Tag Archives: Arrowverse

Pixel Scroll 12/3/24 I See Files Of Blue, Red Pixels Too, I See Them Purr For Me And You

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(0) FILE 770 TURNS ON ‘LIKE’ FUNCTION. Starting today you can now tag posts and comments with a “like”.

(1) SUPER SPOILER ALERT! Superman and Lois ends with a climactic fight, and a highly sentimental flashforward to the beginning of Superman’s supernatural life. I found both clips pretty impressive, so just imagine their impact on those who watched the series faithfully.

(2) FROM BC TO AD TO DC. “The CW’s DC Era Ends With ‘Superman & Lois’ Finale: Numbers Behind the Enduring Franchise” from The Hollywood Reporter.

The series finale of Superman & Lois aired Monday night on The CW. It marked not just the end of the show’s four-season run, but also an entire programming philosophy at the network.

Superman & Lois was the last series based on DC Comics characters to air at the network. It was also the last connection to The CW’s Arrowverse (even if it wasn’t technically part of the main continuity of that franchise), which defined the 2010s for the network and became one of the more successful multi-show franchises in TV history.

The ending of Superman & Lois, which — spoiler alert — flashes forward several decades to show the end of its title characters’ (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) lives, precludes any continuation of the show elsewhere — as do new regimes at both The CW and DC parent Warner Bros. Discovery, which both have very different approaches than they did during the Arrowverse’s heyday in the mid- and late 2010s….

… 10: The number of series based on DC characters that aired on The CW, beginning with Arrow in October 2012. All of them came from Warner Bros. TV and what was then called DC Entertainment, and nine — Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights — were executive produced by Berlanti via his Berlanti Productions. The 10th is 2022’s Naomi, co-created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and produced by DuVernay’s ARRAY Filmworks along with DC and WB….

… 817, 797: The combined episode total from all 10 shows, and those that ran on The CW; Supergirl‘s first season, which spanned 20 episodes, aired on CBS. The 817 episodes are more than all but three multi-show franchise since 1990 — only Law & Order (1,363 episodes as of publication time), JAG/NCIS (1,249) and CSI (838) have more. NBC’s Chicago franchise will need to air 131 more episodes — about six 22-episode seasons’ worth of shows — to pass the DC total….

(3) DIVERSE READING AID. Rocket Stack Rank reminds us of “Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2023”. See the list at the link.

62 outstanding SF/F short stories by People of Color from 2023 that were finalists for major SF/F awards, included in “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, or recommended by prolific reviewers. (40 free online, 18 with podcasts)….

… Readers asked us to make it easy for them to find good stories written by authors with diverse racial backgrounds, and that’s what this list is meant to accomplish (author identity plays no role in our ratings)….

(4) MORPHIN’ INTO CASH. By the time Heritage Auction’s November 18-19 Power Rangers Hasbro Hollywood & Entertainment Signature® Auction wrapped it had realized $3.3 million dollars in sales.

Every costume, monster, prop, weapon and warrior offered in the landmark event — nearly 700 lots! — found a new home.

As a result, the auction realized $3,310,929, with countless surprises and smash hits throughout the largest and most comprehensive collection of Power Rangers memorabilia ever assembled, spanning the classic Power Rangers Mighty Morphin to the most recent season, Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, which premiered last year.

From the latter series came the auction’s top lot: the original hero Cosmic Fury Cannon, the team’s signature weapon that combines all five of the Cosmic Fury Rangers’ individual dino-themed powers into an 80-inch-long laser blaster. After a prolonged bidding war during the auction’s second day, the Cosmic Fury Cannon shot up to its final price of $87,500.

Another smash hit was one of this auction’s numerous centerpieces: the Transformable Astro Megaship/Astro Megazord hero filming miniature from 1998’s Power Rangers in Space, one of the only complete Zords in this auction used on screen as the Rangers’ spacecraft and battle Zord. It’s fully articulated, an armed warrior and battle carrier that still moves like a well-oiled machine — and is so complete it still has the fishing line used to open its chest. It opened live bidding at $19,000 and finally realized $47,500 after a lengthy bidding war.

Weapons wielded significant power during this event, with the Green Ranger Hero Dragon Dagger from last year’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always realizing $23,750. And six Cosmic Morpher Hero Props from Power Rangers Cosmic Fury blasted their way to a $17,500 finish.

Numerous costumes worn throughout the series’ 31-year run realized five figures, among them the Green Ranger hero costume worn by Jason David Frank, as Tommy Oliver, during the initial run of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the mid-1990s. It realized $30,000, while his complete White Ranger hero costume from 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie sold for $16,250. The auction’s second day began with a moment of silence in tribute to Frank….

A couple more favorites:

Fierce Fashions: Trini Kwan’s Yellow Ranger costume, Saber-Toothed Tiger Power Morpher included, roared to $23,750. Kimberly Hart’s Pink Ranger suit wasn’t far behind, landing $22,500.

Villains Rule: Even baddies got their moment in the spotlight, with Goldar Maximus strutting off for $21,250 and Master Zedd securing $18,750.

(5) TERMINALS OF ENDEARMENT. “Lovable Movie Robots Are Coming to Charm Your Children” writes Diego Hadis in the New York Times (great article, but behind a paywall).

 One near certainty about raising a young child these days is that you and your offspring will be exposed to a lot of stories about robots. Another is that the robots working their charms most effectively on you will belong to a new kind of archetype: the sympathetic robot. Sitting in darkened theaters with my 5-year-old son, I have watched any number of these characters. They are openhearted and often dazzled by the wonders of everyday life — innocently astounded by, say, the freedom of playing in the surf, the bliss of dancing with a loved one or the thrill of just holding hands. They might be more winningly human than some of the humans you know….

… Take Roz, the main character of the animated film “The Wild Robot,” which came out in September. Like the Peter Brown book series on which it is based, the movie focuses on a robot protagonist that gains emotional complexity after she washes ashore on an island unpopulated by humans, learns to communicate with the animals she meets there and becomes the surrogate mother of an orphaned gosling. Roz changes and adapts; she goes from seeing her care for the gosling as a rote task to welcoming it as a real connection. She embraces the wildness of the animals around her and ceases to be the unfeeling machine that her programming intended. Instead, she becomes an unnatural champion for the natural world — one whose touching incomprehension of how to care for a newborn makes her charming….

…We’re now inarguably living in the future that science fiction once imagined. Artificial intelligences weaned on vast libraries of human endeavor are coming online, their boosters hyping their potential to either fulfill our greatest wishes or realize our deepest fears. It feels notable that we are raising our children on pointedly comforting stories about robots that, instead of relieving us of our jobs or edging us to the brink of Armageddon, offer to show us how to be more human. Granted, computers are an inescapable facet of our world now. As they grow up, our children will consume stories about humanlike robots as naturally as our ancestors delighted in tales about anthropomorphic animals. Still, these stories seem to be doing an inordinate amount of work to help children feel warm toward the technologies that increasingly dominate our lives….

…This is all in spite of the remarkably bleak near future portrayed in many of these children’s films. They tend to show us a world of ecological ruin devastated by climate change. “The Wild Robot” offers haunting images like the Golden Gate Bridge submerged in San Francisco Bay as a flock of geese passes overhead. The Earth in “Wall-E” has been reduced to a lifeless, postindustrial horrorscape reminiscent of the works of the photographer Edward Burtynsky; humans have fled it entirely. “Robot Dreams” evades this by being set in and around its 1980s New York, but even that film concerns itself greatly with the natural world. We see the robot experiencing the changing seasons on a wintry beach; the dog takes pity on a fish that he has caught and releases it. There is even a scene — echoing the surrogate parenting in “The Wild Robot” — in which the robot helps encourage a young bird to learn how to fly.

There is an echo here of the classic robot stories: Humanity’s hubris has once again led us to get in over our heads. But now we’re encouraged to take pleasure in watching a robot try to navigate what’s left, slowly figuring out that human values — love, connection, caretaking — are eternally important. The sympathetic robots are devised as much to comfort us parents as they are to make technology appealing to our kids. Despite the destabilized world that we’re leaving to our offspring, they reassure us, artificial intelligences could one day serve as our surrogates — and care for our children or, who knows, even love them for us when we’re gone.

(6) WRITERS NEED HELP. [Item by Steven French.] Worrying news: “Royal Literary Fund’s hardship grants for writers see applications increase by 400%” in the Guardian.

Applications for the Royal Literary Fund’s (RLF’s) hardship grants for professional writers increased by 400% between last year and this year, the charity has said.

There was a nearly fivefold increase in applications in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023, RLF CEO Edward Kemp told the Guardian.

The RLF’s grant applications are open to writers who need short- or long-term financial support because they are, for example, facing an unexpected bill, reduced income, or are unable to write due to a “change in circumstances, sickness, disability, or age”, according to the RLF.

The grants are given as a donation towards the “removal of distress for the applicant”, rather than to help complete literary works. Writers must have published (via a traditional publisher, not self-published) at least two books in the UK or Ireland to be eligible for a grant.

The rise in applications comes after research published by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in 2022 showed authors’ median earnings were just £7,000 a year, down from £12,330 in 2006.

(7) FUTURE WORLDS PRIZE JUDGES NAMED. TheFuture Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced the judging panel for its 2025 prize. The prize aims to find new talent based in the UK writing in the SFF space and is funded by author Ben Aaronovitch and actor Adjoa Andoh.  The judges are:   

  • 2023 winner Mahmud El Sayed 
  • Shadow and Bone actor Amita Suman 
  • Bestselling author Saara El Arifi 
  • Literary agent Amandeep Singh 
  • Author Rogba Payne. 

The winner of Future Worlds Prize receives £4,500, and the runner-up receives £2,500. The remaining six shortlisted writers each receive £850. All eight writers also get mentoring from one of the prize’s publishing partners: Bloomsbury, Daphne Press, Gollancz, HarperVoyager, Hodderscape, Orbit, Penguin Michael Joseph, Simon & Schuster, Titan and Tor.

Future Worlds Prize closes for entries at 23:59 GMT on Sunday 26th January 2025.  

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Sarah Pinsker and Yume Kitasei on Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

SARAH PINSKER

A starred Booklist review called Sarah Pinsker’s latest, Haunt Sweet Home, “Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful…” She is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of the novels A Song For A New Day and We Are Satellites, plus the collections Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and Lost Places, both published by Small Beer Press, and over sixty pieces of short fiction. She’s currently the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College, and lives in Baltimore with her wife and two weird dogs.

YUME KITASEI

Yume Kitasei is the author of The Deep Sky, The Stardust Grail, and Saltcrop (forthcoming in 2025). She is half Japanese and half American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. You can find more information about her at www.yumekitasei.com. She chirps occasionally @Yumewrites at Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky.

Meets at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

(9) WALT BOYES AND JOY WARD JOIN MISTI MEDIA, LLC. Walt Boyes and Joy Ward, longtime chief editors for Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press, and Top of the World Publishing, are joining Misti Media as Editors-at-Large. They will be responsible for the startup of Misti Media’s new Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror imprint: Nazca Press. They will also be working with Misti Media’s other main imprints and alongside Sandra Murphy who oversees content for specialty imprint Sandra Murphy Presents. For the Misti Media story, see Misti Media, LLC.

“Nazca Press doesn’t have a website yet, as Misti Media is only a year old and growing its Internet presence,” says Walt Boyes, “but what we do have is close to 100 years of editing and publishing experience in both fiction, genre fiction, and non-fiction. And when you add this to the incredible 30 years of industry experience brought to Misti Media by CEO and Publisher Jay Hartman, we are the real deal.”

“We moved first to create world-class distribution for both ebooks and trade paperbacks,” Jay Hartman explains. “We have worldwide distribution in nearly every country, including bookstores and libraries, and we have begun publishing some fantastic authors. Now, with Walt and Joy’s experience and knowledge, we can start looking for more great authors to join our family.”

You can reach Walt at wboyes@mistimedia.com; Joy at jward@mistimedia.com; and Jay Hartman at jhartman@mistimedia.com.

(10) LARPING IN SOCAL. The Washington Post takes you “Inside Twin Mask, an elaborate fantasy world just miles from L.A.” (This gift article bypasses the paywall, but you still need a free WaPo account to read it.)

…The entire weekend — Friday night until Sunday morning — would be spent inside this elaborate fantasy realm with its many rules and intricate replicas.

Held at the site of the Koroneburg Renaissance Festival about an hour outside Los Angeles, the live-action role-playing (LARP) game Twin Mask stands out for its sheer size and lifespan. It’s far more elaborate than other games of its ilk, with anywhere from 400 to 600 players converging in character at events held every month and a half or so.

“You eat food in character, you walk to the bathroom in character,” says its creator, John Basset, who started Twin Mask 14 years ago. “It really feels like you’re in another world.”

Given its proximity to Hollywood, it attracts a fair number of players whose day jobs are in the film industry. And they revel in making a next-level spectacle.

… In the dark world of Adelrune, characters share a unifying aspect — they each have been resurrected from death. Whether they’re a knight, a healer or a merchant, allthe players, known collectively as “The Returned,” have detailed backstories….

… Twin Mask is run by a detailed system of unpaid volunteers and staff who take on everything from writing the story, to ensuring people (and mythical creatures) are hydrated and safe, to performing as non-player characters who help guide the storyline. Still, every player can influence the plot, which continues long after the weekend is over….

… A little over an hour into the game, no one is in charge and a criminal underworld is beginning to take hold. Much of the site is eerily quiet.

Not so at the tavern in the center of town where the single dusty road splits. The boisterous bar is filled with the chatter of players who never break character. Some are making deals while others are socializing. The crowd is soon silenced by the sound of a ringing bell. Players returning from death quietly shuffle in.…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 66.

I first encountered Terri Windling’s writing through reading The Wood Wife, a truly extraordinary fantasy that deserved the Mythopoeic Award it won. (The Hole in the Wall bar in it would be borrowed by Charles de Lint with her permission for a scene in his Medicine Road novel, an excellent novel.) I like the American edition with Susan Sedona Boulet’s art much better than I do the British edition with the Brian Froud art as I feel it catches the tone of the novel. 

I would be very remiss not mention about her stellar work as the founding editor along with Ellen Datlow of what would be called The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror after the first volume which was simply The Year’s Best Fantasy, that being noted for those of you who would doubt correct me for not noting that. The series won three World Fantasy Awards and a Stoker as well.

They also edited the most splendid Snow White, Blood Red anthologies which were stories based on traditional folk tales. Lots of very good stuff there. Like the Mythic Fiction series is well worth reading and available at usual suspects and in digital form as well.

Oh, and I want to single out The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood which took on the difficult subject of child abuse. It garnered a much warranted Otherwise nomination.

Now let’s have a beer at the Dancing Ferret as I note her creation and editing (for the most part) of the Bordertown series. I haven’t read all of it, though I did read her first three anthologies several times and love the punks as you can see here on Life on the Border, but I’ve quite a bit of it and all of the three novels written in it, Emma Bull’s Finder: A Novel: of The Borderlands, is one of my comfort works, so she gets credit for that. 

So now let’s move to an art credit for her. So have you seen the cover art for Another Way to Travel by Cats Laughing? I’ve the original pen and ink art that she did here. 

Which brings me to the Old Oak Wood series which is penned by her and illustrated by Wendy Froud. Now Wikipedia and most of the reading world thinks that it consists of three lovely works — A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale, The Winter Child and The Faeries of Spring Cottage. 

But there’s a story that Terri wrote that never got published anywhere but on Green Man. It’s an Excerpt from The Old Oak Chronicles: Interviews with Famous Personages by Professor Arnel Rootmuster. It’s a charming story, so go ahead and read it.

Photo posted by Terri on Bluesky. Photographer unstated.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) PREPARE TO BLEEP AND BLUR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The House of Mouse said nay to one line of dialogue in Deadpool & Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds came up with a replacement that was just as raunchy, but didn’t reference Steamboat Willie’s willy. People says, “We Now Know the Super-Raunchy Mickey Mouse Joke Disney Asked Ryan Reynolds to Cut from Deadpool & Wolverine”.

…Director Shawn Levy previously said there was “only one line in the entire movie that we were asked to change,” telling Entertainment Weekly in August that he and star Ryan Reynolds made a “pact” to “go to our grave with that line.”

However, Marvel Studios has shared the film’s official screenplay online as part of a For Your Consideration campaign this awards season, and in the script, that original deleted line is revealed.

In the scene where Deadpool (Reynolds) asks if Magneto is also in the film, he’s told the character is dead. He then says, “F—! What, we can’t even afford one more X-Man? Disney is so cheap. I can barely breathe with all this Mickey Mouse c–k in my throat.”

The actual line in the final cut of the movie is: “F—, now Disney gets cheap? It’s like Pinocchio jammed his face in my ass and started lying like crazy.”

The scene features the surprise cameos made by Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Wesley Snipes as Blade and Channing Tatum as Gambit. The screenplay showcases the Stranger Things–inspired code names the writers used to keep the characters’ identities a secret. Gambit is “Gatsby,” Elektra is “Eleven” and Blade is “Billy,” plus, earlier, Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm is listed as “Jonathan Byers.”…

(14) SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE: PAOLO BACIGALUPI. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Season 103 of LearnedLeague feature this as the third question of the twelfth match day:

Emiko, the central character in Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?

Although this refers to a Hugo-winning novel, it’s sufficiently obscure that not all Filers might know it: the answer is “windup”; the novel is The Windup Girl.

11% of LearnedLeague players got this right (your reporter being one of them). The most common wrong answer actually had a higher rate than the right answer: 16% guessed “geisha” — not totally unreasonable if you have to guess something.

One interesting note is that the question originally gave the author’s name as “Paulo” and the answer as “wind up”, two words. I contacted the League commissioner and got it corrected. (I don’t know how many other people might also have done so.)

LearnedLeague competition allows you to control the points available on each question, within limits, and makes extensive history available to the players. My opponent did not avail himself of this resource! He gave me the maximum points for this one, when even a quick search would suggest that I’d know it.

Brick Barrientos sent along his own comment about the difficulty of this LL question:

“Emiko, the central character in Paulo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?”

The answer, of course, is Windup. Only 11% got it right. I thought it was a very hard question for a general knowledge, non-specialist trivia quiz. In my mind, I tried to think of three more recent Hugo novel winners that maybe 30% of trivia enthusiasts could get. In other words, if you gave the author, said it was a Hugo novel winner, some elements of the plot, and a hint at the title, would a mainstream audience get it? I came up with The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Redshirts by John Scalzi, and maybe Network Effect by Martha Wells. 

Extend it to novellas, and you could add This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. If this becomes a Pixel Scroll item, what genre novels have had major mainstream exposure in the last 15 years?

(15) COULROPHOBIA CENTRAL. Those of you who made it to the Westercon in Tonopah have already driven past this landmark: “Creepy vibes drives booming business at Tonopah’s Clown Motel” in the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of its painted faces to be smiling.

But as Vijay Mehar has learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., happy clowns are not what most of his customers want.

What they seem to want is fear, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be scared.”

So aiming to lure more people off Main Street (a.k.a. U.S. 95) to visit this 31-room motel in the dusty, stark middle of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.

By the end of 2025, he’s hoping to have completed a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the size of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift shop area. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house, to be made of 11 shipping containers….

…“America’s Scariest Motel,” read the brochures by the register. “Let fear run down your spine.”

There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. And then there are the neighbors. The motel stands next to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents…

…“If we had paid 60, or 70, or even 80 bucks, this place might have been worth it,” wrote one unamused motel customer on Trip Advisor recently.

“We had good fun, and even better we weren’t murdered,” wrote another….

(16) TRADING PLACES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Over here in Brit Cit we have a shop chain called Games Workshop that sells tabletop games and models.  It has been steadily growing and now may become one of the nation’s top 100 companies on the UK stock market…. “Alliance Witan and Games Workshop expected to join FTSE 100 this month” reports Shares Magazine.

Games Workshop store.

(17) HEARING FROM PAUL DI FILIPPO. Mark Barsotti recently interviewed prolific sff author Paul Di Filippo and through the creative use of photos and book covers turned the recordings into a three-part video series.

Part one of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a better world would make the bestseller lists. Interview: November 11, 2024.

Part two of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a juster world would make a lot more money. Paul talks about his multiverse novel VANGIE’S GHOST. Interview 11, 2024.

Part 3 on my interview with science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo, who discusses his latest novel, Vangie’s Ghosts, “technopunk jazz scatting” and not being a miserabilist. Interview: 11-11-24.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Barsotti, Walt Boyes, Cathy Green, Brick Barrientos, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff “What A Wonderful World” Smith.]

Pixel Scroll 10/19/21 He Learned Almost Too Late That Man Is A Scrolling Pixel

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(1) TOR.COM DEFCON DOWNGRADED. Reddit has updated yesterday’s warning that Tor.com was hacked and spreading malware to say the site is now “safe-ish” to use.

It appears that Tor.com has taken action and cleaned up the file mentioned in this post, meaning the information below is now outdated and Tor.com should currently be safe-ish to use.

Safe-ish, as the vulnerability that allowed the hack to happen may still exist, along with any possible backdoors the hackers left behind. So until Tor.com confirms that the problem is completely resolved, it is possible that malware might re-appear on the site.

(2) IT’S CROSSOVER SEASON. [Item by Daniel Dern.] This season/year’s Flash/Arroverse crossover will span five episodes across several shows, starting with The Flash, on November 16. Gizmodo has the story: “The Flash: Armageddon First Trailer for New Crossover Event”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkeKc0pEQ60

Despero first appeared in  Justice League of America #1 (October 1960) (via Despero – I knew he was initially a JLA villain and was early Silver Age, since I’m pretty sure I remember buying (or borrowing) and reading it when it came out, for a dime… and the TV preview/trailer’s brief chess images around the 15-second mark are, I’m sure, an homage to JLA #1’s cover.) Despy has returned many times over the decades; in more recent manifestations, all muscle-bulked out. I also realized that I was briefly conflating him, JLA-comic-villain-appearance-wise, with Kanjar Ro, my bad. Based on the trailer, in this cross-over, he’ll look like a human being, no head-fin, etc.

Here’s File 770’s roundup of two past crossovers.

2019:

2017: The musical one

And here’s CBR’s summary of the Arrowverse cross-overs: “Every Arrowverse Crossover, Ranked”.

(3) HARROW & VALENTE ONLINE. The Glasgow in 2024 Worldcon bid invites you to joing them for “Tor-rific tales: Alix Harrow and Catherynne M. Valente in conversation with Anna Milon” on Thursday, November 11 at 7:00 p.m. British Summer Time. Free. Register here.

Offering fresh, feminist perspectives and chilling, creepy visions in their reimaginings of beloved stories, the authors will discuss craft, favourite tales, and of course, their latest novellas. So grab a hot drink and a copy of A Spindle Shattered by Alix E. Harrow and Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente.

(4) RAUM AT THE TOP. The next two articles in Cora Buhlert’s episode-by-episode review of the West German science fiction show Space Patrol Orion are live at Galactic Journey.

Here’s episode 2, “Planet Off Course”: “[October 18, 1966] Moral Dilemmas and Earth in Peril: Space Patrol Orion Episode 2: ‘Planet Off Course’”.

… So far, science fiction had had no presence on West German TV, so professional TV critics were mostly baffled, to put it politely. The Berlin tabloid B.Z. called Orion “pseudoscientific nonsense” set in a “brainless utopia”. The magazine Kirche und Fernsehen (Church and Television) lamented that the dialogues were too complicated for the viewers to understand, at least viewers not used to science fiction and gadget speak….

And here’s episode 3, “Guardians of the Law”: “[October 19, 1966] Routine Missions and Asimovian Robots: Space Patrol Orion Episode 3: ‘Guardians of the Law’”

After pulling out all the stops in episode 2, what would Raumpatrouille Orion do for an encore? Well, instead of threatening the entire solar system this time around, writer Rolf Honold and W.G. Larsen have opted for a more low-key adventure for the Orion 8 and her brave crew.

And so episode 3 “Hüter des Gesetzes” (Guardians of the Law) opens with that most routine of situations, namely a robotics training course for Space Fleet personnel, including the Orion crew. The Orion crew seems bored, but my interest perked up once robotics specialist Rott (Alfons Höckmann) mentioned the Three Laws of Robotics. Yes, Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics exist in the Space Patrol Orion universe….

(5) FIRST CONTACT. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Great little twitter thread from Farscape star Claudia Black about her encounter with a young James McAvoy. Bit of a long read (best to see the quote about her in the linked article first, to give context), but it’s just heartwarming. (“James McAvoy, Son Of Dune, Has Advice For His Father, Dune Star Timothée Chalamet” at Slashfilm.) Twitter thread starts here.

(6) HEROIC NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA. [Item by Andrew Porter.] After over a year’s worth of work, Jess Nevins completed the expansion and conversion of his Encyclopedia of Print Heroes (2017) to an online edition. Table of Contents here. Introduction here:

The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes is intended to be a kind of sequel to my Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana: an attempt at providing a panoptical view of the characters of genre culture from across media and around the world, spanning the years from 1902 to 1945. But as was the case with Fantastic Victoriana the title of Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes is likely to be misleading, and some explanation of what the book is and what it is not is necessary. 

Pulp Heroes is an encyclopedia. However, any book with the word “encyclopedia” in the title is at least implicitly laying claim to both authority and exhaustiveness. I’ve made a reasonable attempt at the former, but the latter was beyond my capabilities, and perhaps beyond anyone’s. As I documented in my Pulp Magazine Holdings Directory, time has been cruel to the American pulps. 38% of all American pulps no longer exist (at least in libraries), and 14% of all American pulps survive in only scattered (less than five total) copies. It’s theoretically possible that pulp collectors own large numbers of these missing pulps, but collectors are hard to locate and many are uncooperative when it comes to letting outsiders view their collections (or even to sharing information). [1] Only a handful of academic libraries have more than one or two issues of the longer-lasting and better-known pulps, and more obscure pulps, like Spicy Screen Stories, Thrilling Mysteries, and Zeppelin Stories, are completely unavailable. And the rarest pulps of all, Spicy Gorilla Stories, Hobo Romance, and Two-Fisted Quaker Mysteries, are not mentioned in even the most in-depth reference works.…

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1954 – Sixty-eight years on this date, Ballantine Books first published Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. It would be awarded a Retro Hugo at Noreascon 4.  It would also be voted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. Though most reception at the time of publication was extremely favorable with the Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin saying the novel was “among the great works of the imagination written in English in the last decade or more”, some were not at all pleased with the P. Schuyler Miller review for Astounding saying that it was “one of Bradbury’s bitter, almost hysterical diatribes”. It would later be made into a well-received François Truffaut film which has a strong rating of seventy-two percent among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. A remake which was made three years ago fares much worse garnering a rating of just thirty- three percent. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 19, 1934 — Peter Weston. He made innumerable contributions  in fan writing and editing, conrunning, and in local clubs. He was nominated for a number of Hugo awards but never won, including a nomination for his autobiography Stars in My Eyes: My Adventures in British Fandom. Since 1984, those awards have been cast by the car-parts factory which Weston owned and managed until he retired. (Died 2017.)
  • Born October 19, 1940 — Michael Gambon, 81. Actor of Stage and Screen from Ireland who is best known to genre fans as Professor Albus Dumbledore from the Hugo-nominated Harry Potter films (a role he picked up after the passing of Richard Harris, who played the character in the first two films). He also had roles in Toys (for which he received a Saturn nomination), Mary Reilly, Sleepy Hollow, and the Hugo finalist Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. He has had guest roles in episodes of The Jim Henson Hour, Doctor Who, and Tales of the Unexpected, and played an acerbic storyteller and possibly tomb robber in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He has also done voice roles in animated features including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Paddington, and The Wind in the Willows, in which he voiced very nicely The Badger. 
  • Born October 19, 1945 — John Lithgow, 76. He enters SF fame as Dr. Emilio Lizardo / Lord John Whorfin in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He’ll later be in Santa Claus: The Movie, Harry and the Hendersons, Shrek, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Interstellar and the remake of Pet Sematary. Oh, and he voiced The White Rabbit on the Once Upon a Time in Wonderland series! He of course is Dick Solomon in 3rd Rock from the Sun.  And for true genre creds, he voiced the character of Yoda in the  NPR adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
  • Born October 19, 1943 — L.E. Modesitt, Jr., 78. Writer of more than 70 novels and 10 different series, the best known of which is his fantasy series The Saga of Recluce. He has been Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, including a World Fantasy Convention. He won a Neffy for his Endgames novel, and a Utah Speculative Fiction Award for his Archform: Beauty novel. 
  • Born October 19, 1946 — Philip Pullman, 75. I’ll confess that I like his Sally Lockhart mysteries, both the original versions and the Billy Piper-led series, far more than I enjoy the Dark Materials series as there’s a freshness and imagination at work there I don’t see in the latter. Oh, some of the latter is quite good — I quite enjoyed Lyra’s Oxford and Once Upon a Time in The North as the shortness of them works in their favor.
  • Born October 19, 1955 — Jon Favreau, 66. I can’t possibly list everything he’s done so I’ll just singly my favorite things he’s done or will do. He’s the creator of The Mandalorian, and he’s serving as a director and executive producer for its spin-off series, The Book of Boba Fett. He was executive producer of The Avengers and the first and only great Iron Man film where he made his appearance as Happy Hogan, a role he’s reprised several times. 
  • Born October 19, 1990 — Ciana Renee, 31. Her most known genre role is as Kendra Saunders / Hawkgirl  on Legends of Tomorrow and related Arrowverse series. She also showed up on The Big Bang Theory as Sunny Morrow in “The Conjugal Configuration”, and she played The Witch in the theaterical production of Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions.  She was also Elsa in the theaterical production of Frozen.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) THE PRICE FOR CHALLENGING SCIENCE CLAIMS. [Item by Brown Robin.] Is there (scientific) method to this madness? “Bik And Raoult Hydroxychloroquine Feud Exposes Tensions” at Buzzfeed.

Days after a mysterious new illness was declared a pandemic in March of last year, a prominent scientist in France announced that he had already found a cure.

Based on a small clinical trial, microbiologist Didier Raoult claimed that hydroxychloroquine, a decades-old antimalarial drug, was part of a 100% effective treatment against COVID-19. Then–US president Donald Trump promptly proclaimed that the finding could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”

But the study seemed off to Elisabeth Bik, a scientist turned science detective living in Silicon Valley. Bik has a sharp eye for spotting errors buried in arcane scientific papers, particularly when it comes to duplicated images. And much about Raoult’s paper looked fishy, as she later noted on her blog. Unfavorable data was left out, and the trial’s timeline was mathematically impossible. “Something does not seem quite right,” she wrote.

Before long, Bik would learn the price of raising such concerns. Raoult and a coauthor went on to call her a “witch hunter,” a “mercenary,” and a “crazy woman” on Twitter and in the press. Then, in April 2021, Raoult’s collaborator announced that they had filed a criminal complaint against Bik and a spokesperson for PubPeer, a website where she and others post scientific criticism, accusing them of blackmail, extortion, and harassment. He tweeted out a screenshot of the complaint, revealing her home address to the world….

(11) TOURING IMAGINARY WORLDS. [Item by David K.M. Klaus.] Rick Steves is / was my / Nila’s favorite travel writer and PBS travel program TV host, and we wished we could have gone on one of his marvelous European tours. I never saw anything specific until this very article, but he always set off my fannish radar. “Rick Steves Casually Reviews Dangerous Fantasy Locations” by Kurt Zemaitaitis at McSweeney’s.

… The Shire used to be the best-kept secret of Middle Earth, but tourists have been flocking there lately because of their famous “second breakfasts.”…

(12) AMBIVALENT OPTION. Kotaku says “Classic Doom Is Now Playable Via A New Twitter Account”. Yeah, I don’t know – I’m still traumatized from playing it on the network in the Loscon game room years ago and being repeated killed by the same teenager before I’m 30 seconds into the game…

Are you bored, sitting in some waiting room? Maybe, instead of just doing nothing you want to play some Doom? Well you could download the fantastic mobile ports of Doom or play it on Switch. Or, why not play Doom using Twitter via short commands and videos?…

(13) CONFLATION. Yeah, I can sort of see how this might cross someone’s mind. This Dune meme is a callback to the poster for the 2000 stoner comedy Dude, Where’s My Car?

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Every Sean Connery Bond” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies take on the six Sean Connery Bond movies (Never Say Never Again doesn’t count).  They note that Connery is “England’s best Scottish spy” and Connery fights “like a drunk stepdad.”  But he’s up against SPECTRE, whose limited range of evil plans results from all the henchmen who keep getting killed off.  Also, for “peak evil performance” you need “the physique of an egg.”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Eric Franklin, David K.M. Klaus, Brown Robin, Ben Bird Person, Cora Buhlert, Olav Rokne, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day m.c. simon milligan.]

Pixel Scroll 3/9/20 And There’s Hamburger All Over the Information Superhighway

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(1) HOPE IS ON THE WAY. There’s a brand new podcast, If This Goes On (Don’t Panic), themed around hopepunk. The first episode is hosted by Cat Rambo and Alan Bailey, interviewing Alexandra Rowland, who coined the term “hopepunk.”

In this episode, Cat and Alan discuss the concept of Hopepunk with Alexandra Rowland, coiner of the term. Other topics include the hopeful nature of Lord of the Rings, why there has to be a protagonist in fiction, and why sometimes you have to sell out.

Alan also reviews the second season of The Witch Who Came in From the Cold published by Serialbox

(2) FREE DOWNLOAD. Elizabeth Bonesteel just released a free ebook of her short fiction Survival Tactics:

https://twitter.com/liz_monster/status/1236714253685526528

(3) ARROWVERSE EXPANDS. CBR.com thinks “Stargirl: The CW’s Newest Series Could Be Its Best Yet”.

The next TV series based on a DC Comics property is Stargirl, which is receiving a dual release on both The CW and the DC Universe streaming app. While this might be a drawback for DC Universe, which could benefit from the show’s exclusivity, it could be a boon for The CW.

The network’s lineup of Arrowverse shows continues to grow, something that will only continue now that the groundbreaking “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover has come and gone. Despite their seeming popularity, the shows have their fair share of detractors and common criticisms. Since it’s technically a DC Universe show, however, Stargirl may just be able to avoid those pitfalls, and thus become the best superhero series on The CW yet.

(4) CAPTIONS CASE CLOSED. Publishers Lunch tells readers “The Audible Settlement Is Finally Public”.

The case brought by seven publishers against Audible over their planned Captions feature is now formally concluded, with Judge Valerie Caproni’s signature in place on the permanent injunction barring the audiobook company from displaying text from e-books without the permission of copyright holders. Audible will pay each litigating publisher an undisclosed sum, after which both parties will file final documentation to the court.

(5) DOES THIS MEAN GETTING FOUND IN SPACE? ComicBook.com brings the shocking news that “Lost in Space Cancelled After Season 3 on Netflix”.

[Showrunner Zack] Estrin revealed that the plan for Lost in Space was always meant to be told in three parts, so this ending really is a conclusion of the story rather than a cancellation by Netflix.

“From the beginning, we’ve always viewed this particular story of The Robinsons as a trilogy,” Estrin said. “A three part epic family adventure with a clear beginning, middle and end. It’s also worth noting that, with what these characters go through just trying to survive each episode — if anyone deserves to catch their breath before their next mission — it’s Will, Penny, Judy, Maureen, John, Don West, Dr. Smith… and The Robot. And, of course, Debbie the Chicken. So while this chapter of Lost In Space is coming to a rousing conclusion, I’m excited about continuing to explore new stories with my friends at Netflix, and for all of the incredible possibilities that lie ahead.”

(6) SHERYL LERNER. Condolences to Lofgeornost’s faned Fred Lerner, who sent out this message today:

I am sorry to report that my wife Sheryl died last night. Many of you will have met her at various conventions, or read about her in my Lofgeornost trip reports. Although she did not read much science fiction, she enjoyed convention programming and the conversations we had with Lofgeornost readers.

(7) VON SYDOW OBIT. Actor Max Von Sydow died March 9. He was the only male Swedish actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. The New York Times tribute is here: “Max von Sydow, Star of ‘Seventh Seal’ and ‘Exorcist,’ Dies at 90”.

Mr. von Sydow, widely hailed as one of the finest actors of his generation, became an elder pop culture star in his later years, appearing in a “Star Wars” movie in 2015 as well as in the sixth season of the HBO fantasy-adventure series “Game of Thrones.” He even lent his deep, rich voice to “The Simpsons.”

By then he had become a familiarly austere presence in popular movies like William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” and, more recently, Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

But to film lovers the world over he was most enduringly associated with Bergman.

If ever an actor was born to inhabit the World According to Bergman, it was Mr. von Sydow. Angular and lanky at 6-foot-3, possessing a gaunt face and hooded, icy blue eyes, he not only radiated power but also registered a deep sense of Nordic angst, helping to give flesh to Bergman’s often bleak but hopeful and sometimes comic vision of the human condition in classics like “The Seventh Seal” and “The Virgin Spring.”

The National Review reminded readers about a few of his other popular roles:

Sydow was 44 when portraying the wizened old priest [in The Exorcist] whose stalwart faith combats the film’s antagonistic demonic presence; he reportedly required more makeup to appear old than Linda Blair required to appear possessed in the role of Regan MacNeil.

King Osric in the underappreciated Conan the Barbarian. Sydow, along with James Earl Jones (as the villain Thulsa Doom) was brought onto the production of the 1982 John Millius film in the hope that their stately presence would inspire the mostly novice crew of actors (including Arnold Schwarzenagger, in one of his first major productions) to greater heights.

He also played emperor Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon (1980), and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983).

(8) TUCCI OBIT. Actor Nicholas Tucci died March 3 — The Hollywood Reporter has the story: “Nicholas Tucci, ‘You’re Next’ and ‘Channel Zero’ Actor, Dies at 38”.

Nicholas Tucci, an actor who appeared in the horror film You’re Next and SyFy’s Channel Zero, died Tuesday after battling an unspecified illness, according to his father, who shared the news on Facebook. Tucci was 38.

(9) NEELY OBIT. Mystery author Barbara Neely, named Mystery Writers of America’s 2020 Grand Master just last December, has passed away. USA Today profiles her career: “Barbara Neely, author of first black female series sleuth Blanche White, dies at 78”.

Award-winning mystery writer Barbara Neely, who created the first black female series sleuth in mainstream American publishing, died last week after a brief illness, according to her publisher, Brash Books. She was 78.

Neely is perhaps best known for her four-book Blanche White series, which had at its center a nomadic amateur detective and domestic worker who uses the invisibility inherent to her job as an advantage in pursuit of the truth.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 1933 –This month was when the first Doc Savage novel was published. The Man of Bronze was by Lester Dent writing under the house name Kenneth Robeson. It would publisher in the March issue of the Doc Savage magazine. It was the basis of the Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze film that starred Ron Ely. You can see the film here. The Man of Bronze is available at the usual digital publishers. 

March 9, 2011 — Dynamite Entertainment published the  first issue of Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris. It was set on the world of Barsoom 400 years before John Carter went there, with her being of the focus of the story.Arthur Adams and Joe Jusko were the writers, with Paul Renaud, and Alé Garza being the artists. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 9, 1918 — Mickey Spillane. His first job was writing stories for Funnies Inc. including Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman and Captain America. Do note these were text stories, not scripts for comics. Other than those, ISFDB lists him as writing three genre short stories: “The Veiled Woman“ (co-written with Howard Browne),  “The Girl Behind the Hedge” and “Grave Matter” (co-written with Max Allan Collins).  Has anyone read these? (Died 2006.)
  • Born March 9, 1930 — Howard L. Myers. Clute over at EofS positively gushes over him as does here of Cloud Chamber:“ attractively combines Cosmology, Antimatter invaders of our Universe, Sex and effortless rebirth of all sentient beings in a wide-ranging Space Opera“.  I see he had but two novels and a handful of short stories. They’re available, the novels at least, from the usual digital sources. (Died 1971.)
  • Born March 9, 1939 — Pat Ellington. She was married to Dick Ellington, who edited and published the FIJAGH fanzine. They met in New York as fans in the Fifties. After they moved to California, she was a contributor to Femizine, a fanzine put out by the hoax fan Joan W. Carr. (Died 2011.)
  • Born March 9, 1940 — Raul Julia. If we count Sesame Street as genre, his appearance as Rafael there was his first genre role. Yeah, I’m stretching it. Ok, how about as Aram Fingal In Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, a RSL production off the John Varley short story? That better?  He later starred in Frankenstein Unbound as Victor Frankenstein as well. His last role released while he was still living was in Addams Family Values as Gomez Addams reprising the role he’d had in The Addams Family.  (Died 1994.)
  • Born March 9, 1945 — Robert Calvert. Lyricist for Hawkwind, a band that’s at least genre adjacent. And Simon R. Green frequently mentioned them in his Nightside series. Calvert was a close friend of Michael Moorcock.  He wrote SF poetry which you read about here. (Died 1988.)
  • Born March 9, 1955 — Pat Murphy, 65. I think her most brilliant work is The City, Not Long After. If you’ve not read this novel, do so now. The Max Merriwell series is excellent and Murphy’s ‘explanation’ of the authorial attributions is fascinating.
  • Born March 9, 1959 — Mark Carwardine, 61. In 2009, he penned Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams. This is the sequel to Last Chance to See, the 1989 BBC radio documentary series and book which he did with Douglas Adams. In 2009, he also worked with Stephen Fry on a follow-up to the original Last Chance to See. This also was called Last Chance to See. 
  • Born March 9, 1965 — Brom, 55. Artist and writer whose best work I think is Krampus: The Yule Lord and The Child Thief. The Art of Brom is a very good look at his art. He’s listed as having provided some of the art design used on Galaxy Quest. 
  • Born March 9, 1978 — Hannu Rajaniemi, 42. Author of the Jean le Flambeur series which consists of The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince and The Causal Angel. Damn if I can summarize them. They remind a bit of Alastair Reynolds and his Prefect novels, somewhat of Ian Mcdonald’s Mars novels as well. Layers of weirdness upon weirdness. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Macanudo creates a clever image for what sff fans think of as the multiverse.
  • Free Range points out a challenge of producing the 1960s Batman TV show that’s obvious if you think about it…
  • Off The Mark has a very amusing library gag.  
  • Grant Snider’s Incidental Comics:

(13) MONSTER ART COLLECTION. Lonely Planet shows where “Metallica fans can visit Kirk Hammett’s traveling sci-fi and horror art collection”.

… Organized by the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, its final stop is at the Columbia Museum of Art (CMA) in Columbia, South Carolina, where it runs from 15 February to 17 May, 2020 and includes an interactive guitar experience and programming schedule with appearances by Hammett himself.

…On display are 135 works from twentieth century cinema including posters, rare art by master artists and related memorabilia such as electric guitars, lobby cards, film props and costumes. As described by his biographer Stefan Chirazi, Hammett was a self-described shy kid obsessed with monsters, ghouls, toys, movies and guitars; he first connected with Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein followed by Godzilla, the Mummy and other terrifying creatures that tap into our psychological response to fear. He admits it’s his collection that has primarily sparked his creativity over the years. “The stuff of horror has a mojo that always works on me,” he says. “I start producing ideas…they just flow like liquid.”

(14) PRESCRIPTION ROBOT. “Former MythBuster’s adorable Baby Yoda robot will cheer up sick kids” – CNET has a Q&A with the designer.

Baby Yoda captured hearts everywhere when it debuted on Disney Plus Star Wars live action series The Mandalorian. Count former MythBusters cast member Grant Imahara among the fans. He thinks the character’s so cute he built his own life-like animatronic Baby Yoda to cheer up sick kids. 

Imahara currently works as a consultant for Disney Research and a mechanical designer at Spectral Motion. He helped build Disney’s animatronic Spider-Man that will be flying over the upcoming Marvel Campus in Disney’s California Adventure.

“Pleased to present my newest creation: a fully animatronic Baby Yoda,” Imahara posted on his Facebook on Friday. “It’s been three months of hard work and countless revisions. I did all the mechanical design, programming, and 3D printed the molds. He’s currently running a continuous sequence, but soon I’ll be able to trigger specific moods and reactions, as well as incorporate sound.”

To find out more about how this adorable moving animatronic Baby Yoda was created, I chatted with Imahara about what went into building it. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. 

Q: How did the idea come about to build an animatronic Baby Yoda?
After the third episode of The Mandalorian, I knew I had to make my own Baby Yoda. I was an animatronics engineer in the ILM model shop before MythBusters, and worked on the Star Wars prequels as well as the Energizer Bunny, so I had the required skill set. And it could be a character I could bring to children’s hospitals for charity work, which is something I’ve been committed to doing.

(15) GIBSON BOOK REVIEWED. Thomas J. Millay explains “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Superintelligent AI: On Wiliam Gibson’s ‘Agency’” at LA Review of Books.

NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO, Mona Lisa Overdrive; Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties; Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History: William Gibson works in threes. Agency is the second novel of what is almost certainly going to be a trilogy. The first novel, titled The Peripheral, was a New York Times best seller notable for its heady mixture of drone manipulation, time travel, apocalypse, and alternate history, all these devices being combined in a narrative prose precise in its physical and technological descriptions. Given the novel’s formal innovations and literary qualities, it is the pace of The Peripheral that is most remarkable, with Gibson moving readers rapidly toward the novel’s utopian conclusion, in thriller-like fashion….

(16) ZONING OUT. When you live near a radio telescope, it turns out you have to give up certain things. The New York Times takes you there: “No Cell Signal, No Wi-Fi, No Problem. Growing Up Inside America’s ‘Quiet Zone’”.

…Welcome to Green Bank, population 143, where Wi-Fi is both unavailable and banned and where cellphone signals are nonexistent.

The near radio silence is a requirement for those living close to the town’s most prominent and demanding resident, the Green Bank Observatory, home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. To protect the sensitive equipment from interference, the federal government in 1958 established the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area near the state’s border with Virginia.

The observatory’s telescope “could detect your phone on Saturn in airplane mode,” states a sign outside its science center building, but is rendered much weaker if anyone uses electronics that emit radio waves. For those who live within 10 miles of the observatory, the limitations also include a ban on Bluetooth devices and microwaves, unless they are contained in a metal box, known as a Faraday cage, which blocks electromagnetic fields.

Nearly 15 million Americans live in sparsely populated communities where there is no broadband internet service at all, a stark digital divide across America between those with access to uber-fast connections and those with none.

(17) COUNTRIES REJECT ‘ONWARD’ OVER GAY CHARACTER. BBC reports “Pixar’s Onward ‘banned by four Middle East countries’ over gay reference”.

Pixar’s latest animation Onward has been banned by several Middle Eastern countries because of a reference to lesbian parents, according to reports.

The family film will not be shown in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Hollywood media have reported.

Police officer Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe, has been heralded as Disney-Pixar’s first openly gay character.

Her lines include: “It’s not easy being a parent… my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, OK?”

Other Middle East countries like Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt are showing the film.

And according to Deadline, Russia censored the scene in question by changing the word “girlfriend” to “partner” and avoiding mentioning the gender of Specter, who is a supporting character.

Speaking to Variety, Waithe explained that the line about “my girlfriend” was her idea.

And Variety’s story about it is here.

(18) MMM-MMM-BAD? BBC inquires “Why plastic is a deadly attraction for sea turtles”.

Scientists have new evidence to explain why plastic is dangerous to sea turtles: the animals mistake the scent of plastic for food.

Thus, a plastic bag floating in the sea not only looks like a jellyfish snack, but it gives off a similar odour.

This “olfactory trap” might help explain why sea turtles are prone to eating and getting entangled in plastic, say US researchers.

…Garbage patches

Once plastic has been released into the ocean, microbes, algae, plants and tiny animals start to colonise it and make it their home. This creates food-like odours, which have been shown to be a magnet for fish and possibly sea birds. The new research suggests sea turtles are attracted to plastic for the same reason.

(19) LOOK UP AND SAY CHEESE. “Space radar movies track motion on Earth’s surface” – the BBC coverage features several short sample clips.

Satellite operator Iceye is now making videos that can show the Earth’s surface through cloud and at night.

The short, 20-second movies are an extension of the standard still radar images it already produces.

In the examples released by the Finnish company on Monday, planes are seen taxiing across Britain’s Heathrow airport and heavy plant vehicles are observed working in a Utah mine.

The videos are said to be a first for a commercial space operator.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology is already appreciated for its ability to “see” the ground irrespective of the weather or lighting conditions. Retrieving motion in a scene literally now gives Iceye’s products another dimension, says CEO Rafal Modrzewski.

(20) WHO NEEDS GOOGLE? Patrick Stewart answers the web’s most searched questions for WIRED.

“Star Trek: Picard” star Patrick Stewart takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet’s most searched questions about himself. How did Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen meet? Was Patrick in Harry Potter? How many awards has he won? Does he own a vineyard? Sir Patrick answers all these questions and much, much more.

[Thanks to Standback, Cat Eldridge, Rich Horton, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Andrew Liptak, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]