(1) ANIMAG HOF INDUCTEES. “Nine Honorees Receive Animag’s Hall of Fame Awards at World Animation Summit’s Opening Night Gala”. Animation Magazine listed the recipients of the 2024 Hall of Fame awards. Short bios at the link.
- Pete Docter, CCO, Pixar Animation Studios.
- Lisa Henson. CEO of The Jim Henson Company
- Claudia Katz, Executive Producer, Rough Draft Studios.
- Joel Kuwahara, Co-founder, Head of Production, Bento Box [Studio of the Year Award].
- Nick Park, Creator-Director, Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl.
- Kevin Michael Richardson, Voice Actor.
- Kay Wilson Stallings, EVP, CCD & Production Officer, Sesame Workshop.
- Raymond Zibach. Production Designer, The Wild Robot.
- Eric Bauza. Voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Woody Woodpecker and many other characters.
(2) TED CHIANG AND KELLY ROBSON CONVERSATION. On the Toronto Public Library’s YouTube channel: “Ted Chiang: Soulful Science Fiction”.
“Has there been an alternate universe as alternate as this universe? Will people accept a story where the universe is this weird?” —Ted Chiang Celebrated science fiction writer Ted Chiang takes the Appel Salon stage us to discuss his beloved short story collections. In conversation with Kelly Robson on October 24, 2024. Please note that this video will only be up until December 2, 2024.
(3) FRONT ROW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4’s art show Front Row has had an SFnal edition. First up was an interview with the makers of the new Christopher (Superman) Reeve documentary. Next was an interview with author Samantha Harvey whose book, Orbital, has been short-listed for this year’s Booker. It is set on the International Space Station. Apparently, it is not SF but ‘space realism’.
Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui talk about their new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which uses never-seen-before family archive to tell the story of the famed Superman actor. He became a champion of disability rights after being left paralysed from a horse riding accident.
The final of Front Row’s interviews with the authors on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist – Samantha Harvey on her novel Orbital.
You can download an .mp3 of the programme here: “Front Row, Christopher Reeve documentary, Booker author Samantha Harvey on Orbital”.
(4) LEZLI ROBYN GOFUNDME. Francesca Myman has started a GoFundMe to “Help Lezli Robyn Deal with Medical Challenges”. The goal is $4,500. At this writing they’ve raised $2,390.
Those of you who know Lezli Robyn know that she has had a terrible run of medical bad luck for years now, from near-blindness to an excruciating case of occipital neuralgia which requires her to have nerve blocks every two months in order to function. She also had to have her thyroid radiated/fried several years back due to a thyroid storm that nearly took her life, and now unfortunately she’s facing the opposite problem: extreme hypothyroidism.
She was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday October 30 for myxedema — doctors said she was at severe risk of going into a myxedema coma, which is life-threatening….
…She went to the ER with severe tiredness, stroke-like symptoms and an almost-inability to move her left side. She was remarkably chipper mentally for all of this, because her spirit is strong, but myxedema means that your organs are essentially shutting down because they’re out of fuel. Myxedema also results in swelling from the buildup of carbohydrate and sugar compounds in the skin and tissue….What is certain is that the swelling contributed to a freak case of Quincke’s disease, which is when your uvula swells up and obstructs your breathing, meaning that she has had to puree her food to eat it and was constantly choking. It was terrifying to listen to my lovely Lezli rasping and choking as she fought that off.
She IS fighting, but this is all very debilitating and as you may recall from earlier this year she’s already been put through the wringer like no one else I have ever seen. She’s managed to edit and travel for work, and is definitely still her lovely, down-to-earth, and funny self, but can’t work during the current situation.
What’s the financial situation? She won’t even let me tell you all of it, but I’m sure you can imagine how expensive the many hospitalizations were before the new insurance kicked in. There will still be high expenses associated with this new six day hospitalization….
(5) WON’T BE MISSED. Ember Wars author Richard Fox has been banned from Author Nation’s annual Las Vegas event for violating its Code of Conduct reports crusading journalist (and Fox’s friend) Jon Del Arroz.
Author Nation, formerly known as 20BooksTo50K, asks all who want to participate on the program to complete a form. According to Del Arroz, in “Author Nation Book Conference Cancels Science Fiction Author Richard Fox For Refusing To Comply With Gender Pronouns” [Internet Archive link] at Fandom Pulse, this is what Richard Fox entered in the space for “Pronouns”:
JDA continues, “he [Fox] received a call later in the evening after filling out the form. He was told the ‘ethics and safety committee’ removed him from the panel.”
(Oh, and when someone posted some praise about Author Nation’s Code of Conduct on Facebook on September 27, Richard Fox added a “Haha” icon in response.)
Richard Fox first shared his unique personality with File 770 in 2019 by making the false charges reported in “Perjury, Not Piracy Is The Problem” and “Brought to You By The Letter Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!”
(6) STRANGER THINGS 5. Variety has the details: “Stranger Things 5 Sets Release for 2025, Episode Titles”.
The fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” will debut in 2025, Netflix announced on Wednesday. To celebrate Nov. 6, 1983, a.k.a. “Stranger Things Day” — the day Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) was abducted into the Upside Down — the streamer also released a video revealing the titles for the final eight episodes, which will conclude the supernatural story of Hawkins, Indiana.
The episode titles are “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of…,” “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazotz,” “The Bridge,” and “The Rightside Up.”…
… The most delightful detail in the video is arguably the reveal that the season takes place in the fall of 1987, four years after the events of the first season — which debuted eight years ago, in 2016.
(7) WAS INTERACTIVE A BUST? The Verge reports “Netflix is removing nearly all of its interactive titles”.
Netflix will delist just about all of its interactive shows and films as of December 1st, the company confirms to The Verge. Netflix’s “Interactive Specials” page lists 24 titles, but only four will remain: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild.
The removal of the titles marks a disappointing conclusion to Netflix’s earliest efforts into interactive content. The company first launched the interactive titles in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and I remember being wowed (and horrified) by paths in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
In addition to specials based on franchises like Carmen Sandiego and Boss Baby, Netflix also tried ideas like a daily trivia series and a trivia game you could play with a friend. But the relatively few titles available suggests the format wasn’t much of a hit — Puss in Book has apparently been gone for a while….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born October 6, 1914 — Jonathan Harris. (Died 2002.)
Jonathan Harris was the ever not-to-be-trusted Doctor Zachary Smith, of course, on Lost in Space. But before we get to that role, we should mention several of his previous genre roles.
Well, I would but it turns out that all he had was two minor roles on Twilight Zone. If Zorro is genre adjacent which is really stretching it, he was Don Carlos in Disney’s Zorro.
So, Doctor Zachary Smith.
In the pilot, not seen by the general audience until the late Nineties, there was no Doctor Smith. The marooning of the Space Family Robinson and their spaceship, the Jupiter 2, came about as the result of a meteor storm. The staff came to feel that an antagonist was needed, and so certain scenes were re-filmed with Smith having snuck aboard, with his extra weight having thrown the delicately-balanced ship badly off course.
An outright villain on a small craft was a bad story idea and Jonathan Harris very well knew that such a villain would not be tolerated or kept around for very long, even if he were not killed off. Fond of the role as written for him, not to mention staying as a cast member, he and the writing staff kept rewriting his story as the series went so he’d be much, less evil, more sympathetic and even comical.
However, it is my opinion, and that of many reviewers, that this change resulted also in a change in the show, turning the series from a mostly SF series to more much lighter series, more comical in tone.
He remained typecast as a villain showing up as such as Mr. Piper on Land of the Giants, The Ambassador on Get Smart and the voice of Lucifer on the original Battlestar Galactica. He did play an occasional lighter role such as Johann Sebastian Monroe on Bewitched in the “Samantha on the Keyboard” episode.
Worth noting is he played Commander Isaac Gampu, the head of the Space Academy, on the children’s series of the same name. It was produced by Filmation and aired Saturday mornings on CBS for just one season of fifteen episodes in 1977.
He did so many voices on so many animated shows that I couldn’t even begin to list them all here. It made up the bulk of the work that he did with A Bug’s Life, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, My Favorite Martian, Spider-Man and Toy Story 2, ones where I recognized his voice.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Carpe Diem fails the test.
- Rose is Rose imagines a stop.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal backgrounds a UFO abduction tactic.
(10) GET READY FOR THESE LEGO SETS OF GENRE INTEREST. “LEGO Captain America: Brave New World Sets Just Launched” – find out the price tag at Comicbook.com.
The fourth movie in the Captain America series, Captain America: Brave New World, is set to release on February 14, 2025, which is going to arrive faster than you think. LEGO is getting us prepared with the first wave of sets for the film. The lineup includes a new Captain America Construction figure, the Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle set, and two LEGO Brickheadz figures of Captain America & Red Hulk….
- Captain America Construction Figure (76296): Stands at 11-inches tall and made of 359 pieces, this Construction Figure is also poseable like a regular action figure! / $34.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
- Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle (76292): This battle set includes multiple mini-figures: Captain America and Falcon (both with opening wings), Red Hulk and Ruth Bat-Seraph. The jet also includes an operable cockpit that fits any of the mini-figures and two stud blasters. 223 pieces. / $54.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
- Captain America & Red Hulk Figures (40668): This Brickheadz set is 202 pieces with each figure measuring about 3-inches. Captain America includes his wings and shield. / $19.99 / Available for pre-order on December 1st at LEGO.com
“LEGO Marvel X-Men: The X-Mansion” – Comicbook.com can tell you about this one, too.
This set will be packed with details like a Cerebro element, switchable Danger Room items, an exploding cupola, a motorcycle for Wolverine, as well tons of graphical nods to the X-Men franchise. As noted, it will also include a buildable Sentinel and 10 minifigures, 5 of which are all-new for this set. These figures include Professor X in his wheelchair, a new variation of Jean Grey, Gambit, Iceman and Bishop. There’s also Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue.
(11) HOW WUDE! “58 Years Later, One Star Trek Actor Reveals the Secret to the Show’s Most Iconic Aliens” and Inverse has the quote.
…Vulcans also have a bit of an edge and a reputation for being direct to the point of being rude. And Star Trek’s latest Vulcan, Gabrielle Ruiz, understands this paradox perfectly.
“There’s a menace to their honesty,” Ruiz tells Inverse. “They’re such snobs. They’re just so sophisticated and snobby that you just want to be a part of the clique, I think.”…
… Since the Season 2 episode “Wej Duj,” Ruiz has voiced the no-nonsense Vulcan T’Lyn on the animated comedy, Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Like many Vulcans in Star Trek canon, T’Lyn is often the funniest character in any given scene, and part of that stems from that relentless honesty Ruiz says is essential to playing Vulcans. Sometimes Vulcans are trying to be funny, and sometimes they’re funny by accident. But in Ruiz’s opinion, it’s all down to looking at the template created by the actors who came before her.
“My rule is simple,” Ruiz says. “I literally say it’s equivalent to ‘What would Jesus do?’ It’s How would Leonard Nimoy say it? How would Spock say it?”…
(12) WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STARLINK. [Item by Steven French.] Does it ever dream of becoming a ‘real’ satellite, I wonder?! “World’s first wooden satellite launched into space” in the Guardian.
The world’s first wooden satellite has been launched into space as part of study on using timber to help reduce the creation of space junk.
Scientists at Kyoto University expect the wooden material to burn up when the device re-enters the atmosphere – potentially providing a way to avoid generating metal particles when a retired satellite returns to Earth.
These particles may negatively affect the environment and telecommunications, the developers say….
(13) THAT OTHER REASON FOR THE SEASON. The mission to save Christmas comes to theaters November 15. Red One Official Trailer 2.
(14) SILO SEASON 2. “Watch first 5 minutes of ‘Silo’ season 2 premiere” – Entertainment Weekly introduces the clip.
Apple TV+’s dystopian thriller returns for season 2 on Friday, Nov. 15, but you don’t have to wait until then to find out what happens to Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) after she finally ventured outside her home silo only to discover the existence of other silos close by. We’ve got the beginning of the premiere for you to watch right… now….
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
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(2) “Will people accept a story where the universe is this weird?” Hell, I don’t accept it. I want out.
(4) I tried. I cannot get it to unchoose $300. I can’t afford that. (Firefox on Linux). And yes, I’ve contributed to other gofundmes.
Birthday: he was annoying, and I was watching it as a teenager. But of course man against the universe isn’t a Good Story (per Hollywood idiots).
Oh, first!
5) Maybe they’ve changed, but you have to be pretty awful to get kicked out of the Author Nation a.k.a. 20BooksTo50K conferences, because they’ve had a lot of problematic people speak at the conferences in the past and don’t care as long as the person in question is successful enough by their metrics.
I also don’t get why so many people freak out when faced with a pronoun field on an online form. Even if you personally think it’s silly, just fill in the field and don’t be a jerk about it.
(5) Pronoun fields are just common sense. Even for those who want to pretend trans and non-binary people don’t exist. Even given names widely used in English-speaking countries aren’t all clearly one gender or the other. Add in names from other cultures, and everyone is going to need a lifeline to avoid being accidentally offensive.
(7) I certainly don’t want interactive TV, but I wouldn’t have bet money on my reaction being common enough that it wouldn’t succeed.
@Cora Buhlert
I think it’s partly that they’re always angry; somehow they feel that they’re not getting what they’re owed. But mostly, they just seem to like being mean and obnoxious to everyone outside their small group.
(1) According to the underlying article, the ninth honoree was voice actor Eric Bauza.
(6) Really disliking this multiple years between short seasons production model.
Joshua K: Thanks. That was in a paragraph I just skimmed because it seemed to be the usual canned intro about the ceremony hosts. But I see now they surprised one of the hosts with his own HOF award. And that’s why he isn’t in the bulleted list of other inductees.
5) To be fair to Mr Fox it might have been an honest mistake on his part, after years and years of people referring to him with those two words and his own confusion about grammar, the meaning of words and reality in general.
(2) Looking forward to watching this
(8) Oh, the pain!
6) Fox I will never forget. He was the one who called me elitär and bigot, because I wasn’t into his claim that his downloadsnumbers of a work on Kindle Unlimited are comparable to the seels of other writers who charge money for the works solo.
(Not to trow shade at anyone who is using KU as a writer, but I still stand by that opinion)
Now he was right, that I am not an expert of KU and I am clearly not an expert on Mr. Fox work. His work was the only one in his category that I didn’t read (the begining yes, but than Fox happend on Cams Blog and the bizare acusations of piracy)
Camestros Felapton: A friend of mine was a K-9 dog handler in the service. He tells the story of another handler who used to cuss at his dog so often that finally the dog wouldn’t answer to its official name, only to “Shithead”. So what you’re thinking is that Fox has a comparable problem?
5) “crusading journalist (and Fox’s friend) Jon Del Arroz.” Crusading journalist? I guess that would also make Donald Trump an “International Human Rights Ambassador.”
13). When I saw that trailer, I immediately thought of “The Night the Reindeer Died” starring Lee Majors, from the Christmas movie “Scrooged.”
All he had to enter was he / him, nothing more than that. His answer was to say the least, to use the Farscape wording, a frelling overreaction, and that of an asshole as well.
Mike, there’s an episode in the Jag series where one of the characters adopts a German shepherd that helped rescue him after he’s been lost after ejecting from an aircraft. As in he wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t showed up and led him out of the wilderness.
The canine wouldn’t answer to any name he gave it until it was acting out and he said, “damn it!” To which to immediately responded, so that became his name.
Yes, I’m binge watching the series.
My father told me that when I was very young I thought the word for “car” (at the time an ancient and cranky Pierce-Arrow that he’d acquired on leaving the Navy in 1946) was “sonofabitch.” Of course, he might have been yarnin’ just a bit.
(5) Yup. If you upset the group once known as 20BooksTo50K, you must have really gone over the line. There might very well be more here.
Seriously, just fill out the line. Like Lis said, that field is probably there so they don’t accidentally refer to you by the wrong pronoun when you attend the event.
Even if you rant about other people having pronouns, you know what your pronouns are — especially if you are a writer. Allegedly, writers know their parts of speech.
(8) I really thought Doctor Smith was a lot of fun to watch. In grammar school, kids often complained that the show turned into “The Doctor Smith Show.” So at times, I felt like I was the only one who enjoyed him in the show.
I might be wrong (because I haven’t seen enough reruns), but I think “Land of the Giants” retained a better balance with the Fitzhugh character (Special Guest Star Kurt Kasznar).
(5).
I would just have left it empty, so maybe that wasn’t an option and he got fed up with it.
Since the only time you’d need to refer to me by pronouns would be when I’m not there, what do I care?
Here Scroller! Come back Scroller!
5) Asking for pronouns makes sense, simple because accidental misgendering happens all the time, even to cis people who have ambiguous or uncommon names. I went to school with a girl who kept getting misgendered, because she had an East Frisian first name, which lots of teachers weren’t familiar with.
I once told my Dad that if someone asks for his pronouns on a form, he should just fill in his pronouns and not make jokes about it. His reply was, “What are pronouns?”.
And we all remember what Valentine Michael Smith called the stereovision.
Even though I am obviously a woman with a woman’s name, I fill out the pronoun thing and wear pronouns on my badge to be an ally. What is wrong with kindness?
Also, I really want to see Red One. But like usual, will wait for the DVD or streaming.
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