Monthly Archives: June 2021

Pixel Scroll 6/24/21 This Scroll Is Infested With Killer Pixels

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(1) CHANGE TO AURORA AWARDS BALLOT. Aurora Awards administrator Clifford Samuels has removed short story nominee “So You Want to be a Honeypot“ by Kelly Robson from the 2021 Aurora Award Ballot.

Samuels’ explanation is quoted with his permission:

The story was removed about a week ago, June 14th.  I got feedback that it was felt it was not genre.  I had a number of the board members read it and we agreed it was a spy thriller story but had no SF, Fantasy or Horror elements.  I read other reviews of it online and a number of people were confused that Uncanny Magazine had published it.  I suspect it was a story by a respected genre author.

I contacted Kelly and she said it was very loosely fantasy and she had no hard feeling if we removed it from the ballot.  I could not see any fantasy elements.  There were no hints that it was in an alternate world.  As I read it I kept hoping it would have some “Black Widow” type elements but I could not see anything like that.

This is the first time we’ve ever had to do this but it is important that only genre works are on the ballot.  With Kelly’s background in genre stories and with the story being published in a genre magazine we had no expectation it would not qualify.  It would have been a problem if a non-genre work won an Aurora Award.

The administrator emphasizes that the story was only removed because it was non-genre — ” it was a good story but was not something that should be on an Aurora ballot” — and that they contacted Robson and got her okay before doing this. Normally there’s only 5 items on the Aurora Award ballot; there were 6 short story finalists this year because of a tie, so the Robson entry will not be replaced by another story.

(2) CHENGDU WORLDCON BID COVERAGE. China.org.cn published an English-language article about the Chengdu in 2023 Worldcon bid on June 23: “Chengdu gears up to bid for 2023 Worldcon”.

A brief explanation of the Worldcon is followed by the introduction of the bid’s co-chairs, and a quote from the bid filing documents:

With the support of the Chinese sci-fi industry and sci-fi fans, Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province, has put in a formal bid to host the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in 2023.

Worldcon is the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) and was founded in 1939. Its Hugo Awards are one of the world’s most prestigious sci-fi award. China’s Liu Cixin won the 2015 Hugo Award for best science-fiction novel for “The Three-Body Problem.”

Wang Yating, co-chair of the bidding committee and deputy secretary-general of the Chengdu Science Fiction Society, told China.org.cn that now they were working hard to prepare for organizing and presenting 2023 Worldcon as best as they can. Chengdu is aiming to become the first Chinese city to host the high-profile sci-fi convention.

“Chengdu is the science fiction capital of China, and a mecca for Chinese sci-fi fans. The science fiction periodical – Science Fiction World – is headquartered in the city,” wrote Wang and Xia Tong, another co-chair of the bidding committee and the film development director of Chinese sci-fi brand Eight Light Minutes, in a letter to William Lawhorn, co-chair of the 2021 Worldcon in Washington, D.C. in February of this year. “Over the past four decades, Chengdu has nurtured generations of science fiction writers and fans. Now, Chengdu is looking forward to a chance to welcome sci-fi fans from all over the world.”

Wang Yating, deputy secretary-general of the Chengdu Science Fiction Society, joins a panel at a sci-fi film industry forum held during the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival to introduce Chengdu’s bid for the 2023 Worldcon, June 19, 2021. [Photo courtesy of Shanghai Pudong Science Fiction Association]

(3) RULES FOR A BETTER STORY ABOUT AN AWFUL WORLD. Science fiction author Marissa Levien shares her “3 Rules for Writing a Better Dystopian Novel” at Writer’s Digest.

1. Prioritize Story, Not Concept

Confession: In my dystopian novel, I didn’t start out writing a dystopia at all. I was fascinated by a character learning, ahead of the rest of the world, about an oncoming catastrophe. That lead me to ask: Who is first to know that a major catastrophe is coming? Answer: those at the very top and very bottom of the societal chain. So, I decided to write a character who was a servant. From there, I concentrated more on what my character was after, and as I did, the world grew on its own. The nature of the catastrophe demanded a certain kind of setting. The character and story demanded a flawed class system. I didn’t start the writing process thinking, “I want to tell a story about the evils of class systems.” I thought, “I want to tell a story about this character and how she fights to get what she wants.”…

(4) THE HOPE OF HUMANITY. Netflix Anime dropped this trailer for “Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway” on June 10.

After Char’s rebellion, Hathaway Noa leads an insurgency against Earth Federation, but meeting an enemy officer and a mysterious woman alters his fate.

(5) ON THE FRITZ. Haven’t had enough fandom drama yet? Let’s borrow some from the history of ERBdom! “Nobody remembers this today,…” from Not Pulp Covers.

Nobody remembers this today, but there was immense fandom drama in the 1960s in the Edgar Rice Burroughs fanzines like ERBdom, the Oparian, and Burroughsania. 

Yes, this legendary fandom brawl was all because a bright eyed and bushy tailed young go-getter fanzine writer named Fritz Leiber wrote about how Burroughs was inspired by and used tons of visual imagery and concepts from Theosophy, a strange offshoot of the spiritualist movement popular in the 1890s to the 1950s. Tons of ERB imagery, Lieber argued, particularly the John Carter of Mars books and elements of the wilder Tarzan novels, came from Theosophy, like four armed men who hatch from eggs, universal planetary telepathy, mental astral projection to other planets, and Atlantean societies with both Neanderthal and evolved modern men…. 

(6) DREAM FOUNDRY CONTESTS. Dream Foundry is getting people ready for their Writing Contest and Art Contest. The judges of the Writing Contest will be Premee Mohamed and Vajra Chandrasekera. This year’s art contest judges will be Juliana Pinho and Charis Loke. Guidelines at the link.

Submissions for the Writing Contest open on 10 August 2021 and will close 11 October 2021, with the finalists announced mid-November. Then, our judges will announce winners in early December.

Submissions for the Art Contest open on 1 September 2021 and will close on 1 November 2021.

There are no submission fees and we are pleased to announce that the prizes for both the art and writing contests each include $1000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $200 for third place. The first place prize of the Art Contest is awarded as part of the Monu Bose Memorial Prize, established in fond memory of Monu Bose by her children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose. Monu Bose was a lover of art of all kinds, and a graduate of Lucknow University and the College of Arts and Crafts. This Prize is to honor the legacy she opened up for us.

(7) DREAM FOUNDRY VIDEOS. More videos from this year’s Flights of Foundry have been released on the Dream Foundry YouTube channel.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • June 24, 1987 — On this day in 1987, Spaceballs premiered. It was, as y’all know co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks. The film stars Bill Pullman, John Candy and Rick Moranis, with the supporting cast comprising Daphne Zuniga, Dick Van Patten, George Wyner, Lorene Yarnell, and the voice of Joan Rivers. With production costs and marketing, it didn’t make a penny. Critics were decidedly mixed on it with the consensus on it that Brooks had done much better earlier on in his career. It has since become a cult film with audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently giving it an outstanding rating of eighty-three percent. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 24, 1925 — Fred Hoyle. Astronomer of course, but also author of a number of SF works including October the First Is Too Late which I think is among the best genre novels done. I’m also fond of Ossian’s Ride which keep its SF elements hidden until late in the story. (Died 2001.)
  • Born June 24, 1937 — Charles Brown. Editor of Locus from 1969 to 2009, a fanzine and a semiprozine at various times. Winner of many a Hugo, actually a record 29 Hugo Awards. Though he died before he could attend, he was still listed as one of the guests of honor at Renovation.  (Died 2009.)
  • Born June 24, 1947 — Peter Weller, 74. Robocop obviously with my favorite scene being him pulling out and smashing Cain’s brain, but let’s see what else he’s done. Well there’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a film I adore. And then there’s Leviathan which you I’m guessing a lot of you never heard of. Is it of the Naked Lunch genre? Well, Screamers based on Philip K. Dick’s short story “Second Variety” certainly is. Even if the reviews sucked.  And Star Trek Into Darkness certainlyqualifies. Hey he showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise! 
  • Born June 24, 1950 — Mercedes Lackey, 71. There’s a line on the Wiki page that says she writes nearly six books a year.  Impressive. She’s certainly got a lot of really good series out there including the vast number that are set in the Valdemar universe. I like her Bedlam’s Bard series better. She wrote the first few in this series with Ellen Guon and the latter in the series with Rosemary Edghill. The SERRAted Edge series, Elves with race cars, is kinda fun too. Larry Dixon, her husband, and Mark Shepherd were co-writers of these. 
  • Born June 24, 1950 — Nancy Allen, 71. Officer Anne Lewis in the Robocop franchise. (I like all three films.) Her first genre role was not in Carrie as Chris Hargensen, but in a best forgotten a film year earlier (Forced Entry) as a unnamed hitchhiker. She shows up in fan favorite The Philadelphia Experiment as Allison Hayes and I see her in Poltergeist III as Patricia Wilson-Gardner (seriously — a third film in this franchise?). She’s in the direct to video Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return as Rachel Colby. And she was in an Outer Limits episode, “Valerie 23”, as Rachel Rose. 
  • Born June 24, 1961 — Iain Glen, 60. Scots actor who played as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones, he’s also  well known for his roles as Dr. Alexander Isaacs/Tyrant in the Resident Evil franchise; and he played the role of Father Octavian, leader of a sect of clerics who were on a mission against the Weeping Angels in “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone”, both Eleventh Doctor stories.
  • Born June 24, 1982 — Lotte Verbeek, 39. You most likely know her as Ana Jarvis, the wife of Edwin Jarvis, who befriends Carter on Agent Carter. She got interesting genre history including Geillis Duncan on the Outlander series, Helena in The Last Witch Hunter, Aisha in the dystopian political thriller Division 19 film and a deliberately undefined role in the cross-world Counterpart series. 
  • Born June 24, 1994 — Nicole Muñoz, 27. You’ll perhaps best remember her for role as Christie Tarr (née McCawley) in the Defiance series. Her first role was playing a Little Girl in Fantastic Four. Likewise she was A Kid with Braces in The Last Mimzy, and yes, Another Girl, in Hardwired. The latter was written by Michael Hurst, and has apparently nothing to with the Walter Jon Williams novel of the same name.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SEE NEW SPIDER-MAN CYCLE ON FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. Yesterday’s Spider-Man teaser led up to this info in today’s follow-up press release:

Kelly Thompson, Saladin Ahmed, Cody Ziglar, Patrick Gleason, and Zeb Wells will team up on the thrice-monthly title to shake up the Spider-Man mythos in ways no one will see coming… The saga will kick off in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #75 where Ben Reilly will return to take back the mantle of Spider-Man. Backed by the Beyond Corporation, the captivating clone of Peter Parker is determined to be the best version of Spider-Man there ever was. And as yesterday’s teasers showed, this could have fatal consequences for Peter Parker…

 Fans will be able to get their first glimpse at what’s to come on August 14th in FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2021: SPIDER-MAN/VENOM. Check out artwork below and stay tuned for an upcoming announcement revealing which incredible artists will be joining this talented group of writers in what promises to be one of the most unpredictable runs in Spider-Man history…

  • FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2021: SPIDER-MAN/VENOM Artwork by PATRICK GLEASON

(12) SOCK IT TO ME. Why is a 78-year-old guy filming a fight scene? Yahoo! Entertainment reports “Harrison Ford Injured While Filming ‘Indiana Jones 5’”.

…The extent of Ford’s injury is unknown, though it’s hardly the first time he’s hurt himself while making a movie. In the past, Ford suffered a serious back injury on “Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom” and endured leg trauma on “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

“Indiana Jones 5” began production earlier this month in the U.K. Plot details for the sequel haven’t been announced yet, though the 78-year-old Ford is reprising his iconic role as the fedora-wearing, swashbuckling archaeologist. 

(13) VAUGHN’S THEME PARK TURNED DEADLY. “The Battle of Four Armies: Carrie Vaughn’s Questland” – a Paul Weimer review at Tor.com.

…The writing style is exactly what fans of Vaughn’s writing have come to expect, on all levels. It’s been a number of years since I’ve read Vaughn’s Kitty Norville novels, but the familiarity with her easy and immersive style was quick and very welcome. Her previous novels may have had geeky references, and this novel doesn’t lean on those so much as making them a supporting pillar of the plot, characters, setting and writing. This is a novel that shows how a commercialized, mainstream ultra-immersive theme park experience can and would meet the beating heart of geekdom. How well, and how badly those forces would interact is a lot of how this novel runs, and Vaughn has clearly spent a lot of time on the idea….

(14) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter witnessed tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants overwhelmed by an answer about a book I like to think of as science fiction anyway.

Category: American Authors

Answer: “Camelot”, “The Pilgrims”, and “A postscript by Clarence” are chapters in a classic novel by this author.

Wrong questions: “Who is Harriet Beecher Stowe?” and “Who is Nathaniel Hawthorne?”

Correct question: Who is Mark Twain (in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”)

(15) OCTOTHORPE. John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty are live from Punctuation 2 in “We Are All Filing Cabinet”, episode 34 of the Octothorpe podcast.

Liz and Alison made John put a warning at the start of the episode. We discuss Winnipeg, ConSpire, and scavenger hunts! Listen here: 

(16) FAST AND THUNDEROUS. SYFY Wire sets up the clip: “Jurassic World: Dominion teases special IMAX teaser to play before F9”.

…Serving as a prologue to the main action of Colin Trevorrow‘s trilogy capper (out next summer), the extended look is set millions of years in the past when dinosaurs freely roamed the Earth without the presence of those pesky bipeds called humans. It also features music from Jurassic World composer Michael Giacchino, as well as seven new species of dinos never before seen in the prehistoric franchise (life finds a way, right?). Right off the bat, though, we recognize some of the usual suspects like Pterosaurs and Ankylosauruses….

 [Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Danny Sichel, John Coxon, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]

The Kitschies 2020 Shortlists

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The 2020 Kitschies Award shortlists have been revealed. The prize, sponsored by Blackwell’s, is given to “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic.”

This year’s shortlisted books were winnowed down from 177 submissions, coming from 55 publishers. The Kitschies administrators announced that 80% of the submissions were from white authors, 20% from non-white authors, 50% from female authors, 48% from male authors 2% from non binary authors.

The winners will be announced in a virtual ceremony on July 21, and receive a total of £2,000 in prize money, as well as one of the prize’s iconic Tentacle trophies.

THE RED TENTACLE (NOVEL)

Judged by M.R. Carey, Clare Rees, Mahvesh Murad, Kaiya Shang and Daphne Lao Tong

  • A Tall History Of Sugar by Curdella Forbes (Canongate)
  • The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
  • The Lost Future Of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury)
  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
  • The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

THE GOLDEN TENTACLE (DEBUT)

Judged by M.R. Carey, Clare Rees, Mahvesh Murad, Kaiya Shang and Daphne Lao Tong

  • Sharks In The Time Of Saviours by Kawai Strong Washburn (Canongate)
  • The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay (Scribe)
  • The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line by Deepa Anappara (Chatto & Windus)
  • Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Hot Key Books)

THE INKY TENTACLE (COVER ART)

Judged by Paul Wiseall, Fleur Clarke, Claire Richardson and Jeffrey Alan Love

  • The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem, Cover Design by Allison Saltzman and Illustration by Dexter Maurer (Atlantic Books)
  • Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, Cover Design by Ben Summers (Oneworld)
  • Monstrous Heart by Claire McKenna, Cover Design by Andrew Davis (Harper Voyager)
  • The Harpy by Megan Hunter, Cover Design by Lucy Scholes and Illustration by Amy Judd (Picador)
  • The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin, Cover Design by Lauren Panepinto (Orbit)

[Via Locus Online.]

Tempe Withdraws 2023 Westercon Bid

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The Tempe (Arizona) committee has dropped their unopposed bid to host the 2023 Westercon because the recovery from the pandemic has not moved quickly enough to assure them the region’s fans will support and attend their con. They are now considering a bid for 2025.

They announced on the bid’s website:

With sadness, CASFS and WesternSFA are officially withdrawing our bid to host Westercon 75 in Tempe, AZ in 2023.

This is because of the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic. While we expect that the country as a whole and the southwest in particular will be much more open in 2023 than it is today, that expectation has sadly not translated into support for Westercon 75 thus far and choosing to continue at this point would put both our sponsoring bodies at serious risk. We cannot survive on local fans alone. We also need regional fans to be ready to travel again and it’s clear that they’re not comfortable doing that yet.

The prudent option, which was taken unanimously by our committee and both our sponsoring bodies, is to withdraw at this time but to ready a future bid for a time when the wider community is hopefully ready to return to a physical Westercon.

Our current plan is to submit an equivalent bid to host Westercon 77 in Tempe in 2025, once we’ve agreed a contract with our hotel in mid-2022.

The bid was a joint effort of the Western Science Fiction Association and the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society. 

Kevin Standlee explained on the Westercon.org that the site selection process for 2023 will be conducted at Loscon 47 in November 2021, because this year’s Westercon was merged into Loscon after the original Westercon 73 committee disbanded and handed the convention over to LASFS, owner of the Westercon service mark.

Standlee also told File 770: “Because Westercon’s deadlines are hard-coded into the Bylaws, we’re not allowed to reopen filing to be on the ballot. Bids can still file, though, and be eligible to win. There will still be an election (at Loscon), but if no eligible bid wins, it will go to the Business Meeting (at Loscon), and if the meeting can’t decide, then as you probably know, LASFS will have to decide.”

Progress Made Toward Resolving Issues Between Hugo Finalists and DisCon III

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A Zoom meeting between several 2021 Hugo finalists and DisCon III committee representatives Gadi Evron and Randall Shepherd, facilitated by Mary Robinette Kowal, took place June 23. Evron is the Events division head responsible for the Hugo Ceremony and reception. Evron has temporarily stepped in to maintain communications until the new Hugo administration team is in place.

The meeting reportedly resulted in progress in dealing with the issues that triggered the resignation of DisCon III’s Hugo administration team and have been the focus of heated comments on social media. After the meeting, Evron emailed this message to the 2021 finalists. Among other things, it retracts the four-person limit stated in the committee’s previous message:

To our 2021 Finalists: An apology and request for communication

Dear Finalists,

I’m Gadi Evron, the head of Events, the division which is in charge of the Hugo Ceremony and Reception for DisCon III.

You may have heard that the DisCon III Hugo Administration team has resigned. I am sorry to confirm this is true. Their contributions to making the Hugo Awards a success can’t be overstated. They are amazing people, and we can only thank them for all their help. We will update you as we recruit a new team.

Last week we sent a communication to you regarding Ceremony and Reception issues. Instead of coming to you, we made a decision on our own. We should have asked for your input as we said we would. This was a mistake, and we apologize. We know this isn’t the first time, but we sincerely hope it will be the last.

As you may be aware there are serious space constraints this year, but we have decided to prioritize the attendance of the Finalists and will make space for all Finalists and their plus ones who wish to attend. There will be no four person limit.

The DisCon III ConCom will be meeting this weekend. Discussion of the communication issues with Hugo Finalists is on the agenda. We would like to include any additional concerns you have, Please respond by emailing hugofinalists@discon3.org (CC:’d) to have them added.

Following the meeting we will contact you regarding your participation and attendance. We will also invite you to meet with us so that we can discuss these issues directly. As part of this conversation, we will create a plan for better communication and collaboration moving forward.

We look forward to celebrating the Hugo Awards and honoring your work in December.

File 770 was told yesterday’s meeting was positive, but the DisCon III representatives know they have a limited time to follow up with action.

2020 Leo Literary Award Winners

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Examples of awards from 2019.

The 2020 Leo Literary Awards have been announced. The Leo Awards’ goal is to highlight exceptional works of literature in the furry fandom.

The juried award is given to those works that surpass a benchmark score, which means that there can be multiple “best” works in each category.

NOVELS

  • Disbanded, by Frances Pauli
  • Entanglement Bound, by Mary E. Lowd
  • Qoholeth + Gallery Exhibition, by Madison Scott-Clary
  • Fox Spirit: A Two-Tailed Adventure, by Amy Clare Fontaine
  • Whip and Boot, by Herr Wozzeck
  • Ritual of the Ancients, by Ian Madison Keller

NOVELLAS

  • What Makes a Witch, by Linnea Capps
  • Rightful Salvage, by Frances Pauli

ANTHOLOGIES

  • Difursity, by Weasel
  • Selections of Anthropomorphic Regalements, vol. 1, by KC Alpinus
  • Sensory De-tails, by Thurston Howl

SHORT STORIES

  • “The Battler” by Cedric G! Bacon in Even Furries Hate Nazis
  • “The Fire in Her Claws” by Mary E. Lowd in Daily Science Fiction
  • “Paths” by Kyell Gold in Sensory De-tails
  • “Water” by Utunu in The Voice of Dog
  • “Summer Strawberries” by Mary E. Lowd in The Voice of Dog
  • “Loving You is Wrong” by NightEyes Dayspring in The Voice of Dog
  • “Ember in the Night” by BanWynn Oakshadow in SPECIES: Wildcats
  • “Sharp” by Thurston Howl in Electric Sewer
  • “Keep Breathing” by Karter Mycroft in Zooscape

POEMS

[No winner[

NONFICTION

  • “Furry Erotica and Pornography: Art, Sex, and the Self” by Katav in From Paw to Print
  • From Paw to Print, compiled by Thurston Howl

BOOK COVERS

Pixel Scroll 6/23/21 Second Stage Lesnerizer

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(1) STARTING A STORY. This compelling thread starts here.

(2) BUTLER BIO ON THE WAY. Yesterday’s Oprah Daily acknowledged the author’s birthday with an excerpt from a new biography: “Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler: Excerpt”.

…But the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author who explored themes of gender fluidity, climate change, authoritarianism, and the rise of Big Pharma is perhaps more widely read now than ever, and that phenomenon is destined to grow with the publication Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler by Ibi Zoboi, due out in January of 2022.

Zoboi, who was a National Book Award finalist for her young adult novel American Street, is not just a Butler devotee, but was mentored by the writer. Now, she has written an ode to her told in poems and prose. Here, Oprah Daily shares an exclusive sneak peak of the forthcoming volume, just in time to say: Happy Birthday Octavia Butler.

(3) THE PLAY’S THE THING. (Except she’s talking about a different play than Hamlet.) Connie Willis shared “Some Midsummer Night’s Dreams for Midsummer Night” on Facebook.

…The first night of our film festival, we watched GET OVER IT, the teen movie with Ben Foster, Kristen Dunst, and Martin Short. Berke, played by Ben Foster, has been dumped by Allison for another guy, so he tries out for the school musical DeFores-Oates (Martin Short) is directing, to try to get her back. He’s helped by Kelly (Kirsten Dunst) who really likes him, but he doesn’t even see her because he’s completely obsessed with getting Hermia back. Sound familiar?

The movie doesn’t do the whole play–there’s no Pyramus and Thisbe and Bottom’s just a walk-on, but there are fairies (including the rapper Sisqo), and a stoned stage crew who double as Puck, and the movie’s surprisingly faithful to the play, except for the ending, when Berke takes things into his own hands. GET OVER IT captures even better than Shakespeare the agony you go through when you’re in love with someone who doesn’t even know you exist.

The second night we watched the 1999 A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM (or as I call it, the Ally McBeal version,) starring Calista Flockhart and Christian Bale, with Kevin Kline as Bottom and Stanley Tucci as Puck. It’s a good movie overall and lots of stuff I loved–the lovers flee to the woods on bicycles, Puck is very funny and as much of an annoyance to his boss Oberon, Michelle Pfeiffer makes a sexy and funny Titania, and Max Wright is beyond wonderful as the reluctant actor dragged into the play at the last minute to be the Man in the Moon, with a cigarette dangling from his lip and a dog getting into the act.

But there are three moments of true genius in the play…

(4) GOODBYE TO AMAZON. Amanda S. Greene continues her step-by-step explanation of everything involved in shifting her books away from the Amazon platform in “Moving Forward or Onward or Whatever” at Mad Genius Club. There are a lot of issues that require thoughtful decisions.

 …I knew when I started it more would be involved than just uploading my books to the various storefronts or 3rd party aggregator. I hadn’t anticipated having to retrain myself to think in ways I haven’t since going exclusively with Amazon. 

Without going into too much detail, I had to look at how to get my books into the various storefronts, which storefronts I wanted to go with, etc. Initially, I decided to upload direct to BN, Kobo and Apple. I’d use Draft2Digital for the rest. I’ve changed my mind. The time saved alone by using D2D for everything is worth the few pennies per sale I pay to D2D to handle things for me. All I have to do is upload a generic ePub of the book, fill in the blanks and they do the rest. 

There is an added benefit of allowing them to handle it. Draft2Digital has a “sister” site called Books2Read. I’ve mentioned the site before but I am really starting to appreciate how powerful of a tool it can be for a writer. For example, here’s the landing page for Witchfire Burning. It shows the cover, gives the description and below lists other books (showing covers) I’ve written. It’s a much more attractive landing page than the product page at Amazon. If you click on the “get it now” button, it will take you to a new page where you can choose which storefront you want to visit (and I need to update it to pull in the Amazon link). 

The great thing about something like this is you can use it as your landing page for the book on your website…. 

(5) WE INTERRUPT THIS KERFUFFLE. Michael Swanwick offered “A Few Quiet Words of Thanks for the People Putting on Discon III” at Flogging Babel.

Yesterday, I reserved my hotel room for Discon III. And that put me in mind of the first and only time I was on a con committee.

This was in the 1970s, before I made my first sale. I’d only been to a few science fiction conventions but I knew the guy in charge of putting on a con whose name I conveniently forget and, doubtless for reasons of fannish politics, he filled the committee with his friends, despite the fact we none of us had any experience at the tasks we were assigned.

Long story, short. I did a terrible job. And I’ve never volunteered to serve again. Because even if everything goes perfectly, your reward for putting on a convention is not getting to experience it.

So I’d like to express my gratitude to the Discon III staff, both present and past. That includes everybody who quit for reasons of principle and everybody who decided to tough it out, also for reasons of principle.

This has been a star-crossed year for the Worldcon. I won’t bother to list all the problems: Acts of God, acts of Man, acts of Fans. We all know them. It must have been maddening to be at the white-hot center of them all.

Which makes this a good time to say: Thank you.

(6) FINE DISTINCTION. And one of John Scalzi’s comments:

(7) VISIT FROM THE DOCTOR. Jo Martin will be a guest at Gallifrey One: Thirty Second to Midnight, to be held in LA in February 2022.

It’s with great pleasure that we can now announce that JO MARTIN will be joining us next February as a confirmed guest, for her very first Doctor Who convention appearance in North America!

Jo Martin became an immediately beloved part of Doctor Who mythology when she appeared as Ruth Clayton in series 12’s “Fugitive of the Judoon” opposite Jodie Whittaker… a woman who was, in fact, a previously unknown earlier incarnation of the Doctor herself!  As the landmark first Doctor of color to be shown in the long-running series, she also appeared in the season finale “The Timeless Children.”…

(8) ONLINE PROMETHEUS AWARDS TO INCLUDE LFS-REASON PANEL. The Libertarian Futurist Society couch plans for their online award ceremony in these terms:

In 2021, LFS members will have a rare opportunity to watch and enjoy the annual Prometheus Awards ceremony and an interesting related panel discussion for free online – without having to register for a Worldcon.

Reason magazine will be the media sponsor of the hour-plus panel discussion, which will immediately follow the online half-hour Prometheus Awards ceremony for Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame). Reason editor Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason’s book editor Jesse Walker will join LFS leaders, including board president William H. Stoddard, on the hour-plus panel discussion along with, we hope, the 2021 Prometheus Award-winning novelist (tba).

(9) VETERAN COMICS READER. James Bacon was interviewed by Football Comics Podcast Champ/We are United, as hosts Rab and Gull take a little break from all the footie and have a look at War Comics, covering classic titles like Battle, Commando, Victor, Warlord, and many more. “Champ/We Are United Episode 13: War Comics”.

(10) COSPLAY DATING. Yahoo! says “Singles Dress Up as Creatures for Blind Dates” is the premise of Sexy Beasts.

Given the popularity of The Masked Singer, we can ascertain that viewers enjoy watching people dressed up in strange costumes. And given the general state of reality television over the past two decades, we can also conclude that people enjoy watching people go on bizarre dates. Netflix has endeavored to combine these two irrefutable tenets in one convenient package. Thus, we have Sexy Beasts, in which elaborate-prosthetic-laden singles meet for a night of “nonjudgmental” romance. At least that’s how they’re touting it. Take a look at the trailer, which features dolphins, demons, canids, scarecrows, insects, bovines, and a handful of uncategorizables….

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • June 23, 1976 — On this date in 1976, Logan’s Run premiered. It was directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Saud David. The screenplay by David Zelag Goodman is based on the 1967 Logan’s Run novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. It starred Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Farrah Fawcett, and Peter Ustinov. Though critical reception was at best mixed, it was a box success and is considered to have MGM from financial ruin. It was nominated at SunCon, a year in which no film was awarded a Hugo. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent sixty-seven percent rating. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 23, 1945 — Eileen Gunn, 76. Her story “Coming to Terms” based on her friendship with Avram Davidson won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Her stories are in Stable Strategies and Others, Steampunk Quartet and Questionable Practices. With L. Timmel Duchamp, she penned The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future. She’s well stocked at the usual digital suspects. 
  • Born June 23, 1951 — Greg Bear, 70. Blood Music which won both a Nebula Award and a Hugo Award is an amazing read. I’m also very fond of the Songs of Earth and Power duology, The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage, and found his Queen of Angels a fascinating mystery. He’s deeply stocked at the usual suspects. 
  • Born June 23, 1953 — Russell Mulcahy, 68. You’ll likely remember him as directing Highlander, but he was responsible also for Highlander II: The Quickening, but disowned it after the completion-bond company really messed with production. He would later released this film in Highlander II: The Renegade Version. He also directed episodes of The Hunger, On The Beach, Perversions of Science and Tales from The Crypt. 
  • Born June 23, 1957 — Frances McDormand, 64. She’s God. Well at least The Voice of God in Good Omens. Which in on Amazon y’all. Her first genre role was in the “Need to Know” episode of Twilight Zone followed shortly thereafter by being Julie Hastings in Sam Raimi’s excellent Dark Man. She’s The Handler in Æon Flux and that’s pretty much everything genre worth noting. 
  • Born June 23, 1963 — Cixin Liu, 58. He’s a winner of a Hugo Award  for The Three-Body Problem and a Locus Award for Death’s End. He also a nine-time recipient of the Galaxy Award, the Chinese State sponsored SFF Awards. Anyone got a clue what’s going on with the alleged Amazon production of The Three-Body Problem as a film? Is it still on? 
  • Born June 23, 1964 — Joss Whedon, 57. I think I first encounter him with the Buffy tv series. And I hold that Angel was far better told. Firefly was a lovely series that ended far too soon. And don’t get me started on the Avengers: Age of Ultron…
  • Born June 23, 1972 — Selma Blair, 49. Liz Sherman in Hellboy, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. She voiced the character also in the animated Hellboy: Sword of Storms and Hellboy: Blood and Iron as well. She’s Stevie Wayne in The Fog, a slasher film a few years later and was Cyane on the “Lifeblood” episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. Later on, she’d be Jessica Harris in the “Infestation” episode of Lost in Space. 
  • Born June 23, 2000 — Caitlin Blackwood, 21. She was the young Amelia Pond in these Doctor Who episodes; “The Eleventh Hour”, “The Big Bang”, “Let’s Kill Hitler”, and “The God Complex”, and had a cameo in “The Angels Take Manhattan”.  She’s the cousin of Karen Gillan who plays the adult Pond. No idea how she was cast in the role but it was brilliantly inspired casting!

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Tom Gauld’s cartoon for New Scientist.

(14) WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD. CrimeReads excerpts a new history of comic books by Paul S. Hirsch: “The Early, Wild, Exploited, and Sometimes Radical Days of the Comic Book Industry in America”.

The American comic book is inseparable from foreign policy, the great twentieth-century battles between capitalism and totalitarianism, and the political goals of the world’s preeminent military and cultural power. The history of the American comic book is a story of visual culture, commerce, race, and policy. These four fields are analogous to the four colors used to print comic books: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. They lie atop one another, smearing, blending, and bleeding to create a complete image. To separate them is to disassemble a coherent whole and to shatter a picture that in its entirety shows us how culture and diplomacy were entangled during the mid-twentieth century.

THE EARLY YEARS, 1935–1945

The period from 1935 to 1945 was defined by images of darkness and light. The comic industry itself—populated by otherwise unemployable immigrants, racial minorities, and political radicals—emerged from the shadows of the New York publishing world….

(15) BOOK RESURRECTION. “’Most of Australia’s literary heritage is out of print’: the fight to rescue a nation’s lost books” in The Guardian.

…This is the unfortunate fate of most books, even literary prize-winners. In fact, of the 62 books that won Australia’s Miles Franklin Award between 1957 and 2019, 23 are currently not available as ebooks, 40 are not available as audiobooks, and 10 are not available anywhere, in any format whatsoever. They’re officially out of print. This is something that Untapped: The Australian Literary Heritage Project is trying to rectify.

“Untapped is a collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, and it came about because most of Australia’s literary heritage is out of print. You can’t find it anywhere,” says project lead, Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin from Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. “Think about it. If so many Miles Franklin winners are out of print, you can imagine how bad availability must be for memoir, and histories, and other local stories.”

Untapped’s mission is to digitise 200 of Australia’s most important lost books, preserving them for future generations and making them available through a national network of libraries. They include books such as Anita Heiss’s I’m Not Racist, But … (2007) and Frank Hardy’s The Unlucky Australians (1968). “One exciting thing is that all these books will now be part of the National E-deposit scheme,” Giblin says, referring to the legal requirement for all publishers to provide copies of published works to libraries – a framework only recently extended to electronic publishing. “This means they’ll be preserved forever. These books will now be around as long as we have libraries.”

(16) WEIR Q&A. Suspense Radio, a thriller podcast, interviews Andy Weir: “LaunchpadOne: Interview with Andy Weir”.

Andy Weir built a two-decade career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing full-time. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of such subjects as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail. He lives in California.

(17) ROY HOWARD GOH SPEECH. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] The Cromcast has a recording of Roy Thomas’ guest of honor speech at the 2021 Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains. Lots of interesting stuff about working at Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s, not just Conan related, though there is a lot of that, too. “Howard Days 2021 – When Conan Went Public!”

(18) BUILDING UP THEIR INVENTORY. James Davis Nicoll knows where the cargo in their holds came from — “Risky Business: Five Books About Interplanetary Trade” at Tor.com.

Humans have, starting in prehistoric times (with obsidian, red ochre, etc.), established vast trade networks that cross mountains, deserts, and oceans. Presumably, this will be true in the future as well, even as humanity expands out into SPAAACE. While there are reasons why larger concerns will tend to dominate, the little guys will often provide more engaging narratives. Thus, these five heartwarming tales of working traders enthusiastically engaging in commerce among the stars…

The Trouble Twisters by Poul Anderson (1966)

Hyperdrive gave humans the stars…also vast fortunes to Polesotechnic League merchant princes like Nicolas van Rijn. Great men cannot be everywhere, however, which is why this collection of short pieces focuses not on van Rijn but his employee, David Falkayn (don’t worry! David eventually gets into management by marrying the boss’s beautiful daughter). Whether upending religious prohibitions, obtaining state secrets, or intervening in bitter ethnic strife, Falkayn and his co-workers always find the solution that delivers profit.

Long after the events in this book, Falkayn would become disenchanted with the League’s conscience-blind focus on immediate profits. This would have regrettable implications for Falkayn’s relationship with van Rijn, but without actually saving the League or humanity from the consequences of the League’s short-sighted policies. But at least they generated lots of profit for the shareholders before the League-armed space barbarians descended from the skies….

(19) SPIDER-MAN BEYOND. A Marvel press release tells me – “Stay tuned tomorrow for information on this exciting new Amazing Spider-Man era from Kelly Thompson, Saladin Ahmed, Cody Ziglar, Patrick Gleason, and Zeb Wells!”

(20) MARVEL MARKETING. Did that previous item come from this guy? This video from Screen Rant, which dropped today, features Ryan George as master marketer Normantula McMan, who says, “I get butts in seats.  I influence butts in ways you can’t imagine.”  And McMan knows butts, because his grandpa came up with the idea that four out of five doctors recommended a particular smoke!

(21) ASTRONAUTS TO EXPERIENCE TIDE EFEFCT. Yep, here’s the science entry in today’s Scroll courtesy of the AP: “Dirty laundry in space? NASA, Tide tackle cleaning challenge”. It turns out there’s a simple reason why the International Space Station smells like an old gym sock.

How do astronauts do laundry in space? They don’t.

They wear their underwear, gym clothes and everything else until they can’t take the filth and stink anymore, then junk them.

NASA wants to change that — if not at the International Space Station, then the moon and Mars — and stop throwing away tons of dirty clothes every year, stuffing them in the trash to burn up in the atmosphere aboard discarded cargo ships. So it’s teamed up with Procter & Gamble Co. to figure out how best to clean astronauts’ clothes in space so they can be reused for months or even years, just like on Earth.

The Cincinnati company announced Tuesday that it will send a pair of Tide detergent and stain removal experiments to the space station later this year and next, all part of the galactic battle against soiled and sweaty clothes….

(22) RETURN TO SENDER. Yahoo! draws our attention to a remarkable working model: “Fan-Made Captain America Shield Actually Bounces Back”.

…We have to give big props to the YouTuber here. Unlike other “make your own Cap shield” videos, he didn’t go the drone route. Which is kind of cheating. The MCU shield bounces after all, it doesn’t fly. According to their own description, the shield they made was created with carbon fiber with a fiberglass ring, to provide bounce while keeping maximum strength. The shield also magnetically connects to the user’s wrist, and can be thrown overhand just like Cap. We think the final results are pretty darn impressive….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Hampus Eckerman, Cora Buhlert, James Davis Nicoll, Olav Rokne, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Bunker Retro Arcade

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By James Bacon: Pixel Bunker is retro arcade in Central Milton Keynes, England, and has opened with the end of the Covid lockdown. With over 100 arcade machines, they operate on a pay-once-to-enter and no further charges model, so a three-hour visit is £12, an absolute bargain when I think of how much I spent in so little time any time I could get to an arcade! 

With Covid-Safe precautions, there’s tight control and pre-booking required, and there is a max capacity of 70 in the 2000 sq ft space — it felt spacious and uncramped. With a number of games for two players, there was never a wait to get onto favourite machines.

Which, let’s be honest, is a new experience. 

The variety of machines, is amazing, Outrun, Time Crisis 2, which was always very popular, Tron, Afterburner, Donkey Kong – well, they have 100 machines! 

I was impressed to find Return of the Jedi and even more so, the sit-down X-Wing Star Wars machine which was utterly fabulous. The sounds, the visuals, linear and basic, and such an immersive machine where one can escape. And if you get blasted, just press Start.  

I got a chance to speak to Jason Joiner, who is currently developing The National Film and Sci-Fi Museum where the arcade is situated. He explained that the Museum had some machines but another business rented them out to him for large events. This business was in trouble during Covid, so an accommodation was made to buy the machines, all of which are fully restored and maintained and the same team continues to maintain them — a collobarative success in time of crisis. 

More machines have been acquired, and they cycle games in and out. 

These are unique and fascinating moments in history. I was minded of the Pinball Machine museum near Oakland, the old games on the pier at San Francisco, both of which I enjoyed, but these are the electronic machines I grew up with, and do much Science Fiction, Aliens, RoboCop, Battlezone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many more. 

The collection is growing and there were Star Trek II, Willow and Empire Strikes Back machines awaiting cycling into use.

I loved it. I went to Sega World in the Trocadero many years ago and loved it, I think the pay in once model really helps, and although they did not have Gauntlet or the Sega R360 After Burner game, I cannot complain and really enjoyed it. 

Click for details of the Pixel Bunker and National Film and Sci-Fi Museum.

Pixel Bunker tickets are available here from Eventbrite.

The National Film & Sci-fi Museum is in central Milton Keynes at 34 Secklow Gate West, MK9 3AT.

[We’ll send James back to the National Film & Sci-fi Museum when its 20,000 sq foot museum opens and get a full report.]

Pixel Scroll 6/22/21 You Are About To Enter The Most Fascinating Scroll Of Pixel Work

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(1) HWA PRIDE MONTH. The Horror Writers Association’s “Point of Pride” series continues: “Interview with Rin Chupeco”.

What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?

I think that what a lot of people define as being monstrous just means being different from them, and this often stems from bigotry or prejudice. Most of the horror books that I’ve read growing up were about victims who were treated terribly simply for who they are (women relegated to second class citizens, prostitutes and sex workers not given agency, etc.), and then becoming their own monstrous vehicles for justice. I’m fascinated with stories where the real monsters are the humans who wind up creating the very demons they accuse others of being, often paying the price for it. When you shift your worldview and realize that the real demon in say, Frankenstein , is the monster’s creator instead of the creature itself, it opens up these new hidden layers to storytelling in horror that helps you explore the good and the bad sides of the human condition, work on that to make it more compelling to readers.

(2) ESSENCE OF WONDER. Mary Robinette Kowal, author of The Relentless Moon (Tor Books / Solaris), and Micaiah Johnson, author of The Space Between Worlds (Penguin Random House / Del Rey) joins Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron to talk about their works and what they have coming down the pipeline — Saturday, June 26 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here. Can be viewed on Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook.

(3) GET YOUR KICKS. By wearing the patch design for ISS Expedition 66. (More info here.)

The Expedition 66 patch was designed by NASA graphic designer Blake Dumesnil. Blake decribes the background of the design, “Growing up around classic cars, collectibles, and Americana, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the Route 66 sign as a starting point for this design, but going beyond the obvious numerical tie, I loved the idea of a journey being just as important as the destination – the Space Station is an incredible stop along the road back to the Moon and on to Mars!”

(4) BY ANY OTHER NAME. It’s not a crash test dummy, it’s a Moonikin – and it needs a name. NASA wants the public to “Name the ‘Moonikin’ Flying Aboard Artemis I” from among eight choices. Looks like the names will be offered for voting in pairs on various social media platforms, and move up in brackets.

To vote on today’s bracket (Montgomery vs. Rigel) on the web, click here. 

Choose your player! NASA is holding a naming contest beginning Wednesday, June 16 for the manikin that will fly on an upcoming mission around the Moon. 

As NASA gears up for the Artemis I mission around the Moon that will pave the way to send the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface, we have an important task for you (yes, you!). Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft ahead of the first flight with crew on Artemis II. We want your help to select a name for the suited manikin, or Moonikin in this case, that will fly aboard Orion to help gather data before missions with astronauts!

A manikin is an anatomical model that simulates the human body and is commonly used in training for emergency rescues, medical education, and research. The manikin on Artemis I will be equipped with two radiation sensors, and sensors in the seat – one under the headrest and another behind the seat – to record acceleration and vibration throughout the mission as Orion travels around the Moon and back to Earth. Data from these and other sensors inside the spacecraft will help NASA understand how to best protect crew members for Artemis II and beyond.

We have eight names to choose from, but only one can win. Every other day starting Wednesday, June 16, we will be asking social media users on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, to vote between one of two names. The winners of each bracket compete with one another until the final showdown on Monday, June 28.

The final name of the Moonikin will be announced on Tuesday, June 29!

(5) NEITHER FAST NOR FURIOUS. Light races past and waves in the rear-view mirror at this compilation of sff — “Not So Fast: Five Books Featuring Sublight Space Travel” by James Davis Nicoll at Tor.com.

Rissa Kerguelen by F. M. Busby (1977)

The 21st century is a veritable utopia, governed by United Energy and Transport (UET). A utopia, that is, where peace and security are assured by rigid class stratification and a punitive justice system. Few of the cowed citizens can imagine a better way of life. Those who do can look forward to midnight visits from large, unfriendly UET minions.

While winning the lottery might be seen as a forgivable mistake, welfare orphan Rissa Kerguelen commits the unforgivable sin of wanting to keep her winnings. UET’s reach is long and there is no safe place on Earth for reprobates like Rissa. But Earth is not Rissa’s only option. Head out for the stars on a sublight starship and she might escape UET…if she is willing to take the long view.

(6) HE’S NOT A WEREWOLF, HE’S A WEASEL. The Suicide Squad – Official “Rain” Trailer dropped today.

Our only hope to save the world is a bunch of supervillains — what could go wrong? Check out the new trailer for James Gunn’s #TheSuicideSquad in theaters and streaming exclusively on HBO Max* August 6.

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • June 22, 1990 — On this date in 1990, Robocop 2 premiered. It was directed by Irvin Kershner and produced by Jon Davison. It was written by Frank Miller and Walon Green. It stars Peter Weller once again as Robocop along with Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon. Very few critics liked it and the Box Office barely covered the costs of making it. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather poor rating of thirty six percent. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 22, 1856 — H. Rider Haggard. Writer of pulp fiction, often in the Lost World sub genre. King Solomon’s Mines was the first of his novels with Allan Quatermain as the lead and it, like its sequels, was successful. These novels are in print to this day. Haggard by the way decided to take ten percent royalties instead of a flat fee for writing, a wise choice indeed.  And let’s not forget his other success, She: A History of Adventure, which has never gone print out of print either. (Died 1925.)
  • Born June 22, 1936 — Kris Kristofferson, 85. He first shows up in a genre film, The Last Horror Film, as himself. As an actor, his first role is as Bill Smith in Millennium which is followed by Gabriel in Knights, a sequel to Cyborg. (A lack of name creativity there.) Now comes his role as Abraham Whistlerin Blade and Blade II, a meaty undertaking indeed! Lastly I’ll note he voiced Karubi in Planet of the Apes.
  • Born June 22, 1947 — Octavia Butler. I think her Xenogenesis series is her most brilliant work though I’m also very, very impressed by the much shorter Parable series. Two Hugos, for “Speech Sounds” (Best Short Story – 1984) and “Bloodchild” (Best Novelette – 1985). Parable of the Sower was Book of Honor at Potlatch 17. MacArthur Fellowship recipient – the first SF author to receive one. SFWA’s Solstice Award.  (Died 2006) 
  • Born June 22, 1949 — Meryl Streep, 72. She’d make the Birthday list just for being Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her and her epic battle there with Goldie Hawn. She’s the voice of Blue Ameche in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and a very real Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. She’s the voice of Felicity Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox, based off the on Dahl’s 1970 children’s novel. She voices Jennie in a short that bring Maurice Sendak’s dog to life, Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life. She’s The Witch in Into The Woods. I think that’s it.
  • Born June 22, 1952 — Graham Greene, 69. Primary ongoing genre role to date has been as Rafe McCawley In the Defiance series. He also played Humpstone John in Winter’s Tale based off the Mark Helprin of the same name, and was Whiskey Jack in an episode of American Gods. In The Twilight Saga: New Moon, he was Harry Clearwater.
  • Born June 22, 1958 — Bruce Campbell, 63. Where to start? Well let’s note that Kage loved the old rascal as she described him, so I’ve linked to her review of Jack of All Trades. I personally liked him just as much in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and think it’s well worth checking out. I think his work as Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise can be both brilliant and godawful, often in the same film. Or the same scene. The series spawned off of it is rather good. Oh, and for popcorn reading, check out If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, his autobiography. 
  • Born June 22, 1971 — Laila Rouass, 50. She was Sarah Page, an Egyptologist on Primeval, a series I highly recommend if you’ve not seen it. She played Colonel Tia Karim, a traitorous UNIT officer in the two part “Death of The Doctor” on The Sarah Jane Adventures. This story was the last to feature Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor, The Eleventh here, together onscreen. Jo Grant would also show up. 
  • Born June 22, 1973 — Ian Tregillis, 48. He is the author of the Milkweed Triptych trilogy which is frelling brilliant. He’s contributed three stories to Max Gladstone’s The Witch Who Came in From the Cold  rather good serial fiction narritive (if that’s the proper term) and he’s got another series, The Alchemy Wars, I need to check out. He’s also a contributor to George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series.

(9) WHAT ARE YOUR FAVES SINCE 2011? NPR is polling sff readers to compile a new list to supersede the one they did a decade ago: “Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Have Changed. Tell Us Your New Favorites”. Full guidelines at the link.

Ten years is a long time! In 10 light-years, you could get from Earth to a whole new solar system, Epsilon Eridani. And in the past 10 years, science fiction and fantasy have undergone a revolution — new voices, new perspectives and new stories, bright as stars in the night sky.

So we thought it would be a great time to revisit our original 2011 reader poll of favorite science fiction and fantasy. And not just because of all the fantastic new stuff that’s come out in the past decade, but because that 2011 list has some notable holes in it when it comes to race and gender. (Octavia Butler fans, I am SO sorry. But we do plan to address that with a supplement to first list.)

We’re doing things a little bit differently this year since we already know you guys love The Lord of the Rings. Instead of a grand survey of all of time and space, we’re zeroing in on titles from the past 10 years — that is, anything that has come out since the 2011 poll. And since we’re only looking at the past decade, our panel of expert judges will take your nominations and use them to curate a final list of 50 titles (rather than our usual 100)…

(10) HOMAGE TO THE MASTER. Artist Will Quinn did this tribute to Bob Eggleton’s “A Pint with a Mollusc” (1999):

Here’s Eggleton’s orginal.

(11) STRANGERS IN STRANGER LANDS. James Davis Nicoll considers “Five SF Books About Living in Exile” at Tor.com.

Few calamities sting like being driven from the land one once called home. Exile is therefore a rich source of plots for authors seeking some dramatic event to motivate their characters. You might want to consider the following five books, each of which features protagonists (not all of them human) forced to leave their homes….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. This Jeep® Wrangler 4xe commercial “2021 Earth Odyssey” is from February, but it’s news to me! (The closed captioning is amusing, too.)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Ben Bird Person, James Davis Nicoll, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Another DisCon III Hugo Administration Team Resigns

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DisCon III’s WSFS Division head Nicholas Whyte today announced on Twitter and Facebook that the Hugo Administration team of the 2021 Worldcon has resigned en masse:

Departing WSFS Division Head Nicholas Whyte was also in charge of the 2023 Site Selection voting.

The committee has not yet addressed the staff resignations.

This is the second team of Hugo administrators to quit DisCon III this year. The con’s original WSFS Division Head Jared Dashoff explained here in January why he and the Hugo Administrator resigned. It had to do with efforts to manage policies created by the committee “to deal with a) space constraints at receptions and award ceremonies, b) budget constraints of the receptions and trophies, c) constraints relating to font size on both ballots and in-ceremony visuals, and d) in response to multiple requests to list long lists of contributors to Hugo Finalists over the last few years….”

Dashoff made his comment in response to Colette Fozard’s guest post about why she resigned as DisCon III co-chair in the same timeframe.

The protested restrictions, which DisCon III announced January 11, were repudiated the next day by DisCon III chair Bill Lawhorn (see “DisCon III Abandons Previously Announced Hugo Policy”). Lawhorn said:

…All publications and visuals linked to the Hugo Awards will include all Hugo Finalist creators named to DisCon III with no restrictions to the number of names. This includes, and is not limited to, the Hugo Awards ballot, the visuals used during the Hugo Awards Ceremony, the plaques on the Hugo Awards trophies, the Hugo Awards Ceremony program guide, the DisCon III souvenir guide, and the DisCon III and Hugo Awards websites.

We will address concerns about the size of events such as the Hugo Pre-Reception, the number of Hugo Awards trophies, and any other cost considerations individually with the finalists….

However, it seems that when the time recently arrived to address these concerns, some controversial limitations were still on the table – see the message documented in Pixel Scroll 6/19/21 item #6.

When Nicholas Whyte announced on Facebook last January 17 that he had signed on as DisCon III’s new WSFS Division Head, he commented: .

…The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year’s Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).

I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it’s clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.

What led to today’s round of resignations Whyte doesn’t explicitly say. He simply quotes Lawhorn’s aspirational statement about last January’s policy reversal, and says “It is clear that we have taken the process as far as we can, and that our input is no longer needed by the convention leadership.”

 [Thanks to James Davis Nicoll for the story.]

The Golden Age of Dystopia: Guest Post by Jenna Greene

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Jenna Greene is a writer from Lethbridge, Alberta. She teaches elementary school. When she isn’t teaching, writing, or spending time with her daughter, Olivia, or husband, Scott, Jenna coaches, drums, and paddles with several dragonboat teams. She is the author of several YA novels, including the Heroine and the Imagine series. Renew (The Reborn Marks Book 2) is her latest book.

By Jenna Greene: Dystopian literature is far from new. George Orwell may have set the world on a disturbing, informative, and thought-provoking path with 1984, but it continued from there with works such as Brave New World, The Giver, and Ready Player One. All these titles are rich classics. Still, the insurgence of utopian-societies-set-upside down was an anomaly instead of the norm at that point in our historical timeline.

Then The Hunger Games crashed onto the scene, finding a YA audience that burned with desire for more prints and more pages, catching the attention of youth and adults alike. It could have been a one-hit wonder, skillful and unique, but it wasn’t. Divergent soon followed in Suzanne Collin’s footsteps, before authors such as Lauren Oliver, Ally Condie, and Victoria Aveyard hit the scene.

With many trends in literature, there are often ebbs and flows. Yet the dystopian trend has not had its ebb yet. The quality novels, short stories, and poems have continued to be produced. Hollywood studios are filming adaptations of newer classics as well as older titles. (Maze Runner and Ender’s Game anyone?) I could write for hours on The Handmaid’s Tale – willingly and with great passion, and see more and more titles popping up in my Netflix queue.

So how and why has the Golden Age of Dystopia been sustained this long, providing more quality than the temporary teenage-vampire trend? I believe it is connected to the depth of the questions that can be asked, should be asked, and most importantly need to be asked. Tackling discrimination, poverty, government corruption, fundamentalism, voyeurism, and a wealth of other themes through allegory and metaphor allows us to examine the issues in a critical way. Dystopian settings are both objective and subjective, authentic and fake. For those who have never examined these issues, they are drawn in by character arcs and rapid storylines filled with action and sentiment. Readership begins, fandoms arise, and then discussions happen. Sure, this happens with all literature, but with our global consciousness rising each day, dystopian literature has the power to do so in a way other genres cannot hope to equal. Paired with genuine societal movements such as #metoo, books have a way of changing the scope of thought and action in the world in a pivotal way.

All that remains is the question of which issues will dystopian authors tackle next. As a YA fantasy/ dystopian author myself, the challenge of creating new worlds with new problems, connected to our consciousness of this world and this world’s problems, is one I am able and set to tackle – and excited to do so. I am a part of the discourse, and thankful to be so.

ABOUT RENEW

The Unclaimed Cities are not the idyllic setting Lexil, Finn, and Ceera thought it would be. This new land has challenges of its own – which they soon discover. When Lexil and Finn return to the Wastelands, they are accompanied by Kaylen, someone they can’t decide is a friend or foe. As they retrace their path, they meet up with old allies and enemies, and encounter other treachery embedded in the Wastelands. The trio are then forced to face their own assumptions, prejudices, and fears.

And in the end, to change her fate and alter the destiny of all other Reborns, Lexil must decide what she is willing to risk…

Of both herself and others.

JENNA GREENE ON SOCIAL MEDIA