Pixel Scroll 7/4/22 The Scroll Will Come Out Tomorrow, Bet Your Bottom Pixel That Tomorrow, There’ll Be Scrolls

(1) GREEN BONE GETS RED LIGHT. A TV series adaptation of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga will not be produced: “Peacock has canceled an award-winning fantasy epic and fans are up in arms” reports TechRadar.

Peacock has canceled its planned TV adaptation of bestselling and award-winning fantasy trilogy, The Green Bone Saga. 

The Universal-owned streaming service revealed in 2020 that it had begun developing the show, which was due to be based on the first novel in the series, Jade City. Dave Kalstein, who’d most recently overseen Bourne spin-off Treadstone, and Breck Eisner, director of Vin Diesel-led fantasy adventure The Last Witch Hunter and many episodes of The Expanse, were in the charge overseeing the series. 

However, The Green Bone Saga author Fonda J. Lee, revealed that Peacock executives have now changed their minds and will not be moving forward with their show. 

(2) NEARLY-FINAL WESTERCON MEMBERSHIP FIGURES. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] Assuming nobody shows up in the next 3 hours to buy an at-the-door membership or pick up their pre-registered badge, the numbers at “Membership Count by Location/Class – Westercon 74” are pretty much the final membership stats. (Includes breakout by country and state.)

Total Memberships all types: 338; Attending: 278; Child: 1; Supporting: 59

Badges picked up: 158 (57% of Attending+Child)

Meanwhile, the hoax issue of the Westercon 74 daily newzine has posted: Tonopah Telegraph issue Π.

(3) ALERT THE MEDIA! Congratulations to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller on collaborative Opus 100!

(4) A CLOUD OF WITNESS. The Hugos There podcast assembled a panel to discuss the 2022 Best Short Story Hugo finalists. The panelists are host Seth Heasley, Ann Spangler, Rob Tomshany, Amanda Wakaruk, Lisa McCarty, JW Wartick, Ivor Watkins, Cora Buhlert, Lori Anderson, Haley Zapal, Sarah Elkins, and Juan Sanmiguel. Here is the audio link. Or view on YouTube:

(5) 1940 ASF COVER RENEWED. The Conservation Center describes the restoration of an original pulp cover painting by Hubert Rogers: “Astounding Science (non) Fiction! Conserving a Pulp Fiction Painting”.

… “Astounding was the leading science fiction pulp magazine of the late 1930s and 1940s. The artist, Hubert Rogers, was their primary cover artist from the late 1930s until he left to return to his native Canada and assist in the war effort. The story this illustrates, “Space Guards,” was written by Philip Francis Nowlan. Nowlan’s name may not be remembered today, but in 1928 he created Buck Rogers.” The owner of this painting, a true pulp art and science fiction fan, found this Roger’s painting in need of conservation. “I bought this painting at an estate sale, where it had apparently been stored for decades in a closet. I don’t know how it ended up there – back then, pulp art often was given to folks who worked at the publisher, or given to science fiction conventions to be auctioned off to help raise money for the convention. Rogers was one of the few artists who did manage to get a great deal of his original art back. Obviously, it was in dire need of conservation, as it had suffered greatly over the years.”…

(6) ROOTS OF A CAREER. Oliver Brackenbury interviews David C. Smith in episode 44 of the So I’m Writing A Novel podcast: “Interview with David C. Smith (Part One)”.

David C. Smith is an author whose career began in the 1970’s during the second wave of sword & sorcery, he still writes to this very day, and Oliver felt very lucky to get the chance to have this epic, first-ever two-part interview with him!

In this first part we cover David’s original aspirations to work in film, the incredible role having the right English teacher can play in your life, discovering Conan, the real life model for Norman Bates, how Lord of the Rings helped David see Robert E Howard more clearly, the grounded nature of sword & sorcery and how it contrasts to make the weird elements shine brighter, too many elephants in too many towers, “when everything is special than nothing is”, the 70’s fanzine community and the role it played in David’s career…

(7) THE DAYS LINGER ON. The Cromcast continue their Howard Days recording with a recording of the “What’s Up with REH?” panel, where a representative of the Conan rights owners tells what is planned (Conan novels by big names like Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King or GRRM apparently, even though Sanderson and King are not at all suited to Conan): “Howard Days 2022 – Part 8 – What’s Up with REH?”

The panelists discuss the latest news regarding Howard publishing, entertainment and how his influence continues. Panelists include Joel Bylos, Paul Herman, Matt John, Fred Malmberg, Matt Murray, Steve Saffel, and Jay Zetterberg.

And the final installment from Howard Days is an interview with Matt John of the Rogues in the House podcast: “Howard Days 2022 – Part 9 – A Chat with Matt John of Rogues in the House!”

Hile, Cromrades! For our final episode from Howard Days 2022, we present a most excellent crossover event! In this recording from Saturday, June 11, Josh and Luke are joined by Matt John of Rogues in the House Podcast, Monolith Games, and Modiphius Entertainment!

(8) BIBLIOGRAPHIC DYNAMOS. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] At ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’, Martin Edwards talks about his work on indexing fiction magazines, including SFF mags: “Crime Indexes and Phil Stephensen-Payne”. I mostly know Edwards as a crime and mystery specialist — he’s the current president of the Detection Club, edits the British Library Crime Classics series and was chair of the CWA – but I had no idea he was also active in SFF.

…By now (2000), the Internet was beginning to be a “thing” so I decided to create a small (!) website that focussed on author bibliographies ( http://www.philsp.com/authors.html) and also had a simple list of which magazines had been indexed (and where).

By coincidence (“steam engine time”) Doug Ellis and John Locke had just produced their first checklist of pulps and Dave Pringle and Mike Ashley had produced a checklist of significant “fiction magazines”. With permission from all parties I merged these two lists and added all the SF magazines indexed in the various SF magazine indexes and produced the first pass of the magazine list part of the website ( http://www.philsp.com/magazines.html). Having expected to list a few hundred magazines at most, this had already grown to 4000 magazines (and has since grown to just under 11,000)….

(9) MEMORY LANE

1984 [By Cat Eldridge.] Call me a mercenary. Call me an assassin. Call me a villain. I am all that and more. My name’s John Gaunt, but out on the streets of Cynosure, I am called Grimjack — Grimjack

His first appearance was the tenth issue of Starslayer: The Log of the Jolly Roger as published by First Comics. He was created by John Ostrander and Timothy Truman, but the setting, the all-dimensional city of Cynosure, which plays an important role in the life and deaths of this character, predates him.

He, the mercenary with a heart of gold at times and very much not at other times, was the creation of writer John Ostrander and artist Timothy Truman. It was sold well enough to be spun off into its own series, lasting eighty-one issues, though First’s nasty bankruptcy, see the Conan debacle, prevented any new material from being published until 2005.

Cynosure crosses all the time lines so anything can happen. One of my favorite stories was the one involving the Really Big Rabbits, “Night of The Killer Rabbits” which if you’re interested, a Grimjack fan has detailed here. There’s a panel in that story where Grimjack, when told of the existence of these, errr, bunnies flatly refused to believe they exist. Oh they do.

Would any such series be complete without a bar full of weird characters including a drunk lizard? I think not. Our sort of hero owns Munden’s and he spends a lot of time there drinking and brooding. It’s run by Gordon Munden, the Manager who owns the bar following Gaunt’s first and, presumably, second death. Death isn’t permanent in this multiverse.

It’s a wonderfully weird series in which Grimjack gets into many adventures, both SF and not so SF. Yes, I’ve read the entire run of him, or least pretty much all of them save some of those early Starslayer appearances which I’d would dearly to get my hands on at a reasonable price. 

So if you’ve not read it yet I will recommend you do so.  It was resurrected, yes pun intended, in Grimjack: Killer Instinct and The Manx Cat in the Nineties, both excellent. (Those are quite superb introductions to the character and readily available.) The hardcover omnibuses, though not cheap, are stellar publications. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 4, 1883 — Rube Goldberg. Not genre, but certainly genre adjacent as I could argue that MacGyver is direct descendent of him. Born Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, he was a sculptor, author, cartoonist, engineer, and inventor who’s certainly best known for his very popular cartoons showing overly complex machines doing simple tasks in a terribly convoluted manner, hence the phrase “Rube Goldberg machines”. The X-Files episode titled “The Goldberg Variation” involved an apartment rigged as a Goldberg machine. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 4, 1901 — Guy Endore. American novelist and screenwriter whose 1933 The Werewolf of Paris novel holds the same position in werewolf literature as does Dracula does for vampire literature. It was filmed as The Curse of The Werewolf for which he wrote the screenplay. Stableford also praises his horror story, “The Day of the Dragon”. He worked on the screenplay for Mark of the Vampire starring Bella Lugosi. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 4, 1910 — Gloria Stuart. She was cast as Flora Cranley opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man in 1933, and 68 years later she played Madeline Fawkes in The Invisible Man series. She was in The Old Dark House as Margaret Waverton which is considered horror largely because Boris Karloff was in it. And she was in the time travelling The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan as well. (Died 2010.)
  • Born July 4, 1949 — Peter Crowther, 73. He is the founder (with Simon Conway) of PS Publishing where he’s editor now. He edited a series of genre anthologies that DAW published. And he’s written a number of horror novels of which I’d say After Happily Ever and By Wizard Oak are good introductions to him. He’s also done a lot of short fiction but I see he’s readily available in digital form for much of short fiction or novels at the usual digital suspects. 
  • Born July 4, 1960 — Joyce Agu, 62. Background characters are fascinating. She played Ensign Gates on the Next Generation, a role she did for forty-seven episodes! She later showed up as an Excelsior crew member in The Undiscovered Country thought it’s not certain it’s the same character. 
  • Born July 4, 1974 — Kevin Hanchard, 48. Canadian actor best known for his major role in Orphan Black as Detective Art Bell, whose partner’s suicide kicks off the whole show. He also had a significant role in the first season of The Expanse as Inspector Sematimba, Det. Miller’s old friend from Eros. Other genre roles include appearances in the movies Suicide Squad and the made-for-TV Savage Planet, and shows The StrainHemlock GroveWynonna Earp, and Impulse, among others. (Xtifr) 
  • Born July 4, 1977 — David Petersen, 45. Writer and illustrator of the brilliant Mouse Guard series. If you haven’t read it, do so — it’s that good and it’s still ongoing. It almost got developed as a film but got axed due to corporate politics. IDW published The Wind in The Willows with over sixty of his illustrations several years back. 

(11) CLICK ON THE INTERNOPE. “Nope: Viral website tours Jordan Peele’s movie amusement park” reports SYFY Wire. The website link: “Get out of this world at Jupiter’s Claim”.

With only two weeks and change before Jordan Peele’s Nope finally blows into theaters on an ill-omened wind, the clouds that’ve obscured a clear bird’s-eye view of Peele’s secret-shrouded horror flick are finally starting to part. Fans can now pan for buried nuggets of pre-release movie lore, thanks to a new viral website that mines Nope’s old west-style setting to tease a Gold Rush-era good time that’s pretty much guaranteed to go bad.

Moseying on over to the site brings guests to a family-friendly marketing come-on for Jupiter’s Claim, the movie’s fictional B-grade theme park celebrating the flaky, fake filmography of Nope’s former kid-cowboy star Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun). Now an opportunistic adult in the movie, Jupe’s still trapping wayward tourists who head up the park’s remote dusty trail…but as the film’s final trailer suggests, he delivers on the promise of an otherworldly spectacle that more than makes up for the price of admission….

Universal has dropped a number of behind-the-scenes clips recently – here’s one:

(12) DEMON PRINCES REVIVAL. In 2021, Jack Vance’s estate (Spatterlight Press), published Matthew Hughes’s Barbarians of the Beyond, an authorized companion novel to Vance’s iconic revenge series, The Demon Princes.  The book prompted George R.R. Martin to say, “Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack himself.”

Twenty years ago, five master criminals known as the Demon Princes raided Mount Pleasant to enslave thousands of inhabitants in the lawless Beyond. Now Morwen Sabine, a daughter of captives, has escaped her cruel master and returns to Mount Pleasant to recover the hidden treasure she hopes will buy her parents’ freedom.

But Mount Pleasant has changed. Morwen must cope with mystic cultists, murderous drug-smugglers, undercover “weasels” of the Interplanetary Police Coordinating Company, and the henchmen of the vicious pirate lord who owns her parents and wants Morwen returned. So he can kill her slowly…

Joining GRRM in praising Hughes’ novel are other major sff writers. David Gerrold says, “Lock the door, turn off the phone, get into a comfy chair, and deep-dive into a marvelous continuation of Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series. Matthew Hughes is a treasure and Barbarians of the Beyond is a terrific adventure.”  Robert J. Sawyer opines, “Matthew Hughes follows nimbly in Jack Vance’s footprints, then breaks some fresh trail. First-class space opera.”And Kurt Busiek is just as enthusiastic: “Engaging and enchanting…a fine companion adventure to Jack Vance’s The Demon Princes series, told with Matthew Hughes’s excellent sense of charm, ethical complexity and exotic worldbuilding. Let’s hope this is just the beginning!”

Available from Amazon and Amazon.ca.

(13) DON’T BLAME CTHULHU. Charles Fort would have been disappointed by the real answer: “Mysterious Incident of Fish Raining From The Sky May Have Been Solved”.

Did it rain fish in Texarkana, Texas/Arkansas, last December? Or did a massive gulp of cormorants spontaneously hurl their payloads? Sharon Hill, an independent researcher from Pennsylvania, and Paul Cropper, an author from Australia, investigated the odd phenomenon and have come to a conclusion: It was the regurgitating gulp….

(14) KEEP WATCHING THE WEBB. NASA says July 12 is the date we’ll get to see the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. This press release tells when and where to view them.

The public release of Webb’s first images and spectra is July 12 – now less than two weeks away! The Webb team has confirmed that that 15 out of 17 instrument modes are ready for science, with just two more still to go. As we near the end of commissioning, we wanted to let you know where you can see the first Webb science data and how to participate in the celebration of Webb science! Here are all the ways you can #UnfoldTheUniverse with Webb:

Countdown: How many minutes left? The official countdown is at https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/countdown.html

Watch: See the images revealed in real-time and hear from experts about the exciting results on NASA TV at 10:30am Eastern on July 12: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

View: Just interested in the amazing imagery? You will be able to find the first images and spectra at: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

(15) ARGON, AYE. In “3-D Printing Grows Beyond Its Novelty Roots” the New York Times throws out some impressive numbers.

The machines stand 20 feet high, weigh 60,000 pounds and represent the technological frontier of 3-D printing.

Each machine deploys 150 laser beams, projected from a gantry and moving quickly back and forth, making high-tech parts for corporate customers in fields including aerospace, semiconductors, defense and medical implants.

The parts of titanium and other materials are created layer by layer, each about as thin as a human hair, up to 20,000 layers, depending on a part’s design. The machines are hermetically sealed. Inside, the atmosphere is mainly argon, the least reactive of gases, reducing the chance of impurities that cause defects in a part.

The 3-D-printing foundry in Devens, Mass., about 40 miles northwest of Boston, is owned by VulcanForms, a start-up that came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has raised $355 million in venture funding. And its work force has jumped sixfold in the past year to 360, with recruits from major manufacturers like General Electric and Pratt & Whitney and tech companies including Google and Autodesk….

(16) MAN OF MYSTERY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Murdoch Mysteries — ‘Pendrick’s Planetary Parlour’ (S15 E20)”

In the 1890s [more like a few years into the new century by this episode], William Murdoch uses radical forensic techniques for the time, including fingerprinting and trace evidence, to solve some of the city’s most gruesome murders.

Even if you haven’t watching this show (S1E1 involved some of the Edison-Tesla AC/DC wars), this one’s a tech hoot, anticipating/using everything from Nigerian Prince scams to naught-video blackmail, encryption, backdoors, and more that I can’t offhand remember.

Other episodes have had everything from (was or appeared to be) moon launch cannons and hyperloop tunnels to Martian invasions, robots, time travel, with historic guests including Houdini, Sir Arthut Conan Doyle, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter and bunches more I can’t remember. (Including Mark Twain, played by William Shatner.)

(Toronto fan Yvonne Penney even had a walk-on in an episode that aired in 2013.)

(17) DR. EVIL’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURE. [Item by JJ.] In June 1999 Mike Myers released the movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. In it, his Dr. Evil villain character describes his megalomaniac plans for a time machine, which he calls “Time Machine”, and a laser, which he calls “The Alan Parsons Project”.

Part 1:

Part 2:

In September 1999, Alan Parsons released a new album with the theme of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine. The bonus track is a cut of the title song… remixed with samples of Dr. Evil speaking in it.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cora Buhlert, Kevin Standlee, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

25 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/4/22 The Scroll Will Come Out Tomorrow, Bet Your Bottom Pixel That Tomorrow, There’ll Be Scrolls

  1. First!

    May I just say that the Mouse Guard series is bloody brilliant and I love the mostly adorable characters in it? They are available from the usual suspects for very reasonable prices.

  2. (10) Joyce Agu and her then-husband Uchenna won CBS’ The Amazing Race way back in 2005. It wasn’t until after I’d seen her in it that I started noticing her as a bridge crew member in TNG reruns.

    (12) I ordered and received Barbarians of the Beyond about 6 months ago. It’s terrific. (I had read and enjoyed some Gaean Reach novels by Vance before, but none of the Demon Princes books. Barbarians requires no foreknowledge of them.)

  3. gottacook says Joyce Agu and her then-husband Uchenna won CBS’ The Amazing Race way back in 2005. It wasn’t until after I’d seen her in it that I started noticing her as a bridge crew member in TNG rerun

    The Trek series, particularly the post original series, are fascinating as they did use a lot of secondary characters that made a lot of appearances. We wouldn’t necessarily notice them but they were there and they helped make it look like there was an actual crew there. I know Babylon 5 did the same thing.

  4. Seconding recommendations of the excellent Mouse Guard.

    For non-US readers who may not know: Rube Goldberg is more-or-less the American equivalent of the UK’s Heath Robinson, especially in the way his name is used.

    As far as the MacGyver connection goes, though, I might argue that MacGyver is the opposite of Goldberg, creating simple, practical devices to achieve extraordinary goals, rather than the reverse. 🙂

  5. (9) Memory Lane. Thanks for revisiting John Gaunt/Grimjack. I was and remain a huge fan, for a lot of the reasons you noted. Great stories and great art, ranging from deadly serious to very silly and amusing. I hope I have read all of them.

  6. I note that a Munden’s Bar story featured the first appearance of Bill and Barry, the Heterodyne Boys, important characters in the backstory of the Hugo-winning webcomic Girl Genius. (Although their appearance and behavior were quite different from the characters in the webcomic; no doubt they were counterparts from an adjacent universe.)

  7. 12) I’ve read some of Hughes’ Dying Earth adjacent books and enjoyed them.

    I’ve been reconsuming the Demon Princes as they have been re-releasing them in audio. Once that is done, I should pick this book up to see how it compares…

  8. 7) Having listened to the Howard Days podcast, to clarify: There are no actual plans for Conan novels by Martin, King or Sanderson — the publisher said that they wanted to get Conan fiction from the biggest names they could find, then threw out Martin, King and Sanderson as examples. The only novel that I remember them discussing as forthcoming will be by S.M. Stirling (and will be a prequel to Red Nails).

  9. The forthcoming novel by S.M. Stirling is Conan – Blood of the Serpent: The All-New Chronicles of the Worlds Greatest Barbarian Hero and it’s out in October. I kid you not on the title. Titan Books who currently has the rights to Conan pastiches is the publisher.

    (Every time I write the word pastiches I think of pistachios and then I think of pistachios which invariably leads me to thoughts of Ben & Jerry’s pistachio ice cream. Ymmm!)

  10. @Cat I have a soft spot for The Sky People and In the Halls of the Martian Kings.

  11. S. M. Stirling — Liked Conquistador very much (including the Guns of the South Easter Eggs).

    The current issue of Reason (a libertarian journal) is on Banned Books. Some of the articles will likely be of interest here. The paywalled article on Sensitivity Readers can be found on Reason’s blog.

  12. I think the only Stirling I’ve read was The Rose Sea, his collaboration with Holly Lisle (remember back in the 90s when about half of Baen’s output was collaborations?). It’s been so long that I don’t remember anything specific, though.

  13. Paul Weimer says I have a soft spot for The Sky People and In the Halls of the Martian Kings.

    I’m assuming that you meant In The Courts of The Crimson Kings. John Barnes wrote In the Hall of the Martian King. Not to to be confused with John Varley’s “In The Hall Of The Martian Kings” novella…

  14. A Danish friend once told me there was a Danish equivalent to Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg,. named Storm P (Robert Storm Petersen in full.) I’m tempted to wonder if every country’s got one…

  15. @Cat. Ack, you are right! I conflated the titles. Also the hazards of two different authors using King Crimson as inspiration for their book title.

  16. Paul Weimer says Ack, you are right! I conflated the titles. Also the hazards of two different authors using King Crimson as inspiration for their book title.

    Three actually as John Varley has the novella as I noted which is called “In The Hall Of The Martian Kings”. It is available in The John Varley Reader.

    Your Meredith moment by the way is related to this subject, sort of: John Orstrander’s Martian Manhunter: Son of Mars is available for just five dollars and ninety nine cents.

  17. I believe it was John Ostrander who established that the Martian Manhunter loves Oreo cookies.

  18. Jeff Smith notes I believe it was John Ostrander who established that the Martian Manhunter loves Oreo cookies.

    Oh very cool. Thanks.

    He remains my favorite Justice Leaguer. I need to essay him sometime.

  19. (3) The Liaden saga has been going for quite a while (I know a few fans of it, but I haven’t dipped into it yet) – I saw fans wearing buttons referring to the then-impending release of “Plan B” back at Bucconneer in 1998.

  20. 10) The Museum of Science in Boston used to have a Goldberg machine that I loved as a kid. I don’t know if they still have it.

  21. Liaden does seem to have some very dedicated fans! I’ve read several, and found them fairly enjoyable. Nothing that would inspire me to the devotion some folks seem to feel, but also nothing to make me question the sanity of the devoted! 🙂

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