(1) GENESIS OF SF ANTHOLOGIES. A Deep Look by Dave Hook turns its attention to “The First SF Reprint Anthology – ‘The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction’, Donald A. Wollheim editor, 1943 Pocket Books”.
…The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction was the first anthology of reprinted science fiction. Another important aspect of this anthology is that it was the first one with “science fiction” in the title.
Finally, it was probably the first paperback of science fiction. After first publication in hardback in 1933, Lost Horizon by James Hilton was published in paperback in 1939 by Pocket Books. I have not read it, but what I found suggested that it is probably more fantasy than SF. I could be wrong.
R. D. Mullen makes a great case for the importance of paperbacks to science fiction in Science Fiction Studies Volume 1, No. 3, Spring 1974 in essay “AN INDEX TO AMERICAN MASS-MARKET PAPERBACKS”…
… On this basis, I believe that The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction was important both for what it was and as a harbinger of easier access to SF by more people….
(2) HOW MICHAEL WHELAN GOT HIS START. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] Michael Whelan writes interestingly about how he broke into professional illustration, along with pics of some of his early book covers. “1975: Year in Review”.
Ever since I can remember, it seemed natural to draw things that interested me. I just did it. I wasn’t aware of wanting to be an artist until the concept of a career impinged on my mind, but in any case I never thought of it as a serious option until my third year in college.
I had grown to think that I had to be something professional, and since I’d always had an interest in human anatomy, I was intending to become a doctor. In college I was able to separate what I wanted to do from what I thought was expected of me, and in the latter half of my junior year I changed my major to art.
After graduating from San Jose State University, I attended The Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. I enrolled hoping to acquire some mysterious quality of refinement I felt was lacking in my work.
I knew it would be a big mistake to attempt to find my first commission with anything less than professional-level work in my portfolio…
The rest of Whelan’s article tells why he was more surprised than anyone when sf publishers said his work made the grade.
(3) NOT HIS BEST VINTAGE. Jason Sanford’s latest Genre Grapevine devotes a long passage to justifying Erin Cairns’ disproven complaints against Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, in the process shading File 770’s post “Two Accusations Against Ekpeki Disproved”. Sanford refuses to account for the critical fact that Cairns made up two of the worst accusations in her “ODE Ethics Report”.
First, when Erin Cairns claimed that Ekpeki had left her name off the byline when submitting their co-authored story, she merely assumed that must have happened because it was a way she could make sense of how Ekpeki was responding to her, and how she was being ignored by the magazine’s editors. She didn’t know whether that had actually occurred when she made the claim. It wasn’t true. Her name was on the byline of the cover letter and the manuscript. I’ve seen the magazine’s archived copies.
Second, Cairns, a white woman, was distressed because she was under the impression the publication their story was submitted to was a “Black voices magazine”. Cairns emailed the magazine about her concerns and received no answer from them. Therefore, in her report she represented her belief about the magazine’s policy as a fact. It wasn’t a fact. Through contact with an editor of the magazine involved File 770 learned that it was not inappropriate for Cairns’ co-authored story to be submitted to the magazine, which has published a white author in the past.
Jason Sanford had exactly the same opportunity as File 770 to fact-check Cairns’ story. He did not choose to do it, instead devoting the Genre Grapevine for September/October 2024 to a Queeg-like exercise of geometric logic denying Ekpeki’s self-defense:
…In Ekpeki’s response, he essentially says the story was co-written by both of them and he submitted it without her name due to “miscommunication and misunderstandings and assumptions on both sides from two people in not great situations.” Ekpeki also says all the claims Cairns made were incorrect.
However, his argument doesn’t hold up for me. I see it as semantics and legalese, trying to rationalize away what happened. For example, Ekpeki said in his report that “As for her name not being on the bi-line, even if that were true (which it isn’t), it would not be theft, or even an attempt at theft, just an oversight, unless there was an intention to eventually publish it without her name on the bi-line.” And he then says that the magazine he submitted the story to wasn’t a Black voices publication because the magazine “caters to Africans and African diasporans. So there was no malfeasance there. She was eligible to be on the mag.”
That claim is absolutely wrong. As a white person born in South Africa, Cairns specifically said she wasn’t eligible to submit works to the magazine….
Sanford rejected Ekpeki’s statement that her name was on the byline. Yet it was. And about the magazine not being a “Black voices publication”, how did Sanford establish that claim was “absolutely wrong”? By the circular process of referring back to Cairns’ report. Not by pursuing third-party verification, through which he could have learned that it is Cairns’ claim that was wrong.
(4) MOONFALL. Slashfilm discovers there’s a new record-holder for “The Least Scientifically-Accurate Sci-Fi Movie, According To Neil deGrasse Tyson”.
Know that when celebrated astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson nitpicks the bad science commonly encountered in mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, he’s not trying to spoil anyone’s fun. He’s just being a nerd, and I think we can all respect that. There’s nothing shameful about possessing a lot of scientific knowledge, and pointing out the physics and astronomical errors in a movie can only, one might hope, encourage filmmakers to be more accurate next time….
… There are a few movies, however, that would strain the credulity of anyone. Michael Bay’s 1998 thriller “Armageddon,” for instance, is about a team of oil drillers and astronauts who fly to an oncoming comet to blow it up. On a 2024 episode of “The Jess Cagle Show,” Tyson pointed out several reasons why blowing up a potentially lethal comet is a bad idea. In fact, he once felt that “Armageddon” was the most brazenly unscientific sci-fi film ever made.
But “Armageddon” was recently supplanted by an even stupider movie. Tyson has some harsh words for Roland Emmerich’s 2022 mega-dud “Moonfall.”…
“It was a pandemic film […] — you know, Halle Berry — and the moon is approaching Earth, and they learned that it’s hollow. And there’s a moon being made out of rocks living inside of it. And the Apollo missions were to visit and feed the moon being.* And I … And I just couldn’t … I thought ‘Armageddon’ had a secure hold on this crown. But apparently not.”…
(5) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Batman movie (1966)
By Paul Weimer: Batman 1966 film, or some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.
The Batman movie was, for me, just a long two-part episode of the Batman 1960’s TV series. I didn’t even know for years that it was meant to be a movie, I just thought it was a long episode of the second superhero show I remember watching. (The first is another story entirely).
Come back me to the days of the 1970’s and endless reruns. Among the reruns on Channel 5 (I swear, by the time I finish doing these anniversaries, you filers will know every nuance of TV in NYC in the 70’s and 80’s) was the 1960’s Batman TV show. I’ll save my thoughts about the entire show for another day.
Today we’re talking about the movie. It’s the classic set up, have several supervillains (Catwoman, Penguin, Joker, and Riddler) team up for their greatest plot yet, which Batman and Robin must foil. Sadly, Julie Newmar was unable to play Catwoman for the movie, and instead fell on Lee Meriweather. I’m sorry, but Lee is a distant third behind Newmar and the last Catwoman, Eartha Kitt, in my book. She’s not bad, but she doesn’t quite inhabit the role as the other two actresses do.
The plot is silly but the movie has a lot of the extra tropes and gadgets that people associate with the entire series but were only in this movie or were much more prominent in this movie. The Batboat. Bat Shark repellent. Batcycle. Batcopter. Catwoman with a secret identity. Someone figures out a way into the Batcave! Lots of silly fights and chases.
And of course, the bomb. In trying to save some civilians, we are treated with Batman carrying a preposterous large bomb with a fuse, unable to dispose of it safely. He becomes so exasperated by this that he utters the memorable line “some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”
The movie itself is not a bomb. Sure, Batman is a very different character these days. But the movie is pure fun, and it never takes itself too seriously, not even in the denouement.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
January 12, 1980 — Kameron Hurley, 45.
So I’ve been re-listening to Kameron Hurley’s space opera The Stars are Legion as I write this Birthday essay. A most excellent story indeed.
Her time travel novel which I listened to recently, The Light Brigade, is one the best works in that sub-genre I’ve encountered. It was nominated for a Hugo at CoNZealand.
Her first novel which I need someday to listen to (if it’s in audiobook format) is the start of her matriarchal Islam culture Bel Dame Apocrypha biopunk trilogy. Her term, not mine.
The Worldbreaker trilogy which begins with The Mirror Empire I find delightful with its merging of hard SF underpinned by magic in a space opera setting. Now that shouldn’t work, should it? Really. But it magnificently does.
And let’s talk about her non-fiction. The Geek Feminist Revolution which garnered a BFA is a collection of previously published blog posts and none news essays written for here. One of the first, “We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” got a Hugo for Best Related Work at Loncon 3, and she also won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer.
Her exemplary short stories have been collected so far in Meet in The Future and Future Artifacts. Meet in The Future was nominated for an Otherwise Award.
Of course, everything she’s written is available from the usual suspects.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Lio tries to be a good neighbor.
- Off the Mark shows what cats are doing with Zoom.
- Speed Bump reveals a surprising thing about a dog’s space suit that you probably don’t want to know.
- Tom Gauld hypothesizes about why she’s a Sleeping Beauty.
- Tom Gauld wonders how to tell the difference between this trio.
(9) WARWICK DAVIS TO BE HONORED BY BAFTA. “Warwick Davis to Receive BAFTA Fellowship” – Variety has the story.
Warwick Davis, the British star best known for his appearances in the “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” franchises, is to be awarded the British Academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship.
Recognizing those who have made an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, games or television, the honor will be presented at the BAFTA film awards on Feb. 16….
(10) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. The Week has learned “Florida condos sinking at ‘unexpected’ rates”.
For as long as humans have endeavored to build upwards toward the sky, they have also been forced to contend with inexorable laws of nature — ones that are not always so accommodating to our species’ vertical endeavors. In the modern era, that tension is perhaps best exemplified in Florida, where coastal erosion, sinkholes, and other environmental factors have become a constant challenge in the march toward upward construction.
Nearly three dozen structures along Florida’s southern coast sank an “unexpected” amount between 2016 and 2023, according to a report released this month by researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. All told, “35 buildings along the Miami Beach to Sunny Isles Beach coastline are experiencing subsidence, a process where the ground sinks or settles,” the school said in a press release announcing the results of its research. Although it’s generally understood that buildings can experience subsidence “up to several tens of centimeters during and immediately after construction,” this latest study shows that the process can “persist for many years.” What do these new findings mean for Miami-area residents, and our understanding of how to build bigger, safer buildings in general?…
(11) THE BULGE FINALLY CAPTURED. Live Science posted “Space photo of the week: The tilted spiral galaxy that took Hubble 23 years to capture”. See the image at the link.
Why it’s so special: This image of a spiral galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope is a portrait more than two decades in the making.
Like most full-color images of space objects, it’s a composite of images taken in different wavelengths of light. What sets this image apart, however, is that the data used to create it was collected during observation sessions in 2000 and 2023 — 23 years apart. That’s one advantage of having a space telescope in orbit for so long: Hubble was launched from the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, and its long service has enabled it to capture a huge amount of data about every corner of the cosmos.
But besides the prolonged methods used to create it, it’s also an unusual image on its face. Spiral galaxies — which account for about 60% of all galaxies in the universe, according to the European Space Agency — are, by chance, typically seen face-on when viewed from the solar system. That’s why spiral galaxies are typically associated with vivid spiral arms, which can only be seen from a face-on vantage. However, UGC 10043 is viewed edge-on, with its rings seemingly flattened into a line. This unique angle gives astronomers the chance to see how spiral galaxies are structured in 3D.
(12) HI-TECH PERCH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ars Technica finds“Three bizarre home devices and a couple good things at CES 2025”. See the cat tower/air purifier at the end of this article. Gloriously free of AI.
This cat tower is also an air purifier; it is also good
There are a lot of phones out there that need charging and a bunch of gamers who, for some reason, need even more controllers and screens to play on. But there is another, eternally underserved market getting some attention at CES: cats wanting to sit.
LG, which primarily concerned itself with stuffing generative AI interfaces into every other device at CES 2025, crafted something that feels like a real old-time trade show gimmick. There is no guarantee that your cat will use the AeroCat Tower; some cats may just sit inside the cardboard box it came in out of spite. But should they deign to luxuriate on it, the AeroCat will provide gentle heat beneath them, weigh them, and give you a record of their sleep habits. Also, it purifies the air in that room….
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, Bruce D. Arthurs, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mark Roth-Whitworth.]
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4) Regarding Armageddon.
First, IIRC, it was an asteroid, not a comet. (That would have been Deep Impact.)
Second, it was an incredibly dumb movie; agreed,
Third, However, the statement that blowing up such a object was an very bad idea fails. Because if you are about to be hit by a absolutely lethal object and blowing it up is your only option, then do it. You are not any worse off. When the option are dying if you don’t and probably dying, but not necessarily if you do, then do.
@Pierre E. Pettinger, Jr.
The bad idea here is that blowing up an asteroid means that instead of one large object, you get hit with many smaller ones. Which you now can’t destroy or track.
What you want to do is deflect that incoming object, so it will miss, even if not by a lot.
(4) Re. Armageddon. Now I’m curious. If every nuclear weapon on earth was detonated on a large asteroid, would that pulverize it and end the threat? Asking for a friendly species.
PJ Evans: If you could blow up the rock into nothing but plasma and dust — then would the residue still do damage to the Earth?
(0) Thanks tor liking my warning about pixellite – it glows green, you know…
(4) I… was dragged to Armageddon by three of my kids and a friend. I managed to get out to the parking lot afterwards before I started screaming and ranting. WHY on earth would you need a Gatling gun? Oh, yes, it takes years to train wildcat oil drillers, but only two weeks to get them ready for space… Everything he did was going out of its way to insult NASA. And yes, he’s going to push the button at just the right second…
Moonfall? From what you say, you’re sure it’s not intended as comedy?
Memory Lane: but the TV show was marvelously silly.
(10) Oh, but don’t you know that climate change and rising sea levels are all just made up by “scientists” who want to cash in big on money from, er, um… Miami, first modern sunken city-to-be.
(12) I may have to look at them. It would be perfect to set next to the cat litter boxes.
If the rock was that big, there’s no way you could hit it with “all the nukes on earth”, being as most can’t make orbit. It would be a Bad Idea. DART showed us the correct answer.
@Mike — If you blew it into plasma and dust, but that plasma and dust was still on a collision course with Earth, then I think the final net effect would be … well, maybe not similar, but at least similarly destructive to Earth because you’d still be dumping all of that mass and kinetic energy into the atmosphere.
Oh, one more comment on Alliance Rising: I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. This is the first book by her/them where it is not the case that by the end of the book, the reader is as exhausted as the PoV characters, and they’ve always been awake for 72 or 96 hours….
Leave the pixel. Take the scroll.
4) Armageddon was very much a “high concept” film. (Meaning, the studio execs must have been very high to have approved it.)
If you could vaporize the asteroid far enough away that the plasma and dust would have almost completely dispersed. But if you knew about it in time to get enough nukes there fast enough, you wouldn’t have a disaster movie. What you’d have is plenty of time to take the far less risky of diverting it so it won’t hit Earth.
(12) Some Noble Filer needs to buy that cat tower/air purifier, and see how their credentials like it. I think it generating warmth under the sitting areas would be a big selling point for any credential. No, I haven’t clicked through to check the price. Why do you ask?
(6) Julie Newmar was The One True Catwoman. Eartha Kitt was a marvelous new character that really fascinated me, but unaccountably, they called her Catwoman. I was, what? 7, at the time. Just couldn’t get the studio to listen to me, crazy ageists that they were.
@Lis Carey
RE (12) As I understand it, there’s no price (or delivery date) yet. For good or ill, that’s the norm for products being previewed at CES.
@Mike Kennedy–
So it’s all just a tease. Harrumph, I say, HARRUMPH!
@Lis Carey
RE (12) At least LG does already sell a line of air purifiers and other air-care products. Their basic unit in fact looks a lot like the cylindrical base of the tall part of the cat tower, but without any of the cat-related stuff (including the lower perch which I don’t think is instrumented or heated). That air purifier has a list price of around $250. Thus I wouldn’t be surprised at something around $400-$500 as a list for the cat tower. Mind you, that’s just my (very) non-educated guess.
https://www.lg.com/us/air-purifiers/lg-as601hbb0-air-purifier
One should probably also be prepared to replace the filter often if your cat sheds badly.
So it’s likely going to be a bit spendy, but not as outright crazy as I anticipated.
Not for me; too much for my income, and Cider (my 11 pound dog) doesn’t have cats to teach her what it’s for. Not like my two previous cats to show them the delights of a cat tree. That crew–Addy and Dora (dogs) and Retsina and Aquavit (cats) loved their cat tree.
(6) I appreciate the references to channel five (“Five Alive!”). I think I first saw the one-true Batman movie at the local high school when I was in elementary school – in the summer the school would show movies and cartoons for the local kids, and this was the most memorable of them. I love the fact that the Riddler is so over the top, that at some points the Joker and Penguin are visibly disturbed.
1) I was about to get a bit snarly (in my capacity as “that idiot who read and reviewed every issue of Unknown“) about dates of reprint anthologies and what about Phil Stong’s 1941 anthology The Other Worlds, then? But Mr. Hook does mention that one, and he does have a point about the Wollheim volume opening up SF for the (affordable) mass-market, so I think I’ll have to forgive him. And The Other Worlds does have one original story – “A Problem for Biographers” by Mindret Lord – so maybe it doesn’t count as pure reprints.
(The Other Worlds was reviewed by L. Sprague de Camp – writing as “J. Wellington Wells” – in Unknown vol. 5 number 5, which is why it instantly leapt to my mind. An awful lot of Unknown is now permanently seared into my brain, which may be why I am but a haunted wreck of my former self.)
Phil Stong was an interesting choice for an anthologist – he’s best known, I think, for the musical State Fair, and his genre connections are tenuous at best. I knew the name from one of James Thurber’s essays, about the naming of dogs; Thurber and Stong meet, and Stong is oddly skittish about his dog’s name, which turns out to be “Thurber”. Why this would qualify him to edit a spec-fic anthology, I can’t tell you, but L. Sprague de Camp thought well enough of him.
10) it is a little known fact that the original shooting script for The Princess Bride had a different ending line for the Sicilian.
The one we are familiar with – “…classic blunders. The most famous of which is ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia…’, was originally intended to be ‘never build a high rise condo on a sandbar’.
Dust and plasma hitting the upper atmosphere is almost certainly not as bad as rocks hitting the earth because the rocks hitting the earth start fires, which throw smoke into the atmosphere and create massive extinction events (see Chicxulub), and rocks hitting earth throw massive amounts of terrestrial dust into the atmosphere (see also Chicxulub).
~40 tons of dust/debris hit the earth every day, with no ill effects. One 40 ton meteorite hitting the earth would have ill effects.
“Five Million, two hundred seventy one thousand, nine minutes
5,271,009 Bester stories to read”
4) The funny thing is that, having actually seen Moonfall in the theater (my wife and I were going through a newly-empty-nesters phase of seeing a movie every Tuesday(*)), I knew which film the item was going to be about before actually reading the quoted text. On the other hand, the science is so bad that it actually crosses well over into fantasy – besides the hollow moon, there are points were the moon is actually grazing close enough to the earth to be pulling things into the air (!), and the earth is hanging in there just fine structurally (!!).
(*) It’s still a better film than Unfavourable Odds, by the way, which was the next film we saw and ended the streak of consecutive Tuesday nights.
(1) Steve, my thanks for your information on Phil Stong, who I know nothing about. I will credit you when I write about The Other Worlds. IMHO, it is probably the first speculative fiction reprint anthology, ignoring the two possibly very minor original stories.
But the “asteroid” in Armageddon was described as being “the size of Texas”, so maybe 600 miles across, so even if it’s completely vaporized we’re talking about something like a quintillion tons of dust and plasma, which would just be differently apocalyptic to what would happen if the asteroid hit us as a single, solid chunk.
JoeH: Bigger. I-10, about to leave the state, TX says it’s about 888 mi. Forget Chicxulub, this would be ten times bigger or more.
BoydN: well, of course, I mean, if the Moon is hollow, it’s got that much less gravity…
Yeah, whatever the precise size, it’s big enough that the impact would end up looking more like one of those “this is how the Moon was formed” or “Charon collides with and is captured by Pluto” videos. Either way, it would be a really bad day for everything and everyone.
(1) There was a paperback edition of Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John published in 1935. I think that was probably the first paperback SF.
4) I’ll always love “Armageddon.” Parts of it were filmed in my small hometown of Sanger (all the shots of the small town in the movie are Sanger, TX. One shot missed showing my old family business by 45 degrees. Most of the rural shots were nearby in surrounding Denton County).
@Joe H: Exactly. An asteroid of that size would have a mass hundreds of times greater than that of Earth’s atmosphere. Turn that into a cloud of dust and plasma and only a small fraction of it would be required to entirely strip the Earth of its atmosphere.
@PhilRM
Movie and TV makers aren’t really up on celestial mechanics. (See also the twin planet of Vulcan, in ST:TOS, which should have resulted in both planets being tidally locked to each other.)
An explosion large enough to disintegrate an asteroid is surely going to impart enough force to send a significant fraction of mass on trajectories away from Earth, no?
(1) Stuart Hall, thanks for the correction. I should have said that The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction is the first mass-market paperback of SF. Odd John does appear to be the first SF paperback, with a 1935 paperback edition by Metheun perhaps at about the same time as the hardback by them. I see that ISFDB does not include that 1935 Odd John paperback edition, and I will see if I can gather sufficient definitive information to make an update.
@P J Evans: The JJ Abrams Universe, where apparently no planets are further away from each other than the Moon is from the Earth.
@Cliff: It depends on exactly how you blow it up, but in any case, if you want most of the mass to miss the Earth, then you have to impart velocities to the fragments that are much larger than roughly V_app*(radius of Earth)/(distance to asteroid), where V_app is the velocity at which the asteroid is approaching Earth – this is just saying that the expanding sphere of asteroid fragments will be much larger than the radius of the Earth at the time it arrives. So clearly the farther away the asteroid is when you blow it up, the easier your job is, in that you have more time for the cloud of asteroid fragments to expand, and so you only need to give the fragments a kick that is small compared to the approach velocity.
@ PhilRM – without double-checking your math, yes!
For an asteroid up to about 1 km diameter (depending on density and impact velocity), it’s sufficient for the fragments to be individually low-risk (10 m or less) and to have decorrelated shock waves. For larger asteroids, you need most of the fragments to miss the Earth to avoid excess atmospheric heating from the asteroid’s kinetic energy. See https://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/pi-terminal-planetary-defense for a 194-page paper with more details.
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