Pixel Scroll 1/6/18 First You Get The Files, Then You Get The Pixels, Then You Get The Scrolls

(1) ZILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. College Humor shows that “If Jurassic Park Were In Different Geological Eras,” we’d be staying away from the box office in droves….

(2) FINDER. Silvia Moreno-Garcia will be hosting a list of Latino SFF in English published or to be published this current year (2018). You’ll find it at “LATIN AMERICANS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE SPECULATIVE LITERATURE LIST 2018”.

(3) DRINK UP. A piece by Nancy Di Gennaro called “Murfreesboro’s Green Dragon Launches On-Site Brewery” in a newspaper called the Daily News Journal says that the Green Dragon Pub and Brewery is a “Hobbit-themed” pub that has become a brewery in October.

Green Dragon opened 3 1/2 years ago, fulfilling a lifelong dream of Joe Minter, a big fan of “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien. Two of Tolkien’s main characters, Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, both embarked on adventures at age 50. So Minter took their lead and did the same, leaving his career with Home Depot for the unknown.

The tiny eatery nestled in the basement of an old creamery is reminiscent of Tolkien’s imagined shire pub, with staff members that dress the part and rustic furnishings.

(4) STABBY AWARDS. Voting continues on Reddit for the 2017 r/Fantasy Stabby Awards until January 13. There are two sets of award categories, external and those focused on r/Fantasy redditors.

  • External awards:

BEST NOVEL OF 2017
BEST SELF-PUBLISHED / INDEPENDENT NOVEL OF 2017
BEST DEBUT NOVEL OF 2017
BEST SHORT FICTION OF 2017
BEST SERIALIZED FICTION OF 2017
BEST ANTHOLOGY / COLLECTION / PERIODICAL OF 2017
BEST ARTWORK RELEASED IN 2017
BEST FANTASY SITE FOR 2017
BEST GAME (ANY FORMAT) OF 2017
BEST TV SERIES / MOVIE OF 2017
BEST RELATED WORK OF 2017

  • redditor awards – guaranteed reddit gold as an award:

BEST ACTIVE r/FANTASY AUTHOR (‘best overall redditor- author edition’)
r/FANTASY BEST COMMUNITY MEMBER (‘best overall redditor- non-author edition’)
BEST POST / COMMENT IN 2017
BEST r/FANTASY ORIGINAL REVIEW

(5) MAIL IS COMING. It seems like a long time since Sean Bean was in Game of Thrones, but his character is part of the forthcoming Royal Mail stamp set — “Game of Thrones: New stamp set to feature Jon Snow and Arya Stark”.

An additional five-stamp sheet features the Night King and his undead White Walkers as well as giants, direwolves, dragons and the Iron Throne.

Fans can buy the stamps at Post Office branches across the UK from 23 January or by calling Royal Mail’s customer service line.

They can also be pre-ordered on the Royal Mail website.

(6) SUBMISSION WINDOW OPEN. Alpennia reports that The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast will be open for submissions during January 2018 for short stories in the lesbian historic fiction genre, to be produced in audio format for the podcast, as well as published in text on the website. See complete guidelines here — “Call for Submissions: Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Fiction Special”.

(7) RAMBO READS. The Seattle Review of Books asked “Whatcha Reading, Cat Rambo?” She told them, beginning with —

What are you reading now?

Right now I am reading Louisa Morgan’s A Secret History of Witches. Morgan’s the pen name for local author Louise Marley, whose work I enjoy under any name.

(8) WHERE THE IDEAS ARE. Cat Rambo also livetweeted highlights from Rachel Swirsky’s Ideas Are Everywhere class today. Jump aboard here —

(9) BLACK MERMAIDS. Nalo Hopkinson does a reading and gives an interview in a podcast on the Boston Review website, “Waving at Trains”. She talks about dystopias and how they affect her writing.

“We are not supposed to own imagination . . . so, damn it, I am making black mermaids.” In this podcast, the award-winning writer Nalo Hopkinson reads her story, “Waving at Trains,” featured in Boston Review‘s 2017 literary issue, Global Dystopias. She also talks to Avni Sejpal about the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and the enduring importance of black mermaids….

AS: So when you are writing something, are you also thinking about how it will sound out loud?

NH: Yes. If I am thinking in words at the time that I am writing. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I think in moving images and then I have to translate it into words. But, yes, I am always aware that at some point I might want to read the thing. And I am very aware of how characters speak, because speech does not only carry the accent, it carries the economic level of the characters, which tells you something. So whenever I have stories translated into other languages, generally they go for the standard form of the language. I find that that actually makes the translation a little bit pallid and it removes some of the nuances, so my characters end up sometimes sounding like middle class people being petulant . . . and sometimes they are middle class people, like the girl in this story, who are having a very hard time.

(10) YOUNG OBIT. NASA astronaut John Young has died at the age of 87.

John Young, NASA’s longest-serving astronaut, who walked on the moon and flew on the first Gemini and space shuttle missions, has died.

The first person to fly six times into space — seven, if you count his launch off of the moon in 1972 — and the only astronaut to command four different types of spacecraft, Young died on Friday (Jan. 5) following complications from pneumonia. He was 87.

“NASA and the world have lost a pioneer,” said NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot in a statement on Saturday. “John Young’s storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight; we will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier.”

(11) JERRY VAN DYKE. The Hollywood Reporter says Jerry Van Dyke, brother of Dick, died January 5. He was 86. He had one main genre credit —

Van Dyke famously passed up the opportunity to star on Gilligan’s Island in favor of toplining the short-lived My Mother the Car, considered one of the worst shows in TV history.

As the Wikipedia explains the show —

…Attorney David Crabtree (played by Jerry Van Dyke), …while shopping at a used car lot for a station wagon to serve as a second family car, instead purchases a dilapidated 1928 Porter touring car. Crabtree hears the car call his name in a woman’s voice. The car turns out to be the reincarnation of his deceased mother, Gladys (voiced by Ann Sothern)….

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) THE LOVE LIFEBOAT. I’d pay to see this.

(14) CENTURIES OF COVERS. BookPorn assembled a big collection of Frankenstein book covers to celebrate the anniversary.

January 1st, 1818Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is published

(15) ALIENS BITE THE DUST AGAIN. The Washington Post’s Ben Guarino says a Kickstarter-funded campaign has discovered that the flickering light in the yellow-white dwarf star KIC 8462852 was not caused by aliens who “had constructed a titanic array of solar panels around the star” but to dust — “The strangest star in the sky finally has an explanation for its flicker”.

Fourteen hundred light-years separate Earth from the strangest star in the sky. The light from this star flickers, like a giant neon sign drifting through the constellation Cygnus. After the star’s dim intervals, which last for days or weeks, it brightens again.

No other star acted this way. No observation could explain its behavior.

That is, until now. A 200-strong team of scientists says it has arrived at an answer, thanks to an astronomy project crowdfunded on Kickstarter. The culprits are not aliens, as some people have speculated, but probably a cloud of dust, each particle less than a micrometer across. Combined, these dust particles coalesced into one of the biggest question marks in recent astronomical memory.

In 2015, astrophysicist Tabetha Boyajian published a paper describing the starlight dips. The brightness diminished by 20 percent, according to observations from the Kepler space telescope. Planets block starlight when they pass across stars, like a hand waved in front of a flashlight. But even an object as huge as Jupiter can reduce a star’s brightness by just 1 percent.

(16) 1949 WORLDCON. Available on eBay, “30 photos Worldcon 1949 w negatives Doc E.E. Smith Jack Williamson Robert Bloch”, from the estate of Franklyn M. Dietz.

30 photos Worlds Science Fiction Convention 1949 in Cincinnati  w negatives Doc E.E. Smith jack Williamson, Robert Bloch L.A. Eschbach Fletcher Pratt.

Nice fan photos – 30 photos plus a greeting card from the Cincinnati fan group and 17 negatives.  Lots of behind the scenes photos of the worldcon with fans, models and speakers/authors.

Others speaking are probably Theodore Sturgeon, Judy Merrill George O Smith Arthur banks and some fans

(17) BARDIC CIRCLE. Moira Greyland Peat looked for a humorous side of JDA being banned from Worldcon 76 and wrote new lyrics to the filk standard “Banned from Argo.”

“Banned from Hugo.”

When we pulled into Worldcon in need of R&R
The puppies, Sad and Rabid camped in every joint and bar
We had Trufan expectations of their hospitality
But found too late it wasn’t geared for Puppies such as we

And we’re Banned from Hugo, everyone
Banned from Hugo just for having that Wrongfun
We spent a jolly Worldcon there for just three days or four
But Hugo doesn’t want us anymore…

Our Captain’s tastes were simple and his stories were complex
We found he’d sold five manuscripts and pocketed large checks
The Thought Police were on the way—he had no second chance
His heroine was fair and blonde, and had a straight romance! …

Our Engineer would yield to none at writing Rabid tales
He wrote them for Castalia House and made a ton of sales
His favorite story didn’t win, but it got the votes of all
And now he’s got his No Award on the mantle of his hall! …

(18) THE UNINVITED. John Scalzi obliquely commented on the current uproar in “Obnoxious Twits and Conventions”.

And if a convention decided I was not welcome at their event, how would I take it? I mean, I would hope they’d tell me before I made flight arrangements and my hotel rooms were non-refundable, but otherwise, meh, it’d be fine. Generally I prefer not be in places I’m not wanted, and if the convention committee was telling me to go away, that’s a pretty good, non-subtle hint. Which means my weekend is now free! Which is excellent, I usually have things to do on a weekend, even if those things are “watch six hours of How It’s Made in a row and then take a nap.” Which these days is a pretty great weekend, I have to tell you.

I was looking for something more substantive, so asked this question in comments:

Bearing in mind how instrumental you were, personally, in the drive to get sff conventions to adopt Codes of Conduct, I’d be much more interested in your views about this application of a CoC. Do you think it was appropriate? Why? What do you think we should take away from it?

He responded:

As for whether in this case the convention’s decision to yank attending status was merited, it seems so to me based on what I know (and what I know of the obnoxious twit in question), although as noted I haven’t spoken to anyone involved about the decision and am not privy to the full data set they used to make their decision. But even if I disagreed with it, they’re the concom and it’s their decision to make. The decision might have consequences, although in this case, the consequences (other obnoxious twits deciding not to attend in solidarity) seem like an upside to me.

(19) OPEN THE CELL BAY DOOR PAL. Whitney Avalon sings “Funny Rey Song – Second To Last Jedi – Star Wars Musical.”

(20) THE OTHER JJ. And either funny or sad – maybe both! ScreenRant gives us “Everything Wrong With ‘The Last Jedi’ – Pitch Meeting.” Plenty of spoilers in case that still matters.

[Thanks to JJ John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, Hampus Eckerman, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Bill for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

30 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/6/18 First You Get The Files, Then You Get The Pixels, Then You Get The Scrolls

  1. I’ve never heard of Whitney Avalon but she is quite funny and has a good voice. I bet she has classical training. I’d like to see more of her work.

  2. An acting friend of mine used to sing the theme from “My Mother, The Car.” She also mentally went over a chronological list of Supreme Court Chief Justices in her mind as a sleep aid. I miss her.

    Anyway, I was watching 2001 again tonight, and at the end, when the Star Child appears, I had an epiphany (or maybe a Bird Day). The effect is created with a prop, and it seems quite lifelike, even though it isn’t animated. It made me wonder if Kubrick had directed Dullea not to move more than he had to (or select him for that reason) so that the prop would match his persona. Well, it couldn’t have been the only reason, but I hadn’t had the thought before, so here I am to blather about it.

  3. (19) OPEN THE CELL BAY DOOR PAL.

    THAT. Is Utterly Amazing.

    I would fund the Kickstarter for a full-length version of that musical.

  4. 3) I should obviously go check out this pub in the interests of journalistic something-or-other. Of course, it might be a bit hard to get home if I enjoy it too much — taxis are not a big thing here, and no such thing as buses to the appropriate places. Hmmm.

  5. (19) OPEN THE CELL BAY DOOR PAL

    That is glorious!

    I’m with JJ; where’s the Kickstarter?

  6. (16) I hope they end up at a good home. At least ending up on Ebay is a better fate than being thrown in a dumpster by clueless relatives.

    (17) Time for a follower:

    The sound of postings on the net
    good fans, lock down your comment sections.
    Beware they seek the deadly set
    that spawns objections and rejections.
    Sad puppies, sad puppies!
    They seek the perfect screed.
    Sad puppies, sad puppies!
    They’re very sad indeed.
    Sad: the books they find deserving.
    Sad: their look when Hugos settle.
    From bias Hugos they are saving;
    their pot is blacker than their kettle.
    Sad puppies, sad puppies, now planning their reruns.
    Sad puppies, sad puppies, you poor and little ones.

    (Ttto the Blackadder theme song)

  7. 11) On the other hand, if he had gotten on Gilligan’s Island, Minnesotans would have been sad, because he likely never would have gotten to, years later, get to be on Coach thanks to typecasting.

    I never realized until I moved here that more than a few of the weird things in Coach (ice fishing! winter shenangians!) are actually quite real here…

  8. @Jonathan Edelstein: (1) I might go to Carboniferous Park.
    Cockroaches the size of your head, man.

  9. (18) Interestingly, Jo turned up on Scalzi’s discussion thread, spouting more of the same, and Scalzi said he had dealt with them before.

  10. (19) That’s very good. And I agree with Martin Wooster, she’s got a great voice and probably have classical training.
    Clicking through to her profile shows she have lots of other genre-relevant videos, most of them “princess rap battle” between for example Galadriel and Princess Leia, and Hermione and Katniss Everdeen.
    But the pedant in me have to say that we now know that Rey’s future vf abg gb or gur frpbaq-gb-ynfg Wrqv, ohg gb or gur svefg Ersbezvfg Wrqv (be fbzrguvat yvxr vg).

  11. (13) We used to make Das Love Boot jokes. Somewhere I have an old Macpaint drawing of a U-boat with “The Atlantic Princess” on the side of the conning tower. Would that be gritty enough? If it follows the original Das Boot, you’d only really get one guest star each week who would be a reporter writing a story about the submarine.

    Edit: Now if you really wanted to bring something back from that era it would be a grim Fantasy Island. Sort of like the pilot movies for Fantasy Island where Mr. Roarke wasn’t quite as pleasant.

  12. Back in the days between The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I used to tell any and all my idea for rebooting the Trek franchise for a lower denominator: [smarmy announcer voice] “STAR BASE… LO-O-OVE!”

  13. @Jack Lint – My favorite Fantasy Island episode as a child featured the Devil as a character. You may be on to something.

  14. Re (1) “If Jurassic Park Were In Different Geological Eras,” : Oh, come on. The radiation of the mammals and other classes during the Paleogene means that there were plenty of large predators, like amphicyonids [bear-dogs], nimravids [sabre-tooth-not-exactly-cats], and phorusrhacids [terror birds], not to mention giant herbivores like titanotheres. And there were also giant snakes like titanoboa! Going with a sloth was, OK, funny, but deliberately left out plenty of real dangerous animals of the Paleogene. And that’s just the few from my non-expert knowledge.

    I am also confident that there were large organisms they didn’t use in the other snippets, like the giant scorpion-like eurypterids during the Devonian.

  15. (1) ZILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. Cute (especially the trilobite, aw).

    (15) ALIENS BITE THE DUST AGAIN. On the other paw, in Noumenon (a book I enjoyed not long ago), the answer is a bit different. 😉

    – – – – –

    In book+Christmas+reading news, I “finally” used the Barnes & Noble gift card from my parents. Yay, new books and a graphic novel; my Mount TBR runneth over! When I finish D. Nolan Clark’s Forsaken Skies (I liked the on-sale sample & bought it the other day; great so far!), I’ll be ready to jump into K.B. Wagers’s Beyond the Empire, Leckie’s Provenance, Barker’s Age of Assassins, Tara Sim’s Timekeeper, Nicholas Kaufmann’s Dying Is My Business, and/or Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel Grandville: Force Majeure. Probably Beyond the Empire first, to complete the first trilogy from Wagers. 🙂 Thanks, Mom & Dad!

    In audiobook book news, I’m listening top Jennifer Foehner Wells’s The Druid Gene (which was later renamed) read by Robin Miles. So far, so good; Hain from her short story “The Grove” just made an appearance, 🙂

  16. (18) Controversy over JDA being banned from WorldCon 76 strikes me nothing more thought-provoking than the habitual custom of (some of) the sf/f community to express horror over an adult experiencing ordinary consequences for exercising bad behavior.

  17. @kathodus Played by Roddy McDowall? I have a vague memory of that. Mr. Roarke should have appeared in Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes given his connections to the various religious pantheons. I’m pretty sure Venus showed up at some point. I definitely remember the Flying Dutchman (played by Peter Graves) stopping in for a visit.

    If you watch the original made for TV movies they made as pilots for Fantasy Islands, Mr. Roarke was not so kind. (And Tattoo was closer to Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun.) People came to Fantasy Island for a fantasy and most of the time they got a harsh lesson instead.

  18. @Jack @kathodus Yeah, that Fantasy Island remake with Malcolm McDowell did definitely make Roarke darker. I liked it, though, for as short a time as it was on the air.

Comments are closed.