(1) GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE. Joe Hill will bring his comic series to the air — see “Locke & Key TV Show Happening with Original Creator Joe Hill” at MovieWeb.
IDW Entertainment (IDWE) announced today that the award-winning, fan-favorite property Locke & Key is being developed as a television series. Author/creator Joe Hill will be writing the pilot and serving as an executive producer. Locke & Key has garnered both awards and acclaim during its five-year run.
Following the titular Locke family as they encounter magic beyond belief and evils beyond redemption, Locke & Key quickly won over readers and has since become a staple in introducing new readers to the medium. With the series adapted in dozens of languages across the globe, and more than a million copies sold worldwide, Locke & Key is an obvious choice to make the transition to the screen. New York Times bestselling author, Joe Hill, has continually captivated readers through his gripping novels and award-winning comic series.
(2) DIG HERE. According to The Independent, a 15-year-old boy believes he has discovered a forgotten Mayan city using satellite photos and Mayan astronomy
William Gadoury, from Quebec, came up with the theory that the Maya civilization chose the location of its towns and cities according to its star constellations.
He found Mayan cities lined up exactly with stars in the civilization’s major constellations.
Studying the star map further, he discovered one city was missing from a constellation of three stars.
Using satellite images provided by the Canadian Space Agency and then mapped on to Google Earth, he discovered the city where the third star of the constellation suggested it would be….
(3) DISABILITY METAPHORS. The Our Words launch included reposting “Corinne Duyvis on Minding Your Metaphors”, which first appeared on SF Signal in 2014.
I’m a co-founder of the website Disability in Kidlit as well as an author who regularly writes disabled characters; both my recently published fantasy novel Otherbound and my upcoming sci-fi novel On the Edge of Gone feature disabled protagonists. On top of that, I’m disabled myself. It’s pretty safe to say I’m a huge fan of disability representation. Specifically, I’m a fan of accurate, respectful, and textual disability representation.
However, when writing science fiction and fantasy, it doesn’t just stop at featuring textually disabled characters. Many SFF stories contain disability metaphors. These span a wide range—from purposeful to unintentional, from obvious to subtle, and from well-done to inadvertently offensive.
(4) SWIRSKY ASKS. Rachel Swirsky conducts a “Silly interview with Spencer Ellsworth whose bedpost notches are real people”.
…Every time I see Spencer, I always ask the same question. You see, several years ago when Ann Leckie was running Giganotosaurus, I sometimes did first-round reading for her. And while Ann and I have very similar taste, we don’t have identical taste. So once in a while we’d come up against a story that I was jazzed about, but that didn’t quite cross her threshold. So every time I see Spencer, I ask about that one story that got away…
(5) PKD COMES TO TV. io9 has the story: “Philip K. Dick Is Getting an Anthology Show, Courtesy of Bryan Cranston and Ronald D. Moore”.
“Ronald D. Moore, Bryan Cranston, and Philip K. Dick” are three names you probably never expected to see in the same sentence together. But that’s what’s happening as the longtime scifi producer and the acclaimed actor are teaming up to bring the legendary writer’s work to TV in a new anthology series for the UK.
Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K. Dick will be a 10-part miniseries written by Moore, who will executively produce alongside Michael Dinner (Justified, Masters of Sex) and Bryan Cranston, who will also star in the series itself. Each episode will be a standalone story that illustrates Dick’s “prophetic vision” and “[celebrates] the enduring appeal” of the writer’s past work. Isa Dick Hackett, whose past work includes The Adjustment Bureau and The Man in the High Castle and is Dick’s daughter, will also produce the show.
(6) WILLIAM SCHALLERT OBIT. His best known role was as the dad in The Patty Duke Show, but William Schallert appeared in dozens of series in a career that spanned eight decades (1947-2014). He passed away May 8.
Most fans would consider the peak of his sf career to be playing Nilz Baris, under secretary in charge of agricultural affairs for the United Federation of Planets, in Star Trek’s “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode.
His genre work started with many bit parts, like the uncredited Gas Station Attendant in Mighty Joe Young (1949), and most of the time he was a supporting actor. IMDB shows he was in The Man From Planet X (1951), Space Patrol (1951-52), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), Gog (1954), Them! (1954), Tobor the Great (1954), Commando Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Monolith Monsters (1957), Men into Space (1960), The Twilight Zone (1960), One Step Beyond (1959), The Wild, Wild West (1967-69), Land of the Giants (1969), Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), The Bionic Woman (1976), Legends of the Superheroes (1979), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), The Twilight Zone (revived series) (1986), Quantum Leap (1989), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), and Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1994).
Schallert recorded this promo for MeTV in April 2014 when he was 91 years old.
Schallert featured in one of the Patty Duke Show themed PSA’s the Social Security Administration put online in 2010.
(7) SLATE THOUGHTS. Gary Denton of the Nightly Nerd News said as part of a long comment on Facebook:
I agree that slates violate the intention of the Hugo Awards that individuals should only nominate what they enjoyed and thought worthy of an award for best of the year. I also believe all elections eventually come to be dominated by parties and people have a right to oppose parties or support parties. Just don’t vote blindly folks, have an opinion on each item, don’t follow orders.
I believe that E Pluribus Hugo will only lessen the problem with slates, 20% of voters all following orders on how to vote even with votes on each ballots fractionalized will still allow disciplined Fascists treating this as a show of strength to dominate the ballot. Fascist is the correct term here, they are blindly following orders on what to vote for.
A digression, I dislike the editor nominations. Samples of what they actually did that year need to be included and that seems problematic. On all awards you need to have samples if not the whole thing to cast an informed vote, otherwise it is a popularity contest. If I can’t determine what they worked on last year and make a guess at how well they did they won’t get a vote from me. It is easier with short form editors. Wow, that magazine or anthology had a lot of amazing stories, that editor deserves an award…
(8) IT AIN’T ME. Max Florschutz processes a conflict some young writers have: “Being A Better Writer: Author Morals and Character Morals” at Unusual Things.
…Think about the last book that you read or movie that you watched that has a dangerous, unstable, or otherwise alarming character in it. Maybe they were a sleazy scumbag, or maybe a serial killer. A ruthless businessman, or an unscrupulous social worker. Basically, a character that was dangerous, alarming, or perhaps just unstable.
Now think about that character in relation to the author. And here’s where today’s topic comes into play. Do you think that because the author created a character like that, it means that they are, in some way, like that character?
The obvious—and correct—answer is no. I’ll say that again for emphasis, no, it does not. And this is where we run once more back into the question that plagues so many young writers: how can they write characters like that despite being nothing like them?
The trick is that for many this is not a question of being able to write good characters or filling their pages with creative prose. That’s not the consideration at all.
No, what a lot of these young writers are asking is how you deal with writing a character that’s not just different from themselves, but is different in a way that they find morally objectionable….
Yeah, some of you might be chuckling right now or even laughing and shaking your heads, but this is a real barrier that a lot of young writers run into. There’s a real question of where they stand on their own feet while writing characters that may hold different views than the, attitudes, or morals than them….
These characters are not you. They will swear. They will fight. They will make poor choices and good ones. As the author writing these characters, separate what they believe from what you believe because, unless you’re writing self-inserts (common enough), these characters are going to be as different from you as anyone else you meet in your life, and their emotions, thoughts, and other assorted things are theirs, not yours. That distinction is important. Your morals, ethics, and concepts, the stuff that makes you a person is not the same as theirs.
For instance, I am not a sociopath serial killer who stalks young couples. But one of my characters, Amacitia Varay, is. That doesn’t mean that I agree at all with her mentality, or the things that she says, or at all in any way what she does (all of which you can read about in the pages of Unusual Events). But I wrote the story … and it was her story, from her perspective and about her beliefs.
(9) MEET THE NEIGHBORS. Nerd & Tie’s Trae Dorn has learned Anime Midwest (July 8-10) will be sharing space with a porn convention:
In a bizarre coincidence, this year Anime Midwest will end up sharing the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center [in Rosemont, IL] with the Exxxotica Expo, a touring convention for “Adult Entertainment.” Exxxotica bills itself as “the Largest Adult Event in the USA Dedicated to Love & Sex.”
While Anime Midwest’s management (I’m just guessing) probably wants to distance themselves from Exxxotica publicly, Exxxotica management has embraced the proximity between events. Apparently, anyone with an Anime Midwest badge is being offered discounted admission to the porn expo and is planning “adult anime” events including a cosplay contest and “sexy anime seminars.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
This is… probably terrible? Pretty sure this is terrible. Frankly, many anime convention attendees are under the age of 18, and the idea that these underage attendees are going to be in immediate proximity of this kind of event doesn’t really do anyone any good. There are a list of bad things happen from the merely uncomfortable to the dangerous that are racing through my head.
I want to be clear that this is patently not Anime Midwest’s fault. It’s not a big enough event to rent the entirety of the Stephens Convention Center (which also is the home to the much larger Anime Central), and they cannot control what the owners of the site do with the space they don’t have under contract. We’re not huge fans of AnimeCon.org around here (for both obvious and not so obvious reasons), but honest to god there is no way they could have seen this coming.
(10) HOGWARTS. Costume sketches from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
“Early sketch for the new Hogwarts black robes" – Katrina Lindsay, costume designer #CursedChild #HarryPotterPlay pic.twitter.com/9h88wm4ufQ
— Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (@CursedChildLDN) May 5, 2016
(11) WILLIS, WHITE, AND IAN MCDONALD. Visual Artists Ireland says Richard Howard will speak about The Secret History of Northern Irish Science Fiction at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry on May 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Using the exhibition Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone (ending May 21st, info here) as a point of departure, this talk will sketch the history of a science fiction tradition in Northern Ireland. Beginning in the late nineteenth century with Robert Cromie, it will trace the development of this tradition in the region, a tradition solidified by Belfast natives Walt Willis and James White, who instigated the Irish Fandom science fiction group in the 1940s and produced the fanzines Slant and Hyphen. Willis and White were eventually joined by Bob Shaw, one of the most prolific science fiction authors the region has produced. Shaw and White’s own efforts in the genre from the mid-twentieth century to its end will also be discussed; short stories and novels that were received in the context of the international science fiction community, but that extrapolated from and estranged the material conditions of Northern Irish society. As the latest iteration of the tradition, there are many schisms within the genre that separates the work of Ian McDonald from those that came before him. The paper will nevertheless attempt to propose a unified theory of Northern Irish science fiction, if only to detect the remainders and contradictions that might answer the questions: to whom is Northern Irish science fiction a secret and why?
(12) IS CAPTAIN JACK COMING BACK? Den of Geek speculates whether Captain Jack will be appearing on Doctor Who.
After he brought back Alex Kingston’s River Song for last year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, it’s starting to look like Steven Moffat may repeat the trick this year by bringing back another long-time absentee from the supporting cast for a festive reprive.
John Barrowman has teased that he has work in Cardiff in the near future, which has led the internet to suggest that he could be appearing in the 2016 Doctor Who Christmas special. Or maybe even the spin-off series, Class.
For the record, all Barrowman said – while promoting his new book in a Welsh Waterstones – was that “I will be back in Cardiff in about a week and a half… but I’m not telling you what for!”
That’s enough to get a rumour started, since the Welsh capital is synonymous with the production of Doctor Who at this stage. Perhaps it’s a bit soon to get excited, but the idea of Captain Jack Harkness bantering with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor is a tantalising proposition, isn’t it?
(13) LONDON ROBOT EXHIBIT NEXT YEAR. The London Science Museum’s 2017 show about robots in the Daily Mail is accompanied by a small photo gallery.
Throughout history, artists and scientists have sought to understand what it means to be human and create machines in our own image.
Soon, a new exhibition will explore our obsession to recreate ourselves, revealing the remarkable 500-year history of humanoid robots.
The forthcoming show at London’s Science Museum will include a collection of more than 100 robots from a 16th-century mechanical monk to robots from science fiction and modern-day research lab.
Set in five different periods and places, this exhibition will explore how robots and society have been shaped by religious belief, the industrial revolution, 20th century popular culture and dreams about the future.
As well as celebrating machines of the past, the exhibition will examine scientists’ quest to build ever more complex and human-like robots that are able to learn from their mistakes and express emotions.
Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum Group said: ‘This exhibition explores the uniquely human obsession of recreating ourselves, not through paint or marble but in metal.
Seeing robots through the eyes of those who built or gazed in awe at them reveals much about humanity’s hopes, fears and dreams.’ …
The Science Museum has also launched a Kickstarter campaign that will pay to rebuild Eric, the UK’s first robot.
Originally built in 1928 by Captain Richards and AH Reffell, Eric was one of the world’s first robots and travelled the world to amaze curious crowds in the UK, US and Europe before disappearing.
If the full £35,000 ($50,596 is raised, the historic replica will become part of the museum’s permanent collection, as well as featuring in the Robots exhibition. It will also travel the world as part of the exhibition’s international tour, just like the original Eric did 90 years ago.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., James H. Burns, JJ, and Hampus Eckerman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peace Is My Middle Name.]
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Lost Mayan city: I suppose it isn’t impossible that the Maya tried to organize cities based on constellations, but I doubt that they would do it to the extent of ignoring locations of arable land, water supplies, trade routes, etc. There is only so much inconvenience any culture is willing to put up with in the name of religion.
Anime plus Pornathon: I’m willing to bet that most everyone interested in anime/manga (below 18 or not) has already googled up things that would make those clutching pearls over the nude Ms. Marvel drawing be at risk of dropping dead from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Ancillary Heinlein wherein a young red-headed woman who behaves and speaks in ways no woman has ever done in all of human history discorvers Richard Ames, Jubal Harshaw, Colonel Dubois, Lazarus Long, Baslim the Cripple, Ira Johnson, and many others are one character with many bodies. Then for some reason at the start of act three, she gives up her quest for vengeance in order to plural marry all of them in a nudist colony and have babies.
ETA will late stage Heinlein be the new late stage capitalism?
EETA Filers destroy Heinlein?
@hampus Where’s there’s a whip, there’s a way…
@Hampus Eckerman:
Winner.
Actually the thing that got me about Weber’s books was that I eventually noticed a pattern that every liberal was either a bad guy or a stupid dupe of the bad guys. Add into that the missile spreadsheet issue and I …never made a conscious decision to quit the series; I just realized at one point I hadn’t read another of his books in years and didn’t plan to change that.
I don’t know if “dude, zip up your characterization; your politics are showing” is a thing an editor says or not. But it’s part of what made me as a reader lose interest.
Heinlein: Resurrection: The old master is cloned and an SJW-nullifier is surgically removed from his body.
Heinlein 2: Judgement Day. Heinlein comes back from the dead waving copies of Job: A Comedy of Justice.
alexvdl — Personally I’m not concerned with the people WORKING the porn convention (they’re professionals there for an industry event), I’m concerned about a handful of the porn con’s ATTENDEES. Not all, just some.
It’s an anime con.
It attracts a lot of young people, many under the age of 18.
I’ve worked a lot of anime cons over the last couple decades, and dealing with harassment issues when it’s just anime con attendees is difficult enough. Exxxotica is a three day porn convention, and while I’m sure most attendees are perfectly nice people, it’s the kind of event that tends to draw a higher douchebag audience than most other things.
I don’t think it’s crazy to worry about the douchebags,
(Not to mention how frustrating it is that some of us spent the early 2000s having to convince parents that anime WASN’T exclusively the hentai genre… yeesh)
It seems possible that the politics is a feature from the point of view of the editor, publisher and target readership, even if it turns off other readers. (Haven’t read Weber myself.)
An editor might, but not a Baen editor.
Elizabeth Sorenson, authoress of If You Were A Star Beast, My Love, is the new new new new Heinleinette!
….immediately followed by having to convince them it wasn’t exclusively Pokemon?
@ Cat:
He tried to change that later by bringing in Catherine Montaigne as a left-wing anti-slavery hero, but even then he couldn’t help himself: he made her announce that of course she wasn’t one of those economic leftists.
I only nominated one or two (can’t remember which and too lazy to check) Best Editors Long Form — and that was because I read a fantastic book, and the author said in the acknowledgements of that book that they couldn’t have done it without Name-of-Editor. (Why, yes, I do read the acknowledgements… when I like the book.)
It’s second-hand knowledge, but it’s the best I’ve got. And it goes by my own experience of their work. Maybe they gave the author nothing but cookies and encouragement; maybe they cut out three chapters and two unnecessary characters; I’ll never know. But the result was very good, for that specific book.
Coming soon from Castalia House, Betty Sorenson’s 3/5ths Of A Citizen Of The Galaxy
@ Cat:
That’s also the reason I ultimately stopped reading Tom Clancy.
Agreed. Especially when you consider the huge harassment issues surrounding cosplay that you already have with normal anime-cons. With porn-con visiotors in the same vicinity…. yeah, no. Not a good idea.
I’m pretty sure that a lot of the under 18 visitors of the anime con have an idea what Hentai/Yaoi is and probably have stumbled across it in the wild, wide web. Or the more erotic side of fanfiction. But that doesn’t mean that they are able to deal with sexual harassment by adults who might confuse a cosplayer with an actress. Or that sexily dressed cosplayers are available for, you know, sex.
@@Mutiny in Space: most definitely NOT “Heinleinesque”, right from the get go. Whoever did an “analysis” of RAH’s Juvenovels obviously missed the fact that being dismissive of traditional authority figures doesn’t take place until the main character has had a chance to “grow” a bit and it is always related to a conflict between the main character and the authority figure who is the loco parentis (real or circumstantial) and the conflict is handled first by dialogue that sets the nature of the conflict, followed by action on the main character’s part.
Nikolai’s father has no such conversation with Nikolai and he needs to take no rebellious action.
In short, we’re told, not shown, the main character’s maturation.
“Rod Walker” indeed. “Walk this way to the egress, Rod”.
@9: See! See! THIS is what happens when we allow fandom to open up, when we water down what it means and what its about!!!
Someone no doubt will point out that stuff like this has always happened and that fandom has always been graying and dying and hanging out with Baptists, Porn stars and high school women’s field hockey teams. And I will respond by pointing out that its ALL Moskowitz’s and Wollheim’s fault; If they’d kept to themselves, we wouldn’t have to worry about anime kids wandering into chika-chika-boom-boom land while carrying concealed weapons!
🙂
The other possibility, which seems more plausible to me, is that the Mayans designed their constellations based on their maps of settlements – constellation-designing being a bit of an arbitrary business where one can ignore all but the brightest stars if one wants to.
That said, I’m a bit skeptical about the story too, and know zip about the Mayans or anthropology in general.
Starship Troopers, in which a soldier goes about his career while remembering the pro-fascist lectures he got in school.
I think I’m doing this wrong…
Niall McAuley on May 11, 2016 at 5:46 am said:
Kudos!
I’m also looking forward to:
Have Space Suit, Can’t Get Through TSA
Time Enough To Read THE WHEEL OF TIME _And_ Be Around For the Final Volume of SONG OF FIRE AND ICE
The Phantom Menace Tollbooth On The Glory Road
The Unpleasant Blog Postings Of Jonathan Hoag
The fetishization of Heinlein by some people (notably a lot of the Puppies) is kind of disturbing. I’ve pretty much read everything that Heinlein published, up to and including his travelogue Tramp Royale, but he was just one author who had a good run. Given some of the essays that he wrote, I’m reasonably sure that he wouldn’t be very fond of those who have made him into a near-deity.
“I Will Fear No Editor”
Have Spurs, Will Tingle
Tunnel in the Sky: a woman, forced to conceal herself as a man in order to succeed in her chosen profession, gets lost on an alien world during a training accident. On her quest for survival she discovers a ne’er-do-well fellow trainee and saves him countless times with her superior skills and intellect.
By the end of the story she has become so worn down by social convention that she reveals her true identity, marries the ne’er-do-well and subordinates herself to society’s expectations.
This I Believe by the New New Heinlein where he movingly describes his belief that his gay neighbours should be beaten to death with tire irons by a mob of genetically superior supermen.
(Have these people ever read Heinlein?!? –
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/thisibelieve.html )
The latest Story Bundle is out, and it looks pretty good.
(Looks ruefully at the ever-expanding Mount Tsundoku, both physical and electronic…)
Okay, one of Heinlein’s novels is titled Job. Write your own jokes.
Rod Walker is the black protagonist of one of Heinlein’s juvies, so VD may be setting up another of his award-losing Xanathos gambits.
::tickage::
@Hypnotosov
DAMN. I’ve been outHeinleined!
How many pen names is Teddy up to now?
@Hampus:
Wasn’t that Deadpool?
(Mayan City) The kid mentions how odd he thinks it is that so many Mayan cities aren’t near surface water. Someone forgot to tell him that the cities’ primary sources of water were groundwater cenotes. They didn’t limit themselves to river sites because they didn’t need to.
Public service message: probably nobody here would fall for it, but make sure you don’t make yourself a Darwin Awards candidate with this trending IED formula.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As A New Heinlein.
The Rabids Must Troll
…And He Built A Castalia House…
We Also Walk Puppies
“…All You Filers”: The story of The Man Who Got There Too Late To Find Any Jokes That Hadn’t Already Been Made
The SJW Credential That Scrolls Through Walls
Double Starship Trouper: A closeted gay starship captain in the service of a psychotic politician who believes he is really an actor. Hilarity ensues.
Well, some of the Mayan cities had cenotes, and some didn’t. At Uxmal for example, they had to make do with rainwater cisterns.
It’s a Heinlein Between Juvenile and Genius
6) Darn. There was a period in the 60s when a TV show hadn’t made it until there was an appearance by William Schallert. He was always enjoyable to watch–one of his funniest roles was as the reoccurring character of “The Admiral”, former head of CONTROL on Get Smart! (which is definitely genre-related).
I’m happy that he was able to remain active for so long.
“The Witches Make The Law, or, I Will Fear No Devil”: A spell gone pear-shaped leaves an elderly Wiccan practitioner and an equally elderly author’s ex-wife sharing a newly-rejuvenated redheaded body. They steal the author from his domineering spouse and die valiantly preventing an unprovoked U. S. nuclear strike against France.
Robert Whitaker Sirignano: I watched Dobie Gillis when I was a wee bairn. If anything science fictional happened I must not have registered it. What are you remembering?
Time for the Farce: One twin goes off to space. He’ll travel at Castalia speed while everyone on earth gets dumber.
Rocket Ship Aristotle: Where young manly men with guns confound aliens with their casuistry and philosophical genius
Blue Planet: None of your commie-symp socialist SJW colours here
Second Fifth Column
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, typical of today’s SJW Feminazis
Wired article on the “Mayan city.”
John Lorentz: In sorting Schallert’s credits I wasn’t very consistent. I think Wild, Wild West was a lot of the time a pre-steampunk fantasy. I think Get Smart was a spy parody with a lot of silly tech jokes. But it was parodying things like The Man From UNCLE that are hard to dismiss from sci-fi….
I don’t think it’s at all likely the Mayans founded their cities out based on their locations relative to their constellations. The thing is, all the evidence says that the Mayans were organized in city-states like the ancient Greeks, and that they were constantly warring with each other. There was no central authority which could have done this.
The layout of individual cities: sure, that wouldn’t surprise me.
The evidence in the book for Rod being black is pretty slim. Heinlein’s equivocation in text about the race of his characters really stood out when I turned to my 50 Nortons in 50 Weeks project, where Norton cheerfully presented the reader with worlds where not only was the lead not white, there were no white people to speak as they had rather stupidly wiped themselves out.
Another day, another 107 dozen planets…