(1) EXPANSE GETS FIFTH SEASON. The Expanse has been renewed for Season 5 at Amazon reports Variety.
The announcement was made during the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Saturday. Season 4 of the series is set to debut on Dec. 13.
“The Expanse” aired its first three seasons on Syfy, with the cable networking having cancelled the series back in 2019. Shortly after it was cancelled, it was reported that Amazon was in talks to continue the series, which is produced and fully financed by Alcon Television Group.
(2) SF AUTHOR’S PREDICTION FULFILLED. A writer for Britain’s Private Eye rediscovered Norman Spinrad’s Agent of Chaos (1967) with its prescient comments about another political leader named Boris Johnson.
(3) SIX WILL GET YOU ONE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] At The Atlantic, contributing writer Dr. Yascha Mounk (Johns Hopkins University associate professor and German Marshall Fund senior fellow) has his own ideas on “How Not to Run a Panel” (tagline: “Panel discussions can be very boring, but they don’t have to be if you follow these six rules.”).
I could write a whole book about the panels that have gone wrong in particularly strange or hilarious fashion: the one where the moderator fell asleep. The one where the opening statements lasted longer than the time allotted for the whole event. The one, high up on the 10th floor, when the acrobatic window washer stole the show.
These exotic horrors notwithstanding, I disagree with Leo Tolstoy: Every unhappy panel is unhappy in some of the same ways.
Mind you, he’s talking about academic panels (his field is political science), but one wonders how much his advice crosses over to convention panels. He elaborates on each of his six points:
1. Don’t have more than four people onstage.
2. Keep introductions to a minimum.
3. Ax the opening statements.
4. Guide the conversation.
5. Cut off the cranks.*
6. Pick panelists who have something to say to one another.
* NB: He’s talking about cranks in the audience. He doesn’t seem to consider cranks on the panel.
(4) THE VERDICT. Camestros Felapton reports from the scene: “Michael Z Williamson’s Wikipedia page has not been deleted”.
For those keeping score, the Michael Z Williamson article on Wikipedia has not been deleted after a long and fractious discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2019_July_21#Michael_Z._Williamson
The outcome of the deletion discussion was ‘no consensus’ i.e. notability wasn’t decided one way or another. This was mainly because of the brigade of trolls who descended on the discussion at Williamson’s request.
While the Wikipedia is keeping the article, the record of the debate preserves these additional facts:
I note that the subject of this article, Michael Z. Williamson, has edited Wikipedia as Mzmadmike. He has been banned from Wikipedia as a result of a community discussion that concluded that Williamson has disrupted Wikipedia through his edits as a Wikipedia user and through comments on social media, which (according to the community discussion) have included canvassing, legal threats (admin-only diff) and harassment of Wikipedians. This has no bearing on the outcome of this deletion discussion, because having an article is not an indication of merit (as a person, author or otherwise), but only of what Wikipedia calls “notability“, i.e., being covered in some detail by reliable sources. But it bears mentioning here as a context of what may be necessary future administrative actions to protect the article and Wikipedia from further disruption.
(5) THE MEN WHO SOLD THE MOON. The New York Times profiles the conflicting family views behind an auction that has already yielded $16.7 million in sales: “‘Would Dad Approve?’ Neil Armstrong’s Heirs Divide Over a Lucrative Legacy”.
Those sales by the brothers, who also pursued a newly disclosed $6 million wrongful death settlement over their father’s medical care, have exposed deep differences among those who knew Neil Armstrong about his legacy — and what he would have wanted.
Some relatives, friends and archivists find the sales unseemly, citing the astronaut’s aversion to cashing in on his celebrity and flying career and the loss of historical objects to the public.
“I seriously doubt Neil would approve of selling off his artifacts and memorabilia,” said James R. Hansen, his biographer. “He never did any of that in his lifetime.”
(6) ERB-DOM ANNUAL GATHERING. Burroughs fans will hold DUM-DUM 2019 in Willcox, AZ from August 1-4.
(7) IN THE LID. Alasdair Stuart’s latest, newly BFS Award-nominated “The Full Lid for 26th July 2019″ includes a look at the first three episodes of The Space Race. An epic dramatized account of the birth and evolution of crewed spaceflight it starts in the future, takes in Gagarin, Armstrong and the rest of the past and throws light on some surprising elements of the story.
As does the deeply eccentric Apollo 11 anniversary coverage. Says Stuart, “I was especially impressed with the choices made by a BBC movie about the flight and the little moments of humanity we glimpse outside the history books in Channel 4’s programming.”
He also salutes “the monarch of the kitchen warriors, the king of the B movie and the crown prince of charming villainy, the one, the only Rutger Hauer. Rest well, sir.”
The Full Lid is free and comes out every Friday.
(8) DRAGON ANATOMY. From the New York Times Magazine: “Judge John Hodgman on Whether a Tail Is Part of the Butt” (January 17).
“Paul writes: My wife, Samantha, and her grandmother Gigi have a disagreement about whether a creature’s tail is part of his butt. Gigi says that because poop can get stuck in a butt, it is part of the butt. Sam argues that a tail only starts at the butt. Are tails butts? (Specifically a dragon’s tail, which is what sparked this argument.)
JOHN HODGMAN SAYS: “What a surprise twist at the end! Before we walked through this wardrobe into fantasy land, I was confident in my ruling: tails are NOT butts, as they have specific balance and display functions. And also let’s face it: Poop can get on anything. But as I am no expert on dragon anatomy, I turned to the actual George R.R. Martin, whose number I actually have, who reports: ‘Poop can also get stuck to a dragon’s leg, but that does not make it part of the butt. Dragon poop is hot, by the way. Fire hazard.'”
Martin Morse Wooster sent the link with a postscript: “How many points do I get for finding George R.R. Martin’s opinions on ‘dragon poop?’”
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born July 28, 1866 — Beatrix Potter. Probably best known for Tales of Peter Rabbit but I’d submit her gardening skills were second to none as well as can be seen in the Green Man review of Marta McDowell’s Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life. (Died 1943.)
- Born July 28, 1926 — T. G. L. Cockcroft. Mike has his obituary here. Not surprisingly none of his works are currently in-print.
- Born July 28, 1928 — Angélica Gorodischer, 91. Argentinian writer whose Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was got by translated by Ursula Le Guin into English.
- Born July 28, 1931 — Jay Kay Klein. I’ll direct you to Mike’s excellent look at him here. I will note that he was a published author having “On Conquered Earth” in If, December 1967 as edited by Frederik Pohl. I don’t think it’s been republished since. (Died 2012.)
- Born July 28, 1941 — Bill Crider. Though primarily a writer of horror fiction, he did write three stories in the Sherlock Holmes metaverse: The Adventure of the Venomous Lizard, The Adventure of the St. Marylebone Ghoul and The Case of the Vanished Vampire. He also wrote a Sookie Stackhouse short story, “Don’t Be Cruel” in the Charlaine Harris Meta-verse. (Died 2018.)
- Born July 28, 1966 — Larry Dixon, 53. Husband of Mercedes Lackey who collaborates with her on such series as SERRAted Edge and The Mage Wars Trilogy. He contributed artwork to Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons source books, including Oriental Adventures, Epic Level Handbook, and Fiend Folio. Dixon and Lackey are the 2020 Worldcon’s Author Guests of Honour.
- Born July 28, 1968 — Rachel Blakely, 51. You’ll most likely know her as Marguerite Krux on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as that was her longest running genre role. She was briefly Alcmene on Young Hercules, and played Gael’s Mum on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And showed as Penelope in the “Ulysses” episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.
- Born July 28, 1969 — Tim Lebbon, 50. For my money his best series is The Hidden Cities one he did with Christopher Golden though his Relics series with protagonist Angela Gough is quite superb as well. He dips into the Hellboy universe with two novels, Unnatural Selection and Fire Wolves, rather capably.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Pearls Before Swine succinctly explains social media.
- The Flying McCoys shows one of the problems faced by the crime scene team after King Kong was shot down.
(11) LE GUIN ON TV. This Friday night on PBS the program American Masters is highlighting Ursula Le Guin. That’s when they’ll air the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin documentary.
(12) JOHNSON’S WALK. In the Washington Post, Hau Chu interviews Richard Kelly, whose obscure 2006 sci-fi film Southland Tales might have been pivotal in advancing the film career of Dwayne Johnson: “The delightfully bonkers film that turned the Rock into Dwayne Johnson”.
…Survey a theater of moviegoers and they all might tell you a different interpretation of what “Southland Tales” is actually about. The short version is that a nuclear explosion has gone off in Texas, thrusting the United States into World War III. Taking place in 2008 Los Angeles at the end of the world, the film consequently delves into the post-Iraq War militarization of the country, the rise of the surveillance state and, naturally, rifts on the space-time continuum.
The movie, which would go on to become a critical and commercial failure, contains a who’s who of character actors, as well as once- and soon-to-be notable stars. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a porn star who simultaneously has a hit single (“Teen Horniness is Not a Crime”) and accurately foretells the imminent apocalypse in a screenplay she’s written. Amy Poehler delivers a slam poetry performance in her last seconds on Earth before she is gunned down by a racist cop played by Jon Lovitz. Justin Timberlake, in a confounding, drugged-out dream sequence, lip-syncs the Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done.”
To steer his often messy but engaging opus — and eventual cult classic — director Richard Kelly needed a truly magnetic force. Enter Johnson.
(13) BRYAN FULLER. [Item by Carl Slaughter.]According to Midnight’s Edge and Nerdrotic, Bryan Fuller pitched the Picard series concept to CBS as one of 5 possible series. Fuller also approached Jeri Ryan and Brent Spiner about starring in it. Fuller has yet to get any credit it for the Picard show.
(14) ONE VOTER’S DECISION. Rich Horton rolls out his “Hugo Ballot Thoughts, Short Fiction, 2019” on Strange at Ecbatan. Which actually begins with his argument against having AO3 up in the Best Related Works category. But he soon veers back to the topic, such as these comments about Best Novella:
Of these only Artificial Condition was on my nomination ballot, but I didn’t get to The Black God’s Drums until later, and it would have been on my ballot. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach struck me as impressively ambitious – probably the most ambitious of the nominees – but I think the ending is a mess. Still a story worth reading. The Tea Master and the Detective is nice work, not quite brilliant. And, I say with guilt, I haven’t read Beneath the Sugar Sky, which I suspect will be very fine work.
(15) BUTTERFAT CHANCE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Author, crafter, and freelance journalist Bonnie Burton has a knack for spotting odd news—her CNET article “NASA’s Apollo 11 astronauts honored in… a butter sculpture” in this case. (Tagline: “Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins look just as legendary carved in butter at the Ohio State Fair.”)
If you want to celebrate NASA‘s 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, you might as well do it with butter.
At this year’s Ohio State Fair, visitors can see highly detailed, life-sized butter sculptures of the Apollo 11 moon crew — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
There’s also a separate butter sculpture of Armstrong in his spacesuit saluting the American flag while standing near the lunar module Eagle.
Armstrong — who was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio — is considered a state icon for his trip to the moon. In addition, Armstrong bought a dairy farm in Ohio after leaving NASA in 1971.
You can see the entire butter sculpture unveiling ceremony posted by The Columbus Dispatch on YouTube.
(16) EN FUEGO. Space is getting hotter…but not that much (AP: “New Mexico chile plant selected to be grown in space”). The first fruiting plant to be grown on the International Space Station will be the Española Improved hot pepper. However, it’s said to max out at a relatively modest 2,000 Scoville units, well less than the typical Jalapeño much less really hot hot peppers.
A hybrid version of a New Mexico chile plant has been selected to be grown in space as part of a NASA experiment.
The chile, from Española, New Mexico, is tentatively scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station for testing in March 2020, the Albuquerque Journal reports .
A NASA group testing how to produce food beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and the chile plant was created with input from Jacob Torres — an Española native and NASA researcher.
Torres said the point of sending the chiles into space is to demonstrate how NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat – which recreates environmental needs for plant growth like CO2, humidity and lighting – works not only for leafy greens, but for fruiting crops, as well.
(17) TRAILER BREAKDOWN. New Rockstars answers questions you didn’t even know you had about the newest Star Trek: Picard trailer.
Star Trek Picard Trailer from Comic Con teases the return of Data, Seven of Nine, the Borgs, and more nods to The Next Generation and Voyager! Where will this new Picard series on CBS All Access take Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) after the events of Star Trek Nemesis and First Contact? Erik Voss gets an assist from friend and Trekkie Marina Mastros, who breaks down this Star Trek trailer shot by shot for all the Easter Eggs you may have overlooked! What is the secret identity of the new mystery woman, Dahj? Why are the Romulans experimenting with Borg technology? Has Data really returned, or is it his alternate version, B-4?
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Jennifer Hawthorne, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
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1) Woohoo!
(and first)
This title makes me so happy.
(3) “* NB: He’s talking about cranks in the audience. He doesn’t seem to consider cranks on the panel.”
That seems like a pretty big exception (though, of course, dealing with cranks on the panel would take a very different strategy than dealing with cranks in the audience).
[click]
12) I heard “Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime” on Jersey City’s noted freeform station WFMU. Ken Freedman, the station manager, played it on his show last week. It is a definite trip in the “deliberately ‘bad’ tune that somehow manages to succeed” category.
9). Bill Crider wrote a lot of mystery fiction.
(1) I’m not much for squeeing, but I felt like jumping up and down when I heard that.
I haven’t read the fifth book yet (if they’re sticking to one season per book). –Quick detour to my library’s website to place the 4th and 5th books on hold.– But from what I’ve heard about it, I’m glad it will be on Amazon where presumably they will have a much bigger special-effects budget.
Bill Crider was not “primarily a horror writer.” He was primarily a mystery writer who wrote some horror and sf.
Clickity
Some news of paleontology:
College Student Discovers 65-Million-Year-Old Triceratops Skull
and
Dinosaur bone: Scientists uncover giant femur in France
The skull is partial, as typical; the femur, unusually, is a complete bone 2 meters long.
(11) PBS show schedules can vary from station to station–I see that we’re not getting here in Portland, (Ursula’s home town) until Sunday, August 11th.
(On the other hand, we were lucky enough to see the world premiere–also here in Portland. I urge everyone to watch it.)
So I’ve started to play Wizards Unite after Pokémon Go started to feel more like work to me. And today I found out that some of the games collectibles can be only be caught at around dawn. Which is around 4:30 in the morning. Not the way to draw in new players, at least not me.
(4) for those keeping score, the parallel discussion about tank marmot resolved as “Keep”
@Hampus,
I’ve seen other friends play Wizards Unite & have decided that one addiction is enough, so I’ll keep playing PoGo only. And now that Team Rocket is out, I don’t have to delete potions anymore. 😉
5). Having just spent too much time,and physical and emotional energy trying to clear out a friend’s place and ensure that things went where they were supposed to, my first thought is that if Mr. Armstrong wanted his stuff to go to a museum, then he should have put it in a will or donated it himself.
If he left it to his kids without any kind of direction, then they get to decide.
And anyone who gets the pinched-mouth look and starts talking about “what he would have wanted” needs to back off.
Especially archivists–the man had already donated some 400 boxes of papers, for god’s sake.
I do have to wonder if there would be this much fuss if they’d only gotten a couple of thousand for it.
Harold Osler: my first thought is that if Mr. Armstrong wanted his stuff to go to a museum, then he should have put it in a will or donated it himself. If he left it to his kids without any kind of direction, then they get to decide.
While the scientist in me says, oh, it would have been nice if this had gone to museums all over the country (or world), so that everyone could see a little bit of it no matter where they live, the pragmatist in me says that Armstrong was no idiot, and if he’d wanted that, he would have done it.
I think it’s far more likely that he regarded this as the inheritance he left to his kids, and he had the right to make that choice.
(1) “EXPANSE GETS FIFTH SEASON. ” Rocinante gets engulfed in tectonic events and everybody has to hide from ash clouds.
Camestros Felapton: Rocinante gets engulfed in tectonic events and everybody has to hide from ash clouds.
That was exactly my first reaction when I read that headline! 😀
(2) I dropped a copy of the story to Dave Langford who pointed out that here’s already written on the book when the Guardian spotted it in 2005
https://ansible.uk/sfx/sfx131.html
5) My kid’s brilliant mom took on a book project by a local test pilot some years back, for which Neil Armstrong wrote the introduction. My understanding is that he was glad to write it, but wanted it to be unused in promotion, which it was. If he had that level of concern about this, I bet he knew what he was doing when he left his effects to his heirs.
That said, I sure wish they’d made a less remunerative choice. Surely they could’ve gotten a nice payoff from some other method. But that’s not my decision to make.
Like @OlavRokne, I was pleased by this pixel scroll title.
One of my credentials is missing: she somehow slipped out of the house some time Friday. We have called Animal Rescue for Belmont and other nearby towns; contacted the people who put in her microchip; and put up some posters, We’re also working with an animal rescue person who saw the Belmont Animal Control post about her on Facebook.
If anyone sees a lost-looking gray tabby, about six years old, anywhere in or near Belmont, Mass., please let me know. (Realistically, posting here really a request for sympathy, given how spread out Filers are.)
@ Vicki Rosenzweig –
I hope your credential comes home soon.
@Vicki —
Crossing my fingers for the safe return of your credential!
Credentials do go for a wander sometimes, so hopefully yours will be back soon Vicki.
We went to a festival the weekend before last, and while a neighbour did come in to feed the menagerie, only two of ours were about to greet us when we got in on Sunday. It was Wednesday before Thomas turned up, acting as though he had never been away.
@VIcki Rosenzweig: back when NESFA was meeting at the Belmont Lions’ Club, we could probably have turned out a force to go enticing; unfortunately that was 35 years ago. Here’s hoping some more-mundane method works.
@Vicki — My credentials & I are also hoping for a safe homecoming.
Meredith Moment: K.B. Wagers’ There Before the Chaos is $2.99.
Brief media consumption update: Finished John M. Ford’s Scholars of Night, which was excellent — I hadn’t realized when I first picked it up that it was going to be more of a Cold War spy thriller involving a lost Christopher Marlowe play — and started Gene Wolfe’s Devil in a Forest for the first time in a couple of decades.
And I watched The Wandering Earth on Netflix, which had physics that were a LITTLE more plausible than Space: 1999. but which was still a lot of fun.
@Vicki Rosenzweig, I wish you all sympathies and good luck. Don’t lose hope; one sister had her credential fall out of a window (first-floor; the screen failed) and return two weeks later thinner but unharmed.
Joe H. says Meredith Moment: K.B. Wagers’ There Before the Chaos is $2.99.
A truly amazing novel which does not require you to read the first trilogy set in this series as she tells you what you need to know about what has already happened while avoiding infodumps.
@Cat Eldridge — That’s good to know; I think K.B. Wagers is moving to the top of my when-it’s-time-for-some-space-opera stack.
Joe H. says to me: That’s good to know; I think K.B. Wagers is moving to the top of my when-it’s-time-for-some-space-opera stack.
It and Ancestral Night By Elizabeth Bear were the two best space opera novels that I read this year. The best before that was Reynold’s Elysium Fire which came out last year. I know the first two have sequels coming and I’m hoping Elysium Fire will as well.
I finished There Before The Chaos over the weekend and the first thing I did was look up when the sequel would be out. Early December, yay
BGrandrath notes I finished There Before The Chaos over the weekend and the first thing I did was look up when the sequel would be out. Early December, yay
Yeah it’s out just before Stross’ Invisible Sun, the next in his crossworld series, is out. That’s a good month for me.
Given the ending of There Before the Chaos, the sequel can’t come out soon enough.
Cora Buhlert says Given the ending of There Before the Chaos, the sequel can’t come out soon enough.
Quite so. She that with the first three novels as well. Her characters are believable, the society she’s created is fascinating and the story is great. What’s not to like?
Btw I’m listening now to Monica Bryne’s The Girl in The Road which definitely shares all of those desirable traits. Highly recommended! Oh and the narrators, Dioni Collins and Nazneen Contractor, are outstanding.
@Vicki: You have my wishes for a quick and safe return of your credential. A friend of mine who was a wizard with cats had a good suggestion. If you use a shampoo, conditioner, lotion or perfume regularly, mix some (or all) up in a spray bottle with water. Then spray some on bushes, curbs, etc at cat nose height so that you effectively have a trail leading to your house from several directions. Draw the trails further than you think you need because cats can roam much further than expected.
(15) Wouldn’t green cheese have been more appropriate?
Vicki, I’m sending good thoughts for the safe return of your credential.
Ooh, another very wrong spelling of Fred Pohl’s name, this time by Cat Eldridge. It’s not “Fredrick Pohl”, it’s Frederik Pohl. Not be confused with Fredric Brown, either.
And here I thought you never read my blog.
In fairness: I’m a huge fan of Pohl; I’ve written his name I don’t know how many times in various threads on various media over the years, and I still have to look up the spelling pretty much every time.
@Xtifr: I just call both Pohl and Brown “Fred”