Heralding a new era for Titan’s Doctor Who line, Titan Comics and BBC Studios are proud to reveal launch details for Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #1, featuring variants from leading artists including Babs Tarr (Batgirl, Motor Crush), Sarah Graley (Rick and Morty), Katie Cook (Adventure Time), Ariela Kristantina (Mata Hari), and Paulina Ganucheau (Zodiac Starforce).
This Fall, join the Thirteenth Doctor in a new series of comic adventures. Taking control of the TARDIS for this regeneration are Eisner-nominated writer Jody Houser (Stranger Things, Mother Panic, Faith, Spider-Man), illustrator Rachael Stott (Doctor Who, Motherlands), and colorist Enrica Angiolini (Warhammer 40,000).
The new comic series sees the Doctor return – played by Jodie Whittaker (Broadchurch) – to travel the cosmos with three brand new friends: Graham (played by Bradley Walsh), Yasmin (Mandip Gill), and Ryan (Tosin Cole).
To commemorate this exciting series, Titan is celebrating this debut issue by launching thirteen variant covers, including art covers by Doctor Who fan-favorite artist Alice X. Zhang, series artist Rachael Stott, Babs Tarr (Batgirl, Motor Crush), Sanya Anwar (Assassin’s Creed), Paulina Ganucheau (Zodiac Starforce), Sarah Graley (Rick and Morty), Ariela Kristantina (Mata Hari) and Katie Cook (Adventure Time). Plus, a photo cover, a cosplay variant and a fantastic Doctor Puppet variant by Alisa Stern – creator of the beloved Doctor Puppet Youtube series. Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #2 will feature covers by Paulina Ganucheau and Rachael Stott, as well as a stunning photo cover.
Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #1 is part of Titan Comics’ larger plans for the Thirteenth Doctor in 2018, including; Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Vol. 0 – which sees the Doctor relive memories from her many incarnations, showcasing unseen adventures from EVERY version of the Doctor!; and Doctor Who Comics Day on November 24 – where fans and stores unite to celebrate everything Doctor Who!
Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #1 hits stores and digital devices in the Fall. The
Foz Meadows: I honestly think you can’t have good SF without a degree of domesticity. There’s something sterile to the environments so often preferred by hard and military SF, where everyone is in uniform without a hint of how they live outside of it, that forgets that, even in the far and dazzling future, people are still people. One of the clearest visual examples that springs to mind was the ship Serenity, in Firefly—that show had a lot of problems, but the decision to lovingly render the spaceship as a domestic environment wasn’t one of them. There were hand-painted signs on the metal that Kaylee had done, scenes of the crew cooking real food together as a novelty, or making Simon a cake out of flavoured protein for his birthday because they didn’t have anything else; the difference between Inara’s quarters, with its lush decorations, and Jayne’s wall of guns. The Radchaii love of tea in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series is another example of this.
But again, I find myself at odds with the assumption that domesticity is frowned upon in space opera, given that its presence is, to me, one of the defining qualities that separates it from traditional, “masculine” hard and military SF….
Sources tell Variety that “The Crown” star Matt Smith is joining “Star Wars: Episode IX,” which is currently in production in the U.K. It’s unknown at this time whether the “Doctor Who” alum will be on the side of the rebels or the evil empire.
(3) A SFF SPLASH. Scott Edelman interviews Rachel Pollack over a bowl of Vietnamese Seafood Noodle Soup in Episode 75 of Eating the Fantastic.
Rachel Pollack
We had lunch on the final day of Readercon at Pho Pasteur. This Quincy restaurant is a 2017 spin-off of the original Boston Vietnamese venue which has been open since 1991, and since that cuisine is one of her favorites, I thought we should give that venue a try.
Rachel Pollack is someone I’ve been connected to for a third of a century, even since I ran her story “Lands of Stone” in a 1984 issue of Last Wave, a small press magazine I edited and published. But she’s gone on to do so much more since then!
Her novel Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and her novel Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award. Her other novels include Temporary Agency, which was a 1994 Nebula Award nominee. Her comic book writing includes an acclaimed run on Doom Patrol, as well as New Gods and Brother Power the Geek. She is also an expert on the Tarot and has published many books on the subject, including a guide to Salvador Dali’s Tarot deck. Her comics and Tarot loves blended when she created the Vertigo Tarot Deck with writer Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean.
We discussed why Ursula K. Le Guin was such an inspiration, the reason celebrating young writers over older ones can skew sexist, what Tarot cards and comic books have in common, how 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t a science fiction movie but an occult movie, why Captain Marvel was her favorite comic as a kid (Shazam!), the serendipitous encounter which led to her writing Doom Patrol, how she used DC’s Tomahawk to comment on old Western racial stereotypes, the problems that killed her Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot deck, how she intends to bring back her shaman-for-hire character Jack Shade, and much more.
A rare books dealer thought he had gotten lucky in 2013 when he managed to acquire a 1787 French first edition — inscribed by Thomas Jefferson when he was ambassador to France.
“If someone else had seen it first, it would have been gone,” said the dealer, John Thomson, who owns Bartleby’s Books, an online shop.
He had no idea that his seeming good fortune was a byproduct of one of the most expansive rare book thefts in history.
The dealer at a book fair who sold it to him, John Schulman, is now accused of conspiring with a library archivist, Gregory Priore, to steal and sell rare items from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh….
… In this niche world based on trust, where confidants are currency and handshake deals are commonplace, the arrest of a prominent dealer is a shocking suggestion of deceit.
Mr. Schulman had served on the association’s board of governors and had even led its ethics committee, the organization said. His clients included some of the biggest names in the business. Prominent bookshops from New York to London bought stolen books, an affidavit shows.
…None of the buyers are accused of wrongdoing. But the booksellers’ association is taking steps to try to prevent a similar wide-scale theft from happening again.
We traced the path of one book, the edition signed by Jefferson, to explain how the theft is suspected to have worked — and why it went undetected for so long….
(5) BETHKE TRIBUTE. Bruce Bethke’s frank memoir “Family Matters” leads up to his announcement of the death of his first wife.
…What even fewer people have known until recently is that in December of 2012, my first wife, Nancy, was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. After a five-and-a-half year battle, she left this world sometime between late Sunday evening, August 19, and early Monday morning, August 20. Her funeral was this past Saturday.
(6) VELEZ OBIT. Artist Walter Velez (1939-2018) died August 24 at the age of 78.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction tells about his popular work, including covers for Robert Asprin’s books, such as the first Thieves World anthology.
Per the SYFY Wire story, genre roles included appearances on: One Step Beyond (1 episode); The Twilight Zone (2 episodes); Voyagers! (1 episode); Bewitched (2-part episode); Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (2-part episode); Wonder Woman (1 episode); Small Wonder (1 episode); The Phantom of Hollywood (TV movie); Chamber of Horrors.(feature film). There may be others they didn’t list. Depends, in part, on what you count as genre (Nanny and the Professor? Matinee Theatre’s “The Alumni Reunion” & “The Century Plant”?)
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
August 28, 1991 — First E-mail Sent from Space
Using a Mac Portable aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, the first e-mail from space is sent to Earth. Two astronauts on the spacecraft, James Adamson and Shannon Lucid, wrote, “Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here,…send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby,…we’ll be back!” The message was transmitted to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 28, 1915 – Tasha Tudor. American illustrator and writer of children’s books. Her most well-known book is Corgiville Fair, published in 1971, the first of a series to feature anthropomorphic corgis.
Born August 28, 1916 – Jack Vance. Where to start? The Dying Earth series? Or perhaps the Lyonesse trilogy? I think I’ll pick the Demon Princes series.
Born August 28, 1917 – Jack Kirby. Comic artist is somewhat of an understatement for what he was. Created much of modern Marvel continuity and even some of the DCU as well with New Gods at the latter being my fav work by him.
Born August 28, 1948 – Vonda McIntyre, 70. Best known I think for for her Trek and SW work, but Dreamsnake won her both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and The Moon and The Sun won her the Nebula Award.
Born August 28 – Barbara Hambly, 67. Author of myriad genre works including the James Asher, Vampire Novels, The Windrose Chronicles, and the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series. Some Trek work. Was married for some years to George Alec Effinger.
Born August 28 – Amanda Tapping, 53. Stargate franchise of course, also lead in Sanctuary, Travelers, Kiljoys, Riese, Earthsea, Flash Forward and X-Files.
Born August 28 – Kelly Overton, 40. Genre work includes Van Helsing, Legends, True Blood, Beauty and The Beast and Medium.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
If you need a horrible vampire pun, Frank and Ernest deliver today.
(11) REASON FOR A SEASON. John King Tarpinian says he has already ordered his “Santa in Space” shirt.
(12) ABOUT W76. Alexandra Erin unpacks a host of feelings about attending a Worldcon in “Conventional Wisdom”, like these sentiments about awards:
And so here is my insight for this year: the awards matter because they represent genuine appreciation, and the appreciation is genuine because it comes from people, from real people, a real community of people, a community of communities — some old, some newer, each diverse in different ways, each with their own competing and conflicting and even occasionally complementary tastes. This community is here at the convention and it is distributed somewhat haphazardly across the globe, wherever people are reading and writing and appreciating science fiction and fantasy literature published in the English language.
WorldCon is a concentration of that community, and the Hugo Awards are a concentration of WorldCon. The community is people, the convention is people, the awards are people, Soylent Green is people, and it is beautiful and it is glorious, even when the community stumbles.
(13) OUT IN FRONT. John Picacio mentions that he won the only Alfie Award presented by George R.R. Martin this year, tells about the gatherings of MexicanX Initiative members, and how he felt while emceeing the Hugos, in his conreport “Worldcon 76: The End Is The Beginning”.
I always forget how applause makes me feel like I’m underwater. I knew I was going to ‘X-up’ centerstage in salute to my Mexicanx brothers and sisters, but from there, every word of my opening address was blank page. Unscripted. Pulled from the bright stagelights, the infinite sea of faces, the inky black, that primetime moment you can’t calculate no matter how hard you try. It’s right there in front of your eyes, beyond the dazzle, if you can stop your heart from exploding out of your chest. All of those struggling years, building to arrive at that moment….I remembered that kid who so desperately wanted to be a part of this business….that guy who appeared at his first Worldcon a mere twenty-one years ago. And he led me through the darkness, like he always does — because I’m still that guy. I still want it as bad as I did when I worked on my first book cover, when I resigned from architecture to be the person I am full-time, seventeen years ago. I don’t remember everything I said up there — it just comes out — and no, I don’t want to watch the video and find out. Once is enough.
An international team has identified a kind of brain cell that exists in people but not mice, the team reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
“This particular type of cell had properties that had never actually been described in another species,” says Ed Lein, one of the study’s authors and an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.
The finding could help explain why many experimental treatments for brain disorders have worked in mice, but failed in people. It could also provide new clues to scientists who study human brain disorders ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to schizophrenia.
“It may be that in order to fully understand psychiatric disorders, we need to get access to these special types of neurons that exist only in humans,” says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research.
Shedding light on the much-rumored events of the upcoming eighth and final season, a newly released teaser for the wildly popular HBO series of Game Of Thrones that aired Monday centered around the image of a cackling, power-mad George R.R. Martin burning the completed manuscript of Winds Of Winter.
(17) COMING TO A BOOKSTORE NOWHERE NEAR YOU. Ferret Bueller shares a rarity:
This is a pic?ture I took of the official (I guess) Mongolian translations of the Game of Thrones books in Ulaanbaatar; they’re published by Monsudar, the leading publisher of translated books. These were on display at one of the little branches of Internom, their brick and mortar franchise, this one being near my office. I see by the stamp I took it on 1 April; I took the picture for a friend of mine who’s a GoT fanatic and didn’t even think that you might enjoy seeing it or putting it up on File 770 (it’s interesting enough SF news, I guess) until earlier today.
An emerging genre of speculative, ‘post-human’ writing that blurs genre boundaries and conventions, pushes humanity and human-centred reason from the centre to the margins, and generally poses questions that may not be answerable in any terms we can understand (hence the ‘weird’). It is associated with people like Jeff Vandermeer and M John Harrison in fiction, but the approach is bleeding into television narratives (see Westworld or Noah Hawley’s innovative series Fargo and Legion). Vandermeer’s Annihilation is heavily influenced by recent ecological thinking which takes the view that humanity is a blip in geologic history: even considering the potential catastrophe of global warming, the Earth existed long before us, and it will exist long after (see the ‘hyperobject’ entry elsewhere here). In his 2002 book Light, Harrison imagines a universe where human physics is encroached upon by alien physics that coexist and are equally or more potent. Westworld posits machine intelligences that overthrow their masters, unleashing a radically non-human order.
Del Toro is producing the teen thriller with his “Shape of Water” producer J. Miles Dale. Sean Daniel and Jason Brown of Hivemind and Elizabeth Grave are also producing. CBS Films and Entertainment One are co-financing.
(20) NOT ENOUGH CONAN. Doctor Strangemind’s Kim Huett tells how Hollywood suffers for lack of his advice to guide them, in “Conan the Rebooter”.
What is best in life? To revive a franchise, to turn it into a success, and to hear the lamentation of your rivals!
I really do wish Hollywood would consult with me before embarking upon certain film projects. I’ve no doubt my sage advice could save them endless money and embarrassment in regards to the making of the more expensive science fiction and fantasy sort of films. “What’s that Mr Executive? You’re thinking about green-lighting a film based on the game Battleship? No. Just no.”
Ah, but I sense you would like some proof of my ability to deliver such sage advice. Fair enough, let’s then consider that famous barbarian, Conan, by Crom! As a teenager I read at least eleventy-seven paperbacks featuring Conan stories (published by Sphere Books in the UK and by first Lancer and then Ace Books in the US) so I’m reasonably familiar with the source material. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read any of Robert E. Howard’s stories but I think I can unequivocally state that neither attempt to put Conan on the big screen was unflawed….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Ferret Bueller, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, Kim Huett, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Goobergunch.]
By JJ: To assist Hugo nominators, listed below are the series believed to be eligible as of this writing for the 2019 Best Series Hugo next year *†.
Each series name is followed by the main author name(s) and the 2018-published work.
Feel free to add missing series and the name of the 2018-eligible work in the comments, and I will get them included in the main post.
I just ask that suggesters (1) first do a Find on author surname on this page, to check whether the series is already on the list, and (2) then make an effort to verify that a series does indeed have 3 volumes, that it has a 2018-published work, and that it has likely met the 240,000 word threshold; in the past I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to verify suggested series, only to discover that they had fewer than 3 volumes, or nothing published in the current year, or weren’t anything close to 240,000 words (e.g., children’s books). Self-published works may or may not be added to the list at my discretion.
Note that the 2017 Hugo Administrator ruled that nominations for a series and one of its subseries will not be combined. Therefore, when nominating a subseries work, think carefully under which series name it should be nominated. If the subseries does not yet meet the 3-volume, 240,000 word count threshold, then the main series name should be nominated. If the subseries does meet that threshold, then the subseries name should probably be nominated. This will ensure that another subseries in the same universe, or the main series itself, would still be eligible next year if this subseries is a finalist this year.
Updated: The 2019 Hugo Administrators have announced that the 2017 Best Series Finalists, although the result of a one-time category, are subject to the same re-qualification requirements as the 2018 Best Series Finalists; bear that in mind when making your nominations.
An incensed federal judge has done his best to make up what San Diego Comic-Con couldn’t get from a jury after winning its trademark infringement lawsuit against Salt Lake Comic Con, hammering the defendants with a trademark ban and an order to pay nearly $4 million of SDCC’s attorney fees and costs.
Last December, the federal jury ruled that Salt Lake Comic Con infringed on a trademark held by San Diego Comic-Con by using the words “comic con” in their name without permission. However, the jury did not award the $12 million in damages sought by San Diego Comic-Con, only $20,000, finding no willful infringement of the copyright by SLCC.
The Salt Lake Convention has since changed its name to FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention.
Judge Anthony J. Battaglia’s August 23 order scolded defendant Dan Farr Productions (DFP), run by Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg, as he justified the award of attorneys fees. An excerpt from the ruling quoted by Salt Lake City’s CBS station KUTV (see “San Diego Comic Con awarded nearly $4 million in ruling against FanX”) reads:
Battaglia chided DFP for ignoring court rulings, including making items marked “confidential” public, including on Twitter.
Part of what made the case exceptional in the judge’s decision was press releases and interviews DFP gave after getting a cease and desist letter from SDCC. Battaglia wrote:
“The Court’s analysis under this factor is best explained by quoting to Defendant Brandenburg himself. In a news article, Mr. Brandenburg explained his reaction to receiving SDCC’s cease and desist letter:
Our knee jerk reaction was that [SDCC was] trying to intimidate us” . . . “We were not going to cease and desist using the name. We decided to go public about it.” After consulting with their lawyers, the team behind the Salt Lake Comic Con knew they had strong legal ground to stand on, but they didn’t want to go to court, they wanted to win in the court of public opinion . . . “Everyone said that San Diego had no leg to stand on, but the only way to win this would be to outspend them on legal fees” … “Our strategy was, if we are going to spend legal fees vs. legal fees, we wanted to be creative. We put it out to the public, challenging the cease and desist letter publically.
“Refusing to cease and desist and turning to the media to litigate a trademark infringement case in the court of “public opinion” is objectively irrational,” the judge wrote while also explaining it didn’t seek to limit free speech.
“The Court finds that this case is not a dime a dozen. Instead, it is a trademark infringement lawsuit that stands out from others based on the unreasonable manner it was litigated and thus an award of attorneys’ fees and costs to SDCC is justified.”
San Diego wanted about $5 million in attorney’s fees and it will end up with 80 percent of the request.
The Hollywood Reporter’s article “Judge Issues ‘Comic-Con’ Injunction” says the court also put teeth in the jury verdict by forbidding the defendants from using “comic con” or anything that sounds like it:
Battaglia, in his order on an injunction, has enjoined Salt Lake from “Comic Con” and “Comic-Con” and any phonetic equivalents (i.e. ComiKon). Additionally, Farr and Brandenburg can’t operate any social media site that incorporates the trademark, nor can they even advertise how the festival they run was “formerly known as Salt Lake Comic Con.”
On the other hand, the judge rules it would go too far to prevent the phrase “comic convention” and won’t require defendants to destroy all of their already-made merchandise and marketing materials bearing the banned phrases.
The Hollywood Reporter opined that this “may be the beginning of the end of the road for any self-described ‘Comic-Con’ that doesn’t take place in San Diego.”
It’s important to note that San Diego has sued or asserted claims against others who operated “Comic-Cons” around the nation — and most of those cases were put on hold for this one. San Diego vs. Salt Lake was a test case.
Both sides in the SDCC/SLCC case had asked for a new trial, victor San Diego because they disputed the jury’s finding of non-willfulness and wanted more money. That, at least, the judge refused to grant, pointing to evidence that Brandenburg thought it was okay to use “Comic Con” because so many others were also doing it.
The defendants’ past statements indicated a desire to appeal the original verdict. Meanwhile Farr and company will be busy running FanX from September 6-8.
The Game Manufacturers Association announced it will not renew Executive Director John Ward’s contract. An August 24 press release says:
The Board of Directors of the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) has passed a motion electing not to renew the current employment contract of its Executive Director, John Ward.
John Ward has served GAMA in the Executive Director role for ten years. He led the organization through a difficult time by building its annual events — the Origins Game Fair and GAMA Trade Show — and retiring its debt. The Board thanks John for his service and wishes him the best in his future endeavors.
This is a non-renewal, not an immediate termination, and Ward will be around to assist the transition to new leadership:
…An Executive Director job description and call for applicants will be posted on the gama.org website when the board is ready to consider applicants. The board encourages all enthusiastic, qualified candidates to apply. The board also thanks the outgoing Executive Director for agreeing to help during the transition period.
GAMA runs Origins Game Fair. John Ward first made news at File 770 on May 14 when he withdrew the event’s invitation for Larry Correia to be one of its guests of honor: “Origins Game Fair Drops Larry Correia as Guest”.
…Shortly after publicizing that Correia had been added to the lineup, John Ward, the event’s Executive Director, received so many negative social media comments (on Twitter, particularly) that he announced Correia’s invitation has been rescinded….
This elicited an enormous negative reaction among Correia fans on social media, including people who might otherwise have approved anyone with the kind of background Ward brought to the job. A press release about his hiring in 2009 stated:
…Professionally, Ward has extensive experience in the military and in state government. Ward is a retired Army officer with over 23 years of combined service in the military police and engineer corps. His military experience has provided him opportunities to deploy to Europe, Central America, Korea, and the Persian Gulf for the first Gulf War.
Ward also has over 20 years of government service in the criminal justice field, most recently in the juvenile system as the state of Ohio’s Bureau Chief of Parole and then Bureau Chief of Community Facilities….
The Correia matter was just one of the challenges Ward faced this year. Harassment allegations by one participant against another about an experience during the Origins Game Fair received wide coverage. Polygon’s story covered responses from the accused, and by Origins’ administering body, GAMA: “Accusations of sexual harassment rock the board gaming community”.
GAMA’s official statement said in part:
As we demonstrated earlier this year, we take harassment very seriously and are committed to providing a safe, welcoming and fun environment for everyone at the show.
This serious allegation has not been taken lightly. We are committed to handling this in a thorough and professional manner. We are interviewing all parties involved and gathering statements from witnesses who viewed the incident firsthand. We owe all parties involved a fair process to gather the facts and discern as much as possible those confirmed elements before we act. The ramifications of an unjustified response are simply irreplaceably damaging….
A Google search did not find any more news about how the harassment allegations are being handled.
(1) ON THE GROUND AT WORLDCON 76. Raven Oak’s trip report about Worldcon 76 includes a fun photo of astronaut Kjell Lindgren posing with fans costumed (so I believe) as the GalaxyQuest alien crew members.
Kjell thanked me and said he was an astronaut because of science fiction authors like me. He read lots of sci-fi books as a kid, which made him dream of going into space. He signed the back of one of my coloring book pages, the one featuring Bay-zar from my sci-fi novella Class-M Exile.
Lots of good photos of hall costumes, too.
(2) RETRO HUGOS OF 1943. Chair Kevin Roche sent along a better photo of the Retro-Hugo award base he designed for Worldcon 76.
The block is solid cherry, in honor of the orchards once common in San Jose (cherries were still one of the top cash crops in the Valley of Heart’s Delight in the early 40s). The backplane is a laser-etched image I created of our SJ Galactic Tower, which is itself an homage to the historic San Jose Electric Tower, erected in 1881 and making San Jose the first electrified downtown west of the Rockies (the historic tower, alas, collapsed in 1915. I have photos from 1910 showing buses driving under the tower where it stood over the intersection of Market and Santa Clara Streets.)
How Norman Spinrad’s The Men in the Jungle, which features drugs, violence, and infanticide, made it into the children’s section, I don’t know. Is there anything by Spinrad that is child-friendly? That was indeed a traumatizing book to encounter when I was prepared for something more along the lines of Blast-off at Woomera. If I think about that Spinrad book now (even though I am older and somewhat hardened) I still feel queasy.
A different kind of normalization happens at the other end of the spectrum, where the harassment is so vicious and constant that it overwhelms the ability to react.
As an independent video game developer in 2014, Brianna Wu was the subject of abuse during GamerGate, when women involved in gaming were targeted for harassment.
Now a Democrat running for Congress in Massachusetts, Ms. Wu, 41, said death and rape threats came so routinely that she had ceased to feel much in response. Even when people threw objects through her window. Even when they vandalized her husband’s car. Even when they emailed paparazzi-like photos of her in her own home.
“I often look at it and I’m like: ‘I know I should be feeling something right now. I know I should be feeling scared or angry or stressed.’ And it’s at a point where I can’t feel anything anymore,” Ms. Wu said. “It’s almost like fear is a muscle that is so overtaxed, it can just do nothing else in my body.”
Many said it was a point of principle not to be intimidated into silence. Others said their political ideals were simply more important.
“For good reason, there’s never any shortage of telling stories about women being harassed on the campaign trail,” Ms. Wu said. “But I cannot communicate to you strongly enough: Over all, this job is fun. This job is exhausting, but this job is amazing.”
(5) ANOTHER BORDER ISSUE. Some artists on their way to a Dungeons & Dragons concept push were stopped from entering the US because their Electronic System for Travel Authorization waiver was not accepted as they expected.
This is what happened: Please don't point fingers. It's a very complicated situation and we are figuring out what exactly went wrong and why. Mostly, we are tired, scared, glad and overwhelmed. A huge thanks to your support and love. pic.twitter.com/c9hadptU8f
Quick update, more when I'm back on my feet. Anna Magali and me were kicked out of the US due to visa issues. We were detained overnight at an ICE facility and on our way home. Please don't spam us with questions. We're fucking exhausted. Well share more when we can. Much love <3
According to the government website about the ESTA program –
ESTA is an automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Authorization via ESTA does not determine whether a traveler is admissible to the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers determine admissibility upon travelers’ arrival. The ESTA application collects biographic information and answers to VWP eligibility questions.
The Hugo Awards ceremony was a delight. We didn’t win the Best Series award, but to be honest, at only three books into the Stormlight series it might have been a little preemptive to give it any awards. We’ll see how things go as the series progresses. Many congrats to Lois McMaster Bujold (the winner), who is a favorite around the Dragonsteel offices. She’s a fantastic writer, well worthy of the award.
Oathbringer still has one shot at an award, the Dragon Award, given out at Dragon Con. This is a newer award, one I’m not as familiar with, but man…the award itself is gorgeous. (Seriously, you guys should go have a look at the thing.)
…As always, however, I strongly urge you to be a thoughtful voter when it comes to awards. Don’t vote for Oathbringer just because I wrote it—only do so if you think this book, in specific, deserves the award. And there are some other excellent nominees, so if you enjoyed one of those more, then vote for it!
(7) IT’S NOT LOOKING GOOD. P.N. Elrod hopes people can help, especially those who like Elrod’s Patreon and Facebook entertainment.
Crap. Having a blubbing panic meltdown. In a month my rent goes up by 63 bucks. At this point I don’t have even half the rent for September. I’m facing the ugly reality of eviction.
The complex offered to get me into a different apartment with slightly lower rent, but that means moving. (Bureaucracy Stuff.) I can’t afford that, either, and most of all, I do not have the strength or mobility to move again. I just don’t. I am sick. I am tired.
The ONLY thing I can think of at this point to prevent that is to increase subscriptions to my Patreon page. Right now, that income isn’t enough to cover my bills, so some go unpaid until and unless I sell books from my library.
While Jemisin finds it hard to recommend books, she does offer up two recommendations from fellow award-winning female science fiction authors.
1) The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells
Jemisin is “a giant fan” of Martha Wells’s Murderbot series, an “adorable little set of almost old-school science fiction.” The titular Murderbot is a rogue cyborg who works tirelessly to protect humans from themselves, though it would rather be watching soap operas. The latest novella in the series, Exit Strategy, will be released on October 2.
2) Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler
Groundbreaking science fiction author Octavia Butler died in 2006, but two of her stories were found posthumously and published as an e-book. One of the stories in the volume, “Childfinder,” was commissioned by writer Harlan Ellison to be included in a never-published anthology.
The podcast is available direct from Apple iTunes as well as many other sources.
(9) BALL OBIT. K.C. Ball died of a fatal heart attack on August 26 reports the SFWA Blog: “In Memoriam: K.C. Ball”.
…Ball attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2010 and Launch Pad in 2011. She served as the publisher and editor of 10Flash Quarterly, an on-line flash fiction magazine. She also won the Speculative Literature Foundation Older Writer Award….
And now she’s gone, fallen to another heart attack, and she never really got the chance to “break out” the way many writers do, which is through hard work, and soldiering on through rejection, and most of all playing the long game. If you want to read some of her kick-ass work, here’s the collection I edited, Snapshots from a Black Hole and Other Oddities.
I’m so sorry not to able to hear your voice any more, K.C. I hope your journey continues on, and that it’s as marvelous as you were.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Born August 27 – Frank Kelly Freas, who won many Best Professional Artist Hugos, and drew Mad Magazine covers once upon a time.
[compiled by Cat Eldridge]
Born August 27, 1929 – Ira Levin. Author of many novels including The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby which of course became films.
Born August 27 – Paul Reubens, 66. Genre work includes Gotham, Batman:The Brave and the Bold, Tron: Uprising Star Wars Rebels and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Is Pee-wee’s Playhouse genre?
Born August 27 – Alex PenaVega 30. Spy Kids film franchise and apparently a Spy Kids tv series as well, also The Tomorrow People, Sin City: A Dame To Live For and The Clockwork Girl, an animated film where love conquers all differences.
Two renowned writers with Brooklyn ties have been appointed as the state’s official author and poet by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Colson Whitehead, Brooklyn resident for more than a dozen years, has been named New York’s 12th state author.
Alicia Ostriker, born in Brooklyn, has been named New York’s 11th state poet. Cuomo said the award recognizes their work “and the impact it has had on the people of New York and beyond.”
During their two-year terms the state laureates promote and encourage fiction writing and poetry throughout New York by giving public readings and talks.
The main focus of the campaign has actually been crowd-funding for comics by a rightwing creator, not all of whom use the term “Comicsgate” (Vox Day, for example, has been a bit more equivocal about the term because he thinks all these people should be joining his petty empire). So we have a ‘campaign’ that is just a collaboration of outrage marketing techniques following the standard Scrappy-Doo model: be as loud and as obnoxious as possible and then when people react, claim to be being persecuted.
(14) RAH IN CONTEXT. Charles Stross has a whole rant about what RAH was actually about, versus what his emulators seem to think he was about: “Dread of Heinleinism”.
…But here’s the thing: as often as not, when you pick up a Heinlein tribute novel by a male boomer author, you’re getting a classic example of the second artist effect.
Heinlein, when he wasn’t cranking out 50K word short tie-in novels for the Boy Scouts of America, was actually trying to write about topics for which he (as a straight white male Californian who grew up from 1907-1930) had no developed vocabulary because such things simply weren’t talked about in Polite Society. Unlike most of his peers, he at least tried to look outside the box he grew up in. (A naturist and member of the Free Love movement in the 1920s, he hung out with Thelemites back when they were beyond the pale, and was considered too politically subversive to be called up for active duty in the US Navy during WW2.) But when he tried to look too far outside his zone of enculturation, Heinlein often got things horribly wrong. Writing before second-wave feminism (never mind third- or fourth-), he ended up producing Podkayne of Mars. Trying to examine the systemic racism of mid-20th century US society without being plugged into the internal dialog of the civil rights movement resulted in the execrable Farnham’s Freehold. But at least he was trying to engage, unlike many of his contemporaries (the cohort of authors fostered by John W. Campbell, SF editor extraordinaire and all-around horrible bigot). And sometimes he nailed his targets: “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” as an attack on colonialism, for example (alas, it has mostly been claimed by the libertarian right), “Starship Troopers” with its slyly embedded messages that racial integration is the future and women are allowed to be starship captains (think how subversive this was in the mid-to-late 1950s when he was writing it).
(15) ROCKET MAN. In the wake of yesterday’s report that 10% of Hugo novel winners are named Robert, and someone else’s observation that being named Robinson helped, too, Soon Lee composed this filk:
So here’s to you Robert Robinson
Hugo loves you more than you will know,
Wo wo wo
Awards you heaps Robert Robinson
Rockets coming out your ears all day
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey
Then Cath could only exorcise the earworm by finishing the verse –
Hide your rockets in the hiding place where no cat ever goes
Put them on your bookcase with your cupcakes
It’s a little secret just the Robinsons’ affair
Most of all you’ve got to hide it from the pups
Sitting in the green room on a Sunday afternoon
Feasting from the finalists’ cheese plate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When Hugo’s got to choose
There’s no way that you can lose
Where have you gone, John Picacio
A Worldcon turns its lonely eyes to you
Wu wu wu
What’s that you say, Robert Robinson?
Diversity shall never go away
(16) SUBTRACTION. Robert/Rob/Bob may be a statistically lucky name for a Hugo nominee, however, the odds won’t soon be improving in the astronaut program. Ars Technica has the info that, “For the first time in 50 years, a NASA astronaut candidate has resigned” — one of a class of 12:
A little more than a year ago, NASA introduced its newest class of 12 astronaut candidates. These talented men and women were chosen from a deep pool of 18,300 applicants, and after two years of training they were to join the space agency’s corps for possible assignment on missions to the International Space Station, lunar orbit, or possibly the surface of the Moon.
However, one of those 12 astronauts, Robb Kulin, will not be among them. On Monday, NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean confirmed to Ars that Kulin had resigned his employment at NASA, effective August 31, “for personal reasons.”
The leader of the firm behind the hit game Fortnite has accused Google of being “irresponsible” in the way it revealed a flaw affecting the Android version of the title.
On Friday, Google made public that hackers could hijack the game’s installation software to load malware.
The installer is needed because Epic Games has bypassed Google’s app store to avoid giving it a cut of sales.
Epic’s chief executive said Google should have delayed sharing the news.
(18) BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE. Beyond the Sky trailer (2018). The movie is coming to theaters this September.
Chris Norton has been hearing about alien abductions his entire life but, in his gut, he knows they are not real. Setting out to disprove the alien abduction phenomenon once and for all, he attends a UFO convention to meet alleged abductees and reveal the truth behind their experiences. It is only when he meets Emily, who claims to have been abducted every seven years on her birthday, that Chris realizes there may be more to these claims than meets the eye. With Emily’s 28th birthday only days away, Chris helps her to uncover the truth as they come face to face with the reality that we are not alone.
CAST: Ryan Carnes, Jordan Hinson, Peter Stormare, Dee Wallace, Martin Sensmeier, Don Stark
(19) AN INTERPLANETARY ROMANCE. The restored 1910 Italian silent film Matrimonio interplanetario (“Marriage on the Moon”) is now online. Its antique delights include a very strange space launch facility that looks suspiciously like a samovar or maybe an espresso machine.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Karl-Johan Norén , Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]
Uncanny Magazine Issue 24, the three-time Hugo winner’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction special issue, will be released September 4.
Hugo Award-winning Publishers Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas present the 24th issue of their three-time Hugo Award-winning online science fiction and fantasy magazine. Issue 24 is the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction special issue, guest edited by: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (Editor-in-Chief, Nonfiction), Dominik Parisien (Editor-in-Chief, Fiction), Nicolette Barischoff (Personal Essays), S. Qiouyi Lu (Poetry), and Judith Tarr (Reprint Fiction).
As always, Uncanny features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative nonfiction, and a deep investment in the diverse SF/F culture, along with a Parsec Award-winning monthly podcast featuring a story, poem, and interview from that issue. Every piece of the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction special issue was created by disabled people.
All of Uncanny Magazine’s content will be available in eBook versions on the day of release from Weightless Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Kobo. Subscriptions are always available through Amazon Kindle and Weightless Books. The free online content will be released in two stages: half on day of release and half on October 2.
Uncanny Magazine Issue 24- Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Table of Contents
Cover:
And With the Lamps We Are Multitudes of Light by Likhain
Editorial:
“The Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Manifesto” by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien (9/4)
Fiction:
“Fiction Introduction” by Dominik Parisien (9/4)
“The House on the Moon” by William Alexander (9/4)
“Birthday Girl” by Rachel Swirsky (9/4)
“An Open Letter to the Family” by Jennifer Brozek (9/4)
“Heavy Lifting” by A. T. Greenblatt (9/4)
“The Frequency of Compassion” by A. Merc Rustad (9/4)
“The Stars Above” by Katharine Duckett (10/2)
“The Things I Miss the Most” by Nisi Shawl (10/2)
“Abigail Dreams of Weather” by Stu West (10/2)
“A House by the Sea” by P. H. Lee (10/2)
“Disconnect” by Fran Wilde (10/2)
“This Will Not Happen to You” by Marissa Lingen (10/2)
Reprint Fiction:
“Reprints Introduction” by Judith Tarr (9/4)
“By Degrees and Dilatory Time” by SL Huang (9/4)
“Listen” by Karin Tidbeck (10/2)
Nonfiction:
“Nonfiction Introduction” by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (9/4)
“Design a Spaceship” by Andi C. Buchanan (9/4)
“The Linguistics of Disability, or, Empathy > Sympathy” by Fran Wilde (9/4)
“The Body to Come: Afrofuturist Posthumanism and Disability” by Zaynab Shahar (9/4)
“The Expendable Disabled Heroes of Marvel’s Infinity War” by John Wiswell (9/4)
“And the Dragon Was in the Skin” by A. J. Hackwith (9/4)
“Miles Vorkosigan and ‘Excellent Life Choices’: (Neuro)Divergence and Decision-Making in Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga” by Ira Gladkova (10/2)
“Give Me Heroism or Give Me Death” by Gemma Noon (10/2)
“My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” by teri.zin (10/2)
“The Future Is (Not) Disabled” by Marieke Nijkamp (10/2)
Poetry:
“Poetry Introduction” by S. Qiouyi Lu (9/4)
“Ctenophore Soul” by Rita Chen (9/4)
“core/debris/core” by Rose Lemberg (9/4)
“How to Fix a Dancer When it Breaks” by Genevieve DeGuzman (9/4)
“the body argonautica” by Robin M. Eames (9/4)
“All the Stars Above the Sea” by Sarah Gailey (9/4)
“Convalescence” by Alicia Cole (10/2)
“hypothesis for apocalypse” by Khairani Barokka (10/2)
“Spatiotemporal Discontinuity” by Bogi Takács (10/2)
“You Wanted Me to Fly” by Julia Watts Belser (10/2)
Interviews:
Rachel Swirsky interviewed by Sandra Odell (9/4)
Marissa Lingen interviewed by Sandra Odell (10/2)
Personal Essays:
“Personal Essays Introduction” by Nicolette Barischoff (9/4)
“The Stories We Find Ourselves In” by A. T. Greenblatt (9/4)
“The Horror and the Reality: Mental Illness Through the Lens of Horror” by V. Medina (9/4)
“We Are Not Daredevil. Except When We Are Daredevil” by Michael Merriam (9/4)
“Nihil De Nobis, Sine Nobis” by Ace Ratcliff (9/4)
“From Rabbit Holes to Wormholes: KidLit Memories” by Alice Wong (9/4)
“Stories That Talk” by Keith A. Manuel (9/4)
“Once We Were Prophets” by Leigh Schmidt (9/4)
“Science Fiction as Community” by Kathryn Allan (9/4)
“Constructing the Future” by Derek Newman-Stille, PhD (ABD) (9/4)
“Disabled or Just Broken?” by Jaime O. Mayer (9/4)
“Now I Survive” by Jacqueline Bryk (9/4)
“Instant Demotion in Respectability” by Bogi Takács (9/4)
“Being Invisible” by Joyce Chng (9/4)
“We Are Not Your Backstories” by K. C. Alexander (9/4)
“Disabled Enough” by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (9/4)
“Malfunctioning Space Stations” by Marissa Lingen (10/2)
“BFFs in the Apocalypse” by John Wiswell (10/2)
“Why I Limp” by Dilman Dila (10/2)
“The Only Thing Faster Than Tonight: Mr. Darkness” by Elise Matthesen (10/2)
“Homo Duplex” by Tochi Onyebuchi (10/2)
“A Dream to Shape My World” by Eli Wilkinson (10/2)
“To Boldly Go” by Cara Liebowitz (10/2)
“Move Like You’re From Thra, My People” by Haddayr Copley-Woods (10/2)
“Everything Is True: A Non-Neurotypical Experience with Fiction” by Ada Hoffmann (10/2)
“Unlocking the Garret” by Rachel Swirsky (10/2)
“The Stories We Tell and the Amazon Experiment” by Day Al-Mohamed (10/2)
“Science Fiction Saved My Life” by Laurel Amberdine (10/2)
“After the Last Chapter” by Andi C. Buchanan (10/2)
“Dancing in Iron Shoes” by Nicolette Barischoff (10/2)
The Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 24A (9/4)
William Alexander- “The House on the Moon,” as read by Erika Ensign
Sarah Gailey- “All the Stars Above the Sea,” as read by Stephanie Malia Morris
William Alexander Interviewed by Haddayr Copley-Woods
The Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 24B (10/2)
Nisi Shawl- “The Things I Miss the Most,” as read by Stephanie Malia Morris
Alicia Cole- “Convalescence,” as read by Erika Ensign
Marieke Nijkamp Interviewed by Haddayr Copley-Woods
From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces to submit to editor N.K. Jemisin for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Jemisin then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy, highlighted in green on the table.)
Here is the Table of Contents — including the 20 stories they thought the best:
2018 Table of Contents
FANTASY
Loneliness is in Your Bloodby Cadwell Turnbull from Nightmare Magazine
The Resident by Carmen Maria Machado from Her Body and Other Parties
Carnival Nineby Caroline M. Yoachim from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Rivers Run Freeby Charles Payseur from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coastby Gwendolyn Clare from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Last Cheng Beng Giftby Jaymee Goh from Lightspeed Magazine
You Will Always Have Family: A Triptychby Kathleen Kayembe from Nightmare Magazine
Black Powderby Maria Dahvana Headley from The Djinn Falls in Love (ed. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin)
The Orange Tree by Maria Dahvana Headley from The Weight of Words (ed. Dave McKean and William Schafer)
Church of Birdsby Micah Dean Hicks from Kenyon Review
SCIENCE FICTION
Brightened Star, Ascending Dawnby A. Merc Rustad from Humans Wanted (ed. Vivian Caethe)
Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sueby Charlie Jane Anders from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
The Wretched and the Beautifulby E. Lily Yu from Terraform
Destroy the City with Me Tonightby Kate Alice Marshall from Behind the Mask (ed. Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson)
Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilitiesby Lettie Prell from Clarkesworld Magazine
Cannibal Actsby Maureen F. McHugh from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
ZeroSby Peter Watts from Infinity Wars (ed. Jonathan Strahan)
The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrantby Rachael K. Jones from Lightspeed Magazine
The Hermit of Houstonby Samuel R. Delany from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenanceby Tobias S. Buckell from Cosmic Powers (ed. John Joseph Adams)
Vincent Villafranca casting the 2013 Hugo Award base.
[[Editor’s Note: I wanted more people to see Jo’s story, left in comments, about her Homeric efforts on Hugo day, and got her permission to run it as a front-page post.]]
By Jo Van Ekeren: It all started when I made the mistake of whingeing to Mike Glyer about never getting to go to GRRM’s awesome Hugo Losers Parties.
“Well, you did a big favour for my blog,” he said. “If you want, you can be my +1 and go to the parties, as my way of saying ‘thanks’”.
“What a great idea!” I said. “What could possibly go wrong?” I said.
And we made arrangements to meet on Sunday evening outside the location for the Hugo Finalist pre-party.
So on Sunday morning at the WSFS Business Meeting, I got a phone call saying that Mike had been taken from his hotel to the medical centre and could I go see him. “Sure!” I said. “I’m sure that he’ll be up on his feet shortly, and everything will be just fine!” I said.
So I got to the hospital, where a little creative editorialising led the staff to believe that I might possibly be one of Mike’s errant blood relations who just happened to live on the other side of the world, and was delighted when I got to his room and discovered that he seemed to be back to his usual jovial self.
“I’m so relieved to see that you’re doing well!” I said. “It’s a good thing that you’ll still be able to go to the Hugos tonight!” I said.
“Yeah, uh… about that…” he said.
I gave him The Look.
“They want to keep me in the hospital overnight, just to be sure that I’m okay,” he said. “So I’m going to need you to stand in for me at the Hugos tonight,” he said.
< deep breath >
“Okay,” I said. “I can do that, but I’m going to need you to e-mail me a copy of your speech in case you win,” I said.
“Yeah, uh… about that…” he said.
I gave him The Look again.
“I haven’t exactly written my speech yet,” he admitted.
< another deep breath >
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what you need me to say if you win.” And he proceeded to toss out his thoughts for an acceptance speech, which I avidly typed into my cell phone’s memo app.
I wanted to stick around until they got him taken from the evaluation area to an actual room. So we got a “here’s what’s going on” post put up on File 770, and I spent a few hours reading Filers’ responses to that to Mike, and relating the content of various tweets, Facebook posts, and the Business Meeting summaries to him. I’d missed the ceremony rehearsal which was early in the afternoon, but I talked to the Hugo staff on the phone, and they promised to give me a quick run-through whenever I got there.
FINALLY they got Mike moved to a room. At that point, it was getting very late in the afternoon, and I really needed to get home and take a shower and get ready for the ceremony. So I called an Uber, and walked out of the ER exit toward the pickup point. The Uber driver arrived, and seemed to have some sort of selective visual impairment, because they were looking at every one of the 16 compass points except at me. I put my arm up and waved it, while walking toward them. They still didn’t see me. So I kept waving and walking.
I never saw the curb that jumped up and hit me. (In my defence, there was construction going on, and the wide sidewalk area there had two sloping areas ramping down flush with the pavement. In between them was a curbed area which was not flush with the pavement.)
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground wondering where the truck that hit me had gone, and two people were urging me to go back into the ER and get my injuries checked. I looked at my watch. It was 5:10pm. The pre-party was supposed to start at 6:00pm. “I can’t,” I said. “I have a ceremony I have to be at in an hour.” So they helped me up, and I hobbled over to my Uber which was 3 fricking metres away — and my Uber driver had missed the entire thing, which had happened right in front of their car. “When did this happen?” they asked. “Just now?” they asked.
I didn’t bother giving them The Look.
Setting aside my perhaps well-founded concerns about their ability to observe possible obstructions and impending collisions in traffic, I had the driver take me back to my hotel. On the way, I called Helen Montgomery, told her what had happened, and said that I was probably going to need some wrangling from the staff at the ceremony. I hobbled up to my room, in a massive amount of pain, wondering how in hell I was going to make it to the ceremony. So I cracked open a cold Mike’s Hard Lemonade, took a few big swigs, and got in the shower. As I was washing my hair, I heard my roommate come in. “Heather?” I said. “What are you doing for the next hour?” I asked her.
“Nothing, as far as I know,” she said.
“Yeah, uh… about that…” I said. “How would you like to be a Hugo Finalist Wrangler?” I asked her. “Because I’ve sprained my ankle and I think I may have broken my arm, and I’m supposed to be down at the pre-Hugo party in half an hour. Would you be willing to help me get ready?” And she graciously agreed.
Heather Rose Jones, folks, is probably the only reason I wasn’t curled up on the bed crying from pain and exhaustion instead of going to the Hugo ceremony Sunday night. She kept talking to me and kept me going while I was getting ready, and helped with all of the things I couldn’t do by myself with a useless hand and arm. The hair and the makeup ended up being, shall we say, close enough only for Government Work. (But at least I had a tiara.)
I got to the pre-party late at about 6:45pm, which at least provided the benefit of allowing me to duck out of being brigaded into the posed finalist photos. I scavenged some food from the buffet, joked with Ursula Vernon about getting into a scuffle with her over something which involved her lying on the floor weeping and covered in quacamole, and sat down to write a speech — alternating between typing on my phone with one finger and shoving cheese and red wine into my mouth.
When the time came, the Hugo Ceremony staff ushered me out to the Grand Ballroom, where they had reserved for me a seat up front right by the stairs to the stage. They made sure that I had an arm and a good hand when I needed one, to carry a heavy rocket and avoid falling. Which was a good thing, because being given less than 12 hours of warning to make a speech under blinding lights in front of 3,500 people, which is being livecast to hundreds of fans all around the world, is pretty terrifying.
All I can say is that GRRM’s Hugo Loser’s Party is every bit as awesome as the rumours say — and that copious amounts of Blood Orange Cider apparently make a passable substitution for legal pharmaceutical analgesics, since I managed to stay to the end. And I have to thank Mike for giving me the opportunity to have what will be one of the most special experiences of my life. I am just sorry that he missed the opportunity to pick up his very last Hugo himself.
I figure that I must have some sort of Hugo record for “Trophy Accepter With Untreated Broken Bones”. Perhaps Kevin Standlee will give me a footnote in the official records.
(1) ALL SYSTEMS WIN. Martha Wells posted a Worldcon 76 report including her experiences at the Hugo Awards ceremony —
Then we got to novella, and I was extremely nervous. I felt like I had a strong chance and was hopeful, but it was still awesome to win. I managed to get up the stairs to the stage, give my speech without crying (After the Nebula Awards I didn’t want to be the author who cries all the time.) (I saved it all up for Monday, when every time anyone said anything nice to me, I would start crying.) Managed to get down the Stairs of Doom backstage with the help of about four people, got stopped to get a photo outside the auditorium in the reception area, went back in the wrong door and could not get it open and had to thump on it until the backstage people heard me, and then got back to my seat in time to see Nnedi Okorafor win for Best YA novel and N.K. Jemisin win for Best Novel!
(2) DIGBY IN ONE PLACE. The Golds reminded readers today about the extended electronic edition of Tom Digby’s amazing fanwriting that’s available online, “Along Fantasy Way”. Originally produced for the 1993 Worldcon where Tom was a guest of honor, the collection was expanded in its 2014 digital version. What a treasure trove of wonderfully creative idea-tripping. Delightful poetry, too – for example:
…OR MINERAL(2/07/76)
Pet rocks are OK, but some people prefer more variety.
The guy upstairs from me
Has a 1947 Chevrolet engine block.
I think his apartment is too small for it,
But there it is.
And the family down the street
With the goldfish pond in the yard
Has an old ship’s anchor
To keep the fish company.
But of all the inorganic pets in the neighborhood,
The happiest is an old beer can
Belonging to a small boy.
It would never win a prize at a show:
Too many dents
And spots of rust
And paint flaking off.
And besides, it’s a brand of beer
Most people don’t like.
But that doesn’t really matter.
What matters is FUN
Like afternoons when they go for a walk:
The can leaps joyously ahead
CLATTERDY RATTLEDY CLANG BANG!
Then lies quietly waiting for its master to catch up
Before leaping ahead again.
I may get a beer can myself some day.
But I still don’t think it’s right
To keep a 1947 Chevrolet engine block
Cooped up in such a small apartment.
The collection is illustrated by Phil and Kaja Foglio.
Sources say that crewmembers, which is, at this stage, a small group that was prepping for preproduction, are being dismissed and are free to look for new work.
The Marvel project was originally to have been directed by James Gunn and was to have begun principal photography in the winter, either in January or February. The project was crewing up and was to have gone into full preproduction mode in the fall.
But Gunn was let go as the director in July when old tweets were resurfaced in response to his vocal political posts. While some held out hope that the director would be given a reprieve by Disney, a mid-August meeting with Disney chairman Alan Horn closed the door on that.
(5) LAST DAYS OF BANG ON EARTH.Big Bang Theory has started production of its final season.
To see other outstanding stories that didn’t make it into the five “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, go to RSR’s 2017 Best SF/F article, which has also been updated with the BASFF stories for a total of 256 stories by 201 authors.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
August 26, 1953 — The War of the Worlds premiered. (“Welcome to California!”)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge]
Born August 26 — Katherine Johnson, 100. NASA mathematician and physicist awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama in 2015. Her work made space travel possible. And yes she’s African-American as well! (Makers has a post celebrating her birthday.)
Born August 26 — Barbara Ehrenreich, 77. Social activist and author of one genre novel, Kipper’s Game which gets compared to the works of Connie Willis.
Born August 26 — Stephen Fry, 61. Narrator, all of the Harry Potter audiobook recordings, Col. K. In the animated Dangermouse series and any number of other delightfully interesting genre related undertakings.
Born August 26 — Wanda De Jesus, 60. Genre work includes Robocop 2,SeaQuest 2032, Tales from The Darkside, Babylon 5, and Ghosts of Mars
Born August 26 — Melissa McCarthy, 48. Now starring in The Happytime Murders which apparently is the first film from the adult division of Jim Henson Productions. Also Ghostbusters: Answer the Call.
Born August 26 — Chris Pine, 38. James T. Kirk in the current Trek film franchise; also Steve Trevor in the Wonder Woman film franchise as well as A Wrinkle in Time and Rise Of The Guardians.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Brevity shows some movie dinosaurs who keep comic back.
Launched into a solar orbit on Aug. 25, 2003, Spitzer was the final of NASA’s four Great Observatories to reach space. The space telescope has illuminated some of the oldest galaxies in the universe, revealed a new ring around Saturn, and peered through shrouds of dust to study newborn stars and black holes. Spitzer assisted in the discovery of planets beyond our solar system, including the detection of seven Earth-size planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, among other accomplishments.
In a new study, physicists attempted to find differences between matter and antimatter—confusingly, also a kind of matter, but with the opposite charge and other differences. It’s like an evil twin. Confusingly, the universe has way more matter than antimatter, for no clear reason. Physicists haven’t found the specific differences they were looking for when studying the antimatter version of hydrogen, called antihydrogen, but they have demonstrated a way to study antimatter better than ever before.
Mike Kennedy forwarded the link with the note, “It’s a complicated story, and mostly about recent measurements of the Lyman-? emission lines of anti-hydrogen… in particular it being the same wavelength as for hydrogen <http://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0435-1>. The bit about laser cooling anti-hydrogen and dropping it to observe how it reacts to gravity is IIUC speculative at this point.”
The legendary actor and musician William Shatner is giving us another reason to be excited about the holiday season. Shatner tweeted the Amazon link to pre-order his first upcoming record: Shatner Claus The Christmas Album. You can add the self-described godfather of dramatic musical interpretation’s album digital audio, CD, or vinyl in your letter to the North Pole. With vinyl record sales on the constant rise, it’s exciting to see if this will find Shatner Claus’ sleigh riding its way to the top of the Billboard charts.
But fighting fires in freezing temperatures also calls for some specialist equipment.
Surprisingly, water is still an option. McMurdo’s fire engine has a pump, which cycles water constantly through the vehicle to prevent it from freezing.
Remembering to set the pump going is, says Branson, a lesson quickly learned.
“You do not want to be the person who freezes all the water in the fire engine. Then you’re stuck with a 500 gallon engine with an ice block in it… and nobody on base is going to like you.”
A bear was filmed going through the lobby of the hotel that inspired Stephen King’s classic horror novel in Colorado.
(17) YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. While excavating on YouTube, Carl Slaughter found Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965): “Frankenstein, ie, Frank the android, does battle with a Martian beast to prevent a Martian princess from replenishing Mars with voluptuous and sometimes bikini-clad Earth women. The Pentagon monitors the situation and tries to lend Frank a hand. Turns out Frank wears an Air Force uniform and holds military rank – like Data. This is in the so bad it’s good category.”
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
