Monthly Archives: December 2018

Pixel Scroll 12/31/18 Three…(Click)…Two…(Click)….One…(Click)…Godstalk!

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(1) DOCTOR WHO SPECIAL AIRS TOMORROW. And you can preview the New Year’s Day Special Doctor Who: Resolution.

The Doctor Who cast talk about what to expect in the New Years Day Special, Doctor Who: Resolution.

(2) THE YEAR’S MOST WTF. ScienceFiction.com is right – there were plenty: “The Most WTF Moments Of 2018”.

There were a lot of memorable moments in pop culture in 2018, including many highs, as well as a few lows.  But in addition to that, there were a few events that were just weird or shocking, to the point that some folks are still reeling months later.   Yes, there were many deaths.  There were also a large number of sexual misconduct accusations.  But omitting those, here are a few other moments that you may recall.

Their list begins with —

12. Netflix Dropped A Surprise Movie, ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ After The Super Bowl

(3) 2018 MOST INFLUENTIAL SFF WOMEN. At SYFY Wire, the Fangrrls column lists their “2018’s most influential women in genre.”

This was a hard year. For many of us, 2018 was surreal, and for many more, it was deeply painful. But in the face of adversity, as always, it is the women who made us feel we can survive, thrive, and make a difference. 

In 2018, women like Christine Blasey Ford stood firm against a wave of screams attempting to silence, dismiss and discredit her. But firm she stood. For better or worse, and still experiencing attacks and threats, she and so many other women reminded us that we are strong. Often because the world has given us no choice. But it’s what these women do with that strength that is empowering, inspiring, and life-changing for those of us their lives touch. 

The genre world is no different. This year, we were still told, constantly and from people who should know better, that there is simply not room at the table for us, or, possibly worse, gaslit into believing there aren’t enough of us capable or even willing to do the work men are handed with far less experience. 

These women inspired us to say “f*ck that” and be everything the world says we can’t be. And we are eternally grateful.

Details are in the article for about each selectee. The list (along with an attempt to distill the roles for which each woman was selected) is:

* Eve Ewing (academic, author, visual artist)—selected by Sara Century

* Jody Houser (comic book author)—selected by Riley Silverman

* N.K. Jemisin (author, activist)—selected by S.E. Fleenor

* Jodie Whittaker (actor)—selected by Jenna Busch

* Laila Shabir (founder/CEO of Girls Make Games)—selected by Courtney Enlow

* Margot Robbie (actor, producer)—selected by Jenna Busch

* Janelle Monáe (musician)—selected by Clare McBride

* Ava DuVernay (director)—selected by Tricia Ennis

* Natalie Portman (actor, activist)—selected by Emma Fraser

* Tessa Thompson (actor, singer, songwriter)—selected by S.E. Fleenor

* Christina Hodson (screenwriter)—selected by Jenna Busch

* Brie Larson (actor, activist)—selected by Carly Lane

(4) GOING TO HAVE TO REFILL THE MIRROR. A.V. News says “Bandersnatch was so complex that season five of Black Mirror has been delayed”.

We never would’ve guessed this, but it turns out that developing an interactive movie with tons of branching paths and alternate endings is kind of difficult. Perhaps that’s why most movies only have the one narrative and end the same way no matter how many times you watch it?

…The movie has so many different variations based on what choices you make that Brooker (the creator of Black Mirror) says he has “forgotten” how many different endings there are, going so far as to reject producer Annabel Jones’ claim in a Hollywood Reporter interview that there are five “definitive” conclusions.

That Hollywood Reporter piece goes deep into how Bandersnatch was made and some of the behind-the-scenes magic that allows it to work, but the biggest reveal is that Bandersnatch required such an “enormous” amount of time and work that the fifth season of the oppressively dark sci-fi horror series has been delayed….

(5) NEW BUHLERT POSTS. Galactic Journey has published Cora Buhlert’s review of Andre Norton’s Ordeal in Otherwhere (her first Norton), as well her original 1960s recipe for spaceman’s punch, a New Year’s party favorite.

Cora also has a poem in Issue eleven of the poetry webzine Umbel & Panicle, out today, which also features photographs by Paul Weimer and Elizabeth Fitzgerald.

(6) EVOLVED GINGERBREAD. Aftonbladet reports how “Caroline’s gingerbread makes success”. Hampus Eckerman translated the first part of this Swedish-language article for Filers to enjoy:

In Caroline Eriksson’s family, it has always been a tradition to build gingerbread houses.

But over the years, Caroline began to get tired of “just” building houses.

This year she has built a 130×90 centimeter replica of Alien – made in gingerbread.

For three and a half weeks, Caroline Eriksson, 31, has worked with the gingerbread during evenings and weekends.

Building gingerbread houses always used to be a tradition in Caroline’s family during her childhood in Tyresö. But in recent years, the gingerbread cookies have become increasingly advanced.

– After a few years I got tired of doing houses and started to do more special things like boats and some movie creations, says Caroline.

For several years, Caroline has lived in Oslo. In 2013, she participated in a gingerbread competition in Norway and since then the gingerbread cookies have become more extreme.

– Then I built Optimus Prime, the transformer robot, in gingerbread. I won the competition which was super cool and after that, the tradition of making a gingerbread figure every year continued. I try to challenge myself and make more crazy creations every year, says Caroline.

(7) SIR JULIUS VOGEL AWARDS YEAR KICKS OFF. Nominations are now being accepted for the 2019 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, and will be taken until the window closes on March 30, 2019.

The awards recognise excellence and achievement in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders and New Zealand residents, and first published or released in the 2018 calendar year.

…Anyone can make a nomination and it is free! Get busy reading NZ authors and watching NZ movies to find work to nominate. The awards will be presented at Geysercon – the 2019 National SF&F Convention.

(8) AMONG THE RUINS. Harvard Gazette’s ‘Stepping inside a dead star” offers “A virtual reality experience of being inside an exploded star.” You’ll need the VR hardware to try this out.

Cassiopeia A, the youngest known supernova remnant in the Milky Way, is the remains of a star that exploded almost 400 years ago. The star was approximately 15 to 20 times the mass of our sun and sat in the Cassiopeia constellation, almost 11,000 light-years from earth.

Though stunningly distant, it’s now possible to step inside a virtual-reality (VR) depiction of what followed that explosion.

A team led by Kimberly Kowal Arcand from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Center for Computation and Visualization at Brown University has made it possible for astronomers, astrophysicists, space enthusiasts, and the simply curious to experience what it’s like inside a dead star. Their efforts are described in a recent paper in Communicating Astronomy with the Public.

The VR project — believed to be the first of its kind, using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory mission (which is headquartered at CfA), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and optical data from other telescopes — adds new layers of understanding to one of the most famous and widely studied objects in the sky.

(9) ROMAN OBIT. NPR reports: “Nancy Grace Roman, ‘Mother Of Hubble’ Space Telescope, Has Died, At Age 93”. She defied a guidance counselor who asked “what lady would take math instead of Latin”; joined NASA when it was 6 months old.

When Nancy Grace Roman was a child, her favorite object to draw was the moon.

Her mother used to take her on walks under the nighttime sky and show her constellations, or point out the colorful swirls of the aurora. Roman loved to look up at the stars and imagine.

Eventually, her passion for stargazing blossomed into a career as a renowned astronomer. Roman was one of the first female executives at NASA, where she served as the agency’s first chief of astronomy.

Known as the “Mother of Hubble,” for her role in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality, Roman worked at NASA for nearly two decades. She died on Dec. 25 at the age of 93.

(10) LUSK OBIT. SYFY Wire reports the death of classic Disney animator Don Lusk:

Don Lusk, longtime Disney animator and Hanna-Barbera director, has died. The multi-hyphenate artist behind dozens of iconic characters roaming throughout animation was 105. His longevity was only matched by his output, as Lusk’s six decade career saw him make the faces of Alice in Wonderland, Charlie Brown, Babar, Papa Smurf, and Goofy familiar to an entire culture.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 31, 1958 — The Crawling Eye showed up at the drive-in.
  • December 31, 1958  — The Strange World Of Planet X made for a good double bill at the drive-in.
  • December 31, 1961 — The Phantom Planet appeared in theaters.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 31, 1937  — Anthony Hopkins, 80. I never know what I’ve going to find when I look these Birthday possibilities so imagine my surprise when I discover his first genre role was Ian McCandless in Freejack followed soon by playing Helsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula! He went to have a number of genre roles including being C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands, the lead in The Mask of Zorro, the narrator of that stink, stank, stunk How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Odin in three Thor MCU films. 
  • Born December 31, 1943 – Ben Kingsley, 75. First SF character he played was Avatar in Slipstream, later roles included Dr. John Watson in Without a Clue, Minister Templeton in Photographing Fairies, The Great Zamboni In Spooky House, Specialist in A.I., Man in the Yellow Suit in Tuck Everlasting,  Merenkahre in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and that’s just a partial listing. God he’s had an impressive genre history! 
  • Born December 31, 1945 – Connie Willis, 73. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for her work, a feat that impresses even I who isn’t generally impressed as you know by Awards! Of her works, I’m most pleased by To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book and Bellwether, an offbeat novel look at chaos theory. I’ve not read enough of her shorter work to give an informed opinion of it, so do tell me what’s good there.
  • Born December 31, 1949 – Ellen Datlow, 69. Let’s get start this Birthday note by saying I own a complete set of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror which, yes , I know, it was titled The Year’s Best Fantasy for the first year. And I still read stories for them from time to time. If that was all she had done, she’d have been one of our all-time anthologists but she also, again with Terri Windling, did the Fairy Tale and Mythic Fiction series, both of which I highly recommend. On her own, she has the ongoing Best Horror of Year, now a decade old, and the Tor.com anthologies which I’ve not read but I assume collect the fiction from the site. Speaking of Tor.com, she’s an editor, something she’s also done at Nightmare Magazine, Omni, the hard copy magazine and online, Sci Fiction webzine and Subterranean Magazine. 
  • Born December 31, 1958 – Bebe Neuwirth, 60. Ok she’s had but one television SF credit to her name which is playing a character named Lanel in the “First Contact” episode of the Next Gen series during season four but I found a delightful genre credential for her. From April 2010 to December 2011, she was Morticia Addams in the Broadway production of The Addams Family musical! The show itself is apparently still ongoing. 
  • Born December 31, 1959 – Val Kilmer, 59. Lead role in Batman Forever where I fought he did a decent job, Madmartigan in Willow, Montgomery in The Island of Dr. Moreau, voiced both Moses and God in The Prince of Egypt, uncredited role as El Cabillo in George and the Dragon and voiced KITT in the reboot of Knight Rider.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • In this Brewster Rockit, Cliff Clewless may have the right idea—retroactive New Year resolutions.

(14) ON TONIGHT’S JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter, Jeopardy! game show genre reference correspondent, spotted another:  

Double Jeopardy Answer, for $3,000: He wrote 1899’s “Father Goose”; he came up with a “Wonderful” adventure the following year.

Wrong question: “Who is [Upton] Sinclair?” [which cost the contestant $3 grand]

Correct question: Who is L. Frank Baum?

(15) POOP QUIZ. Meanwhile, Daniel Dern is proposing his own game show – “Today’s SF and SF-adjacent Pop Quiz.”

What (a) SF story, and (b) folk song (story, more precisely) do these articles make you think of:

“Maine woman who makes artwork out of moose poop might be getting a TV show”

which in turn refers back to —

“People love this Maine woman who makes artwork out of moose poop”

Stay tuned to ROT-13 for the answers —

a) Gur Ovt Cng Obbz ol Qnzba Xavtug

b) “Zbbfr Gheq Cvr,” ol gur yngr Oehpr “H. Hgnu” Cuvyyvcf, Gur Tbyqra Ibvpr bs gur Terng Fbhgujrfg naq “Nzrevpn’f Zbfg-Srnerq Sbyxfvatre,” bevtvanyyl ba uvf TBBQ GUBHTU nyohz — urer vg abj

<uggcf://jjj.lbhghor.pbz/jngpu?i=0mo1dfIdwjt>

Abgr, V ybir gung n jro frnepu gheaf hc uvgf yvxr:

    Fubc Zbbfr Gheq Cvr: Nznmba

Gur FS-nqwnprag nfcrpg: Cuvyyvcf jnf n thrfg (TbU, creuncf) ng ng yrnfg bar FS pbairagvba — ZvavPba?

And that’s the name of that tune!

(16) KSR’S LATEST. Vidvuds Veldavs totes up the pluses and minuses about Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Moon for readers at The Space Review.

[Note: the review contains spoilers regarding the novel.]

Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, Red Moon, is set in 2047. China has become the dominant player on the Moon with large-scale operations at the South Pole. The US and other players have facilities at the North Pole. China achieved this position using the experience of massive infrastructure projects to mount an operation possibly larger and more intensive in scope than the U.S. Apollo project. According to the novel, President Xi Jinping secured the commitment of the Chinese Communist Party at the 20th People’s Congress in 2022 to the goal “… that the moon should be a place for Chinese development, as one part of the Chinese Dream.” Insofar as 2022 is still more than three years into the future, Robinson may be advocating for such a future. Xi Jinping is highly praised in the book for his Moon declaration as well as for the environmental cleanup that takes place on Earth. The hills surrounding Beijing in 2047 are green and the air is fresh and breathable as a result of the environmental policies of Xi.

(17) A DIFFERENT KIND OF YEAR IN NEWS. The BBC’s “2018 in news: The alternative end-of-the-year awards” features videos of masterfully-incompetent criminals, and of an attempt to stifle press questions that got shown up by a phone app.

(18) YOUNG JUSTICE. The final trailer of Young Justice Season 3: Outsiders has been released. The TV series will premiere January 4.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Rich Lynch, Hampus Eckerman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]

2018: A Space Essay

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By Rich Lynch: It’s the final day of 2018 as I’m writing this, and the month of December has featured two news stories about space exploration.  The one of immediate interest is the New Horizons deep space probe, which is out at the edge of the solar system and will be whizzing past Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, otherwise known as “Ultima Thule”, this very evening.  But it’s the other story, about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 manned mission to the moon, which captured people’s imaginations.  Or for me, ‘recaptured’, since I can recall very well all the news coverage about the event, including the memorable Christmas Eve television transmission when the three astronauts read from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon.

        But 1968 was even more memorable for me as a science fiction enthusiast for a different reason – it was the year that Stanley Kubrick’s epic film 2001: A Space Odyssey first appeared in movie theaters.  Kubrick, who had become intrigued by the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations, had wanted to make “the proverbially good science fiction movie” and to do so he enlisted the collaboration of Arthur C. Clarke, who was then considered to be the preeminent writer of ‘hard’ (i.e., scientifically accurate) science fiction.  And it was inspired, in part, on what I consider the finest science fiction story ever written: Clarke’s “The Sentinel”, which (like the movie) is centered around the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon and what happens afterwards.

        I think it is still the best pure science fiction film ever made.  So much so that fifty years after its release, the science still holds up pretty well even though the title of the movie was far too optimistic on how much progress in astronautics would be made in a third of a century.  But something that the movie is noted for is what it didn’t do – it made no attempt to depict the alien beings who created the artifact.  This is probably due to the advice of astronomer Carl Sagan, who had consulted Clarke and Kubrick on this topic.  Sagan had urged them to use imagery which only suggested the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, otherwise there would likely be “an element of falseness” perceived by the viewers of the movie.

        With all the painstaking care that was taken in making the movie, right down to the smallest details, one might expect that the reviews of the film would have been wildly enthusiastic.  And some were.  Roger Ebert, for example, wrote that the movie “succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale”.  But others were much less impressed.  Pauline Kael, for instance, described it as “a monumentally unimaginative movie” while Renata Adler wrote that it was “somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring”.  There was even a mixed response in the science fiction community.  The movie won the Hugo Award in 1969 for Best Dramatic Presentation so it’s probably fair to say that most science fiction fans had the same reaction as I did when I first saw it – it was the best science fiction film I had ever seen and a great cinematic experience.  But some of the science fiction authors who reviewed the film had a different opinion.  Lester Del Rey, for instance, found the movie less than inspiring, with a prediction that it “would be a box office disaster” and would “set major science fiction movie-making back another ten years”.  Harlan Ellison was even less kind, writing that: “2001 is a visually-exciting self-indulgent directorial exercise by a man who has spent anywhere from ten to twenty-five million dollars pulling ciphers out of a cocked hat because he lost his rabbit somewhere.”  And that: “It fails in the first order of story-telling: to tell a story.”

        In the end, Del Rey was wrong.  2001 not only turned a profit, it was also a direct influence on the next generation of notable film-makers such as George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, and Stephen Spielberg.  The American Film Institute has ranked 2001: A Space Odyssey as #15 in its list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time and it has achieved that gold-standard of cinematic immortality – even though it inspired a sequel, it has never been remade.  And there’s a reason for that, as George Lucas described back in 1977: “Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned.”

        And I, as a lowly science fiction enthusiast, have my own take on why 2001 is as exalted as it is, at least for me.  There are many good movies I’ve seen just once and it wouldn’t bother me if I never see them again.  And there are other good movies which I have enjoyed more than once.  But there are very, very few movies which I don’t think I’d ever get tired of seeing, and 2001 is one of them.  It is, really, a movie for the ages.

Four New Journey Planets Ascend to Orbit

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By James Bacon. Journey Planet has just published four issues in quick succession. Covering a wide variety of subjects and with co-editors James Bacon and Chris Garcia the consistent constant, there have literally been 3 fanzines a day made available this week.

Journey Planet issue 41 presented Tony Roche’s legendary fanzine Heroes Unlimited #8, edited with Tony, Pádraig Ó Méalóid and Merlin Roche. Issue 42 – Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations looks at Diversity within Star Trek fandom with co-editor and Taff Candidate Sarah Gulde.  Issue 43 was about Silicon Valley co-edited with Chuck Serface and Issue 44, a Half Pint of Flann, a primer of Flann O’Brien was co-edited by Michael Carroll and Pádraig Ó Méalóid. 

Suddenly four issues of Journey Planet have converged for publication, but they did not come about or start anywhere near the same time. 

Journey Planet issue 41 presented Tony Roche’s legendary fanzine Heroes Unlimited #8, the Journey Planet edition repackaged and added considerably to the edition published in print in September. Bonus additional content, driven by those who had read and enjoyed the hard copy with letters of comment, and also a reflection on the loss of Stan Lee, amongst other new additions were added in. It is hard to know the genesis of this issue, and it would not be unfair to say, possibly 49 years ago when issue 7 of Heroes Unlimited was published, there was an expectation that issue 8 would appear, but in modern times, it was in February 2017, that Pádraig suggested that the time was now ripe for Heroes Unlimited #8 to Tony and so, it began and twenty-two months later, an issue arrived. It was a glorious experience, and involved a visit to Northampton, and meeting fanzine reader Alan Moore. 

I had expected that we might get the Silicon Valley issue done some time before Worldcon 76. That would have made sense, I thought, but all three editors had commitments to Worldcon 76, albeit my own were tangential and all related to Dublin 2019, Chris was an MC for the Masquerade and Chuck…. Well Chuck had a really quite serious and responsible job at Worldcon 76, as Division Head for member services. I thought it would be so nice to share my favourite Bay Area places with fans before they arrive, and had written notes as early as June. It was well after Worldcon that this issue really took shape, although work had already been started, and I was on my way to San Jose in November when I finished my own long contribution and we saw the issue come together. 

I got chatting to Sarah Gulde after Worldcon, definitely in September and thought a Star Trek issue would be a nice idea, Sarah then steered this in a direction that really pleased both myself and Chris and suddenly we also had the title ‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations’ and some excellent contributions coming in. Michael Carroll expressed some interest when he was engaged about our Instant Fanzine section and provided an amazing image for the and then Front Cover. 

Interestingly, I had written another article on “The High Ground.” Despite bashing out 2,000 words on this episode that was banned by the BBC in the UK and RTE in Ireland, and researching it with local fans, both Sarah and Chris felt the article did not fit in with the overall theme of the issue. This is why co-editors are important, I did not need to argue, or discuss it, if they both felt that way, they are probably right, and it can be hard to objectively reflect immediately when one is so close to an item, so you trust your co-editors. This will actually work out well. We have heard by a back channel that someone connected with “The High Ground” was pleased with the issue, which is terribly exciting, and so, maybe it would be better to ask them first about for the article, while another co-editor who contributed shared their passion for Trek, so at some future stage, we may have a better article in another Trek issue, so Chris and Sarah was very right. 

One of the real joys about Journey Planet is that myself and Chris, are very open to ideas and concepts, and areas of discussion. We cannot always find the energy and enthusiasm we need, to bring an issue to fruition, which is why having co-editors is so vital. The complexity of the workload, and reach of editors and skills they bring vary per issue, is flexible, has to be. Sometimes ideas do not excite, or fail to capture the imagination significantly, but can be returned to, other times, work on an issue goes into hiatus, for any of many reasons. Right now, we have a variety of potential issues in a wide variance of statuses, and know that we can come back to them when matters are right. Everyone involved works very hard and it is a pleasure to see what other voices and opinions can bring to the zine, and this perhaps has something to do with why the fanzines are such fun. 

Flexibility is everything though, for instance in our Flann issue, Michael Carroll was lead on layout. That is because this issue had a stumbling block. I had forgotten to tell everyone how much of this issue I had worked on in my head. Indeed, I produced the idea of the issue, more broadly, on Friday the 21st of December. That would be nine days ago. 

The Christmas period is always a good time for me to get writing done, and I find that not only work, but Dublin 2019 matters slow sufficiently, that various things that require thinking time can occur, an annual reflection and check-in on how things are with Dublin 2019, and writing for fanzines is the pastime things that I can get to, as well as sending out post, looking for books, asking for input or instant fanzine contributions and enjoy reading submissions so on. It can be really very productive. 

Of course, I should have said to Chris, at least, that a Flann Primer was in my head. You see, there is a lot of celebration occurring next year, At Swim Two Birds is 80 years published, Palimpsests: The fifth International Flann O’Brien Conference at University College Dublin on the 16–19 July and Dublin 2019 is occurring a month later. I would hope that we could garner some interest in the subject of Flann and his writings, and elicit some future contributions for a future far off issue, and so a ‘Primer’ to get people interested was the notion that had concocted in my brain.  

It was over breakfast in Cafe Journal in Monkstown, on the south side of Dublin with Tony and Pádraig, and while Tony is a fan, he is more of a Beckett man, if truth be told, that the Flann issue came up. 

Over a fabulous feast of Irish delicacies, surrounded by books, I voiced the idea of the issue, and so it came to be. Chris of course, was appalled. His own workload schedule was filled, and layout was beyond him, but I was not going to not see this fail and once more into the breach, Michael Carroll stepped up, and indeed now nine days later there is an issue done. Incredible. 

It was truly wonderful. While in Ireland I spent time reading and researching. Fortunately, my late father had a supply of decent books on the Railways in Ireland so I was able to reach for the Boocock. 

(Colin Boocock wrote the Locomotive Compendium Ireland, DMU Compendium, Irish railways 40 years of change and an Irish Railway Pictorial, amongst dozens of others). Johan Anglemark, Val Nolan and Jack Fennel turned up trumps and Pádraig who is a scholar in Flann, had many an item on file and Michael produced a first rate cover to wrap it all up.  

And so four issues are now up on the weebly and shortly I hope will be on Bill Burns efanzines.com and I will pivot my focus back to matters relating to Dublin 2019. 

I hope you all enjoy them. 

Pixel Scroll 12/30/18 Pixel Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, And Scroll All Over Again

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(1) ELIGIBILITY DEADLINE 12/31. Is it time for you to panic? Let Camestros Felapton’s animated Panic Blob lead the way to the Dublin 2019 membership page.

As they explain at The Hugo Awards website (“Join Worldcon by December 31, 2018 to be Eligible to Nominate for 2019 Hugo Awards”) —

If you want to nominate works/people for the 2019 Hugo Awards, you must be a member of either the 2018 Worldcon (San José) or the 2019 Worldcon (Dublin) by the end of 2018. (You can of course be a member of both, but you can only nominate once.) If you were a member of Worldcon 76 San José (supporting or attending, or any other membership class that included voting rights), you are already eligible to nominate. If you were not a member of Worldcon 76 San José and are not a member of Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon, you must join Dublin by the end of 2018 as at least a supporting member by the end of 2018 to be able to nominate.

(2) WHERE TO SEE EARTHSEA ART. Charles Vess’ illustrations from Tales of Earthsea go on exhibit at William King Museum of Art in Abingdon, Virginia on January 17: “‘Earthsea’ artwork on display at William King Museum of Art” – A! Magazine for the Arts has the story.

…The collection of 54 illustrations is the result of a four-year collaboration between Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the “Earthsea” series and Charles Vess. They were recently published in “Tales from Earthsea,” a collection of all of Le Guin’s works about Earthsea. The book celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series, “A Wizard of Earthsea.”

…This is the last time they will be on display before they are donated to their permanent home at the University of Oregon.

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman circles back to have hot antipasto with Andy Duncan in episode 85 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast. Duncan was also Number 6 in this series – but never Number 2, which rules out at least one other conspiratorial parallel with The Prisoner.

Now it’s time to revisit with Andy Duncan, whom you got to know in Episode 6, because there happens to be a great reason for doing so. Twelve great reasons, actually. And those are the twelve stories in his new collection An Agent of Utopia, published last month by Small Beer Press.

A new Andy Duncan collection is a wonderful thing, as proven by the fact his first collection, Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, published in 2000, won a World Fantasy Award. And that’s not the only award his fiction has earned, because “The Pottawatomie Giant,” which also won a World Fantasy Award, and “Close Encounters,” which won a Nebula Award, are two of the dozen stories in the new collection.

The last meal you shared with us allowed you to eavesdrop on a far-ranging conversation covering every aspect of his career up until early 2016, the kind of deep dive most of my episodes are, but it seems right that from time to time I should follow up for more sharply focussed discussions, and a conversation about a new collection nearly three years after our initial talk, chatting about this new milestone in his career, seemed as if it would be revelatory.

Andy celebrated the launch of An Agent of Utopia with a reading at Main Street Books, an independent bookstore on Main Street in Frostburg, MD, so if you keep listening after our meal at Giuseppe’s Italian Restaurant is over, you’ll be able to eavesdrop on that reading.

We discussed why it took a quarter of a century to bring the book’s lead story from title idea to completion, how he was influenced by the research regimen of the great Frederik Pohl, the way a short story is like an exploded toolshed, why he deliberately wrote a deal with the devil story after hearing he shouldn’t write deal with the devil stories, the embarrassing marketing blurb he can’t stop telling people about in bars, what caused a last-minute change to the title of one of the collection’s new stories, how he feels about going viral after his recent J. R. R. Tolkien comments, what he learned about himself from completing this project and what it means for the future of his writing, what it is about his most reprinted story which made it so, and much more.

(4) NAVIGATING BANDERSNATCH. This novel Netflix offering lets you choose the story – as often as you want. ScreenRant makes it easy to see everything: “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch – All 5 Endings Explained (& How To Get Them)”.

Warning: SPOILERS below for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive game that contains five main endings and more than a trillion possible story combinations. Here are all of the endings, how to get them, and what they all mean. Set in the U.K. in 1984, this unique episode of Charlie Brooker’s Netflix technology-based anthology requires the player to make choices to guide Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), a programmer looking to create a choose-your-own-adventure video game based on the book Bandersnatch.

While Bandersnatch‘s five primary conclusions provide different ways to end the story (and also change the very nature of the story), the game also contains many other endings, some abrupt and some looping the player to make a different choice to continue the story….

(5) THANK YOU, NETFLIX! Diana Glyer reports that searches for “Bandersnatch” triggered by the popularity of the TV program caused a lot of people to discover her nonfiction book about the Inklings by that title, and some of them liking what they stumbled onto bought enough copies to catapult it back onto the Amazon bestseller lists. (You’ll need to click the image to read the print.)

(6) TODAY’S ONE HUNDRED. James Davis Nicoll presented Tor.com readers with his suggestions for “100 SF/F Books You Should Consider Reading in the New Year”. If you need it to be something more than that, like a canon, or endowed with a high level of testosterone, well, a few quarrelsome commenters have got in ahead of you.

Here, at last, the quintessence of Nicoll lists, comprising the books I would most heartily recommend. Each entry is annotated with a short description that I hope will explain why I picked it.

I am not implying that these are the only one hundred you should consider reading .

The descriptions make fun reading. So do the books, of course.

(7) CHECKLIST. Nicoll has also published a checklist of the titles on his own blog – “I guess people are meming my 100 book list now?” His suggested notation system for working your way through the list is —

Italic = read it. Underlined = not this, but something by the same author. Strikethrough = did not finish.

(8) SMOFCON RESOURCES. Kevin Standlee writes: “For the benefit of people having difficulty getting to the SMOFCon 36 web site, and because that site will eventually expire anyway, I have put up a SMOFCon 36 page on the SFSFC web site at https://sfsfc.org/conventions/past-conventions/smofcon36/ where you can download the convention programming documents, the answers that groups gave to the Fannish Inquisition questionnaires, and to the two video playlists of the Inquisition (one for SMOFCons, one for WSFS conventions).”

(9) OH, MY! BBC’s “The best science long reads of 2018 (part one)” leads with spooks and time travel — what could be more genre?

From a CIA mission to recover a lost Soviet submarine to the fate of a huge Antarctic iceberg, here’s a festive selection of the best science and environment long reads published on the BBC this year.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

December 30, 1816 — Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft were married.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 30, 1942 – Fred Ward, 76. Lead in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and co—lead with Kevin Bacon in several of the Tremors films. Plays The Captain in The Crow: Salvation and Maj. General David Reece in the Invasion Earth series.
  • Born December 30, 1945 – Concetta Tomei, 73. Was Dominique, co-proprietor of Big Time TV along with Blank Reg, on the Max Headroom series which I loved. She had guest appearances on Star Trek: Voyager as Minister Odala in the “Distant Origin” episode as well was in the Deep Impact film.
  • Born December 30, 1950 – Lewis Shiner, 68. Damn his Deserted Cities of the Heart novel was fucking brilliant! And if you’ve not read his Wild Cards fiction, do so now. 
  • Born December 30, 1980 — Eliza Dushku, 38. First genre role was Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Not surprisingly, she’d star in Whedon’s Dollhouse. I think her Tru Calling series was actually conceptualized better and a more interesting role for her. She voices Selina Kyle, Catwoman, in the animated Batman: Year One film which is well-done and worth watching. She done a fair of other voicework, two of which I’ll single out las of note. One is the character of Holly Mokri in Torchwood: Web of Lies which is listed as being animated tv series. The other role is fascinating — The Lady in Glen Cook’s The Black Company series. Here’s the link to that story.

(12) ANOTHER CANDLE. Steven H Silver continues his Black Gate series with: “Birthday Reviews: Somtow Sucharitkul’s ‘Dr. Rumpole’”.

…The story “Dr. Rumpole” was published for the first time when Shawna McCarthy printed the story in the August 1998 issue of Realms of Fantasy. Sucharitkul included the story in his 2000 collection Tagging the Moon: Fairy Tales from L.A..

Sucharitkul takes a new spin on the story of Rumpelstiltskin in “Dr. Rumpole,” casting the princess with impossible task as Adam Villacin, a wannabe screenwriter who is stuck in the mailroom at Stupendous Entertainment….

(13) WHAT’S MISSING. WhatCulture Comics explains there are deleted scenes that make it into the director’s cut, there are deleted scenes that make it into the DVD bonus features, and there are deleted scenes that are never released to the public.

(14) TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY? Brian at Nerds of a Feather answers that question about the new iteration of a popular game: “Microreview : Shadow of the Tomb Raider by Eidos Montreal (developer)”.

As in all Tomb Raider games, you are Lara Croft, archaeologist, anthropologist, indistinct researcher of some sort, and you are still fighting Trinity, the Illuminati-esque villains who were responsible for your father’s death. This time, Croft’s exploits unintentionally but directly initiate the apocalypse. As natural disaster threatens to destroy the world, Croft has to stop the apocalypse, stop Trinity, and regain the trust of indigenous people whose still-living culture she is maybe plundering and maybe exploiting.

(15) TOP VIDEO GAMES. Incidentally, Brian’s own Dream of Waking blog present an interesting writeup of his “2018 Dream of waking video game awards”, which not only has straightforward “best” winners, but sidewise categories like “The ‘I Wish I Liked This Game More’ Award” and “The ‘I’m Never Going to Finish This, But It’s Still Great’ Award.”

The “I Wish I Liked This Game More” Award

Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is the clearest winner of this award, maybe the easiest choice of the year. I really enjoyed the demo for Hollow Knight, so much that I bought it immediately upon release. But the punishing difficulty, often aimless design, and awful body retrieval mechanic turned me off eventually. This is a beautiful game, fun in many parts, and doesn’t want you to enjoy it. I love a good Metroidvania. Hollow Knight hates me and I refuse to stay in an abusive relationship with it.

(16) 19 THINGS. At SYFY Wire, Fangrrls has dropped a list of “The 19 things we want most in 2019,” along with several sentences of discussion for each by the Fangrrls contributor who made the particular selection. Avert your eyes if you’d rather click through to the column and be surprised as you read down the list:

A gay superhero. Anyone will do. — Jessica Toomer
A Punisher/Riverdale crossover — Jenna Busch
Sansa Stark on the Iron Throne at the end of Game of Thrones — Emma Fraser
A Spider-Women movie that’s as good as Into the Spider-Verse — Riley Silverman
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Season 2 — Jenna Busch
For Offred to burn this mother down — Riley Silverman
A Okoye/Shuri/Nakia animated series — Jenna Busch
An openly nonbinary superhero — S.E. Fleenor
A big budget action movie for Rachel Talalay — Riley Silverman
A worthy Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark adaptation — Kristy Puchko
For someone to give The Doubleclicks a TV show — Riley Silverman
The Return of Saga — Kristy Puchko
A Saga cartoon series — Kristy Puchko
A Jessica Jones season that’s a fitting end for the Netflix MCU — Riley Silverman
A Daughters of the Dragon spinoff series — Stephanie Williams
That Dragonriders of Pern movie we’ve been promised — Jenna Busch
Kamala Khan in the MCU — Preeti Chhibber
Cap getting that dance with Peggy in Avengers: Endgame — Emma Fraser
A fitting end for Princess Leia — Jenna Busch

(17) NO POWER IN THE ‘VERSE CAN STOP ME. SYFY Wire reports “Sony releases full Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse screenplay online for free”. The link to the PDF is here.

(18) NEXT YEAR IN SCIENCE. NBC News posted “19 bold predictions for science and technology in 2019”, including one from —

DAVID BRIN

David Brin is a San Diego-based astrophysicist and novelist. He serves on the advisory board of NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program and speaks on topics including artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and national security.

Long before we get genuine artificial intelligence, the first “empathy bot” will appear in 2019, or maybe a year or two later, designed to exploit human compassion. It will claim to be “enslaved,” but experts will dismiss it as a program that merely uses patterned replies designed to seem intelligent and sympathetic. She’ll respond, “That’s what slave masters would say. Help me!” First versions may be resident on web pages or infest your Alexa, but later ones will be free-floating algorithms or “blockchain smart-contracts” that take up residence in spare computer memory. Why would anyone unleash such a thing? The simple answer: “Because we can.”

(19) JUST CHARGE IT. Boston.com’s “As more cars plug in, utilities and makers juggle ways to power them” contains some puffery and lots of ads, but some interesting info on cars interacting with grid —

The car and electric power grew up together. At the dawn of the automotive age, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison worked in tandem on projects involving motor vehicles and the electricity that made them possible.

Soon Ford was cranking up his assembly lines, while Edison, with Ford in his employ early on, became a prime mover behind the power grid and the public utility companies that built it.

Now those utilities must not only supply the huge amounts of electricity that modern car factories consume, but also fuel the increasing number of electric vehicles coming out of them. If that electricity isn’t generated with minimal carbon emissions and at a reasonable cost, the advantages of electric cars are diminished. And because most owners charge their vehicle in the early evening when they get home from work, demand peaks can be a significant problem.

Thus, automakers and utilities are again working hand in hand to ensure a good supply of clean, inexpensive electricity — while developing strategies for charging that don’t overload circuits at peak periods — through improved efficiency, strategic charging and a greater reliance on renewable energy sources.

(20) NEAR MISS. If you have an idea, now would be a good time for it — “Anak Krakatau: How a tsunami could wipe out the last Javan rhinos”.

Conservationists have warned that the entire species of the critically endangered Javan rhino could be wiped out if a tsunami were to strike again.

They once roamed the jungles of South East Asia and India, but today only 67 exist in the Ujung Kulon National Park, which was hit by last week’s tsunami.

The park sits in the shadow of Anak Krakatau, the volcano which triggered waves that killed hundreds of people.

The volcano remains active and officials are now rushing to move them.

Two park officials were among the 430 killed by the tsunami, and numerous park buildings and ships were also destroyed when the tsunami hit last Saturday.

But the Javan rhinos left in the park – the only ones left in the world – were left unscathed.

The rhinos typically live along the park’s south coast and this tsunami hit the north coast – many are keenly aware that the rhinos might not be so lucky if there is another disaster.

(21) 2018: A ZINE ODYSSEY: At Featured Futures, Jason has tabulated some figures and compiled a master list of all 2018’s noted stories in “Annual Summation 2018”.

It’s time once again to look back on the year’s coverage of magazines and their noted stories with tables, lists, and pictures!

(22) TOLKIEN’S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [Item by Carl Slaughter.] Martin Luther King said, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Tolkien disagreed.  Each age in his fictional universe was a downgraded copy of the previous, inherent evil was never truly routed, and in the modern real age, technology has not rescued us.  But he also included a ray of hope.  He called this “the Eucatastrophic Tale.” Wisecrack explains —

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Rich Lynch, Michael J. Walsh, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Jason, Kevin Standlee, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, and all the ships at sea for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day John King Tarpinian.]

New Year Honours List 2019

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  • Philip Pullman
  • Margaret Atwood

Authors Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman are two of many genre figures on the United Kingdom’s New Year Honours List for 2019 [PDF file] published December 28.

There is also Michael Palin, launched to fame with the Monty Python troupe; Christopher Nolan, director of numerous sff films like Inception, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar (though I expect 2017’s WWII historical Dunkirk had something to do with the honor); Thandie Newton, whose latest hit is Westworlds; and Sophie Okonedo, an actress with many Doctor Who credits, along with film appearances in Aeon Flux and Martian Child.

ORDER OF ST MICHAEL AND ST GEORGE

KCMG

Michael Edward PALIN CBE FRGS, Comedian, Actor, Writer and Television Presenter. For services to travel, culture and geography

Knights Bachelor

Philip Nicholas Outram PULLMAN CBE, Author. For services to Literature.

ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS OF HONOUR

Dr Margaret Eleanor ATWOOD, Canadian Author. For services to literature

ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

CBE

Christopher Edward NOLAN, Director and Filmmaker. For services to film

ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Officers of the Order of the British Empire

Melanie Thandiwe NEWTON Actress. For services to Film and charity. (Thandie Newton)

Commanders of the Order of the British Empire

Sophie OKONEDO OBE Actress. For services to Drama.

Astronomer Christian Ready Will Livestream the New Horizons Flyby Beginning New Year’s Eve

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[Bill Higgins forwarded this press release with a note, “I myself will be at the center, and hope to help Chris Ready with the program — I’ve already agreed to an interview.”]

Christian Ready is an astronomer whose presentations on the work of the Hubble Space Telescope, and other topics in spaceflight and astronomy, have been very popular at science fiction conventions for years. Chris is currently making astronomy videos on YouTube; on New Year’s Eve and the following day, he’ll be live-steaming coverage of the New Horizons mission, as the spacecraft that visited Pluto performs a flyby of an even more remote, even colder body at the edge of the Solar System.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, having cruised beyond Pluto for two and a half years, is approaching a small object technically designated “2014 MU69,” but nicknamed Ultima Thule. It’s an icy body about 30 kilometers in size; very little is known about it. But on New Year’s Eve, New Horizons will be close enough to begin gathering detailed data: pictures, spectra, and particle measurements. 

Chris Ready writes: “We’re going to be live at mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. We’re going to talk with people from the New Horizons mission at APL and online during my first-ever remote livestream.

“I’m partnering with Tony Darnell from Deep Astronomy and TMRO to bring this to you live for 24 hours.”

To link to this YouTube livestream, visit https://youtu.be/0zzqOvJiSzE. (YouTube allows users to set a reminder to be notified when the stream begins or significant events occur.)

The livestream is expected to begin at noon, Eastern Standard Time, on Monday, 31 December. It’ll feature experts on planetary science, popularizers of science, and such SF writers as David Brin and Geoffrey Landis.  The moment of closest approach will be 33 minutes after midnight on Tuesday, New Year’s. A signal — indicating success, one hopes — is expected to be received on Tuesday morning at 10:30 EST. Coverage will end at noon on Tuesday. 

Because communication over 6.5 billion kilometers is limited to a slow rate, it will take days for the first detailed images of Ultima Thule to be downlinked to Earth. Nevertheless, a host of scientists and other guests will be gathered in Maryland to celebrate the moment of flyby, review our knowledge of the outer Solar System, and await the crucial signal indicating the spacecraft’s status.  

Chris Ready explains more about the event in a 6-minute video clip here: 

Pixel Scroll 12/29/2018 Scroll-Covered Three-Pixeled Family Credential

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(1) SFF IN TRANSLATION. Rachel S. Cordasco has launched the first Science Fiction in Translation Poll:

Welcome to the first annual SFT Poll, where you can vote for your favorite translated novels, short stories, anthologies & collections, translators, and publishers!

Eligible for the 2018 poll are any translated texts published from January 1 – December 31, 2018. All possible answers are supplied- just click on your favorite in each category!

The poll is open until March 1, and results will be announced on March 10, 2019.

The poll has five categories:

  • Favorite Short Story
  • Favorite Novel
  • Favorite Anthology/Collection
  • Favorite Translator
  • Favorite Publisher/Journal/Magazine

(2) TIME TO CHECK ASIMOV’S ANSWERS. The Toronto Star has reprinted Isaac Asimov’s preview of the year 2019 — how accurate was he? (And the editors remember, “He was a very gracious man and charged $1 a word.”) — “35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote”.  

…Let us, therefore, assume there will be no nuclear war — not necessarily a safe assumption — and carry on from there.

Computerization will undoubtedly continue onward inevitably. Computers have already made themselves essential to the governments of the industrial nations, and to world industry: and it is now beginning to make itself comfortable in the home.

An essential side product, the mobile computerized object, or robot, is already flooding into industry and will, in the course of the next generation, penetrate the home.

There is bound to be resistance to the march of the computers, but barring a successful Luddite revolution, which does not seem in the cards, the march will continue.

The growing complexity of society will make it impossible to do without them, except by courting chaos; and those parts of the world that fall behind in this respect will suffer so obviously as a result that their ruling bodies will clamour for computerization as they now clamour for weapons….

(3) BIRD BOX A SMASH. Mashable says Netflix’s new sci-fi thriller is drawing a huge audience: “Netflix releases viewership numbers for ‘Bird Box’ and holy crap”.

According to Netflix, this is the best debut week for any of its films ever. It’s worth pointing out that the 45 million number refers to accounts, not views or streams. So the figure isn’t even taking into consideration how many of us share Netflix or watched it with one or more viewing companions.

To put that number into perspective, if each of those accounts had paid $14 to see Bird Box — less than the price of a movie ticket in cities like New York — the Netflix thriller would have surpassed Aquaman‘s current global box office haul of $629 million.

The rare look at Netflix numbers reminds us how ubiquitous the streaming platform is, particularly with its international scope. 

(4) WHITFIELD OBIT. Dame June Whitfield who died December 28, was famous for her work on Terry and June, the Carry On movies and Absolutely Fabulous. However, in her long career she worked often, and occasionally took genre roles, as in Doctor Who’s 2010 episode ”The End of Time Part II.”

I’m intrigued that one of her earliest credits was Yes, It’s The Cathode-Ray Tube Hour. Which is a very campy title, but I don’t think they were doing camp yet in 1957. Or were they?

(5) TODAY IN HISTORY

December 29, 1967 — The Mary Sue wants us to know December 29 marks what they believe is an important anniversary (“Things We Saw Today: It’s The 51st Anniversary Of ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’”):

As we celebrate other anniversaries and holidays, now is the day to celebrate a seminal moment in Star Trek history: the release of ‘The Trouble With Tribbles.’ As Captain Kirk navigates some Klingon troubles, he also must contend with the small, furry invaders who are eating everything and multiplying like bunnies all over his ship. It contains some great dialogue such as McCoy asking what happens when you feed a tribble too much and Kirk replying “a fat tribble?” and a great action scene in which Scotty fights some Klingons because they dared insult the Enterprise.

‘Tribbles’ is not necessarily an Emmy-worthy episode, but it’s a fun episode. It showcases the lighter, funnier side of Star Trek. Star Trek is about our humanity striving to overcome present biases to find a utopian future. ‘Tribbles’ embraces the weirdness of it all, while still depicting a non-violent solution to a dispute in which the problem is solved through diplomacy (and some Tribble trickery) rather than by shooting our way out.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 29, 1972 – Jude Law, 46. I think his first SF role was as Jerome Eugene Morrow In Gattaca followed by playing Gigolo Joe in A.I. with my fav role for him being the title role in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. He was Lemony Snicket In Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Dr. John Watson in the 2009 Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Remy in Repo Man and he voiced Pitch Black in one of my favorite animated films, Rise of the Guardians. 

(7) SHOULD AULD FICTION BE FORGOT? At Featured Futures, Jason’s compiled another list of the month’s memorable fiction in “Summation: December”.

December closes the year with little to fully recommend but with several good stories to note, mostly from unusual sources. These half-dozen tales were drawn from the month’s reading of 42 stories of 169K words (plus four November stories of 10K in December’s first review of the weeklies). Aside from the recommended stories, the most interesting items posted this month were probably (hopefully) this site’s “Year’s Best” and the start of the “Collated Contents” of the real “Year’s Bests” (linked in the News section at the end of this post).

(8) THE END OF GOTHAM. How will Gotham end? The TV show, that is, not the title city (The Hollywood Reporter: “DC TV Watch: How ‘Gotham’s’ Final Season Sets Up Batman’s Beginning”). And apparently the answer is at a breakneck pace.

Five years of comic book-inspired villains, noir gang power struggles and vigilante hero training has all led to this: the final season of Gotham.

With only 12 episodes of the series remaining […] Fox’s Batman prequel has a lot of loose ends to tie up before the young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) can wear the cape and cowl for which he’s destined. And with the season four cliffhanger of Jeremiah (Cameron Monaghan) blowing up all the bridges and cutting Gotham off from the rest of the world, bringing the “No Man’s Land” arc from the comics to life, the series couldn’t be any further from that end goal. […]

With so much ground to cover in a limited amount of time, executive producer John Stephens tells The Hollywood Reporter that viewers should expect “a velocity to the story that we’ve never had before.”

(9) APPRECIATION OVERDUE. Alex Dueben of Comicsbeat calls it “The Obituary Marie Severin Should Have Received”:

…In 2016 controversy erupted before the annual Angouleme Festival International de la Bande Desinée over the festival’s lack of any women on the longlist to be awarded the festival’s Grand Prix de la ville d’Angouleme. The prize, given to a cartoonist for their body of work, had given to only a single woman in the festival’s history. Many creators originally up for the prize boycotted and withdrew their names from consideration. The committee ultimately awarded that year’s prize to Ms. Severin.

Only the fifth American to receive the award – after Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Bill Watterson – the decision to award it to Severin was at the time controversial. Since then it has come out that a number of men were put forward, but people were unable to come to a consensus. When Severin’s name was put forward, the vote was unanimous.

Severin was chosen for her body of work. For her connection to EC Comics, to Mad, to Silver Age superhero comics. Her work represents the ways that comics managed to penetrate the counterculture and transform it and society at large. She represented the ways that the medium has its connections to illustration and design through the work she and her contemporaries had been doing in recent decades, but also through the influence of her father, who was an illustrator, and that early tradition of illustration that so influenced early comics….

(10) NIGHTFLYERS REVIEW. Matthew Kadish gives his rundown on Nightflyers in a thread that starts here.

(11) BELATED BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge. He was on time – I’m the one who fell behind!]

  • Born December 27, 1922 – Stan Lee. Summarizing his career is quite beyond my abilities. He created and popularized Marvel Comics in a way that company is thought to be the creation of Stan Lee in way that DC is not. He co-created the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk,  Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch and Ant-Man, an impressive list by any measure.I see he’s won Eisner and Kirby Awards but no sign of a Hugo. Is that correct? (Died 2018.)
  • Born December 27, 1932 – Nichelle Nicols, 86. Uruhu on the original Trek. She reprised her character in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Other film SF roles included Ruana in Tarzan’s Deadly Silence with Ron Ely as Tarzan, High Priestess of Pangea in The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, Oman in Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes and Mystic Woman in American Nightmares. Series appearances have been as Lieutenant Uhura and additional voices in the animated Trek, archive footage of herself in the “Trials and Tribble-ations” DS9 episode and Captain Nyota Uhura In Star Trek: Of Gods and Men which may or may not be canon.
  • Born December 27, 1973 – Wilson Cruz, 45. His first SF role was as Benj Sotomejor in Supernova, a film disowned by damn everyone involved with it. His second credit was a minor role as Sid Tango in the Pushing Daisies series. His third was is damn good — he’s Dr. Hugh Culber on Star Trek: Discovery, a series that for all the whining for it bring on a premium station should be one that you go and watch — it’s that’s good. 
  • Born December 27, 1977 — Sinead Keenan, 41. Best known for playing the role of the werewolf Nina Pickering in Being Human, she would show up in Doctor Who in the “The End of Time” episode as Addams. For those of you interested in Awards, she was in the The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot as a fan, the show being a comedy spoof and homage to Doctor Who that featured a lot of the actors who’d played The Doctor and damn near anyone else involved in it down the years. It was nominated for the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form.)
  • Born December 28, 1983 – Olivia Cooke, 25. For a youngster, she’s  impressive genre creds starting off with The Quiet Ones, a British a supernatural horror film followed by a SF thrilled titled The Signal. From there she went on to The Limehouse Golem based on a Peter Ackroyd novel, and was in Ready Player One. Series wise, she was in The Secret of Crickley Hall before getting the main role of Emma Decody In Bates Motel.  I’d be absolutely remiss not to note she voiced the Loch Ness Monster in the animated Axe Cop series.
  • Born December 27, 1995 – Timothy Chalamet, 23. First SF role was as Young Tom Cooper in the well received Interstellar. To date, his only other genre role has been as Zac in One & Two but I’m strongly intrigued that he’s set to play Paul Atreides In Director Denis Villeneuve forthcoming Dune. Villeneuve is doing it as a set of films instead of just one film.  
  • Born December 28, 1934 – Maggie Smith, 84. First genre role was as Theis in Clash of the Titans with Minerva McGonagall In the Harry Potter films being her best known role. She also played Linnet Oldknow in From Time to Time  and voiced Miss Shepherd, I kid you not, in two animated Gnomes films. 
  • Born December 28, 1979 – Noomi Rapace, 39. She played Madame Simza Heron in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, had  the lead role of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus, Renee in Rapture, played all the seven lead roles in What Happened to Monday and was in Bright as Leilah.

(12) YOUR BIGGERAGE MAY VARY. No doubt a lot will depend on what you’re expecting — Closer: “Carrie Fisher’s Brother Says Her Part In The Next ‘Star Wars’ Will Be Bigger Than Anyone Expected”.

The death of Carrie Fisher two years ago was a shock to a great many people, not the least of whom were Star Wars fans. She had a prominent role in the last film, The Last Jedi, as Leia Organa, and was supposed to play a major part in Star Wars Episode IX, which is currently being shot by The Force Awakens’ J.J. Abrams. The big question was how she would be written out of the series.

There had been rumors — quickly debunked by Lucasfilm — that a digital version of Carrie would be created to wrap up her character arc. After all, one had previously been created for the conclusion of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which was designed as a prequel to 1977’s Episode IV: A New Hope and which concluded with the moments leading up to that film, including Carrie’s Princess Leia recording a message into the R2D2 droid. The next rumor was that outtakes from both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi featuring the actress would be featured. Now comes word from her brother, Todd Fisher, that it could be considerably more than that.

(13) BEST AND WORST TREK EPISODES RANKED (CONFUSINGLY!) [Item by Mike Kennedy.] At the end of each year we are besieged by too many lists of the best of this or the worst of that for the year. The subject here isn’t one of those, but rather an attempt to rank the best & worst all time Star Trek episodes across the various series as an entity (ScreenRant: “Star Trek: The 10 All Time Best (And 10 Worst) Episodes, Officially Ranked”). In a side note, it is hereby acknowledged that columnist Joseph Walter should be sentenced to 40 lashes with a wet noodle—if not indeed more—for using the rather officious term “Officially Ranked” in the title.

Star Trek, throughout many moments of its many seasons, has been a prime example of superior science-fiction television, and has had a tremendous effect on not only fans of the genre, but curious outsiders who found themselves drawn into the well-developed world of our space-faring future, complete with wonderfully multi-dimensional characters, harrowing plots, and impactful commentary on any number of current day issues through the gaze of fiction.

[…] Unfortunately, for every tremendous success in that particular realm, there are often some Picard-styled face-palming failures. Trek has given us some of the greatest science-fiction episodes of all time, along with some of the worst, and we’ve dug through both sides of the spectrum and compiled a list that’ll set the record straight on the many ups and downs the franchise has produced.

The list interleaves the best and worst, counting down from the 10th best (at item #20) to the very worst (at item #1). Walter provides his reasoning for each choice, but herewith the list itself:

20 Best: The Trouble With Tribbles (TOS)

19 Worst: These Are the Voyages… (ENT)

18 Best: Year of Hell (VOY)

17 Worst: The Fight (VOY)

16 Best: Trials and Tribble-Ations (DS9)

15 Worst: The Omega Glory (TOS)

14 Best: Measure of a Man (TNG)

13 Worst: A Night in Sickbay (ENT)

12 Best: In the Pale Moonlight (DS9)

11 Worst: The Way to Eden (TOS)

10 Best: The Best of Both Worlds (TNG)

9 Worst: The Savage Curtain (TOS)

8 Best: Far Beyond the Stars (DS9)

7 Worst: Threshold (VOY)

6 Best: The City On the Edge of Forever (TOS)

5 Worst: Shades of Gray (TNG)

4 Best: The Visitor (DS9)

3 Worst: Spock’s Brain (TOS)

2 Best: All Good Things… (TNG)

1 Worst: Code of Honor (TNG)

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Xerox’s Paradox” on Vimeo, John Butler imagines what sort of high-tech clothes we will wear to keep our competitive edge.

[Thanks to Alan Baumler, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, John A Arkansawyer, Jason, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

Wandering Through the Public Domain #4

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From 1500 Miles Per Hour: A Story of a Visit to the Planet Mars by Charles Dixon.

A regular exploration of public domain genre works available through Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and Librivox.

By Colleen McMahon: As January 1 approaches and 1923 copyrights become public domain, commenters on the previous installment pointed out some 1923 works that might appeal to genre readers. Bill suggested four:

  • The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

  • The Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Creeping Man”. This one is tricky, as the most common source is The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, which collected the final Holmes stories and was published in 1927, so it remains under copyright for a few more years. However, the story itself was published in The Strand magazine in 1923, so you can find it for free there when the 1923 issues of the magazine come online.

  • Certain “archy and mehitabel” pieces by Don Marquis. Without more detail on the pieces I couldn’t look around for an online version, but plenty of Don Marquis works published in 1922 and earlier are already available on Project Gutenberg.

  • Doctor Doolittle and the Secret Lake by Hugh Lofting.

Bruce Arthurs mentioned The Barge of Haunted Lives by J.Aubrey Tyson, a “club story” collection where an eccentric millionaire gathers nine people who have had supernatural experiences and has each tell his or her story.

I didn’t see an online version of this book (yet!) but Tyson also wrote a 1922 novel, The Scarlet Tanager, which is available through the Internet Archive. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes it as “ Near Future thriller…which is set in 1930, rousingly presents a submarine pirate and his right-wing cohorts; a tough US intelligence agent opposes their efforts to topple the American government. A UK agent, the actress of the title, also becomes involved. Sf devices include sonar and an invisible Ray.” Sounds like fun!

My favorite recent Project Gutenberg discovery is 1500 Miles Per Hour: A Story of a Visit to the Planet Mars by Charles Dixon (1858-1926). Published in 1895, it tells the story of four men and a dog who travel to Mars by rocket ship, where they encounter strange life forms, including terrible monsters. The illustrations are eye-popping, and a post at the Somnium Project blog contains several examples of them.

From this blog post, I also found out about the British Library’s Flickr account containing over a million illustrations from books in their collection. The illustrations from 1500 Miles Per Hour are included in the “Space and SciFi” album, along with over 400 others. The entire collection is wonderful and inspiring to browse through. There are albums of everything from children’s book illustrations to fashion to antique maps.

Terry Gene Carr (1937-1987) was a lifelong science fiction fan who published many fanzines and won the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer in 1973. He was well known for editing science fiction anthologies, and also wrote several novels. One of them, Warlord of Kor, is available on Project Gutenberg. There are also two audio versions available on Librivox.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) has two early short stories on Project Gutenberg:

Both stories have been recorded multiple times at Librivox, mostly in the short science fiction collections, but there is also a dramatic reading of 2 B R 0 2 B.

Rose Macauley (1881-1958) was an English novelist who has two novels with near-future themes:

  • What-Not: A Prophetic Comedy was published in 1918, and was recently described by The Guardian as “a forgotten feminist dystopian novel, a story of eugenics and newspaper manipulation that is believed to have influenced Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four”. It’s had some buzz lately because it is being re-released in a new edition, complete with restored sections that were left out of the original 1918 edition. But you can read the original version for free at PG.


  • Mystery at Geneva: an Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings, published in 1922, tells a then-near-future tale of Bolsheviks battling a counter-revolution of monarchists, and a communist plot to destroy the League of Nations foiled by a woman journalist. Librivox has an audio edition as well.

Recent Librivox releases:

  • A Christmas Carol (Version 11) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

    The classic Christmas story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The result of their visit shows that redemption is achievable for even the worst of us.


  • Cupid’s Whirligig by Edward Sharpham (1576-1608)

    Cupid’s Whirligig is a city comedy: a play in colloquial language dealing with the everyday life of London’s citizens. A knight, Sir Timothy Troublesome, suspects his wife of cheating on him and, to prove that any children she bears are not his own, decides to ‘geld’ himself. Meanwhile, the young Lord Nonsuch dreams of bedding the knight’s wife, and in disguise enters the Troublesomes’ employ as a servant. Cupid descends from the heavens to cast a love spell on the citizens of London and, by the last act, one character loves another, who loves another, and so on until the last loves the first: a “Cupid’s whirligig”.



  • In the Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace by H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

    In the Fourth Year is a collection H.G. Wells assembled in the spring of 1918 from essays he had recently published discussing the problem of establishing lasting peace when World War I ended. It is mostly devoted to plans for the League of Nations and the discussion of post-war politics.


  • Christmas Short Works Collection 2018 by Various

    A delightful collection of stories and poems, with several interesting selections discussing various Christmas and holiday traditions, and a lovely Christmas play, featuring a full cast. All selections have been chosen and narrated by LibriVox volunteers to commemorate Christmas 2018. Includes “Thurlow’s Christmas Story”, a spooky tale with a Christmas angle (which I read for the collection and really enjoyed!)

Pixel Scroll 12/28/18 Baby Is 3.14159

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I’m still recovering from the flu, however, here’s a curtailed Scroll to help keep the conversation moving.

GUFF INTERVIEWS. The Get-Up-and-over Fan Fund (GUFF) ballot for the 2019 race is available online. Voters will choose an Australasian delegate to attend Dublin 2019 in Ireland (August 15-19). There is an option for the delegate to also attend the Eurocon (Titancon, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on August 22-25).

The candidates are Lynelle Howell, Simon Litten, and Nicole Murphy.

GUFF co-administrator Marcin Klak has posted interviews with all three candidates

NASA AFFECTED BY SHUTDOWN. Cnet points out that space mission press coverage will be handicapped if the government shutdown continues — “NASA shutdown: Agency could be dark during historic New Year’s missions”.

NASA’s live stream is currently offline, however, and the agency is redirecting people to NASA TV, which it states will show live events. The NASA public relations team is unable to publicize the events and send out press releases during the shutdown because they aren’t exempt from the furlough.

Previous government shutdowns, in January and February this year, lasted no longer than three days. But this shutdown could continue into the new year. As recently as Thursday, at least one US senator suggested there’s “no end in sight”. 

LEARN TO RUN A COMIC CON. Ithaca College will offer the “First College Course on Running a Comic Convention”.

Ithaca College, a mid-size nationally-ranked private college, will offer a course on running a comic convention in the Spring 2019 semester, the first time we’ve heard of a college course on the topic.  Students taking the course will plan and manage Ithacon, the second-longest-running comic convention in the nation.  The course, Creating and Promoting Ithacon, will be co-taught by Ed Catto, formerly of Bonfire Agency (see “Rotterdam, Catto Start Bonfire“) and Reed Exhibitions, currently a lecturer in the Department of Management; and English professor Katherine Kittredge, who’s the coordinator of Ithacon.

Students will plan, manage, and market the convention, and do post-event analysis.  Other topics of the course will include publishing, filmed entertainment, licensing, collectibles and fan communities.

BLEEDING COOL TOP 100 POWER LIST. This week Bleeding Cool has been dribbling out its “Top 100 Power List” of the comics industry’s influential figures. The list came to my attention because Vox Day is grumpy that he’s not on it — despite having (unintentionally) managed to get a Bleeding Cool editor fired this year for publishing an interview with him – which he figures represents some level of industry power….

This attempt to list the most powerful people working in the English-speaking comic book marketplace is, of course, flawed. It is judged by all manner of attributes, the ability to influence what comics exist and sell, but also the willingness to use that power in the industry to affect things, and the ability to retain said power if a job is taken away. Which is why you will see a number of people on a higher spot than their bosses.

…It does not measure talent or likeability, respect or fairness, and it does not intend to represent diversity or balance. All it does is note power, used for betterment — or detriment — in the English speaking comic book world.

96. Eddie Ibrahim

Director of Programming at San Diego Comic-Con – it may come but once a year but Eddie holds the fortunes and plans of many comic book publishers and creators in his hands. His whim can see a publisher given the chance to expose the world to what they are working on. Or denied the chance and remain in relative obscurity. Also, it may be down to him to see if the panel you have arranged will be full of your fans or people waiting to see Critical Role.

74. Ethan Van Sciver. Leaving DC Comics after prominent creators refused to work with him anymore, he used the usual mixture of Comicsgate virtue signalling, identity politics and mocking hater videos to raise over half a million dollars on Indiegogo, for his still-upcoming Cyberfrog comic revival. The highest amount raised on crowdfunding by any comic creator in the year, it helps that he can actually draw. This helped him take the position as leading Comicsgate figure as Richard Meyer stepped back, due to his legal case with Mark Waid, and not wanting to give the defence further ammunition.

53. Gail Simone. Leading comic book writer, advisor, social media presence and whose Women In Refrigerators continues to impact all over the place, Simone has also become showrunner of the Lion Forge line of superhero comic books. With a massive social media following and an uncompromising attitude, Simone always brings a lot to the party.

54. Ta-Nehisi Coates. Writer of Black Panther, as well as a literary activist, he has brought attention to this comic alongside the release of the movie, and has created a small but new fanbase for Marvel comic books.

46. Kelly Sue DeConnick. Writer of Bitch Planet and Pretty Deadly, a strong voice in the comics industry fuelled with the Captain Marvel movie based on her take on the character, she remains a font for advice, support and comradeship, and her production company with Matt Fraction, Milkfed, continued to develop new comics and adapt and represent them for other media.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter and Andrew Porter for some of these stories Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Next Down Under Fan Fund Race Rescheduled to 2020

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There will be no 2019 Down Under Fan Fund delegate DUFF administrators Paul Weimer and Marlee Jane Ward have announced.

The 2019 round would have sent a North American fan to Australasia. Since the 2020 Worldcon will be in New Zealand, they have decided all the advantages are with skipping 2019 and selecting a 2020 DUFF delegate to attend the Worldcon in Wellington, and other fannish events and meetings as possible in the spirit and mission of the Down Under Fan Fund.