(1) WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING ON MY SUMMER VACATION. I don’t know how much material will make it into today’s Scroll because I have been very busy creating a series of posts about rules change proposals being submitted to the WSFS Business Meeting in Glasgow.
- WSFS 2024: Motion to Add Human Rights and Democracy Standards to Worldcon Site Qualifications
- WSFS 2024: Three Resolutions
- WSFS 2024: Cleaning Up the Art Categories
- WSFS 2024: Meetings, Meetings, Everywhere
- WSFS 2024: Transparency in Hugo Administration
- WSFS 2024: Irregular Disqualifications and Rogue Administrators
- WSFS 2024: Independent Hugo Administration
- WSFS 2024: No Illegal Exclusions
(2) BLOCH’S HUGO. Robert Bloch’s 1959 Hugo Award for Best Short Story “The Hellbound Train” sold at auction on eBay for $2,766.00 last night.
(3) GET YOUR NITPICKER READY. “75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time – What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?” asks Esquire. And after looking at this list, the questions I have are not what I’d have expected. For one: Is Excession really Iain M. Banks’ best novel?
Over two years ago, we published a version of this list featuring 50 books. But why stop at 50? Now, as part of our latest Summer Fiction Week, we’ve cast a wider net and expanded the list to 75 titles. Choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. We also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre—to borrow a great sci-fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Now, in ranked order, here are the best science fiction books of all time….
(4) LATEST TUTTLE COLUMN. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup” in the Guardian covers Curandera by Irenosen Okojie; The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman; The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer; an Toward Eternity by Anton Hur.
(5) BIG RIVER, MANY TRIBUTARIES. Cedar Sanderson offers helpful tools for strategizing what Amazon book categories to choose when marketing a self-published book on that platform: “Categories on Amazon” at Mad Genius Club.
…This post will be Amazon-centric, as I haven’t published a book wide in years. Still, much of the information will be useful elsewhere as well, just not in the same way as it is for the biggest bookseller in the world.
It used to be that you could put your book in up to ten categories. This was changed in the latter part of 2023, and you can now select three categories. Categories are the broad buckets Amazon uses to help readers find books they like, so as you can imagine, it’s important to put your book in the best categories. Which also means not putting them into the broadest categories – a book placed into ‘fantasy’ is a tiny minnow swimming in a whole ocean, while a book placed into something like ‘dark fantasy horror’ is a trout in a fishing hole, and much more likely to find a reader who really wants it.
KindleTrends has a great (and free!) tool for researching categories on Amazon.
BookLink also has a ton of free tools for researching, and while you can use it to find the best categories for an already-published book, you could also enter the ASIN of a book that is very similar to a planned publication, to give you some guidance while you are setting your new book up. Their website isn’t the easiest to use, so read carefully….
(6) THE REAL MCCOY. “Captain Kirk’s Original ‘Star Trek’ Phaser Heads to Auction” – The Hollywood Reporter expects it to go for six figures.
The prop weapon and a communicator used by William Shatner on the original series will go on display at the Comic-Con Museum before heading to auction in November.
Fans of Star Trek, get set to be stunned.
A original phaser and communicator used by William Shatner’s James T. Kirk on the 1960s NBC series will be on display starting Monday at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego. The iconic props, created in 1966, have not been seen in more than 50 years, organizers say, and will be available to purchase through auction.
Don Hillenbrand, a veteran Star Trek prop collector and researcher, has authenticated the phaser and communicator using a “screen-matching” method that identifies unique details and flaws on the props to verify they indeed were the ones seen in the series.
The original owner of both pieces, a late relative of the current owners, was a Hollywood prop veteran who is believed to have acquired them from a former employee at Paramount Pictures, home of Star Trek.
The pistol-like phaser and communicator, which features a spinning dial, will be at the museum through July 28, then will go on the block at a Julien’s Auctions/TCM Hollywood event Nov. 9 in Los Angeles. Each piece is conservatively estimated to sell for $100,000 to $200,000….
(7) WHAT CRESSIDA COWELL LIKES. “On my radar: Cressida Cowell’s cultural highlights” – a Guardian profile. Including an item about David Tennant’s next series, which isn’t sff but don’t you want to know anyway?
Children’s author Cressida Cowell was born in London in 1966. In 2003 she published the first of 12 books in the How to Train Your Dragon series; since then, they have been adapted into several feature films, including the Academy Award-nominated 2010 animation. Her other book series include the Treetop Twins and The Wizards of Once. Between 2019 and 2022, Cowell was the Waterstones children’s laureate. She lives in London with her husband; they have three children. Here Be Dragons, an exhibition co-curated by Cressida Cowell and one of her dragon creations, Toothless, is at the Story Museum in Oxford until July 2025….
6. Television
Rivals
The first trailer for Disney+’s forthcoming TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals has dropped, starring the always magnificent David Tennant. I bet he will have an absolute whale of a time playing Lord Tony Baddingham. Rivals was one of my go-to comfort reads when I was in my 20s, so very nostalgic for me and so many others. Everything David touches seems to turn to gold, from Hamlet to Broadchurch to Staged to Good Omens, and the lead director of Rivals is Ted Lasso’s Elliot Hegarty, so I have high expectations for this.
(8) WESTERCON MINUTES HOT OFF THE PRESS. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] Linda Deneroff turned around the minutes and new bylaws for Westercon very quickly, even with five ratified bylaw amendments and two new ones for consideration next year. Here’s the announcement post: “Westercon Official Papers Updated for 2025”.
The Westercon Bylaws & Business page has been updated with the minutes of the 2024 Westercon Business Meeting held at Westercon 76 in Salt Lake City, links to the video of the Business Meeting, and the updated Bylaws for use at the 2025 Westercon (Westercon 77).
The Business Meeting ratified five amendments to the Bylaws, including removing the “traditional” date of Westercon (which was never a requirement). The meeting then gave first passage to two amendments: one would clarify the official name of Westercon and the other would suggest (but not required) that Westercons be held sometime between May and August each year. The full text of the amendments, which must be ratified at Westercon 77 in Santa Clara, California, is in the updated Bylaws document.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 13, 1940 – Sir Patrick Stewart, 84.
By Paul Weimer: Where does one begin, or end, with Stewart’s oeuvre? I first came across him as Leodegrance in the movie Excalibur, which is perhaps the most fever-dream of all the adaptations of King Arthur and the Round Table that I’ve ever seen. Then, some years later, he was of course Gurney Halleck in the David Lynch Dune movie, and that itself was a fever dream of an adaptation of an unfilmable novel.
So it was with excitement when I found out that he would be Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the reboot of Star Trek as a TV Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sure, the series took a few years to find its feet and even Picard took some time to establish his character (I remember him being weirdly francophilic to the point of excess in the early seasons) but once Picard had the character, he gave us a character arc and journey that went through Locutus, through the movies, and all the way to his titular series. Picard’s growth and development has been a part of my adult life.
And then there is of course, Professor X. Yes, McAvoy has mostly taken up that mantle, since. And there are the animated adaptations. But when I saw Stewart as Professor X in Multiverse of Madness in that alternate world Strange and Chavez wound up in, I cheered in delight. Patrick Stewart was and does remain my Professor Charles Xavier, and how I envision him in my mind to this day. (And he makes a wonderful double act with Ian McKellen’s Magneto, a chemistry between the two that no other actors or adaptations have managed to really match.
Stewart has done a slew of other stuff, too, and I’ve consumed a lot of it. One fun bit I will mention is a videogame: Lands of Lore. It was one of the early videogames in the early 1990’s that featured extensive voiceovers, done by Stewart himself (in his role as a dying king). It felt like a return to his fantasy King Arthur days. And of course, since I am a Roman Empire enthusiast, although it is not genre, how can I miss his portrayal of Sejanus in I, Claudius?
Truly one of the best actors of all time.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Free Range discovers a litigious Sasquatch.
- Reality Check re-enacts a painful inspiration.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal takes the fun out of villainy.
- Tom Gauld tries to spoil summer reading but fails.
(11) 100 YEARS OF ANIMATION ART EXHIBIT. [Item by Marc A. Criley.] The exhibit “A Journey into Imagimation: Over 100 Years of Animation Art from Around the World” just opened at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama, and will run through September 29, 2024.
A Journey into Imagimation celebrates the ongoing history of animation production since the creation of this magical art form. The exhibition presents 140 rare and recognizable objects, including original cels, drawings, and models that feature a full range of animation techniques from the groundbreaking traditional animation of Gertie the Dinosaur, created by Winsor McCay in 1914, to many of today’s digitally supported animations, including The Simpsons and Toy Story.
The exhibition includes well-recognized animations from such movies and cartoons as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Mighty Mouse, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Jetsons, Mary Poppins, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Simpsons, The Ren and Stimpy Show, The Lion King, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Toy Story, as well as popular commercials for Raid, Pillsbury, Clearasil, and Lipton Brisk Ice Tea and the music video for Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract.
(12) SUPER PALS. “’His skincare regime alone would bankrupt you’: Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman bring banter and bromance to London” and the Guardian listens in.
The enduring friendship between the actors Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman was unpacked in irreverent detail in London on Friday, as the pair premiered their new movie, Deadpool & Wolverine.
The stars, who frequently tease one another both in the press and on X, take the leads in Marvel’s latest blockbuster, which sees foul-mouthed superhero Deadpool (Reynolds) exhume and then team-up with the beleaguered Wolverine (Jackman), seven years after his apparent death in 2017’s Logan.
Speaking at a press conference, Reynolds and director Shaun Levy said they had been scrambling for ideas to continue the franchise until Jackman agreed to return. Rejected pitches included a film in which it is revealed Deadpool was the hunter who shot Bambi’s mother.
(13) WHAT HE SAID. Meanwhile, Hank Green has been studying modern English.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Marc A. Criley, Jeffrey Smith, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
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Yes, first!
I’ve been enjoying the Green Lantern graphic novel that N.K. Jemisin wrote, Far Sector, which I believe won a Hugo.
Second!
(and with a scroll birthday item!_
(3) Why not 100? And some of those I’ve never heard of, but we don’t see, say, Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar.
(5) Thanks! Since my publisher doesn’t advertise my novels – hell, they haven’t changed the imprint page to show Becoming Terran at the top, rather than 11,000 Years, I’m trying ads on Amazon.
Birthday: Stewart. Excalibur… right, glad other people liked it, though it was really made for me, and about six other people in the US. (Really? Well, you go to, say, Temple U. library, and find the Arthurian section… an entire row of racks, with then 50+ year old journals, and read all of it. Then you’ll really get Excalibur. For example, who here knows that Kay was a solar hero, his strength increasing, then decreasing with the rise and setting of the sun?)
Comics, Sat Morn Breakfast Cereal. Yeah, I learned the story of the real-life ultimate ninja when I was in the SCA….
(13) That is so clicky….
Happy birthday to Patrick Stewart, one of the best actors going. He played Oberon in the first show I ever saw in Stratford (photo in Making It So) and I’ve been lucky enough to see and hear him as Prospero, Antony, Macbeth, Shylock (the second production) and Claudius (to Tennant’s Hamlet). Also my favorite film Scrooge. Thanks, Sir Patrick, for decades of enjoyment and education.
I’m curious. Does anyone here know if any of the Trek fiction have Picard in the rank of Admiral which would be a logical thing for him to be in? And is them fiction considered canon?
(11) Info passed along to the mailing list of the North Alabama Science Fiction Association in Huntsville.
13) It’s crackers to slip the rozzers a dropsy in snide. Also notary sojac and nov shmoz ka pop. Vootie, y’all.
Tired, but here.
(3) In English, that is.
(13) Is it weird that I recognized the Origin of that quote right off?
Andrew (not Werdna) on July 14, 2024 at 3:39 am said:
While I kind of know a few slang words’ meaning, I literally do not know the source-anyone who knows that can enlighten me?
Google tells me it’s from a tiktok song. But the point of these things is to mystify the Olds, and as an Old myself, who am I to spoil the fun?
A kidlydivy too, wouldn’t you?
2) I have some doubts on the authenticity of the Bloch Hugo. The name of the short story on the plaque is wrong. It says “The Hellbound Train.” The name of the short story was really “That Hellbound Train.” It was several years later it was reprinted with the new title. While it could be a case of the trophy engraver making a mistake, it’s enough to warrant better investigation of the provenance. The fact it was from someone involved with the show “Storage Wars” which was accused of faking contents of the storage lockers makes me think caveat emptor applies.
9) Because I grew up watching TNG, Picard is of course my favorite of Patrick Stewart’s roles. But he was also wonderful as Charles Xavier, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Captain Ahab.
Robert Bloch’s alleged Hugo Award has another error, since it was called “That Hell-Bound Train” and the hyphen is missing. I don’t know if the errors make it more likely to be fake. Someone who could fake the look of that year’s trophy as well as they did would want the title to be correct too.
@Troyce it’s worth noting that Storage Wars was accused (well, basically openly admitted) to staging the contents of the lockers. As in, they planted known items ahead of time to guarantee “interesting” items and so that they could have relevant appraisers and such already lined up.
That’s very different from planting specifically counterfeit fake items.
(2) The trophy has an address stamped on the bottom for Hollywood Trophy, which includes a zip code. Zip codes were introduced in 1963. The award was for 1959.
Are any other photos of 1959 Hugos available online to compare?
3) That is certainly one of the better lists I’ve seen – nice balance of old and new, and everything on it that I’ve read, I agree should be there. And it does include a couple I’ve not heard of – and, given the quality of the ones I have heard of, that makes me go “ooh, must check that out!”
Which is a good thing. Mount TBR needs more material, it’s barely poking out of the atmosphere right now.
(9) I think my first exposure to Sir Patrick Stewart was as Sejanus in I, Claudius. In the early 1990s I went to see his one man A Christmas Carol on Broadway, a very enjoyable experience.
Bill, I looked at the picture of the 1959 trophy from the Hugo webpage. The base is different from the one in Ebay. The Ebay one has a squared bottom base, while the one on the Hugo site looks like it’s scalloped, and is also black, as is the top of the base. So at most it might be the original rocket, but on another base, which could explain the zip code on the bottom. If this is the case (and it’s not a more modern forgery), we still don’t know who changed it. Bloch? We have no idea. As such, I think we’d have to consider it questionable.
Nothing to do with Bloch, but it is a revealing story. Kelly Freas told me that when he brought his Hugo home from the Heidelberg Worldcon of 1970 the base was so “crappy” that he threw it away and made his own for the rocket.
@cathy: I certainly saw Stewart first in “I, Claudius” – I remember watching that in the basement on PBS (on a small portable black and white tv).