(1) SANS CLUE. Cora Buhlert declares, “The Guardian is Clueless about Masters of the Universe”.

…That said, the casting of Alison Brie has attracted more mainstream attraction than the casting of Galitzine and Mendes, probably because Brie is better known. And so Ben Child, who has a weekly geek media column in The Guardian, penned a spectacularly clueless article about the proposed live action Masters of the Universe movie.

Even the headline is terrible: “Can Travis Knight’s He-Man movie do for boys what Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did for girls?”

Yes, we all know how fiercely gendered the toy industry is, but must we really perpetuate those shitty stereotypes, especially when we know they’re wrong? Because in the 1980s, Mattel found to their own surprise that forty percent of all Masters of the Universe toys were sold to girls, which is what prompted the introduction of She-Ra. The 1980s Filmation cartoon was eagerly watched by both boys and girls and though Masters of the Universe fandom skews male, there are plenty of female fans, me among them. This isn’t surprising either, because Masters of the Universe has always featured plenty of impressive female characters such as Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress, Queen Marlena and of course, She-Ra and her entire supporting cast. Finally, there are plenty of male Barbie collectors as well….

… The main problem with the article is that Ben Child seems unable to view Masters of the Universe as anything other than a joke…

(2) FORMER BOARD MEMBER, NOW 404 ERROR. Sarah Gailey, who was on the NaNoWriMo “writers board” is no longer, as explained in “Some Thoughts on NaNoWriMo”.

…It’s reasonable for people to have reacted badly; the “statement” they released was very silly. To say “we will not take one of two positions, but we will say that one of those positions is classist and ableist” is not the deft rhetorical maneuver that NaNoWriMo seems to think it is. The arguments themselves around this so-called classism and ableism wave off the actual existence of writing communities, critique groups, beta readers, and critique partners; they also ignore the creative realities of the impoverished and disabled artists, marginalized authors, and indie authors who have been working all this time without the help of language learning model software that was trained on work stolen from their peers and colleagues. …

And this is the statement Gailey sent to Kilby Blades, Interim Executive Director of NaNoWriMo:

And Gailey said:

… I haven’t heard anything back. As of the time I’m writing this, the urls for the staff page and the Writers’ Board page are returning 404 errors. So does the url for my pep talk. …

(3) GOOD OMENS THIRD SEASON STILL HAPPENING. “’Good Omens’ season three on track at Amazon despite Neil Gaiman allegations” reports Screen Daily.

The third season of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens is understood to be going ahead as planned at Amazon Prime Video, even though Disney has paused a feature adaptation of Gaiman’s novel, The Graveyard Book, following allegations of sexual assault against the UK author and screenwriter….

Amazon officially greenlit the third season of fantasy drama Good Omens in December 2023. Screen understands plans have not changed for the third season starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant to start filming in early 2025 in Scotland. Gaiman is executive producer, writer and showrunner of the series that is based on a book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett.

Gaiman is also executive producer and a screenwriter on Anansi Boys, a Prime Video series based on Gaiman’s novel of the same name. While production wrapped on the series last year, no official release date has been set. Screen understands there are no plans to not stream the series….  

(4) CRIME ACTUALLY DOES PAY. For seven years! “FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist” – Ars Technica tells how the scheme worked.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged a North Carolina musician with defrauding streaming services of $10 million through an elaborate scheme involving AI, as reported by The New York Times. Michael Smith, 52, allegedly used AI to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by nonexistent bands, then streamed them using bots to collect royalties from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

While the AI-generated element of this story is novel, Smith allegedly broke the law by setting up an elaborate fake listener scheme. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced the charges, which include wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge.

Smith’s scheme, which prosecutors say ran for seven years, involved creating thousands of fake streaming accounts using purchased email addresses. He developed software to play his AI-generated music on repeat from various computers, mimicking individual listeners from different locations. In an industry where success is measured by digital listens, Smith’s fabricated catalog reportedly managed to rack up billions of streams.

To avoid detection, Smith spread his streaming activity across numerous fake songs, never playing a single track too many times. He also generated unique names for the AI-created artists and songs, trying to blend in with the quirky names of legitimate musical acts. Smith used artist names like “Callous Post” and “Calorie Screams,” while their songs included titles such as “Zygotic Washstands” and “Zymotechnical.”

…The district attorney announcement did not specify precisely what method Smith used to generate the songs….

(5) BULGACON. Начална страница (bulgacon.org) – Bulgacon, the Bulgarian national convention – takes place September 21-23 with Ian McDonald and Farah Mendlesohn as guests of honor. Dr. Valentin D. Ivanov reports, “Many panels will be in English and the committee is considering opening the online panels to everybody.”

(6) LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF: NARNIA AND MURDERBOT. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Question 1 on day 9 of the current regular LearnedLeague season asked us:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Magician’s Nephew are all books set in what mythical realm?

(I’ve spoiled the answer in my header, but I daresay very few Filers would have had any trouble with it.) This had a get rate of 89%, with no single wrong answer getting to 5% of the submissions.

In the most recent off-season there was a One-Day Special about File 770’s favorite rogue death machine: follow this link to see Murderbot for Everyone. As the title suggests, the questions try to include general-knowledge paths to the answers as well as knowledge of the books themselves. I actually didn’t do all that well on it: 9 right out of 12, and only 63rd percentile in the scoring. Filers may enjoy seeing if they could have done better.

(7) FLASH SF NIGHT. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents “Flash Science Fiction Night” online on Monday September 9 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register to attend for free here.

This is the last Flash Science Fiction Night of the season! Join us online for an evening of short science fiction readings (1000 words or less) with authors Jenna Hanchey, Eric Fomley, and Marie Vibbert. Flash Science Fiction Nights run 30 minutes or less, and are a fun and great way to learn about new authors from around the world.

(8) SFWA TOWN HALL COMING. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Board will conduct the organization’s first SFWA Town Hall for members on September 10, 2024.

This event is part of the ongoing effort to foster communication with the membership, talk about what the organization is current doing and planning, and to take an opportunity to listen.

By working together, the board can address concerns and begin writing the next chapters in the history of SFWA.

(9) TRIBUTE TO BROTHER. Inverse remembers, “40 Years Ago, a Cult Classic Sci-Fi Movie Beat John Carpenter to the Punch”.

…Compared to the bloated multiverse era where “less is more” is an alien concept, 1984 cult favorite The Brother from Another Planet seems like it’s been beamed in from an entirely different celestial body. Its $350,000 budget — a small sum even for the time — would be lucky to cover 30 seconds of a Marvel flick. Its special effects are limited to a few glowing lights and a deformed toe. And far from delivering any grandstanding speeches, its superhero is entirely mute.

The titular Brother, who’s not even given the luxury of a name, is an extra-terrestrial whose powers are far more intuitive (he can hear voices from the past by touching his surroundings) than communicative. But thanks to a nuanced performance from future Emmy winner Joe Morton, he still manages to convey the emotional complexities of the immigrant experience (just to make it clear the film is allegorical, his primitive spaceship crashlands on Ellis Island)….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Land of the Lost series (1974)

By Paul Weimer. “Marshall, Will and Holly, on a routine expedition…”

Before Buck Rogers, or Battlestar Galactica, or reruns of TOS Star Trek, the first genre shows I can recall watching, in the misty lands of the 1970’s, were reruns of the Sid and Marty Krofft TV shows, including and most especially, Land of the Lost. 

What was not to love in those days? The Marshall family trapped in another world. Dinosaurs! Lizardmen! Weird alien technology crystals? I watched the show avidly, until it fell away from TV screens, and other tv series took their place in my mind in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  And I mostly didn’t think about Land of the Lost for two decades.

Until Bubble Boy.

Bubble Boy was a 2001 film, and I can’t really counsel you to seek it out and watch it. It has a young Jake Gyllenhaal playing the titular immunocompromised character who goes on adventures despite being in a bubble. But he is as sheltered emotionally and otherwise as he is physically, having not been allowed to even watch much TV.  One of the shows he has been able to watch was, in fact, Land of the Lost…and very early in the movie, the titular character does a “punk rock version” of the theme song.  It brought me back immediately to my young watching of the show.  That song really is an earworm.

Later on, a few years later, I met a friend who was obsessed with the show, and insisted I watch it again. So, with the suck fairy an idea that had not formulated in popular culture, but was in my mind, I decided to rent it on Netflix DVDs and rewatch it. I was nervous it was more going to be than wasted time, that my fond distant memories of the show would burst like a bubble.

Yes the show is cheesy, the special effects not so much, and it is a kids tv show…but I was surprised at how much I liked the show for what it was. 

Watching the entire arc from start to finish, I saw the creative seeds of genius in the show (and also saw at least one episode I had missed back in the day. Crucially, an episode written by Larry Niven (!) where the Marshalls try to paddle out of the Land of the Lost, run into a Confederate Gold miner and discover they are, in fact, in an enclosed pocket universe. Combine that with the crystal powered pylons that allow time and space travel, a time loop episode and more, the strong SF roots of the show came to mind. 

And then there is Enik. Poor, poor Enik, the intelligent Sleestak..who thought he had traveled into the past to see the barbaric ancestors of his high-tech civilization. And the soul crushing realization he gets when he realizes that he has in fact traveled far to the future, and his high-tech civilization is doomed to fall to barbarism. Heady stuff for a kids TV show, eh?

Land of the Lost crops up again, visually and otherwise in fantasy novels and tv series. In the novel Paragaea, for instance, the main character, trapped on another planet, stumbles onto a jungle temple ruin, complete with Sleestaks, described exactly in terms of the tv series. 

But the remake movie with Will Farrell? Skip it. Just skip it. I’ve never seen the reboot series, either (that is apparently currently on Apple TV).

“When I look all around, I can’t believe the things I found…”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal points out a sneaky reason for long introductions.
• Bliss speaks for a lot of us.
• Loose Parts covers the forgotten past.
• Pardon My Planet doesn’t let us forget that some quests are more important.
• The Other Coast introduces another hero.
• Tom Gauld’s figure of mystery returns.

My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon. pic.twitter.com/juIypXG84j

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 7, 2024

(12) CAMPY CRANIUM. “New horror musical arrives in Ypsilanti just in time for Halloween” – The Eastern Echo has details.

Getting antsy for the spooky season? Kick off those calendars with the premiere of “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!”, a new musical written by Ypsilanti-area vocalist and stage director Carla Margolis.

Inspired by the 1960s cult classic of the same name, the musical is a reimagining that takes audiences through the infamous, campy storyline with an all-new original soundtrack. When a brilliant yet, reckless scientist’s fiancé is decapitated in a car accident, he uses a magical serum to keep her head alive. The head, while completely immobile, keeps its ability to sing and talk.

Fans of the movie can expect a more serious look at the same themes found in the original. 

“It focuses on bodily autonomy for women; now that it’s more perilous than ever, I don’t really address it specifically, but there was definitely an inspiration. There’s a lot of misogyny baked into this story,” Margolis said. 

Margolis’ unique take is rooted in a time period when feminist themes were less accepted in media, and that elevates the script to new levels, they said….

(13) ALL ABOARD FOR ALL ALONG. “How Marvel expands ‘WandaVision’ corner of MCU with ‘Agatha All Along,’ ‘Vision Quest’” – Entertainment Weekly interviews a Marvel TV exec and a showrunner.

…These two shows will broaden what Schaeffer refers to as “the WandaVision corner” of the MCU, and Winderbaum says Agatha All Along, titled after Hahn’s chart-topping song of the same name as performed in that first series, “really led the charge.”

The premise kicks off when a mysterious goth teen who’s obsessed with witchcraft (Joe Locke) helps Agatha break free of Wanda’s spell, only now she’s completely left without her powers. This “Teen,” who’s been hexed by…someone so that he can never share his name or any identifying information with other witches, plants the idea of traversing the Witches’ Road, a mystical realm that faces wanderers with deadly trials. If conquered, Agatha could regain all her magic once more. She just needs a coven to pull it off. Enter Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal, Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu, Sasheer Zamata’s Jennifer Kale, and Ali Ahn’s Alice Wu-Gulliver….

(14) SAIL SIGHTED. “NASA spacecraft captures 1st photo of its giant solar sail while tumbling in space” – Space has the story.

On April 23, NASA launched a solar sail protype to orbit around our planet — a piece of technology that could very well revolutionize the way we think about spacecraft propulsion. Then, on Aug. 29, the agency confirmed this sail successfully unfurled itself in outer space. Yet, we still didn’t have official photographic evidence of this for some time. 

Now, as of Sept. 5, we indeed do. NASA has released the first image of the open solar sail, formally called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and stated that the spacecraft from which the sail was released will continue to send back more footage and data as time goes on….

… As NASA says in the statement, it’s important to first remember there are four wide-angle cameras in the center of the spacecraft anchoring the sail. 

Near the bottom of the image, one camera view shows the “reflective sail quadrants supported by composite booms” while at the top of the photo, we can see the back surface of one of the craft’s solar panels. Most spacecraft are lined with solar panels because that’s how they power themselves up: with sunlight.

“The five sets of markings on the booms close to the spacecraft are reference markers to indicate full extension of the sail,” the statement says. “The booms are mounted at right angles, and the solar panel is rectangular, but appear distorted because of the wide-angle camera field of view.”…

(15) WHIP IT. Gizmodo says “Bear McCreary Wants to Bring an Obscure Lord of the Rings Song to Rings of Power”.

The soundtrack for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel has afforded composer Bear McCreary a canvas as vast as Middle-earth to play with: Howard Shore-ish riffs, unique orchestral pieces, and increasingly in season two, lots of song work. We already know the lumbering hill-troll Damrod is getting his own heavy metal infused piece this season, and this week, McCreary weaved one of Tolkien’s own poems into a beautiful song to welcome Tom Bombadil to the show. But the composer has a much more obscure, and much more intriguing ditty from the franchise’s adaptive past he wants to make a nod to.

That song? “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way” from the Rankin Bass adaptation of Return of the King. “I’m looking. I’m looking for the moment,” McCreary said in a recent Instagram live chat of his desire to bring the song to Rings of Power (via /Film). “It hasn’t happened yet but I would love to make that happen.”

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, David Goldfarb, Paul Weimer, 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 Ken Richards.]