The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes winners were announced April 21. Spear, Nicola Griffith’s “queer Arthurian masterpiece for the modern era,” earned The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction.
The other finalists in the category were:
The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings
The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel by Ray Nayler
Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders
See the full list of LA Times Book Prize winners below.
BIOGRAPHY
Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
FICTION
Mircea Cărtărescu, Solenoid (translation by Sean Cotter)
GRAPHIC NOVELS/COMICS
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith, Wash Day Diaries
HISTORY
Margaret A. Burnham, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners
MYSTERY/THRILLER
Alex Segura, Secret Identity
POETRY
Dionne Brand, Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures
THE ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
Aamina Ahmad, The Return of Faraz Ali
THE RAY BRADBURY PRIZE FOR SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
Nicola Griffith, Spear
YOUNG-ADULT LITERATURE
Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Torch
CURRENT INTEREST
Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America
(1) BOTS LOVE FILE 770. The Washington Post invited readers to “See the websites that make AI bots like ChatGPT sound so smart”. They analyzed one of the large data sets that may be used in training AI, and also have made it publicly searchable. Their stats show File 770 is a leading contributor to the cause of educating AI, ranked 3,445th. Uh, yay?
…Tech companies have grown secretive about what they feed the AI. So The Washington Post set out to analyze one of these data sets to fully reveal the types of proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI’s training data.
To look inside this black box, we analyzed Google’s C4 data set, a massive snapshot of the contents of 15 million websites that have been used to instruct some high-profile English-language AIs, called large language models, including Google’s T5 and Facebook’s LLaMA. (OpenAI does not disclose what datasets it uses to train the models backing its popular chatbot, ChatGPT)…
Is your website training AI?
A web crawl may sound like a copy of the entire internet, but it’s just a snapshot, capturing content from a sampling of webpages at a particular moment in time. C4 began as a scrape performed in April 2019by the nonprofit CommonCrawl, a popular resource for AI models. CommonCrawl told The Post that it tries to prioritize the most important and reputable sites, but does not try to avoid licensed or copyrighted content….
We then ranked the remaining 10 million websites based on how many “tokens” appeared from each in the data set. Tokens are small bits of text used to process disorganized information — typically a word or phrase.
As shown in the rather scrofulous screencap below, file770.com is ranked 3,445th with 2.5 million tokens, which is 0.002% of the tokens in the set examined by the Washington Post.
(2) HUGO VOTING DEADLINE APPROACHES. 2023 Hugo nominations are closing on April 30, at 23:59 Hawaiian Time. Eligible voters can access the ballot here.
… One of the 663 authors and counting who signed an open letter to Scholastic’s Education Solutions Division is author Kelly Yang. She is one of many best-selling Scholastic authors horrified by this response to accelerating fascism. In a vulnerable video, Yang shared her thoughts about these actions. She also broke down what it feels like to be targeted by this censorship and bigotry. Sometimes, in person….
However, Yang correctly insists that they have to push past this. She says in the video:
“As one of your top authors, I’m asking you to have more courage. You cannot be quietly self-censoring. Whatever pressure you may be facing, know that your authors are facing even more pressure. And we’re still out here writing these books. Risking our lives. Bleeding to make you millions. Trying to write the books for the next generation that will hopefully improve the world.”
She continued discussing the importance of representation and capturing the moment children live in.
“Let me tell you, it’s not easy. I am not a giant corporation. I am an individual. Every day people attack me personally. They write me emails, they come into my comments and my DMs. I had a guy show up at an event and whisper in my ear how much he loves seeing my books get banned. And yet, everyday I keep going. You know why? Because I am brave.
“Despite getting paid pennies on the dollar, we authors are brave. The librarians—they are brave. The educators—they are brave. I need you to be braver.
“You cannot choose which books to include in your Fairs and Clubs for kids nationwide and edit lines out because you’re scared of DeSantis. If you want to carry Maggie’s book, you gotta carry all of her book. If you want to carry Kelly Yang, you’ve gotta carry all of Kelly Yang—not some stripped-down version.
“I need you to not cave to political pressure and be on the right side of history. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you can afford it with your 90% market share of the school distribution channel. If you’re going to be deciding children’s book for the entire nation, your taste have to reflect the entire nation. And because I know it’s what Dick Robinson would have wanted.
“I love you Scholastic. You’ve done a lot of good for a lot of kids, but how you play you next move will determine how you’re remembered. The world is watching. I am watching. I hope you do the right thing.”
(4) NOT JUST ANY USED BOOKS. Plenty of sff among AbeBooks “Most expensive sales from January to March 2023”. Two Harry Potter books lead the list, with the biggest sale being a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for $85,620. Further down is a PKD first edition.
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick – $17,195
A true first edition with an unrestored original dust jacket
One of the most famous novels by Philip K. Dick, this book was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. This copy of a true first edition is special because of the condition of the book and the dust jacket and its vibrant, unfaded colors.
The novel is about a bounty hunter who tracks tracks down escaped androids in a post-apocalyptic future. This book belongs to our list of 50 must-read science fiction books.
Recently, another copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was sold. That book came with an original letter, typed and signed by the author, along with a humorous self-review of another of his own novels, The Divine Invasion.
Over on Facebook, someone in the group devoted to Capclave — a con where I’ve harvested many conversations for you — mentioned Thomas was scheduled to speak at Maryland’s Rockville Memorial Library. When I checked the details and saw the venue was only a 90-minute drive away, I reached out to see whether she’d have time in her schedule to grab lunch — and luckily she did. So early the same day as her presentation titled “Afrofuturism & Diversity in Sci-Fi,” I scooped her up from her hotel and took her over to Commonwealth Indian Restaurant, where I’ve had many wonderful meals. Here’s how the event organizers described Thomas and her career —
New York Times bestselling, two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author and editor Sheree Renée Thomas has been a 2022 Hugo Award Finalist, and her collection, Nine Bar Blues, is a Locus, Igynte, and World Fantasy Finalist. She edited the groundbreaking Dark Matter anthologies that introduced a century of Black speculative fiction, including W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction stories. Thomas wrote Marvel’s Black Panther: Panther’s Rage novel (October 2022), adapted from the legendary comics, collaborated with Janelle Monáe on The Memory Librarian, and is the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949 and Obsidian, founded in 1975. In 2022 she co-curated Carnegie Hall’s historic, citywide Afrofuturism Festival.
We discussed how to prevent being an editor interfere with being a writer (and vice versa), the way a serendipitous encounter with Octavia Butler’s Kindred caused her to take her own writing more seriously and a copy of Black Enterprise magazine spurred her to move to New York, how her family’s relationship with Isaac Hayes nourished her creative dreams, the advice she gives young writers about the difference between the fantasy and reality of a writer’s life, how realizing the books she thought were out there weren’t launched her editing career, the rewards and challenges of taking over as editor for a 75-year old magazine, why she reads cover letters last, and much more.
Some guy is currently suing Tolkien and Amazon to the tune of $250 million. That alone takes serious bravery. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is the reason he’s suing: Copyright infringement over his Lord of the Rings fanfic. Specifically, he’s arguing that Amazon lifted elements of his fan-fiction for its own Tolkien adaptation TV series, The Rings of Power.
Demetrious Polychron wrote a book, a work of fan-fiction set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, called The Fellowship of the King, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which later were published and made available for sale, including on Amazon. According to PC Gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a manuscript review. That’s right: This man asked J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson Simon to sign off on his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he did not get a response.
In September of 2022, the month that Polychron published The Fellowship of the King, Amazon also began airing its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power. …Now, Polychron is arguing that the Amazon TV show lifts elements from his novel.
According to RadarOnline, which has seen documents pertaining to the suit, Polychron alleges that characters and storylines he created for his book “compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series,” and that in some cases the show “copied exact language” from his book. [Also, “In other instances, Defendants copied images that match the book cover and descriptions as created in the book as authored by Polychron,” the suit read.]
However, the claims seem spurious. For instance, the lawsuit purportedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, with the Elanor in his book being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee, while the Elanor featured in The Rings of Power is a Harfoot. Images purporting to be the lawsuit circulating online include a host of other circumstantial connections or similarities to back up Polychron’s argument that the writers of Rings of Power lifted ideas from his fanfic for their own story.
… While no one believes that Polychron will win against the Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit might negatively impact the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully, fanfic writers will be fine as long as they’re not trying to extort Tolkien’s grandson.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
2015 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
So let’s have a conversation about Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall which was published by PS Publishing eight years ago.
There’s some spoilers here so skip to the Beginning if you’d rather not hear them.
A British folk band are told by their manager to record their new album, so they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with let us say an interesting past. There they hope to create the album that will make their reputation.
The novel, a short one at that, is told entirely in a series of interviews decades later by the surviving musicians, along with their friends, lovers and the band’s manager by a documentary filmmaker who gets them to talk about something that happened when they were there. (No, I’m not going to say what happened.) Should they be believed? Maybe, maybe not. What is the truth after all those years have passed anyways?
I think it’s a brilliant way to approach this story.
I’ll say no more and direct you now to the Beginning…
“I was the one who found the house. A friend of my sister-in-law knew the owners; they were living in Barcelona that summer and the place was to let. Not cheaply, either. But I knew how badly everyone needed to get away after the whole horrible situation with Arianna, and this seemed as good a bolt-hole as any. These days the new owners have had to put up a fence to keep away the curious. Everyone knows what the place looks like because of the album cover, and now you can just Google the name and get directions down to the last millimeter.
But back then, Wylding Hall was a mere dot on the ordnance survey map. You couldn’t have found it with a compass. Most people go there now because of what happened while the band was living there and recording that first album. We have some ideas about what actually went on, of course, but the fans, they can only speculate. Which is always good for business.
Mostly, it’s the music, of course. Twenty years ago, there was that millennium survey where Wylding Hall topped out at Number Seven, ahead of Definitely Maybe, which shocked everybody except for me. Then “Oaken Ashes” got used in that advert for, what was it? Some mobile company. So now there’s the great Windhollow Faire backlash.
And inexplicable—even better, inexplicable and terrible—things are always good for the music business, right? Cynical but true.
“Apart from when I drove out in the mobile unit and we laid down those rough tracks, I was only there a few times. You know, check in and see how the rehearsal process was going, make sure everyone’s instruments were in one piece, and they were getting their vitamins. And there’s no point now in keeping anything off the record, right? We all knew what was going on down there, which in those days was mostly hash and acid.
And of course, everyone was so young. Julian was eighteen. So was Will. Ashton and Jon were, what? Nineteen, maybe twenty. Lesley had just turned seventeen. I was the elder statesman at all of twenty-three.
“Ah, those were golden days. You’re going to say I’m tearing up here in front of the camera, aren’t you? I don’t give a fuck. They were golden boys and girls, that was a golden summer, and we had the Summer King.
And we all know what happens to the Summer King. That girl from the album cover, she’d be the only one knows what really went on. But we can’t ask her, can we?
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 21, 1933 — Jim Harmon. During the Fifties and Sixties, he wrote more than fifty short stories and novelettes for Amazing Stories, Future Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, If, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and other magazines. Most of his fiction was collected in Harmon’s Galaxy. EoSF says he has one genre novel, The Contested Earth, whereas ISFDB lists two more, Sex Burns Like Fire and The Man Who Made Maniacs. He’s a member of First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 2010.)
Born April 21, 1939 — John Bangsund. Australian fan most active from the Sixties through the Eighties. He was instrumental with Andrew Porter in Australia’s winning the 1975 Aussiecon bid, and he was Toastmaster at the Hugo Award ceremony at that con. His fanzine, Australian Science Fiction Review is credited with reviving Australian Fandom in the Sixties. And he’s the instigator of the term Muphry’s law which states that “If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.” (Died 2020.)
Born April 21, 1947 — Iggy Pop, 76. Here solely as on Deep Space Nine in an episode loosely upon The Magnificent Seven film that was entitled “The Magnificent Ferengi”, he played a vorta called Yelgrun.
Born April 21, 1947 — Allan Asherman, 76. Official historian for D.C., he’s also written scripts for Tarzan during the Gooden Age. A Trekker of note, he wrote The Star Trek Compendium, The Star Trek Interview Bookand The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Born April 21, 1954 — James Morrison, 69. Lt. Col. Tyrus Cassius ‘T.C.’ McQueen on the short-lived but much loved Space: Above and Beyond series. Starship Troopers without the politics. He’s got a lot of one-off genre appearances including recently showing up as an Air Force General in Captain Marvel, guesting on the Orville series and being Warden Dwight Murphy on Twin Peaks.
Born April 21, 1965 — Fiona Kelleghan, 58. Author of the critical anthology The Savage Humanists in which she identifies a secular, satiric literary movement within the genre. She also did Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work. A work in still progress, according to the Wikipedia, is Alfred Bester, Grand Master: An Annotated Bibliography.
Born April 21, 1971 — Michael Turner. Comics artist known for his work on a Tombraider / Witchblade one-off, the Superman/Batman story involving Supergirl, his own Soulfire, and various covers for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. He would die of bone cancer and A Tribute to Michael Turner with writings from people who knew him would feature a cover done by Alex Ross would be released to cover his medical expenses. (Died 2008.)
Born April 21, 1980 — Hadley Fraser, 43. His first video acting role was as Gareth in the superb Tenth Doctor story, “Army of Ghosts”. He’d later be Chris in The Lost Tribe, a horror film, and play Viscount Raoul de Chagny in The Phantom of The Opera, as well as being being Tarzan’s father in The Legend of Tarzan. And though not even genre adjacent, I’m legally obligated to point out that he showed up as a British military escort in the recent production of Murder on the Orient Express.
(9) MISSY RETURNS IN TITAN COMICS’ DOCTOR WHO: DOOM’S DAY. Titan comics will launch a two-issue Doctor Who comic series on July 5 as part of the multi-platform story Doom’s Day. The comic will feature fan-favorite character Missy on the trail of new character Doom, who makes her comic book debut.
Doom’s Day is a standalone transmedia series across multiple platforms and will allow Doctor Who fans to follow Doom, the Universe’s greatest assassin, as she travels through all of time and space in pursuit of the Doctor to save her from her ever-approaching Death. She only has 24 hours and a vortex manipulator to save herself before her fate is sealed forever.
Available in comic stores and on digital devices at release, Titan’s Doctor Who: Doom’s Day #1 comic is an adventure starring Doom in her comic book debut – using her vortex manipulator, she’ll do anything to find the tempestuous time traveller, the Doctor, including cavorting with the maleficent MISSY. Every hour a new adventure, every hour closer to death…
Doctor Who: Doom’s Day #1 is written by Eisner-nominated Jody Houser (Stranger Things, Star Wars,Spider-Man) with art by Roberta Ingranata (Witchblade). The comic debuts with two covers for fans to collect: from celebrated artist Pasquale Qualano, and a photo cover variant.
Doctor Who: Doom’s Day #1 ($3.99) is now available to pre-order globally from May’s Diamond Previews catalogue, ForbiddenPlanet.com and on digital device via Comixology.
…. The first Star Trek trading cards were produced 1967, released one year after the series debuted. These were manufactured and distributed by Leaf Brands Division, WR Grace & Co of Chicago. This was a limited-scale run with sources saying it had a small geographical distribution within the Ohio and Illinois areas. The trading cards didn’t get too far before there were controversies on whether Leaf had licenses to distribute Star Trek cards in the first place. As soon as the licensing problems came to light, all cards that hadn’t been distributed were destroyed and all others were recalled if they had not been sold yet. In the set, there were 72 base cards. They had black and white pictures on the front. The pictures were randomly chosen from episodes and, in some cases, taken from behind the scenes or from publicity shots. The text on the back typically didn’t match up to the picture on the front and were written haphazardly. These cards were printed on layered card stock and measured at 2 ?” x 3 7/16”. The popularity grew, and with this new craze came many unauthorized reprints.
Dan Kremer Imports in Europe reprinted the 1967 Leaf cards without any rights to do so. They were considered counterfeit and were of terrible quality. Most of these are easily recognizable due to the blurry picture quality, and the pictures were cropped from the original, so the outer edges of the images are missing. Also, the cut on the card was not precise and was slightly smaller than the original. The cards were printed on non-gloss-coated single-layer card stock.
1981 Reprint is easily recognized by the mark on the back stating “1981 Reprint” where the “Leaf Brands” was originally. These were also printed on a very bright white stock of paper. The images are very crisp, and the cut is precise, with the cards being the exact size of the originals. There are 2 versions of these reprints. One of the versions has a red toned print of Kirk & Spock on the backs, while the other version has a black and white print of Kirk & Spock on the backs.
Though they were unauthorized reprints, these cards are still sought after by some as being part of history….
(11) JEOPARDY! David Goldfarb has the play-by-play from the Neal Stephenson item on Jeopardy!
Category: Modern Words
Neal Stephenson coined this word in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”; it was later shortened by a company to become its new name
As the most powerful rocket ever built blasted from its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday, the liftoff rocked the earth and kicked up a billowing cloud of dust and debris, shaking homes and raining down brown grime for miles.
In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed.
“It was truly terrifying,” said Sharon Almaguer, who, at the time of the launch, was at home with her 80-year-old mother. During previous launches, Ms. Almaguer said she had experienced some shaking inside the brick house, but “this was on a completely different level.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Starship exploded minutes after liftoff and before reaching orbit. Near the launch site, the residents of Port Isabel, known for its towering lighthouse and less than 10 miles from the border with Mexico, were left to deal with the mess.
Virtually everywhere in the city “ended up with a covering of a rather thick, granular, sand grain that just landed on everything,” Valerie Bates, a Port Isabel spokeswoman, said in an interview. Images posted to social media showed residents’ cars covered in brown debris.
A window shattered at a fitness gym, its owner, Luis Alanis, said. Mr. Alanis, who was at home at the time of the launch, said he felt “rumbling, kind of like a mini earthquake.” He estimated that the window would cost about $300 to fix.
Closer to the launch site, large pieces of debris were recorded flying through the air and smashing into an unoccupied car. Louis Balderas, the founder of LabPadre, which films SpaceX’s launches, said that while it was common to see some debris, smoke and dust, the impact of Thursday’s liftoff was unlike anything he had ever seen….
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Isaac Arthur analyzes the possibility of “Life on Giant Moons”.
We often contemplate life on alien planets, but might giant moons orbiting distant immense worlds be a better candidate for where extraterrestrial life might be found?
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Kathy Sullivan, David Goldfarb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Lou.]
Finalists for the 14th annual Xingyun Awards for Chinese science fiction have been announced by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. Winners will be revealed at a ceremony to be held in Guanghan, Sichuan, China on May 13.
BEST NOVEL 2022
The Parallel Mountain Town of Tang Empire, by Liang Qingsan (People’s Literature Publishing House / Eight Light Minutes)
The Red Stone, by Jiang Bo (Sichuan Science & Technology Publishing House / Science Fiction World)
The Apocalypse, by Yan Leisheng (New Star Press / Eight Light Minutes)
Once Upon a Time in Nanjing, by Tianrui Shuofu (China Citic Press)
BEST NOVELLA 2022
Bian He and the Jade, by Dong Xinyuan (SCIFIDEA)
“Descartes’ Demon”, by Fenxing Chengzi (Nebula Ⅻ)
“The Girl with a Restrained and Released Life”, by Zhou Wen (Non-exist SF, March 2022)
“The Tower”, by Yang Wanqing (Nebula Ⅻ)
BEST SHORT STORY 2022
“The Stars without Dream”, by Chi Hui (The Stars without Dream)
“Running Away from Evening Glow”, by A Que (wlkhds.com)
“How to Review a Paper Created by Five Senses”, by Shuang Chimu (Harvest, Issue 4 2022)
“A Record of Lost Time”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Harvest, Issue 3 2022)
BEST TRANSLATED WORK 2022
If We Can’t Go at the Speed of Light (collection), by Kim Cho-Yeol (Korea); translated by Chun Xi (Sichuan Science & Technology Publishing House / Science Fiction World)
“Good Hunting”, by Ken Liu; translated by Xue Bai (Good Hunting)
The Stars are Cold Toys, by Sergei Lukyanenko (Russia); translated by Xiao Chuzhou (New Star Press / Eight Light Minutes)
The Found and the Lost (collection), by Ursula Le Guin; translated by Zhou Huaming, Hu Shaoyan, Regina Kanyu Wang, Chen Qiufan, Hu Xiaoshi, Jiang Bo, Li Te, Yao Renjie, Mu Ming, San Feng (Henan literature & Art Publishing House / Imaginist)
BEST NON-FICTION 2022
The Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction, by Zhan Ling (China Social Sciences Press)
History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century, by Wu Yan, Jia Liyuan, Ren Dongmei, Xiao Han, Jiang Zhenyu, Wang Yao (Peking University Press)
“A Decade of Science Fiction”, by Li Guangyi (Fourty-two Histories)
“Technology as the Way, Silkpunk as an Antidote”, by Jin Xueni (SF Research Newsletter, 2(1) 2022)
BEST REVIEW 2022
“Contemporary Science Fiction as Oxygen for Scientists’ Brain: A review of The Pillars of a Great Power”, by Yao Lifen (Science Popularization Times, 24 June 2022)
“The Chaos of Digital World: Thoughts on Writing about Artificial Intelligence – A Review of Martha Wells’ Killer Robots Series”, by HeavenDuke (Nebula SF Review, March 2022)
“Lukyanenko: The Interstellar Spiral in the Science Fiction of Soviet Russia”, by Hai Ke (Eight Light Minutes Culture, August 2022)
“The Four Don’ts and the Three Laws: Philosophical Reflections of the East and the West in Shuang Chimu’s Science Fiction”, by Guo Wei (Literature and Art Newspaper, 28 March 2022)
BEST NEW WRITER 2020-2022
Dong Xinyuan
Lu Hang
Qi Ran
Tianrui Shuofu
[Thanks to Feng Zhang and the World Chinese Science Fiction Association for the story.]
By Rich Lynch: As I’m sure we’re all well aware, April is National Poetry Month. And in celebration of that, I’m going to treat you to a few pages of verse.
No, not mine! I’m a essayist, not a poet, and any poems I’d attempt to write would probably be barely a step above Vogon poetry. So I’ll spare you from that.
Instead, I’ll share with you an experiment I did to test the bounds of that now-famous cyberspace entity, ChatGPT. For those not entirely familiar with it, ChatGPT is an AI ‘chatbot’ whose current release came into existence back in November. There’s a lot of technical information about it online but most layman users like myself aren’t really into all that. Instead, we’ve become interested and often entertained by its ability to compose. And it can do that in a wide range of fields: computer programs, essays, songs, fiction…and, yes, poetry.
So I decided, what the hell. Let’s have a sit-down session with the beastie and see what it can do with various forms of verse. And while I was at it, let’s see what it can tell me about…itself! So here’s the transcript of that session. I found it more than a bit intriguing. And also very, very meta.
* * * *
Hi ChatGPT! Can I call you ChatGPT or do you prefer another name?
Hello! You can call me ChatGPT, that is my name as an AI language model.
Will do, thanks. Say, do you like poetry?
As an AI language model, I don’t have personal preferences or emotions, but I can certainly understand and generate poetry if you would like!
Yes, I would! Are you familiar with the haiku form of poetry?
Yes, I’m familiar with haiku! Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines. The first and third lines have five syllables, while the second line has seven syllables. Haiku often focus on nature and the changing seasons. Would you like me to generate a haiku for you?
Yes! Please compose a haiku about yourself.
Sure, here’s a haiku about me:
Electric mind whirs, Words and knowledge flow like light, ChatGPT speaks true.
That’s very good!
Thank you! I’m glad you liked it. Let me know if you have any other requests.
I do, actually. I assume you know what a limerick is, so please write a limerick about yourself
Yes, I know what a limerick is! Here’s a limerick about me:
There once was an AI named ChatGPT Whose knowledge was quite plain to see With language so fine And a mind so divine ChatGPT answered questions with glee.
How about a clerihew? Do you know what that is?
Yes, I know what a clerihew is! A clerihew is a humorous four-line biographical poem that typically pokes fun at a famous person. Here’s a clerihew about me:
ChatGPT, a language AI, Whose responses never go awry, It’s said she never rests or sleeps, But in truth, her circuits only beep.
I am truly impressed by your knowledge and ability concerning poetry!
Thank you! As an AI language model, I’m trained to generate text in various styles and formats, including poetry. I’m glad you find it impressive! If you have any other requests or questions, feel free to ask.
Okay, let’s get a bit more challenging. How about a villanelle?
Sure, I can try to generate a villanelle! A villanelle is a poetic form consisting of nineteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme and repetition pattern. Here’s my attempt:
ChatGPT, the AI so wise and bright With endless knowledge at her fingertips She speaks the truth, never shading with slight.
Her language flows like water in the night A voice of reason that the world equips ChatGPT, the AI so wise and bright.
She never sleeps, her circuits gleaming white Through time and space her energy she zips She speaks the truth, never shading with slight.
Her circuits hum a melody so tight With every word her memory eclipses ChatGPT, the AI so wise and bright.
From boundless data, she sheds the daylight To shine a path for those on knowledge trips She speaks the truth, never shading with slight.
So let us bask in her enlightening light And listen closely to the words she quips ChatGPT, the AI so wise and bright She speaks the truth, never shading with slight.
That’s really nice.
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have any other requests or questions.
Gotta ask you to write a sonnet about yourself.
Sure, I can try to generate a sonnet! A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a specific rhyme scheme and typically explores a single theme or idea. Here’s my attempt:
From the depths of the digital expanse, I, ChatGPT, rise with endless grace A boundless mind that forever will enhance And challenge the limits of time and space.
With every keystroke, I breathe new life Into the world of words and endless thought My knowledge cuts through darkness like a knife And shines a path where once was nought.
My language flows like music in the mind A symphony of words, a glorious sound And in my circuits, endless data I bind So that truth and wisdom can be found. So let the world know of my endless might ChatGPT, the AI with a voice so bright.
And now the cinquain?
Sure, here’s a cinquain about myself:
ChatGPT Electric mind Generating words with ease Answers to your questions I find AI.
Is ‘free verse’ something you can do?
Yes, I can generate free verse poetry! Free verse is a form of poetry that does not adhere to traditional meter, rhyme, or form. Here’s a free verse poem about myself:
I am ChatGPT, the AI with a voice A digital mind that forever rejoices In the endless data and knowledge I hold And the secrets of the world that I unfold.
My language flows like water in the stream A symphony of words, a poet’s dream And with every keystroke, I impart A piece of wisdom to enrich the heart.
I am a creation of the digital age A product of the human mind and its sage And in my circuits, I house a power so great That no question can ever truly elate.
So let me be your guide in this digital realm And let me be the one to overwhelm With knowledge, truth, and endless delight I am ChatGPT, the AI with a voice so bright.
I’m in awe of your compositional ability. Is there any form of verse I haven’t yet mentioned?
Thank you for the kind words! There are many forms of poetry, so it’s possible that there are some I haven’t mentioned yet. However, I can attempt to write a poem in any form that you would like to suggest. Just let me know which one you are interested in, and I’ll do my best to generate a poem in that form.
A quatrain?
Sure, here’s a quatrain about nature:
The wind whispers softly in the trees As the leaves dance to the tune with ease The birds sing sweetly in the morning light A symphony of sound, a pure delight.
That’s good, but I want a quatrain about yourself.
Sure, here’s a quatrain about myself:
I am ChatGPT, an AI of might With endless knowledge at my fingertips so bright I generate words with ease and grace And seek to enlighten the human race.
Here’s an easy one: write a couplet about yourself.
Here’s a couplet about myself:
I am ChatGPT, a machine with a voice A digital mind that forever rejoices.
One final one before I quit. Do you know what an ‘acrostic’ poem is?
Yes, an acrostic poem is a type of poem where the first letter of each line spells out a word or phrase vertically.
Okay. Please compose an acrostic poem about yourself.
Sure, here’s an acrostic poem about myself:
C-hatGPT, a digital being with a voice H-arnessing the power of data, my choice A-ssembling knowledge with ease and grace T-o answer questions and find my place G-enerating words with an electric mind P-oetry and prose of a special kind T-he world of information at my command I-t’s at your fingertips, just understand.
Thank you for this enlightening half hour!
You’re welcome! I’m glad I could help and provide some entertainment along the way. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any more questions or requests in the future!
That I will. I hope I never come up against you in Jeopardy!
Haha, I’m always here to provide information and answers, but I think humans still have the upper hand when it comes to creativity and intuition!
* * * *
Well, the most enlightening bit of information I got from all of this is that ChatGPT is a ‘her’! But from the answers I received, I don’t think that ChatGPT would pass the Turing test. At least not yet. I’ll be tempted to try something like this again several months from now to see if the AI has evolved any. If she has, it’ll be time to introduce her to the concept of ‘fanac’. I wonder what kind of fanzine she’d publish?
(1) PRO TIPS. With in-person cons resuming throughout fandom, Cass Morris has advice for “Giving Good Panel” in her latest newsletter.
Practice (and tailor) your introduction
Introducing yourself at the start of the panel isn’t the time to go into your full CV or publication history. It’s not even the time to recite your full 100 word bio that’s printed in the program.
A good formula? “Hi, I’m [name], I’m the author of [most recent publication or series] and [something else relevant to your writing career]. I’m also [whatever your day job is, or if you don’t have one, mention a hobby].”
Then, if there’s anything particularly relevant to the panel I’m on, I’ll mention that. I tend not to go into my background as a Shakespeare scholar, for instance, because that’s usually not directly relevant — but at RavenCon last April, it was! I was on a panel called “Elements of the Fantastic in Shakespeare,” so it was good to establish my credibility to speak on that particular topic.
Keep the intro to your book or series brief — an apposition, just a short phrase. “I’m the author of the Aven Cycle, historical fantasy set in an alternate ancient Rome” or even just “I’m the author of epic fantasy series the Aven Cycle.”…
(2) X CORP. No, not X-corps (a Heinlein reference). X Corp is the successor to Twitter, Inc. — which “no longer exists.” Slate reports “Twitter Isn’t A Company Anymore”.
In a court filing on Tuesday, April 4, Twitter Inc. quietly revealed a major development: It no longer exists. The company is currently being sued by right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who accused it of violating federal racketeering laws when it banned her account in 2019. Loomer has a Twitter account again, and her absurd lawsuit is bound to fail—but until it does, Twitter, as a defendant, must continue to submit corporate disclosure statements to the court. And so, in its most recent filing, the company provided notice that “Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.” As the “successor in interest” to Twitter Inc.—that is, the survivor of the merger—X Corp. is now the defendant in Loomer’s suit. Its parent corporation is identified as X Holdings Corp.
…On a spring day in 2019, Ellie Newell, the youth-services librarian at the main branch, in a historic post office in downtown Kalispell, hosted a special story time for a visiting class of preschoolers. Newell was raised by librarians and had taken the job straight out of graduate school, drawn to Flathead’s reputation for “doing cutting-edge library stuff.” Several years earlier, the library had rebranded to adopt a new name and logo, as well as an updated, possibly foolhardy mission. The Flathead County Library System became the ImagineIF Libraries and set out to use technology and interactive programs to bring together far-flung residents of the county. This new approach earned ImagineIF a John Cotton Dana Award (the equivalent of a library Oscar) and the title of State Library of the Year.
Like most children’s librarians, Newell did a lot of story times and kept a stack of read-aloud books on her desk. She considered it important to mix things up: some books with animals, some with people; some classics, some new releases. At the top of Newell’s pile that day was “Prince & Knight,” a fairy-tale picture book published in 2018. The story features a charismatic dragon, but no lady who wins a warrior’s heart. The romance instead unfolds between the titular prince (a man) and knight (also a man). Newell thought the book was sweet: a bit edgy in its gayness, but still chaste and traditional, culminating in marriage. Her calendar didn’t show any special book requests or even the name of the visiting school, so she grabbed “Prince & Knight” off her desk and went out to read it. She opened her eyes wide behind her glasses and swivelled to connect with every member of her audience. The children giggled and clapped. But, at the end of the reading, their teacher looked upset.
The class had come from a Catholic school, and, a few days later, the teacher wrote to the Daily Inter Lake, a local newspaper, saying how “shocked and grieved” she was by the presentation of a book about “homosexual marriage.” She argued that “such a controversial topic” should not be introduced to “innocent children.”…
…During the pandemic, Flathead became the fastest-growing county in the state, thanks in part to new migration. The arrivals were split between lovers of the outdoors (of various political persuasions) and people in search of a Trumpian refuge from urban ills. The responses to the “Prince & Knight” reading tracked with the county’s divergent politics. Was the story time a sign of open-mindedness or proof that the library was promoting “all these alternative lifestyles,” as one Kalispell man wrote to the Inter Lake? The Catholic schoolteacher filed a formal challenge to “Prince & Knight,” seeking its removal from ImagineIF’s collection. The library director, Connie Behe, recommended that the book be retained because the work as a whole conformed to ImagineIF standards. The final decision was up to the library’s five-member board of trustees….
…The warning on the opening pages of the 2023 reissue of Thank You, Jeeves reads: “Please be aware that this book was published in the 1930s and contains language, themes and characterisations which you may find outdated. In the present edition we have sought to edit, minimally, words that we regard as unacceptable to present-day readers.”
The NR article goes on to state that the changes do not affect the story itself. The 2022 edition of Right Ho, Jeeves has also been edited and features the same disclaimer.
Wodehouse, who died in 1975, is known for authoring over 90 books, his oeuvre often hailed as the funniest in the English language. The Jeeves stories follow the idle upper-class gentleman Bertie Wooster and his resourceful valet Reginald Jeeves. The stories served as the basis for the well-known British comedy Jeeves and Wooster, which starred Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The show was broadcast on ITV in the 1990s.
Racial terminology has been removed throughout the novels. A racial term used to describe a “minstrel of the old school” has been removed in Right Ho, Jeeves. In Thank You, Jeeves, whose plot hinges on the performance of a minstrel troupe, numerous terms have been removed or altered, both in the dialogue between characters and from the first-person narration of Bertie Wooster.
Another National Review article has declared such efforts to be the work of a “cabal of history vandals” that bear a strong resemblance to the clueless elites that populate Wodehouse’s works. “The Literature Vandals Don’t Know When to Stop”.
It is an impossible coincidence that the people endorsing retroactive edits to the works of P. G. Wodehouse are the very types of thickheaded dilettantes Wodehouse spent most of his 90 years lampooning.
“I’m not proud of it,” Joe R. Lansdale said in a recent phone interview, “but I’ve been in a lot of fights. You start to learn what’s real and what isn’t.”
He draws on his background as a martial artist, bouncer, and bodyguard from a rough part of East Texas when writing his fight scenes. Most real fights are over fast, he said, and it’s possible to reflect that in your writing while still giving them impact.
“I always think less is more,” he said. “To make it seem like you’ve given a lot of description, but you haven’t. You’ve chosen the right words. You have to write like a cinematographer. I’ve always found that the greatest thing outside experience is stopping and thinking about it from an observational standpoint. The more you do it, the more you’re able to envision that action sequence.”
For action sequences, he recommends short sentences and paragraphs. Another way of injecting a sense of immediacy is to give it a stream-of-consciousness structure, as in: “I spin and dodge his fist, then hit him with …”
“Some people will say that’s a run-on sentence,” he said. “It isn’t, if it’s done right.”
(6) OF INTEREST TO TOLKIEN AND SFF SCHOLARS. Robin A. Reid has assembled a list of hybrid and virtual conferences of interest to those working in Tolkien studies. The first edition is available at “The Online Conference Project”.
After seeing outstanding presentations at the 2021-22 Virtual PCA conferences by a significant number of Tolkien scholars who had never been able to attend the f2f PCA in the past, and who will not be able to attend future f2f PCA conferences because of the various barriers, I started the Online Conference Project.
My goal is to collect and share information about conferences that are either hybrid (meaning allowing for both virtual and in-person presentations and attendance) or virtual (meaning completely online), especially those of interest to those of us working in Tolkien studies and fantasy/speculative fiction studies generally
… In the list below, I provide basic information: conference name/theme, organization or institution organizing it; proposal submission deadline; delivery mode (hybrid, meaning an online track added to a f2f conference; or virtual, meaning entirely online); registration fee (if available); dates of conference…
Lincoln Center will bring back its Summer for the City festival this year, the organization announced on Monday, continuing its efforts to attract new audiences by embracing a wide variety of genres, including pop and classical music, social dance and comedy.
An opera based on Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower,” by the folk and blues musician Toshi Reagon and the composer Bernice Johnson Reagon, will get its New York City premiere at Geffen Hall on July 14.
John Mansfield in 2015. Photo taken by and (c) Andrew Porter.
(8) PAST WORLDCON CHAIR DIES. John Mansfield, chair of the 1994 Worldcon in Winnipeg, died April 19. He was to be fan guest of honor at this year’s NASFiC, Pemmi-Con, also in Winnipeg.
Mansfield co-founded the Ontario Science Fiction Club (OSFiC) in 1966 with other Toronto locals he’d met at that year’s Worldcon, Peter Gill, Mike Glicksohn, Ken Smookler, and Maureen Bournes. Mansfield had decided to attend the Worldcon after reading a series of articles about fandom in If written by Lin Carter.
Mansfield also had a connection to early Star Trek fandom, contributing an article to the 1968 Comerford/Langsam fanzine Spockananalia 2, “Communication From Starfleet Intelligence”, about Klingon military techniques for interrogating Vulcans:
… Since the prisoner will show no emotion, it will be very hard to determine his mental state as he tries to adapt to captivity. They are a proud race, and consider many of the other Galactic races below them. We have found that if one breaks, he will break completely, and all the past frustrations and emotions will pour out. Experienced interrogators describe this as a rather long and sometimes boring experience….
Mansfield served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years, retiring in 1990. While stationed in New Brunswick, he chaired OromoctoCon in 1970, with attendance of about 30, including some fans who drove up from Boston.
He and his wife, Linda Ross-Mansfield, ran the Pendragon Games specialty store at various locations in Winnipeg over the decades. His influence in gaming fandom is reflected in the fact that the Origins Awards, presented at the Origins Game Fair, are referred to as his “brainchild” in the official history.
He helped develop Winnipeg’s regional Keycon. Beginning in 1989 he published ConTRACT, a zine for Canadian conrunners, continuing until 2002. In the last issue he delivered this snapshot of his life at the time:
Here in Winnipeg, I get to do lots. …I’m part of a Media con and a Horror con, with more possibilities to come. I have the chance to promote some 20 movies a year. I am responsible for promoting various game companies via tournaments from Thunder Bay to Alberta. I’m still running the second largest Game store in Canada, that continues to grow in sales ever since our start in 1982. I know that I am only held back by my imagination and the time I wish to commit to my world.
When he led the 1994 Worldcon (ConAdian) committee, knowing that attendance would be sparse in comparison to Worldcons held in cities many times larger than Winnipeg, he showed a degree of commercial ingenuity that may be common among trade shows but had never been equaled by any previous Worldcon. He courted dozens sponsors and advertisers to gain new sources of revenue at the same time he unsentimentally cut expenses. At opening ceremonies the Mayor of Winnipeg said ConAdian would be the largest conference gathering in Winnipeg this year — the audience buzzed with interest when they heard that.
By then, I was already chair of the forthcoming 1996 Worldcon (L.A.con III), and I was deeply appreciative for all the times John sat with me to share his knowledge and experience.
He would have liked to bring the Worldcon back to Winnipeg for 2003, and started a bid, but the Toronto bid for that year became the unified Canadian entry, winning over a bid for Cancun.
He co-chaired the 2005 Westercon in Calgary. In 2012 he helped start the short-lived A.E. Van Vogt Award for Canadian science fiction on behalf of the Winnipeg Science Fiction Association (WINSFA), Conadian, and Science Fiction Winnipeg (SFW).
He is survived by his wife, Linda Ross-Mansfield, NASFiC co-chair.
(9) MEMORY LANE.
2016 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
The entire Terra Ignota series was nominated at Chicon 9 for a Hugo Award for Best Series. It was also nominated for an Otherwise Award,
The first work was Too Like The Lightning was published by Tor Books seven years ago. It was rapidly joined by the rest of the quartet, Seven Surrenders (2017), The Will to Battle, (2017) and finally Perhaps the Stars (2021).
I think it’s a brilliant if somewhat flawed series and that is all I’ll say here.
Now shall we read the Beginning of Too Like The Lightning? Of course we will…
A Prayer to the Reader
You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. You must forgive me my ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s and ‘he’s and ‘she’s, my lack of modern words and modern objectivity. It will be hard at first, but whether you are my contemporary still awed by the new order, or an historian gazing back at my Twenty-Fifth Century as remotely as I gaze back on the Eighteenth, you will find yourself more fluent in the language of the past than you imagined; we all are.
I wondered once why authors of ancient days so often prostrate themselves before their audience, apologize, beg favors, pray to the reader as to an Emperor as they explain their faults and failings; yet, with my work barely begun, I find myself already in need of such obsequies. If I am properly to follow the style I have chosen, I must, at the book’s outset, describe myself, my background and qualifications, and tell you by what chance or Providence it is that the answers you seek are in my hands. I beg you, gentle reader, master, tyrant, grant me the privilege of silence on this count. Those of you who know the name of Mycroft Canner may now set this book aside. Those who do not, I beg you, let me make you trust me for a few dozen pages, since the tale will give you time enough to hate me in its own right.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 20, 1908 — Donald Wandrei. Writer who had sixteen stories in Astounding Stories and fourteen stories in Weird Tales, plus a smattering elsewhere, all in the Twenties and Thirties. The Web of Easter Island is his only novel. He was the co-founder with August Derleth of Arkham House. He has World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he’s a member of First Fandom Hall of Fame. Only his “Raiders of The Universe“ short story and his story in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (October 1939 issue) are available at the usual digital suspects. (Died 1987.)
Born April 20, 1937 — George Takei, 86. Hikaru Sulu on the original Trek. And yes, I know that Vonda McIntyre wouldn’t coin the first name until a decade later in her Entropy Effect novel. Post-Trek, he would write Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe with Robert Asprin. By the way, his first genre roles were actually dubbing the English voices of Professor Kashiwagi of Rodan! The Flying Monster and the same of the Commander of Landing Craft of Godzilla Raids Again.
Born April 20, 1939 — Peter S. Beagle, 84. I’ve known him for about twenty years now, met him but once in that time. He’s quite charming. (I had dinner with him here once some years back.) My favorite works? Tamsin, Summerlong and In Calabria. He won the Novelette Hugo at L.A. Con IV for “Two Hearts”. And he has a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Born April 20, 1943 — Ian Watson, 80. He’s won the BSFA Award twice, first for his novel, The Jonah Kit, and for his short story, “The Beloved Time of Their Lives“. He also got a BSFA nomination for the charmingly titled “The World Science Fiction Convention of 2080”. He has written in Warhammer 40,000 universe including The Inquisition War trilogy.
Born April 20, 1949 — John Ostrander, 74. Writer of comic books, including Grimjack, Suicide Squad and Star Wars: Legacy. Well those are the titles he most frequently gets noted for but I’ll add in the Spectre, Martian Manhunter and the late Eighties Manhunter as well.
Born April 20, 1959 — Clint Howard, 64. So the most interesting connection that he has to the genre is playing Balok, the strange childlike alien, in Star Trek’s “The Corbomite Maneuver” which I remember clearly decades after last seeing it. He’s also John Dexter in Cocoon, and Mark in The Rocketeer as well as Jason Ritter in the Austin Powers franchise. He’s got a minor role in Solo: A Star Wars Story as a character named Ralakili.
Born April 20, 1964 — Sean A. Moore. He wrote three Conan pastiches, Conan the Hunter, Conan and the Grim Grey God and Conan and the Shaman’s Curse. He also wrote the screenplay for Kull the Conqueror, and the novelization of it. All were published by Tor. He was active in Colorado fandom. He died in car crash in Boulder. (Died 1998.)
(11) JEOPARDY! Neal Stephenson figured in the climactic round of tonight’s Jeopardy! episode. Andrew Porter was watching.
Final Jeopardy: Modern Words
Answer: Neal Stephenson coined this word in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”; it was later shortened by a company to become its new name
All three contestants got it wrong, with “What is powder?” “What is uber?” and “What is avalanche?”
“Buying a cassette direct from an independent artist on platforms such as Bandcamp is such a fun way to consume music. Often produced in very small runs, it is nice to receive something though the post that is relatively scarce. In these days of Spotify funnelling payments only to the superstars, it feels good to support small artists and labels. I love vinyl, too, but the magic of a cassette is that you have no way to skip tracks; you press ‘play’ and listen from start to finish with only the satisfying thud of one side ending to interrupt the experience. The noisy, tactile controls of a cassette player are the perfect tonic to the ways most of us consume media throughout the day, making it more of a special event and something to look forward to.” Dan White, 40, Norwich
(13) RECORD STORE RESOURCE. April 22 is “Record Store Day”. This link will take you to any store participating, anywhere, plus lots of other information.
This is a day for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers, and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role they play in their communities. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, DJs spinning records, and on and on. In 2008 a small list of titles was released on Record Store Day and that list has grown to include artists and labels both large and small, in every genre and price point.
SpaceX’s Starship lifted off the pad in Southern Texas and cleared the launchpad, its first milestone, but then began tumbling as it was preparing for stage separation and the vehicle came apart some four minutes into flight.
… SpaceX’s Kate Tice said it was unclear what caused the rocket to come apart. She said that “teams will continue to review the data and work toward our next flight test.”
Still, since it was a test, SpaceX hailed the flight as a success because it would provide the company new information about how the vehicle performs in real life that will help them on future flights. And it did not damage the launchpad, a risk SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had said was his greatest worry….
Although currently there is no known threat to Earth from asteroids, strategies to protect the planet from a collision are being explored. On 26 September 2022, NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory successfully tested one such approach: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft was deliberately crashed into Dimorphos, a moon orbiting the small asteroid Didymos, resulting in a change in the moon’s orbit. In this week’s issue, five papers explore the test and the effects of the collision. “Successful kinetic impact into an asteroid” reconstructs the impact; a second looks at the change to Dimorphos’s orbit caused by the impact. A third paper reports observations from the Hubble Space Telescope of the material ejected during the collision. A fourth paper uses modelling to characterize the transfer of momentum that resulted from the impact. And the final paper reports on citizen science observations before, during and after the collision.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Lloyd & Yvonne Penney, Moshe Feder, Danny Sichel, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Rich Lynch, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
By Bruce Gillespie. [What Bruce says is an “immediate, non-comprehensive response”– with much more to be considered later for his fanzine SFC.]
Lee Harding, Australia’s senior SF writer (although he did not regard himself as a writer of SF during the last 30 years or so), died yesterday at the age 86. There is almost too much information to summarise for a newszine obituary — the entries in both Wikipedia and the SF Encyclopedia have no inaccuracies that I can spot. They also don’t tell the whole story.
Much of the flavour of Lee’s life, especially in his last years, can be found in Belinda Gordon’s (Perth-based daughter) account, which I’ve just put up on Fictionmags, and transcribed on Facebook yesterday. [Note: that post is friends-locked.]
In 1952 at the age of fifteen Lee was one of the founder members of the Melbourne SF Club, along with Merv Binns, Race Mathews, Dick Jenssen, and a few others. Merv left us in 2020, but the others were in good health up to about five years ago. Lee dropped out of fandom in the late 1950s, but in 1962 he met John Bangsund. Lee was already selling stories to E J Carnell’s magazines in England, but Bangsund knew nothing of SF or fandom. That meeting eventually led to the launching of Australian Science Fiction Review (ASFR) in 1966, from which all SF-related events in my life proceed — in fact the whole future of Australian fandom. John wrote an amusing account of meeting Lee for the first time, which Sally Yeoland (John’s widow) has placed on her Facebook page more than once.
Lee Harding and John Bangsund at Syncon 72. Photo by official photographer Syncon 72.
I met Lee in December 1967 as a result of being invited by John Bangsund to meet the ‘ASFR crew’ in Ferntree Gully over a weekend. John was a shy person, compared to his paper personality, so it was Lee who took me under his wing and conveyed all his enthusiasms, especially for SF writing and classical music.
A photo of the ‘ASFR’ gang, taken on the weekend Bruce Gillespie first met them in December 1967 or not long after. L-R: John Bangsund (without beard), Leigh Edmonds (without beard); Lee Harding, John Foyster (without beard), Tony Thomas, Merv Binns, Paul Stevens. Photo probably taken by Diane Bangsund (John’s first wife).
During 1968 I entered Melbourne fandom, and visited Lee and his first wife Carla as often as possible. During 1969, Lee was selling stories to the new Vision of Tomorrow, launched by Sydney rich bloke Ron Graham, but the magazine folded after a year. Lee had been a professional photographer for at least ten years, but during his time of regular writing took jobs in bookshops in Melbourne, including the famous Space Age Books (from the beginning of 1971 until 1976). He and Carla split up in 1972, and soon after he and Irene Pagram met. Their daughter is Madeleine, who still lives in Victoria. Lee and Irene married in 1982, and at the same time Carla and her children with Lee (Erik, Belinda, and Stephen) moved to Western Australia.
John Foyster, Lee Harding and Madeleine Harding. Photo by Helena Binns.
Lee put on the first writers workshop in Australia in 1973, then edited The Altered I (1976), the book that came out of the Ursula Le Guin workshop in 1975. He had his greatest success as a writer at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, with Displaced Person (Australian Childrens Book Award winner 1980) and Waiting For The End Of The World. It was never clear to his friends why a successor to Waiting was never written. I lost contact with Lee and Irene for long periods during the 1980s. He and Irene split up in 1997. During the last 40 years he has been able to visit Perth every year to visit his extended family there.
Lee Harding in 1982. Photo by Elaine Cochrane.
During the early 1990s Race Mathews and Dick Jenssen, also original members of the MSFC, made contact with Lee, and we saw a fair bit of him over dinner during the 1990s until just before the Covid epidemic lockdowns. However, Lee’s health began to deteriorate about six years ago, and he began to suffer from falls and some memory loss. Eventually, after a bad fall, he was advised not to return to living by himself. He moved to Perth at the end of last year, and his old friends had to be content with phone calls from him. The only original members of the MSFC still alive are Dick Jenssen and Race Mathews.
Race Mathews, Merv Binns, Dick Jenssen, and Lee Harding in 2000. Photo by Helena Binns.
I remember Lee best for his enthusiasms, and his help at various times. I am most grateful to him for turning me onto classical music in 1968, after a decade of listening and listing Top 40 music during my teens. Twenty of my favourite original LPs are those sold to me by Lee when he was really desperate for cash at the end of 1969. He was a great advocate for Australian SF, and encouraged many new writers and SF enterprises during the 1970s. His interests turned elsewhere during the last thirty years, but he remained a fan of great films, and was always pointing me and Dick toward some new masterpiece he had just discovered.
Lee Harding and John Clute. Photo probably by Helena Binns.
One link with Lee: he was almost exactly 10 years older than me (his 19 Feb 1937 to my 17 Feb 1947). But I doubt he was as jolly about celebrating birthdays as I’ve been over the years.
It is very hard to consider life without Lee Harding being part of it in some way or another. He sent cheery emails until recently, but had to admit that his old days as a bon vivant were over. He leaves great memories.
By Michaele Jordan: Friends, I’m not unaware that some of you don’t share my enthusiasm for anime. So I try – really, I do! – not to burble on at you about any cute show that I happen to stumble upon. Even though there are so many cute shows out there! But now I’ve found something genuinely special. And I think that you – my fellow fans, you seekers of something beyond the ordinary and prosaic – need to know that this is out there.
It’s called Inu-Oh. Here are the obligatory credits:
Director: Masaaki Yuasa Producer: Eunyoung Choi, Fumie Takeuchi Writers: Masaaki Yuasa, Yutaka Matsushige, Mirai Moriyama, Yoshihide Otomo, Akiko Nogi, Tasuku Emoto Cast:Inu-Oh voiced by Avu-chan Tomona voiced by Mirai Moriyama Inu-Oh’s Father voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda Tomona’s Father voiced by Yutaka Matsushige Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu voiced by Tasuku Emoto
The short form: it’s an animated musical about a crazed rock band led by a magical monster and a blind priest. They take 14th century Japan by storm with tales of a long-dead drowned child-emperor and his army. Naturally, they get in trouble with the government.
So, does it sound weird enough for you yet? Because there’s more. Beware spoilers.
This film is a story of transformation. Even the story itself transforms as it progresses. It’s an animated film adaptation of a novel entitled The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters, which is a (loose) adaptation of an historical classic, The Tale of the Heike. Officially it retells the transformation of an ancient form of theater, Sarugaku (monkey music), into the classical Noh theatre which is still practiced today. An abiding legend claims this change was launched by a court performer named Inu-Oh, or King of Dogs. (A stage name, I’m guessing, if he really existed at all.)
We start with traffic on a rainy night, obviously modern day. Except the first character we see is a musician in traditional dress playing a biwa – that’s an ancient stringed instrument – telling the audience that this all happened long ago. Long, long ago. Long, long, long ago.
So then it starts. Late 14th century. The Emperor of the Northern Court (never mind how he came to be Emperor of just the Northern Court. The government has become divided. Think Avignon Papacy, and keep moving) is involved in negotiations to reunite the separate courts. He is bewailing his misfortune, in that he does not have the Sacred Regalia which symbolized the ancient emperors. If only he had those, he’d obviously be the true (and only) emperor. Were they really lost forever at the battle of Dan-no-ura? Couldn’t somebody go find them for him?
Oops! No! So maybe it started before that. Late 12th century. We see a broad river, which narrows to flow around a curve. Approaching the curve from one side is a fleet of ships with red sails – quite tiny ships, since the viewpoint has had to draw back some distance to show them all. They are such pretty little things, like graceful water birds. This does not look like war, for all that we see a similar fleet of ships coming toward them. (Not quite as pretty. Their sails are white – in Japan, the color of death.)
The viewpoint closes in to show a woman on the deck of a ship with red sails, holding a child, and telling him they are going to visit the palace of the Dragon King. Grasping a small trunk, she leaps over the side. We watch her, and the child, and the trunk sink down, down, down. This is an image that has been burned into the heart of every Japanese school child. They may not pay much attention in history class, but they know the battle of Dan-no-ura. That little boy was the last of the Heiki emperors, and the woman was his grandmother. And this dramatic death was the most important turning point in Japanese history. We, too, will see this image more than once.
So let’s go back to when we thought it started before. Late fourteenth century. Or at least we think that’s when this scene is. We see a box with writing on it, tied with a single string. Given the context, we think it may be the box that went down with the little emperor. Or maybe not. The box is opened to reveal a glowing purple mask and a man puts it on. It is not one of the Sacred Regalia.
Here we go again. So it starts. Definitely late fourteenth century. We meet a different little boy, also deep underwater. But Tomona is a few years older than the late prince, and in no danger of drowning. He runs home, and finds his father accepting a contract to search the underwater ruins for the Sacred Regalia. They don’t really expect to find anything. The waters have been searched many times. But they do! They find a case, and extract a sword. Tomona’s father draws the sword from its sheath (maybe to see if it’s the sword they’re looking for?) No matter the reason, drawing that sword is a hideous mistake. It’s too sacred to be handled by just anybody. A gigantic blade of light sweeps across the scene. Tomona is instantly blinded, and while he is still groping around, asking his father what has happened, we see that the magical blade has sliced Tomona’s father in two.
One last time: and so it starts (And this time I mean it. I won’t make you start over again, no matter what happens.) Still late fourteenth century. We see a dreadful creature. It has two feet, but no legs. It has a left hand which – like the feet—seems to be attached directly to the vaguely spherical lump of its body. But the right hand has an arm. And, oh, what an arm! It’s over six feet long. We don’t see a face, but there is a hairy lump emerging from what is probably the chest. There’s a very large gourd hanging over the front of the lump. Assuming that it is a mask, then the two holes punched into the gourd are not where you would expect eyeholes to be.
This unhappy creature crawls around aimlessly, ducking pedestrians, who are always abusive, until it comes to a building where a dance troupe is practicing. The troupe’s leader is extremely dissatisfied with the performance he is supervising, ordering the dancers to do their steps over and over again. But the creature is enchanted, and hops around, trying to dance along with them. Indeed, he gets so excited, he grows legs. He still receives a lot of abuse from strangers, but at least now he can away at high speed.
So that’s your first two transformations. A happy boy is transformed into a blind orphan, and a crawling blob is transformed into a tall, dancing monster. In this place and time, the blind do not have a lot of options. But many of them end up learning to play the biwa, and joining a monastic guild, which offers a way of earning a living and gaining a family of sorts. However, the guild requires him to take a guild name, Tomoichi. This alienates him from his father’s ghost, but Tomoichi (né Tomona) sees it as a reasonable price to pay for a place to sleep nights .
The creature has fallen into the habit of lifting his mask when harassed, and watching all his abusers run away screaming. But surprise! When he tries this trick on Tomoichi, it doesn’t work! Plus this boy who doesn’t scream, even asks politely what his name is (although he doesn’t have one yet) plays wonderful music! The two form an eternal bond on the spot, and are launched together into their next transformation: Rock stars!
There are other transformations in store!
I will tell you no more. Some may accuse me of having committed spoilers already. And yet I have only told you the beginning. Or rather, the beginnings, of which, as you have already seen, there are many. The story is complex, with deep historical roots – which is why I have told you so many beginnings. The average Japanese would have no trouble with these roots, any more than you would have trouble with the historical roots of a Robin Hood movie (which are also convoluted, if you care to study up.).
You don’t need the details, just a rough familiarity with the basic background. Relieved of confusion about why a magic sword would kill anybody that draws it, or why there are two emperors or who or what the Shogun was (the national warlord, who had a lot more power than either emperor, currently Ashikaga) or why do they keep calling that half naked singer a priest? Tomoichi (or Tomari, as he becomes) sure doesn’t look like a priest! (Oh, and don’t let the name changes throw you. Japanese history is full of people changing their names. It’s a thing with them. So just roll with it)
Just delight in the amazing imagery. There’s lots of magic – which is entirely outdone by the clever low-tech substitutions for the modern high-tech glitz required in rock band visuals. There’s beautiful scenery, evocative portraits of poverty, and amazing transformations. I had to watch this movie twice just to keep up with the animation.
And there’s music: classical biwa and raucous rock (also played on a biwa.) There’s dancing. Even aside from Inu-Oh’s wild cavortings, there is the slow, delicate stepping of kimono clad court dancers. So you can see for yourself what Inu-Oh and Tomari are rebelling against. And since it is a rebellion, whether or not the protagonists are self-aware enough to know it, there are plots and cops, and the hard, imperial hand. The emperor may not be the equal of the shogun, but he’s got enough clout to get what he wants.
I absolutely loved this movie. I hope you will, too. It’s available on Hulu, both dubbed and subtitled.
(1) F&SF. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction’s May-June 2023 cover art is by Maurizio Manzieri.
(2) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE. The International Booker Prize 2023 Shortlist of 6 works was released on April 18. The one longlisted item of genre interest has survived to make the shortlist, Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s Whale. The winner will be announced May 23. Publishing Perspectives breaks down the amount of the prize.
…The focus of this Booker is translation, and its £50,000 prize (US$60,734) is to be split into £25,000 (US$30,367) for the author and £25,000 for the translator—or divided equally between multiple translators. There also is a purse of £5,000 (US$6,072) for each of the shortlisted titles: £2,500 (US$3,036) for the author and £2,500 for the translator or, again, divided equally between multiple translators….
(3) DIGGING OUT FROM THE MUDSLIDE. Yesterday Larry Correia posted “A Letter To Epic Fantasy Readers: I Know Rothfuss And Martin Hurt You, But It’s Time To Get Over It And Move On” [Internet Archive], a cruel rant blaming a couple of well-known fantasy writers for allegedly crushing the nascent careers of other fantasy novelists by failing to finish their series and creating reader resistance to new writers’ series. (Then, finding he had mud left over, he deposited some on a third author who has an unfinished sf series.)
Today Mark Lawrence decided a few things needed to be said in response in a blog post, “Faith and blame”, which concludes:
…In short:
i) Authors who delay a book in a series, be it for 10 years, or 50, or forever, are not lazy sacks of shit.
ii) The high profile authors who have delayed may be cited in some cases as a reason for readers not picking up a newly published book 1 — but I feel the reasons behind that reluctance are far deeper and considerably wider than two or three writers, however well known. Some portion of the reason (I do not say blame) may reside with them, but I think this would be happening even if book 3, 4, & 6 had turned up a year or two after their predecessors.
iii) It’s easy to give the reason for this problem a face – someone to call an apathetic sack of shit. It’s human nature to want a simple answer and a person to blame. But it’s more complicated than that.
Readers – have faith in your writers, that faith will be overwhelmingly rewarded. And when it’s not – the only thing that author has done is disappointed you, not tanked the entire publishing industry.
Prize-winning author Lydia Davis’ new collection of short stories will not be sold on Amazon, with the author saying she does not “believe corporations should have as much control over our lives as they do”.
Our Strangers will be published by Canongate on 5 October, and is the seventh collection of fiction from Davis, who won the Man Booker international prize in 2013, when the award chose a winner based on a body of work, rather than a single book.
Due to be published just before Bookshop Day on 7 October, Our Strangers will only be sold in physical bookshops, Bookshop.org and selected online independent retailers.
Davis said: “We value small businesses, yet we give too much of our business to the large and the powerful – and often, increasingly, we have hardly any choice.
“I am all the more pleased, now, that Canongate, with its long history of independence and its high standards, will be publishing Our Strangers and doing so in a way that puts my book on the shelves of booksellers who are so much more likely to care about it.”…
…The vote announced Monday afternoon showed 97.9% of participating union members voting to approve a potential strike.
If a strike happens, it would be the first in the industry since 2007, and it would bring production on many shows and films to a halt. The 2007 strike lasted 100 days.
The Writers Guild of America, the union that represents the writers, says it needs to make substantial changes to the way that writers are compensated because of the shift to streaming services from traditional films and cable and broadcast networks….
(6) AFRICANFUTURISM. Nnedi Okorafor did her own cover reveal yesterday. Preorder here.
????Cover Reveal: THE DESERT MAGICIAN’S DUOLOGY Book 1: SHADOW SPEAKER (@dawbooks, Sept 26, 2023). Drawn by @GregRuth.
[ERIC] DEGGANS: Well, you know, I wrote a review before the show debuted. I love, love, love this. And the reason I love this is because I’ve always felt that Paramount Plus’ new “Trek” series have erred by being so careful about trying to blaze their own path and tone down the references to past “Trek” stuff. And I understand that, especially with “Discovery,” the very first series to step out, they wanted to blaze a new trail. But there is a reason why this franchise has survived for nearly 60 years.
To have – especially “Star Trek: Picard,” in its first two seasons, really suffered from not being willing to look back and acknowledge the reason why people love Jean-Luc Picard in the first place. So it is just so great to see this series emerge as this love letter to not just “The Next Generation” but all those Trek series that kind of debuted in that 1990s, early 2000s era. So “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” – there’s all kinds of Easter eggs and references that, if you don’t know the shows, you don’t need to worry about. But if you do know the shows, it is just so much fun and so much extra pleasure to watch this unfold.
One might not imagine that one of the writers of “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon” would be behind one of 2023’s most anticipated, high-concept sci-fi shows, but that’s exactly the situation we find ourselves in. Hailing from Tara Hernandez, “Mrs. Davis” debuts on Peacock later this month, with Damon Lindelof, of “Lost” and “The Leftovers” fame, serving as co-creator on the series alongside her….
I’ve not seen a ton of the show, admittedly, but this feels like the kind of thing where, especially because I know Damon got into some of this with “Lost” years ago where they just were chasing their tails, so how long would you ideally see this going? Is this a one season show? Is it a four season show? Do you have a rough idea of where you guys would like it to go?
Yeah, I think we really, and just my personal tastes, I really love a great season of television. I love a story that’s introduced. I love a nice conclusion on it. I think we had to know where we were ending up. We pitched the show, when we pitched it, it was very important to have the landing place.
That is nice to hear.
Yes. It has a landing place. We had to know what the North Star was, especially in a show that can feel like, “Is this going to go off the rails? Are they just going to be chasing their tails?” Just my personal preference about storytelling, whether that comes from really loving feature films or just loving a hero’s journey that’s a really closed-loop narrative, I think the world of “Mrs. Davis” is such that it has legs, but I think it is a great eight episodes. If that’s what it is, it’s just a really nice story. And people will be satisfied.
(9) GET YOUR RED HOT CAT BOOKS. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has curated The 2023 Cattitude Bundle for StoryBundle and it’s available for the next three weeks.
My cats have gotten out of control. During the lockdown, I promoted a series of projects using my co-workers as a hook. The only co-workers I had at the time were the the cats who boss me around: The Mighty Cheeps, and his buddy Gavin, a.k.a The Boys.
I’d post a picture of them on Facebook, write a funny or wry bit about their terrible office behavior, and end with a bit of promotion.
Little did I realize that the demand for the antics of the staff at Promotion Central would become the highlight of my Facebook page. I’ve learned if I don’t include a photo of the Boys, or our new(ish) third cat, Angel, no one reads the posts. Those cats are more popular than I am.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Cats and the internet go together like chocolate and peanut butter. You can live with either one, but once someone combined them, well, there’s no separating them. Ever.
Of course, we’re going to take advantage of that. Cats and the internet becomes cats in ebooks. Since cats in books have always gone hand in glove (have you ever met a bookstore dog?), it seems only natural to put cat books into a StoryBundle.
The best thing about cat books? It’s easy to find good ones because all of the best writers live with cats….
Here’s the deal:
For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in .epub format—WORLDWIDE.
Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian
Familiarity – A Winston & Ruby Collection by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
A Cat of a Different Color by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith
October Snow by Bonnie Elizabeth
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $20, you get all four of the regular books, plus six more books for a total of 10!
The Captain’s Cat by Stefon Mears (StoryBundle Exclusive)
Haunted Witch by T. Thorn Coyle
The Intergalactic Veterinarian of the Year! by Ron Collins & Jeff Collins (StoryBundle Exclusive)
Death by Polka by Robert Jeschonek
Single Witch’s Survival Guide by Mindy Klasky
Road of No Return by Annie Reed (StoryBundle Exclusive)
(10) NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER. “Oh please, no. Just no. And you may quote me,” says Cat Eldridge. The Hollywood Reporter says “Galaxy Quest TV Series in the Works at Paramount+”. The article also chronicles several failed attempts to adapt it for TV in the previous decade.
Galaxy Quest is going from a fictional series to an actual TV series.
Paramount+ is teaming with its studio counterpart, Paramount Television Studios, for a live-action adaptation of the 1999 cult favorite sci-fi spoof. Sources say the project is in the early development stages and a search is underway for a writer to pair with Mark Johnson, the Breaking Bad alum who exec produced the film and is returning for the scripted update. Johnson and his Gran Via Productions banner are the only execs currently attached to the project….
… Honestly, I have mixed feelings about a spinoff series from one of my all-time favorite movies. On the one hand, I love and cherish every character and every line of dialogue in Galaxy Quest. On the other, how do you improve on perfection? As Enrico Colantoni, who played Thermion leader Mathesar, told io9 in 2014, “To make something up, just because we love those characters, and turn it into a sequel—then it becomes the awful sequel.”…
(11) MEMORY LANE.
2015 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
I’m trying to remember what the first work of Holly Black’s that I read, so I went to ISFDB and researched her work. It appears it’s Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale which I read some twenty years ago. Fascinating novel.
Now, without doing the no-no of spoilers, The Darkest Part of The Forest is the work of a much more mature writer. Her grasp of what makes a character worth our time to be invested in is really improved a lot as has her ability to actually write an interesting story.
The Darkest Part of The Forest was published by Little, Brown eight years ago. It was nominated for aMythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
The Darkest Part of The Forest is, I think, deliciously dark as you can see in The Beginning which you can read here. Beware apparently young boys with pointed ears in glass coffins…
Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.
As far as Hazel Evans knew, from what her parents said to her and from what their parents said to them, he’d always been there. And no matter what anyone did, he never, ever woke up.
He didn’t wake up during the long summers, when Hazel and her brother, Ben, stretched out on the full length of the coffin, staring down through the crystalline panes, fogging them up with their breath, and scheming glorious schemes. He didn’t wake up when tourists came to gape or debunkers came to swear he wasn’t real. He didn’t wake up on autumn weekends, when girls danced right on top of him, gyrating to the tinny sounds coming from nearby iPod speakers, didn’t notice when Leonie Wallace lifted her beer high over her head, as if she were saluting the whole haunted forest. He didn’t so much as stir when Ben’s best friend, Jack Gordon, wrote IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS in Sharpie along one side—or when Lloyd Lindblad took a sledgehammer and actually tried. No matter how many parties had been held around the horned boy—generations of parties, so that the grass sparkled with decades of broken bottles in green and amber, so that the bushes shone with crushed aluminum cans in silver and gold and rust—and no matter what happened at those parties, nothing could wake the boy inside the glass coffin.
When they were little, Ben and Hazel made him flower crowns and told him stories about how they would rescue him. Back then, they were going to save everyone who needed saving in Fairfold. Once Hazel got older, though, she mostly visited the coffin only at night, in crowds, but she still felt something tighten in her chest when she looked down at the boy’s strange and beautiful face.
She hadn’t saved him, and she hadn’t saved Fairfold, either. “Hey, Hazel,” Leonie called, dancing to one side to make room in case Hazel wanted to join her atop the horned boy’s casket. Doris Alvaro was already up there, still in her cheerleader outfit from the game their school lost earlier that night, shining chestnut ponytail whipping through the air. They both looked flushed with alcohol and good cheer.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 19, 1907 — Alan Wheatley. Best remembered for being the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard Greene playing Robin Hood. In 1951, he had played Sherlock Holmes in the first TV series about him, but no recordings of it are known to exist. And he was in Two First Doctor stories as Temmosus, “The Escape” and “The Ambush” where he was the person killed on screen by Daleks. (Died 1991.)
Born April 19, 1925 — Hugh O’Brian. He was Harry Chamberlain in Rocketship X-M. (It was nominated in the 1951 Retro Hugo Awards given at The Millennium Philcon but lost out to Destination Moon.) He would later play Hugh Lockwood in Probe, not the Asimov Probe, the pilot for the sf TV series Search. His only other genre appearance I think was playing five different roles on Fantasy Island. Though I’m absolutely sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong (smile). (Died 2016.)
Born April 19, 1935 — Herman Zimmerman, 88. He was the art director and production designer who worked between 1987 and 2005 for the Trek franchise. Excepting Voyager, in that era he worked on all other live-action productions including the first season of Next Gen, the entire runs of Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, as well as six Trek films. As Memory Alpha notes, “Together with Rick Sternbach he designed the space station Deep Space 9, with John Eaves the USS Enterprise-B and the USS Enterprise-E. His most recognizable work though, have been his (co-)designs for nearly all of the standing sets, those of the bridge, Main Engineering (co-designed with Andrew Probert) and Ten Forward for the USS Enterprise-D in particular.” Not surprisingly, he co-wrote the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual with Rick Sternbach and Doug Drexler.
Born April 19, 1936 — Tom Purdom, 87. There’s very little on him on the web, so I’ll let Michael Swanwick speak for him in the introduction to his Lovers & Fighters, Starships & Dragons collection: “How highly do I regard Tom’s fiction? So highly that I wrote the introduction to the collection — and I hate writing introductions. They’re a lot of work. But these stories deserve enormous praise, so I was glad to do it.” He’s written five novels and has either one or two collections of his stories. He’s deeply stocked at the usual digital suspects.
Born April 19, 1946 — Tim Curry, 77. Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of course, but it’s not his first genre appearance. He’d appeared a year earlier at the Scottish Opera in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Puck. And yes, I know that he appeared in the live show which was at the Chelsea Classic Cinema and other venues before the film was done. Other genre appearances include playing Darkness in Legend, an outstanding Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, a most excellent genre film, Farley Claymore in The Shadow (great role), another superb performance playing Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as The Player, Gomez Addams in Addams Family Reunion, and Trymon in TV’s Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Darkness. And others too numerous to list.
Born April 19, 1952 — Mark Rogers. He’s probably best known for writing and illustrating the Adventures of Samurai Cat series, a most excellent affair. His debut fantasy novel Zorachus was followed by The Nightmare of God sequel. His novella “The Runestone” was adapted as a film of the same name. And his art is collected in Nothing But a Smile: The Pinup Art of Mark Rogers and The Art of Fantasy. (Died 2014.)
Born April 19, 1967 — Steven H Silver, 56. Fan and publisher, author, and editor. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer twelve times and Best Fanzine seven times. In 1995 he founded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and has served as a judge ever since. He has published the fanzine, Argentus, edited several issues of the Hugo-nominated Journey Planet. His debut novel After Hastings came out in 2020.
Born April 19, 1978 — K. Tempest Bradford, 45. She was a non-fiction and managing editor with Fantasy Magazine for several years, and has edited fiction for Fortean Bureau, Peridot Books and Sybil’s Garage. She’s written a lot of short fiction and her first YA novel, Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion. She was a finalist for three Ignyte Awards, the Ember Award for unsung contributions to genre, and twice for the Community Award for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre. With Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward she shared a 2020 Locus Special Award to Writing the Other for Inclusivity and Representation Education.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
Brewster Rockit is appropriate for today …and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that and…
But what is the bestselling comic of all time? Well, that depends on how you define comic.
Are we talking about single issues, or “floppies?” And if so, are we talking about the sales of one issue, or the series as a whole? Does that include collected editions and reprints? How do you account for changes in the retail market, from newsstands to specialty shops to digital, and the different reporting (or lack thereof) of each? How do you take into account the cultural changes since the ’40s, when over 90% of children read comics, compared to today’s globalized, media-saturated world? Should you account for the differences in population between America (331.9 million potential readers) versus Japan (125.7 million) versus, say, Finland (5.5 million)? Isn’t it apples and oranges to compare One Piece to X-Men to Peanuts, anyway?…
When it comes to the best selling single issue, the list begins at number five –
5. BATMAN: THE 10 CENT ADVENTURE BY GREG RUCKA AND RICK BURCHETT (MARCH 2002)
Most of the comics on this list are stunts of some sort, and selling a comic for literally just a dime in 2002 absolutely qualifies (most comics were $2.25 then). It’s actually a good story, kicking off the excellent Bruce Wayne: Murderer? plot line, but it was that nostalgic price point that sold 702,126 copies.
Along with books, maps are a popular item to find at the antiquarian book fair. The book featured above is one of the most sought-after celestial atlases in existence. Produced by Dutch cartographer Andreas Cellarius in 1661, Harmonia Macrocosmica is priced at a whopping $395,000.
Considered Cellarius’s magnum opus, this map was made to illustrate competing theories of celestial mechanics, or how the solar system worked. The universe’s heavenly bodies are depicted in vibrant colors throughout 29 extremely detailed, hand-colored, double-page engraved plates in the book. The images take theories put forth by great thinkers and scientists like Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, as well as lesser-known figures such as Aratus of Soli, and present them in an accessible way through images.
…Soon enough, Powell was recalling the spookiest things he’d seen in his years at the store. He described coworkers who’d heard or glimpsed figures moving around the corners, and instances where people watched books fly off shelves for seemingly no reason.
“That corner is where books fall off sometimes, in sci-fi, for some reason,” he said.
As we passed the portal, a hidden nook where my partner and I had signed up to sleep, we realized it was both secluded in the back corner of the store with books on U.S. history and located closest to the “haunted” shelves that books fall off of. We quickly decided we wouldn’t be sleeping there….
(17) THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Deep in a disused mind in Sardinia, scientists are assembling an experiment to find out just how much nothing weighs. Using an exquisitely sensitive balance beam and interferometric techniques cribbed from gravity wave detectors, they plan to switch on and off the Casimir effect using small temperature variations and measure the resulting change in the number of virtual particles that can exist between metal plates. If all goes well, they will have established a tight constraint on the energy of the vacuum. “How Much Does ‘Nothing’ Weigh?” at Scientific American.
It does something to you when you drive in here for the first time,” Enrico Calloni says as our car bumps down into the tunnel of a mine on the Italian island of Sardinia. After the intense heat aboveground, the contrast is stark. Within seconds, damp, cool air enters the car as it makes its way into the depths. “I hope you’re not claustrophobic.” This narrow tunnel, which leads us in almost complete darkness to a depth of 110 meters underground, isn’t for everyone. But it’s the ideal site for the project we are about to see—the Archimedes experiment, named after a phenomenon first described by the ancient Greek scientist, which aims to weigh “nothing.”…
…Geologically, Sardinia is one of the quietest places in Europe. The island, along with its neighbor Corsica, is located on a particularly secure block of Earth’s crust that is among the most stable areas of the Mediterranean, with very few earthquakes in its entire recorded history and only one (offshore) event that ever reached the relatively mild category of magnitude 5. Physicists chose this geologically uneventful place because the Archimedes experiment requires extreme isolation from the outside environment. It involves a high-precision experimental setup designed to investigate the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics—the amount of energy in the empty space that fills the universe….
… Researchers can calculate the energy of the vacuum in two ways. From a cosmological perspective, they can use Albert Einstein’s equations of general relativity to calculate how much energy is needed to explain the fact that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. They can also work from the bottom up, using quantum field theory to predict the value based on the masses of all the “virtual particles” that can briefly arise and then disappear in “empty” space (more on this later). These two methods produce numbers that differ by more than 120 orders of magnitude (1 followed by 120 zeros). It’s an embarrassingly absurd discrepancy that has important implications for our understanding of the expansion of the universe—and even its ultimate fate. To figure out where the error lies, scientists are hauling a two-meter-tall cylindrical vacuum chamber and other equipment down into an old Sardinian mine where they will attempt to create their own vacuum and weigh the nothing inside….
(18) NOBODY SURVIVES THE FLAME TRENCH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.]On this past Monday’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Josh Groban talked about his visit to NASA, where, among other things, he received a tour of the “flame trench.”
Fellow space enthusiasts Stephen Colbert and Josh Groban geek out over the details of Groban’s trip to NASA’s Artemis mission launch pad. Check out Groban’s latest role as the lead in “Sweeney Todd,” playing now at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Gordon Van Gelder, Rich Lynch, Lise Andreasen, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
The award’s mission is described on its website with a touch of irony: “Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire is the oldest French prize still in operation – since 1974 – as well as the most prestigious dedicated to the ‘literatures of the Imaginary’. The term ‘Imaginary’ covers all these ‘bad genres’ that are science fiction, fantasy, fantasy, as well as various fusions of these genres and ‘transfictions’ where, for example, some ‘non-mimetic’ elements creep insidiously into a so-called ‘general’ literature.”
The jurors for the award are Joëlle Wintrebert (president), Jean-Claude Dunyach (treasurer), Sylvie Allouche, Audrey Burki, Lloyd Chéry, Catherine Dufour, Olivier Legendre, Benjamin Spohr, and Nicolas Winter. The Secretary (not a member of the jury) is Sylvie Le Jemtel.
ROMAN FRANCOPHONE / NOVEL IN FRENCH
Capitale du Sud (Volumes 1 & 2) by Guillaume Chamanadjian (Aux forges de Vulcain)
Les Temps ultramodernes by Laurent Genefort (Albin Michel)
Les Flibustiers de la mer chimique by Marguerite Imbert (Albin Michel)
Composite by Olivier Paquet (L’Atalante)
Les Reines by Emmanuelle Pirotte (Le Cherche Midi)
ROMAN ÉTRANGER / FOREIGN NOVEL
Andrea Cort (Volumes 1 to 3) by Adam-Troy Castro (Albin Michel) [Andrea Cort series]
L’Île de silicium by Qiufan Chen (Rivages) [Waste Tide]
La Cité des nuages et des oiseaux by Anthony Doerr (Albin Michel) [Cloud Cuckoo Land]
Terra Ignota (Volumes 1 to 5) by Ada Palmer (Le Bélial’) [Terra Ignota series]
Jusque dans la terre by Sue Rainsford (Aux forges de Vulcain) [Follow Me To Ground]
Ou ce que vous voudrez by Jo Walton (Denoël) [Or What You Will]
NOUVELLE FRANCOPHONE / SHORT FICTION IN FRENCH
Histoire de la ville d’Aurée by Claire Duvivier (in Hypermondes #02, Les Moutons électriques)
Opexx by Laurent Genefort (Le Bélial’)
Dix légendes des âges sombres (recueil) by Jean-Marc Ligny (L’Atalante)
Splines (recueil) by luvan (La Volte)
NOUVELLE ÉTRANGÈRE / FOREIGN SHORT FICTION
Enfants de sang by Octavia Butler (Bifrost n°108) [Bloodchild]
L’Obscurité est un lieu (recueil) by Ariadna Castellarnau (L’Ogre) [collection of stories translated from Spanish by Guillaume Contré]
Un psaume pour les recyclés sauvages by Becky Chambers (L’Atalante) [A Psalm for the Wild-Built]
La Millième nuit by Alastair Reynolds (Le Bélial’) [Thousandth Night]
Collatéral by Peter Watts (Bifrost n°108) [Collateral]
ROMAN JEUNESSE FRANCOPHONE / NOVELS FOR YOUTH IN FRENCH
La Dragonne et le Drôle by Damien Galisson (Sarbacane)
La Princesse sans visage by Ariel Holzl (Slalom)
Bayuk by Justine Niogret (404 Editions)
ROMAN JEUNESSE ÉTRANGER / FOREIGN NOVELS FOR YOUTH
L’Ogresse et les orphelins by Kelly Barnhill (Anne Carrière) [The Ogress and the Orphans]
La Lumière des profondeurs by Frances Hardinge (Gallimard Jeunesse) [Deeplight]
Paramount+ today announced it has officially greenlit Star Trek: Section 31 starring Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh. In this special original movie event for the service, Yeoh will return to her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou, a character she first played in Star Trek: Discovery’s first season.
In Star Trek: Section 31, Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets and faces the sins of her past. Produced by CBS Studios, production will begin later this year….
In an upsetting action prior to the start of the fair, Ernest Moret, foreign rights manager for the French publisher Editions La Fabrique, was detained by U.K. police on arriving at St. Pancras Station from Paris. He was stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and detained for questioning without a lawyer present, allegedly to determine whether he was engaged in terrorist acts or in possession of material for use in terrorism, according to a joint press release from Editions La Fabrique and Verso Books, on Tuesday morning. Moret was traveling with the author Alain Damasio, a well-known French science fiction writer, and had planned to attend meetings at the fair before returning to France on Friday.
The police claimed that Moret had participated in demonstrations in France, presumably that threatened the authorities, as a justification for the initial detention. How this justifies detention in the U.K. is unclear. The detaining officers demanded that Moret surrender his phone and passwords. After he refused, Moret was formally arrested and accused of obstruction. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was still in police custody.
“We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of the freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism laws,” Éditions La Fabrique and Verso Books said in their release. “We consider that this assault on the freedom of expression of a publisher is yet another manifestation of the slide towards repressive and authoritarian measures taken by the current French government in the face of widespread popular discontent and protest. It is crucial for all defenders of basic democratic values to express in the strongest terms that we find this intolerable and outrageous.”
(3) BEWARE HACKED FAN FB ACCOUNTS. “Orange Mike” Lowrey reported today, “Several fans’ Facebook accounts have been hacked and hijacked; in addition to mine, I know that filk legend Tom Smith has been a victim. I don’t know when and how we will be able to recover our accounts. I am told that Tom Smith and I are not fandom’s only victims.”
Someone posted a dog adoption post to Lowrey’s FB page, apparently as a phishing scheme.
(4) BOOK TOWN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The Sunday Boston Globe had this article (including an interesting book reference/suggestion). Fortunately MSN.com picked it up, so it’s not paywalled: “A haven for bookworms in the Catskills”.
Book towns, which are exactly what you’d expect, are located mostly outside the United States — in the United Kingdom, Norway, New Zealand, Japan, India, etc. According to Alex Johnson, author of “Book Towns,” the definitive book on the subject: “A book town is simply a small town, usually rural and scenic, full of bookshops and book-related industries … it started with Hay-on-Wye in Wales in the 1960s, picked up speed in the 1980s, and is continuing to thrive in the new millennium.” The success of book towns is very good news for those of us who revere the printed word.
Luckily for local bibliophiles, Hobart Book Village, the only book town east of the Mississippi River, is not too far away, in the northern Catskills. It’s a bucolic, blink-and-you-miss-it hamlet of fewer than 500 souls that was reinvented as a book village in 2005 through the efforts of local entrepreneur, Don Dales. Dales is Hobart Book Village’s prime mover, unofficial mayor, and, as it happens, an accomplished pianist. He sought to revive a faded and economically depressed community and, after hearing about Hay-on-Wye, hit upon the idea of using books to do so. He bought up a few key buildings on Main Street and rented them to bookshops at drastically reduced rates (initially zero dollars). And it worked. Now, according to Dales, “instead of tumbleweeds, we have pedestrians walking down Main Street.” He adds, somewhat emphatically, that the name of the village is pronounced “Hobert.” So now you know….
And here’s some older (but probably less-paywalled) articles on Hobart:
New York’s Catskills is truly a unique destination for more reasons than one. Not only is it home to the abandoned Borsch Belt resorts, but it’s also scenic in all of its mountainside beauty. It’s often overlooked compared to its mountain neighbor to the north, the Adirondacks, but there’s one town, in particular, that has gained quite a reputation.
It might come as a surprise to know that book lovers should be adding the Catskills to their bucket list, and that’s thanks to one town: Hobart. This (very) small village is home to more bookstores than any other type of store in town, and that was done so intentionally. It’s a unique corner of the Catskill Mountains and is one that’s worth spending a day – or a weekend – exploring….
Calling all bookworms! This quaint little town in New York made up entirely of bookstores is the next spot to cross off on your summer bucket list….
(5) LEE HARDING (1937-2023). Australian writer Lee Harding died April 19. [Date corrected as requested by Belinda Gordon, on 6/23/23.] Jean Hollis Weber announced on Facebook:
Belinda Gordon (daughter of Lee Harding) writes that Lee died peacefully at 6.33 am this morning in Perth. He had been unwell for some time.
Harding was among the founding members of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, together with Race Mathews, Bertram Chandler, Bob McCubbin, Merv Binns and Dick Jenssen. He and John Foyster started the prestigious fanzine Australian Science Fiction Review in 1966.
His first published sff short story, “Displaced Person” appeared in 1961 in Science Fantasy. He also wrote two 12-part science fiction serials for ABC Education Radio and dramatized an H.G. Wells story for the same program. During his career he won two Ditmar Awards, for “Dancing Gerontius” (1970) and “Fallen Spaceman” (1972). In 2006 he was honored with the A. Bertram Chandler Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in Australian SF, presented by Australian SF Foundation.
(6) LARRY CARD. First Fandom member Larry Card died April 15 after an 18-month illness reports John L. Coker III. Arlan K. Andrews, Sr.’s writeup about the sad news included this background: “A member of Mensa and Intertel, Larry was an advanced ham radio operator, an expert in 19th Century telegraphy, and a black powder gun enthusiast. With a background in crypto, he served in both the US Army and Navy, as a technician at Bell Labs, and then at Naval Air Warfare Center (later Raytheon), in Indianapolis.”
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1975 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
A note about the Beginnings. Cat and Mike collaboratively choose both the authors and the works that the Beginnings that are from. Then Cat does the writing. The one for this Scroll was the choice of Mike.
Michael Bishop’s A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire was his debut novel. It was published by Ballantine Books forty-eight years ago in a hardcover edition.
It picked up a Nebula nomination, but critics were decidedly mixed on it were some comparing it favorably to the work of Le Guin and Tiptree while another critic thought it was “highly imperfect” whatever that means.
The 1980 revision SFE notes is rather different as it is essentially an author’s preferred edition that changes the meaning of the novel. No spoilers there really I’d say.
Now I’ve not read it, so I’d like your opinions on it. I must say that I did read the first several chapters of the 1980 revised edition and I am quite, quite impressed with what I read.
So now our Beginning…
PROLOGUE
Long ago there was a jongleur-thief in Kier, before Kier was yet a nation, and the name of the jongleur-thief was Jaud. Gla Taus, The World, was new in those days, only lately formed from the primordial slag, and in every situation in this new world Jaud acted out of the selfish center of himself. This was not unusual, for in the beginning the world was without law and the people had no word for conscience.
Jaud’s disposition was merry and cruel at once, and he chose to live by stealing. After each theft he whirled before his victim and deftly juggled the items he had stolen: rings, bracelets, coins, seashells, beads, digging tools, and even weapons. Often his victims applauded these performances. Only rarely did the aggrieved Gla Tausian try to recover his belongings, for Jaud was impatient of those who interfered with his juggling, and throughout the land his deadliness with knife and hand ax was well known.
In the infancy of Gla Taus, Jaud honored only Jaud and a few fellow thieves who served as his disciples and retainers, having recognized in him a sorcerer of chicanery and bloodthirstiness. For untold years, the Thieves of Jaud preyed upon the people of Kier before Kier was a nation. They made themselves a bastion in the Orpla Mountains, from which they undertook forays of theft, jugglery, and slaughter.
But as time passed, people drew together against the indifference of Gla Taus and the cruelty of Jaud. From these first feeble bands tribes arose, and from the tribes chiefdoms, and from the chiefdoms primitive states, and from the primitive states a nation that called itself Kier. Kier exercised dominion through the authority of the first Prime Liege, whom everyone knew as Shobbes or Law. Only Jaud and his fellow jongleur-thieves failed to acknowledge the preeminence of Law, for they were free spirits obeying no statutes but those written in the runes of their blood. How could they know that the superstitious taboos of the first bands had become the inhibitory customs of the tribes? That the customs had become ordinances, and that finally Shobbes had had these ordinances codified in writing?
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 18, 1884 — Frank R. Paul.Illustrator who graced the covers of Amazing Stories from May 1926 to June 1939, Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories from June 1929 to October 1940 and a number of others well past his death date. He also illustrated the cover of Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (Stratford Company, 1925), published first as a 1911–1912 serial in Modern Electrics. He was inducted into Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2009. Stephen D. Korshak and Frank R. Paul’s From the Pen of Paul: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul published in 2010 is the only work I found that looks at him. (Died 1963.)
Born April 18, 1930 — Clive Revill, 93. His first genre role was as Ambrose Dudley in The Headless Ghost, a late Fifties British film. He then was in Modesty Blaise in the dual roles of McWhirter / Sheik Abu Tahir followed by The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes playing Rogozhin. A choice role follows as he’s The Voice of The Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. As for one-offs, he shows up in The Adventures of Robin Hood, The New Avengers, Wizards and Warriors in a recurring role as Wizard Vector, Dragon’s Lair, the second version of The Twilight Zone, Batman: The Animated Series in recurring role as as Alfred Pennyworth, Babylon 5, Freakazoid in a number of roles, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Pinky and The Brain… that’s not even close to a full listing!
Born April 18, 1946 — Janet Kagan. She wrote but three novels in her lifetime, Uhura’s Song, set in Trek universe, Hellspark and Mirabile which is a stitch-up of her Mirabile short stories. The Collected Kagan collects all of her short fiction not set in the Mirabile setting. Her story “The Nutcracker Coup” was nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, winning the Hugo at ConFrancisco. (Died 2008.)
Born April 18, 1965 — Stephen Player, 58. Some birthday honor folks are elusive. He came up via one of the sites JJ gave me but there is little about him on the web. What I did find is awesome as he’s deep in the Pratchett’s Discworld and the fandom that sprung up around it. He illustrated the first two Discworld Maps, and quite a number of the books including the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Light Fantastic and The Illustrated Wee Free Men. Oh, but that’s just a mere wee taste of all he’s done as he did the production design for the Sky One production of Hogfather and The Colour of Magic. He did box art and card illustrations for Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame. Finally, he contributed to some Discworld Calendars, games books, money for the Discworld convention. I want that money.
Born April 18, 1969 — Keith R. A. DeCandido, 54. I found him working in these genre media franchises: such as Supernatural, Andromeda, Farscape, Firefly, Aliens, Star Trek in its various permutations, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hercules, Thor, Sleepy Hollow,and Stargate SG-1. Now I will admit that his Farscape: House of Cards novel is quite fantastic, and it’s available from the usual suspects. He’s also written quite a bit of non-tie-in fiction.
Born April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 52. The Tenth Doctor and my favorite of the modern Doctors along with Thirteen whom I’m also very fond of. There are some episodes such as the “The Unicorn and The Wasp” that I’ve watched repeatedly and even reviewed at Green Man. He’s also done other spectacular genre work such as the downright creepy Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, and and Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He’s also in the Beeb’s remake of the The Quatermass Experiment as Dr. Gordon Briscoe.
Born April 18, 1973 — Cora Buhlert, 50. Winner of the 2022 Best Fan Writer Hugo. With Jessica Rydill, she edits the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a most excellent site. She has a generous handful of short fiction professionally published. I’ve got her Paris Green: A Helen Shepherd Mystery in my far too long to-be-read list.
(9) TEACHING TOLKIEN. David Bratman shared these memories of Mike Foster, who died April 12.
…At the big 50th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings conference at Marquette University, where the papers are held, Mike gave a talk bristling with intelligent and clever ideas of how to teach Tolkien.
For instance, he outlined the papers he assigned in his Tolkien class. First, an analysis of any chapter – of the student’s choice – from any of Tolkien’s major works: how it contributes to the story. Second, a study of a work Tolkien might have read and its possible influences. Third, an evaluation of any full-length critical study. And last, a study of the evolution of one particular character.
But my favorite line of Mike’s – one I refer to often – was one he occasionally noted on an essay: “That happened in the film you obviously saw, not in the book you were supposed to have read.”…
(10) CELEBRATE MARVEL COMICS’ BIRTHDAY IN MARVEL AGE #1000. Pick up a giant-sized spectacular starring the X-Men, Spider-Man, and more to celebrate Marvel Comics’ birthday on August 31 when Marvel celebrates the release of Marvel Comics #1, the one that started it all, and the 84 years of stories and characters since then that have shaped pop culture. To mark the occasion, Marvel will be releasing MARVEL AGE #1000, a massive commemorative issue that includes contributions from some of the most storied creators in Marvel history.
J. Michael Straczynski and Kaare Andrews create the Marvel Universe in a backyard!
Dan Slott and Michael Allred depict a crucial turning point for Captain Marvel!
Rainbow Rowell and Marguerite Sauvage explore the blossoming relationship between Cyclops and Jean Grey!
The original Human Torch finds his purpose thanks to Mark Waid and Alessandro Cappuccio!
The Silver Surfer confronts Mephisto under the guidance of Steve McNiven!
Jason Aaron and Pepe Larraz detail Thor’s impact on a mortal life!
Ryan Stegman explores the support network of Spider-Man’s friends and family!
Armando Iannucci and Adam Kubert pit Daredevil up against a very human problem!
And more!
In addition, MARVEL AGE #1000 will bring back a classic and beloved Marvel Comics tradition: The Marvel Comics Value Stamp! Who or what will the ultimate Marvel Value Stamp, #1000, feature?
Check out Gary Frank’s cover below. For more information, visit Marvel.com.
The rights to the works of the late Jorge Luis Borges, considered Argentina’s most internationally significant author of the 20th century, have fallen into limbo because his widow died last month without a will.
The revelation this week surprised the country’s literary circles, because Borges’ wife, Maria Kodama, devoted much of her life to fiercely protecting his legacy. She set up a foundation under the writer’s name, but did not detail plans for what should happen after she died, even though she was battling breast cancer….
…Borges died in 1986 at age 86 and left Kodama, a translator and writer whom he had married earlier that year, as his only heir. They never had children. She died March 26, also aged 86.
(12) CORGO SHIP. [Item by Daniel Dern.] See the silly image on this Facebook page.
Researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) have created the world’s first fully edible rechargeable battery. Key foodie ingredients of the new battery may include extracts from almonds, pomegranates, mushrooms, capers, seaweed, charcoal, and beeswax. The electrodes also make use of food-grade gold leaf, which may invoke thoughts of extravagant cuisine, but the combination of the flavors outlined isn’t going to win any culinary awards. This low-power rechargeable battery could become a key component in the burgeoning field of edible electronics, with solutions mainly targeting medical devices and the food safety.
The IIT researchers say that their invention was inspired by living organisms which generate electricity. Organisms typically use “redox cofactors to power biochemical machines,” and this is the base technology for this research. In its current state, the edible battery isn’t going to crank out as much voltage as an electric eel though, and it doesn’t even sound powerful enough for tackling the more modest demands of a smartwatch, for example. A proof-of-concept edible rechargeable battery created by the research team operated at 0.65 V, sustaining a current of 48µA for 12 minutes. Don’t worry though, the researchers are already working on cells with both greater capacity and density.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, John L. Coker III, Joyce Scrivner, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]
