Arabella of Mars (the Adventures of Arabella Ashby) by David D. Levine, Tor Books
Sword and Verse by Kathy MacMillan, HarperTeen
Sleeping Giants (The Themis Files) by Sylvain Neuvel, Del Rey
Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, Book 1) by Ada Palmer, Tor Books
Sleep State Interrupt by T.C. Weber, See Sharp Press
The award winner will be announced in May at Balticon 51.
The Compton Crook Award is presented by BSFS to the best first novel by an individual (no collaborations) published each year in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror. Selection is made by vote of the BSFS membership. The winner gets $1,000 and a commemorative plaque.
The Award is named for science fiction author Compton Crook (d. 1981), who wrote under the nom de plume Stephen Tall. The award has been given since 1983.
By Martin Morse Wooster: Like most cities of its size, Washington has theatres for every taste. You have your edgy theatres, your really edgy theatres, your commercial theaters for Broadway tours, and the Shakespeare Theatre. We even have one theater, Signature, which specializes in musicals and got Disney development money for a theatrical version of Freaky Friday.
The Washington Stage Guild specializes in traditional, well-made plays with a British accent.[1] They pride themselves on their performances of George Bernard Shaw, and in 2014 started to perform Shaw’s Back to Methuselah, Shaw’s only full-fledged attempt to write science fiction. Shaw wrote the play between 1918-20 and it was first performed in 1921.
The play, unabridged, probably takes between six and seven hours to perform. Here are some indications that Shaw didn’t really expect it to be performed much. His earlier plays have very detailed stage directions, for example, and Back to Methuselah has very sketchy ones.
As far as the Stage Guild knows, there have only been four professional performances of the unabridged Back to Methuselah: the British and American productions of the early 1920s, one done by Canada’s Shaw Festival in 1986, and the Stage Guild’s production. The play is in five parts, and the Stage Guild performed parts one and two in 2014 and parts three and four in 2015. There was an abridged version of the play done on Broadway in 1958 and the BBC did a five-part dramatization in 1952.
The Stage Guild’s current production is part five of the play, subtitled “As Far As Thought Can Reach” and set in the year 31,920.
Back to Methuselah begins with Adam and Eve and then leaps to contemporary Britain, where a process is discovered that can extend the human lifespan to 300 years. In parts three and four, longevity becomes commonplace and the British Empire moves its capital to Baghdad.
Having now seen the whole thing, I can say there’s an additional reason the play is performed very rarely—it’s not very good.
Do you have a friend you really care about and who was once full of zest for life, but as he’s gotten older would much rather discuss his prostate or the miracle superfoods he’s seen on TV commercials then the books he’s read? This is what happened to Shaw here. He wrote the play when he was in his sixties, and he’s turned, ummm, crotchety.
In the future Shaw describes, people come from eggs and when the egg cracks, a 20-year-old hatches. Adults then live for four more years, and Shaw thinks it hilarious that a ”four-year old” who’s actually 24 can love a much younger “two-year-old” who’s 22. After they turn four, they then become “ancients” and live on for 700 more years.
There’s science in this play, but Shaw talking about science is like me expounding on the foundations of mathematics: it takes very little for Shaw to blither. For example, at one point there are some robots created (well, “automata” since the term “robot” hadn’t been invented) with brains that run on “keyboards.”
In the middle of the play, a character dies, and is cremated in a “million-degree furnace.” Why does the furnace heat up to a million degrees instead of the several thousand degrees it takes to burn a human body? Shaw doesn’t say.
There’s some speculation on the nature of art, but the dialogue is quite wan. The second part of Back to Methuselah, set in contemporary times, almost matches the crackling wit of Shaw at his best, but in this installment, since Shaw really can’t visualize what life would be like in 30,000 AD, he can’t write characters in the distant future that are fully developed.
Still, I give the Washington Stage Guild enormous credit for staging this play and for completing it. Shakespeare fans don’t just want to see Hamlet and Henry IV, but also King John and Titus Andronicus. Shaw fans want to see his bad plays as well as his good ones.
The cast did the best they could with the material, but of the actors, I enjoyed the performances of Conrad Feininger and Laura Giannarelli the best.
One final point. Having read Brian Stableford’s The New Atlantis last year, I know that what Shaw was writing was not sf, but the British variant, “scientific romance,” which died around 1960. I suspect Back to Methuselah will be the only time I see a scientific romance performed on a stage.
[1] We used to have the American Century Theater, which specialized in well-made American plays. They’ve now folded, but because of them I’ve actually seen The SevenYear Itch and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? performed on stage.
“This is my favorite show on TV,” Kirtley says in Episode 248 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “This is the most serious science fiction TV show—in terms of what hardcore science fiction fans would want in a TV show—that I’ve seen in a long time, possibly ever.”
But while the show is widely praised in many corners, it has yet to attract a wider audience. John J. Joex, who tracks the ratings of various shows over at Cancelled Sci Fi, says that The Expanse looks like a show headed for cancellation.
“The ratings started out decent and then really dropped off,” he says. “And I know this is an expensive series to produce, so I was really getting kind of nervous about it.”
(2) TECH PREDICTIONS. There’s a touch of Ray Bradbury in “Interactive! The Exhibition” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum through April 16:
Interactive! is a large-scale, hands-on examination of how popular culture in movies, books, TV, and the arts has influenced modern technology and changed the ways we live, work, move, connect and play. In addition to a wide variety of “hands-on” experiences, including Oculus Rift virtual reality, interactive robots, the driverless car, multiple gaming stations, remote control drones, 3D printing stations and more, Reagan Library visitors will also get up close to some of science fiction’s most iconic characters, including a roving, interactive R2D2 from Star Wars, a T-800 endoskeleton from The Terminator, and a full-size Alien from the Alien films. The exhibit also showcases the creative inspiration behind legendary innovators such a Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Walt Disney.
Over a dozen immersive games await, including Virtual Reality Gaming by Oculus Rift, robotic arm interactives, 80’s gaming stations and more.
Create and compose your own musical masterpiece.
Seek out resources on Mars with a remote-control version of the rover from the hit film The Martian.
Get up close with the first ever 3D printed car, by Local Motors.
Examine communications from the landline rotary telephone and VCR to smartphones.
Check out jetpacks, Marty McFly’s hoverboard and even meet Baxter the robot!
And much more!
This exhibit is great for museum guests of all ages – from the young, to the young at heart!
Daniel Espinosa’s new horror film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds as astronauts fighting a hostile alien…
Any reasonable creature feature worth its bones should have, on balance, about half a dozen scenes where a character makes a patently illogical decision. Just discovered a new form of ancient alien life? Give it some zaps with a cattle prod, just to see what happens. Now you’re fighting an alien enemy in an enclosed space station? Break out the flamethrower! Running low on fuel? Definitely vent everything you have left in an effort to startle the creature, even when it doesn’t work the first three times. If the film is scary and chaotic enough, every bad choice will act as a link in a chain, building to a satisfying crescendo of mayhem that the audience has secretly been rooting for all along. Life isn’t perfect—you probably won’t remember it after three months—but it does exactly that.
Daniel Espinosa’s horror film is set in space and has some ostensible sci-fi trappings, as it’s centered around humans’ first encounter with prehistoric Martian life. But the movie might as well take place in an underground cavern or a fantasy dungeon, since its two-fold premise is fairly universal: The heroes are trapped in a gilded tomb from which they may not escape, and the monster they’ve awakened is stuck in there with them.
Further, one might argue that when it comes to alien life forms, anything is possible, but the plausibility of this particular alien life form can be seriously questioned. Without going into detail about all of its antics, I find it extremely difficult to imagine, given what we know about the history of Mars, any series of events that would cause such a creature to emerge and thrive for hundreds of millions of years (which is what we are told happened). And Derry specifies that the alien is a carbon-based life form that in most ways closely resembles terrestrial life forms; and since all such organisms would die within a minute if exposed to the vacuum of space, the Martian would never be able to cavort about in a vacuum with undiminished energy and flexibility for an indefinite period of time. But this nonsense does provide the film with an exciting scene, and for the filmmakers, that was all that mattered. In sum, precautions will always be necessary in dealing with potential alien life, but no one should have any nightmares about slimy, lightning-fast starfish embarking upon campaigns to slaughter all humans in sight.
(6) BEAT THE CLOCK. James Van Pelt, in “Marketing Short Stories”, reviews lots of sales and rejection statistics derived from taking the Bradbury challenge.
First, the background. Two years ago I decided to try Ray Bradbury’s challenge to write a story a week for a year….
CONCLUSIONS: – I was able to find places to submit all the stories pretty much all the time. If there are that many markets, then the short story marketplace is robust. The Submission Grinder lists 25 markets in science fiction that will pay six cents or more per word. There are many more, beautifully done, semi-pro magazines that I’m proud to submit to who pay less. – This is an old lesson, but if you are going to write short stories and submit them on spec, you have to be thick-skinned. I have been submitting stories seriously since the 80s. I’ve sold 145 stories, been a finalist for the Nebula, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. I’ve appeared in several Year’s Best collections. I think I’m doing okay, but I’m still rejected at an 8 to 1 ratio. Mike Resnick doesn’t suffer from this ratio, I’ll bet, but there’s only one Mike….
The movie is the first documentary directed by Oz, who also made such comedies as “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “Bowfinger.” And of course he was the voice of Yoda in the “Star Wars” films.
It is just a few hours after their premiere and four of the Muppet originators — Oz, Brill, Barretta and Goelz — are sitting around a hotel conference table in Austin. (Nelson died in 2012, the same year the movie’s conversation was filmed.) The four of them have a rapport one might associate with a sketch comedy group, responding quickly to one another with a near-telepathic sense of connection.
With impish delight, Goelz noisily unwraps a candy over the microphone of an interviewer’s recording device a few beats longer than is necessary. Brill playfully spurts a sweet from between her fingers, sending it gracefully arcing through the air to the other side of the room.
It was that largely unseen affinity among them that was the initial impetus for the film. While they have all spoken separately about their characters and time working with Muppets creator Jim Henson, who died in 1990, it was not until filming “Muppet Guys Talking” that they had ever done an interview together.
How quickly people forget that the very first pilot episode of The Muppet Show was entitled, “The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence”. In fact, The Muppets and associated Henson characters were never completely immune to controversy, tragedy, or touchy topics, despite their family-friendly exterior. After all, muppets are essentially just a bunch of guys with their hands up the butts of various animal and human-like creations. What kind of dark secrets could we possibly uncover about them? Read on, all you puppet-loving weirdos and take a gander at 15 Dark Secrets About The Muppets
Frank Oz never wanted to be a puppeteer
Amazing as it may seem, one of the most famous muppet voices, aside from Jim Henson himself, never wanted a career in puppetry. Frank Oz was the son of Belgian immigrants who were both puppeteers themselves. While his siblings never took much of an interest in it, Oz performed puppet shows to make extra money as a teenager, saving up for a trip to Europe. As he explained in an interview with IGN, “it was something that I latched on to because it was a way to please them (his parents) and it was a means of expression for a shy, self-effacing boy.”
Oz had actually planned to study journalism in college, but dropped out after a year when Jim Henson offered him a job….
(9) TODAY’S DAY
Spinach Day
It’s not just Popeye who will be strong to the finish on Spinach Day, but everyone who chooses to celebrate the day by consuming some of this leafy green plant will get to join in the health benefits as well!
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
March 26, 1937 — Popeye statue unveiled during spinach festival, Crystal City, Texas. (Are you sensing a theme here?)
Hollywood quickly made room on its red carpets for the young Scarlett Johansson in 2003, when she first created a stir in Sofia Coppola’s film, Lost in Translation. It seemed clear that this blonde bombshell from New York, who was so ably sharing the screen with a dyspeptic Bill Murray, would go on to deliver popcorn buckets-full of mainstream audience appeal. Beautiful, mysterious and charismatic: she was already an aspirational trophy for any traditional leading man.
Yet, 14 years on, Johansson is established instead as a rather different sort of screen idol. Following a succession of high-octane blockbusters and off-beat critical hits, the actress is now enshrined as perhaps the leading sci-fi action star of her generation. Where once her sardonic smirks and sultry looks spoke of old-school movie glamour, she is now more likely to grab the limelight by kickboxing than by smouldering.
Yes, there’s nothing like reaching out and touching someone from a phone booth. They used to be everywhere, but they are now rare coin-operated curiosities. Mo Rocca looks into the history of the once-ubiquitous phone booth, and of the wi-fi kiosks that are now replacing them in New York City.
The real superpower of the comic book heroine, who just turned 75, is the power to inspire. Faith Salie explores the history of Wonder Woman, and talks with Lynda Carter, made immortal by playing the Amazonian on TV in the 1970s, and with Jill Lepore, author of “The Secret History of Wonder Woman.”
The tales in [Maria] Tatar’s compilation swing from vicious to romantic, from comedy to horror. There are stories of a steadfast prince being loyal to his frog-wife, or a princess searching for her bear-husband “east of the sun and west of the moon” — here, love is proven in action and rewarded with happiness. But Beauty and the Beast stories are about power as much as about love. So sometimes the prince steals a maiden’s animal skin to force her to stay with him, or he puts his tortoise-wife on display against her wishes, or he ignores his devoted wife’s warnings and discovers she’s actually a crane. And these stories, where power is abused, differ sharply from the stories of proof and trust: Almost all of them end with her escape.
The Opera de Montreal is taking the rock out of “rock opera” with its ambitious interpretation of Pink Floyd’s classic double album, The Wall.
Another Brick in the Wall: L’Opera tells the story of Pink, a rock star who retreats into his mind to cope with the alienation of fame.
Roger Waters’ lyrics provide the narrative backbone of the two-hour production but composer Julien Bilodeau has removed the album’s familiar rhythms and melodies in favour of timpani and a 50-person chorus.
One of the many powers held by a historic music venue like the Forum in Inglewood — which has seen celebrated concerts by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen and Prince — is that of a time machine.
Capable of transporting an audience back to a summer when it first heard a favorite song or an aging band to its initial heyday, the Forum’s ability to slip the bounds of time was again in full view Thursday night with the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience, a celebration of the blockbuster HBO series and its music, led by the show’s composer, Ramin Djawadi.
This time-skipping quality could be felt on two fronts. With a mix of orchestral sweep, multiple screens and the occasional blast of fire and smoke, the show’s expected aim was to transport fans to the Middle Ages-adjacent universe of the tangled and very bloody machinations of George R.R. Martin’s Westeros. However, the performance also offered a fleeting glimpse of the not too distant future when “Game of Thrones” is no longer something analyzed and anticipated — July 16 and the new season is coming, everyone! — and exists only as a memory. Indeed, having left such an imprint on pop culture, it wasn’t difficult to imagine this concert being toured and staged well after “Game of Thrones” is over and our watch is ended.
This sort of living tribute to a series nearing its finish gave the night a communal, Comic-Con-esque quality.
(18) WILSON. In “How sketching a dying father led Daniel Clowes to his quirky new film ‘Wilson’” the Washington Post’s Michael Cavna interviews Daniel Clowes, whose new film Wilson is based on his graphic novel. Clowes makes comparisons between producing graphic novels and directing and discusses what happened when he took Charles Schulz’s challenge to come up with a gag for a comic strip every day.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Darrah Chavey.]
Voting is open through April 17 to determine the five finalists for the 2017 Deutscher Phantastik Preis. The award honors speculative fiction published for the first time in German language during the previous year. The longlist is created by an independent jury, and in the first round voters also are allowed to vote for write-ins.
Once the short list is determined, winners will be picked by a public vote hosted by the online magazine Phamtastik-News.de.
Deutscher Phantastik Preis Longlist
Bester deutscher Roman / Best German Novel
Thomas Finn — Dark Wood — Knaur TB
Karsten Kruschel — Das Universum nach Landau: Roman in Dokumenten und Novellen — Wurdack
A. S. Bottlinger — Der Fluch des Wüstenfeuers — Klett-Cotta
Bernd Perplies und Christian Humberg — Der Goldene Machtkristall (Die unheimlichen Fälle des Lucius Adler, Band 1) — Thienemann Verlag in der Thienemann-Esslinger Verlag GmbH
T. S. Orgel — Die Blausteinkriege 2 – Sturm aus dem Süden — Heyne Verlag
Bettina Belitz — Die Diamantkrieger-Saga – La Lobas Versprechen — cbt
Kai Meyer — Die Seiten der Welt: Blutbuch — FISCHER FJB
Katharina Seck — Die silberne Königin — Bastei Lübbe
Dirk van den Boom — Die Welten der Skiir 1: Prinzipat — Cross Cult
E. S. Schmidt — Die zweite Finsternis — Papierverzierer Verlag
C. M. Hafen — Drachensichel — O’Connell Press
Carina Zacharias — Emba – Magische Wahrheit: Band 2 — beBEYOND by Bastei Entertainment
Susanne Pavlovic — Feuerjäger 3: Das Schwert der Königin — Amrûn Verlag
Tommy Krappweis — Ghostsitter, Band 03: Hilfe, Zombie-Party! — Egmont Schneiderbuch
Vanessa Kaiser, Thomas Lohwasser u. a. — Herbstlande — Low, Torsten
Christoph Marzi — London: Ein Uralte Metropole Roman — Heyne Verlag
Andreas Brandhorst — Omni — Piper
Laurence Horn — Rodinia – Die Rückkehr des Zauberers — Papierverzierer Verlag
Robert Corvus — Rotes Gold: Die Schwertfeuer-Saga 1 — Piper Taschenbuch
Michael Masberg — Salon der Schatten — Ulisses Medien und Spiel Distribution GmbH
Annie J. Dean — Seelenhauch — Dark Diamonds
Christian Humberg und Bernd Perplies — Star Trek – Prometheus 1-3 — Cross Cult
Andreas Eschbach — Teufelsgold — Bastei Lübbe
Markus Heitz — Wédora – Staub und Blut — Knaur HC
Dominique Stalder — Der Wanderer: Band 1: Die Schwarzen Klippen — SadWolf Verlag
Carolin Wahl — Die Traumknüpfer — Heyne Verlag
Bestes deutschsprachiges Romandebüt / Best debut novel in German
Nadine Erdmann — Cyberworld — Greenlight Press
Nicole Gozdek — Die Magie der Namen — ivi
Katharina Fiona Bode — Erasmus Emmerich und die Maskerade der Madame Mallarmé — Art Skript Phantastik
Ivar Leon Menger, Anette Strohmeyer u. a. — Monster 1983 — Audible GmbH
Bodo Traber — Nachtexpress — WDR
Neil Gaiman — Niemalsland — Bastei Lübbe
André Wiesler — Protektor: Monsterjäger mit Sockenschuss — Verlag Torsten Low
Stuart Kummer und Edgar Linscheid — The Cruise — Folgenreich
Markus Heitz — Wédora – Staub und Blut — Audible GmbH
Beste deutschsprachige Serie / Best German Language Series
Aurora — Papierverzierer Verlag
BattleTech — Ulisses Medien und Spiel Distribution GmbH
Chroniken von Chaos und Ordnung — Acabus Verlag
D9E – Die neunte Expansion — Wurdack
Das Erbe der Macht — Greenlight Press
Die Chroniken der Seelenwächter — Greenlight Press
Die Phileasson Saga — Heyne Verlag
Die Scareman-Saga — Atlantis Verlag
Frost & Payne-Reihe — Greenlight Press
Gladium — Amrûn Verlag
Heliosphere 2265 — Greenlight Press
Maddrax — Bastei Entertainment
PERRY RHODAN-Arkon — Perry Rhodan digital
Perry Rhodan-Trivid — Perry Rhodan digital
Professor Zamorra — Bastei Entertainment
RACK — Papierverzierer Verlag
Sky-Troopers — Saphir im Stahl
Spiegelmagie — Machandel-Verlag
Wächter-Chroniken — Papierverzierer Verlag
Bester deutschsprachiger Grafiker /Best German-speaking Graphic Artist
Arndt Drechsler — Die zweite Finsternis — Papierverzierer Verlag
Martin Frei — Das Ende des Regenbogens — Cross Cult
Mark Freier — Weltentor: Fantasy — NOEL-Verlag
Birgit Gitschier — Der Fluch des Wüstenfeuers — Klett-Cotta
Vivien Heinz — Shut Down – Du hast nur 24 Stunden — Chicken House
Alexander Kopainski — Die Legenden von Karinth (Band 1) — Sternensand
Tina Köpke — Brautsee — Papierverzierer Verlag
Timo Kümmel — Niemand – Mehr! — Fabylon
Stefanie Kurt — Hourglass Wars – Jahr der Schatten (Band 2) — in Farbe und Bunt
Melanie Philippi — Rodinia – Die Rückkehr des Zauberers — Papierverzierer Verlag
Nadine Schäkel — Aventurischer Almanach — Ulisses Medien und Spiel Distribution GmbH
Juliane Schneeweiss — Tiranorg: Schwertliebe — Create Space
Dirk Schulz — Arkon 5: Der Smiler und der Hund — Perry Rhodan digital
Helge Vogt — Magnus Chase – Das Schwert des Sommers — Carlsen
Bestes deutschsprachiges Sekundärwerk / Best German Language Secondary Work (i.e., Related Work)
Burkhard Ihme, Christian Endres u. a. — COMIC!-Jahrbuch 2017 — Buch Musik & Film
Corona Magazine — in Farbe und Bunt
Hannes Riffel — Das Science Fiction Jahr 2016 — Golkonda Verlag
Olivia Vieweg und Klaus Vieweg — Die Philosophie in Star Trek — Cross Cult
Markus May, Michael Baumann u. a. — Die Welt von »Game of Thrones«: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf George R.R. Martins »A Song of Ice and Fire« — transcript
Geek!-Magazin — Panini Verlags GmbH
Julian Eilmann — J. R. R. Tolkien – Romantiker und Lyriker — Oldib Verlag
phantastisch! neues aus anderen welten — Atlantis Verlag
The juried award for the best short story and best novel written in the German language is sponsored by the SFCD, Germany´s largest science-fiction club. Each winner will receive €1000.
The winners will be announced June 16 at U-Con.
Beste deutschsprachige Kurzgeschichte / Best German Language Short Story
»Die Stadt der XY« von Dirk Alt. In: Exodus 34. Ausgabe 04/2016.
»Suicide Rooms« von Gabriele Behrend. In: Exodus 35. Ausgabe 10/2016.
»Acapulco! Acapulco!« von Andreas Eschbach. In: Exodus 34. Ausgabe 04/2016.
»Vor dem Fest oder Brief an Mathilde« von Marcus Hammerschmitt. In: Nova 24.
»Das Netz der Geächteten« von Michael K. Iwoleit. In: »Gamer«. Hrsg.: Armin Rößler, Frank Hebben und André Skora. Begedia Verlag 2016.
»Tubes Inc.« von Frank Lauenroth. In: »Hauptsache gesund!«. Hrsg.: Ralf Boldt. p.machinery 2016.
»Korbball« von Ernst-Eberhard Manski. In: »Rund um die Welt in mehr als 80 SF-Geschichten«. Hrsg.: Eric Schreiber. Saphir im Stahl Verlag Erik Schreiber 2016.
Bester deutschsprachiger Roman / Best German Language Novel
»Die Welten der Skiir 1: Prinzipat« von Dirk van den Boom. Cross Cult 2016. 450 Seiten.
»Omni« von Andreas Brandhorst. Piper 2016. 560 Seiten.
»Der Bahnhof von Plön« von Christopher Eckert. Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2016. 400 Seiten.
»Helix« von Marc Elsberg. Blanvalet Verlag 2016. 648 Seiten.
»Teufelsgold« von Andreas Eschbach. Bastei Lübbe 2016. 512 Seiten.
»Vektor« von Jo Koren. Atlantis Verlag 2016. 190 Seiten
Star Trek fans might remember an episode from the original series where our heroes were transported to a mirror universe where their counterparts served an evil version of the Federation. At the end of “Mirror Mirror“, it is the alternate universe’s Spock who begins to set things right.
One has to wonder if the creators of the recently discovered Kirk ransomware had that episode in mind. SophosLabs threat researcher Dorka Palotay told Naked Security that this new specimen appeared a few days ago….
Unlike the ransomware families SophosLabs has seen so far, this family uses Monero for ransom payment, which is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin. Monero has already been popular among cyber-criminals. You could say it’s the new latinum – the favored currency of the Ferengi. Or, you could say it’s the old one. (These temporal paradoxes give us a headache.)
Here’s a breakdown of the tools documented and their purpose:
Sonic Screwdriver: Fans of Doctor Who know that the Sonic Screwdriver is the Doctor’s trusty device for analysis and defense. In the CIA’s world, it’s a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting,” allowing attackers to “boot its attack software even when a firmware password is enabled”. The CIA’s Sonic Screwdriver infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter. The documentation for this was released internally at CIA headquarters November 29 2012….
Marvel’s Iron Fist may not have gone over well with critics, but fans can’t seem to get enough.
According to a report by Parrot Analytics, Marvel’s Iron Fist is the second-biggest debut for a Marvel series on Netflix so far, performing better than both Marvel’s Daredevil and Marvel’s Jessica Jones in the first week it was available to stream. Iron Fist falls just short of Marvel’s Luke Cage, which was Marvel’s best debut to date.
It should be noted that Parrot Analytics is a third party industry analyst and that these metrics are not endorsed by Netflix. Netflix does not share its viewership numbers publically.
Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. He waited until the age of 30 to write his first novel, Fahrenheit 451. “Worth waiting for, huh?”
You may love ’em, but you can’t be ’em. Bear that in mind when you inevitably attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to imitate your favorite writers, just as he imitated H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and L. Frank Baum.
(5) BY YOUR ROYAL LEAVES. Standback guested on Jonah Sutton-Morse’s Cabbages and Kings podcast. (I’m not trying to blow his cover, he sent the link indicating it should be a “scroll item for Standback.”)
This episode I am joined by Ziv Wities (@QuiteVague), host of the SFSqueeAndSnark short story discussion site, to discuss Jo Walton’s The Just City. We covered our different reactions to the story, the elevation of Plato’s Republic to a holy text, and the problems of privilege and how it is portrayed in The Just City. In addition, Brandon O’Brien returns for the second installment of Black Star Cruises, a review of Maurice Broaddus’ forthcoming novella Buffalo Soldier.
There’s a transcript of the podcast available at the site, too.
Z – So, this is the only book in my entire life that I have ever bought based on a book ad. There was a print ad for the Just City in Fantasy & Science Fiction and I saw it and I read it and I said that sounds really really really cool. I don’t think I’ve ever reacted that way to a print ad before.It’s just, it’s just a cool high-concept idea, and one of the things that really grabbed me about it was the idea that it’s not only a recreation of The Republic but specifically that it is done with the support of a goddess. With Athene, Athene?
JSM – Yes
Z – With Athene supporting and bankrolling and magicing together the entire thing.
Andy Weir’s sci-fi drama “Mission Control” was written with a bilingual Latina and African-American man — now played by Poppy Montgomery and David Giuntoli…
According to an individual familiar with the project, producers initially did reach out to and offer the roles to non-white actors, but they passed. The production ultimately moved on as the script evolved, leading to the casting of Montgomery and Giuntoli. Montgomery’s character will no longer speak Spanish in the final version of the pilot.
The pilot, which the individual described as an “ensemble drama,” does feature nonwhite actors in other roles, including “Desperate Housewives” alum Ricardo Chavira as the director of the Johnson Space Center and Nigerian-born actress Wunmi Mosaku as Rayna, the mission’s public affairs officer….
(7) A NUMBER OF BUGS. Find the answer to “What Kind of Bug Eats Books” here. There are five main types, a number that suits the Scroll perfectly.
Bugs that eat books aren’t injurious to humans, but they can destroy your library. Book-eating insects inhabit books in their larval stage, eating collagen glues, cotton, leather, linen and paper. These insects can be difficult to spot because of their small sizes and hiding instincts. Use a magnifying glass to inspect volumes for intruders. There are five types of bugs that commonly infest books.
(8) SOMETIMES IT CAUSES ME TO TINGLE. Future Nobel laureate for literature Dr. Chuck Tingle weighs in on Castalia House’s latest antics at The Rabid Puppies.
in recent days man name of JOM SCALZI put out a big time book name of THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE. bad dogs blues said they could copy it and do better, so to keep bad dogs blues honest this is now website to show current sales rank between BAD DOGS BLUES fake book and JOM SCALZI real book. this is good way to determine wether or not being a devil is a WINNING WAY. please enjoy.
Len is doing better but still not on social media. It’s boring when he’s not actually working and he’s at war with the restrictions on his diet. What a surprise, right? The amputated toe is considered healed (yay), but the doctor needs to do some clean-up work on his second toe which had been delayed because of the neck surgery. He’s a captive patient in rehab, so that will get done on Monday evening.
(10) SAD TRIVIA. Today’s Livestream of the Debbie Reynolds/Carrie Fisher public memorial had over 63,000 views. Right now, the link is just showing a short slide-show of the pair at various ages.
Their celebration of life was in the same auditorium that Sammy Davis, Jr.’s was held.
Earlier Mr Fisher said the public was invited to the memorial “because that’s how my mother would want it”.
He added that she was “very connected to her fans and felt they were a part of her”.
James Blunt was friends with Carrie Fisher and recorded part of his debut album in her bathroom. His tribute song will be accompanied by a montage of photographs of the pair.
Todd Fisher called it a “beautiful song to Carrie”, adding that “it might rip your heart out”.
Princess Leia from Star Wars reel shown at SDCC 2015.
(11) NO CGI FOR FISHER. Gene Maddaus of Variety, in “Bob Iger Reveals ‘Star Wars’ Han Solo Spinoff Details, Talks Plans After ‘Episode IX’”, reports on a talk that the Disney CEO gave at USC. Iger says that Carrie Fisher’s performance in Episode 8 is complete and does not have to be digitally enhanced and the forthcoming moving about young Han Solo will reveal how Chewbacca got his name.
At the conference, where he also confirmed that he’s “definitely” leaving in 2019, he said he has seen Episode 8, “The Last Jedi,” and addressed how the company is handling the death of Carrie Fisher, who appears extensively in the film.
“We are not changing ‘8’ to deal with her passing. Her performance remains as it was in ‘8,’” he said. “In ‘Rogue One’, we created digitally a few characters… We’re not doing that with Carrie.”
…Iger was otherwise tight-lipped about Episode 8, saying that he sometimes reviews dailies “in my laptop in bed under the covers” to keep the project secret from his own teenage boys.
(12) TODAY’S DAY
TOLKIEN READING DAY
The Tolkien Society started Tolkien Reading Day in 2003 after a journalist from New York enquired as to whether or not there was such an event. March 25 was selected because that is the date of the Downfall of Sauron.
(13) TODAY IN HISTORY
March 25, 1957 — United States Customs confiscated 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, printed in England, on grounds of obscenity.
(14) BY THE LITRE. “Discovery enables ‘mass produced blood’” – the BBC has the story. Chip Hitchcock says, “The kicker is that it’s so expensive it’s only useful for types so rare that they’re in very short supply — e.g. Heinlein’s AB-.”
A recording has emerged of Harrison Ford explaining to air traffic control why he flew directly over a waiting passenger jet and landed on a taxiway at John Wayne Airport in southern California in February.
I turned to Brunner’s Secret Agent of Terra. I couldn’t help but feel as if I was reading a novella that pitted the characters of H. Beam Piper’s Paratime series against the American agents of The Time Traders. In almost exact contrast to the universe of Chandler’s piece, Brunner’s protagonists are agents of the Corps Galactica – a economic and security force powerhouse for Earth’s galaxy-wide territories. When a remote and technologically backward world called Planet 14 is penetrated by off-worlders looking to take advantage of the natural resources of the isolated human society, it is up to agents of the Corps to infiltrate the population without notice and take down the exploitative evil doers.
Tidhar’s novel is both subtle and quotidian, bolshie and wildly inventive. In common with some of its characters, it is a cyborg patchwork; a novel about a bold future that has its feet firmly planted in the past.
The book started life as a series of short stories, reworked and ordered here within a narrative frame to form a novel. It’s complex and wily, structured around three points in time: a present, a future and a far future. The author introduces themselves quietly in a first-person Prologue, a writer sitting down in a shebeen in Tel-Aviv – perhaps in our present, perhaps not – to tell a science fiction story. They sip cheap beer while the rain falls outside and put pen to paper: ‘Once the world was young,’ they begin, ‘The Exodus ships had only begun to leave the solar system then…’ (2) Our writer in the present addresses us as if were a knowing audience in a far distant future, ‘sojourners’ amongst the stars who tell ‘old stories across the aeons.’ These stories – of ‘our’ past but the author’s fictional future – make up the meat and substance of the book that follows. It sounds like rather a baroque set-up and it’s barely gestured at but it is thematically fundamental. Central Station is a book about how the future remembers, about the future’s past. It’s a historical novel as much as a science fiction novel.
Good Morning, Midnight is a bit of a shortlist risk, as shadow jury conversations have proved. Ranging in complaints about too much lyrical sciencing to complaints about too much overt preciousness, overall, the general jury criticism toward the book has been along the lines of “too much too much.” And yet, the novel has been blurbed as a blend of Station Eleven and Kim Stanley Robinson– two supreme yet entirely different approaches to SF, flawed in their own “too much” ways (the first, a well-written, but literary carpet bagging of superficial SF tropes, the other, an over-lingering on most things, including the sublimation of ice). With comparisons like these, Good Morning, Midnight might be just the kind of “too much too much” I, and other Clarke readers, would relish. Besides, it has stars on the cover, a spaceship in the story, and is free of the usual, predictable pew-pew hijinks that tends to come with spaceship stories, so, for those reasons, it seems like something worth discussing within the context of possible Clarke contenders.
If the blurring of the ‘human/animal’ distinction gives Geen’s book its substance, the thriller plot gives it its shape—and here the novel comes a little unstuck. With two plot strands unfolding over the length of the novel, the reader is geared up to expect two conclusions: first, the revelation of whatever it was that caused Kit to flee ShenCorp; and second, the final reckoning. ‘Uncanny Shift’ builds the intrigue, as Kit is invited (not compelled, no, not at all) to work on the development of a new income stream: consciousness tourism. She’s not sure about the ethics of this, as she tells one character:
When discussing Steph Swainston’s fiction within the context of the Clarke Award, it is never long before the question arises: but is it even science fiction? I have heard it said that Swainston’s debut, The Year of Our War, should not have been eligible for the Clarke Award by reason of it being a work of fantasy rather than SF. No doubt similar objections were voiced in respect of the volumes that followed. The old dragons versus spaceships dichotomy, in other words, complicated only by the fact that there are no dragons in Swainston’s Fourlands novels, and there is a strong argument to be made that the multi-generational, FTL space craft so beloved of much heartland science fiction is as much a fantasy as any mythical leviathan and possibly more so.
Power Rangers cost a little over $100 million to make and looks about half as expensive, unless catering services were provided by Eric Ripert. The five Power Rangers are appealing but bland, as if skimmed from a CW casting call, and Israelite stages the action sequences in a chaotic mass of swish-pans and rapid-fire edits, perhaps to hide the daytime special effects. And yet the film grows steadily more disarming as it approaches the grand finale, in part because it believes so earnestly in the unity necessary for good to defeat evil and in part because everyone appears to be having a ball.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, David K.M. Klaus, Mark-kitteh, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, Matthew Johnson, John King Tarpinian, and Standback for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Meredith.]
Justice League will be in theaters in November 2017.
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
Christian Gerhartsreiter, who used many assumed names – the most notorious being “Clark Rockefeller” — is the subject of the new play “True Crimes” that will be performed in Toronto at Crow’s Theatre from April. 4-15.
Rockefeller was a self-aggrandizing liar who ended up being prosecuted for kidnapping his own daughter. But before that Gerhartsreiter was living in LA County under the name of Chichester and just a few years ago, after a long investigation, he was convicted of the 1985 murder of sf fan and LASFS member John Sohus. He also is suspected in the disappearance of Sohus’ wife, Linda, another LASFSian.
When someone is a successful criminal, the “successful” part inevitably outweighs the “criminal” part. There’s a long tradition of romanticizing criminals – think of all those shows about the Mafia. Woven between the crimes is a thread of populism and approval for getting over on The Man.
I never expected to have the experience of seeing this fictional polish applied to somebody who killed people I’d met. It makes me sick. When people write that something makes them feel sick, I always believe them, whether or not I have the same visceral reaction. I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same, but I assure you when I say it here, I mean it literally.
There were so many absurd pretensions and highly embroidered lies involved in the “Clark Rockefeller” part of the story they can upstage the darker part of his story. Even journalist Frank Girardot, who followed Gerhartsreiter’s LA prosecution for years and wrote a book about him, said on File 770in 2013 right after the murder conviction was announced, “It’s a tragic story that would be a comedy if it wasn’t for the deaths of John and Linda.”
The trailer emphasizes that he was a con man – which he was, but fictionalized con men are usually thieves or impostors pretending to a title or expertise they don’t really have, not kidnappers and violent murderers. Think of movies like The Great Impostor with Tony Curtis, or Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo Di Caprio – two of Hollywood’s most attractive actors. I feel doubtful about the direction this play will be taking.
After decades away from the franchise that he began back in 1979, director Ridley Scott has become unbelievably gung-ho about the Alien series, promising that he’s got perhaps another half-dozen sequels already planned out for the near future. Before he can get to those, however, he’ll first deliver the follow-up to 2012’s Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, which by the looks of its recent trailer, is going to be a no-holds-barred descent into extraterrestrial madness. And now, its third theatrical poster (see it below) makes plain that its action won’t just be otherworldly; it’ll be downright hellish.
(2) BRAGGING ON BATMAN. Is this claim big enough for you? Why “Batman: The Animated Series 1992-1995” is far better than any other incarnation before or since.
Albert Einstein letter signed with his hand drawings, elegantly explaining his electrostatic theory of special relativity to a physics teacher struggling to reconcile it with experiments he was conducting. In addition to the letter, which is new to the market, Einstein generously replies to a series of questions the teacher asks him on a questionnaire, providing additional drawings and calculations, initialed ”A.E.” at the conclusion. Dated 4 September 1953 on Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study letterhead, Einstein writes to Arthur L. Converse, the teacher from Malcolm, Iowa, in part, ”There is no difficulty to explain your present experiment on the basis of the usual electrostatic theory. One has only to assume that there is a difference of potential between the body of the earth and higher layers of the atmosphere, the earth being negative relatively to those higher layers…[Einstein then draws Earth and the atmosphere, referring to it for clarification] The electric potential p rises linearly with the distance h from the surface of the earth…For all your experiments the following question is relevant: How big is the electric charge produced on a conductor which is situated in a certain height h, this body being connected with the earth…” Also included is Einstein’s original mailing envelope from ”Room 115” of the Institute for Advanced Study, postmarked 7 September 1953 from Princeton. Folds and very light toning to letter, otherwise near fine. Questionnaire has folds, light toning and staple mark, otherwise near fine with bold handwriting by Einstein. With an LOA from the nephew of Arthur Converse and new to the market.
(4) PROFESSIONAL FAKE REVIEW. As announced in comments, Theakers Quarterly have posted their fake review of There Will Be Walrus. They’re doing these as a fundraiser for Comic Relief on Red Nose Day. This is the first of four paragraphs in the review:
Military science fiction is a part of the genre that does not always get the attention it deserves, but thank goodness Cattimothy House is on the case, producing an anthology of stories and essays that ranks with the very best sf being produced in the world. Overrated social justice writerers such as John Scalesy and Jim B. Hinds might knock this kind of stuff and despise the fans who love it, but us real fans know the real deal when we see it, and here we do!
(5) NEW TAFF REPORT. Jacqueline Monahan published her TAFF trip report and earned a $500 bounty for the fund from the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests. More details when I find out how fans can get a copy.
(6) SALLY RIDE. At UC San Diego, where Ride served as a professor, a new graduate fellowship — the Sally Ride Fellowship for Women in Physics – has been established in her name to inspire future generations of boundary-breaking physicists who will contribute to the public good.
The pioneering astronaut Sally Ride was a beloved professor at UC San Diego for years. Brian Keating, professor of physics and Associate Director of the Clarke Center, and his wife, Sarah, recently provided the lead gift to fund the Sally Ride Graduate Fellowship for the Advancement of Women in Physics. “We thought this would be a great way to honor Sally Ride’s accomplishments and at the same time, motivate young scientists,” said Brian. “We hope that UC San Diego students will be inspired by her contributions to science and society.”
(7) STATISTICAL ACCURACY. Lately Cecily Kane has tweeted more than once about File 770 not linking to the Fireside Report —
This latest tweet came after I quoted Lela E. Buis in yesterday’s Scroll. That wasn’t the most popular thing I’ve ever posted and the comments section is open — it’s a shame to think we’ve been stuck reading Vox Day’s ridiculous attacks when we might be hearing something useful from Cecily Kane.
Beale’s master plan here, evidently, is to convince enough of his supporters to buy Kindle copies of the ersatz book out of spite so that it outranks Scalzi’s book in Kindle sales, a somewhat meaningless metric given that Beale’s books is priced at $4.99, compared to Scalzi’s $12.99, and that Scalzi is also selling actual paper copies of his book, while Beale’s is only available as an ebook. (Beale’s book has been taken down from Amazon several times already in the brief time it’s been out, apparently because, you know, it looks almost identical to Scalzi’s book, but at the moment it’s up on the site.)….
Beale, for all of his many defects, does seem to understand the art of the publicity stunt.
(9) THE LINE STARTS HERE. Can it be true that Kelly Freas and Pablo Picasso agreed about how nude women look? Go ahead, look at this Freas abstract now up for bid and tell me I’m wrong.
The covers are by probably the two leading SF illustrators of that time: Jack Gaughan (in a more psychedelic than usual mode for him), and Kelly Freas. So, I spent a fair amount of time on the background of these writers. Could it be that the novels themselves are not so interesting? Well — yes, it could.
Rackham, as I have said before, was a pretty reliably producer of competent middle-range SF adventure. And that describes Flower of Doradil fairly well. Claire Harper is an agent of Earth’s Special Service, come to the planet Safari to investigate some mysterious activity on the proscribed continent Adil. Safari is mostly devoted to hunting, but Adil is occupied by the humanoid (completely human, it actually seems) natives. But some plants with tremendous medical properties are being smuggled out, and the agents sent to investigate have disappeared.
The event takes place April 13 at UC San Diego. Armantrout, Keating, the writer Brandon Som, and the critic Amelia Glaser will discuss how Rae’s poems mix the personal with the scientific and speculative, the process of interdisciplinary creativity, and what her poetic engagement with physics can teach those working in the physical sciences.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
Born March 24, 1874 – Harry Houdini
Born March 24, 1901 – Disney animator Ub Iwerks.
(13) TEN MYTHS. Carl Slaughter, recommending “10 Sci-Fi Movie Myths That Drive Scientists Crazy” from CBR, says “Instead of discussing science movie by movie, this debunk video is organized by topics. I would add lasers, but more about laser myths another time.”
Outer space is vast and holds a multitude of mysteries that have yet to be solved. But for some reason, the mysteries we have solved are still be represented incorrectly by Hollywood today. We understand these movies are all fiction, but with our growing knowledge of the universe it’s hard to ignore the glaring mistakes made in movies that make them less realistic. Here are 10 space facts movies ALWAYS get wrong.
The video covers: gravity, no helmet, black holes, sound, explosions, speed, time, distance, dogfights, and Mars.
(14) THEY DELIVER. According to the maker of “Futurama: Authentic Science, Sophisticated Comedy, Cultural Commentary,” their video takes “A look at the show that brought humor and emotion into the sterile world of science and arithmetic.”
This is a fanzine from Finland that features stories on speculative fiction, this time from Magdalena Hai, J.S. Meresmaa and Viivi Hyvönen.
The text includes an English translation. The issue is available as a free download here.
(16) FIVE STAR TREK CAPTAINS AND ONE DOCTOR WHO CAPTAIN. Another Carl Slaughter pick: “There are so many delightful memories and insightful comments during this discussion with 5 Star Trek captains, I can’t even begin to list them. Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer were all on stage in London in 2012. To top it off, the discussion is hosted by yet another captain, Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who/Torchwood fame.”
(17) BOMB OR NO BOMB? Digital Antiquarian tries to answer the question “What’s the Matter with Covert Action?”, game designer Sid Meier’s biggest disappointment – mostly to Sid himself.
But there are also other, less scandalous cases of notable failure to which some of us continually return for reasons other than schadenfreude. One such case is that of Covert Action, Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley’s 1990 game of espionage. Covert Action, while not a great or even a terribly good game, wasn’t an awful game either. And, while it wasn’t a big hit, nor was it a major commercial disaster. By all rights it should have passed into history unremarked, like thousands of similarly middling titles before and after it. The fact that it has remained a staple of discussion among game designers for some twenty years now in the context of how not to make a game is due largely to Sid Meier himself, a very un-middling designer who has never quite been able to get Covert Action, one his few disappointing games, out of his craw. Indeed, he dwells on it to such an extent that the game and its real or perceived problems still tends to rear its head every time he delivers a lecture on the art of game design. The question of just what’s the matter with Covert Action — the question of why it’s not more fun — continues to be asked and answered over and over, in the form of Meier’s own design lectures, extrapolations on Meier’s thesis by others, and even the occasional contrarian apology telling us that, no, actually, nothing‘s wrong with Covert Action.
The reason the Czech Republic is launching a manned spacecraft is the arrival of a strange comet that has “swept our solar system with a sandstorm of intergalactic cosmic dust.” A cloud, named Chopra by its Indian discoverers, now floats between Earth and Venus, turning the night sky purple. Unmanned probes sent out to take samples have returned mysteriously empty. Likewise a German chimpanzee has returned to Earth with no information save the evidence that survival is possible. The Americans, the Russians and the Chinese show no sign of wishing to risk their citizens, so the Czechs have stepped up, with a rocket named for the Protestant reformer and national hero Jan Hus. At many points in the novel, Kalfar sketches key moments in Czech history, and the very premise of a Czech space mission is clearly a satire on the nationalist pretensions of a small post-Communist nation. Financed by local corporations whose branding is placed on his equipment, Jakub is the epitome of the scrappy underdog, grasping for fame by doing something too crazy or dangerous for the major players.
When you have a featured character like this, how do you determine what techniques you’ll use to realize him? Particularly when it comes to performance — do you go through different approaches as to whether to use pure motion-capture, or pure animation?
We definitely did. We were very fortunate to work with [actor] Terry Notary, who I’d worked with before on Warcraft. He did a lot of body performance work. We had a couple days in mo-cap where Jordan could iterate very quickly with Terry to work through different scenes, then also try different gaits. And try things like, “Give us 10 chest pounds.” So he’d try different cadences. Is it three, is it alternating hands, is it hands together? Just trying to give us a nice library of things to pull from.
Then I would say the same is true of the face. We had a day of capture with Toby Kebbell (A Monster Calls, Warcraft), where he works through some of the scenes — particularly the less action-heavy scenes, where you really have a lot of time to look at Kong’s eyes, and the movement of the face. There are some shots where that facial capture is used directly, but through the production process and the reworking of the scenes, a lot of what Kong needed to do changed so much that the capture was used a lot more as inspiration and moments to pull from. And then ultimately a lot of the animation was key-framed. I think that was actually important to do, especially when trying to sell that Kong was 100 feet tall. Because even weighted down and moving slower, anyone that’s six feet tall is going to be able to change direction and move much faster than Kong would ever be able to.
It’s not even just a matter of saying, “Let’s take that and slow it down by 25 percent.” Once the arm gets moving, it can actually be pretty fast. But then when he needs to change direction, you need to have that appropriate, physically accurate process of getting this massive arm to move a different direction. With the animation in particular, it was a real challenge between making sure Kong felt slow enough where he was huge, but at the same time not letting the shots drag on so long that it no longer became an action movie.
(20) AN ALTERNATE INTERPRETATION. Carl Slaughter explains:
“Chain of Command” is usually included in lists of Star Trek’s best episodes. This is the one with “There are 4 lights !” The antagonist in this two-parter is Captain Jellico, who clashes with the Enterprise’s crew and even deliberately endangers Picard’s life. This video essay depicts Jellico as the protagonist who made all the right decisions for all the right reasons.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, rcade, Michael J. Walsh, Iphinome, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
