(1) KING JOINS RUSH FOR THE X-IT. “Stephen King leaves X, describing atmosphere as ‘too toxic’” reports the Guardian.
Stephen King has announced he is quitting X after describing the platform as “too toxic”.
In a post on X on Thursday, the author of The Shining and Shawshank Redemption wrote: “I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.” Referring to the rival platform launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, he added: “Follow me on Threads, if you like.”
This week, the Guardian said it would stop posting on X, citing concerns over toxic content on the platform. The German football club St Pauli, the actor Jamie Lee Curtis, the US TV journalist Don Lemon and Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia have also announced they will no longer post on the site.
On Wednesday, King denied he had called X’s owner, Elon Musk, “Trump’s new first lady” or that the world’s richest person, a staunch Donald Trump supporter, had kicked him off the platform – drawing a reply of “Hi Steve!” from Musk’s own account.
The Guardian left ahead of King:
…On Wednesday, the Guardian said it would no longer post from its official accounts because the benefits of being on the site were outweighed by the negatives, citing the “often disturbing content” found on it….
Since the election there’s been a mass X-odus. Bluesky has been one of the beneficiaries. File 770, which honestly has never had a big following at X.com, has lost 150 readers there — while gaining over 400 at Bluesky. We’re probably in somebody’s Starter Pack. Once people discover what they’ve signed up for I predict there will be a market correction…
(2) B&N BOOK OF THE YEAR. Barnes & Noble has announced James by Percival Everett as the 2024 Book of the Year reports Publishers Weekly. Filers soundly rejected my efforts to label James as being of genre interest. However, the bookseller has specially recognized two additional books, naming Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (definitely genre) as its inaugural Children’s Book of the Year, and The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan as its first-ever Gift Book of the Year. The entire list of “2024 Book of the Year Finalists” is here at B&N Reads.
(3) DARK HORSE FOR AWARDS CONSIDERATION? “You probably haven’t heard of Meanwhile on Earth. It’s only 2024’s best sci-fi movie” according to Digital Trends. A lot is revealed about the plot at the link, and there are more clips.
… Meanwhile on Earth ends the way it should end, which is to say not all is revealed, and it’s up to you to decide what happens. Remember, this isn’t a big-budget sci-fi movie, so there’s no need to satisfy a mass audience who desperately need all questions answered and all mysteries revealed.
This film doesn’t do that, and it’s better for it. The ending is either happy or sad depending on how you interpret it. I’m leaning more to the former, although like everything else in the film, happiness comes at a cost, and you’re still left asking the film’s central question: Was everything Elsa did worth it?…
(4) BEFORE THERE WAS AI. Paul O’Connor reminds us about “The Wisdom of Wally Wood”.
One particular saying of comics arts genius Wally Wood has always stuck with me:
“Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.”
I worked in comics for several years, and then — as in Wally Wood’s day — creators were mostly paid by the page. There was a minimum quality bar you needed to hit, but quantity was the thing. As a writer, I could manage about eight finished script pages per day. That meant I wrote a comic in three days. To make my rent, I needed to write four or five comics a month. It’s largely because of those days that I still think of myself as a pulp writer at heart.
(I envied writers who went faster — still do).
In that kind of environment, you need outlines, structures, reliable starting places, formulas. And you need to work fast.
Wood’s quote hits to the heart of those requirements. If it worked before, it should work again. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use your tools to tell the story, then tell the next story, and the next. Most of all, don’t worry about starting with a copy. By the time you finish the work, it will be your own.
One of the artists Wally Wood copied … was himself. His “22 Panels That Always Work” was a toolkit of poses and composition for injecting variety into boring panels from “some dumb writer (who) has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!” (Ahem)….
(5) FORBIDDEN AGAIN. Deadline tells us: “’Forbidden Planet’ Remake Set; Brian K. Vaughan To Adapt Sci-Fi Classic”. Of course, Hugo voters know who Vaughan is. But are we excited?
Warner Bros has made a deal to mount a new version of the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. The film will be written by comic book and screenwriter Brian K. Vaughan, and it will be produced by Emma Watts.
For its forward-thinking themes, the film is considered a north star for science fiction writing and cinema that came after it. It has never had a big-screen remake — though James Cameron reportedly once considered it — partly because the rights were complicated and difficult to untangle. The studio and Watts finally got that major obstacle out of the way….
… Vaughan is the Hugo- and Eisner Award-winning comic book writer and screenwriter whose comic creations include Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Pride of Baghdad, Saga and Paper Girls. He also wrote on such comics as X-Men, Spider-Man and Captain America — and his TV work includes serving as writer, story editor and producer of three seasons of Lost, after being tapped by Damon Lindelof. Vaughan was then handpicked by Steven Spielberg to adapt Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome. He has the sci-fi bona fides….
(6) WIN THE STOKER AWARD IN HALF AN HOUR. The Horror Writers Association debuted its “official tabletop game” at StokerCon 2024 – Sudden Acts of Horror! Available from the Stop The Killer online store. Takes 30 minutes to play.
In this fun party charades game, teams invent fake horror novel titles on-the-spot to score points and win their very own mini Bram Stoker Award®!
The game comes packaged in a box that looks and opens like a novel, and includes:
- 460 words printed on 230 double-sided tiles
- 1 velvety black drawstring bag with gold cord to hold the tiles
- 1 mini (2.5″) Bram Stoker Award®
- 3 Dice
- 1 Sand timer
- 1 Score pad with pencil
- 1 Rule Book
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: — Star Trek’s “The Tholian Web”
Untold years ago this evening, Star Trek’s “The Tholian Web” first aired.
It was written by Judy Burns, her first professional script. She would later write scripts for myriad genre series including Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man and Fantasy Island. Her co-writer was Chet Richards, this would be his only script.
Primary guest cast was Sean Morgan as Lt. O’Neil, Barbara Babcock as the voice of Loskene who was the Tholian commander (she was Mea 3 in “A Taste of Armagedon” and Philana in “Plato’s Stepchildren” plus four voice roles), and Paul Baxley (uncredited in the episode) as the Captain of the Defiant. Baxley was the stunt coordinator for the series, and the stunt double for Shatner.
RED ALERT, ERR, SPOILER ALERT. GO DRINK SOME KLINGON BLOOD WINE IF YOU CAN STOMACH IT. NOT ALL CAN.
The Defiant has gone missing. Everyone can see the faintly green glowing ship, and the Enterprise is not picking up on any sensor readings. “Fascinating!” says Spock. (How many times did we hear those words in the final season?)
Kirk decides Chekov, Bones, Spock and himself will beam over and check it out. They beam aboard the Defiant, each wearing a special suit. Everyone there is dead. Are you surprised? A Red Shirt murdered the Captain. Again, are we supposed to be surprised? This is a season three episode. I consider that season by far the weakest season.
Then transporter seriously acts out. Scotty manages to get it almost behave but says he can take only three at a time. (Plot device!) Kirk says he’ll beam last. He vanishes. Errr, no surprise. And they can’t get a fix on him. No, I won’t say that again.
As Chekov observes, the Defiant disappeared and took the captain with her. Shortly thereafter, aliens called the Tholians demand that the Enterprise go away. Spock, who is now in command, insists that they will not leave until Kirk is rescued.
The Tholians decide to trap the crew there inside an energy web, and reveal that this is a part of space where people tend to go insane as if we need to be told that by now. The crew begins to go insane, again no surprise.
Kirk is declared dead after attempts to save him have failed. Will it be any surprise that then Kirk is rescued? I think not. Will all be well in the end? What do you think?
In a two-part episode of Enterprise, “In a Mirror, Darkly”, written by Michael Sussman, it is told that the Defiant has reappeared in the Mirror Universe of Archer’s time, where it is salvaged by the Tholians and later stolen from them by Jonathan Archer of the Terran Empire who tries but fails to become Emperor of that Empire when he is murdered by his lover so becomes Empress. All of this happening because the Defiant is the most technologically advanced starship in the Empire.
Yes, I very much like the latter story and think those episodes were very well told. Each of the regular cast here got to do something they didn’t usually get to do, actually really act.
ENJOY THE WINE? OR NOT? EITHER WAY DO COME BACK BACK NOW.
This is the first appearance of a Tholian in Star Trek — in this case, Commander Loskene. For this appearance, Loskene appeared only on the Enterprise’s viewscreen and was portrayed simply by a puppet created by Mike Minor.
They would be a recurring presence in the Trek verse with three appearances in Star Trek Next Generation, seven in Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Nemesis and Enterprise twice.
It is well worth noting as Memory Alpha says, “The approximately two dozen crew members who attend Kirk’s memorial service appear to constitute the largest assemblage of Enterprise personnel in the original series.” Having seen the rest of the various Trek series, I don’t think there’s another scene where there’s that many crew members assembled. Anyone remember one?
It is considered by most critics and a lot of fans alike to be one of the best Trek episodes done though it did not get a Hugo nomination unlike a lot of other Trek episodes. It appears we were more picky than they were.
Need I say that both are on Paramount+?
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal seeks answers to Big Questions.
- Eek! says no to hanging out.
- Thatababy knows quests.
- Loose Parts thanks supporters.
(9) VIDEO GAME CELEBRATES 20TH ANNIVERSARY. “’We don’t go to Ravenholm’: the story behind Half-Life 2’s most iconic level” as told in the Guardian.
At the start of Valve’s Half-Life 2, the seminal first-person shooter game that turns 20 this month, taciturn scientist Gordon Freeman is trapped within a dystopian cityscape. Armed soldiers patrol the streets, and innocent citizens wander around in a daze, bereft of purpose and future. Dr Wallace Breen, Freeman’s former boss at the scientific “research centre” Black Mesa, looks down from giant video screens, espousing the virtues of humankind’s benefactors, an alien race known as The Combine.
As Freeman stumbles through these first few levels of Half-Life 2, the player acclimatises to the horrible future laid out before them. It’s hardly the most cheerful setting, but there are some friendly faces (security guard Barney, Alyx and Eli Vance) and even moments of humour, as Dr Isaac Kleiner’s pet, a debeaked face-eating alien called Lamarr, runs amok in his laboratory. It feels safe. It feels fun. It feels familiar. There’s even a crowbar! And then, the foreshadowing. “That’s the old passage to Ravenholm,” mutters Alyx Vance during Freeman’s chapter five tour of the Black Mesa East facility. “We don’t go there any more.” You feel a shiver down your spine; you know you will end up going there.
“[Ravenholm] was a totally different environment from what the player had been in until that point,” says Dario Casali, level designer and member of the informal City 17 Cabal, a group within Valve that worked on Half-Life 2’s most famous level. “It was an outlier of a map set that survived from a pretty early build of the game, borne from a need to give the newly introduced Gravity Gun a place to shine.”
(10) STOCKHOLDER SUES HASBRO. “Hasbro sued in investor suit for allegedly lying about overpurchased inventory after pandemic demand” – Polygon analyzes the claims.
A self-described “investor rights law firm” filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that Hasbro, the tabletop gaming and toy company, misrepresented its excessive inventory to investors, something the firm says is a violation of federal securities laws. Polygon reached out to Hasbro for comment and has yet to hear back.
Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann (the law firm) filed a complaint in a New York court on behalf of the West Palm Beach Firefighters’ Pension Fund, asking the court to grant the case class action status — meaning other investors and stock purchasers can participate. Hasbro, like other gaming companies, saw a boost in interest and sales during the pandemic, when people were looking for things to do in their homes; games were an obvious choice. The lawsuit alleges Hasbro purchased inventory to meet that demand — but ended up buying too much. Hasbro allegedly told investors the high purchasing was necessary to “mitigate supply chain risk and meet consumer demand” ahead of the 2022 holiday season, according to the lawsuit. When that inventory sat, Hasbro said the stock “reflected outstanding and anticipated demand” and not a decreased demand. The lawsuit alleges Hasbro was intentionally misleading investors and knew it “overpurchased inventory to an extend that significantly outpaced customer demand.” The timeline makes sense: 2022 is when the world started opening up more broadly, and people were eager to get out of their houses….
…Because of all this — especially the October 2023 financial disclosures — stock prices declined and investors lost money, the lawsuit alleges, to the tune of a loss of $831 million in shareholder value. The stock value Hasbro previously had, according to the lawsuit’s claims, was due to inflated prices due to the lack of disclosures….
(11) LATE REPORT FROM THE EARLY NO-WARNING SYSTEM. Space.com tells readers: “An asteroid hit Earth just hours after being detected. It was the 3rd ‘imminent impactor’ of 2024”. “By the time the astrometry reached the impact monitoring systems, the impact had already happened.”
Last month, an asteroid impacted Earth’s atmosphere just hours after being detected — somehow, it managed to circumvent impact monitoring systems during its approach to our planet. However, on the bright side, the object measured just 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter and posed very little threat to anything on Earth’s surface.
This asteroid, designated 2024 UQ, was first discovered on Oct. 22 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey in Hawaii, a network of four telescopes that scan the sky for moving objects that might be space rocks on a collision course with Earth. Two hours later, the asteroid burned up over the Pacific Ocean near California, making it an “imminent impactor.”The small amount of time between detection and impact means impact monitoring systems, operated by the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, didn’t receive tracking data about the incoming asteroid until after it struck Earth, according to the center’s November 2024 newsletter….
(13) SPACEWOMAN DOCUMENTARY. “Trailblazer: astronaut Eileen Collins reflects on space, adventure, and the power of lifelong learning” at Physics World (registration required).
In this episode of Physics World Stories, astronaut Eileen Collins shares her extraordinary journey as the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft. Collins broke barriers in space exploration, inspiring generations with her courage and commitment to discovery. Reflecting on her career, she discusses not only her time in space but also her lifelong sense of adventure and her recent passion for reading history books. Today, Collins frequently shares her experiences with audiences around the world, encouraging curiosity and inspiring others to pursue their dreams.
Joining the conversation is Hannah Berryman, director of the new documentary SPACEWOMAN, which is based on Collins’ memoir Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, co-written with Jonathan H Ward. The British filmmaker describes what attracted her to Collins’ story and the universal messages it reveals. Hosted by science communicator Andrew Glester, this episode offers a glimpse into the life of a true explorer – one whose spirit of adventure knows no bounds….
(14) HOW RADIO TELESCOPE BECAME PERMANENTLY UNPLUGGED. “Unprecedented failure led to the collapse of the world-renowned radio telescope in Puerto Rico, report shows” – NBC News has the story.
Four years after the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed, a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is shining a light on the unprecedented failures that caused its destruction.
The steel cables holding up the telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform became loose because the zinc-filled sockets built to support them failed, according to the report published Oct. 25.
The failure was due to excessive “zinc creep,” a process in which the metal used to prevent corrosion or rusting on the sockets deforms and loses it grip over time, the report said.
The zinc gradually lost its hold on the cables suspending the telescope’s main platform over the reflector dish. This allowed several cables to pull out of the sockets, ultimately causing the platform to plummet into the reflector more than 400 feet below, according to the report…
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Lise Andreasen, 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 Kip W.]
