Pixel Scroll 1/20/19 Pix-El: The Man of Scroll

(1) TOLKIEN RESEARCH SURVEY. Robin Anne Reid of the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce is continuing to collect surveys for the project mentioned in the January 11 Scroll (item 2) – “I have 42 but more would be nice.”

The link leads to Reid’s academic Dreamwidth page for the informed consent information. The link from there goes to SurveyMonkey. Reid’s cover letter says: 

Hello: I am a professor of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC) who is doing a research project. The project asks how readers of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium who are at least eighteen years old and who are atheists, agnostics, animists, or part of New Age movements interpret his work in the context of the common assumption that Tolkien’s Catholic beliefs must play a part in what readers see as the meaning of his fiction.

I have created a short survey which consists of ten open-ended questions about your religious and/or spiritual background, your experiences of Tolkien’s work, and your ideas about the relationship between religious beliefs and interpreting his work. It would take anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours to complete the survey, depending on how much you write in response to the questions.  The survey is uploaded to my personal account at Survey Monkey: only I will have access to the responses. My research proposal has been reviewed by the TAMUC Institutional Review Board.

If you are eighteen years or older, and are an atheist, agnostic, animist, or part of a New Age movement that emphasizes spirituality but not a creator figure, you are invited to go to my academic blog to see more information about the survey. The survey will be open from December 1, 2018-January 31, 2019, closing at 11:30 PM GMT-0500 Central Daylight Time.

Complete information about the project and how your anonymity and privacy will be protected can be found at by clicking on the link:

https://robin-anne-reid.dreamwidth.org/50424.html

(2) RETRO READING. The Hugo Award Book Club‘s Olav Rokne recalls: “The Retro-Hugo for Best Graphic Story was overlooked by enough nominators that it failed to be awarded last year. That’s a real shame, because I can tell you that there was a lot of work that’s worth celebrating. It’s actually quite sad that it was forgotten last year, and I’m sincerely hoping that people don’t neglect the category this year.” That’s the reason for his recommended reading post  “Retro Hugo – Best Graphic Story 1944”.  

(3) A FEMINIST SFF ROUNDUP. Cheryl Morgan gives an overview of 2018 in “A Year In Feminist Speculative Fiction” at the British Science Fiction Association’s Vector blog. Morgan’s first recommendation —

Top of the list for anyone’s feminist reading from 2018 must be Maria Dahvana Headley’s amazing re-telling of Beowulf, The Mere Wife. Set in contemporary America, with a gated community taking the place of Heorot Hall, and a policeman called Ben Wolfe in the title role, it uses the poem’s story to tackle a variety of issues. Chief among them is one of translation. Why is it that Beowulf is always described as a hero, whereas Grendel’s Mother is a hag or a wretch? In the original Anglo-Saxon, the same word is used to describe both of them. And why do white women vote for Trump? The book tackles both of those questions, and more. I expect to see it scooping awards.

(4) HONEY, YOU GOT TO GET THE SCIENCE RIGHT. Where have I heard that before? Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is netting all kinds of awards, but writing for CNN, physicist Don Lincoln opines that, “‘Spider-verse’ gets the science right — and wrong.” Of course, this is an animated movie and maybe Don is a bit of a grump.

CNN—(Warning: Contains mild spoilers) 

As a scientist who has written about colliding black holes and alien space probes, I was already convinced I was pretty cool. But it wasn’t until I sat down to watch “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” that I understood the extent of my own coolness. There on the screen was fictional scientific equipment that was clearly inspired by the actual apparatus that my colleagues and I use to try to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Amid the action, the coming-of-age story, a little romance and a few twists and turns, the movie shows a fictional gadget located in New York City called a collider, which connects parallel universes and brings many different versions of Spider-Man into a single universe.

(5) SFF TV EDITOR. CreativeCOW.net features a rising star in “Editing SYFY”.

When talking about her career path, you get the immediate sense that rejection isn’t a “no” for Shiran Amir. There’s never been an obstacle that’s kept her from living her dream. Shattering ceiling after glass ceiling, she makes her rise up through the ranks look like a piece of cake. However, her story is equal parts strategy and risk – and none of it was easy.

After taking countless chances in her career, of which some aspiring editors don’t see the other side, she has continually pushed herself to move onward and upward. She’s been an assistant editor on Fear the Walking Dead, The OA, and Outcast to name a few, before becoming a full-fledged editor of Z Nation for SyFy, editing the 4th and 9th episodes of the zombie apocalypse show’s final season, with its final episode airing December 28, 2018. She’s currently on the Editors Guild Board of Directors and is involved in the post-production community in Los Angeles.

And she’s only 30 years old.

(6) ARISIA. Bjo Trimble poses with fans in Star Trek uniforms.

The con also overcame horrible weather and other challenges:

And here’s a further example of the Arisia’s antiharassment measures:

(7) EXTRA CREDITS. The Extra Credits Sci Fi series on YouTube began Season 3 with “Tolkien and Herbert – The World Builder”

Mythic worldbuilding and intentionality just weren’t staples of science fiction until the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert were published. We’ll be doing an analysis of The Lord of the Rings and Dune, respectively–works that still stand out today because they are meticulously crafted.

Here are links to playlists for the first two seasons:

  • The first season covered the origins of SF up to John Campbell.
  • The second season covered the Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke era up to the start of the New Wave.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 20, 1884 A. Merritt. Early pulp writer whose career consisted of eight complete novels and a number of short stories. Gutenberg has all of all his novels and most of his stories available online.  H. P. Lovecraft notes in a letter that he was a major influence upon his writings, and a number of authors including Michael Moorcock and Robert Bloch list him as being among their favorite authors. 
  • Born January 20, 1920 DeForest Kelley. Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy on the original Trek and a number of films that followed plus the animated series. Other genre appearances include voicing voicing Viking 1 in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (his last acting work) and a 1955 episode of Science Fiction Theatre entitled “Y..O..R..D..” being his only ones as he didn’t do SF Really preferring Westerners. (Died 1999.)
  • Born January 20, 1926 Patricia Neal. Best known to genre buffs for her film role as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still. She also appeared in Stranger from Venus, your usual British made flying saucer film. She shows up in the Eighties in Ghost Story based off a Peter Straub novel, and she did an episode of The Ghost Story series which was later retitled Circle Of Fear in hopes of getting better ratings (it didn’t, it was cancelled).  If Kung Fu counts as genre, she did an appearance there. (Died 2010)
  • Born January 20, 1934 Tom Baker, 85. The Fourth Doctor and my introduction to Doctor Who. My favorite story? The Talons of Weng Chiang with of course the delicious added delight of his companion Leela played by Lousie Jameson. Even the worse of the stories, and there were truly shitty stories, were redeemed by him and his jelly babies. He did have a turn before being the Fourth Doctor as Sherlock Holmes In The Hound of the Baskervilles, and though not genre, he turns up as Rasputin early in his career in Nicholas and Alexandra! Being a working actor, he shows up in a number of low budget films early on such as The Vault of HorrorThe Golden Voyage of SinbadThe MutationsThe Curse of King Tut’s Tomb and The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood. And weirdly enough, he’s Halvarth the Elf in a Czech made  Dungeons & Dragons film which has a score of 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. 
  • Born January 20, 1946 David Lynch, 73. Director of possibly the worst SF film ever made from a really great novel in the form of Dune. Went on to make Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me which is possibly one of the weirdest films ever made. (Well with Blue Velvet being a horror film also vying for top honors as well.) Oh and I know that I didn’t mention Eraserhead. You can talk about that film.
  • Born January 20, 1948Nancy Kress, 71. Best known for her Hugo and Nebula Award winning Beggars in Spain and its sequels. Her latest novel is If Tomorrow Comes: Book 2 in the Yesterday’s Kin trilogy.
  • Born January 20, 1958 Kij Johnson, 61. Writer and associate director of The Center for the Study of Science Fiction the University of Kansas English Department which is I must say a cool genre thing indeed. She’s also worked for Tor, TSR and Dark Horse. Wow. Where was I? Oh about to mention her writings… if you not read her Japanese mythology based The Fox Woman, do so now as it’s superb. The sequel, Fudoki, is just as interesting. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a novella taking a classic Lovecraftian tale and giving a nice twist. Finally I’ll recommend her short story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
  • Born January 20, 1964 Francesca Buller, 55. Performer and wife of Ben Browder, yes that’s relevant as she’s been four different characters on Farscape, to wit she played the characters of Minister Ahkna, Raxil, ro-NA and M’Lee. Minister Ahkn is likely the one you remember her as being. Farscape is her entire genre acting career.  

(9) IS BRAM STOKER SPINNING? It’s all about Scott Edelman:

(10) MAGICON. Fanac.org has added another historic video to its YouTube channel: “MagiCon (1992) Worldcon – Rusty Hevelin interviews Frank Robinson.”

MagiCon, the 50th Worldcon, was held in Orlando, Florida in 1992. In this video, Rusty Hevelin interviews fan, editor and author Frank Robinson on his career, both fannish and professional and on the early days of science fiction. Frank talks about the war years, the fanzines he published, the Ray Palmer era in magazines, his time at Rogue Magazine and lots more. Highlights include: working with Ray Palmer, discussion on the line between fan and pro writing, the story of George Pal’s production of ‘The Power’ from Frank’s story of that name, and Frank’s views on the impact of science fiction and of fantasy. Frank Robinson was a true devotee of the field – “Science fiction can change the world.”

(11) MUONS VS. MEGS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.]Those cheering for the stupid-large shark in last year’s The Meg, may now know what to blame for the lack of megalodons in the current age. A story in Quanta Magazine (“How Nearby Stellar Explosions Could Have Killed Off Large Animals”) explains a preprint paper (“Hypothesis: Muon Radiation Dose and Marine Megafaunal Extinction at the End-Pliocene Supernova”). Using iron-60 as a tracer, supernovae have been tracked to a time of mass extinction at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary 2.6 million years ago. The paper’s authors make the leap from that to a hypothesis that a huge spike in muons that would have occurred when supernova radiation slammed into Earth’s atmosphere could have contributed to that extinction.

Even though Earth is floating in the void, it does not exist in a vacuum. The planet is constantly bombarded by stuff from space, including a daily deluge of micrometeorites and a shower of radiation from the sun and more-distant stars. Sometimes, things from space can maim or kill us, like the gargantuan asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. More often, stellar smithereens make their way to Earth and the moon and then peacefully settle, remaining for eternity, or at least until scientists dig them up.

[…] But the search for cosmic debris on Earth has a long history. Other researchers have demonstrated that it’s possible to find fossil evidence of astrophysical particles in Earth’s crust. Some researchers are pondering how these cosmic events affect Earth — even whether they have altered the course of evolution. A new study suggests that energetic particles from an exploding star may have contributed to the extinction of a number of megafauna, including the prehistoric monster shark megalodon, which went extinct at around the same time.

“It’s an interesting coincidence,” said Adrian Melott, an astrophysicist at the University of Kansas and the author of a new paper.

(12) STEPPING UP. “Girl Scouts of America offers badge in cybersecurity” – a BBC video report.

Girl Scouts of America is now offering girls as young as five a badge in cybersecurity.

It’s part of a drive to get more girls involved in science, technology engineering and mathematics from a young age.

An event in Silicon Valley gave scouts an opportunity to earn the first patch in the activity, with the help of some eggs.

(13) A LITTLE GETAWAY. The BBC asks “Is this the least romantic weekend ever?”

The road runs straight and black into the gloom of the snowy birch forest. It is -5C (23F), the sky is slate-grey and we’re in a steamy minibus full of strangers. Not very romantic you’re thinking, and I haven’t yet told you where we’re going.

My wife, Bee, had suggested a cheeky New Year break. Just the two of us, no kids. “Surprise me,” she’d said.

Then I met a bloke at a friend’s 50th. He told me how much he and his girlfriend had enjoyed a trip to Chernobyl – that’s right, the nuclear power station that blew up in the 1980s, causing the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history.

“Don’t worry,” my new friend declared, a large glass of wine in his hand. “It’s safe now.”

Well, she’d said she’d like something memorable…

(14) HARRIMAN REDUX. BBC considers the question — “Chang’e-4: Can anyone ‘own’ the Moon?”

Companies are looking at mining the surface of the Moon for precious materials. So what rules are there on humans exploiting and claiming ownership?

It’s almost 50 years since Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. “That’s one small step for a man,” the US astronaut famously said, “one giant leap for mankind.”

Shortly afterwards, his colleague Buzz Aldrin joined him in bounding across the Sea of Tranquility. After descending from the steps of the Eagle lunar module, he gazed at the empty landscape and said: “Magnificent desolation.”

Since the Apollo 11 mission of July 1969, the Moon has remained largely untouched – no human has been there since 1972. But this could change soon, with several companies expressing an interest in exploring and, possibly, mining its surface for resources including gold, platinum and the rare earth minerals widely used in electronics.

(15) UNIDENTIFIED FEDERAL OUTLAYS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Piggybacking on a Washington Post article (paywalled here) and a Vice article (freely available here), SYFY Wire says, “The government’s secret UFO program has just been revealed, and it’s something out of a sci-fi movie.”

We didn’t know much about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program until now, but apparently, the Department of Defense has been focusing its efforts far beyond potential threats on Earth.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has finally let the public in on at least some of what it’s been up to by recently releasing a list of 38 research titles that range from the weird to the downright bizarre. It would have never revealed these titles—on topics like invisibility cloaking, wormholes and extradimensional manipulation—if it wasn’t for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request put in by the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Society, Steven Aftergood.

(16) STANDING TALL. BBC traces “How Japan’s skyscrapers are built to survive earthquakes” in a photo gallery with some interesting tech info. “Japan is home to some of the most resilient buildings in the world – and their secret lies in their capacity to dance as the ground moves beneath them.”

The bar is set by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. This was a large earthquake – of magnitude 7.9 – that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama, and killed more than 140,000 people.

For earthquakes of a greater magnitude than this benchmark, preserving buildings perfectly is no longer the goal. Any damage that does not cause a human casualty is acceptable.

“You design buildings to protect people’s lives,” says Ziggy Lubkowski, a seismic specialist at University College London. “That’s the minimum requirement.”

(17) ORDER IN THE TINY BRICK COURT. SYFY Wire reports “Ruth Bader Ginsburg will uphold the Constitution in Lego Movie 2: The Second Part cameo”.

If nothing else, the upcoming sequel to The Lego Movie will adhere strictly to the legal confines of the U.S. Constitution.

That’s because 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will have a cameo as a black-robed, law-defining minifigure in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, according to the film’s director, Mike Mitchell.

“These movies are so full of surprises. And we were thinking, ‘Who’s the last person you would think to see in a Lego film as a minifig?’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg!” Mitchell told USA Today. “And we’re all huge fans. It made us laugh to think of having her enter this world.”

[Thanks to Greg Hullender, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]

Pixel Scroll 1/19/19 Pixelation, Mr. AllScroll, Is What We Are Put In This File To Rise Above

(1) ARISIA. As of Friday at 11 p.m. Boston sff convention Arisia reported 2,873 members.

The Arisia 2019 Souvenir Book is available online, and includes Jenn Jumper’s heartwarming writeup about Fan GoH’s Bjo and John Trimble.

(2) DRESSING UP THE LOCATIONS IN GEORGIA. Amazing Stories’ Steve Davidson has been scanning the media for news of Spielberg’s namesake TV show which is now in production.  He found this report in a in the Morgan County (GA) Citizen: “Hollywood sets eyes on Bostwick”

A new filming project is sweeping through Morgan County this week for a reboot television series of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi/horror “Amazing Stories,” with shooting locations in Rutledge, Bostwick and right outside of Madison. 

Filming begin on Monday, Jan 14 off Highway 83 outside of Madison and then moved to Bostwick, behind the Cotton Jin on Mayor John Bostwick’s farm. Downtown Rutledge is getting a full makeover this week for the filming project, which will shoot on Friday, Jan 18 and run into the wee hours of Saturday, Jan 19. Rutledge’s iconic gazebo underwent a paint job for the filming, and on Wednesday, Jan. 16, crews began covering the intersection of Fairplay Road and Main Street with dirt. 

(3) GETTING BETTER. The second story in The Verge’s “Better Worlds” project has been posted — “Online Reunion” by Leigh Alexander.

As an alternative to the text, you can listen to the audio adaptation of “Online Reunion” at Apple PodcastsPocket Casts, or Spotify.

The Verge also has “A Q&A with the author” where “Leigh Alexander discusses the world of ‘Online Reunion’ and the ‘compelling, fascinating, beautiful, terrifying car crash of humanity and technology.’”

In “Online Reunion,” author Leigh Alexander imagines a world in which a young journalist is struggling with a compulsive “time sickness,” so she sets out to write a tearjerker about a widow reconnecting with her dead husband’s e-pet — but she finds something very different waiting for her in the internet ether. A self-described “recovering journalist” with a decade of experience writing about video games and technology, Alexander has since branched out into fiction, including an official Netrunner book, Monitor, and narrative design work for games like Reigns: Her Majesty and Reigns: Game of Thrones.

The Verge spoke with Alexander about finding joy and connection online, preserving digital history, and seeing the mystical in the technological.

(4) FANTASTIC FICTION AT KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted her photos from the series’ January 16 event.

Victor LaValle and Julie C. Day entertained a huge audience with their readings. Victor read from a new novella and Julie read two of her short stories.

(5) THE FIRST DOESN’T LAST. Critics say they made Mars boring: “‘The First’ Canceled at Hulu After One Season”.

In his review for Variety, Daniel D’Addario wrote:

“After the initial statement of purpose, though, the show falls victim to both pacing problems and a certain lopsidedness. A show like this, with title and premise centered around what it would mean to be a pioneer on a new planet, encourages an excited sort of stargazing; that quite so much of it is spent exploring Hagerty’s family crisis saps the energy and spirit from a show that should have both in spades.”

(6) BRADBURY OBIT. Bettina Bradbury, Ray Bradbury’s daughter, died January 13 at the age of 64 announced the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum on Facebook.

Her son, Danny Karapetian, wrote on Facebook 1/13/19, “It is my very sad duty to report that my Mom Bettina passed away this morning. “She was an indefatigable force of nature, a talented and decorated writer, and a loving mother, sister, and friend to everyone she knew. I know how much she cared about all of you, and how much you all loved her.”

Quoting Jonathan Eller, Ph.D., Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, “Bettina was herself a successful writer, achieving great success on daytime TV dramas Santa Barbara (1987-1993), All My Children (1995-2003), Days of Our Lives (2007), and others. She won several Emmy Awards and Writers Guild of America Awards, and earned yet more nominations.”

SoapHub paid tribute: “Longtime Soap Opera Scribe Dies At 64”.

…Daughter of famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, known mostly for his stunning novel Fahrenheit 451, and Marguerite McClure, Bradbury proved that the writing gene can be passed down. She studied Film/History at USC School of Cinematic Arts

NBC’s Santa Barbara was her first soap writing team in the early 1990s. She also wrote for both All My Children (and won three Daytime Emmys) and One Life to Live on ABC and later worked on Days of Our Lives, also for NBC.

(7) DAVIES OBIT. [By Steve Green.] Windsor Davies (1930-2019): British actor, died January 17, aged 88. Genre appearances include The Corridor People (one episode, 1966), Adam Adamant Lives! (one episode, 1967), Doctor Who (three episodes, 1967),  Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), UFO (one episode, 1970), The Guardians (one episode, 1971), The Donation Conspiracy (two episodes, 1973), Alice in Wonderland (one episode, 1985), Terrahawks (voice role, 39 episodes, 1983-86), Rupert and the Frog Song (1985), Gormenghast (two episodes, 2000).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 19, 1809Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve got several several sources that cite him as a early root of SF. Anyone care to figure that out? Be that as it may, he certainly wrote some damn scary horror — ones that I still remember are “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” (Died 1849.)
  • Born January 19, 1930 Tippi Hedren, 89. Melanie Daniels In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds which scared the shit out of me when I saw it a long time ago. She had a minor role as Helen in The Birds II: Land’s End, a televised sequel done thirty years on. No idea how bad or good it was. Other genre appearances were in such films and shows as Satan’s HarvestTales from the DarksideThe Bionic Woman, the new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Batman: The Animated Series
  • Born January 19, 1932 Richard Lester, 87. Director best known for his 1980s Superman films. He’s got a number of other genre films including the exceedingly silly The Mouse on the MoonRobin and Marian which may be my favorite Robin Hood film ever, and an entire excellent series of Musketeers films. He also directed Royal Flash based on George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novel of that name. 
  • Born January 19, 1981Bitsie Tulloch, 38. Her main role of interest to us was as Juliette Silverton/Eve in Grimm. She also has played Lois Lane in the recent Elseworlds episodes of this Arrowverse season. However I also found her in R2-D2: Beneath the Dome, a fan made film that use fake interviews, fake archive photos, film clips, and behind-the-scenes footage to tell early life of that droid. You can see it and her in it here.

(9) DRAWN TO POE. Crimereads celebrates the author’s birthday with “The 25 Most Terrifyingly Beautiful Edgar Allan Poe Illustrations”. Harry Clarke and Gustav Doré are heavily represented.

Since it’s the season for basking in all things dreadful, we decided to round up twenty-five of the greatest illustrations ever made for Poe’s work. Some are more terrifying, others more beautiful, but all fall somewhere on the spectrum of terrifyingly beautiful, and we can’t stop looking at them, just as we can’t stop reading the works of the great Edgar Allan Poe.

(10) FAUX POES. Emily Temple undertakes “A Brief and Incomplete Survey of Edgar Allan Poes in Pop Culture” for LitHub readers.

What’s the first image that pops into your head when you think of Edgar Allan Poe? Is it this ubiquitous one? Maybe it’s that snapshot of your old roommate from Halloween 2011, when she tied a fake bird to her arm and knocked everyone’s champagne glasses over with it. (Just me?) Or is it an image of Poe in one of his many pop culture incarnations? You wouldn’t be alone.

After all, Poe pops up frequently in contemporary culture—somewhat more frequently than you might expect for someone who, during his lifetime, was mostly known as a caustic literary critic, even if he did turn out to be massively influential. I mean, it’s not like you see a ton of Miltons or Eliots running around. So today, on the 210th anniversary of Poe’s birth, I have compiled a brief and wildly incomplete selection of these appearances. Note that I’ve eliminated adaptations of Poe’s works, and focused on cameos and what we’ll call “faux Poes.” Turns out it isn’t just my old roommate—lots of people really love to dress up as Edgar Allan Poe.

First on the list:

1949: Ray Bradbury, “The Exiles,” published in The Illustrated Man

As you probably know, Poe’s work has been massively influential on American literature. In a 1909 speech at the Author’s Club in London, Arthur Conan Doyle observed that “his tales were one of the great landmarks and starting points in the literature of the last century . . . each is a root from which a whole literature has developed. . . Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” But it’s not just his work—Poe as a figure has infiltrated a number of literary works, including this early Bradbury story, in which Poe (along with Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Charles Dickens, and William Shakespeare) is living on Mars, and slowly withering away as humans on Earth burn his books. The symbolism isn’t exactly subtle, but hey.

(11) SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL. Here’s something to play on a cold winter’s night — Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

The boundaries between worlds have drawn perilously thin…

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a cooperative Living Card Game® set amid a backdrop of Lovecraftian horror. As the Ancient Ones seek entry to our world, one to two investigators (or up to four with two Core Sets) work to unravel arcane mysteries and conspiracies.

Their efforts determine not only the course of your game, but carry forward throughout whole campaigns, challenging them to overcome their personal demons even as Arkham Horror: The Card Game blurs the distinction between the card game and roleplaying experiences.

(12) NO APRIL FOOLIN’. There’s a trailer out for Paramount’s Pet Sematary remake —

Sometimes dead is better…. In theatres April 5, 2019. Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary follows Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), who, after relocating with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences.

(13) 1943 RETRO HUGO ADVICE. DB has written a post on works by Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, C.S. Lewis, and Charles WIlliams eligible for the Retros this year. It begins with an illustration —

This is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, as drawn by Mervyn Peake. Vivid, isn’t it? Peake’s illustrated edition of the Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was published by Chatto and Windus in 1943, and is the first reason you should consider nominating Peake for Best Professional Artist of 1943,1 for the Retro-Hugos 1944 (works of 1943) are being presented by this year’s World SF Convention in Dublin. (The book might also be eligible for the special category of Best Art Book, for while it’s not completely a collection of visual art, the illustrations were the point of this new edition of the classic poem.)

Though remembered now mostly for his Gormenghast novels, Peake was primarily an artist. He had in fact 3 illustrated books published in 1943, and all three of them were arguably fantasy or sf.2

(14) F&SF FICTION TO LOVE. Standback took to Twitter to cheer on F&SF with a round-up of his favorite stories from the magazine in 2018. The thread starts here.

(15) RARE BOOKS LA. Collectors will swarm to Pasadena on February 1-2 for this event —

Rare Books LA is a book fair that features more than 100 leading specialists in rare books, fine prints, photography, ephemera, maps, and more from throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. This prestigious event takes place at the Pasadena Convention Center.

Exhibitors

Rare Books LA will compromise of numerous exhibitors. There will be 60+ exhibitors that come from around the world to showcase their rare books. Expect to discover exhibitors who also showcase photography and fine prints. To view the list of exhibitors, click here.

(16) ORIGINAL SWINGERS. CNN reports “‘Missing link’ in human history confirmed after long debate”.

Early humans were still swinging from trees two million years ago, scientists have said, after confirming a set of contentious fossils represents a “missing link” in humanity’s family tree.

The fossils of Australopithecus sediba have fueled scientific debate since they were found at the Malapa Fossil Site in South Africa 10 years ago.

And now researchers have established that they are closely linked to the Homo genus, representing a bridging species between early humans and their predecessors, proving that early humans were still swinging from trees 2 million years ago.

(17) MOON PICTURES. The Farmer’s Almanac will show you “The Oldest Moon Photo”.

On the night of September 1, 1849, the nearly full Moon appeared over the town of Canandaigua, New York. At 10:30 P.M., Samuel D. Humphrey slid a highly polished, silver-plated copper sheet measuring 2–¾x1–¾ inches into his camera, which was pointed at the Moon.

Humphrey then exposed the light-sensitive plate to the shining Moon nine times, varying the length of exposure from 0.5 seconds to 2 minutes. After developing the plate with mercury vapor, he sent his daguerreotype to Harvard College.

Louis Daguerre, the Frenchman who explained the secret of the world’s first photographic technique in 1839, had daguerreotyped a faint image of the Moon, but the plate was soon lost in a fire. John W. Draper of New York City is credited with making the first clear daguerreotype of the Moon in March 1840, but this also was destroyed in a fire.

(18) THE LONG AND GRINDING ROAD. In “NASA eyes gaping holes in Mars Curiosity wheel” Cnet shares the images.

The rough and rocky landscape of Mars continues to take a toll on the wheels of NASA’s Curiosity rover. As part of a routine checkup, Curiosity snapped some new images of its wheels this week. 

Most of the photos don’t look too alarming, but one in particular shows some dramatic holes and cracks in the aluminum. 

(19) GLASS EXIT. If you left the theater in a haze, Looper wants to help you out:

[Thanks to Standback, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Steve Green, Cat Eldridge and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

NASFiC 2019 to Host Chesley Awards; New Trimble Sponsor Steps Forward

The Utah Fandom Organization has issued an update about events, guests, and other plans for the combined Westercon 72, NASFiC 2019, & 1632 Minicon (Spikecon.org) convention to be held July 4-7, 2019 in Layton, Utah:

  • The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) Announces NASFiC 2019 as the location to host the Chesley Awards – The Chesleys will be held at the NASFIC in Layton Utah, July 4 -7, 2019. ASFA member Vincent Villafranca is the artist guest and we can’t wait to get involved.  There will be ways for artists to participate at the convention so please check http://www.asfa-art.org/.
  • Westercon 72 Gaming Guest Tim the GM (Mottishaw) – We regret to inform our gaming guest Tim Mottishaw had to cancel his appearance at Spikecon due to conflicts in dates. He offers his regret and apology to everyone, and is assisting us with possible candidates to honor in his stead.
  • NASFiC 2019 Master and Mistress of Ceremony, Bjo & John Trimble (and Sponsorship) -A fan, professional photographer and writer, Ctein (Kuh-TEIN), has volunteered to continue the sponsorship, and support Bjo and John Trimble in their appearance at Spikecon 2019. Utah Fandom Organization wishes to thank everyone for their support in making these combined events fun and exciting.
  • (Ctein is a professional photographer and writer. He is the co-author, with John Sandford, of the New York Times best selling science fiction thriller, “Saturn Run.” He is currently writing an natural disaster thriller, “Ripple Effect,” with David Gerrold. Ctein is also the author of “Digital Restoration From Start To Finish” and “Post Exposure.” He is best known in the SF community for his photographs of eclipses, aurora, natural and unnatural scenics, and space launches and his hand-printed fine-art books.  His photographic work can be seen at http://ctein.com and photo-repair.com.)
  • Updates to Departments – The website, https://www.spikecon.org/ , has updated forms to apply for the Art Show, Dealers Room, Program Participation, Gaming, Panel Suggestions and Membership Updates.
  • Future Announcements – Upcoming plans include a special event 4th of July breakfast with Bjo and John Trimble to discuss Star Trek(™), A filk/music guest announcement and a new progress report due at the end of November.

Pixel Scroll 11/17/18 You Can Hear The Pixels Scroll One Hundred Files

(1) THE NEXT DAY. That’s got to smart. No sooner did Arisia announce its move to the Boston Park than the strike that forced the change came to an end. Boston’s CBS affiliate reports “Marriott Hotel Workers In Boston Reach Deal To End Strike”.

The union representing them, Unite Here Local 26, confirmed Saturday they “reached a tentative agreement” on a new contract. A few hours later, a ratification vote at Hynes Convention Center officially ended the strike.

“We can confirm we have a tentative agreement. We look forward to welcoming our associates back to work,” a Marriott International spokesperson said in an e-mail.

(2) WFC 2019 FALLOUT. Adam-Troy Castro is arguing that critics of Robert Silverberg, in trouble for his disdainful remark about N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo acceptance speech, should pull their punches:

This is how much a racially charged statement can affect status: the World Fantasy Convention is making public apologies for, among other things, inviting Robert Silverberg. Close to seventy years a fixture of the field, hundreds of novels and nonfiction books and short stories, an influence and footprint that cannot be denied; really, a giant, or the word “giant” doesn’t mean anything and never has. (DYING INSIDE, alone.) And now he’s in danger of having this become his entire legacy in eyes of the next generation, and…damn.

I understand why people are mad at him. I really do. I believe they should be. I am, whether you believe me or not….

… I have given the only reply that makes sense to me: that someday, your splendid, woke, brilliantly sensitive perfect generation will have this happen to you too. The attitudes you think natural will seem neanderthalic to those who come after you. The icons of your current cultural starscape will someday be torn down, for missteps or beliefs central to their work. Maybe it should happen, but when it does happen, it will hurt and you will protest and you will be condemned for any affection you still possess for those figures.

However, in Marta Randall’s comment there (screencapped by rcade), she casts doubt on this being a one-time lapse.

(3) NOT SO BAD. Today’s the 40th anniversary of the airing of one of TV’s negative icons – but The Hollywood Reporter had nice things to say about it at the time: “‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’: THR’s 1978 Review”.

If the prospect of a two-hour Star Wars Holiday Special conjured up visions of “May the force be with you” repeated ad nauseam in your head, this show on CBS was a welcome surprise….

For the most part the special was [an] inventive diversion that stood on its own merits.

(4) INFO DUMPSTER FIRE. Slate’s Dan Kois isn’t nearly as forgiving of this movie’s flaws s other critics: “The New Fantastic Beasts Is So Bad It Actually Makes the Other Books and Movies Worse”.

…Instead of building upon the story, characters, and conflicts that Fantastic Beasts torturously established, The Crimes of Grindelwald layers on further exposition and introduces yet more new characters. Even a character I thought was safely dead is once again alive! Remember poor Credence (Ezra Miller), the moody teen who sometimes turns into a screaming cloud of smoke? I swear he got disintegrated in the New York City subway at the end of the previous movie, but now here he is moping around Paris rooftops, trying to find his mom. In my opinion he should chill out; he’s got cheekbones to die for and a hot girlfriend who’s also a huge snake, which seems like a scenario out of any goth teen’s dreams….

(5) NO WRITER, NO SERIES. Funny how that works. Knock-on effects of Chuck Wendig’s exit from Marvel are still happening. Gizmodo’s io9 says that “Marvel Comics Scraps New Darth Vader Series After Chuck Wendig’s Controversial Exit”.

Almost a month and a half after it was first announced at New York Comic-Con, Marvel has pulled the plug on its latest Star Wars miniseries, Shadow of Vader, bringing an awkward end to the saga the publisher created by booting writer Chuck Wendig from the book in the first place.

Wendig made waves last month when he explained in a lengthy series of tweets that he had been fired from the Shadow of Vader title—at that point mere days after the series had been publicly unveiled—with the writer pinning the reasoning as allegedly down to an editor citing Wendig’s coarse language on social media, combined with the writer’s discussion of U.S. politics online. When initially asked, a Marvel Comics representative would not confirm why Wendig was suddenly off the book. It was the latest in a line of recent incidents in the pop culture space over hollow calls for civil discourse in the wake of targeted campaigns of harassment.

(6) IN TIMES TO COME. Congratulations to WIndycon 2019’s guests!

Windycon 46 will be held November 15-17 in Westin Lombard, IL. The guests are:

Author GoH: Elizabeth Moon
Artist GoH: Mitchell Bentley
Fan GoH: Chris Barkley
Toastmistress: Lee Martindale

Next year’s theme is “Space Opera”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born November 17, 1915 – Raymond F. Jones, Writer who is best remembered for his novel This Island Earth, which was made into a movie which was then skewered in Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie. However, he produced a significant number of science fiction novels and short stories which were published in magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories, Astounding Stories, and Galaxy, including “Rat Race” and “Correspondence Course”, which respectively earned Hugo and Retro Hugo nominations. (Died 1994.)
  • Born November 17, 1925 – Rock Hudson, Oscar-nominated Actor whose best-known genre role was in The Martian Chronicles miniseries; he also played the President in the alt-history miniseries World War III. Other roles included The Golden Blade, based on a One Thousand and One Nights folktale; Embryo, about artificial gestational chambers in a much less benign scenario than Bujold’s; and Seconds, about transplanting the minds of wealthy elderly people into fresh young bodies. (Died 1985.)
  • Born November 17, 1931 – Dennis McHaney, Writer and Critic. Pulp writers in particular seem to attract scholars, both amateur and professional. Robert E. Howard was not an exception. So I give you this individual who, between 1974 and 2008, published The Howard Review and The Robert E. Howard Newsletter. Oh, but that was hardly all he did, as he created reference works such as The Fiction of Robert E. Howard – A Pocket Checklist, Robert E. Howard in Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet and The Souk, and The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Quick Reference Guide. A listing of his essays and other works would take an entire page. It has intriguing entries such as Frazetta Trading Cards, The Short, Sweet Life and Slow Agonizing Death of a Fan’s Magazine, and The Films of Steve Reeves. Fascinating… (Died 2011.)
  • Born November 17, 1944 – Danny DeVito, 74, Oscar-nominated Actor, Director, and Producer whose best-known genre role was as The Penguin in Batman Returns (for which he received a Saturn nomination), but he also had roles in Matilda (which he directed, and which was based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name), Mars Attacks!, Men in Black, Big Fish, Junior, and the black comedy cult film Death to Smoochy, about an anthropomorphic character actor, which JJ thought was hilarious. He provided the voice for the credential detective Whiskers in Last Action Hero, as well as for characters in Look Who’s Talking Now, Space Jam, the My Little Pony movie, Hercules, The Lorax, Animal Crackers, and the forthcoming Dumbo.
  • Born November 17, 1966 – Ed Brubaker, 52, Writer and Artist of comic boooks and graphic novels. Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives, I’d consider his first genre work. Later work for DC and Marvel included The Authority, Batman, Captain America, Daredevil, Catwoman, and The Uncanny X-Men. If I may single out but one series, it’d be the one he did with writer Greg Rucka which was Gotham Central. It’s Gotham largely without Batman, but with the villains, so the Gotham Police Department has to deal with them by themselves; grim and well done. In 2016, he joined the writing staff for the Saturn-winning Westworld series, where he co-wrote the episode “Dissonance Theory” with Jonathan Nolan. He’s had numerous nominations and wins for Harvey and Eisner Awards, as well as a Stoker nomination for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel.
  • Born November 17, 1971 – David Ramsey, 47, Actor and Martial Artist, who is best known for his role in the the Arrowverse (Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow) as John Diggle/Spartan, but he also had roles in The Nutty Professor and the pandemic film Fatal Contact, and has appeared in episodes of Ghost Whisperer, Space: Above and Beyond, Journeyman, and Charmed.
  • Born November 17, 1978 – Tom Ellis, 40, Actor from Wales who is currently playing Lucifer Morningstar in the Lucifer TV series based on the character from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. It’s quite good. He’s also had roles in Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, Messiah, The Strain, and Merlin.
  • Born November 17, 1978 – Rachel McAdams, 40, Oscar-nominated Actor from Canada who played the titular character in the The Time Traveler’s Wife, a film based on the Clarke- and Campbell-nominated novel of the same name, which she followed up genre-wise by earning Saturn nominations for playing Irene Adler in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films and the terrorists’ target in the creepy Red Eye. She also had lead roles in Dr. Strange, Midnight in Paris, and another time-travel movie, About Time. Her sole series work is apparently in an episode of Earth: Final Conflict, and she had a voice role as The Mother in an animated version of The Little Prince.
  • Born November 17, 1983 – Christopher Paolini, 35, Writer known for the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance, the first of which was made into a Saturn-nominated film and a videogame of the same name. In December of this year, The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, the first book in a series called Tales of Alagaësia, will be published.

(8) BY BIRTHDAY CANDLELIGHT. Rich Horton, in “Birthday Review: Stories of Raymond F. Jones”, gives reasons that name should not be forgotten.

Raymond F. Jones would have been 103 today. He’s not much remembered these days, but he was an interesting writer of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. His career continued into the 1970s — his last story appeared in Ted White’s Fantastic in 1978.  In his memory I’ve compiled this set of reviews of his stories, that I wrote based on reading several old magazines in my collection.

(9) TRIMBLES TAKE THE HIGH ROAD. Bjo and John Trimble responded on Facebook to Steve Davidson withdrawing Amazing Stories sponsorship of their GoH expenses at the 2019 NASFiC after they decided to continue as Arisia 2019 GoHs.

This is Steve Davidson’s reaction to our decision to attend Arisia. He makes some assumptions that we don’t agree with, but we’re not about to get into a “he said” “they said” conversation here. Suffice it to say that we feel strongly that Arisia is making an attempt to deal with their former transgressions, including offering space at the 2019 con to discuss this with people willing to do so. We look forward to that meeting. It may be a worthwhile contribution to something that has not yet been openly addressed in fandom.

(10) JOURNEY PLANET CALLING. Chuck Serface says the Journey Planet theme issue he’s working on is  looking for contributors:

A reminder to all that Christopher J Garcia and I are co-editing an issue of Journey Planet dedicated to Silicon Valley. We’re looking for articles, creative writing, and art based on anything related to this part of the world — technology, history, the arts, cultures, peoples, politics, stories, poetry, whatever strikes your interest. Our deadline for submissions is December 10, 2018, and we’ll get the issue out before the end of the calendar year. Send your entries to [email protected]!

(11) ACE SEXTET. That’s what you get when Galactic Journey reviews three fresh-off-the-shelf (in 1963) Ace Doubles. In the first book, Leigh Brackett is on one side, and on the other –

Legend of Lost Earth, by G. McDonald Wallis

It’s common practice in SFF for women to initialize their first names (or flat-out take on male pseudonyms).  I have been told vociferously by one of my readers that this practice has nothing to do with any bias against women in the genre; nevertheless, it is puzzling that men don’t seem to do it.  In any event, the “G.” stands for Geraldine, and this is her second Ace Double, the first being The Light of Lilith, which I have not read.

(12) SUBSTANDARD COMPENSATION FOR SUBWAY ARTISTS. The ghost of Harlan Ellison was invoked by Toronto columnist Cliff Goldstein in “Drawing the line on a sketchy TTC ad campaign”.

I was on the subway recently, enjoying some of the lovely art created by local artists as part of the TTC’s Sketching The Line campaign. Curious to find out if the artists were paid for their contributions, I submitted a query through the artintransit.ca website listed on the posters and got a timely answer from Antonina MacDonald, sponsorships and events specialist for Pattison, the outdoor advertising giant.

“They are not compensated… in the form of money. It [compensation] is provided in the form of exposure on our subways and buses.”

This was not the answer I had expected from Canada’s largest outdoor advertising company that’s part of an international corporation with 39,000 employees worldwide and annual sales that have grown to $8.4 billion annually.

…One of my favourite authors, Harlan Ellison, said it best in the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth: there is no value in publicity for starving artists.

(13) WRITE MYSELF A LETTER. Cool idea — “Shrinking Swiss glacier hosts world’s largest postcard”.

Laid out on the shrinking Aletsch Glacier, this huge mosaic is actually made from 125,000 drawings and messages about climate change.

They measure 2,500 sq m (26,910 sq ft), and were created by children from all over the world.

“WE ARE THE FUTURE GIVE US A CHANCE,” urged one poster, standing out against the snow.

Seen from above, the whole picture read: “STOP GLOBAL WARMING #1.5 DEGREES C”

(14) HWA YA. The Horror Writers Association announced the Table of Contents for its next anthology for young readers, New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark edited by Jonathan Maberry

Contents:
1. “The Funeral Portrait” by Laurent Linn
2. “The Carved Bear” by Brendan Reichs
3. “Don’t You See the Cat?” by Gaby Triana
4. “The Golden Peacock” by Alethea Kontis
5. “Strange Music” by Joanna Parypinski
6. “Copy and Paste Kill” by Barry Lyga
7. “The House on the Hill” by Micol Ostow
8. “Jingle Jangle: by Kim Ventrella
9. “The Knock-Knock Man” by Brenna Yovanoff
10. “The Weeping Woman” by Courtney Alameda
11. “The Neighbor” by Amy Lukavics
12. “Tag, You’re It” by Nancy Lambert
13. “The Painted Skin” by Jamie Ford
14. “Lost to the World” by John Dixon
15. “The Bargain” by Aric Cushing
16. “Lint Trap” by Jonathan Auxier
17. “Cries of the Cat” by Josh Malerman
18. “The Open Window” by Christopher Golden
19. “The Skelly Horse by Trisha Wooldridge
20. “The Umbrella Man by Gary N. Braunbeck
21. “The Green Grabber” by D.J. MacHale
22. “Brain Spiders” by Luis Alberto Urrea and Rosario Urrea
23. “Hachishakusama” by Catherine Jordan
24. “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board” by Margaret Stohl
25. “In Stitches” by Michael Northrop
26. “The Bottle Tree” by Kami Garcia
27. “The Ghost in Sam’s Closet: by R. L. Stine
28. “Rap Tap” by Sherrilyn Kenyon
29. “The Garage” by Tananarive Due
30. “Don’t Go into the Pumpkin Patch at Night” by Sheri White
31. “Pretty Girls Make Graves” by Tonya Hurley
32. “Whistle Past the Graveyard” by Zac Brewer
33. Title TBD by James A. Moore
34. “Mud” by Linda Addison
35. “The Tall Ones” by Madeleine Roux

(15) CALLING SANTA. Congratulations to Juniper Books for finding a way to make Harry Potter even more expensive to buy! These Harry Potter Sets in a luxurious traveling case sell for $275.

(16) A KIND OF SHREK QUILT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Movie remakes, right? Gotta love ‘em, right? (Or maybe I was looking for a different word.) Well, apparently someone loves them; about 200 someones in the case of Shrek Retold—a retelling of the first movie by a large group of artists, each using her or his own style. The Verge ( “Over 200 artists got together to remake Shrek”) has the story and the Retold trailer. The release is coming 29 November on on the 3GI website.

The internet’s favorite ogre may already be headed for another Hollywood-backed installment, but fans of the fantasy parody aren’t waiting around for its release. Instead, hundreds of artists have collaborated on their own scene-by-scene retelling of the first Shrek movie. Produced by Wisconsin comedy group 3GI, each artist brings their own style into the mix, meaning there’s everything from live-action bits to CGI and pixel art thrown into the same film. The project looks absurd in the best possible way, like a viral eBaum’s World video for 2018.

(17) HISTORIC PARK MAKES RECOVERY PLAN. These sets were on National Park land, and new ones may take their place: “Paramount Ranch, Western Town, will rise from the Woolsey fire’s ashes, officials vow”Daily News has the story.

Friday’s media event also announced the launch of The Paramount Project to rebuild the ranch’s Western Town. The 24-month projected rebuilding effort is organized by the Park Service’s nonprofit partner the Santa Monica Mountains Fund. You can get more information on the Project and contribute at www.samofund.org/2018/11/15/the-paramount-project/.

“This was a very emotional, iconic place, it captured history of the area and of Los Angeles,” Fund board president Sara Horner noted. “It’s globally significant, it is locally significant and culturally significant.

“Park Services, as you can imagine, is reeling from the losses,” she added. “So they will put together an assessment of their losses, and then we will refine the direction of the plan in place – which will probably change. But there is a plan of what we would like and a schedule for how it will get built, and the Santa Monica Mountains Fund will spearhead the fundraising for that.”

Horner said several movie studios have already called the fund inquiring about how they can help. Her organization is also planning meetings with location managers and other industry professionals to do informal surveys of what they would like to see in the rebuilt Western Town. Due to rigorous Park Service guidelines on what can and cannot be built on their land, she can’t say exactly, but Horner expects a combination of the setting looking somewhat like it did before the fire and new facilities to help the film industry to be up two years from now

LAist has a gallery of photos of the fire damage.

Today, the National Parks Service gave LAist a tour of the ranch post-fire. Little except smoldering piles of wood and cleared land remained of what was once a backdrop to legendary TV shows like The Cisco Kid and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, rcade, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rick Moen.]

Pixel Scroll 11/16/18 A Pixel May Not Scroll A Human Being, Or Through Inaction, Allow A Human To Be Scrolled

(1) DIVERSITY STARTS EARLY. The 2019 World Fantasy Convention responded to Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s criticism (see yesterday’s Scroll, item #3.) She answered in a thread that begins here.

(2) IN DETAIL. NPR’s Glen Weldon gets specific: “‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald’: Beasts? Check. Crimes? Check. Fantastic? Not Quite.”

The Crimes of Grindelwald is better than the first Beasts film, and not just because that turns out to be such a low bar to clear, but because it has a firmer grasp on what kind of movie it wants to be. It feels more familiarly Potter-y, in that it assumes the distinctive narrative shape of Harry Potter stories.

Once again: Structurally, it’s familiar, not, you know: good.

Can we all admit, here, that the plots of Harry Potter books and movies were always frustrating in the extreme? Rowling’s characters delighted in keeping vital information from Harry — and by extension, the reader — turning every tale into an ersatz, low-rent mystery where the goal was never to uncover whodunnit, but to eke out even the most basic understanding of whatthehellsgoingon? Inevitably, we’d discover the answers — well, “discover” is inaccurate. We’d be told, when Rowling would finally sit Harry down to have him listen to an extended monologue, filled with secret history to which neither he nor we could have been expected to be privy.

That’s the kind of plotting The Crimes of Grindelwald serves up, down to a hilariously out-of-nowhere pseudo-climactic scene in which characters who’ve spent the movie scheming to murder one another just stand around listening patiently to a series of monologues like they’re sleepy kindergartners at storytime.

(3) JUST PINING FOR THE FJORDS. In the midst of this excitement let’s not overlook that Unbound Worlds ends its life as a blog this month:

Today we’re announcing that the conversation with our readers is ready to evolve in new and exciting ways. In the new year, the articles, interviews, and lists you have enjoyed on Unbound Worlds will have a new home within penguinrandomhouse.com. That means we’ll no longer be publishing new content on Unbound Worlds after this month, but we’re excited to be able to deliver even more of the very best in science fiction, fantasy, and horror books, curated collections, and offers through our email programs.

(4) A BETTER LIGHTSABER. Don’t just sit there – spend money on Star Wars toys! “Disney Designs New Lightsaber That Extends and Retracts Just Like the Film Versions”.

For some of us out there, society’s technical advancements can all be measured by answering one question: How close are we to a real lightsaber?

While the model outlined in Disney’s newest patent application may not cut through solid steel, it will have an advantage over previous toys and replicas. Published today by Disney Enterprises, Inc., “Sword Device with Retractable, Internally Illuminated Blade” outlines a lightsaber design which allows the “energy blade” to shoot forth and retract in a way that properly mimics the iconic weapon’s use in the Star Wars franchise.

Currently, if you want to walk the path of the Jedi you’ve got two basic options. The cheaper choice involves purchasing a toy with a telescoping blade, with larger segments near the hilt and smaller segments near the tip, creating a triangular — and not very film accurate — shape. For more money you get more accuracy, so you could also purchase a fixed blade that looks closer to the movie ones when lit, but can’t extend or retract at all. Remember that iconic scene where Mace Windu stopped to screw in his purple blade before battle? Nope, neither do we.

(5) BRINGING THE HAMMER. Marvel is ready for another climactic moment —

This April, the war that has exploded across the Ten Realms finally blasts into the last realm standing…ours.

WAR OF THE REALMS IS COMING!

Starting in April, the award-winning creative team of Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson will usher in an event of unparalleled scale! And like the mega-event Secret Wars, no corner of the Marvel Universe will be untouched!

“I have been building towards WAR OF THE REALMS for the entire duration of my Thor run. So we’re talking six years and 80-something issues and counting,” teased Jason Aaron. “This is a war that covers the entire globe and involves the biggest heroes of the Marvel Universe, as you can see in this amazing promo piece by my MIGHTY THOR collaborators, Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson, who I’m so thrilled to be working with again on WAR OF THE REALMS.”

(6) GOING TO THE WORLDCON. The Shimmer Program announced that the winners of the Dublin 2019 Attending Funding for Chinese fans offered by Storycom are Constance Hu and Amelia Chen. Each will get RMB 10,000 for use in attending and staffing the con. They are expected to gain experience in the Worldcon organizational work and help with future Chinese bids.

Tammy Coxen & Adam Beaton, Member and Staff Services DH & DDH of Dublin 2019, and Colin Zhang, winner of Worldcon 75 Attending Funding & Hospitality DDH of Worldcon 75, worked as judges for the selection.

There are photos and introductions to the two winners at the link.

(7) DEVORE COLLECTION FOR SALE. The daughters of the late Howard Devore are selling the remainder of his collection/stock at ScienceFictionSales.com. Many interesting items going on the block, including Gene Roddenberry’s thank-you letter to 1966 Worldcon chair Ben Jason. Howard got one, too, but it’s not for sale —

Bjo [Trimble] wrote the following in honoring Howard as he received the Science Fiction World Convention Fan Guest of Honor award (posthumously) in 2006:

“How Howard helped save Star Trek”

When NBC decided to cancel Star Trek after its second season in 1967, the Trimbles decided to organize a write-in campaign to the network. “This was before computers and the Internet, so we had to rely on obtaining mailing lists. We asked but were turned down by several people who had mailing lists, but Big-Hearted Howard DeVore gave us his list to start the campaign. He also talked others into letting us use their mailing lists. He never got credit for this, though the [sic] we (John and Bjo Trimble) mentioned his name in interviews.”  So it may surprise many fans to know that without Howard, the Save Star Trek campaign might not have succeeded.

(See also the letter written by Roddenberry to thank a good friend of Dad’s, Ben Jason, for the letter writing campaign which we offer for sale in the Oddities and Curiosities section of the website. Our letter is not for sale.)

(8) FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS AT WHITE WOLF. Corporate management has taken drastic action to deal with problems at White Wolf:

My name is Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development at Paradox Interactive and interim manager at White Wolf Publishing. I wanted to inform you of some changes that will be implemented at White Wolf, starting immediately.

Sales and printing of the V5 Camarilla and Anarch books will be temporarily suspended. The section on Chechnya will be removed in both the print and PDF versions of the Camarilla book. We anticipate that this will require about three weeks. This means shipping will be delayed; if you have pre-ordered a copy of Camarilla or Anarchs, further information will follow via e-mail.

In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity. The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.

Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.

The World of Darkness has always been about horror, and horror is about exploring the darkest parts of our society, our culture, and ourselves. Horror should not be afraid to explore difficult or sensitive topics, but it should never do so without understanding who those topics are about and what it means to them. Real evil does exist in the world, and we can’t ever excuse its real perpetrators or cheapen the suffering of its real victims.

In the Chechnya chapter of the V5 Camarilla book, we lost sight of this. The result was a chapter that dealt with a real-world, ongoing tragedy in a crude and disrespectful way. We should have identified this either during the creative process or in editing. This did not happen, and for this we apologize….

(9) SPACE COLLECTIBLES CASH IN. HA’s recent Space Exploration Auction set records:

The “star of the show” was my personal favorite piece, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Flown Spacecraft ID Plate. When the fierce bidding was over, it had sold for $468,500 to a bidder in the room. Four lots tied for “second place” at $275,000 each: two Apollo 11 LM Flown Wright Flyer Propeller Pieces (Lot 52284 and Lot 52285); the Apollo 11 Flown Largest Size American Flag; and the Apollo 11 LM Flown Apollo 1 Fliteline Medal. This last lot was particularly poignant as Neil Armstrong and Ed White II were close friends; the medal was taken to the moon as a tribute to White who perished in the Apollo 1 training fire. A special thanks to the dedicated staff at Collectibles Authentication Guaranty (CAG) who worked tirelessly to authenticate and encapsulate or certify every single item in The Armstrong Family Collection™. Another sincere “thank you” goes out to Rick and Mark & Wendy Armstrong who were always available to help in any way needed.

This auction also featured an incredible selection of material from several dozen regular and new consignors. One thing I noted was that Gemini-flown Fliteline medals were particularly strong in the early Friday session. The examples we offered all had incredible provenance from various astronauts and many were graded by NGC. We set new price records for the following missions: Cooper’s Gemini 5 ($35,000); Schirra’s Gemini 6 ($8,750); Lovell’s Gemini 7 ($10,625); Cooper’s Gemini 8 ($30,000); Stafford’s Gemini 9 ($32,500); Young’s Gemini 10 ($5,750); Conrad’s Gemini 11 ($12,500); Lovell’s Gemini 12 Silver-colored and Gold-colored ($9,375); and Chaffee’s Apollo 1 ($20,000). Oh, by the way, the Gemini 3 ($16,250) and Gemini 4 ($9,375) records were set the previous day by lots from The Armstrong Family Collection™. That makes it a “clean sweep.”

(10) GOLDMAN OBIT. William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride, has died. Deadline has the story — “William Goldman Dies; Oscar Winning Writer Of ‘Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid’ Was 87”.

Goldman began as a novelist and transitioned to writing scripts with Masquerade in 1965. While his greatest hits were the indelible pairing of Robert Redford with Paul Newman in the George Roy Hill-directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the Alan Pakula-directed toppling of President Richard Nixon drama All The President’s Men, he wrote the scripts for many other great movies. The list includes the Hoffman-starrer Marathon Man (Goldman also wrote the novel, which made dentist visits even more undesirable),as well as The Princess Bride, The Stepford Wives, The Great Waldo Pepper, A Bridge Too Far, Chaplin and Misery. He also did a lot of behind the scenes script doctoring without taking a screen credit, as on films that included A Few Good Men and Indecent Proposal.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

  • Born November 16, 1907 – Burgess Meredith, Actor of Stage and Screen, Writer, Director, and Producer. His two most significant roles were in Twilight Zone: The Movie as the Narrator, and in a delightful take as The Penguin in the original Batman series. Genre film appearances include Magic, Clash of the Titans, Torture Garden, The Sentinel, and Beware! The Blob. He also showed up in Tales of Tomorrow, an anthology SF series that was performed and broadcast live on ABC from 1951 to 1953, and episodes of The Invaders, The Twilight Zone, Faerie Tale Theatre (Thumbelina, with Carrie Fisher!) and The Wild, Wild West. Did I mention he voiced Puff the Magic Dragon in a series of the same name? He also narrated the documentary Debrief: Apollo 8, with footage from the historic spaceflight. (Died 1997.)
  • Born November 16, 1939 – Tor Åge Bringsværd, 79, Writer, Editor, and Fan from Norway who co-founded Norwegian fandom. He and his university friend Jon Bing were huge SF readers in a country where SF publishing did not exist, so they founded, in 1966, the still-existing Aniara science fiction club and its fanzine at Oslo University. In 1967, they produced an SF short story collection Ring Around the Sun, which is known as the first science fiction by a Norwegian author. In 1967, they persuaded Gyldendal, the leading Norwegian publisher, into launching a paperback SF line with themselves as editors. Between then and 1980, this imprint released 55 titles which included the first Norwegian translations for many authors, such as Aldiss, Bradbury, Le Guin, and Leiber. He quit university to become a full-time SF writer, and since then has accumulated an impressive array of awards, including the Norwegian Academy Award, the Ibsen Award, and the Norwegian Cultural Council Award.
  • Born November 16, 1942 – Milt Stevens, Law Enforcement Analyst, Fan, Conrunner, and Filer. Excerpted from Mike Glyer’s tribute to him: Milt attended his first Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society meeting in 1960 at the age of 17. By 1970 Milt was President of LASFS he signed my membership card when I joined. He was somebody to look up to who also became a good friend. Milt won the Evans-Freehafer Award for service to the club in 1971. He was on the LASFS, Inc. Board of Directors for a couple of decades, and was Chair for around five years. After the original LASFS clubhouse was bought in 1973 Milt dubbed himself the “Lord High Janitor,” having taken on the thankless task of cleaning the place. Milt was among the club’s few nationally-active fanzine publishers and fanpoliticians. He put out an acclaimed perzine called The Passing Parade. He coedited and bankrolled later issues of my fanzine Prehensile. For many years he was a member of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA). He was Chair of LA 2000, the original Loscon (1975), and later the 1980 Westercon. And he co-chaired L.A.Con II (1984), which still holds the attendance record. He was made Fan GoH of Loscon 9 and Westercon 61. (Died 2017.)
  • Born November 16, 1952 – Candas Jane Dorsey, 66, Writer, Poet, and Critic from Canada whose works include poetry, fiction, television and stage scripts, magazine and newspaper articles, and reviews. Her fiction has garnered a Tiptree Award, numerous Aurora Award nominations and wins, and a Sunburst nomination. She was a co-founder of SF Canada, was editor-in-chief of The Books Collective from 1992 to 2005, and has co-edited two editions of Canadian Science Fiction’s long-running annual anthology Tesseracts.
  • Born November 16, 1952 – Robin McKinley, 66, Writer. Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast was her first book. It was considered a superb work, and was named an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Rose Daughter is another version of that folktale, whereas Spindle’s End is the story of Sleeping Beauty, and Deerskin and two of the stories that you can find in The Door in the Hedge are based on other folktales. She does a superb telling of the Robin Hood legend in The Outlaws of Sherwood. Among her novels not based on folktales are Sunshine, Chalice, and Dragonhaven. Her 1984 The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as that year’s best new American children’s book. She was married to Peter Dickinson from 1991 to his death in 2015; they lived together in Hampshire. They co-wrote two splendid collections of Tales of Elemental Spirits: Water and Fire. I’d be very remiss not to note her other bonnie Awards: a 1983 Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, the 1986 World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection for Imaginary Lands, and as editor, the 1998 Phoenix Award Honor Book for Beauty, and the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Impressive indeed!
  • Born November 16, 1958 – Marg Helgenberger, 60, Actor who played Hera in Wonder Woman. She also appeared in Conan: Red Nails, Species and Species II, After Midnight, Always, the miniseries The Tommyknockers, an episode of Tales from the Crypt, and a recurring role in Under the Dome.
  • Born November 16, 1964 – Harry Lennix, 54, Actor of Stage and Screen and Producer, who has appeared in Suspect Zero, two of The Matrix movies, Man of Steel, Timeless, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and has provided character voices for animated features and series including Transformers: Robots in Disguise and Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.
  • Born November 16, 1967 – Lisa Bonet, 51, Actor whose first genre work was in an episode of Tales from the Darkside and as Epiphany Proudfoot in Angel Heart, a decidedly strange horror film. More germane was that she was Heather Lelache in the 2002 A&E adaptation of Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven. She later played Maya Daniels in the Life on Mars series as well.
  • Born November 16, 1972 – Missi Pyle, 46, Actor who played Laliari in Galaxy Quest, which is one of my (and JJ’s) favorite SF films of all time. She also appeared in Josie and the Pussycats, Big Fish, Pandemic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is is just plain awful), Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, A Haunted House 2, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roswell, The Tick, Pushing Daisies, and Z Nation.
  • Born November 16, 1976 – Lavie Tidhar, 42, Writer, Editor, and Critic from Israel. The first work I read by him was Central Station, which won 2017 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It certainly deserved that accolade! The next work by him I experienced was The Bookman Histories, in which Mycroft Holmes is murdered and, well, everything of a pulp nature gets tossed into alternate history England: it’s both brilliant and annoying at times. I’m reading Unholy Land, his telling of the founding of a Jewish homeland long ago in Africa, now. It’s a quieter read than much of his work. He edited the first 3 editions of the anthology series The Apex Book of World SF, an evolution of his BSFA-winning and World Fantasy Award-nominated The World SF Blog, where he posted reviews on international SFF from 2009 to 2013.
  • Born November 16, 1977 – Gigi Edgley, 41, Actor and Singer from Australia. Though her genre experiences are varied, I think she’ll be best remembered for her role as Chiana, one of the Nebari, a repressive race that she rebels against, and as a result, becomes a member of the crew on Moya on the Farscape series. Other genre appearances include a role in Richard Hatch’s robot film Diminuendo, and guest parts in episodes of Beastmaster, The Lost World, Quantum Apocalypse and the web series Star Trek Continues (in “Come Not Between the Dragons”). She is a popular guest at SFF media conventions.

(12) MISTAKES WERE MADE, INFO WAS DUMPED. Beware! Paralysis (from laughter) may ensue when you read “The Concerning Fine by Tim Catzi: Part 2 of the Colluding Umpire” at Camestros Felapton.

Chapter 5
Brunomars Nicechap stood in front of the crowd of angry looking space geologists.
“Please,” he pleaded, “you have to believe me that the whole Interminabledependnecy is going to collapse!”
“Of course we believe you,” said the scientists, “your math checks out and anyway the whole thing started to collapse in the last book. We aren’t idiots.”
“But, but, we’ve a whole chapter to fill with you guys not believing me.” said Brunomars Nicechap.
“Maybe we could just all sit here and check our emails instead?” suggested the scientists.
Which is what they did.

(13) INTERNATIONAL LIFE. Other languages have words for “10 Personality traits English Can’t Name”. Chip Hitchcock marvels, “Who knew Greek had a word for ‘schlimazel’?”

Learning other languages offers insights into the way that other cultures see the world. For someone like myself, gaining those insights can become addictive, and that fixation has led me to study 15 different languages. My recent book, ‘From Amourette to Zal: Bizarre and Beautiful Words from Around Europe’, explores some of the words that other languages have, but that English doesn’t. The following 10 words, for example, describe character traits and behaviours that may be familiar to us all, but that the English language struggles to succinctly express.

(14) HONOR ROLL. BBC snaps pics as “Tom Hardy made a CBE by Prince Charles”. (Fortunately, they didn’t blame him for the Venom script.)

Film star Tom Hardy has been made a CBE for services to drama by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.

The Mad Max and Venom actor is a friend of Princes William and Harry and was among the guests at Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in May.

(15) CURRENT AFFAIRS. It’s official: “Kilogram gets a new definition”. But Chip Hitchcock says, “I hope some other Filer can explain why this works, or what the BBC has left out. ISTM that they’re measuring weight rather than mass, which means that the same object would have different results depending on where on Earth the measurement happened — on a mountain or at sea level, at the equator vs. the pole.”

How does the new system work?

Electromagnets generate a force. Scrap-yards use them on cranes to lift and move large metal objects, such as old cars. The pull of the electromagnet, the force it exerts, is directly related to the amount of electrical current going through its coils. There is, therefore, a direct relationship between electricity and weight.

So, in principle, scientists can define a kilogram, or any other weight, in terms of the amount of electricity needed to counteract the weight (gravitational force acting on a mass).

Here’s the tricky part

There is a quantity that relates weight to electrical current, called Planck’s constant – named after the German physicist Max Planck and denoted by the symbol h.

But h is an incredibly small number and to measure it, the research scientist Dr Bryan Kibble built a super-accurate set of scales. The Kibble balance, as it has become known, has an electromagnet that pulls down on one side of the scales and a weight – say, a kilogram – on the other.

The electrical current going through the electromagnet is increased until the two sides are perfectly balanced.

By measuring the current running through the electromagnet to incredible precision, the researchers are able to calculate h to an accuracy of 0.000001%.

This breakthrough has paved the way for Le Grand K to be deposed by “die kleine h“.

(16) OTHER CURRENT EVENTS. This week’s BBC News Quiz (and closes) with a gift for Filers. A good thing, because I got the rest of the quiz wrong!

(17) COLLECTIVE MAMATAS. Fantasy Literature delivers a parallax view of Nick Mamatas’ short fiction: “The People’s Republic of Everything: An experimental collection”.

Jana Nyman —

On the whole, though, the stories within The People’s Republic of Everything often feel like they’re lacking something (narrative/thematic focus, clarification of details or character motivation, sometimes even just character voice) that would bring all of the elements together into a cohesive whole. I found myself relying heavily on Mamatas’ notes after each story in order to parse out what his goals and mindsets were for each work.

Marion Deeds —

I enjoyed Nick Mamatas’s story collection The People’s Republic of Everything more than Jana did. My experience with Mamatas’s work is his novel I am Providence, which I enjoyed very much, a few short stories, and his role as a gadfly on Twitter. I had a pretty good idea what to expect from this 2018 collection and I was not disappointed.

(18) SHARED UNIVERSE. Adri Joy makes this sound pretty good — “Microreview [Books]: Redemption’s Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Salvation’s Fire by Justina Robson” at Nerds of a Feather.

Oh hey, a shared universe! In books! Perhaps I’m not reading the right things, but this feels like a pretty rare occurrence, and aside from George R. R. Martin’s Wildcards series (which I haven’t read) and the occasional posthumous series continuation, I’m struggling to think of any intentional collaborations of this kind. Redemption’s Blade and Salvation’s Fire are a sequential pair which together open the “After the War” series. Redemption’s Blade – and, I believe, the concept for the whole world – was written by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who is fast on his way to becoming one of my favourite authors; Salvation’s Fire continues with Justina Robson, whose work I hadn’t read before.

…The fantasy world here is probably best described as “Legend of Zelda except society makes sense”. Humans share their world not with Tolkien-issue elves and dwarves but with the (formerly) winged Aethani, the water-dwelling Shelliac, forests full of ethereal Draeyads (some of which are now eternally on fire), some spider people (a Tchaikovsky special!), and most prominently, the Yorughans….

(19) LOST IN TRANSLATION. If alternative history with John Adams battling giant snakes is SF/Fantasy, then this is a good thread — starts here.

(20) NOT GENRE, JUST WEIRD. The 41st Pasadena Doodah Parade steps off Sunday, November 18.

Known as the twisted sister of the conventional Rose Parade, the Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade began as a grassroots event in 1978 to gain national attention for its eccentric and, often, irreverent satire. The parade which has spawned numerous off-beat replicants across the country was even highlighted in last year’s Wall Street Journal. It was also named by Readers Digest as “America’s Best Parade,” and was recently featured in the book 50 Places You Must Visit Before You Die.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Joel Zakem, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Reuben, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 11/14/18 Ask Not For Whom The Files Scroll

Power was off here for 8 hours while they replaced a utility pole – fortunately the rest of you kept sending stuff!

(1) GRRM DEALS WILD CARDS TO TV. Tor.com says “George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards Universe Finds a Home at Hulu”

The Hollywood Reporter dropped big news for GRRM fans yesterday; the Wild Cards series, helmed by Martin and Melinda Snodgrass, and featuring stories from many SFF luminaries, is coming to Hulu.

Hulu and Universal Cable Productions are near to a deal that would create a writers room for Wild Cards, helmed by Andrew Miller. The intent is to begin with two series and potentially expand to more, with Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, and Vince Gerardis executive producing the lot.

(2) ARISIA GOHS PUNISHED. Did you know Amazing Stories was sponsoring the 2019 NASFiC’s Fan Guests of Honor Bjo and John Trimble? Well, if you didn’t, never mind, they aren’t anymore — “Amazing Stories Withdraws Trimble’s NASFiC Sponsorship”. And why is that? Steve Davidson thinks it’s bad publicity for Amazing to be associated with people who are also going to be guests at Arisia 2019 — apparently, even worse publicity than Amazing will receive from making this announcement.

Today, November 14th, The Experimenter Publishing Company reluctantly announces that it has formally rescinded its NASFiC Fan GoH sponsorship of John and Bjo Trimble, following the Trimble’s decision to remain Guests of Honor of the Arisia 2019 convention.

In December of 2017 at the Boston SMOFcon, Steve Davidson (Experimenter Publisher) met Kate Hatcher, chair of the 2019 Utah NASFiC bid.  Utah won the bid and The Experimenter Publishing Company was approached as a potential sponsor for the as yet unnamed Fan GoH.  Following brief discussions, Experimenter agreed to cover the costs associated with the attendance and promotional efforts typically incurred.

… The Trimbles initially announced that they would be attending Arisia.  When I learned of this, I wrote to Kate Hatcher of the Utah NASFiC and subsequently to Bjo Trimble, explaining that The Experimenter Publishing Company and Amazing Stories could not be associated with nor support Arisia under the current circumstances and, since one purpose of their trip to the convention was to promote the NASFiC as sponsored by Amazing Stories, I felt that I had no choice but to withdraw their sponsorship should they choose to attend….

(3) HAZARDOUS SFF TOYS. W.A.T.C.H. (World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc.) has released their 2018 list of “10 worst toys” for the holiday season (press release here and more about each toy starting here). Cited issues include choking, ingestion, cutting, blunt force, and eye damage hazards. A majority of the toys have sff or science themes. The full list is:

  • Nickelodeon Nella Princess Knight Pillow Pets Sleeptime Lites
  • Nerf Vortex VTX Praxis Blaster
  • Marvel Black Panther Slash Claw
  • Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel Superstar Blade
  • Cabbage Patch Kids Dance Time Doll
  • Zoo Jamz Xylophone
  • Nici Wonderland Doll: Miniclara The Ballerina
  • Stomp Rocket Ultra Rocket
  • Cutting Fruit
  • Chien Á Promener Pull Along Dog

(4) BEFORE LITTLE NEMO. Titan Comics is publishing McCay, an “invented biography” chronicling authentic — though only partially true — stories of the life of the “father of animation” Winsor McCay, in which “McCay’s life is enriched by an imaginary encounter with British mathematician and science fiction writer Charles Hinton…and glimpses of the fourth dimension.” Release date is November 20.

(5) KICKSTARTER SPRINT. Fireside Fiction has launched a short crowdfunding campaign for “Hope In This Timeline”, a collection of short spec fiction stories about finding hope in difficult times curated by Meg Frank.

This reality is bonkers, and keeping up, let alone keeping your spirits up is really hard. Team Fireside thought we’d insert a little hope into the mix. We collected stories by Lee S. Bruce, Beth Cato, Gillian Daniels at midnight EST and in addition to the collection we’ve got some rad backer rewards like an enamel pin designed by Team Fireside and original artwork by Sara Eileen Hames.

They have raised $3,845 of their $7,000 goal with two days to go.

(6) G. WILLOW WILSON INTERVIEW. She starts her run on the DC icon this month — “Ms. Marvel’s G. Willow Wilson reflects on the political side of Wonder Woman”.

Wonder Woman is unavoidably this icon of feminism and of diversity and, to an extent, any Wonder Woman story can’t escape the broader context of her as a fictional element in the wider world. You just look at her becoming a figurehead for the UN, and the backlash to that, and the weight that we place on her as a fictional character. And certainly there’s a lot of conversation about issues of feminism and diversity just in the comics world right now. Do you feel that the presence of that context when you’re writing her?

Yes, absolutely. I think those of us, especially in the United States, who grew up with these characters, tend to assume a kind of universality to them. We assume that the ideals that they represent are universal across time and space and culture; that everybody can relate to them the same way that we do; that the things that they say and they think, their costumes, all of this stuff — is a universal human expression of justice.

And it’s not always the case. That’s not always the case. And I think now that we are really interconnected across the globe, and in social media, to the press, through the globalization of pop culture, we’re asking much bigger questions about these characters then we might have before, when they were a uniquely American phenomenon. And so it’s something that I’m always conscious of.

And it does, I think, make one’s job as a storyteller more interesting, because we’re now dealing with these characters who have a much broader reach than they might have 60 years ago. Yet by that same token, they’re no longer as universal and that’s a very interesting paradox.

[That’s] part of why I wanted to start out my run on the series in the way that I do: asking, “What is justice in this very different context?” Is there such a thing as a just war in a time when war is no longer about two armies facing each other across the battlefield, and it’s more about proxy wars and asymmetrical warfare and civilian casualties? And all of these different warring perspectives where there is no clear, black-and-white good guy and bad guy? And not shy away from that stuff. It’s a tall order, but I think it’s never been more necessary to ask those questions

(7) PATTEN TRIBUTES. Lee Gold has assembled a LASFS memorial page for Fred Patten that includes this quote from David Gerrold:

Fred was a treasure. You could turn to him and say, “I remember a story about a … etc.” and he would not only identify it by title and author, but where it was published. He was an incredible resource. I admired his encyclopedic knowledge of the field. He was classic old-school fandom. I am so sorry to hear of his passing.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 14, 1883 — Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is published as a one-volume book.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • November 14, 1907 Astrid Lindgren. Creator of the Pippi Longstocking series and, at least in the States, lesser known Emil i Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children series as well. In January 2017, she was calculated to be the world’s 18th most translated author, and the fourth-most-translated children’s writer after Enid Blyton, H. C. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. There have been at least forty video adaptations of her works over the decades mostly in Swedish but Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter (Sanzoku no Musume R?nya in English transliteration) was an animated series in Japan recently. (Died 2002.)
  • November 14, 1930 – Lt. Col. Ed White, Engineer, Pilot, and Astronaut who was the first American to walk in space during the Gemini 4 flight, for which he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. He and his crewmates Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee died as a result of a catastrophic fire in the command module during a launch test for Apollo 1, which was to have been the first manned Apollo mission. (Died 1967.)
  • November 14, 1932Alex Ebel. He did the poster for the first Friday the 13th film, and his cover illustration for The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin published by Ace Books in 1975 is considered one of the best such illustrations done. I’m also very impressed with The Dispossessed cover he did as well as his Planet of Exile cover too. His work for magazines includes Heavy MetalSpace Science Fiction and Fantastic Story Magazine. (Died 2013.)
  • November 14, 1951 – Beth Meacham, 67, Writer, Editor, and Critic who is best known for the many award-nominated and winning authors and books she has brought to SFF fans in her decades as editor at Ace and Tor, including Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates and Greg Bear’s Blood Music. She has been a finalist for the Best Editor Hugo numerous times – but what JJ found especially interesting are her Hugo nominations for Best Related Book, as a collaborator on A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy, and on Vincent Di Fate’s Catalog of Science Fiction Hardware. She has been Editor Guest of Honor at several conventions, including next year’s World Fantasy Convention.
  • November 14, 1951 – Sandahl Bergman, 67, Actor, Stuntperson, and Dancer who appeared in several Broadway shows and gained prominence when choreographer Bob Fosse cast her in Pippin and Dancin’, and then in his fantasy dance film All That Jazz. She played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian – for which she won a Saturn Award – and Queen Gedren in Red Sonja. She was one of the nine muses in the fantasy musical Xanadu, and starred in She, a post-apocalyptic movie based on H. Rider Haggard’s novel She: A History of Adventure. Other genre appearances include Hell Comes to Frogtown, Revenge on the Highway, TekWar: TekJustice, Ice Cream Man, and Sorceress II, and guest roles on Sliders and Hard Time on Planet Earth.
  • November 14, 1959 Paul McGann, 59. Yes he only did one film as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who television film, but that role he has reprised in more than seventy audio dramas and the 2013 short film entitled “The Night of the Doctor”. Other genre appearances include Alien 3FairyTale: A True StoryQueen of the Damned and Lesbian Vampire Killers.
  • November 14, 1963 – Cat Rambo, 55, Writer and Editor, who co-edited Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2011, which earned her a World Fantasy Special Award nomination. Her fantasy and science fiction works have been recognized with Nebula, Endeavour, and Compton Crook Award nominations. She has been an ardent gamer since the days of Pong and Chainmail, and was one of the developers of Armageddon (MUD). Her alter identity is as President, since 2015, of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which has enjoyed an unprecedented amount of visibility and transparency to fandom and non-members under her guidance; in addition to letting the rest of us get a better understanding of “how the sausage gets made”, the organization has continued its evolution by adding a mentorship program, Nebula voting rights for Associate Members, and a Gamewriting category to the Nebula Awards.
  • November 14, 1969 – Daniel J. Abraham, 49, Writer and Producer. He has published several fantasy series under his own name, as well as under M. L. N. Hanover and Daniel Hanover;  his solo works include the Long Price Quartet (about which Jo Walton has waxed enthusiastic), and the Black Sun’s Daughter and Dagger and the Coin quintologies, as well as numerous short works in GRRM’s Wild Cards universe. But let’s get to the leviathan in the room: he is one half of James S. A. Corey – a pen name which derives from his middle name and that of his collaborator, Ty (Corey) Franck, and his daughter’s initials – a team responsible for the bestselling Expanse novels and popular TV series. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was a Hugo finalist, and the episode of the same name won a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation; the novel series itself was a finalist for the Best Series Hugo Award in the year of its inception. He has also collaborated on comic books for various GRRM properties, including Game of Thrones.
  • November 14, 1979 – Olga Kurylenko, 39, Actor born in the Ukraine who is probably best known for her genre-adjacent role in Quantum of Solace, which earned her a Saturn nomination. She’s had several roles in movies based on comic books: Hitman, Max Payne, the Belgian Largo Winch, and the regrettably plothole-ridden Oblivion. She played The Vampire in Paris, Je t’Aime, and had appearances in Tyranny, Vampire Academy, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Mara, and the probably-never-to-be-released epic fantasy Empires of the Deep.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Off the Mark is just kidding, but you’ll never look at your bookshelves quite the same way again.
  • This In the Bleachers shows the importance of correct spelling in horror.

(11) STEAM TO MARS. Online play will become an option for a top-rated board game says Ars Technica: “Review: Super-hot board game Terraforming Mars goes digital”.

Terraforming Mars is one of the most popular heavy strategy games of the last two years (read our 2016 review); it earned a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres (expert’s “game of the year”), losing to the very good but much simpler Exit: The Game series. It’s currently ranked #4 on BoardGameGeek’s master ranking of all board games, a ranking that tends to skew towards complex games that eschew luck in favor of strategy and engine building.

Now, an adaptation from Asmodee Digital brings the game to Windows via Steam. (Android and iOS ports are coming soon.) The Windows port offers local play, online multiplayer, and a solo challenge mode that functions as a good learning tool in addition to providing a strong single-player experience.

(12) BABYLON BERLIN. The Berlin Sci-Fi FiImfest takes place November 16-17.

Last year we screened 66 films from 21 countries and had over 600 visitors. This year the festival will have 144 features as Berlin Sci-fi Filmfest takes over the Babylon Cinema.

Berlin Sci-fi Filmfest is pleased to announce the inclusion of the following:

Simon Lejeune aka Haedre, Berlin based Artist, painter, illustrator and comic author will take up residency and his exhibition will be featuring new works along with original comic pages.

Hans Hanfner, A Berlin based composer who wrote music for the award winning series Danni Lowinski and Allein gegen die Zeit will discuss the scoring workflow used in Babylon Berlin and discuss the tools and techniques used that made working with a team across the world possible.

Irrlicht e.V. is an association that supports fantastic culture, role-playing, tabletop and board games. They are committed players who meet regularly in Berlin and around the country and offer all those interested in the opportunity to experience fantastic culture and art and of course to play.

And as for Cosplay, we welcome back Anette Pohlke and the Film Fan Force team, who will be providing our guests with ample photo opportunity to pose with some of their favourite fan film characters from Star Wars to Star Trek to Guardians of the Galaxy.

(13) SHED A TEAR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Artist Thomas Ollivier (aka Tom le French) has re-imagined modern technology as if it had been developed pre-internet. The Verge’s Ashley Carman was particular taken by them (“We’re charmed by these tech products, reimagined for a simpler time”) though there seems something quite sad about the perpetually blinking “No Likes” display on the Facebook-branded pager. For myself, I’m at least as taken by his Cosmo Kids portfolio of kids from around the world, all dressed as if for astronaut’s official photos. Of those, Ollivier says “These portraits depict kids as agents of change.  There’s no more powerful fuel on the planet than a kid’s imagination.”

(14) COP A PLEA. NPR reports “Man Who Made Fatal ‘Swatting’ Hoax Call Pleads Guilty To 51 Charges”.

Tyler Barriss, 26, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making a false report resulting in a death, after he placed a hoax call late last year that resulted in police fatally shooting an unarmed man in Wichita, Kan.

Barriss pleaded guilty to a total of 51 charges as part of a plea deal. He will be sentenced in January, The Associated Press reports.

Prosecuting U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister told The Wichita Eagle he will recommend that Barriss be sentenced to 20 years in prison, providing he writes apology letters to police, dispatchers and the family of Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old father of two who was shot by police who responded to the hoax call in December.

(15) EXO MARKS THE SPOT. “Exoplanet discovered around neighbouring star” – the second-closest ever found. (If we leave right away we can get there in… never mind.)

The planet’s mass is thought to be more than three times that of our own, placing it in a category of world known as “super-Earths”.

It orbits Barnard’s star, which sits “just” six light-years away.

(16) JOURNEY TO THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH. “Greenland ice sheet hides huge ‘impact crater'” — scroll down for discussion of entanglement with current recent-extinction hypotheses.

If the impact was right at near-end of the age window then it will surely re-ignite interest in the so-called Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.

The Younger Dryas was a period of strong cooling in the middle of the climatic warming that occurred as the Earth emerged from the height of last ice age.

Some have argued that an asteroid impact could have been responsible for this cooling blip – and the accompanying extinction of many animal groups that occurred at the same time across North America.

Others, though, have been critical of the hypothesis, not least because no crater could be associated with such an event. The Hiawatha depression is likely now to fan the dying embers of this old debate

(17) POSTED TO ORBIT. “Rocket Lab’s Modest Launch Is Giant Leap for Small Rocket Business” – the New York Times has the story.

A small rocket from a little-known company lifted off Sunday from the east coast of New Zealand, carrying a clutch of tiny satellites. That modest event — the first commercial launch by a U.S.-New Zealand company known as Rocket Lab — could mark the beginning of a new era in the space business, where countless small rockets pop off from spaceports around the world. This miniaturization of rockets and spacecraft places outer space within reach of a broader swath of the economy.

The rocket, called the Electron, is a mere sliver compared to the giant rockets that Elon Musk, of SpaceX, and Jeffrey P. Bezos, of Blue Origin, envisage using to send people into the solar system. It is just 56 feet tall and can carry only 500 pounds into space.

…The Electron, Mr. Beck said, is capable of lifting more than 60 percent of the spacecraft that headed to orbit last year. By contrast, space analysts wonder how much of a market exists for a behemoth like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which had its first spectacular launch in February.

A Falcon Heavy can lift a payload 300 times heavier than a Rocket Lab Electron, but it costs $90 million compared to the Electron’s $5 million. Whereas SpaceX’s standard Falcon 9 rocket has no shortage of customers, the Heavy has only announced a half-dozen customers for the years to come.

(18) YOU’RE INVITED TO THE SHOWER. NPR tells you where to “Watch The Leonid Meteor Shower This Weekend”.

This year the shower of shooting stars is expected to peak late Saturday night and into Sunday morning.

Always occurring in mid-November, an average of about 15 meteors per hour streak across the night sky during the shower’s yearly peak, according to NASA.

The cascade will be competing with a waxing gibbous moon, so the best time to watch is after the moon has set but before dawn.

NASA suggests finding a viewing site far away from city or street lights and giving your eyes time to adjust to the darkness.

(19) TORUS TORUS TORUS. Vice claims “Apparently, Some People Believe the Earth Is Shaped Like a Donut” – which makes for some interesting astronomical GIF illustrations, like the one that explains the motion of the moon.

Yes, some people on the internet are arguing that Earth is neither flat, nor spherical, but torus-shaped, which is a fancy science word for something that looks like a donut. The idea first appeared on FlatEarthSociety.org in a 2008 thread started by a mysterious figure named Dr. Rosenpenis as a joke, but it was fleshed out in detail by FES trailblazer Varaug in 2012.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/4/18 The Scrolled Fan and the Spree

(1) EDELMAN GOH SPEECH AT WFC44. World Fantasy Con GoH Scott Edelman has posted a video of his speech, which is a call for inclusiveness in many dimensions of conrunning and the sff community. Scott hired the ASL interpreter seen in the video at his own expense, reports Andy Duncan.

(2) ARISIA 2019 NEWS. Arisia Inc. announced that Bjo and John Trimble will remain as GoHs, as will artist Elizabeth Leggett, but not Daniel Older and Malka Older.

It is with respect and regret that we are confirming what Daniel Older reported in his social media; he and his sister, Malka Older will not be participating in Arisia 2019. We asked each guest to make the choice they felt most comfortable with, and Malka and Daniel let us know they could not participate as things stood.

Our Fan Guests of Honor, Bjo and John Trimble, have confirmed that they would like to continue to be our guests. Lastly, as we shared from her social media post earlier, Elizabeth Leggett will continue to be our Artist Guest of Honor.

On top of Arisia 2019’s other problems, their venue is one of seven Boston area Marriott hotels where workers are on strike, and Arisia leadership are creating contingency plans because they won’t hold the con there if the strike is still going on. An unofficial Facebook page published the text of the staff email on the subect:

We cannot hold a convention in a hotel that is striking. If the strike continues, we see two possible options, and are looking for your help to determine which one is best. We can either move the convention to another property, or cancel Arisia 2019. We will need to work together to determine a timeline to make the go/no-go decision, as well as which of the two outcomes we should choose in the event the strike continues….

(3) PARDON THE INTERRUPTION. Some booksellers are retaliating against a new AbeBooks policy: “Booksellers Protest Amazon Site’s Move to Drop Stores From Certain Countries” – the New York Times has the story.

More than 250 antiquarian book dealers in 24 countries say they are pulling over a million books off an Amazon-owned site for a week, an impromptu protest after the site abruptly moved to ban sellers from several nations.

The flash strike against the site, AbeBooks, which is due to begin Monday, is a rare concerted action by vendors against any part of Amazon, which depends on third-party sellers for much of its merchandise and revenue. The protest arrives as increasing attention is being paid to the extensive power that Amazon wields as a retailer — a power that is greatest in books.

The stores are calling their action Banned Booksellers Week. The protest got its start after AbeBooks sent emails last month to booksellers in countries including South Korea, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia to say that it would no longer “support” them. “We apologize for this inconvenience,” the company said….

(4) MORE MEXICANX. Stephen C. Tobin covered the MexicanX Initiative for Latin American Literature Today: “The Long-Overdue Recognition of Mexicanx Science Fiction at This Year’s WorldCon76”.

The Initiative sprang forth from the seedling of an idea by one of this year’s WorldCon76 Guest of Honor, illustrator John Picacio. In the past he has twice won a Hugo Award –the crown jewel of science fiction awards– and was also invited to be this year’s Master of Ceremonies for the Hugos. His being Mexican-American led him to discover that no Guest of Honor or Hugo Award MC had ever been a brown person. “I thought it’s great to be the first,” he said, “but who cares if you’re the last? That’s the question I kept thinking about: who would come behind me? I break the door down, but then who’s coming through the door after me?” Initially, he thought he would sponsor one or two people (i.e., pay for their membership fees) out of his own pocket, but then his friend and novelist John Scalzi said he would do the same. Shortly after, more people agreed to sponsor, and before long, when the number reached 10 people, the whole process gained the momentum of a sizable snowball just picking up speed down a mountain. At that moment, Picacio decided to aim for sponsoring 50 people and gave the project its official title of The Mexicanx Initiative. By convention time, approximately 15 Mexicanx nationals along with 35 Mexicanx-Americans held sponsorships. (A similar origin story lies behind the bilingual anthology A Larger Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins, which was published just for the Initiative at WorldCon76 and receives an in-depth treatment in the prologue to the dossier.) Ultimately, Picacio said, this was not just merely some brown people getting together but “this was a human endeavor, like George R.R. Martin said [at the Hugo Awards after party]. It was all cultures getting together to bring in another that wasn’t really being included.”

(5) A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE.

(6) SUB SANDWICH. Quartzy posits “Nine sci-fi subgenres to help you understand the future”. The fifth is —

5. Solarpunk

“What does ‘the good life’ look like in a steady-state, no-growth, totally sustainable society?”

According to “On The Need for New Futures,” a 2012 article on Solarpunk.net, that’s the question this movement—which melds speculative fiction, art, fashion and eco-activism—seeks to answer. In the same post, Solarpunk’s anonymous founders warn, “We are starved for visions of the future that will sustain us, and give us something to hope for.” Yet what if we dreamed differently? What if we tried to answer a separate question: What does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?

As Olivia Rosane puts it, what if we tried to “cancel the apocalypse?”

Solarpunk is the opposite of cyberpunk’s nihilism, offering stories, the founders say, about “ingenuity, positive creation, independence, and community.” These narratives are often framed around infrastructure as both a form of resistance and as the foundations for a new way of life—the eponymous solar panels feature heavily.

What to read

Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars trilogy (beginning with Red Mars,1992)

“I’ve always written utopian science fiction,” says Robinson. He’s one of the best world-builders in contemporary sci-fi, and these stories of terraforming Mars are super worked-through, both technically and sociopolitically. They describe a future in which humans just might be able to achieve ecosystem balance.

Cory Doctorow, Walkaway (2018)

This is far less utopian than Robinson’s work, but perhaps, quietly, just as hopeful. In a world wracked by climate change and fully captured by corporate power, most people live grinding lives of toil in “Default” cities. Yet 3-D printing has created post-scarcity, and so Doctorow’s trio of characters simply secede and walk away into the lands in between, and start to rebuild the world. “The point of Walkaway is the first days of a better nation,” one says.

Check out Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation (2017, eds. Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland), the first English-language collection of solarpunk fiction . For stories from Brazil and Portugal, there’s Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World (2014 / English 2018, ed. Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro).

(7) BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME. James Davis Nicoll wonders if we missed the chance at a real-life Rendezvous with Rama: “Recent Interstellar Asteroid May Have Been Alien Artifact, Speculates New Paper”.

… “Just what is ‘Oumuamua?” you may ask. I am so glad you asked. It’s the first ever verified interstellar object traversing our solar system. It was discovered in late 2017. Unlike Rama, it was only spotted over a month after its first and only perihelion. Also unlike Rama, there weren’t any space probes conveniently located where they could be diverted to take a close look. And of course, unlike Rama, we have NO nuclear-powered crewed spacecraft bopping around the Solar System, let alone one in the right place at the right time to visit ‘Oumuamua….

(8) MARTENSSON OBIT. “[Swedish fan] Bertil Mårtensson died this morning, from the effects of inhaling smoke and soot during a fire in his apartment kitchen last Thursday – he was weakened from other illnesses, and unable to escape from the apartment,” John-Henri-Holmberg announced on Facebook.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia has an entry about his writing career here.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • November 4, 1920 – Sydney Bounds, Writer, Editor, and Fan from England who was a prolific author of short fiction, and novels — not just science fiction, but also horror, Westerns, mysteries, and juvenile fiction — from 1946 until his death in 2006. He was an early fan who joined Britain’s Science Fiction Association in 1937 and was active in fandom there. He worked as an electrician on the Enigma machine during World War II, and while in the service, he started publishing the fanzine Cosmic Cuts. The film The Last Days on Mars (an adaptation of “The Animators”) and the Tales of the Darkside episode “The Circus” are based on stories by him. In 2005, two collections of his fiction were released under the title The Best of Sydney J. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories, and The Wayward Ship and other Stories. In 2007, the British Fantasy Society honored him by renaming their award for best new writer after him.
  • November 4, 1934 – Gregg Calkins, Writer, Editor, and Fan. Mike Glyer’s tribute to him reads: “Longtime fan Gregg Calkins died July 31, 2017 after suffering a fall. He was 82. Gregg got active in fandom in the Fifties and his fanzine Oopsla (1952-1961) is fondly remembered. He was living in the Bay Area and serving as the Official Editor of FAPA when I applied to join its waitlist in the Seventies. He was Fan GoH at the 1976 Westercon. Calkins later moved to Costa Rica. In contrast to most of his generation, he was highly active in social media, frequently posting on Facebook where it was his pleasure to carry the conservative side of debates. He is survived by his wife, Carol.”
  • November 4, 1950 – John Vickery, 68, Actor of Stage and Screen. Wearing making makeup and prosthetics is something this performer did very well, as he appeared as a Cardassian military officer in Deep Space Nine’s “The Changing Face of Evil”, a Betazoid in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Night Terrors”, and a Klingon in Star Trek: Enterprise‘s “Judgment”. In Babylon 5 and its spinoff Crusade, he had dual roles, as Neroon and Mr. Welles, and he had guest parts in episodes of Medium and The Others. A veteran stage actor, he originated the role of Scar in The Lion King on Broadway.
  • November 4, 1955 – Lani Tupu, 63, Actor and Director from New Zealand. He’d be on the Birthday scroll just for being Crais on the Farscape series, but he’s actually been in several other genre undertakings, including the 1989 Punisher, Robotropolis, and Finders Keepers. He also had guest parts in episodes of Tales of the South Seas, Time TraxArthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and the Australian remake of the Mission: Impossible series (which if you haven’t seen it, is quite excellent; I just found it in DVD format sometime in the past month).
  • November 4, 1953 – Kara Dalkey, 65, Writer and Musician. Author of YA fiction and historical fantasy. She is a member of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship (which, if memory serves me right, includes both Emma Bull and Stephen Brust) and the Scribblies. Her works include The Sword of Sagamore, Steel Rose, Little Sister, and The Nightingale; her Water Trilogy blends together Atlantean and Arthurian mythologies. She’s been nominated for Mythopoeic and Tiptree Awards.
  • November 4, 1953 – Stephen Jones, 65, Editor from England. He is a prolific Anthologist — and that is putting quite mildly, as he went well over the century mark in edited anthologies quite some time ago. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror accounts for seventeen volumes by itself, and his editions of The Mammoth Book of (Pick A Title) run for at least another for another dozen. He has also authored a number of horror reference works, such as The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History, Basil Copper: A Life in Books, and H. P. Lovecraft in Britain. He chaired the World Fantasy Conventions in 1988 and 2013, and has himself been a Guest of Honor at a World Fantasy Convention. His work has won a whopping 22 British Fantasy Awards, 5 Stoker Awards, and 3 World Fantasy Awards. In 2006, the British Fantasy Society recognized him with the Karl Edward Wagner Award for outstanding contribution to the genre.
  • November 4, 1965 – Kiersten Warren, 53, Actor who has had roles in Bicentennial Man, Independence Day, 13 Going on 30, The Astronaut Farmer, The Thinning, and The Invisible Mother, and guest roles on episodes of Night Man, Wolf Lake, and Fringe.
  • November 4, 1970 – Anthony Ruivivar, 48, Actor whose genre appearances include Starsthip Troopers and The Adjustment Bureau, along with a plethora of recurring roles in TV series Frequency, The Haunting of Hill House, American Horror Story, Scream, Revolution, and the new Beauty and the Beast, and recurring voice roles in Beware the Batman and Avengers Assemble.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brevity turns to Auric Goldfinger for a laugh.

(11) CHUCK TINGLE’S HALLOWEEN COSTUME. This has probably never been done before.

(12) HELP NEEDED BY LONGTIME ASFA, SFWA, WHC VOLUNTEER MAURINE DORRIS. “Medical for Maurine Dorris” is a fundraiser on Facebook started by Joann Cavitt Parsons. To date they’ve raied $1,000 of the $10,000 goal. Latest update is that her cancer is Stage 4, with widespread metastases.

Older fans, especially in the South, will remember Maurine Dorris as a force to be reckoned with. She and JoAnn Parsons ran more ASFA suites and SFWA suites than I can remember.  They started World Horror Convention, and ran the first two, in Nashville, TN.

Maurine fell at home last week and broke her hip. Happens to lots of us these days. Sadly, while in the ER for that, it came out that she has metastatic cancer in multiple sites.

Maurine has never been well blessed with money. The only insurance she has is Medicare Part A, because she felt that she couldn’t even afford Part B. She was widowed at an early age, and has only one son. She lives by herself, in a trailer on the property of her best friend JoAnn Parsons and her husband.

Maurine has decided not to treat the cancer, and to return home as soon as possible. Clearly, she will need help. JoAnn has started a GoFundMe account for her, which I hope that you will be kind enough to share.

(13) POWERFUL LINEUP. Joe Sherry recalls an influential 1975 Pamela Sargent anthology in “Feminist Futures: Women of Wonder” at Nerds of a Feather.

…How familiar readers are with the twelve writers of Women of Wonder likely depends on how well and broadly read they are with the overall field of science fiction. For many, Vonda McIntyre may only be known as the writer of one Star Wars novel (The Crystal Star) and five Star Trek novels. Other readers will know McIntyre from her three Hugo Awards and one Nebula Award.

Pamela Sargent put together a powerful lineup of writers (and stories), some of which have become absolute giants of the field. Anne McCaffrey. Ursula K. Le Guin. Joanna Russ. Marion Zimmer Bradley (more on her later)….

(14) FILE TYPE. Paul Weimer adds an entry to Ursula K. Le Guin’s dossier for Nerds of a Feather — “Feminist Futures: The Word for World is Forest”.

…Finally, there is our Athshean protagonist, Selver. It is from his semi-omniscient point of view that we get the major worldbuilding of the novel as regards to how the Athesheans see themselves, and how their societies actually work. Davidson and even Lyubov, for his sympathies for the native inhabitants, simply doesn’t see or know about….

Legacy: The novella’s polemic, strong, unyielding tone meant that it had an immediate impact on readers, especially since it was in the high profile Again, Dangerous Visions anthology edited by Harlan Ellison. It deservedly was nominated for and won a Hugo award. It’s anti-colonial and ecological themes were likely the greater focus of readers at the time, given the Vietnam War, and the realization and maturation of the work into recognition for its gender and feminist ideals is something that has become a function of seeing it placed within the Hain-verse. …

(15) BOOK LIFE. This time the author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant supplies the titles for Nerds of a Feather’s recurring feature — “6 Books with Seth Dickinson”.

  1. How about a book you’ve changed your mind about over time–either positively or negatively? Guns, Germs, and Steel. When I read it in high school I thought it was the smartest thing ever written. Now it’s pretty obviously reductionist. (I’m not, like, clever for figuring this out, there’s a bot on the history reddit whose only job is to post disclaimers about GG&S.)I used to think Pale Fire was a clever postmodern novel with a ‘true’ story hidden behind the one we’re given. Now I know that Zembla is real and John Shade failed its people.God, I can never remember enough books.

(16) AQUAMAN. They call this trailer “Aquaman – Attitude.”

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Marcia Kelly Illingworth, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Wesley Crusher: Naming Calls

ST:TNG had just started its second season when Rick Foss and I organized the 1988 Loscon program. Every fan I knew watched the show and had opinions about the assorted minor controversies involving its creator Gene Roddenberry and how the characters were scripted. We expected a panel about Wesley Crusher, the precocious teenaged boy who all too often saved the Enterprise, to be a good draw, and we had excellent writers to use on it.

We also had the prospect of springing a celebrity guest on the panelists – just not the one who actually showed up. Here’s what happened. (From File 770 #78, recently uploaded to Fanac.org)

o0o

The Star Trek-oriented “Solving the Wesley Problem” filled every seat and had fans lining the walls They got a bonus when the actor who plays Wesley unexpectedly dropped in.

The panel began with D.C. Fontana, Joe Straczynski (then known as story editor for the new The Twilight Zone), Sonni Cooper (a Trek novelist), Mel Gilden and Jane Mailander (local writers) and a hoped-for surprise guest – but not the one we got.

As the program began, Bjo Trimble was stationed at the front of the Pasadena Hilton, and John Trimble at the back door, waiting for the arrival of Patrick Stewart, whom a contact at Paramount had supposedly sent our way seeking some word-of-mouth publicity for his Charles Dickens reading scheduled in December.

While I was shuttling between John and Bjo for news of Patrick Stewart, Wil Wheaton, who plays Wesley, materialized in the “Solving the Wesley Problem” audience and virtually took over the panel. As I learned from him the next day, he simply came to Loscon because he likes sf conventions. But Guy Vardaman, his stand-in, looked in the pocket program and told him, “Hey, there’s an ‘I Hate Wesley’ panel; I think you should check it out.”

Wheaton’s gesture to explain the panelists’ changing tone when he arrived was one of extracting foot from mouth. (Actually, the panelists had criticized the series, rather than Wheaton’s acting.) They didn’t know he hadn’t been there for most of it.

Patrick Stewart never did show up, but I like to think of the alternate world where he walked in on the panel after Wil Wheaton had already joined it. What pandemonium!

Before Wheaton’s unexpected appearance, our biggest “star” was going to be Paul Marco, joining the “Plan 9 From Outer Space 30th Anniversary” panel. He played Kelton the cop, and ever since the film came out he’s been working very hard to turn himself into a cult figure, despite the movie’s reputation as the worst film ever made.

Trimbles Walk the Red Carpet at Star Trek: Discovery Screening

Nichelle Nichols and Sonequa Martin-Green

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery were feted in a Hollywood premiere at ArcLight Cinemas on September 19. CBS has posted a gallery of photos of the cast and celebrities in attendance — “Red Alert! All The Red Carpet Arrivals At The Star Trek: Discovery Premiere”. (Pay no mind that the carpet seems to have been blue — let’s consider it a term of art.)

CBS’ photo gallery includes Bjo and John Trimble, recognized for leading the letter-writing campaign that saved The Original Series in the Sixties.

In addition to the stars of Star Trek: Discovery, present at the premiere were William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Adam Nimoy, Jonathan Frakes, Bill Nye, Greg Jein, Rick Sternbach, and Mike and Denise Okuda. (Not all those named here are in the photos.)

Bjo and John Trimble at Star Trek: Discovery premiere.

Westercon 70 Completes Its Guest of Honor Slate

Westercon 70, happening in Tempe, AZ from July 1-4, has announced their final five Guests of Honor.

Science GoH Henry Vanderbilt

Henry founded Space Access Society in 1992 and ran the quietly influential annual Space Access Conferences in most of the years since. He is not a rocket scientist, but he can translate reasonably well between rocket scientist and English. (He did manage a bunch of rocket engineers once, but that’s another story.) He first started working for radically cheaper space transportation via fast-turnaround fuel-and-go reusable rockets back in 1986, when that was all strictly SF. He’s a lifelong Fan but he’s nevertheless pleased as hell to see this plot device now doing a genre jump to current-day technothriller. He looks forward to it soon settling down as just another taken-for-granted background element in mainstream contemporary literature.

Fan GoHs Val & Ron Ontell

Val’s 43 years in fandom include chairing the 2011 World Fantasy Convention, the 1986 and 1989 Lunacons in New York and the 2010 Conjecture in San Diego. She’s currently Guest Liaison for many San Diego cons. Ron has served as the President of the New York Science Fiction Society (the Lunarians) and Val was a board member in the 1980s. Both have held committee positions at a variety of local cons, Westercons and Worldcons and are Senior Assistants in the Autograph Area at San Diego Comic-Con. They’ve also run tours in connection with overseas Worldcons since 1987, including Britain (twice), Ireland, Japan, Australia (twice) and, of course, Helsinki in 2017.

Special Media GoHs Bjo and John Trimble, sponsored in part by the United Federation of Phoenix.

John and Bjo met in science fiction fandom and married in 1960. They originated Art Shows at Worldcon and San Diego Comic-Con and Futuristic Fashion Shows at CostumeCon. They chaired Westercon in 1970 and John co-chaired in 1965. They worked together on the original Save Star Trek letter-writing campaign, which is generally credited with allowing a third season to happen. They’re still active in the SCA and wider fandom. They enjoy unusual cheeses, home-brewed dark beer, intelligent conversation and travel anywhere at any time.

[Thanks to Kate Hatcher for the story.]