The winners of the 2019
Ngaio Marsh Awards for the best New Zealand crime novel were
announced in Christchurch on September 14.
Best Novel
THIS MORTAL BOY
by Fiona Kidman (Penguin)
“Despite the historical nature of the novel, the spirit still resonates in our time with regards to bigotry and discrimination,” said the judges. “The quality of the writing is extraordinary: a richly textured sense of 1950s New Zealand and an elegant structure and flow creating a harrowing tale full of humanity.”
Best First Novel
CALL ME EVIE by
JP Pomare (Hachette)
“An interesting take on unreliable narrators,” said the judges. “Evocative and elegant writing. An intricate story packed with suspense and a fascinating exploration of the concept of false memory.”
Best Non-Fiction
THE SHORT LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF JANE
FURLONG by Kelly Dennett (Awa Press)
“A tragic story approached with sincerity and compassion,” said the judges. “There was a sense of understated rage at the injustice of it all. Dennett has, with compassion and respect, shown us the young woman who was so much more than a ‘teen prostitute’ who went missing from K Road.”
(1) CHANGES TO NY TIMES BESTSELLER LISTS. Publishers
Weekly reports “‘NYT’
Shifts Its Lists Again”. Mass market paperbacks and graphic books will
be tracked again, and middle grade paperback and YA paperback lists will debut.
After cutting the mass market paperback and graphic novel/manga lists in 2017, the Times‘ Best Sellers team will again track mass market paperback sales, as well as debut a combined list for graphic books, which will include fiction, nonfiction, children’s, adults, and manga. Two new monthly children’s lists, middle grade paperback and young adult paperback, will debut as well. (The Times retired its middle grade e-book and young adult e-book lists in 2017.) In addition, the Times will cut its science and sports lists, explaining that “the titles on those lists are frequently represented on current nonfiction lists.” The changes are effective October 2 online and October 20 in print.
The Times has already cut back its print lists on the combined print/e-book and print hardcover lists to 10 titles, from 15, although the online lists will continue to show 15 titles. A representative of the paper said that the change “was made for design reasons, specifically to improve the readability of the lists in print.”
(2) KGB. Fantastic
Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel
present Barbara Krasnoff and Nicole Kornher-Stace on Wednesday, October 16.
Barbara Krasnoff
Barbara Krasnoff is the author of over 35 short stories, including “Sabbath Wine,” which was a finalist for the Nebula Award, and recently published a mosaic novel titled The History of Soul 2065. She’s also responsible for a series of captioned photos that can be found under the hashtag #TheirBackstories.
Nicole Kornher-Stace
Nicole Kornher-Stace is the author of the Norton Award finalist Archivist Wasp and its sequel, Latchkey. Her next novel, Firebreak, is due out from Saga in 2020. She can be found online at nicolekornherstace.com or on Twitter @wirewalking.
The event begins 7 p.m. at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just
off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
New York, NY.
(3) SUNDAY IN THE PARK. Last Sunday at the Brooklyn Book Festival, Andrew Porter took this photo of the Dell Magazines booth which was hosted by Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams and her daughter.
Sheila Williams and daughter. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Sheila Williams and daughter. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
(4) NEW AWARD PROMOTES DIVERSE SFF. Gollancz
and author Ben Aaronovitch are launching a writing prize championing under-represented voices in science fiction,
fantasy and horror after stats showed less than 1% of the genres’ books
come from British BAME authors. (BAME is used in the UK to refer to black, Asian and minority ethnic
people.)
Submissions for the
Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award will
be taken from October 1, 2019 until January 31, 2020 — 5,000
to 10,000 words consisting of either a self-contained short story or the
opening of a novel that fits into the scifi, fantasy or horror genres
The prizes include:
£4,000 for the overall winner alongside a critique and year-long mentoring programme with Gollancz commissioning editor Rachel Winterbottom.
Second place: £2,000 and a critique of their work
Five runners-up will receive £800 and a Gollancz goodie bag.
Gollancz publisher Anne Clarke said:
The current lack of representation in science fiction and fantasy is no secret and it has to change. As modern speculative fiction publishers, we at Gollancz have a responsibility not just to say our doors are open, but to actively seek out and support writers whose backgrounds and experience have historically been – and still are – under-represented in our genre. I hope this award will encourage writers who have perhaps not always felt welcome in the world of science fiction and fantasy publishing and I’m looking forward to discovering exciting new writing talent within the submissions.
It’s Hollywood logic to try bleed more money from a stone. Whenever there’s a successful franchise, it’s natural for studios to stay safe and invest in more of the same product and produce as many sequels, prequels, TV shows, and reboots of the property. However, every so often, Tinseltown fails to catch lighting in a bottle a second time. Not every movie deserves 815 more iterations of the same story.
In
the middle of the list is —
5. CATWOMAN
Long before DCEU fans bemoaned the current DC movies, they were (rightfully) bailing on another one. Somehow, DC was able to zap all of the fun and sultriness out of Selina Kyle for the long-gestating Catwoman movie, which starred Oscar winner Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, and Benjamin Bratt. All in all, not a bad trio. So what went wrong?
First, the entire origins of a cat burglar/vixen are heaved out the window and replaced with an Egyptian Cat Mythology. That mythology would have worked if it was a little more thought out and the movie itself wasn’t just an excuse to feature the gorgeous Berry in as little clothing as possible.
(6) STEAMFEST. Cora Buhlert shares lots of photos in her report “Steampunk in East Frisia:
Steamfest Papenburg 2019”. (Before I read Cora’s post, Papenburg
was, for me, only an obscure reference in a Patrick O’Brien novel.)
…Steampunk is not exactly something you would associate with Papenburg, even though the steamship MV Liemba a.k.a. Graf Goetzen, which starred in The African Queen as the German gunboat Königin Luise, was built here in 1913. Therefore, I was very surprised to learn that Papenburg not only has an active Steampunk community, but also hosts Steamfest, a Steampunk festival which took place for the second time in 2019. And since Papenburg is only about 114 kilometres away, I of course decided to pay Steamfest a visit.
Magic as revenge, retaliation, or retribution is the theme of many of September’s best short speculative fiction stories. There are some new authors on this list alongside some very well-known names, yet no matter where they are career-wise, the stories they’ve written have left a mark on this world. Here are some of the ten best science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories I read in September.
(8) FUTURE TECH CRIMINALS. Editors
Eric
Bosarge and Joe McDermott have launched a Kickstarter to fund their The
Way of the Laser: Future Crime Storiesanthology from VernacularBooks.
The contributing authors include Kameron Hurley, Mur
Lafferty Patrice Sarath, Wendy Wagner, Julie C Day, Paul Jessup, Jamie Mason,
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Ross Lockhart, Karen Bovenmyer, with open submissions to
new authors.
It used to be if someone wanted to mug you, they had to look you in the face and make a threat. Not anymore. Hackers can wipe a bank account without ever having to risk drawing blood. Bad people use technology for personal gain. Nothing’s new about that. What is new is the ways technology opens up opportunities for exploitation.
New technology is coming on-line all the time, creating new opportunities for creative criminals and dissidents. Stolen elections, companies held hostage by hackers, and acts of terror have all been committed with technology that didn’t exist a few short years ago.
Join leading edge speculative fiction authors on an exciting walk into darkness where people and machines plunder, cheat, kill, and steal in ways we can’t even imagine with tools that may not even exist, yet. But, they’re coming.
(9) SATIRE ON TWO WHEELS. Remember Knight
Rider? Well, here’s David Hasselhoff in Moped Rider…
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 27, 1958 — In Italy, The Day the Sky Exploded (Italian: La morte viene dallo spazio, “Death Comes From Space”. It is known as the first Italian SF film, predating even the SF films of Antonio Margheriti.
September 27, 1979 — Buck Rogers in the 25th Century began its regular first season (after the airing of the film) with an episode called “Planet of the Slave Girls”.
September 27, 2002 — Joss Whedon’s Fireflypremiered on Fox TV. It was cancelled after eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired. Eventually it concluded in a film called Serenity which Will Shetterly reviewed here.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 27, 1902 — Henry Farrell. Novelist and screenwriter, best known as the author of the “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” story which was made into a film of the same name starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. (Died 2006.)
Born September 27, 1932 — Roger Charles Carmel. The original Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd as he appeared in two episodes of the original Star Trek, “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd”” and one episode of the animated series as well, “Mudd’s Passion”. I say original because Discovery has decided that they have a Harry Mudd. He also had one-offs on I-Spy, Munsters, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Batman. It is rumored but not confirmed he was going to reprise his role as Harry Mudd in a first-season episode of Next Gen but died before filming could start. (Died 1986.)
Born September 27, 1934 — Wilford Brimley, 85. His first genre role is as Dr. Blair in John Carpenter’s The Thing. He’s Benjamin ‘Ben’ Luckett in the Cacoon films, and Agency Director Harold Smith in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. He made a rather splendid President Grover Cleveland in The Wild Wild West Revisted. And finally I note that he was Noa in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
Born September 27, 1947 — Meat Loaf, 72. He has a tasty role as Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I’d argue some of his music videos are genre stories in their own right. He also has film roles in Wishcraft (horror), Stage Fright (horror) and Urban Decay (yes, more horror). He’s also in BloodRayne which is yes, horror. He’s had one-offs on Tales from the Crypt, The Outer Limits, Monsters, Masters of Horror and was Doug Rennie, a main cast member of Ghost Wars.
Born September 27, 1950 — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, 69. He’d be on the Birthday Honors list if he’d only been Zylyn in Space Rangers which lasted only six episodes. Damn. But he’s also shown up on Babylon 5, the premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Superboy, Alien Nation, the Australian version of Mission: Impossible, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Stargate SG-1, Poltergeist: The Legacy, The Librarians, voicing characters on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Rebels. He’s currently got two main roles going, the first being Nobusuke Tagomi in The Man in The High Castle, the other being Hiroki Watanabe in Lost in Space.
Born September 27, 1956 — Sheila Williams, 63. Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction last fifteen years. She won the Hugo Award for Best Short Form Editor in 2011 and 2012. With the late Gardner Dozois, she co-edited a bonnie bunch of anthologies such as Isaac Asimov’s Robots, Isaac Asimov’s Christmas and Isaac Asimov’s Cyberdreams. She was also responsible for the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy writing being renamed the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.
Born September 27, 1972 — Gwyneth Paltrow, 47. Yes, she is Pepper Potts in the Marvel Universe film franchise but her first genre role was as a young Wendy Darling in Hook. And she shows up in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow asPolly Perkins, a reporter for The Chronicle.
(12) ROCKET ROYALTY. In Olav Rokne’s post “Many
Princes; One Crown” at the Hugo Book Club Blog, readers are
reminded of the challenges in voting on works translated to English, beginning
with a recent Retro-Hugo winner.
…But the case of The Little Prince is more comparable to that of the first translated work to appear on a Hugo Ballot: the 1963 novel Sylva, which was written by French war hero Vercors (A.K.A. Jean Bruller). No translator is mentioned on the dust jacket of the book. And until this summer, when the record was updated at our request, the official Hugo Awards site did not list the name of the translator, Rita Barisse. The Wikipedia entry for the Hugo Awards, and several other publications continue to neglect Barisse’s contribution to the work….
(13) LAFFERTY AWARENESS. Shelf Awareness checks in
with the author of Lies My
Teacher Told Me in
“Reading
with… James W. Loewen”. R.A. Lafferty gets a big shout-out:
Book you’re an evangelist for:
The only historical novel I recommend without reservation: Okla Hannali by R.A. Lafferty. Even though by a white author, I credit it as a Choctaw history of the 19th century, in the form of a biography of a fictional Choctaw leader who was born in Mississippi around 1801 and died in Oklahoma in 1900. I realize such a statement creates all sorts of problems for me–expropriation of Native knowledge, white arrogance, etc. My only defense is the work itself. I have no idea how Lafferty, otherwise known for science fiction, learned so much about Choctaws (and white folks), but every time I have checked out any fact in Okla Hannali, no matter how small, Lafferty got it right. And what a read! Only a little over 200 pages long, but an epic, nevertheless.
(14) ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS. David Gerrold contends
art and the artist should be regarded separately in his public
Facebook post:
So let’s say that I point out that the owners of a specific fast-food chain have donated a lot of money to anti-LGBTQ+ causes.
This is not an invitation to say:
“The food is terrible.”
Let’s say that I point out that a particular actor has said some unsavory things about politics. This is not an invitation to say,
“She can’t act anyway.”
Or maybe a well-known author has said something egregiously stupid. That’s not an invitation to say,
You are on a runaway trolley. On one track are five people who have not yet seen The Good Place and don’t intend to, and who will die if you don’t move the lever. On the other track is one person who, like you, is caught up and can discuss the show with you. What do you do?
(16) PENN AND POURNELLE. There’s a pair of names you wouldn’t
put in the same sentence – unless you’re Tedium’s Ernie Smith. In “All
Penn, No Teller” he recalls when Penn Jillette was “a sometimes-rebellious big-name computer magazine
columnist in the ’90s.”
…Now, tech writing of this era doesn’t have the pedigree of, say, good music journalism in the 1970s. Certainly, there were good tech writers during this time, particularly free-wheeling voices like fellow moonlighter Jerry Pournelle of Byte, hard-nosed insiders like journeyman scribe John C. Dvorak and the long-anonymous Robert X. Cringely, and well-considered newspaper voices of reason like syndicated columnist Kim Komando and the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg.
But Jillette was something different. He was already famous—certainly more famous than Pournelle, an established science-fiction author, thanks to being a regular fixture on television during much of his career and starring in a legendary Run-DMC music video—and he likely did not need a nationally distributed computer magazine column to make a living. Jillette simply liked computers and knew a lot about them, which meant that he could rant about the details of an Autoexec.bat file just as easily as he can about politics. He gave the tech writing form something of an edge, while maintaining the freewheeling nature established by fellow pre-blogging voices like Pournelle….
“Caltech scientists have discovered a new species of worm thriving in the extreme environment of Mono Lake. This new species, temporarily dubbed Auanema sp., has three different sexes, can survive 500 times the lethal human dose of arsenic, and carries its young inside its body like a kangaroo.”
Terry Hunt sent the link in with a note: “I was
irresistibly reminded of Vonda N. McIntyre’s story ‘Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand’ and its novel expansion Dreamsnake.”
(18) LOOKING FOR ET IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD. The Beyond Center
presented the 2019 Eugene Shoemaker Memorial Lecture with James Benford on
September 5.
Abstract: A recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate for observing Earth. Near-Earth objects provide an ideal way to watching our world from a secure natural object that provides resources an ETI might need: materials, a firm anchor, concealment. These co-orbital objects have been little studied by astronomy and not at all by SETI or planetary radar observations. I describe the objects found thus far and propose both passive and active observations of them by optical and radio listening, radar imaging and launching probes. We might also broadcast to them.
India’s Moon rover, which lost contact moments before it was to touch down on the lunar surface earlier this month, had a “hard landing”, Nasa has said.
New pictures from a Nasa spacecraft show the targeted landing site of the Vikram rover, but its precise location “has yet to be determined”.
The images were taken at dusk, and were not able to locate the lander.
India would have been the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon.
Chandrayaan-2 was due to touch down at the lunar South Pole on 7 September, over a month after it first took off.
It approached the Moon as normal until an error occurred about 2.1km (1.3 miles) from the surface, Indian space officials said.
On Friday, Nasa tweeted the images of the targeted landing site of the Indian module.
(20) STAR WARS AT DISNEYLAND. Good Morning America shared
an advance look at the “Rise
of the Resistance” attraction that
will be part of the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area of the Disney parks,
The future: The fully realized version of Shapeshifter would be a “mothercraft” lander that carries a collection of 12 mini robots (“cobots”) to the surface, acts as the main power source, and uses a suite of scientific instruments that can directly analyze samples. The cobots could work together to carry and move the mothercraft to different areas. They would be able to operate individually or as one cohesive unit, in order to adapt to a variety of terrains and environments.
For example, the cobots would be able to separate and fly out in different directions or together as a flock, link up together like a barrel of monkeys in order to explore narrow caves and caverns, or even float on or swim in liquid.
(22) SURVIVE BY A WHISKER. Gato Roboto
is
a video game designed to let you channel your inner feline.
Pounce inside of your cozy armored mech and set off on a dangerous trek through an alien underworld full of irritable creatures and treacherous obstacles in a valiant effort to save your stranded captain and his crashed spaceship. Tiptoe outside the friendly confines of your technological marvel and follow your feline instincts through tight tunnels and mysterious waterways to scavenge for new weapons and gear. Adventure awaits the most curious of cats in Gato Roboto!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy,
Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Terry Hunt, Nina Shepardson,Cliff, Rob Thornton,
Michael J. Walsh, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories.
Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna NImmhaus.]
By John Hertz: (reprinted, mostly, from No Direction Home 29) Also reaching a centenary this year is Felix the Cat, who arrived with TheAdventures of Felix or, if as sometimes considered he continued Master Tom introduced earlier, Feline Follies (each 1919). He came from the studio of Pat Sullivan, created by Sullivan (1885-1933), Sullivan’s lead animator Otto Messmer (1892-1983), or both, the first animated-cartoon character to win international fame. In 1921 Winslow B. Felix (1890-1936), a friend of Sullivan’s, opened a Chevrolet automobile dealership in Los Angeles irresistibly called Felix Chevrolet; in 1958 new owner Nick Shammas (1915-2003) put up a giant Felix the Cat sign, still proudly maintained by the current owner, 3330 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles 90007. Everyone knew Felix’ pacing deep in thought during the cartoons (at left, from Oceantics, 1930). There was also a comic strip for newspapers (1923-1966). The fantasy element was broader, or something, than anthropomorphism; at a moment when a man might tip his hat, Felix might raise an arc with his ears from the top of his head; wanting to see at a distance, he might take off his tail and look through it as a telescope. Later, at the hands of Joe Oriolo (1913-1985) for television, Felix had a satchel Bag of Tricks; this may have been a weakening, or even a blandification, but it produced an object which an opponent could try to get. Joe’s son Don (1946- ), a painter, musician, and maker of guitars, inherited Felix, became known as the Felix the Cat Guy, and licensed him in the United States and abroad, particularly in Japan; dozens of Felix paintings by Don have appeared, some with guitars, at least one noting the resemblance of Felix and the Kit-Cat® Klock (invented 1932 by Earl Arnault 1904-1971, adopting a distinctive bow tie in 1954, or pearls for the Lady Kit-Cat in 2001). In 2014 rights to Felix were acquired by DreamWorks Animation, now part of NBCUniversal owned in turn by Comcast.
In 1925, Felix at his height, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) led a Vanity Fair article with him.
In the course of one of his adventures, my favorite dramatic hero, Felix the Cat, begins to sing…. little black notes hang in the air above him…. He reaches up, catches a few handfuls of them, and…. fit[s] them together into the most ingenious … scooter … the wheels … made out of the round heads of the notes, the framework of their tails. He helps his companion into her seat, climbs in himself, seizes by its barbs the semi-quaver which serves as the lever of propulsion and, working it vigorously backwards and forwards, shoots away…. What the cinema can do better than literature is to be fantastic…. A study of Felix the Cat would teach … many valuable lessons.
“Where Are the Movies Moving? The brilliant success of the cinema in portraying the fantastic and preposterous”; July, pp. 39, 78
Having spoken of a fictional black cat famous through graphics I must bring another, who started earlier, ended earlier, stayed mainly on the plain printed page (though there were 230 animations – half as many as Felix), was less widely known but perhaps greater: Krazy Kat, in the eponymous 1913-1944 comic strip by George Herriman (1880-1944). Fantasy element broader, or something, than anthropomorphism? The landscape is strange, and while the characters are stationary may change. Krazy has been called androgynous; sometimes she seems to be female, sometimes he seems to be male. The characterization, the layout, the language, the plot (if any) – is there anything that isn’t extraordinary? maybe the policeman, Officer Pupp? – no – maybe Ignatz Mouse’s bricks? yet if they are the anchor to reality, that is very strange. And William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) loved it. P. McDonnell et al. eds., Krazy Kat (1986) is a good overview. Bill Blackbeard while at Eclipse reprinted the 1916-1924 Sunday strips in nine volumes 1988-1992, then at Fantagraphics the 1925-1944 Sundays in ten more volumes 2002-2008.
Because Herriman illustrated the tales of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis (“MAR-kwiss”; 1878-1937) we know Mehitabel, an alley cat with whom Archy the cockroach hung out, was also black. Starting in 1916 Marquis ran them in his column for the New York City newspaper The Evening Sun, then in the Tribune, then in Collier’s magazine, then The Saturday Evening Post. Archy, the protagonist, had been a free-verse poet in an earlier life; he took to writing stories and poems on a typewriter in the newspaper office after everyone had left, climbing onto the machine and hurling himself onto one key at a time; he couldn’t manage capital letters, which called for simultaneously pressing the Shift key (though once landing on the Shift Lock key he wrote CAPITALS AT LAST). Several collections have been published; Herriman is in them only, starting about 1932. Michael Sims edited The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel in 2006.
Filers know a long run of photographs from people under the topic “Cats Sleep on Science Fiction”. Last September I sent a photo I took at the 2018 World Science Fiction Convention of Steven Barnes asleep on some SF he was writing. He was, I explained, one of the coolest cats I knew. Note that Our Gracious Host uses the spelling “SFF”, presumably to make certain-sure, in these days of uncertainty, that both science fiction and fantasy are included.
The KitKat candy bar, wafers coated in chocolate, was originally made in England by Rowntree’s of York; now by Hershey in the United States, by Nestlé elsewhere. When I went to Yokohama for the 2007 Worldcon (“The Worldcon I Saw”, File 770 152 [PDF]; “The Residence of the Wind”, Argentus 8 [PDF]), Terry Karney said I should be sure to try a green-tea KitKat, because they were strange. He was right. I had been brought from the U.S. by the Hertz Across to Nippon Alliance (hana meaning flower or blossom is a Japanese word much used in poetry), Chris O’Shea from the United Kingdom by the Japanese Expeditionary Travel Scholarship (JETS).
As I was going my way west
Farther than ever one day,
I met a traveler going east.
The world is round, they say.
Title, Felix Mendelssohn and His Times p. 1 (H. Jacob, 1963; J.L.F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy 1809-1847); felix in Latin means happy or fortunate, felicissimus is the superlative; fortunate lingers in English happy (which is mostly cheerful, contented, sunny), since hap is occur, and English still has happen, still allows e.g. “He had the happy knack of bringing people to like him”.
The lawsuit filed in Texas on Wednesday names Wu, as well as Cenk Uygur, of the news outlet the Young Turks, and Mark Follman, of the magazine Mother Jones. It seeks damages and a “jury trail [sic].”
(2) SPACE DRAMA. For All Mankind premieres November 1 on the Apple TV app for those with an Apple TV+ subscription. The series will dramatize an alternate history depicting “what would have happened if the global space race had never ended” after the USSR succeeds in the first manned Moon landing. It’s created by Emmy Award winner Ronald D. Moore (Outlander, Battlestar Galactica), Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi.
Told through the lives of NASA astronauts, engineers and their families, For All Mankind presents an aspirational world where NASA and the space program remained a priority and a focal point of our hopes and dreams.
Andrew Liptak mentions how much the premise makes him think of Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars in his post about the trailer at Tor.com.
(3) RESTORE THE LEGEND! Chris Garcia has given
himself a task – to make Jack C. Haldeman II (or as everyone else called him,
Jay) famous again! The legendary writer and SMoF, Jay was also the master of
the SpecFi Sports story! This plan all starts with a simple plan – an issue of The
Drink Tank!
We’re looking for stories about Jay, personal reminiscences, appreciation of his writings, anything! We’d love stories particularly about folks who knew him from the 1970s and 80s, and especially anything about the Discon II! If you’ve got any photos of Jay, that’d be great, too!
(4) GAHAN WILSON APPEAL. Paul Winters, organizer of the “Help
Gahan Wilson find his way” GoFundMe, is calling for more donations
after Wilson had a medical emergency.
We have a crisis.
Gahan had surgery over the weekend and he was discharged from the hospital yesterday. It turns out that the hospital and the memory care facility didn’t have the best communication going, because today we were told that the memory care unit could not care for Gahan because of the severity of the surgery. The hospital won’t take him back and he can’t go to a rehabilitation facility.
We were informed that for him to stay in the memory care facility, we would need to get him a 24 hour care person to stay with him for the next thirty days until the doctors can assess his condition.
All through this gofundme I have been careful not to take in too much money. A few months ago, I suspended donations because it looked like we would have enough. Today, that all changed. Please, if you can spare any more, we could use it to pay this unexpected expense.
The circumstances of this whole hospital event have been surreal. I will spare everyone the details of the surgery, but we did it because the doctor said he would die without it. None of the medical experts warned or prepared us for the change that would make in his care level after the surgery.
I know that even with Alzheimer’s Gahan wants to live. Whenever we are with him, he speaks of how lucky we all are to be alive and the last cartoon he drew was of a guy holding a sign that read “Glad to remain alive!” I know he was drawing himself. We will keep trying to give him the best quality of life until the end.
This rulebook contains everything a group of buckaroos will need, including four playable types (bigfoot, dinosaur, human, and unicorn), five trots (bad boy, charmer, sneak, true buckaroo, and wizard), several unique ways, as well as hundreds of cool moves that are specially crafted for each unique play style.
Within these 270+ pages you will also find various magical items and a menagerie of monsters, ranging from pesky Void crabs to this villainous Ted Cobbler himself.
The only question left is: what are you waiting for?
WASCALLY WABBIT is included in tingleverse RPG monster guide this two dimensional creature is not evil but does not understand difference of physics between our timelines and ends up hurting buckaroos with singing swords, mallets, portable holes and dropping pianos. very scary
(6) WISDOM SEEKER. Likewise, UrsulaV knew who could help her navigate the recent fannish storm.
tell the devils to get out of the way because THE BEST FAN FICTION BUCKAROOS ON THIS TIMELINE ARE COMING THROUGH NO TIME FOR SCOUNRELS WERE TROTTING BUDDY. DEVILS OUT! https://t.co/VWNCXP0VFthttps://t.co/aFGRrOV1zb
Tingle even promised to get into the topic on his “My Friend Chuck” podcast — but I must be in the wrong timeline, it hasn’t dropped yet.
new podcast episode of https://t.co/F8MSX8vxqp coming tomorrow where i will discuss current HUGOS AWARD and @ao3org controversy in detail and share thoughts on this dramatic way. TUNE IN TOMMOROW ON THIS TIMELINE subscribe to not miss
(7) THE CAT’S MEOW. Orbit’s cover reveal for Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes explains why we’re interested. SJW Credentials in SFF… Irresistible.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 26, 1937 — The Shadowradio serial premiered with the first episode being titled “The Death House Rescue”. The introduction to the program, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” was spoken by actor Frank Readick.
September 26, 1987 — Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Encounter at Farpoint” opening episode premiered in television syndication. The series would run for seven years, the longest Trek series to date.
September 26, 2001 — Star Trek: Enterprise debuted. It was called simply Enterprise for the first two seasons. “Broken Bow” was the name of the first episode. Captain Archer was played by Scott Bakula, star of Quantum Leap. It ran for four seasons before being cancelled.
September 26, 2007 — The Bionic Woman first aired. This is NBC’s retooling of the 1970’s SciFi channel series Bionic Woman which starred Lindsay Wagner, and now starring Michelle Ryan. It lasted exactly eight episodes.
September 26, 2014 — Star Wars: Rebels first aired. It was produced by Lucasfilm Animation and set in the Star Wars universe five years before A New Hope. It lasted four seasons.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 26, 1866 — Winsor McCay. Cartoonist and animator who’s best remembered for the Little Nemo strip which ran between The Wars and the animated Gertie the Dinosaur film which is the key frame animation cartoon which you can see here. He used the pen name Silas on his Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strip. That strip had no recurring characters or theme, just that a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream after eating Welsh rarebit. What an odd concept. (Died 1934.)
Born September 26, 1877 — Edmund Gwenn. Dr. Harold Medford in the classic Big Insect film Them. He showed in the Fifties show Science Fiction Theatre twice, once as Dr. Pliny in “A Visit from Dr. Pliny” and another time as Dr. Lorenz in “The Strange Doctor Lorenz”. (We’re not mentioning his famous role as Santa Claus: since we all still believe, that must be classified as merely a courtroom drama.) (Died 1959.)
Born September 26, 1927 — Charles Macaulay. He appear twice in Trek, once in “The Return of the Archons” as Landru, and in the “Wolf in the Fold” as Prefect Jaris. He was Captain Townsend in “God Save The Queen” in The Tales of The Golden Monkey, and in the Wonder Woman series, he was Ambassador McCauley in “Formula 407”. (Died 1999.)
Born September 26, 1941 — Martine Beswick, 78. Though she auditioned for Dr. No, she was instead cast in From Russia with Love as Zora. She also appeared as Paula Caplan in Thunderball. She would appear in One Million Years B.C. opposite Raquel Welch. She made several Hammer Studio films including Prehistoric Women and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.
Born September 26, 1948 — Olivia Newton-John, 71. She was Kira in Xanadu which is considered responsible for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards. In 2017, she appeared in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. A coincidence? I think not. It got a 30% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Born September 26, 1956 — Linda Hamilton, 63. Best known for being Sarah Connor in The Terminator film franchise and Catherine Chandler in the Beauty and the Beast series. She also played Vicky Baxter in Children of the Corn, and Doctor Amy Franklin in King Kong Lives. She would be Acacia, a Valkyrie in “Delinquents” of the Lost Girl series, a role she would reprise in two more episodes, “End of a Line” and “Sweet Valkyrie High”.
Born September 26, 1957 — Tanya Huff, 62. Her Confederation of Valor Universe series is highly recommended by me. And I also give a strong recommendation to her Gale Family series. I’ve not read her other series, so I’ll ask y’all what you’d recommend.
Born September 26, 1968 — Jim Caviezel, 51. John Reese on Person of Interest which CBS describes as a “crime drama”. Huh. He was also Detective John Sullivan in Frequency, and Kainan in Outlander. And yes he played Number Six in the unfortunate reboot of The Prisoner.
Born September 26, 1985 — Talulah Riley, 34. Miss Evangelista in “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, two Tenth Doctor stories. She also portrays Angela in Westworld, and she shows up in Thor: The Dark World as an Asgardian nurse.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Crankshaft obviously has seen authors hawking their books in the dealer’s room.
Free Range gets a laugh from an unexpected link between the Olympics and UFOs.
As with any decent superhero origin, the Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum here began in ambition and humility, overreach and wonder: Allen Stewart loved superheroes and comic books and spent every dime from his paper routes on superhero comics and toys and refused to throw anything away. His fever never abated, not as a teenager, not after he entered the military, not after he started a family, and so, when he became an adult and made some money in local real estate, he decided to splurge: He decided he would build the Justice League’s Hall of Justice in his backyard.
This was a dozen years ago.
…Still, the Hall of Heroes and its unlikely Hall of Justice were becoming a draw in Elkhart County. Within a few years of opening, he had 10,000 annual paying visitors, and the collection — which he now calls the largest superhero memorabilia collection in the world, and believes is worth about $5 million — exploded to include: a nine-foot tall Hulk statue, a Captain America shield used in the 2011 movie, rare Superman toys, original artwork and the debut comics of nearly every major superhero. His Hall went from something like a child’s bedroom shrine to superheroes to something like a museum.
…Another visitor who received a warm welcome in Germany was American Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he visited Berlin earlier this month. The official reason for the visit was a memorial service for John F. Kennedy, but Dr. King also used the opportunity to visit the Berlin Wall, where only hours before a young man had been shot during an attempt to flee East Berlin and only survived due to the heroic actions of an US Army sergeant who pulled him to safety, a sad reminder that about fifty people have already been killed trying to surmount the Berlin Wall….
(13) THE HUBBLE GAZE. Abigail Nussbaum drills into new sff
film Ad
Astra at Asking the Wrong Question.
…This is absolutely a film that revels in the stark visual of a single space-suited protagonist made small against a backdrop of endless stars, or in stunning vistas of planetary bodies and orbital installations. It absolutely features long wordless stretches in which the cosmic soundtrack strives to create a 2001-esque sense of grandeur. And it absolutely filters all those sensory feasts through Pitt’s character, a soulful Competent Man whose emotional turmoil is both soothed and magnified by the scale of the setting he’s been placed in, and the challenges of surviving it. But Ad Astra also feels like a film aware of its antecedents, of the movies that have come before it over the last decade and the tropes they’ve established. If it isn’t quite a dismantling of those tropes, it is at least a more measured, more humane response to them….
(14) NOT SURPRISED BY DAN SIMMONS. RedWombat was ahead of
the curve, like usual.
Am I really the only one who knew that Dan Simmons had gone batshit right years ago?
I’m not trying to do a hipster thing here, I genuinely thought this one was common knowledge. I am Captain Oblivious, so if I know it, I assume people living under rocks on Mars must know it.
(15) ALT-RIGHT HATES SEEING THOSE CLICKS GO TO WASTE. Jon
Del Arroz hopes he can rev up the last couple days of his latest Kickstarter
campaign by tweeting his own crap about Greta Thunberg. Was getting banned for
a week part of the plan? No idea. “BANNED
On Twitter And Can’t Promote!” [Internet Archive link.]
…To get started, just say, “Alexa, introduce me to Samuel L. Jackson.” You can then choose whether you want him to use explicit language or not, so it’s safe to assume that those who want him to curse will get a dose of his iconic “Motherf—er!” The beauty of it is, you can always change your mind and toggle between clean and explicit content as much as your heart desires.
Bacteria have been caught “stripping off” in order to evade antibiotics and survive, scientists show.
Researchers at Newcastle University filmed bacteria “undressing” and taking off their outer layer – or cell wall.
Antibiotics can attack cell walls so scientists think this is a new form of drug resistance and could explain why some infections keep coming back.
But experts said it was still unclear if this was having an impact on patients.
What are they taking off?
Some species of bacteria have a cell wall built out of sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of protein).
It gives the bacterium shape and protection but it is also a weak spot that can be exploited by antibiotics.
The first antibiotic to be discovered, penicillin, disrupts the cell wall and causes bacteria to burst.
The study, published in Nature Communications, looked at bacteria from elderly patients with urinary tract infections that kept coming back.
Researchers spotted that some bacteria were responding to antibiotics by slipping out of their cell wall in order to escape the drug’s effects.
(18) STARKILLER! [Item by Olav Rokne.] Stars and galaxies are being torn asunder, and nobody really knows why. Could it be The Doomsday Machine from Star Trek’s original series? Has some alien civilization found a Tox Uthat? Is it just a bunch of busy Vogons? Well, probably not. But hopefully, Canadian scientists working with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) will be able to figure out the exact mechanism that explains why galaxies are being destroyed. The New York Post has the story: “Something in the universe is killing off entire galaxies”.
The cause of death is thought to be a shutdown of star formation, and a new project aims to use one of the world’s leading telescopes to observe the process in detail.
The Canadian-led project is called the Virgo Environment Traced in Carbon Monoxide survey (VERTICO).
It will investigate how galaxies can be killed off by their own environment.
Principal investigator Toby Brown explained in The Conversation that he is leading a team of 30 experts who will be using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope to map stars being made in our nearest galaxy cluster, the Virgo Cluster.
A satellite delivery “taxi service” using a giant helium balloon is being developed by a start-up company.
B2space is looking primarily to launch commercial satellites, but it has even fielded an inquiry about “space funerals”, sending ashes into space.
…Described as a satellite “taxi service” by the company, balloons have already been sent to the edge of the atmosphere to test their components and systems – their first launch was from Snowdonia Aerospace Centre, and they have since taken off from Shetland Space Centre.
B2space’s technology will use a giant helium balloon to lift an unmanned rocket up over the sea to a height of around 22-25 miles (35-40km). The rocket, carrying a satellite, will then blast into space to deliver its cargo, while the balloon deflates and falls to earth to be retrieved from the sea.
This will be cheaper because the rocket does not have to power itself up through dense air up to 22 miles, using 85% less fuel, and the rocket will be smaller, the company claimed.
The man behind Marvel Studios’ string of comic book movie blockbusters is to develop a new Star Wars film, a senior executive at Disney has revealed.
Alan Horn, co-chairman of Walt Disney Studios, said it “made sense” for Kevin Feige to work with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy on the project.
The film would be part of “a new era in Star Wars storytelling,” Horn told the Hollywood Reporter.
Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios are both subsidiaries of Walt Disney Studios.
Horn described Feige – who has been president of Marvel Studios since 2007 – as “a die-hard fan” of the Star Wars universe.
Under Feige’s leadership, the films that make up the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) have made more than $22 billion (£18 billion) worldwide.
(21) JEDI GAMES. EA has dropped a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen
Order game trailer — “Cal’s Mission.”
In the Galactic Empire, the Inquisitorius has only one mission: seek out and destroy all remnants of the Jedi Order. Learn more about what Cal Kestis is searching the galaxy for and why the Empire will stop at nothing to bring him down. Become a Jedi in Respawn Entertainment’s third-person action-adventure game, STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order™. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC this holiday season, November 15, 2019.
[Thanks to Chris Garcia, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Steven
H Silver, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, and Andrew
Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing
editor of the day Ingvar.]
(1) DOZOIS FINALE. At Flogging Babel, Michael
Swanwick reviews “Gardner
Dozois’ Last Story”, “Homecoming” (Fantasy & Science
Fiction, Sep/Oct 2019).
Chance plays such a major role in our lives! It was chance that killed Gardner Dozois. He died not of a lingering illness but from a fortuitous disease picked up in a hospital whose staff chanced not to be competent enough to take care of his original complaint in a reasonable lenth of time. So when he wrote “Homecoming,” he had no idea how close he was to death.
Nevertheless, it is hard to read this story as anything but his farewell….
Since the creation of the Tiptree Award was first announced by Guest of Honor Pat Murphy at WisCon 15 in 1991, WisCon has been proud to host the award winners and to support the award by hosting fundraisers at-con. Making big changes can be difficult, but listening to the voices of our community members exemplifies the values that our con continues to strive towards. We fully support the Motherboard in their decision to rename the award, and we look forward to celebrating the award under its new name at WisCon 44 in 2020.
The original stars of Jurassic Park are to reunite for the next instalment of the dinosaur film franchise.
Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum will reprise their roles in the upcoming Jurassic World 3.
The actors led the cast of the 1993 hit, directed by Steven Spielberg, and have appeared separately in subsequent instalments.
…It is believed the trio will appear alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, the stars of 2015’s Jurassic World and 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The latter release saw Goldblum reprise his role as Dr Ian Malcolm, having previously done so in 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Neill and Dern reprised their roles as Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ellie Sattler in 2001 film Jurassic Park III.
(4) IN AND OUT OF FANDOM. Rob Hansen announces some additions to his fanhistory site THEN:
Now that T. Bruce Yerke’s memoir of 1930s LA fandom is online I was able to expand my page on “The LASFS Clubroom” accordingly.
In the late 1930s the Los Angeles Science Fiction League – as they were then known – were meeting in Clifton’s Cafeteria, a downtown eatery located at 648 South Broadway after initially meeting at members’ homes and the like. T.Bruce Yerke recalled those LASFL days in his MEMOIRS OF A SUPERFLUOUS FAN (1943):
The great difference between the Chapter #4 of the SFL and the present LASFS is a subject of many ramifications, the product of an evolution of some years’ length, and a very interesting study. Perhaps it may be summed up in brief by the observation that the club in l937 had no social life to speak of. The chapter centered about meetings held roughly every other Thursday. Otherwise the members contented themselves with occasional Sunday gatherings of a highly informal and unofficial nature. Often groups of three or four attended shows together or went book hunting en masse, but that was virtually the sum of it. For the most part, members saw nothing of each other between alternate Thursdays, save the vicarious mediums of post and telephone….
And a couple of weeks back I added a bunch of correspondence relating to Vince Clarke’s 1960 departure from, and 1981 return to, fandom: “Vince Clarke: The Return (1981)”
Prominent among those dissidents were the trio – Vince Clarke, Joy Clarke, and Sandy Sanderson – known as ‘Inchmery’ after Inchmery Road in South London where they all shared a house together. Vince Clarke was not at all happy with fandom and was on the point of quitting it, as can be seen in this letter to him from George Locke dated 7 April 60…
(5) HUGO WANK. At Archive of Our Own, “Stanley Cup — What it
Means” by Anonymous. Looks like this has been online for over a week,
but it’s news to me!
…“What? No, the Oviraptors won fair and square. But the fans are saying they won.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here, I’ll read you this tweet. Someone called PuckerUp wrote, “I can’t believe we won the Stanley Cup! I’m so excited you guys!” And there’s more like that. They really think they won it. So we want you to tell them that it was the Oviraptors team that won, not them. They can say they supported the actual winners.”
“Uh, are you sh—“ the spokesperson quickly changed course mid-sentence. “Are you sure someone saying “we won” instead of “my favorite team won” is a problem? I think everyone knows it was the athletes who actually won…”
“It dilutes what winning the Stanley Cup means, if just anyone can go around saying they won it. I mean, listen to this: HockeyLuvver63 tweeted, “Oviraptors won because I was the MVP and saved Darcy from rolling off the couch.” And then there’s a picture of this woman catching a Boston Terrier in a puck costume as it slides off a sofa. If people keep saying things like that, other people might start thinking the real winners and MVPs are just making it up too, and sneer at them for it.”…
(6) WILD IN THE STREETS. Although we covered this
performance, I haven’t previously linked to The New Yorker story. In the
magazine’s December 11, 2017 issue Alex Ross reviews
War of the Worlds, an opera by Annie Gosfield based on the Orson Welles radio
broadcast of 1938 and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic collaborating
with the experimental opera company The Industry.
The main audience was seated at Disney Hall, where the orchestra was ostensibly performing a new suit, by Gosfield, modelled on Holst’s The Planets. The actress Sigourney Weaver, who has a history with aliens, assumed the pose of an unctuous gala host. Halfway through the “Mercury” movement, she broke in with the first of many news bulletins. As the concert faltered–we never got past “Earth”–Weaver elicited live reports from three nearby parking lots, each of which had its own performers and audience. The auxiliary sites were placed near antiquated air-raid sirens that still stand throughout the city; they hummed with extraterrestrial transmissions. Scientists jabbered technicalities; a TV reporter interviewed eyewitnesses; a military honcho tried to impose order. Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, had a cameo, appearing onstage at Disney with a reassuring message: “Please don’t attempt to leave this building. Just outside these walls is utter chaos. A climactic ray-gun assault on Disney was repelled by the metal shield that Frank Gehry had presciently installed on the exterior. Weaver exclaimed, ‘The power of music has redeemed humanity once again!’
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 25, 1924 — Opened on this date in Moscow, Aelita: Queen of Mars. A silent film by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov. In the United States, Aelita was edited and titled by Benjamin De Casseres for release in 1929 as Aelita: Revolt of the Robots. The 2004 DVD has a musical score based on the music of Scriabin, Stravinsky, and Glazunov.
September 25, 1976 — Holmes & Yoyo debuted. A heavy on the comedy police show where Detective Alexander Holmes keeps injuring his partners so he’s given an android partner which is John Schuck as Gregory “Yoyo” Yoyonovich in his first genre role. It lasted thirteen episodes. The reviews were not kind. Nor were the ratings.
September 25, 2006 — On NBC, Heroes aired its first episode, “Genesis”. It would last four seasons and remarkably would actually not be cancelled before it wraps up its story.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 25, 1862 — Henry McNeil. Though he wrote two Lost Race novels, he’s here because he was a member of the Kalem Club circle that centered around Lovecraft. He played an important role in the career of Lovecraft as he was the first to urge that writer to submit his fiction to Weird Tales in the early Twenties. (Died 1929.)
Born September 25, 1919 — Betty Ballantine. With her husband Ian, she created Bantam Books in 1945 and established Ballantine Books seven years later. They won one special World Fantasy Award for professional work in 1975 and another one shared with Joy Chant et al for The High Kings which is indeed an amazing work. ISFDB list one novel for her, The Secret Oceans, which I’ve not read. Anyone here done so? (Died 2019.)
Born September 25, 1930 — Shel Silverstein. Not sure how he is SFF but ISFDB lists him as such and I’m more than thrilled to list him under Birthday Honors. I’m fond of his poetry collection Where the Sidewalk Ends and also note here A Light in the Attic if only because it’s been on “oh my we must ban it now attempts” all too often. (Died 1999.)
Born September 25, 1951 — Mark Hamill, 68. Ok, I’ll confess that my favorite role of his is when he voices The Joker in the DC Universe. He started doing this way back on Batman: The Animated Series and has even doing on other such series as well. Pure comic genius! Oh, and did you know he voices Chucky in the new Child’s Play film? Now that’s creepy.
Born September 25, 1952 — Christopher Reeve. Superman in the Superman film franchise. He appeared in the Smallville series as Dr. Swann in the episodes “Rosetta” and “Legacy”. His Muppet Show appearance has him denying to Miss Piggy that he’s Superman though he displays those superpowers throughout that entire episode. (Died 2004.)
Born September 25, 1962 — Beth Toussaint, 57. She was Ishara Yar in the “Legacy” episode of Next Gen and she’s been in a lot of genre series and films including Berserker, Babylon 5, the Monsters anthology series, Nightmare Cafe, Mann & Machine, Project Shadowchaser II, Legend and Fortress 2: Re-Entry.
Born September 25, 1968 — Will Smith, 51. Despite the vile stinkers that are Wild Wild West and Suicide Squad, he’s done some brilliant work — the first Men in Black film is quite superb as is Independence Day and Aladdin.
Born September 25, 1969 — Catherine Zeta-Jones, 50. Her first role ever was as in Scheherazade in French short 1001 Nights. Her next role was Sala in The Phantom. Does Zorro count as genre? If go, she appeared as Eléna Montero in The Mask of Zorro and Eléna De La Vega in The Legend of Zorro. She was Theodorain The Haunting, a riff off The Haunting of Hill House. And finally, she was in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as Maya in “Palestine, October 1917”.
Born September 25, 1980 — Benedict Jacka, 39. Though I’ll admit I’ve fallen behind in my reading of his Alex Verusseries, what I’ve read of it has been quite excellent — superb protagonist, interesting story and a quirky setting. Good popcorn literature!
(10) REPRESENTATION
ON TV. [Item by Olav Rokne.] In advance of The Good Place’s return this week, Kwame
Opam of the New York Times profiles the show’s understated
convention-breaking character Chidi Anagonye, and what the positive depiction
of a character like him means for nerds of color: “The
Good Place”. Opam writes:
Chidi is the sort of character who, in past generations, might have been the butt of the joke more often than not. Instead, he’s a romantic lead on one of television’s most beloved shows.
Families of those killed while watching a Batman film in 2012 have written to Warner Bros with concerns about the new Joker film and urging the studio to join action against gun violence.
Twelve people died in a cinema showing The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado.
They included Jessica Ghawi, 24, whose mother Sandy Phillips told BBC News she was “horrified” by the Joker trailers.
Warner Bros said the film – which stars Joaquin Phoenix – was not an endorsement of real-world violence.
Phoenix walked out of a recent interview when asked about the issue.
Sandy Phillips and her husband, Lonnie, who run Survivors Empowered, an anti-gun violence group, wrote to Warner Bros along with three others whose relatives were killed, injured or caught up in the 2012 shooting.
Speaking to BBC News, Mrs Phillips said: “When I first saw the trailers of the movie, I was absolutely horrified.
“And then when I dug a little deeper and found out that it had such unnecessary violence in the movie, it just chilled me to my bones.
“It just makes me angry that a major motion picture company isn’t taking responsibility and doesn’t have the concern of the public at all.”
Staffordshire University might be one of the smallest in the UK, but it has some quirky degree courses.
One is theme park management. Undergraduates spend half of their time at Alton Towers whose owner Merlin Entertainments helped design the course.
Amusing genre note: Wikipedia says the teaching site’s
new wooden roller coaster (first woodie in the UK in 20 years, and first ever
to include fire) is called the Wicker Man.
A robotics company whose creations have amassed millions of views on YouTube, is renting out one of its stars, Spot.
Anyone wishing to lease the quadruped dog-like robot could do so for “less than the price of a car,” Boston Dynamics told IEEE Spectrum.
It suggested Spot could be useful in construction, the oil and gas industry and for those working in public safety.
One expert said its appeal may be limited by its price, which will be determined by demand.
Noel Sharkey, robotics experts and professor of computer science at Sheffield University, said “Spot is possibly the world’s finest example of a quadruped robot and since the addition of a robot arm, it seems a little more practical – but will it be practical enough at that price?
An infamous hacker group that was thought to have disbanded appears to be behind a wave of new attacks being carried out across the world.
Researchers at cyber-security company Secureworks say they reached their conclusion after analysing a new strain of computer virus.
They claim the culprits are the GandCrab crew.
The gang is thought to be Russian and previously sold customised ransomware to other criminals.
Their code had scrambled data on victims’ computers and demanded blackmail payments to decrypt it. It is estimated to have affected more than 1.5 million machines, with hospitals among those affected.
In May, the group had surprised many in the security industry when it announced it was “retiring” after earning more than $2bn (£1.6bn) from the trade.
Someone claiming to be part of the group claimed it had “cashed out” its earnings and quit the business.
It had been active since about January 2018.
But Secureworks has linked the group to a new strain of ransomware called REvil or Sondinokibi.
The malware has caused major disruption to hundreds of dental practices in the US as well as 22 Texas municipalities.
Researchers say not only is the code similar to that of the earlier attacks but that it contains similar mistakes.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Rob Hansen, Mike
Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of
these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day
Acoustic Rob.]
The winner of the 2019 Salam Award for
Imaginative Fiction, which recognizes emerging speculative fiction
writers of Pakistani origin or residence, was announced September 25.
Winner
Kehkashan Khalid for her story The Puppetmaster
Finalists
The two other finalists were:
Umair
Khan for the story Compound
Fatima
Taqvi for the story The Third Feather
Honorable Mentions
Sadia
Khatri – The City of Mitr
The winner receives:
A cash prize of Rs 50,000;
Review by an established literary agent for market guidance and possible representation;
An editorial review by a professional editor for critique and potential publication in a multi-award winning science fiction magazine;
The Salam Award judges were Jeffrey Ford, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Maha
Khan Phillips. In
addition to the jury, the top stories will also be reviewed by editor John
Joseph Adams and agent Saba Sulaiman.
By Colleen McMahon: I wanted to start out this week with two offbeat suggestions that
are not strictly fantasy or science fiction literature, but that might be of
interest to some Filers. Both are recent audiobook releases from Librivox.
The
first is The Lost Art of
Reading by
Gerald Stanley Lee (1862-1944). Lee was an American author and
Congregationalist minister, and he wrote The Lost Art of Reading in
1902. Long before the age of Netflix and screentime, even before radio and
widespread movie attendance, passionate defenders of the written word were
lamenting a decline in reading. In this case, Lee blames cities, trains, and
industrialization for speeding up life too much.
If
listening to an audiobook about how no one reads anymore is too meta, the text edition is available through Project
Gutenberg. (While searching around for information on this book, I discovered
that a book of the
same title was
published 108 years later, this one by Paul Ulin!)
The
other is one of Librivox’s quirkier collections: Insomnia
Collection Vol. 004, in
which volunteers found the most soporific reading material possible with the
idea of boring the listener to sleep. I can vouch for previous volumes, with
their excerpts from early 20th century telephone directories and copyright
renewal lists, as they have sent me off to dreamland on many mornings after
overnight shifts, when it was otherwise hard to settle down to sleep.
The
new volume is promising for more of the same, with selections like “W. Kent and
Co’s Annual Catalogue, April 1859,” and “Disinfection and Disinfectants.” I
contributed an excerpt from the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology’s detailed listing of
items collected in field expeditions in 1881, and it nearly put me to sleep while
I was trying to edit it, so it should work for anyone else who is battling
insomnia.
Alan
E. Nourse
(1928-1992) was on the August birthday lists, and it turns out that he was a
very prolific author. In addition to his science fiction writing, he was a physician
and wrote plenty of nonfiction books as well, with titles like So You Want
to Be a Doctor (1957) and The Backyard Astronomer (1973). Late in
life, he seems to have turned toward sex education, with books on sexually
transmitted diseases, herpes, AIDs and a 1990 Teen Guide to Safe Sex.
His
public domain works on Project Gutenberg include lots of short stories and
novelettes, 25 titles in all. That’s too many to include here, so I’ll just
mention a few below and include a link to his complete works at PG.
Jerry
Sohl
(1913-2002) is probably best remembered now as a scriptwriter for television,
including shows like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Star
Trek. (He wrote or co-wrote the episodes “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “This
Side of Paradise,” and “Whom Gods Destroy”.) However, he was also a novelist
with over twenty titles to his credit, as well as nonfiction books on chess and
bridge, and numerous short stories.
“Man’s Rights; or, How Would You Like It?: Comprising Dreams” is the first known feminist utopian novel written by a woman. The text features nine dreams experienced by a first-person female narrator. In the first seven dreams, she visits the planet Mars, finding a society where traditional sex roles and stereotypes are reversed. The narrator witnesses the oppression of the men on Mars and their struggle for equality. In the last two dreams, the narrator visits a future United States ruled by a woman president.
This is a collection of original and interesting fairy tales. We have here princes and princesses, pirates, wizards, and all the other ingredients for entertaining stories for kids.
Sabotage accidentally takes Earth’s first manned interplanetary expedition to the Moon, where a sublunar adventure ensues, involving two intelligent species and a good deal of fighting as well as romance. The perceptive reader will perceive the author’s peculiar notions concerning the behavior of volcanos, an offense against scientific fact that is hard to pardon in a writer of science fiction, but if it can be overlooked, the variety of incident and the fast pace of the action, full of surprises, amply repay the reader’s generous indulgence.
Librivox volunteer Kirk Ziegler assembled his own anthology of 30 ghost stories (including multiple selections from a book of ghost stories from India) to record as a solo project. The collection includes intriguing titles like “The Phantom Toe,” “The Fight With a Ghost,” and “What the Professor Saw”.
Dan Simmons’ Facebook comment mocking teenaged environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who recently spoke at the U.N., is now removed, however, screencaps were shared and many sff writers and fans have tweeted their dismay.
Simmons is a World Horror Grandmaster and past winner of the Hugo
(for Hyperion), World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, British Fantasy
Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Robin Johnson (the game
developer, not the Australian fan)
@midnight_pals Dan Simmons: I have a story about something VERY scary King: Go on Simmons: It's utterly terrifying King: Ok, whenever you're ready Simmons: For the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story Simmons: The Tiny Autistic Girl Lovecraft: AAAAAAAAAAHH
Very sad to see Dan Simmons comments on Greta Thunberg on Facebook. But not for Greta, who's clearly a powerhouse, but for a 71 year old white man who can't see that maybe we should listen to youth when it comes to saving the planet and wants to call her 'bratty'.
Oh, Dan Simmons jumped the shark with me with the Islamophobia that came out nowhere in OLYMPOS, plus a "thought experiment" on his blog that really went into the Eurabia stupidity.
I published his early work and considered him a friend-I spent time with him and his family in the 80s/90s. Lost touch mostly but in the last few years had heard he'd turned right, into someone I wouldn't recognize.
Eisner Hall of Fame cartoonist Lynda Barry is among 26 recipients
of this year’s MacArthur Fellowships.
In announcing the selections, MacArthur President John Palfrey said:
From addressing the consequences of climate change to furthering our understanding of human behavior to fusing forms of artistic expression, this year’s 26 extraordinary MacArthur Fellows demonstrate the power of individual creativity to reframe old problems, spur reflection, create new knowledge, and better the world for everyone. They give us reason for hope, and they inspire us all to follow our own creative instincts.
Lynda Barry is best-known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek. She has also produced several illustrated novels including The Good Times are Killing Me (1988), Cruddy (1999), and One! Hundred! Demons! (2002). Her graphic novel What It Is (2008), part memoir, part collage and part workbook, won the 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.
In recognition of her contributions to the comic art
form, Comics Alliance named Barry as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving
of lifetime achievement recognition.
Others receiving fellowships are:
Elizabeth Anderson – Philosopher. Employing
pragmatist methods to examine the ways that various institutions, policies, and
social practices serve to promote or hinder conditions of democratic equality.
++ Ann Arbor, MI
sujatha baliga — Attorney and
Restorative Justice Practitioner. Expanding access to survivor-centered
restorative justice strategies that interrupt the criminalization of people of
color and break cycles of recidivism and violence. ++ Oakland, CA
Mel Chin – Artist. Harnessing the
power of art to raise awareness of social concerns through a practice that
defies categorization. ++ Egypt, NC
Danielle Citron — Legal Scholar. Addressing the
scourge of cyber harassment by raising awareness of the toll it takes on
victims and proposing reforms to combat the most extreme forms of online abuse.
++ Boston, MA
Lisa Daugaard — Criminal Justice
Reformer. Developing alternative approaches to policing and law
enforcement practices to improve outcomes for those struggling with substance
use disorder and mental illness. ++ Seattle, WA
Annie Dorsen — Theater Artist. Pioneering a new
genre of theater that dramatizes the ways in which nonhuman intelligence is
profoundly changing the nature of work, culture, and social relationships. ++ Brooklyn,
NY
Andrea Dutton — Geochemist and
Paleoclimatologist. Furthering current understanding of sea level dynamics by
reconstructing the extent and rate of sea level rise in the ancient past. ++ Madison,
WI
Jeffrey Gibson — Visual Artist. Melding
indigenous North American materials and forms with those of Western
contemporary art to create a new hybrid visual vocabulary and prompting a shift
in how Native American art is perceived and historicized. ++ Annandale-on-Hudson,
NY
Mary Halvorson — Guitarist and
Composer. Experimenting at the intersection of jazz and rock with a
signature sound on her instrument and an aesthetic that evolves and surprises
with each new album and configuration of bandmates. ++ New York, NY
Saidiya Hartman — Literary Scholar
and Cultural Historian. Tracing the afterlife of slavery in modern American
life and rescuing from oblivion stories of sparsely documented lives that have
been systematically excluded from historical archives. ++ New York, NY
Walter Hood — Landscape and
Public Artist. Creating ecologically sustainable urban spaces that
resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring
communal histories. ++ Oakland, CA
Stacy Jupiter — Marine Scientist.
Integrating
local cultural practices with field research to design conservation strategies
that protect ecosystem biodiversity and the well-being of coastal communities.
++ Suva, Fiji
Zachary Lippman — Plant Biologist.
Investigating
the genetic mechanisms determining flowering and flower production and
developing tools for breeding hardier, higher-yielding crops. ++ Cold Spring
Harbor, NY
Valeria Luiselli — Writer. Challenging
conventional notions of authorship in fiction, essays, and inventive hybrids of
the two that pose profound questions about the various ways we piece together
stories and document the lives of others. ++ Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Kelly Lytle Hernández – Historian. Challenging
long-held beliefs about the origins, ideology, and evolution of incarceration
and immigrant detention practices in the United States. ++ Los Angeles, CA
Sarah Michelson – Choreographer. Expanding the
scope of contemporary dance in works that extend and subvert classical, modern,
and postmodern traditions and make evident the physical realities of dancers’
performance. ++ New York, NY
Jeffrey Alan Miller — Literary Scholar.
Shedding
light on how the writing practices of Renaissance scholars shaped foundational
texts of modern Christianity, philosophy, and literature. ++ Montclair, NJ
Jerry X. Mitrovica — Theoretical
Geophysicist. Revising our understanding of the dynamics and structure
of Earth’s interior and developing models to better predict the geometry and
sources of sea level change in the modern world and the geological past. ++ Cambridge,
MA
Emmanuel Pratt — Urban Designer. Integrating
agriculture, education, and design in a resident-driven approach to community
development and turning neglected urban neighborhoods into places of growth and
vitality. ++ Chicago, IL
Cameron Rowland – Artist. Using physical
objects and contractual relations—such as items seized in civil forfeiture or
furniture made by prison labor—to make visible the mechanisms through which
systemic racism is perpetuated. ++ Queens, NY
Vanessa Ruta – Neuroscientist. Investigating
how stimuli in the physical world shape the function of neural circuits and are
translated into innate and learned behaviors. ++ New York, NY
Joshua Tenenbaum — Cognitive
Scientist. Combining computational models with behavioral experiments
to shed light on human learning, reasoning, and perception, and exploring how
to bring artificial intelligence closer to the capabilities of human thinking.
++ Cambridge, MA
Jenny Tung — Evolutionary
Anthropologist and Geneticist. Revealing links between social
environmental factors—such as social status and social integration—and genomic
variation and how these connections impact health, well-being, and longevity.
++ Durham, NC
Ocean Vuong — Poet and Fiction
Writer. Marrying folkloric traditions with linguistic experimentation in works
that explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the refugee experience,
and the complexities of identity and desire with eloquence and clarity. ++ Amherst,
MA
Emily Wilson — Classicist and
Translator. Bringing classical literature to new audiences in works
that convey ancient texts’ relevance to our time and highlight the assumptions
about social relations that underlie translation decisions. ++ Philadelphia,
PA
(1) LE GUIN FELLOWSHIP. Shelley Streeby is the 2019 winner of the Le
Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship sponsored by UO Libraries’ Special Collections and University
Archives at the University of Oregon. [Via Locus Online.]
The intention of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is to encourage research within collections in the area of feminist science fiction. The UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) houses the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, and Jessica Salmonson, along with Damon Knight…
This award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in SCUA. These short-term research fellowships are open to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in feminist science fiction. In 2019, $2,000 will be awarded to conduct research within these collections.
Just in case you missed it, all of Trader Joe’s Halloween and pumpkin products have officially hit shelves for 2019, so autumn is finally in full delicious swing. Joining all of our spooky favorites in this year’s lineup is the Trader Joe’s Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kit, a crowd-pleaser and returner from last year that will tide you over until gingerbread house season finally arrives. (Although this is arguably much better — what gingerbread house can also boast that it’s haunted?)
As usual, Joe is nothing if not prepared — the kit comes ready with everything your spooky little HGTV-loving heart desires. It contains six different chocolate cookie pieces to make up the house, plus an extra cookie ghost for spooky ambiance.
…Just as he did with Aron [Eisenberg] and Bob [O’Reilly], at the conclusion of the convention, Mr. Silber looked me straight in the eye and handed me a bad check that he not only failed to write a number that agreed with the alphabetical amount but he post dated it for nearly a week in the future. He knew what he was doing! I didn’t notice because I trusted him. Bob trusted him. Aron trusted him. Mike Friedman trusted him. Garrett Wang, Max Grodenchik, Chris Abbott trusted him. All were handed bad checks. All were stiffed at the end of the weekend during which we all gave 110% of our ability to entertain and inspire the fans of Star Trek. Aron gave perhaps a little more…like 150%…but he always did. It’s not the money….it’s the betrayal of trust and then the dishonesty. Because I live in New York state, it was fairly simple for me to sue Mr. Silber in small claims court to make good on his check. The judge listened to both sides of the issue and found in my favor in approximately 5 minutes. A judgement was made against Mr. Silber that would follow him about for 20 years or until paid. In two days, it was paid. Somehow he found the money! That was great for me but there were my friends and colleagues who were still left with nothing….
(4) SUPERSTINKERS. James Davis Nicoll makes it sound like
you want to be careful not to create any gaps in your urban ecology, because
who knows what will move into it: “The
Care and Feeding of Supervillains” at Tor.com.
…After all, it’s a lot easier to track down people in bright, garish costumes whose mental quirks compel them to leave riddles, jokes, maps, and large billboards hinting at crimes to come. This is the moment where our roof-runner should stop and think.
Mishandling these eccentrics means the difference between living somewhere like the Silver Age Central City, where rogues were willing to follow rules of engagement, or living somewhere more like the Punisher’s New York, where every encounter is going to end with a corpse….
(5) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 24, 1956 — The world’s first transatlantic telephone cable, from Clarenville, Newfoundland, to Oban, Scotland, began operation.
September 24, 1995 — Space: Above and Beyond with debut the first two episodes, “Pilot” and “Omega Squadron” airing as a single film. It would last a single season.
September 24, 2007 — The Journeyman seriesdebuted. Marketed as a “time travel science fiction romance” series, NBC didn’t renew it after the run of its first thirteen episodes was done.
Septembr 24, 2009 — FlashForward first aired. Adapted for television by Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer, it was based on the novel Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer. It lasted for one season.
September 24, 2013 — Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. first aired on the ABC Network. Six seasons later, it’s still going strong.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 24, 1922 — Bert Gordon, 97. Film director most famous for such science fiction and horror films as The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants and The Food of the Gods (based of course on the H.G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth). His nickname “Mister B.I.G.” was a reference both to his initials and to his preference for directing movies featuring super-sized creatures.
Born September 24, 1930 — Jack Gaughan. Artist and illustrator who won the Hugo several times including once for Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist in the same year. Most of his from 1970 onward was for Ace and DAW. He illustrated the covers and hand-lettered title pages for the unauthorized first paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings which Ace released in 1965. (Died 1985.)
Born September 24, 1934 — John Brunner. Favorite works? The Shockwave Rider, the Hugo Award winning Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. That was easy. What’s your favorite works by him? (Died 1995.)
Born September 24, 1936 — Jim Henson. As much as I love The Muppet Show, I think The Storyteller is his best work. That’s not to overlook Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal which are also excellent. (Died 1990.)
Born September 24, 1945 — Ian Stewart, 74. Mathematician and writer. He makes the Birthday Honors for the four volumes in The Science of Discworld series he wrote with Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett. Each segment of the book alternates between the usually absurd Discworld story and serious scientific exposition. He did write two novels with Jack Cohen, Wheelers and Heaven
Born September 24, 1951 — David Banks, 68. During the Eighties, he was the Cyberleader on Doctor Who in all stories featuring the Cybermen — Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis. In 1989, he played the part of Karl the Mercenary in the Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure stage play. There were two performances where he appeared as The Doctor as he replaced Jon Pertwee who had fallen ill.
Born September 24, 1957 — Brad Bird, 62. Animator, director, screenwriter, producer, and occasionally even a voice actor whom I’m going praise directing for The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Incredibles 2 and Tomorrowland. He’s the voice of Edna Mode in both the Incredibles films.
Born September 24, 1965 — Richard K. Morgan, 54. The Takeshi Kovacs novels are an awesome series which is why I haven’t watch the video series. His fantasy series, A Land Fit For Heroes, is on my TBR, well, my To Be Listened To pile now.
Born September 24, 1979 — Justin Bruening, 40. Seriously who really thought did we needed a reboot of the Knight Rider series? I know it was one where he played Mike Traceur, the son of character Michael Knight, but still… it lasted a pilot film plus eighteen episodes. He went one to to cast as Benjamin Price in Ravenswood, a supernatural drama that got cancelled after one season. And intriguingly he was cast as Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, a never-broadcast television pilot.
The Flying McCoys matches up Bigfoot with another well-known reference and winds up with a pretty funny cartoon.
(8) SCI-FI STANDBY. Titan Comics is reissuing the first two years of adventures from the iconic, British classic Dan Dare written and drawn by David Motton and Keith Watson — reprinted for the first time ever.
(9) HARD-WORKING BIDDER. Hampus Eckerman was amazed at what
he received from the Glasgow in 2024 bid chair: “They’re sending out handwritten letters and pins!!”
…Dr Kristyn Vitale, lead author of the study, said: “Cats that are insecure can be likely to run and hide or seem to act aloof.
“There’s long been a biased way of thinking that all cats behave in this way but the majority of cats use their owner as a source of security.”
Vitale continued: “Your cat is depending on you to feel secure when they are stressed.”
For the study, the team of researchers replicated situation tests that were originally designed in the 1970s to help evaluate the parent-infant bond.
But, instead of parents and infants, the scientists tested the relationship between 108 cats – including 70 kittens and 38 adult felines – and their owners.
(11) REPRESENTATION CONTROVERSY. In the Washington Post, Lindsey Beyer says that there
is a conflict between Autism Speaks and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network over
the character of Julia, an autistic character who has been part of the Muppet
cast since 2017. “How
a ‘Sesame Street’ Muppet became embroiled in a controversy over autism”.
… An autistic “Sesame Street” Muppet is caught in a conflict between the most prominent autism organization in the United States advocating for early intervention, and autistic adults who see the condition as a difference, not a disease needing to be cured….
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), an organization run by and for autistic people, announced it had cut ties with “Sesame Street” after the children’s program partnered with Autism Speaks to make the Muppet the face of a public service campaign encouraging early screening and diagnosis of autism. ASAN has accused Autism Speaks of using “language of acceptance and understanding to push resources that further stigmatize and treat autistic people as burdens on our families.” It contends that resource materials from Autism Speaks encourage parents “to view autism as a terrible disease from which their child can ‘get better.’ ”
Russia has said it knows what caused the air leak on board the International Space Station in 2018 but intends to keep it a secret, with its space agency head Dmitry Rogozin stating: “We won’t tell you anything.”
The leak, which caused a drop in pressure, took place on 29 August, 2018. After investigating the cause, the crew found a small hole—0.07 inches in diameter—and fixed it using heat-resistant tape. It was in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked at the ISS and it posed no threat to any of the astronauts on board.
Scientists say one of the US space agency’s (Nasa) new Earth observers is going to have a transformative impact in an unexpected area.
The IceSat-2 laser mission was launched a year ago to measure the shape of Antarctica and Greenland, and to track the thickness of Arctic sea-ice.
But early results show a remarkable capability also to sense water depths.
IceSat’s laser light penetrates up to 40m in the clearest conditions, opening up a raft of new applications.
“As much as people think all areas on Earth have been reasonably well mapped, it’s really not true when you start looking at shallow water areas,” said Dr Christopher Parrish from Oregon State University.
“We’ve got huge data voids from the shoreline out to about 5m water depth.
“This hinders our ability to study things like inundation, the effects of major storms, and the changes to coral reef habitat.”
A project has already started to map the seafloor around low-lying Pacific islands and atolls, which will assist tsunami preparedness for example.
The capability should also enable scientists to work out the volumes of inland water bodies to help quantify Earth’s global freshwater reserves.
…Snopes began as a forum for sharing and investigating urban legends and cool folklore.
But in a world where “fake news” dominates, where disinformation is a part of the political sphere and misinformation touches every single corner of the internet, what is it about this online encyclopaedia which has made it become the go-to bible for many fact-checkers?
And how is it evolving to deal with the current landscape?
…David Mikkelson, the co-founder of Snopes, says: “People come to look up things they’ve encountered on the internet and find out whether they are true or not.
…”The standards we use for fact-checking are about going after what most people are questioning or asking about.
“We don’t make any judgments about what’s too silly or obvious or frivolous or not important enough.”
However he added that sometimes he found it disconcerting what the audience considered to be important and how it was sometimes very different to what his team would consider reporting.
“There may be rumours of a chemical attack against civilians in Syria and all sorts of rumours about whether that happened and who was involved. There are questions around did the government do it; was it an outside force etc and that doesn’t get much interest.
“But then you might have a ridiculous story about something like a woman giving birth in an elevator and it gets millions of views.”
…My neighbors at the parking lot-slash-campsite were a punk band called Foreign Life Form. They weren’t part of the planned music lineup, one Life Form explained as he ate Chef Boyardee room-temperature from a can, but when they heard about Alienstock, it seemed like fate.
My other neighbor, an erudite, joint-smoking history podcaster from Oregon, wore a T-shirt that said “Take me to your dealer”. He and his son had had the shirts custom-made; the Life Forms were disappointed they couldn’t buy some….
One man’s 12-ton, 16-foot-tall fighting robot is another man’s treasure.
Eagle Prime, the crown jewel of MegaBots Inc.’s fleet of sci-fi-inspired piloted robots, is being sold on eBay with bids starting at a single dollar. Founded by Gui Cavalcanti, Matt Oehrlein and Andrew Stroup, the company is shuttering operations amid money trouble. Their latest high jinks, a futuristic bot battle between the US and Canada, drew thin crowds online.
“It was meant to be monster trucks meets UFC with a hint of WWE,” Oehrlein tells The Post. “The goal was to build a multibillion-dollar sports league of robots fighting in stadiums.”
(17) GETTING IN THE MOOD FOR HALLOWEEN. The Valley Relic
Museum in Los Angeles has lined up a scary panel event.
“For the last twenty years, I have been fascinated with the ghost stories of Los Angeles. One of my favorite pastimes is to explore historical and haunted locations in the area. This past year I’ve turned my hobby into a podcast and I have been interviewing people about their personal ghost stories as well as exploring haunted locations in Los Angeles and beyond for my podcast Ghost Magnet, from the Playboy Mansion to the house on Cielo Drive (associated with the Sharon Tate Murder) there is no shortage of ghost stories or paranormal activity,” says Bridget Marquardt.
[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster,
John King Tarpinian, JJ, bill, James Davis Nicoll, Cat Eldridge, Chip
Hitchcock, mlex, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes
to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]
