Pixel Scroll 10/26/16 The Tick Against the Box

Posted on by

(1) CAN’T STOP LOOKING. CinemaBlend’s Gregory Wakeman waited to finish his post about this Jar Jar Binks movie poster before gouging out his eyes…

(2) ADD THIS WORLDCON BID TO YOUR SCORECARD. Kevin Standlee reports that, at the request of this bid, he has added UK in 2024 to the Worldcon.org list of bids. The link is a Facebook page. Kevin notes, “They did say to me when they contacted worldcon.org that they plan to have an actual web site eventually as well, not just a Facebook page.”

(3) PREDICTING THE PRESENT. In “The Celebrity Campaign” on National Review Online, Kevin D. Williamson summarizes William Gibson’s Idoru and explains why Gibson’s work is important for understanding the vapid, celebrity-driven campaign we have this year.

(4) OCTOCON. Forbidden Planet bookstore’s correspondent James Bacon easily mixes dance with journalism: “Science Fiction in Ireland: James Reports from Octocon”.

Even though I finished work at 5.30AM in London on a mild autumnal Saturday morning, within a few hours I was in the Camden Court Hotel in Dublin’s city centre, amongst friends and fans at Octocon. The enthusiasm and excitement then carried me through until I hit the sheets at 4.30AM on Sunday morning, fed by the energy of the convention, dancing well past midnight and imbibing great cheer.

This year’s committee is youthful, bucking a trend with similar conventions in the UK, and possess a dynamism that brought together a nice programme, good fun social elements and of course overall a very enjoyable convention. The Guests of Honour, Diane Duaine and Peter Morward and Rhianna Pratchett, allowed much ground to be covered and attracted great audiences. With over two hundred people in attendance, the five-stream programme was busy.

(5) SETTING THE STUPID AFLAME. This Bradbury-related tweet went viral.

Here’s the text:

I love this letter! What a wonderful way to introduce students to the theme of Fahrenheit 451 that books are so dangerous that the institutions of society — schools and parents — might be willing to team up against children to prevent them from reading one. It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could never really happen,’ but pretending to present students at the start with what seems like a totally reasonable ‘first step’ is a really immersive way to teach them how insidious censorship can be I’m sure that when the book club is over and the students realize the true intent of this letter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accepted it as an actual permission slip. In addition, Milo’s concern that allowing me to add this note will make him stand out as a troublemaker really brings home why most of the characters find it easier to accept the world they live in rather than challenge it. I assured him that his teacher would have his back.

(6) REMAINS OF THAT DAY. The demolition of Ray Bradbury’s house inspired Joshua Sky’s Omni story “The House Had Eyes”.

The exterior was yellow with a brown triangle thatched roof and a thin brick chimney. The windows had been destroyed—the frames, like the living room, were gutted. Their remains tossed into a large blue dumpster resting on a hillside covered in dying grass. All that was left were two large cragged square shaped holes that bore inward yet outward all at once. Inward, laid the wisps of soot polished ruin. Hardwood floors, a mantle, masonry, some shelves and dust. Outward—the structure telepathically transmuted its emotions of loss and sorrow. She knew she was dying.

I was transfixed, my eyeballs locked with the house’s. It was like something straight out of a Bradbury story! My hands tightly gripped the fence, chain-links dug into my finger tendons. Focused on the yellow lawn, my mind pictured a phantom montage of Bradbury, time-lapsed: Watering the grass. Reading on the steps. Puttering about. Stalking the sidewalks. Talking to the neighbors. Talking to himself. Writing. Staring at the sky. Staring at the stars. Staring beyond. Marveling in awe. Downright dreaming—of rockets and Martians and technicolored time travelers.

It all felt so cosmically unfair. Why’d they have to tear it down? Why’d they have to piss on a legacy? It felt like we were all losing something—even if we didn’t know it. That our country—the people—the vanishing literate—were losing not only a landmark, but a sense of our collective wonderment. That we were continuing a bad trend that had no hint of ending—swapping our heritage for a buck. That’s the American way some would say. Some—maybe—but not all.

(7) FROM VELOUR TO MONSTER MAROON. With Halloween just around the corner, Atlas Obscura offers guidance to cosplayers: “How to Read The Secret Language of Starfleet Uniforms”.

It’s Halloween time again, and as it has been for the past 50 years, a Star Trek costume is a safe bet for anyone looking to dress up. But do you want to be a Starfleet captain in 2268? A ship’s doctor in 2368? For the uninitiated, deciphering the language of colors and symbols that place you in the show’s universe is a crapshoot.

Luckily, Atlas Obscura is here to help, with a bit of cosplay codebreaking….

The most recent Star Trek television series, 2001’s Enterprise, was actually a prequel, taking place in the mid-2100s, and strangely, their uniforms take cues from every era of the Star Trek franchise. Taking place prior to the formation of the Federation Starfleet seen in later incarnations, the uniforms of the very first space-faring Enterprise, were once again standardized into a purple workman’s jumpsuit (echoing the red-washed uniforms of the later Original Series films). Position on the ship could be determined by the color of a seam that ran along the shoulder of the jumpsuit, with the colors corresponding to the original command gold, science blue-green, and operations red.

And then rank was indicated by the number of silver bars over the right breast, just like the pips used in The Next Generation. While not everyone’s favorite, this suit kind of had it all.

(8) NEXT AT KGB. The Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series will present John Langan and Matthew Kressel, on Wednesday, November 16, beginning at 7p.m. in New York’s KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street, just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

John Langan

John Langan is author of two novels, The Fisherman and House of Windows.  He’s also published two collections, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters.  With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures:  Thirty Years of Monsters.  He is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards and he currently reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine.

New and forthcoming are stories in Children of Lovecraft, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Swords v. Cthulhu, and Children of Gla’aki.  In February of 2017, his third collection of stories, Sefira and Other Betrayals, will be published by Hippocampus Press.

John Langan lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and teaches classes in creative writing and Gothic literature at SUNY New Paltz.  With his younger son, he’s studying for his black belt in Tang Soo Do.

Matthew Kressel

Matthew Kressel is the author of the novels King of Shards and the forthcoming Queen of Static. His short fiction has been twice nominated for a Nebula Award and has or will soon appear in such markets as Lightspeed, Nightmare, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9.com, Apex Magazine, Interzone, and the anthologies Cyber World, After, Naked City, The People of the Book.

From 2003-2010 he published and edited Sybil’s Garage, an acclaimed SF magazine. He also published the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Paper Cities and for his publishing work, received a World Fantasy Award nomination for Special Award Non-Professional. He co-hosts the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series alongside Ellen Datlow. When not writing fiction he codes software for companies large and small, studies Yiddish (Nu?), and recites Blade Runner in its entirety from memory.

(9) NEW SF BOARD GAMES. In a piece on arstechnica.com called “Essen 2016: Best board games from the biggest board game convention”, Tom Mendlesohn reports from the International Spieltage convention in Germany, where most of the new board games have sf/fantasy content.

terraforming-mars

Terraforming Mars

FryxGames, 1-5 players, 90-120 mins, 12+

One of the most buzzworthy releases of the whole show, this title sold out by 3pm on the first day—a whole hour before Ars even arrived. The one table that FryxGames ran with a playable copy was booked every day. Fortunately, Ars US staffers already got their grubby little hands on the title and gave it a thorough—and hugely positive—review.

You’re playing as a futuristic global megacorp attempting, as the title suggests, to terraform Mars. Your tools are lots of plastic cubes, which track your resources and which are traded to in for asset cards, which get you more cubes. (The game is a total engine-builder.) Though the art isn’t terribly exciting, this is a terrific thinky Eurogame of interlocking systems and finding the most efficient ways to exchange one set of numbers for a higher set of numbers. 

(10) HE MADE IT SO. In a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by Mike Moffitt called “The Real James T. Kirk Built the Bridge of the Enterprise – In the Sunset District” profiles a guy named James Theodore Kirk, who was born a month before Star Trek went on the air and who built a replica of the Enterprise in his house.  He also is a Trekker who once won a chance to meet William Shatner, but he was dressed as the villianous reptile Gorn and wouldn’t tell Shatner his name really was James T. Kirk.

Captain’s log, Stardate 21153.7: After straying into a wormhole, the Enterprise has somehow crash-landed on Earth in early 21st-century San Francisco. We are attempting to effect repairs from a location in the city’s Sunset District.

James T. Kirk commands the Starship Enterprise from the captain’s chair of the ship’s bridge, conveniently located in the back of his house in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset.

The bridge is equipped with a wall of computers blinking with colorful lights, a transporter room and the main viewer, which would toggle to show flickering stars, sensor data or the occasional Romulan or Klingon message demanding the Enterprise’s immediate withdrawal from the Neutral Zone.

There is even an “elevator” in the back that makes a “whoosh” just like the one on the classic 1960s show “Star Trek.” Of course, the bridge is not an exact duplicate of the show’s — it’s a smaller area, so the key fixtures are a bit crammed and the helmsmen seats are missing altogether. But the overall impression is clearly Mid-century Modern Starship.

(11) KUTTNER. You can find Stephen Haffner hawking his wares this weekend at World Fantasy Con. Or you can order online today!

Haffner Press does it again! In 2012 we included a newly discovered Henry Kuttner story—”The Interplanetary Limited”—in THUNDER IN THE VOID. Now, with the upcoming release of THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR: THE EARLY KUTTNER, VOLUME TWO, we are pleased as pandas (!) to announce we have discovered ANOTHER unpublished Henry Kuttner story!

MAN’S CONQUEST OF SPACE or UPSIDE-DOWN IN TIME is an early gag-story (featuring pandas) supposedly written for the fanzines of the 1930s. It likely predates Kuttner’s first professional sale in 1936. “And how can I get a copy?” you ask? Well, we made it simple. So simple that it’s FREE* if you place (or have already placed!) a PAID preorder for THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR: THE EARLY KUTTNER, VOLUME TWO. We’re printing a limited quantity of this new Kuttner story, so Do. Not. Delay.

(12) KEEP WATCHING. Martin Morse Wooster recommends an animated short, Borrowed Time.

A weathered Sheriff returns to the remains of an accident he has spent a lifetime trying to forget. With each step forward, the memories come flooding back. Faced with his mistake once again, he must find the strength to carry on.

“Borrowed Time” is an animated short film, directed by Andrew Coats & Lou Hamou-Lhadj, and produced by Amanda Deering Jones. Music by Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla.

 

[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

80 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/26/16 The Tick Against the Box”

  2. At Book View Cafe, an enjoyable Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff rerun from 2011: There’s a Bimbo on the Cover of My Book: Verse One

    Following on the description of a Bujold Vorkosigan cover, she wonders

    When I sold my first novel shortly after this to the same publisher, I was terrified of what the cover might look like. Would I inherit another writer’s bimbos?

  3. (5) SETTING THE STUPID AFLAME.

    Clever response. Unfortunately the person receiving the letter probably doesn’t have the power to do anything. I imagine best-case scenario being the teacher agrees with you and thinks you’re kind of cool. Worst-case being that they label your kid the child of a troublemaker/wise-ass.

    (12) KEEP WATCHING.

    That was beautiful. I found it a wee bit overwrought, but that was thematically appropriate. Gorgeous music and visuals, and quite powerful.

    N.B. to anyone who was curious about Imzy, the social media platform mentioned in the comments of the 10/19 Scroll, just an FYI that membership has opened. I had a look and it strikes me as kind of a merger of Tumblr and Reddit. Which means it’s so not for me, but it may be for others if they wanna check it out.

  5. Cally on October 26, 2016 at 5:46 pm said:
    Morwood is misspelled, also. I don’t think that’s Mike’s error.

  6. Book rec: Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters

    This is a tricky book to recommend, because the basic premise is pretty triggery and requires the reader to have all their spoons in a row. Even me, and I’m usually not put off by such things. So: guvf vf na nygreangr uvfgbel jurer gur Pvivy Jne jnf arire sbhtug…orpnhfr Noenunz Yvapbya jnf nffnffvangrq va 1861. Va gur nsgrezngu, gur Pevggraqra Pbzcebzvfr jnf cnffrq, naq fgngrf’ evtugf gb ubyq fynirf jnf rafuevarq va gur Pbafgvghgvba, jvgu na nzraqzrag (“ab shgher nzraqzrag bs gur Pbafgvghgvba funyy nssrpg gur svir cerprqvat negvpyrf”) gung sbeonqr vgf rire orvat ercrnyrq. Fb va bhe zbqrea qnl, gurer ner sbhe fgngrf jurer fynirel fgvyy ervtaf. Nyfb, Znegva Yhgure Xvat qvq yvir va guvf gvzryvar, ohg orpnhfr YOW jnf qenttrq vagb, abg gur Ivrganz Jne, ohg na 11-lrne svtug gb xrrc Grknf sebz frprqvat, gur Pvivy Evtugf Npg jnf arire cnffrq.

    I think this book is fantastic, and it’s going on my shortlist, but it’s a tough read. The prose is restrained, almost Hemingwayesque, to further drive home the horrors of the story. You need to be prepared.

    (x-posted to 2016 recommendation thread)

  7. Third fifth.

    Read the Ars Technica review and I’d definitely like to play Terraforming Mars!

  15. @Bonnie McDaniel: I found that Underground Airlines, like Matt Ruff’s Mirage, completely failed as a plausible alternate-world story. But if you swallow the premises whole, the story holds together — very bleakly. I would not suggest it to anyone who has triggers.

  16. Camestros Felapton: UK in 2024? Can the con organisers actually guarantee that there will be a UK in 2024?

    They can always call it FormerUKCon. Or BrexitCon.

  21. The Kickstarter for Strange California: A Speculative Fiction Anthology by Jaym Gates and J. Daniel Batt has 24 hours left to go.

    The anthology consists of 26 stories totalling 110,000 words, and includes stories from a lot of great authors (including a couple of Filers!):
    Natania Barron
    Laura Blackwell
    Chaz Brenchley
    Armel Dagorn
    Richard Dansky
    Marion Deeds
    Meg Elison
    Spencer Ellsworth
    Laura Ann Gilman
    Nancy Holder
    Ezzy G. Languzzi
    S. Qiouyi Lu
    Patricia Lundy
    Nick Mamatas
    Seanan McGuire
    Melissa Monks
    D. Morgenstern
    Tim Pratt
    Loren Rhoads
    K.A. Rochnik
    Lance Shoeman
    E. Catherine Tobler
    James Van Pelt
    Juliette Wade
    Suzanne Willis
    Christie Yant

    Plus a cover by Galen Dara, interior illustrations by Jason Batt, and an Introduction by Yonatan Zunger.

    The Kickstarter has already funded. Just $12 gets you the e-book in non-DRM pdf, mobi, and epub formats.

  22. Bonnie McDaniel on October 26, 2016 at 5:57 pm said:
    Book rec: Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters

    I’m interested in checking this out, I liked his Last Policeman trilogy.

  23. (5) I’m still kind of bewildered at the idea that the student wrote out the permission request by hand. Like, seriously? They ask students to explain to their parents why a book they’ve been assigned has been challenged, before they’ve even read the book? WTF.

    (I know, I know, it’s a WTF to begin with.)

    (1) I hadn’t previously actually watched the Rogue One trailer. As usual, I am depressed by the words-to-explosion ratio.

    “We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope!”

    Oh yes that’s definitely all the dialogue and character voice a trailer needs, let’s see more explodeys!!!

    ::curmudgeonly sigh::

  25. 8) might well be worth a look-in, for people in the area (i.e. not me, no chance I’m afraid.) I read Langan’s first collection The Wide Carnivorous Sky and was favourably impressed – enough so to put him on my “authors to watch out for” list.

    I would, naturally, welcome the return of Worldcon to whatever dystopian remnants are left of my country in 2024….

  28. Well, here’s fun: as thousands of amateur novelists (myself included, naturally) canter up to the starting line for 2016’s NaNoWriMo, StoryBundle is providing the 2016 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle, curated by Kevin J. Anderson and featuring a number of familiar names. (And there’s no denying that Kevin J. Anderson writes, and sells, books, that’s for sure.)

    I’m not certain how much I want a set of books (and discounts on software) which will undoubtedly tell me I’m Doing It All Wrong… but the fact remains, these things are available, and they will have plenty of useful insights (because, let’s face it, I very probably am Doing It All Wrong.)

  29. 1: maybe I’ll still be around when someone mashes up SW and makes Jar Jar Luke’s father…

    getting so sick of Star Wars. Yes, I was wowed by it in ’77 (and avidly following developments from 75 until release) because it promised to be a science fiction film that respected SF (and to some extent it was); but these endless re-dos with the same freakin plot and insert for toy fodder characters is just so lame.

    I want a constitutional amendment: no film less than 100 years old may be re-done, re-imagined, re-booted, re-cycled, re-tconned, re-cast, or re-cycled; penalties shall not exceed having your entire toy line removed from stores.

  32. @steve davidson

    I want a constitutional amendment: no film less than 100 years old may be re-done, re-imagined, re-booted, re-cycled, re-tconned, re-cast, or re-cycled; penalties shall not exceed having your entire toy line removed from stores.

    Can I second that motion for you?

    B/R
    Dann

  34. Camestros Felapton: UK in 2024? Can the con organisers actually guarantee that there will be a UK in 2024?

    Well, most of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy should still be united, though I wouldn’t bet on Northumbria being in there.

  36. Terraforming Mars is a great game–played it last Sunday for the first time, and I almost won on points by importing pets from Earth. 🙂

  37. Oh yes that’s definitely all the dialogue and character voice a trailer needs, let’s see more explodeys!!!

    To be fair, the series isn’t called Star Meaningful Conversations.

  38. lurkertype asked:

    Is 200 an average size European con?

    Hardly. European cons have the same range of scales as cons anywhere else, from small to ginormous. The largest sf-intersecting event is probably Spiel Essen, which is about the same size as SDCC.

  39. Imzy report! I got my invite code, went to the site, and discovered it’s now just doing straight signups.

    In Imzy, you can create multiple personas and interact with different communities with different personas. (However, to stop sockpuppeting, you can only interact with each community with one persona, and if it gets banned, all your personas are banned.) It appears that every single handle has to be unique within Imzy.

    The multiple-persona aspect leads to the biggest hurdle for people coming from Facebook and Twitter: there’s no concept of a default out-of-the box personal posting space like the Facebook timeline. You have to create a specialized community for one of your personas, mark it as a personal blog, and set it so only you can post there. It could stand to have a streamlined workflow just for personal blogging.

    There’s an integrated feed that shows everything going on in all the communities you’re following, just like you’d expect. Commenting is similar to Facebook except it gives you two levels of threading instead of just one, and currently sorts by “popular” by default, though you can manually sort by oldest/newest (and Imzy claims to be working on the ability to choose a different default order).

    There’s already a payment system built in, so you can send “tips” to your favorite creators if they have a presence there. You can even send tips to individual posters or commenters if the settings in a community allow it.

    Despite being overcomplicated for a personal blog, the community setup process is nice and smooth for a full-featured community.

    As for its big selling point, well, Imzy is certainly starting off on the right foot with a clear set of rules and a design that reflects a commitment to trying to restrain the trolls. It’s now down to whether they follow through as they grow, and how the user community evolves.

  40. @Darren:

    To be fair, the series isn’t called Star Meaningful Conv’ersations.

    LOL 😀

    I feel like there might be some middle ground possible, though…

    The original Star Wars gave us “I am your father!”; “I love you.” “I know,”; “Fear leads to anger,” “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” and so many others.

    The original trilogy had groundbreaking effects, sure, but they also had kickass characters.

    And maybe Rogue One has kickass characters; I dunno. But it doesn’t look like the trailer-composers thinks they’re a significant element in the movie.

  42. And maybe Rogue One has kickass characters; I dunno. But it doesn’t look like the trailer-composers thinks they’re a significant element in the movie.

    Well, that leads to the question of which Rouge One trailer you’ve seen? Because there are more than one. This one is almost all talk. So is this one. And this one. And this one.

    (I might have got my links a little tangled there, but suffice it to say that there are 3 or 4 trailers with lots of dialogue.)

  44. @Lee

    Glad to be of service 😉

    If I hadn’t been at work I might have turned it into a full filk, so be grateful <g>

  45. @Standback: Did you ever see the original trailers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi? Or, for that matter, the trailer for just about any major motion picture in the last 40 years that had action/adventure elements? It’s almost unheard of for them to focus on the quiet character moments (not to mention that the kinds of memorable lines you’re talking about are mostly meaningless out of context— you can get a kick out of reading just those lines by themselves now because you’ve already seen those movies).

    I mean this is kind of like complaining that most science fiction these days is about spaceships and nothing else, because they keep putting spaceships on the covers… and then allowing as how “maybe this book is about other things too, I dunno, but it doesn’t look like the publisher thinks they’re a significant element.” As a comment about marketing that’s reasonable, but it doesn’t seem like that’s how you meant it.

  47. Steve Wright: I’m not certain how much I want a set of books (and discounts on software) which will undoubtedly tell me I’m Doing It All Wrong… but the fact remains, these things are available, and they will have plenty of useful insights (because, let’s face it, I very probably am Doing It All Wrong.)

    If you’re feeling extra masochistic, Chuck Wendig has an 8-book bundle of writing how-tos for $20.

  49. The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland was a redo. Just sayin’.

    So was the Maltese Falcon (1941), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Not all remakes are bad.

Comments are closed.