Tag Archives: Brian Keene

Pixel Scroll 4/27/23 Only The True Pixel Denies His Divinity

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(1) BOASE AWARD. The UK’s Branford Boase Award honors debut efforts in children’s books and the editors as well as authors behind them. There are three works on The Branford Boase Award 2023 Shortlist of genre interest:

The other shortlisted works are:

  • The Bones of Me by Kel Duckhouse, edited by Harriet Birkinshaw, Flying Eye Books YA
  • Seed by Caryl Lewis, edited by Sarah Hughes, illustrated by George Ermos, Macmillan Children’s Books 7+
  • The Cats We Meet Along the Way, Nadia Mikail, edited by Bella Pearson, Guppy Books YA
  • Ellie Pillai is Brown, Christine Pillainayagam, edited by Leah Thaxton, Faber 13+
  • The Map of Leaves, Yarrow Townsend, edited by Rachel Leyshon, Chicken House 10+

(2) SMALL PRESS WINS AWARD WITH GENRE BOOK. “Dead Ink wins Republic of Consciousness prize with Missouri Williams’s ‘astonishing’ debut” in the Guardian.

…First awarded in 2017, the Republic of Consciousness prize is given to the best literary novel published by a small press in the UK and Ireland with fewer than five employees. Over the past seven years the prize has awarded almost £100,000 to more than 25 small presses and writers….

Dead Ink Books has won the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses for Missouri Williams’s “astonishing” debut novel The Doloriad. Yet while Dead Ink and Williams will get the prestige of winning, the entire shortlist will receive the same reward. Each of the five books wins £1,000, split 70:30 between publisher and author, on top of the £300 awarded to the 10 longlisted titles, which was paid to the presses only.

Prague-based Williams’s novel is set in the imagined wake of a mysterious disaster that has wiped out most of humanity. One family, descended from incest, remains, ruled by a merciless woman known only as the Matriarch. When the Matriarch believes there might be more survivors she sends one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering….

(3) HOW LONG? Author Hana Lee built a tool designed to calculate how many copies an author must sell to earn out an advance. [Via Publishers Weekly.]

“Earning out” means that the amount you’ve “earned” in royalties from copies sold (across all formats) equals or exceeds your advance payment.

(4) CON OR BUST AUCTION RETURNS. Dream Foundry’s Con or Bust program makes direct cash grants to creators or fans of color to assist with travel, food, registration, and other expenses associated with attending industry events. They are bringing back The Con or Bust Auction to raise money for their grants and are looking for donors for items of interest to potential auction buyers. “Think special experiences (like author Q&As), art, limited and/or special edition copies of books, ARCs for anticipated releases, etc.”

They want to have donations in by the end of June for inclusion this year. See full information on the program and how to contact them about donations here. Dream Foundry is a recognized non-profit and any donations given to us are tax deductible.

(5) ELLIOTT Q&A. Paul Weimer asks the questions in “Interview: Kate Elliott, author of Furious Heaven“ at Nerds of a Feather.

Furious Heaven, being a sequel to Unconquerable Sun, is a middle book in a series. How has the writing of this been the same, and different than other series that you have done? 

My goal with each of the three books of this trilogy has been, and continues to be, to shape each individual volume as if it is a standalone. Unconquerable Sun completes several of its major plot threads and, I believe, ends at a satisfying point. If I’ve done my job right, the reader will feel they’ve read a complete story and ALSO wish to read more.

Middle volumes are peculiarly hard. It’s important, in my opinion, to avoid “adding more beads onto the string” — that is, just to add more incident without complicating or expanding on the original elements of the story. A middle volume can add layers, unexpected twists and outcomes; it can deepen the characters and guide the reader into new landscapes and unknown dangers only hinted at in book one. That’s how I worked with (for example) Shadow Gate (Crossroads), Cold Fire (Spiritwalker), and Poisoned Blade (Court of Fives), which are all second volumes in trilogies that make the story bigger and show the reader new places and new conflicts.

With Furious Heaven I specifically wanted to do my best to make the story readable by someone who hadn’t read book one, while also having it build on what had come before…. 

(6) DUNE 2 PREVIEW. “’Dune: Part Two’—An Exclusive First Look at the Saga’s Epic Conclusion” – Vanity Fair offers descriptions and photos, but no video.

If you want to know where Dune: Part Two will begin, just look to the ending of the 2021 original. Director Denis Villeneuve wants to make it clear that his new movie, set for release November 3, is not so much another film as a continuation of the first. “It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference,” Villeneuve tells Vanity Fair for this exclusive first look. “I wanted the movie to really open just where we left the characters. There’s no time jump. I wanted dramatic continuity with part one.”…

….Although the first part of Dune became one of the first post-pandemic blockbusters and was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning six, the filmmaker himself still fixates on what he feels he could have done better. “You have to accept your failures as an artist,” he says. “It’s a task that was almost impossible, for me to be absolutely faithful to what those childhood dreams were. But what brings a lot of peace in my heart is that I brought a lot of them to the screen, a lot of them are close to what I had imagined.”

For now, Villeneuve is keeping his head down, staying focused on his work. “I’m deep into sound design and the visual effects, and it’s a race against time,” he says. Even discussing the film for this story was taxing for him. “I’ll be very blunt, okay?” he says with a smile, deploying the most Canadian analogy imaginable. “It’s very difficult for me to start to talk about a movie when I’m doing it. It’s like asking a hockey player to describe how he will score as he is skating toward the net.” 

Meanwhile, The Onion is skeptical: “’Dune: Part Two’ To Pick Up Right Where Viewers Fell Asleep During First One”.

(7) URSA MAJOR AWARDS. The group that runs the Ursa Major Awards for anthropomorphic works is asking for financial support. Contact them at the Ursa Major Awards website.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2003 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

One of my very favorite authors is Emma Bull (she and Will are on the chocolate gifting list) and Finder: A Novel of The Borderland is a novel that I’ve read at least a half dozen times to date.

Without stating any spoilers, I think it’s safe to say that Emma created truly believable characters, from the primary ones to the ones that just exist to enhance out the story, the setting of the city itself, and a story that makes the most of the setting that Bull has fleshed out from what Terri Windling created originally in this series.

The novel is available readily for quite reasonable prices in various editions, print and digital. 

And here’s the Beginning straight from the Border…

“My father he rides with your sheriffs

And I know he would never mean harm…

— Richard Thompson, “Genesis Hall”

 Chapter 1. Falling Out of Paradise

I remember where I was and what I was doing when Bonnie Prince Charlie was killed. Not that I knew it at the time, of course. But while Charlie was traveling the distance from the Pigeon Cloisters belfry to High Street with all the dispatch that gravity can muster, I was sunbathing.

If the weather had held, I’d have been on the roof of my building the next day, too, spread out like a drying sweater. But it promised rain. (If the forecast had been different, would the past be, too? Would a lot of people still be here? This town is strange and has weather to match, but I never imagined it was a matter of life and death.)

So when Tick-Tick pounded on the frame of my open front door, I was in and washing dishes. She poked her head in and shouted, “I am the queen’s daughter, I come from Twelfth and Flynn, in search of Young Orient, pray God I find him!”

I lifted my hands dripping from the suds, took the herbal cigarette out of the corner of my mouth, and said, “Excuse me?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” said the Ticker placidly. She stalked in, the picture of elven self-possession, and picked a saucer out of the dishpan with thumb and forefinger. “Mab’s grace. So low as you’ve fallen, my precious boy.”

“I’m out of cups. Nothing else would have driven me to it.” The water had killed my cigarette. I sighed and flicked it out the window.

She dropped into my upholstered chair and swung her long legs over the arm. Her concession to summer’s heat, I noticed, was to tear the sleeves off her favorite pair of gray mechanic’s coveralls and roll the legs up to mid-calf. And still she did look rather like a queen’s daughter; but the elves usually look like royalty. When they’re trying not to, they only look like royalty in a cheap plastic disguise. Tick-Tick had a face like the bust of Nefertiti, only more daunting, and her eyes were huge and long and the gray of January ice.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 27, 1899 — Walter Lantz. Cartoonist, animator, producer and director who founded Walter Lantz Productions. He created the Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy characters among others. He received an Academy Award “for bringing joy and laughter to every part of the world through his unique animated motion pictures”. (Died 1994.)
  • Born April 27, 1901 — Frank Belknap Long. John Hertz says that Long should be singled out for the “To Follow Knowledge” novelette which he lovingly discuses here.  I only add that Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1994.)
  • Born April 27, 1920 — Doris Baumgardt.Well-known and loved fan, illustrator and writer. She was a member of the Futurians, and a founding member of FAPA. She was also a member of the CPASF and the Science Fictioneers. She was one of five members of the Futurians allowed into the first World Science Fiction Convention by Sam Moskowitz — the other four were Isaac Asimov, David Kyle, Jack Robinson and Richard Wilson. She wrote three pieces of short fiction that were published in the Forties and Fifties; she contributed artwork to fanzines. (JJ) (Died 1970.)
  • Born April 27, 1958 — Caroline Spector, 65. She was an Associate Editor at Amazing Stories for several years, but her main genre connection is her fiction in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series where she has seven stories. She also a Shadowrun novel, Worlds Without End. (Now that was an interesting RPG!) she also has an essay, “Power and Feminism in Westeros” in James Lowder’s Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, From A “Game of Thrones” to “A Dance with Dragons
  • Born April 27, 1962 — Rachel Caine. She had two ongoing endeavors, the Weather Warden series which is most excellent and the superb Great Library series. I can’t speak to the Morganville Vampires series as I don’t do vampires really. And yes, I know she’s got a number of other series, far more than can detailed be here. (Died 2020.)
  • Born April 27, 1963 — Russell T. Davies, 60. Responsible for the 2005 revival on BBC One of Doctor Who. (A Whovian since the very beginning, he thinks “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” has the best dialogue in the entire series, an opinion I concur with.) Of course he’s also responsible for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures as well. (Need I note that the The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot was his idea?) Davies returned as the showrunner in October 2022 after the departure of Chris Chibnall; the first episodes of his second tenure will be the show’s sixtieth anniversary specials in 2023.
  • Born April 27, 1986 — Catherine Webb, 37. She’s writes under a number of names but I only know her under her Kate Griffin name where she wrote the extraordinary London set Matthew Swift series which one of the best urban fantasy series I ever read. I’ve not read any of her fiction written as Claire North which is major other name, so if you have, do tell me how it is. As North, her book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August won the Clarke Award and Campbell Memorial Award, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope won a World Fantasy Award. Now go read the Matthew Swift series! 

(10) JOBS MAGNET. “As New York Boosts Tax Breaks for Movies, Some Critics Pan the Program” reports the New York Times.

 Four years ago, Amazon pulled the plug on its plans to build a headquarters in New York City, amid left-wing outrage over a $3 billion public subsidy package. But New York has hardly cut the company off: Amazon’s film and TV arm has received more than $108 million in state tax credits since then, and the left has raised nary a peep.

The handout is part of a state program that provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year in tax incentives to producers across the film and television industry, including Amazon — helping fuel a rapid expansion of studios in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester County.

Now, Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing to expand the program by nearly 70 percent, using the proposed state budget to shower as much as $7.7 billion in tax credits on the industry over the next 11 years. As it now stands, the subsidy is the most generous of any offered by the state, according to an analysis by Reinvent Albany, a watchdog group.

The proposed expansion to $700 million a year from $420 million has drawn stern rebukes from a range of critics who argue the decades-old program has consistently been a bad deal for taxpayers. But its likely success shows what is possible when powerful political and economic forces align in Albany, and states are increasingly pitted against each other for prestige jobs.

Ms. Hochul’s team is most concerned about neighboring New Jersey, which, along with Georgia and Canada, offers its own buffet of sweeteners that threatens to siphon film projects from New York.

(11) WWII RESISTANCE WORK. “Colorful Stories for Children, With the Darkest History as Backdrop” in the New York Times.  Includes many pictures from the books.  

During World War II, a clutch of whimsical children’s books were published in the Netherlands under a pen name, El Pintor. One book shows children flying on the backs of sparrows. In another, they float, attached to balloons. There is a pop-up book with people and animals nestled in trees and an activity book with paper cutouts.

The books sold thousands of copies, and were popular not only in the Netherlands, which was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940, but in Germany as well.

The books did more than entertain children during the grim days of war. Behind the pseudonym El Pintor was a Jewish couple, Galinka Ehrenfest and Jacob Kloot. They used the name El Pintor to obscure their heritage, and funneled the proceeds from their picture books to fund Dutch resistance efforts and to help Jews who were hiding from the Nazi regime.

They did so at great risk, said Linda Horn, who wrote a book published in the Netherlands about Ehrenfest’s life.

“Secrecy was very important, people couldn’t write down what they were doing,” said Horn of those who worked in the Dutch resistance. “There are barely any sources.”…

(12) TODAY’S DAY. It’s World Hyena Day today. Which is important if you’re into furry fiction.

https://twitter.com/WildDogUtunu/status/1650854052245250049

(13) HISTORY-MAKING AMATEUR FILM CLUB. [Item by Ahrvid Enghom.] UK fan Jim Walker suddenly appears in the new documentary “A Bunch of Amateurs” (eg 37h30m in, but also later and in the credits), a film about the world’s perhaps oldest amateur film club, the Bradford Movie Makers founded in 1932.

Available here for UK viewers  (Geo-blocking may be overcome by VPN or something, if you know how.) I’ve seen the film, which has been on our local SVT.

(See also e.g. “Bradford-Based Feature Documentary A Bunch Of Amateurs”) — Bradford Movie Makers. They seem to have done some skiffy flicks among their 300 productions over 90 years, e.g. a Superman parody which is shown in this documentary.

Jim Walker

(14) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 82 of Octothorpe, “Metatextual Dinosaurs” —

John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty talk about their Hugo Award nominations. You have about four days to vote, so get your skates on! Read and watch everything we recommend! Do it now!

(15) APEX ACQUIRES KEENE BOOK. Apex Book Company has acquired first North America English trade paperback rights to the novel Island Of The Dead by Brian Keene in a deal brokered by the author.

Island Of The Dead is a horror/sword and sorcery novel in which an enslaved barbarian plots his escape from a war galley transporting soldiers and a mysterious biological weapon. But when a storm at sea leaves them shipwrecked on a mysterious island, friend and foe alike must band together against a ravenous, steadily growing horde of the undead.

Through Apex Books, Keene has written the Lost Level series of dark fantasy novels and co-authored the Rogan Chronicles series with Steven Shrewsbury.

Brian Keene is the author of over fifty books, mostly in the horror, crime, fantasy, and non-fiction genres. His 2003 novel, The Rising, is credited (along with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later film) with inspiring pop culture’s recurrent interest in zombies.

(16) STALKER. “A Russian ‘inspector’ satellite appears to be chasing a secret US military satellite in a game of cat and mouse” – see photos at MSN.com.

A mysterious Russian satellite and a confidential US military satellite appear to be engaged in a cat-and-mouse chase through space.

The Russian spacecraft, called Kosmos-2558, was launched into the same orbital plane as the US satellite, called USA-326, in August 2022 and has regularly passed close to the American spacecraft ever since.

The behavior of Kosmos-2558, and the lack of a formal explanation from Russia, has led space observers to believe that the probe is stalking USA-326. It’s at least the third satellite Russia has launched that appears to be an “inspector” — a spacecraft aiming to gather up-close data on another satellite….

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Ahrvid Engholm, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 4/6/23 Other Files Just Make You Swear And Curse, When You’re Chewing On Life’s Pixel

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(1) CHANGES IN PUBLISHING. Pete Kahle of Bloodshot Books is stepping down from publishing and Joe Mynhardt of Crystal Like Publishing is stepping in to help Bloodshot Books’s authors by offering them all a new home at Crystal Lake — or offering them the option to simply take their rights back if they prefer. See “Big Publishing News” on the Crystal Lake Publishing website.

Anyone who knows me [Joe Mynhardt] knows that I’m a big supporter of great books and great authors. I believe in the power of stories, and want to give my all to the genre fiction community.

So whenever I see authors or even a publisher in need, I reach out. Sometimes it’s to help publishers end things on the best of terms, and other times to help authors find a new home for their books.

That’s why I made the decision to step in and offer all the authors at Bloodshot Books a new home at Crystal Lake Publishing. I’m familiar with most of the authors there (yip, I always keep an eye on talented authors), and some of the actual books. Plus, I know Pete Kahle at Bloodshot Books has a great eye for talent. Unfortunately Pete has to step down from publishing, so this is our way of helping him and the 40+ authors involved.

We have given all the authors the option to take their rights back, in case they want to sub elsewhere or self-publish, but I’m confident that Crystal Lake is a great publishing house. We’re trustworthy, pay on time, and hell, we’ve been around for over 10 years. Which is almost impossible in this industry.

If any Bloodshot Books authors are reading this and you haven’t received our emails (there are a few authors we’re struggling to get a hold of), please message me. Even if you’re not interested, you’ll need a rights reversion letter from us.

The essence of why Pete Kahle would be stepping down can be discerned in Brian Keene’s “An Open Letter to Pete Kahle of Bloodshot Books” from last December.

(2) GET READY BEAGLE FANS! The Essential Peter S. Beagle, which celebrates the storied career of the bestselling author of The Overneath, Summerlong, and The Last Unicorn, will be released May 16 by Tachyon Publications. They will begin taking preorders on April 11 starting at noon Pacific time.

In addition to the two-volume trade editions, Tachyon Publications has announced single-volume, lettered and numbered limited editions. See details at the link.

Beagle, one of America’s most influential fantasists, continues to evoke glowing comparisons to such iconic authors as Twain, Tolkien, Carroll, L’Engle, and Vonnegut. From heartbreaking to humorous, these tales show the depth and power of Beagle’s incomparable prose and storytelling.

Featuring original introductions from Jane Yolen (The Devil’s Arithmetic) and Meg Elison (Find Layla), and gorgeous original illustrations from Stephanie Law (Shadowscapes), The Essential Peter S. Beagle is a must-have for any fan of classic fantasy.

(3) MATTER HERE, MATTER THERE. James Davis Nicoll takes us to “Five SF Futures Where Teleportation Is Possible (But Not Necessarily Safe)” at Tor.com.

Few headlines thrill like “‘Counterportation’: Quantum breakthrough paves way for world-first experimental wormhole.” The article itself delivers, raising the possibility that “disembodied transport (…) without any detectable information carriers” may prove to be physically realizable.

Teleportation by another name is still teleportation….

First on his list is —

All the Colors of Darkness by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1963)

The Universal Transmitting Company has a simple dream: provide the Earth of the mid-1980s with facilities that would allow travellers to step from city to city or continent to continent in a single stride. The business would be instantly profitable and the founders able to sit back and rake in the dough.

This elegant plan is straightforward in concept. In practice, the project has met impediment after impediment. Why, it’s almost as if the Universal Transmitting Company had a very determined enemy…

(4) PUTTING CHATGPT TO WORK. Joe Pitkin says “I Used ChatGPT to Write My Novel!” at The Subway Test. But he doesn’t mean what was probably the first thought that came to your mind.

Well, not really. Or at least not in the way that you might think: I’m definitely not one of those scammy side hustlers sending ChatGPT-generated concoctions to award winning science fiction magazines.

But the novel I’m working on now, Pacifica, begins each of its 74 chapters with an epigraph. Much like the computer game Civilization, each chapter is named after one of the technologies that have made modern humanity possible. And, much like Civilization, each technology is accompanied by an apposite quote. Leonard Nimoy was the gold standard narrator for those quotes in Civilization IV (though Sean Bean has his moments in Civilization VI).

One of the most fun parts of drafting Pacifica has been finding the right quotes for each chapter. I picked from books and poems that I love (as well as a few books that I hated) to put together what I imagined as a kind of collage or mosaic of human knowledge. I imagined the task as something like a literary version of the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where The Beatles assembled a photo-collage crowd of their favorite thinkers and artists and goofball influences.

… So I asked ChatGPT to find me some quotes about superconducting….

(5) AN INDEX OF FOOLISHNESS. “The Post ruins April Fools’ Day, 2023 edition” is a compilation of shenanigans published yesterday by the Washington Post. Here are a couple of literary-themed examples.

(6) SLF GULLIVER GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation announced in February that Em North is the winner of the 2022 Gulliver Travel Grant. North’s winning piece is The School of Forgetting.

Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has sought to assist writers of speculative literature (in fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction) in their research. The grant awards one writer $1000 annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses.

Em North is a writer who has lived in eighteen different states and still can’t figure out where to settle down. Their debut novel, IN UNIVERSES, is forthcoming from Harper Books (US) and Heinemann Hutchinson (UK) in March 2024. They received their MFA from Johns Hopkins University, where they were awarded the Benjamin T. Sankey Fellowship for a graduating student. They have also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, the Tin House Summer Workshop, Aspen Words, and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Their fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sun, Conjunctions, Lightspeed Magazine, Threepenny Review, and Best American Experimental Writing 2020.

Before becoming a writer, they studied physics and philosophy, writing their undergraduate thesis on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In previous lives, they’ve worked as an observational cosmologist, snowboard instructor, horse trainer, wine taster, pure math researcher, (very brief) investment banker, ranch caretaker, and creative writing instructor.

(7) SLF VIRTUAL CLASSES. The Speculative Literature Foundation has three courses and workshops on its April schedule – see full details and registration cost at the link.

Nancy Hightower, essayist and author, is teaching a workshop on writing about mental health on April 22. The day after, our course on screenwriting begins with Ted Schneider, director and writer of films like “Early Light” and “Iqaluit.” On May 13 our Writing the Taboo workshop returns, instructed by our very own director, Mary Anne Mohanraj.

(8) LEO D. SULLIVAN (1940-2023). Animator Leo D. Sullivan, whose most famous work was the chugging engine that opened Soul Train, died March 25 at the age of 82 reports Deadline.

…In addition to creating the memorable Soul Train opener, Sullivan contributed to cartoons featuring Fat Albert, Transformers and My Little Pony. He worked as an animator for five decades.

His resume included television work for The Incredible Hulk, Flash Gordon, BraveStarr and Scooby-Doo, his family said.

Born in Lockhart, Texas, Sullivan moved to Los Angeles in 1952, and started working for Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett. In the 1960s, he joined forced with Floyd Norman, the first Black animator at Disney, and cofounded Vignette Film, which created educational films about historic Black figures.

He also published a video game that honored the Tuskegee Airmen and taught at the Art Institute of California-Orange County.

Sullivan was honored by the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1979 and 1991….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1984 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Poul Anderson & Karen Anderson’s “Cosmic Concepts”

This is less about “Cosmic Concepts” which this is the Beginning of, but rather all of the splendid poetry of The Unicorn Trade.

Now most of you know that this collection which is mostly by Poul Anderson & Karen Anderson was published first by Tor thirty-nine years ago. It’s an amazing collection of stories, poems, and, errr, science fiction haikus, something I never knew even existed. 

I am not by any means a big poetry fan but I was quite delighted by everything that was here for poetry, most of which is by her.  The poetry is a sheer joy to read. Of the collection starts off with “The Unicorn Trade”, a stellar affair, by her but I will also single out “Haiku for Mars” and “Professor James” by both of them. A deep drink of their favorite ale is in order! 

And now the Beginning of “Cosmic Concepts”… 

This is the science fiction story.
This is the young man full of pride,
whose gadgets work the first time tried
in a science fiction story.

This is the elder scientist,
every year on the honors list,
who trained the young man full of pride,
whose gadgets work the first time tried
in a science fiction story.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 6, 1924 — Sonya Dorman. Her best-known work of SF is “When I Was Miss Dow” which received an Otherwise retrospective award nomination. Her “Corruption of Metals” received won the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She also appeared in Dangerous Visions with the “Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird” story. (Died 2005.)
  • Born April 6, 1926 — Gil Kane. Artist who created the modern look and feel of Green Lantern and the Atom for DC, and co-created Iron Fist with Roy Thomas for Marvel. I’m going to single him out for his work on the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets in the Sixties and Seventies which you can find on the DC Universe Infinite app. (Died 2000.)
  • Born April 6, 1935 — Douglas Hill. Canadian author, editor and reviewer. For a year, he was assistant editor of Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine. I’m going to admit that I know more of him as a decidedly and to be admired Leftist reviewer than I do as writer, indeed he held the same post of Literary Editor at the socialist weekly Tribune as Orwell earlier did. Who here is familiar with fiction? He was quite prolific indeed. (Died 2007.)
  • Born April 6, 1948 — Sherry Gottlieb, 75. Best remembered and loved as owner of the Change of Hobbit bookstore whose origin story you can read in her memoir. It closed in 1991. She’s written two horror novels Love Bites and Worse Than Death. 
  • Born April 6, 1948 — Larry Todd, 75. Writer and cartoonist, best known for the decidedly adult Dr. Atomic strips that originally appeared in the underground newspaper The Sunday Paper and his other work in underground comics, often with a SF bent. In our circles, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Science Fiction and Imagination were three of his venues. He also did some writing for If. He also did, and it’s really weird art, the cover art and interior illustrations for Harlan Ellison’s Chocolate Alphabet.
  • Born April 6, 1956 — Mark Askwith, 67. Did you know there was an authorized Prisoner sequel? Well there was. The Prisoner: Shattered Visage is a four-issue comic book series written by him and Dean Motter who was also the artist. Askwith also wrote for DC Comics, specifically Batman: Gotham Knights. 
  • Born April 6, 1977 — Karin Tidbeck, 46. Her first work in English, Jagannath, a short story collection, made the shortlist for the Otherwise Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. The short story “Augusta Prima”, originally written by her in Swedish, was translated into English by her which won her a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award in the Short Form category.

(11) NEVER LET THE FACTS STAND IN THE WAY. “ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding” says the Guardian’s Chris Moran.

Last month one of our journalists received an interesting email. A researcher had come across mention of a Guardian article, written by the journalist on a specific subject from a few years before. But the piece was proving elusive on our website and in search. Had the headline perhaps been changed since it was launched? Had it been removed intentionally from the website because of a problem we’d identified? Or had we been forced to take it down by the subject of the piece through legal means?

The reporter couldn’t remember writing the specific piece, but the headline certainly sounded like something they would have written. It was a subject they were identified with and had a record of covering. Worried that there may have been some mistake at our end, they asked colleagues to go back through our systems to track it down. Despite the detailed records we keep of all our content, and especially around deletions or legal issues, they could find no trace of its existence.

Why? Because it had never been written.

Luckily the researcher had told us that they had carried out their research using ChatGPT. In response to being asked about articles on this subject, the AI had simply made some up. Its fluency, and the vast training data it is built on, meant that the existence of the invented piece even seemed believable to the person who absolutely hadn’t written it.

Huge amounts have been written about generative AI’s tendency to manufacture facts and events. But this specific wrinkle – the invention of sources – is particularly troubling for trusted news organisations and journalists whose inclusion adds legitimacy and weight to a persuasively written fantasy. And for readers and the wider information ecosystem, it opens up whole new questions about whether citations can be trusted in any way, and could well feed conspiracy theories about the mysterious removal of articles on sensitive issues that never existed in the first place.

If this seems like an edge case, it’s important to note that ChatGPT, from a cold start in November, registered 100 million monthly users in January. TikTok, unquestionably a digital phenomenon, took nine months to hit the same level. Since that point we’ve seen Microsoft implement the same technology in Bing, putting pressure on Google to follow suit with Bard….

This reminds me of the punchline from an old Peanuts strip.

(12) JEOPARDY! David Goldfarb brings us more highlights from Wednesday’s Jeopardy! episode, which had (in the Double Jeopardy round) a category called “Literary Bad Day for the Planet”. 

$1600: Early in this novel Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz informs humanity Earth will be destroyed for a hyperspatial express route

Returning champion Brian Henegar responded: “What is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”

$400: Set in Melbourne, Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel “On the Beach” finds much of the world destroyed by this man-made disaster

Brian: “What is a nuclear war?”

$800: In Neal Stephenson’s “Seveneves”, this mysteriously blows up into 7 pieces that rain bolides onto Earth

Brian: “What is the moon?”

$1200: Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” is a sun that went supernova, killing a planet, & is this celestial object from the New Testament

Teresa Browning: “What is the Star of David?”
Silence from the other two.

$2000: John Wyndham’s novel about “The Day of” these meat-eating plants sees most of humanity blinded before being featured on the menu

Brian: “What are the triffids?”

(13) FUTURISM RESOURCE. John Shirley and Brock Hinzmann have launched Instant Future, a new site for essays and articles.

Instant Future offers both quick jumps and deep dives into futurist prediction. We look with open minds, informed by critical thinking, to refine the lens of prediction, sorting through new research and media reports so you don’t have to. We look for the most insightful voices in the field of prediction, to cite and to interview. We combine the insights of professional futurists and forward-thinkers of all kinds, to give you an advanced look at what’s coming.

We’re offering a brisk trip to the edge the future itself…an edge that’s always edging away.

(14) DO CHICKENS HAVE LIPS? Maybe they would have if they were descended from T. Rex. “Facelift for T. rex: analysis suggests teeth were covered by thin lips” is a report in today’s Nature. “Crocodiles and Komodo dragons provide evidence to support the idea of a scaly cover over the teeth of dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.”

…In crocodiles, the enamel is thick and stays hydrated because they live in the water. Even so, crocodile teeth bear the signs of cracks and damage on their outer surface. That’s not the case in theropods, she says. Theropod teeth are covered by just a thin layer of enamel, indicating that these dinosaurs probably had lips to keep the teeth protected and coated in saliva when their mouths were closed….

(15) FREE SHOWING OF SF CLASSIC. The UCLA Library Film & Television Archive will be showing a restored print of Invaders from Mars at the campus’ Billy Wilder Theater on April 9 at 7:00 p.m.

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Invaders From Mars. U.S., 1953

Young David (Jimmy Hunt) wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a flying saucer land in his backyard. So begins the visually stunning and whimsical film that has been captivating audiences for 70 years, directed by production designer William Cameron Menzies (Gone with the Wind) and photographed by studio legend John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity). Politically and socially charged, this superbly crafted sci-fi thriller captures the paranoia of the time, complemented by a curiosity for the universe. Physically compromised shortly after its release—butchered, recut, elements scattered—Invaders from Mars has been retrieved from the brink of extinction thanks to this dazzling new restoration. Screening on the same date the movie premiered in 1953, the film will be preceded with a presentation about the restoration by former Head of Preservation at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Scott MacQueen.

DCP, color, 78 min. Director: William Cameron Menzies. Screenwriter: Richard Blake. With: Leif Erickson, Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz.

Restored by Ignite Films in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, George Eastman Museum and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Philip Harbottle’s 1950s British Science Fiction YouTube channel has over 60 videos on the topic. The latest is “John Russell Fearn Inspired Comic Strips (#62)”.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, David Goldfarb, Moshe Feder, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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).]

Pixel Scroll 3/26/23 I Need A Little Pixel In My Scroll

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(1) MEMBERS WILL HEAR FROM GLASGOW 2024. Glasgow 2024 told Facebook readers they will shortly be emailing all WSFS Only Members and Unconverted Friends with personalized instructions on how to become an Attending member, which will save people between £20 and £50 on what it will cost to become an Attending Member after the end of April.

Those who are not already members but plan on attending Glasgow 2024 in-person you should become a member before the end of April when, for example, Adult rates will rise from £170 to £190. If this is too much to pay out right now, by opting into the installment plan people can fix the rate at £170 and pay over time.

If people want help joining, or want to know their current status, email [email protected]

(2) FURRY CON INTERRUPTED BY BOMB THREAT. On Friday, the first day of Motor City Furry Con in Ypsilanti, MI Fox 2 News says the con was evacuated after a reported bomb threat. However, nothing was found and the con resumed for the rest of the weekend.

WWJ News Radio interviewed people who were there: “Evacuations underway at Motor City Furry Con in Ypsilanti”.

…Speaking to the crowd, a man who identified himself as chairperson for the convention said organizers received an email from an unidentified person who “actually did threaten us with a bomb.”

The chairperson added: “What’s going on right now is we’ve got the police here to sweep the hotel. There’s gonna go and investigate — probably your rooms, I’m sorry — but they are gonna look through the hotel and make sure we are safe.”

Cassidy, who traveled to Michigan from Vancouver for the event, said the police showed up as everyone was evacuating. Eventually, officers ushered everyone away from the hotel onto a nearby golf course.

“There wasn’t really a large panic because in some ways the furry fandom is unfortunately getting used to this. It’s kind of becoming part of daily life to some degree, I think where we all understand that someone can just call something in,” Cassidy said.

“And this is actually the third time at a convention this month that there’s been a police presence.”

(3) IT’S THE PITS. Cora Buhlert has posted a new Masters of the Universe action figure photo story on her blog. “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: ‘The Prisoner of Castle Grayskull’”.

Like any good castle, the mystical Castle Grayskull from Masters of the Universe also has a dungeon and indeed the Castle Grayskull playset has always been equipped with a practical trapdoor that allows you to drop intruders from the throne room straight down into the dungeon.

However, beneath the regular dungeon of Castle Grayskull, there is also a second, deeper dungeon that extends steadily downwards, because Castle Grayskull sits on top of a bottomless abyss named the Dwell of Souls. This lower dungeon is populated by all sorts of monsters and represented in all versions of the Castle Grayskull playset by a sticker of a metal grate with all sorts of monsters trying to get out. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the portal to the underworld located underneath Castle Joiry in C.L. Moore’s stories “Black God’s Kiss” and “Black God’s Shadow” or the monster-infested dungeon underneath the Scarlet Citadel from the eponymous Conan story by Robert E. Howar. I doubt this is a coincidence, because Masters of the Universe draws a lot of inspiration from vintage sword and sorcery and pulp SFF in general

Unsurprisingly, people have been fascinated by the dungeon sticker and the monsters living underneath Castle Grayskull for forty years now. I mean, it’s monster-filled dungeon beneath a castle, so who wouldn’t be fascinated by what’s down there? However, little was known about the creatures that live beneath Castle Grayskull until very recently….

(4) LOOKING AHEAD. Brian Keene shared this unexpected sentiment in his newsletter today, “Letters From the Labyrinth 326”:

…For many years, people in our business used to say “Don’t mess with Brian Keene’s family, Brian Keene’s money, or Brian Keene’s genre.” These days, I don’t give a crap about the genre. It can collapse into rubble tomorrow and that would be okay with me. That was how I found it when I arrived on the scene, and I did my part to rebuild it into something better, but the older I get, the more I’m convinced it needs to be reduced to ashes and rebuilt from time to time….

(5) THREE GENRE WINNERS. The winners of the 2023 Waterstones Children’s Book Prizes are genre books.

Nadia Mikail has been named Overall Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for her debut novel, The Cats We Meet Along The Way, which also won the Older Reader’s Category. 

M.T. Khan’s Nura and the Immortal Palace won the Younger Readers’ category and Kim Hillyard’s Gretel the Wonder Mammoth took the category for Illustrated Books

(6) CASTRO SEEKS FINANCIAL HELP. Adam-Troy Castro opened a GoFundMe for “Chemotherapy and Other Medical Expenses”.

I have run five fundraisers in about as many years, and I am getting used to apologizing for starting this well-worn route again. Believe me, I don’t want to.

Past Fundraisers included one when Judi needed ankle surgery, one when she and I lost our home, one when Judi died and left me penniless, one when car troubles and medical expenses loomed.

I have just closed that last fundraiser because events have yet again changed.

In September, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer, a tumor the size of a fist.

I required scans, iron infusions, many visits, and lots of arguing with my insurance provider.

When the tumor was removed in December, I lost a foot of bowel and discovered that the category-3 tumor had begun to spread to my lymph notes. In late January I will commence chemotherapy.

And this is where I am, at the beginning of another year’s deductible.

This is what I have been told: the entire process of chemotherapy will fall under my deductible. 800 dollars per treatment for six months. I will also require post-surgical scans, more tests and iron infusions. plus lots of unforeseeable disbursements to take care of me while I endure what will be a bumpy ride. There will be drugs to manage the symptoms, some quite expensive. And then I will need many check-ups to see if the treatment is effective.

At the same time, a separate issue but a real one, I am rapidly going blind from cataracts. Treatment for that has been delayed as the cancer takes precedent. That will involve outpatient surgery.

So yeah, right now, holding on to life is costing more than it costs to live.

And here’s the thing.

I know that this is another round of “Adam is in trouble.”

I would rather not be having one. Trust me. I would so much love to do things like travel.

I am more grateful for prior assistance than I can possibly tell you.

But this is what is going on, and I thank you, so thank you, for considering even the smallest donation to what is shaping up to be the battle of my life, only a year and a half removed from the loss of Judi and what I previously imagined to be the battle of my life….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1959 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Some truly great things come in small servings, and it is with Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies-“. First published by the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the March 1959 issue after it was rejected by Playboy. It actually had a previous smaller release in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag on Gnome Press.

It develops themes that were in a previous work, “By His Bootstraps”, published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the pen name Anson MacDonald. 

So given its shortness and the possibility, however remote I’ll admit, that some Filer might have not experienced it, I won’t say anything about it. All will I say is that I love the story and think that it’s one of his best.

The Australian 2014 Predestination film was based upon this story. The film which stars Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook gets a stellar eighty-four rating from the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

Spider Robinson does a brilliant narration of it, and I know it’s been done as an audio work quite a number of times going back decades. Anyone care to list them? 

And now our quite amazing Beginning…

All You Zombies—” 2217 Time Zone V (set) 7 Nov 1970 NYC—“ Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10.17 p.m. zone five or eastern time November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time & date; we must. 

The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, immature features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile. 

Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “—at four cents a word. I write confession stories.” 

If he felt nasty, he would wait for somebody to make something of it. He had a lethal style of in-fighting, like a female cop—one reason I wanted him. Not the only one. 

He had a load on and his face showed that he despised people more than usual. Silently I poured a double shot of Old Underwear and left the bottle. He drank, poured another. 

I wiped the bar top. “How’s the ‘Unmarried Mother’ racket?” 

His fingers tightened on the glass and he seemed about to throw it at me; I felt for the sap under the bar. In temporal manipulation you try to figure everything, but there are so many factors that you never take needless risks. 

I saw him relax that tiny amount they teach you to watch for in the Bureau’s training school. “Sorry,” I said. “Just asking, ‘How’s business?’ Make it ‘How’s the weather?’” 

He looked sour. “Business is okay. I write ’em, they print ’em, I eat.”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 26, 1850 — Edward Bellamy. Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is really the only work that he’s remembered for today. He wrote two other largely forgotten works, Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process and Miss Ludington’s Sister: A Romance of Immortality. (Died 1898.)
  • Born March 26, 1920 — Alex Comfort. No smirking please as we’re adults here. At least allegedly. 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.” (Died 2000.)
  • Born March 26, 1924 — Peter George. Welsh author, most remembered for the late Fifties Red Alert novel, published first as Two Hours To Doom and written under the name of Peter Bryant. The book was the basis of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. (Died 1966.)
  • Born March 26, 1931 — Leonard Nimoy. I really don’t need to say who he played on Trek, do I? Did you know his first role was as a zombie in Zombies of the Stratosphere? Or that he did a a lot of Westerns ranging from Broken Arrow in which he played various Indians to The Tall Man in which at least his character had a name, Deputy Sheriff Johnny Swift. His other great genre role was on Mission: Impossible as The Great Paris, a character whose real name was never revealed, who was a retired magician. It was his first post-Trek series. He of course showed up on the usual other genre outings such as The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Outer Limits, Night Gallery and Get Smart. And then there’s the matter of “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.  If you find it on the web, do not link to it here as all copies up are illegally there. (Died 2015.)
  • Born March 26, 1953 — Christopher Fowler. I started reading him when I encountered his Bryant & May series which though supposedly not genre does feature a couple of protagonists who are suspiciously old. Possibly a century or more now. The mysteries may or may not have genre aspects but are wonderfully weird. Other novels by him are I’d recommend are Roofworld and Rune which really are genre, and Hell Train which is quite delicious horror. (Died 2023.)
  • Born March 26, 1950 — K. W. Jeter, 73. Farewell Horizontal may or may be punk of any manner but it’s a great read. Though I generally loathe such things, Morlock Night, his sequel to The Time Machine, is well-worth reading reading. I’ve heard good things about his Blade Runner sequels but haven’t read them. Opinions?
  • Born March 26, 1985 — Keira Knightley, 38. To my surprise, and this definitely shows I’m not a Star Wars geek, she was Sabé, The Decoy Queen, in The Phantom Menace.  Next up for her is Princess of Thieves, a loose adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. Now I didn’t see that but I did see her in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl as Elizabeth Swann. (She’s in several more of these films.) I saw her as Guinevere, an odd Guinevere indeed, in King Arthur. Her last role I must note was as The Nutcracker and the Four Realms in which she was the Sugar Plum Fairy! 

(9) WHY DID THEY BLOCK ME? John Scalzi supplies the answer for one Twitter user.

(10) FACING YOUR DEMONS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Yup. It’s a real thing. I heard about it on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! “Facing the demons: can Dungeons & Dragons therapy heal real-life trauma?” in the Guardian.

…According to practitioners, D&D can be used to treat everything from exploring gender – you can take on a character whose identity is completely foreign to yours – to recovering from traumatic events. “Trauma disconnects us from ourselves, and one of the first things we get disconnected from is our imagination and creativity,” Cassie Walker, a clinical social worker, told Wired last year. Role-playing has the potential to lighten up therapy sessions, and invigorate clients whose expressiveness may have been dulled by past events.

Today, Connell is especially interested in working with young women and girls to use the game to build self-esteem and assertiveness through play. “It’s a great place to practice skills and step into those aspirational traits to be the person you want,” she said….

(11) INTERSTELLAR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Science fiction (and science nonfiction) author, Les Johnson (whose day job is at NASA), was recently interviewed via email for an article in Forbes about interstellar travel. “NASA Technologist Talks What’s Needed For Interstellar Travel”.

What should we be doing to make interstellar travel possible?

“We need to bring back funding for basic research and development and run away from the notion that all R&D must have a near-term return on investment,” said Johnson.

Some form of warp drive is likely the most feasible way to enable realistic Star Trek-styled travel since each warp factor is a multiple of the speed of light cubed. As Johnson explains in “A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars,” Warp drive “uses tremendous energies to change the shape of space-time, allowing the ship to cross normal, albeit warped/compressed/expanded space very quickly.”

In a now-famous 1994 refereed paper, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre describes a warp drive that “works mathematically and would allow a starship to appear to be traveling faster than light, while not really doing so,” Johnson notes in his book.

(12) SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. “Mathematicians Discovered a New 13-Sided Shape That Can Do Remarkable Things” at Popular Mechanics. See image at the link.  (There’s also more discussion in a Twitter thread that starts here.)

Computer scientists found the holy grail of tiles. They call it the “einstein,” one shape that alone can cover a plane without ever repeating a pattern.

And all it takes for this special shape is 13 sides.

In the world of mathematics, an “aperiodic monotile”—also known as an einstein based off a German phrase for one stone—is a shape that can tile a plane, but never repeat.

“In this paper we present the first true aperiodic monotile, a shape that forces aperiodicity through geometry alone, with no additional constrains applied via matching conditions,” writes Craig Kaplan, a computer science professor from the University of Waterloo and one of the four authors of the paper. “We prove that this shape, a polykite that we call ‘the hat,’ must assemble into tilings based on a substitution system.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Cora Buhlert, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 3/16/23 Who Knows What Lurks In The Heart Of A Pixel? Only The Scroll Knows

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(1) HELL(P) WANTED. Brian Keene is bringing back “Jobs In Hell”, the 2001 Bram Stoker Award for Non-Fiction-winning monthly industry newsletter for writers, artists, editors, and other professionals specializing in horror and other speculative and weird fiction genres.  Paid subscriptions are being taken at the link.

Jobs In Hell will cost $5 per month to subscribe to. You can sign up for it here. The first issue will go out later this month.

To begin, it will run on a monthly schedule, rather than the weekly schedule of the old Jobs In Hell. I will revisit that schedule regularly, however, and I’m almost certain that at some point we’ll increase frequency.

If you are looking for submissions for your magazine, website, publishing company, etc. please email the details to [email protected]. Your email should contain the following information: Name of publication, name of editor overseeing submissions, guidelines as to what you are looking for, details on how to submit, deadline (if any), and payment (if any).

(2) ONLINE SFF COURSE IN NOVEMBER. Aliette de Bodard and Alastair Reynolds will be teaching an online course in writing SF & Fantasy at the end of the year: ”Teaching SF and F with Aliette” at Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon.

This course, “Sci-Fi & Fantasy”, offered through the Canolfan Ysgrifennu Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre, will be held over four online sessions on the following dates: Tuesday 14 November, Tuesday 21 November, Tuesday 28 November & Tuesday 12 December 2023 from 7.00 – 8.30 pm. Register here.

Over four online sessions, Aliette and Alastair will address the peculiar challenges and opportunities open to anyone wishing to write science fiction, fantasy or their related sub-genres. Drawing on their own experiences across a range of literary styles and formats, from short stories to novels and extended series, they’ll cover the mechanics of crafting a story, from planning and plotting, to the use of voice and viewpoint, setting and mood. They’ll address the unique challenges of worldbuilding within the literatures of the fantastic, from the use of language to evoke a time and a place to the invention of social systems and far-future technologies, and how to make those creations seem real to the reader. They’ll talk about the different stages of writing; from initial drafts to polishing, how to prepare work for submission and how to make the most of the literary marketplace, from traditional venues to the online world and self-publishing. They’ll bring invaluable experience in problem-solving: how to come up with ideas, how to work around creative blocks, how to make a good story better – and, always, how to find fun and fulfilment in your craft, wherever it takes you. The future is wide open!

(3) ZELAZNY AND MORE. Today at Galactic Journey Cora Buhlert reviews the 1968 Hugo winner Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny and the 1968 heist novel Easy Go by John Lange a.k.a. Michael Crichton amongst other reviews. According to Cora, the largely forgotten heist novel got a better review than the Hugo winner: “[March 16, 1968] In Distant Lands (March Galactoscope)”.

Buddha is a Spaceman: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny, of Polish origin himself, is one of the most exciting young authors in our genre and has already won two Nebulas and one Hugo Award, which is remarkable, considering he has only been writing professionally for not quite six years.

My own response to Zelazny’s works has been mixed. I enjoyed some of them very much (the Dilvish the Damned stories from Fantastic or last year’s novella “Damnation Alley” from Galaxy) and could not connect to others at all (the highly lauded “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”). So I opened Zelazny’s latest novel Lord of Light with trepidation, for what would I find within, the Zelazny who wrote the Dilvish the Damned stories or the one who wrote “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”?

The answer is “a little bit of both” and “neither”….

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 79 of Octothorpe, “You Get To Be A Little Cat” —

John Coxon wants new gloves, Alison Scott is foreshadowing, and Liz Batty scrolls past spiders. We discuss a plethora of awards – Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, BSFA Awards – while also chatting about hot dog finger gloves and Adrian “Spiders” Tchaikovsky. Listen here! 

(5) ONE OF OUR CAPTAINS IS MISSING. [Item by Dann.] Chris Gore of Film Threat magazine recently pointed out that the new Paramount graphic being used to promote all of Star Trek has omitted one of the key characters in Star Trek history; the original and one-and-only James Tiberius Kirk (ignore that inconvenient headstone).

The TrekNews Twitter feed was one of the first to note the omission.

William Shatner noted that he didn’t find it surprising.

Various users responded with reimagined graphics that place a greater emphasis on Captain Kirk.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

2001 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Our Beginning this Scroll isn’t the start of this series. That would be Revelation Space, published a year prior to Alastair Reynolds’ Chasm City, which came out on Gollancz twenty-two years ago. 

Reynolds uniquely wrote Chasm City as a stand-alone novel so you needn’t be familiar with any of the five Revelation Space Universe that precede it, including the two (and soon to be three) most fascinating Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies. (There’s a seventh novel, Inhibitor Phase, which came out several years back.)

Chasm City appeals to me because to it is the rare SF novel set within a larger universe that, as I said, is intended to allow the reader who hasn’t encountered this series to be introduced to it.

It won the British Science Fiction Association Award.

It’s got great characters, an awesome setting and multiple stories that weave into each other most satisfactorily. It is certainly one of the best SF novels that I’ve ever read. 

I’m sure I spotted one character here who shows up in the Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies series which I think was a very impressive piece of writing by him some years on.

And now its Beginning…

Dear Newcomer, 

Welcome to the Epsilon Eridani system. 

Despite all that has happened, we hope your stay here will be a pleasant one. For your information we have compiled this document to explain some of the key events in our recent history. It is intended that this information will ease your transition into a culture which may be markedly different from the one you were expecting to find when you embarked at your point of origin. It is important that you realise that others have come before you. Their experiences have helped us shape this document in a manner designed to minimise the shock of cultural adjustment. We have found that attempts to gloss over or understate the truth of what happened—of what continues to happen—are ultimately harmful; that the best approach—based on a statistical study of cases such as yours—is to present the facts in as open and honest manner as possible. 

We are fully aware that your initial response is likely disbelief, quickly followed by anger and then a state of protracted denial. 

It is important to grasp that these are normal reactions.

It is equally important to grasp—even at this early stage—that there will come a time when you will adjust to and accept the truth. It might be days from now; it might even be weeks or months, but in all but a minority of cases it will happen. You might even look back upon this time and wish that you could have willed yourself to make the transition to acceptance quicker than you did. You will know that it is only when that process is accomplished that anything resembling happiness becomes possible. 

Let us therefore begin the process of adjustment. 

Due to the fundamental lightspeed limit for communication within the sphere of colonised space, news from other solar systems is inevitably out of date; often by decades or more. Your perceptions of our system’s main world, Yellowstone, are almost certainly based on outdated information. 

It is certainly the case that for more than two centuries—until, in fact, the very recent past—Yellowstone was in thrall to what most contemporary observers chose to term the Belle Epoque. It was an unprecedented social and technological golden age; our ideological template seen by all to be an almost perfect system of governance.

Numerous successful ventures were launched from Yellowstone, including daughter colonies in other solar systems, as well as ambitious scientific expeditions to the edge of human space. Visionary social experiments were conducted within Yellowstone and its Glitter Band, including the controversial but pioneering work of Calvin Sylveste and his disciples. Great artists, philosophers and scientists flourished in Yellowstone’s atmosphere of hothouse innovation. Techniques of neural augmentation were pursued fearlessly. Other human cultures chose to treat the Conjoiners with suspicion, but we Demarchists—unafraid of the positive aspects of mind enhancement methods—established lines of rapport with the Conjoiners which enabled us to exploit their technologies to the full. Their starship drives allowed us to settle many more systems than cultures subscribing to inferior social models. 

In truth, it was a glorious time. It was also the likely state of affairs which you were expecting upon your arrival. 

This is unfortunately not the case. 

Seven years ago something happened to our system. The exact transmission vector remains unclear even now, but it is almost certain that the plague arrived aboard a ship, perhaps in dormant form and unknown to the crew who carried it. It might even have arrived years earlier. It seems unlikely now that the truth will ever be known; too much has been destroyed or forgotten. Vast swathes of our digitally stored planetary history were erased or corrupted by the plague. In many cases only human memory remains intact… and human memory is not without its fallibilities. 

The Melding Plague attacked our society at the core.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 16, 1883 — Sonia Greene. Pulp writer and amateur press publisher who underwrote several fanzines in the early twentieth century. She was a president of the United Amateur Press Association. And she was married to H.P. Lovecraft, though often living apart, until eventually they agreed to divorce. (Died 1972.)
  • Born March 16, 1900 — Cyril Hume. He was an amazingly prolific screenplay writer with twenty-nine credits from 1924 to 1966 including The Wife of the Centaur (a lost film which has but has but a few scraps left), Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan the Ape Man, The Invisible Boy and Forbidden Planet. (Died 1966.)
  • Born March 16, 1929 — Ehren M. Ehly. This was the alias of Egyptian-American author Moreen Le Fleming Ehly. Her first novel, Obelisk, was followed shortly by Totem. Her primary influence was H. Rider Haggard, telling an interviewer that Haggard’s novel She impressed her at an early age. If you like horror written in a decided pulp style, I think you’ll appreciate. (Died 2012.)
  • Born March 16, 1929 — A. K. Ramanujan. I’m going to recommend his Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages as essential reading if you’re interested in the rich tradition of the Indian subcontinent. Two of his stories show up in genre anthologies, “The Magician and His Disciple” in Jack Zipes’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales and “Sukhu and Dukhu“ in Heidi Stemple and Jane Yolen’s Mirror, Mirror. (Died 1993.)
  • Born March 16, 1951 — P. C. Hodgell, 72. Her best known work is the God Stalker Chronicles series with Deathless Gods being the current novel. She dabbled in the Holmesian metaverse with “A Ballad of the White Plague”, first published in The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes as edited by Marvin Kaye. All of the God Stalker Chronicles series are available from the usual suspects
  • Born March 16, 1952 — Alice Hoffman, 71 . Best known for Practical Magic which was made into a rather good film. I’d also recommend The Story Sisters, a Gateway story, The Ice Queen, an intense riff off of that myth, and Aquamarine, a fascinating retelling of the mermaid legend. The Rules of Magic was nominated for Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature Award. 
  • Born March 16, 1966 — David Liss, 57. Writer of Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover, novelization of Marvel’s Spider-Man whichis a 2018 action-adventure game. Comics writer, Black Panther: The Man Without Fear and Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives series. Not at all genre but his trilogy of novels starting with A Conspiracy of Paper and featuring Benjamin Weaver, a retired bare-knuckle boxer, now a thief-taker, a cross between a PI and bounty hunter, are highly recommended by me. 

(8) SPIDER-REX. Marvel brings us “The All-New Spider-Killer Curses the Spider-Verse in Josemaria Casanovas’ ‘Edge of Spider-Verse’ #1 Variant Cover”.

On May 3, the hit comic book series EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE returns for another wild trip through the Spider-Verse, complete with revolutionary new Spider-heroes and further adventures for the series’ biggest breakout stars, all brought to you from an all-star lineup of talent!

 …EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #1 will also feature the roaring return of SPIDER-REX and the daring debut of VENOMSAURUS in a story by writer Karla Pacheco and Pere Pérez. 

(9) SCIENTIST FICTION. Several sff books are part of Martin MacInnes’ list of “Top 10 visionary books about scientists: searching for an answer” in the Guardian.

Science, as much as art, is an act of imagination, the pursuit of something new. While novels about scientists often play with this likeness, there are also scientists who write with the ambition and empathy of novelists. Scientists in literature appear in all sorts of guises: as megalomaniacs, heroes, obsessives. It is this last figure – the obsessive – the character who will not stop – that interests me most….

First on the list is Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihlation.

The four women who enter Area X are named only by their profession: biologist; anthropologist; psychologist; surveyor. It is the biologist who is closest to VanderMeer’s heart, clear in the gorgeous accounts of the living world they walk through and in the novel’s concern with ecstatic dissolution and eroded borders, an awful commonality linking all things. The novel is suffused in beauty and grief, as the biologist goes on, determined to find out what it all means.

(10) WATNEYCRETE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.]They tried urine. They tried blood. But it turned out that potato starch worked better.

The University of Manchester has come up with a extraterrestrial concrete mix that uses Mars (or Moon) dust, potato starch, and a pinch of salt (magnesium chloride). Plus, the “StarCrete” is said to have at least twice the compressive strength of standard concrete. “Engineers Built a New Kind of Concrete 2x Stronger Than the Real Thing” at Popular Mechanics.

The University of Manchester’s new “StarCrete” is twice as strong as traditional concrete, making it a potential solution as a building material for Mars. Add in some extraterrestrial dust and potato starch, and you have a potentially revolutionary new material.

In an article published in the journal Open Engineering, the research team showed that potato starch can act as a binder when mixed with simulated Mars dust to produce a concrete-like material reaching a compressive strength of 72 megapascals (MPa), over twice as strong as the 32 MPa seen in ordinary concrete. Of course, mix in moon dust instead and you can get StarCrete to 91 MPa.

This strength makes it a possible solution, according to the researchers, for a building solution on Mars as astronauts mix Martian soil with potato starch—and a pinch of salt, no joke—to give extra-terrestrial-suited concrete.

Earlier recipes from the team didn’t use potato starch, instead offering blood and urine as a binding agent to reach 40 MPa. Not every astronaut would be excited about continually draining their blood to build in space, though….

(11) DRESSED FOR SUCCESS. “Spacesuit for return to the Moon unveiled” at BBC News.

A new generation of spacesuit for humanity’s return trip to the Moon has been unveiled by Nasa.

The novel design comes with specialist features to support astronauts as they conduct scientific experiments on the lunar surface.

The prototype is said to be a better fit for female space travellers.

Nasa hopes to have the updated suit ready for the Artemis III mission to the Moon in 2025….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Steven French, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cora Buhlert, Dann, John Coxon, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 2/9/23 Fifty Ways To Scroll Your Pixels

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(1) WEBSITE SECURITY. “Safety Dispatch: How to Secure Your Author Website” from the SFWA Safety Committee. Sections on choosing a hosting service, domain registration, and the like, are followed with some wisdom about choosing content.  

Carefully Choose What to Share

Your author bio doesn’t have to list family members, your hometown, or any other identity markers you aren’t comfortable sharing. You’re not obligated to mention your birthday, your employer, or your involvement with other organizations, through which somebody might find details about your identity and location that you don’t wish to share. Some authors are transparent about all of these things, and some aren’t. There isn’t a single right answer to sharing information about your life online. But if you think about the boundaries you would like to set in advance, you’ll find it easier to avoid posting information that you can’t take back.

Photographs can also be sources of more information than you intend. Pay attention to what’s in the background of any photos you post on your website or on social media, such as exterior shots of your home or distinctive landmarks through your windows. Turn off geolocation metadata when you take photos or make sure you know how to remove it before posting images online. 

(2) TRADPUB PAY HIKES. Two publishers recently raised their starting salaries, perhaps hoping to forestall the labor action current facing HarperCollins – Publishers Weekly reports “HBG Raises Starting Salaries to $47,500” and “Macmillan Raises Starting Salaries to $47,500”. It’s hard not to notice the figures are identical – collusion, anyone?

(3) SOONERCON. Oklahoma pop-culture event Soonercon announced a new graphic design and branding yesterday, along with a new mascot.

We are excited today to reveal an all new look and feel for Soonercon! We’ve been working closely these past few months with our Diamond Sponsor Robot House to rebrand Soonercon for the modern era. We started this journey with the Soonercon story and two words came forward: community and hope. Armed with that (and whole heck of a lot more words about our special convention), Robot House designed these new logos for us, a friendly and forward color scheme, and fonts to take us into the future.

Even more exciting, say hello to Ripley Raccoon, Soonercon’s new mascot! Ripley is curious, always learning, loves art and reading, and has a whole lot of hobbies – just like our members.

In the Soonercon Cosplay Facebook group the change received a mixed greeting. Some liked it. Some criticized it for resembling sites aimed at kids, others for lacking any sci-fi identity.

(4) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to collaborate over breakfast with Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni in Episode 191 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Mary SanGiovanni and Brian Keene

Anyone who’s listened to more than a few episodes of Eating the Fantastic already knows — collaboration confuses me. Tell me two writers have managed to work together on the same project without blood on the floor and a lifelong feud and I’m baffled. So when I learned previous guests of the show Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni had collaborated on the short story collection Things Left Behind, released last year by Thunderstorm Books, I knew we’d have to chat about it.

We met for breakfast at Martinsburg, West Virginia’s Blue White Grill, which has been serving diner food since the ’50s.

Brian’s published more than 40 novels, including the best-selling The Rising, and he’s the winner of the 2014 World Horror Grand Master Award, while Mary is the author of The Hollower trilogy, the first volume of which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. There’s a whole lot more to know about each of them, as you’ll learn if you listen to those two earlier episodes.

We discussed how being intimidated by each other helps their collaborative process, their different tolerances for writing gore (and how that’s changed over time), the romantic reason (up until this episode known to only one of them) their collaborative short story collection came about, which of them once wrote 45,000 words in a day, how they came to agree on a joint dedication, who gives each story its final polish (and who get the final say on sending it to market), how Brian attempted to bleed all over Mary’s upcoming Alien novel, the way they approach their own deaths, their honeymoon book tour hitting every state but Alaska and Hawaii, their upcoming collaborative novel, and much more.

(5) MIDDLE-EARTH LEGO SET. “The 6,167-Piece Rivendell Is the One Lego Lord of the Rings Set to Rule Them All” – Gizmodo takes readers on a tour. (See even more on the Lego website.)

…Although Lego’s Rivendell even includes the place where Aragon and Boromir first meet next to the shrine featuring the shards of Narsil, it appears as if the minifigure version of Boromir has yet to cut his finger on the still-sharp sword. But that’s nothing a red Sharpie can’t fix.

As peaceful as Rivendell appears, the elves are still well regarded for their weapons, and not only does this set come with a well-stocked armory, but also a glowing forge for creating Lhangs and other stabby tools for making short work of orcs and goblins.

There’s nothing worse than working your way through a textbook-sized Lego instruction manual only to come across a step that has to be repeated countless times that dramatically slows down your build progress. That is undoubtedly the case with the tiled roof atop Rivendell—each 1×1 Lego tile will have to be attached and aligned individually—but the results look like they’re definitely worth the effort.

Although Lego did release a mountain (of doom) of images of its new LOTR Rivendell set, there still appear to be lots of details not highlighted yet. So if you’re still on the fence over whether you want to make room to add this sizeable set to your collection, you can take a quick tour of its entire layout using this 360-degree animation….

(6) SOMETIMES THEY’RE RIGHT. [Item by David Goldfarb.] On last night’s episode of Jeopardy! in the Double Jeopardy round, “That’s Dedication”, $1200:

Douglas Adams dedicated this title guy’s “Holistic Detective Agency”,

“To my mother, who liked the bit about the horse”

Returning champion Matthew Marcus correctly responded, “Who is Dirk Gently?”

“Comedy Time”, $800:

1960s: General Buck Turgidson wants to explore the nuclear option

Dan Wohl responded, “What is Doctor Strangelove?”

(7) TCHAIKOVSKY Q&A. Moid Moidelhoff conducts “An Interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children Of Memory and Beyond” at Media Death Cult.

(8) OMNIVOROUS READER. A New York Times interview: “Jojo Moyes’s Grandmother Knew a Bookworm When She Saw One”.

Do you distinguish between “commercial” and “literary” fiction? Where’s that line, for you?

Not in terms of my appetite for reading — I read everything from thrillers to literary fiction to comic books. And I’m enjoying the fact that the line appears to have become increasingly blurred between them. If someone I trust tells me something’s good, I’ll give it a go.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I was an only child and a voracious reader. My grandmother called me a bookworm, and it wasn’t a compliment, as my weekly visits to her were usually spent with my nose buried between the pages. The books that have stayed with me are “The Black Stallion,” by Walter Farley, and “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and, as a teenager, the books of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was also a compulsive reader of horror — I could not read horror now if you paid me.

(9) LEE MODER OBITUARY. Comics artist Lee Moder died around January 15 says Deadline.

Comic book artist Lee Moder, who co-created the Courtney Whitmore version of Stargirl with Geoff Johns in 1999, has passed away, according to ComicBook.com and statements from his peers. The web site cited a family friend, who indicated that Moder died quietly at home sometime on or before January 15th. No cause of his death was given. Moder was 53.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1982 — Paul Weimer offers us his thoughts on Robert Heinlein’s Friday. 

Heinlein’s Friday is, in my mind, unquestionably the strongest of the late Heinleins. It starts with a strong and indelible paragraph that introduces and defines the character. The world of the novel, a sequel to the story “Gulf” is also a refutation of that story’s thesis, and shows the evolved thinking Heinlein had about that earlier story’s assumptions. The balkanized America of the novel is a chaotic and interesting place, from its vividly imagined Democracy run amok California to the mighty and autocratic Chicago Imperium. 

Its ideas on corporations, artificial personhood, and more are thought provoking. Friday is far and away the most successful of the late Heinlein novels in what it tries to do, and remains the most readable by a large margin. 

And now the Beginning of that novel… 

As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule he was right on my heels. He followed me through the door leading to Customs, Health, and Immigration. As the door contracted behind him I killed him.

I have never liked riding the Beanstalk. My distaste was full-blown even before the disaster to the Quito Skyhook. A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic. But the only other way to reach Ell-Five takes too long and costs too much; my orders and expense account did not cover it.

So I had been edgy even before I left the shuttle from Ell-Five at Stationary Station to board the Beanstalk capsule…but, damn it, being edgy isn’t reason to kill a man. I had intended only to put him out for a few hours.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 9, 1863 — Anthony Hope. He is remembered predominantly for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau. Well so says online sources but I never heard of the latter novel. Any of you heard of it? The Prisoner of Zenda was filmed in 1936 with the legendary Ronald Coleman in the lead and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rupert. (Died 1933.)
  • Born February 9, 1877 — George Allan England. His short story, “The Thing from—’Outside’”, which had originally appeared in Gernsback’s Science and Invention, was reprinted in the first issue of the first SF magazine, Amazing Stories, in April 1926. Unfortunately, his later Darkness and Dawn trilogy is badly marred by overt racism as later critics note. (Died 1936.)
  • Born February 9, 1928 — Frank Frazetta. Artist whose illustrations showed up damn near everywhere from LP covers to book covers and posters. Among the covers were Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Conan the Adventurer (L. Sprague de Camp stories in that setting) and Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. He did over-muscled barbarians very well! In the early 1980s, Frazetta worked with Bakshi on the feature Fire and Ice. He provided the poster for it as he did for Mad Monster Party and The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, two other genre films. He was inducted into both Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame. (Died 2010.)
  • Born February 9, 1935 — R. L. Fanthorpe, 88. He was a pulp writer for UK publisher Badger Books during the 1950s and 1960s during which he wrote under some sixty pen names. I think he wrote several hundred genre novels during that time but no two sources agree on just how many he wrote. Interestingly nothing is available by him digitally currently though his hard copy offerings would fill a wing of a small rural library. He’d be perfect for the usual suspects I’d say.
  • Born February 9, 1946 — Clive Walter Swift. His first genre appearance was as Snug in that version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968). Several years thereafter he was Dr. Black in “A Warning to the Curious” (based on a ghost story by British writer M. R. James).Then he’s Ector, whoever that character is, in Excalibur. He shows up next in the Sixth Doctor story, “The Revelation of a The Daleks” as Professor Jobel. (Died 2019.)
  • Born February 9, 1951 — Justin Gustainis, 72. Author of two series so far, one being the Occult Crimes Unit Investigations series which he’s written three superb novels in so far, and the other being the Quincey Morris Supernatural Investigations series which has seven novels and which I’ve not read yet. Who’s read the latter series? 
  • Born February 9, 1953 — Ciaran Hinds, 70. I can’t picture him but he’s listed as being King Lot in Excalibur, that being his credited his genre role. He next shows up in Mary Reilly, a riff off the Hyde theme, as Sir Danvers Care. I’ve next got him in Jason and the Argonauts as King Aeson followed by being in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life as Jonathan Reiss. (Yes I like those films.) before being replaced in the next film, he played Aberforth Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Two final roles worth noting. he played The Devil in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and Steppenwolf In Justice League.
  • Born February 9, 1956 — Timothy Truman, 67. Writer and artist best known in my opinion for his work on Grimjack with John Ostrander, along with Scout, and the reinvention of Jonah Hex with Joe R. Lansdale. His work with Ostrander is simply stellar and is collected in Grimjack Omnibus, Volumes 1 and 2.  For the Hex work, I’d say get Jonah Hex: Shadows West which collects their work together. He did do a lot of other work and I’m sure you’ll point out what I’ve overlooked.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Heart of the City is about a family’s plans to go to a con. 
  • Bizarro’s Star Wars-themed joke today proves again why this comic bears the name it has.  

(13) EKPEKI Q&A. The Horror Writers Association Blog continues their Black History Month theme with “Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki”.

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

It’s familiarity. The way that it approached all these very real issues we experienced and lived everyday in ways that were innocent and enticing enough to consume when we shied away from the stark reality of it.

Do you make a conscious effort to include African diaspora characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?

Yes. It’s a conscious, deliberate decolonization process for me. A reclamation of my identity and these pieces of myself, culture, identity that were eroded with slavery and colonialism….

(14) LET THE WOOKIEE WIN. “Chewbacca: Peter Mayhew’s Wife Slams Auction for Star Wars Sale” reports Variety. Things the Mayhews abandoned in an attic when they moved were scheduled to go under the hammer.

Angie Mayhew, the wife of the late “Star Wars” actor Peter Mayhew, is speaking out against an upcoming auction in which Peter’s “Star Wars” memorabilia will be sold. Ryedale Auctioneers is selling “Star Wars” scripts, call-sheets and more that were discovered in Peter Mayhew’s attic after his death. Peter starred as Chewbacca in George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” trilogy. Angie took to Twitter to say the auction “really breaks [her] heart.”

“When we moved out of this house, Peter’s movement challenges made it impossible for him to get into the attic to get the rest of these memories,” Angie wrote. “It really breaks my heart to see our belongings auctioned off like this by [auction house founder] Angus Ashworth and Ryedale Auctioneers.”

“It was one of Peter’s and my biggest regrets that we had to leave these items behind,” Angie added. “His knees and joints had gotten to be so painful that he was no longer able to go into the attic to get them.”

Several hours after posting, Angie updated fans using the Peter Mayhew Foundation account and said that she had a Zoom meeting with the auction house.

“I communicated our desire that Peter’s items be returned to the Mayhew family,” Angie wrote. “Will keep everyone posted as progress is made – thank you for the continued support!”…

(15) INFLATION RATE. Not that you ever doubted it: “Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Communications Signals, U.S. Says” in the New York Times.

The Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean was capable of collecting communications signals and was part of a fleet of surveillance balloons directed by the Chinese military that had flown over more than 40 countries across five continents, the State Department said Thursday.

The United States used high resolution imagery from U-2 flybys to determine the balloon’s capabilities, the department said in a written announcement, adding that the balloon’s equipment “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons.”

The agency said the balloon had multiple antennas in an array that was “likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.” Solar panels on the machine were large enough to produce power to operate “multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the department said.

The agency also said the U.S. government was “confident” that the company that made the balloon had direct commercial ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, citing an official procurement portal for the army. The department did not name the company….

(16) SQUINTING IN SPACE. Nature reports the first space-based discovery of an exoplanet using microlensing. Primary research paper here.

K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb is the first bound micro-lensing exoplanet discovered from space-based data. 

The system lies at a distance of 5.2 ± 0.2 kpc (17,000 light years if my maths is right?) from Earth towards the Galactic bulge, more than twice the distance of the previous most distant planet found by Kepler. The sky-projected separation of the planet from its host is found to be 4.2 ± 0.3 au (1 au being the distance between the Earth and the Sun).

According to current planet formation models, this system is very close to the host mass threshold below which Jupiters are not expected to form…

(17) 00P$. “Google AI chatbot Bard sends shares plummeting after it gives wrong answer” reports the Guardian. “Chatbot Bard incorrectly said James Webb Space Telescope was first to take pictures of planet outside Earth’s solar system.”

Google’s response to ChatGPT has got off to an embarrassing start after its new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot gave a wrong answer in a promotional video, as investors wiped more than $100bn (£82bn) off the value of the search engine’s parent company, Alphabet.

The sell-off on Wednesday came amid investor fears that Microsoft, which is deploying an ChatGPT-powered version of its Bing search engine, will damage Google’s business. Alphabet stock slid by 9% during regular trading in the US but was flat after hours.

Experts pointed out that promotional material for Bard, Google’s competitor to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, contained an error in the response by the chatbot to: “What new discoveries from the James Webb space telescope (JWST) can I tell my nine-year old about?”…

(18) APPARENT VIOLATION OF THE ROCHE LIMIT. Of course you know what that is. Errr…. “Astronomers Discover Unexpected Ring around Distant Dwarf Planet” at Sky & Telescope.

The distant dwarf planet 500000 Quaoar appears to have a ring that spans far beyond where it ought to be stable. “That is not where it was supposed to be,” says Bruno Morgado (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), lead author of a team of 59 astronomers who report the discovery in Nature. 

French astronomer Edouard Roche defined the concept of the Roche limit in 1848, calculating where a planet’s tidal forces would exceed the gravitational force holding a moon together. Inside that region, the stronger gravitational force of the planet overpowers the moon’s gravity and that tidal pull eventually tears the moon apart. Only outside that limit can small objects, dust, and debris coalesce under their own gravity to form a moon. With the ring’s discovery, the Roche limit may need a rethink….

How much trouble can they get into for violating the Roche Limit? John A Arkansawyer guesses, “They might get thrown out of the Astronomical Union?”

(19) DID THE EARTH MOVE FOR YOU? Matt O’Dowd of PBS Space Time displays multiple different ways of looking at the same question in “How Earth REALLY Moves Through the Galaxy”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cliff, David Goldfarb, Steven French, Scott Edelman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John A Arkansawyer, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day by Daniel Dern.]

2023 Splatterpunk Award Nominees

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Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene have announced the nominees for the 2023 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement for works published in 2022 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.

They have also named the recipient of the sixth annual J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award (honoring individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field).

The nominees are as follows:

BEST NOVEL*

  • Playground by Aron Beauregard (Independently Published)
  • The Television by Edward Lee (Madness Heart Press)
  • Faces of Beth by Carver Pike (Independently Published)
  • Last of the Ravagers by Bryan Smith (Thunderstorm Books / Death’s Head Press)
  • Mastodon by Steve Stred (Black Void Publishing)
  • Ex-Boogeyman (Slasher vs The Remake) by Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream Books / Thunderstorm Books)

BEST NOVELLA

  • Charcoal by Garrett Cook (Clash Books)
  • Grandpappy by Patrick C. Harrison III (Independently Published)
  • Mr. Tilling’s Basement by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)
  • #thighgap by Chandler Morrison (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • Plastic Monsters by Daniel J. Volpe (Independently Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Just Another Bloodbath at Camp Woe-Be-Gone” by R.J. Benetti (Independently Published)
  • “Of The Worm” by Ryan Harding (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)
  • “My Chopping List” by Stephen Kozeniewski (from Counting Bodies Like Sheep, The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • “Gutted” by Bracken MacLeod (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)
  • “Jinx” by Bridgett Nelson (from A Bouquet of Viscera)

BEST COLLECTION

  • Always Listen To Her Hurt: Collected Works by Kenzie Jennings (Blistered Siren Press)
  • Mr. Tilling’s Basement and Other Stories by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)
  • Horrorsmut by Christine Morgan (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • A Bouquet of Viscera by Bridgett Nelson (Independently Published)
  • Pornography For the End of the World by Brendan Vidito (Weirdpunk Books)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

  • Human Monsters edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Sawyers (Dark Matter Ink)
  • Camp Slasher Lake, Volume 1 edited by D.W. Hitz and Candace Nola (Fedowar Press)
  • Counting Bodies Like Sheep edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • Call Me Hoop edited by SC Mendes & Lucy Leitner, created by Drew Stepek (Blood Bound Books)
  • Czech Extreme edited by Lisa Lee Tone (Madness Heart Press)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD**

  • Monica J. O’Rourke

The final ballot is composed of top recommendations from readers, critics, and the general public and then voted on by a panel of six judges. The sixth annual Splatterpunk Awards will take place at KillerCon in Austin, Texas on August 12.

The recommendation process for next year’s ballot is now open to readers, critics, and the general public. Eligible works must be first published in 2023, and must meet the definitions of either Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror. Email recommendations to [email protected]. The recommendation window will close at 11:50 p.m. Eastern on December 31, 2023. There Will Be No Extensions.

* Tie category

** The previous J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, John Skipp, and Clive Barker.

[Based on a press release.]

Monteleone Aftermath: Authors Seek Perspective on His Damaging Statements

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Brian Keene and Barney Dannelke have added two notable responses to the widespread discussion about the ouster of Thomas Monteleone from the Horror Writers Association.

In a YouTube video aired yesterday, Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, and Christopher Golden, who each have known Monteleone a long time, used their exceptional gifts to analyze and share the deep emotional hurt they’re feeling over the things he said on Facebook and in a recent podcast. (An auto-generated transcript is available at the link,)

Barney Dannelke has also provided insights about the facts and issues in a Facebook post. Here are some excerpts.

…Little did I know that within 48 hours of my mentioning Thomas F. Monteleone in a Breakfast With Barney that Tom would walk out on to the public square, dowse himself with the kerosene of his own bullshit and gleefully and cheerfully set himself on fire….

…In that capacity he WAS a member of the Horror Writers of America (H.W.A.) and in that capacity he can/could nominate people for the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award – and so he nominated Stuart David Schiff. Except he did it in a manner (or perhaps he only proposed to do it, check my work here) that could best be described as a total dick move. Essentially, he drew attention to the fact that Schiff is an old white male, proposing that to dare to do such a thing in this day and age was somehow a revolutionary act.

Turned out, it was an act of pure “fuck around and find out.” He picked up the heavy stick. He walked straight up to the hornet nest that he had been watching for years. Then he hit the nest with the stick as hard as he could (not very) and then he pretended to be shocked that hornets waiting for an idiot with a stick, went and did what hornets were designed to do. Namely, sting the shit out of him.

Then (!) he went on a podcast linked to YouTube and complained in the most racist and misoginystic ways he could think of for OVER TWO HOURS about how stupid hornets were and how they didn’t properly appreciate him and how confusing sexual designations are for hornets these days and how dumb fat black hornets are and how lucky he was that he made enough money that his kids didn’t have to go to school with hornets and how he has gallons of hornet cream and being old and rich and Italian (note the Fedora) he doesn’t feel shit anyways.

I listened to the entire podcast. I have read the entire 38 page transcript. I am sure you will let me know if I am exaggerating any of this.

Running in background for the last 48 hours there have been dozens of comment threads about this. The most damning addition was a Cemetery Dance op-ed piece from Tom where he explains to the rest of us poor suckers that the ONLY reason that Samuel R. Delany had a career in SF was because of his skin color and that the work had no merit whatsoever….

(There is a copy of that issue of Cemetery Dance #21 [1994-Summer] downloadable from the Internet Archive.)

Dannelke does not object to Monteleone being removed from HWA, however, there are things he would have preferred to be said more explicitly, or not altogether omitted from HWA’s announcement. See the rest of his discussion at Facebook.

Samples of Social Media Reaction to Monteleone Before and After HWA Expelled Him

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Author and editor Thomas F. Monteleone was expelled from the Horror Writers Association on January 31 for violating the organization’s antiharassment policies.

Here are a few examples of what appeared in social media immediately prior to that decision, and after it was announced.

BEFORE

Alan Baxter

“An open letter to the HWA regarding Thomas F. Monteleone”

… It is particularly saddening to see someone who was considered a legend in the field reveal themselves to be as racist, transphobic, and bigoted as Monteleone has. But more important than lamenting the self-immolation of one person is the direct harm those comments and actions cause to so many others.

Allowing Monteleone to remain in the organisation and to attend HWA events will be putting a large number of people directly in harm’s way. It will also show the HWA is complicit rather than active in the face of hate speech….

Todd Keisling

“An open letter to the HWA regarding author Thomas F. Monteleone”

I’m writing to add my voice to the chorus of members demanding Tom Monteleone be expelled from the organization and barred from attending all HWA events going forward. His actions on social media, and most recently his statements on the disgusting “Facebook Has AIDS” podcast, have revealed his true character to all.

Specifically, his racist, transphobic, and bigoted comments aimed at fellow HWA members, as well as whole classes of people, fly in the face of what the HWA stands for. I believe that maintaining ties with Mr. Monteleone in the organization and allowing him entry to future HWA-sanctioned events such as StokerCon will not only put fellow members in harm’s way but also invite controversy overall.

Doug Murano

https://twitter.com/muranofiction/status/1620201809842409474

Brian Keene

Brian Keene announced that the Borderlands Boot Camp, which Monteleone helped found, will be rebranded so that it does not share a name with his anthology series.

Scares That Care adamantly condemns the recent comments made on Facebook and a podcast by one of the founders of Borderlands Boot Camp. Effective immediately, Borderlands Boot Camp (which became part of the Scares That Care family of events in 2022) will be rebranded as the Scares That Care Writers Workshop.

We are also announcing that effective immediately, two (2) annual scholarships for marginalized writers (writers of color, writers from the LGBTQIA+ community, writers with disabilities, writers suffering from economic hardships, etc.) will be available yearly. While interested parties will be responsible for their travel and lodging, Scares That Care will waive the $750 tuition fee for these two individuals. Interested parties can contact board members Brian Keene ([email protected]) or Sonora Taylor ([email protected]) to inquire. Deadline for this year’s applicants is Friday, February 17th.

Respectfully,

The Scares That Care Board of Directors — Joe Ripple, Alfred Guy, Brian Keene, Jason Cherry, Sonora Taylor, Angel Hollman, Andrew Ely, and Donna Thew — and workshop organizer Mary SanGiovanni.

CAMP NECON

The Camp Necon statement does not name anyone, but it can be inferred from the timing what it’s about: “An Important Statement From Camp Necon”.

In light of recent abhorrent public statements and behaviors (on social media and via other media), we, the Camp Necon Board, feel obligated to take this opportunity to publicly state that we stand against bigotry and prejudice and are dedicated to our efforts to make Camp Necon a welcoming and safe experience for ALL attendees. We cannot be idle while friends and colleagues are deliberately maligned and their well-earned achievements mocked. It cannot stand, and we will not allow it at any space Camp Necon inhabits (be that online or in person). 

The legendary Charles L. Grant, often called “The Godfather of Camp Necon,” consistently championed new voices in horror and always insisted that, “By growing the pie, we all eat more.” It is in Charlie’s spirit and tradition that we’d like to state that by championing not just new, but diverse voices within the genre we believe we all eat BETTER. In that regard, we are moving forward with new initiatives to ensure ours is a place where all voices feel welcome and heard, in addition to taking steps to address present and future barriers to safety and inclusivity. We will continue to work to ensure ours is the kind of event that brings people together in an atmosphere of acceptance and collegiality. We hope to continue to have your support.

We understand that statements such as this may have the effect of “self-selecting” membership in our Campers’ roll. We are fine with that. If you do not feel fully aligned with what Camp Necon has become or the direction we continue to head, please follow your conscience. We have made our choice and we stand by both it and our community…. 

Tim Waggoner on Facebook.

Tom Monteleone encouraged me early in my writing career and gave me so much good advice. I thanked him in my acceptance speech when I won my first Bram Stoker Award. He published my collection A LITTLE AQUA BOOK OF MARINE TALES. He accepted two of my stories for BORDERLANDS anthologies. I asked him to write the introduction to WRITING IN THE DARK. He’s been a big supporter of me and my writing for many years. I have so many of his books on my shelves, and reading his short story “Wendigo’s Child” when I was a child myself was a formative experience for me. I used his IDIOT’S GUIDE TO WRITING A NOVEL as a textbook in my novel writing classes.

I admired him so much.

I’m sickened by the overt bigotry Tom has displayed over the last few days.

It doesn’t matter how good he’s been to me when he’s treated others so horribly. Once Tom was a role model for me in terms of artistry and professionalism. Now he’ll be a role model for what I hope never to become as a writer and member of the horror community as I grow older. I hope my mind never becomes so closed. I hope I never start to lash out from intolerance. I hope I never show such disrespect to people who I should view as colleagues. I hope I continue to build people up instead of tearing them down.

You taught me so many things over the years, Padrone. I suppose I should thank you for this final lesson. I just wish it was one I never had to learn.

AFTER

Adam Troy-Castro on Facebook:

… I said something early in this mess that may now be risky to say now.

I remember the Tom Monteleone I once knew, who I laughed with at I-Con in Long Island and at other places, with considerable fondness. I remember the Tom Monteleone who wrote (mostly) great columns about his experiences, for CEMETERY DANCE. I remember loving some of his fiction, including one novel he churned out for a subpar house that contained one of the worst sentence constructions I have ever read, and another I liked very much that existed in the “evil carnival” sub-subgenre. I harbor considerable affection for that Tom Monteleone of thirty-forty years ago, that none of this banishes. To me, the contrast with current events put that Tom Monteleone in a little memory vault. I do not apologize for feeling that way.

Alas, the Tom Monteleone of today, who ate that Tom Monteleone, was already present way back when, though his manifestations, bad as they could be, were intermittent.

I am mourning, at most, a minor but treasured acquaintance. But I still feel the loss.

That is the end of the risky part.

Understand that the Tom Monteleone I feel sorry for, today, is that one from thirty years ago. I think the one from today invited this fate, however seriously he now takes it, and I am pretty damn certain that there is no coming back from this. I am unsure whether he was still producing work, but he was certainly still an influential figure, an elder statesman, and an important editor, who in a few days of frenetic resentment set fire to his legacy. This is a tragedy, but in the Greek sense, where people suffer the fates their character calls for. This is the natural development of groundwork he laid.

What will happen to Tom Monteleone is that he will not shut up about this, and will continue to court the only audience that still cares about him, the people who share his resentments. He will become more and more fringe, a Theodore Beale of horror, a Kevin Sorbo of horror. I promise you. He will humiliate himself further and he will do it willingly…

Chuck Wendig

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1620580945224167424

David Niall Wilson – Twitter thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/CrossroadPress/status/1620597886345170944

Pixel Scroll 1/29/23 Have Spindizzy, Will Travel

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(1) LOST HISTORY, LOST FUTURE. None of the participants in the recent Facebook kerfuffle are mentioned by name, however, have no doubt that is what’s on Brian Keene’s mind in his latest newsletter: “Letters From the Labyrinth 318”.

…I don’t like what social media is doing to us, as a community. I don’t like watching authors and editors in their seventies who once contributed so many important things to our industry now destroying their legacies because their valid fears of being forgotten by the genre’s historical memory have led to misplaced anger due to generational views and the toxic stew of false logic they got from sketchy Facebook posts and talk radio. I don’t like watching writers in their thirties who have inherited this industry dispensing mob justice at the click of a button without pausing to think how it might hurt others who are listening. Speaking truth to power is something that should always be done. But that truth gets muted when everyone is speaking at once, and it’s hard to hear or discern wisdom in the midst of collective braying. I don’t like promising writers in their teens and early twenties, brimming with talent, that the sky is still the limit and yes, if they keep writing and keep submitting, they, too, can have this career… because I no longer believe that is true. They are entering the field at a time when, thanks to social media and technology, every single person in the world is a published writer, and not only do they have to compete with the entire population, they’ll now have to compete with A.I. as well.

So many people seem to have lost their empathy. So many people seem unable to pause, or just walk away. Everyone has to get that last post or Tweet or shot in, and for someone sitting here in the middle of it all, it’s just so very exhausting….

(2) COMICS BC. [Item by Soon Lee.] Colleen Doran who adapted the lovely Neil Gaiman short story “Chivalry” to comics has written a wonderful article about the process of turning the prose story into a graphic novel. Doran shares shoutouts in the graphic novel to the predecessors of modern Western comics. “Sequential art predates Action Comics #1.” The Bayeux Tapestry being an example of this. “Neil Gaiman’s CHIVALRY: From Illuminated Manuscripts to Comics”.

… Action Comics popularized sequential art book storytelling that had already appeared in other forms in fits and starts throughout history. Comic books didn’t take off as a popular medium for several reasons, not least of which was the necessary printing process hadn’t been invented yet and it’s hard to popularize – and commercialize – something most people can never see. 

You find sequential art in cave paintings and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I’ve read that comics (manga) were invented by the Japanese in 12th century scrolls….

(3) MILLIONS OF VOICES SUDDENLY CRIED OUT. “World of Warcraft to go offline in China, leaving millions of gamers bereft” reports the Guardian.

Millions of Chinese players of the roleplaying epic World of Warcraft (WoW) will bid a sad farewell to the land of Azeroth, with the game set to go offline after a dispute between the US developer Blizzard and its local partner NetEase.

Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, WoW is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in a fantasy medieval world. It is known for being immersive and addictive, and players can rack up hundreds of hours of game time.

Blizzard’s games have been available in China since 2008 through collaboration with NetEase. Under local law, foreign developers are required to partner with Chinese firms to enter the market.

But after 14 years and millions of players in China, the two firms announced in November that talks over renewing their operating contract had failed to lead to an agreement. As a result, WoW’s Chinese servers will go offline at midnight local time on Tuesday.

Other popular titles by the Californian developer – one of the world’s biggest – will experience the same fate, including Overwatch, Diablo III and Hearthstone.

“It’s the end,” wrote one Weibo user, accompanied by crying emojis.

“It was not just a game. It was also the memories of a whole generation” of young Chinese, another wrote.

“The two companies have taken players hostage,” said Wu, a 30-year-old doctoral student and a longtime fan….

(4) WANTS TO CUT THE FLOW OF $$$ TO ROWLING. InThem’s view “Hogwarts Legacy Continues to Make Enemies in the Gaming World”.

With two weeks still to go before the release of Hogwarts Legacy, the controversial video game is getting even more derision in gamer circles, both for making J.K. Rowling richer, and for looking like crap in the process.

On January 22, moderators on the gaming forum ResetEra announced that going forward, no discussion of Hogwarts Legacy would be permitted on the site. The forum previously barred “promotional” discussion of the game in 2021, but mods explained that they decided to implement a blanket ban after assessing the full situation.

“After continued internal discussion, we began to start outlining the issues put forth by Rowling and the game in question and each time, and as we discussed it all, we kept coming back to the simple fact that Rowling is not only a bigot but is actively pushing, in her position as a wealthy and famous individual, for legislation that will hurt trans people,” wrote site moderator B-Dubs in the announcement post. “Therefore, the mod team has decided to expand our prior ban on promotion for the Hogwarts game to include the game itself.”….

(5) WILL MEN BLOW A FUSE? “Toni Collette’s new Prime Video thriller series sounds electrifying” says TechRadar.

…Starring Toni Collette (Knives Out, Hereditary), Auli’i Cravalho (Moana), and Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso season 3), the forthcoming Prime Video thriller series will aim to shock audiences with a worldwide tale based around gender imbalance and a single superpower.

Based on Naomi Alderman’s best-selling novel of the same name, The Power takes place in a world not unlike our own. However, one fateful day, teenage girls across the globe suddenly develop the ability to electrocute people at will. This nature-based power is hereditary, there’s no ‘cure’ for it and, most important of all, wielders can awaken the same power in their older mothers, sisters, cousins, and grandmothers.

Unsurprisingly, the emergence of this superpower leads to complete reversal of gender-based power balance in the world. Soon enough, the sparks of revolution are ignited, and men are quickly viewed as the lesser of humankind’s genders. The fallout that follows, then, will be as dramatic, suspense-filled, and electrifying as you can imagine….

(6) TRADITION DEFENDED. Ahrvid Engholm protests Chicon 8’s apology for their having initially called a panel “The Fannish Inquisition”. (Swedish, followed by English translation.) “The new heights of stupidity”.

…This “complaint” from only one (“the member who brought it to our attention”) reaches stratospheric heights in humorlessness and intolerance in claiming to be sensitive to the use of a simple word like “inquisition”. Have a look at HC Andersen’s story about The Princess and the Pea..  

If a tiny articulation of claimed uneasiness may decide what others can express, freedom of speech is in grave danger, and obviously once language is put  in a cage freedom of thought hangs loose.

We must stop this trend that anyone, who states feeling “uncomfortable” with what others say, have the right to silence them.

A well known historical institution, hundreds of years ago (are you going to tear out those pages in history books?), used as a cheerful gag would “understandably” (no, no one understands!) be “offensive” (no, it’s an innocent joke!)…

(7) WESCHING OBITUARY. Actress Annie Wersching has died of cancer at the age of 45 reports Collider.

Annie Wersching, the actress who brought to life a number of fan-favorite TV characters has sadly passed away today. Wersching most recently appeared as the villainous Borg Queen in Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, a role that saw her return to the Star Trek franchise in a much bigger capacity a decade after initially making her Star Trek debut in a guest role in Star Trek: Enterprise. Wersching also had roles in popular TV shows such as 24, Bosch, and The Vampire Diaries. Away from TV, Wersching was a big part of the fast-rising The Last of Us franchise. She lent her voice and performed motion capture for the beloved role of non-player character Tess who was recently brought to live action on the HBO series by Anna Torv. Wersching was 45 years old at the time of her death.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2019 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about a man who’s never named who returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers events that began forty years earlier. The remembrance of those events triggers something in the present of a horrific nature, and I’ll say no more in case some Filers here haven’t read it. 

The illustrated edition of the work was published in 2019, featuring the artwork of Australian Elise Hurst, a fine artist and author, specialising in children’s books.

Dinner was wonderful. There was a joint of beef, with roast potatoes, golden-crisp on the outside and soft and white inside, buttered greens I did not recognize, although I think now that they might have been nettles, toasted carrots all blackened and sweet (I did not think that I liked cooked carrots, so I nearly did not eat one but I was brave, and I tried it, and I liked it, and was disappointed in boiled carrots for the rest of my childhood.) For dessert there was the pie, stuffed with apples and with swollen raisins and crushed nuts, all topped with a thick yellow custard, creamier and richer than anything I had ever tasted at school or at home.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 29, 1913 — Victor Mature. He’s best remembered for his first leading role, as a fur-clad caveman in One Million B.C., and until he showed up on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as Sparks in the “Deadly Creatures Below!” episode, which I’m reasonably sure is his only genre role. (Died 1999.)
  • Born January 29, 1918 — Robert Pastene. He played the title role in the first televised Buck Rogers series on ABC that also had Kem Dibbs and Eric Hammond in that role. 35 episodes were made, none survive. As near as I can tell, his only other SFF performance was on the Out There and Lights Out series. (Died 1991.)
  • Born January 29, 1923 — Paddy Chayefsky. In our circles known as the writer of the Altered States novel that he also wrote the screenplay for. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay. The other winners of three Awards shared theirs. He did not win for Altered States though he did win for Network which I adore and might well be genre. (Died 1981.)
  • Born January 29, 1940 — Katharine Ross, 83. Her first genre work was as Joanna Eberhart in The Stepford Wives, scary film that. She shows up next as Helena in The Swarm and plays Margaret Walsh in The Legacy, both horror films. The Final Countdown sees her in the character of Laurel Scott.  And Dr. Lilian Thurman is her character in the cult favorite Donnie Darko. I’m fairly sure that the only genre series she’s done is on The Wild Wild West as Sheila Parnell in “The Night of the Double-Edged Knife”, and she did an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents as well. 
  • Born January 29, 1945 — Tom Selleck, 78. Setting aside the matter of if Magnum P.I. is genre which some of you hold to be true, he was Sgt. Jack R. Ramsay in Runaway which is most definitely SF.  He recently did some voice acting by being Cornelius, Lewis’ older self, in the animated Meet the Robinsons film, and he showed up as himself in the “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” of the Muppet Babies nearly forty years ago. And now in his thirteenth year as Commissioner Frank Reagan on the Blue Bloods series on Paramount+. 
  • Born January 29, 1958 — Jeph Loeb, 64. His first comic writing work was on the Challengers of the Unknown vol. 2 #1 in 1991 with Tim Sale. He’d go on to win three Eisners for his work for Batman/The Spirit #1, Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory. And he’s also a producer/writer on such genre series such as Smallville, Lost, Heroes and Teen Wolf.
  • Born January 29, 1970 — Heather Graham, 53. Best known SF role was no doubt Dr. Judy Robinson on the Lost on Space film. She played also Felicity Shagwell that year in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. And she was Annie Blackburn on Twin Peaks.
  • Born January 29, 1988 — Catrin Stewart, 35. Jenny Flint in five episodes of Doctor Who. She was the wife of Madame Vastra and the friend of Strax (informally known as the Paternoster Gang) who appeared first during the Eleventh Doctor and last during the Twelfth Doctor. Big Finish has continued them in their audiobooks. She also played Stella in two episodes of the Misfits series, and was Julia in a performance of 1984 done at London Playhouse a few years back.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Lio makes the scene with a frozen Gort.
  • Dick Tracy is starting another (or repeat?) Little Orphan Annie arc.
  • The Far Side has some genre career counseling.
  • Tom Gauld is keeping busy.

(11) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport shares “Tears Waiting to Be Diamonds: Part Two” by Sarah Rees Brennan.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s “Tears Waiting to Be Diamonds, Part One,” our first story of January 2023, brought us news from the Other Lands and absolutely blew our socks off. Now, as January comes to a close, we hope you enjoy Part Two of “Tears Waiting to Be Diamonds,” with all the joys and surprises that entails. ~ Julian and Fran, January 29, 2023

(12) YEAR ENDS WITH A BANG. Joe Stech of Compelling Science Fiction shares his picks for the “Top science fiction short stories published in December”. At number one:

The top story for the month of December (and therefore our t-shirt winner!) is Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness by S.L. Huang. The story is a fun and insightful piece of fictitious journalism. It’s rare that I see near-future AI stories that really feel true-to-life and are also page-turners, Huang knocked this one out of the park.

(13) BRINGING IN THE NEW YEAR. The new episode of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up, where in honor of Lunar New Year, they discuss a Japanese/Taiwanese co-production with the first season and movie of Thunderbolt Fantasy. “Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 1 + The Blade of Life & Death”.

This month, David, Tora and Alexander Case are taking a look at the first season & film of Thunderbolt Fantasy for Lunar New Year.

Thunderbolt Fantasy is available on Crunchyroll: https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY75KE906/thunderbolt-fantasy

(14) REMEMBERING AN ICONIC GAME CONSOLE. Lego supplies 2,532 pieces that add up to a replica of the Atari 2600 and some of the paraphernalia.

Take a trip back to the 1980s with this LEGO Atari 2600 (10306) building set for adults. Enjoy a rewarding project creating all the details of this replica console, replica game ‘cartridges’ and joystick. Gaming fans will love the 3 mini builds depicting themes from 3 popular Atari games. There’s even a hidden 1980s scene to build for total nostalgia overload. Rediscover 3 of the most popular Atari games: Asteroids, Adventure and Centipede. There’s a replica ‘cartridge’ for each, plus 3 scenes to build capturing the story of each game. The games slot into the vintage-style console and can be stored in the cartridge holder. Check out the artwork, inspired by the original Atari designs plus a touch of LEGO spirit. This collectible building set makes an immersive project for you or a top gift idea for gamers.

(15) TERMINATOR GENESIS? CNN has video of the earliest ancestor of the T-1000 “Liquid Metal” bot. At the link: “Video: This tiny shape-shifting robot can melt its way out of a cage”.

Researchers took gallium, a metal with a low melting point, and embedded it with magnetic particles to create a robot that can melt and move. Their inspiration? A sea cucumber.

(16) COMPATIBLE QUARTERS FOR NOVELISTS. A Penguin blogger evaluates “The best places to write your novel according to authors: tried and tested”. For some, a hotel is perfect.

…Agatha Christie ostensibly wrote Murder on the Orient Express at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, while Maya Angelou used to write on hotel beds for months at a time. Ashdown Park Hotel is set right on the edge of the forest where Winnie the Pooh himself was born, and there are some cute nods to the Bear of Very Little Brain outside the hotel’s restaurant. Pooh and Angelou: I was in good company…

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Season 3 official trailer forStar Trek: Picard dropped today.

The stakes have never been higher as Star Trek: Picard boldly goes into its third and final season. Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, and Michael Dorn of Star Trek: The Next Generation join series star Patrick Stewart for an epic adventure.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Soon Lee, Todd Mason, Daniel Dern, Alexander Case, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 1/27/23 Gully File Is My Name, And The Scroll’s My Destination

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(1) 2023 SMOFCON NEWS. MCFI president Rick Kovalcik has announced new discount rates for Smofcon40, being held December 1-3, 2023 at the Marriott Downtown, Providence, RI, USA. 

There is now a $40 (attending) rate for First Smofcon Attendees, Young Adult (Under 33 Years Old / Born After 1 December 1990), or Unwaged / Retired / Hardship. We expect these rates to be good at least through the end of pre-registration. We trust people not to abuse the Unwaged / Retired / Hardship rate. Unfortunately, we will not be refunding $10 to anyone who already bought at the $50 rate. The $50 full attending rate is good at least through 28 February 2023.

We have been working on our official website at smofcon40.org and expect to have an integrated membership / payment system up shortly. In the meantime, memberships may still be bought by filling out the form at  https:tinyurl.com/Smofcon40Membership and paying by PayPal to [email protected] or mailing a check to MCFI at PO Box 1010, Framingham, MA 01701 USA.

Gay Ellen Dennett has been chosen as Smofcon40 Chair and can be reached at [email protected].

The committee has a signed contract with the hotel. They expect to publish a link for room reservations in the late spring. Any additional questions may be sent to [email protected].

(2) BOOK SHOPPING IN MONGOLIA. [Item by Mikael Thompson.] Here are two recent translations I saw in Mongolian bookstores recently. First is Howl’s Moving Castle (literally, “Howl’s habitually-nomadizing castle”–nüü- meaning ‘to move, shift pastures, nomadize’ and -deg indicating habitual aspect). Second is the just-released translation of The Man Who Fell to Earth.   

Howl’s Moving Castle in a Mongolian bookstore
The Man Who Fell To Earth in a Mongolian bookstore

(3) EKPEKI WILL VISIT ASU IN MARCH. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has been named a 2023 Visiting Fellow of the Future of Being Human initiative, in collaboration with the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination.

Oghenechovwe will be visiting the ASU Tempe campus at the end of March, where he will be engaging with initiative communities, participating in meetups, and talking about his work and it’s connection to how we think about being human in a technologically advances future in a number of venues.

(4) AUTHOR WEBSITES. Michael Burton-Murphy has set up his own, but is looking around the field to decide how to use it: “Author Websites: A Survey of Sorts”   (Via Cat Rambo.)

… I’m not really a good hand for visuals, so I usually have a hard time figuring out what I want to do with a new website like this. I decided I’d take a survey of the sites put up by some of the authors whose work I’ve enjoyed over the years, and see what I could infer from them.

Ugly On Purpose

Let’s start with a couple of sites that aren’t formatted for visual appeal.

Charlie Stross is a writer of deep, complex, even mind-bending fiction. He’s also a veteran of multiple tech startups. His author website is spartan….

(5) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to lunch on Laotian food with Cory Doctorow in Episode 190 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Cory Doctorow

Cory is a science fiction writer, journalist and technology activist who in 2020, was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In the years since I published his first professional fiction sale in Science Fiction Age magazine (though I didn’t buy his first professionally sold short story, a distinction we get into during our chat), he’s won the Locus, Prometheus, Copper Cylinder, White Pine and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.

His novels include Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), Eastern Standard Tribe (2004), Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (2005), Little Brother (2008), his most recent, Walkaway (2017), and others. His most recent short story collection is Radicalized (2019). He’s also a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties.

We discussed how different D.C. seems to him now that he’s a U.S. citizen, the way his remarkable evening hanging with both David Byrne and Spider Robinson put things in perspective, the lessons we learned (both good and bad) from Harlan Ellison, our differing levels of hope and despair at the current state of the world, the major effect Judith Merril had on the direction of his life, how an ongoing column he wrote for Science Fiction Age magazine predicted the next 20 years of his life, our differing opinions as to what it means when we say stories are didactic, how to continue on in the face of rejection — and then once we do, how not to become parodies of ourselves, the best piece of advice he didn’t follow, our differing views on spoilers, what he recently came to understand about the reactionary message of traditional hardboiled fiction — and how he used that in his upcoming trilogy, knowing when to break the rules of writing, and much more.

(6) A STOPPED CLOCK TELLS THE RIGHT TIME. Camestros Felapton initially discusses a point made by Larry Correia that he agrees with – how did that happen? But they soon part company again in “Guns & Nonsense: Part 5, Defence in Depth”.

…However, Correia is apparently naïve enough to think that gun control must be perfect before it can be an additional layer of security. The opposite is obviously true. Making it harder for people who wish to hurt others to get access to guns is an additional layer of security. It’s not a perfect layer but as demonstrated in multiple wealthy nations, it is a very effective layer.

Of course, if Correia conceded that gun control is an effective layer in a model of “defence in depth” then a rather alarming conclusion would logically follow: gun control is part of self-defence. Ah. The implication of that is both huge but also demonstrable. A right to protect yourself from harm applied equitably i.e. a right that makes it easier for everybody is the opposite of tyranny….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1968 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel

Food has an important role in Christie’s fiction. (And yes, I adore her detectives, all of them. That’s why you will see more culinary quotes from her fiction.) Hercule Poirot and his oh so perfect breakfast,  or the quote this time from At Bertram’s Hotel, a Miss Marple novel (she is taking a two-week holiday in London at this hotel though she doesn’t figure into our quote, though she loved breakfast here, “Miss Marple inserted a knife gingerly but with confidence. She was not disappointed. Rich deep yellow yolk oozed out, thick and creamy. Proper eggs! “) The manager is telling one of the guests what an English breakfast once was like, and what he can have there now.

‘Eggs and bacon?’

‘As you say—but a good deal more than that if you want it. Kippers, kidneys and bacon, cold grouse, York ham, Oxford marmalade.’

‘I must remember to get all that… don’t get that sort of a thing any more at home.’

Humfries smiled. ‘Most gentlemen only ask for eggs and bacon. They’ve—well, they’ve got out of the way of thinking about the things there used to be.’

‘Yes, yes… I remember when I was a child. … Sideboards groaning with hot dishes. Yes, it was a luxurious way of life.’

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 27, 1940 — James Cromwell, 83. I think we best know him as Doctor Zefram Cochrane In Star Trek: First Contact which was re-used in the Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly (Part I)”.  He’s been in other genre films including Species II, Deep Impact, The Green Mile, Space Cowboys, I, Robot, Spider-Man 3 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. He played characters on three Trek series, Prime Minister Nayrok on “The Hunted” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Jaglom Shrek in the two part “Birthright” story, Hanok on the “Starship Down” episode of Deep Space Nine and Zefram Cochrane once as noted before on Enterprise. 
  • Born January 27, 1950 — Michaela Roessner, 73. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer after writing Walkabout Woman. Though not genre, her two historical novels, The Stars Dispose and The Stars Compel, about Catherine de Medici are excellent.  ISFDB lists another novel of genre status, Vanishing Point. None of her fiction is available digitally, alas. 
  • Born January 27, 1953 — Joe Bob Briggs, 70. Writer, actor, and comic performer. Host of the TNT MonsterVision series, and the ongoing The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder from 2018–present. The author of a number of nonfiction review books including Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies that Changed History!  And he’s written one genre novel, Iron Joe Bob. My favorite quote by him is that after contracting Covid and keeping private that he had, he said later that “Many people have had COVID-19 and most of them were much worse off than me. I wish everybody thought it was a death sentence, because then everyone would wear the f*cking mask and then we would get rid of it.”
  • Born January 27, 1956 — Mimi Rogers, 67. Her best known SFF role is Professor Maureen Robinson in the Lost in Space film which I did see in a theatre I just realized. She’s also Mrs. Marie Kensington in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and she’s Orianna Volkes in the Penny Dreadful hitchhiker horror film. She’s got one-offs in Tales from The Crypt, The X-Files, Where Are You Scooby Doo? and Ash v. Evil Dead.
  • Born January 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 66. He’s both an artist and writer so I’m not going to untangle which is which here. What’s good by him? Oh, I love The Dark Knight Returns, both the original comic series and the animated film, though the same not no true of Sin City where I prefer the original series much more. Hmmm… What else? His runs on Daredevil and Electra of course. That should do. 
  • Born January 27, 1965 — Alan Cumming, 58. I’m now watching The Good Wife where plays Eli Gold, the ultimate crisis manager. His film roles include performances as Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Fegan Floop In the Spy Kids trilogy, Loki, god of Mischief in Son of the Mask, Nightcrawler In X2 and Judas Caretaker in Riverworld (anyone know this got made?). 
  • Born January 27, 1966 — Tamlyn Tomita, 57. I’m fairly sure I first saw her in a genre role on the Babylon 5 film The Gathering as Lt. Cmdr. Laurel Takashima. Or it might have been on The Burning Zone as Dr. Kimberly Shiroma. And she had a recurring late on Eureka in Kate Anderson, and Ishi Nakamura on Heroes? She’s been in a number of SFF series in one-off roles including Highlander, Quantum Leap, The Sentinel, Seven Days, FreakyLinks, Stargate SG-1 and a recurring as late as Tamiko Watanabe in The Man in The High Castle.
  • Born January 27, 1970 — Irene Gallo, 53. Creative Director for Tor.com and Tor Books. She’s won an amazing thirteen Chelsey Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards, as art director of Tor.com and for the Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction anthology. She also co-wrote Revolution: The Art of Jon Foster with Jon Foster and Cathy & Arnie Fenner.

(9) IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THERE. FANAC.org’s next FanHistory Project Zoom Session will be “New York Fandom in the 70s with Moshe Feder, Andy Porter, Steve Rosenstein and Jerry Kaufman”. Catch it live on February 11, 2023 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern

The story of New York fandom is fascinating. From the worldcon in the 60s to fragmentation and multiple fannish groups in the 70s, there’s a real story to tell. How did NY fandom come to break apart? What were the fannish clubs and how were they different? Who were the movers and shakers? How did the emergence of Star Trek and Star Trek conventions affect NY fandom? Did moving Lunacon out of the city have a big effect? What were the highlights and heartbreaks? Join four of the stalwarts of 70s New York fandom, as they revisit those days.

(10) JEOPARDY! SF QUESTIONS 2023-01-26 [Item by David Goldfarb.] Troy Meyer continues to extend his winning streak. On Thursday’s Jeopardy! episode there were two clues with SF content, both in the Double Jeopardy round.

Line in the Sand, $1600: A passage in this novel relays: “Gurney saw Fremen spread out across the sand there in the path of the worm”

Emma Moore responded correctly.

“B” Movies [i.e., movies whose titles began with the letter B], $2000: This Terry Gilliam fantasy features a futuristic bureaucracy

Troy Meyer responded correctly.

(11) FOUNDATIONS OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Austin Gilkeson delves into “The Lore of the Rings” at the New York Review of Books.

One September day in 1914, a young J.R.R. Tolkien, in his final undergraduate year at Oxford, came across an Old English advent poem called “Christ A.” Part of it reads, “Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtast/ofer middangeard monnum sended,” which he later rendered: “Hail Éarendel, brightest of angels/above the middle-earth sent unto men!” Safe in his aunt’s house in Nottinghamshire while battles raged on the continent, Tolkien took inspiration from this ode to the morning and evening star and wrote his own poem in modern English, “Éarendel the Mariner.” That poem was not published in his lifetime, but after it came the stories that would become The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, which in turn inspired, to varying degrees, Earthsea, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Game of Thrones, and so on, an apostolic succession of fantasy.

The latest in the line is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon Studios does not have the rights to The Silmarillion, the posthumous collection of Tolkien’s mythology that serves as a sort of bible for Middle-earth, nor is it adapting The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s 1954 novel about the hobbit Frodo’s quest to save Middle-earth by destroying the One Ring, which holds the power of the Dark Lord Sauron. Peter Jackson’s film trilogy still looms too large. Instead, the showrunners, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, have crafted a prequel, set thousands of years before the events of the three-volume novel and drawn from bits of lore in its prologue, “Concerning Hobbits,” and extensive appendices on Middle-earth history and culture. It’s an undertaking not dissimilar from Tolkien’s own reworking of “Christ A,” spinning out a narrative from a few textual scraps—the kind of academic exercise an Oxford professor of Old English could appreciate….

(12) SUN DIALS ARE RIGHT OUT. “What time is it on the Moon?” in Nature. “Satellite navigation systems for lunar settlements will require local atomic clocks. Scientists are working out what time they will keep.” SF authors and Andy Weir take note…

The coming decade will see a resurgence in lunar exploration — including dozens of missions and plans to establish permanent bases on the Moon. The endeavours pose myriad challenges. Among them is a subtle, but fundamental, question that meteorologists worldwide are working to answer: what time is it on the Moon?… 

The Moon doesn’t currently have an independent time. Each lunar mission uses its own timescale that is linked, through its handlers on Earth, to coordinated universal time, or UTc — the standard against which the planet’s clocks are set. But this method is relatively imprecise and spacecraft exploring the Moon don’t synchronize the time with each other. The approach works when the Moon hosts a handful of independent missions, but it will be a problem when there are multiple craft working together. Space agencies will also want to track them using satellite navigation, which relies on precise timing signals.

It’s not obvious what form a universal lunar time would take. Clocks on Earth and the Moon naturally tick at different speeds, because of the differing gravitational fields of the two bodies. Official lunar time could be based on a clock system designed to synchronize with UTC, or it could be independent of Earth time….

(13) HWA KERFUFFLE. Tom Monteleone, alleging that “gatekeepers” at the Horror Writers Association websites were keeping his post from appearing, took to Facebook to nominate David Schiff for an HWA Lifetime Achievement Award.  But before sharing the reasons Schiff should receive the recognition, Monteleone made known his real agenda:

…That said, and despite the last few LAA years looking very much like a very obvious DEI project, I am compelled to nominate a smart, old white guy: Stu Schiff…

Since then people have left over 500 comments, some applauding what he said and adding their own feelings about “virtue signaling” and “wokeness”, while others have called for him to apologize. He has made additional comments which others are engaging. The worthiness of some of the 2017 LAA winners has also been denigrated.

Former HWA president John Palisano chimed in:

As the person who was president of the HWA when these LAA awards were selected and given, I stood behind them then, and I stand behind them today. And I also stand behind Kevin Wetmore and the LAA committee who made these selections.

I’m more than disappointed their names have been attacked. I have zero tolerance for the transphobia and hateful comments spewed forth.

For the record? They were chosen on merit, period. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dead wrong. I was there. Their Race, gender, sexuality. Etc. we’re not the defining factors.

Also? SCHIFF’s validation and consideration will not be based negatively based upon this hurtful thread.

Even though I’m not president now, I know my colleagues in the HWA will not hold this against a candidate. In fact? Proof of such can be seen in the fact that many people who’ve been very critical against the HWA in the past have been brought in as GOH and in other capacities. There’s always room for growth and learning…

Brian Keene finally decided he needed to come off the sidelines and wrote a long comment that includes this quote:

… But now, with this second topic, there *are* people speaking up directly, and telling you [Monteleone] that some of the things you’re saying here are hurtful. They’re not going through me to do it. They’re saying it right here, directly to you. Maybe you’re not hearing them, so let me try saying it instead.

You’re publishing Mary’s collection of Edward Lucas White stories. She turned that in to you two days ago. That night, she said to me, quote: “Back in the day, Tom was the first editor in this business to treat me like a colleague and not like a groupie.” End quote. Today she saw your trans comments elsewhere in this thread. As the mother of a trans daughter, she was incredibly hurt by them. She’s downstairs right now, trying to reconcile all this. As the soon-to-be step-father to a trans-daughter, and as someone who has known that child since she was 4 years old, and has seen her struggle first hand, I’m hurt by them, too. You have always been kind and generous and supportive of Mary and I both, but what are we supposed to do at the wedding reception? Stick you at a back table like “that one uncle”? Because that’s how it’s coming across to us both…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Mikael Thompson, David Goldfarb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jayn and David Goldfarb.]