Clarion West returns to an in-person workshop next year. The Clarion West 2022 Six-Week Summer Workshop will take place June 19 – July 30, 2022 in Seattle. Applications open December 1, 2021.
The panel of the instructors for the 2022 Six-Week Summer Workshop will be:
Clarion West is able to provide full and partial scholarships to a significant number of applicants, thanks to a generous community of donors and sponsors.
Applications will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. on February 10. Information about how to apply is here. The application fee is $35 from December 1 to January 31; it will increase to $60 on February 1.
Founded in 1971, Clarion West holds a six-week workshop each summer geared toward helping writers of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) at the beginnings of their professional careers. Each workshop is limited to 18 students, and each week features a different instructor, a highly regarded author or editor offering a unique perspective on the field. Applicants and students come from everywhere in the world, and graduates frequently go on to professional success. In addition to changing to an ADA accessible facility in 2022, Clarion West has been working with a team of alumni and instructors to evolve our workshop culture and create protocols towards equity, empowerment, and innovation.
The finalists for the 2021 Costa Book Awards, a UK literary prize sponsored by a coffee company, have been announced.
The prize has five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. The winner of each receives £5,000. The Costa Book of the Year will be chosen from among them, and get £30,000 prize. The category winners will be announced January 4, and the overall winner on February 1.
Below are the works of genre interest. The complete shortlists are here.
FIRST NOVEL
The Stranding by Kate Sawyer, set in a post-apocalyptic New Zealand.
(Also shortlisted is the non-genre Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore, so titled for a story drawing on persecutions during the English Civil War era.)
NOVEL
The High House by Jessie Greengrass is set in a world beset by climate-change-induced flooding, so to that degree is genre-related.
CHILDREN’S BOOK
Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall includes adventure in a parallel world and a teacher’s transformation to a wolf.
The Midnight Guardians by Ross Montgomery is a fantasy set in Blitz-bombed London.
The 2022 GRAMMYs Awards nominees were released today. The complete list is at the link. The winners will be announced in a televised ceremony on January 31.
Now — let’s pretend I can recognize the nominees of genre interest.
2. Album Of The Year Award to Artist(s) and to Featured Artist(s), Songwriter(s) of new material, Producer(s), Recording Engineer(s), Mixer(s) and Mastering Engineer(s).
Planet Her (Deluxe) Doja Cat
Wikipedia says this album is titled after the fictional planet conceived by Doja Cat
8. Best Pop Vocal Album For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new pop vocal recordings.
Planet Her (Deluxe) Doja Cat
58. Best Spoken Word Album Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling
Aftermath LeVar Burton
60. Best Musical Theater Album For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new recordings. Award to the principle vocalist(s) and the album producer(s) of 51% or more playing time of the album. The lyricist(s) and composer(s) of a new score are eligible for an Award if they have written and/or composed a new score which comprises 51% or more playing time of the album.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella Andrew Lloyd Webber, Nick Lloyd Webber & Greg Wells, producers; Andrew Lloyd Webber & David Zippel, composers/lyricists (Original Album Cast)
61. Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media Award to the artist(s) and/or ‘in studio’ producer(s) of a majority of the tracks on the album. In the absence of both, award to the one or two individuals proactively responsible for the concept and musical direction of the album and for the selection of artists, songs and producers, as applicable. Award also goes to appropriately credited music supervisor(s).
Cruella (Various Artists)
Schmigadoon! Episode 1 (Various Artists)
62. Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media Award to Composer(s) for an original score created specifically for, or as a companion to, a current legitimate motion picture, television show or series, video games or other visual media.
Bridgerton Kris Bowers, composer
Dune Hans Zimmer, composer
The Mandalorian: Season 2 – Vol. 2 (Chapters 13-16) Ludwig Göransson, composer
Soul Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, composers
63. Best Song Written For Visual Media A Songwriter(s) award. For a song (melody & lyrics) written specifically for a motion picture, television, video games or other visual media, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year. (Artist names appear in parentheses.) Singles or Tracks only.
Agatha All Along [From WandaVision: Episode 7] Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez, songwriters (Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez Featuring Kathryn Hahn, Eric Bradley, Greg Whipple, Jasper Randall & Gerald White)
(1) KEEPING THE RR IN GRRM. Thanks to checks from George R.R. Martin and his fellow investors, a moribund Santa Fe, NM railroad is being revived as the Sky Railway, open to riders on December 3. Martin told readers of Not a Blog:
On December 3, right here in New Mexico, we will be opening the Sky between Santa Fe and Lamy.
Sky Railway, to be precise.
That’s the new name of the old Santa Fe Southern, the historic short-haul railroad originally build by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe back in the nineteenth century. Largely moribund since 2012, the railway was acquired in 2020 by a group that included me, Bill Banowsky (founder of Magnolia Films and Violet Crown Cinemas), bestselling mystery author Douglas Preston, and five other prominent Santa Feans (Margaritas may have had something to do with our decision). We’ve been busy ever since restoring and refurbishing the cars, repairing the tracks and tressels, replacing old seats, fixing broken windows, even installing a new engine into one of our old locomotives. All of which took longer and cost more than we had originally anticipated… but hey, that’s pretty much always the case….
DAC: What is your mood on climate politics in fall 2021? What developments are keeping you up at night? What developments are making you optimistic that we can avoid the worst?
KSR: I’m scared by the latest IPCC report, which confirms that we are in terrible trouble — on the edge of catastrophe. And we need to act fast.
I’m encouraged by the discoveries that I’ve made since writing The Ministry for the Future. I wrote that book mostly in 2019. That’s like a previous geological era now, because of the pandemic. Certainly the timeline that I portrayed in Ministry for the Future, which was vague and notional anyway, is shot, because things are happening faster in the mitigation front.
The catastrophes are coming faster than scientists predicted, but within the range of their predictions. The response is picking up, because the pandemic was a slap in the face. I didn’t know about the Network for Greening the Financial System: 89 of the biggest central banks trying to figure out how to tweak finance towards green work.
I didn’t know that there were actual papers in Nature quantifying the possibilities of pumping water out from under the big glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. I wrote about them in Ministry for the Future, but I wrote about them as if they were not yet in existence — when they already had been for a few years. So I was behind the curve in some ways.
The Road might go “ever on and on” for Bilbo Baggins, but it has come to a sharp end for the developer of a cryptocurrency called JRR Token, after the estate of JRR Tolkien took legal action to block it.
The Lord of the Rings-themed cryptocurrency, with the tagline “The One Token That Rules Them All”, launched in August. It came with a video endorsement from Billy Boyd, the actor who played Pippin in the films, and the head-scratching claim that “Saruman was trying to unify Middle Earth under centralised rule whereas the fellowship wanted decentralisation. Cryptocurrency is literally a decentralised network.”
The Tolkien estate was not convinced. It took action almost immediately via the World Intellectual Property Organization’s arbitration procedure, where it argued that the product infringed its trademark rights to JRR Tolkien’s name, and that the domain name was “specifically designed to mislead internet users into believing that it and the website to which it resolves have some legitimate commercial connection” with Tolkien….
See, the estate might not have minded if these fellows had started the relationship off right, by paying them a bunch of money (not cryptocurrency, of course.)
The storyboards for the doomed 1970s film version of sci-fi classic Dune have sold for €2.66m ($3m) at auction, about 100 times the expected price.
Long considered a mythical object by sci-fi fans, the notebook of drawings for the film by Franco-Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky triggered a bidding war at Christie’s in Paris.
The film project was supposed to bring together some major stars of the period, including Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger and Pink Floyd – but fell apart after four years of preparation due to lack of funding.
The auction went down to two determined bidders, with an American eventually emerging victorious.
Christie’s admitted their initial valuation for the drawings – between €25,000 and €35,000 – had failed to account for the spike in interest triggered by the new version of the film starring Timothée Chalamet, which has topped box offices around the world.
(5) MAZE BRUNNER. The New Yorker tells “How the World’s Foremost Maze-Maker Leads People Astray”. “Adrian Fisher has devoted the past four decades to bringing back mazes, long regarded as historical curiosities. He has created more than seven hundred—including one on a skyscraper in Dubai and another that’s now reproduced on Britain’s five-pound note.”
…[Archbishop] Runcie’s dream gave him an idea: Fisher wrote to the letters page of the London Times, briefly outlining the maze’s long history as a Christian symbol and noting that, as in the Archbishop’s dream, a maze’s goal is typically reached not by “pressing toward the center” but, rather, by “returning almost to the edge,” in order to find the proper path. In his signature, Fisher styled himself a “Maze Consultant,” and, before long, this stealth marketing had reeled in a customer, and Minotaur’s first public commission. Lady Elizabeth Brunner, a former actress who was married to a chemical magnate, invited Fisher to tea. Over scones and jam, she wondered aloud whether he might create an Archbishop’s Maze, inspired by Runcie’s words, in her garden at Greys Court, a Tudor manor house in Oxfordshire….
(6) WARHAMMER AGAINST HATE GROUPS. It is unknown what the inciting incident (if any) was for this, but Games Workshop put out a very strong statement about not wanting any real-life hate groups represented at their events and stores: “The Imperium Is Driven by Hate. Warhammer Is Not.” The full statement is at the link.
…That said, certain real-world hate groups – and adherents of historical ideologies better left in the past – sometimes seek to claim intellectual properties for their own enjoyment, and to co-opt them for their own agendas.
We’ve said it before, but a reminder about what we believe in:
“We believe in and support a community united by shared values of mutual kindness and respect. Our fantasy settings are grim and dark, but that is not a reflection of who we are or how we feel the real world should be. We will never accept nor condone any form of prejudice, hatred, or abuse in our company, or in the Warhammer hobby.”
If you come to a Games Workshop event or store and behave to the contrary, including wearing the symbols of real-world hate groups, you will be asked to leave. We won’t let you participate. We don’t want your money. We don’t want you in the Warhammer community….
What happens when fans of Joss Whedon grow up and start working in television and movies? Netflix’s remake of Cowboy Bebop.
I can’t say for sure if the writers and showrunners on Bebop were, like I once was, huge fans of Buffy or Angel, the two shows that put Whedon on the map. Based on the way the characters speak, it sure sounds like it, though. Over the years, I’ve begun to notice more and more “Whedonspeak,” as the phenomenon used to be called, in mainstream television and movies. Describing the qualities that make dialogue sound Whedonesque is now difficult though, because those qualities are ubiquitous.
….Characters in Whedon’s shows talk a lot, and they talk in very particular ways. Characters are often imprecise in their language, letting sentences trail off as they struggle to articulate themselves. They turn nouns into verbs and vice versa. They say “thing” or “thingy” or “stuff” in place of more descriptive terms. Often these characters metatextually comment on their surroundings or the environments they’re in, usually in a sarcastic or snarky way. The tone of this is pretty “wink wink, nudge nudge,” as if the writers are speaking through the characters to the audience, rather than the characters commenting on the situation they are in….
When Buffy Summers says, “Well, if this guy wants to fight with weapons, I’ve got it covered from A to Z, from axe to… zee other axe,” that’s a prime example of Whedonspeak. When, in long-running BBC show Doctor Who, the titular Doctor says, “This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there’s stuff,” that is also Whedonspeak. This clip, where the lead characters of Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker say “They fly now? They fly now!” to each other shows you how far the phenomenon of Whedonspeak has spread….
…Fans have been waiting for it since 2014, when Written in My Own Heart’s Blood left them hanging, but Gabaldon has been somewhat delayed by the television adaptation of her series, which kicked off that year and on which she is a consultant. Go Tell the Bees, in which Jamie and Claire have finally been reunited with their time-travelling daughter Brianna and her family in 1779 North Carolina, only for the American revolution to cast its shadow over their lives, also runs to more than 900 pages.
I feel sorry for George RR Martin – his show caught up with him. But they’ll never catch me
“It was definitely more of a challenge to write, mostly because of the chronology, which was very complicated,” she says. In any event, seven years is less time than fans of George RR Martin have been holding on for the sixth Game of Thrones novel; Gabaldon has, incidentally, included a chapter in her latest doorstopper called The Winds of Winter – a “nod or a dig, depending on how you want to interpret it” at Martin’s writing speed.
“Poor George, I feel very sorry for him,” she says. “What happened is that his show caught up with him, and he then met with the showrunners and he told them what he was planning to do in that book, so that they could then write accordingly. Only they didn’t write accordingly, they took his stuff, and distorted it and wrote their own ending, which wasn’t at all what he had in mind but used all the elements that he told them.”
(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1963 — Fifty-eight years ago, “An Unearthly Child”, the very first Doctor Who story, began airing on the BBC. Scripted by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, the serial introduced William Hartnell as the First Doctor and his original companions of Carole Ann Ford, the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan Foreman, with Jacqueline Hill and William Russell as school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton.
Reception was mixed with The Mail, Daily Worker and Television Today liking it very much while the Guardian was rather unimpressed by it. Current critics think it’s fine if a bit long in the latter two parts. There’s a story that it was cancelled after this series due to quite poor ratings before being revived a month later but that makes no sense give the short turn-around time between the two series. It has a sixty-eight percent rating currently among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it here.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 23, 1887 — Boris Karloff. Where do I start? Well, consider the Thirties. He portrayed Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein, and Imhotep in The Mummy. And he played a great pulp character in Dr. Fu Manchu in The Mask of Fu Manchu too! Now let’s jump forward to the Sixties and the matter of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! which featured him as both the voice of The Grinch and the narrator of the story as well. I know I’ve skipped four decades of that means not a word about such as Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where he was the latter. (Died 1969.)
Born November 23, 1914 — Wilson Tucker. Author and very well known member of fandom. I’m going to just direct you here to “A Century of Tucker” by Mike as I couldn’t say anything about him that was this good. (Died 2006.)
Born November 23, 1916 — Michael Gough. Best known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from the late Fifities and for his recurring role as Alfred Pennyworth in all four films of the Tim Burton / Joel Schumacher Batman series. His Hammer Horror Films saw him cast usually as the evil, and I mean EVIL! not to mention SLIMY, villain in such films as Horrors of the Black Museum, The Phantom of the Opera, The Corpse and Horror Hospital, not to overlook Satan’s Slave. Speaking of Doctor Who, Gough appeared there, as the villain in “The Celestial Toymaker” (1966) and then again as Councillor Hedin in “Arc of Infinity” (1983). He also played Dr. Armstrong in “The Cybernauts” in The Avengers (1965) returning the very next season as the Russian spymaster Nutski in “The Correct Way to Kill”. Gough worked for Burton again in 1999’s Sleepy Hollow and later voice Elder Gutknecht in Corpse Bride. He would mostly retire that year from performing though he would voice later that Corpse Bride role and the Dodo in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. (Died 2011.)
Born November 23, 1951 — David Rappaport. I remember him best as Randall, the leader of the gang of comically inept dwarves in Time Bandits who steal the map to the Universe. I’m reasonably sure that it’s the only thing he’ll be remembered for of a genre nature having looked up his other works and found them to be decidedly minor in nature. Most of them such as The Bride, a low budget horror film, were artistic and commercial disasters. It is said that his death by suicide in 1990 is one of the reasons cited by Gilliam for there not being a sequel to Time Bandits. (Died 1990.)
Born November 23, 1955 — Steven Brust, 66. Of Hungarian descendant, something that figures into his fiction which he says is neither fantasy nor SF. He is perhaps best known for his novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a scorned group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. All are great reads. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands, with co-author Skyler White. Both are superb. His finest novel? Brokedown Palace. Oh, just go read it. It’s amazing. And no, I don’t love everything he’s done. I wrote a scathing reviewing of Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille that he told us at Green Man that he might be the only person who liked the novel. Freedom & Necessity with Emma Bull is decidedly different but good none the less and his Firefly novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, is stays true to that series. He’s quite the musician too with two albums with Cats Laughing, a band that includes Emma Bull, Jane Yolen (lyrics) and others. The band in turn shows up in Marvel comics. A Rose For Iconoclastes is his solo album and “The title, for those who don’t know, is a play off the brilliant story by Roger Zelazny, “A Rose For Ecclesiastes,” which you should read if you haven’t yet.” Quoting him again, ““Songs From The Gypsy” is the recording of a cycle of songs I wrote with ex-Boiled-in-Lead guitarist Adam Stemple, which cycle turned into a novel I wrote with Megan Lindholm, one of my favorite writers.” The album and book are quite amazing!
Born November 23, 1966 — Michelle Gomez, 55. Best known genre role is Missy, a female version of The Master on Doctor Who from 2014 to 2017, for which she was nominated for the 2016 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress. I admit having grown up with Roger Delgado as The Master so later performers playing this role took a bit of getting used but she made a fine one. She is also Mary Wardwell in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. She plays Talia Bauerin in Highlander: The Raven which apparently is a very short-live spinoff from the Highlander series. And she shows up in the Gotham series for two episodes simply as The Lady. She is now playing Madame Rouge on the Doom Patrol.
Born November 23, 1967 — Salli Richardson-Whitfield, 54. Best known genre role is as Dr. Allison Blake on Eureka which apparently in syndication is now called A Town Called Eureka. H’h? I’m reasonably sure her first genre role was as Fenna / Nidell in the “Second Sight” of Deep Space Nine but she charmingly voiced Eliza Mazda, the main human character, on the Gargoyles series! She shows up as the character named Dray’auc in “Bloodlines” on Stargate Sg-1 and had a role on a series called Secret Agent Man that may or may have existed. She was Maggie Baptiste in Stitchers, a series that lasted longer than I expected it would.
Born November 23, 1970 — Oded Fehr, 51. Actor from Israel whose most well-known genre roles are as the mysterious warrior Ardeth Bay in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and as Carlos Oliveira (or his clone) in three of the Resident Evil films: Apocalypse, Extinction, and Retribution. (His Mummy roles no doubt led to his casting in voice roles in Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy? and as The Living Mummy in the animated Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.) On Charmed, he played the demon Zankou, the main villain of the show’s seventh season. He’s had an impressively long list of appearances on TV series, including recurring roles on Once Upon A Time, Stitchers, V, and The First, a series about the first mission to Mars. He has also voiced characters on numerous other animated features and series. He appeared in the third season of Discovery as Fleet Admiral Charles Vance.
(11) BIRTHDAY P.S. — CELEBRATING BORIS KARLOFF’S BIRTHDAY![Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Born November 23rd, 1887, Boris Karloff would have celebrated his birthday today.
He was a gentle giant who charmed children of all ages, while thrilling their parents in beloved tales of classic terror. The wonderful Boris Karloff was born on November 23rd, 1887, and is the subject of a new, full length, screen documentary, written and produced by Ronald Maccloskey, entitled “Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The “Monster.”
“Karloff, The Uncanny” became Frankenstein’s “Monster” to generations of adoring movie goers but, at his core, was a cultured gentleman, loving father, and hard working performer who co-created the legendary Screen Actor’s Guild in his quest for equal rights for actors all over the world.
His cinematic legacy is incalculable. William Henry Pratt was a cultured, lovely soul whose presence enriched the timeless fabric of motion pictures, television, radio, and the Broadway stage, and became the most enduringly beloved actor in the checkered history of classic “Horror Films.” Here is my affectionate remembrance of this gentle giant … the undisputed “King of Horror” …the one and only Boris Karloff. “The Thunder Child: Vertlieb’s Views: The Life of Boris Karloff”.
…But on Nov. 1, staffers from Image Comics — home to Spawn, The Walking Dead and Savage Dragon franchises — formed a union called Comic Book Workers United (CBWU), with 10 of the 12 eligible staffers voting to organize and go public. The employees were assisted by organizers from the Communications Workers of America, a labor giant organizing workers across multiple industries.
…While unions are a long-standing reality for the movie-making parent companies of publishers like DC and Marvel, the comic book industry has historically been resistant, with publishers having fired creators discussing the possibility in the past. No creative guild exists solely for comic book freelancers; the Writers Guild of America’s minimum basic agreement is based upon work developed for broadcast rather than print, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America only recently voted to admit comic writers and graphic novelists. “We’re crafting membership requirements for this new group of creators,” SFWA president Jeffe Kennedy says of the organization’s current position.
Of the nine goals the CBWU lists on its website, there is an obvious through-line, visible via repeated requests for transparency in terms of workload and employer expectations; the group asks for the opportunity to provide “white glove attention for all the books we publish … in reasonable proportion to the actual quantity of output we generate.”…
(13) SIGHTED BY SOCIAL MEDIA’S HUBBLE TELESCOPE. John Scalzi explains the growth on his 2008 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award.
15 Year Old Me: What's my future?
Carnival Fortune Teller: I see you in your fifties. Most people are at work, but you're at home, in a bathrobe, eating snacks.
Well that’s clearly his awards shelf… so I’m guessing the coveted “Socrates’ Brain” for his work in… I’m gonna go with children’s philosophical literature circa 1996…
(14) STAR TREK MAKES HISTORY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I saw an episode of “The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek” on the History Channel. The episode, narrated by Gates McFadden, was about the animated series of 1973-74. The show’s creators were proud that it is the only version of Star Trek to win an Emmy for writing (others have won for makeup) and that it was the first version of Star Trek to feature Native American mythology. Larry Niven and David Gerrold were both interviewed about their scripts for the series; Niven’s was the rare episode where a character died on Saturday morning cartoon television.
The Center Seat: 55 Years Of Star Trek is a multi-episode documentary series that takes viewers on the definitive in-depth journey behind the scenes of one of the greatest landmark franchises of all time: Star Trek. Celebrating the show’s 55th anniversary, each episode focuses on a different chapter in the groundbreaking program’s history, starting with its inception at Lucille Ball’s legendary production company Desilu. Interviews with the cast, crew and experts reveal never-before-heard backstage stories and offer fresh insights. No stone is left unturned, including lesser-known aspects of the franchise like The Animated Series and Phase II. Additionally, The Center Seat features one of Leonard Nimoy’s final in-depth Trek interviews. Star Trek is the most iconic television science-fiction saga of all time and remains more popular than ever. The Center Seat details how it began, where it’s been, and how it’s boldly going where no television series has gone before!
(15) DUEL. Artist Will Quinn did this piece based on David Lynch’s Dune (1984):
Plan 9 From Outer Space is often regarded as the worst movie of all time, and the making of it is well documented in the Tim Burton biopic Ed Wood, which is about the titular eccentric writer and director. However, as bad as it is, there are a lot of great ideas in it.
As outrageous as it sounds, the movie’s narrative of extraterrestrials attempting to stop humanity from creating a doomsday device that could destroy the universe is oddly relevant. With so much war and nuclear weapons that could be detonated at any time, a Plan 9 From Outer Space could be shockingly dramatic and could play out like an episode of Black Mirror.
…There’s a medical algorithm that favors white patients over sick or black ones, which is unforgivable in a system that already treats black people like an afterthought. Unfortunately in America getting appropriate health care is a lot like playing chess: when you’re white you always get to go first. That’s why my strategy and either one is to just yell “King me!” and see if i get anything extra…
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Shang-Chi And The Legend of Ten Rings” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say the movie is about “the ultimate power fantasy: Kicking your dad’s ass” and the film combines Jackie Chan comedy, wuxia super action, and “the CGI toilet slurry of a Marvel third act.”
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Jennifer Hawthorne, N., Ben Bird Person, Chris Barkley, Steve Vertilieb, John A Arkansawyer, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris S.]
By Chris Garcia: Ever wanted to be a part of an issue of Journey Planet, but never knew where to start?
Have an idea for a thing, but don’t think it’s got a place?
You like doing stuff with fun folks with a completely artificial deadline?
Then join Team Journey Planet on Saturday, November 27th as we spend One Day on Journey Planet!
We’re making an issue starting the minute it becomes November 27th (just at the International Dateline) and be continuing until it’s not November 27th anymore (or, more realistically, when Chris decides to go to bed…)
We’ll be providing prompts for pieces, but we’re open to a whole lot of everything! Been thinking about writing an article about your favorite 1970s ghost comic? Do it! Wanna draw a series of works of El Vez fighting dinosaurs? Sure! Wanna pre-flight and write now, but send on Saturday? DO IT!!! We’re looking for art, articles, reviews, comics, photos, and just about anything!
The winner of the 2021 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year is:
To Cook A Bear by Mikael Niemi, translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner (MacLehose Press)
The author Mikael Niemi receives a trophy and a pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2022. Mikael Niemi and Deborah Bragan-Turner will also receive a cash prize.
CRIME FICTION LOVER AWARDS 2021
The inaugural Crime Fiction Lover Awards shortlists was selected by Crime Fiction Lover readers. Anybody can vote for the winners here. The deadline to vote is December 1.
Best Crime Novel 0f 2021 shortlist
The Dark Remains by Ian Rankin and William McIlvanney
Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby
The Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh
I Know What I Saw by Imran Mahmood
True Crime Story by Joseph Knox
The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths
1979 by Val McDermid
Best Debut Crime Novel of 2021 shortlist
The Source by Sarah Sultoon
Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass
Edge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison
The Waiter by Ajay Chowdhury
Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Burying the Newspaper Man by Curtis Ippolito
Best Crime Novel in Translation of 2021 shortlist
Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward
Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa
The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston
Riccardino by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson, translated by Victoria Cribb
Cold As Hell by Lilja Sigurdardottir, translated by Quentin Bates
Little Rebel by Jerome Leroy, translated by Graham H Roberts
Hannah Brown has won the 2021 Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award for her historical suspense novel My Name Is Emma.
The award is for the best novel by a graduating student, with the winner receiving £3,000.
Judges also awarded a highly commended prize to Duality – a Russian in Osaka by Denise Kuehl, a Japanese-set procedural with near-future touches.
AL BLANCHARD AWARD
The winner of the 2021 Al Blanchard Award, a short mystery prize handed out at a con called the New England Crime Bake, has been announced.
“Herb Ecks Goes Underground” by Joseph S. Walker
The award is for a previously unpublished short crime story by a New England author or with a New England setting if the author is not from New England.
The winner receives a $100 cash award, publication in 2021’s Best New England Crime Stories anthology, free admission to the Crime Bake Conference, and a plaque.
2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE LONGLIST
The 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist honoring mid-career authors in fiction has been announced. It includes several crime and mystery novels as well as a few that appear to be SFF:
LONGLISTED AUTHORS: 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE AND THEIR MOST RECENT TITLES:
Megan Abbott, The Turnout, Putnam
Kristen Arnett, With Teeth, Riverhead
Christopher Beha, The Index of Self-destructive Acts, Tin House
Matt Bell, Appleseed, Custom House
Venita Blackburn, How to Wrestle a Girl, MCD
Amina Cain, Indelicacy, FSG
Dan Chaon, Sleepwalk, Henry Holt
Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus, New York Review Books
Lucy Corin, The Swank Hotel, Graywolf
Katie Crouch, Embassy Wife, FSG
Louis Edwards, Ramadan Ramsey, Amistad
Percival Everett, The Trees, Graywolf
Jonathan Evison, Legends of the North Cascades, Algonquin
Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, FSG
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie, Algonquin
Lauren Groff, Matrix, Riverhead
Joshua Henken, Morningside Heights, Pantheon
Caitlin Horrocks, Life among the Terranauts, Little, Brown
Jessica Francis Kane, Rules for Visiting, Penguin Press
Katie Kitamura, Intimacies, Riverhead
Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun, Hogarth
Shelia Kohler, Open Secrets, Penguin
Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot; Celadon
Zachary Lazar: Vengeance, Catapult
Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest, Ecco
Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria, Knopf
Jason Mott, Hell of a Book, Dutton
Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness, Viking
Kathleen Rooney, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, Penguin
Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle, Knopf
Joan Silber, Secrets of Happiness, Counterpoint
Dana Spiotta, Wayward, Knopf
Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals, Riverhead
Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, FSG
Vendela Vida, We Run the Tides, Ecco
Bryan Washington, Memorial, Riverhead
Tiphanie Yanique, Monster in the Middle, Riverhead
Finalists are expected to be named in early March 2022, followed by a Winner named in April 2022. Recipients will participate in virtual or non-virtual events. The Prize Winner receives $50,000 and will be in brief residence at Cal and in the Bay Area at a time to be determined in 2022–23.
(1) WORLDCON PROGRAM. DisCon III has posted a basic outline of the times programming will take place – on their website here. They’ve also included specific times on significant events and for important DisCon III locations, such as Registration and the Exhibit Hall.
… A.3.2: Hugo Awards Study Committee – I was one of the original proposers of this committee. I am very disappointed with the results. The only concrete output that it has achieved in four years of existence is the addition of the words “or Comic” to the category title of “Best Graphic Story”. In the meantime other proposed changes have been killed off by referring them to this committee, which has then failed to consider them. I would not support the continuation of this committee’s mandate. I do not blame anyone, especially in the circumstances of the last two years, but I think we have proved that this is not a format that will deliver change.
On the other hand, if it is renewed, I would prefer to continue as a member, and I strongly urge (yet again!) that it takes the reform of the Best Artist categories as a priority. This was the main motivation for my proposing the committee in the first place. It is the single issue that has caused most headaches in my four years of Hugo administration. The Artist category definitions are very out of date, and present a risk to the future reputation of the awards because it would be very easy to make a public and embarrassing mistake. A bit more on this further down….
(3) C.J. CHERRYH HEALTH UPDATE. In a public Facebook post, C.J. Cherryh discusses the effects of her chemotherapy.
Coming to grips with chemo and change…
I’ve decided to go with the Gandalf look. I had reconciled myself to the Yul Brynner or Zhaan look, but I didn’t lose the hair with chemo. It just went snow-white and brittle. It’s not bad, now that I’m not trying to be Cher. I think I’ll let it grow and see if I can rock the look. I have a light hat I can wear when the wind’s blowing, so I don’t look like sfx surround me—it’s super light, and doesn’t stay put.
Complexion—well, that’s aged a whole lot. Dropping 40 sudden pounds will do that to you: I am developing…character. That’s my take on it. Always wondered where the lines would go. Not too bad.
Strength: that’s the big one. I don’t have much stamina for standing upright—or for walking very far…
She is getting a portable powered scooter and plans to attend cons as they continue to open up again.
…[On] on Friday, …activist-performers Holly Stars, Georgia Frost and Richard Energy held a protest ahead of Saturday’s Trans Day of Remembrance in front of Rowling’s Scotland home to protest what many see as the author’s anti-trans viewpoints. They held signs that read “Don’t Be a Cissy” and ‘Trans Liberation Now” and, while there, took a photo in front of Rowling’s house in which the address was visible, then posted it on Twitter.
Last Friday, my family’s address was posted on Twitter by three activist actors who took pictures of themselves in front of our house, carefully positioning themselves to ensure that our address was visible. 1/8
… According to Pink News, their demonstration outside Rowling’s home in Edinburgh, Scotland, was in support of the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual event to memorialize the scores of trans and gender nonconforming people murdered every year.
The Post Millennial reported Stars, Frost and Energy stood by their tweeting of the photo, but Stars tweeted they made the decision to delete it after a backlash from Rowling supporters:
“Yesterday we posted a picture we took at JK Rowling’s house. While we stand by the photo, since posting it we have received an overwhelming amount of serious and threatening transphobic messages so have decided to take the photo down. Love to our trans siblings.”
(5) PLAYING MONOPOLY. Kristine Kathryn Rusch thinks about what-might-have-been if the DOJ had been on the job sooner: “Business Musings: The If-Only Lawsuit”.
All the promises in the world mean nothing when large companies merge.
I read the complaint for the suit the day the suit was announced. The complaint is worth reading because, if nothing else, it’s a what-if. What if the DOJ had been on this as the mergers started twenty years ago? What would the traditional publishing landscape look like now?
I can tell you: It would look completely different. Instead of the traditional part of the industry being dominated by five large conglomerates, the traditional part of the industry would look the same or better than it did in the early 1990s. There would be a lot of publishing houses, a lot of working editors, a lot of imprints, and a lot of competition….
(6) DC METRO NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This article about the problems of the Washington Metro is important because it’s going to affect DisCon III attendees. The short version: one of the 7000 series of Metrorail cars derailed on October 12 and Metro pulled these cars out of service. They haven’t brought them back yet. So Discon attendees should factor in extra time when using the troubled Washington D.C. subway. “Metro extends limited rail service through December”.
Metro will operate with reduced rail service through the end of the year as it works to return its 7000-series rail cars to the tracks, the transit agency announced Monday.
The trains, the newest in Metro’s inventory, make up 60 percent of the transit agency’s fleet but have been sidelined since the October derailment of a Blue Line train near the Arlington Cemetery station….
[Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld] said a more likely scenario would be a gradual ramp-up of service as trains are cleared to resume carrying passengers. In all, Metro has 748 rail cars in the series. The transit agency is operating with about 45 trains using its older 2000-, 3000- and 6000-series rail cars.
Wiedefeld said rail ridership, which had been around 30 percent of pre-pandemic levels, has dipped to about 28 percent in recent weeks.
No one was injured in the Oct. 12 incident, but an initial investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found defects in the trains’ wheelsets that could make them more prone to derailment.
(7) OKORAFOR IN THE NEWS. In the Chicago Tribune, an article (which you may find blocked by a paywall) refers to fantasy writer Nnedi Okorafor in reporting on Black residents who have moved out of the Chicago area. “Black residents leaving Chicago with few regrets”. Here are the paragraphs about her:
Award-winning fantasy writer Nnedi Okorafor said she moved from the south suburbs to Phoenix earlier this year, drawn there by its year-round warmth. The author of 19 books, Okorafor said her resolve to stay in the Southwest grew after her daughter, Anyaugo, was accepted at Arizona State University.
“Each time I’ve gone (to Arizona), I’ve gradually fallen in love with the area because I love heat and the desert,” she told the Tribune. “Once (my daughter) got into ASU, it all just lined up and made sense.”
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1996 — Twenty-five years ago, Star Trek: First Contact premiered. It was the eighth film of the Trek films, and the second of the Next Gen films following Star Trek Generations. It was directed by Jonathan Frakes from the screenplay by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore. The story was written by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore. It of course starred the Nex Gen cast plus guest stars Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell and Alice Krige, the latter as the Borg Queen.
First Contact received generally positive reviews upon release. The Independent said “For the first time, a Star Trek movie actually looks like something more ambitious than an extended TV show.” And the Los Angeles Times exclaimed, “First Contact does everything you’d want a Star Trek film to do, and it does it with cheerfulness and style.” It did very well at the box office making one hundred fifty million against a budget of fifty million. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most excellent rating of ninety percent.
It was nominated for a Hugo at LoneStarCon 2, the year that Babylon 5’s “Severed Dreams” won.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 22, 1932 — Robert Vaughn. His best-known genre work was as Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with other genre work being in Teenage Caveman, Starship Invasions, The Lucifer Complex, Virus, Hangar 18, Battle Beyond the Stars, Superman III, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. (seriously who penned that awful title?), Transylvania Twist and Witch Academy. Oh, and he wrote the introduction to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series companion that came out a generation after the series aired. (Died 2016.)
Born November 22, 1940 — Terry Gilliam, 81. He’s directed many films of which the vast majority are firmly genre. I think I’ve seen most of them though I though I’ve not seen The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Tideland, The Zero Theorem or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. I’ve seen everything else. Yes, I skipped past his start as the animator for Monty Python’s Flying Circus which grew out of his work for the children’s series Do Not Adjust Your Set which had the staff of Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Though he largely was the animator in the series and the films, he did occasionally take acting roles according to his autobiography, particularly roles no one else wanted such those requiring extensive makeup. He’s also co-directed a number of scenes. Awards? Of course. Twelve Monkeys is the most decorated followed by Brazil with two and Time Bandits and The Fisher King which each have but one. He’s not won any Hugos though he has been nominated for four — Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Time Bandits, Brazil and Twelve Monkeys. My favorite films by him? Oh, the one I’ve watched the most is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen followed by Time Bandits.
Born November 22, 1943 — William Kotzwinkle, 78. Fata Morgana might be in my opinion his best novel though Doctor Rat which he won the World Fantasy Award for is in the running for that honor as well. And his short stories of which there are many are quite excellent too. Did you know Kotzwinkle wrote the novelization of the screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? The usual digital suspects are well stocked with his books.
Born November 22, 1949 — John Grant. He’d make the Birthday list solely for being involved in the stellar Encyclopedia of Fantasy which won a Hugo at BucConeer. And he did win another well-deserved Hugo at Noreascon 4 for Best Related Work for The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective. Most of His short fiction has been set in the Lone Wolf universe though I see that he did a Judge Dredd novel too. (Died 2020.)
Born November 22, 1957 — Kim Yale. Married to John Ostrander until 1993 when she died of breast cancer, she was a writer whose first work was in the New America series, a spin-off of Truman’s Scout series. With Truman, she developed the Barbara Gordon Oracle character, created the Manhunter series, worked on Suicide Squad, and was an editor at D.C. where she oversaw such licenses as Star Trek: The Next Generation. For First Comics, she co-wrote much of the amazing Grimjack with her husband.
Born November 22, 1958 — Jamie Lee Curtis, 63. Can we agree that she was the best Scream Queen for her film debut in the 1978 Halloween film in which she played the role of Laurie Strode? No? Well, that’s my claim. She followed up with yet more horror films, The Fog and Prom Night. In all, she’s the only character that survives. She would reprise the role of Laurie in six sequels, including Halloween H20, Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween (a direct sequel to the first Halloween) and Halloween Kills. She shows up in one of my fav SF films, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension as Sandra Banzai but you’ll need to see the director’s extended version as she’s only there in that version. Is True Lies genre? Probably not, but for her performance, Curtis won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Saturn Award for Best Actress. Damn impressive I’d say. No, I’m not listing all her films here as OGH would likely start growling. Suffice to say she’s had a very impressive career.
Born November 22, 1979 — Leeanna Walsman, 42. Spoiler alert. She’s best known as the assassin Zam Wesell from Attack of The Clones. Being Australian, she’s shown up on Farscape, a Hercules series (but not that series), the BeastMaster and Thunderstone series, and Spellbinder: Land of the Dragon Lord.
Born November 22, 1984 — Scarlett Johansson, 37. Best known perhaps for her role as the Black Widow in the MCU films including the present Black Widow film but she has other genre appearances including playing Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell which was controversial for whitewashing the cast, particularly her character who was supposed to be Japanese.
Ray Billingsley didn’t much like his second-floor Harlem home on Bradhurst Avenue back then. It was affordable — this being the mid-’80s — but he felt isolated, and he knew crime was a threat: “One evening while in bed with the window open, I actually heard three guys planning on burglarizing my apartment.”Yet this setting was also where, later that night after going to bed, Billingsley drew inspiration. He awoke with a creative burst. “I had a vision of these two kids. I sketched them down in the dark and went back to sleep. That morning, I found the first images of Curtis and Barry.”
There they were, two cartoon brothers — the taller one wearing Curtis’s signature ball cap, the shorter one in suspenders. With minimal line work, he had rendered his future….
…When DC’s League of Super-Pets comes to theaters next year, fans will get an odd pairing as Superman and Lex Luthor: facing off against Marc Maron’s scheming Luthor will be a Man of Steel voiced by The Office star John Krasinski. Sharing a still from the upcoming, animated movie, Krasinski revealed not only that he is Superman, but what his Superman will look like. The costume owes a debt to the one from the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s — a look that recently popped back up again in flashbacks of Tyler Hoechlin’s character on Superman & Lois.
While the Super-Pets getting their own feature film may seem strange, the movie has an absolutely stacked cast providing the voices for its characters. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is starring in the film as Krypto the Superdog, the canine pal of one Superman. Kevin Hart, Johnson’s friend and frequent collaborator, will be voicing Batman’s four-legged friend, Ace the Bat-Hound….
(12) FAMOUS LIGHTSABERS AND WANDS. Julien’s Auctions “Icons And Idols: Hollywood” auction starts December 2. “I am almost grateful that I don’t have unlimited funds,” says John King Tarpinian, who sent links to such items as this lightsaber.
From the Harry Potter franchise: David Thewlis’ wand in his role as Professor Remus Lupin from the 2004 installment Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban ($5,000-$7,000), a wand used by Death Eater “Alecto Carrow” in the 2011 film Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows and Rupert Grint’s hero wand in his role as “Ron Weasley” from the same film as well as signed stamp sheets by the cast members, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, call sheets and Hogwarts acceptance letter;
Also included in the collection is a signed animation cel from 1958 featuring five of Blanc’s famous characters, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, and Daffy Duck.
The cel is inscribed in black fountain pen ink on the background page, which reads, ‘For Pat/ with love from/ ‘Uncle’ Mel Blanc/ 4/8/58.’
(13) FIRST BLACK VOICES MATTER ACQUISITION. Angry Robot Books has officially announced their first signing through the Black Voices Matter unagented submissions.
Denise Crittendon
Denise Crittendon is a former editor of NAACP’s The Crisis, and her debut Where it Rains in Colour infuses romance, mystery and the mythology of the Dogon tribe of Mali, West Africa in a magical mythological retelling. Significantly inspired by her time in Zimbabwe, Crittendon questions and plays with universal beauty standards, and challenges the structure and system in which they live. Where it Rains in Colour will be published in December 2022.
Launched as an open submissions program for sff novels by Black authors in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, this window was originally meant to run from July to September 2020, but Angry Robot Books has since announced it would be extended indefinitely. For more details, click through here.
(14) ZERO GRAVITY NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Christian Davenport talks about how he experienced weightlessness for only $7,500 on a Zero-G flight from Dulles Airport, as he talks about adapting to weightlessness and how these flights give a lot of encouragement to disabled people who get to stand for the first time in years. “You don’t have to go to space to experience weightlessness”.
… I did the flips, flew arms wide like Superman, did the Spider-Man crawl along the ceiling, all in an airplane with a couple dozen others as part of a flight organized by Zero Gravity Corp. (Zero-G) that flew out of Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia earlier this month.
For years, the company has been able to create an experience for customers that mimics the weightless experience of going to space by flying in parabolic arcs. The plane flies up on a pitched ascent, and then crests over like a roller coaster into a steep dive that allows passengers to float for about 30 seconds at a time.
In a hollowed-out cabin of a 727 jet, with padding all around, your body rises involuntarily, and you float, effortlessly, as if you were a molecule in a state of matter that suddenly went from a solid to freewheeling gas, pinging around with abandon….
Our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light-years from Earth, which is super close from a cosmological perspective but achingly far from a human point of view. A new telescope promises to bring this intriguing star system, and any habitable planets it holds, into closer view.
The new mission, called TOLIMAN, was announced today in a press release. TOLIMAN is the ancient Arabic name for Alpha Centauri—the closest star system to Earth—but it’s also an acronym for Telescope for Orbit Locus Interferometric Monitoring of our Astronomical Neighbourhood. Once in space, astronomers will use the orbital observatory to search for potentially habitable exoplanets around Alpha Centauri.
The international collaboration includes teams from the University of Sydney, Breakthrough Initiatives, Saber Astronautics, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Peter Tuthill from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney will lead the project.
…In the first real-world test of a technique that could someday be used to protect Earth from a threatening space rock, a spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday at 10:20 p.m. PST.
The golf-cart-size spacecraft will travel to an asteroid that’s more than 6 million miles away — and poses no danger to Earth — and ram into it. Scientists will then watch to see how the asteroid’s trajectory changes.
NASA has identified and tracked almost all of the nearby asteroids of a size that would cause world-altering damage if they ever struck Earth. For the foreseeable future, none that big are headed our way. But there are plenty of smaller asteroids, the size that could take out a city, that still haven’t been found and tracked.
It’s a space rock of that smaller size that the DART mission — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — will take head-on…
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Jim Meadows III, Chris Barkley, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA. The the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda is online here.
Business Meeting Chair Kevin Standlee adds, “There are blank spots in the agenda where we are expecting reports that haven’t arrived yet The agenda will be updated as the stragglers arrive.”
The agenda includes Business Passed on to DisCon III by CoNZealand. In 2020, the 78th Worldcon, CoNZealand, was forced to hold only a limited Business Meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the meeting, they defeated all constitutional amendments up for ratification and then passed the same amendments for the first time. This effectively postponed the ratification of all amendments, and passed them on to DisCon III for ratification in 2021. (Minutes and a recording of the CoNZealand Business Meeting are available on the WSFS web site.)
There is a pending re-ratification vote on whether to make Best Series a permanent Hugo category, and to make the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book a permanent award.
And there are quite a few proposals from the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee (members appointed by the Business Meeting) with the goal of making the rules work better in one way or another.
All seven new proposals to change the rules are of interest. These two would directly reshape the Hugo ballot:
Short Title: One Episode Per Series: A rules change with the “intention of reducing the amount of episodes of the same dramatic presentation series that can be finalists from two to one and to retain the existing restriction of not more than two works by the same author in each ‘story’ category.” Proposed by: Nana Amuah, Olav Rokne, Cora Buhlert and Terry Neill.
Short Title: Best Audiobook. A new Hugo category is proposed by Michele Cobb and Nicole Morano. Their supporting statement argues: “Although several Hugo Award categories allow audiobook entries by being agnostic of the publication medium per section 3.2.6, audiobooks cannot simply be viewed as interchangeable with the print and ebook experience and are deserving of their own award category. Since we honor Best Graphic Story or Comic and Best Dramatic Presentation, Long and Short Form because the experience of the story is distinctive in that medium, it only follows that we acknowledge audiobooks as a category all their own.”
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com. Wipe your feet before entering.]
MOT JUSTE
Hello, all! Melanie here.
If you’re reading for the first time, welcome! It would make sense for me to say something to get you caught up on the emails we’ve all been reading from Writer X just to help you feel at home.
I gave this idea a surprising amount of thought. Ultimately I concluded that there’s nothing I could say to you, or to me, or to anybody that would get them caught up or explain what is going on.
We are all essentially here for the first time. Welcome! Welcome to all of us!
It’s probably a good time to top up and say that all typos and grammatical choices belong to Writer X and that my name is definitely not Gladys.
Other than that, you should be good to go.
Without further ado.
Subject: I AM FINALLY A FULL TIME WRITER!!!
Dear Gladys,
When I summoned a high level demon from the void of Ashiput, I had to set some ground rules for myself.
Oh wait, you probably don’t want to hear about that!!! I know you must be waiting on pins and needles for the first installment of pages for my epic fantasy saga I promised you last week. I have some explaining to do before I let you see it so that you can understand what is happening here.
With my new discoveries about my saga, that while it is an epic fantasy saga, it is really about two people who love each other across the world of the living and the dead, loosely based off of C__ and my relationship. I have more conviction than ever that THIS IS GOING TO BE FAMOUS!!! And to think, it’s a WHOLE NEW GENRE OF FANTASY TO BOOT!!! The only problem is, with C__ and I being the heart of the story, this story has to be perfrect.
And I mean perfect. I feel like I have an immense weight on my shoulders now that I know what my story is really about. As a result of having to write the world’s MOST PERFECT, MOST FAMOUS fantasy saga, I have come up with an ENTIRELY NEW WAY TO WRITE A BOOK.
Don’t worry, I’m not delusional!!! I know that I will HAVE to go through the whole novel and fix typos and maybe a couple of grammatical touch ups here and there.
So what I’ve decided is that I’m going to write—a little at a time—and only keep the most perfect words before I add any more. This means I am writing at a WHOLE NEW LEVEL and the writing I am about to send to you is MUCH MORE POTENT.
Writing such high quality, perfect work means that I need a LOT more hours to write if I am realistically going to get these books done by mid-December. Fortunately EHPKTRYX is covering for me at work (he does a near-perfect duplication of me except for a blackened, shriveled sixth finger on my left hand but so far nobody’s noticed.) This has cleared up more than forty hours a week for writing time!!!!
That said, I’m still going to take time out of my precious writing schedule to break into the Grim Hill House next Thursday at 7:30 pm to retrieve my custom croc. R___ says he can do it Thursday night after his chemistry exam. He thinks we’re going on a historic house tour. He doesn’t know that we’re breaking in so DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO HIM!!! R___ doesn’t seem to remember getting creeped out by the lady that was in my closet but I think his subconscious is still a little jittery so DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO SCARE HIM OFF. If you ruin this for me, I WON’T BE TALKING TO YOU!!!! My protege’s future career as a mumble rapper depends on ME!!! (Bring your anbo-jyutsu armor!!!)
Hang on, EHPKTRYX is asking to borrow my phone. I have to be nice to him even if he is the creepiest…person? (DON’T TELL HIM I SAID THIS!!!) (And the house STINKS of Sulfur but fortunately I ordered a box of tutti-fruity incense to help get the smell of hell out.)
But constant sounds of dragging chains gets grating. BRB.
Okay, I’m back. Sorry that took a while. (There are so many lights on in my house and NONE of them will turn off so I always have lightbulb retina burns and it takes forever to find my phone!!)
My sleep schedule’s also been a bit weird. Gladys, do you have a gun??? I’m wondering if we can shoot out some of these lights. I feel like I’m starting to see things. (The other day I went down to my basement to heat-fluff my socks and I SWORE I saw an abyss in the floor two feet away from my dryer. But it can’t be there because I told EHPKTRYX he could use the basement as his bedroom FOR THE TIME BEING and you think he would mention it if an abyss opened.)
Demonic-Substitute or no, eventually I’m going to have to break it to him that he should get his own apartment. Not to say that there’s any problem with a demon living in people’s houses, that’s totally fine of course, I’m just the kind of person who lives having my space.
Here is my latest work below. This is very hard because I had to not only tell you what was happening, but what Fenchin looks like and I think you’ll find I did something pretty clever.
Chapter One: Darkness Comes to Chaalchaal Mall
Fenchin was picking herbs in the forest when a shot rang out at the Chaalchaal Mall. Fenchin looked in the gazing pool at her reflection. She was very beautiful. She had dark hair and a black leather jacket and skinny jeans that fit her perfectly. When she heard the shot, she screamed.
Please let me know all of your thoughts. For example, doesn’t it FEEL like an exciting story is about to start?
Write me right away!!!!! I have to know what you think as I have a DEADLINE. THe writing critique group at the Ink Black Coffee Club is VERY Exclusive and they want a writing sample before they’ll extend an invitation. TIME TO BLOW THEM AWAY, GLADYS!!!!
xox,
X
P.S. I notived you are late getting me the list of publishers, but that’s okay because I really want this to be PERFECT and I need you to put ALL YOUR FOCUS ON THIS FOR NOW!!!
Subject: DISREGARD THE LAST DRAFT, GLADYS!!!
Dear Gladys,
I realized when I hit send that the last draft is completely wrong. This current version is the only one you should read!!!
Chapter One: Darkness Comes to Chaalchaal Mall
Fenchin’s fingers wer sticky with minty sap as she plucked a fistful of herbs from the forest floor. These herbs made her think of her mother, who had disappeared years before in search of a wand that could let magic into or out of the world. A shot rang out in the direction of the city and then a bunch of birds flapped over the sky.
xox,
X
Subject: That was pretty brilliant but not PERFECT
Dear Gladys,
The lasst version I sent you was pretty brilliant and some very strong writing, however I am having a hard time thinking straight because ?HPKTRYX is listening to Lil Nas X and the Beach Boys at TOP VOLUME!!! AT THE SAME TIME!!
Disregard that version. TOO MUCH BACKSTORY!! I’ve incorporated more imagery into my latest writing. Again, I’m only keeping the PERFECT WORDS.
Chapter One: The Dark Arrival at ChaalChaal
Fenchin’s fingers were sticky with minty sap. She grabbed a handful of purple leaves from the forest floor.
xox,
X
Subject: New Draft
Dear Gladys,
Had to fix the last one. Here are the perfect words I’m keeping.
1.
Fenchin’s fingers were
xox,
X
Subject: RE: New Draft
Dear Gladys,
I know it’s been a couple hours but I’ve been working on my story in my bedroom as it’s getting late. The one nice thing about all these lights being on is that the full moon in that blasted skylight isn’t so distracting!! (Although all the eye masks I have to sleep in have been rubbing off all my eyelashes!!!)
Here is the latest draft with ONLY the perfect words
1. Fenchin
Fenchin’s fingers
xox,
X
Subject: RE: RE: New Draft
Scratch that. those last drafts wer absolute rubbish. Here is my FINAL draft.
(1) SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME TRAILER. Initially shown this week in theaters with Ghostbusters: Afterlife – now everyone can see it.
For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero’s identity is revealed, bringing his Super Hero responsibilities into conflict with his normal life and putting those he cares about most at risk. When he enlists Doctor Strange’s help to restore his secret, the spell tears a hole in their world, releasing the most powerful villains who’ve ever fought a Spider-Man in any universe. Now, Peter will have to overcome his greatest challenge yet, which will not only forever alter his own future but the future of the Multiverse.
(2) NEEDS MORE INGREDIENTS. Lise Andreasen got a look at this headline and replied:
…It is a must buy for any SF fan of the era interested in exploring the larger world behind the texts. Considering the focus of my website and most of my reading adventures over the last decade, I can unabashedly proclaim myself a fan of the New Wave SF movement–and this edited volume is the perfect compliment to my collection and interests….
The first paragraph of the authors’ introduction begins –
The “long sixties,” an era which began in the late 1950s and extended into the 1970s, has become shorthand for a period of trenchant social change, most explicitly demonstrated through a host of liberatory and resistance movements focused on class, racial, gender, sexual, and other inequalities. These were as much about cultural expression and social recognition as economic redistribution and formal politics. While the degree to which often youthful insurgents achieved their goals varied greatly, the global challenge they presented was a major shock to the status quo.,,,
Though the animated film The Last Unicorn will turn 40 years old in 2022, it’s still largely considered a cult classic. The sort of movie that a certain kind of nerdy Gen-Xer or elder millennial will enthusiastically yell about with strangers whenever it happens to come up in casual conversation, but that most average moviegoers almost completely missed out on. Part of the reason for that is that 1980s animated films were generally more interested in making money than being art, and the Disney renaissance spearheaded by critical and commercial hit The Little Mermaid was still several years off.
But it’s also because The Last Unicorn is simply unlike anything else that existed at the time. From the stacked voice cast that included everyone from Mia Farrow and Alan Arkin to Angela Lansbury and Christopher Lee, to the earnestly twee soundtrack by the band America and its general refusal to fit into neat narrative boxes, it is a film that consistently makes surprising and unexpected choices of the deeply risky sort we still don’t often see today.
Actor Mustafa Shakir sounds starry-eyed when he explains why he said yes to playing Jet Black, one of the central characters of Netflix’s new “Cowboy Bebop.” Shakir had become a devotee of the anime show, which originally aired in Japan in the late ’90s and then helped launch Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block in the fall of 2001. “My thought was, this is like a gateway drug into anime,” he says, which was the case for many U.S. viewers who had yet to understand that not all anime is kiddie fare.Shakir, best known for playing Bushmaster on “Luke Cage,” was particularly intrigued by the way this anime paid loving tribute to American jazz, most explicitly through the character of Jet, an ex-cop and the paternal leader of an interstellar bounty-hunting crew, who named his spaceship — what else? — the Bebop.
But translating “Cowboy Bebop” to live action and satisfying the sky-high fan expectations around this beloved space-western was an imposing endeavor. The most persistent question on set was, “Is this Bebop-y enough?” (“That’s a real term, you know?” Shakir deadpans.) …“Cowboy Bebop” adds yet another layer to that debate: What happens when a production studio tries to assign race to a pop culture artifact where race is hinted at but not always made explicit? The race and appearance of all the main characters have been debated on Twitter, Reddit and TikTok, but incensed online commentators went as far as smearing Shakir’s casting as “blackwashing” — a play on “whitewashing” and an accusation often lobbed at Black anime fandom in cosplay and fan art.
The original “Cowboy Bebop” does feature explicitly dark-skinned characters the Netflix version made sure to include. And in the accompanying art book, “The Jazz Messengers,” series creator Shinichiro Watanabe said that when developing the anime, he “paid a lot of attention to skin color.” But the original anime never mentions or discusses race; it stands to reason that in a near future where Earth was all but obliterated, its ideas about race would have vanished along with it.
(6) SFF IN TRANSLATION. “How Do You Say ‘Quidditch’ in Yiddish?” – Tablet Magazine has “The inside story of how ‘Harry Potter’ was translated into Yiddish.” (From 2020.)
… This tension has proved productive for Viswanath and his sisters, all of whom are involved today in various Yiddish projects—which is how Arun came to the idea of translating Harry Potter. What better way to pass on the legacy of Yiddish to another generation, he thought, than to translate one of the most popular works of children’s literature of all time? Seized with this inspiration, Viswanath began spending evenings away from his job at a tech startup translating the first book of the series, not knowing if he’d ever be permitted to publish it.
As it turned out, though, he wasn’t the only one.
When Rowling’s agent Blair connected Viswanath with Olniansky, the Swedish publisher found himself with what he described as “a pleasant problem”: He’d already been contacted by another Yiddish translator who had also begun translating the first Harry Potter novel. Given the significance of the project, Olniansky did not feel qualified to personally decide between the manuscripts, and so he submitted samples of both translations to two expert reviewers—Jean Hessel, the Swedish government’s official for Yiddish at the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore, and Mikhoel Felsenbaum, the noted Yiddish postmodern novelist living in Israel.
“Both of them picked Arun’s translation,” Olniansky told me, “so that’s the way we went.”…
(7) LOST AND FAUN. The Lesser-Known Writers blog introduces us to “Arthur MacArthur”:
…He published very little. One short story is known, “Told in the Mid-Watch,” in Sea Stories Magazine, 20 December 1922. (He claimed he gave up short story writing because it was too restrictive.) And he published only one novel, After the Afternoon (New York: D. Appleton-Century, [October] 1941), though it was retitled Aphrodite’s Lover and given a racy cover when it was reprinted in paperback in 1953.
After the Afternoon tells the story of the faun Lykos in Crete, who, after a tryst with Aphrodite, becomes a human being, endowed with immortality and able to enter the human body, male or female, of his choice. He passes through various incarnations, one at the bizarre court of an Egyptian king….
(8) REMEMBERING THE FOUNDER. The other day members celebrated the birthday of Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association founder Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015) by giving a reading of her poetry.
Poems by Suzette Haden Elgin read by SFPA board members Rocky Road to Hoe – read by Richard Magahiz No Contact – Read by Diane Severson Mori As for the Universal Translator – read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier
(9) RYAN OBIT. Voice actor and past ASIFA president Will Ryan died November 19 at the age of 72 reports Deadline. Ryan had a vast resume of genre credits, beginning with the pteranodon Petrie from Universal’s animated classic, The Land Before Time.
He’d go on to amass more than 100 screen credits in his nearly four-decade career…
Ryan voiced Willie the Giant for The Walt Disney Company in numerous projects over a 35-year period, last doing so in 2020. He voiced Peg-Leg Pete in the Oscar-nominated animated short Mickey’s Christmas Carol, reprising the role 30 years later in the Mickey Mouse short, Get a Horse!, which was also nominated for an Oscar. He also voiced the latter character, among others, in the beloved Disney Afternoon series DuckTales, and portrayed several, including a herd of Ogres, in Adventure of the Gummi Bears, which was the first animated series from Walt Disney Television. Ryan also had the opportunity to portray Tigger and Rabbit, and to provide the singing voice of Eeyore, for the long-running Disney Channel series Welcome to Pooh Corner, which aired twice a day for 17 years.
Throughout his career, Ryan also lent his voice to such classic animated films as The Little Mermaid, An American Tail, Thumbelina and A Troll in Central Park, along with multiple G.I. Joe series, the 1986 animated series Teen Wolf, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Family Guy and many more projects.
He also “wrote over 100 songs for Disney and the Jim Henson Company, seeing his songs get recorded by Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the gang; Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and the gang; The Cat-In-The-Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Grinch and the gang; the Pointer Sisters, the Saguaro Sisters, Patti LaBelle, and more.”
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1973 — Forty-eight years ago, the film that launched the Westworld franchise premiered. Westworld was created by Michael Crichton wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It was produced by Paul N. Lazarus III. It starred Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin in the three primary roles. You may have noticed Majel Barrett as Miss Carrie, The Madame of the Westworld bordello.
Reception by critics was generally superb with Variety saying it had “superbly intelligent serio-comic story values.” And the Los Angeles Times called it “a clever sci-fi fantasy.” The New York Times which I swear doesn’t like SF films was the lone dissenting major newspaper as regards this film. Box office was great making almost eight million against a budget of just a million and a quarter. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent rating of seventy percent. It was nominated for a Hugo at DisCon II, the year Sleeper won.
It was followed by a sequel, Futureworld which got nominated for a Hugo at Suncon, and a really short-lived CBS series, Beyond Westworld (five episodes). The HBO Westworld TV series is now in its third season with a fourth in production. The present series has not been nominated for a Hugo yet.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 21, 1851 — T. O’Conor Sloane. Editor of the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, from 1929 to 1938. And earlier on, Scientific American, from 1886 to 1896. (Died 1940.)
Born November 21, 1924 — Christopher Tolkien. He drew the original maps for the LoTR. He provided much of the feedback on both the Hobbit and LoTR and his father invited him to join the Inklings when he was just twenty-one years old, making him the youngest member of that group. Suffice it to say that the list is long of his father’s unfinished works that he has edited and brought to published form. I’ll leave to this august group to discuss their merit as I’ve got mixed feelings on them. (Died 2020.)
Born November 21, 1942 — Al Matthews. Performer, best known for his appearance as Gunnery Sergeant Apone in Aliens. Other genre films were Omen III: The Final Conflict, The Sender, Superman III, The Fifth Element and Tomorrow Never Dies. He stated on his website that he was the first black Marine in the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam to be meritoriously promoted to the rank of sergeant, quite an honor indeed. (Died 2018.)
Born November 21, 1944 — Harold Ramis. Actor, Writer, and Producer, best-known to genre fans for his role as Egon Spengler in the Saturn-winning, Oscar- and Hugo-nominated Ghostbusters and its lesser sibling Ghostbusters II (the scripts for both of which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd). He had voice roles in Heavy Metal and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and a cameo in Groundhog Day, for which he received Saturn nominations for writing and directing. He was also director and producer of Multiplicity. (Died 2014.)
Born November 21, 1945 — Vincent Di Fate, 76. Artist and Illustrator who has done many SFF book covers and interior illustrations since his work first appeared in the pages of Analog in 1965. He was one of the founders of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA), and is a past president. In addition to his Chesley Award trophy and 7 nominations, he has been a finalist for the Professional Artist Hugo 11 times, winning once at Seacon ‘79; two collections of his artwork, Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art and Di Fate’s Catalog of Science Fiction Hardware, have been Hugo finalists as well. He was Artist Guest of Honor at the 1992 Worldcon, for which he organized their Art Retrospective exhibit. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011. You can see galleries of his works at his website.
Born November 21, 1953 — Lisa Goldstein, 68. Writer, Fan, and Filer whose debut novel, The Red Magician, was so strong that she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer two years in a row. Her short fiction has garnered an array of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominations, as well as a Sidewise Award. The short story “Cassandra’s Photographs” was a Hugo nominee at Nolacon II and Nebula finalist as well, and “Alfred” was a World Fantasy and Nebula finalist; both can be found in her collection Travellers in Magic. The quite excellent Uncertain Places won a Mythopoeic Award. You can read about her work in progress, her reviews of others’ stories, and other thoughts at her blog which is one of the better ones I’ve read: https://lisa-goldstein.dreamwidth.org/
Born November 21, 1965 — Björk, 56. Who bears the lovely full name of Björk Guðmundsdóttir. I like Icelandic things. And I’ve got boots of her band somewhere around here I’m sure. She’s here for The Juniper Tree which is a 1990 Icelandic film directed and written by Nietzchka Keene which is based on “The Juniper Tree” tale that was collected by the Brothers Grimm. She’s one of five performers in it. Oh, and because her last album Utopia explored that concept even using cryptocurrency as part of the purchase process.
Born November 21, 1982 — Ryan Carnes, 39. He was in two Tenth Doctor stories, “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks” in which he played Laszlo. He played Kit Walker / The Phantom in the miniseries of the same name which I’ve never even heard of until now, and has the lead as Chris Norton in Beyond the Sky, an alien abductee film.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
In the Bleachersshows some golfers who don’t seem to have their priorities in order.
Tom Gauld on supply chain problems faced by the magical realism industry.
(13) BABY YODA ON SNL. Last night on Saturday Night Live Baby Yoda showed off his new tattoos and talked about all the fun he was going to have in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
(14) ATTENTION MAMMOTH ENTHUSIASTS. Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist, will do a live presentation: “Nat Geo Live: How to Clone a Mammoth” on The Broad Stage in Los Angeles on January 27-28, 2022. Tickets are available at the link.
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? National Geographic Emerging Explorer Beth Shapiro is one of the scientists investigating this intriguing possibility. From deciding which species should be restored to anticipating how revived populations might be overseen in the wild,the technical challenges and ethical considerations of de-extinction are substantial. Join Shapiro for a vivid exploration into the extraordinary cutting-edge—and controversial—science that is being used today to resurrect the past.
(15) HOWDY STRANGER. In the Washington Post, Ashley Spencer profiles Finn Wolfhard, who is interviewed because of his performance in Ghostbusters: Afterlife but became “one of the most recognizable young actors in the world: for his work on “Stranger Things.” “Finn Wolfhard, star of ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife,’ doesn’t really want to be famous”.
… Talking to Wolfhard now, the candidness remains. His answers, even the ones that hint of rehearsed, PR-approved sound bites, lack the disquietingly poised delivery that many young stars learn to perfect. Instead, Wolfhard uses “like” with reckless teenage abandon and meanders off course with details and anecdotes that excite him. There’s a lengthy tale about a tipsy Rami Malek imparting advice at a 2016 Critics Choice Awards after-party — “Did you really have fun tonight?” the older star implored of Wolfhard. “Because if you’re doing any of this stuff and you’re not having fun, you need to stop it immediately” — and an apologetic f-bomb as Wolfhard marveled at how “crazy” it is that he will potentially be the same age in “Stranger Things 5” as his older co-stars Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton were when they started the show.
Wolfhard shares “a lot” of scenes with Heaton in “Stranger Things 4,” which was delayed by covid and is finally due to arrive next summer, and said they became “incredibly close” during filming. In fact, he found a new appreciation for most of his castmates over the chaotic past two years. “When you start a show that young, there’s drama and there’s rivalries because it’s like school. And then you become older, and you stop caring,” he said. “I think it’s actually such an incredible thing to come back to each other and be like, ‘Wow, I really understand you. We’re all going through this thing together. I love you.’?”…
(16) BEST CAPTURE.[Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This video from the Royal Ocean Film Society argues that Spielberg’s 2011 The Adventures of Tintin was the best of the motion capture animated films of 2005-10 and the only one still worth watching today.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Tex Avery predicts the Internet in his 1949 cartoon “The Home of Tomorrow.”
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Ben Bird Person, Lise Andreasen, Joel Zakem, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
