(1) BOMBS AWAY. Reactor’s Leah Schnelbach wanted to love the new Coppola movie, but it was too big a stretch: “Et Tu, Wow Platinum? Megalopolis’ Vision of the Future Offers Nothing New”. “Alas, I come to bury Cesar Catilina, not to praise him.”
…See there are people who will go with the full title Megalopolis: A Fable, and people who will not. I’ll go with it as far as it wants to go. There are people who will be on board with a movie where Adam Driver clambers out onto the top of the Chrysler Building and screams “TIME STOP!!!”—and time actually does stop. I am such a people, I eat that kind of shit right up. There are people who giggle with delight at a character named Wow Platinum and people who roll their eyes—I’m a giggler, baby.
But when the “fable” is so obvious Aesop could see all the twists and turns coming even though he was sight-impaired in life, and is currently dead, and when TIME STOPS but no one uses it to do anything interesting, and when the character Wow Platinum is a boring misogynist cliché—well, to be honest I become frustrated and sad that my willingness to go with a movie has been squandered…
And that’s just the beginning of Schnelbach’s highly entertaining review.
(2) LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS OFFICIALLY RELEASED TODAY. And Rolling Stone’s Jason Sheehan tells the masses why it matters as “Harlan Ellison’s ‘Last Dangerous Visions’ Hits Shelves 50 Years Later”.
LET ME TELL you a story about Harlan…
I talk to 10 people about Harlan Ellison and that’s how almost every conversation starts. If I’d talked to a hundred, it would’ve been the same. Because everyone has a Harlan Ellison story. Everyone who knew him, worked with him, argued with him, fought with him; everyone who was friends with him or claimed to be; everyone who was taught by him, learned from him, owes some portion of their career or life to him; everyone who loved him or hated him — they’ve all got a story about Harlan….
…It matters because this book was different. Special in a way that only lost albums or missed connections truly can be. Over 50 years, TLDV (as the cool cats call it) had been promised, anticipated, maligned, dreaded, forgotten, and mythologized by generations of fans. In Harlan’s lifetime, it swelled to over 600,000 words, got split into three volumes (none of which ever materialized), shrunk down to half its size, then a third. It is undoubtedly the most famous science fiction book never published. And it haunted Harlan — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. At his home in Sherman Oaks, California, it literally sat, in pieces, stacked on the railing outside his office until the dust started gathering dust.
But now, decades later, Harlan’s great, unfinished project is finally going to see the light of day. Set to hit shelves on Oct. 1, The Last Dangerous Visions comes with all the weight of decades of impossible expectation and the relief of a last debt finally paid. And its existence as a finished, bound, actually readable object is thanks largely to years of efforts by Harlan’s friend, partner in crime and the executor of his estate, J. Michael Straczynski….
(3) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. The 2024 shortlists have been released. The complete lists are at Publishers Weekly: “2024 National Book Award Shortlists Announced”. These are the works of genre interest:
FICTION
- Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda (Norton)
NONFICTION
- Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
TRANSLATED LITERATURE
- The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless)
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
- The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)
(4) FUTURE TENSE FICTION IS BACK. After a hiatus for much of 2024, Future Tense Fiction once again will be publishing an original speculative fiction story each month, accompanied by illustrations and a response essay from an expert in a related field. Their new publishing partner is Issues in Science and Technology, a publication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Arizona State University.
The story for September 2024 is “Parasocial,” by Monica Byrne.
“Do you have any idea how good holography has gotten in the last 10 years?”
The response essay by Vance Ricks, a researcher at Northeastern University, is “Move Fast and Fake Things”.
In a recent episode of the podcast Women at Warp, the hosts discussed their favorite episodes of the various Star Trek series in which the Holodeck—a fully immersive, interactive virtual reality interface—is central to the plot. On occasion, a Trek character uses a Holodeck to interact with holo-versions of their crewmates, turning their coworkers and friends into unwitting characters in a storyline that they didn’t help to write. Reflecting on the potential problems of that choice, one host observed that Starfleet’s human resources department “would have a binder that was the size of Crime and Punishment for the Holodeck.”
The characters in Monica Byrne’s “Parasocial” should have read whatever is in that binder….
The archive of Future Tense Fiction stories, running through January 2024, is still available on Slate. As they continue publishing new work with Issues, though, they will be resurfacing some favorites from the archives, with new illustrations, and posting them on the Issues site as well.
(5) FURY AND FAST. “Samuel L. Jackson was surprised by his Marvel contract’s length: ‘How long I gotta stay alive to make nine movies?'” – so he told Entertainment Weekly. “The Nick Fury actor joked he had no idea how fast the Marvel machine could grind through a nine-picture deal.”
…It’s true that Marvel moves through films faster than most studios would ever dare to try, but “two and a half years” is in reality more like 11. Jackson’s first appearance in the MCU as Nick Fury, the former spy, Avengers founder, and director of S.H.I.E.L.D., was in 2008’s Iron Man, and his ninth was in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home.
The character and the conditions at Marvel were clearly agreeable enough to Jackson, because he has starred in a tenth film (The Marvels), three TV series (Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., What If…?, and Secret Invasion), and three video games (Iron Man 2, Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, and Disney Infinity 3.0) as Fury….
(6) NOT YOUR AVERAGE WITCH. “Who Is Baba Yaga? The Slavic Witch Has a Complicated Origin Story” says Atlas Obscura.
Excerpted and adapted with permission from Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods, by Kris Spisak, published September 2024 by Hampton Roads Publishing. All rights reserved.
… The old woman, with her legs as skinny as bones, lives deep in the woods in a hut that stands on chicken feet. The structure turns and moves as it likes, but especially away from those who seek to find her. Baba Yaga’s broom isn’t for flying but for sweeping away her tracks. She is rumored to eat her victims for supper if she thinks they deserve it, but she also features in tales of reluctant kindness, of mentorship, and of fairy godmother-like grace. Isn’t it time we all knew her for who she is?
Folktale traditions can be difficult to explore, because how does one capture the whispers at bedtime or recollections told back and forth among family and friends, all of which have been built upon centuries and centuries of tellers? There is good; there is evil. Then there is Baba Yaga….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Mike Glyer.]
October 1, 1941 – Glen GoodKnight. (Died 2010.) I was often in the home of Glen Goodknight and his partner Ken Lauw when I was on Glen’s 1997 Mythcon committee. It was the ideal fan’s home, walls covered with bookcases, though unlike other fans Glen’s shelves were filled with editions of Lord of the Rings in every language it had appeared: collecting these was his passion.
Glen founded the Mythopoeic Society in 1967 in the aftermath of the legendary “Bilbo-Frodo Birthday Picnic” held in September of that year. He invited fans to his house on October 12 to form a continuing group. The 17 attendees became the Society’s first members. Within a few years they had planted 14 discussion groups around the country. In 1972 at the suggestion of Ed Meskys of the Tolkien Society of America the two organizations merged and overnight the Society grew to more than a thousand members.
Mythcon I in 1970 was organized to help knit the Society’s different groups together. Glen married Bonnie GoodKnight (later Callahan) at Mythcon II in 1971.
Glen edited 78 issues of the Society journal Mythlore between 1970 and 1998.
After staying away from Mythcons for several years, Glen returned to celebrate the Society’s 40th anniversary at Berkeley in 2007. Greeted with a standing ovation, he delivered an emotion-filled reminiscence of the Society’s early days.
GoodKnight died in 2010 and his collection is now at Azusa Pacific University.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Off the Mark is on the mark for genre.
- The Argyle Sweater answers a typical kid’s question, but not in a typical way.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast finds reality is elusive.
(9) FOR THOSE WHO MISSED THIS STORY THE FIRST TIME AROUND. “The real story on the Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman crossover with Star Wars that DC and Lucasfilm were cooking up (and why it didn’t happen)” at Popverse.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….Superman took on Darth Vader.
Well, not quite. However, this almost happened. Believe it or not, Star Wars was going to crossover with the DC Universe. In 2017 writer Kurt Busiek revealed that he and Alex Ross had once developed a DC/Star Wars pitch, but the project fell apart due to corporate disagreements regarding the money. It’s unknown when this project was first pitched, but it was presumably sometime before Disney acquired Lucasfilm. While details of the pitch are scant, some of Alex Ross’ concept art has been released, including the Superman vs Vader image that acts as a headline for this article.
Speaking to a crowd at Tampa Bay Comic Convention, former DC publisher Dan DiDio elaborated on why he canceled the project, which apparently was about more than money.
“I was brought a DC Universe and Star Wars crossover. There was fighting over what you could and couldn’t do, and who gets the better shot, and who gets the hero moment…it wasn’t worth it. Honestly, it just wasn’t worth it.”
While DiDio didn’t name Busiek, he noted that the creator was not happy.
“The creator who came onboard got really angry because he brokered the deal and brought it to us. I just didn’t want to do it at that time, because it didn’t make sense.”
(10) VOYAGE TO SEE WHAT’S ON THE BOTTOM. “Wreck of ‘Ghost Ship of the Pacific’ Found Off California” reports the New York Times. (Story is paywalled.)
On Aug. 1, a ship dropped its unusual cargo into a patch of ocean some 70 miles northwest of San Francisco: three orange robots, each more than 20 feet long and shaped like a torpedo. For a day, the aquatic drones autonomously prowled the waters, scanning nearly 50 square miles of ocean floor.
Some 3,500 feet beneath the surface, an apparition popped up on the robots’ powerful sonar. Down in the darkness, the drones saw a ghost.
The robots had spotted the wreck of the “Ghost Ship of the Pacific,” the only U.S. Navy destroyer captured by Japanese forces during World War II. Formerly known as either the U.S.S. Stewart, or DD-224, the ship was resting in what is now the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
Three days later, another set of underwater robots captured images of the historic wreck. Though shrouded in decades of marine growth — and home to sponges and skittering crabs — the 314-foot-long destroyer is almost perfectly intact and upright on the seafloor.
“This level of preservation is exceptional for a vessel of its age and makes it potentially one of the best-preserved examples of a U.S. Navy ‘four-piper’ destroyer known to exist,” Maria Brown, superintendent of both the Cordell Bank and Greater Farallones national marine sanctuaries, said in a statement.
The find, which came during a technology demonstration, highlights the efficiency of modern robotic ocean exploration. Ocean Infinity, the marine robotics firm that operated the drones that made the discovery, owns the world’s largest fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles. The drones are used to create high-resolution maps of the seafloor — a major gap in our understanding of the oceans. The technology is also crucial for selecting sites for offshore construction projects such as wind farms and oil rigs, or for laying out routes for undersea pipelines and cables.
These robotic fleets are also proving invaluable to marine archaeologists. In 2020, Ocean Infinity helped find the wreck of the U.S.S. Nevada. In 2022, the company also contributed to the rediscovery of the Endurance, which sank during a 1915 expedition by Ernest Shackleton….
(11) TAKES A LICKING, BUT WILL IT KEEP ON TICKING? “Spruce Pine just got hit by Helene. The fallout on the tech industry could be huge” according to NPR.
…Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, the community of Spruce Pine, population 2,194, is known for its hiking, local artists and as America’s sole source of high-purity quartz. Helene dumped more than 2 feet of rain on the town, destroying roads, shops and cutting power and water.
But its reach will likely be felt far beyond the small community.
Semiconductors are the brains of every computer-chip-enabled device, and solar panels are a key part of the global push to combat climate change. To make both semiconductors and solar panels, companies need crucibles and other equipment that both can withstand extraordinarily high heat and be kept absolutely clean. One material fits the bill: quartz. Pure quartz.
Quartz that comes, overwhelmingly, from Spruce Pine.
“As far as we know, there’s only a few places in the world that have ultra-high-quality quartz,” according to Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization. Russia and Brazil also supply high-quality quartz, he says, but “Spruce Pine has far and away the [largest amount] and highest quality.”
Conway says without super-pure quartz for the crucibles, which can often be used only a single time, it would be impossible to produce most semiconductors…
(12) GETTING THERE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] You know how it is, there you are stuck out 500 light years away on the Galactic rim from the nearest decent real ale pub in Bognor Regis when your motor breaks down. The repair guy says a new engine is required (‘they couldna’ take it Jim’). So what sort of drive should you have?
David Kipping over at Cool Worlds has ranked the best options for you…. However, the betting is you won’t get back before closing time…. “Interstellar Propulsion Technologies – RANKED!”
Many of you wanted me to talk about the different interstellar propulsion ideas out there so we figured a fun way to compare them all would be in a tier list! Today we take a look at 14 different methods proposed to explore the stars. Let us know your rankings down below in the comments.
(13) SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. A “cut for time” sketch – really? “Blonde Dragon People”.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Michael J. Walsh, Joey Eschrich, 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 Paul Weimer.]