(1) BEAMING UP OR BEAMING DOWN? How likely is The Orville to stick around? Follow the ratings chart and compare it to the competition. Although interest has tailed off since the first couple of episodes, its audience is comparable to a lot of other shows in its time slot.
(2) DUD DAD. The first glimpse of Ambassador Sarek in 1967 did not prepare us for this. But Emily Asher-Perrin is persuasive: “We Can Safely Say That Sarek of Vulcan is Sci-fi’s Worst Dad”.
Look, I have been waiting years to say this and I just can’t hold back anymore. Science fiction is full of horrible dad figures. We know this. There are so many that we’d be hard pressed to decide the winner of that Battle Royale, particularly given the scope of their terribleness. Anakin Skywalker Force-choked his pregnant wife and tortured his daughter. Howard Stark emotionally abused his son into creating the “future” he wanted to bring about, and never managed to utter the words I love you. Admiral Adama made his eldest son feel totally inferior to both his dead son and his surrogate daughter, and then left him alone on a new world so he could spend three minutes with his dying paramour. Sci-fi dads are generally bad at their jobs.
But you know who it the absolutely worst? Spock’s dad.
Yeah. I’m looking at you, Sarek of Vulcan…
It’s a great hook for an article. It’s even greater if you’re old enough to remember that Jane Wyatt, the actress who played Spock’s mother in TOS, had spent years playing the mother in that ultimate patriarchal sitcom Father Knows Best.
(3) SCARY METER. The “2017 Halloween Poetry Reading” is up at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association website, with soundfiles of the poets reading their works.
This year’s Halloween poems are being curated by our own Ashley Dioses, who recently released her new book, Diary of a Sorceress. Congratulations, Ashley!
Already, poems are available by emerging and award-winning poets such as Melanie Stormm, F.J. Bergmann, John C. Mannone, Angela Yuriko Smith, Richaundra Thursday, Joshua Gage, Adele Gardner, Gary Baps, Celena StarVela, Marie Vibbert, and Deborah Davitt. Others will be added as Halloween comes closer!
(4) BREAK IN THE ACTION. Paul Cornell says “The Future of the Shadow Police” isn’t rosy.
Readers have been asking me for a while now about when the next Shadow Police novel is coming out. The unfortunate answer is: I don’t know, verging toward never. I’m afraid Tor UK have dropped the line. Now, this is no cause for anger at them. I serve at the pleasure of publishers. I’m used to the ups and downs. (And I know I have several ups coming my way soon, so I feel strong enough to write about this.)
I might, at some point in the future, consider using a service such as Unbound to publish the last two books in the series. (There were always going to be five.) And if a publisher were to get in touch, seeking to republish the first three, then go forward, I’d have that conversation. But the aim right now is to continue with the flourishing Lychford series, and look to use the next non-Lychford novel to move up a league division or two, and then return to Quill and his team from a position of strength.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I’ve loved the reader reaction to the Shadow Police books. I promise I will finish that story when it’s possible to do so. I thought you all deserved an explanation.
(5) AS SEEN ON TV. Today, Jeopardy! obliquely referenced the various Puppy campaigns in a question:
Any member of the World Science Fiction Society can vote for this literary award, which has led to some drama.
Rich Lynch says nobody got it. Steven H Silver called it a “Triple stumper.”
(6) ROCK’N ROLL IS HERE TO SLAY. In “Slate’s Definitive Ranking of Songs in Which Aliens Exterminate All Life on Earth”, the downbeat is really down.
#2: “The Last Transmission,” The Comas
Now that’s what I call “music about aliens systematically wiping out humanity!” This song, bone-deep in its pessimism, explains in some detail why we’ve got this coming: we’re oblivious to everything around us; we’re afraid for reasons we don’t understand; and above all, we’re gonna be a cakewalk for the aliens to conquer. And has there ever been a lyric that crystalized this particular moment in time as well as “At this time, sirs, I recommend that we proceed to Phase Three: Eradicate them all for the glory of our interstellar queen”? Probably. But once the interstellar queen arrives and starts eradicating us, this is going to be the hottest jam of the summer.
(7) DRAGON ART. Hampus calls this a “Meredith painting” – an artist paints an elaborate dragon in one stroke. Apparently this is a thing in Japanese art.
https://twitter.com/TimeIapsevids/status/921543505561968641
(8) BATTLE ROBOTS. The culmination of a series of robotic brawls — “Two Giant Robots Enter a Steel Mill for a 3-Round Slugfest. Which One Leaves?”
Back in 2015, American startup MegaBots Inc challenged Japanese company Suidobashi to a Giant Robot Duel–a knock-down dragout, totally-not-staged fight between the US and Japanese robot teams. On Tuesday night, the final fight went down. Here’s the breakdown, starting with Round 1:
Iron Glory (MK2) is fifteen feet tall, weighs six tons, has a 22-foot wingspan at full extension, a top speed of 2.5 miles per hour, a 24 horsepower engine, and is armed with a missile launcher and a six-inch cannon that fires 3-pound paintballs. Iron Glory is described as favoring a “Western” combat style, with an emphasis on distance and ranged weaponry….
And if that’s not enough coverage for you, there’s also “USA and Japan’s giant robot battle was a slow, brilliant mess”.
(9) SAGA FIGURES. Funko is working with Skybound Entertainment to produce figures from the Saga graphic novel series. Nine figures have been announced, which include a couple of variants and one exclusive to Barnes and Noble: “Funko SAGA Pops are Coming!” The figures will be available in February of 2018.
It’s no secret that we here at Skybound LOVE Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples’ Eisner Award winning comic SAGA. We love it so much that in the past couple years we’ve teamed up with Brian and Fiona to bring you a ton of amazing merch for the series. Today, we’re happy to announce that everyone’s favorite space opera is OFFICIALLY get the Funko Pop! vinyl treatment.
We’ve got Marko, Alana, The Will, Prince Robot & Lying Cat coming your way and they’re adorable! These guys will be dropping at a shop near you in February. Make sure to keep an eye out for retailer exclusives (like Izabel at Hot Topic) and chase variants. You can see the first images for the figures below. Let us know in the comments which Funko pop you’re most excited for (the correct answer is: ALL OF THEM. Just fyi).
(10) BIRD UPDATE. In October 2015, File 770 linked to a GoFundMe appeal by science fiction writer RP Bird (RP’s Cancer Survival Fund). Terhi Törmänen has news about a new appeal for help:
RP Bird survived cancer treatment but is not in good health and still suffers from chronic and almost debilitating pain. He’s actually currently quite desperate as you can read from his latest appeal.
He’s been able support himself through a low-paying part time job that he’ll probably lose in very near future.
He’s launched a new appeal to raise money to be able to go trough further facial and dental surgery to improve his ability to e.g. eat properly and lessen the pain and other health issues stemming from the cancer and its treatment. The state will pay for the operations but he does not have any savings to pay rent for his one-room accommodation and other very modest living expenses while he’s going through the operations and recovering from them. His appeal is quite reasonable $ 2000.
I think that if you’d mention his desperate situation in the File 770 the appeal might have a chance to succeed and a life could be saved.
(11) SOPHIA THE SAUDI ROBOT. The BBC asks, “Does Saudi robot citizen have more rights than women?”
Meet Sophia, a robot who made her first public appearance in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh on Monday.
Sophia was such a hit she was immediately given Saudi citizenship in front of hundreds of delegates at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on 25 October.
But as pictures and videos of Sophia began circulating on social media many started to ask why a robot already seemed to have secured more rights than women in the country
Sophia, created by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, addressed the audience in English without the customary headscarf and abaya, a traditional cloak which Saudi women are obliged to wear in public.
“I am very honoured and proud for this unique distinction,” she said. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”
"It is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with citizenship." Please welcome the newest Saudi: Sophia. #FII2017 pic.twitter.com/bsv5LmKwlf
— CIC Saudi Arabia (@CICSaudi) October 25, 2017
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Chip Hitchcock asks, “Horror or scifi?” A recent Mother Goose & Grimm.
- He’s also bugged by today’s Bizzaro.
(13) SJW CREDENTIAL RENEWED. Bruce Arthurs tells “My Best True Cat Story” at the Undulant Fever blog.
…Hilde and I exchanged looks as we drove slowly by, but didn’t want to upset Chris before church. So I drove them to church, then came back, retrieved the body, took it home, and buried it in the back yard, with a lot of tears. (He may not have been THE World’s Best Cat, but he was a contender.)…
(14) IT’S IN THE BAGON. “Do you have a hoard that needs guarding? A dragon could be your greatest ally,” says the person behind the Dragon Bagons Kickstarter.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign to launch Bagthulhu’s conquest of the globe, Wayward Masquerade is back with a range of CR10 cuties that want to hoard all your dice. They’ve raised $6,216 of their $18,260 goal as of this writing, with 26 days left in the appeal.
(15) CEREAL JUSTICE WARRIOR. Saladin Ahmed’s tweet in protest yielded an immediate promise from Kellogg’s to change some art.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/922840667277135872
USA Today reports “Kellogg’s revamping racially insensitive Corn Pops boxes”.
Kellogg’s will be redesigning Corn Pops cereal boxes after a complaint about racially insensitive art on the packaging.
The Battle Creek, Mich.-based cereal and snack maker said on Twitter Wednesday it will replace the cover drawing of cartoon characters shaped like corn kernels populating a shopping mall. The corn pop characters are shown shopping, playing in an arcade or frolicked in a fountain. One skateboards down an escalator.
What struck Saladin Ahmed was that a single brown corn pop was working as a janitor operating a floor waxer. Ahmed, current writer of Marvel Comics’ Black Bolt series and author of 2012 fantasy novel Throne of the Crescent Moon, took to Twitter Tuesday to ask, “Why is literally the only brown corn pop on the whole cereal box the janitor? this is teaching kids racism.”
He added in a subsequent post: “yes its a tiny thing, but when you see your kid staring at this over breakfast and realize millions of other kids are doing the same…”
Kellogg’s responded to Ahmed on the social media network about five hours later that “Kellogg is committed to diversity & inclusion. We did not intend to offend – we apologize. The artwork is updated & will be in stores soon.”
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/922930010058575873
(16) BREAKFAST IN SWITZERLAND. Newsweek reports experiments at CERN still cannot explain how matter formed in the early universe: “The Universe Should Not Actually Exist, Scientists Say”.
David K.M. Klaus sent the link along with this quotation:
“Don’t you see, Tommie? I’ve explained it to you, I know I have. Irrelevance. Why, you telepaths were the reason the investigation started; you proved that simultaneity was an admissible concept…and the inevitable logical consequence was that time and space do not exist.”
I felt my head begin to ache. “They don’t? Then what is that we seem to be having breakfast in?” ”Just a mathematical abstraction, dear. Nothing more. She smiled and looked motherly. “Poor ‘Sentimental Tommie.’ You worry too much.” Time For The Stars by Robert A. Heinlein, 1956
(17) BREAKFAST IN WAUKEGAN. The Chicago Tribune says you can find some alien eats in Bradbury’s birthplace: “Waukegan eatery gets its moniker from famous son Ray Bradbury”.
Science fiction author and native son Ray Bradbury wrote about 1920s Waukegan as “Green Town” in three books, “Dandelion Wine,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and “Farewell Summer.”
Bradbury died in 2012. A park, two arts festivals, and a tavern downtown bear his name
Robert Sobol, owner of Green Town Tavern in Waukegan’s downtown district, originally opened the place under a different name in 2006. His business partner left and Sobol took over the bar two years later. Sobol was looking for a new name, so he held a contest asked his customers to think of one. Green Town was declared the winner with the most votes….
Green Town Tavern offers a Saturday Happy Thyme Breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon and features breakfast dishes like the Green Town Omelette — three eggs, bacon, sausage, onions, peppers and cheddar cheese with hash browns — and “Waukegan’s Finest Bloody Mary.”
(18) KINGPIN. If you follow Daredevil, this will probably be good news for you: “‘Daredevil’ Brings Back Vincent D’Onofrio For Season 3; Erik Oleson Joins As New Showrunner”. Deadline has the story.
Vincent D’Onofrio has been set to reprise as Wilson Fisk for the third season of Daredevil, I’ve learned. As the Kingpin crime lord, the Emmy nominee was the main villain in Season 1 of the Netflix series and made an imprisoned appearance in last year’s Season 2. The ex-Law & Order actor hinted to fans recently that official word on his Daredevil return was in the cards with a banner photo of the Fisk character up on his Twitter page
(19) KARLOFF AND LUGOSI: A HALLOWEEN TRIBUTE. Steve Vertlieb invites you to read his posts about the iconic horror actors at The Thunder Child website.
He was beloved by children of all ages, the gentle giant brought to horrifying screen existence by electrodes and the thunderous lightening of mad inspiration. Here, then, is my Halloween look back at the life and career of both Frankenstein’s, and Hollywood’s beloved “Monster,” Boris Karloff.
Here is my affectionate Halloween tribute to Bela Lugosi…his “horrific” career ascension, as well as its poignant decline…as we remember The Man Behind Dracula’s Cape.
(20) OHHHKAYYYY….. Polygon reports “Boyfriend Dungeon is all about dating your weapons, and it looks rad”.
We’ve already found our favorite mashup of 2019: Boyfriend Dungeon, a dungeon crawler from indie team Kitfox Games (Moon Hunters, The Shrouded Isle), which combines hack-and-slash gameplay with very, very cute guys and girls.
Boyfriend Dungeon is exactly what it says on the tin, based on the first trailer. Players are a tiny warrior fighting through monster-ridden areas. Scattered across the procedurally generated dungeons are a bunch of lost weapons — which, once rescued, turn out to actually be extremely cute singles.
That’s when the dungeon crawler turns into a romance game, and it’s also when we all realized that Boyfriend Dungeon is something special. Every romance option has their own specific weapon to equip, from an epee to a dagger and then some. Players work to level up those weapons, but also to win over these sweet babes during dialogue scenes. If this isn’t the smartest combination of genres we’ve seen in some time, we don’t know what is.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Dann, Steven H Silver, Rich Lynch, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Acoustic Rob.]
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5) I’d like to think, had I been on J! today and gotten this clue when ahead by a sufficient margin to be able to take the hit if judged wrong, I would’ve responded “What is the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer?”
5)
“has led to some drama”
And so the Puppies have, obliquely, made it onto a Jeopardy answer.
20) and here I thought I’d seen it all with the Tank dating simulator game (no, really!)
15) Unfortunately the usual trolling suspects have been slamming Saladin on twitter. I got wrapped in that–he had retweeted a Virgil Finlay image that I had retweeted of a story I did on SFF audio. It happened to be a dark hand…so a host of trolls started saying that the image was racist. So naturally I got to see those tweets too…
Eventually, Saladin undid his retweet to try and stop the trolls from attacking him for “tweeting a racist image” and how ‘oh so horrible that was.’ So yeah…
What a long, strange scroll it’s been.
Dark scroll crashes, pouring pixels into ashes.
[fifth]
[godstalk]
Paul, the puppies made it onto Jeopardy back in 2015.
@ultragotha Hunh, I missed or did not remember that. Hunh.
(And when you make a post to tick the box, you’re supposed to tick the box…)
I Scroll the Pixel Electric.
He thrusts his fists against the scrolls
And still insists he sees the trolls.
2) Sarek is certainly a dud father, but he’s far from science fiction’s worst, considering the genre also includes the likes of Darth Vader and Ego the Living Planet.
15) I’d been wondering about the racist cereal box art, when Paul and I talked about this on Twitter. Glad to finally see what the fuss was all about.
Finally, for those who expressed an interest in reading my articles on the German pulps from a long defunct fanzine, I found PDF versions of the drafts of two of them. Both are on crime pulps – I still haven’t found the article I wrote about a horror series – but you can read them here:
G-Man Jerry Cotton – German Pulp’s Biggest Gun
Jerry Cotton’s Rivals – The Lesser Guns of German Pulp
I’m probably going to collect these articles eventually and maybe write additional chapters about SF pulps, western pulps and war pulps, so it’s a comprehensive overview.
(20) I learned about Boyfriend Dungeon earlier this week when a friend posted the link on her FB feed. I think her caps-lock key has been permanently fused by the accompanying squee-radiation created by the ensuing discussion.
But both Ego and Darth were absentee parents. They didn’t have as much of a chance to really screw up their kids as Sarek did.
True. Unlike Sarek, Ego and Darth Vader weren’t actually around to screw up their kids. Though both tried to kill their kids, which Sarek for all his failings didn’t try to do. For a truly horrible father who actually was present in the lives of his kids, there’s also Thanos and – if we expand it to fantasy – Tywin Lannister. Sarek, meanwhile, is more along the lines of Howard Stark, emotionally distant and incapable, but not actively evil.
The Scroll Bone’s connected to the File Bone.
The key element of Sarek is his level of incompetence with being a dad was not related to him also being incompetent in general or actively evil.
Yup, Sarek is a fine ambassador and a Vulcan with an unusual liking for humans, but he is not evil in any way. He’s just a really crappy father.
(7) DRAGON ART.
Whoa.
I (and I daresay a lot of other fannish JEOPARDY watchers) correctly answered “Hugo”, though in my opinion the wording of the question wasn’t the best
Saotome Genma would like a word on bad parenting. I mean, marrying off your infant son for food is bad. Doing it multiple times though? Um. And that’s not even the worst way he screwed over his son.
Unless we’re limiting ourselves to the visual arts, I think we can do a lot better than Sarek. (Or worse, if you prefer.)
Consider, for example, Ser Galen from the Vorkosigan Saga, who abandoned his birth-child, Duv, and later tried to suborn him into helping with a terrorist attack, and when that failed, attempted to proceed with his plans in a way which would–purely incidentally–cause the maximum damage to his son’s career. But the main thing is the way he raised Mark–who, though not his biological offspring, was, in many legal senses, his child–subjecting him to frequent torture and abuse (even though Mark was key to at least one of his evil plans). As is pointed out many times in the series, it’s amazing that Mark was able to cling to anything resembling sanity after all that.
Oh yes, Ser Galen is a real piece of work.
Other really terrible fathers from written science fiction are Gregor Shreck from Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker series jub frkhnyyl nohfrf uvf bja qnhtugre Rinatryvar naq zheqref ure jura fur erfvfgf. Gura, ur unf uvf qrnq qnhtugre pybarq (va n jbeyq jurer pybarf unir ab evtugf naq ner onfvpnyyl fynirf) naq oynpxznvyf gur pybar qnhtugre vagb borqvrapr ol guerngravat ure jvgu rkcbfher. Bu lrf, naq ur nyfb frkhnyyl nohfrf ure orfg sevraq, xvyyf ure naq xrrcf ure frirerq urnq va n wne. The Deathstalker series (and most of Green’s work, come to think of it) is full of awful parents anyway. The ones who are just Sarek level incompetent are the best.
Eve Dallas from J.D. Robb’s In Death series jnf frkhnyyl nohfrq ol ure bja sngure naq nccneragyl eragrq bhg gb bgure zra, orsber fur xvyyrq uvz ng gur ntr bs nccebk. 10. Gur sngure bs Rir’f uhfonaq Ebnexr jnf n ivbyrag nypbubyvp jub orng uvf bja fba naq zheqrerq Ebnexr’f zbgure.
There’s also Brian Caldswell from Rachel Bach’s Paradox series jub nppvqragnyyl znantrf gb xvyy uvf bja jvsr naq qnhtugre, orpnhfr ur’f vapncnoyr bs sbyybjvat vafgehpgvbaf nobhg ubj gb unaqyr n irel qnatrebhf betnavfz. Nsgrejneqf, Pnyqfjryy pbzrf gb gur pbapyhfvba gung arvgure ur abe nalobql ryfr haqre uvf pbzznaq fubhyq unir nal ebznagvp be snzvyl eryngvbaf jungfbrire. Pnyqfjryy nyfb vzcevfbaf naq nohfrf n grrantrq tvey sbe qrpnqrf gb rkcybvg ure fcrpvny novyvgvrf naq xrrcf ure snvyvat obql nyvir ol nal zrnfher. Ur nyfb svaqf uvzfrys va punetr bs n fhpprffvba bs bgure grrantrq tveyf jub jrer fgbyra sebz gurve snzvyvrf naq oenvajnfurq gb rkcybvg gurve fcrpvny novyvgvrf. Pnyqfjryy cnffrf gurfr tveyf bss nf uvf qnhtugref naq xvyyf gurz jura gurl’er hfrq hc (ohg gung’f bxnl – vg’f sbe gur tbbq bs gur havirefr). Ur nyfb gnxrf na becunarq obl haqre uvf jvat, abg gb nqbcg uvz ohg gb vaqhpg uvz vagb uvf betnavfngvba, lbh xabj gur bar gung rkcybvgf naq zheqref grra tveyf sbe gur tbbq bs gur havirefr, naq fbzrubj crefhnqrf gur obl gung ur pnaabg rkcrpg ybir be nalguvat cbfvgvir va yvsr, orpnhfr ur qbrfa’g qrfreir fhpu guvatf. Ur nyfb cflpubybtvpnyyl gbegherf uvf jneq, jura ur qnerf gb snyy va ybir naq gheaf ntnvafg uvz nf na nqhyg. Gehyl n cvrpr bs jbex naq ur rira fheivirf gur raq bs gur frevrf.
So yes, SFF is full of horrible parents. Sarek is actually a very mild example, since he’s merely incompetent and emotionally distant, but not abusive or outright evil.
Bad fathers in SFF? King Oberon in the Amber Chronicles surely qualifies. Nearly lost all of reality in his scheming.
(3) Now waiting in my podcast app is the most recent episode of The Grim Tidings Podcast which involves poetry. Grim poetry. Dark poetry. Grimdark poetry.
Who knows?
Rob and Philip always put on a good show.
Regards,
Dann
/tickbox
Whether or not Sarek is up for the Bad Dad award, he may be eligible for another distinction: Trek character played by the most actors: Mark Leonard, Jonathan Simpson, Ben Cross, James Frain.
Who else might be in the running?
Submitted without comment.
baby wombat!
Denethor was not a good father. Although one of his sons turned out all right in spite of it.
Also, Matai Shang was no great shakes.
(18) Erik Oleson’s resume does not inspire confidence. Literally everything he’s worked on has been of dramatically lower quality than Netflix’s Marvel shows.
Sarek is in the Worst Husband running too. No wonder Jane Wyatt played Amanda as being blissed out on tranquilizers.
7 – I know folks who one stroke paint, but I they’ve never made me dragons.
9 – Not a fan of the POP figure aesthetic but need a Lying Cat for my desk.
18 – Awesome, his Kingpin radiates pure menace in a suit and the both S1 of JJ and DD benefited from great antagonists, hoping his presence signals better things for Season 3. But like August said the resume for Erik Oleson sets my expectations lower.
20 – Dating simulator Mash Ups have started to spread more, while in the past they haven’t been popular in the west there have been ones going viral for being different, like Hatoful Boyfriend the pigeon dating game, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator and now this. Part of it is the quirky trope subversion but the fusion between dungeon crawler and romancing your weapon is a great idea. Like if you spent a lot of time interacting and getting to know your weapon and a weapon with better stats to handle the monsters do you abandon one for the other? If you have multiple weapons do they get jealous of each other and do you have to find some sort of relation balance? All sort of fun weird things you can play around with in that idea.
I think God in the Bible is the worst father in SFF. He crucified his only son because of his own mistakes in gardening, staffing, and reptile control. And then he turned him into a zombie.
Send Pixels, Scrolls, and Money. The shit has hit the fans.
@Greg
Please accept this prestigious prize Internet for your work here today….
VBR,
Dann
@7 is stunning — not just the control of multiple colors on the brush but the uniform scales without any obvious tremor in the stroke. I wonder how many decades it took him to work that out?
@14: my partner says “Aw!” (and more, even though they haven’t gamed in decades…).
@16: I recall a radio-HHG quote to the effect that some people are terrified the universe will be wiped out and replaced with something stranger, while others assert that this has already happened. I can just imagine the field day the reality-challenged will have with this story.
@2 followons: I have this mindworm of a bunch of SF characters having grown up (?) from “My dad can beat your dad!” to “My dad is worse than your dad!”
@Paul Weimer: per discussion, I’d call that bad ruling rather than bad parenting.
@Iphinome: I can actually hear somebody squealing “he’s so cute!” on the soundtrack.
Science news: astronomers think they’ve found an interstellar asteroid, on a slingshot path through the solar system.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/interstellar-asteroid-might-have-just-been-spotted-first-time?tgt=nr
@14 — Trevor Noah mentioned the cereal controversy on The Daily Show last night, and pointed out that there are actually no brown corn pops in the cereal, so they had to import one to be the janitor.
Title credit! Yay!
(9) Oh, I want that Lying Cat.
P J Evans on October 27, 2017 at 9:46 am said:
Science news: astronomers think they’ve found an interstellar asteroid, on a slingshot path through the solar system.
The Ramans do everything in threes, so expect a couple more of them….
Greg Hullender on October 27, 2017 at 8:58 am said:
I think God in the Bible is the worst father in SFF.
God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son!’
Abe said, ‘Man, you gotta be putting me on.’
(1) TV by the Numbers lists The Orville as currently likely to be renewed by Fox. (They use The Cancel Bear as in you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun enough of the other network shows.) The Orville has the benefit of being owned by Fox.
Please remember to scroll your pixels in the form of a queston.
Trek character played by the most actors:
Must be Spock, no? Four or five different actors in Star Trek III (including Nimoy), plus Spock-as-newborn in Star Trek V and the NuTrek actor Z. Quinto.
There was also a young Spock on the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “Yesteryear” who was voiced by Billy Simpson. Mark Lenard provides the voice of Sarek in the episode.
AKA “Whimsical Will”, who has been doing the Demented News every week for Doctor Demento for more than 30 years.
I guess you thought that was funny. It’s just offensive.
This is pretty amazing, if true. How many thousands of years must there be between such large interstellar objects passing this close to Earth?
Serious question from a white person. Since IRL corn pops are uniformly yellow, if everyone on the box was yellow, would that be an issue? Because it seems to me that going to the extra effort of making the janitor brown is the racist part. It strikes me as a joke on the part of a racist artist who either knew that the editor would miss it, or the editor also thought it was a great joke. No way was it an accident in the printing process.
If someone is inspired to do a bracket set of bad fathers, I nominate Zeus. When one son was born ugly, he crippled him. When it was prophecied that another child would be greater than him, he swallowed her as she was being born. And those were his legitimate children.
@Jack Lint: Since when is being on Fox a benefit to a genre show (RIP Firefly, Briscoe County Jr., etc)?
What I find offensive is the continued propagation of a mistaken anti-environment pro-genocide theistic religion that keeps people in bondage. It’s necessary to refute such by any means available.
And yet you don’t. So even you don’t believe what you’re saying.
I don’t follow you. Please keep in mind that I’m mentally disabled.
bloodstone75: It’s owned/produced by 20th Century Fox Television. A network is less likely to cancel a show that it produces versus one that’s owned by another studio. Of course, Fox also doesn’t have a lot of successful shows at the moment which helps.
(Does any network have a lot of successful shows right now? There’s too much available to watch.)
And the best examples you can produce for Fox cancelling genre shows are 15 and 23 years old?
Yeah, I wonder about that, too. I’m as quick as anyone to jump on uses of the race/cultural appropriation/etc. card that I think are frivolous, but I’m wondering why they would make one and only one a different color from all the rest when corn pops don’t come in different colors in the first place. It does seem like the artist tried to slip something subtle in there.