(0) While drafting this Scroll I got a call that I need to go pick up a prescription for my mother and drive it over to her skilled nursing facility. So I’ll have to put off the rest of this work til tomorrow.

(1) MEMORY LANE.

2010 – [Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Larry Niven’s Rainbow Mars novel is our Beginning this time and fair warning this time, there is spoilers here this time as I want to talk about how Niven came to write this stellar piece of Barsoomian fiction. 

Now go away if you don’t want to learn how this came to be. So go have Niven’s Irish Coffee and come back when I say you can so.

NOW GO HAVE THAT IRISH COFFEE. BE GENEROUS WITH THE WHISKY. 

In the “Afterword: Svetz and The Beanstalk” to Rainbow Mars, first published by Tor in hardcover thirteen years ago with the cover illustration by Bob Eggleton, Niven talks about how he came  write these stories where Svetz finds mythological beasts as he starts with the premise that “time travel is fantasy” but “Svetz has the scientist’s talent: he can wrap a theory around what he finds, rather than altering the evidence to fit a theory”.  Really neat.

The beanstalk that is at the center of the Rainbow Mars novel was originally to be a collaboration between him and Pratchett: “We started talking collaboration and spent our whole time that way. I tossed in the notion of a Beanstalk that’s a plant. We carved out a loose novel structure from there.” Alas that never happened. 

He says “Yggdrasil (and a lot of Norsemen) was one of Terry’s suggestions. A lot of that six-hour conversation must have worked its way into the novel.” 

DONE WITH YOUR IRISH COFFEE? DO COME BACK. 

I love this novel. It’s fun. It’s a quite take both on Norse mythology and Barsoomian fiction all rolled into one ever so excellent story. 

Now here’s our Beginning…

+ 390 Atomic Era. Svetz was nearly home, but the snake was waking up.

Gravity pulled outward from the center of the extension cage as it was pulled toward present time. The view through the wall was a jitter of color and motion. Svetz lay on his back and looked up at the snake. A filter helmet showed only as a faint golden glow around its head. It wouldn’t strangle on post-Industrial air, and it couldn’t bite him through the inflated bubble.

A ripple ran down the feathers along its spine, a gaudy flurry of color, nine meters from head to tip of tail. It seemed to take forever. Tiny rainbow-colored wings fluttered at its neck. Its eyes opened.

The natives of –550 Atomic Era would have carved his heart out without losing that same look of dispassionate arrogance.

Svetz raised the needle rifle.

A loop of it shimmied aside as he fired. The anesthetic crystal needle shattered on the wall. The shimmy ran down the tail, while Svetz fired again and missed again. Then the tailtip snapped down and flicked the needle gun out of his hands.

Svetz cringed back.

“The rainbow-feathered head lifted to study him.

+1108 Atomic Era. Watery colors around the cage took on shapes. For an instant Svetz saw startled techs, and Ra Chen yelling. Then the snake fell over him in coils, knocking the breath out of him. Coils constricted around his torso. He wriggled an arm free and reached for the needle gun, but a loop of tail coiled around his wrist.

Immobile, he looked into the ophidian face.

(2) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born September 6, 1904 — Groff Conklin. He edited some forty anthologies of genre fiction starting The Best of Science Fiction from Crown Publishers in 1946 to Seven Trips Through Time and Space on Fawcett Gold in 1968. The contents are fairly a mix of the obscure and well known as Heinlein, Niven, Simak, Dahl, Sturgeon, Lovecraft and Bradbury show up here.
• Born September 6, 1946 — Hal Haag. Baltimore-area fan who found fandom in the early Eighties and who chaired Balticon 25 and Balticon 35 and worked on Balticon and quite a number of regionals.  He co-founded BWSMOF (Baltimore/Washington SMOFs) along with Inge Heyer from Shore Leave, a regional organization whose purpose it is to discuss running regional conventions of all types. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society put together a very touching memorial site which you can see here. (Died 2006.)
• Born September 6, 1953 — Elizabeth Massie, 70. Ellen Datlow who’s now doing the most excellent Year’s Best Horror anthology series was the horror editor for Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror where she selected Massie’s “Stephen” for the fourth edition. A horror writer by trade, she’s also dipped deeper into the genre by writing a female Phantom graphic novel, Julie Walker is The Phantom in Race Against Death! and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Power of Persuasion novel.
• Born September 6, 1953 — Patti Yasutake, 70. Best-known for her portrayal of Nurse Alyssa Ogawa in the Trek universe where she had a recurring role on Next Generation and showed up in Star Trek Generations and Star Trek First Contact. In doing these Birthdays, I consult a number of sites. Several of them declared that her character ended her time as a Doctor. Not true but it would have made for a nice coda on her story.
• Born September 6, 1972 — China Miéville, born 1972, aged fifty one years. My favorite novels by him? The City & The City is the one I’ve re-read the most, followed closely by Kraken. Scariest by him? Oh, that’d King Rat by a long shot.  And I’ll admit the dialect he used in Un Lun Dun frustrated me enough that I gave up on it. I’ll hold strongly that the New Crobuzon series doesn’t date as well as some of his other fiction does. His Hugo history is a one long one. His first nomination at ConJosé for Perdido Street Station was followed by The Scar at Torcon 3. He picked up another nomination at interaction for Iron Council, and his only win at Aussiecon 4 for The City & The City which was shared Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. He has two more nominations to date, Embassytown at Chicon 7 and “This Census-Taker” novella at Worldcon 75. 
• Born September 6, 1976 — Naomie Harris, 47. She’s Eve Moneypenny in Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die. This was the first time Moneypenny had a first name.  No word if she’ll be in Bullets for Winter, the next Bond film which has been announced.  She also appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as Tia Dalma. In the Marvel Universe, she was Frances Barrison / Shriek in the Spider-Man centric Venom: Let There Be Carnage. And lastly I’ll note she played Elizabeth Lavenza in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the National Theatre.

(3) COMICS SECTION.

• The Far Side — Maybe put up a do not disturb sign?

(4) SACRED LOCOMOTIVE ROBOTIC PTERODACTYL FLIES. And you can witness it happen in a Facebook video at the link. ”Robotic Pterodactyl Flies”.

(5) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Star Trek Honors 50 Years of Animation With Very Short Treks” reports Gizmodo.

The original Star Trek animated series turns 50 this year, and while there’s certainly at least some animation from the boldly going adventures of the Trek universe still in the works at Paramount, the network is getting into a celebratory mood in the weirdest way possible.

First revealed at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this year, Paramount has now lifted the lid on our first look at a series of promotional shorts, now dubbed Star Trek: very Short Treks, as an homage to the Discovery-era short anthology series of a similar name…

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Lise Andreasen, Lynn Maners, 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 Daniel Dern.]