(1) BIG CHOICES. “The Big Idea: Kameron Hurley” at Whatever.
…When I began writing my Worldbreaker Saga back in 2012, which begins with the novel The Mirror Empire, I too was obsessed with this idea of two choices: the light and the dark. I was writing fantasy, after all! While my protagonists might be morally messy early on, I always knew I was headed for a showdown where they had two choices: good or evil. Genocidal or self-sacrificing.
But it was a false choice.
And it literally took me years to realize this.
At some level I must have understood I was setting up a false choice as I finished the second volume, Empire Ascendant, and began the grueling process of tying everything up in the third and final book, The Broken Heavens. Emotionally, I was rebelling against my own embrace of these false choices, because no matter how many times I tried to get myself to write the ending I had in mind at the beginning of the series, it just never felt… right.
(2) BASE RUMORS. CoNZealand has extended the deadline for entering the Hugo base design competition until January 31.
If you were thinking of entering the competition to design bases for the 2020 Hugo Awards and 1945 Retro Hugos, you’re in luck. The deadline for entries has been extended until 31st January 2020 (from the original deadline of 17th January).
(3) SCREAM QUIETLY. Paramount dropped a trailer for A Quiet Place II.
Following the deadly events at home, the Abbott family (Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe) must now face the terrors of the outside world as they continue their fight for survival in silence. Forced to venture into the unknown, they quickly realize that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats that lurk beyond the sand path.
(4) THEY HAVE ISSUES. Daily Grail spotlights fantasy history in “Hidden Jewels in ‘The Garden of Orchids’: The Esoteric Content of an Early Fantasy Magazine”.
For a long time Weird Tales (probably best known for short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert. E. Howard, and later Ray Bradbury) was seen as the first fantastical magazine, publishing science fiction, weird fiction and horror. That history has been revised over the past few years. Der Orchideengarten (in English, The Garden of Orchids) was a Munich-based magazine first published in 1919, predating the better known American magazine by several years, and is now acknowledged as the first fantasy magazine (archived digitally here).
Only published until 1921 Der Orchideengarten is somewhat overshadowed by its better known, and more mainstream, Munich-based contemporaries, Jugend and Simplissicimus, yet the breadth of stories and unsettling art is worth looking at.
(5) WOLFMAN. One of the many cameos in CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths “Part 5” was the real Marv Wolfman, who co-wrote the original Crisis on Infinite Earths mini-series which was published by DC Comics in 1985-1986. CBR.com has the dialog, from when Marv, playing a fan, stops Supergirl and The Flash to ask for their autographs.
“Wait, you know both of us?” Kara asks. “And it’s normal to see us together?” Barry adds.
“Well, normally, you’d also have Green Arrow and a Legend or two,” Wolfman explains. “Last year, even Batwoman joined in.” He points to the folder. “Would you make that out to Marv? Thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” Barry says as he scribbles. “Marv, as far as you know, how long have Supergirl and I and all the rest of us been working together on this Earth?”
“Uh, since forever!” Wolfman answers.
(6) LAST TRUMP. The LA Times’ Mark Swed reviews an opera: “King Arthur meets Trump and Superman in Long Beach “.
…Meanwhile, Long Beach Opera, as ever priding itself with radically rethinking repertory, has done a full refashioning of the first great “King Arthur” opera (there aren’t many, but Chausson’s “Le Roi Arthus” is a neglected beauty). Arthur here becomes the comic book delusional fantasy of a pudgy, narcissistic, emigrant-phobic politico requiring psychiatric treatment.
…Arthur King is a patient at Camelot O’Neil, a behavioral residence mental health unit. His sexy nurse is Gwen E. Veer. His buddy is another patient, Lance E. Lott. Doc Oswald runs the dubious joint.
Mitisek then takes apart the opera, adapting Purcell’s music to fit new circumstances and a completely new theatrical structure. His cutup rearranges, revises, reorders and reduces Purcell’s score. The occasional Dryden line is retained, but much of the sung text is new. Five acts become a single uninterrupted one under two hours.
Our schlumpy, Trumpian Arthur thinks he can save the world from aliens. He can be ridiculously pompous, Drydenesque even. He can also be sympathetically vulnerable.
(7) MAISEL MASHUP. Marvel’s Mrs. Maisel: Rachel Brosnahan Enters the Marvel Universe on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- January 15, 2010 — Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold‘s The Lovely Bones novel premiered. It starred starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, and Saoirse Ronan. The screenplay was by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. Although Ronan and Tucci were praised for their performances, it received mixed reviews from critics. It has a 32% rating at Rotten Tomatoes by reviewers.
- January 15, 2008 – File 770 blog makes its first post. Happy birthday to us!
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born January 15, 1879 — Ernest Thesiger. He’s here because of his performance as Doctor Septimus Pretorius in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein. He had a major role in Hitchcock’s not completed and now lost Number 13 (or Mrs. Peabody) which is even genre adjacent. He was also in The Ghoul which was an early Boris Karloff film. And he continued to show up in SFF films such as The Ghosts of Berkeley Square where he was Dr. Cruickshank of Psychical Research Society. (Died 1961.)
- Born January 15, 1913 — Lloyd Bridges. Though I’m reasonably sure Secret Agent X-9, a 1945 serial, isn’t genre, I’m listing it anyways because I’m impressed with it — it was based on a comic strip by Dashiell Hammett, Leslie Charteris and others. He’s the Pilot Col. Floyd Graham in Rocketship X-M, Dr. Doug Standish In Around the World Under the Sea, Aramis in The Fifth Musketeer, Clifford Sterling in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Grandfather in Peter and the Wolf. His television appearances are too many to list here. (Died 1998.)
- Born January 15, 1926 — Maria Schell. German actress who had roles in Superman and The Martian Chronicles. I’m reasonably sure that the Village of The Damned was her only other SFF film appearance. (Died 2005.)
- Born January 15, 1927 — Phyllis Coates, 93. Lois Lane on The Adventures of Superman series for the first season. She’s also in Superman and the Mole Men which preceded the series. And she was in Fifties horror film Teenage Frankenstein. Wiki claims she had an appearance on Lois & Clark but IMDB does not show one.
- Born January 15, 1928 — Joanne Linville, 92. Best remembered I’d say for being the unnamed Romulnan Commander Spock gets involved with on “The Enterprise Incident”. (Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, calls her Liviana Charvanek.) She also starred in the Twilight Zone‘s “The Passersby” episode, and she starred in “I Kiss Your Shadow” which was the final episode of the Bus Stop series. The episode was based on the short story by Robert Bloch who wrote the script for it. This story is in The Early Fears Collection.
- Born January 15, 1935 — Robert Silverberg, 85. I know the first thing I read by him was The Stochastic Man a very long time ago. After that I’ve read all of the Majipoor series which is quite enjoyable, and I know I’ve read a lot of his short fiction down the years. So what should I have read by him that I haven’t?
- Born January 15, 1944 — Christopher Stasheff. A unique blending I’d say of fantasy and SF with a large if sometimes excessive dollop of humor. His best-known novels are his Warlock in Spite of Himself series which I’ve read some of years ago. Who here has read has Starship Troupers series? It sounds potentially interesting. (Died 2018.)
- Born January 15, 1945 — Ron Bounds, 75. One of the founders of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society in the Sixties. He co-chaired Discon 2, was a member of both the Baltimore in ’67 and Washington in ’77 bid committees. He chaired Loscon 2. He published the Quinine, a one-shot APA. He was President of the Great Wall of China SF, Marching & Chop Suey Society which is both a cool name and a great undertaking as well.
(10) BINTI FOR TV. Author Nnedi Okorafor will co-write the script alongside Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen) for Media Res.Shelf Awareness reports –
Hulu has given a script order for an adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning Binti trilogy. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen, PEN15, The Morning Show) will co-write the script with Okorafor. The studio is Media Res, the banner launched by former HBO drama head Michael Ellenberg, who will executive produce alongside Osei-Kuffour and Okorafor.
(11) GENERAL WITHOUT TROOPS. NPR finds it’s lonely a the top:“Commander Sworn In As First Member Of New Space Force”.
The first newly created branch of the U.S. armed forces in more than seven decades now has its first official member.
Air Force Gen. John “Jay” Raymond was sworn in Tuesday as chief of Space Operations. It’s the top post in what since late last month is the Pentagon’s seventh military branch, the United States Space Force.
…But at the moment, there are no Space Force troops to command. Most of the 16,000 officers, airmen and civilians who Pentagon officials expect to comprise the new service branch in the next few months would likely be Air Force personnel drawn from the U.S. Space Command, which is to be the Space Force’s operational component.
(12) LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. “Secrets of ‘1,000-year-old trees’ unlocked” – BBC shares the key.
Scientists have discovered the secret of how the ginkgo tree can live for more than 1,000 years.
A study found the tree makes protective chemicals that fend off diseases and drought.
And, unlike many other plants, its genes are not programmed to trigger inexorable decline when its youth is over.
The ginkgo can be found in parks and gardens across the world, but is on the brink of extinction in the wild.
“The secret is maintaining a really healthy defence system and being a species that does not have a pre-determined senescence (ageing) programme,” said Richard Dixon of the University of North Texas, Denton.
“As ginkgo trees age, they show no evidence of weakening their ability to defend themselves from stresses.”
(13) RIGHT TO THE POINT. James Davis Nicoll tells Tor.com readers about “Five Sword-Wielding Women in SFF”.
Steel by Carrie Vaughn
In Carrie Vaughn’s Steel, fourth-rate fencer Jill Archer tumbles off her boat during a family vacation near Nassau. She hits the water in the 21st century; she is pulled out during the Golden Age of Piracy. Luckily for the teen, Captain Marjory Cooper offers Jill the choice between signing on as a pirate or remaining a prisoner. (Less savoury fates are not on offer.) She chooses piracy, a life that involves a lot more deck swabbing than Basil Rathbone movies would suggest. Jill’s astounding temporal displacement makes her of considerable interest to scallywag pirate Edmund Blane. Jill will need better than fourth-place sword skills to survive Blane and find her way home.
(14) TWO RESNICK TRIBUTES. One of them was a young writer longer ago than the other, but they both admire how Mike Resnick treated them then.
George R.R. Martin: “RIP Mike”.
I don’t recall when I first met Mike, but it was a long, long time ago, back in the 1970s when both of us were still living in Chicago. I was a young writer and he was a somewhat older, somewhat more established writer. There were a lot of young writers in the Chicago area in those days, along with three more seasoned pros, Gene Wolfe, Algis Budrys, and Mike. What impressed me at the time… and still impresses me, all these years later… was how willing all three of them were to offer their advice, encouragements, and help to aspiring neo-pros like me. Each of them in his own way epitomized what this genre and this community were all about back then. Paying forward, in Heinlein’s phrase.
And no one paid it forward more than Mike Resnick.
Michelle Sagara West: “Mike Resnick and me, or Laura Resnick is my sister”.
…Michelle is shy.
People who had met me in real life found this hilarious. I think one of them was certain I was play-acting. I wasn’t, of course. I was terrified. I could stand outside a door that lead to a publisher party and hyperventilate.
Resnick?—?I called him Resnick, not Mike; I don’t remember why?—?understood that fear. He talked about being nineteen and terrified at his first convention. And I knew that if I went to a convention that Mike Resnick was at, I’d know at least one person. I’d have one friend.
(15) TO DYE FOR. “Oreo Is Releasing Pink Easter Egg Cookies This Year And They’re Honestly Adorable” – that’s Delish’s opinion, anyway.
From the looks of it, these are actually Golden Oreos that have been dyed pink and made to look like decorated Easter eggs. As @ThreeSnackateers pointed out, these aren’t any fancy flavor, they’re just festive and fun.
And maybe you can wash them down with one of these — “Jelly Belly Is Releasing Seltzer And It Comes In 8 Sweet Flavors”.
Just because the name suggests this will be a super sugary drink (based off the beloved jelly beans, of course) doesn’t mean that’s true. These seltzers are going to have zero calories and zero sweeteners and will only use two ingredients.
The cans will begin to stock shelves next week, and the drink comes in eight of the iconic Jelly Belly jelly bean flavors. You can take your pick between French vanilla, lemon lime, orange sherbet, piña colada, pink grapefruit, tangerine, very cherry, or watermelon. Each flavor is made only with carbonated water and natural flavors, so you can have a taste of the candy jar with zero of the cals.
(16) HOPING TO LAUNCH. When you’re rich enough, you can get AV Club to treat your singles ad as news: “Rich man taking applications for moon wife”.
Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire and the founder of online fashion retailer Zozotown—according to Forbes, as of today, he’s worth $2 billion…
Let me be perfectly clear: the Bachelor references are there for fun, and technically, Maezawa is looking for a female “life partner,” not a moon wife, but other than that, nothing else in this story is a joke. These are facts: Yusaku Maezawa, a billionaire, is taking applications from women (aged 20 and up) who want to be his life partner. One of the things that life partner will do with Maezawa is go to the moon, and that’s not just a minor perk or something, it is his major selling point.
(17) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter was tuned in when a Jeopardy! contestant missed another chance:
Answer: This Netflix show is a chilling reworking of Shirley Jackson;s gothic horror tale.
Wrong question: “What is ‘The Lottery.'”
Correct question: What is ‘The Haunting of Hill House’?”
And somebody else took a header over this —
Answer: One of England’s most beloved tunes is the one by Hubert Parry names for this faraway Mideast city.
Bizarrely wrong question: “What is Van Diemon’s Land?”
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In the sci-fi short film ‘Regulation'” on YouTube, Ryan Patch describes a dystopian future where children are forced to wear “happy patches” to fight depression.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Second!
@9 (Silverberg): I wouldn’t go back to any of his novels that I remember (except maybe Lord Valentine’s Castle, which I read sometime around when I taught myself (out of a book) to juggle), but my memory holds hard to a couple of shorts: “To See the Invisible Man” (his selection for one of the Author’s Choice series) and “The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV” (an original for Wandering Stars). Both could be seen as too didactic — but both have narrators who grow and change believably in just a few pages.
@9 (Stasheff): My catalog says I liked Troupers well enough to buy all three of them — or maybe to buy them on spec because I used to do enough theater to find any stfnal theater potentially interesting — but I left no notes about them (meaning I must have finished them before I started cataloging 24 years ago), and don’t have reliable memories.
Mediant!
(9) ISTR that Ron bought the banner that Seacon79 had hanging in their auditorium (if that’s what that hall was). “Sold – to the crazy American who upped his own bid!”
(9) Re: Silverberg: Downward to the Earth and Nightwings.
(9) I’ve always had a fondness for Silverberg’s swingin’ late ’60s / early ’70s novels where his characters were sexually driven (and consequently got into trouble), such as Up the Line, The Masks of Time, and The Book of Skulls — as well as The World Inside where omnisexuality is obligatory. (This last is a fix-up that, for me at least, stubbornly remains a collection of separate stories; the first and most essential was published as “A Happy Day in 2381” in an all-originals anthology edited by Harry Harrison.)
For short stories, I would seek out his early comedy “MUgwump 4” (originally in Galaxy, August 1959, with illustrations by — as I just learned from the Galaxy online archive — Don Martin of MAD fame.
(9) Lloyd Bridges also appeared in Airplane II, which is SF surely (and don’t call me . . . ).
(17) The missing Jeopardy question is “What is Jerusalem?”
(9) gottacook: For me, The World Inside is a novel. You’re reading a group of separate stories, yes, but each story advances the plot thematically. If you read them in a different order, you’d lose that. It’s a masterful job.
I also have to recommend Dying Inside.
(9) Lloyd Bridges also had a featured role in Joe Versus the Volcano, as the father of the two Graynamore sisters.
(17) The first time I ever heard “Jerusalem” was in a slightly altered version in an early Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode: “And did those teeth in ancient times…”
Jeff S.: I thought of recommending Dying Inside (I even have a German edition, Es Stirbt in Mir, that I once hoped would help revive my college German), but these days I like the concept better than the execution. As for The World Inside, I think my problem is that I found what happens to Siegmund in the last story unconvincing and somewhat arbitrary. I did like most of the other stories, though.
Clickity
Sexuality, gender and machines are a bit of a theme for the week. This is an interesting story at Fireside https://firesidefiction.com/custom-options-available
7) Yay for Mrs Maisel!
Number Nine, number nine, number nine…
Neep-neep alert: Joanne Linville, too many N’s in “Romulan”.
A Robert Silverberg recommendation: “Good News From The Vatican”. What might seem to be a simple and cute plot twist at the end actually has astoundingly deep religious and philosophical implications left as an exercise for the reader. Probably my favorite SF short story.
@Chip Hitchcock: I’m fond of “To See the Invisible Man” too. Another Silverberg that stuck in my mind was “The Sixth Palace.”
For me, the Silverberg story is “Sundance”.
Today’s title makes me vicariously happy because I started the discussion that led to it. I mentioned the Scanners trailer to my husband last night and he said, “Wow, you’re still really worked up about it!” It’s true, I tend to hold on to extreme emotion. I was only 9 going on 10 when that trailer scared the life out of me.
@gottacook Monty Python was also my first exposure to “Jerusalem”. IIRC Michael Palin would put a bag over his head anytime the word “mattress” was uttered (pretty inconvenient for the clerk at a mattress store) and everyone had to stand in a box and sing it until he recovered. Don’t remember if that was the same as the teeth episode.
And did those files, in ancient time, scroll upon England’s pixels green?
Happy Birthday, File 770!
I would recommend The Stochastic Man, “Born with the Dead”, and Unfamiliar Territory without hesitation as representing Silverberg at his best. This includes one in my personal mental anthology of SF Stories That Came True (Mostly), “When We Went To See The End Of The World”.
I’m not saying that’s all there is worth reading, just that this novel, this novella, and this short story collection kick my ass.
The Silverberg story I remember (and Cam’s Hugosauariad reminded me of it) is “Our Lady of the Sauropods.”
(10) So being made by former HBO Drama head… Does that imply that it will be shown on HBO and therefore Sky Atlantic, or is the show as yet unhomed?
I never read a lot of Silverberg, I think — I do remember fondly the original Majipoor trilogy (although when I went back to subsequent books in the series they didn’t quite grab me the same way), and Book of Skulls was … interesting.
I also have a non-fiction book of his — Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations, about, well, you can probably guess.
He’s done good work as an editor, not least including Legends, which I’m pretty sure was the start of the “giant anthology of lengthy original fiction in authors’ existing universes” trend.
Slight off-topic, but I rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy this week:
“I am scrolling this pixel. Pray I don’t scroll it any further”
Silverberg’s prose style has always impressed me. My favorite short story collections are Beyond the Safe Zone, which includes “Good News From the Vatican,” and the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party. Tom O’Bedlam is a fave of mine that was not mentioned (and may be controversial for a few reasons).
@gottacook: is omnisexuality a feature of The World Inside? My vague recollection is the expectation that sex could happen between any “nightwalker” (male) and any female in bed, but there was no mention of anything else; this which would go with the Urbmons’ belief in reproduction as the highest good.
@bill: damn, I should have caught that.
@Kaboobie: wasn’t it a fishtank rather than a mere box? (Or maybe that was changed for a recording — I can imagine the budget not extending to real fishtank.)
Michael Flanders: What English national song have we got? “Jerusalem!”
ETA: Beat to the punch on the MP mattress sketch whilst composing. “But it’s my only line!”
January 15th is also Andrea Martin’s birthday. She’s been in so many things there’s gotta be something genre there. How about the voice of Queen Slug-for-a-Butt in the Earthworm Jim cartoon series?
“And was Jerusalem posted here among those fan writ Pixel Scrolls?”
Chip H.: In the first chapter of The World Inside (aka “A Happy Day in 2381”) it’s made plain in dialogue between Charles Mattern and his (male) guest from outside the Urbmon, Nicanor Gortman, the sociocomputator from Venus:
Mattern next explains the nightwalking custom and mentions that “Each of us has access at any time to any other adult member of our community.”
(That said, I don’t recall any non-heterosexual nightwalking incidents in the book. Indeed, at the end of this chapter Mattern goes nightwalking and leaves his guest with his wife, anticipating he’d want privacy, something none of the urbmon dwellers care about.)
Tor.com reports Christopher Tolkien has died at the age of 95.
Hey Mike!
Big fan, and it was great to come across my film “Regulation” on the daily roundup. Hope you enjoyed and hope we have more opportunities to run into one another in the future!
Jack Lint says January 15th is also Andrea Martin’s birthday. She’s been in so many things there’s gotta be something genre there. How about the voice of Queen Slug-for-a-Butt in the Earthworm Jim cartoon series?
She alas didn’t show up on any of my usual sources. Y’all can email me with suggestions, preferably the evening before. She certainly would’ve made the Birthday List.
@Chip Hitchcock I checked YouTube but only found a rather charming recreation by a channel called Monty Python Wedding. If this is accurate, we were both wrong, and it’s a tea chest.
While watching, I laughed out loud in my cubicle just as someone walked by. Time to put a bag over my head.
I knew there was a reason I purchased the two-volume Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words back in 1991.
Episode 4 begins with Eric Idle playing guitar and singing “And did those teeth…” and ends with the British Dental Association sketch.
Episode 8 has the “buying a bed” sketch in which an employee, Mr. Lambert (Graham Chapman), puts a bag over his head when he hears the word “mattress”, whereupon another employee (Idle again) is obliged to bring him out of it by standing in a tea chest and singing the first few lines of “Jerusalem” the usual way, with “feet”. Then the manager (John Cleese) comes in, yells “Did somebody say mattress to Mr. Lambert!” and then joins in singing until Lambert takes off the bag.
Public service performed for the day.
Happy birthday to File770!
Happy birthday, File 770!
JeffWarner: A Robert Silverberg recommendation: “Good News From The Vatican”. What might seem to be a simple and cute plot twist at the end actually has astoundingly deep religious and philosophical implications left as an exercise for the reader. Probably my favorite SF short story.
This was re-printed in the September 2013 issue of Galaxy’s Edge, and I’ve just read it.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m not Catholic, but I don’t see why this story won a Nebula Award, and I don’t see a “twist” ending in it. Explanations would be welcome.
@gottacook: TFTI; I sit corrected.
Adding to @JJ’s questions: how stunning was this story, coming 20 years after “The Quest for Saint Aquin”?
Honestly, I see “Good News From the Vatican” as a sweet, charming story, and I don’t see a twist in it. And as Chip notes, 20 years after “The Quest for St. Aquin.”
Yeah, I don’t see the twist either. Maybe there’s some obscure significance to the way he ascends (on levitator jets) to the “heavens” at the end? If so, it’s completely lost on this non-Christian.