(1) BRIAN KEENE INSTALLS A NEW BASKET AT HIS BOOKSTORE. Patrick Tomlinson somehow thought he was entitled to call out Brian’s purity. Anybody could have told him what happens when you yank Brian’s chain.

(2) FLORIDA SUED. “John Green and Jodi Picoult Join Publishers, Authors and Advocates in a Lawsuit Against Florida Book Bans” – People has the story.

A group of book publishers and renowned authors — along with students, their parents and The Authors Guild — are suing the state of Florida for its decision to implement the state’s book-banning law.

On Thursday, Aug. 29, Penguin Random House announced in a press release that it — along with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks — would be filing a suit against the state to challenge House Bill 1069.

Also joining the suit are two students, two parents, the Authors Guild and the individual authors Julia Alvarez (The Cemetery of Untold Stories) Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), Jodi Picoult (By Any Other Name), and Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give).

Back in 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069 into effect, giving parents a say in what books schools can and can’t have in their libraries. The Associated Press reported at the time that the law would require Florida schools to provide a searchable list of all books in their libraries, and school boards have to give notice to the public if adding in new reading materials….

…One of the attorneys representing the group of plaintiffs, Dan Novack said in the press release that the law’s “complex and overbroad provisions have created chaos and turmoil across the state, resulting in thousands of historic and modern classics — works we are proud to publish — being unlawfully labeled obscene and removed from shelves.”…

(3) MAKING A LIVING AS A WRITER (FOR SOME VALUES OF LIVING). Jeff Reynolds applies inflation to sf magazine pay rates of years gone by to argue “The Past Is Not as Rosy as You’ve Been Led to Believe” at the SFWA Blog.

… You could make an excellent living selling shorts during the pulp era. But there’s a truckload of ifs tied to that could. If editors liked you; if you wrote decently; if you churned out work fast enough that your fingers bled; if you didn’t mind being hungry. Being a pulp writer during the Depression years was downright murderous.

I limited my research to pulp’s heyday, the mid-1920s through mid-1930s, and left out the type of magazines referred to as slicks in order to maintain a close comparison with modern genre writers who publish short stories. By 1934, there were as many as 250 monthly pulps operating, publishing stories on topics ranging from war, science fiction, romance, westerns, mysteries, and so on.

The majority of pulps paid one cent per word or less. A few paid two or three cents, and some paid even more for writer exclusivity. But to get to that level, you had to be talented and charming. You also had to write enormous quantities of stories….

(4) GOLDMAN FUND. Dream Foundry’s “Con or Bust” program is taking applications for funding to bring Palestinians and members of the Palestinian diaspora to the 2025 Worldcon. Apply at the link.

Our preferred application window for funding is now open until October 21, 2024 for Palestinians or members of the Palestinian diaspora planning to go to Worldcon 2025 in Seattle. Applicants who apply within this window will be considered together, and hear about their funding amounts in early November. Applications received outside this window will be considered on a first-come-first served basis for as long as funding remains. 

We’d love to reach as many Palestinian fans and creators as possible. 

(5) THE WATERMELON GRANT. The Watermelon Grant offers $2000 USD in unrestricted funds to an emerging Palestinian creator in the field of speculative arts. The 2025 grant considers works of speculative fiction and poetry. Full guidelines at the link.

The roots of Palestinian and Black American solidarity are deep and storied, stretching back decades and centered in the works, writings, and movements of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and Toni Morrison. In keeping with FIYAH’s pledged solidarity with the Palestinian people, The Watermelon Grant aims to assist emerging Palestinian creators working in speculative artforms throughout the world.

This grant is funded by L. D. Lewis and administered by Dream Foundry’s Incubator Program. To support an expansion of the project, through a donation to the Match Me campaign, tap here.

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The Watermelon Grant offers $2000 USD in unrestricted funds to an emerging Palestinian creator in the field of speculative arts. A panel of three judges with expertise in a given year’s accepted format review in full all applications entered through an electronic submissions portal. Applications are judged on a criteria which considers artistic merit and potential impact. One grant is awarded annually (two if our Match Me campaign funds)….

WHAT ARE “SPECULATIVE ARTS?”

Speculative Arts are here defined as works of imagination based in concurrent, alternate, invented, or emerging realities. Works of memoir or nonfiction would be considered ineligible. Rather than just being based in speculative literature, the grant cycles through eligible media every year allowing artists beyond those who work in prose or poetry to enter portfolios of visual media (illustration, photography, etc) or those pertaining to performance arts.

(6) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 117 of the Hugo-winning Octothorpe podcast, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty discuss the recent Worldcon, Glasgow 2024.  Listen here: “You Made That Joke Last Time, John”.

We talk mostly about registration, attendance, and programme. Spoiler: we quite liked it, listeners.

There’s an uncorrected transcript at this link.

(7) OCTOTHORPE RECUSES FROM 2025. After winning the Best Fancast Hugo at Glasgow, the Octothorpe crew say they are recusing “for at least the 2025 Hugos”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 29, 1954 — Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 70.

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Kube-McDowell ‘s work in a quasi tie-in novel, Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Odyssey. This was part of a series of novels that Asimov commissioned in the titular city, set somewhere in his Robot-Empire timeline. It started off in the classic amnesia case, with a man on the run and not remembering why, and easing readers into the setting Asimov had created for Kube-McDowell to explore in this and subsequent books. It was entertaining enough that I started to look for other works of his. I came across some stories here and there (especially a couple that wound up as Tales from the Darkside)

And then I struck gold when I found Alternities. 

Alternities stands as one of the classic parallel world novels. Walter Endicott, clearly not from our world, stumbles from our world, suddenly, into a world not his own. The singular universe has now fractured into a kaleidoscope (the novel uses the word maze) of alternate realities. The novel, like many alternate history multiverse novels of the period (before and since) heavily thinks about the branch points, the jonbar points, the decisions that lead to each of the major color-coded worlds that we see in the book. There is a lot of speculation as to why the worlds split as they did, and a surprising answer and conclusion, as well.  The novel shows his erudition not only in science but in general communication of popular knowledge. Kube-McDowell’s columns and articles on everything from the space program to the idiocy of “scientific creationism” are a testament to his knowledge, curiosity, and ability to explain and bring ideas to his reading audience both in fiction and nonfiction alike.

And he’s a filker on top of all that.  Quite the Renaissance man indeed.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Speed Bump shows if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
• Thatababy exposes the inner workings.
• The Argyle Sweater is present at the creation of a famous saying.
• Rubes complains about a superhero theme song.

(10) KBG. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Alaya Dawn Johnson and Sarah Beth Durst on Wednesday, September 11 starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Alaya Dawn Johnson

Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of Trouble the Saints, winner of the World Fantasy Award; Reconstruction, her debut short story collection; and The Library of Broken Worlds, recent winner of the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People. Alaya has lived in Mexico for the last decade, where she’s sung in a blues band, gotten her master’s degree, produced a documentary, written novels, fooled around and fell in love. She and her filmmaker partner can normally be found in rural Oaxaca on a haunted mountaintop, where they have half a house, seven dogs and a mare.

Sarah Beth Durst

Sarah Beth Durst is the New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-five books for adults, teens, and kids, including cozy fantasy The Spellshop. She’s been awarded an American Library Association Alex Award, as well as a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Several of her books have been optioned for film/television, and her novel Drink Slay Love was made into a TV movie and was a question on Jeopardy! She lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. Visit her at sarahbethdurst.com.

(11) EBERT’S TEN WORST SF MOVIES. Roger Ebert died in 2013 and missed seeing some stinkers that might belong on this list; however, he probably thought the field of candidates was already pretty crowded: “10 Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, According to Roger Ebert” at Collider.

The science fiction genre asks audiences to suspend belief in the name of scientific and sometimes extraterrestrial wonders. This demands intricate premises that rely on logic and enough of a fictional leap to seem plausible in a world that exists apart from reality.The worst movies of the genre are unable to do any of these things, many of them falling victim to the merciless reviews of the esteemed Roger Ebert. In his reviews of what he deemed the worst sci-fi movies of all time, Ebert cuts through the convoluted and scolds the special effects.

First and worst is Battlefield Earth. Trailing in second place is —

2. ‘Jason X’ (2001)

Directed by James Isaac

With Ebert’s incredible distaste for the Friday the 13th movies, it’s only fitting that he gave the slasher franchise another scathing review for its sci-fi chapter. The tenth installment in the series, Jason X takes place in the year 2455 where a cryogenically frozen Jason Vorhees is transported from the now-research facility at Camp Crystal Lake to space. Aboard the ship, he thaws out and begins terrorizing the crew. The formulaic horror movie swaps the nooks and crannies of the summer camp for a spaceship where the promiscuous crew sneaks away only to be met by the masked slasher.

In one moment of the movie, Jason’s iconic hockey mask and garments are replaced with metallic armor. Jason X calls upon the rules of its former films but also strays so far with its dive into sci-fi. Ebert’s one-star reviewcalled the movie a “low-rent retread” of the Alien franchise but was dismally optimistic there would be a follow-up movie. Laughably terrible and so far out of its element, Jason X is easily considered one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time.

(12) TREKKIN’ TO GONDWANALAND. “Matching dinosaur prints were found an ocean apart in Africa and South America” – NPR follows a prehistoric trot.

Tens of millions of years ago, South America and Africa were part of the same land mass, an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana.

At some point, the two continents we now know started to pull away from each other until there was just a thin strip of land at the top holding them together.

A group of scientists say in new research that matching dinosaur tracks found in modern-day Brazil and Cameroon were made 120 million years ago along that narrow passage before the continents separated.

“There was just a neck of land connecting the two, and that neck of land is the corridor that we’re talking about,” said Louis Jacobs, a professor emeritus of earth sciences at Southern Methodist University.

(13) DRESS REHEARSAL FOR LUCIFER’S HAMMER. Scitechdaily covers the biennial exercise: “NASA Confronts 72% Asteroid Impact Probability: A Planetary Defense Test (scitechdaily.com)

…Asteroid Impact Preparedness

A large asteroid impacting Earth is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future. But because the damage from such an event could be great, NASA leads hypothetical asteroid impact “tabletop” exercises every two years with experts and decision-makers from federal and international agencies to address the many uncertainties of an impact scenario. The most recent exercise took place this past April, with a preliminary report being issued on June 20.

Designing Realistic Impact Scenarios

Making such a scenario realistic and useful for all involved is no small task. Scientists from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which specializes in the tracking and orbital determination of asteroids and comets and finding out if any are hazards to Earth, have played a major role in designing these exercises since the first 11 years ago.

“These hypothetical scenarios are complex and take significant effort to design, so our purpose is to make them useful and challenging for exercise participants and decision-makers to hone their processes and procedures to quickly come to a plan of action while addressing gaps in the planetary defense community’s knowledge,” said JPL’s Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS.

…The Impact Scenario

This year’s scenario: A hypothetical asteroid, possibly several hundred yards across, has been discovered, with an estimated 72% chance of impacting Earth in 14 years. Potential impact locations include heavily populated areas in North America, Southern Europe, and North Africa, but there is still a 28% chance the asteroid will miss Earth. After several months of being tracked, the asteroid moves too close to the Sun, making further observations impossible for another seven months. Decision-makers must figure out what to do.

Leading the exercise were NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the Federal Emergency Management Agency Response Directorate, and the Department of State Office of Space Affairs. Over the course of two days in April, participants gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which hosted the event, to consider the potential national and global responses to the scenario.

(14) THE MAN WHO SOLD THE SUN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] HotHardware.com has learned “California Startup Wants To Sell Sunlight After Dark Using A Giant Space Mirror” Dern ponders, (a) what’s the potential (bad) impact on global warming, and (b) could we use this to sell dark during the day? And c) If earth gets invaded by giant cats, this might be useful.

…Nowack remarked at the International Conference on Energy from Space, “The problem is that solar energy is not available when we actually want it. It would be really great if we could get some solar energy before the sun rises and after sunset, because then you could actually charge higher prices and make a lot more money.” He added, “And we think that reflector-based technologies can solve this problem.”

Reflect Orbital, a California-based startup, wants to send 57 small satellites into low-Earth orbit with 33-square-foot ultra reflective mylar mirrors that would, in theory, bounce sunlight back down to solar farms on Earth. The company made a video (see above) that uses a hot-air balloon to simulate how the technique is supposed to work. If successful, the satellites could provide an additional 30 minutes of sunlight to the solar farms during peak demand times.

There are some possible pitfalls to the idea, however. Thick clouds and stormy weather could potentially block the sunlight from reaching its destination. Seasonal changes that alter the amount of sunlight in certain areas of the world could also present challenges, and the possible environmental impacts of this light reflection have also not been discussed thus far.

The company’s orbital mirror project is scheduled to launch sometime in 2025, and interested parties can “apply for sunlight” over the next few months ahead of the launch….

(15) SCIENTIST BEWARE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] You’ve heard of ‘writer beware’, well now scientists beware as there are some who are out to build up a fake profile.  It seems there is a citation black market. Reported in this week’s Nature.

Research-integrity watchers are concerned about the growing ways in which scientists can fake or manipulate the citation counts of their studies. In recent months, increasingly bold practices have surfaced. One approach was revealed through a sting operation in which a group of researchers bought 50 citations to pad the Google Scholar profile of a fake scientist they had created.

The scientists bought the citations for US$300 from a firm that seems to sell bogus citations in bulk. This confirms the existence of a black market for faked references that research-integrity sleuths have long speculated about, says the team.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “I Make Everything Groovy” Dern.]