(0) …Shall Ever Medicine Thee To That Sweet Sleep Which Thou Scrolledst Yesterday

(If I make the headline too long, Jetpack definitely won’t send a subscriber notice. It may be too long as it is! But what a wonderful title.)

(1) FILE 770 MEETUP AT GLASGOW ON SUNDAY. Cora Buhlert on her first day at the Worldcon met several Filers — Chris Barkley, Christian Brunschen, Ingvar, Standback a.k.a. Ziv, but thinks it would be great to have a semi-official Filer meet-up in Glasgow.

Cora proposes that Filers meet her on Sunday at 3:00 p.m.at the free library in Hall 4 and then find someplace to sit down. There are several tables and chairs in the area.

Please take pictures!

(2) SEATTLE 2025 MEMBERSHIP SALE. Through Monday the Seattle 2025 Worldcon is giving a $10 discount on memberships. The deal was announced on Facebook.

In honor of Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures, we have a $10 membership discount that is good from today (Thursday) through Monday!

Go to https://reg.seattlein2025.org/ and click on “Add New Registration”. After you fill out the information, go to “Review and Pay”. Next to “Total Cost”, you will see a button marked “Add Coupon”. Click on it and enter “Glasgow” in the text box.

You’ll go back to “Review and Pay” and the total cost will be adjusted.

(3) WHERE’S WALDO DAVE? Dave McCarty is in Glasgow…somewhere… despite not being allowed to attend Glasgow 2024.

(4) CROATIA’S GIFT. The SFera Science Fiction Society of Zagreb, Croatia has produced an issue of its fanzine Parsek to commemorate there being a Worldcon in Europe. Download Parsek here.

This issue was edited by Emanuel Ježić-Hammer, Jelena Janjić, Vedran Ilic-Dreven and Mila.

In this issue we present a story from the most recent fantasy collection Project Tulip, and two winners of the SPera Prize for Story, from 2019. in 2024 Here’s a review of events on the local SF scene since 2009. years (there we stopped in one of the older numbers), and one film, to show the Americans and English that we also have power armour for the race. Reports and gossip from Glasgow and Rotterdam caught in one of the following issues!

(5) SUPPORT FAN FUND AUCTIONS AT WORLDCON. Courtesy of David Langford, here are the catalogues for two fan fund auctions being held at Glasgow 2024. In person and online bidding is available. One auction is Saturday evening local time, and the other closes on Sunday. The catalogs tell how to bid online.

• 2024 Fan Funds Auction Catalogue 20:30 BST SATURDAY 10 AUGUST
• 2024 Fan Funds Silent Auction Catalogue BIDDING CLOSES 13:00 BST SUNDAY

(6) SAYONARA. [Item by Dave Doering.] After almost 20 years as an institution in fan events in Utah, Anime Banzai abruptly announced it closing down less than two months before its October edition: See their home page, the only heads up on the cancellation: Anime Banzai – Utah’s Premier Anime Convention.

Anime Banzai family

Utah Anime Promotions has been considering the fate of Anime Banzai 2024 after the convention meeting held on 4 Aug (including the harsh realities that shutting down an event like this entail), but events have outpaced that consideration. The problems are too deep to address long term, and while we had hoped to patch things up internally to still successfully run Anime Banzai 2024 as a farewell for attendees and staff, that is no longer possible.

I would like to deeply apologize directly to Artemis and Warky who were spoken of in this meeting, and clearly state that Utah Anime Promotions vehemently rejects all negative claims made against either. The Board has been in communication with you both since then to discuss the situation, and would like to thank that both of you have continued to express a hope that Anime Banzai 2024 could be provided for attendees, even under these circumstances. Hope can be a hard choice to make, and I regret that we won’t be able to assist with that.

Anime Banzai has always operated on a shoe-string budget, with funds diverted back into running each next event and the expenses that lead up to it. Without a convention in Oct where most of the convention funds are generated, we’re honestly not sure what it will look like to take care of outstanding expenses including pre-registration, vendors, etc. While we’re not sure what this path will look like, we will do our best to make things right.

Utah Anime Promotions has let the community down by not being attentive enough to the signs that manifested over time. As years continued, patterns of complacency and detachment grew. Some members of staff pointed this out over time; I’m sorry we didn’t pay better attention.

We have had many great people involved with Anime Banzai over time; inspiring experiences with energetic guests, panelists eager to share their passions with attendees, cosplayers sharing their delight for costuming and embodying characters they love, editors marrying audio and visual for anime music videos, and staff and volunteers who have worked long and hard hours to help things going. Thank you for the uplifting joy, and I hope people can hold on to more of those positive experiences than be burdened by the negative.

This convention was started by a local group of friends, who had the idea of “How hard would it be to start a convention ourselves?” while on a road trip back from a convention in a nearby state. Anime Banzai grew from that seed with the enthusiasm and joy from the community. As Anime Banzai shuts down, I hope that anime fans in Utah can continue that positive spirit. You have been the best part of Anime Banzai; always remember that, and you can continue to be better, shine brighter, day to day.

Utah Anime Promotions: Steven Jones, Daniel Bentley

They say when refunds will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

• Bliss knows this image is ubiquitous.
• Crabgrass has an excuse.
• Mannequin on the Moon – not sure what planet they’re on, but it has punctuation.
• Pardon My Planet wants to move into this neighborhood.
• Rhymes with Orange has a follicle problem.
• Calvin and Hobbes revisits Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

(8) MORE LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF: BRANDON SANDERSON, OCTAVIA BUTLER, STUDIO GHIBLI, SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY. [Item by David Goldfarb.] We’re in the middle of what’s called the “off-season” in LearnedLeague, when in between regular seasons we have specialty quizzes for one day, and “mini-Leagues” that are more topic-oriented and go for 12 days.

Yesterday we had a One-Day Special about Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Follow the link for the questions, but be warned that they are for serious Sanderson fans. I’ve read every book published in the Cosmere (and a couple that haven’t!) and I got only 8/12. At 56 I don’t have the memory for small details that I used to.

In day 10 of the just-concluded California mini-league (technically “California 2” because there was a previous one on the same topic back in 2007), we had this question:

Give the title of the prescient 1993 dystopian novel by Pasadena-born Octavia E. Butler that has as its protagonist Lauren Olamina, a young woman who creates a religion called Earthseed in a speculative 2024 California, ravaged by climate change and social inequality.

This had a 33% get rate, with no single wrong answer getting to the 5% threshold to be shown.

Filers might also find of interest 1DS’s about Studio Ghibli (the animation studio behind Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Howl’s Moving Castle, among many others) and Speculative Biology (based on books such as Dougal Dixon’s After Man, taking a look at how life on Earth might evolve in the future if humanity were to vanish).

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman keeps the wheel turning even while he’s away at the Worldcon, inviting listeners to breakfast with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam in Episode 232 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of the horror novel Grim Root, which was officially released two days after our chat. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in over 90 publications, such as Popular Science, Lightspeed, and LeVar Burton Reads. Her short story collection Where You Linger & Other Stories and her horror novella Glorious Fiends were both published in 2022.. She’s a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award. By day, she works as a Narrative Designer writing games for a mobile game company. 

We discussed how her new horror novel toys with the tropes of reality TV, the importance of balancing multiple POVs in a novel to keep them all equally interesting, our differing views on the revision process, the three years she spent writing 1,000 words per day (and why she stopped), the message she took from her two Nebula nominations, the importance of community, what she learned about herself by rereading her short stories to assemble a collection, why we both believe in ambiguous endings, and much more.

(10) SUPES ON! [Item by Daniel Dern.] Some Dern current recommendations on TV/streamers:

(a) The Umbrella Academy is re-opened for business: Season 4, the six-episode final season of The Umbrella Academy, dropped on Netflix on Thursday, August 8, 2024. Having so far watched Episode 1, I’m in.

Here’s an article that includes the S4 teaser trailer and other information (I can’t tell if there’s any spoilers but I’ll guess there aren’t.) “’The Umbrella Academy’ Season 4: Cast, Release Date, Teaser Trailer, Character Posters, Script Page, Photos” at Netflix Tudum.

And here’s the amazing Footloose Dance-Off! segment from Season 3, which I don’t think is in any way a spoiler (btw, there’s a nice short making-of documentary somewhere online):

(b) Orphan Black: Echoes (on Prime Video/AMC, Apple+, etc), starring Krysten Ritter (previously in, among other things, Marvel’s Jessica Jones series). This is a 37-years-later (in the show timelines, set in 2052) follow-up to Orphan Black (which starred Tatiana Maslany (who was on the recent HBO/MAX Perry Mason, and was Jennifer Walters in the (great) Marvel TV series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law).

We’re 7 episodes in, and we’re enjoying it. (I’m sure it makes more sense if you’ve seen Orphan Black; since we’ve seen Orphan Black, I can’t speak to that.)

(c) Season 5 of The Boys (over on Amazon) was, unsurprisingly, good. (Met expectations on the lotta violence, cussing, sex, violence, drugs, politics — note, this was all written and filmed several years ago — more violence and cussing, and great acting.)

‘Nuff Scrolled! (or Itemized!)

(11) YOUR MILEAGE PHONING HOME MAY VARY. [Item by Steven French.] Not every child thought ET was cute: “’Sobbing in the aisles’: writers on their most memorable parent-kid film experiences”.

ET: adorable interstellar tyke or nightmarish space demon? As a four-year-old in a multiplex in Aberystwyth, west Wales, I was in the latter camp. From the moment he scuttled out of an eldritch mist like the Demogorgon’s weirdo little cousin, my blood curdled. There were tears, almost instantly. What was this monster? This boggle-eyed gonad? This sentient hammer wrapped in flayed human flesh? And other questions I wouldn’t have had the vocab to ask.

The final straw came when he terrified a tiny Drew Barrymore almost as much as the prospect of runninga talkshow during Writers Guild strikes. I was whisked into an empty lobby, where my mum tried soothing me.

She possibly pointed out that my two-year-old sister was such a fan of ET that every off-camera moment left her yelling: “Where TV?” I forget the exact details – all I remember is the sweet relief of being nowhere near the cinema screen. We left shortly after – not quite the pleasant Welsh holiday movie jaunt my parents had hoped for….

(12) BY ALL THAT’S HOLY. [Item by Steven French.] Good beginning! “No god in the machine: the pitfalls of AI worship” as assessed in the Guardian.

In Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Nine Billion Names of God, a sect of monks in Tibet believes humanity has a divinely inspired purpose: inscribing all the various names of God. Once the list was complete, they thought, he would bring the universe to an end. Having worked at it by hand for centuries, the monks decide to employ some modern technology. Two sceptical engineers arrive in the Himalayas, powerful computers in tow. Instead of 15,000 years to write out all the permutations of God’s name, the job gets done in three months. As the engineers ride ponies down the mountainside, Clarke’s tale ends with one of literature’s most economical final lines: “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

It is an image of the computer as a shortcut to objectivity or ultimate meaning – which also happens to be, at least part of, what now animates the fascination with artificial intelligence. Though the technologies that underpin AI have existed for some time, it’s only since late 2022, with the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, that the technology that approached intelligence appeared to be much closer. In a 2023 report by Microsoft Canada, president Chris Barry proclaimed that “the era of AI is here, ushering in a transformative wave with potential to touch every facet of our lives”, and that “it is not just a technological advancement; it is a societal shift”. That is among the more level-headed reactions. Artists and writers are panicking that they will be made obsolete, governments are scrambling to catch up and regulate, and academics are debating furiously….

(13) ROUGH START AT BIG FINISH. Big Finish, known for its Doctor Who audio adventures (among other things), has experienced problems with its systems upgrades. The chairman has apologized: “A personal message from Big Finish chairman, Jason Haigh-Ellery”.

Over the past 18 months, Big Finish has undergone a transformational change. We have introduced several new systems which control the essential business functions of Big Finish.

These systems, which include stock control, dispatch and shipping tracking, payment gateways and accounting, email and customer service tools, replaced older software that had reached the end of its life.

They were vital upgrades, needed to ensure that we could continue to fulfil orders to our customers, and all the new “behind the scenes” systems have been tested for many months and are working seamlessly. 

The final action of this transformation was the rolling out of our new “shop front”, the Big Finish website and app. 

Unfortunately, it is very clear that here a number of mistakes have been made. In particular, the migration of customer data has not gone as planned, and the browsing experience of the website and app is proving to be a frustration. I sincerely apologise to everyone who has encountered difficulties accessing their purchase library since the relaunch, or who feels let down by how we have managed the process.

I know from seeing the many messages coming in via email and social media that these updates are a cause of worry and concern to many listeners. I would like to reassure each and every customer that no purchases will be lost, all the data is safe, and we are committed to improve the functionality, accessibility and reliability of the website, whatever it takes.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to do so, I would urge you to read the new “How tos” page which explains how to reset your password and update address information the first time you visit the site. We could not carry across any of these details in the upgrade due to the requirements of data protection law. It is not possible to browse your purchased items or order new releases without completing these steps.

The team will keep updating the “Work in progress” page with known issues and our timetable for improvements. As you might imagine, the Big Finish customer service team is currently inundated with messages but they will do their best to answer all queries. I thank you in advance for your patience, understanding and loyalty, and for sticking with us during this difficult period.

Finally, please let me just restate how deeply sorry I am for the inconvenience so many of our loyal listeners are experiencing at the moment. I completely recognise the very valid frustrations being expressed and I hope that you can bear with us as we try our utmost to find the best solution to bring you the best website and app experience at Big Finish. 

(14) D&D GOES POSTAL. The Dungeons & Dragons stamp issue that USPS announced last November was released August 1. “Dungeons & Dragons Stamps | USPS.com”.

(15) SKILL TREE EPISODE: SIGNS OF THE SOJOURNER. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has released another episode of CSI Skill Tree, their series examining how video games envision possible futures and build thought-provoking worlds. In this episode, they discuss “Signs of the Sojourner”, a deckbuilding game set in a hazily sketched post-crash version of the southwestern U.S. that explores themes of community resilience, trust, and the dynamics of conversation.

The guests are Leigh Alexander, a speculative fiction author, critic, and narrative designer for video games including Reigns: Game of Thrones and Neo Cab, and Mia Armstrong-López, a journalist and editor working on issues of science, health, and justice, and managing editor for our Future Tense Fiction series.

 Also, here’s a YouTube playlist with all 16 of Skill Tree episodes thus far.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Dave Doering, David Langford, Scott Edelman, Joey Eschrich, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]