(1) WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT A HOBBIT HOLE HERE. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted to Bluesky a spin on the “Omelas” tale in the voice of you-know-who. Stunningly on point. Fourteen posts long. The first one is here.
(2) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES IS SEVEN. Space Cowboy Books today launched the 7-year anniversary episode of the Simultaneous Times podcast. This episode is a collaboration with Apex Magazine.
Simultaneous Times 7 Year Anniversary Episode
Featuring stories from the pages of Apex Magazine.
- “Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia” by Nadia Radovich. With music by Doctor Auxiliary. Read by Jenna Hanchey
- “What Happens When a Planet Falls From the Sky?” by Danny Cherry, Jr. With music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier & Jenna Hanchey
Theme music by Dain Luscombe
(3) SPECIAL ACCESS TO NATURE FUTURES STORY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted the first of its four “Best of Nature Futures” short stories of the year. Because it is behind a paywall, non-Nature subscribers can’t access the original weekly stories. Fortunately SF² Concatenation has an agreement with Nature and the permission of respective writers to re-post four a year. The story “Cosmic Rentals” by Dave Kavanaugh concerns a rental store where you can literally hire “universes”… What’s not to like? …And if you scroll down below the story you will get the author’s ‘story behind the story’. You access it here.
(4) WHAT YOU WON’T SEE ON THE BALLOT. The Ursa Major Awards, the annual anthropomorphic literature and arts award, will shortly release their 2024 finalists and open public voting. But the administrators have decided to announce some rulings on the prospective nominees ahead of time.
We are about to present the list of nominees for 2024 and will open up voting soon. However, we thought it was best to first present a list of special considerations for a select few entries we have received this year.
In the Best Anthropomorphic Game category, Atlyss did receive enough nominations to place in the top 5, but because Atlyss has only been released as an “early access” title, it has been disqualified from the 2024 list.
In the Fursuit category, only one qualifying entry was given more than a single vote, therefore we felt it best to drop the category for 2024, as has been done in the past.
In the Best Anthropomorphic Music category, an album titled “Where Will the Animals Sleep” would have been in the top 5 nominations. However, as neither the content nor the author is anthropomorphic / furry, it has been disqualified.
(5) FEAR FACTOR. “Snow White Premiere: Dwarf Actor Responds to Rachel Zegler Movie Pivot” in The Hollywood Reporter.
One performer from Disney‘s new Snow White is sharing his thoughts amid the debate surrounding the launch for the live-action movie.
Martin Klebba — who has appeared in two previous versions of Snow White, including the 2012 feature Mirror Mirror that stars Julia Roberts and Lily Collins — provides the voice of Grumpy in the new movie and also serves as an advisor for the miner characters. Klebba tells The Hollywood Reporter that the recent controversy surrounding Snow White, which has led to the film’s Saturday premiere not inviting press onto the red carpet, has meant a less exciting celebration for those involved in the project that stars Rachel Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.
“It really isn’t going to be a red carpet,” says Klebba, who emphasizes that he is very proud of the movie and cannot wait for audiences to see it. “It’s going to be at the El Capitan [Theatre], which is cool. But it’s basically going to be a pre-party, watch the movie, and that’s it. There’s not going to be this whole hoopla of, ‘Disney’s first fucking movie they ever made.’ Because of all this controversy, they’re afraid of the blowback from different people in society.”
Klebba says that the premiere changes were due to “the controversy with Rachel” but clarifies that he had not been given direct information on why the event was altered. Zegler is known as an outspoken star who suggested in 2022 that she was not a fan of the original 1937 animated classic due to outdated plot points. Additionally, after President Donald Trump was elected in November, Zegler posted comments to social media that were critical of his victory before later apologizing….
(6) FREAKIER FRIDAY. They’re afraid, too, apparently. “Freakier Friday Teaser Trailer”. Movie in theaters August 8.
(7) DO FANNISH VALUES WORK IN SCALED-UP CONVENTIONS? Patch O’Furr analyzes the issues of “How to love the freedom of leaderless fandom, and fight the flipside of organized abuse” for furry fans at Dogpatch Press.
Do you know the story where several blind people try to describe an elephant by only touching small parts of it? Nobody can say what the whole animal is.
That happens when furry subculture talks about itself, and protests outside stereotypes by falling into its own… The Geek Social Fallacies….
…That’s the natural downside of the old-school fan values, but things were more personal when groups were smaller scale. They would put up with a few jerks because it was harder to kick them out and sustain groups. Now add decades of growth, and much bigger scale of members who don’t know each other. (Dunbar’s Number names a finite limit on how many relationships your brain can handle.) Put the problem on steroids with internet platforms we don’t own. It’s not YOU, it’s MATH….
…The math of escalating abuse
Rapid and unplanned growth of furry subculture has many unforeseeable effects. Straining the limits of conventions is one covered on Soatok’s furry cybersecurity blog: Furries Are Losing the Battle Against Scale. Convention attendance is doubling every few years and “the furry community is growing at a break-neck exponential speed.”
Security suffers without top-down management at impersonal scale, especially when the more we depend on net platforms, the more problems we have by policy. Social media is built to shift liability for moderation from owners to users. It’s their business model to be unaccountable! The point is to eliminate the cost of the editor/gatekeeper/mod layer by automating the labor and letting volunteers and peers fill in.
Peer moderation may feel like personal control, but meanwhile, bad actors can game the system with off-site advantage. Moderators may respond to simple individual incidents on-site, but can’t even see complex cross-platform abuse. That’s how responses can be weak, scattered, inconsistent, and lack resources for scale, no matter how much their hearts are in it.
If you can’t see abuse, it festers. Think of church scandals where abuser priests were shifted around from church to church. We have that too, but there’s no orders from the top. It’s from being nobody’s job. A long-time creep can use a newly minted fursona to jump from group to group, when it’s easy to change accounts and delete evidence, but an uphill battle to track them or get consequences. Different process, same outcome….
(8) REMEMBERING A CLASSIC HORROR AUTHOR. “Lisa Morton Discusses Dennis Etchison” in an installment of the Horror Writers Association’s blog series “Nuts & Bolts”.
Lisa Morton describes Dennis Etchison’s work as a “brain bombshell” that changed her idea of what horror fiction could do. When she was just starting out, Etchison had a major influence on both her art and her career. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Lisa discusses Etchison’s writing technique, his influence on her own work, and what writers today can learn from the late horror legend.
Q: Can you tell us a little about Dennis Etchison and his contributions to the horror genre?
A: To me, Dennis is one of the absolute greatest craftsmen of the horror short story. His short story collection The Dark Country came out in 1982, when most of the genre was split between Stephen King’s suburban, East Coast horror on one hand and the glorious excesses of the splatterpunks on the other, and his work fit into neither camp. It was completely unique and was the first time I’d read horror set mostly in my hometown of Los Angeles; it’s not an exaggeration to say that it made me think I might be able to write horror fiction. My all-time favorite short story is his 1993 masterpiece The Dog Park, which is one of those works of fiction that’s like a magic trick — it really gets under your skin and you’re not sure how it was done. Although I also like several of his novels, especially California Gothic, his short fiction is what I think will be remembered….
(9) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted photos on Flickr of the “Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series March 12, 2025” gathering where Victoria Dalpe and Jedediah Berry read from their work to a very full house.
(10) LACON V HOLDING ANAHEIM MEETING. LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon committee, told Facebook readers how to ask to attend their meeting next weekend.
LAcon V is hosting an in-person meeting on March 22nd and 23rd at the Anaheim Hilton.
This is a good opportunity to meet some of our leadership, learn more about the convention, and possibly become part of the LAcon V team!
If you are interested in participating, and plan to be in the Anaheim area, please email us at info(at)lacon.org for further details.
(11) T. JACKSON KING (1948-2025). Author and archeologist Thomas Jackson King, Jr. died December 3, 2024. SFWA’s tribute “In Memoriam: T. Jackson King” notes he was “a prolific writer of science-fiction, horror, and urban fantasy, and an award-winning journalist. He wrote articles for The SFWA Bulletin and SFWA Handbook, and served as the SFWA Election Committee Chair.”
(12) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
The Girl with Something Extra series (1976)
Networks in the Sixties liked young actresses. They were either sexy, or they were cute. So let’s talk about the lead of The Girl with Something Extra series that debuted forty-nine years ago.
That lead actress was Sally Field which tells you how deep the story was intended to be. She was a wife who had ESP, and her husband played by John Davidson never quite understood her. It was intended to be cute, really, really cute with her giving it that cuteness.
There was other cast, but really who cared? Not the studio. It was intended to be just a vehicle for these two to be a couple as this critic noted “The plot for The Girl With Something Extra TV show immediately brings to mind another show that ended in March of 1972 after a whopping eight seasons on the air! That series of course was “Bewitched” which also featured a young newlywed couple with the wife having super-human powers that caused many problems for her and her husband.”
The audience apparently didn’t grasp its charms, and it was canceled after one season of twenty-two half hour episodes.
So the Apple search engine says it’s not streaming anywhere. The Flying Nun is streaming on, errr, Tubi. Any of y’all ever subscribe to that service?
Lancer Books published a tie-in novel by Paul Farman, The Girl With Something Extra.
I see multiple signed scripts is for sale on eBay. Press photos too. Like the one below. Aren’t they cute? Well, aren’t they?
(13) COMICS SECTION.
- xkcd proves there’s a lot to learn about Planet Definitions.
- Bizarro introduces a vampire with ambition.
- Brewster Rockit knows his readers.
- Cul de Sac adds fan fiction.
- Free Range knows time travel.
- Strange Brew helps with housekeeping.
(14) DWAYNE MCDUFFIE AWARD TAKING ENTRIES. Comics Beat announced that the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is accepting submissions. “Mark Waid joins 10th annual Dwayne McDuffie Award selection committee”.
…As in previous years, the event will name one winner from five honored finalists, whose work resembles a commitment to excellence and inclusion on and off the page, much like the late Mr. McDuffie’s own efforts to produce entertainment that was representative of and created by a wide scope of human experience. Moreover, prolific comic creator Mark Waid has joined joined the selection committee which includes The Beat‘s own Heidi MacDonald, and other notable comics industry figures.
The 10th annual “Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics” is now accepting submissions at https://dwaynemcduffie.com/dmad/. The deadline is May 1, 2025 for comics published during the 2024 calendar year.
New York Times best-selling author, Mark Waid, joins a selection committee of notable comic book professionals led by industry legend, Marv Wolfman. This prestigious prize has grown exponentially in esteem since it was established in 2015 in honor of Dwayne McDuffie (1962-2011), the legendary African-American comic book writer/editor and writer/producer of the animated Static Shock, Justice League, and Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, who famously co-founded Milestone Media, the most successful minority-owned comic book company in the history of the industry.
The slogan for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is Mr. McDuffie’s own profound saying:
“From invisible to inevitable.”
Prolific writer/creator, Mark Waid, is “proud to be part of the DMADs”:
“As a medium and as a community—even removing from consideration the onslaught of bigotry and intolerance sweeping the U.S. as we speak—the world of comics has a responsibility to recognize, promote, and honor comics that not only employ great storytelling but are emblematic of the power of equality and inclusion. As creators, good work from anyone forces us to up our game. As readers, we’re all better off—and more entertained and educated—when we’re exposed to the widest possible variety of voices and viewpoints.”…
(15) AVENGERS ACADEMY. Anthony Oliveira, Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund’s Avengers Academy Infinity Comic series on Marvel Unlimited comes to print for the first time this June.
Since launching last year, Marvel Unlimited’s hit AVENGERS ACADEMY Infinity Comic series by rising star Anthony Oliveira and visionary artists Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund has become an online phenomenon, gaining a devoted fanbase who tune in each week to experience the adventures of Marvel’s most promising young heroes! This June, the acclaimed series comes to your local comic shop in AVENGERS ACADEMY: ASSEMBLE #1, a new one-shot collecting the first six issues in print for the first time!
From the X-Men to the symbiote hivemind, this eclectic group assembles fan-favorite characters from every corner of the Marvel Universe, including new sensations like Kid Juggernaut. Discover their journey to become tomorrow’s Mightiest Heroes in this masterful blend of teen drama and super hero adventure!
SCHOOL’S IN SESSION!
Welcome to Avengers Academy! Seeking to guide the next generation of super heroes, Captain Marvel recruits a misfit team of super-powered teens: CAPTAIN AMERICA OF THE RAILWAYS, BLOODLINE, ESCAPADE, MOON GIRL, RED GOBLIN, and new hero on the block, KID JUGGERNAUT! But classes are the least of their concerns as they fend off super-villain attacks, make new friends – and new foes – and learn what it really means to be Earth’s mightiest heroes. Featuring the first appearance of an all-new SINISTER SIX, this is one book you don’t want to miss!
Check out the all-new cover by Stephen Byrne and preorder Avengers Academy: Assemble #1 at your local comic shop today! For more information, visit Marvel.com.
(16) FARADAY UNCAGED. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Why do we have a lot of electricity? Faraday. I think a lot of us know who Faraday was, but this is a lovely, loving article. “Unearthed notebooks shed light on Victorian genius who inspired Einstein” in the Guardian.
…When a lab assistant at the Institution got into a brawl and was fired in February 1813, Davy remembered the 22-year-old Faraday and offered him the job – which involved taking a pay cut, but gave the young man access to the laboratory, free coal, candles and two attic rooms.
Faraday later gave an account of this job offer: “At the same time that he [Davy] gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he advised me to remain a bookbinder, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress… poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service.”
Despite Davy’s advice, Faraday accepted the job. It was a decision that would prove to be seminal for science. Over the next 55 years, while working for the Royal Institution, Faraday discovered several fundamental laws of physics and chemistry – including his law of electromagnetic induction in 1831, which illuminated the relative motion of charged particles.
It was thanks to Faraday’s trailblazing experiments at the institution that he discovered electromagnetic rotation in 1821, a breakthrough that led to the development of the electric motor and benzene, a hydrocarbon derived from benzoic acid, in 1825. He became the first scientist to liquefy gas in 1823, invented the electric generator in 1831 and discovered the laws of electrolysis in the early 1830s, helping to coin terms such as electrode, cathode and ion. In 1845, after finding the first experimental evidence that a magnetic field could influence polarised light – a phenomenon that became known as the Faraday effect – he proved light and electromagnetism are interconnected….
(17) PIXEL SCROLL TITLE EXPLANATION OF THE DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (1922).
Probably my favorite recording (keeping in mind I’ve only listened to a fraction of the various artists’ recordings) is from Jim Kweskin’s Relax Your Mind album (more generally one of my favorite albums): “Three Songs – A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate’s Night Out) : I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”.
Here’s the first version I’ve run into (yesterday!) that shows there’s a long intro section: “Sister Kate” – song and lyrics by Vi Wickam, Paul Anastasio, Albanie Falletta | Spotify.
Lots of (current/recent) popular covers!
Here’s the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band “Sister Kate”.
And here’s an unexpected cover (from the From Liverpool To Hamburg 2CD set) — The Beatles – “i wish i could shimmy like my sister Kate” (live).
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Arnie Fenner.] This “Frazetta Fridays” episode about the creation of Vampirella includes some fun history featuring Harlan, Forry, and Trina Robbins.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Arnie Fenner, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(1) And let me tell you, I could sell some of it to you, but…
(7) It was not, still should not be, “put up with jerks”. Most fen, up until not that long ago, were all weirdos, unsocialized, people who grew up on books (eating a library at a time). They – and I add I – didn’t deal with people as “smoothly” as the popular kids. But I feel as though fandom has become so large, and sf popular, that it’s “ok” for the “popular kids” to come in… and they’re finding fault with the rest of us.
(16) Faraday, and Maxwell.
(17) Thanks, Mike – that’s a song I’ve always liked.
(12) Tubi is a free ad-supported service. An account is required, but no subscription (and in fact there is no paid option.)
I haven’t used it much, but it seems fine, especially if you grew up watching broadcast television.
(16) Faraday was a very popular science lecturer, too.
He also said, of lectures and speeches, that “one hour is long enough for anyone”.
I found Tubi because they were running the Super Bowl broadcast (free) AND they still support streaming video for my computer’s operating system (which YouTube TV and Amazon Prime stopped doing a couple months ago.) They don’t have a lot I’m interested in, though I did watch a season of The Floor, a trivia show.
Clickity
1) The gap between outrageous satire and bare fact is becoming very thin.
Tubi is where The Phantom Empire resides. As well as Radar Men from the Moon and Zombies of the Stratosphere. That alone is reason enough to watch.
Faraday holds the record for Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. Yhey are televised these days.
https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/history-christmas-lectures
(17) All the listed “current/recent” covers of “Sister Kate” are actually closer in time to the original than to the present day, as was the last time I saw Van Ronk perform it, back during the Nixon regime.
@ mark on March 15, 2025 at 7:34 pm
Thanks for reading (7). That’s a reference to chronic nuisances who are not new, but have been around for decades. Names can be named. Not only are they the type who don’t play well with others, they’re involved in organized malice. Organized is the key word, it’s not a piece about personality issues, it’s about a complex of natural issues on top of artificial platforms that magnify toxic influence by industrial scale. The clout game.
It’s possible those nuisances may not have stuck around if opportunity was taken for a little healthy gatekeeping way back when. I’m not a newcomer finding fault with old guarders, I was a lurker in those times and remember them at work then and see them doing the same thing today.
The definition of authentic old guard vs newcomer strikes me as arbitrary and I don’t think there is any way to boil down fandom to extract pure identity. Sometimes that attempted definition is used for malice itself, such as accusing women of being alien to the boys club.
Unsocialized people didn’t handle things as well as the popular kids? This is still said today. After a while it’s less an explanation and more like enabling.
These are topics I’m constantly running into and hope to see get progress through awareness.
17) The shimmy was made popular by a nice Polish girl who came to Milwaukee, and adopted the name “Gilda Gray” (born Marianna Michalska). Her “explanation” in Variety of how she got it from the American Indians is so shameless as to be hilarious.
(Why do I know all this? Because I was researching for a Wikipedia article on her father-in-law, a Socialist state legislator and union leader.)
patch: I think we’re talking past each other. The problem I’m seeing – including personally – are the more popular kids who are now going after others, for sheer malice.
@mark can you give an example of that?
The problem with the new Snow White, at least as it appears from the trailers and publicity, is that they couldn’t decide what it’s supposed to be. It’s as if some of the writers wanted to create a new version of the story, while others were determined to do a remake of the earlier animated film. The results show most obviously in the dwarfs, who are cartoon caricatures in a live-action world. Apparently this was to satisfy Peter Dinklage, who called the dwarfs’ house a “cave.” The result is nobody’s satisfied.
It seriously annoys me that in the animated movie, Snow White treats the dwarfs like children, apparently just because they’re short. I wanted Grumpy to give her a good lecture on that. This is a matter which could easily have been fixed, showing the dwarfs as hard-working, sympathetic, and worthy of the same respect as regular-sized humans.
The Olympics did a rocking version of “Shimmy like My Sister Kate” in 1960.
(1) How much simpler and free of moral dilemmas life becomes without that “fundamental weakness of Western civilization”, a.k.a. empathy.
Meredith Moment: a plethora of Tolkien-authored, Tolkien-related, and Tolkien-adjacent ebooks are currently on sale at the usual suspects. Notably including The Hobbit (Illustrated Edition) and The Hobbit (Enhanced Edition). How do these differ? Well may you ask, and perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can tell you.
Gary McGrath, I only know about the new film what I’ve read here, but it seems that some of the controversy is precisely over whether the dwarfs are “humans,” so that little people are being done out of one of their few possible screen jobs through animation, and the dwarfs’ aged deserve the same respect as any human, or instead are fairy-tale dwarfs (or indeed dwarves, using Tolkien’s spelling), members of a separate intelligent species with its own characteristics, and perhaps more suitable for caricature.
(12) I’ll have to look for that. I’m also reminded of “Nanny and the Professor” (widowed dad with three (?) kids hires a nanny who may just be more than human).
@ mark on March 15, 2025 at 10:30 pm
Sounds like clout games. There’s never not been abusive people but they’re more empowered by platforms that reward algorithmically boosted influence.
It’s not just a newcomer thing. They’re also enabled by the people running groups and platforms. Including old guarders who should know better and refuse to lift a finger because cliqueism. I could name so many names.
It’s also not just “callout culture” because that’s not a culture when built on top of the platform distortion, it’s a symptom.
There might be some axiom about malice floating to the top along with negligence, I just link the Geek Social Fallacies. They’re the rules for negligent old timers who should know better.
The newcomer vs long time fan thing seems like poor framing to me. I’d switch it for media literacy deficit and extremely-online parasocial behavior, which applies to fans old and new. That could improve by more selective curation and strategic engagement online, and centering community offline.
Check back with me a little later in the year for a specific big story coming out.
(17) @Judge Magney
OK, so, for fuzzy values of curren/recent. (I’m not sure Van Ronk performed the song at any of the thankfully-many of the concerts I saw him at, much of my memory isn’t that phono-granular. OTOH, I have a clear memory of him launching into “The Bastard King of England” tho don’t remember where/when.)
@Arthur D. Hlavaty – Olympics’ “Shimmy Like Kate” yes, nice.
(1) I recently saw this update to the tale by rolameny on Tumblr
User anyagobsin added
patch: talking about IRL, not online with algorithms. It’s inappropriate for me to name names and clubs, but I, along with at least one other long-time fan, are being uninvited to participate in programming, for example.
Mm and Faraday’s legacy is maintained in use by the unit of electrical capacitance: the Farad…Best wishes
So capacitance multiplied by time would be a farad second and 86400 farad seconds would be a farad day?
@ mark on March 16, 2025 at 5:21 pm
The claim is popular people are going after others for sheer malice, and the example is being uninvited to participate in programming? Color me unimpressed.
Many are the cases where people’s assumed importance by longevity is overestimated, and their reaction seals the separation. There’s notorious people on the fringes of furry fandom who were popular 30 years ago, and if people fell out of fandom with them, it means they’re owed payback. They forgot that free association includes not being forced to associate with anyone.
11) Very sorry to hear about Tom King passing. We corresponded and he was always a pleasant and positive guy.