The winners will be announced October 20, 2019, at FantasyCon in Glasgow, Scotland. Tickets and further information can be found on www.fantasycon.org.
(1) FOR PARENTS OF TEENS AT WORLDON. A Facebook group has been created for parents who will
have minors at Dublin 2019, to set up reciprocal chaperoning arrangements: Dublin2019parents.
This COMPLETELY UNOFFICIAL group is for parents of young people who will be attending Dublin2019, an Irish Worldcon, to discuss the logistics of Kids In The Space. We all want to have a great time, make sure our offspring are safe, and work within the rules set forth by the convention regarding unaccompanied children and responsible adults. Let’s collaborate!
(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading
series presents Paul Witcover & Lara Elena Donnelly on Wednesday, August 21,
2019, 7 p.m. at the KGB Bar. Chandler Klang Smith & Mercurio D. Rivera will
be subbing for hosts Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel, who will be traveling.
Paul Witcover
Paul Witcover is the author of five novels, most recently The Watchman of Eternity. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards. He hopes one day to win something!
Lara Elena Donnelly
Lara Elena Donnelly is the author of the Nebula- Lambda, and Locus-nominated trilogy The Amberlough Dossier, as well as short fiction and poetry appearing in venues including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Uncanny. Lara teaches at the Catapult Classes in New York City and is a thesis adviser in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.
KGB
Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.) New York, NY.
(3) WATCHMEN COMIC-CON TRAILER. Watchmen debuts on HBO this
October.
There is a vast and insidious conspiracy at play…. From Damon Lindelof and set in an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws, this drama series embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name while attempting to break new ground of its own. The cast includes Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Jean Smart, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Hong Chau, Andrew Howard, Tom Mison, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, and James Wolk.
I wholly endorse Tim Kreider’s views and mourn Mad’s effective demise to the extent it ceases the publication of new material.
As the beneficiary of slightly distracted conservative parents, I subscribed to and have collected Mad since I was a preteenager. Bill Gaines’s “usual gang of idiots” offered intellectual freedom from the confining dictates of the 1950s, and that freedom continues to inform my thinking.
The art was as meticulous as the writing. Each artist’s style was perfectly attuned to the text of the particular piece. What can compare to George Woodbridge’s illustrations of hippies and beatniks?
In contrast to so many publications, those many issues of Mad reflect no typographical errors, misspellings, grammatical mistakes or instances of poor usage, unless intentional. At least I have never spotted any.
Literate, entertaining, enlightening and inspirational.
R.I.P., Mad!
Barbara Jaffe New York The writer is a New York State Supreme Court justice.
Loser: Veronica Mars (Hulu) Surprise! All episodes of the highly anticipated revival are available to stream a week early! In what was designed as a reward for diehard fans of the Kristen Bell-led series from creator Rob Thomas, those packed into Ballroom 20 were delighted at the early arrival before likely realizing they’d be unable to stream it given that they already had weekend plans — at Comic-Con — and would likely be spoiled by that heartbreaking finale. The early drop was a regular topic on Friday but by Saturday, it had already been drowned out amid a glut of hundreds of other film, TV, video game and comic book panels and trailers.
The Comic-Con Blood Drive was the most successful ever:
(7) FULL LID REFILLED. Blade
Runners, alien invasions of several kinds
and the retirement of an all-time great are all part of this week’s “The Full Lid 19th July 2019”. Alasadair Stuart outlines
what’s inside —
We open with a look at the first issue of Titan Comics’ Blade Runner 2019 featuring a new member of the division with some very new problems. Then we’re off to curdled suburban horror with Jeremy C. Shipp’s superbly unsettling Bedfellow. A house guest turns a family’s lives on their heads, but he’s always been there, hasn’t he? An uncle, a brother, a god, a monstrous cuckoo nesting in their lives. Marv is here to stay and a superbly unsettling villain.
Then we salute the comics career of Alan Moore, godfather of the UK scene, film-maker, actor, magic user and architect of an age. But for all his legendary skill and gravitas, Moore is a hell of a comedian and my favorite work of his falls in that field. Finally, with the recent and much deserved Clarke Award win, we re-run the review of Tade Thompson’s excellent Rosewater from last year. Rounded out with the latest work from Anne Fortune, Claire Rousseau and You Suck At Cooking, that’s the Full Lid for the week.
The Verge spoke with Lego designer Simon Kent recently, who explained that he and his colleagues recently visited with NASA engineers and personnel to compare their toys against the real spaceships, rovers, and space stations currently in operation today. “Across the company, space is such a big theme, that we can tap into it in many different ways, whether its a plaything like Lego City, or a display model that goes into the fine details of the spacecraft’s design,” like the recently-released Apollo 11 Lunar Lander [list price $99.99].
(9) THAT’S NOTABLE, NOT NOTORIOUS. Camestros Felapton fills
everyone in about “Today’s
right wing author meltdown…” which commenced when Michael Z. Williamson
learned his Wikipedia entry was slated for deletion on grounds that he is not
sufficiently notable. In fact, the page has been deleted and restored pending debate
while this has been going on.
Last night Michael Z. Williamson’s blog was brought to my attention, who if you are unfamiliar with him, was (is) one of the pioneering fiction writers in the wild west of the early-mid 2010s who bucked the system of social justice-focused “woke” writing in order to focus on craft and excellent storytelling.
Now, years later, big tech is taking its revenge on Michael as they’ve deleted his wikipedia page.
Christopher C. Kraft Jr. — NASA’s first flight director and a legendary scientist who helped build the nation’s space program — died Monday, just two days after the world celebrated the historic Apollo 11 walk on the moon. He was 95.
“#RIP Dr. Christopher Kraft,” former astronaut Clayton Anderson posted on Twitter soon after. “You were a true leader for this nation and our world. So glad you were able to witness #Apollo50th…we felt your presence everywhere.
“Godspeed and thank you.”
Kraft’s name is emblazoned in bold letters on the side of the mission control building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to the base of operations where Kraft guided astronauts from launch to landing as the organization grew to a full-blown agency that required multiple flight directors to oversee a mission.
…During an era with no calculators and only rudimentary computers, Kraft essentially built NASA’s mission control to manage human operations in space. As the agency’s sole flight director, with a simple black-and-white monitor and listening to eight different communications loops, he had the final say for NASA’s first five manned missions, including the Mercury flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn.
(11) HEDISON OBIT. Actor David Hedison, best known for his
role in Sixties sci-fi series Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea, hdied
July 18 at the age of 92 reports Deadline.com. He also was in the original version of horror sci-fi
classic The Fly.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 22, 1881 — Margery Williams. The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is the work that is by far her best known work. Is it genre? Sure. And it has been adapted as video, audio and theatre myriad times. One audio version was narrated by Meryl Streep with music by George Winston. (Died 1944.)
Born July 22, 1912 — Stephen Gilbert. His final novel, Ratman’s Notebooks was adapted as the Willard film. Thirty’s years later, it was made into a film yet again. Kindle has most of his books available, iBooks just Ratman’s Notebooks. (Died 2010.)
Born July 22, 1932 — Tom Robbins, 87. Author of such novels as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Another Roadside Attraction. ISFDB lists everything he’s done as genre and who am I to argue with them? Now Jitterbug Perfume, that’s genre!
Born July 22, 1941 — Vaughn Bodé. Perhaps best known for the Cheech Wizard character and his art depicting erotic women. For our purposes, he’s a contemporary of Ralph Bakshi and has been credited as a major influence on Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and Wizards. He’s been inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 1975.)
Born July 22, 1944 — Nick Brimble, 75. His first genre role was in Lust for a Vampire as the First Villager. He next shows up in Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound as The Monster. He’s Sir Ectot in A Knight’s Tale which I really be it genre or not. His lastest film genre role is as Dr. Zellaby in Soulmate, and he’s the voice of Owsla in the Watership series.
Born July 22, 1959 — Nigel Findley. He was a game designer, editor, and an author of science fiction and fantasy novels and RPGs. He was also part of the original core group of Shadowrun RPG core group and has sole writing credit on both sourcebooks and Shadowrun world novels. Yes, I played Shadowrun, a most enjoyable experience. (Died 1995.)
Born July 22, 1972 — Colin Ferguson, 47. Best known for being Sheriff Jack Carter on Eureka. I miss that series. Did it win any Hugos? He’s also been in Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Hunger, The X-Files, The Outer Limits, the Eureka “Hide and Seek” webisodes (anyone seen these?) and The Vampire Diaries.
Born July 22, 1976 —Karen Cliche, 43. She’s known for her roles on Flash Gordon, Mutant X, Vampire High and Young Blades. She’s does two horror films, Pact with the Devil and Saw VI.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
Cul de Sac shows how hard it can be to be a space flight dreamer.
(14) GRRM AND FORBIDDEN PLANET. The Irish Film Institute
will start selling tickets to this event on Thursday:
There’s gratuitous swearing, Joker shooting someone at point-blank range, and he’s taking a shot to the groin courtesy of Harley? Yeah, I can see why Kaley Cuoco wanted to get the warning out on her Instagram, especially when the animation for Harley Quinn looks like something DC would run on Cartoon Network in primetime.
A suggestion for a mass search for the Loch Ness Monster later this year has gone viral on social media, and caused concern for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.
On Facebook, about 18,000 people say they are going to a Storm Loch Ness event with 38,000 “interested”.
It has been inspired by Storm Area 51, an idea tens of thousands of people could storm a US Air Force base to uncover the truth to a UFO conspiracy.
But Loch Ness RNLI is warning of the dangers of the loch’s deep water.
Concerned that hundreds, or even thousands, of people head out on to the loch for Storm Loch Ness on 21 September, the volunteer crew said it could not match the resources being used by the US military to deal with Storm Area 51.
Many readers may find the plots of some SF novels deeply implausible. “Who,” they ask, “would send astronauts off on an interstellar mission before verifying the Go Very Fast Now drive was faster than light and not merely as fast as light? Who would be silly enough to send colonists on a one-way mission to distant worlds on the basis of very limited data gathered by poorly programmed robots? Who would think threatening an alien race about whom little is known, save that they’ve been around for a million years, is a good idea?”
Some real people have bad ideas; we’re lucky that comparatively few of them become reality. Take, for example, a proposal to send humans to Venus. Not to land, but as a flyby.
So yeah, there’s a lot of great works to be nominated for this award, and this year’s shortlist contains some pretty good works, including one book again that was one of my favorites from all of last year, one book that I really really liked, one I enjoyed a good bit which will probably win it all, and two other books that are at least solid – really only one nominee of the bunch do I think is unworthy, although I can understand why it’s nominated. All in all, this award will give recognition to a work that definitely deserves it, which is the point of the matter.
India has successfully launched its second lunar mission a week after it halted the scheduled blast-off due to a technical snag.
Chandrayaan-2 was launched at 14:43 local time (09:13 GMT) from the Sriharikota space station.
India’s space chief said his agency had “bounced back with flying colours” after the aborted first attempt.
India hopes the $145m (£116m) mission will be the first to land on the Moon’s south pole.
The spacecraft has entered the Earth’s orbit, where it will stay for 23 days before it begins a series of manoeuvres that will take it into lunar orbit.
If successful, India will become the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon’s surface. Only the former Soviet Union, the US and China have been able to do so.
The European Space Agency (Esa) is researching technologies based on 3D printing to see how materials found on the lunar surface could be made into products to help with habitation on the Moon.
Dusty powdered rock found on the Moon’s surface could be made into construction materials, explains the Esa’s James Carpenter.
Kazakhstan’s drive to obtain government access to everyone’s internet activity has raised concerns among privacy advocates.
Last week, telecoms operators in the former Soviet republic started informing users of the “need” to install a new security certificate.
Doing so opens up the risk that supposedly secure web traffic could be decrypted and analysed.
Some users say the move has significant privacy and security problems.
Much of the concern focuses on Kazakhstan’s human rights record, which is considered poor by international standards.
…A statement from the Ministry of Digital Development said telecoms operators in the capital, Nur-Sultan, were carrying out technical work to “enhance protection” from hackers, online fraud and other cyber-attacks.
It advised anyone who had trouble connecting to some websites to install the new security certificate, from an organisation called Quaznet Trust Network.
…One user filed a bug report with Mozilla, maker of the internet browser Firefox, characterising the move as a “man in the middle” cyber-attack and calling for the browser to completely ban the government certificate.
(22) REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE. Frequent contributor Martin Morse Wooster says:
“I have a question I want to ask Filers but it’s guaranteed not to provoke a flame war. My question:
“I would like to eat more tomatoes. What are the best recipes Filers have for using tomatoes from the farmers’ market?
“I am very serious about this.”
Your culinary advice is welcome in comments.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin
Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Darrah Chavey, James Davis Nicoll, Carl
Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to
File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
By
John Purcell: The
deadline for submitting material to the Worldcon
Order Of Fanedutors (WOOF)
via e-mail (preferred) is August 17; submissions on USB sticks or in print can
be brought to the convention and will be included in the final version of WOOF
2019, which will be electronically mailed out to all participating members
on or about August 20th. Printed copies will be mailed out in that
week after print and mail cost are known to those who wish to receive a printed
copy.
Submitting
USB sticks or printed material at the convention in Dublin can be done is the
Private Party room in the Gibson (Stratocastor A) on Sunday August 18th from
14:00 to 15:00.
Please
limit your contribution to a reasonable size to avoid excessive postal charges
for members who want a printed copy.
Submit
material electronically (PDF/Word or whatever format you are happy with)
to: [email protected]
Submit
printed material via mail to: Kees van Toorn, Postbus 3411,
NL 3003 AK Rotterdam, Netherlands
Many creators were
honored at Comic-Con International 2019 with Inkpot Awards for their
contributions to the worlds of comics, science fiction/fantasy, film,
television, animation, and fandom services.
The convention has
not yet updated its list of winners, but all of the following artists, writers,
and media figures were reported by social media as 2019 award recipients.
Wendy All
Leigh Bardugo
Jon B. Cooke
Mary Fleener
Gene Ha
Jonathan Hickman
Arvell Jones
Charlie Kochman
Craig Miller
Paco Roca
Scott Snyder
Billy Tucci
Chris Ware
Maryelizabeth Yturralde
Here are links, and where possible photos, documenting the award
presentations.
Craig Miller
Facebook: I was on a panel called “Bringing Films to Comic-Con” with Jeff Walker and Steve Sansweet and Gary Sassaman. Gary was head of programming for Comic-Con for many years. And Jeff, Steve, and I were three people who brought many films and film companies to the convention. (There were others too. Most notably Charley Lippincott, who started it all.)
Anyway, during the panel, the convention presented me with an Ink Pot Award. Definitely unexpected and I was very pleased to receive it.
(1) CROWDSOURCED SUCCESSES. The appeal to help send Tiptree Fellow Vida Cruz to Dublin 2019, “Help Vida attend the 77th WorldCon in Dublin!”, has raised $1,230 at this writing, slightly more than its target figure.
Con or Bust so generously sent me funds to pay for accommodations and airfare–two large chunks of expenses that make me hopeful that I will be able to attend. In fact, I have already booked the tickets and my AirBnB stay. I need only save up for food, transportation, and other smaller travel expenses.
However, I hit several snags recently. Sudden health issues required medicines and physical therapy. As a freelancer, my biggest contract was recently ended, and so I have been searching for part-time gigs and full-time jobs to not only help me fund this trip and pay GoGetFunding, but to help pay for my daily and medical needs. Your contribution will greatly help toward lessening the amount I need.
And when Brandon O’Brien was trying to round up the last $700 he needed to get to Dublin, look what happened! Jeff VanderMeer put up 7 of the Sub Press Borne signed special editions for $100 each to the first 7 takers. And just like that, he was funded.
Here’s who you won’t see as Phase 4 unfolds between May 2020 and November 2021: Spider-Man, Star-Lord and a new Iron Man. But you will meet what’s easily the most diverse superhero line-up in comic book movie history, including a master of kung fu and a group of eternals. You’ll also welcome back a strange sorcerer, a sharpshooting archer and a sword-swinging Valkyrie. Based on the crowd reaction, the most anticipated reunions are with Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, who will be returning as a thunder goddess, and that vampire hunter Blade, now played by two-time Oscar winner, Mahershala Ali.
Most major achievements, be they personal or collective, arrive after rehearsals. Some unfold as flights of the imagination. The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing provides a great opportunity to examine how an entire branch of speculative fiction — novels, short stories and also feature films — lies behind the first human footprints on another world.
Works of fiction aren’t particularly known for having influenced historical events. Yet some foundational early rocket science, embedded deep within the developmental history of the Saturn 5 — the towering, five-stage rocket that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon 50 years ago this week — was paid for by the budget of the first science fiction film to envision just such a voyage in realistic terms.
Spaceflight as we know it today wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for three extraordinary figures: the borderline-crazy Russian spaceflight visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the hard-right nationalist German-Transylvanian rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth and the idiosyncratic American rocketeer Robert Goddard. All devised their distinctive strains of rocket science in response to speculative novels, specifically the stories of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells — founders of a nascent genre later to be known asscience fiction. Tsiolkovsky and Oberth also had important roles to play in early 20th century film projects depicting trips to the Moon.
… Of the three, only Tsiolkovsky actually wrote science fiction, which he used as a scratch pad for his revolutionary ideas. Living in near-poverty 100 miles southwest of Moscow, he also issued a stream of theoretical papers. In articles published in 1911-12, he came up with the great utopian credo of the space age: “Earth is the cradle of the mind, but humanity can’t live in its cradle forever.”
Fifty years ago, a bunch of comics fans in San Diego decided they wanted a way to meet other fans. They were mostly teenagers — okay, and two adults — but what they created became the pop culture phenomenon we know as San Diego Comic-Con.
Today, Roger Freedman is a physics professor, but in 1969 he was 17 years old — and he had no idea what he was about to get himself into. “I think it’s fair to say that if you had come to us and said how Comic-Con was going to evolve, we would have said A) what are you smoking, and B) where can we buy some?”
It all started with a guy named Shel Dorf — one of only two adults involved with that first convention. Dorf had some experience attending and planning conventions, and more importantly, he had connections. He knew Jack Kirby, the legendary co-creator of characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. And Kirby was willing to talk to a bunch of kids.
“I think we thought comic creators lived on some comic book Mount Olympus and couldn’t be approached by normal mortals like us,” says Mike Towry, who was 14 when he got involved with the convention committee. “And then to find out that we could actually meet them and talk to them one on one, and then have a convention where they would come and we would get to hang out with them was just kind of mind-blowing.”
…It’s not hyperbole to say that without Ken Liu and his Herculean efforts in translation, Chinese SF would not exist — or at least it would not exist in its current state. When Ken Liu’s 2014 translation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2008) won the Hugo Award in 2015, not only was it the first Chinese work awarded the honor, it was the first work in translation from any language to be lauded so. At some point in the past decade, Chinese SF went from “having a moment” to “enjoying its golden age,” and if 2015 wasn’t the exact moment that shift happened, it was certainly when the translation heard round the world was sounded. The Three-Body Problem’s award signaled the significance of Chinese SF to many Anglophone readers for the first time, but equally important was its reaffirmation of Chinese SF for local readers. Liu’s translation has in turn been the source for the novel’s translations into other languages, putting Liu at the vanguard of Chinese SF’s march toward the world. Within hours of the award announcement, domestic internet searches and sales of both the first book and of Liu Cixin’s whole 2008–2010 trilogy increased more than tenfold. Publishing houses and state institutions like the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China redoubled their efforts using SF as a vehicle for promoting China’s “peaceful rise,” and have identified SF as a key aspect of their propaganda and publicity campaigns.
Just as, when pressed, Calvino’s Marco Polo claims that “[e]very time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice,” every story in Invisible Planets is saying something about the author’s own position — but that may or may not be the China we know (or think we know). Invisible Planets is not only the spiritual successor to Calvino’s Invisible Cities: it evinces the same magic without following the same formula, creating a panoply of possible worlds that may or may not be our worlds, and which may or may not be true.
(6) BRAZILIAN INVITATION. Canadian sff author Craig Russell
received multiple items of good news recently.
First, “an incredibly kind” review
of his novel Fragment written by Brazilian
literature professor, Dr. Zélia M. Bora and published in The
Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature and Ecocritics.
Some of the comments, translated from Portuguese:
“Craig
Russell’s clever and captivating novel captures the sensitive reader’s
attention from the beginning to the end of the narrative, in a balanced
way between the real and the imagined.”
“Fragment is
undoubtedly one of the most important ecocritical fiction works written in
this millennium.”
Russell has also received an invitation to speak about the novel at the 2020 Association for the Study
of Literature and Environment (Brazil) conference in the
city of Curitiba, Brazil (pending travel grant funding approvals.)
The man suspected of carrying out a deadly arson attack on a Japanese animation studio may have visited the area before, local media reported.
Neighbours spotted a man resembling Shinji Aoba near the Kyoto Animation (KyoAni) office before Thursday’s fire.
Mr Aoba, 41, who suffered severe burns, is in police custody and has been transferred to a hospital in Osaka.
On Saturday, a man died in hospital from his injuries, bringing the death toll from the attack to 34.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 21, 1911 — Marshall McLuhan. He coined the expressions the medium is the message and global village, and predicted the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. I read The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects a long time ago. Somehow it seemed quaint. (Died 1980.)
Born July 21, 1921 — James Cooke Brown. He’s the creator of Loglan. Oh, and he did write SF. The Troika Incident written in 1970 features a global data net. That, and two short pieces of fiction, are the sum total of his of genre writings. The Troika Incident is available from Kindle but not from iBooks. (Died 2000.)
Born July 21, 1933 — John Gardner. Grendel, the retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s viewpoint, is likely the only work he’s remembered for. Gudgekin The Thistle Girl (and Other Tales) are genre fairy tales as are The King of the Hummingbirds (and Other Tales); A Child’s Bestiary is, well, guess what it says it is. Mickelsson’s Ghosts, his final novel written before his untimely death, is a ghost story. (Died 1982.)
Born July 21, 1939 — John Woodvine, 80. First role in our realm is as Macbeth at Mermaid Theatre back in the early Sixties. Shortly thereafter, he’s Badger in Toad of Toad Hall at the Comedy Theatre before being The Marshal in the Fourth Doctor story, “The Armageddon Factor”. He’s in An American Werewolf in London as Dr. J. S. Hirsch, and he had a recurring role in The Tripods as Master West. He did show up on The Avengers several times, each time as a different character, and he was Singri Rhamin for the episodes of Danger Man.
Born July 21, 1948 — G. B. Trudeau, 71. Not precisely genre or even genre adjacent, but he did an amazing series on the Apple Newton when it came out.
Born July 21, 1951 — Robin Williams. Suicides depress me. I remember a bootleg tape of a performance of him and Carlin in their cocaine fueled days. Such manic energy. Genre wise, he was brilliant in most everything he did, be it Mork & Mindy, Hook, The Fisher King, Bicentennial Man or Jumanji. (Died 2014.)
Born July 21, 1960 — Lance Guest, 59. An American film and television actor, best known for his lead role in The Last Starfighter. He also shows up in Jaws: The Revenge as Michael Brody, as Jimmy in Halloween II, as Kyle Lane in the “Fearful Symmetry” episode of The X-Files and as The Burning Zone in “The Critical Mass” episode.
Born July 21, 1976 — Jaime Murray, 43. If you watch genre television, you’ve most likely seen her as she’s been Helena G. Wells in the Warehouse 13, Stahma Tarr in Defiance, Fiona/the Black Fairy In Once Upon a Time, Antoinette in The Originals, and Nyssa al Ghul in Gotham. Film wise, she was Livinia in The Devil’s Playground and Gerri Dandridge in Fright Night 2: New Blood.
(9) DRIVE AROUND THE BLOCK AGAIN. Referring to the second tweet below — You never know who you’re going to wish you’d run into at Comic-Con.
(10) YEAR 6 IS IN THE BANK. The Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter
is clicking along, too. Year 6 is funded, and they’re in hot pursuit of their
second stretch goal already, with 24 days remaining.
(11) ON THE HORIZON. The “Strange
Horizons 2020” Kickstarter has also passed its $13,000 goal with 9
days to go in the campaign.
This was the Big Superhero Showdown Marvel’s been aiming towards for ten years, but when I saw it, it felt a bit….underwhelming. With so many characters tossed into the mix and so much to do, there wasn’t time for any of them to make much of an impression, with the possible exception of Thor and Rocket. Also, if I’d been Chris Pratt, I would have been ticked off by the way my character was forced to wield the Starlord Stupid Stick, not once but twice. If Peter Quill had only killed Gamora in the beginning, like she asked him to do and he agreed, Thanos would never have found the Soul Stone. Of course, then we wouldn’t have had a $2 billion-plus grossing movie…..
(13) WIDENING GYRE OF HUGO COVERAGE. Steve J. Wright has completed his Campbell
Best New Writer reviews + Pro Artist Hugo and Retro Hugo reviews.
Former NASA intern Gary George sold off three of the agency’s videotapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing for $1.82 million at auction house Sotheby’s on Saturday, the 50th anniversary of the event, CNN reported.
Sotheby’s claims the videos have not been enhanced, restored, or otherwise altered and are the “earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images of man’s first steps on the moon,” CNN wrote. George paid $217.77 in 1976 (approximately $980 in today’s dollars) for 1,150 reels of NASA magnetic tape at a government auction while he was a Lamar University student interning at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
…For discerning pet owners who treat their cats and dogs like family — in some cases better than family — designers are creating stylish, even glamorous, furniture. Witness the new $5,000 Crystal Clear Lotus Cat Tower by the Refined Feline, with three platforms for lounging and a hideaway cubby at the bottom lined in white faux fur. (You can see one at the trendy Los Angeles cat cafe Crumbs & Whiskers.) And now you and Buddy can catnap or watch DOGTV on matching tufted Chesterfield-style Wayfair Archie & Oscar sofas; his is a $399 miniaturized version of yours in faux-leather scaled with similar nailhead trim and turned legs.
FX’s Archer has some huge changes coming for season 11. The first piece of news is that there is going to be a season 11 (creator Adam Reed has previously suggested the show might end after the current 10th season). The second revelation is — as Archer producers just revealed at Comic-Con in San Diego on Friday — that Sterling Archer is going to wake from his three-year coma in the upcoming finale as the show plans a return to its spy agency roots next season. But there’s a lot more to it than just that.
EW exclusively spoke to executive producers Matt Thompson and Casey Willis about their season 11 shakeup. We got the scoop on the show’s major story line for next season, how long Archer has been in a coma, the future involvement of Reed on the show, and more.
A little over three months after Paris’ Notre Dame caught fire, French officials say the cathedral is still in a precarious state and needs to be stabilized. Ultimately, they aim to restore the monument, a process that will take years.
When that work begins, there will be a new demand for experts who have the same skills required to build Notre Dame 900 years ago. In the workshops of the Hector Guimard high school, less than three miles from the cathedral, young stone carvers are training for that task.
In an airy and light-filled workshop in the north of Paris, a handful of students chip and chisel away at heavy slabs of stone. Each works on his or her own piece, but all are sculpting the same project: the base of a Corinthian column. The students are earning a professional degree to hew the stone pieces needed to maintain and restore France’s historical monuments.
…”In the beginning, it was my own parents who were surprised when I left my architecture studies to do this,” says Marjorie Lebegue. “But most everyone who finds out I’m studying to be a stone carver says, ‘Wow, what a beautiful profession.'”
Luc Leblond instructs the aspiring stone carvers.
“There’s no reason this should be a masculine profession,” he says. “Men have more physical force, but as a professor, I see the women have a sharpened sensitivity for the more detailed work. So it’s complementary.”
Los Angeles Times correspondent Benjamin Crutcher wound up going viral at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con by cosplaying as the infamous coffee cup that appeared during an episode of the final season of Game of Thrones.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “The Simpsons: Russian Art Film Version” on YouTube is what the opening of “The Simpsons” would be like in a gloomy Soviet apartment complex.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge,
Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Carl
Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to
File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
With 10
Days left to vote, the Hugo Administrators have discovered an error in their
tally of the nominations for the 1944 Retro Hugo for Best
Fanzine and updated the ballot.
Nicholas
Whyte, Hugo Administrator for Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon, explains:
In fact, Guteto, edited by Morojo (Myrtle R. Douglas) received enough votes to qualify for the final ballot; and Fantasy News, edited by William S. Sykora, did not.
We have accordingly revised the online ballot, and the downloadable ballot form, to reflect that Guteto is a finalist in this category, and that Fantasy News has been disqualified. Write-in votes for Guteto on previously printed hard copy versions of the ballot will be accepted.
We apologize to voters, and to the estates of Myrtle R. Douglas and William S. Sykora, for the inconvenience.
By John Purcell: From Kees van Toorn, the OE of this year’s WOOF (Worldcon Order Of Faneditors) at the Dublin World Science Fiction Convention next month, here are some basic guidelines to consider if fans are planning on contributing to the annual Worldcon APA. (See John Hertz’s splendid article “WOOF in the Spirit of Shibano Takumi?” posted on File: 770 July 16, 2019 for what WOOF is all about.)
If you are bringing a contribution to the collation
during the Dublin Worldcon – the time and location of the collation is yet to
be determined – keep in mind that the copy count is 50. However, this year Kees
has an idea that might simplify the process. Ergo, here is what Kees wants anyone
interested in contributing to do the following:
“All material(s) should be send as PDF in A4 size
format to me at my e-mail address: [email protected]
. . .We will have an electronic version and, if needed, a printed version.
“Once it is clear how many printed versions we need
and what the size/weight is, I will ask people who want an actual printed
version to send me money via PayPal – hence, with every contribution submitted,
name, full address and email address would be welcome and is needed.”
The 2019 Inky Awards shortlists were announced July 19 –
the Gold Inky for Australian titles, and the Silver Inky for international
titles. The award recognizes achievement in young adult literature, with
nominees and winners selected by voters under the age of 20. Some of these
titles are of genre interest.
These
titles were selected from a longlist by a panel of young readers aged between
12 and 20 years.
The
Prism Awards are presented to comic works by queer authors and works that
promote the growing body of diverse, powerful, innovative, positive or
challenging representations of LGBTQAI+ characters in fiction or nonfiction
comics.
The
awards are administered by Prism Comics, The Queer Comics Expo, and the Cartoon
Art Museum.
The
judges who read and evaluated this year’s submissions are:
Short
Form Judges: Mey Valdivia Rude (writer
at them, Autostraddle); Joamette Gil (Heartwood:
Non-binary Tales of Sylvan Fantasy); Sfé R. Monster (The Beyond Anthologies)
Webcomic
Judges: Matt Lubchansky (The Nib); Ajuan Mance (Gender Studies);
Zora Gilbert (Dates: An Anthology of Queer Historical Fiction Stories, Books 1
and 2)
Small
to Midsize Press Comic Judges: Juliette
Capra (Crowded); Noella Whitney (Dates: An Anthology of Queer
Historical Fiction Stories, Book 2 ); Heidi MacDonald
(editor-in-chief of Comicsbeat)
Mainstream
Publisher Comic Judges: Brian Andersen (Stripling Warrior); AJ Real (writer, Advanced Death Saves); Jack Baur (Librarian, Berkeley
Public Library)
Anthology
Judges: e jackson (Flux); Hazel Newlevant (Sugar Town); Rob
McMonigal (founder and head writer at Panel Patter)
The
Prism Awards Organizing Team: Ted
Abenheim (Prism Comics); Nina Taylor Kester (Queer Comics Expo, Cartoon Art
Museum); Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer: A Memoir).
Actor Mark Hamill received Comic-Con International’s Icon Award in Hall H on July 19. The award is given to “individuals or organizations who have been instrumental in bringing comics and/or the popular arts to a wider audience.”
The two most recent winners prior to Hamill were artist Sergio Aragones (2016) and Ray Bradbury (2010).
Mark Hamill celebrated the award as one item in a busy day
at Comic-Con.
The Team Coco event video is on YouTube, “Mark Hamill, aka
Luke F***ing Skywalker, administers Conan’s Comic-Con® Citizenship Test.”