(0) I’ve been invited to my brother’s for the weekend, so this will be a Scroll of modest proportions. Feel free to add your own worthwhile links in comments.

(1) A WILDLY INCONVENIENT MUSEUM. [Item by Steven French.] Among the movie museums listed here are the Mad Max II museum in Silvertown, Australia and the Ghibli museum on the outskirts of Tokyo: “Eight Movie Museums Cinephiles Need to Visit” in Smithsonian Magazine.

…The Mad Max 2 Museum being in the middle of nowhere only seems appropriate. Located some 330 miles and a nearly six-hour drive away from its closest major city, Adelaide, in the remote village of Silverton, New South Wales, just getting to the museum is like being in one of Australian filmmaker George Miller’s dystopian movies. Then, on top of that, the filming of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) took place nearby.

Opened in 2010 and run by English couple Adrian and Linda Bennett, the museum is primarily dedicated to the 1981 action classic Mad Max 2, but there’s no doubt that fans of the other four installments of the franchise will enjoy the memorabilia that fills it.

Mostly donated by local residents, the Mad Max 2 Museum is home to original and replica vehicles from the film, including the black GT Falcon car with a supercharger on its hood that Max drives throughout the franchise. There’s also a huge collection of photographs, costumes worn by the cast and other fascinating props, like the weapons and stunt mannequins from the set of the acclaimed and influential action series….

(2) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 31, 1984 — Cassandra Khaw, 40.

By Paul Weimer: I don’t read much modern horror, but a fair bit of that is the work of Cassandra Khaw. I got hooked into their work through their early novellas like Hammer on Bone, which caught into the wave of modern cosmic horror and showed off immediately Khaw’s chops in sometimes very visceral, and definitely dark modes. 

But there is much more to their work. Khaw has a variety of short stories and a variety of subtypes of horror and dark fiction in her oeuvre. A really good selection of these are in her collection Breakable Things, which won a Bram Stoker Award. Her stories are uniformly short, finely honed, and deadly sharp in their impact. And a surprising number of them involve foxes and other SEAN mythological creatures.

Oh, and Khaw had leveraged their previous expertise and knowledge of video games as a tech and videogame journalist, married it to their fiction writing skills, and together has done excellent work in video games. From the narrative focused role-playing video game Sunless Skies to the rogue-like horror game World of Horror, Khaw’s enthusiasm and interest in bringing horror narratives into the RPG space. 

I think Nothing But Blackened Teeth, a haunted house story set in an old Japanese mansion, is probably the definitive horror work that, aside from her short fiction, that gives you the feel of their writing. I will never read a ghost story quite the same way again after this one.  The atmosphere, the character interactions, the evocative writing…and of course, a ghost bride. And it’s short, compact and never outstays its welcome. What more can you want in a horror novel?

(3) COMICS SECTION.

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal debates how to serve humans.
• Tom Gauld witnesses a complaint.

A recent @newscientist cartoon. pic.twitter.com/iOBdEMpPJa

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) August 30, 2024

(4) AMAZING STORIES SHIRTS. Amazing Stories has introduced new line of Convention Wear shirts. Available now from the Amazing Stories store. Learn more about them on Amazing Stories.

Make a statement and stand out from the crowd with Amazing Stories’ new Convention Wear, all-over-print shirts!

Available in a dozen stunning designs by the Father of Science Fiction art, Frank R. Paul, these renditions of iconic Amazing Stories covers are sure to make a mark!

Convention Wear shirts come in both men’s and women’s cuts, in sizes ranging from XS to XXL.

(5) HEALTH EFFECTS OF SPACE TRAVEL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s cover story for Nature looks at the health effects of space travel. However, I am not sure they’ll translate into a cure for car sickness after a night on the tiles… Nature, 29 August 2024

The past few years have seen an increase in spaceflight with the largest-ever number of missions and spacecraft entering space. Alongside this, advances in biological techniques have allowed human and microbial responses to spaceflight to be mapped in unprecedented detail. In this week’s issue, researchers from the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) present three papers that explore this new frontier. The papers form part of a broader package of content, representing the largest-ever compendium of data for aerospace medicine and space biology. First, Afshin Beheshti, Chris Mason and colleagues set the scene, highlighting some of the recent research in the field. Then, Eliah Overbey, Cem Meydan, Chris Mason and colleagues introduce SOMA, the biobank at Weill Cornell Medicine, and reveal the breadth of data in the atlas. Finally, Mathias Basner, Chris Mason and colleagues present new technologies and biomedical effects of the all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 mission, laying the foundation for SOMA and suggesting that short-term spaceflight is safe for civilian crews

(6) D’OH-NUT. [Item by Steven French.] As Homer Simpson famously remarked, “Is there anything doughnuts can’t do?!” “Vast ‘doughnut’ discovered in molten metal of Earth’s core” says the Guardian.

By travelling to the centre of the Earth via seismic waves scientists have discovered a ring-like structure within the swirling pool of molten metal known as the outer core.

Research published in the journal Science Advances has identified a doughnut-shaped region within the outer core, parallel to the equator.

A study co-author and Australian National University geophysicist, Prof Hrvoje Tkalčić, said because scientists could not reach the core with current technology, the team had analysed the forms of seismic waves generated by large earthquakes as they travelled through it.

They found the waves slowed down as they passed through a section near the ceiling, before the mantle. “By understanding the geometry of the paths of the waves and how they traverse the outer core’s volume, we reconstructed their travel times through the Earth,” Tkalčić said.

“We realised that seismic waves slow down in the zone that mathematically is called a torus.”…

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Paul Weimer, Steve Davidson, 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 Mark.]