(1) CARDINAL NUMBERS. On this week’s Beyond Solitaire Podcast, Ada Palmer speaks about her papal election LARP at The University of Chicago–but also about historical research, her work as a sci-fi author, and how both history and fiction can help us talk about today’s world. “Beyond Solitaire Podcast 189: Ada Palmer on LARPing the Renaissance”.

(2) BANKRUPT COMIC DISTRIBUTOR FINDS BUYER. “Alliance wins bid to acquire Maryland-based Diamond Comic Distributors” reports The Baltimore Banner.

Alliance Entertainment Holding Corporation, a global distributor and wholesaler that specializes in media and collectibles, won a bid Tuesday to acquire the assets of Hunt Valley-based Diamond Comic Distributors.

Diamond, once the country’s top comic book distributor, filed for bankruptcy in January. The company began to lose its grip on distribution when the COVID-19 pandemic began, forcing Diamond to briefly suspend operations as other competitors popped up. More recently, the company struggled with delays in getting titles to comic stores on time.

Diamond warned in a federally mandated notice filed in January that if it didn’t find a buyer by April 1, it could face layoffs and the closure of its headquarters. Raymond James, a global financial services firm, hosted the auction in New York on Monday. There will be a court hearing Thursday to approve the sale….

…The acquired businesses support more than 5,000 retail stores, from independent game and comic shops to online stores and mass-market chains, according to the press release….

(3) POSTMASTER GENERAL DEJOY IS OUT. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I note that in late February I mailed a letter to my brother in Michigan. It took a mere 21 days to reach him… “US postmaster general resigns with immediate effect” in the Guardian. (Editor’s note: We old fanzine fans always seem more interested in this post than other government officials.)

The US postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who said earlier this month that he had asked the government efficiency team led by Elon Musk for assistance with a number of issues, is resigning effective on Monday, the agency said.

DeJoy, who has headed the agency since 2020, in February said he had asked the US Postal Service (USPS) governing board to identify his successor but had given no indication in recent days that he planned to step down abruptly.

Donald Trump said in February that he was considering merging the United States Postal Service with the commerce department, a move Democrats said would violate federal law.

“Much work remains that is necessary to sustain our positive trajectory,” DeJoy said in a statement, adding that the deputy postmaster general, Doug Tulino, would head the agency until the postal board names a permanent successor. They have hired a search firm, he added….

(4) GEOFF RYMAN WORK DISCUSSED ON BBC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Geoff Ryman’s book is covered in this week’s A Good Read on BBC Radio 4.

(By the way, looks like BBC shutting down overseas access to BBC Sounds.  As a Brit Cit citizen who pays an annual license to fund the BBC, I am allowed to say this… I think this is a retrograde step. First off it cuts off British ex-pats from Auntie and this is not good.  Second, the BBC has some great, ‘free’ (well, paid for by residents like me) public broadcast content. The BBC is therefore a British soft-power play and Britannia rules the air waves… Short rant over.)

Meanwhile, back at the plot…

Towards the end of the half-hour programme (last 10 minutes) we get comedian Sarah Mills choice of read, Ryman’s 235…

Sarah has selected 253 by Geoff Ryman, the novel originally published on the Internet which tells the stories of 253 passengers on a London Underground train.

A Good Read can be accessed at BBC Sounds here (for now…)

(5) SFWA REMEMBERS POURNELLE. Michael Capobianco chronicles an early SFWA president in “Jerry Pournelle: SFWA Historian” at the SFWA Blog. The “historian” tag comes from the institutional knowledge Jerry shared on GEnie, a pre-internet phone modem bulletin board service run by General Electric that offered access to published science fiction and fantasy writers.

…Many of Jerry’s anecdotes on GEnie showed that SFWA had accomplished much, and some showed its sillier and/or more combative side. What did we learn? We learned that Somtow Sucharitkul’s cat had peed in his box of important SFWA documents when he was SFWA Secretary in the mid-80s (the loss of which still bedevils the organization today). We learned that SFWA had conducted a mass audit of Ace Books that turned up a lot of money owed to SFWA members. We learned that SFWA had intervened to help get J. R. R. Tolkien’s US rights to The Lord of the Rings back (see Part 1 and Part 2 of “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning”). We learned there had been a long and vicious fight over creating an official SFWA tie (don’t ask) and a Fellowship membership category. 

Some SFWA wounds were still open after many years and were a touchstone for the organization in some quarters. On GEnie, one controversy that was often referenced but never fully explained was the Lem Affair. SFWA had awarded Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem an honorary membership and then, after Lem attacked American science fiction and amid a long internal fight, had retracted it. Whether the retraction was political or simply happened because giving it to Lem was in violation of the bylaws (or, most likely, a combination of both) is still debated…

(6) GRACE PERIOD FOR EFF. The European Fan Fund has extended its nominations deadline to March 30. EFF is the European Fan Fund which transports European SF fans to Eurocons.

Apply to have your trip to Eurocon 2025 covered by the European Fan Fund or spread the word to fellow fans!

(7) DRAWN THAT WAY. “’Doctor Who’ S2 Teases Adventure in an Animated Universe” – Animation Magazine sets the frame.

Today, Disney+ unveiled a new trailer for Season 2 of iconic BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, featuring the heroic Time Lord’s latest incarnation (portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa; Sex Education) and his new companion Belinda Chandra, a.k.a. The Nurse (Varada Sethu; Andor). New episodes launch April 12 on the streamer.

The new spot offers a glimpse of a delightful first for the long-running hit franchise: The Doctor’s travels to an animated reality! While “lost” episodes of vintage Doctor Who have been resurrected with animated visuals, this marks the first originally animated installment for the live-action show.

Disney-owned ABC News revealed that the season’s second episode will see The Doctor and Belinda encountering a strange cartoon character named Mr. Ring-a-Ding (voiced by Emmy winner Alan Cumming). As shown in the trailer, our time-traveling protagonists will get a 2D toon makeover reminiscent of vintage Saturday morning cartoon favorites like Scooby-Doo.

Mr. Ring-a-Ding is described as “a happy, funny, singalong cartoon, who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally.”

“In 1952, after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr. Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.”

Cumming previously guest starred in a 2018 episode of Doctor Who, “The Witchfinders,” as King James I.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cora Buhlert.]

March 25, 1939 — D.C. Fontana. (Died 2019.)

By Cora Buhlert: Dorothy Catherine Fontana, better known as D.C. Fontana, was born on March 25, 1939 in New Jersey. At age eleven she decided that she wanted to become a novelist. But while she would become a writer, her main body of work would be in television rather than novels.

Employment opportunities for women were limited in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so Dorothy Fontana went to work as a secretary after college. This was her entrance into the TV industry, because she found employment first at Screen Gems and then at Revue Studios, where she worked as a secretary for Samuel A. Peeples on the largely forgotten western series Overland Trail and The Tall Man. But Dorothy Fontana wanted more than just to type other people’s scripts. She wanted to write her own and in 1960, aged twenty-one, she managed to sell her first script for the episode “A Bounty for Billy” of The Tall Man. More sales followed.

In 1963, Dorothy Fontana went to work on a military themed TV show called The Lieutenant. The show only lasted for one season, but nonetheless it would change D.C. Fontana’s, as she was calling herself by now, life, because she wound up working as the secretary of Gene Roddenberry, creator of The Lieutenant. Roddenberry encouraged Fontana’s writing, leading to the publication of her first novel, a western called Brazos River.

When The Lieutenant was cancelled, Gene Roddenberry started working on a new show called Star Trek. D.C. Fontana accompanied him. Before working on Star Trek, D.C. Fontana had had no interest in science fiction, but this quickly changed as work on the new show progressed. D.C. Fontana wrote the teleplay for “Charlie X”, the second episode of Star Trek. By the end of season 1, she was the story editor of Star Trek and also wrote the scripts of such memorable episodes as “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, “Journey to Babel”, “This Side of Paradise” and “Friday’s Child”.

D.C. Fontana left as story editor before the third season of Star Trek, but continued to contribute to the series as a freelance writer. Her collaboration with Gene Roddenberry continued on The Questor Tapes and Star Trek: The Animated Series. By the 1970s, D.C. Fontana, who had never read a science fiction story before Star Trek, had become one of the go-to writers for science fiction television and worked on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Logan’s Run, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantastic Journey and Battlestar Galactica, an experience she disliked so much that she disavowed her screenplay. She also continued to work on non-genre shows such as The Waltons, The Streets of San Francisco, Bonanza, Kung Fu and Dallas.  

D.C. Fontana returned to Star Trek as story editor and associate producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for which she co-wrote the pilot “Encounter at Farpoint”. However, she left during the first season, following a fallout with Gene Roddenberry. Though D.C. Fontana was not completely done with Star Trek yet. She wrote Star Trek novels and contributed a script to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She also wrote several screenplays for Deep Space Nine’s great rival Babylon Five.  

I don’t know what my first contact with D.C. Fontana’s work was. I know it wasn’t Star Trek, because she wrote none of the Star Trek episodes I saw as a young kid during a rerun on German TV in the late 1970s. And while I watched all of the science fiction series on which she worked, I didn’t see most of them until much later, when the floodgates of private television opened and many of these shows aired in Germany for the first time.

Indeed, it’s quite likely that my first contact with D.C. Fontana’s writing was a non-genre show, quite possibly The Waltons, which aired on Sunday afternoons and which my parents watched religiously. The Streets of San Francisco or Dallas are also possibilities, though I only got to see those shows sporadically during the holidays, since they aired in evening slots after my bedtime.

However, one story penned by D.C. Fontana that I definitely encountered early on is her sole contribution to the Filmation He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, the second season episode “Battlecat”, which tells the origin of Prince Adam’s “fearless friend” Cringer and his alter-ego Battlecat. The episode is basically one long flashback, recounting how a young Prince Adam rescues a tiger cub from a sabrecat stalking the little one. Adam takes the injured cub to the royal palace and nurses him back to health and the two are soon inseparable. However, Adam is mortified that is pet is terrified of everything, up to and including his own shadow, which also gains him the name Cringer, courtesy of Teela teasing Adam about his pet.

As for why Cringer is always so afraid, this episode never shows us what happened before Adam found Cringer, though we can guess from fact that Cringer is all alone in the jungle and being stalked by a predator that it was nothing good. In 2012 finally, a comic did tell what happened just before, namely that Cringer’s entire family and tribe were wiped out by a sabrecat attack. Baby Cringer was the only survivor and was hunted for days, until Adam drove off the predators and rescued him. So the reason Cringer is always terrified is because he is deeply traumatized.

When Adam gains the Power of Grayskull and becomes into He-Man, he makes sure never to transform in front of Cringer, until one day when Cringer follows Adam and chances to witness the transformation. Cringer is understandably terrified and when He-Man tries to reassure him that there’s no reason to be afraid and that he’s still Adam inside, he accidentally points the Sword of Power at Cringer and Battlecat is born. And not a moment too soon, because an eldritch horror has escaped from its tomb and needs to be stopped…

“Battlecat” is a highly memorable episode, especially since the Filmation He-Man cartoon rarely ever gave us origin stories for the various characters. We never even got to see how Adam first became He-Man, so it’s a treat to see how Cringer first became Battlecat and how Adam and Cringer met in the first place. The fact that Baby Cringer is one of the cutest creatures ever seen on screen doesn’t hurt either.

In many ways, this episode also illustrates D.C. Fontana’s strengths as a writer. Her episodes were inevitably memorable and often expanded the world of the story and gave backstory to characters who did not have a lot before, whether it’s introducing Spock’s parents in “Journey to Babel”, delving into the previous hosts of the Dax symbiont in “Dax” or recounting the origins of Cringer in “Battlecat”.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Brevity updates a fairy tale.
• Dinosaur Comics has the perfect Batman story.
• Speed Bump asks a question philosophers can’t answer.
• Strange Brew closes the case.
• Zen Pencils quotes Sagan.

(10) RAIDERS CAST-SIGNED LASERDISC. If you can’t live without this you better get your bid in by Thursday: “’Raiders of the Lost Ark’ Cast, Director & Creator Signed Laser Disc Cover — Signed by Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Karen Allen and Philip Kaufman — With Beckett COA” offered by Nate Sanders Auctions.

Extraordinarily rare ”Raiders of the Lost Ark” laser disc cover signed by all the principals of the iconic 1981 film. Large 12.5” square cover is signed by actors Harrison Ford and Karen Allen as well as by director Steven Spielberg and creators George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. All sign in blue felt-tip with excellent contrast against the cover. Includes actual laser disc, with bifold cover opening to show scenes from the movie. Light edgewear with dings to corners. Very good plus condition. With Beckett COA for all signatures.

(11) 13 IS AN ANSWER? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Let’s see: 6×9=42. Ah, but it is true… in base 13. Which perfectly explains why things are so screwed up – we use base 10, or 2… but not 13. This, of course, is demonstrated by the paper… “The secret behind pedestrian crossings—and why some spiral into chaos” at Phys.org.

Pedestrian crossings generally showcase the best in pedestrian behavior, with people naturally forming orderly lanes as they cross the road, smoothly passing those coming from the opposite direction without any bumps or scrapes. Sometimes, however, the flow gets chaotic, with individuals weaving through the crowd on their own haphazard paths to the other side.

Now, an international team of mathematicians, co-led by Professor Tim Rogers at the University of Bath in the UK and Dr. Karol Bacik at MIT in the US has made an important breakthrough in their understanding of what causes human flows to disintegrate into tangles. This discovery has the potential to help planners design road crossings and other pedestrian spaces that minimize chaos and enhance safety and efficiency.

In a paper appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team pinned down the precise point at which crowds of pedestrians crossing a road collapse from order to disorder.

The researchers found that for order to be maintained, the spread of different directions people walk in must be kept below a critical angle of 13 degrees.

When it comes to pedestrian crossings, this could be achieved by limiting the width of a crossing or considering where a crossing is placed, so pedestrians are less tempted to veer off track towards nearby destinations….

(12) RAISING ‘CANE. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Coming soon, oil from Martian dinosaurs, and the major push to get to Mars, funded by the petrochemical industry. “NASA’s Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules on Mars” reports NASA.

Researchers analyzing pulverized rock onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover have found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date. The finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further on Mars than previously observed.

Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds, which are made up of 10, 11, and 12 carbons, respectively, are thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life.

Living things produce fatty acids to help form cell membranes and perform various other functions. But fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by various geological processes, including the interaction of water with minerals in hydrothermal vents.

While there’s no way to confirm the source of the molecules identified, finding them at all is exciting for Curiosity’s science team for a couple of reasons….

(13) THE SECRET PREQUEL TO BLADE RUNNER. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult takes a deep dive into the Blade Runner films. “The Secret Prequel To Blade Runner”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, amk, Michael J. Walsh, David Langford, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]