Pixel Scroll 7/15/21 This Pixel Will Self-Destruct In Five Parsecs

(1) SUMMER READING. In “Meet the Authors of Summer’s Biggest Sci-Fi and Fantasy Adventures” Goodreads features Q&As with Shelley Parker-Chan, Nghi Vo, Matt Bell, Tasha Suri, Becky Chambers, Cassandra Khaw, T.J. Klune, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Cadwell Turnbull, author of No Gods, No Monsters

GR: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

CT:  Balancing all the narrative elements. I’m very interested in narratives where individuals and groups of people converge around significant events for very different reasons. I wanted the novel to honor individual and collective action where each person is important. That was hard to do. The other challenge was the cosmology underpinning the story, which requires a few conceptual leaps to make sense. I didn’t want to do too much too fast and undercut the emotional weight of those leaps. I also didn’t want to undermine the very real and very important personal conflicts of the characters with god-level madness. Add to that my love of subtlety and subtext and the writing process became a tug-of-war between all these disparate goals. But I did my very best. Luckily I have two more books in the series to tease out every layer.

(2) BARBARA NEELY REMEMBERED. Mystery Writers of America has established the Barbara Neely Scholarship in honor of the late author, a trailblazing Black crime novelist who was named a Grand Master by MWA in late 2019. “She was named a Grand Master not only for the high quality of the work she produced during her career, but also for being an inspiration to an entire generation of crime writers of color.”

Two scholarships of $2000 each per year will be awarded: “One for an aspiring Black writer who has yet to publish in the crime or mystery field, and another for Black authors who have already published in crime or mystery.”

Applications are being taken from July 1 through September 30. The applications will be reviewed by the Barbara Neely Scholarship committee, including Black crime writers, and the winner will be announced in the late fall. The application form is here

Applicants must be Black, American citizens, and age 18 or older. They must submit a brief biography, competed application form, and 300-500-word statement on their interest in the mystery genre and in general terms (class, conference, equipment, etc.) how they would use the scholarship funds. Prior membership in MWA is not required.

The Barbara Neely Scholarship will be awarded on the basis of writing ability, interest in the crime/mystery genre, and likely benefit from the scholarship funds and MWA membership. 

(3) JUICY IS BETTER. There’s a Kickstarter to fund Juicy Ghosts by Rudy Rucker, the author’s twenty-fourth novel. People have contributed $5,302 of its $7,000 goal with 27 days to go. Rucker tells how the project began:

 Juicy Ghosts is about politics, telepathy, and immortality. I started it in 2019, as a reaction to Donald Trump’s repeated remarks that he planned to be a three-term president. That pushed me over the edge.

I started with a short story called “Juicy Ghosts.” Rebels bring down an insane, evil President who’s stolen an election. They sting him with a lethally tweaked wasp, erase the online backup of his mind, and explode his clone. Too much? It’s hard to stop, when you’re having this much fun! Over the next two years, my story grew into a novel. I had to write it. I had to stand and be counted.

So, yes, Juicy Ghosts is a tale of political struggle—but it’s more than that. It’s hip and literary, with romance and tragedy. Plus gnarly science, and lots of funny scenes. I used a loose, say-anything style. The point-of-view characters are outsiders and slackers. The majority of them are women, and they give the tale a grounded tone.

We’ll see commercial telepathy, or teep, before long. And we’ll want a channel that’s richer than text and images. Users might transmit templates for the neurochemicals that are affecting their current mood. Your friends feel your pheromones! In Juicy Ghosts, people do this with gossip molecules, which are nano-assemblers  with tiny antennas.

I’ve been writing about digital immortality since my early cyberpunk novel Software. The idea is to represent a soul by a digital program and a data-base, calling the construct a lifebox. But in Juicy Ghosts  a lifebox needs to be linked to a physical body.  It’s not enough to be a ghost—you want to be a juicy ghost. The linked body might be an insect or an animal or a biotweaked bot—but high-end users will have tank-grown clones.

Lifeboxes and clones will be expensive, so most people will settle for free lifebox storage provided by tech giants. The catch is that if you accept this free service, you’re obligated to do gig-work for the company—as a bodyguard, a chauffeur, a maid, of a factory worker. Typical of our times!

I like happy endings. I’d rather laugh than cry.  My characters destroy the evil President’s political party, topple the pay-to-play immortality racket, and provide everyone with free lifeboxes and physical bodies. Ta-da!

(4) LET IT GO. Lightspeed Magazine shines its “Author Spotlight” on Rachel Swirsky whose story “Innocent Bird” is in the magazine’s July issue.

[Swirsky:] … I actually initially went into submission with a version of this that was 1,000 words shorter. After getting a couple of very kind rejections, I let it lie for a while, and the next time I looked at it, I felt like the story had a reserved quality to it that didn’t seem appropriate. My graduate training—along with a lot of other aspects of contemporary aesthetics—strongly veers toward keeping emotions subtextual in this very discreet fashion. I went back into the story to let the heartbreak go straight onto the page. Shoko is a teenager; she’s full of these big emotions. She doesn’t express them to other people which only means she’s constantly inflated with love and distress and confusion and uncertainty about her future that she has no escape valve from. I think she tries to distance herself from that internally to some extent—there are moments when she underplays what she’s feeling—but she shouldn’t be written like a middle-aged literary professor wrestling with a midlife crisis….

(5) ROBOCREATORS. “Automated art: threat or menace?” asks James Davis Nicoll. SFF authors’ answer the question in these “Five SF Stories About Automated Art” at Tor.com.

“The Darfsteller” by Walter M. Miller (1955)

Thanks to advances in the field of robotic acting, Ryan Thornier, former star, is now Ryan Thornier, underpaid theatre janitor. True, there are many occupations not yet automated to which the old man could apply his thespian talents—salesman, politician, general—but these are beneath the former star. Only stage acting will do. But his desire to shine onstage cannot erase the fact that robotic mannikins programmed with recorded personality matrices deliver the same services as living actors, but are much cheaper and more reliable.

Ryan is very stubborn. Given even the smallest hope of reclaiming his lost place on stage, he will leap to take advantage of the opportunity…regardless of consequences.

(6) PERFORMATIVE REFORM. Radio Times, not surprisingly given their heavy coverage of The Doctor, favors the Doctor/Missy/Master arcs in this analysis: “What Loki got wrong – and Doctor Who got right”.

… A few times over the course of Loki, viewers had compared it to Doctor Who, mainly because of its general time-travel premise (what are the officious TVA except Time Lords with a dental plan?) and especially after episode three saw Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) trapped on a dying world. In fact, many commented that Loki did ‘Doctor Who’ better than Doctor Who itself, thanks to a higher budget and bigger stars. (Though did Loki have a sonic screwdriver? I think not. Case closed.)

And I actually think Loki could learn something from Doctor Who, more specifically, from a storyline that saw an iconic villain try to change their ways with mixed success….

(7) CLEAR CHANNEL. Here’s a post about the new book its author was trying to draw attention to in that sabotaged Reddit AMA: “The Big Idea: Nicole Kornher-Stace” at Whatever.

NICOLE KORNHER-STACE:

Since approximately five minutes after I started publishing, my mom has been telling me I should write a kids’ book. For a while I was…skeptical. Many of the kind things people have said about my work involve it being dark but ultimately hopeful but before that just. so dark. And many of my rejections have been for being “too dark.” None of which really felt super compatible with, y’know, a children’s book.

It’s not that I thought it was a bad idea, it just felt like an idea that was beyond my skillset or ability to even really conceptualize. So on the back burner it sat for a long time, along with a whole bunch of other stuff I’d talked myself out of writing for various reasons. (Thanks, impostor syndrome. You’re the best.)

And then I had a baby. And then my baby grew up into a kid. And just like that I had an audience to write a kids’ book for. And everything kind of came together from there….

(8) DISABLED PARTICIPANTS SOUGHT. Mission: AstroAccess has put out “A Call For Disabled Explorers to Experience Zero Gravity.” Any disabled adult living in the U.S. can apply – see full guidelines and view the application here. The deadline to apply is August 15.

Outer space is not just humanity’s future: it’s a call to rethink life on Earth right now.

In zero gravity, what is standing up? What is lying down? What does it mean to be unable to walk if no one there is walking? How does that shift our understanding of disability?

We are excited to announce the launch of Mission: AstroAccess, a program bringing a diverse group of disabled space enthusiasts on a historic ZERO-G parabolic flight! Participants will complete targeted tasks during the program’s flight to help answer basic questions about how disabled people can live and work in outer space. Mission: AstroAccess’ crew of disabled volunteers will take flight on October 17th, 2021, as the first step in a progression towards increasing diversity in space and the greater STEM field. 

…Mission: AstroAccess serves an additional purpose—while traditional physical barriers are lifted in space, accidents resulting in some form of disability are inevitable during extended missions in space’s dangerous environment. We are dedicated to advancing disability inclusion in space exploration, not just for the benefit of marginalized communities, but for the benefit of all humankind. The tasks conducted during this program will help inform accessible design to make extended space travel safer for everyone.

(9) A GENRE SUCCESS STORY. “Print Book Sales Soar in Year’s First Half”Publishers Weekly ran the numbers, which show graphic novel sales blew up.

…The big story in adult fiction was the strength of the graphic novel format. Unit sales soared 178.5% in the first half of the year, rising to 16.2 million copies sold, making graphic novels the second-largest adult fiction subcategory. Graphic novels made up nearly 20% of adult fiction unit sales in the first six months of 2021, compared to 9.3% last year.

Viz Media was one of the big beneficiaries of the graphic novel boom. Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia, Vol. 26 was the top adult graphic novel in the first half of the year, selling more than 90,000 copies. Other volumes in the Academia line also sold well, including volume two (about 82,000 copies sold) and volume one (81,000 copies). Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Taiba, Vol. 1 by Koyoharu Gotouge, also published by Viz, sold more than 82,000 copies. A title published by a company other than Viz, Attack on Titan, Vol. 1 by Hajime Isayama, published by Kodansha, sold nearly 88,000 copies….

(10) SID ALTUS (1949-2021). Detroit fan Sid Altus died July 13, his daughter Shana announced on Facebook. Sid was a member of the Detroit in ’82 Worldcon bid. He worked on AutoClave and ConFusion. He and Alex Berman co-founded a small press, Phantasia Press, which published high-end limited editions of hardcover sf aimed at the collectors’ market. Fancyclopedia 3 has more about his history.

(11) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1997 – Twenty-four years ago this week, the Roar series premiered on Fox. It would last but thirteen episodes, five of which initially would go unaired. This sort of Celtic fantasy had Heath Ledger in the lead role, his first genre undertaking. The series also starred Vera Farmiga, Lisa Zane, John Saint Ryan, and Sebastian Roché. The show was created by Shaun Cassidy after the success of of  Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess but it truly bombed. It certainly didn’t help that the series was in the same time slot as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two novels, Roar: A Novel, a prequel, and Roar: The Cauldron, would later be written.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 15, 1931 Clive Cussler. Pulp author with definite genre leanings. If I had to pick his best novels, I’d say that would be Night Probe and Raise the Titantic, possibly also Vixen 03. His National Underwater and Marine Agency, a private maritime archaeological group, has found several important wrecks including the Manassas, the first ironclad of the Civil War. (Died 2020.)
  • Born July 15, 1944 Jan-Michael Vincent. First Lieutenant Jake Tanner in the film version of Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. Is it worth seeing? Commander in Alienator and Dr. Ron Shepherd in, and yes, this is the name, Xtro II: The Second Encounter. Not to mention Zepp in Jurassic Women.  As Airwolf counts as genre, he was helicopter pilot and aviator Stringfellow Hawke in it. (Died 2019.)
  • Born July 15, 1947 T. E. D. Klein, 74. Horror writer with two awards to his name, one a BFA for The Ceremonies novel, another a World Fantasy Award for his “Nadelman’s God” novella. He was editor of the Twilight Zone Magazine in the mid Eighties and the Night Cry zine for several around that time.
  • Born July 15, 1957 Forest Whitaker, 64. His best known genre roles are Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Saw Gerrera and in The Black Panther as Zuri. He’s had other genre appearances including Major Collins in Body Snatchers, Nate Pope in Phenomenon, Ker in Battlefield Earth for which he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor, Ira in Where the Wild Things Are, Jake Freivald In Repo Men (anyone see this?) and he was Host of Twilight Zone.
  • Born July 15, 1963 Brigitte Nielsen, 58. Red Sonja! What’d a way to launch your film career. Mind you her next genre roles were 976-Evil II and Galaxis… Oh well… She starred as the Black Witch in the Nineties Italian film series Fantaghiro, and played the Amazon Queen in the Danish Ronal the Barbarian
  • Born July 15, 1967 Christopher Golden, 54. Where to start? The Veil trilogy was most excellent as was The Hidden Cities series co-authored with Tim Lebbon. The Menagerie series co-authored with Thomas E. Sniegoski annoyed me because it never got concluded. Straight On ‘Til Morning is one damn scary novel. His short stories are most excellent thus it’s most fitting his recent The Twisted Book of Shadows collection won a Shirley Jackson Award. 
  • Born July 15, 1951 Jesse Ventura, 70. He’s actually been in far more genre films that I thought. His first film was Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe which audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give a rating of nineteen percent. After that, he’s been in PredatorRunning ManDemolition Man and Batman & Robin

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side has a strange Martian/Wizard of Oz mashup. At least that’s what I think it is.
  • Frank and Ernest meet some innovative cave people.

(14) HIS CUP RUNNETH OVER. At Black Gate, Aaron Starr’s “Long and Winding” is the amusing saga about writing a doorstop-sized novel.

January 12th

Dear Diary,
After Justine’s third encounter with the forces pursuing her, I realized that what this sword-and-sorcery novel needs is some more swords! But Justine has given no hint of any sort of background with weapons. I’ll need to introduce a wise mentor, to teach her the ways of cold steel. Someone grizzled and worldly, cynical and a touch sarcastic.

That’s it! Dear diary, you’re a genius! Her mentor will be her spirit animal! This will kill two birds with one stone, which, I might point out, rules out a bird as her spirit animal, doesn’t it? Tee-hee! Seriously, what sort of animal embodies these qualities? A raccoon springs to mind. They seem sufficiently grizzled and worldly, and are no doubt cynical. But might I be playing into harmful stereotypes? I’ll have to think about that some more.

Later: I have visited the cafe next door, to allow myself a fresh perspective. As I drank a fortifying mug of pressed-almond choco-caf with double-frothed soy, I struck up a conversation with a man who just happens to be a city planner. He confirmed my instincts regarding raccoon-kind, and assured me that, if any urban mammals were to take up arms, they would certainly be among the first to do so….

(15) REINCARNATED IN FANTASYLAND. The tropes come thick and fast in Petréa Mitchell’s “Anime roundup 7/15/2021: Work in Progress” at Amazing Stories.

In this week’s viewing: More summer premieres! More terrible light-novel-based summer premieres! Also a couple of fighting shows….

(16) YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES. The Criterion Collection will bring out The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) on October 19.

…Existentialism goes pop in this benchmark of atomic-age science fiction, a superlative adaptation of a novel by the legendary Richard Matheson that has awed and unnerved generations of viewers with the question, What is humanity’s place amid the infinity of the universe? Six months after being exposed to a mysterious radiation cloud, suburban everyman Scott Carey (Grant Williams) finds himself becoming smaller . . . and smaller . . . and smaller—until he’s left to fend for himself in a world in which ordinary cats, mousetraps, and spiders pose a mortal threat, all while grappling with a diminishing sense of himself…. 

(17) CONSISTENCY. Nothing hits the spot in Schmigadoon like a big bowl of good old corn pudding! Here’s another introductory clip from the forthcoming musical series. Available tomorrow on AppleTV+. View on YouTube. (The stinkers won’t let it be embedded here!)

The six-part series follows a couple (Strong, Key) who stumble on a magical town that lives in a 1940s musical. From there, the pair have to try and find true love.

(18) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter found another show in touch with Broadway – tonight’s episode of Jeopardy. A contestant had trouble with this. Though they really shouldn’t have.

Category: Broadway Musicals by Setting

Answer: Mushnik’s Skid Row Florists

Wrong question: What is ‘The Little Barber Shop of Horrors?”

Right question: What is ‘Little Shop of Horrors?”

(19) DICK GRAYSON & CO. Titans Season 3 begins airing on HBO Max on August 12.

Titans follows young heroes from across the DC Universe as they come of age and find where they belong. In season three, circumstances draw our heroes to Gotham City, where they will reunite with old friends and face new threats.

(20) BLINDED BY THE LIGHT. Experience the world in Vampire Reality. What We Do in the Shadows returns Sept 2 on FX.

A look into the daily (or rather, nightly) lives of four vampires who have “lived” together for hundreds and hundreds of years in Staten Island.

(21) HOOKED UP. “Tapping Into the Brain to Help a Paralyzed Man Speak” reports The New York Times.

He has not been able to speak since 2003, when he was paralyzed at age 20 by a severe stroke after a terrible car crash.

Now, in a scientific milestone, researchers have tapped into the speech areas of his brain — allowing him to produce comprehensible words and sentences simply by trying to say them. When the man, known by his nickname, Pancho, tries to speak, electrodes implanted in his brain transmit signals to a computer that displays his intended words on the screen.

His first recognizable sentence, researchers said, was, “My family is outside.”

The achievement, published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, could eventually help many patients with conditions that steal their ability to talk.

“This is farther than we’ve ever imagined we could go,” said Melanie Fried-Oken, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University, who was not involved in the project.

Three years ago, when Pancho, now 38, agreed to work with neuroscience researchers, they were unsure if his brain had even retained the mechanisms for speech.

“That part of his brain might have been dormant, and we just didn’t know if it would ever really wake up in order for him to speak again,” said Dr. Edward Chang, chairman of neurological surgery at University of California, San Francisco, who led the research.

The team implanted a rectangular sheet of 128 electrodes, designed to detect signals from speech-related sensory and motor processes linked to the mouth, lips, jaw, tongue and larynx. In 50 sessions over 81 weeks, they connected the implant to a computer by a cable attached to a port in Pancho’s head, and asked him to try to say words from a list of 50 common ones he helped suggest, including “hungry,” “music” and “computer.”…

(22) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night’s The Late Show: “Welcome back to the cool green hills of Earth,” he said to Sir Richard Branson.

Sir Richard Branson sits down with Stephen after returning from his historic trip to the edge of space, and has some advice for the next billionaire headed to orbit.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

70 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/15/21 This Pixel Will Self-Destruct In Five Parsecs

  1. First! Really. Truly.

    I had a good day made even better by Kyra telling me that Catherynne Valente had read her oh so delicious Orphan’s Tales during the Pandemic and that they’re available on YouTube.

  2. Joining Cam in Lockdown reading Part 547!
    Finished ‘The Monster Baru Cormorant’ and wonder why these books do not get more love. Brutal. Now beginning ‘The Book of Kali’, which does not have the stunning beginning of ‘The Girl With All the Gifts”. but promises a slow burn. Comparative light relief from ‘Flowers for Algernon’ in the car. The suck fairy has touched it but lightly.
    Listening to Al Stewart and Garfunkel and Oates whilst watching my team prevail in AFL

    And This Pixel scrolled the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

  3. Home!

    The hospital sent me home in a set of hospital scrubs and hospital slipper socks, because I arrived at the hospital Sunday night in my nightgown.

    Note that my rule that there must always be a spare set of keys in an easily identifiable to others spot in my bag enabled the EMTs to lock my apartment door when we left.

    My sleep schedule is shot all to hell.

    Coming home in a medical Uber, uh, I know there’s something I would have stopped to do, and obviously set aside till tomorrow.

    Will have a visiting nurse and physical therapy for a while.

    Want some uninterrupted sleep.

  4. Lis Carey: Glad you’re home and will get some sleep. Good to hear you’ll have a visiting nurse and PT.

  5. Lis, very glad that you’re home. Get some much needed sleep. And I think you’ll find the visiting nurse and PT are quite a wonderful thing to have. I had them for months after all three of my knee surgeries.

  6. @Lis
    Hope things improve quickly!

    (13) That was my thought about that Far Side cartoon.

  7. 18) Little Barber Shop of Horrors is a mash-up between Little Shop of Horrors and Sweeney Todd?

  8. Good to hear, Lis.

    Started reading Bujold’s Penric’s Demon. I think she has upped her prose game for her fantasies and they are a real pleasure to read.

  9. Meredith moment: the definitive edition of Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg is available on Kindle for the very reasonable price of nine dollars and ninety nine cents. I read it as floppies when First Comics published it a very long time ago.

  10. FYI the free sample of Kindle’s Flagg is 38 pages including an intro by Michael Chabon… enough to give you a sense of the book

  11. Daniel Dern says FYI the free sample of Kindle’s Flagg is 38 pages including an intro by Michael Chabon… enough to give you a sense of the book

    Yeah I took a look at it. The Chabon intro is most excellent. And the imaging of the pages is quite excellent given that the original pages were not all that sharp.

    I really liked it when I read it back then and look forward to re-reading it.

  12. Glad to hear that you’re back home, Lis, and that there will be people looking in on you. Please take good care of yourself. ❤

  13. Very glad to hear, Lis!

    To answer the question posed in the birthday section (is the Damnation Alley movie worth seeing): a few years ago, I would have given a resounding no!, but I recently encountered some fans. I don’t believe any of them had read the book, but apparently, if taken on its own terms, it can be seen as a moderately entertaining piece of schlocky B-movie SF. So…I guess that’s my new answer. If you haven’t read the book, you might not hate it! 🙂

    (To be fair, the prop vehicle they built for it is pretty cool.)

  14. Jan-Michael Vincent’s name reminded me that he also had a role in a 1995 horror film called THE ICE CREAM MAN. It was a… not very good… movie. Rotten Tomatoes gives it what I find an astonishingly generous rating of 44%.

    JMV pretty much walks thru a role that pretty much didn’t call for more than a walk-thru. Literally, at one point, as JMV’s detective character walks (untouched!) thru an insane asylum filled with capering murderous loosed inmates. I interpreted the horrified expression on JMV’s face as “My career has come down to this. To THIS.” Never been a big JMV fan, but couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him.

    I checked IMDB’s entry on JMV, and found to my shock that his first regular role, as opposed to one-offs, was on… ohmighod… THE BANANA SPLITS ADVENTURE HOUR. Possibly #1 on my list of Most Hated TV Shows, with The World’s Worst Earworm as its theme song.

    My ire is entirely at the awful, unfunny antics of the four animal-costumed “hosts” of the show. JMV’s contribution was to one of the live-action/animated/live-action-AND-animated serial-like segments interspersed throughout the hour.

    Arabian Knights and The Three Musketeers were animated, Micro Ventures was a mix of animated and live action, and Danger Island (that JMV was in) was all live action. I must have watched at least some of the early episodes of each before giving up on the show as a whole, but I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of what they were like.

    Danger Island was apparently a modern-day adventure of a scientist, several teens, and a problematic-by-today’s-standards native who only spoke in monkey screeches and bird calls, searching an uncharted island for an ancient lost city. Which would be a lot easier without all the damn pirates and cannibals they keep running into.

    Another very surprising bit of information I learned was that the director of Danger Island was… Richard Donner. Yes, that Richard Donner, in the early days of his career.

    There’s a fan-edited compilation of all 36 episodes of Danger Island available on YouTube.

  15. Bruce Arthurs on July 15, 2021 at 9:30 pm said:
    THE BANANA SPLITS ADVENTURE HOUR. Possibly #1 on my list of Most Hated TV Shows, with The World’s Worst Earworm as its theme song.

    [splutters indignantly] People these days have no love for the great classics of music!

  16. One scrollnana, two scrollnana, three scrollnana, four
    All scrollnanas make a pixel, & so do many more
    Over file and fileway, the nana scrolls go
    Come along to bring you the pixel scrollnana show
    Tra la la, tra la la, la
    Tra la la, tra la la, la
    Tra la la, tra la la, la
    Tra la la, tra la la, la

  17. Can you imagine that I immediately heard that song in my mind, even though I haven’t seen that show in ages?

    Damnation Alley was actually my first Zelazny and the reason I bought it was because I knew it had been made into a movie, so I hope it would be good. And the book actually is pretty good, though not as good as the best of Zelazny.

    Also in case anybody is worrying about me because of the devastating floods in Germany, I’m okay, cause I live in a different part of the country. StefanB and Peer Sylvester are also nowhere near the flooding as far as I know.

    However, it’s a terrible tragedy and the flood with 93 dead and still many people missing. This is the highest death toll in Germany due to a flood or any natural disaster really since the 1963 North Sea flood.

  18. (3) More Rucker is good!

    (12) Jan-Michael Vincent gets name-checked on Rick and Morty by the way. Tra la la…

  19. Stay safe, Cora. The news looks devastating.

    (12) I’m old enough to remember Banana Splits and Danger Island. Heck, to this day, I can still hear the donkey from the Arabian Nights cartoon braying. It’s burned into my mind. And Star Trek script co-writer Shari Lewis provided one of the voices in that cartoon!

    Look up Kim Kahana, the actor who played Chongo, the mute native from Danger Island. Wow. He’s a decorated veteran with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts; an actor; a stunt performer; and a martial arts and stunt instructor. Something tells me his talents were wasted in the TV show.

  20. Meredith moment: Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth is available from the usual suspects for two dollars and ninety nine cents.

  21. Cora, thanks for reassuring us about the safety of yourself and other German Filers, and my condolences on the terrible ongoing tragedy there.

  22. Cora Buhlert says Damnation Alley was actually my first Zelazny and the reason I bought it was because I knew it had been made into a movie, so I hope it would be good. And the book actually is pretty good, though not as good as the best of Zelazny.

    All Zelazny is quite readable, though the jury is I admit still out for me on the second set of Amber novels. I even went in a recent jag of purchasing quite a bit of him when Amber Ltd. starred making available great numbers of digital publications at reasonable rates.

    I need to re-read the original He Who Shapes novella to see how it differs from The Dreammaster novella.

  23. I am well known as being a big Amber fan (maybe the biggest in this section of the internet or at least in the running).

    And I admit…the second series does not reach the heights of the first.

  24. @ Cat Eldridge

    Speaking of Zelazny, I always wanted to see that sequel to Madwand appear, alas.

  25. (21) this is a staggering advance in neural-computer interfacing. We’re living in the future!

    I’ve spoken with my brother-in-law, who is from Cologne. The flooding is close to there and is by his account quite devastating. Apparently the waters rose so quickly many people were trapped and drowned in basements and lower stories. Truly horrible; if anyone is so inclined, a prayer or two would be appreciated.

  26. Paul Weimer says
    I am well known as being a big Amber fan (maybe the biggest in this section of the internet or at least in the running).

    And I admit…the second series does not reach the heights of the first.

    I’m glad that I’m not the only one disappointed by the second series. The first series is awesome, but the second series just, errr, sucks. I just couldn’t believe how annoying the main character was.

    Now listening to Gareth L. Powell’s Macque Attack

  27. Rob Thornton says Speaking of Zelazny, I always wanted to see that sequel to Madwand appear, alas.

    Me too.

    Zelazny dying young is something that I curse the Universe for doing.

  28. I’d rank This Immortal as my favorite Zelazny, with Doorways in the Sand a close second, but I think The Dream Master is his best novel.

  29. PhilRM says I’d rank This Immortal as my favorite Zelazny, with Doorways in the Sand a close second, but I think The Dream Master is his best novel.

    My favs are Isle of Dead, To Die in Italbar and My Name is Legion. None of which I’d claim is his best as I agree that The Dream Master is his best written novel. I just like them better as stories. And I’d prolly toss Roadmarks in there as well.

  30. My favorite Zelazny might be Jack of Shadows. Doorways in the Sand is another that has always stuck with me, for no real reason I can articulate.

    I think I was discovering Amber at the public library shortly before Courts of Chaos was released.

  31. James Davis Nicoll says Doorways in the Sand was out of print for decades for some reason, although it is back now.
    Avoid the Betancourt prequels.

    A lot of Zelazny works have been out of print far too long. Amber Ltd. has just now gotten them back in print, and the audio works with Roadworks out in October and more I’m told will be out over the next few years.

    The Betancourt prequels are simply awful.

  32. @Cat Eldridge: Two of the three novellas that make up My Name is Legion, the unpronounceable ‘Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k and Home is the Hangman, are among my very favorite Zelazny stories.

  33. I watched a couple of episodes of Roar and I didn’t mind it, except that now the only thing I even slightly recall is that there was a story where a heroine was trapped, barely clinging on, in a gushing waterfall, and needed rescuing, and I was NOT at all convinced by the rather weak looking dribble she was actually lying in. I mean, sure, I’d have fallen, but I’m not a warrior.

  34. PhilRM says Two of the three novellas that make up My Name is Legion, the unpronounceable ‘Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k and Home is the Hangman, are among my very favorite Zelazny stories.

    Yeah “The Eve of RUMOKO” is the weakest of the three stories by far. I think the “Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k” may be among the best stories he ever wrote. If it gets done as an audio work, I can’t wait to see how it gets pronounced!

  35. Yeah I get the news about the flood from TV. I have family near there but they are also okay. Not in danger.

  36. Count me as another who wanted to see the sequel to Madwand Zelazny said he was writing it, and had a title (Deathmask) at Seacon’84. But he went on to write the Merlin books instead, which may have sold better, but were not what I wanted to see.

    I encountered Zelazny’s work relatively young, starting with The Guns of Avalon – I was a bit too young for Creatures of Light and Darkness but I read it anyway. (The advantage of having a librarian for an Aunt). I still remember getting an imported copy of the newly released The Courts of Chaos as a Christmas present.

    Favourite novels include Madwand and Eye of Cat as well as To Die in Italbar – I must revisit Today We Choose Faces sometime, to see if it is as good as I thought it was,

  37. In a Dorian Grey sort of fashion, both ‘Predator’ and ‘Demolition Man’ have aged better than Ventura himself has. ‘Demolition Man’ in particular only becomes more and more prescient every day, seemingly.

  38. Quatermain says In a Dorian Grey sort of fashion, both ‘Predator’ and ‘Demolition Man’ have aged better than Ventura himself has. ‘Demolition Man’ in particular only becomes more and more prescient every day, seemingly.

    I like Demolition Man quite a bit. I’ve watched it at least three or four times now and liked it very much every time. The Suck Fairy hasn’t effected it at all. The Predator films not so much. I’ve seen just the first two, the first one twice and the second one once. That’s enough.

  39. Cora Buhlert on July 16, 2021 at 3:26 am said:
    Also in case anybody is worrying about me because of the devastating floods in Germany, I’m okay, cause I live in a different part of the country. StefanB and Peer Sylvester are also nowhere near the flooding as far as I know.

    I’m glad to hear it. The news coverage here of the tragedy has been very poor with little details. It’s the usual anglophone bias in international news.

Comments are closed.