Tag Archives: Billie Lourd

Pixel Scroll 5/1/24 Pak Up Your Pixels In An Old Scrith Bag And Smile, Smile, Smile

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(1) A SHAMELESS PLUG FOR “THE AI SONG,” A PARODY BY MY FRIEND (AND COLLEAGUE) PAUL SCHINDLER. [Item by Daniel Dern.] My friend, colleague, and former-boss — briefly (at Byte.com) — Paul Schindler, knowing that I’m a frequent File770 contributor/suggester (from my periodically alerting him to Terry Pratchett and other Scrolls/Items here) asked me to submit as a potential item his recent song parody:

“Inspired by a spate of recent news stories about Artificial Intelligence (including one about a fake Supreme Court decision), I have written (with Clark Smith), “The AI Song” (“P.S. A Column On Things: The AI Song”), including a YouTubing.”

I’m happy to do so, but thought Paul also deserves a (brief-for-me) introduction, particularly since it looks like this will be his first appearance in an Item in a Scroll (as, for the benefit of those coming here via Paul, and other newcomers), File770 posts, and enumerated entries, are irrespectively called):

Paul is (among other things) a (now-former) tech journalist. In terms of AI, Paul notes/recalls, “During the early 1970s, when Daniel and I were fellow undergrads—including working on the student newspapers–at MIT, I interviewed Marvin Minsky several times about AI. This was back when it took very large machines to implement very small models. I remember asking Minsky how many millions of rules it would take to make an AI as smart as a five-year-old.”

While editor of Byte.com, Paul worked with/“managed” the late Jerry Pournelle, notably regarding Jerry’s Chaos Manor column – and post-Byte.com, stayed friends with Jerry. (See Paul’s P.S. A Column On Things post, “My Pal Jerry”). (Note: Byte.com was where Paul was my boss — see my March 2001 “Dern Bids Farewell To Byte.com”).

Additionally, Byte.com-wise, Jerry was the regular, primary guest on the Byte.com Week In Review/Audio Review: The Worldʼs First Podcast, with Paul as the host. (I was involved in a few episodes.) Among other things, Jerry would tell some tales from his variegated past. (It looks like there’s a few episodes on the Internet Archive, per links in Paul’s post.)

More generally, Paul is an sf reader/watcher (among other stuff).  In “My Pal Jerry,” he says, “I read all the science fiction in my childhood branch library and subscribed to the Science Fiction Book Of The Month Club (my premium was The Foundation Trilogy.” Another data point: He cites Joe Haldeman’s The Hemingway Hoax in a footnote to one of his PSaCoTs: “An Open Memo To My Muse”.

(2) GOOD LUCK! When Nick Stathopoulos delivered this year’s Archibald Prize entry to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, they posted a snapshot on Facebook. The 10-time Ditmar Award winner won the prize in 2017.

Nick Stathopoulos holding his portrait of David Stratton.

(3) SMALL WONDERS #11. Issue 11 of Small Wonders, the magazine for science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, is now available on virtual newsstands here. Co-editors Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade bring a mix of flash fiction and poetry from authors and poets who are familiar to SFF readers as well as those publishing their first-ever piece with them.

The Issue 11 Table of Contents and release dates on the Small Wonders website:

  • Cover Art:”Meywa Sowen” by M. A. Del Rosario
  • “Celestial Bodies” (fiction) by Mar Vincent (6 May)
  • “Music of the Seraphim” (poem) by Angel Leal (8 May)
  • “What You Sow” (fiction) by Holly Schofield (10 May)
  • “Eloīse” (fiction) by Albert Chu (13 May)
  • “Kannaki Contemplates” (poem) by Tehnuka (15 May)
  • “Up From Out of Clay” (fiction) by Eris Young (17 May)
  • “Unbending My Bones” (fiction) by Sierra Branham (20 May)
  • “Swan’s Song” (poem) by Colleen Anderson (22 May)
  • “The Stars That Fall” (fiction) by Samantha Murray (24 May)

Subscriptions are available at the magazine’s store the magazine’s store, Patreon, and Weightless Books.

(4) SOFT SF. If only reading social media was always this much fun: Premee Mohamed at Bluesky.

(5) AMAZING STORIES WANTS WHAT IT’S OWED. Steve Davidson is trying to get NBC to pay attention – and pay the money they’ve owed Amazing Stories since 2020. He’s asking anyone who’s willing to signal boost the statement he posted on Facebook.

This is VERY important and I would appreciate reader’s doing two things (if they agree and are comfortable doing so):

First – share this as far and wide as you can. You are granted permission to copy the original text, in its entirety and without alteration, in order to share it elsewhere.

Second – if you are a professional in the field and support this effort, I would like to hear from you personally via PM.

OK – here goes:

Last week I was informed by NBC representatives that I would have a communication from them regarding my missing payments on Tuesday (April 30) of this week.

That email was in response to a query I sent to them regarding this non-payment issue.

In the email, I stated that in the past, the only way(s) in which it seemed that I was able to get any action out of them was to go public with the issue.

Twice previously I had to engage in such actions in order to get breaches of the contract cured through renegotiation.

Major Hollywood personalities and production entities were embarrassed, upset and angered at the time by my accurate and truthful statements.

Tuesday has come and gone with nary a whisper.

I (and by extension, Amazing Stories) have been owed contractually negotiated fees since October of 2020.

Read that date carefully. Later this year, non-payment will have gone on for FOUR years.

While the funds owing are not great by Hollywood standards, they are great by Amazing Stories’ standards and affect its ability to pay authors and artists and others appropriate amounts. The absence of those funds has also negatively affected Amazing’s ability to promote and market its offerings as well.

I informed NBC representatives that if I did not hear back from them (with progress) when they had promised to do so, I would be launching a crowd funding campaign to see if we could raise the missing dollars elsewhere.

I also informed them that, out of necessity, that crowd funding effort would have to explain the entire history of my dealings with NBC (since 2015).

Not included in my email to NBC representatives was my additional intention to encourage NBC to voluntarily give up the rights I licensed to them.

When the contract was in breach (and NBC notified of termination – a notice that they also did not respond to until after I had gone public) I contacted several production studios with the idea of licensing them to do a show under that name.

Several responded in the affirmative, even to the point of discussing a production partnership, in which Amazing Stories would have production credit and direct creative input into the show (after I pitched them the idea that I would be seeking Science Fiction authors with script writing experience to create episodes, as well as to script existing classics of the genre), but that they could not move forward until the “legal encumbrances” had been settled.

The point being that, if free, the name could be used to (attempt) to produce a television show that would have great respect for the genre, would involve contemporary authors with proven story telling and script writing chops, would have ties to the magazine version and, obviously, the greater public footprint that a television show would bring.

(Some may be familiar with the radio shows Dimension X and X Minus 1, where episodes were based on short stories drawn from the magazines of the era. This is what we believe we could do with television.)

I will be forwarding a copy of this FB post to my contacts at NBC (again, who promised response by yesterday which was not forthcoming) and will begin putting together the crowd funding effort that I hope my friends and fellow fans here and elsewhere will support, either by contributing or helping to spread the word.

That effort will be seeking funds to support the legal action of terminating the licensing agreement.

Initial filings in pursuit of that goal are expected to cost approximately 15 to 20k. Some or all of those funds may be recoverable, depending upon a legal ruling.

AGAIN. It is important for this statement to gain wide distribution if it going to have the desired effect. The crowd funding campaign will include additional details and suggestions as to how folks can help advance this effort, but starting here on FB will give it a boost.

Thank you.

“I can’t be ignored. I won’t be ghosted. I can no longer be bargained with. I feel no remorse or fear. And I absolutely will not stop, ever, until this matter is settled to my satisfaction!”

(6) TENTACULUM #4 IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. The special Weird West issue of The Tentaculum is now available for all to download for free.

Featuring short fiction from Cedrick May, Arthur H. Manners, Sasha Brown, and Avra Margariti. This issue also includes nonfiction from Cedrick May and returning contributor Bobby Derie.

Edited by Cameron Howard and designed by Braulio Tellez. Cover and story illustrations by Tristan Tolhurst.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 78. Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley. 

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

 I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. 

Joanna Lumley in 2015.

(She’ll have a very minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin shock will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad. 

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers. 

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. 

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther       as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been! 

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor.  I’d like to link to the copies on YouTube but I’m absolutely sure they’re all bootlegs so please don’t offer up links to them.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) HE-MAN HAS APPOINTMENT WITH THE BIG SCREEN. “’Masters of the Universe’ Finally Hitting Theaters Summer 2026” reveals Deadline. We predict Cora Buhlert will buy a ticket to see it!

The power of Greyskull is happening on June 5, 2026 when Amazon MGM Studios’ and Mattel Films’ finally bring their live-action reboot of Masters of the Universe to theaters.

As Deadline first told you, Bumblebee filmmaker Travis Knight is directing off Chris Butler’s screenplay (the initial draft written by David Callaham, and Aaron and Adam Nee). Mattel Films’ Robbie Brenner, and Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Steve Tisch are producing.

The movie follows ten-year-old Prince Adam who crashed to Earth in a spaceship and was separated from his magical Power Sword—the only link to his home on Eternia. After tracking it down almost two decades later, Prince Adam is whisked back across space to defend his home planet against the evil forces of Skeletor. But to defeat such a powerful villain, Prince Adam will first need to uncover the mysteries of his past and become He-Man: the most powerful man in the Universe….

(10) CALL HER AGENT. Inverse is listening as “5 Years Later, Billie Lourd Pitches the Star Wars Spinoff We Need Right Now”.

…Lourd first appeared as Resistance Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix in The Force Awakens, and has only become more involved in the franchise since. Following Fisher’s passing in 2017, Lourd has become the “keeper” of Princess Leia, standing in for a younger version of the character in a Rise of Skywalker flashback. Returning to that galaxy far away has been a “difficult” experience for Lourd, but nowadays, the actress is keen to reprise her role as Connix.

“I would do anything to come back to any Star Wars franchise. I am absolutely available,” Lourd tells Inverse. “Getting to play Connix was such a gift, and to get to do it again would just be insane.”…

(11) THREE-BODY SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] “The science of 3 Body Problem: what’s fact and what’s fiction?” “Nature spoke to the sci-fi program’s adviser and two other researchers about the portrayal of PhD scientists and their technologies.”

…An alien civilization spying on humans using quantum entanglement. A planet chaotically orbiting three stars. Nanofibres capable of slicing through Earth’s hardest substance, diamond. Despite being chock-full of hardcore science, 3 Body Problem, a television series released on 21 March by the streaming service Netflix, has been a hit with audiences. So far, it has spent five weeks straight in Netflix’s list of the top-three programs viewed globally.

The story follows five young scientists who studied together at the University of Oxford, UK, as they grapple with mysterious deaths, particle-physics gone awry and aliens called the San-Ti who have their sights set on Earth. But how much of the science in the sci-fi epic, based on the award-winning book trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past by the Chinese writer Cixin Liu, reflects reality, and how much is wishful thinking? To find out, Nature spoke to three real-world scientists.…

(12) NOT ONLY IN WASHINGTON. “Is Alien Abduction Insurance a Thing in Washington State?” asks KPQ.

…Before we get into Washington’s take on the subject, it’s worth mentioning that this peculiar form of insurance coverage is associated with the Saint Lawrence Agency in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

Founded in 1987, this agency is famous for being the pioneering provider of alien abduction insurance policies. Over the years, the agency has made headlines and garnered both support and skepticism for its alien abduction policy.

The Saint Lawrence Agency reports to have sold thousands of these policies worldwide.

The policy costs $19.99 and pays out 10 million dollars if you get abducted. It’s important to note that, you’ll need an alien signature to verify your claims….

Newsweek read the fine print.

…The alien abduction scheme says it provides $10 million compensation in the event the policyholder is beamed up. It covers medical issues (all outpatient psychiatric care), sarcasm coverage (immediate family members only) and double indemnity coverage to the sum of $20 million in the event aliens insist on conjugal visits or the extraterrestrial encounter results in offspring.

St. Lawrence told WFLA last month his business has sold upwards of 6,000 policies since 1987. He says there have been two claims since the company formation—and only one big payout. The catch is in the fine print: cash is paid in installments of $1 per year for 10 million years….

(13) CALLS X-FILES SCENE “CRINGEY”. File 770 readers may be interested in this thumbnail self-retrospective of Gillian Anderson’s career produced by Vanity Fair. Of particular interest, of course, will be the first segment discussing The X-Files. But one of her other roles covered (as the psychiatrist in Hannibal) is at least genre adjacent. “Gillian Anderson Rewatches The X-Files, Sex Education, Scoop & More”.

(14) SHELL GAMES. Here is a cute stop motion video featuring a crossover of Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/4/23 Rough Scrolls Do Shake The Sweet Pixels Of May

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(1) BIGGEST STAR WARS DAY EVENT. The Hollywood Reporter covers the ceremony: “Billie Lourd Gets Teary Honoring Late Mother Carrie Fisher at Walk of Fame: ‘Mama, You’ve Made It’”

… Lourd accompanied her mother to Comic-Con. There she learned that Fisher was also beloved.

“People of all ages from all over the world were dressed up like my mom, the lady who sang me to sleep at night and held me when I was scared. Watching the amount of joy it brought to people when she hugged them or threw glitter at them — sorry about that — was incredible to witness. People waited in line for hours just to meet her. People had tattoos of her, people named their children after her. People had stories of how she saved their lives. It was a side of my mom I had never seen before, and it was magical,” recalled Lourd. “I realized then that Leia is more than just a character. She is a feeling. She is strength. She is grace. She is wit. She is femininity at its finest. She knows what she wants and she gets it. She doesn’t need anyone to rescue her because she rescues herself and even rescues the rescuers. And no one could have played her like my mother.”

The ceremony, which kicked off shortly after 11:30 a.m. near the El Capitan Theatre on the corner of Hollywood and Highland, saw Lourd accept Fisher’s honor as she received the 2,754th star on the famed Walk of Fame….

(2) THE STAR WARS PARKING LOT. If you’re going to be in LA on May 6, this is an option available to you: “Movies on Location – ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’”.

In celebration of Star Wars Day, My Valley Pass is thrilled to present Star Wars: A New Hope as part of our ongoing film series Movies On Location. Throughout this exciting series, we screen films at their actual filming locations, or at settings that go hand-in-hand with these specially curated movies. The series features state of the art projection and sound.

This May the 6th, join us in Van Nuys as we screen Star Wars: A New Hope in the parking lot of Neiman & Company, formerly the original location of Industrial Light & Magic where all of the visual effects for Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) were produced.

(3) STAR WARS UNDERGROUND. SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie forwarded this photo taken by a member of his local UK sf group today.

(4) HIGH TEA. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are home from a convention visit. Sharon shares all the interesting details in “To HELIOsphere and beyond!”

…Immediately following our conversation, was the highlight of the convention — the Teddy Bear Tea.

The Teddy Bear Tea is something Steve and I try to schedule, whenever we are Guests of Honor.  It turns out that many fans travel with their stuffed friends, who usually stay in the room, ready for comfort and conversation, when their companions come back from panelling and partying.  We thought it was a shame that the plushies never got a chance to socialize, and that was the inception of the Teddy Bear Tea.

The Teddy Bear Tea is Vastly Flexible, depending on the understanding of the programming folks about what, exactly, we were doing here.

HELIOsphere did us more than proud.  A full British High Tea awaited the plushies and their human friends — cucumber sandwiches (finally! I have had a cucumber sandwich), chicken salad, and egg salad, all cut into triangles and the crust trimmed off.  Cookies!  Biscotti!  It was just marvelous.  All of the plushies and people I talked to were impressed.  Just a very good time, indeed….

(5) DS9’S UNION ORGANIZING EPISODE. “This ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ Episode is Suddenly Very Relevant” says Bell of Lost Souls.

There’s a WGA strike happening. Now is the perfect time to watch the Deep Space Nine‘s episode about union organizing “Bar Association”….

Deep Space Nine, Ferengi, and “Bar Association”

It’s the Bajoran Time of Cleansing. We don’t know what this holy time is about exactly but cleansing means no drinking or gambling. There’s nary a holosuite rental in sight. It’s Lent on steroids. And since much of the station consists of Bajorans that means wildly depleted profit margins for Quark’s Bar!

In “Bar Association“, Quark’s brother Rom nearly dies on the floor of the bar from a nuclear-grade ear infection because Quark won’t give him time off for a doctor’s visit. Worse, Quark decides that, in order to deal with the lack of incoming profit, he’s reducing salary by a third effective immediately.

Finally, in sickbay, Rom complains to Doctor Bashir about the lack of paid time off. Bashir offhandedly suggests that Rom should start a union in order to fight for an improved contract for all the workers. Rom takes the idea to heart and before you know it Quark’s entire staff is on strike.

“Bar Association” is very funny. But it’s also one of the most serious episodes in Star Trek history precisely because it deals with the mistreatment of workers. Obviously, right at the top, the episode deals with the dangers of working while sick. Rom nearly dies of that ear infection. But “Bar Association” says a lot more about the importance of unions than just paid sick leave….

(6) WHO HYPE. “Doctor Who airs new footage of 60th anniversary in cryptic teaser” and Radio Times has the morning-after report.

The ten-second clip aired during the channel’s Saturday (29th April 2023) evening schedule, with a message flashing up onscreen that read Network Error before making way for a number of distorted images and seemingly indecipherable sounds.

But it didn’t take sleuthing Whovians too long to work out some meaning behind the teaser, with fans noting that when the audio is played backwards Donna can be heard saying: “Why did this face come back?”

(7) DEAR DIARY. Radio Times will be running excerpts: “The 1963 Doctor Who diaries of Waris Hussein – part one”.

Much has been written about Doctor Who across the past six decades, but surely little could be more striking and fascinating than the diary kept by Waris Hussein way back in 1963 – his contemporaneous account of those crucial months 60 years ago when the sci-fi series was slowly, sometimes painfully, coming into being.

As Doctor Who’s very first director, he was heavily involved in the programme’s inception and can be counted among its talented band of founding parents…

…What follows is not a day-by-day diary. In 1963 Waris was far too busy for that. Instead, whenever time allowed, he kept a journal in a notebook, sometimes recording his thoughts on one particular day or else summarising recent events. That year he was also directing the BBC soap Compact, a Sunday Play called The Shadow of Mart and wartime espionage series Moonstrike. His diaries cover those in depth, as well as many private matters. For this series of articles exclusive to Radio Times, he has kindly allowed us to edit his accounts, extracting aspects pertinent to Doctor Who.

… Thursday 30th May 1963

The more I think of “Dr Who”, the more it depresses me and I can’t bear the thought of it. I hope it never happens.

[Waris in 2023: “You see, nobody knew exactly what the format was. The scripts were non-existent apart from the first one by Anthony Coburn. There was nothing more to go on. The sci-fi element didn’t bother me particularly; it was more that we’d be dealing with Stone Age characters. I mean, the discovery of fire was not my idea of directing something after my Cambridge days where I studied Shakespeare. And I didn’t want to be laughed at – directing actors in skins.”]….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1984 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Barry Hughart’s career, I was surprised to learn, consisted of just one exemplary series, the Master Li novels which in turn were but a trilogy — Bridge of Birds, The Story of The Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. 

Why this was according to Hughart wasn’t due to his publishers screwing him over though they, according to him, did just that doing everything from labeling his fiction as exclusively being genre to releasing the paperback edition of Eight Skilled Gentlemen the same time as the hardback edition resulting in very few sales of the latter. 

None of which he says actually had to do with him ending his writing career. In the Subterranean Press printing of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox series as it is called, he stated:

“Will there be more? I doubt it, and it’s not because of bad sales and worse publishers. It’s simply that I’d taken it as far as I could. … [N]o matter how well I wrote I’d just be repeating myself.”

So that was it for his writing career. Mind you, according to him in another interview, there were supposed to be seven novels in the series had it run its full course. 

But oh what extraordinary fiction it was. Blending an ancient China that never was, Chinese mythology with detective genre influences, Bridge of Birds won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. It’s an amazing series and go read it if you’ve not. 

The series is available at the usual suspects. 

Our Beginning naturally is from Bridge of Birds… 

I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world. 

My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea. My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father’s sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox. My father died when I was eight. A year later my mother followed him to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth, and since then I have lived with Uncle Nung and Auntie Hua in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of Cho. We take great pride in our landmarks. Until recently we also took great pride in two gentlemen who were such perfect specimens that people used to come from miles around just to stare at them, so perhaps I should begin a description of my village with a couple of classics. 

When Pawnbroker Fang approached Ma the Grub with the idea of joining forces he opened negotiations by presenting Ma’s wife with the picture of a small fish drawn on a piece of cheap paper. Ma’s wife accepted the magnificent gift, and in return she extended her right hand and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger. At that point, the door crashed open and Ma the Grub charged inside and screamed: “Woman, would you ruin me? Half of a pie would have been enough!

That may not be literally true, but the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can. 

Pawnbroker Fang’s ability to guess the lowest possible amount that person would accept for a pawned item was so unerring that I had concluded it was supernatural, but then the abbot took me aside and explained that Fang wasn’t guessing at all. There was always some smooth shiny object lying on top of his desk in the front room of Ma the Grub’s warehouse, and it was used as a mirror that would reflect the eyes of the victim.

“Cheap, very cheap,” Fang would sneer, turning the object in his hands. “No more than two hundred cash.” 

His eyes would drop to the shiny object and if the pupils of the reflected eyes constricted too sharply he would try again.

 “Well, the workmanship isn’t too bad, in a crude peasant fashion. Make it two-fifty.” The reflected pupils would dilate, but perhaps not quite far enough.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 4, 1852 — Alice Pleasance Liddell (rhymes with “fiddle”). One of the sisters to whom “Lewis Carroll” (Charles Dodgson) told the story that he later developed into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and a second book about the character Alice, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). She eventually auctioned the manuscript copy of the first book Carroll had given her (under the original title Alice’s Adventures under Ground). That is how it came to be displayed at Columbia University on the centennial of Carroll’s birth, with Alice present, aged 80. In a nice coincidence, during this visit to the United States she met Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the brothers who inspired J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. (Died 1934.) (OGH/JH)
Alice Liddell dedication copy of Through The Looking Glass
  • Born May 4, 1909 — Ray Quigley. Here solely for the three covers that he did for Weird Tales in the Forties. He didn’t do a lot of pulp work that I can find but these three are amazing. He did the December 1938 cover with the Dracula-like figure, the September 1940 cover with the nightmarish skull faced Bombers and fInally the May 1942 cover with the really scary living ship. The latter issue had Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch and Dorothy Quick listed on the cover! (Died 1998.)
  • Born May 4, 1913 — John Broome. DC writer during the Golden Age. He’s responsible for the creation of an amazing number of characters including The Phantom Stranger, Per Degaton (with artist Irwin Hansen), Captain Comet and Elongated Man (with Carmine Infantino), Atomic Knight and one of my favorite characters, Detective Chimp. DCUniverse streaming app has his work on The Flash starting on issue #133 and the entire early Fifities run of Mystery in Space that he wrote as well. (Died 1999.)
  • Born May 4, 1920 — Phyllis Miller. She co-wrote several children’s books with Andre Norton, House of Shadows and Seven Spells to Sunday. Ride the Green Dragon, a mystery, is at best genre adjacent but it too was done with Norton. (Died 2001.)
  • Born May 4, 1942 — CN Manlove. His major work is Modern Fantasy: Five Studies which compares the work of Kingsley, MacDonald, Lewis, Tolkien and Peake. Other works include Science Fiction: Ten Explorations, The Impulse of Fantasy Literature and From Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England. (Died 2020.)
  • Born May 4, 1943 — Erwin Strauss, 80. I’m not sure I can do him justice. Uberfan, noted member of the MITSFS, and filk musician. He frequently is known by the nickname “Filthy Pierre” which I’m sure is a story in itself. Created the Voodoo message board system used at a number of early cons and published an APA, The Connection, that ran for at least thirty years. Tell me about him. 
  • Born May 4, 1966 — Murray McArthur, 57. He first shows up on Doctor Who in “The Girl Who Died”, a Twelfth Doctor story before being The Broken Man on The Game of Thrones. He also shows up as a stagehand in the historical drama Finding Neverland before playing Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 
  • Born May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 47. Ahhhh such lovely mannerpunk she writes! I think I first noticed her with the start of the Finishing School series which she started off with Etiquette & Espionage some six years ago. Moira Quirk does a delightful job of the audiobooks so I recommend that you check them out. I also love the two novellas in her Supernatural Society series as well. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal calls this argument about consciousness “Robot John Searle”.
  • The Argyle Sweater delivers a Cinco de Mayo/May the Fourth crossover. “Surely Han is giggling and saying ‘Come on Luke, use the Force!’” says Rich Horton.

(11) COME AS YOUR FAVORITE KAIJU. Tomorrow’s First Fridays 2023 event at the LA County Museum of Natural History has a “Giant Monsters/Giant Robot” theme. Cosplay encouraged. See full details at the link.

The Natural World vs. Fantasy Worlds: This season we focus on how nature and science influence the creation of our favorite imagined worlds. From dragons and witchcraft to superheroes and giant monsters, First Fridays 2023 is where the fans come out to celebrate the intersection of pop-culture fandom and the work and collections of NHM. 

(12) WESTERCON 2025 WIDE OPEN. “No Bids Filed for 2025 Westercon” writes Kevin Standlee. “No bids have been filed to host Westercon 77 (2025), meaning that once again (as in 2021 and 2022), there will only be write-in spaces on the ballot, and if no valid bid wins (technically, that’s what happened last year, even though nearly every vote was for Utah, because the Utah bid was technically deficient), the Business Meeting will again have to make a decision, or if they can’t decide, throw it to LASFS. The last choice is thought to be the least-wanted one, at least by those LASFS directors who have expressed an opinion about it to me.”

(13) NNEDI OKORAFOR BOOK ANNOUNCED. DAW Books, an imprint of Astra Publishing House, has added another Nnedi Okorafor novel to the DAW publication schedule for this December. 

Four months after the release of SHADOW SPEAKER (on sale September 26, 2023; ISBN 9780756418762) by critically acclaimed author Nnedi Okorafor will come the never-before-published sequel, LIKE THUNDER (on sale December 5, 2023; ISBN 9780756418793), completing the Desert Magician’s Duology. 

LIKE THUNDER is the story of the powerful young man whom the magical protagonist of SHADOW SPEAKER befriends, and continues the precedent of powerful prose and compelling story-telling that has made Nnedi Okorafor a star of the literary science fiction, fantasy, and Africanfuturist spaces. 

“This duology is really one long story,” says Betsy Wollheim, publisher of DAW Books, “and we felt it would be exciting for readers to have the finale to this story publish just four months from the first half, rather than waiting nearly a year to read the conclusion.” 

The Desert Magician’s Duology tells the story of Ejii, as she embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father’s killer, in an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, set in Niger, West Africa at the end of the 21st century, on an Earth changed by a momentous apocalyptic event that altered the laws of physics and created “The Changed,” children born with rare and odd abilities: shadow speakers, shapeshifters, windseekers, firemolders, faders, and rainmakers.

Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and was a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young adult books, and won a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death. Nnedi’s books are inspired by her Nigerian heritage and her many trips to Africa.

(14) BIG GULP REDUX. Here’s more about Nature’s cover article “Exoplanet destruction”

As stars evolve, they expand and so will engulf planets in close orbit around them. This planetary catastrophe is expected to generate powerful luminous ejections of mass from the star, although this has not been observed directly. In this week’s issue, Kishalay De and his colleagues present observations of a short-lived optical outburst in the Galactic disk accompanied by bright, long-lived infrared emission. The combination of low optical luminosity and radiated energy suggests that the source of the outburst was the engulfment of a planet by its Sun-like star — an event that awaits Earth and the other planets of the inner Solar System in about 5 billion years, and that is captured in the artist’s impression on the cover.

Also there’s a review article here.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Rich Horton, Lise Andreasen, Olav Rokne, Kevin Standlee, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

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(1) HUGO VOTER PACKET ADDITION. The editors of Uncanny Magazine tweeted –

(2) WINDS (OF WINTER) BENEATH MY WINGS. George R.R. Martin gave a classy response to Air New Zealand’s offer to “help” him finish his next book by flying him to their country — “Thanks, New Zealand”.

…Of course, I was especially moved by your offer to bring me to New Zealand “on us.”  How wonderfully generous.   As it happens, I do have enough money to make it to New Zealand on my own… but there are many American writers, fans, and artists who do not.   If you’d care to fly, say, twenty or thirty or fifty of them to Wellington in place of me, I have no doubt they would instantly accept, and fall in love with Middle Earth.. er, New Zealand… just as I have. 

Of course, GRRM already has plays to go there – he gave a nice shout-out to CoNZealand.

In the summer of 2020, Wellington is hosting the World Science Fiction Convention, the oldest and most important con in the SF/ fantasy calendar, and they’ve asked me to serve as Toastmaster for the Hugo Awards. Writers, fans, and artists from all over the world will be headed down to check out all of your wonders. I hope lots of you Kiwis will join us.

And while he didn’t promise to have the next book done before then, he expressed hope that he will —

As for finishing my book… I fear that New Zealand would distract me entirely too much.   Best leave me here in Westeros for the nonce.   But I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done.   Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine.

(3) FIFTY YEARS ALREADY? “Disneyland Summons a Spirited 50th for the Haunted Mansion” reports NBC Los Angeles. I was in high school when the attraction was about to open, and was one of the winners of the contest held by KFI radio personality Jay Lawrence to pick a group of people who’d be among the first to go through the ride. You entered by writing a very short (100 word?) bit about your family ghost. I made up something about a relative who was a failed baseball player, and decided to end it all by walking into the ocean – because, don’t you know, there are 20,000 leagues under the sea…

(4) HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS. “AnimeNEXT Staff Launch Investigation Into Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Former Con Chair” – Anime News Network has the story.

Allegations of sexual misconduct against a former member of the board of Atlantic City’s AnimeNEXT convention has led to an ongoing internal investigation. Former con staff member “Anne May” posted her story on Facebook on March 12 where she alleged the board member was “handsy,” made inappropriate comments, and invited her back to his room in 2015. Anime News Network learned via former convention staff members that the allegations were levied against long-time AnimeNEXT staffer Eric Torgersen.

…Staff members that were present at the vote stated that the allegations relayed to them by the President of the Board Robert Rustay were misrepresented as less serious.

“What we were told is that one staff member reported that Eric was chatting with them and asked if they drank and then invited them to his room for drinks. The request made them uncomfortable so they reported it to another member of Corporate HR Carlo Darclin. In actuality it was a number of staff members who were approached in a similar fashion,” former staff member “B” told ANN.

“From my understanding, the decision had been made by the President [Rustay] and Chairman of the Board, who also happened to be Eric’s best friend, to move on from the matter,” they said.

Torgersen would remain on the board of directors and a vote held at the meeting would make him convention chair for AnimeNEXT. Torgersen continued as convention chair for two years following the vote. Darcelin chose to retire from the convention following the 2015 vote.

Former staff member “A” cited Torgersen’s friendships with fellow board members Gregg Turek, Lindsey Schneider, and Andrew Green for his continued involvement with the con despite the allegations.

“The entire board would validate his behavior or simply look the other way because they enjoyed their position of power and didn’t want to ruin it,” “A” said.

(5) SAY CHEESE. The Huntsville, AL Museum of Art has opened their new exhibit: “A New Moon Rises: Views from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera” featuring large-scale, high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface captured over the last decade by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of man’s first step on the Moon, see Earth’s only permanent natural satellite like never before. A New Moon Rises is a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian and features amazing, large-scale, high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface taken over the last decade. Captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), the images are stunning: from historic Apollo landing sites to towering mountains rising out of the darkness of the lunar poles.

The Moon is not the same place as when astronauts last stepped foot on it. New impact craters are being formed. Volcanic activity, once thought long extinct, may have happened in the recent past. The crust has recently fractured from slow interior cooling and shrinking of the Moon and it may still be shrinking today. The LROC has taken over a million images of the surface and revealed details never before seen. These images are providing answers to long-held questions, and raising new questions about the Moon’s ancient and recent past, as well as its future.

The LROC’s mission was originally conceived to support future human missions to the Moon. After its first 15 months of operation, it began a mission of pure scientific exploration.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.

May 22, 2008 – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls set a record for shark leapage.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 22, 1859 — Arthur Conan Doyle. I read the Holmes stories a long time ago. My favorite is The Hound of the Baskervilles as it allows him to develop a story at length. Favorite video Holmes? Jeremy Brett.  Looking at ISFDB, I’m see there were more Professor Challenger novels than I realized. And the Brigadier Gerard stories sound suspiciously comical… (Died 1930.)
  • Born May 22, 1901 — Ed Earl Repp. His stories appeared in several of the early pulp magazines including Air Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories. Some were collected in The Radium Pool (just three stories), The Stellar Missiles (another three stories) and Science-Fantasy Quintette (five this time with two by L. Ron Hubbard). He also had one SF novel written in 1941, Rescue from Venus. He turned to writing scripts for Westerns and never wrote any fiction thereafter. (Died 1979.)
  • Born May 22, 1939 — Paul Winfield. He’s best remembered as Capt. Terrell in The Wrath of Khan, but he was also in the Next Gen episode “Darmok” as the signature character.  He showed up in Damnation Alley as a character named Keegan and in The Terminator as Lt. Ed Traxler. Oh, and let’s not forget that he was Lucien Celine In The Serpent and the Rainbow which surely is genre. (Died 2004.)
  • Born May 22, 1960 — Andrea Thompson, 59. I’ll not mention her memorable scene on Arliss as it’s not genre.  Her noted genre work was as the telepath Talia Winters on Babylon 5. Her first genre role was in Nightmare Weekend which I’ll say was definitely a schlock film. Next up was playing a monster in the short-lived Monsters anthology series. She had an one-off on Quantum Leap before landing the Talia Winters gig. Then came Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys. Really. Truly. Her last genre role to date appears to be in the Heroes: Destiny web series.
  • Born May 22, 1964 — Kat Richardson, 55. Her Greywalker series is one of those affairs that I’m pleased to say that I’ve read every novel that was been published. I’ve not read Blood Orbit, the first in her new series, yet. Has anyone here done so?
  • Born May 22, 1968 — Karen Lord, 51. She’s a Barbadian writer. Her debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, retells the story “Ansige Karamba the Glutton” from Senegalese folklore; The Best of All Possible Worlds and The Galaxy Game are genre novels as is her edited New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.
  • Born May 22, 1979 — Maggie Q, 40. She portrayed Tori Wu in the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s novel Divergent, a role she reprised in its sequels, Insurgent and Allegiant. She played a female agent in a comedic version of the Jackie Chan fronted Around the World in 80 Days. And she’s in the forthcoming film remake of Fantasy Island. No, I’m not kidding.

(8) GROWING AWARENESS. “13 Reasons Horror Should Put On A Happy Face” is Ace Antonio Hall’s contribution to HWA’s series “Horror & Urban Fantasy Literature’s Effect on Health Awareness” —

…In conclusion, one of my biggest takeaways from researching horror writing for Mental Health Awareness Month was some of the things we shouldn’t do. For example, unless your character is politically incorrect, don’t describe suicide as an “epidemic”, “skyrocketing” or other exaggerated terms. Use words such as “higher rates” or “rising”. Don’t describe suicide as “Without warning” or “inexplicable”. Do convey that the character exhibited warning signs. Don’t refer to suicide as “unsuccessful” or “failed attempt”, or report it as though it was a crime. Do say, “died by suicide” “killed him/herself”, and instead of presenting the act like a crime, write about suicide in your story as a public health issue. Hopefully, as horror authors, we can continue to scare the jeebies out of our readers but at the same time, create a story which accurately exhibits archetypes of mentally ill characters, whether they are mad scientists, psychopathic serial killers or characters with dissociative identity disorders that assume their mother’s personality.

(9) TBR. Andrew Liptak lists “13 new science fiction and fantasy books to check out in late May” at The Verge.

May 15th

Alternis by Maurice Broaddus, Andrea Phillips, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and E.C. Myers

The latest serial from digital publisher Serial Box dropped last week, and it features a great team of writers: Maurice Broaddus, Andrea Phillips, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and E.C. Myers, with Firefly star Summer Glau handling the audiobook narration. In this story, a video game developer learns that the game she’s working on is part of a top-secret government project where countries around the world are competing for real resources.

You can read the first installment for free.

(10) FOLLOW THAT LODESTAR. Bonnie McDaniel has completed her Lodestar YA Award Reviews. Here is her summary. Here are the links to her individual reviews of the finalists:

(11) HUGO NOVELETTES. Standback provides an enthusiastic rundown of the Hugo Best Novelette category: “The Hugo 2019 Best Novelettes are The Best”.

Almost all of these stories are free to read online; and they’re quick and sharp and unusual. If you want the fun and beauty of the Hugos in a nutshell, the Best Novelette category is a damn good place to find it.

(12) HUGO RECOMMENDATIONS WIKI. Standback also announced: “I’m picking up the Hugo Nominee Wiki that Didi Chanoch has been running the last few years — just a simple site for collecting (and keeping track of…) recommendations and notable nominees in the various categories” — Hugo Award Nominees 2020 Wiki

This wiki is a handy place to collect recommendations for 2019 works which are eligible for a Hugo Award in 2020!

If you’re looking for recommendations from last year, the 2019 wiki is right here.

(13) MORE NOVELETTE LOVE. Peter Enyeart’s “2019 Hugo Picks: Novelettes” are also filled with praise.

This is a strong set, perhaps my favorite set of nominees ever. I enjoyed reading all of them, and I’m sad I have to rank any of them lower than #1.

(14) ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE? BBC asks “Would you pay $1m for a laptop full of malware?” (I’m afraid I own one of these already!)

A laptop deliberately infected with six notorious strains of malware, including WannaCry and ILoveYou, is being auctioned in the US as an art project.

At time of writing, the highest bid for the device was $1.1m (£800,000).

…The project is a collaboration between the artist Guo O Dong and a New York cyber-security company called Deep Instinct.

“We came to understand this project as a kind of bestiary, a catalogue of historical threats,” Guo told Vice.

“It’s more exciting to see the beasts in a live environment.”

(15) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Female-voice AI reinforces bias, says UN report” – BBC has the story.

AI-powered voice assistants with female voices are perpetuating harmful gender biases, according to a UN study.

These female helpers are portrayed as “obliging and eager to please”, reinforcing the idea that women are “subservient”, it finds.

Particularly worrying, it says, is how they often give “deflecting, lacklustre or apologetic responses” to insults.

The report calls for technology firms to stop making voice assistants female by default.

The study from Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is entitled, I’d blush if I could, which is borrowed from a response from Siri to being called a sexually provocative term.

“Companies like Apple and Amazon, staffed by overwhelmingly male engineering teams, have built AI systems that cause their feminised digital assistants to greet verbal abuse with catch-me-if-you-can flirtation,” the report says.

(16) SUPERBUGS MR. RICO! NPR tells how “Scientists Modify Viruses With CRISPR To Create New Weapon Against Superbugs”.

…”What CRISPR is able to do is something that we’ve not been able to do before. And that is, very selectively modify genes in the viruses to target the bacteria,” Priebe says.

Later this year, Dr. Michael Priebe and his colleagues plan to start infusing cocktails containing billions of bacteriophages genetically modified with CRISPR into patients at six centers around the United States.

“If we’re successful, this revolutionizes the treatment of infections,” he adds. “This can be the game changer that takes us out of this arms race with the resistant bacteria and allows us to use a totally different mechanism to fight the pathogenic bacteria that are infecting us.”

The approach, developed by Locus Biosciences of Morrisville, N.C., involves viruses known as bacteriophages (called phages for short). Phages are the natural enemies of bacteria. They can infect and destroy bacteria by reproducing in large numbers inside them until the microbes literally explode.

(17) WHY A SKYWALKER HAS TRUE GRIT. It may have something to do with the location shooting — “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Ultimate Preview” at Vanity Fair.

There’s a desert valley in southern Jordan called Wadi Rum, or sometimes “the Valley of the Moon.” There are stone inscriptions in Wadi Rum that are more than 2,000 years old. Lawrence of Arabia passed through there during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. More recently, J. J. Abrams went there to film parts of the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, because it’s largely uninhabited and starkly beautiful and looks plausibly alien, and one of the things that has always made the Star Wars movies feel so real—as if they had a real life of their own that continues on out beyond the edges of the screen—is the way they’re shot on location, with as few digital effects as possible. George Lucas shot the Tatooine scenes from A New Hope in southern Tunisia. For Skywalker, it’s Wadi Rum.

They don’t do it that way because it’s easy. Abrams and his crew had to build miles of road into the desert. They basically had to set up a small town out there, populated by the cast and extras and crew—the creature-effects department alone had 70 people. The Jordanian military got involved. The Jordanian royal family got involved. There was sand. There were sandstorms, when all you could do was take cover and huddle in your tent and—if you’re John Boyega, who plays the ex-Stormtrooper Finn—listen to reggae.

(18) RESCUED FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Yahoo! Entertainment reveals “Carrie Fisher and Daughter Billie Lourd Will Appear in Scenes Together in New Star Wars Film”.

Fans of Carrie Fisher will be able to see the star live on in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — with her daughter Billie Lourd right beside her.

Director J.J. Abrams told Vanity Fair he used old footage of Fisher for the upcoming Episode IX and had cut Lourd, 26, out of those scenes with her late mother thinking it would be too painful for the young actress to see.

Instead, Lourd asked him to keep their scenes intact….

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