Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Pixel Scroll 10/29/24 The Pixels Have A Gene That Gives Them All Short Hair, So They Don’t Like Cold Weather

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(1) PICKETT LINE. I love this one by Adam Roberts. (Inspired by the Bobby “Boris” Pickett song.)

(2) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? In Episode 5 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Why Not Say What Happened? we get the story of “My Rooftop Dance with Larry Lieber” at the 1974 Worldcon.

Join me as I demonstrate the limits of my memory by telling tales of why my first Worldcon was supposed to have been my second Worldcon, the question I never got around to asking my cousin, the actor Herb Edelman, which song I sang while dancing across a Manhattan rooftop with Larry Lieber, what Fantastic Four moment motivated the first letter I ever wrote to a comic book company, the string of serendipities which led to one of my DC horror stories being adapted as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, how the Washington Post got me a job editing Science Fiction Age magazine, and more.

(3) MEMORIES FINALLY RETURNING. [Item by Michael Dobkins.] This is a follow up to a news item by Bruce D. Arthurs in the October 19 Pixel Scroll ((8) SECOND, JUST SAY, ‘I FORGOT’.) A new video on the Beinecke Library at Yale’s YouTube just dropped that gives more details on the exhibit and even quotes briefly letters between Disch and David Gerrold about the project at the end.

Remembering “Amnesia” with Claire Fox- MAB 10/14/24

A talk in conjunction with the exhibition “Remembering ‘Amnesia’: Rebooting the First Computerized Novel” on view now in the Hanke Gallery at Sterling Memorial Library. “Amnesia”—a work of interactive science fiction by Thomas M. Disch, published in 1986—was an early attempt to bring video games into the realm of literary art by translating a novelist’s script into a medium that readers could only experience by interacting with a computer. This exhibition traces how “Amnesia” moved from story idea to digital manifestation. Visitors can also play the game on workstations in the Hanke Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library and in Bass Library, using Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) software. Included is the story of the library’s Digital Preservation unit’s work to bring the interactive, computerized novel to life. Claire Fox, curator of the exhibition, is Software Preservation and Emulation Librarian in Yale Library. Mondays at Beinecke online talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and Q & A beginning about 4:30pm until 5pm.

There is also an Amnesia: Restored website devoted to the interactive novel that offers “a new version of the cult classic published by Electronic Arts 1986, now available on the web for contemporary computers.”

(4) UNREAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENTS. Arturo Serrano gives Poltergeist an almost theological analysis at Nerds of a Feather: “First Scare: Poltergeist”.

…Poltergeist feels like a condensation of mystical currents of thought that had gained strength during the hippie era but really date back to the spiritualist fad of the 19th century. Advances in the understanding of electromagnetism coincided with a growing interest in the inner workings of the mind, and it was only natural that a theory eventually formed linking electromagnetism with the paranormal. If you didn’t know any better, it made some sort of sense: if you consider radio waves, they’re an invisible force that exists all around us and can even pass through us, and have very tangible effects if you have a properly sensitive machine at hand. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to suppose that ghosts worked the same way. Poltergeist is an heir to over a century of superstition that viewed in electrical devices a viable tool for contacting the spiritual realm.

But Poltergeist does more than that. It also takes advantage of the moral panic that was forming around mass media and the way the TV set ended up altering not only the inner dynamics of the American family, but also the rhythm of daily life. People in Poltergeist time their activities by the programming schedule of TV; their day ends when the last broadcast ends. Even before malevolent spirits jump out of the screen, they’re already under the spell of TV….

(5) SURPRISE PACKAGE. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature wants a publisher to look at his trunk stories. Forward follows the trail: “Bob Dylan wants a horror publisher to look at his stories”.

In breaks on his Never Ending Tour, Bob Dylan has returned to social media to send his regrets to the Buffalo Sabres hockey team for missing a game, recommend an incredibly famous restaurant in New Orleans and, in a new twist for the Nobel laureate, hint at his spooky literary aspirations.

“At the hotel in Frankfurt there was a publishing convention and every room was taken, parties all night,” Dylan posted on the social platform X  (formerly Twitter) Oct. 23.

“I was trying to find Crystal Lake Publishing so I could congratulate them on publishing The Great God Pan, one of my favorite books,” Dylan continued. “I thought they might be interested in some of my stories. Unfortunately it was too crowded and I never did find them.”

As always, Dylan speaks, the world listens. It came as quite the October surprise for Crystal Lake, a Bloemfontein, South Africa-based press specializing in dark fiction and horror whose current titles include an anthology called Dastardly Damsels and Blood and Bullets: A Trio of Western Horror Novellas. (Yes, they also published a “revamped” edition of Machen’s 1894 Great God Pan, about a sinister woman who seems to be driving powerful men to suicide.)

“We had literary agents in Frankfurt representing our books, so we weren’t there in person,” Crystal Lake’s founder and CEO Joe Mynhardt said in an email.

Mynhardt said that, since the Dylan post, they’d spent a few days tracking down the songwriter and his team.

“It’s my understanding that they now have our contact info, so fingers crossed,” Mynhardt wrote in his email Saturday.

While Dylan has previously published poetry, the first part of his memoirs and most recently his 2022 book The Philosophy of Modern Song, it remains to be seen what scary stories he may have in his drawer. Less of a mystery is what he may have admired in Machen’s novella — a tale of sex, pagan gods and death. Somehow this all seems very on brand, even if it’s lacking in the Americana department (Machen was Welsh, like another great poet named Dylan)…

(6) TODAY’S 270. Chris M. Barkley’s essay for 270 Reasons (“Why Kamala Harris?”) has gone live: “Because the lawlessness, the fascism, the fearmongering must come to an end” (which he also shared with File 770 a few days ago).

… The election of Kamala Harris will not end the partisan and political divisiveness that ails America. But it, along with a majority in the House and Senate, will be an important and vital first step toward restoring a sense that democracy, and the underlying systems that support and nourish it, can prevail and grow.

Fear sells—until we, collectively, stop buying it.

We have no excuse. We know better, and now we must do better….

(7) AFI LIFE ACHIEVEMENT 2025 ANNOUNCED. “AFI Life Achievement Award to go to Francis Ford Coppola in 2025” says The Hollywood Reporter. Yes, in spite of Megalopolis.

The filmmaker has been selected to receive the 50th installment of the organization’s highest honor, the AFI Life Achievement Award, at a ceremony scheduled to take place at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on April 26, 2025. He will be 86 at the time. The tribute will air on TNT with encore presentations on Turner Classic Movies. All proceeds from the gala will support AFI’s education and arts initiatives.

The AFI Life Achievement Award is presented to an honoree “whose talent has in a fundamental way advanced the film art, whose accomplishment has been acknowledged by scholars, critics, professional peers and the general public, and whose work has stood the test of time.”…

(8) (BOW) WOW! “Kathryn Hahn Reacts to Agatha-Themed Dog Halloween Costume: ‘Wagatha Barkness?!’” at Entertainment Tonight. Watch the video at the link.

Kathryn Hahn on the success of ‘Agatha All Along’

Kathryn: “Jac Schaeffer who wrote it is a genius because she wrote Wandavision too and so I just hurled myself with faith into whatever she would do, she knows this character really well.”

Kathryn Hahn on a viral Halloween dog costume inspired by the Disney+ series

Kathryn: “Apparently there is a dog costume called Wagitha Barkness… which I’m like, that seems amazing!”

(9) ALTERNATIVES TO OUR DIGITAL FUTURE. Joshua Rothman asks “Could Steampunk Save Us?” – behind a paywall in The New Yorker.

In 1990, Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote “The Difference Engine,” an alternative-history novel, set in the nineteenth century, in which computers are built about a hundred years earlier than in reality, using quirky systems including gears, wheels, and levers. The novel helped popularize the genre of steampunk, in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century technologies are merged. Arguably, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells wrote steampunk avant la lettre, simply by crafting science fiction in the late nineteenth century; the genre’s aesthetic markers-valves, pipes, airships, monocles-have since informed the imaginative worlds of films and television shows like “Snowpiercer,” “Silo,” and much else. Steampunk mounts an imaginative protest against the apparent seamlessness of the high-tech world; it’s an antidote to the ethos of Jony Ive. It’s also fun because it’s counterfactual. It’s fascinating to imagine, implausibly, how ravishing technology could be constructed out of yesterday’s parts.

But what if the world really is constructed that way? In that case, it could be a mistake to put too much faith in digital perfection. We might need to fiddle with our technology more than we think.

(10) STOP BEING MIDDLE-CLASS IMMEDIATELY.  “This is a Thomas Ha Fanzine Now” at Seize the Press, edited by Jonny Pickering and Karlo Yeager Rodríguez.

The other week someone asked me why I thought there was such discomfort with unresolved narratives and non-cathartic endings in some corners of the contemporary short story world. I thought about it a bit and figured my answer would be worth sharing.

The conversation came about after I read a Thomas Ha story called “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”, which features a story within the story — an old pulp western the narrator discovers has been altered so that the original ending (where the protagonist is defeated by the evil sheriff and limps off into the desert) is rewritten into a glorious, audience-pleasing victory. As with any Thomas Ha story, there are layers stacked on layers to the narrative, but one thing it got me thinking about is why so much contemporary media (and short fiction in particular) is so ill at ease with leaving the audience ill at ease.

I can’t say for sure why this is, but I can speculate. I think one reason is there’s an influential school of (largely American) middle class liberal writers who dominate a lot of the bigger magazines and who come at fiction from the viewpoint that writing and reading stories constitutes some form of activism. You see it a lot in the ‘power of stories’ assertions that go round from time to time and is also partly why we see so much didactic fiction out there, because it’s a view that thinks the purpose of art is to ‘instruct’ and to portray the ‘correct opinions’, whereas for me good art raises more questions than it answers….

… At the risk of sounding like a vulgar Marxist I think western society in general (and, from what I can gather as a Brit, particularly American society, which has such a big effect on western culture as a whole) has reached a stage where, for lots of people, collectively trying to change the world can seem pretty hopeless, and so there’s a tendency to retreat into a very individualistic notion of activism, where if you’re working on yourself and thinking the right things and reading the right things, even when that thing is fiction, it feels like praxis. It’s incredibly reactionary and has a stultifying effect on art in my opinion, because it results in these calcifying stories that do nothing to challenge, and whose purpose and effect is simply to reassure….

(11) TERI GARR (1944-2024). Teri Garr, who received an Oscar nomination for her role in Tootsie, died October 29 reports the AP. She died of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” said publicist Heidi Schaeffer. Garr battled other health problems in recent years and underwent an operation in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.

Garr is best remembered by fans playing the helpmate in four genre classics:

  • Wife, Ronnie Neary, to Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Wife, Bobby Landers, to John Denver in Oh, God
  • Lab Assistant, Inge, to Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein
  • Office Assistant, Roberta Lincoln to Robert Lansing in Star Trek’s  “Assignment Earth” episode

She also appeared on the Sixties Batman series. And forty years later she voiced the character of Mary McGinnis in the animated “Batman Beyond” TV series, and Sandy Gordon in 2003’s What’s New, Scooby Doo? animated series.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 29, 1906 — Fredric Brown. (Died 1972.)

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Fredric Brown’s work with a pastoral work known as “The Waverlies”. Sometime in the near future, a peculiar sort of alien arrives on earth that is invisible, and eats all forms of radio, and electromagnetic signals and power fail.  The United States and the rest of the world is thus plunged into a late Victorian era of technology. It was and is a pastoral, gentle story of the hands of time being stopped and put backward to a slower pace, permanently. The story nagged at me, though, even as I liked it. Such a technological change would be wrenching and millions…if not more, would die in the result (c.f. S M Stirling’s The Change series).  I don’t think Brown considered that. But this is notably one of Philip K Dick’s favorite short stories. It has a power…even if it doesn’t realize its full implications and problematic nature

But he considered and thought about a lot of other SF ideas in other fantastic stories. His story “Answer” has the classic line you know even if you haven’t read it “NOW there is a God”.  “Arena” is the basis of the Star Trek episode where Kirk fights a Gorn. And there are plenty more where those come from. I haven’t delved into his extensive work with mystery novels and stories, but if that is your jam, Brown has a plethora of work for you once you finish his science fiction stories and short novels.

But as much as I like “The Waverlies” (even as I recognize the problematic aspects of the story), my favorite Brown story is probably his most definitive one, and that is “What Mad Universe”. You probably know this story if you read it. A SF book editor finds himself in a world whose ideas run on SF magazine story conventions. With a breakneck pace and change of action and twists at a pace that Van Vogt might envy, the story is a rollercoaster and deconstruction of what was soon to become a dying breed — pulp SF stories. It thus stands as the Pulp Science Fiction story for as unwitting capstone of the era, and it’s a lot of fun.  I’m not the only one who thinks this, as witness Lawrence Block’s The Man Who Met Frederic Brown, which takes up on this trope and references that story directly. 

Fredric Brown

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss has a big problem.

Crankshaft tries a crossover.

(14) CHARLES BURNS RETURNS. [Item by Steven French.] Charles Burns, creator of Black Hole is back with a new graphic novel, Final Cut: “’I was high, drawing my self-portrait in a toaster’: the thrilling return of graphic novelist Charles Burns” in the Guardian.

…Burns became obsessed with monsters at a young age. His father had “every kind of hobby”, which meant the house was always full of art tools and Indian ink. Burns would try to recreate comics he found around the house but his awakening came in early 1969 when a kid at school introduced him to Zap Comix, helmed by the godfather of underground comix Robert Crumb. “Suddenly, here’s this thing with intense drawings! I wasn’t interested in Captain America and Iron Man – but I would imitate these psychedelic comics.”

Burns disappears again and comes back with some of his early examples. They have a beautiful, frantic quality – a kind of professionalised bedlam – with all the hallmarks of his current work, from weird monsters to attractive adolescents. The cartoonist Lynda Barry once wrote of his style and the standard he reaches: “You can’t believe a person could do it with regular human hands. It’s the kind of drawing that would have scared the pants off you in grade school, not only because the images are so eerie but because they are too perfectly done, and not good or evil enough for you to tell what you are supposed to think about them.”

That eerie perfectionism is right there in his earliest work. It’s this style that excited Spiegelman, who agreed to publish Burns in Raw in the 1980s. It’s why the cult literary magazine The Believer, founded by Dave Eggers in 1998, used Burns for every cover until 2014…

(15) HOW WOULD YOU TRANSLATE IT? From Viktoria on Threads:

(16) TV VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LAST-MINUTE JACK O’LANTERN CARVERS. In anticipation of Halloween, JustWatch has put together a list of the Top 10 spooky movies and TV shows available to stream in the United States based off their 13 million users in the United States. 

(17) EARTH ABIDES SERIES. “’Earth Abides’ Trailer: Alexander Ludwig Stars In Series Adaptation” – Deadline tells what to expect.

MGM+ has dropped the first trailer and unveiled the premiere date for Earth Abides, its upcoming post-apocalyptic limited series adaptation of George R. Stewart’s sci-fi novel of the same name. It’s slated to launch December 1 on the streamer.

Written and executive produced by Todd Komarnicki (Sully), who also serves as showrunner, in Earth Abides, when a plague of unprecedented virulence sweeps the globe, the human race is all but wiped out. In the aftermath, as the great machine of civilization slowly and inexorably breaks down, only a few shattered survivors remain to struggle against the slide into extinction….

(18) A VISIT TO SHENZHOU-18. Futurism invites us to “Watch Astronauts Give a Rare Tour of China’s Luxurious Space Station”.

…As seen in an almost seven-minute-long video shared by Chinese state-owned news agency CCTV, members of the current Shenzhou-18 crew gave an extensive tour of their temporary abode.

Crew members show off the station’s kitchen, from a small heater that dispenses water into small pouches to a modified microwave. Astronauts also showed off the surprisingly roomy beds that each feature a sizable porthole, with unparalleled views of the Earth below.

We even got a glimpse of the two orbital lab segments, including several cherry tomato and lettuce plants growing in the station’s greenhouse….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Jo Fletcher, Lew Wolkoff, Andrew (not Werdna), Michael Dobkins, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 11/24/22 On The Avenue, Second-Fifth Avenue, The Filetographers Will Snap Us, And You’ll Find That You’re In The Pixelgravure

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(1) TURKEY DAY. Following that overstuffed title it’s time to pay homage to another Thanksgiving tradition, one I’m sure you’ll immediately recognize.

(2) SIGNERS OF THE TIMES. “Bob Dylan Gets Tangled Up in Book Autograph Controversy” – the New York Times tells why.

Simon & Schuster sold 900 signed copies of the singer’s new essay collection, but superfans and internet sleuths noticed something wasn’t right with the autograph. Now the publisher is issuing refunds.

… So when Simon & Schuster, Dylan’s publisher, advertised limited-edition, hand-signed copies of the musician’s new collection of essays for $600 each, Bernstein was among 900 fans who went for one. Last week, he received his copy of “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” Dylan’s first collection of writings since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, with a letter of authenticity signed by Jonathan Karp, the publisher’s chief executive.

There was only one problem.

Karp’s signature “looked more legit than Bob’s,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein was one of hundreds of fans who sleuthed their way around social media, reaching the conclusion that the supposedly hand-signed books had not, in fact, been signed by Dylan.

“I got the nostalgia bug,” said Bernstein, who already owned an unsigned copy of the book, as well as a Kindle version and an audio version. He added, “If he touches this book — he wrote it, signed it — it feels like the soul of Bob Dylan is with me.”

Instead, many fans suggested that the “autographed” copies of the book had been signed by a machine….

(3) OCTOTHORPE. “Just Nearly Froze to Death”, Octothorpe episode 71, is ready for listeners.

John is on the Holodeck, Alison is in the past, and Liz is at school. We discuss what Alison got up to at Novacon before chatting about a few other bits and bobs. Listen here!

(4) SMACKAGE. “Stephen King, Elon Musk spar: MyPillow will be Twitter’s ‘only advertiser’” on MarketWatch.

That was master of horror and bestselling fiction writer Stephen King riffing on the parade of advertisers including GM, United Airlines and Audi pausing or scrapping their marketing on the social-media platform since Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over…. 

…This is perhaps why Musk responded to King’s most recent tweet about MyPillow with “Oh hi lol.” 

Musk followed up by asking, “Is My Pillow actually a great pillow? Now I’m curious.” 

(5) DRAGONS DEFENDED. In “Weber & Correia on the mil-SF Dragon Award” – Camestros Felapton delivers lengthy excerpts from the two authors’ remarks delivered in the wake of the Dragon Awards deleting the Military SF category. Weber tries to justify the decision to his grumpy fan base, and Larry Correia upbraids “the people who are nominally supposed to be on my side” for their “black pilled doom nonsense.” If you care what Weber and Correia think about the situation, this would be the place to find out.

(6) PUSH THE PANIC BUTTON! SF2 Concatenation, in an Autumn 2022 editorial headlined “The 2023 Worldcon in China may be cancelled! If, that is, the UN COP15 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD-COP15) changes are a portent”,  is volunteering the Winnipeg NASFiC as the backup plan.

The 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu China has had its problems, not least political controversy due to its Guests of Honours’ support for political aggression, namely: China’s Uyghur policy, Putin’s war on Ukraine and apparent tacit support (being willing to share a platform with those of such views) thereof respectively.  However, these are not  the reasons the event may be cancelled.  China has a strict ‘zero CoVID-19 policy that has meant that as soon as a number of cases are reported in a city, then that city is put into strict lockdown: this has already happened a number of times this year.  So, for instance, following discussions with China, on 21st June (2022) the United Nations announced that the CBD-COP15 meeting would no longer be held in Kumming, China, but be held instead 5th – 17th December (2022) in Montreal, Canada.  The risk of the CBD-COP running foul of, or even itself causing – with the international influx of thousands of participants – a mini CoVID outbreak so triggering, a strict lockdown in Kumming was real enough for the UN to make the change: it was considered a non-trivial risk….

Meanwhile, following the above being written in July-August following the UN CBD-COP15 change, at the beginning of September (2022) 25 million people in Chengdu, China, have been put in lockdown.  This is a portent if ever one should be needed, irrespective with what has already happened with the UN’s CBD-COP15.

The crew’s vision for rescuing the Hugo Awards is a little shortsighted — “The rest could be arranged by those regularly associated with WSFS governance (the World SF Society being the body under whose auspices the Hugo’s are organised)” – because WSFS is not an administrative body, it is the members of the seated Worldcons. There’s no WSFS management to pull the plug on Chengdu, or to take funds from them to pay for award trophies. That would take the Chengdu Worldcon’s cooperation. And consider that the minimum requirements for the Worldcon are far more modest than a UN convention. What if Chengdu fell back on doing a virtual Worldcon, like CoNZealand?

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1993 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Tombstone 

The Old West has a significant impact upon the SFF genre, be it in video such as Star Trek’s “Spectre of the Gun”, Doctor Who’s “A Town Called Mercy”, The Wild Wild West series or, to note but two novels, Emma Bull’s Territory and Midori Snyder’s The Flight of Michael McBride. 

So I’m going to look at some of my favorite Westerns starting with the Tombstone which premiered twenty-nine years ago. 

It directed by George P. Cosmatos from a screenplay by Kevin Jarre. He was also the original director, but was replaced early in production.  It had three producers — James Jacks, Sean Daniel and Bob Misiorowski.

It quite possibly the most extraordinary cast ever assembled for a Western —  Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliott in lead roles, and with Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, and Dana Delany in supporting roles, as well as narration by Robert Mitchum. The Dana Delany appearance, though brief, I think was one of her best ever.

The film was screenwriter Kevin Jarre’s first job as director but he was overwhelmed by the job, failing to get needed shots and falling behind the shooting schedule. Biehn threaten to quit being his close friend but Russell talked him out of it.

I see no need for spoilers as likely you know the story as they really didn’t deviate that much from what has been told before. It’s how they told it that I find such a stellar story. Each of the principal characters is realized, a completely believable human being. And each is given enough lines to come to life in this story. If I had to single out one actor here in particular, it’d be Val Kilmer as the dying Doc Holliday. That is a performance for the ages. 

One of the actors gets much of the credit for what the final shooting script looks like. Russell worked endlessly with producer Jacks to ruthlessly cut to the bone Jarre’s originally vastly overblown script, deleting endless subplots and emphasizing the oh so important relationship between Wyatt and Doc. 

It is disputed to this day who directed the actual film. Russell claims that he and not Cosmatos did. He says that the latter was brought in as a “ghost director” because Russell did not want it to be known at the time that he was directing the film. 

Critics either really liked it or really, really hated it. The latter, all male I must note, thought it treated women badly. I didn’t. 

Box office wise, it was a fantastic success, making three times what it cost to produce. 

I’ve watched it at least a half dozen times. The Suck Fairy has equally enjoyed it each times she’s viewed it with me. She particularly liked the final scene with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Dana Delany as Josephine Marcus dancing in the snow in San Francisco. She does have a soft heart, you know.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 24, 1882 — E. R. Eddison. Writer whose most well-known work by far is The Worm Ouroboros. It’s slightly connected to his much lesser known later Zimiamvian Trilogy. I’m reasonably that sure I’ve read The Worm Ouroboros but way too long ago to remember anything about it. Silverberg in the Millenium Fantasy Masterworks Series edition of this novel said he considered it to be “the greatest high fantasy of them all”. (Died 1945.)
  • Born November 24, 1907 — Evangeline Walton. Her best-known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, was written during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy was produced during the late 1940s. It’s worth stressing Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher’s title of The Virgin and the Swine which is inarguably a terrible title. Although receiving glowing praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold quite awfully and none of the other novels in the series were published at that time. Granted a second chance by Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued with a much better title of The Island of the Mighty. The other three volumes followed quickly. Witch House is an occult horror story set in New England and She Walks in Darkness which came out on Tachyon Press is genre as well. I think that is the extent of her genre work but I’d be delighted to be corrected. She has won a number of Awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, Best Novel along with The Fritz Leiber Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Convention Award and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1996.) (JJ )
  • Born November 24, 1926 — Forrest J Ackerman. It’s no wonder that he got a Hugo for #1 Fan Personality in 1953 and equally telling that when he was handed the trophy at Philcon II (by Asimov), he physically declined saying it should go to Ken Slater to whom the trophy was later given by the con committee. That’s a nice summation of him. You want more? As a literary agent, he represented some two hundred writers, and he served as agent of record for many long-lost authors, thereby allowing their work to be reprinted. Hell, he represented Ed Wood! He was a prolific writer, more than fifty stories to his credit, and he named Vampirella and wrote the origin story for her. His non-fiction writings are wonderful as well. I’ll just single out Forrest J Ackerman’s Worlds of Science Fiction, A Reference Guide to American Science Fiction Films and a work he did with Brad Linaweaver, Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art. Did I mention he collected everything? Well, he did. Just one location of his collection contained some three hundred thousand books, film, SF material objects and writings. The other was eighteen rooms in extent. Damn if anyone needed their own TARDIS, it was him. In his later years, he was a board member of the Seattle Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame who now have possession of many items of his collection. (Died 2008.)
  • Born November 24, 1948 — Spider Robinson, 74. His first story, “The Guy with the Eyes,” was published in Analog (February 1973). It was set in a bar called Callahan’s Place, a setting for much of his later fiction.  His first published novel, Telempath in 1976 was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella “By Any Other Name”. The Stardance trilogy was co-written with his wife Jeanne Robinson; the first book won a Nebula. In 2004, he began working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The resulting novel would be called Variable Star. Who’s read it?
  • Born November 24, 1957 — Denise Crosby, 65. Tasha Yar on Next Gen who got a meaningful death in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” after getting an earlier truly meaningless one. In other genre work, she was on The X-Files as a doctor who examined Agent Scully’s baby. And I really like it that she was in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, as Denise, Bruno’s Moll. And she’s yet another Trek performer who’s popped doing what I call Trek video fanfic. She’s Dr. Jenna Yar in “Blood and Fire: Part 2”, an episode of the only season of Star Trek: New Voyages as Paramount was not amused. 
  • Born November 24, 1957 — Jeff Noon, 65. Novelist and playwright. Prior to his relocation in 2000 to Brighton, his stories reflected in some way his native though not birth city of Manchester. The Vurt sequence whose first novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award is a very odd riff off Alice in Wonderland that he describes as a sequel to those works. Noon was the winner of an Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer.
  • Born November 24, 1957 — John Zakour, 65. For sheer pulp pleasure, I wholeheartedly recommend his Zachary Nixon Johnson PI series which he co-wrote with Larry Ganem. Popcorn reading at its very best. It’s the only series of his I’ve read, anyone else read his other books? 
  • Born November 24, 1965 — Shirley Henderson, 57. She was Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She was Ursula Blake in “Love & Monsters!”, a Tenth Doctor story, and played Susannah in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a film that’s sf because of the metanarrative aspect.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Eek! shows that even a successful experiment by a mad scientist can cause problems. (Or do they always?)
  • The Far Side shows the real reason they went extinct.

(10) I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT. Radio Times is agog as “Doctor Who unveils new look at David Tennant as Fourteenth Doctor”.

…Fans were previously treated to a closer look at Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor outfit at MCM Comic Con last month, where a special exhibit showed off the blue coat and white trainers that the Doctor will wear in the upcoming 60th anniversary episodes, which are set to air in 2023.

The exhibit also featured the striped jumper and green jacket worn by Catherine Tate, who will be reprising her role as the Doctor’s companion Donna Noble in the three specials….

(11) SHOCKWAVE WIDER. Nature shows how “Shock waves spark blazing light from black holes”.

Radiation from a jet of ultrafast particles powered by a supermassive black hole suggests that the particles are accelerated by shock waves propagating along the jet, making them shine with the brightness of 100 billion Suns!

Most of the 200 billion galaxies in the Universe are centred around enormous black holes that can weigh as much as one billion Suns. Many of these black holes are dormant, but some are still growing, devouring gas from their surroundings and releasing vast amounts of radiation. Even fewer of these active supermassive black holes are capable of launching powerful jets from their cores — ultrafast streams of particles that shine brightly, and can travel distances of up to 100 times the size of their own galaxy. But what provides the initial kick that enables these particles to release so much energy? Writing in Nature, Liodakis et al. report that the push comes from shock waves that are generated naturally…

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Patrick McGuire, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 6/5/17 Don’t Scroll Until You See the Whites Of Their Pixels

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(1) WISDOM. Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture has been posted online.

By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details.

You know what it’s all about. Takin’ the pistol out and puttin’ it back in your pocket. Whippin’ your way through traffic, talkin’ in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you’ve heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen.

I had all the vernacular all down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went over my head — the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries — and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When I started writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I used it.

(2) TO THE MOON, ALICE. Chuck Wendig couldn’t just review the movie — “Greetings From The Eunuch Moon Colony #457!”

On the first day, I’d heard some rumblings about how the film was doing very well in the box office, perhaps even setting records as a film directed by a woman — strange to think how that was once unusual! — and I’d also heard that there were a handful of “women-only” screenings happening, and that some men were noticeably upset about being excluded. What I didn’t know was what happened during those screenings. They were the start of it. The beginnings of the rebellion. A fast-growing fire….

That was it. That was how it began. Bloody and brutal. Turns out, there was a Special Edition Wonder Woman film. One we men did not get to see. One that indoctrinated the women and the girls, one by one, in the ways of Matriarchy. That was the start of the Lady’s Laws. They spliced in iPhone footage from those initial women-only screenings: the male organs bouncing around, the blood, the chanting, the Vagenda of Manocide laid bare for all to see. It was brainwashing, pure and simple. I’m with her, they said again and again. A mantra. Pointing to the woman on the screen. Wonder Woman. An Amazon. A goddess made of clay killing all the men.

It wasn’t long before the women had taken over. It was only two years later I found myself on a shuttle bound for the moon. To one of the expansionist eunuch colonies. I expected that you’d need us for breeding — not you personally, of course, but the Greater General Lady-You — but turns out, with genetic manipulation, we aren’t needed for much at all.

(3) TOO MUCH GAS. The Center for Planetary Science offers an explanation for “The ‘Wow!’ Signal”.

ABSTRACT

In 2016, the Center for Planetary Science proposed a hypothesis arguing a comet and/or its hydrogen cloud were a strong candidate for the source of the “Wow!” Signal. From 27 November 2016 to 24 February 2017, the Center for Planetary Science conducted 200 observations in the radio spectrum to validate the hypothesis. The investigation discovered that comet 266/P Christensen emitted a radio signal at 1420.25 MHz. All radio emissions detected were within 1° (60 arcminutes) of the known celestial coordinates of the comet as it transited the neighborhood of the “Wow!” Signal. During observations of the comet, a series of experiments determined that known celestial sources at 1420 MHz (i.e., pulsars and/or active galactic nuclei) were not within 15° of comet 266/P Christensen. To dismiss the source of the signal as emission from comet 266/P Christensen, the position of the 10-meter radio telescope was moved 1° (60 arcminutes) away from comet 266/P Christensen. During this experiment, the 1420.25 MHz signal disappeared. When the radio telescope was repositioned back to comet 266/P Christensen, a radio signal at 1420.25 MHz reappeared. Furthermore, to determine if comets other than comet 266/P Christensen emit a radio signal at 1420 MHz, we observed three comets that were selected randomly from the JPL Small Bodies database: P/2013 EW90 (Tenagra), P/2016 J1-A (PANSTARRS), and 237P/LINEAR. During observations of these comets, we detected a radio signal at 1420 MHz. The results of this investigation, therefore, conclude that cometary spectra are detectable at 1420 MHz and, more importantly, that the 1977 “Wow!” Signal was a natural phenomenon from a Solar System body.

(4) A BAD DAY FOR DINO SCI-FI. While astronomers were eliminating the Wow from that space signal, other researchers were taking the mick out of some exciting fossils: “Scientists just destroyed our dreams of a real Jurassic Park”.

Jurassic Park — you know, that silly little novel-turned-movie about mankind bringing dinosaurs back from the dead that made a measly $1 billion — is science fiction, but could it ever actually happen? Researchers studying the remains of one special Tyrannosaurus rex thought it just might be when they discovered what they thought was intact proteins deep within the dinosaur’s fossilized bones. Now, new research has absolutely destroyed the already hazy dream that dinosaurs could one day be resurrected.

When first announced, the discovery of these proteins proved a very exciting event for many paleontologists and scientists. It was the first time that such a discovery had been made, and seemed to fly in the face of the accepted belief that dinosaur fossils simply couldn’t provide the DNA data that would be needed to even begin the process of resurrecting such long-extinct animals. Unfortunately, there was apparently no reason to be excited in the first place, because the proteins detected by lab analysis weren’t even that of a dinosaur.

(5) SALLIS OBIT. Actor Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace of Wallace & Gromit, has died at 96.

Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park led tributes to Sallis, describing him as a “unique character”.

“I’m so sad, but feel so grateful and privileged to have known and worked with Peter over so many years. He was always my first and only choice for Wallace,” Park said in a statement.

(6) HE’S BACK. John Crowley (Little, Big) has a new publication from PM Press — Totalitopia.

John Crowley

John Crowley’s all-new essay “Totalitopia” is a wry how-to guide for building utopias out of the leftovers of modern science fiction. “This Is Our Town,” written especially for this volume, is a warm, witty, and wonderfully moving story about angels, cousins, and natural disasters based on a parochial school third-grade reader. One of Crowley’s hard-to-find masterpieces, “Gone” is a Kafkaesque science fiction adventure about an alien invasion that includes door-to-door leafleting and yard work. Perhaps the most entertaining of Crowley’s “Easy Chair” columns in Harper’s, “Everything That Rises” explores the fractal interface between Russian spiritualism and quantum singularities—-with a nod to both Columbus and Flannery O’Connor. “And Go Like This” creeps in from Datlow’s Year’s Best, the Wild Turkey of horror anthologies.

Plus: There’s a bibliography, an author bio, and of course our Outspoken Interview, the usual cage fight between candor and common sense.

(7) SUPER SHOWCASE. Some of the best sff author around are contributors to —

Behind the Mask: An Anthology of Heroic Proportions
Editors: Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson
Released May 12th, 2017

Behind the Mask is a multi-author collection with stories by award-winning authors Kelly Link, Cat Rambo, Carrie Vaughn, Seanan McGuire, Lavie Tidhar, Sarah Pinsker, Keith Rosson, Kate Marshall, Chris Large and others.

It is partially a prose nod to the comic world: the bombast, the larger-than-life, the save-the-worlds and the calls-to-adventure. But it’s also a spotlight on the more intimate side of the genre. The hopes and dreams of our cape-clad heroes. The regrets and longings of our cowled villains. That poignant, solitary view of the world that can only be experienced from behind the mask.

The authors in this collection, both established and new, are all dexterous and wonderfully imaginative, each deserving of their own form-fitting uniforms and capes.

Some of the stories pulse with social commentary, like Cat Rambo’s whimsical and deft “Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut” and Keith Rosson’s haunting “Torch Songs.”

Others twist the genre into strange and new territories, like Stuart Suffel’s atmospheric “Birthright,” Kate Marhsall’s moving “Destroy the City with Me Tonight,” and Adam Shannon’s reality-bending “Over an Embattled City.”

Some punch with heart and humor, like Matt Mikalatos’s satisfying “The Beard of Truth” and Chris Large’s adventurous “Salt City Blue,” while others punch with bite and grit, such as Michael Milne’s evocative “Inheritance,” Aimee Ogden’s poignant “As I Fall Asleep,” and Jennifer Pullen’s heartfelt “Meeting Someone in the 22nd Century.”

Some of the stories feature characters who might not be superheroes in the traditional sense, yet are heroic nonetheless, such as Sarah Pinsker’s imaginative “The Smoke Means It’s Working” and Stephanie Lai’s majestic “The Fall of the Jade Sword.”

Some shine a unique, captivating spotlight on supervillains, like Keith Frady’s dramatic “Fool” and Carrie Vaughn’s romantic “Origin Story.”

Some are somber, ponderous works, where our heroes consider their impact on the world, like Lavie Tidhar’s regret-tinged “Heroes” and Nathan Crowder’s resonant “Madjack.” Others tread more light-hearted waters, with heroes adjusting to the sometimes-comical, sometimes-stressful life in the public eye, like Seanan McGuire’s entertaining “Pedestal” and Patrick Flanagan’s lively “Quintessential Justice.”

And then there are the softer, quieter moments between heroes, as they navigate their extraordinary lives in their own unique ways, such as Ziggy Schutz’s tender “Eggshells” and, of course, Kelly Link’s captivating “Origin Story.”

(8) ROGUE REVIEWER. Aaron Pound at Dreaming of Other Worlds discusses a Hugo finalist —“Review – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”.

Short review: A convoluted plot sends Jyn Erso to Scarif with a band of ruffians where they set about stealing the plans for the Death Star and kick off the plot of the original Star Wars movie from 1977.

Haiku
Her father taken
A secret design flaw
Desperate mission

(9) LANDMARK NOT DEAD YET. The LAist says “Rejoice, West Hollywood’s Historic Formosa Cafe Plans To Reopen”.

Is West Hollywood’s iconic Formosa Cafe coming back to life? Sure seems that way. In an interview with Los Angeles Magazine, Bobby Green, Dimitri Komarov, and Dima Liberman of 1933 Group (who restored the Highland Park Bowl and The Idle Hour, among other establishments) revealed that they have signed a long-term lease with the property’s owners and will restore the Formosa to its former glory. “We’re gonna put it all back,” Green told LA Mag. “Vince [Jung, the previous, long-time owner/operator] has everything in storage: All the autographed photos, all the Elvis decanters, the lucky Buddha. He’s got everything.”

(10) TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. In 1962, not all customers are satisfied. Galactic Journey takes readers “[June 5, 1962] Into the Sunset (the End of The Twilight Zone, Season 3)”.

You hear that? That’s the last school bell ringing, signifying the end of the school year. That means the beginning of summer break, and with it the end of another season of The Twilight Zone. However, unlike the previous seasons of The Twilight Zone, I hear this may be the last. I am both sad, and a bit relieved. I have very much enjoyed reviewing this series with my father, and I am very sad to see it go. However, I believe it’s also time for it to go. It had a very good first season, and progressively got worse over time as Serling strained for more ideas. It was obvious that by the end, Serling was out of inspiration. Still, rather than focus on all the many mediocre episodes, I’d like to go back and appreciate the really stand-out episodes of The Twilight Zone.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, and Camestros Felapton for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade.]