Tag Archives: Charles Addams

Pixel Scroll 1/7/24 Pixels Scrolling Off Into The Sky, The Sound Of Filers Echoing Down From The Heaven

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(1) THESE GUYS ARE SHAMELESS. Disney tried to shut down a YouTuber’s remix of Steamboat Willie even though it was in public domain: “Disney pulls ‘Steamboat Willie’ YouTube copyright claim amid Mickey Mouse entry into public domain”.

Mashable reported that YouTuber and voice actor Brock Baker had uploaded a video to his channel with over 1 million subscribers which was almost immediately hit with a copyright claim from Disney.

Baker’s video featured the entirety of the 1928 Disney animated short Steamboat Willie. He had remixed the film, which stars Mickey Mouse, with his own comedic audio track playing over the nearly 8-minute cartoon, and released it under the title “Steamboat Willie (Brock’s Dub).”

After being hit with the claim, Baker’s upload became demonetized, meaning the YouTuber could not make any money off of it. The claim also blocked the ability to embed the video on third-party websites. In addition, the YouTube video was given limited visibility, including being blocked from view entirely in certain countries. 

Baker disputed the copyright claim shortly after receiving it. His case appeared strong, as Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on January 1, 2024, allowing a broad range of creative usage of the film and its contents without Disney’s permission — including for profit.

He was successful.

“Disney released their claim and it’s now embeddable and shareable worldwide,” Baker told Mashable on Friday along with a screenshot of the email alert he received from YouTube letting him know the copyright claim was released.

“Good news! After reviewing your dispute, Disney has decided to release their copyright claim on your YouTube video,” reads the YouTube email message….

Watch “Steamboat Willie (Brock’s Dub)” at the link.

(2) THE SUBSTACK DILEMMA. Cass Morris and Brian Keene recently shared their takes on “Substack’s Nazi Problem”.

“So… Substack…” by Cass Morris.

A few weeks ago, I co-signed an open letter to Substack’s founders asking them to not platform Nazis. Their response was… not great. The Paradox of Tolerance in action, really. And I could go into a big thing about the dangers of free speech absolutism and how it’s really just permission for terrible people to be more terrible more openly, but, y’know, that’s all been said a billion times. “Don’t welcome Nazis” really should not be a controversial viewpoint, yet here we are.

As a result of the founders’ statement, a fair number of both creators and supporters are leaving Substack. Even more, I think, are trying to decide whether to do so. A.R. Moxon and Catherynne Valente have said, more eloquently and thoroughly, the things I’m thinking and wrangling with, but I did want my readers to hear from me directly on this….

…Moving somewhere else is also no guarantee that a new platform won’t also face the same problems someday, forcing yet another move. I’m a child of the LiveJournal age; I remember how it started, and I remember what happened when it got sold. Very few sites seem to have long-term viability without corporate backing, and the increased corporatization of the internet is most of the reason I think the internet peaked in 2007. Every site is potentially in danger. Just because Buttondown or other platforms are promising good behavior now doesn’t mean anything if leadership or ownership changes (citation: Twitter). As Moxon and Valente both pointed out in their essays, abandoning every site that fails a virtue test means giving all our playgrounds over to the Nazis, and I’m not sure I’m okay with continuing to do that….

“Letters From the Labyrinth 364” by Brian Keene.

…These days I am so far removed from the drama and the backbiting and the petty squabbles that encompass our industry that I no longer know who is mad at who, or who’s been cancelled and for what, or which publisher isn’t paying, or what this person did. For example, I only found out recently that Substack has an apparent Nazi problem — something I was blissfully unaware of until several newsletters I subscribe to migrated away from the platform. And I respect folks decisions to do that. I’m going to stick it out because I’m tired of leaving platforms when the Nazis show up. We did that with Facebook and Twitter and Reddit. If we keep doing that, soon every bar will be a Nazi bar. Sooner or later, you’ve got to plant your feet and fight. So here is where I’ll make my stand — a counter-voice to their voices. If you can dig that, cool. If not, I don’t care….

(3) THE AMERICAN MULE? Ross Douthat’s New York Times opinion piece “Is Trump an Agent or an Accident of History?” kicks off with a big reference to Asimov.

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, a “psychohistorian” in a far-flung galactic empire figures out a way to predict the future so exactly that he can anticipate both the empire’s fall and the way that civilization can be painstakingly rebuilt. This enables him to plan a project — the “foundation” of the title — that will long outlast his death, complete with periodic messages to his heirs that always show foreknowledge of their challenges and crises.

Until one day the foreknowledge fails, because an inherently unpredictable figure has come upon the scene — the Mule, a Napoleon of galactic politics, whose advent was hard for even a psychohistorian to see coming because he’s literally a mutant, graced by some genetic twist with the power of telepathy.

Donald Trump is not a mutant telepath. (Or so I assume — fact checkers are still at work.) But the debates about how to deal with his challenge to the American political system turn, in part, on how much you think that he resembles Asimov’s Mule.

Was there a more normal, conventional, stable-seeming timeline for 21st century American politics that Trump, with his unique blend of tabloid celebrity, reality-TV charisma, personal shamelessness and demagogic intuition, somehow wrenched us off?

Or is Trump just an American expression of the trends that have revived nationalism all over the world, precisely the sort of figure a “psychohistory” of our era would have anticipated? In which case, are attempts to find some elite removal mechanism likely to just heighten the contradictions that yielded Trumpism in the first place, widening the gyre and bringing the rough beast slouching in much faster?…

(4) DOUG BERRY: THE GUY IN THE GIANTS HAT. [Item by Chris Garcia.] Last October, the world lost a wonderful human being — Douglas Berry. A Bay Area fan who was one of the original denizens of the 2000s Fanzine Lounges, Doug was also a phenomenal writer, best-known for his game writing in the Traveler game system universe, he was also a regularly blogger and Facebooker, and contributed to Journey Planet and The Drink Tank, co-editing two issues of the latter. 

Doug’s widow Kirsten, Chuck Serface, and Chris Garcia gathered some of Doug’s best writing from 2023, along with a few pieces from the last few years. The resulting collection, The Guy in the Giants Hat, can be downloaded from the link.

(5) PARAMOUNT+ SHEDS ORIGINAL STAR TREK MOVIES. Rachel Leishman gloats “Now That Only the Kelvin-Verse ‘Star Trek’ Movies Are Available on Paramount+, Maybe You’ll See Things My Way” at The Mary Sue.

Finally my time has come. You will all be forced to appreciate the Kelvin-verse. My plan is working, and you will all soon love my favorite Star Trek movies. That’s what you get for being mean. 

To be fair, you can still stream the original Star Trek movies. They’re just no longer on Paramount+, the home of the franchise. Hilarious to think about it like that, but it is weird that the home of Trek does not have the original Star Trek movies on its platform. What it does have are the movies starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban. Yes, you can still watch the magic that is Star Trek Beyond to your heart’s content. 

The Kelvin-verse movies (aptly named because they exist in an alternate timeline) started with the 2009 Star Trek from director J.J. Abrams and gave us a new crew of the Enterprise. They are beautiful and getting to see their adventures is extremely necessary in the world of Trek. Also, who doesn’t want to see more of Leonard Nimoy as Spock? Point is: These movies rule and we have been stuck in limbo about whether this franchise will continue for years. 

(6) SCHRÖDINGER’S TV SERIES. Meanwhile, The Orville’s fate has not been sealed: “Seth MacFarlane Says The Orville Isn’t Canceled Yet” in The Wrap.

Seth MacFarlane, the creator, writer and star of “The Orville,” has offered a cryptic update on the sci-fi series’ fate.

“All I can tell you is that there is no official death certificate for ‘The Orville’,” MacFarlane told TheWrap in an interview when asked about an update on a possible Season 4. “It is still with us. I can’t go any further than that at the moment. There are too many factors.”

MacFarlane’s co-star Scott Grimes added that conversations about “The Orville” Season 4 began before the SAG-AFTRA and Writers’ Guild of America strikes.

“I do know that we are still talking about it. It’s not dead in any sort of way whatsoever. It’s just about when, where and how and building the stuff again,” Grimes told TheWrap. “I’m excited because it’s one of the greatest things to work on. So I just have my fingers crossed. And I know Seth wants to do it and that usually holds a lot of power. And I hope he gets to because it’s one of his babies that he just loves and it’s a blast to work on.”…

(7) FREE SFF READ. The Sunday Morning Transport offers “Agni” by Nibedita Sen as a free read to encourage people to subscribe.

Nibedita Sen brings us a brilliant, dangerous world, complex power dynamics, and characters we can’t stop thinking about…

(8) DR. EMANUEL LOTTEM (1944-2024.) Israeli translator and editor Dr. Emanuel Lotem has died. The Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy Association mourned his loss on Facebook. (Note: Translations of his name are spelled several different ways; I have followed the spelling used by his Zion’s Fiction co-editor Sheldon Teitelbaum.)

Emanuel was one of the founding fathers of the Israeli community. As one of the association’s founders and chairman, he saw the approach of science fiction and fantasy as a supreme goal. The founders of the community and the association concentrated around him, and in light of his vision, conferences, and lectures began in them. Even after retiring from his official position, Emanuel was always present to give a listening ear, a push in the right direction or a prickly and precise word, always out of love for the content world and the community created around him. Emanuel made sure to lecture at conferences, meet the young and old fans that always surrounded him, and always returned the love that the community allowed him.

Emanuel was the translator of the science fiction and fantasy types into Hebrew, his translations brought to the Israeli audience the greatness of writers and books in Israel for more than 45 years. For many his translations were the first encounter with science fiction. His translations to “Dune” and “Lord of the Rings” well illustrated that Emanuel saw in the role of a translator a purpose, and a way to enrich the literary world through careful dialogue with the work. His vast breadth of knowledge and proficiency in every possible subject made his translations into art, and not just technical art. Emanuel pushed for the translation and publication of science fiction at a time when its translation was an insidious act, and was a significant factor in the field’s bloom.

Many people owe him their entry into this world, and many more will miss him.

Lottem recalled his start as an sff translator in an interview, “Dr. Emanuel Lottem, Intrigue and Conspiracies”, by the ISFFA.

…I fell in love with the English language and it helped me a lot to develop my third career as a translator from English to Hebrew. I started it basically as a gig. In my first career, as a university lecturer, salaries there weren’t anything, I needed a gig, I said, I can translate, why not, that’s how I came to Am Oved Publishing House, I had personal connections there, and I translated several books for them in my professional field, which is international economics. Then the White Series was born. And I was turned on. I said I want to translate. Tell me what a serious person is, what you have with this nonsense, science fiction. What are you, floating in the clouds? Translate serious things. I insisted, and then one day I called, it was already in my second career in the Foreign Ministry, the editorial secretary of Am Oved, called me, said I have a book called Dune, want to translate it? Luckily I was sitting on a good chair, so I didn’t fall out of it… And that’s how it started. That’s how my journey as a science fiction translator began. If the question was how my love for science fiction began, it was years before….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 7, 1912 — Charles Addams. (Died 1988.) Ahhh Charles Addams. No doubt you’re now thinking of the Addams Family and you’ve certainly reason to do so, but let’s first note some other artistic endeavors of his. 

His first published book work in the early Forties was the cover for But Who Wakes The Bugler by Peter DeVries, a silly slice of life novel.  He previously sold some sketches to the New Yorker. 

Random House soon thereafter contracted him for anthologies of drawings, Drawn and Quartered and Addams and Evil. (Lest you ask, the term “anthology” is from his website.)  Four more anthologies, now on Simon & Schuster will follow. 

And there was The Chas Addams Mother Goose, really there was. Here’s his cover for it.

Based on his the characters that had appeared in his New Yorker cartoons, 1964 saw The Addams Family television series premiere on ABC. It would star, and I’m just singling them out, John Astin as Gomez and Carolyn Jones as Morticia. 

It lasted just two seasons of thirty-minute episodes. Mind you there were sixty-four episodes. Yes, I loved every minute of it. I have watched it at least three times, as recently as several years ago and it as great now as was when I first watched it decades ago.

Halloween with the New Addams Family is a follow-up film with the primary cast back. No idea why the New is in there.  We also had The Addams Family, an animated with a voice cast with some of the original performers, yet another Addams Family series (each with these largely had just Sean Astin from the original series).

Think we’re done? Of course there is The Addams Family with Raúl Julia as a most macabre Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia Addams with Carol Struycken playing Lurch for the first of several times.  I really, really adore this film. 

It was followed by the Addams Family Values which for some reason that I can’t quite figure out I just don’t adore.

Are we finished? No. The New Addams Family which aired for one nearly a quarter of a century after the original series went off the air after but a single season but lasted an extraordinary sixty-five episodes. I need to see at least the pilot for this. 

And then there’s the Addams Family Reunion which had the distinction of Tim Curry as Gomez. I’ve not seen it, so who has? It sounds like an intriguing role for him…

There will be two animated films as well, The Addams Family and The Addams Family 2, neither of which I’ve seen.

Finally let’s talk about licensing. After his death, his wife, Tee Addams, was responsible for getting his works licensed. To quote the website, “The Addams Family, both its individual characters and the Family in its entirety, have a long history of selling products, in print ad campaigns and television commercials alike – from typewriters to Japanese scotch, from designer showcases to perfume, from paper towels to chocolate candies, and all that lies in between.” 

So I went looking for use of the characters. I think the best one I found is the claymation one for M&Ms Dark Chocolate which you can see here. (And please don’t ask me about the Wizard of Oz M&Ms commercial. That one is still giving me nightmares.though the FedEx Wizard of Oz commercial is just silly. I mean dropping a FedEx truck on that witch…)

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Thatababy plays “match the snowman”. How many do you recognize?
  • The Far Side shows the dogs’ take on nuclear war.
  • Peanuts from March 28, 1955 is the start of five more Martian jokes.
  • Sally Forth has a complaint about that other Jetpack…

(11) I’LL BE BACK. [Item by Steven French.] Physics World picks “The 10 quirkiest stories from the world of physics in 2023”. This one is kinda scary:

Shape-shifting robot

In the classic 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robot assassin, the T-800, comes up against the T-1000 Advanced Prototype, which is made from a liquid metal called “mimetic polyalloy” that can reform into any shape it touches. Researchers in China and the US this year came close to recreating in the lab some of the T-1000’s special abilities. They did this by designing miniature robots that can rapidly and reversibly shift between liquid and solid. First, they embedded magnetic particles in gallium, a soft metal with a low melting point. Then they applied an alternating magnetic field, which not only heats the magnetic particles, making the body become a liquid, but also allows it to become mobile. In one video released by the team, a 10mm-tall LEGO-like minifigure liquifies to ooze before passing through bars in a mocked-up cell. It then cools inside a mould before the figure reforms back into its original shape.”

(12) CLIENTS PROPPING THEM UP. CBS Los Angeles reports how the “Entertainment industry bands together to save struggling Hollywood prop house”.

From the outside, Faux Library Studio Props may seem like an unassuming warehouse nestled in North Hollywood. Inside, however, are a whole host of set pieces that tell the recent history of the entertainment industry. 

Unfortunately, like many businesses trying to bounce back in the past couple of years, all of the priceless mementos may be lost unless the owner can come up with $100,000 by February.

Marc Meyer started Faux Library Studio Props over two decades ago in 2000. 

“When I retired from decorating I said I got to keep buying and enjoying myself. So, this was my business,” Meyer said. 

His retirement project turned into the home for vintage furniture and décor worth millions of dollars, including a desk from “Top Gun Maverick” and a boardroom table in “Grey’s Anatomy.” 

However, Meyer is famous for the prop books he holds, all 16,000 of them, including the ones from “Angels and Demons.”

While the covers are real, the insides are not. 

“That’s the wallpaper on the inside, just to make it look like pages,” Meyer said. “The actor really has to act to show the weight.”…

(13) STAR HOOEY. “Fox News Host Unexpectedly Wins for Most Baffling ‘Star Trek’ vs. ‘Star Wars’ Take” according to The Mary Sue.

….On Thursday’s episode of the Fox News roundtable show Outnumbered, the hosts discussed a new Star Wars announcement. These high-profile, successful women on Fox News were outraged that a woman, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, will direct the next Star Wars film. Like much of the right-wing media, they found it upsetting that Obaid-Chinoy said it was about time a woman directed a Star Wars movie.

The show also highlighted a statement Obaid-Chinoy made years ago, unrelated to Star Wars, about enjoying making men uncomfortable with her movies. After showing the Obaid-Chinoy quote, Fox News host Emily Compagno said, “Pretty great attitude for a director of a franchise that is geared towards men!”

Kayleigh McEnany, another host on the show, predicted Obaid-Chinoy’s film would “flop.” McEnany tried to bolster her argument by reading a list of recent conservative “successes” in pop culture. These included the terrible song “Try That in a Small Town” and the Bud Light boycott. McEnany made an argument that “woke” things failed in 2023. (I guess she missed how Barbie dominated the box office, among other successful feminist works in the past year.) She wrapped up her rant by sarcastically wishing Obaid-Chinoy the “best of luck” with her Star Wars movie.

That’s when Compagno flashed a backward Vulcan salute and said, “And that’s why I’m a Trekkie and not Star Wars!”…

And then The Mary Sue pointed out many examples of when Star Trek was attacked as too “woke”.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes you inside the “Rebel Moon: Part One Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/2/19 Hairy Philosophers And The Pixel’s Scroll.

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(1) MEAN STREETS. I Write Like says it analyzes a sample of your writing and determines the author you most write like. I pasted in a paragraph from my “Fourth of Sierra Madre” article and was very happy to be told —

(2) POUNDING THE KEYBOARD. Chuck Tingle’s encouraging words for those taking up the NaNoWriMo challenge.

(3) DRONE PROBLEMS. The LA Times tracks how many times “Illegal drones ground water-dropping helicopters at critical moment in Maria fire battle “.

…The interruption of the aerial firefighting underscores growing concerns about how drones can bring added dangers to pilots battling major fires.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, aerial firefighting efforts have been shut down at least nine times this year because of drone use, and at least 20 drone incursions have hindered firefighting capabilities nationwide from January through October. A report shared with The Times showed that of those 20 incursions, five were in California.

While the unmanned aerial vehicles are small, drones can wreak incredible havoc. A collision with a wing, engine or any part of a larger aircraft can cause severe damage.

“A bird collision with a plane can cause a plane to go down,” said Jessica Gardetto, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center. “These are hard plastic items.”

(4) WAKING UP THE WOKE. “Barack Obama Calls Out Woke Culture And Twitter Outrage: ‘That’s Not Activism’” – Huffington Post has the story.

“This idea of purity, and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly,” he said. “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” 

Obama also called out what he perceived as a “danger” among younger people.

“There is this sense sometimes of ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough,’” he said, then offered an example: 

“Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb. Then, I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, ‘Man, you see how woke I was? I called you out.’ I’m gonna get on TV. Watch my show. Watch ‘Grown-ish.’ You know, that’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.”

(5) NYRSF READINGS. In honor of Guy Fawkes Day, the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series offers two brilliant speculative fiction writers who will make sure you will remember, remember, the Fifth of November — Robert V.S. Redick and Gay Partington Terry. Event takes place Tuesday, November 5 beginning at 7:00 p.m. in The Brooklyn Commons at 388 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.

Robert V.S. Redick‘s fantasy novel Master Assassins, an (anti-) war epic, was a finalist for the 2018 Booknest Award for Best Novel, and was described by Daryl Gregory as “A blazingly smart thrill-ride of an adventure.” He is also the author of the critically-acclaimed nautical epic fantasy series The Chathrand Voyage Quartet. His debut novel, The Red Wolf Conspiracy, received a special commendation by the 2010 Crawford Award Committee and was translated into five languages.

Robert teaches speculative fiction writing in the Stonecoast MFA Program in Freeport, Maine, and works as a freelance editor and book coach. He has worked for international development and environmental justice organizations for many years, including Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and the Center for International Forestry Research. He has lived in Indonesia (where he wrote Master Assassins), Colombia, Argentina, London and rural France. He’s also worked as a baker, horse handler, translator and stage critic. He now lives in Western Massachusetts with his family.

Gay Partington Terry grew up in northern Appalachia but has lived in NYC ever since. She wrote screenplays for “Toxic Avenger,” and stories for anthologies, magazines, and ezines (Asimov’s, Full Spectrum, Why New Yorkers Smoke…). She’s the author of two books, Meeting the Dog Girls and Life, Death, and Beyond Smiggle’s Bottom.

Gay has been a waitress, factory worker, welfare worker, magician’s assistant, and catalogued tribal arts for a gallery. She does tai chi and is mentored by five grandchildren.

(6) BIG BANG COROLLARY. John Scalzi has posted a free short story related to his freshly finished trilogy: “And Now, A New Short Story: The Origin of the Flow”.

…I mentioned yesterday, when I wrote about writing The Last Emperox, my upcoming novel, that I sometimes write reference pieces for myself so I can give some context to myself about what I’m writing. Those pieces usually are never seen by others, but they’re useful for me, and they make a better book for everyone else.

This is one of those pieces. In the book, humans get around space via “The Flow” — a “metacosmological multidimensional space” that’s not of this universe but lets people get around in it at multiples of the speed of light. I decided I needed to give The Flow an origin story, as well as understand how people discovered it, so I wrote this piece for myself, which I am sharing with you now….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 2, 1902 — John P. Fulton, A.S.C. A special effects supervisor and cinematographer.  He’s the man who parted the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments. Neat trick that. Genre wise, we can first find him in 1931 on Frankenstein in a career that’ll stretch through The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein and I Married a Monster from Outer Space to name a few of the films he worked on. (Died 1966.)
  • Born November 2, 1913 — Burt Lancaster. Certainly being Dr. Paul Moreau on The Island of Doctor Moreau was his most genre-ish role but I like him as General James Mattoon Scott in Seven Days in May. And, of course, he’s really great as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams. (Died 1994.)
  • Born November 2, 1924 — Michi Kobi. She was Dr. Hideko Murata in Twelve to the Moon, half of as a double feature with either Battle in Outer Space or 13 Ghosts. Unless you consider her doing voices on Courage the Cowardly Dog, an early Oughts animated series, to be genre, this is her only SF work. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 2, 1927 — Steve Ditko. Illustrator who began his career working in the studio of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby during which he began his long association with Charlton Comics and which led to his creating the Captain Atom character. Did I mention DC absorbed that company as it did so many others? Now he’s best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. For Charlton and also DC itself, including a complete redesign of Blue Beetle, and creating or co-creating The Question, The Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove.  He been inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 2018.)
  • Born November 2, 1941 — ?Ed Gorman. He’d be here if only for writing the script for the  Batman: I, Werewolf series in which Batman meets a werewolf. Very cool. More straight SFF is his Star Precinct trilogy with Kevin Randle which is quite excellent, and I’m fond of his short fiction which fortunately is showing up in digital form at the usual spots. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 2, 1942 — Carol Resnick, 77. Wife of that Resnick who credited her according to several sources with being a co-writer on many of his novels. (Does he do this in the actual novels?) He also credited her as being a co-author on two movie scripts that they’ve sold, based on his novels Santiago and The Widowmaker. And she’s responsible for the costumes in which she and Mike appeared in five Worldcon masquerades in the Seventies, winning awards four times.
  • Born November 2, 1942 — Stefanie Powers,77. April Dancer, the lead in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. which lasted just one season. Did you know Fleming contributed concepts to this series and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well?  She would play Shalon in the crossover that started on The Six-Million Man and concluded on The Six-Million Woman called “The Return of Bigfoot”. 
  • Born November 2, 1949 — ?Lois McMaster Bujold, 70. First let’s note she’s won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein’s record, not counting his Retro Hugo. Quite impressive that. Bujold’s works largely comprises three separate book series: the Vorkosigan Saga, the Chalion series, and the Sharing Knife series. She joined the Central Ohio Science Fiction Society, and co-published with Lillian Stewart Carl StarDate, a Trek fanzine in which a story of hers appeared under the byline Lois McMaster.
  • Born November 2, 1980 — ?Brittany Ishibashi, 39. Ishibashi played Karai in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She’s currently portrays Tina Minoru on Runaways, streaming on Hulu. And she was Maggie Zeddmore in the Ghostfacers webseries. 

(8) JOIN THE JOURNEY. Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus will steer their time machine to a series of Southern California destinations to present these live events in November and December. Marcus says, “They are free (at least, we don’t charge, and only LosCon has a door fee) so if you’re in the neighborhood, please stop on by!” Here’s the list:

Talking about the Women Pioneers of Space Science at a great dark sky site

  • Loscon, Los Angeles, Dec. 1, 1:00 PM

“Crest of a New Wave“, discussing 1964 in science fact and fiction

Talking about “What Science Fiction got wrong…and right!“

“The First Moon Race“, talking about the troubles and ultimate triumph of Project Ranger.

Once more, talking about the Women Pioneers of Space Science at another great dark sky site.

(9) MARTIAN HOPS. Behind a paywall in the October 26 Financial Times, Edwin Heathcote reviews an exhibit on living on Mars that is at Britain’s Design Museum (designmuseum.org) through February 23.

Another room is devoted to off-world agriculture, with terraria and complex hydroponic closed-loop systems, though it all depends on either transporting water from Earth or finding and extracting some of the ice at the Martian poles.  Architect Xavier de Kesteller from Hasell suggests a circular economy is a matter of life and death on Mars–the extreme self-reliance necessary for a Martian mission, the need to recycle everything, might promote better use of our resources on Earth.

It all ends with an intriguing installation by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg about a Mars ‘wilding,’ populating the planet not with people but with plants, presented through a series of screens and a gaming engine which maps the development of the fauna over millennia.

(10) MONSTER MASHER. NPR introduces readers to “Rick Baker, The Monster Maker Of Hollywood”.

An American Werewolf in London. The zombies from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Bela Lugosi’s Dracula from Ed Wood. The dark fairy Maleficent.

They’re all the work of Rick Baker, who created some of the most memorable movie monsters and creatures of the last four decades. Baker is retired now, having won seven Oscars for makeup. But he’s chronicled his long career in a new two-volume illustrated book titled Metamorphosis.

In the LA enclave Toluca Lake, Baker answers the door to his house-turned-studio wearing a t-shirt that says “I’d Rather Be Making Monsters.” Inside, the building is packed with gorilla skull casts, monster sculptures, masks of gruesome victims. There’s a mysterious room that looks from a distance like Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. (“Uh, that’s a room you probably shouldn’t go in,” Baker says, with a wink.)

His massive book documents his long career, starting when he was a 10-year-old kid making monster masks in his bedroom. His parents encouraged his passion, which included his fascination with the 1931 Frankenstein movie starring Boris Karloff.

(11) IT ALL ADDS UP. Popular Mechanics advises “Use Math to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse”.

Put away the chainsaw. Stow your machete. The best zombie-fighting tool in your arsenal may be … math?

Just in time for Halloween, mathematicians at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. have modeled different scenarios that may occur in the event of a zombie apocalypse. The math the team used to model these scary scenarios is a type of modeling scientists rely on to predict and prevent the spread of infectious diseases like measles.

“These models allow us to explain real-world data, make predictions about future disease outbreaks or control measures, and to gain a deeper understanding of the natural environment,” mathematician Alex Best of the University of Sheffield said in a statement.

(12) ADDAMS FAMILY ORIGINS. Long Island Press profiled “Charles Addams: The Long Island Macabre Master Who Created The Addams Family”.

…In 1931, he enrolled in Manhattan’s Grand Central School of Art. He set his sights on The New Yorker magazine. The next year he sold them his first spot sketch for $7.50. In 1933, the magazine bought the first of many drawings.

After his father died that year, he went to work for True Detective magazine. He relished retouching and removing the blood from the pictures of corpses.

In 1935, he joined the New Yorker staff. America was transfixed by the dark, shadowy Frankenstein and Dracula films, which likely inspired Addams to create his signature subjects: a slinky, pale, black-gowned vixen and her weird-looking clan in front of a dilapidated, haunted-looking Victorian mansion. Unlike movie monsters, Addams’ characters had an eerie yet healthy sense of humor.

The New Yorker started running his immediately recognizable Addams Family artwork that year. In 1942, his first anthology of drawings was published.

(13) 404SKI. NPR reports a “New Russian Law Gives Government Sweeping Power Over Internet”.

A Russian law has taken effect that, in theory, would allow the Russian government to cut off the country’s Internet from the rest of the world.

The “sovereign Internet law,” as the government calls it, greatly enhances the Kremlin’s control over the Web. It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia’s government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia “in an emergency,” as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post.

It requires Internet service providers to install software that can “track, filter, and reroute internet traffic,” as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog “to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat.”

The equipment would conduct what’s known as “deep packet inspection,” an advanced way to filter network traffic.

Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent.

“Now the government can directly censor content or even turn Russia’s Internet into a closed system without telling the public what they are doing or why,” Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. “This jeopardizes the right of people in Russia to free speech and freedom of information online.”

(14) IN THE STARS. The Cut collected proof from Instagram showing that “Celebrities Really Went All Out on Halloween”. A bit heavy on Kardhasians, sure, but without this post I would never have seen LeBron James perfectly attired as Edward Scissorhands,

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4QnqppF2qc/

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Olav Rokne, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770’s collaborating contributing editors of the day Jon Meltzer, Soon Lee, and Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 10/31 Standlee’s Instant Summons

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(1) The title of Jeb Kinnison’s review encapsulates his opinion — “’Tomorrowland’: Tragic Misfire”.

Having seen mixed reviews, I waited until Tomorrowland came out on cheaper streaming services. Directed and mostly written by Brad Bird, auteur of brilliant work like Iron Giant and The Incredibles, the previews looked promising — a story about the shiny visions of the technological future we had as kids in the 1960s, and a world where they actually happened.

(2) An old b&w photo of a scientist controlling waldos to diaper a baby doll is one of the relics in the Vault of the Atomic Space Age.

(3) William Shatner tells how his face was used for the mask that Halloween film franchise killer Michael Myers wore.

(4) “Jim Burns’ Halloween Reverie: Then and Now” from last year, at the local New York CBS station’s website.

Twenty-five years ago, youngsters at my door could see through the screen to a life-sized Superman and Batman that were just past me, in the living room.

On another night, every window of my home was adorned with special Halloween themed balloons, the merry Mylar reaching high into the October sky.

For another year, a wide assortment of latex masks of classic  Hollywood monsters (a wolfman, a mummy, Planet of the Apes’ Dr. Zaius and  creatures from The Outer Limits)–an amazing collection I had somehow acquired–peered out from those portals, gazing upon a lawn filled with a virtual galaxy of giant pumpkin lawn bags!

(5) How big did you say those pumpkin bags were, Jim? A giant inflatable pumpkin got away the other day in Arizona….

Diego Ramirez captured video of the 25-foot-tall jack o’lantern blowing around in traffic after it broke free of its straps at the Peoria Sports Complex.

“I was so shocked to see that it was like bouncing like a basketball all the way down the road,” Patrick Sparkes of Big AZ Promotions, the company that owns the decoration, told KPNX-TV.

The company said the 350-pound pumpkin broke free from its straps with the help of strong winds.

“We showed up and it wasn’t there and we spent the last 40 minutes driving around looking for it,” Sparkes said.

There were no injuries from the pumpkin’s dash for freedom, but there was some damage done to streetlamps.

(6) The Addams Family: The Broadway Musical evidently has been around for years, but it’s news to me!

THE ADDAMS FAMILY features an original story, and it’s every father’s nightmare. Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and fallen in love with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family. A man her parents have never met. And if that weren’t upsetting enough, she confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Now, Gomez Addams must do something he’s never done before — keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia. Everything will change for the whole family on the fateful night they host a dinner for Wednesday’s “normal” boyfriend and his parents.

 

(7) The SJW viewpoint strikes again! A. J. Jacobs told NPR host Scott Simon some famous monsters aren’t as horrible as you think. I think I hear “Officer Krupke” in the background…

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Misunderstood, misunderstood.

JACOBS: Misunderstood – that’s what I’m here to do is trying to salvage the reputation of some of these Halloween monsters. So yes, Frankenstein I think gets a really raw deal in the reputation department. We all think of Frankenstein’s monster as this monosyllabic idiot from the movies. But actually, in Mary Shelley’s original novel from 1818, Frankenstein’s monster was more of a sensitive intellectual type. He read Plutarch and Goethe. He was more Brooklyn hipster and less unfrozen caveman.

(8) A mysterious castle, a deserted village and things that go bump in the night are all in a day’s work for a TODAY team on the hunt for Dracula — “Take a Trip ‘Behind the Screams’ in Transylvania”

(9) Today In History

  • October 31, 1926 – Harry Houdini dies. Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn’t had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.
  • October 31, 2001 — Lovecraft adaptation Dagon makes its theatrical premiere in Spain.

(10) Today’s Birthday Boy

  • October 31, 1961 — Peter Jackson is born on Halloween in Wellington, New Zealand.

(11) The photo comes from “Susan Beatrice Recycles Old Watch Parts Into Intricately Detailed Steampunk Scultptures” on EarthPorm, but here full gallery is here. Amazing stuff.

recycled-watch-parts-sculptures-vintage-antique-susan-beatrice-36

Beatrice’s creations bring boring old gears and machinery to life. She has the ability to turn ratchets and other tiny technical parts into a lively mouse, seahorse or fairy. The more you look at her varied artwork the more you wonder what this woman can’t do… as it appears she can make everything out of anything.

(12) How badly do you want to be one of the first people to see the new Star Wars movie? Air France can help you out.

Lines will form at the crack of dawn on December 18 as die-hard fans set out to snag the best seats to see Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in theaters.

But some very lucky trans-Atlantic plane passengers will get the jump on them.

In what seems like a ploy to rope super-fans into buying very expensive plane tickets, Air France will be letting passengers watch the much-anticipated flick two days before its official release, on December 16.

The French airline is teaming up with EuropaCorp CINEMAS to offer the advance screenings for passengers on four Paris-bound flights, AF083 from San Francisco to Paris, AF065 from Los Angeles, AF011 from New York and AF009 from New York.

[Thanks to James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day, Soon Lee.]

Bradbury Estate Auction Begins Online

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Charles Addams painting done in 1946.

Charles Addams painting done in 1946.

The Ray Bradbury estate auction has gone live on the Nate D. Sanders Fine Autographs & Memorabilia site – see the full catalog here. It includes paintings by Charles Addams and Hannes Bok that hung on Bradbury’s walls and items from his collections of Disney animation cels, comic strips and original illustration art. The auction continues until September 25

The minimum bid on the Charles Addams signed painting is $32,500:

”Addams Family” cartoonist and creator Charles Addams original 1946 painting personally owned by Ray Bradbury. True to Addams’ whimsical and macabre tone, painting depicts a landscape scene at twilight with a Gothic mansion overlooking a shore, and with ghoulish creatures and spirits ascending towards the house. Signed, ”Chas Adams” at upper right. Mixed media on illustration board was selected to be the cover image for Bradbury’s book, ”From the Dust Returned”, which was released in 2001. Painting measures 17” x 12” and is matted and framed to an overall size of 24” x 19”.

They’re asking at least $6,000 for the iconic Dean Ellis painting commissioned for the cover of The Illustrated Man published by Bantam Books in 1969.

Dean Ellis Illustrated Man COMP

Ray Bradbury's 2004 Retro Hugo for Fahrenheit 451.

Ray Bradbury’s 2004 Retro Hugo for Fahrenheit 451.

The Retro Hugo Award that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 won at the 2004 Worldcon could be yours for $5,000 (if nobody bids higher). That might be a reasonable asking price — Harry Warner Jr.’s Hugo went for $2,000 at auction in 2012. The association of this Hugo with a more famous winner ought to drive up the value.

Hugo Award presented to Ray Bradbury at Noreascon 4, the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention in 2004. Trophy honors the great author as part of the Retrospective Awards in the category of Best Novel for ”Fahrenheit 451”. Iconic sci-fi trophy features a sleek figural metal sculpture of a rocket pointing skyward, mounted to a wooden base with the information plaque affixed to one of the three sides. The other two sides are studded with rings of 13 stars. To the underside, the name of the trophy’s designer, Patrick J. O’Connor is engraved. Measures 17” in total height; base sides each measure 7”.

(In contrast the minimum bid for his Saturn Award is $500 – hear, hear!)

The hundreds of items of art going under the hammer include works by Joseph Mungiani, Hannes Bok,Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Ron Cobb — and Joseph Lane’s portrait of Bradbury from the Hollywood Brown Derby.

Bradbury receives autographed "Ice Cream Suit."

Bradbury receives autographed “Ice Cream Suit.”

Plus all the minutiae accumulated throughout his life — handwritten poems and doodles, Bradbury’s annotated copy of the 1977 Academy Award script, and checks he signed in 1960. There are two unopened bottles of French wine from the same vineyard, vintage 1945 and 1946. Furniture, lamps, silverware. Even his personally-owned Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, autographed by the cast. (I ran of photo of his receiving that just a couple weeks ago.)

Medusa Harryhausen 47916_med

One final hidden gem is this Medusa Mask:

Ray Bradbury personally owned Medusa mask. Rubber cowl features a hideously delightful green textured face with pointy teeth and a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression. Snakes emanate from the head in conformity with the myth. Possibly a movie prop from the 1981 film ”Clash of the Titans”. Measures 11” x 13” x 9”. Near fine. With a COA from the Ray Bradbury estate.

It was indeed made by Ray Harryhausen (though the catalog doesn’t say so), and once sat on top of the refrigerator in Bradbury’s Palm Springs home according to John King Tarpinian.