Pixel Scroll 2/21/22 And The Scrolls That Mother Gives You Don’t Have Any Pixels At All

(1) WAVE FUNCTION. Jim Benford was interviewed in a double-segment of 60 Minutes about the “Havana Syndrome” that is sickening State Department staffers around the world. He was interviewed as an expert on microwaves and as the author of High Power Microwaves, a copy of which was shown on screen. He was asked if the syndrome could be caused by a microwave weapon. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript.

James Benford: I think the best explanation, the most plausible, is that it’s a high-power microwave weapon.

James Benford is a physicist and leading authority on microwaves. He was not part of the government studies, but he co-wrote the book on microwave transmission. These are portable microwave transmitters of the kind that could damage the tissues of the brain.

James Benford: There are many kinds, and they can go anywhere in size from a suitcase all the way up to a large tractor trailer unit. And the bigger the device, the longer the range. 

Scott Pelley: This would be able to transmit its microwave energy through the wall of a van, the wall of a home, something like that?

James Benford: Vans have windows, microwaves go through glass. They go through brick. They go through practically everything.

The technology, Benford told us, has been studied more than 50 years.

James Benford: It’s been developed widely in, perhaps, a dozen countries. The primary countries are the United States, Russia and China.

(2) VALE LOVECRAFT. From Joseph T. Major’s latest Alexiad I learned: “H. P. Lovecraft has stunned the world by announcing that this summer will see the end of his regular advice videos, ‘Ask Lovecraft’, on YouTube. How blasphemeously rugose and squamous! …Leeman Kessler, the real voice of Ask Lovecraft, has a second child and regular responsibilities as Mayor of Gambier, Ohio. After ten years, this additional activity has become more than he can handle. We will miss Ask Lovecraft.”

The latest video assures listeners things will wind down gradually —

And we’re not ending right away. Have no fear, we’re going to take things to the middle of the year so that we are right on our 10th anniversary. Until that time we will continue to answer your questions, dispense wisdom and offer up all the jackanapes you’ve come to expect.

(3) IT’S THE ECONOMY. Author Kyle Galindez asks “Why can’t Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy imagine alternatives to capitalism or feudalism?” at Salon.

… As a fantasy author myself, I’m intrigued as to how writers’ imagination hit a wall when imagining political alternatives. I am reminded of the oft-quoted remark from literary theorist Frederic Jameson, who quipped that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Accordingly, the authors who are adept at imagining the end of capitalism are, more often than not, at the fringes….

(4) BY CROM, NOW THIS IS A MIGHTY ORGAN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Found in my library’s sale pile, and purchased for a buck, because it didn’t occur to me to first check Hoopla, YouTube, etc:

Basil Poledouris’ soundtrack for the Conan The Barbarian movie, transcribed for organ, performed by Phillipp Pelster (on Amazon).

As opposed to the actual soundtrack: “Conan The Barbarian (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” (via Hoopla).

Here’s one of several tracks, via YouTube:

Here it is being played on piano

And here’s a live orchestra performance (not just the organ):

By Crom’s Cavitous Teeth, I wouldst happily sell my copye for that dollar plus shipping (media mail even), elstwhyse I mayeth slip the foul thing back into the library’s for-sale box.

(5) MOCCA. The Society of Illustrators released the visuals for the 2022 MoCCA Arts Festival to be held April 2-3 in New York.

Featuring work by over 500 creators, the weekend will also include live lectures, panels, and artist signings! In one of the first independent comics festivals of the season, this year’s Fest will truly be a momentous occasion with many happy reunions for the community!

To help announce and promote this year’s Fest, the Society asked creator Yadi Liu, previous MoCCA Arts Fest exhibitor and Award of Excellence gallery artist, to create a colorful, celebratory image. Liu’s art will grace the cover of the Souvenir Journal and will feature prominently on all advertising and promotional materials, as well as a selection of merchandise available to purchase at the SI Booth. “Yadi’s art really captures our excitement for the return of the Fest. After several years of challenges and disappointments, we are so happy to welcome everyone back!” said Executive Director Anelle Miller.

In addition to Liu’s art, the Society has also asked several notable artists to create work for the show. Natalie Andrewson’s whimsical creatures will be displayed on the badges, and Patrick McDonnell’s quirky MUTTS characters will be featured as spot illustrations found throughout the Fest. These featured artists will be attending the Fest, and their schedules and table locations will be released as the date approaches. 

(6) BLACK HISTORY MONTH CONTINUES. The Horror Writers Association blog continues its “Black Heritage HWA interview series” –

How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?

For sure in the 50 years that I’ve been writing I see changes. Per diversity: In the beginning there were so few Blacks (and others) in genre writing. Since then it has increased in horror and science fiction and fantasy, which is good. The birth of black publishers and self-publishing has created an outlet for Other authors to offer their work to readers, in addition to the traditional publishers. We need this expanding to include more Others to continue. There are many different kinds of stories to be told and and creators to be seen. A big part of making this happen is for the publishing field to increase awareness and be willing to work at including other voices and realize that decision makers need to include Others.

Who are some African diaspora horror authors you recommend our audience check out?

The incredibly talented Chesya Burke is a writer who first came to my attention when I was putting together 60 Black Women in Horror. Valjeanne Jeffers and Crystal Connor are two writers who have impressed me with their short story work. I love L.A. Banks’ highly entertaining Vampire Huntress series. I love anthologies that give the reader a sampling of various African Diaspora horror writers, and Sycorax’s Daughers, edited by Linda Addison, Kinitra Brooks, and Susanna Morris and Dark Matter edited by Sheree Renee Thomas are two I recommend.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

I was drawn to horror because I needed it. I needed the distraction, the escape. The truth is, I was sort of an outcast and a latch-key kid until high school, where I would settle into just being awkward. I’m the quintessential late bloomer. With that, all that we now label ‘nerd stuff’ drew my attention and helped keep my little mind off some of the more challenging aspects of my life. Because of my strange interests, the other kids didn’t get me, and to be fair, I may have handled it badly. To give you a sense of how early my problems started, the first fight I ever had in school was over a Planet of The Apes action figure which I mistakenly brought to school only to have someone try to steal it. That was second grade.

As far as horror was concerned, everything I was exposed to became part of this rich fantasy world I developed in my head. At any given moment my imagination let me either hunt Dracula or be just like them. Naturally, this was balanced out with fantasies about being Batman or Spider-Man but as I approached my teens, these fantasies became an addiction. I think that’s possible; being addicted to your own imagination. And mine is a beast. It’s been fed some of the best horror books and movies. There’s also been a lot of cross pollination within genres, like drama and comedy. That’s why there are certain things I cannot stop doing, like inserting humor into some of my work, or creating these dialogues that could easily be inserted into a family drama, if not for the fact it’s a vampire and a werewolf having the argument.

(7) THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK. The New York Times asked “How Marlon James, Novelist, Spends His Sundays”.

ON CALL When I come back here, I usually have to deal with people who don’t respect the sanctity of my Sunday, like the production team for this TV show I’m working on called “Get Millie Black,” a detective show set in the U.K. and Jamaica. It’s produced by HBO and hopefully will be out around this time in 2023. When you’re a writer, there’s no days off….

(8) WORLD VIDEO GAME HOF NOMINATIONS. You have until February 28 to submit a recommendation for the 2022 World Video Game Hall of Fame sponsored by The Strong National Museum of Play.

Do you have a favorite video game that deserves to join icons such as Pong, Pac-ManSuper Mario Bros., TetrisThe Legend of Zelda, and The Oregon Trail in The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame? Video game lovers everywhere are urged to submit nominations for induction onlineSubmissions for nominations must be made by Monday, February 28, 2022. Finalists will be announced in March, 2022, and inductees will be revealed at a special ceremony at The Strong museum on May 5, 2022.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong was established in 2015 to recognize individual electronic games of all types—arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile—that meet the following criteria: icon-status, the game is widely recognized and remembered; longevity, the game is more than a passing fad and has enjoyed popularity over time; geographical reach, the game meets the above criteria across international boundaries; and influence, the game has exerted significant influence on the design and development of other games, on other forms of entertainment, or on popular culture and society in general.

(9) WADE IN. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna writes about “Homer At the Bat,” a classic episode of The Simpsons that first aired in February 1992 and was one of the first episodes to feature multiple celebrities in one episode.  Cavna reports the episode is packed with baseball lore (if you know who Cap Anson was, this is a show for you) and he interviews Wade Boggs, who says at autograph shows “I feel like I’m at a Comic-Con” because he has as many fans asking him to sign stills from The Simpsons as he does photos of him in a Red Sox, Yankees, or Devil Rays uniform. “’Homer at the Bat’ at 30: The ‘Simpsons’ baseball episode that pushed the show’s boundaries”.

…As Major League Baseball endures a lockout and faces a possible delay to this season, it’s an apt occasion to remember another time when ballplayers and management didn’t see eye to eye. Enter Homer, Mr. Burns and themighty lineup of imported pro ringers.

“Homer at the Bat,” which featured the voices of nine active major leaguers andmade its debutFeb. 20, 1992,was more than a quirky one-off in celebrity stunt casting. The 17th episode of Season 3 emboldened the minds behind “The Simpsons” to push the boundaries of what an animated half-hour series could do and show.

And from a ratings standpoint, it was a bellwether for the surging show: “Homer at the Bat” marked the first time that a new “Simpsons” episode beat an original episode of “The Cosby Show,” long an NBC juggernaut; on that prime-time Thursday night, “Simpsons” softball also topped CBS’s Winter Olympics coverage from Albertville, France….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1967 [Item by Cat Eldridge] Fifty-five years ago, Raquel Welch starred in One Million Years B.C. which was financed by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts. It was a remake of One Million B.C., a film made twenty-seven years earlier. The original film was also known as Cave Man, Man and His Mate and Tumak. That film was produced by Hal Roach and D. W. Griffith who I know you’ll recognize. 

 It was directed by Don Chaffey from the screenplay by Michael Carreras which in turn was based off the screenplay for the first film written by Mickell Novack, George Baker and Joseph Frickert. 

The primary cast was Raquel Welch as Loana and John Richardson as Tumak with rest of the cast being Percy Herbert as Sakana, Robert Brown as Akhoba, Martine Beswick as Nupondi  and Jean Wladon as Ahot. 

Ray Harryhausen animated all of the dinosaur attacks using stop-motion animation techniques, and also coordinated all of the live action creatures used from turtles to crickets and iguanas. 

So what was the reception for it? Most critics liked it. The Monthly Film Bulletin said that while it was “Very easy to dismiss the film as a silly spectacle; but Hammer production finesse is much in evidence and Don Chaffey has done a competent job of direction. And it is all hugely enjoyable.” And TV Guide said “While far from being one of Harryhausen’s best films (the quality of which had little to do with his abilities), the movie has superb effects that are worth a look for his fans.”

It cost just two point five million to make and made four point five million, a solid profit at the time.

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a really poor thirty-six percent rating which I admit surprised me.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 21, 1912 Peter Schuyler Miller. He wrote pulp fiction starting in the Thirties, and is generally considered one of the more popular writers of the period. His work appeared in such magazines as Amazing StoriesAstoundingThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionMarvel TalesSuper Science Stories, and Weird Tales to name but a few of the publications he appeared in. He began book reviewing beginning initially for Astounding Science Fiction and later for its successor, Analog. The 1963 Worldcon presented him with a special committee award for book reviewing. He had but two novels, Genus Homo, written with L. Sprague de Camp, and Alicia in Blunderland. (Died 1974.)
  • Born February 21, 1914 H.L. Gold. Editor of Galaxy from 1951 to 1960 and If from 1959 to 1961. Before that, from 1939-41 he was an assistant editor on Captain FutureStartling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. He also was a writer working for DC in the early Forties on BatmanBoy Commandos, Superboy, Superman and Wonder Woman. In the Thirties, he wrote two novels, A Matter of Form and None But Lucifer, the latter with L. Sprague de Camp. And he wrote a double handful of short fiction. Philcon II awarded him, along with John W. Campbell, Jr. for Astounding Science Fiction, the Hugo for Best Professional Editor for his work on Galaxy. (Died 1996.)
  • Born February 21, 1935 Richard A. Lupoff. His career started off with Xero, a Hugo winning fanzine he edited with his wife Pat and Bhob Stewart.  A veritable who’s who of writers were published there. He also was a reviewer for Algol. To say he was prolific as a professional writer is an understatement as he’s known to have written at least fifty works, plus short fiction, and some non-fiction as well. I’m fond of Sacred Locomotive Flies and The Universal Holmes but your tolerance for his humor may vary. The usual digital suspects stock him deeply at quite reasonable prices. (Died 2020.)
  • Born February 21, 1937 Gary Lockwood, 85. Best remembered for his roles as astronaut Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey and as Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell in the Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. He’s also in The Magic Sword as Sir George which Mystery Science Theatre admitted was pretty good, a rare admission for them. He’s got a number of genre of one-offs including the Earth II pilot, Mission ImpossibleNight GallerySix Million Dollar Man and MacGyver.
  • Born February 21, 1946 Anthony Daniels, 76. Obviously best known for playing C-3PO in the Star Wars film series. To my knowledge, he’s the only actor to have appeared in all of the productions in the series, no matter what they are. He has scant other genre creds but they are being in I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle as a Priest, voicing C-3PO in The Lego Movie and the same in Ralph Breaks the Internet. Did you know that Season 4, Episode 17 of The Muppet Show is listed as “The Stars of Star Wars” and C-3PO apparently appears on it? 
  • Born February 21, 1946 Alan Rickman. I’ll single him out for his role in the beloved Galaxy Quest as Dr. Lazarus but he’s got an extensive acting resume in our community. Of course he played Professor Severus Snape in the Potter franchise, and his first genre role was in the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the Sheriff of Nottingham. He voiced Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a role worthy of an Academy Award. Voicing Absolem in Alice Through the Looking Glass was his final role. (Died 2016.)
  • Born February 21, 1950 Larry Drake. I know him best as the over the top Robert G. Durant in the Darkman franchise. His other genre roles are largely in series one offs such as several appearances on Tales from the Crypt, an appearance on The Outer Limits and even an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. (Died 2016.)
  • Born February 21, 1961 David D. Levine, 61. Winner of the Hugo Award at L.A. Con IV for the Best Short Story for his story “Tk’tk’tk” which you hear thisaway. He has the Adventures of Arabella Ashby series which currently is four novels strong. To date, he has had one collection titled Space Magic.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro with Batman and Robin – took me a moment to get it!
  • It’s The Argyle Sweater, but this one would be just as at home in Bizarro or The Far Side.
  • Dinosaur Comics’ creator tells the audience, “What this comic assumes is that the ninth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, the former Prime Minister of Portugal, knows who Spider-Man is. I believe this to be an extremely fair assumption.”
  • Tom Gauld in the Guardian:

(13) EASTER EGGS. Each week Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, posts his Sunday comic, then a short essay. In “Pie Eyed” he explains all the extras in yesterday’s comic. There are plenty!

…Anyway, I’m fascinated by background jokes and hidden images. I’m saying all this because the Sunday cartoon above is a prime example of my obsession. There are so many background gags in this one it almost overwhelms the main joke. I’m aware of that but I can’t stop myself.

I’ve included Bunny’s Pie Repair as a business in the background of cartoons on city streets a bunch of times, but I think this one is the most elaborate version I’ve done. Here’s an enlargement for your convenience….

(14) ARCHIE’S NOTES. Bob Byrne turns another calendar page at West 35th Street: “Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: Stay at Home – Day 37” at Black Gate.

So, in 2020, as the Pandemic settled in like an unwanted relative who just came for a week and is still tying up the bathroom, I did a series of posts for the FB Page of the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. I speculated on what Stay at Home would be like for Archie, living in the Brownstone with Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Horstmann. I have already re-posted days one through thirty-six. Here is thirty seven (April 27). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries.

Day Thirty Seven – 2020 Stay at Home

I was looking through some old notebooks today and came across this gem from a case I never finished writing up. There have been times when I think Inspector Cramer really did want to lock me up forever, and this was one of them…

(15) ONCE AND FUTURE AILUROPHILES. Mark Twain House & Museum will host a free virtual event “A Cat’s Tale: Dr. Paul Koudounaris and Baba the Cat on the History of Cats in America” on Thursday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here.

The Mark Twain House & Museum is delighted to welcome fellow feline enthusiast, historian, and author Paul Koudounaris – a man who might just love cats as much as Mark Twain did.

Paul will discuss the history of America’s felines and their oft neglected contributions. Presented with a slideshow of historical images, the talk will take the audience on a wild and harrowing journey to reclaim the prodigious achievements of some of our nation’s greatest cats. Learn about cats in wartime and their role in the Wild West. Hear the extraordinary stories of cats like Clementine Jones, who traveled 1600 miles to find her family in a home and city she had never before been in. Or Pooli, a World War II US Navy cat who is the most decorated military animal in American history. Or Kiddo the flying cat, the world’s first celebrity feline. Or the amazing Colonel, the greatest (and highest ranking!) cat in US Army history.

(16) KEEP CALM.

Twitter would not give me the blue check, so I can assure everyone that standards are being upheld.

(17) COULD IT BE…CTHULHU? “Galaxy’s Centre Hosts Hundreds Of Strange Tendrils” reports Nature.

The Galaxy’s population of mysterious filaments that emit bright radio waves is at least ten times larger than scientists realised

Radio astronomer Farhad Yusef-Zadeh co-discovered the first of these filaments in the 1980s.  The structures consist of electrons travelling at nearly the speed of light, on trajectories that spiral around magnetic-field lines. Now, Yusef-Zadeh, who is based at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his collaborators have used MeerKAT, an array of 64 antennas in South Africa’s Northern Cape region, to take a series of 20 shots of the Milky Way’s central region, an effort that took some 200 hours.

The resulting composite image reveals a number of striking features, including expanding shock waves generated by supernovae, or exploding stars, and almost 1,000 filaments. The filaments’ spectral features suggest that their origin is not related to supernovae.

One possible explanation is that they originated from past cycles of activity of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy’s centre. Mysteriously, some of the filaments seem to be clustered together and evenly spaced, like the teeth of a comb.

(18) WALLY FUNK AND INGENUITY AWARDED. The National Air and Space Museum’s 2022 Michael Collins Trophy has been awarded to Wally Funk and the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter Team.

Wally Funk will receive the 2022 Michael Collins Trophy for Lifetime Achievement. Funk embodies the adage of “never give up on your dreams.” Since her first flying lesson in 1948 at age 9 and enrollment in flight school at 16, Funk knew that she wanted to fly, despite societal biases against women in aviation. After earning multiple certificates and ratings, she set her sights even higher in the sky—space. She was one of the top-performing participants in the Lovelace Woman in Space Program and dedicated decades of her life to flight instruction and safety, having logged over 19,600 hours of flight time, while never abandoning her dream of going to space. In 2021, that dream came true when she launched on the first crewed suborbital mission of Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule.

MiMi Aung and the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Team will receive the 2022 Michael Collins Trophy for Current Achievement. In April 2021, a small robotic helicopter achieved the first powered flight on another planet. Delivered to the surface of Mars by the rover Perseverance, Ingenuity was a technology demonstration aboard the Mars 2020 mission and successfully proved that flight was possible on the Red Planet. It is also now serving as a helpful tool to aid rover exploration of Mars. Ingenuity completed increasingly challenging flights and scouted areas for the Perseverance rover’s upcoming treks. Ingenuity’s “Wright brothers moment” captured the attention of the public back on planet Earth and inspired everyone to imagine what could be next in planetary exploration.

Congratulations to these two worthy recipients! They will be honored at an event at the end of March. The event is sponsored by Atlas Air Worldwide, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation, Jacobs, Leidos, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Pratt & Whitney, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and Thales.

(19) FLAME ON. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter is coming in May and has a kid “who can unleash a nuclear explosion simply by using the powers of her mind.”  Gosh wow!

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. This video, which dropped yesterday, has Ryan George playing an apprentice ghost who’s having a hard time learning not to haunt people: “Ghosts Are Bad At Revenge”.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Lise Andreasen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Tom Becker.]

41 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/21/22 And The Scrolls That Mother Gives You Don’t Have Any Pixels At All

  1. (9) If I recall correctly that episode features a literally bottomless pit, so it’s genre.

    (11) Levine’s “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” is a great story too.

  2. (3) IT’S THE ECONOMY.
    The writer Tweeted a link to their article and got such a tremendous response from people replying, with so many examples of non-capitalist and non-feudalist SFF, that they ended up deleting their Tweet.

  3. (11) Anthony Daniels also provided the voice for Legolas in Ralph Bakshi’s “The Lord of the Rings”.

  4. 11) Larry Drake also did a fine one-shot turn in the Firefly episode “Shindig”.

  5. 11) Alan Rickman also plays the ghost of Juliet Stevenson’s lover in “Truly, Madly, Deeply” (1990). To really see the range of a great actor, watch that, and compare it to his work in “Die Hard”. He was taken far too soon.
    16) I thought Twitter stopped handing out blue ticks?

  6. Iain Delaney: They’re still letting people apply for blue checks. (I just went and looked at my account — the link to initiate a request is still there.)

  7. (11) Sadly, “Truly, Madly, Deeply” seems to go in and out of print. The DVD price has settled down, but it used to be even higher. (Most of the cheaper copies on Amazon are Region 2, but my region-free player might still work…)

    (11) Larry Drake was also very memorable as “Dr. Giggles.”
    IIRC for a while, he didn’t get offered as many suitable parts because people believed he was really developmentally disabled. That’s a compliment to his work, but it doesn’t say much about the casting directors…

  8. 11) David D. Levine’s Arabella Ashby novels are great, but there are only 3 books in the series. Any other ISFDB listings in the series are excerpts or an omnibus of the trilogy. I hope he writes more in that world.

  9. Roger says David D. Levine’s Arabella Ashby novels are great, but there are only 3 books in the series. Any other ISFDB listings in the series are excerpts or an omnibus of the trilogy. I hope he writes more in that world.

    I thought there were only three novels but it looked like a fourth had been published since i last listed him. Mike, please correct the text for that Birthday.

  10. Twitter started handing out blue checks again a while ago, but their current guidelines make it almost impossible for SFF writers and bloggers to get one.

  11. Cora Buhlert: Twitter started handing out blue checks again a while ago, but their current guidelines make it almost impossible for SFF writers and bloggers to get one.

    I did not impress their algorithm. And it’s only going downhill from here! Last year I could cite Emily Van Der Werff linking to F770 from the Vox article about Isabel Fall. This year all I can brag about is being the number one source of news about Nehemiah Persoff.

  12. (11) [checks price on Amazon for DVD]
    …WHAAAAAA?
    I guess I oughta keep better tabs on what’s OOP or not in my collection. (Not that I’m selling that one…)

    (16) Ah, yes, people blathering about “the blue checks” – the equivalent of people being dicks about SMOFs.
    Although I REALLY wish that the tick marks were actually what Twitter says they mean, and no more – “this person or entity is who they say they are.” Twitter seems to have decided that it means both that, and also that it’s also a marker of some kind of notability, where “notability” might mean “famous actor” or “famous author” OR “has a podcast or Substack and won’t shut up”, but not, say “local artist of note for almost fifty years”.
    (I’m reminded of how, before they finally just airlocked him, they took away Milo’s checkmark as a form of “punishment” – and all I could think was “So, they’ve decreed that he might not be who he says he is. THAT’LL learn him, sure.”)

    (2) Aw, bummer! Sad to see such a great guy hanging up this particular hat.

  13. Of course, Wordle is the current Big Thing. I still have my 100% solve rate, but I did lose my consecutive streak the day of my heart surgery; I just wasn’t up for it.

    There are multiple knock-offs out there now, most of which I don’t bother with, but I do sometimes play Quordle, where you have to solve four words at once. Yesterday, one of the four words was FILER. I know it has mundane meanings, but that’s not what I thought of when I was getting close to it. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for PIXEL.

  14. 1) Good old-fashioned contagious hysteria seems the most likely explanation, though – or bored journalists.

    16) One pleasant thing about Mastodon (my social network of choice these days) is that custom emoji mean anyone can have a blue tick if they want. Though trans flags, cats, and anarchist symbols are more popular

  15. 10: I’ll bet that someone made more than 4.5 million on that Raquel poster from the movie.
    There was a time in America when it was mandated by law that every male citizen in the US had to have one displayed in their bedroom beginning when they were no older than 16 (younger is permissible). (Voluntary for non-males, wallet-sized reprint for older males.)
    It was also permissible to own and display plastic dinosaurs (usually stegosaurus, brontosaurus and T-Rex) in or around the poster, but was not mandatory.

  16. Steve Davidson says I’ll bet that someone made more than 4.5 million on that Raquel poster from the movie.

    Errr, you did notice which poster I choose to use? The one that’s Raquel free? Sort of like the write-up itself makes no comment at all about that bikini? So I assume you’re talking about about another poster altogether.

  17. Meredith moment: Elizabeth Bear’s debut novel, Hammered (Jenny Casey Book 1) is available from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine. The next two volumes in the series are not yet Meredith moments.

  18. 1) How long until someone writes a spy thriller about this?

    3) As someone in the process of writing a novel about a forming democracy, it’s surprisingly hard to spin all the nuances together into something functional. But also bear in mind that there’s plenty out there and what hits the main shelves as popular is often about the readers, many of whom don’t want to shy away from such things. It would be much more interesting if you were asking why these stories don’t often hit status on par with Le Guin or GRRM.

  19. One Million Years BC was a movie that did itself no favors by having the cast speak made-up cavemanese, and by trying to save money by matting in shots of actual iguanas and tarantulas made to look gigantic. The Harryhausen animation sequences are, of course, magnificent, though.

  20. (3) The reason why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism is that the former is possible and the latter is impossible. The vast majority of people that criticize capitalism, if not all of them, seem to not understand what capitalism actually is. It is simply the economic arrangement, on whatever scale, that exists when artificial barriers to trade or exchange are removed. For instance all black market transactions are intrinsically capitalist. Does anyone think we’re ever going to totally eliminate crime? Myself, I am not sanguine. Even in deeply socialist countries such as the former USSR, capitalism thrived in the black market.

    Whenever you do a swap or trade with a friend, you are a capitalist. Ever paid a kid to cut your grass? Ever hired a babysitter? Ever chipped in gas money for a road trip? You’re a capitalist.

    Allow me to reiterate myself. Every time you exchange money for a service in which the government is not involved, whether or not it that service is provided by a formal business or otherwise, you have engaged in capitalism. Even Star Trek was unable to truly envision a post-scarcity economy.

    Actually, such a scifi tale has already been written and quite some time ago. Please see Arthur C Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night – or The City and the Stars, if you prefer.

  21. (1) I remain convinced it’s crickets and delusion, and honestly ‘it’s a CIA attempt to get additional funding after the heroin pipeline from Afghanistan dried up’ isn’t that much less plausible than ‘Russian mind-melting rays’.

  22. Miles, We had markets, exchange, and even money long before we had something called capitalism. Those processes work in very different ways than in the present, but they certainly existed and there is a good chance a version of them will exist after the current system has collapsed.

    Some of the activities you describe certainly are a part of capitalism, especially anything involving the purchase of commodities, but not all of them. Even the ones that implicate you in the processes of capitalist accumulation do not necessarily make you a capitalist and none of the activities you listed, one of which was simply an act of consumption, would make you a capitalist.

  23. 2) “Leeman Kessler, the real voice of Ask Lovecraft, has a second child and regular responsibilities as Mayor of Gambier, Ohio.”

    Well, hello. Gambier is an itty-bitty college town among the cornfields. I know it well, having spent eight years there…

  24. Robert Wood, capitalism is just a label for an economic arrangement that existed before we had markets and currency. And you have just further reinforced my point that very few people understand what capitalism is. It’s not wealth accumulation. It’s not robber barons. It’s not the stock exchange. It’s two people (at minimum) carrying out an economic transaction without artificial barriers, the most common of which is government interference. We’ve all done it, we are all capitalists. The first time a caveman swapped some meat for a spear, capitalism began. It will persist until technology gets so good (if it ever does, which I doubt) that scarcity dies.

  25. @Miles Carter: That’s not anywhere close to a standard usage of ‘capitalism’, nor is it one that seems at all useful. I’m not engaging in capitalism with my dog when I give him a snack in exchange for sitting down.

  26. Sorry Miles. That’s not what capitalism is. You’re defining a wide swathe of very different types of exchange as capitalism regardless of the context. Just, no. A medieval market is a profoundly different thing than a supermarket. They involve very different social rules, forms of regulation. The social bond between buyer and seller is different. The labor practices involved in each situation are different.

    In that same sense, my act of swapping job shifts with a coworker is a very different thing than owning a chain of groceries stores. My relationship with that coworker is very different than the relationship between the store owner and their employees. There are distinct differences in power and social prestige. Differences in social control, etc.

    Erasing those differences both historically and in the present moment is an act of mystification, a profound act of erasure.

    It’s also significant that until the 20th century, very few people got most of their necessities from the market. Our way of life is very unique even in the history of the expanding capitalist world system.

    As to the notion that capitalism is something that is outside of state ‘interference’, I’ll also note that most economic interactions at the present moment are regulated by governments and that governments create the conditions for those interactions to occur. That takes the form of licenses, taxes, the construction of roads and other forms of infrastructure. It also takes the form of economic policies that incentivize certain types of behavior and in our current economy frequent economic bailouts.

  27. Anthony Daniels also appeared in one episode of Urban Gothic, a rather uneven but fairly watchable horror series starting in 2000. I remember thinking to myself “ah, so that’s what he looks like, then.” (His character came to a bad end, but then they mostly did, on that show.)

  28. “Erasing those differences both historically and in the present moment is an act of mystification, a profound act of erasure.”

    Very well said, indeed!

    I’ve got no idea what polemical itch Miles Carter thinks he’s scratching, but I want to thank Robert Wood for his eloquent clarification. It’s important to prevent reality from being plastered over by false narratives.

  29. @Robert Wood
    In medieval Britain, markets were approved by the government, and carefully scheduled so they didn’t all happen on the same days in the same areas.

  30. My high school history classes associated capitalism with the invention of the joint stock corporation, starting in the Netherlands some time in the 17th century. The point there being that any group of investors could pool their capital into a potentially profitable venture, whereas before that the most you might see was a few partners who knew and trusted each other going in together on something. Obviously trade and commerce existed for thousands of years before that. Crassus was a money lender, the Phoenicians presumably had their own systems worked out, and Mecca and Medina were trade centers long before they assumed religious importance. A quick web search on “define: capitalism” turns up almost as many different definitions as there are definers, so I don’t feel obligated to accept any of them as the One True Capitalism. Sure, if you define capitalism to include almost anything, then almost everything turns out to be capitalism, and where does that get us?

    Moving back in the directon of genre fiction, some historical fantasy goes into great detail about earlier economic and political systems, for example Nicola Griffith’s Hild or Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which incidentally is enjoying a Meredith Moment at $1.99. If we don’t see many new systems projected into the future, it’s probably because inventing new economic systems is hard: you need something that would plausibly work and that also hasn’t been tried before.

  31. P.S. Not to mention that most fiction is about the present day, sometimes thinly disguised as belonging to another era.

  32. (11) Perhaps the reason Anthony Daniels hasn’t managed to accumulate even more genre credits is because he was so busy (and perhaps having so much fun?), being in every single Star Wars entry.

  33. It’s odd to see capitalism defined in such a way that removes one of the central arguments in favor of it (if capitalism has existed since the dawn of time, then it can’t be responsible for the last several centuries of increased wealth, health and lifespan).

  34. Lis Carey says Perhaps the reason Anthony Daniels hasn’t managed to accumulate even more genre credits is because he was so busy (and perhaps having so much fun?), being in every single Star Wars entry.

    I assume that counts each series as a single entry? Which is still a lot of Star Wars work to put it mildly.

    Here’s a nice piece of C-3PO and R2D2 visiting Sesame Street.

  35. Thank you, File 770, for reminding me about the upcoming Firestarter remake in May! I knew that there was something we wanted to cover in our podcast after the trio of Sheckley episodes.

  36. Thanks for the shout out, Mike! I’m a huge (even gargantuan) Nero Wolfe fan. Archie Goodwin is one of the great sidekick narrators in mystery fiction.

    As you know, he stories are more about the interactions of the characters, and life in the Brownstone, than the mysteries themselves. They sure are a lot of fun. The series came about, because I thought about Archie’s life, locked down with Wolfe. Oh, the humanity!!!!! Glad you’re enjoying the posts.

  37. The article about the organ recital (no, I don’t mean old ladies discussing their latest operation) of the score from Conan, reminds me of the time our local radio station broadcast a new album called “The Naked Carmen,” which was, in fact, Bizet’s “Carmen” recast as alternative rock. At they end they pleaded for someone to come down to the station and relieve them of the record, so I obligingly did. It was not as bad as their reaction would lead one to suppose, but neither is it “Carmen Jones.”

    Actually, I do like organ transcriptions, so if you want to send it to me…

    At the end of the 19th Century organ transcriptions were one of the few ways that people could get to hear big new symphonic pieces. That is why The Palace of the Legion of Honor is, in addition to being a great art gallery, a cleverly disguised giant organ. Sometimes on Sundays they will have a concert and you can here the instrument play through the faux stone walls.

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