Monthly Archives: July 2023

Pixel Scroll 7/31/23 Have Space Suit, Will Accessorize

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(1) SERGEY LUKYANENKO WILL BE WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Starting tomorrow, Chengdu Worldcon GoH Sergey Lukyanenko will join a whistlestop tour of Russia “Book beacons of Russia. Reading August 2023”. The TASS publicity release says:

“Reading August” [is] a book expedition from Murmansk to Vladivostok, which will be held for the first time from August 1 to August 20. The book expedition will light up the “Book Beacons of Russia” in cities along its way.

… For the first time in history, a unique book expedition by train and other means of transportation will travel with a cultural program throughout Russia and cover more than 30 regions of the Russian Federation, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok….

In another news item, Sergey Lukyanenko, appointed by Putin to the Russian Federation’s Civic Chamber in April, was on hand when the group convened on June 20. He appears for about two seconds in the video report on the session here.

Sergey Lukyanenko, smiling, at left.

Finally, Lukyanenko is a judge in “The final of the literary competition ‘Project of Special Importance’ 2023”. What makes it “special” is that one of the entries was produced with ChatGPT and has made the finals.

The neural network reached the final of the literary competition for authors and readers of audiobooks “Project of Special Importance”. It is not yet known which text from among the finalists belongs to artificial intelligence, the [ChatGPT] neural network. The name of the laureate will be announced at the award ceremony in October in St. Petersburg.

The works of the participants are evaluated by science fiction writers Sergey Lukyanenko, Andrey Vasiliev, Vadim Panov, Max Glebov, professional audiobook readers and dubbing actors Kirill Golovin, Marina Lisovets, Dmitry Cherevatenko, Inga Brik and others. A total of 644 applications were received for the competition, 50 readers and 39 writers reached the final, stories in the genres of production novel, post-apocalypse, science fiction and cyberpunk were accepted for participation. The evaluation took into account the plot, intrigue, language style and emotional impact on the reader. The full list of finalists can be found on the website.

… The winner of the competition – the author of the text, who took 1st place, receives 250,000 rubles, 2nd place – 150,000 rubles, 3rd place – 100 thousand rubles. A prize fund of 400,000 rubles is distributed among the finalists. Among the readers, 10 winners are determined, who receive 50,000 rubles each.

(2) HELP SEATTLE IN 2025 WORLDCON BID RAISE FUNDS FOR CANCER RESEARCH. The Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid has formed a Base2Space team to climb the Space Needle on October 1 and raise funds for cancer research. The climb is 832 steps from street level to the observation deck, rising 0.1 miles high, or about 1/620 of the distance to space. They promise to take pictures from the top, showing the city which members of the science fiction community will have the chance to visit if Seattle wins the (so far uncontested) site selection vote to host the 2025 Worldcon. The black and white image shows what the Space Needle looked like in 1961, the last time Seattle hosted a Worldcon. 100% of donations go to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Please give generously: Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid – Base 2 Space.

(3) ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVED. “Octavia Butler Avenue Designated in Lake Forest Park, Wash.” reports Publishers Weekly.

The city of Lake Forest Park, Wash., dedicated a section of 37th Avenue NE to science fiction and fantasy author Octavia E. Butler on Saturday, July 29. Admirers of the author, who died in 2006, can now walk a three-block stretch known as Octavia Butler Avenue, passing the midcentury modern home where the author lived from 1999–2006 and wrote her final novel, Fledgling.

Lake Forest Park city councilmembers Phillippa Kassover and Tracy Furutani led the initiative to establish the honorary landmark, which covers three residential blocks, from NE 162nd to NE 165th Street. In the shade of an oak tree at the dedication ceremony, Kassover explained that Butler had moved to the Seattle suburb because she “wanted a home with a garden from which she could walk to a grocery store and had access to a cultural center and a good bookstore via bus, as she did not drive.” (Third Place Books Lake Forest Park is a short walk away.)

Kassover acknowledged Butler’s visionary fiction, “her prescient warnings about authoritarian leaders, and her many accolades, including being the first science fiction author to receive a Macarthur Genius Award.” Furutani called Butler’s novels “more Orwellian than we might suppose,” noting Butler’s Afrofuturist and social justice vision. Butler wrote Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and the Xenogenesis trilogy, and received Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards.

Those honoring Butler at the ceremony included Kassover and Furutani, along with Lake Forest Park deputy mayor Tom French, councilmember Semra Riddle, Clarion West science fiction and fantasy workshop writer Caren Gussoff Sumption, scholar Sheila Liming, and musician Terry Morgan, who befriended Butler after she moved to the neighborhood.

(4) MEDICAL UPDATE. Sff author Michael Flynn, who was hospitalized with an infection early this month, was released from the hospital yesterday he announced on Facebook. Good news!

(5) CHENGDU AND UNCANNY MAGAZINE. Michael Damian Thomas and Lynne M Thomas, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of Uncanny Magazine report that Uncanny Magazine was invited to send a representative to the Chengdu Worldcon “on the convention’s dime, but none of our team will be attending the convention.”

Of course, notes Michael, “In the case of Lynne and me, we are no longer able to attend any conventions that require flying or are too far away from a children’s hospital due to our daughter Caitlin’s palliative care.”

(6) SLIP-SLIDING AWAY. AV Club explains why “Loki can’t escape Jonathan Majors in season 2 trailer”.

…. After fracturing the Sacred Timeline at the end of the first season, Loki has lots of issues, including the fact that he’s “time slipping.” Unfortunately, the Time Variance Authority’s repairs guy (Ke Huy Quan) can’t fix it, although he does make for a delightful addition to the cast.…

(7) POOL PARTY FOR MICHIGAN FALSE ELECTORS. Michigan’s Grand New Party PAC announced a fundraising pool party in Oakland County this week for the false electors facing felony charges. There is no mention of Michele Lundgren by name in the publicity.

(8) ABOUT TODAY’S TITLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Heinlein’s Kip Russell wanted interoperable oxygen tank fittings, among other things. Larry Niven’s Belters [[IIRC, notes DPD]]] had designs painted on theirs. What would you add to yours?

(9) TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency warns about “Dangerous Children’s Picture Books That Could Be Lurking in Your Home”. Like this one —

The Giving Tree
A story of handouts. Flat-out socialism. Not to mention the climate-thumper extremism of giving the tree feelings. “Oh no, a tree is sad. It turns into a pathetic little stump. Whatever will we do?” Ridiculous.

(10) PAUL REUBENS (1952-2023). Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian who gained fame in character as Pee-wee Herman, died July 30 of cancer.

An Instagram released after his death quotes him: “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

The Los Angeles Times’ obituary describes his iconic character:

…Accompanied by a talking chair and pterodactyl named Pterri, Reubens established his place in the pop-culture zeitgeist with a maniacal laugh, form-fitting gray suit and red bow tie while embodying the man-child who ran amok on Saturday mornings during the TV run of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” The CBS series aired from 1986 to 1990 and then yielded the big-screen adaptations “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton, and “Big Top Pee-wee” in the 1980s. Stage shows followed in more recent years., as did Netflix’s 2016 follow-up “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” produced by Judd Apatow….

However, Reuben’s’ career was derailed by criminal charges, first in 1991 — he ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure — then in 2004, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge in a plea bargain with prosecutors who agreed to drop charges concerning child pornography.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 31, 1932 — Ted Cassidy. He’s best known for the role of Lurch on The Addams Family in the mid-1960s. If you’ve got a good ear, you’ll recall that he narrated The Incredible Hulk series. And he played the part of the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” on Trek and provided the voices of the more strident version of Balok in the “The Corbomite Maneuver” episode and the Gorn in the “Arena” episode. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. “The Napoleon’s Tomb Affair” episode (SPOILERS), he was Edgar, who kidnapped, tortured, and repeatedly attempted to kill Napoleon and Illya. And failed magnificently. I watched a few months back. (Died 1979.)
  • Born July 31, 1950 — Steve Miller, 73. He is married to Sharon Lee, and they are the creators of the vast and throughly entertaining Liaden universe. (And where would one would start? And go from there?  Do tell.) I was surprised though they’ve won both a Golden Duck and Skylark that they have never been nominated for a Hugo. 
  • Born July 31, 1955 — Daniel M. Kimmel, 68. His essays on classic genre films were being published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction from 2005–2010 and are now in the Space and Time magazine. He is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Shh! It’s a Secret. And he was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work at Chicon 7 for Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies.
  • Born July 31, 1956 — Michael Biehn, 67. Best known in genre circles as Sgt. Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks in Aliens and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. He was also The Sandman in a single episode of Logan’s Run. Though not even genre adjacent, he was Johnny Ringo in the magnificent Tombstone film. Likewise he was in The Magnificent Seven series as Chris Larabee.
  • Born July 31, 1959 — Kim Newman, 64. Though best known for his Anno Dracula series, I’d like to single him out for his early work, Nightmare Movies: A critical history of the horror film, 1968–88, a very serious history of horror films. It was followed up with the equally great Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten.
  • Born July 31, 1962 — Wesley Snipes, 61. The first actor to be Blade in the Blade film franchise where I thought he made the perfect Blade. (There’s a new Blade actor though their name escapes me right now.) I also like him as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. And he was Aman in Gallowwalkers, a Western horror film that is really, really bad. How bad? It gets an eleven percent rating by audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Born July 31, 1976 — John Joseph Adams, 49. Anthologist of whom I’m very fond. He did The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West. He was the Assistant Editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for nearly a decade, and he’s been editing both Lightspeed Magazine since the early part of the previous decade. He is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Nominated for the Hugo many times, he won for the Lightspeed prozine at Loncon 3 (2014) with Rich Horton and Stefan Rudnicki, and at Sasquan (2015) with Horton, Rudnicki, Wendy N. Wagner and Christie Yant. 

(12) HORROR WRITING GENERATIONS. Brian Keene hosts a panel sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, “Back in the Day (part 1)”.

Back In The Day (Part 1) hosted by Brian Keene, he speaks with panelists about what has changed in publishing and horror fiction over the years… and what hasn’t

He’s joined by David J. Schow, John Skipp, Chet Williamson, and Douglas E. Winter. 

(13) OPPOSITE OF OPPENHEIMER. “Where are the ‘violet hues’ and ‘bath of heat’? Australian scientists review what Oppenheimer gets wrong” in the Guardian.  

Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but not always accurate.

Its portrayal of the first atomic bomb detonation, for example, lacked the “violet hues” and heat wave of the real thing.

“Some characters even made comments like ‘quantum mechanics is hard’, which I disagree with – it’s only hard if someone hasn’t explained it properly,” says Dr Kirrily Rule, an instrument scientist who works with the thermal triple-axis spectrometer Taipan at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).

Rule gives Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Manhattan project four stars, saying it’s exciting and suspenseful but the science is “brushed over”.

“As a physicist watching the movie, I think they could have been much clearer on the science involved … I believe Nolan used such high-level jargon as a confusing element to the film intentionally….

In an article where people complain about making science look too hard, it’s comical to see this as the last line:

This article was amended on 28 July 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the sound wave boom resulting from the 1945 Trinity detonation travelled at the speed of light.

(14) REVISED OPINION. Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative, immediately went to see the movie and gave it an overall positive review.

We saw Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer last night as it was meant to be seen: in 70 mm IMAX.

It’s a very good film; I recommend it. That said, is it the best cinematic treatment of the subject? No, that’s still the 1989 movie Day One.

And is Cillian Murphy going to win the Academy Award for Best Actor? No, I don’t think so; his is an awfully one-note version of Oppie, who was much more complex (and much more charming) than Murphy’s portrayal would indicate….

However, a week later he told his newsletter subscribers that his enthusiasm has cooled:

…For all of Christopher Nolan’s posturing that his Oppenheimer is an important film, and how, in his own words, it “poses the most unsettling questions,” he completely cops out, showing us only the Trinity test explosion in New Mexico and not the dropping of the bombs on the living, breathing cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, Nolan portrays the famous moment in which Oppenheimer says he fears he has “blood on his hands” to Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, but, in his film, we never get any real sense of Oppenheimer’s regret or of the horrors of nuclear war. Sadly, despite the IMAX format, most scenes in Oppenheimer aren’t very memorable either visually or emotionally.

(15) EARLY DISNEYLAND. Shorpy recently posted “Moonliner: 1960”. Image at the link.

Circa 1960, the TWA “Moonliner” rocket at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland in Anaheim, California. (With Richfield Oil’s “Autopia” in the background.) At 76 feet, the Moonliner was the tallest attraction in the park. This medium format transparency is part of a recent donation to Shorpy from the family of California photographer Mary Baum (1925-2012). View full size.

I remember that rocket. And the ride — which was a circle of theater seats around a circular screen. The “launch” was b&w film taken by a camera on a V-2.

(16) SECOND SIGHT. “Queen legend Brian May helped NASA ace its asteroid-sampling mission” and Space.com tells how.

Queen guitarist Brian May and Dante Lauretta, the chief scientist of NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission, have collaborated on a book about the asteroid Bennu — and it’s not a PR stunt.

OSIRIS-REx snagged a sample of Bennu in October 2020 and is currently speeding toward Earth with the precious space-rock material, which is scheduled to touch down here on Sept. 24.

Unbeknownst to the world, May, voted the greatest guitarist of all time by readers of Total Guitar magazine earlier this year, had actually been hard at work for years leading up to the sampling attempt, helping to process images captured by NASA’s flagship space rock explorer to find a suitable landing spot on the treacherous surface of asteroid Bennu. The work proved harder than Lauretta and May had expected, as the 1,722-feet-wide (525 meters) Bennu turned scientists’ understanding of asteroids upside down…. 

OSIRIS-REx wasn’t fitted with a stereo camera. May, however, knew a way around this limitation, as he had previously produced 3D images of Comet 67P, the target of the Rosetta mission, and of Pluto as seen by New Horizons, by carefully selecting and aligning images taken by a single camera from different angles. 

The OSIRIS-REx cooperation, however, put the musician’s commitment to science through a test. As data from OSIRIS-REx started pouring in, the scientists realized that Bennu’s surface was not at all what they had expected and designed their mission for. Instead of mostly smooth, beach-like plains of sand occasionally strewn with smatterings of bigger rocks, they found a body covered in boulders that sometimes rose against the asteroid’s barely existent gravity in formations tens of feet tall. Understanding what the researchers were truly facing from the two-dimensional snapshots captured by OSIRIS-REx’s cameras was nigh impossible. And so May quickly got to prove his scientific worth.

(17) STUCK TO THE FUTURE. “This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape” at IEEE Spectrum.

…What sets CFS’s technology apart is its use of high-temperature superconducting tape, which is layered and stacked to create extremely strong electromagnets that will shape and confine the unruly plasma and keep the bulk of the charged particles away from the tokamak’s walls. The company believes that this novel approach will allow it to build a high-performance tokamak that is much smaller and less expensive than would be possible with previous approaches….

Daniel Dern asks, “Yeah, but would it keep the Ringworld from breaking?”

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Kevin Black, Dann, Michael Damian Thomas, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

2023 Dream Foundry Contest Finalists

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Dream Foundry announced the 2023 finalists of its latest contest for speculative fiction writers and artists on July 31. 

The contest is open to relatively new writers and artists. The finalists for each category are:

WRITING CONTEST

  • Fatima Abdullahi
  • Jessica Andrewatha
  • Zary Fekete
  • Ariel Finkle
  • Mallika Kamat
  • Toshiya Kamei
  • Felicia Martínez
  • Albert Nkereuwem
  • Alexia Tolas
  • Alan Mark Tong

ART CONTEST

  • Ahmed Asi
  • BraveBurattino
  • chocokkyo
  • Alieha Dryden
  • Galtenoble
  • ©Jin
  • MarMar
  • Mocarro
  • ReYtzin
  • Larissa Usuki

The finalists were chosen by Julia Rios and Dante Luiz for the writing and art contests respectively. The finalists’ entries have been sent to writing contest judges John Wiswell and Suzan Palumbo, and art contest judges Sloane Hong and Solomon Enos, who will pick the first, second, and third place winners.

Emails From Lake Woe-Is-Me — Fit the Eighty-Fifth

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A dark forest sits beneath a starry sky. Black goo drips over the scenery. Text reads, “Fit the Eighty-Fifth: An Ark of Sub Genres, Emails from Lake Woe-Is-Me”

[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.]

AN ARK OF SUB GENRES

Hello, all! Melanie here.

It’s rained quite hard here in New Hampshire. Our town flooded, a few roads were washed away, and some residents lost access to the outside world altogether. My house was mostly spared but nonetheless acquired a foot of water. Two weeks later, we’ve finally got the musty smell out of the air, although there are so many fans in my basement, I’m afraid we might drift skyward like a house balloon.

We haven’t heard from Writer X for a couple weeks, either. As it turns out, Cradensburg, NH, received significantly more flooding than we did, and her hands were full.

Remember that entire wing X hired gnomes to add to her house? I know this will come as a surprise to many, but when gnomes throw up square footage in the course of one or two weeks, there are a few architectural drawbacks.

Without further ado…

Subject: Ark replacement

Dear Gladys,

I would have written you earlier but I had trouble getting flights home from Mount Ararat. Ever since 2020 the airlines have become incorrigible!!!

First, we couldn’t find a direct flight from Mount Ararat to Cradensburg, NH which is just mind blowing that an airline would never think to connect these two VERY IMPORTANT PARTS of the map!!! Fortunately for us, I was able to put together a very nearly ALMOST direct series of flights that saved at least $30 per ticket. When I mentioned we’re all writers, they told us they would give us extra air.

Secondly, on the first leg of our trip from Yerevan to Hong Kong, they promised us complementary pretzels but ran out of them while we were still over Saudi airspace!!! Then, on the fourth leg of our return trip from Melbourne, Australia to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, we threw a high altitude hula party but the stewards informed us the airline has a strict policy about serving alcoholic beverages to passengers who are only wearing body paint, to say nothing of the pigs swinging around on stripper poles. You can’t have a hula without pigs, Gladys!!!!!

Of course I had to reel things in. You know how those far future science fiction writers fly. They are wild and free. But by the time our passports were returned on the tenth leg of our return trip we had worked things out.

Anyhoo, you’re probably dying to know how my writing is going. Things were going quite nicely and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I were having an ordinary Monday afternoon writing in the writing wing of our house. Tryxy was also having a particularly lovely day. He had just perfected his rainy day playlist so that it was nothing but a #MOOD, and he had brushed #bestkitten, trimmed her claws, and finally removed the very last of her cat hair off his favorite terry track suit.

Sometime after that, our house began to float. First there was a loud crack as the new wing tore away from the original cape cod structure, and then we were drifting. At first it was enjoyable. Do you ever drive around and look into people’s windows? Of course you do, it’s enormous fun. Well, what if you could stay in the comforts of your own home while floating through the neighborhood and seeing whose calico cat is sitting in the window and who is watching television in dingy boxer shorts???

But after a couple hours of that, the rains fell in earnest and Main Street Cradensburg turned into rapids. The house began to pitch this way and that and when Tryxy’s statue of Lil Nas X dislodged and went flying through the house, I lost at least a third of my faberge eggs (THEY’RE MY LATEST OBSESSION, GLADYS!!!) Something had to be done, but when I threw open a window to cry for help, that’s when I learned someone else had already beaten me to the punch and was crying for rescue out there.

It was a small writing critique group who had gathered on this rainiest of days during a flood watch and there they were, stranded on top of a porch with their latest works in progress and a speckled pony. We stuck our arms out the window and rescued them all before the tidal wake of our house swept them all away!!!!

Once the writers, the works in progress, and the pony were safe indoors, we had another problem on our hands: THE HOUSE WAS PITCHING SOMETHING AWFUL!!! If I didn’t act quickly, I would lose another third of my faberge eggs and Tryxy would lose his lunch!!!

Fortunately for us, we spotted another lost soul standing on the roof of a floating SUV with their laptop held high over their head lest their short stories be wiped from the earth!!!! Tryxy made kind of life preserver from a rope and a deflated exercise ball and flung it out to that poor writer!!! The writer threw her laptop onto the exercise ball, plunged into the water, and splonked around as we drew her in to safety.

We had quite a crowd in the southern part of the floating wing what with the speckled pony and all. But there was news of another flock of writers stranded on the roof of an Aroma Joes, clinging to their cats, and the rapids were already carrying us in that direction!!!

Tryxy suggested that if there were going to be any more people climbing aboard this vessel, could we—for the love of god and hiphop—come up with a way of organizing them so that our weights were evenly distributed and we could be done with this horrible pitching back and forth.

This is when I concocted the Ark of Subgenres System, also known as the A.of S. S.!!! I sprang into action designating that fantasy writers fill the rooms to the north, science fiction to the south, and horror fill the rooms in the west. Four-legged people could take the upper floors and I installed Tryxy as Manager of that particular Mess.

But then my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, said what about Weird? And I said, What’s Weird? And he said, No, weird fiction I mean, where do we put them? And I said, You’re right, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

So then we determined that since there are more rooms on the north and south sides of the house, that some of the rooms abutting the west would be assigned to weird.

How do we know which side to put a weird writer on? North or South? By weight? my boyfriend asked.

By weight???? Don’t be preposterous, I said. If their work is weird but has things that behave like magic or is set in the past, we’ll put them in the Weird Fantasy rooms to the north. And if it’s weird but has advanced technology or is set in the future, then we’ll put them in the Weird Science Fiction rooms to the south. 

Crisis averted, said my boyfriend.

Only that’s when our floating house went spinning by a group of young writers who had congregated in a rapidly deteriorating treehouse. Most of them wrote Corrective Harry Potter Fan Fiction that seeks to undo the damage that She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named is doing to witches and wizards everywhere so, before we knew it, the north end of the house was over populated and my faberge eggs quivered perilously from the northern edge of the display case.

There were still three writers who had not been assigned rooms and none of them knew what genre they belonged to exactly. We quickly asked them to describe their latest works in progress and, wouldn’t you know it, two of them were science fiction. I became very excited because one of them was a triple threat. He was very smart, very good looking, and fantastically fat. Unfortunately, when we came to the third of them, she announced that she wrote science fantasy and then we were stuck moving people into different rooms all over again!!!!

Science fantasy is its own genre, Gladys!!!!!

That was when we passed the pet shop. We sent out rescue crafts and quickly passed all the cats, puppies, ferrets, iguanas, birds and tarantulas into the house and Tryxy developed his own little organization system and assigned them to rooms two by two.

No one was expecting the talking pigs. We passed an abandoned animal farm on Dead Mist Hill and collected three alapacas, one goat, and six pigs whom a mad scientist/pole fitness instructor had trained to talk.

That’s when award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins said, What about talking animals?

They go up to Tryxy, I said.

No, I mean are we failing to account for talking animal stories?

They’re fantasy, I said.

Yes, but if we’re putting weird fantasy down near horror, shouldn’t we put fabulist fiction at the other end? It’s starting to tip a little westward and if we keep going this way, we’ll end up in Maine, he said.

But before we could do anything about it, one of the science fiction writers came back out and said, What if my story has a ghost? Do I still belong in science fiction?

Weird science fiction, Tod BOadkins and I said in unison.

But what if the ghost isn’t weird, what if it’s a retelling of The Christmas Carol but in space? asked the writer.

And then we had to rearrange everyone all over again. Meanwhile, Tryxy was on the upper floor in hog heaven, you know how he loves animals. However, it turns out that there is only so much pet hair a terry cloth tracksuit can sustain without become an irreversible ball of fluff and the alpacas were particularly affectionate and the goat ate Tryxy’s favorite sandals.

Before anyone had anytime to settle in, we passed a barn with about thirty writers and their cats taking refuge on the roof and two of them were slipstream and one of them wrote comic books. No matter how we arranged and rearranged, the sudden influx of wet, clingy, disgruntled cats threatened to capsize the whole vessel and we hit a whirlpool and spun clear across New Hampshire, up through Maine, and into the Atlantic.

Fortunately, we had a room with at least two Christian fantasy writers who were able to provide ark-steering instructions and I was able to gain control of things and land us safely on Ararat and book all our trips back home.

Or what was left of my home. When Tryxy, #bestkitten, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins and I got back, we were greeted by a tiny cape cod with a hole in the back of it, a statue of Lil Nas X in the front yard, and absolutely nowhere to put my remaining faberge eggs!!!!

Pages next week Gladys!!!!

xox,

X

ONCE, BACK

IN THE

ANCIENT CITY

OF NINEVAH,

THERE WAS

A FLOOD

AND I

ARRANGED ALL

THE ANIMALS

TWO BY

TWO ON

A BARGE

AND GOD

SAW AND

WAS LIKE

THAT’S SO

COOL, SHOW

ME THAT

AGAIN AND

I SAID

NO AND

GOD SAID

FINE, I’LL

ASK NOAH.

Paul Weimer Review: Karen Osborne’s Architects of Memory

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Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne
Tor, 2020

By Paul Weimer: Space Opera, as I mentioned on twitter recently, and Epic Fantasy are my core subgenres of SFF. When I want to sink into the comfort of comforts in my reading, especially for a new to me author, these are the subgenres I seek out.

Imagine a corporate interstellar future, where an indentured worker finds herself on the front line of not only an intercorporate, but also interspecies conflict. Where that indentured worker’s tie to the alien technology makes her, and her Captain, targets for all sides seeking control of weapons capable of prosecuting, or ending, the war.

This is Karen Osborne’s debut novel Architects of Memory.

The novel is a strong two-hander of a pair of viewpoint characters. Our primary character is Ashlan Jackson, or Ash. She’s a pretty good pilot under Captain Kate Keller on the salvage team on the Twenty Five, a salvage ship for the Aurora Corporation. It’s an unglamorous ship, and unglamorous life, especially since she is indentured, not a citizen, but it beats some of the hardscrabble situations she could have. But even as precarious this life is, Ash has another problem — she has a terminal disease that, if discovered, would mean her precarious life on the Twenty Five would be over.  The fact that she has a relationship with Captain Keller further complicates Ash’s life.

Our other viewpoint character is Captain Keller…

The novel has a host of interesting secondary characters as well. They are a hard and sometimes prickly set, on a salvage ship like Twenty Five, there are no angels. More to the point, they all have significant arcs of their own, and through the viewpoints of Kate and Ash, we get a parallax view of Dr. Sharma, and Natalie, and Len, and Ramsay, the other members of the Twenty Five. This also goes to characters even more afield, like the company CEO Joseph Solano, who, given the importance of Ash, and the Vai technology, winds up getting personally involved in matters. It’s a novel that certainly leans strong on the mysteries, the technology and the worldbuilding of the novel, but it is a novel that leans not only on the Ash-Keller relationship (and how that is propagated and promulgated when they are apart for large rafts of the novel is clever and plot-relevant) but on the other relationships as well. The novel has character drama, in spades.

The novel is rich in its world details, too, big and small, providing a rich space opera universe for the plot and characters. The mystery of the Vai, who and what they are, and the mystery that the characters themselves have, and the secrets they are holding when they do know something, adds a layer of mystery and discovery to the plotting and worldbuilding. The major question of how and what the Vai technology is, and how it might be used extends out to how Ash and Keller are connected to it, how corporations in this verse work, ships, human technology, settlements and a lot more. It’s a decidedly dystopian world that the author depicts here, it’s not one that anyone would want to visit, but from wrecked spaceships in orbit to secret labs on a planet, it has a variety of set piece locations that tell the story of the place, and the book and the world.

Architects of Memory is careful in its reversals and its plot reveals. There are a number of mysteries that slowly unfold themselves over the course of the novel — how and why the Vai attacked, what the Vai themselves really are, and what’s the deal with their very dangerous tech and weapons, to say nothing of what is happening to Ash and Kate as well. Looking back, once revelations are made, the seeds of clues and lines of development are all there, right to be seen. It’s an excellent crafted set of puzzles and mysteries that within the bounds of the novel, are paid off and resolved. It’s really expert plotting for a debut novelist.

The novel sets in a space that I think of as a mixture that Jason Hough, Elizabeth Bear, Tim Pratt, James S A Corey, and Gareth Powell might come together and produce. The thriller action beats (including a classic ductwork sequence), the aliens, the criticism and critique of ultracapitalism, the weird alien tech, the strong character drama and the mystery element of the novel come together into something rather special.

(Tor, 2020)

Pixel Scroll 7/30/23 No Country For Old Pixels

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(1) SURVIVAL ISSUES FOR ACTORS. Bleeding Cool quotes Wil Wheaton’s statement supporting the strike: “Star Trek Residuals ‘Kept Me Afloat For Two Decades’: Wil Wheaton”.

…In 1960, SAG and WGA struck to force management to adapt to the new technology of television. Without that strike and the agreement it birthed, residual use payments would not exist.

My parents stole nearly all of my salary from my entire childhood. My Star Trek residuals were all I had, and they kept me afloat for two decades while I rebuilt my life. I have healthcare and a pension because of my union. The AMPTP billionaires want to take all that security away so they can give CEOs even more grotesque wealth at the expense of the people who make our industry run.

To give some sense of what is at stake: There are actors who star in massively successful, profitable, critically acclaimed shows that are all on streaming services. You see them all the time. They are famous, A-list celebrities. Nearly all of those actors don’t earn enough to qualify for health insurance, because the studios forced them to accept a buyout for all their residuals (decade of reuse, at the least) that is less than I earned for one week on TNG. And I was the lowest paid cast member in 1988. They want to do this while studio profits and CEO compensation are at historic highs…

(2) IN THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. The above item made me curious about Wil Wheaton’s The Ready Room. Here’s the most recent episode, “On A Healing Journey With Babs Olusanmokun And Melissa Navia” at Paramount+. Beware spoilers.

(3) CADWELL TURNBULL STORY. Sunday Morning Transport posted their last free story of July, “A Tech Mage Comes to Visit” by Cadwell Turnbull about a “stunning new world, and the characters who have strange powers over the machines there.” Editors Julian Yap and Fran Wilde encourage fans to read it and subscribe.

(4) ALASTAIR REYNOLDS STORY. Auki Labs has posted a short story, “End User” by Alastair Reynolds.

The following is a short story by renowned sci-fi author Alastair Reynolds, commissioned by Auki Labs. It is the third short story published on our Medium about the future of Augmented Reality….

Alastair Reynolds’ “End User” is a chilling reminder, if one could call a vision of the future that, of why it is important for us as a society to reject surveillance capitalism and think critically about how AR will be delivered to us. We should never allow corporations to see through our eyes….

(5) ON THE COVER. These are pretty damn cute. Especially the one of the TARDIS. “Iconic Sci-Fi Vehicles Reimagined in the Cool Vintage Art Style of Modern Mechanix Magazine” at GeekTyrant.

Illustrator Chet Phillips has reimagined six iconic fictional sci-fi vehicles in as front covers in the vintage style of Modern Mechanix magazine. The magazine is known for its wildly cool and exaggerated illustrations, and was popular in the early to mid part of the 20th Century….

(6) AUREALIS AWARDS TAKING ENTRIES. The 2023 Aurealis Awards are open for entry from now until December 14.

The Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier awards for speculative fiction, are for works created by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published for the first time between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2023.

We strongly encourage publishers and authors to enter all works published already this year by September 30, 2023, then subsequent publications as they are released; our judges appreciate having time to consider each entry carefully.

Read the Aurealis Awards Rules and the FAQ at the links.

(7) COURT PUTS BRAKES TO ARKANSAS BOOK LAW. “Judge halts Arkansas ban on librarians giving kids ‘harmful’ books” reports the Washington Post.

A federal judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked a state law that would have made it a crime for librarians and booksellers to give minors materials deemed “harmful” to them — a move celebrated by free-speech advocates, who had decried the law as a violation of individual liberties.

Act 372 would have taken effect Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction Saturday, siding with bookstores, libraries and patrons in the state thatargued in a lawsuit filed last month that parts of the law were unconstitutional.

Section 1 would have made it a criminal offense to knowingly provide a minor with any material deemed “harmful” — a term defined by state law as containing nudity or sexual content, appealing to a “prurient interest in sex,” lacking “serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors” or deemed “inappropriate for minors” under current community standards.

Plaintiffs also challenged Section 5, which would have allowed anyone “affected by” material in a particular county or municipal library to challenge the “appropriateness” of the material.

The plaintiffs argued that the law would force librarians and booksellers to make an impossible choice: Remove books that some might deem offensive to young readers from their shelves; create secure, adult-only spaces for those books; ban minors from their facilities altogether; or expose themselves to criminal charges or fines.

In his injunction, Brooks said the law “would permit, if not encourage, library committees and local governmental bodies to make censorship decisions based on content or viewpoint,” in violation of the right to free speech under the First Amendment. He agreed with the plaintiffs that the state’s definition of “harmful” materials was overly vague….

(8) SHELLEY BELSKY (1955-2023). Shelley Adrienne Mimi Belsky, a New York City fan, died July 25 at the age of 68.

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society’s tribute says: “Shelley was a transwoman known for her knowledge and love of science fiction literature and hearty laugh in east coast con suites in the late ’70s to ’80s before she married and moved to Canada. After a decade she returned to the US and resided in the Milwaukee area. She often attended Balticon….. May her memory be a blessing.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 30, 1911 — Reginald Bretnor. Author of many genre short stories involving Ferdinand Feghoot, a comical figure indeed. It looks like all of these are available in digital form on iBooks and Kindle. He was a consummate SJW. He translated Les Chats, the first known book about cats which was written by Augustin Paradis de Moncrif in 1727. He also wrote myriad articles about cats, was a companion to cats, and considered himself to have a psychic connection to cats. Of course, most of us do. (Died 1992.)
  • Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger, 76. Terminator franchise, of course, as well as Running Man, Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer, Tales from the Crypt and True Lies.  
  • Born July 30, 1948 — Carel Struycken, 75. I remember him best as the gong-ringing Mr. Holm on Next Gen, companion to Deanna Troi’s mother. He was also Lurch in The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and the Addams Family Reunion. He’s listed as being Fidel in The Witches of Eastwick but I’ll be damned if I remembered his role in that film though I’ve seen it twice. And he’s in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor which I’ve never seen. 
  • Born July 30, 1947 — John E. Stith, 76. Winner of two HOMer Awards, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Forum on CompuServe, for Redshift Rendezvous and Naught for Hire. The former would be nominated for a Nebula as well. The HOMer Awards ended in about 2000. 
  • Born July 30, 1961 — Laurence Fishburne, 63. Morpheus in The Matrix films. My favorite role by him was Dr. Raymond Langston on CSI. (Not genre, though the forensic science there is SF.) His voice work as Thrax in Osmosis Jones on the other hand is outstanding as is his role as Bill Foster in Ant-Man.
  • Born July 30, 1966 — Jess Nevins, 57. Author of the superlative Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victorian and the equally great Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which is far better than the film ever could be. He’s also written the Fable Encyclopedia which is a most excellent look at Willingham series. I didn’t know he also wrote fiction ‘til now but he has two genre novels, The Road to Prester John and The Datong Incident. 
  • Born July 30, 1975 — Cherie Priest, 48. Her Southern gothic Eden Moore series is kickass good and Clockwork Universe series is a refreshing take on steampunk which has been turned into full cast audiobooks by GraphicAudio. I’ve not read the Cheshire Red Reports novels so have no idea how good they are. Anyone read these?  She won an Endeavour Award for her Dreadnought novel.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) HOW MANY STEPS TO MORDOR? Literary Hub invites you to “Read W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring”. He liked it! I was particularly interested in this measure of praise:

… The first thing that one asks is that the adventure should be various and exciting; in this respect Mr. Tolkien’s invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, The Fellowship of the Ring is at least as good as The Thirty-Nine Steps….

He refers to John Buchan’s 1915 “shocker”, beloved by readers of popular fiction a century ago. Their experience can’t really be recovered by reading the book now (or even several decades ago when I looked it up due to its reputation.) However, Auden’s comparison was a ringing endorsement in 1954.

(12) ANIME EXPLORATIONS. The new episode of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up – covering the conclusion of this year’s Summer of Jojo with the end of Stardust Crusaders. Episode 10 “JoJo Part 3 – Stardust Crusaders (Battle in Egypt Arc)”.

(13) T. HEE? “The Twilight Zone Needed A Favor From A Disney Great To Make The Dummy Work” at Slashfilm.

…Rod Serling and his crew didn’t have anyone on staff that could handle that, so they ended up recruiting for an unlikely source: Walt Disney Animation. 

As the story goes (at least according to 1992’s “The Twilight Zone Companion” written by Marc Scott Zicree), “Twilight Zone” makeup effects artist, William Tuttle was hard up for ways to pull off the effect in a way that would please Serling, who was determined that the gag only works if the audience can recognize Robertson in the dummy at the end. It still had to look like a real ventriloquist’s dummy, but have enough of the actor’s features so nobody walked away from the episode confused…

The rest of the story is at the link.

(14) BERLITZKRIEG. Very clever.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Epic Spaceman helps us visualize our home galaxy:“The scale of The Milky Way – why is the galaxy bigger than we think?”

I love the Milky Way, this crazy, giant whirlpool of stars that’s our home. And I remember being blown away learning that the cloudy line in the sky was something we’re actually inside, something that really confused me at first. So this video is really my attempt to bring a little more appreciation and clarity to our oasis in the Universe. Making it has really helped me get to grips with some of the scale of things and I might well do another shorter video showing the size and location of some other things in the Milky Way on the ‘US’ scale. I also tried to address that existential dread that can creep in when getting to grips with the scale of things like this. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, our galaxy makes a long walk down to the chemist’s look like peanuts so I’ve tried to temper that with a quick reminder of the scale of the really small stuff. I do personally like to remind myself that I’m actually huge when the cosmos gets a little too big for its boots and starts melting my brain.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Lise Andreasen, Rich Lynch, Daniel Dern, Jennifer Hawthorne, Tom Boswell, Alexander Case, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day brnkn117.]

2023 Scribe Award Winners

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The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers announced the Scribe Award winners at San Diego Comic-Con on July 21.

SPECULATIVE

  • Star Trek Strange New Worlds High Country by John Jackson Miller

GENERAL/ADAPTED NOVEL

  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow

GRAPHIC NOVEL

  • Kolchak the Night Stalker by David Avallone, Rodney Barnes, Jonathan Maberry, Gabriel Hardman, Peter David, James Aquilone, R. C. Matheson, Nancy A. Collins, Kim Newman, James Chambers, Tim Waggoner, & Steve Niles

YA/MG

  • Squirrel Girl Universe by Tristan Palmgren

AUDIO

  • Tom Clancy’s Firewall by Paul Cornell and Sebastian Baczkiewic

[Via Sci-Fi Bulletin.]

Celebrating David Amram and “The Manchurian Candidate”

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By Steve Vertlieb: It had been a dream of mine for fifty-five years to finally meet iconic film composer David Amram. This ninety-one-year-old powerhouse classical, jazz, and motion picture composer is among the last of a remarkable breed.

Still composing and performing all over the world at his rather tender young age of ninety-one years (on November 17 last year), David is the composer of such original motion picture scores as The Manchurian Candidate (with Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury ) for director John Frankenheimer, Splendor In The Grass (starring Natalie Wood, and Warren Beatty) for Elia Kazan, and The Young Savages (with Burt Lancaster) once again for John Frankenheimer.

David harkens back to an artistic period during the 1950’s when the world was still young, and brash enough to believe that anything was possible. As part of the “Beat Generation,” David worked closely with Jack Kerouac, composing music for some of the author’s early films, as well as emigrating to Hollywood to write for some of the most distinguished film productions of the early 1960’s. A student of many diverse cultures and influences, including Native American, David is truly a man for all reasons and seasons.

Among his countless friends over half a century could be counted Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Pete Seeger to name just a selected few. David and I had corresponded, and spoken on the telephone, for the past several years, but had never actually had an opportunity to personally meet.

David Amram and Steve Vertlieb.

When David visited his home town of Philadelphia in early December, 2016, for a concert of his music, he invited me to join him for lunch the following day at his hotel….and so, on Thursday afternoon, December 8 of that year, David and I shared an absolutely joyous two-hour repast at The Weston Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. He regaled me with stories of his remarkable career, and made me feel that we had known each other for decades.

During these difficult days and years of dissension, insecurity, and intolerance, it was somehow reassuring to share such precious hours and memories with a cultured, gentle, musical inspiration from another time and, sadly, ideologically distant artistic reality.

When we parted, David hugged me. As we embraced, I told him that I loved him, and he responded in kind. This was truly among the happiest experiences of my life, and I remain both flattered and honored to think of David Amram as my friend.

DAVID AMRAM, CINEMA’S ELUSIVE MUSICAL POET

[First published in 2017.]

David Amram remains one of America’s most profoundly expressive composers.  Like Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him as the first composer in residence for the New York Philharmonic, Amram refused to be pigeonholed or labeled by a single genre or musical style.  He has written opera, classical, folk, jazz, Native American, and motion picture music.  Of the latter, it can safely be stated that the least is known.  Amram’s first film score was for Echo of an Era a documentary motion picture produced in 1956 about the dismantling of New York City’s third avenue elevated subway line.  

In 1958, director Elia Kazan asked the composer to write the music for his Broadway production of J.B., a play by Archibald MacLeish, written in verse and based upon the biblical “Book of Job,” winning a 1959 Pulitzer Prize for drama. He began scoring short films during the “Beat Generation” for his friend and colleague, Jack Kerouac, in 1959 with Pull My Daisy. Kazan approached Amram once more in 1959, asking him to score his upcoming film for Warner Bros., Splendor in the Grass.  William Inge had worked on a treatment of the story with Kazan, turning the treatment into a novel with the clear understanding that Kazan would turn it into a film.  Although the director wanted Amram for the picture, he was required by Jack Warner to produce Amram for an informal interrogation by the studio head.  Warner was unhappy with Kazan’s choice of David as the composer since Amram had few theatrical credits to his name.  Kazan reminded Warner that neither Alex North on A Streetcar Named Desire nor Leonard Bernstein with On The Waterfront were particularly well known at the time that they worked for the director, and that neither composer had done too badly with their respective careers in the intervening years.  Amram was eventually hired by the studio to write the score, but the music publisher assigned to the film complained that the composer’s score “had too many chord changes,” and that it “would never produce a hit song.”  Additionally, he said that the score was simply “too weird.”  Consequently, the studio decided not to release a commercial soundtrack album of the music when the film was released in 1961. Despite hesitation on the part of Warner Bros, Kazan adored the score.  Lush, romantic, and heartbreakingly evocative, Amram’s score for the coming of age drama about a young woman tormented by fear, and frustration over her burgeoning sexuality, is exquisite.  Its hauntingly beautiful theme, echoing the lonely melancholia of a young woman on the terrifying brink of mental collapse, is simply unforgettable, contributing immeasurably to the deep sadness and poignant clarity of Natalie Wood’s Oscar nominated performance

While working still on Splendor in the Grass for Kazan, John Frankenheimer asked Amram to compose the music for his new film concerning violence in the streets, and juvenile delinquency.  The Young Savages, directed by Frankenheimer and starring Burt Lancaster, was a defiant condemnation of societal prejudice and urban violence, and featured an explosive dramatic score by Amram, utilizing powerful latin and jazz motifs expressing the hopelessness and fear rampant in New York’s ghetto neighborhoods.

However, it was for director John Frankenheimer once again that the composer would write his most important motion picture score, The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.  Based upon Richard Condon’s best-selling novel of brain washing during the Korean War, the often shocking, experimental tenor of the film cried out for a decidedly non-traditional composer and score.  Frankenheimer’s documentary approach to the film, combining contemporary lensing with explosive interludes of pure cinema verite and newsreel simulation, required a fresh, wholly original avant garde soundtrack.  Amram’s extraordinary work on the motion picture has easily stood the test of time in its power, intensity, and quiet eloquence.  The main title sequence, a subtle elegy for strings, is a remarkably elegant prelude to the sobering thematic story line. It is a haunting, reflective melody played with subtle power and authority throughout the film, conjoined at pivotal moments by a brooding solo horn, adding to the intense, yet melancholy nature of the unfolding tragedy.

Composed by the then thirty one year old composer during the Spring of 1962, the score for The Manchurian Candidate is a brooding, portentous tone poem, deeply evocative at its core, yet entirely menacing in its understated performance.  Director John Frankenheimer had reportedly gone to a production of New York’s Shakespeare In The Park series, and listened to portions of the incidental music written by Amram for the productions.  This, according to the liner notes for the belated soundtrack recording, led directly to Frankenheimer hiring the composer to pen the score for his Emmy Awarded television production of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which starred Ingrid Bergman in her television debut for Ford Star Time on October 20th, 1959.  Frankenheimer’s only significant instruction to Amram for scoring The Manchurian Candidate, was to “pay attention to the film.”  “The picture,” he advised, “will tell you what to do.”  “I hired you because you’re different from anyone else, and you care and have pride in what you do.”  Upon completion of his score for the film, producer and star Frank Sinatra remarked that “David Amram has done a magnificent job.  The score is exactly what I wanted for the film.  The music is almost sane sometimes, as the story is almost sane sometimes.  And at other times, the music is in the trees, just like the movie.  It is a great score.”  John Frankenheimer commented in 1997 that “David Amram’s haunting score drives the movie forward and emphasizes perfectly all the dramatic elements.”  Amram’s recording sessions for the soundtrack were completed during four separate sessions over two days, utilizing symphony soloists, chamber music performers, as well as both jazz and Latin musicians.  Manny Klein performed the unforgettably searing trumpet solos for the film while, according to the CD’s liner notes, Amram’s enthusiasm and energy were boundless, conducting the ensemble for the recording and jumping into the sessions himself with wholly improvised solos on French horn and piano.  Most tracks, reportedly, were completed in a single take.

Sinatra and Amram had never met during the making of the film, nor did they meet during the scoring sessions, but Sinatra deeply admired the music.  Early in 1963, David Amram was appearing at the Village Gate in New York.  Actor Martin Gabel approached him after a set and said, in his characteristically gruff voice, that “Frank is waiting downstairs to meet you.”  Naively, Amram asked “Frank Who?”  Startled by his friend’s innocence, the actor bellowed “SINATRA.” Sinatra was cordial and warm, expressing his admiration for The Manchurian Candidate score, while exclaiming his astonishment that the soundtrack had never been released to the public.  Years later, Tina Sinatra produced a three-track recording of the soundtrack from her safe, and the score was finally released on CD decades after it had been produced. Frank Sinatra, Jr. wrote in the accompanying liner notes that “The ingenious combination of polytonality and jazz was just incredible to me, and the choice of instruments was perfect for the film.  None of us had ever heard a film score like this before.”

John Frankenheimer next turned his sights to directing Seven Days in May, a political thriller concerning the attempted overthrow of the United States government by a covert military coup.  With a screen play by Rod Serling, and a powerhouse cast of actors that included Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Ava Gardner, Frankenheimer asked Amram once more to compose the music.  The score was written and recorded, but executive producer Edward Lewis disliked the music, and replaced Amram with Jerry Goldsmith who wrote a brief fifteen minute track utilizing percussion and piano.  David Amram’s score was forever lost, while not even the composer has any memory or physical remnant of its content.

The Boston Globe once referred to David Amram as “The Renaissance man of American music.”  Composer John Williams wrote that “I have always regarded David Amram as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, and I don’t just mean for the cinema.”  Now, thankfully, his music is receiving the exposure that it so rightly deserves. 

++ Steve Vertlieb — February 2017

Pixel Scroll 7/29/23 Glass Pixels Are Good For Seeing Into The Hearts Of Scrolls

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(1) CLASSIC CAR WITH AN SFF PEDIGREE. J. Michael Straczysnki told Facebook readers he needs a taker for the late Harlan Ellison’s 1947 Packard.

For the last six months, we’ve talked to just about every vintage car company in existence about buying Harlan’s 1947 Packard, to no avail. It’s not an especially collectible car, not in great condition, not worth much on the market, and nobody we spoke to knew who Harlan was or felt that this added to its market value.

We need to get the car out of the garage where it’s been sitting, exposed to the elements, every day for almost ten years because the plan is to turn the open garage into an enclosed, on-site storage and work area to make it easier to work on the house, rotate out equipment, and store display cabinets and other items to be used for exhibitions. But I really don’t want to just sell it for parts because it hurts my heart.

Knowing Harlan, I think he’d want the Packard to end up in the hands of a fan who could appreciate it, look after it, maybe fix it up over time. Which brings me here. If there’s a stone Harlan fan who can arrange to have the car (safely) picked up and transported away, it’s yours.

(And to everyone looking on: please don’t send me suggestions or links or say “well, what about this company?” or “I think I know a guy” or “what about an SF museum somewhere” because we have spent half a year chasing that stuff down and come up empty every time. We have to start the process of transforming the garage into on-site storage and as a place for the contractors currently making repairs to the house to seek refuge from the bitter heat. It’s been a long, difficult and annoying process, with so many folks flaking out on us, so honestly, just don’t.)

Any takers? Serious only. Must be able to pick it up by no later than the end of August.

UPDATED TO ADD: Despite the very clear request not to post more dead-end solutions, true to the tradition of the Internet, people keep posting the very thing they’re being asked not to post. I don’t mean to be crotchety about it, but I don’t know how to express it any more clearly: the only posts here should be from folks interested in taking the car, so if we can keep the signal to noise ratio to a minimum that would be grand. Otherwise every time I get pinged with a notification and think, oh, good, we have someone who can take the car, I come back to…the opposite.

Harlan Ellison wrote about his love for that Packard here.

I’m sitting in my car, my car is a 1947 Packard. I got a current car. I drive that one, but I love the Packard. I love the Packard because it was built to run, built to last. You could hit this car with 200 small Japanese cars and they would be demolished into ashes. When I go past a grade school little kids have no idea what this car is. They have no idea it was made in 1947. They don’t even know there was a year called 1947. But they see this car go by and they give me that (thumbs up & OK signs) and that means they recognize something that is forever, like the pyramids….

(2) X NO LONGER MARKS THE SPOT. Charlie Jane Anders has pulled the plug on her X (formerly Twitter) account. It’s gone. “If you see me on Twitter, it’s not me”. She tells why another common strategy for leaving the platform wouldn’t work for her:

…. Many, many people have advised me to delete all of my tweets, lock my account, and simply stop tweeting. Their argument is that someone else could take my username and impersonate me, which feels like a real, serious issue — but if I leave my account inactive for long enough, Twitter will probably take my username away and let someone else take it in any case. So I apologize in advance to anyone who sees a fake Charlie Jane on Twitter and gets confused. It’s not me, I swear. (And that’s part of why I’m writing this newsletter: so people can point to it if there’s any confusion.)

I feel the need to make a clean break from Twitter at this point. After all of the proliferation of hate speech, and the random shutdowns of progressive accounts that challenge the owner’s rigid orthodoxy, I was already wanting to make a break for it. But after the latest scandals involving CSAM, I really feel as though I have no choice. And the “clean break” thing feels important — to be honest, I don’t entirely trust myself not to log in a month from now when I have something to announce, unless I delete the account entirely….

(3) CELEBRATE BRATMAN’S HALF-CENTURY OF SCHOLARSHIP. A collection of David Bratman’s nonfiction, Gifted Amateurs, has been released by the Mythopoeic Press.

For more than four decades, David Bratman has established himself as a leading authority on J.R.R. Tolkien, the Inklings, and the enchanting realms of fantasy literature. Bratman’s scholarly articles, captivating Mythopoeic Conference presentations, and esteemed editorial work for the newsletter Mythprint and the journal Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review have solidified his expertise. Now, in celebration of his profound contributions and recent distinction as the Scholar Guest of Honor at Mythcon 52, the Mythopoeic Press proudly presents Gifted Amateurs and Other Essays, an extraordinary collection of some of Bratman’s most insightful, engaging, and intellectually stimulating works.

Within these pages, discover the untold stories behind the “Top Ten Rejected Plot Twists from The Lord of the Rings,” unravel the religious themes woven throughout Middle-earth, and delve into the surprising origins of hobbit names. Guided by Bratman’s unwavering curiosity and scholarly passion, explore the fascinating history of the Inklings and how they connect to the boundless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, unearth the dramatic works of Lord Dunsany and the overlooked masterpiece of Mervyn Peake, and revel in the mythopoeic genius of Roger Zelazny. Seamlessly blending scholarship and entertainment, Gifted Amateurs and Other Essays invites readers on a journey that illuminates the true essence and enduring power of mythopoeic storytelling.

David Bratman has been writing Tolkien scholarship for nearly 50 years. He’s been co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review since 2013 and has edited its annual “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies” since 2004. In addition to contributing to Tolkien scholarship, Bratman has published works on Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, Neil Gaiman, and others. Now a retired academic librarian, Bratman also was editor of the Mythopoeic Society’s members’ bulletin Mythprint for 15 years and worked on many Mythopoeic Conferences, including serving twice as chair.

(4) SDCC SOUVENIR BOOK. The 2023 San Diego Comi-Con souvenir book can be downloaded as a free PDF here.

(5) WANT TO BE A SPSFC JUDGE? The Self-Published Science Fiction Competition is recruiting judges for its third season. Apply here.

(6) YEARS PASS AND THESE ARE STILL LIVE ISSUES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] SAG-AFTRA and producers are still at odds over many things. But, at least they have seemingly agreed to end the large majority of paintdowns and wiggings. 

Wait, what?

“Ending One of the Last Vestiges of Blackface in Hollywood” in Rolling Stone.

As SAG strikes, stunt performers have proposed one thing the union and studios can agree on: a new process to end controversial “paintdowns” and “wiggings”

Actor Jason George was a few years into his career when he secured his first starring role in a movie. It was the early 2000s, and he’d been cast as a co-lead in a mountain climbing flick called The Climb. He was excited for the prospect of a break until he walked into a trailer one day and saw a white man “wearing my wardrobe, my helmet, my climbing harness, and they’re putting makeup on him to make him look like me.”

George, who is Black, was stunned. 

“I did a double take — if you’d shot it for a movie, [my reaction] would’ve been too much, too big,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I stepped out to make sure I was in the right place, came back in, and said, ‘What is happening?’ And they said, ‘This is your stunt double.’”

What George had walked in on was a “paintdown.” It wasn’t blackface in the traditional sense of a minstrel show, but it was also definitely blackface. One of Hollywood’s many seedy little secrets, a paintdown is when the skin of a white stunt performer is darkened so they can double for an actor of color — rather than just hiring a stunt performer of the same ethnicity….

In the 20-odd years since, paintdowns and “wiggings” — a similar practice where, instead of hiring a stuntwoman, a man is dressed up to double a woman — have been on the decline, but they’re far from eradicated….

(7) A LITTLE MISTAKE. [Item by Kevin Hogan.] I always start my Hugo ballot early, based on what I nominated.  In case I’m abducted by aliens, at least my initial preferences will be taken into account.

The website itself is nicely done, and the ranking of choices is easy enough.  No way to accidentally rank multiple entries the same number with a drag and drop system. 

I feel that the English proofreading on the nominees might need another pass, though.  Unless Rachel Hartman truly is the secret 7th member of Monty Python.

Editor’s note: In case that’s too hard to read, we’re talking about Lodestone Award finalist Rachel Hartman’s In the Serpent’s Wake. When I voted today I copied the Chinese characters for Hartman’s work and ran them through Google Translate. It returned “Monty Python – Rachel Hartman (Random Children’s Books)” in English. The self-same Chinese text is part of the 2023 Hugo finalists press release.

(8) ROLL BACK THE RED CARPET. The New York Times is reporting “With Actors on Strike, Sony Pushes Big Releases to 2024”.

…Sony Pictures Entertainment on Friday pushed back the release of two major films that had been set to arrive in theaters by the end of the year — the Marvel Comics-based “Kraven the Hunter” and a sequel to “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”

In addition, Sony is postponing some of its big 2024 releases. “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” is no longer on track for a March premiere, and a new “Karate Kid” will no longer arrive in June.

Until now, the 2023 theatrical release schedule had been left relatively unscathed by the actors’ strike, which started on July 14. But other studios are likely to follow Sony’s lead. Warner Bros. has been debating whether to postpone “Dune: Part Two,” which is supposed to arrive in theaters on Nov. 3. “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a big-budget superhero sequel, and “The Color Purple,” based on the Broadway musical, are among other 2023 holiday-season movies that could be delayed….

(9) BO GOLDMAN (1932-2023.) [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Bo Goldman is probably best known as the screenwriter for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, but many of his films received acclaim. He won two Oscars (for Cuckoo’s Nest plus Melvin and Howard) and was nominated for a third (for Scent of a Woman). Goldman died July 25. Read Variety’s tribute: “Bo Goldman, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Script, Dies at 90”.

His only completed and credited genre work appears to be the script for Meet Joe Black (1998)—starring Brad Pitt as Joe Black, aka Death. He did also do uncredited script revisions for 1990’s Dick Tracy.

In an alternate reality, we could’ve seen Goldman’s take on the King Kong story. In 1975 he wrote a script for a Universal film, to be called The Legend of King Kong. It went unproduced after Paramount and Dino DeLaurentis sued in favor of their own 1976 release of King Kong. (Source: IMDb, Trivia section of his entry.)

Goldman is also credited as one of the sources for a fan-produced King Kong film from 2016. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 29, 1888 — Farnsworth Wright. Editor of Weird Tales, editing an amazing 179 issues from November 1924–March 1940. Mike Ashley in EoSF says, “Wright developed WT from a relatively routine horror pulp magazine to create what has become a legend.” His own genre fiction is generally considered undistinguished. He also edited during the Thirties, Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet. The work available digitally is a poem, “After Two Nights of the Ear-ache”. He was nominated at Loncon 3 for a Best Editor Retro Hugo. (Died 1940.)
  • Born July 29, 1907 — Melvin Belli. Sole genre role is that of Gorgan (also known as the “Friendly Angel”) in the Star Trek “And the Children Shall Lead” episode. Koenig objected to his playing this role believing the role should have gone to someone who was an actor. (Died 1996.)
  • Born July 29, 1915 — Kay Dick. Author of two genre novels, The Mandrake Root and At Close of Eve, plus a collection, The Uncertain Element: An Anthology of Fanta. She is known in Britain for campaigning successfully for the introduction of the Public Lending Right which pays royalties to authors when their books are borrowed from public libraries. They which may or may not be genre is her only work available at the usual suspects. (Died 2001.)
  • Born July 29, 1927 — Jean E. Karl. Founder of Atheneum Children’s Books, where she edited Ursula K Le Guin’s early Earthsea novels and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. An SF author as well for children and young adults, she wrote The Turning Place collection and three novels, Beloved Benjamin is Waiting, But We are Not of Earth and Strange Tomorrow. (Died 2000.)
  • Born July 29, 1941 — David Warner. Being Lysander in that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was his first genre role. I’m going to do just highlights after that as he’s got far too extensive a genre history to list everything. So he’s been A Most Delightful Evil in Time Bandits, Jack the Ripper in Time After Time, Ed Dillinger / Sark In Tron, Father in The Company of Wolves, Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Creature in Frankenstein, voice of Ra’s al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series and Abraham Van Helsing on Penny Dreadful. (Died 2022.)
  • Born July 29, 1955 — Dave Stevens. American illustrator and comics artist. He created The Rocketeer comic book and film character. It’s worth noting that he assisted Russ Manning on the Star Wars newspaper strip and worked on the storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Rocketeer film was nominated for a Hugo at MagiCon which was the year Terminator 2: Judgment Day won. (Died 2008.)
  • Born July 29, 1956 — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 67. Author of the India set magical realist The Brotherhood of the Conch series. She also has three one-off novels, The Palace of Illusions, The Mistress of Spices, and The Forest of Enchantments.

(11) VALHALLA FOR FANZINES. Thanks to Heath Row, the late Marty Cantor’s 54 boxes have been delivered to the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside. See photos on FB.

Today a friend and I loaded a rented van with 54 boxes of science fiction fanzines and amateur press association bundles and mailings to donate to the Eaton collection at UC Riverside. The collection spans 1975 to the present day. It is a veritable treasure trove.

(12) A JOLLY PAIR OF FRIGHTENERS. Once upon a time in 1968, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price sang a duet on the Red Skelton Hour.

(13) IS THAT WATER THEY SEE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There’s a pre-print just up on Nature in which an international collaboration of western European based astronomers has reported the detection of water in the terrestrial zone of a planet forming star system.

PDS 70 (V1032 Centauri) is a very young T Tauri star in the constellation Centaurus. Located 370 light-years (110 parsecs) from Earth, it has a mass of 0.76 M☉ and is approximately 5.4 million years old. The star has a protoplanetary disk containing two very early exoplanets, named PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which have previously been directly imaged by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. PDS 70b was the first confirmed protoplanet to be directly imaged.

Terrestrial and sub-Neptune planets are expected to form in the inner (less than 10 AU – 1 AU being the distance from Earth to the Sun) regions of protoplanetary disks.

The European astronomers’ findings show water in the inner disk of PDS 70. This implies that potential terrestrial planets forming therein have access to a water reservoir.

OK, before we get too excited 1) the edge of the detection is 1 AU (the distance from the Earth to our Sun) and 2) PDS 70 is smaller, hence cooler, K-type star than our Sun and so the habitable zone would closer in to the star than in the Solar System: further in than the 1AU detection limit.

OK, we can get a little excited. There has been a fair bit about water in proto-planetary systems recently and the over-all picture emerging does seem that it is likely that water might exist early in star systems’ lives in the habitable zone and not — as it is today either already on planets or alternatively on small bodies beyond planetary snow or frost line which in our system is beyond Jupiter. The reason it could exists so close in — as the pre-print alludes — is because proto-planetary systems have not yet has a star with solar wind clearing out all the interplanetary dust and gas: that came later.

Until recently, the conventional theory was that the Earth (and Mars) had water transported to it from beyond the snow line. by the more abundant comets in the early Solar system. Possibly these comets were driven inward by a migrating Jupiter to a more stable orbit, so providing the inner system with a late veneer or heavy bombardment of volatile rich comets. The picture that emerges is that water is more common — if not universal — in very early planetary systems and so planets forming there will have water.

The pre-print is Perotti, G. et al (2023) Water in the terrestrial planet-forming zone of the PDS 70 disk. Nature, vol. to be determined, pages to be determined.

(14) VASTER THAN EMPIRES. The Smithsonian discusses the challenges of “Preserving Launch Infrastructure” at the National Air and Space Museum.

Launching a rocket is a complex operation, requiring personnel, equipment, and infrastructure. Space agencies and companies around the world, therefore, build giant ground systems to support launches. One of the largest and best-known launch complexes is Launch Complex 39 (LC 39), which NASA has used at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to stack and launch rockets for the Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and Artemis programs, among others.

All these programs have relied on a similar method of assembly. Apollo and Skylab’s Saturn V and Saturn IB, the Space Shuttle’s Space Transportation System, and Artemis’ Space Launch System (SLS) have all had their final construction inside the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). At 525 feet tall, the VAB is one of the largest buildings by volume in the world. Stacking the launch vehicle inside protects it from weather, including Florida’s frequent storms….

Both the mobile launch platforms and the CTs are enormous, meaning that they are both much too large to fit inside either of the National Air and Space Museum’s two locations. Even NASA does not have enough space to store the MLPs now that they will not be used for Artemis. At the same time, both structures are integral to the histories of three space programs. How can the Museum collect artifacts to tell this history? One way is through preserving representative components that can speak to the history, use, and scale of these pieces of infrastructure. 

From the Crawler Transporter, the Museum’s collection boasts two tread shoes. Seeing the shoes up close gives a sense of scale. Additionally, it is possible to see that these are shoes that have been used. Their wear and tear speaks to the heavy load that the CT carries as it moves the vehicle to the launch pad….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended works out the correct finish for “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3”. Actually, several correct finishes. Take your pick!

How Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 Should Have Ended. Starlord remembers his boots, The High Evolutionary visits the Villain Pub, The Guardians visit the Super Cafe, and Rocket Raccoon saves his friends.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kevin Hogan, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day P J Evans.]

Prix Utopiales 2023 Shortlist

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Five finalists have been announced for the Prix Utopiales 2023. The award will be presented at Utopiales, the International Science Fiction Festival of Nantes planned for November 1-5.)

PRIX UTOPIALES 2023

The Prix Utopiales recognizes a novel, or a collection, published in French during the eligibility period by a European author. The prize has a cash value of 2000 euros.

Le premier jour de paix by Elisa Beiram (L’Atalante)
Paideia by Claire Garand (La Volte)
Rossignol by Audrey Pleynet (Le Bélial)
La trilogie baryonique – Volume 1 : la tragédie de l’Orque by Pierre Raufast (Aux forges de Vulcain)
Eversion by Alastair Reynolds (Le Bélial)

Chris Tuthill Review: Trader Joe’s Sipping Chocolate
and Ghirardelli’s Peppermint Bark

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Review by Chris Tuthill: I’d never had sipping chocolate before trying this tin from Trader Joe’s. To my ears, even the name — ‘sipping chocolate’– sounded amusing and a bit decadent. It’s nothing like the chocolate drinks most Americans like me grew up with— it’s sweet but not nearly as sweet as the hot chocolate or Bosco syrup you might find in the grocery store. Mix a scoop of this with hot milk, and you feel almost like you’re drinking a smooth, melted bar of dark chocolate. It’s not bitter the way some dark chocolates can be, but creamy and a bit heavy, though you could also mix it with water to make the effect more like hot chocolate. It’s a rich indulgence, but for a cold winter’s night this is the perfect remedy. Add a little anisette to your cup and you’ll soon banish the chill of winter.

Ghirardelli makes delicious chocolate, with something for every palate in their many flavors. The Dark Twilight Delight 72% cacao bar, is smooth, dark, and just sweet enough for me without overpowering the cocoa. This makes for a really nice after dinner treat that to me tasted slightly of espresso. It doesn’t leave you feeling too guilty, as three squares of the bar is two hundred calories.

I also tried the peppermint bark, a holiday treat of a whole different kind. My young children love the sweetness and the mix of peppermint and milk chocolate. It isn’t exactly subtle the way some of Ghirardelli’s dark chocolates are, but it’s quite good, especially if you have a sweet tooth and enjoy peppermint. Unless you’re really craving sugar, for most of us these will be best enjoyed in moderation. These bars had been a seasonal offering, but Ghirardelli now seems to be selling them year-round.

You can’t go wrong with any of the Ghirardelli bars. Even if you buy one and decide it isn’t to your taste, you’re sure to find a friend or family member who will happily finish it for you.

Chris Tuthill’s work has recently appeared in The Mythic Circle, A Companion to JRR Tolkien, and Dark Tales From Elder Regions, among other venues. Chris is a librarian who lives in Poughkeepsie, New York with his wife and two children.