(1) FANAC.ORG LOOKING FOR FANZINES TO SCAN AT WORLDCON. Joe Siclari, Mark Olson and Edie Stern say FANAC.org will be travelling to Glasgow next month.
We have arranged with the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon (August 8-12) to have a scanning station at the con, to scan and digitally archive more fanzines. This has been exceptionally helpful and successful at past conventions.
What you can do to help: Please help us grow this digital archive of fandom. If you’re a fanzine editor, bring your old fanzines to the fan table area at the con. If you have convention publications not already online, bring them too (fanac.org/conpubs/). We will scan them onsite and be able to give them back to you at con. Bring memorable and worthwhile fanzines by other editors as well. We will reach out to them for permission before we put them online.
We do have to unstaple and restaple the zines to scan them, and if they are perfect-bound, we may not have time at con.
If you can, please drop us a note (to [email protected]) telling us what you are bringing so we can be prepared.
Stop by and say hello: Even if you don’t have fanzines or other pubs to scan, stop by the table and say hello, and pick up your history ribbon. We’d like to see you!
How big is it? The archive has over 24,500 fanzines, 5,000 convention pubs and more than 5,000 photos. It’s over half a million pages and grows every week!
(2) PARADIGM SHIFT? In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviews Chris Nashawaty’s new book The Future Was Now (Flatiron): “1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing”
…So, what is it with this fateful eight? Well, Nashawaty has a solemn case to make. He writes:
“During the eight weeks spanning between May 16 and July 9, Hollywood’s major studios would release eight sci-fi/fantasy films that would not only go on to become cornerstones in the pop culture canon four-plus decades on, they would also radically transform the way that the movie industry did—and continues to do—business, paving the way for our current all-blockbusters-all-the-time era.”
That is quite a claim. Nashawaty is by no means sure that he likes the result—“what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience”—but he proposes that, for most of us, going to the cinema is now “one endless summer,” which is much less sunny than it sounds. Like it or not, we live in a Conanistic world.
Whether or not you buy into this notion of 1982 as a red-letter year, it’s worth asking when the redness first began to dawn. Does Nashawaty, in his soothsaying capacity, even have the right decade? Note the elaborate tribute that he pays not only to Spielberg’s “Jaws” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars”—the first released in May, 1975, the second in June, 1977—but also to another summer hit, Scott’s “Alien,” from 1979, which seemed like a suppurating antidote to the antisepsis of “Star Wars.” (I still don’t comprehend how you can love both of those movies equally. You make your choice, and you stick to it.) Clamp the three together, top them with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which bore the imprint of Lucas and Spielberg, and there, I suggest, you have the precursor of 1982, and a more compelling template for so much that has blazed and crawled across our screens ever since.
Viewed from that perspective, what the filmmakers were doing, when they created the eight works that are covered in “The Future Was Now,” was not crunching through barriers or setting fresh trends. They were cashing in. This is not a lowly skill, or an easy one; indeed, in some respects, it is the raison d’être of the movie trade. But let’s not pretend that Hooper, Lisberger, Meyer, and the rest of the guys were a movement, conjoined by a common iconoclastic purpose.
(3) X MARKS A NEW SPOT. According to Deadline, “Elon Musk Is Moving SpaceX And X From California To Texas”
Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket ship maker SpaceX from California to Texas, blaming a new law that bars school districts in the state from requiring that parents be notified of changes in their child’s gender identification.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law, the of its kind in the nation, on Monday. It says school staff can’t be required to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.
It also requires the California Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school….
(4) GET READY. “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” will be hosted at UCSD’s Epstein Family Ampitheater on Tuesday, July 23 at 7:30 pm. Reserved seating $25-$75. Tickets at the link.
Join us for a captivating evening as we bring together two iconic actors who have both portrayed the legendary character Sulu in the Star Trek universe. “A Tale of Two Sulus” features George Takei and John Cho in a dynamic conversation that delves into their shared legacy as Starfleet’s esteemed helmsman. Beyond their roles in Star Trek, Takei and Cho are celebrated authors of graphic novels and passionate advocates for social justice. This event promises an engaging exploration of their diverse careers, creative endeavors, and the impactful contributions they have made to important causes. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear from two trailblazing artists whose work continues to inspire and resonate across generations.
![](https://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/TWO-SULUS-hero-sulus-giacchino-584x292.jpg)
(5) COLLISION AWARDS. Animation Magazine has the list of “Animation and Motion Design Winners for the Inaugural Collision Awards”.
[The] Collision Awards, which honor animation across all disciplines (marketing and communications, commercials, TV, film, experimental, game and XR), were announced this morning. The awards honor work by studios, production companies, brands, agencies and individuals with a varied list of categories specifically focused on the intersection of creativity and technical skills unique to this community and inclusive of everyone working in the medium of animation and motion design.
The “Collision Awards 2024 Winner Reel” doesn’t identify what works the various clips come from, but it’s fun to watch.
(6) COMING TO FILM FESTIVALS. “Impressive Full Trailer for ‘Escape Attempt’ – A Cerebral Sci-Fi Short” explains FirstShowing.net.
“We’re here to help them survive. We’re here to free them.” Aggressive has revealed an official trailer for an indie sci-fi short film creation called Escape Attempt, from filmmakers Dan Shapiro & Alex Topaller. This is a full-on, 30 minute hard sci-fi film, which is also being pitched a series pilot. It already premiered at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival last year and won a Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. No idea when it will be out in full to watch, but it’s showing at the Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal next this summer. A soldier escapes from a WWII concentration camp. Once he is out, he finds himself on an unknown planet in an unknown future controlled by a homicidal alien race….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 17, 1954 – J. Michael Straczynski, 70.
By Paul Weimer: For all the trouble the series had in getting produced, and getting aired, and me finding it on the dial when it was moved yet again, J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 is one of the defining SFF series in my science fiction diet and education.
Is it a perfect show? No, and part of that is the capricious nature of television and the “unexpected” fifth season which leaves that season weaker than the others. And frankly, I do like Bruce Boxleitner much better as Captain Sheridan than I do Michael O’Hare in the first season as Commander Sinclair. I can kind of see where Straczynski was going to possibly go with Sinclair had he been allowed to do so and he gets it most of the way there (my theory: Babylon Squared would have been a fifth season show, and so Sinclair ends his time here by going back and becoming Valen, after defeating the Shadows). But what we got is pretty darned special to me. I’m on my third iteration of having physical media of the shows (four if you count me trying to videotape episodes back in the 90’s).
![](https://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/together-we-will-go-straczynskibanner-768x462-1-584x351.jpg)
The post Babylon 5 series Straczynski works are of course a mixed bag. The movies are a mixed bag to be sure. Crusade had some interesting ideas but never got a chance to actually do its thing. I did highly enjoy the animated Babylon 5 movie, The Road Home. I honestly don’t think it works except for deep Babylon 5 fans, but that’s me, so it did feel like coming home.
Of course, one can’t talk about Straczynski without mentioning his huge impact on a number of different comic runs. I suspect that for a lot of fans, Babylon 5 is off to the side, forgotten. Instead, his fans can talk endlessly about his numerous comic projects and runs. It is his runs with Squadron Supreme, Spiderman, Superman, and a number of others (mostly recently, a new take on Captain America) that for a whole slew of fans defines what Straczynski is a writer.
I only found out years later after the fact that he was a writer on a weird cartoon I watched in the 1980’s. No, not He-Man, although he wrote for them and was one of the minds behind the original She-Ra. No, the strange and weird and wondrous Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which had the titular character fight malevolent plant creatures…in SPAAACE. What can I say, the 1980’s were weird, man. But it goes to show the wide breadth and interests of Straczynski’s work.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Speed Bump warns that the picture has left the attic.
- Wizard of Id knows people have heard this motif before!
(9) WHATCHAMACALLIT. “’Alien: Earth’: FX’s ‘Alien’ Series Gets Official Title” – Variety has the story.
FX‘s upcoming “Alien” series has a new title, according to network boss John Langraf and showrunner Noah Hawley: “Alien: Earth.”
… “Alien: Earth” serves as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” which kicked off a franchise that is now comprised of eight films. Alongside Hawley’s series, a new film titled “Alien: Romulus” is set to debut later this summer….
(10) POSTER CHILDREN. Collider presents “All 11 ‘Star Wars’ Movie Posters, Ranked”.
…Not counting the animated Clone Wars movie, there have been 11 movies in the Star Wars series to date: nine encompassing the Skywalker Saga, and two spin-off movies. The posters for all of those are ranked below, based partly on how well they tie to the film they’re attached to, but based mostly on how visually striking they look overall. To those who might disagree, too bad, because “I am the Senate” and have “unlimited power.”
Collider says the worst poster is the one for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
![](https://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/star-wars_-the-rise-of-skywalker-2019-poster-584x876.jpg)
There’s a horse on the poster for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but no room was given to Carrie Fisher, even though she was rather confusingly first billed, owing to prior footage of her being incorporated into the movie. Princess Leia still plays a part in the film, and was likely to be given a bigger one had Fisher not sadly passed away. Han and Luke were featured prominently on other sequel trilogy movie posters, but maybe there was a good reason not to feature Leia here.
There’s a goofy blaster round visible, thanks to Poe (a running theme across the two worst Star Wars posters), Zorii Bliss is featured way too prominently for a character who does basically nothing, and even the apparent clashing of two lightsabers looks clunky. Kylo Ren’s helmet is there, and presumably another Kylo Ren is holding that red lightsaber? And the placement of the Millennium Falcon between Rey and Kylo looks dreadful. This one’s pretty bad overall; a lackluster poster for a lacking (and overlong) movie.
(11) KEEP IT UP. “Former Space Agency Leaders Horrified by Plan to Destroy Space Station, Say It Would Be Easier to Save It” reports Futurism.
…The aging orbital outpost’s demise has been in the works for years now, with NASA hoping to destroy it by 2030, marking the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation in Earth’s orbit.
And not everybody’s happy with the plan. Jean-Jacques Dordain, who was the director general of the European Space Agency when the station was being built, and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin say its life should be extended instead, giving future scientists a chance to continue studying outer space.
“As two among many builders of ISS, we recommend to those in charge to consider other options than destroying” the station, Dordain told Forbes in an interview.
Instead, he argued, the ISS should be transferred “to future generations… leaving them to decide” its fate, he added.
To do it, Dordain and Griffin argue SpaceX’s deorbit vehicle should be used to rescue the station, not destroy it. Such a rocket would increase the ISS’s altitude, not lower it, allowing it to enter a stable orbit much farther from the Earth.
In an open letter published by SpaceNews earlier this month, the two space agency legends argued that boosting the ISS “from its present 400-kilometer altitude to an 800-kilometer altitude circular orbit requires a boost of about 220 meters per second, about the same as required for precise deorbit control.”…
(12) WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This student has designed and built a model rocket using standard Estes solid fuel rocket motors that can takeoff and land vertically. He designed a two-axis gimbal so that he would have thrust vector control plus the microcontroller and software to integrate sensor data and drive the gimbal to keep the rocket vertical. Separate Estes motors were used for ascent and decent. He also designed landing gear to absorb the shock of any slight off-vertical landing. “High School Student Makes Model Rocket That Can Land Vertically, Like A Falcon 9 Booster” at IFL Science.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day (and night) Daniel Dern.]
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(3) So, Musk wants to help parents crush their kids. Running away to Texas, where X can be more vicious.
(11) I think we should at least know what we’re replacing it with, before we destroy it.
(2) Not a fan of the early 80’s, culturally and politically…
(3) “Marks a new spot” is dead on. Sort of like a dog at a fence post. And I’m waiting for the power outage that takes hq for Xtwit down…
(4) If I were on the other side of the country… haven’t heard Cho speak politically, but I’d love to hear Takei.
Birthday: and a happy birthday to him. I remember when he was a program item at Worldcons. And B5 still may be the best SF film, and yeah, I’m biased – how many other films had a union play an important part in the first season?
(10) I liked the Rise of Skywalker, but that poster is terrible. Was it done by someone’s kid, that wanted to do art, but failed college?
(11) Can we have a supersize GoFundMe to keep it up?
(12) Damn good of him. Hmm… I suddenly get a flash of October Sky….
11) We should not destroy the ISS, especially not without a plan for a replacement. Besides, the fate of the ISS is not for NASA alone to decide, since the station was a joint project. ESA, JAXA, CSA and Roscosmos deserve a say as well.
Hiring that piece of shit Musk to destroy the ISS is even worse.
(3) I used to be in love with space travel and committed to the need for humanity to spread out into the universe for our own survival. In the last few years I have changed my mind – there are people we should not be inflicting on the universe. And unfortunately, they are in the forefront of space exploration.
(2) The Golden State’s new statute, AB1955, specifically protects teachers, forbidding any school from requiring them to notify parents if a student starts using different pronouns, a new name, or otherwise identifies as trans.
As Apartheid Clyde is infamously anti-trans, including against his own daughter, his latest tantrum amply reminds us in the San Francisco region that Twitter is about the least valued firm in town, that it won’t be missed, and that nothing of value will be lost. (This will suck for the remaining local employees, of course.) Perhaps SpaceX, being moved out of Hawthorne in the L.A. area, at some point in the future can be liberated and fumigated.
(2) That’s a snotty and snooty review, innit? It’s just made me interested in the book, because I spent a whole lot of time in the theater that summer (Ah for the days you could afford to see a movie several times).
(3) Welp, since Elon hates his trans kid, paying taxes (Texas has no state income tax), and little things like environmental and worker protections, is anyone surprised? Good thing he’s got all those batteries for the many times the power grid goes down there.
(4) Would attend if it was in the other half of the state.
(5) It gets weirder: JMS was a writer/producer for “Murder She Wrote” before B5, and even at that point, we were all “The science fiction guy? … huh, gotta make a living, I guess.” He went to many a con on the West Coast, like Baycon, his “home” con Loscon, and Westercon. Always entertaining.
Most people prefer Sheridan to Sinclair, but the reason for the needed replacement is sad.
(11) Can we get a new one first?
mark wrote:
I thought I was the only science fiction fan who also read Homer Hickam, too.
He wrote informatively of Americana/a real life version of growing up like the teens in Heinlein’s Rocketship Galileo but fictionalised somewhat or a little, I’m not wording it accurately but if you also read the book or watched the movie; I hope you get my meaning.
I remember being stunned years later that JMS wrote so many of the cartoons I used to love as a kid – He-Man, She-Ra, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors – and then went on to create Babylon 5, which I loved as a young adult.Babylon 5 actually had a remarkable number of JMS’ former cartoon compatriots on its writing staff like Larry DiTillio, who introduced a generation to cosmic horror by including Lovecraftian monsters in He-Man, She-Ra and Jayce.
@lurkertype Yeah, I didn’t want to get into all of that, because it IS sad.
Count me as another fan of Homer Hickam
3) Musk/Twitter/X’s move from California to Texas recalls the old Will Rogers crack about how the Dust Bowl-era refugees from Oklahoma (i.e., the “Okies”), by migrating to the “promised land” of California, “raised the average intelligence level in both states.” Wonder if some X employees are thinking similar thoughts.
(11) I think people are underestimating just how old the ISS is, and how far past its original service life it already is. The oldest module was manufactured in 1985. Everything is dependent on everything else, nothing was really designed to be detached, and it’s not feasible to swap out the core components
The ISS is a spectacular achievement, and I’m personally proud to have contributed to it (in a very, very, minor way), but it’s functionally done.
If Musk thinks he’ll pay less taxes in Texas, well bless his heart. Yes, we don’t have a state income tax, but we tax everything else. Property taxes, regressive sales taxes, corporate taxes (which Gov Asshat will probably waive for him), etc. Studies have shown we pay more in total taxation in TX than people do in CA.
(3) Not at all surprising. Musk clearly thinks that children are animate pieces of meat owned by their parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks that they should be owned forever, given how much he appears to like slavery. He’s also angry that his trans child disowned him. The more harm he can do to LGBTQ people, especially trans people, the better he seems to like it.
I wonder what the people who scream “parents rights” about being able to punish and torture their trans children think about parents who support their trans children? (I speculate: “They are Groomers! Take their children away and lock them away in camps where we can torture them into following our orders!”)
12) That is impressive.
Yes, but I’m willing to bet Texas is striking a deal with him. It’s not as though anyone can object after all.
I’m sure Musk would never impulsively jump into announcing something without first thinking it through carefully. Or sign a binding contract for a joke price. No, no, not Elon…
Someone on Twitter had the brilliant response, “All his X’s moved to Texas.”
@Troyce
California collects $9,229 in state and local tax collections per capita.
Texas collects $4,822 in state and local tax collections per capita.
https://taxfoundation.org/location/california/
https://taxfoundation.org/location/texas/
Texas tax climate for businesses is rated #13 in the US, California is rated #48.
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/state/2024-state-business-tax-climate-index/
Hi, RickM. Apatheid Clyde? Or as Charlie Stross has it, Dilbert Stark.
LurkerType: I wasn’t reading that back then. It worked out really well, when the Earth Alliance Senators were pissed at him because instead of crushing the union, he made deals with them.
MixMat: Not hardly. And I should really read Rocket Boys. On the other hand, I only buy a DVD if I intend to watch it more than once. I own October Sky.
Omnes, re the ISS: so the first part went up in the eighties. Voyager I. And the rover on Mars that’s 15 YEARS into its 90 DAY mission. NASA builds them to last, when it can. (And my late ex, Dian Hardison, worked on Shuttle, and Station, and a lot of others, including getting one of NASA’s highest awards for her work on Chandra.)
Bill: yes… but how much of that taxation is income tax? Mean that falls heaviest on the wealthier and wealthy corporations, rather than on the poor? Blanket numbers like that are meaningless.
Did anyone else notice that Rocket Boys is an anagram of October Sky
@2 (again): Anthony Lane seems to have a problem with theory of mind if he can’t comprehend how people can love both Star Wars and Alien. They’re both good, entertaining movies!
@rochrist: You know he’s getting all sorts of sweet deals which will further enrich him and impoverish the citizens of Texas. No taxes for him, and sales tax on things he buys is much less onerous than it is for the vast majority of people. It’s so high that the state “magnanimously” has one weekend a year where back to school supplies don’t have sales tax — which is about the only way they actually support families. Like @Rick Moen said, no one in this area will miss him; it’s not like we don’t have plenty of other, bigger companies that aren’t run by complete asshats.
@mark: Plus California manages to keep the lights on, the air and water as clean as possible in these days, and doesn’t go mental because Hispanic people lived here before it was the US. Or whines about the Asian population, or the LGBTQ+ one, or the non-fundie. Both the Senators were women for years, though we only have one now; our previous one is serving as Vice-President. The taxes on higher earning people and corporations are more than the ones on regular folk –which is like it was back in the days of that woke Commie radical Eisenhower. Giving businesses tax breaks instead of real people is wrong.
So if a cruel racist, sexist, fascist, Putin-supporting transphobe who got his money via apartheid wants to leave, no big deal. Good riddance. I hope the local groupies and their Cyberstucks move with him. The Chinese and other EV car makers (including Chevy and Ford, ffs) are fixin’ to eat his lunch soon anyway.
Andrew (not Werdna) on July 18, 2024 at 3:50 pm said:
I don’t remember if it being mentioned in the book or movie promos(DVD cover) but it’s in the Wikipedia page/Homer hickam’s website now.
I knew it around the time of reading the book/watching the DVD, so maybe it’s in the foreword or introduction?
@mark
Homer Hickam’s writing is an acquired taste to me, I read Rocket Boys and the sequels but not his later works(maybe Back to the Moon, all borrowed from the library in the 00s). It gave an inside look into real life teens who were like the ones in Heinlein’s Rocketship Galileo as I wrote earlier(I don’t remember if anyone in Rocket Boys read sf, or how it was they got into rocketry this long after I last read ’em maybe/almost 20 years ago now, maybe Andrew not Werdna remembers/read it more recently)
Rocket Boys was based on a short article from Smithsonian in 1995:
The Big Creek Missile Agency.
The anagram is on purpose. Publicity when the movie released said that the producers didn’t like “Rocket Boys” as a title, and one of them anagrammed it and came up with “October Sky”.
@MixMat
“I don’t remember if anyone in Rocket Boys read sf”
Rocket Boys, p. 11:
“I fell in love with his books, filled as they were with not only great adventures but scientists and engineers who considered the acquisition of knowledge to be the greatest pursuit of mankind. When I finished all the Verne books in the library, I became the first in line for any book that arrived written by modern science-fiction writers such as Heinlein, Asimov, van Vogt, Clarke, and Bradbury.”
@bill
October Sky was overlooked/not shown in cinemas here in S.E.A(at least I never noticed it before the DVD was out).
I also never read the Smithsonian article(but Hickam’s website has a screen shot/full article maybe).
Thanks, Bill for the info.