24 Pixels Were Scrolled

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TED CHIANG WINS PEN/MALAMUD AWARD. Ted Chiang is the winner of the 2024 PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, which recognizes writers “who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form.” He will be honored at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony, held in partnership with American University, on December 6.

“Ted Chiang’s stories are an absolute wonder to behold,” said Jung Yun, PEN/Malamud Award committee chair. “Not only do they demonstrate his exceptionally high standards for creativity and construction, they also invite readers to think, imagine, and explore unique worlds beyond their own. Whether set in an alternate version of the past, or one possible version of the future, his work prompts important questions that are deeply relevant to how we live today. In doing so, Chiang exemplifies Bernard Malamud’s belief that a short story can produce ‘the surprise and effect of a profound knowledge in a short time.’ “

Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and six Locus Awards, and has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories. His first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into 21 languages, and the title story was the basis for the Oscar-nominated film Arrival. His second collection, Exhalation, was chosen by the New York Timesas one of the 10 Best Books of 2019.

“I cannot overstate how surprised and delighted I am to be a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story,” Chiang said. “The short story has played a central role in the history of science fiction; I grew up reading anthologies where every story contained a different world, and I feel privileged to be a part of science fiction’s growing acceptance in the wider literary world. As a writer I appreciate the way the short story allows me to focus on a single idea or moment, and it’s wonderful to receive an award that celebrates the form.”

(2) NYRSF READINGS. Barbara Krasnoff told Facebook readers today the New York Review of SF Readings are back. Susan Emshwiller will guest at the next one on June 20. See it on Jim Freund’s YouTube channel.

First, we apologize for the long wait for our NYRSF Reading with Susan Emshwiller — because of health and tech issues (things always pile up, don’t they?), we had to postpone.

However, we’re planning to make up for it with a wonderful reading and interview with the multi-talented Susan Emshwiller about her great new book All My Ancestors Had Sex (love the title!) on Thursday, June 20th, at 7 PM ET, on Jim’s YouTube channel. I am hosting, Jim Freund is running tech, and Amy Goldschlager will be your faithful audience wrangler. See you online soon!

(3) THE FINAL EPISODE ON THE FINAL FRONTIER. Galactic Journey’s Janice L. Newman and others tuned in for the final episode of Star Trek – in 1969. What did they think of it? “[June 12, 1969] Heavy on the Bitters (Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder)”.

The mood was bittersweet as we gathered to watch the final episode of Star Trek. It also held a hint of trepidation: would we get another instant classic, like All Our Yesterdays, or another disappointment, like the string of episodes before it?

As it turned out, the final episode of Star Trek, probably the last new one that will ever be aired, was compelling, well-acted, well-paced, well-directed…and disappointing for an entirely different reason….

… The plot that then unfolds is simple: Kirk must try to convince his crew that he is himself, despite being in Lester’s body, while Lester must convince them that “Janice Lester” is dangerously insane and that she is Captain Kirk. Lester is hampered by the fact that she is emotionally unstable, to put it mildly, and clearly unfit to be a starship captain. Spock uses Vulcan telepathy early on and believes Kirk, and the rest of the crew slowly come to support him as well, despite no medical tests showing anything off about Kirk (this is another implausible point—surely brain scans, psychological tests, or gauges of emotional stability should have shown that something was different.)…

…There are a couple of ways to interpret this story. You could, as we tried to do, simply say that Lester sees sexism where it none exists, blaming an outdated concept for why she couldn’t get promoted rather than her own mental and emotional instability. Unfortunately, this is undercut by Kirk’s agreeing with her statement that, “It’s not fair,” and Kirk’s own final words that her life could have been as rich as “any woman’s”.

On the other hand, taking it at face value seems wildly counter both to previous episodes and to current (present-day) trends. “Number One” from The Menagerie was a woman, and even acting captain of the Enterprise back in Pike’s day, years before Kirk was put in charge. Perhaps there hasn’t been a female starship captain yet (there are only 13 Enterprise-class ships, per Tomorrow is Yesterday) but you don’t make someone First Officer if there’s no avenue for them to eventually become a captain. And in “our world”, two world leaders are women: Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel just two months ago, while Indira Gandhi has been Prime Minister of India since 1966!…

(4) EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE A PLAN FOR THEIR COLLECTION … [Item by Mike Ward.] …for their death… Or even just for forgetting to pay the fee for the storage unit.

Don’t let this happen to you:

Dusty Riach is one of the people on Storage Wars, but this video is one he himself put on YouTube a couple of years ago.

Someone with a storage unit in Bloomington, California, let it lapse. It was full of SF/Fantasy; a pile of stuff that seems to have come from Forry Ackerman’s estate; and hundreds of LP and other records.

There was a box of fanzines that included an APA-L for instance. Lots of other stuff that someone had put together over the years.

The video runs half an hour. The collector’s name is not given, and perhaps not even known, but someone in LA fandom probably knew them.

(5) RECURSIVE BOOK BAN. [Item by Cliff.] “Book about book bans banned by Florida school board” – the Guardian sorts it out.

A book about book bans has been banned in a Florida school district.

Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.

Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website.

In a peculiar case of life imitating art, Jennifer Pippin, a parent in the coastal community, challenged the book….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 12, 1916 – Irwin Allen. (Died 1992.) So let’s talk about Irwin Allen. While he may be best known for that most spectacular of ocean disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure, he’s done more than done a reasonable share of genre work.

The first series that he created in the Sixties was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, was based off his film of the same name, that would air on ABC from the fall of 1964 to the spring of 1968 making it the decade’s longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The one hundred and ten episodes produced included the first thirty-two shot in black-and-white, and last seventy-eight filmed in color.

Next up for him was Lost in Space. Saying it’s based off Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson is really, really stretching things, isn’t it? Be that as it may, the show ran for eighty-three episodes over three seasons on CBS.

Remember The Time Tunnel? Yeah he was responsible for it too. The show ran for one season of thirty episodes from 1966 to 1967 on ABC.

His run of SF series would be concluded with Land of the Giants, a one-hour series that aired on ABC from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1970. It was filmed in color. It’s worth noting that five novels based on the television series, including three written by Murray Leinster, would be published while the series aired.

A decade later, we have a miniseries on that took Robert Bloch and six other scriptwriters to please Irwin Allen, The Return of Captain Nemo (theatrical title when a shorten, possibly more coherent version had a screen run was The Amazing Captain Nemo). It has been considered an attempt by him to duplicate the success of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It didn’t.

Finally I’ll note that he was responsible for it happening in all aspects possible, a music version of Alice in Wonderland. It aired on CBS over two nights in 1985, and it had an amazing cast of Natalie Gregory (Alice here), Red Buttons, Anthony Newley, Jayne Meadows, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., Roddy McDowall, Ann Jillian, Pat Morita and Robert Morley. It has an extraordinary rating of eighty-five percent over at Rotten Tomatoes.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss demonstrates why someone is not invited to beach games.
Brewster Rockit shows the threat is closing in.
Moderately Confused sets up the following comic.
Mannequin on the Moon has a ‘sounds like’ problem.
Carpe Diem shows an emoji used by Homer.

(8) SPAM OF THE DAY. I got an email from the IMF today. My immediate reaction was, “What a wonderful scam – an email from the Impossible Missions Force!” But I was wrong. They were only pretending to be from the International Monetary Fund, offering to let me tap into a 850,000 Euro victims compensation fund. Since the email was not going to self-destruct in five seconds, I helped it along.

(9) HOW DO IT KNOW? (To borrow a line from an old comedy routine.) “The puzzle of emergence asks how regularities emerge on macro scales out of uncountable constituent parts. A new framework has researchers hopeful that a solution is near.” “The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges” in Quanta Magazine.

A few centuries ago, the swirling polychromatic chaos of Jupiter’s atmosphere spawned the immense vortex that we call the Great Red Spot…

…A complex system exhibits emergence, according to the new framework, by organizing itself into a hierarchy of levels that each operate independently of the details of the lower levels. The researchers suggest we think about emergence as a kind of “software in the natural world.” Just as the software of your laptop runs without having to keep track of all the microscale information about the electrons in the computer circuitry, so emergent phenomena are governed by macroscale rules that seem self-contained, without heed to what the component parts are doing.

Using a mathematical formalism called computational mechanics, the researchers identified criteria for determining which systems have this kind of hierarchical structure. They tested these criteria on several model systems known to display emergent-type phenomena, including neural networks and Game-of-Life-style cellular automata. Indeed, the degrees of freedom, or independent variables, that capture the behavior of these systems at microscopic and macroscopic scales have precisely the relationship that the theory predicts….

(10) ALL MUST CHOOSE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] If you don’t like the menu, please don’t behead the servers! The Mile End Deli in Brooklyn will offer House of Dragons-themed food on Father’s Day:

(11) DORNE TO THE SEA IN SHIPS. Meanwhile, “A ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Has Been Revived, Says George RR Martin” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Martin revealed that the Princess Nymeria prequel Ten Thousand Ships is alive again and making progress under a new writer — Eboni Booth, who won a Pulitzer Prize in May for her play Primary Trust.

“She’s an amazingly talented young playwright, and a joy to work with; when not writing and producing her prize-winning plays on- and off-Broadway, she has been kept busy by me and HBO, working on a new pilot for Ten Thousand Ships, a Game of Thrones spinoff about Nymeria and the Rhoynar,” Martin wrote on his blog. “We’re all very excited about this one … though we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for 10,000 ships, 300 dragons and those giant turtles.”

Set 1,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series tells the story of warrior queen Princess Nymeria — the founder of the kingdom of Dorne — and the surviving Rhoynars who traveled from Essos to Dorne following their defeat by Valyrian and their dragons. HBO had no comment on the update….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. And making the rounds this week: “Elijah Wood Gets a Burger Master Class” at Burger Bucket List.

How do you impress a world-class eater like actor Elijah Wood? Go crazy with research, find out what he wants, and make it happen. Trust us, we dug deep for this tasting menu: Japanese luxury, pizza nostalgia, and the ‘One Burger to Rule Them All.’ We think Frodo and the other hobbits would approve. From a Lord of the Rings surprise, to a Wilfred cameo, this career-spanning meal packs it all in. Welcome to the Elijah Wood Burger Omakase.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/11/24 A Pixel Is To Be Hugged And Sung Lullabies Lest It Grow Up Feeling Unwanted. And Then It Won’t Want To Be Scrolled

Posted on June 11, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW 2024 TOWN HALL ABOUT BUSINESS MEETING ON 6/15. Glasgow 2024 will host a virtual Town Hall Event about the WSFS Business Meeting on Saturday, June 15, at 7:00 p.m. BST (which is 11:00 a.m. Pacific). Sign up for a free ticket at this Eventbrite link.

Key members of the Business Meeting and The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) team from Glasgow 2024 will discuss the Business Meeting that will occur at Glasgow 2024.

The event will be moderated, taking questions in advance. If you wish to submit a question for consideration, please do so below. There may not be enough time to cover all questions, but we will do our best to get to as many as we can. https://forms.gle/goRw9ZGspQ4YE3mA9

(2) SHE’S ON THE FRONT. Nnedi Okorafor is featured in the June 10 issue of Publishers Weekly.

(3) CREDIT FOR HELPING SAVE TREK. Bjo Trimble’s daughter Lora reports on Facebook she “again went to the Peabody awards last night to watch Star Trek be honored with the Peabody Institutional Award. What Bjo didn’t know was Alex Kurtzman paid tribute to her and My father John Trimble and all the work they did to save Star Trek and keep it going! It was a lovely evening.” More photos at the link.

Bjo Trimble attends the 2024 Peabody Awards at Beverly Wilshire on June 9. Photo by Jon Kopaloff.

Below you can see J. J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman accepting Star Trek’s Peabody Award, including Kurtzman’s mention of Bjo.

(4) A STELLAR VILLAIN. “Paul Giamatti Joins ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ as Main Villain” reports Variety. (Does Starfleet Academy have holiday holdovers?)

Set phasers to stunned. In another casting coup, the upcoming Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has cast Emmy winner and multiple Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti in a recurring guest role as the first season’s main villain, who has a sinister connection to the past of one of the (yet to be cast) cadets.

Giamatti joins Holly Hunter, who Variety exclusively reported in May is boarding “Starfleet Academy” as the Academy’s captain and chancellor.

“Sometimes you’re lucky enough to discover that one of the greatest actors alive is also a huge ‘Star Trek’ fan, and meeting Paul was one of those miraculous moments for us,” said co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau in a statement. “The sheer delight with which he dove in on ‘Starfleet Academy’ is only surpassed by the gratitude we feel about him joining our incredible cast.”…

(5) HOW MANY VIEW WHO. Steven Moffat told Facebook readers today:

According to Russell T Davies, the ratings for Doctor Who are “far above expectations.”

While he admits that the figures “aren’t where we want them. We always want higher”, an independent BBC review has revealed that it is the most watched show for under 30s in the world.

The series has “reached and exceeded every target, so we are showing no signs of slowing down.”

(6) NO VROOM AT THE INN. New York Times critic Esther Zuckerman recommends “A Four-Hour-Long Hotel Review That Is Actually About So Much More” – Jenny Nicholson’s report on Disney’s Star Wars-themed Galactic Starcruiser hotel, now shut down, which she deems a spectacular failure.

…One of the most captivating pieces of entertainment I’ve seen so far this year is a four-hour-long YouTube video in which one woman describes her stay at a Disney World hotel. I’m as shocked by this as anyone.

To be clear: I was initially resistant when my partner encouraged me to watch Jenny Nicholson’s epic “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” which breaks down in microscopic detail her visit to Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. During the experience, now closed, guests on vacation were encouraged to live out their George Lucas dreams by participating in a role-playing game while staying in a structure on the outskirts of the park near Orlando, Fla.

Nicholson’s monologue, which runs longer than “Lawrence of Arabia,” has been viewed more than seven million times since it was uploaded last month and has been the talk of social media, yet I was still unprepared for how absolutely riveting it was. While it highlights a litany of problems with the hotel itself, the video can also be viewed as a diagnosis of the entertainment industry’s current ills writ large. In her frustration, Nicholson becomes a valiant truth teller, clearly articulating how corporate greed betrays loyal fans to sell a cheaper and less emotionally enriching product. And she does this against a backdrop of stuffed animals and while wearing various costumes, including, at one point, a giant suit resembling a Porg, the puffin-like creature in “The Last Jedi.”…

…The great irony is that Nicholson herself produced what Disney couldn’t: a comprehensive, entrancing experience that held my attention.

(7) PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BOTS. Clarkesworld’s Neil Clarke has updated his blog post “Block the Bots that Feed ‘AI’ Models by Scraping Your Website” to warn about another offender: “If you haven’t updated your robots.txt to protect your work from scraping for ‘AI’ training recently, there’s probably a few bots you aren’t blocking. Added Applebot-Extended this morning.”

Applebot-Extended does not directly crawl webpages. It is used to determine whether or not pages crawled by the Applebot user agent will be used to train Apple’s models powering generative AI features across Apple products, including Apple Intelligence, Services, and Developer Tools….

(8) ANOTHER SCURRILOUS TACTIC. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] I was listening to a favorite law podcast of mine, Law and Chaos, (“PA Dad Takes On Moms For Liberty”) and they were interviewing a Pennsylvania father who discovered books were quietly going missing from his kid’s local school library and decided to figure out why. Turns out it was a “shadowban” campaign against books that Moms for Liberty hates and included such lovely behavior as the school creating fake student library accounts, checking out the books to those accounts for an entire year, and then adding the books to the list of items to be removed from the library on the grounds that they weren’t being checked out (!). It’s a fascinating story about just how far Culture Warriors will go to ban books! The titles secretly removed included the entire “A Court of Thorns and Roses” (ACOTAR) fantasy series, which, while not my cup of tea where fantasy is concerned, are very popular with teenage girls who deserve to have the right to check out the books if they want.

The Bucks County Beacon wrote about the Dad who discovered what was going on: “Uncovering the Cover-up: How Republican Pennridge School Board Directors Secretly Banned Books”.

…Frustrated by the lack of answers, I submitted a Right-To-Know request seeking a report that listed the books checked out of the high school library by non-students. To my surprise, the report furnished by the district was discernibly inaccurate. It did not contain any of the targeted titles that had recently gone missing.

I hired an open records attorney, Joy Ramsingh, to negotiate with the district’s law firm, Eckert Seamans. I was simply requesting the production of a good faith public record. My goal was to learn which books were being censored.

I wanted to give the community a fair opportunity to read, defend, and debate the merit of literature before it was permanently removed from the library. My lawyer sought to reach a quick and amicable resolution, but the negotiations were unsuccessful. We appealed to the Court of Common Pleas.

After a year of litigation, my attorney was able to prove that the RTK report furnished by the district was illegally manipulated. Faced with overwhelming evidence, the district eventually conceded that an employee had deleted records from the report. It was a clear attempt to hide the removal of books from public scrutiny….

(9) MEDICAL UPDATE. Adam-Troy Castro, in a public Facebook post, has announced he is battling cancer again – but it should be survivable. Full details at the link.

…They remove this and give me another round of chemo and it is pretty survivable. Which is a lot different than this would be if the Colon Cancer had metastasized in any other organ. Anywhere else would have been a case of, “okay, we’re bailing water to keep the boat afloat until it sinks.”

On the scale of having Stage 4 any kind of Cancer, this kind of cancer is not as bad as most. Okay? It’s survivable.

Does this suck?

Yes.

Does it suck a lot less than it could suck if it has to suck?

Yes….

(10) WHAT THE SCROLL SHOULD HAVE ADDED ABOUT H. BRUCE FRANKLIN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Pixel Scroll 5-23-24 item #9’s mini-obit of H. Bruce Franklin, while acknowledging him as “author of numerous books, essays, and exhibitions related to science fiction.” fails to cite what (to me at least) are the obvious suspects (titles) Future Perfect (an antho that I read decades ago; my memory burped the title up instantly when I saw the NYTimes obit a few weeks ago) and it looks like he also wrote a book about Heinlein, Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction, and, along with political/historical non-fiction, this one of interest no doubt to SJW credentials: The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America.

And thanks to Scott Edelman, here’s an unlocked copy of the New York Times obituary: “H. Bruce Franklin, Scholar Fired for His Antiwar Views, Is Dead at 90”.

(11) WORKING THROUGH LOSS. Sharon Lee writes about her experiences while grieving the death of her husband, Steve Miller, in “While one lives, both stand”. Here are the opening paragraphs.

Grief puts funny ideas into your head.

For instance, for awhile back in March, I was convinced that Steve had left me — walked out of our partnership and left no forwarding address. I couldn’t imagine why, and spent way too much time minutely reviewing our past, looking for my error.

Then I became convinced that we had gotten done at this house, and were moving on. As has been the case in previous moves, Steve had gone on ahead, leaving me to clean up these last few things before I joined him. This delusion is particularly pernicious because for those of us who speak Metaphor, it’s true. Only it’s not.

Anyhow, it’s been my goal for some while now to find or create for myself a place of gratitude for having been privileged to share so much time, love, and magic; for having had Steve in my life. While it’s certainly a very lonely, hard, and scary thing to no longer have him for back-up, for taking the lead, for producing surprising — and occasionally infuriating — insights — surely unrelenting misery was not the best lesson I could take from our life together.

So, I started looking for ways to achieve, at first, equilibrium. I didn’t expect to leap from misery to gratitude. I expected there to be a process, and backsliding, and all the things that attend the pursuit of any mighty goal.

Steve and I not only shared our mundane lives, but we shared an active and beguiling fantasy life. The worlds we built, the people who live there, the lessons, the philosophies — those also fed the richness of our partnership and informed our mundane lives…

(12) DOUG LEWIS (1955-2024). Thomas Kellogg, in a Centipede Press newsletter, paid tribute to bookseller and publisher Doug Lews, who died May 20.

Doug Lewis who with his wife Tomi, owned and operated the Little Bookshop of Horror/Roadkill Press in Arvada, Colorado and won a World Fantasy Award in the Nonprofessional category in the 1990s, died on May 20, 2024 of complications of diabetes.

Doug started their bookstore when he was unable to find a copy of Joe Lansdale’s The Night Runners to purchase locally. The Lewis’ store primarily featured horror, fantasy, science fiction and crime fiction. Soon they were sponsoring readings by Joe R. Lansdale, along with Edward Bryant, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Connie Willis, Nancy Collins, Norm Partridge, Steve Rasnic Tem, Melanie Tem and many others.

The Night Voices series of readings spawned a long friendship between Doug, Tomi and Ed Bryant. Ed was in many ways their mentor. Ed was the MC for the readings and his introductions were memorable by themselves. The readings spawned a publishing venture Roadkill Press. The initial idea was to publish chapbooks of the writers featured in readings. At that time chapbooks were a rarity. The concept was a quality item using high quality paper, with illustrations, signed by the writers that were incredibly affordable. The line of chapbooks was a big success. A collectible that was affordable was unusual in a time dominated by costly limited editions.

…It all came to a crashing end when Tomi became ill and was diagnosed with cancer. Although she fought bravely, she was gone in less than eight months. A farewell auto tour across the county to see all their friends was thwarted by the ravages of the chemotherapy. Doug was crushed by Tomi’s passing. Nothing mattered anymore. Tomi was the extrovert of the pair. With her gone, Doug fell into an abyss of despair that would last the rest of his life.

Adrift in that despair, his physical health deteriorated. He became a type 1 diabetic almost overnight. I remember at the time he told me that he wasn’t going to let diabetes run his life. Caring about nothing, he failed to take care of himself. The disease ultimately destroyed life.

My 30 year plus friendship with Doug spanned both his highs and his lows of his life. It as a tragedy that he couldn’t overcome the loss of Tomi. As with us all, he had his demons. Many friends reached out multiple times in the years after Tomi’s passing, only to be rebuffed or ignored. I like to think he avoid responding because it only deepened his sense of loss….

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

Born June 11, 1971 — P. Djeli Clark, 53.

By Paul Weimer. By day, he is a historian of slavery in history and popular culture. By night. P. Djèlí Clark is a ferocious new talent in science fiction and fantasy. It took me a bit to come across his work, a friend of mine practically pushed his novella, The Haunting of Tram Car 015 into my hands, telling me that this was going to be my jam. And an alternate historical late 19th century Egypt with magic, becoming a world power? Djinn, magic, spirits and a strong sense of place in this alternate Cairo? It most certainly was, and is.

His A Master of Djinn continues in that same world as the novella, and builds and extends and grows that world in a very satisfactory manner. Like the first novella, it builds and works with themes of colonialism, race and gender relations, and magical worldbuilding in exploring the consequences of “The magic returns” and making Egypt a powerhouse. I would so love to physically visit this alternate Cairo and photograph its wonders, but for the moment, can only hope for more books set in this world.

I have not yet read the copy of Ring Shout on my Kindle although, given his day job, it is probably the work of his thus far that is closest to his day job and his academic research interests. I am confident that it will be excellent, but it remains buried in Mount TBR. For now.

However, as part of my Hugo Reading for 2024, I read and enjoyed “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub”. It’s a clever little story that takes its worldbuilding as a matter of fact sort of approach to add Krakens, and merpeople, to a 19th century Britain not really equipped or ready to deal with the consequences of racism and colonialism and sexism.

As of the writing of this, I have started reading an ARC of his forthcoming work, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins. This story, unlike his others, is firmly set in a secondary world, and reminds me, as of this moment, of the secondary world fantasy of N K Jemisin, in particular the Dreamblood novels. The setting is an entrepot city, and indeed, the main character is one of the titular Dead Cat Tail Assassins. Shenanigans have already ensued. It’s a new and different mode for Clark, and I look forward to seeing how he continues with it.

(14) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a new routine
Tom Gauld pitches a doubleheader.

My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon pic.twitter.com/PiVTYG0aUc
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 9, 2024

My latest cartoon for @newscientist. pic.twitter.com/wdAAjGyQXW
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 10, 2024

(15) THE GAME’S AFOOT. Inverse’s Ryan Brittthinks “’Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’ Could be the Best Indy Adventure in 35 Years”.

…But for the most ideal Indy results, perhaps it’s still best if the entire adventure happens in the 1930s or 1940s, with Dr. Jones looking and sounding like he’s in between the events of the first three movies. And with the release of a new trailer for the upcoming Bethesda game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it seems the franchise is getting back to its roots in an unexpected medium.

Set in 1937, The Great Circle takes place right in between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade and pairs Indy with a new character named Gina Lombardi. As revealed in the new trailer, the primary mystery in this story is centered on various spiritual sites of great importance — from the Vatican to the Great Pyramids — that form a kind of invisible circle. A madman named Voss is after this power, and it’s up to Gina and Indy to stop him while they race to unlock the secrets of the circle.

Indy is voiced by Troy Baker, but you can barely tell this isn’t Harrison Ford uttering the lines. The mystical and religious overtones of the story also feel very aligned with the tone of The Last Crusade. In other words, this feels authentically Indy in a way that aspects of Dial of Destiny and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull didn’t.

(15) BAIT FOR YOUR CLICK. “’Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ Debuts Epic First Footage” – Variety has the reaction. (But no video!)

Warner Bros. Animation, New Line Cinema and Sola Entertainment previewed 20 minutes of its upcoming anime feature “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” receiving thunderous applause during the packed presentation on Tuesday at the Annecy Animation Festival.

Director Kenji Kamiyana said he was inspired by not just J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” books, but by the films of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who were confirmed as exec producers of the movie during the session.

The new story is set nearly 200 years before Bilbo Baggins comes into contact with the ring of power, and centers on the House of Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan (voiced by Brian Cox), with a focus on his daughter, the strong willed Princess Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise). In the clip, a dispute erupts during a council meeting, leaving Wulf, a ruthless Dunlending lord, seeking vengeance. Miranda Otto reprises her “Lord of the Rings” role as Éowyn, this time as the movie’s narrator….

(16) BYE, BOYS. “’The Boys’ Is Ending With Season 5 on Amazon” says The Hollywood Reporter.

The Boys will have their final fight in the near future.

Eric Kripke, the showrunner of Prime Video‘s super(anti)hero series, said on social media Tuesday that the show’s fifth season — which the streamer ordered in May — will be its last.

“Season 4 premiere week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the final season!” Kripke wrote on X. “Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax.”…

(17) NO SCRAPING UNLESS IT’S MY SCRAPING. Gizmodo tells us “Elon Musk Just Cancelled iPhones”.

Apple and OpenAI’s partnership is only a few hours old, and Elon Musk is already going to war over it. The owner of Tesla, X, SpaceX, and xAI said he would ban Apple devices at his companies if Apple integrated ChatGPT at the operating system level, which the companies are very much planning to do. Musk, a founder of OpenAI who is now suing the present owners, said ChatGPT integrated iPhones present an “unacceptable security violation.”

“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies,” said Musk in a tweet on Monday. “And visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” said Musk in a follow-up tweet…

(18) STEVE HEADROOM? “Brighton general election candidate aims to be UK’s first ‘AI MP’” reports the Guardian. Candidate Steve Endacott tells journalists how it’s supposed to work.

‘Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians’, so the saying goes.

This may be why a businessman in the south of England is proposing a novel solution: putting himself forward as a candidate in the UK general election as the first “AI MP”.

AI Steve is a nominee on the list of candidates for the 4 July general election in Brighton Pavilion, last held by the Green party’s Caroline Lucas, who is stepping down.

The man behind AI Steve is Steve Endacott, a self-described entrepreneur who lives in Rochdale, but “maintains a house in Brighton”.

Endacott, who is the chair of an artificial intelligence company called Neural Voice but “made his fortune” in the travel sector, claims he will attend parliament to vote on policies as guided by AI Steve’s feedback from his constituents.

He claims the AI representative would answer constituents’ concerns and questions using a rendition of Endacott’s voice and an avatar.’…

(19) SMALL BANG THEORY. “Webb telescope reveals asteroid collision in neighboring star system” at Hub.

Astronomers have captured what appears to be a snapshot of a massive collision of giant asteroids in Beta Pictoris, a neighboring star system known for its early age and tumultuous planet-forming activity.

The observations spotlight the volatile processes that shape star systems like our own, offering a unique glimpse into the primordial stages of planetary formation.

“Beta Pictoris is at an age when planet formation in the terrestrial planet zone is still ongoing through giant asteroid collisions, so what we could be seeing here is basically how rocky planets and other bodies are forming in real time,” said Christine Chen, a Johns Hopkins University astronomer who led the research.

The insights will be presented today at the 244th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin.

Chen’s team spotted significant changes in the energy signatures emitted by dust grains around Beta Pictoris by comparing new data from the James Webb Space Telescope with observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope from 2004 and 2005. With Webb’s detailed measurements, the team tracked the dust particles’ composition and size in the exact area previously analyzed by Spitzer.

Focusing on heat emitted by crystalline silicates—minerals commonly found around young stars as well as on Earth and other celestial bodies—the scientists found no traces of the particles previously seen in 2004–05. This suggests a cataclysmic collision occurred among asteroids and other objects about 20 years ago, pulverizing the bodies into fine dust particles smaller than pollen or powdered sugar, Chen said.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. PRINT Magazine praises “Design Army’s Out of This World Campaign for the Hong Kong Ballet”.

The Hong Kong Ballet is celebrating its 45th anniversary with a groundbreaking campaign in collaboration with Design Army and Dean Alexander Productions. The production brings the ethereal beauty of ballet to the masses, transforming it from a symbol of privilege to a universal cultural experience. This inventive campaign, inspired by Degas’ ballerina portraits, the Renaissance, and artistic hip-hop, redefines ballet in a uniquely Hong Kong context. From the witty “Tutu Academy” to sci-fi extraterrestrial scenes, the film captures the essence of dance as a universal language, connecting everyone, even aliens, to its unearthly magic. With vibrant settings ranging from university halls to iconic plazas, the campaign showcases the troupe’s artistry against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s cultural landmarks, making ballet accessible, relatable, and joyfully unconventional….

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

Pixel Scroll 6/1/24 If You Like My File And You Think I’m Pixely, Come On Baby Let Me Scroll

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) $UPPORT THE BID. The Worldcon Heritage Organization, which maintains several fixed exhibits to be shown at Worldcons, including a collection of past Hugo Awards, is putting together a bid in hopes of acquiring the first Hugo Award ever given when it goes to auction on June 7. They will also try to get the honorary one given to Hugo Gernsback in 1960, another lot in the same auction.

WHO President Kent Bloom said in a comment on File 770, “Our funds are limited, so if anyone bids against us we may not succeed. I don’t know how to set up a fund to collect donations, but anyone who wants to donate can send money to Worldcon Heritage Organization, c/o Kent Bloom, 1245 Allegheny Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919. If you want this considered as a contingent donation, please let us know and if we don’t succeed in acquiring the trophies we can return your contributions.” Bloom can be contacted at [email protected] or at kent.bloom (at) rialto.org

John Pomeranz followed with this advice: “And, as a reminder, let’s not publicize how much we’re giving. No need to tip off the other bidders how high WHA might be able to go.”

(2) POLAND’S FAN OF THE YEAR. Congratulations to Polish fan Marcin “Alqua” Klak who received the Śląkfa Award from Śląski Klub Fantastyki as the fan of the year.

(3) UNEXPECTED KAIJU. “Godzilla Minus One Makes a Surprise Stomp to Netflix and Digital” reports Gizmodo.

Godzilla Minus One was one of 2023’s best movies, if not the best, depending on who you ask. If you’re one of the folks who didn’t get the chance to see it in theaters, great news: it’s now on Netflix and available to own or rent digitally…

…If you weren’t aware, there was some confusion around the circumstances of Minus One’s arriving on streaming and physical formats. Due to a contract between Toho and Legendary, the movie had to be taken out of theaters once Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire came out. Presumably, that’s also why a physical 4K/Blu-rRay version hasn’t dropped in outside of Japan either. New Empire only just hit streaming in mid-May and is coming to physical formats on June 11, so it might be a while before folks get to snatch up Minus One to add onto their physical collections….

(4) WHO KNEW? At Physics World, Robert P. Crease says our Steven French knew! “Ursula Le Guin: the pioneering author we should thank for popularizing Schrödinger’s cat” at Physics World.

… But despite its current ubiquity, the fictitious animal only really entered wider public consciousness after the US science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin published a short story called “Schrödinger’s cat” exactly 50 years ago. Le Guin, who died in 2018 at the age of 88, was a widely admired writer, who produced more than 20 novels and over 100 short stories.

Schrödinger originally invented the cat image as a gag. If true believers in quantum mechanics are right that the microworld’s uncertainties are dispelled only when we observe it, Schrödinger felt, this must also sometimes happen in the macroworld – and that’s ridiculous. Writing in a paper published in 1935 in the German-language journal Naturwissenschaften (23 807), he presented his famous cat-in-a-box image to show why such a notion is foolish.

For a while, few paid attention. According to an “Ngram” search of Google Books carried out by Steven French, a philosopher of science at the University of Leeds in the UK, there were no citations of the phrase “Schrödinger’s cat” in the literature for almost 20 years. As French describes in his 2023 book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, the first reference appeared in a footnote to an essay by the philosopher Paul Feyerabend in the 1957 book Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics edited by Stephan Körner….

(5) SUMMER IS COMING. “George R.R. Martin reveals first look at his sci-fi short film The Summer Machine” at Winter Is Coming.

…The Summer Machine is a science fiction story and may be the first entry in an anthology. Martin is producing the movie, but not writing or directing it; both roles are filled by Michael Cassutt, with whom Martin worked on the 1985 Twilight Zone reboot. The short will star Lina Esco, Charles Martin Smith and Matt Frewer.

We don’t know many details about the plot, although in the image above you can clearly see that Martin is sitting in front of some kind of sci-fi doohicky….

FIRST LOOK! Famed fantasy writer George R.R. Martin has unveiled the first still from the set of ‘The Summer Machine,’ a short film that we’re told will be part of a new anthology series produced by Martin https://t.co/nlHp9tpZ4T pic.twitter.com/xRmLYM6E17
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 30, 2024

(6) GEORGE R.R. MARTIN COMING TO GLASGOW 2024. Blink and you’ll miss it, but in a Not a Blog post about yet another TV series based on his work (“Here’s Egg!”) George R.R. Martin said he’s going to this year’s Worldcon.

THE HEDGE KNIGHT will be a lot shorter than GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much different tone… but it’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe Ira Parker and his team are doing a great job. I hope to visit the shoot come July, when I swing by Belfast on my way to the worldcon in Glasgow.

(7) CENSORING SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT APPARENTLY FEARS TO TOUCH BOOK. “The Handmaid’s Tale Was Removed from An Idaho School Library. This Teen Handed A Copy to the Superintendent At Graduation” – People tells what happened then.

Annabelle Jenkins protested the removal of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel earlier in the school year

An Idaho high school graduate took book censorship into her own hands at her graduation ceremony earlier this month.

During the May 23 graduation ceremony for the Idaho Fine Arts Academy, Annabelle Jenkins handed West Ada School District superintendent Derek Bub a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book had been removed from the school district’s libraries in Dec. 2023.

According to the Idaho Statesman, the novel was one of 10 books, including Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen and Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas, to be removed from the school district. It’s administration concluded that the “graphic imagery contained within [the graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale] was not suitable for the West Ada School District student population,” per a statement from district representative Niki Scheppers.

“I just realized that I did not want to walk across that stage and get my diploma and shake the superintendent’s hand,” Jenkins told KTVB. “I just did not want to do that.”

In a TikTok Jenkins posted, which currently has over 24 million views, the graduate is seen shaking the hands of other faculty on stage during the ceremony. When she gets to Bub, Jenkins hands him a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale graphic novel instead.

“I got up there and I got the book out. I kind of showed it to the audience really quick,” she said. “He crossed his arms like this and he wouldn’t take it.” Jenkins placed the book at his feet before she walked off the stage….

(8) DOG’S BEST FRIEND. The New York Times’ Amy Nicholson tells why this is a “critic’s pick”: “‘Robot Dreams’ Review: A Friendship That Is Far From Mechanical”. (Link bypasses NYT paywall.)

Decades after Philip K. Dick asked if androids dreamed of electric sheep, we have an answer. This android — one of two nameless leads in the Oscar-nominated charmer “Robot Dreams” — envisions a small, lonely dog in his third-floor walk-up, microwaving a depressing dinner for one. Set in 1980s Manhattan, Pablo Berger’s all-ages, wordless wonder of a cartoon kicks into gear when the mutt assembles a self-aware, spaghetti-limbed robot companion ordered from an infomercial. You might be thinking that sentient artificial intelligence didn’t exist 40 years ago, and you’d be right. But dogs don’t rent apartments, either.

This fanciful vision of New York is populated by animals: sporty ducks, punk rock monkeys, buffalo mail carriers, penguins shouldering boomboxes, and a disproportionate number of llamas. Mechanical beings are sparse and some creatures consider them lower in status, a brutal development when our robot’s relationship with his dog begins to break down. But Berger isn’t interested in science fiction. He’s made a buddy film that’s as relatable as two friends bonding over slices of pizza (but the robot eats the plate, too)….

(9) ZACK NORMAN (1940-2024). Producer Zack Norman, who gained a kind of fame as the maker of a film referenced on Mystery Science Theater 3000, died April 28 at the age of 83. The New York Times obituary tells how he became a pop culture icon.

…A far more obscure film that Mr. Norman helped produce, “Chief Zabu” (1986), entered into pop-culture lore in an unusual way: by disappearing for three decades.

“Chief Zabu,” which Mr. Norman wrote, produced and directed with Neil Cohen, was another bargain, made on a shoestring budget of $200,000. Mr. Norman was also a star of the film: He played Sammy Brooks, a real estate mogul who, with his friend Ben Sydney (Allen Garfield), pursues both financial and political ambitions in a grandiose scheme to take over a fictitious Polynesian island.

The film fizzled in a preview and was never released. For 30 years it was buried, but not forgotten — at least not to fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the Generation X staple of the 1990s that featured a weary space traveler and his robot friends poking fun at bad B-movies on a journey through the cosmos.

On the show, any time a character in one of those achingly bad movies cracked a newspaper, Joel Hodgson, the original host, would wearily intone, “Hey, Zack Norman is Sammy in ‘Chief Zabu.’”

It was a knowing reference to an advertisement for the movie, featuring a stern photo of Mr. Norman, that he continued to run — stubbornly yet playfully — in Weekly Variety every Wednesday for nine years. Why? “Because it gave me great joy,” he said in a 2016 interview with The Sun Sentinel of South Florida….

Mr. Norman’s faith in “Chief Zabu” eventually paid off. He and Mr. Cohen released a new cut of the film in 2016 and then took it on tour, presenting it at comedy clubs. Even so, it took them decades to realize that the Variety ad had become a cultural artifact.

In a 2020 interview with the film website Skewed & Reviewed, Mr. Cohen said that neither of them had heard of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” until one afternoon in the mid-2010s when they were walking down a Los Angeles street and saw a man wearing a “Zack Norman as Sammy in Chief Zabu” T- shirt.

“We stopped the guy and said, ‘Dude, what is up with that?’” he recalled. “And you can imagine his reaction when he saw he was talking to Zack Norman, whose face was on his T-shirt.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

June 1, 1947 — Jonathan Pryce, 77. I’m reasonably sure that the first role I saw Jonathan Pryce in was the lead antagonist of Some Wicked Comes This Way. (Bradbury did a stellar job writing the screenplay, didn’t he?) He pulls off the carnival leader of Mr. Dark in suitably sinister manner.

Then there’s the matter of Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where we meet him executing a heroic officer played by Sting for his act of bravery because it’s demoralizing to soldiers and citizens just trying to lead as he says unexceptional lives.

(That is the Gilliam film I’ve watched the most followed by Time Bandits. Surely you’re not surprised?)

As media baron Eliot Carter is in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, he’s trying to cause war between the United Kingdom and China. Arrogant little prick he is here.

He’s in Pirates of the Caribbean seriesas Governor Weatherby Swann. I’ve only seen the first film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and I thought it was an interesting but not terribly great film.

He’s The Master in the Doctor Who special, Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, made specifically for the Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was the only BBC commissioned live-action Doctor Who production between the Who television movie and the launch of the present Who era starting with the “Rose” episode.

In Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, he got to play that character with Bill Paterson as Watson. The Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street urchins as the BBC press kits described them, is trying to find their missing members, while also trying to prevent Sherlock Holmes being convicted of murder. I’ll end this review with a photo of him in that role.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Close to Home has questionable priorities.
Speed Bump hears from a nineteenth-century bird.
The Flying McCoys hears complaints about a retired superhero.
Tom Gauld doubles down.

A recent cartoon for @newscientist. pic.twitter.com/6uUh6Uyw0o
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 26, 2024

(12) STARLINER LAUNCH SCRUBBED. “Boeing forced to call off its first launch with NASA astronauts once again” – NBC News has the story.

NASA and Boeing were forced once again to call off the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to lift off aboard the Starliner from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 12:25 p.m. ET. The flight to the International Space Station would have been the vehicle’s first with a crew.

The launch attempt was scrubbed with only 3 minutes and 50 seconds to go in the countdown — yet another setback for Boeing, which has already dealt with years of delays and budget overruns with its Starliner program.

Officials were attempting to try again the next day but announced Saturday evening that the flight was postponed “to give the team additional time to assess a ground support equipment issue,” according to NASA….

(13) SECOND LIFE. “Scavengers Reign, a sci-fi show like no other, now gets a second shot at life on Netflix” – Polygon has the good news.

The streaming era operates via a cold and opaque calculus. Many shows unceremoniously premiere with limited promotion, only to face swift cancellation with an equal lack of fanfare. With no real numbers and a few dodgy reports available to the public and creators (now a little less dodgy, thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike), a show’s fate can feel like a cosmic joke, with no rhyme or reason to why some soldier on and some never get the chance to find an audience. Scavengers Reign, the stunning animated series that debuted on Max last year, found its number was up when the streamer canceled it earlier this May. However, in a rare moment of clarity, there is a way forward for the show: It just has to be a hit starting Friday, when it premieres on Netflix.

Its new summer home (Scavengers Reign is still available to stream on Max) is reportedly considering a season 2 renewal pending the show’s Netflix debut, though what a favorable run looks like isn’t terribly clear. Mostly, this is just an excuse to exercise a rare bit of streaming-era agency: Go check out Scavengers Reign, one of the very best shows of last year, and the rare series that earns the superlative of “like nothing else on television” simply by virtue of its stunning visual design.

Taking visual cues from European sci-fi artists like Moebius and Simon Roy, Scavengers Reign chronicles the aftermath of a disaster aboard the spacecraft Demeter, following a handful of survivors that escaped to the alien world of Vesta Minor, a hauntingly beautiful and hostile planet….

(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER. “’3 Body Problem’ To Run For 3 Seasons On Netflix” reports Deadline.

3 Body Problem creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo on Friday cleared up the confusion over the Netflix sci-fi drama’s recent renewal, confirming that it will produce two more seasons.

At the streamer’s upfront presentation last month, the streamer announced that 3 Body Problem has been picked up for “all-new episodes”, with Benioff, Weiss and Woo assuring fans that they will “get to tell this story through to its epic conclusion.”

No number of episodes or seasons were revealed, creating a confusion and triggering wild speculation. Benioff, Weiss and Woo subsequently indicated to THR that the pickup was for “seasons” but have not provided specifics until today when they confirmed that there will be Seasons 2 and 3 during a 3 Body Problem Television Academy panel at the Netflix FYSEE space….

(15) SMOKE BUT NO MIRRORS? [Item by Steven French.] So, maybe not built by aliens ….? “Are dusty quasars masquerading as Dyson sphere candidates?” asks Physics World.

Seven candidate Dyson spheres found from their excess infrared radiation could be a case of mistaken identity, with evidence for dusty background galaxies spotted close to three of them.

The seven candidates were discovered by Project Hephaistos, which is coordinated by astronomers at Uppsala University in Sweden and Penn State University in the US.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical construct: a swarm of energy collectors capturing all of a star’s radiant energy to provide huge amounts of power for its builders. As these energy collectors – basically huge arrays of solar panels – absorb sunlight, they must emit waste heat as infrared radiation to avoid overheating. While a complete Dyson swarm would hide a star from view, this waste heat would still be detectable.

The caveat is that to build a complete Dyson swarm, a lot of raw material is required. In his 1960 paper describing the concept, Freeman Dyson calculated that dismantling a gas giant planet like Jupiter should do the trick.

Given that this is easier said than done, Project Hephaistos has been looking for incomplete Dyson swarms “that do not block all starlight, but a fraction of it,” says Matías Suazo of Uppsala University, who is leading the project….

(16) CHANG’E-6 LANDS ON MOON. “China’s Chang’e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon” – CNN puts the news in perspective.

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon.

The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced.

China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time.

The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.

If all goes as planned, the mission — which began on May 3 and is expected to last 53 days — could be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power.

The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and building a research base at its south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.

Sunday’s landing comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. You’re just in time (!) for the “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark Pitch Meeting” with Ryan George. Does the proposed story have any holes? Shut up, he explained.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 4/9/24 Ebenezer Scroll! Tonight You Will Be Visited By Five Pixels (Three, My Lord!)

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) IMAGINE THERE’S NO MUSIC. “59 Years Later, The Oldest Sci-Fi Show Ever Is Fixing A Very Big Beatles Problem” — Inverse tries to guess how Russell T. Davis will do it in a Fab Four-themed Doctor Who episode — because he can’t afford the rights to the real thing.

…In the upcoming relaunched Doctor Who Season 1 (2024), the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) will travel to the 1960s in the forthcoming episode “The Devil’s Chord,” and, at some point, cross paths with the Beatles….

… As Russell T. Davies says in the new Empire interview: “‘How would you do a Beatles episode without Beatles music?” Previous movies about the Beatles have faced similar problems. The 1994 biopic Backbeat — which chronicles the Beatles’ early days in Hamburg — features no actual Beatles music. Meanwhile, the 1979 movie Birth of the Beatles (helmed by Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand!) used cover versions of most Beatles songs to avoid copyright issues of the time.

But, for Davies and Doctor Who, the copyright law problem became “the entire plot.” As Davies says, “I knew instantly you can never play Beatles songs on screen because the copyright is too expensive… That’s where the idea came from — copyright law!”

Could this mean the Doctor and Ruby will inspire alternate Beatles songs? Could the Beatles be getting by with a little help from their time-traveler friends? We don’t know the exact plot of “The Devil’s Chord,” but there’s a good bet that the Doctor will almost certainly inspire a classic Beatles song. We’ll just have to read between the lines to figure out which one.

(2) CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FINALISTS. The Carol Shields Prize shortlist has been revealed. The award recognizes “creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States”.

One of the finalists is a work of genre interest.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

In this eco-thriller, a guerilla gardening collective named ‘Birnam Wood’ (after Macbeth) meets an American billionaire. In his review for WHYY’s Fresh Air, John Powers writes, “this New Zealand-set book is a witty literary thriller about the collision between eco-idealism and staggering wealth.”

The other shortlisted books are:

Daughter by Claudia Dey
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
A History of Burning by Janika Oza
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

The winner gets $150,000 and a residency with Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland, Canada. Each of the four runner-ups will get $12,500. The prize-winner will be announced May 13.

(3) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST. Based on the descriptions of the works at the website, there are no books of genre interest among the 6 that made the International Booker Prize 2024 shortlist today.

(4) 2023’S MOST-CHALLENGED BOOKS. From the American Library Association: “ALA Releases Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023”. Publishers Weekly has the list. Based on the descriptions, none are sff works.

The Most Challenged Books of 2023

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, for LGBTQIA+, and sexually explicit content.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, for LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content.
This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, for LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, for LGBTQIA+, and sexually explicit content, rape, drugs, profanity.
Flamer by Mike Curato, for LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, for rape, incest, sexually explicit and EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) content.
(Tie) Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, for LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content.
(Tie) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, for sexually explicit content, profanity.
Let’s Talk About It by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan, for LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content.
Sold by Patricia McCormick, for sexually explicit content, rape.

(5) IN-BODY EXPERIENCES. Logan Dreher discusses “Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, and the Power of Pleasure” at Reactor.

…I’ve been especially interested in revisiting three of her strangest works—her vampire novel Fledging; “Bloodchild,”a short story about a colony of humans living alongside an insectoid race of aliens; and the Xenogenesis trilogy, which explores human’s post-apocalypse relationship with a bioengineering race of extraterrestrials called the Oankali. Across these stories, I see a recurring fascination with the reality of our bodies, our needs and frailties, and the way our bodily desires inextricably link us to each other.

In each of these stories, humans are less powerful than their nonhuman counterparts, whether that’s the tentacled, pheromone-exuding Oankali in Xenogenesis or the three-meter long, centipede-like Tlic in “Bloodchild.” But for all of their physical superiority, the nonhuman characters are desperately reliant on their relationships with humans. In Xenogenesis, the Oankali can exude chemicals that drug humans with a thought and heal with a touch. They manipulate their own genetic makeup and easily heal their own bullet wounds. Yet they depend on their human relationships in order to live. Oankali adolescents go into metamorphosis where they are comatose—profoundly helpless—and rely on their human partners to care for them. In Imago, the final book in the trilogy, a young Oankali begins to physically dissolve, unable to survive because it does not have human companions to ground it in a stable form. As the narrator notes, “We called our need for contact with others and our need for mates hunger. One who could hunger could starve.”….

(6) AFROANIMATION AWARDS NEWS. “AfroAnimation Summit Honors Kemp Powers, Camille Eden, Bruce Smith & Jermaine Turner” – Animation Magazine introduces these icons and other awards finalists.

AfroAnimation, the largest annual event featuring diverse and BIPOC animators and creators, announced today the honorees for the first AfroAnimation Summit Icon Awards…

…Icon Award honoree Kemp Powers, director of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, will headline the summit’s kick-off panel April 10, ‘Developing Original Stories and the Art of Diverse Storytelling.’ Pioneer Award honoree Camille Eden, Vice President of Recruitment, Talent Development & Outreach at Nickelodeon, will speak on the April 11 panel, ‘Unveiling the Untold Narratives of Women in Entertainment: Triumphs, Challenges, & Journeys.’

In addition, Bruce Smith, creator and executive producer of Disney+’s The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, and Jermaine Turner, Director of Adult Genre Animation for Netflix, will be honored as industry pioneers at the AfroAnimation Icon Awards….

FRWD Awards Semifinalists. (Celebrates the art of diverse storytelling in the film, new media, and streaming platform industries.)

Best Series: Castevania, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Young Love, Scavengers Reign
Best Animation Feature: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Elemental, The Boy and the Heron, Craig Before the Creek
Best International Series: Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, Iwájú, Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes, Supa Team 4
Best Animation Director: Kemp Powers (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)

(7) M. JOHN HARRISON MEMOIR. Saga Press will publish author M. John Harrison’s anti-memoir Wish I Was Here on September 3, 2024.

What is an “anti-memoir”? M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, and magical and literary realism. Yet in WISH I WAS HERE, he asks, ‘Is there even an M. John Harrison and if so, where do we find him?’ This is the question the author asks in this memoir-as-mystery, turning for clues to forty years of notebooking: ‘A note or it never happened. A note or you never looked.’

Are these notebooks records of failed presence? How do they shine a light on a childhood in the industrial Midlands, a portrait of a young artist in counterculture London, on an adulthood of restless escape into hill and moorland landscapes? And do they tell us anything about the writing of books, each one so different from the last that it might have been written by another version of the author?

With aphoristic daring and laconic wit, this anti-memoir will fascinate and delight. It confirms M. John Harrison still further in his status as the most original British writer of his generation.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 9, 1937 — Marty Krofft. (Died 2023.)

H.R.Pufnstuf.
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf.
Can’t do a little, ‘cause he can’t do enough

Who here didn’t grow up watching some of the shows created by the Krofft brothers? Well, this is the day that Marty Krofft was born, so I get to talk about their work. So let’s get started.

Their very first work was designing the puppets and sets for Banana Splits, a rock band composed of four animal characters for Hanna-Barbera. To get a look at them, here’s the open and closing theme from the show.

After working for Hanna-Barbera, they went independent with the beloved H. R. Pufnstuf, their first live-action, life sized puppet series. It ran a lot shorter than I thought lasting only from September to December of ‘69. Like everything of theirs, it ended up in heavy, endless syndication.

Next was The Bugaloos. This was a musical group, very much in keeping with the tone with Banana Splits. It was four British teenagers wearing insect outfits, constantly beset by the evil machinations of the Benita Bizarre. Here’s the opening song, “Gna Gna Gna Gna Gna” courtesy of Krofft Pictures.

Lidsville, their next show lasted but seventeen episodes, and I’ve no idea if the short longevity of their series, all of them, was planned or due to poor ratings. This show had two types of characters: conventional actors in makeup taped alongside performers in full mascot costumes. It was mostly stop motion in its filming.

Opening credits are here. The opening was produced at Six Flags Over Texas. The show was itself shot at Paramount Pictures film studio in Los Angeles.

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters lasted two seasons though it was aired over three years, the second delayed because a fire at the beginning of season two which destroyed everything. It’s about two brothers who discover a friendly young sea monster named Sigmund who refuses to frighten people. Poor Sigmund. This time you get a full episode as that is all Krofft Pictures had up, “Frankenstein Drops In”.

There’s two more series I want to note.

The first is Land of the Lost which was created though uncredited in the series by David Gerrold. So anyone know why that was? It was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft who co-developed the series with Allan Foshko. Lots of genre tropes here. A family lost in a land with dinosaurs and reptile men? It was popular enough that it lasted three seasons. And here’s the opening and closing credits for season three.

The very last pick by me is Electra Woman and Dyna Girl which lasted but sixteen episodes of twelve minutes. Despite the ElectraEnemies, their foes here being way over the top, this is SF though admittedly on the pulp end of things.

So they stayed active including doing rebooted versions of new versions of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

Marty Krofft passed on from kidney failure on November 25, 2023, at the age of eighty six.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Wallace the Brave demonstrates that not everyone appreciates interesting facts.

(10) VASTER THAN EMPIRES, AND MORE EXPENSIVE. Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis might be sff – which might matter more if the film can make it into theaters. Variety says it will premiere at Cannes. However, The Hollywood Reporter learned studios are not lining up to accept the film’s high-dollar marketing risk: “’Megalopolis’: Francis Ford Coppola’s Challenges in Distribution”.

…The project, which Coppola first began writing in 1983, cost a reported $120 million to make — funded in part by the sale of a significant portion of his wine empire (the 2021 deal was reportedly worth over $500 million). Clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes, the film follows the rebuilding of a metropolis after its accidental destruction, with two competing visions — one from an idealist architect (Adam Driver), the other from its pragmatist mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) — clashing in the process. References to ancient Rome — including Caesar haircuts on the men — abound…

… One source tells THR that Coppola assumed he would make a deal very quickly, and that a studio would happily commit to a massive P&A (prints and advertising, including all marketing) spend in the vicinity of $40 million domestically, and $80 million to $100 million globally.

That kind of big-stakes rollout would make Megalopolis a better fit for a studio-backed specialty label like the Disney-owned Searchlight or the Universal-owned Focus. But Universal and Focus have already tapped out of the bidding, sources tell THR….

(11) THANKS FOR YOUR GIZZARD. James Davis Nicoll comments on “Five Science Fiction Stories About Involuntary Organ Donation” at Reactor.

… Why should some teenager enjoy perfect skin, a pain-free back, and functional joints when persons of my age could make much better use of these body parts? Yet such are the politically correct times in which we live that simply proposing, never mind implementing, mandatory organ¹ donations is considered somehow controversial.

Science fiction can see past the squeamishness of short-term social fashions to the glorious world we might have if we were willing to apply technology in a socially responsible—which is to say, one that benefits the people in charge—manner. Consider these five classic tales….

One of the selections is –

The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson (1964)

…Reefs features an intriguing deep space ecology in no way inhibited by plausible science. The use of political prisoners as involuntary organ donors is much more plausible….

(12) SPACE COWBOYS READINGS. Space Cowboy Books will host an online Flash Science Fiction Night on April 23 with Howard V. Hendrix, Ai Jiang, and Hailey Piper. These short science fiction readings (1000 words or less) are great way to learn about new authors from around the world. Starts at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Lasts around half an hour. Register for free at Eventbrite.

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “They Came From Outer Space. Now, They’re Going Into Hiding.” So says the New York Times.

If you’re looking for meteorites, here’s a tip: Go south. All the way south. And do it soon.

In some parts of Antarctica, there’s a good chance that what looks like a regular old rock could actually be a chunk of an asteroid, the moon, or even Mars. Roughly 60 percent of all known meteorites have been collected there.

But scientific sleuthing for such extraterrestrial material, which can shed light on how the solar system formed billions of years ago, will probably get more difficult in Antarctica in the coming decades. That’s because, as temperatures rise, thousands of meteorites will sink into the continent’s ice and disappear from sight every year, according to a new study published on Monday.

Antarctica’s meteorite largess isn’t because more extraterrestrial stuff is falling there, Cari Corrigan, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution and a curator of the National Museum of Natural History’s meteorite collection, said.

Rather, meteorites simply tend to be more visible on the Antarctic ice sheet than they would be, say, in your backyard. “Your eye can pick out a dark rock on a white surface super easily,” said Dr. Corrigan, who was not involved in the new research….

(14) ON THE JOB. Here’s the trailer for “Monsters at Work: Season 2” with Ben Feldman, Billy Crystal, and John Goodman. The season premiered April 5 on Disney Channel, and on May 5 comes to Disney+.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] For the small Venn overlap who know both references: “Leslie Nielsen in Star Wars”.

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Kathy Sullivan, Dann, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 4/8/24 Everyone I Know Is A Hoopy Scroll, Who Know Where Their Pixel Is

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ANGRY ROBOT BRINGS ON ECLIPSE OF STORYWISE. [Item by Anne Marble.] Angry Robot Books announced a one-week open submissions period that begins April 22, and several posts down in their thread they also said they would be using a submissions portal named Storywise to help them sort through their submissions. In their image, they explain a little more and point out that it’s not generative AI.

Angry Robot provided more information about Storywise here: “Storywise and Open Submissions FAQ’s “ [Internet Archive copy]. It included information on how authors can opt out of Storywise being used in their submission.

For obvious reasons, people are worried. People are pointing out that the Storywise platform can have biases. (And because it’s software, you can’t see those biases.) While it’s great that it’s not generative AI, does that mean writers can still trust it? For example, how do authors known what Storywise will do with their submissions? Others think its fine because it’s not generative AI — it’s just AI being used as a tool. Some have pointed out that slush readers are often unpaid, so that this is not taking away jobs. (But does that apply to slush readers working for book publishers?!)

Here is a quote-tweet by Vajra Chandrasekera with lots of information about Storywise. (Thread starts on X.com here.)

Angry Robot subsequently removed the posts to social media about their open submissions, and walked back the announcement with respect to Storywise, saying they will resume using their inbox system.

Editor’s note: Adrian Moher has a good roundup about the controversy at Astrolabe Digest: 040824. (Moher provided the link in his social media.)

(2) ON THE WAY TO THE CENTERLINE. Rich Lynch snapped this photo of the view from Interstate 87, in the middle of Adirondack Park while on his way to witness today’s eclipse. (Click for larger image to read sign).

No pictures of the event itself, though. “I don’t have any eclipse photos on my iPhone.” But Rich says, “It very much did exceed my expectations, even with the sun having to burn its way through a thin cloud layer.”

(3) STOKERCON 2024 ADDS GOH. Rob Savage was announced today as StokerCon 2024’s fifth Guest of Honor.

Rob Savage initially gained attention at the age of 19 when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited the low-budget romantic drama film Strings (2012), he later became more widely known for his work in horror films and has since co-written and directed lockdown horror hit Host (2020), co-written and directed Dashcam (2021), and directed Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman (2023).

The con also signal-boosted HWA’s Librarian’s Day.

This year’s Librarian’s Day on Friday, May 31, 2024, once again offers fantastic programming featuring the conference’s guest authors on timely topics and more. Librarian’s Day ticket holders ($60) will have access to the Dealers Room and other areas of the full conference throughout the day.

(4) DETROIT FURRY CON VICTIMIZED AGAIN. “Motor City Furry Con evacuated for second straight year” reports Audacy.

For a second straight year Motor City Furry Con attendees were forced to be evacuated from their hotel due to a threat.

The nature of the threat was not clear, but officials with the convention confirmed Sunday the Ann Arbor Marriott Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest in Ypsilanti was evacuated around 9 a.m.

The “all clear” was given around 12:30 p.m. and the final day of convention activities resumed.

Sunday’s evacuation comes a year after attendees were evacuated from the same hotel due to an emailed bomb threat. Ultimately, there were no injuries or any explosives found last March.

The Motor City Furry Con is a convention for people who “appreciate the anthropomorphic lifestyle,” according to a report from The Detroit Free Press.

The Detroit Free Press article also noted, “Event attendee Scoops took to social media to celebrate the second year of being an evacuee.”

Bomb threat at #MCFC2024 2 years in a row, lets gooooo!!! pic.twitter.com/qzk0SNyICt
— Scoops! plushieyeen.bsky.social (@SpoonsScoops) April 7, 2024

(5) SLOWLY WE TURNED, STEP BY STEP. “Caeciliusinhorto” has written an impressive perspective piece synthesizing all the news items that comprise “The 2023 Hugo Awards fuckup” for Reddit’s r/HobbyDrama.

… After much discussion, the general consensus seemed to coalesce around a combination of two or three explanations: firstly, active censorship by the Hugo administrators, possibly due to pressure from the Chinese government (national or local); secondly, incompetence; and perhaps thirdly, weird nominator behaviour (possibly including organised voting blocs). For a while things stalled there: the data was obviously wrong, the most plausible explanation seemed to be some combination of cock-up and conspiracy, and there was no prospect of anyone finding out anything more.

And then we found out more….

(6) SURE. MAYBE. DUNNO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Nautilus asked six sff writers “Does Science Fiction Shape the Future?”.

Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic about hackers and computer viruses set in an Orwellian Los Angeles. Jeff Bezos cites Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, which unreel in an utopian society of humanoids and artificial intelligences, often orchestrated by “Minds,” a powerful AI. Elon Musk named three of SpaceX’s landing drones after starships from Banks’ books, a tribute to the role they played in turning his eyes to the stars.

Part of this makes sense. Science fiction widens the frontiers of our aspirations. It introduces us to new technologies that could shape the world, and new ideas and political systems that could organize it. It’s difficult to be an architect of the future without a pioneer’s vision of what that future might look like. For many, science fiction blasts that vision open.

Yet these tech titans seem to skip over the allegories at the heart of their favorite sci-fi books. Musk has tweeted, “If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks.” Yet in Banks’ post-scarcity utopia, billionaires and their colossal influence are banished to the most backward corners of the galaxy.

Recently, I interviewed six of today’s foremost science-fiction authors. I asked them to weigh in on how much impact they think science fiction has had, or can have, on society and the future….

The interview subjects are N.K. Jemisin, Andy Weir, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Brin, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Here’s a quote from Stross:

Charles Stross: Yes, the entire current AI bubble is exactly that. The whole idea of AI has been turned into the centerpiece of a secular apocalyptic religion in which we can create superhumanly intelligent slaves that will solve all our knottily human intellectual problems, then work out how to liberate our pure soul-stuff from these clumsy rotting meatbags and upload us into a virtual heaven. And right now, some of the biggest tech companies out there are run by zealots who believe this stuff, even though we have no clear understanding of the mechanisms underlying consciousness. It’s an unsupported mass of speculation, but it’s threatening to derail efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and mitigate the climate crisis by encouraging vast energy expenditure.

(7) MONSTER BOX OFFICE. Godzilla x Kong rang the registers loudly last weekend reports Variety.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” dominated the domestic box office again, looming large over newcomers “Monkey Man” and “The First Omen.”

Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s monster tentpole added $31.7 million from 3,948 theaters in its second weekend of release. Ticket sales dropped a standard (for a tentpole of its size and scale) 60% from its mighty $80 million debut and stand at $132 million domestically and $361 million globally.

First-time director Dev Patel’s action thriller “Monkey Man” nabbed second place with $10.1 million from 3,029 venues, while Disney and 20th Century’s supernatural prequel “The First Omen” trailed at the No. 4 spot with a muted $8.4 million from 3,375 locations….

(8) PEAK TELEVISION. “Twin Peaks’ Agent Cooper: How TV’s strangest detective was born” – BBC went right to the source.

… Writer Mark Frost told the BBC’s Late Show that part of the inspiration behind the character was the show’s co-creator and director David Lynch.

“I tried to base that character on David to some extent,” said Frost. “A lot of his quirkiness and attention to detail, which are things that David has in great abundance, sort of came to the surface with that character. I guess his interest in people’s obsessions, and characters who are obsessed with something, are pretty common with other things he’s done.” …

(9) SMALL BUSINESS. And what is David Lynch working on today? “David Lynch Still Wants To Make Animated Movie ‘Snootworld’: Interview” at Deadline. Netflix said no – maybe someone else will say yes.

…“I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots but I’d do these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge,” Lynch told us in a rare interview. “I got together with Caroline and we worked on a script. Just recently I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months but they rejected it.”

Lynch was philosophical about the reasons for that decision: “Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes. Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.”

Thompson described the storyline to us as “wackadoo”: “It takes my breath away how wacky it is. The Snoots are these tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at aged eight at which time they get tinier and they’re sent away for a year so they are protected. The world goes into chaos when the Snoot hero of the story disappears into the carpet and his family can’t find him and he enters a crazy, magnificent world”….

(10) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? “Star Trek Discovery’s Doug Jones Reveals How He Said Goodbye to Saru (And It Involves Whitney Houston)” – Comicbook.com listens in.

Star Trek: Discovery‘s long-awaited fifth season finally debuted this week on Paramount+, and it marks the beginning of the end for the series. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with some of the show’s cast, and they opened up about saying goodbye to their characters in the final season. Doug Jones (Saru) revealed how he said farewell to the character he began playing in 2017, and it involves an iconic song…

“Oh yeah,” Jones said when asked if he was able to keep any part of Saru after the show finished filming. “I wasn’t gonna let that go. Yeah. My final time taking Saru off, I did not cut him up and throw him across the room at all,” he added, referencing the famous story of René Auberjonois throwing his Odo mask at the showrunner at the end of Deep Space Nine. “I held him on my hand and we were playing a Whitney Houston song and I sang ‘I Will Always Love You’ to him and somebody was recording it. So I hope that’s out there somewhere.”…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 8, 1974 — Nnedi Okorafor, 50. Tonight we have Nnedi Okorafor, a truly phenomenal writer.

She’s Nigerian, and has coined two words to describe her literary focus, Africanfuturism, and Africanjujuism. The latter word identifies the Afrocentric subgenre of fantasy fiction that draws on African spiritualities and cosmologies. Cool.

Let’s start with some of her work as comic book writer. The LaGuardia series that she wrote for was published by Berger Books. The collection won a Graphic Story Hugo Award at ConZealand, and her Black Panther: Long Live the King was nominated at Dublin 2019. She did other work in the Panther universe as well — Shuri in which Black Panther is missing and she has to find him (great story), Wakanda Forever and Shuri: Wakanda Forever

I started there as I love her writing in this medium. Now let me pick my favorite novellas and novels by her.

The Binti trilogy is an extraordinary feat of writing and my favorite reading experience by her. The “Binti” novella which leads it off won a Hugo at MidAmeriCon II. Then came the “Binti: Home” novella which was nominatedfor a Hugo at Worldcon 76 and the final “Binti: The Night Masquerade” novella to date which was nominatedfor a Hugo at Dublin 2019.

Lagoon is a deep dive in Nigerian mythology including Legba in the forefront here, in what is a SF novel as aliens and humans come together to form a new postcapitalist Nigeria. Neat concept well executed, characters are fascinating and the story is done well.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Distracted Dino brings us “ADHDinos… in space!”.

ADHDinos… in space! pic.twitter.com/qtyTPRxMfy
— (The Book is Out!!!) Distracted Dino (@ADHDinos) April 7, 2024

(13) IT COULDN’T HURT. “Fallout Moves To California For Season 2 With Big Tax Credit Award” – Deadline pencils in the numbers.

Just days before its debut, Fallout looks to be assured a second season thanks to a $25 million tax credit from California.

Officially, Amazon has not said yet that the Prime Video series is coming back, but, with some hints from executive producers Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan recently, it is pretty clear the money is doing the talking here. Receiving one of the largest allocations ever from the program for a relocating series, the LA-set post-apocalyptic drama is among a dozen shows awarded $152 million in incentives.

Primetime prequel NCIS: Origins, the Noah Wyle starring The Pitt, plus the Ryan Murphy executive produced Dr. Odyssey starring Joshua Jackson, and Grotesquerie starring Emmy winner Niecy Nash also were awarded credits through the California Film Commission run $330 million annual program – as you can see below….

… Of course, being awarded the tax credits, even big bucks like what Fallout has reaped, is no guarantee a project will go forward. The allocations are conditional on certain timelines being met, and a number of films and shows, like Season 2 of Amazon’s spy saga Citadel, have dropped out of the program after getting a green light….

(14) FILM CENSORSHIP. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Though not SF in itself, this half-hour radio programme, Screenshot, will be of interest to anyone over here in Brit Cit who are fans of fantastic films. It explains how Britain ranks its films for age suitability. Those in the rebel colonies are not ignored as there is a section comparing Britain’s system with that in the US. It seems we get a better deal over here. Meanwhile, along the way Kim Newman (co-master of ceremonies at the 2005 Hugo ceremony) gets a name check.

As the British Board of Film Classification publishes its new guidelines, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode delve into the long, chequered history of film censorship and classification in the UK.

Mark speaks to BBFC President (and original Strictly Come Dancing winner) Natasha Kaplinsky about her role, and about her reaction to the new guidelines. And he discusses the Board’s controversial history, and some of its most notorious decisions, with ex-BBFC Head of Compliance Craig Lapper.

Ellen talks to director Prano Bailey-Bond about her debut film Censor, which was inspired by the ‘video nasty’ moral panic of the 1980s. And pop culture critic Kayleigh Donaldson talks her through some of the differences between the BBFC and its US equivalent, the MPA Ratings Board.

Half hour prog here: BBC Radio 4 – Screenshot, “Censorship”.

(15) THE ELEPHANT NOT IN THE ROOM. “US company hoping to bring back the dodo and the mammoth – but here’s why it won’t be like Jurassic Park” explains Sky News.

… “We’ve got all the technology we need,” says Ben Lamm, chief executive of the firm, based in Dallas, Texas.

“It is just a focus of time and funding. But we are 100% confident [we can bring back] the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, and the mammoth.”

The science behind the project is simple: Work out the genes that make an extinct animal what it is, and then replicate those genes using the DNA of a close existing relative….

… So after around 4,000 years of extinction, when could we see the return of the mighty mammoth – a creature that fell victim to human hunting and the changing conditions brought about by the end of the last Ice Age.

“We are well into the editing phase,” says Mr Lamm.

“We don’t have mammoths yet, but we still feel very good about 2028.”…

(16) STAND BY FOR MANIACAL LAUGHTER. “Animaniacs in Concert” will be presented at Pepperdine in Malibu on April 19. Buy tickets at the link. Learn more about the show itself at their website: “Animaniacs – IN CONCERT”.

Join the leading voice cast of Animaniacs—the iconic animated Warner Bros. series created and produced by Steven Spielberg—for a “zany, animany and totally insaney” evening as they perform the world-famous songs backed by projections from the beloved cartoon TV series. The live show celebrates the creative inspiration behind the songs with lots of audience interaction and never-before-told behind-the-scenes insider stories shared by the show’s original Emmy-Winning composer Randy Rogel and iconic voice actors like Rob Paulsen (Yakko) and Maurice LaMarche (The Brain) to some of the most unforgettable characters in the history of animation. Special guest Nancy Cartwright joins for this performance. Nancy, of course, is Bart Simpson, a lead character in a “globally known property,” as well as Mindy in Animaniacs, from “Mindy and Buttons.”

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Warp Zone’s video “If the Star Wars ‘Cantina Song’ Had Lyrics” was first posted six years ago – but it is news to me! (Maybe you, too?)

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Lise Andreasen, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Igvar.]

Pixel Scroll 3/19/24 Ocean’s Elevenses

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN COLLECTION AUCTION RESULTS. March 15 was “The Day Neil Gaiman Swapped His Original Comic Art, Comic Books and Collectibles for More Than $1 Million”.

[He offered] 125 prized pieces from his collection — everything from original comic artwork to signed books, a Coraline puppet used in the film to limited-edition sculptures, handmade Christmas stories given as gifts, to the awards he received. It was a day well spent: The completely sold-out Neil Gaiman Collection Comics & Comic Art Signature ^® Auction, which drew more than 1,200 bidders worldwide, realized $1,029,392.

A portion of the auction’s proceeds will benefit The Hero Initiative, which provides medical and monetary assistance to veteran comics creators, writers and artists needing a helping hand. Some proceeds will also go to the Authors League Fund, which assists professional authors, journalists, critics, poets and dramatists in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income or other misfortunes.

Gaiman will also share some of the proceeds with the artists who made his imagination tangible enough to put on Bristol board.

“I love the idea of benefitting charities that look after authors who’ve fallen on hard times, that look after the artists and writers and creators of comics who’ve had hard times,” Gaiman told the packed auction gallery Thursday morning. “And I like the idea of normalizing the idea that we who do have art we bought for $50 a page or $100 a page that now sells for tens of thousands of dollars a page get into the idea of giving something back to the artists who originally drew it. That seems to me an important thing to do.”

This single page of art alone went for $132,000: “Dave Gibbons and John Higgins Watchmen #7 Story Page 16 Original Art”.

… Not far behind was the only piece of Sandman-related artwork Gaiman had ever purchased: Jean Giraud’s 1994 painting of Death of the Endless, sister of the titular Sandman whose epic tale spans the universe’s origin through the present day. This painting by the man called Moebius sparked a bidding war that drove its final price to $96,000. That was also the amount realized for John Totleben’s cover of Miracleman No. 16, the last issue written by Moore before Gaiman took the reins.

One of the auction’s most sought-after, fought-over pieces was among its smallest: an on-screen, camera-used puppet of Coraline in her orange polka-dot pajamas accompanied by her ever-present companion, The Cat — “fully posable actors,” as Gaiman explained. He told the audience that Coraline “has been in my bedroom in a glass case since 2009, and I had more qualms about letting her go than I did anything else in this entire auction. She’s there. She smiles at me. She’s special.”

It was so special that a bidding war broke out over Coraline, who eventually went to a new home for $72,000….

(2) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on March 13, 2024 where Moses Ose Utomi and Richard Butner read.

(3) EVIDENCE THAT SCHOOL TOSSED BOOKS WHICH WERE OBJECTED TO BY STAFF OR PARENTS. “Publishers Issue Letter to NYC DOE Over Discarded Books” – Publishers Weekly has details.

Candlewick Press, Charlesbridge Press, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, and the organization Authors Against Book Bans have issued a letter to the New York City Department of Education over reports that hundreds of books were discarded by a Staten Island elementary school on ideological grounds.

On March 11, Gothamist reported that hundreds of new books featuring characters of color and LGBTQ themes were found near the garbage at PS 55. Some of the books, pictured in the report, were marked by sticky notes that marked certain titles “not approved,” with reasons such as “Boy questions gender,” “teenage girls having a crush on another girl in class,” and “Witchcraft? Human skulls.”

The discarded books included copies of My Two Border Towns by David Bowle, illustrated by Erika Meza; Kenzy Kickstarts a Team (The Derby Daredevils #1) by Kit Rosewater, illustrated by Sophie Escabasse; Black Panther: The Young Prince by Ronald Smith; We Are Still Here: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know by Traci Sorell, illustrated by Frané Lessac; and Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci N. Todd, illustrated by Christian Robinson.

Gothamist reporter Jessica Gold found that no formal challenge to the books had been raised through official channels and that “the removal of the books resulted from an objection raised by staff or parents.” The NYC DOE has reportedly announced it is conducting an investigation into the incident.

In response, a coalition of publishers whose books were discarded teamed with Authors Against Book Bans to pen a letter to New York City’s DOE over the report about the book removal, stating, “If true, such action amounts to unlawful censorship and violates authors’ and students’ First Amendment rights.”…

(4) SENDAK FELLOWS. “2024 Sendak Fellows Announced” – Publishers Weekly has the names.

The Maurice Sendak Foundation has announced this year’s Sendak Fellows: Charlotte Ager, Rocío Araya, and Cozbi A. Cabrera.

The four-week fellowship will take place May 13 through June 9 at Milkwood Farm in South Kortright, N.Y., and comes with a prize of $5,000. During the residency, artists will focus on a project of their choosing, meet with visiting artists and professionals in the field, and explore Sendak’s house and archives in Ridgefield, Conn.

Originally from the Isle of Wight, Ager is a freelance illustrator based in London. Her clients have included the New York Times, Google Design, Penguin Random House, and Flying Eye Books. Araya is an illustrator from Bilbao, Spain, currently living in France. Rocío’s first English-language translation of her book Head in the Clouds will be published by Elsewhere Editions in 2024. And Cabrera is the author-illustrator of Me & Mama, which received a Coretta Scott King Honor and Caldecott Honor, and My Hair Is a Garden.

(5) NOT QUITE INFINITE COMBINATIONS. Den of Geek says “It’s Official: TV Shows Have Run Out of Titles”. (Fanzines have run into the same problem – how else to explain “File 770”?)

Back when it was all fields around here, TV show titles were in abundance. In the days when television used to be hand-stretched and sun-dried and made at a gentlemanly pace by artisanal methods, there were titles galore. Worzel Gummidge. Starsky and Hutch. Last of the Summer Wine. Distinct and descriptive titles milled around drinking holes, and all writers had to do was toss in a lasso and drag out a Sapphire & Steel or a Knight Rider.

But thanks to streaming, nowadays TV is made in windowless factories and injected with antibiotics and e-numbers. There can never be enough. Every streamer requires a chunky flow of television shows they can release all on the same day, not tell anybody about, and quickly delete for tax purposes before anybody watches them. And the first casualty (aside from the livelihoods of the writers, directors, crew, cast and the collective human spirit)? The titles.

The problem is, the glut has dried up the supply. Abstract nouns. Character names. Place names. Common phrases. “Fun” puns. Creepy lines from nursery rhymes for psychological thrillers. Every combination of words in the English language has already been used to name a TV show. ITV got lucky with Mr Bates Vs the Post Office, but it’s hardly a long-term solution.

Neither is it a uniquely new problem, but it is getting worse. Time was that two competing TV shows with the same title would be released a good many years apart, by which point, who could really remember the first one? When HBO brought out android interplanetary sci-fi Raised by Wolves in 2020, it was several years after the Channel 4 comedy Raised by Wolves set on a Wolverhampton council estate, and fairly difficult to confuse the two….

(6) DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME? “George Lucas Backs Bob Iger in Disney Proxy Fight with Nelson Peltz: ‘Creating Magic Is Not for Amateurs’” – a quote in The Hollywood Reporter.

… The Star Wars and Indiana Jones filmmaker is weighing in on The Walt Disney Company’s ongoing proxy fight with activist investors, and he is throwing his support firmly behind CEO Bob Iger and Disney’s board.

“Creating magic is not for amateurs. When I sold Lucasfilm just over a decade ago, I was delighted to become a Disney shareholder because of my long-time admiration for its iconic brand and Bob Iger’s leadership,” Lucas said in a statement Tuesday. “When Bob recently returned to the company during a difficult time, I was relieved. No one knows Disney better. I remain a significant shareholder because I have full faith and confidence in the power of Disney and Bob’s track record of driving long-term value. I have voted all of my shares for Disney’s 12 directors and urge other shareholders to do the same.”…

… Disney is facing a proxy fight against two activists: The corporate raider Nelson Peltz, and Blackwells Capital. Notably, Peltz has billions of dollars in shares pledged by Ike Perlmutter, who, like Lucas, sold his company (Marvel) to Disney and became a major shareholder. Perlmutter remained with Disney until being laid off last year….

(7) ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE YOUR LYIN’ EYES? Meanwhile, Variety reports Disney’s Star Wars cash register has rung up another sale: “’The Acolyte’ Trailer: New Star Wars Show Gets First Look on Disney+”.

…Disney has released the trailer for its newest “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” which is set to stream on Disney+ June 4.

The series takes place 100 years before the franchise’s prequel trilogy during the High Republic era of the “Star Wars” universe, which is the furthest back in the timeline “Star Wars” has gone in a live-action production. An official logline for the series reveals, “An investigation into a shocking crime spree pits a respected Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae) against a dangerous warrior from his past (Amandla Stenberg). As more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where sinister forces reveal all is not what it seems.”…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 19, 1928 — Patrick McGoohan. (Died 2009.) I don’t how times I’ve seen the opening of The Prisoner series as it’s been separately shown from the episodes online pretty much since The Prisoner series first aired. Not sure in what context I watching it but that it was. It was, without doubt, one of the the best openings I’ve seen.

Then there was the series. Weird, thrilling, mysterious. Eminently watchable over and over and over again. Was it SF? Or was it a spy series set in the very near future? Who knew? And then there was Number Six, the never named intelligence agent played by Patrick McGoohan. He seemed destined to play this role.

He was an American-born Irish actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. Now it turns out that The Prisoner was his creation. He was also one of the writers – there were five in fact — and he was one of four directors. In other words, he had his hand in every facet of the series and its sixteen episodes.

Before he was that unnamed intelligence agent he was, and I’m not at all convinced that McGoohan meant this to be a coincidence, secret agent John Drake in the Danger Man espionage series. I’ve seen a few episodes, it’s well crafted.

Danger Man (retitled Secret Agent in the United States for the revived series) was a British television series broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. (A neat bit of history here: Ian Fleming was brought in to work on series development, but left before that was complete. Apparently he didn’t like the way the secret service was to be portrayed.)

After The Prisoner, McGoohan’s next genre endeavor was as the narrator of Journey into Darkness is a British television horror film stitching together two episodes derived from late sixties anthology television series Journey to the Unknown.

We are now leaving genre and headed for, well the Colombo series. Why so? Because he was good friends with Peter Falk and directed five episodes of the series, four of which he appeared in, winning two Emmys in the process. McGoohan was involved with the series in some way from 1974 to 2000.

He was said that his first appearance on Columbo was probably his favorite American role. He had top billing as Col. Lyle C. Rum, fired from a military academy, in “By Dawn’s Early Light”, one of the Colombo films that preceded the series.

His daughter Catherine McGoohan appeared with him in the episode “Ashes To Ashes” The other two Columbo episodes in which he appeared are “Identity Crisis” and “Agenda For Murder”.

Yes, he reprised his role as Number Six for The Simpsons in “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”. Homer Simpson fakes a news story to make his website more popular, and he wakes up in a prison that is a holiday resort. As Number Five, he meets Number Six.

McGoohan’s last movie role was as the voice of Billy Bones in the animated Treasure Planet.

He received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for The Prisoner.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem updates a fairy tale.

(10) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] On last night’s Jeopardy! episode, the Double Jeopardy round had a category, “Horrors!”

$1200: This horror master turned director to translate his own novella “The Hellhound Heart” to the screen as “Hellraiser”

Yogesh Raut knew this was Clive Barker.

$1600: H.P. Lovecraft wrote that the “U”s in the name of this “hellish entity” should sound “about like that in ‘full’ “

Ben Chan stumbled over the pronunciation a bit but gave “Cthulhu”.

$2000 – Daily Double. Yogesh: “I’ve wanted to say this ever since I was a child. Alex, I’ll make it a true Daily Double.” His bet: $15,200.

The title of this 1962 Ray Bradbury novel is a Shakespeare line that rhymes with “By the pricking of my thumbs”.

Very unsurprisingly, Yogesh got this right, parlaying this into a runaway win for the round.

$800: His Christmas ghost story “The Haunted Man” sold 18,000 copies on its first day of publication in 1848

Yogesh picked it as Dickens.

$400: Catriona Ward’s “The Last House on Needless Street” is partly narrated by Olivia, one of these animals, & that can’t be good luck

Troy Meyer tried, “What is a pig?”

Yogesh said, “What’s a cat?” and on prompting added “black” and was scored right.

Catriona Ward squeed about being a clue.

(11) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. “Researchers Name Ancient Species of Giant Turtle After a Universe-Vomiting Stephen King Character” – IGN unravels the references.

Researchers have named a newly discovered species of giant prehistoric turtle after a universe-creating character that features in Stephen King’s novel It, alongside the Dark Tower series of books.

The monstrous armoured reptile was thought to have lived between 40,000 to 9,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene period, during which time it may have lived alongside and potentially been hunted as a source of food by early humans in the Amazon….

…The fossil’s gigantic proportions lead the scientists to name the species Peltocephalus Maturin, in reference to the fictional, god-like turtle Maturin, which vomited out the universe that serves as the setting for Stephen King’s novel It. The benevolent turtle also appears as one of the guardians of the beams featured in King’s eight-part Dark Tower book series, which, like It, has been adapted into a live-action movie, though perhaps the less said about that the better.

As noted in the paper published in the scientific journal Biology Letters – and by the author himself on X after reading the news – King’s character was itself named in reference to the fictional doctor Stephen Maturin, who, in the course of Patrick O’Brian’s seagoing novel H.M.S. Surprise, names a giant tortoise….

(12) LIFE IS SHORT, ART IS LONG. ShortCon2024, “the Premiere Conference for Short Crime Fiction Writers”, takes place Saturday, June 22, and Michael Bracken and Brendan DuBois – familiar around here – are among the presenters.

In June, I will join NYT bestseller Brendan DuBois, AHMM & EQMM Senior Managing Editor Jackie Sherbow, and Stacy Woodson as a presenter at ShortCon, the Premier Conference for Short Crime Fiction Writers. Learn more and register at https://t.co/OZ8BgEueno pic.twitter.com/KsDhwNBuUH
— Michael Bracken (@CrimeFicWriter) March 18, 2024

Join acclaimed crime fiction professionals for an immersive, one-day event and learn how to write short crime fiction, get your stories published, and develop and sustain a long-term career writing short.

(13) THUMBS UP. Camestros Felapton gives us his eyewitness account in “Review: Zombie the Musical”.

… The show starts off with the hapless cast rehearsing their production of “It’s a Musical! (The Musical!)” with requisite sailors singing about the wonders of New York. In reality, the cast is a mix of a not-so-bright leading man whose acting career is magically failing upwards, a leading woman sick of playing two-dimensional characters, an ageing actress whose career is effectively over and a perpetual understudy with genuine talent but no chance of ever becoming a professional. Outside it is Sydney 1999 and people are worried about Y2K and excited about the Olympics coming in 2000. The tone is set with broad parodies about musicals and the sexism of the theatre industry (especially circa the 1990s).

The world of musicals begins breaking down when the leading man quits and the news on the radio warns of a rapidly spreading infection. Will there even be an audience for their opening night?…

Here’s a “sneak preview” from last fall.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/14/24 I Am The Go-Captain Of The Pixelfore

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LIBBY BOOK AWARDS. Congratulations to Martha Wells and Rebecca Yarros, two of the 17 winners of the inaugural Libby Book Awards, chosen by a panel of 1700 librarians worldwide.

Fiction: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
Nonfiction: The Wager, by David Grann
Young Adult: Divine Rivals, by Rebecca Ross
Audiobook: I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai
Debut Author: The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes
Diverse Author: Camp Zero, by Michelle Min Sterling
Comic Graphic Novel: The Talk, by Darrin Bell
Memoir & Autobiography: Pageboy, by Elliot Page
Cookbook: Start Here, by Sohla El-Waylly
Mystery: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Thriller: Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll
Romance: Georgie, All Along, by Kate Clayborn
Fantasy: Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros
Romantasy: Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros
Science Fiction: System Collapse, by Martha Wells
Historical Fiction: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
Book Club Pick: Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang

(2) BOOK BANS SURGED IN 2023. “American Library Association reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023” at ALA.org.

Stack of books background. many books piles

The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles* in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship.

ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. Four key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:

Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.
There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in each of these 17 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

“The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over, and that we must all stand together to preserve our right to choose what we read,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced. By joining initiatives like Unite Against Book Bans and other organizations that support libraries and schools, we can end this attack on essential community institutions and our civil liberties.”…

(3) PNH’S NEW POST AT TPG. “Patrick Nielsen Hayden to Become Editor-at-Large for TPG” reports Publishers Weekly.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has assumed the title of editor-at-large for the Tor Publishing Group. Hayden has been with TPG for 35 years and most recently served as v-p, associate publisher, and editor-in-chief.

During his tenure, he has published the debut novels of authors such as Charlie Jane Anders, Corey Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton, and has received three Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award for his editorial work. In 2020, he founded our Tor Essentials imprint, which highlights a new generation of SFF classics.

As editor-at-large, he will continue to edit such authors as Scalzi, Doctorow, and Walton, and will continue to select and oversee the Tor Essentials.

In announcing Hayden’s new role, TPG president and publisher Devi Pillai added that the company “will not be replacing Patrick in his previous position—he is one of a kind.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden in 2013. Photo by Scott Edelman.

(4) WICKED WORLD’S FAIR FOLLOWUP. “Eventbrite Refutes Mach’s Claims About WWF Payouts, Hints at Possible ‘Actions’” at The Steampunk Explorer. The linked post adds a great deal more coverage after this introductory item:

Amid the fallout from the Wicked World’s Fair (WWF), show organizer Jeff Mach has repeatedly blamed Eventbrite, the online ticketing and event management platform, for his inability to cover the event’s expenses. But in a statement provided Wednesday to The Steampunk Explorer, Eventbrite refuted key aspects of his claims.

WWF was held Feb. 23-25 at the SureStay Plus hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mach used Eventbrite to manage ticket sales, as well as sales of vendor spaces. During the event, as a sound crew was awaiting payment and vendors were requesting refunds, he told them that Eventbrite had frozen his account, preventing use of the platform’s payout features.

In the weeks that followed, Mach continued to blame Eventbrite for payment issues at WWF. “I had repeated assurances from Eventbrite that the money would be forthcoming,” he remarked in one statement to The Steampunk Explorer. “Why Eventbrite had the account locked down, but refused to tell us, I don’t know.”

This was the company’s response on Wednesday: “Eventbrite offers, but does not guarantee, multiple ways to request funds ahead of the event date. Due to an error on the organizer’s end, we can confirm that a few of these advance payouts were delayed. This was quickly remedied, and the organizer received much of his payout ahead of the event and has now been paid out in full.”…

(5) I NEVER WANTED TO GO DOWN THE STONEY END. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Last month, Doug Muir did a piece about the impending death of Voyager 1, originally launched in 1977. “Death, Lonely Death” at Crooked Timber.

…Voyager has grown old. It was never designed for this! Its original mission was supposed to last a bit over three years. Voyager has turned out to be much tougher than anyone ever imagined, but time gets us all. Its power source is a generator full of radioactive isotopes, and those are gradually decaying into inert lead. Year by year, the energy declines, the power levels relentlessly fall. Year by year, NASA has been switching off Voyager’s instruments to conserve that dwindling flicker. They turned off its internal heater a few years ago, and they thought that might be the end. But those 1970s engineers built to last, and the circuitry and the valves kept working even as the temperature dropped down, down, colder than dry ice, colder than liquid nitrogen, falling towards absolute zero.

(Voyager stored its internal data on a digital tape recorder. Yes, a tape recorder, storing information on magnetic tape. It wasn’t designed to function at a hundred degrees below zero. It wasn’t designed to work for decades, winding and rewinding, endlessly re-writing data. But it did.)…

… We thought we knew how Voyager would end. The power would gradually, inevitably, run down. The instruments would shut off, one by one. The signal would get fainter. Eventually either the last instrument would fail for lack of power, or the signal would be lost.

We didn’t expect that it would go mad.

In December 2023, Voyager started sending back gibberish instead of data. A software glitch, though perhaps caused by an underlying hardware problem; a cosmic ray strike, or a side effect of the low temperatures, or just aging equipment randomly causing some bits to flip.

The problem was, the gibberish was coming from the flight direction software — something like an operating system. And no copy of that operating system remained in existence on Earth….

But all is not lost. Well, probably. But not necessarily. At the link you can read the rest of the story about the people trying to put the smoke back in the system from fifteen billion kilometers away.

(6) WEIMER GUESTS ON WORLDBUILDING FOR MASOCHISTS. Paul Weimer joins hosts Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris, and Natania Barron for episode 124 of the Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, “Worldbuilding in Review”.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with worldbuilding as writers — but how does a reviewer approach the topic when they’re reading works of sci-fi and fantasy? Guest Paul Weimer joins us to share his insights as a prolific consumer and critiquer of speculative fiction! Paul talks about the details that he pays attention to, the things he looks for, and the things that draw his attention, as well as discussing the purpose of reviews and who they’re for (hint: it’s not the authors!).

In this episode, we spin things around to look at how we approach worldbuilding and narrative construction as readers — since we are, of course, readers as well as writers! We explore of aspects of how a writer can set and, hopefully, meet expectations through worldbuilding — and where that can sometimes become challenging as a series goes on. What makes a world exciting to enter in the first place? What grips a reader and keeps them with it? And how can you use worldbuilding to make your wizard chase sequence a more cohesive part of your world?

(7) ENTRIES SOUGHT FOR BALTICON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL. Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival has been revised and is looking for talented filmmakers. Full guidelines here: “Short Film Festival”. Entries must be submitted by April 10 2024.

In 2024, the Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival (BSSSFFF) will take place on Sunday evening at 7:00pm. We will thrill festival attendees with independently produced short films from around the region and across the globe. BSSSFFF features live action and animated films in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror from some of the best independent filmmakers this side of the Crab Nebula.

Awards will be given in both the Live Action and Animation category based upon audience preferences. Some of the history of this film festival can be found on the BSFS website.

(8) TRY SUNDAY MORNING TRANSPORT. Mary Robinette Kowal has posted a link valid for a 60-day free trial of Sunday Morning Transport.

If you're curious about The Sunday Morning Transport but haven't yet subscribed, I've graciously been given this code to share with you to try it free for 60 days. It's well worth the subscription for high-quality stories. https://t.co/3Q1NEtkFPM
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) March 14, 2024

(9) ONE SUPERHERO ACTOR CONS ANOTHER. “Simu Liu was scammed by a Hollywood Boulevard Spider-Man” at Entertainment Weekly.

Simu Liu is reflecting on an enemy he made during his first visit to Los Angeles: a not-so-friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

During an interview with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Dinner’s On Me, the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actor recalled an unfortunate encounter with a swindling web-slinger on Hollywood Boulevard. “I remember I was taking photos of the Chinese Theater and a Spider-Man came up to me and was like, ‘I’ll help you!’” the actor remembered.

Alas, Liu’s spider-sense didn’t alert him to the insidious plot that was about to unfold. “And then he took a bunch of photos of me, and then he took some selfies of himself, and then he was like, ‘That’ll be $20!’” the actor said. “And that was mortifying for me, because I didn’t have $20 to give him. Core memory, clearly.”

(10) INTELLECTUAL (?) PROPERTY. Jon Del Arroz tagged me on X.com about this. I clicked through and was fascinated to learn he has declared Sad Puppies is a movement “owned and led by JDA!”

OFFICIAL Sad Puppies merch is now live on the store! Show your allegiance to this great movement which is owned and led by JDA!

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 14, 1933 — Michael Caine, 91. On my list of favorite British performers of all time, Michael Caine is near the top of that list. Both his genre and non-genre performances are amazing. So let’s take a look at those performances.

Caine portrayed Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. He was quite stellar in this role. And he was in The Prestige, a truly great film, as John Cutter, in Inception as Stephen Miles, Professor John Brand in Interstellar and Sir Michael Crosby in Tenet.

Did you see him in as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol? If not, go see it now. He’s wonderful and The Muppet take on the Dickens story is, errr, well actually touching. Really it is.

Definitely not genre is The Man Who Would Be King, based off the Kipling story, which starred him with Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey and Christopher Plummer. The two primary characters were played by Sean Connery — Daniel Dravot — and Caine played the other, Peachy Carnehan. A truly fantastic film.

Michael Caine and Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King.

In the Jekyll & Hyde miniseries, he’s got the usual dual role of Dr Henry Jekyll / Mr Edward Hyde. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – in a Miniseries. He did win a Globe for Best Actor for playing Chief Insp. Frederick Abberline in the Jack Ripper miniseries airing the same time.

Nearly thirty years ago, he was Captain Nemo in a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea miniseries.

He’s in Austin Powers in Goldmember, third film in the franchise. He’s Nigel Powers, a British agent and Austin and Dr. Evil’s father. Can someone explain to me the appeal of these films?

In Children of Men, he plays Jasper Palmer, Theo’s dealer and friend, Theo being the primary character in this dystopian film.

He’s Chester King in Kingsman: The Secret Service. That’s off the Millarworld graphic novel of Kingsman: The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons.

I’m reasonably sure that’s all I need to mention about his career.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Blondie anticipates tomorrow’s celebration of World Sleep Day.
Frazz figures out the anatomy involved in scientific advancement.
Does F Minus depict the dream of some File 770 commenters?
Non Sequitur imagines the earliest days of streaming.
Carpe Diem has a new origin story.

(13) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 105 of the Octothorpe podcast, John Coxon watches movies, Alison Scott walks on the Moon, and Liz Batty has special bonds. Listen here: “Scorching Hot Month-Old Takes”.

In this episode, we talk through your letters of comment with diversions into Zodiac podcasts, poetry collections, and Scientology. We discuss the BSFA Awards shortlist and return to the Hugo Awards for another round of head-scratching and bewilderment.

A famous photograph of Margaret Hamilton standing beside printed outputs of the code that took the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, overlaid with the words “Octothorpe 105” and “Liz has finished reading the latest Hugo Award exposés”.

(14) OUTSIDE THE BOX — AND INSIDE THE SHELVES. Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits can already be found in some bookstores, ahead of the official release date.

Can confirm. As far as I can tell at this point it's only the B&N Exclusive Edition that's popping up in their stores, the regular edition should be closer to the 26th. So the book is now out in the wild for folks interested i picking it up. https://t.co/HBpVDBitzx
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) March 15, 2024

(15) GLIMPSE OF BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7 Will Arrive in 2025 With a Sequel to One of Its Most Beloved Episodes” – IGN has the story.

Netflix’s long-running bleak anthology series, Black Mirror, is coming back for Season 7 next year, and it’s bringing a sequel to fan-favorite episode USS Callister with it.

The streaming platform announced the news during its Next on Netflix event in London (via The Hollywood Reporter), later bringing public confirmation with a cryptic message on X/Twitter. The post contains a video teasing the six episodes, and judging by the familiar logo that appears, it sounds like the third will be the one to give us our USS Callister sequel.

(16) THE GANG’S ALL HERE. “Doctor Who’s Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat unite to support Chris Chibnall” – Radio Times cheers the gesture.

Doctor Who writers past and present have shared a photo together after Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat attended a performance of Chris Chibnall’s new play.

Recently returned showrunner Davies posted the image to his Instagram page alongside the caption: “A marvellous night out in Salisbury to see Chris Chibnall’s wonderful new play, One Last Push.”

And he added: “Also, we plotted Zarbi vs Garms”, referencing two classic Doctor Who monsters…

(17) TRUE OR FALSE? Radio Times reviews evidence supporting story that “Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat ‘returns to write 2024 Christmas special’”.

More than six years after his final episode of Doctor Who aired, it appears that former showrunner Steven Moffat may be returning to write a new episode of the sci-fi.

While the news has not yet been confirmed, it was picked up on Tuesday 12th March that producer Alison Sterling’s CV had been updated to note she had worked on the show’s 2024 Christmas special.

Underneath this, it was noted that the director of the episode is Alex Pillai, while it was stated that the writer is one Steven Moffat. The notes regarding the writer and director of the episode have since been removed….

One factor which may throw doubt on the idea that Moffat has written the special, is that Russell T Davies previously said that he himself was writing it back in 2022.

(18) STARSHIP HITS SOME MARKS. “SpaceX celebrates major progress on the third flight of Starship” – ArsTechnica has details.

… The successful launch builds on two Starship test flights last year that achieved some, but not all, of their objectives and appears to put the privately funded rocket program on course to begin launching satellites, allowing SpaceX to ramp up the already-blistering pace of Starlink deployments.

“Starship reached orbital velocity!” wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, on his social media platform X. “Congratulations SpaceX team!!”

SpaceX scored several other milestones with Thursday’s test flight, including a test of Starship’s payload bay door, which would open and shut on future flights to release satellites into orbit. A preliminary report from SpaceX also indicated Starship transferred super-cold liquid oxygen propellant between two tanks inside the rocket, a precursor to more ambitious in-orbit refueling tests planned in the coming years. Future Starship flights into deep space, such as missions to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, will require SpaceX to transfer hundreds of tons of cryogenic propellant between ships in orbit.

Starship left a few other boxes unchecked Thursday. While it made it closer to splashdown than before, the Super Heavy booster plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in an uncontrolled manner. If everything went perfectly, the booster would have softly settled into the sea after reigniting its engines for a landing burn.

A restart of one of Starship’s Raptor engines in space—one of the three new test objectives on this flight—did not happen for reasons SpaceX officials did not immediately explain.

Part rocket and part spacecraft, Starship is designed to launch up to 150 metric tons (330,000 pounds) of cargo into low-Earth orbit when SpaceX sets aside enough propellant to recover the booster and the ship. Flown in expendable mode, Starship could launch almost double that amount of payload mass to orbit, according to Musk….

Space.com has a video at the link: “SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket into space on epic 3rd test flight (video)”.

(19) FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Elsewhere, some bad news from Japan: “Space One’s Kairos rocket explodes on inaugural flight” reports Reuters.

Kairos, a small, solid-fuel rocket made by Japan’s Space One, exploded shortly after its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit…

(20) TALKING TO NUMBER ONE. In Gizmodo’s opinion, “This New Robot Is So Far Ahead of Elon Musk’s Optimus That It’s Almost Embarrassing”.

As if Elon Musk needed yet another reason to hate OpenAI. Figure, a startup that partnered with OpenAI to develop a humanoid robot, released a new video on Wednesday. And it’s truly heads above anything Tesla has demonstrated to date with the Optimus robot.

The video from Figure, which is available on YouTube, shows a human interacting with a robot dubbed Figure 01 (pronounced Figure One). The human has a natural-sounding conversation with the robot, asking it to first identify what it’s looking at….

(21) MILLION DAYS TRAILER. “A Million Days” is available on Digital Platforms 18 March.

The year is 2041 and the next step in the future of humankind is imminent. After decades of training and research, the mission to create the first lunar colony is about to launch with Anderson as lead astronaut. Jay, an AI purpose built for the mission, has simulated every possible outcome for the expedition. Tensions arise when the chilling motives of Jay become apparent, sowing the seeds of distrust between Anderson, and the group that had gathered to quietly celebrate the launch. As the night descends into chaos, the group’s faith in one another and their mission begins to crack, with the knowledge that the decisions they make before sunrise, will change humanity forever.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Lance Oszko, Daniel Dern, Kathy Sullivan, Scott Edelman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 1/2/24 It Was A Dark And Scrolly Night, Suddenly A Pixel Rang Out

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD. Rachel Craft tells “How Writing Challenges Made Me a Better Writer” at the SFWA Blog. One of the ways is: they make her “Let go of perfection”.

…For me, one of the hardest parts of writing is deciding when a piece is finished and ready to submit. No matter how many rounds of revision I’ve been through, the perfectionist in me can always find something else to tweak. Sometimes I suspect it’s less about perfectionism and more about fear of rejection. As long as I never quite finish a story, it can never be rejected, right?

Writing challenges forced me to let go of perfectionism, fear of failure, and all the other things that usually keep me from saying “It’s done.” They also reframed this last step of the process. Submitting used to be a big, daunting task that loomed like a specter over the rest of my writing process—but in a writing challenge, submitting is actually a triumph. There’s nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment that comes from hitting “submit” as the clock ticks down after 24 hours of frenzied creativity. And even if your story doesn’t win or place in the challenge, you can go on to submit it elsewhere….

(2) MIDNIGHT ACQUISITIONS. Colin O’Sullivan tells his CrimeReads audience not to sleep through great raw material for their writing: “How to Corral Your Nightmares for Use in Your Next Novel” at CrimeReads.

Will robots dream of us in the same way that we dream about them? They say that AI can “hallucinate”, right? Hadn’t Philip K. Dick warned us about all this many years ago? Maybe we weren’t paying enough attention then. Maybe we aren’t paying enough attention now. What a strange world we are being thrust into… and are we ready?

Sunny, the titular robot character of my novel, was conceived in a dream. Several years ago, I tossed and turned in bed, unnerving visions unfurling in my head. In this nightmare I was being chased by a robot that I myself had programmed. The domestic robot had turned on me – and I had been under the illusion that it was merely a household appliance, there to help with the laundry, dust a shelf, or vacuum the floor. I was trying to access its “dark settings” in order to switch the damn thing off, but I wasn’t having much luck: I couldn’t find the manual that would provide me with the right set of instructions, and the machine was definitely out to get me. It was one of the nastiest nightmares I’ve ever had, so vivid, so real. I woke in the proverbial sweat, and was instantly relieved to realize we hadn’t yet reached that stage where the machines were taking over. Not yet, at least, not yet….

(3) IOWA BOOK BAN LAW REBUKED BY FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT. “Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Iowa Book Banning Law” reports Publishers Weekly.

In yet another legal victory for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has blocked two key portions of SF 496, a recently passed Iowa state law that sought to ban books with sexual content from Iowa schools and to bar classroom discussion of gender identity and sexuality for students below the seventh grade.

In a 49-page opinion and order, judge Stephen Locher criticized the law as “incredibly broad” and acknowledged that it has already resulted in the removal of “of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize–winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault.”

Specifically, Locher preliminarily enjoined two provisions challenged in two separate but parallel lawsuits. Regarding the law’s ban on books with any depictions of sex acts, Locher found that the law’s “sweeping restrictions” are “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny.” In a rebuke, Locher said he was “unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.”

Locher said that the law’s “underlying message” is that there is “no redeeming value to any such book even if it is a work of history, self-help guide, award-winning novel, or other piece of serious literature,” adding that with the law state lawmakers had sought to impose “a puritanical ‘pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries.”

Furthermore, Locher suggested that the law was a solution in search of a problem. “The State Defendants have presented no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting, much less to the degree that would give rise to a ‘substantial and reasonable governmental interest’ justifying across-the-board removal,” he wrote….

(4) FROM ZERO COURANT TO AU COURANT. In “Scalzi on Film: When Fun Becomes Homework” at Uncanny Magazine, John Scalzi puts on his film critic’s hat and runs down the ridiculously large number of film and streaming series a person must have previously seen in order to fully appreciate the latest in certain Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars properties. This is a lot like a job!

…We are nerds, and more than slightly obsessive—all the minutiae of created universes are our jam. But there’s a difference between salting in easter eggs to reward the faithful, and requiring hours of prep work—or at least the willingness to locate a wiki and dive in. And even the nerds have limits. I am a nerd by inclination and by profession—but I’m also a 54-year-old human who lives in the world and who requires at least some of my time and brain slots remain open for other things, like family and work and sleep and domain knowledge in other areas relevant to my life….

(5) FUTURES HISTORY. Professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Chair of Glasgow 2024, a Worldcon for Our Futures, posted a message on New Year’s Day: “Looking Ahead to 2024—Reflections from the Chair”.

…When I look up from writing this, I see original art on my wall by Iain Clarke, and an empty bottle of our gin, full of lights and on display in my bookcase. I see a mug that one of my team gave to me and a comic book that a Division Head sent this week to cheer me up. My phone is buzzing, because it always is, despite the fact that I said ‘This is the last week we have before the new year, you HAVE to all take breaks’. (Reader, my team absolutely has not let me do this, because there’s always one thing that needs addressing and, as a result, several of them have been forcibly told to take that break, because we really won’t get it from now on in.) I can see the official gavel of the convention, which is on my mantlepiece until next August. The gavel has been around the world multiple times, but for me, it will be next used to open Glasgow 2024, and five days later, it will be used to declare it closed. Another Chair told me once that closing their Worldcon with that gavel broke their heart a little bit. All of the Chairs cry in the Closing Ceremony. Because it’s five days to attend, but it’s years and years to build….

Any Chair that wants to cry should go right ahead. Do all Chairs? No.

(6) I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T KNOW. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Or, so US House of Representatives members may claim after they leave this briefing: “Scoop: House members to receive classified UFO briefing” says Axios.

Members of the House Oversight Committee will receive a classified briefing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), better known as UFOs, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Congressional interest in the issue has grown in recent years, with a small but vocal group of lawmakers in both parties pushing for greater transparency from the government on the issue.

Driving the news: The members-only briefing will be held in the Office of House Security, according to a notice obtained by Axios.

The briefing is being provided by the Office of Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, the notice said….

(7) HURT IN NYC. A stuntwoman whose resume includes major MCU films was critically hurt by a hit-and-run driver on New Year’s Day: “Carrie Bernans Injured: Stuntwoman & Actress Hurt In NYC Hit & Run” – Deadline tells how it happened.

Actress and stuntwoman Carrie Bernans was critically injured during an alleged hit and run in New York City at 1:30 a.m. Monday.

Bernans, whose work includes 2023’s The Color Purple as well as Marvel’s Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame, was hurt along with eight others. Per her publicist, she was struck by a driver who crashed into an outdoor dining shed at Chirp, a Peruvian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. That driver then backed up and rammed into another car before officers swarmed.

Bernans recently gave birth to a son, and luckily the newborn wasn’t with her but rather in a hotel with her family. Bernans was in stable condition and is undergoing surgery. Her mom posted details on the traumatic incident on Instagram and said Bernans is in rough shape….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 2, 1920 — Isaac Asimov. (Died 1992.) I’m looking at Isaac Asimov this Scroll, one of the Big Three of SF, proclaimed so at the time along with Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein.

Isaac Asimov. Photo by and © Andrew Porter.

Now let me note these selections are my personal picks, not a look at his entire career as that’s simply not possible given how prolific he was. One source says that he wrote five hundred books and I certainly wouldn’t say that’s impossible to believe!

Without a single doubt, I can state that the Foundation Trilogy which won a well deserved Hugo at NyCon 3 for All Time Best Series is my favorite work by him, and it is certainly the work by him that I’ve read the most down the years. Like everything by him, I’ve not watched any film adaptations that have been done.

I am familiar with, and fond of, of his first two novels, Pebble in The Sky and The Stars, Like Dust. It’s been decades since I’ve read either so I’ve no idea how they’ve fared with age.

The Caves of Steel and the other Robot series novels I think are on the whole excellent. Now of course speaking of robots, I, Robot with Susan Calvin is simply awesome. Almost all of the Robot stories, all 32 of 37, can be found in the 1982 The Complete Robot collection. There also are six novels.

The Gods Themselves is an amazing and it stands up well when re-read. It would win a Hugo at Torcon II.

That’s it for SF by him, but there’s one more tasty creation by him that being The Black Widowers stories which were based on a literary dining club Asimov belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders.

The Widowers were based on real-life Spiders, some of them well known writers in their own right such as Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Harlan Ellison and Lester del Rey.

There were sixty-six stories over the six volumes that were released. So far only one volume, Banquets of the Black Widowers, has been released as an ePub. And yes, I’ve got a copy on my iPad as they are well worth re-reading.

Someone needs to get them collected in one ePub collection. Pretty please.

So that’s what I like by him. What do you like?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

The Far Side asks, if a tree falls on an exoplanet, does it make a sound?
Peanuts (published March 22, 1955) has one more Martian joke.
Moderately Confused lives up to its name – does the sign refer to the store or the books?
Oh my gosh – Tom Gauld revealed a secret message!

Happy New Year! pic.twitter.com/IWY8jMPeE2
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) January 1, 2024

(10) YOUR LACK OF FAITH ETC. ETC. It’s not a very good omen that Entertainment Weekly’s “The 40 best alien movies of all time” can’t make up its mind about the very first film on the list.

1 of 40 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 and 1978)

If you favor the later renditions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we don’t blame you. And it may be cheating to double up on our list’s first entry, but the 1978 version (featuring Brooke Adams, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright) is one of the rare examples of a remake living up to the legacy of its predecessor, which is all the more impressive when you consider the magnitude of industry legend Robert Wise‘s original. As an EW staffer previously wrote, the 1956 film is meant to be “a timely Cold War parable of takeover from within.” It ultimately “hit upon even deeper mass-marketing-age fears,” which helped it stand the test of time. Meanwhile, the follow-up flick harnesses that same dread and translates it to a new age without losing any punch.

At the center of these effective alien features is our fear of the Other. Most people don’t worry about little green men taking over their cities and suburbs, but most of us have watched some of our friends and family become bizarre shadows of their former selves practically overnight — which is exactly what transpires in Body Snatchers as the citizens of Earth are infiltrated by alien doppelgängers. In an age where paranoia and misinformation reign supreme, this tale of science failing to explain the chaos around us seems more timely (and more frightening) than ever before.

(11) SCREAMBOAT WILLIE. “Mickey Mouse horror film unveiled as copyright ends” and BBC is quick to point it out.

…A trailer for a slasher film, featuring a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse, was released on 1 January, the day that Disney’s copyright on the earliest versions of the cartoon character expired in the US.

“We wanted the polar opposite of what exists,” the movie’s producer said….

…Creatives have been quick to take advantage of the new rules, with a trailer (contains violent scenes) for a Mickey horror film dropping on the same day.

In the horror comedy thriller, called Mickey’s Mouse Trap, a young woman is thrown a surprise birthday party in an amusement arcade – but things quickly take a turn for the worse when she and her friends encounter a knife-wielding murderer in a Mickey costume….

(12) WIPER NO SWIPING! Meanwhile Disney’s lawyers are staying in shape by working over the owner of a Chilean car wash. Forbes analyzes the case in “Lucasfilm Sues ‘Star Wash’—A Car Wash In Chile—Claiming Plagiarism”.

Lucasfilm, the billion-dollar Disney-owned film and production company behind the “Star Wars” franchise, is suing a Chilean car wash known as “Star Wash,” arguing the small business is plagiarizing the wildly popular franchise with its branding, according to Reuters.

The law firm representing Matias Jara, the owner of “Star Wash,” told Reuters that Jara was in the process of registering his brand with Chile’s patent authority when he received a lawsuit from Lucasfilm seeking to block the registration of his business’s name.

Lucasfilm is claiming the business brand could confuse consumers into believing it’s affiliated with the studio, though it hasn’t taken issue with car attendants who can be seen on the “Star Wash” Instagram account dressed as characters like Darth Vader, Chewbacca and Boba Fett….

Once I looked at this Instagram ad for the business, though, I thought Disney had a point.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Star Wash (@starwashchile)

(13) MUSICAL ITEMS. [By Daniel Dern.] By the way, a third theremin video (not here) said that playing the trombone was the best preparation/way for learning to play the theremin.

The Flight of the Bumblebee performed on the theremin

Katica Illényi – Star Trek (theremin) – YouTube

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]

This Year Santa Is Bringing Everyone A Ray Bradbury Roundup

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN. GameRant has opinions: “Ray Bradbury’s Novels: Best & Worst Film & TV Adaptations”. The list starts with one Ray personally downchecked.

… Not every adaptation has been perfect, of course, and even when the movie or show is a decent product other things can go wrong to make it less than successful. Bad publicity, a low budget, or disagreements between the director and studio can bring a whole production down even if the story and cast are on point. Bradbury’s work as it appears on screen can go either way depending on the viewer’s personal opinion of the original, and the author himself didn’t mince words when offering his own thoughts on the matter.

6. The Martian Chronicles (1980)

This BBC miniseries had all the marks of a successful adaptation, at least in the beginning. It had a cast with big names like Rock Hudson and Bernadette Peters, an original soundtrack with more than 30 songs, more than decent production values, and it was an adaptation of a novel of the same name by a popular author with literary clout.

However, things started to go awry when Ray Bradbury himself described the show as “boring” at a solo press conference. Although he and screenwriter Richard Matheson had worked together on the adaptation, Bradbury was disappointed with the result, which deviated significantly from his original story. Even though the show was finished in 1979, this poor marketing was enough to delay the release for a year, but fans and critics ultimately gave The Martian Chronicles a positive reception.

(2) HAVE YE READ THE GREAT WHITE WHALE. “Ray Bradbury, Moby Dick and the Irish connection” in The Irish Times.

… One part of the Bradbury story that may be less well known, however, is his Irish connection. This had its origins when in 1953 director John Huston recruited him to write the screenplay for his film of Moby Dick. Though the two men had expressed a wish to work together, Huston’s offer came to Bradbury as a bit of a shock, possibly because at the time he had yet to read Melville’s novel.

But, of course, this was an offer he couldn’t refuse. So, the night of Huston’s proposal, Bradbury – by his own account – stayed up till dawn making good his omission, a feat that smacks of Ahab’s whale-tussling or some such epic fiction. And, by morning, the account continues, Bradbury had knocked enough skelps off the thing to believe he was the man for the screenwriting job. It turned out that he’d signed up for a stormy voyage – but the money was good: $12,500 for the script, plus another $200 a week living expenses.

At the time, Huston was living in Courtown House near Kilcock, Co Kildare and intended to direct Moby Dick with this as his base. Obviously Bradbury had to be on hand as well. So in September 1953, with his wife, their two small children and a nanny, he trekked from Hollywood by land and sea (Bradbury could imagine space travel but wouldn’t board a plane for God or man) to Dublin’s Royal Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street (where the arcade is now)….

(3) POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE. Bradley J. Birzer highly praises Jonathan R. Eller’s biography Becoming Ray Bradbury in “Ray Bradbury’s First 33 Years” at The Imaginative Conservative.

…In terms of Bradbury’s politics, he was immensely complicated. As a very young man, he embraced—to a rather shocking degree—ideas of technocracy, believing that the future of America, especially through the Great Depression, and even into World War II, resided in economic and scientific efficiency. Everything, he thought, was tied to the ideas of energy production and output. However, at a meeting of technocrats, all adorned in their matching grey suits, Bradbury suddenly realized that his affection for their policies, was akin to loving either Mussolini or Stalin. He moved toward the mainstream parties. Though a Stevenson Democrat in 1952, Bradbury found himself, again, disillusioned with the presidential candidate, especially after Stevenson refused to address directly either the Korean War or Joseph McCarthy’s scandalous witch hunts. Famously (or infamously, depending on one’s point of view), Bradbury took out a large ad in Variety, “To the Republican Party,” challenging them to disown McCarthyism as well as refrain from claiming that anyone in the Democratic Party was a Communist. In the spring of 1953, Bradbury published in The Nation one of his most famous essays, “Day After Tomorrow: Why Science Fiction,” a defense of the much maligned literary genre. Later that year, Bradbury’s masterfully anti-consumerist but deeply libertarian novel, Fahrenheit 451, appeared, perhaps solidifying the author’s anti-authoritarian reputation….

(4) FLAME ON. The opening panels from this 1984 computer game can be viewed at the Internet Archive: “Fahrenheit 451 : Byron Preiss Video Productions, Inc., Trillium Corp.”.

In a not so distant future, books have become illegal. As Fireman Guy Montag, the player’s role is not to save houses, but to burn them for the books inside. However, Guy becomes passionate about books and becomes a rebel, pursued by the authorities. With the help of the Underground, he must survive and save books from complete extinction.

The game acts a sequel to Bradbury’s novel. Following the imposition of martial law Montag finds the young woman who inspired his resistance to the established order. With her help he can now track down 34 microcassettes which hold the contents of the New York Public Library, then pass them on to underground members who will memorise the texts.

(5) CENSORING AND BOWDLERIZING 451. From the Wikipedia’s article on Fahrenheit 451.

Expurgation
Starting in January 1967, Fahrenheit 451 was subject to expurgation by its publisher, Ballantine Books with the release of the “Bal-Hi Edition” aimed at high school students.^[58][59] Among the changes made by the publisher were the censorship of the words “hell”, “damn”, and “abortion”; the modification of seventy-five passages; and the changing of two incidents.^[59][60]

In the first incident a drunk man was changed to a “sick man”, while the second involved cleaning fluff out of a human navel, which instead became “cleaning ears” in the other.^[59][61] For a while both the censored and uncensored versions were available concurrently but by 1973 Ballantine was publishing only the censored version.^[61][62] That continued until 1979, when it came to Bradbury’s attention:^[61][62]

In 1979, one of Bradbury’s friends showed him an expurgated copy of the book. Bradbury demanded that Ballantine Books withdraw that version and replace it with the original, and in 1980 the original version once again became available. In this reinstated work, in the Author’s Afterword, Bradbury relates to the reader that it is not uncommon for a publisher to expurgate an author’s work, but he asserts that he himself will not tolerate the practice of manuscript “mutilation”.

The “Bal-Hi” editions are now referred to by the publisher as the “Revised Bal-Hi” editions.^[63]

Then there’s this example where someone rewrote the book without permission: “Fahrenheit 451 As Childrens Book” at Slideshare.net.

(6) PRESCRIPTION 451. And yet the American Medical Association says that Bradbury book is good for what ails you: “5 fantastic novels doctors recommend for your summer reading list”.

Reading can boost your vocabulary, sharpen your reasoning, expand your intellectual horizons and improve memory. But reading for fun can also help in the battle against physician burnout.

Here, in alphabetical order by book author, are five novels that AMA members who have participated in the “Shadow Me” Specialty Series recommend reading….

Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Bradbury

“This book speaks to teen idealism and offers a wealth of wisdom about maintaining perspective, understanding history, valuing art and literature and remembering to live life,” said Kanani Titchen, MD, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine physician.

Battling burnout… Wait, I get it!!

(7) FINGERPRINTS. “The Twilight Zone: Ray Bradbury’s Influence Is All Over Six Degrees of Freedom” — Den of Geek tells readers where to look for it.

The following contains spoilers for The Twilight Zone, “Six Degrees of Freedom.”

If the latest episode of the newly rebooted Twilight Zone — “Six Degrees of Freedom” — feels old school to you, you’re not crazy. For bookish types, the most obvious Easter egg in the episode comes pretty early; the Mars-bound spaceship central to the story is called“Bradbury Heavy,” a kind tribute to Elon Musk putting the word “heavy” after the names of rockets, but also, of course, the iconic author of The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury. And, even if the screenwriters of this Twilight Zone episode (Glen Morgan and Heather Anne Campbell) weren’t intentionally homaging Ray Bradbury’s writing, his ghost haunts this creepy episode in surprising ways….

(8) BRADBURY AWARD HONOREES. In 2022, The Portalist called these “The 10 Best Movies That Have Won the Ray Bradbury Award”.

Ray Bradbury was, among many other things, a celebrated screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Moby Dick, as well as teleplays for some 59 episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater, to name just some of his credits. And in 1992, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) inaugurated the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation in his honor.

Presented at the same time as the SFWA’s Nebula Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award was not initially considered a Nebula. It was chosen not by a vote from members of the SFWA, as the Nebulas are, but by the organization’s president. In that format, it was presented in 1992, 1999, 2001, and 2009. At the same time, there was also a Nebula Award for Best Script, which was given out in the ‘70s and brought back in the 2000s.

After 2009, the two were rolled into one….

The list includes:

Gravity

Known for being absolutely stunning, among other things, Alfonso Cuarón’s flick about stranded astronauts played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney managed to nab a whopping seven Academy Awards, including Best Director. It was nominated for Best Picture, but lost to 12 Years a Slave.

Gravity‘s competition for the Bradbury was less stiff, though it did still beat out Pacific Rim, the Hunger Games sequel, Spike Lee’s Her, and others….

(9) WHERE IDEAS COME FROM. In “Ray Bradbury on feeding your creativity”, Austin Kleon reminds people about Ray’s three-point plan:

Ray Bradbury’s advice for being more creative

Every night read:

– one short story

– one poem

– one essay

Do that for a thousand nights and you’ll be stuffed full of ideas pic.twitter.com/35d6Z2V1os
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) November 1, 2022

(10) WICKED GOOD. Jack Butler of National Review Online has nice things to say about Somethng Wicked This Way Comes. “Halloween Explored in Literature”.

…This year, it’s Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. The book, which tells the story of a mysterious carnival’s arrival to and malevolence in a small town, is a master class in supernatural suspense:

The carnival, populated by a grotesquerie of characters against whom the boys, at first alone, contest, comes to life in vivid, unsettling descriptions. At the center of it all is Mr. Dark, “the illustration-drenched, superinfested civilization of souls.” His designs assail the boys through time-manipulating carousels, witch-piloted hot-air balloons, blood-drenched fists that drip onto boys hiding below a sewer grate, stealthy pursuits through endless stacks of books and infinite mazes of mirrors, and more. (In a 1983 adaptation, Mr. Dark is chillingly depicted by a young Jonathan Pryce.) At first, the boys alone perceive the carnival’s malevolence, as it operates through the town, preying on citizens’ desires and sins while trying to enfold the boys into its plots as a means of shutting them up. Anyone looking for an eerie and gripping Halloween read will find plenty that’s satisfying in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

But he will also find more than that, as I argue in my piece, which you can read here….

(11) CELEBRITY BRUSH. In the Season 5 opening episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel there is a fictional variety show she writes for. They announce the evening’s guests, “Angie Dickinson and the novelist Ray Bradbury.” Best part of the episode.

(12) NEWSMAKER. Here’s a clip from Ray Bradbury’s talk at the San Diego Comic Con in 1974 hosted on CBS 8 San Diego’s YouTube channel.

August 1, 1974 Devotees of comics strips and comic books gathered in a convention today at El Cortez Hotel where one of the major attractions was the famous writer, Ray Bradbury. He is noted as one of America’s leading science fiction authors, but is also a poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, and creator of musical productions. Bradbury has been a fan of the comics since boyhood. Today I asked him (Harold Keen) if he considers comic books and newspaper comic strips genuine American art form. Bradbury said he is planning to adapt some of his short stories into a comic magazine of his own.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for these stories.]

Pixel Scroll 11/15/23 File The Pixels You Scroll With Your Scrolls

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) CURATOR TAKES SIDES, GETS CANCELLED. An Afrofuturism-themed exhibit “chapter” is the casualty when “German Museum Shutters Curator’s Contribution Over Pro-Palestine Instagram Activity, Igniting Censorship Outcry” reports ArtNews.

… On Monday, writer, professor, and curator Anaïs Duplan, who goes by the pronouns he/they, posted screenshots on Instagram of an email sent to them from Museum Folkwang director Peter Gorschlüter informing them that the institution had decided to “suspend” their “collaboration.”

The email reads: “We noticed that you shared and commented on a number of posts on your Instagram channel in the light of the current situation in Israel and Gaza. From our perspective some of these posts are unacceptable. These posts do not acknowledge the terroristic attack of [Hamas] and consider the Israeli military occupation in Gaza a genocide.”

Gorschlüter continued that Duplan’s engagement put the museum “in a situation that the museum might be considered to support antisemitic tendencies and voices that question the very right of existence of the state Israel.”

The show, titled “We is Future” and slated to open on November 24, invited artists and curators to propose “historic and current” ideas “for alternative forms of living together” in relation to various social catastrophes: climate change, the housing crisis, late-stage capitalism, among others. The “chapters” of the show listed on its webpage include architectural projects from Bruno Taut and Wenzel Hablik, eco-conscious drawings and paintings by Elisàr von Kupffer, and contemporary works by Eglė Budvytytė, Emma Talbot, and Timur Si-Qin.

Duplan’s chapter was centered on the intersectional potential of Afrofuturism and was set to feature, among others, Brooklyn-based artist Fields Harrington, whose multidisciplinary practice examines the inextricability of race from our social fabric. The description of Duplan’s chapter has since been deleted from the webpage…

…The [Museum Folkwang’s] statement continued: “This decision was made neither for artistic-curatorial reasons nor because of the exhibition’s theme, but solely because the curator personally takes sides with the BDS campaign, which questions Israel’s right to exist. The Museum Folkwang views the developments in Israel and Gaza and the suffering of the civilian population on both sides with great concern. The City of Essen and the Museum Folkwang stand for peace and dialogue between cultures.”…

.. Amid an outpouring of support from professional peers, Duplan wrote in an Instagram post Monday that their priorities were “to ensure that any artists in the future—especially BIPOC artists—who are considering working with [the museum] have full transparency regarding their politics, not just in relation to the war on Palestine, but also their very fraught labor practices.”

Duplan added in a separate post Tuesday: “It should go without saying that Afrofuturism and liberation struggles around the world go hand in hand, as do Afrofuturism and antisemitism, Afrofuturism and islamophobia, and Afrofuturism and all other struggles for collective wellbeing.”…

(2) KEEP THE LIGHTS ON AT THE DARK. Last month Sean Wallace told Facebook readers that “for The Dark the loss of Amazon Newsstand effectively resulted in ten thousand dollars of revenue going poof, for the entire year.” Yesterday he wrote about the budget he’s working with to keep the publication afloat. After you’ve read the screencap, here is the subscription page for The Dark Magazine.

(3) HAS YOUR TROPE LOST ITS FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT? Four-time Stoker Award winner Tim Waggoner has written a fascinating discussion about “61 Horror Clichés and How to Make Them Fresh Again” at Writing in the Dark.

…I can choose one element of horror writing that I think will have the most immediate impact on your fiction to talk about – and that’s avoiding and reworking clichés.

A genre has a collective group of character types (both protagonist and antagonist), setting types, story types, etc. These elements are called tropes, and they’re the shared tools genre writers use in their work. In Horror, an abandoned graveyard is a setting trope. A curious, naïve, and ultimately doomed scholar is a character trope. You get the idea. Tropes are effective when they’re first created/used in a story, but the 3000^th time? Not so much. (This is one of the reasons readers can get sick of a genre. When they first start reading in it, all the tropes are new to them, and thus interesting and exciting. But after they read a number of books in the genre, they start to realize that the same old tropes are used all the time, and they get bored.) There’s a word for an overused trope that has lost its power and impact.

Cliché.

This is the reason that old pros like me advise new writers to read widely in their chosen genre and seek out the best, most original work via reviews and word of mouth. (This is one of the most useful functions social media serves – it makes you aware of some really cool shit to check out.)…

Here are two of his many ideas.

…Once you’ve identified overused tropes, you can avoid including them in your work. Better yet, you can transform them into something new and powerful. Allow me to elucidate.

Choose a New Signifier

One of the most common tropes in horror is darkness/shadows as a signifier of evil or a threat. It makes sense, since not being able to use one of our strongest senses puts us at a huge disadvantage in a dangerous situation. But darkness has been used so often in horror that it doesn’t have much power anymore. Maybe you could choose a different sense to indicate evil in your story. How about cicada song? Or a slight stickiness on surfaces in a place tainted by evil? (A stickiness that gets worse the closer you get to the source of the evil.) Corvids are used as harbingers or servants of evil in horror. What if you used hummingbirds instead?

Reverse a Trope

Haunted houses are often portrayed as old and abandoned. Let’s reverse this trope. Older houses are safe from hauntings/demonic infestations because they gain psychic shielding from the long-term presence of living beings inside them. So only new structures are susceptible to hauntings/demonic infestations. In Frankenstein, a living being is fashioned from parts of the dead. Reverse this: an immortal being who can instantly heal any injury seeks death by trying to find a way to permanently disassemble their body….

(4) HELP DECIDE THE DIAGRAM PRIZE. The shortlist for the Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2023 is now open for a public vote on The Bookseller website here. The closes December 1, with the winner revealed on the 8th. Here is this year’s Diagram Prize shortlist:

The 12 Days of Christmas: The Outlaw Carol that Wouldn’t Die by Harry Rand (McFarland & Co)

The author of Rumpelstiltskin’s Secret: What Women Didn’t Tell the Grimms looks at how a raucous drinking song became a festive favourite.

Backvalley Ferrets: A Rewilding of the Colorado Plateau by Lawrence Lenhart (University of Georgia Press)

The “beguiling weasel” at the centre of this book is “more than a charismatic minifauna; it is the covert ambassador of a critical ecosystem,” says the author.

Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History by Matthew F Jordan (University of Virginia Press)

Charts the device’s lifespan from “metallic shriek that first shocked pedestrians” to its use in the trenches in the First World War.

Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze by Tawny Lara (Quirk Books)

The only non-academic contender is a “judgement-free” handbook from a podcaster and self-described “sober sexpert”.

I Fart in your General Direction: Flatulence in Popular Culture by Don H Corrigan (McFarland & Co)

“Covers every aspect of abdominal gas” in movies, music and TV, combined with “philosophical positions on colonic expression”.

The Queerness of Water: Troubled Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Chow (University of Virginia Press)

An interdisciplinary look at classic canonical works and how “sea, rivers, pools, streams and glaciers all participate in a violent decolonialism”.

(5) HWA-THEMED GAME IS ON THE WAY. An officially-licensed party game called “Sudden Acts of Horror” – coming in 2024 – aims to celebrate the Horror Writers Association, the oldest and most respected professional nonprofit organization in the horror genre. The game asks teams of players to act out made-up horror novel titles to score the highest points and ultimately win a mini–Bram Stoker Award® for their efforts.

“Sudden Acts of Horror” is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2024 and will be available for purchase at www.stopthekiller.com.

(6) SAVE THE COYOTE. This ain’t over ’til Porky Pig sings… “’Coyote vs. Acme’: Congressman Calls for Federal Probe on Warner Bros Discovery” — Deadline has the story.

…“The @WBD tactic of scrapping fully made films for tax breaks is predatory and anti-competitive,” wrote Castro, who has protested WBD before on antitrust issues.

“As the Justice Department and @FTC revise their antitrust guidelines they should review this conduct,” he continued.

“As someone remarked, it’s like burning down a building for the insurance money,” he added.

…. Several sources have told us that in a cost-cutting, debt-laden environment as Warner Bros Discovery that it’s not CEO David Zaslav to blame here for the axing of the film. Warner Bros. Motion Picture bosses Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy and new animation head Bill Damaschke are the ones who made the decision, this despite the fact that it’s not a production chief’s bandwidth to worry about tax writedowns on a movie. That’s for accounting and finance to sweat over.

The new WBD administration doesn’t want the problem of the previous admin’s greenlights and at $70M, that’s a cost too high for a movie to simply skip theatrical and head to streaming service Max.

While it’s not in production bosses’ nature to worry about tax writeoffs, they realize that there’s a lot of stress over at WBD to win in the wake of having the highest-grossing movie in the studio’s history and YTD with Barbie at $1.4 billion worldwide. A severe financial savings mentality exudes at Warners, and if a film looks too risky to spend marketing on, execs there don’t want to stick their necks out and have a lackluster result and be blamed for a greenlight that wasn’t there….

(7) STARSHIP LAUNCH APPROVED. [Item by Bill.] The FAA and the Fish and Wildlife Service have completed their reviews of SpaceX’s launch plans, issued their final reports, and given approval for the next launch of Starship. The FAA has issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) closing airspace around Boca Chica for Friday November 17. SpaceX appears to be planning for a Friday launch. Gizmodo has further coverage: “SpaceX Granted FAA Permission for Second Starship Test Flight”.

…The FAA’s entire report can be seen here, but in summary, the water deluge system was deemed to be no more threatening to the environment than a summer rain storm:

“…an average summertime thunderstorm at Boca Chica would deposit more water over the landscape than any single or all combined activations of the deluge system. Since the amount of water that is anticipated to reach the mud flats from a maximum operation of the deluge system is expected to be less than an average summer rainfall event, this amount of water would be unlikely to alter water quality.”

With the launch license secured, SpaceX is ready to go. The second launch of Starship is scheduled for Friday, November 17 at 8:00 a.m. ET, with the launch window ending two hours later. Two FAA space TFRs (temporary flight restrictions) are in effect for Brownsville, Texas, one for Friday and a second TFR going into effect at 8:00 a.m. ET on November 18 and ending one hour later….

(8) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS SHORTLIST. The American Library Association has unveiled the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist. None of the items are genre works. The winners will be announced on January 20.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2024 Shortlist

“The Berry Pickers,” by Amanda Peters. Catapult. In 1962, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, this braided novel fascinates. While little is easy for Peters’ characters, in the end, for all of them, there is hope.
“Denison Avenue,” by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. ECW Press.
In a mixed-media narrative saturated with a sense of poignancy and grief, Wong Cho Sum navigates the sudden death of her husband by a hit-and-run driver. As an “invisible” elderly observer, she compares the old Chinatown she remembers with this new, slowly gentrifying one. Innes’ detailed and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations are eye-catching complements to Wong’s writing.
“Let Us Descend,” by Jesmyn Ward. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Sold away from her mother, teenage Annis, daughter of a Black mother and the white man who enslaved them, must endure a grueling march to the slave markets of New Orleans with only her wits and her mother’s ivory awl to help her survive. Ward’s vivid imagery and emotionally resonant prose convey the horrors of chattel slavery in stark, unforgettable detail.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2024 Shortlist

“The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration,” by Jake Bittle. Simon & Schuster.
This multifaceted examination considers numerous communities that have been wiped out by changing weather patterns and foretells a future filled with additional displacements. Environmental journalist Bittle uses a combination of science reporting and individuals’ stories to explain the fates of towns deemed uninhabitable and ends with a plea for comprehensive environmental policy change and urgent action.
“The Talk,” by Darrin Bell. Henry Holt and Company.
In 2019, Bell became the first Black editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this brilliant graphic memoir, Bell’s growth from a trusting child afraid of dogs to an esteemed, nationally syndicated cartoonist is a marvel to witness through his spectacular panels and pages. A must-read manifesto against racist brutality.
“We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America,” by Roxanna Asgarian. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Investigative reporter Asgarian’s years of work getting to know the birth families of six children killed by their adoptive parents in 2018 uncovered a devastating web of intergenerational poverty, violence, and wrenching separations. She exposes the tragedy of what happened and the ongoing, insupportable failings of the foster system.

Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000.

(9) MORE FOR MOUNT TBR. TIME Magazine’s list of “The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023” includes several works of genre interest that I recognize, and doubtless others I didn’t which you can name in the comments:

The Future by Naomi Alderman
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Victory City by Salman Rushdie
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

(10) MORE ON MICHAEL BISHOP. The family’s Michael Bishop Obituary has been published. It includes details on Bishop’s life and writing career, and funeral plans.

(11) MEMORY LANE.

1950 — [Written by Cat Eldridge.]

We mentioned Mack Reynolds’ The Case of the Little Green Men in a Scroll recently and there it was noted that it was set at a Con, and that’s all it’ll say about it as there might be someone here who hasn’t read it yet. Now I will ask the question, well two questions actually. Was it the first genre novel set at a Con? And what’s your favorite Con set novel? Or more.

So now let’s talk about The Case of the Little Green Men. It was the first novel by him, published seventy-three years ago by the Phoenix Press who ISFDB lists only one other work being published, Will Garth’s Dr. Cyclops. The cover illustration is by Carl W. Bertsch.

Is the novel fun? Oh yes. Is it really a mystery? Well, that depends on how much you want to stretch your idea of what a mystery is. And I’m surprised it hasn’t been nominated for a Retro Hugo. Really surprised.

To my utter surprise, the publication notes for The Case of the Little Green Men at ISFDB, says it was out of print for sixty-one years until Prologue Books did a new edition. It is available from usual suspects on, and no I’m not pulling your tentacles, Richard A. Lupoff’s Surinam Turtle Press. The website for that is here.

And now for our shortest Beginning ever…

The detective isn’t tough and he isn’t even smart and he doesn’t prove the case against the killer. And boy doesn’t get girl, either. Otherwise, this story is just about like a good many others you’ve read. At least it starts the same way.…

We can’t help it if it dissolves into men from Mars, people who believe in spaceships and flying saucers, murders without motive, and heat rays fired by little green men (or were they?).

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 15, 1877 — William Hope Hodgson. By far, his best-known character is Thomas Carnacki, featured in several of his most famous stories and at least partly based upon Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective John Silence. (Simon R. Green will make use of him in his Ghost Finders series.) Two of his later novels, The House on the Borderlandand The Night Land would be lavishly praised by H.P. Lovecraft. It is said that his horror writing influenced many later writers such as China Miéville, Tim Lebbon and Greg Bear but I cannot find a definitive source for that claim. (Died 1918.)
Born November 15, 1933 — Theodore Roszak. Winner of the Otherwise Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein and the rather excellent Flicker which is well worth reading. Flicker and The Devil and Daniel Silverman is available at the usual suspects, and his only other available fiction is his Japanese folktales. Odd. (Died 2011.)
Born November 15, 1941 — Daniel Pinkwater, 82. His absolutely best work must be without doubt Lizard Music, an sf novel in which a young boy begins seeing musical lizards all around. Lizards opposing an alien invasion. Oh so perfect a novel.
Born November 15, 1942 — Ruth Berman, 81. She’s a writer of mostly speculative poetry. In 2003, she won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem for “Potherb Gardening”, and in 2016 for “Time Travel Vocabulary Problems”. She was the winner of the 2006 Dwarf Stars Award for her poem “Knowledge Of”. She’s also written the fantasy novel, Bradamant’s quest. In 1973, she was a finalist for the first Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She brings out the Dunkiton Press genre zine annually — over 30 issues and still going strong. She was nominated for Best Fan Writer Hugo at Baycon (1968).
Born November 15, 1955 — N Lee Wood 68. She was once married to Norman Spinrad. The Mahdi written in 1996 is an interesting take on the situation in the Middle East with AIs thrown into the mix. I’m more fond of her Inspector Keen Dunliffe series of detective novels which are definitely not genre. There’s at least twenty-three to date, and they’ve been adapted for television under the series title of DCI Banks. It’s a most excellent series.
Born November 15, 1982 — Jessica McHugh, 41. Very prolific horror writer who’s also a playwright. IDFDB says she has written eight genre novels and some forty pieces of shorty fiction to date, the latter gathered in three collections. She won an Imadjinn Award for The Train Derails in Boston novel given by the Con of the same name held in Kentucky every year. Her poetry which apparently is on the dark side of things, of which she’s even written more than she has short fiction, has earned two Stoker nominations.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Lio’s local library has some strange books. Of course it does.

(14) GONZO AND GAIMAN TOMORROW. Nick Gonzo says, “If you are in Leeds on Thursday and are looking for something cool to do, I am hosting a workshop with Leeds Library about the history of Scifi and Zines. This is obviously a career high point as I’m sharing an event programme with Neil Gaiman.” Program description and ticket information is in the screencaps below.

(15) LIBRARIANS LAUNCH GAME AWARD. The Games & Gaming Round Table (GameRT) of the American Library Association is seeking nominations for the new Platinum Play Awards as part of its celebration of International Gaming Month. The new award will recognize the best games for use in library collections and library programming. “GameRT seeks nominations of amazing games for its new Platinum Play Awards list!”

Through this award, GameRT will highlight and honor the best games for library collections and programming. The Platinum Play Awards — affectionately called The Platys after the platypus mascot on the new award seal — are planned as an annual award and will recognize up to twenty games each year. GameRT will collect nominations from library workers and patrons each year. Once all nominations are in, GameRT members will be able to vote for their top picks, and games that receive at least two votes will move on to the final assessment round, where they will be evaluated by GameRT’s Platinum Play Award Committee. The final award list will be announced each year, starting with a special Platinum Play Classics Hall of Fame in January 2024 that will celebrate classic games like Chess and Go.

In an effort to help libraries find newer games, only games published between two and ten years prior to the awarding year are eligible. Games will be evaluated based on their ability to provide an enjoyable gaming experience in one hour of play. Eligibility for the award is open for games designed for any age range and any number of players. Games that require a system for play will be considered based on the number of platforms available that libraries can access.

…Nominations for the 2024 Awards — for games published between published between 2013 and 2021 — are open now and can be submitted online until March 31, 2024. Library staff, teachers, and gamers of all types should submit their favorite games using the online nomination form. Game publishers and creators that seek to have their games considered should email GameRT Staff Liaison Tina Coleman at [email protected].

(16) DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL. The LA Times learns why “Composer John Williams can’t let Indy go to someone else”.

What does an old adventurer have to offer a modern world that seems to have moved on?

That’s the existential question posed to Indiana Jones, the beloved archaeologist immortalized by Harrison Ford across four decades, in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Indy is creaky, retiring and alone when the fifth and latest chapter opens in 1969 — a man out of time.

It was also a question for John Williams, the venerable composer who gave Indy his infectious march beginning with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981. Williams was no less than Indy’s galloping tempo and his comic, whip-cracking action, his romantic stirrings and his heroic quest for every previous search for some ancient relic.

Now in his 10th decade, Williams had nothing left to prove and no obligation to score a new “Indiana Jones” film. For the first time, his forever-collaborator Steven Spielberg wasn’t even directing. So why get back in the saddle?

“Very frankly,” Williams says, “I thought to myself: Well, I really don’t want somebody else to do that. It was like when I was doing ‘Star Wars,’ you know. I thought: If I can possibly do it, I should try to do it.”

In other words: Just like Harrison Ford, no one else should wear that hat….

(17) THIS PLANET BITES. Camestros Felapton watched “Scavengers Reign (HBO)” and wrote a review that will make you nervous whenever you hear easy-listening music from now on.

…You could probably make a nice edit of the more relaxed landscape scenes that would be quite relaxing. Indeed, musically from the soft opening titles to much of the incidental music the tone is one that emphasizes the sense of wonder in this alien world.

This sense of wonder is coupled with terror though. The beauty of the world comes with plenty of creatures eager to eviscerate the humans (if they are lucky) or infest them (if they are more unlucky) or turn them into monstrous puppets (if they are even more unlucky). Spores, tentacles, stingers, strangling vines and psychic powers are all out to consume the hapless survivors….

(18) ANOTHER BIZARRE PRODUCT. Archie McPhee has done it again with “Bigfoot Basecamp”.

Some say Bigfoot is an interdimensional traveler who disappears when he wants to, but maybe there are no good pictures of Bigfoot because he’s so tiny. The Bigfoot Basecamp has all the things you need to create the scene of a surprised camper trying to snap a picture as Bigfoot approaches. You can take the itty bitty soft vinyl figures, between 1/2″ and 1-3/8″ tall, out of the box and play with them or leave them inside as a desktop display. Comes with eight pieces, everything you need from trees to Bigfoot to a campfire! Figures may come loose during transit but snap easily back into place.

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

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