(1) UNION AND STRAND BOOK STORE SETTLE. “Strike Ends at the Strand as Union, Management Reach Tentative Agreement” reports Publishers Weekly.
The Strand Book Store has reached a tentative contract agreement with its staff union, which is represented by United Auto Workers Local 2179, putting an end to a strike that stretched through the weekend and much of Monday, December 9. Should the contract be ratified, it would last through Aug 31, 2028, adding an additional year to a contract that was previously three years long, said Will Bobrowski, the former Strand employee and current second VP at UAW Local 2179.
Among the changes to the contract, Bobrowski told PW, are an increase to the store’s per hour hiring rate, which will now be $0.50 above New York State minimum wage and a $1.50/hour raise in an employee’s fourth year, amounting to a roughly 37% wage increase over four years for Strand workers who begin at the base salary. (The minimum wage in New York will increase by another $0.50 on January 1, 2026, and on Jan. 1, 2027, the state’s rate will be tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, taking inflation into account in the establishment of a minimum.)
Paid time off for employees will remain unchanged in the new contract, totaling nine days for all workers. Charges of unfair labor practices filed by the union to the National Board of Labor Relations over the weekend will also be dropped….
(2) DEADLINE APPROACHES TO APPLY FOR OTHERWISE FELLOWSHIPS. The Otherwise Motherboard is soliciting applications for two 2024 Otherwise Fellows.
The Otherwise Fellowship (formerly Tiptree Fellowship) was established in 2015 to support and recognize new voices who are creating work that is changing our view of gender today. The Fellowship program seeks out creators who are striving to complete new works, particularly creators from communities that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy genre and those who are working in media other than traditional fiction! Each Fellow receives USD $500 in support of a new or ongoing project.
Applications are due December 15, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, via email. Selected Fellows will be announced in Spring 2025. The Fellowship committee is being chaired by Otherwise Motherboard member Jed Samer.
For more information about what the Fellowship entails and how to apply, see “How to apply for an Otherwise Fellowship”.
(3) GENRE SPECIALISTS’ PICKS. At Reactor: “Reviewers’ Choice: The Best Books of 2024”.
As readers of speculative fiction, we are spoiled for choice. The book releases in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and beyond this year took us to lands of magic and wonder, newly terraformed planets and generation ships, crumbling gothic mansions, and tech-fueled future Earths—and we are so lucky to get to read them all. Our reviewers each picked their top contenders for the best books of the year, along with some personal favorites….
(4) ASFS’ REVISED CODE OF CONDUCT. The African Science Fiction Society released its new Code of Conduct today in concert with this statement about Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. (The Code of Conduct is at the link.)
ASFS had started gathering information in response to Erin Cairns’ report discussed in File 770’s post “Two Accusations Against Ekpeki Disproved”.
(5) SCOTT EDELMAN’S OTHER PODCAST. Episode 10 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Why Not Say What Happened? — “Why I Was Questioned by the Police for Wearing a Mister Miracle Mask” — includes his ramblings about his first cons — plus a couple of con photos of him at 16.
And here’s the link to all episodes in the series, which can be downloaded through multiple sites.
(6) CALL ME ISHMAEL, BUT DON’T CALL ME LATE TO DINNER. “’People are rooting for the whale’: the strange American tradition of Moby-Dick reading marathons” at Yahoo!
Every fall on Venice beach, local residents set up a director’s chair by the water. A harpoon goes on one side, a whalebone on the other. Then, in honor of grey whale migration season, they spend two days reading Moby-Dick aloud.
Nearly 200 years after Herman Melville first published the story of a sea captain’s obsessive hunt for a white whale, Moby-Dick marathons have become a surprisingly popular American tradition. There are an estimated 25 or more across the US each year, in locations ranging from museums to a 19th-century whaling ship….
…The Venice beach marathon, held for 29 years, is a particularly surreal scene. Even in late November, the beach is crowded: French tourists on bicycles, the men of Muscle beach lifting weights, friends playing volleyball in short shorts. Far out on the sand, where the air begins to smell more like salt than weed or essential oils, the Moby-Dick readers sit in a circle, switching readers every chapter, as tourists and surfers eddy around them, drifting up to take photographs and then drifting away again. Occasionally, readers spot whales in the distance….
…Other classic novelists may inspire larger fan events, but Jane Austen celebrations don’t typically include a live reading of all of Pride and Prejudice.
“No offense to Jane Austen, but more happens. It’s more exciting to hunt a whale than to hunt a husband,” said Dawn Coleman, the executive secretary of the Melville Society, and an English professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville….
(7) MANY DOLLARS WERE LOST. Giant Freakin Robot makes its case for “How Disney’s Horrible Marketing Forever Changed Sci-Fi Movies”. They begin by dissecting the corpse of Disney’s marketing campaign for John Carter (2012).
In the long, storied history of Disney, the company has had massive successes, including the history-making Marvel Cinematic Universe and their entire animated output in the ’90s. At the same time, they’ve created some of the biggest bombs of all time.
The 2012 sci-fi adventure John Carter was, at the time of its release, the least profitable film ever made, a title it might end up losing to Joker: Folie a Deux by the end of the year. A rollicking sci-fi adventure based on classic pulp novels, John Carter should have been a massive success, but it never had a chance, thanks to the worst marketing campaign of all time….
…The second trailer course-corrected and starts off with Carter fighting in an arena before launching into a montage of the alien planet with Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” playing. As with everything about this movie, it was too far ahead of the curve, as today, every trailer has a slowed-down, epic version of a classic rock song playing over the trailer, but in 2012, this confused most of the general audience.
Worse, there’s nothing about being based on the legendary pulp novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, nothing about being an adventure 100 years in the making, no mention of how it’s starring Taylor Kitsch, who at the time Hollywood was pushing as the next big thing. In interviews leading up to its release, Kitsch publicly spoke about his disappointment with the film’s marketing, which lacked any sort of “hook” or jaw-dropping special effects shot to leave an impression on viewers. Even his other sci-fi dud, Battleship, included a screen-filling shot of the alien ship in all of its glory to tease moviegoers of the battle yet to come….
(8) WICKED INSPIRATION. Saturday Night Live gives us “Gladiator II: The Musical”. “There’s No Place Like Rome.”
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
December 10, 1960 — Kenneth Branagh, 64.
I first saw Kenneth Branagh with his then-wife Emma Thompson in Much Ado About Nothing, the Shakespearean comedy which he adapted. Truly lovely film.
So let’s look at his genre work as a performer. Dead Again might or might not be his first genre film where he was Mike Church / Roman Strauss, but Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where he was Victor Frankenstein is genre and he directed it as well. I’ve heard varying opinions on it. What did y’all think of it?
Then there’s Wild Wild West where he was Arliss Loveless, some bastardized variant on Michael Dunn’s perfectly acted Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless. He didn’t work for me. Not at all. Nor did that shudderingly awful film.
Alien Love Triangle is a thirty-minute film starring Kenneth Branagh, Alice Connor, Courteney Cox and Heather Graham. Teleportation. Aliens. Genders, alien.
He got to play in Rowling’s universe in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as Gilderoy Lockhart. Great role it was.
Oh, and in an alternate reality sort of way, he plays William Shakespeare in All is True, another name for Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII. It’s a very lovely role and a sweet film as well. Recommended.
For hard SF, I’ve got him directing Thor. (Well sort of hard SF.) For fantasy, he directed Cinderella and Artemis Fowl.
Finally, he’s Hercule Poirot in the three Agatha Christie films produced so far — Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice. He was also director and producer for these. He’s certainly a different manner of that detective. Really different.
(10) SPIDER-MAN FIGURES. “Hasbro Unveils New Spider-Man Marvel Legends Wave for 2025” – Bleeding Cool has all the photos. Here are a couple.
…The first wave of Marvel Legends figures for 2025 have been revealed, with Spider-Man bringing some heat in the new year…. However, the whole roster has been unveiled, with six iconic heroes and villains coming to life, with each getting their own card back. For the classic Spider-Man: The Animated Series retro wave, we have the debut of The Chameleon, and yes, he gets a J. Jonah Jameson mask. We are also getting a Clone Saga debut with Kaine from a time before he was a hero and the corrupt clone of Peter Parker. Lastly, we are stepping into the Spider-Verse with the 1st ever-Marvel Legends figure of Spider-Man Unlimited!…
…The latest wave of Marvel Legends Series Spider-Man inspired figures:
- Spider-Man Unlimited
- Agent Venom (Flash Thompson)
- Spider-Boy
- Marvel’s Chameleon
- Marvel’s Kaine
- Electro (Francine Frye)
(11) CASTING OUCH. Variety reports “Jeremy Allen White Joins ‘Star Wars’ Film ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ as Jabba the Hutt’s Son”. Eh, Jabba the Hutt’s son? How? Parthenogenesis? Binary fission? Actual sex? Where’s my eye bleach.
… Plot details have been hard to come by for “The Mandalorian & Grogu,” so White’s casting as Jabba’s son provides the first real glimpse for what could be in store for the titular bounty hunter and his adorably wee adopted son. Their Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” is set in the years following the events of 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” in which Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) strangles Jabba to death. The recent spin-off series “The Book of Boba Fett” revealed that Jabba’s absence left a power vacuum among the organized crime bosses on Tatooine; two of Jabba’s cousins made a play for his territory, only to be defeated by Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison), who takes over instead. It seems likely that, with Jabba’s son somehow involved in the new film, Boba Fett and his deputy Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) could show up as well….
(12) BLASTED IN THE PAST. Larry Correia would never do this. “Why ‘Gladiator’ director Ridley Scott keeps a 40-year-old negative review framed on his wall: ‘I was actually hurt’” at CNBC.
At 87 years old, director Ridley Scott has seen a tremendous amount of success over the course of his career.
His films have grossed billions at the box office and taken home nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture for 2000′s “Gladiator.” But despite the plaudits he has received as a filmmaker, it’s the critical pans that have stayed with Scott the most.
In an interview with filmmaker Fede Alvarez on the DGA’s “Director’s Cut” podcast, Scott revealed that he has a negative review from famed film critic Pauline Kael of his 1982 science fiction epic “Blade Runner” on display in his office.
Scott explained that Kael “destroyed Blade Runner in four pages” in the New Yorker, likening the review to “industrial espionage, because you’re destroying a product before it’s out.”…
… “I framed that. It’s still in my office today,” he said. “It taught me this: there’s only one critic that means anything, and that’s you.”…
(13) THE WEST EGG AND I. Chuck Tingle seems to have embraced Scott’s number – and a good many other things.
(14) UNUSUAL VIDEO GAME. [Item by N.] “I Hope This Hurts: Mouthwashing Through A Disabled Lens” at The Jimquisition is a video essay from game critic James Stephanie Sterling, which analyzes the recent indie sci-fi horror success Mouthwashing from the vantage point of disability.
(15) CASTLEVANIA. Netflix dropped a trailer for “Castlevania: Nocturne Season 2”, which is available there starting January 16.
The legendary Alucard, Richter Belmont, and his band of vampire hunters are in a desperate race against time. Erzsebet Báthory, the Vampire Messiah, who already seems invincible, seeks the full power of the goddess Sekhmet so she can plunge the world into endless darkness and terror
(16) ZOMBIES BY INCREMENTS. Gizmodo says, “In 28 Years Later’s First Trailer, the Apocalypse Just Keeps Going”. Beware spoilers (maybe). Beware gory zombie stuff (definitely). In theaters June 20, 2025.
A lot can change in nearly three decades, even in a zombie apocalypse. New ways to survive, new mysteries evolving in the infection that laid the world low. Sometimes people grow up and become Aaron Taylor-Johnson, even. But one thing that doesn’t change? The violence….
…28 Years Later is just the first half of our long-awaited return to this version of the zombie apocalypse, however–Boyle’s sequel was shot back-to-back with its own continuation, helmed by Nia DaCosta and titled The Bone Temple (which we seem to get a brief look at in this trailer, too). That film will see Cillian Murphy reprise his role from 28 Days as Jim, but it hasn’t stopped people from speculating that one of the zombies glimpsed in the trailer could be his grim fate, as there is one that looks especially like a particularly gaunt Murphy glimpsed rising out of a bed of wild grass….
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Sumana Harihareswara, N., Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “We’d Like To Welcome You” Dern.]
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(1) Nine dayes of paid time off? Does that include sick days? If so… that’s really not good.
(7) One of these days, I will see the movie. I reread the first trilogy before the movie came out, then never saw it. I do remember people asking “why not call it John Carter of Mars?”
Birthday: Much Ado About Nothing is brilliant. I really liked the idea of casting Denzel Washington as the Prince… suggesting, to modern audiences, the way that the culture back then viewed them as truly different than “ordinary people”.
(15) Looks interesting, but rather, well, brutal and bloody.
On these autumn evenings, I’ve been listening to the latest Rivers of London novel, Amongst Our Weapons. Peter, our sorcerer Constable, is as interesting as ever, and the new characters who are added to story are spot on. Highly recommended.
Am here. Alive. Earlier today, Cider was running around on the bed, jumping over me repeatedly, having a grand time.
With all the movies Disney has made, it would be suspicious if they didn’t have any bombs.
Am reading a “pretend to be a time traveler day” story, which I suppose is only genre-adjacent.
To my surprise, a check of my total number of steps reveals that I was not totally inert today. But close.
Lis: I’m glad you moved the step counter. Sounds like if you’d put it on Cider today’s number would be terrific.
@Mike
Frisbie did a wheel-rotation counter for the LACon rats. they ran something like a mile and a quarter in 10 hours. (I still think it was mostly Masterson running.)
Lis – more steps is good. I have trouble getting Ellen to do more, but then we both spend too much time in front of our computers.
Lis, the question is has Disney made more boms than other studios. And how do we define bombs? Critically? Financially? Both? Just how many bombs suffice to say a studio makes a lot of bombs?
(16) The trailer for 28 Years Later is impressive (and bloody and violent.) I particularly like “Bonehenge”–not being ironic–that is some legitimately impressive set design.
7) John Carter was a bit ahead of the curve, perhaps, but I can think of any number of expensive would-be franchise starters that cratered at the box office back in the 2010s, including but not limited to The Dark Tower, Mortal Engines and Warcraft. To be fair, none of those were put in a sack and thrown in the river with malice aforethought the way John Carter was.
7) Michael D. Sellers tracked the various components of the John Carter fiasco in John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood. I can’t recall all the details (the book came out in 2012), but I recall my impression that it was a catalogue of corporate movie-biz screwups and pathologies even more appalling than the standard horror stories (John Gregory Dunne’s Monster: Living Off the Big Screen and William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade).
I thought the movie was a pretty reasonable Hollywoodization of old SF material, and certainly much better than its financial failure would suggest. I mean, it wasn’t Much Ado (which is a really lovely take on the play), but it did stand up to a re-watch years later on our 32-inch telly.
Hmm, I thought John Carter of Mars was the fellow who delivered toilet fixtures on Barsoom.
I liked John Carter. But I liked Blade Runner and the (female) Ghostbusters movie, too.
Happy birthday to Branagh. His Much Ado is good, as is Henry V, and his success enabled Trevor Nunn to make a good Twelfth Night, and a good version of Titus Andronicus by another director. Denzel was a solid Prince of Aragon in Much Ado and recently an excellent Macbeth.
Good for Ridley Scott. With slightly different motives, I used to keep a file of my professional mistakes – in the hope of not repeating them.
(9) Hercule Poirot, not Hercules.
(6) Extra points if they read it in Khan’s voice
“From now on you’ll be Psychohistory, you’ll be Psych, you’ll be Psych, you’ll be Psychohistory!”
A good film would have eventually transcended its bad marketing, either through word of mouth or acquiring cult movie status.
John Carter is a bad film.
@Steve Davidson
I think that’s a little strong. I wouldn’t say it was a good film but it was full of elements that could have made a good film if the production history hadn’t been such a mess.
Though I do think part of the problem is that A Princess of Mars is a bit of a slow and lumpy start to the Barsoom stories. It might have been better to adapt one of the other books as a pure action swashbuckler and just not worry about explaining everything
9) I’m extremely partial to his “Much Ado About Nothing.” We based our wedding on it, with similar costumes and holding it at a winery. Dead Again is brilliant, and the opening of Henry V is fantastic (Jacobi and the muse of fire). Few actors have been good as a narcissistic buffoon as he was in Potter (he’d probably do a good Trump too). One of his most overlooked films is one he directed, a black and white movie called “A Midwinter’s Tale” about a troupe doing a performance of Hamlet at Christmas. We watch it every Christmas.
@Sophie Jane: Yeah, it’s a flawed film, which is not the same thing as a bad film.
I would be very interested in seeing Andrew Stanton’s original cut of the film.
I saw John Carter in a theater when it first came out. About thirty seconds into the movie someone sat next to me and asked what was going on. “It just started”, I said.
The framing story doesn’t really add anything except confusion.
@Mike & mark–Thanks! I have several goal points. The number of steps that I consider “not totally inert.” My official goal, programmed into the counter, chosen because it’s the sweet point between “I can definitely do this if I’m making any effort” and “encourages me to make more effort than I would without a goal.” And finally, the point at which I think I’ve done really good for the day, which is significantly higher than I ever reached without having a goal that required some genuine effort.
@Cat Eldridge–My definition of bomb is, ticket sales/other measures of actual views is really low. However, I assume the studios and their owners are more concerned about revenue, and that critics are more concerned about what they and other critics think of the movie. Different priorities, none wrong.
Yeah, of all the things to keep (relatively) intact from the original book A Princess of Mars, the lengthy introduction by ERB “explaining” how the manuscript came into his possession, would not have been high on my list.
Off topic, I am being tempted to gafiate and I have a question. Which genre work do you find indepsensible even in mundane life? I have one in mind but I’d like to hear your thoughts first.
I’ve not read John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, but I’m guessing that someone had a great idea, and then something happened to them, and whoever was given it hated it. This is, among other things, based on an interview I read with whoever the honcho was in the late 80s who got handed ST, and he said he hated the franchise… but he ran it for 10 or 15 years.
Lis says My definition of bomb is, ticket sales/other measures of actual views is really low. However, I assume the studios and their owners are more concerned about revenue, and that critics are more concerned about what they and other critics think of the movie. Different priorities, none wrong.
Now, if a movie even does marginally well and is perceived as a bomb, there are other revenue streams, of course streaming and DVDs that potentially make what looks like a bomb into a moneymaker however slight for the studio. And of course, it does that some films which become cult classics are become popular enough in the long run that that they make the studio a lot of money..Roccy Horror Picture Show, anyone tonight?
It’s hard to say how much John Carter lost the studio but it cost about $306 million and tickets sales were $286 million. That doesn’t look bad until you consider that the studios only gets no more that 60% of each ticket, so $170 million is all they got, so yes it bombed. And it’s doubtful the other revenue streams since made up the difference.
Brian Z: Starship Troopers, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Stranger In A Strange Land. If I had to pick one, though, it’d probably be Harsh Mistress.
@Quartermain, thank you very much. A fine choice. Harsh Mistress is a bit older than me, but I’ve given it some thought and found a work younger than me which fits the bill. It’s Nine Princes in Amber. But it’s not much younger than me at all. I do feel like a prince, or really just a fly, in amber.