It’s the First of April you know.
(1) PHAKE PHANS LISTEN UP. We predict there will be a journey in your future.
PHLEGMATIC PHLEAS ANNOUNCE TPP PHUND 2016 NOMINATIONS OPEN Nominations for the Phlegmatic Phleas’ TPP Phund (Trans-Planetary Phan Phund) are open. Note: Trip awards are one way only. Another note: Current funding is available for up to a dozen winners. Fifth note: You may nominate slates rather than individuals. Pre-Fifth note: Nominate someone you feel has earned the right to go far. Post-Fifth note: Sponsored by the “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog” Phoundation.
(2) A TALL TAIL. The Aurora Awards left a category out of today’s announcement: “Best Canadian Squirrel in a book, story or poem”.
- Squirrelly McSquirrelface in, An Icebreaker goes North, Nuts Are Us books
- Fuzzy Nutcracker in, The Galactic Safe, In Trees Publishing
- Digger Moreholes in, “A Tail of Nuts”, Rodent Magazine, issue 341
- Zippy Treeclimber in, “The Maze of Nuts”, Squirrel Poets, issue 1
- Warhammer Graytail in, A Song of Oaks and Pine, Random Tree Press
We are proud to announce this special new category. Stay tuned for more details.
(3) CONNIE THE DECEPTICON. Connie Willis’ April Fool’s Day blog post ends with a list of her dozen all-time favorite April 1 jokes. One of them is fake.
That’s another key to a good April Fool’s joke–details. The more specific the story is, the more believable, especially if it involves science. Or a technology that’s already in our lives. Like lasers or smartphones. Or digital watches. My favorite April Fool’s joke of all time was the one the BBC did where they announced Big Ben was going to go digital. A bright green digital readout was going to replace the four Victorian clock faces. You can imagine how that was received!
(4) A HAIRY PROBLEM. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum “Tribble Trial Trends Toward Trouble”.
Stardate 1604.01: At 12:01 am EDT this morning, the National Air and Space Museum began breeding tribbles. This bold, innovative, not-at-all-ill-advised experiment will run for 24 hours, until 11:59 pm tonight, allowing Museum specialists to study the galaxy’s most adorable ecological disaster in greater detail than ever before. The tribble trial utilizes five original specimens of the species Polygeminus grex from the original Star Trek television series, donated to the Museum in 1973.
(5) THE DECENT THING TO DO. You heard it here last: “National Geographic to Stop Publishing Nude Animal Pictures”.
The media group says that it will no longer degrade animals by showing photos of them without clothes.
(6) MIGHT CHANGE HIS MIND TOMORROW. Joe Vasicek explains “Why I stopped writing”, at One Thousand And One Parsecs.
This will probably come as a shock to most of you, but I’ve decided to give up writing. It was a good run while it lasted, but the time has come to pack it away with my other childhood dreams, like living on a houseboat or becoming a paleontologist.
Why did I give up writing? Because frankly, I just don’t have any new ideas anymore. Whenever I manage to come up with one, it turns out that someone else has already done it. Accidental marriage in space? Firefly. Trek across a desert planet? Dune. Colonizing an unexplored nebula? I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m sure it’s been done before.
(7) IT IS THE END MY FRIEND. io9’s James Whitbrook declared “There Was Only One Decent April Fools’ Day Prank Today, and This Is It”
Friends, we’ve finally made it: The hellishly wearisome event that is April Fool’s Day is basically at its end. We at io9 despise this black day, but even our curmudgeonly souls got a smile out of this “prank” by the Canadian Library and Archives, which claimed to have dug up Wolverine’s military records from its collection.
The organization announced today that it had secured the declassified journals and military records of Canada’s most famous son: James “Logan” Howlett, better known to his legion of comic book fans a X-Man Wolverine.
(8) JOKES BECOME REAL IF YOU PAY ENOUGH. ThinkGeek offers a “Star Trek White Noise Sleep Machine” –
As effective as the Vulcan nerve pinch
- Drift off to sleep to a familiar low thrum
- 8 sounds from 5 different spacecraft
- Projects a moving starfield on your ceiling
Is this genuine? At a price of $149.99 it must be.
(9) TODAY IN FOOLISH HISTORY.
- April 1, 1964 — The Horror of Party Beach opens on April Fools’ Day.
(10) THE TRUTH WILL OUT. SciFiNow ranks “The Top 10 Avengers TV Episodes”. Number 1 is “The Hidden Tiger” (Mar 1967).
“Pussies galore!” Ronnie Barker’s cat-rescue home is the centre of a magnificently ludicrous plot to turn domestic moggies into man-eating killers. A feel-good feline frolic exemplifying prime Avengers.
(11) EDELMAN HOMES IN ON THE RANGE. Scott Edelman’s latest installment of Eating the Fantastic features Carolyn Ives Gilman —
Carolyn Ives Gilman
A new Eating the Fantastic is now live! Episode 5 was recorded with Carolyn Ives Gilman at Range in Friendship Heights, Maryland.
We discussed what’s kept her coming back to her Twenty Planets universe for a quarter of a century, how her first science fiction convention was “total sensory overload,” what it was like working with David Hartwell as an editor, why she’s not visible on social media, and more.
Edelman says, “If all goes well, the next will be Andy Duncan.”
(12) DOC WEIR. Winner of the Doc Weir award for unsung UK fan heroes is Kathy Westhead. [Via Ansible.]
(13) MYSTERY GATHERS. Deadline Hollywood says an MST3K reunion is in the works – “Full ‘MST3K’ Casts To Reunite For RiffTrax 10th Anniversary”.
In the 17 years since the cult TV series’ cancellation, the creative team behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 have never fully reunited in public. That changes this summer as part of the 10th anniversary of MST3K offshoot Rifftrax, with RiffTrax Live: MST3K Reunion Show, a live event to be performed in Minneapolis on June 28 and broadcast to theaters nationwide by Fathom Events. Tickets will be available April 15th from the official RiffTrax website.
(14) MORE FROM LEVINE. David D. Levine’s new Wild Cards novelette “Discards” is a free read at Tor.com. And more!
My superhero story “Into the Nth Dimension,” originally published in Human for a Day, has been podcast at GlitterShip — narrated by me!. The full text is also available on the web to read for free. You can read or listen here.
I will be appearing at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle next Friday, April 8 (one day only). I’ll be on the panel “Aliens and Airships and Authors, Oh My!”, followed by an autograph session. At other times you can most likely find me at the WordFire Press booth.
I’ve sold an essay, “How to Sell a Novel in Only Fifteen Years,” to the nonfiction anthology The Usual Path to Publication. It comes out in June and you can pre-order it here.
(15) BVS WINS BY LOSING. This was posted on March 30, just saying…. “Batman V Superman Sets Unwanted Box Office Record”.
‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ may have netted the fourth biggest opening weekend of all time, but according to business site Forbes, it’s broken a record that may be rather less welcome.
It’s recorded the worst audience drop-off over a weekend for any superhero movie in ‘modern box office history’.
Attendance has plummeted for the critically-hammered movie, which sets Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel against Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader.
It dropped an eye-popping 55% between Friday and Sunday, a figure which even beats the 48% drop in numbers set by the much-despised ‘Fantastic Four’ last summer…
(16) POST TAFF STRESS SYNDROME. Wolf von Witting is still recovering from losing TAFF.
On the first day, it was grossly tear-jerking ballads. On the second day I went on to heavy metal and other music which blows the crap out from a brain (where there is one). But in the night before the third day, my scary godmother (she doesn’t like being called a fairy) came to me in a dream and announced that I was to become the pope of European sf-fandom. “You’re supposed to reform TAFF, not win it!” she said and hit me over the back of my head with her magic wand.
She had… a beaver sitting on her left shoulder, and suddenly it became so clear to me why I lost again. It was meant to be this way, folks. We’re not living in 1952 anymore. It’s EASY and relatively cheap crossing the Atlantic now. If the yanks wish to meet the pope of European fandom, there are two ways.
1) come to Italy – that’s where the pope lives.
2) I’d be absolutely delighted to accept any FGoH invitation they send (we have American guests all the time over here in Europe. You can afford it, if you care to meet the pope).
The Gods of fandom have resolved the issue to the best of all possible outcomings. Filkers are not stupid, mind you. They knew what they were up against. So they just did what was necessary to win and I have to both salute and bless them for that. Before my scary godmother went away, she uttered some magic mumbo jumbo in an obscure language I didn’t quite understand (could have been Albanian).I recall the final three words: “Nnn.. in come Pope!”
(17) HUGO PROBABILITY SEMINAR. Chaos Horizon’s Brandon Kempner reveals his prediction in “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 5”.
By breaking these out into three groups and three turnout scenarios (40%, 60%, 80%), I produced 27 different models. To conclude, we can look to see if certain books show up in a lot models, and then I’ll make that my prediction….
So that makes the official 2016 Chaos Horizon Hugo prediction as follows:
- Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
- Uprooted, Naomi Novik
- The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher
- Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
- Somewhither, John C. Wright
(18) CYBORG OLYMPICS. A video of people are competing in the world’s first “cyborg Olympics.” The Cybathlon competitors, called pilots, use technology to compensate for disabilities.
(19) VERTLIEB DOCUMENTARY GAINS MOMENTUM. Diabolique online magazine is getting behind the Steve Vertlieb feature documentary The Man Who “Saved” The Movies.
The first film from Gull Cottage / Sandlot’s newly minted “Gull Cottage & Flying Bear” banner, STEVE VERTLIEB: THE MAN WHO “SAVED” THE MOVIES is the feature-length documentary delving into the colorful life, career and ultimate legacy of cinema archivist, journalist, historian and film music educator STEVE VERTLIEB – who’s quiet, unassuming persona belies his growing status as one of the most respected of figures to a new generation of cinema buffs, filmmakers, and, surprisingly, even that most fickle and verbose of filmdom’s family tree – the genre fanboy.
A former on-air TV reviewer of film, and magazine writer, Steve’s learned and literate dissertations on cinema over the last near half-century have made him a much sought after consultant on numerous projects, including an appearance in the 2006 award winning documentary KREATING KARLOFF, and as consultant on TCM’s 75th Anniversary Restoration of Merian C. Cooper’s original KING KONG. Widely considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on the legendary “Great Ape”, his numerous articles on the subject (including that in the still definitive volume THE GIRL IN THE HAIRY PAW) is referenced to this day by film makers, teachers and cinema students alike.
(20) MY APRIL 1 INSPIRATION. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lt. Worf Bloopers.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Clifford Samuels, Glenn Hauman, Hampus Eckerman, Steve Vertlieb, and Daniel Dern for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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First. Setting up for all the great comments to come.
Want the white noise machine. Sounds very soothing!
Otherwise, not really awake, I think.
Fifth less two!
I would LOVE to see a season or two with Bruce Campbell as the Doctor…
Pre Fifth!?!
ETA: Yay! I meant to do that. ::Yeah, right::
*snorting at the Pixel Scroll title*
… and FIFTH.
I came, I read, I clicked!
This post was brought to you by the year 1062, Marrakesh and the Order of St. Benedict.
My multivalent, naive-Bayesian model predicted that today’s Pixel Scroll would contain exactly these items, and also that I would be Fifth. So some of these earlier comments must not be real.
Guys! Great news! I’m teaming up with Vox Day for Rabid Puppies 3 next year!
…
…
…
(checks nervously to make sure it isn’t yet April 2 in East Coast Time. It is not.)
Also, Connie Willis is good. One of her twelve hoaxes is itself made up by her. Took me 3 guesses before I got the correct one.
I know the Dr Who poster is meant to be funny, but 100% I would watch that.
If Connie Willlis made up an April Fools’ hoax on April Fools’ day, that makes it a hoax of a hoax, which means, by my math, it’s twice as hoaxy as the other hoaxes. So if you guessed correctly, you’re wrong.
Maybe.
Other than Bruce, who would work as an American Dr Who?
(2) A TALL TAIL. – What – were Tippy-toe or Monkey-Joe ineligible? Squirrel Girl’s gonna be real mad….
(20) MY APRIL 1 INSPIRATION. – Poor Worf. He never really got any respect until Deep Space 9.
I PIXEL THE FOOL!
~B.A. Scrollacus
Inundated Circle of Unskewed Fifths!
snowcrash: Other than Bruce, who would work as an American Dr Who?
I think that Bruce Greenwood would make a fantastic American Dr. Who (okay, he’s Canadian… pond, pool, whatever).
Regarding WorldCon. I contacted Flying Saucer Draught Emporium to see what their policy was if there were minors in the group.
Their answer was that it was ok for minors to join a group if it was before 21:00, but that after that time, everyone would have to be above the age of 21. This means that the place might be good for a File-meet up during WorldCon, but not the best for pre-meet the evening before. So I’ll see what more places that are around.
Thank you for taking the initiative on this, Hampus. 🙂
… and, checking those top 10 Avengers episodes… nope, not an April Fool’s joke amongst them.
(I’d have picked a different top 10, myself, though. I mean, for a New Avengers episode, I’d probably have gone for the one where the assassin uses his brain-draining machine to transfer his mind into the body of a tap-dancer and… what are you looking at me like that for? I’m not making this up you know.)
ETA – the stammering assassin, I mean. Can’t believe I forgot the stammer, it’s a critical plot point.
@Steve Wright
I’m just impressed I recognized UFO’s Gay Ellis from the picture from The Hidden Tiger without the purple wig. Must be the eyes…
God I love IMDB, it’s now so easy to resolve that nagging feeling you’ve seen an actor in something before.
(5); Fifty years ago, it was the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals.
I mailed MAC2 now to ask if they know of any good places for a pre-meet the evening before. I guess it is always possible to meet at one of the hotel bars.
@Hampus; I’ll be arriving the day before.
Anyone else?
I tried to avoid obvious false stories on April 1st. I saw through the Taylor Swift fantasy series one immediately, but I fell for Mary Robinette Kowal’s one about the rebooted Farscape and her part in it.
Me, I spent the day on twitter doing “tourist bureau sponsored” tweets from various genre places. Pity no one storified them for me. A couple of people liked them at the time
e.g. “This tweet brought to you by the Gallifrey Tourist Bureau. Isn’t it Time you treated yourself to being treated like a Lord or Lady?”
I actually took the whole week off, so I might be around there days before also to check out the weird attractions. What I’ve found as yet:
* T-Rex Cafe
* Kansas Library Gigantic Bookshelf
* The National Museum of Toys and MIniatures
* TWA Moonliner 2
* Big Spider
* Star Wars Mailbox
And a slew of weird museums…
@Hampus
Thank you so much for checking out the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium’s policies (/the local laws) on minors! I really appreciate that. Actually “okay till 11 pm” is pretty good, in my book.
I don’t tend to stay out much later than 11pm (indeed often I fade earlier than that but I’m on a late-for-me schedule right now) but my friend is a real night owl and would probably appreciate the chance to stay late should that be a workable thing.
OTOH at the moment I’ve got hotel rooms reserved for the days of the con but not for the day before–finances, you understand–so I may not be there for a pre-con meetup anyway. WorldCon will certainly have other under-age fen, but I don’t know how much of an issue that will be.
@Cat – I’m arriving one day before and leaving one day after the con; at the moment I have space available (but then, I once packed 13 people into a room at a Philcon, so…)
Not okay to 11 pm. Okay to 9 pm (21:00). Ok, the place seems workable for meetups during the con (if we don’t meet in the party area instead). And ok for a pre-meet unless there aren’t any minors in company. For a pre-meet, I was thinking of something like promising that someone(me) will be at hand 19:00 – 22:00 and if someone wants to come earlier or stay later it will be up to them.
When we get closer to the con, a smart thing would be to have a special meetup post for the whole convention, so people don’t have to search individual threads for all infomation.
The caption in the photo of #19 has not one but two typos. “Psycho” is spelled wrong, and Forrest J Ackerman is written without a period after the J.
Rainy Day Pixel
Well, they’ll scroll you when you’re writin’ on your blog
They’ll scroll you when you’re fightin’ with a dog
They’ll scroll you when you’re publishing a tome
They’ll scroll you when you write a poem
But I would not feel like I’ve been trolled
Everybody must get scrolled.
Well, they’ll scroll you when you’re headed for a con
They’ll scroll the early panel you were on
They’ll scroll you when your pixels turn blue
They’ll scroll you when your show is canceled too
But I only know what I’ve been told
Everybody must get scrolled
They’ll scroll you when you’re at the banquet table
They’ll scroll you when your authors leave the stable
They’ll scroll you when you’re stinkin’ up the joint
They’ll scroll you just to make a point
Yeah but I would not feel I broke the mold
Everybody must get scrolled
Well, they’ll scroll you when you’re on the mend
Then they’ll scroll you ‘cause George Lucas is your friend
They’ll scroll you when you’re filkin’ at the bar
They’ll scroll you when you name a star
Yes but I would not feel so very old
Everybody must get scrolled
Well, they’ll scroll you when your harmonies are modal
They’ll scroll you when you go full Aristotle
They’ll scroll you when you try to get a Hugo
They’ll scroll you every single place that you go
But I would not feel like I’ve been trolled
Everybody must get scrolled
[all: Sorry for all the edits. In my defense, they were possible. So cold. So sweet.]
Speaking of weird museums…
Here in organdie Maine, we have the ‘world famous’ Crytozoology Museum and the Umbrella Cover Museum. It’s April 2nd so I’m not joking about the latter…
I’ll be getting to KC Monday night before the con. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) I hope to make the meet up this year.
I need book recs for Mr. Dr. Science, who is recovering from an illness. Specs: 2016 publication date by preference (start your Hugo reading early!), fantasy, SF, or “heir to the mantle of Patrick O’Brian” (he just finished a re-read of the entire series); no grimdark, no horror, no ebooks. Already read for 2016: Gentleman Jole, City of Blades.
I was thinking Vincent Price for an American Doctor Who. Except that he has been dead for over a decade.
And I confess, when I read of the cyborg games, I was thinking more along the lines of the Japan (Suidobashi) – US (Megabots) mecha duel that was announced on CNN last year.
@steve davidson
Eric and I will be there a couple of days early. We’d love to meet up with you and other Filers in person–even if you do think RSR is a slate. 🙂
Matt Frewer would have been a good Doctor at one point. (Doctor, Doctor was like 25 years ago.) Now he might be a better Master.
> “I need book recs for Mr. Dr. Science, who is recovering from an illness. Specs: 2016 publication date by preference …”
I’ll give a thumbs up to “All The Birds In The Sky”, by Charlie Jane Anders. Of the very limited number of 2016 books I’ve read thus far that aren’t sequels to something or other, it would probably top the list.
Among the sequels, “Indexing: Reflections”, by Seanan McGuire (second book in the Indexing series) was a lot of fun, and “The Hunter’s Kind”, by Rebecca Levene (second book in the Hollow Gods series) is solid epic fantasy.
I did a blog post a while back (2013) speculating who might have played the Doctor if it had started as an American series, rather than British.
Too tired to click thru? Here’s the list I came up with:
For the older seasons: Bob Keeshan, Dick Van Dyke, John Astin.
For the newer seasons: Jon Delancie, Michael J. Fox, Paul Rubens aka Pee-Wee Herman. In a comment, D. Gary Grady also suggested Tony Shalhoub.
Giving it a bit more thought, I’d add Jeff Goldblum.
Walter Jon Williams has a historical navy series. I read one and liked it.
Seconding Indexing:Reflections. It’s the only 2016 book I’ve read so far, but it’s quite good. Might need to re-read Indexing, but that’s hardly a chore. (If he’s not read Indexing yet, he’s got that to look forward to, too!) Seanan McGuire knows her way around a fairy tale. They’re not grimdark, but she reminds you that fairy tales are Not Fun To Be In. (And fairy-tale incursions into the modern world are really, really bad…)
If you’re going to have American Doctor Whos, then really go American:
Bryan Cranston
Walton Goggins
Jesse L. Martin
Tina Fey
Rosario Dawson
John Cho
@Jim Angela Bassett.
@Dr Science – Patricia McKillip has Kingfisher out now. It’s still in my TBR pile but looks interesting — not a surprise.
I will be arriving at MACII on Tuesday as well.
Ooh, Goggins as the Doctor. I’d watch that. After Bruce Campbell, though.
BethZ:
Ooo, he’s a big McKillip fan, that’s a definite. Thank you!
@Dr Science:
I third Kingfisher and raise with one Every Anxious Wave.
Bravo Kip!
> “Patricia McKillip has Kingfisher out now. It’s still in my TBR pile but looks interesting — not a surprise.”
Well, if we’re allowed to mention 2016 books that are out but we haven’t read yet …
The Spider’s War by Daniel Abraham — conclusion of a thus-far *amazing* fantasy series of war and high finance (by 1/2 the author of The Expanse books.)
Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs — latest in an ongoing urban fantasy series which has consistently been high quality action adventure
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton — haven’t read anything else by the author and the book isn’t SFF, but the subject of this extremely well-reviewed work of fictionalized history is Margaret Cavendish, who among other things was, in real-life history, a very early science fiction author (17th century).
Mr Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt — again, don’t know the author, but this work of what sounds like literary fantasy is well-reviewed and sounds like a nifty premise (“Mr Splitfoot tells the tale of two orphans who plot their escape from a backwards foster home using their apparent abilities to talk to the dead”.)
Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip — NEW PATRICIA MCKILLIP SO EXCITED
A Tangle of Gold by Jaclyn Moriarty — Third book in a great but sadly little-known portal fantasy trilogy about a world where colors sometimes attack people.
Calamity by Brandon Sanderson — The third book in Sanderson’s dystopian superhero trilogy; I loved the first, found the second a bit of a let-down, am interested to see if he sticks the landing on the third.
The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home by Catherynne M. Valente — FINAL BOOK IN THE FAIRYLAND SERIES SO EXCITED!!!
@Kyra If you haven’t checked out Abraham’s Long Price Quartet, I strongly recommend it. Its less traditional than the Dagger and the Coin, but that’s feature, not bug. I think Abraham’s writing has gotten better since he wrote it, but I strongly recommend it
@Kyra Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs — latest in an ongoing urban fantasy series which has consistently been high quality action adventure
I enjoyed it. 😀
My Amazon wishlist for next year’s eligible works. Most of the links take you to the ebook. You should be able to click “other formats” to see hardcover or paperback. My list includes books not yet out as well as already released. It has over 50 books so far.