(1) BOOKER PRIZE 2024 LONGLIST. [Steven French.] Several genre or adjacent works tucked away in here! “Three British novelists make Booker 2024 longlist among ‘cohort of global voices’” in the Guardian surveys all 13 books.
Percival Everett, Hisham Matar and Sarah Perry are among the 13 novelists longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. The “Booker dozen” also features works by Richard Powers, Tommy Orange, Rachel Kushner and Anne Michaels.
This year’s “glorious” list comprises “a cohort of global voices, strong voices and new voices”, said judging chair and artist Edmund de Waal….
File 770 has a genre-focused post here: “Booker Prize 2024”.
(2) REJECTING TACIT AGREEMENT. Christopher Golden sends a message “To those of you nodding along with Tom Monteleone…”
A note to certain members of the horror community. I know you’re out there—writers and readers who saw the substack post from Tom Monteleone over the weekend and quietly agree with his estimation of many of the writers who’d received Stoker Awards, or Lifetime Achievement Awards from the HWA. Honestly, it’s easy to do. We get wrapped up in our lives and perceptions and rely on our own experiences and acquired knowledge to filter the information we’re receiving. If you read Monteleone’s screed and agreed with it, even somewhat, maybe you haven’t taken the single moment of wondering if there’s another way to approach it….
… Let’s take a look at some of the authors Monteleone views as unworthy of recognition.
He dismisses Linda Addison mostly, I believe, because she’s best known as a poet. In order to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, Monteleone reminds us, one must have “significantly contributed to and influenced the field.” It’s obvious he views the field as comprised as writers like himself, never considering that one’s contributions and influence do not need to touch you or even enter your awareness to be legitimate and worth celebrating. Linda Addison does not need you to acknowledge her worth to be worthy. She doesn’t need to have been embraced by readers who are not interested in poetry for her contributions to be significant. You don’t need to have felt her influence or even observed it for her to be influential. I wonder how many horror writers have written poetry because Linda Addison makes them sit up and take notice of the art form. I’d wager the number is far higher than the number of authors who took up writing horror novels because they’d read something by Thomas F. Monteleone. Linda has blazed a trail for others to follow, and lit the goddamn path for them. She’s been a mentor and an example to follow. How many can say the same?
And to claim you consider her your friend? Shame on you. Learn something. Instead of assuming Linda’s race is the reason for her recognition, consider that her race is the reason you haven’t educated yourself as to why she has actually been honored….
(3) KSR ON BBC. The Climate Question team interviews Kim Stanley Robinson in this episode of the BBC World Service program: “The Climate Question, Can Science Fiction help us fight climate change?”
The acclaimed US sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson is also a star in the world of climate activism because his work often features climate change – on Earth and beyond. Robinson has been a guest speaker at the COP climate summit, and novels such as The Ministry For The Future and The Mars Trilogy are admired by everyone from Barack Obama to former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. Robinson’s books are not just imaginative but scientifically accurate, and some of their ideas have even inspired new thinking about climate-proofing technology. Kim Stanley Robinson has been talking to the Climate Question team.
(4) STOP PALPATINE! Gizmodo introduces us to a three-book Star Wars tale coming out in 2026 and 2027: “Star Wars’ New Book Trilogy Explores the Politics Behind the Rise of the Rebellion”.
…As you can tell by the cover of the first novel in the series, The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed (writer of the absolutely incredible Alphabet Squadron series) Reign of the Empire will examine the struggle against the Empire through the eyes of some familiar faces. Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera–all with their own differing perspectives on what must be done to stop Palpatine–play key roles in the trilogy, alongside a new cast of original characters as the galaxy begins to reckon with the grip of the Empire. Here’s the official logline for The Mask of Fear:
Before the Rebellion, the Empire reigned.
“In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society!”
With one speech, and thunderous applause, Chancellor Palpatine brought the era of the Republic crashing down. In its place rose the Galactic Empire. Across the galaxy, people rejoiced and celebrated the end to war—and the promises of tomorrow. But that tomorrow was a lie. Instead the galaxy became twisted by the cruelty and fear of the Emperor’s rule.
During that terrifying first year of tyranny, Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera, and Bail Organa face the encroaching darkness. One day, they will be three architects of the Rebel Alliance. But first, each must find purpose and direction in a changing galaxy, while harboring their own secrets, fears, and hopes for a future that may never come, unless they act.
The Mask of Fear will be followed by two more novels: the first written by Resistance Reborn‘s Rebecca Roanhorse, and the second by Fran Wilde…
(5) RHONDI SALSITZ (1949-2024). Prolific sff novelist Rhondi Salsitz, who went into hospice care on June 30, died on July 29 Facebook friends learned today.
She was a 1979 Clarion graduate. Her first published story, “Persephone”, appeared in Damon Knight’s Orbit 21 (1980).
Salsitz was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She told a BookReview.com interviewer:
I started writing short stories when I was in the 3rd grade. I wrote my first science fiction novel when I was in the 5th grade. Needless to say, they weren’t very good but I knew very early on that I wanted to be an author. My mother was a writer …so, I grew up with an inherent love for books and I thought being a writer was probably one of the best things in the world you could be. I spent a lot of my early years trading letters with Walter Farley of Black Stallion fame. He was a wonderful author for a child to communicate with. He always wrote back… He was …very encouraging. …I was very lucky. I was always encouraged.
…I got a lot of rejections for a lot of years before I finally started selling. But I’m stubborn. My dad used to say that if I fell in a river, I’d float upstream. I was determined to get published and I did….
During her career she wrote under many names: Sara Hanover, Emily Drake, Anne Knight, Elizabeth Forrest, Charles Ingrid, Rhondi Greening, Rhondi Vilott Salsitz, Jenna Rhodes, R.A.V. Salsitz, and Rhondi Vilott.
Her eight series included the space opera Sand Wars books and fantasy sequences such as Magickers, Patterns of Chaos, and Dragontales. The 14-book Dragontales series was interactive fiction similar to Choose Your Own Adventures. Salsitz also told the BookReview.com interviewer, “I received hundreds of letters from kids who read those. As a matter of fact, I still run into people who read them when they were younger.”
A 2022 anthology she co-edited with Crystal Sarakas, Shattering The Glass Slipper, boasted a finalist for the 2023 WSFA Small Press Award, R.Z. Held’s story “Ashes of a Cinnamon Fire”.
You can hear Salsitz interviewed by Scott Edelman – another 1979 Clarion grad – at the link for his Eating the Fantastic podcast in 2023.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: July 30, 1966 — Batman (also known as Batman: The Movie) (1966)
So let’s have pure nostalgia for this Scroll which is the Batman film that came out in 1966. Need I say it starred Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin? Of course not. But who were the villain or villians here this time that our cape crusaders dealt with while protecting the citizens of Gotham City and keeping their real identities secret?
I’ll come to that eventually but first let us look at who put the Batman film together. It was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., one of the primary writers for the series who would go one to write the scripts of two best political thrillers ever produced, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. I’d consider The Parallax View to be genre adjacent.
The director was Leslie Herbert Martinson who’s later was responsible for Wonder Woman: Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince? along with episodes of This Immortal, Mission: Impossible, Wonder Woman, Fantasy Island and several other genre series. He produced Rescue from Gilligan’s Island.
Yes, Bob Kane is credited as the creator, but Bill Finger alas goes uncredited.
So most members of the original series cast, with the exception of Julie Newmar as Catwoman are here. She was replaced by Lee Meriwether. I must say that she made a most purrfect Catwoman just as Newmar had.
Those villains are a Rouges Gallery of Gotham City’s criminal masterminds. In addition to Catwoman, we have Cesar Romero as The Joker, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin and Frank Gorshin as The Riddler. I’ll freely admit that Newmar’s Catwoman was by far my favorite of Batman’s foes. She was just the funnest of them, and the one I think the actress liked playing her role most of all the villains.
It premiered in Austin, Texas on this date followed by general release the following weekend.
It cost one point four million dollars and made three point nine million making it a rather nice box office success in those days.
We don’t do Story here even on an almost sixty-year-old films as we got criticized for giving away the plot of a forty-year-old TV episode once. Suffice it to say that if you like liked the series, this is for you; if you’ve not seen the series, it’s still a good piece of entertainment.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 30, 1975 – Cherie Priest, 45.
By Paul Weimer: I started with Priest’s work as many people have done–her Steampunk Clockwork Century novels. Boneshaker came out during a boom cycle for Steampunk fiction, and since I was avidly reading Steampunk at the time (trying to keep up with the trend). I decided to give Boneshaker a try. I loved its alternate American take on a subgenre that for a long while seemed terribly British-centric. With its sequels, Priest proved to me that she could master a subgenre with her characters and sharp writing, and I started picking up novels of interest she’s written ever since.
Horror and dark fantasy, with mystery and gothic touches, make up her major power chords of books she’s written since, with books like The Toll, or the more recent Cinderwich. Cinderwich shows that, beginning with and since her Clockwork Century novels, she has a really excellent sense and style of making a place come to life. Sure, her characters are fully fleshed and real, and sometimes so badly hurt by events. But it is the locales and places that they inhabit, or are trying to escape from, that really makes her fiction special for me. Grave Reservations, a supernatural mystery that is less Gothic and more quirky, has its Seattle come to life for me, for example.
Her most audacious work, and my favorite, are Maplecroft and Chapelwood. Lizzie Borden in this pair of novels faces off against Cosmic Horrors, with her axe. These two books are exactly for the people excited by that concept and Priest delivers in spades. The really strong use of point of view makes the novels feel inhabited, and alive. (And a really good message about confronting prejudice and hate that make the novels feel endlessly timely). And yes, once again, the settings and landscapes come alive in her writing.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Candorville is about our current alternate timeline.
- Saturday Morning Breafast Cereal has a new variation on the trolley problem.
- Randall Munroe advances the cause of science!
(9) HEATHER WOOD’S MUSIC. Thank Goodness It’s Folk devotes an episode of the podcast to “Remembering HEATHER WOOD”, a sff publishing figure who enjoyed even greater musical fame.
James and Sam bring this season of TGIF to a close with a special episode dedicated to the memory of Heather Wood, the inspirational singer and folklorist who sadly passed away this week. Her records with The Young Tradition are benchmarks in unaccompanied harmony singing, nearly sixty years after they formed. We play some of her wonderful solo singing, an absolute belter of a Young Tradition live performance, and some of the music that surrounded them in London in the 1960s where they lived, sang and worked together.
In the second half, Sam is joined by Eliza Carthy to talk about her plans with Martin Carthy to record his latest, and critically important, project “East” – and how you can get involved to help this be born. Sam plays two exclusive, never-before-broadcast live recordings of Martin singing from this project.
(10) MUST HAVE? [Item by Daniel Dern.] Here’s the buy-it link for the book bookbag: “Library Print Shoulder Bag” at TeezAvenue. (They also offer the design as a skirt or a dress.)
(11) HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. You’ve been warned. Variety explains “‘Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shockingly Sweet Eulogy for 20th Century Fox”.
For all the raunchy jokes, club drugs, buckets of blood and meta punchlines, “Deadpool & Wolverine” may be the most sentimental movie of the summer. Hollywood insiders and superhero film fans were stunned to discover that last weekend’s Marvel blockbuster basically amounts to a big, sobbing, “Steel Magnolias”-grade sendoff to 20th Century Fox.
After all, it was at that defunct studio, founded in 1935 and sold by Rupert Murdoch to Disney in 2019, that “Deadpool” first shimmied on-screen in a skintight bondage suit and pistols. It’s also where two decades’ worth of Marvel films were made, most notably the “X-Men” series, which catapulted Hugh Jackman to stardom. These characters first appeared in Marvel Comics but were licensed to Fox, leaving them operating outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the moniker for Disney’s film and TV Marvel adaptations). The merger with Disney changed all that….
(12) AND IF YOU WANT SPOILERS. The New York Times heads this article: “Spoiler Alert: Here’s a Guide to the Cameos in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’”. However, it’s paywalled, so it may be hard to give into the temptation to peek at the list.
(13) BAD TRIP. “Astronaut traveling to Titan loses his grip on reality in 1st ‘Slingshot’ trailer” – Space.com has a synopsis:
Laurence Fishburne…shares the screen with the Academy Award-winning Casey Affleck (“Manchester By the Sea”) and Tomer Capone (“The Boys”) in Bleecker Street’s upcoming outer space thriller, “Slingshot,”…The basic plot revolves around a harrowing 1.5-billion-mile trek to Saturn’s moon Titan and one astronaut’s inability to distinguish nightmares from real-life due to the side effects of a drug meant to induce hibernation sleep for the long haul….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Daniel Dern, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]
