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Pixel Scroll 12/12/24 Somewhere Over The Ringworld

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(1) AWARD UPDATE. Emily Hockaday, Analog/Asimov’s Senior Managing Editor, says the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices usually presented at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has been put “on hiatus over 2025 due to personal commitments, but we hope to offer it again the following year.”

(2) CHRISTIE’S SFF ART AUCTION SCORECARD. Christie’s has posted the results of its December 12 “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction. Sandra Miesel speculates, “The price for the Ender’s Game art must be some kind of record!” The John Harris cover art fetched ten times its estimated value.

(3) A BIT OF ALL RIGHT. Who says the internet has no sense of humor? (Oh, I did… Never mind.) Camestros Felapton lightens our day with “Dahrk Snarl the Blood-Axe Wielder: A Cosy Vignette”.

[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, how wonderful to meet you in person.
[Snarl] I need a job.
[Simon Goquickly] Of course, of course and this is quite a resume you have here!
[Snarl] I got the wizard to write it.
[Simon Goquickly] Ah, I see – that would be Karl the Angstomancer, the cursed conjurer of Battlehaven. How is he these days?
[Snarl] Dead. Eaten by a beetle.
[Simon Goquickly] Oh dear. Eaten by beetles! What a ghastly fate.
[Snarl] A bettle. Just the one. Karl was in very small pieces at the time….

(4) ART VS. ARTIST. Nathan Deuel, a teacher at UCLA, discusses literary writers in terms that will be familiar to sff fans: “Writers I Have Met; Or, On Learning That Cormac McCarthy Was a Creep” at Literary Hub.

…The clock is ticking and I need to teach Bradbury and I’m speed-reading a Vanity Fair piece with growing alarm. Had I wanted to know more than what I already knew about Cormac? What do we know about Thomas Pynchon, for instance? How much was life enhanced by reading those New York Times profiles of Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, or Lore Segal?…

…I need to get to class. I’m walking and trying to puzzle out how I feel and why I think I am so mad. What do we search for in stories? It’s one thing to teach Bradbury’s ideas about state control and personal freedom. It’s another thing to walk to class and try to privately mourn… what? That Cormac was a bad dude? That one of my favorite writers was a monster? Here’s the deal: I do not know what to think and I can’t say exactly why….

..How much did it matter whether or not I had met the author? What role did imaginary or real people play in whether a book had the juice to keep us thinking about it years later? Why do stories stay with us and demand reading and re-reading? What was I learning as I struggled to reckon with what I knew and had not known about Cormac?…

…Just what am I getting at, with my paltry memories of famous writers? In my most cherished little stories, I seem to care whether or not writers were nice to me and people like me. The imbalance is inescapable. The world is cruel. Why do we write and why do we read? What power do we grant others over us? Especially when they’re so good at telling us stories we want to hear?…

(5) AI IS CONTROVERSIAL POINT IN ANIMATION INDUSTRY DEAL. “Animation Guild Leaders Say They’re Voting ‘No’ on Tentative Deal” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

Tensions over The Animation Guild‘s controversial new tentative contract spilled into public view on Tuesday as the ratification vote for the deal began.

Three members of the union’s sprawling negotiating committee posted on social media that they personally will be voting “no” on the tentative contract that they helped to bargain, primarily due to concerns about provisions covering generative AI. But that same day, the union’s chief negotiator said the agreement improved on recent deals “by a good margin” and warned that not ratifying the agreement could be “dangerous,” risking losing more work in Los Angeles.

The Animation Guild’s 56-person negotiating committee consisted of a “table team” of 29 members that met across the table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and a support team of 27 members. Both teams weighed in on proposals and changes to proposals, but only the table team voted on the tentative agreement — and largely voted favor of the deal. Two of the negotiating committee members that posted on Tuesday were part of the support team, while one served on the table team.

“I believe the AI and outsourcing protections in this contract are not strong enough — and in my opinion — could lead to the loss of lots of jobs,” Mitchell vs. The Machines writer-director Mike Rianda posted on Instagram on Tuesday. Adding that there were gains in the contract, like pay increases and health benefits improvements, Rianda argued that the pact’s A.I. protections give “sole power to the employer to make us use A.I. however they see fit.”…

(6) OVERSHADOWED. “Westeros Conquered Middle-earth” in Matt Goldberg’s opinion at Commentary Track.

It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.

While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.

Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy….

(7) TOLKIEN’S HERSTORY. Meanwhile GameRant+ is still betting on our willingness to click on LOTR-related links like “The Strongest Female Characters In Middle-Earth”. I know I am….

…Plenty of the movers and shakers in Middle-earth are women, starting in the realm’s earliest history and carrying right through to the later times when the last of the Elves finally sailed into the West. The protectors of Doriath, the foe of Morgoth, and the slayer of the Nazgul were exploits carried out by the strongest women in Middle-earth.

Number one on the list is still waiting for her close-up:

Melian

Wife Of King Thingol And Mother Of Luthien

Out of all the notable characters in Middle-earth, Melian is one of the few who has yet to appear in any on-screen adaptations. A Maiar on the same level as the Wizards who would follow in her footsteps, Melian chose a different life when she arrived in Middle-earth. The Vala she served was Yavanna, and when she met Prince Elwe, who would eventually become King Thingol, she took on a mortal form to be his queen.

Melian not only protected her husband’s kingdom using her power, but she also mentored a young Galadriel, who would use the same magic to protect her realm of Lothlorien. Melain and Thingo had one child, a girl named Luthien, who would challenge her mother when it came to heroic exploits.

(8) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out an open call for its “Illustration of the Year 2025”, a piece of original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured on the SLF website, monthly e-newsletter and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag throughout the year. Submissions are being taken through January 15, 2025. The winner will be announced in February 2025. Full guidelines at the link.

The winning artist will receive $750.00 and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on the SLF’s website and social media and in a press release.

(9) A MUSEUM FOR BOGUS BOOKS. “’These are magic books’: bringing imaginary works of literature to life” – the Guardian tells how it’s being done.

At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure – squabbled over by her mother and husband Ted Hughes, it supposedly disappeared in 1970 – or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy, the influential treatise on theater thought to have burned at a Benedictine Abbey in 1327 (at least, according to Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose). The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist….

…“It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to even consider having an exhibition of the imaginary,” said [Reid] Byers, a multi-hyphenate bibliophile who has also worked as a Presbyterian minister, a welder and a C language programmer, on a recent tour of the exhibition….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born December 12, 1976 — Tim Pratt, 48.

By Paul Weimer: In both his straight up name and his pen names, Pratt has written a slew of novels, having “graduated” to novels after a run of shorter fiction that culminated with his Hugo award winning story “Impossible Dreams”. That short story’s parallel universe heart is something that I see and encounter again and again in his fiction. Parallel universes, adjacent dimensions, demiplanes, and the like populate many of his novels, one way or another. 

It was in his Pathfinder tie-in work that I first started reading his novels, proceeding through the kindle serial Heirs of Grace and into his even more ambitious work. I want to highlight these two. 

The Axiom novels are a fun trio of space opera novels, revolving around a freight and salvage ship, the White Raven, accidentally finding the secret to a dread Alien race, the titular Axiom, whose awakening would spell doom for humanity. The crew of the White Raven, in a breezy trio of reads that belie their doorstopper status catapult themselves from frying pans to fires as they are literally on the front line of trying to protect humanity from an existential threat.

But it is the Doors of Sleep books that I think Pratt really hits all cylinders. The premise is deceptively simple, our protagonist Zaxony has, for reasons slowly revealed in the unfolding of the story, been granted a blessing and a curse. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new parallel world. As far as he can tell, he can’t ever “go back”, either. And so with a tone often reminiscent of Doctor Who and Sliders, Zaxony finds himself traveling from world to world.  

The novel is clever in that it starts us in media res, Zaxony has been through this for nearly three years of personal time when the novel begins, so we get to see how he’s adapted and tried to deal with his gift. In fashion reminiscent of both Doctor Who and Sliders, it emerges that Zaxony isn’t the only person who can travel the worlds…but Zaxony’s gift makes him a target.  The pair of novels go down easy and are a fun read and are my current Tim Pratt favorites.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) THE 442ND. Airing now at the BBC World Service or available from BBC Sounds for another year, “Purple Heart Warriors”.

Time-travelling drama about the Japanese American legends of US military history – inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd Regiment fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two. An original six-part drama, released from 9th December 2024. Written by Oscar nominee Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe.

(13) A TOUR OF DEVELOPMENT HELL. Sifting Variety’s annual list of unproduced scripts, Gizmodo has culled “The 10 Most Intriguing Sci-Fi and Horror Scripts on This Year’s Black List”.

…Here are the 10 we would be most excited to see from the 2024 list (via Variety; you can check out the full list here), all hailing from the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy realms….

For one example:

The 13th Hour by Anna Klassen

“When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.”

Something tells us there will be consequences, eventually, for the tinkering kids—their magical control of time notwithstanding.

(14) SMASH THE STATE (BUT NOT THE POTTERY). Nature has a report based on a study titled “There and back again: local institutions, an Uruk expansion and the rejection of centralisation in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala region” from Cambridge Core.

Excavations in northeastern Iraq have unveiled neatly stacked bowls dating to more than 5,300 years ago that bear evidence of organized societies and whose abandonment points to eventual rejection of the state.

Mesopotamia was home to the world’s most ancient cities and state institutions, such as the Copper Age Uruk civilization. Claudia Glatz at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her collaborators excavated a Copper Age site that, in its final phase, shared close cultural ties with Uruk. They found mass-produced bowls with bevelled rims (pictured) that indicate the existence of institutions that fed large numbers of people, perhaps labourers, often with meat stews, traces of lipids on the pottery and nearby animal bones suggest.

The team found evidence of multiple consecutive periods of occupation at the site, but no signs that it was ultimately abandoned because of violent attacks or a natural disaster. Urbanism did not make another appearance in the region for some 1,500 years. The evidence suggests that the region’s population deliberately dispersed — and that the formation of state-level institutions is not an inevitable trend, the authors write.

(15) EFFECT MASKING COVID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature:

What would have happened if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn high-grade masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? A modelling study1 has estimated just how sharply transmission might have dropped.

Determining the effect of masks on viral transmission is difficult, and most studies so far have been affected by limitations such as small sample sizes. To overcome this issue, Richard Sear at the University of Surrey, UK, developed a model of transmission using data from the UK National Health Service COVID-19 app. The app, which ran on mobile phones between 2020 and 2023, logged information about infections and the length of time users came into contact with each other.

Sear built on a previously published analysis2 of 240,000 positive COVID-19 tests and 7 million contacts — instances in which app users were notified that they had been exposed to the virus. He estimated that if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn N95 or FFP2 masks — both highly effective at filtering particles — the rate of COVID-19 transmission would have dropped by a factor of 9.

Research here: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.064302

(16) COZYING UP TO SPACE JUNK. “Spacecraft makes daring approach of metal object in Earth’s orbit” – Mashable has details.

A Japanese spacecraft has made a daring approach to a discarded rocket in Earth’s orbit.

The mission — undertaken by the satellite technology company Astroscale — intends to eventually remove the 36-foot-long spent rocket stage, but has first tested its ability to rendezvous with the problematic object (one of 27,000 space junk objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit).

The pioneering space endeavor is called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J.

“Ending 2024 with a historic approach!” Astroscale posted online. “Our ADRAS-J mission has achieved the closest ever approach by a commercial company to space debris, reaching just 15 meters [almost 50 feet] from a rocket upper stage.”

This rocket stage, weighing three tons, is the upper part of the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) H2A rocket, which launched the Earth observation GOSAT satellite in 2009. The greater space debris removal mission is part of JAXA’s “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project, which seeks a proven way to remove problematic space junk from orbit…

(17) SMALL BUT TOUGH. CNN learns that “’Conan the Bacterium’ is extremely radiation-resistant for a surprising reason”.

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.

Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….

…“We’ve long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the ‘magic’ potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough….,” said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement.

Previous research has shown that Deinococcus, known as the most radiant-resistant life-form in the Guinness World Records, can survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. The hardy bacteria can also withstand acid, cold and dehydration.

…For [a] previous study, the team measured the amount of manganese antioxidants in the cells of the bacteria. The researchers found that the amount of radiation that a microorganism could survive was directly related to its amount of manganese antioxidants. So the more manganese antioxidants present, the more resistance to radiation….

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Pixar – Outtakes/Bloopers Collection” compiled in years gone by.

Watch and enjoy a wonderful compilation of hilarious bloopers from three hit Pixar films; A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).

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

Pixel Scroll 12/9/24 If I Only Had A Positronic Brain

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(1) SNARKY CLAUS. Naomi Kritzer recommends “Gifts for People You Hate, 2024” at Will Tell Stories For Food. This really is an amazing/appalling assortment.

Once again, the holidays are upon us, and once again, people are telling me that in this trying time, the one thing I have to offer that they truly need is a hand-picked selection of the absolute worst possible gifts that they can give their brother-in-law. You know which brother-in-law…

…Using my guide, you can carefully select a gift to present with wide-eyed faux sincerity while knowing he’ll take it home and think, “what the hell am I supposed to do with this?” (Bonus points if the nephew thinks it’s awesome.)…

Here’s the kind of thing she’s talking about –

… So this one is actually kind of cool: it’s a whiskey decanter shaped like a Star Wars Storm Trooper’s head (with two glasses that are molded on the inside so that if you pour in whiskey or some other beverage that isn’t clear, it’ll look like you’re drinking your whiskey out of Storm Trooper heads. Like Ewoks.) However, you have to pour quite a lot of whiskey into the decanter to make it look cool (which means if you’re not drinking it quickly, and want to store it properly, you’ll have to pour it back into the bottle). It’s bulky to store and not dishwasher safe. It’s solidly in the sweet spot of “too nifty to just toss so it’ll take up cabinet space for years.”…

(2) YEAR’S TOP HORROR BOOKS. New York Times columnist Gabino Iglesias shared a gift link to “The Best Horror Books of 2024”. His list of 10 books includes:

Model Home

By Rivers Solomon

Solomon’s novel takes a new approach to the “evil house” trope. The novel is about three sisters forced to return to their haunted childhood home after the mysterious deaths of their parents. Solomon puts the malevolent building in the back seat and focuses instead on a plethora of topics like depression, motherhood, sexuality, gender, trauma and growing up in a hostile environment with a strong, demanding mother. The result is a wonderfully surprising haunted house story that is also a sharp excavation of the human issues that plague us all.

(3) ALEX SEGURA Q&A. “The End as the Beginning: Alex Segura on his Continuing Adventures in Comic Book Noir” at CrimeReads.

JBV: As with Secret Identity’s Carmen Valdez, this book has a trailblazing hero in Annie Bustamante, who is both an icon of the arts and entertainment world and a fiercely devoted single mom. In what ways did you want to honor the complexities of modern life (and womanhood) – both professionally and personally? How is this an extension of Carmen’s experiences without being a retread of them?

AS: I wanted Annie to feel three-dimensional, and that meant pushing back on some of the narrative tropes of crime fiction – like the untethered protagonist. Annie is a parent with a job, she’s also in recovery and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She felt real to me, and though it made the writing more logistically challenging from a plot perspective, I felt like giving readers time to get to know Annie, her life, and most importantly, her past, created a more layered character and better story. Like Carmen, I wanted to be friends with Annie by the end of the story. 

I think the unifying thing between Carmen and Annie is that both are presented their dream creative opportunity – and are forced to realize that these dreams are often laced with poison. Carmen is asked to create a superhero for a comic book publisher, something she’s hoped for since she was a kid. But when she does it, it’s anonymous, and she has to claw and fight to reclaim that credit. On the flipside, Annie has to pinch herself when she’s asked to write and draw a new Legendary Lynx comic – based on the character that made her a comic fan. But when she finds that the people running the company that purports to own the Lynx don’t understand the property they control, Annie has to ask herself if it’s worth the artistic expense. Both characters find their dreams crashing down to reality, but that also creates a sense of fearlessness and freedom that propels both books….

(4) COMICS EDITOR’S DAYBOOK TO AUCTION. NateSanders.com is auctioning items from the Chic Young Estate (creator of Blondie) and others.

One lot has “Sheldon Mayer’s 1946 Day Planner as Editor of All-American Publications — Nearly Every Day Filled-in With Dozens of Artists & Strips Like Flash & Green Lantern — With Idea of Wonder Woman as a Girl”.

Sheldon Mayer’s personal day planner from 1946 when Mayer was editing and creating content for All-American Publications, one of the companies that would ultimately form DC Comics. Mayer filled-in nearly every day of this planner, mentioning almost all the characters and titles in the AA canon, including Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Mr. Terrific, Boy Blue, 3 Mousketeers, J. Rufus Lion, Wildcat, Molly Pitcher, Funny Stuff, Sargon [the Sorcerer], All Star [Comics], Willy Nilly, Black Pirate, Joey Kangaroo, Bulldog Drumhead, Ghost Patrol, Nutsy Squirrel, Foney Fairy Tales and more. Almost every day Mayer lists various comic artists, pairing them with the title, including the issue number and pages. He also sometimes notes payment details for the artist, recording mailing checks and other details such as ”Get raise for [Woody] Gelman”, which appears on 8 March 1946.

Interestingly, Mayer appeared to explore the possibility of expanding ”Wonder Woman” with an additional storyline or comic book with the character as a young girl. On 12 August 1946 Mayer writes a note to himself, ”See Jack re W.W. as a girl.” He seemed to get the idea on 2 August when he writes to himself, ”Wonder Girl?”. Other notes include a funny doodle of a man’s head that he draws on 25 March. There’s even a note slipped in by another person named Ted (likely Ted Udall) on Friday 26 June 1946 reading, ”I’ll see you Monday – BOO! / Ted”.

Some of the comic artists that Mayer mentions in the 1946 day planner include Joe Kubert, Harry Lampert, Ronald Santi, Jack Adler, Larry Nadle, Martin Naydel, Stookie Allen, Ed Wheelan, Moe Worthman, Paul Reinman, Howard Purcell, Rube Grossman, Bill Hudson, Joe Rosen, Ewald Ludwig, and Marin Nodell, sometimes with references to pay, and assigning artists to specific strips. A few notes are also tucked into the book. The day planner ends on 31 December, but with additional memoranda pages filled in after that, including one with entries for specific strips and prices. Most entries written in pencil, with a few in fountain pen. Planner measures 5” x 7.875”, with each page assigned to one calendar day. Bound in red boards with gold lettering. Some cocking to spine and light wear, overall in very good condition. A treasure trove detailing the inner workings of the comic industry during its Golden Age. From the Sheldon Mayer estate.

(5) JULES BURT NAMES ‘BEYOND THE VOID’ BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024. Popular YouTube channel presenter Jules Burt has named his book of the year: Steve Holland’s Beyond The Void: The Remarkable Story Of Badger Books.

Published by Bear Alley Books, this full-colour softback charts the history of the British paperback publisher, notorious for publishing the science fiction and horror stories of the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe and John S. Glasby, who wrote over 400 novels and short story collections for the firm… some written over a weekend.

Beyond The Void covers the origins of Badger Books, when, as John Spencer & Co., they began producing slim magazines in the late 1940s, before turning to science fiction magazines in 1950, their four titles—Futuristic Science Fiction, Worlds of Fantasy, Tales of Tomorrow and Wonders of  the Spaceways—infamous for publishing some of the worst sf stories ever written.

The collapse of the market for original novels in 1954 led most publishers to experiment with reprints. Not so Badger Books, the imprint adopted in 1959, who continued to publish mostly original works, paid for at the rate of 10 shillings a thousand words—$75 for a full-length novel, all rights—well into the 1960s.

Steve Holland says: “To have the book recognised by Jules as his favourite title of 2024 is an honour given the quality of the books BEYOND THE VOID was up against, ironic as BEYOND celebrates a company and its notoriously terrible output. But exploring the authors and artists turns up some gems that I wanted to share with fans… and if you’re new to Badger, the interviews and over 500 covers illustrated will hopefully make you want to explore further.”

Beyond the Void: The Remarkable History of Badger Books is available at the link.  

(6) EYE THE JURY. In “another online conference” at Kalimac’s Corner, David Bratman discusses a paper presented last weekend at a virtual conference hosted by the Tolkien Society (UK-based) and the Tolkien Society of Serbia. He ends with a very hooky comment:

…It’s true that Tolkien experimented with writing stories that were factually unreliable within the fictive universe, but I think you can tell which ones those are, and while there are small points in The Lord of the Rings which are unknown or unanswered, the oft-used trope of claiming Sauron as the hero and depicting the book as a giant libel on him does not, I think, fall into that category. I mean, you can write that, but don’t claim Tolkien’s imprimatur on it….

(7) HANDMADE FANZINES. First Fandom Experience introduces us to a Chinese-American fan artist who wrote to Forrest J Ackerman in the Thirties: “Howard Low and the Junior Science Correspondence Club”.

…Although dated “Sol 23, 1947,” this remarkable Martian newspaper of the future was penned in January 1932 by one “Howard Lowe.” At the time of our 2020 post, we admitted that we knew nothing further about Lowe or his work.

We’ve learned a lot since then.

Stephen Howard Lowe (later, Low) was born on April 19 1917 in Portland Oregon. In 1930, he was 13 years old and living in New York City. During that year, he began a correspondence with Forrest J Ackerman, then 14. The first known example of the teenagers’ exchange dates to January 18 1931, where Lowe says, “I feel as if I’ve known you for a long time but really its been only about six or seven months.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: December 9, 2002 — Star Trek Nemesis (2002)

By Paul Weimer: Be prepared, this one is not going to be a fun look back.  

I had had high hopes for what would turn out to be the last of the Star Trek TNG movies, Star Trek Nemesis. It features Tom Hardy (in an early role) as the villain, a clone of Picard that wreaks havoc on the Romulan Empire. Themes of identity, cloning, technology and more were promised. What’s not to love?

Just about everything. There is little I can say that is good about this movie, and it would be folly for me to try, except maybe the confrontations between Shinzon and Picard. There is some actual good stuff there. But it’s cut to merry hell.

And I do think it was the bad editing that really kills the movie’s room to breathe. The original run time of 2 hours and 40 minutes may have been too much, but cutting it down to two hours means that a lot of character development and space for the characters just winds up on the cutting room floor, and it feels like a “this way to the egress” with a lot of scenes and subplots unexplained and undercooked. Just take Deanna and Riker’s marriage, with Wesley somehow coming back to say hi. What was that? 

And don’t get me started on Data and B-4.  The frustrating thing is, in the final cut, the existence of B-4, Data’s earlier model, there is absolutely, positively no consideration of the existence of Lore, Data’s original “twin”, who featured on multiple episodes of ST: TNG. As far as this movie concerned, and the way characters act and react to B-4…Lore might as well never have existed, which is a crying shame. And having Data be sacrificed at the end but his memories downloaded into B-4…that feels like an identity erasure of B-4, quite frankly.  I left the movie with a very foul taste in my mouth, and I didn’t even rewatch any TNG related stuff for a couple of years afterwards. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Baldo looks behind the scene.
  • Bizarro tentatively adds to the roll call of superheroes.
  • Free Range mocks our cryptid interest.
  • Working Daze knows why internet research doesn’t get finished.

(10) INDELIBLE PURPLE. “’Generation Barney’ explores one dinosaur’s enduring legacy”, NPR reminds us that PBS intended to quit on Barney after its first season. Here’s how he avoided extinction.

…HERRERA: When it debuted on PBS on April 6, 1992, “Barney & Friends” was a hit, but Barney was competing against two worthy opponents.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)

HERRERA: In one quarter, “Lamb Chop,” and in the other, “Thomas The Tank Engine.”

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)

HERRERA: About a month later, PBS broke some bad news. It was moving forward with the other two shows. There wouldn’t be a second season of “Barney & Friends.”

RIFKIN: I was crestfallen. I was devastated, as you can imagine, because there was a lot of personal reputation on the line.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HERRERA: This is where Barney’s story could have ended. But Larry didn’t go quietly into the night.

(SOUNDBITE OF RICHARD AITKEN AND ANDREW GANNON’S “CYLINDERS AND BANK VAULTS”)

HERRERA: He had a plan to save Barney from extinction that included bending a few rules. First, Larry worked Barney into CPTV’s fundraising drives. Technically, you couldn’t use a character like Barney to ask viewers for money, so Larry came up with a workaround. He would make the financial ask with Barney in studio spreading messages of love and kindness, you know, his specialty….

(11) SOUNDS LIKE YOUNG INDY. “Indiana Jones Chooses Wisely: The Biggest Voice in Gaming” – a New York Times profile. (Paywalled.) “Troy Baker, the industry’s go-to voice actor, channels a young Harrison Ford in the action-adventure Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.”

When Todd Howard heard the name Troy Baker, he could not help but roll his eyes.

For months, the team behind Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person action-adventure video game based on the film franchise, had been discussing who to cast as the charismatic archaeologist. (The 82-year-old Harrison Ford, it was decided early on, would not be reprising the role.) The game’s performance director was pushing for Baker. But Howard, who is its executive producer and previously led several Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, was unconvinced.

“I’m not putting Troy Baker in my game,” Howard told the team, “just because that’s what you do.”

Baker, a veteran voice actor with more than 150 video game credits, is sympathetic to this perspective. He is one of the industry’s most recognizable names, turning up in multiplayer shooters, comic book fighting games, online battle royale hits and Japanese role-playing games.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle uses a young Harrison Ford’s likeness, but Baker provided the motion capture for the character.

He earned enthusiastic acclaim playing Joel Miller, the morally conflicted hero of the postapocalyptic drama The Last of Us, and won legions of fans as the voice of Booker DeWitt, the disgraced Pinkerton agent turned class liberator in the steampunk BioShock Infinite. He has played Batman, Superman, the Joker and Robin, each in a different game. He has played countless numbers of soldiers, aliens and demons in franchises like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat. If you have played a video game in the past two decades, you have probably heard him speak.

He is aware that it is a lot….

(12) BODY OF LITERATURE. “Scientists Think a Skeleton Found in a Well Is the Same Man Described in an 800-Year-Old Norse Text” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

More than 800 years ago, raiders threw a dead body into a well outside a Norwegian castle. The incident is chronicled in a medieval Norse text, which suggests that the men hoped to poison the area’s water supply. Known as the Sverris Saga, the tale is named for King Sverre Sigurdsson, who was battling enemies affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1938, archaeologists excavated the well—and found a skeleton. Now, by analyzing the DNA extracted from the skeleton’s tooth, researchers have learned new information about the physical characteristics and lineage of the so-called “Well Man,” according to a recent study published in the journal iScience.

“This is the first time that the remains of a person or character described in a Norse saga has been positively identified,” co-author Michael Martin, an evolutionary genomicist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, tells the New York Times’ Franz Lidz. “It is also the oldest case in which we have retrieved the complete genome sequence from a specific person mentioned in a medieval text.”

The well is located near the ruined Sverresborg Castle outside the city of Trondheim in central Norway. During a period of political instability in the 12th century, Sverre insisted he had a claim to the throne, but he faced opposition from the archbishop. The 182-verse Sverris Saga, which Sverre ordered one of his associates to write, describes battles between the new king and his opposition, though historians don’t know whether these accounts are accurate. According to one passage, Roman Catholic “Baglers”—from the Norse for “bishop’s wand”—raided Sverresborg Castle while Sverre was out of town in 1197.

The Baglers didn’t harm the castle’s inhabitants, “but they completely destroyed the castle,” co-author Anna Petersén, an archaeologist at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, tells NPR’s Ari Daniel. “They burned all the houses.”

After that, she adds, “the archbishop’s people wanted to do something nasty.”

Per the saga, the Baglers “took a dead man and cast him into the well headfirst, and then filled it up with stones.” Scholars have long assumed the man was connected to the king, and that the Baglers dumped his body in that spot to taint the water and perhaps humiliate Sverre. The text includes “nothing about who this dead man was, where he came from, what group he belonged to,” says Petersén…

(13) BACK TO THREE MILE DESERT ISLAND. “Artificial Intelligence wants to go nuclear. Will it work?” asks NPR.

… But since the advent of AI, power consumption has been rising rapidly.

Training and using AI requires significantly more computational power than conventional computing, and “that corresponds to energy use,” Strubell says. Strubell and other experts expect emissions will skyrocket as AI becomes more common.

Nuclear power offers a way out: plants like Three Mile Island can deliver hundreds of megawatts of power without producing greenhouse gas emissions. New nuclear plants could do still more, powering data centers using the latest technology.

But Silicon Valley’s ethos is to go fast and break things. Nuclear power, on the other hand, has a reputation for moving extremely slowly, because nothing can ever break….

(14) TENSION HEADACHE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The “Hubble Tension” is still there, giving cosmologists headaches.

Initial studies of the Webb telescope data had failed to resolve the Tension. But some people hoped that further study would illuminate conflicting observations for the rate at which the universe is expanding. Nope. A new analysis of a whopping third of data from the Webb still show about an 8% discrepancy (plus or minus a few percentage points) in the expansion rate of the universe based on the ancient universe versus the current universe.  “Webb telescope confirms the universe is expanding at an unexpected rate” at Reuters.

Fresh corroboration of the perplexing observation that the universe is expanding more rapidly than expected has scientists pondering the cause – perhaps some unknown factor involving the mysterious cosmic components dark energy and dark matter.

Two years of data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have now validated the Hubble Space Telescope’s earlier finding that the rate of the universe’s expansion is faster – by about 8% – than would be expected based on what astrophysicists know of the initial conditions in the cosmos and its evolution over billions of years. The discrepancy is called the Hubble Tension.

The observations by Webb, the most capable space telescope ever deployed, appear to rule out the notion that the data from its forerunner Hubble was somehow flawed due to instrument error.

“This is the largest sample of Webb Telescope data – its first two years in space – and it confirms the puzzling finding from the Hubble Space Telescope that we have been wrestling with for a decade – the universe is now expanding faster than our best theories can explain,” said astrophysicist Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, lead author of the study published on Monday in the Astrophysical Journal, opens new tab….

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

Pixel Scroll 12/8/24 If I Were King Of Thesaurus

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(1) NETHERLANDS WORLDCON BID. An exploratory 2032 Worldcon bid for Maastricht, Netherlands was announced at Smofcon this weekend. That’s one of the many news items in Vincent Docherty’s roundup: “Bidders for Future Worldcons and Smofcons Heard from in Smofcon 41 Q&A Session”.

(2) BRISBANE 28 BID NEWS. Random Jones, chair of the bid to hold the 2028 Worldcon in Brisbane, Australia, has submitted their answers to Smofcon 41’s questionnaire: “Worldcon 2028 ‘Aussiecon 5’” [PDF file.]

(The other active 2028 bid is for Rwanda, Africa: “ConKigali 2028 Bid to Hold Worldcon in Africa Sends Update”.)

(3) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI will take place in the City Tech Academic Building at 285 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday, December 10, 2024 from 9:00am to 5:00pm in Room A-105.

The event is free and open to the public. Pre-registration for this in-person event is not required. Participants and attendees who are not affiliated with the college will need to sign-in at the security desk before entering and walking down the hallway to the right to room A-105.

The Program is at this link.

(4) PICKET LINE. “Workers go on strike at NYC’s iconic Strand Books, ask owners to pay more than minimum wage” – Gothamist has details.

Workers at Strand Books — one of New York City’s most famous book shops — walked off the job Saturday as part of a labor strike demanding they make more than minimum wage.

The store’s 110 unionized workers went on strike in the middle of the busy holiday season, leaving the shop’s “18 miles of books” to be run by a skeleton staff made up of a mix of store managers, part time non-union workers and other non-union administrative staff, according to labor organizers. The union wants their base pay to increase from $16 an hour, which is minimum wage in New York City, to $18 an hour in the first year of the contract. The workers voted to authorize a strike late last month….

…Shop steward and bookseller Brian Bermeo said the union and management are hung up over wage proposals. The union has demanded a $2 hourly raise in their first year of the contract, followed by $1.50 per hour raise in each of the second and third years.

Strand Books’ management has offered 50 cents less for each year, according to Bermeo. The two sides are due back at the bargaining table on Monday, according to a spokesperson for the store.

(5) RUOXI CHEN MOVES UP. Two-time Hugo winning editor Ruoxi Chen has joined Putnam as Executive Editor reports Publishers Weekly.

Ruoxi Chen has joined Putnam as executive editor. Chen was most recently an editor at Tordotcom Publishing, where she spent seven years editing speculative fiction, including the Hugo Award–winning novels Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, and Riot Berry by Tochi Onyebuchi. Chen has also been recognized by the Hugo Awards for her work as an editor.

In her new role, Chen will be acquiring crossover fantasy, romantasy, and science fiction. She will report to Putnam VP and editor-in-chief Lindsay Sagnette. 

(6) DISCORDANT NOTES. [Item by Steven French.] Isaac Asimov drafted a screenplay based on McCartney’s idea of an alien musical but the former Beatle turned it down: “’It’s like they were smoking something potent’: the ‘bizarre’ Paul McCartney alien musical that never was” in the Guardian.

It is the film that never was – an unlikely sci-fi musical about aliens dreamed up by Paul McCartney half a century ago. The aliens would have landed in a flying saucer, but the project never got off the ground.

Now the former Beatle’s treatment for the film – and an expanded version by the American sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov that McCartney turned down – have been unearthed in a US archive by the authors Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, while researching a forthcoming book.

The treatment’s discovery is revealed in The McCartney Legacy, Volume 2: 1974-80, published by HarperCollins on 10 December….

…The Fab Four had made several films, including A Hard Day’s Night, and McCartney wanted his new band [Wings] to star in one. He came up with a story about a band of aliens who arrive on Earth, morphing into the members of Wings before challenging the real Wings musicians.

Spanning almost 400 words, his treatment began: “A ‘flying saucer’ lands. Out of it get five creatures. They transmute before your very eyes into ‘us’ [Wings]. They are here to take over Earth by taking America by storm and they proceed to do this supergroup style. Meanwhile – back in the sticks of Britain – lives the original group, whose personalities are being used by the aliens…”

“Nothing ever came of this because McCartney couldn’t recognize good stuff,” said Asimov in a grumpy handwritten note on the manuscript.

(7) HEADS FOR SALE. BBC checks in when “Star Wars fan from Swindon sells toy collection after job loss”.

A man who changed his name to Luke Skywalker has sold his collection of Star Wars memorabilia after losing his job.

The sale included signed items from the films, life-sized models of the cast, creatures and droids from the films.

“I need to survive. This stuff is just in a warehouse just collecting dust all the time,” Mr Skywalker said.

The auction, at Wessex Auction Rooms in Chippenham, was described as “extremely unique”….

… Mr Skywalker said: “My van blew up last week and I need a new one, so I thought I’ve still got lots.

“I’ve got the memories and I’ve got the photos, you know?”

Some of the collection included rare replica helmets, Mr Skywalker said.

“They only released 200 each in the world,” he said.

Tim Weeks, director and auctioneer at Wessex Auction Rooms and Bargain Hunt expert, said: “We had a packed room and more than 500 live online bidders from around the world….

(8) DEVIL AT A BLUE ADDRESS. “How Easy Rawlins Built a Real Estate Empire, One Crime Novel at a Time” in the New York Time. (Link bypasses paywall.)

…Easy is a Black World War II veteran who fled the Jim Crow South for a better life in Los Angeles. In “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the 1990 classic that started both the series and Mosley’s career, Easy takes his first case so he can pay his mortgage and uses a windfall to add a rental property. The ups and downs of real estate continue as a recurring theme and story engine, especially in the early books, where the remedy for some tax lien or underwater mortgage is often to solve whatever mystery is driving the plot.

Now, two decades of buying and holding later, Easy is flush. As he explains in “Farewell, Amethystine,” his 12 buildings have a total of 101 rental units that a friend manages for a 0.8 percent fee. Subtract that commission along with mortgage payments and general upkeep, and his take-home is $26,000 a year in 1970 (the year the novel takes place), which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $217,000 today.

“I wasn’t rich,” Easy says. “But I sure didn’t need to be going out among the hammerhands and scalawags in the middle of the night.”

Let’s dispense with the obvious: Easy Rawlins is a fictional character [created by Walter Mosley]. Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you that his story has much to teach us about small landlording — America’s most enduring side hustle…

(9) TODAY’S DAY.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

By Paul Weimer: Once there was a shared world anthology. In a real sense, it was the ur-shared world anthology, created by several fantasy writers and written by many authors. A creation of one of the Great Cities of fantasy, a city of contradictions. A City on the edge of Empire. A city that was sprawling. A city that was cramped. A city with more reprobates, dark magicians, heroes, villains, witches, and more per square block than any other. A city of endless adventure. 

That city, the City of Sanctuary, that anthology and its many sequels, was Thieves’ World, created by Robert Asprin which was published forty years ago.

I came to Thieves’ World in the first rush of playing AD&D in the early 1980’s. Thieves’ World was tailor-made for a D&D locale, and in fact my brother and I had the boxed set of the RPG module before we actually touched the module. That early module, as unforgiving and sometimes spartan as other modules of the time meant that we really had to read the books in order to understand the setting deeply, even given all the maps, encounter tables and the like (it really was and is one of the best setting modules) My brother read the first two, first, before I did. I remember looking at the cover of the first one and asking my brother who these people were (it’s the cover with Lythande, Hanse and a mystery character, with One Thumb ready to serve them a round) .

At the time, Discworld was an ocean away and I would not encounter it for more than a decade. There was of course Lankhmar (and, no surprise, we had that D&D module too) . So Thieves World was, for me, for many years, the definitive and one true fantasy city.  Lots of invented fantasy cities in games I ran (and my brother ran) that didn’t take place in Sanctuary and its environs took place in expys of it. 

And then there were the stories themselves. A wide range of fantasy authors, some of whom I followed into other work (Asprin, for instance, right into the Myth series) and others that would become heart authors later (like Poul Anderson). Janet Morris. Jody Lynn Nye. And many, many others, borrowing, using and changing these characters.  My older brother, who played thieves in D&D more than I liked the shades of grey characters and series even more than I did. I was always interested in the high magic and magical doings in the stories. Hanse Shadowspawn, son of a God, who kills another God. Lythande, whom today we might call a trans man, keeping his birth gender a secret, but as a result having quite potent magical powers. The strange spell that hits One-thumb, a dastardly magical trap. Again, for many years, other than Lankhmar, and some of the work of Zelazny (whom I only learned recently was invited but didn’t get to write in Thieves World), Thieves’ World’s anthologies were the sword and sorcery standard for me, with an emphasis on the dark sorcery. My brother might have been interested in thiefly doings, dark magic and fighting (and sometimes using it) was my deal.

Eventually the series petered out after a respectable number of volumes, side novels and the like. It did inspire a lot of other shared world series (such as Heroes in Hell) , and very probably, the most enduring of the shared worlds, Wild Cards. 

But it occurs to me that the story of Sanctuary, of an edge-of-the-empire garrisoned town (with apologies to Sting) in a Empire that itself eventually topples and falls, leaving Sanctuary to its own devices is a story that is timeless. And given very recent events (hello, Syria), ever-fresh.

Meet you for a drink at the Vulgar Unicorn? My treat. Just bring your sword (or if you have a handy spell, then that) and your wits, the Maze is a dangerous place.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STRANGER THINGS ON STAGE. Entertainment Weekly keeps track of casting in “’Stranger Things’ Broadway play adds season 5 newcomer, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ alum T.R. Knight”.

The Upside Down continues taking over Broadway as the cast for the U.S. version of Stranger Things: The First Shadow continues to grow.

Louis McCartney will reprise his role of young Henry Creel/future Vecna from the London West End production when the show makes its stateside debut in New York next year. But among the new batch of casting unveiled Wednesday is Alex Breaux, who’s already playing a mysterious series regular character in Stranger Things season 5, which premieres on Netflix in 2025. Fans only caught a glimpse of him on the show in a behind-the-scenes sneak peek, revealing him in a black militarized uniform holding an automatic rifle.

On stage, Breaux will play the new Dr. Martin Brenner, a role played by Patrick Vaill in the London stage version and Matthew Modine on the Netflix series.

Another piece of interesting casting: Grey’s Anatomy alum and The Flight Attendant actor T.R. Knight will hit the stage as Victor Creel, Henry’s father. Horror icon Robert Englund played the character on the series, while Michael Jibson took the role for the London production.

Also joining the Broadway cast are Alison Jaye (Shameless) as young Joyce Maldonado, Burke Swanson (Back to the Future: The Musical) as young Jim Hopper Jr., Broadway newcomer Nicky Eldridge as young Bob Newby, Emmy nominee Gabrielle Nevaeh (Nickelodeon’s That Girl Lay Lay) as Bob’s sister Patty, Rosie Benton (Patriots) as Henry’s mother Virginia, and Andrew Hovelson (Lucky Guy) as Hawkins High Principal Newby.

The production will give U.S. audiences a look at the prequel to Stranger Things that also ties into the events of the highly anticipated fifth and final season of the show. The play follows Henry Creel’s arrival in town with his family in 1959 Hawkins. It’s based on an original story by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, Jack Thorne, and Kate Trefry. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin serve as director and co-director, respectively….

(13) ABOUT TABLETOP GAMES. [Item by Steven French.] Tim Clare, who was diagnosed as autistic while researching a book on how games connect people, discusses how board games offer a refuge from a noisy, chaotic world and lists his top five: “’Playing games turns me into a person who makes sense’” in the Guardian.

As a phenotype, autism is very loosely defined (“If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person,” goes the old saying). It has a lot in common with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of games; there’s no single trait, he said, common to all games that excludes everything not a game. Rather, we must rely on “family resemblances”. The best we can do is point to a bunch of activities and say: “These things, and things like them, are games.”

Tabletop games are a vast, sprawling island chain of loosely federated states, each with its own laws and customs. Trying to sum them all up in a neat little Baedeker feels measly, incomplete. Again, there are miles of open water between chess and Crokinole, Dungeons & Dragonsand Votes for Women. Each offers me different ways to unmask and connect….

(14) BACK IN ROTATION. We learn from The Hollywood Reporter that “’The Wheel of Time’ Season 3 Has a Premiere Date and Teaser”.

The Amazon-owned streamer has set a March 13 premiere date for the fantasy drama’s third season. Prime Video also released a first teaser for the coming season at São Paulo’s CCXP24 convention.

In the teaser (watch it below), Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) warns that she has seen “a thousand thousand futures” — and that there are none in which both she and Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski), the young man who may hold the future of humanity in his hands as the Dragon Reborn, survive….

(15) DIM PROSPECTS. “The world asked NASA for help in its greatest crisis: They just said that “it’s not possible” reports EcoNews.

…Solar power from space has been an interesting concept since Isaac Asimov first described it in the context of 1940s science fiction. The concept is simple: put solar panels in an area with constant daylight, and the transformed solar energy is converted to microwaves and transmitted to the earth, where it is transformed back to electricity.

This approach would provide a constant and uninterrupted power supply, unlike the ground-based solar power dependent on sunlight. Although it seems the perfect answer to the world’s energy problems, the technical and financial issues have proved too difficult.

NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy published a catastrophic report on SBSP’s vision. The findings were clear: SBSP will not be economically feasible shortly. The report shows that the costs of deploying space-based solar power systems remain prohibitive, and current research indicates that prices can be as much as 80 times more costly than on-ground solar systems.

In this case, the total lifecycle cost of these systems would be astronomical and much higher than that of land-based renewable technologies such as solar and wind power. NASA’s report also discussed the environmental effects of SBSP….

(16) HARD TO BELIEVE. Variety sets the scene: “Dick Van Dyke Sings and Dances Again at 98 in Coldplay Music Video”. Dick Van Dyke will be 99 on December 13 (coincidentally my sister’s birthday, too).  

Dick Van Dyke is the star of Coldplay‘s music video for the band’s latest single, “All My Love,” which sees the 98-year-old Hollywood legend dancing barefoot and duetting with frontman Chris Martin.

Directed by Spike Jonze and Mary Wigmore, the seven-minute video is more like a short film as Van Dyke — who turns 99 on Dec. 13 — reflects on his nearly eight-decade career…. 

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Mark Roth-Whitworth, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel (cue Bert Lahr on vocals) Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/20/24 The Scroll Is Good. The Pixel Is Evil

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(1) JOHN WISWELL COVER LAUNCH. DAW Books has shared the cover of Wearing the Lion, the second novel from Nebula Award-winning John Wiswell, which will forever change how you understand the man behind the myth of Heracles—and Hera, the goddess reluctantly bound to him.

The cover, illustrated by Tyler Miles Lockett and art directed by Debbie Holmes, depicts one of the most famous myths surrounding the Greek warrior, the slaying of the Nemean lion, except that in this version of events, Wiswell’s Heracles chooses to reject expectations and care for the lion instead.

Wiswell is the author of the 2024 success Someone You Can Build a Nest In — “a heartwarming (and sometimes heartrending) fantasy romance between a monster and the monster hunter who loves her.”

Wearing the Lion is scheduled for release in hardcover on June 17, 2025 in the US and June 19, 2025, in the UK. It is available now for pre-order.

(2) SIGN OF A TREND? Add Muse from the Orb to the list of those who are happy Orbital won the Booker Award: “I Told You People About ORBITAL”.

…Exulting over industry awards is a rare thing for me. Familiarity with the business side of publishing imbues you with a deep, abiding cynicism when you learn just how many awards are corporate exercises, popularity contests, reflections of limited demographics with bespoke priorities to signal, or literally just purchased by the house.

Nevertheless, I’m delighted that Orbital by Samantha Harvey won the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It’s well deserved. I was impressed by this book — sometimes you dip into a novel and think, So — they DO still write ‘em like that anymore.

Orbital’s win is also a sign of continued success for the nonofficial genre of prestige-literary-speculative-fiction, whose prevalence in mainstream shortlists and awards like the Booker is no longer a fluke but a pattern. (See also: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [2022] and Prophet Song [2023]).…

Too late for Orbital to do it, but could a future book sweep the Hugo and the Booker Prize?

… Honestly, the biggest obstacle to a Hugo-Booker singularity would be the fans and demographics. The Hugo and Booker cater to very different groups of readers, with the Hugo and Worldcon crowd skewing very nerd/fandom and High Genre. (This year Dungeons and Dragons won Best Movie over Poor Things.) But at the same time, it seems that the SFF short fiction market is feeling increasingly literary and MFA-inflected, while literary fiction imprints seem to be giving a lot of deals to MFA grads who’ll write “fresh” literary takes on genre stuff like vampires. The amount of literary fiction editors/agents I’ve met who proudly announce they’re into “literary fiction with speculative elements” grows by the month. Are the conditions there? Is John the Baptist preparing the way in the wilderness?…

(3) SECOND-STAGE TAKEOFF. And the award gave Harvey’s book a sales boost: “Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning Orbital tops UK bestseller list” reports the Guardian.

Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning Orbital has rocketed to the top of the UK bestseller chart, becoming the first Booker novel to hit number one in the week of its win.

20,040 copies were sold in the UK last week across paperback and hardback editions, according to Nielsen BookData…

(4) UK EASTERCON 2027 BID. Since we last reported about the Glasgow bid for the 2027 Eastercon they’ve published the names of the bid committee. They’re still deciding on a venue.

  • Alan Fleming and David Bamford — co-chairs
  • Steve Cooper — treasurer
  • Kate Wood — secretary & timeline
  • Ila Khan — communications
  • Kirsty Wood — liaison

And we’re being assisted by Mark Meenan and Meg MacDonald in liaising with the Glasgow Convention Bureau in the search for a location.

(5) ADDING A WING TO THE HALL OF FAME. Strange at Ecbatan’s Rich Horton has some fun imagining what belongs in a hypothetical next volume of the SF Hall of Fame. As someone who has read widely, he has lots of good suggestions: “SF Hall of Fame 1989-2018” at Strange at Ecbatan.

…I have lists of “short stories” (up to approximately 10,000 words) for a rough analog to the SF HOF Volume I, and novellas (10,000 to 40,000 or so) as a rough analog to Volumes IIA and IIB. I purposely slanted the list heavily to SF and not fantasy — much as the first books were — but there is some fantasy on these lists. I stuck to the 1989-2018 timeframe. I chose 30 short stories and 22 novellas — just a bit more than the original books had. (So sue me!)…

(6) THE NEXT WAR AFTER THE WAR TO END ALL WARS. Jeremy Zenter reminds readers about “The Many Alt-Histories of World War II” at the SFWA Blog.

…Some writers have drawn from [Philip K.] Dick’s example to blend other science-fiction aesthetics with alt-history. Like Dick’s novel [The Man in the High Castle], Peter Tieyaras’s The United States of Japan involves a contraband story that imagines a world without fascism, in a US divided between Germany and Japan; only, instead of a book, a video game is the forbidden medium. The narrative priorities are different, though. This novel depicts a 1980s Japanese pop culture that rebels against the status quo, so we get more of a pulpy escapade that follows investigative tropes and uses oodles of cyberpunk technology. Tieyaras was clearly inspired by Dick, but his writing is also reminiscent of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The result is a work that honors its predecessors by creating a new world in the long shadow of genre classics….

(7) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALBERT EINSTEIN. Andrew Porter feels yesterday’s Scroll unfairly highlighted only one lot in Christie’s “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction, running from November 28-December 12. So he sent me this search link. It returns 49 items and not only art. There’s also two rocks from Mars (they came to the Earth on the rebound). And the head of a robot so famous Christie’s thinks it will sell for at least £100,000.

Einstein by Hanson
Robotic head, with 28 servo motors for face movements and 3 servo motors for neck movements, linked at various points with Teflon-coated nylon strings, with Hanson ‘Flubber’ covering
16in. (40.5cm.) high
created in 2005

The Einstein by Hanson robotic head, developed by Hanson Robotics in 2005: a landmark achievement in robotics and artificial intelligence.

This innovative creation blends advanced mechanics with a distinctly human-like visage modelled after the renowned physicist Albert Einstein. His likeness was constructed using Frubber, a flexible, skin-like material developed by Hanson Robotics, while various motors inside the head made it capable of performing a range of facial expressions. Indeed, with over thirty-five actuators in the head alone, the robot could mimic human facial movements with remarkable accuracy, including nuanced expressions around the eyes and mouth. The human-like facial expressiveness made Einstein by Hanson one of the first robots to evoke empathy and a sense of personality, going beyond mere mechanical functionality. This was both a hand-sculpted work of art and a work of cutting edge technological innovation, resulting in numerous patents, awards, and scientific papers on the subject of AI mechanisms for synthetic facial expressions and human-robot interactions…..

(8) CLAP A STOPPER OVER IT. “Ready to sing along at ‘Wicked’? It’s not happening in AMC movie theaters” says Yahoo! AMC isn’t telling customers,“Shut yer festering gob!” They’re saying this:

…Singing is on the list of no-nos for guests in the theater, according to an advisory being shown ahead of Friday’s release of Part 1 of the expected blockbuster.

“At AMC Theatres, silence is golden,” says the 30-second advisory, which features scenes from the movie. “No talking. No texting. No singing. No wailing. No flirting. And absolutely no name-calling. Enjoy the magic of movies.”

(9) IT’S A THEORY. [Item by Steven French.] How L. Frank Baum was influenced by his feminist (and Theosophical) mother-in-law: “The Feminist Who Inspired the Witches of Oz” in Smithsonian Magazine.

The backstories of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good are the subject of the upcoming movie Wicked, based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz’s 2003 stage musical. The witch, who is unnamed in The Wizard of Oz, has a name in Wicked: Elphaba, an homage to the initials of L. Frank Baum. (His first name, which he rarely used, was Lyman.) But the real-life backstory of the witches of Oz is just as fascinating. It involves a hidden hero of the 19th-century women’s rights movement and the most powerful woman in Baum’s life: his mother-in-law, Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage. 

It was likely at Gage’s urging that Baum began submitting his poems and stories to magazines. Gage even suggested putting a cyclone in a children’s story. But she was a notable figure in her own right. As one of the three principal leaders of the women’s rights movement, along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gage was known for her radical views and confrontational approach. At the Statue of Liberty’s unveiling in 1886, she showed up on a cattle barge with a megaphone, shouting that it was “a gigantic lie, a travesty and a mockery” to portray liberty as a woman when actual American women had so few rights.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Back to the Future II (1989)

By Paul Weimer: Back to the Future, the original, was a revelation for me. Even if I am not musically inclined (for a movie that is often all about the music), the movie worked for me on a lot of levels. I was in an age and a place and a time where I could see movies in a theater, and then read about them in magazines like Starlog, anticipating and wondering what was going to happen…and then discuss them afterwards. I was still young and shy and didn’t send any letters to such magazines, but I read them all avidly.

And then came the movie itself. I’d read a bunch of time travel SF by now, and so I was delighted to see Back to the Future II use time travel in a way the first had not. The first movie used it as a device to move Marty to the past and comment on culture in the 1950’s and the present of the 1980s. Back to the Future II actually used time travel in a way that few genre movies would contemplate. Most genre movies tend toward scenarios where the time travel proves to have happened all along. History is never changed and can’t be changed. 

Back to the Future II changed all that, when 2015 Biff gives 1955 Biff the Almanac, and utterly changes his future.  The vision of the Biff Tannen Wins timeline is dark, horrendous and compelling. It makes Potterville from It’s a Wonderful Life look like a theme park in comparison. Back to the Future II is a “set things right where things went wrong”, but it was actual malice aforethought, not chance or circumstance, that Marty has to fix. This leads to a delightful overlapping of events in 1955 as Marty has to desperately fix the timeline…but not screw up his own future in the process. It’s a wonderfully done sequence of events, and we get a couple of extra scenes that are implied in the first movie, but never seen. It’s an attention to detail in a time travel change history movie that few have attempted, much less this well. 

It occurs to me, though, that we’ve wound up in the Biff Tannen Wins timeline after all. Sobering, but undeniable in the end. And no time machine to save us.

It also occurs to me that this movie suffers from a lack of strong female characters. After Jennifer being brought along at the end of Back to the Future II, she gets knocked out first thing by Doc in Back to the Future II, in a whiplash that really doesn’t work well. The movie is even more of a young man’s adventure than the first, but with more action adventure and less sexual innuendo than the first. 

But back to the plot. After seeing the movie came the aftershocks of the movie. After all, Back to the Future II lives on a cliffhanger. Doc is trapped in the past, and is doomed to die. Marty needs the help of the 1955 Doc Brown…but not to go home, but to go to the past to save him.  It’s a lovely tangle of time paradoxes and foreshadowing and destiny that the second movie revelled in, and so the magazine’s endless discussions and theories on how time travel really worked, or should, gave Back to the Future II an afterlife for me after seeing it for the first time. Of course we take such things for granted, now, but Back to the Future II was one of my first real engagements with a movie’s afterlife. (I have a story about Star Trek II in the same vein, but we’ll save that for another day).

(11) EDITOR’S ENDNOTE. Incidentally, Back to the Future The Musical is doing a North American tour. It’s in LA for the rest of the month before moving on.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) DENIS VILLENEUVE Q&A. “Director Denis Villeneuve On Shooting ‘Dune: Part Two’ In The Desert” at Deadline. “More faithful to Frank Herbert than to the book.”

DEADLINE: It’s also Zendaya’s film. Her Chani provides the moral compass and makes the romance feel real.

VILLENEUVE: Paul is the main character, but Chani is our moral compass. It’s a big difference. That’s where the movie differentiates itself from the book. In the book, she’s a believer, she’s in Paul’s shadow, but I decided to transform our character in order to bring this idea that the movie will be a cautionary tale and not a celebration of his ascension. When the first book was released, Frank Herbert said he was disappointed by the way the book was perceived by some readers who saw in Paul a hero, and saw the book as a celebration of Paul. Herbert wanted to do the opposite. He wanted to do a cautionary tale, a warning against the embrace of charismatic figures. In order to correct this perception, he wrote a second book called Dune Messiah, that made sure that his initial intentions will be more clear. And me knowing this, I made this adaptation having this knowledge. I tried my best to be, let’s say, more faithful to Frank Herbert than to the book…

(14) JUMP ONTO GALACTIC JOURNEY. Do you have any idea what riches are in store for fans at Galactic Journey? Thread starts here. Here are the first two posts.

1) Going OOC for a mo.What is Galactic Journey? It is so staggeringly big, so comprehensive, that I suspect even our fans don't know all of its facets. We review every SFF story that comes out, but did you know we’re also a TV station? A radio broadcaster? A LARP?Strap in—we're taking a ride:

— Galactic Journey (@galacticjourney.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T18:22:44.024Z

2) At its heart, Galactic Journey is a blog—or to use a more period term, a ‘fanzine’—written as if its authors are fans living exactly 55 years ago. We move forward, day by day, in exact parallel with modernity. It's currently 1969; next year will be 1970.

— Galactic Journey (@galacticjourney.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T18:22:44.025Z

(15) THEY’RE BAD GUYS FOR CHARITY. amNY encourages us to “Meet the Star Wars villains making a positive impact in New York City”.

In George Lucas’s Star Wars universe, the evil Galactic Empire’s iconic Stormtrooper army isn’t exactly known for doing good deeds. But, in a galaxy not so far, far away – New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley, to be exact – the white-armored Troopers are a much more welcome sight.

The Empire City Garrison, founded in 1999, is one of more than 80 chapters of the 501st Legion organizations worldwide. The fan-founded groups began as a means for costumes to showcase their hyperrealistic Stormtrooper replica armor, but soon expanded to include promoting broader interest in Star Wars and volunteerism. 

“We’ve raised money on behalf of the Cancer Society, the Autism Society and organizations in the Hudson Valley area. We try to rotate it around,” Chris Feehan, Empire City Garrison commanding officer, said. “If it’s a very small event, we might only have one [trooper]. It only takes one to make a difference and impact whatever that organization is.”

“They’re not selling anything; they include their own costs to be here and take time off of their lives to dress up and do the things,” said Benjamin Kline, Tenacious Toy CEO, who collaborated with the Empire Garrison at New York Comic-Con by giving a customized set of Star Wars stickers. “They’re entertaining while raising money. I think that’s a really good way to be.”

Among the 130 events they participate in a year, New York Comic-Con at Javits Center is one of the most significant. This year, they raised $9,000 in donations, primarily driven by photo opportunities….

(16) TRASH OBLITERATION. “Why can’t we just launch all of Earth’s garbage into the sun?” asks Popular Science. (Didn’t Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero show why this kind of thing is a bad idea in the long run?)

After seeing Elon Musk send thousands upon thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit, it’s only natural to wonder, why can’t we launch all our junk into space, too? Or even straight into the sun? (You asked. We answered.)

Aside from the moral quandaries raised by such poor stewardship of our already disheveled solar system, Earthlings probably haven’t made a habit of beaming literal garbage into space yet because we simply can’t afford to. 

“It’s not cost-feasible at all. You require a lot of thrust and a lot of fuel to do that,” explained John L. Crassidis—a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo—in a call with Popular Science. Part of the challenge is that our junk can’t go just anywhere, although it certainly does so here on Earth; microplastics are literally everywhere and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is around twice the size of Texas…. 

(17) PITCHING MORE RINGS. Ryan George takes us inside the “The Rings of Power (Season 2) Pitch Meeting”.

(18) THE RAT RACE. Steve Cutts’ 2017 cartoon “Happiness” is “The story of a rodent’s unrelenting quest for happiness and fulfillment.”

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Jeffrey Smith, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 11/19/24 Six Impixelable Things Before Breakfast

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(1) PORTENT OF ELECTRONIC DOOM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s BBC Radio 4 The Infinite Monkey Cage looked at the personal digital landscape, the threats from hacking, digital theft, cyber war and the coming quantum day.

Invited to discuss this were experts in cyber crime and cyber warfare with the show’s regular hosts: physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince.

The show concluded somewhat grimly that we are all doomed…

I have been saying for years that the machines are taking over the world but no-one ever listens… well, it now seems, hardly anyone.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince head to Bletchley Park with comedian Alan Davies, and cyber experts Victoria Baines and Richard Benham to decode cyberwarfare and discuss its future.

As computers have shrunk from the size of rooms to fitting in our jacket pockets, our cyber sleuths explore the changing nature of cyber-attacks and defence. They decipher the fancy jargon abounding in cyber land, from trojan horses to phishing scams and reveal how prolific these attacks are on nation states, businesses and the public. From digital army battalions to teenage freelance hackers, the cyber-villains are multiple and varied. Our panel discusses the aims of these malevolent forces; from extorting money and holding valuable commercial data hostage to influencing people’s electoral intent.

The panel explores how AI and quantum computing are supercharging cyberwarfare – but in good news, also cyber-defence. Alan Davies shares his susceptibility to being tricked online whilst our experts give some tips for staying safe online, and finally, Alan comes up with his surprising alter-ego hacking name.

The show can be downloaded from here.

(2) GILLER PRIZE. The Giller Prize 2024 winner – Held by Anne Michaels — was announced on November 18. The Prize is a celebration of Canadian literary talent.

Held may be a work of genre interest – or a historical novel that jumps around in time (even into 2025). It’s not easy to decide based on what the Penguin Random House Canada’s website says. Is this a literal description, or a poetic analogy?

…1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

…From its opening lines, Held is alive with seeking: “We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”

If anyone here has read it, please help us decide whether this is a work of sff!

(3) THE NITTY GRITTY. Bidding starts at Christie’s in nine days for “Dune: an early study of Arrakis by John Schoenherr”, which is estimated to bring £5,000-£7,000 at auction.

‘I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations.’ -Frank Herbert.

An early painted landscape of the Dune universe, one of only six known Dune studies by Schoenherr from the 1960s. The others are the three cover artworks for Analog magazine (one of which was used on the hardcover first edition), the first paperback cover, and an unused Analog cover.

To visualize his world, Herbert worked alongside the Hugo award winning artist, Schoenherr, who produced the illustrations for the original magazine serial, as well as the cover art for the original hardcover and paperback editions of the trilogy. Indeed, the present work bears certain similarities to the cover art for the 1965 first paperback edition published by Ace Books, particularly the angle of the large rocky outcrop in the foreground. Schoenherr’s work for Dune laid the visual foundations for every cinematic and artistic interpretation of the world that would follow, his barren and emotive landscapes helping bring to life the otherworldly spice fields and kingdoms laid out in Herbert’s iconic text. So fitting were Schoenherr’s illustrations that the author declared him ‘the only man to ever visit Dune’.

Ragged and sharp in its visualization of an arid desertscape, the present work captures the hostile and unforgiving environment of Arrakis. It appears to be unpublished and was perhaps intended as an early experimental adventure into the vast world of Dune.

(4) AND THAT’S NOT ALL. Heritage Auction also has artwork of sff genre interest in their forthcoming 2024 December 9 Illustration Art Showcase Auction 15236. See lots at the link. Includes artists Emsh, John Schoenherr, Virgil Finlay, Jack Gaughan, and Richard M. Powers.

Here’s one example: “Away Team” by Edmund (Emsh) Emshwiller.

(5) NEW SHORT FROM RODDENBERRY ARCHIVE AND OTOY. “William Shatner’s Captain Kirk Faces a Long Goodbye in This Stunning Star Trek Anniversary Short” – Gizmodo sets the scene.

Thirty years ago today [November 18], Star Trek‘s cinematic legacy boldly stepped forward as the heroes of the original series and The Next Generation teamed up on the silver screen in Star Trek: Generations. The Enterprise-D met her end, the Star Trek movie franchise passed the torch to a new age, and, of course, William Shatner’s Captain Kirk gave it all to save the Veridian system from the sinister Dr. Soran. And now, to celebrate, the Roddenberry Archive has once again teamed up with OTOY to create a fitting, fond farewell to not one, but two of Trek‘s original heroes….

…There’s some fascinating connections to a whole gamut of Star Trek lore here, from OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive’s previous use of Mahé Thaissa as Yeoman Colt from “The Cage” all the way up to the inclusion of Yor, a Betelgeusian Starfleet officer from the Kelvin Timeline who briefly appeared during the events of Star Trek: Discovery season three. But you’re mostly here for the uncanny valley being overridden by tugs at your heart strings to give Kirk and Spock alike one last shared farewell….

(6) LOSCON 50 SUPPORTS THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY/RELAY FOR LIFE TEAM. Loscon 50, taking place November 29-December 1 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel, has announced their support for a charity, and three ways you can help: knit or crochet a hat; donate funds; donate to an auction. Details in the following press release:

Loscon 50 is honored to support the mission of the American Cancer Society during the 2024 convention weekend as “Loscon Gives Back”. Many of our community members have been affected by various forms of cancer, we have survivors and losses from this devastating disease. We have teamed up with the Relay for Life fundraiser with one of our staff, Julia Ree who is part of the Riverside team and a cancer survivor herself. Here is Julia’s direct Relay for Life link.

We have put out a call for knit hats to be crafted by those who knit or crochet in our Loscon community. These hats are gifted to cancer patients during their treatment and will be presented to Julia Ree during the convention. The hats can be brought to Loscon 50 and dropped off in the Office or they can be mailed in, please use the contact form on the loscon.org website.

Loscon will have an auction during the convention to raise funds to donate directly to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life team. We welcome donations to the auction by our community, our dealers, our authors and others who would like to support this worthy cause. Please use the contact form on our website at this link: https://loscon.org/contact/

Loscon is excited to welcome attendees to our three day weekend of Science Fiction and Fantasy fun. We celebrate Larry Niven as our Writer Guest of Honor, Kathy Mar our Musical Guest of Honor, Dr Laura Brodian Freas Beraha our Artist Guest of Honor and the late Kelly Freas as our Artist Ghost of Honor and our Fan Guests of Honor, Genny Dazzo and Craig Miller. Please see https://loscon.lineupr.com/loscon-50/ for programming details.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Let’s talk about my favorite Star Wars film. No, not the first one, The Empire Strikes Back. Released forty-four years ago but please note not on this date. I think it’s the best written, best performed and simply most interesting of the trilogy.

It was as you know the sequel to the original film which Leigh Brackett was hired to write before she died way too soon, just several weeks after turning in her script, so Lucas hired Lawrence Kasdan to write but gave Leigh Brackett co-writing credit on it as much of script is still in the final script. 

Now they did met several times in late 1977 to hash out an outline for what was called then Star Wars II. They figured out the framework of plot, which remained pretty much intact in later drafts, although there were some differences such as Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father in their outline.

Den of Geek has this quote, “Writing has never been something I have enjoyed, and so, ultimately, on the second film I hired Leigh Brackett. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out; she turned in the first draft, and then she passed away, I didn’t like the first script, but I gave Leigh credit because I liked her a lot. She was sick at the time she wrote the script, and she really tried her best.”

Does her script exist for reading? I’ve seen it referred to in articles over and but can’t find it online. 

Now the co-written script is quite fine and the performance here by everyone I think far outshines the first film. The addition of Darth Vader makes Luke Skywalker into a more interesting character, and the expansion of the cast and setting in general makes this a more believe story. Yes, it’s far darker, more sinister, but a galactic empire would be so.

Even Yoda who could be cute isn’t. (That sentence structure is deliberate.) Look it’s a muppet! It’s voiced by Frank Oz! Perfectly designed to sell lots of plushies! 

Lucas had intended to have a new mentor character for Luke who in his original design was a diminutive frog-like creature named Minch Yoda. No, I’m not kidding. 

Side-note: I still find our two droids far too irritating. They just always come off as being that for me, particularly the C-3PO. I like my droids darker which I why I prefer the ones in Neal Asher’s polity series. Aren’t they darker in The Culture series as well? 

Is there anything I dont like here? No. I’ve watched it a half dozen times and I think it well deserves generally positive reviews, the half billion box office on a budget of under fifty million dollars, and the audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes of 97%. 

It of course, like everything Star Wars, is streaming on Disney +. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) TIMESTAMPS FOR A SET OF EASTER EGGS. Collider says “This Haunted Object Has a Cameo in Nearly Every Flanagan Project” – and brings receipts.

Oculus was Mike Flanagan’s second feature-length film and arguably the one that first made people sit up and take notice of the new director. The Lasser Glass is the haunted mirror at the center of the movie that causes so much trauma for Karen Gillan’s and Brenton Thwaites’ sibling characters, but for eagle-eyed viewers, it also haunts the backgrounds of the majority of Flanagan’s other works….

… It took four years for Mike Flanagan to release another movie after Oculus, but he returned with not one, but three movies in one year. Although 2016’s Hush and Before I Wake don’t include the Lasser Glass, Flanagan included the mirror in the background of Ouija: Origin of Evil — it can be spotted precisely at 1:07:00 when Doris (Lulu Wilson) walks through the basement. This kicked off Flanagan’s habit of including some variation of the mirror in every one of his projects since then. In total, the mirror from Oculus appears in nine of Flanagan’s works (10 if you count the short film on which Oculus is based). Let’s take a look at where, and when, you can see each other reference to the horrifying mirror….

(10) WAS WINNING A GOOD OR BAD THING? [Item by Steven French.] Some of the winners of the Ig Nobel prize share their stories, which include homosexual necrophiliac ducks, levitating frogs and mammals that can breathe through their anus: “How a silly science prize changed my career” in Nature.

…Eleanor Maguire wasn’t too thrilled when she was first offered an Ig Nobel Prize. The neuroscientist at University College London was being honoured for her study showing that London taxi drivers have larger hippocampi in their brains than do people in other professions1. But she worried that accepting the prize would be a disaster for her career. So, she quietly turned it down.

Three years later, the prize’s founder, Marc Abrahams, contacted Maguire again with the same offer. This time, she knew more about the satirical award that bills itself as honouring achievements that “make people laugh, then think”. She decided to accept. On the way to the ceremony, her taxi driver was so delighted to learn about his enlarged hippocampus that he refused to accept a fee from her.

Maguire credits the prize with bringing more attention to her work. “It was useful for my career because people wanted to talk about it,” she says, adding that “it was on the front pages of newspapers when it came out and struck a chord with people.”…

(11) HEAVY, MAN. Interesting Engineering stands by as “China activates world’s most advanced hypergravity research facility”.

China has activated the world’s most advanced hypergravity machine, aiming to deepen scientific understanding.

The system, featuring the largest hypergravity centrifuge, will be able to produce forces thousands of times stronger than Earth’s gravity.

The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) is located in Hangzhou, the capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang province….

… The facility will house three primary hypergravity centrifuges and 18 onboard units. These centrifuges, machines designed to spin containers rapidly, force heavier materials to the edges or bottom by creating hypergravity conditions, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP)….

… CHIEF’s hypergravity centrifuges are considered groundbreaking tools for creating extreme physical conditions not typically encountered in everyday environments.

These capabilities are expected to advance research across multiple disciplines, enabling scientists to simulate and analyze phenomena such as geological processes, material behaviors, and engineering challenges….

(12) WELL, THIS LOOKS BAD. PROBABLY DOESN’T SMELL TOO GOOD, EITHER. “A mythical harbinger of doom washes up on a California beach” and NBC News didn’t need long to sniff out the story.

The legendary “doom fish” has returned to California.

A long, ribbon-shaped oarfish, rarely seen and believed to signal disaster, has washed up on California’s shores for the second time this year.

PhD candidate Alison Laferriere from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego discovered the nearly 10-foot-long oarfish on a beach in Encinitas, in southern California, last week.

Oarfish are elusive creatures that dwell in the deep ocean — often as far as 3,300 feet below the surface — in the mesopelagic zone, a dark region beyond the reach of sunlight….

Rare, monstrously-proportioned and strangely-shaped, oarfish have sparked myths and legends for centuries and are sometimes referred to as the “doomsday fish” due to their reputation as predictors of natural disasters or earthquakes.

In 2011, the largely forgotten “earthquake fish” legend resurfaced after 20 oarfish washed ashore in the months leading up to Japan’s most powerful recorded earthquake….

(13) BUSINESS IS BOOMING. VERY. “SpaceX Starship’s Sonic Boom Creates Risk of Structural Damage, Test Finds” – story in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

SpaceX’s new Starship rocket far exceeds projected maximum noise levels, generating a sonic boom so powerful it risks property damage in the densely populated residential community near its South Texas launch site, new data suggests.

The measurements — of the actual sound and air pressure generated by the rocket during its fifth test launch last month — are the most comprehensive publicly released to date for Elon Musk’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed.

Starship, as tall as a 30-story building, is so large that it generates 10 times as much noise as the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX now uses to get cargo and astronauts to orbit, the new data shows. SpaceX plans another test this week.

For residents of South Padre Island and Port Isabel, which are about six miles from SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas, the noise during the October test flight was the equivalent of standing 200 feet from a Boeing 747 plane during its takeoff, said Kent L. Gee, an independent acoustics engineer who conducted the monitoring.

Dr. Gee is the chairman of the physics and astronomy department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, as well as a researcher helping NASA study ways to reduce noise impacts generated by supersonic planes. The test results were published on Friday in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The Federal Aviation Administration and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

When supersonic Concorde jets were still in service, the United States banned them from flying over domestic land “so their resulting sonic booms won’t startle the public below or concern them about potential property damage,” according to NASA.

The Starship flight test in October was about 1.5 times as loud on the ground as the Concorde sonic boom, the test results showed….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Dickensian Christmas season is coming. Fortunately, Ryan George knows what to do “When Ghosts Try To Teach You Lessons”.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Sandra Miesel, Krystal Rains, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 11/3/24 Never Scroll In Against A Pixelian When Death Is On The Line

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(1) BOWERS MUSEUM FANTASY EXHIBITION. [Item by Matthew Sangster.] A touring version of the British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination (which was reviewed on File 770 last year) has now opened at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, CA. (It opened October 26 and runs to February 16, 2025).  A small number of the more fragile manuscripts haven’t travelled, but there are a number of new inclusions, including original concept art from Labyrinth by Brian and Wendy Froude.

Sleeping Beauty (1968) © Royal Ballet and Opera. Tunic worn by Rudolf Nureyev as Prince Florimund in Act III of The Royal Ballet production of The Sleeping Beauty (1968) © Royal Ballet and Opera

Let our landmark exhibition cast its spell as we explore the beautiful, uncanny and sometimes monstrous makings of fantasy. From epic visions to intricately envisaged details, Fantasy: Realms of Imagination celebrates some of the finest fantasy creators, reveals how their imagined lands, languages and creatures came into being, and delves into the traditions of a genre that has created some of the most passionate and enduring fandoms.

Journey from fairy tales and folklore to the fantastical worlds of Studio Ghibli. Venture into lands occupied by goblins and go down the rabbit hole. Explore the realms of the one ring and travel into the depths of Pan’s Labyrinth. And discover how the oldest forms of literature continue to inspire fantasy authors today.

Presented in partnership with the British Library, Bowers Museum invites visitors to discover 160 fantastical items that include costumes, historical manuscripts, rare first editions, drafts of iconic novels, scripts, maps, original artwork, film props, and immersive multimedia experiences.

Gather your fellow adventurers and step into the realms of fantasy as they have never been chronicled before. Who knows where your journey will lead…

(2) TREK MEMORABILIA. Julien’s “Bid Long & Prosper Auction” will take place November 11. Among all the Star Trek costumes, props, and documentation going under the hammer, this “William Shatner Captain James T. Kirk Hero Screen-Matched Communicator Prop” is expected to fetch one of the highest prices, in the six-figure range. (I assume the stopwatch is for scale, not to measure whether Kirk was fastest on the draw.)

(3) GODZILLA AT SEVENTY. LAist recalls “The little-known connection between LA and Japanese monster masterpiece, ‘Godzilla’” — which may or may not have been a good thing, but did mean I got to watch this version on local TV when I was a kid.

Today marks a very special day for a timeless Japanese icon.

On Nov. 3, 1954, the first Godzilla film was released in Japan. The monster flick, which many people saw as an allegory for the Atomic bomb, was a box office hit in the country, and would go on to become a global sensation.

But, “unbeknownst to many people, Godzilla’s international stardom actually began right here in Los Angeles,” said Steve Ryfle, who co-authored the book, Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa.

That’s because for five decades, according to Ryfle, pretty much the only way audiences in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world could see the film was through a highly altered version of the 1954 Japanese original.

And that re-edited version, titled Godzilla King of the Monsters! contained added scenes that were all shot in Los Angeles.

… The studio behind Godzilla — the renowned Toho Studios — was looking to expand into foreign markets, and set up a small export office in L.A.

One of the films they offered up for sale was the monster film, said Ryfle. The people who bought it were not your typical Hollywood execs….

What these American producers did to the original Japanese version was write in an entirely new character named Steve Martin, who is an American wire service reporter stationed in Japan, played by character actor Raymond Burr of Perry Mason fame….

(4) EDEL RODRIGUEZ Q&A. Steven Heller interviews Edel Rodriguez about “Cuban Sci-Fi and Hope for the Future” at PRINT Magazine.

What exactly does this niche of fiction mean?
Some of these stories reflect on what is happening in Cuban culture and politics under the cover of science fiction. It gives writers a way to be social critics in an indirect manner. They can tell stories about corruption, migration, shortages and other social ills in a dystopian setting that is not directly tied to Cuba.

Are the books produced in Cuba for Cuban readers?
The books are written in Cuba by Cuban writers but have mostly been published in Spain. Some of them have been published in Cuba; it just depends on the nature of the writing. The books by the author Yoss are not printed on the island, though they do make their way back to readers there.

Are the writers dissidents?
I don’t think they are dissidents per se, but some have been looked at in a negative light by the establishment. This is why some of their books are often published overseas. I believe that the writer Agustín de Rojas was embraced by Cuban institutions while the writer Yoss was not.

What do you feel is a smart sci-fi scenario? And is there a Cuban narrative?
My favorite thing about these stories is seeing the references to Cuban culture, the conversation style and scenarios which mirror what is happening in the Cuban society. A Cuban narrative is when all goes to hell and the characters are desperately trying to right the ship, whether it be a boat, a country or a spaceship.

(5) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport starts the month with a free read: “Margeaux Poppins, Monster Hunter”. As the editor say –

Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors. If you already subscribe — thank you!

(6) EVERYTHING ROMERO. You can explore the George A. Romero Archival Collection at Digital Pitt.

What’s online?

The online collection contains selections from the George A. Romero Archival Collection including behind the scenes and premiere photos from Night of the Living Dead, as well as posters spanning Romero’s filmography.

What’s in the entire collection?

The George A. Romero Archival Collection documents a creative history of Romero’s work spanning his entire career. It includes drafts and manuscripts for both his produced and unrealized projects, as well as production, publicity, and promotional materials related to his work. It is part of the horror studies collecting area within Archives & Special Collections.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Memory: Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead (1934)

I truly love country house mysteries.  I really do. And they are perfectly suited, the classic ones, for me to listen to, especially this time of year.

There’s A. E. Milne’s The Red House Murder and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. And now let’s talk about Ngaio Marsh and her country house mystery, A Man Lay Dead. 

Ngaio Marsh was born in 1895 Christchurch, New Zealand where she lived until 1928, when she went to London with friends on whom he would base the Lamprey family in the Surfeit of Lampreys novel, her tenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn. But long before that, she would write A Man Lay Dead which as I said is a country house murder. It is the first novel of thirty-two to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published ninety years ago by Geoffrey Bles in London. 

The plot concerns a murder committed during a game of murder mystery at a weekend party in a country house.  

WE ARE GOING TO TELL A STORY HERE, SO GO AWAY UNLESS YOU WANT KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS NOVEL!

A small group of guests at Sir Hubert Handesley’s estate including a man about town, several of his nieces, an art expert, a gossip reporter, and pay attention as Marsh makes sure you notice him, a butler of Russian ancestry.

The murder mystery game in which one of the guests is of course chosen to be the murderer and someone to be murdered by him or her. At the time of the murderer’s choice, he tells the victim they’re dead.

At that point, the lights go out, a loud bell rings, and then everyone comes back to together for yet more drinks and to piece together who did it. It is all intended to be a good hearted diversion, except that the corpse is very, very real.

When the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have solid alibis, so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit. (Alleyn is conveniently investigating a murder connected to a stolen chalice in the area, but he’s called when this murder occurs at uncle’s estate.) 

Will more murders happen? I’m not saying, but this a classic manor house mystery, so what do you think? Need I say? 

NO MORE STORY SHALL BE TOLD, SO COME BACK NOW.

Marsh had being reading a short story by Christie or Sayers, she forgot which, and wondered if she could write a mystery novel set in the Murder Game which was popular at English weekend parties. So she bought some composition books and set down to write.

Marsh regretted this novel immensely once she’d refined her writing skills in years to come. Joanne Drayton noted in Ngaio Marsh: Her life in crime that she would “cringe at the thought of her first novel with its barely plausible story line, shallow characterization and confined setting”.  

Despite her criticisms, the story does work decently, or at least I think it does. Who else has read it, and what are your opinions of it?  I’d say a lot of the manor house mysteries of that period weren’t exactly literary masterpieces by any reasonable measure, but were they meant to be? I think not. 

It would later be adapted for the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series with the Angela North character here being replaced by Agatha Troy who appears in later novels as Alleyn’s romantic interest and eventual wife. 

It, like almost everything Marsh did, is available from the usual suspects. The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series is streaming on Amazon Prime.  

The cover is that hardcover first by Geoffrey Bles. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Breaking Cat News details how Tortimer the Roomba will save the world.
  • Strange Brew has a strange crossover.
  • Tom Gauld wasn’t blinded by science – but by lunch.

(9) COMICS HISTORY UP FOR AUCTION. Christie’s will auction this month “Les Cousins Dalton” by Morris (1923-2001).

The Belgian cartoonist Morris (pen name of Maurice De Bevere) introduced his comic-book cowboy Lucky Luke in 1946. Les Cousins Dalton, an original strip in which our hero defeats four gunslingers at a single stroke after slurping a Coca-Cola, dates from 1958, when Morris was working with René Goscinny, co-creator of Asterix

(10) THE ODDS OF LIFE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Dave Kipping over at the Cool Worlds channel has always been a bit of a sceptic regarding the possibility of life elsewhere, especially technological life.  The reason why some biologists, like Jack Cohen and I, do think that life is fairly common and while intelligent life with technology may be rare, it is not that rare. However, Dave Kipping does have some mathematical arguments on his side (if you go down the Bayesian route — it’s a maths probability thing). However, work the past few years had pushed back evidence for first life to even earlier in the Earth’s life than before, and a recent paper extends the likely lifespan of our biosphere.  So, Dave Kipping has had a re-think and is coming around to our way of thinking…

There’s been some new studies in the fields of palaeontology that have changed my mind about one of the most profound questions – does life start easily on Earth-like planets? Join me today to find out why…

(11) OVER THE GARDEN WALL 10TH ANNIVERSARY SHORT. [Item by N.] Over the Garden Wall, an animated fantasy miniseries that has become an autumnal staple for many, premiered 10 years ago today. In celebration, Cartoon Network has released a stop-motion short with help from Aardman Animations.

Concurrently, Inverse has published an interview with series creator Patrick McHale, who both looks back and looks forward: “10 Years Later, the Creepiest Cult Classic Just Got a Huge Upgrade”.

Here’s an official mirror on X.com which can be seen outside the US.

(12) AI BLIGHT OF THE DAY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Generative AI is a blight, but sometimes it can make things like this – a music video for Game of Thrones in a Trailer Park. “A Song of Rednecks (Official Music Video)”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Matthew Sangster, N., Danny Sichel, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 10/6/24 In Nomine Pixelis, Et Fileii, Et Scrollius Godstalkii

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(1) LEARNING CURVE. “5 Dark Academia Novels from the World of Dark Fantasy” — CrimeRead’s Victory Witherkeigh on sub-genre of the school novel.

…What is it about school-setting stories that make us as readers sink into the world so much faster? Is it our nostalgia for a time when life seemed much more straightforward than our lives as working adults? We’ve seen it across the tales of boy wizards, lightning thieves, and even young women writing love letters. As a dark fantasy/horror author and fan, there’s something about school being a nightmare that just sings to my penchant for the spooky season of fall…

…Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – What is it about the secret societies of the Ivy League schools that are so interesting? Is it our own hunger for conspiracy theories when dealing with the institutions that have produced several of the United States’ most notorious leaders? Follow Galaxy “Alex” Stern as she navigates her first year at Yale University as the occult apprentice of a missing mentor trying to handle school and the varying power dynamics of the illegal occult use of the secret societies. This is the first book in a two-part Bardugo series that will make you snuggle in your college sweatshirt tighter….

(2) WHY HORROR? Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk tells the Guardian why she chose to write a horror novel:

“I adore horror. But I realised, too, that only the tools of that genre could portray the topic I wanted to portray – the hidden violence, the misogyny that is rife in the entirety of our culture, which we live with like some sort of constant illness, like a predator that is always present and emerges from time to time to attack us.”

(3) FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY FANTASY. “Gods who make worlds” in The Christian Century.

Three decades ago, Tad Williams published the final volume in the best epic fantasy trilogy written in English since The Lord of the Rings. Called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series ran from 1988 to 1993 and totaled over a million words. Half of those words came in the final book—one of the longest books ever to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list….

…Why have these books sold well but never set the world on fire?

Three reasons come to mind. First, while Williams may mark a certain transition away from the never-ending half-lives of J. R. R. Tolkien imitations, his stories do not belong to the grimdark turn of contemporary fantasy (a turn recently pilloried by Sebastian Milbank as “grimdull”). They are not gritty. Whether the topic is sex or violence, there’s nothing pornographic on display. Williams is a romantic at heart. His stories are not sadistic. Subversion, when and where it happens, is subtle, thematic, and stylistic; the narratives are not oedipal, with Tolkien or C. S. Lewis or Christian morals as the fated father. For readers or viewers exhausted by the teetering nihilism of Game of Thrones and its many peers, Williams is a breath of fresh air.

Second, Williams puts the “slow” in “slow burn.” He is a master plotter, and you may be confident that every single narrative thread, no matter how small, will come together by the end. But there’s no hand-holding and no artificial fireworks to keep your attention. I know only two kinds of people who have picked up Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: those who put it down after about 200 pages, bored to tears and wondering what all the fuss was about, and those who kept going all the way to the end, falling in love in the meantime. There is no third group.

Finally, the world and history and happenings of Osten Ard are colored by a deep melancholy. (One character is startled to find a timeworn but intact statue: “She had never seen an ancient city of her people that was not in ruins.” A different character wonders to himself: “Is all we have—all we are—only a memorial of what we failed to save?”) Williams’s prose is among the best in fantasy, and its distinguishing character is a kind of plangent lyricism. In the dedication of the third volume, he calls the book “a little world of heartbreak and joy.”…

(4) COPYRIGHTUS INFRINGIO! “Warner Bros pulls plug on Harry Potter events at library” reports the Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News and Guide.

After eight years, Teton County Library has been forced to cancel its free Harry Potter-inspired programming for children and adults.

This year’s events — A Night at Hogwarts, Harry Potter Trivia for Adults and Harry Potter Family Day — had all been scheduled for later this month.

The library said in a press release Thursday that it acted in response to a cease-and-desist letter from legal representatives of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., the owner of copyright and other intellectual property rights related to the films featuring child wizard Harry Potter.

Before receiving the letter, the library’s staff “was unaware that this free educational event was a copyright infringement,” the release said. “In the past, libraries had been encouraged to hold Harry Potter-themed events to promote the books as they were released.”…

Boing Boing snarkily says:

…In the past the company has encouraged such activities, but it’s rebooting Harry Potter and wants to make sure the decks are cleared of deauthorized content and all the little brains wiped and ready for their new Vision for the Franchise….

(5) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Military.com reports “Troops at Colorado Space Force Base Will Have to Bring Their Own To-Go Boxes for Dining Hall”.

… “As of 15 October 2024, the Schriever SFB DFAC will no longer provide takeout containers for patrons,” the spokesman said. “This initiative is part of our ongoing efforts to reduce waste and minimize our environmental impact. Individuals who wish to take their food to go are welcome to bring their own reusable containers.”

Schriever Space Force Base near Colorado Springs is home to numerous around-the-clock missions ranging from GPS operations, missile detection and warning, satellite communications and high-level surveillance missions.

As a result of those daunting and time-consuming missions, many of the 8,000 Guardians, airmen and civilian employees on base are often in a hurry and take their meals or leftovers from the DFAC — fittingly called the Satellite Dish Dining Facility — to go.

The news was not well-received on the Space Force subreddit.

“So, if you’re on crew at Schriever, or are simply one of those people who doesn’t have time for a real lunch break and prefers (like me) to take a meal back to your desk and do working lunches, consider this your heads up to go buy a bunch of food containers,” one commenter wrote.

“I’m always impressed about how the negative-morale field around Schriever is able to warp reality into ever more depressing states, but this one takes the cake,” the commenter added.

The Space Base Delta 1 spokesperson said Guardians can bring their own from home or can also buy their own takeout containers from the on-base coffee shop — also fittingly named the “Bean Me Up Cafe.”

Additionally, Guardians can choose to sit and eat their meal entirely at the dining hall….

(6) MIESEL ART AUCTION RESULTS. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Here are screencaps showing the final sale prices of Sandra Miesel’s sff art put up for sale at Ripley Auctions. (Only the sff art, none of the other items.) Click for larger images.

(7) STILL IN SEARCH OF (DIGITAL) BOMINABLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Following up on my item “(8) TERRY QUERY: WHERE’S ARNOLD?” in the September 24 Scroll (and some back-and-forth with a non-Filer PTerryphile), regarding the “recentlly ‘unlost’ story “Arnold, The Bominable Snowman,” which was, according to that scroll, “is/was supposed to be published online [in September 2024]:

The story is (now) available in an updated paperback version of Terry Pratchett’s (posthumous) collection, A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories… but not (based on my web search of my library’s e-holdings) Hoopla; Amazon/Kindle (and Amazon general search); nor a general web search), available online (yet).

If anybody knows more (ideally, when/e-where), my friend (via me) would like to know, as, no doubt, will many Filers.

(One guess is that it’s online in some UK site, outside of where my searches are searching.)

(Yes, I know, one could buy the new version or borrow/request it from one’s library. Or switch to Linux and LibreOffice–oh wait, wrong discussion…)

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 6, 1950 — David Brin, 74.

By Paul Weimer: It’s Kevin Costner’s fault that the work of David Brin came to my attention. When the adaptation of The Postman, warts and all, came to the screen, I discovered to my surprise I had not at that time read any of the work of David Brin. I set to rectify that, starting with The Postman…which, to my mystified surprise, I found I preferred the plot of the movie in many respects.  Undeterred, I hit my stride with reading his Uplift novels, revelling in the grand SF idea of species across the galaxy raising others to sentience–but who raised Humanity?  

But my favorite David Brin novel is probably Kiln People. Ostensibly a mystery novel, the big damn idea of Kiln People, being able to make copies of yourself to do various tasks and functions, is such a compelling one that I felt myself propelled on the strength of the premise and its implications for work, humanity, mortality and much more. Even more than the Uplift novels, it embodies the good of Brin’s fiction and thought. 

But Brin is an author whom I can disagree with, especially when it comes to Star Wars. I find Brin’s criticism and denigration of Star Wars to be, I think, way way too much. Sure, it’s a Campbellian monomyth hero chosen one narrative. But I think his criticism is way overpowered (and goes to far too much length) for the arguments he is making. I do get they come from a place of passion and sincere belief, but it is not one that I share. 

David Brin

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) TYPEWRITER COMEBACK. [Item by Andrew Porter.] PBS News Weekend tells “Why typewriters are having a renaissance in the digital age”

…Take a look inside this South Philadelphia shop called Philly Typewriter and you’ll see the renaissance of something many consider a relic of the past. And now it’s gotten a boost from a 21st century icon. Singer Taylor Swift using a vintage Royal 10 typewriter in the video Fortnight, the chart topping single off her latest album, the Tortured Poets Department….

Andrew Porter remembers:

I used to use a Royal portable that my father used when he was going to school in the 1930s. It came in a big case with a carrying handle. Used it for many years. 

Then my stepfather swiped an Underwood office machine from his office for me (he was the publisher, could get away with that) that I used for ALGOL and other stuff, until I bought my Selectric directly from IBM in 1968. They said I was the first person who’d ever bought one from them who didn’t work in an office. $105 down and $35 a month payment until it was paid off.

As I’ve posted before, when I got a computer, I had my Selectric serviced, then it went into the closet, and ultimately I gave it to Curt for his wife.

I think local doctors still use them, for filling out forms in triplicate.

My desk in 1974, exactly where I’m typing this now (and mailing labels: I remember them, too!):

(11) SECRETS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL BUGS. “The Oldest Termite Mound? 34,000 Years and Counting” — an unlocked article in the New York Times.

… Her appreciation for termites stems from a project that she recently oversaw in Namaqualand, a region of desert scrubland along the west coast of South Africa and into Namibia. There, some 27 percent of the landscape is covered with low, sandy mounds that were built by the southern harvester termite, Microhodotermes viator. Inside the mounds are vast labyrinths of chambers, tunnels and nests that extend up to 11 feet underground. The locals call them heuweltjies, which means “little hills” in Afrikaans.

Three years ago, Dr. Francis and her field research team set out to find why the groundwater along the Buffels River in Namaqualand was saline. “The groundwater salinity seemed to be specifically related to the location of these heuweltjies,” she said. The investigators reasoned that radiocarbon dating could pinpoint when the minerals stored in the termite mounds had seeped into the groundwater.

The investigators were surprised to find that the heuweltjies were far older than any active termite structures known to exist. As detailed in a paper that the researchers published this spring in the journal Science of the Total Environment, one of the three mounds selected for dating has been continually occupied by termite colonies for 34,000 years. It is more than 30,000 years older than the previous record-holder, a mound in Brazil built by a different termite species….

(12) GOING DEEP. “NASA’s laser comms demo makes deep space record, completes first phase” at Phys.org.

…NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration broke yet another record for laser communications this summer by sending a laser signal from Earth to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft about 290 million miles (460 million kilometers) away. That’s the same distance between our planet and Mars when the two planets are farthest apart.

Soon after reaching that milestone on July 29, the technology demonstration concluded the first phase of its operations since launching aboard Psyche on Oct. 13, 2023….

(13) LET’S TREAD BOLDLY 2 — SPACE TRAVEL RADIATION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Going into space is fraught with dangers: you can get stuck in orbit (Marooned); have a critical computer glitch (2001); have your crew quarters destroyed (Dark Star); encounter a meteor shower (Pitch Black); have mental issues (Forbidden Planet); get left behind (The Martian), get a blocked toilet due to the Russian, potato-heavy diet (The Big Bang Theory); encounter rogue space junk (Gravity)… among much else.  Among the ‘much else’ are the radiation belts surrounding the Earth.  These are caused by the Earth’s magnetic field trapping solar wind positive and negative particles, accelerating them to the poles where they enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere to the visual delight of spectators. Associated risks include cancer, cataracts, degenerative diseases and tissue reactions which makes space travel far more hazardous than being at a convention after the bar has run dry. (Honest!) So, what to do?

Well, for the International Space Station there is little problem as its orbit is below the inner Van Allen belt.  But if you want to go anywhere more interesting, you have to go through the Van Allen belts.  Here the recent Artemis mission with the unmanned Orion capsule that went around the Moon (how I remember the run-up to Christmas with Apollo 8) took detailed measurements from various place inside the craft.

This research has just been published.  The Orion craft traversed both the lower (more proton rich) and higher (more electron rich) belts. They report on radiation measurements at differing shielding locations inside the vehicle, a fourfold difference in dose rates from differently located detectors was observed during proton-belt passes that are similar to large, reference solar-particle events encountered in interplanetary travel. Interplanetary cosmic-ray dose equivalent rates in Orion were as much as 60% lower than previous observations from the Apollo missions. Furthermore, a change in orientation of the spacecraft during the proton-belt transit resulted in a reduction of radiation dose rates of around 50%. These measurements validate the Orion for future crewed exploration and inform future human spaceflight mission design. What happens in the future will depend heavily on shielding, trajectory, the Solar cycle and severity of Solar particle events. The problem is that manned interplanetary missions have good reasons to prefer long missions in light vehicles. (Lighter vehicles and short missions use less fuel and short missions shorten exposure.) So radiation risks will remain a key challenge for human space exploration.

The primary research is George, S. P., et al (2024) “Space radiation measurements during the Artemis I lunar mission”. Nature, vol. 634, p48-52.

(14) GOING WITH THE FLOW. [Item by N.] This info comes a little late, but on closer inspection, this film has fantastical elements! Good, because it looks and sounds stunning. Set for a limited release in NY and LA on November 22 and a wide release in the rest of the US on December 6. (Those in France get it earlier on October 30). “’Flow,’ An Edge-Of-Your-Seat Survival Film, Gets U.S. Trailer, Release Date” at Cartoon Brew.

A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. From the boundless imagination of the award-winning Gints Zilbalodis (Away) comes a thrilling animated spectacle as well as a profound meditation on the fragility of the environment and the spirit of friendship and community. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses and a treasure for the heart.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Hmm. Seems genre adjacent. Or perhaps adjacent to genre adjacent: Ryan George’s “How Psychics Argue”.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/20/24 It’s Not A Cookbook, It’s A Pixel Scroll!

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(1) BIG DEAL. Marie Vibbert counsels writers about “Playtesting Card Games” at the SFWA Blog. One bit of advice will sound very familiar.

Immolate Your Darlings

You’ve perhaps heard writers talk about “Murdering their darlings,” which refers to the agony of having to cut a beautiful sentence, scene, or even a sub-plot that you love but doesn’t serve the overall arc of the story. I once twisted five drafts of a novel around a scene I absolutely adored before I realized that it had to go. Ow, it hurt.

The same thing happens in games. There might be a mechanic, a special card, an illustration, a subtle joke…and you love it, but it has to go. It’s worse when you have this nice physical card you made for the mock-up.

Even your game’s theme, which might seem the most essential part of it, must be disposable. On the off chance your game is picked up by a publisher, one of the most common things they want to do is re-theme it, probably for some big franchise. (In case you thought someone set out to create the Go Bots 50th Anniversary Card Game.)

You cannot grow attached before completion. The game is in flux. Consider every part expendable in service to the greater whole….

(2) SFF ART UP FOR AUCTION. [Item by Sandra Miesel.] I’ve put some of my sf collection up for sale at RipleyAuctions.com The live auction is October 5 and registration is free. My pieces include: the Kelly Freas’  DAW cover painting for Soldier, Ask Not by Gordon R. Dickson and its preliminary sketch, Kelly’s Analog interior illustration for “The Second Kind of Loneliness” by George R.R. Martin; Kelly’s Laser Books sketch for The Extraterritorial by John Morrissey; Richard Powers’ cover painting for Far Out by Damon Knight; John Schoenherr’s Analog interior illustrations for “And He Fell into a Dark Hole” by Jerry Pournelle, “The Demon Breed” by James Schmitz, “Spaceman” by Murray Leinster, and the ultimate prize: Schoenherr’s scratchboard Analog illustration for the very first installment of “Dune World”. Sandra Miesel at Ripleyauctions.com.

Frank Kelly Freas, American (1922 – 2005), Soldier, Ask Not book cover

(3) REMEMBERING THE FAHRENHEIT FIFTIES. Heritage Auctions has an interesting item on the block – a volume of Fahrenheit 451 inscribed by Bradbury to Hugh Hefner.

40th Anniversary Edition. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR TO HUGH HEFNER: “For Hef! Who published this when almost everyone else was afraid! With gratitude! Ray Bradbury. Nov. 3, ’93. 40 years later!”

Fahrenheit 451 was first published by Ballentine Books, Inc., in 1953, as a revision and expansion of his fifty-six-page novella, “The Fireman.” The novel was sold to Hugh Hefner’s new magazine, Playboy, which published the story in three installments in its fourth, fifth, and sixth issues (March 1954 to May 1954). 

(4) SPOTLIGHT ON MAD MAGAZINE. [Item by Steven French.] If you happen to be in Massachusetts over the next month, check out “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine,” an exhibition running until October 27 at the Norman Rockwell Museum. 

It covers the full 72-year history of Mad, highlighted by the stretch from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, when the magazine pilloried mass culture—television, movies, politics and more—in a way that introduced satire to kids raised on tamer entertainment like “Leave It to Beaver.”

The Smithsonian article on it is an interesting read in its own right!  “The Madcap History of Mad Magazine Will Unleash Your Inner Class Clown”.

… Mad magazine had its beginnings in 1947, when publisher Maxwell Gaines’ death in an upstate New York boating accident left his Educational Comics company to his 25-year-old son, William Gaines. Under Maxwell, the comics featured stories of science, animals, history and Picture Stories From the Bible. When William took over, he quickly shifted gears to “Entertaining Comics” (EC for short) and started publishing romance, westerns, science fiction, war and horror stories, most notably Tales From the Crypt. Gaines the younger had more than laughs and frights on his mind, however; woven into EC Comics were progressive ideals around racial equality, pacifism, environmentalism and the existential nuclear-age dread rarely spoken of in the placid, conformist 1950s.

In 1952, a comic book poking fun at other comic books debuted, but it would take four issues for Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD to take off. That fourth one featured the parody “Superduperman,” a blueprint for making hay of pop culture and politics. Amid a panic over youth corruption, inspired in part by EC’s other publications, editor Harvey Kurtzman convinced Gaines to retool Mad from a comic book into a magazine, and in July 1955 (Issue No. 24), a future mockery machine emerged….

(5) LITIGATION IS IN THE CARDS. “Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX, alleges ‘invasion’ of land on US/Mexico border” – Ars Technica has the story.

Cards Against Humanity sued SpaceX yesterday, alleging that Elon Musk’s firm illegally took over a plot of land on the US/Mexico border that the party-game company bought in 2017 in an attempt to stymie then-President Trump’s attempt to build a wall.

“As part of CAH’s 2017 holiday campaign, while Donald Trump was President, CAH created a supporter-funded campaign to take a stand against the building of a Border Wall,” said the lawsuit filed in Cameron County District Court in Texas. Cards Against Humanity says it received $15 donations from 150,000 people and used part of that money to buy “a plot of vacant land in Cameron County based upon CAH’s promise to ‘make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall.'”

Cards Against Humanity says it mowed the land “and maintained it in its natural state, marking the edge of the lot with a fence and a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” But instead of Trump taking over the land, Cards Against Humanity says the parcel was “interfered with and invaded” by Musk’s space company. The lawsuit includes pictures that, according to Cards Against Humanity, show the land when it was first purchased and after SpaceX construction equipment and materials were placed on the land….

…Cards Against Humanity also set up a website to publicize its lawsuit. “We have terrible news,” the website says. “Seven years ago, 150,000 people paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump’s very stupid wall. Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire—Elon Musk—snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked that land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.”

The website claims that SpaceX made a “lowball offer” to buy the land after Cards Against Humanity complained….

(6) WRITER BEWARE. “Wolves in Authors’ Clothing: Beware Social Media Marketing Scams” says Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware.

For authors, one of the (these days, increasingly few) positives of social media is connecting with other authors. Especially if no one else in your family/social circle is involved in the arts (raises hand), it’s great to be able to find a community where you can discuss craft, business, the ups and downs of querying, the challenges of self-publishing–both sharing your own experiences and learning from others’.

But…what if that friendly author who just DM’d you on one of your social media accounts isn’t actually a writer, but someone who wants to sell you worthless “marketing” services?

… Oooh, conversion enhancement campaign! That’s some sexy jargon right there.

The name on the marketer’s Instagram account (which no longer exists) was Ashley Wallace of Ashley Digitals. You can see the author’s conversation with her–including an unconvincing excuse for why her website URL doesn’t work, an elaborate sales pitch, and false claims about clients….

(7) FOUR-PAGE GOTHAM GAZETTE INSERT IN THURSDAY NYT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Our household gets the New York Times in the classic physical flattened-dead-tree version; I was bemused to discover the Thursday, September 19 edition included a four-page insert, the Gotham Gazette.

As part of HBO/MAX’s promotion of its new Penguin live-action show, which has just started. I/we haven’t yet tried it (but we just finished, and enjoyed, the first two episodes of Agatha All Along, over on Disney+, which, perhaps-arguably, is bat-adjacent via Walt’s round-eared mascot.)

Here’s some article links — note, the first link has readable images of the four-page insert. Wak, wak, wak.

“The Penguin: Gotham Gazette Offers Interesting Post-The Batman Details” at Bleeding Cool.  This article has readable images of full four online pages. The others below have some partial shots.

“How the New York Times became the Gotham Gazette for a day” at Fast Company. Including “But if you pass through Grand Central Station today, or Little Italy, or Times Square, you’ll see old-school newspaper hawkers schlepping copies of the Gotham Gazette”  [also, according to the ComicBook.com article listed below, at Times Square, Penn Station]

“The Penguin Takeover Heads to New York City to Celebrate Premiere” at Comicbook.com. This article includes deets on the “Penguin take-over” events in NYC and elsewhere:

HBO and Max are gearing up for the premiere of The Penguin with a takeover of the Big Apple. The spinoff of The Batman brings Colin Farrell back as Oz Cobb, aka the titular Penguin and foe of the Dark Knight. The Penguin has started a global campaign leading to the premiere on Thursday, September 19th, with one of its first stops at San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. The Penguin Takeover will involve exclusive merchandise trucks all across New York City, along with the lighting of iconic landmarks and collaboration with local businesses using Penguin’s signature plum purple hue….

Max is continuing The Penguin’s presence internationally following the Iceberg Lounge’s success in San Diego. The Penguin will bring the iconic Iceberg Lounge to select locations in France, Spain, The Netherlands, and Thailand, along with other local promotions in the APAC, EMEA, and LATAM regions. Fans might also spot The Penguin’s purple Maserati in the streets of São Paulo, Paris, and other major cities.

The Penguin Takeover will feature the Feast of San Gennaro, the New York Latino Film Festival Block Party, early fan screenings at Alamo Drafthouse, and specialty menu items at participating businesses as Gotham comes to life. The takeover will extend beyond New York, with The Penguin’s iconic Iceberg Lounge and other experiences in select cities worldwide.

Also coverage at MSN.com: “The Penguin makes The Gotham Gazette real for one day only as the Max series takes over The New York Times to explain everything that’s happened since The Batman”.

And Looper: “HBO’s Penguin Confirms Where Batman Is (Or Isn’t)”.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)

Forty-five years ago on this evening, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century first aired on NBC.

It is of course based on characters created by Philip Francis Nowlan. It started out as a comic strip that first appeared in daily U.S. newspapers on January 7, 1929, subsequently appearing in Sunday and international newspapers, then there were books, a radio adaption, comic books, a serial film. You get the idea. 

So after all of that came this series. It was developed by Glen Larson who created Battlestar Galactica and Leslie Stevens who created Outer Limits.  

It lasted but two seasons in total comprising thirty-seven episodes. A feature-length pilot episode for the series was released as a theatrical film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It did spectacularly well at the box office as it cost just three and a half million and made eighteen point seven more than that!  

The film was narrated as was the first season by William Conrad who had found stardom as a detective in the two series, Cannon and Nero Wolfe. Yes, he played Wolfe though briefly as it lasted but fourteen episodes. Who here saw him as Wolfe? 

The only cast that counts was Gil Gerard as Captain William “Buck” Rogers and Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering.  Oh, and Mel Blanc in the first season voicing Twiki. Felix Silva would voice him in the second season. Other cast members I’ll note are Tim O’Connor as Dr. Elias Huer, Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala and Henry Silva as Kane. Andrew Thom Christopher as Hawk, a bird man with the most comical feather for hair I’ve ever seen! 

Later interviews with Gerard and Gray as well as the directors say that neither got along with the other as they thought each was getting more lines and better stories. Oh well. 

Buster Crabbe who played Buck Rogers in the original thirties Buck Roger’s film serial would play Brigadier Gordon in an episode here. Yes, a nod to his other film series. 

The casting director had a fondness for one of our favorite series. Many of the actors who had played villains in the Batman series guest-starred here such as Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowall, Julie Newmar and Cesar Romero. 

It’s worth noting that the series re-used most of the props, star fighters, stages, some of the effects film and even costumes from Battlestar Galactica. The network obviously being keen on keeping costs down at all costs.

Ratings were fine for the first season, but dropped drastically in the second season and cancellation was decided by mid-season. 

It has streamed on Amazon and on Peacock, not surprisingly on the latter as that’s owned by NBC, and Prime, but not is not currently streaming anywhere. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SQUID GAME RETURNS. “’Squid Game’ Season 2 Trailer: New Players, New Game” – Variety introduces the trailer.

“Squid Game” is back and Netflix has released the first teaser for its hotly anticipated second season. The footage comes as the final reveal of the streamer’s annual Geeked Week fan event.  

The teaser picks things off right after Season 1’s finale, when Seong Gi-hun abandoned his plans to go to the U.S. and instead started a daring chase with a newfound motive. In the short teaser, he appears back in his 456 uniform amid a crowd of new contestants. Another massive cash prize awaits them, with a quick look at the games to come.

The globally successful Korean series follows financially struggling individuals competing in deadly games for a chance to win a life-changing prize, revealing the dark depths of human desperation and resilience…

(11) THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. “Scientists discover weird new kind of shape found in nature” reports Boing Boing.

Mathematicians have identified a new class of shapes that “tile space without using sharp corners.”

From bathroom floors to siding on buildings, it’s common to cover areas without gaps by arranging shapes with straight edges and flat surfaces. In the natural world though, those kinds of shapes are rare. Patterns like those in muscle tissue are created with flowing curves, rounded surfaces, and almost no sharp angles. But the mathematics of these “soft shapes” have been a mystery until now.

“Nature not only abhors a vacuum, she also seems to abhor sharp corners,” says University of Oxford mathematician Alain Goriely who, with colleagues from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, discovered the new shape class called “soft cells.”

From Oxford University:

In 2D, these soft cells have curved boundaries with only two corners. Such tiling patterns are found, among others, in muscle cells, zebra stripes, the shapes of river islands, in the layers of onion bulbs, and even in architectural design.

In 3D, these soft cells become more complex and interesting. The team first established that, in 3D, soft cells have no corners at all. Then, starting with conventional 3D tiling systems such as the cubic grid, the team showed that they can be softened by allowing the edges to bend whilst minimising the number of sharp corners in this process. Through doing this, they found entire new classes of soft cells with different tiling properties.

Professor Gábor Domokos said: ‘We found that architects – including Zaha Hadid – have constructed these kinds of shapes intuitively whenever they wanted to avoid corners.

(12) TRANSCENDENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of transcendence or subliming (the term used in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels) is a minor, but recurring SF trope by which a civilization evolves to a point when they leave our space-time continuum for a ‘higher’ plane of existence.  I think I first came across this half a century ago reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Anyway, Isaac Arthur over at Isaac Arthur Science Futurism this week takes a bit of a dive into this concept…

Many seek a path to enlightenment through study and meditation, but what does science tell us about transcendence? And could entire civilizations seek to leave this reality behind?

(13) FROM THE CRYPT, ER, ARCHIVE. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special of 1976 has a highly eclectic cast – like Margaret Hamilton and Betty White vamping together!

Bringing Witchypoo from HR Pufnstuf and Wizard of Oz’s wicked Witch of the West together but only Paul Lynde could give you the band KISS and Donny and Marie Osmond in the same show.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/11/24 I’ve Clicked To Scroll It Stealthily In Narnia

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(0) File 770 was crashed most of the afternoon. Customer Service said high bot traffic is to blame. That may be fixed now. Let me quote Alan Arkin to whoever is sending these bots my way: “Argo fuck yourself!”

(1) LIFE IN PANDEMIC TIMES. “Station Eleven 10th anniversary: Emily St. John Mandel on what she’d change” at Slate. “Emily St. John Mandel on her eerily prescient sci-fi classic—and what she’d change about it now.”

You’re in a unique position in that you wrote a pandemic book in 2014, then had the TV adaptation come out in 2021. You experienced people’s responses to art about pandemics before COVID, during COVID, and now. I’m curious what the differences may have been.

I remember absorbing a lot of comments online to the effect of How did you predict this? Which I absolutely did not. There was always going to be another pandemic. What was interesting to see was the differences in the way between how I imagined a pandemic would be and how it actually is. In the Station Eleven pandemic, the mortality rate is insane. It’s like 99 percent or something. I didn’t have to go that far. It turns out society gets extremely disrupted extremely quickly, with vastly lower numbers than that.

Something I hadn’t anticipated was the in-between state of pandemics. For all my research into pandemics, I’d kind of thought of a pandemic as a binary state. You’re either in a pandemic or you’re not in a pandemic. But I remain fascinated by the month of February 2020 in New York City—we knew it was coming, but we didn’t believe it. It’s this uneasy territory wherein it’s very hard to make informed, reasonable decisions around risk management when you’re kind of in a pandemic and kind of not. We’re kind of there again now. Obviously, it’s much better than it was, but I do a lot of events where typically people will be unmasked at this point, but often there are a few people in the audience wearing a mask, and that is absolutely rational, and also being unmasked is rational at this point. That was something I just didn’t expect.

One thing that doesn’t ring true to me about the book anymore isn’t necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can’t even imagine that happening.

(2) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. Two of the five National Book Award longlists were announced yesterday reports Publishers Weekly, for Translated Literature and Young People’s Literature. The shortlists come out October 1. The winners will be announced during an awards ceremony in New York City on November 20.

The works of genre interest in the 10-book longlists are named below.

Translated Literature

  • The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless)
  • Woodworm by Layla Martínez, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott (Two Lines)
  • Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Scribner)

Young People’s Literature

  • The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)

(4) WILL GAIMAN STEP BACK FROM GOOD OMENS? According to Deadline: “’Good Omens’: Neil Gaiman Offers To Step Back From Season 3”.

Neil Gaiman is understood to have offered to step back from the third and final season of Prime Video‘s fantasy drama Good Omens.

Deadline revealed on Monday that pre-production had paused on the BBC Studios-produced show in the wake of allegations made by four women against Gaiman, which he denies. This came after Disney’s planned feature adaptation of Gaiman’s 2008 YA title The Graveyard Book also was put on pause.

Now, we understand that Gaiman has made an offer to Amazon and producers to take a back seat on the latest season so that it can continue amid crisis talks over the Terry Pratchett adaptation’s future. Deadline understands Gaiman’s offer is not an admission of wrongdoing following a podcast from Tortoise Media that chronicled accounts of two women, with whom he was in consensual relationships, who accused him of sexual assault. Another two have since come forward. Gaiman’s position is that he denies the allegations and is said to be disturbed by them. His rep did not respond to a request for comment….

(5) WOT’S THAT? TV Guide says “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Has an Accent Problem”.

Tom Bombadil made his The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debut this week, played by character actor Rory Kinnear in a voluminous beard and wig. Known for his role in The Fellowship of the Ring (notably cut from the Peter Jackson movie), Bombadil is enigmatic yet silly; a mythic figure who hints at ancient wisdom while living out his days as a jovial, eccentric hermit. And like his harfoot neighbors, Rory Kinnear’s version speaks with a strong regional accent, playing into a recurring problem throughout the show.

Tolkien’s linguistic worldbuilding is famously sophisticated, and The Rings of Power puts a lot of work into its use of constructed languages like Quenya. Unfortunately its English-language choices are nowhere near as thoughtful, embracing clumsy stereotypes from around the British Isles. The most uncomfortable example is the nomadic harfoot community in Season 1; they’re the only characters who speak with Irish accents.

Writing in The Irish Times, critic Ed Powers described these “twee and guileless” harfoots as “a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis.” He made the convincing argument that they reflect offensive images of Irish culture as “pre-industrial and childlike.” Unfortunately the show’s accent problems don’t stop there.

Overseen by American showrunners, the accent choices in The Rings of Power are deeply rooted in unexamined classism and regional stereotypes.….

(6) SUZANNE PALMER FUNDRAISER. “Fundraiser for Suzanne Palmer by Meguey Baker : Changing Suzanne’s Story: Emergency Funds for a Writer” at GoFundMe.

Let me tell you about Suzanne. She’s a writer, a world-builder, and a dear friend of mine over the past three decades. We need art to live. We need stories and storytellers. We need Suzanne. It’s easy to think that artists just make art, but they also have lives, and bills, and accidents that are terrible, or hilarious, or both, depending on the telling.

So when she told me the story about her kid stepping through the ceiling, plaster raining down on their sister’s bedroom below, it was with the smile of a writer who sees the humor in the misadventure. I knew it would become a family legend. But when she told me about being crushingly tight on funds due to payment for her work being months late, I knew that was no laughing matter.

I’m asking us all to step up….

(7) ANALYZING CONCORD’S FAILURE. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s the latest gaming news from the Guardian: “Sony’s big-budget hero shooter Concord failed spectacularly – here’s where it went wrong”.

As is now traditional, right after I’d filed last week’s Pushing Buttons, huge gaming news broke: Sony was pulling its hero shooter Concord from sale just two weeks after launch – because nobody was playing it. Everyone who bought it on PlayStation 5 and PC was refunded, and the future of the game is now unclear.

This is a brutal sequence of events. Sony bought the makers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, in 2023. Concord had been in development for eight years, and it was an expensive game, with bespoke cinematics and a long-term plan that would have cost $100m or more to develop. In its two weeks on the market, it sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to estimates. This is a shocker, even compared with the year’s other bad news for developers and studios.

Much has been written about why Concord flopped so spectacularly. As Keith Stuart pointed out in his review of the game, it launched into a crowded genre, the hero shooter, in which many players already have their preferred game (Overwatch, Valorant or Apex Legends, to name three). Sony’s marketing of the game also seemed to fail, in that almost nobody knew about Concord before it arrived. (I barely knew about it, and it’s my job to know these things.) Criticisms, too, were levelled at its characters and design: it was generic and didn’t have any particularly interesting gameplay ideas.

The failure of Concord is also symbolic of the existential-level problems in modern game development: they are so expensive to create, and they take so long that a game can miss its moment years before it is released. All this makes publishers risk-averse, but if you’re simply trying to recreate what’s popular, it’ll be out of date by the time it’s finished….

(8) DID DISNEY MUFF THE MOFF? “Lucasfilm Sued for Recreating Grand Moff Tarkin Actor Peter Cushing’s Image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at IGN.

Peter Cushing

Disney subsidiary Lucasfilm is being sued over its recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin actor Peter Cushing’s image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

As reported by The Times, a friend of Cushing has alleged Disney did not have permission to recreate the actor’s image with special effects for Rogue One. Disney tried and failed to have the case dismissed for a second time on September 9, 2024.

The plaintiff Kevin Francis is suing Lucasfilm through his film company Tyburn Film Productions and also brought claims against Rogue One producer Lunak Heavy Industries, the late executors of Cushing’s estate, and Cushing’s agency Associated International Management.

Francis claimed he must give authorization for any recreation of Cushing’s image following an agreement made between him and the actor in 1993, one year before his death at age 81.

Lucasfilm claimed it didn’t think it needed permission to recreate Cushing’s image due to his original contract for Star Wars (the 1977 film which became Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope) and the nature of the special effects. It also paid around $37,000 to Cushing’s estate after being contacted by his agent about the recreation.

On September 9, deputy High court judge Tom Mitcheson dismissed the appeal, stating the case should go to trial. “I am also not persuaded that the case is unarguable to the standard required to give summary judgment or to strike it out,” he added. “In an area of developing law it is very difficult to decide where the boundaries might lie in the absence of a full factual enquiry.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born September 11, 1952 – Sharon Lee.

By Lis Carey: She is best known as one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, creators of the popular and very enjoyable Liaden Universe series of novels and stories. Her solo works include two Maine-based mysteries, a fantasy series set in the fictional Maine town of Archer’s Beach, and several dozen short stories, both sf and fantasy.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in 2017.

It may interest some to know that her “day jobs” over the years have included (in addition to a lot of secretarial work) advertising copy writer, call-in talk host, nightside news copy editor, freelance reporter, photographer, book reviewer, and deliverer of tractor trailers.

 Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, she met fellow beginning new writer Steve Miller. They married in 1980, around the time Sharon made her first professional sale, “A Matter of Ceremony,” to Amazing Stories.

 In 1988, Sharon and Steve moved to Winslow, Maine, and lived there until 2018, when they moved “into town,” to Waterville, on the other side of the Kennebec River. Throughout their writing lives, they’d been carefully supervised by a succession of cats, and this remains true for Sharon. She currently has three Maine Coon cats, including veteran editorial cats Trooper and Firefly, and the new apprentice, Rook.

Sharon is working on the next Liaden book, Diviner’s Bow. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series, but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) KISSES FROM SPACE. [Item by lance oszko.] Orbital Author Reading gives new meaning to Book Launch. “Kisses from Space”. “Kisses from Space – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital”.

Polaris Dawn Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon invites you to embark on a celestial journey as she reads Kisses from Space, a children’s book published by Random House. Inspired by the resilient spirit of the young patients at St. Jude, Anna’s heartwarming tale comes to life by bridging the gap between the cosmos and our earthly hearts. These courageous children, in turn, have lent their creativity to the book by crafting artwork inspired by its whimsical illustrations. As you immerse yourself in the magic of Kisses From Space, know that every page turned contributes to a noble cause: supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

(12) WESTEROS: EVERYTHING MUST GO. Heritage Auctions is running “HBO® Original Game of Thrones The Auction”, an huge event offering over 2,000 costumes, weapons, props, and set decorations, from October 10-12. For example:

…Among the essential pieces in this auction, my favorite is Oathkeeper, a Valyrian steel sword. Although initially forged for Jaime Lannister (through Tywin Lannister) from Eddard Stark’s legendary sword “Ice,” it was later gifted to Brienne by Jaime with the poignant directive, “It was reforged from Ned Stark’s sword. You’ll use it to defend Ned Stark’s daughter.” Oathkeeper thus became a symbol of Brienne’s journey from an underestimated sole female heir, whose worth was once seen as limited to marriage, to her rise as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard….

(13) DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO BABYLON-I-AY? Live Science celebrates a “Babylonian Map of the World: The oldest known map of the ancient world”.

…This tablet, which depicts how Babylonians perceived the world thousands of years ago, is peppered with details that offer insight into an earlier time. For example, the ancient world is shown as a singular disc, which is encircled by a ring of water called the Bitter River. At the world’s center sits the Euphrates River and the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon. Labels written in cuneiform, an ancient text, note each location on the map, according to The British Museum. …

(14) CHINA’S MARS PLANS. “China aims for historic Mars mission ‘around 2028’ as it vies for space power” reports CNN.

China’s historic attempt to bring samples from Mars to Earth could launch as soon as 2028, two years earlier than previously stated, according to a senior mission official.

The country’s Tianwen-3 mission would carry out two launches “around 2028” to retrieve the Martian samples, chief mission designer Liu Jizhong said at a deep-space exploration event in eastern China’s Anhui province last week.

The projected mission launch is more ambitious than a 2030 target announced by space officials earlier this year, though the timeline has fluctuated in recent years. A 2028 target appears to return to a launch plan described in 2022 by a senior scientist involved with the Tianwen program – a mission profile that would see samples returned to Earth by 2031.

The latest remarks follow China’s landmark success retrieving the first samples from the far side of the moon in June.

It also comes as an effort by NASA and the European Space Agency to retrieve Mars samples remains under assessment amid concerns over budget, complexity and risk. The US space agency, which first landed on Mars decades ago, said it is evaluating faster and more affordable plans to allow for a speedier result than one that would have returned samples in 2040….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Once upon a time on Letterman: “James Earl Jones presents things that only sound cool when he says them.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, lance oszko, Lise Andreasen, Andrew (not Werdna), SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 9/9/24 A Strange Pixel. The Only Winning Move Is Not To Scroll

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(1) F&SF GOES QUARTERLY. Jason Sanford relayed this announcement from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The summer 2024 issue of F&SF is out. The issue contains a note from publisher Gordon Van Gelder that reads, "Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue and to switch to a quarterly schedule." 1/2 weightlessbooks.com/the-magazine…

— Jason Sanford (@jasonsanford.bsky.social) 2024-09-09T18:43:11.828Z

The note continues, "We apologize to our disappointed readers and assure subscribers that no one will be shorted any issues. Thank you for bearing with us during this rough stretch." 2/2

— Jason Sanford (@jasonsanford.bsky.social) 2024-09-09T18:43:49.125Z

(2) WE INTERRUPT OUR PROGRAM. Remember the other day when we reported that Good Omens 3 was moving forward? Well, that’s changed: “’Good Omens’: Production Paused On Amazon Drama From Neil Gaiman” reports Deadline.

Production has been paused on the third and final season of fantasy drama Good Omens, the Neil Gaiman drama for Amazon that’s shooting in Scotland.

Deadline is hearing there are discussions about possible production changes. A spokesperson would not comment.

News about the future of Good Omen comes less than a week after Disney put a planned feature adaptation of Gaiman’s 2008 YA title The Graveyard Book on pause amid a series of sexual assault allegations against the award-winning author. (Insiders said multiple factors went into the decision). Gaiman has denied the allegations and said he was “disturbed” by them….

(3) WORLDCON AT THE MOVIES. There will be a Seattle Worldcon 2025 Film Festival – FilmFreeway and full details are on the Film Freeway site.

Seattle Worldcon 2025 is proud to dedicate a room for all five days of the convention exclusively for showcasing speculative fiction films. This room will be the home of the Seattle Worldcon 2025 Film Festival.

If you’re a cinephile, a filmmaker, or just a lover of speculative fiction, make sure to spend some of your time at the Worldcon in the festival room. The festival promises to be an exhilarating celebration of creativity, diversity, and the magic of the silver screen.

The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Film Festival is not your run-of-the-mill film event. It’s a carefully curated showcase of independent films that fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction. Whether you’re into mind-bending science fiction, epic fantasy, or spine-tingling horror, this festival has something for everyone. And the best part? It’s a judged festival, so you’ll be treated to the cream of the crop—films that push boundaries, challenge conventions, and transport you to otherworldly realms.

Calling All Filmmakers
Are you a filmmaker with a passion for speculative storytelling? This is your chance to shine! The submission window for the Seattle Worldcon 2025 Film Festival opens on September 1, 2024 and closes on March 31, 2025. We encourage filmmakers from all backgrounds to submit their works. And here’s the icing on the cake: if you’re a BIPOC or a woman director, the submission fee is waived. So, dust off that camera, polish your script, and get ready to share your vision with the world. For more information on submitting films, please see the Seattle Worldcon 2025 Film Festival webpage on FilmFreeway.

(4) CHANGING TIMES. Joe of Compelling Science Fiction is signal-boosting Rich Larson’s new collection The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches, which comes out tomorrow with a mix of new and reprint short stories.

For those of your who have never read Rich Larson, here’s the short version of what you need to know: he writes crisp, vivid scenes exploring messy human behavior in mostly near future SF contexts. His work often digs into the darker corners of technological advancement, examining how innovations might amplify or twist our existing flaws and desires. He also writes short, and fortunately for all of us, he writes a LOT.

Instead of belaboring how great his short fiction is, I want to tell you about the first time I met him in person. I was in the audience at a Worldcon panel (the topic of which I don’t remember). One of the panelists was a classic “old dude who doesn’t want the world to change” and he started editorializing about people clutching pearls ruining science fiction and fantasy.

The place devolved into mild pandemonium, with folks in the back yelling at the panelists, standard culture war stuff.

This was many years ago so I don’t remember the exact moment, but I had given a tshirt to Rich. He proceeded to take his shirt off and put mine on, and everyone was so incensed that nobody even noticed him shirtless in the auditorium.

That’s one of my favorite Worldcon memories, and is a Rich Larson signature: injecting humor into serious situations.

(5) DEEP PERSPECTIVE. At Reddit’s r/Fantasy forum, Janny Wurts chimed in and gave her informed perspective on the topic at hand, which was about changes in SFF book cover design trends over the past couple of decades.  “WTF happened to book cover art?”

When I started painting cover art (and when my husband did) – the USA did full range portrait or figure style art. The UK tended to do landscapes – all painted. Digital art did not exist then.

The reasons given for this difference was market…UK, where life was more crowded, they claimed readers wanted to feel the other worldliness as an open landscape maybe with a castle or tiny figure.

The USA readers wanted to see character based.

Then one editor (Jane Johnson) shifted the metric – wanting to put Fantasy into a more ‘adult’ look – since many readers (she said) were tearing off the covers so that others wouldn’t see them reading in the genre…so she struck off in a new direction to make the books ‘appeal’ to a more adult audience, since so many books were not for younger readers anyway.

Then came digital art…and one publisher in the USA threw everything upside down…suddenly they realized they did not have to PAY for an artist at all. They could hire a design firm to do a simple cover design mostly based on typography – and use in house people doing photoshop (and therefore saving anywhere from 3000/7000 bucks per cover) to mere hundreds….

(6) POSTIVELY BEASTLY. Camestros Felapton shares “Timothy’s Bestiary of Mythical Creatures of Wonder” – probably so-called because you’ll wonder how Tim thought them up.

(7) BAEN CONTEST GETS NEW DIRECTOR. C. Stuart Hardwick told Facebook readers he has been selected as Contest Director for the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, taking over for William Ledbetter after 18 years. Hardwick said:

In this competition, Bill and Toni Weisskopf have created something of real and lasting value to the industry, and I’m honored and excited to have a part in carrying on its legacy.

Contest opens for submissions on October 1, 2024 at 12:01am EDT.

Details at https://www.baen.com/contest-jbmssa

(8) KEEPING THE ‘Z’ IN FOLIO. If you’ve ever wanted an artisanal edition of Children of Dune (a snip at £80!) then this is for you: “TikTok meets Tolkien: how the Folio Society attracted gen Z readers” in the Guardian.

Founded in 1947, the Folio Society was once a membership club known for publishing classic tomes and history books, with a customer base of predominantly “old white men”, according to its boss.

Now, however, more than half the people who buy its books are aged between 25 and 44, and it is selling more sci-fi and fantasy titles, boosted by BookTok and growing gen Z interest in “artisanal” editions.

The publisher, which produces illustrated editions with elaborate covers, has seen sales soar 55% since 2017-18.

Joanna Reynolds, chief executive since 2016, said: “We’ve completely changed the sort of books that we sell. We developed fantasy, sci-fi and more children’s. Particularly the fantasy and sci-fi have made a massive difference to us. Game of Thrones was literally a gamechanger … It made so much money for us.”

Reynolds recalled that, when she joined, “the business was in freefall by every metric. It was losing money, losing customers. It was in a mess.”

She ditched the membership model, opened the company to new audiences and started asking them what they wanted.

One of the answers was more sci-fi and fantasy. The genres are a growing market in UK publishing, achieving a record year for sales in 2023. In the past year, the Folio Society’s three bestselling titles across all age groups are Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, Dune by Frank Herbert and Jurassic Parkby Michael Crichton.

Last week, the society published Children of Dune, the third in Herbert’s series, and sold more than 1,000 copies of the £80 book in 24 hours. Younger audiences buy more Tolkien and Game of Thrones, while older readers want James Bond novels and classics such as The Wind in the Willows and Rebecca.

(9) JAMES EARL JONES (1931-2024). Actor James Earl Jones died at home in New York state on September 9 at the age of 93. Deadline’s tribute, “James Earl Jones Dead: Darth Vader Voice, ‘Field Of Dreams’ Star, EGOT Winner”, noted these career highlights:

…Among his more than 80 film credits, Jones’ other notable movies include as a B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War satire “Dr. Strangelove” (his feature film debut), as the first Black president of the United States in 1972’s “The Man,” as the fearsome villain in 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian,” as a reclusive author in 1989’s “Field of Dreams,” as a blind former baseball star in 1993’s “The Sandlot,” and as a minister living in apartheid South Africa in 1995’s “Cry, the Beloved Country.”…

He voiced Darth Vader in many Star Wars movies and innumerable live and animated TV productions and games. He also was Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian (1982), King Jaffe Joffer from a mythical African country in Coming to America (1988) and Coming 2 America (2021) and appeared in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986). He appeared as himself in a 2014 episode of The Big Bang Theory.

James Earl Jones in Dr. Strangelove

(10) ROBERT SIDAWAY (1942-2024). Actor and documentary-maker Robert Sidaway died August 16 reports the Guardian. Fans saw him in several Sixties genre productions, including Doctor Who:

…His television credits included … Out of the Unknown (1965) and The Avengers (1968). The second of his two roles in Doctor Who – as the cheery, affable and dashing Captain Turner in the Patrick Troughton adventure The Invasion (1968) – involved him going up in a helicopter, being an original member of Unit (the army outfit that would become a mainstay of the series), and announcing one of the series’ most enduring sequences – the Cybermen bursting from the sewers and marching in front of St Paul’s Cathedral….

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Close to Home shows a prehistoric practical joker in action.
  • Thatbaby apparently does not need to apologize to everyone.
  • Macanudo has a transcription of an early critic.
  • Rubes is on hand for the last sign.

(12) HISTORIC COMPUTER ARTIFACTS. Christies auction of “Firsts: The History of Computing from the Paul G. Allen Collection” runs until September 12.

Firsts: The History of Computing from the Paul G. Allen Collection presents important milestones in the history of computing, some of which have been preserved in working order. Initially focused on recovering software for the DEC PDP-10, Paul Allen’s collection expanded to include hardware for many other systems as well. Iconic supercomputers such as the CDC-6500 and Cray 2 will be offered alongside early and influential microcomputers, like the Altair 8800 and Apple-1. These groundbreaking innovations were instrumental in shaping our modern world.

One of the items is this Tate’s Arithmometer (C & E Laytons, Circa 1892).

(13) NOT A BOMB. Denver fan Dana Cain’s musical The Android’s New Soul is praised by Front Row Center Denver.

I had the extreme pleasure of watching a dream come true tonight.  Dana Cain as a teenager in 1974 had an idea for a musical that incorporated all the late-night movies she watched that were the aftermath of atomic bomb tests creating giant mutant bugs.  She mixed in a hard rock beat like the groups she heard on the radio and MTV – ELO, Genesis, Kiss, Led Zeppelin.  Robotics were in their infant stages but endlessly fascinating in their possibilities.  Mix all this together with a beautiful medical technician as the lone survivor of a Big Bomb and you’ve got the outline for a rock musical that took fifty years to finish.  But that is still as fresh, creative, and relevant as when it burst from her imagination.  Her dream of seeing it come alive on a stage happened tonight at the appropriately named Bug Theatre. …

(14) IF YOU WANT TO DRIVE, GET SOME WHEELS. Idolator digs deep into the archives to bring us photos of “40 Of The Most Futuristic Concept Cars From The Past That Look Totally Bizarre Today”.

Automakers have often pushed the boundaries of creativity, resulting in concept cars that defied conventions and challenged the status quo. When these cars were first revealed, they dazzled everyone with their futuristic design and cutting-edge features… but now, they seem a bit strange and out of place compared to today’s standards.

However, despite all their eccentricities, these concepts have made a place in automotive history due to their quest for innovation. Let us have a look at some of the most futuristic concept cars from the past that look bizarre now…

Got to love this one:

Ford Nucleon (1958)

Back in the late 50s, it was believed that nuclear technology could be made small and cheap enough to replace gasoline. So, Ford came up with the bold idea to use it to power cars.

Unveiled in 1957, the Ford Nucleon featured a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle. The idea was to use uranium fission to power a steam engine, such as done in nuclear submarines. But it proved to be impractical, and the car could never advance beyond the concept stage.

(15) SAUSAGE GRINDHOUSE. “’The Franchise’: HBO Comedy Series Gets Premiere Date & First Trailer” says Deadline.

HBO has set Sunday, October 6 for the premiere of Sam Mendes and Armando Iannuccci’s comedy series The Franchise. The streamer also released the official teaser trailer which can be viewed above.

Created and executive produced by Jon Brown, The Franchise follows the crew of an unloved franchise movie fighting for their place in a savage and unruly cinematic universe. The comedy series shines a light on the secret chaos inside the world of superhero moviemaking, to ask the question — how exactly does the cinematic sausage get made? Because every f*ck-up has an origin story…. 

(16) A HOLE NEW TREK. Animation Magazine shares the link as “Paramount+ Debuts ‘Lower Decks’ Exclusive Clip for Star Trek Day”.

In celebration of Star Trek Day (Sept. 8), Paramount+ debuted an exclusive clip and the official key art for the fifth and final season of its hit animated comedy series Star Trek: Lower Decks. The new season will premiere on Paramount+ with two episodes on Thursday, October 24 in the U.S. and internationally. Following the premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode long season will drop every Thursday on the service leading up to the series finale on Thursday, December 19.

In Season 5 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes” — subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Junior Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford … if they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jennifer Hawthorne, N., Joe, Jason Sanford, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]