(1) I DON’T BELIEVE MY EARS. Episode 7 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast recalls “Archie Goodwin’s Marvel Bullpen Parkour”.

A regrettable reminder to wish a dead comic book friend happy birthday sent me down a Marvel memories rabbit hole, reminding me of what it was like to know Stan Lee before he had hair, the cherry pie that almost got me fired, the day Archie Goodwin did parkour across Bullpen furniture, Len Wein turning us into a Mickey Mouse operation, Marie Severin’s most inventive prank, my faux fight with Don McGregor, performing Time Square guerrilla theater with Steve Gerber, the time I was on Candid Camera (or was I?), and more.

(2) REMEMBERING JOHN NIELSEN-HALL. Motorway Dreams, a publication of the late John Nielsen-Hall’s collected fan writing, has been released as an Ansible Editions ebook on the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site. It’s a free download, however, they hope you will be moved to use the donation button and contribute to the informal fan fund associated with his favorite convention, The Corflu Fifty.

John Nielsen-Hall was first active in UK fandom from the late 1960s to the late 1970s as a central member of London’s iconoclastic “Ratfandom”; in the early days he signed himself John Hall or John N. Hall. He returned to fandom in the 1990s, participating in email lists, and in 2005 began to publish again with Motorway Dreamer, a title he’d chosen early in his fan career but never before used. Motorway Dreams echoes this title and (in the cover lettering) his fondness for Comic Sans. It’s an eclectic mixture ranging from knockabout Ratfan reminiscences and convention reports to travelogues and thoughts on rock music, living with John Brunner and his wife Marjorie (an uninhibited and much admired memoir), Buddhism (which he adopted during his long absence from fandom), big cars, collecting ancient artefacts, the horrors of dialysis, and even some literary criticism. He died in September 2024 and is much missed. This collection was assembled as a memorial.

Over 66,000 words. Cover artwork by Harry Bell from Motorway Dreamer #3 (2006) ed. John Nielsen-Hall.

(3) IS THIS THE RECORD? “The Worst Spaceship Of All Time Is On A New Sci-Fi Show” claims Giant Freakin Robot.

…When a fictional starship is designed badly, it’s usually because the ship in question is part of a sci-fi project that’s as bad as it is. And yet the worst sci-fi starship ever created is, somehow, not part of the worst piece of science fiction ever made. It’s on a kind of good, new science fiction series called The Ark….

…The Ark is set in a future where the Earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. The whys and hows of this aren’t all that important and aren’t fully explored by the show. What matters is that humans need a new home and so The Ark program was conceived to build ships that would take us somewhere else.

The series begins aboard Ark One, flying through space mid-mission. The crew is in stasis for the long voyage, there’s a disaster, and most of the command crew is killed. The survivors wake up, and the only people left are junior officers and civilians….

The aesthetic failures of this design could be dismissed as being due to an attempt at realism. That excuse won’t work, because that’s not what’s going on.

For instance, those spinning rings may look like they are there to create gravity with centrifugal force. They aren’t. This is where the stasis pods were kept. Once everyone wakes up, they never go in that section of the ship again. Instead the crew spends all its time in the parts of the ship without any gravity creating spin, and yet there seems to be plenty of gravity in them.

So why the spinning rings then? No idea, they’re just there and no one on the ship ever mentions them.

That’s the case with most of Ark One. Nothing about it serves any purpose. The Ark’s hero ship is a bunch of non-specific pieces jammed together for no reason. The people inside the ship don’t seem to know most of it, outside of the command area at the front and the very strange biodome on top exists.

The biodome, by the way, also makes no sense. When running out of food, the crew decides to grow crops in there, because it’s a big open space. Why was a big, empty, exposed, dome-shaped area on top of the ship? It’s never addressed….

…It’s also unclear why the ship has stasis pods or why the entire crew was sleeping in them. Once the accident wakes them up, they seem to be able to activate the ship’s hyperspace drive and get almost anywhere in a few days or hours. In fact, along their journey, they encounter other identically ugly and stupid Arks, all of which have fully active and awake crews….

(4) MEET ‘THE SIMPONS’ DIRECTOR. On November 20 the Los Angeles Breakfast Club presents “The Simpsons: From Sketch to Screen with David Silverman”. Tickets available at the link.

After graduating from UCLA in 1983, David Silverman worked as a freelance illustrator and animator until, in 1987, he landed a job animating on The Tracey Ullman Show — where The Simpsons began. Animating on all 48 shorts led to David directing the first shows of The Simpsons. Starting with the Christmas Special in December 1989, and then the premiere episode the following month, David soon became Supervising Animation Director and a producer on The Simpsons. All told, he has directed 24 episodes and has won 4 Emmys along the way.

When no one was looking, David snuck away from The Simpsons to work at DreamWorks (The Road to El Dorado – co-director), Pixar (Monsters, Inc. – co-director), and Blue Sky (Ice Age, Robots – writing and boarding). But, he came back to the show full-time at the end of 2003 and directed The Simpsons Movie. In 2012, David directed and co-wrote the short film The Longest Daycare about Maggie Simpson, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

(5) A MONSTER’S DOZEN. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s roundup of recent young adult books includes some genre related works: “Young adult books roundup – reviews”.

Liz Hyder won the older readers’ category in the Waterstones children’s book prize for her memorable debut Bearmouth. Now, in The Twelve (Pushkin), Kit and her friend Story must travel back in time to find Kit’s sister, who goes missing close to an ancient stone circle on the eve of the winter solstice. Channelling the dark menace of classic British fantasy writers such as Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, this is a beguiling tale of ancient magic, good and evil, deeply rooted in the Welsh landscape. Haunting illustrations by Tom de Freston add to the eerie atmosphere….

(6) A PRESIDENT IN A RED STATE. Entertainment Weekly watches as “Harrison Ford hulks out in new ‘Captain America 4’ trailer”.

…The trailer culminates with its tensest moment: President Ross collapsing to the ground at what looks like a White House press conference, holding out his hand as he begins to transform. He then emerges from flames as the Red Hulk. 

“You want me? Come and get me!” Sam [Wilson] taunts as he faces off against the newly morphed president before a backdrop of D.C.’s famous blossoming cherry trees.

(7) BRUCE BOSTON (1943-2024). Poet Bruce Boston died November 11. His wife, Marge Simon, announced his passing saying, “He is at peace, it was his wish. If you would like to donate a couple of dollars or more to your local Humane Society, that would be wonderful.”

While best known for his poetry, Boston also published more than a hundred short stories and the novels Stained Glass Rain and The Guardener’s Tale, the latter a Bram Stoker Award Finalist.

Boston has won the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award for speculative poetry a record seven times, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Award for poetry a record seven times. He has also received a record four Bram Stoker Awards for solo poetry collections, and was named SFPA’s first Grand Master in 1999.

He was the poet guest of honor at the World Horror Convention in 2013.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest (1974)

This is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication by Doubleday (cover art by Tom Lewis) of Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest. 

Let’s raise a tankard of our favorite beverage on honor of the author who wrote it and the work itself. 

It would win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and be nominated for the Locus, Nebula and World Fantasy awards as well.  

THESE MAY BE SPOILERS. THINK OF THEM AS PIXELS SLEEPING UNDERFOOT.

It was in a world where Shakespeare was the Great Historian, all the events depicted within his plays were historical fact. Some of the plays depicted technology more advanced than existed then, Anderson just said that this world was more technologically advanced than our world. And the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are also part of this world.

The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with an Industrial Revolution.

This is under spoilers for an obvious reason — One of the guards sent to escort Jennifer when she is being used as bait in a trap for the catching of Prince Rupert is named “Nehemiah Scudder”. That was the name of the First Prophet in Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction. 

The Old Phoenix tavern here appears in several of Poul Anderson’s short stories as a nexus between worlds.

I ASSUME YOU AVOIDED WAKING ANY OF THE PIXELS? GOOD? YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

Lester Del Rey said in his August 1974 If review that it is “a fantasy I can recommend with pleasure.” 

It is available in print and digital editions. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• F Minus warns this is what book reading might soon be like.
• Zack Hill works on a new hero’s supporting cast.
• Bizarro is about gifts superheros don’t want.

(10) ANIMATED SHORT BASED ON STEPHEN KING STORY. ScreenRant introduces “Lily – written by Stephen King – a DARK CORNERS film” in their article “First Stephen King Written Animated Short Adapts Short Story From 1968”.

One of Stephen King‘s earliest short stories, “Here There Be Tygers,” has now been turned into an animated short film. King remains one of the most iconic and prolific horror authors of all time, writing novels like It, Carrie, The Shining, and Misery, among others, as well as many short stories. “Here There Be Tygers” was first published in Ubris magazine in 1968 before appearing in his Skeleton Crew collection in 1985. King’s short story follows a third-grader who discovers a tiger hiding out in the school bathroom and the scary encounters that follow.

Dark Corners Films now releases an animated short film called Lily, which adapts the events of King’s “Here There Be Tygers.” The short film, which clocks in at just under 10 minutes, is told mostly in black-and-white, with splashes of bold red and green to help convey some of the story’s key themes and moments….

(11) VARIATIONS ON A THEME. “’What If…?’ S3 Trailer Previews the Marvel Series’ Final Season” – Animation Magazine sets the scene.

Marvel’s animated series What If…? returns in Season 3 for its culminating adventure through the multiverse. Watch as classic characters make unexpected choices that will mutate their worlds into spectacular alternate versions of the MCU. The Watcher (voice of Jeffrey Wright) will guide viewers as the series traverses new genres, bigger spectacles and incredible new characters….

…Season 3 features fan-favorite characters like Captain America/Sam Wilson, The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes, Hulk/Bruce Banner, The Red Guardian, Captain Peggy Carter, Agatha Harkness, Shang-Chi, Storm the Goddess of Thunder, and numerous others…. 

(12) IT IS A QUESTION OF SCALE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In 1964, in a paper that looked at the hypothetical detectability of alien civilisations, Soviet physicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a three-point scale – the Kardashev scale – for technological civilisations.  It is an energy-based scale with type-1 Kardashev civilisations harnessing all the energy falling on their home planet, type-2 harnesses the entire energy output of their home star, and type-3, their galaxy.

Currently our planet is between 0 and 0.5 on the scale. (And thank goodness our galaxy does not host a type-3 civilisation…)

Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time asks whether we will ever become a Type 1 civilisation. This means harnessing around 10,000 times more than we currently do to become a fully-fledged Type 1.

Warning: in the 20-minute vid Matt does refer to our ‘A.I. overlords’ and ‘A.I. successors’: I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens… “How Can Humanity Become a Kardashev Type 1 Civilization?”

Imagine a world where humanity masters every planetary resource available to it – our first step on the famous Kardashev scale of technological advancement. How distant is that step? Will we even become a true Type-1 civilisation, and how can we get there?

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]