Juniper Wiles really doesn’t want to be Nora Constantine, the teen detective she played on TVfor three years. But now that she knows she can see and hear ghosts, when most people can’t, and that ghosts wouldn’t be ghosts if they didn’t have unresolved problems in the living world, it’s hard to say no when they ask for help. This time, it’s the strangely, and obnoxiously, hostile head of the NPD’s Spook Squad that brings her together with seven ghost girls trapped in an unopenable box. She’s soon made a promise to the girls that she’ll find their killer witch, and help them move on. That’d be enough on her plate, even if she hadn’t also agreed to help a man from a popular fictional universe find his missing sister, who has reasons for avoiding him right now. And if Sam Cray, head of the Spook Squad, weren’t trying to arrest Juniper and Christy for not providing their help in exactly the way he demands, at exactly the time he demands it.
Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls (Newford #22), by Charles de Lint Triskell Press, ISBN 9781989741054, November 2022
Review By Lis Carey: Juniper Wiles, former actor who starred as the plucky teen detective Nora Constantine, was dragged back into the Nora Constantine world in a previous book, Juniper Wiles, when it started to bleed into Newford, starting with her meeting with the ghost of a murdered young man. She survived that adventure, but decided that she didn’t want to be a detective, teen or otherwise. And she’s certainly no Nora Constantine.
But having learned that she can see and talk to ghosts, and that they all have unresolved problems they want to solve, she can’t always say no when they ask her for help. Yet while she often helps, she has no interest in making it the focus of her life.
Then Christy persuades her to come to a meeting at the police station, with Captain Sam Cray, head of the Newford Police Department’s Paranormal Investigations Task Force. Christy consults for the part of the police that’s informally called the Spook Squad, and Cray is having a problem that involves ghosts. Juniper is there only as a reluctant favor to Christy, and Cray is angry that Christy has brought “an actress” who only thinks she’s something because she played Nora Constantine. He’s offensive enough about it that she decides to walk out, but Christy persuades her to stay, and Cray to at least show her the problem.
Soon Juniper has met the “ghost girls” tied to box taken from a house that was being plagued by what seemed to be a poltergeist. They can’t open the box, and no one can see or hear any ghosts — except, when she enters the room, Juniper. Soon she has promised the girls that she’ll do her best to solve their problem of being trapped by the box — and find their killer, who got each of them, over several decades.
That would be enough of a problem, with no real clue who the girls are or when and where they were killed, but this is Newford, and Juniper has a reputation of helping people who aren’t part of the everyday world. She meets a young man who isn’t a ghost, but rather an Eadar Duncan Fairweather, one of the young mages studying at Kingsmoor College, wants her to find his missing sister, also a mage student, called Daisy Fairweather. Getting this information clear takes a few minutes, because Juniper isn’t one of the fans of either the books or the movies based on them, and doesn’t even recognize their names. She agrees to do some preliminary investigation and decide if she’ll be able to help him.
Soon Juniper is doing exactly what she doesn’t want to do — two investigations that become dangerous and high-stakes, sometimes involving her friends, especially the all too willing Jilly Coppercorn, into events Juniper things are too dangerous for her gentler friends. She’s happy to have the assistance of Joe, the shapeshifter “cousin,” and Christy’s sister Christiana after she learns more of Christiana’s abilities, but she’s also not at all sure she likes who she becomes when she’s dealing with genuine bad guys — such as the killer of the ghost girls.
And things don’t get better with Cray. They get worse. When he figures out he really needs Juniper’s help, he wants a pro forma apology for his rudeness and insults to wipe the slate clean, and then dictate how she’s going to help him and how it will work. Juniper does not respond well to this, and Cray becomes another problem she and her allies have to deal with, while hunting a killer and looking for a missing woman. Along the way, she learns a lot about herself, her friends, and also about the reputation she’s already earned in parts of the magical world she has till now been only marginally aware of, from listening to Jilly, Christy, Joe, and other friends. De Lint’s character development is never less than excellent, and we see him doing his good work here.
On that note, it would be wrong not to say a bit more about Sam Cray. I don’t like him, but he’s understandable. Several characters in the book say he’s “not a bad guy,” but I really don’t like him. He does have some painful events in his past that make his behavior understandable–but it is at best an unhealthy reaction. Charles de Lint says in an afterword/intro to the bonus short story about the beginnings of the Spook Squad, that Cray is “not a bad guy.”
And I read the bonus story, and it’s good, and I still don’t like Sam Cray. Perhaps that’s my past experiences, that give me a low tolerance for people who think they can tell me what to think and feel, and want pro forma apologies to wipe the slate clean, without anything really changing.
Highly recommended.
I received this book as a gift, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
Charles de Lint gave us the green light to share Joey’s first birthday photo. The pup’s celebration included a visit to MaryAnn Harris in the hospital. Be sure to check out the Harris – de Lint Recovery Gofundme and Charles’ new Patreon.
Joey turned one today–only three days after the birthday of his namesake Joe Strummer who would have turned seventy. For his birthday he got a spa day (that was inadvertent; I made the appointment months ago) and then a visit with MaryAnn at the hospital. He loves to sprawl on her whether she’s in her chair or in bed and make sure her face is really clean which makes her laugh.
Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
By Julie Bartel: MaryAnn Harris, wife and creative partner of legendary author and musician Charles de Lint (and an artist and musician in her own right) fell ill on September 6, 2021. After many months of suffering from brain stem encephalitis, MaryAnn was diagnosed with Powassan virus, an extremely rare tick-borne illness. MaryAnn spent 8 months in ICU before being transferred to a complex care facility, where she is still recovering. She is still dependent on a ventilator to breathe, and fully paralyzed except for a toe.
In order to make a full recovery and go home (which her doctor believes is possible), MaryAnn needs significantly more therapy than the Canadian healthcare system can provide. In addition, due to the severity and long term nature of her condition, Charles and MaryAnn will start being assessed a co-pay for MaryAnn’s room and board that could be as high as C$4000 per month, an impossible figure at this time. As a result, fundraising efforts are now underway to help Charles and MaryAnn raise the funds needed to move forward.
Having mustered through almost a full year under the most difficult circumstances, Charles has agreed that additional fundraising is the best way to ensure that MaryAnn gets the therapy she needs to make a full recovery. Last week he launched a long-awaited and much anticipated Patreon which has been incredibly successful and has already given him the breathing room to schedule additional physical therapy sessions.
Charles and MaryAnn also gave their blessing to a GoFundMe campaign which has been started on their behalf. The goal of that campaign is to raise the funds necessary for the additional intensive rehabilitation therapy along with the monthly copayment they are expecting from the hospital. In addition, when MaryAnn recovers enough to go home, she will likely need mobility aids, potential renovations to their home to make it more accessible, ongoing rehabilitation therapy and possibly private home care to help her with activities of daily living.
An online auction is also in the works for later this fall. Organizers will be reaching out to members of the science fiction and fantasy community for donations shortly, and hope to create a marketplace of items and experiences for bidding on shortly before the holidays.
To follow MaryAnn’s recovery, a Facebook Page – “The Newford Star” – has been created; updates and announcements will be posted there regularly.
A fairly recent development has been her ability to use voice commands to make phone calls in the late afternoon and evening, which has been a delight. She called me yesterday and asked that I pass on to everyone here her overwhelming gratitude for the outpouring of support and well wishes. She feels them, she said, and they mean the world. Thank you.
Updates will also be posted on the Go Fund Me page. Contributions or Patreon subscriptions are gratefully accepted, but we also encourage the community to buy a book, download a tune, or leave a review. And, as MaryAnn says, “If you’ve been adversely affected by COVID, or anything else for that matter, please just send your best wishes, which we will treasure with all of our hearts.”
Please, contribute what you can here. Check out Charles’ long-awaited and much-requested Patreon. Buy a book, download a tune, leave a review. Share their story, raise awareness, reach out to your own communities.
(1) TOLKIEN MANUSCRIPT EXHIBIT. [Item by Michael “Orange Mike” Lowrey.] “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript” opens August 19 in Milwaukee, with material not just from Marquette University’s collection but items on loan from England which will probably not be seen again in North America in our lifetimes. The exhibit runs through December 23. Ticket information here.
Marquette University’s Raynor Memorial Libraries and the Haggerty Museum of Art collaboratively present this exhibition focused on the work of celebrated author and artist J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), best known for his literary classics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The exhibition considers Tolkien’s work through the lens of manuscripts, in terms of both the materials that Tolkien studied as a medieval philologist and the manuscripts that he created while developing his collected writings on Middle-earth. Professor Tolkien was deeply immersed in the complexities of manuscripts, and this exhibition will illustrate how different aspects of the manuscript tradition found expression within Tolkien’s scholarly life and in his creative writing. Founded on Marquette’s J.R.R. Tolkien Collection, the exhibition also includes items borrowed from other repositories, including a significant number of Tolkien manuscripts and artwork from the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford. Many of the 147 items in the exhibition have not previously been exhibited or published.
MaryAnn Harris has been in the hospital since September 6, 2021. She is recovering from Powassan virus, an extremely rare tick-bourne illness, but is still dependent on a ventilator to breathe, and paralyzed except for a toe. In order to make a full recovery and go home (which her doctor believes is possible), she needs significantly more therapy than the Canadian healthcare system can provide. In addition, due to the severity and long term nature of her condition, Charles & MaryAnn will start being assessed a co-pay for MaryAnn’s room and board that could be as high as $4k per month, an impossible figure at this time. Charles & MaryAnn have spent their lives reaching out to all of us through words and music and conversation and acts of kindness, through their creativity and heart, their generous spirits, and their dedication to putting light out into the world. Together we can help build the resources needed to help MaryAnn make a full recovery and to bring her home. Thank you.
… If I had been considered & denied I wouldn’t even have worried as much. But I don’t feel I was even considered at all. It didn’t look like. Despite all I did (seperate from being ultra excellent at what I do.
After I undertook to attend the Hugo, I did a GoFundMe drive ran for me by Jason Sanford l. We raised over $7000 in a day. I started trying to get a visa interview appointment. Nigerians reading this know how nerve wracking that is.
This was in June. Btw then and August, like 2 months, I got an interview date. I battered my soul to pieces for that. Nigerians understand. Immigration firm I went to refused to talk to me. Said no one was going to US from Nigeria now cuz no dates. Everyone said it was impossible. But I got it.
That’s how many layers of impossible I have had to beat. How many miracles. But this is Nigeria. Everything needs a miracle. The most basic ish. Miracle after miracle till you are one short….
(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 64 of the Octothorpe podcast, “John Coxon is crying, Alison Scott is lounging, and Liz Batty is crocheting. We go through our entire Hugo Award ballots in 30% the time it took us to go through one category, before talking about our schedules for Chicon 8 and then doing some picks.”
(5) OCTOPUS. Nautilus takes readers down “Another Path to Intelligence”, with help along the way from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time.
It turns out there are many ways of “doing” intelligence, and this is evident even in the apes and monkeys who perch close to us on the evolutionary tree. This awareness takes on a whole new character when we think about those non-human intelligences which are very different to us. Because there are other highly evolved, intelligent, and boisterous creatures on this planet that are so distant and so different from us that researchers consider them to be the closest things to aliens we have ever encountered: cephalopods.
Cephalopods—the family of creatures which contains octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish—are one of nature’s most intriguing creations. They are all soft-bodied, containing no skeleton, only a hardened beak. They are aquatic, although they can survive for some time in the air; some are even capable of short flight, propelled by the same jets of water that move them through the ocean. They do strange things with their limbs. And they are highly intelligent, easily the most intelligent of the invertebrates, by any measure.
… Perhaps one of the fullest expressions of this difference is to be found, not in the work of scientists, but in a novel. In his book Children of Time, science-fiction writer Adrien Tchaikovsky conceptualizes octopus intelligence as a kind of multithreaded processing system. For the spacefaring octopuses in Children of Time, their awareness—their consciousness—is tripartite. Their higher functions, which Tchaikovsky calls the “crown,” are embedded in their head-brain, but their “reach,” the “arm-driven undermind,” is capable of solving problems independently—sourcing food, opening locks, fighting, or fleeing from danger. Meanwhile, a third mode of thinking and communicating, the “guise,” controls the strobing and spotting of the octopuses’ “skin, ‘the chalkboard of the brain,’” where it doodles its thoughts from moment to moment. In this way, the octopuses freewheel through space, constructing ships, habitats, and whole societies which owe as much to bursts of emotion, flights of fancy, acts of curiosity and boredom, as they do to conscious intent. Tchaikovsky’s octopuses are lively, frantic, bored, creative, distracted, and poetic—all at the same time: a product of the constant dialogue and conflict within their own nervous systems. As Tchaikovsky tells it, octopuses are multiple intelligences in singular bodies….
(6) AND THEN THERE ARE VIRTUAL TENTACLES. Steve Davidson contemplates “The Coming Death of Commercialized Art” at the hands (figuratively speaking) of artificial intelligence in a post for Amazing Stories.
…Eventually, things will sort themselves out (if global warming doesn’t get us first) and commercial art will become the province of AI programs: Need some paintings for your hotel lobby? An AI will no doubt already have tens of thousands of possibilities available at relatively low cost (maybe large corporations will simply buy an art-enabled AI outright, for ALL of their commercial art needs – report covers, company retreat t-shirt designs, product illustrations, etc.). Amazon will no doubt be the first to offer “get the story you want to read” services…completely custom fiction (written in the style of – and boy, won’t that “style copyfight” be an interesting one); franchises will become perpetual, versions can be offered for different reading ages, the saga need never end….
Human beings will NOT be able to compete effectively in those environments. They need food and water and shelter, sleep, physical exercise and can’t memorize the writing styles or painting styles of any artist or author who ever produced something.
We’re not talking about the “death of artistic expression”, but we are almost certainly talking about the death of the midlist author and the commercial graphic artist….
(7) CALL IT A FANACALENDAR. First Fandom Experience’s latest post in support of Project 1946 at Chicon 8 tracks “A Year in Fandom: 1946” practically day-by-day.
What was it like to be a science fiction fan in 1946?
Fan activity was also resurgent. The club scene remained most active in Los Angeles and New York, but fans from other corners also made their voices heard. Several clubs formed prior to the war resumed meeting in 1946, often attracting a mix of old and new members.
The timeline presented here is drawn from a variety of sources. Primary among them is Joe Kennedy’s 1946-1947 Fantasy Review, the second in his series of yearbooks covering the field. Eleven pages were dedicated to the doings of fans….
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1950 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Seventy-two years ago on this date, Destination Moon, produced by George Pal and an uncredited Walter Lantz premiered in the United Kingdom.
It was directed by Irving Pichel from the screenplay by Alford Van Ronkel and Robert A. Heinlein and James O’Hanlon. It’s based off Robert A. Heinlein‘s Rocketship Galileo novel.
It starred John Archer, Warner Anderson, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson.
Mainstream critics were mixed with a Bob Thomas of the Associated Press saying, “Destination Moon is good hocus-pocus stuff about interplanetary travel.” Asimov meanwhile not surprisingly said in In Memory Yet Green that it was “the first intelligent science-fiction movie made.”
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a mediocre 48% rating. It however did rather well at the box office returning ten times its half million-dollar production budget.
It would be voted a Retro Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at the Millennium Philcon.
It is not in the public domain, but the trailers are and here is one for you.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 18, 1925 — Brian Aldiss. I’ll single out his Helliconia series, Hothouse and The Malacia Tapestry as my favorites. He won a Hugo at Chicon III for “The Long Afternoon of The Earth”, another at Conspiracy ’87 for Trillion Year Spree which he co-authored with David Wingrove. He’s edited far too many collections to know which one to single out, but I’m sure that the collective wisdom here can make recommendations. (Died 2017.)
Born August 18, 1929 — Joan Taylor. Her first genre role was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers as Carol Marvin, and she followed that with 20 Million Miles to Earth as Marisa Leonardo. Her last genre role was as Carol Gordon in Men into Space, a late Fifties series about a USAF attempt to explore and develop outer space. She retired from acting in the early Sixties. (Died 2012.)
Born August 18, 1932 — Grant Williams. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Scott Carey in The Incredible Shrinking Man though he will have the role of the psychopathic killer in Robert Bloch’s The Couch. Of course, he shows in Outer Limits, he plays Major Douglas McKinnon in “The Brain of Colonel Barham”. And he’s Major Kurt Mason in The Doomsday Machine. (Died 1985.)
Born August 18, 1934 — Michael de Larrabeiti. He is best known for writing The Borrible Trilogy which is noted by several sources online as being an influence by writers in the New Weird movement. Ok folks, I’ve not read so please explain how The Borrible Trilogy influences that literary movement. And while you’re at it, explain what the New Weird movement was as I never quite did figure that out. (Died 2008.)
Born August 18, 1954 — Russell Blackford, 68. Writer resident in Australia for awhile but now in Wales. Author of Terminator 2: The New John Connor Chronicles, and editor of the Australian Science Fiction Review in the Eighties. With Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, he wrote Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction. And he wrote Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics.
Born August 18, 1958 — Madeleine Stowe, 64. She’s in the Twelve Monkeys film as Kathryn Railly, and she’s in the Twelve Monkeys series as Lillian in the “Memory of Tomorrow” episode. Her only other genre work was a one-off in The Amazing Spider-Man which ran for thirteen episodes nearly forty years ago. She was Maria Calderon in “Escort to Danger” in that series, and she also played Mia Olham in Impostor which was scripted off Philip K. Dick’s “Impostor” story.
Born August 18, 1966 — Alison Goodman, 56. Australian writer who’s won three Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Speculative Fiction for Singing the Dogstar Blues, The Two Pearls of Wisdom and Lady Helen and the Dark Days Pact. The Two Pearls of Wisdom was nominated for an Otherwise Award.
Born August 18, 1967 — Brian Michael Bendis, 55. He’s both writer and artist, a still uncommon occurrence. Did you know he’s garnered five Eisner Awards for both his creator-owned work and Marvel Comics? Very impressive! He’s the primary force behind the creation of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man which is an amazing series which I read on the Marvel Unlimited app.
(10) COMIC SECTION.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t expect to hear a character in Funky Winkerbean holding forth about psychohistory.
(11) PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE. N. K. Jemisin tweeted a reminder.
Reminder: the BK library is still doing this! If you're in a state or town where queer & BIPOC books are getting censored by bigots, you can get them here, even if you're not a New Yorker! https://t.co/iucoz0Jy3A
(12) SOYLENT GREEN IS BALONEY! This being the year in which the movie is hypothetically set, Slate’s Andrew Maynard could not resist pointing out “Why Soylent Green got 2022 so wrong”.
All of this may have remained as a footnote in the annals of dystopian 1970’s sci-fi movies, were it not for the fact that Soylent Green was set in a year we’re all very familiar with: 2022. Predictably, there’s been a flurry of journalistic interest this year in what was predicted back in 1973, and how it compares to where we are now. The good news is that we haven’t yet resorted to eating people (although based on recent trends in fiction we may be closer than we think!). But this isn’t the only thing that the film gets wrong.
Despite being underpinned by very real issues, the extrapolated future that Soylent Green portrays is deeply out of step with present-day reality. Overpopulation is not the issue it was perceived to be in the 1970s—rather, the prospect of static and declining populations is now raising concerns. The productivity of agricultural systems has been vastly extended through technologies ranging from high yield crops and advances in irrigation techniques, to innovations in agrochemicals and genetic engineering. And rather than the dystopic single-noted social, political, and culinary narratives portrayed in the film, many—including me—would argue that the world we live in has never been more diverse and full of potential (even if some of us do have a tendency to reject this in favor of our own manufactured monotoned bubbles)….
…Humphrey Carpenter put it well in his authorised biography of Tolkien: “He could laugh at anybody, but most of all at himself, and his complete lack of any sense of dignity could and often did make him behave like a riotous schoolboy.” He catalogues incidents where Tolkien dressed up as a polar bear in sheepskin rug, as an Anglo-Saxon axeman (he chased a neighbour down the street), and gave shopkeepers his false teeth in a handful of change.
But it was the late Hugh Brogan, eminent professor of history at the University of East Anglia, who showed me the lengths Tolkien would go to in his quest for a laugh. As a child, Brogan lived in a late Regency house with a tall, elegant, winding staircase. Tolkien, visiting the family, “went up to the first-floor landing and fell all the way down quite spectacularly – about a dozen steps, I guess – arms and legs splaying about in all directions, and an immense clatter. We were literally breathtaken.” The elderly Brogan regretted that he couldn’t remember for sure whether Tolkien gave an encore….
(14) HEAVY METAL NEWS. [Item by Dann.] Heavy Metal Entertainment is taking another plunge into the video market. Its studio division, Heavy Metal Studios, will produce live-action video content from Heavy Metal’s library of properties. (Taarna, Cold Dead War, Dark Wing, Arena Mode, etc.)
A sizzle reel accompanied the announcement at this year’s San Diego Comic-Contm. Curiously, the sizzle reel includes snippets from movies that have already been released. (I swore that the rhinos came from Jumanji. There were others.)
“Just as Heavy Metal Magazine changed the way the world looked at comic books, and how the ‘81 animated film Heavy Metal changed animation forever, Heavy Metal Studios is about to take the reins on live action content and push it far past its current stagnation and into new heights. Things will never be the same again, again,” said Tommy Coriale, Heavy Metal’s President and Head of Studio.
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Games Trailers: Madison,” Fandom Games says “Madison,” even though it appears to be named after a really annoying Valley Girl, delivers an oldschool horror experience: so old-school messages come on cassette tapes and clues come from snapping Polaroids. But can you take enough Polaroids to find the ghosts?
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Bonnie McDaniel, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, John Coxon, Dann, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bonnie McDaniel.]
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (Newford #18), by Charles de Lint (author), Charles Vess (illustrator). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, March 2013
Review by Lis Carey: Lillian Kindred is an orphan girl living with her Aunt on a farm in the hills, surrounded by a very tangled forest. When she is not doing chores, she wanders the forest, looking for fairies and spirits and spirits and magical things. Aunt warns her spirits don’t necessarily want rambunctious little red-haired girls bothering them, Lillian says she’s not bothering anyone. She just wants to say, “Hello hello.”
One day, Lillian is out wandering, and lays down under a tree to rest. She falls asleep, and is awakened by a snake biting her. It’s poisonous, very poisonous, and Lillian realizes she is dying.
Many of the local cats gather around her, though, and realize that they can’t save the little girl’s life, but they can use cat magic to change her into something that isn’t dying–a kitten. Lillian agrees, and when she wakes again, she’s a kitten, and very healthy. This is when Lillian starts to get her first tough lesson in not thinking things through. She heads off for home, knowing Aunt will be worried about her.
Aunt is worried. And remains worried, not realizing that the kitten is Lillian, because of course, why would she? As the day gets late, Aunt gets very worried indeed, and starts organizing the neighbors, the few neighbors they have, to search for Lillian.
Lillian goes looking for her next excellent magical solution. She can’t find the cats; she doesn’t realize they weren’t supposed to use cat magic that way, and they’re keeping scarce for fear of the anger of the Father of Cats. She meets a fox, with whom she forms a tentative friendship, and visits Old Mother Possum, who is a witch. Old Mother Possum rolls time back for her, so that the snake bite never happened.
She goes home, and discovers the snake has bitten Aunt, instead, and Aunt is already dead. This is her second lesson in not thinking things through, and what major effects small changes can make.
But Lillian doesn’t give up. She has a lot to learn, and that includes staying for a while with the nearest neighbors, the Welches, and learning about the harder tasks of running a farm. She’s Aunt’s only heir, and while Mrs. Welch wants to make her a proper, respectable girl, Lillian is determined to run her aunt’s farm, not sell it.
Eventually, though, not accepting Mrs. Welch’s plan for her means setting off to find another solution, hopefully one that doesn’t involve Aunt dying. Along the way, she meets Jack Crow, the terrifying Bear people, the Father of Cats, and other magical creatures. None of the lessons are easy ones, and before she gets home again, she’s learned to speak to the animals, to think things through a bit better, to take responsibility–and taken on an obligation to the Father of Cats, which may not come due for many, many years. It’s a wonderful, magical story, and at the same time, one that makes clear that even magic can’t make things perfect, that happy endings are provisional and the result of hard work and careful choices.
And Charles Vess’s illustrations are wonderful and magical in themselves, making the story even better.
Recommended.
I received this book as a gift, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
Chicon 8 announced today that author Charles de Lint will not be appearing as one of their guests of honor.
It is with regret that we announce that Charles de Lint has had to step down as Guest of Honor for Chicon 8 due to family circumstances.
We were utterly thrilled in 2020 when Mr. de Lint agreed to be our Author Guest of Honor and have been looking forward to having him at the convention. However, we completely understand that his current situation will not allow him to attend Chicon 8 either in person or virtually. In discussion with Mr. de Lint, we agreed that rather than honor him in his absence, we will release him as a Guest of Honor. Our sincere hope is that a future Worldcon will take the opportunity to honor him as he so richly deserves.
The family circumstances likely include his wife’s illness. De Lint shared publicly on Facebook last November that his wife MaryAnn has been afflicted with “Powassan virus which is a tick born virus akin to West Nile” and “since Sept 7th she has been unable to move. She was aware but unable to communicate.” Writing two months after the first onset he said, “there have been some incremental improvements. She can move her feet and her mouth is mobile enough to ‘talk’ but no sound comes out. We mostly communicate by lip-reading (badly) or spelling the words out letter by letter. The rest of her body remains immobile and she still has some blurring/double vision….” He gave one more public update later that month, and has not posted another since that time.
Roughly five years after the implementation, in New York City, of the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, a local law intended to establish and enhance the rights of freelance workers—including authors, journalists, and other writers on contract—a similar law has been proposed at the state level.
On February 18, Democratic New York state senator Andrew Gounardes and assembly member Harry Bronson introduced S8369, also nicknamed “Freelance Isn’t Free,” a new bill intended to “protect contract and freelance workers from wage theft by ensuring all freelancers receive appropriate contracts for their work, are paid in a timely manner, and have state support to recoup unpaid wages.” It would, the lawmakers explained in a release, build upon the prior New York City bill, expanding the protections for freelancers state-wide.
The bill, should it become law, would also lower the threshold for mandating additional financial remediation from contractors to contract workers should the latter not be paid in a timely manner from $800 to $250. It would also make the New York State Labor Department the regulatory agency for freelancers in the state, including New York City, where, currently, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection oversees the protection of freelancers, but has no ability to pursue legal action against delinquent contract clients….
The simple answer: I’ve been a fan of Robert E. Howard’s work since 1981 when, at the time, my best friend loaned me his Ace paperback copy titled, Conan, with the Frank Frazetta cover art for Howard’s story, “Rogues in the House.” The idea for a biography came to me when I purchased a copy of Glenn Lord’s work, The Last Celt back in the mid-80s. Lord’s book made me realize there were others out there who took Howard’s work a bit more seriously than the casual reader. Due to life and higher education, Howard was sidelined until I began work (mostly research) on the biography in late 2002. I am currently working on a novel….
(3) 25 BEST SFF SHOWS. Den of Geek declares these to be the “Best Sci-Fi TV Shows of the Past 15 Years”. I don’t want to spoil everything by posting their #1 – but here, let me spoil number nine…
9. The Mandalorian
Star Wars has long been a little too beholden to one particular corner of its mythology. The Skywalker Saga looms large, perhaps too large, in pop culture consciousness. Deviate too much from it, or fail to pay sufficient homage to childhood classics, at your peril. But The Mandalorian managed to deliver everything longtime fans want from Star Wars, while also making the galaxy far, far away equally appealing to those who might be experiencing it for the first time. As much a space Western or a riff on Lone Wolf and Cub as it is an actual science fiction show, The Mandalorian is every bit as cinematic as the most famous entries in the franchise, exploring deeper corners of the Star Wars universe than we’re accustomed to seeing in live action (with apologies, of course, to the brilliant Rogue One).
Alternately as episodic as the vintage movie serials that first inspired George Lucas and as intricately woven as any other prestige TV effort, it’s made all the more remarkable by the fact that it’s anchored by a riveting performance by its lead (Pedro Pascal), who spends all but moments of the show’s entire runtime so far hidden completely behind a mask. And then there’s Grogu (Baby Yoda), a character who should feel like the cloying, craven little cash grab he is who instead became an instantly (and deservedly) beloved Star Wars fixture. – Mike Cecchini
(4) NOVACON.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Novacon is Britain’s longest-running regional SF convention. Last November it held its 50th event. SF2 Concatenation has just Tweeted an advance post of a review of the 50th anniversary Novacon report ahead of its next seasonal edition that is slated for April. [The con took place November 12-14, 2021.]
There were around 250 attendees: about a quarter of those you’d get at the average Eastercon these days. Being the 50th anniversary event, the occasion was marked by a special publication, Burning Brightly, edited by Ian Whates, gathering stories generated exclusively from various Novacon publications over the decades, with work by such luminaries as Iain M Banks, Adrian ( Shards of Earth) Tchaikovsky and Stephen (Flood) Baxter among others. Each attendee received a free copy.
There were two programme streams with main hall events running parallel to fringe events in a side room, and everything was on the ground floor with easy access. (The accommodation was upstairs, served by a dreadful, slow rickety tin elevator with a mind of its own)….
… His tendency to seem half-asleep and harmless until – snap! – he has you in his teeth, like a Venus flytrap, serves him well in the world of The Batman. Robert Pattinson plays the caped vigilante, while Sarsgaard is Gil Coulson, the shady, shaven-headed district attorney of Gotham City. “Gil is leading a double life,” he says. “He is protective of his family, but he’s involved in some things that are not legit.” The mix of sweet and sour appeals. “It creates more conflict. What if the biopic of Donald Trump showed how he made a damn good cherry pie on Thanksgiving, and sang songs with his family, but then he did all this other stuff?”…
As the climate crisis worsens, our home planet and our conversations about it are heating up–and creative writers both reflect and anticipate such concerns. Thanks to the recent ethical turn in science fiction and fantasy, many speculative works offer readers a mirror in which to view our own world. Its beauties and vulnerabilities take on special clarity through the page or the screen. A tale of terraforming another planet reminds us how precious and fragile our home world is. The perennial conflict between nature and technology comes alive when trees march to war. We find insights into healthy, diverse communities by spending time with characters in a fellowship–or on a starship….
(7) HENRY LINCOLN (1930-2022). Doctor Who writer Henry Lincoln has died at the age of 91. Doctor Who News paid tribute.
Henry Lincoln was the last surviving writer to have worked on Doctor Who in the 1960s. He wrote three Doctor Who stories, co-creating The Yeti and the character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
…In the 1960s he formed a writing partnership with Mervyn Haisman and together they were commissioned to write a six-part story for the second Doctor. The result was The Abominable Snowmen which saw the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria battle The Great Intelligence and their robot servants The Yeti. The story was so successful the team was immediately commissioned to write a sequel, this time bringing the Yeti into the claustrophobic world of the London Underground in The Web of Fear.
The story introduced a new character in the form of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart played by Nicholas Courtney. Not only was the story highly regarded but the new character caught the imagination of the producers and would return the following year, albeit with a promotion, and become a regular throughout the Pertwee years.
Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman’s third outing with the Doctor was not so successful. Their six-part story, The Dominators would cause a permanent rift with the BBC following an argument over who owned the characters The Quarks. The story was rewritten and reduced to five episodes resulting in the writers asking for their names to be removed from the credits. The story was transmitted under the pseudonym Norman Ashby. …
(8) GEORGE OLSHEVSKY (1946–2021). Artist George Olshevsky died in December of Covid, according to an announcement by SDCC’s Jackie Estrada on Facebook. A profile of his work for Marvel can be found on the Marvel Database.
…Graduate of M.I.T. Olshevksy indexed all of the Marvel Comics major titles in the 1970’s and Early 80’s. This quite extensive project also employed Lou Mougin and many others. Olshevksy was also aided by a complete personal collection of Marvel Comics….
(9) MEMORY LANE.
2019 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Two of my favorite individuals, Charles de Lint, who would later win a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and Charles Vess, who received a Hugo at Dublin 2019 for Best Professional Artist and a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist. collaborated on The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, a follow-up to their A Circle of Cats.
Fourteen years ago, it would win the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, an award that until this moment I’d not heard of. My bad for not knowing of this award.
If you’ve not encountered this novel, it’s considered a young adult work but I’d recommend for anyone interested in a good read grounded in Appalachia folklore with the fantastic artwork of Vess profusely illustrating it. You can read the Green Man review here. And here’s our review for A Circle of Cats as well. I’ve got one of his signed prints for A Circle of Cats in my apartment.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 25, 1909 — Edgar Pangborn. For the first twenty years of his career, he wrote myriad stories for the pulp magazines, but always under pseudonyms. It wasn’t until the Fifties that he published in his own name in Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Ursula Le Guin has credited him with her realizing it is possible to write humanly emotional stories in an SF setting. And yes, I know he wrote Davy. (Died 1976.)
Born February 25, 1917 — Anthony Burgess. I know I’ve seen and read A Clockwork Orange many, many years ago. I think I even took a University class on it as well. Scary book, weird film. I’ll admit that I’m not familiar with the Enderby series having not encountered them before now. Opinions please. (Died 1993.)
Born February 25, 1964 — Lee Evans, 58. He’s in The History of Mr Polly as Alfred Polly which is based on a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. No, not genre, but sort of adjacent genre as some of you are fond of saying.
Born February 25, 1968 — A. M. Dellamonica, 54. A Canadian writer who has published over forty rather brilliant short since the Eighties. Her first novel, Indigo Springs, came out just a decade ago but she now has five novels published with her latest being The Nature of a Pirate. Her story, “Cooking Creole” can be heard here at Pod Castle 562. It was in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
Born February 25, 1971 — Sean Astin, 51. His genre roles include Samwise Gamgee in the Rings trilogy, Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, and Bob Newby in the second season of Stranger Things. He also shows up in Justice League: War and in Justice League: Throne of Atlantis films voicing both aspects of Shazam, a difficult role to pull off. He reprises that role on the Justice League Action series.
Born February 25, 1973 — Anson Mount, 49. He was Black Bolt in Marvel’s Inhumans series. He now has a recurring role as Captain Christopher Pike, a role he first played on Discovery, and which he will reprise on Strange New Worlds this year. I see he was in Visions, a horror film, and has had appearances on Lost, Dollhouse and Smallville.
(11) JEOPARDY! Sure, you’ll get it. But Andrew Porter saw a contestant miss it on tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!
Final Jeopardy; category: Awards
Answer: These awards have a retro version & winners include the novel “The Sword in the Stone” and “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast
A newly described bacterium living in the Caribbean “is visible to the naked eye, growing up to 2 centimeters — as long as a peanut — and 5,000 times bigger than many other microbes,” writes Elizabeth Pennisi via Science.org.
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Not only can you play Lego Star Wars in “mumble mode,” but your inner eight-year-old will love that you can turn off the weapons noises and replace them with human sounds! “LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – Behind the Scenes”.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
…There is also a huge variance in the quality of editorial and stakeholder feedback. Sometimes you get notes that make it clear that the person making them was reading (or wants to read) an entirely different book than the one you’ve written.
So how do you determine which notes to take to heart, and which to ignore?
For me, it all comes back to understanding my novel and the story I want to tell. The feedback I get that gets me closer to refining and communicating that story is the feedback I take. The notes I get that that are clearly moving off into a direction that takes me away from the story I want to tell are the ones I toss….
Turned in the completed novella to the editor at about 10am this morning, which meant that at 10:05 some part of my brain was wondering where my editorial notes were.
(3) STAND BY. Vanity Fair says the LOTR for television is coming out in 2022. “Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Unveils a First Image and Release Date”. Someone – not the Vanity Fair writer — pointed out the September 2 release date coincides with the anniversary of Tolkien’s death in 1973. (Actually, the Vanity Fair article names two different September release dates, but the second presumably is a typo.)
Ever since 2017 when Amazon first announced the massively expensive deal that would send TV audiences back into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, fans have been eagerly wondering when their journey might begin. The folks behind the as-yet unnamed series have picked a very auspicious date indeed. Break out the Longbottom Leaf and mark your calendars for September 2, 2022 so you can see what Amazon has had cooking over in New Zealand these last few years.
The date announcement comes with a first image of the series to celebrate the wrap of filming in New Zealand, and fans will be sure to eagerly pore over every pixel. We can confirm that the image is from the first episode though sources close to the production are declining to confirm the identity of the figure seen there. This could be an image of a city in Valinor. The trees in the background, at least, are very interesting. …
(3) DREAMS. Read Aaron Starr’s amazing parable “Feathers or Stones” at Black Gate. Today!
Once, long ago, there was a poor writer who lived in the depths of a forest with his wife. He would spend his evenings putting words to page while his wife rested by the fire. As she did so she would read those stories which were complete, and yet not yet ready for market. Using a special red pencil, she would note occasional errors and put to him questions the writing had left unresolved, in order that his next version of the story might be improved.
During the day she would walk out into the forest and spend her time hewing mighty trees, for she was a woodcutter by trade. He, meanwhile, would tend to the small garden, and every few days journey into the nearby town, riding down the river on a mighty raft formed of entire tree trunks she had stripped, all lashed together, and he would walk back home before sundown. Thus they had a modest supply of silver, and the wife was content they be together every evening.
Jhon Charlton is a weapon created by the Terran Empire. Nearly invulnerable, incredibly strong and fast, he can even summon tremendous energies. Unfortunately for him, for the last three years, he has shared his mind with a sarcastic entity called Moros, which has appointed itself as his conscience. Now, Jhon has been sent to the planet Apollon to help the local rebels overthrow the dictatorial government.
Gardner Dozois is this month’s new author, and this is quite a debut. It’s a long piece for a novice, but he seems up to it. There’s room for some cuts, but not much. The mix of science fiction and almost fantasy elements is interesting and works. The only place I’d say a lack of experience and polish shows it at the very end. The point is a bit facile and could have been delivered a touch more smoothly, but it’s a fine start to a new career. Mr. Dozois has entered the Army, though, so it may be a while before we see anything else from him.
(5) FROM MASHUPS TO SMASHUPS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster, Designated Reader, Financial Times.] In the July 28 Financial Times, Tom Faber discusses video game crossovers.
Most crossovers are like this: Brawlers created solely to let fans collide fictional DNA of their favourite characters against each other, Their storylines are little more than a set dressing,usually involving a convenient tear in the space-time continuum. Kingdom Hearts, a collaboration between Disney and Final Fantasy developer Square-Enix, took narrative more seriously to offer a role-playing game with original characters and complex lore. Sending plucky anime heroes out adventuring with Donald Duck to learn the true meaning of friendship may sound like a painfully trite exercise, but the games proved a runaway success. Kingdom Hearts developed into a stranger, darker story than anyone expected.
Today we are at peak crossover. There is The Little Prince- in -Sky: Children of the Light, Assassin’s Creed in Final Fantasy, DC Comics heroes in Mortal Kombat and dozens of franchises distilled into costumes for party game Fall Guys. Sometimes these make sense: Yes, ace attorney Phoenix Wright and kindly Professor Layton could plausibly solve crimes together while Pirates of the Caribbean nestles neatly into the nautical fiction of Den of Thieves. Others are plain wrongheaded: Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing pits the blue hedgehog against other Sega characters in go-karts, blithely ignoring his defining trait–Sonic doesn’t need a vehicle to go anywhere fast.
(6) MIDSOUTHCON HONORS. Nominations are being taken for the 2022 Darrell Awards through December 1. See complete guidelines at the link.
In order to qualify, the work must either be written by an author who is living in the greater Memphis area (as defined below) when the work is published OR have at least one significant scene set within that area. Broadly defined, the area is west Tennessee, north Mississippi and northeast Arkansas.
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1991 – Thirty years ago, Charles de Lint’s The Little Country novel wins a HOMer Award. The HOMer Awards were given by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Forum on CompuServe. Locus notes that the winning authors were active there. (The novel was set in Cornwall though the music in it is influenced by Northumberland bagpiper Billy Pigg as the principal character is smallpiper Janey Little.) It was also nominated for the Aurora, Locus, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and World Fantasy Awards as well. It’s just been released as an audiobook, and it is available from the usual suspects.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 2, 1917 — Wah Chang. Of interest to us are the props he designed for the original Star Trek seriesincluding the tricorder and communicator. He did a number of other things for the series — the Rabbit you see on the “Shore Leave” episode, the Tribbles, the Vulcan harp first seen in “Charlie X“ and the Romulan Bird of Prey. Other work included building the title object from The Time Machine, and the dinosaurs in Land of the Lost. (Died 2003.)
Born August 2, 1920 — Theodore Marcuse. He was Korob in “Catspaw”, a second season Trek episode that aired just before Halloween aptly enough. He had appearances in The Twilight Zone (“The Trade-Ins” and “To Serve Man”), Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wild Wild West and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the episodes “The Re-collectors Affair,” “The Minus-X Affair,” and “The Pieces of Fate Affair.” (Died 1967.)
Born August 2, 1932 — Peter O’Toole. I’m tempted to say his first genre role was playing King Henry in A Lion in Winter as it is alternate history. Neat film. Actually before that he’s got an uncredited role in Casino Royale as a Scottish piper. Really he does. His first genre role without dispute is as Zaltar in Supergirl followed by being Dr. Harry Wolverine in Creator. He’s Peter Plunkett in the superb High Spirits, he’s in FairyTale: A True Story as Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stardust as King of Stormhold. Not surprisingly, he played Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Died 2013.)
Born August 2, 1948 — Robert Holdstock. Another one who died far too young. His Ryhope Wood series is simply amazing with Lavondyss being my favorite volume. And let’s not overlook his Merlin Codex series which is one of the more original takes on that character I’ve read. The Ragthorn, co-written with Garry Kilworth, is interesting as well. Tor, which has the rights to him in the States, has been slow to bring him to the usual suspects. (Died 2009.)
Born August 2, 1949 — Wes Craven. Swamp Thing comes to mind first plus of course the Nightmare on Elm Street franchiseof nine films for which he created Freddy Krueger. Let’s not forget The Serpent and the Rainbow. (Died 2015.)
Born August 2, 1954 — Ken MacLeod, 67. Sometimes I don’t realize until I do a Birthday note just how much I’ve read of a certain author. And so it was of this author. I’ve read the entire Fall Revolution series, not quite all of the Engines of Light Trilogy, just the first two of the Corporation Wars but I’ve got it in my to be finished queue,and every one of his one-off novels save Descent. His Restoration Game is quite chilling. I should go find his Giant Lizards from Another Star collection as I’ve not read his short fiction. Damn it’s not available from the usual suspects!
Born August 2, 1955 — Caleb Carr, 66. Ok, I’ll admit that this is another author that ISFDB lists as genre that I don’t think of as being as genre. ISFDB list all four of his novels as being genre including The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness which are not even genre adjacent by my reading. So is there something in those novels that I missed?
Born August 2, 1976 — Emma Newman, 45. Author of quite a few SF novels and and a collection of short fiction. Of interest to us is that she is co-creator along with her husband Peter, of the Worldcon 75 Hugo Award winning podcast Tea and Jeopardy which centers around her hosting another creator for a nice cup of tea and cake, while her scheming butler Latimer (played by Peter) attempts to send them to their deaths at the end of the episode. Her Planetfall series was nominated for a Hugo at CoNZealand.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Off the Mark shows even an animated celebrity’s prosthetics can’t get past TSA.
At the end of William Morris’s News from Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest (Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance), a woman named Ellen explains to the visitor, William Guest, that he cannot stay in this perfect place of clean air, meaningful work, and satisfying leisure. Not because of any fictional science of time travel, nor because he poses a threat to this particular future’s social harmony, but because his very being has been so thoroughly deformed by the social conditions of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism that he is incapable of experiencing the pleasures and desires of a world freed of competition, exploitation, and suffering. “You belong,” explains Ellen, “so entirely to the unhappiness of the past that our happiness even would weary you.”
…Many aspects of News from Nowhere set it apart from other utopian fiction of the time—it is decidedly socialist, conscious of the environmental costs of industrialization, backward-looking rather than futuristic, and free of prescriptiveness about any particular social arrangements—but Ellen’s melancholy observation on the psychic life of the capitalist subject is singularly important. If no other argument for revolutionary change made within the novel seems persuasive, this line, appearing late in the narrative, should give us reason to consider the insufficiency, even the costs, of a pragmatic reformist mindset. At a moment in history when social reform and conservationist policy have appeared on the political horizon, William Morris offers a reminder of the constitutive limits of our imaginations. He urges us to wish harder, not plan better….
(11) INSIDE HIS STRUGGLE. SFF Book Reviews’ “The State of SFF – August 2021” roundup has an excellent lead-in to Scott Lynch’s recently-made-public newsletter update.
…Scott Lynch has always been transparent about his battle with depression and the resulting delay in publishing further books in the Gentleman Bastard series. When The Republic of Thieves came out years after the previous volume, me and the other Locke Lamora fans were happy and excited and hopeful that the series would continue soon. In 2019, Lynch mentioned that the next instalment, The Thorn of Emberlain, was as good as finished. It had a cover and everything. But as of 2021, the book hasn’t been published yet.
Scott has recently posted an update about his struggle with anxiety and his difficulties letting go of his work (handing it in to the publisher, making posts public, etc.). I found the post both brave and educating. I am no stranger to anxiety but it can take so many shapes and forms and not all of them are well-known. Scott is now taking medication to help him and as far as comments on the internet go, I think we all agree that we wish him the best! Whether the next book comes out soon or not isn’t even a point of discussion. We just want Scott to be okay.
(12) WATCH ALONG WITH JMS. J. Michael Straczynski has made public another Synced Straczynski Commentary for Babylon 5 for the “And the Sky, Full of Stars” episode.
Originally created for Patrons of my page at: https://www.patreon.com/syntheticworlds This is an original full-length commentary/reaction for And the Sky, Full of Stars, one of our most important season one episodes. Sync up at the start of the commentary, and hit play.
Phil Coulson just can’t be killed! Thanks to a production brief for Marvel’s What If…? (debuting next week), we now have it confirmed that Clark Gregg officially recorded dialogue for the animated anthology series. While the document doesn’t go into specifics about the episode Gregg’s featured in, we’d say it’s not too far-fetched to assume that he’ll reprise the role of the Corvette-loving S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who has a rather impressive talent for sticking around the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Coulson, whose MCU tenure can be traced back to the very beginning in 2008’s Iron Man, was a regular recurring character across the movies until he was murdered by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in 2012’s The Avengers. As Mobius (Owen Wilson) was kind enough to remind us in the season premiere of Loki, the agent’s death was the catalyst for bringing together Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
(14) WHY PROVO IS FANNISH PT. 64. [Item by David Doering.] Here at the Provo City Cemetery is another reason why our city is suitably fannish–even Daleks come here to die…
A Dalek Named Thomas… kids’ book maybe?
(15) REANIMATION. The Huntington knows our day won’t be complete without a timelapse video of the blooming of one of its famous Corpse Flowers.
[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, David Doering, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Richard Horton.]
Acclaimed speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison died today at the age of 84. Here is a selection of tributes and reactions posted in social media immediately following the announcement.
Stephen King
Harlan Ellison: There was no one quite like him in American letters, and never will be. Angry, funny, eloquent, hugely talented. If there's an afterlife, Harlan is already kicking ass and taking down names.
Here’s the guy who started the notable part of my career. At the Tricon, he ran up to me and demand a story: I wrote it at the upcoming Milford–Aye and Gomorrah, which won the following year’s Nebula Award.
Patton Oswalt
My heart is broken. Off to gather what few thoughts I can for awhile.
As most of the planet knows, Harlan Ellison passed away in his sleep last night. I am seriously bummed. Little did I know when I bought the first volume of the paperback edition on Dangerous Visions when I was a sophomore at Tech did those two words would have such a profound impact on my life. Harlan was responsible for my first sale, to the mythical Last Dangerous Visions, at a Clarion Workshop.
He became a big brother figure to me, and I stayed at Ellison Wonderland on and off during the many times when I was *ahem* between places in LA. I knew his dog Abu, who used to sneak out of the house to get some Hungarian Goulash from a couple down the street. I knew his maid Yosondua, a wonderful person. And I missed meeting his mother by a couple of weeks. There’s so much to remember about him that I can barely stand it.
I met a whole bunch of interesting people thanks to him. Forget the famous ones like Erica Jong; thanks to him, I met Pam Zoline, author of “The Heat Death of the Universe.” We saw Borges together. Thanks to him, I discovered Mahler and Bruckner. I turned him on to Kalinnikov. We both read comics and he liked to impersonate the Hulk with the voice of Ronald Coleman. (Try it.) He tried to set me up with young women; usually I ignored them, thus driving him stinking bonkers. And that was just the 70s.
Then there’s that Dangerous Visions thing – a whole bunch of autograph parties just for starters. (And let’s not forget the time he streaked A Change of Hobbit.) He was immensely supportive throughout the entire frustrating, rewarding enterprise. True, he had his faults; usually I ignored them too. But the exception of my family and friends from Tazewell, I wouldn’t know any of you today were it not for his generosity and friendship. He was a helluva guy, and I have been proud to be his friend forever.
Just got word that my friend Harlan Ellison passed away last night. An amazing man to know. I knew he was very ill – he’d never really recovered from a stroke a couple of years ago. So I feel no surprise. Just very, very sad.
A talented writer for sure, a self-made writer for absolutely sure…. I so remember “Repent, Harlequin” and “On the Downhill Side” and THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER… and his columns that became THE GLASS TEAT, which sent me here to LA…. and more, the friendship that developed in the past decade or so, where I would pop up to Ellison Wonderland and have coffee with HE in his kitchen…. telling tales of George O. Smith and who else. I am actually bawling right now…..Harlan was my big brother and while his passing now, given his stroke three years back, is not a surprise…. it’ s still a shock.
Harlan Ellison has died. My sympathies to those who will miss him. His voice was powerful, sometimes for good.
As a woman, I am not sad that there will be one less person who thinks it is funny to grope a woman on stage, and who was often used as a smoke screen for bad behavior by creative men.
Today I will toast a man who was a role model, a mentor, a critic, a friend — and ultimately my big brother.
He knew how much I loved him. I told him more than once.
The one thing he said about me that I cherish the most was shortly after I adopted Sean. He said, introducing me to someone else, “David Gerrold is the most courageous man I know.” Actually, it was Sean who needed the courage, but I understood what he was saying. He was acknowledging that I had finally grown up.
Harlan had a great public persona — but it was the private soul I loved the most. And goddammit, I’m going to miss that man.
I’m very sad to have to write this but Harlan Ellison has passed away. He was a voice of reason, if somewhat contrary, and one of the best short story writers this field, or really any field, has known. He wore his “angry young man” persona lost after he was a young man but behind that bluster was a kind and generous man who would do anything for a friend. He will be greatly missed.
Ellison’s voice was infectious and has a tendency to creep into his fans’ writing. When I was 19, I attended a writing workshop at a local convention taught by Ann Crispin, who told me that I would be pretty good writer once I stopped trying to write like Harlan Ellison (I went on to sell that very Ellisonian story to Pulphouse).
Harlan was one of my Clarion instructors in 1992. He taught us remotely, by speakerphone, from his hospital bed in LA where he was recovering from angioplasty. I had attended that year because I couldn’t miss the opportunity to learn from Harlan Ellison, whom I held in highest regard (“hero worship” is not too strong a phrase to use here).
Ellison was not a good teacher (that year, at least). In fact, I think it’s safe to say that his instructional methods, which involved a combination of performative bullying and favorite-playing, were viewed as a disaster by all of my classmates, at least in hindsight.
Confronting the very real foibles of the object of my hero-worship was the beginning of a very important, long-running lesson whose curriculum I’m still working through: the ability to separate artists from art and the ability to understand the sins of people who’ve done wonderful things.
…My second Harlan Ellison story was from 2011, the last time he was a finalist for the Nebula Award, given out by SFWA. Traditionally, SFWA contacts the Nebula finalists by phone to see if they’ll accept being on the ballot, and knowing of Harlan’s sometimes irascible phone manners, I was the one to call.
Harlan was not irascible. He wept into the phone. He had been ill, he said, and he wondered if what he was writing now still resonated and still mattered to people. To have his professional peers nominate him for one of the field’s most significant awards, he said, meant everything to him.
In that moment he wasn’t a giant of the field, a figure equally loved and loathed, a man about whom everyone had a story, or an opinion, about. He was simply a writer, happy to be in the company of, and remembered by, other writers.
He was a monumental personality who was influential in his day and to some extent today. He dove into the style and issues of his times with vigor, which sometimes makes his work feel dated but also resulted in classics that feel timeless. As an anthologist, he pushed boundaries in ways that, like his fiction, risked looking silly or actively terrible to modern audiences, but because of that also published a ton of innovative material and furthered the careers of writers who were quite experimental.
In erratic and sporadic fashion Ellison tended to be immensely helpful to some beginning writers and actively not helpful to others for no particular reason. Sometimes, I think, because he was too caught up in his mythology. Sometimes because he had a chip on his shoulder and was mercurial. I have mixed feelings about him for that reason, not to mention others, but there’s no denying he was a protean creative talent. I did learn to take risks in my writing from him, while also learning who I did not want to be as a teacher.
We lost Harlan Ellison today. The dedication to THE FIRST RULE reads as follows: “For my friend, Harlan Ellison, whose work, more than any other, brought me to this place.”. He cannot be replaced. He was a giant. He mattered.
Harlan was wickedly witty, profanely-provocative, yet generous to a fault. His penchant for skewering all authority would have got him strangled in any other human civilization, yet in this one he lived – honored – to 84… decades longer than he swore he would, much to our benefit with startling, rambunctious stories that will echo for ages.
John Hertz
I can’t remember who first remarked that “H.E.” stood equally for Harlan Ellison and High Explosive.
It also stands for His Excellency. Our H.E. being a whole-souled egalitarian would never have stood for that. But if one can break from the bonds of aristocratic associations – which in principle he was always for – it’s true.
I’m glad, not I hope without humility, that what pushed down the Montaigne piece was your notice of Brother Ellison’s death. Although Montaigne and the nature of zeal were two topics I never discussed with him, he might – and he did this sometimes – have approved.
David Doering
I feel a strong sense of loss with his passing. While he and I shared few opinions in common, I always appreciated his ability to stir up discussion.
To be clear, I did not have much personal interaction with Harlan over the years. The first tho was at a Worldcon in the 80s when he asked a large audience who had read a particular book he appreciated. Turned out that only he and I had done so. We chatted for a minute sharing comments, and, as a first encounter, I found him pleasant despite his reputation.
The other time was when Ray Bradbury suggested I call “his friend Harlan” about serving as a guest to LTUE. I can just imagine what must have gone through Harlan’s mind when he got a call from Utah, and from very Mormon BYU at that, asking about being a guest. (Had it happened, it would certainly have stirred things up here!) He was polite, straightforward, and nothing like his public “persona”. I came away appreciating him much more.
The last time was at a LASFS meeting at the old “Hooverville” building. He looked tired, but came to be with fen and seemed to have a good time. I’ll keep that image in my mind as I remember him.
Along with the Star Trek episode, Ellison’s 1964 Outer Limits installment “Demon with a Glass Hand” is widely considered among the best of its series. The bizarre, uncanny episode starred Robert Culp as a man who wakes with no memory but an apparently all-knowing glass hand. For years, rumors persisted that “Demon” inspired Terminator, though Ellison was quoted to have said, “Terminator was not stolen from ‘Demon with a Glass Hand,’ it was a ripoff of my OTHER Outer Limits script, ‘Soldier.’” According to a 1991 Los Angeles Times article, Ellison once again sued and settled.
…Ellison also crafted a script for the Batman ’66 television series that would’ve introduced Two-Face into the show’s canon, but it was never shot. The story recently was turned into a comic titled Batman ’66: The Lost Episode, which officially brings the character into the series.
…When he dealt with Hollywood, he fearlessly said exactly what he thought again and again — often causing fallout as a result. In the wake of the 1977 release of “Star Wars,” a Warner Bros. executive asked Ellison to adapt Isaac Asimov’s short story collection “I, Robot” for the bigscreen.
Ellison penned a script and met with studio chief Robert Shapiro to discuss it; when the author concluded that the executive was commenting on his work without having read it, Ellison claimed to have said to Shapiro that he had “the intellectual capacity of an artichoke.” Needless to say, Ellison was dropped from the project. Ellison’s work was ultimately published with permission of the studio, but the 2004 Will Smith film “I, Robot” was not based on the material Ellison wrote.
Perhaps Ellison’s most famous story not adapted for the screen was 1965’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,” which celebrates civil disobedience against a repressive establishment. “Repent” is one of the most reprinted stories ever.
Shawn Crosby
[Editor’s note: The evil done to Harlan Ellison’s television scripts by cigar-chomping producers has long been part of his legend. In some of the worst cases he refused to have his name appear in the credits, and they aired with his pseudonym Cordwainer Bird shouldering the blame.]
Harlan’s death is accompanied by the passing of Cordwainer Bird, his writing partner of many years, described as “a short, choleric, self-possessed writer of mystery stories and science-fiction for television”, who “has no compunction about punching directors and producers two foot taller than himself right in the mouth.” Bird’s parents were Jason Bird and Rhonda Rassendyll, and he is nephew to The Shadow and a descendent of Leopold Bloom. As a member of the Wold Newton Family himself, Bird’s illustrious heritage has made him something of a fighter for justice in his own right.
(0) WE INTERRUPT THIS SCROLL. I will be taking the train to New Mexico to attend my mother’s 91st birthday celebration over the weekend. I leave Thursday evening and get back Tuesday morning. The train won’t have wi-fi and once I get there I’ll be with the family, so I won’t be able to write Scrolls some of these days (any of these days?) I plan to set up in advance a daily stub with hope that some of you will do-it-yourself, as you did so magnificently when I was offline a year ago. Thanks also to Carl Slaughter who has also chipped in some short video roundups that will be unveiling each night.
Annihilation and Borne author Jeff VanderMeer signed a “major deal” with publisher FSG for his next novel, Hummingbird Salamander, and an untitled short story collection. The deal is for over half a million dollars, and VanderMeer tells The Verge that it’s inspired in part by his concerns over the state the world when it comes to right-wing politics, climate change, and national security.
(2) BEHIND BARS CON. Utah author Brian Lee Durfee (with Simon and Shuster) works at the Utah State Prison. With strong support from the facility’s administration, Brian is launching a convention to be held at the prison for the prisoners. Maze Runner author James Dashner will be there. Durfee told his plans and hopes for it on Facebook.
Good idea? Bad idea? COMIC CON inside a prison. Yup! I arranged it. Not as easy as one might think either. I’m calling it PRISON CON…..I will give you a moment with that) . Anyway, as many of you know I’m a Sergeant at the Utah State Prison. I also teach creative writing inside the prison. I also write novels and meet other famous authors in my travels. And I also have WILD ideas that just take root & wont let go. So on Oct 17 all my various worlds will collide! James Dashner (author of the Maze Runner series) and I are putting on a little mini convention for the Inmates. I must thank Dashner for donating his time to this event and Warden Benzon for agreeing to the craziness of it all. Inmates will be Cosplaying as…well…DOC Inmates. I will be in a Darth Vader suit. Not really. But on a serious note, the inmates LOVE books and LOVE reading, and many are even talented writers. It might not seem like much, two writers discussing books and Maze Runner movies, but letting those who are locked up feel as if they are part of normal society for even an hour or two is a huge deal. They are excited for this. So lets hope its a success because I want PRISON CON to grow and become an annual thing. I truly believe going out of your way to make a difference and to give others hope (even if its just in your own small corner of the world) is important to the future of us all. Thanks also to Director Jensen and Sgt Preece and Officer Halladay and all the programming staff and SWAT guys that will be helping. I always wanna promote the positive things that are happening on the inside.
(3) IN MINNESOTA. Cory Doctorow and Charlie Jane Anders will appear together at the Twin Cities Book Festival. Also appearing are cartoonist Roz Chast, and the Lemony Snicket guy, Senator Al Franken and others.
Twin Cities Book Festival, Minnesota State Fairgrounds
Friday, October 13, 2017: 6-7pm Reception; 7-8pm Opening Night Talk
Saturday, October 14, 2017: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
(4) RECONSIDERED. I thank Nerds of a Feather, who took down the post that led off yesterday’s Scroll and issued an apology.
We made the editorial decision to pull a recent post on the video game Destiny. In the post, the author discusses at length the various weaponry used in the game and why some are more effective than others.
Like most of our pieces, this one was written more than a week ago and pre-scheduled by the author. And in normal times, this would just be another piece on video games. But these are not normal times. Two days before the Destiny piece posted, a man used an arsenal of real weapons to murder more than fifty people in Las Vegas, whose only “crime” was attending a music festival.
We do not believe that violence in video games has any more relationship to actual violence than violence in film, comics or pen-and-paper RPGs. But the timing of our post was nevertheless problematic. Like many of you, we are in deep shock and grief over what happened, and are angry that the US government does nothing to prevent these kinds of incidents. Thus we apologize for posting something that appears to treat these issues lightly, and just days after the massacre occurred.
Five years ago, satellite launches were quarterly events that dominated the front page. Now, the Air Force is launching a mission every week, and NASA is not far behind. The United Kingdom and Canada have joined the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the orbital club, and one can be certain that Japan and France aren’t far behind. It’s truer than ever that, as I’ve said before, unmanned spaceflight has become routine.
Yesterday, the same thing happened to manned missions.\
39 year-old Navy Commander Walter M. “Wally” Schirra blasted off early the morning of October 3, 1962, flew for six orbits, and splashed down safely in the Pacific near Midway Island less than half a day later. His Sigma 7 capsule was in space twice as long as Glenn and Carpenter’s Mercury ships and, to all accounts, it was a thoroughly uneventful trip. Aside from the whole nine hours of weightlessness thing.
While the newspapers all picked up the mission, radio and television coverage was decidedly less comprehensive than for prior flights. Part of it was the lack of drama. Shepard was the first. Grissom almost drowned. Glenn’s mission had the highest stakes, it being our answer to the Soviet Vostok flights, and his capsule ran the risk of burning up on reentry. For a couple of hours, Carpenter was believed lost at sea.
Although I can see why Solzhenitsyn would come to mind, writing about oppression is the very reason Solzhenitsyn’s name is known. Wouldn’t it have been a comparative loss if he’d been, say, an untroubled but prolific creator of musical comedies?
(7) PURLOINED PARAGRAPHS. Lou Antonelli, the gift that keeps on taking! After File 770announced a Storybundle with his book in it this afternoon, Lou ganked the text and put it on his blog without attribution. Admittedly all I had to do was write a frame for Kevin J. Anderson’s description of the project, but I guess a Dragon Award nominee like Lou couldn’t spare five minutes away from his next contender to write a frame of his own.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
October 4, 1961 – Attack of the Puppet People premiered in Mexico.
October 4, 1985 — The Adventures of Hercules premiered and staring Lou Ferrigno.
It was the size of a fitness ball, but its effect was bigger than that of any bomb.
Sixty years ago, on Oct. 4, 1957, the world awoke to learn that the Soviet Union had launched a satellite into orbit — the first nation to do so. Sputnik 1 was nearly two feet in diameter and weighed as much as a middle-aged insurance salesman. Most people were stunned.
Why was this so disturbing? The idea of artificial satellites had been around for a while. Indeed, sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke had written up a prescient scheme predicting the use of geosynchronous satellites for communications as early as 1945.
The shock, of course, was because Sputnik was launched at the height of the Cold War.
(11) COMICS SECTION
John King Tarpinian found a space fashion statement in today’s Speedbump.
(12) FROM BINTI TO MARVEL. Nnedi Okorafor will be writing for Marvel’s Black Panther.
(13) A BUNDLE THESE COST. On eBay, golden Yoda cufflinks, baby! A mere $3,999.95! (Tax and shipping mumble).
(14) CANADIAN SFF HALL OF FAME. The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (CSFFA) added three inductees to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame for 2017: Charles de Lint, Lorna Toolis, and Elisabeth Vonarburg. The announcement was made September 23 at Hal-Con. [H/T Locus Online.]
Think back to your favorite Disneyland ride. Maybe it’s the dusty rock-filled Indiana Jones Adventure, or the rickety, open-air Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Whatever your attraction of choice, your memory of it might include a smell: the stuffy, musty attic air of the Haunted Mansion or the leathery dampness of the Pirates of the Caribbean, with just a hint of gunpowder and sea salt.
“That is on purpose,” says Dreyer.
Disneyland’s Imagineers–the creative force behind Walt Disney Parks and Resorts–rely on a scent-emitting machine known as the Smellitzer (patented by Imagineer Bob McCarthy), which produces specific sweet, savory, or mundane smells to accompany various park attractions. Imagineers understand that smell is hardwired to our brain, specifically the area that handles emotions. In her book, Dreyer writes, “That’s why smell can transport us to a time and feeling that we’d long forgotten.”
So whether you’re shopping for a stuffed Donald Duck or clutching your safety bar on Space Mountain, you’ll get a whiff of whatever the Smellitzer crafted to make your experience complete. Even the wafts of popcorn along Main Street U.S.A. are by design.
(16) GOING PUBLIC. Regardless of whether they will be attending, some fans are upset that YaoiCon is letting a Vice Media crew shoot video at the con. The thread starts here.
(17) FOR YOUR FILES. How could I fail to mention a new product called Pixel Buds? Put them in your ears and they control your mind! Wait, that’s something else.
Loud, proud, wireless.
Google Pixel Buds are designed for high-quality audio and fit comfortably in your ear.
“The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.”- The Fellowship of the Ring
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, Dave Christenson, Tom Galloway, and Dave Doering for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
