Pixel Scroll 10/1/19 Attention, Slans! This Is a Porgrave Pixel-Broadcasting Scroll

(1) DEEP DISH READING SERIES. The Speculative Literature Foundation will be hosting the Deep Dish Reading Series Thursday, October 3 at 7pm at Volumes Bookcafe (1474 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60622).  This event is being done in partnership with the Plurality University Network as part of their Many Tomorrows Festival.

Transcending boundaries of space, time, and imagination, we will gather together in Chicago speculative fiction authors from various communities, each with their own unique vision of the world. This event is co-sponsored by SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) (www.sfwa.org) and Chicago Nerd Social Club (www.chicagonerds.org). 

The event’s Featured Readers will be Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, and Scott Huggins, with Rapid-Fire Readers Sue Burke, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jeremy John, and Anaea Lay. Deep Dish readings are open to the public and all are welcome, free of charge.

(2) COUPLE OF AMAZON TRIBUTARIES DRYING UP. The Digital Reader reports a pair of changes will soon be made to Amazon’s marketing strategies.

On September 27 they wrote: “Amazon is Shutting Down Amazon Giveaways on 30 November”.

Amazon is shutting down its nearly five-year-old giveaway service in two weeks.

The retailer sent out an email today, informing authors and others who have run contests that the service is being wound down over the next couple months. The option to start a new giveaway contest will end on 10 October, and Amazon will end all current contests on 17 October. 

A couple days later this item followed: “Amazon is Shutting Down Kindle Matchbook, Its Print+eBook Bundling Program”.

…Launched in 2013, Kindle Matchbook was a program where authors and publishers had the option of creating ebook+print bundles that combine a Kindle ebook with a print book sold by Amazon. The ebook could be given away for free, or sold for $1.99 or $0.99.

If you’ve never heard of this program, you’re not alone. Aside from the stories about the publishing industry losing its shit when Amazon launched Kindle Matchbook, it has gotten almost no media attention.

Most authors have never heard of it, and the ones that do have books in the program report that there was little interest from readers.

(3) BREAKING A RULE. Doctor Strangemind’s Kim Huett assembles an entertaining array of authors reproving critics in “Taking Care When Biting the Bear”. Keith Roberts lights up a pseudonymous reviewer, while James Blish is racked by Anthony Boucher and Isaac Asimov.

It has often been said, and rightly so, that there is little value in an author complaining about what others say about their work. No matter how wrong-headed an author might think such opinions, in the normal course of events complaining about them rarely does the author much good. The problem for any author who feels slighted is that we all form opinions about everything we experience and few of us will happily accept being told our opinions are worthless. Thus when an author uses the argument ‘that X did not understand what I was trying to do’ most of us feel our hackles raise in empathy with the critic.

To argue about anything but clear errors of fact (as Jack Vance once did in response to James Blish) is risky business for this very reason….

(4) MARS BY WAY OF KENSINGTON. Forbes advises travelers, “From A Mars Exhibit To An Out-Of-This-World Tea Time, Here’s How To Have The Perfect Space-Themed London Day”. The itinerary begins here:

…On October 18, the London Design Museum will launch their “Moving to Mars” exhibition, which considers both the science and design behind what going to Mars will look like for humankind. The exhibit is divided into three aesthetically pleasing exhibitions – one on Mars in popular culture, one on what life and living conditions will be like on Mars, and one on what the future of Mars could look like. Guests are then invited to make their own conclusions about how and when humans should make the leap to the red planet. Because it’s a design museum, the curators have collected more than 150 Mars-related objects and commissioned an interior design firm to create a multi-sensory experience. Guests will be able to walk through a prototype of a Martian habitat and study the clothing that will need to blend style and functionality with heavy-duty protection and technical performance. The exhibit will run until February 23, 2020. It’s best to buy your tickets in advance and is recommended for children 8 and older.

(5) POLL CATS. At Tor.com, James Davis Nicoll comments on “Four Speculative Novels Featuring Important Elections”. (And has no trouble reaching that number even before mentioning Double Star.)

My nation (which may not be yours) is in the midst of another election. On the one hand, it’s a glorious celebration of our right to choose who runs the nation for the next four years. On the other hand, many of us view with dismay the endless election—thirty-six full days of bloviation and punditry!—and the sinking feeling that it is all an exercise in deciding which of our colourful array of parties  is least objectionable. Still, even if it feels like one is being asked to choose between the Spanish Influenza and Yersinia pestis, it is important to remember one take-home lesson from Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War: even undesirable outcomes can be ranked in order of preference. The Spanish flu is bad. The Black Death is worse.

All of which led me to consider how elections have figured in speculative fiction novels.

(6) HARLEY QUINN. The first Birds of Prey trailer has dropped. In theaters February 7, 2020

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • October 1, 1957 The Brain From Planet Arous premiered. Starring John Agar, Joyce Meadows, and Robert Fuller, it was made on a budget of $ 58,000. It went into appeared in wide distribution in 1958 as a double feature with Teenage Monster.
  • October 1, 1998Futuresport aired on ABC. Starring Dean Cain, Vanessa Williams, and Wesley Snipes, it polled 23% at Rotten Tomatoes. 
  • October 1, 2001 — The Mutant Xseries first aired. It lasted for three seasons and sixty episodes. John Shea who was Luthor in the 1990s Lois & Clark was a cast member. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 1, 1896 Abraham Sofaer. The Thasian in “The Charlie X” episode of the original Trek. He’s also been on  The Man from U.N.C.L.E in “The Brain-Killer Affair” as Mr. Gabhail Samoy, head of U.N.C.L.E. operations in Calcutta, and also had one-offs on Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff’s ThrillerTime Tunnel, I Dream of JeannieKolchak: The Night Stalker and Lost in Space. (Died 1988.)
  • Born October 1, 1914 Donald Wollheim. Founding member of the Futurians, Wollheim organized what was later deemed the first American science fiction convention, when a group from New York met with a group from Philadelphia on October 22, 1936 in Philadelphia. As an editor, he published Le Guin’s first two novels as an Ace Double. And would someone please explain to me how he published an unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings? (Died 1990.)
  • Born October 1, 1930 Richard Harris. One of the Dumbledores in the Potter film franchise. He also played King Arthur in Camelot, Richard the Lion Hearted in Robin and Marian, Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels, James Parker in Tarzan, the Ape Man and he voiced Opal in Kaena: The Prophecy. His acting in Tarzan, the Ape Man him a nominee for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. Anyone seen that film? (Died 2002.)
  • Born October 1, 1935 Dame Julie Andrews, DBE, 84. Mary Poppins! I could stop there but I won’t. (Hee.) she had a scene cut in which was a maid in The Return of the Pink Panther, and she’s uncredited as the singing voice of Ainsley Jarvis in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Yet again she’s uncreated in a Panther film, this time as chairwoman in Trail of the Pink Panther. She voices Queen Lillian in Sherk 2Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After. And she’s the voice of Karathen in Aquaman.
  • Born October 1, 1944 Rick Katze, 75. A Boston fan and member of NESFA and MCFI. He’s chaired three Boskones, and worked many Worldcons. Quoting Fancyclopedia 3: “A lawyer professionally, he was counsel to the Connie Bailout Committee and negotiated the purchase of Connie’s unpaid non-fannish debt at about sixty cents on the dollar.” He’s an active editor for the NESFA Press, including the six-volume Best of Poul Anderson series.
  • Born October 1, 1948 Michael Ashley, 71. Way, way too prolific to cover in any detail so I’ll single out a few of his endeavours. The first, his magnificent The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, 1926 – 1965; the second being the companion series, The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1990. This not to slight anything he is done such as The Gernsback Days: A Study in the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936.
  • Born October 1, 1953 John Ridley, 66. Author of Those Who Walk in Darkness and What Fire Cannot Burn novels. Both excellent though high on the violence cringe scale. Writer on the Static Shock and Justice League series. Writer, The Authority : human on the inside graphic novel. And apparently the writer for Team Knight Rider, a female version of Knight Rider that last one season in the Nineties. 
  • Born October 1, 1989 Brie Larson, 30. Captain Marvel in the Marvel film universe. She’s also been in Kong: Skull Island as Mason Weaver, and plays Kit in the Unicorn Store which she also directed and produced. Her first genre role was Rachael in the “Into the Fire” of Touched by an Angel series; she also appeared as Krista Eisenburg in the “Slam” episode of Ghost Whisperer. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Where are they now? Grimmy answers the question for one rainbow vaulter.

(10) AT A GLANCE. Camestros Felapton in “Cat Psychology” provides a handy chart of facial expressions so you can tell what your cat is thinking – provided yours thinks the same way as Timothy the Talking Cat.

(11) WRONG ON JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter watch a contestant lose money with this response on tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!

Category: What’s that award for.

Answer: The Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Wrong question: What is tennis?

(12) NEW SFF. Victoria Sandbrook praises an author’s debut novel: “Review: THE LESSON by Cadwell Turnbull”.

…Turnbull’s narrative is measured, calm, until it isn’t, a thundercloud too easily written off until it looms above you. The central, external conflict remains taut and ever-present, even as Turnbull explores the deeply individual experiences of each character with an awareness and love of place rooted in his own history there.

(13) DON’T MISS THE APOCALYPSE. The Daily Mail’s article “Enter the Thunderdome: 4,000 Mad Max fans and their weaponry-festooned vehicles gather in the California desert for Wasteland Weekend – the ‘world’s largest post-apocalyptic festival'” comes with myriad photos.

Roughly 4,000 people have descended on to California‘s Mojave Desert for an annual post-apocalyptic festival called Wasteland Weekend. 

The festival, which was inspired by the Mad Max film series, celebrated its tenth anniversary this year and revelers flocked to the desert in their masses. 

Created in 2010 by Karol Bartoszynski, Jared Butler and James Howard, the festival sees its participants spend the entire weekend in post-apocalyptic costume. 

They proudly note:

The permanent festival site sits between the defunct Nevada nuclear test site, where from 1951 a total of 928 nuclear warheads were tested during the cold war, and Hollywood.

(14) BEAR ANCESTRY. Scientists are “Collecting polar bear footprints to map family trees”.

Scientists from Sweden are using DNA in the environment to track Alaskan polar bears.

The technique which uses DNA from traces of cells left behind by the bears has been described as game changing for polar bear research.

It’s less intrusive than other techniques and could help give a clearer picture of population sizes.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) comes from traces of biological tissue such as skin and mucus in the surroundings.

Scientists and now conservationists are increasingly using such samples to sequence genetic information and identify which species are present in a particular habitat.

It’s often used to test for invasive species or as evidence of which animals might need more protection.

In another application of the technique, geneticist Dr Micaela Hellström from the Aquabiota laboratory in Sweden worked with WWF Alaska and the Department of Wildlife Management in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) to collect snow from the pawprints of polar bears.

They tested the technique on polar bears in parks in Sweden and Finland.

“We realised that for the first time we could reach the nuclear DNA within the cells. The material outside the cell can tell what species you are and there are 1,000 or 2,000 copies. But the DNA in the nucleus which identifies an individual has only two copies, so it’s an enormous challenge to get out enough from these snowsteps,” she said.

(15) ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY.  “Babies in the womb have lizard-like hand muscles” – BBC has the story.

Babies in the womb have extra lizard-like muscles in their hands that most will lose before they are born, medical scans reveal.

They are probably one of the oldest, albeit fleeting, remnants of evolution seen in humans yet, biologists say, in the journal Development.

They date them as 250 million years old – a relic from when reptiles transitioned to mammals.

It is unclear why the human body makes and then deletes them before birth.

The biologists say the developmental step may be what makes thumbs dextrous. Thumbs, unlike other digits, retain an extra muscle.

(16) GOOD USE. BBC reports “Virtual reality PTSD treatment has ‘big impact’ for veterans”.

Virtual reality could be used to help military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who have struggled with mainstream treatment.

It involves patients walking on a treadmill in front of a screen which projects images depicting the type of trauma experienced.

A two-year trial found some patients could see almost a 40% improvement in their symptoms.

One veteran said it had given him the “biggest impact” out of any treatment.

(17) NOT IN HAWKINS ANYMORE? Netflix has greenlighted a fourth season of Stranger Things. The announcement took the form of this video:

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Olav Rokne, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]

46 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/1/19 Attention, Slans! This Is a Porgrave Pixel-Broadcasting Scroll

  1. 13
    “The permanent festival site sits between the defunct Nevada nuclear test site, where from 1951 a total of 928 nuclear warheads were tested during the cold war, and Hollywood.”

    There’s only about 300 miles between those two locations.

  2. (8) And Julie Andrews was also the author of a (children’s) genre book, “The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles”.

  3. 15: “Babies in the womb have lizard-like handmuscles” Am I wrong in remembering an old gothic movie from England that used this idea of embryonic ‘evolution’? A woman goes to a spooky mansion and learns the owner of the house must never be seen. After much angst and foreshadowing, she finds out he never developed past a certain embryonic stage and is basically a very big frog. Unable to fully express their love, he ends it all by hopping out a tower window.
    If I’m making up this memory, I need help, but I’m fairly sure I saw something like this on late-night tv.

  4. (15). Found it! The Maze (1953). I probably misremembered the specifics, but the movie does exist.

  5. (8) Just for the record, Wollheim did not publish Le Guin’s first two novels as “an Ace Double.” He published them as halves of separate Ace Doubles, as he did with writers like Dick, Delany, and Bradley. I don’t think he published anybody’s first two novels in the same Ace Double (at least not originally), although if I remember right Bradley’s second and third appeared in the same Ace Double.

  6. (8) Additionally, Julie Andrews was married to Blake Edwards, who directed most of the Pink Panther films–which is, I suspect, the reason for the uncredited cameos and voice work in those films.

  7. @Kevin Harkness: Sounds like it would make a good double feature with a hypothetical adaptation of Huxley’s “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”.

  8. 3) The Lester del Rey section is both hilarious and horrifying. Adding 5,000 words to an author’s 10,000 word story, apparently without notifying the original author? Holy moley. (Can’t help wondering if payout for the story was for 10K or 15K words, and if the latter, whether LdR paid himself for the addition.)

  9. Judge Magney says in a correction of what I said that Just for the record, Wollheim did not publish Le Guin’s first two novels as “an Ace Double.” He published them as halves of separate Ace Doubles, as he did with writers like Dick, Delany, and Bradley. I don’t think he published anybody’s first two novels in the same Ace Double (at least not originally), although if I remember right Bradley’s second and third appeared in the same Ace Double.

    I took that from the Wiki page for him. Mike, feel free to correct.

  10. @Kevin Harkness: Sir Roger! That was schlock movie viewing for us once in college.

  11. Bruce Arthurs: Yes, the idea of an editor adding 5,000 words that the author didn’t write is a whole new frontier for me, too.

    Usually the complaints are about cutting. Like Ted White’s anecdote from when he was working at F&SF and was assigned to trim a Zelazny novel to fit the magazine, and after painstakingly picking everything Ted thought could go — Edward Ferman decided that wasn’t enough and slashed out several thousand more words.

  12. (8) In the demented 1967 movie ‘Bedazzled’. “Julie Andrews” was the magic word used by the Devil (Peter Cook) to grant the wishes of the mortal he was trying to ensnare (Dudley Moore). But she never appears in the movie.
    Unfortunately, she does appear in 2010’s ‘The Tooth Fairy’ where she is in charge of the newest tooth fairy recruit, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. 🙁

  13. 6) The new Suicide Squad trailer was actually pretty entertaining! I’m planning to go.

  14. James Davis Nicoll

    At least 36 days. In 2015, the election lasted a full 11 weeks.

    And those 36 days started LITERALLY the day after our provincial election, so I’ve been in election season for an extra month or so, AND had to keep track of two different races. (Though one candidate who lost provincially is running federally too, just to add to the whiplash.)

    And it’s not like there aren’t a lot of obvious election-pandering actions pre election season. We just don’t seem to end up stuck in it for every single month starting right after the last campaign. And the nearest equivalent of the primaries, choosing the party leader, is a lot more discreet and mostly done in party.

  15. @Bruce Arthurs: I noted that story about del Rey. It wasn’t surprising given what I’ve read about his high opinion of himself; I wonder whether writing that much filler was really necessary (as opposed to buying a short story) rather than a stroke to his ego — although I suppose he could have been short the money to buy a full magazine’s worth of stories, or (as you hint) paid himself above whatever he got for editing.

  16. @Mike Glyer & @P J Evans: I can’t preorder Network Effect (whoops, I didn’t put the title) because I want the audiobook, and it’s not showing up on Audible yet. 🙁 But I’m super looking forward to a full novel! 😀

  17. Yeah, one of the advantages of not having fixed election dates is that it greatly reduces the ‘eternal campaign’ effect.

  18. (2) The issue I had with Matchbook was that it was opt-in by publishers. And the Big Six (now Five) didn’t opt in.

    I got a few bargains from them – books I’d ordered long enough ago that I’d just about forgotten them magically appeared there to be refreshed and renewed.

    I’ll be sorry to see it go, even though I rarely buy treeware anymore.

  19. 3: The excerpt has a link to the reviewer’s take on ‘Fawlty Towers’ and their analysis of the more sympathetic between Manuel / Basil reminds me of that old anti-labor cartoon where the lucky duck worker gets to go home to his family and the unfortunate over-stressed capitalist is left in the office doing something-or-other.

  20. (6) Thanks. That’s another generic live-action superhero cartoon I can scratch off my “to see” list.

    (8) @Jee Jay: Worse still, she appeared in Blake Edwards’ dire S.O.B., which would have counted as grounds for divorce if she’d pressed the suit.

  21. @Kendall:

    Yes, the excerpt is short – much shorter than the excerpt that Martha Wells shared at her reading at Worldcon … 🙂

  22. Meredith Moment: A one-volume ebook collection of Nancy Springer’s five-book series The Book of Isle is available from the Usual Suspects for $2.99. This is one of my all-time favorite series and Springer’s prose style is marvelous.

  23. (8) I was delighted by Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles when I read it as a child, and thought it held up pretty well when I re-read it in college.

    And she was credited as “Julie Edwards” when the book came out and I didn’t realize who wrote it until the end of the second read, when I looked harder at the author picture on the back flap. The “about the author” section had nothing about musical theater or Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, but did mention that she was married to filmmaker Blake Edwards. Sneaky!

  24. Honest question (not complaint): Were the Pink Panther movies SF in any way? The cartoons, sure, but my memory of the movies is simply bumbling detective vs suave, clever thief. Of course, it’s been a while since I saw them, but I’ve definitely never thought of them as at all SFnal.

    Bond, I can sorta buy, what with all the fanciful gadgets, but I don’t remember anything like that in Pink Panther. But I admit that my memory of the later movies is much fuzzier than my memories of the first, which I re-watched not too long ago.

  25. There was a death ray* in The Pink Panther Strikes Again from 1976. That’s all I can remember.

    IMDB describes it as a Doomsday device. It was a giant ray gun that would disintegrate things. They disappeared in a pink florescence.

  26. @Andrew
    Some of those look interesting, but I don’t know if they’re any good. (The Zahns and the Keyes)

  27. I don’t have the Octavia Butler books and the Keyes look good enough that I figure it’s worth it.

  28. @Andrew
    I have the Butler (and the Sayers, as three books), so I’ll look at Keyes. (FWIW, in the Sayers, “Whose Body” and “Clouds of Witness” are quite good. I don’t remember “Unnatural Death” well.)

  29. @Andrew: Thanks for the heads up. Funny, I went to their site just a day or two ago out of curiosity, but this wasn’t up then. I’m interested in a few of them, but I see I have an omnibus of the first couple of Zahn’s “Dragonback” series, the first of Keys’s series, and some of Butler’s, so I’m going to pass.

    I love the charity listed – Doctors Without Borders. That’s in my top 5 charities.

  30. I forgot to add:

    @Christian Brunschen: I’m sorry I didn’t or couldn’t (I forget which) make it to Wells’s reading at Worldcon. 7-8 months till the book comes out, sign. 😉

  31. Huh. The Humble Bundle won’t display right on this computer. I’ll have to remember to check it again elsewhere.

  32. Andrew wrote: Meredith moment: Big Humble Bundle including books by L’Engle, Zahn, Keyes, Sayers, and others (64 books, I think, for $15)

    Thanks! I’d never before invested in a Humble Bundle (though maybe I tried and found it didn’t work for some reason like my being in the UK) but I’m glad to have bought this one — several interesting things to read or reread, and cheap enough that I’m not fussed about the stuff I’ll likely never look at.

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