Pixel Scroll 11/30/16 It Ain’t Necessarily Scroll

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(1) OUTRUNNING CANCER. Pat Cadigan decided – why wait to party? “The Hormones Laughed At Me, Saying, ‘Sleep? B!tch, Please – You Can Sleep When You’re Dead! Mwahahahahahaha!’”

Truth to tell, I suspected I was going to have some sleepless nights coming up anyway. This December was my original estimated time of departure. I didn’t believe for a moment that it would be (I’ve probably said that about a thousand times, here and elsewhere). But when a doctor gives you an expiration date, it kinda sticks in your mind even if it doesn’t come true. And though I didn’t believe it, I tried to imagine what it would be like but as I never got within spitting distance of Death’s Door, it didn’t seem like a productive use of my time so I stopped.

Anyway, starting tomorrow, 1 December, every day is a party. They won’t all be noisy and lively parties; some will be too sedate to really be worthy of the term. But I’m calling them parties anyway. From 1 December till…well, who knows? Whatever I’m doing, I’ll be partying. If I’m writing, I’m partying. If I’m in the bathtub, I’m partying. If I’m reading, I’m partying. You get the idea.

(2) IT ONLY TAKES MONEY. Martin Morse Wooster knows how you can get into the Hollywood sci-fi event of the season:

Now I know you’d like nothing better than to go to the Star Wars premiere in LA and chill with Forest Whitaker afterward.  Well, guess what:  this experience is yours for ONLY $35,000!  But you get TWO tickets.

This offer is made on a website called ifonly.com, which offers “unique experiences.”  I wish I could tell you more but they demand you sign up for their newsletter before they show you what they have so that’s what I’m able to tell you.

You know, the Washington Nationals only charged me $40, and I got to see two Cy Young winners AND get a Coveted Star Wars Thingie.  Five digits for a STAR WARS experience is a little much…

Details

  • 2 tickets to the premiere of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” in Los Angeles on December 10
  • 2 passes to the after-party
  • Does not include a meet & greet with any cast members
  • Must be 16 or older
  • Travel and accommodations not included
  • Background check may be required and guests must provide names within 24 hours of the auction’s close

Auction ends December 5.

(3) END OF TORONTO FAN INSTITUTION. In her latest newsletter for the group, Yvonne Penney announced Toronto’s First Thursday gatherings will end next week.

December will be the final First Thursday as founded by Tommy Ferguson in 1997. This decision has not been an easy one because of its longevity in the SF community in Toronto and region.

Here is why this is happening:

  1. I am retiring in 2017 and I have a long list of things that I want to accomplish and hopefully will have the time and continued health to do it in.
  2. Arthritis is slowly making its presence felt. For a number of years I have had difficulty in walking because of arthritis in my right ankle, my shoulders are in constant pain and my hips give me grief at times.
  3. Because of an unfortunate atmosphere that has arisen because one member decided he didn’t like the pub we were using. When the Foxes Den suddenly closed its doors (It’s now a Firkin), a new venue needed to be found, and rather than work with the group, he decided to start his own. He and his group cannot lay claim to the original pubnite as they were not around when the First Thursday Pubnite was created, which by the way was not created solely for the 2003 Worldcon bid – it predates that. Also, attendance has been low for the past several years; we no longer had the numbers, even at the Foxes Den, we once had many years ago.

This sort of split is not new; it occurs all the time anywhere in the world for any community or interest. I find it stressful….

(4) TREASURE HOUSE FOR READERS. Literary Hub reveres the memory of James Lackington — “The Man Who Invented Bookselling As We Know It”.

Today, few people are likely to remember James Lackington (1746-1815) and his once-famous London bookshop, The Temple of the Muses, but if, as a customer, you’ve ever bought a remaindered book at deep discount, or wandered thoughtfully through the over-stocked shelves of a cavernous bookstore, or spent an afternoon lounging in the reading area of a bookshop (without buying anything!) then you’ve already experienced some of the ways that Lackington revolutionized bookselling in the late 18th century. And if you’re a bookseller, then the chances are that you’ve encountered marketing strategies and competitive pressures that trace their origins to Lackington’s shop. In the 21st-century marketplace, there is sometimes a longing for an earlier, simpler age, but the uneasy tension between giant and small retailers seems to have been a constant since the beginning. The Temple of the Muses, which was one of the first modern bookstores, was a mammoth enterprise, by far the largest bookstore in England, boasting an inventory of over 500,000 volumes, annual sales of 100,000 books, and yearly revenues of £5,000 (roughly $700,000 today). All of this made Lackington a very wealthy man—admired by some and despised by others—but London’s greatest bookseller began his career inauspiciously as an illiterate shoemaker.

(5) HINES AUCTION #5. In the fifth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions, up for bid are two autographed books (one trade paperback, one hardcover) by author Stephen Leigh.

Today’s auction is for a signed trade paperback of the Spectrum Award-winning DARK WATER’S EMBRACE and a signed hardcover of CROW OF CONNEMARA, both by Stephen Leigh.

The Crow of Connemara is a contemporary Celtic fantasy set primarily in Ireland.  Picking up threads from ancient Irish mythology and folktales, this story is fantasy, drama, and tragic romance all at once, a tale caught in the dark places where the world of ancient myth intersects our own, where old ways and old beliefs struggle not to be overwhelmed by the modern world.

Often compared to Ursula Le Guin’s ground-breaking The Left Hand of Darkness, Dark Water’s Embrace is a fascinating look at issues of human (and alien) sexuality. Stephen Leigh creates a rich world with elaborate care and uses this alien backdrop to delve into issues of survival, sexuality and the meaning of life itself.

(6) STRAHAN’S FAVORITES FROM THIS YEAR’S SHORT NOVELS. Spotted via Black Gate, Jonathan Strahan posted his imaginary ToC of Best Short Novels 2016

  • The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe, Kij Johnson (Tor)
  • The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Tor)
  • Every Heart A Doorway, Seanan McGuire (Tor)
  • This Census-taker, China Mieville (Del Rey)
  • The Charge and the Storm, An Owomoyela (Asimov’s)
  • The Devil You Know, K.J. Parker (Tor)
  • The Iron Tactician, Alastair Reynolds (Newcon)
  • The Best Story I Can Manage, Robert Shearman (Five Storeys High)
  • The Vanishing Kind, Lavie Tidhar (F&SF)
  • A Taste of Honey, Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor)

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 30, 2011 — A pristine copy of Action Comics #1, famed for the first appearance of Superman, sold for $2,161,000. It was the first comic book to break the $2 million mark.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born November 30, 1937 – Ridley Scott

(9) QUARK FOR REALZ? Daniel Dern drew a connection between this New York Times news item and a Seventies TV show — “Space Trash Collector? A Japanese Entrepreneur Wants the Job”.

Sitting in a drab industrial neighborhood surrounded by warehouses and factories, Astroscale’s Tokyo office seems appropriately located for a company seeking to enter the waste management business.

Only inside do visitors see signs that its founder, Mitsunobu Okada, aspires to be more than an ordinary garbageman. Schoolroom pictures of the planets decorate the door to the meeting room. Satellite mock-ups occupy a corner. Mr. Okada greets guests in a dark blue T-shirt emblazoned with his company’s slogan: Space Sweepers.

Mr. Okada is an entrepreneur with a vision of creating the first trash collection company dedicated to cleaning up some of humanity’s hardest-to-reach rubbish: the spent rocket stages, inert satellites and other debris that have been collecting above Earth since Sputnik ushered in the space age. He launched Astroscale three years ago in the belief that national space agencies were dragging their feet in facing the problem, which could be tackled more quickly by a small private company motivated by profit.

Dern remembers Quark was a 1977-1978 TV show. Per Wikipedia:

Quark was created by Buck Henry, co-creator of the spy spoof Get Smart.

The show was set on a United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, an interstellar garbage scow operating out of United Galaxies Space Station Perma One in the year 2226. Adam Quark, the main character, works to clean up trash in space by collecting “space baggies” with his trusted and highly unusual crew.

In its short run, Quark satirized such science fiction as Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Flash Gordon. Three of the episodes were direct parodies of Star Trek episodes.

(10) MIND MELD RETURNS. At Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Shana DuBois curated “Mind Meld: Some of Our Favorite Characters”.

Kate Wilhelm wrote, “Great fiction reveals that there is no such thing as a common, everyday uninteresting person. They are all interesting if you learn enough about them to discover who lives behind the facade.”

So we asked members of the genre community:

What is one of your favorite novels in which the characters sucked you into the story? What about these characters sets them apart?

The panelists answering the question are: Michael Damian Thomas, Cheryl Morgan, Jana Nyman, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Arianne “Tex” Thompson, Rachel S. Cordasco, and Beth Cato.

(11) FIGHTING ALZHEIMERS. Bill Gates tells about the research he saw on a visit to CalTech in “Why I’d Love To Be A College Student Again”.

People often think that the U.S. spends a huge amount of money—perhaps too much—on R&D. In fact, all U.S. R&D spending accounts for less than 1 percent of national income.

I’ve written before about the importance of government investment to jumpstart innovation. Government-backed research in universities and labs leads to new ideas and technology that build new businesses, create jobs, and strengthen our overall economy.

But those big, life-changing discoveries and innovations—from the cancer cures to moonshots to solar cells– often get their start as an experiment in a university lab, an equation sketched on a professor’s blackboard, or a student asking, “What if?”

A new idea is a fragile thing. It needs allies to nurture it. Government R&D investments provide that important support. Without it, we would have fewer scientific breakthroughs.

Let me give a couple examples of why this is so important.

Some of the most exciting research I learned about during my visit was from Caltech scientists working on identifying possible treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. All of the researchers received government R&D funding.

(12) VISION QUEST. Diane Duane told Facebook readers she developed an eye problem last Sunday. She feared it was a torn retina. It wasn’t – though the real problem is also a concern.

So here’s the tl:dr; version of today’s episode of the Adventure of the Dexter Eye.

Part 1: What happened to me was (thank all Gods in the neighborhood) NOT any kind of retinal detachment, vitreous detachment, or similar traumatic damage to the retina. So today’s teaching moment is: even if you are a health care professional (or former one) and expert at Googling For Symptoms, don’t be so sure you know what’s going on.

This means that I’ve dodged this bullet, only to find I’m standing in front of a bigger, slower one.*

Part 2: What seems to have happened to me is a small transient circulatory blockage in the retina….

And that could be symptomatic of any number of other problems.

This is a herald of other things that may be going on elsewhere. So over the next couple of weeks I get to go to my GP here and have a full workup of bloods and various diagnostic procedures to be determined as we go along, with an eye to ruling in/out a complex of possibilities: circulatory system problems, heart problems, incipient dIabetes, plaque, sunspots, you name it. (There are way too many possible causes for this event…) (OKAY, maybe not sunspots.)

(13) MARTIAN HOPS. The Space Review posted the first part of a discussion of two new productions with Martian roots. “Love and a Red Planet: popular entertainment and the settlement of Mars (part 1)” at The Space Review.

It takes Hollywood about two years to produce a movie or a television show. It can happen faster, and it certainly can be done slower—a situation often referred to as “development hell” in the industry—but two years is about average. Thus, it is unlikely that any of the Mars-themed shows and movies appearing today are a direct result of the success of last year’s movie The Martian. More likely, National Geographic’s Mars series and the weepy teen romance The Space Between Us got started as a result of the success of Andy Weir’s 2014 book that inspired the hit movie, as well as the increased attention that human exploration of Mars gained starting around 2013 or so with Mars One and Elon Musk. The success of the movie, which starred Matt Damon and premiered in fall 2015, probably only reassured any nervous financiers that movies and television shows that used Mars as a backdrop could find an audience.

Mars premiered on The National Geographic Channel on November 14. The Space Between Us was to open in theaters in mid-December (it has recently been delayed to early February), but had a special advance showing in Washington, DC, a couple of weeks ago. Both have at their core fictionalized stories about the first humans on Mars, and in both cases they depict plans for settlement involving public-private partnerships, as opposed to the more common theme of human exploration of Mars. Because of these similarities they serve as useful indicators of how the subject of human settlement of Mars—not simply exploration—is being depicted in popular entertainment. Has Mars-themed entertainment been liberated of some of its prior constraints and is it evolving in new ways, or is it still beholden to many of the standard tropes we’ve seen in numerous other movies? This article will address The Space Between Us, and the second part will address the National Geographic series Mars.

Has Mars-themed entertainment been liberated of some of its prior constraints and is it evolving in new ways, or is it still beholden to many of the standard tropes we’ve seen in numerous other movies?

…Part 2 will address National Geographic Channel’s Mars miniseries.

(14) DEEP SPACE NEIN. With fake news getting so much attention right now, can a new Moon mission succeed in convincing people Neil Armstrong really went there in 1969? “German Mission to the Moon Will Prove the Apollo Landings Weren’t a Hoax”. Gizmodo has the story.

A German Lunar X-Prize team has announced its intentions to send two mobile probes to the Moon to inspect the lunar rover left behind by the Apollo 17 mission. Finally, something that’ll get the Moon landing conspiracy nutters to shut the hell up.

The group, known as PT Scientists, is one of 16 teams currently vying for the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize, a competition requiring a private group to land an autonomous vehicle on the Moon, travel more than 500 meters (1,640 feet), and transmit high-definition photographs back to Earth. The group is currently working with German automobile manufacturer Audi to develop the rover, and it has signed a deal with broker Spaceflight Industries to secure a ride on a commercial launch vehicle (which rocket company is yet to be determined).

[Thanks to Murray Moore, JJ, Daniel Dern, Mark-kitteh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

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87 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/30/16 It Ain’t Necessarily Scroll”

  3. (9) QUARK FOR REALZ? – It’s possible that Mr Okada may be more familar with Planetes, a manga/ anime about a bunch of space debris cleaners. I strongly recommend the anime – it’s probably the “hard”est SF anime out there. It’s also where I learnt about Kessler syndrome as well

    (14) DEEP SPACE NEIN. – heh. Yup

  4. Ooo-ee-ooo
    Ooo, ooo, The Martian Hop!

    Yeah, it’s on my music player.

    In Russia, pixel scrolls you.
    (Strong feeling I’m just quoting someone here. Anybody?)

  6. #4: Those numbers seem off; Lackington was getting the equivalent of $7/book despite the much less economical printing tech of that time? Do today’s middlemen so overwhelm the savings of phototypesetting, large presses, and semi-automated binding, or were the books on average so small as to hold the price down? Or did somebody use a non-relevant figure for inflation?

    #14: Does Gizmodo believe in the Tooth Fairy? Why should the nutters believe the Germans (who have access to massively better tech fakery than NASA did) actually went to the Moon either? For the rest of us, seeing what the pieces look like decades later will be interesting, if not as dramatic as the scene in Duane’s Deep Wizardry (nice coincidence her showing up in the same Scroll).

    edit: 2nd 5th; first claim — and second the cheers for Pat, although “partying in the bath” unfortunately brings to mind a scene from Almodovar….

  7. (14) I doubt this will make much difference. Moon landing hoaxers, like most conspiracy theorists, simply adapt to the information presented. I once had an exchange with a Moon landing hoaxer who claimed, in response to my pointing out there were photographs taken of the landing sites by orbiting probes years after the landings, that the U.S. had sent robots to the Moon to make it look like people had been there, but all the scenes with people broadcast in 1969-1972 had been filmed on sound stages on Earth.

  10. @3
    you have just seen a vision of your future worldcon voters. puppies are, by definition, young. how are those wooden… ahem ….. starfish…. looking now?

  11. (14) There must be some psychological reward for denying the moon landings, I just can’t imagine it would be better than believing the moon landings.

  12. What was the story where NASA, in order to fake the moon landing, had to build sound stages on the moon?

  13. you have just seen a vision of your future worldcon voters. puppies are, by definition, young. how are those wooden… ahem ….. starfish…. looking now?

    Oh please. The Pups skew older. We know this because we have paid attention to the outspoken Puppies. The youngest prominent Puppies are middle-aged.

  14. There must be some psychological reward for denying the moon landings, I just can’t imagine it would be better than believing the moon landings.

    Its the same reward that all conspiracy theorists get: They are the ones with the “real” knowledge, not like all those other sheep out there who buy the “official story”. They are part of a secret and special group who really found out the truth.

  15. @Mars Ultor

    how are those wooden… ahem ….. starfish…. looking now?

    They look just fine to me, thank you. How are those Dragon awards looking? Seeing as y’all were gushing so over them.

  16. @Tom Becker

    I don’t know about a fake moon landing, but wasn’t there a movie about a fake Mars landing? Capricorn One, I think it was called. (Checks IMBD.) Here it is. With Elliott Gould and James Brolin.

  18. 1) funny that Pat mentioned ‘Deaths Door’; we recently took a trip to Door County in ‘Wisconsin. This is a well known vacation destination, and being a curious type, I looked up the origin of the name. It turns out that at the end of th peninsula is a four mile wide passage between it and a big island. The Voyageurs using the passage thought it was so damned dangerous that they named it Death’s Door, and that’s where the name of the county came from, decades later.
    Stories like this will stay with me for years.

  19. @Mars Ultor: The Pups aren’t exactly spring chickens, you know.

    Larry: 39
    Brad: 42
    Ted Beale: 48
    John C Wright: 55
    Sarah Hoyt: 54
    Kate Paulk: ???
    Dave Freer: 57
    Amanda S. Green: ???

    You think this group of people, middle-aged and upwards, are leading a Youthful Revolution in SFF?

  20. What is going to prevent the moon landing conspiracy theorists from claiming that the German landings were also a hoax?

  23. Oneiros on November 30, 2016 at 10:48 pm said:
    @Mars Ultor: The Pups aren’t exactly spring chickens, you know.

    Larry: 39
    Brad: 42
    Ted Beale: 48
    John C Wright: 55
    Sarah Hoyt: 54
    Kate Paulk: ???
    Dave Freer: 57
    Amanda S. Green: ???

    You think this group of people, middle-aged and upwards, are leading a Youthful Revolution in SFF?

    Thank you for making me feel young!

    So they are basically a bunch of older folk lecturing me that I’m doing SFF wrong.

  24. @David Goldfarb: well, she’s not doing too badly for a 111 year old I guess.

    @rob_matic: I’m feeling pretty good about my 28 years on this planet too. (Holy crap and I’m probably still too old to be part of any youth uprising)

  25. JCW is only 55? The way he writes and talks, I thought he was the one who was 111… quickly does math… nope, older than that. I knew upper-class Southerners born more than 120 years ago and they weren’t that uptight or prolix. Looking at that list of ages really does show the Pups are Old People Yelling At Clouds. Half of ’em will be AARP-eligible by the time Worldcon comes back to the US.

    The youth seem to be browner, queerer, and girlier than Puppies approve of. Why, they were out there daring to vote for Bernie and Hillary and everything!

    Funny how the Puppies aren’t talking about the new keen Dragon Awards any more. They did pretty well there, and they are very spiffy-looking; why is it they seem to care less about them than us Filers? Maybe they’re afraid to let people know about them, fearing armies of Johnlock-fanfic Tumblr girls and PoC cosplayers voting for stuff with women protagonists, gay heroes, people of melanin, and feeelings?

    @David Goldfarb: They’ll still deny it, they’ll just have to do it in German.

  26. Bonnie McDaniel on November 30, 2016 at 10:09 pm said:

    @Tom Becker

    I don’t know about a fake moon landing, but wasn’t there a movie about a fake Mars landing? Capricorn One, I think it was called. (Checks IMBD.) Here it is. With Elliott Gould and James Brolin.

    A fake moon landing set also appears (without explanation) in Diamonds are Forever. Sean Connery steals a moon buggy. This is the best bit of any James Bond film.

  27. In memorian Joe Dever:

    If you want to file that scroll, go to no. 5
    If you want to tick the box instead, go to no. 770.

  28. “Funny how the Puppies aren’t talking about the new keen Dragon Awards any more.”

    Not even The Dragon Awards are talking about The Dragon Awards.

  29. Hampus Eckerman on December 1, 2016 at 1:33 am said:

    Not even The Dragon Awards are talking about The Dragon Awards.

    They never did release the voter numbers.

  30. Lurkertype: Funny how the Puppies aren’t talking about the new keen Dragon Awards any more.

    Hampus Eckerman: Not even The Dragon Awards are talking about The Dragon Awards.

    I suspect that the Puppies finally found out what the rest of us knew all along — that winning something when the game is rigged from the start feels like an incredibly hollow victory and provides very little satisfaction, especially when those manipulations result in that award program immediately losing any credibility.

  31. So I enjoyed “Arrival”! But, I think mostly because I had my expectations dialed down really really low.

    Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” is an absolute masterpiece. It takes several fascinating threads – first contact, science and linguistics, the mundane triumphs and tragedies of family – and weaves them all together, making them mirror each other. And with THAT, he creates a new, unique experience.

    “Arrival”… does not do that. What it *does* do, is a good adaptation of *some* of those fascinating threads. Not *all* of them, and *absolutely not* the amazing things Chiang’s story constructs out of them.

    It also has a heck of a lot of plot holes, groaners, and schmaltz. Gripes and spoilers (for the movie and the story both) in ROT13. Even without rotating, you can see how frequently I lapse into all-caps 😛

    —

    Gur zbfg nofheq guvat jnf guvf: gung gur nyvraf’ “tvsg” vf abg bayl gur novyvgl gb frr gur shgher, ohg gb PUNATR gur shgher. Va jnlf gung ZNXR AB FRAFR, naq ner cbegenlrq va jnlf gung znxr rira YRFF frafr.

    Va gur bevtvany fgbel, gurer jnf guvf zneirybhf nzovthvgl nobhg rirelguvat – jurer gur aneengbe’f npgvbaf frrz *vasyhraprq* ol jung fur xabjf bs gur shgher, ol gur jnl fur frrf gur jbeyq, ohg gurl *nyfb* jbex cresrpgyl vs rirelguvat jrer abezny. Ure nakvrgl nobhg zbhagnva-pyvzovat, juvpu shryf ure qnhtugre’f raguhfvnfz sbe vg, vf n angheny naq nyzbfg fgrerbglcvpny qlanzvp — ohg gnxrf ba arj zrnavat jura lbh xabj FUR xabjf ure qnhtugre’f tbvat gb trg xvyyrq zbhagnva-pyvzovat, fb BS PBHEFR fur’f nakvbhf.

    “Neeviny” qbrf rknpgyl gur bccbfvgr. Fur trgf gb fnir gur qnl orpnhfr SHGHER SYNFUONPX gryyf ure rknpgyl ubj gb fnir gur qnl. Xabjvat guvatf fur’q bgurejvfr unir ab jnl bs xabjvat.

    BX, snve rabhtu. Ohg gur bu-fb-pbairavrag synfusbejneq gb Furat gryyvat ure rirelguvat fur arrqf gb xabj vf whfg QHZO. Vs fur’f tbvat gb synfu sbejneq gb nalguvat, ubj nobhg synfuvat sbejneq whfg *gjb zvahgrf va gvzr,* naq frrvat jung ahzore fur qvnyf naq jung fur fnlf? TNU.

    Naq vs guvf *vf* ubj “shgher synfuonpxf” ner zrnag gb jbex, gura gur ragver svefg pbagnpg frghc znxrf AB FRAFR JUNGFBRIRE. Jr fubhyq unir tbggra ab evbg-vaqhpvat nyvraf, whfg n zrffntr frag gb gur crefbany pryycubarf bs Rnegu’f terngrfg vasyhrapref, tbvat:

    “Uv, bhe shgher fryirf unir qvpgngrq gb hf ubj gb cebqhpr gur LbhGhor ivqrb lbh arrq, urer’f n yvax gb n 40-ubhe ghgbevny ragvgyrq ‘Ubj Gb Fcrnx Urcgncbq.’ CYRNFR EG”

    —

    This is *exactly* the kind of absurdity that Chiang managed to sidestep so elegantly – and even to making the act of sidestepping poignant and meaningful.

    More than anything else, this film is a *great* reminder to go back and reread the story.

  33. If anyone’s interested, I have a story in an anthology winding its way through kickstarter.

    The anthology is called “Warrior”, it’s a mix of sf and fantasy stories about people (werewolves, gladiators, mermaids and more) fighting for what’s important to them.

  35. Re Moon Hoaxes, fake news, and the like. I suspect there is an unformulated version of Gresham’s Law (which deals with good and bad currency) when it comes to fake news in regards to how it interacts with real news.

    Further thought: If the moon landings first happened now, the fake news stories and conspiracy theory about it would get even more play and acceptance than they do now.

  36. @Paul Weimer:

    Further thought: If the moon landings first happened now, the fake news stories and conspiracy theory about it would get even more play and acceptance than they do now.

    That is horrifying and also 100% correct.

  39. I liked QUARK when I first saw it. I fear that the allergy to bad farce hit me some years ago. I tried a couple of the shows when the series came out on DVD and couldn’t watch any of them for more than a few minutes.

  40. Eric Flint has asked his fans to nominate him for the Dragon Award. I am assuming this is out of a desire to support /boost the award and perhaps on foot of a plea similar to the one Larry Correia mentioned receiving last year.

  42. 14: “Today, Moon Hoax Conspiracy Advocates were awarded ten million in research funds by the American Science Foundation (at the strong suggestion of the Trump Administration) for their project to re-create the robotic vehicle responsible for placing human footprints on the lunar surface….”

    3. Wow! I’ve never been in on the ground floor of a fannish revolution! Has anyone seen Shorty Mkrum? I think we better call ‘Mike’…is he still at the Raffles?

  43. @steve davidson

    AHA! No-one expects a fannish revolution! Out main weapon is scrolls, and pixels. Our two main weapons are scrolls pixels and a hive like community. Our three, three main weapons are scrolls, pixels and a hive like community and fanatical inability to take things seriously. Amongst our many weapons are such diverse elements as pixels, scrolls… I’ll come in again.

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