Summer’s Endby John Van Stry My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Review by Dann Todd: This is a 3.5-star review. Every time I talked myself into rounding it up to 4 stars, I found another reason to make it 3 stars.
I picked up Summer’s End because it is a finalist for this year’s Prometheus Award given to works of fiction that explore or incorporate libertarian themes. Prometheus Award winners are almost always pretty good. This is a worthy finalist.
Our protagonist is Dave “Mongoose” Walker. A former gang-banger who was literally scared straight and made it through enough college to get a certificate as a 5th-class engineer. In the opening pages, his brother tells him trouble is coming Dave’s way. His brother has acquired an engineering position for him on a tramp starship. Go now. Dave does.
The author does a great job of using Dave to bring us into a reality of interplanetary travel and settlement. Dave learns a bit about repairing/maintaining various parts of the ship. But we are spared the description of weeks of travel between destinations. This keeps the story/action moving and interesting.
Dave has all sorts of unusual challenges tossed his way. His biological mother’s new-ish husband wants him dead for political reasons. Dave ends up being taken by pirates/buccaneers (there apparently is a useful difference). He just happens to have a skill that he can use to negotiate for his release.
This leads to one major criticism of the book. Coincidence. While every book has to have a specific set of narrative circumstances occur for the book to make sense, it begins to strain credulity when, later in the book, so many of Dave’s issues are either caused by and/or resolved by people that were tangentially introduced earlier in the book. And in most cases, those people all know each other in some capacity or another independent of their relationship with Dave. The world is a small place, but it ain’t that small. Also, there are more than a few occasions where a character that is of interest to Dave for one reason just happens to have the skill set needed to solve an unrelated problem that Dave is dealing with.
A second criticism is basic spelling, grammar, and wordsmithery. A common complaint that I hear about books published by Baen is that there isn’t any clear indication of editorial input. The spelling and grammar errors were just enough to tip my inner editor. There were a few instances where I found the phrasing of a sentence or a paragraph needed to require required* re-reading a few times to determine what the author was intending to say.
A third criticism is how the author treats a sizeable number of female characters. They are “hot”. Hot as in “Hot babe sittin’ beside me in my ‘Cuda.” At least one other review notes that female characters are “frustratingly” undeveloped. With the exception of Dave and one or maybe two other main characters, all of the other characters are undeveloped.
Take away (or diminish) two of those criticisms and this becomes a solid 4-star review (maybe 4.5) as the author does a very good job of incorporating a lot of real-world social structures and issues. He dials them up a bit and projects current trends to create a believable future where people are leaving Earth to avoid overregulation. He also points out that leaving Earth is not a panacea; some new polities develop some pretty horrendous beliefs and corporations really aren’t to be trusted.
The slow burn in the book is about social structures and trust. Dave succeeds because he demonstrates himself to be worthy of trust primarily because his life has shown him that trust is the only real value a person has. Gangs, families, business partners, corporations, neighborhoods, cities, and societies all rely on high levels of trust if they are going to continue to exist.
The characters and plot were compelling enough to keep me reading all the way to the end. The conclusion was satisfying. I’d like to read more about all of these characters in the future and see if the author can develop them more fully.
*Read the text that was striked out. Read the replacement. Which one reads more clearly. This book contained too many similar passages.
Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250849458, November 2022
Review by Lis Carey: This story was definitely not for me.
I had bad feelings just reading the title. It telegraphs that there’s something not positive about the ending, right? And the publisher’s blurb for it cheerily states that the protagonist, Helen, sold her soul to save her brother’s life. This is accurate.
As a direct result, she and her brother are no longer on good terms, or even in contact. She also got kicked out of the magical order they belonged to because, of course, damned soul.
Then years later, her time is almost up, and she gets pulled into the investigation of Chicago’s White City Vampire, a serial killer who is apparently a demon. She doesn’t want to be involved; she has only three days left and wants to spend them with her girlfriend, Edith. Her client offers irresistible bait, though–the chance to win her soul back, and have a lifetime with Edith.
It turns out Edith has her own secret, and also the White City Vampire isn’t a demon, although they are something closely related.
Helen, Edith, and Edith’s secret start investigating the killings, the victims, and seeming bystanders who had mental breakdowns shortly after each killing. It’s what happens to those bystanders that makes the real identity of the killer even more appalling.
There’s so much I want to say about what happens here and why I dislike the story. Unfortunately, I can’t say what I want without spoilers, and it probably doesn’t matter because probably most readers, or at least enough readers for this story to have the audience that made it a Hugo Finalist, either wouldn’t agree with me, or wouldn’t care.
It is a very well-written story. It’s a good mystery, and a good romance, despite the thing that spoils the enjoyment of it for me. It doesn’t, however, have the substance and depth that made me consider “Rabbit Test” a serious candidate for my first place vote in the short story category, despite also being dark and depressing in a way that made it hard for me to read. This story is supposed to be just a fun story, and maybe it is for many, but not for me.
I received this story as part of the 2023 Hugo Voters Packet.
A female-led adaptation of the science fiction blockbuster Minority Report is among a new season of works at London’s Lyric Hammersmith theatre, announced on Monday, placing women at its centre.
Steven Spielberg’s film, about a predictive near-future criminal justice dystopia, was based on a Philip K Dick story and starred Tom Cruise as the pre-crime chief who becomes a fugitive. The play, however, makes the hunted hero a female neuroscientist called Dame Julia Anderton. Set in 2050 and adapted by David Haig, it is produced by the Olivier award-winning team behind Life of Pi, and directed by Max Webster.
The theatre’s artistic director, Rachel O’Riordan, says the play, opening in April, will use “the most cutting-edge technology there is” for its visual effects and ambitious design concept….
The author Lauren Groff has become a prepper. “I think everyone should have a go bag right now,” she told National Public Radio (NPR) in the US. “I think every household should have enough food to last through at least two weeks. This is just logical at this point.”
Groff lives in Florida, where dangerously extreme weather has become a fact of life – we’re lucky enough to be spared that in the UK, at least for now. But as a semi-professional catastrophist – one apocalyptic sandwich board short of full doom-monger status – am I missing a trick? Should I have a go bag and what should go in it?…
(3) CHENGDU WORLDCON UPDATE. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]
It’s not completely clear to me what exactly this is – it seems that several of the organizations involved in the behind-the-scenes promotion of the con are doing some interviews with science and SF people from around the world. When these interviews might appear, and whether they’ll be text articles, videos, or something else, doesn’t seem to be stated.
Perhaps it’s also worth noting that this is the second Worldcon related article I’ve seen in as many days that namechecks Xi Jinping…
(4) HWA LATINX Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog continues its “Latinx Heritage in Horror” series in “Interview with Luisa Colón”.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
Writing horror has really brought me to a place of peace and acceptance of myself that I’ve never had before. There is a tendency for a lot of people to suppress pain, dark thoughts, and traumatic experiences, both in themselves and in others. “Try not to dwell on it,” “Don’t be so morbid,” “Why do you want to put depressing stuff out into the world?” I’ve heard it all, and it all boils down to “Don’t be yourself because being yourself is the wrong way to be.” Talk about chronic invalidation! Now suddenly I feel like I have a place in this world where I belong, where it’s okay to be me—more than okay. And that has taught me something not just about myself but about the world around me.
The files linked below are the end result of a project I have been working on at intervals since July 2017, with the object of compiling as complete an account as possible of the works of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). The original edition (running to 676 pages) was released just before what would have been his one-hundredth birthday: January 2, 2020. The reaction from others was gratifyingly positive, but comments from my correspondents also highlighted a number of inaccuracies, missing items, and various other deficiencies that prevented the bibliography from being quite as definitive as I had hoped. A minor update was made in March 2020 in response to some of this feedback, but the larger issues remained unaddressed. These, along with the uncovering of a great deal of further information that was not available to me earlier, clearly showed the need for a thorough revision.
Three and a half years later, the revision is finally complete, resulting in a new edition nearly a third longer than the original. Of course, not all of this increased page count represents items that were missed in the original edition, though there are several dozen such additions, and hundreds of previously unknown reprint publications have been added. The index of periodical publications (Part IV) is now expanded to include newspaper publications as well as magazines, and the provision of new page-based indexes throughout fixes a serious shortcoming of the original edition. The format of the individual catalogue entries has also been improved, notably in the documenting of alternate titles, excerpts and abridgements, and non-Asimov variants (there is also a new introductory section providing a detailed description of the catalogue entries’ format and features). Finally, the addition of running section headings and PDF bookmarks should significantly enhance the usability of the new edition….
(6) TRAINED ON STOLEN BOOKS. Today authors have been using a searchable database at The Atlantic to see if their books are part of the Books3 collection used to train AI. Although this gift link will take you to the article, neither of the browsers I used to read it would bring up the search tool. Don’t ask me why. “These 183,000 Books Are Fueling the Biggest Fight in Publishing and Tech”. But here are a couple of responses authors have posted to X.
Where were you Sept. 16, 1963? If you were a self-respecting baby boomer, sci-fi nerd or an intellectual intrigued by the subject matter, you probably were in front of the television to watch the premiere of ABC’s thought-provoking and often terrifying anthology series “The Outer Limits.”…
As a matter of fact, that’s exactly where I was that night.
… The series was especially meaningful to writer Joseph Stefano, who is best known for his screenplay for “Psycho,” who produced the first season of “The Outer Limits,” as well as penning 12 episodes…
…I talked to Stefano about my favorite episode “The Man Who Was Never Born,” starring Landau and Knight in which a transmuted human of the future travels back to 1963 to stop the birth of a scientist who creates a bacterium that will turn humanity into mutants. While on earth he uses hypnosis to transform into a handsome, perfectly normal human. He soon finds himself in love with the young woman who will become the mother of the scientist. “”The Terminator’ was taken from that,” Stefano noted. “Anthony Lawrence wrote that. It was one of the most beautiful shows we did. I had a trick of saying, ‘let’s do a haircut’ on something, like let’s do a haircut on ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Landau loved the part, he noted, because he got to be the horrendous mutant “and at the same time look very handsome and be loved.”…
(8) DAVID MCCALLUM (1933-2023). Actor David McCallum, known especially for his work on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS, died September 25 reports The Wrap.
David McCallum
[McCallum], who played Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on CBS procedural “NCIS” and Illya Kuryakin on ’60s series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E,” has died at 90….
After moving to America in 1961, he was cast in the role of Russian agent Illya Kuryakin in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E,” a role that earned him two Emmy Award nominations and a Golden Globe nod. He went on to star in films including “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “The Great Escape,” “Billy Budd,” “Freud” and “A Night to Remember.”
In the ’70s, he headlined the series “The Invisible Man,” later appearing in the BBC Mystery! “Motherlove,” as well as episodes of “The Outer Limits,” “Law & Order” and “Sex and the City.”…
…McCallum also starred opposite Joanna Lumley for four seasons on the 1979-82 British sci-fi series Sapphire & Steel (she was Sapphire, he was Steel) — a show many see as a precursor to The X-Files …
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 25, 1919 — Betty Ballantine. With her husband Ian, she created Bantam Books in 1945 and established Ballantine Books seven years later. They won one special World Fantasy Award for professional work in 1975 and another one shared with Joy Chant et al for The High Kings which is indeed an amazing work. ISFDB list one novel for her, The Secret Oceans, which I’ve not read. Anyone here done so? (Died 2019.)
Born September 25, 1930 — Shel Silverstein. Yes we’ve decided in previous Scrolls that he’s genre. I’m fond of his poetry collection Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree. (No, I don’t think the relationship between them is abusive.) I’ll also note here A Light in the Attic if only because it’s been on “oh my we must ban it now attempts” all too often. Oh, and I’d be remiss not to note he wrote Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”. Why would I be remiss? Just because. (Died 1999.)
Born September 25, 1932 — J. Hunter Holly. Her various book dedications showed she had a strong love of cats. I’ve not encountered her novels but she wrote a fair number of them including ten genre novels plus The Assassination Affair, a novel in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. franchise. Only The Flying Eyes novel by her is available from the usual digital suspects. (Died 1982.)
Born September 25, 1946 — Felicity Kendal, 77. She plays Lady Clemency Eddison in the the Tenth Doctor story, “The Unicorn and The Wasp”, one of my favorite Who tales which I reviewed at Green Manhere. She played Baroness Ortsey in the Pennyworth series. And though it’s definitely really not genre, I’m noting her role in Shakespeare-Wallah, story of a family troupe of English actors in India, just because it’s a fascinating story.
Born September 25, 1951 — Mark Hamill, 72. I’ll confess that my favorite role of his is when he voices The Joker in the DC Universe. He started doing this way back on Batman: The Animated Series and has even doing on other such series as well. Pure comic genius! Oh, and did you know he voices Chucky in a Child’s Play film? Now that’s creepy.
Born September 25, 1952 — Christopher Reeve. Superman in the Superman film franchise. He appeared in the Smallville series as Dr. Swann in the episodes “Rosetta” and “Legacy”. His Muppet Show appearance has him denying to Miss Piggy that he’s Superman though he displays those superpowers throughout that entire episode. (Died 2004.)
Born September 25, 1961 — Heather Locklear, 62. Her first genre role was Victoria ‘Vicky’ Tomlinson McGee in Stephen King’s Firestarter followed by being Abby Arcane in The Return of Swamp Thing. She was also Dusty Tails in Looney Tunes: Back in Action. She’s had one-offs in Tales of the Unexpected, Fantasy Island, Muppets Tonight and she voiced Lisa Clarkson in the “Prophecy of Doom” episode on Batman: The Animated Series.
Born September 25, 1977 — Clea DuVall, 46. A long genre history if we include horror (and I most gleefully do) — Little Witches, Sleeping Beauties, Ghosts of Mars and How to Make a Monster. Series appearances include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a main role on Carnivàle as Sofie Agnesh Bojakshiya (loved that series), a recurring role as Audrey Hanson on Heroes, and though we didn’t see it, she was in the unsold television pilot for the never to be Virtuality series as Sue Parsons, she had a recurring role in American Horror Story: Asylum as Wendy Peyser, and finally another recurring role in The Handmaid’s Tale as Sylvia.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Thatababyshows a favorite kids book given a dark sff turn.
In a sprawling new profile with GQ, director Martin Scorsese discussed comic book and franchise culture, a topic which he has spoken out about at length in the past.
When asked about those blockbusters, Scorsese said that their omnipresence could be negative to audiences who aren’t well-versed in other types of film.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that’s what movies are.”
When the interviewer posited that audiences might already believe that, Scorsese agreed.
“They already think that,” he said. “Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”…
(12) CLICK ALONG. Entertainment Weekly must not have gotten the memo from Scorsese because they’re eager for you to click through their gallery “Every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie ranked”. The 2008 Incredible Hulk is at the bottom of the list.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe just keeps growing. It’s been more than a decade since Robert Downey Jr. donned a metal suit and introduced the world to Iron Man in 2008, and since then, the MCU has become one of the biggest and most successful film franchises in history. Part of what makes the series so much fun to follow is its constant evolution: Installments range from moody character studies to gleefully zany space operas, stretching from distant worlds to the down-to-earth streets of Queens. Here, EW takes on the Hulk-sized task of ranking each entry….
(13) POPULAR PINK PIRACY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Barbie, but apparently not Barbenheimer, is paying an unofficial visit to Russia. Behind a paywall in The Times (UK): “Proud to be pink: Russians rush to see bootleg Barbie”.
On the streets of Russian towns there are no posters for the Barbie movie. There was no official release. The owner of the screening rights, Warner Bros, swiftly left Russia after President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and did not give permission for distribution here.
Nevertheless, “Barbiemania” took Russia by storm long before the film arrived in cinemas and Greta Gerwig’s vivid monument to American capitalism has become the film of the year. It finally appeared in cinemas on September 14, two months after the world premiere.
This summer more and more people started wearing pink on the streets of Moscow, while restaurant guides started publishing their top picks of places with pink food for those wishing to eat out “Barbie style”. Russian Instagram turned pink — even though Meta is officially an “extremist resource” in Russia. Instagram users made themselves up as Barbies or Kens and flooded social media. Pink nails and blonde hair are back on trend.
A 250 sq ft “House of Barbie” has popped up in Moscow’s Kuntsevo shopping centre. In the pink pavilion you can take photos of yourself for an hour for 500 roubles (£4.25). The manager tells me it is busiest at the weekend, when entertainers dressed as Barbie and Ken put on a soap-bubble show for children.
Since the war began, Russia has yet to come up with a legislative framework for the “parallel release” of western films. When the first bootleg versions of the Barbie film turned up in June, it was a DCP (digital cinema package) file from Kazakhstan. That supply line was soon closed. Now Russian venues are showing a digital version designed for streaming platforms, not cinemas.
I opt to watch the film in one of Moscow’s “Kinomax-XL” theatres. It is advertised as a “pre-session service” before the supposed main event: Sclerosis, a Russian short film released in 2021 about a female pensioner fooled by telephone scammers.
This means that officially you are not buying a ticket to see Barbie. On cinema timetables, Barbie is nowhere to be seen; Sclerosis accounts for half the show listings….
A recent study submitted to Acta Astronautica and currently available on the arXiv preprint server explores the potential for using aerographite solar sails for traveling to Mars and interstellar space, which could dramatically reduce both the time and fuel required for such missions.
This study comes while ongoing research into the use of solar sails is being conducted by a plethora of organizations along with the successful LightSail2 mission by The Planetary Society, and holds the potential to develop faster and more efficient propulsion systems for long-term space missions.
“Solar sail propulsion has the potential for rapid delivery of small payloads (sub-kilogram) throughout the solar system,” Dr. René Heller, who is an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for solar system Research and a co-author on the study, tells Universe Today. “Compared to conventional chemical propulsion, which can bring hundreds of tons of payload to low-Earth orbit and deliver a large fraction of that to the moon, Mars, and beyond, this sounds ridiculously small. But the key value of solar sail technology is speed.”…
(15) GOOD NIGHT MOON LANDER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The Lunar lander/rover combo from India that touched down near the Moon’s south pole last month operated just fine for the first fortnight or so. After being put to sleep for the Lunar night, however, it failed to re-awaken at Lunar dawn as hoped. “Hope fades for India’s moon lander after it fails to wake up” (paywalled in The Times (UK).)
Extreme temperatures at the moon’s south pole may have damaged India’s spacecraft which landed there last month, raising doubts over whether communication can be re-established.
Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) have been trying to contact both the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover from the pioneering Chandrayaan-3 mission since putting them into “sleep” mode earlier this month.
The probes had previously been deployed and gathering data as planned but now scientists fear that the temperatures during the lunar night — which can drop to between minus 200C and minus 250C — may have cut off contact….
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, Olav Rokne, Kathy Sullivan, Lise Andreasen, 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 Cat Eldridge.]
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com(temporarily closed for update).Wipe your feet before entering.]
THE GHOST OF WORDS UNWRITTEN
Hello All! Melanie here.
The SFF writing life, with all of its arc ships, singing swords, and uncanny terrors, is brought to you by Regularity.
Having dependable places to sleep, dependable food to eat, and dependable friends to laugh with goes a long way ensuring chapters are written and multi-volume sagas are slogged.
Yes, your characters may not know whether their sleep will be wrested by a band of angry goblins, but your writer should. Too little is said in praise of the banal, too few songs are sung about a regular oatmeal breakfast and an evening walking the cat. Three cheers for the afternoon when all you have to do is write 500 words in your latest short story and dry the towels before they get moldy in the washing machine.
It’s been a season of focusing on writing for our heroes in Cradensburg but with that Cradensburg flare. Just a few weeks ago, Tod Boadkins was hunted by a bow-wielding character that escaped a novelette he was working on. Writer X had hunting of her own to do: she hunted down a special flash light that reveals whether a first draft is ready for revisions or needs more time to cool. And Tryxy the demon started two things at the same time: the fall semester at Miskatonic Online University, and a strict diet and exercise program to keep the freshman fifteen at bay. But I like to think that, in all of this, things have been more regular and cozy, and that our heroes are happier for it.
Without further ado…
Subject: A new stor—HALP!!!!! A HAUNTING!!!!
Dear Gladys,
How are you??? I hope you are enjoying this suddenly sunny weather we’ve been having. By the way, I’m being haunted and need you to come over write away.
I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. Well, this afternoon—OH MY GOD I’M NOT ALONE, I CAN FEEL THAT I’M NOT ALONE!!!! THE SOUND IS BACK TOO!!!!! THERE’S A PRESENCE HERE GLADYS, A MALEVOLENT PRESEN
Oh, it’s gone. What was I saying???
This afternoon my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, closed himself in our bedroom away from the television to force himself into editing his novelette “Tasyin of the Wicked Watch.” He’s been dreading the task for at least two weeks and has gotten SUPER GOOD at avoiding it. Just the other week he went hunting baers and got lost in the wilderness and so had an excellent excuse for missing the final edits deadline.
It all started when he went up Shit creek, got in a fight with a baer that had been fishing for salmon, and broke his paddle fending off a swarm of woodchucks who came to support the baer (long story.) Fortunately, he hadn’t lost any of his provisions in the tussle. The canoe drifted into some marshlands and my boyfriend opened up the cooler I had packed for him but discovered he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. This is because I had left the sandwiches on the counter and ran off to write a short story about a woman that receives a clock as an early retirement gift. The clock tells her how long she has left to live. The woman discovers that certain things shorten or lengthen the time, but at one point, she eats a sandwich and, once finished, she checks the clock and discovers she only has three minutes before death takes her.
Anyhoo, my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, being without any sandwiches for his picnic, was forced to abandon his canoe and trudge through the marshes into the bog looking for food. About that time he spied a banana tree in the distance. As you know, Galdsy, it’s not too often that you spot a banana tree growing in the New Hampshire wilderness—I really have only seen one, to be honest—and he knew he was saved!!! A few hours later, he found a path through the bog to the banana tree but discovered that the banana grew at the center of an ancient graveyard with a crumbling stone wall surrounding it.
In the graveyard, mildew-streaked headstones stuck out from the ground like weathered teeth. Occasionally, he glimpsed worn off surnames of the long dead like Luck, Charity, and Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer. Dates such as 1589 and 1703 filled the cemetery, not a year beyond 1713 on any of them. Some of the tombstones had been broken by wind and rain or unimaginable violence, the shattered edges worn smooth by centuries. No one had been in this graveyard for at least 300 years, from my boyfriend’s guess.
He came to the banana tree and, so hungry was he after the woodchuck fight, that he devoured four or five on the spot. When he bit into the sixth, he realized that the graveyard had not been entirely abandoned. On the other side of the banana tree was a freshly dug and deep grave with pale pink worms wriggling in the newly exposed earth. The edges of the grave had not been shored yet and so they sloped inward so that someone who stood on the edge of the grave might slip inside if they weren’t careful. My boyfriend learned too late that he had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
He fell into the grave. It was far deeper than any grave he’d seen before, at least fifteen feet deep and it was a good thing that my boyfriend had attended boy scouts and learned that the safest way to fall is on your face. Still, it knocked him out for a matter of hours. When he came to, the first stars of twilight hung far above him and the darkness made it seem as though the fifteen feet of grave stretched into one hundred, then two hundred.
Then, a figure appeared at the top of the grave. A gaunt, long figure in a wide black hat. The figure stooped with its bone white hands on its knees and called to my boyfriend with a thin voice that invoked the cold of death.
“What ho, traveler there. You have fallen into my grave and so you are bound to do my will or else never return to the world you once knew.”
“What is your will?” cried my boyfriend.
“Have you seen the great wood that surrounds this place?”
“Errr…I think so?” my boyfriend replied. “Do you mean the marsh. Or the part with the baers—”
“This great and malevolent wood has claimed the thousand and eleven souls of the town of Unjust.”
“Would that be the mythological town of Unjust whose inhabitants escaped from Roanoke and came to New Hampshire because they were sensitive to sunburn, and created a place in which horrible things happened that revealed the depravity within the human condition and legend has it that a fog settled on the town for a year and shortly after the inhabitants would mysteriously leave their beds and disappear one by one into the woods never to be seen again?” asked my boyfriend.
“Anyhoo,” said the figure with a voice like the gallows. “I was the last of these souls and my punishment was to roam these woods and find the bones of each of those lost—including the parts the animals got to—and carry them back and bury them each fifteen feet in the earth’s hollow beside a banana tree. As you can see, I’ve been at it for a while and still have eight hundred more to find. Now that you have fallen into my grave, you must pay the price and I task you to help me find the bones of those lost in the fog—particularly the finger bone of Madame Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer, it’s escaped me for years—and help me until my task is completed and one thousand and ten souls rest in these cursed grounds.”
“Is there any other way I can help? I kind of like my life the way it is,” said my boyfriend.
“Bury five hundred with me,” was the gravedigger’s counter offer.
And so the man in the hat and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, haggled back and forth until they came to the following terms:
“If I help you from this grave, you must give to me the soul of the first person you see as you leave and they will be bound to the first task they undertake or else the fog will come and take you too into the dark, into the woods, into the mouth of whatever beaver ate Madame Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer’s right hand.”
“Deal!” said my boyfriend, and they shook on it.
About that time I was taking a little break from my story with the clock and had a sudden craving for bananas. Fortunately, I knew just where to find some without having to get dressed in presentable clothes and drive down to Mr. Morgan’s. That’s when I happened to run into my boyfriend and let him know that his editor had called and the deadline for final edits had passed and when was he going to turn in the novelette?? On our way home, he told me what had happened and we both agreed that it was an excellent reason for missing a deadline if there ever was one. Then, we got home and he ate those stale sandwiches and I got back to my writing and Tryxy had gotten on to resuming his Golden Girls marathon.
That’s what I mean when I say that he’s gotten very good at avoiding his editing, Gladys. And so, when he closed himself in our bedroom this afternoon, I took the liberty of installing a deadbolt that locks from the outside on the bedroom door and informed him that he could come out again when he’s finished the edits and submitted the story. Every writer deserves someone who will lock them in a room until they finish their writing.
Anyhoo, what was I saying?? Right!!! I was telling you about how my writing was going today.
With my boyfriend working on his edits, and Tryxy finishing his homework so that he can continue his eighties sitcom marathon and #bestkitten helping by sitting on his keyboard, I was completely free to start working on a short story of my own. I know I haven’t told you about this story yet Gladys, it came to me all of a sudden while I was stuck in that stupid clock story—ACCCK!!!! IT’S BACK!!!! IT’S BACK GLADYS!!! HANG ON, I HAVE TO RELOCATE UNDER MY KITCHEN SINK SO THAT IT WON’T FIND ME!!!!!
Ahem. As I was saying, I got to the spot in the clock story where the lady discovers that she has just three minutes left to live and she has to figure out what to do to save her life or die when the minute hand reaches 11:18 a.m. and I’ve been at it for days and I can’t figure it out. So I decided to just throw it aside and start on this completely NEW short story about a child who discovers they can walk through walls and is kidnapped by an evil uncle who has learned his secret and—OH MY GOD, I HEAR THAT SOUND AGAIN!!!! IT’S A HISSING NOISE!!!! AND THEN THE SOUND OF A CLOCK!!!! AND NOW A DARK BLACK FOG IS CREEPING UNDER THE CABINET DOOR!!!!!
GLADYS!!!!! SOME LONG THIN HANDS HAVE OPENED THE DOOR AND ARE PRESENTING ME WITH A WHITE-FACED CLOCK. THE HANDS ARE SET TO 11:18!!!! THAT’S JUST THIRTEEN MINUTES FROM NOW!!!!! THERE’S SOME TINY WRITING!!!! IT SAYS “TIME UNTIL WRITER X’S SOUL WILL BE TAKEN BY THE FOG UNLESS SHE COMPLETES HER STUPID CLOCK STORY!!!!!”
GALDSY, I NE— hang on, my capslock was stuck. I need you to come save me!!!! I would ask Tryxy in the next room but he finally got settled into his snuggie and has arranged his popcorn into the perfect position on the sofa and the opening song for Golden Girls is playing and if I ask him, he’s going to have to pause the show, wipe the popcorn butter off his hands, get out of his snuggie after he got it perfect, feel like the room is super cold because of the temperature difference after being in a polar fleece snuggie, and come fight off the ghost!!!!! I can’t do that!!!! And #bestkitten just made a perfect fur circle in his lap!!!!!
If you don’t come, I’ll die!!!! There’s no way I can finish the clock story!!! It’s too hard and I’ll die before I do!!!!
Oh wait. What if I make the character…but that would mean I’d have to go back to the beginning and—
Gotta go, Gladys!!!! I have an idea for my clock story!!!!
Pages next week!!!!
xox,
X
P.S. I still need you to come over. I’ve managed to lose the key to the deadbolt down one of the floor vents and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, is banging on the bedroom door. He says he has to pee.
Rob Hansen surveys the early presence of women in UK science fiction fandom, identifies the UK’s first known female fan, and shows the lead-up to the fanzine Femizine (1954-1960) – the first true rallying point for female British fans — in Generation Femizine, the latest addition to TAFF’s library of free downloads.
The 67,000-word book, compiled from the participants’ own words, is available in multiple electronic formats from the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s website, where they also hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund. Find it here.
In this compilation, each major contributor is represented by a mini-biography and a photograph, followed by a selection of her writings in Femizine and/or contemporary fan publications. Rob Hansen supplies necessary context and commentary, tells how it all ended, and adds appendices dealing with the male response (reviews in professional sf magazines), the Great Hoax, the full bibliographical details, and an international listing of “Female Fannish Firsts”.
From Rob Hansen’s Foreword
Femizine (not to be confused with the later similarly-titled US zine Femzine) was launched at SUPERMANCON, the 1954 Eastercon, held that year in Manchester. The idea of an all-female fanzine had been bubbling up for a while and several letters had passed between Frances Evans, Joan Carr, and Ethel Lindsay shortly before the convention in which they decided it was time. Carr volunteered to edit the zine and a flyer was produced in time for the con, with the first issue appearing soon afterwards. As can be seen from the cover photo (taken at the event by Eric Bentcliffe) there was a certain amount of excitement among female fans at this finally happening.
As is now widely known, “Joan Carr” did not exist (see Appendix 2). She was created as a hoax to be played primarily on the Nor’west Science Fantasy Club (NSFC), who then met regularly in Manchester….
A printed paperback edition is also available, released simultaneously with the ebook: click here for more. All proceeds from paperback sales go to TAFF.
Hollywood heaves a sigh of relief. The WGA and major studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that promises to end the 146-day strike that has taken a heavy toll across the content industry.
Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached the finish line Sunday after five consecutive days of negotiations. Day 4 on Saturday mostly involved lawyers for the guild and AMPTP hashing out the fine print of language around complicated and groundbreaking additions to the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement. The nitty-gritty details of language around the use of generative AI in content production was one of the last items that the sides worked on before closing the pact.
“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional – with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the WGA Negotiating Committee wrote in an email to sent to members at 7:10 p.m. PT (Full text below).
The three-year contract will be sent to WGA members for a ratification vote. After nearly five months on strike – the work stoppage began May 2 – it’s highly likely to pass muster with the WGA’s 11,000 members, especially with the enthusiastic endorsement of WGA leaders. As momentum built this week, negotiators began to look at the approach of the Yom Kippur holiday on Sunday as a soft target deadline….
(1) HUGO VOTING DEADLINE. Voting for 2023 Hugo Award, Astounding Award and Lodestar Award closes less than a week from now on September 30 at 11:59 p.m. Hawaiian Time. Don’t miss your chance to cast and update your ballot before the deadline.
(2) YOU STEPPED OUT OF A DREAM. I dreamed last night I was watching a stand-up comic perform. He got to part of a story where emergency vehicles were responding to a situation and he was imitating the siren/bell/electronic squawks they made — which was surprising (and possibly unlikely) he could do with his voice alone, but it was mentally up to me to decide when he had made enough different noises to be funny but without doing too many to kill the joke. Apparently I woke up at the point I decided he’d done enough.
In my latest novel Starter Villain, the book’s protagonist, Charlie Fitzer, inherits his mysterious uncle’s vast corporate empire – only to discover that underpinning it all is a supervillainy business that rivals anything that James Bond’s adversaries might have ever imagined.
While my book takes place in today’s world, there are definitely unexpected elements (wait until you meet the cats!) that make for a mash-up of wild science fiction and modern corporatised evil. But of course, Starter Villain isn’t the first work to blend the two concepts.
Submitted below, for your approval, are five cinematic (non-007) works from across several decades that have offered up the sort of villains who show up in my novel….
One of his choices is:
Aliens(1986): In the original Alien (1979), it is clear that the Weyland-Yutani corporation that has sent the crew of the Nostromo to pick up a murderous, extraterrestrial egg values its military branch’s profits more than humans. But in this excellent and rather tonally different sequel, that corporate ethos is given a face in Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a striving middle-management type who just doesn’t understand why Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) can’t see the financial opportunity the aliens offer the company. Appropriately, it’s the aliens themselves who eventually show him the error of his ways.
(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]
Chengdu Science Fiction Season. I’m not sure how officially these are associated with the Worldcon, but there have been a few events under the “2023 Chengdu Science Fiction Season” branding, which include the Chengdu Worldcon name and panda logo on their photos and videos.
On September 15th, writer 泽泽 / Ze Ze gave a talk at a Chengdu primary school about the history of SF, which apparently went as far as explaining the difference between hard and soft SF.
This is another talk to schoolkids, this time by La Zi (aka Latssep), who works at SF World magazine, and co-edited one of the Best Fanzine finalists. This line caught my eye:
First of all, [La Zi] started by talking about three “major science fiction events” that happened around us, the World Science Fiction Conference, The Wandering Earth, General Secretary Xi’s speech…
That’s the Google Translate rendering, but I also put that text through the DeepL and Vivaldi Lingvanex translators, and they all came out with similar results.
I’m not sure when exactly this took place. The Friday post talks about an event that happened this afternoon (Sunday 24th), but has a video of the panel, so whatever happened today can’t have been that panel? (I think that panel may have been streamed live, per the text in the top right of the video?) The panelists include one of the Worldcon division heads, and a couple of writers who’ve had stories published in English translation.
The people on stage, from left:
The lady hosting the panel is 陈曜 / Chen Yao aka Sara Chen, who works at SF World magazine, and is one of the Worldcon division heads.
The guy in the black North Face polo shirt is 谢云宁 / Xie Yunning, who won the Xingyun Best Novel award in 2021, but doesn’t seem to have had anything published in English.
Third panelist (guy with glasses) is 阿缺 / A Que, who has had several stories published in Clarkesworld, and also one in the Sinopticon anthology.
Fifth panelist (guy with glasses) 天瑞说符 / Tianrui Fu, webnovelist. He has a translation of one of his works available on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Die-Mars-Chinese-science-fiction-ebook/dp/B07YH2HXR7 ), but from a very quick skim, it doesn’t look like anyone who was a native speaker was involved in the translation.
Rightmost panelist: 张玉乐 / Zhang Yule, president of a university SF society
Early on, after giving an overview of what Worldcons are, and a bit of background about the Hugos, between 17:45 and 20:05, Chen Yao namechecks all the Hugo finalists that SF World has published, has scheduled to publish in the future, or employs (in the case of the editor finalists), all of which were on the recommendation list mentioned in the Scroll a couple of months ago. I’m sure none of that is an attempt to influence Hugo voters….
Ever since the success, demise, rebirth and extended afterlife of the NBC-turned-Yahoo sitcom “Community,” the showrunner Dan Harmon has largely avoided the strictures of network TV. With his cynical streak and meta references, Harmon’s niche sensibility was always an awkward fit for a mass audience; even when “Community” was on the air, it was perpetually on the verge of cancellation. As television expanded rapidly in the 2010s, Harmon found a more natural home in cable and streaming. Despite the departure of “Rick and Morty” co-creator and star Justin Roiland amid allegations of sexual assault, the hit show is now entering its seventh season on Adult Swim; earlier this year, Harmon helped adapt the web comic “Strange Planet” into a series for Apple TV+.
With the animated half-hour “Krapopolis,” however, Harmon makes his official return to a broadcast network. Airing on Fox, “Krapopolis” is at least guaranteed the stability “Community” never enjoyed; ahead of its premiere on Sept. 24, the show has already been renewed through Season 3. And due to the ongoing strikes, “Krapopolis” is now, by default, one of the tentpoles of its network’s fall schedule, with new live-action series postponed until further notice.
That’s a heavy load to bear for an amusing, high-concept riff on the family sitcom set in an extremely loose rendition of ancient Greece. Physically weak and intellectually arrogant, 29-year-old Tyrannis (Richard Ayoade) is a man ahead of his time, so he’s recruited his warrior sister Stupendous (Pam Brady) and scientist half-brother Hippocampus (Duncan Trussell) to help him build a modern city-state. (“He tells powerless people they’re powerful and they like that, so they give him all their power,” one citizen says of Tyrannis’ skill set.) But first, Tyrannis must persuade the skeptical, not least among them his own parents: vain goddess Deliria (Hannah Waddingham) and Shlub (Matt Berry), a manticore-like hybrid of several different creatures….
…What once sounded outlandish, like material for a dystopian novel, is looking more and more like reality. So what is a writer of fiction supposed to do? For decades, authors have speculated what the world might look like when the climate from hell arrives. Consider American War by Omar El Akkad, set in 2074 during the outbreak of a civil war set off by a ban on fossil fuels, when Florida is erased from the map and Louisiana is half-underwater. In the six years since the book’s publication, the United States has become the most deeply polarized democracy in recent history; the intensity of heat waves and other disasters have eclipsed expectations. Earlier this year, the magazine Writer’s Digest called American War an “all-too-realistic cautionary tale.”
But El Akkad never intended it to be realistic at all. I asked him if it felt like the novel was starting to come true. “I thought that the way I had structured it was enough of an extrapolation that I wouldn’t have to deal with precisely the question you’re asking,” El Akkad told me. “And that has been obliterated in the last few years. That, to me, is terrifying.”
Extreme weather has melted the distinction between fact and fiction. As El Akkad described it, global warming doesn’t feel slow and steady; it feels more like falling down the stairs, with big drops that shake your expectations. One moment, you’re taking a nap in your house; the next, you’re running for your life from a wildfire. This year, a naturally hotter weather pattern called El Niño started setting in, adding extra heat on top of the climate change we’ve become accustomed to. July was the planet’s hottest month on record, clocking in at 1.5 degrees C (2.4 F) warmer than the preindustrial average. The disasters this summer serve as a preview of what the world could see during a typical year in the early 2030s. We no longer need authors or scientists to imagine it; real-world experience does the trick for anyone who’s paying close attention…..
I grew up in a house surrounded by books so there was never a moment where I did not think I was going to write, it felt like everyone must write for there to be this many books. Really, I was just impatient to grow up a little and become a better writer, somebody who did not have to lean so hard imitating other writers. One thing that helped me as a writer was when I reached out to the Marvel editorial asking for help on becoming a comic book writer and I got a response from Stan Lee (or more likely his assistant) telling me it does not matter what I write but I need to write every single day if I want to improve. So I wrote letters, I wrote reviews, I wrote poems, I translated, I journaled… but I made sure I always wrote every single day.
A few months ago, I hosted a friend from Colombia who was touring my university. After a morning walk in the cemetery, we ended up at the campus Barnes & Noble, where we picked out favourite novels for the other to read. Rather predictably, we went for the Nobel laureates – I chose for her Kazuo Ishiguro’s TheRemains of the Day, and she chose Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. She also included a random bonus pick – a short, translated novel by Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, which I enjoyed so much I have since copied out the following passage about writing in several letters to friends: “All this, yes, the story is history. But knowing beforehand so you never forget that the word is the fruit of the word, the word must resemble the word. Reaching it is my first duty to myself. And the word can’t be dressed up and artistically vain, it can only be itself. Well, it’s true that I also wanted to arrive at a sheer sensation and for it to be so sheer that it couldn’t break into a perpetual line.” The word can only be itself. Good advice for every time I sit down to write….
(9) REST IN PEACE TACO CAT. Cat Rambo shared this sad news today:
Taco Cat passed away last night. She was a good little cat, and I know she's somewhere happily watching birds. Going to put her in the garden next to the hazelnut tree. But this is going to be a sad week getting used to not hearing that little chirp in the morning. pic.twitter.com/rVxm7OL2uy
Earlier this year Taco was part of our Cats Sleep on SFF series in “Proud Pink Sky” – photo at the link.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 24, 1922 — Bert Ira Gordon. He not only wrote but directed such films as Serpent Island, King Dinosaur, The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs. the Spider, Village of the Giants and Empire of the Ants. Aren’t those truly deliciously pulpy SF film titles? (I need more adjectives, I truly do.) Forrest J Ackerman nicknamed him “Mr. B.I.G.” a reference to both his initials and his films’ tendency to feature super-sized creatures. (Died 2023.)
Born September 24, 1930 — Jack Gaughan. Artist and illustrator who won the Hugo several times including once for Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist in the same year. Most of his work from 1970 onward was for Ace and DAW. He illustrated the covers and hand-lettered title pages for the unauthorized first paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings which Ace released in 1965. Here’s those covers he did for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. (Died 1985.)
Born September 24, 1934 — John Brunner. My favorite works by him? The Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar which won a Hugo at St. Louiscon and The Sheep Look Up. I’m also fond of The Squares of The City which was nominated for a Hugo at Tricon. What’s your favorite works by him? (Died 1995.)
Born September 24, 1936 — Jim Henson. As much as I love The Muppet Show, and I’ve watched every show at least twice, I think The Storyteller is his best work. That’s not to overlook Labyrinth, The Witches, (yes I know it’s now considered misogynistic) The Dark Crystal and the first two Muppets films which are also excellent. (I think they really did far too many Muppets films.) (Died 1990.)
Born September 24, 1945 — David Drake, 78. I’d say his best-known solo work was the Hammer’s Slammers series. He has also written the Royal Cinnabar Navy series which are space operas inspired by the Aubrey–Maturin novels which i be not read. Opinions please on if I should do so. He has also drafted story ideas that were then finished off by co-authors such as Karl Edward Wagner, S.M. Stirling, and Eric Flint. He’s very, very well stocked at the usual suspects. Usual suspects for those of you are curious being Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo.
Born September 24, 1945 — Ian Stewart, 78. Mathematician and writer. He makes the Birthday Honors for the four volumes in The Science of Discworld series he wrote with Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett. It was nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000. Each of the books alternates between the usually absurd Discworld story and serious scientific exposition. (All four volumes are available from the usual suspects.) He would write a number of genre novels, none of which I’m familiar with. Anybody here read his works?
Born September 24, 1957 — Brad Bird, 66. Animator, director, screenwriter, producer, and occasionally even a voice actor whom I’m going to praise for directing The Iron Giant (nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000), The Incredibles (winner of Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form at Interaction), Incredibles 2 and Tomorrowland. He’s the voice of Edna Mode in both the Incredibles films, a most excellent role indeed.
Born September 24, 1965 — Richard K. Morgan, 58. The Takeshi Kovacs novels are an awesome series that I’ve read at least twice which are why I haven’t watched the Netflix series. His fantasy series, A Land Fit For Heroes, is still on my TBR To Be Listened To pile. I read the first of the Black Man series and will admit that I was far from impressed.
The USA TODAY Network/Gannett group has released a list of the selected 34 comic strips and panels that local editors and publishers will* choose from to run in their newspapers – not all will run in all (any?) of the papers.
The chosen strips and panels:
Group 1: Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Dennis the Menace
Group 2: Garfield, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues, Pickles, FoxTrot
Group 3: Pearls Before Swine, Jump Start, Ziggy, Marmaduke, Non Sequitur, Crabgrass
Group 4 Crankshaft, Luann, Baldo, Frank & Ernest, The Born Loser
Group 5: B.C.,Wizard of Id, Close to Home, Argyle Sweater, Mother Goose, Rose is Rose
Group 6: Hi & Lois, Mutts, Curtis, Shoe, The Lockhorns
Have you ever wanted to see a Disney movie where the Princess gets her foot chewed off by a baby dragon? Well, look no further, Dragonslayer has you covered! Here to chat about said foot-chewing are 3 of the biggest Dragonslayer fans I could find: Author Clay McLeod Chapman, Author Junot Diaz, and comic book writer / artist Stephen Bissette. Together we dive deep into the era known as “Dark Disney” and come to the realization that Disney has ALWAYS BEEN DARK!
(14) I COULD HAVE HAD A V-2. The National Air and Space Museum blog article “Restoring the Museum’s V-2 Missile” goes into fascinating detail about the history of the components in the museum’s V-2, and the painstaking research to explain which of the paint jobs applied over the years might be the most historically accurate.
One of the icons of the Museum’s location on the National Mall has been the black-and-white German V-2 ballistic missile. Ever since the building opened in July 1976, it stood in Space Hall, which in 1997 was revised to become Space Race. That rocket, currently off display, will return in a new guise, with green camouflage paint, when the hall reopens in a few years as RTX Living in the Space Age….
In a parallel project, Duane Decker of the Preservation and Restoration Unit redid the V-2 launch stand, which is original German mobile launch equipment transferred by NASA Marshall in 1975. Painted black, it was used to support the missile in Space Hall/Space Race. When he stripped it, he found no original paint. I consulted with Tracy Dungan, who supplied 1944 images that showed German stands painted in “dark yellow,” the late-war Wehrmacht vehicle camouflage. Duane painted ours in that color and it will once again support the rocket when it goes back on display in RTX Living in the Space Age.
This time the stand and rocket will be on top of a pedestal in the Missile Pit, the hole in the center of the gallery floor that allows taller rockets to fit under the roof. Lifted up to floor level, visitors will be able to see the stand and the rocket much as they would have looked during the V-2 campaign of 1944-1945. I very much look forward to the day when we again assemble and mount this important and deadly icon of the missile and space age.
The Museum’s V-2 rocket in the Space Race exhibition in 2006.
Weeks after the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki made his long-awaited comeback, the studio he founded almost four decades ago has secured its long-term future, easing concerns over its struggle to find a successor.
Studio Ghibli said this week that the company would be acquired by the private broadcaster, Nippon TV, which promised to continue building on Ghibli’s global success.
Miyazaki – widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest animators – founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, leading it to a string of successes, including an Oscar in 2003 for Spirited Away.
The studio built a loyal following around the world with films like My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, while Miyazaki was nominated for two further Academy Awards – for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and The Wind Rises in 2014 – the same year he was chosen to receive an honorary Oscar.
The agreement with Nippon TV, which will become Ghibli’s biggest shareholder, came after Miyazaki, 82, and its president, 75-year-old Toshio Suzuki, failed to persuade Miyazaki’s son to take over the running of the studio….
A capsule containing precious samples from an asteroid landed safely on Earth on Sunday, the culmination of a roughly 4-billion-mile journey over the past seven years.
The asteroid samples were collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which flew by Earth early Sunday morning and jettisoned the capsule over a designated landing zone in the Utah desert. The unofficial touchdown time was 8:52 a.m. MT, 3 minutes ahead of the predicted landing time.
The dramatic event — which the NASA livestream narrator described as “opening a time capsule to our ancient solar system” — marked a major milestone for the United States: The collected rocks and soil were NASA’s first samples brought back to Earth from an asteroid. Experts have said the bounty could help scientists unlock secrets about the solar system and how it came to be, including how life emerged on this planet….
(18) ANIME EXPLORATIONS. The prospect of Jamie Lee Curtis being cast in One Piece is also one of several topics taken up in episode 12 of the Anime Explorations Podcast, “Shirobako”. Another is Anime industry figures referenced in Shirobako. And Vampire Hunter D.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, Steven French, Alexander Case, Kathy Sullivan, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]
By Steve Vertlieb: Allan Asherman has passed away. He was a revered writer, journalist, Star Trek scholar … and cherished friend. My brother Erwin and I first encountered Allan at Forry Ackerman’s original “Famous Monsters Convention” at Loew’s Midtown Manhattan Motor Inn in the heart of New York City in September 1965. Along with fellow fans, collectors and writers such as George Stover, Wes Shank, and Gary Svehla, Erwin and I, along with Allan, were introduced to the expansive world of organized “Fandom.”
Erwin and I visited Allan many times over the ensuing years at his parent’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York. It was Allan who introduced us to Buster Crabbe when we three journeyed as star struck teenagers to The Concord Hotel in the Catskills in 1969, and sat in rapturous awe before the hero who had enchanted our childhoods as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Red Barry, and Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion.
I can remember a young gentleman in his early teens, so many years ago, joining us for an afternoon at Allan’s home. This young fan, Scott MacQueen, went on to become one of America’s greatest film scholars and preservationists.
In 1969, after having shared a joyous day with Buster Crabbe in upstate New York, courtesy of Allan, I returned the favor when he visited Erwin and I at our own parent’s home in Philadelphia. I had arranged for, perhaps, the very first “fan” interview with William Shatner at “The Playhouse in the Park” near Philly where Captain Kirk was co-starring with Jill Hayworth in a theater in the round production of There’s A Girl In My Soup. I happily gathered together my brother Erwin, and Allan, to join me when I interviewed Shatner for a British fanzine that I was writing for called L’Incroyable Cinema Magazine.
My published interview with Bill Shatner was later re-published in the third issue of The Monster Times, the world’s first and only bi-weekly Monster tabloid. Still later, it was published yet again within the pages of Allan’s definitive, original study of the Star Trek phenomenon, the famed Star Trek Compendium.
Allan and I were among the original stable of staff writers for The Monster Times in 1972, while Allan journeyed to planets and galaxies “Where No Man Had Gone Before” as a revered, legendary figure in the vast world of all things Star Trek.
Allan visited my home, and my parents, many times over the ensuing years and, when I married my then wife, Maria, visited us for a memorable weekend where I proudly gifted my dear friend with some treasured soundtrack albums by composers such as Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann.
As we grew older, our paths diverged. Allan married his sweetheart, Arlene Lo, and settled on Long Island. We met once more for a couples weekend with fellow fans Bill and Mary Burns, Bruce and Flo Newrock, Maria and I.
Every year during the holidays Allan would telephone me, or I would telephone him, and we’d catch up on each other’s lives.
In recent years our communications became fewer, and I always regretted not having just one more opportunity to meet with Allan, and talk endlessly into “the wee small hours of the morning.”
Despite the absence of regular telephone calls, however, I always cherished Allan’s friendship. Then, on the evening of September 23, 2023, I received a somber phone call from my brother Erwin in Los Angeles. He’d heard from Allan’s devoted wife, Arlene, that Allan had passed away suddenly at age seventy-six in a freak accident.
Allan Asherman and I were friends for very nearly sixty years. Despite the physical distance between us, I always cherished Allan, both as a dear friend, and as a brother. I remain numbed by his passing, and by his terrible loss from my life, yet shall forever hold dear my memories, recollections, conversations, associations, and friendship with this dear man.
My sense of loss and utter desolation, however, is palpable. May God Rest His Sweet Soul, sailing the galaxy eternally upon the gallant bridge of the “U.S.S. Enterprise.”
Until we meet amongst the stars once more, dear friend, I shall ever love and cherish both your memory and friendship.
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (Trantor Audio, 2009)
Review by Lis Carey: Chasm City is set in Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe, a century or so after the events of The Prefect and Elysium Fire. Or, put another way, some years after the end of the Belle Epoch, the golden age of the height of human civilization in the Yellowstone system, where Chasm City on the planetary surface, and the Glitter Band, made up of thousands of orbital habitats, offered the near-idyllic life of your choice, until the Melding Plague brought it crashing down.
The Melding Plague infects all nanotechnology, including nanotech implants in human beings, and causes it to mutate and distort in ways that in machinery is disturbing and dangerous, and in humans is horrific. The near-utopian life of the Belle Epoch civilization in the Yellowstone system depended on that nanotech and what it made possible. The wealthy who were able to get their implants out, or who sealed themselves into high-tech coffins that allow them to live lives with the tools and pleasures of implants, live in relative comfort in the Canopy of Chasm City. The non-wealthy live in much less desirable areas lower down, and the lowest and worst of those areas is the Mulch.
The main character is Tanner Mirabel, or at least, he sincerely believes he is. He comes to Yellowstone from the world of Sky’s Edge, and he’s hunting the man who killed his friend and employer, Cahuella, an arms dealer and, by many accounts, a sadistic monster. Tanner has a better opinion of him than many others, indeed thinks of him as being in some ways a good man. Cahuella’s wife tells Tanner he’s better than Tanner realizes, that he was better than his reputation when she met him, and has continued to improve since.
Tanner is one of the two narrative voices in the book, the other being Sky Haussmann, born on a slow colony ship from Earth to the intended colony world of Journey’s End. The ship has a crew of about 150, and a cargo of tens of thousands of sleepers, who will be awakened on arrival at their new home. We meet Haussmann as a young boy, and follow him as he rises through the crew, by intelligence, hard work, and, oh yes, treachery. He becomes both the hero and the villain of the story of how the planet–now called Sky’s Edge–was successfully settled.
He also becomes a religious figure, inspiration for a cult, and his followers have created a virus that gives those infected visions of his life.
Tanner’s home is Sky’s Edge, and he has become infected with the virus.
Tanner leaves Sky’s Edge and goes to Yellowstone, after Cahuella and his wife are killed, pursuing the killer. Without FTL, the trip takes fifteen years, and it’s during those fifteen years that Yellowstone goes from the very height of civilization to collapse under the effects of the Melding Plague, and struggling to preserve any civilization at all. The Glitter Band is now the Rust Band, and only parts of Chasm City are civilized and pleasant–and even that part has a bloodthirsty edge that perhaps was just not so apparent before. Along the way, he meets the religious order that cares for those who awake from cold sleep with their minds not yet fully reintegrated, the entrepreneurs who, for a price, will remove your implants, hopefully before the Melding Plague gets you. He meets some interesting people, some of whom are part of one of Chasm City’s more bloodthirsty sports, and some very attractive women who may or may not be his friends.
His sleeping visions of the life of Sky Haussmann become more frequent, more intrusive, and start to depart from the official version of Sky’s life.
In his waking hours, outside the visions, he starts to learn some confusing and disturbing things about himself and those around him.
And we start to ask ourselves, as he is, who is Tanner Mirabel, really?
There are twists on twists, here, and the answer may not be what you think.
Tanner, Sky, and the people Tanner meets, are interesting and compelling characters, not necessarily likable, and not necessarily who you think.
The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival has announced the program for its sixth annual event, with a lineup of science fiction and fantasy films, documentaries, music videos, and a screenplay competition. Screenings will be held from October 20-22 at the Producers Club Theaters in Midtown Manhattan, with passes available here.
The mission of the festival is to raise awareness about the psychedelic experience through media and meditative practices, with an emphasis on exploring creativity and self-expression.
“The festival offers an array of films, talks, and documentaries where kindred souls and good ideas collide,” said event director Daniel Abella. “Our goal is to educate and entertain attendees about how psychedelic practices are approached, which will allow for new pathways towards everyday life.” By offering a wide range of entertainment and imagery, the festival hopes to enlighten audiences’ perspective of their own identities.
The striking writers and Hollywood studios are in the “final phase” of negotiations and hope to strike a deal to end the historic work stoppage that has paralyzed the entertainment industry by the end of the weekend, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.
The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers spent Saturday negotiating for the fourth consecutive day.
The big four studio bosses — Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, Disney chief Bob Iger, Netflix co-chief Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal studio chairman Donna Langley — were no longer in the Sherman Oaks room by Saturday afternoon, one personsaid, signaling nearly all the major issues had been resolved. The person stressed, while not directly in the room, the studio chiefs remained wholly engaged in the process….
As Doctor Who‘s 60th anniversary draws closer, the BBC has started to post even more promotional images on social media ahead of the specials’ release, and the latest teaser may be a clue that both Rose Tyler and the Twelfth Doctor are coming back….
… On Sept. 17, the official X (formerly Twitter) account for Doctor Who shared a cryptic image that featured the Doctor’s TARDIS at the end of a long and narrow corridor. The walls are covered with posters hung by employers who are looking to hire workers for their businesses, and one poster clearly reads Henrik’s, the very department store chain Rose Tyler works at in the New Who’s first episode “Rose.” Fans are now saying that this Easter egg could easily mean that Piper will be returning to Doctor Who after all, at least for a cameo appearance in the anniversary episodes….
Another poster, situated right above the Henrik’s one, contains a reference to Glasgow, which some Doctor Who fans are ready to take in as an indication that Capaldi is coming back as well….
… Neither Capaldi nor Piper are confirmed to be part of the cast for Doctor Who‘s 60th-anniversary specials yet, but viewers believe that these Easter eggs offer strong evidence that they will be making cameo appearances. The show is known to be very careful and selective with the promo images and other teasers shared publicly, so there’s definitely hope that the former stars, who were both in Doctor Who‘s 50th-anniversary episode in 2013, will be making fans happy this November once more….
Destiny isn’t done with them just yet… The Doctor and Donna return for three special episodes
(4) LONGTIME PULP COLLECTOR. Joe Kloc introduces readers to Gary Lovisi in “The Golden Fleece” at Harper’s Magazine.
…Gary, I learned, was Gary Lovisi, a retired postal worker living in South Brooklyn who, since 1986, has edited and self-published more than one hundred issues of Paperback Parade, a near-quarterly journal in which he interviews midcentury noir and sci-fi writers, revisits the “girl-fight covers” of the “sleaze era,” and eulogizes longtime pulp book dealers as they pass on. I got Gary’s number through Gryphon Books, the publishing house through which he put out three issues last year, though he stopped updating its website nearly a decade ago….
… He went on to explain: they were talking about the first issue of Golden Fleece Historical Adventure, a pulp magazine created by Sun Publications in Chicago in 1938. Apart from its two stories by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and its two covers by Margaret Brundage, an early master of the damsel-in-distress motif, it is an unremarkable periodical that folded after nine issues. It’s possible that Gary would not have given it a second glance if not for the circumstances under which they came across it: “It was maybe twenty years ago,” he began.
He and Lucille were at a flea market in Brimfield, Massachusetts, when swirling black rain clouds gathered overhead. The storm broke, and they ducked under a tent in which a man was selling items recovered from a house fire. Gary noticed a pile of burnt books on a folding table and started digging through them. He brushed one off, revealing the first issue of Golden Fleece Historical Adventure. Somehow, it had survived the fire unharmed, the only book to do so. He showed it to the vendor, who couldn’t make sense of it. Gary paid the man five dollars and drove back to Gerritsen Beach. He placed the book on a shelf in the basement and forgot about it for a decade. Then, in the fall of 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall. The water rose, filling subway tunnels, submerging thousands of vehicles, and killing more than one hundred people. Gary and Lucille’s basement flooded to the ceiling. Tens of thousands of their books were destroyed. Days later, as a city sanitation worker was hauling the remains of the waterlogged collection out to a garbage truck, Gary noticed that two books had swelled and fused together. He pulled the paperbacks apart to discover, wedged between them, in pristine condition, his Golden Fleece.
Beloved reading advocate, writer, and television and film star LeVar Burton will lead this year’s Banned Books Week, which takes place October 1–7, 2023. Burton is the first actor to serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, an annual weeklong event that highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.
Recognizable for his groundbreaking roles in the landmark television series Roots and the Star Trek franchise, Burton’s work as a literacy advocate has inspired generations. Many in the book community can trace their love of reading and advocacy for the right to read to Burton’s treasured PBS children’s series Reading Rainbow. Burton has continued to inspire readers with the enormously popular LeVar Burton Reads podcast. A long-time champion for reading and access to books, Burton executive produced The Right to Read. This award-winning 2023 documentary film positions the literacy crisis in America as a civil rights issue.
“Books bring us together. They teach us about the world and each other. The ability to read and access books is a fundamental right and a necessity for life-long success,” says Burton. “But books are under attack. They’re being removed from libraries and schools. Shelves have been emptied because of a small number of people and their misguided efforts toward censorship. Public advocacy campaigns like Banned Books Week are essential to helping people understand the scope of book censorship and what they can do to fight it. I’m honored to lead Banned Books Week 2023.”
Burton will headline a live virtual conversation with Banned Books Week Youth Honorary Chair Da’Taeveyon Daniels about censorship and advocacy at 8:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, October 4. The event will stream live on Instagram (@banned_books_week). Visit BannedBooksWeek.org for more details….
…We might, then, turn our attention to awards, of which there is still an abundance. The invaluable Science Fiction Awards Database tracks the short lists and results of over 100 different awards, and a few dozen include short fiction categories. Through their short lists, they provide a kind of crowdsourced year’s best survey, not least because most of them are decided by some form of popular vote. This includes probably the two best-known SF awards—the Nebulas, which are voted on each year by members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), and the Hugos, which are voted on by members of that year’s World Science Fiction Convention—and is one reason why, historically, it has been so useful to have both awards and anthologies.
Popular votes and editorial selection have different strengths and weaknesses, and one particular weakness of popular votes has become more noticeable in recent years. There has always been a degree of overlap between the Hugo and Nebula nominees, but in an era of more short stories than any one person can reasonably read, there is an incentive to read the stories that are most easily accessible and that other people are already talking about, leading to reinforcing cycles of attention. As a result, it is now the norm for at least half of the short fiction nominees for these two awards to be the same, and for them to come from a relatively small group of online magazines—and even allowing for Sturgeon’s sometimes-useful generalization, in a healthy ecosystem, you’d like more differentiation than that.
All of this is a long way around to justifying the ostensible subject of this essay: now is a particularly good time to pay more attention to the short story awards that are casting a broader net than the Hugos and the Nebulas themselves, and one that I find consistently interesting is the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. …
Putting Ballard on a master’s course list, as I’ve done a couple of times, provokes a reaction that’s both funny and illuminating. Asked to read Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition, the more vociferous students invariably express their revulsion, while the more reflective ones voice their frustration that, although the ideas might be compelling, the prose “isn’t good.” This is especially the case with students who’ve been exposed to creative writing classes: they complain that the books are so full of repetition they become machinic or monotonous; also that they lack solid, integrated characters with whom they can identify, instead endlessly breaking open any given plot or mise-en-scène to other external or even unconnected scenes, contexts, and histories, resulting in a kind of schizoid narrative space that’s full of everyone and no one.
This second group, of course, is absolutely right in its analysis; what’s funny (and, if I can teach them anything, reversible) about their judgment is that it is these very elements (repetition, machinism, schizoid hypermnesia) that make Ballard’s work so brilliant. Not only are his rhythmic cycles, in which phrases and images return in orders and arrangements that mutate and reconfigure themselves as though following some algorithm that remains beyond our grasp, at once incantatory, hallucinatory, and the very model and essence of poetry; but, mirroring the way that information, advertising, propaganda, public (and private) dialogue, and even consciousness itself run in reiterative loops and circuits, constitute a realism far exceeding that of the misnamed literary genre. If his personae are split, multiplied, dispersed, this is because they are true subjects of a networked and fragmented hypermodernity—ones for whom identification, if it is to amount to anything more than a consoling fiction, must come through man’s recognition of himself (as Georges Bataille put it) not in the degrading chains of logic but instead, with rage and ecstatic torment, in the virulence of his own phantasms….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 23, 1908 — Wilmar House Shiras. Her story “In Hiding” was submitted in 1948 to Astounding Science Fiction, where it was published. She published two sequels in the magazine: “Opening Doors”, and “New Foundations”. The three stories would become the first three chapters in the novel, Children of the Atom. Other than a handful of short fiction, I think it’s her only work. (Died 1990.)
Born September 23, 1920 — Richard Wilson. Not a writer of much genre fiction at all. His really major contribution to fandom and to Syracuse University where he worked as the director of the Syracuse University News Bureau was in successfully recruiting the donation of papers from many prominent science fiction writers to the Syracuse University’s George Arents Research Library. The list of those writers includes Piers Anthony, Hal Clement, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven and Frederik Pohl. And, of course, himself. It has been called the “most important collection of science fiction manuscripts and papers in the world.” (Died 1987.)
Born September 23, 1928 — John S Glasby.English writer who wrote a truly amazing amount of pulp fiction of both a SF and fantasy under quite a few pen names that included John Adams, R. L. Bowers, Berl Cameron, Max Chartair, Randall Conway, Ray Cosmic, John Crawford, J. B. Dexter, John Glasby, J. S. Glasby, Michael Hamilton, J. J. Hansby, Marston Johns, Victor La Salle, Peter Laynham, H. K. Lennard, Paul Lorraine, John C. Maxwell, A. J. Merak, H. J. Merak, R. J. Merak, John Morton, John E. Muller, Rand Le Page, J. L. Powers and Karl Zeigfried. It is thought but not confirmed that he produced more than three hundred novels and a lot of short stories in a twenty year period that started in the early Fifties. (Died 2011.)
Born September 23, 1948 — Leslie Kay Swigart, 75. Obsessions can be fascinating and hers was detailing the writings of Harlan Ellison. Between 1975 and 1991, she published Harlan Ellison: A Bibliographical Checklist plus wrote shorter works such as “Harlan Ellison: An F&SF Checklist“, “Harlan Ellison: A Nonfiction Checklist” and “Harlan Ellison: A Book and Fiction Checklist”. Her George R. R. Martin: A RRetrospective Fiction Checklist can be found in the Dreamsongs: GRRM: A RRetrospective collection.
Born September 23, 1959 — Frank Cottrell-Boyce, 64. Definitely not here for his sequels to Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. (Horrors!) He is here for such writing endeavors as Goodbye Christopher Robin, his Doctor Who stories, “In the Forest of the Night” and “Smile”, both Twelfth Doctor affairs, and the animated Captain Star series in which he voiced Captain Jim Star. The series sounds like the absolute antithesis of classic Trek.
Born September 23, 1956 — Peter David, 67. Did you know that his first assignment for the Philadelphia Bulletin was covering Discon II? I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Legions of Fire, Book: The Long Night of Centauri Prime but he’s also done a number of comics I’ve read including runs of Captain Marvel , Wolverine and Young Justice.
Born September 23, 1967 — Justine Larbalestier, 56. Writer, Editor, and Critic. An Australian author of fiction whose novels have won Andre Norton, Carl Brandon, and Aurealis Awards, she is probably best known for her comprehensive scholarly work The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction which was nominated for a Hugo at Torcon 3. Her Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, an anthology of SFF stories and critical essays by women, won The William Atheling Jr. Award.
(9) SMOFCON RATES TO RISE. SMOFcon 40, taking place December 1-3 in Providence, RI, is raising its membership rates on September 30. Register now and save.
Current rates are:
Attending $60
First Smofcon (never attended Smofcon in person) $40
Young Adult (Under 33 Years Old / Born After 1 December 1990) $40
Unwaged / Retired / Hardship $40
Virtual/Online $35
Family/Con Suite Only $30
On October 1 the attending rate will rise to $70 and the Virtual/Online membership will rise to $40. All other rates will remain the same. The new rates are good through November 27, when the Attending membership will rise again to at-the-door pricing.
Smofcon 40 also has published a Covid policy at the link. Short version: masks required in program space, recommended but optional in hospitality space. Up-to-date vaccines are recommended but not required. Corsi-Rosenthal boxes will be used to filter air in all spaces.
Armageddon‘s quarter-century reign as the Hollywood movie running afoul of the most physics laws is over. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson made the revelation during an interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show to promote his new book, To Infinity and Beyond, highlighting glaring scientific inaccuracies in another space film, the 2022 Moonfall starring Halle Berry.
“Armageddon, you say, violates more laws of physics per minute than any other film ever made,” Cagle began.
DeGrasse Tyson agreed, adding, “That’s what I thought until I saw Moonfall. It was a pandemic film that came out, you know, Halle Berry, and the moon is approaching Earth, and they learned that it’s hollow and there’s a moon being made out of rocks living inside of it and the Apollo missions were really to visit, to feed the moon being, and I just couldn’t, so I said, “Alright, I thought Armageddon had a secure hold on this crown, but apparently not.”…
(12) CARBON IN EUROPA MOON OCEAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.
Two research teams have independently used the James Webb Space Telescope to look at Jupiter’s moon, Europa.
Jupiter takes a lot of hits for the rest of the solar system, and new footage shows one of the biggest astronomers have ever seen.
About 14 seconds into the video below, you can see a bright flash appear in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. The flash is from an impact — likely an asteroid or comet slamming into the planet. The video was captured by amateur astronomer Tadao Ohsugi, in Japan, in August. It’s a rare sight….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Rick Kovalcik, Tammy Coxen, Steven French, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Elisa.]
