Graham Connor (1957-2018)

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Mike Glyer

By Jonathan Cowie: SF Concatenation’s co-editor, SF fan and my close friend for over four decades, Graham Connor has died.

This is the mini-obit we will be using in the next edition:

Graham Connor, the British physicist and SF fan, has died aged 61. He graduated only with a 2:1 as – not only was this decades before university funding privatisation and its grade inflation – his lecturers said that they did not give firsts to students who never attended their lectures in the final year; though arguably this was another reason he should have received a first. As a result, he had a career in aerospace building communication satellites: it was not rocket science (well it was) and not the career researching gravity he wanted, his physics passion. If ever you have made an international phone call in Europe, then most likely your signal will have gone through a microwave guide designed by Graham onboard the communications satellite. But before that, and since, Graham was an SF enthusiast. He entered fandom, while a student, in 1976. He was a runner-up at the Unicon 1 short story competition (claiming he should have won) and won the short story competition at Unicon 2 (claiming he should have come second against what he considered another’s more worthy story). He was on the committee of a couple of the Hatfield PSFIFA Shoestring cons (now rebranded as Hertfordshire University PSIFA). He was one of the film projectionists for the London area BECCONs of the 1980s and the BECCON Eastercon in 1987. That was the convention that SF² Concatenation was launched with Graham as co-editor: he was the issue editor of its 1989 paper edition. His last major contribution to SF² Concatenation was the creation of the now-running series of articles by scientists who are SF authors on their favourite scientists. He was a regular at Eastercons in the late 1970s though to the 1990s. He attended other conventions including the 1979, 1987, 1990 and 1995 Worldcons and the non-British 1994 Eurocon. In the mid-1990s he began attending Manchester’s Festival of Fantastic Films (founded by a friend of SF² Concatenation, the late Harry Nadler) and attended the Fest most years through to the late 2000s. Following an episode, ill health prevented his attending conventions after 2008. For the past few years, a few old PSIFAns met regularly near his home for a reunion, as did the past couple of years the former BECCON team, and these gave him a convention fan bar experience. We really had hoped for more time with him.

Graham in 1982.
Jonathan and Graham in 2017

2018 Novellapalooza

Posted on December 28, 2018 by JJ

[Editor’s note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]

By JJ: I’m a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last few years, I’ve done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015, 35 of the novellas published in 2016, and 46 of the novellas published in 2017 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).

The result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza and the 2017 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I’m doing it again this year.

The success and popularity of novellas in the last 4 years seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Tor.com, Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, Book Smugglers, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Tachyon bringing out a multitude of works, along with the traditional magazines Asimov’s, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. By necessity, I’ve gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis being of interest to me.

It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book which sounds as though it will be up my alley and to discover that, actually, the book doesn’t really do much for me.

Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn’t, stories I didn’t expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers’ thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?

I’ve included plot summaries, and where I could find them, links to either excerpts or the full stories which can be read online for free. Short novels which fall between 40,000 and 48,000 words (within the Hugo Novella category tolerance) have been included.

Please feel free to post comments about any other 2018 novellas which you’ve read, as well.

(Please be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

(fair notice: all Amazon links are referrer URLs which benefit non-profit SFF fan website Worlds Without End)

Witchy-witchy-witchy

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Mike Glyer

Theodore Sturgeon in 1976. Photo by Carol De Priest.

By John Hertz: (reprinted from Vanamonde 1333) It’s the centennial year of Theodore Sturgeon. Let us salute him.

He left seven novels, one published posthumously; two hundred shorter stories, republished in two dozen collections, then fully in The Complete Stories, thirteen volumes 1995-2010, a labor of love – I use the word deliberately – by Paul Williams, Debbie Notkin, Noël Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, and a host of others.

Hundreds of book reviews, for Galaxy, Venture, Twilight Zone, National Review, The New York Times, and Hustler while Paul Krassner was editor, are so far uncollected.

The sounds above open “The Man Who Lost the Sea” (1959), title tale of Complete Stories vol. 10, whose editor found it apparently the first science fiction chosen for The Best American Short Stories (i.e. 1960).

Best was edited 1941-1977 by Martha Foley (1897-1977), whose magazine Story had introduced J.D. Salinger, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, and in 1938 gave first prize to Richard Wright; Best had previously introduced Sherwood Anderson, Edna Ferber, Ernest Hemingway; Foley’s own first story, published in the Boston Girls’ Latin School magazine, was “Jabberwock”.

An Ellison story was in the 1993 Best (“The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore”; the oceanic coincidence does not seem substantive, although Robert Bloch, who like Ellison was both a fan and a pro, said Ellison was the only living organism he knew whose natural habitat was hot water).

Ellison wrote the foreword to Collected Stories 11, which volume includes one they co-authored (see Partners in Wonder, 1983), a Western co-authored with Don Ward, two from mystery-fiction magazines, and one from Sports Illustrated.

In 1952 Sturgeon said a good science fiction story was one “built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content”. That was before “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff” (1955) – which one of our finest editors, Anthony Boucher, put into one of our finest anthologies, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction (vol. 1, 1959). Come to think of it –

In theory science fiction and fantasy are distinct. In practice – well, I don’t want to decide whether, say, “Seasoning” (1981), which I apparently rate higher than the editor of Collected Stories 13, is science fiction or fantasy, or in what sense we are to suppose the two characters know what is happening at all.

“Yesterday Was Monday” (1941) must be fantasy. But another of our finest editors, Groff Conklin, chose it to open another of our finest anthologies, Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension (1953). It’s been translated into Dutch, Finnish, French, German, and Japanese, and reprinted two dozen times. Its protagonist, and other characters, don’t know what’s happening.

In “The Skills of Xanadu” (1956), another candidate for Sturgeon’s best, the protagonist doesn’t know what’s happening. Everybody else knows.

The title character of “The Comedian’s Children” (1958) – another candidate – is the only one who does know what’s happening. If the protagonist of a story is the one who changes, that may be Nobel Prize scientist Iris Barran; she finds out. This is a transformation story. We transform. There is a bad guy. If his immense talent were not genuine, there would be no story. Is he sympathetic? Well –

Sturgeon also said Science fiction is knowledge fiction. If the best puns resonate in each meaning, this is one of our best. Consider the Latin root of science.

Robert Heinlein (Collected Stories 3, p. 367; from his 1985 introduction to Godbody): “Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word was the difference between lightning and lightning bug. Sturgeon did not deal in lightning bugs.”

Isaac Asimov (v. 3, p. xi): “He had a delicacy of touch that I couldn’t duplicate if my fingers were feathers.” Connie Willis (vol. 12, p. ix): “he was writing about different things…. problematic, dangerous … ultimately tragic…. in a simple … style…. Like Fred Astaire, Theodore Sturgeon made it look easy.”

Samuel Delany (v. 2, p. x): “The range of Sturgeon’s work is a … galaxy of … dazzling and precise lights shining out against … ordinary rhetoric…. the single most important science fiction writer during the years of his major output – the forties, fifties, and sixties.”

Ellison (v. 11, p. xiii): “He could squeeze your heart till your life ached.”

Horace (The Art of Poetry, l. 143 – two millennia ago): “His thought is not to give flame first and then smoke, but from smoke to let light break out.”

Sturgeon became fond of Ask the next question, and used as an emblem a Q with an arrow through it. I never asked him about Ask the previous question.

Pixel Scroll 12/26/18 And The Fur Suit Of Happiness

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW BUJOLD NOVELLA ON THE WAY. Bujold announced it on Goodreads — a “new Lakerwalker novella impending”.

…I am pleased to report that I have finished the first draft of a new novella in the world of The Sharing Knife. Functionally a novella, anyway; its length, at the moment, is a tad over 49,000 words, so it’s technically a short novel. This falls in an odd limbo in categorization — the official cap for a novella is 40k or 45k words, but the minimum contractual length for a commercially published novel is usually 100k. (It was 80k back when I started, but word-count inflation has occurred since then.) Since it’s headed for original e-publication, I don’t have to care, so the main concern is to label it so readers won’t charge in expecting something twice as long.

The working title was “Barr & Lily”, which is also its subject matter, being a sort of slice-of-Lakewalker-life character study. However, that won’t do for the final, since it sounds a bit too much like the name of a tea company. The current front-runner is “Knife Children”, but I’m not sure yet if that is going to stick.

It takes place about a dozen years after the events of the tetralogy, but should be perfectly readable as a stand-alone. (Old readers will gratify me if they can refrain from fending off potential new readers by telling them they have to read four other books first.)…

(2) 9W HIATUS. On December 22, London’s Nine Worlds convention governance committee made a response to some recent critical tweets, and acknowledged there will be no 9W in 2019. Thread starts here.

We have decided that rather than scramble to pull together a sub-par event for 2019 from scratch while also getting a new team set up, we would rather focus our efforts on sorting out Nine Worlds as a whole and bring you an improved event in 2020.
— Nine Worlds 2018 (@London_Geekfest) December 22, 2018

(3) WHATEVER’S NUMBERS. While John Scalzi’s annual statistical roundup shows it’s getting very hard to measure anyone’s social media reach, I still read these breakdowns in rapt fascination: “Top Whatever Posts and Social Media Stats, 2018”.

Every year I post stats on traffic for Whatever, and every year it gets harder to see how it accurately reflects my actual readership, because of the way people read things I post here. Bluntly, relatively few people visit the site directly at this point in time — As of this moment, for 2018, Whatever has had 2.82 million direct visits in 2018, down from last year’s 4.1 million, and substantially down from the 2012 high of 8.16 million. At the same time, Whatever has 30k+ followers through WordPress and email, another 10k+ on Feedly and other RSS aggregators, a few thousand though social media feeds, and there an unknown number of people reading the site’s content on mobile, through AMP versions of the site. None of those impressions/reads get tracked through the WordPress stats suite.

(4) SANS SERIF FACTOR THREE, MR. SULU. Hyperallergenic contends that “Many Stories Are Told Through the Typography in Science Fiction Films”.

In film, there is a shorthand for the future, the typeface Eurostile Bold Extended. It appears on the interface screens of the time-traveling Delorean in Back to the Future (1985), and in the logo of Lunar Industries at the lonely lunar station in Moon (2009). It adorns the exterior of the USS Enterprise starship in the Star Trek franchise, and the Federal Colonies intergalactic megacorporation branding in Total Recall (1990). It gives both the Battlestar Galactica series title and the credits of District 9 (2009) an ultramodern tone.
As blogger and designer Dave Addey explains in his new book Typeset in the Future, out now from Abrams, he first noticed the ubiquity of the typeface in 2013.

(5) THE YEAR IN SCIENCE. BBC picked its “Ten big science stories of 2018”. Second on the list —

The earliest animals
The one-million-plus animal species alive today are staggeringly diverse, from the giant oceanic blue whale to the wriggly earthworms beneath our feet. But their early evolution from single-celled ancestors remains shrouded in mystery.
In the hunt for the earliest animal life, much attention has been focused on a group of enigmatic life forms – known as the “Ediacaran biota” – from more than 500 million years ago. These were some of the first complex organisms to appear on Earth.
But their position on the tree of life is difficult decipher. These curious creatures have been variously categorised as lichens, fungi, and even as a halfway house between plants and animals.
In September, scientists were able to extract molecules of cholesterol from a fossilised Ediacaran life form called Dickinsonia, which resembled a flat jellyfish. Cholesterol is one of the molecular hallmarks of animal life, clearly demonstrating that the Ediacaran biota were animals.

(6) THE SIGN OF THE ZERO. A.V. Club is impressed, in a negative sort of way: “Holmes & Watson crack the case of the 0 percent Rotten Tomatoes score”.

Entering into a robust fraternity of cinematic triumphs that includes such highlights as Gotti and Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s new comedy Holmes & Watson has joined the storied pantheon of movies rocking a 0 percent “rotten” score on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. For those unfamiliar with the site’s system, that means that not a single one of the 15 critics currently being polled for the film’s merits have said it’s even marginally worth the 89 minutes of your life it would take to watch, making this a real anti-Paddington 2 situation.

(7) DOA ON BAKER STREET. Here’s The Hollywood Reporter’s contribution to the funeral cortege: “‘Holmes & Watson’: Film Review”.

You can feel the flop sweat emanating from the third onscreen pairing of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Making their previous vehicles Step Brothers and Talladega Nights seem the height of comic sophistication by comparison, Holmes & Watson features the duo parodying Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous characters to devastatingly unfunny effect. Numerous talented British thespians are wasted in supporting roles in this Christmas turkey that, not surprisingly, wasn’t screened in advance for critics. Although making them troop out to theaters Christmas morning is something of which even Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t have approved.

(8) EISENBERG OBIT. Scientist and sff author Larry Eisenberg achieved his greatest fame writing limericks in comments to the online New York Times over the past decade: “Larry Eisenberg, 99, Dead; His Limericks Were Very Well Read”. Eisenberg died December 25 from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.

Dr. Eisenberg joined Rockefeller University in 1958 and later became a director of its electronics laboratory. Early in his tenure at Rockefeller, he helped develop a transistorized, battery-operated cardiac pacemaker, which was considered a vast improvement over the wire-laden earlier models. He taught at the university until 2000.

As a science-fiction writer, Dr. Eisenberg was best known for his short story “What Happened to Auguste Clarot?” The comic tale of a disappearing Parisian scientist, it was published in “Dangerous Visions” (1967), the noted anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.

He was also known for his stories featuring Prof. Emmett Duckworth, an amiably hapless Nobel Prize-winning scientist. (Duckworth’s inventions include an intensely addictive aphrodisiac containing 150,000 calories per ounce.)

…In a 2011 feature, Dr. Eisenberg was asked by The 6th Floor, a Times Magazine blog, to supply a brief biographical summary for readers. He replied — a mere 20 minutes later — in the form he knew best:

A nonagenarian, I,
A sometime writer of sci-fi,
Biomed engineer,
Gen’rally of good cheer,
With lim’ricks in ready supply.

(9) ISAACS OBIT. Boston area conrunning fan Fred Isaacs died December 26 after a long battle with COPD. Just a few items from his extensive resume — he chaired Boskone 9 (1972), and was co-inventor of the concourse format of organizing exhibits and fan tables for the 1989 Worldcon, which was frequently emulated by later Worldcons.

(10) GRAU OBIT. Jorge Grau (1930-2018): Spanish screenwriter and director, reportedly died today, aged 88. Best known for the horror film The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974, aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie). Also directed The Legend of Blood Castle (1973, aka The Female Butcher) and Violent Blood Bath (1974).

(11) MOSIMAN OBIT. Billie Sue Mosiman (1947-2018) has died. She had her first fiction published in the 1980s, and went on to become an Edgar nominee for her novel Night Cruise and a Stoker nominee for Widow. She authored eight suspense novels and more than 150 short stories, and coedited six anthologies.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 26, 1911 – Milton Luros. Illustrator during the Golden Age of pulp magazines from 1942 to 1954 (yes I’ve expansive on what I consider to be to the Golden Age). His work graced Science Fiction Quarterly, Astounding Stories, Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, Future Science Fiction Stories, Dynamic Science Fiction and Science Fiction Quarterly. He had an amazing ability to illustrate women in outfits in hostile environments that simply were impractical such as one for Science Fiction Quarterly (UK), October 1952 cover had a cut out in her spacesuit so her décolletage was bare. (Died 1999.)
Born December 26, 1930 – Donald Moffat. Yes he just passed on several days ago but his Birthday is today so he gets written up. Yes The Thing indeed was first SF undertaking followed by License to Kill, The Terminal Man, Exo-Man, Monster in the Closet and Earthquake films, plus The Twilight Zone and Six Million Dollar Man series. (Died 2018.)
Born December 26, 1961 – Tahnee Welch, 57. Daughter of Raquel Welch, she has shows up in Cocoon and Cocoon: The Return; also in Sleeping Beauty, Johnny 2.0 and Black Light. She also appears in a SF video game called Ripper that took place in 2040 NYC and uses Jack as the basis for the plot there.
Born December 26, 1974 – Danielle Cormack, 44. Performer of New Zealander status so you can guess what that means — Ephiny on Xena: Warrior Princess, a one shot as Lady Marie DeValle on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Ephiny on the same series, Katherine on Jack of All Trades (which I’ve mentioned before was one of Kage Baker’s fav shows), Raina on Cleopatra 2525 and Shota on the Legend of the Seeker. Genre television has been very, very good for the New Zealand economy!
Born December 26, 1986 – Kit Harington, 32. Jon Snow on Game of Thornes of course but also voiced the Eret character in the How to Train Your Dragon films, a considerably lighter affair I’d say. Also played Bill Bradley in Seventh Son and is voicing Sir Gadabout In Zog, yet another dragon-centred film, I gather.
Born December 26, 1960 – Temuera Morrison, 58. New Zealand performer known for being Jango Fett in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (and Commander Cody in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. He also voiced the clone troopers in both films. He is also voiced Chief Tui, the father of the title character in Disney’s Moana, and for playing Arthur Curry’s father in Aquaman.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

XKCD on feathered dinosaurs.

(14) SOMEDAY MY PRINTS WILL COME. Io9 has a cool décor suggestion: “Hang Iconic Doctor Who Moments on Your Wall With These Fantastic Framed Prints”.

Over the past few months, Classic Stills has been capturing high-res moments from genre faves like Jurassic Park and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as artsy prints you can frame on your wall. Now, it’s turning its hand to TV, in the form of another genre icon: 55 years of Doctor Who’s adventures in time and space….

(15) DO YOU PREFER LEINSTER OR JENKINS? Now’s your chance to find out. Murray Leinster’s daughter recently put together a short collection of mainstream short stories published under his real name of Will F. Jenkins which was, as Bruce D. Arthurs notes, was “Apparently the actual majority, and bread-and-butter, of his writing career.” Intro by Michael Swanwick. Available on Amazon. Link to Swanwick’s blog post: “The Mainstream Murray Leinster”.

…In a career that began in 1913 and ended with his death in 1975, Jenkins published some 1,800 stories in more than 150 periodicals, as well as 74 novels and collections. Only a small part of his output was science fiction — and that was written over the horrified objections of his agent. (SF didn’t pay as well as the slicks, which were his usual markets.) But Jenkins loved science and wrote science fiction for the fun of it, utilizing the Leinster pen name to protect his other fiction….

(16) SUCCESSFUL DEMONSTRATION. NPR asks “What’s Next For Tiny Satellites?” but doesn’t really have much of an answer yet.

On Nov. 26, as the probe known as InSight plummeted through the Martian atmosphere on its way to the planet’s surface, two miniature spacecraft — known collectively as MarCO — relayed telemetry from InSight to Earth, assuring all those watching that the landing of the probe was proceeding successfully and was soft.

In the past, spacecraft were only able to transmit back to Earth simple tones during a landing. Those tones would change for major milestones, such as parachute deployment, the firing of landing rockets or touchdown.
This time, as InSight team member Christine Szalai called out altitudes from the control room in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, she was reading off actual data from InSight’s onboard radar. It was live play-by-play, bearing in mind that the radio signal from Mars took approximately eight minutes to reach Earth.
… After its relay mission was over, the MarCOs sailed past Mars; they’ll go into orbit around the sun. Marinan says the research team on Earth will check in on the cubesats from time to time, just to see how long they last.

(17) I’VE SEEN THAT FACE BEFORE. A crossover comic brings together two characters played by actor Bruce Campbell: “Interview: Scott Duvall on How Ash Meets Bubba Ho-Tep in Dynamite’s New Army of Darkness Crossover”.

Worlds collide this February when Ash meets Elvis and a foul-mouthed mummy in Dynamite’s latest crossover Army of Darkness vs. Bubba Ho-Tep. The four-issue mini-series not only brings together two beloved cult classics, it also pits Bruce Campbell’s infamous character against another of his best personas (the actor played Ash in the Evil Dead series as well as Elvis Presley in Bubba Ho-Tep in 2002).
Written by Scott Duvall (They Called Us Enemy, Heavy Metal) and with art by Vincenzo Federici (Grimm Fairy Tales), the story follows Ash on a road trip through Texas in search of Elvis, who is rumored to be alive and taking down evil mummies. With a time-traveling Elvis jumpsuit and a new evil Book of the Dead, Ash must then come face to face with Bubba Ho-Tep, the soul-sucking mummy.

(18) THIS SCEPTRED ISLE. For those of us beyond the range of Her Majesty’s broadcast, Camestros Felapton helpfully supplies a transcript: “And now a message from the Queen to her commonwealth”.

When the creatures of the void break through the veil of cosmogyny and come to rend your essence from your bones and then marke sport with your skeleton while your howling soul looks on, to whom would you turn? Your milquetoast post-modernist professors? Your “Jeremiah Corbills”? Your “republicans” and constitutional reformers?
Or instead will you turn to a family that are the heirs to Boudicca, King Arthur, William the Conqueror, or my namesake Glorianna herself Elizabeth the First?

(19) TRANSFORMATIVE MURDERBOTS. Meredith advised:

For those who may not be aware: Transformative works fandom has a yearly secret santa gift exchange called Yuletide where people write small-fandom fanfiction for each other, and book fandoms usually make quite a good showing. This year’s collection can be found here.
(It’s also one of several fannish endeavours founded by Astolat, who also writes some really excellent and Hugo-nominated books when she’s not writing fanfic.)

Then JJ discovered –

There are 8 Murderbot fics!
And one of them features Timothy!

[Thanks to Steve Green, Bruce Arthurs, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Meredith, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Gary Farber, ULTRAGOTHA, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 12/25/18 The Little Pixel Boy

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Mike Glyer

If you made it all the way through the season without hearing that tune, well, oops!

(1) SIX-PACK. Tor.com’s Leah Schnelbach invites you to “Have Yourself a Cosmic Little Christmas with 6 Intergalactic Holiday Specials”.

Lots of shows decide they need a little Christmas come December, but they’re not quite sure how to do it. Do you talk about the big Jesus-shaped elephant in the room? Do you just focus on Santa? Do you, I don’t know, cast Juliana Hatfield as an angel or make miracles happen on Walker, Texas Ranger?
This late-December urge becomes extra fun when sci-fi shows try it—they don’t usually want to deal with the religious aspect of Christmas, but they still have to find a way to explain Santa and presents (and maybe just a dash of Christianity) to aliens who are already confused enough just trying to deal with humans. So most of them fall back on humans teaching aliens about “goodwill” or “being kind to others.” This leads to some amazing moments, as we’ll see.

(2) WHITE CHRISTMAS ON A RED PLANET? Inverse speculates “Why There Could Be Snow on Mars This Christmas”.

Mars is clearly cold enough for snow. It has ice — the amount of which has varied significantly over time. When its axis is tilted at only a small angle relative to its orbit, its surface is ice-free except for the polar caps. This is the situation today, when its axial tilt is 25 degrees (similar to Earth’s 23-degree axial tilt). However, possibly because Mars lacks a large moon to stabilize its spin, there have been times when its spin axis was tipped over by up to 60 degrees — allowing the polar ice caps to spread, maybe even to the extent that there was abundant ice near the equator.

(3) HUNG BY THE HELICOPTER WITH CARE. There is, of course, a wide variety of Christmas season movie marathon fare – having almost nothing to do with Christmas — from the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies to Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels (which we George Clayton Johnson fans heartily recommend). Many prefer Die Hard, but I only just discovered that someone has turned the story into an illustrated book, and that book has been given the read-aloud video treatment: “Die Hard Christmas Book with Voice Actor Steve Blum – Presented by Sideshow & Insight Editions”

(4) THE ENVELOPE PLEASE. John Scalzi nominates —

Ian McKellan IS: The Angriest Santa! pic.twitter.com/Y23HrtGdr1
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 25, 2018

(5) ANOTHER ONE YULE LIKE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] For all of you who just can’t get enough of the Yuletide “classic” I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, look to the skies. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tells us (“Holiday Asteroid Imaged with NASA Radar”) that a mile-long hippo passed Earth just 3 days before Christmas.

The December 2018 close approach by the large, near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 has provided astronomers an outstanding opportunity to obtain detailed radar images of the surface and shape of the object and to improve the understanding of its orbit.
The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers). This will be the asteroid’s closest approach in more than 400 years and the closest until 2070, when the asteroid will safely approach Earth slightly closer.
The radar images reveal an asteroid with a length of at least one mile (1.6 kilometers) and a shape similar to that of the exposed portion of a hippopotamus wading in a river. They were obtained Dec. 15-17 by coordinating the observations with NASA’s 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, the National Science Foundation’s 330-foot (100-meter) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot (305-meter) antenna in Puerto Rico.

(6) CHRISTMAS CRIMESTOPPER. In the days before Steve Fjeldsted became the Director of Library, Arts & Culture for the City of South Pasadena, and patron of things Bradburyesque, he was a county librarian in Northern California, an experience that furnished him with this unforgettable story: “Mrs. Santa vs. the Snake”.

Camille hadn’t noticed anything dangerous and counted out change into the hand of the customer paying for a lost book. While rushing out the door, I said I’d be right back. Moments later I had breathlessly arrived at the front counter at the Police Station. A detective was summoned and Sergeant Salvador nodded knowingly to my retelling of the threatening event at the library and the man I first encountered while driving to work that morning.
…“That’s Snake!” Officer Salazar exclaimed, “And he’s a violent bank robber who was recently released.”
… When I glanced toward the library entrance, I could see Snake slither inside the front door until he stood motionless in side the entryway with his head tilted down. Seconds later, right behind him entered Millie, a volunteer who was dressed up in her Mrs. Santa Claus costume. Each year she donned her festive homemade outfit to read holiday stories to kids in the Children’s Room….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 25, 1924 – Rod Serling. Best remembered for The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery with the former winning an impressive three Hugos. He’s also the screenwriter or a co-screenwriter for Seven Days in May, a very scary film indeed, as well as The New People series, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Town Has Turned to Dust, UFOs: Past, Present, and Future and Planet of the Apes. (Died 1975.)
Born December 25, 1928 – Dick Miller, 90. He’s appeared in over a hundred films including every film directed by Dante. You’ve seen him in both Gremlins, The Little Shop of Horrors, Terminator, The Howling, Small Soldiers, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Amazon Women on the Moon, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm where he voiced the gravelly voiced Chuckie Sol and Oberon in an “The Ties That Bind” episode of Justice League Unlimited.
Born December 25, 1952 – CCH Pounder, 66. She’s had one very juicy voice role running through the DC Universe from since Justice League Unlimited in 2006. If you’ve not heard her do this role, it worth seeing the animated Assault on Arkham Asylum which is far superior to the live action Suicide Squad film to hear her character. She also had an recurring role as Mrs. Irene Frederic on Warehouse 13 as well. She’s also been in X-Files, Quantum Leap, White Dwarf (horrid series), Gargoyles, Millennium, House of Frankenstein, Outer Limits, W.I.T.C.H. and The Lion Guard. Film wise, she shows up in Robocop 3, Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Face/Off, NetForce, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and several of the forthcoming Avatar films.

(8) COMING ATTRACTIONS. Petrea Mitchell administers the “Winter 2019 Anime Preview” at Amazing Stories. First on the list:

Bermuda Triangle ~Colorful Pastrale~
The premise: Mermaids have everyday problems.
Derivative factor: Spinoff vaguely related to videogame
The buzz: Mermaids are cool, but everyone hates the art for one reason or another.
Premiere: January 12

(9) SPACECRIME. Investigators say it was an inside job reports the AP: “Russia: Hole drilled from inside International Space Station capsule”.

A Russian cosmonaut who explored a mysterious hole in a capsule docked to the International Space Station said Monday that the opening was drilled from inside the spacecraft and Russian law enforcement agencies are investigating what caused it.
Sergei Prokopyev said investigators were looking at samples he and crewmate Oleg Kononenko collected during a Dec. 12 spacewalk. Prokopyev and two other astronauts returned to Earth last week from a 197-day space station mission.

(10) TROPE-A-DOPE. In “Tradition”, Mad Genius Club’s Dave Freer uses the holiday to warn everyone who doesn’t plan to spend the coming year writing what he likes:

So here is my short Christmas Eve point: ignoring traditions may get you a lump of coal in your stocking and rotten sales to boot. Using them to add to your work, to build on – whether we’re talking the traditional (and very popular) tropes – be it a fantasy collect-the-tokens, or Bug-Eyed Monsters invading Earth remains more popular than following new attempts at ‘traditions’ (like yet another Handmaiden’s Tail clone) that are not popular. Using the language and style of the genre at least won’t lose you the established readers…

(11) PULP FRICTION. No matter what kind of story you’re telling, here’s some news published writers hated to hear: “Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales”. The New York Times has the story.

Several of this year’s most critically acclaimed novels, including Lisa Halliday’s “Asymmetry,” Richard Powers’s “The Overstory” and Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers,” were listed as out of stock on Amazon the week before Christmas after inventory ran low because publishers could not to reprint copies quickly enough. Best-selling and critically lauded nonfiction titles like David W. Blight’s biography of Frederick Douglass, Samin Nosrat’s cookbook “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and Ben Reiter’s “Astroball” were also unavailable on Amazon, with some titles showing shipping dates of two to four weeks from now.
The industrywide paper jam has been building for months — a result of shrinking and consolidation among printing companies, the collapse of one of the major printers this summer, global paper shortages and a tightening job market that’s made it difficult for printers to hire additional seasonal workers. But it has become increasingly acute and visible at the industry’s peak sales season, when consumers are shopping for must-read titles to give as gifts, and finding that Amazon’s virtual shelves are bare.

(12) POMPEII DISCOVERY. BBC reports about a “Pompeii horse found still wearing harness”.

The remains of a horse still in its harness have been discovered at a villa outside the walls of Pompeii, in what archaeologists are hailing as a find of “rare importance”.

The horse was saddled up and ready to go, possibly to help rescue Pompeians fleeing the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried the town in ashes.

It was found with the remains of other horses at the Villa of the Mysteries.

The villa belonged to a Roman general or high-ranking military magistrate.

Archaeologists at the luxurious Villa of Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) overlooking the sea have already found wine presses, ovens and extraordinary frescoes.

(13) WILD ASS CHASE. It could result in “Bringing ‘Asia’s zebras’ back to the steppe”.

“Do you see them?” the radio crackled in the old Russian 4×4.

The driver tried to steer away from pits and ravines that he could barely see in the dark. The lights of another car flashed in the distance. After a prolonged silence came the answer. “No.”

The two drivers navigating around a national park in the dead of the night are Kazakh rangers trying to capture Asiatic wild ass, known locally as kulans.

It is a part of the operation to reintroduce these animals to the steppes of central Kazakhstan, where they disappeared a century ago.

Kulans are the zebras of Asia. They used to roam on a massive territory stretching from Syria to Mongolia but today their populations are fragmented and vulnerable. Kulans in Central Asia are in particular danger.

(14) GRIM REAPER’S STOCKING STUFFER. Here is Jordan Peele’s gift for all: “‘Us’ trailer: Gory first trailer for new Jordan Peele film drops on Christmas Day”.

First things first, Happy Christmas! And if you haven’t unwrapped your surprise present from Get Out director Jordan Peele yet, you can watch the trailer for his new film Us below.
The timing of the trailer drop was very much planned by Peele. “The trailer going out on Christmas day is very exciting to me,” the director says. “Because, as families are gathered around the fireplace to celebrate the holidays, hopefully they can look on their phone, see this trailer and I’ll scare the pants off them.”

(15) TOP 10 GAMING CONTROVERSIES OF THE YEAR. And if you’re looking for a few more kerfuffles to tide you over til 2019, try these —

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

Here’s Something For Your Own Stocking

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Mike Glyer

Cat Rambo is running a three day sale —

We are wrapping up the end of the year with a special promotion for THREE DAYS ONLY, December 24-26, by offering all Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers on-demand classes, including the ones from Ann Leckie, Rachel Swirsky, and Juliette Wade, for $5 or less.
Yep, that’s right. For less than $50 you can, in fact, buy access to every class we currently offer. Did I mention it’s only through the 27th, aka three days (well, a little more since this is going out Sunday evening) only?

Click on the links to access the sale coupons:

Character Building Workshop for $5
Description and Delivering Information for Genre Writers for $5
Hex Engines & Spell-Slingers: Write Steampunk/Weird Western for $5
Literary Techniques for Genre Writers for $5
Moving from Idea to Finished Draft for $5
Old Stories Into New with Rachel Swirsky for $5
The Power of Words with Juliette Wade for $5
Reading to an Audience Workshop for $3
Rewriting, Revising, and Fine-Tuning Your Fiction for $5
To Space Opera and Beyond with Ann Leckie for $5

Pixel Scroll 12/24/18 One For My Pixel And One More For The Scroll

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Mike Glyer

(1) A NEW YORK MIDDLE AGES MINUTE. The New York Time discovers the Society for Creative Anachronism: “The Weekend Warriors of the Crown Province of Ostgardr (Otherwise Known as New York City)”.

King Wilhelm and Queen Vienna — a Connecticut couple whose real names are Jackie and Brian Van Ostenbridge — reign over the East Kingdom, which encompasses the Northeast and parts of Canada.
It is one of the society’s 20 kingdoms in North America, each of which is subdivided into provinces, baronies and shires. There is the Crown Province of Ostgardr, which includes all five New York City boroughs and several surrounding counties, many of which also have their own medieval names.
Manhattan is known as Whyt Whey, a reference to Broadway’s White Way. Brooklyn is Brokenbridge, a reference to the Brooklyn Bridge. Westchester County is known as Northpas, and Nassau County is Lions End. Southwest Connecticut is the Barony of Dragonship Haven, while the rest of the state is the Barony Beyond the Mountain.

(2) INTRO TO ART. The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott discusses Saul Steinberg’s The Labyrinth, reprinted by the New York Review of Books, which he thinks is an ideal introduction to the complexities of art: “Think you don’t understand art? This is the one book you’ll need.”

“The Labyrinth” has been republished by the New York Review of Books press, and looking back into it is a revelation. The book opens with an extended, tour-de-force version of a Steinberg classic, the Line, seven pages unified by a single horizontal line that functions in myriad ways, as a timeline of history, a horizon line, the line dividing water from land, the edge of a table, the top of a bridge, a topographical mark and a clothesline (with socks, towels and shirts appended). From there, the book unfolds as a set of interlocking mini-essays on Steinberg’s favorite and recurring subjects: music and musicians, architecture, the chatter of socialites, the vanity of power and ambition, and the iconography of mid-century America.

(3) LIT HISTORY. Princess Weekes draws her own “A (Brief) Timeline of Female Authors’ Influence on Sci-Fi and Fantasy” at The Mary Sue.

However, it’s because of the works of Leigh Brackett, who was the first woman to be shortlisted for a Hugo and worked on the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, that we have certain concepts of the Space Opera in both literature and film.
Pop culture has downplayed a lot of Brackett’s additions to the Star Wars storyline, since George Lucas apparently didn’t like that screenplay, but as io9?s co-founder and award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders brought up years ago, “the basic story beats are the same,” and Brackett came up with the concept of Luke Skywalker having a twin sister.
Brackett was also a mentor to Ray Bradbury, and despite being mocked for writing “space fantasy,” rather than “hard” science-fiction, her influence on the genre still holds up.

(4) YOU BETTER NOT WATCH, YOU BETTER NOT SIGHT. FirstShowing.net tells us how to “Ring in the Holidays with Fox’s Stop-Motion ‘Predator Holiday Special'”.

“Looks like someone’s staying on the naughty list… Larry, light him up!!” What the craziness is this?! 20th Century Fox has released an extra-violent, stop-motion animated short film titled The Predator Holiday Special. And it’s actually all kinds of awesome. The funny short is just a new mash-up of Predator and the classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” animated TV movie, telling a story about a Predator invading the North Pole – but Santa has an elite defense force of his own that jumps into action and fights back….

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 24, 1910 – Fritz Leiber. I can say that my fav work by him is The Big Time which I either read or listen to every year. And yes I’ve read the Change War Stories too, difficult to find as they were. Yes I know it won a Hugo — much, much deserved! I’m also fond of Conjure Wife, but otherwise I prefer his short fiction to his novels. (Died 1992.)
Born December 24, 1945 – Nicholas Meyer, 73. Lovely novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is. Much better Ithan the film I think. Now his Time After Time film is spot on. And let’s not forget his work on the Trek films, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (much of which went uncredited), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Born December 24, 1964 – Mark Valley, 54. He made my Birthday list first by being the lead, Christopher Chance, in Human Target, a short-lived series created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino for DC. He was also John Scott In Fringe as a regular cast member. He voiced Clark Kent / Superman in the second part of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
Born December 24, 1966 – Dietrich Bader, 52. I know him best as the voice of Batman on The Batman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. No, he’s not Kevin Conroy but his Batman is quite enjoyable and interesting in his own right. He’s best cast as Batman / Brace Wayne in the forthcoming Harley Quinn series on the DC Universe service.
Born December 24, 1969 – Mark Millar, 49. Comic book write whose resume is long at both house so I’ll like of his work. The Millar/Quitely era on The Authority was politically edged and often got censored by DC as it commented on the Iraq War — well worth your reading. His run on Swamp Thing from 142 to 171 has a lot of other writers including Morrison. He the Ultimates at Marvels and a lot of the superb series ended in the Avengers film. Finally his excellent Civil War was the basis of the Captain America: Civil War film and his not to missed Old Man Logan was the inspiration for Fox’s Logan film.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

This classic Calvin and Hobbes explains time travel.

(7) SMALLER ON THE INSIDE. As a fellow blogger, let me applaud GeekTyrant for figuring out a way to get an entire post out of this little item –“GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Star Karen Gillan Responds to Being Featured on Jeopardy”.

There are some trademark signs in the industry that you’ve truly “made it.” Like if you’re a musician, and you hear your song on the radio, or even moreso, when that song gets remade by Weird Al Yankovic. Or if you’re an actor, and you get a beefy role in a Marvel movie, or get nominated for an award, or you get to go on Saturday Night Live, or in Karen Gillan’s case, you’re featured in a question/answer on Jeopardy! What a fun and exciting treat!

(8) UNEMPLOYED MEN TELL NO TALES. In case there was any doubt the other day – he’s out. The Independent has the tale:

Johnny Depp’s tenure as Captain Jack Sparrow has officially come to an end, following a Disney executive’s confirmation that the actor will no longer be a part of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
The studio’s production chief, Sean Bailey, was speaking about the previously announced reboot – set to be written by Deadpool‘s Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese – when he was asked whether the series could survive without Depp.
Rather than deny the reports, Bailey told The Hollywood Reporter: “We want to bring in a new energy and vitality. I love the [Pirates] movies, but part of the reason Paul and Rhett are so interesting is that we want to give it a kick in the pants. And that’s what I’ve tasked them with.”

(9) FRANKENSTEIN (1910) RESTORED. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Slate shines a little light on the fact that “The First Film Adaptation of Frankenstein Has Been Restored, and You Can Watch It Right Here”. The 1910 silent movie by Edison Production was restored by the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center from the sole remaining print (and other source material) and posted on their site in 2017. It is also available on YouTube. Music for the restoration was composed and performed by Donald Sosin. The Edison Production title card bills it as “A liberal adaptation from Mrs. Shelly’s famous story” and indeed significant liberties are taken. (Then again, cramming the full story into about 13 minutes would have been difficult, though IMDb clams the original was about 16 minutes.) The LoC site describes the film thus:

“While he is in college, Frankenstein decides he must attempt to make a perfect human being. The being he creates is given life in a vat of burning chemicals. On the day Frankenstein weds his sweetheart, who has been living patiently at home, he sees the monster he created reflected in a mirror. Having disappeared, the monster returns to his creator to gain acceptance. However, when the creature is in front of the mirror he disappears again, with only his slowly vanishing reflection left. When Frankenstein arrives and stands in front of the same mirror he witnesses the fading image, signifying the monster’s destruction in the face of Frankenstein’s increased love for his wife and life.”

(10) TIS THE SEASON. New holiday, a new mission: “McEdifice: Ghosts of X-mas Past” at Camestros Felapton.

“Please sit down,” he said gesturing to a wooden crate marked “cheap tobacco”.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, “but all our furniture was replaced with old shipping crates due to budget cuts. I understand you’ve come out about the role we advertised?”
“Sure,” I responded, “the assistant to ‘Mr Scrooge’.”
I’d heard rumours of this Scrooge guy. A man of old but indeterminate age. Misanthropic, holed up inside an ageing house. A nexus of supernatural events. Everything about this Scrooge guy’s profile said ‘vampire’….

The End.
Straw Puppy: Um, isn’t the title ‘Ghost of X-mas Future?
Tiny Tim the Cat: Oh crap. Too late now, we’ve published it.
Chiseled McEdifice: Nooooooooo!!!!!!!

(11) NICE TRY. Another not-ready-for-prime-time app: the BBC tests “How well does Zozosuit measure up?” [Video.]

Japanese retailer Zozo, which operates Zozotown, the country’s largest online fashion marketplace, has developed a figure-hugging bodysuit featuring lots of uniquely patterned dots.

As you turn slowly round, your smartphone takes photos, building up a 360-degree image of your body shape. Then you can order clothes that really fit.

At least, that’s what the company claims. But how well does it work?

(12) MORE TO WATCH FOR. They have to worry about more than the name-brand seismic activity: “Indonesia’s tsunami shows the need to research unexpected dangers”.

Nobody had any clue. There was certainly no warning. It’s part of the picture that now points to a large underwater landslide being the cause of Saturday’s devastating tsunami in the Sunda Strait.

Of course everyone in the region will have been aware of Anak Krakatau, the volcano that emerged in the sea channel just less than 100 years ago. But its rumblings and eruptions have been described by local experts as relatively low-scale and semi-continuous.

In other words, it’s been part of the background.

And yet it is well known that volcanoes have the capacity to generate big waves. The mechanism as ever is the displacement of a large volume of water.
Except, unlike in a classic earthquake-driven tsunami in which the seafloor will thrust up or down, it seems an eruption event set in motion some kind of slide.

(13) TOP COMICS ARTIST. Complex shares “Spider-Man to Spawn, How Todd McFarlane Became the Biggest Comic Book Artist Ever.”

Todd McFarlane opens up about his career as a comic book artist that includes making Spider-Man cooler and creating the Spawn character. He also shares his blueprint to launching Image Comics and McFarlane Toys.

(14) BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS OTHER GUY? CBS Sunday Morning took viewers “Inside the studio of legendary comic book artist Alex Ross.”

In the world of comic book artists, Alex Ross is a superhero. He’s been called the Norman Rockwell of comics and has put his imprint on Superman, Spiderman, Aquaman and Captain America. Ross wields his superpower in his paintbrush and he allowed “CBS This Morning: Saturday” co-host Anthony Mason into his secret lair.

(15) WW84 WRAPS. USA Today says “Gal Gadot posts heartfelt message after production wraps on ‘Wonder Woman 1984′”.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gal Gadot (@gal_gadot)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Iphinome.] ked0 C

Uncanny Magazine Issue 26 Launches 1/1

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Mike Glyer

The 26th issue of Uncanny Magazine will be available on January 1.

Hugo Award-winning Publishers/Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are proud to present the 26th issue of their 2016, 2017, and 2018 Hugo Award-winning online science fiction and fantasy magazine. As always, it features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative nonfiction, and a deep investment in the diverse SF/F culture, along with an award-winning monthly podcast featuring a story, poem, and interview from that issue. Stories from Uncanny Magazine have been finalists or winners of Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards.

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 2 stages- half on day of release and half on February 5.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 26 Table of Contents

Cover

Julie Dillon- Pearls and Stardust

Editorial

The Uncanny Valley (1/1)

Fiction

Fran Wilde- “A Catalog of Storms” (1/1)
Natalia Theodoridou- “Poems Written While” (1/1)
Senaa Ahmad- “Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Fear” (1/1)
Delilah S. Dawson- “The Willows” (2/5)
Marissa Lingen- “The Thing, With Feathers” (2/5)
Inda Lauryn- “Dustdaughter” (2/5)

Reprint

Ellen Kushner- “The Duke of Riverside” (1/1)

Essays

Linda D. Addison- “Safe Havens– WFC Award Ceremony 2018 Toastmaster Speech” (1/1)
Elsa Sjunneson-Henry- “How to Make a Paper Crane” (1/1)
Alec Nevala-Lee- “The Most Powerful Force” (2/5)
Keidra Chaney- “What It Feels Like for a Fangirl in the Age of Late Capitalism” (2/5)

Poetry

Cassandra Khaw- “A Letter From One Woman to Another” (1/1)
Sonya Taaffe- “The Watchword” (1/1)
Hal Y. Zhang- “Steeped in Stars” (2/5)
Jennifer Crow- “Red Berries” (2/5)

Interviews

Caroline M. Yoachim Interviews Natalia Theodoridou (1/1)
Caroline M. Yoachim Interviews Marissa Lingen (2/5)

Podcast 26A (1/1)

Fran Wilde- “A Catalog of Storms,” as read by Erika Ensign
Cassandra Khaw- “A Letter From One Woman to Another,” as read by Stephanie Malia Morris
Lynne M. Thomas Interviews Fran Wilde

Podcast 26B (2/5)

Delilah S. Dawson- “The Willows,” as read by Stephanie Malia Morris
Hal Y. Zhang- “Steeped in Stars.” as read by Erika Ensign
Lynne M. Thomas Interviews Delilah S. Dawson

Pixel Scroll 12/23/18 Galileo, (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Pixel Scroll

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Mike Glyer

Abbreviated Scroll after a busy day of family celebrations.

(1) A BIG FISH TAIL. No, Jason Momoa is not the first actor to portray Aquaman in a live-action film (SYFY Wire: “How a $10,000 1984 fan film became the world’s first Aquaman movie”).

Warner Bros.’ Aquaman is poised to make a super splash this weekend as DC’s oft-maligned underwater wonder makes his solo feature debut. The $160 million fantasy adventure, directed by Saw and Insidious franchise helmer James Wan, already boasts optimistic box office predictions, targeting a $65 million opening.
But long before Jason Momoa emerged as the charismatic King of Atlantis in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2017’s Justice League, and, now, Aquaman, an officially authorized, $10,000 fan film became the world’s first Aquaman movie.

The film in question is on YouTube here. It runs about 20 minutes. I haven’t watched it – you’re on your own!

(2) SILVER BELLS. Galactic Journey’s Victoria Silverwolf celebrates the coming year at the newsstand: “[December 23, 1963] Ring Out the Old, Ring In the New (January 1964 Fantastic)”.

The Lords of Quarmall, by Fritz Leiber and Harry Fischer
You may not know the name Harry Fischer. A new writer, perhaps? Well, not exactly. In fact, Fischer created the famous characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in a letter to his friend Leiber nearly three decades ago. Since then, of course, the great fantasist has made the pair of adventurers his own. In 1937, Fischer wrote about ten thousand words of a novel. Leiber completed it, and it appears here for the first time.
Quarmall is a strange kingdom. Its ruler lives in a keep above ground, but the rest of his realm lies deep down below. He has two adult sons. One reigns over the upper half of this underground land, the other the lower half. The brothers are bitter rivals, each trying to destroy the other through treachery and magic. They also plot against their father. He, in turn, hopes to eliminate his sons and leave his kingdom to the unborn child of a concubine.
Unknown to each other, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are each hired as a swordsman by one of the brothers. When the king’s archmage announces the death of his master, the conflict between the siblings explodes into open warfare….

(3) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 23, 1945 – Raymond E. Feist, 73. Best known for the Riftwar series. The only novel I’ve read by him is was Faerie Tale, a dark fantasy set in the state of New York, which is one damn scary work.
Born December 23, 1971 – Corey Haim. You’ll most likely remember him from the Lost Boys but he had a long career in genre film after that with roles in Watchers, Prayer of the Roller Boys, Fever Lake, Lost Boys: The Tribe (no, I’ve never heard of heard it) and Do Not Disturb. He showed in two series, PSI Factor and Merlin. (Died 2010.)

(4) COMICS SECTION.

#TimesUpSanta at Pearls Before Swine.
John A Arkansawyer explains, “The strip is there, big as day, but you have to mouse over for the Christmas greeting. I’m sorry he’s not updating as regularly as he did, but this week and last week were both very fine send-ups of supercliches. Maybe it’s just as well that we have to wait longer for longer, consistently good strips” — The Non-Adventures of Wonderella.

(5) MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS. Mike Kennedy asks, “Is it just me, or does the idea of parallel walls comprising a whole-body security scanner (Wired: “Super-Fast Airport Scanners Are Coming—Eventually”) remind you, too, of the scene in the original Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger is spotted carrying a gun into a restricted area? I wonder if they can get these wholesale?”

Some passengers traveling through Denver International Airport this holiday season are in for a treat—or what amounts to a treat in today’s high-throughput, high-stress security environment. As they go through TSA screening, they’ll be able to keep their hands at their sides because of a new type of rapid body scanner. Instead of standing sideways in a plastic tube while a scanner shwoop shwoops around them, Denver fliers will step between two white plastic walls, about 4 feet apart. There are no moving parts, and the scan takes less than a second; if all is clear, the passenger moves on. The Denver scanner is built by Rohde & Schwarz, which also has a system up and running in Cologne Bonn Airport, Germany.
Not having to raise your arms over your head is a tiny improvement, but it’s a big deal for people with limited mobility. And saving even a second per person adds up to shorter lines for everyone. The new scanner is an example of the booming, maturing field of full-body scanners. They are based on millimeter-wave technology, and they’re giving security personnel the equivalent of Superman’s x-ray vision. (But without the x-ray radiation concerns.)

(6) WHAT SHAT. Mr Bill says, “Ohh Nooo!!!” The headline in The Independent (“William Shatner criticises ‘hysterical’ Me Too movement: ‘Women use it as a weapon’”) really sounds bad. It’s up to you to read the article and find out if he’s being taken out of context or is seriously stepping in it.

(7) ANOTHER PILE. BBC overheard this one: “Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says”.

One of the first men to orbit the Moon has told BBC Radio 5 Live that it’s “stupid” to plan human missions to Mars.

Bill Anders, lunar module pilot of Apollo 8, the first human spaceflight to leave Earth’s orbit, said sending crews to Mars was “almost ridiculous”.

Nasa is currently planning new human missions to the Moon.

It wants to learn the skills and develop the technology to enable a future human landing on Mars.

Nasa was approached for a response to Anders’ comments, but hasn’t responded.

Anders, 85, said he’s a “big supporter” of the “remarkable” unmanned programmes, “mainly because they’re much cheaper”. But he says the public support simply isn’t there to fund vastly more expensive human missions.

“What’s the imperative? What’s pushing us to go to Mars?” he said, adding “I don’t think the public is that interested”.

(8) FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS. Patti Abbott returns with links to the following reviews at her blog: “Friday ‘s Forgotten Books, December 21, 2018”.

Frank Babics, SENTENCED TO PRISM, Alan Dean Foster
Les Blatt, MORE MURDER IN A NUNNERY, Eric Shepherd
Brian Busby, BEST BOOKS read in 2018
Kate Jackson/CrossExaminingCrime. MYSTERY IN WHITE. J. Jefferson Farjeon
Martin Edwards, FIVE ROUNDABOUTS TO HEAVEN, Francis Iles
Rich Horton, THE CONFIDENCE MAN, HIS MASQUERADE, Herman Melville
Jerry House, THE CALIGARI COMPLEX, Basil Copper; THE SECRET OF SHARK REEF by “William Arden” (Dennis Lynds)
George Kelley, TIED UP IN TINSEL, Ngaio Marsh
Margot Kinberg, ALL SHE WAS WORTH, Miyuke Miyabi
Rob Kitchin, COP HATER, Ed McBain; SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, Kurt Vonnegut
B.V. Lawson, DANGLE, Meg Elizabeth Atkins
Evan Lewis, THE KING’S COAT, Dewey Lambdin
Todd Mason, “The Faithless”, a novella by John D. MacDonald, plus stories by James McKimmey, Jr. et al.: REDBOOK, May 1958
J.F. Norris, THE VALANCOURT BOOK OF VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, V. 3, edited by Simon Stern
Mike Lind/Only Detect, CHARLIE CHAN: HIS UNTOLD STORY, Yunte Huang
Matt Paust, THE DEATH OF MR. LOMAS, Francis Vivian James Reasoner, LONGARM AND THE COLDEST TOWN IN HELL, Tabor Evans Richard Robinson, A HOLIDAY FOR MURDER, Agatha Christie Gerard Saylor, THE TOMB, F. Paul Wilson Andi Shechter, NO HUMAN INVOLVED, Barbara Seranella
Kevin Tipple, FLASHBACK, Ted Wood
TomCat, “Time Wants a Skeleton”, Ross Rocklynne
TracyK, THE SHORTEST DAY, Jane Langton

(9) VIDEO OF THE DAY. James Cordon: 22 Musicals In 12 Minutes w/ Lin Manuel Miranda & Emily Blunt. Daniel Dern says, “No real sfnal aspect here, but hey, who doesn’t love a quick zoom through great musical moments…and see the current ‘Ms. Poppins’ strut some other stuff.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, John A Arkansawyer, Todd Mason, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.] n Locked=

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

Monthly Archives: December 2018

Graham Connor (1957-2018)

2018 Novellapalooza

Top Posts of 2018

Witchy-witchy-witchy

Pixel Scroll 12/26/18 And The Fur Suit Of Happiness

Pixel Scroll 12/25/18 The Little Pixel Boy

Here’s Something For Your Own Stocking

Pixel Scroll 12/24/18 One For My Pixel And One More For The Scroll

Uncanny Magazine Issue 26 Launches 1/1

Pixel Scroll 12/23/18 Galileo, (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Pixel Scroll