(1) PLEASE RELEASE ME. GameRant reminds us, “Weird Al Recorded New Music For Ill-Fated Star Wars Detours Series”.

… It’s been a pretty long existence, and one that most people still have yet to truly figure out. But luckily, at some point along the way, somebody discovered that adding Weird Al Yankovic to a thing, including Star Wars, is pretty much always a recipe for entertainment. Even if the rest of the project turns out to be a wide flat stinkum, the presence of the parody king is always a treasure in and of itself.

So thanks to some new discoveries regarding Yankovic, that makes it all the more tragic that Star Wars Detours will likely never truly see the light of day, even if fans still hear various teases about it potentially coming to Disney Plus. The animated comedy series from Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich may have been canceled before its release a decade ago, but somehow more info about it just randomly seems to keep surfacing. It’s like a really lethargic zombie whose return from the grave largely consists of the occasional gas release.

… The potential for hearing lost Weird Al music should be enough to inspire some steam behind the “release Detours, please” movement that isn’t really a movement….

(2) IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. Thomas Wagner of SFF180 does a roundup of yesterday’s most astonishing news item in “The Implosion of Silver Shamrock Publishing” on YouTube.

What the eff were they thinking? A racist book sinks an indie horror publisher, and Thomas offers up a post-mortem.

(3) MOSHE FEDER CHANGE OF E-DRESS NEWS. [Item by Moshe Feder.] I’ve owned the moshe.feder.name domain since the .name TLD was first promulgated in 2000. (Alas, it never won the popularity I expected. In all these years, I never met anyone else with a .name address.)

Now I’m letting it go, along with the associated [email protected] e-mail address. If you’ve been using that address to write me, please switch to [email protected], which I’ve had almost as long. 

In the unlikely event you ever have a problem with the Gmail address, my backup address is [email protected].

Also, if you sent anything to the old address on March 26 or later, please resend it to the new address.

(4) VINTAGE PRATCHETT. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Terry Pratchett defines fantasy, explains what he doesn’t like about Howard and Tolkien, and tells how his readers range 7 to 85 in this 1992 clip from the BBC that dropped today.

“I went from a kid to whom reading was something you did if there was nothing else to do, to a 40-book-a-day man!” – Terry Pratchett Linda Mitchell chats to Terry Pratchett, the prolific mind behind the beloved Discworld series of comic fantasy novels. What were his inspirations? Was he a bookish child? Is there an “average” Terry Pratchett reader? Where is all the sex? What is the secret to his success? And, speaking of success – how does it feel to be “Britain’s least famous best-selling author”? This clip is from Summer Scene, originally broadcast 21 July, 1992.

(5) MEMORY LANE.

1999 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-three years ago, something that had been made into a film four times previously starting in 1925 (Doyle appears in preface to that film, though not all existing prints have him) was made into a series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, often shortened to just The Lost World, premiered this day in syndication. 

It was based very loosely as you well know you on Doyle’s The Lost World novel and includes John Landis among its bevy of executive producers. The actual producer was Darrly Sheen who was the line producer on Time Trax and who did the same on several episodes of the Australian version of Mission: Impossible. 

Guess where this series was produced? It was done at Village Roadshow Studios, Oxenford, Queensland, Australia.  Other productions of note done there include Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge and Aquaman.

The initial cast was Peter McCauley as Professor George Edward Challeger, Rachel Blakely, as Marguerite Krux, Jennifer O’Dell as Veronica Layton, William deVry as Ned Malone and William Snow as Lord John Richard Roxton and Michael Sinelnikoff as Professor Arthur Summerlee.

They lived in a giant tree house, really they did, and had many a fantastical adventure, none of which I’d say had anything to do with The Lost World novel unless there’s reptile people in there that I missed when I read it. It lasted three seasons consisting of sixty-six episodes. It was cancelled when funding for another season fell through. It’s on Amazon Prime right now.

Personal opinion? It was fun and I certainly don’t regret the time that I took to watch it. It was quite pulpy (Doc Savage would have fit right in here) and as long as you don’t expect it to have anything to do with the novel, you could enjoy a Thirties-style concept updated to contemporary standards. 

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born April 3, 1783 — Washington Irving. Best remembered for his short stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, both of which appear in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. collection. The latter in particular has been endlessly reworked downed the centuries into genre fiction including the recent Sleepy Hollow series which so far I’ve managed not to watch. And a certain Johnny Depp film as well I believe. (Died 1859.)
• Born April 3, 1927 — Donald M. Grant. He was responsible for the creation of several genre small press publishers — Grant-Hadley Enterprises in 1945,  Buffalo Book Company in 1946,  Centaur Press in 1970 and Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in 1964. Between 1976 and 2003, he won five World Fantasy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Balrog Award as well. He wrote one genre novel, Act of Providence co-authored with Joseph Payne Brennan. (Died 2009.)
• Born April 3, 1928 — Colin Kapp. He’s best remembered for his stories about the Unorthodox Engineers which originally largely appeared in the New Writings in SF anthologies. I’d also single out his Cageworld series which is set in the future when humanity lives on nested Dyson spheres. Both series are available at the usual digital suspects. (Died 2007.)
• Born April 3, 1936 — Reginald Hill. Now this surprised me. He’s the author of the most excellent Dalziel and Pascoe copper series centered on the profane, often piggish Andrew Dalziel, and his long suffering, more by-the-book partner Peter Pascoe, solving traditional Yorkshire crimes which is on the Britbox streaming service. Well there’s a SF mystery in there set in 2010, many years after the other Dalziel and Pascoe stories, and involves them investigating the first Luna murder. I’ll need to read this one. There’s another with Peter Pascoe as a future European Pan Police Commissioner. Huh.  (Died 2012.)
• Born April 3, 1946 — Lyn McConchie, 76. New Zealand author who has written three sequels in the Beast Master series that Andre Norton created and four novels in Norton’s Witch World series as well. She has written a lot of Holmesian fiction, so I’ll just recommend her collection of short stories, Sherlock Holmes: Familar Crimes: New Tales of The Great Detective. She’s deeply stocked at the usual digital suspects.
• Born April 3, 1962 — James R. Black, 60. I’d like to say he’s best known for his leading role as Agent Michael Hailey on The Burning Zone but since it was short-lived and I’m not sure anyone actually watched it on UPN that might be stretching reality a bit. Prior to his run on that series, he’s got a number of one-offs including Babylon 5, Deep Space 9, The Sentinel, Space: Above and Beyond with his first genre role being Doctor Death in Zombie Cop.
• Born April 3, 1970 — Jo Graham, 52. Her first novel, Black Ships, re-imagines The Aeneid, and her second novel, Hand of Isis,  features the reincarnated main character of the first novel. If that‘s not enough genre cred for you, she’s written Lost Things, with Melissa Scott and a whole of Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1 novels.

(7) TOLKIEN ON TV. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] J.R.R. Tolkien discusses why he wrote a “stupendously long” novel, his love of trees, and how hard it is to write Elvish in this excerpt from a BBC documentary in 1968.

J. R. R. Tolkien speaks to John Ezard about his extraordinarily popular Lord of the Rings series of fantasy novels. The author touches upon their genesis and themes, his fondness for invented languages – and how they are often misinterpreted.

(8) SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] “Three Normal Goths” on SNL explains how Goths are so normal that even their Goth dog is normal! “Please Don’t Destroy – Three Normal Goths”.

(9) VIDEO OF THE DAY. FirstShowing.net gives us reasons to “Watch: Dystopian Vending Machine Animated Short ‘Change Return’”.

How far are we from this kind of future? Much closer than you might think… Change Return is a funky animated short film made by filmmaker Robert Findlay and it’s only 5 mins long. Set in an underground city in the near future, where services such as healthcare and law enforcement are delegated to local vending machines, a man finds a crafty way to buy a cheap meal. That’s all you need to know going in…

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Moshe Feder, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Valley Boy” Dern.]