2024 World Fantasy Awards Judges Announced

Peter Dennis Pautz, President of the World Fantasy Awards Association, today released the list of judges for the 2024 World Fantasy Awards, for work published in 2023.

The judges read and consider eligible materials received by June 1, 2024, the earlier the better. Pautz explains, “If, for instance, something is received on May 31 the judges may well have only one day to read it before their deliberations conclude. Anything received after June 1 will receive little or no consideration.”

2024 WORLD FANTASY AWARDS JUDGES 

  • Douglas A. Anderson, 11080 Mount Zion Road, Marcellus, MI 49067-8772; USA

[email protected]

Prefers HC (strongly), then PDF, then EPUB

  • Stephanie Feldman, PO Box 3257; 200 W. Butler Avenue; Ambler, PA 19002-9998; USA

[email protected]              

Prefers HC, then PDF

  • Thomas Olde Heuvelt, 1351 Route de Grasse; 06140 Tourrettes-sur-Loup; France

[email protected]

Prefers HC (strongly); then PDF, then EPUB (N.B. This judge’s last name is two words:  Olde Heuvelt)

  • Pat Murphy, 1400 Colorado St. Ste C; Boulder City, NV 89005; USA

[email protected]        

Prefers EPUB, then HC, then PDF

  • Dr Angela Slatter, C/ Pulp Fiction Booksellers; GPO Box 297; Brisbane, Q 4001; Australia

[email protected]

Prefers HC, then MOBI, then EPUB

(Judges’ order of preference as listed above:  HC=Hard Copy; MOBI=Mobipocket ebook format; EPUB=Electronic Publication; PDF=Portable Document Format; MSWord= Microsoft Word Document)

So that a comprehensive submission list may be kept, a copy should also go to:

Peter Dennis Pautz, President
World Fantasy Awards Association
3519 Glen Avenue
Palmer PA 18045-5812; USA
[email protected]

Send materials you wish to be considered by the panel directly to the addresses above, and very importantly, please mark all packages as PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS – NOT FOR SALE OR RESALE – NO COMMERCIAL VALUE — WORLD FANTASY AWARDS MATERIALS.  

Qualifications:  All books must have been originally published in English in 2023; magazines must have a 2023 cover date; short length stories must have been originally published in English in 2023; only living persons are eligible.

Fantasy Types:  All forms of fantasy are eligible, e.g. high, epic, dark, contemporary, literary, horror, etc.

Categories:  Life Achievement; Best Novel; Best Novella (10,001 to 40,000 words); Best Short Story; Best Anthology; Best Collection; Best Artist; Special Award—Professional; Special Award—Non‑Professional.

When submitting works shorter than novel length, please provide a word count for the judges’ benefit.

Please note that the nominees in the Life Achievement category will not be released, though the winners will be announced well before the awards banquet.

All questions pertaining to the convention should be directed to the Convention Chairs:

The awards will be presented at the convention, to be held Thursday through Sunday, October 17-20, 2024, at the Sheraton Niagara Falls, 300 3rd Street, Niagara Falls, NY 14303, USA.

Until January 17th, an attending membership costs $160.00 US, which does not include the Awards Banquet, tickets for which must be purchased separately. Virtual memberships are $80.00 US. Supporting memberships are $50.00 US.From January 18th through May 31, Attending tickets will be $210, Virtual $100, and Supporting $50. From June 1st through October 11th, Attending will be $260, Virtual $130, and Supporting $50. Banquet tickets will be available in late Summer, 2023. Information and forms can be found on the convention website.

[Based on a press release.]

Update 01/16/2024: Peter Dennis Pautz today sent this update to the instructions for sending items to judge Thomas Olde Heuvelt:

Due to new customs practices in Europe and the UK, some packages that are still marked “GIFT” or “NO VALUE” or “NO COMMERCIAL VALUE” or “PROMOTIONAL” or “WORLD FANTASY AWARDS JURY MATERIAL” are requiring a duty or “landing fee” at the recipient’s end.

While some packages are getting through with those fees, there are no funds available from the WFC, WFA, or the jury member(s) to pay for or reimburse those costs.

Thus, please be aware that those submissions requiring a fee will be refused by WFA Judge Thomas Olde Heuvelt, with our agreement.

M. Olde Heuvelt still prefers hard copies of any submissions. However, I suggest backing up those submissions with PDF or EPUB to ensure your submissions receive their due attention.

Pixel Scroll 11/28/23 Scrollmas Won’t Be Scrollmas Without Any Pixels

(1) WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2025 ACCESSIBILITY. Karen Fishwick, Chair of World Fantasy Convention 2025, responded to Mari Ness’ comments about accessibility issues at the 2025 WFC hotel quoted in yesterday’s Scroll.

There have been some very valid concerns raised on social media about the accessibility of World Fantasy Convention 2025. 

Some of these concerns are based on experiences at a previous WFC held at the same Hotel, so I wanted to make sure that these were put into context. 

  • The hotel has recently undertaken some renovations in the front/lobby area, which has improved access. 
  • The bedrooms have been renovated since 2013. 
  • We are not using function rooms in the hotel that are not accessible to people in wheelchairs (including the mezzanine room on the staircase). The function rooms we are using are on the lower ground floor and the upper ground floor. We do also have options to use rooms on Floor M as well.
  • Details of the entrances to the hotel are on our Accessibility Audit https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-audit/

There are still some things we are working on:

  • Parking for high sided vehicles – this particularly affects dealers, event organisers and people with larger mobility vehicles – There is space to drop people/unload at the venue, but the car park is height limited. We are looking for parking options. If these are further away from the venue, we will look at the logistics of getting drivers to and from that site. Details of the current provision and height limits are on our Accessibility Audit. https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-audit/
  • We will be talking to adjacent hotels to identify options for people with different budgets and access needs to make sure that people have a range of options to choose from. 

We would very much like people to read our Accessibility Policy https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-policy/ that sets out the measures we are taking to improve the accessibility of our event. We will add any additional measures/accommodations to this page as they are confirmed. 

If anyone has specific concerns or have a question about the venue, they can contact me directly on [email protected]

On a personal note, I myself am physically disabled, so we do take these concerns very seriously and want to work with our potential attendees to ensure they enjoy the event. 

(2) OF COURSE THERE WERE VFX. “No Visual Effects in ‘Barbie’? Glen Pratt Reveals the Truth”Animation World Network sets the record straight.

Much has been made of Barbie and Oppenheimer sharing the same theatrical release date to the point that clever fan posters were created to promote a possible double bill coined Barbenheimer. Both productions also notably shared the declaration that they contained no visual effects when in fact, the famed physicist’s biopic, directed by Christopher Nolan, utilized digital compositing; and there are full CG shots as well as CG augmentation used to bring the adventures of a Mattel doll to life by Greta Gerwig. 

Caught the middle of the controversy are Glen Pratt and Andrew Jackson, the visual effects supervisors responsible for the two projects. Their presence on the credit list highlights the ludicrous nature of the public statements….

… “Even if you look at the sets that were physically built like the Barbie Dream House,” Pratt continues. “We shot clean plates of that for certain shots and in those clean plates, when you looked at them without any actors or crew in them, it looked like a toy.  We were taking that and extrapolating further upon that language.”

There are over 20 fully CG shots in the film. “In the Dawn of Women sequence, which is Greta’s version of 2001: A Space Odyssey there is an entirely CG shot of the original Barbie doll which doubles as the monolith,” Pratt reveals. Framestore did concept art, visual development, previs, postvis, and virtual production, totalling 1,300 shots, while Chicken Bone FX, FuseFX, UPP, and Lola VFX contributed 300 shots. 600 of the 1,600 shots required extensive visual effects work.  “When Barbie is first driving out onto the open road environment and you have the big Barbie Land rainbow, all of that was essentially bluescreen,” Pratt shares. “There was a tiny bit of set and pink road but the car had to be moving.  The sky, distant vista of Barbie Land and the mountains were created digitally from reference photography of the sets that were built.  We created an entirely CG environment.”…

(3) LIST OF PRIORS. [Item by Jim Janney.] Ars Technica has a long dive into movie time travel, from George Pal to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, with separate scores for entertainment and science. Includes some I haven’t seen and some I hadn’t even heard of.  “The Ars guide to time travel in the movies”.

…Even without scientific accuracy, we can still ask for logical consistency. Alas, that is also pretty thin on the ground, although in this case, there are true exceptions. The most straightforward way for travel to the past to make sense is if you can visit but you can’t actually change anything—“Whatever happened happened,” in the memorable formulation of fictional physicist Daniel Faraday in the TV show Lost. Physicists have dubbed this the “Novikov self-consistency principle,” but it can really just be summed up as “making sense.” Somewhat more ambitiously, we can imagine one or more alternative parallel timelines that are created by a sojourn into history. For the most part, however, our cinematic heroes make a cheerful hash of logic and narrative sense as they traipse through their pasts….

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

…You will not be surprised to learn that Hot Tub Time Machine doesn’t work too hard to maintain scientific plausibility in its portrayal of time travel….

(4) EGGSCLUSIVE. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Did you there was an Alien series? I didn’t.

But Deadline does: “’Alien’: Timothy Olyphant Cast In Noah Hawley’s FX Series”.

Timothy Olyphant is reuniting with Noah Hawley and FX, signing on for a major role in the upcoming Alien series. Olyphant, who recurred on Season 4 of Hawley’s FX anthology series Fargo, is set to star opposite Sydney Chandler in Hawley‘s prequel to the Alien franchise, sources tell Deadline.

Details about Olyphant’s character are not being disclosed. I hear he plays Kirsh, a synth who acts as a mentor and trainer for Chandler’s Wendy who is a hybrid, a meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult….

(5) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. “From Local, to Global, to Gone: On the Rise and Fall of Borders Books” — an excerpt from Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of American Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century, edited by Buz Teacher and Janet Bukovinsky Teacher — at Literary Hub.

… Rookie Mistake #2: they ordered some new books and mixed them with used books on the same shelves. Customers were confused, not knowing if a slightly worn new book was “used,” or if a gently used book was “new.”

Rookie Mistake #3: They finally understood that Ann Arbor was a readers’ town and that antiquarian books were of marginal interest to the local avid readers. All the used books were culled from the shelves. After surviving three moves in two years, Borders Book Shop was in a good location with enough space to make a splash, and selling the kind of books people wanted. Their ambitions were rekindled.

That year, Joe Gable, fresh from Madison, Wisconsin, swaggered into Borders Book Shop. During a stand-up job interview in front of the fiction section Tom asked him “What do you know about books?” Sounding a bit like Marlon Brando, looking straight into Tom’s eyes, Joe said humbly: “I know more about books than anyone in this store.” Tom was momentarily stunned by the hubris of the comment. But he took the insult like a man, and after a few pointed questions, he hired Joe on the spot. In fact, Joe did know more about books than anyone in the store. And he proved it over the next quarter century….

(6) RECOMMENDED CLASSICS. The Martian Chronicles and Lord of the Rings are on Her Campus’ list of “ Classics That Are Worth The Read”.

Often it feels like to consider yourself a true reader, you have to know the classics. But the most classic of classics can feel impossible to read. I’ve read my fair share of incredibly boring classics, but have also managed to find some entertaining and important stories among them. Here is my list of five classics that are absolutely worth the read….

(7) DAVID ELLIOTT (1931-2023). Director David Elliott, who worked on several Gerry and Sylvia Anderson series, died November 10. Stephen La Riviere paid tribute in the Guardian.

Like many film back-room boys, my friend David Elliott, who has died aged 92, was not a household name, although he had seven decades worth of credits. Many thousands, however, will remember the happy childhood images he created as a director on the classic 1960s puppet TV series Thunderbirds, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

David first met Gerry Anderson while they were both working on feature films in the 50s. When Anderson went on to become a producer of puppet series for the fledgling medium of television, he brought David over to picture edit. A back-breaking schedule saw him cut one episode of The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-58) a day. The work paid off and soon a marionette empire was born.

David then started directing, shooting puppet stars as if they were film stars. Each production brought greater worldwide success. Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-62), Fireball XL5 (1962-63), Stingray (1964-65) and Thunderbirds (1965-66) entertained and pushed the boundaries of TV. At one point, Anderson’s production company AP Films was the largest consumer of colour film, when TV was still black and white. It was a far-sighted decision that ensured new audiences for their work for decades….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 28, 1946 Joe Dante, 77. He started off as one as us as he wrote columns and articles for fanzines and APAs.  

Now let’s look at what he’s done that I find interesting.

The first would be his collaboration with John Sayles when they completely rewrote the first draft of Gary Brandner’s The Howling novel for that film. Brandner was said to extremely angry with the film that was produced.

Because of The Howling, Speliberg offered up Gremlins, one of my all time favorite films, to him. I’ve watched it more times than I can count and I enjoyed it each time. Gremlins II, not so much. 

Spielberg also brought him on as one of the directors on John Landis’ Twilight Zone: The Movie. Dante’s segment, a remake of the original Twilight Zone “It’s a Good Life” episode as written by Serling. That story was based off a Jerome Bixby story published in 1953 in the Star Science Fiction Stories anthology series, edited by Frederik Pohl.

Ahhh, Innerspace with Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan. The Studio  hated it, Dante made the film he wanted to despite the Studio and audiences stayed home. I thought it was sweet. 

I hadn’t realised to now that Dante was responsible for Small Soldiers, an interesting film. Not a great film but it have a possibility of being something. Not sure what that something would have been. Dante says that there were twelve writers involved in writing the script. Ouch. 

So Dante directed Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Moving on.

Finally Dante came back to Gremlins by serving as a consultant on the Max Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai prequel series. Don’t get too excited as this is an animated series and I’ll give you the promo poster of this kid friendly series as I take leave of you.

(9) PROTEST DAMAGE TO LIBRARY. “New York Public Library facing steep graffiti cleanup costs after protests”Gothamist forecasts the bill.

…Protesters have caused at least $75,000 in graffiti damage to the famous New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman building, where some carved reliefs may need to be replaced.

The damage was caused by at least three separate pro-Palestinian protests over the last few weeks, officials said. The worst damage, however, occurred on Thanksgiving Day when protesters sprayed “Free Palestine” in dark green paint and smeared red handprints on the steps, fountain and facade.

The graffiti damage from Thursday covered parts of marble where donors’ names are engraved with delicate crevices that can be easily eroded by cleanup efforts, said Garrett Bergen, director of facilities for the library.

Cleaning dark paint from the building requires applying a number of applications of solvent for days at a time, he said.

“We could have to replace certain elements if a rosette is too damaged for the paint to be removed. So it’s a little unclear,” Bergen said….

(10) SNAKES, IT HAD TO BE SNAKES. “Box Office: ‘Hunger Games’ Beating ‘Wish’ With $43M, ‘Napoleon’ $30M+ Over Thanksgiving” reports Deadline.

Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes won Black Friday and Saturday at the box office, respectively with $11.4M and $11.2M, soaring above a Disney animated movie (Wish) which are typically the champs of Thanksgiving weekend, and big streamer Apple’s $200M war epic, Napoleon, for a No. 1 win over the holiday stretch with a 3-day $28.8M and 5-day of $42M….

… Disney Animation’s Wish came in third on Friday and Saturday (eeks) with respectively $8M and $7M, behind Apple Original Production’s Sony-distributed Napoleon, which earned an estimated $8.4M on Friday and $7.5M [Saturday]…

(11) PAYING IT FORWARD. “Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s advice to writers from advice given to him by Robert Heinlein” – a Writers & Illustrators of the Future video from a number of years ago.

(12) LAUGHING WITH BARBIE. “’Barbie’ Gotham Awards Tribute: Watch Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie Get Silly” – an invitation from Deadline.

Barbie writer-director Greta Gerwig and star-producer Margot Robbie showcased their comedy chops in a one-two bit tonight, thanking the Gotham Awards for a Global Icon & Creator tribute. Watch their speech above.

“We love a restaurant in a bank!” said Gerwig of the Cipriani Wall Street locale, which is just that. 

The duo was lovingly introduced by Laura Dern. …… “Four years ago, I asked Greta to come and write Barbie with me,” said Robbie. Gerwig and her husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach “took an object — a doll with no character or story — and cooked up the most ridiculous, outrageous, bananas script in an attempt to conjure back what they loved about the movies.”

Said Gerwig about making the film during the Covid lockdown: “We figured that if no one was making movies anyway, they might as well not make this one. And we showed it to everyone. And Warner Bros., miraculously, said yes, and Mattel, miraculously, said yes.” 

Robbie: “Essentially. Mostly. With some notes, which Greta and Noah ignored.”

Gerwig: ”We carefully considered the notes. And then we presented our case.”

Robbie: “You ignored them.” …

(13) THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This is a charming, and surprisingly informative 15 minute documentary from the one and only Moid Moidelhoff over at  Media Death Cult. Actually, this came out a couple of weeks ago, but I have only just watched my downloaded copy. Trust me, I think you’ll find two or three things you did not know. (Have you ever heard of the paperback original revolution of the 1950s?…) In the middle of domestic chaos, Moid took the trouble to make this the week before he moved house.  So make a mug of builders and join Moid…

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

Pixel Scroll 11/27/23 What’s In The Daily Scroll? I’ll Tell You What’s In The Daily Scroll — An Item About A Credential Who Didn’t Pay Their Air-And-Gravity Dues And Now Has Got Those Vacuum Blues

(1) REGRESS REPORT. Mari Ness says the 2025 World Fantasy Con is bringing the convention back to a venue it used a decade ago that still has substantial accessibility problems. Thread starts here.

On Bluesky Ness added:

The organization behind 2025 World Fantasy Con, HWS Events, replied on Bluesky:

(2) THE END IS NEAR. Brian Keene says he will end his revived Jobs In Hell newsletter in March 2024.

…One thing I’ve definitely noticed between JIH’s original incarnation back in the late-1990’s and early-2000’s versus now is the speed at which market listings and industry news happen. During the original Jobs In Hell’s run, we were the absolute fastest way for those kind of things to travel. Email was then a brand-new thing for most homes, and email newsletters were the fastest way of disseminating information, because social media did not exist yet.

These days, by the time I get the information to you once a month, you have probably already seen it elsewhere on Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter) or a dozen other places. Thus, the question becomes — how do I overcome that?

And the answer is, I don’t….

… So, what I have decided is that Jobs In Hell will cease publication next March. Why wait until then? Because many of you paid for a full year’s subscription in advance, and I want to make sure you are served….

(3) PRESENT VALUE IS NO GIFT. “’Doctor Who’ Writer Residuals Shaken Up After Disney+ Boards BBC Show” reports Deadline.

Doctor Who, the long-running BBC sci-fi series, has shifted away from a residual model for its writers since Disney+ came on board as a partner, we understand.

The series, which is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary with a trio of specials from returning showrunner Russell T. Davies, has moved towards a buyout model for writers, Deadline has been told.

Sources said that episodic writers are now being paid a large fee upfront rather than a smaller fee plus residuals that has seen previous scribes earn additional compensation when Doctor Who is repeated.

Doctor Who, which has aired nearly 900 episodes over six decades, has been one of the most lucrative British sources of residuals for former writers down the years as it is so heavily repeated. The entire back catalog has just landed on BBC iPlayer, for example.

While Deadline understands that contracts were freely negotiated and agreed with writers and their agents, the move comes at a topical time for writers’ compensation, particularly given the recent labor action in the U.S. Doctor Who remains a British show and thereby doesn’t have to abide by WGA contracts but the optics are interesting given that the move comes after Disney+ boarded the series last year as a partner outside of the UK and Ireland….

(4) TIME TO TALK ABOUT A TROPE. Alyssa Shotwell tells readers of The Mary Sue “I Will Be Seated for ‘The American Society of Magical Negroes’”.

…Directed by writer/actor Kobi Libii (DoubtMadam Secretary), the satirical fantasy film looks to turn the storytelling trope of the Magical Negro on its head and into a fantastical adventure. As a refresher, the trope occurs when a fictional work uses its primary Black character to serve the interests of its white character. They have little to no importance to the plot and exist as a tool to help the white characters on their journey. Unfortunately, this is not a trope of a bygone era. In 2019, the Oscars awarded Green Book, a movie that turned an important Black American composer, Don Shirley, into a Magical Negro. Even into the 2020s, the trope has reappeared in popular media like The Queen’s Gambit and The Strand. You can learn more about the trope in former TMS writer Princess Weekes’s video on Magical Negros in Stephen King’s work.

The American Society of Magical Negroes stars Justice Smith (Detective PikachuDungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) as Aren. After a secret society of magical Black people recruits Aren to help join their cause, his life changes forever. What’s their cause? Making white people’s lives easier….

(5) BALLARD’S NONFICTION. This week’s Open Book on BBC Radio 4 had its last third devoted to J. G. Ballard: “Open Book, Alexis Wright”.

Also on the programme, Roland Allen explores the history of writers and their notebooks; and Mark Blacklock and Toby Litt discuss J G Ballard’s non-fiction.

(6) LA WORLDCON BID. Craig Miller told Facebook readers that the LA in 2026 Worldcon bid was active at Loscon last weekend.

…One other thing that kept me occupied was the bid to host a World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in the Los Angeles-area again in 2026. The bid had a table on the convention floor and we held a party on Saturday night in the hotel’s main party suite. Our theme is “intergalactic adventure” taking the form “of come to our Worldcon and be launched into adventure”. We decorated the room with large format posters of alien worlds and had special “intergalactic taste treats”.

The foods were named for various planets, some from fiction some real, and they each had appropriate descriptions. Quite a few people took photos of the food and their descriptions. I, of course, didn’t think to, even though I was noticing people doing so.

For Hoth, we had “Sweet snow caps topped with blue glacier shavings from ice caves”. Actually meringues topped with blue-colored white chocolate.

For KOI-5Ab (an actual exoplanet with three suns) we described this as giving different spectrums for growth resulting in blue, ruby, and brown outer coatings of crimson fruit. The food was really pomegranate seeds in either dark, ruby, or blue-colored white chocolate.

Perhaps my favorite was one we didn’t tie to a planet. We had fresh rambutan (which are sort of like lychee) served with the top half of their skin removed, leaving the round, white fruit exposed in a “hairy” base. I called them “alien eggs served in nest”.

And, yes, I’m that crazy, getting involved with running another Worldcon….

(7) SO WASN’T IT POPULAR ENOUGH? The magazine is gone, but the website remains. “After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine”The Verge has the story.

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine. In a statement to The Verge, Cathy Hebert, the communications director for PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures, says the outlet needs to “evolve” beyond its magazine product, which published its first all-digital issue in 2021.

PopSci, which covers a whole range of stories related to the fields of science, technology, and nature, published its first issue in 1872. Things have changed a lot over the years, with the magazine switching to a quarterly publication schedule in 2018 and doing away with the physical copies altogether after 2020….

…In addition to dropping its magazine format, PopSci laid off several employees earlier this month, leaving around five editorial staff members and “a few” workers on the publication’s commerce team, according to Axios. The digital media group Recurrent Ventures acquired PopSci in 2021 and named its third CEO in three years just one week before the layoffs hit.

PopSci will continue to offer articles on its website, along with its PopSci Plus subscription, which offers access to exclusive content and the magazine’s archive…. 

(8) BE FREE. The Guardian’s Alex Clark says take the labels off those bookstore shelves: “The big idea: should we abolish literary genres?”

…Genre is a confining madness; it says nothing about how writers write or readers read, and everything about how publishers, retailers and commentators would like them to. This is not to criticise the many talented personnel in those areas, who valiantly swim against the labels their industry has alighted on to shift units as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Consider the worst offender: not crime, horror, thriller, science fiction, espionage or romance, but “literary fiction”. It can and does contain many of the elements of the others, but is ultimately meaningless except as a confused shorthand: for what is thought clever or ambitious or beyond the comprehension of readers more suited to “mass market” or “commercial” fiction. What would happen if we dispensed with this non-category category altogether? Very little, except that we might meet a book on its own terms.

Is last year’s Booker prize winner, Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a ghost story because its central character is dead, or a thriller because he has to work out who has murdered him? A historical novel because it is set during the Sri Lankan civil war, or speculative fiction because it contains scenes of the afterlife? And where do we place previous winners such as Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders or A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James?…

… I’m returning now to a new novel, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, one of my favourite contemporary novelists. It is set in space, on board a craft circling the Earth, filled with astronauts from different countries and cultures, undergoing physical, mental and emotional changes. Her last novel, The Western Wind, was set in 1491, and she has also written about Alzheimer’s disease, Socrates, infidelity and insomnia. Categorise that….

(9) GROW MOUNT TBR. Becky Spratford introduces readers to “Largehearted Boy’s Essential and Interesting Best of 2023 Book Lists”.

I am talking about Largehearted Boy’s Best of 2023 Book Lists. For the past 15 years, David Gutowski has spent his end of each year trying to give you access to every single best books list in America. This year, for his 16th go-round, he has streamlined the process a bit. From this year’s page:

“For the past fifteen years, I have aggregated every online year-end book list I have discovered into one post.

“This year, I will collect essential and interesting year-end book lists in this post and update it daily.

“Please feel free to e-mail me with a magazine, newspaper, or other online list I have missed.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 27, 1907 L. Sprague de Camp. (Died 2000.)  So what’s not to like about L. Sprague de Camp?  

Let’s start with his excellent The Incorporated Knight series comprises some 1970s short stories by de Camp and two novels written in collaboration with his wife Catherine Crook de Camp, The Incorporated Knight and The Pixilated Peeress. The early short stories were reworked into first novel.

Next let me praise his Harold Shea and Gavagan’s Bar stories, both written with his friend Fletcher Pratt.  There are five stories by them, another ten stories are written forty years later but not by them and I’m not at all fond of those. The original stories were first collected in The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea. Treasure them. 

Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov, Philadelphia Navy Yard, 1944.

They say Gavagan’s Bar were patterned after Lord Dunsany’s Jorkens stories and that certainly makes sense. These are quite extraordinary tales. It appears the last printed edition is Tales from Gavagan’s Bar in 1980 on Bantam Books. Orion did a UK epub just several years ago but not for the U.S. 

They did a lot of Really Good Stuff, say The Incomplete Enchanter and The Land of Unreason. An amazing writing partnership it was. 

So what’s good by him alone. Surprisingly his Conan tales are damn good. Now stop throwing things at me, I’m serious. Some are stellar like “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” and “The Bloodstained God”. (Yes I’ve a weakness for this fiction.) The three Conan novels co-written with Lin Carter (Conan the Barbarian was also written with Catherine Crook de Camp) are remarkably resistant to the Suck Fairy. 

Shall I note how excellent his Viagens Interplanetarias series is? Well I will. Adventurous and lighthearted SF with great characters and fun stories, novels (much of which was written with his wife) and stories alike are great reads. I read a few stories a while back and even the Suck Fairy still liked them. All of his fiction holds up remarkably well despite being written upwards of six decades ago. 

Well, that’s my personal reading history with him. What’s yours? 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side: Lise Andreasen says, “Something similar actually happened to me, when I and my family visited Odense (birth place of H.C. Andersen) and hit another car.”

(12) THE TEARS ARE BIGGER ON THE OUTSIDE. In the Guardian: “’I blubbed inconsolably for 20 minutes’ – your favourite ever Doctor Who moments”.

‘A giant maggot creeping towards Jo Grant’

I remember the sheer terror as I watched a giant maggot slowly creeping towards Jo Grant at the end of an episode of The Green Death in the Pertwee era. There are always mentions of “hiding behind the sofa”, but I literally did. I was so terrified that my mum, another Who fan, tried to explain that the maggot would probably turn out to just want to have a talk with Jo. I have no idea why this made any sense to me, but it did help calm me down. My second favourite moment was when Christopher Eccleston regenerated into David Tennant. The first series of the new Who was a shared experience with my eldest daughter and turned her into a lifelong fan. At the end of this episode, she fled the room in tears crying out “but I don’t want him to go!” We still watch together, but reply via chat. Doctor Who brings three generations of my family together and keeps them connected over a silly show about a blue box. Andrew Stephens, Swindon

(13) DRESSING FESTIVELY. The New York Times looks to a Hallmark Christmas movie costume designer to understand “Clothes that Conjure the Holiday Spirit”.

How do locations like Biltmore House influence your process?

I walked through the mansion to get ideas from the space. I remember looking at the colors of the wood paneling and of the limestone. Window shades are kept at a certain level and rooms are kept dimly lit to protect the things inside from light. It’s very romantic and cozy, and I wanted wardrobes that communicated warmth and coziness using colors besides red and green.

To create a gown and a kilt worn by the stars of “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” I pulled together a bunch of tartans that went with the tapestries, candles and dark wood at the castle. We settled on MacDonald of Glencoe, a tartan with holiday-like jewel tones. The pattern was digitally printed on the fabric used to make the gown, and the kilt was made with a traditional wool tartan.

What are some challenges with costuming holiday films?

It’s the little things. All clothing sizes have changed: Vintage shoes are narrower than shoes are today, jackets fit differently, and girdles are gone. It’s hard to find people to do embroidery and beading.

But I like classic and timeless looks because Christmas movies are watched over and over.

 (14) WHEN NO ONE IS AT THE WHEEL. Two companies operated hundreds of driverless cars in San Francisco at the peak: “‘Lost Time for No Reason’: How Driverless Taxis Are Stressing Cities” reports the New York Times.

…After five years, there are still no systematic state safety and incident reporting standards for driverless cars in California, Ms. Friedlander said. “This is such a dramatic kind of change in transportation that it’s going to take many years for the regulatory structure to really be finalized,” she said.

Last year, the number of 911 calls from San Francisco residents about robotaxis began rising, city officials said. In one three-month period, 28 incidents were reported, according to a letter that city officials sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

By June, autonomous car incidents in San Francisco had risen to such a “concerning level” that the city’s Fire Department created a separate autonomous vehicle incident form, said Darius Luttropp, a deputy chief of the department. As of Oct. 15, 87 incidents had been recorded with the form.

“We move forward with expectations that this wonder technology will operate like a human driver,” Mr. Luttropp said. “That did not turn out to be the case.”

Mr. Wood, the firefighter, attended a weeklong training session held by Waymo in June at the Fire Department’s training center to learn more about the self-driving vehicles. But he said he was disappointed.

“None of us walked away from the training with any way to get a stalled car to move,” he said, adding that manually taking over the car takes 10 minutes, which is too long in an emergency.

His main takeaway was that he should bang on the car’s window or tap on its door so he could talk to the vehicle’s remote operator, he said. The operator would then try to remotely re-engage the vehicle or send someone to manually override it, he said.

Waymo said it had rolled out a software update to its cars in October that would let firefighters and other authorities take control of the vehicles within seconds….

(15) RAW FOOTAGE. “Disneyland Park Guest Arrested After Stripping Off Clothes On ‘It’s A Small World’ Ride”Deadline tells what happened.

Disneyland park guest in Anaheim, California was arrested and escorted off the property by local authorities after stripping off their clothes during the It’s A Small World attraction.

The incident happened on Sunday afternoon during the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend. A Disneyland Resort representative told Deadline that the guest got off the ride while it was in motion and the attraction was stopped when park operators were made aware of the situation.

… “It’s a Small World” was shut down for about an hour as park operators inspected the attraction. No guests were harmed physically during the incident and the ride resumed operations at about 3 p.m. local time….

Here’s one of the videos taken of the incident: “This Family Survived the #Disneyland Its a small world #streaker#”.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Lise Andreasen, Steven French, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 10/9/23 Scrolls Are Truth At 24 Pixels A Second

(1) WORLD FANTASY CON UPDATE. The World Fantasy Convention is in Kansas City, MO from October 26-29 at the Sheraton Crown Center. They are getting very close to the event. 

The deadline for online registration and tickets for the awards banquet is October 12. People can still pay for memberships on the day, but it will be more expensive. More details on their website.

They have also posted the Tentative Schedule (subject to change).

(2) WIKI HELP WANTED. Scott Edelman quite reasonably thinks the Wikipedia page for prolific sff creator Robert Reed (author) should have a photo of Reed, and not him. It once did. Can any editor fix it?

After I accepted a Hugo Award for Robert Reed at the Yokohama Worldcon, someone swiped in my photo on his wikipedia page. It was corrected after I made a public complaint, but checking his page on his birthday today, I see — I’m back! And blurry, too! Could one of your readers who has editing privileges toss in an actual picture of Bob?

And would you know — today is Robert Reed’s birthday. See the listing below.

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

Ben Yalow arrives in China

The Worldcon co-chair’s arrival in China received coverage from Red Star News.  Via Google Translate (with minor manual edits):

At 14:37 noon, Ben Yalow’s plane flew from Hong Kong, China to Chengdu Tianfu International Airport. He specially wore a panda badge from this World Science Fiction Convention on his front. He also received a special gift just after getting off the plane — the mascot “Kemeng” of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention. Ben Yalow couldn’t put it down: “It’s so cute, I love it!”

This is Ben Yalow’s third visit to Chengdu. He said: “When I came to Chengdu before, the plane landed at Chengdu Shuangliu Airport, and this time it landed at Tianfu International Airport. The airport is bigger and the facilities are more beautiful. What has[n’t?] changed is that everyone is still so enthusiastic, and so many friends came to pick me up.”

Red Star News also posted a short video to the Bilibili video site.

Test run of the Worldcon-branded train this Friday

Further to the item yesterday, there will be a test run event of the Worldcon branded train this coming Friday (13th) morning.  Applications to be part of the event have to be in by the end of Wednesday the 11th; SF fans, traditional dress wearers and cosplayers are specifically named as being welcome to apply, so I imagine there’ll be plenty of photos taken and published.

Who’s sponsoring the Chengdu Worldcon?

Section B.10 of the recently released Business Meeting Agenda has a short “Sponsorship List” section near the bottom of page 31, listing two sponsors:

  • Chengdu Technology Innovation New City Investment and Development Co., Ltd
  • Chengdu Media Group

This seems inconsistent with reporting on the June 12th Brand Conference, which stated that there would be eight sponsors, although only one was named at that event.  Selected paragraphs via Google Translate:

On June 12, the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention global brand launch conference was held in Chengdu, and invitations were issued to brand partners around the world.

The “2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Conference Market Development Cooperation Plan” was released on site, and a signing ceremony of intent with the first sponsor company, China Telecom, and the first batch of eight franchise companies was held….

…During the event, Liang Xiaolan, full-time chairman of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Conference and vice president of the Chengdu Science Fiction Association, and Cheng Hong, deputy secretary of the party committee and deputy general manager of China Telecom Chengdu Branch, signed the first sponsoring enterprise intention contract. Sun, vice chairman of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Conference Yue signed intention cooperation agreements with representatives of the first eight franchise companies….

…According to the relevant person in charge of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, the World Science Fiction Convention will hold seven high-profile main activities. By fully participating in the activities, companies can fully display their brands at the main venue of the conference and other online and offline official scenes, and use their products. Interact with fans around the world and bring massive exposure to corporate brands through the media communication matrix….

To the best of my knowledge, these sponsorships have never been acknowledged in any of the media released on the Chengdu Worldcon’s various channels (website, social media accounts, etc), in either English or Chinese.  I’m unaware of any of the other sponsors being named since that original announcement in June.  On the positive side, I don’t recall seeing any sponsor logos being displayed on any of the photos I’ve seen of the convention venue or surrounding area, or in any of the magazines that have run features on the con, so maybe some of the things mentioned in that news report never came to pass?

(I’ve attached what I think are the 5 most pertinent images from the linked sina.cn news story.) 

More Xiaohongshu photo posts

A gallery of several photos ; A transit stop ; A bus stop (second photo)

There have been a handful of posts with photos of signage, transit stops, billboards, etc related to the Worldcon.  Part of the text of of the first of the above links says (via Google Translate):

More than 800 sets of science fiction conference road flags are hung on 15 main and secondary roads in the city. With the theme of “Meeting the Future in Chengdu”, 21 themed landscape sketches are set up around the science fiction museum, on the connection and support lines and at major nodes in the city, and use back streets and alleys. The courtyard walls, bus stops and other carriers integrate sci-fi elements such as Nebula and the mascot “Ke Meng” with the characteristics of Pidu City. 

(3) GRRM’S ANSWER. A bit of Chinese advertising researched by Ersatz Culture led me to check with George R.R. Martin whether planned to go to the Worldcon. GRRM replies that he’s neither going nor participating virtually. 

“I am not involved in this year’s Worldcon.  Either in person or via zoom. Have way too much to do here at home.”

(4) COLLECTING PODCAST. Heritage Auctions sponsors The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, a collecting podcast hosted by showrunners and “writer-collectors” David Mandel (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep) and Ryan Condal (House of the Dragon).

Every week, David and Ryan explore the far reaches of the thrilling world of collecting TV and movie memorabilia. They have dedicated much of the current season to covering the once-in-a-lifetime event that is the Greg Jein Collection. They provide everything from a three-part, deep-dive into the auction catalog, going literally page by page through Greg’s incredible collection to an entire episode to finding out who Greg Jein was as a human.

Here are links to episodes of the podcast:

There are also several YouTube videos:

(5) THEY’RE NOT ALL STINKERS. “Every Isaac Asimov Movie & TV Adaptation Ranked (Including Foundation)” at ScreenRant.

…Apple TV+’s Foundation has been a recent success for Asimov adaptations, as TV networks have been working to bring fantasy/sci-fi novels to the screen. The success of Game of Thrones changed the television landscape, and every network has wanted to bring sprawling book universes to life, paving the way for Foundation. The Foundation series, with Robots and Empire books included, is Asimov’s most expansive work. If it can be adapted, anything else is possible too. Attempts have been made at bringing the author’s novels and novellas into feature films, though so far few have been successful or faithful adaptations….

There are seven items on their list – this is the first one they didn’t hate.

5. The End Of Eternity (1987)

The End of Eternity is a 1987 adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s novel of the same name. The sci-fi film has elements of mystery and thriller and actually proves to be a well-made and faithful adaptation of the time travel novel. The film, which was released episodically for television, may have some pretty niche appeal for fans of the novel. For readers who love the story, the film is definitely worth a watch.

(6) FRIENDS, ROMULANS, COUNTRYMEN. The Commandant of Starfleet Academy announces “Due to Falling Enrollments, We Will No Longer Offer Courses in Romulan at Starfleet Academy” at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

… But despite living in a post-scarcity utopia, in which all of our material needs are satisfied by replicators and the infinite energy supplied by dilithium reactors, recent increases in the price of antimatter, declining domestic enrollments, and intensifying competition for intergalactic students mean that we are facing some tough economic headwinds.…

(7) ANTHONY HICKOX (1959-2023). [Item by Steve Green.] British screenwriter, actor, director Anthony Hickox died October 9, 2023, aged 64. Most of his movies were within the horror genre — Waxwork (1988), Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Full EclipseWarlock: The Armageddon (both 1993) — but he also adapted the comic strip Prince Valiant for the big screen in 1997. Son of director Douglas Hickox (Theatre of Blood, 1973).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 9, 1900 Harry Bates. Writer, Editor, and Member of First Fandom. Editor from 1930 to 1933 of the new pulp magazines Astounding Stories of Super-Science (which later became Astounding Stories, then Analog) and Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. His Retro Hugo finalist novelette “Farewell to the Master” was the source of the classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. He wrote a number of other stories under his own name and under various pseudonyms. In 1976 he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1981.)
  • Born October 9, 1948 Ciaran Carson. Northern Ireland-born poet and novelist who is here, genre wise at least, for his translation of the early Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, which he called simply The Táin. I’m also going to single him out for penning the finest book ever written on Irish traditional music,  Last Night’s Fun: About Time, Food and Music. It’s every bit as interesting as Iain Banks’ Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram is. (Died 2019.)
  • Born October 9, 1949 Jim Starlin, 74. Comics artist and illustrator. If you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ve seen the characters Thanos and Drax the Destroyer which he created. He would also work for DC and other companies over the years. Starlin and Bernie Wrightson produced Heroes for Hope, a 1985 one-shot designed to raise money for African famine relief and recovery. Genre writers such as  Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, and Edward Bryant would contribute to this undertaking. He’s written a number of genre novels co-written with his wife Daina Graziunas. 
  • Born October 9, 1964 Jacqueline Carey, 59. Author of the long-running mildly BDSM-centered Kushiel’s Legacy Universe which also includes the Moirin Trilogy. (Multiple Green Man reviewers used this phraseology in their approving reviews.) Locus in their December 2002 issue did an interview with her called “Jacqueline Carey: Existential BDSM”.  She did several stand-alone novels including the intriguingly entitled Miranda and Caliban.
  • Born October 9, 1961 Matt Wagner, 62. The Grendel Tales and Batman / Grendel are very good as is Grendel vs. The Shadow stories he did a few years back. His run on Madame Xanadu was amazing too. Oh, and I’d suggest both issues of House of Mystery Halloween Annual that he did for some appropriate Halloween reading. And let’s not forget his long run on the Sandman Mystery Theatre
  • Born October 9, 1965 Robert Reed, 68. Extremely prolific short story writer with at least two hundred tales so far. And a number of novels as well such as the superb Marrow series. He won a Hugo at Nippon 2007 for his “A Billion Eves” novella. And he was nominated for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer as well.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater has a monstrous religious experience.
  • Thatababy shows how an ordinary phrase sounds ominous when it’s also a movie reference.

(10) READY TO BE STRANGER AGAIN. “A Georgia Town Where ‘Stranger Things’ Is Shot Yearns for Production to Return” — the New York Times pays a visit.

Liz Bowman, who was a special effects artist for “Stranger Things” before the strikes began, has since been giving tours of locations from the show in Jackson. Ga.Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

Before a hole could pierce open a parallel dimension, unleashing murderous creatures like a Demogorgon into the placid existence of Hawkins, Ind., there needed to be another invasion.

Hawkins, the fictional home of “Stranger Things,” had to take over the small town in Georgia where the hit Netflix show has been set since it debuted in 2016.

The old county courthouse in the center of Jackson, Ga., was turned into the Hawkins Library. An empty storefront became Melvald’s General Store. On the other side of the town square, a marquee was added to the front of a restaurant, transforming it into Hawkins’s movie theater.

But lately, Jackson has just been Jackson. “Stranger Things” retreated, along with most of the other movies and television shows filmed in Georgia, as the writers’ strike that began in May and the actors’ strike that followed in July reached far beyond Hollywood. The writers reached a tentative deal with studios in late September, and a ratification vote is underway. But actors are still negotiating with entertainment companies, keeping most TV and film production shut down….

(11) KEEP DRINKING TIL YOU SEE NESSIE. Are you in the market for a “Scotch Ness Critter (Chilling Stone)”?

Looming far into the Scottish Highlands, the Scotch Ness Critter roams around its habitat in secrecy. Its long neck and strong nose are drawn to only the finest scents: toasted oak, dried fruits, or even a wisp of peat. No matter how shallow or deep the glass, you might be the lucky one to keep it sticking around…are you ready?

(12) THE SHADOW KNOWS…DO YOU? One of these three contestants on a 1974 episode of To Tell The Truth is the real Walter Gibson, creatof of The Shadow: “To Tell The Truth (June 6, 1974)”.

(13) FANTASTIC VOYAGERS. “The Future of Medicine: Artificial Life Forms” at SciTechDaily.

Creating artificial life is a recurring theme in both science and popular literature, where it conjures images of creeping slime creatures with malevolent intentions or super-cute designer pets. At the same time, the question arises: What role should artificial life play in our environment here on Earth, where all life forms are created by nature and have their own place and purpose?

Associate professor Chenguang Lou from the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark, together with Professor Hanbin Mao from Kent State University, is the parent of a special artificial hybrid molecule that could lead to the creation of artificial life forms.

They have now published a review in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science on the state of research in the field behind their creation. The field is called “hybrid peptide-DNA nanostructures,” and it is an emerging field, less than ten years old.

Potential Applications of Artificial Life

Lou’s vision is to create viral vaccines (modified and weakened versions of a virus) and artificial life forms that can be used for diagnosing and treating diseases.

“In nature, most organisms have natural enemies, but some do not. For example, some disease-causing viruses have no natural enemy. It would be a logical step to create an artificial life form that could become an enemy to them,” he says….

(14) POINT NEMO. BBC Future takes you to “The Soviet spacecraft cemetery in the Pacific”.

…The area is not routinely used for any other human activity, such as shipping or fishing – in fact, the nearest humans are often a very different kind of explorer: astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who are just 415km (258 miles) away when they pass overhead. This is known as the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, otherwise known as Point Nemo.

To find Point Nemo on a globe, you can simply look for the vast swathe of unbroken blue between New Zealand and southern Chile – it’s roughly halfway. For a more exact location, triangulate between an uninhabited atoll, Ducie Island – part of the Pitcairn Islands – in the north, Antarctica’s Maher Island in the south, the Chatham Islands in the west and Chile in the east. This is a place of superlatives: the most lonely, isolated and lifeless part of the ocean … even the seafloor is some 13,000ft (2.5 miles) from the surface.

But there is another link between the icy, empty waters of this desolate place and the void of space besides the ISS: it’s famous as the centre of a spacecraft cemetery – an expansive, scattered rubbish dump for obsolete items in Earth’s orbit.   

Between 1971 and 2018, global space powers, including the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe,  crashed more than 263 space objects in the uninhabited region of the ocean around Point Nemo. The list includes the Soviet-era Mir space station and six craft from the country’s Salyut programme, as well as 140 Russian resupply vehicles, six cargo transfer vehicles launched by Japan, and five from the European Space Agency (Esa). More recently, this oceanic dump is thought to have received part of a SpaceX capsule rocket. And coincidentally, its closest neighbour, the ISS, is expected to splash-land at this remote spot in just eight years.

How do spacecraft end up at Point Nemo? What twisted, broken remains are currently lurking in its inky depths? And what might future archaeologists make of it all?…

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, Steve Green, Kathy Sullivan, JeffWarner, Karen Fishwick, Steven French, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

2023 World Fantasy Awards Final Ballot

The World Fantasy Awards administrator announced the final ballot for this year’s awards, and the Lifetime Achievement award winners, on July 25.

 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

  • Peter Crowther
  • John Douglas

2023 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALISTS

NOVEL

  • Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney (Solaris)
  • Spear by Nicola Griffith (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (Redhook/Orbit UK)
  • Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
  • Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom Publishing)

NOVELLA

  • The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia (Tachyon Publications)
  • The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer (Stelliform Press)
  • Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum (Undertow Publications)
  • Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books)

SHORT FICTION

  • “The Devil Don’t Come with Horns” by Eugen Bacon (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)
  • “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” by Tananarive Due (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)
  • “The Morning House” by Kate Heartfield (PodCastle, July 5 2022)
  • “Telling the Bees” by Kat Howard (The Sunday Morning Transport, Jan. 30 2022)
  • “Douen” by Suzan Palumbo (The Dark magazine, March 2022)


ANTHOLOGY

  • Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)
  • Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, eds. Vince Liguano and Rena Mason (William Morrow)
  • Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, ed. John F. D. Taff (Tor Nightfire)
  • Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy Wiggins (Third Man Books)

COLLECTION

  • Dark Breakers by C. S. E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books)
  • Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)
  • All Nightmare Long by Tim Lebbon (PS Publishing)
  • Boys, Beasts & Men by Sam J. Miller (Tachyon Publications)
  • A Different Darkness and Other Abominations by Luigi Musolino (Valancourt Books)

ARTIST

  • Kinuko Y. Craft
  • Galen Dara
  • Matt Ottley
  • Lauren Raye Snow
  • Charles Vess

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

  • Irene Gallo, for Tor.com
  • Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link, for Small Beer Press
  • Tim Lebbon and Daniele Serra, for Without Walls (PS Publishing)
  • Fiona Moore, for Management Lessons from Game of Thrones: Organization Theory and Strategy in Westeros (Edward Elgar Publishing)
  • Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Dirt Lane Press)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL

  • Michael Kelly, for Undertow Publications
  • Cristina Macía, for The Celsius Festival
  • Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine
  • Dave Ring, for Neon Hemlock Press
  • E. Catherine Tobler, for editing The Deadlands

Judges: Dale Bailey, Kelly Robson, Ginny Smith, A. C. Wise, and Ian Whates.

Update 08/09/2023: At the request of this year’s World Fantasy Convention co-chair the year of the award has been changed to 2023. (We had reported 2022 based on the WFC’s press release and past experience with the award.)

WFC 2024 To Be Held In Niagara Falls

World Fantasy Convention 2024 will be held from October 16-20, 2024 in Niagara Falls, NY.

The host organization will be New Amsterdam Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom Inc. (NASF3), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that also runs the annual Heliosphere.

The group recently unveiled a website with the announcement, however, it has yet to be listed on the official WFC website as of this writing.

The venue will be the Niagara Falls Convention Center.  The members of the committee are Debi Chowdhury, Mary Catelynn Cunningham, Judy Bemis (Treasurer), Todd Dashoff (Hotel Liaison), Scott Zrubek (Art Show), Mark Richards, Liz Crefin, Joni Dashoff, Bryan Herring, and Louise Amy Herring.

2023 World Fantasy Awards Judges Announced

Peter Dennis Pautz, President of the World Fantasy Awards Association, today released the list of judges for the 2023 World Fantasy Awards, for work published in 2022.

The judges read and consider eligible materials received by June 1, 2023, the earlier the better. Pautz explains, “If, for instance, something is received on May 31 the judges may well have only one day to read it before their deliberations conclude. Anything received after June 1 will receive little or no consideration.”

2023 WORLD FANTASY AWARDS JUDGES

  • Dale Bailey, 2490 27th Avenue Circle NE; Hickory, NC  28601; USA;

[email protected]

Prefers HC, then PDF, ePUB, MOBI (in order)

  • Kelly Robson, 315 – 96 Saint Patrick Street; Toronto, ON CANADA; M5T 1V2;

    [email protected]       

Prefers MOBI, ePUB, HC (in order)

  • Mary Anne Mohanraj, 332 Wisconsin Ave; Oak Park, IL  60302; USA;

[email protected]

Prefers ePUB, PDF, then HC (in order)

  • Ginny Smith, P.O. Box 4563; Frankfort, KY 40604-4563; USA;

[email protected]

Prefers ePUB, PDF, then HC (in order)

  • A.C. Wise, P.O. Box 663; Downingtown, PA 19335; USA;

[email protected]

Prefers HC, PDF, ePUB, MOBI (in order)

  • Ian Whates, 41 Wheatsheaf Road, Alconbury Weston, Huntingdon, Cambs, PE28 4LF, UK;

[email protected]

Prefers HC, MOBI, PDF, ePUB (in order)

(Judges’ order of preference as listed above:  HC=Hard Copy; MOBI=Mobipocket ebook format; EPUB=Electronic Publication; PDF=Portable Document Format; MSWord= Microsoft Word Document)

So that a comprehensive submission list may be kept, a copy should also go to:

Peter Dennis Pautz, President
World Fantasy Awards Association
3519 Glen Avenue
Palmer PA 18045-5812; USA
[email protected]

Send materials you wish to be considered by the panel directly to the addresses above, and very importantly, please mark all packages as PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS – NOT FOR SALE OR RESALE – NO COMMERCIAL VALUE — WORLD FANTASY AWARDS MATERIALS.

Qualifications:  All books must have been published in 2022; magazines must have a 2022 cover date; only living persons are eligible.

Fantasy Types:  All forms of fantasy are eligible, e.g. high, epic, dark, contemporary, literary, horror, etc.

Categories:  Life Achievement; Best Novel; Best Novella (10,001 to 40,000 words); Best Short Story; Best Anthology; Best Collection; Best Artist; Special Award—Professional; Special Award—Non‑Professional.

When submitting works shorter than novel length, please provide a word count for the judges’ benefit.

The nominees in the Life Achievement category will not be released, though the winners will be announced well before the awards banquet.

All questions pertaining to the convention should be directed to the Convention Chairs.

The awards will be presented at the convention, to be held Thursday through Sunday, October 26-29, 2023, at the Sheraton Crown Center, 2345 McGee Street, Kansas City, MO 64108  USA.

Currently, an attending membership costs $210US, which does not include the Awards Banquet, tickets for which must be purchased separately. Virtual memberships are $105US. Supporting memberships are $50US. Banquet tickets will be available in late Summer, 2023. Information and forms can be found on the convention website.

[Update 01/27/2023: Peter Dennis Pautz announced today that Mary Anne Mohanraj withdrew as a judge and will be replaced. 02/04/2023: Pautz announced that Kelly Robson has replaced Mohanraj as a judge.]

Pixel Scroll 11/23/22 I’ve Read Through The Pixel On A Scroll With No Name

(1) ARISIA CHAIR TURNOVER. The acting Arisia 2023 convention chairs Alan and Michelle Wexelblat have resigned. Melissa Kaplan has stepped up as acting con chair in their place. The Arisia board says “details of the handoff and relevant ongoing efforts at Arisia will be forthcoming after the holiday break.”

(2) UNCLE HUGO’S / UNCLE EDGAR’S GET THEIR NAMES OUT FRONT. Don Blyly says, “The new awnings were installed last Friday afternoon, making it much easier to find the new location for the first time.” Until then, his bookstores’ new location still had the previous tenant’s name out front.  

(3) SUSPECT IN WOOSTER DEATH. Martin Morse Wooster was killed by a hit-and-run driver on November 12, however, his name did not appear in news reports until yesterday on WAVY in an update that says Virginia State Police have identified a suspect.

…State Police had said it was looking for witnesses who may have been driving in the area around Bypass Road prior to or after the incident.

Sgt. Michelle Anaya with the Virginia State Police said it has identified a suspect, and it is investigating and working with the Commonwealth’s Attorney. The incident, she said, is still under investigation, with charges pending….

(4) A GHOSTLY REALITY. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight” introduces readers to “A Haunted History of Invisible Women – True Stories of America’s Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes”.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Leanna: I’ve been writing since I was a kid and didn’t consider pursuing it professionally until my first job out of college. I had gotten a BFA in theatre performance with a focus study in the Victorian Era. I worked in the professional regional theatre circuit for a few years before moving to New York City and ended up at a Broadway callback where all I could think about was the book that would end up becoming my debut Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy series, Strangely Beautiful. I stopped auditioning and solely focused on my novel about a girl who sees, talks with, and helps ghosts. Spectral subjects have been part of my creative process since childhood. I got my NYC tour guide’s license my first years in New York as I knew I wanted to incorporate real history into my fiction and eventually write non-fiction. Being a tour guide is a great way to make history second-nature. I feel like A Haunted History of Invisible Women is the culmination of everything that’s ever been important to me.

Andrea: I’m a writer and a New York City tour guide. I founded my own walking tour company, Boroughs of the Dead, in 2013….

(5) BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP. Sarah A. Hoyt offers some practical encouragement to writers in “The Best Beginning” at Mad Genius Club.

The best beginning is the one you can do.

This applies both to the beginning of novels, and “simply” to starting to write, or to establishing a writing schedule.

There are all sorts of books and instructions on how to start any of those, but what they leave out is: just begin any way you can. The rest will follow.

With novels, there are all kinds of ways to begin, including setting the tone of the book in the first paragraph. The theme in the first page. Make sure you start with the character who is central to the conflict, because readers are like ducklings, they imprint on the first moving thing they see.

However, you can always fix it in post. You can always go back and fix that beginning so it points the right way. You can lose the first fifty pages (beginning writers consistently start fifty pages too early.) Etc….

(6) PICARDO ASKS DOCTOR WHO WHO IS THE DOCTOR. But he is one only in an emergency, right?

(7) NEW ORLEANS IS HIS BEAT. Rich Horton lets us look over his shoulder in “Convention Report: World Fantasy 2022”; from Strange at Ecbatan.

…Mary Ann and I had decided to use Sunday afternoon to visit the French Quarter. We took the streetcar down there — it’s very easy and convenient. We were going to get lunch and I was determined to get a muffeletta, which is one of my favorite sandwiches. I wanted an authentic muffuletta from New Orleans — which I got at Frank’s, which advertised the “original muffuletta”. Alas, it might be the original, and it was fine, but you can get one just as good at, for example, C. J. Mugg’s in my town of Webster Groves. We should have eaten at the French Market Restaurant instead! We also, of course, went to Cafe du Monde to try beignets, and, hey, they were actually very good. (The line was long but went quickly.)…

(8) THE TRISOLARIANS ARE COMING. ScreenRant publicizes the release date for Bilibili’s animated adaptation of The Three-Body Problem. Beware spoilers.

The award-winning science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem has been adapted into an anime series by the Chinese online video and anime platform Bilibili, and the first episode is set to premiere on December 3, 2022.

…Normally, an adaptation is a testament to the popularity of the work in the public’s mind. This is particularly so with The Three-Body Problem. In addition to Bilibili, two other powerful film and television operations, namely Netflix and the Chinese tech giant Tencent have also produced their own live-action adaptations of the story. Fittingly, the world-famous story has its own version of the three-body problem….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1986 [By Cat Eldridge.] Peter S. Beagle’s The Folk of The Air

So let’s talk about one of the underappreciated novels by Mister Beagle, The Folk of The Air which was published thirty-six years ago by del Rey / Ballantine in hardcover.

It had a long, long gestation period as it took nearly twenty years from the time he started work on it until the time the final version was done. 

SPOILERS ARE HERE NOW. I SUGGEST MULLED WINE WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO DRINK WHILE I DISCUSS THIS NOVEL? 

Joe Farrell, a musician who’s whiled away most of his post-college time in a sort of hippie style, travelling the country and avoiding any possibility of settling down, has returned at last to his Bay Area hometown of Avicenna, Beagle’s fictional version of Oakland.

Everything has changed — his closest friend is living with a woman who has immense magical powers in a house that keeps changing itself; another acquaintance is involved up with the League of Archaic Pleasures, a group that has taken to itself the events and manners of medieval chivalry, sometimes way, way too seriously; and he sees a teenage witch successfully summon back a centuries-old demon.

That Demon could tear asunder all that exists now and only his closest friend’s girlfriend can stop him but she’s gone walkout into a room in their house that nobody can find.

DID YOU LIKE THE MULLED WINE? I THINK THAT IT IS MOST EXCELLENT. 

I think it’s a most splendid novel, though Peter has reservations about it as he told me once that he considered revising it. He never said what about it that he’d change, just that he thought it could use some more work. Even SFReviews.net reported that saying “Beagle has never been fully satisfied with The Folk of the Air, and is currently reported to be working on a revision to be retitled Avicenna.” Mind you his Editor and closest friend tells me that she never heard of this existing either. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 23, 1908 Nelson S. Bond. Writer, Editor, Critic, and Member of First Fandom who also wrote for radio, television, and the stage, but whose published fiction work was mainly in the pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. He’s remembered today mainly for his Lancelot Biggs series and for his Meg the Priestess tales, which introduced one of the first strong female characters in SF back in 1939. As a fan, he attended the very first Worldcon, and he famously advised Isaac Asimov, who kept arguing with fans about his works in the letter columns of magazines, “You’re a writer now, Isaac. Let the readers have their opinions.” He was named a Nebula Author Emeritus by SFWA in 1998. (Died 2006.) (JJ) 
  • Born November 23, 1951 David Rappaport. I remember him best as Randall, the leader of the gang of comically inept dwarves in Time Bandits who steal the map to the Universe. I’m reasonably sure that it’s the only thing he’ll be remembered for of a genre nature having looked up his other works and found them to be decidedly minor in nature. Most of them such as The Bride, a low budget horror film, were artistic and commercial disasters. It is said that his death by suicide in 1990 is one of the reasons cited by Gilliam for there not being a sequel to Time Bandits.  Well, now there is as Apple TB with the cooperation of Gilliam, there will Time Bandits series that Taika Waititi will co-write with Gilliam and direct, since it’ll shield in New Zealand. (Died 1990.)
  • Born November 23, 1966 Michelle Gomez, 56. Best known genre role is Missy, a female version of The Master on Doctor Who from 2014 to 2017, for which she was nominated for the 2016 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress. I admit having grown up with Roger Delgado as The Master so later performers playing this role took a bit of getting used but she made a fine one. She is also Mary Wardwell in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. She plays Talia Bauerin in Highlander: The Raven which apparently is a very short-live spinoff from the Highlander series. And she shows up in the Gotham series for two episodes simply as The Lady. She is now playing Madame Rouge on the Doom Patrol.
  • Born November 23, 1992 Miley Cyrus. She’s had three genre appearances, each ten years apart. She was in Big Fish as the eight-year-old Ruthie, she was the voice of Penny in Bolt and she voiced Mainframe on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. And there’s the matter of A Very Murray Christmas which is at least genre adjacent…

(11) SEEN THIS IN YOUR DICTIONARY? FilmSchoolRejects introduces a video about “The Existential Comforts of Cyberpunk”.

…There isn’t a succinct definition of cyberpunk. Its origins can be traced back to the late 1960s and the New Wave sci-fi movement, with writers like J.G. Ballard, William Gibson, and Harlan Ellison. As a sci-fi sub-genre, cyberpunk is keenly interested in speculative technology and urban dystopias; which together provide fertile breeding grounds for vice, drugs, nefarious corporations, corruption, and social upheaval.

…I can think of a lot of ways to describe how cyberpunk worlds make me feel (sad, artificial, and lonely spring to mind). But “comforting” isn’t one of them. The following video essay argues that, if you tilt your head the right way, cyberpunk cities offer a kind of relief. Somewhere, on the other side of all that existential anxiety and angst … there’s a sense of bliss and relief. Amidst all the urban bustle and the sea of cables, you don’t mean a thing. Thank god….

(12) FAKING IT IS MAKING IT. Is artificial intelligence equal to the challenge of writing about Timothy the Talking Cat? Find out in Camestros Felapton’s post “AI-generated writing”.

…I’ve experimented with MidJourney to make images but how is the world of AI-generated text going? I’m trying out the LEX, a cross between a Google docs wordprocessor and an AI text generator….

(13) FIRST FIVE. Joe Stech of Compelling Science Fiction is ready to tell you his picks for the top science fiction short stories published in August.

These are the top 5 out of the 26 stories I read. August was a lighter month than July because some of the bimonthlies aren’t out in August…

“Polly and (Not) Charles Conquer the Solar System” by Carrie Vaughn is the winner.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. While Camille DeAngelis was in LA for a screening of Bones and All, the film adaptation of her vegan subtext cannibal novel, she and Henry Lien made this video about why they love being vegan and how Henry has a magical fridge: “Henry Lien and the Narnia Fridge”.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Patrick McGuire, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 10/29/22 If Pixels Waltz, Do Scrolls Pirouette?

(1) THE GULF BETWEEN. [Item by Jim Janney.] Pat Bagley’s editorial cartoon in today’s Salt Lake Tribune references a famous cover from the October 1953 Astounding. (Note how it’s signed “With apologies to Frank Kelly Freas.”)

(2) KEEP CALM. No matter what you may have heard – like in an email from the World Fantasy Convention committee itself – the WFC 2022 Covid policy remains the same.

The convention’s website adds these details: “COVID-19 Policy”.

Our safety protocols for WFC 2022 are as follows:

– Attending members must be fully vaccinated. Proof of vaccination will be required upon check-in at the convention.

– Masks will be required in all public places. Masks must be worn properly, covering the nose and mouth. If a member appears at any WFC 2022 event without a mask, they will be asked to put one on. If they refuse, their membership will be revoked, their badge confiscated, and they will be required to leave the convention.

– Safe social distances will be observed at all times.

– We will have hand sanitizer easily accessible throughout the convention.

If you are not fully vaccinated for any reason, please do not purchase an attending membership. We invite you to purchase a virtual membership and participate in the convention remotely.

James Van Pelt addressed on Facebook that a similar policy at the recent MileHiCon was not always followed by panelists, with the attendant social pressure on those who would rather it be followed.

(3) YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WINDROSE. Can it be that John C. Wright thieved a diagram created by Camestros Felapton without giving credit? Survey says – “Bow wow!” However, according to Camestros, “It’s nice to be appreciated”.

In 2016 I was going to write a post about John C. Wright’s near incomprehensible scheme for categorising ideologies on two axes (original Wright post archived here). However, vanity and vainglorious aspiration required me to furnish the post with a better graphic. Having laboured on the graphic I realised I had very little to say, leaving the post as little more than my drawing of Wright’s windrose: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/john-c-wrights-windrose-of-political-heresy/

Now Mr Wright recently reposted his essay on his scheme, and as with his previous essay, there was a graphic to accompany it…which looks more than a little familiar…

(4) THE HOUSE OF COMMONS NEEDS YOU. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  AI is sort of SFnal.  Do any Filers have knowledge of AI and wish to contribute to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into the “Governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI)”? The call for evidence is here. The deadline is November 25. HAL lives! (but does not give 42 as the answer.)

MPs to examine regulating AI in new inquiry

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee launches an inquiry into the governance of artificial intelligence (AI). In July, the UK Government set out its emerging thinking on how it would regulate the use of AI. It is expected to publish proposals in a White Paper later this year, which the Committee would examine in its inquiry.

Used to spot patterns in large datasets, make predictions, and automate processes, AI’s role in the UK economy and society is growing. However, there are concerns around its use. MPs will examine the potential impacts of biased algorithms in the public and private sectors. A lack of transparency on how AI is applied and how automated decisions can be challenged will also be investigated.

In the inquiry, MPs will explore how risks posed to the public by the improper use of AI should be addressed, and how the Government can ensure AI is used in an ethical and responsible way. The Committee seeks evidence on the current governance of AI, whether the Government’s proposed approach is the right one, and how their plans compare with other countries.

(5) NOT FOREVER STAMPS. The UK’s Royal Mail, which added barcodes to its stamps this year, soon will no longer honor previous issues. The Guardian’s Dale Berning Sawa asks “My stash of old stamps is beautiful. Why make them unnecessarily obsolete?”

After introducing barcodes to our regular sticker stamps in February, Royal Mail has now given us 100 days to use up our old stamps. Come February 2023, only those barcoded will be valid. To swap out any remaining oldies, we will have to fill out a request form and send it, for free, to a depot in Edinburgh.

The ironic loop-the-loop of freeposting postage to receive same-value postage in the post – in order to, in the beleaguered company’s own words, “connect physical stamps to the digital world” – is not lost on me. It’s more than curmudgeonly irritation, though, I feel bewildered. Why does one stamp having the ability to play you Shaun the Sheep videos mean that all those other beauties have to go? Does the Royal Mail not realise how great, how quietly subversive, how steadfast its one defining product has been all these years?…

(6) SWEDISH SHORTS SFF COMPETITION. [Item by Ahrvid Engholm.] The Result of the 23rd Fantastiknovelltävlingen (approx “Fantastic Short Story Competition”; Fantastic as in Fantastic Literatur, often here called Fantastik.) I translate the story titles, but skip the 6 “honorary mentions”:

  • 1st prize “Fyrmästarens dotter” by Camilla Linde  (999 kr) [“Daughter of the Lighthouse Keeper”]
  • 2nd prize “En glimt av oändlighet” by Sunna Andersson (600 kr) [“A Glimpse of Eternity”]
  • 3rd prize “God Granne” by Tobias Robinson (400 kr) [“Good Neighbour”]

The prize sums are in Kr=kronor; 10 kr is around 1 USD/Eur. Winners also get a diploma.

(7) A SOLID HONOR. Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, CA will host the “Vroman’s Walk Of Fame Dedication Ceremony Honoring Author Leigh Bardugo” on Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. The location is 695 E. Colorado St., Pasadena, CA 91101.

We are very excited to announce author Leigh Bardugo as our next honoree to immortalize her handprints and signature in the Vroman’s Author Walk of Fame! We are so thrilled to honor Leigh with this dedication and to celebrate all of her wonderful books.

Join us on Saturday, November 19th at noon for the dedication. After the dedication please stay for a special conversation between Leigh Bardugo and Sarah Enni, discussing Leigh’s life and career.

We realize that not everyone will get the best view of the dedication ceremony so we will be broadcasting this morning event on Instagram Live. Keep watch for more details and follow up on Instagram! @vromansbookstore

(8) WHERE WOLF? THERE HOME DEPOT. In the Washington Post, Maura Judkis talks to buyers of the 9-1/2 foot audioanimatronic werewolf available at Home Depot for $399.  She talked to one anonymous furry who thinks the werewolf is a furry icon. “The Home Depot werewolf is getting howls of approval”.

… She saw him and she had to buy him: A beefy, sinewy wolfman with massive hands (paws?), glowing eyes and, under his shredded buffalo-check shirt, six-pack abs. Best of all, and unlike his skeletal brethren, he talks and moves: With a growl, he opens his mouth to reveal a row of sharp fangs, tilts his head back and … aroooooooooo!

Rush bought the $399 werewolf on “Orange Friday,” which is what the most dedicated of Halloween decorators call the day Home Depot makes its Halloween decorations available online for purchase. This year, that day was July 15, when normal people are, well, what’s normal anymore?…

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1951 [By Cat Eldridge.] One of the finest works that Bradbury crafted was The Illustrated Man. It was published seventy-one years ago by Doubleday & Company and consists of eighteen stories, of which ISFDB claims three are original to here.

Let’s note that the British edition, published a year later by Hart-Davis, omits “The Rocket Man”, “The Fire Balloons, “The Exiles” and “The Concrete Mixer” and adds “Usher I” from The Martian Chronicles and “The Playground”. 

The unrelated stories are weaved together by the framing story of “The Illustrated Man” involving a now wandering member of a carnival freak show with an almost completely tattooed body, save one spot, whom the unnamed narrator and a few other people meet. (My assumption there.) The man’s tattoos, supposedly created by a time-traveling woman, are individually animated, and each tells a different story.

The stories would be adapted elsewhere. Some of the stories, including “The Veldt”, “The Fox and the Forest” (changed to “To the Future”), “Marionettes, Inc.”, and “Zero Hour” were also dramatized for the Fifties X Minus One radio series. 

The Ray Bradbury Theater series used “The Concrete Mixer”, “The Long Rain”, “Marionettes Inc.” “The Veldt”, “Zero Hour” whereas “The Fox and the Forest” was adapted for Out of the Unknown series.

Seventeen years after it was published, it would debut as a film. The screenplay was by Howard B. Kreitsek who adapted three of the stories from the collection, “The Veldt”, “The Long Rain” and “The Last Night of the World”, the last one a good choice I think to end the film.

SPOILERS NOW AS WE CONSIDER A BEGINNING AND A POSSIBLE END

The prologue tells of how The Illustrated Man came to be so after he encountered a mysterious woman named Felicia. Our film narrator encounters our The Illustrated Man and watches the three stories play out as animated stories. 

The plot comes to a terrifying conclusion when one of the people accompanying The Illustrated Man on his journey looks at the only blank patch of skin on his body and sees an image of his own murder at his hand of The Illustrated Man then attempts to kill The Illustrated Man and then flees into the night, pursued by a still-living Illustrated Man, with the audience left undetermined as to his fate of either.

NOW BACK TO OUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING 

Jack Smight, the film director, decided that the carnival sideshow freak who appeared in the collection’s prologue and epilogue made the  best primary narrative device. 

As for The Illustrated Man, he cast Rod Steiger, whom he had known since the Fifties. 

It failed horribly at the Box Office and critics hated it. 

It was nominated for a Hugo at the Heicon ’70 Worldcon held in Heidelberg, Germany but did not win. 

I will let our writer have the last word here: “Rod was very good in it, but it wasn’t a good film, the script was terrible.” 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 29, 1906 Fredric Brown. Author of Martians, Go Home which was made into a movie of the same name. He received compensation and credit from NBC as their Trek episode “Arena” had more than a passing similarity to his novelette which was nominated for a Retro Hugo at CoNZealand. (Died 1972.)
  • Born October 29, 1928 Benjamin F. Chapman, Jr. He played the Gill-man on the land takes in Creature from the Black Lagoon. (Ricou Browning did the water takes.) His only other genre appearance was in Jungle Moon Men, a Johnny Weissmuller film. (Died 2008.)
  • Born October 29, 1928 Jack Donner. He’s no doubt best known for his role of Romulan Subcommander Tal in the Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident”. He would later return as a Vulcan priest in the “Kir’Shara” and “Home” episodes on Enterprise. He’d also show up in other genre shows including The Man from U.N.C.L.E.Mission Impossible (eleven episodes which is the most by any guest star) and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Died 2019.)
  • Born October 29, 1935 Sheila Finch, 87. She is best remembered for her stories about the Guild of Xenolinguists, which aptly enough are collected in The Guild of Xenolinguists. She first used the term her 1986 Triad novel, and it would later be used to describe the character Uhura in the rebooted Trek film. Her Reading the Bones novella, part of the Guild of Xenolinguists series, would win a Nebula. These books are available at the usual suspects. 
  • Born October 29, 1941 Hal W. Hall, 81. Bibliographer responsible for the Science Fiction Book Review Index (1970 – 1985) and the Science Fiction Research Index (1981 – 1922). He also did a number of reviews including three of H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy books showing he had excellent taste in fiction.
  • Born October 29, 1954 Paul Di Filippo, 68. He is, I’d say, an acquired taste. I like him. I’d suggest as a first reading if you don’t know him The Steampunk Trilogy and go from there. His “A Year in the Linear City” novella was nominated at Torcon 3 for Best Novella, and won the 2003 World Fantasy Award and the 2003 Theodore Sturgeon Award. Oh, and he’s one of our stellar reviewers having reviewed at one time or another for Asimov’s Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionScience Fiction EyeThe New York Review of Science FictionInterzoneNova Express and Science Fiction Weekly
  • Born October 29, 1954 Kathleen O’Neal Gear, 68. Archaeologist and writer. I highly recommend the three Anasazi Mysteries that she co-wrote with W. Michael Gear. She’s a historian of note so she’s done a lot of interesting work in that area such as Viking Warrior Women: Did ‘Shieldmaidens’ like Lagertha Really Exist?  And should you decide you want to keep buffalo, she’s the expert on doing so. Really. Truly, she is. 
  • Born October 29, 1971 Winona Ryder, 51. Beetlejuice, of course, but also Edward Scissorhands and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Not to mention Alien Resurrection and Star Trek. Which brings me to Being John Malkovich which might be the coolest genre film of all time. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Junk Drawer has an amusing twist on a familiar bit of horror pedantry.
  • Non Sequitur shows the very first “trick or treat” trial run.

(12) READ SJUNNESON STORY. Arizon State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination has posted the final Us in Flux story for 2022. This is the latest in their series of short fiction and virtual events about reimagining and reorganizing communities in the face of transformative change.

The story is “The Island,” by Elsa Sjunneson, about the ability-disability continuum, journalism, and creating adaptable communities.

(13) CLIP SHOW. NPR’s “Fresh Air” “Halloween special, with horror masters Stephen King and Jordan Peele” is a compilation of past interviews.

King talks about what terrified him as a child — and what frightens him as an adult. Peele talks about the fears that inspire his filmmaking. Originally broadcast in 1992, 2013 and 2017.

(14) VISION OF THE FUTURE. “Marvel developing Vision spinoff series with Paul Bettany” – and SYFY Wire assumes readers have seen every MCU movie and freely reveal the previous fates of various characters, so beware spoilers.

Deadline reports the studio is developing a new potential series codenamed Vision Quest, which will star Paul Bettany returning to the role of Vision. The show will reportedly follow Vision as he attempts to “regain his memory and humanity.” This would focus on the White Vision character who ended the first season of WandaVision on the loose in the world after regaining enough of his memories following a face-off with Wanda’s version of Vision (yeah, it’s a bit confusing).

It’s still early, with a writers room reportedly opening for the project next week, but it’s reportedly possible that Elizabeth Olsen could also return as Wanda Maximoff. As fans know, Wanda was last seen buried under a temple in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness…. 

(15) PLAYING MARS LIKE A DRUM. [SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Science journal has “A seismic meteor strike on Mars”. “A meteor impact and its subsequent seismic waves has revealed the crustal structure of Mars.”

A large meteorite impact on Mars, as recorded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) InSight Mars lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and present analysis of the detected surface waves produced by the meteorite impact. Kim et al. also present an updated crustal model of Mars that provides a better understanding of the formation and composition of the martian crust and extends the current knowledge of the geodynamic evolution of Mars.

First primary research paper here. Second paper here here.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is Ryan George’s latest BUT my computer is wonky in that the sound is off so I don’t know what he says! I am sure he has a field day because I saw Black Adam and it’s a stinker. Spoiler alert!

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