(1) 2023 SMOFCON AWARDED TO RHODE ISLAND. Massachusetts Convention Fandom Inc. (MCFI) has been voted the right to host the 2023 Smofcon in Providence, RI. The vote, taken this weekend at the Smofcon in Montreal, was Providence 37 and Sweden 28. The MCFI bid presentation can be accessed here.

The convention will be held December 1-3, 2023 at the Providence Marriott Downtown. The membership rates, good through February 28, 2023 are: Attending $50; Hybrid $35; Family/Con Suite Only $30.

(2) WHAT TO DO THE WEEK AFTER GLASGOW 2024. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon will be held August 8-12, 2024. Information coming out of Smofcon indicates two cons will run the following weekend.

• The Buffalo, NY 2024 NASFiC will be held August 15-18, 2024.
• Eurocon 2024, which had announced plans to run in August, now is reported to be slotted into the weekend after Worldcon, although its website still does not show specific dates.

(3) FUTURE TENSE FICTION. The latest story in Future Tense Fiction’s monthly series of short stories is “Universal Waste, by Palmer Holton” at Slate, “about a small-town cop, a murder, and a massive recycling plant.”

It’s accompanied by waste management expert Josh Lepawsky’s response essay “Can we turn landfills into energy? The laws of thermodynamics have something to say”.

You handle waste every day. Tissues. Bottles and cans. Kitchen scraps, maybe yard trimmings. And plastics. So many plastics. The wet, the dry, the smelly, and the disgusting.

But the stuff you personally put in this or that bin is the tiniest part of all the waste that arises in the United States and other countries whose economies are premised on mass consumption. Although numbers are tricky here, something like 97 percent of all waste arising in the United States happens before you—as citizen and consumer—buy, use, and toss the things you need and want for your daily life. If you live in a typical American city, all the garbage and recycling you see getting picked up at the curb is just that remaining 3 percent of overall waste arising….

(4) SUSAN COOPER PRAISED. “Midwinter magic: Robert Macfarlane on the enduring power of The Dark Is Rising” in the Guardian. (The 12-part BBC audio adaption of The Dark Is Rising will be broadcast on the World Service from December 20, and on Radio 4 from December 26.)

I first read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising the summer I turned 13, the year the Berlin Wall came down. I read it by torchlight under the bedclothes, not because of parental curfew or power cut, but because that seemed the safest place to read what was, unmistakably, the eeriest novel I’d ever met.

Eeriness is different in kind to horror. Eeriness thrives in edge-of-the-eye glimpses; horror is full-frontal. The eerie lives in the same family of feelings as Freud’s “uncanny”, which in its original German, unheimlich, means “unhomely”. A core power of Cooper’s novel lies in its counterpointing of the homely and the unhomely. It opens in the domestic clamour of the Stanton family house, in a quiet English village in the upper Thames valley. It’s 20 December: the eve of both the winter solstice and the 11th birthday of Will, the youngest of the Stanton children. Inside the house, all is pre-Christmas chaos, baking smells and familiarity. But in the wintry landscape around, something is very wrong. Rooks are behaving strangely, dogs are suddenly afraid of Will, a blizzard is coming, and “a shadowy awareness of evil” is building. Will’s life is about to change for ever – for he will become caught up in an ancient battle between the forces of the Light and those of the Dark, which are always strongest at midwinter. His young shoulders are soon to bear an immense burden….

(5) KRESS Q&A. Media Death Cult brings fans “An Interview with Nancy Kress”.

Nancy Kress is a multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author, a Professor of Literature and a lover of ballet. Her books include:
– BEGGARS IN SPAIN
– AFTER THE FALL, BEFORE THE FALL, DURING THE FALL –
– PROBABILITY MOON –
– OBSERVER (2023)

She discusses her work, the future of humanity and gives her top SF reads.

(6) DECEMBER IS HERE AND A PERSON’S MIND TURNS TO PRESENTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Fancy an SFnal read? A reminder that in the autumnal edition of SF2 Concatenation, its news page has a listing of current SF book listings and brief blurbs from Britain’s major SF imprints. Also included are fantasy listings and popular science. These titles should be available in N. America at your favorite SF bookshop or online.

SF² Concatenation has also just tweeted an advance post of a Best of Nature ‘Futures’ short story: “The Christmas Tree Barn” by Mary E. Lowd.  This one has a suitable theme for the festive season. What will Christmas trees be like in the Future? Remember, a Christmas tree is not just for Christmas!

(7) PEPPÉ REMEMBERED. The Guardian profiles the late Rodney Peppé who died October 27.

For more than 50 years Rodney Peppé, who has died aged 88, conjured up a wonderful world through the children’s books that he wrote and illustrated, together with the toys, models and automata that he made. In that world, daydreaming pigs dance, mice travel in time, and at the turn of a handle characters come to life. Two of these creations became stars for children’s television, Huxley Pig (Central TV, 1989, 1990) and Angelmouse (BBC, 1999).

Inspired by the painted and embellished wood models and sculptures of the British artist Sam Smith, as well as by Victorian toys, Rodney carefully crafted colourful toys and automata that displayed a playful charm and engaging, gentle wit, free from any dark undercurrents. A substantial collection of these, together with his book illustrations and archive, are now housed at Falmouth Art Gallery.

He authored more than 80 children’s books, including The Mice and the Clockwork Bus (1986), which was to become part of the national curriculum for seven-year-olds….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1990 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Alice in Wonderland in Guildford

Lewis Carroll spent much of his later years in rural Guildford. He had chosen it as he found that he really liked walking in that area, it had good train access to London, and he could access it easily by train from his home in Oxford.

So it’s not surprising that a sort of cottage industry has grown up there around him and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. 

We have not one, but two Alice in Wonderland statues here with the first at Guildford Castle. It’s the more fantastical of the two. “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the life-size statue, is in Alice’s Garden on the eastern side of the castle. The statue depicts Alice trying to climb through the looking glass. Sculptor Jeanne Argent made the statue in 1990 to mark the link between Lewis Carroll and Guildford. It is modeled on the sculptor’s daughter Anne.

The second statue, “Alice & the White Rabbit”, is far more traditional. It depicts the book’s famous beginning where Alice follows a talking rabbit into a hole, leaving her older sister behind. So we have the two sisters and, of course, the white rabbit. 

Edwin Russell, the sculptor, who did this in 1984, got really obsessed about finding the perfect model for his white rabbit and looked at, errr, over five hundred! 

And please note that the sculptor gave Alice a bob-cut, so she has short-fringed hair, a relatively uncommon depiction of the character. And note that her sister is also depicted as a young girl, unlike the 1951 Disney film and most modern illustrations of her. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born December 3, 1918 — Polly Freas. Fan and wife of SFF artist Frank Kelly Freas with whom she had 3 children. She was much loved in fandom. She and Kelly co-edited Wonderworks: Science Fiction and Fantasy Art by Michael Whelan, which was a Hugo finalist for Best Nonfiction Book. She was Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, and was given a Special Award by Southern Fandom. (Died 1987.)
• Born December 3, 1922 — Donald Tuck. Engineer, Writer, Editor, and Fan from Tasmania, Australia who discovered SF very young; by the time he was 18, he had co-edited three issues of the fanzine Profan, which included author bios and bibliographies. Considering the logistical difficulties of the time in terms of communication by snail mail – especially given the added difficulty due to WWII and the distance of Australia from the U.S. – his feat in amassing a huge collection of index cards with the details of hundreds of SFF works was impressive. In 1954, he collected those index cards into A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy, a 151-page bibliography of the field; in 1959 he released a greatly-expanded and updated version, at 396 pages. He was given a Worldcon Special Award for this work. He continued to refine this over the years, and in 1974 produced the first volume of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968: Who’s Who, for surnames starting A to L, followed four years later by Volume 2, for M to Z, and was recognized for this work with a World Fantasy Special Award. The third volume, a bibliography to accompany the two-volume encyclopedia of authors, editors, and artists, won a Hugo Award. He was to be Guest of Honor at the first Australian Worldcon; when he couldn’t attend, a group of fans went to visit him at his home. In 1985, he was given Fandom’s Big Heart Award. (Died 2010.) (JJ)
• Born December 3, 1937 — Morgan Llewelyn, 85. Ok, so what have I read by her is The Horse Goddess, as wonderful as is Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas and Lion of Ireland which I read a long time ago because the now closed Brian Boru Pub had just opened here and I was interested in his story. I later booked uilleann piper Paddy Keenan there. I got into a dispute a few mornings after with the Irish lads who ran the Pub who wanted their money back claiming no one showed up when in fact over ninety people at twenty dollars packed the upstairs and each drank at least three pints that night. How much Irish whisky was consumed I know not.  No, they didn’t get a cent back. 
• Born December 3, 1949 — Malcolm Edwards, 73. Writer, Editor, and Critic from England who is considered one of the field’s great editors. Early in his career, he joined the British Science Fiction Association, and served as editor of its journal Vector. He was extremely active in British fandom in the 60s and 70s, producing several fanzines, and was one of the co-founders of the semiprozine Interzone. In the 80s, he co-wrote several SFF nonfiction reference works. His work has influenced many fans’ reading: as SF editor for Gollancz, he launched the SF Masterworks series. He was Deputy CEO of the Orion Publishing Group until 2019. Although he is best known as an editor, his short story “After-Images” won a British Science Fiction Award, and has been included in five different anthologies. He chaired the 1987 Worldcon in Brighton, and was a Guest of Honor at Worldcon in London in 2014.
• Born December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 64. Author of The Wood Wife, winner of the Mythopoeic Award for Novel of the Year, she has deservedly won has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, and The Armless Maiden collection was on the short-list for the then named James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Along with Ellen Datlow, Windling edited sixteen volumes of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror  from 1986–2003. (Yes, the first volume is actually called Year’s Best Fantasy. I do have a full set here so I know that.) She is one of the core creative forces behind the mythic fiction emergence that began in the early Eighties through her work as an editor for the Ace and Tor Books fantasy lines, and they also edited a number of anthologies such as the superb Snow White, Blood Red series which collected the very best in contemporary fantasy. I’m very fond of her work with Illustrator Wendy Froud, wife of Brian Froud, on the Old Oak Wood series about faeries living in the Old Oak Wood.  She interviewed one of them, Sneezlewort Rootmuster Rowanberry Boggs the Seventh, for Green Man here.
• Born December 3, 1960 — Daryl Hannah, 62. She made her genre debut in Brian De Palma’s The Fury, though she’s better known as Pris in Blade Runner. And she was the mermaid Madison in Splash. In a decidedly unfashionable role, she was Ayala in The Clan of The Cave Bear before being Mary Plunkett Brogan in High Spirits which resulted in her being nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress. Was she really that bad in it? Her last genre role I think was in the Sense8 series as Angelica Turing, though she had a cameo as herself in Cosmic Radio.
• Born December 3, 1968 — Brendan Fraser, 54. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are enough to get him Birthday Honors. (Let’s not mention the third Mummy film.) Though he’s been in Monkeybone based on Kaja Blackley’s graphic novel Dark Town, Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Journey to the Center of the Earth, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and being Robotman on the Doom Patrol series that now airs on HBO Max.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

• FoxTrot features a D&D game with a special challenge.

(11) SPSFC TAKE TWO. In the second annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition, Team ScienceFiction.news, the successor to last year’s Team File 770, has announced the seven books that they are advancing as quarterfinalists. The seven-member judging team is led by Rogers Cadenhead, and includes Rowena, Joshua Scott Edwards, Claire, Al, Sarah Duck-Mayr, and Varnster. See what they had to say about their picks for SPSFC Quarterfinalists.

You might wonder about the quality of novels submitted to a self-published competition open to the public. Are they a slush pile of unpolished prose where a story that’s well-written and compelling is the exception, or do enough good books get entered in the contest that it makes choosing the best of them genuinely difficult?

The ScienceFiction.news team of judges in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition sampled 27 books in our allocation during the first round and had to pick the seven most worthy of being selected as quarterfinalists. It wasn’t easy to choose just seven….

(12) APPLIED SF: FREE ZOOM EVENT. [Item by Joey Eschrich.] The ASU Center for Science and the Imagination’s event, “Science Fictional Scenarios and Strategic Foresight: Planning for the Future with Applied Sci-Fi,” will take place on Thursday, December 8, from 12:00-1:00pm Eastern time. Panelists include science fiction writer and consulting futurist Madeline Ashby and foresight practitioners Ari Popper (SciFutures), Steven Weber (Breakwater Strategy), and Leah Zaidi (Multiverse Design). The event will also feature introductory remarks by renowned game designer and futures thinker Jane McGonigal, author of the books Superbetter and Imaginable.

The event is the third in a series for the Applied Sci-Fi Project at ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, which seeks to understand the influence of science fiction on technology and the people who build it, and to study the ways that sci-fi storytelling can a tool for innovation and foresight. 

The event is free and open to everyone. Here is the registration link.

(13) BEFORE THE IDES OF MARCH. “’Mandalorian’ Season 3 Sets March Premiere Date at Disney+” and Yahoo! has the story.

…The third season of the “Star Wars” series will debut on March 1 on Disney+, the Mouse House has announced. It had previously been reported that the series would debut on February 2023, but no official date had been announced prior to this.

(14) STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE. “I do not think San Francisco police’s killer robots are a good idea” declares Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri.

…I understand that this remark is controversial. But what are columnists for, if not to take these bold stances? So I will say it again: I, for one, think that killer robots are bad. I do not think the robots should kill. I think if you are going to draw a line someplace, killer robots should be on the other side of the line.

I was against the murder hornets, too. I heard “hornet” and said, “I will hear you out,” but then they said “murder,” and I said, “I will pass!” I am also opposed to killer people. When people say, “I am thinking of killing,” I am always the first to say, “Don’t!” I am consistent in these matters….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts arrives in theatres June 9, 2023.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure and introduce the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mark, James Bacon, Joey Eschrich, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cora Buhlert, Mike Kennedy, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]