(0) SCROLL TITLE, LONGER AND UNCUT. You’ll immediately guess Daniel Dern’s title inspiration once you see his original, full-length suggestion: “Be Our Ghost, Be Our Ghost, Raise Your Pixels In A Toast (Try The Knishes, They’re Delishnes)”.

(00) HOUSE WINS. Er, wrong reference. Just announcing this will be an abbreviated Scroll because I’m finding it too hard to pull my attention away from election coverage.

(1) MARTIAN ENCOUNTERS. Martian Encounters / Encuentros Marcianos: Imagining Alternate Non-Colonial Futures, a series of international, interdisciplinary conversations, is taking place virtually on November 12 and 13. Martian Encounters is presented by three organizations in Mexico City—Marsarchive.org, Cúmulo de Tesla, and UNAM—in collaboration with Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination and Future Tense.

These sessions bring together thinkers and practitioners from across art, science, and literature to address themes shaping our visions of the future on Earth and beyond: Maps, Temples, Borders, and Ecosystems.

Among our guests are a number of speculative fiction authors and creators, including author Erick J. Mota (Cuba), author and artist Luis Carlos Barragán (Colombia), author, translator, and editor Libia Brenda (Mexico), video game designer Randy Smith (U.S.), scholar and fiction anthologist Grace L. Dillon (U.S.), and author Gabriela Damián Miravete (Mexico).  

The event features five 90-minute panels, all hosted on Zoom: one for each theme (Maps, Temples, Borders, Ecosystems), plus a final synthesis session on “Martian Weirdness.” Each panel features a diverse group of speakers, ranging from biologists and astrophysicists to fiction authors, visual artists, poets, and video game designers.

Conversations will be held in English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation between both languages. All sessions are free and open to the public. You can see the full schedule and register for any or all of the 5 panels at https://csi.asu.edu/martian-encounters (in English) and https://csi.asu.edu/encuentros-marcianos (en español).

(2) COUNTERINTUITIVE ADVICE. Children’s author Moira Butterfield encourages creators to “Have Bad Ideas!” at Picture Book Den.

…Have bad ideas to get better is the opposite of what many people imagine is the creative life. 

TRUTH: Creators do not come up with perfect work straight off the bat. They might pretend they do. They might quite like you to think they’re unusual geniuses with some kind of hotline to the muses. But the truth is, they will have made – and continue to make – bad work in order to get the best. They will have taken ‘wrong ‘pathways. The chances are they will have thrown stuff in the bin after spending ages on it. 

The view that good creators only make perfect things is not that surprising – because you may well have been encouraged to think that in school. There your writing/painting/creative project is judged good or not good. Right or not right. I think it’s why so many people give up on art early on and say ‘oh I can’t do that’. They didn’t do it ‘right’ first time and that was that.

But if you continue with that view you will struggle – I will go as far as to say you won’t make it – as a creator in any field.

Wrong is the fertiliser of right.  It’s the path you take to eliminate things, learn things and ultimately find the best way….

(3) NANCY DREW FANDOM. “Among the Sleuths: Looking for Answers at the Nancy Drew Convention” at Literary Hub.

… This was the second night of the Nancy Drew Convention, an annual affair that sees devotees of the iconic teen detective (better known as “sleuths”) gather to celebrate her enduring legacy….

…As in many of Nancy Drew’s adventures, the questions were more important than their answers. Does anyone really remember what the secret in the old attic actually was, once our favorite teen detective got it out of there? (“Sheet music!” someone answered during Saturday’s round of Nancy Drew trivia.) Though she’s closed 600-plus cases over the course of her 94 year career, Nancy’s always been more—and less—than her prodigious solve rate.

With a cultural half-life that spans five generations, two hair colors, and at least four mediums, the fictional detective became a mythic figure long ago. She’s also, fittingly, something of a mystery herself. Who is Nancy Drew, specifically? Why have fans been so long devoted to her, in particular? Though this year’s convention was centered on the 15th book in the original series, The Haunted Bridge, it’s this unanswered question that brought these two longtime fans to Sleepy Hollow. Surrounded by the decades-long devotion and keen expertise of those who know her best, we came in search of the girl who is forever finding things.

The Nancy Drew Convention officially began in Toledo, Ohio in 2001 and has descended upon a range of American cities on an almost-annual basis ever since. Activities vary year to year, but they tend to include trips to local haunts (like the graveyard), book hunting and collecting, presentations, merch sales, and—of course—a mystery to solve over dinner….

(4) FIRST IN CLASS? Muse from the Orb introduces us to “Beware The Cat (1553): A Very Spooky Word-Hoard”, a claimant for the honor of inventing weird fiction.

…Was weird fiction invented in 1553? It’s tempting to consider. At the time, they certainly seem to have thought Beware the Cat was weird. The earliest response we have to Beware the Cat dates from 1570, and it’s a poem by an anonymous writer who attacks the book’s “staunge faschions” and its author, William Baldwin, for spreading lies. The poet maintains that “every thing almost in that boke is as tru / as that his nose to my dock [ass] is joyned fast with glu.” Which makes sense, since Beware the Cat is a novel about the adventures of a guy who uses alchemy to gain the ability to understand cats.

Anyway, happy late Halloween! It’s my absolute pleasure to discuss Beware the Cat. It’s been called the first-ever horror novel, but I personally feel that its other elements — humor, folktale, scientific discourse, mystery — keep it from being anything so classically definitive….

(5) JONATHAN HAZE (1929-2024). Roger Corman collaborator Jonathan Haze, who originated the Seymour role in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) died November 2 at the age of 95. Deadline notes that among the 20 movies they made together were Day the World Ended (1955); It Conquered the World (1956); Swamp Women (1956); Not of This Earth (1957); and The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1957).

…Haze — a cousin of drum legend Buddy Rich — went on to appear in Corman’s 1963 films The Terror and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes and would have sporadic film and TV roles culminating with the 2010 gangland drama feature Nobody Smiling.

He also served as production manager on Corman’s The Fast and the Furious and The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955) along with a few other films in the 1960s and ’70s. Haze also wrote screenplays for the 1962 feature Invasion of the Star Creatures and a 1960 “Family Skeleton” episode of 77 Sunset Strip and went on to enjoy a long career producing commercials….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born November 5, 1960 — Tilda Swinton, 64.

By Paul Weimer: My first exposure to Tilda Swinton, as it was for many people at the time, was the movie Orlando.  I was in my 20’s, now going to college, and starting to see beyond the small walls of the culture of my family, and Staten Island. A genderswapping portrayal by the title character was a bit much for me to take (see also The Crying Game) but Swinton herself was stunning and enthralling.

I saw here in a variety of films, particularly in genre. Her Gabriel in Constantine is the best damn thing in the movie, acting up a storm. She’s elegant excellence as the White Witch Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She has a small but crucial role in the underrated (probably because it gets compared to the Spanish original) Vanilla Sky. Her turn in Snowpiercer shows how much of a chameleon she can be–I didn’t even recognize her as Minister Mason. Playing two dueling gossip columnist twins in Hail, Caesar! is delightful (as is the rest of that movie).  She also shows up in Wes Anderson films as well, which suits her abilities quite nicely.

And then there is Three Thousand Years of Longing. You may not have seen it yet (thanks, Pandemic) or even know that there is a movie featuring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba as the leads. And that Swinton plays a narratologist, uncovering and understanding stories, who gets a bottle with a Djinn (Elba), uncorks it, and learns his story. And learns to love, and be loved, despite all the challenges. It’s a touching story that Elba, and Swinton sell on the basis of their acting ability. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

• The Other Coast wrangles over a serious topic.
• One Big Happy looks for a particular kind of book.

(8) THESE WEREN’T EXACTLY PREDICTIONS. “10 Sci-Fi Films That Got the Future All Wrong—and the Hilarious Reasons Why!” at Fortress of Solitude.

According to sci-fi future films, by the year 2015, we should have been surrounded by flying cars, wearing automatically-adjusting clothing, seeing kids everywhere riding hoverboards, all of the lawyers should have been dead and Jaws 19 should be showing at the 3D cinemas everywhere. Well, that’s if you believed the future as predicted in Back To The Future II. As great as that sci-fi future film was, it was completely wrong….

Here’s a forgotten (or perhaps never heard of in the first place) example:

5. DOUBLE DRAGON (1994)

Welcome to New Angeles… 2007? It was a post-apocalyptic swampy wasteland, but at least it’s a difference from a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland. Cops control the city during daytime, gangs control it at night, and the weather forecast is brought to us by comedian Andy Dick. Oh geez.

Why on Earth any villain would even want to rule this place is beyond us, and why a sassy Alyssa Milano and her buddies would want to stop him is even more mystifying.

While this sci-fi film future may not have actually come true and was ultimately wrong, we can rest easy knowing that if it did then we could rely on a pair of martial artist brothers to save us.

(9) FLORIDA CENSORSHIP. “Florida Removed More Library Books Than Any State Last Year” – Yahoo! runs the numbers.

Florida topped every state in the nation for the number of books removed from school libraries during the 2023-2024 school year.

That’s 4,500 books from July 2023 to June 2024, according to an annual report from PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for freedom of expression.

That represents nearly half of nationwide removals, which numbered 10,064. Iowa, which removed more than 3,600 books, was next closest to Florida.

Florida’s 2023 law, HB 1069, created a legal process for removing books, including a requirement that they be pulled while schools respond to challenges filed by parents or citizens. The list compiled by PEN includes books permanently removed from schools, removed pending investigation, and restrictions based on grade level or requiring parental permission.

Thirty-three school districts in Florida removed books, according to PEN’s report….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]