(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF IS SAFE. In response to the Eaton Fire, Nikki High, owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, turned the shop into a “mutual aid pit stop”. The shop itself is a mile or two away from the active fire area, outside the current evacuation zone but in the warning area.

When the bookstore opened yesterday they broadcast that they had food items and many other household necessities available. They put out a call for donations needed which was answered abundantly because they later said they are full for today – but check back for what is needed tomorrow.

Octavia’s Bookshelf is at 1353 N. Hill Ave. in Pasadena.

Nikki High has also posted this video of damage to the area:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Octavia's Bookshelf (@octavias_bookshelf)

Publishers Weekly has more coverage in “Brush Fires, Severe Weather Threaten L.A. Bookstores and Publishers”.

(2) CULTURAL ICONS LOST TO FIRE. There are probably more, but these have already made the news.

“Zane Grey House in LA Consumed by fires” reports the New York Times.

In Altadena, the Eaton fire has already claimed two cultural treasures: the 1907 Zane Grey Estate, the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California’s great Western novelists; and the 1887 Andrew McNally House, a Queen Anne gem that was home to the mapmaking tycoon who co-founded Rand-McNally.

Here’s a photo of the place Curbed LA ran in 2020.

The Theosophical Society building and archives in Altadena also burned.

…The Pasadena location was “the world’s largest archive of Theosophical materials, including a library with 40.000 titles, the entire archive of the history of the TS, including ca. 10.000 unpublished letters, pertaining to HPB, the Mahatmas, W.Q. Judge, G.R.S. Mead, Katherine Tingley, and G. de Purucker, membership records since 1875, art objects, and countless other irreplaceable materials. The archives also contained works of Boehme, Gichtel, donations from the king of Siam including rare Buddhist scriptures, and so on.”…

(3) RELEASED ON THEIR OWN RECOGNIZANCE. In “The Last Orphan Stories” John Grayshaw shares what he learned while pursuing the interesting question of what became of the stories purchased by Harlan Ellison for Last Dangerous Visions that did not get included in the recent anthology produced by Ellison’s literary executor J. Michael Straczynski. He reached out to the authors and the responses ranged from warm to hostile.  

…But ever since JMS announced LDV was finally seeing the light of day, I was very interested to see which stories would be included, which would not and especially what became of the ‘orphans’. In practical terms, the rights to any of the stories not included by JMS revert to the authors/estates. For 45 years all fans (we are both fans, if you have not guessed by now!) have had is the list of titles and authors and endless speculation, fueled by our imaginations. In a way this is appropriate for SF, the literature of the imagination.

I decided to take a look at the list of unpublished stories and contact the authors, or their estates in the case of this who have died, to ask them if these stories have been or will ever be shared with the world. I have followed the original structure of the three ‘books’ as set out by Ellison in the following discussion and I have highlighted the titles of the stories where I had a reply from them or their estate. Sadly not all my inquiries were successful, but I have shared as much information about the authors as I could in the hopes that maybe down the line we will hear more about these unpublished stories. Short biographies of the writers have been included; many of these will be known to you, some may be less well known and sadly there are a few for which almost no information is available….

(4) WHY IT’S HARD TO TELL. The New Yorker tries to figure out, “Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?” “Tracy Wolff, the author of the ‘Crave’ series, is being sued for copyright infringement. But romantasy’s reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.”

(5) THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE NO CATNIP SIGN. Camestros Felapton returns with more “Missing Moments in Movie History: When Worlds Collide”. No excerpt because that would spoil your fun. However, you don’t need to be told how this turns out: Never count on Timothy the Talking Cat to save humanity.

(6) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 14 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast takes us back to the Seventies to learn about “Tony Isabella’s Essential Edit of My Early Avengers Script Assist”. (A dozen possible places to listen to the show are hat this link.)

While destroying hundreds of pages of bad poetry I scribbled as a teenager, I made a few surprising discoveries which cause me to reminisce about my poem “Ode on Comic Book Company Loyalty,” written 18 days after I was hired by Marvel Comics, my extremely rough sketch for the second Scarecrow splash page, my team-up with Quicksilver and 7-Eleven to freeze your brain with Slurpees during the summer of 1975, Tony Isabella’s heavy edit on my early Avengers script assist (and why we should all be grateful), my forgotten horror pitches bounced by Marvel in 1974, and much more.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Valentin D. Ivanov.]

Born January 10, 1950 — Lyubomir Nikolov-Narvi. (Died 2024.)

By Valentin D. Ivanov: Lyubomir Nikolov – Narvi was a towering figure among the Bulgarian speculative genre writers. Author, translator, and journalist, he is best known for the translation of the Bulgarian translation of The Lord Of The Rings in 1990 making this great book accessible for the first time in our country. My first memory of Lyubomir Nikolov dates soon after that, at a meeting of the Sofia society of speculative fiction, heuristics and prognostics (what a name!) “Ivan Efremov”. The political transformation of the country had just begun, the publishing had “exploded” and immersed us in books and authors that we had only heard about before – Tolkien among them. Nikolov held the equivalent of a master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and journalism.

Narvi read a freshly translated story at that gathering, but it is his own writing I can talk about here. The Mole, Worm under the Autumn Wind, On the Wall and especially The Tenth Righteous Man. The last one won the fans’ award for work of the 1990s decade. Although he was primarily a social science fiction writer, that particular book contains a wonderful and original science fiction assumption that deserves to be noted. I will reveal it here, even though it is an important plot-forming element, because I am not optimistic about the chances the novel would ever get an English translation: the Universe undergoes… a phase transition, the fundamental physical constants change and as a result the nuclear fission reactions become much “easier” to achieve. 

It is enough to light a small fire and the aches can exceed the critical mass and blast into another Hiroshima. Lyubomir Nikolov investigates in the books the consequences of giving such immense powers to everyone. Pretty much like what the nanotechnologies have the potential of doing, but he reaches the same effect by means of physics rather than technology. A lesser writer may have turned this into a cheap horror tale; not Narvi – his pen gave birth to a Greek tragedy of epic proportions, with its own Odysseus figure.

He passed away less than a year ago and was active until almost the end: recently he published a two-volume novel The Gray Road – a tale of power struggle on a terraformed Moon where the humanity has slid back into a nearly feudal society.

Narvi is one of the fathers of the game books phenomenon that took our country by storm in the 1990s too. Unfortunately, I hardly knew this side of his writing – I missed the entire game books phenomenon and only rediscovered it much later when I had to teach my own children to read… with his game books.

Lyubomir Nikolov holds Eurocon (1987), Sotscon (1989) and Graviton (2001) awards.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 10, 1969 — Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

Fifty-three years ago this evening, Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” first aired on NBC. It was the fifteenth episode of the third season. 

It written by Oliver Crawford who also penned “The Galileo Seven”. It was based on a story by Gene L. Coon who was writing under his pen name “Lee Cronin” due to contractual reasons. Coon was the showrunner for the series through most of the second season and was responsible for such major elements as the Klingons and the naming of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet Command. 

The co-stars here were Frank Gorshin as Commissioner Bele and Lou Antonio as Lokai. Gorshin would be known in this period for his recurring role on Batman as The Riddler. Lou Antonio did a few genre one-offs. 

The episode has since been rated as one of the best of the Trek series with Collider, Hollywood Reporter, PopMatters, SciFi and ScreenRant all rating it among the best episodes produced. 

Spock’s comment that “Change is the essential process of all existence” which remains one of the most memorable lines of dialogue ever said on Trek comes from this episode.

The original version when Beale and Lokai run through the Enterprise shows the burning cities of World War II Europe. The remastered version shows the Cheron cities still burning from space. That scene was done because the episode was running short.

It’s streaming on Paramount+. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Carpe Diem is subtle. Pat yourself on the back when you get it.
• Eek! finds a bad moment to look up.
• Free Range has a Jedi doomsayer.
• Lio appreciates a guest reader.
• Pardon My Planet meets the marrying kind.
• The Argyle Sweater keeps its teeth clean.
• Wumo thinks there’s a cop in Oz.

(10) GOREYGRAM. [Item by Steven French.] The Paris Review shares “The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey”.

Tom Fitzharris and Edward Gorey met one afternoon in 1974 when Fitzharris, long a fan of Gorey’s books and illustrations, bumped into him outside of the Town Hall, the performance space in Midtown Manhattan. Gorey—in his trademark fur coat, long beard, and sneakers—was immediately recognizable. The two struck up a brief but intense friendship. When Gorey was in New York, they met frequently, especially to go the ballet—Gorey planned his time in the city around the New York City Ballet’s performance schedule. His summers were spent in Cape Cod. It was in August of that year that Gorey began sending Fitzharris mail, richly illustrated both inside and out. Reproduced [here] are four of the fifty notes, quotations, and letters Fitzharris received over the course of their correspondence.

(11) GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE AND ASK THE HORSE. Sounds like a variation on “Let the Wookiee win”. From Fighter Guy.

(12) UK VIEWS MERCURY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC reports “New images of Mercury captured by UK spacecraft BepiColombo”.

Astrium in Stevenage was where SF² Concatenation  co-founding editor  Graham Connor. If we still have him, he would undoubtedly have designed the probe’s onboard communication system.

A spacecraft built in the UK has captured new images of Mercury as it made its sixth and final flyby ahead of entering the planet’s orbit in 2026.

BepiColombo was built by the Stevenage-based company Astrium, now Airbus, and launched in 2018.

The spacecraft comprises two satellites that will gather data for at least a year, and needs special shielding to withstand the heat from the sun.

Monitoring cameras on the spacecraft captured images of the planet as it flew 295km (183 miles) above Mercury’s surface, including views of the planet’s north poles, as it was lit by sunlight.

(13) IT ROLLS. IT FLIES. BUT WHAT, NO BOAT? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A mere monster SUV is so yesterday. Chinese company XPeng AeroHT has announced a 6-wheel SUV/truck with 4 seats for the land vehicle and an additional 2 seats in the included manned hexacopter. All powered by electricity. They call this configuration a “Land Aircraft Carrier“. The company website assures potential buyers that pre-sales are coming soon. “XPeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier comes with onboard EVTOL” at Wallpaper*.

… Whilst this particular combo occupies something of a legislative grey area, at least in heavily certified airspaces like Europe and the USA, XPeng has set out to make the aircraft as easy as possible to fly. Controls are reduced to a single-lever, take-offs and landings are automated and an autonomous flight system takes control of navigation. ‘Five minutes to learn, three hours to master,’ is the relevant strapline….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Valentin D. Ivanov, Danny Sichel, Scott Edelman, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]