Tag Archives: Ben Yalow

Pixel Scroll 10/22/24 Now We See The Scrollence Inherent In The Pixels

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(1) BEAR NECESSITY. “Paddington Bear given UK passport by Home Office” reports the Guardian.

He has been one of the UK’s favourite and most prominent refugees for two-thirds of a century. Now Paddington Bear – official name Paddington Brown – has been granted a British passport.

The co-producer of the latest Paddington film said the Home Office had issued the specimen document to the fictional Peruvian-born character – listing for completeness the official observation that he is, in fact, a bear.

“We wrote to the Home Office asking if we could get a replica, and they actually issued Paddington with an official passport – there’s only one of these,” Rob Silva told Radio Times….

(2) TIANWEN AWARDS CEREMONY. Ersatz Culture reported the winners of the Tianwen Awards 2024 in a File 770 post today.

And last week the award’s official website promoted the forthcoming ceremony with an article that quoted many sf figures including Ben Yalow: “Nebulae are twinkling! More than 100 science fiction celebrities gathered in Chengdu, and the countdown to the release of the “Tianwen” results has begun”

…Ben Yalow , a senior American science fiction activist who served as co-chair of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, will come to Chengdu again as vice chairman of the “Tianwen” judging committee. This is the first time that Ben Yalow has served as a judge for the Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition. “Although the judging schedule is relatively tight, in addition to focusing on browsing, this process also brings me a lot of enjoyment.” He said, “The Tianwen Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition has set up a number of creative awards, hoping to further broaden the breadth of China’s science fiction field. At the same time, I also hope that this competition will allow more readers to understand and fall in love with science fiction-this is a literary genre that is very helpful for readers to think about the possibilities of the future. No matter how far technology goes, its charm will not disappear.”…

Ben Yalow on stage. Source: HELLO Chengdu’s Twitter”

(3) HIS LIFE IN COMICS. Scott Edelman has launched a new podcast, “Why Not Say What Happened?” in which he talks about his early experiences in comics and writing. The fourth episode just went live.

It’s time for another trip back to when teen me strode through the Marvel Bullpen like, well, a big teenager, as I share what I remember (and what I’ve forgotten) about writing the Avengers, what Marvel’s paying Assistant Editors these days vs. what I was paid in 1975, why Steve Gerber called me the most violent man on Earth, the way Conan caused me to write my first short story, the embarrassing cover letter I wrote at age 16 to accompany my first short story submission, how I unwittingly destroyed my comic book collection, what Dennis Etchison wrote in an acceptance letter which made me cry, and more.

(4) AS TOLD BY JIM BROADBENT. [Item by Steven French.] In 1976, Ken Campbell, who had a career-long involvement with science fiction (subsequently putting on the first stage version of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) decided to launch a theatrical production of The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, in the form of a nine hour cycle of five plays (the production eventually transferred from Liverpool to London’s National Theatre). Here Jim Broadbent, who’s appeared in everything from the Harry Potter series to Game of Thrones (and more!) described how Campbell’s play changed his life: “The play that changed my life: Jim Broadbent on Ken Campbell’s electrifying epic Illuminatus!” in the Guardian.

…The Illuminatus! Trilogy [by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson] is a sort of science fiction piece, drawing together an awful lot of the then current conspiracy theories. It’s a huge thing that spreads over lots of different stories and characters.

It was the hot summer of 76, and the play was going to start in Liverpool. There was a character in the books of Illuminatus! called Fission Chips. I think he was sort of based on James Bond, And so I went along and quoted from the book in my Sean Connery accent.

If you wanted to be in it, you could be. I mean I don’t think he turned anyone away….

(5) A ROOMBA WITH THEOLOGY. Muse from the Orb wants to know: “Are We Ready for a Robot Pope?”

Awhile ago, I made a Note in which I quipped about the dearth of robot pope stories these days. I included a panel from a comic I was reading — a looming robot crowned with the triregnum, draped in gem-encrusted robes. Reaction was positive, so I figured that I’d devote a post to the extended lore behind the Robot Pope….

…His official name is Sixtus the Seventh, and he’s the central focus of Robert Silverberg’s classic short story “Good News from the Vatican,” in which the Catholic Church elects its first — is this a spoiler? — robot pope. The story first appeared in Universe 1 (1971), an anthology commissioned by the influential Ace editor Terry Carr, and it won the Nebula Award that next year. In 1975, it was adapted into comics form in the magazine Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, which I purchased at Worldcon and whence I got the photo. Silverberg has called “Good News” a “lighthearted little item,” and it’s a fun approach to classic questions of humanity, technology, and religion….

(6) REMEMBER: MONEY SHOULD FLOW TO THE CREATOR. [Item by Steve Green.] I know there’s a Writers Beware website, but maybe there needs to one for artists? This publication sounds somewhat sketchy, as Ron signals. A warning about “Narrative Magazine” by Ron Coleman at Colemantoons.

I’m writing to discuss Narrative Magazine. This magazine pays $50 for cartoons, but there is a catch all cartoonists should be aware of. They request a submissions fee to review your cartoons and they don’t guarantee that they will buy anything.  I understand this submission fee does include a subscription to their magazine, however. One cartoonist told me they had to pay a $20 submission fee but the magazine did buy a cartoon from them for $50.  To test how this worked I tried to submit a few cartoons to them and they were asking me for a $60 fee.  I didn’t go for it….

…In my 60 years of cartooning this is the first time I’ve ever come across a publisher requiring a submission fee to consider cartoons….

(7) BREVITY, ALWAYS BREVITY. Or something like that. The Hollywood Reporter announces a “New Shorter Version of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ on Broadway”.

A revised, shortened version of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will come to Broadway in November. 

The new version of the play clocks in at under three hours, including intermission, compared to the current running time of three-and-a-half hours. The new version will premiere on Broadway when new cast members take over and begin performances at Lyric Theatre on Nov. 12, 2024.

This marks the second time the play has been shortened while on Broadway. The original production, which opened on Broadway in April 2018, was shown in two parts which ran five hours and 15 minutes in total…. 

(8) IT’S FROM AN OLD FAMILIAR SCORE. Speaking of brevity, the amount of rollover Dune music to the sequel seems to have been too much. “Hans Zimmer’s ‘Dune 2’ Score Ruled Ineligible for Oscars”.

One of the year’s most anticipated and epic musical scores won’t be in the running for an Academy Award.

Warner Bros.’ “Dune: Part Two,” directed by Denis Villeneuve, was met with critical acclaim when it hit theaters in March. Both critics and audiences lauded the film’s visuals, storytelling, and, most notably, the music score by Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer. However, Zimmer’s powerful and evocative score for the sci-fi epic is not eligible to be submitted for this year’s Oscars due to surpassing the Academy’s limit on pre-existing music; therefore, it cannot be nominated in the best original score category.

The Academy’s rule states: “In cases such as sequels and franchises from any media, the score must not use more than 20% of pre-existing themes and music borrowed from previous scores in the franchise.” Since Zimmer’s composition for “Dune: Part Two” incorporates substantial elements from his work on 2021’s “Dune,” it falls outside of the eligibility criteria….

… However, Zimmer’s work on “Dune 2” remains in contention to be recognized by other awards bodies, including the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA, and even the Grammys….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 22, 1938 — Derek Jacobi, 86. 

Derek Jacobi

Remember I’m not covering everything here, just what I find find interesting.

I first fondly remember Derek Jacobi from the Cadfael series where he played Brother Cadfael, the monk mystery solver. He had an edge to him that belied his supposed monkness. 

 It lasted for a much shorter period than I thought as the series only went thirteen episodes. There were twenty-one novels, not all of which were filmed, and there are many differences between the plots and characters in the novels. 

(Neat note here: Sean Pertwee was Sheriff Hugh Beringar in four episodes (not all).)

Much earlier and certainly less gentle was I, Claudius in which he played Claudius who was considered rather sane after Caligula, who didn’t survive assassination, and before Nero who succeeded him. He plays the role brilliantly over the twelve episodes and I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. 

By no means a major character in it, but he is Probert, Sir William’s valet in Gosford Park. He, in his scenes, is spot on. And this film is of my favorite of the Manor House mysteries. 

He was in The Golden Compass film as Magisterial Emissary which according to the film wiki “was a man from Lyra’s world who worked for the Magisterium. He talked to Pavel Rasek about Bolvangar and how it should be protected. He said that Marisa Coulter was going to demonstrate the intercision process on Lyra Belacqua. His dæmon was a black panther.” Now if you read the series and don’t recognize him that’s because they invented his character for the film. 

I just discovered he was in Tolkien, a biography of, well, you can guess who. He played as Joseph Wright, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. Tolkien himself was played by Nicholas Hoult, with a younger one performed by Harry Gilby as he would been at eighteen, so presumably during the War. 

I’m going to finish off with his performance as Professor Yanna the Tenth Doctor’s “Utopia” episode. 

SPOILERS  FOLLOW. THERE’S A NICE CUP OF TEA IN THE TADRIS AS LONG YOU’RE POLITE TO HER. 

Derek Jacobi here plays the fifth version of the Master whom the Doctor will encounter on screen, and John Simm will the sixth of eight to be so far. This will be the first of three episodes that form a single story along with “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords”.

The episode serves to re-introduce the Master (John Simm), a Time Lord villain of the show’s original run who last appeared in the 1996 television movie Doctor Who.”

SPOLIERS ARE FINISHED. ENJOY THAT CUPOF TEA? SHE MAKES A GOOD ONE, DOESN’T SHE? 

Those are my choices. I’m sure yours might be different. 

P.S. Cadfael is available on BritBox;  I, Claudius is on Acorn; Gosford Park is available to rent on Amazon Prime, as is The Golden Compass; Tolkien’s on Hulu; the new Doctor Who is on Disney+.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) STICK-TO-ITIVENESS. “At Comic Con, Emergency Tailors Keep Cosplayers in Character” – behind a New York Times paywall.

When cosplayers descend on New York Comic Con, they’re looking to meet their favorite creators and show off their outfits — but they often end up in need of costume triage. Armed with glue guns, zip ties, Popsicle sticks and safety pins, the Paladins of Cosplay come ready to fix wardrobe malfunctions — like a dangling shoulder pad, an imploding jetpack or any number of hazards that costumed fans face.

“I really love helping people,” said Law Asuncion, 46, who founded the Paladins in 2017. The group is named after the pilots of the robotic hero Voltron, and the term is also an olden-days word for champion. Asuncion and the repair team will be at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, home of New York Comic Con, through Sunday….

…The Paladins set up their first table in 2021, the year New York Comic Con returned to in-person attendance after going virtual in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

At that show, they came to the aid of Boba Fett, the “Star Wars” bounty hunter. “He looked immaculate,” Asuncion said. But his jetpack, which was created using 3-D printing, was problematic, he recalled.

When someone in the crowd bumped into Boba Fett, the jetpack shattered. Boba Pfft. “We were able to Humpty Dumpty, piece it back together and locate areas where it needed additional structure and support,” Asuncion said. On average, about 500 cosplayers visit the group daily at the convention, he said, and the amount doubles on Saturday, the most popular day of the event….

(12) MORE LIKE FROM THE HEAD OF ZEUS. It’s hard to think of Miss Marple as a baby – which is just as well, since this article doesn’t mean it that way: “The Birth of Miss Marple—the Perpetual Spinster Detective at the Heart of Agatha Christie’s Works” at CrimeReads.

…However, by the time that Miss Marple made her debut in December 1927, Christie’s life had been turned upside down. In 1926, she had a breakdown following the death of her mother and [her husband] Archie’s decision to leave her for another woman. Both this breakdown and the subsequent well-publicised disappearance took some time to recover from, and yet these difficult events also coincided with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a novel that has since taken pride of place as one of Christie’s masterpieces….

…Agatha Christie’s career was flourishing just as her life seemed to be falling apart. So it is notable that it was shortly after these events that she created a new character, whose entire raison d’être was to be a calm point in a stormy sea. Miss Jane Marple is an unmarried older lady who has spent most of her life in the small village of St Mary Mead, and her quiet observations of people and relationships give her great insight into character….

(13) IN YOUR EYE. [Item by Chris Barkley.] File Under “I Think We’ve Seen This Movie Already… NO Thanks!” “Sam Altman’s Worldcoin becomes World and shows new iris-scanning Orb to prove your humanity” at TeleCrunch.

Worldcoin, the Sam Altman co-founded “proof of personhood” crypto project that scans people’s eyeballs, announced on Thursday that it dropped the “coin” from its name and is now just “World.” The startup behind the World project, Tools for Humanity, also unveiled its next generation of iris-scanning “Orbs” and other tools at a live event in San Francisco….

…The World project is predicated on the idea that advanced AI systems — like the one Altman’s OpenAI is trying to build — will one day make it impossible to tell whether you are talking to a human online. Its solution is “human verification services” based around blockchain…

(14) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISNEY STUDIES CALL FOR NEW CO-EDITORS. “The International Journal of Disney Studies is looking for new co-editors! IJDS examines the Walt Disney Company, an international media conglomerate that impacts our global culture.” They will begin reviewing applications on December 1.

This international, peer-reviewed journal draws from a variety of academic and industrial lenses, perspectives, methods and fields, while providing a space for scholars to present new research, review current research and comment on wider Disney commodities. IJDS currently publishes two issues a year (with issues due to the publisher approximately in March and September) with a special issue every other year (for more information, see our webpage: https://www.intellectbooks.com/ijds). Join current co-editor Rebecca Rowe and the rest of our associate editor team to help IJDS keep moving forward!

Co-editor responsibilities include (and can take 2-10 hours a week):
● Timely and professional communication with contributors during different stages of the publishing process, including but not limited to legal document signing, editing and proofreading;
● Coordinating peer reviews for all submissions, including recruiting subject matter experts as peer reviewers;
● Recruitment and training of members of the editorial team and board;
● Preparing and implementing a style guide specific to the study of Disney across many disciplines and countries;
● Soliciting contributions (articles, book reviews, and commentaries) and special issues, including reaching out to organizations and/or specific authors;
● Relaying communication between the publisher (Intellect), the editorial team and board, and contributors;
● Delegating additional duties and responsibilities as necessary.
Financial compensation: co-editors split 10% of the royalty based on Intellect’s net receipts from sales of the journal.

We are recruiting two new co-editors who will serve for three years, with an option for renewal.

We are looking for:
● Ideally, one person from within our current editorial team or board who already knows how the journal works and one person currently unassociated with the journal who can bring new ideas and perspectives to the journal.
● We hope to hear from scholars from a variety of perspectives, positionalities, and backgrounds in order to reflect the global, multivocal engagement with the journal’s stated scope. We are especially looking to support leadership opportunities from historically institutionally marginalized scholars.
● People with a terminal graduate degree in their field (e.g., PhD, EdD, MLS, MBA, MFA, etc.), preferably with previous experience with journal management/editorship. We do not require that you be in a tenure-track position nor even directly involved with academia as long as you regularly engage with research.
● People who are:

○ Motivated, detail-oriented, and organized with experience with the moving parts of publication flows;

○ Strong and compassionate in their verbal and written communication skills in English (preferably in the professional context of editing for a peer-reviewed journal or academic book) and dealing with scholars, co-editors, and publishers;

○ Experienced with team management and working in collaborative settings across languages and time zones;

○ Effective at offering constructive (positive and helpful) feedback to writing projects and at suggesting informed workarounds or concrete alternatives during the revision process;

○ Knowledgeable about Disney (you don’t have to know everything, but a basic understanding helps in the editing process);

○ Practiced in interdisciplinary approaches to cinema and media studies, popular culture studies, and reception, including literacy and fan studies, along with awareness of globally situated scholarship and methodologies.

Selection Process:
● While we will continue accepting applications until the positions are filled, we will begin reviewing applications 1 December. If you are interested, email the following materials (or any questions) to IJoDS@intellectbooks.com with the subject heading “IJoDS Co-Editor Application”:

○ 1-page single-spaced cover letter explaining what skills, knowledge, and experience you hope to bring to the editorial team

○ Curriculum Vitae or resume

● December: finalists will be notified and interviews will be scheduled for December/January with Rebecca, an associate editor, and a representative from the publisher
● Late January: decision will be communicated

(15) TOP SHOWRUNNER’S NEW PROJECT. “’God Of War’: Ronald D. Moore Boards Amazon Series As New Showrunner” reports Deadline.

With Ronald D. Moore back in the Sony Pictures TV Studios fold, the prolific creator/showrunner is taking on a high-profile IP for the studio. He has been tapped as writer, executive producer and showrunner of Sony TV and Amazon MGM Studios’ Prime Video series God Of War, based on PlayStation‘s hugely popular ancient mythology-themed video game.

Moore’s involvement with God Of War follows the recent exit of the project’s original creative team, showrunner/executive producer Rafe Judkins and exec producers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, who had been with the show since its inception two and a half years ago. As Deadline reported, they had completed multiple scripts prior to the changeover, which marks a shift in the creative direction of the series adaptation.

…Since its 2005 launch on the PlayStation 2, the God of War franchise from Sony’s Santa Monica Studio has spanned a total of seven games across four PlayStation consoles. At the center of the story is ex-Spartan warrior Kratos and his perilous journey to exact revenge on the Ares, the Greek God of War, after killing his loved ones under the deity’s influence. After becoming the ruthless God of War himself, Kratos finds himself constantly looking for a chance to change his fate…

(16) THIS SUCKS. Malwarebytes reports “Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners”.

Multiple robot vacuum cleaners in the US were hacked to yell obscenities and insults through the onboard speakers.

ABC news was able to confirm reports of this hack in robot vacuum cleaners of the type Ecovacs Deebot X2, which are manufactured in China. Ecovacs is considered the leading service robotics brand, and is a market leader in robot vacuums.

One of the victims, Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, said he heard sound snippets that seemed similar to a voice coming from his vacuum cleaner. Through the Ecovacs app, he then saw someone not in his household accessing the live camera feed of the vacuum, as well as the remote control feature.

Thinking it was a glitch, he rebooted the vacuum cleaner and reset the password, just to be on the safe side. But that didn’t help for long. Almost instantly, the vacuum cleaner started to move again.

Only this time, the voice coming from the vacuum cleaner was loud and clear, and it was yelling racist obscenities at Swenson and his family. The voice sounded like a teenager according to Swenson.

Swenson said he turned off the vacuum and dumped it in the garage, never to be turned on again….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Pitch Meeting”. Whether we want to be there or not….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, N., Ersatz Culture, Scott Edelman, Steve Green, John A Arkansawyer, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Tianwen Awards 2024

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Source: Zhao Enzhe on Xiaohongshu

By Ersatz Culture: The inaugural Tianwen Awards were presented on Friday October 18, as part of a two-day event at the Chengdu SF Museum.

Source: Andy on Xiaohongshu

Nine categories were based on the decisions of judging panels, with a tenth category selected by a public vote of people who had applied to be Tianwen members, as previously covered in this post.  The official Tianwen website is somewhat lacking in details, especially regarding the conference and the events there, so this coverage is assembled from a variety of news articles and social media posts.

Note: names and titles are mostly via Google Translate; apologies for any errors in translation or transcription.

Source: Hai Ya’s Weibo

BEST NOVEL

  • Liu Yang – City in the Well

BEST NOVELLA

  • Fenxing Chengzi (“Fractal Orange”) – Descartes Demon

BEST SHORT STORY

  • Hai Ya – The Spring Outside the Tulou

BEST SF VIDEO GAME SCRIPT

  • Honor of Kings: Amber Age

BEST SF COMIC BOOK

  • The Three-Body Problem: Part 1

BEST YOUNG SF WRITER(S)

  • He Shan
  • Liu Ziheng
  • Pang Yujie
  • Long Teng
  • Ren Keye

BEST SF FILM AND TV SCRIPT

  • The Wandering Earth 2 

BEST SF LITERATURE ORGANIZATION

  • Science Fiction World

BEST NEW SF WRITER

  • Liu Maijia

TOP 10 MOST POPULAR TRANSLATED SF WORKS OF THE DECADE (special award based on public vote)

  • Greg Egan – The Best Of Greg Egan (collection)
  • Ray Bradbury – Selected Short Stories (collection)
  • Robert L. Forward – Dragon’s Egg
  • Ted Chiang – The Life Cycle of Software Objects
  • Frank Herbert – Dune
  • Robert Sheckley – Store of the Worlds (collection)
  • Andy Weir – Project Hail Mary
  • Ursula K. Le Guin – The Found and the Lost (collection)
  • Arthur C. Clarke – Rendezvous with Rama
  • Olaf Stapledon – Star Maker

(Note; only the original authors were credited in the announcement, not the translators)

There is an 18-minute video embedded at the top of this page containing part of the ceremony, including Ben Yalow introducing the translated works award, and Hugo winners Hai Ya and Zhao Enzhe respectively presenting the Best New Writer and Best Comic awards.

Ben Yalow on stage. Source: HELLO Chengdu’s Twitter”
Zhao Enzhe and the winners of the Best SF Comic Book award. Source: Zhao Enzhe’s Xiaohongshu
Hai Ya receiving the Best Short Story award. Source: Yang Feng’s Weibo
Liu Yang receiving the Best Novel award. Source: Yang Feng’s Weibo

OTHER ACTIVITIES. The event schedules show around 15 panels and presentations over the course of the two days.  These included:

Three musical items on the stage (links are to news articles with embedded videos of the performances): 

Prerecorded video messages from Richard Taylor (WETA special effects), Bill Lawhorn, and Pablo Vazquez were played — a video can be found embedded at the top of this page.

“[T]he second Science Fiction Industry Development Promotion Conference to industrialize science fiction”, the first such conference being part of the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon. Chen Shi (subject of  Worldcon Intellectual Property censure in January) was also on an industry-related panel. 

Source: Yang Feng’s Weibo

The N Universe Conference was also held for the first time at this event, although this included the fourth iteration of the associated awards.  The latter is a competition for original works on the theme of nuclear science, and is organized by the China National Nuclear Corporation.  The linked article also states (via Google Translate with minor edits):

As one of the official major events of the “Tianwen” Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition, this year’s N Universe Conference has joined forces with the “Tianwen” Chinese Science Fiction Literature Award, reflecting the deep integration and mutual promotion of the two major fields of nuclear technology and science fiction literature. It is reported that writers who won the N Universe Science Fiction Award will also join the “Tianwen” Youth Writers Training Camp, and the two brands will cooperate deeply. In the future, N Universe and “Tianwen” will also jointly carry out overseas plans, grow together and create prosperity in the global science fiction wave, demonstrate cultural confidence supported by nuclear technology, and contribute hard-core strength to the development of China’s science fiction industry.

Source: Andy on Xiaohongshu
Source: 163.com

Note: although it may appear that Tianwen is using the same panda logo as the Chengdu Worldcon, the two logos are similar but not identical.  Per an earlier article from Red Star News (via Google Translate with minor edits):

“With the authorization of the copyright owner of the 81st Worldcon’s logo and mascot, the logo of this competition has made bold innovations and tributes to the spirit of the Chengdu Worldcon.” At the meeting, Yang Xiaoyang, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Chairman of the Chengdu Federation of Literary and Art Circles and Vice Chairman of the Competition Organizing Committee, announced the design of the competition’s logo, mascot and trophy.  Starting from oracle bone inscriptions, writing has been the medium for ancient people to ask questions to the heavens, and also the ancient people’s pursuit of the universe and nature. This kind of thinking is reflected in the design of the logo of the “Tianwen” Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition. “We deeply integrated the logo of the 81st Worldcon with traditional Chinese calligraphy to create a unique logo for this competition. The ears, arms and golden star rings around the giant panda are outlined by the strokes of Chinese calligraphy, and the flying white part at the end of the star ring is composed of scattered stardust, symbolizing the boundless imagination of mankind.” Yang Xiaoyang said.

Pixel Scroll 10/19/24 Pixeling On The Other Side, Where Only Scrolls Hide

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(1) BEAR APPARENT. “Ur Sid arrives at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives”. Sharon Lee tells fans a photographer was standing by. (OK, it was actually Curator Jeremy Brett.)

…Since the Bumpy Passage fell out of use many years ago, I created a travel pod so that Ur Sid could make his journey in the style to which he had become accustomed, and packed him carefully in a box.  He accompanied nine other boxes containing the Full Run of Lee-and-Miller, Lee, and Miller published works.

Well, today Ur Sid arrived at his new post.  Jeremy Brett, Curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection has kindly sent along photographs of this momentous arrival, which are posted below.

Right now, Ur Sid is sharing office space with Curator Brett.  Very shortly, he will be transferred to Collections Care so that a proper enclosure for Ur Sid and his belongings, including his travel diary, may be constructed….

(2) CHENGDU TWEETS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The official Twitter account of Chengdu, China recently posted some tweets of interest:

  • Yesterday there was a video commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Chengdu Worldcon.  A bit cheekily, there are a couple of shots from the Glasgow Worldcon around 1:15 in, that aren’t flagged up as such:  
  • Today there’s a video with Ben Yalow saying how happy he is to be back in Chengdu: 
  • There’s also a tweet asking for responses about SF experiences in Chengdu; as yet they haven’t had any replies.  

Incidentally, these posts followed straight after one criticizing a recent bill before Congress in the U.S. to fund “badmouthing China”, indicating this account seemingly isn’t just for doing local tourism promotion type stuff… 

(3) ICON 50 TO BE DELAYED TO 2026. [Item by Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey.] On Friday at the opening ceremonies of ICON 49 in Cedar Rapids, it was announced that ICON 50, originally scheduled for October 2025, has been postponed to 2026, due to problems with money and with volunteer shortages. 

This follows the recent announcement that WisCon for 2025 will be a Wisconline, all-online event. 

(4) FIRST BITE. Adam Roberts has a funny take on a recent Guardian story:

Or if you prefer your news straight, here’s the link: “Reader stumbles on Dracula’s ancestors in a Dublin library”.

In a Dublin library once frequented by James Joyce and WB Yeats, beneath a turquoise and white domed ceiling and surrounded by oak shelving, Brian Cleary stumbled across something by Dracula author Bram Stoker he believed no living person had ever read.

Cleary, who had taken time off from his job at a maternity hospital after suffering sudden hearing loss, was looking through the Stoker archives at the National Library of Ireland when he came across something strange. In a Dublin Daily Express advert from New Year’s Day 1891 promoting a supplement, one of the items listed was “Gibbett Hill, By Bram Stoker”. He had never heard of it, and went searching for a trace. “It wasn’t something that was Google-able or was in any of the bibliographies,” he said.’

Cleary tracked down the supplement and found Gibbet Hill. “This is a lost story,” he realised. “I don’t think anyone knows about this.” The story follows an unnamed narrator who runs into three children standing by the memorial of a murdered sailor on Gibbet Hill, Surrey, which is also referred to in Dickens’ 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby.

Together, the four walk to the top of Gibbet Hill. Distracted by the view, the narrator loses sight of the children. He takes a nap among some trees, and wakes to see the children a short distance away, before a snake passes over his feet towards the children, who appear able to communicate with and control the snake. Later, the children attack the narrator. The story culminates with the snake wriggling out of the narrator’s chest, gliding away down the hillside…

(5) LITERARY INCOGNITO. The Week features a list of “Jeff VanderMeer’s 6 favorite books that delve into the unknown”.

In his new sci-fi horror novel, “Absolution,” Jeff VanderMeer returns to the world of 2014’s award-winning “Annihilation,” which launched his Southern Reach Trilogy. Below, the best-selling ‘weird fiction’ author recommends six psychological expeditions into the unknown.

The six-pack includes:

‘A Perfect Spy’ by John le Carré (1986)

“The past is another country” may be a cliché, but not in the hands of my favorite espionage novelist. His masterpiece charts the entanglements, both professional and personal, that bring about the downfall of operative Magnus Pym. A stunning tale of betrayals, redemption, and, ultimately, a compassionate portrayal of a compromised life.

(6) CHARLIE JANE ANDERS ON ELECTION. At the 270 Reasons blog Charlie Jane Anders answers the question “Why Kamala Harris” — “Because we are close to reaching climate benchmarks we can’t come back from”.

Future generations will look back on 2024 as the moment when the United States of America made a defining choice about climate change. This November, we’re either going to renew our commitment to fixing this mess we created, or embrace denial and plunge the world into a nightmarish scenario.

Nobody much is talking about it, but this election feels especially important for a couple of reasons: first, we are dangerously close to reaching some climate benchmarks that we won’t be able to come back from easily, if at all. And second, we are now being faced with daily brutal reminders of the impacts of climate change on our world. As Kamala Harris herself said in a powerful 2023 speech, climate change is here and the effects are in our face everyday. 

The good news is, the past few years have seen some real advances toward clean energy and green infrastructure. Tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act are helping to make wind and solar power more affordable than non-renewable energy sources, and the subsidies in the bill are creating more jobs in the clean energy sector. But there’s much more work to be done…

And if you scroll down past the end of Anders’ article there is an index to other posts, including several by genre contributors Tomi Adeyemi, George Saunders, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and Beth Revis.

(7) PLEASE NOT TO CALL IT SF. This Washington City Paper interview with Tara Campbell perpetuates the cliché that if it’s well-written it can’t be science fiction: “Crossover Sci-Fi Author Tara Campbell Comes Home With a New Novel”.

WCP: When hearing the phrase “speculative fiction,” most readers will immediately think we’re referring to either science fiction or fantasy, and there are elements of both in your novel. But this work leans strongly in to literary writing, with beautiful, sometimes even lyrical storytelling and far less of the extensive worldbuilding than we’d normally see in the aforementioned genres. How do you approach “speculative literary” writing?

TC: Before I stumbled upon the term “speculative fiction,” I used to say that I write science fiction for people who don’t think they read science fiction. But that was only an approximation of what I was doing, and I’m glad that more people are discovering the depth and breadth of fantastical writing beyond strict genre definitions. 

I love the way “speculative literary” opens up narrative by allowing us to go beyond the bounds of realism to get at emotional truths. If something feels surreal, why not try to capture that cognitive dissonance by portraying it as something palpably unreal? Certain parts of American culture are indeed surreal to me, like our relationship with guns, or our lack of reckoning with history, or our income inequality, and those areas of disconnect came out indirectly in stories about sneaking needles striking us everywhere from home to school to church, or screaming ropes howling in the darkest corner of a dusty barn, or sword fighting robots protecting the bunkers of the uber-wealthy….

(8) SECOND, JUST SAY, ‘I FORGOT’. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] An interesting piece about a project to bring obsolete software back from the dead, using Thomas Disch’s Amnesia computer game from 1986. “Remembering ‘Amnesia’: Digital preservationists reboot classic video game” at Yale News.

You wake up naked in a hotel room. You don’t recall who you are or how you got there. Your clothes are missing. Someone knocks on the door.

So begins “Amnesia,” a text-only video game released in 1986, in which players inhabit the perspective of a man experiencing memory loss while staying in midtown Manhattan at the fictional Sunderland Hotel. Players must negotiate a series of puzzles to find much-needed clothes, leave the hotel, and navigate Manhattan’s busy streets. By gathering clues and avoiding innumerable pitfalls, they gradually discover that the protagonist has a fiancée he cannot remember, is being pursued by an assassin, and is wanted for murder in Texas.

A groundbreaking digital work of interactive fiction by the sci-fi novelist Thomas M. Disch, the game anchors “Remembering Amnesia: Rebooting the first computerized novel,” an exhibit on view through March 2 in the Hanke Exhibition Gallery at Sterling Memorial Library.

Drawing on materials from Disch’s archive at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the exhibit explores the author’s novel attempt to move video games into the realm of literary fiction. It also describes the efforts of the Yale Library’s Digital Preservation unit to preserve the game, originally stored and played on now-obsolete hardware, and restore it to life.

The revived version of “Amnesia” is available to play on three workstations — two located just outside the exhibit space and one in Bass Library — that emulate a mid-1980s computing environment….

(9) FIVE IS RIGHT OUT. Well, not always. PRINT Magazine’s Steven Heller interviews Arlen Schumer about his latest collection of essays on the famed TV show: The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, in “The Daily Heller: Your Next Stop, The Twilight Zone”.

You declare in your new title that five themes exist in Serling’s portfolio. What are they?
With this book, I was inspired to curate what I thought were the best episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” collected in a framework that would separate my “greatest hits” of the series into distinct themes that would encompass the diversity—and similarity—of the best episodes by Serling and company. Of course, one can argue that there are more than just five themes of “The Twilight Zone” that the breadth of its 156 episodes would suggest, but I decided rather quickly on the following five, almost as if they suggested themselves: “Science and Superstition,” “Suburban Nightmares,” “A Question of Identity,” “Obsolete Man,” and “The Time Element.” (Of the five, “Suburban Nightmares” is the only one I coined that does not have a direct “Twilight Zone” connection; bonus points for recognizing that “A Question of Identity” comes from dialogue spoken by the protagonist of [the show’s] debut episode, “Where is Everybody?”)

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by John King Tarpinian.]

Anniversary, October 19, 1953 — Fahrenheit 451

By John King Tarpinian: On this day in history one of the most read science fiction novels was published. One of the few, if not only, novels of sci-fi on a majority of middle and high school reading lists.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of three books that as a young man made me think about stuff outside of my comfortable life. The other two were Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, the three making up a trio of books that woke up my little brain.

Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie by the French director, François Truffaut. It was his first movie in color and his only English-language film. Remember the French guy in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?  That was Truffaut.

Flatscreen TVs were in this book. Bluetooth was in this book. Most people know that Ray never drove a car, remember that in the book Clarisse was killed by a speeding car. Montag was a brand of paper; Faber was a brand of pencil. Beatty was named for the lion tamer, Clyde Beatty.

Bradbury’s book rails against censorship, in any form.

Lastly, Ray’s headstone reads “Author of Fahrenheit 451.”

(Use this link to see a parade of Fahrenheit 451 book covers from over the years.)

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) READING THE ROOMS. For the “Every Town Deserves a Library” episode of the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast, hosts Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders are joined by Ken Liu.

Science fiction and fantasy are full of wondrous libraries containing everything from powerful artifacts to some dang good reads. How does the idealized view of libraries in speculative fiction compare with the real-life libraries, which are under attack by would-be censors and culture warriors? Also, we talk to award-winning author Ken Liu about his brand new translation of the classic Daoist text, the Dao De Jing.

(13) JOY WILLIAMS Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] Joy Williams on why fiction should be ‘uncanny’ (and on reading Baba Yaga stories as a child) in the Guardian.

For many years, you’ve written about the climate emergency and environmental destruction. I wonder if your thinking about how to represent that in fiction has developed, and where you think it might go?

I’m always trying to convince myself that fiction will rise up and throw away the crutches that have been supporting it for far too long. The comfy story has got to change. It needs to be more uncanny, less personal….

(14) MICHELLE YEOH TREK – MARK YOUR CALENDAR. “’Star Trek: Section 31′ Movie Gets Premiere Date On Paramount+” – Deadline has the story.

Paramount+ has set January 24, 2025 for the premiere of its upcoming movie Star Trek: Section 31, starring Michelle Yeoh in a reprisal of her Star Trek: Discovery role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou.

The announcement was made Saturday during the Star Trek universe panel at New York Comic Con. Yeoh made a video appearance during the panel, which featured cast members Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl and Robert Kazinsky, along with executive producer and director Olatunde Osunsanmi.

Star Trek: Section 31 will premiere exclusively Friday, January 24 in the U.S. and international markets where the service is available….

(15) YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT. “As AI takes the helm of decision making, signs of perpetuating historic biases emerge” – the Arizona Mirror overviews the research.

…In a recent study evaluating how chatbots make loan suggestions for mortgage applications, researchers at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University found something stark: there was clear racial bias at play.

With 6,000 sample loan applications based on data from the 2022 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the chatbots recommended denials for more Black applicants than identical white counterparts. They also recommended Black applicants be given higher interest rates, and labeled Black and Hispanic borrowers as “riskier.”

White applicants were 8.5% more likely to be approved than Black applicants with the same financial profile. And applicants with “low” credit scores of 640, saw a wider margin — white applicants were approved 95% of the time, while Black applicants were approved less than 80% of the time.

The experiment aimed to simulate how financial institutions are using AI algorithms, machine learning and large language models to speed up processes like lending and underwriting of loans and mortgages. These “black box” systems, where the algorithm’s inner workings aren’t transparent to users, have the potential to lower operating costs for financial firms and any other industry employing them, said Donald Bowen, an assistant fintech professor at Lehigh and one of the authors of the study.

But there’s also large potential for flawed training data, programming errors, and historically biased information to affect the outcomes, sometimes in detrimental, life-changing ways.

(16) TURNOVER TIME. “Earth’s Flipping Magnetic Field Heard as Sound Is an Unforgettable Horror” – ScienceAlert lets you eavesdrop.

Approximately 41 000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field briefly reversed during what is known as the Laschamp event. During this time, Earth’s magnetic field weakened significantly—dropping to a minimum of 5% of its current strength—which allowed more cosmic rays to reach Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used data from ESA’s Swarm mission, along with other sources, to create a sounded visualisation of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created a stereo sound version which is what you can hear in the video. The soundscape was made using recordings of natural noises like wood creaking and rocks falling, blending them into familiar and strange, almost alien-like, sounds. The process of transforming the sounds with data is similar to composing music from a score.

(17) DOUG JONES VEHICLE. “’Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror’ – Doug Jones Stars in Unique Horror Remake [Trailer]” recommended by Bloody Disgusting. (And with a recommendation like that, you know what you’re in for!)

Eight years in the making, director David Lee Fisher’s new take on the horror classic Nosferatu has finally been unleashed, the film now available on Digital through Prime Video….

(18) THE (POD BAY) DOORS OF PERCEPTION. Six years ago someone shared the results of a thought experiment that asked what would happen “If HAL9000 was Amazon.com’s Alexa”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Bruce D. Arthurs, N., Ersatz Culture, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]

Glasgow 2024 Will Not Allow Yalow and McCarty To Attend

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Glasgow 2024 has told Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow and Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty they will not be allowed to attend the convention. McCarty says he did not receive an explanation why; Yalow says he did not request one.  

Yalow said to File 770:

I was told by the Glasgow committee that they would not permit me to attend the convention in person.

I had all of the monies that I had paid returned to me.

Asked what explanation he was given for this decision, and who communicated it to him, Yalow replied:

It came from the Vice Chair.  I did not ask for an explanation, since I accept that it’s within the power we grant to Worldcon committees.

Dave McCarty today told a listserv of former Worldcon chairs that Glasgow 2024 notified him they are refunding his attending upgrade and will not sell him a virtual membership. McCarty says, “This was done without explanation or any prior contact on this topic and questions about it were not answered.”

File 770 asked the Glasgow 2024 committee for an explanation and got this reply:

The convention’s formal response is as follows:

Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, believes in and respects everyone’s right to privacy. Various sections of applicable Scottish and international law, including the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation, legally limit what we may disclose. To maintain our commitment to individual privacy and confidentiality, we cannot discuss any person’s membership status or attendance.

So at this time Yalow and McCarty are representing they’ve had no explanation of Glasgow’s action, nor is Glasgow offering one to the public.

Ever since this year’s UK Eastercon refused membership to McCarty and placed unspecified restrictions on Yalow while he was there, File 770 has been trying to learn whether Glasgow 2024 intended to take actions of its own, or simply planned to allow the pair to attend as expected.

Prior to that, in January, Worldcon Intellectual Property (W.I.P.), the California non-profit corporation that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society including the mark “Hugo Award”, announced it had censured several directors including McCarty and Yalow. McCarty was “censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.” Ben Yalow was “censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.”

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Person Refused Membership by UK Eastercon and Escorted Out by Security

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Reports circulated Friday that Dave McCarty had been refused admission to the UK Eastercon being held this weekend. McCarty had posted a flight itinerary to the UK on his Facebook page on March 27.

File 770 contacted the Levitation (UK Eastercon 2024) committee asking if they could confirm the story or put it to rest. Today Farah Mendlesohn, Chair, Levitation 2024 issued the following statement:

On Thursday the Levitation (Eastercon 2024) executive committee was informed that a person, whose presence we believed would cause significant interference with the operations of the convention, was intending to join on the door.

The Levitation (Eastercon 2024) executive committee took the decision to refuse membership to this person. 

An email was sent explaining our decision and referencing our code of conduct which states that we may revoke or refuse membership under these circumstances.  

When this person then chose to enter the convention the next day, we told them that they would not be allowed to buy a membership and asked them to leave the site. They repeatedly refused to do so. We explained that if they did not leave we would ask site security to escort them out. They did not leave, and security did therefore escort them from the premises.

A second person of concern who purchased a membership in 2022 was permitted to remain under specified conditions, and has abided by those conditions.

Farah Mendlesohn

Chair, Levitation 2024

N.B. Levitation is an unincorporated members’ society under UK law, and may refuse membership for any reason other than a person belonging to a protected group. 

The “second person of concern” is believed to be Ben Yalow, who is present at the convention.

Pixel Scroll 2/27/24 It’s Scrolls And Pixels I Recall, I Really Don’t Know Files At All

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(1) BEN YALOW OFF LA IN 2026 BID. LA in 2026 Worldcon bid chair Joyce Lloyd told File 770 today, “I can confirm that Ben Yalow is no longer a member of the bid committee.”

Craig Miller, a director of the nonprofit, also said in a comment here that Yalow has resigned from SCIFI, Inc., the parent organization to the L.A. in 2026 Bid. And that Yalow is not going to be on the L.A. 2026 Worldcon Committee.

(2) SOUND OFF. Kristine Kathryn Rusch reacts to “Findaway And Corporate Rights Grabs” on Patreon.

…Does that mean that after next week, you will find my work on Findaway? Um, no. You will not. As a friend of mine said, they’ve shown their true colors. Musicians have had trouble with Spotify for years and these are Spotify-inspired changes.

Spotify bought Findaway in 2022, paying about $123 million dollars. At the time, Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, told investors that he was “confident that audiobooks will deliver the kind of earnings that  investors are looking for, with profit margins north of 40 percent.”

Over the past 18 months or so, Spotify has tinkered with Findaway in a variety of ways, mostly to do with the way that they’re paying content providers. Then this new TOS rights grab, which is not unexpected. In fact, it’s right on time….

(3) VERSUS INJUSTICE. Reckoning publisher Michael J. DeLuca reacts to the 2023 Hugo disaster, then goes beyond, in his post “On Ongoing Prejudice in the SFF Community and What Is to Be Done”. (Or go straight to DeLuca’s “original, uncut and expletive-laden version” here: “Do the Right Thing: A Hugo Rant”  at The Mossy Skull.)

….We perceive the dangerous potential, as daily worse things seem to come out about the behavior of a Hugo admin committee responsible for hurting so many great authors and the entire fandom of China—not to mention individual humans in their immediate vicinity—of writing them off as irrevocably evil outliers and therefore not representative of problems in our field. We don’t want this latest crisis to overshadow the previous, ongoing crisis or the one before that. That the Hugo committee has provided a scapegoat to whom consequences can be applied cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that, for one glaring example, the insidious shutting-out of Palestinian voices is still going on. There are so many compounded crises, anyone can be forgiven for not addressing every one all the time loud enough so nobody else forgets. Individually, we must choose one injustice at a time to address, with our voices, our donations, our votes, because otherwise we’ll all implode from the pressure. But we can’t let the latest injustice blot out the rest.

How do individual people get to act this terribly? They get encouraged. If they’re entitled white men, that encouragement need amount to nothing more than looking the other way. How do individual people get encouraged to be better? By positive peer pressure. By example.

The antidote to bureaucratic power-clutching and uninterrogated fascist creep, like the problem, is manifold. We need juried awards with juries of accountable, well-intentioned people empaneled by accountable, well-intentioned people. The Ignyte awards are one such. So are the Shirleys. Support them, care about them, pay attention to who wins. Our fellow Detroit-based indie press Atthis Arts bent over backwards this past year rescuing an anthology of Ukrainian SFF, Embroidered Worlds, from the slag heap. Pay attention to what they’re doing. Lift them up. We need magazines like Strange Horizons (who published a Palestinian special issue in 2020), Fiyah, Clarkesworld (who have long been in the vanguard of championing translated work and translators), Omenana, and khōréō (their year 4 fundraiser ends 2/29). We need magazines whose editors and staff are actively listening to, seeking out, boosting, celebrating, paying—and translating, paying, and celebrating translators of—Chinese, Taiwanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, Ukrainian, Russian, Israeli, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Congolese, Nigerian, disabled, neurodivergent, queer, and trans voices. Do we in that litany miss anybody currently getting oppressed and shut out? Undoubtedly. This work is unending. We choose to keep at it.

The Hugo admins aren’t the only ones failing at this. The PEN Awards have recently been actively lifting up pro-genocide voices and suppressing Palestinian voices. A story we published, “All We Have Left Is Ourselves” by Oyedotun Damilola Muees, won a PEN Award for emerging writers in 2021. How can the administrators of an award designed specifically to remedy the way the publishing establishment has systematically ignored marginalized voices side with imperialism? There’s an open letter calling the PEN organization to task for this. Reckoning is among those who have signed it….

(4) ROMANTASY. Vox explores “How Sarah J. Maas became romantasy’s reigning queen”.

… Within the stories themselves, Maas’s worldbuilding is full of hat tips to her predecessors. In A Court of Thorn and Roses, the faerie land is called Prythian, a nod to Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. In Prythian, faeries use a form of teleportation called “winnowing,” and their explanation of it will be familiar to anyone who loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. “Think of it as … two different points on a piece of cloth,” Maas writes (very much her ellipses). “Winnowing … it’s like folding that cloth so the two spots align.” If you’ve read the classics of YA fantasy before, you’ll recognize the sampling and remixing she is doing here.

Part of the pleasure of reading Maas is seeing these familiar YA fantasy references lie cheek by jowl with the tropes of romance novels. In A Court of Mist and Fury, the second volume of the series, two lovers who have not yet admitted their feelings for each other find themselves forced by cruel circumstance to fake date. Later, they end up at an inn with only one bed to spare, not once but twice. Across ACOTAR, Maas’s protagonist, Feyre, is torn between two boys. One is blond and sunny; one is dark-haired and brooding; both are impossibly beautiful, rich, and powerful; both begin as Feyre’s enemies….

(5) CHESTBURSTERS, MUPPETS, AND A BLACK HOLE, OH MY! Hugo Book Club Blog calls 1980 “The Ascendancy of Science Fiction Cinema (Hugo Cinema 1980)”.

In each year from 1970 to 1975, fewer than five of the top-30 movies (which could only be seen in cinemas at that time) could even remotely be considered genre works. By 1979, just two years after Star Wars, most of the top grossing movies were science fiction.

When the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation began in 1958, there had been concerns raised about whether or not there could be sufficient SFF movies worthy of consideration. Several times between 1958 and 1978, fans voted to present no award because they were dissatisfied with the cinematic fare on offer. That would never happen again.

After decades as a marginal cinematic genre, science fiction was in its ascendancy.

Most of the movies on the 1980 Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo have withstood the test of time: The Muppet Movie, Time After Time, Star Trek The Motion Picture, and Alien remain well-loved today. Only Disney’s The Black Hole stands out as being one we thought was unworthy of Hugo Awards consideration … and even it has some charm to it….

(6) GODZILLA MINUS ONE LIVE REVIEW. Artist Bob Eggleton and Erin Underwood will review Godzilla Minus One live on YouTube on February 29 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. (YouTube link.)

Join a special live movie review on YouTube of Godzilla Minus One with award winning science fiction artist Bob Eggleton, whose past work on Godzilla imagery has earned him love from fans around the world. Godzilla Minus One is the newest Japanese remake of the iconic monster who has captured our hearts ever since its original release in 1954. The newest film in the Godzilla genre features post war Japan when the country is still trying to recover, and “a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb.”

Bob Eggleton: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobeggleton; Bob Eggleton has won 9 Hugo Awards, and various other important awards for his art over the last 30 years of his career. He is a fan of Godzilla and worked as a creative consultant on the American remake. While in Japan he appeared as an extra in one of the more recent films. Bob has designed concepts for Star Trek, Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius (2001) and The Ant Bully (2006) as well as created art for various publishers, magazines, book covers and media projects. His passion is with classic masters of art such as JMW Turner, John Martin and the Romantic movement. Bob has always been fascinated with ‘scale’ as a philosophy in the painted image, whether it be the vastness of outer space, or the size of a kaiju, H P Lovecraft denizen, or a dragon viewed from a human perspective.

Erin Underwood: YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ErinUnderwood; Erin Underwood is a movie reviewer on YouTube. She’s also a science fiction and fantasy conrunner, fan, author, and editor who loves dissecting stories and talking about films, TV, and books. However, in the daylight hours, she designs and produces emerging technology conferences for MIT Technology Review, where she tells the story of how new technologies are being used and how they are likely to impact our world.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 27, 1940 — Howard Hesseman. (Died 2022.) So yes, I’m doing Howard Hesseman so I can mention how much I liked him as Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati. Hesseman prepared for the role by actually DJing at KMPX-FM in San Francisco for several months. 

In interviews, the producers of the show said that persona was largely developed by him and the following opening words of him on the first show are all his doing. 

All right, Cincinnati, it is time for this town to get down! You’ve got Johnny—Doctor Johnny Fever, and I am burnin’ up in here! Whoa! Whoo! We all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts, because I got the healing prescription here from the big ‘KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now I am talking about your 50,000 watt intensive care unit… 

Now let’s talk about his genre roles. 

He was Fred in Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, a television horror film that has no rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but one person there says the only interesting thing was the real tarantulas. 

Howard Hesseman in 2014.

No, Clue, one of my all-time favorite films cannot be stretched to be considered genre, but I’m including it here because he, though uncredited, had the juicy role of The Chief. 

He was in the wonderful Flight of the Navigator as Dr. Louis Farsday, and then there’s the amusing thing Amazon Women on the Moon where he’s Rupert King in the “Titan Man” segment. 

He was Dr. Berg in the excellent Martian Child which based the David Gerrold’s Hugo Award winning novelette, not the novel based off it. 

Yes, he was in both Halloween II as Uncle Meat and Bigfoot as Mayor Tommy Gillis, neither career highlights by any measure.

I see he showed up on one of my favorite series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, playing a character named Bayes: in “Downwind from Gettysburg”.

Around the that time, he  went elsewhere to the new Outer Limits to be Dr. Emory Taylor in “Music of the Spheres”. 

I’m off to watch the pilot now…

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) NO SFF IN DICK TRACY RETURN. In “Dick Tracy Writers Tease the Legendary Detective’s Return” at CBR.com, Alex Segura and Michael Moreci celebrate Dick Tracy’s return. No fancy wrist-radio, though.

When does your series take place? What made you choose this era as a setting?

Moreci: We’re very specific in the time we’re setting this — our story takes place in 1947, so it’s just after World War II. Again, there’s a definite, clear reason for that, rooted in Tracy’s character and the mood we’re trying to set.

Segura: This is Dick Tracy: Year One, basically.

(10) CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME. In a manner of speaking… The Library Foundation of Los Angeles invites you to “The Stay Home and Read a Book Ball”, 36th edition, on Sunday, March 3 at 12:00 a.m. – “Wherever you are!”

While you’re celebrating, take a moment to support the Library Foundation of Los Angeles by donating what you would have spent on a night out.

Share photos of your literary festivities on our Facebook event page, Instagram, or Twitter and tell us what you’ll be reading. Tag us at @LibraryFoundLA and use hashtag #StayHomeandRead to let others know how you are celebrating!

(11) THE ROBOT YOU NEED? The “Lost In Space Electronic Lights & Sounds B9 Robot Golden Boy Edition” is offered by Diamond Select Toys on Amazon.

  • Eyes light up and sensors blink, Chest blinks when B-9 talks
  • Head bubble manually raises and lowers, Arms extend and collapse
  • Claws open and close
  • Wheels allow B-9 to roll
  • B-9 Says the following phrases, including dialogue from “Cave of the Wizards”: “Watch it, I do not like grubby finger stains on my new suit of gold.” “From now on I’d appreciate it if you’d call be Golden Boy” “In my opinion, it is not Professor Robinson who needs psychiatric treatment, it is his doctor.” “I forgot, you are brave, handsome Dr. Smith.” and more!

(12) SIDEWAYS ON LUNA. [Item by Steven French.] I wonder if one of the engineers went home before the launch thinking “I’m sure I’ve forgotten something”! “Odysseus craft’s moon mission to be cut short after sideways landing” in the Guardian.

….On Friday, Intuitive Machines had disclosed that the laser range finders – designed to feed altitude and forward-velocity readings to Odysseus’ autonomous navigation system – were inoperable because company engineers neglected to unlock the lasers’ safety switch before launch on 15 February. The safety lock, akin to a firearm’s safety switch, can only be disabled by hand….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Introduction from Deadline: “’The Watchers’ Trailer Sees Dakota Fanning Stalked Through Irish Forest”. Comes to theaters June 7.

Warner Bros on Tuesday unveiled the first trailer for The Watchers, the anticipated supernatural thriller marking the feature debut of writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan, with Dakota Fanning (The Equalizer 3) in the lead.

Set up at New Line following a multi-studio bidding war, this film from the daughter of M. Night Shyamlan is based on the 2021 gothic horror novel by A.M. Shine. Pic tells the story of Mina (Fanning), a 28-year-old artist who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers that are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, N., Kathy Sullivan, Andrew (not Werdna), Olav Rokne, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 2/20/24 The Scroll Of Theseus

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(1) IN THE BEGINNING. Philip Athans asks everyone, “Don’t Be Hatin’ On Prologues (Again)” at Fantasy Author’s Handbook.

… Anyway, once again we’re being told that all prologues are bad, no books should ever have a prologue, and all authors who write prologues are bad, and anyway, it’s best to just skip over them if one should have the nerve to appear….

…Let’s take this monumental misconception in two parts. First, the notion that prologues are optional and no one reads them.

As both an editor and a reader I have never in my life skipped a prologue or in any way went in thinking it was not necessary to the story. Not one time, not ever. This notion is so alien to me I can’t even begin to understand the origin of it.

Richard Lee Byers, author of Called to Darkness and The Reaver (neither of which happen to have prologues) tried to help: “…the assumption is that the prologue is an info dump. Beyond that, even if it’s exciting in its own right, there’s a feeling that if Chapter 1 switches to different characters or is Ten Years Later, you’ve thrown away whatever narrative momentum you might have built up.”

There should never be an assumption that a prologue is an info dump, because prologues should never be info dumps—not ever, not under any circumstances. And yes, even if your world is really complex and you’ve spent years worldbuilding and you’re sure no one will understand your story unless you “set the scene” or teach them all about your amazing world, and all that nonsense. If this is what your prologue is doing, that’s why your book is being rejected, not because it has a prologue, but because it has a crappy prologue….

(3) HISTORY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. Canadian sff author D.G. Valdron writes about “Moral Compromise and the Lesson of the Hugos” on Medium.

… Well, the Hugos Scandal isn’t the battle for Civil Rights. But the sort of moral compromise and coercion that King criticized is on display here, and it’s frightening how unnecessary it was, how shallow virtue turned out to be.

How do we really act, how do we really think or behave, how virtuous are we if we are genuinely tested, if there’s a real push. How often have you bowed your head and simply gone along to get along.

And how brave will you be when there are real consequences? When taking a stand actually can get you arrested, or get you fired from your job, or get you beaten up? How principled are you, when there’s money involved, either to lose or to gain? When principles mean some form of inconvenience? When principles mean going against the crowd?

Sadly, I think that most of us won’t be. We’ll be just like the Hugo folk….

(4) THE FIRST. “’No one had done it before him’: the groundbreaking stories of Black astronauts” – the Guardian discusses the documentary film The Space Race.

…Glover describes the tension of code switching between his professional and personal lives. He is a military officer and Nasa astronaut – he will pilot the upcoming Artemis II mission that will orbit the moon – but also a Black man in America. “Is it really possible to have a double consciousness? No, but you almost have to think of it that way: there’s a bit of me that I am at home and then there’s a bit of me that I am at work, and the overlap is kind of small.”…

(5) STEVE MILLER (1950-2024). Sff author Steve Miller died this afternoon. His wife and co-author Sharon Lee told Facebook readers:

He went downstairs to take a walk at about 4:30. At about 5:30, I thought he’d been awhile and went downstairs to see what was going on.

He was on the floor, unconscious, and not breathing. I called 911, and did CPR until the ambulance and EMTs arrived. They did everything they could, but his heart just wouldn’t beat on its own.

Miller’s health had been failing; he recently wrote his own obituary, which Sharon Lee has allowed File 770 to post (see “Steven Richard Miller (July 31, 1950 – February 20, 2024)”.)

Steve and Sharon Lee declared themselves partners in life and in writing in 1978. They married in November 1980, and moved from Maryland to Skowhegan, Maine, in October 1988 after the publication of their first joint novel, Agent of Change, the first in what was to become a long series of space opera novels and stories set in their original Liaden Universe®. A book in that series, Scout’s Progress, won the 2002 Romantic Times Book Club Reviewers Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Steve was an active member of fandom in earlier years, as Director of Information of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society for some time, and as vice-chair of the bid committee to hold the 1980 Worldcon in Baltimore (they lost to Boston).

The SF Encyclopedia says Steve began publishing work of genre interest with “Shalgiel” for Flux Magazine in 1976, one of his few solo works. He began collaborating with Sharon with “The Naming of Kinzel: The Foolish” (June 1984 Fantasy Book); and all his novels have been with Lee, primarily the Liaden Universe® sequence. 

Steve ran his own small press from 1995 through 2012, specializing in chapbooks containing 2-3 short stories set in the Liaden Universe® and other settings from books by him, Sharon Lee and other authors.

For awhile Steve and Sharon ran Bookcastle & Dreamsgarth, Inc., a genre bookstore with a traveling convention SF art agency component.

Steve and Sharon were honored together in 2012 with NESFA’s Skylark Award, given for contributions to SF in the spirit of E.E. “Doc” Smith.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 20, 1926 — Richard Matheson. (Died 2013.) Now we come to Richard Matheson. So where shall I start?  From a genre viewpoint, we should start with the Hugo he would share at Solacon for The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold from Matheson’s screenplay based off his novel. 

What next? Well The Twilight Zone, of course. He scripted thirteen episodes of which “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with William Shatner is certainly the best-known. I’d also single out “Little Girl Lost” for just being out really, really scary, again it’s based off a story of his. Also, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” became part of the Twilight Zone film.

Richard Matheson

Oh, sweet mother, he was prolific! I mean really, really prolific. Just cinema films alone totaled up to at least twenty-eight: television work adds another thirty-four. So no, I’m not covering these in detail, am I? 

Matheson’s famous novel I Am Legend was made into three movies – but he wondered in an interview why it kept being optioned when no one ever made a movie that actually followed the book. He hated The Last Man on Earth, so he’s credited as Logan Swanson instead. It got made twice more, as The Omega Man, and much later as I Am Legend with Will Smith.

Now where was I? (The phone rang from a medical office. Lots of those these days.) Ahhh, series work. 

The Night Stalker was his greatest success. The Night Stalker first aired in January 1972, and garnered the highest ratings of any television movie at that time. Matheson would receive an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay. 

He scripted but a single episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., “The Atlantis Affair” and none of the other U.N.C.L.E. series. 

He did “The Enemy Within” episode of the Trek series, not one that I consider to be all that great.

Remember in the Jack Palance Birthday I mentioned Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dan Curtis’ Dracula? Well guess who the scriptwriter was for it?

He’s the scriptwriter of The Martian Chronicles, the good, the bad whatever of that series. Seen it at least three times, still love the original version much more.

He was involved in Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics. The first and much shorter segment, The Theatre, was expanded and scripted by him from a Serling outline. 

Now his fiction. 

Thirty novels which with the exception of the ones of the ones I’ve already noted and The Shrinking Man and The Night Stalker novels, I recognized absolutely nothing. What I found fascinating is that half of the nearly thirty novels had become films. Nearly all with him writing the scripts for them. 

Short stories. Oh yes. And as I’ve mentioned previously, many of them were adapted by him into scripts for such series as The Twilight Zone. He’s got literally dozens of collections but not being one who’s read him deeply, I cannot recommend what ones are the best to acquire.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) HOW EDUCATIONAL! The New York Times declares, “It’s Alive! EC Comics Returns”.

EC Comics, which specialized in tales of horror, crime and suspense, and was shut down in the “moral panic” of the 1950s, is making a comeback.

Oni Press will publish two new anthology series under the EC Comics banner. The first, Epitaphs From the Abyss, coming in July, will be horror focused; Cruel Universe, the second, arrives in August and will tell science fiction stories.

Hunter Gorinson, the president and publisher of Oni Press, said the new stories will interpret the world of today, much as EC Comics explored the American psyche of the 1950s. The cover designs will feel familiar to EC Comics fans: Running down the top left is a label declaring the type of story — “Terror” or “Horror” or “Science-Fiction” — and the logo evokes the bold colors and fonts of past series like “Tales From the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.”

The series are a partnership between Oni and the family of William M. Gaines, the original publisher of EC Comics, who died in 1992. Gary Groth, the editor of The Comics Journal, told The New York Times in 2013 that EC Comics was “arguably the best commercial comics company in the history of the medium.”….

 (9) IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE. “I Went to Hogwarts for Seven Years and Did Not Learn Math or Spelling, and Now I Can’t Get a Job” is a 2020 humor piece from The New Yorker.

Dear Headmaster McGonagall:

I am a recent Hogwarts graduate, and, although my time with you was a literal fantasy, I unfortunately did not learn a lot of basic skills, like math or spelling, at your skool.

You may say, “Why do you need arithmetic? You’re a wizard. You can do magic!” To which I reply, sure, for some wizard careers that’s great, but other wizards work in middle management and just want a normal nine-to-five gig. When I graduated, I thought that all I would need was my wand and a couple of choice incantations, but these days, without at least a little algebra, you’re not even qualified to work in Bertie Bott’s retail department…

(10) ARTIFICIAL SURE, INTELLIGENT? MAYBE. Not including any copies of the images was an easy choice: “The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images” at Science Integrity Digest.

… The authors disclose that the figures were generated by Midjourney, but the images are – ahem – anatomically and scientifically incorrect.

Figure 1 features an illustration of a rat, sitting up like a squirrel, with four enormous testicles and a giant … penis? The figure includes indecipherable labels like ‘testtomcels‘, ‘senctolic‘, ‘dissilced‘, ‘iollotte sserotgomar‘ and ‘diƨlocttal stem ells’. At least the word ‘rat‘ is correct.

One of the insets shows a ‘retat‘, with some ‘sterrn cells‘ in a Petri dish with a serving spoon. Enjoy!…

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Lise Andreasen, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, John A Arkansawyer, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Chengdu Worldcon Won’t Account for Sponsorships

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By Rcade: At the 2021 Worldcon in Washington D.C., a sponsorship by Raytheon caused such a furious backlash that convention chair Mary Robinette Kowal apologized and announced that the con was donating an equal amount to an organization devoted to peace.

Two years later millions of dollars were spent on the Chengdu Worldcon by commercial and Chinese government sponsors, funding expenses that included event promotion, airfare and lodging for all Hugo Awards nominees and convention committee members, shuttles between the hotel and convention center, human translators at events and tourist excursions to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

These sponsorships will not be accounted for in the convention’s financial report, Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow revealed during a panel discussion in December at Smofcon, a conference for convention planners. “None of that appears on our financial report because we didn’t get any money out of the deal. The convention never saw that money. What the convention saw was Hugo finalists who would show up and their plane ticket was taken care of and their hotel room was taken care of. It means that our financial report is completely accurate and totally misleading.”

The panel was titled “What Can We Learn from Chengdu?” and included three members of the convention’s committee: Yalow, advisor Helen Montgomery and business meeting chair Donald Eastlake III. The other panelists were Vincent Docherty, an advisor to the upcoming 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, and Marie Vibbert, a 2023 Hugo nominee who made the trip to China. The moderator was Tammy Coxen, chair of the 2014 Detroit NASFiC convention.

In late January, John S of Ersatz Culture called attention to the Smofcon panel as part of his ongoing reporting about problems with Chengdu. The discussion drew further scrutiny after Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford revealed last week that Chengdu Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty manipulated the nominations and final vote, excluding some top vote getters after his team investigated nominees for anything political in their work or life that might cause concerns in the host country.

The hour-long Smofcon panel was a discussion of how future Worldcons could potentially emulate Chengdu, where Yalow said “damn near everything” was funded by sponsors.

When the first audience question began with a comment that sponsor dollars bought “splashy” presentations but communications with members before the con would’ve also been nice, Coxen interjected before any panelists could respond. “What I wanted to focus this panel on was not the tearing down but the building up,” she said. “What can we take away, what can we learn.”

There was a lot of enthusiasm on the panel for Worldcons aggressively pitching their event to sponsors, tempered with the reality that opportunities would be far smaller than they were in China.

Yalow offered this advice: “When we went to sponsors and said are you interested in sponsoring it … the way you had to structure that pitch is not what benefits can the convention can get out of it. The way the pitches were always structured is what benefit does the sponsor — or the government in the case of government sponsorship — what benefit does that person or that organization get out of it. A pitch that says ‘Well we can do all of these really cool things’ is a failed pitch.”

Chengdu sponsors “were not particularly intrusive,” Yalow said, but the con could not change a sponsored panel’s scheduled time or panelists without consulting that sponsor. The only disclosure of the commercial arrangement was in the backdrop of the panel, not in any convention publications. “From the person on the other side of the table, the person sitting in the audience, it looked exactly the same,” he said.

There was one part of Chengdu that disallowed sponsors. “One of our ‘do not break this rule ever under any circumstance’ was no sponsorship in respect to the Hugos,” Yalow said.

The WSFS Constitution, which sets the rules of Worldcon, grants members the right to examine a Worldcon’s “financial records and books of account.”

As the panel was nearing its close, the issue of financial transparency was raised for the first time by a questioner in an online chat visible to the panelists and audience but not shown on video.

The moderator Coxen read the question aloud: “One of the objections to Raytheon as a sponsor for DC 3 was not just who they were but the perceived lack of transparency around it. How do you think we could reconcile that with the effective but relatively subtle sponsorship Chengdu had?”

She responded jocularly. “Nobody knew who the sponsors were, at least from the West, so nobody asked you hard questions about them from the West!”

Yalow dodged the question. “That’s a political question that is in a sense above my pay grade,” he said.

Helen Montgomery answered, “As the chairperson of Chicon 8, coming in right after the whole Raytheon thing at DisCon, we were like, OK here’s our sponsorship policy, which we’d been working on — we had to change it after Raytheon. … I can’t quite get my head around the words, I’m sorry. I think it’s a really tricky balance. The people who come to Worldcon want Worldcon to do more and more and more. And we’ve tried really hard to do the more and more and more. But we are at a point where we can’t do more unless we get more money. So do we charge attendees more so we can do more? We’re going to get all kinds of pushback around that. Our other alternative is sponsorship, right? And like I’m saying about the position Seattle is in. Boeing is right frickin’ there but Boeing does military stuff. That balance is just so hard and I don’t have a good answer to that question.”

In her apology for accepting the Raytheon donation, DisCon III chair Kowal offered three action items for future conrunners to avoid making the same mistake: “Developing a sponsorship policy for your organization that reflects the values and concerns of our community. Creating a robust plan for doing due diligence on potential sponsors. Creating a mission and value statement against which to measure actions.”

A final question at the Smofcon panel was about the Hugo nominee Vibbert, who revealed she was offered an honorarium and turned it down because of concerns about the sponsor. An audience member asked if she would share the company’s name.

“She said that was Huawei,” Coxen responded.

Pixel Scroll 2/4/24 Pixel, Pixel, Scroll And Stumble. File Churn And Cauldron Double

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(1) FUNERAL FOR CACHED WEBPAGES. Ars Technica says “Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead”. That will make reporting controversial social media – where people sometimes take down posts that have attracted attention — rather harder.

Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search’s “cached” links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google “Search Liaison” Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature “was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

The feature has been appearing and disappearing for some people since December, and currently, we don’t see any cache links in Google Search. For now, you can still build your own cache links even without the button, just by going to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:” plus a website URL, or by typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search. For now, the cached version of Ars Technica seems to still work. All of Google’s support pages about cached sites have been taken down….

(2) GERROLD Q&A. The Roddenberry Archive has released a two-part interview with David Gerrold.

The Roddenberry Archive presents an in-depth two-part conversation with award-winning science fiction novelist and screenwriter David Gerrold. During the conversation, Mr. Gerrold tells how, as a college student he broke into the television industry by writing a script for the original Star Trek, the classic episode, “Trouble With Tribbles.”. Mr. Gerrold speaks candidly of his sometimes-tumultuous relationship with Star Trek’s creator, the late Gene Roddenberry. He delves into his personal experiences in the making of the legendary series and of his pivotal role in the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

(3) DISCUSSING HUGO REFORM. Brad Templeton has distilled his comments about the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo problems and potential fixes into a single post: “The World Science Fiction convention/awards were attacked again. How can its unusual governance structure deal with this?” at Brad Ideas. Here are the final two sections:

Legal clarity

The organization also needs more legal clarity. The terms of the agreement between WSFS and the conventions it appoints need to be more explicit and clear. The current WSFS constitution says the WorldCon (the local convention entity) does most of what goes on at a convention, but the Hugos and Site Selection are officially the actions of WSFS, though it delegates the logistics and administration to the WorldCon. It’s a bit confusing and might not handle legal scrutiny well.

That WSFS is constitutionally the party that awards the Hugos, using the WorldCon as its agent, has many advantages for trademark law and also if WSFS wants to exercise authority over the Hugos and the people administering them. This should be made more clear.

Recommendations

  • When all is done, there should at least be the appearance that they did not get away with it, to deter future corruption and censorship.
  • The best solution is not a specific one, but a general one that allows the organization to respond quickly to problems and threats, without removing its intentional slow pace of change, and resistance to control by “SMOFs.”
  • Auditing and more transparency are a good start, with an ethos of whistleblowing.
  • Put term limits on all WSFS officials.
  • Clarify and codify the structure of WSFS and the contracts.
  • Pick one way or another to allow WSFS to respond immediately to threats. I like the idea of actions that can be reversed, but some path should be chosen.
  • Do find some way to stop Hugo administration from being under the influence of censorship states, including China.

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

La Zi speaks again

Filers will recall that on January 24th, Mike ran an article by me that included an item about a bizarre Weibo post from Worldcon Vice-Chair and SFW editor La Zi.  I did notice that that Weibo post disappeared not long after it was featured here, but I’d not checked on his account since then, thinking that he might understandably be taking a step back from social media, especially given all the ongoing Hugo stats report controversy.

Reader, I was sorely mistaken.

Amongst some fairly mundane reposts, a couple of his recent posts stood out to me.  The most pertinent to File 770 is this short one from Wednesday January 31st, which is straightforward enough that I could just about understand it all, even with my meagre Chinese language skills.  That text reads:

中国科幻迷应该永远记得本·亚洛这个名字。他是真正的好人，也是真正的国际主义者。

which Google Translate renders as follows (surname error corrected):

Chinese science fiction fans should always remember the name Ben Yalow. He is a truly good man and a true internationalist. 

Here’s a screenshot of the Weibo post – including a similar translation from Alibaba Cloud – just in case it also disappears.

Note to readers: the censuring of Ben Yalow (and Chen Shi, and Dave McCarty) occurred on the previous day, the 30th – although obviously time zone differences make things a bit more complicated with regard to recording what happened when.

The second post that I would like to bring to your attention is a couple of days older, published on Monday the 29th.  The Chinese text reads:

应该要求美国尊重得克萨斯（孤星）共和国人民的民主诉求，承认其独立共和国身份。可以考虑签订《与得克萨斯（孤星）共和国关系法》，并提供防卫目的的武器贸易和军事援助，目的是保护得克萨斯不会因为强大北方邻国的觊觎而被掠夺珍贵的油气资源，任何企图以非和平方式来决定得克萨斯共和国前途之举——包括使用经济抵制及禁运手段在内，将被视为对东太平洋地区和平及安定的威胁，联合国应该介入。

Google Translate renders this as follows (text left unaltered):

The United States should be required to respect the democratic aspirations of the people of the Republic of Texas (Lone Star) and recognize its identity as an independent republic. Consider signing the “Relationships with the Republic of Texas (Lone Star) Act” and provide arms trade and military assistance for defense purposes. The purpose is to protect Texas from being plundered of precious oil and gas resources due to the covetousness of its powerful northern neighbors. Any attempt to use Non-peaceful measures to determine the future of the Republic of Texas, including the use of economic boycotts and embargoes, will be considered a threat to peace and stability in the Eastern Pacific region, and the United Nations should intervene.

Here’s another screenshot for posterity.

Whilst many may presume that this second post indirectly refers to some other place, please note that on January 30th, Newsweek reported that Chinese social media was full of stories about the US being in a state of civil war.  A couple of extracts:

As the battle of wills over immigration continues between the White House and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a parallel debate is happening in China, where trending social media posts are backing the Lone Star State’s right to secede from the United States.

On China’s X-like microblogging site Weibo, accounts with more than a million followers were spreading misinformation this week claiming Texas had entered a “state of war” with the federal government. In the comment sections, Chinese netizens met the news with excitement and glee…

“If the U.S. really pushes Texas back, then it will be great fun,” the user said. “I hope both sides will not be cowardly and that they will fight to the end!”

In a follow-up post on Tuesday, the user said he was inspired to “definitely contribute money and effort” to support the cause against America’s “imperialist oppression” in Texas and elsewhere in the world.

There’s further discussion of this on Reddit’s /r/China, which is where I’d previously heard about this meme.

Note to readers: per Fancyclopedia:

Ben [Yalow] shocked most of fandom when he moved to Texas in 2021.

(5) GLOBETROTTER. Australian fan Robin Johnson has been writing posts for The Little Aviation Museum “Reading Room”. Here’s an example published in 2022: “1997 – A Year of Sightseeing and Science Fiction”.

I have been reminded by a Facebook post by astronomical artist Don Davis of the Hale-Bopp comet of 1997, a year that was a red-letter one for me. As a pensioner of BOAC (now British Airways) I was able to fly on a stand-by basis on their flights (and some other airlines). Flights from Australia to England were operating with one stop using the latest Boeing 747-400s.

I visited my father in England in January for his birthday, and on the way home to Tasmania attended two regional science fiction conventions in the U.S.A. and one in Perth – Arisia in Boston, Chattacon in Chattanooga, and Swancon in Perth.

In late March I set off to England again, attending a Con in Wellington, New Zealand en route, visited friends in the Los Angeles area, and took advantage of the fact that BOAC had recently taken over British Caledonian Airways to fly to London from Dallas-Ft Worth by DC-10.

Comet Hale-Bopp had not yet been easily visible in the Southern hemisphere when I left home, but was spectacular in the Northern Hemisphere. Sitting aboard the flight next to a flight crew member, we talked about the comet – and soon I was invited onto the flight deck. The DC-10 has spectacularly large windows, and standing behind the Captain as we overflew Greenland, on a moonless night: the view was unique. The comet had just passed its closest point to Earth, and the tail was prominently on view to the naked eye, and there could not have been a better viewpoint….

(6) CHRISTOPHER PRIEST OBITUARIES.

John Clute’s “Christopher Priest obituary” ran in the Guardian today.

The novelist Christopher Priest, who has died aged 80 after suffering from cancer, became eminent more than once over the nearly 60 years of his active working life. But while he relished success, he displayed a wry reserve about the ambiguities attending these moments in the limelight.

In 1983 he was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, a 20-strong cohort, most of them – such as Martin Amis, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and AN Wilson – significantly younger than Priest, whose career had begun almost two decades earlier, and who had at least 15 books and 50 stories in print by the early 80s. He clearly felt that it was not so much the quality of his work that delayed his “promotion” to the literary establishment, but his reluctance to deny, when asked, that he wrote science fiction.

His large body of work never fitted easily into any mould. Only in recent years has it become widely understood that the sometimes baffling ingenuity and thrust of his fiction has been of a piece, no more detachable into convenient genres than, say, Amis’s or Ishiguro’s tales of the fantastic….

Paul Kincaid’s reminiscences about “Chris” appear at Through the dark labyrinth.

The 1976 Eastercon was held in the rather grim surroundings of Owen’s Park student accommodation, Manchester. It was my third convention and I still wasn’t used to the fact that mere mortals could mix freely with actual authors. So I was very nervous approaching a small group in the bar. My target was a tall, thin guy wearing blue denim jacket and jeans and smoking with a long cigarette holder (later in the convention, Lee Montgomerie would win the fancy dress for the best costume as an author; she was wearing almost exactly the same outfit). This was Christopher Priest and I had just bought the paperback of his latest novel, The Space Machine. I asked for an autograph. He pointed to someone at the other side of the bar. “See that guy? Andrew Stephenson. He did the illustrations. Why don’t you get him to sign it?” To this day, that paperback is one of the few Chris Priest novels I own that isn’t signed by the author.

Later that day I was standing at the back of a programme item. Chris was on the panel, smoking with that long holder, and I began to notice the wild figure of 8 shape that the glowing end of the cigarette was making, and I realised his hand was shaking. He was more nervous than I had been.

Years go by. A BSFA meeting in London at a pub near Hatton Garden. I’m propping up the bar with Chris. I mention that I’ve just reviewed his latest novel, The Glamour, and I thought it was really good except that the ending didn’t quite work. Two days later I receive a thick envelope in the post. It was the typescript for a revised ending of The Glamour, the first of countless revisions of the novel that was so good but so impossible to end….

black and white photo of Christopher Priest taken in 1983 by Gamma
Christoper Priest outside Forbidden Planet in London in 1983. Photo by Gamma.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1940 — The Adventures of Superman on radio

Black and white photo of Superman radio show cast members Jackson Beck (announcer), Joan Alexander (Lois Lane) and Bud Collyer (Superman)
Superman radio show cast members Jackson Beck (announcer), Joan Alexander (Lois Lane) and Bud Collyer (Superman)

The Adventures of Superman is a long-running radio serial. Initially, the show, which aired  from 1940 through to 1951, was  syndicated through the Mutual Broadcasting System’s cornerstone station, WOR in New York, subsequently taken up by the Mutual network, and finally by ABC. In the beginning there were three episodes a week of 15 minutes in length. When in 1941 they began making five episodes a week, some stations stayed with the three-a-week format. Late in the show’s run episodes ran 30 minutes.

The year after the comic strip debuted four audition radio programs were prepared to sell Superman as a syndicated radio series. It took very little time to have WOR sign the contract to do this, so it went on the air less two years after the comic strip launched.

The original pitch was that the audience was going to be predominantly juvenile so the scripts had to be lighthearted with the violence toned down. The performers were chosen with that mind, so they cast Bud Collyer in the Clark Kent / Superman role and Joan Alexander as Lois Lane. She also voiced that role in animated Fleischer Superman shorts. 

The continuity of the series is significantly different than the series as Krypton is located on the far side of the sun, and on the journey to Earth,  Kal-el becomes an adult before his ship lands on Earth., so he is never adopted by the Kents but immediately begins his superhero / reporter career. 

This serial is responsible for the introduction of kryptonite to the Superman universe. Daily Planet editor Perry White and Jimmy Olsen who was a copy editor originated in the serial as well. 

As a gimmick that paralleled the Superman comic and which the audience adored, they kept the identity of Collyer as the character a secret for the first six years, until when Superman became the character in a radio campaign for racial and religious tolerance and Collyer did a Time magazine interview about that campaign.

Kellog Company was the sponsor at least initially with the product being its Pep cereal. It was sponsored Tom Corbet, Space Cadet.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side captures a photo op with visitors who aren’t from around here.
  • Pearls Before Swine finds an unexpected angle to library censorship.
  • Six Chix meanwhile shows the challenges of a bookstore customer.  

(9) EUROSTAR. The Guardian looks ahead to issues with cross-Channel train travel. “Eurostar may cap services due to post-Brexit biometric passport checks, says station owner”.

Eurostar could be forced to limit passenger numbers travelling from St Pancras each day under post-Brexit plans to bring in biometric border controls later this year, the owner of the station has warned.

HS1, the owner and operator of the line and stations between London and the Channel tunnel, has raised concerns that planning for new Entry/Exit System (EES) checks at the London rail station are “severely inadequate”, and would lead to long delays and potential capping of services and passenger numbers.

The EES requires citizens from outside the EU or Schengen area to register before entering the zone.

This will replace the stamping of passports for UK travellers, and instead require passengers to enter personal information and details about their trip, as well as submitting fingerprint and facial biometric data.

It has been mooted that the new checks will come into force in October but the implementation has been delayed several times in recent years because the infrastructure was not ready.

HS1 has now raised several concerns to MPs around St Pancras’s ability to accommodate the changes, predicting “unacceptable passenger delays”.

It said only 24 EES kiosks had been allocated by the French government, despite modelling suggesting that nearly 50 would be needed at peak times….

(10) WOULD YOU CARE FOR A BEVERAGE? Comics on Coffee has enlisted this couple to share their “Mad Love for Raspberry Coffee”.

DC & Comics On Coffee have joined forces to make your mornings more action packed with great tasting coffee! It’s time to get crazy in love with this Valentine’s Day Special Edition Coffee. A smooth, raspberry flavored coffee.  

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. George R.R. Martin shares as much as he can about the films they’re making based on the late Howard Waldrop’s stories in “Come to the Pulls” at Not A Blog.

…COOTERS was just the beginning, though.  Only the first of a series of short films — and one full-length feature, we hope — we have been making, based on some of Howard’s astonishing, and unique, stories.   He wrote so many, it was hard to know where to start, but start we did, and I am pleased to say that we have three more Waldrop movies filmed and in the can, in various stages of post production.   Some of you — the lucky ones — will get a chance to see them this year, at a film festival near you.  As with COOTERS, we’re taking them out on the festival circuit.

First one out of the chute will be MARY-MARGARET ROAD GRADER.   We were able to screen a rough cut for Howard just a few days before his death.  I am so so so glad we did.   And I am thrilled to be able to report that he loved it.

We can’t show it to the world yet.   But here’s a trailer, to give you all a taste.

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

Worldcon Intellectual Property Announces Censure of McCarty, Chen Shi and Yalow; McCarty Resigns; Eastlake Succeeds Standlee as Chair of B.O.D.

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Ben Yalow
Dave McCarty displaying the Hugo base in Chengdu.
Chen Shi
Kevin Standlee and Don Eastlake III.

Worldcon Intellectual Property (W.I.P.) is the California non-profit corporation that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society (www.wsfs.org) including the mark “Hugo Award”. In the midst of social media discussions about the continued viability of these marks, W.I.P. issued the following press release on January 30.

W.I.P. takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and complaints about comments made by persons holding official positions in W.I.P. In connection with these concerns, W.I.P. announces the actions listed below. There may be other actions taken or to be taken that are not in this announcement. 

  • Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P.
  • Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD).

W.I.P. has censured or reprimanded the following persons, listed in alphabetic order, for the reason given:

  • Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.
  • Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.
  • Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks.
  • Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.

Donald Eastlake has been elected Chair of the W.I.P. BoD.

The release also asks readers to note:

Each year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is run by a separate organization which administers the Hugo Awards for that year. The Chengdu 2023 Worldcon has asked that any specific questions about the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards be sent to hugoteam@chengduworldcon.com. (For media enquiries on topics related to W.I.P. other than the specifics of the 2023 Hugo Awards, you may contact info@thehugoawards.org.)

[Based on a press release.]

Update: 01/30/2024: The membership of the WIP Board are the members of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. Upon Dave McCarty’s resignation, the MPC elected Bruce Farr to fill that now-empty seat (which was up for election at the 2024 WSFS Business Meeting). Bruce was currently already serving as a non-voting Treasurer of the MPC and of WIP.

The members of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee as of January 30, 2024 are: Judith Bemis (Elected until 2026); Alan Bond (Appointed by Seattle 2025 until 2027); Joni Dashoff (Elected until 2026); Linda Deneroff (Secretary, Elected until 2024); Donald E. Eastlake 3rd (Chair Elected until 2024); David Ennis (Appointed by Buffalo NASFiC 2024 until 2026); Bruce Farr (Treasurer, Appointed by Board Resolution to fill vacancy until 2024); Alissa Wales (Appointed by Glasgow 2024 until 2026); Chris Rose (Appointed by Chicon 8 until 2024); Linda Ross-Mansfield (Appointed by Pemmi-Con/2023 NASFiC until 2025); Chen Shi (Appointed by Chengdu Worldcon 2023 until 2025); Kevin Standlee (Elected until 2025); Mike Willmoth (Elected until 2026); Nicholas Whyte (Elected until 2025); and Ben Yalow (Elected until 2025).