The Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game franchise says it won’t allow artists to use artificial intelligence technology to draw its cast of sorcerers, druids and other characters and scenery.
D&D art is supposed to be fanciful. But at least one ax-wielding giant seemed too weird for some fans, leading them to take to social media to question if it was human-made.
Hasbro-owned D&D Beyond, which makes online tools and other companion content for the franchise, said it didn’t know until Saturday that an illustrator it has worked with for nearly a decade used AI to create commissioned artwork for an upcoming book. The franchise, run by the Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, said in a statement that it has talked to that artist and is clarifying its rules.
“He will not use AI for Wizards’ work moving forward,” said a post from D&D Beyond’s account on X, formerly Twitter. “We are revising our process and updating our artist guidelines to make clear that artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their art creation process for developing D&D.”…
(2) WALK RIGHT IN, FALL RIGHT DOWN. Cora Buhlert’s new Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre story is “The Uninvited Guest”.
YouTube trumps TikTok as the most popular online platform for young people to discover new books, according to a report by Nielsen BookData.
Nielsen, which provides data for the Bookseller’s UK Bestsellers chart, conducted a survey in November 2022 that revealed 34% of people aged between 14 and 25 find new reads using the video platform YouTube.
TikTok and Instagram were used by 32% and 27% of participants respectively, and online book retailer websites were visited by 33% of respondents. This data comes after reports that “BookTok” – the corner of TikTok in which creators share book recommendations – is driving sales of particular authors and genres that are popular on the platform. Its YouTube counterpart, BookTube, similarly features videos of users discussing their favourite titles and “hauls” of books they have recently bought….
(4) BEST EVER. ScreenRant picked the “10 Greatest Anthology TV Shows Of All Time, Ranked” and despite the list not being restricted to genre, there are seven sff and horror shows on it. The Twilight Zone is ranked number one.
Although most television series follow a single story over the course of several seasons, there are some shows called anthologies that change up the plot from episode to episode or season to season, and these can be some of the most successful series to date. Anthologies may not be the most popular form of television, but they certainly stand out for their distinct format and ever-changing stories. In fact, some of the most popular and lauded television series from the past to now are anthology series.
The following list offers ten of the best anthology television series to ever appear on-screen. This is a particularly diverse bunch of shows that range in release date, genre, and form. Though they each have the anthology structure in common, each show offers their own unique take on the concept, and more than that, their own important story. Whether it’s a silly comedy, a gruesome horror, or peek into true crime, each of these anthology series is popular in its own right and for good reason. For those interested in diving into anthologies, this is the ultimate place to start.
Working for the BBC in the early 70s, I made a Junior Points of View episode in which kids said they thought most BBC children’s programmes were patronising rubbish. Soon after I was at a get-together for TV people where Monica Sims, the head of BBC children’s programmes, challenged me to do better. I said: “Give me a time slot and budget, and I will.” Lewis Rudd, the Independent Television equivalent, overheard and asked: “Did you mean that?”
We had lunch and he said: “We need an answer to Doctor Who.” Twenty years earlier, I’d been enrolled at a boarding school full of German kids. We were all the best of friends, and knowing that only seven or eight years earlier our fathers would have been trying to kill each other in the second world war made me think that we must be the next stage of human evolution. That was the inspiration for the idea I pitched to Lewis – kids who had special powers, but who were unable to use them to kill or do harm.
These “Tomorrow People” were telepathic and telekinetic, and could teleport or “jaunt” from one place to another via hyperspace. They became aware of their abilities after “breaking out” – deliberate shorthand for puberty. I wanted kids watching at home to feel that they too might be a Tomorrow Person, and that it was OK to feel different….
Nicholas Young, played John
…Some of the spacecraft looked quite good even though they were built out of plastic cups from the canteen painted silver. But the aliens were often ridiculous. It’s difficult to act with a straight face against a puppet with an aerial on its head or something that looked like a Dalek on Viagra.
In the early days, when Tomorrow People were seen floating in hyperspace, we’d be standing on one foot in front of a yellow screen – then the yellow would be electronically overlaid with a star field or psychedelic effects. Later, we were hung on wires which could clearly be seen on TV. We looked like Thunderbirds puppets. I said: “Why don’t you paint the wires yellow?” Someone covered them with yellow gaffer tape and bingo! They disappeared….
(6) BOARDGAME OF THE YEAR. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Spiel des Jahres (Boardgame of the Year) is a huge deal in the boardgame world and the 2023 winners were just announced.
The 2023 Spiel des Jahres is Dorfromantik: Das Brettspiel (Romantic village: The boardgame) by Lukas Zach and Michael Palm, published by Pegasus Spiele.
The 2023 Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s Boardgame of the Year) is Mysterium Kids by Antonin Boccara and Yves Hirschfeld.
Radio Bremen interviews of one the winners, Lukas Zach who is a local. (They were not interested in interviewing Germany’s first ever Hugo winner, who also happens to be a local…)
(7) ROBERT OSBAND DIES. The American Space museum announced that long-time volunteer Robert “Ozzie” Osband, a fixture at Space View Park rocket launches for four decades, died August 6 at the age of 72.
…In 1976, when one of his favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, was going to be Guest of Honor at a World Science Fiction Convention, Mr. Osband journeyed to Kansas City.
In his suitcase was his copy of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel—a novel about a teenager who wins a secondhand space suit in a contest—and his ILC Dover suit.
Because if you wanted to get your copy of Have Space Suit, Will Travel autographed, and you happened to own a secondhand space suit, it would be a shame NOT to wear it, right?…
(8) WILLIAM FRIEDKIN (1935-2023). [Item by Dann.] William Friedkin died August 7 of heart failure and pneumonia. He was 87. The director’s most noteworthy genre work was The Exorcist. Other works include an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, an episode of The Twilight Zone, an episode of Tales from the Crypt, and horror movies The Guardian and Bug. Friedkin also directed The French Connection for which he won an Oscar.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 7, 1933 — Jerry Pournelle, 1933 – 2017. Some years ago, I got an email from a J. R. Pournelle about an SF novel they wanted Green Man to review. I of course thought it was that Pournelle. No, it was his daughter, Jennifer. And that’s how I came to find out there was a third Motie novel called, errrr, Moties. It’s much better than The Gripping Hand was. His best novel is of course The Mote in God’s Eye which he wrote with Niven. And yes, I’ve read a lot of his military space opera when I was a lot younger. At that age, I liked it. I expect the Suck Fairy with her steel toe boots wouldn’t be kind to it now if I read any of it, so I won’t. He had a number of Hugo nominations starting at Torcon II for “The Mercenary” novella followed by a nomination at DisCon II for his “He Fell into a Dark Hole” novelette. The next year at the first Aussiecon, The Mote in God’s Eye got nominated and his Extreme Prejudice novel also got a nod. MidAmericaCon saw Inferno by him and Niven get nominated and his “Tinker” novelette also was on the ballot. Lucifer’s Hammer with Niven got on the ballot at IgunaCon II and his final nomination was at ConFederation for Footfall with Niven. Oh and at MidAmericaCon II, he got a nomination for Best Editor, Short Form. And yes, I was a devoted reader of his Byte column. (Died 2017.)
Born August 7, 1936 — Richard L. Tierney. A Lovecraftian scholar. Coauthored with David C. Smith, a series of Red Sonja novels which have Boris Vallejo cover art. Some of his standalone novels riff off the Cthulhu Mythos. Unless you read German like Cora does, he’s not available digitally on at the usual suspects. (Died 2022.)
Born August 7, 1957 — Paul Dini, 66. First, he is largely responsible for the existence of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman/Superman Adventures, Batman Beyond, and yes Duck Dodgers And Tiny Toons as well. He’s recently been writing for the Ultimate Spider-Man series which is quite good. He co-authored with Pat Cadigan, Harley Quinn: Mad Love. He’s responsible for the single best animated Batman film, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, as he wrote it. If you see it, see the R rated version.
Born August 7, 1957 — Lis Carey, 66. A prolific reader whose reviews fill the shelves at Lis Carey’s Library. She is also a frequent Filer, contributor of numerous cat photos and even more book reviews. She is a longtime member of NESFA, and chaired Boskone 46 in 2009. (OGH)
Born August 7, 1960 — Melissa Scott, 63. I think the first work I read by her was Trouble and Her Friends which holds up well even now. I’m also fond of Night Sky Mine and The Jazz. I see that she has an entire series set in the Stargate Atlantis universe. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and four Lambda Awards, the first for Trouble and Her Friends, a second for Shadow Man, a third for Point of Dreams and a fourth for Death by Silver.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Eek!shows an unexpected fan of a well known sff movie franchise.
Speed Bump is there when a librarian fields a controversial request.
(11) MASS QUANTITIES. The New York Times looks into “The Complicated Estates of Obsessive Collectors”. “When collectors die, their families face a lot of decisions, including what to do with a hundred Superman figurines.” Some familiar names quoted here.
“More times than I can remember, a spouse or child has said to me, ‘If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him all over again for leaving me with this mess,’” said Greg Rohan, the president of Heritage Auctions.
Most people tend to know what to do with traditional investments after someone dies, he said, but when it comes to baseball cards, first-edition books, coins and other collectibles, the loved ones dealing with the estate can be stumped (and annoyed).
If some collectors of, say, vinyl figurines, seem to have a gene that spurs them to dedicate entire rooms of their home to inanimate rubbery friends, they are also, in many ways, just like everyone else. “People don’t want to think about dying,” said Maggie Thompson, 80, a former senior editor of Comic Buyer’s Guide, which was a newsmagazine that covered the comic book industry. “I realize as I look around my rooms, my family is not going to know what things are.”…
(12) FREE READ. Cora Buhlert has a story called “Rest My Weary Bones” in the July 2023 issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine.
It seems I’ve barely rested at all when the call comes… again.
Rise and shine, sunshine. Time for battle, time for war, time to smite the enemy and hear the lamentations of their women… if I could still hear properly, that is. ‘Cause hearing doesn’t work very well, when you’re essentially a skeleton.
For that’s exactly what I am these days: A skeleton….
(13) IT’S IN THE BAG. Geek Grind Coffee is another outfit that tempts fans to buy its products on the strength of its clever and intriguing genre packaging. But that’s not the only recommendation:
…More than 600 women involved in the cooperative are leaders of their own farms, heads of households or in managegment with our organiztion. Geek Grind is strongly focused on promoting women in leadership, ownership and success in coffee. We do this because of the need….
(14) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. [Item by John King Tarpinian.]
Truman Capote is at the same cemetery as Ray.
Non-genre trivia is that the crypt that Truman is in was originally for Johnny Carson. In his final years Truman Capote lived at the Malibu home of Joanne Carson who was one of Johnny’s ex-wives.
What if the original Star Trek was a comedy? Or, better yet, what if the intro for this comedy was set to the theme song to Friends? This intro re-imagines one of the world’s top science-fiction shows as one of the hottest comedies on television. Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy will always be there for you!
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Dann, Peer, Bill Higgins, Cora Buhlert, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
…Per Indianapolis’ WRTV, the tabletop game convention had over $300,000 worth of cards stolen from the show floor. Dicebreaker reported that the theft occurred on Wednesday, August 2 as vendors were setting up for the event at the Indiana Convention Center. Police in the area claim the thieves used a pallet jack to remove a pallet of cards, which allowed them to blend in since everyone was moving product around the convention floor that day. Dicebreaker further noted that the theft was pulled off with two thieves. At time of writing, it’s unknown which specific cards were stolen, and what company (or companies) they belonged to…
Project manager Chris Moore, who is transgender, wrote in the piece:
“There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor….”
The Deadline article is sourced in “She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”, a May 2023 blog post by Chris Moore, MoPOP’s Exhibitions Project Manager.
We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored. Yes, we’re talking about J.K. Rowling, and no, we don’t like that we’re giving her more publicity, so that’s the last you’ll see of her name in this post. We’ll just stick with You-Know-Who because they’re close enough in character….
And what is MoPOP doing? If you’ve visited the museum recently, you will have seen artifacts from the Harry Potter films in Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic gallery and her likeness in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. They’re there and trying to dance around it would make me look like a bigger hypocrite. But here’s the deal… it’s complicated. Long conversations are being had and a lot of considerations around what to do with problematic people and content because instances like this are going to keep happening. I’m privileged to get to work with our Curatorial team and see the decision-making processes there, so let me give you a little bit of insight into what these are like after someone outs themself as holding terrible ideologies….
… As for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, this list of inductees has a long history that didn’t start with MoPOP, EMP Museum, or even the Experience Music Project. It was founded in 1996 at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction and came to MoPOP in 2004. The inductees are specifically chosen by public voting. You-Know-Who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018 before she became the face of trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF). If you keep looking in there, you’ll see other figures with questionable if not downright disturbing pasts. But what does that mean? Are MoPOP’s hands tied on something that is in our building? Again, it’s complicated. For the time being, the Curators decided to remove any of her artifacts from this gallery to reduce her impact. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s what we were able to do in the short-term while determining long-term practices. As we’ve continued to learn and grow, they’re planning on continuing to add context to creators and content through our blog and possibly in-gallery QR codes….
(3) SEVENTIES GENRE ART. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Jared Pechaček will talk with 70’s Sci-Fi Art curator Adam Rowe about his new book Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s. It’ll be streamed live on Zoom at 12 PM EST/3 PM PST on Tuesday, August 8th. Register here.
A visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art
Third Place Books welcomes local author Adam Rowe—senior writer at Tech.co and curator of the popular, multi-platform 70s Sci-Fi Art feed @70sscifi—for a presentation of his latest book, Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s. Visit the store to see this stunning art-object for yourself! Rowe will be joined in conversation by local artist and writer Jared Pechaček.
This event will be broadcast live on Zoom. Registering will provide you with a unique access link in an email. During the event, you can ask questions using the Q&A feature, or chat with fellow attendees. A recording of the event will be made available and emailed to all who register.
This author talk is free! You can sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book.
Some used bookstores are seeing a rush of donations from teachers because those teachers are worried about book bans.
A stack of books sat in front of “Best Used Books” in Longwood on Thursday.
Crystal Bryant says the shelves are filling up more quickly this summer.
“Every author that you could possibly think of,” Bryant said.
Teachers are donating thousands more books than usual because they’re concerned about banned books.
“Those teachers are literally coming back every day, bringing boxes of stuff that they can’t they can’t use in their classrooms, which is sad,” Bryant said.
Bryant’s family has owned the shop for nearly 30 years.
And she says this year, they’ve gotten three times the amount of book dropoffs.
“Just a lot of stuff coming in,” Bryant said.
And we’re just like, we will take it because we don’t discriminate whatsoever.
“You’re seeing a lot of teachers saying, ‘I’m just not going to take the chance and I’m going to get rid of the classroom libraries,'” Andrew Spar said.
Spar is the president of Florida’s largest teachers’ union….
The famous Waterstones in London’s Piccadilly is a modernist/art deco building. It started life as a menswear store and has the feel of that sort of traditional shop that is fast disappearing. But this bookshop, like many others, is enjoying a very modern sales boost from social media.
Groups of teenage girls regularly gather here to buy new books and meet new friends, both discovered on the social media app TikTok. Recommendations by influencers for authors and novels on BookTok – a community of users who are passionate about books and make videos recommending titles – can send sales into the stratosphere.
But while very much an online phenomenon, BookTok is having a material impact on the high street, with TikTok now pushing people to buy their books from bricks-and-mortar booksellers through a partnership with bookshop.org, which allows people to buy online and support independent bookshops at the same time.
Last year, Waterstones Piccadilly hosted a BookTok festival. One sales assistant told the Observer: “I can’t stress how much BookTok sells books. It’s driven huge sales of YA [young adult] and romance books, including titles such asThe Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and authors such as Colleen Hoover.
“The demographic is almost exclusively teenage girls, but the power it has is huge. We have a ‘BookTok recommended’ table – and you can tell which books are trending by the speed at which they sell.”…
(6) JETSON LORE. Back with another MeTV quiz – “How well do you know Elroy Jetson?” I only got 8 out of 10. “Only” because I’m convinced I knew the hardest ones, and one of my misses wasn’t really a question about the show itself.
“His boy, Elroy!”
Meet the boy of the future, Elroy Jetson! He’s got all the gadgets you could shake a stick at. But even though he’s living in a sci-fi world, Elroy Jetson is still relatable enough that any kid could see themselves reflected in his astronaut helmet.
How well do you recall this techno-lad? Was Elroy your favorite, or were you tuning in for Astro? Who here wanted to be Elroy? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!
After the regrettable incidents on the island (the old island), the Doctor kept a low profile. Many thought he was dead. There was safety in that once. Now the greater safety is in being known.
What plans he had, back in the day! World domination! If only … but no, this is just the sort of negative spiral his therapist has warned him about. He has remade himself as an altruist, a philanthropist, and he means for his efforts to have maximum impact.
His therapist calls it “harm reduction,” a transition from the “malignant” narcissism of his past to the “altruistic” narcissism of the present. And it’s true he has changed: In times past, even referring to his narcissism might have earned the therapist a trip to the guano workings. But he is no longer that malevolent man. He’s even developed a sense of humor. He collects mad doctor jokes. He has a T-shirt that reads I’M NOT MAD I’M JUST GETTING EVEN….
One of Friedrich Nietzsche’s great early essays opens with a strange, science fictional vignette. Set on a melancholy little planet where “clever beasts invented knowing,” the philosopher’s parable recounts the rise, reign, and ultimate extinction of this sapient species, whose career is described as only a “minute” in the history of the universe. “After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die,” Nietzsche writes.
Nietzsche’s grift soon becomes transparent, of course: We are the “clever beasts” in the story, and the point of the parable is to force the reader to imagine our species from a God’s-eye view, to expose “how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.” The parable concludes on a nakedly nihilistic note: “When it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened,” Nietzsche observes. “For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life.”
Understandably, most readers focus on the wildly pessimistic penultimate sentence, where Nietzsche announces humanity’s cosmic insignificance. However, it is the last sentence, which expressly explains why nothing will have happened, that holds the key to the parable’s meaning. For Nietzsche, the extinction of the “clever beasts” is meaningless not because their existence is intrinsically worthless, but because they fail to pursue any “mission” that would give their collective existence purpose. They do not set themselves a goal as a species….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 6, 1874 — Charles Fort. Writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The term fortean is sometimes used to characterize such phenomena. No, not genre as such, but certainly an influence on many a writer. The Dover publication, The Complete Books of Charles Fort, that collects together The Book of The Damned Lo!, Wild Talents and New Lands has a foreword by Damon Knight. When it was originally published as The Books of Charles Fort L. Sprague de Camp reviewed it in Astounding Science-Fiction in the August 1941 issue. (Died 1932.)
Born August 6, 1877 — John Ulrich Giesy. He was one of the early writers in the Sword and Planet genre, with his Jason Croft series. He collaborated with Junius B. Smith on many of his stories though not these which others would call them scientific romances. He wrote a large number of stories featuring the occult detective Abdul Omar aka Semi-Dual and those were written with Smith. (Died 1947.)
Born August 6, 1926 — Janet Asimov. Author of some half dozen novels and a fair amount of short fiction on her own, mostly as J.O. Jeppson; co-author with Isaac of the Norby Chronicles. Her Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing, came out thirteen years ago. (Died 2019.)
Born August 6, 1934 — Piers Anthony, 89. Ok I’ll admit that I’m not at all familiar with him as comic fantasy isn’t my usual go-to reading though I’ve some of the Xanth series a long time ago. I know he’s popular so I’m going to ask y’all which of his novels would be a great introduction to him. Go ahead and tell which novels I should read.
Born August 6, 1956 — Ian R. MacLeod, 67. Another author I need to read more of. I’ve read the first two in what’s called the Aether Universe series, The Light Ages and The House of Storms, but there are other novels I’m intrigued by, including Song of Time and The Great Wheel. He’s won some impressive Awards including three Sidewise Awards for The Summer Isles (short and long forms) and for Wake Up and Dream novel. He also won a World Fantasy Award for “The Chop Shop” short story.
Born August 6, 1972 — Paolo Bacigalupi, 51. I remember the book group I was part of some years ago having a spirited debate over The Windup Girl (which won a Hugo at Aussiecon 4 and a Nebula as well) over the believability of the central character. I think he did a better job with characters in his next novels, Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities, but he’s really not about characters anyways.
(10) THE MAN FROM UNCLE WITH THE GOLDEN GUN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. On the official blog of artist J.J. Lendle, The Poster Project, is an amazing gallery of tributes to current movies and shows on posters done in myriad styles drawn from the decades of Hollywood history. Here’s a very recent example.
(11) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport’s editors hope their free August story, Eugenia Triantafyllou‘s “Always Be Returning,” will “transport all our readers to mythical and strikingly heartfelt shores.” “Always Be Returning”. To receive new posts and support our authors’ work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
… It was initially going to be Star Trek Picard that was possibly going to have a musical episode. Executive producer of both Picard and Strange New Worlds Akiva Goldsman says that another exec-producer, Michael Chabon knows Lin-Manuel Miranda. “We were like, ‘Call him! call him!’” but “[Lin-Manuel] didn’t call him back. And that was the end of that musical. But it did seem like such a good idea. As soon as Henry and I got together to make [Strange New Worlds], I kept peppering him with, ‘We should do a musical,’ and Henry, of course, had done musicals before.”…
(13) 10,000 MILES I ROAMED, JUST TO MAKE THIS DOCK MY HOME. Most of these new-species-named-for-something-genre are pointlessly precious, but I admit this one made me laugh: “New Fish Species Named After The Lord of the Rings” at Comicbook.com.
The world of The Lord of the Ringshas inspired countless adaptations and fan works — and now, it has officially influenced the world of fish. According to a new study in the Ichthyology & Herpetology journal, scientists have discovered a brand-new species of suckermouth catfish along West Africa’s Niger River, which shares some similarities with the franchise’s fictional Hobbits. In particular, the fish are seen as “diminutive travelers” who were separated a great distance from their fellow catfish, much like the Hobbits are in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories. As a result, the brown and white fish has now officially been named Chiloglanis frodobagginsi, a reference to protagonist Frodo Baggins…
(14) VIDEO OF BACK IN THE DAY. Brian Keene joins three more living legends — Ellen Datlow, Linda Addison, and Steve Rasnic Tem — for “Back in the Day (part 2)”.
Brian Keene speaks with panelists about what has changed in publishing and horror fiction over the years… and what hasn’t
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Steven French, Ben Bird Person, Kathy Sullivan, Peer, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
…Bear, who moved to the Seattle area in 1987, also had an impact on his adopted home. He was a member of the team that created and organized the Washington State Centennial Time Capsule. And GeekWire contributor Frank Catalano recalls introducing Bear to the late software billionaire Paul Allen — a contact that helped lead to the creation of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, now part of Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture.
The accolades streaming in from friends and admirers stressed the personal as well as the public contributions made by Bear over the decades. “Greg the man was a friend,” fellow science-fiction icon Harry Turtledove tweeted. “Greg the writer was quite remarkable.”…
…As a “hard” science fiction writer who does extensive research, Bear has dived into everything from nanotechnology (his 1983 novel Blood Music is credited by some as being its first use in science fiction) to planetary science. A current fascination, in part because it’s a key setting in the War Dogs trilogy, is Titan. “It’s got a hazy orange layer,” he explained. “It’s full of plastics, and waxes, and organic chemistry. Then, it turns out, it’s actually got a water ocean underneath.”
But the hard science fiction reputation can mask the fact that Bear has also written — successfully — novels that are fantasy, horror, and near-future techno thrillers. “I find the idea, and then I try to find the story that fits it,” he said. “Some of these ideas are coming up so fast that you can’t write about them as far-future ideas.”…
The SFWA Blog’s“In Memoriam – Greg Bear” notes he was a past President, and quotes from a selection of several other Presidents.
…Current SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy remarked, “When I took over as a newbie President of SFWA, Past-President Greg Bear was unfailingly gracious to and supportive of me. I loved his work and admired him as an author, so to discover what a truly kind person he was meant so much. He will be greatly missed by SFWA and the larger community.”
Former SFWA Presidents also wished to pay their respects to their colleague and friend as such:
“There are few people in my life from whom I learned so much, and was so fortunate to have known, than Greg Bear.” – Paul Levinson
“Whether or not he was one of the greatest novelists of speculative fiction may be questionable for the ages to argue but a Prince of SF he surely was. From the beginning to the end, he was a sincere literary artist, scientifically learned, a speculative visionary, if not the king of that which has no king, surely a prince seated at the SF table.” – Norman Spinrad
“Greg Bear and I were friends for thirty years. What I loved about his work was that it freely embraced the entire scope science fiction has to offer: from the far future (Anvil of Stars), through the present day (Quantico), to cavorting with creatures we know only from the distant past (Dinosaur Summer), he took us on a grand tour of his boundless imagination.” – Robert Sawyer
“Greg was my vice president, unflappable, always supportive, funny, endearing, and smart. Heart-breaking he is leaving us so soon.” – Jane Yolen
Sixteen years after her death, the writer Octavia Butler is experiencing a renaissance.
Butler, seen here on a mural at a middle school that bears her name, is celebrated for novels that grappled with extremism, racial justice and the climate crisis.
The future she wrote about is now our present moment. What follows is a tour of the worlds that made her — and the worlds that she made.
She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. The MacArthur Foundation said of Octavia E. Butler, “Her imaginative stories are transcendent fables, which have as much to do with the future as with the present and the past.”
Part of what has made Butler so beloved is the work that preceded these honors: the way she envisioned her own future and encouraged herself to keep going despite the very real obstacles in her path. She recorded her goals and aspirations in her personal journals in terms that have since resonated across the decades:
I will buy a beautiful home in an excellent neighborhood.
I will help poor Black youngsters broaden their horizons.
I will travel whenever and wherever in the world that I choose.
Deteriorating health has made it necessary to move Ray to a nursing home. Ray loves to receive letters and if you would like to let him know how much you enjoyed his work, now would be a good time (and soon). Send to Ray Nelson, c/o Walter Nelson, PO Box 370904 Reseda CA 91337
In his cartoons Nelson popularized the association fans with propeller beanies, and he was honored with the Rotsler Award in 2003.
(5) PITTSBURGH FANDOM BACK IN THE DAY. Fanac.org’s next FanHistory Project Zoom Session is “Fannish Life in 1970s Pittsburgh, with Ginjer Buchanan, Linda Bushyager, Suzanne Tompkins, and Laurie Mann”. It will take place Saturday December 10, 2022 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.
Pittsburgh in the late 60s/70s saw an explosion of fannish activity, with the founding of the Western Pennsylvania SF Association (WPSFA), the creation of PghLANGE and the publication of many fanzines, including Granfalloon (Linda Bushyager and Suzanne Tompkins). What made Pittsburgh special? Why the resurgence of fannish activity? Who were the driving forces? In this session, Ginjer Buchanan, Linda Bushyager and Suzanne Tompkins, three of the movers and shakers of 1970s Pittsburgh fandom, talk about that era. Our Moderator Laurie Mann is a current Pittsburgh fan as well as a fan historian.
The FBI’s takedown of Z-Library, one of the world’s largest repositories of pirated books and academic papers, this month set ablaze the subset of TikTok devoted to discussing books and authors, said Lexi Hardesty, a BookTok content creator.
“I have never seen authors and readers go head-to-head the way they did that week,” said Hardesty, a student at the University of Kentucky.
Readers were mourning that their ability to download free textbooks, novels and academic papers had disappeared overnight. Some BookTokers compared the shutdown of the website to the mythical burning of the library of Alexandria in 48 B.C., Hardesty said. “Some even said that shutting it down was an extension of slavery.”
Yet authors across BookTok were relieved. “Piracy costs us our sales, specifically for marginalized authors; it adversely impacts public libraries; and it hurts the publishing industry,” said Nisha Sharma, an author and BookToker. “Essentially when you mourn Z-Library, you are mourning the end of theft.”…
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1995 — [By Cat Eldridge.]Deep Space Nine‘s “The Sword Of Kahless”
“Did you see the look on the face of that Klingon that I killed? It was as if he understood the honor bestowed upon him. The first man in a thousand years to be killed by the Sword of Kahless.” — Kor
“I’m sure he was very proud.” – Dax
On this evening twenty-seven years ago in syndication, Deep Space Nine‘s “The Sword Of Kahless” was brought to us for our enjoyment.
The story was created by Richard Danus and was turned into a script by Hans Beimler.
The episode was directed by LeVar Burton. It features the return of John Colicos as Kor. Colicos had first appeared as Kor, the very first Klingon in all of Trek, in Trek’s “Errand of Mercy” and had previously appeared in this series in the episode “Blood Oath”.
GO GET YOURSELF A CUP OF WARM KLINGON BLOODWINE AS SPOILERS LIKE BLOOD OFF A BATLEFF FOLLOW NOW.
Kor has returned to the Deep Space Nine to get the help of Worf and Dax to help to find the ancient Sword of Kahless. It was the very first bat’leth forged by the founder of the Klingon Empire, Kahless the Unforgettable. After they find the sword, they are forced to evade the forces of Toral, son of Duras, and Worf and Kor starting fighting to the death.
Worf and Kor realize that the Sword is partially sentient and has turned them against each other, and will lead to the end of the Empire.
Worf ponders if they really were meant to find it; Kor firmly asserts that they were, but notes that they were also not meant to keep it. So they teleport the sword into space where hopefully it will stay forever.
IF YOU HAVE DRANK ENOUGH OF THAT WINE, COME ON BACK BY THE WARMING FIRE.
The sword itself was created specifically for the episode, and was made to seem more elaborate than the bat’leths previously seen in Trek, including hand etchings to make it appear similar to Damascus steel.
This episode was somewhat unpopular with many viewers when it first aired, something which disappointed writer Hans Beimler and producer René Echevarria. What particularly disappointed them was the fact that many viewers were unable to accept the notion that the bat’leth itself had no actual power. According to Echevarria, “A lot of fan reaction was that there must be a tech explanation, that the sword must be emitting something. I was astonished.” — Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — The Office Poster Magazine
Michelle Erica Green, who watched the episode in April 2013 for TrekNation, thought that it was not a typical Deep Space Nine episode and that it required that the viewer had knowledge of Worf’s history from the Next Generation. It rated slightly off the “Little Green Men” episode that preceded it and the “Our Man Bashir” that followed it.
It of course is streaming at Paramount +.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 20, 1923 — Nadine Gordimer. South African writer and political activist. Her one genre novel was July’s People which was banned in her native country under both governments. Her three stories are collected in Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized as a writer “who through her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity”. (Died 2014.)
Born November 20, 1923 — Len Moffatt. He was a member of First Fandom. Len and his second wife June helped organize many of the early Bouchercons for which they received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bouchercon staff. He was a member of LASFS. He wrote far too many zines to list here. Mike has an excellent look at his memorial here. (Died 2010.)
Born November 20, 1929 — Jerry Hardin. Actor famous for his character roles, whom genre fans know as the informant Deep Throat in The X-Files, or perhaps as Samuel Clemens in the Star Trek: The Next Generation double episode “Times’s Arrow”. Other TV series guest appearances include Star Trek: Voyager, Sliders, Brimstone, Time Trax, Lois & Clark, Quantum Leap, Dark Justice, Starman, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The (new) Twilight Zone, and The Incredible Hulk, and he had roles in Big Trouble in Little China and Doomsday Virus (aka Pandora’s Clock). (Died 1993.)
Born November 20, 1926 — John Edmund Gardner. No, not the one that wrote that Grendel novel, but the who was actually an English spy and a novelist who is remembered for his James Bond novels of which he wrote, according to critics, way too many as they though they were silly, but also for his Boysie Oakes spy novels and three novels containing featuring Professor Moriarty that are most tasty. (Died 2007.)
Born November 20, 1932 — Richard Dawson. Usually one appearance in a genre film or show isn’t enough to make the Birthday list but he was Damon Killian on The Running Man, a juicy enough role to ensure making this list. Twenty years earlier he was Joey on Munster, Go Home! He’d voice Long John Silver on an animated Treasure Island film in the Seventies. And he had a one-off on the classic Fantasy Island as well. (Died 2012.)
Born November 20, 1944 — Molly Gloss, 78. What a lovely name she has! Her novel Wild Life won the 2000 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. She has two more SF novels, The Dazzle of Day and Outside the Gates. Her “Lambing season” short story was nominated for a Hugo at Torcon 3, and “The Grinnell Method” won a Sturgeon.
Born November 20, 1956 — Bo Derek, 66. She makes the Birthday list for being Jane Parker in Tarzan, the Ape Man. There’s also Ghosts Can’t Do It and Horror 101 as well as the two Sharknado films she did. A friend of Ray Bradbury, she was the presenter when Kirk Douglas received the 2012 Ray Bradbury Creativity Award.
Born November 20, 1963 — Ming-Na Wen, 59. Actor born in Macau who appeared as Agent Melinda May in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She was raised near Pittsburgh, PA and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also had main roles in the series Stargate Universe and the short-lived Vanished, and a recurring role in Eureka. Her breakthrough genre role was providing the voice for Disney’s Mulan, for which she won an Annie Award (awards which recognize voice actors in animated productions). This led to a lengthy career providing voices for animated features and series, including Spawn, The Batman, Adventure Time with Finn & Jake, Phineas and Ferb, Robot Chicken, and Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as a plethora of Mulan spinoffs, offshoots, tie-ins, and video games. Other genre appearances include the films The Darkness, Starquest (aka Terminal Voyage), Tempting Fate, and Rain Without Thunder.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Non Sequiturshows a space probe confirming what you already suspected.
…Comparing modern day (2010+) to the early comics (1940-60), we observe from the green trendlines:
Busts occupy more than triple the cover space today
The amount of cleavage shown has more than doubled (cleavage of greater than 50% was not observed until the 1970s at which point it became relatively common)
Women actually did “fill out” in the waist over time (hip:waist ratio declined by ~15%)
Breast:Waist ratio has remained the same – as breasts have grown, so have waists
… The white-spotted dog, who became “the first beagle on the moon” in a series of Peanuts comic strips in 1969, is now on his way back to the moon aboard NASA’s Artemis 1 mission(opens in new tab). Snoopy, in the form of a small doll dressed in a one-of-a-kind replica of NASA’s pressure suit for Artemis astronauts, is the “zero-g indicator,” or ZGI, on board the space agency’s now lunar-orbit-bound Orion spacecraft.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Snoopy. They had to put you on a leash because you’re hanging in the Orion capsule right now,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during an August photo op with the beagle (in this case, a costume character(opens in new tab), also wearing the bright orange spacesuit). “Snoopy was the last person to be put in Orion when they closed the hatch.”
Snoopy’s leash, or tether, was to keep the doll in view of a camera inside Orion’s cabin. Traditionally, zero-g indicators have been flown on crewed spacecraft as a visual sign for the astronauts that they have reached orbit. The Artemis 1 Orion is flying without a crew — other than Snoopy, four LEGO minifigures(opens in new tab), Shaun the Sheep(opens in new tab) and three instrumented manikins(opens in new tab) — so the doll was flown for the benefit of the public watching the launch on NASA’s television channel or website….
… Graham Hancock, the journalist who hosts the series, returns again and again to his anger at this state of affairs and his status as an outsider to “mainstream archaeology,” his assessment of how terrible “mainstream archaeology” is about accepting new theories, and his insistence that there’s all this evidence out there but “mainstream archaeologists” just won’t look for it. His bitter disposition, I’m sure, accounts for some of the interest in this show. Hancock, a fascinating figure with an interesting past as a left-leaning foreign correspondent, has for decades been elaborating variations on this thinking: Humans, as he says in the docuseries, have “amnesia” about our past. An “advanced” society that existed around 12,000 years ago was extinguished when the climate changed drastically in a period scientists call the Younger Dryas. Before dying out completely, this civilization sent out emissaries to the corners of the world, spreading knowledge, including building techniques that can be found in use at many ancient sites, and sparking the creation of mythologies that are oddly similar the world over. It’s important for us to think about this history, Hancock adds, because we also face impending cataclysm. It is a warning….
However, the last half of Slate’s article is devoted to an interview with archaeologist John Hoopes about why no credence should be placed in Hancock’s theories.
…So a fast decision was made to change the shrinking fabric. Since the velour was causing so much grief, they had to do something with all those extra shirts. Waste was not going to happen on such a tight budget….
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Jennifer Hawthorne, Frank Catalano, Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]
… After 54 years of speculative fiction journalism, we are in danger of losing Locus Magazine. With the rising costs of physical publishing, the mass exodus toward digital, and the rising costs of living, the margins at Locus narrow from month to month. And if no one takes action, we could lose this resource in less than a year.
Contributing reviewers return to publishing reviews for free. The six full-time staff members lose their salaries and benefits. Our community loses the Locus Awards and the honor of the Recommended Reading List. We lose a breadth of speculative journalism including short story and book reviews, spotlights, interviews, acquisition announcements, cover reveals, press releases, articles, essays for, by, and about people in speculative fiction.
I won’t pretend I had a Locus subscription when I got this news. To the contrary, I thought I had time. I thought that was something you acquired when you were farther along in your career. But it’s become clear that if we don’t start contributing to speculative fiction institutions, they might not be here when we think we’re ready for them and they definitely won’t be around for the generations of writers behind mine.
In the same way that readership and fundraising are the lifeblood of so many magazines we aspire to and love to read as fiction readers and writers, this journalistic institution needs you and I to help it keep its pages open. It is an archive of science fiction past and present, and Locus needs us to help it carry us into the future.
Due to the glorious future Twitter is being dragged kicking and screaming into thanks to the inspired leadership of Elon Musk, suupergenius, UI thought it was time to give the ol’ blog a bit of attention again. Not that I haven’t been blogging semi-regularly, but whereas a decade ago I’d hit a post a day fairly regularly, the past couple of years I’ve lucky to get into double digits in a given month. Mostly focused on anime too, as for political and other writing Twitter was just too handy. But if Twitter is going away, will blogs make a comeback?…
(3) SFWA STORYBUNDLE. The SFWA Magical Mysteries StoryBundle of novels with characters that ask “What Am I Doing Here?” is available for through November 30.
The Magical Mysteries StoryBundle features ten fantasy books that have protagonists shaking their heads and wondering how the heck they got into this, whether “this” is discovering a dragon in a coal mine or that they’ve found themselves in a nightmarish game of chess. Join us for tales of burgeoning magic, portal fantasies, strange creatures and … you guessed it: characters who have no idea what’s going on.
SFWA StoryBundles are collections of ebooks curated by the SFWA Indie Authors Committee and offered at a discounted price. Readers decide what price they want to pay. For $5 (or more, if they’re feeling generous), they get the core bundle of four books in any ebook format available—WORLDWIDE!
The Dragon’s Playlist by Laura Bickle
Jester by Geoff Hart
Dragon Dreams by Chris A. Jackson
Ritual of the Ancients by Roan Rosser
If they pay at least $20, they get all four of the core books, plus six more books, for a total of ten!
The Sister Paradox by Jack Campbell
Sorrow and Joy by D.R. Perry
Revise The World by Brenda W. Clough
The Year’s Midnight by Rachel Neumeier
Pawn’s Gambit by Darin Kennedy
Spindled by Shanna Swendson
Readers will gain a rich library of fantasy ebooks and can opt to donate part of their purchase price to support SFWA’s ongoing work to promote and support speculative fiction genres and writers.
BookTok, the nickname for TikTok videos in which books are discussed, analysed, cried about and turned into “aesthetic” moodboards, began as a small group of the app’s users who wanted a place to talk about books. It has since grown into a hugely influential community that has the power to pluck authors out of relative obscurity and propel them into the bestsellers charts.
Earlier this month it was named FutureBook Person of the Year, an accolade which recognises digital innovation and excellence across the book trade. According to James Stafford, Head of Partnerships and Community at TikTok, BookTok is a community of “creative people around the world with a shared passion for literature”. Publishers, creators and writers have generally agreed that this corner of the platform has had an overwhelmingly positive effect, having led to huge increases in book sales and the discovery of new writers. The Bookseller even recently called it “the last safe place on the internet”….
(5) IMAGINARY PAPERS. The ASU Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, their quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.
The issue features an essay by the artist, researcher, and critic Zoyander Street on the 2017 BBC utopian film Carnage, and another on Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novel The Invention of Morel, by writer, podcaster, and lawyer Jason Tashea, who works on the future of criminal justice. There’s also a brief writeup of Vice Motherboard’s anthology Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn.
Carnage (2017)
The year is 2067. A diverse polycule of androgynous young people, wearing what appears to be glittering eye makeup, walk hand in hand through a sunny field, glass pyramids shining on the horizon. Comedian Simon Amstell narrates: “Though we rarely think about it, Britain is now raising the most peaceful and happy humans ever. Violence has been defeated with compassion, depression cured with intimacy.”
Carnage is a feature-length mockumentary written and directed by Amstell, and published on the BBC’s iPlayer in March 2017. In its utopian future, British people now live in harmony with nature and do not eat meat or animal products. Audiences are invited to reflect on Britain’s history of “carnism,” a term adopted to refer to the archaic practice of eating animals and animal-derived products. Their history is our present, so the film is a darkly comic appraisal of intergenerational trauma in the making. Characters represent the perspectives of different generations: millennial seniors undergo group therapy to process their shame at having participated in a system of abuse, while the generation reaching adulthood in the 2060s tries to make sense of the atrocities committed by their parents and grandparents….
(6) MEMORY LANE.
1951 — [By Cat Eldridge.]Strangers on a Train
Seventy-one years ago, Strangers on a Train premiered. It’s a classic film noir which was produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
It was based on the Strangers on a Train novel by Patricia Highsmith that she had written just the previous year. Hitchcock secured the rights to the novel for only $7,500 since it was her first novel. As per his practice, he kept his name out of the negotiations to keep the purchase price low. Naturally she was quite angry when she later discovered who bought the rights for such a pitiful amount.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS, MAY I SUGGEST YOU GO TO THE BAR NOW?
On a train, two strangers meet and swap the idea of murders — Bruno, who is actually a psychopath, suggests he kill Guy’s wife Miriam and Guy kill Bruno’s hated father. Each will murder a stranger, with no apparent motive, so neither will be suspected. The perfect murders. Or so they think oh so smugly.
Apparently they vary out the murders, or do they? Miriam shows up alive, Guy actually has no attention of killing Bruno’s father which leads to, of all things a fight between them on carnival wheel that mortally wounds .Bruno
I’ve no idea why the psychopath didn’t kill his victim, nor does Hitchcock give us a clue.
Sometime later, another stranger on a train attempts to strike up conversation with Guy in the same way as had Bruno with Guy, about Anne, the daughter of the US Senator he wants to marry (which is why he wants to kill his still alive wife — don’t think about that too long) but Guy turns and walks away from him.
ENJOY YOUR DRINK IN THE BAR? COME ON BACK.
Hitchcock hated the leads, Farley Granger as Guy Haines, Ruth Roman as Anne Morton and Robert Walker as Bruno, as the Studio which paid for the production would be the one that choose the performers. He openly scorned Ruth Roman throughout the production saying she was “lacking in sex appeal”.
(Warner Bros. wanted their own stars, already under contract, cast wherever possible. All studios did this because it was considerably cheaper than hiring freelancers. Hitchcock of course thought money was no object and bitterly complained.)
Though critics at the time were at best lukewarm, audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes are giving it a ninety eight percent rating. And it did great at the box office — the production costs were just one point six million dollars and it made seven million in its initial run. Very impressive.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 15, 1877 — William Hope Hodgson. By far, his best known character is Thomas Carnacki, featured in several of his most famous stories and at least partly based upon Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective John Silence. (Simon R. Green will make use of him in his Ghost Finders series.) Two of his later novels, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land would be lavishly praised by H.P. Lovecraft. While serving as a Lieutenant in the army, he was killed by the direct impact of an artillery shell at the Fourth Battle of Ypres in April 1918. (Died 1918.)
Born November 15, 1879 — Lewis Stone. He was Lord John Roxton in The Lost World which premiered here in 1925 making it one of the earliest cinematic adaptations of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel. If you define Treasure Island as genre, that’s his only other genre role where he’s Captain Smollett. (Died 1953.)
Born November 15, 1929 — Ed Asner. Genre work includes roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, Shelley Duvall’s Tall Tales & Legends, Batman: The Animated Series and I’ll stop there as the list goes on for quite awhile. (Died 2021.)
Born November 15, 1933 — Theodore Roszak. Winner of the Tiptree Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1995), and the rather excellent Flicker which is well worth reading. Flicker is available at the usual suspects, and his only other available fiction is his Japanese folktales. Odd. (Died 2011.)
Born November 15, 1934 — Joanna Barnes. Genre work includes roles on Planet of the Apes TV series and Fantasy Island. (Died 2022.)
Born November 15, 1942 — Ruth Berman, 80. She’s a writer of mostly speculative poetry. In 2003, she won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem for “Potherb Gardening”, and in 2016 for “Time Travel Vocabulary Problems”. She was the winner of the 2006 Dwarf Stars Award for her poem “Knowledge Of”. She’s also written one YA fantasy novel, Bradamant’s quest. In 1973, she was a finalist for the first Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She edited the Dunkiton Press genre zine for a decade or so. She was nominated for Best Fan Writer Hugo at Baycon (1968). Impressive indeed.
Born November 15, 1972 — Jonny Lee Miller, 50. British actor and director who played Sherlock Holmes on the exemplary Elementary series, but his first genre role was as a nine year-old with the Fifth Doctor story, “Kinda”. While he’s had a fairly steady stage, film, and TV career across the pond since then, it’s only in the last decade that he’s become well-known in the States – unless, like JJ, you remember that twenty-three years ago he appeared in a technothriller called Hackers, with another unknown young actor named Angelina Jolie (to whom he ended up married, until they separated eighteen months months later). Other genre appearances include a trio of vampire films, Dracula 2000, Dark Shadows, and Byzantium, the live-action Æon Flux movie, and the lead in the pseudo-fantasy TV series Eli Stone. (JJ)
It’s been a little more than a year since news of a potential reboot of Babylon 5 surfaced over at The CW. Since then things have stalled in a big way, and remained stalled as The CW goes through major changes after its purchase by Nexstar Media Group. So, what does all that upheaval mean for our chances at more B5? According to creator J. Michael Straczynski, it means we wait, and it’s as simple as that….
— and when it does I'll get it out as soon as possible or at minimum let you know that something has been decided. Through 30+ years of rumors and online nonsense I've always dealt straight with the B5 fan community. Waiting is hard, but wait we must until *something* is decided
EVER WANTED TO BE THE PROTAGONIST OF A STRANGER THINGS ADVENTURE?
Your chance has arrived. Stranger Things: The Experience throws you headfirst into your favorite show —join Eleven, Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Max, and Will for a very special episode starring… you! Venture inside Hawkins Lab for a 45 mins. immersive experience featuring a brand-new Stranger Things storyline, then explore an 80’s-themed Mix-Tape medley with food & drinks, special merchandise, photo ops, and much more.
(10) THEIR COPYEDITOR MUST BE MY COUSIN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] From a tech PR email pitch:
Subject: Hackers using stenography for malware attacks – expert source
Daniel Dern adds, “They did get the term correct within the text – ‘steganography’ – and their response to my politely noting the hiccup, was as I expected, ‘Damn autocorrect!’”
(11) A GAME THAT TEACHES BIODIVERSITY PROTECTION. Nature Kin is a collaborative card game to help young people and families cultivate ecological literacy. The game puts players in charge of an open space where they and their friends race to find a home for 28 different native plants, animals, and insects.
Patrick Coleman (assistant director, Clarke Center) created the game with the help of his two young daughters, who adore the abundant nature we have in San Diego County: one of the top ten biodiversity hotspots in the country.
They have launched an Indiegogo campaign to help bring that game to the world and as of today it has raised $783 of the $1500 flexible goal.
Also, for every set purchased during the Indiegogo campaign, they will donate one set to a young person through a school or community outreach program, doubling your impact, and donate $5 to Project Wildlife (part of the San Diego Humane Society), a wildlife rehabilitation program that gives injured, orphaned, and sick wild animals a second chance at life.
(12) LOCAL STONES. Here’s a flyby comparison of all the moons of Uranus and Neptune – except the flyby is set above a familiar cityscape for real impact. I never knew how many moons look more like potatoes than billiard balls.
All known moons of the planets Uranus and Neptune, arranged in order of size. Uranus has 27 moons discovered so far and Neptune has 14. Some moons are known with Triton, Miranda or Titania, but there are many more smaller moons that are little known.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Joey Eschrich, Rich Lynch, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
…Now one of the commanding forces in adult fiction, BookTok has helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021, according to BookScan. So far this year, those sales are up another 50 percent. NPD Books said that no other form of social media has ever had this kind of impact on sales.
The most popular videos don’t generally offer information about the book’s author, the writing or even the plot, the way a traditional review does. Instead, readers speak plainly about the emotional journey a book will offer.
And that, it turns out, is just what many people are looking for, said Milena Brown, the marketing director at Doubleday.
“‘This is how it makes me feel, and this is how it’s going to make you feel,’” Ms. Brown said, describing the content of many of the videos. “And people are like, ‘I want to feel that. Give it to me!’”…
(2) VICIOUS CIRCLES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Dante Alighieri’s 9 rings face some stiff competition from these movies, though they overlap in ways much more complex than mere circles. Plus, columnist Danielle Ryan carefully points out at least one way our reality is worse than each movie. I suppose that means that, climate change notwithstanding, we should all break out our warmest winter gear for the icy lake ahead. “8 Dystopian Movies That Are Better Than Our Current Hellscape” at Slashfilm.
It is not an understatement to say that life in the United States right now is absolutely terrifying for the majority of its population. In 2016, a game show host won the highest seat of power in the country on a platform of lies and hatred, emboldening the worst of Americans to be angrier, louder, and more violent. More than 1 million Americans are dead from a pandemic, lives that could have potentially been saved with proper leadership and planning in public health instead of one president who publicized injecting bleach as a cure and one who can’t seem to make a firm decision on anything. A sneakily stacked Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade with the potential to go after other landmark civil rights cases, revoking bodily autonomy from more than half of the population. Things are looking pretty bleak, and while sometimes looking to hopeful fiction like “Star Trek” can be a balm, sometimes a person needs to find comfort in a fictional dystopia to remind them of the tenacity of the human spirit and that there is good even in the worst of times.
Here are some of the best movie dystopias that provide an alternative to our current, real-life one. After all, if we’re going to have to live through corporations owning everything, having no privacy whatsoever, and basically being in a boring version of a William Gibson story, shouldn’t we at least have flying cars by now?
(3) FIRST IN, LAST OUT. Kevin Standlee’s photos on Flickr show the Tonopah Westercon winding down.
In 2008, Lisa Hayes was the first person who was part of what would become the 2022 Westercon 74 committee to set foot in the Tonopah Convention Center. On July 5, 2022, she was the last member of the Westercon 74 com
Kevin Standlee sports his newly-minted Former Westercon Chair ribbon bestowed upon him by past Westercon Chair Patty Wells and other former chairs during the Alien Autopsy Party at Westercon 74 in Tonopah.
Ahead of Contact’s 25th anniversary, we spoke to nearly two dozen people involved in its making, including Zemeckis, Foster, McConaughey, Druyan, Sasha Sagan, and veteran producer Lynda Obst. They disagreed on several aspects of Contact’s development saga, but settled on some consensus: Contact was a lightning-in-a-bottle project, the kind of thing big movie studios barely made before and would probably never make again — intellectually challenging, emotionally messy, heavy with metaphor, wherein nobody shoots an alien in the face in front of an American flag. “We used to do that,” said Foster. “We used to make movies that were resonant and were entertaining.”…
Ann Druyan: This is 1978. Carl and I are still working on CosmosCosmos: A Personal Voyage is a 13-part TV series written by Sagan, Druyan, and Steven Soter, that first broadcast on PBS in 1980.. At the time, it was popular to say things like, “Well, if men are as smart as women, then how come there are no female Leonardos? No female Einsteins?” This made both of us furious. I had just co-written the part of Cosmos about the Great Library of Alexandria and the fact that Hypatia, who was the leader of the library, was a mathematician focusing on the Diophantine equations that Newton would later become interested in. Her reward for being the great intellectual light of the library in 415 AD was to be ripped from her chariot that she was driving herself and carved to bits with abalone shellsSagan gave Druyan an abalone shell that she says she always keeps with her..
People were throwing everything at Carl then. He was such a phenomenon in the culture, and everybody wanted to do something with him. So we knew we could get a book and a movie contract. We agreed one night, sitting in the pool at our little rented house in West Hollywood, that we were going to tell a story in which not only would a woman be the intellectual hero but, in the great tradition of Gilgamesh, she was going to go on the voyage and the guys would stay home.
(5) UNIQUE HONOR. Author TC Parker’s wish has been granted!
(6) HIS WORLD IS ENOUGH. In the Washington Post, Thomas Floyd interviews Dean Fleischer Camp, who directed Marcel The Shell With Shoes On. Camp discusses how he created the tiny crustacean with Jenny Slate in 2010 and how the shorts, having been viewed nearly 50 million times on YouTube, led to the feature film, which has just been released. “’Marcel the Shell’ made it to the big screen by staying small”.
Crafted out of a hermit crab shell, a googly eye and a pair of pink Polly Pocket tennis shoes, Marcel the Shell leaves an outsize impression that belies his one-inch stature. Dean Fleischer Camp realized as much in the summer of 2010, when the first audience was introduced to the stop-motion character’s trembling timbre and infectious positivity.
After promising he’d make a video for a friend’s Brooklyn comedy show, the filmmaker got his then-partner, “Saturday Night Live” alum Jenny Slate, to riff in character as a minuscule mollusk in a big world. (One quip: “Guess what I do for adventure? I hang-glide on a Dorito.”) Dropping Slate’s voice in Marcel’s roughly sketched mouth, Camp delivered a three-minute mockumentary that played as amusing, absurdist and, to his surprise, delightfully disarming….
We aren’t that important to the biosphere either way! If we wreck civilization and cause a mass extinction event, the biosphere will be fully reoccupied in a few million years by new species. Life will forge on. Humans, who knows. We are probably somewhat ineradicable — check out the near-extinction event from 73,000 years ago that left only a few thousand humans alive on the planet — that was a close one! And yet without our current capabilities we still squeaked through what appears to have been a decades-long volcanic “nuclear winter” event. So, best not to get apocalyptic about it. Put it this way — it could always get better or get worse, it will never end: So try for better.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1993 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-nine years ago, a film that Mike has actually seen to my surprise, debuted on the FOX network here in the States, 12.01 as it was called. It was written by Richard Lupoff, Jonathan Heap and Philip Morton. It was a time loop affair very similar to Groundhog Day, one of Mike’s favorite films. Mike obviously has great taste in films.
It came from Richard Lupoff’s short story “12:01 PM” which had published in the December 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It had previously been adapted as the 1990 12:01 PM film starring Kurtwood Smith.
Groundhog Day, which has a similar time loop premise, was released later in 1993. The writers and producers of 12:01 believed their work was stolen by that film. To quote Lupoff, “The story was also adapted—actually plagiarized—into a major theatrical film in 1993. Jonathan Heap and I were outraged and tried very hard to go after the rascals who had robbed us, but alas, the Hollywood establishment closed ranks.”
Now my question to you is simple: do you recall similar plot lines before Groundhog Day came out?
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 5, 1941 — Garry Kilworth, 81. The Ragthorn, a novella he co-authored with Robert Holdstock, won the World Fantasy Award and the BSFA. It’s an excellent read and it makes me wish I’d read other fiction by him. Anyone familiar with his work?
Born July 5, 1946 — Joyce Ballou Gregorian Hampshire. A fascinating woman who was way too short-lived due to a long illness with cancer. She was an SF writer, an expert on Oriental rugs, and a horse breeder. She wrote the Tredana trilogy, an alternative world fantasy. She collaborated with her father, Arthur T. Gregorian, and her nephew, Douglas Christian, on a book on Armenian oriental rugs. (Died 1991.)
Born July 5, 1948 — Nancy Springer, 74. May I recommend her Tales of Rowan Hood series of which her Rowan Hood: Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest is a most splendid revisionist telling of that legend? And her Enola Holmes Mysteries are a nice riff off of the Holmsiean mythos. She won an Otherwise Award for her Larque on the Wing novel, and her latest, The Oddling Prince, came out several years ago on Tachyon.
Born July 5, 1957 — Jody Lynn Nye, 65. She’s best known for collaborating with Robert Asprin on the ever so excellent MythAdventures series. Since his death, she has continued that series and she is now also writing sequels to his Griffen McCandles series as well. She’s got a space opera series, The Imperium, out which sounds intriguing. Her latest two novels are both written with Travis Taylor, Moon Beam and Moon Tracks.
Born July 5, 1962 — Marc Gascoigne, 60. Winner of the World Fantasy Special Award—Professional for his Angry Robot press, and later he won the British Fantasy Award in the category Best Independent Press, again for Angry Robot. If you’re a gamer, you’ll be impressed by knowing that he co-wrote Games Workshop’s original Judge Dredd RPG, and wrote the original Shadowrun source book. And yes, I played the latter longer ago than I want to think about. Read more than a few of the novels as well.
Born July 5, 1963 — Alma Alexander, 59. Author of three SF series including the Changer of Days which is rather good. I’m including her here for her Abducticon novel which is set in a Con and concerns both what goes on at that Con and the aliens that are involved. Very, very cool indeed! It is available as a Kindle book.
Born July 5, 1964 — Ronald D. Moore, 58. Screenwriter and producer who’s best remembered for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation where he fleshed out the Klingon race and culture, on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and Outlander. He’s the creator and writer of For All Mankind. He was one of the folks who won a Hugo at Intersection for the Next Generation’s “All Good Things…”, and among the filmmakers nominated for another at LoneStarCon 2 for First Contact. His latest Hugo was won at Interaction for Battlestar Galactica’s “33”.
Born July 5, 1972 — Nia Roberts, 50. She appeared in two Doctor Who episodes during the time of the Eleventh Doctor, “The Hungry Earth” and “Cold Blood”. But it’s an earlier role that gets her a Birthday citation just because it sounds so damn cool: Rowan Latimer in the “Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom” episode of the Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible which spoofed shows such as Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. Damn that sounds really, really amazing.
Beauty and the Beastis getting the live treatment at ABC to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the beloved animated classic’s history-making Academy Award nomination.
…The Disney-backed broadcast network is making a two-hour, live-action/animated special that will feature a new cast and air Dec. 15 on the broadcast network. Jon M. Chu (In the Heights, Wicked) is on board to executive produce the project, which will be directed by Hamish Hamilton. The latter is best known for helming awards shows including the Emmys and Grammys, as well as the Super Bowl halftime show, ABC’s The Little Mermaid Live and a pair of Disney’s quarantine-era sing-alongs. The special will be available to stream Dec. 16 on Disney+. …
Diego Luna couldn’t trust the driver. He didn’t think he could trust anybody. And hadn’t he read something about an epidemic of eavesdroppers hacking phones? “That was just my paranoia,” the actor says now. “Not connected to reality.” Still, he pressed his phone so tightly to his ear that it made his face hot, as a voice from thousands of miles away told him secrets from another galaxy. The car was stuck in traffic on the top tier of a double-decker highway in Mexico City. “I was speaking in code words because I was trying not to say too much in the car,” says Luna. The words he was avoiding most strenuously were star and wars.
Luna had played the dauntless Rebel spy Cassian Andor in the 2016 film Rogue One. Now, on the other end of the phone, was Tony Gilroy, who had punched up the movie’s script for reshoots. Gilroy—whose credits include writing the first four Bourne thrillers and writing and directing Michael Clayton—was developing a series that would explore Andor’s backstory, revealing what drew him into the galactic Rebellion and how he evolved from a self-serving nihilist into a selfless martyr. Luna’s call with Gilroy—the first time he heard the full plan for the Andor story—happened more than three years ago. “One thing I remember, from being part of this since day one, is how little you can share of what happens,” says the actor. “I have kids, man. It’s painful for them—and for me.”…
A group of biofuel experts have developed a completely new type of fuel using bacteria that could have an energy density greater than most advanced heavy-duty fuels being used today. The new discovery could be used to develop a cleaner and more cost-efficient rocket fuel for NASA and other space agencies….
“The larger consortium behind this work, Co-Optima, was funded to think about not just recreating the same fuels from biobased feedstocks, but how we can make new fuels with better properties,” remarked Sundstrom. “The question that led to this is: ‘What kinds of interesting structures can biology make that petrochemistry can’t make?'”…
(14) THIS IS CERTAINLY HIDEOUS. This is like a horror movie. Beware the visuals when Last Week Tonight with John Oliver displays those “Beach Dolls”.
John Oliver discusses a surplus of dolls which have been mysteriously washing up on the beach in Texas, and, crucially, how they can be destroyed.
…Not only was the PET 600’s screen limited to just displaying characters (letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) but the machines behind them were impossibly slow, often taking a few seconds to load and display lists of files or other data. There was zero chance a dedicated YouTube app could be developed for Commodore BASIC which the PET 600 ran, so Jemander had to take the long road….
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness,” the Screen Junkies say the film is “full of gore that would shock a 13-year-old raised without Internet” and you get “the creepy feeling at hand that Marvel doesn’t know what to do with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.” But instead of watching this “MCU content slop,” the narrator recommends watching Everywhere Everything All At Once, which he thinks far more entertaining than Doctor Strange 2.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, JeffWarner, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
