The Frank R. Paul Awards 2024 winners were announced today at halftime of the Buffalo 2024 NASFiC masquerade.
The Buffalo NASFiC sponsored this year’s awards. The winner receives a trophy (featuring a 3D print of the “Tiger-bot” smashing a car, from FRP’s cover for the September 1935 Wonder Stories), and an honorarium of $500.
2024 FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS (for 2023 calendar year)
By Michaele Jordan: Friends, I usually write to tell you about a current book I’ve just read, or a current movie I’ve just seen. And I am writing now about a movie I’ve just seen. I watched it just last night. But it’s not current. It’s almost twenty years old. But trust me, this film is a delight – well worth the trouble of hunting it up in the archives.
As always, we start with the credits. Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest is a 2006 animated fairytale/fantasy film, written and directed by Michel Ocelot and animated at Mac Guff Ligne, the Parisian animation and visual effects studio. It was Ocelot’s fourth feature, following Kirikou and the Sorceress, and his first use of 3D computer graphics, although he did not use them to produce lifelike imagery, but rather to enhance the texture and mood of a fairy tale.
It stars: Hiam Abbass as Jénane, Cyril Mourali as Azur and Rayan Mahjoub as young Azur, Karim M’Riba as Asmar, and Abdelsselem Ben Amar as young Asmar.
The story is simple. Azur and Asmar are raised as brothers by Jénane. But they’re not. Blond, blue-eyed Azur is the son of a nobleman, whom Jénane has been hired to care for. Dark-eyed Asmar is her son. But these petty distinctions make no difference to the happy trio. She raises them lovingly, and fills their days with tales of the beautiful Djinn-fairy, imprisoned in a palace and awaiting rescue. Both boys vow to rescue her. Neither reflects that they can’t both marry her.
But the idyll can’t last. When the boys reach adolescence, Azur’s father appears. His son no longer needs a nanny, and is sent to a private tutor. Jénane and Asmar are kicked out of the house.
It is years before they meet again. But Azur is still haunted by memories of the Djinn-fairy and goes to seek her. He starts by travelling to Jénane and Asmar’s homeland. Jénane has become a rich and successful merchant. Asmar has joined the Royal Guard.
Their old friendship cannot fully resume as Asmar is also haunted by memories of the Djinn-fairy, and both boys are still determined to find her and marry her. But they must work together to find her. And then . . . one of them can marry her, and some other happy ending must be found for the other.
Like I said, it’s a simple story. But it is entirely engaging – almost hypnotically so, in fact – due to the animation. I cannot stress enough how beautiful this movie is. You will not be able to take your eyes off it. Need a sandwich or a bathroom break? You will be hard pressed to claim it. You will carefully run it back a few minutes before pausing it, so that you do not miss a single frame. Sometimes you’ll pause it for no reason except to admire the picture. The beauty of it embraces and enhances the tale. I promise you, you want to see this!
The prize was created to celebrate “excellence, originality, and the very best in crime fiction from UK and Irish authors” whose novels were published in paperback during the eligibility period. The winner receives £3,000 and a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakstons Brewery.
Other awards announced at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival were:
THE HOTEL. An interesting building (more on that a bit later) but I don’t think it was truly ready for the convention. I was told that it had run out of food last night — if so, not so good planning on its part. And one of the three elevators has been out of service since about 3-4 days before the start of the convention with no estimate when it will be repaired.
As for the elevators which do work, there’s an interesting steampunk vibe with the room floor display.
THE WONDERFUL OLD GENESEE BUILDING. The building that is occupied by the Hyatt Regency opened back in 1923 as a multi-tenant office building. It survived various boom and bust cycles over the decades until, in 1976, it went into bankruptcy. Hyatt reached agreement with the city of Buffalo to have a hotel in the space the building occupied, but there was enough community resistance to the original plan of razing the building to make way for a characterless glass-walled tower that an enterprising architectural firm came up with a way to include the building into a new and better overall design.
There was an addition of a new atrium and the new Hyatt hotel opened in February 1984. The facade of the old building is still a prominent feature that segues the atrium into the hotel proper. It’s a grand space.
The original building facade.
PANEL: THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE +50. Friday morning panel looking back at the Niven-Pournelle novel from 1974. Another partly virtual panel with (l-r) Donald Wyatt, Jr., Entwife Judy, JMac, and two online participants. Oh group mind, help me with who they are.
Overall, a pretty good retrospective. It wasn’t a Motie-esque dissection, but it did delve into a lot of the details and nuances of the novel.
BEHOLD THE FANZINE LOUNGE! It’s located next to the gaming area, which itself is only marginally busier.
Still, this is an improvement from yesterday, when the fanzine lounge was locked up the entire day.
BUFFALOS EVERYWHERE. As you might expect, statues of bison are fairly common here in Buffalo. This one is “Molly” and she’s located on the walkway over Pearl Street between the hotel and the convention center.
(Photo by Andy Porter, but since it’s my phone he’s doing it as a work for hire. In this case he works really cheaply!)
PANEL: BOOKS TO FILM.
(L-R) Vaughne Hansen, Catherine Cohen, Alan Dean Foster, Lawrence Connolly, and Richard Sparks
Pretty informative and interesting, from a nuts-and-bolts deep dive perspective. Lots of useful information for prospective screenwriters interspersed with many amusing anecdotes.
THE DEALERS ROOM, ART SHOW, FAN TABLES, AND FREEBIE TABLES AREA
All these are in the Convention Center. There is still a huge amount of unused space, probably enough to stage a fannish softball game like the one at the 2013 Worldcon in Texas.
PANEL: GALAXY QUEST +25
(L-R) Joshua Palmatier, Randy Hoffman, JF Garrard, Ira Nayman, and John-Allen Price
The panel went out of its way to avoid movie trivia associated with the film. Instead, there was a lot about how the movie affected the career path on some of the actors and how fandom embraced the film. But the most memorable thing that happened was when the real-time voice recognition onscreen text kept pranking Nayman. The first time he had the microphone it interpreted him as saying “penis 45 penis 45 penis 45”.
The next time, it captioned him “shut up shut up”, and the time after that “more country music please”. Didn’t quite upstage the panel, but it came close.
PANEL: HEINLEIN: HOW DOES HE HOLD UP TODAY?
(L-R) David Gerrold, David Ritter, Entwife Judy, and Stephen Wilk
As expected, the panelists drew a dividing line between the early Heinlein who wrote entertaining and sense of wonder so-called “juveniles” and the later Heinlein who wrote bloated and self-indulgent novels. The panel did a good job dissecting many of Heinlein’s stories and novels, and the consensus seemed to be that, yeah, it all does still hold up today, even though some of it is obviously retro. We’re all still fans.
…Penned by Joshua Kaplan, a Hollywood writer whose credits include HBO’s Tokyo Vice, TERF imagines a confrontation between Rowling and the stars of Harry Potter over her views on transgender rights.
The production is topical given Rowling’s near-daily pronouncements and hardened rhetoric on how trans rights have come into conflict with women’s rights. Her posts on X (once Twitter) have put her further at odds with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint in recent months, and Kaplan sees TERF as a “family conversation” between loved ones with differing views.
Staged by veteran Edinburgh Festival Fringe producers at Civil Disobedience, TERF (an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist usually deployed in a pejorative context) had to change venue from Saint Stephens Theatre to the Assembly Rooms amid concerns over the controversy the play was attracting.
Barry Church-Woods, the co-founder of Civil Disobedience, said that the team is now putting security and other measures in place for protests. He told Deadline that they anticipate audience members could attempt to disrupt the play as it is performed.
“We expect that most people, if they’re intending on disrupting what we’re doing, that will happen in the auditorium of the theatre. We have processes in place that are going to deal with that,” said the producer, who has previously worked on Edinburgh shows with the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race star Courtney Act….
(2) GLASGOW 2024 PUBLISHES FINAL PROGRESS REPORT. This week the Worldcon published its sixth electronic Progress Report, which due to there having been a PR #0 is numbered Progress Report 5. Download the PDF here. Cover by Sara Felix.
PR5 includes news from all areas including:
A final update from Convention Chair Esther MacCallum-Stewart
A list of our 6,000+ registered members and ticket holders
Membership statistics and demographics, with 33 countries represented from around the globe
Practical information to help attendees arrive in and enjoy their time at the convention, from site maps to badge collection arrangements and discounted local travel passes
Full details and timings for our Special Events – including the Hugo Award Ceremony, Masquerade, Opera, Orchestra, theatrical performances, concerts, and dances
Updates on Volunteering, Accessibility and Childcare Services, as well as our approach to Sustainability
Our updated Code of Conduct, which all members and ticket holders are expected to abide by when attending the convention in person or online.
Those lucky enough to attend May’s Disney‘s upfronts at the North Javits Center were treated to clips, teases and appearances from some of the world’s biggest stars.
In the spotlight from the Bob Iger-led Mouse House were hits from the Disney stable including The Acolyte,Welcome to Wrexham, Abbott Elementary and a wealth of ESPN sports shows. The combined budget must have been astronomical.
But almost completely absent from the upfront festivities was Doctor Who, the iconic British sci-fi series that Disney+ now co-produces with the BBC following what was undoubtedly one of the biggest global TV show deals of the past decade. Doctor Who was handed a minor bit of real estate at the North Javits, but its lack of front-and-center placement may spin a yarn about the series’ position in the Disney priority log nearly three years on from the deal being struck.
… Following the conclusion of the the first Disney-BBC Doctor Who season several weeks ago, Deadline has taken the opportunity to analyze its performance both locally and across the pond, its critical reception and just what the future has in store for the deal. Noises that it may not last beyond its initial two seasons are already reverberating around international TV circles, and one source close to the production tells us that they feel its future hangs in the balance already. Disney, the BBC, and co-producers BBC Studios and Bad Wolf all declined Deadline’s interview requests for this article….
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will recognize legendary human computer Dorothy Vaughan and the women of Apollo with activities marking their achievements, including a renaming and ribbon-cutting ceremony at the center’s “Building 12,” on Friday, July 19, the eve of the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
At 9 a.m. CDT, NASA Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche will begin with a discussion about the importance of Vaughan and the women of Apollo’s contributions to the agency’s lunar landing program and their significance to today’s Artemis campaign. Other highlights include a poetry reading, a recital by Texas Southern University’s Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Debate Team, and a “Women in Human Spaceflight” panel discussion….
…Following the program, the ribbon-cutting ceremony will begin at Building 12, which will thereafter be named the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo.” The dedication is a tribute to the people who made humanity’s first steps on the Moon possible.
Li Jun Li (Wu Assassins) is set as a series regular opposite Nicolas Cage in Spider-Noir, the upcoming MGM+ and Prime Video live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir.
From executive producers/co-showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and Sony Pictures Television, Spider-Noir tells the story of an aging and down-on-his-luck private investigator (Cage) in 1930s New York who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero.
Li will play a singer at the premier nightclub in New York. In addition to Cage, she joins previously cast Lamorne Morris as Robbie Robertson….
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 19, 1969 – Kelly Link, 55.
By Paul Weimer: Genius Grant recipient. Small Press Owner, Small Beer Press. Anthologist.
Oh, and just perhaps the best short fiction fantasist of our age.
No biggie, right? I think of her work, be it ”Magic for Beginners”, “The Faery Handbag” or “The Hortlak” or any of the numerous other stories she’s written, as being in an overlapping series of subgenres that are centered in magic slipstream realism. To this core central subgenre, Link ably adds elements of urban fantasy, horror, mystery, into this basic dough and bakes rather tasty treats of stories that linger in the mind and in the soul.
Kelly Link
I think of Link as a magic realist counterpart to Ted Chiang: her actual output of stories is not actually all that massive. She is careful with word choice and writing, shaping words and sentences to sublime effect. Link’s stories are never to be skimmed over, ever. You will, in the end, regret it. Her work needs and demands attention, and sometimes, like the work of Liz Hand, I feel like as a reader I am “not in her league” and don’t always grok what she is doing in a story. (To be fair the kind of fantasy Link writes is stuff I do not commonly read besides her fabulous work.
But that’s really wrongheaded of me to make her seem inaccessible. In fact, like Chiang, I think of Link as an excellent ambassador for genre fiction in the worlds of literary fiction, luring readers from outside the genre into it, hopefully to stay. Certainly “Magic for Beginners” is probably the one story I would hand to someone who hasn’t read much or any contemporary fantasy and wanted to give it a try.
(7) COMICS SECTION.
Thatababy continues crossing over into neighboring strips.
(8) WHAT IF? Check out the next trio of covers in the monthly Disney What If? variant cover series, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Avengers and X-Men.
The new covers see Goofy, Donald, and Daisy fill in for Wolverine, Captain America, and Black Widow for their iconic team-up in Uncanny X-Men #268; Mickey, Minnie and more enter the X-Men’s revolutionary Krakoan age that kicked off in House of X #1, and the gang assembling for one of the Avengers’ most pivotal moments, the “Disassembled” storyline, in Avengers #500. For more information, visit Marvel.com.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #59 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY GIADA PERISSINOTTO
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #61 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY PAOLO MOTTURA
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #63 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY FRANCESCO D’IPPOLITO
(9) REMEMBERING H.R. PUFNSTUF. The LA Breakfast Club will host “Sid Krofft: 55 Years of Weird” on September 4. Tickets at the link.
CELEBRATE ALL THINGS KROFFT, INCLUDING PUFNSTUF’S ANNIVERSARY! On September 6, 1969, the world was introduced to the series H.R. PufnStuf and with it, the zany genius of brothers Sid and Marty Krofft! In the decades that followed, Sid & Marty continued to innovate TV, films, live shows and even theme parks with their signature style of puppetry, visuals and storytelling.
Join us on September 4th to witness Sid Krofft’s honorary initiation into The LA Breakfast Club! We’ll then join Sid on a rollicking discussion about the beloved projects that define his groundbreaking career.
Sep 04, 2024, 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM
The Los Angeles Breakfast Club, 3201 Riverside Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90027, USA
…Now there is a new dinosaur species on the paleontology block, Fona herzogae.
HAVIV AVRAHAMI: Small plant-eating dinosaurs – they were bipedal. If you took, like, a Komodo dragon tail and attached it to the back of an ostrich, that’s kind of what Fona would have looked like.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
That’s Haviv Avrahami. He’s a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University and was part of the team that identified this new dino. They published their research in the scientific journal The Anatomical Record this month.
AVRAHAMI: It was a small dinosaur. It was about 7 feet long, so probably would have been as long as Shaq would have been if he was laying down….
Vincent Price and Peter Lorre were in 3 Roger Corman films together, and the two shone as a hilariously odd couple. I would gladly watch their chemistry in any film! So here’s a compilation of all my favorite bits of them.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The 2024 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda published today by the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon contains the text of 12 amendments passed at the Chengdu Worldcon that are up for ratification; 20 newly proposed constitutional amendments; and the full text of 12 resolutions – but not the text of two other resolutions described by the committee as calling for the “censure of certain groups and named individuals over the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards”.
The titles of the two resolutions are:
“Statement of Values for Transparency and Fair Treatment” submitted by Chris Garcia, James Bacon, Frank Wu, Chris Barkley, Steve Davidson, Kirsten Berry, Chuck Serface, Paul Weimer, Andrew E. Love, Claudia Beach, Nina Shepardson, Bonnie McDaniel, Tobes Valois, and Linda Robinette.
“Chengdu Censure” submitted by Terri Ash, Kevin Sonney, Cliff Dunn, and Kristina Forsyth.
The resolutions will still be brought to the floor of the Business Meeting, but the substance of the charges will not be allowed to be discussed. Instead, Glasgow 2024, availing themselves of procedures in Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised, will treat the censure resolution as “a motion to form a committee on investigation as the first step in disciplinary proceedings.” This committee will be elected by the meeting to conduct an investigation into the allegations contained in the resolutions — including a reasonable attempt to speak with the members accused — and report back to the 2025 Business Meeting in Seattle, USA.
Glasgow 2024 has assumed the authority to say the Business Meeting will be placed in executive session while all of these proceedings are handled, and that session will be exclusively focused on the formation of an investigative committee into the charges. Glasgow 2024 says they will suspend livestream coverage during the related portion of the Business Meeting. The details of debate will not be published in the publicly available minutes, nor will this section of the meeting be shown in the posted recording of the Business Meeting.
The committee says this procedure has been formulated after taking “legal counsel to ensure adherence to Scottish law.”
We are concerned that publication of these items, as well as public debate about them in Glasgow 2024 spaces, will bring us out of compliance with Scottish libel and defamation law and expose Glasgow 2024, the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), and/or its members to significant legal liability.
But their statement in the agenda also says, “The World Science Fiction Society also has the clear right to hold its members accountable for their conduct and do so as transparently as possible.”
…All eyes now on the upcoming season, which is in the can and due to launch next year, along with a long-rumored set of spin-offs that comprise the new ‘Whoniverse’ including The War Between the Land and the Sea. Fans were delighted when this spin-off was alluded to in the ’73 Yards’ episode of the latest season and Deadline is told that shooting will commence in September.
One of our sources close to the production believes Disney will “need to make a decision” on its future relationship with the show soon after The War Between the Land and the Sea wraps, and this could have a bearing on how long the in-demand Gatwa — who will lead a West End production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the end of this year — remains Doctor. Although the next season has wrapped, this source predicts the final episode has been left open-ended, with the possibility remaining that Gatwa could regenerate into his successor if he chooses to exit. Gatwa’s agents hadn’t responded to Deadline’s request for comment by press time.
… A fundamental principle of the many-worlds interpretation is that any contact between the different worlds is impossible. But a fundamental principle of popular culture is that it’s not, physics be damned. The beauty of using parallel worlds in fiction is that it can neatly exploit our human anxiety over the consequences of taking and having taken actions. In a sense, it reveals the God-like, world-shaping power of the human ability to choose and the depth of our innate desire to live our lives again.
As Brit Marling, co-author and star of Another Earth, told an interviewer: “Sometimes in science fiction you can get closer to the truth than if you had followed all the rules.”…
…Quantum-inspired fictional worlds are back in the spotlight after featuring in two Apple TV+ dramas this year – Constellation and Dark Matter. Both use superposition as a device for allowing characters to take forking paths. The former was cancelled after one season, while the latter finished its season in June. The two shows illustrate what’s problematic about the genre….
(3) JMS DEFENDS THE DISCLAIMER. J. Michael Straczynski says he’s gotten sharp criticism for beginning the new edition of Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits with this disclaimer.
“Harlan Ellison’s work epitomized and reshaped the speculative, science fiction, and horror genres across decades. Ellison’s stories and novellas have been an inspiration to subsequent writers, and his impact can still be seen in contemporary television, culture, and literature.
“However, while these stories are outstanding works across multiple genres, they may contain outdated cultural representations and language. We present the works as originally published. We hope that you enjoy discovering, or rediscovering these stories.”
Several folks here have used terms like “disgraceful” and “shameful” to discuss the disclaimer at the front of Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits, and the decision not to use the original computer tape images in I Have No Mouth. Let me address these frankly, and in that order.
When the disclaimer was first brought up by the publisher, I bristled at it. (And that part is literally just one sentence inside of one paragraph.) But it was explained to me that having that one sentence in that one paragraph meant that nothing in the stories themselves would have to be changed or edited. The book could go out without so much as a misplaced comma. Just as importantly, it meant the book could be sold into high school and college bookstores, school and public libraries, and curricula without impediment.
The fellow who did the YouTube video posted twice here made the observation, on this topic, that he basically didn’t give a shit if the book was available to high schools and universities, even though most everyone reading this discovered Harlan’s work at around that age. All he cared about was having the book of stories he’d already read and owned be readily available in a bookstore so he could buy one more edition of it, new readers be damned. (And it’s nearly impossible to get enough copies into print to be in stores without being able to sell the book into schools, libraries and the like.) So yes, I pulled the trigger on that, and I’d do it all over again given how this has worked out.
Jumping to the computer tape issue…what folks need to understand is that while Greatest Hits is certainly a wonderful opportunity for fans to collect some of Harlan’s best work in one place, that’s not the primary target of this book. Everybody reading this already has all or most of those stories, in the original books and in some cases even the original magazines. It’s not one more fan service compilation.
Greatest Hits is a primer of Harlan’s work for newcomers. As such, the whole point is to make the book as accessible as possible to new readers, many of whom had never previously even heard of Harlan Ellison. It’s not so much that I wanted folks to want to buy the book, I wanted to make sure there was nothing that could prompt them to *not* buy the book.
The disclaimer was part of that decision. So was removing the computer tape image and substituting the actual words themselves, especially given the current technological state of things. Corollary: You’re watching the latest Dune movie, and one of the main characters goes to a highly sophisticated computer system to give it instructions on the next issue by loading in a mountain of 3 inch floppy disks. It would get a laugh.
Computer tapes, *outside of their original historical context* (about which more in a second), would have the same effect on a modern reader. It’s being offered as a story right now to a modern readership, at a time when such tapes aren’t used anymore, and folks either wouldn’t know what it was (and some say “well, let them do their homework” but that’s a self-defeating line of reasoning when the whole point is to get the work out to that new readership) or they would know and it would break the illusion and be considered laughable.
So yes, I pulled the trigger on that as well. Because again: this is a primer, by definition an accessible introduction to a writer’s work.
As a result of all this, at a time when so many writers are having their words altered, softened or otherwise bastardized in order to be allowed into the marketplace, Harlan’s stories went out intact.
…The first print run of the regular edition Greatest Hits sold out before it was even formally published. There was another print run of that edition, and two print runs of the exclusive edition.
As I write these words, there are now roughly *sixty thousand copies of Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits in print*….
…The surrealist artist Salvador Dali was known for art featuring melting clocks, bizarre landscapes and dreamlike imagery. He died in 1989, but visitors at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., can ask him questions about his art or anything else. NPR’s Chloe Veltman reports that Ask Dali uses generative AI to bring the artist back to life.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The question – why are the clocks in your paintings melting? – provokes a long, poetical response from Ask Dali. Here’s a snippet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Salvador Dali) My dear questioner, think not of the clocks as merely melting. Picture them as a vast dream caressing consciousness.
VELTMAN: Museum visitors just pick up the lobster-shaped receiver on a replica of Dali’s famous telephone sculpture to speak with him. The museum says the artificial intelligence Dali has responded to well over 30,000 questions since the installation launched in mid-April. People ask about things like the artist’s famous curling moustache…
A drunk animatronic bear who was a Disney World fixture for over 50 years has reportedly been cancelled over concerns he could offend alcoholics.
Liver Lips McGrowl did not make an appearance when the “Country Bear Jamboree” – one of the final attractions designed by Walt Disney before his death – returned on Wednesday following a seven-month refurbishment.
The attraction, which features 18 animatronic bears performing country-style Disney songs, first opened its doors in 1971 and has been a mainstay of the theme park for decades.
Disney decided to cancel the character because the phrase “liver lips” could be offensive to alcoholics, according to the Disney Inside the Magic blog.
“The decision to remove Liver Lips McGrowl was driven by concerns over the character’s name. The term “liver lips” is considered derogatory and offensive,” it reported….
… The bear has been replaced by Romeo McGrowl, who looks identical to his predecessor – including his protruding lips – but sports a sky-blue jumpsuit and blonde quiff….
(6) BOB NEWHART (1929-2024). [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The one and only Bob Newhart is gone. A quick glance at his credits on IMDb might give the impression that his contributions to entertainment were modest. That would be utterly false.
If you’re young enough to be unfamiliar with his work, I urge you to investigate not only his genre appearances, but his entire body of work. So much of it has what might be called sfnal sensibilities. For instance, the entire run of Newhart (his 1982–90 TV show) was just skew enough to our mundane world that you could be convinced it was deliberately set in an alternate reality. So, too, were many of the standup comedy routines he was beloved for before he ever set foot on a soundstage.
His contributions to specifically genre media were also significant. They include: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under, The Simpsons (as himself), Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer: The Movie, Elf, The Librarian(s) series (3 TV movies & a TV series), and two appearances on Svengoolie (one as himself).
…Understated in his delivery and physically small of stature — he looked like the former accountant that he was — Newhart nonetheless left a sizable footprint on comedy. His first album, 1960’s The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, was a blockbuster; featuring his trademark one-sided conversations, the album won multiple Grammys including Album of the Year and achieved the commercial success of a huge pop album….
…Some of his most popular bits — marketing executives advising Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers and a harried driving instructor — were included on The Button-Down Mind. (“What’s the problem?” Lincoln’s publicist is overheard saying to him before the Gettysburg Address. ” … You’re thinking of shaving it off? … Um, Abe, don’t you see that’s part of the image?”)…
…He gained a new legion of fans after appearing as Will Ferrell’s tiny North Pole dad in Elf and he guest-starred in several episodes of The Big Bang Theory as Professor Proton, the host of Leonard and Sheldon’s childhood-favorite TV science show. Those appearances led to Newhart finally winning an Emmy in 2013 (for “Outstanding Guest Actor”) after seven previous nominations….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 17, 1967 – Paul Cornell, 57.
By Paul Weimer: I came to Cornell different. Not thanks to all of his excellent and groundbreaking work with Doctor Who (his DW novels were and are groundbreaking, and elements of those novels have made their way into multiple episodes of the rebooted shot. Nor was it for all of his work in television, from Coronation Street to Robin Hood, and much more. I didn’t even come to Cornell thanks to his extensive work in comics, from Captain Britain to Wolverine to Demon Knight. I was not aware of any of that vast oeuvre…at first.
Paul Cornell
I came to Cornell’s work first thanks to the SF Squeecast. SF Squeecast was one of the high-water marks of professionals being fans and doing fannish things that was a major source of controversy back in the early 2010’s. I remember the discussions at Loncon in 2014, whether such productions such as Squeecast should really be “eligible” for fan awards, since they were “Stacked with pros”. But I knew, and personally knew, some of the people on the SF Squeecast, so I began listening to it, and discovering the work of people I didn’t know.
Just like Paul Cornell.
So I got in on the ground floor when Cornell announced his Shadow Police novel, London Falling, and I gave it a try (and even managed to get an ARC). I enjoyed it highly. It was part of a trend of Magical London novels out at that time — Ben Aaronovich, and others explored this as well. I highly enjoyed London Falling, and its two sequels, and so my reading of Cornell began in earnest. I started reading his Doctor Who work (The Discontinuity Guide in particular, was a revelation) and have continued to read him ever since.
Cornell’s wide oeuvre and styles continue to amaze. I also particularly like his switch from urban London to the more pastoral rural fantasy of the Witches of Lychford novellas. And again here, like the London novels, he has counterparts in work such as that of Juliet McKenna. I like to think of Cornell’s work as an amplifier and booster of themes and subgenres and ideas, adding his voices to a chorus and making his work, and the subgenre he works in, stronger and better.
Oh, and one last bit. For a number of years, Cornell came to Convergence, a local big con here in Minneapolis. Every year, Cornell had a special panel, where he would go out to a parking lot and teach us poor Americans how cricket works. These demonstrations were fun, entertaining, and I always came away feeling that I better understood the game. His absolute fun and joy in showing us the game is the takeaway and mental image I have of Paul.
(9) WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BATTLE OF ENDOR’S MOST COURAGEOUS WARRIORS? This October, Steve Orlando, Álvaro López, and Laura Braga’s Star Wars: Ewoks tell a new saga set directly after the events of Return of the Jedi. For more information, visit Marvel.com.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Ewoks’ continued adventures beyond the Star Wars films. The Ewok Adventure, also known as Caravan of Courage, followed up on the popularity of the adorable—but formidable—creatures who secured the Rebellion’s victory during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi. To celebrate the anniversary and the Ewok’s mighty legacy, they’ll star in a new 4-issue limited comic series this October—STAR WARS: EWOKS!
A team of Imperial-led bounty hunters and scavengers arrive on the Forest Moon of Endor searching for a secret cache of Imperial weaponry! Are they prepared to face off against the battle-ready Ewoks who took down so many of their ranks? Who is the mysterious new warrior Ewok returning to Bright Tree village, and what is their connection to Wicket W. Warrick?
STAR WARS: EWOKS #1 (OF 4): Written by STEVE ORLANDO; Art by ÁLVARO LÓPEZ & LAURA BRAGA
COVER BY PETE WOODS
VARIANT COVER BY DAVID LOPEZ
ACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHER
The news comes a few months after Season 2 of the live-action video game adaptation premiered on the streamer in February. Amblin Television, Xbox and 343 Industries are currently shopping Halo in hopes of finding it a new home, Deadline understands….
NASA has cancelled its VIPER moon rover program due to rising costs.
VIPER, short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, was a robotic mission intended to land near the moon’s south pole and spend 100 days scouting for lunar ice deposits. The rover was slated to launch in 2025 to the moon aboard an Astrobotic Griffin lander as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative (CLPS). Now, it appears VIPER will be scrapped for parts or potentially sold to industry. The decision to axe the VIPER mission was announced today (July 17) in a teleconference; cancelling the program is expected to save the agency an additional $84 million in development costs. NASA has spent about $450 million on the program so far, not including launch costs.
…At the time of its cancellation, the car-sized VIPER was completely assembled and undergoing environmental testing to ensure the rover could handle the physical stresses of launch and the harsh environment of space.
NASA is now looking to “potentially de-integrate and reuse VIPER scientific instruments and components for future moon missions” Kearns said today, but will first ask both U.S. and international industry partners for any interest in using the rover as-is….
Hot enough to melt metal and blanketed by a toxic, crushing atmosphere, Venus ranks among the most hostile locations in the solar system. But astronomers have reported the detection of two gases that could point to the presence of life forms lurking in the Venusian clouds.
Findings presented at the national astronomy meeting in Hull on Wednesday bolster evidence for a pungent gas, phosphine, whose presence on Venus has been fiercely disputed.
A separate team revealed the tentative detection of ammonia, which on Earth is primarily produced by biological activity and industrial processes, and whose presence on Venus scientists said could not readily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena.
The so-called biosignature gases are not a smoking gun for extraterrestrial life. But the observation will intensify interest in Venus and raise the possibility of life having emerged and even flourished in the planet’s more temperate past and lingered on to today in pockets of the atmosphere….
A nearly complete stegosaurus skeleton sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday for a record $44.6 million — the most ever paid for a fossil.
The dinosaur, nicknamed “Apex” — which lived between 146 and 161 million years ago in the Late Jurassic Period — was originally expected to sell for between $4 million and $6 million, according to the auction house.
Sotheby’s has said Apex is the “most complete and best-preserved Stegosaurus specimen of its size ever discovered.”
A meteor crashed into Earth’s atmosphere over New York City yesterday (July 16), putting on quite the show for spectators throughout the region.
The meteor created a rare daytime fireball that traveled west into New Jersey at speeds of up to 38,000 mph (61,000 km/h) according to NASA Meteor Watch.The American Meteor Society received several reports of a daytime fireball on July 16, 2024 over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Dramatic fireball footage was captured over Wayne, New Jersey and Northford, Connecticut….
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George lets us eavesdrop on the “Independence Day: Resurgence”. As a commenter says, “Forgetting this movie existed was super easy, barely an inconvenience.”
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “he’s a marvel” Dern.]
OPENING CEREMONIES. Wayne Brown on stage. Alan Dean Foster (in straw hat) said this is the first convention of any kind he’s been to in ten years.
GoHs seated at podium, left to right: Suford Lewis, Tony Lewis, Nilah Magruder, Kaja Foglio, Phil Foglio, Alan Dean Foster.
VIRTUAL GUEST IS INTRODUCED. Cheryl S. Ntumi, all the way from Ghana.
And yeah, the real time closed captioning was (as usual) doing wonky things.
PANEL: EARLY FANDOM. Late afternoon panel about “Early Fandom in Upstate New York”. David Ritter of the First Fandom Foundation described the 1943 Schenectacon and the 1944 Buffalocon, including mini histories of many of the fans from that era. About a dozen in the audience, and we were all fascinated and entertained.
PANEL: ARE TRADITIONAL SF CONS DYING? Short answer: probably.
Randy Hoffman, Michael Ventrella, Tony Lewis, and David Stephenson expound on the topic.
HYBRID PANEL: An entertaining one: “Science Fiction in 60s Comics”.
Left to right: Stephen Wilk, Chuck Rothman, D.G. Valdron and (virtually) Martin Shoemaker
Glasgow 2024 has told Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow and Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty they will not be allowed to attend the convention. McCarty says he did not receive an explanation why; Yalow says he did not request one.
Yalow said to File 770:
I was told by the Glasgow committee that they would not permit me to attend the convention in person.
I had all of the monies that I had paid returned to me.
Asked what explanation he was given for this decision, and who communicated it to him, Yalow replied:
It came from the Vice Chair. I did not ask for an explanation, since I accept that it’s within the power we grant to Worldcon committees.
Dave McCarty today told a listserv of former Worldcon chairs that Glasgow 2024 notified him they are refunding his attending upgrade and will not sell him a virtual membership. McCarty says, “This was done without explanation or any prior contact on this topic and questions about it were not answered.”
File 770 asked the Glasgow 2024 committee for an explanation and got this reply:
The convention’s formal response is as follows:
Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, believes in and respects everyone’s right to privacy. Various sections of applicable Scottish and international law, including the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation, legally limit what we may disclose. To maintain our commitment to individual privacy and confidentiality, we cannot discuss any person’s membership status or attendance.
So at this time Yalow and McCarty are representing they’ve had no explanation of Glasgow’s action, nor is Glasgow offering one to the public.
Prior to that, in January, Worldcon Intellectual Property (W.I.P.), the California non-profit corporation that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society including the mark “Hugo Award”, announced it had censured several directors including McCarty and Yalow. McCarty was “censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.” Ben Yalow was “censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.”
(1) FANAC.ORG LOOKING FOR FANZINES TO SCAN AT WORLDCON. Joe Siclari, Mark Olson and Edie Stern say FANAC.org will be travelling to Glasgow next month.
We have arranged with the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon (August 8-12) to have a scanning station at the con, to scan and digitally archive more fanzines. This has been exceptionally helpful and successful at past conventions.
What you can do to help: Please help us grow this digital archive of fandom. If you’re a fanzine editor, bring your old fanzines to the fan table area at the con. If you have convention publications not already online, bring them too (fanac.org/conpubs/). We will scan them onsite and be able to give them back to you at con. Bring memorable and worthwhile fanzines by other editors as well. We will reach out to them for permission before we put them online.
We do have to unstaple and restaple the zines to scan them, and if they are perfect-bound, we may not have time at con.
If you can, please drop us a note (to [email protected]) telling us what you are bringing so we can be prepared.
Stop by and say hello: Even if you don’t have fanzines or other pubs to scan, stop by the table and say hello, and pick up your history ribbon. We’d like to see you!
How big is it? The archive has over 24,500 fanzines, 5,000 convention pubs and more than 5,000 photos. It’s over half a million pages and grows every week!
(2) PARADIGM SHIFT? In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviews Chris Nashawaty’s new book The Future Was Now (Flatiron): “1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing”
…So, what is it with this fateful eight? Well, Nashawaty has a solemn case to make. He writes:
“During the eight weeks spanning between May 16 and July 9, Hollywood’s major studios would release eight sci-fi/fantasy films that would not only go on to become cornerstones in the pop culture canon four-plus decades on, they would also radically transform the way that the movie industry did—and continues to do—business, paving the way for our current all-blockbusters-all-the-time era.”
That is quite a claim. Nashawaty is by no means sure that he likes the result—“what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience”—but he proposes that, for most of us, going to the cinema is now “one endless summer,” which is much less sunny than it sounds. Like it or not, we live in a Conanistic world.
Whether or not you buy into this notion of 1982 as a red-letter year, it’s worth asking when the redness first began to dawn. Does Nashawaty, in his soothsaying capacity, even have the right decade? Note the elaborate tribute that he pays not only to Spielberg’s “Jaws” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars”—the first released in May, 1975, the second in June, 1977—but also to another summer hit, Scott’s “Alien,” from 1979, which seemed like a suppurating antidote to the antisepsis of “Star Wars.” (I still don’t comprehend how you can love both of those movies equally. You make your choice, and you stick to it.) Clamp the three together, top them with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which bore the imprint of Lucas and Spielberg, and there, I suggest, you have the precursor of 1982, and a more compelling template for so much that has blazed and crawled across our screens ever since.
Viewed from that perspective, what the filmmakers were doing, when they created the eight works that are covered in “The Future Was Now,” was not crunching through barriers or setting fresh trends. They were cashing in. This is not a lowly skill, or an easy one; indeed, in some respects, it is the raison d’être of the movie trade. But let’s not pretend that Hooper, Lisberger, Meyer, and the rest of the guys were a movement, conjoined by a common iconoclastic purpose.
Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket ship maker SpaceX from California to Texas, blaming a new law that bars school districts in the state from requiring that parents be notified of changes in their child’s gender identification.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law, the of its kind in the nation, on Monday. It says school staff can’t be required to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.
It also requires the California Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school….
Join us for a captivating evening as we bring together two iconic actors who have both portrayed the legendary character Sulu in the Star Trek universe. “A Tale of Two Sulus” features George Takei and John Cho in a dynamic conversation that delves into their shared legacy as Starfleet’s esteemed helmsman. Beyond their roles in Star Trek, Takei and Cho are celebrated authors of graphic novels and passionate advocates for social justice. This event promises an engaging exploration of their diverse careers, creative endeavors, and the impactful contributions they have made to important causes. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear from two trailblazing artists whose work continues to inspire and resonate across generations.
George Takei and John Cho. Moderated by Michael Giacchino
[The] Collision Awards, which honor animation across all disciplines (marketing and communications, commercials, TV, film, experimental, game and XR), were announced this morning. The awards honor work by studios, production companies, brands, agencies and individuals with a varied list of categories specifically focused on the intersection of creativity and technical skills unique to this community and inclusive of everyone working in the medium of animation and motion design.
“We’re here to help them survive. We’re here to free them.” Aggressive has revealed an official trailer for an indie sci-fi short film creation called Escape Attempt, from filmmakers Dan Shapiro & Alex Topaller. This is a full-on, 30 minute hard sci-fi film, which is also being pitched a series pilot. It already premiered at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival last year and won a Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. No idea when it will be out in full to watch, but it’s showing at the Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal next this summer. A soldier escapes from a WWII concentration camp. Once he is out, he finds himself on an unknown planet in an unknown future controlled by a homicidal alien race….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 17, 1954 – J. Michael Straczynski, 70.
By Paul Weimer: For all the trouble the series had in getting produced, and getting aired, and me finding it on the dial when it was moved yet again, J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 is one of the defining SFF series in my science fiction diet and education.
Is it a perfect show? No, and part of that is the capricious nature of television and the “unexpected” fifth season which leaves that season weaker than the others. And frankly, I do like Bruce Boxleitner much better as Captain Sheridan than I do Michael O’Hare in the first season as Commander Sinclair. I can kind of see where Straczynski was going to possibly go with Sinclair had he been allowed to do so and he gets it most of the way there (my theory: Babylon Squared would have been a fifth season show, and so Sinclair ends his time here by going back and becoming Valen, after defeating the Shadows). But what we got is pretty darned special to me. I’m on my third iteration of having physical media of the shows (four if you count me trying to videotape episodes back in the 90’s).
The post Babylon 5 series Straczynski works are of course a mixed bag. The movies are a mixed bag to be sure. Crusade had some interesting ideas but never got a chance to actually do its thing. I did highly enjoy the animated Babylon 5 movie, The Road Home. I honestly don’t think it works except for deep Babylon 5 fans, but that’s me, so it did feel like coming home.
Of course, one can’t talk about Straczynski without mentioning his huge impact on a number of different comic runs. I suspect that for a lot of fans, Babylon 5 is off to the side, forgotten. Instead, his fans can talk endlessly about his numerous comic projects and runs. It is his runs with Squadron Supreme, Spiderman, Superman, and a number of others (mostly recently, a new take on Captain America) that for a whole slew of fans defines what Straczynski is a writer.
I only found out years later after the fact that he was a writer on a weird cartoon I watched in the 1980’s. No, not He-Man, although he wrote for them and was one of the minds behind the original She-Ra. No, the strange and weird and wondrous Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which had the titular character fight malevolent plant creatures…in SPAAACE. What can I say, the 1980’s were weird, man. But it goes to show the wide breadth and interests of Straczynski’s work.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
Speed Bump warns that the picture has left the attic.
Wizard of Id knows people have heard this motif before!
FX‘s upcoming “Alien” series has a new title, according to network boss John Langraf and showrunner Noah Hawley: “Alien: Earth.”
… “Alien: Earth” serves as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” which kicked off a franchise that is now comprised of eight films. Alongside Hawley’s series, a new film titled “Alien: Romulus” is set to debut later this summer….
…Not counting the animated Clone Wars movie, there have been 11 movies in the Star Wars series to date: nine encompassing the Skywalker Saga, and two spin-off movies. The posters for all of those are ranked below, based partly on how well they tie to the film they’re attached to, but based mostly on how visually striking they look overall. To those who might disagree, too bad, because “I am the Senate” and have “unlimited power.”
Collider says the worst poster is the one for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
There’s a horse on the poster for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but no room was given to Carrie Fisher, even though she was rather confusingly first billed, owing to prior footage of her being incorporated into the movie. Princess Leia still plays a part in the film, and was likely to be given a bigger one had Fisher not sadly passed away. Han and Luke were featured prominently on other sequel trilogy movie posters, but maybe there was a good reason not to feature Leia here.
There’s a goofy blaster round visible, thanks to Poe (a running theme across the two worst Star Wars posters), Zorii Bliss is featured way too prominently for a character who does basically nothing, and even the apparent clashing of two lightsabers looks clunky. Kylo Ren’s helmet is there, and presumably another Kylo Ren is holding that red lightsaber? And the placement of the Millennium Falcon between Rey and Kylo looks dreadful. This one’s pretty bad overall; a lackluster poster for a lacking (and overlong) movie.
…The aging orbital outpost’s demise has been in the works for years now, with NASA hoping to destroy it by 2030, marking the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation in Earth’s orbit.
And not everybody’s happy with the plan. Jean-Jacques Dordain, who was the director general of the European Space Agency when the station was being built, and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin say its life should be extended instead, giving future scientists a chance to continue studying outer space.
“As two among many builders of ISS, we recommend to those in charge to consider other options than destroying” the station, Dordain told Forbes in an interview.
Instead, he argued, the ISS should be transferred “to future generations… leaving them to decide” its fate, he added.
To do it, Dordain and Griffin argue SpaceX’s deorbit vehicle should be used to rescue the station, not destroy it. Such a rocket would increase the ISS’s altitude, not lower it, allowing it to enter a stable orbit much farther from the Earth.
In an open letter published by SpaceNews earlier this month, the two space agency legends argued that boosting the ISS “from its present 400-kilometer altitude to an 800-kilometer altitude circular orbit requires a boost of about 220 meters per second, about the same as required for precise deorbit control.”…
(12) WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This student has designed and built a model rocket using standard Estes solid fuel rocket motors that can takeoff and land vertically. He designed a two-axis gimbal so that he would have thrust vector control plus the microcontroller and software to integrate sensor data and drive the gimbal to keep the rocket vertical. Separate Estes motors were used for ascent and decent. He also designed landing gear to absorb the shock of any slight off-vertical landing. “High School Student Makes Model Rocket That Can Land Vertically, Like A Falcon 9 Booster” at IFL Science.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day (and night) Daniel Dern.]
