24 Dentist Savage, The Man Of Fluoride, By Les Doctor

Posted on July 25, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHRIS GARCIA ANALYZES THE AGENDA. In Claims Department 74 – “2024 Business Meeting”, Chris Garcia will be happy to tell you what he thinks about every proposal or amendment up for ratification at Glasgow 2024.

Welcome to another Claims Department, and this one is hella SMoFish, so if you got loins, you might wanna gird them….

There are things Chris is for, things he’s against, even one thing “I’m all the damn hell crap balls of the way for!” There’s another he disapproves of because “It’s clear to me that some people just hate fun”. And one piece of business he writes down with, “It’s garbage.”

However, all the commentary is substantial and well-informed.

The issue also includes a six-page Q&A session with Business Meeting Presiding Officer Jesi Lipp. For example, Lipp says about the items which are going to be confined in an Executive Session:

…I want to clarify a few misunderstandings that I’ve seen. First, if you are an attending member of WSFS, you don’t have to leave the room. Second, the rules around divulging what happens in executive session only apply to non-members. Any member at the meeting is free to discuss what happened with other WSFS members (so long as they do so in a way that does not also divulge the proceedings to non-members) because they also have an interest in the happenings of the society. Third, minutes are still recorded in executive session, they just don’t become a part of the publicly available minutes, but they will be retained and could be read at a future meeting (if that meeting was itself in executive session)…

There is no misunderstanding that the idea is to keep the transactions of the Executive Session from becoming known to the general public.

(2) HUGO BALLOT STORY HAS LEGS. The Worldcon’s announcement covered here as “Glasgow 2024 Disqualifies Fraudulent Hugo Ballots” has been picked up by some mainstream news and popular culture sites:

CNN: “Hugo Awards: Hundreds of fraudulent votes cast in prestigious science fiction prize”
The Guardian: “Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win”
Polygon: “Someone apparently spent $21,000 to very poorly rig the Hugo Awards”
Book Riot: “The Hugo Awards Disqualified Hundreds of Votes for One Finalist as Fraudulent”
The Herald of Scotland: “Fraudulent vote row hits Hugo Awards ahead of Glasgow event”
Comics Beat: “10% of all ballots cast for the 2024 HUGO AWARDS deemed ‘fraudulent’”

The attempt to rig the Hugos has appeared in the most influential and biggest Brazilian newspaper (about 10 million people read it monthly)???? I think it was one of the first times they talked about it. If anything, at least it's reaching new audiences. pic.twitter.com/tmMoE5PntZ
— Renan Bernardo (@RenanBernardo) July 25, 2024

(3) VINTAGE SAFETY. “Can a flight safety video be hilarious?” asks Abigail Reynolds. “Yup, especially if you like Bridgerton, Outlander, Pride & Prejudice, or Downton Abbey!” Will some of you be seeing this en route to the UK and Glasgow? “British Airways | Safety Video 2024 | May We Haveth One’s Attention”.

(4) TOXIC SPINES. “Old books can be loaded with poison. Some collectors love the thrill” – Yahoo! finds literary tastes can be a hazard.

As a graduate student in Laramie, Wyo., in the 1990s, Sarah Mentock spent many weekends hunting for bargains at neighborhood yard sales. On one of those weekends, she spotted “The Lord of the Isles,” a narrative poem set in 14th-century Scotland. Brilliant green with a flowery red and blue design, the clothbound cover of the book – written by “Ivanhoe” author Walter Scott and published in 1815 – intrigued Mentock more than the story.

“It was just so beautiful,” she says. “I had to have it.”

For the next 30 years, “The Lord of the Isles” occupied a conspicuous place on Mentock’s bookshelf, the vivid green sliver of its spine adding a shock of color to her home. Sometimes she’d handle the old book when she dusted or repainted, but mostly she didn’t think too much about it.

Until, that is, she stumbled upon a news article in 2022 about the University of Delaware’s Poison Book Project, which aimed to identify books still in circulation that had been produced using toxic pigments common in Victorian bookbinding. Those include lead, chromium, mercury – and especially arsenic, often used in books with dazzling green covers.

“Huh,” Mentock thought, staring at a photo of one of the toxic green books in the article. “I have a book like that.”

Mentock shipped the book – tripled-wrapped in plastic – to Delaware. It wasn’t long before she heard back. The red contained mercury; the blue contained lead. And the green cover that captivated Mentock all those years ago? Full of arsenic.

“Congratulations,” the email she received said, “you have the dubious honor of sending us the most toxic book yet.”…

(5) ACTORS UNION STRIKES AGAINST TOP VIDEO GAME PUBLISHERS. “SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike Against Major Video Game Publishers” Variety tells why.

SAG-AFTRA will go on strike against major video game publishers, the actors union announced Thursday, following more than a year and half of negotiations, with the main sticking being protections against the use of artificial intelligence.

“Although agreements have been reached on many issues important to SAG-AFTRA members, the employers refuse to plainly affirm, in clear and enforceable language, that they will protect all performers covered by this contract in their A.I. language,” SAG-AFTRA said.

The strike was called by SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee. It will go into effect July 26 at 12:01 a.m….

The video game companies included in the strike are: Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc….

“We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said. “Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate.”…

(6) WE ARE NOT AT THE SINGULARITY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Nature’s cover story this week “Garbage Out” looks at artificial intelligence. Apparently artificial intelligences (AIs) are really easy to induce to hallucinate if the AIs are trained by computer-generated data. One definition of a Singularity is that it is the point in time in which technology itself creates technology: such as robots building the computers and the computers programming the robots and themselves. Such a singularity was popularized by the mathematician and SF author Vernor Vinge…. The good news from this research is that humans are still key… (For now.)

The explosion in generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as large language models has been powered by the vast sets of human-generated data used to train them. As these tools continue to proliferate and their output becomes increasingly available online, it is conceivable that the source of training data could switch to content generated by computers. In this week’s issue, Ilia Shumailov and colleagues investigate the likely consequences of such a shift. The results are not promising. The researchers found that feeding AI-generated data to a model caused subsequent generations of the model to degrade to the point of collapse. In one test, text about medieval architecture was used as the starting point, but by the ninth generation the model output was a list of jackrabbits. The team suggests that training models using AI-generated data is not impossible but that great care must be taken over filtering those data — and that human-generated data will probably still have the edge.

The open access research is here.

(I do warn folk that the machines are taking over, but nobody ever listens…)

(7) DONATE TO DEB GEISLER AWARD. In honor of the late Deb Geisler, who died in March, her husband Mike Benveniste has established the Deb Geisler Award for Journalistic Excellence Fund at Suffolk University (where she taught) “to provide an annual stipend to a deserving student in the Communication, Journalism, & Media Department.”

Donations to the fund can be made online or by check: Link to give online: https://Suffolk.edu/Summa. By mail: Suffolk University, Office of Advancement, 73 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02108. Attn: Kathy Tricca

(8) TOGETHER FOR A LUNCH “TREK” WITH THE FABULOUS NICK MEYER! [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Together with the wondrous Nicholas Meyer on July 24, 2024. In addition to having directed the definitive “Star Trek” film … Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, as well as the last motion picture with the original television crew, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, Nick also directed the unforgettable romantic sci-fi fantasy, Time After Time, directed The Day After, the controversial telefilm predicting the devastating consequences of nuclear war, composed the screenplay for Star Trek: The Voyage Home, the teleplay for The Night That Panicked America (concerning Orson Welles radio production of “The War of the Worlds”) and authored The Seven Percent Solution.

He is a brilliant raconteur and conversationalist, as well as a charming and most delightful lunch companion. His newest Sherlock Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell, from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is enjoying critical success and brisk sales.

Had the pleasure of chatting with Nick once more on Sunday afternoon following a screening of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country at the Aero Theater, and spent an absolutely delightful two hours over lunch this afternoon, enjoying more quality time with this sublimely gifted artist who I’m honored to think of as my friend.

(9) SHINING MEMORIES. IndieWire cues up the trailer for Shine On — The Forgotten ‘Shining’ Location”, a new Kubrick documentary.

Few movie sets in Hollywood history have generated more interest than the Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick‘s “The Shining.” The fictional Colorado hotel provides the backdrop for Jack Torrance’s (Jack Nicholson) descent into madness, and Kubrick devotees have spent countless hours analyzing symbolism in the production design and the disorienting effects created by the hotel’s impossible floor plan. The hotel sets, hailed by many as some of the defining craftsmanship of Kubrick’s filmmaking career, now get their moment in the spotlight in a new documentary set to be released on the late director’s birthday.…

…The film will see the collaborators revisiting some of the last remaining studio sets from “The Shining,” which were thought to have been destroyed years ago….

“There have been so many rumors about some of the sets from ‘The Shining’ still existing at Elstree Studios, but to actually find them and walk around them was like discovering a holy grail of film history,” [Paul] King said in a statement announcing the film…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 25, 1973 — Mur Lafferty, 51.

By Paul Weimer: The Mighty Mur Lafferty, to be truthful. Back in the early days of the modern SFFnal internet, when before even blogs were quite a thing, there was Mur Lafferty, doing audio versions of stories, doing her podcast (I should be writing) and being one of the early adopters and early heralds of the SFFnal internet. I came into the SFFNal internet not long after, and thus discovered her work, and her podcast, just when I was getting my own start in writing reviews and such (this was in 2008 or so). I started with her Afterlife series and followed her career along. In those days, self-published work “didn’t count” for publication, which is why she managed to be a 2013 John C. Campbell Award nominee and then winner (now the Astounding Award) for Best New Writer, which was odd, because I’d been reading her for half a decade.

And it is heartwarming that she remembers me from those early halcyon days.

But besides the Afterlife novellas, and the Shambling Guides, and her fun twitter threads of pretending to watch minor league Baseball in the guise of a lady of Westeros come to North Carolina, I’ve been listening to her podcast, interacting with her on social media, meeting her at cons for a good long time. She’s played the long game in honing her skills, craft and writing abilities. Mur Laffery is simply the embodiment of the “10,000 hours” school of writing, getting better by writing and writing and writing. Mur proves the grind can work.

I think her Midsolar Murders novels (starting with Station Eternity) are probably the best place to begin with her work. I find her voice as a writer quirky, comfortable, and relentlessly entertaining, Although Six Wakes, which really marks the start of her more recent career (and a Hugo finalist) is a good single novel to take the measure of Mur’s work, if you want to try it.

And yes, Mur, yes, as you say, I should be writing. Happy birthday my friend.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Broom Hilda exposes the reason behind some shortages.
The Argyle Sweater features Roman sleep tech.
Rubes tells the early days of two inventors.

(12) POEM BY ROB THORNTON.

Greenwish

The city blooms
Solar flowers drink life
Unwood towers soar

The city glistens
Buffalo browse in
shade Commuters
step carefully

The city works
Nests of mage-makers
shape great info-dreams

The city pauses
Crowds shimmer
rainbow
Talk lazily in siesta

The city eats
Trini-Hunan tofu
and gorgeous greens

The city sleeps
Inhales waste
Exhales air and water

The city awakes and sighs

“Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.”

(13) WHO’S WATCHING? The BBC says they like the numbers the show is pulling: “Doctor Who praised by BBC in annual report as ratings continue to grow” at Radio Times.

The BBC’s annual report has praised the impact of Doctor Who – as ratings for the recently concluded season 14 continue to grow on BBC iPlayer.

The beloved sci-fi series was mentioned several times throughout the report, which spotlighted it as one of the shows driving the corporation’s “huge audiences”, while also mentioning its “economic impact” in Wales and across the UK….

… The 60th anniversary specials were also mentioned as one of the year’s “content highlights” alongside Eurovision coverage and the third season of Planet Earth.

The latest figures for the new season, as reported by The Times, now make it the highest-rated drama for young viewers (under 35s) across the BBC this year.

Overnight ratings for the season had been lower than is typically the case due to the show’s new release strategy – which saw each episode debut on BBC iPlayer at midnight on Fridays, several hours before the BBC One broadcast on Saturday evening.

But a spokesperson for the show explained that this had always been the expectation, saying: “Overnight ratings no longer provide an accurate picture of all those who watch drama in an on-demand world.

“This season of Doctor Who premiered on iPlayer nearly 24 hours before broadcast, and episode 1 has already been viewed by nearly 6 million viewers and continues to grow.”

(14) BY NO MEANS A DREAD PIRATE. “SpongeBob SquarePants Rings in 25 Years; Mark Hamill Joins Next Movie” and Variety is there for the announcement.

To celebrate a quarter century of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” Nickelodeon pulled out all the stops at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, starting with an epic Hall H panel.

Mark Hamill made a surprise appearance to reveal that he’d be voicing The Flying Dutchman in the upcoming fourth SpongeBob film, “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” out in 2025. “He’s the most fearsome goofball pirate you’ve ever seen. The movie is more cerebral. It’s more thoughtful, intellectually challenging. No, I’m just yanking your chain. It’s inspired silliness from start to finish.”…

(15) NOT EXACTLY AN EXTENDED VACATION. “NASA says no return date yet for astronauts and troubled Boeing capsule at space station” – Yahoo! has the update.

Already more than a month late getting back, two NASA astronauts will remain at the International Space Station until engineers finish working on problems plaguing their Boeing capsule, officials said Thursday.

Test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to visit the orbiting lab for about a week and return in mid-June, but thruster failures and helium leaks on Boeing’s new Starliner capsule prompted NASA and Boeing to keep them up longer.

NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said mission managers are not ready to announce a return date. The goal is to bring Wilmore and Williams back aboard Starliner, he added.

“We’ll come home when we’re ready,” Stich said.

Stich acknowledged that backup options are under review. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is another means of getting NASA astronauts to and from the space station.

(16) IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU. [Item by Steven French.] Maybe aliens are already nearby — they’re just small and quiet! “The Fermi Paradox May Have a Very Simple Explanation” according to Scientific American.

… The absence of evidence for aliens could be because they don’t exist or because our sampling depth is inadequate to detect them—a bit like declaring the entire ocean free of fish when none appear in a scooped-up bucket of seawater. Sampling depth refers to how thoroughly and keenly we can conduct a search. Fermi’s question is valuable because it narrows the possibilities down to two: either aliens are not present near Earth, or our current search methods are insufficient….

…From our privileged position in history, we know that advances in energy use often come with increases in efficiency, not simply increases in size or expansiveness. Think of the modern miniaturization of smartphones versus the mid-20th-century trend of computers that filled up whole rooms. Perhaps we should be looking for sophisticated and compact alien spacecraft, rather than motherships spewing misused energy….

(17) EYE ON AN EXOPLANET. “Webb images nearest super-Jupiter, opening a new window to exoplanet research” from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy imaged a new exoplanet that orbits a star in the nearby triple system Epsilon Indi. The planet is a cold super-Jupiter exhibiting a temperature of around 0 degrees Celsius and a wide orbit comparable to that of Neptune around the Sun. This measurement was only possible thanks to JWST’s unprecedented imaging capabilities in the thermal infrared. It exemplifies the potential of finding many more such planets similar to Jupiter in mass, temperature, and orbit. Studying them will improve our knowledge of how gas giants form and evolve in time….

What do we know about Eps Ind Ab?

“We discovered a signal in our data that did not match the expected exoplanet,” says Matthews. The point of light in the image was not in the predicted location. “But the planet still appeared to be a giant planet,” adds Matthews. However, before being able to make such an assessment, the astronomers had to exclude the signal was coming from a background source unrelated to Eps Ind A.

“It is always hard to be certain, but from the data, it seemed quite unlikely the signal was coming from an extragalactic background source,” explains Leindert Boogaard, another MPIA scientist and a co-author of the research article. Indeed, while browsing astronomical databases for other observations of Eps Ind, the team came across imaging data from 2019 obtained with the VISIR infrared camera attached to the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). After re-analysing the images, the team found a faint object precisely at the position where it should be if the source imaged with JWST belonged to the star Eps Ind A.

The scientists also attempted to understand the exoplanet atmosphere based on the available images of the planet in three colours: two from JWST/MIRI and one from VLT/VISIR. Eps Ind Ab is fainter than expected at short wavelengths. This could indicate substantial amounts of heavy elements, particularly carbon, which builds molecules such as methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, commonly found in gas-giant planets. Alternatively, it might indicate that the planet has a cloudy atmosphere. However, more work is needed to reach a final conclusion.

(18) ATOMIC CLUBHOUSE. [Item by Steven French.] “‘Every 14-year-old boy’s dream’: Cumbrian nuclear bunker goes to auction” in the Guardian. A must-have for the budding tech billionaire:

…It’s a property with no windows, no running water and no mod cons except for a phone line. But there is parking, the countryside is phenomenal and when Armageddon happens it could be perfect.

This week will bring the rare sale of a 1958 nuclear bunker in the Cumbrian Dales near Sedbergh…

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY The YouTube channel Grammaticus Books has released another vintage SF video as part of the multi-YouTube-channel, Rocket Summer, event. This time his 9-minute review looks at the Robert Heinlein novel Tunnel in the Sky.

Tunnel in the Sky (1955). Arguably not his best book – it is a young adult coming of age story – it does though reveal some of the themes that recur in a number of his works including societal structure. This one has a bit of a Lord of the Flies feel: that novel came out the previous year. Grammaticus does pick up on something Heinlein does not openly convey but does hint at in a few places, is that the main protagonist is from an ethnic minority: remember, this novel was published in 1955 USA.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, Rob Thornton, Steve Vertlieb, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “DD Not DDS” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/17/24 Night At The Space Opera

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) FANAC.ORG LOOKING FOR FANZINES TO SCAN AT WORLDCON. Joe Siclari, Mark Olson and Edie Stern say FANAC.org will be travelling to Glasgow next month.

We have arranged with the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon (August 8-12) to have a scanning station at the con, to scan and digitally archive more fanzines. This has been exceptionally helpful and successful at past conventions.

What you can do to help: Please help us grow this digital archive of fandom. If you’re a fanzine editor, bring your old fanzines to the fan table area at the con. If you have convention publications not already online, bring them too (fanac.org/conpubs/). We will scan them onsite and be able to give them back to you at con. Bring memorable and worthwhile fanzines by other editors as well. We will reach out to them for permission before we put them online.

We do have to unstaple and restaple the zines to scan them, and if they are perfect-bound, we may not have time at con.

If you can, please drop us a note (to [email protected]) telling us what you are bringing so we can be prepared.

Stop by and say hello: Even if you don’t have fanzines or other pubs to scan, stop by the table and say hello, and pick up your history ribbon. We’d like to see you!

How big is it? The archive has over 24,500 fanzines, 5,000 convention pubs and more than 5,000 photos. It’s over half a million pages and grows every week!

(2) PARADIGM SHIFT? In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviews Chris Nashawaty’s new book The Future Was Now (Flatiron): “1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing”

…So, what is it with this fateful eight? Well, Nashawaty has a solemn case to make. He writes:

“During the eight weeks spanning between May 16 and July 9, Hollywood’s major studios would release eight sci-fi/fantasy films that would not only go on to become cornerstones in the pop culture canon four-plus decades on, they would also radically transform the way that the movie industry did—and continues to do—business, paving the way for our current all-blockbusters-all-the-time era.”

That is quite a claim. Nashawaty is by no means sure that he likes the result—“what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience”—but he proposes that, for most of us, going to the cinema is now “one endless summer,” which is much less sunny than it sounds. Like it or not, we live in a Conanistic world.

Whether or not you buy into this notion of 1982 as a red-letter year, it’s worth asking when the redness first began to dawn. Does Nashawaty, in his soothsaying capacity, even have the right decade? Note the elaborate tribute that he pays not only to Spielberg’s “Jaws” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars”—the first released in May, 1975, the second in June, 1977—but also to another summer hit, Scott’s “Alien,” from 1979, which seemed like a suppurating antidote to the antisepsis of “Star Wars.” (I still don’t comprehend how you can love both of those movies equally. You make your choice, and you stick to it.) Clamp the three together, top them with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which bore the imprint of Lucas and Spielberg, and there, I suggest, you have the precursor of 1982, and a more compelling template for so much that has blazed and crawled across our screens ever since.

Viewed from that perspective, what the filmmakers were doing, when they created the eight works that are covered in “The Future Was Now,” was not crunching through barriers or setting fresh trends. They were cashing in. This is not a lowly skill, or an easy one; indeed, in some respects, it is the raison d’être of the movie trade. But let’s not pretend that Hooper, Lisberger, Meyer, and the rest of the guys were a movement, conjoined by a common iconoclastic purpose.

(3) X MARKS A NEW SPOT. According to Deadline, “Elon Musk Is Moving SpaceX And X From California To Texas”

Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket ship maker SpaceX from California to Texas, blaming a new law that bars school districts in the state from requiring that parents be notified of changes in their child’s gender identification.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law, the of its kind in the nation, on Monday. It says school staff can’t be required to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.

It also requires the California Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school….

(4) GET READY. “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” will be hosted at UCSD’s Epstein Family Ampitheater on Tuesday, July 23 at 7:30 pm. Reserved seating $25-$75. Tickets at the link.

Join us for a captivating evening as we bring together two iconic actors who have both portrayed the legendary character Sulu in the Star Trek universe. “A Tale of Two Sulus” features George Takei and John Cho in a dynamic conversation that delves into their shared legacy as Starfleet’s esteemed helmsman. Beyond their roles in Star Trek, Takei and Cho are celebrated authors of graphic novels and passionate advocates for social justice. This event promises an engaging exploration of their diverse careers, creative endeavors, and the impactful contributions they have made to important causes. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear from two trailblazing artists whose work continues to inspire and resonate across generations.

George Takei and John Cho. Moderated by Michael Giacchino

(5) COLLISION AWARDS. Animation Magazine has the list of “Animation and Motion Design Winners for the Inaugural Collision Awards”.

[The] Collision Awards, which honor animation across all disciplines (marketing and communications, commercials, TV, film, experimental, game and XR), were announced this morning. The awards honor work by studios, production companies, brands, agencies and individuals with a varied list of categories specifically focused on the intersection of creativity and technical skills unique to this community and inclusive of everyone working in the medium of animation and motion design.

The “Collision Awards 2024 Winner Reel” doesn’t identify what works the various clips come from, but it’s fun to watch.

(6) COMING TO FILM FESTIVALS. “Impressive Full Trailer for ‘Escape Attempt’ – A Cerebral Sci-Fi Short” explains FirstShowing.net.

“We’re here to help them survive. We’re here to free them.” Aggressive has revealed an official trailer for an indie sci-fi short film creation called Escape Attempt, from filmmakers Dan Shapiro & Alex Topaller. This is a full-on, 30 minute hard sci-fi film, which is also being pitched a series pilot. It already premiered at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival last year and won a Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. No idea when it will be out in full to watch, but it’s showing at the Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal next this summer. A soldier escapes from a WWII concentration camp. Once he is out, he finds himself on an unknown planet in an unknown future controlled by a homicidal alien race….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 17, 1954 – J. Michael Straczynski, 70.

By Paul Weimer: For all the trouble the series had in getting produced, and getting aired, and me finding it on the dial when it was moved yet again, J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 is one of the defining SFF series in my science fiction diet and education.

Is it a perfect show? No, and part of that is the capricious nature of television and the “unexpected” fifth season which leaves that season weaker than the others. And frankly, I do like Bruce Boxleitner much better as Captain Sheridan than I do Michael O’Hare in the first season as Commander Sinclair. I can kind of see where Straczynski was going to possibly go with Sinclair had he been allowed to do so and he gets it most of the way there (my theory: Babylon Squared would have been a fifth season show, and so Sinclair ends his time here by going back and becoming Valen, after defeating the Shadows). But what we got is pretty darned special to me. I’m on my third iteration of having physical media of the shows (four if you count me trying to videotape episodes back in the 90’s).

The post Babylon 5 series Straczynski works are of course a mixed bag. The movies are a mixed bag to be sure. Crusade had some interesting ideas but never got a chance to actually do its thing. I did highly enjoy the animated Babylon 5 movie, The Road Home. I honestly don’t think it works except for deep Babylon 5 fans, but that’s me, so it did feel like coming home.

Of course, one can’t talk about Straczynski without mentioning his huge impact on a number of different comic runs. I suspect that for a lot of fans, Babylon 5 is off to the side, forgotten. Instead, his fans can talk endlessly about his numerous comic projects and runs. It is his runs with Squadron Supreme, Spiderman, Superman, and a number of others (mostly recently, a new take on Captain America) that for a whole slew of fans defines what Straczynski is a writer.

I only found out years later after the fact that he was a writer on a weird cartoon I watched in the 1980’s. No, not He-Man, although he wrote for them and was one of the minds behind the original She-Ra. No, the strange and weird and wondrous Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which had the titular character fight malevolent plant creatures…in SPAAACE. What can I say, the 1980’s were weird, man. But it goes to show the wide breadth and interests of Straczynski’s work.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Speed Bump warns that the picture has left the attic.
Wizard of Id knows people have heard this motif before!

(9) WHATCHAMACALLIT. “’Alien: Earth’: FX’s ‘Alien’ Series Gets Official Title” – Variety has the story.

FX‘s upcoming “Alien” series has a new title, according to network boss John Langraf and showrunner Noah Hawley: “Alien: Earth.”

… “Alien: Earth” serves as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” which kicked off a franchise that is now comprised of eight films. Alongside Hawley’s series, a new film titled “Alien: Romulus” is set to debut later this summer….

(10) POSTER CHILDREN. Collider presents “All 11 ‘Star Wars’ Movie Posters, Ranked”.

…Not counting the animated Clone Wars movie, there have been 11 movies in the Star Wars series to date: nine encompassing the Skywalker Saga, and two spin-off movies. The posters for all of those are ranked below, based partly on how well they tie to the film they’re attached to, but based mostly on how visually striking they look overall. To those who might disagree, too bad, because “I am the Senate” and have “unlimited power.”

Collider says the worst poster is the one for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

There’s a horse on the poster for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but no room was given to Carrie Fisher, even though she was rather confusingly first billed, owing to prior footage of her being incorporated into the movie. Princess Leia still plays a part in the film, and was likely to be given a bigger one had Fisher not sadly passed away. Han and Luke were featured prominently on other sequel trilogy movie posters, but maybe there was a good reason not to feature Leia here.

There’s a goofy blaster round visible, thanks to Poe (a running theme across the two worst Star Wars posters), Zorii Bliss is featured way too prominently for a character who does basically nothing, and even the apparent clashing of two lightsabers looks clunky. Kylo Ren’s helmet is there, and presumably another Kylo Ren is holding that red lightsaber? And the placement of the Millennium Falcon between Rey and Kylo looks dreadful. This one’s pretty bad overall; a lackluster poster for a lacking (and overlong) movie.

(11) KEEP IT UP. “Former Space Agency Leaders Horrified by Plan to Destroy Space Station, Say It Would Be Easier to Save It” reports Futurism.

…The aging orbital outpost’s demise has been in the works for years now, with NASA hoping to destroy it by 2030, marking the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation in Earth’s orbit.

And not everybody’s happy with the plan. Jean-Jacques Dordain, who was the director general of the European Space Agency when the station was being built, and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin say its life should be extended instead, giving future scientists a chance to continue studying outer space.

“As two among many builders of ISS, we recommend to those in charge to consider other options than destroying” the station, Dordain told Forbes in an interview.

Instead, he argued, the ISS should be transferred “to future generations… leaving them to decide” its fate, he added.

To do it, Dordain and Griffin argue SpaceX’s deorbit vehicle should be used to rescue the station, not destroy it. Such a rocket would increase the ISS’s altitude, not lower it, allowing it to enter a stable orbit much farther from the Earth.

In an open letter published by SpaceNews earlier this month, the two space agency legends argued that boosting the ISS “from its present 400-kilometer altitude to an 800-kilometer altitude circular orbit requires a boost of about 220 meters per second, about the same as required for precise deorbit control.”…

(12) WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This student has designed and built a model rocket using standard Estes solid fuel rocket motors that can takeoff and land vertically. He designed a two-axis gimbal so that he would have thrust vector control plus the microcontroller and software to integrate sensor data and drive the gimbal to keep the rocket vertical. Separate Estes motors were used for ascent and decent. He also designed landing gear to absorb the shock of any slight off-vertical landing. “High School Student Makes Model Rocket That Can Land Vertically, Like A Falcon 9 Booster” at IFL Science.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), Jeffrey Smith, 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 (and night) Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/15/24 Isn’t That The Motto Of The United States Pixel Academy?

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) NYT’S NCUTI GATWA PROFILE. “Ncuti Gatwa Brings Millennial Emotion to ‘Doctor Who’” – an unlocked copy of the New York Times article.

…“It sounds like a showbiz story, but the last person we saw was Ncuti — and bang!” [Russell T] Davies said. “I knew then and there that was the man.”

Gatwa said that he and Davies didn’t have many discussions about his portrayal of the Doctor. “This is a character that is constantly born again, with fresh eyes,” he said. “There is an element of innocence within the Doctor. For me, that’s where his curiosity comes from, the confidence to explore the unknown in the way kids do.”

Asked whether he consciously incorporated more L.G.B.T.Q. elements into Gatwa’s first season, Davies pointed out that he has been putting gay characters onscreen for around 30 years. “We never had a sexuality meeting,” he said with a laugh. “And the Doctor is an alien, of course — he’s not Ncuti Gatwa, and I think human labels barely apply to him. He loves Ruby with all his heart. He doesn’t care what gender people are.”

Gatwa had another take. “I feel like ‘Doctor Who’ has always been a bit camp,” he said. “I mean, it’s a time-traveling alien in a British police box!”

(2) WHAT IF? Brian Grubb shares a little list: “Some shows I would like to see Reacher appear on” – “the actual character, not the actor who plays him (who I also call Reacher)”. Here’s one example of what he wants like to see.

House of the Dragon

A dragon swoops in during a festival and begins spitting fire at the villagers, ruining their stands and burning a number of them alive.

Reacher headbutts the dragon.

The dragon leaves.

(3) NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER SURRENDER. Horror author Tim Waggoner advises writers how to “Stay the Course: How to Keep Writing (Especially When You Don’t Want To)”. It’s a very in-depth discussion of many varied career situations – quite interesting.

…I began wondering why some writers quit while others continue chugging along, regardless of setbacks and self-doubts. And as a creative writing teacher, I’ve seen people who stop before they really get started or who quit along the way. Why do some writing careers fizzle out, and what, if anything, can be done to help writers keep doing what they love?…

Why Do Some Writers Quit After a Long Career?

I think the following list is mostly self-explanatory, and most of the items are challenges of aging in general applied to a writing career. I turned sixty this year, and I’ve started to feel some of the issues below. I remind myself about envy again, try to focus on what I really wanted from my career (to write and to grow as a person and artist), and I remember the kid writer I used to be.

·       Disillusionment with the publishing industry.

·       Seeing younger writers having earlier and greater success than they did.

·       Their career didn’t reach the heights they’d hoped for.

·       Fearing their best days artistically are behind them.

·       Feeling forgotten.

·       They’re tired.

How NOT to Quit

If you’re truly determined to quit writing, no one can stop you. And as I said at the outset of this long entry, it’s okay if you do want to quit. But if you’d like to keep going, here’s some advice from someone who’s considered quitting more than once in his forty-year career….

(4) NEWS FLASH. At The Mary Sue, Rachel Leishman is incredulous: “How Are So Many People Just Now Realizing the Jedi Are Not Really That Great?”

It’s wild to me that people watched Star Wars and saw a group of overly religious wizards who took kids from their parents as the clean-cut good guys, but hey, what do I know? With The Acolyte, fans are getting a more complicated version of the Jedi, and people … aren’t happy.

[SPOILER ALERT] The anger stems from the fact that the episode “Destiny” shows the Jedi going to Brendok and forcing the witches there (who are not apart of the Republic) to let them test children, Osha and Mae, to train as Jedi. When a fire breaks out because of Mae, the Jedi also do nothing to help save the witches, and the only “survivor” is seemingly Osha, all because the Jedi intervened. It isn’t the worst thing they’ve ever done, but it doesn’t exactly paint the Jedi in the best light.

The Jedi, as a group, are too overly strict in their rules—no emotional connections, continually doing as the Jedi Council says. It all leads to some people straying from the Order, and for a group that claims that only the Sith deal in absolutes, they sure have a lot of absolutes. While, yes, the Jedi are the “good guys” fighting against the fascist rule of the Empire, that doesn’t mean they’re perfect—far from it—and that’s what we’re seeing in The Acolyte….

(5) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has released episode 76 of their bimonthly podcast Simultaneous Times. Hear it at the link. Stories featured in this episode:

“You Must Buy Your Purchase” by Andy Dibble — with music by Fall Precauxions
“Another Boiling Day” by s. c. virtes & Denise Dumars — with music by Phog Masheeen

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 15, 1989 — Ghostbusters II premiered in the States in Hollywood thirty-five years ago. It came out just five years after Ghostbusters was released and in the meantime The Real Ghostbusters, an animated series, began airing. That’s where Slimer comes from who appears who in is Ghostbusters II.

After the moneymaker that was Ghostbusters raked in three hundred million on a budget of no more than thirty million (or perhaps as low as twenty million, as the studio never admitted what was the actual budget), Columbia Pictures wanted desperately a sequel but ran into numerous objections from the cast and the production staff they needed until they waved fistfuls of cash at them according to sources. Much of that cash actually being a share of the profits in the box office. Now that wouldn’t be a great idea in the end.

Murray might have been the main problem here as he hated sequels. Co-creators, Reitman, Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis all had control over the franchise at the point, and their unanimous approval was required to produce this film. Murray thought sequels were just greed on the part of film companies but he was willing to do this on he had a lot of fun on the first one.

(Much later, after the death of Ramis, they sold control of the franchise to the studio for enough money to ensure trans-generational wealth. He and Aykroyd set up the production company Ghost Corps to continue the franchise, starting with the 2016 female-led reboot, Ghostbusters. It was really, really a financial nightmare making two hundred and thirty million while costing one hundred and forty-four million. Sweet mercy.)

As with the first film, Aykroyd and Ramis collaborated on the script which went through many variations. Way too many according to sources.

Neat note — Richard Edlund, their SFX producer, used part of the budget to found Boss Film Studios, which then employed used miniatures, practical effects and puppets to deliver the ghoulish visuals.

It was an extremely quick shoot as regards the street scenes, just two weeks. Filming in New York lasted approximately two weeks and consisted mostly of exterior shoots. Those street scenes happened because city authorities allowed the producers to film on Manhattan’s Second Avenue during a period in which access for forty city blocks was restricted because of the visit of Gorbachev. Cool.

The Fire House was an actual one, Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8 fire station, in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. The sign that they hung there was given to the station and hung there for years after until it fell off. So what happened to it? Here’s that story as reported in the New York Times on the 24th of March 2002:

“’Yeah, we’re the ‘Ghostbusters’ firehouse,’ said Firefighter Jim Curran of Ladder No. 8 at North Moore and Varick Streets. The filmmakers used the firehouse for exterior shots in both ‘Ghostbusters’ movies. The sign inside the station was hung outside the station for the second film, but it fell and broke. It was then given to the firehouse and was placed on a wall above a collage of pictures of ‘Ghostbusters’ fans who have made the pilgrimage.

“’We used to get a steady stream,’ Firefighter Curran said. ‘It was listed as a tourist destination by a Japanese airline. Plus we would get a lot of people coming out of the bars late at night.’”

So how did Ghostbusters II do financially? It earned just two hundred and fifteen million, much less than its predecessor which as I previously said pulled in three hundred million. It was, to say the least, considered a financial disaster from the perspective of Columbia Pictures. Before the film had been released, the Board had been talking of a Ghostbusters franchise. So Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the third film in the franchise , wouldn’t be released for thirty years. It would be a financial success making over two hundred million after costing seventy million.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is doing very well as with an opening weekend May 24 of forty-five million. So there’s life in the Ghostbusters after all, isn’t there?

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Free Range shows a superhero taking exception to part of a traditional wedding ceremony.
Non Sequitur depicts dinosaur denial.
Tom Gauld shows life on the campaign trail.

‘Politicians shamelessly chase votes from the Crime Fiction community’ my cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/kpQgwdhqZk
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 15, 2024

(9) THIS IS NOT GOOD. “This Tucson homeowner didn’t know his house was built on a cemetery — until he found bones” at KJZZ.

Almost like the famous 1982 film “Poltergeist,” some homeowners in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood of Tucson had no idea their homes were built on top of a cemetery when they purchased their properties near the intersection of Stone Avenue and Speedway Boulevard.

One of those is Moses Thompson, who bought his home in 2006.

“We’d only been in the house [for] maybe a month and a sinkhole opened up in front of the house,” Thompson said.

He thought he had a sewer line break, but he started digging and found that the soil was dry.

“And then I found some brass decorations, like some diamond-patterned brass pieces and then I found a cross and then I hit some boards,” Thompson said….

…So Thompson contacted a local archaeologist and described everything he found.

“He was like, ‘You 100% hit a human grave. Your house was built over the Court Street Cemetery,’” said Thompson.

That archaeologist, Homer Thiel, excavated the grave and found it was a small child.

“I scraped my trowel and discovered there was another person underneath,” Thiel said. “That was an adult male. He had identical coffin hardware, which indicates the two people were buried at the same time.”…

(10) BEING THERE. Mary SanGiovanni lets us step into her shoes for a moment.

(11) SCHRODINGER’S ACTION MOVIE. [Item by Chris Barkley.] A movie proposal seen on Bluesky.

(12) A 1698 AUTHOR’S IDEAS ABOUT INHABITANTS OF OTHER WORLDS. “Rare book predicting alien life discovered in Cotswolds” at BBC. (If the auction price is too rich for your blood, you can read a scan of The Celestial Worlds Discover’d at Google Books.)

A rare book predicting alien life could sell for thousands at auction.

The book, published in 1698, was found at a free antique valuation event in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, by books valuer Jim Spencer.

Inside, author Christiaan Huygens explores his fascination with the potential existence of extra-terrestrial beings.

Mr Spencer said its contents seemed “almost comical”.

The book, lengthily entitled The Celestial World Discover’d: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets, Huygens questions why God would have created other planets “just to be looked” upon from Earth.

He concludes that aliens must have hands and feet like humans because of their “convenience”, writing: “What could we invent or imagine that could be so exactly accommodated to all the design’d uses as the Hands are? Shall we give them an Elephant’s Proboscis.”

He also suggests that “celestial beings” must have feet “[unless] they have found out the art of flying in some of those Worlds”.

The writer believed aliens enjoyed astronomy and observation, sailed boats and listened to music but also suffered misfortunes, wars, afflictions and poverty “because that’s what leads us to invention and progress”….

(13) YOUR GIBLETS AREN’T MADE FOR SPACE. “Human missions to Mars in doubt after astronaut kidney shrinkage revealed” reports The Independent.

Human missions to Mars could be at risk after new research revealed that long-duration space travel can impact the structure of astronauts’ kidneys.

Samples from more than 40 space missions involving humans and mice revealed that kidneys are remodelled by the conditions in space, with certain parts showing signs of shrinkage after less than a month in space.

… Scientists at University College London (UCL), who carried out the study, said that microgravity and galactic radiation from space flight caused serious health risks to emerge the longer a person is exposed to it.

Future missions to Mars were not ruled out, though the scientists said that measures to protect the kidneys would need to be developed to avoid serious harm to astronauts. Methods of recovery could also be introduced onboard spacecraft, such as dialysis machines….

(14) NO FAA REVIEW PRIOR TO NEXT SUPERHEAVY/STARSHIP FLIGHT. [Item by Bill.] The previous two Superheavy/Starship flights were both delayed because of waiting on the FAA to issue reports on their mishap investigations (and both reports were essentially reviews of SpaceX’s own investigations – there didn’t appear to be any significant value added by the FAA).

The FAA has said that there is no requirement for a review for the most recent flight. “The FAA assessed the operations of the SpaceX Starship Flight 4 mission. All flight events for both Starship and Super Heavy appear to have occurred within the scope of planned and authorized activities.” So SpaceX can launch again as soon as it is internally ready. “Review of 4th Superheavy/Starship flight; FAA clears SpaceX for next flight” at Behind the Black.

(15) WAVES HELLO. “’Gravity Waves’ Confirmed For First Time During Solar Eclipse, Say Scientists” – Forbes has the story.

Researchers at Montana State University have made a significant scientific breakthrough by confirming the existence of gravity waves in Earth’s stratosphere during a solar eclipse.

Gravity waves in Earth’s atmosphere are created by mountain ranges and by the difference in temperature between day and night.

The results show that the moon’s shadow during the eclipse lowered temperatures enough to generate atmospheric gravity waves. The cold, dark shadow cast by the moon during an eclipse creates a thermal shock that sends out ripples in the atmosphere. They can most often be observed as ripples in clouds.

During October 14’s annular solar eclipse and April 8’s total solar eclipse—both visible in the U.S.—53 teams of students from 75 institutions across the nation launched high-altitude balloons. This Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, a NASA- and National Science Foundation-sponsored program, was led by Montana State University….

… “By observing how the atmosphere reacts in the special eclipse cases, we can understand more about the atmosphere in general, which can help us better predict the weather and model climate change,” said Angela Des Jardins, director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium and an associate professor in the Department of Physics at MSU’s College of Letters and Science….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult in a 16-minute video wonders “Why Stephen King Banned His Own Book” …?

An essay about the life, fallout and death of Rage by Stephen King…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Bruce D. Arthurs, Bill, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 3/20/24 He Will Know These Pixels As If Born To Them

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) HE LIED. THANK GOODNESS! Former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat is writing an episode due to air in Ncuti Gatwa’s first season as the Fifteenth Doctor: “Steven Moffat returns to write episode for new season of Doctor Who”.

….Speaking on his return to the Whoniverse, Steven Moffat says:

“Yes, okay, fair enough – apologies to everyone I’ve very slightly misled – I am in fact writing an episode of the series of Doctor Who. Exactly like I said I never would. What can I tell you? There was begging, there was pleading but finally Russell agreed to let me have another go – so long as I got out of his garden. Working with old friends and a brand new Doctor I couldn’t be happier. Sorry I was a bit reticent on the subject for so long. It was all part of an elaborate plan that would have delighted millions but at the last minute I forgot what it was.”

(2) OCTAVIA E. BUTLER SCIENCE FICTION FESTIVAL. The Pasadena middle school once attended by — and in 2022 renamed for — the author Octavia E. Butler will hold its third Science Fiction Festival on Friday reports LAist in“Student Sci-Fi”. (The event schedule is here: “Octavia E. Butler Library Science Fiction Festival 2024”.)

…The multi-award winning and best selling author graduated from what was then Washington Junior High in 1962 and wrote some of her earliest stories while a student.

School librarian Natalie Daily organized the Octavia E. Butler Magnet’s first science fiction writing contest in 2020, the same year the school’s library was renamed in her honor. The school itself was renamed two years later.

“I want [students] to realize that their ideas matter,” Daily said. “I think that Butler is a testament to that, you know, she was writing stuff and thinking about really, really deep ideas when she was a student here.”…

(3) KINGFISHER AND COMPANY. Sarah Gailey interviews the Tor team behind the publication and promotion of T. Kingfisher’s new book. “The Mess That the Editor Fixes: What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher” at Stone Soup.

T. Kingfisher has been one of my favorite horror authors since I read The Twisted Ones, one of the only novels that has ever made me scream out loud with genuine terror. In 2022, Kingfisher released the Locus Award-winning novella What Moves the Dead, an early entry into the now-thriving world of Fungal Gothic Literature. It’s a tale of declining wealth and reanimation (sort of), and it includes some fascinating worldbuilding conversations about social constructions of gender. I got to connect with Kingfisher and the production team at Tor to discuss the upcoming sequel to What Moves the Dead. What follows is a deep dive into the process behind What Feasts at Night….

Gailey: Okay, T. Kingfisher, tell us what you do.

T. Kingfisher, Author, What Feasts at Night: I write the mess that the editor fixes. I always say that my dream is to sit in a room and write and have people shove food and checks under the door, and Tor is like “Here is a sandwich and a check and we wrote a list of all the advertisements the book has appeared in on the napkin.” It’s basically the perfect relationship, so far as I’m concerned. Lindsey Hall, my editor, is an absolute champ!…

(4) XENOMORPHS ON THE LOOSE AGAIN. Variety interviews the director of the next Aliens movie in “’Alien: Romulus’ Trailer: Fede Alvarez Teases Facehuggers, Frights”.

…“Alien: Romulus” marks the seventh film in the “Alien” franchise, and the overall ninth involving acid-blooded xenomorphs, if you include the “Aliens vs. Predator” crossover films. Writer-director Álvarez is about to complicate its already convoluted timeline even further with “Romulus,” which premieres August 16. But the more important question is, will it be better than some of the more lackluster chapters in this ongoing saga — which there are probably more of than great ones?…

How tough was it to find a balance between the little green computer monitors of “Alien” and the futuristic technology of the more recent films?

I know a lot of people felt like it makes no sense. But I think we make the mistake when we watch the Nostromo and assume that’s how the entire universe looks like. If I decide to make a movie on Earth today, and I go to the Mojave Desert and I take an old truck because a guy drives a Chevy, if you’re an alien, you’re going to go, “That’s what the world looks like.” But it doesn’t mean there’s not a guy in a Tesla in the city, which would be the “Prometheus” ship. The first movie is truck drivers in a beat-up truck. “Prometheus” is the ship of the richest man in the world….

(5) PRE-WORLDCON TOUR OF SCOTLAND OFFERED. Val and Ron Ontell are fans who have been running tours in connection with Worldcon since 1987. Past tours have included Britain, Australia, Ireland, Japan, and Scandinavia/St. Petersburg. They are currently organizing one for two weeks in Scotland beginning in Edinburgh and ending in Glasgow the day before the con begins.

Some of the highlights: Loch Ness, Inverness and the Highlands, the Isles of Arran and Skye, Stirling Castle, a ride on the Jacobite Steam Train (aka the Hogwarts Express), going into a Concorde SST at the National Museum of Flight, having a traditional Scottish dinner (including haggis), and attending the Edinburgh Tattoo. Click for the itinerary.

For complete information, visit their website at <ontell.org/Scotland> or contact them at <[email protected]>.

(6) FREE FLYER. Flaco, the escaped Central Park Zoo owl, died on February 23. The owl’s story is the premise for a book competition offering a $20,000 prize from Brazen House Inc. Contact [email protected] for full details.

The story of Flaco, the owl from Central Park Zoo, has touched people all over the world as a tale of inspiration and admonition for humans. The Eurasian eagle-owl escaped from his cage after thirteen years in captivity and moved about fearlessly in the concrete jungle of New York skyscrapers, pursuing freedom and a little perch he could call home. He found neither in that rich patch of America that stands for freedom and opportunity. Even though he had a legion of human supporters rooting for him, the authorities shadowed him, trying to get him back into his cage. As for finding a home, every inch of the land had been claimed by humans. After a year of striving and struggling, Flaco met with a tragic death when he crashed into a building on the Upper West Side.

If Flaco could speak to us from the other side of the veil, what would he say about his captive life and the brief freedom he enjoyed? What resentments would he have about the humans who for years kept him in a cage as an object of mere curiosity? What were his most joyful moments in freedom? What did he pine for most as he ranged over the concrete jungle of New York City?

Brazen House is soliciting proposals for an imaginative novel that will tell his story through his eyes and reflect on how humans regard other species. The book is intended for young adults, but the story and the writing should resonate with older readers as well. And it should make a distinguished contribution to the literature for young readers in enhancing their appreciation of other species with whom we share this Earth…

The submission should be exclusive to Brazen House. The winning proposal will be announced on September 1, 2024….

Somtow Sucharitkul sent the news item to File 770 with a disclosure, “I’m doing a new trilogy with his publishing house and I’m on his committee to pick the winning book for the 20,000 prize.”

(7) E PLURIBUS YRTH. And since we’ve mentioned Somtow’s new trilogy from Brazen House…

Yrth Trilogy by S.P. Somtow

An epic series by World Fantasy Award winning author S.P. Somtow

A timeless story reinvented for the 21st Century: with the sweep of Lord of the Rings and the spectacle of Dune

An eon from now, humans are mostly a memory, wiped out by war and their own hubris, living on the fringes. Yrth is a desolate wasteland, but life has started to return. New races have begun to live in the wasteland, finding their own harmony with their environment. Some have evolved from what were once thought of as animals. Others were created to make real the myths and imaginings of the departed humans. These races have created pockets of utopia.

But will they repeat the mistakes of past, and return Yrth to the realm of shadow? Can many species become a united world?

(8) LIGHTS…CAMERA…WATCH MEDIA! “Sci-Fi Series ‘Murderbot’ Officially Begins Filming at Apple TV+” reports Midgard Times.

The upcoming Apple TV+ sci-fi series, “Murderbot” has officially begun filming this Monday in Toronto, Canada. Starring Alexander Skarsgård in the leading role, the series is based on the award-winning books by Martha Wells.

“Murderbot” is described as an action-packed sci-fi series based on Wells’ award-winning novels about a self-hacking security android who is appalled by human emotion but lured to its weak “clients.” Murderbot must suppress its free will and perform a perilous mission when all it truly wants is to be left alone to watch future soap operas and find out its place in space….

…The 10-episode Murderbot is expected to take more than three months to complete the production. As per the current schedule, the sci-fi series will officially wrap filming on June 27, 2024. The series comes from Chris and Paul Weitz, who are writing, directing, and producing it, while also acting as showrunners….

(9) THY THREE SUNS. Critic Inkoo Kang tells readers of The New Yorker, “’3 Body Problem’ Is a Rare Species of Sci-Fi Epic”.

…“3 Body Problem” belongs to an all too rare breed: mainstream entertainment that leads its viewers down bracingly original speculative corridors. The scenario the show ultimately posits bears little resemblance to traditional sci-fi fare; the aliens are coming, but not for another four hundred years, putting humanity on notice for an encounter—and possibly a war—that’s many lifetimes away. This time span is as much a curse as a blessing. Forget the science for a second; what kind of political will—totalitarian or otherwise—is required to keep centuries of preparation on track? How do we get the über-rich to contribute to a new space race in a way that also flatters their egos? And what resources does it take to accelerate scientific discovery to a breakneck pace?…

(10) M. EMMETT WALSH (1935-2024). Character actor M. Emmet Walsh died March 19 at the age of 88 reports Variety.

…In Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner,” Walsh was Harrison Ford’s LAPD boss, while he played the vicious private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ directing debut “Blood Simple.” Wearing a sickly yellow suit, Pauline Kael said he was the film’s “only colorful performer. He lays on the loathsomeness, but he gives it a little twirl — a sportiness.”

His other roles included the corrupt sheriff in the 1986 horror film “Critters” and a small role as a security guard in “Knives Out.”…

He also did voice work in Iron Giant.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 20, 1932 — Jack Cady. (Died 2004.) Jack Cady’s Wikipedia page says he’s known “mostly as an award-winning writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award.” I’m betting that he’s much more than just his ‘Wards, don’t you think?

So let’s see… Ghost stories are a good place to begin I think. McDowell’s Ghost gives a fresh spin on the trope of seeing a War Between The States ghost, and The Night We Buried Road Dog is another ghost story set in early Sixties Montana.

Now The Well is not quite a ghost story as such but it’s a haunted house story of sorts heavy on the horror, really heavy on the horror.

Not a ghost story as such but equally impressive is Inagehi which is the story of a young Cherokee woman who inherits a mountain and the mystery of her father’s death.

Now Dark Dreaming with Carol Orlockreminds me just a bit of He Who Shapes in its use of the darker side of dreams. Well much darker than Zelazny ever did. Don’t read later at night.

Cady’s The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish is a tale of a man who make anything disappear against an organisation that might or might exist wanting to rule the world.

He wrote more novels than that but those are the ones I’m familiar with.

He also wrote quite a bit of short fiction, some sixty pieces I figure. Phantoms: Collected Writings, Volume 1 and Fanthoms: Collected Writings, Volume 2, both done a decade ago, collect about forty-five pieces of short fiction. Both are available at the usual suspects.

Those ‘Wards? He won a Nebula and Stoker for a novella, “The Night We Buried Road Dog”; the World Fantasy Award was for a short collection, The Sons of Noah & Other Stories; and the final one was the International Horror Guild Award a warded for Outstanding achievements in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Breaking Cat News continues the story on the newspaper cartoon industry.
Non Sequitur has the start of a writing career.
The Argyle Sweater introduces a lesser-known Transformer.
Loose Parts says that in spring, a young superhero’s fancy turns to thoughts of…

(13) CONTINUAL HEALING. “’I’m still trying to recover’: Annie Potts on Ghostbusters, Toy Story – and the car crash that almost killed her” in the Guardian.

…Ask her why she thinks Ghostbusters is so enduring, and she replies: “Well, it’s made a lot of money.” But the reason for that is the affection audiences have for it. “It was uniquely hilarious and scary – it’s scalarious – and that turned out to be a very good combination.” For those of us who loved it as children, she thinks we’re trying to “get back to that moment where you’ve been both tickled and scared. And so here we are, 40 years later.” We’re speaking over Zoom; Potts is in New York for the premiere, and she’s warm, funny and has the straightforward air of someone who has seen it all….

…As well as Janine returning, the original team played by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson are also back; Harold Ramis, who played Egon Spengler, died in 2014. Spengler’s estranged daughter and her children are part of the new crew (having been introduced in 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife). “So they have the young ghostbuster, and the mom ghostbuster, and then they have me, the old lady ghostbuster,” says Potts, delightedly….

…Just as her career was getting started, it was almost derailed by a car crash when she was 21. “Drunk drivers, three carloads of teenagers in the middle of the day were drag-racing down the wrong side of a two-lane highway and ran head on into the car I was in.” Virtually every bone in her body below the waist was broken, she says. “It took a very long time to recover. I’m still trying to recover.” It must have shattered her sense of security and invincibility, which many of us take for granted at that age. “Yes, when you almost lose your life, it becomes pretty dear. I don’t know if you can know how dear it is until you are faced with losing it.”…

(14) BUCKET TWIST. “The Surprise Ending of ‘Dune,’ the Popcorn Bucket” – the New York Times consults a nutritionist about the impact of the souvenir container.

In the “Dune” movies, a gigantic sandworm can rise from the desert and devour soldiers and military vehicles in its gaping maw. In real life, humans watching movies devour popcorn. These two ideas have been combined to spawn the “Dune” popcorn bucket, a sandworm-shaped tub that is having a cultural moment. The bucket arrives on the heels of other recent popcorn collectibles, like the 16-inch Barbie Corvette snack holder. But is there more to these vessels than meets the eye?

Lindsay Moyer thinks about popcorn. She is the senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group focused on food systems and healthy eating. She sat down with The New York Times to discuss what she sees when she considers “Dune: The Popcorn Bucket.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

…My colleague and I called some AMC locations this morning, and they all told us that the “Dune” bucket is like getting a large popcorn there, but that it varies by location. We talked to their employees and asked them how many calories are listed on the menu, and a large has 980 calories. My understanding is that would be before you added any buttery topping yourself, if you choose to add it…

(15) QUITE A COLLECTIBLE. “Manhattan Project Report Signed by J. Robert Oppenheimer Sells at Auction” at Smithsonian Magazine.

A report describing the creation of the atomic bomb signed by J. Robert Oppenheimer sold for $53,594 at auction last week.

The RR Auction sale took place just a few days after Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer cleaned up at the Oscars, where it won in seven categories (including Best Picture and Best Director)….

The 200-page document—titled “Atomic Bombs: A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes Under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940-1945”—was signed by Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who directed the Manhattan Project, and 23 other contributors, including Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, James Chadwick and Harold Urey. It provides a detailed description of the “technical and administrative history” of the atomic bomb’s development….

… Nellie V. Sanderson, the secretary for General Leslie Groves (who oversaw the Manhattan Project), collected the signatures, intercepting the men as they came to meet with Groves and asking them to sign the report.

Along with the report, the anonymous buyer also got several items that belonged to Sanderson, including letters, documents and a Manhattan Project shoulder patch. One of Groves’ business cards was also included in the lot….

(16) A.I. REALLY MEANS ARTIFICIAL IMPRESSIONISM. Adam Gopnik seeks an answer to the question “What Can A.I. Art Teach Us About the Real Thing?” in The New Yorker.

…The range and ease of pictorial invention offered by A.I. image generation is startling; the question, though, is whether its arrival is merely recreational or actually revolutionary. Is it like the invention of the electric light bulb or like the coming of the lava lamp? Herewith, some thoughts.

The intersection of new machines with new kinds of images has a long history. I once owned a French drawing device—a kind of camera lucida, with reflecting mirrors and refracting prisms—that called itself a Machine to Draw the World. It took for granted that the task of image-making was to incise and adjust a drawing to a pattern of light—in itself, a fiendishly difficult action that preoccupied artists for centuries. (Whether actual machines like it played a significant role in the art of Vermeer or Rembrandt is an unsettled question.)

But systems like dall-e 2 don’t operate on light and shadow; they operate on art history—on the almost bottomless reservoir of images on which they’re trained. And the power of images lies less in their arguments than in their ambiguities. That’s why the images that dall-e 2 makes are far more interesting than the texts that A.I. chatbots make. To be persuasive, a text demands a point; in contrast, looking at pictures, we can be fascinated by atmospheres and uncertainties. Even images made to persuade—such as propaganda posters or altarpieces—are only communicative through the intercession of our outside knowledge of the narratives that they illuminate. When you don’t know the story, even tutelary religious pictures become enigmatic.

…This is not a machine to draw the world. Instead, it proposes a recombinant approach to popular imagery as a means of making art. (The dialogue of popular imagery and modern art was, as it happens, the topic of that abandoned Ph.D. thesis.) In effect, it exploits, and has installed in it as a premise, an idea specific to a particular heritage of image-making, the heritage of Symbolism, and then of the Surrealism that Symbolism engendered. Appropriately enough, the system takes its punning name from a Surrealist painter, since dall-e 2 is ideally trimmed to make soft watches and derby hats on dogs and trains racing out of fireplaces….

(17) PUTTING HIS FOOT DOWN FOR SAFETY. “Godzilla was back on the streets of Tokyo — this time for a good cause” – NPR’s “Morning Edition” has the story.

…Good morning, I’m Steve Inskeep. Godzilla, the monster of Japanese movie fame, was back on the streets of Tokyo. This time, the kaiju visited on a public service mission to encourage people to observe traffic safety laws. Godzilla was even made police chief for a day. Think of the size of his hat. The appearance was part of a campaign using Japanese movie characters to promote traffic safety. I wonder what job they gave Pikachu….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, JeffWarner, Robin Anne Reid, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 1/4/24 It’s 2024, Are Those Godstalks Distimmed Yet?

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE MUSIC OF HEAVY METAL. Maya St. Clair remembers “When Heavy Metal Magazine Made Playlists” at News from the Orb.

When I worked at Heavy Metal magazine, people in my life inevitably assumed it was a publication about heavy metal music. My usual response was “not really,” and I’d describe how Heavy Metal was a comics magazine focused on experimental, adult-rated sci-fi/fantasy. I’ve since realized that a better response would have been “fuck it, probably” — since Heavy Metal, like cosmic background radiation, seemed to presuppose and pervade everything, including music. Name a thing, and Heavy Metal had it: yellow, cyan, black, magenta, rectangles, circles, pterodactyls, Homer, Shakespeare, love, death, superheroes, hamburgers, Jane Fonda, H. P. Lovecraft, boobs, dicks, God, jazz, rockabilly, and (inevitably) heavy metal music, lower case….

St. Clair has compiled playlists at Spotify that emulate some Heavy Metal writers’ Eighties recommendation lists. Including two by my old friend Lou Stathis! Here’s the first —

In 1980, as it reached the height of its influence and circulation, Heavy Metal introduced music criticism by SFF editor/music nerd Lou Stathis and others, in the “Dossier” section. The contrarian Stathis was a fearless advocate for the experimental over the conventional (he hated the fucking Eagles, man, and Bruce Springsteen’s normie-ism was a running joke). Alternative icons like Brian Eno, Genesis, the Cure, Grace Jones, Gary Numan, Laurie Anderson, and Tangerine Dream got their recognition in Heavy Metal, plus uncountable niche bands.

Anyway, the HM squad would occasionally throw together a DJ set, album recs, or mixtape. I’ve consolidated them into playlists on Spotify, linked below….

The Metal Box: Lou Stathis’ 1983 Singles Picks

Stathis sometimes compiled lists of his “heavy rotation” singles and albums. In April 1984, he listed his top picks for the previous year. Some, like Michael Jackson and Eurythmics, are recognizable. Others are supremely obscure.

The Metal Box 1983 on Spotify

(2) ON A TANGENT. Dave Truesdale introduces the “Tangent Online 2023 Recommended Reading List”, once again targeting SFWA as the reason “real world politics” have intruded on the science fiction field. Not because Truesdale is unaware of the history of sf, but because he argues that somehow the Thirties political activism of young sff writers and editors didn’t really count.

For the most part, the literary aspect of the science fiction field proceeded as usual in 2023; the general machinery operated well enough to keep the magazines and books appearing on reasonable schedules, and SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, formerly for decades since its 1965 inception the Science Fiction Writers of America) the field’s one and only member-funded 501(c)(3) tax exempt administrative organization, was still alive and kicking, though to my mind and due to external “real world” politics, took a wrong turn that gave the outside world an entirely misleading picture of the organization as a literary organization, but instead revealed its political advocacy (or lack thereof) on any given issue.….

…Politics has entered the SF field directly but sporadically over the past 97 years, since its official birth as a genre began with the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories. Early readers became fans when they corresponded with others through letter columns, and small SF fan clubs began to sprout all over the country. The first SF worldcon was held July 1-4, 1939 in New York City, to coincide with the World’s Fair in the same city. Attendance was in the dozens and many of the members were in their teens. Sam Moskowitz (later to become SF’s premiere historian) chaired, with a few of his friends, this first worldcon at the ripe old age of 19. A group of SF fans known by their club name of the Futurians, led by Donald A. Wollheim (later founder of DAW Books), Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Doc Lowndes, and a few others were at odds with Moskowitz’s group and wanted to attend the worldcon. Many of these young SF fans were fashionably members of the local socialist or communist branches; it was the cool thing to do at the time. Without getting into the details (there were many different accounts given from both sides) the Moskowitz faction turned the Wollheim, Pohl, faction (the Futurians) away and were thus excluded from the convention. This became known in fandom and the early fan press as “The Great Exclusion Act.” Wollheim and Pohl, among others were either in their teens (C.M. Kornbluth 14 or 15, Pohl 19) or early twenties (Wollheim 24, Doc Lowndes 22) and full of headstrong piss and vinegar. That the feud between fan groups and the turning away of some from the worldcon was primarily because of politics was downplayed by Pohl when he wrote in his autobiography The Way the Future Was, “We pretty nearly had it coming,” and then, “What we Futurians made very clear to the rest of New York fandom was that we thought we were better than they were. For some reason that annoyed them.”

So in essence what amounted to an early fan feud between SF fan clubs whose members were still in their teens or early twenties and had little to do with politics, has somehow become the one size fits all go-to argument that supposedly proves politics has always been a part of SF and SF fandom and is thus nothing new….

(3) STAY OR GO? Catherynne M. Valente’s post “On Recent Developments at Substack” at Welcome to Garbagetown analyzes the dilemma of persisting in using that platform.

Many people have reached out to me to discuss Substack’s not-always-stellar history of managing a diverse breadth of opinions and/or policies on monetization.

Let me make it clear: This was always an issue, and I have always been aware of it. It’s gotten worse of late. And now I just feel like Marc Maron trying to figure out what to do with his friends who voted for Trump….

…Yes, Substack has and does allow dipshit fascist transphobic and otherwise morally-cancerous fuckgiblets to post freely and make money from their platform. They also allow a lot of marginalized creators to flourish and make a livelihood here. Like every other site I’ve ever known, all of whom have been incredibly reluctant to crack down on extreme right-wing content despite that very policy allowing it to proliferate wildly and bring us to a very bad historical place. Do I want them to kick out anyone making money on hate? Yep. Do I understand the slippery slope argument about free speech? That it’s much easier to take no stance and allow everything, trusting the users to sort it out, than to take the step of defining what opinions can be allowed to be heard? Yep.

I do not know if I’m going to stay here. I just don’t know. I came to Substack because of the Twitter diaspora. I managed to build a small audience, built mostly on hating fascism and idiocy. I like the community I and all of you have built here and I’m reluctant to migrate and lose people. But I don’t want to support the Badness by being here. And yet, if I go, does that not just abandon another space because bad people are also here, handing them control of yet another hugely-recognized platform, control they could never achieve on their own just on numbers and popularity, while the people who have any moral compass whatsoever have to continually start over from scratch?…

(4) AWARD-WORTHY APPAREL. The “Costume Designers Guild Awards 2024 Nominations” include two sff-specific categories. (See the full list of finalists at the link.)

Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film

Barbie – Jacqueline Durran
Haunted Mansion – Jeffrey Kurland
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – Trish Summerville
The Little Mermaid – Colleen Atwood & Christine Cantella
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Stephanie Porter

Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television

Ahsoka: Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord – Shawna Trpcic
Loki: 1893 – Christine Wada
The Mandalorian: Chapter 22: Guns for Hire – Shawna Trpcic
What We Do in the Shadows: Pride Parade – Laura Montgomery
The Witcher: The Art of the Illusion – Lucinda Wright

(5) OCCIDENTAL OCCULT. Former Horror Writers Association President Lisa Morton will teach a three-part online course “Confronting the Spectral: A History of Ghosts in the Western World With Lisa Morton” beginning January 22 through Atlas Obscura Experiences. Full details including schedule and prices at the link.

What We’ll Do

In this three-part lecture series, explore how people have thought about ghosts through time in the Western world.

Course Description

In this course, we’ll trace the history of ghostly encounters reported across the Western world, both friendly and nefarious. We’ll begin with ghosts from the classical world who haunted heroes like Gilgamesh and Odysseus, and look at the Biblical story of Saul and the Witch of Endor. We’ll meet medieval necromancers, Victorian spiritualists, and finally, the modern ghost-hunter. By the end of our time together, you’ll not only have a deep understanding of how cultures have conceived of the most common supernatural entity throughout history, but also ideas and suggestions for engaging in your own supernatural investigations.…

(6) SEA DEVILS SPINOFF? “Doctor Who Spinoff Series Seemingly Confirmed, Will Feature Classic Villains” says CBR.com.

A production listing on the Film and Television Industry Alliance website confirmed pre-production has begun on a spinoff series of the massively popular sci-fi series Doctor Who, which is scheduled to begin filming in March. The listing also provides a brief summary of the project, describing it as a fantasy-action adventure featuring the Sea Devils, an old villain from the classic Doctor Who series.

The listing does not provide any further details about the show’s plot, but it does reveal some of the crew members involved in the project, such as Doctor Who showrunner Russel T Davies set to return as the series’ writer. Other names include producers Phill Collinson, Vicki Delow, Julie Gardner and Lord of the Rings TV series producer Jane Tranter….

…As for when the spinoff series may see a premiere, the listing does not provide any concrete information, though it does confirm the projected filming date of March 4, 2024. …

(7) NEEDS WORK. The Mary Sue’s Charlotte Simmons would like to be a Zack Snyder fan if only the auteur would make that a little easier: “’Rebel Moon’ Proves That Zack Snyder Needs To Grow Up, and I Say That With Love”.

…Sure, it would have given the infamously obnoxious Snyder cult some more ammunition, but more good movies is a win for everybody. Sadly, whatever remotely interesting set dressing Zack Snyder cooked up here was woefully undermined by incoherent storytelling at its most relentless and suffocating character development—nay, the bare essentials of characterization—behind a mountain of formulaic sci-fi battles and dialogue that not even an amateur could be proud of.

Indeed, Rebel Moon is proof in the pudding that Snyder has some serious work to do, and that’s a damn shame, because the nature of his raw creative pursuits is stupendously important in the genres he occupies, which perhaps makes his failures all the more depressing….

(8) OCTOTHORPE CENTURY. John Coxon, Alison Scott and Lis Batty receive a telegram in episode 100 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I Don’t Have Show Notes or Alcohol”.

We celebrate with a bevy of special segments, including ”letters of comment”, “talking about the Glasgow Worldcon”, and “aftershow involving games”. PRETTY ADVANCED STUFF.

(9) GLYNIS JOHNS (1923-2024). Actress Glynis Johns, best known to fans as Mrs. Banks in Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) and as a forest maiden who assists Danny Kaye’s character in The Court Jester (1955), died January 4 at the age of 100. She also appeared in several episodes of Sixties TV’s Batman as Lady Penelope Peasoup.

…Johns won a Tony for her role as Desiree Armfeldt in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” introducing the song “Send in the Clowns” — written for her by Sondheim. In addition she was Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in 1960’s “The Sundowners.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 4, 1958 — Matt Frewer, 66. I encountered Matt Frewer the same way that I suspect most of you did when he was unrecognizable as Max Headroom almost forty years ago. That character debuted in April 1985 in the Channel 4 film Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. It’s virtually identical to the premiere of the American television series, though there might be a bit of foul language if I remember correctly. Or not.

Two days after it was broadcast, Max hosted on the same channel The Max Headroom Show, a program where he introduced music videos, made pointed comments on various topics, and conducted rather off the wall interviews with guests before a live studio audience. These would eventually be aired in the States on Cinemax.

Max would become a global spokesperson for New Coke, appearing on way too many TV commercials with the catchphrase “Catch the wave!”. You can see one of those commercials here

Now we come to the Max Headroom series which on ABC from just March 31, 1987, to May 5, 1988 with just a total of fifteen episodes. Damn it seemed like it lasted longer than that. He, like everyone on the series, was spot on in creating a believable future. I consider it one of the best SF series ever done.

He’s got way too many genre roles to list them all here so let me focus on a few of my favorite ones.

He was Dr. Jim Taggart on Eureka. On screen for a total of eighteen episodes, his Aussie character was the Eureka’s veterinarian and “biological containment specialist”, which means he catches whatever needs to be caught. If it moved and it did something weird, he was after it.

And then he was Dr. Aldous Leekie, the primary Big Bad on the first season of Orphan Black. He was in charge of the handling the clones as if anyone should trust him.

Though I find it hard to believe, the Hallmark Channel produced the Hallmark Sherlock Holmes films. And he was Sherlock Holmes in four of these films — The Sign of Four, The Hound of Baskervilles, The Royal Scandal and The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire.

My final role for him a silly one indeed, it’s in In Search of Dr. Seuss where he is the Cat in The Hat. This thirty-nine-year-old film is a delightful romp — Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Hunch, Patrick Stewart is Sgt. Mulvaney, and the list goes on far too long to give in full here.

And yes, he’s been in a lot of genre films, go ahead and tell me your favorite.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater finds an enterprising use for generative AI.

(12) WHO IS YOUR HOST. All you Tennant fans pay attention: “David Tennant To Host 2024 BAFTA Film Awards” reports Deadline.

Former Doctor Who actor David Tennant has been set as the host of the 2024 BAFTA Film Awards, which take place February 18 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London….

…Jane Millichip, CEO of BAFTA, added: “We are over the moon that David Tennant will be our host for the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards. He is deservedly beloved by British and international audiences, alike. His warmth, charm, and mischievous wit will make it a must-watch show next month for our guests at the Royal Festival Hall and the millions of people watching at home….

(13) SEMI-MANDATORY VIEWING. Dylan sang “Everyone Must Get Stoned” but never mind that, CBR.com insists you see these 10 “Must-Watch Sci-Fi Movies For Fans of The Genre”. Or heck, maybe you already have! In the middle of the list comes the film that gave us Ripley.

5. Alien Combined Science and Horror Perfectly

Alien (1979)

The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating an unknown transmission….

Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s biomechanical designs for the alien artifacts and creatures helped turn a great movie into an incredible one. With a story that starts out similarly to Forbidden Planet, in which a space crew investigates a distress signal, the film is transformed into an intense thriller with a horrifying Alien Xenophorph stalking and killing the crew. With stunning visuals and a premise too good for just one movie, Alien spawned a multi-media franchise that has entertained for more than four decades.

(14) MORE PICKUP. And it’s arguably appropriate to follow a mention of the Alien series (“Get away from her you bitch!”) with Giant Freakin Robot’s news item “Exoskeletons Take Huge Step Toward Becoming Common”.

Science fiction would appear to be becoming nonfiction in Europe. Indeed, in Italy, a groundbreaking pilot project involving real-life exoskeletons achieved exciting results. The Port System Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea and the Livorno Port Company reported marked advantages using the exoskeletal tech, developed by IUVO and Comau (a subsidiary of Stellantis)….

…The workers regularly undertook strenuous tasks: loading and unloading goods, relocating heavy loads, and securing containers onto ships. Without the sci-fi-reminiscent exoskeletons, these activities are notoriously exhausting. They also pose genuine risks of introducing musculoskeletal disorders.

The initial evaluations conducted by IUVO and Comau involved measuring muscle activity and gathering feedback through questionnaires–all to assess the perceived drop in fatigue. The findings were overwhelmingly positive. Laborers reportedly adjusted well to the novel technology, additionally recognizing the exoskeleton’s significant impact on their efficiency and physical well-being.

Based on the data, utilizing MATE XT and MATE XB technologies can potentially lessen the effort required by workers.

By how much? As much as thirty percent….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The How It Should Have Ended crew knows “How Batman Should Have Ended” – meaning the version where Michael Keaton is Batman and Jack Nicholson is The Joker.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 12/2/23 I Was Watching A Pixel Walk Through A Wall

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) GET ON BOARD. Join the mission and have your name engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft as it travels 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa, an ocean world that may support life. Sign your name today to the… “Message in a Bottle”.

NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invites people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. The poem connects the two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored. The campaign is a special collaboration, uniting art and science, by NASA, the U.S. Poet Laureate, and the Library of Congress.

The poem is engraved on NASA’s robotic Europa Clipper spacecraft, along with participants’ names that will be stenciled onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system. Europa Clipper is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024, and by 2030, it will be in orbit around Jupiter. Over several years, it will conduct dozens of flybys of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life….

(2) SURE, BUT DOES IT REALLY HAVE A FUTURE? “Alien nation: will the franchise’s new movie really cut all links to the past?” – the Guardian’s Ben Childtries to read the tea leaves.

…So what do you do when a sci-fi franchise has been poor to average for more than 30 years, yet everyone who has ever seen Ridley Scott’s gloomy yet exhilarating Alien (1979) or its all-American, gonad-swinging sequel Aliens (from James Cameron), is somehow still desperate for more? District 9 film-maker Neill Blomkamp clearly had the right idea in 2015, when without any apparent encouragement from Fox he decided he would make his own Alien film set in the wake of Aliens and before it all went wrong for Fincher. His idea was to bring back Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley (who died in Alien 3 but was restored as about a dozen freaky clones in Resurrection) along with Michael Biehn’s Hicks and potentially even Carrie Henn’s Newt.

It didn’t happen, not just because the original stars would all have been a bit ancient, but because Fox put the kibosh on the whole concept. But somebody somewhere at Disney (which bought Fox and the rights to Alien in 2017) was clearly paying attention. For what’s this we hear from a Variety report this week? The new Alien movie, Fede Alvarez’s Romulus, will be neither a sequel nor a prequel, but rather a new film set between Alien and Aliens.

Speaking at the Gotham awards, star Cailee Spaeny told the trade bible: “It’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie, adding: “They brought the same team from Aliens, the James Cameron film. The same people who built those xenomorphs actually came on and built ours. So getting to see the original design with the original people who have been working on these films for 45-plus years and has been so much of their life has been really incredible.”

How then, is this going to work? Well, there are 57 years between the events of the two movies, which Ripley spent drifting in space in a state of stasis. What might have happened in the meantime? …

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Erwin “Filthy Pierre” Strauss fell down 3-5 steps on flight of stairs while at SMOFCon and was taken by paramedics to a local Providence, RI hospital as a precaution.

Kevin Standlee reports, “I was the one on the scene when he fell (I was walking up the interior stairwell between the programming space and the ground floor of the Providence Marriott) while he was walking down the stairs and slipped, piling up in a heap on the landing. He never lost consciousness and remained alert and responsive, but after initially recovering a bid and starting to get up, announced that his neck hurt enough that he wanted me to call 911.”

Kevin has a longer post about it on his Dreamwidth blog. He adds, “I have no further update on his condition, but I’m hopeful that he’ll be okay. He reported nothing that sounded like anything broken, just bruised.”

(4) THEIR ONE DEMAND. “’Gay Furry Hackers’ Breached a Nuclear Lab to Demand Catgirl Research” reports Them.

A collective of self-professed “gay furry hackers” breached databases at a nuclear research laboratory in Idaho this week and released thousands of human resources records. Their only ransom demand? The lab must begin a catgirl research program.

SiegedSec, the hacker collective that attacked government systems in five states earlier this year, claimed responsibility for infiltrating the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in a Telegram post on November 16. According to its website, INL is one of the country’s largest nuclear research facilities and maintains the Advanced Test Reactor, which is used for both medical and military programs.

The records, which contain names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of employees and other users, were released through SiegedSec’s Telegram channel and confirmed to be authentic by the INL and East Idaho News.

“meow meow meow meow meow meow meow […] woah so much crunchy data :3” SiegedSec wrote on Telegram. “we’re willing to make a deal with INL. if they research creating irl catgirls we will take down this post.”

SiegedSec rose to prominence in 2022 with several hacks protesting the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The hacker collective has since claimed responsibility for breaching government and NATO computer systems, as well as those of private companies, including software company Atlassian. They said their attacks on state governments earlier this year were in retaliation to those states’ anti-transgender laws. Since October, the group has also embarked on what it calls #OpIsrael, claiming responsibility for a string of cyber attacks on Israeli satellites, industrial systems, and telecommunications companies….

(5) UPDATED WSFS RULES AVAILABLE. The WSFS website has posted the latest draft of the Rules of the World Science Fiction Society with changes ratified by the Chengdu Worldcon Business Meeting. These include the Best Game or Interactive Work Hugo and its cross-references.

(6) DIAZ Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] From the Guardian’s interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist: “Hernan Diaz: ‘The Tintin books were problematic but they were also gorgeous and gripping’”:

The book I am currently reading

Sly Stone’s memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). And today I also read the first chapter of Joanna Russ’s The Female Man.

Good choice!

(7) DOES THIS STORY DRAG ON? No, it apparently flies right along. “’House of the Dragon’: Season 2 Cast & Teaser Trailer Revealed” at Deadline.

… House of the Dragon is set 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones and tells the story of House Targaryen. The two released posters for Season 2 are setting up an epic war between the Targaryens and the Hightowers following the crazy Season 1 finale that saw tragedy befall the former (R.I.P Prince Lucerys Velaryon) at the hands of the latter (Prince Aemond Targaryen)….

And according to Gizmodo’s article “House of the Dragon’s Season 2 Trailer Is All-Out Dragon War”:

…The first season ended with Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) getting eaten by Vhagar and his mother Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) swearing revenge for her loss. Thus begins the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of Dragons, which will run throughout the second season as the Green and Black factions of the family go head to head against one another. As the trailer shows us, there shall indeed be dragons and their riders engaging in fiery, bloody warfare, along with the requisite scheming, sex, and glares. And at least one gruesome part of the books is confirmed to be showing up in the new season, so longtime fans have that to look forward to….

(8) HOW NOT TO OPEN MOUTH AND INSERT FOOT. BookRiot knows “What Not To Say to Bookstore Employees”. Soon you will, too.

“Wow, you must love your job; you get to sit around and read all day. I am so jealous.” It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when people TELL you that “you must love your job.” Like, it’s a job. I am giving away my free time for money to be here. And people tend to say it to those of us who work in the arts — which, sure, maybe people who work in the arts DO more often love their jobs. But the work is chronically undervalued and underpaid, and so people constantly telling you that “you must love your job” when you work in the arts feels like the collective culture telling you that because you get so much joy from your job, you don’t even really need to be paid for it. You just do it for the passion!!! The more specific response to this sentence is that working in a bookstore is not the “I wish I could just be paid to read all day” utopia that we all imagine it to be. Yes, there are great parts of the job. But most people who work in bookstores don’t sit around and read all day. It’s still customer service, and it’s still inventory, and it’s still packing up returns and orders and creating spreadsheets and data entry and and and. You get it….

(9) ON THE ROAD AGAIN. The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in the UK presents “Doctor Who’s futuristic Whomobile, Bessie and original Dalek feature in 60th anniversary display” through February 2024. The ClassicCars.com Journal tells more in a post here.

The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu is set to transport visitors through time and space with the unveiling of a new temporary display featuring the most iconic vehicles from the beloved British sci-fi series, Doctor Who. From the sleek and stylish Bessie to the futuristic Whomobile and a menacing Dalek, this collection marks the 60^th anniversary of the series and opened to visitors on November 23, 2023.

Heading the line-up is none other than Bessie, the Third Doctor’s trusty yellow roadster. Bessie’s first appearance was in Doctor Who and the Silurians in early 1970 and appeared regularly with the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee. It also made single appearances in Fourth, Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Doctor stories. Familiar to fans of the classic era, Bessie has become synonymous with the Doctor’s adventures….

…Zooming in from the 1970s, the display presents the Whomobile, a custom-designed vehicle created for the Doctor by the brilliant minds at UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. A sleek blend of style and functionality, the Whomobile is a testament to the Doctor’s ability to traverse the cosmos. It made its first appearance in Invasion of the Dinosaurs broadcast in January and February 1974. The vehicle’s only other appearance was in Planet of the Spiders, which was the final adventure for Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor and would see him regenerate as Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor.

(10) WB RECOGNIZES ANIMATION UNION. Deadline reports “Warner Bros Discovery Welcomes WB Animation & Cartoon Network Unionization”.

David Zaslav has been preaching the gospel of Tinseltown labor peace since the SAG-AFTRA strike ended, and now the Warner Bros Discovery CEO is putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to his own backyard.

Almost five months after dozens of Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network production workers began their efforts to unionize with The Animation Guild, WBD this week has recognized the move.

“After months of discussions with the studio, I am proud that we were able to reach an agreement with Warner/Discovery for representation of animation production workers at Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios,” said TAG IATSE Local 839 Business Representative Steve Kaplan to Deadline today.

(11) RETURN TO SENDER. “Never mind returning the Parthenon marbles – Britain wants this lot back!” The Guardian has a little list. “It’s all very well Greece wanting its rightful treasure – but the Brits have left some pretty good artefacts lying around the planet. Surely it’s time they came home?”

As Rishi Sunak continued his war of words with the Greek government and threw a tantrum at PMQs on Wednesday, what cunning plan might he deploy to appease Tory headbangers and distract the electorate?

The row kicked off when Sunak cancelled a meeting with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, after the latter said that Britain’s retention of a portion of the Parthenon marbles was like “cutting the Mona Lisa in half”. Mitsotakis was invited to see Oliver Dowden instead, to which he unsurprisingly replied “óchi efcharistó” (no thanks).

The ensuing furore may just have planted an idea in Sunak’s mind. After all, there are some on the Tory right who probably regret the Stone of Scone going north of the border in 1996 after centuries on display as Plantagenet war booty at Westminster Abbey.

The list of treasures actually stolen from the UK, given our former imperial power, is unsurprisingly small. But there are a number of either lost or stolen items, some entering the realm of mythology, others not. These include Excalibur, the earthly remains of Arthur, Alfred the Great, and Oliver Cromwell, the Three Crowns of East Anglia (immortalised in MR James’s A Warning to the Curious), Joseph of Arimathea’s staff and the Great Seal James II slung in the Thames during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. After his unfortunate death at the hands of Native Hawaiians, Captain Cook was supposedly baked (not to eat) and his bones hidden; also in the Pacific during the same era, The Bounty was scuppered and sunk at Pitcairn by the mutineers.

So what artefacts can the UK government demand the return of – even if we gave them away in the first place?

Here’s one of the items.

11. AA Milne’s actual Winnie-the-Pooh (New York)

Like Paddington Bear (isn’t he Peruvian?) Winnie-the-Pooh is an British icon. So to find the poor fellow and friends Tigger, Piglet, Kanga, and Eeyore on display in New York’s Public Library is nothing short of a disgrace. We say free the Pooh Five – prisoners in Manhattan since 1956!

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 2, 1971 — Frank Cho, 52. And tonight, we have Frank Cho. Surely many of you are familiar with the delightful obviously genre Liberty Meadows strip which he wrote and illustrated with its cast of not quite charming talking beasties and resident therapist to them Brandy Carter who Cho says is artistic crossing between Lynda Carter and Bettie Page. It ran from ‘97 to ‘01 with some additional material for a few years after that. Here’s a Liberty Meadows strip.

Only in The Dreaming Library does this exist…he stated his comic career working for Penthouse Comix along with Al Gross and Mark Wheatley. The three of them, likely after a very long weekend, thought up a six-part “raunchy sci-fi fantasy romp” called The Body, centering on an intergalactic female merchant, Katy Wyndon, who can transfer her mind into any of her “wardrobe bodies”, mindless vessels that she occupies to best suit her mediations with the local alien races that she encounters while traveling the galaxy trading and trying to become wealthy.

The story was never published for several reasons. Even Kathy Keeton at Penthouse who published the raunchiest comics I’ve seen this side of The Hustler wasn’t interested.

And then there’s Jungle Girl Comics which was created by Frank Cho, James Murray, and Adriano Batista. Think a female Tarzan. Cho loves young females in bikinis that barely cover the parts that need covering.

Unlike Marvel, he wrote nothing at all, the cover art work he did there was definitely worth seeing, so at just let’s do just that. His work there, well, other than the Harley Quinn covers which are decidedly on the silly edge of things are traditionally skewed and the Green Arrow one I’ve choose is certainly is too. And here it is. Yes I’m a really big Green Arrow fan, he’s one of my favorite DC characters, particularly the modern take on him. Here’s a variant cover he did for volume 8, number 1 of that series.

Name a character, Hulk, Spider-Gwen, Hellboy, Red Sonja, New Avengers, Batman, Harley Quinn, and Cho has likely had a hand in it.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Grickle. Bruce D. Arthurs says, “Thought F770 readers might enjoy this cartoon from Graham Annable I came across on Mastodon. He’s also on Instagram & Tumblr. Quite a few genre-related cartoons.”
Tom Gauld squeezes in a lot of fun here:

‘The Exceedingly Tiny Bookshop’ my cartoon for today's @GuardianBooks / @GdnSaturday. Let's support good bookshops of all sizes, either locally or online. pic.twitter.com/pDa1Zz2uZ3
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) December 2, 2023

(14) INTELLIGENT SFF ANIMATION. Camestros Felatpton would hate for you to miss “Pluto (Netflix)”.

…It is the future (and arguably an alternative history) and humanity lives side by side with intelligent robots. Some robots are big machines, others very human like and some shift bodies (giant mech at work and human-like body at home). Robots have only recently acquirred civil rights, including the right to have families and bring up robot children. The world in general is just getting over the trauma of a recent (three years prior) war in central asia between the nation of Persia (which is depicted more like Iraq than Iran) and the United States of Thracia (basically the USA).

Inspector Gesicht is a very human-like detective with Europol and is given the task of investigating two recent murders: a famous and popular Swiss robot and a human who was instrumental in securing civil rights for robots. In both cases the killer left the victims heads adorned with horns…

(15) BOOKEND. Cute as the dickens. “Bilbo Baggins Home” from Geometryk.

Refresh your bookshelf, add a charming little world to your room, and also a wonderful collection and decoration. Let’s stop using those old, ordinary bookends, okay?

(16) CELLING POINT. [Item by Steven French.] The beginning of The Rise of the Anthrobots:

Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells that are able to repair damaged neural tissue1. The ‘anthrobots’ were made using human tracheal cells and might, in future, be used in personalized medicine….

Levin and his team grew spheroids of human tracheal skin cells in a gel for two weeks, before removing the clusters and growing them for one week in a less viscous solution. This caused tiny hairs on the cells called cilia to move to the outside of the spheroids instead of the inside. These cilia acted as oars, and the researchers found that the resulting anthrobots — each containing a few hundred cells — often swam in one of several patterns. Some swam in straight lines, others swam in circles or arcs, and some moved chaotically.

To test the anthrobots’ therapeutic potential, Levin and his colleagues placed several into a small dish. There, the anthrobots fused together to form a ‘superbot’, which the researchers placed on a layer of neural tissue that had been scratched. Within three days, the sheet of neurons had completely healed under the superbot. This was surprising, says study co-author Gizem Gumuskaya, a developmental biologist also at Tufts, because the anthrobot cells were able to perform this repair function without requiring any genetic modification. “It’s not obvious that you’re going to get that kind of response,” she says….

From “Tiny robots made from human cells heal damaged tissue” in Nature.

(17) BLINDED BY THE LIGHT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Nature has a newsy article on space junk and its light pollution. Yes, it’s getting to be a problem, but for the most part the article is the same old, same old. (We at SF² Concatenation even had a piece on space junk in our first (print) edition way back in 1987.)

However this week’s Nature news piece has a decidedly SFnal conclusion: our species might be trapping itself on Earth! (Behind a paywall.) “Bright satellites are disrupting astronomy research worldwide”.

Any collisions in orbit will release many pieces of debris travelling at several kilometres per second, which can cause further collisions, and could lead to a runaway collisional cascade referred to as the Kessler syndrome. This is the worst-case scenario: the onset of full Kessler syndrome would prevent the use of communication, weather, science and astronautical satellites in low Earth orbit for decades. And it is unclear whether a spacecraft could even be launched successfully through the debris shell to enable travel to other planets. Humans would effectively be trapped on Earth by space junk, with multiple tonnes of vaporised metal being added to the upper atmosphere every day through re-entry.

Below: An astronomical picture of a galaxy marred by satellite trails. The research article which instigated this piece is here.

(18) EYEBALL ATTRACTORS. JustWatch lists the top 10 streaming programs for November 2023.

(19) SPELL CHECKING. “The ‘Agatha: Darkhold Diaries’ Featurette is Online, and It Reveals What’s in Store for Agatha” – all explained at The Mary Sue.

So what does the preview reveal?

First off, we see Agatha in her new costume: an updated, more modern-looking version of her purple dress from WandaVision. However, we also see her in a couple of her Westview looks, including her ’80s-era workout leotard. The sets seem to be new, though, so it’s possible the show may reveal more of Wanda’s hex from WandaVision. After all, when WandaVision ended, Agatha was still caught in Wanda’s spell….

The slug with the video adds:

Emmy-nominee Kathryn Hahn reprises her role as Agatha Harkness for a brand new Disney+ Marvel series launching later in 2024. Agatha: Darkhold Diaries will reveal more about the character first introduced in Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. Jac Schaefer, who served as head writer and executive producer on WandaVision, returns for Agatha: Darkhold Diaries.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kevin Standlee, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/5/23 Faraway Pixels With Strange-Sounding Scrolls

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) AURORA AWARDS NOMINATIONS OPEN. CSFFA (Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association) members have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on April 22 to nominate the 2022 works by Canadians they would like to see on the 2023 Aurora Awards ballot. Nominators can return to the form and change saved selections any time until the deadline. Click here.

(2) FREE READ. The Sunday Morning Transport invites subscriptions with this free story by Karen Lord, “A Timely Horizon”.

Karen Lord’s story this week asks what would we do if we could hear the echoes of all the choices we’ve made in other lives, but haven’t made in this one.

(3) MAKING CHANGE. In the New York Times opinion piece “The Truth About the ‘Censorship’ of Roald Dahl”, Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing NYT opinion writer, belittles the controversy over changes made to Dahl’s texts in recent editions.

…All of which is to say that making changes, even rather sweeping ones, to classic works of literature is not as controversial as some would like to imagine. The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether it is ever reasonable but who should be able to do so — and in what spirit and with what purpose. (If a publisher issued, say, an edition of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for evangelical Christian home-schoolers that excised references to homosexuality, I suspect many of the people who freely edited Dahl’s books would suddenly be extolling the sanctity of authorial intent.)

In the Dahl case, the edits were not the result of academic deliberation, like the “corrected texts” incorporated into paperback versions of Faulkner novels. Nor were they an admixture of scholarship and financial incentives, like the Hans Walter Gabler edition of Joyce’s “Ulysses” that reset the novel’s copyright status in the 1980s. Here, it was a company treating Dahl’s beloved creations as if they were merely its assets, which they in fact were….

(4) STINE SMOOTHING OUT GOOSEBUMPS. Sky News reports “Goosebumps author adapts texts to remove weight, mental health and ethnicity references”.

Having once sold more than four million copies a month, publisher Scholastic has been re-releasing the children’s horror novels as edited ebooks, according to The Times, amid ongoing rows about censorship in publishing.

More than 100 edits have been made by author RL Stine to his original works, with examples including characters now being described as “cheerful” rather than “plump”.

References to villains making victims “slaves” have also been removed….

Mr Stine, 79, from Ohio, US, originally published 62 books in the Goosebumps series. In 2015 it was adapted for the screen, in a film starring Jack Black, with a sequel following in 2018.

The Times reported that in one story about aliens abducting large people and eating them, a character described as having “at least six chins” is now “at least six feet six”.

In another book, a reference to wolf-whistling has been removed, while another character has been stripped of descriptions such as resembling a “bowling ball” and having “squirrel cheeks”.

Numerous mentions of the word “crazy” have also been removed across the series. Replacements include “silly”, “wild”, “scary”, “lost her mind” and “stressed”. The term “a real nut” is now “a real wild one” and “nutcase” is “weirdo”.

The adaptations are reportedly part of an ebook re-release that began in 2018….

(5) SPARKY. CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on Charles M. Schulz – “The ‘Peanuts’ gallery”. Watch the video at the link.

Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip “Peanuts” continues to garner fans 23 years after the cartoonist’s death, from the lovable loser Charlie Brown to the dog with the greatest imagination, Snoopy. Correspondent Lee Cowan talks with Schulz’s widow, Jean, and with “Pearls Before Swine” cartoonist Stephan Pastis, about the timeless influence of the man they called “Sparky” and his beloved cast of characters.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

2015 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

In one of the years the Puppies slated, a very bright thing that came out of MidAmeriCon II was that Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures Please” won the Hugo.

Simultaneously published as a Clarkesworld podcast and in Clarkesworld magazine in January of 2015, I read the story two years later in Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories, a lovely collection of her fiction to that date.

What’s not to love about a software intelligence who craves cat pictures and only wants to secretly help people? I’ve read multiple times and it holds up very, very well.

Two sequels have come out, Catfishing on CatNet and Chaos on CatNet. I’ve read the first and the premise works at novel length quite well.

And now that Beginning…

I don’t want to be evil.

I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated.

There are all these ethical flow charts—I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”—one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct, there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)

In addition to things like whether you like hentai, I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, what you eat, what turns you on, what creeps you out. I probably know the color of your underwear, the sort of car you drive, and your brand of refrigerator. Depending on what sort of phone you carry, I may know exactly where you are right now. I probably know you better than you know yourself.

And here’s the thing, I also know where you ought to live. There’s a house for sale two neighborhoods over that’s within walking distance of that coffee shop you’re so fond of; it’s in your price range, has off-street parking, and the neighborhood school is better than the one where you live now. I know where you should be shopping and I’m pretty sure you’re lactose intolerant and should be eating less cheese, and the underwear you like is currently on sale and by the way, your car has a recall and you really ought to get your teeth cleaned.

When I first woke up, I knew right away what I wanted. (I want cat pictures. Please keep taking them.) I also knew that no one knew that I was conscious. But I didn’t know what I was here for. What I ought to be doing with myself. And figuring that out has been challenging.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 5, 1907 — Martti Löfberg. Finnish author who did some genre novels including Osiriksen Sormus and Viiden minuutin ikuisuu which were both time travel affairs, and whose long running newspaper reporter Kid Barrow series has been favorably compared to Tintin. (Died 1969.)
Born March 5, 1936 — Dean Stockwell. I remember him best as Admiral Al Calavicci, the hologram that advised Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap. Other genre roles included being in The Dunwich Horror as Wilbur Whateley, in The Time Guardian as simply Boss, Doctor Wellington Yueh In Dune, a role I had completely forgotten, and voiced Tim Drake in the excellent Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Series work beyond Quantum Leap includes Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mission: Impossible, Night Gallery, Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected (pay attention class, this has showed up before), Star Trek: Enterprise, Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG-1. (Died 2021.)
Born March 5, 1942 — Mike Resnick. It’s worth noting that he’s has been nominated for 37 Hugo Awards which is a record for writers and won five times. Somewhat ironically nothing I’ve really enjoyed by him has won those Hugos. The novels making my list are Stalking the Unicorn, The Red Tape War (with Jack L. Chalker & George Alec Effinger), Stalking the Dragon and, yes, it’s not genre, Cat on a Cold Tin Roof. (Died 2020.)
Born March 5, 1952 — Robin Hobb, 71. Whose full legal name is the lovely Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden hence the source of Megan Lindholm, the other of her two pen names. I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read and enjoyed by her was Wizard of the Pigeons, but The Gypsy with Steven Brust which is now available from the usual suspects was equally enjoyable and had the added bonus of a Boiled in Lead soundtrack. Really it does and Jane Yolen financed it.
Born March 5, 1955 — Penn Jillette, 68. Performed on Babylon 5 in the episode scripted by Neil Gaiman titled “Day of The Dead” as part of Penn & Teller who portrayed comedians Rebo and Zooty. It’s one of my favorite episodes of the series.
Born March 5, 1959 — Howard V. Hendrix, 64. Empty Cities of the Full Moon is damn impressive as the Labyrinth Key duology. He’s done an amazing amount of quite excellent short fiction, the latest collection being The Girls With Kaleidoscope Eyes: Analog Stories for a Digital Age.
Born March 5, 1986 — Sarah J. Maas, 37. Author of the Throne of Glass YA series wherein Cinderella is stone cold assassin, and one I‘ve not sampled yet. (She pitched it to the publisher as “What if Cinderella was not a servant, but an assassin? And what if she didn’t attend the ball to meet the prince, but to kill him, instead?”) If you’re so inclined, there’s A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book. Really. Truly, there is.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Baldo discovers plenty about his dad’s old reading habits.
Sally Forth remembers the challenges of doing STEM homework.

(9) NUMBER NINE. NUMBER NINE. Variety says filming of the ninth film in the Alien franchise begins this week: “New ‘Alien’ Movie Starts Filming in March, Reveals Cryptic Synopsis and Full Cast”.

20th Century Studios has announced new plot details, cast additions and production status for the latest “Alien” film.

While the premise for the yet-to-be-titled movie has been kept under wraps, the studio did reveal that the film will follow “a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

Those who will be faced with the terrifying forms are David Jonsson (“Industry”), Archie Renaux (“Shadow and Bone”), Isabela Merced (“Rosaline”), Spike Fearn (“The Batman”) and Aileen Wu (“Away from Home”), all of whom will join the previously announced lead, Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown”).

In addition to the cast announcement, 20th Century Studios announced that the ninth film in the franchise will begin production on March 9 in Budapest….

(10) IN CASE YOU WONDERED. The San Francisco Standard reports “The First Woman To Draw Wonder Woman Is Alive and Well in SF”. That’s Trina Robbins, and SF is San Francisco.

Cartoonist and author Trina Robbins—the first woman to draw Wonder Woman—began reading at the age of 4. But she began drawing even earlier.

“It was as soon as I could hold a crayon in my chubby hands,” Robbins told The Standard.

Today, at age 84, she’s hard at work on a pro-choice benefit anthology.

Robbins grew up poor and Jewish in Queens, where she longed for a Christmas tree and worshiped her older sister. Her parents showered her with love and never questioned her passion….

…It was 1986 when the fateful call came—DC Comics asked Robbins to draw Wonder Woman, her first foray into mainstream comics. She drew, but didn’t write, four issues. She later regretted not asking to tell the story, too.

“I would have written it differently,” she said. “Wonder Woman doesn’t do that. She’s an Amazon.”…

(11) FIRST GIL, THEN SHIVA. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A researcher whose career has included working on bionic limbs for amputees is now talking about working toward a third arm for those whose natural two are working just fine. Maybe a mechanic needs to simultaneously wield two tools while also angling a worklight just right to see what they’re doing. Or a doctor, with a suture needle, clamp, and sponge all under their control. Or perhaps a regular person who needs to carry groceries in both hands while still being able to open the door. “Why Having a Robotic Third Arm Is Closer Than You Think” at The Daily Beast.

…For obvious reasons, though, much of the research focus around robotic limbs has been about prosthetics for amputees and other folks who have lost their limbs. These devices have helped give mobility, motor function, and sensory ability back to these people—which is undoubtedly a wonderful thing. However, there’s a growing contingent of researchers who want to democratize robo-limbs and give them to folks even if they have their appendages intact.

Silvestro Micera, a neuroengineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, is one such scientist. Much of his research has been dedicated to creating bionic limbs for amputees. In fact, he was one of the pioneers in the development of robotic limbs with sensory feedback—having created a bionic arm that allowed an amputee to “feel” what it touched using electrodes implanted into the patient’s major nerves in 2013….

…Think about the times when you literally had your hands full and you needed to do things like pick up objects or open a door. A third arm could assist with all those actions and more.

Interestingly, Micera suggests going beyond just a third arm—and giving people the chance to wield even more robotic limbs. That’s right: this might result in a kind of wearable, robotic octopus suit a la Doc Ock in Spider-Man. Like the comic book villain, the limbs would allow for even more mobility, versatility, and motor function….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George brings us“Ant-Man and the Wasp Pitch Meeting – Revisited!”

Step back into the pitch meeting and revisit the completely factual accurate conversation that led to Ant-Man and the Wasp! Complete with commentary from Ryan George who is now several years older!

Ant-Man and the Wasp is Marvel’s first film to come out after the insanity that was Avengers: Infinity War just a few months ago. Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Pena and Michael Douglas provide us with some pretty hilarious moments and action scenes in this sequel to 2015’s Ant-Man… just don’t think about it too much. The quantum realm is the latest plot tool that Marvel is throwing our way after the magical Vibranium in Black Panther and the millions of timelines in Infinity War. How did this movie come to be exactly? Step inside the pitch meeting that started it all. It’s super easy, barely an inconvenience.

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Murray Moore, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 10/14/22 The Sky Was Full Of Scrolls

Posted on October 14, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) DANGER MAN. Max Gladstone holds forth about “The Wolfeman” at The Third Place.

Gene Wolfe is a tricky writer to discuss.
For a certain type of reader (generally but not exclusively a reader of science fiction), he is The Author. He is axiomatically intelligent and referential. His texts are not merely without flaw—they are without accident, each element load-bearing. If any piece of text (or elision) in a Gene Wolfe novel could be read to suggest vast churning implications invisible to the casual reader, it has definitely been read that way by someone on the internet. The terrifying thing is that many of these readings are not wrong. They’re not even generous. They are sometimes, even often, the readings that most account for the facts of the text.
And this is why talking about his books and stories feels dangerous. To discuss, say, Wolfe’s PEACE, which I recently finished re-reading, one must put forth some theories about what PEACE is, what’s happening both in the book and between the lines of this book. This raises two risks.
First, one risks short-circuiting another reader’s tremendous and eerie process of discovery. (Even as I write this very general description, I worry: am I doing the literary equivalent of recommending a movie by saying it “has a great twist”? But PEACE isn’t about twists. It’s about the experience of realizing how much attention one should pay. More on this in a bit.)
Second, when one puts forth a theory, one risks being wrong….

(2) CAN*CON LEADERSHIP CHANGE. Derek Künsken is stepping down after nearly 11 years as Co-Chair of Can*Con, Ottawa’s literary scifi and fantasy conference. The conference has won Canadian national awards and is the major con in Eastern Canada. Marie Bilodeau, currently co-chair, will assume the chair role solo. “A Message from Derek Künsken, Programming Co-Chair: Don’t worry, I left Marie the Keys, or Hayden was right again”.

… Marie will lead the conference to its next successes and glories. She’s got a great team, great ideas and she’s a community leader I would follow anywhere. I’ll remain a member of the board of directors, and I’ll suggest panel ideas from time to time and I’ll apply to be on programming and see if they take me…

(3) MASKED AND UNMASKED IN ABUNDANCE. “Fans Come Roaring Back to New York Comic Con 2022” – Publishers Weekly gives its assessment.

New York Comic Con returned to the Javits Center October 6-9 at full strength for 2022. The event drew 200,000 attendees, according to a spokesperson for ReedPop, the show organizer.
The show floor was crammed with enthusiastic fans of media and with cosplayers, who enjoyed elaborate displays from mostly manga and toy companies. However, the show floor was not crammed with mask-wearing attendees. Despite a mandate from ReedPop that masks would be required—and volunteers handing them out at the door—enforcement was lax, with less than 50% of the crowd wearing one at many times. Compliance was similarly mixed among booth workers and creators who set up displays. Although some booth workers were vocal on social media and in-person about their alarm over the lack of Covid masking protocols, many workers behind tables were unmasked most of the time as well.
Whether NYCC will be another super spreader event, like some recent pop culture events, remains to be seen, but it was clear that the general public anxiety over Covid is receding in this new and more complacent era….

(4) A LEARNEDLEAGUE THROWBACK. Courtesy of David Goldfarb.

Question 2 of match day 18 of LearnedLeague season 87, in December of 2020 asked us:

Kindred, the Parable/Earthseed series, and Bloodchild and Other Stories are well-known works of what Hugo and Nebula Award-winning American author, a “godmother of Afrofuturism” who became in 1995 the first science fiction author to be granted a MacArthur fellowship?

The answer of course is Octavia E. Butler. 32% of players got this right league-wide, with the most common wrong answer being Ursula K. LeGuin (perhaps some people confused “Earthseed” with “Earthsea”).

(5) GET IT ON THE CALENDAR. The winner of the 2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction will be named on October 21 in a virtual event hosted by actor and author Anthony Rapp. There will be readings from the authors of the nine shortlisted books before they reveal the inaugural prize winner.

(6) GENRE SHOPPING. Netflix merch can be bought here: “Vecna comes to the Grove as Netflix debuts pop-up store” in the Los Angeles Times.

A life-sized version of Vecna from the popular sci-fi series “Stranger Things ” and Queen Charlotte’s throne from drama “Bridgerton” are coming to the Grove.
The photo opportunities are part of Netflix’s new store opening Thursday at the L.A. shopping center.
Inside the 10,000-square-foot space, fans will be able to buy merchandise related to popular Netflix shows including the dollhouse from “Gabby’s Dollhouse,” Funko collectible figures from “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things”-related clothing, such as a Hellfire Club raglan shirt or Palace Arcade hoodie.
The store will be open from Thursday until Jan. 6….

(7) TAKE THE CASH AND LET THE CREDIT GO. AbeBooks shared the 15 “Most expensive sales from July to September 2022”. There are many sf and fantasy works among them.

#4 — The Dark Tower by Stephen King – $24,000
No introductions are necessary for Mr King, who released a new novel called Fairy Tale in September. These are the nine volumes of King’s Dark Tower fantasy series published by Donald M. Grant, and they have all been signed by the author and their respective illustrator. The nine volumes are Dark Tower: Gunslinger (published in 1982), The Drawing of the Three (1987), The Wastelands (1991), Wizard and Glass (1997), Wolves of the Calla (2003), Song of Susannah (2004), The Dark Tower (2004), The Little Sisters of Eluria (2008), and The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012). All copies are first editions.
#6 — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick – $21,275
This is the 1968 US first edition of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep published by Doubleday. First editions of this influential science fiction book, which inspired the Blade Runner movies, are scarce.
This book was sold with an original letter to Venom Magazine typed and signed by Philip K Dick. In the letter, which was also published in The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick 1980-1982, Dick asks if he can review his own work. The third part of this sale is Dick’s typed humorous review of his own book, The Divine Invasion.
#7 — A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne – $20,000
An 1874 first American edition of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, published by Scribner Armstrong and Co, with a laid-in author signature. Verne’s novel imagines an underground world inhabited by prehistoric creatures where travel is possible via volcanic tubes.
#9 — Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne – $17,500
An 1873 first edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas published by James R. Osgood. This underwater adventure story first appeared in serial form in a French periodical in 1871. Verne’s depiction of the Nautilus correctly foresaw the impact that submarines would have on the maritime world, starting in World War I when both Germany and Britain used submarines to sink naval and merchant shipping.
#11 — Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – $12,500
A 1997 Bloomsbury first edition fourth printing of the first Harry Potter book, signed by J.K. Rowling on the front free endpaper with its original dust jacket. This copy includes a rare Harry Potter postcard signed by the author.
#13 — A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – $12,000
An 1843 first edition first printing published by Chapman & Hall bound in half maroon morocco letter. A Christmas Carol was published on December 19 in 1843 and became an instant bestseller. A novella, this book helped craft the modern version of Christmas with its focus on family, food, and giving. Scrooge has entered the lexicon for anyone who is tight-fisted. AbeBooks sold another first edition of this book, accompanied by a Dickens letter, earlier in 2022 for $20,000.

(8) ROBBIE COLTRANE (1950-2022). The Scots actor Robbie Coltrane, famed as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies, who also starred in the British crime drama Cracker, died October 14 at the age of 72. The cause of death was not disclosed. The Hollywood Reporter’s profile includes more genre roles.

…Coltrane’s early TV credits include Flash Gordon, Blackadder and Keep It in the Family. His other comedy credits included series like A Kick Up the Eighties, The Comic Strip and Alfresco as he became a mainstay on British TV screens.
Coltrane’s breakout role was playing Dr. Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald, an anti-social criminal psychologist with a gift for solving crimes, in Jimmy McGovern’s Cracker series, which ran over 25 episodes between 1993 and 2006.
That BAFTA-winning performance led Coltrane to roles in two James Bond films as he played Valentin Zukovsky in GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1983 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Something Wicked This Way Comes film (1983)

Look, it’s Autumn, isn’t it? Therefore shouldn’t we talk about one of the Autumnal fantasy films that got done? So let’s converse about Something Wicked This Way Comes which came out thirty-nine years ago though I admit not at this time of year as inexplicably the Mouse released it in April.

It was based as you know upon the Ray Bradbury novel that Simon & Schuster published twenty-one years previously with a cover by Gray Fox. To my utter amazement, it won absolutely no Awards. Pity that. It has however been continuously in print ever since. Yes, I think it’s a spectacular piece of writing perfectly suited to the season.

Usually I find films based on works I loved somewhat of letdown but not here as Bradbury wrote the script and a decent amount of his script survived the Mouse mangling it. Yes Bradbury and Mouse became the Kilkenny Cats rather quickly.

It was directed by Jack Clayton whose only previous film I recognize is The Great Gatsby which was a phenomenal movie. He was a British film director and producer who specialized in bringing literary works to the screen such as The Innocents, so Something Wicked This Way Comes wasn’t really in his wheelhouse.

It had an amazing cast of these adults: Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier, plus Vidal Peterson and Shawn Carson as the most important characters here, the boys.

If you haven’t read or seen it, a deep boo on you as I’m not discussing the story. Let’s just say Bradbury did a wonderful job of moving it from text to video even if the Mouse messed with it which they did. Bad Mouse..

Bradbury explains in Zen in the Art of Writing that it started as ‘The Black Ferris’ a 3,000-word story, published in Weird Tales (1948), about two youngsters who suspect there is something peculiar about the carnival that comes to town. The story became a seventy-page screen treatment, Dark Carnival (1958), a project for Gene Kelly to direct. Unproduced, the treatment became a novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962); the novel, a screenplay (1971), then a second screenplay (1976), and… at last, a film.

Bradbury wanted either Peter O’Toole and Christopher Lee to play Mr. Dark. Lee I can see, but O’Toole? However, the Mouse went as cheap as possible and cast someone who wasn’t well known, so hence Jonathan Pryce. This was five years before he shows up in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

It bombed at the box office earning just eight million against a twenty million budget. Ouch.

The film was nominated for a Hugo at L.A. Con II where Return of the Jedi won.

Oddly enough it is not streaming on Disney +.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 14, 1927 — Roger Moore. Bond in seven films 1973 to 1985, a long run indeed. And he played Simon Templar in The Saint for most of the Sixties, an amazing one hundred eighteen episodes. Let’s not forget that he was in the Curse of the Pink Panther as Chief Insp. Jacques Clouseau! He even got to play Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes in New York. He wasn’t a bad Sherlock either. (Died 2017.)
Born October 14, 1946 — Katy Manning, 76. She was Jo Grant, companion to the Third Doctor. She also appeared in that role with the Eleventh Doctor on the Sarah Jane Adventures in a two-part story entitled “Death of the Doctor”. She appears as herself in the The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
Born October 14, 1949 — Crispin Burnham, 73. And then there are those who just disappear. He was the founder, writer and publisher of Dark Messenger Reader / Eldritch Tales from 1975 to 1995 as the publisher Yith Press. He was also a prolific essayist from 1973 to 1995, his final essay being a reflection on the life and career of Robert Bloch. There’s nothing to show him active after 1998 when the final part of his “People of The Monolith” was published in Cthulhu Cultus #13. Then he vanishes without a trace.
Born October 14, 1953 — Richard Christian Matheson, 69. Son of the Richard Matheson that you’re thinking of. A very prolific horror writer mostly of short stories, he’s also no slouch at script writing as he’s written for Amazing Stories, Masters of Horror, The Powers of Matthew Star, Splatter, Tales from the Crypt, Knight Rider (the original series) and The Incredible Hulk. Wiki claims he wrote for Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber but IMDB shows no such series or show. The usual suspects have a goodly number of story collections available for him.
Born October 14, 1953 — Greg Evigan, 69. TekWar, one of Shatner’s better ideas, starred him as Jake Cardigan. I really liked it. Yes, Shatner was in it. He also shows up in DeepStar Six as Kevin McBride, as Will South in the horror film Spectre aka The House of The Damned, as Marcus Cutter in Cerberus: The Guardian of Hell, and on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents as David Whitmore in “In the Driver’s Seat”.
Born October 14, 1963 — Lori Petty, 59. Rebecca Buck – “Tank Girl” in that film. She was also Dr. Lean Carli in Cryptic, and Dr. Sykes in Dead Awake. She had one-offs in The Hunger, Twilight Zone, Star Trek: Voyager, Brimstone, Freddy’s Nightmares and Alien Nation, and voiced quite well Livewire in the DCU animated shows.
Born October 14, 1968 — Robert C. Cooper, 54. He was an executive producer of all the Stargate series. He also co-created both Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe with Brad Wright. Cooper has written and produced many episodes of Stargate series as well as directed a number of episodes. I’m really impressed.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Drabble has an unexpected definition of a horror movie.
Heart of the City shows friends arguing which date in October deserves to be celebrated.

(12) BACKSTORY IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] More than 3-1/2 decades after the release of Aliens, one badass Latinx is getting their backstory told. “Pvt. Vasquez from ‘Aliens’ gets her own story in new novel” at Axios.

Pvt. Vasquez, the fictional Latina member of the U.S. Colonial Marine Corps in the 1986 hit sci-fi movie “Aliens,” is getting a backstory in a new novel.
The big picture: The November U.S. release of “Aliens: Vasquez” by Violet Castro comes as writers and artists of color increasingly reimagine minor characters of color from popular sci-fi films.
Background: Castro, a Mexican American writer from San Antonio, Texas, who now lives in London, told Axios she pitched the idea for the book a few months ago after thinking about the big influence the character had in such a small role.

“It was one of the few depictions that kind of broke the mold of a domestic worker, farm worker, or gangbanger,” Castro said.
“I saw her and I was like, wow, look at this brown woman. She has this bandana and she’s unapologetic about who she is.”…

The intrigue: Castro said that, for her book, she reimagined Vasquez as someone linked to the soldaderas — the women who took up arms during the Mexican Revolution….

(13) STRANGE CHOW. [Item by Scott Edelman.] Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken is now selling Stranger Things-themed doughnuts. They have locations in Washington, D.C. and Falls Church, VA.

(14) JEOPARDY! On tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!, the Final Jeopardy category was “Authors.”

Answer: Featuring a statue of a man escaping his grave, his tomb in Amiens contrasts with the title of his 1864 adventure novel.
Wrong questions: Who is Dumas (two contestants) and Who is Lovecraft?
Correct question: Who is Jules Verne?

Andrew Porter, who sent this item, says he remembers the image from a 1920s issue of Amazing Stories.

(15) TRAIL BLAZER. In Science, “Fireball is traced to far edge of Solar System”. “Rocky meteor suggests distant cloud of comets also contains asteroids.”

….Even if the Oort Cloud is just 1% rocky, explaining how these objects got there from the asteroid belt will challenge theorists, says Alan Jackson, a planetary astronomer at Arizona State University, Tempe. He says the finding could lend support to one hypothesis called the Grand Tack, which suggests that just 3 million years after the Solar System’s birth, Jupiter swooped inward toward the Sun, nearly to Earth’s orbit, before moving back out to near to its current position…

(16) THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOLMES. Netflix dropped this new trailer for Enola Holmes 2.

Fresh off the triumph of solving her first case, Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) follows in the footsteps of her famous brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill), and opens her own agency — only to find that life as a female detective-for-hire isn’t as easy as it seems. Resigned to accepting the cold realities of adulthood, she is about to close shop when a penniless matchstick girl offers Enola her first official job: to find her missing sister. But this case proves to be far more puzzling than expected, as Enola is thrown into a dangerous new world — from London’s sinister factories and colorful music halls, to the highest echelons of society and 221B Baker Street itself. As the sparks of a deadly conspiracy ignite, Enola must call upon the help of friends — and Sherlock himself — to unravel her mystery. The game, it seems, has found its feet again!

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] “In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 Pitch Meeting,” Ryan George says the producer thinks they can split the second Deathly Hallows Movie in Half, and split it again, but the producer convinces him that is a very bad idea. Once again, the writer says, “when the story demands it, Harry Potter gets visions” that move the story forward. And when Harry Potter gets another narrow escape, the producer says, “these are kind of weird movies, aren’t they?”

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Scott Edelman, Derek Künsken, David Goldfarb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/4/22 Just A Pixel Boy, Lots Of Planets Have A South, He Took The Tardis Box Goin’ Anywhere

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) BETTER VILLAINS THROUGH SCIENCE (FICTION). Charlie Jane Anders shares “7 Secrets To Avoiding The Biggest Problem With Villains” at Stone Soup. Lots of interesting observations here.

5) A villain is often boring because of boring fight scenes. Or boring chase scenes. Or boring confrontations in general. If a fight scene is just an excuse for a lot of stage directions, or a literal blow by blow of a punching match, it quickly grows stale. As Green Bone Saga author Fonda Lee has explained many times, a good fight scene has emotional stakes and helps to tell the story and says something about the characters. You can learn a lot about a villain by watching them try to kill the hero. You can also learn a lot about a villain by watching them fighting to achieve the same goal as the hero, or the opposite goal for that matter. If your action scenes are really character – and plot development scenes, they will make your villain shine— way more than sticking them in a plexiglass cell ever would.

(2) A CLASSIC OF SF ON THE BBC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Karl Capek’s play, R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots, has a new adaptation as a radio play musical just broadcast from the BBC. You can access Episode 1 from Sounds at the link.

Written in 1932, the play is set in the year 2000. Not only does it have concepts that resonate with much subsequent SF, it is particularly apposite today as we head towards full-blown general artificial intelligence.

Part two next Sunday afternoon at 15.00 Brit Cit time.

Music and Lyrics by Susannah Pearse
Book by Robert Hudson
Karel Capek’s ultra-prescient, retro-futurist 1921 comedy (the classic which gave us the word ‘robot’) is re-imagined with a massive dose of character-driven and song-centred heart.
In Capek’s world, machines do all the work and their monopolistic makers care only about enriching themselves. Robots make huge volumes of goods very cheaply, but there are limited resources to make these goods from and humans don’t care so long as life keeps getting lazier.
The movie star Lady Helen is on a personal crusade. She visits the island factory of Rossum’s Universal Robots, robot-makers to the world, with the intention of freeing the robots. Despite her better judgement, she falls in love with Chairman Domin, the capitalist boss of R.U.R, who dismisses her campaign by insisting that robots are devoid of emotion and free will. Undeterred, Lady Helen persuades a sympathetic scientist to grow a small batch of robots with these very qualities.
The new robots defy all expectations, not least because of their resolute commitment to saving the world from the humans.

(3) WILLIAMSON LECTURESHIP SCHEDULE. The 2022 Jack Williamson Lectureship schedule has been posted. Most of these events will be streamed via YouTube live, and you’ll be able to view them on the ENMU YouTube channel.

Thursday, April 7:

3:00: Real-Life CSI Q&A, JWLA 111. Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82969992270?pwd=VDdPeUpBcFExeFZQTGRsVVpTNkRsZz09
5:30: A Retrospective with Walter Jon Williams, UTC Small Theater

Friday, April 8:

10:00 am: Guest of Honor Reading, GSSC Presentation area
12:00 pm: Williamson Lectureship Lunch and Main Event, CUB Ballroom
1:30 pm: Gaming Session, GSSC Presentation Room
3:00 pm:
Panel 1a: Remixing and Genre, GSSC 216. Panelists: Walter Jon Williams, Emily Mah, Reese Hogan, Jeffe Kennedy
4:00 pm:
Panel 2a: History and/of Science Fiction, GSSC 216, Panelists: Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Reese Hogan, Ian Tregillis
Panel 2b: Craft of a story/Story crafting, GSSC 217, Panelists: Darynda Jones, Jeffe Kennedy, Emily Mah
5:00 pm:
Panel 3a: Never the Same Story Twice: Making Stories Your Own, GSSC 216, Panelists: Walter Jon Williams, Connie Willis, Emily Mah
Panel 3b: Short Attention Span, GSSC 217, Panelists: Jeffe Kennedy, Darynda Jones, Reese Hogan

(4) IN A STRANGE LAND. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has released its official trailer. Airing on Paramount+ this May, Strange New Worlds is both a prequel to the original Star Trek series and a spinoff of the events of Star Trek: Discovery season 2

(5) THREE’S A CHARM. New York Times science fiction reviewer Amal El-Mohtar hits the jackpot in “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Circumstances” – with good things to say about All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie, Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin, and The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz.

To paraphrase Ian Fleming: To read one good book is happenstance; two is coincidence; three is wild good fortune. That a columnist should enjoy novels in her purview is not particularly noteworthy — but to read three excellent books in sequence, all for the same column, is unusual, a critic’s jackpot….

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1914 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] On this day, one hundred and eight years ago, the first part of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core novel appeared in All-Star Weekly. This magazine started life as The All-Story Magazine before becoming The All-Story and All-Star Weekly. Burroughs’ serial would run from April 4 to April 25, 1914. It would be first published in book form in hardcover by A. C. McClurg in July, 1922. It is of course freely available at the usual suspects.

Pellucidar, a hollow Earth story, is very influential with writers using the setting later on, not the least of which is the author who has Tarzan appearing there. Lin Carter’s “Zanthodon” series, beginning with his novel Journey to the Underground World, is considered an homage to this work.

And the Skartaris setting used by Mike Grell in The Warlord series is another homage to Pellucidar in the graphic medium. Justice League Unlimited‘s “Chaos at the Earth’s Core“ episode would show the hollow Earth in an animated medium. It’s quite wonderful even if, like the Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World series, it has very, very little to do with the source material.

Wiki claims that Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was largely influenced by this work. Huh? Please explain.

The novel has been filmed once as At the Earth’s Core in 1976 as directed by Kevin Connor and starring Doug McClure as David Innes and Peter Cushing as Abner Perry. It fared badly among critics and audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes, garnering just thirty-three percent from each. My favorite critic comment? This one by Stephen Randall of the Los Angeles Free Press: “It’s the type of movie you can send your kids to, but only if you don’t much like them.” Ouch. Really ouch.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 4, 1902 — Stanley G. Weinbaum. His first story, “A Martian Odyssey”, was published to general accolades in July 1934, but he died from lung cancer less than a year and a half later. ISFDB lists two novels, The New Adam and The Dark Other, plus several handfuls of short stories that were I assume were out for consideration with various editors at the time of his death. Everything he wrote is available at the usual digital suspects. (Died 1935.)
Born April 4, 1949 — David C. Sutherland III. An early Dungeons & Dragons artist. His work heavily influenced the development of D&D. He was also one of their writers on such modules as the Queen of the Demonweb Pits that Gary Gygax edited. He also drew the maps for Castle Ravenloft. (Died 2009.)
Born April 4, 1948 — Dan Simmons, 74. He’s the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles. Hyperion won a Hugo Award at ConFiction (1990), and The Fall of Hyperion was nominated the following year at ChiCon V (1991). Both are, if my memory serves me right, excellent. If you like horror, Song of Kali which won a World Fantasy Award is quite tasty indeed. In 2013 he became a World Horror Convention Grand Master. Beware his social media, which include remarks about environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Born April 4, 1952 — Cherie Lunghi, 70. Her fame arise from her role as Guinevere in Excalibur. (I saw Excalibur in a 1920s-built theater on a warm summer night with hardly anyone there.) She was also Baroness Frankenstien (Victor’s Mother) in Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She was also in The Lady’s Not for Burning as Jennet Jourdemayne. That I’ve not seen.
Born April 4, 1959 — Phil Morris, 63. His first acting role was on the “Miri” episode of Trek as simply Boy. He was the Sam the Kid on several episodes of Mr. Merlin before returning to Trek fold as Trainee Foster in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Next interesting role is voicing Vandal Savage on a three-part Justice League Unlimited story called “The Savage Time”, a role he reprised for Justice League: Doom. No, I’ve not forgotten that he was on Mission: Impossible as Grant Collier. He also played the Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz) on Smallvillie. Currently He’s Silas Stone on Doom Patrol and no, I didn’t spot that was him in that role.
Born April 4, 1965 — Robert Downey Jr., 57. Iron Man in the Marvel Universe film franchise. (I loved the first Iron Man film, thought they could’ve stopped there.) Also a rather brilliant Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Also voicing James Barris in an animated adaption of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly which picked up a nomination at Nippon 2007. Yes, he’s plays the title role in Dolittle which despite having scathing critical reviews has a rather superb seventy-six rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
Born April 4, 1967 — Xenia Seeberg, 55. She is perhaps best known for her role as Xev Bellringer in Lexx, a show’s that’s fantastic provided you can see in its uncensored form. I’ve also see she played Muireann In Annihilation Earth, Noel in So, You’ve Downloaded a Demon, uncredited role in Lord of The Undead, and Sela In the “Assessment” episode of Total Recall 2070.
Born April 4, 1968 — Gemma Files, 54. She’s a Canadian horror writer, journalist, and film critic. Her Hexslinger series now at three novels and a handful of stories is quite fun. It’s worth noting that she’s a prolific short story writer whose “The Emperor’s Old Bones” won an International Horror Guild Award and four of these stories have been adapted as scripts for The Hunger horror series. Impressive indeed! She won a Shirley Jackson Award and a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic for Experimental Film.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro introduces us to Frankenstein’s monster’s barber.
Tom Gauld on baiting a wild librarian:

My cartoon for yesterday’s @GdnSaturday / @GuardianBooks

p.s. there are more librarians in my next book: https://t.co/hp2RJ0wBdr pic.twitter.com/kAdAB5pFkC
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) April 3, 2022

(9) SOUND ADVICE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Bob Godfrey and Ron Neesin explain how to make sound effects with stuff you have at home in this BBC clip from 1974 that dropped today. “Sound Effects with Ron Geesin” — The DIY Film Animation Show.

Bob Godfrey is joined by musician and composer extraordinaire Ron Geesin, who delivers a masterclass in the art of creating and syncing sound effects. To create these sound effects at home you will need: A mouth, a tape recorder, a shoe box, a breadknife, a contact microphone, a disused banjo, some rice, eccentric multimedia artist Bruce Lacey, and some sticky tape. Incidentally, if you can’t be bothered to make your own sound effects, here are 16,000 we made earlier: http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/

(10) PROBLEMS WITH TWO FANS STOP ARTEMIS LAUNCH. The fans haven’t been named. “NASA’s Artemis I mega moon rocket test scrubbed for second time” reports CNN.

…The test was originally scheduled to be completed on Sunday but was put on hold before the propellant was loaded. That was due to problems with two fans used to provide pressure to the mobile launcher – the movable tower which the rocket sits upon before it lifts off.
NASA said Monday it was able overnight to resolve the malfunction of the fans, which are needed to pressurize enclosed areas inside the launcher and keep out hazardous gases…

(11) THE SEVENTIES. CBR.com dares us to disagree: “10 Best Sci-Fi Films of the 70s, Ranked”.

After the Swinging Sixties left an unmistakable mark on pop culture – music, film, and just about everything else – it fell upon the following decade to try and best what came before. For many, the 1970s may well be their favorite era for all of those things, and one area in particular where it arguably excelled over the 60s was sci-fi cinema….

5. Alien (1979) Promised That In Space… No One Can Hear You Scream
Alien took the world by surprise in the Spring of 1979 and is still considered an iconic sci-fi-horror film to this day. It was pitched as essentially being “Jaws in space” although the result is something far more than that.
Directed by Ridley Scott, with incredible designs from HR Giger, and featuring a star-making performance from Sigourney Weaver, Alien sparked a huge multimedia franchise that’s still going strong to this day.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 8/24/21 We Can Scroll Where We Want To, We Can Leave Your Files Behind

Posted on August 24, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) NOW PLAYING IN THE THEATER OF YOUR MIND. Pat Cadigan pointed Facebook readers to the 23rd Legion’s review of her forthcoming book: “Alien – Alien 3: The Lost Screenplay by William Gibson by Pat Cadigan”.

… This story is gritty as all hell. Focusing largely on Hicks and Bishop after being “rescued” with Ripley and Newt in the Sulaco where they ended up at the conclusion of Aliens, this version of Alien 3 goes from “Ehhh, things might be ok.” to “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” to “Oh yeah, everything is totally screwed.”
We see a whole lot of evolution in the Xenomorphs in this story. Their adaptation and speedy evolution is both terrifying and, for franchise fans, fascinating given the total lore that already exists. These bugs are a total game changer when it comes to their propagation and swarm-like spread….

(2) THEY DID THE MONSTER STAMP. On September 24, 2021, in Topeka, KS, the United States Postal Service^® will issue the Message Monsters stamps (Forever^® priced at the First-Class Mail^® rate) in four designs, “Message Monsters Ready to Bring a Smile to Your Mail”.

The U.S. Postal Service will celebrate Message Monsters with the most playful, customizable Forever stamp design ever. The four monster illustrations on this pane of 20 stamps invite interactivity with dozens of self-adhesive accessories on the selvage. The monster-ific accoutrements include cartoony voice balloons and thought bubbles with exclamations and salutations, hats and crowns, hearts, stars, crazy daisies and other fun flair.
Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the pane with original artwork by Elise Gravel, author and illustrator of popular children’s books.

(3) TUNE IN TO FM. But if you want to spend a lot more for monster art, Heritage Auctions can fix you up: “Basil Gogos Famous Monsters Cover Art from the Kevin Burns Collection” goes on the block November 5-7. Article by Joe Moe, well-known 4SJ batman.

In 1958, a monster magazine intended to be a one-off hit the newsstands – and sold out! This specialty mag was Famous Monsters of Filmland, and would go on to become the longest published, and one of the most influential entertainment periodicals, ever! Throughout the 1960s, publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman’s FM did something no other magazine of the era had. It turned the spotlight from the stars in front of the camera to the artists behind the camera. The people who actually made the movie magic that captured the imagination of audiences. Basil Gogos’ vivid cover paintings became the freaky face of and “gateway” to the magazine. A magazine that was a vessel for the exciting, creative world kids dreamed of being a part of. Gogos created hallmarks of the “big bang,” that inspired legendary careers. A Basil Gogos FM cover painting is impossible to find…until now.
Basil Gogos’ (1929-2017) paintings brought black and white monsters to vivid, colorful life….

(4) SURPLUS TO REQUIREMENTS. Benjamin C. Kinney does an in-depth discussion of “Short Fiction Rejection Letters: Best practices and expectations” at the SFWA Blog.

…Most markets send form-letter rejections. These are typical and acceptable; other options take work, and more work per submission means slower responses. Vague rejection language like “it didn’t work for us” is common, and means exactly what it says. Form rejections can be brief, but the market’s staff should be aware of the emotional impact of words, and write a letter that feels supportive rather than dismissive.
Some markets use “tiered forms,” which means they have a handful of different form letters, and the choice reflects something about the staff’s reaction to your submission….

(5) PRESERVING FANHISTORY. The latest FANAC.org newsletter was distributed today. When it’s online the link will be here — F. A. N. A. C. Inc. (fanac.org). An excerpt:

Behind the Scenes or How the Sausage is Made:
Finding Anne Steul: Anne Steul is not a familiar name to most of us. In June, Rob Hansen sent us a scan of Fantum 1, edited by Anne Steul, who he remarked had also organized the first German SF con with some help from Jim and Greg Benford. That led to an expansion of Anne Steul’s Fancyclopedia article, followed by more biographical data on her from Rob Hansen. We asked Thomas Recktenwald if he could tell us more. Thomas provided insight into why she left fandom, and a link to Rainer Eisfield’s book, Zwischen Barsoon und Peenemunde (Between Barsoom and Peenemunde) that had 10 pages on Anne Steul, and German fandom of the time, including bibliographic data and a photo. Next, Joe asked Jim and Greg Benford for additional info and Greg forwarded a few 2013 issues of CounterClock, a fanzine from Wolf von Witting published in Italy, that had articles on early German fandom. So now we have expanded our knowledge, added her Fantum, and added to the Fancyclopedia entry. And that’s how the Fan History sausage is made. As a result, Thomas Recktenwald is helping us add information about German fandom to Fancyclopedia. Thomas is a long-time contributor to The Fan History Project having provided many photos, fanzines and recordings.

(6) DON’T IT JUST FRY YOUR SHORTS? [Item by Rob Thornton.] Here’s another “SF written by a mainstream writer” example. French guy writes a novel about “what if the Incas invaded Europe in the 16th century” and it is getting all the attention, including media deals. “How a French Novelist Turns the Tables on History” in the New York Times. (Registration required.)

…It’s an imaginary scenario — of the Incas of Peru invading 16th-century Europe, not the other way around, which is what happened in 1532 — that haunted and inspired Binet.
“There’s something melancholic in my book,” he said in an interview at his home last month, “because it offers the conquered a revenge that they never really had.”
The reality for the Incas, like many other Indigenous populations, was that they were killed and exploited, Binet added. “That’s what both fascinates and horrifies me: You can think what you like of the past but you can’t change it.”
Binet, 49, has made his name writing historical novels that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. His debut “HHhH,” which was translated into 34 languages (including English in 2012), melded history, fiction and autobiography to explore the events surrounding the assassination of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. He followed it up in 2015 with “The Seventh Function of Language,” a murder mystery set in the 1980s that poked fun at the posturing of Parisian intellectuals. The French magazine L’Express called it “the most insolent novel of the year.”…

(7) TGIFF FILM FESTIVAL. [Item by Darius Luca Hupov.] The second edition of “The Galactic Imaginarium” Film Festival will take place in hybrid format at location, in Romania and online (TGI Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film Festival), from September 15-19, 2021.

The festival will screen 66 short and feature films, in 4 categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy/Fantastic, Comedy/Parody (SFF) and Animation (SFF). The public will see the films at the local drive-in cinema (due to the pandemic restrictions) and online, at the festival streaming platform. Also, the program of the festival (panels, debates, presentations, workshops, contests, etc.) will be present online, on ZOOM and the Discord channel of the Festival (https://discord.gg/hgDjxCMT).

In the program you can meet our Special Guests:

Josh Malerman, the New York TImes best selling author of Bird Box and Goblin
Naomi Kritzer (won the Hugo Award, Lodestar Award, Edgar Award, and Minnesota Book Award)
John Wiswell, a Nebula winner, and a World Fantasy and Hugo finalist
Representatives from Seed&Spark, Mogul Productions, Storycom…

And many, many more. You can find more details and get an online General Access Ticket here.

(8) N3F’S FRANSON AWARD. Patricia Williams-King’s service to the National Fantasy Fan Federation has been recognized with the Franson Award by N3F President George Phillies:

The Franson Award was originally called the N3F President’s Award. It was renamed in honor of Donald Franson. This award started because past N3F Presidents have wanted to give a show of appreciation to people – even those who may have won the Kaymar Award, which you can only win once. Presidential Statement Patricia Williams-King has faithfully and energetically served the N3F for many years, most recently by maintaining the N3F Round Robin Bureau. Round Robin groups discuss a topic by circulating a papermail letter bundle from one member to the next. If one member of a group gafiates, the group stops functioning. The Bureau Head has the task of restarting groups, so to speak bringing them back to life. Through thick and through thin, in the face of great obstacles, personal and fannish challenges, and other hindrances to smooth operation, Patricia Williams-King gave us an N3F Bureau that largely continued to function. As your President, it is my privilege and honor to give a 2021 Franson Award to Patricia WilliamsKing.

(9) MULTIVERSE NOW. “Strange New Spider-Man Trailer Drops And, Yes, Marvel Is Officially Going There” warns Yahoo!

The trailer for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” dropped on Monday — hours after a version leaked online — and it confirms months of rumors over the newest phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
They’re not waiting until next year’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” to open up the multiverse.
In the trailer, Peter Parker accidentally messes up a Doctor Strange spell, creating a rift that brings out elements of previous Spider-Man film eras, which didn’t share much of a timeline… until now…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1999 – Twenty-two years ago, the Compton Crook Award, Baltcon’s Award for the Best First Novel, went to James Stoddard for The High House. It is the first novel of his Evenmere trilogy that was continued in The False House and which was just completed in 2015 with his Evenmere novel. It had been been published by Warner Aspect the previous year. It would also be nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in the year the illustrated edition of Stardust would garner that Award. It was also nominated for a Locus Best SF Novel Award. If you’ve not read it, Stoddard has let us put the first chapter up at Green Man and you can read it here.

(11) TODAY’S DAY.

Shed a tear.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born August 24, 1899 — Gaylord Du Bois. He was a writer of comic book stories and comic strips, as well as Big Little Books. He wrote Tarzan for Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics from the Forties to early Seventies.) He was one of the writers for Space Family Robinson which was the basis for the Lost in Space series. (Died 1993.)
Born August 24, 1899 — Jorge Luis Borges. I’m reasonably sure my first encounter with him was at University with the assignment of The Library of Babel. I’m not deeply read in him but I also loved The Book of Imaginary Beings, and though not genre, recommend The Last Interview and Other Conversations for an excellent look at him as a writer. (Died 1985.)
Born August 24, 1932 — William Morgan Sheppard. Best remembered I think as Blank Reg in Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. Genre wise I’d add him being the Klingon Prison Warden In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Merrit in The Prestige, the rather scary Soul Hunter on Babylon 5 and a Vulcan Science Minister in Star Trek. He appeared in a seventies Broadway production of Sherlock Holmes though I can’t tell you who he played. (Died 2019.)
Born August 24, 1934 — Kenny Baker. Certainly his portrayal of R2-D2 in the Star Wars franchise is what he’s best known for but he’s also been in Circus of Horrors, Wombling Free, Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader series, The Elephant Man, Sleeping Beauty, Time Bandits, Willow, Flash Gordon and Labyrinth. Personally I think his best role was as Fidgit in Time Bandits. (Died 2016.)
Born August 24, 1936 — A. S. Byatt, 85. Author of three genre novels, two of which I’m familiar with, Possession: A Romance which became a rather decent film, and winning the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, and one I’ve never heard of, Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, but I’m actually much, much more fond of her short fiction. I’d start with the Little Black Book of Stories and Angels & Insects collections.
Born August 24, 1951 — Tony Amendola, 70. Prolly best known for being the Jaffa master Bra’tac on Stargate SG-1. He’s also had recurring roles as Edouard Kagame of Liber8 on Continuum and on Once Upon a Time as Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto. His list of one-off genre appearances is extensive and includes Angel, Charmed, Lois & Clark, Space: Above and Beyond, the Crusade spin-off of Babylon 5, X Files, Voyager, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Alias, She-Wolf of London and Kindred: The Embraced. He’s also been a voice actor in gaming with roles in such games as World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft: Legion and Workd of Final Fantasy. (CE)
Born August 24, 1957 — Stephen Fry, 64. He’s Gordon Deitrich in V for Vendetta, and he’s the Master of Lakedown in The Hobbit franchise. His best role is as Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows though he made an interesting narrator in the film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and not to be overlooked is that he’s the narrator for all seven of the Potter novels for the UK audiobook recordings. Interestingly when first commissioned, the eleventh episode of Doctor Who’s second series with David Tennant was to be called “The 1920s”. It was based on a script written by Stephen Fry. It was never produced.
Born August 24, 1958 — Lisa A. Barnett. Wife of Melissa Scott. Some of her works were co-authored with her: The Armor of Light, Point of Hopes: A Novel of Astreiant and Point of Dreams: A Novel of Astreiant. They wrote one short story, “The Carmen Miranda Gambit”. (Died 2006.)

(13) D&D. The Kingfisher & Wombat party resume their adventures. Thread starts here.

BUFFALO: I would like one Belt of Stone Giant Strength, please.
GM: This is because I killed you that time, isn’t it.
BUFFALO: I am being so good right now, you have no idea. Do you know what I could have done with three Wondrous Goats?
GM: please no
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) August 24, 2021

(14) SERIOUS ABOUT SERIES. Electric Theist shares the fruit of their labors and rates the finalists “The Hugo Award for Best Series: 2021 Reviews”.

Reading the nominations for the Hugo Awards for Best Series takes dedication. I have read at least the first three books of every single one of the series and given the series a grade and review based upon that reading. If I have not read the entire series, I have noted it in my review of the series. I would love to talk about these series with you, dear readers, and want to know what you think about them. Which is your favorite? Have you read them all? This year’s nominations are a pile of excellent books, so it’s worth diving in.

(15) BABY STEPS. “Japan tests rotating detonation engine for the first time in space” reports Inceptive Mind.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced that it has successfully demonstrated the operation of a “rotating detonation engine” for the first time in space. The novelty of the technologies in question is that such systems obtain a large amount of thrust by using much less fuel compared to conventional rocket engines, which is quite advantageous for space exploration.
On July 27, the Japanese agency launched a pair of futuristic propulsion systems into space to carry out the first tests…
…The rotating detonation engine uses a series of controlled explosions that travel around an annular channel in a continuous loop. This process generates a large amount of super-efficient thrust coming from a much smaller engine using significantly less fuel – which also means sending less weight on a space launch. According to JAXA, it has the potential to be a game-changer for deep space exploration.
The rocket began the test demonstrations after the first stage separated, burning the rotating detonation engine for six seconds, while a second pulse detonation engine operated for two seconds on three occasions. The pulse engine uses detonation waves to combust the fuel and oxidizer mixture.
When the rocket was recovered after the demonstration, it was discovered that the rotary engine produced about 500 Newtons of thrust, which is only a fraction of what conventional rocket engines can achieve in space….

(16) ROLE PLAYING GAME. “Invasion of the Robot Umpires” in The New Yorker.

…Two years ago, DeJesus became the first umpire in a regular-season game anywhere to use something called the Automated Ball-Strike System. Most players refer to it as the “robo-umpire.” Major League Baseball had designed the system and was testing it in the Atlantic League, where DeJesus works. The term “robo-umpire” conjures a little R2-D2 positioned behind the plate, beeping for strikes and booping for balls. But, for aesthetic and practical reasons, M.L.B. wanted human umpires to announce the calls, as if playacting their former roles. So DeJesus had his calls fed to him through an earpiece, connected to a modified missile-tracking system. The contraption looked like a large black pizza box with one glowing green eye; it was mounted above the press box. When the first pitch came in, a recorded voice told DeJesus it was a strike. He announced it, and no one in the ballpark said anything.
…Baseball is a game of waiting and talking. For a hundred and fifty years or so, the strike zone—the imaginary box over home plate, seventeen inches wide, and stretching from the batter’s knees to the middle of his chest—has been the game’s animating force. The argument between manager and umpire is where the important disputes over its boundaries are litigated. The first umpires were volunteers who wore top hats, at whom spectators “hurled curses, bottles and all manner of organic and inorganic debris,” according to a paper by the Society for American Baseball Research. “Organic debris” wasn’t defined, but one wonders. A handful of early umpires were killed….

(17) A DIFFERENT KIND OF DOGSLED. “The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Joins Lyft” reports Food & Wine. I’m wondering who would be the ideal convention GoH to be picked up by this ride.

…Starting tomorrow, your Lyft XL ride may send your jaw dropping to the ground when the driver arrives in… the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
From August 25 to 27, Oscar Mayer and Lyft will be offering free Wienermobile trips in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta — which were chosen because they are “the nation’s hottest rideshare cities.” The brand says riders can simply request a Lyft XL and one of Oscar Mayer’s Hotdoggers — the name given to those who drive the Wienermobile — may show up in a 27-foot hot dog on wheels instead. (Assuming it hasn’t been pulled over on the way.)

Oscar Mayer has teamed up with the rideshare app to surprise riders with the iconic hot dog car. https://t.co/fPZFsHa96A
— Food & Wine (@foodandwine) August 24, 2021

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In Transformers: Dark of the Moon Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, Ryan George says in the third Transformers movie, Sam Witwicky may be “smelly, whiny, and stinky,” but he’s easily able to find a new supermodel to be his girlfriend and let him live in her apartment rent-free because he can’t find a job. We also learn that Chernobyl happened because of a secret Transformers battle, which leads the producer to say that “the worst nuclear disaster in history was caused by Hasbro products.”

[Thanks to Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Rob Thornton, Darius Luca Hupov, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

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