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Pixel Scroll 9/27/23 Do Pixels Dream Of Electric Scrolls?

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22

(1) LE GUIN ON EARTHSEA. Literary Hub invites fans to “WATCH: Ursula K. Le Guin on Creating the World of Earthsea”.

The Journey That Matters is a series of six short videos from Arwen Curry, the director and producer of Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a Hugo Award-nominated 2018 feature documentary about the iconic author.

In the third of the series, John Plotz reflects on “Worlds Out of Words,” in which Ursula talks about creating her most beloved fantasy world.

Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea is both a series of books and a whole world. Perhaps its most amazing power is how it teaches readers that even here, in our own shared world, “words do make magic.”

Nobody who came to A Wizard of Earthsea as a child will ever forget Ged’s relationship to words of power. Calling down birds, or threatening a dragon with its own name, is the sort of magic that makes an overlit library fade away, that puts readers like shy solitary nine-year-old me out on the sea in a boat held together only with spells. “Making worlds out of words,” as she puts it here, is a power she felt lucky to have.

(2) THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY? Even though Publishers Weekly says the suit doesn’t mention books, nevertheless, they report that the “Book Business Applauds Government Lawsuit Against Amazon”.

The Federal Trade Commission, supported by 17 state attorneys general, finally filed its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon yesterday. In a 172-page complaint, the government alleged that the e-tailer “uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.” The use of that power, the government continued, allows Amazon “to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”

The immediate industry reaction to the news of the suit was uniform: “What took so long?” Or, in the words of Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson, that it was “about fucking time.” An industry lawyer, who wished to remain anonymous, gave a more nuanced view in wondering why it took the government so long to act, pointing to the infamous buy button case in 2010, when Amazon pulled Macmillan’s buy buttons in a dispute over e-book terms. (The fight is detailed in former Macmillan CEO John Sargent’s new book, Turning Pages.)

Even with Amazon’s dominant position over the sale of e-books and print books, the suit doesn’t mention books, which, of course, were Amazon’s first line of business. The suit does, however, highlight Amazon’s hold over the companies who use its online marketplace to sell a range of products, including books, to consumers….

(3) CHENGDU WORLDCON UPDATE. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

He talks about his nominated story, and then about SF generally and the Chengdu Worldcon.

There’s a title card that says this is “Episode 1”, but I’ve not come across an episode 2.  Although there’s a brief bit with Cixin Liu at the start, you see more of Yao Haijun, who is a Best Editor (Long Form) finalist this year.  The video doesn’t seem to be directly tied to this year’s Worldcon or Hugos though.

(4) HISTORIC INFLUENCE. Digital Trends posits these as the “10 most influential sci-fi movies ever”. I very much agree with the decision to include this one on the list:

A Trip To The Moon (1902)

As the first science-fiction movie ever created, this black-and-white short holds great importance in the world of cinema. Based on a story by Jules Verne, this picture follows a team of astronomers who launch themselves into the eye of the Moon and encounter the alien Selenites on the lunar surface. While this film is known more for its technical achievements, A Trip to the Moon still stands out as a goofy satire of imperialism and colonialism.

(5) ED BRYANT’S BLOOD. Scott Edelman says he’s at 77% of the fundraising goal to buy new podcasting equipment for Eating The Fantastic. What will he do to move the needle now?

“I’m parting with an autographed copy of the limited edition to Edward Bryant’s Fetish — which he signed using his own blood. The letter at the listing explains how and why.” The item is here on eBay. “I bought this at an HWA charity auction during the 1995 World Horror Con … and now it’s time to let someone else own Ed’s DNA.”

(6) HANSBERRY’S FANTASTIC PLAY. Nisi Shawl’s essay “Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry”, part of the “Expanded Course in the History of Black Science Fiction”, can be read at the Carl Brandon Society website.

…This essay is about Les Blancs, Lorraine Hansberry’s last play.

WHERE IT FITS IN THE OEUVRE
First produced in 1970, a little over five years after the author died of cancer at the age of 34, Les Blancs never achieved the acclaim of Hansberry’s massively successful Broadway play A Raisin in the Sun, nor that of the Off-Broadway dramatic adaptation her widower Robert Nemiroff patched together from her notes and autobiographical writings, To Be Young, Gifted and Black. But though it remained unfinished at the time of her death, she considered it her most important work.

HOW TO TELL IT’S FANTASTIC
Les Blanc’s action takes place in an unnamed African country modeled on Ghana and Kenya, according to Hansberry’s biographers, and also somewhat on the Congo, according to me. (See, for instance, the reference in Act Two, Scene 2 to the Belgian King Leopold’s favorite method of mutilation, the cutting off of indigenes’ hands.) The “Kwi,” this country’s original inhabitants, are in the midst of being supplanted by English-speaking whites. The supplantation is carried out via multiple methods: a paternalistic Christian mission-cum-hospital, a white-run government supported by a white-run soldiery, and political interference with the threat of military intervention from the US. Like many SF and Fantasy authors before and after her, Hansberry is able to analyze real-life issues with lessened fear of triggering reprisals by situating them in a purely speculative location. Rather than invoking an alternate past as I do in Everfair or an extrapolated future as Nnedi Okorafor does in Who Fears Death, though, Hansberry creates a semi-imaginary present. (Now, of course, that present has passed….

(7) HOUSE COLORS. You can watch the Empire State Building lit up in Harry Potter colors tonight, September 27, via this livestream.

(8) MIXING IN WITH MARVEL. The creator of the Mutts comic goes in a different direction with his new book. Patrick McDonnell’s The Super Hero’s Journey, published by Abrams ComicArts in collaboration with Marvel Comics, was released September 26.

The book begins with the Watcher as he observes Earth and the inner struggles of the Marvel heroes. He watches Doctor Doom (who has harnessed the power of the Negative Zone) slowly destroy the human spirit. The Watcher then leads Mr. Fantastic on a meta journey through the pages of classic comic books. Ultimately, our heroes come to a Zen solution in an unexpected fashion — one that aligns with Patrick’s other beloved and award-winning books — leaving us with a renewed sense of love, hope, and redemption.

Learn more about the project as Forces of Geek “Chats With Cartoonist Patrick McDonnell About ‘The Super Hero’s Journey’”.

The book features excerpts of early Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and Vince Colletta. Was including original Marvel art part of the plan from the beginning and when it came to your selections, were they already definitive in your mind or did Marvel make suggestions on certain images/panels to include within your narrative?

One of my first concepts for this project was to combine my art with the classic ‘60s comic panels and pages to tell a new story in a new way. It gave me an excuse to re-read all those amazing early issues. I was looking for panels that would work with my storyline, but also staying open to find happy surprises that might help shape the story. Marvel was not part of that process but were supportive and enthusiastic of the final product.

Early in the book, you mention that reading the early Marvel comics was life-altering and transformative and transported you. Can you explain how the experience changed you?

Early childhood art experiences open you up to new ways of thinking and seeing the world. Those comics made me want to explore my own imagination and creativity. The Marvel super heroes made you believe that everything and anything is possible and to strive to be the best you could be.

(9) PETE KOZACHIK (1951-2023). Cinematographer Pete Kozachik, who worked on several well-known stop-motion animation genre features, died September 12 at the age of 72 reports SFGate.

Pete Kozachik, the pioneering visual effects artist and cinematographer who brought his unique style to stop-motion animation classics including “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Corpse Bride,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Coraline” and more, died Tuesday, Sept. 12, at his Bay Area home due to complications related to primary progressive aphasia. He was 72 years old….

…Kozachik decided he wanted to try his hand at making his own Harryhausen-esque movies. A family friend taught him how to shoot, develop and print photos, and after reading an article titled “Build a Movie” in one of their Popular Photography magazines, he got to work on his very first project. Earnings from his job as a paperboy with the Detroit Free Press allowed him to buy a black-and-white 8 mm camera, foam pieces snipped with scissors became crude dinosaurs and cave people, and a dark rabbit-fur purse he found in a trash can was transformed into his star: a King Kong puppet he would pit against the dinosaurs….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1989 — [Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids where our Beginning is from one of the early Discworld novels, being just the seventh. It was published by Gollancz thirty-four years ago. Josh Kirby did the absolutely amazing wrap-around cover for this edition. 

Pyramids was unusual for the early novels as it was  split into four ‘Books’, a structure that gives it a unique position amongst the otherwise early chapterless Discworld novels. No, The Colour of Magic doesn’t really count as it’s a collection of linked novellas, not a single novel with chapters or sections. Later novels did have chapters. 

The only Award that it got nominated for, a British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, it won. 

And now our Beginning…

Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. 

This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and . . . . . . 

but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilization. 

For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld—flat, circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A’tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No one knows the reason for all this, but it is probably quantum.

Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a turtle like that. 

It’s happening already. 

The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote villages high in the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are vast constellations; the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example, glows like a couple of colliding galaxies. 

But here, away from the great centers of population, where the Circle Sea meets the desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of Hell roar toward the sky. Ghostly light flickers across the desert. 

The pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring their power into the night.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 27, 1920 — Henry Farrell. Novelist and screenwriter, best known as the author of the “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” story which was made into a film of the same name starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. His other genre fiction was all in the Toffee series which consisted of a novel, The Shades of Toffee, and related short stories. Any of you read them? (Died 2006.)
  • Born September 27, 1927 — Roberta Gellis. Though she wrote nearly a dozen novels of her own, you most likely know her writing within the Elves on the Road Universe created by Mercedes Lackey. She co-wrote the Serrated Edge prequels with Lackey, two of which were full novels — Ill Met by Moonlight and And Less Than Kind. (Died 2016.)
  • Born September 27, 1956 — Sheila Williams, 67. Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction. She won the Hugo Award for Best Short Form Editor in 2011 and 2012. With the late Gardner Dozois, she co-edited a bonnie bunch of anthologies such as Isaac Asimov’s Robots, Isaac Asimov’s Christmas and Isaac Asimov’s Cyberdreams. She was also responsible for the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy writing being renamed the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. 
  • Born September 27, 1966 — David Bishop, 57. In the Nineties, he edited the UK Judge Dredd Megazine (1991–2002) and 2000 AD (1995–2000). He wrote a number of Dredd, Warhammer and Who novels including the Who novel Who Killed Kennedy which is a popular Third Doctor story.  He’s written Big Finish stories in the Dredd, Sarah Jane and Who lines. Dredd audio dramas. 
  • Born September 27, 1972 — Andy Briggs, 51. He started out as an uncredited writer working on story developer on the Highlander Series. I’m going to single out his writing of The Tarzan Trilogy which consists of Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy, Tarzan the Jungle Warrior and Tarzan: The Savage Lands. Most excellent pulp. He’s written eleven scripts including a remake of The Philadelphia Experiment. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • xkcd reinvents book podcasts.

(13) IGNORE THAT BOND BALONEY. JoBlo quickly walked back its story that “Christopher Nolan could possibly direct period James Bond films”. Ain’t happening.

…Well, that was fast but a knowledgeable source has reached out to us to say that this rumour is “1000% fantasy” and not at all true. Nolan is not in discussions with EON to take on the James Bond films, and indeed, the rumour below did seem too good to be true. The fact is, with Oppenheimer having grossing over $900 million worldwide, Nolan’s next project can be – well – whatever he wants. Would he really tie himself to a franchise at this point in his career? It’s unlikely. Chalk this one up to wishful thinking as far as us James Bond fans go. Oh well, it was fun thinking about it while it lasted!…

(14) YOU HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO STEAL MONEY. “Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in growing tech battle” reports AP News.

Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in Anthropic and taking a minority stake in the artificial intelligence startup, the two companies said Monday.

The investment underscores how Big Tech companies are pouring money into AI as they race to capitalize on the opportunities that the latest generation of the technology is set to fuel.

Amazon and Anthropic said the deal is part of a broader collaboration to develop so-called foundation models, which underpin the generative AI systems that have captured global attention.

Foundation models, also known as large language models, are trained on vast pools of online information, like blog posts, digital books, scientific articles and pop songs to generate text, images and video that resemble human work.

Under the agreement, Anthropic is making Amazon its primary cloud computing service and using the online retail giant’s custom chips as part of work to train and deploy its generative AI systems.

San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded by former staffers from OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT AI chatbot that made a global splash with its ability to come up with answers mimicking human responses….

(15) VISIT A NEARBY TOWER. The Guardian has good news about an architectural and scientific landmark: “Observatory built to represent Einstein’s theory of relativity reopens in Germany”.

A solar observatory built to substantiate Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity has been reopened near the German capital after a renovation project to preserve it for future generations.

The Einsteinturm (Einstein Tower) on Telegraph Hill in Potsdam, 16 miles (25km) south-west of Berlin, spent a year under scaffolding while work was carried out using modern techniques to seal its many thousands of cracks, cure it of extensive dampness, and to save its domed zinc roof, while retaining its authenticity.

Constructed between 1920 and 1922 by the architect Erich Mendelsohn in collaboration with the astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, the 20-metre tower, said at the time to resemble a “gawky spaceship”, has long been a lure for architectural enthusiasts and astrophysicists alike….

… The tower is very much still in operation as a working solar observatory today, run by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP), where it is mainly used for the study of solar magnetic fields….

(16) DO YOU HAVE PRINCE ALBERT IN A CAN? “Scientists just opened the lid to NASA’s asteroid sample canister” — Ars Technica peeked over their shoulders.

…When the spacecraft departed the roughly 1,600-foot-wide (500-meter) asteroid Bennu in 2020, engineers estimated the probe had gathered around 250 grams, or 8.8 ounces, of specimens from Bennu’s porous surface. The spacecraft sampled the asteroid by extending a robotic arm out in front of it, then essentially pogoing off the surface, only contacting Bennu for a few seconds. When it touched the asteroid, the spacecraft released a burst of gas to funnel loose rocks into a collection chamber shaped like an air filter on the end of the robot arm. This device is called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM.

Scientists discovered the collection chamber’s door was wedged open with larger rocky material, with some fragments of rock leaking out into space, so they decided to quickly stow the sampling device inside the return capsule to avoid losing more material. That led some scientists on the OSIRIS-REx team to wonder whether the spacecraft might come back to Earth with even more than the 250-gram estimate, which was four times the minimum requirement for mission success.

Researchers likely won’t know for sure how much material OSIRIS-REx brought home until next month. That will require the lab team in Houston to remove the TAGSAM sampling mechanism from its restraint inside the canister, which protected it for the journey back to Earth like a nested doll. Then they will open up the device and hopefully find larger chunks of rock. All of this should happen in the next couple of weeks….

(17) BUT DOES IT LAND JELLY SIDE DOWN? “Scientists find antimatter is subject to gravity” – the Guardian has the story.

Galileo put gravitational theory to the test by dropping balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Four hundred years on, scientists have performed a higher tech version of the experiment to demonstrate for the first time that antimatter also falls downwards.

The study, by scientists at Cern, showed conclusively that gravity pulls antihydrogen downwards and that, at least for antimatter, antigravity does not exist.

“Broadly speaking, we’re making antimatter and we’re doing a Leaning Tower of Pisa kind of experiment,” said Prof Jonathan Wurtele, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re letting the antimatter go, and we’re seeing if it goes up or down.”…

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Daily Woo earlier this week posted a video with a “Final Look At Warner Bros Ranch As It’s Leveled – Hollywood History Gone Forever”.

…I pulled over here and parked on this street in Burbank where the Warner Ranch was. It is no longer the Warner Ranch even though there are still some buildings back in here. I was lucky enough twice to be able to get inside once like a year ago and then once like four months ago. Since then from what I am hearing there are no employees of the company of Warner, it’s not even title that anymore, and there’s just a demolition crew in there so I’m gonna see what I can find…

[Thanks to Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven French, Dann, Rich Lynch, Scott Edelman, John A Arkansawyer, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 12/15/22 Pixel’s Turn To Scroll

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(1) LOCUS REACHES CROWDFUNDING TARGET. The Locus Magazine Indiegogo appeal hit the target today. When I checked in they had exceeded their $75,000 goal and were at $78,571. Although today was the announced deadline, Locus has extended the appeal to the end of the year.

…But, wait, it’s not over yet! On advice from those that know, we are going to extend our campaign to the end of the year: if we hit $85k that will cover all of the expenses of the fundraiser and we will get the whole $75k. FTW!

Also, we really want to reach our Special Short Story Issue stretch goal!! At $85,000 we’ll dedicate one of our 2023 monthly issues to the art of short fiction, and already have Kelly Link, Usman T. Malik, and Ted Chiang lined up for a roundtable feature. 

Oh, and (Jan-Erik Zandersson might want to cover his eyes here) Locus hitting its goal means John Scalzi is going to do a Christmas story.

(2) TRUMP’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. Former President Trump’s hyped “big announcement” would probably not be covered in today’s Scroll except that it proved to be the introduction of his “’official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card’ collection with a picture of himself in superhero costume, cape and ‘Trump Champion’ belt.” “’Losing the plot’: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection” at Yahoo!

… But when the announcement came on Thursday, Trump said he was merely offering supporters “limited edition cards featur[ing] amazing ART of my Life & Career”, which he promised would prove “very much like a baseball card but hopefully much more exciting”.

“GET YOUR CARDS NOW!” the 76-year-old former president commanded, above the picture of himself standing in a ring for boxing or wrestling, muscles rippling under a red leotard and wearing high blue boots emblazoned with “45” (his presidential number) and an American flag as a cape.

The cards, the declared candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 said, cost “Only $99 each” and “would make a great Christmas gift”….

And how did the base react? We take you now to Jon Del Arroz’ reaction video titled “Trump HUMILIATES Himself With His New CRINGE Announcement. Make It STOP!”

“This is ridiculous. This reeks of an nft scam where you’re just like collecting these things that are not actually collectible. They’re digital pictures just like this one. Just take a screenshot friends and you’ll have it yourself. Let’s go to the website and check it out. All right. Collecttrumpcards.com here we go. [laughs] And it’s loading slow, too, how exciting. How exciting. Gosh this is so sad. I mean to me like a president doing this, somebody who is a 2024 Contender or kind of was. Uh, the site’s not even loading. Womp womp uh it is actually embarrassing. Like he he should not be stooping to this kind of thing, especially as like a big businessman or whatever. Like I mean you’d think that he’d have a better sort of business plan going forward to where he’s making real money. I mean this is like selling stupid trinkets that aren’t even actual trinkets, you don’t even get anything out of it, and it’s just kind of sad to watch. I think this is really the downfall of Trump when you’re doing a big announcement in all this and this is what you come out with….”

It’s my blog so I don’t have to run an image of Trump’s superhero card to illustrate this item. I think that’s a right guaranteed to me by the Constitution. Or the LA County sanitation code. Somewhere.

(3) MARLEY WAS DEAD. Open Culture invites you to “Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christmas Carol Just Like Charles Dickens Read It”. (It’s an updated 2014 post.) The recording is here.

In Christmases past, we featured Charles Dickens’ hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He did that hand editing for the purposes of giving public readings, a practice that, in his time, “was considered a desecration of one’s art and a lowering of one’s dignity.” That time, however, has gone, and many of the most prestigious writers alive today take the reading aloud of their own work to the level of art, or at least high entertainment, that Dickens must have suspected one could. Some writers even do a bang-up job of reading other writers’ work: modern master storyteller Neil Gaiman gave us a dose of that when we featured his recitation of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” from memory. Today, however, comes the full meal: Gaiman’s telling of A Christmas Carol straight from that very Dickens-edited reading copy….

(4) HORROR HOSTESS. Via the Horror Writers Association blog, “Nuts and Bolts: Interview with Aurora Gorealis”. There’s a substantial excerpt at the link, however, only HWA members have access to the full article.

In the tradition of such sinister seductresses as Vampira and Elvira, Aurora Gorealis is a Baltimore-based horror host who weaves dark magic from a combination of campy movies, sassy attitude, and the occasional pun of dubious quality.

Since 2017, Aurora (aka: Melissa LaMartina) has been playing the character during “Shocktail Hour” at the Golden West Café in Baltimore, combining live comedy and screenings of off-the-wall classics such as “Phantom of the Paradise” and “House on Haunted Hill” (complete with William Castle-style gimmicks)….

(5) STONE THE PHONE. “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes” reports the New York Times.

…“Lots of us have read this book called ‘Into the Wild,’” said Lola Shub, a senior at Essex Street Academy, referring to Jon Krakauer’s 1996 nonfiction book about the nomad Chris McCandless, who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. “We’ve all got this theory that we’re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.”

“When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person. I’ve been trying to write a book, too. It’s like 12 pages now.”

Briefly, the club members discussed how the spreading of their Luddite gospel was going. Founded last year by another Murrow High School student, Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, the folkloric 18th-century English textile worker who supposedly smashed up a mechanized loom, inspiring others to take up his name and riot against industrialization….

… “But that wasn’t enough,” she said. “So I put my phone in a box.”

For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens. And she began waking up without an alarm clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight. Once, as she later wrote in a text titled the “Luddite Manifesto,” she fantasized about tossing her iPhone into the Gowanus Canal.

While Logan’s parents appreciated her metamorphosis, particularly that she was regularly coming home for dinner to recount her wanderings, they grew distressed that they couldn’t check in on their daughter on a Friday night. And after she conveniently lost the smartphone they had asked her to take to Paris for a summer abroad program, they were distraught. Eventually, they insisted that she at least start carrying a flip phone….

(6) THERE’S A LOT AT THE END OF GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. “Thomas Pynchon, Famously Private, Sells His Archive” – and the Huntington Library is its new home reports the New York Times.

For years, archival traces of the novelist Thomas Pynchon have been almost as rare as sightings of the man himself.

Only a handful of confirmed photos of him are known to exist. While letters by him sporadically pop up for sale, those that have surfaced in publicly accessible archives have tended to disappear from view just as quickly, following protests from the famously private author.

But now, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., has acquired Pynchon’s literary archive, promising to open a window into the mind and methods of an author whose dense, erudite, playfully postmodern and often extremely long novels like “Gravity’s Rainbow” (760 pages) and “Against the Day” (1,085) have inspired serious scholarship, cultish devotion and wild-eyed conspiracy theories.

The archive includes 48 boxes — 70 linear feet, in archivist-speak — of material dating from the late 1950s to the 2020s. There are typescripts and drafts of all his published books, from “V.” (1963) to “Bleeding Edge” (2013). And there are copious research notes on the many, many subjects (World War II rocketry, postal history, 18th-century surveying) touched on in his encyclopedic novels.

But for all its richness, those hoping for a more intimate view of the man who twice made a cheeky cameo on “The Simpsons” with a paper bag over his head may be out of luck.

The archive includes correspondence relating to the publishing process, the library said, but no private letters or other personal material. And no, there are no photographs of Pynchon either…..

(7) DEFENDING SANDMAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last night BBC Radio 4 Front Row arts programme had Neil Gaiman. Neil, apparently, has been getting a fair bit of criticism saying that Sandman is too woke what with non-binary characters and all.  Neil thinks this strange as 30 years ago when Sandman first came out there was no problem.  OK, so woke did not exist then, but Neil points out that nobody back then complained that Sandman was too PC.. “Neil Gaiman, China’s art censorship in Europe, Decline of the working class in the creative industries”.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1995 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Winnie statues in the London Zoo

Yes, we already had a look at the Winnie the Pooh statue in White River, Ontario, but neither one of those statues is of him. Rather the examples today are of the bear that inspired A.A. Milne to create that marvelous bear.

The first, not at all surprisingly, stands close to the War Memorial.

This bronze statue, which is called the Winnie the bear and Lt. Colebourn Statue, was sculpted by Canadian artist William (Bill) Epp, and donated to London Zoo by the Canadian province of Manitoba. A copy of an identical statue in the Assiniboine Park Zoo, Winnipeg.

The plaque reads:

Winnie and Lt. Colebourn
by Bill Epp
presented by the people
of Manitoba
unveiled July 1995

But it’s not the only sculpture of Winnie you’ll find here in the London Zoo! There is another bronze of Winnie, shown as a young cub, by sculptor Lorne McKean. It was unveiled by Christopher Robin Milne in 1981. It is located near Animal Adventure right by the Blackburn Entrance.

McKean likes swans since two of her commissions have been them, Girl and A Swan and simply Swans. She also did a stellar Fox fountain with a bronze fox on a rock with water in Old Fox Yard, Stowmarket.  

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 15, 1923 — Freeman Dyson. Physicist best known in genre circles for the concept he theorized of a Dyson Sphere which would be built by a sufficiently technologically advanced species around a sun to harvest all solar energy. He credited Olaf Stapledon in Star Maker (1937), in which he described “every solar system… surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use,” with first coming up with the concept. (Died 2020.)
  • Born December 15, 1937 — John Sladek. Weird and ambitious would be ways to describe his work. The Complete Roderick Is quite amazing, as is Tik-Tok, which won a BSFA, and Bugs is as well. He did amazing amounts of short fiction, much of which is collected finally in the ironically named Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek. He is generously stocked at the usual suspects. (Died 2000.)
  • Born December 15, 1949 — Don Johnson, 73. Though Miami Vice is where most will know him from, he has impressive genre creds including the lead in the Ellison-derived A Boy and Dog, voicing Wazir’s Son in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Office Andy Brady in the Revenge of the Stepford Wives film and another Sheriff, Earl McGraw, in the From Dusk till Dawn: The Series.
  • Born December 15, 1951 — David Bischoff. His “Tin Woodman” which was written with Dennis Bailey and nominated for a Nebula would be adapted into a Next Generation story. He also wrote the Next Gen story “First Contact” (with Dennis Russell Bailey, Joe Menosky, Ronald D. Moore and Michael Piller.) And he continued the Bill the Galactic Hero story with Harry Harrison.  He’s also written a kickass excellent Farscape novel, Ship of Ghosts. (Died 2018.)
  • Born December 15, 1952 — Marta DuBoi. Her first genre role is on the Starman series as Dr. Ellen Dukowin the “Fever” episode though you’ll likely better recognize her as Ardra on the “Devil’s Due” episode of the Next Generation. She also had roles on The Land of The Lost, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk and Tales of the Golden Monkey. (Died 2018.)
  • Born December 15, 1953 — Robert Charles Wilson, 69. He’s got a Hugo Award for Spin, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for The Chronoliths, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the “The Cartesian Theater” novelette and Prix Aurora Awards for the Blind Lake and Darwinia novels. He also garnered a Philip K. Dick Award for Mysterium. Very, very impressive indeed. 
  • Born December 15, 1963 — Helen Slater, 59. Was Supergirl in the film of that name, and returned to the 2015 TV series of the same name as Supergirl’s adoptive mother. Also within the DC Universe, she voiced Talia al Ghul in in Batman: The Animated Series. Recently she also voiced Martha Kent in DC Super Hero Girls: Hero of the Year. And Lara in Smallville… And Eliza Danvers on the Supergirl series. Me? I’m not obsessed at all by the DC Universe.  Her other genre appearances include being on Supernatural, Eleventh Hour, Toothless, Drop Dead Diva and Agent X. 
  • Born December 15, 1970 — Michael Shanks, 52. Best known for playing Dr. Daniel Jackson in the very long-running Stargate SG-1 franchise. His first genre appearance was in the Highlander series and he’s been in a lot of genre properties including the Outer Limits, Escape from Mars, Andromeda (formally titled Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda and there’s a juicy story there), Swarmed, Mega Snake, Eureka, Sanctuary, Smallville, Supernatural and Elysium. Wow! 

(10) A “KING KONG” BIRTHDAY CAKE. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] For my 70th birthday (December 15th, 2015), dear friends Bruce and Ann Gearhart in Baltimore surprised me with the most wonderful celebratory cake I’ve ever been given.

“The Girl In The Hairy Paw,” edited and compiled by Ronald Gottesman and Harry M. Geduld, with wonderful cover art by Dave Willardson, was published by Avon Books in 1976 and featured, as its lead chapter, my lengthy essay on the making and production of the original “King Kong.” Its release was a significant benchmark in my life and career, as it was the first time that my work had ever been published in a book.

The opening chapter of this legendary volume was adapted from my series of articles comprising the cover story for the premiere issue of “The Monster Times” in 1972. This astonishing birthday sheet cake, replicating the book’s famous “King Kong” cover, thrilled me beyond words.

Carving into this wondrous pastry was delayed by a solid half hour while we all took pictures of it. It was simply too precious to deface. Fortunately, sanity eventually prevailed and this wondrous cake was ravenously devoured. Still, I wish that it might somehow have been preserved forever…. a delectable artifact commemorating my lifelong favorite film.

After seven years, the astonishing, childlike joy of having received this unforgettable gift brings a wondrous smile to my aging lips.

(11) TURKISH CARVINGS COULD BE FIRST COMIC STRIP. “Prehistoric carvings are oldest known story sequence” behind a paywall in Nature.

An 11,000-year-old carving in Turkey is the earliest known portrayal of a narrative scene. Archaeologists have uncovered other etched images in southeastern Turkey from the Neolithic period, which in the Near East stretched roughly from 10,000 bc to 7,000 bc and
includes the transition from nomadic life to settlements. But, unlike previously identified images, the latest discovery consists of two adjacent panels with a progressing storyline….

Although the Nature article is paywalled, the source journal article with numerous photos is available: “The Sayburç reliefs: a narrative scene from the Neolithic” at Cambridge Core.

(12) SF READER LITMUS TEST. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Having pre-registered as press for the rapidly-approaching CES (I’m not going IRL/F2F, but want some of the PR email barrage), Daniel Dern just got this:

Subject: CES to Feature FoodTech Sessions, Exhibits & More – Connect w/ Cultivated Meat CEO Panelist?

Dern asks/thinks (but did not reply with) this, to a mix of fellow tech journalists and Filers: Who else first quick-read this as a, with all due respect to SF writer Terry Bisson [1] ‘made-of-cultivated-meat’ panelist rather than the more likely meaning?

[1] http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/

(13) WITH ALICE. [Item by Daniel Dern.]It zooms through the skies with the greatest of ease! “Antimatter Could Travel Through Our Galaxy With Ease, Physicists Say” – Gizmodo has the story.

A team of physicists determined that enigmatic ‘antinuclei’ can travel across the universe without being absorbed by the interstellar medium. The finding suggests we may be able to identify antimatter that is produced by dark matter in deep space.

The physicists estimated the Milky Way’s so-called transparency to antihelium-3 nuclei—meaning, how permissive the galaxy’s interstellar medium is to antinuclei zipping through space.

“Our results show, for the first time on the basis of a direct absorption measurement, that antihelium-3 nuclei coming from as far as the centre of our Galaxy can reach near-Earth locations,” said ALICE physics coordinator Andrea Dainese, in a CERN release….

(14) WHY IT CRATERED. MLive takes you back to “Space World: The Michigan amusement park that never was”.

In the late 1970s, a Detroit-area aeronautical engineer who helped make NASA’S Apollo program possible dreamed up an amusement park called Space World. He hoped to build it on what was then farmland in Ypsilanti Township. He eventually broke ground on the park in nearby Huron Township, but down-to-earth troubles like high interest rates scrubbed the project.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. From The Late Late Show With James Corden, “Avatar Ed: James Explains The First ‘Avatar’ To Kids”.

This group of schoolchildren is getting older, so it’s time they got… “the talk”. That is of course, the talk about what “Avatar” is and why they should care.

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