Pixel Scroll 1/10/16 The Nine Billion Rules of God’s Robotics

(1) RAY BRADBURY WOULD BE SO PROUD. That’s what John King Tarpinian thinks. Look who won at the Golden Globes tonight.

  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
    Rachel Bloom, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”

Here’s video of her acceptance speech.

(2) OTHER GOLDEN GLOBES OF GENRE INTEREST.

FILM

  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture ?? Musical or Comedy
    Matt Damon, “The Martian”
  • Best Motion Picture — Animated
    “Inside Out”
  • Best Motion Picture -? Musical or Comedy
    “The Martian”

TELEVISION

  • Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
    “Wolf Hall”
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture made for Television
    Christian Slater, “Mr. Robot”
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
    Lady Gaga, “American Horror Story: Hotel”
  • Best Television Series ?? Drama
    “Mr. Robot”

(3) SCIENCE-ING THE SHIT OUT OF ENDOR. ScienceFiction.com has the scoop of the century – Star Wars’ science is defective! The proof? “Physicist Theorizes There Should Have Been An Ewok Extinction Upon Death Star Destruction”.

What if all the Ewoks were killed at the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’? You don’t have to think about it. Really, you don’t. But someone thought about it—Dave Minton, a physicist at Purdue University.

Now before you start thinking Minton hates all things cute, he performed some interesting research into what the reality would be like if the second Death Star really did explode near Endor.

(4) DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS A STAT FOR THIS. Harrison Ford has passed Samuel L. Jackson to become the top-grossing actor in domestic box office history, powered to the top by the growing bank for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Ford’s 41 films have grossed $4.699 billion at the domestic box office, led by The Force Awakens, which accounts for $764.4 million of that figure as of Box Office Mojo’s last update.

Jackson’s films, in comparison, have grossed a mere $4.626 billion, led by Marvel’s The Avengers and its $623.4 million domestic haul.

(5) PAPER TARDIS. This animation is something I’m going to share with my daughter. One of her Christmas gifts was a hand-made facsimile of River Song’s journal. (Via io9)

(6) ROWLING YANKED HIS CHAIN. Hello Giggles says that Stephen Fry met J.K. Rowling long before becoming the narrator of the UK Harry Potter audiobooks, and claims his bland disinterest during that first encounter motivated her to refuse a favor he asked later while trying to record a challenging phrase. True story? Who knows. But it has an edge to it.

(7) SCOOBY CHOO-CHOO, WHERE ARE YOU? The BBC explores “Why Britain has secret ghost trains”. Hobbyists spend a lot of time tracking these down so they can ride them. And as usual where ghosts are concerned, the explanation is less than supernatural.

“Ghost trains are there just for a legal placeholder to prevent the line from being closed,” says Bruce Williamson, national spokesperson for the advocacy group RailFuture. Or as Colin Divall, professor of railway studies at the University of York, puts it: “It’s a useless, limited service that’s borderline, and the reason that it’s been kept is there would be a stink if anyone tried to close it.”

Why ghosts exist

That is the crux of why the ghost trains still exist. A more official term is “parliamentary trains”, a name that stems from past years when an Act of Parliament was needed to shut down a line. Many train operators kept running empty trains to avoid the costs and political fallout – and while this law has since changed, the same pressures remain.

(8) SCRIMM OBIT. Actor Angus Scrimm, best known for playing the “Tall Man” in the Phantasm horror franchise, died January 9 at the age of 89. He also was in I Sell the Dead (2008), the TV show Alias, and the audio play series Tales From Beyond the Pale. Scrimm also appeared in a production of Ray Bradbury’s play Let’s All Kill Constance.

For several decades Scrimm writer album liner notes for Capitol Records, winning a Grammy in 1974 (credited as Rory Guy, as were his early film roles) for his notes on Korngold: The Classic Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

(9) FITZSIMMONS OBIT. SF Site News reports kT FitzSimmons (1956-2016) who ran program for the 1991 Worldcon, Chicon V, died January 10 after a lengthy battle with cancer. She was a veteran conrunner who worked on Windycon and Capricon in Chicago, and served as a board member of Capricon’s parent organization Phandemonium.

(10) YESTERDAY IN HISTORY

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 10, 1927 Metropolis makes its world premiere in Germany.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY CHARACTER

  • Born January 10, 1732 — Saara Mar. According to Taral Wayne, she was born in 1732 on a planet 400 light years from Earth, in the direction of the Pleiades cluster. She “discovered” Earth in 1970, on the 5th of April, 6 days before the lift-off of Apollo 13, and 8 days before the miraculous rescue of the crew that changed history.

Saara Mar

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 10, 1904 — Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

(14) SHORT AND SWEET. Fynbospress teaches sound techniques for blurb writing at Mad Genius Club.

At the heart of every story, there is this: A person, who wants something, but a force opposes him. This is important, because of these stakes. Either they get it, or they don’t.

Take the first and second sentence of that paragraph. (Not the third; you don’t give away how it comes out in the blurb.) Who is your person? What do they want? What opposes them? What are the stakes?

Simplify. If you have two or three main characters, pick the one whose wants or needs drive the story the most. Unless you’re writing epic fantasy, where the browser will be disappointed if you don’t introduce at least three sides, stick to one protagonist, and one opposing force. Generally, that’s the first opposition they meet in the story, not the one they meet in chapter 3, and definitely not the one revealed in the twist in chapter 20.

Your description should not, as a rule of thumb, reveal any information past chapter 3.

(15) ONE IN A MILLION. Mark Lawrence in “Luck, Deus Ex Machina, Plot Armour” tells why it’s okay to build a story around the statistically unlikely survivor.

We don’t see the article about the lottery winner in the newspaper and cry, “Jesus fuck! What are the odds that the reporter chose the winner to write about.”

…Swap now from reality to fiction. The author still has a choice about who they write about. They can still pick the person who survives, at least long enough to do some interesting things. But they also get to choose how that person survives

(16) SPEAK TO THE GEEK. Declan Finn devoted today’s installment of his internet radio show The Catholic Geek to Sad Puppies 4 (he’s in favor), with time left over to diagnose why George R.R. Martin hasn’t finished his book, and to argue Shakespeare really wrote for the rabble not the nobility.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

131 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/10/16 The Nine Billion Rules of God’s Robotics

  1. (4) DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS A STAT FOR THIS.

    Yes, I was surprised when I found out a couple of years(?) ago when Jackson was top.

    (6) ROWLING YANKED HIS CHAIN.
    That Rowling, what a card!

  2. (2): Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: “The Martian”
    Dang, I really want a musical “The Martian” now. Complete with disco.

    (7): Ooh, I can see the seed of an interesting fantasy story in that explanation of “ghost trains”. Why ghosts exist, indeed.

  3. (16) SPEAK TO THE GEEK. – I look forward to Declan nominating himself for best Fancast in SP4 then, if he has not already

    Pre fifth!

  4. Wildcat on January 10, 2016 at 10:01 pm said:

    (2): Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: “The Martian”
    Dang, I really want a musical “The Martian” now. Complete with disco.

    That is just asking for trouble.

    I Will Survive
    At first I was afraid,
    I was petrified,
    Didn’t think that I could ever make it without the crew by my side
    But I’ve spent oh so many sols working what could go wrong
    And I grew strong
    And I learned how to get along

    And now they’re back
    From out of space
    And I find houston on the screen with that sad look upon their face
    I should have fixed that stupid tent
    Or jury rigged that battery
    If I’d known for a second that they’d be back to rescue me

    Blame it on the Watney
    Don’t blame it on sunshine
    Don’t blame it on the dual moonlight
    Don’t blame it on potatoes
    Blame it on the Watney

  5. We Ain’t Got Grains
    We got sunlight on the sand
    There’re two moons we can see
    We got monitors and gauges
    For all contingencies
    We got Earth on all the channels
    Incoming low as well high gain
    What ain’t we got?
    We ain’t got grains!

  6. These practically write themselves

    Don’t leave him this way
    He can’t survive
    He can’t stay alive
    Without some food, no, baby
    Don’t leave him this way
    He can’t exist, he’ll surely miss
    Your potato bliss
    Don’t leave him this way

    [Chorus:]
    Ohhhhh, Watney, our hearts are full
    Of desire to rescue you
    So come on down and do
    What you’ve got to do
    You’ve started this fire
    Down in your tent
    Now can’t you see that
    It’s burning out of control

  7. (3) That’s been around for a while, although other people have debunked it.

    (4) Is Sam J. going to be in any more Marvel movies? Then he’d go back to #1. But is that counting the movies he only had one scene in?

    (5) Very nice! Well done.

    (7) That is definitely something out of a Peter Grant investigation, only more actual ghost-y.

    disco dances away

  8. First Lemmy now Bowie 🙁 I don’t suppose anyone has contact info for the necromancer who did Keith Richards, there might still be time to bring him back.

  9. Blam, I was just getting ready for our farewell party for Lemmy on saturday and now Bowie too. Meh. 🙁

  10. (7) SCOOBY CHOO-CHOO, WHERE ARE YOU?

    The Beeb rather oversold that article, but I suppose it makes it a good read. Parliamentary services are one of the many oddities of the UK rail network. Another that often bemuses people is the existence of request stops – the train won’t stop at the station unless a passenger is stood on the platform flagging it down.

  11. I’m really sorry to hear about David Bowie.

    @Mark:

    What’s difficult about the concept of request stops? The commuter trains where I am have them.

    No weirder than hailing a taxi, I think.

  12. On a less spooky but more equally interesting decision by the Japanese railway was to keep Kami-Shirataki Station in Hokkaido open for an extra three years for one highschool girl to to and from school. She graduates March this year so train buffs don’t have long before their last chance to catch a train from there.

  13. @Peace,

    Request stops sounds like an incredibly inefficient way of running a service. Trains would have to slow down approaching the station in preparation to stop even if there is no one there. That slows the timetable and costs more per trip since additional fuel is needed to slow and speed up the train.

    And trains are a lot bigger than taxis so the cost per person/stop is not going to be insignificant.

  14. Can someone clarify for me, please, what the difference is between a request stop and an old-fashioned flag stop, I.E. someplace where the train stops if you put out the ‘stop’ flag?

  15. But request stops exist in the US, too. Called flag stops, in my experience, but exactly the same thing. It’s a necessary service in some places.

  16. Tintinaus

    Request stops sounds like an incredibly inefficient way of running a service. Trains would have to slow down approaching the station in preparation to stop even if there is no one there.

    But surely more efficient than stopping entirely at an empty platform on every service on the off-chance of a passenger?

    (The request works both ways, of course – if you want to get off at a request stop you have to alert the train guard before hand!)

  17. re: David Bowie

    Oh No! Very sad. I wasn’t aware he was even sick.

    Condolences to his family and to all of us who loved and were often surprised by the White Duke. A unique talent.

  18. Request stops sounds like an incredibly inefficient way of running a service. Trains would have to slow down approaching the station in preparation to stop even if there is no one there.

    Yes, it’s somewhat inefficient, but it’s wastly more efficient than actually stopping when there’s no passengers. And at least around here request stops are only used on relatively slow-running local trains.

    The local train line where I live have lots of stops where the train almost never stops. I sometimes find myself going “hu? there’s a stop here?” or telling friends things like “yes, there’s a small stop midway between X and Y”. That story from Japan is odd for me not because they keep the stop open, but because keeping the stop open is a big enough deal to reach newspapers.

    We also do request stops on boat routes, but that usually involve arranging it up front. Historically flags were used, now some places have a radio system that signals the boat to stop.

    And to keep on theme regarding ghost trains, Ben Aaronovitch’s “Whispers Under Ground” features one.

  19. We used to have a ghost train in Stockholm when I was a kid. All subway trains were green apart from this one that was silver coloured. It never ever stopped at any station. You just saw it screeching past and I say screeching, because it was a horrible sound. Always empty, no one on board. I think I saw it 2-3 times myself. It used to be called The Silverarrow and the theory was that it stopped at a never opened station to pick up and leave ghosts and if you ever got on the subway you would be lost forever.

  20. Shao Ping on January 11, 2016 at 12:16 am said:
    @Lurkertype–I’ve been listening to “Lazarus” again and again ever since I heard the news. Hard not to think he knew it was his final album.

    According to Tony Visconti, he did know. I spent a chunk of the weekend listening to Blackstar, and given how much of it is about his mortality I think I’ll have to leave it a while before I listen to it again.

  21. I think he knew. I think he and his doctors and loved ones kept it private from the rest of us.

  22. Jim Henley: Also, hooray Wolf Hall!

    Is there something I’m not getting? How is that a genre show?

    Also, very sad at the loss of Bowie, another huge talent. I hope his ending was peaceful and painless.

  23. @JJ: I don’t consider Wolf Hall a genre show. I just consider it amazing. Mark Rylance should be in everything, even though he is a complete kook. (All anti-Stratfordians are kooks by definition, but IIRC it goes beyond that.)

  24. At work they are playing all Bowie all the time, low, in the background, and it is making me very very sad. Damn.

    He got an official “Thank you for helping bringing down the Wall” tweet from the GERMAN FOREIGN OFFICE. That is a life well spent. Although he could have given us another couple of albums yet.

  25. Jim Henley on January 11, 2016 at 4:56 am said:
    @JJ: I don’t consider Wolf Hall a genre show. I just consider it amazing. Mark Rylance should be in everything, even though he is a complete kook. (All anti-Stratfordians are kooks by definition, but IIRC it goes beyond that.)

    The UK audiobook is also pretty astounding.
    I know somebody who worked in theatre in London and she told me that some of the most talented and amazing actors are, in real life, a bit of a personality vacuum. Which is a shame, but perhaps needed to be one kind of good actor.

  26. @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan:

    I know somebody who worked in theatre in London and she told me that some of the most talented and amazing actors are, in real life, a bit of a personality vacuum. Which is a shame, but perhaps needed to be one kind of good actor.

    I can believe it. Shades of the Borges sketch about Shakespeare. IIRC, Shakespeare once remarks to a companion how strange it is not to be anybody when everyone else talks like everyone is someone. Based on the companion’s reaction, Shakespeare never mentions that to anyone again.

  27. Loving the musical Martian filks, Camestros and Bruce! 😀

    (And R.I.P. David Bowie, an astounding bringer of song.)

  28. Playing David Bowie today, like everyone else. Last album is strong as ever.

    * * *

    Some of the books from my most recent order arrived today:

    Depths of Blue, by Lisa MacTague. The only 2015 entry in this particular chunk of the order, although a bunch more are coming. Looking forward to it.

    The Prize in the Game, by Jo Walton. Finally there was a used copy inexpensive enough for me to get it.

    The Porcelain Dove, by Delia Sherman. For some reason, this book smells AMAZING.

    The Year They Burned The Books, by Nancy Garden. I suspect the author’s experience with her own books being banned by the Kansas City school system and burnt in demonstrations in the 90’s is going to play a part in this one.

    The Shadow Throne, by Django Wexler. I’ve been told this book is very different from the first one in the series. Hope I like it as much or more!

  29. @Camestros Felapton Double points for this being a Disco soundtrack. Watney says he would rather walk outside without a suit then face another month in Disco Hell, but the story plays out differently.

  30. @Kyra. I think that Wexler’s gear shift is sort of like Scott Lynch’s between the first and second Locke books. He’s trying something different, and it works.

  31. I don’t see what’s mysterious or requiring analysis about why GRRM isn’t finished with the new GoT book yet. GRRM is -incredibly- busy, with a heavily packed schedule of work and travel and various projects, AND the GoT books are incredibly long, AND GRRM has often said he’s a slow writer. I don’t see what’s puzzling about any of that.

    And I wish GRRM peace. He gets the rewards (lots of readers, lot of income, lots of success), but like most rewards, it comes at a price (lots of scrutiny and pressure).

  32. The idiot who, in railway carriages,
    Scribbles on window-panes,
    We only suffer
    To ride on a buffer
    In Parliamentary trains.

    Next up, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Martian

  33. [ticky]

    Also, damn. Waking up to David Bowie’s passing is a helluva way to start the week.

  34. @redheadedfemme
    …and then I went outside, in -9F weather to find that not only had David Bowie died, but so had my car battery.

    So yeah, a helluva way to start the week.

  35. (12) Born January 10, 1732 — Continuing our calendar discussions from previous scrolls, did Taral make it clear whether this was according to the Julian or the Gregorian calendar?

  36. (16) SPEAK TO THE GEEK

    I’m not terribly surprised that Finn can’t bend his mind around the fact that Shakespeare wrote for rich patrons and the rabble simultaneously. It’s one of those supposed ‘gotchas’ against the imagined literati who are supposed to have the vapours when their cherished William S is shown to have put in fart jokes to make the rubes laugh.

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