(1) GALAKTIKA UP TO ITS OLD TRICKS. Bence Pintér of Mandiner.sci-fi checked with the authors of translated short stories in the latest issue of Galaktika, the Hungarian prozine caught publishing overseas authors without payment. Pinter discovered —
They [Galaktika] went on with publishing short stories without the authors’ permission, in this case the victims were Indra Das and Colin P. Davies. Davies knew nothing about this translation; but they asked Das for permission, but never got back to him with contract or the royalty. He did not know his story was published. Here is my article in Hungarian.
(2) CINEMA DENIERS. New Statesman’s Amelia Tait, in “The Movie That Doesn’t Exist and the Redditors Who Think It Does”, reports there is an intense discussion on Reddit about people who say that they saw a movie called Shazaam in the mid-1990s with Sinbad as a genie, even though there is no evidence that this movie was ever made and Sinbad himself tweeted that “only people who were kids in the mid-90s” claim to have seen it. Tait says these redditors are probably mis-remembering Kazaam, a movie with Shaquille O’Neal as a genie from the mid-1990s.
“I remember thinking Shaq’s Kazaam was a rip-off or a revamp of a failed first run, like how the 1991 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer bombed but the late Nineties TV reboot was a sensation,” says Meredith, who is one of many who claim to remember both Shazaam and Kazaam. Don remembers ordering two copies of the former and only one of the latter for the store, while Carl says: “I am one of several people who specifically never saw Kazaam because it looked ridiculous to rip off Shazaam just a few years after it had been released.” When Carl first realised there was no evidence of the Sinbad movie existing, he texted his sister to ask if she remembered the film.
“Her response [was] ‘Of course.’ I told her, ‘Try and look it up, it doesn’t exist’. She tried and texted back with only: ‘What was it called?’ – there was never a question of if it existed, only not remembering the title.”
(3) ALL HE’S CRACKED UP TO BE. Another work of art from “Hugo Nominated Author” Chuck Tingle.
please enjoy PHILOSOPHICAL AUDIOBOOK TINGLER name of Schrodinger's Butt you will learn nature of observed butts https://t.co/Uw68LxDOEt pic.twitter.com/BPMK1eAOqt
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) January 6, 2017
(4) THE NEXT STEP. “Where do you get your ideas,” is an oft-mocked interview question, but how one writer develops his ideas is captured in Joshua Rothman’s profile “Ted Chiang’s soulful Science Fiction” in The New Yorker.
Chiang’s stories conjure a celestial feeling of atemporality. “Hell Is the Absence of God” is set in a version of the present in which Old Testament religion is tangible, rather than imaginary: Hell is visible through cracks in the ground, angels appear amid lightning storms, and the souls of the good are plainly visible as they ascend to Heaven. Neil, the protagonist, had a wife who was killed during an angelic visitation—a curtain of flame surrounding the angel Nathanael shattered a café window, showering her with glass. (Other, luckier bystanders were cured of cancer or inspired by God’s love.) Attending a support group for people who have lost loved ones in similar circumstances, he finds that, although they are all angry at God, some still yearn to love him so that they can join their dead spouses and children in Heaven. To write this retelling of the Book of Job, in which one might predict an angel’s movements using a kind of meteorology, Chiang immersed himself in the literature of angels and the problem of innocent suffering; he read C. S. Lewis and the evangelical author Joni Eareckson Tada. Since the story was published, in 2001, readers have argued about the meaning of Chiang’s vision of a world without faith, in which the certain and proven existence of God is troubling, rather than reassuring.
(5) BIG RAY GUN. The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded a ?30M contract to produce a prototype laser weapon.
The aim is to see whether “directed energy” technology could benefit the armed forces, and is to culminate in a demonstration of the system in 2019.
The contract was picked up by a consortium of European defence firms.
The prototype will be assessed on how it picks up and tracks targets at different distances and in varied weather conditions over land and water.
(6) CHOW DOWN. Episode 26 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast brings Edelman together with James Morrow at an Uzbek restaurant.
James Morrow
We discussed his first novel (written when he was only seven years old!), why he feels more connected to the fiction of Arthur C. Clarke than that of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, his many paths not taken, including that of filmmaker, the ethical conundrum which occurred after Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. autographed a book “for Jim Morrow, who writes just like me,” how Charles Darwin “confiscated our passports,” and much more.
Edelman has launched an Eating the Fantastic Patreon.
In order to make Eating the Fantastic even better, I’d like to pick up the pace, post episodes more often than biweekly, make day trips to capture writers whom I never get a chance to see on the con circuit, and maybe even upgrade to more advanced recording equipment.
(7) AUTOGRAPH THE PETITION. Brad Johnson of Covina, CA has started a Change.org petition calling for California lawmakers to repeal the troublesome new standards for dealers in autographed items.
Nearly everyone in California is impacted by AB 1570, California’s new autograph bill, because it affects everyone with a signed item in their possession, whether it’s a painting passed down through generations, an autographed baseball, or a treasured book obtained at an author’s book signing. Under the new law, when a California consumer sells an autographed item worth $5 or more, the consumer’s name and address must be included on a Certificate of Authenticity. This requirement applies to anyone reselling the item as authentic, be it a bookseller, auction house, comic book dealer, antiques dealer, autograph dealer, art dealer, an estate sales company, or even a charity.
AB 1570 is fatally flawed and must be repealed with immediate effect. It is rife with unintended consequences that harm both consumers and small businesses. It has been condemned by newspaper editorial boards and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This bill never should have passed. The Legislature must fix or repeal it immediately when it resumes business.” – Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
(8) THERE IS A SILVER BULLET FOR THIS PROBLEM. Kate Beckinsale, star of Underworld: Blood Wars, joins Stephen Colbert to deliver an important werewolf-related public service announcement.
(9) A STRANGE DEVICE. Seattle’s Museum of Popular Culture hosts “The Art of Rube Goldberg” beginning February 11.
From self-opening umbrellas to automated back scratchers, if you can dream it, Rube Goldberg invented it.
For more than 70 years, cartoonist Rube Goldberg drew unique worlds filled with inventive technology and political commentary. Equal parts clever satirist and zany designer, the Pulitzer Prizing-winning artist is best known for his invention drawings—complex chain-reaction machines designed to perform simple tasks.
From iconic board games like Mouse Trap to thrilling music videos such as OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass,” Goldberg has influenced some of the most indelible moments in pop culture. His name is so synonymous with his creations that it was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as an adjective that describes the act of complicating a simple task. The tireless creator is thought to have drawn 50,000 cartoons over his long career.
Today, Goldberg’s ideas live on through the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This annual international competition challenges teams of students to compete in building the most elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine.
The Art of Rube Goldberg is the first comprehensive retrospective of Goldberg’s 72-year career since 1970. With more than 90 objects on display ranging from original drawings and animations to 3D puzzles, these incredible artifacts are paired with MoPOP’s signature interactive style to bring Goldberg’s imagination to life.
(10) EIGHTIES VERTLIEB. Matt Suzaka at Chuck Norris Ate My Baby rediscovered an old video of Steve Vertlieb being interviewed on Philadelphia TV:
While wandering the crowded halls of YouTube recently, I came across this enjoyable Halloween special that aired sometime in the early 1980s (maybe ‘81 or ‘82). The show in question, People Are Talking, was hosted by Richard Bey, and this particular episode features a genuinely interesting interview with film journalist and historian Steve Vertlieb.
One thing that I enjoy about this special, specifically the interview with Vertlieb, is the fact that horror films aren’t being chastised, something of which was very common for this type of show during the time period. Instead, this interview and the special as a whole is more of a celebration of what makes horror enjoyable for people of all ages. There is some discussion about how horror evolves to reflect modern society as well as how horror films can be a positive escape for some people.
(11) SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES. Anthony Herrera Designs has many patterns for science fictional paper snowflakes. The link takes you to the 2016 Star Wars set, and on the same page are links to Guardians of the Galaxy, Frozen, and Harry Potter designs.
New characters! New vehicles! 50% more beards! It’s time for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. These characters look just awesome and they make great snowflakes too. Here is the Star Wars snowflake collection for 2016. Featuring Rogue One characters and a few additional ones I just needed to throw in there. Download, cut and decorate with these snowflakes and most of all REBEL! This is an rebellion isn’t it? Unless your office coworkers will be annoyed. In that case be cool. Don’t be that guy. As always I recommend using scissors, a sharp x-acto knife and patience. Have fun!
(11) THE SHAPE OF SHADES TO COME. Several File 770 readers have said they will be chasing the eclipse next summer. Here’s the latest information on where it can be viewed — “NASA Moon Data Provides More Accurate 2017 Eclipse Path”.
On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, millions in the U.S. will have their eyes to the sky as they witness a total solar eclipse. The moon’s shadow will race across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. The path of this shadow, also known as the path of totality, is where observers will see the moon completely cover the sun. And thanks to elevation data of the moon from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, coupled with detailed NASA topography data of Earth, we have the most accurate maps of the path of totality for any eclipse to date.
(12) MOON PICTURE. Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica says “Hidden Figures is the perfect space race movie”. Does the review live up to the wordplay of the headline? You decide!
Hidden Figures is the perfect title for this film, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s exhaustively researched book of the same name. It deals with an aspect of spaceflight that is generally ignored, namely all the calculations that allow us to shoot objects into orbit and bring them back again. But it’s also about the people who are typically offscreen in sweeping tales of the white men who ran the space race. What Hidden Figures reveals, for the first time in Hollywood history, is that John Glenn would never have made it to space without the brilliant mathematical insights of a black woman named Katherine Johnson (played with what can only be called regal geekiness by Taraji Henson from Empire and Person of Interest).
Johnson was part of a group of “colored computers” at Langley Research Center in Atlanta, black women mathematicians who were segregated into their own number-crunching group. They worked on NASA’s Project Mercury and Apollo 11, and Johnson was just one of several women in the group whose careers made history.
Though Johnson is the main character, we also follow the stories of her friends as Langley pushes its engineers to catch up to the Soviets in the space race. Mary Jackson (a terrific Janelle Monae) wants to become an engineer, and eventually gets a special court order so she can attend classes at an all-white school. Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) becomes the first African-American woman to lead a department at the space agency, by teaching herself FORTRAN and learning to program Langley’s new IBM mainframe. One of my favorite scenes is when Vaughan debugs the computer for a bunch of white guys who have no idea what’s going on. As they splutter in confusion, she pats the giant, humming mainframe and says, “Good girl.”
(13) OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED NOW GRAPHIC NOVEL. Via Tor.com’s Leah Schnelbach we learn:
If you’re in New York City on January 13th and 14th, illustrator and Visual Studies professor John Jennings will be debuting the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred at the 2017 Black Comic Fest at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture! Jennings collaborated with writer Damian Duffy on the project, and you can read a preview here.
(14) SHINING GEEKS. Also at Tor.com is Schnelbach’s post “Adam Savage Tours a Weta Workshop Sculptor’s Mini Labyrinth Maze!”
Is there anything more joyful than watching someone explain their passion to an appreciative audience? In the video below, Johnny Fraser-Allen walks Adam Savage through his gorgeously detailed model of the Labyrinth from, er, Labyrinth. Fraser-Allen began work at Weta Workshop straight out of high school, after being inspired to go into film by repeated viewing of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Now he’s been commissioned by River Horse Games to create figures and illustrations for their Labyrinth tabletop game, and he gleefully shares his work with fellow maze-enthusiast Adam Savage, whose model of The Shining‘s iconic hedge maze is currently touring the country with the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition.
See her post for the Youtube video about the Labyrinth maze.
Meantime, here’s another video about Savage’s own Overlook Hotel Maze. The video is cued to when it’s all complete for about an 8-minute run, but people who want all the details on how it was designed and built can watch from the very beginning (24:21 total).
(15) PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. Alex Acks tweets
https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/817375521034137600
https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/817376625180418048
(16) AWESOMENESS. Patrick Wynne, renowned mythopoeic artist, was thrilled with a gift he received from Carl F. Hostetter, one of his colleagues in the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. It’s amazing what happens when your friends really know you.
I think I might just have gotten my favorite Procasmas present EVER—a huge fleece throw with the infamous friendship portrait of Amy Farrah Fowler and Penny from “The Big Bang Theory”! Thank you, Carl F. Hostetter, it’s wonderful!
(17) INTERPLANETARY LOVE. The Space Between Us trailer #3 is out.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Soon Lee, Michael J. Walsh, Steve Vertlieb, Andrew Porter. and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dawn Incognito.]
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First past the post!
[godstalk]
Post past the first!
2) I would have sworn that in the early 90’s, when I was in my early 20’s, a movie called Shazam! starring Sinbad was released. He was an incompetent genie… and I think some kids permanently freed him from the lamp. So it isn’t just 90’s kids who have this memory.
(17) Anybody see the split-second shot of the space shuttle in that trailer? Oops.
15) Alex is a treasure. (disclaimer, Alex is a cohost with me on Skiffy and Fanty, so I am a wee bit biased).
The Celery Godstalks at Midnight
Dawn Incognito on January 6, 2017 at 5:39 pm said:
The Godstalks distim the doshes?
15) Alex is indeed a treasure.
@15 – I had never heard of this guy. After searching, he has one paperback and a couple of short stories. A nobody with a twitter rant is important how?
That is about the reaction I had about all the authors the puppies slated. Alex Acks is at least someone I know of as a fan writer. Actually as someone who would have had a chance at a Hugo as fan writer if it wasn’t for puppy slating.
Alex is notable fan writer among other things – I’m not saying you should have heard of them but many other people who read File 770 will. I don’t know exactly how many times they’ve been covered here but ‘many’ would be a reasonable estimate:
eg.
https://file770.com/?p=30060
https://file770.com/?p=28441
ETA: Also what Hampus said.
@airboy: puts Alex in good company with the Puppies then.
ETA: Seriously? I need to read these scrolls faster. What Hampus and Camestros already said.
The whole Shazam thing is clearly more evidence for the popular theory that people actually do stumble between alternate realities every so often.
There’s a whole crowd who are convinced this is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that the bears are now named “Berenstain” instead of the “Berenstein” they remember from their youth. (Seriously. There’s a website about it. And the theory has an official name: “the Mandala effect”.)
airboy: I had never heard of this guy. After searching, he has one paperback and a couple of short stories. A nobody with a twitter rant is important how?
Yeah, you know, I get such a huge laugh whenever you and the rest of the Puppies repeatedly make claims that writers are clearly no one of importance because you’ve never heard of them. You think that you’re proving their insignificance and your credentials as a knowledgeable person.
What you’re actually proving is your own insularity and ignorance. The “person of no importance” is not those writers. 🙄
I’ll admit I had only heard of Alex Acks by the name Rachael. *mentally adjusts pronouns*
@JJ, Hampus, and Cam. Thank you. You beat me to a response.
@Dawn Yes, there’s been a pronoun and name change. I’m still getting used it myself, and I podcast with Alex!
Clicky. Not well. Dogs attending closely. Must take them out for their late potty walk now.
“I’m a pixel scroller. I scroll pixels. I’m the best pixel scroller that ever scrolled pixels.”
I never had a problem with the name Berenstain, because the Bears were the last thing by them. Before that, they were known to me for a rather good family cartoon series that ran in McCall’s (“It’s In the Family”). A hardback collection I found shows that if any Suck Fairy has visited them, it sure wasn’t mine.
Then, after that, they did a paperback original in an Ace Double sort of format, called Flipsville/Squaresville, one half of which poked fun at adults from a teenager’s point of view, and the other half of which did the complementary view from elders.
These things are given rather short shrift in a permanent display at the Museum of Play here in Rochester, but notwithstanding the Bears (some of which I read to Sarah when she was the appropriate age), they are what I think of first, regarding Stan & Jan.
http://katsudon.net/?p=5214
(1) GALAKTIKA UP TO ITS OLD TRICKS. Bence? Pence? @Mike Glyer, which one is it? 😉 ::appertaining::
(2) CINEMA DENIERS. Oh good grief, people.
(3) ALL HE’S CRACKED UP TO BE. ::laughing at the book and Mike’s title here:: 😀
(8) THERE IS A SILVER BULLET FOR THIS PROBLEM. LOL, very cute.
(11) SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES. A lot of these are pretty awesome, though some of the Harry Potter ones just wind up looking like creepy Halloween faces that will attack me in the middle of the night, when I least expect it.
(13) OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED NOW GRAPHIC NOVEL. What a bummer: I really don’t like the artwork. The page did lead me to 13 LGBT Superheroes To Watch out for in 2017, though (mildly interesting).
SF Reading, er, Listening: I listened to “Things With Beards” by Sam J. Miller from Clarkesworld and rather liked it. It did make me think of Peter Watts’s story, “Things,” but it was different (I liked both stories). That was just a brief break from listening to every “Tea and Jeopardy” episode ever, which itself is really just a super-enjoyable interruption of regular fiction listening. There are a lot of episodes; I may have to take more breaks to catch up on fiction listening. Print/ereading? Ugh, had no time this week except to read a sample and to start, barely start, something about Orcus (not the D&D demon) that folks around here keep recommending. 😉
“A couple of stories” like almost 30, you mean? http://katsudon.net/?page_id=2 But it’s OK, he’s probably never heard of you either.
Ticking for the team. Just got up early to finish Summer in Orcus, don’t need to tell this crowd how good it is. Strongly considering a snowflake cutting crafternoon using the patterns from 11.
@Camestros:
Thank you so much for the link! I had just done a Google search and read the bio on Alex’s main page, so didn’t know the details.
*mentally adjusts pronouns again*
airboy: @15 – I had never heard of this guy.
You realize that you have just given a textbook example of Ad hominem, right? Neither the original comment or Mikes selection of it for quoting depend on the fame of the person making it.
“after searching” – i.e. Amazon, Google, etc…. I find he had written almost nothing. Yep – looked at his home page where he repeats his huge productivity and the Amazon book which relists his accomplishments.
Then several of you (JJ the most snidely – but that is his special skill) inform me that he is a “big fan writer” in addition to his handful of short stories and one almost unread paperback. Wow!! I guess he really is important. Being a professional “fan” and “fan writer” is a critical skill.
So yes, he has written very little. His twitter rant is largely meaningless. And JJ is still the wonderful person he always is.
12) a. Ars Technica, not Ars Technical
12) b. Newitz, being quoted here, says “at Langley Research Center in Atlanta”. Is this reflective of something in the movie? Cause Langley is in Hampton, VA, not Atlanta.
@airboy
Alex Acks has a novel coming out March 17, 2017, plus several short story sales plus a history as a fanwriter/genre commentator. It’s okay, if you haven’t heard of him – there are plenty of writers I haven’t heard of either, including several of the people the puppies insisted on nominating in 2015 and 16. But I don’t see why you need to be so snide and dismissive about the fact that you haven’t heard of Alex. Especially since being well known is not actually a prerequisite for saying something insightful on Twitter.
airboy: Then several of you (JJ the most snidely – but that is his special skill) inform me that he is a “big fan writer” in addition to his handful of short stories and one almost unread paperback. Wow!! I guess he really is important. Being a professional “fan” and “fan writer” is a critical skill. So yes, he has written very little. His twitter rant is largely meaningless. And JJ is still the wonderful person he always is.
Firstly, you clearly don’t understand the meaning of “snide”. My comment was not snide, it was quite direct and straightforward. Demerit points for poor vocabulary knowledge.
Secondly, I didn’t say any of the things you are claiming I said. So more demerit points for once again having extremely poor reading comprehension.
My point, since it apparently was not direct and straightforward enough the first time for you to get it, is this:
It doesn’t matter whether you know who someone is, when Mike links to something by them in a scroll. You are not an arbiter of quality. You have no credentials here (other than as a rather irrational troll). You have on numerous occasions here said things which made it clear that your knowledge of the SFF field and fandom, the reporting of which is the main purpose of this site, is rather limited.
Whether or not you are aware of someone else, and their reputation and credentials, has no bearing on the actual relevance of that person and their remarks — and it is certainly not any indication of their actual importance.
And yet you clearly seem to think that the fact you don’t know who someone is, is supposed to have meaning for the other people here. You apparently believe that your pronouncement that someone else’s words are “meaningless” is supposed to be a judgment of some value to other people here.
And apparently I am also supposed to care, or find some meaning, in the fact that you don’t think that I am a “nice person” because I have repeatedly pointed out the idiocy of your remarks.
I have indeed noticed that people who point out the bad behavior of trolls are not considered “nice people” by those trolls. That does not bother me one bit.
@airboy – This site relates generally to fandom, so fan writers tend to be held in higher regard here than most other places. I don’t think that’s an attempt to hold up as more important than they are to the rest of the world, but why not talk about the people you know about, just because people who don’t know about those people don’t talk about them? I hadn’t recognized the name, either, though, until someone brought up that Alex use to be Raechel.
Seems to me that the opinion of someone who is still obviously new-ish and building their career (Acks), regarding the sense of entitlement to career success held by people who are also obviously new-ish and building their careers (Pups), is pretty relevant.
(8) *sigh* Stephen Colbert just doesn’t make me laugh any more. Standard Late Show humor just doesn’t work for him. His skits where he’d go out and do a report and just be a jack-ass as the joke were always the least funny of his Colbert Report/Daily Show bits, and this is only a tiny bit better.
Currently reading:
Finished The Riddle-Master of Hed – all three books. Stunning trilogy. Just amazing. The story doubles in quality by the end of each book. The first book starts off almost as typical fantasy, but turning some tropes on their heads, and written poetically but not pretentiously. Around the middle or so, I started wondering if it was going anywhere, only to be hit with a whole lot of story at the end. Toward the middle of the second book, I was wondering if we were stuck in a myth-based story with events all set in stone and motives that were formed to make sure said events occurred, only to be completely blown away by one single line near the end – a line that shifted the entire story so far into place as a real story filled with real people. Then, the third book grew and grew – I had the “surprise(?)” figured out early on (was suspicious by book two), but the denouement wasn’t about twists or mysteries revealed. It was a beautiful ending to a beautifully-told tale. I look forward to re-reading this when I have the chance, going back and enjoying the world McKillip revealed.
At the moment I’m reading through anthologies and compilations, to finish things I started a while back – currently reading the Simak collection “The Big Back Yard.”
@Bill: Langley is in McLean, VA – not Hampton, VA, which is a few hours away. 😉 Unless we’re talking about different Langleys.
Addendum to my above post: sorry for the awkward phrasing. I am be-wined.
@Kendall “@Bill: Langley is in McLean, VA – not Hampton, VA, which is a few hours away. ? Unless we’re talking about different Langleys.”
We must be. CIA HQ is at the Langley near McLean. NASA Langley is at Hampton.
Ah, that’s it then, thanks and sorry.
OK, well if you feel we must ignore people who haven’t sufficiently established their bona-fides by writing multiple books then….
Hey, if we’re done with that little wobbly, can I ask the hive mind for its opinions on “most influential SFF author with shortest canon”?
Of the tiny slice of history I’m familiar with, Tiptree is the name I’d put forward, but I’d love to hear others’ more substantiated thoughts.
@Kendall
“Things With Beards” was a bit too meta for my tastes, not just the connection to The Thing but also the two or three other points he was trying to fit in. There’s no denying he’s a good writer but I find Miller’s stories a bit marmite-y – either I really like them (e.g. Ghosts of Home) or don’t really notice them (e.g. lots of people seemed to like Calved but I remember thinking it was only ok). I think it’s because he’s always trying to speak to people in each story, and it depends on whether you catch that connection or not.
@Camestros
Point!
(11) THE SHAPE OF SHADES TO COME
I caught the 1999 total eclipse by traveling to Devon, watching it over the sea was pretty special.
Of course, I then found I’d trapped myself in Devon with a heck of a lot of other people who wanted to drive back out of it at the same time. Such queuing, so slow, much tedium.
(5) BIG RAY GUN
Our laser will be much like the US one, except it can also be used to make a good cup of tea.
Meredith moment: Elizabeth Hand’s collection Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories is on sale for $0.99 on Amazon (US).
@kip – I think I read that flip/hip side comic.
@Arifel – great idea! I’d love to see who people nominate. I’d say (delving almost knee deep in my shallow knowledge and coming up with a cheap shot) J.R.R. Tolkien, who after all only put out a trilogy, a prequel, a meta guide to his world, and some short stories…
@Arifel
I suppose Tiptree only wrote two novels but her output of shorts was impressive. It’s an interesting question though – a lot of big name writers old enough to be influential were extremely prolific.
Walter J Miller also only wrote two novels plus many shorts but he’s not as influential as Tiptree.
For a modern example of a good stories-to-reputation ratio, perhaps Ted Chiang?
Stanley G. Weinbaum. 18 months from first professional sf publication to his death. Not well-known now, but a tremendous impact on the field. Go find A Marian Odyssey and Other Stories if you don’t know his work. No, really. Do it.
Weinbaum’s a good one…. Olaf Stapledon’s output isn’t particularly large, either, but he was a notable influence on some other writers, Arthur Clarke for instance.
I havent heard of Alex either, but I found his tweet spot on.
But then I judge peoples output on their output not on wether other people know or like them.
PSA for anyone who uses Calibre to extract their kindle books from Kindle for PC on their desktop – the latest version (1.19.0) of Kindle for PC does something to break how Calibre works. It’s not clear if this deliberate on Amazon’s part or just that they changed some stuff that happened to break what Calibre does. I’d suggest turning off auto-updates on Kindle for PC until it’s clear that Calibre has caught up.
The eclipse: I’ve been literally waiting for that for most of my life. In primary school in the early 1980’s there was a partial or annular eclipse and all of us students went outside to view it (reflected in bowls of water.) In the news, there was talk of the total eclipse that would be coming in 2017, and I distinctly remember at the time how much I looked forward to watching it. When you are less than 10, planning something close to 40 years in the future is a pretty big prospect. (Okay, that’s probably a pretty big prospect at any age.) To be in the totality of this eclipse, I’ll need to travel, oh, 20 or 30 feet (depending on which room I’m sitting in before I walk into the yard.) Fate having the sense of humor that it does, you can probably mark down on your calendars the day before the eclipse for when I drop dead.
The tiny ‘tendo (which was scrolled a while back): It is now hackable.
Hidden Figures: It has a kerfuffle tangentially attached to it now.
Oh, and Shazam: there’s a similar group with false memories of an alternate ending for the movie Big.
Darren Garrison: Hidden Figures: It has a kerfuffle tangentially attached to it now.
And I see that Burrell is doing a capital job of refusing to accept personal responsibility for her homophobic remarks. This is my surprised face. 🙄
@Xtifr,
If I recall correctly, it’s the “Mandela effect” – even the web site you link to is mandelaeffect.com. I am so tempted to wonder whether you used to live in a reality where it was in fact called the “Mandala effect” … 🙂
I’d heard of the Burrell thing but hadn’t realised there was a connection to Hidden Figures. I see the connection appears to be that she has a song on the soundtrack – that is (as Darren said) a tangential connection.
@Xtifr:
Is the Mandala Effect named after Nelson Mandala?
🙂
ETA: ninja’d! And while it is named after Nelson, it wasn’t for the reason I was thinking of …
Yes, and her having that song on the soundtrack was the reason for her being scheduled for an appearance on Ellen, which was canceled after the sermon video surfaced.
Airboy:
You do realize that File 770 is a page on Fandom News and that reporting on opinions from fan writers is directly in line with the mission of the webpage?
If you are uncomfortable with opinions from fans and fan writers being cited, then this perhaps isn’t a page for you.