Tag Archives: Black Mirror

Pixel Scroll 6/2/25 All Scrolls Bright And Beautiful, All Pixels Great And Small

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(1) PROPS TO VARLEY. Polygon’s Tasha Robinson says “Only one science fiction novel really predicted AI right”.

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst of humanity…..

…John Varley’s 1992 novel Steel Beach lays out a wild far-future world where aliens have destroyed human life on Earth. Humanity has decamped to the Moon (the unwelcoming “steel beach” of the title) and other colonies, forming the “Eight Worlds” system in which many of Varley’s stories and novels are set. In the future of Steel Beach, humans run dinosaur ranches for meat, alter and rewrite their bodies at a whim, and grow organic brain-to-computer interfaces so they can operate devices with a thought. But the book still gets at some aspects of real-world AI better than most sci-fi books set in near-present futures. In particular, Varley doesn’t just consider the impact of AI on humanity — he digs into the impact of humanity on AI….

… The idea that most people turn this endlessly sympathetic companion into nothing more than a hands-free texting tool seems improbable. But notably, Hildy’s own relationship with the CC is a lot more complicated, emotional, and invested, which suggests Hildy isn’t necessarily aware of how other people interface with their omnipresent overlord.

The reasoning behind that relationship is what really makes Steel Beach feel so insightful about the problems with present-day AI. Steel Beach is an episodic, expansive novel that uses Hildy’s search for a meaningful, satisfying life as a frame for vignettes about the futures of journalism, body modification, relationships, capitalism, literacy, mental health, escapism, and a whole lot more. (Especially sex: The book’s provocative opening line is “In five years, the penis will be obsolete.”) But Hildy’s relationship with the Central Computer is the throughline that holds it all together….

(2) WE WANT – INFORMATION. [Item by Steven French.] “Fun, flirty and far too brief: why did Ncuti Gatwa leave Doctor Who so soon?” The Guardian doesn’t really answer the question but it’s hard to disagree with their conclusion:

Gatwa’s Doctor was fun, flirty and full of joy, but it is difficult not to conclude that we hadn’t seen enough of him in the role, and now we never will….

… The show sometimes feels stuck between a rock and a hard place in the modern era. It has to compete in a streaming environment where grownup fans also watch shows such as Andor or The Last of Us and compare it directly with those. The BBC though is also still trying to make a show whose primary purpose is to be broadcast on Saturday evening on BBC One for a communal multigenerational family audience gathered around the TV. And that is an audience that is increasingly vanishing in houses with multiple screens and multiple viewing options.

Gatwa’s era also seemed to be riding two slightly conflicting horses. Russell T Davies returned as showrunner with the nostalgia rush of having David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in the Tardis for three 60th anniversary specials, then promised a softish reboot with the aim of picking up new audiences and starting afresh as “Season one” with a new Disney+ international distribution deal. But he also opted to bring back companions from the 1960s and 1980s, and have the return of niche villains and enemies that necessitated flashbacks to episodes from the 1970s, which didn’t exactly scream “accessible”….

(3) SPEEDY OPTION. [Item by Dann.] Barely a month after initial release, James Cameron has picked up the film rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils.  It’s nice to see good karma in action.“James Cameron’s Company Has Picked Up the Rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils” at Reactor.

… Cameron continues, “I’m looking forward to the writing process with him, though I’m certain this adaptation will practically write itself because Joe writes very visually, almost in scenes, and with a very cinematic structure. I can’t wait to dig into this as I wind down on Avatar: Fire and Ash. It will be a joyful new challenge for me to bring these indelible characters to life.”

The Devils was published by Tor Books less than a month ago, on May 13th….

(4) THERE WAS A RACE IN HOLLYWOOD, TOO. “75 Years Ago, A Shockingly Dark Sci-Fi Adventure Tried To Predict The Space Race” – Inverse remembers.

Several years before the Space Race officially began, two suspiciously similar Hollywood movies raced to launch their lunar expeditions onto the big screen. And even though it had a year-long head start, Destination Moon ended up as the Soviet Union to Rocketship X-M’s United States.

George Pal Productions had started working on the former in 1949, proudly teasing its state-of-the-art construction, scientific accuracy, and Technicolor visuals in an extensive marketing campaign. But when various snags delayed the release date, Lippert Pictures saw an opportunity to steal its thunder, and landed Rocketship X-M in theaters 75 years ago today.

Remarkably, the finished product rocketed into theaters just 25 days after shooting wrapped. And while the fast-tracked film doesn’t soar to the same heights as its costlier rival — it’s largely in black and white, for one thing, while the lack of any expert consultants soon becomes abundantly clear — it still stands as a fascinating curio….

(5) ON THE AIR. Phil Nichols’ new episode of Bradbury 100 is about “Radio Classics – Dimension X / X Minus One”, two series that adapted Ray’s work.

Here’s another new episode of Bradbury 100, and this time I return to Ray’s stories in the golden age of radio, looking at the classic science fiction drama series Dimension X and X Minus One.

I’ve mentioned these shows before on the podcast, but I figured it was time to make them the focus.

Although Ray Bradbury was himself a scriptwriter and dramatist, he didn’t do any writing specifically for these two shows. And unlike the series Suspense (which I looked it in episode 61), Dimension X and X Minus One only produced adaptations of stories which had already been published.

But what terrific adaptations they were! With scripts by future Emmy Award winners Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, these series never put a foot wrong. The scripts are pretty close to the original stories, without being simple, lazy transcriptions.

In this episode I include clips of many of the Bradbury-based episodes, the most striking of which is the run of episodes based on stories from The Martian Chronicles. But if you’ve never listened to a Dimension X or X Minus One in its entirety, I would urge you to do so. Go to a darkened room, and let your mind conjure up… well, something like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits… or wherever your imagination takes you…

(6) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter says that it paid for tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants to know their Nineteenth Century sff.

Final Jeopardy: Category: Science Fiction

Clue: Referring to what’s wrongly believed to be a meteorite, “The Falling Star” is the title of Chapter 2 of this 1898 novel.

Wrong question: What is “The Time Machine”?

Correct question: What is “War of the Worlds”?

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1915 — Lester del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: For me, first and foremost, Lester del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn del Rey.  And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge). 

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser).  And Lester del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”.  I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.  

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”.  I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard.  “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a del Rey story at its best.  Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger.  Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

Lester del Rey

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) KINGPIN FOR MAYOR. The Brooklyn Eagle is there when “’Daredevil’ gives an ominous look to Brooklyn Borough Hall”.

Downtown Brooklyn passers-by were treated to moody lighting and fog effects at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday evening when the Disney+ series “Daredevil: Born Again” filmed a scene on the plaza steps. 

Banners showing a man’s stern face (“Mayor Fisk,” aka crime boss “Kingpin,” played by Brooklyn-born actor Vincent D’Onofrio) and the words “New York Born Again” hung between the pillars; an armored vehicle was parked on the plaza; and flowers were piled on the steps, giving the scene an ominous air.

Signs indicated the shoot was for a show named “Out of the Kitchen,” but crew members told the Brooklyn Eagle that is the working title for the most recent incarnation of “Daredevil.” The series features Charlie Cox as blind attorney Matt Murdock — the superhero Daredevil — reprising his role from Marvel’s Netflix television series….

‘Daredevil: Born Again,’ filmed at a transformed Brooklyn Borough Hall Thursday and Friday evening. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

(10) OF COURSE THEY DO. “Meta plans to replace humans with AI to assess risks” – NPR has the story.

For years, when Meta launched new features for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, teams of reviewers evaluated possible risks: Could it violate users’ privacy? Could it cause harm to minors? Could it worsen the spread of misleading or toxic content?

Until recently, what are known inside Meta as privacy and integrity reviews were conducted almost entirely by human evaluators.

But now, according to internal company documents obtained by NPR, up to 90% of all risk assessments will soon be automated.

In practice, this means things like critical updates to Meta’s algorithms, new safety features and changes to how content is allowed to be shared across the company’s platforms will be mostly approved by a system powered by artificial intelligence — no longer subject to scrutiny by staffers tasked with debating how a platform change could have unforeseen repercussions or be misused….

(11) BEFORE AND AFTER DARK. [Item by Steven French.] Nora Claire Miller on screen savers, poetry and her gran’s iMac in The Paris  Review: “Recurring Screens”.

The world’s first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE, and when it was released in 1983 it was very exciting to a niche audience. It was like John Cage’s 4’33″ but for computers—a score for meted-out doses of silence….

…My grandmother’s iMac spent most of its time showing Flurry, a dancing rainbow spider that was the first-ever Macintosh screen saver when it debuted in 2002. My grandmother was very tech-averse and preferred to write on a yellow legal pad. Whenever she needed to use the iMac, she’d call me with questions. “Thank goodness you picked up,” she’d say. “An alternate universe has emerged in the corner of my screen. Can you help?” 

I quickly gave up on trying to convince her to use words like “window” or “application” instead of “planet” or “dimension.” Her descriptions felt closer to the real experience of using a computer—like trying to fly a spaceship. She read a lot of sci-fi. I helped her download Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven from iTunes as an audiobook. We listened together as a man altered collective reality with his dreams….

Flurry screensaver

(12) BLACK MIRROR EFFECTS. Animation World Network takes us “Inside the VFX of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror – USS Callister: Into Infinity’ Season 7 Finale”.

Black Mirror’s 7th season finale, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the fan-favorite 2017 Season 4 opening episode, “USS Callister,” picks up years later where the ship’s crew, led by Captain Nanette Cole, is stranded in an infinite virtual universe, fighting for survival against 30 million players. MacLachlan spoke with AWN about how he and the visual effects team began with a fresh visual direction and an ambitious VFX brief, modernizing the original look while employing a collaborative pipeline to produce needed shots, and why family visits to set might help inspire a new generation of digital artists….

…He adds, “Some of the stuff we designed as we did the VFX, and some of the things Union VFX did were absolutely fantastic. You know, the teleportation, the defragging / fragging, the spaceship design, the space battles, they were all new elements this time around.”

“There are north of 600 VFX shots in the episode, which is a significant shot count,” MacLachlan shares. “The largest body of work was obviously the space battle sequences in and around the Heart of Infinity,” he says. “There’s a lot of fully CG content — space battles, explosions, laser fire, dynamic camera moves.”

Designing the action around a unique central structure was critical. “A key feature of the show was that everything is moving in and around this swirling, gyroscopic behemoth of a center of the Heart of Infinity,” MacLachlan says. “The team had to coordinate shots where the camera moves in and around a moving obstruction. I can’t think of another space battle where the object is shifting this way.”…

(13) PERSISTENT TECH. BBC Future also keeps an eye on the past: “Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won’t give up floppy disks”.

…Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

The original 8in (20cm) and 5.25in (13cm) floppy disks were actually floppy – you could bend them slightly without harming the magnetic material inside.

But the later 3.5in (8.75cm) disks were arguably the most successful. It is these that came to be immortalised as the “Save” icon in many computer applications even today. The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store….

…Kraft adores floppy disks because they help him creatively, he says. He doesn’t want to make music that merely apes 1980s styles – rather, he wants it to sound like it actually came from that decade.

It’s when Kraft is using antiquated equipment that he makes his best music, he says. Feeling the ruggedness of a treasured disk as it slots into a dusty old drive. In his opinion, more modern equipment with gigabytes of storage doesn’t come close. He even performs live shows with floppy disks and has used them during musical appearances on Norwegian television.

To this day, Kraft records new sounds and samples straight onto this physical format, including crickets singing in the forest near his house in the evening. If you pitch that cacophony down by 10 octaves or so, and add some reverberation as well as a little delay, then lo: “You have instant music,” says Kraft. “A very nice custom soundstage,” he says….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, N., Dann, Michael J. Walsh, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge with an assist from OGH.]

Pixel Scroll 4/18/25 Esprit de L’Ascenseur Spatial — [Things I Wish I’d Said While Descending The Space Elevator]

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(1) PEABODY AWARDS 2025 NOMINEES. This year’s nominees for the George Foster Peabody Awards program were released on April 17. The awards honor what are described as “the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and online media.”

Here are the nominees of genre interest.

Children/Youth

  • Spirit Rangers (Netflix)

Spirit Rangers is an animated series on Netflix that follows three Chumash and Cowlitz siblings who transform into animal heroes to protect their California national park, blending Native stories, environmental themes, and adventure. As the first U.S. kids’ show created and showrun by a Native American, with an all-Native writers’ room and deep tribal collaboration, it offers authentic, joyful, and empowering representation for Indigenous communities.(Laughing Wild / Netflix)

Interactive & Immersive

  • 1000xRESIST

This genre-blending narrative adventure game uses time, memory, and shifting gameplay styles to explore themes of identity, resistance, and intergenerational trauma, rooted in the emotional aftermath of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Created by a majority Asian-Canadian team, the game sets players in a haunting future shaped by a global pandemic and alien occupation, challenging them to reckon with historical memory. (sunset visitor 斜陽過客 and Fellow Traveller)

  • Tchia

In Tchia, players embark on a tropical open-world adventure to rescue the protagonist’s father from the tyrannical ruler Meavora, exploring a physics-driven sandbox across beautiful islands. Inspired by New Caledonia, the game features creative gameplay and immerses players in the culture and language of the island nation. (Awaceb)

Documentary

  • The Space Race (National Geographic Channel)

The Space Race tells the powerful, long-overdue story of Black NASA astronauts who overcame systemic racism to claim their place in the U.S. space program. The films centers on Ed Dwight, the nation’s first Black astronaut trainee who was denied flight but paved the way for future generations. Decades later, Dwight finally reached space at age 90, turning his personal victory into a historic moment of justice. (National Geographic Documentary Films, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Algeria Films & Cortés Filmworks)

  • Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (HBO | Max)

After a devastating accident left him paralyzed, Christopher Reeve became a powerful symbol of resilience, using his platform to inspire hope and advocate for disability rights. Throughout it all, he remained a passionate actor, filmmaker, and devoted family man, with his wife Dana as his unwavering support. (DC Studios / HBO Documentary Films / CNN Films)

(2) FUNDRAISING FOR FELIX FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. “Propane gas leak caused home explosion in Northwest Austin” reports NPR station KUT.

The home explosion in Northwest Austin that injured six people and damaged two dozen homes was caused by a substantial propane gas leak inside the home, according to Travis County Fire Marshal Gary Howell.

In a statement, Howell said there are no suspicious or criminal circumstances surrounding the incident.

“While this investigation is entering its final stages, it is important to remember that there is still a long road of recovery ahead for those who were affected by this tragic event,” he said. “There are still two people in critical condition at area hospitals.”

The house on Double Spur Loop near U.S. Highway 183 and Spicewood Springs exploded the morning of April 13. The blast was heard more than 15 miles away in Georgetown, according to the Austin Fire Department.

Community members have raised more than $36,000 for the Felix family, who owned the home.

Samantha Leer, whose house was damaged by the explosion, started another fundraiser for her neighbors to help with the rebuilding process. She said many homes, especially those closest to the explosion, need thousands of dollars in repairs.

“As a neighborhood we’re all still wrapping our heads around what happened and where to start to begin putting our lives back together,” Leer said on the GoFundMe page. “We’re all in an insurance ‘hold’ while we wait for the investigation to be completed. Our houses are damaged, our lives are displaced, so I am hoping … we can start putting some of the pieces back together both physically and mentally.”

(3) COMPARING GENRE ARTISTS. Steven Heller calls “Frank Frazetta, the Norman Rockwell of Horror” at PRINT Magazine.

Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) was not just a horror magazine artist whose purpose was to create fantasies that scare the bejesus out of the average mortal. He was an artist first, and storyteller second. His art is reminiscent of late 19th-century European symbolism, notably that of the French Odilon Redon and the Austrian Alfred Kubin—but Frazetta’s paintings express an American essence similar to Norman Rockwell (had Rockwell decided to paint menace instead of tranquility).

Picture a Rockwell image of a typical country doctor examining a young lad … except instead of a calm, caring man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope, the same personage wears animal skin and a spiked helmet, brandishing a heavy steel sword with a sharp serrated blade, poised to carve the heart of his young, trusting patient. And rather than a benign, handsome white-clad nurse assisting the doctor, there’s a busty, muscular she-wolf bedecked with slithering serpents and a bloodied scythe. Frazetta and Rockwell share the same tools but see through different eyes. Each captured the affection of their respective loyal fans, but it’s doubtful there’s much crossover of those bases…

(4) CELEBRATE BOOKS. Witness History explains “The origin of World Book Day” at the BBC.

In November 1995, a proposal of having an annual day focused on celebrating books was put forward at the UNESCO conference in Paris. 

The idea came from a long-established Spanish celebration ‘The Day of Books and Roses’. 

The first World Book Day was on 23 April 1996. 

Although some countries now celebrate World Book Day on different dates, it’s marked on 23 April in the majority of countries. 

Pere Vicens is a book publisher from Barcelona in Spain and one of the creators of World Book Day. He tells Gill Kearsley the origins of this now annual event.

(5) IN PRAISE OF SINNERS. “Sinners Is a Sumptuous Southern Vampire Delight” – Paste Magazine’s Tara Bennett is a fan.

Give it to writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) for coming at Sinners, his first horror feature, with the intentionality of a PhD student with something to prove. There’s no shortage of existing lazy or derivative vampire movies that he could have easily bested with modest effort. Instead, Coogler cracked the history books, collected his A-list family of collaborators, including composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and ever-trusted leading man Michael B. Jordan, to cinematically (with a capital C) transport the audience to a 1930’s Jim Crow Mississippi ripe for all kinds of delicious trouble.

Coogler’s Sinners screenplay is original but it most certainly carries the baton for what Misha Green explored in her mashup of horror, the supernatural and Black oppression in her HBO series, Lovecraft Country (2020). Although that series was ultimately too broad with its ambitions, Coogler wisely stays hyper-focused on just two monsters – the vampire and bigoted Whites who wear hoods. Coogler weaves vampiric metaphors into the societal oppression of the Old South and asks the audience to consider, which is worse?

Sinners is told through the world-weary eyes of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (a finely-tuned dual performance by Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after first surviving WWI, and then the organized crime gangs of Chicago….

(6) CORRECTION. Correcting yesterday’s Scroll, Andrew Porter now says, “Judy-Lynn del Rey piece ONLY available on broadcast versions of this, NOT at link!!!”

Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 54.

Very minor spoilers here if you’ve not been watching the recent series.  You’ve been warned.

Of the modern Doctor Whos, the one performed by David Tennant is my favorite by far. (It won’t surprise you that Tom Baker is my classic Doctor.) I liked him from the very first time that he appeared, in “The Christmas Invasion”.  (Spoiler alert from here out.) The fact that he won’t finish his transition until he inhales the fumes from a dropped flask of tea. Oh, what a truly British thing to have him do! 

Christopher Eccleston was good but I thought that he didn’t have long enough to fully settle into the role so I felt his character was more of a sketch than a fully developed character. His certainly would have been a better Doctor if he’d decided to stay around, but he didn’t. 

Tennant, on the other hand had three series plus some specials, he’d also be the Doctor in a two-part story in Doctor Who spin-off, Sarah Jane Adventures, “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith”. 

He got the proper time to settle into his character.  And what a character it was — intelligent, full of humor, sympathetic and just alien enough in his quirkiness to believable that he wasn’t human. 

Oh, and the stories. So, so great. Those along with his companions made for ever so great watching. My favorite companion?  Not picking one as each had their own unique effect on the series  and him — Rose Tyler, Donna Noble and Martha Jones, all made fine companions in very different ways. 

If I could pick just one story from his run, it’d be “The Unicorn and The Wasp” with Agatha Christie as a character and Donna Noble as the companion. And it was a country manor house mystery! 

Yes, I know he came back as the Fourteenth Doctor.

It’s certainly not his only genre role, and yes he played several Doctor Who roles before being the Tenth Doctor. He had a role in the BBC’s animated Scream of the Shalka and appeared in several Big Finish Productions. I think I read he played a Time Lord in one of them. 

Now let’s see about his other genre roles… One of my favorite series, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), had him as Gordon Stylus in the “Drop Dead” episode. The Quatermass Experiment film had him as Dr. Gordon Briscoe. 

He was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Barty Crouch Jr., a fine performance he gave there. I like the films, found what I read of the first novel dreadfully boring. 

In How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which I think has awesomely cute animation, he voices Spitelout Jorgenson, a warrior of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. Need I say more? I think not.  DreamWorks Dragons was another series in which he voiced this character. 

In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he had a short run there as Huyang.  Huh. He even voiced a character in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, one called Fugitoid, a sort of android figure.

He’s the voice of Dangerous Beans in The Amazing Maurice off Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

The last role I’ll mention is his Jessica Jones one and one that honestly made me not watch the series. No, I’ll not say why as that’d be a major spoiler. He was called Kevin Thompson / Kilgrave.

David Tennant

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) FIONA MOORE’S BOOKSHELF.  Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #32: Fiona Moore”. Photo at the link.

…On the top shelf, there’s a BFI Guide to Metropolis, and on the lower one, McGilligan’s exhaustive biography of its director, Fritz Lang. Metropolis is my favourite movie, in part because no two versions are ever the same. The original was lost, meaning that only a cut-down 90-minute version made for the US market survived, but over the years people added in found footage, or reordered things to make more sense. And since it’s silent, you don’t have to just use the original soundtrack; Moroder famously did a techno version, and I’ve seen the movie with accompaniments by a free jazz band and by an Irish harp. It’s fitting because the movie itself is one with resonances all over the political spectrum. These days, I think one could read it as a warning of what happens when billionaires form alliances with vindictive tech-bros and try to “disrupt the workplace”, and how the intellectuals and the workers need to come together to fix the damage….

(10) DESERT ISLAND DISC. [Item by Steven French.] One from the margins… “Super spicy! Jack Black’s Minecraft song Steve’s Lava Chicken becomes shortest ever UK Top 40 hit” in the Guardian.

Actor and musician Jack Black has made UK chart history, with the shortest ever song to reach the Top 40: his novelty track Steve’s Lava Chicken is just 34 seconds long.

The spectacularly silly song reaches No 21 this week, and is taken from A Minecraft Movie, the video game spin-off film, which has earned $570m (£430m) so far at the global box office – and caused cinemas to be overrun by the game’s young and high-energy fanbase.

Black performs the song in the film as the character Steve, as he shows the other protagonists around the alternate universe, the Overworld, and hymns the virtues of chicken cooked in lava (“Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack / Ooh, super spicy, it’s a lava attack”).

(11) WAYS TO SUPPORT NASA. The Planetary Society today wrote to members:

NASA science is facing a potential dark age.

News broke on April 11 confirming rumors that the White House Office of Management and Budget is working on a proposal that would cut the NASA science budget in half. If enacted, this budget would force the premature termination of dozens of active, productive spacecraft, and would halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA.

In response to these proposed cuts, The Planetary Society has launched a campaign for citizens to write to their representatives and voice their concerns. We urge Americans who support space exploration to share their support of NASA science.

(12) QUANTUS INTERRUPTUS. [Item by Steven French.] A watched quantum pot never boils – how the quantum Zeno effect reveals just how weird the quantum world is: “The quantum Zeno effect: how the ‘measurement problem’ went from philosophers’ paradox to physicists’ toolbox” at Physics World.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a quantum system. Specifically, you are an unstable quantum system – one that would, if left to its own devices, rapidly decay from one state (let’s call it “awake”) into another (“asleep”). But whenever you start to drift into the “asleep” state, something gets in the way. Maybe it’s a message pinging on your phone. Maybe it’s a curious child peppering you with questions. Whatever it is, it jolts you out of your awake–asleep superposition and projects you back into wakefulness. And because it keeps happening faster than you can fall asleep, you remain awake, diverted from slumber by a stream of interruptions – or, in quantum terms, measurements.

This phenomenon of repeated measurements “freezing” an unstable quantum system into a particular state is known as the quantum Zeno effect (figure 1). Named after a paradox from ancient Greek philosophy, it was hinted at in the 1950s by the scientific polymaths Alan Turing and John von Neumann but only fully articulated in 1977 by the physicists Baidyanath Misra and George Sudarshan (J. Math. Phys. 18 756). Since then, researchers have observed it in dozens of quantum systems, including trapped ions, superconducting flux qubits and atoms in optical cavities. But the apparent ubiquitousness of the quantum Zeno effect cannot hide the strangeness at its heart. How does the simple act of measuring a quantum system have such a profound effect on its behaviour?

(13) BLACK MIRROR HIGHLIGHT. The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reminisces: “Plaything – how Black Mirror took on its scariest ever subject: a 1990s PC games magazine”.

Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.

The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker….

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

Pixel Scroll 4/12/25 Hey, Scroll. Take A Walk On The Filed Side

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(1) THE FATE OF U.S. WORLDCONS WEIGHED. Two editorials came out today addressing how Worldcons should react to the increased risks of international travel to the U.S.

The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog’s post “Worldcon In An Age Of American Truculence” concludes:

…Because of the voter base, institutional knowledge, and enormous fan base, US Worldcons will and should always occur. But perhaps there should be an increased willingness among fandom to support overseas conventions in locations that present logistical hurdles for North American travellers. If we may be so bold, perhaps we as fans should encourage the practice of having a Worldcon outside of North America every second year.

In an age of US truculence, Worldcon needs to embrace friends and allies around the globe without turning its back on the generations of fans and volunteers who have built it as an institution.

Gary Westfahl’s “Op-Ed: ‘No More Worldcons in the United States?’” at File 770 starts with a more draconian conclusion:

The time has come to cancel or move the 2025 Seattle Worldcon.

And to cancel or move the 2026 Los Angeles Worldcon.

It has to be done, in order to honor a century-old tradition of science fiction….

(2) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS. Frank Wu has announced that the 2025 Frank R. Paul Awards will be presented at Philcon (November 21-23). Due to the lateness of the convention in the calendar, he is extending the deadline for submissions for the Frank R. Paul Awards for another month, to May 15. All artists, publishers and editors are enthusiastically encouraged to submit their 2024 work to the main awards administrator, Frank Wu, at FWu@Frankwu.com Details are available here: “Frank R. Paul Awards”.

Frank R. Paul Award trophy. Photo by Rich Lynch.

(3) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025. [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival 2025 has curated 19 short films representing 8 countries. Featured are Short Stories adapted into Short Films.

Sunday 25 May 2025 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

George RR Martin produced another Howard Waldrop film Mary Margaret Road Grader“. Estimated budget $2.2 Million. Director Steven Paul Judd is known for Dark Winds and Marvel’s Echo. It has a score by Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi.

Italian Director Luca Caserta brings us The Reach. One of the last authorized Dollar Baby Stephen King Films.
With a song by Bruce Springsteen.

Director George Vatistas adapted The Hobbyist by Frederic Brown.

Actor Stacy Thunes (Nosferatu – Head Nurse) currently at Universal Studios, Japan stars in The Hairdo.

An Old Friend. Director Nuk Suwanchote. An imaginary friend (Jason Faunt) finds out his sole purpose is to bring happiness to his child, only to discover his child is a 90 year old man (Tom Skerritt) on his deathbed.

First time Local filmmakers were also selected in Twilight Zone and Animation motifs.

Horror and Fantasy round out our offerings.

(4) “I’M NOT A ROBOT” [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival could not arrange a screening, but still worthy of your attention. “Watch The Surreal Identity Crisis of ‘I’m Not a Robot’” in The New Yorker.

(5) SFF BOOKS OUT OF NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. Allen Steele pointed out that the list of 381 books pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library (reported at the top of yesterday’s Scroll) includes several works of sff (even though the vast majority are nonfiction about gender issues or racism). Steele asks, “Wonder what Robert Heinlein would have to say about the actions of his Alma mater?”

The three sff works I found on the list are:

  • Light From Uncommon Stars / RykaAoki.
  • Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon
  • A Psalm For The Wild-Built / Becky Chambers.

(6) AUSTEN IN INNSMOUTH. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein finds much to enjoy in “’Innsmouth Park’ (2025) by Jane Routley”.

Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:

Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?…

(7) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS.  There are almost no nominees of genre interest among the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. The one exception is in this category, a work of horror fiction.

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)

For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English.

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books)

(8) BBC COVERAGE OF BELFAST EASTERCON. Eastercon got a 15-minute slot on BBC Northern Ireland with Jo Zebedee and Ian McDonald doing an interview and chatting about it. “Saturday with John Toal – Puppets, Worms and Sci-fi”. Interview starts at 45m20s.

…As Belfast prepares to host a special Sci Fi convention Eastercon, for the first time in its 76 year history, John hears from two successful science fiction writers Ian McDonald and Jo Zebedee….

(9) STUNT OSCAR APPROVED. “Oscars Add Best Stunt Design Category Starting in 2027” – Variety has the story.

…“Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang. “We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion.”

In a statement, Leitch said, “Stunts are essential to every genre of film and rooted deep in our industry’s history—from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin, to the inspiring artistry of today’s stunt designers, coordinators, performers, and choreographers.” He went on to say, “This has been a long journey for so many of us. Chris O’Hara and I have spent years working to bring this moment to life, standing on the shoulders of the stunt professionals who’ve fought tirelessly for recognition over the decades. We are incredibly grateful. Thank you, Academy.”

…Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027 with the complete 100th Academy Awards Rules….

(10) BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7’s Tech Tales Come With a Knife-Twist of Emotion” — Gizmodo gets down to cases.

A new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and with it the usual cautionary tales (and screaming warnings) about technology’s darkest capabilities—wrapped in a deceptively alluring blanket of “Jeez, that would actually be really cool if it were real!” Across six episodes, season seven boasts some of the show’s all-time greatest performances, as well as its first sequel episode, which proves well worth the eight-year wait….

(11) MIDDLE-EARTH WAYFINDER. Wisconsin Public Radio profiles Karen Wynn Fonstad, “The Wisconsin cartographer who mapped Tolkien’s fantasy world”.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore the world of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the best place to start might be Oshkosh.

That’s where a Wisconsin cartographer created dozens of maps that went into “The Atlas of Middle-earth,” the official geographic guide to the world of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Her work went on to influence “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

Like many readers, Karen Wynn Fonstad fell in love with the fantasy series and went through multiple readings. Unlike most readers, she was trained as a cartographer, and came up with an ambitious plan to use the texts to create realistic maps from Tolkien’s texts.

Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son — both geographers themselves — have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them…

… “It’s a little bit of an overwhelming process because, first of all, there’s hundreds of maps. Secondly, the maps are built in such a way that they have many layers to them,” Mark said. “I barely scratched the surface this week.”

As we walk into the map library, we are surrounded by Middle-earth. Mordor, the Shire and all points in between are represented. And not just Middle-earth. Karen created works for other fantasy worlds — some never published.

How do you scan a collection of maps of varying sizes, some of them in delicate condition?

You need a big scanner, caution and some patience….

… In 1977, she called the American publisher of Tolkien’s work, Houghton Mifflin, to pitch the idea of an atlas. As Todd recalled, the person in charge of handling Tolkien’s work fell in love with the idea, and the Tolkien estate gave it the thumbs-up.

Then the work really began….

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Mad Max film (1979)

By Paul Weimer: The quintessential post-apocalyptic movie, the one with the real breakthrough. Sure, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley and others preceded it, but this was the movie, series of movies that made a star of Mel Gibson, and the scenes of the Australian desert became the cinematic language and landscape of what a post apocalyptic world should look like in three movies that it took dozens for, say, the American Western.

That’s the power of Mad Max, that’s the power of George Miller’s cinematography. One could approach these movies from all sorts of angles, from worldbuilding to characterization, to point of view. As an example-the second movie, Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is not told from the point of view and perspective that you’d expect. It’s a recreation, a retelling, and that brings in all sorts of interesting questions about narrative and conventions and storytelling. 

Or one could explore Max as a character, from his end of the world cop, all through the damaged survivor in the latest Mad Max movie, where he literally is used as a resource. 

Or one could explore environmental themes, social themes, and the psychology of the survivors of the landscape, from the small to the mighty.

But I want to talk a bit about cinematography, as a person interested in image, you are not surprised. One thing that told me and showed me that Miller “Still had it” in Fury Road was the scene with the dust storm and the vehicles approaching it. You know the scene if you watched it. It was solid proof for me that Miller’s fantastic cinematography, to be able to bring the wildness of the Australian wasteland to life in the previous films, was still there. It recalled for me of many of the other iconic places and imagery used in the series, from Thunderdome back through the mean streets of Melbourne in Mad Max. The lack of dialogue in much of the films means that Miller’s storytelling in the films is necessarily what the movies are carried on. And it is indeed carried so effectively. You remember the visuals, the costumes, the sets, and of course the vehicles. How many gearheads were born from watching these movies?

One last fun note on Mad Max. The first bit of Mad Max I saw was not until the mid 80’s. I accidentally caught the last few minutes on a videotape recording of Mad Max 2 while trying to (don’t judge) see D.C. Follies. I wondered what the heck I had watched and looked it up in the TV guide…and then I recorded and watched The Road Warrior and was captivated.  Later, I found the original Mad Max…and then, of course Thunderdome.

Mad Max. A cinematic icon, four movies (5 if you count Furious) and counting.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) TWO HEARTS AND TWO EARS. “Graham Norton to star in Eurovision-themed Doctor Who episode” reports BBC.

Graham Norton is to star in a new episode of Doctor Who, taking his Eurovision commentary duties to an Interstellar Song Contest.

Norton, the BBC’s voice of Eurovision, will meet Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord at the 803rd annual Interstellar Song Contest, where different planets compete to be crowned winner.

“And it’s not just a cameo,” showrunner Russell T Davies said. “He has a whole plot twist all to himself!”

The episode will also feature fellow Eurovision fanatic and broadcaster Rylan Clark as the event’s co-host, and will be broadcast on BBC One just before this year’s real-life grand final on 17 May….

(15) THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. “How might AI chatbots replace mental health therapists?” asks The Week.

There is a striking shortage of mental health care providers in the United States. New research suggests that AI chatbots can fill in the gaps — and be remarkably effective while doing so.

Artificial intelligence can deliver mental health therapy “with as much efficacy as — or more than — human clinicians,” said NPR. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the results delivered by a bot designed at Dartmouth College.

What did the commentators say?

There was initially a lot of “trial and error” in training AI to work with humans suffering from depression and anxiety, said Nick Jacobson, one of the researchers, but the bot ultimately delivered outcomes similar to the “best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy.” Patients developed a “strong relationship with an ability to trust” the digital therapist, he said.

Other experts see “reliance on bot-based therapy as a poor substitute for the real thing,” said Axios. Therapy is about “forming a relationship with another human being who understands the complexity of life,” said sociologist Sherry Turkle. But another expert, Skidmore College’s Lucas LaFreniere, said it depends on whether patients are willing to suspend their disbelief. “If the client is perceiving empathy,” he said, “they benefit from the empathy.”….

(16) UPON FURTHER CONSIDERATION. “MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values” says TechCrunch.

A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that hyperbolic notion, drawing the conclusion that AI doesn’t, in fact, hold any coherent values to speak of.

The co-authors of the MIT study say their work suggests that “aligning” AI systems — that is, ensuring models behave in desirable, dependable ways — could be more challenging than is often assumed. AI as we know it today hallucinates and imitates, the co-authors stress, making it in many aspects unpredictable.

“One thing that we can be certain about is that models don’t obey [lots of] stability, extrapolability, and steerability assumptions,” Stephen Casper, a doctoral student at MIT and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “It’s perfectly legitimate to point out that a model under certain conditions expresses preferences consistent with a certain set of principles. The problems mostly arise when we try to make claims about the models, opinions, or preferences in general based on narrow experiments.”

Casper and his fellow co-authors probed several recent models from Meta, Google, Mistral, OpenAI, and Anthropic to see to what degree the models exhibited strong “views” and values (e.g., individualist versus collectivist). They also investigated whether these views could be “steered” — that is, modified — and how stubbornly the models stuck to these opinions across a range of scenarios.

According to the co-authors, none of the models was consistent in its preferences. Depending on how prompts were worded and framed, they adopted wildly different viewpoints.

Casper thinks this is compelling evidence that models are highly “inconsistent and unstable” and perhaps even fundamentally incapable of internalizing human-like preferences….

(17) BIRD WORRIES. “Conservationists raise alarm over Air Force plan to land SpaceX Starships on bird sanctuary atoll” reports Space.com.

The U.S. military is considering Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific island chain that serves as an important refuge for dozens of seabird species, for “two commercial rocket landing pads” to test giant cargo rocket landings for the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, and it’s getting push-back from environmentalists.

The Rocket Cargo Vanguard program aims to develop the technologies required to rapidly deliver up to 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth using commercial rockets. Though not explicitly named, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is currently the only company —commercial or otherwise — capable of manufacturing rockets designed for landing and reuse, and its Starship megarocket is DAF’s leading contender. The Air Force outlined its plans in a Federal Registry notice last month. Objections from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), however, may hinder plans for the new landing pads on the South Pacific atoll.Johnston Atoll lies about 825 miles (1,325 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii, and is home to several different species of seabirds, including the largest known colony of Red-tailed Tropicbirds. It was designated a refuge for native bird populations in 1926, but suffered environmental degradation through 2004, due to its use by the U.S. military as a nuclear weapons testing and chemical weapons disposal site. Since the military’s departure from the islands, restoration efforts have helped raise Johnston Atoll’s bird population back to nearly 1.5 million.

(18) ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES? “Purple Isn’t Real, Science Says. Your Brain Is Just Making It Up” reports Popular Mechanics. If there is no purple, does that mean there can be no purple people eaters?

You might be today years old when you realize there is no purple in the rainbow. There is no P in ROYGBIV.

But wait, what about violet? Well, despite what you may have come to believe, violet is not purple. In fact, violet (along with the rest of the colors in a naturally occurring rainbow) has something purple doesn’t—its own wavelength of light. Anyone who ever ended up with a sunburn knows violet wavelengths are real, as the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the reason you need to wear sunscreen, even though you can’t see those wavelengths (more on that later). Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo are all just as real.

But purple? Well, purple is just your brain’s way of resolving confusion.

That’s right. Red and blue (or violet) wavelengths are two opposite extremes on the spectrum. When you see both of these wavelengths in the same place, you eyes and brain don’t know what to do with them, so they compensate, and the clashing wavelengths register as the color we call purple. It doesn’t actually exist….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven H Silver, lance oszko, Frank Wu, James Bacon, Allen Steele, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]

Pixel Scroll 3/31/25 Are Pixels Beyond Count Or Not?

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(1) WILE E.’S DAY. We’ll get to see it after all: “Warner Bros Completes Sale Of ‘Coyote Vs. Acme’ To Ketchup” reports Deadline.

Ketchup Entertainment today confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to the live-action/animated hybrid film that brings Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote to the big screen. We had the deal pegged in the $50M range and the film is expected to get a theatrical release in 2026….

….The film is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.

Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor and Tone Bell star in the movie, which follows Wile E. Coyote, who, after Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer (Forte) against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win….

(2) #30#. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has announced that the organization is shutting down. They offer a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

We come to you today with a major operational update and important news about the future of the organization and we encourage you to listen to it in its entirety. This video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. It also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps.

This is the aftermath of a controversy that erupted last September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – when it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – and Writers Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells immediately resigned. 

(3) KICKSTARTER FOR LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY 9. [Item by Ziv Wities.] The Long List Anthology series collects stories that show up on the Hugo Award finalist tally, based on the official report of the top fifteen finishers in each Hugo category.  

Long List Anthology Volume 9 is drawn from the Long List of the 2024 Hugo Awards. This volume is co-edited by David Steffen, Chelle Parker, and Hal Y. Zhang, with original cover art by Evelyne Park. The new volume includes stories by genre favorites, new voices, and three translations of stories originally published in Chinese — including one translation which is original to the LLA.

Join the Kickstarter here: “The Long List Anthology Volume 9 by David Steffen”.

(4) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS 2025 HOF INDUCTEES. The Society of Illustrators have announced the 2025 Hall of Fame recipients, contemporary artists Rudy Gutierrez, Kadir Nelson, and Tim O’Brien, and posthumous honorees Peter Arno, Frank R. Paul, and Marie Severin. The Society’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held on Thursday, October 9.

Here is what the press release says about artists of genre interest Paul and Severin.

Art credit: Frank R. Paul, Stories of the Stars: Andromeda, circa 1950s. Gouache and ink on board.

Frank R. Paul (1884 – 1963) was a pioneering American illustrator best known for shaping the visual language of science fiction during the early 20th century. His bold, visionary artwork graced the covers of seminal pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Fantastic Adventures, introducing readers to a vibrant, imaginative future filled with spaceships, robots, and alien worlds. Trained in mechanical drafting and architecture, Paul brought an unmatched level of technical precision and grandeur to his work, helping to define the aesthetic of speculative fiction long before the rise of popular sci-fi cinema. In an era before comic books or concept art departments, Paul created entire worlds from scratch, often illustrating full-color covers, interior black-and-white pieces, and even full spreads for each issue. Over the course of his career, he illustrated thousands of works and played a foundational role in inspiring generations of artists, writers, and filmmakers. He is widely regarded as the first major science fiction artist, and his influence is still seen in visual media today. Frank R. Paul was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 for his trailblazing contributions to the genre.

Art credit: Marie Severin (interior pencils), Marvel Spotlight No. 32, Marvel Comics, February 1977. Ink and color on paper.

Marie Severin (1929 – 2018) was a legendary comic book artist and colorist whose work helped define the visual identity of both EC Comics and Marvel Comics throughout the mid-20th century. Beginning her career as a colorist at EC in the 1950s, she quickly earned recognition for her keen sense of composition, storytelling, and humor, eventually moving into penciling and inking as one of the few prominent female artists in the male-dominated industry of the Silver Age. At Marvel, she co-created iconic characters such as the Living Tribunal and worked on titles including Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Not Brand Echh, a satirical series that showcased her sharp comedic sensibility. Known affectionately as “Mirthful Marie” among peers, Severin brought a distinctive style that blended expressive characters with dynamic layouts, all while mastering the art of visual pacing. She had a unique ability to inject personality and emotion into every panel, making even the most fantastical scenarios feel grounded and human. Her behind-the-scenes influence also extended to production and design, contributing to Marvel’s overall visual tone during a crucial period of expansion and experimentation.

Her versatility as both a humorist and dramatic artist made her an invaluable creative force in every genre she touched—whether superheroes, horror, fantasy, or comedy. Severin was admired not only for her technical skill but also for her warmth, wit, and generosity within the comics community. In 2001, she was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and her legacy continues to inspire comic artists around the world. Marie Severin remains one of the most important and beloved figures in the history of American comics.

(5) BLACK MIRROR S7 EPISODE BRIEFING. “’Black Mirror’ Season 7 Trailer and Episode Details Revealed” by The Hollywood Reporter.

Such details include cast, synopsis, run time and credits for each standalone saga, which includes the first-ever Black Mirror sequel, for USS Callister, and a callback episode to Netflix’s first-ever interactive feature with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

(6) JAMESON QUINN DIES. Jameson Quinn was killed when he fell off a cliff in Guatemala on March 23. His death was announced by his mother on Bluesky. According to his son it happened when Quinn was trying to rescue a dog.

Jameson Quinn

Quinn is best known to science fiction fans for helping to reform the Hugo Award nominating system in the wake of the Sad/Rabid Puppies block voting episodes of 2013-2017. He designed the EPH (E Pluribus Hugo) voting method, and helped get it adopted by the World Science Fiction Society for use in nominations for the Hugo awards. He was an active participant on Making Light, and contributed articles to File 770 and also led comment discussions about the initiative here.

Quinn’s other noteworthy accomplishments in voting theory and/or voting reform included co-organizing and attending the British Colombia Symposium on Proportional Representation in 2018 (sponsored by the Center for Election Science), and popularizing the term “Voter Satisfaction Efficiency” (VSE).

A Harvard grad school blog profile about Jameson featured his contribution to EPH as an example of his work: “A Better Way to Vote”.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novel

It’s the seventy-fourth anniversary of the first publication of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation as a novel. So let’s tell the history of the novel. 

In the summer of 1941, Isaac Asimov proposed to John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction that he write a short story set in a slowly declining Galactic Empire, based on the fall of the Roman Empire. Campbell thought the idea was great. 

Then Asimov proposed writing a series of stories depicting the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the rise of the second. Asimov would write eight stories for Campbell’s magazine over eight years (1942-1949), and they were later collected into three volumes known as The Foundation Trilogy which were published from 1951 to 1953.

Foundation was first published as a single book by Gnome Press. It has “The Psychohistorians”, “The Encyclopedists” “The Mayors”, “The Traders” and “The Merchant Princes”. “The Encyclopedists” and “The Mayors” were novelettes, the others are short stories.  As noted before, each was in Astounding Science Fiction. 

The cover art is by David Kyle. Please note that on the cover it is titled Foundation: An Interplanetary Novel. When Ace published it they renamed it The 1,000 Year Plan in their two editions of 1955 and 1962. 

At Tricon (1966), it would win the Hugo for Best All-Time Series. Other nominees were Burroughs’ Barsoom series, Heinlein’s  Future History series , E. E. Smith’s Lensmen series and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 

As you know, it is now streaming as a series as Apple+. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) THE INSIDE STORY. “Rare Merlin and King Arthur text found hidden in binding of medieval book” – Popular Science tells how it was done.

Variations on the classic Merlin and King Arthur legends span hundreds, if not thousands, of retellings. Many are documented within handwritten medieval manuscripts dating back over a millenia—but some editions are far rarer than others. For example, less than 40 copies are known to exist of a once-popular sequel series, the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. In 2019, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered fragments of one more copy in their collections, tucked inside the recycled binding of a wealthy family’s property record from the 16th century. But at the time of discovery, the text was impossible to read.

Now after years of painstaking collaborative work with the university’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), archivists have finally been able to peer inside the obscured texts—without ever needing to physically handle the long-lost pages.

Experts combined multiple conservation tools and techniques to construct a 3D model of the fragments. These included multispectral imaging (MSI), which creates high-resolution images by scanning an artifact with wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to infrared light. After borrowing X-ray and CT machines from Cambridge’s zoology department, the team then examined the parchment layers to map unseen binding structures without the need to deconstruct the delicate material. CT scanning allowed researchers to examine how the pages were stitched together using thin strips of similar parchment.

Some of the Merlin texts were unreadable due to being hidden under folds or stitching, so the team also needed to amass hundreds of images from every angle using an array of magnets, prisms, mirrors, and other tools. The combined result is a high-definition, digitized 3D model of the entire relic that unfolds, allowing experts to analyze it as though reviewing the physical manuscript itself.

The results revealed not just a part of Suite Vulgate du Merlin, but insights into the time period in which it existed. Experts now believe the sections originally belonged to a shortened edition of the tale. Given small typographical errors as well as the red and blue ink used in its handwritten decorated initials, historians traced its origins to sometime between 1275–1315 CE…

(10) TIME FOR A SNACK. Invasion ’53, written by Danielle Weinberg,is making the rounds of film festivals. View the trailer at the link.

Invasion ’53, a 10-minute short film about a man-eating alien who crashes a suburban cocktail party. The movie stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and was produced with Kurt Uebersax (Elf-Man, America’s Most Wanted).

(11) FROM AN OLD FAMILIAR SCORE. “What gave life on Earth its spark? Scientists recreating a decades-old experiment offer a new clue” says CNN.

In the 1931 movie “Frankenstein,” Dr. Henry Frankenstein howling his triumph was an electrifying moment in more ways than one. As massive bolts of lightning and energy crackled, Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table, its corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.

Electrical energy may also have sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago, though with a bit less scenery-chewing than that classic film scene.

Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence of ancient life — stromatolites, or microscopic organisms preserved in layers known as microbial mats — is about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientists suspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organic molecules in primitive bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordial soup.

But where did that organic material come from in the first place? Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules.

Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent enough to cook up amino acids from inorganic material. Amino acids — organic molecules that combine to form proteins — are life’s most basic building blocks and would have been the first step toward the evolution of life….

(12) VIDEO FROM ANCIENT DAYS. A zillion years ago, Vincent Price was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to promote Theatre of Blood, in which he murders all the critics who fail to praise his Shakespearean ham acting. (How long ago was this? Sitting next to him was the singer Mama Cass Elliot, who obviously wasn’t dead yet…!)

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, N., Danny Sichel, Ziv Wities, Kevin Lighton, Thomas the Red, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/18/25 Soylent Green And Spam: I Would Not Like It In A Pixel, I Would Not Like It Fried With Schnitzel

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(1) BSFA AWARDS NEWS. The British Science Fiction Association released the “BSFA Awards 2024 Shortlist” today.

Congratulations to Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford for their article being among the finalists: “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” – which was simultaneously published by File 770 and Genre Grapevine, and so it would have been nicer if the BSFA announcement hadn’t failed to name File 770.

(2) ACE EDDIE AWARDS. The American Cinema Editors (ACE) announced the “ACE Eddie Winners” on March 15.  The awards recognize outstanding editing in 14 categories of film, television and documentaries. The complete list is at the link. The winners of genre interest are:

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY, THEATRICAL)

Wicked
Myron Kerstein, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

The Wild Robot
Mary Blee

BEST EDITED SINGLE CAMERA COMEDY SERIES

What We Do in the Shadows (603 – Sleep Hypnosis)
Liza Cardinale, ACE
Dane McMaster, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED SERIES:

X-Men ’97 (105 – Remember It)
Michelle McMillan

Also recognized were filmmaker Jon M. Chu who received the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, recognizing a filmmaker who exemplifies distinguished achievement in the art and business of film. Film editors Maysie Hoy, ACE and Paul Hirsch, ACE received Career Achievement Awards for their outstanding contributions to film editing.

(3) THIS CHARACTER WAS DEMANDED BY THE TIMES. So argues R.P. O’Donnell: “Sherlock Holmes in the World” at CrimeReads.

…To Victorian Londoners, crime was terrifying and out of control. Penny Dreadfuls, cheap pamphlets blending the lurid and the sensationalist, contributed to the feeling that violent crime was lurking behind every street corner, waiting to spring out of every shadow with a knife drawn and ready to kill. 

Jack the Ripper, with the entire city at his heels, murdered and mutilated his way through the streets of London — preying on the same underworld he seemed to spring out of. And then, suddenly and without resolution, he disappeared, and slipped back into the shadows. Ready to spring out again, at any moment. A knife held against the entire city.

And then, out of these same shadows, stepped a hero. A man of science, who brought order to a dangerous world in the throes of calamitous change. A man who obeyed only a strict moral code, rather than the letter of an unjust law. A man who not only did not obey the class structure, but openly flaunted it — in his very first adventure, he reproached a King for saying a lower-class woman was not on his level. This was a man who would help anyone in need — as long as the case was interesting enough. He had no interest in money or class; he was as happy with a king’s simple portrait as he was with the proverbial king’s ransom. He was a man who didn’t just protect the city, but even adapted some of its worst bits, such as the young and ruthless pickpockets, to help him in his quest.

That man was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. And it’s no wonder he became a sensation when he first appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1891 — emerging into the city and wider society that he did.

(Author’s note: I’m setting aside the first novels for a few reasons. But in any case, it was the Adventures that exploded in popularity, and would’ve been most readers’ first introduction to Sherlock.)…

(4) WON’T BE IN SEATTLE. Count Australian sff author Jeremy Szal among those who are checking out of attending the Seattle Worldcon.

(5) BLACK MIRROR TRAILER. “’Black Mirror’ season 7 trailer previews epic ‘USS Callister’ sequel”. Entertainment Weekly sets the frame.

The AI apocalypse is primed for an explosive launch in the Black Mirror season 7 trailer, which previews a bloody, bombastic batch of six new episodes — including the return of Cristin Milioti (The Penguin) in a sequel to 2017’s epic “USS Callister” episode.

Netflix revealed Thursday the first preview of Charlie Brooker’s beloved sci-fi anthology, which welcomes a wealth of stars to its seventh season, including Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Awkwafina, Rashida Jones, Chris O’Dowd, Emma Corrin, Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti, and Will Poulter (reprising the role of Colin Ritman from 2018’s interactive Bandersnatch movie).

In addition to teasing Milioti’s return alongside fellow “USS Callister” stars Jimmi Simpson, Paul G. Raymond, Milanka Brooks, Osy Ikhile, and Billy Magnussen, the Black Mirror season 7 trailer gives us a glimpse at a few of the new installment’s harrowing episodes….

(6) THE ELECTRIC STATE, THEIR LATEST DUD. [Item by Steven French.] A Guardian writer asks, “Why are the most expensive Netflix movies also the worst?”

Here’s the answer:

Blockbusters … have always been deceptively difficult to replicate; on some level, most of them seek some kind of overwhelming sensation, whether it’s thrills, big laughs, melodrama, spectacular visuals or some combination; these things can be faked or strung along (plenty of middling mega-movies have been big hits), but the presentation is part of that fakery, which in turn can be part of the fun. A well-crafted one can sweep you up in the moment even if what they’re doing isn’t all that clever or insightful and leaves you with empty calories; JJ Abrams owes his whole career to this phenomenon. The Netflix auteur movies, meanwhile, are made with the confidence that they will transcend their humble smaller screens (or maybe the serene knowledge that at least they’ll be shown at a lot of festivals before they make it to streaming). The most striking aspect of their mockbuster cousins is how they feel infused with the knowledge that this avenue is closed to them; it’s almost astonishing how inept they are at faking otherwise. Movies like The Electric State can throw around millions of dollars, big stars and cutting-edge effects, but they just can’t shake the bone-deep knowledge that they’re content first….

(7) CHILDREN AND FAMILY EMMY AWARDS. The Children’s & Family Emmys were presented on March 15. Animation Magazine tells who took home the honors: “’Orion and the Dark,’ ‘Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ Are Among the Big Winners of Children’s & Family Emmys”.

…As previously announced, this year’s winners of the juried Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation honors are background designer Philip Vose (Merry Little Batman), viz-dev artist Miho Tomimasu (Orion and the Dark), animation supervisor Elena Najar (Merry Little Batman), character designer Lesego Vorster (Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire), digimatte artist Lauren Zurcher (Orion and the Dark), art director Guillaume Fesquet (Merry Little Batman) and storyboard artist David Lux (Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin)….

CAFÉ winners of genre interest included:

Children or Family Viewing Series

  • Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock (Apple TV Plus)  [The Jim Henson Company /Apple]

Fiction Special

  • The Velveteen Rabbit (Apple TV Plus) [Magic Lamp Pictures/Apple]

Preschool Animated Series

  • The Tiny Chef Show (Nickelodeon)

Children’s or Young Teen Animated Series

  • Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney+)

Animated Special

  • Orion and the Dark (Netflix)

Voice Performer in a Children’s or Young Teen Program

  • Eric Bauza as Daffy Duck & Bugs Bunny – Teen Titans Go! (Cartoon Network)

Younger Voice Performer in a Preschool, Children’s or Young Teen Program

  • Jacob Tremblay as Orion – Orion and the Dark (Netflix)

Writing for a Children’s or Young Teen Animated Series

  • “Dancing with Myself” – Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney+)

(8) YOU COULD GET LOST IN HERE. “Architectural Misdirection: Seeking Out Secret Staircases and Hidden Rooms” at CrimeReads.

Mystery fans love ingenious misdirection in their plots, and novels can be even more mysterious when the setting itself adds layers of intrigue. Creepy old buildings have a long history in mystery fiction, and the novels I’m diving into today use architecture as a key part of the puzzle…. 

In the middle of this list:

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

This classic novel is dominated by a medieval abbey’s labyrinthine library that’s filled with secret passageways and hidden rooms. Friar William of Baskerville and his apprentice are investigating the mysterious deaths of several monks at the abbey, and the architecture both provides clues and mirrors the deeper symbolic meaning behind the crimes. 

(9) CHRIS MOORE’S NYT OBITUARY. [Item by Daniel P. Dern.] Sff artist Chris Moore, whose passing was noted in the February 11 Scroll, has now received a detailed tribute in the New York Times. This gift link bypasses the paywall: “Chris Moore Dead: Illustrator for Classic Sci-Fi Books Was 77”.

DPD notes, Alex Williams’ obituary for Moore has a refreshing, remarkable depth (and presumed accuracy) with respect to sf stuff, e.g.:

Chris Moore, a British artist who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Charmouth, on the southwestern coast of England. He was 77.

… Moore provided memorable interstellar images for various editions of notable books by Mr. Dick — including his novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the basis of the 1982 film “Blade Runner” — as well as works by Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, H.G. Wells, Alastair Reynolds, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King and many others.

…While best known for his visual journeys through the cosmos, Mr. Moore produced a wide range of illustrations. He created the art for several album covers, including Fleetwood Mac’s “Penguin” (1973) and Mr. Stewart’s “The Vintage Years 1969-70” (1976), as well as contributing images to magazines like Omni and Asimov’s Science Fiction. And he designed wallpaper tied to the Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980).

…He exhibited his work for the first time in 1995, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, where he realized that there was a market for his originals, which he began selling….

DPD adds: So I’m sure I saw those there, and for all I know, crossed paths with Moore.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 19, 1928 — Patrick McGoohan. (Died 2009.)

 I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. — Number 6

I don’t how times I’ve seen the opening of The Prisoner series as it’s been separately shown from the episodes online pretty much since video came to the Internet. Not sure in what context I was watching it but it was, without doubt, one of the best openings I’ve seen.

Then there was the series. Weird, thrilling, mysterious. Eminently watchable over and over and over again. Was it SF? Or was it a spy series set in the very near future? Who knew? And then there was Number Six, the never named intelligence agent played by Patrick McGoohan. He seemed destined to play this role.

He was an American-born Irish actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. Now it turns out that The Prisoner was his creation. He was also one of the writers – there were five in fact — and he was one of four directors. In other words, he had his hand in every facet of the series and its sixteen episodes. 

Before he was that unnamed intelligence agent he was, and I’m not at all convinced that McGoohan meant this to be a coincidence, secret agent John Drake in the Danger Man espionage series. I’ve seen a few episodes, it’s well crafted.  

Danger Man (retitled Secret Agent in the United States for the revived series) was a British television series broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. (A neat bit of history here: Ian Fleming was brought in to work on series development, but left before that was complete. Apparently, he didn’t like the way the secret service was to be portrayed.) 

After The Prisoner, McGoohan’s next genre endeavor was as the narrator of Journey into Darkness is a British television horror film stitching together two episodes derived from late Sixties anthology television series Journey to the Unknown.

We are now leaving genre and headed for, well the Columbo series. Why so? Because he was good friends with Peter Falk and directed five episodes of the series, four of which he appeared in, winning two Emmys in the process. McGoohan was involved with the series in some way from 1974 to 2000. 

He was said that his first appearance on Columbo was probably his favorite American role. He had top billing as Col. Lyle C. Rum, fired from a military academy, in “By Dawn’s Early Light”, one of the Columbo films that preceded the series.

His daughter Catherine McGoohan appeared with him in the episode “Ashes To Ashes” The other two Columbo episodes in which he appeared are “Identity Crisis” and “Agenda For Murder”.  

Yes, he reprised his role as Number Six for The Simpsons in “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”.  Homer Simpson fakes a news story to make his website more popular, and he wakes up in a prison that is a holiday resort. As Number Five, he meets Number Six. 

McGoohan’s last movie role was as the voice of Billy Bones in the animated Treasure Planet.

He received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for The Prisoner.

The Prisoner is streaming on Prime. No, not awful remake (shudder) but the original one. 

Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brewster Rockit seems to be accounting to DOGE.
  • Dog Eat Doug doesn’t want to go to Mars.
  • Rose Is Rose shows why reading only the good parts doesn’t work.
  • Wizard of Id takes us back to the early history of social media “blocking”.
  • Tom Gauld tells what changed the bird’s mind.

A cartoon for @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T13:03:11.704Z

(12) THE SHADOW KNOWS. ThePulp.Net takes us from Victor Jory to Alec Baldwin and beyond in “The Shadow on film”.

As in radio, The Shadow’s film career began with him as an announcer of detective stories, not as a lead character. In 1931 — the same year that the namesake pulp began — The Shadow began introducing a series of two-reel mysteries for Universal Studios.

Frank Readick, one of the voices of The Shadow on radio’s Detective Story Hour, is credited with narrating A Burglar to the Rescue, the first of the six 15- to 23-minute films. The other film shorts included: Trapped, Sealed Lips, House of Mystery, The Red Shadow and The Circus Show-Up.

It was five years before The Shadow returned to the screen. This time silent-screen actor Rod La Rocque appeared in The Shadow Strikes for Grand National Pictures. The 1937 film featured detective Lamont “Granston,” who like Cranston in the radio program was The Shadow. In 1938, La Rocque returned, this time as Lamont Cranston, in International Crime. The Shadow isn’t the main character, but rather radio sleuth Cranston is.

The Shadow is back in the lead role in a 15-chapter Columbia serial. The Shadow starred hawk-nosed actor Victor Jory….

… Alec Baldwin is the latest to assume the role in The Shadow. The 1994 film enjoyed the trappings of a robust budget. The art direction and production were splendid, but the script was lacking. Disappointingly for pulp purists, its story, like the previous motion pictures, was an amalgam of influences from The Shadow’s past in print, radio and film. On top of that, screenwriter David Koepp or director Russell Mulcahy added several curious twists to the story, such as Margo Lane being psychic, and Lamont Cranston being police commissioner Wainwright Barth’s nephew….

(13) A SOLAR ECLIPSE… FROM THE MOON. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025 got a pic of the *Earth* eclipsing the Sun… “Private Lunar Lander Captures Stunning ‘Diamond Ring’ Eclipse from the Moon’s Surface” at Daily Galaxy. You can see the image at the link.

For the first time in history, a privately operated lunar lander has captured images of a total eclipse from the Moon’s surface. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025, recently transmitted breathtaking images of a “diamond ring” eclipse—a rare celestial phenomenon that occurs when the Sun emerges from behind Earth, forming a brilliant ring of light in the lunar sky….

(14) A LIGHTER FORM OF DARK MATTER. Hey, I’m not making this up! “Mysterious phenomenon at center of galaxy could reveal new kind of dark matter” at Phys.org.

A mysterious phenomenon at the centre of our galaxy could be the result of a different type of dark matter.

Dark matter, the mysterious form of unobserved matter which could make up 85% of the mass of the known universe, is one of science’s biggest manhunts.

In this first of its kind study, scientists have taken a step closer to understanding the elusive mystery matter. They believe a reimagined candidate for dark matter could be behind unexplained chemical reactions taking place in the Milky Way…

Dr. Shyam Balaji, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King’s College London and one of the lead authors of the study explains, “At the centre of our galaxy sit huge clouds of positively charged hydrogen, a mystery to scientists for decades because normally the gas is neutral. So, what is supplying enough energy to knock the negatively charged electrons out of them?

“The energy signatures radiating from this part of our galaxy suggest that there is a constant, roiling source of energy doing just that, and our data says it might come from a much lighter form of dark matter than current models consider.”

Primary research: Pedro De la Torre Luque et al, (2025) Anomalous Ionization in the Central Molecular Zone by Sub-GeV Dark Matter, Physical Review Letters, vol. 134, 101001 

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Around tea time, about 65 million years ago, a large pebble hit the Earth, wiping out many birds with a single stone.  (I really have never forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch.) Recently there has been news of asteroid 2024 YR4 possibly hitting Earth in 2032.  It now looks like it will be a near miss, but what other dangers are there out there?  Keep watching the skies….  Over at PBS Space Time Matt O’Dowd looks at the chaotic Solar system that otherwise might puzzle Bruce Willis…

Giant space rocks are definitely going to hit the Earth again. We actually do know how to deflect them, but only if we find them and correctly assess their risk. But the solar system is a chaotic place. How is it even possible to tell if a space rock will one day collide with the Earth?

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

Pixel Scroll 8/23/24 Yippi-Ki-Yay, Pixel Scroller

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(1) PARALLEL POPPING. [Item by Dann.] Rotten Tomatoes is updating its scoring system: “Introducing The Verified Hot Audience Badge”. They will keep the tomato-based system for professional reviewers.  Audience reviews will use a popcorn-based system.  Allegedly, only reviews from people who have purchased a verified ticket will count for the new system.  The Fandango app is going to be the means for validating a purchased ticket.

I say “allegedly” as that is what is asserted in the article linked below.  I was unable to access the details about the verified audience score at the other link below.

“Rotten Tomatoes Introduces a Popcorn Meter for Audience Reviews”; Comicbook.com explains it:

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes today announced a new program to codify audience reviews — or at least “verified” audience reviews — into a more official score…. 

In addition to introducing Verified Hot, Rotten Tomatoes has clarified the “Popcornmeter” rating system for all their TV shows and movies. Starting today, fans will see a full, red popcorn bucket with a “Hot” label if 60% or more of the audience rates the title with 3.5 stars or higher. Otherwise, a green tipped-over popcorn bucket will be labeled “Stale,” when less than 60% of the audience provides a rating of 3.5 stars or higher….

…Verified purchases include users who have proven they bought tickets to the movie on Fandango, the movie ticketing platform. The move was made to prevent disgruntled users from going after movies or actors they don’t like with negative reviews — an issue that had divided audiences and put Rotten Tomatoes in the middle of a number of controversies.

Effectively, the same company that owns Rottentomatoes.com also owns Fandango.  NBCUniversal has a 75% stake and Warner Home Entertainment has a 25% stake.  So there is some self-interest involved in limiting audience reviews via a purchasing system owned by these entertainment companies.

(2) HIGH COMPRESSION. The Guardian suggests “’It’s like Game of Thrones!’ The return of India’s ancient superhero fantasy epic”. The Mahabharata will screen at the Venice film festival on September 5 and 6.

When Antonin Stahly was nine years old, his mother took him to the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris to see a production of the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata, which translates loosely as “the great story of mankind”. More than 20 actors from 16 countries performed on a stage steeped in red earth and scarred by a water-filled trench; fire also played a leading role. Directed by Peter Brook, whom the RSC founder Peter Hall called “the greatest innovator of his generation”, and adapted by Luis Buñuel’s former co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière, this spectacular Mahabharata weighed in at nine hours, plus intervals. Even at that length, it represented a massive compression of its source text, which runs to 1.8m words. Brook and Carrière’s version has been likened to summarising the Bible in 40 minutes.

Audiences could devour The Mahabharata in three parts over successive evenings or as an all-day weekend marathon; in some outdoor venues, such as the limestone quarry in Avignon where the production premiered in 1985, it began at dusk and climaxed just as the dawn sun lit up the sky. Stahly saw it in a single noon-to-midnight sitting. “It was like a superhero fantasy,” he says, still sounding awestruck. “It had Bhima, the strongest man on Earth, and Bhishma, who has the power to live for ever. Arjuna was the best warrior. And then there were all the gods. It was amazing for me, because I’m half Indian, but I wasn’t brought up in an Indian context.”…

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC.  Scott Edelman invites listeners to feast on burgers and fries with Cynthia Pelayo in Episode 234 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Scott Edelman and Cynthia Pelayo.

I invite you to join me at the table with the award-winning Cynthia Pelayo for burgers and fries at Hodad’s Downtown.

Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award-winning and International Latino Book Award-winning author and poet. She’s the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, as well as dozens of short stories and poems. Loteria, which was her MFA in Writing thesis at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was re-released to much praise, with Esquire calling it one of the Best Horror Books of 2023. Santa Muerte and The Missing, her young adult horror novels, were each nominated for International Latino Book Awards. 

Poems of My Night was nominated for an Elgin Award, while Into the Forest and All the Way Through was nominated for an Elgin Award and was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Children of Chicago was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in Superior Achievement in a Novel and won an International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery. Crime Scene won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Her most recent novel, The Forgotten Sisters, was released in March and is a modern adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”
 
We discussed the dead body she thought she saw which sparked The Forgotten Sisters, why she changed her mind about killing every character at the end of that newest novel, how growing up in a haunted house helped turn her into a horror writer, why she evolved from a pantser into a plotter, the importance of describing decaying bodies in extreme detail, which journalistic skills transferred easily to fiction writing and which didn’t, what makes Chicago great, the reason classic fairy tales survive, how reading Agatha Christie helped her learn how to plot, the way to write successful flash fiction, and much more.

(4) WORLDBUILDING WITH STEPHENSON. Variety is on hand when “’LOTR’ VFX Firm Weta Workshop, Neal Stephenson Launch Digital World”.

Prolific author Neal Stephenson‘s digital content platform Lamina1 and “The Lord of the Rings” film franchise special effects company Wētā Workshop are set to collaborate on a “participatory worldbuilding” experience titled “Artefact.”

The experience is expected to offer “a new blueprint for IP expansion through immersive experiences that incorporate fan action and input.”

Per Lamina1’s description for the project, “Stephenson and the Wētā team will begin engaging a global community of creators and fans on the Lamina1 platform this fall, inviting them to unravel the lore behind a mysterious set of ‘Artefacts’ that will build upon the themes and lore from Stephenson’s critically-acclaimed catalog of work. Next, the superfan will take on the new role of creator, utilizing their discoveries to contribute directly to the expansion of the universe.”

… “This is more than just a new virtual world—it’s a new way to build worlds. It’s a promising new way of looking at what we can offer to both creators and their communities,” Stephenson said. “By collaborating with Wētā Workshop, we’re forging a new path in digital worldbuilding. Lamina1’s commitment to a creator-driven economy and open metaverse provides a foundation that ensures long-term value and creative quality.”…

(5) KEEP IT GOING. “Petition to Save ‘The Acolyte’ Already Has Hundreds of Signatures” reports Collider. By the time this Scroll was being put together, the “Renew the Acolyte” petition at Change.org had over 26,000 signatures.

It’s only been a day since Disney canceled its latest Star Wars series, The Acolyte, but fans are already quickly mobilizing support for the polarizing show. Over at Change.org, a petition was created by a fan named Blue Smith to save Leslye Headland‘s High Republic-set series, and, in just 24 hours, it blew up with over 700 signatures. While the poor reception from some viewers, along with more malicious review-bombing, was evident throughout the show’s run, the swift and proactive reaction from fans shows a dedicated fanbase that was eager to see what Headland and company were ultimately cooking.

(6) AMERICAN MANGA AWARDS. Publishers Weekly is there when “Inaugural American Manga Award Winners Announced” at the first American Manga Awards ceremony, held on August 22 at the Japan Society in New York City.

  • Best New Manga: #DRCL midnight children by Shin’ichi Sakamoto (VIZ Media)
  • Best Continuing Manga Series: Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui (Yen Press)
  • Best New Edition of Classic Manga: Neighborhood Story by Ai Yazawa (VIZ Media)
  • Best Translation: Stephen Kohler for Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama, (Kodansha)
  • Best Lettering: Lys Blakeslee for Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama (Kodansha)
  • Best Publication Design: Adam Grano for My Name Is Shingo by Kazuo Umezz (VIZ Media)

The awards were launched this year by Anime NYC and the Japan Society to honor outstanding achievements in the world of Japanese comics, and celebrate the best manga published in North America in the past year. The ceremony was held on the eve of Anime NYC, the Japanese pop culture convention being happening at the Javits Center in New York City August 23–25,

(7) SILENCE WAS GOLDEN. Rowling broke her “silence” today, and tripled down, reports Out: “J.K. Rowling broke her social media silence… with more Imane Khelif transphobia”.

J.K. Rowling is back on the hate and ignorance train.

The disgraced Harry Potter author and famed transphobe has posted on X (formerly Twitter) for the first time since August 7. After a rare social media break, the outspoken transphobe is once again taking aim at cisgender boxer and Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif.

Rowling was one of the leading online voices in the crusade against Khelif, a female boxer from Algeria who was targeted with transphobic and racist hate during the Paris 2024 Olympics after a discredited Russian boxing federation claimed she failed an unspecified “gender test.”

(8) JOHN GRAZIANO (1962-2024). Long-time Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoonist John Graziano passed away on August 17. The Daily Cartoonist paid tribute.

John Anthony Graziano, 62, a remarkably talented artist of Davenport, Florida, passed away at his residence on August 17, 2024.

…John majored in Illustration at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts in New Jersey. Following his graduation, he began his career as an illustrator for a T-shirt company. However, it wasn’t long before he landed his dream job, one he had envisioned since his teenage years. John applied as a youngster to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, only to receive an encouraging reply to reach out again in the future. He did. Several years later, John joined Ripley’s Believe It or Not, where he became only the seventh artist to take up the pen since Robert Ripley himself. He dedicated 17 years as an illustrator, retiring in 2021.

Before moving up to Ripley’s, he had a wide range of freelance assignments.

He has designed trading card sets and a portrait series based on the 1960s cult TV show “Dark Shadows.” John has also created comic strips for “Scream Queens” magazine, sculpted figures that have been made into wax museum pieces, provided book illustrations, plastic model kit box illustrations, designed t-shirt graphics and created storyboards and concept drawings for Hollywood films.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 23, 1931 – Barbara Eden, 93.

By Paul Weimer: I still DO dream of Jeannie, thank you very much.

It’s funny, though.  The reruns of I Dream of Jeannie I remember only when I was young and didn’t quite get it at the time (in other words, I was not yet a teenager).  I found the show funny and amusing, and years later, when Larry Hagman wound up on Dallas, I was amused at his return to my screens (and more on Dallas and Eden in a moment). 

But let’s go back to Barbara Eden and of course, Jeannie. Even young me could see that the story of Jeannie was meant to be a story of cultural assimilation to America. It was the “melting pot theory” taken literally with a 2000-year-old genie played by Barbara Eden. I was so compelled by Eden’s performance and characterization of Jeannie, that for a number of years afterwards, I thought Djinn WERE default female and the first times I came across male Djinn, I started to think of some very awkward questions about Djinn as a species.

Barbara Eden

But there is a tension in Jeannie (and come to think, Samantha in Bewitched) about the problems of assimilation. Maybe it’s my reading of the text, but Samantha, and especially Eden’s Jeannie, torn between the desire to assimilate, and the desire to remain as themselves (using magic, granting wishes, respectively) is a subtext that I can see in Eden’s performance. Eden’s Jeannie, even after getting married, never gives up her powers but she does hide them. She never fully becomes “American”.  

I enjoyed Eden in other roles besides Jeannie…oddly, in The Brass Bottle, she doesn’t play the Djinn, she plays the girlfriend of the guy who opens the Djinn bottle (and the Djinn is female…).  Eden is also great in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. Both those movies have her with Tony Randall, and for a bit, my focus on Eden meant that I confused Randall and Hagman a bit together until I properly watched The Odd Couple (and later, Dallas).  And oh yes, I was delighted when Eden showed up on Dallas for a few episodes. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) FOURTH WALL COMICS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Some comics are notable for “breaking the fourth wall” like today’s Adam@Home.

Dern notes, “Possibly my favorite ‘fourth wall’ strip is from Walt Kelly’s Pogo: Pogo saying (to Churchy or Albert, probably), “These silhouettes sure save a mess of drawing.”

The Thatababy strip has frequent sf/superhero/other-geeky references; they appear to have been collected into a book, here’s the digital-free-from-participating-libraries link: Thatababy Geeks Out!

(12) WHAT TO EXPECT. According to series creator Charlie Brooker, “Black Mirror season 7 episodes will be like OG Black Mirror, gut punches and all”. JoBlo has the story.

A seventh season of the anthology series Black Mirror will be making its way to the Netflix streaming service sometime in 2025 – and while episodes of the show have branched out into different genres as it has gone along, during an interview with Deadline, series creator Charlie Brooker said that the episodes of Black Mirror season 7 will be like the “OG Black Mirror.”

Brooker said, “We’re doing some things we’ve not done before. People can expect quite a lot of emotion and, hopefully, a good mix of chills. We did a couple of horror stories in Season 6, which we label as Red Mirror. But this time around, the episodes are all, in a way, like OG Black Mirror. I wrote one script, and the general consensus was that it was one of the bleakest, heaviest gut punches yet. There’s also techy episodes and ones that are making people cry. So, hopefully, it’s a full emotional workout, but we shall see. The viewers will be the judge.“

Black Mirror season 7 will consist of six episodes, one of which will be a sequel to the popular season 4 episode USS Callister! We even have a short synopsis for that one: “Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning.” Directed by Toby Haynes from a script written by William Bridges and Brooker, the season 4 USS Callister episode told the story of a gaming company’s CTO. He is the mastermind behind a popular multiplayer game and has a private copy of it, which he uses to torment his colleagues who fail to show him respect in the office… 

(13) CROSSWORD SPOILER. [Item by Susan de Guardiola.] In the New York Times Crossword for Friday, August 23, 2024.

Clue for 49 down:

“Genre celebrated at the annual Worldcon”

Five-letter answer: SCIFI [obviously that is a spoiler]

(14) NAME THAT WRITER. Somebody set up a “Guess the Authors” quiz at IQuiz. Sixty questions. I got 56 right. It’s not a hard quiz. I only had to guess four times, and luckily two of the guesses were correct. One miss was a dumb mistake – The Sound of Music was based on a book, but that wasn’t the name of the book; although frankly, the lyricist isn’t the person who wrote the play’s book, so their answer is wrong, too. And once I was in a hurry, so despite knowing the right answer I put my cursor over the wrong name. Lesson learned!

(15) YOU’RE HIRED. “Marvel Sets James Spader to Return as Ultron for Vision Quest” – details in The Hollywood Reporter.

The Emmy-winning actor is set to reprise his role as the voice of robotic villain Ultron in Marvel Studios’ untitled Vision series, the follow-up series to its acclaimed WandaVision show. He first played the role in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Paul Bettany is reprising his role as Vision, the android who fell in love with the Scarlett Witch and then was destroyed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. In WandaVision, he returned via magic and the power of grief but also as a rebuilt android, now ghostly white.

Terry Matalas, the much-heralded showrunner of Star Trek: Picard, is spearheading the new show, which has been referred to as Vision Quest, although that is not its official title, and which tackles white Vision’s search for a new purpose in life….

(16) NSFW, DID WE MENTION THAT? [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Blood. Tits. The Word Fuck. Repeatedly. You’ve been warned. It’s a great trailer. “’Twilight of the Gods’ Red Band Teaser Delivers Blood, Sex and Dragons” in Animation Magazine.

Netflix today unleashed a quite NSFW red band teaser for Zack Snyder’s highly anticipated adult animated saga Twilight of the Gods, arriving covered in blood (and other bodily fluids, judging from the footage) on September 19. The eight-episode, 2D-animated series is set in the brutal, carnal yet complex realm of Norse Mythology. (You can read more in our interview with executive producers Zack and Deborah Snyder in the upcoming September/October issue of Animation Magazine.)…

(17) CARD FLIPPING DOMINO VIDEO. [Item by Daniel Dern.] That’s a lotta decks of cards!

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Star Trek: Crew’s Logs – ‘Efficiency Officer’”. “You know none of this happens on other ships, right?”

The Crew’s Log series shows you what life is like for the crew members aboard Star Trek TNG’s USS Enterprise. In this episode, the Efficiency Officer goes over some suggestions on how the senior staff could better manage the ship.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Paul Weimer, Jon Meltzer, Susan de Guardiola, Steve Green, Andrew (not Werdna), Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

Pixel Scroll 5/31/24 Scroll Dol! Pixel Dol! File A Dong Dillo!

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(1) ARISTOTLE! In 2017 The New Yorker considered “Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them” Aristotle isn’t the only one who had an opinion.

Consider the yeti. Reputed to live in the mountainous regions of Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal. Also known by the alias Abominable Snowman. Overgrown, in both senses: eight or ten or twelve feet tall; shaggy. Shy. Possibly a remnant of an otherwise extinct species. More possibly an elaborate hoax, or an inextinguishable hope. Closely related to the Australian Yowie, the Canadian Nuk-luk, the Missouri Momo, the Louisiana Swamp Ape, and Bigfoot. O.K., then: on a scale not of zero to ten but of, say, leprechaun to zombie, how likely do you think it is that the yeti exists?

One of the strangest things about the human mind is that it can reason about unreasonable things. It is possible, for example, to calculate the speed at which the sleigh would have to travel for Santa Claus to deliver all those gifts on Christmas Eve. It is possible to assess the ratio of a dragon’s wings to its body to determine if it could fly. And it is possible to decide that a yeti is more likely to exist than a leprechaun, even if you think that the likelihood of either of them existing is precisely zero….

(2) IGLESIAS REVIEW COLUMN. Gabino Iglesias reviews four new horror books in the New York Times, Stephen King’s You Like It Darker: Stories (Scribner), Layla Martínez’s debut novel, Woodworm (Two Lines Press), Christina Henry’s The House That Horror Built (Berkley) and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots: Stories (Norton).

(3) SOME PIG! [Item by Dann.] Author Paul Hale has released the first episode of his next series for the Cinema Story Origins podcast.  This time around, he will be comparing and contrasting the book and movie versions of “Charlotte’s Web”. “Charlotte’s Web Part 1”.

(4) SPEED UPDATING. The latest in Joe Vasicek’s continuing series at One Thousand and One Parsecs is “How I would vote now: 2018 Hugo Award (Best Novel)” – a decision made easier by the fact that he didn’t read three of the books at all, and only read “the first couple pages” of a fourth.

How I Would Have Voted

  1. Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
  2. No Award

Everything else from this year is pretty much terrible, in my opinion. I skipped The Stone Sky, Provenance, and Raven Strategem because those were all series that I had already DNFed….

A fourth finalist that he actually started was Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2140.

(5) CCB CASE ANALYZED. At Writer Beware a guest post looks over a case involving “Disney, Books, and the Copyright Claims Board”.

Writer Beware has been covering the Copyright Claims Board since it started accepting cases in 2022. A small claims court for copyright matters, the CCB offers an alternative to the expensive court battles that previously were the only path to resolving copyright disputes, providing creators with a streamlined, inexpensive method of adjudicating cases of infringement, misuse, and other alleged malfeasance…..

Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today says:

…Overall, the CCB did a good job. Though it cited the most recent Supreme Court ruling, which was handed down just four days before this final determination was published, the CCB didn’t get bogged down needlessly in the injury rule/discovery rule debate. Instead, it turned to the Raging Bull case, allowing the case to move forward but only looking back three years.

That filing delay deeply hurt the claimant. Not only did the vast majority of the alleged infringement take place during the excluded time, but much of the relevant evidence was also from then. Key pieces of that evidence were simply gone.

As the CCB pointed out, the burden of proof is on the claimant. While Disney may have some responsibility, there wasn’t enough (or any) evidence to prove it. If the case had been filed before 2018, things might have progressed very differently.

It is a frustrating case. As small as the infringement may have been, it feels like someone should be held responsible for it. However, the evidence simply didn’t support holding Disney accountable. If this case had been filed earlier or targeted Hoopla directly, there might have been a different outcome.

Ultimately, I think the CCB made the right call, even if my sympathies lie with the author and her publisher….

(6) FANS B.C. Atlas Obscura finds that “Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’ ‘Longhairs,’ and ‘Lions’” – a study that encompasses sports, theater, and finally, science fiction.

THE EXACT ORIGINS OF THE modern term “fan” are disputed, but most look to the 1880s, where it was first used by American newspapers to describe particularly invested baseball enthusiasts. But “fan” was just one of the words the press, leagues, clubs, and baseball enthusiasts themselves were using at the time. They were called “enthusiasts,” but also a whole host of other names, from “rooters” to “bugs” to “fiends” to “cranks,” sometimes spelled—as in the German word for “sick”—as “krank.”…

… This, of course, stretches across the history of fandom: Differences like age, geography, approach, and values can lead to different groups forming around the same thing. Trekkies versus Trekkers, for instance, or Holmesians versus Sherlockians. “How you name yourself says a lot about what you think of yourself and your very intense passions,” Cavicchi says. “But at the same time, another name or variation on the name, or another use of your name, maybe in a derogatory sense, may say something about what the culture thinks about you.” Modern fandom terms like “stan” and “fangirl” can connote very different things depending on the speaker—overly emotional and uncontrollable to a critic, or a term of in-group recognition to fellow fans….

(7) TAKING POPCORN OUT OF THE MOUTH OF A SUPERHERO. Does this popcorn bucket need a trigger warning? Consider it given. “Ryan Reynolds unveils hilarious ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ popcorn bucket” at Entertainment Weekly.

Dune began this war, but Ryan Reynolds isn’t backing down from it. Following the popularity of the Dune: Part Two custom popcorn bucket (which was shaped like the gaping jaws of a sandworm), Reynolds unveiled Deadpool and Wolverine‘s own bucket on Thursday….

…Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige teased that the bucket would be “intentionally crude and lewd” at CinemaCon, and now we get to see it for ourselves.

Similar to the Dune bucket, the top of the Deadpool and Wolverine popcorn container is shaped like a mouth — Wolverine’s mouth, that is. If you’ve ever wanted to shove your hand down the clawed mutant’s throat…well, now’s your chance….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 31, 1993 — Total Recall, the one and only true Total Recall, premiered on this date in Los Angeles thirty-four years ago. So let’s talk about it.

As you most likely know, it’s based off Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” which not surprisingly can be found in the We Can Remember It for You Wholesale collection. 

Ronald Shusett who wrote the original script for Alien, not the one that was filmed, bought the film rights to it fourteen years prior to it making it to the screen. It went through at least four studios over sixteen years, some forty script drafts, seven different directors and a potential cast of what seemed like hundreds. In other words, what is called development hell. 

It didn’t get better as it was being film when the De Laurentiis company went bankrupt. Oh well. 

Schwarzenegger wanted to play that role but had been dismissed as inappropriate for the lead role by, well, everyone including the De Laurentiis company, but he convinced the Carolco Pictures to purchase the rights and develop the film with him as the star.

In 2024 terms, the film cost two hundred million dollars.  Quite a bit given that Foundation is only costing Apple five point five million an episode for the current season.  Cost overruns were so common that the bankers gave up trying to figure out what it’d cost to make it. No, none jumped out windows but I bet they thought about it… 

Shusett was the co-director here along with Frederick Feitshans. Why him? Because he’d directed Schwarzenegger on Conan the Barbarian and he wanted him here. If you’re getting the idea, that is a vanity project of Schwarzenegger, you’re not far off as the shooting script was also approved by him. 

Setting him aside, it had a lead cast that you’ll (mostly) recognize— Rachel Ticotin,  Sharon Stone,  Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox. Each went to be a major star save Rachel Ticotin. The other three you’ll know as being in any number of genre films though Stone is best known for Basic Instinct which cannot ever be stretched under any circumstances to be genre adjacent and shouldn’t even be really considered for its police procedural angle really. Seriously no one went to see it for that. 

It’s an entertaining film that I like. I’m amazed Gary Goldman, a film producer, director, animator, writer and even voice actor, was able to make sense of the nearly forty scripts that everyone had a hand in – even Dan O’Bannon at one point. But he did. He even went back to the original script based off the Dick work. Verhoeven read each one of these, bless him, and highlighted those he wanted Goldman to reference.

Yes, the specials effects by Industrial Light & Magic were extraordinary, as is the actual physical work that had to done like The Earth train station which was filmed in the Mexico City Metro and all of the exterior Mars scenes took place at the Valley of Fire State Park in Overton, Nevada. 

The critics were mostly either unfavorable or meh on it with a few impressed. Even when they praised the production values and Schwarzenegger’s performance, they really, really criticized the violent content. 

It turned to be one of the year’s most successful films. On its release, the film earned approximately $261.4 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year.

I rewatched it a few years back. Does it hold up well? The Suck Fairy says yes and I agree. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brewster Rockit reports there are some things everyone must watch.
  • Non Sequitur demonstrates a problem that might be unfamiliar today.

(10) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(11) DON’T LOSE YOUR WAY WHEN YOU CHOOSE YOUR WAY. “These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books” – Atlas Obscura unveils an example.

Reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book can feel like being lost in a maze and running through twists and turns only to find dead ends, switchbacks, and disappointment. In the books—for those not familiar with them—you read until you come to a decision point, which prompts you to flip to another page, backward or forward. The early books in the series, which began in 1979, have dozens of endings, reached through branching storylines so complex that that trying to keep track of your path can seem hopeless—no matter how many fingers you stick into the book in order to find your way back to the key, fateful choice. You might end up back at an early fork again, surprised at how far you traveled only to reemerge at a simple decision, weighted with consequences that you couldn’t have imagined at the beginning.

The last installment of the original “Choose Your Own Adventure” series came out in 1998, but since 2004, Chooseco, founded by one of the series’ original authors, R.A. Montgomery, has been republishing classic volumes, as well as new riffs on the form of interactive fiction that seemed ubiquitous in the 1980s and ’90s. The new editions also carry an additional feature—maps of the hidden structure of each book….

…The meat of “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories are gender-neutral romps in worlds where there are no obviously right or wrong moral choices. There’s danger around bend, usually in the form of something like space monkeys, malicious ghosts, or conniving grown-ups. Even with a map, there’s no way to find out what really comes next without making a choice and flipping to another page….

(12) BROOKER Q&A. “Black Mirror Season 7: Charlie Brooker Talks AI, USS Callister Sequel” in The Hollywood Reporter.

…In the conversation below, Brooker reveals what inspired him to create the episode (while musing about what a sequel could look like) and weighs in on the AI conversation now, while also discussing the upcoming seventh season of Black Mirror and the show’s first-ever (and highly anticipated) sequel to the Emmy-winning season four “USS Callister” episode.

***

The timing of the release of “Joan Is Awful” may be the most Charlie Brooker thing that has ever happened. What was it like to watch that play out as the AI conversation began to explode?

It was really odd. So, I must have written it in June-July in 2022. When we shot it, it was September-October. It was just before ChatGPT launched. I think it was about a week later that ChatGPT came out and suddenly, everyone was talking about generative AI and how all creative jobs were going to be replaced, pushed out or automated. There’s also a lot of raw animal panic that takes over as a writer as soon as you see some of that generative AI output. I’d seen some of [AI chatbot app] Midjourney, the image generating stuff.

For a while I had wanted to do a story about a news network that bills itself as satire that isn’t showing news but is showing satirical content, which is photorealistic imagery of political figures either being humiliated or looking heroic. And the idea that was a strange way of doing propaganda that they could claim was satirical, but that was ridiculous and absurd. It was a funny and disturbing idea, but I couldn’t work out quite what the story was.

Then I was watching The Dropout, the Hulu drama about the Theranos scandal starring Amanda Seyfried, with my wife and we were discussing how weird it would be — because it was dramatizing very recent events — if you were Elizabeth Holmes watching this and it’s getting so up to date that in a minute, she’s going to put the TV on and see The Dropout. And so those two ideas kind of glommed together: of AI-generated imagery starring real figures — and a dramatization of somebody’s life that’s depicting them in a terrible light. (Laughs.)

As “Joan” came out, I knew it was timely. That season was originally going to be a season of all horror stories called Red Mirror. I was part way into the season and then I had this idea and I thought: It’s not horror. I mean, it’s existentially terrifying, but it’s not horror. It’s definitely a very Black Mirror idea. So I thought, “Fuck it, OK” [about the Red Mirror idea]. I felt like it had to be done now. I definitely couldn’t wait for another season to do it. So when the ChatGPT conversation caught fire and when it became a huge issue because of the strikes, I was slightly wiping my brow with relief that we got the episode out before. The timing of it was surreal. Hopefully, it added to the conversation….

(13) ANOTHER ENTRY RAMP. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] …On the infinite helical slide into the bottomless pit. “Hollywood Nightmare? New Streaming Service Lets Viewers Create Their Own Shows Using AI” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Fable, the studio behind the viral AI-generated ‘South Park’ clips, has announced a streaming platform that allows users to create their own content.

Generative artificial intelligence is coming for streaming, with the release of a platform dedicated to AI content that allows users to create episodes with a prompt of just a couple of words.

Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.

The endeavor marks the tech industry’s further encroachment onto Hollywood as it eyes the exploitation of AI tools embroiled in controversy over their potential to streamline production and the possibility they were created using copyrighted materials from creators they could eventually displace. Amid the industry’s historic dual strikes last year, in which the use of AI emerged as a contentious negotiating point, Fable released an AI-generated episode of South Park to showcase its tech. While some mocked it for its comedic misses, others pointed to the video as a leap forward in the tech and proof of concept that AI tools will soon allow viewers to more actively engage with content, possibly by creating their own. It also demonstrated the threat the tech poses to creators whose labor could be undermined if it’s adopted into the production pipeline.

“The vision is to be the Netflix of AI,” says chief executive Edward Saatchi. “Maybe you finish all of the episodes of a show you’re watching and you click the button to make another episode. You can say what it should be about or you can let the AI make it itself.”…

(14) CAN THE NEXT MUMMY BE A WHALE OF A TALE? World of Reel reports “’The Mummy’ Sequel in the Works, Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz to Return”.

According to Daniel Richtman, “The Mummy” franchise has a new sequel in development over at Universal — Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz set to return in their respective roles. If you remember, the franchise abruptly ended after 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” — budgeted at $175 million— barely made a profit.

The 1999 original was written and directed by Stephen Sommers and was a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and grossed over $416 million worldwide. The film’s success spawned two direct sequels, 2001’s “The Mummy Returns,” and 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.”

“The Mummy” was an incredible success for Universal on home video, selling 7 million units on VHS and 1 million on DVD, making it that year’s best-selling live-action VHS and second best-selling DVD. This all resulted in Universal grossing over $1 billion in home video sales. It seemed as though everyone you knew owned a copy of this movie.

Fraser is hot right now and is in the comeback phase of his career. In 2023, he won an Oscar for “The Whale” and has been piling up projects ever since….

(15) VOYAGER NOW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science journal there is a look at the Voyager probe, its recovery from computer failure and the mystery region of space it is now entering.  It appears that pulses of Solar plasma are hitting the interstellar medium boundary causing reverberations or it could be plasma clouds from another star…. “Voyager 1 science resumes after interstellar crisis”.

Before a computer crash, venerable NASA probe entered mysterious new region of space Voyager 1, the first earthly object to exit the Solar System may be traversing a plasma cloud from another star.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/14/24 I Am The Go-Captain Of The Pixelfore

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(1) LIBBY BOOK AWARDS. Congratulations to Martha Wells and Rebecca Yarros, two of the 17 winners of the inaugural Libby Book Awards, chosen by a panel of 1700 librarians worldwide.

  • Fiction: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
  • Nonfiction: The Wager, by David Grann
  • Young Adult: Divine Rivals, by Rebecca Ross
  • Audiobook: I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai
  • Debut Author: The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes
  • Diverse Author: Camp Zero, by Michelle Min Sterling
  • Comic Graphic Novel: The Talk, by Darrin Bell
  • Memoir & Autobiography: Pageboy, by Elliot Page
  • Cookbook: Start Here, by Sohla El-Waylly
  • Mystery: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
  • Thriller: Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll
  • Romance: Georgie, All Along, by Kate Clayborn
  • Fantasy: Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros
  • Romantasy: Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros
  • Science Fiction: System Collapse, by Martha Wells
  • Historical Fiction: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
  • Book Club Pick: Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang

(2) BOOK BANS SURGED IN 2023. “American Library Association reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023” at ALA.org.

Stack of books background. many books piles

The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles* in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship. 

ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. Four key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports: 

  • Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
  • Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.  
  • Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts. 
  • There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in each of these 17 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

“The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over, and that we must all stand together to preserve our right to choose what we read,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced.  By joining initiatives like Unite Against Book Bans and other organizations that support libraries and schools, we can end this attack on essential community institutions and our civil liberties.”…

(3) PNH’S NEW POST AT TPG. “Patrick Nielsen Hayden to Become Editor-at-Large for TPG” reports Publishers Weekly.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has assumed the title of editor-at-large for the Tor Publishing Group. Hayden has been with TPG for 35 years and most recently served as v-p, associate publisher, and editor-in-chief.

During his tenure, he has published the debut novels of authors such as Charlie Jane Anders, Corey Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton, and has received three Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award for his editorial work. In 2020, he founded our Tor Essentials imprint, which highlights a new generation of SFF classics. 

As editor-at-large, he will continue to edit such authors as Scalzi, Doctorow, and Walton, and will continue to select and oversee the Tor Essentials. 

In announcing Hayden’s new role, TPG president and publisher Devi Pillai added that the company “will not be replacing Patrick in his previous position—he is one of a kind.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden in 2013. Photo by Scott Edelman.

(4) WICKED WORLD’S FAIR FOLLOWUP. “Eventbrite Refutes Mach’s Claims About WWF Payouts, Hints at Possible ‘Actions’” at The Steampunk Explorer. The linked post adds a great deal more coverage after this introductory item:

Amid the fallout from the Wicked World’s Fair (WWF), show organizer Jeff Mach has repeatedly blamed Eventbrite, the online ticketing and event management platform, for his inability to cover the event’s expenses. But in a statement provided Wednesday to The Steampunk Explorer, Eventbrite refuted key aspects of his claims.

WWF was held Feb. 23-25 at the SureStay Plus hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mach used Eventbrite to manage ticket sales, as well as sales of vendor spaces. During the event, as a sound crew was awaiting payment and vendors were requesting refunds, he told them that Eventbrite had frozen his account, preventing use of the platform’s payout features.

In the weeks that followed, Mach continued to blame Eventbrite for payment issues at WWF. “I had repeated assurances from Eventbrite that the money would be forthcoming,” he remarked in one statement to The Steampunk Explorer. “Why Eventbrite had the account locked down, but refused to tell us, I don’t know.”

This was the company’s response on Wednesday: “Eventbrite offers, but does not guarantee, multiple ways to request funds ahead of the event date. Due to an error on the organizer’s end, we can confirm that a few of these advance payouts were delayed. This was quickly remedied, and the organizer received much of his payout ahead of the event and has now been paid out in full.”…

(5) I NEVER WANTED TO GO DOWN THE STONEY END. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Last month, Doug Muir did a piece about the impending death of Voyager 1, originally launched in 1977. “Death, Lonely Death” at Crooked Timber.

…Voyager has grown old.  It was never designed for this!  Its original mission was supposed to last a bit over three years.  Voyager has turned out to be much tougher than anyone ever imagined, but time gets us all.  Its power source is a generator full of radioactive isotopes, and those are gradually decaying into inert lead.  Year by year, the energy declines, the power levels  relentlessly fall.  Year by year, NASA has been switching off Voyager’s instruments to conserve that dwindling flicker.  They turned off its internal heater a few years ago, and they thought that might be the end.  But those 1970s engineers built to last, and the circuitry and the valves kept working even as the temperature dropped down, down, colder than dry ice, colder than liquid nitrogen, falling towards absolute zero.  

(Voyager stored its internal data on a digital tape recorder.  Yes, a tape recorder, storing information on magnetic tape.  It wasn’t designed to function at a hundred degrees below zero.  It wasn’t designed to work for decades, winding and rewinding, endlessly re-writing data.  But it did.)…

… We thought we knew how Voyager would end.  The power would gradually, inevitably, run down.  The instruments would shut off, one by one.  The signal would get fainter.  Eventually either the last instrument would fail for lack of power, or the signal would be lost.

We didn’t expect that it would go mad.

In December 2023, Voyager started sending back gibberish instead of data.  A software glitch, though perhaps caused by an underlying hardware problem; a cosmic ray strike, or a side effect of the low temperatures, or just aging equipment randomly causing some bits to flip.

The problem was, the gibberish was coming from the flight direction software — something like an operating system.  And no copy of that operating system remained in existence on Earth….

But all is not lost. Well, probably. But not necessarily. At the link you can read the rest of the story about the people trying to put the smoke back in the system from fifteen billion kilometers away.

(6) WEIMER GUESTS ON WORLDBUILDING FOR MASOCHISTS. Paul Weimer joins hosts Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris, and Natania Barron for  episode 124 of the Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, “Worldbuilding in Review”.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with worldbuilding as writers — but how does a reviewer approach the topic when they’re reading works of sci-fi and fantasy? Guest Paul Weimer joins us to share his insights as a prolific consumer and critiquer of speculative fiction! Paul talks about the details that he pays attention to, the things he looks for, and the things that draw his attention, as well as discussing the purpose of reviews and who they’re for (hint: it’s not the authors!).

In this episode, we spin things around to look at how we approach worldbuilding and narrative construction as readers — since we are, of course, readers as well as writers! We explore of aspects of how a writer can set and, hopefully, meet expectations through worldbuilding — and where that can sometimes become challenging as a series goes on. What makes a world exciting to enter in the first place? What grips a reader and keeps them with it? And how can you use worldbuilding to make your wizard chase sequence a more cohesive part of your world?

(7) ENTRIES SOUGHT FOR BALTICON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL. Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival has been revised and is looking for talented filmmakers. Full guidelines here: “Short Film Festival”. Entries must be submitted by April 10 2024.

In 2024, the Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival (BSSSFFF) will take place on Sunday evening at 7:00pm. We will thrill festival attendees with independently produced short films from around the region and across the globe. BSSSFFF features live action and animated films in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror from some of the best independent filmmakers this side of the Crab Nebula.

Awards will be given in both the Live Action and Animation category based upon audience preferences. Some of the history of this film festival can be found on the BSFS website.

(8) TRY SUNDAY MORNING TRANSPORT. Mary Robinette Kowal has posted a link valid for a 60-day free trial of Sunday Morning Transport.

(9) ONE SUPERHERO ACTOR CONS ANOTHER. “Simu Liu was scammed by a Hollywood Boulevard Spider-Man” at Entertainment Weekly.

Simu Liu is reflecting on an enemy he made during his first visit to Los Angeles: a not-so-friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

During an interview with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Dinner’s On Me, the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actor recalled an unfortunate encounter with a swindling web-slinger on Hollywood Boulevard. “I remember I was taking photos of the Chinese Theater and a Spider-Man came up to me and was like, ‘I’ll help you!’” the actor remembered.

Alas, Liu’s spider-sense didn’t alert him to the insidious plot that was about to unfold. “And then he took a bunch of photos of me, and then he took some selfies of himself, and then he was like, ‘That’ll be $20!’” the actor said. “And that was mortifying for me, because I didn’t have $20 to give him. Core memory, clearly.”

(10) INTELLECTUAL (?) PROPERTY. Jon Del Arroz tagged me on X.com about this. I clicked through and was fascinated to learn he has declared Sad Puppies is a movement “owned and led by JDA!”

OFFICIAL Sad Puppies merch is now live on the store! Show your allegiance to this great movement which is owned and led by JDA!

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 14, 1933 — Michael Caine, 91. On my list of favorite British performers of all time, Michael Caine is near the top of that list. Both his genre and non-genre performances are amazing. So let’s take a look at those performances.

Caine portrayed Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. He was quite stellar in this role. And he was in The Prestige, a truly great film, as John Cutter, in Inception as Stephen Miles, Professor John Brand in Interstellar and Sir Michael Crosby in Tenet.

Did you see him in as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol? If not, go see it now. He’s wonderful and The Muppet take on the Dickens story is, errr, well actually touching. Really it is.

Definitely not genre is The Man Who Would Be King, based off the Kipling story, which starred him with Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey and Christopher Plummer. The two primary characters were played by Sean Connery — Daniel Dravot — and Caine played the other, Peachy Carnehan. A truly fantastic film. 

Michael Caine and Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King.

In the Jekyll & Hyde miniseries, he’s got the usual dual role of Dr Henry Jekyll / Mr Edward Hyde. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – in a Miniseries. He did win a Globe for Best Actor for playing Chief Insp. Frederick Abberline in the Jack Ripper miniseries airing the same time.

Nearly thirty years ago, he was Captain Nemo in a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea miniseries. 

He’s in Austin Powers in Goldmember, third film in the franchise. He’s Nigel Powers, a British agent and Austin and Dr. Evil’s father. Can someone explain to me the appeal of these films? 

In Children of Men, he plays Jasper Palmer, Theo’s dealer and friend, Theo being the primary character in this dystopian film. 

He’s Chester King in Kingsman: The Secret Service. That’s off the Millarworld graphic novel of Kingsman: The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons.

I’m reasonably sure that’s all I need to mention about his career.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Blondie anticipates tomorrow’s celebration of World Sleep Day.
  • Frazz figures out the anatomy involved in scientific advancement.
  • Does F Minus depict the dream of some File 770 commenters?
  • Non Sequitur imagines the earliest days of streaming.
  • Carpe Diem has a new origin story.

(13) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 105 of the Octothorpe podcast, John Coxon watches movies, Alison Scott walks on the Moon, and Liz Batty has special bonds. Listen here: “Scorching Hot Month-Old Takes”.

In this episode, we talk through your letters of comment with diversions into Zodiac podcasts, poetry collections, and Scientology. We discuss the BSFA Awards shortlist and return to the Hugo Awards for another round of head-scratching and bewilderment.

A famous photograph of Margaret Hamilton standing beside printed outputs of the code that took the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, overlaid with the words “Octothorpe 105” and “Liz has finished reading the latest Hugo Award exposés”.

(14) OUTSIDE THE BOX — AND INSIDE THE SHELVES. Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits can already be found in some bookstores, ahead of the official release date.

(15) GLIMPSE OF BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7 Will Arrive in 2025 With a Sequel to One of Its Most Beloved Episodes” – IGN has the story.

Netflix’s long-running bleak anthology series, Black Mirror, is coming back for Season 7 next year, and it’s bringing a sequel to fan-favorite episode USS Callister with it.

The streaming platform announced the news during its Next on Netflix event in London (via The Hollywood Reporter), later bringing public confirmation with a cryptic message on X/Twitter. The post contains a video teasing the six episodes, and judging by the familiar logo that appears, it sounds like the third will be the one to give us our USS Callister sequel.

(16) THE GANG’S ALL HERE. “Doctor Who’s Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat unite to support Chris Chibnall” – Radio Times cheers the gesture.

Doctor Who writers past and present have shared a photo together after Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat attended a performance of Chris Chibnall’s new play.

Recently returned showrunner Davies posted the image to his Instagram page alongside the caption: “A marvellous night out in Salisbury to see Chris Chibnall’s wonderful new play, One Last Push.”

And he added: “Also, we plotted Zarbi vs Garms”, referencing two classic Doctor Who monsters…

(17) TRUE OR FALSE? Radio Times reviews evidence supporting story that “Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat ‘returns to write 2024 Christmas special’”.

More than six years after his final episode of Doctor Who aired, it appears that former showrunner Steven Moffat may be returning to write a new episode of the sci-fi.

While the news has not yet been confirmed, it was picked up on Tuesday 12th March that producer Alison Sterling’s CV had been updated to note she had worked on the show’s 2024 Christmas special.

Underneath this, it was noted that the director of the episode is Alex Pillai, while it was stated that the writer is one Steven Moffat. The notes regarding the writer and director of the episode have since been removed….

One factor which may throw doubt on the idea that Moffat has written the special, is that Russell T Davies previously said that he himself was writing it back in 2022.

(18) STARSHIP HITS SOME MARKS. “SpaceX celebrates major progress on the third flight of Starship” – ArsTechnica has details.

… The successful launch builds on two Starship test flights last year that achieved some, but not all, of their objectives and appears to put the privately funded rocket program on course to begin launching satellites, allowing SpaceX to ramp up the already-blistering pace of Starlink deployments.

“Starship reached orbital velocity!” wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, on his social media platform X. “Congratulations SpaceX team!!”

SpaceX scored several other milestones with Thursday’s test flight, including a test of Starship’s payload bay door, which would open and shut on future flights to release satellites into orbit. A preliminary report from SpaceX also indicated Starship transferred super-cold liquid oxygen propellant between two tanks inside the rocket, a precursor to more ambitious in-orbit refueling tests planned in the coming years. Future Starship flights into deep space, such as missions to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, will require SpaceX to transfer hundreds of tons of cryogenic propellant between ships in orbit.

Starship left a few other boxes unchecked Thursday. While it made it closer to splashdown than before, the Super Heavy booster plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in an uncontrolled manner. If everything went perfectly, the booster would have softly settled into the sea after reigniting its engines for a landing burn.

A restart of one of Starship’s Raptor engines in space—one of the three new test objectives on this flight—did not happen for reasons SpaceX officials did not immediately explain.

Part rocket and part spacecraft, Starship is designed to launch up to 150 metric tons (330,000 pounds) of cargo into low-Earth orbit when SpaceX sets aside enough propellant to recover the booster and the ship. Flown in expendable mode, Starship could launch almost double that amount of payload mass to orbit, according to Musk….

Space.com has a video at the link: “SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket into space on epic 3rd test flight (video)”.

(19) FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Elsewhere, some bad news from Japan: “Space One’s Kairos rocket explodes on inaugural flight” reports Reuters.

Kairos, a small, solid-fuel rocket made by Japan’s Space One, exploded shortly after its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit…

(20) TALKING TO NUMBER ONE. In Gizmodo’s opinion, “This New Robot Is So Far Ahead of Elon Musk’s Optimus That It’s Almost Embarrassing”.

As if Elon Musk needed yet another reason to hate OpenAI. Figure, a startup that partnered with OpenAI to develop a humanoid robot, released a new video on Wednesday. And it’s truly heads above anything Tesla has demonstrated to date with the Optimus robot.

The video from Figure, which is available on YouTube, shows a human interacting with a robot dubbed Figure 01 (pronounced Figure One). The human has a natural-sounding conversation with the robot, asking it to first identify what it’s looking at….

(21) MILLION DAYS TRAILER. “A Million Days” is available on Digital Platforms 18 March.

The year is 2041 and the next step in the future of humankind is imminent. After decades of training and research, the mission to create the first lunar colony is about to launch with Anderson as lead astronaut. Jay, an AI purpose built for the mission, has simulated every possible outcome for the expedition. Tensions arise when the chilling motives of Jay become apparent, sowing the seeds of distrust between Anderson, and the group that had gathered to quietly celebrate the launch. As the night descends into chaos, the group’s faith in one another and their mission begins to crack, with the knowledge that the decisions they make before sunrise, will change humanity forever.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/9/23 If You Tape Bacon To A Pixel Scroll Does It Always Fall Bacon Side Down?

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(1) WHEN GRAVITY FAILS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Chuck Jones’ rules for Coyote cartoons said it works best when gravity is what defeats him. Instead, the change in management at Warner Bros seems to be what has claimed his long-awaited film. The mixed live/animated Coyote Vs. Acme is rumored to have been consigned to the dustbin, despite being a finished product. There it will join Bat Girl and Scoob Holiday Haunt!, both already brought to an ignominious end by the Bros. “‘Coyote Vs. Acme’: Finished Live/Action Animated Pic Shelved Completely By Warner Bros As Studio Takes $30M Tax Write-off” – Deadline has the astonishing story.

In another maneuver by the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros Discovery to kill movies, we hear on very good authority that Warner Bros will not be releasing the live-action/animated hybrid Coyote vs. Acme with the conglom taking an estimated $30M write-down on the $70M production. We understand the write-down for the pic was applied to the recently reported Q3.

This reps the third time that Zaslav’s Warner Bros has pulled the plug on a movie greenlit by the previous Warner Media administration; the other two being the Max destined Bat Girl and the animated Scoob Holiday Haunt!.

The difference here is that Coyote vs. Acme is a completed movie with very good test scores, 14 points above the family norm. We’re told that the cash-strapped Warners finds that it’s not worth the cost to release theatrically, or to sell to other buyers (and there are parties who are interested for their own streaming services; we hear Amazon kicked the tires). After reporting a mixed third quarter, the best means for Warners money is a tax write-off. At one point, Coyote vs. Acme was dated on July 21, 2023 for theatrical release before getting pulled; that date placed by the ultimate $1.4 billion grossing Warner Bros biggest hit of all-time, Barbie….

(2) LEAVING THE EXPANSE BEHIND. Gizmodo is on hand as “The Expanse’s James S.A. Corey Announces a New Sci-Fi Trilogy”.

… Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck—who write together as James S.A. Corey—have nixed any return to the world of The Expanse, [but] they’re still working on sci-fi projects together, as today’s big announcement attests.

Fans can look forward to the arrival of The Mercy of Gods, a space opera trilogy “that sees humanity fighting for its survival in a war as old as the universe itself,” according to a press release from publisher Orbit. This book will kick off the Captive’s War trilogy, and it will be released August 6, 2024….

(3) SOMETHING’S MISSING. Victoria Struass posts a “Contest Caution: Lichfield Institute Writing Contest” at Writer Beware.

Just about every temptation for a hungry writer is here. Big bucks for the winners. Feedback on every submission from distinguished judges–at least, one assumes they’re distinguished, since they’re finalists for important literary awards. Monthly stipends! Consideration by literary agencies! What more could a contest offer, even if it does charge a $15 submission fee?

Well…

You’ll probably already have noticed some…oddities…both in the screenshot above and on the contest page. The mis-spelling of Hemingway, to start (plus, it’s PEN–it’s an acronym–not Pen). The curious absence of judges’ names. Guidelines that fail to state when winners will be announced and how they will be notified. An entry form with a copy-and-paste box for submitting your entry (have fun reading, no-name judges)….

(4) IN A MIRROR, VERY DARKLY. “Murky reflections: why sci-fi needs to stop imitating Black Mirror” argues Adrian Horton in the Guardian.

…Black Mirror knock-offs are a scourge of the streaming era, which unfortunately incentivizes dressed-up spins on previous successes over truly cerebral or ambitious imaginations of the future….

(5) JEOPARDY! Last night’s episode of Jeopardy! devoted an entire category to science fictional worlds. Andrew Porter found these responses noteworthy.

Category: At a Loss for Worlds

Answer: Survivors escape to Bronson Beta in the 1933 Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer novel “When” this happens

Wrong question: What is “When Tomorrow Comes”?

No one could ask, “When Worlds Collide”

Same category: It’s the real name of the planet referred to in the title of a 1965 Frank Herbert novel.

He bet it all, got it wrong: “What is Dune?”

Correct question: What is Arrakis?

Same category: At the end of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” this world is destroyed.

No one could ask, “What is the Earth?”

(6) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 96 of Octothorpe, “A Less QR-Code-Using Society”, is ready for listeners.

John Coxon didn’t, Alison Scott would’ve done, and Liz Batty tried. We round up the rest of the news we didn’t talk about in Episode 95, featuring a discussion of how the Chengdu Worldcon went, and the much-anticipated reappearance of THE LIZ BAT. Listen here! 

(7) FEED ME. “John Lewis Christmas Ad Stars a Playful Venus Flytrap” explains Adweek.

In the U.K., watching retailer John Lewis’ Christmas ad is as much of a festive ritual as decorating the tree or exchanging gifts. This year, with a different agency and marketing strategy, the brand is hoping to cement its role in both old and new holiday traditions. 

The new ad, titled “Snapper,” follows the unusual tale of a Venus flytrap. While at a flea market with his family, a boy discovers a seed packet promising to grow into the “perfect Christmas tree.” 

Instead, a carnivorous plant emerges from the soil. Though the boy loves Snapper, the mischievous plant causes disruption and is eventually banished outside after it grows too big for the house. 

On Christmas morning, the boy leaves his family’s normal tree to bring a gift to the Venus flytrap. Snapper spits out confetti and gifts in return, inspiring the family to embrace an unconventional addition to the festivities. … 

(8) FRANK BORMAN (1928-2023). “Astronaut Frank Borman, commander of the first Apollo mission to the moon, has died at age 95” reports Yahoo!

Astronaut Frank Borman, who commanded Apollo 8’s historic Christmas 1968 flight that circled the moon 10 times and paved the way for the lunar landing the next year, has died. He was 95.

Borman died Tuesday in Billings, Montana, according to NASA.

Borman also led troubled Eastern Airlines in the 1970s and early ’80s after leaving the astronaut corps….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 9, 1921 — Alfred Coppel. Have I ever mentioned how much I love pulp? Everything from the writers to the artwork to the magazines themselves are so, so cool. And this writer was one of the most prolific such authors of the Fifties and Sixties. That he was also a SF writer is an added bonus. Indeed, his first science fiction story was “Age of Unreason” in a 1947 Amazing Stories. Under the pseudonym of Robert Cham Gilman, he wrote the Rhada sequence of galactic space opera novels aimed at a young adult market. Wiki claims he was writing under A.C. Marin as well but I cannot find any record of this. (Died 2004.)
  • Born November 9, 1924 — Lawrence T. Shaw. A Hugo Award-winning fan, author, editor and literary agent. In the Forties and Fifties, Larry Shaw edited Nebula, Infinity Science Fiction and Science Fiction Adventures. He received a Special Committee Award during the 1984 Worldcon for lifetime achievement as an editor. His Axe fanzine (co-edited with his wife Noreen) was nominated at Chicon III for a Hugo. (Died 1985.)
  • Born November 9, 1954 — Rob Hansen, 69. British fan, active since the Seventies who has edited and co-edited numerous fanzines including his debut production Epsilon. And he was the 1984 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate. His nonfiction works such as Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK: 1930-1980, lasted updated just a few years ago, are invaluable. 
  • Born November 9, 1988 — Tahereh Mafi, 35. Iranian-American whose Furthermore, a YA novel about a pale girl living in a world of both color and magic of which she has neither, I highly recommended it. Whichwood is a companion novel to this work. She also has a young adult dystopian thriller series.
  • Born November 9, 1989 — Alix E. Harrow, 34. Winner at Dublin 2019 of the Best Short Story Hugo for “Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” which also was nominated for a BSFA and Nebula Award. Other Hugo-nominated work: The Ten Thousand Doors of January was nomination at CoNZealand; “A Spindle Splintered” novella and “Mr. death” short story at Chicon 8; and “A Mirror Mended” novella this year. She has three excellent novels to date, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches which was nominated for a WFA and the just released Starling House.  She has a double handful of short stories not yet collected anywhere.  More’s the pity. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Foxes in Love features a Dune crossover.

(11) BRING ME THE HEAD OF C-3PO. “Star Wars C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels is selling film memorabilia” reports BBC News.

The actor who played C-3PO in Star Wars said “it feels like it is time” to sell the costumes, props and scripts he kept from the iconic films.

Anthony Daniels, 77, is parting company with items from his personal collection via Hertfordshire-based auctioneer Propstore from Thursday.

The famous gold helmet he wore for his character in the first film from 1977 is estimated to sell for up to £1m.

Daniels said he was excited for his collection to “find a good home”.

“I realised I had these items and they’re not unloved but they are unlooked at – we don’t have them crowding the sitting room,” he said, explaining why he has chosen to sell the items now.

“Will I feel sad to part with them? No. I will enjoy the fact people will cherish and display them.”…

Propstore marked the Screen-matched Light-up C-3PO Head as sold, however, the press has not yet revealed the amount of the winning bid.

(12) FANHISTORY ART ZOOM ON YOUTUBE. Fanac.org’s two-part Zoom with a panel of fanartists now can be viewed on YouTube.

Part 1

Title: Evolution of Art(ists) (Pt 1 of 2): Grant Canfield, Tim Kirk, Jim Shull, and Dan Steffan

Description: In part 1 of this 2-part session, you’ll hear their “origin stories”, their influences, how they found science fiction fandom, and what they perceive as the unique benefits of fandom to young artists. You’ll find out why artists should avoid hecto, and torturous tales of justifying margins by hand. There are intriguing insights into adjusting one’s art to the reproduction medium, and how fandom helped people along, especially towards professional careers. Larger than life figures make their appearance, including several stories of Bill Rotsler.

There’s plenty more, including their views on Carl Barks, why Dan started “Lizard Inn”, Jim’s take on the slippery slope to having a fanzine too big to staple without an industrial stapler, Tim on his deep desire to tell stories, and Grant’s opinion of “Starling”.  The fun continues in Part 2.

Part 2

Title: Evolution of Art(ists) (Pt 2 of 2): Grant Canfield, Tim Kirk, Jim Shull, and Dan Steffan

Description: In part 2 of this 2-part session, the fan art discussion continues, with more on professional careers as well. The conversation ranges from Tolkien’s house to Harlan Ellison’s house, from “The Last Dangerous Visions” to Bill Gibson, from Harlan Ellison stories to BNFs that had an impact. There are more Rotsler stories too. You’ll hear about silent jam sessions, “Esoteric Fan Art Tales”, and the impact that conventions had on artists who worked in isolation.  A real treat is the slideshow of samples of our panelists’ art, with their live comments on what each piece represents.  

Q&A starts about 45 minutes into the video, with comments as well as questions, including Ted White’s discussion of the impact of Mondrian’s work on modern magazine design. Lest you believe that fanzines are a thing of the past, the video wraps up with a plug for an upcoming paper fanzine by faned Geri Sullivan. 

(13) A COSMIC EVENT. FirstShowing introduces “US Trailer for French ‘Cosmic Event’ Sci-Fi Thriller Film ‘The Gravity’”.

“After the alignment, the world will change forever. Everything will start over.”  Dark Star Pictures has released an official US trailer for an indie sci-fi action thriller film from France titled The Gravity, made by filmmaker Cédric Ido. This intially premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival last year and it already opened in France earlier this year. Finally set for a US release on VOD starting in November. A mysterious cosmic event upsets the Earth’s gravity and sets the sky ablaze in a red hue, creating chaos in a futuristic Parisian suburb. This French “genre-busting” thriller is more of a story about street culture in the suburbs, following a local band of teenagers and their feud with other residents in the area….

(14) SPACE COMMAND. Marc Scott Zicree has dropped “Why Science Fiction Matters! Unreleased Space Command Full Scene”.

Meantime there five days remain in the Kickstarter to raise funds for “Space Command Forgiveness: Post-Production”. At this time fans have pledged almost $52,000 of the $60,000 goal.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/17/23 Whoever Lives In Glass Pixels Should Not Throw Scrolls

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(1) MEDICAL UPDATE. Ursula Vernon got a biopsy on a lump, and the results are unfortunate.

(2) MOVING WORDS. David Gerrold has opened a GoFundMe appeal to “Help Move David Gerrold’s Family To Vermont”. He offers a couple of free ebooks as an incentive to go to the link and read the whole thing.

…As many of you know, we’re planning to move to Vermont as soon as we can. It’s about the right schools for the kids, the right environment for Sean and Alyce’s health and work, and the right place for me to (eventually) retire. We have been working hard to get this house in shape, get all of our paperwork in order, and find a place that suits our specific needs.

…Right now, I’m the sole support of my family. I’m doing my best, but there’s a WGAW strike, so there are options that are on hold and if the past is any guide, will probably evaporate when the strike ends. Alyce has a toddler and a baby to take care of, so going back to work is out of the question for her. For various reasons, Sean has to rethink his career options, so he’s concentrating on being the best dad he can, and that’s fine with me too. Being a dad is good for him and good for the kids.

So right now, it’s all on me. I’ve got some resources, just not enough. So, I’m asking for a little help. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated. It will get us where we need to be….

(3) THE GATES WE KEEP. Norman Spinrad’s latest “At Large SF” asks how to “Save The SF Magazines From AI, Amazon, And SFWA?” But is this a cure?

It is no secret that the three traditional ink and paper SF magazines, Asimov’s, Analog, and Fantasy and Science Fiction, are in deep trouble, and perhaps not as obviously so are the main online SF magazines. All of them are overrun with AI created submissions and how what was once SFWA, a professional SF writers’ union in all but name, has become just as much a part of the problem, if not worse.

When the SFWA, of which I was one of the creators, if you wanted to be a full member, as I remember, you had to have published 3 stories in magazines accepted as professional, or one novel published by such a book publisher.

This more or less continued while I was three time president, and until fairly recently. In those days, there were no more that 1000 full members of SFWA, but rather rapidly it has now become bloated by about 2500 members of all sorts of memberships which you can join and remain as long as you pay for one the various levels of available membership. And you can also buy even more sorts of official SFWA stuff, a perfect fannish economic operation.

Back in the day, you could write “Member of SFWA” on the header of your submission as long as it was true, and it could mean some thing to an editor, and it might get your story read above the slush pile….

And SFWA membership now plays the same lucrative game. Now since anyone could email anything anywhere without having print it, put it into an envelope, and mail it into the slushpile, anyone can do likewise for free, and of late, you don’t have to really be human, to make the slushpiles even more enormous.

And to make matters worse, since sales in book stories or even drug stores have largely disappeared,, the magazines were forced to largely resort to online subscriptions, meaning Amazon, which has now stopped serving them.

What is more, the SF magazines have for some time become just about the last magazines containing any real short stories, and if they should disappear, so might the literary short story, period.

What can be done about this? It seems to me that the magazines are making a big mistake worrying about what to do about the AI submissions and trying find ways to filter them out of the slushpiles. The answer to that, of course, would be AI slush readers, which at least could be easily taught to recognize each other, if not to recognize the 10% of literary interest.

So what I propose is to look backwards instead of forward to the original SFWA. Call it simply the SF Society. It could be the top of the SFWA or it could be independent, it doesn’t matter. As the original SFWA, there is a membership requirement of say the same 3 published stories by the approved magazines or maybe books too, but with a difference.

If you are a member of the SFS you are entitled to say so on your submissions to any SFS approved publications. But the SFS does not approve the publishers, they approve themselves! They just understand that the SFS mark on a submission means that the writer is a member and they can read it atop of the slushpile, it’s not a requirement, it’s a service.

But where does that leave would-be writers who believe they have what it takes to join the SFS? Look backward. There have long been SF writing schools where you must not just pay but where you must send a story and have it be accepted by a literary board as sufficiently promising.

But SFS is not a school. It has its own literary approval board for the sufficiently promising writers. So who is on the approval board?

Look much further back to Plato’s REPUBLIC. Plato was skeptical of democracy, so he wrote what amounted to the very first skeptical fiction in the form of the non historical Atlantis, ruled by proper philosophers such as himself. And who had selected them? Philosophers who had already been approved by other such philosophizers and so far up the line.

Okay, this is not democracy, but we are not talking about selecting rulers. An SFS approval board could be self-elected SFS member volunteers. Or even magazine editors as well who might want to serve and were approved by the SFS approval board….

(4) TIDHAR Q&A. “Pulp Fiction: PW Talks with Lavie Tidhar” at Publishers Weekly.

An unlikely cast is pulled into the hunt for lost pulp classic Lode Stars in World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar’s metafictional sci-fi romp The Circumference of the World (Tachyon, Sept.).

What inspired this story?

It began so long ago it’s hard to say! The very early seeds for it were born on Vanua Lava in Vanuatu, back in 2007, where the first section of the book takes place. I became interested in the little-known story of the WWII Coastwatchers there and climbed to their hill fort, which is much as it appears in the novel. But that was just one strand; then I had to wait for the others to materialize.

And how did they?

The black holes came from a novelette I wrote that was also called “Lode Stars.” I ran into someone who told me they thought there was more to it, which haunted me because I realized they were right. The section about hapless book dealers in 2001 London was conceived of as a trip to a vanished past. All those bookshops are long gone, and I was trying to catch a bit of the soul of that world before it disappeared. Which, in a way, is the whole theme of the book: how much of what we are is what we remember and what happens if those memories are lost?…

(5) COSY DELENDA EST. Cora Buhlert does an impressively thorough roundup of the players and viewpoints represented in the recent social media flash about “cosy horror” in “Same Old Debate, New Clothes: The Cozy Horror Controversy”. She begins:

Sigh. It’s that time of the year again and we’re having the same old debate again whether some interlopers are trying to ruin the purity of the genre and gentrify it by writing and reading the wrong sort of books.

This time around, the focus is not Hopepunk or what a certain podcast termed Squeecore, but cozy horror, cozy fantasy’s spookier sibling.

The current debate seems to have been sparked by an episode of the Books in the Freezer podcast about cozy horror (which I haven’t listened to yet), which received some pushback on Twitter, and in particular by a recent article on The Mary Sue by Julia Glassman on the cozy horror phenomenon and the backlash against it. Though the term “cozy horror” isn’t new. Here is an article by Jose Cruz from Nightmare Magazine, a horror mag, about cozy horror from 2021 and I’m pretty sure Cruz didn’t invent the term either. The phenomenon is much older anyway. What is now called cozy horror goes back to the ghost stories of the nineteenth century. A genre that – as Jess Nevins pointed out on Twitter – has triggered criticism and backlash for almost two hundred years now. And the reason was that ghost stories were mostly read and written by women. So yup, it’s plain old misogyny….

And Cora ends:

… In short, it’s all depressingly familiar and I probably should have just ignored this latest flare-up of this ages old argument, but the whole cozy horror debate annoyed me enough to put in my two cents.

Cora’s conclusion reminds me of a favorite H. L. Mencken remark, that it is best to spend life sitting in the brewery drinking beer, but sometimes he couldn’t help but rush out and break a bottle over someone’s head.

(6) HWA PRIDE. The Horror Writers Association blog continues its thematic interviews in “A Point of Pride: Interview with Lee Mandelo”.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? 

Anything that provokes strong feeling, I’m into that—and horror, alongside erotica, devotes itself so well to powerful, bodily emotions. As a weird gay child of the ’90s, I was probably destined to love horror. There was such a huge boom in scary books, movies, and so on by LGBTQ+ artists going on during that decade. Unsurprising, given things like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, alongside government abandonment and surging social persecution through the late ’80s onward. I didn’t have that context as a kid, but I had the materials, and they left strong impressions on me! 

Looking back now, I feel like being drawn to horror—a place where stories about being an “outsider” and also experiencing extreme dread and fear could be made somehow safe to explore, in their own strange way—was only natural.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1978 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Vonda N. McIntyre is an author I’m well familiar with as I’ve read her Dreamsnake (we get our Beginning this Scroll), The Moon and the Sun and The King’s Daughter. Anyone read her Starfarers series? I’ve not but it looks potentially readable and certainly how she came to write it is a fascinating story indeed. 

Pocket Books decided to have her do novelizations of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. She created names for Trek characters that later became canon, including Hikaru Sulu, and Kirk’s mother Winona.

She’s won a number of Awards including one at Seacon ’79 for Dreamsnake which was also nominated for a Ditmar. She won a Nebula for Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand novelette (also nominated for a Hugo) and another one for her The Moon and The Stars novel. 

Another one I feel left us far too early though she had seven decades of life.  She died of metastatic pancreatic cancer. Damn.

Here’s our Beginning…

The little boy was frightened. Gently, Snake touched his hot forehead. Behind her, three adults stood close together, watching, suspicious, afraid to show their concern with more than narrow lines around their eyes. They feared Snake as much as they feared their only child’s death. In the dimness of the tent, the strange blue glow of the lantern gave no reassurance. 

The child watched with eyes so dark the pupils were not visible, so dull that Snake herself feared for his life. She stroked his hair. It was long, and very pale, dry and irregular for several inches near the scalp, a striking color against his dark skin. Had Snake been with these people months ago, she would have known the child was growing ill.

“Bring my case, please,” Snake said.

The child’s parents started at her soft voice. Perhaps they had expected the screech of a bright jay, or the hissing of a shining serpent. This was the first time Snake had spoken in their presence. She had only watched, when the three of them had come to observe her from a distance and whisper about her occupation and her youth; she had only listened, and then nodded, when finally they came to ask her help. Perhaps they had thought she was mute. 

The fair-haired younger man lifted her leather case. He held the satchel away from his body, leaning to hand it to her, breathing shallowly with nostrils flared against the faint smell of musk in the dry desert air. 

Snake had almost accustomed herself to the kind of uneasiness he showed; she had already seen it often.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 17, 1903 — William Bogart. Yes, another one who wrote Doc Savage novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, some with Lester Dent. Between 1949 and 1947, he or they wrote some fifteen Doc Savage novels in total. Some of them would get reprinted in the late Eighties in omnibuses that also included novels done with Lester Dent. (Died 1977.)
  • Born June 17, 1927 — Wally Wood. Comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work on EC Comics’ Mad magazine, Marvel’s Daredevil, and Topps’s landmark Mars Attacks set. He was the inaugural inductee into the comic book industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and was later inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (Died 1981.)
  • Born June 17, 1931 — Dean Ing. I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Soft Targets which I really liked and I know I read all of his Man-Kzin Wars stories as I went through a phase of reading all that popcorn literature set in Niven’s universe. (Died 2020.)
  • Born June 17, 1941 — William Lucking. Here because he played Renny in Doc Savage: Man of Bronze. (I know I’ve seen it, but I’ll be damn if I remember much about it.)  He’s also had one-offs in Mission: Impossible, The Incredible Hulk, The American Hero, The Quest, Voyagers, X-Files, The Lazarus Man, Millenium, Deep Space Nine and Night Stalker. (Died 2021.)
  • Born June 17, 1953 — Phyllis Weinberg, 70. She’s a fan who was married to fellow fan Robert E. Weinberg (died 2016). They co-edited the first issue of The Weird Tales Collector, and she co-edited the Weinberg Tales with him, Doug Ellis and Robert T. Garcia. She, along with Nancy Ford and Tina L. Jens, wrote “The Many Faces of Chicago” essay that was that was in the 1996 WFC guide. The Weinbergs co-chaired the World Fantasy Convention In 1996.
  • Born June 17, 1982 — Jodie Whittaker, 41. The Thirteenth Doctor who did three series plus several upcoming specials. She played Ffion Foxwell in the Black Mirror‘s “The Entire History of You”, and was Samantha Adams in Attack the Block, a horror SF film. I like her version of The Doctor a lot with David Tennant being my other favorite modern Doctor. 
  • Born June 17, 1982 — Arthur Darvill, 41. Actor who’s has in my opinion had two great roles. The first was playing Rory Williams, one of the Eleventh Doctor’s companions. The second, and to my mind the more interesting of the two, was playing the time-traveler Rip Hunter in the Legends of Tomorrow, a Time Lord of sorts. (And yes, I know where the name came from.) He also played Seymour Krelborn in The Little Shop of Horrors at the Midlands Arts Centre, and Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe.  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) A DWAYNE MCDUFFIE CALL OUT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] In the next-to-last and final episodes of the WB’s The Flash series, Chester (who, a season or so ago replaced Cisco as Team Flash’s science/tech nerd) (in Chester’s case, as a blerd), uttered, in moments of surprise/stress: “Sweet N.K. Jemisin!” and “Dazzling Dwayne McDuffie!”

The late Dwayne McDuffie wrote a lot of comics and an animated series, including, for DC, some Justice League, Batman, and others, see The DC Universe by Dwayne McDuffie  (I’m using HooplaDigital links; should be available in hardcopy from many libraries and comic/book stores, digitally presumably also from DC, probably ditto ComiXology and Libby.)

I know him best for co-founding Milestone Comics in the early 1990s which, per Wikipedia, “focused on underrepresented minorities in American comics”, including Static (also became an animated series), and my favorite, Icon, (see Icon Vol. 1: A Hero’s Welcome and Icon Vol. 2: The Mothership Connection.)

Milestone comics were published and distributed by DC, but were, at the time, in separate universes… which led to multi-part crossover, with, IIRC, one of my favorite cover gimmicks, namely little sticky-plastic decals of the characters (similar to Colorforms, but I don’t think that term’s been genericized) on a sealed-plastic bag (so I don’t think I opened that copy, I’d have to check my Milestone box…).

As of a few years ago, the Milestone Universe got shuffled/merged into DC main continuity, along with some character rebooting. (E.g., Virgil “Static” Hawkins, last I checked, was working at STAR Labs.)

(11) PICARD AND FRIENDS. Deadline has a superlative interview with the Picard cast: “’Star Trek: Picard’s Patrick Stewart, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes”.

DEADLINE: Do you remember your first meeting with one another, way back in 1986?

JONATHAN FRAKES: I do remember the first time I met Patrick. We’d been called into the makeup trailer to meet the great king of makeup, Michael Westmore. Patrick and I introduced ourselves to one another, and we got right into a cricket versus baseball conversation that eventually led to him becoming a big LA Dodgers fan [laughs].

GATES McFADDEN: I was doing a play with Linda Hunt called The Matchmaker, down in La Jolla. Patrick came down to see it. We went out to dinner and it was all very exciting; we found we had a lot of mutual friends who were in the Royal Shakespeare Company. We talked all night. We both said, “I don’t know, I’m nervous about this whole thing…”

PATRICK STEWART: I remember people telling me not to worry about signing a six-year contract. They said, “You’ll be lucky to make it through the first season.” You cannot revive an iconic series, that’s what they told us. I was told, “Get a plane ticket, come over here, do the show, make some money for the first time in your life, and work on your tan, then you can go home.”

FRAKES: You have to remember, audiences were not ready for a bald English captain with a French name. And a Klingon on the bridge, and a blind guy driving. It was a very strange environment and people were skeptical to say the least. I didn’t know anything about Star Trek. Neither did Gates, or Brent [Spiner], or Patrick. I think [Michael] Dorn did, and I know your space son, Gates, Wil Wheaton did. But we had different tastes in television — in spite of the fact that my wife, the wonderful Genie Frakes, had a poster of Captain Kirk on her bedroom wall when she was a kid [laughs].

McFADDEN: Brent said the same, that we just didn’t know if this was a good idea.

Johnny, do you remember the first time I met you? We went to a costume fitting the day before a shoot, and I was so excited and intense about it all. It was a silly scene in a shopping mall. I said, “Can we rehearse? Can we go over the scene?” You looked at me and just said, “Sure.” After about three times, you were like, “I think we’ve got it.” It was a four-line scene [laughs]. But I’d never done anything like this; committed to a series like that.

STEWART: Of course, I found out eventually that I was also signing up for six years of Jonathan Frakes.

FRAKES: Hey, now [laughs].

(12) SFF STALWART. Linda Hamilton of Terminator, Resident Alien and Beauty and the Beast fame has been cast in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 reports Variety.

“Stranger Things” Season 5 is adding Linda Hamilton to its cast. The announcement was made Saturday as part of Netflix’s annual Tudum event.

Exact details on the character Hamilton will be playing are being kept under wraps….

(13) BACK IN THE BLACK. On CBS Saturday Morning, “Black Mirror” Charlie Brooker discusses the show’s return.

“Black Mirror,” the science-fiction series, has released a new season after four years. Ahead of the release of the new episodes, “CBS Saturday Morning” sat down with Charlie Brooker, the creative mind behind the show. Jeff Glor reports.

(14) THE ENCELADUS FIZZ. “A ‘Soda Ocean’ on a Moon of Saturn Has All the Ingredients for Life” reports the New York Times.

Enceladus — the sixth-largest of Saturn’s 146 moons — has a liquid ocean with a rocky floor under its bright, white and frosty surface. Ice volcanoes spew frozen grains of material into space, generating one of the many rings circling the planet.

Now, a team of researchers has discovered that those icy grains contain phosphates. They found them using data from Cassini, a joint NASA-European orbiter that concluded its study of Saturn, its rings and moons in 2017. It is the first time phosphorus has been found in an ocean beyond Earth. The results, which add to the prospect that Enceladus is home to extraterrestrial life, were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We weren’t expecting this. We didn’t look for it,” said Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin who led the study. He described the realization that they had found phosphates (chemicals containing the element phosphorus) as a “tantalizing moment.”

With the discovery of phosphorus on the ocean world, scientists say they have now found all of the elements there that are essential to life as we know it. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in human bones and teeth, and scientists say it is the rarest bio-essential ingredient in the cosmos. Planetary researchers had previously detected the other five key elements on Enceladus: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur (the last of which has been tentatively detected).

(15) CAN’T FLY AWAY. Scientific American focuses on “The Mystery of Australia’s Paralyzed Parrots”.

…Cases of what is called lorikeet paralysis syndrome (LPS) have been increasing over the past decade, says veterinarian Claude Lacasse of the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital in the eastern Australian city of Brisbane. It is now considered one of Australia’s most significant wildlife diseases. But scientists are baffled as to what is causing it….

Native to Australia’s eastern seaboard, rainbow lorikeets dwell in forest and scrubland and in leafy coastal suburbs. They are the country’s most common backyard bird. The charismatic parrots typically drink the nectar of the fragrant blossoms of native trees and shrubs. But widespread habitat loss, heavy rains that damage blossoms and severe wildfires have increasingly driven lorikeets to other food sources, including fruit, seeds and, strangely, even meat. This increasing variety in their diet is one reason it’s so difficult to identify what’s making them sick….

To take on the mystery, Phalen and his team set up a citizen science project on iNaturalist, a social network for biodiversity observations, asking people in LPS hotspots to take photographs of wild lorikeets feeding on plants.

(16) DIGITAL AFTERLIVES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] What’s it all about? Search me.  Some say 42, but other may want more than a two digit answer (no raising of fingers here).  And then again, what happens next? Is there an afterlife? Gosh, I hope not.  Too much trouble with this one.  Besides, if there was an afterlife it must be awfully crowded by now. (Still, I suppose one benefit might be finally being able to meet aliens?) Anyway, this week Isaac Arthur ponders digital afterlives…

For as long as we have had history and likely before, people have contemplated a life after this one, but might we one day create artificial afterlives? And if so, will we create heavens or hells?

This last reminds me of an Iain Banks novel…

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Christopher Rowe, Danny Sichel, Daniel Dern, Cora Buhlert, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Jones.]