Tag Archives: Brian Jacques

Pixel Scroll 5/23/24 Shhhh. The Pixels Are Sleeping, Let’s Not Disturb Them

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Ellen Klages

(1) ELLEN KLAGES ON JEOPARDY! [Item by Steven H Silver and David Goldfarb.] One of the contestants on Wednesday’s episode was World Fantasy Award-winning, Hugo- and Nebula-shortlisted author Ellen Klages. Ellen came in third.  She was against a couple of guys who had strong buzzer abilities. The game recap can be found on J! Archive. At the break, she began the story of the scary ham story that she told at the Nebula Award Ceremony in San Jose in 2014.

David Goldfarb took notes on the episode’s sff references.

In the Double Jeopardy round, there was some SFF content in the clues.

Books From the Last Few Years, $1200: There are an infinite number of books in “The Midnight” this, a 2020 bestseller by Matt Haig

Amar Kakirde knew it was a library.

Books From the Last Few Years, $1600: This 2021 Andy Weir book about a plucky astronaut sounds like it may be a long shot

A triple stumper. (This was “Project Hail Mary”.)

Books From the Last Few Years, $800: Author Curtis Sittenfeld wonders what would’ve happened in Hillary never married Bill in the novel titled with this maiden name.

Returning champion Chris D’Amico knew Hillary’s maiden name: “What is ‘Rodham’?”

Not SF but amusing to note:

Already in the Form of a Question, $1600. A Daily Double, with $6000 on the line: In a relatively famous play, this 4-word question precedes “Deny thy father & refuse thy name”

Chris didn’t know it: he tried, “What is, ‘How now, brown cow?’”

(It was actually “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”)

(2) DANGER IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. At A Deep Look by Dave Hook the author is “Revisiting ‘Dangerous Visions’”. He still finds 19 of the 33 stories in the volume are “great” or “superlative”.

… With all of the circus and controversy over whether Dangerous Visions was ever as good or as important as its reputation, or whether it was overrated, or whether the Suck Fairy had visited, I approached the reread with interest, hope and no small amount of trepidation….

… I am very glad I reread Dangerous Visions, although my reactions are mixed….

Hook shares ratings and comments about the 19 stories he feels are still remarkable.

It’s worth remembering that four stories in the anthology became finalists for the Hugo and/or Nebula, and of those, three won at least one of the awards:

  • “Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip José Farmer (tied for Hugo Award Best Novella, and a Nebula finalist)
  • “Gonna Roll the Bones” by Fritz Leiber (won the Hugo and Nebula Award for Novelette)
  • “Aye, and Gomorrah…” by Samuel R. Delany (Hugo Best Short Story finalist, and Nebula Award Short Story winner)
  • “The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven (Hugo Best Short Story finalist)
  • “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?” by Theodore Sturgeon (Nebula Award Novella finalist)

However, Hook points out a definite shortcoming in the anthology:

…I also observe that only three out of 33 stories (9%) were by women. I don’t know how this came to be, but it is unfortunate. It may be that Ellison heard criticism on this point for Dangerous Visions. Looking at Ellison’s 1972 anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, there is a modest improvement, with nine out of 55 stories (16%) that feature women writers….

(3) WEN-YI LEE Q&A. With “Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Wen-yi Lee” the Horror Writers Association blog continues its thematic series.

What draws you to the horror genre?

Well, I kind of like twisted things, as a baseline. As a writer, I like that horror as a genre lets you take an abstract fear and make it tangible, and confront and take apart all its angles. I also like the big, raw feelings; I like the transportive strangeness and the sense of confrontation and catharsis. Horror and romance are Barbenheimer genre sisters, really; they’re both rooted in these big vulnerable core feelings. I love romance in my horror, or horror in my romance.

Do you include Asian and/or Pacific Islander characters and themes in your writing with purpose, and if so, what do you want to portray?

I do! The protagonist in my debut novel is Chinese American, but more often than not I write from my being Southeast Asian Chinese–specifically Singaporean–which is very different from the Asian American identity but shares enough here and there that I do resonate with Asian American work. In The Dark We Know there are elements of being unrooted compared to the white families in town that can trace their lines back generations on the land, and familial language barriers and cultural isolation are factors in the main character’s loneliness. Other times, I’m not trying to write something “cultural” and “meaningful”, but just tell a good story that happens to be rooted in a particular ethnic/cultural environment, with characters that look and sound familiar instead of the blonde/blue-eyed girls that my main characters used to be. I’m still working on putting out a true love letter to Southeast Asia’s shared iconic female ghosts…

(4) MESS CALL AT REDWALL. James Folta confesses to Literary Hub readers, “I think about the food in the Redwall books way too often.”

…Before we go any further with Redwall, an important clarification: the characters are animal-sized and their world is scaled down. Some poor, misguided folks will tell you that these books are filled with human-sized animals, but the issue has been settled by scientific polling. We’re talking about a world of whimsy here, not a freak show where some rodents fell into the Toxic Avenger ooze. And yes, I know Jacques said in a Q&A that, “the creatures in my stories are as big or small as your imagination wants them to be.” We can all agree that this is a polite smokescreen for younger readers. But we’re all adults here—the characters are small.

What seems to be most enduring about Jacques’ books for me and other readers, though, are his descriptions of food and drink. If you’ve read the books, you know what I’m talking about—no one ever just eats food in Redwall. The descriptions of food unfurl in long lists, cataloged here in impressive detail. The mice food has inspired memes, a Twitter bot, a drinking game, and a cookbook.

Jacques is sumptuous, even gratuitous in his descriptions of food and drink. In the first book, Jacques writes of “tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, devilled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg.” The Bellmaker has dishes of “turnovers, trifles, breads, fondants, salads, pasties, and cheeses alternated with beakers of greensap milk, mint tea, rosehip cup and elderberry wine.” Even a simple breakfast at the cave of a mouse named Bobbo in Mariel of Redwall is lavished with description: “Now, you will find a small rockpool outside to wash in, and I will prepare wild oatcakes, small fish, and gorseflower honey to break your fast.”…

(5) BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE TRAILER. The official trailer for the Beetlejuice sequel dropped today.

Beetlejuice is back! After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.

(6) CASTLE Q&A. The Chicago Tribune reports on the previously announced career honor: “Crete resident Mort Castle to get horror writers award”.

Mort Castle remembers being frightened when his third-grade teacher played Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” on a phonograph.

“I was one of the weird kids who liked being scared. I dug nightmares,” said Castle of Crete.

The Horror Writers Association will present him with a Lifetime Achievement Award on June 1 during the Bram Stoker Awards ceremony at StokerCon 2024 in San Diego.

The award honors individuals whose work has influenced the horror genre substantially….

(7) FAMILY TIES. Rich Horton is working his way through the 2024 finalists: “Hugo Nominee Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera” at Strange at Ecbatan.

… The story is told primarily from the point of view of Fetter. Fetter’s mother tore his shadow from him at birth, and as a consequence, besides not casting a shadow, he is not tightly rooted to the ground: he will float into the air if he doesn’t take care. His mother also teaches him to be an assassin, from an early age, and she prepares him to commit the Five Unforgivables, as defined by his absent father’s theology — for his father is a “saint”, the Perfect and Kind. These crimes are matricide, heresy, killing of saints, patricide, and killing the Perfect and Kind. Nice family!…

(8) WHAT’S THAT RINGING? The New York Times has done an in-depth article about a controversy recently mentioned in the Scroll: “’The Hunt for Gollum’ Is Announced, Then ‘Lord of the Rings’ Fan Film Disappears”. (The link is not paywalled.)

… In 2009, Chris Bouchard, a recent film school graduate, uploaded his 39-minute “Lord of the Rings” fan film, “The Hunt for Gollum,” to YouTube. At the time, the platform was still, in his words, full of “five-minute videos of people’s cats.”

The site promoted Bouchard’s movie on its homepage, and within 24 hours, he had more than one million views. Today more than 13 million have watched the film, cementing it as a fan favorite.

So it came as a surprise recently when Bouchard received a text from an old friend saying that Warner Bros. had announced a planned addition to its growing “Lord of the Rings” franchise. The name of the movie? “The Hunt for Gollum.”…

… After getting the text, “at first I thought he was pulling my leg,” Bouchard said of his friend. Soon, online articles were embedding the fan film in their coverage of the Warner Bros. announcement, leading younger fans to it for the first time while older ones relived its lo-fi magic.

But by the next morning, Bouchard’s 15-year-old work had disappeared from YouTube. Viewers clicking on the link were shown a message stating, “This video contains content from Warner Bros. Entertainment, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”…

… But YouTube denied the appeal. So, like eagles over Mordor, the Ringers, as the fans are known, swooped in. They wrote articles and posted heated comments on Reddit and other sites, calling the removal “deplorable” and “despicable.” Bouchard noted his disappointment on X.

Bouchard quickly received a follow-up email from YouTube: The movie had been reinstated. In an email, Warner Bros. said it had no official comment. YouTube did not reply to requests for comment….

(9) H. BRUCE FRANKLIN (1934-2024). Black Gate reports that scholar H. Bruce Franklin died May 19 at the age of 90. He was the emeritus John Cotton Dana endowed Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark and author of numerous books, essays, and exhibitions related to science fiction.  

During the 1960s, Dr. Franklin was fired from Stanford despite being tenured supposedly for inciting student anti-Vietnam war protests. A former Air Force navigator and intelligence office in the Strategic Air Command, he also resigned his commission in protest of that war.

He won the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for his article “The Vietnam War as American SF and Fantasy” (Science Fiction Studies Nov 1990).  He also received SFRA’s Pilgrim Award, an Eaton Award, and was named a Distinguished Scholar for the International Association for Fantastic in the Arts.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 23, 1921 — James Blish. (Died 1975.)

By Paul Weimer. For me, my reading of James Blish revolves around two axes.

The first is Star Trek. I’ve not read a ton of Star Trek novels and stories. I don’t consider myself that well read in them, even as I remember at one point it seemed the SFF section of Borders and B Dalton were half Star Trek novels and the like. But when you, reader, having watched lots of repeats of the original series are confronted with a book with the title Spock Must Die, reading it becomes a moral imperative.  It’s a clever book, even if I don’t like the (now distinctly non-canonical) fate of the Klingon Commander, Koloth.  I’ve also read a couple of his adaptations of episodes that he turned into short stories, which is a pretty unique way to go about things. Has anyone else done that, turning tv episodes of a series into short stories? 

James Blish on his Vespa in the Sixties.

But what I remember Blish for the most is Cities in Flight.  I came across this one by accident. Somewhere along the line, I had read Oswald Spengler, whose racial theories are pants, but I was fascinated for a long while (and still am) with his attempts to systemize history into cycles. One really can’t, and he does a lot of plates spinning to make his formulations work.  (and yet, seeing that he sees the West in a period headed toward “Caesarism” and the rise of fascism in Europe and America, I still wonder). But somewhere along the line, I came across a reference that Blish had used a Spenglerian type of history for his Cities in Flight in sequence. 

And so I had to go read it.  The idea is bonkers, outfitting whole cities to go out into space is an idea that simply should not work.  (And yet, it’s an idea which has come time and again ever since).  But the idea of the Okies culture rising, changing, growing as the cities of Earth explore the galaxy and try to make a living is a compelling one. Characters? Plots?  I really don’t remember either for the novel sequence. But the basic ideas (including a devastating nuclear weapon type), especially the spindizzy drive itself, stuck with me.  And of course, the fact that the head of the migrating cities is the city of New York, of course, warmed and warms my ex-pat New Yorker’s heart. And a novel sequence that concludes with the end (or is it the beginning of a new one?) universe is as big a stakes as you can possibly ever get. 

I’ve also read A Case of Conscience, which I feel is a prelude or an overture to the work of Mary Doria Russell, and maybe in another vein, Walter M Miller Jr.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) EYE-OPENING GAMES. In Nature, Sam Illingworth discusses “Why role-playing games can spur climate action”.

… Imagine you are the mayor of a coastal city. How high would you build a sea wall, for example, to offer protection from future flooding? The decision involves balancing the risks of breaches against the cost of construction, without knowing how fast seas might rise or what the wider consequences of building it might be.

It is hard to anticipate the complexity of the decisions that we will all face as the world warms. But, as a game designer and education researcher, I know that games — and, in particular, role-playing games — can be an invaluable tool for helping us think through scenarios. By getting players to deal with situations in a simulated environment, games can help us to explore options in a risk-free way.

For example, I’ve used the board game Terraforming Mars to introduce young adults to the ethics of space colonization. Players control corporations competing to transform Mars into a habitable planet by extracting resources, building cities and creating green spaces. Nearly every session evolves into a heated debate about diverting resources to make a new ‘Earth’ instead of fixing the one we have….

(13) STRANGER WILL STAY ON STAGE. “‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ Trailer Teases Horrific Rise of Henry Creel as West End Play Extends Into 2025” – Variety tells where to find the trailer and the stage show.

“Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” the stage play based on Netflix‘s hit sci-fi drama of the same name, will extend its run on London’s West End into 2025. Previously, shows were only scheduled through Dec. 14, but tickets are now available through Feb. 16.

The news comes as Netflix debuts an official trailer for “The First Shadow,” which serves as a “Stranger Things” prequel. Set in 1959 Hawkins, Ind., “The First Shadow” tells the origin story of Henry Creel, a new kid in town who later goes on to become Vecna, the villain introduced in “Stranger Things” Season 4….

(14) KEEPING TIME. Here’s another reverential look at “John Williams and the Music of ‘Star Wars’” at Take Note.

…John Williams’s neoclassical approach combines elements of classic Hollywood composers (Max Steiner’s leitmotifs and physical action, Alfred Newman’s lush string writing, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s heroic fanfares, and Bernard Herrmann’s suspenseful ostinati) as well as Americana concert composers (such as Aaron Copland and Howard Hanson), and even some of the jazzy piano-based scores of Henry Mancini. 

He is a product of his time, and he found the right collaborator in Steven Spielberg; the two represent one of the most productive director/composer relationships in history….

(15) ON THE LOOSE. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Be on the watch for Mongo (or maybe, if we’re lucky, the planet Porno…) “Euclid telescope spies rogue planets floating free in Milky Way” in the Guardian.

Astronomers have spotted dozens of rogue planets floating free from their stars after turning the Euclid space telescope to look at a distant region of the Milky Way.

The wandering worlds were seen deep inside the Orion nebula, a giant cloud of dust and gas 1,500 light years away, and described in the first scientific results announced by Euclid mission researchers.

The European Space Agency (Esa) launched the €1bn (£851m) observatory last summer on a six-year mission to create a 3D map of the cosmos. Armed with its images, scientists hope to understand more about the mysterious 95% of the universe that is unexplained….

(16) MOMENT IN THE SUN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Today’s Nature cover is quite nifty. Link to cover and contents here.

The Sun undergoes an 11-year cycle that results in a variation of its magnetic field, readily seen in the creation and movement of sunspots. Conventional models assert that the origins of this solar dynamo lie deep within the star, but in this week’s issue, Geoffrey Vasil and colleagues present a model that suggests the opposite is true. The researchers identify that instabilities very close to the Sun’s surface provide a better explanation of the various features of the solar dynamo. The cover is a composite of some 150 images of the Sun taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory between 2010 and 2020, capturing variations in the Sun’s magnetic field over nearly a full sunspot cycle.

There is an “Instability could explain the Sun’s curious cycle” short review item on this here (paywalled).

The primary research paper is at the link.

(17) URANUS PROBE. And in this edition there is a comment piece…. “Why the European Space Agency should join the US mission to Uranus”

Without international partnerships, NASA’s ground-breaking mission could fail to be ready in time for its optimal launch window.

This week, space and planetary scientists are meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, to scope out a new flagship NASA mission — the Uranus Orbiter and Probe. Still on the drawing board, the project would entail sending a spacecraft to orbit Uranus and drop a probe into the planet’s atmosphere. The spacecraft, which could be built and launched within a decade, would investigate the nature of Uranus, including its unusual tilt and magnetic field. It would also search the planet’s moons for signs of hidden oceans and other potentially habitable environments.

Such a mission would be ground-breaking — the first to orbit an ‘ice giant’ planet. Thought to be made mostly of ices, or perhaps dominated by rocks, ice giants Uranus and Neptune have more exotic chemistry than do Jupiter and Saturn, which as ‘gas giants’ consist mainly of hydrogen and helium gas1,2. Ice giants are also the most common type of exoplanet in the Milky Way3. With characteristics that lie between those of gas giants and of Earth and other terrestrial planets, it’s crucial to learn how such systems formed and evolved.

That’s why the Uranus Orbiter and Probe was given priority status in the 2022 US Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. And NASA is set to lead it. At the Goddard workshop, scientists will scope out the mission and consider its design, technologies and costs.

The mission has been under discussion for some time, and it will be exciting to see it begin to take shape. But, to make sure it is successful and happens as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, we would like to see others involved in its design, too. As a first step, we call for the European Space Agency (ESA) to join the project by, for example, building the entry probe — a possibility that was foreseen in the decadal report and has been assessed by ESA but has not yet been agreed.

Uranus

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

Pixel Scroll 2/10/21 You Spin Me Right ’Round, Breqi, Right ’Round Like Radchaai, Breqi

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(1) ROBOT IN MY I. Louder revisits the Seventies to find out “How Alan Parsons made I Robot, his science fiction masterpiece”.

It was June 1977, and the US was being invaded by robots. Leading the charge were R2-D2, C-3PO and the glass-domed dynamo that stared from the cover of the Alan Parsons Project’s album I Robot. 

“It was impeccable timing by George Lucas,” Parsons recalls with a chuckle, “to be so considerate to bring out Star Wars at the same time as our album.” The previous year, Parsons, the audio engineer behind Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, had turned auteur, mining the works of Edgar Allan Poe on his debut album Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (“It didn’t set the world alight,” Parsons says). 

Now, Parsons and his creative partner Eric Woolfson had found literary inspiration in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. The sci-fi writer’s morality-based story collection was built around his Three Laws of Robotics – robots must obey, protect and never harm humans. 

Woolfson had a “pleasant conversation” with Asimov, who loved the idea of musicalising his book. Unfortunately the author had already sold the rights to a film/TV company. Undeterred, the duo dropped the titular comma, then wrote their own version…. 

(2) FIRST REDWALL MOVIE. “’Redwall’ Animated Feature & Series Questing to Netflix” – Animation Magazine says it’s in development. My daughter read the whole series.  

Brian Jacques’ Redwall fantasy book series will be reimagined in animation thanks to a rights deal between Penguin Random House Children’s U.K. and Netflix: A feature film based on Jacques’ first book in the series, Redwall, is currently in development with writer Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), as well as an event series based on the character of Martin the Warrior.

The deal marks the first time that the film rights to the entire book series have been held by the same company and the first time a feature film of any of Jacques’ works will be made….

(3) SFWA STORYBUNDLE.  The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) released its newest StoryBundle, Expansive Futures, a curated collection of books offered at a steeply discounted price. Readers who purchase Expansive Futures can opt to donate part of their purchase price to support SFWA’s ongoing work. The Expansive Futures StoryBundle will be available from February 10 to March 4, here.

Readers choose what price they want to pay for the initial five books. Spending $15 unlocks thirteen more books that they can receive with their purchase. Further details about how StoryBundle operates are available here. 

The books in the bundle are:

  • Starship Hope: Exodus by T.S. Valmond
  • Raptor by John G. Hartness
  • The Chiral Conspiracy by L.L. Richman
  • Ganymede by Jason Taylor
  • The Stark Divide by J. Scott Coatsworth
  • Eternity’s End by Jeffrey A. Carver
  • When You Had Power by Susan Kaye Quinn
  •  Annihilation Aria by Michael R. Underwood
  • The Solar Sea by David Lee Summers
  • The Cost of Survival by J. L. Stowers
  • Claiming T-MO by Eugen Bacon
  • The Hammer Falls by Travis Heermann
  • Warrior Wench by Marie Andreas
  • Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet by Philip Harris
  • Iron Truth by S.A. Tholin
  • Knight Errant by Paul Barrett & Steve Murphy 
  • A Fall in Autumn by Michael G. Williams
  • Two Suns at Sunset by Gene Doucette

(4) COMEDY COMPANION. “Doctor Who’s Chris Chibnall: ‘John Bishop brings a different flavour’”, as he explains to Radio Times.

Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall has praised comedian and actor John Bishop for “bringing a different flavour and a different humour” in his role as companion Dan in series 13 of the BBC sci-fi show.

Bishop was unveiled in a special teaser at the end of New Year’s special Revolution of the Daleks on January 1st and, according to the BBC, his character will become “embroiled in the Doctor’s adventures” in the now-filming series 13, where he’ll “quickly learn there’s more to the Universe(s) than he could ever believe”.

Explaining why he cast Bishop in the new series, Chibnall told Doctor Who Magazine: “I’ve always got my eye out for performers who are loved, and wondering how good they might be as actors. There’s such a great history of performers who start out as comedians transitioning into becoming terrific actors – the best example being Robbie Coltrane in Cracker. John’s somebody I’ve been keeping a beady eye on for years….”

(5) D&D SURPASSED. “Horror RPG Call of Cthulhu is bigger than D&D in Japan” – Dicebreaker delves into the numbers.

Horror roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu has overtaken Dungeons & Dragons’ popularity in Japan, with its success driven by an explosion in interest among younger fans and a growing audience of female players over the last decade….

According to the game’s production studio Arclight, most Call of Cthulhu players in Japan are women aged between 17 and 35. By way of comparison, Wizards of the Coast revealed last year that most Dungeons & Dragons players are under 30, with 40% aged 24 or younger and around a fifth aged between 30 and 34. The majority of D&D players – more than three-fifths – identified as male, with 39% identifying as female. Players who identified as non-binary or “other” comprised less than 1% of the audience.

(6) FOR THIS THEY GET PAID. Fox Meadows lights into Locus reviewer Katharine Coldiron in “Sequel Rights: A Review of Locus Reviews”.

… The absolute gall of any reviewer to start with the second book in a series and then complain that they don’t understand what’s going on, as though this is somehow the fault of the text! It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ve read The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, a book whose plots and politics are both deep and intricate – as, indeed, one might expect from the first book of a projected series! Of course Coldiron had no idea what was going on. Which begs the question: why, if she had no intention of reading the first book in the series, did Coldiron feel the need to review the sequel – and why, even more pressingly, did Locus decide such an abysmal review was worth publishing in the first place?

With such a terrible starting point, it’s hardly a surprise that the full review – which is not yet available online – gets worse as it goes on. That Coldiron repeatedly gets a main character’s name wrong (Rayyan instead of Rayyal) is a minor sin in comparison to describing a book whose setting is explicitly based on the pre-colonial Philippines as a “richly imagined world [that] resembles England before the Norman Conquest.” That Coldiron somehow made this error this despite the customs, nomenclature and general everything about Villoso’s world is bizarre; to quote a different review, “This world isn’t your pseudo-medieval European world. It’s unequivocally Filipino with inspiration from other sources in Southeast Asia. Not once does Villoso allow you to believe this is anything but a fantasy set in a world inspired by the Philippines.”

Over and over, Coldiron talks about how difficult it is to keep track of various details of a narrative which – and I cannot stress this enough – is the sequel to a book she has not read, without ever stopping to consider that this is her problem rather than the author’s…. 

After Meadows analyzes several more examples of Coldiron’s reviews, Meadows says:

… If Coldiron was posting her reviews on a private blog, or at any venue less esteemed than Locus, it’s doubtful that I’d have bothered to write this piece; or at the very least, to have written this much. The real problem, though, is not Coldiron herself: it’s that Locus has failed to notice the regularity with which her reviews rebuke POC for things she either praises or lets pass when written by white authors; has allowed the inclusion of racism and microaggressions within her work without apparent editorial oversight; and has now seen nothing wrong with publishing a wildly unprofessional review that blames a sequel volume for the reviewer’s failure to have read the first instalment. It’s maddening and upsetting in equal measure, and at a time when both SFF and the wider literary community are ostensibly trying to do better by marginalised writers, it’s a sign of how thoroughly white privilege still blinds so much of the industry to its failings, even among those who consider themselves well-intentioned.

(7) EIGHT GREAT. Radio Times unveils the “RadioTimes.com Awards 2021 – Vote for the Best Sci-Fi Show”. Voting is open until February 14. The results of the RadioTimes.com Awards will be announced on 7th March 2021.

The choices on the ballot are —

  • Devs – BBC
  • Doctor Who – BBC
  • His Dark Materials – BBC
  • Lucifer – Netflix
  • The Boys – Amazon
  • The Haunting of Bly Manor – Netflix
  • The Mandalorian – Disney Plus
  • The Umbrella Academy – Netflix

(8) PLENTY OF DOOMS TO GO AROUND. James Davis Nicoll singles out “Five Books Showcasing Humanity’s Talent for Self-Extinction” for Tor.com.

…To put it more simply, perhaps the Great Silence isn’t due to galactic civilizations shunning us, but rather due to the sad probability that no civilizations last long enough to communicate before they find some innovative way to remove themselves from the playing board….

Even the perennially upbeat Clifford Simak can see how it might happen!

City by Clifford Simak (1953)

Humanity at the beginning of the 21st century had so much promise. Famine and energy shortages were vanquished; humans had acquired the basic toolkit to construct a utopia. Yet a handful of centuries later, humans were all but extinct, save for one small, irrelevant city of dreamers in suspended animation. Between those two moments lies an endless cavalcade of good intentions gone horribly awry, each one leading well-intentioned humans towards total extinction.

(9) PRO TIPS. “Interview: Guest Lecturer Melissa Scott” at the Odyssey Writing Workshop Blog.

You have collaborated with several authors. What advice do you have for writers who are interested in collaborating on fiction? What pitfalls are there to avoid?

First, the obligatory practical advice: if you’re going to collaborate, get the terms of the collaboration down in writing. Assume that one or both of you will drop dead, and your heirs will hate each other, and put your arrangements into at least a letter of agreement that all parties involved sign. I have only had to invoke this once, and it was utterly crucial to have the signed letter. It made what could have been a protracted legal mess merely unpleasant and saved the project. Get things in writing. Always.

Beyond that, my most successful collaborations have been with people who shared the same approach toward storytelling. I focus on story and character over theme or message; I get excited about my work and can spend hours making notes on the possible plot(s) and figuring out the connections among the characters and the ways they work in their worlds. I work best with people who share that interest in story and character, and with people who are also enthusiasts. (For me, there’s nothing better than getting an email from a collaborator with six links to videos of reconstructed Renaissance transitional fencing styles to illustrate a point. Your mileage may vary.) It’s basically a matter of understanding your own working style and trying to find a collaborator whose style meshes well with yours.

(10) ONE-MINUTE READ. “‘I basically had a midlife crisis’: Author N.K. Jemisin explains why it’s never too late to quit your day job” at Fast Company.

I didn’t try to publish anything until I was 30, when I basically had a midlife crisis. I was in a city I didn’t like, had not reached various milestones I wanted to reach, and was in student loan debt up to my eyeballs…

(11) MEMORY LANE.

  • 2001 — Twenty years ago, China Miéville ‘s Perdido Street Station wins the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The other nominees that year were Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents, Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History, Ken MacLeod’s Cosmonaut Keep, Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space and Adam Roberts’ Salt. Perdido Street Station would also win a BFA and be nominated for the BSFA, Otherwise and Nebula Awards.  (CE)

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born February 10, 1904 – Lurton Blassingame.  Literary agent to John Barth, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, William F. Nolan.  More letters to him in Grumbles from the Grave than anyone else; some from him too.  Loved fishing, hunting, playing bridge, watching opera and ballet.  After half a century his firm sold to Eleanor Wood’s Spectrum Literary Agency, 1979.  His wife died the next year.  His papers are at Univ. Oregon.  (Died 1988) [JH]
  • Born February 10, 1906 — Lon Chaney Jr. I certainly best remember him as  playing Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man but he has a lot of other roles as well: The Ghost of Frankenstein as The Monster (look, correct billing!), The Mummy’s Tomb as The Mummy Kharis or Son of Dracula as Count Dracula, he played all the great monsters, often multiple times. (Died 1973.) (CE) 
  • Born February 10, 1920 — Alex Comfort. No smirking please as we’re supposed to be adults here. Yes he’s the author of The Joy of Sex but he did do some decidedly odd genre work as well. Clute at EoSF notes  that his “first genuine sf novel, Come Out to Play (1961), is a near-future Satire on scientism narrated by a smug sexologist, whose Invention – a potent sexual disinhibitor jokingly called 3-blindmycin (see Drugs) – is accidentally released over Buckingham Palace at the Slingshot Ending, presumably causing the English to act differently than before.” ISFDB lists only a few genre works by him but EoSF has a generous lists of works. (Died 2000.) (CE) 
  • Born February 10, 1920 – Robert P. Mills.  Edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (managing editor since F&SF began; editor, after Tony Boucher; succeeded in turn by Avram Davidson) and Venture.  Ten years managing editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  Five F&SF anthologies: Best of F&SF 9th, 10th, 11th Series; A Decade of F&SF; Twenty Years of F&SF (with Edward Ferman).  Also The Worlds of SF.  Three Hugos (Best Magazine to F&SF under RPM).  One short story.  After F&SF, a literary agent; sold firm to Richard Curtis, 1984.  Papers at Univ. Texas.  (Died 1986) [JH]
  • Born February 10, 1934 – Fleur Adcock, age 87.  Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.  Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.  Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.  Fellow, Royal Soc. Literature. Cholmondely Award.  One short story for us.  A score of poetry collections; tr. The Virgin and the Nightingale (medieval Latin poems); ed. (with Jacqueline Simms) The Oxford Book of Creatures (verse & prose).  [JH]
  • Born February 10, 1935 — Terrance Dicks. He had a long association with  Doctor Who, working as a writer and also serving as the programme’s script editor from 1968 to 1974. He also wrote many of its scripts including The War Games which ended the Second Doctor’s reign and The Five Doctors, produced for the 20th year celebration of the program. He also wrote novelization of more than sixty of the Doctor Who shows. Yes sixty! Prior to working on this series, he wrote four episodes of The Avengers and after this show he wrote a single episode of Space: 1999 and likewise for Moonbase 3, a very short lived BBC series that I’ve never heard of. (Died 2019.) (CE)
  • Born February 10, 1953 — John Shirley, 68. I’m not going to even attempt a complete précis of his career. I read and much enjoyed his first novel City Come A-Walkin and oddly enough his Grimm: The Icy Touch is damn good too in way many of those sharecropped novels aren’t. I see that to my surprise he wrote a episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (CE)
  • Born February 10, 1953 – Tom Whitmore, age 68.  Three decades a partner in “The Other Change of Hobbit” bookshop.  Chaired Potlatch 2, SMOFcon 2 (SMOF is Secret Master Of Fandom, as Bruce Pelz said a joke-nonjoke-joke); co-chaired ConJosé the 60th Worldcon, Fan Guest of Honor at Denvention 3 the 66th; also Fan GoH at Westercon 36, Loscon XIV, Boskone 26 (as Special Guest, Boskone has no Fan GoH; anyway, see Debbie Notkin’s appreciation), Capclave 2006.  Book reviews in Locus.  Morris dancer.  [JH]
  • Born February 10, 1967 — Laura Dern, 54. I’m going to note she’s in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as Sandy Williams which is not genre but which is one fucking weird film. Jurassic Park where she is Dr. Ellie Sattler is her first SF film followed by Jurassic Park III and a name change to Dr. Ellie Degler.  Such are the things movie trivia is made of. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has her showing as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo.  I think her first genre appearance was on Shelley Duvall’s Nightmare Classic. (CE)
  • Born February 10, 1970 – Robert Shearman, age 51.  Fourscore short stories.  Two of them Doctor Who; ed. The Shooting Scripts (with Paul Cornell, Russell Davis, Mark Gatiss); Rob and Tony’s Marathon Watch of “Doctor Who” vols. 1-2 (with Toby Hadoke).  Interviewed in Nightmare.  [JH]
  • Born February 10, 1976 — Keeley Hawes, 45. Ms Delphox/Madame Karabraxos in the most excellent Twelth Doctor story “Time Heist”.  It wasn’t her first genre role as that would’ve been Tamara in that incredibly awful Avengers film. She also played Zoe Reynolds in MI5 which is at least genre adjacent given where the story went. She has also provided the voice of Lara Croft in a series of Tomb Raider video games.  (CE)
  • Born February 10, 1987 – Cody Martin, age 34.  Four novels, three shorter stories, with Mercedes Lackey (whose name, incidentally, means servant of mercy); five novels and a shorter story in the Secret World Chronicles (which is also a podcast) with Lackey, Veronica Giguere, Dennis Lee, Steve Libby.  Eagle Scout.  Gamer.  “After I started writing him, John Murdock drifted away from me….  It surprised me, pleasantly.”  [JH]

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) MILESTONES. In “The Animation That Changed Cinema” on YouTube, Lewis Bond and Luiza Liz Bond look at how great artists like Lotte Reininger, Jan Svankmajer, and Brad Bird changed and improved animation.

(15) WORLD OF TOMORROW KICKSTARTER. Don Hertzfeldt’s Kickstarter to fund “World of Tomorrow: The First Three Episodes” on Blu-ray has raised $218,446 of its $30,000 goal in the first two days. People who pledge $20 get a copy. There are incentives for higher pledges.

WHAT WILL BE ON THE NEW BLU-RAY?

  • the first three episodes of the series: “world of tomorrow”, “world of tomorrow episode two: the burden of other people’s thoughts”, and “world of tomorrow episode three: the absent destinations of david prime”
  • “intro”, a short cartoon that was created for the 2017 tour and has only ever been seen in theaters
  •  a 32 page booklet, including brand new liner notes for all the titles
  •  additional bells and whistles TBD 

(16) HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD. “Wynonna Earp: New trailer shows her back on the hunt in Purgatory”: SYFY Wire sets the frame:

…“All I want is to stop feeling guilty for what I am, when what I am is necessary,” Wynonna, played by Melanie Scrofano, says at the beginning of the clip. The trailer then goes on to show Wynonna on a bit of a bender — killing demons, getting drunk, hooking up, and passing out, all with Peacemaker back by her side.

(17) DERAILED BY DISNEY DEAL. Disney bought the studio, Blue Sky, that was making the Nimona cartoon (and other things) and has fired all the staff on Nimona and other projects. “Nimona Movie Cancelled by Disney Less Than a Year Before Release” – Comicbook.com has the story.

Fans of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power creator Noelle Stevenson and her original comics were saddened today when news came that Disney is shutting down the former 20th Century Fox animation studio Blue Sky and with it cancelling their feature film adaptation of Stevenson’s Nimona. The movie was less than a year away and had been in development since around 2015, with a release date already scheduled for release on January 14th of 2022. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, sources indicated that the movie was “about 75% complete” and theorized that perhaps another studio could step in and finish the project.

… This marks the latest project that was in development at Fox or one of its subsidiaries that had fans excited and was subsequently cancelled by Disney….

(18) WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES PRINTED WITH THAT? In the Washington Post, Laura Reiley says that Israeli firm Aleph Farms says it has a process for 3-D printing steaks, and discussed other companies that are coming up with “cultivated: meat and fish. “The world’s first lab-grown rib-eye prompts questions about how cultivated meat will be regulated”.

… Aleph Farms’ new 3-D bioprinting technology— which uses living animal cells as opposed to plant-based alternatives — allows for premium whole-muscle cuts to come to market, broadening the scope of alt-meat in what is expected to be a rich area of expansion for food companies.

Several other companies are sprinting to capture what is expected to be a robust appetite for what is often called “cultivated meat.” San Diego-based BlueNalu has announced its intent to bring cell-based seafood products to market in the second half of this year; Israel-based Future Meat Technologies and Dutch companies Meatable and Mosa Meat aim to have cultivated meat products in the market by 2022, each with proprietary methods of growing meat tissues from punch biopsies from live or slaughtered animals.

But the lack of a regulatory framework could stymie the companies’ race to market. In December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the world’s first head of state to eat cultivated meat, and that same month Singapore became the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval for the sale of cultivated meat. It remains unclear when other countries will follow suit. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has not set a date for when it will rule on the matter….

(19) AREN’T YOU SHORT FOR AN IMPERIAL WALKER? SYFY Wire shows “Walking car proven possible by Hyundai TIGER concept”.

It’s probably safe to say that Hyundai is betting big on the future of transportation. Last week, we got wind of their plan to build the world’s smallest airport for flying cars, and then yesterday, the South Korean company just went even more futuristic by presenting its “walking car” concept, TIGER, aka the transforming intelligent ground excursion robot.

Branded as the company’s first uncrewed ultimate mobility vehicle (UMV), TIGER is meant to transform from a four-wheel drive vehicle to a four-legged walking machine….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, N., Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Betsy Hanes Perry, James Davis Nicoll, John Hertz, JJ, Andrew Porter, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]