Pixel Scroll 3/2/24 Yeets of Eden

(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS CLOSE IN ONE WEEK. Nicholas Whyte, Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administrator and WSFS Division Head reminds members that they have until March 9 to submit nominations for this year’s Hugo Awards. Full information at “Hugo Awards – Nomination Ballot”.

They also are offering Chinese translation for the 2024 Hugo Award nomination process as a courtesy to the Chinese-speaking 2023 Chengdu WSFS members who have nomination rights for the 2024 Hugo Awards.

(2) HWA: MARUYAMA Q&A. The Horror Writers Association continues “Women in Horror Month 2024” in “An Interview with Kate Maruyama”.

Kate Maruyama. Photo by Rachael Warecki.

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

I write all characters, but I am always trying to get inside women characters in a complex way that blows out the walls of archetypes. The old woman who is complex and funny and real (and swears! All the older women I admire swear), the ingenue aged woman who is brilliant, unpredictable, problem solving, and forward moving, the mother whose entire existence is not mothering, but is a whole person who happens to have kids, the little girl who is smart and weird and does not give a crap about boys.

What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?

We all have darkness in us, and if we can get inside it and open up our fears and where they come from, it can help people manage their very real lives.

(3) CHUCK TINGLE ON CAMP DAMASCUS CATEGORY. The Horror Writers Association moved Chuck Tingle’s novel Camp Damascus out of the YA category into the main Novel category. One of the responses earned this callout. (Whoever’s blog this is, I see there also were other comments supportive of Tingle’s book.)

(4) IWÁJÚ. Eddie Louise calls Iwájú on Disney+ — “Amazing science fiction for kids with deep cultural and societal commentary.” See trailer at the link.

“Iwájú” is an original animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria. The exciting coming-of-age story follows Tola, a young girl from the wealthy island, and her best friend, Kole, a self-taught tech expert, as they discover the secrets and dangers hidden in their different worlds. Kugali filmmakers—including director Olufikayo Ziki Adeola, production designer Hamid Ibrahim and cultural consultant Toluwalakin Olowofoyeku—take viewers on a unique journey into the world of “Iwájú,” bursting with unique visual elements and technological advancements inspired by the spirit of Lagos. The series is produced by Disney Animation’s Christina Chen with a screenplay by Adeola and Halima Hudson. “Iwájú” features the voices of Simisola Gbadamosi, Dayo Okeniyi, Femi Branch, Siji Soetan and Weruche Opia.

(5) LIKE SAND THROUGH AN HOURGLASS. Maya St. Clair finds what time has done to the first Dune movie – not that a lot of time needed to have passed before the results were known: “Make Sci-Fi Cringe Again (Duneposting 1)”.

The other night, a friend and I went to an anniversary screening of David Lynch’s 1984 Dune. Its manmade horrors were consumed in the way God intended: on a towering screen, with a printout of the infamous Dune Terminology sheet balanced in my lap, as I inhaled a bucket of curly fries agleam with twice their weight in grease. Visually, Dune is an orgy of delights: a dense mannerist universe filled with gilt and wires and inbred animals/people. The voiceovers are camp, the editing ridiculous, the hairdos lofty and aggressive (Aquanet — like spice — must flow). Around the midpoint of the movie — when Sting steps out of a sauna in a codpiece —most people had come to the unspoken understanding that it was okay to laugh instead of sitting in respectful, cinephilic silence. The Harkonnen milking machine (i.e. a rat just duct-taped to a cat) brought down the house….

(6) DUNE PT. 2. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Front Row on B Beeb Ceeb’s Radio 4 (a.k.a. the Home Service) first third sees a review of Dune Part II.

Now, while I concur (others may disagree) that for all its spectacle Part I was a little ponderous (go in with a medium or large real coffee Americana) it was faithful to the novel and the SFX far better than the Lynch offering… This last is, of course unfair, the Lynch offering came out four decades ago… Yes, just a decade short of half a century and so you’d expect as big an improvement in cinematography as there was between 1984 and films made towards the end of the war (that’s WWII in case you were wondering how old I was).

So, how did the Front Row review go?  Well, the first thing that surprised me was that one of the reviewers hates epic ‘sci-fi’.  Yes, for some in the arts, SF remains a ghetto genre.  (Or perhaps we at SF² Concatenation should swop our book review panel of ardent SF readers to those that loathe genre literature. Perhaps File 770 should be edited by someone outside of fandom? Perhaps Boris Johnson  should become Prime Minister…)

Be thrilled.  Be amazed.  The truth is out there….

You can listen to the first third of the programme here: “Front Row, Dune 2”.

(7) ABOUT THOSE LENSMEN. Steve J. Wright may not be treading new ground in “How the Other Half Lives”, but fascism, John W. Campbell Jr., and the Golden Age have been thoroughly plowed under by the time he’s done.

This is spilling out of a discussion over on File 770 (item 4 on the scroll), which in turn derived partly from Charles Stross’s “We’re Sorry we Created the Torment Nexus”. It also ties in, of course, to the ongoing “was John W. Campbell a fascist?” non-debate (because people who say no are not changing their minds, ever.)

“Fascist”, of course, is one of those terms linguisticians call “snarl words”, where the negative connotations have pretty much obscured the original usage…

…But were Golden Age SF writers in general, and John W. Campbell Jr. in particular, happy with elitism? Oh, you bet they were. The Gernsbackian ideal, as exemplified in Gernsback’s own ridiculous novel Ralph 124C41+, was a homogeneous, rationally-planned society in which government, if it existed at all, was strictly subordinated to the scientific elite – in the eponymous Ralph’s case, the “plus men”, entitled to that + sign on their names, whose unfettered experimentation led to an endless round of fresh discoveries and scientific benefits for the general populace. And you can’t throw a brick in Campbell-era SF without hitting an omni-competent super-science hero with world-transforming insights and the steely determination to push aside bureaucratic meddling and Get Things Done. Campbell himself regarded Astounding as not just a science fiction magazine, but a proving ground for the ideas that would shape the world of tomorrow. And he had plenty of sympathy from SF fans, who were happy to believe that their time would come, and they would be in the vanguard of the new elite. Granted, not many fans took it as far as the rather alarming Claude Degler, but if you said “fans are slans” at any fannish gathering of the times, you would see more than one head nodding in approval….

(8) REFERENCE DIRECTOR! Meanwhile, in Russia: “Alexei Navalny Was Buried to the Terminator 2 Theme Song”  — New York Magazine has the story.

…Navalny got in one last laugh at his funeral on Friday. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, the tune playing in the background wasn’t some funeral dirge, but the theme from his favorite movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was the refrain that plays during the movie’s famous final scene, as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s soulful killer cyborg gives a thumbs-up while he is lowered into a vat of molten steel, sacrificing himself to save the future….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 2, 1966 Ann Leckie, 58. So let’s start with Lis Carey talking about her favorite work by our writer this Scroll, Ann Leckie:

Ann Leckie wins Hugo in 2014. Photo by Henry Harel.

Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, starting with Ancillary Justice in 2013, gives us a culture where biological sex is ignored, and only female pronouns are used. Breq, our protagonist throughout the trilogy, is the only survivor of a ship destroyed by treachery, and she’s the ship’s artificial intelligence, occupying an ancillary body, i.e., a body whose own personality has been erased and replaced with one more useful to the empire, and presenting herself as an officer. 

In her quest for revenge, she becomes more and more fully human, and more and more aware of what’s wrong with the empire she serves. We see glimpses of a galaxy beyond the Radch Empire, some of them fascinating.

We’re certainly not given the impression that the Radch are the good guys. In subsequent books and stories, we get looks at the Radch from the outside, and at the other human cultures trying to survive in a galaxy where the Radch are the major human power. It’s a wonderfully complex and layered universe, and it’s well worth exploring.

Ancillary Justice swept the awards field in 2014: a Hugo at Loncon 3, a British Fantasy Award, the Clarke a Kitschie, and a Nebula. The sequel, Ancillary Sword was nominated at Sasquan and won a BSFA Award; the final book in the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, was a Hugo finalist at MidAmeriCon II. Her next book set in that universe, Provenance, novel garnered a Hugo nomination at Worldcon 76. 

Translation State, though also part of the Imperial Radch, is a pretty a stand-alone story. Yes, I liked it a lot. So let’s have Lis set the scene for you again…

It’s set in that universe, on the edge of human space, in a space station where the human polities including the Radch, and several alien polities, attempt to maintain calm and peaceful relations with the Presger, whom no one has ever seen, but who could destroy everyone if they got annoyed.

This is the book where we really get acquainted with the Presger translators, who appear to have been created from humans, but really aren’t, anymore.

It is, I would say, primarily a missing person case more than a murder mystery but it is both. It is a fascinating story. 

She’s also written an excellent fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, which I’ve been listening to of late. Adjoa Andoh narrates the audio version. She’s been on Doctor Who numerous times, mostly playing the mother of Martha Jones. She does a stellar performance here. 

Leckie has published a baker’s dozen short stories, two set in the Imperial Radch universe. I’ve not read any of them. Who has?

I look forward to seeing what she writes next. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Reality Check shows a fan pedant in (unwelcome!) action.
  • Close to Home has the most grotesque Pinocchio joke I’ve ever seen.
  • Tom Gauld mixes higher math with lower cuisine.

(11) GOOD OMENS VISUALS. Colleen Doran’s Funny Business is back with “Good Omens Peeks” – artwork at the link.

… I don’t know if, you know, getting cancer, going blind, smashing my face in, and generally having a really awful 2023 hasn’t been some weird sort of super-motivation, but I’m working very steady, and I actually think the art has gotten more solid as I go along.

I’m also very far behind schedule, but since the book was so far ahead to start, even though it’s going to be late, it won’t be horribly late. I set some pages aside and was unable to work on them for months, and that distance helped me work through some problems, too.

Anyhow, here’s some of my art in progress. And thanks for all the votes in the ComicScene awards for Good Omens as #1 crowdfund campaign of 2023….

(12) AFTER MIDNIGHT. Bitter Karella is back with the members of The Midnight Society, who are being a trial to Ursula K. Le Guin. Thread starts here.

(13) WAY AFTER MIDNIGHT. In “Seeing ‘Dune 2’ in 70mm Imax at 3:15 a.m. Was an Unforgettable Experience”, Variety’s Ethan Shanfeldfiles a snarky report about the ambiance.

…About 45 minutes into the movie, I thought for sure I was toast. Those gorgeous desert sand dunes reminded me of pillows, and I questioned what life choices I made that led me here, to seat H35. But then I saw a guy nod off two rows ahead of me, and I thought about how annoying it would be to have to see this movie again just to catch the parts I missed. I’m not weak like him, I thought, inhaling my Diet Coke. And, to even my own surprise, I powered through, savoring Paul Atreides’ larger-than-life odyssey all the way until the credits rolled at 6:18 a.m.

On the escalator down, I caught up with the three friends from New Jersey. “What are your plans this morning?” I asked, and they told me they were going to walk west to watch the sunrise over the Hudson. I didn’t have the heart (read: brain cells) to tell them the sun rises in the east.

(14) JUSTWATCH. Here are JustWatch’s charts of the most-viewed streaming movies and TV series of February 2024.

(15) SQUEAK IN DELIGHT. [Item by Bill Higgins.] Good news for all who love helium, Minneapolis in 73, and airships! Let us lift our high-pitched voices in song! “’A dream. It’s perfect’: Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America” on CBS Minnesota.

Scientists and researchers are celebrating what they call a “dream” discovery after an exploratory drill confirmed a high concentration of helium buried deep in Minnesota’s Iron Range.

Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of Pulsar Helium, said the confirmed presence of helium could be one of the most significant such finds in the world.

“There was a lot of screaming, a lot of hugging and high fives. It’s nice to know the efforts all worked out and we pulled it off,” Abraham-James said….

…According to Abraham-James, the helium concentration was measured at 12.4%, which is higher than forecasted and roughly 30 times the industry standard for commercial helium.

(16) 2021 FLASHBACK: STRICTER RATINGS FOR THESE SFF MOVIES. The British Board of Film Classification ratings change to Mary Poppins (see Pixel Scroll 2/26/24 item #9) was just the latest to affect sff films as shown in this 2021 BBC News article: “Rocky and Flash Gordon given tighter age rating”. In 2021 the extended edition of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring has also been moved up to a 12A for its “moderate fantasy violence and threat.”Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was moved from Universal to PG.

Of the 93 complaints the board received last year, 27 were about 1980 space opera film Flash Gordon.

The movie’s 40th anniversary re-release was reclassified up to 12A partly due to the inclusion of “discriminatory stereotypes”.

The BBFC did not say what the stereotypes were. However Flash Gordon’s main villain, Ming the Merciless, was of East Asian appearance but played by Swedish-French actor Max von Sydow….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back in the day at school — seems like half a century ago (hang on, it was) — there were a bunch of us whose aim in chemistry was to get the contents of one’s boiling tube to mark the ceiling… We were the back bench bucket chemists! Those were the days. Very much in that spirit, physics Matt O’Dowd asks “What Happens If We Nuke Space?” Come on, Bruce Willis has done it?

EMPs aren’t science fiction. Real militaries are experimenting on real EMP generators, and as Starfish Prime showed us, space nukes can send powerful EMPs to the surface. So what exactly is an EMP, and how dangerous are they?  

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Eddie Louise, JJ, Bill Higgins, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peace Is My Middle Name.]

Pixel Scroll 2/29/24 Scrollaris

(1) STOKER AWARD UPDATE SPARKS KERFUFFLE. [Item by Anne Marble.] The Horror Writers Association has realized that Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle was in the wrong category in the list of finalists — it is not a YA novel. So they moved it to the Adult category – increasing the finalists there from five to six (i.e, nobody was dropped). And because of this change, they added a YA novel by author Kalynn Bayron to the YA category.

But as a result, some people are yelling at Kalynn Bayron on social media — apparently because they think she “stole” the nomination from Chuck Tingle. And Brian Keene has stepped in and asked people to yell at Mr. Keene instead. Let’s see if the people who were so eager to yell at Kalynn Bayron (a young Black YA author) are just as eager to yell at Brian Keene. (Somehow, I doubt it.)

(2) STOKERCON GOH NEWS. Paula Guran will be unable to attend StokerCon 2024 the convention announced today in a newsletter. A reason was not given; the committee hopes she will be able to join them at a future event.

The remaining GoHs are Justina Ireland, Nisi Shawl, Jonathan Maberry and Paul Tremblay.

(3) ANNUAL YARDSTICK. Publishers Weekly reports “New Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey Finds Minor Changes” in the publishing industry.

The third edition of Lee & Low Books’ quadrennial “Diversity Baseline Survey” found that the publishing industry has made incremental gains in broadening its workforce since the survey was introduced in 2015.

The survey’s top-line findings show that white people made up 72.5% of this year’s 8,644 respondents, down from 76% in 2019 and 79% in 2015. Those identifying as biracial/multiracial were the second largest group, at 8.3%—a significant increase over the 3% in 2019 who identified as biracial/multiracial. The percentage of respondents who were Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander/South Asian/Southeast Indian rose slightly, to almost 8%, from 7% in 2019. Black respondents held even at about 5% of the publishing workforce, while those identifying as Hispanic/Latino/Mexican fell to 4.6%, from 6% in both 2019 and 2015….

(4) REACH OUT. Dream Foundry calls for donations to “Con or Bust”, which seeks to assist creators or fans of color with opportunities they can’t afford:

Con or Bust has received a slew of applications for extremely exciting opportunities that we are not currently able to fund or support. You can help us change that! Since late October, we’ve had to defer or decline 14 applications requesting over $25,000 in fiscal support. In most cases even a small portion of the request made as a grant would be a huge help to the applicant. Most fiscal grants we’ve made are $500, and that’s also the largest amount we’ve granted out of our unrestricted funds. …

…If you’ve ever been to an industry event that inspired, motivated, or nurtured you, then you know what these opportunities can mean. Help us bring that to more people!

(5) WRITERS AND ARTISTS, GET READY. Dream Foundry is also looking ahead to their annual Writing and Arts Contest which opens to submissions from April 1 through May 27, 2024.

(6) MACHINES IN TRAINING. Rivka Galchen is “Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem” in The New Yorker.

…“Solaris” is mostly serious in tone, which makes it a misleading example of Lem’s work. More often and more distinctively, he is funny and madcap and especially playful on the level of language. A dictionary of his neologisms, published in Poland in 2006, has almost fifteen hundred entries; translated into English, his invented words include “imitology,” “fripple,” “scrooch,” “geekling,” “deceptorite,” and “marshmucker.” (I assume that translating Lem is the literary equivalent of differential algebra, or category theory.) A representative story, from 1965, is “The First Sally (A) or, Trurl’s Electronic Bard.” Appearing in a collection titled “The Cyberiad,” the story features Trurl, an engineer of sorts who constructs a machine that can write poetry. Does the Electronic Bard read as an uncanny premonition of ChatGPT? Sure. It can write in the style of any poet, but the resulting poems are “two hundred and twenty to three hundred and forty-seven times better.” (The machine can also write worse, if asked.)

It’s not Trurl’s first machine. In other stories, he builds one that can generate anything beginning with the letter “N” (including nothingness) and one that offers supremely good advice to a ruler; the ruler is not nice, though, so it’s good that Trurl put in a subcode that the machine will not destroy its maker. The Electronic Bard is not easy for Trurl to make. In thinking about how to program it, Trurl reads “twelve thousand tons of the finest poetry” but deems the research insufficient. As he sees it, the program found in the head of even an average poet “was written by the poet’s civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time.” The complexity of the average poet-machine is daunting….

(7) THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. It was the club’s first in-person meeting outside of a Loscon since the pandemic. See photos at “We’re Back Baby! LASFS 1st Meeting in Years” on the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Website.

(8) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 104 of the Octothorpe podcast is “Groundbreaking and Great”. And humble!

Octothorpe 104 is here! We know you’ve eagerly been awaiting our takes on the Hugo Awards, so here they all are, as we discuss our favourite SF of 2023!

Hang on, what do you mean? Something else happened with the Hugo Awards and you thought we were talking about that? Well, er…maybe next time!

John is in the bottom-left, sitting in a chair, wearing a blue shirt and purple trousers, holding a can, and reading an ebook. Alison is in the upper-middle, lying down upside down, wearing a purple shirt and stripy trousers, and reading an ebook. Liz is in the bottom-right, wearing a pink shirt with green trousers, holding a mug of a hot beverage, and reading a physical book. They are surrounded by floating beer bottles, books, the Moon, a mug with a moose on it, and two cats. The word “Octothorpe” appears in scattered letters around the artwork, against a pinky-purple background.

(9) FREE READ. Worlds of If #177 is available as a free download for a limited time at the Worlds of If Magazine website. And the print version and t-shirts are also available for order there.

(10) JAIME LEE MOYER HAS DIED. Author and poet Jaime Lee Moyer was found dead today after friends requested a wellness check. C.C. Finlay announced on Facebook:

Dear friends of Jaime Lee Moyer, we have some very sad news. No one had heard from Jaime in more than ten days, which was concerning because her latest book was scheduled for release this week.

This morning we contacted her rental company and the East Lansing Police Department and asked them to perform a wellness check. They found Jaime deceased in her bedroom, apparently from natural causes. They’ve contacted her family to make formal arrangements. We only just received the news, and we don’t know any other information at this time.

Jaime has friends in the writing community all over the world. We thought this would be the best way to reach you. If you are a friend of hers, a client, or are waiting to hear an answer from her on anything else, we wanted you to know as soon as possible.

With love and grief,

Charlie and Rae

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 29, 1952 Tim Powers, 72. Now Tim Powers is a writer that I really admire. He’s decently prolific as he has twenty novels published. Now remember this essay is about what I like, so I may or may not mention what something that you, so please do t be too miffed by that. 

Where to start?  That’s easy as it has to be The Anubis Gates. Victorian London and Egypt. Ancient Egypt. Time travel. Anubis. Oh ymmm. It’s on my list of To Be Listened To list as I’ve already read it several times and the sample at Audible indicates Bronson Pinchot does a great job of narrating this. 

Tim Powers

Just as good in a very different manner is On Stranger Tides takes place during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy which was nothing of the kind, when an individual on his way from Britain to Haiti has a series of increasingly wild adventures. I know the novel was purchased to be part on the Pirates of Caribbean franchise. I’ve not seen the film, so I don’t know how much, if anything of his novel made it into the film, but I’m betting nothing except the name did.

Declare, a secret history of the Cold War, is extraordinary. I mean it really. When I was still actually reading novels as opposed to listening to them, as I’m doing now, I didn’t spend six to eight hours a day on one but I remember I did on Declare just to see where the story went. Stellar.

The Vickery and Castine series is just fun, and I mean that as a compliment. Set in contemporary LA, rogue federal agents Sebastian Vickery and Ingrid Castine can see ghosts and other things that are the secret reality of that city. It’s an ongoing series with four novels so far. Highly recommended. 

Then there’s Three Days to Never which I’m not convinced actually makes sense but is really fun to read with its wild mix of supernatural history of what actually happened, time travel and foreign agents. 

Ok, those are my picks as the Powers novels that I really like. So what’s your choices? 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) TWO COMPANIONS CUT A RUG. Radio Times makes sure we don’t miss out when “Karen Gillan and Jenna Coleman share cute Doctor Who reunion”.

Amy Pond and Clara Oswald may have never met on-screen, but the former Doctor Who companions certainly look like they get along behind the camera.

Karen Gillan (Amy) and Jenna Coleman (Clara) were spotted together at an event in London last night, with former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat also in attendance.

Gillan took to the opportunity to share a video of the trio on the dance floor on TikTok alongside the caption: “We might have had a few red wines… but look WHO it is!”…

@karengillan

We might have had a few red wines…but look WHO it is! #doctorwho

? original sound – Karen Gillan

(14) AGBABI Q&A. HAL interviews 2021 Clarke Award nominee Patience Agbabi, author of The Past Master, at Carbon-Based Bipeds.

HAL: Hello Patience, and congratulations to you on finishing your tetralogy. I’m curious, did you always know this would be a four-book cycle or did the project grow more organically?

PATIENCE: …In reality, a series made sense for lots of other reasons since I had too many ideas to fit into a single book: I wanted to explore the past as well as the future; to take different angles on ecological issues, becoming more covert as the series progressed; and also, I wanted to develop my hero, Elle, from a 3-leap girl to a 4-leap young woman. Elle is black, of Nigerian origin and autistic. It was a positive challenge to show the reader how she overcomes numerous obstacles to reach maturity. I originally submitted the manuscript as young YA but Canongate wanted to market it as middle-grade since my hero was 12 and children like to read up. But since my hero gets one year older with each instalment, I knew I’d be segueing into YA territory anyway, which demands a greater level of introspection.

(15) STRINGS ATTACHED. SOMETIMES. “Muppets, marionettes and magic: My life with puppets” – hear an interview with Basil Twist, who created puppets for the My Neighbour Totoro production by the Royal Shakespeare Company  at BBC Sounds.

Basil Twist’s fascination for puppets started as a child watching productions his mum put on as an amateur puppeteer. Basil built his own puppet characters of Star Wars as a kid and loved it, but became a ‘closeted puppeteer’ in his teens. It wasn’t cool anymore, and playing with dolls was seen as feminine. Basil pursued an education at college, but became unhappy and dropped out. Later moving to New York, Basil could finally embrace his puppetry passions. He scoured phone books and bashed phones to track down people involved in puppetry. His diligence took him around the world, winning awards and captivating crowds along the way. During the pandemic Basil found his biggest challenge to date – bringing the much-loved animated Japanese character Totoro to life for a live action stage show…. 

(16) OUTSIDE THE BOX. The Onion reports “Litter-Robot Recalls Thousands Of Self-Cleaning Litter Boxes That Accidentally Transported Cats To Year 1300”. (Could they be using the same version of the software as my comments section, which unaccountably tells people they’re in random years?)

(17) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Jessica Grose wonders “Could Swifties or Trekkies Decide the Election?” in a New York Times opinion piece. (Well, maybe I exaggerate. I don’t think it really worries her.)

…Social media is where many young voters live — about a third of adults under 30 regularly get news from TikTok, according to Pew Research. And turning out young voters who are otherwise not particularly politically engaged will be key to winning elections up and down the ballot in November. The left-leaning Working Families Party isn’t exactly a threat to take the White House in 2024, but it is on to a new way of reaching Gen Z voters at a time when the old ways are increasingly useless.

As Marcela Valdes explained this week for The New York Times Magazine, young voters tend to have low turnout rates. “No one is more ambivalent about participating in elections than young people,” she wrote. (It’s worth noting, though, that turnout among Americans ages 18 to 29 was historically high in 2018, 2020 and 2022, according to C.I.R.C.L.E., the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.)…

(18) TOMORROW’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT! Kathryn Schulz doubts we’re prepared for “What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet” as she tells readers of The New Yorker.

…But “space-weather forecaster” is an optimistic misnomer; for the most part, he and his colleagues can’t predict what will happen in outer space. All they can do is try to figure out what’s happening there right now, preferably fast enough to limit the impact on our planet. Even that is difficult, because space weather is both an extremely challenging field—it is essentially applied astrophysics—and a relatively new one. As such, it is full of many lingering scientific questions and one looming practical question: What will happen here on Earth when the next huge space storm hits?

The first such storm to cause us trouble took place in 1859. In late August, the aurora borealis, which is normally visible only in polar latitudes, made a series of unusual appearances: in Havana, Panama, Rome, New York City. Then, in early September, the aurora returned with such brilliance that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up at night and began making breakfast, and disoriented birds greeted the nonexistent morning.

This lovely if perplexing phenomenon had an unwelcome corollary: around the globe, telegraph systems went haywire. Many stopped working entirely, while others sent and received “fantastical and unreadable messages,” as the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin put it. At some telegraph stations, operators found that they could disconnect their batteries and send messages via the ambient current, as if the Earth itself had become an instant-messaging system.

Owing to a lucky coincidence, all these anomalies were soon linked to their likely cause. At around noon on September 1st, the British astronomer Richard Carrington was outside sketching a group of sunspots when he saw a burst of light on the surface of the sun: the first known observation of a solar flare. When accounts of the low-latitude auroras started rolling in, along with reports that magnetometers—devices that measure fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field—had surged so high they maxed out their recording capabilities, scientists began to suspect that the strange things happening on Earth were related to the strange thing Carrington had seen on the sun….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Kathy Sullivan, Lise Andreasen, JeffWarner, Anne Marble, Jean-Paul Garnier, Jeffrey Smith, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JeffWarner.]

Pixel Scroll 2/15/24 I Think There Is A World Market For About Five Pixel Scrolls

(1) INTERNATIONAL REACTION TO HUGO AWARDS CENSORSHIP REPORT. Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford’s report “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” (also available at Genre Grapevine and as an e-book epub file and as a PDF) has sparked the attention of mass media: .

The Guardian: “Authors ‘excluded from Hugo awards over China concerns’”. In addition to covering the report, the article includes an excellent quote from Chinese social media:

…The incident prompted discussion among the science fiction community in China. One commenter on Weibo wrote: “Diane Lacey’s courage to disclose the truth makes people feel that there is still hope in the world, and not everyone is so shameless … I can understand the concerns of the Hugo award staff, but ‘I honestly think that the Hugo committee are cowards.’”…

BBC Radio 4: Last night’s arts programme Front Row’s third quarter looked at the Hugo Awards debacle. “Ukraine drama A Small Stubborn Town, Emma Rice, The Hugo Awards”. Jonathan Cowie says, “It was a superficial dive. For example, it did not note that the nominating stats literally did not add up, so clear fraud, nor that Glasgow also is ignoring WSFS rules.” (Cowie adds, “Remember to skip to the programme’s final third quarter.”)

In the wake of the Hugo Awards scandal, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, culture critic and Hugo awards finalist, Han Zhang, editor-at-large at Riverhead Books, focussed on finding works in the Chinese language for translation and publication in the US, and Megan Walsh, author of The Subplot: What China is reading and why it matters, discuss the fallout and what is reveals about the popularity of Sci-Fi in China.

There’s also a paywalled article in New Scientist: “Amid (more) Hugo awards controversy, let’s remember some past greats”.

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that all awards are total bunk except for the ones you personally have lifted into the air in triumph. That rule doesn’t hold, however, if your prize is in some way sullied later on. This, sadly, is the situation for the winners of the 2023 Hugo awards….

Slashdot has an excerpt of 404 Media’s paywalled article: “Leaked Emails Show Hugo Awards Self-Censoring To Appease China”.

And here are some highlights from the vast social media discussion.

John Scalzi: “The 2023 Hugo Fraud and Where We Go From Here” at Whatever

Cora Buhlert: “The 2023 Hugo Nomination Scandal Gets Worse”

Mary Robinette Kowal’s thread on Bluesky starts with this link.

Neil Gaiman commented on Bluesky: “I’m unsure how comfortable I would be participating if anything I was involved in was nominated for a Hugo in 2024, if there were people involved who had been part of what happened in Chengdu.”

Chuck Tingle’s thread on X.com begins, “this report of leaks regarding what actually happened at hugo awards shows a disgusting way. years of buckaroos working in and around hugo awards popularizing phrases like ‘chuck tingle made the hugos illegitimate’ when the rot was starting with them.”

Courtney Milan, on Bluesky, offers a series of short scripts for how censorship could have been deflected. The first is: “Ways to handle censorship if someone asks you on the DL to censor your award. 1. ‘No, this isn’t in our rules. Is this going to be a problem? I can let the community know that the Hugo rules aren’t going to be applied if so.’”

(2) IT ONLY GETS VERSE. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] A brilliant poem by TrishEM about the Hugo mess: “A Vanilla Villain’s Variant Villanelle” at What’s the Word Now. The first stanza is:

It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools;
If you knew all the facts, you’d condone our behavior.
I grok Chinese fans, and was their White Savior.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

(3) HOW CENSORSHIP WORKS.  Ada Palmer’s post about censorship and self-censorship comes highly recommended: “Tools for Thinking About Censorship”. It begins:

“Was it a government action, or did they do it themselves because of pressure?”

This is inevitably among our first questions when news breaks that any expressive work (a book, film, news story, blog post etc.) has been censored or suppressed by the company or group trusted with it (a publisher, a film studio, a newspaper, an awards organization etc.)

This is not a direct analysis of the current 2023 Chengdu Hugo Awards controversy. But since I am a scholar in the middle of writing a book about patterns in the history of how censorship operates, I want to put at the service of those thinking about the situation this zoomed-out portrait of a few important features of how censorship tends to work, drawn from my examination of examples from dozens of countries and over many centuries….

(4) ELIGIBILITY UPDATE FOR US NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS. “US National Book Awards: Opening to Non-US Citizens”Publishing Perspectives has the story.

In recent years, as readers of Publishing Perspectives’ coverage of book and publishing awards know, there have been several cases in which higher-profile book and publishing awards programs have decided to broaden their eligibility requirements for authors whose work is submitted.

Today’s (February 15) announcement from the National Book Foundation about the United States’ National Book Awards‘ change in eligibility opens the program to submissions of work by authors who are not citizens of the United States, as long as they “maintain their primary, long-term home in the United States, US territories, or Tribal lands.”

These new updated criteria will be in effect as of March 13, when submissions for the 75th National Book Awards open….

(5) WAYWARD WORMHOLE. Two workshops will be available at “The Rambo Academy Wayward Wormhole – New Mexico 2024”.

The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers is pleased to announce the second annual Wayward Wormhole, this time in New Mexico. Join us for the short story workshop to study with Arley Sorg and Minister Faust, or the novel workshop with Donald Maass, C.C. Finlay, and Cat Rambo.

Both intensive workshops will be hosted at the Painted Pony ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico. The short story workshop runs November 4-12, 2024, and the novel workshop runs November 15 through 24, 2024.

The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers has been in existence for thirteen years, serving hundreds of students who have gone on to win awards, honors, and accolades, including Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. “I attended Clarion West, and have taught at multiple workshops now,” says Academy founder Cat Rambo. “While others have delivered the gold standard, I decided to stretch to the platinum level and deliver amazing workshops in equally amazing settings. Last year’s was a castle in Spain, this year a fabulous location in southwestern America. And wait till you hear what we’ve got cooked up for 2025!”

More details about these exciting workshops and how to apply!

(6) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Photos from the reopened Chengdu Science Fiction Museum

The Chengdu SF Museum reopened to the public a few weeks ago, after an event a few days earlier involving Hai Ya and other authors.  The images I’ve selected here are primarily because of their potential interest to MPC types, but you can click on the following links to see the Xiaohongshu galleries these came from.

As far as I can tell, all of these photos have been taken in the past few weeks; there are none from when the Worldcon was running.

Gallery 1Gallery 2Gallery 3Gallery 4Gallery 5Gallery 6Gallery 7Gallery 8Gallery 9

(7) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 103 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Just This Guy, Y’know?”, is available for listening. John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty say:

Octothorpe 103 is here! We discuss a bunch of stuff which isn’t Hugo Award-related before moving onto the bits of the kerfuffle that we couldn’t fit into 102 and hadn’t come out when we recorded.

The words “Octothorpe 103 Hugo Regalia Shop” appear above a selection of costumes. There are small depictions of a clown, a pirate, a panda and a banana above full-length depictions of a member of the Catholic church (with Hugos on their mitre and crosier), a gangster (labelled “boss”, holding a Hugo), Zaphod Beeblebrox (holding three Hugos) and Jesus (with a crown of thorns but made with Hugos).

(8) MOURNING MUSIC. “Matthew” (at Bandcamp) is a tribute song about Matthew Pavletich by his sister, Jo Morgan. Matthew died in January. The lyrics are heart-wrenching – see them at the link.

‘Matthew’ is a touching tribute dedicated to Jo’s beloved brother who passed away after a courageous battle with Motor Neurone Disease. Tenderly capturing the power of familial love, serving as an anthem honouring all the qualities defining him.

Jo says “I wrote this song to celebrate my brother Matthew who passed away from Motor Neurone Disease in January 2024. There are so many wonderful qualities about this beautiful man and I am so blessed to have had him as my brother. He lost so much to this illness, and I want the world to know about this sweet and humble gentle man.”

Jo will be making a donation from some of the proceeds from the song to support MND NZ and animal welfare charities.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 15, 1945 Jack Dann, 79. It’s been awhile since we’ve done an Australian resident writer, so let’s do Jack Dann tonight. Yes, I know he’s American-born but he’s lived there for the past forty years and yes he’s citizen there.

In 1994 he had moved to Melbourne to join Janeen Webb, a Melbourne based academic, SF critic, and writer, whom he had met at a conference in San Francisco and who he married a year later. Thirty years later they’re still married. 

They would edit together In the Field of Fire, a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories relating to the horrors of the Vietnam War. I’m not aware who anyone else has done one on this subject, so go ahead and tell who else has. 

Jack Dann

He published his first book as an editor, Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction forty years ago, (later followed up by More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction) and his first novel, Starhiker, several years later. 

His Dreaming Again and Dreaming down-under are excellent anthologies of Australian genre short fiction. The latter, edited with his wife, would win a Ditmar and a World Fantasy Award. Dreaming Again, again edited with his wife, also won a Ditmar. 

With Nick Gever, he won a Shirley Jackson Award for one of my favorite reads, Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense.

He’s written roughly a hundred pieces of shorter fiction.  I’ve read enough of it to say that he’s quite excellent in that length of fiction.  Recently Centipede Press released in their Masters of Science Fiction, a volume devoted to him. Thirty stories, all quite excellent.

So what is worth reading for novels beyond Starhiker which I like a lot? Well if you’ve not read it, do read The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci in which de Vinci actually constructs his creations as it is indeed an amazing story. 

The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean is extraordinary. All I’ll say here is Dean lived, had an amazing life and yes it’s genre. I see PS Publishing filled out the story when they gave us Promised Land.

Those are the three novels of his that I really, really like. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) EVIL GENIUS GAMES. [Item by Eric Franklin.] Morrus, the owner of ENWorld, posted an article on “The Rise And Fall Of Evil Genius Games” that may be of interest to the gaming contingent of File770’s readership: EGG has produced games for a number of licensed genre properties, including Pacific Rim, Escape from New York, and The Crow. “DriveThruRPG – Evil Genius Games”

How does a company go from over twenty core staff to just six in the space of a few weeks?

In the summer of 2023, Evil Genius Games appeared to be riding high. They’d made about half a million dollars over two Kickstarter campaigns and had raised $1M from several rich investors in the form of technology companies. The company boasted 25-30 core staff, an official tabletop role-playing game for a movie franchise called Rebel Moon was well under development, and EGG standees and window clings representing characters from the d20 Modern-inspired Everyday Heroes could be seen in game stores across America.

By the end of the year, the Rebel Moon game was dead, staff had been asked to work without pay for periods of up to three months, freelancers were struggling to get paid, people were being laid off, and the company’s tech company investors seemed to be having cold feet in the face of escalating expenditure and dwindling resources….

(12) SFF FROM LAGOS. “’Iwájú’ trailer: Disney’s enticing limited series is set in a futuristic Nigeria” says Mashable. Available February 28 on Disney+.

“Iwájú” is an original animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria. The exciting coming-of-age story follows Tola, a young girl from the wealthy island, and her best friend, Kole, a self-taught tech expert, as they discover the secrets and dangers hidden in their different worlds. Kugali filmmakers—including director Olufikayo Ziki Adeola, production designer Hamid Ibrahim and cultural consultant Toluwalakin Olowofoyeku—take viewers on a unique journey into the world of “Iwájú,” bursting with unique visual elements and technological advancements inspired by the spirit of Lagos.

(13) NSFF770? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Star Zendaya walked the red carpet at the Dune Part Two premiere wearing a formfitting silver and translucent robot-inspired outfit. Friendly warning: anyone inclined to over-agitation at such a sight might want to make sure they’ve taken their heart medication before checking out the video. “Zendaya’s Robotic Outfit For The ‘Dune: Part Two’ Premiere Has To Be Seen To Be Believed” at Uproxx. Article includes a roundup of X.com posts with video.

(14) WHAT REALLY MATTERS. “This new map of the Universe suggests dark matter shaped the cosmos” at Nature. See the compilation photo at the link.

Astronomers have reconstructed nearly nine billion years of cosmic evolution by tracing the X-ray glow of distant clusters of galaxies. The analysis supports the standard model of cosmology, according to which the gravitational pull of dark matter — a still-mysterious substance — is the main factor shaping the Universe’s structure.

“We do not see any departures from the standard model of cosmology,” says Esra Bulbul, a senior member of the team and an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany. The results are described1 in a preprint posted online on 14 February.

The galactic clusters were spotted in the most detailed picture ever taken of the sky using X-rays, which was published late last month. This image revealed around 900,000 X-ray sources, from black holes to the relics of supernova explosions.

The picture was the result of the first six months of operation of eROSITA (Extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array), one of two X-ray telescopes that were launched into space in July 2019 aboard the Russian spacecraft SRG (Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma). eROSITA scans the sky as the spacecraft spins, and collects data over wider angles than are possible for most other X-ray observatories. This enables it to slowly sweep the entire sky every six months….

(15) VALENTINE’S DAY IN THE TARDIS. How can you not click when Radio Times offers to tell about “Doctor Who’s four greatest love stories – and why they make the cut”?

The love stories definitely aren’t the main focus in Doctor Who… but they certainly don’t hurt.

From David Tennant’s Ten and Billie Piper’s Rose being ripped away from each other in Doomsday, to Matt Smith’s Eleven and Alex Kingston’s River Song finding their way back to each other through time, some of them are love stories for the ages.

Some of them, perhaps, deserved a little more time (looking at Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteen and Mandip Gill’s Yaz), and some don’t even feature the Doctor at all, with Karen Gillan’s Amy and Arthur Darvill’s Rory melting our hearts….

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

Texas Library Association Reverses Decision and Reinvites Chuck Tingle, But He Declines

The public outcry against the Texas Library Association’s decision to revoke their invitation to Dr. Chuck Tingle to participate on their annual conference program, including expressions of support from Neil Gaiman and Ursula Vernon, as well as TJ Klune’s announcement that he would refuse his own invitation, has prompted the organization to apologize and renew their invitation to Tingle; however, he says he will not accept.

On January 10 the Texas Library Association’s executive director Shirley Robinson published a “TLA Statement Regarding Author Chuck Tingle” on the organization’s website which says they want him to reconsider participating in their annual conference. But the statement said nothing one way or the other about him going masked, which the group had contended was the issue.

As you may know, the Texas Library Association is currently planning and securing speakers for our annual conference in April. Last fall, we extended an initial invitation to author Chuck Tingle to participate as a panelist at our Evening with Authors event. We later offered Mr. Tingle the opportunity to participate in a different conference event.

This was a misstep that we regret, and it is counter to our mission to ‘unite and amplify voices…through intentional equity, diversity, and inclusion.’

I contacted Mr. Tingle’s publisher today to apologize and to ask whether or not he might reconsider participating in our Evening with Authors event. I hope Mr. Tingle will accept, and we can discuss what has transpired so that we may all come to a place of greater understanding.

TLA has spent the last two years fighting for the freedom to read and freedom of knowledge in school libraries, and we are always on the side of authors. We set a high standard for ourselves, and in this instance, we did not meet it. In the future, we will be more diligent in our processes and clearer and more thoughtful when discussing opportunities with potential speakers at our events. I am sorry for this mistake. We will learn from this and do better in the future.

Today, Dr. Chuck Tingle responded on Tumblr (and his other social media accounts) saying he appreciated their apology, but “very sincerely, thank you, but i will have to decline the re-invitation. maybe next year’”.

Here is Tingle’s complete statement:

[Thanks to Anne Marble for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 1/10/24 Tom Swift And His Scrolling Pixels

(1) TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATON ASKS TINGLE FOR DO-OVER. Today the Texas Library Association’s executive director Shirley Robinson published a “TLA Statement Regarding Author Chuck Tingle” which says they want him to reconsider participating in their annual conference, although it says nothing one way or the other about him going masked.

As you may know, the Texas Library Association is currently planning and securing speakers for our annual conference in April. Last fall, we extended an initial invitation to author Chuck Tingle to participate as a panelist at our Evening with Authors event. We later offered Mr. Tingle the opportunity to participate in a different conference event.

This was a misstep that we regret, and it is counter to our mission to ‘unite and amplify voices…through intentional equity, diversity, and inclusion.’

I contacted Mr. Tingle’s publisher today to apologize and to ask whether or not he might reconsider participating in our Evening with Authors event. I hope Mr. Tingle will accept, and we can discuss what has transpired so that we may all come to a place of greater understanding.

TLA has spent the last two years fighting for the freedom to read and freedom of knowledge in school libraries, and we are always on the side of authors. We set a high standard for ourselves, and in this instance, we did not meet it. In the future, we will be more diligent in our processes and clearer and more thoughtful when discussing opportunities with potential speakers at our events. I am sorry for this mistake. We will learn from this and do better in the future.

(2) FOR FAN MAIL. The US Postal Service will have a Dungeons & Dragons-themed stamp issue this year: “USPS Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024” at American Philatelic Society.

This stamp release marks the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, described by its owners as the World’s Greatest Role-playing Game, that has become a cultural phenomenon. By inviting participants to imagine themselves as wizards, warriors and other adventurers in exciting and treacherous fantasy worlds, Dungeons & Dragons opened doors to whole new universes of creativity for generations of players. The pane of 20 stamps features 10 different designs that highlight characters, creatures and encounters familiar to players of the game. Greg Breeding, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps and pane with existing illustrations.

(3) TWO TO TANGO. The Guardian brings news of an unexpected collaboration: “Keanu Reeves and China Miéville to release collaborative novel The Book of Elsewhere”.

…Their joint novel is titled The Book of Elsewhere and is set in the world of the BRZRKR comic book series created by Reeves, first published in 2021. It follows an immortal warrior on a millennia-long journey to understand his immortality.

The novel is due to be published on 23 July by Penguin. Reeves, who is best known for his roles in The Matrix and John Wick franchises, said it was “extraordinary” to work with Miéville. “China did exactly what I was hoping for – he came in with a clear architecture for the story and how he wanted to play with the world of BRZRKR, a world that I love so much. I was thrilled with his vision and feel honoured to be a part of this collaborative process.”…

…“Sometimes the greatest games are those you play with other people’s toys,” said Miéville on the collaboration. “It was an honour, a shock and a delight when Keanu invited me to play. But I could never have predicted how generous he’d be with toys he’s spent so long creating,” he added….

…Upon its release, BRZRKR, created with writer Matt Kindt and artist Ron Garney, became the highest-selling original comic book series debut in more than 25 years. The comic will also be adapted into a live-action Netflix film starring Reeves and an anime series….

(4) ON THE ROAD AGAIN. Annalee Newitz soon will be touring to promote their far-future epic The Terraformers. Check the venue website to reserve free tickets.

(5) ALDERMAN Q&A. NPR interviews Naomi Alderman whose new book “’The Future’ asks if technology will save humanity or accelerate its end”.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with author Naomi Alderman on her new novel, The Future, which asks whether the giants of technology more likely to save humankind or accelerate its end.

…ALDERMAN: When I heard about these billionaires building their bunkers, I immediately thought of Lot. So this is a story that is about how you cannot escape from a terrible situation. If you think that, oh no, I’m powerful; I can escape; I can go to my bunker; I’m going to be all right, you just have to know that you take it with you. On a more broad level, I think Bible stories, particularly the stories of Genesis – I grew up reading them in the original Hebrew because I grew up very religious Jewish. And it seems to me that those stories are the foundations of what we might call Western civilization now, and we have sort of ceded them to religious education. So you learn those stories if you have a strong biblical schooling where you’re maybe taught that all of this is literally true, but actually, they’re incredibly important stories.

SHAPIRO: So, like, everybody can talk about the lesson of Icarus. Don’t fly too close to the sun.

ALDERMAN: Right…

(6) HE FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW LOST. AND SO DID HE. Norman Spinrad’s latest “Norman Spinrad at Large” tells why he hasn’t had a new novel out for years.

…When I read that I am “One of the Four “Great Speculative Writers of the Past”  I feel that I’m reading my own obituary. Sometimes when I am asked about things of my history I feel like I’m writing it.  

Which, I suppose, is one good reason to let my Wikipedia answer such questions instead of myself. When I’m interviewed I’m much more interested in talking about what I’ve written about than talking about myself.

And another reason is that I don’t have time for much of such pondering of my past. I am indeed still crazy after all these years.  Since my last new published novel THE PEOPLE’S POLICE in 2017 I’ve written dozens of  my On Books column in Asimov’s. Songs.  Journalism. This and that in the arts world. Political screeds. Published short stories and novellas, some of which are waiting to become a novel. Even  a full first draft of a novel which needs a proper publisher with a good editor.

So why have I not published a new novel since THE PEOPLE’S POLICE in 2017?

That’s a story you won’t find in my wikipedia. That’s a story that is still going on.

There is a lot of talk today that because of the Woke vs. Maga literary political war,  white male writers are finding it unfairly difficult getting their work published. Well, I confese that I am a white man, but I don’t think that is what had happened to me. 

What Tor books did to THE PEOPLE’S POLICE is why I haven’t been able to publish a novel ever since. My editor on it there was the great David Hartwell.  I was so confident of what he would  do for the publication that Dona and I went to  New Orleans on our own money to shoot promotional video for the book, knowing of course that Tor itself would not pay for any such thing.

But when we came back to New York, the shit hit the fan. David Harwell died in an accident, which among other things, turned THE PEOPLE’S POLICE into what is called a orphan book, meaning no one in Tor championed its publication.  A horrible cover of a black cop and a white cop back to back on the hardcover against what the novel was actually hopefully about.

No one showed me the cover until it was too late to change,, telling me that David had approved it while he was still alive without showing it me, which he never would have done, and Tor refused to do anything at all with the videos that we had fronted with several thousand dollars of our money or even spend any at all on promoting the book.

What with the cover and the refusal of Tor to spend anything at all,  what could have been a big seller at least in the South, the hard cover sanked.  As you might imagine, I was not amused, but I thought a good cover, a just conver, could be put on the trade paperback, and Tor would have the freebee video for nothing.

Instead I was told that there would be no trade paperback. Well I was already crazy and did what most writers were not crazy enough to do. I went to war with Tor.  And I won it. I got back my novel away from them so that I could at least create my own trade paperback on Amazon where it still is the only place you can find it.

But I paid a high price for my victory.  I lost my agent because no agent can fight on the side of his writer against a publisher, and indeed shouldn’t for the sake of his other writers.  And by then, it was becoming just about impossible get a proper publisher to even look at a novel except through an agent.  And thusfar  there has been no agent willing to  take a chance on “One of the Four Great Speculative Writers of the Past.”…

(7) DARRAH CHAVEY OBITUARY. Wisconsin fan Darrah Chavey died January 6, 2024 from complications of heart surgery.

He was a mathematics professor at Beloit College in Wisconsin, teaching Computer Science, Ethnomathematics, and Ballroom Dancing.  

He was a member of the Beloit Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.  He was an active volunteer in putting on WisCon for a number of years, including running the “Internet Lounge”.

As a contributor to the Internet Science Fiction Database, one of his specialties was SF by women authors, especially works before the mid-80’s. Some of his research was captured on the SF Gender page.

He is survived by his wife Peggy Weisensel Chavey and other family members.

(8) TERRY BISSON (1942-2024). Author Terry Bisson died January 10 at the age of 81. He was especially well-known for short stories including “Bears Discover Fire”, winner of the Hugo and Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards, and ”They’re Made Out of Meat”. His story “macs” also won a Nebula (2001), as well as French and Spanish sff awards.

He recently was profiled in The New Yorker, “Terry Bisson’s History of the Future”, which noted his beginnings in the sff field.

…He sold his first science-fiction novel, “Wylrdmaker,” to the publisher David Hartwell in 1981, for fifteen hundred dollars. The novel was pulp: it told the story of Kemen of Pastryn, a satirical futuristic version of Conan the Barbarian. It wasn’t the book Bisson wanted to write, he told me, but “it was the smartest thing I ever did. That’s when I discovered you didn’t have to be fucking Hemingway or Fitzgerald to write a novel.” His second novel, “The Talking Man,” was more of a passion project—it was a fantasy novel set in the rural South, with junkyards instead of castles…

He also wrote many film novelizations, including William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic; Virtuosity; The Fifth Element by Luc Besson; Alien Resurrection; Dreamworks’ Galaxy Quest; and The Sixth Day, and three Jonny Quest novels, plus other media tie-in novels.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1987 — Sharyn McCrumb’s Highland Laddie Gone, published in hardcover by Avon Bokks thirty-seven years ago, is the third of the Elizabeth MacPherson mysteries and I think can safely discuss the setting of this novel and the prime character. 

Sharyn McCrumb I’ve covered before, looking at several of her Ballad novels here as well as the genre Jay Omega series as well.  

These novels are apparently her take at Agatha Christie as she has told interviewers. Now I don’t see that when I it read them but none-the-less Elizabeth MacPherson, forensic anthropologist, who’s from Scotland is a delightful central character. 

Most of these novels are set in the mid Atlantic region of the States, and this one was no exception. The mystery is set at a Highland Games of which there are some hundred in the US alone. Now consider men wearing kilts, haggis on a stick, far too many bagpipes (and I like them) and way too much Scottish themed junk for sale. And everyone is of course Scottish for the day. Now she, our writer, manages to find the humor in all of that and make it quite interesting. 

(Yes, I’m part Scottish. Scotch-Irish on my maternal side. No, not Scottish-Irish as I had to explain to more one person who said Scotch was a drink. Scotch-Irish are descendants of Ulster Protestants who emigrated from Ulster to North America during the 18th and 19th centuries. And I’m Welsh on the paternal side.) 

MacPherson has to solve her mystery while dealing with the eccentric culture of the Highland Games. I think that McCrumb did a spot-on job of capturing the feel of those games. 

Here’s our Beginning…

CLAN CHATTAN 

Dear Elizabeth, How are you? It’s been ages! Due to a security leak in your organization (your mom), I have obtained your address and am writing to ask a favor. (In business school they teach us to come to the point in the first paragraph.) Did you know that I’m getting my MBA at Princeton! The folks are so thrilled about it—Daddy’s plastered bumper stickers on every vehicle we own, even the riding lawn mower. It’s quite sweet, really, to see them so happy. Your mother didn’t say what you were doing. 

Haven’t seen you at the Highland games festivals since high school. You really ought to come to one. Surely you’re not still upset about the dance competition. Goodness, there’s so much more to a festival than that! There’s the hospitality tent, and the nametag chairman. Not everybody is meant to be graceful, you know. 

Anyway, I hope I can persuade you to come to the Labor Day games (see enclosed brochure), because there is something that I need a volunteer for. You remember Cluny, don’t you? He’s fine, as reserved as ever. For the past two years, I’ve been the person in charge of him for the festivals. You know how they like a pretty girl to show him off. Well, this year I simply can’t come! I’ll be in Europe during term break with my flatmate. So, I need someone to take my place. Buffy and Pax and Cammie-Lynn were all booked up, so I’m hoping that you’ll show the old Clan spirit and volunteer for the job. But if you can’t afford it, do say so, and I’ll understand. 

Please let me know soon about this. I’m off to Europe next week. Oh, and what have you been doing lately? Teaching? Got to run! 

Mary-Stuart Gillespie

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 10, 1957 George Alec Effinger. (Died 2002.) I first experienced him when I read the Marîd Audran novels (Gravity FailsA Fire in The Sunand The Exile Kiss). Though he set them in a 22nd-century Middle East, the setting isn’t really faithful to that reality but reflects more the city of New Orleans where he lived much of his life. Truly exceptional novels. 

He started work on a fourth Audran novel, Word of Night, but died before that work was completed. The existing two chapters of Word of Night that he did complete are now available in Budayeen Nights, along with the other Budayeen stories and some other short stories as which was edited by Marty Halpern at Golden Gryphon. 

The “Schrödinger’s Kitten” novelette won a Hugo at Noreascon 3, it also garnered a Sturgeon and Nebula too;  his “Marîd Changes His Mind” novella was nominated for a Nebula but was withdrawn for a Hugo after the nomination was declined. 

He wrote a lot, and I do mean a lot, of novels besides the Marîd Audran works  but I’ll confess that I’m largely unfamiliar with most of them. I’ve immensely enjoyed The Red Tape War co-written with Resnick and Jack L. Chalker, but that’s it. Anyone care to give an opinion on the rest of his novels? 

I see he did the scripts for about a dozen comics, one of which was “The Mouse Alone!” in which he created the character of a young Gray Mouser. Huh. That was the Sword of Sorcery #5 issue, DC Comics, Nov.-Dec. 1973. 

And I was surprised to learn he did a Sandman story as well, “Seven Nights in Slumberland” which ran in The Sandman: Book of Dreams. I must’ve read it at some point as I read that anthology. It’s a very good anthology too.

Planet of the Apes novels? Really? Anyone here read these? 

George Alec Effinger in 1988. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(11) ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION.

[Item by Cat Eldridge.]

2001–So this date was when The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film was premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London twenty-three years ago. 

I don’t as a rule watch films or series based off literary works that I deeply, madly love. That’s because I’ve got in my mind’s eye my own vision of what each character looks like already, what the landscape is and so forth. So I’m usually disappointed by what is visually created by even the best of our video creators.  Not their fault of course. 

I cannot begin to remember the number of times that I’ve read The Fellowship of the Ring as it is a novel that I both deeply loved and found to be one that I find always is fresh when I read it. Forty years on since by my first reading of it and now I’m listened to being the tale narrated by Andy Serkis, and I was once again deeply and fully delighted by this story as written by Tolkien.

The very first words of “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton” were enough to draw me and they’ve drawn me ever since. The rest of the novel is just as good. 

So did Peter Jackson do that to me? Very much not at all. He was faithful to the source material as he much as could be given the difference in story telling mediums, and the script as written by him, his wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (they were the writing team for all of the Tolkien films) was quite delightful indeed.

The actors? Stellar they were, one and all in creating the feel that characters of this novels had come alive. I can’t possibly detail all of them here. I really can’t. My favorites? Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins, Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins, Ian McKellen as Gandalf and John Rhys-Davies as Gimli. Those are my favorite actors the first time that I watched it and they remained so with repeated reviewings. 

McKellen it is said by several sources was the fourth choice as the first three approached to play that role turned it down because of ill health — Patrick McGoohan, Anthony Hopkins and Christopher Plummer. 

Oh and the universe they inhabited.  John Howe and Alan Lee were deeply involved as conceptual artists throughout the project, Lee mainly on the architecture such as creating Hobbiton; Howe on characters such as Gandalf, the Ents and the Balrog. Weta was responsible first such things as armour, miniatures and weapons. 

Oh those Ents. They were just what I expected them to be, perfectly realised to be what was in my minds eye. I did look for a nicely crafted one after the film came out even then they were they were running well several hundred dollars unfortunately. Still want one to have who will sit among my plants here. 

So let’s not forget the New Zealand landscape standing in for Middle-earth.  It worked magnificently as it has on oh so many occasions for other series and films now. I felt like I was seeing Middle-earth made real. 

So I fell in love with it and have stayed so. And therefore I’m not at all surprised that it won at Hugo at ConJosé. It certainly deserved that Hugo. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Baldo isn’t sure what he can buy with this.
  • Shoe features a writer with a disturbing perspective.

(13) NEXT TREK. “Star Trek: New Movie in the Works at Paramount Set Before 2009 Film” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

After years of stops and startsParamount is making a step toward returning Star Trek to the big screen. Toby Haynes, who directed episodes of of the Star Wars series Andor, will helm a new feature, with Seth Grahame-Smith writing.

This would mark the first feature for Haynes, who helmed the dark, celebrated Star Trek-inspired episode of Black Mirror, “USS Callister.”

Deadline’s article adds, “Insiders add that the final chapter in that main series, Star Trek 4, remains in active development.”

(14) THE APPRENTICE RETURNS. The Mary Sue rejoices: “Heck Yeah, We’re Getting Season 2 of ‘Ahsoka’!”

Ahsoka‘s renewal is welcome, if unsurprising. The series premiere got 14 million views in the first five days following its premiere, and the series holds an 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ahsoka joins Andor, which is also getting a second season.

Ahsoka stars Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, a former Jedi Padawan apprenticing under Anakin Skywalker. Dawson first played the character in season two of The Mandalorian followed by an appearance in The Book of Boba Fett. The first season of Ahsoka premiered on Disney+ in August 2023 with 8 episodes….

(15) EXPOSURE. The LA Public Library announced a way for indie authors to submit their e-books for circulation. The info doesn’t discuss any payment for authors.

The Los Angeles Public Library is partnering with BiblioBoard to bring the Indie Author Project public library e-book discover service to L.A. residents.

Indie Author Project provides L.A.’s self published authors a wonderful opportunity to submit their e-book for circulation at LAPL, libraries throughout California, and possibly libraries nationwide. This is a great way to reach a wider reading audience and build buzz on your book.

Indie Author Project also provides adventurous readers access to exciting new literary voices in a variety of genres. Discover a great new author before they make it big!

Click here if you are interested in submitting your title and read the terms of agreement.

Submissions must be in the epub or pdf file format—here are a few sites that provide simple free tools to convert files from MS Word to epub: Online-ConvertZamzar. Or, use our free Pressbooks tool to create a professional quality formatted ebook file.

(16) ARTIST INTELLIGENCE. [Item by Steven French.] What do you do when you don’t have a photo to go with a creepy story about a Tennessee ghost or an Aboriginal Australian cryptid? You ask an illustrator for an equally spooky image of course! Atlas Obscura shared its best illustrations of the year: “In 2023, We Illustrated the Darkest Corners of the Human Imagination”.

At Atlas Obscura, we’re always curious about the unusual, and that doesn’t always lend itself to photos. So we turn to an amazing army of illustrators to bring readers into our stories. This year, we noticed that many of our favorite illustrations were commissioned to depict the dark and the mysterious—pretty on-brand for us—whether it’s of menacing creatures of the spring, un-jolly characters of Christmas, or myths of the Egyptian underworld. Our artists around the globe took on the art direction challenges with spooky glee, and brought these unearthly stories to life with bewitching visuals….

…Illustrator Harshad Marathe generally enjoys working on otherworldly subject matter, such as mythology, or creatures, demons, and dieties. So he took naturally to the Egyptian sun god, on a boat towed on snakes, in a desert. He conceived other trippy and colorful scenes for our series on Egypt’s netherworld, a highlight of our annual month-long Halloween bacchanalia….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The trailer has dropped for Monolith, available in theaters and on digital beginning February 16.

While trying to salvage her career, a disgraced journalist begins investigating a strange conspiracy theory. But as the trail leads uncomfortably close to home, she is left to grapple with the lies at the heart of her own story.

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

Texas Library Association Cancels Chuck Tingle

Dr. Chuck Tingle told readers today that the Texas Library Association has rescinded his invitation to be a featured speaker at the organization’s annual conference, slated for April 16-19. Another invited speaker, TJ Klune, is following him out the door in protest.

Tingle has discussed the situation extensively in a post on Tumblr and as a free read on his Patreon: “THE TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION TELLS CHUCK TINGLE TO STAY HOME BUT WE PROVE LOVE ANYWAY”.

Tingle accepted the invitation and had it confirmed by the Texas Library Association several months ago. However, in December —

i get a call from my manager and agent and publisher saying ‘the TLA have rescinded their invitation.’

turns out some things had been going on behind the scenes

at some point the TLA asked chucks INCREDIBLE HEROIC BAD ASS PUBLISHER if chuck would be okay with not wearing the mask, to which tor/nightfire/macmillan said ‘what the heck are you talking about of course chuck is going to wear his mask. this is how chuck presents himself’ (NOT EXACT QUOTE)

as you all know, my pink bag way is a VERY IMPORTANT SPACE. as an autistic buckaroo it is a boundary that allows me to express myself freely and relieve my chronic pain from neurotypically masking all day. i have talked about this for years, and it is why i consider my private identity a SACRED THING. it is literally a health issue.

fortunately THE PINK BAG is never really a problem when making appearances. i have spent years going on television shows, doing interviews, speaking at other conferences and conventions, hosting book events on tour, and even MEETING WITH LAWYERS in my pink face covering. it is always respected and that is very validating to my way.

when arriving anywhere i always take precautions. i always warn buckaroos ahead of time that there is a masked man coming. i always have someone go in ahead of me JUST IN CASE. again, there has never been an issue. at a big conference where i am a special guest there is ESPECIALLY not an issue because my face and bio are printed IN THE DANG PROGRAM

PART TWO: RESCINDED

a few days ago TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION suddenly messaged my publishers and said that chuck tingle is no longer invited. my invitation was rescinded. the reason given was that people could possibly be uncomfortable with my mask

right out of the gate i would like to say this: it is absolutely the right of the texas library association to disinvite someone from their conference. it is their event, after all, and they can ban anyone they would like, for any reason.

of course, that doesnt mean other folks HEARING THIS NEWS wont have their own opinions the TLA choices. if the TLA disinvites someone, their reasoning for doing this can be discussed and analyzed. whether or not they follow their own guidelines can be questioned, and certainly their kindness and tact can be considered

As Tingle explains later in his post, the decision to revoke his invitation was made by the organization based on their unwillingness to host a masked speaker, not because of complaints from TLA members or the public (in contrast with the “disinvitations” tendered sff writers like Larry Correia and John Ringo after some members of an event where they were announced as guests of honor protested in social media.)

Tingle justifiably notes, “I just gotta say buckaroos, it is incredibly rude to invite someone to be a guest speaker at your event, have them confirm and mark off their calendar and turn down other offers, then rescind their invitation. this is maybe the simplest of the points, but it is an important one.”

He goes on to ask why his means of coping with neurodivergence would not be honored by the TLA when it is a practice he follows at every public appearance.

second, (DEEP BREATH HERE WE GO BUCKAROOS) i personally do not think of my autism as a disability very often, but i also KNOW that despite these feelings it ABSOLUTELY IS. autism is important to be listed as a recognized disability because of the help some autistic buckaroos need regarding government programs and things like that. ALSO just because my neurodivergence has helped me in some ways (hyperfocus and a unique artistic sensibility for example). i personally need to step back and remember my battle with stress and chronic pain from having to neurotypically mask all the time. for as much as i love being autistic it has made some things very difficult.

in other words, i am perfectly capable of speaking and interacting with folks without this pink bag on my head BUT WHEN I AM IN THE CHUCK TINGLE SPACE I REQUIRE IT. i can ONLY use this space while covering my face. is not a want. it is a need. holding this boundary is more important than i can ever say. i will not, and can not, let these spaces cross.

TLA not letting an autistic author wear the face cover theyve set up to express their neurodivergence in a safe, healthy way is–for lack of a better term–NOT A GOOD LOOK…

Meanwhile, Tingle wonders whether the objection to his mask is a stalking horse for objections to his queerness or political expression.

you MIGHT think chucks queerness and left leaning politics could be the issue with this organization, but they have had drag queens as past speakers (also featuring some GLORIOUS makeup and hair that covers almost all of their faces. VERY CURIOUS). regardless, the TLA do not seem like a conservative bunch.

if you are bisexual or an autistic person who is good at ‘passing’ you probably already know where this is headed, your dang spiderbuckaroo senses are tingling at FULL ALERT. i will say i do not KNOW the real reason why i was uninvited, and i do not have enough information to make any concrete statement of the real answer. there is only evidence that masks have been fine at TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION events in the past, but not much else to go on.

He also feels forced to consider another possibility:

… AGAIN, i do not know if this is the answer, but someone in my position might be VERY STRONGLY INCLINED TO THINK that a few well-meaning left leaning buckaroos think i am a joke and that this is a character, and that there is something problematic about my work because i am not really a real person.

any upstanding left leaning organization would OF COURSE allow a mask for a neurodivergent buckaroo with an unusual visual presentation, an autistic buckaroo who conquered his chronic pain ONLY by creating this important space… but what about a FAKE autistic buckaroo?

any upstanding left leaning organization would OF COURSE allow a mask for a queer LGBTQ activist standing up for gay and trans rights against a torrent of scoundrels hunting for his legal identity. its a matter of safety… but what about a FAKE queer activist?

let me be very clear for the 100th time: i am a real person. this is not a joke. i am not playing a character. i am really autistic and bisexual. tinglers are sincere and they are not ‘so bad theyre good’. they are just good. camp damascus is not ‘my first serious book’ because my queer erotica is serious. my art is important and real….

Tingle concludes:

i did not want to spend my whole family holiday worrying whether or not i should say something publicly or just lie down and shut my dang mouth. i had to consider HOW i should say it. i had to worry whether or not its worth standing up for myself in the face of the largest state library association in the country. i think buckaroos with differences are with me when i say: WE ARE SICK OF HAVING TO DO THIS WORK TO COVER FOR THE POOR BEHAVIOR OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS WHO TREAT US BADLY

another option would just be to use kindness and common sense and happily accommodate artists with unique presentations to your conventions

Upon hearing about Tingle’s fate, sff author TJ Klune, who had also been invited to participate on a panel with Tingle at the TLA annual conference, turned down his own invitation.  

And Tingle expressed thanks for the support:

Pixel Scroll 7/18/23 I Only Came To Say I Must Be Scrolling

(1) LAST DAY TO NOMINATE FOR DRAGON AWARDS. Nominations are being taken for the 2023 Dragon Awards until July 19.

Need more information about what to put on your ballot? Red Panda Fraction has assembled a Dragon Awards 2023 Eligible Works spreadsheet in the format of Renay’s Hugo Awards Spreadsheet.

Bear in mind that voters are allowed to make only one nomination per category. However, that is somewhat offset by the Dragon Awards having six book categories. (But there are no short fiction categories). [Via Camestros Felapton.]

(2) SLOW BOAT. Aimee Ogden’s name is on the cover of F&SF but for the benefit of other writers she is calling them out about her story submission experience. Thread starts here. Here are some excerpts.

(3) PUBLISHING FACES MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. The Guardian hears from all sectors that “’There’s an industry-wide mental health crisis’: authors and publishers on why the books sector needs to change”.

Author and publisher welfare has been a hot topic in the books industry of late. Publishing houses, trade unions and industry bodies have scrambled for solutions following a survey by the Bookseller in which debut authors reported overwhelmingly negative publication experiences: more than half of respondents said the process adversely affected their mental health. Now, a series of measures are being rolled out across the industry in response to these concerns.

This month, Anna Frame, communications director at the independent publisher Canongate, has confirmed the launch of two initiatives: an authors’ handbook in partnership with the Society of Authors (SoA) and a resource pack for publishers, in conjunction with English Pen. Canongate has also announced that it will publish fewer books so that it can dedicate more time to authors.

These measures follow news that the Orion publishing group will establish an academy for debut novelists with the aim of “demystifying the process and ensuring expectations are clear”. Meanwhile, the Publishers Publicity Circle (PPC) is launching free media training and crisis communications sessions for publishers….

(4) MAYBE WE DIDN’T MISS MUCH. What if Winnipeg was running the 2023 Worldcon instead of Chengdu? Well, they’re running the NASFiC this week and here’s the email Robert J. Sawyer’s wrote to Pemmi-Con’s head of programming which he posted on Facebook today.  

The NASFiC in Winnipeg begins tomorrow. Still no schedule on the website, no informationa about any signings, readings, or kaffeeklatsches, and no updated emails from programming about the time-zone screw-up on the personal panel lists they sent out.

Having to ferret out on my own what times they’ve actually got me scheduled, I’ve just sent this email to programming. Note for future cons: sending out all your programming emails from an email address that says “[email protected]” does NOT make communication easy…

And Sawyer continues from there, trying to get his schedule sorted.

The schedule’s not easy to find – you can’t go directly to it from the Pemmi-Con home page menu – but it looks like there is a schedule online: Schedule | Pemmi-Con.

(5) OP-ED. [Uncredited Item by Guest Author.] It is true that there are many sides to a story, and it is also true that western countries had been and some still do, have oppressive policies toward indigenous and other minority groups, and perhaps it is a stretch to call the camps in Xinjiang as concentration camps where the images of death camps and gas chambers immediately came to mind. However, it is indisputable that such camps exist, and simply calling them re-education camps lessens their intended purposes.

The fact is that the Chinese government is systematically erasing minority views and even languages. We don’t even have to look at Tibet or Xinjiang, but even in Han populated provinces such as Guangdong and the Hong Kong city, teaching and using the Cantonese language is being discouraged, and this is a Han Chinese dialect.

Political oppression is also real. Just a month ago, the Hong Kong government charged 8 democratic leaders for seditious activities:

They promise they will bring these people to “justice” regardless where they live and to the end of time.

At DisCon 3, during the last session before the Site Selection vote, the Chinese committee said “You can say whatever you want at the convention (without being prosecuted)”. How far will that truly go? What if a fan wears a “Democracy for Hong Kong” T-shirt? Note that I carefully said “Democracy” and not “Independence”. Will they be escorted to the airport immediately, or worse outcome, if they are a Chinese citizen?

(6) B5 ON BLU-RAY. J. Michael Straczynski told Facebook readers today that to celebrate B5’s 30th Anniversary, Babylon 5: The Complete Series will be released on Blu-Ray December 5, 2023. Pre-orders can be placed starting today.

…To address some of the obvious questions: I wasn’t directly involved with the release, so I don’t know much more than you do or what’s in the release/at the retail sites but I can add what little I do know: the release includes The Gathering (but not the movies or Crusade) because TG was our pilot (technically the first) episode, so it’s a legit part of the series which fits the title mandate; the other movies were separate, and Crusade is a completely different series, so it doesn’t belong in this box set.

This is essentially the same as the very nice 4:3 remaster done for HBO-Max, which matches the original broadcast, but putting it onto Blu-Ray increases the bitrate so it should look even better than it did there. WB wanted to include the commentaries but with everything else involved with this, it apparently wasn’t feasible (that’s the extent of what I was told, so I’ve no idea what that entails)….

…What matters most in all this is that after years of asking for a Blu-Ray release, which will make this show look more beautiful than it ever has before. Fans can now own the full series in pristine form on physical media without being held hostage by the whims of streamers. I’m very excited by this release, as it further assures the legacy of Babylon 5. Onward!

(7) AI-SPECIFIC CONTRACT LANGUAGE. Publishers Weekly reports “Illustration Agencies Introduce New AI-Specific Contract Clause”.

All ITSme Society illustration agencies will include a new clause in their client contracts protecting the rights of illustrators to their original illustrations from reproduction or other use for purposes of training and artificial intelligence models. The initiative was led by Kate Kendrick, global manager of Astound US Inc. Other participating agencies include Advocate Art, Artistique Int, Illo, and the Yeon Agency.

“We want to get ahead of the curve before there is a halt within the world of publishing—we support our actors and writers on strike, and we’d like to get ahead and not have it come to that for illustrators,” the agencies said in a statement. The clause, they continued, “states that the illustrator must give prior consent to permit the client/publisher to use technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as their work. Our aim is to get ahead of these advancing technologies and to protect the artists and their artwork against the use of AI/ML models.”

(8) TINGLE TALKS TO LITHUB. “Chuck Tingle on How Writing is Like Driving, Being an Autistic Artist, and More” at Literary Hub.

LH: Which non-literary piece of culture—film, tv show, painting, song—could you not imagine your life without?

CT: i would say my number one most important piece of art that i always return to, and thing that is probably most influential on my writing and my existence as a buckaroo, is probably STOP MAKING SENSE the talking heads live film, and also album that comes with it. that is probably chucks number one artistic touchstone even over any book.

first as an autistic buckaroo, that movie and the subtext around it is what made me proud to be autistic like david byrne. being on the spectrum was never a bad diagnosis for me it was ALWAYS just about the coolest thing someone could be because talking heads were the coolest band in the dang world. so watching that was a real big moment for me to think “wow, what a special tradition of artist i am walking in the steps of”

but even outside of that, i think the way the show is setup is just beautiful, and the songs they picked and the way those songs are presented. to me what is says is “there is so much more to art than the medium itself, there is all the other things around it.” art does not exist in a vacuum, so it is always funny to me when buds try to seperate it from the context of the time and place. bud the context is ALSO part of the artwork, and i think you can really see that in the way those songs are presented….

(9) BOX OFFICE IMPROBABLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Despite a much better reception from the critics, the latest Mission Impossible movie has opened with figures extremely similar to the latest Indiana Jones flick. Both somewhat <looks over glasses> disappointing. Perhaps audience reception will echo the critics and MI7 will have more legs than IJ5. “’Mission Impossible 7’ Falls Short of Box Office Expectations” in Variety.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” topped domestic box office charts while falling short of initial expectations. Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster collected $56.2 million between Friday and Sunday, a lackluster start for a movie that cost nearly $300 million before marketing.

Heading into the weekend, Paramount and Skydance’s action-adventure was hoping to establish a new franchise record with $60 million or more. Instead, ticket sales landed behind 2018’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” ($61 million) and 2000’s “Mission: Impossible II” ($57.8 million), which remain as the top openings in the 27-year-old series.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

2017 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Fran Wilde has written five novels with latest being The Ship of Stolen WordsUpdraft, her first novel, won an Andre Norton Award, most excellent to do, also the Compton Crook Award, the Baltimore SF Society’s Best First Novel Award. Riverland also won the Andre Norton Award.

Did I also mention that she’s simply amazing at penning shorter works? I will do so now. She’s written around fifty stories, four poems and a considerable number of essays such as “A Recipe for Summoning Aliette de Bodard”. So our Beginning comes from one of these works, “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” which appeared first in Uncanny.

It would be nominated for a Hugo at Worldcon 76 as well as a Nebula and a World Fantasy Award. It would win the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

And now a short but fascinating Beginning….

Entrance

There’s a ticket booth on my tongue.

Don’t look in my eyes, don’t plead curiosity, you won’t get anywhere with that. Try it and you’ll see your reflection in my sea-green gaze: your shadow sprinting through the heavy glass doors. You’ll smell a whiff of brine, perhaps something more volatile. You’ll be caught and held, while your likeness departs. You don’t want that.

No one wants to be pinned between an entrance and an exit, unless you’re part of the show.

Here’s what you do instead: drop your dime on the rose carpet, just there. Don’t pick it up. The carpet’s sticky. Don’t ask why. Stare at my lips, my hands clasped over my velvet skirts, what rests below that, and wait.

If you’re worthy, I’ll say the word. Your dime gets you a look and a souvenir. Your hands are beautiful, did you know that?

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 18, 1913 Red Skelton. Comedian of the first order. The Red Skelton Hour ran for three hundred and thirty-eight episodes. I remember Freddie the Freeloader. He’s here because ISFDB says he wrote A Red Skelton in Your Closet which is also called Red Skelton’s Favorite Ghost Stories. He also has cameos in Around the World in Eighty Days and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, both of which I consider at least genre adjacent. (Died 1997.)
  • Born July 18, 1943 Charles Waugh, 80. Anthologist and author, whose anthology work up to 2013 numbered over two hundred titles (!), mostly done with Martin H. Greenberg but a handful done with other co-editors as Greenberg died in 2011. Name a subject and there’s likely an anthology on that subject that he had a hand in.  
  • Born July 18, 1956 Deborah Christian, 67. She’s an author and game designer who has designed and edited role-playing game materials for Dungeons & Dragons such as Tales of the Outer PlanesBestiary of Dragons and GiantsDragon Dawn, and Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms.  She also writes fiction under the name Deborah Teramis Christian with genre novel such as The Truthsayer’s Apprentice and her latest, Splintegrate.
  • Born July 18, 1967 Paul Cornell, 56. Author of the Shadow Police series which is quite excellent as well as writing a lot of television scripts for Doctor Who including the stellar Tenth Doctor two part story “Human Nature“ and “The Family of Blood” with one of the best endings ever, Primieval and Robin Hood. He was part of the regular panel of the SF Squeecast podcast which won multiple Hugo Awards for best fancast. 
  • Born July 18, 1967 Vin Diesel, 56. His first genre role was as the delightful voice of The Iron Giant. He next shows playing Riddick in Pitch Black, the first in The Chronicles of Riddick franchise. He’s Hugo Cornelius Toorop in Babylon A.D. and he’s the fascinating if enigmatic voice of Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy and other MCU films. 
  • Born July 18, 1980 Kristen Bell, 43. Veronica Mars. Genre, well not really, but a lot of y’all watched it. She also voiced Jade Wilson in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies which I highly recommend as it’s highly meta. Really it is.
  • Born July 18, 1982 Priyanka Chopra, 41. Alex Parrish in Quantico, she became the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Is it genre? Maybe, maybe not, though it could fit very nicely into a Strossian Dark State. Some of her work in her native India such as The Legend of Drona and Love Story 2050 is genre as is Krrish 3, an Indian SF film she was in. She’s got a key role in the Matrix Resurrections film. No, I’m not saying what it is as some of you possibly haven’t seen it. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) DANGEROUS MEDIA. The New York Times reviews Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Silver Nitrate: “The Dark Magic Wrought by a Nazi Occultist and a Doomed Horror Film”.

… Montserrat is a reclusive sound editor who’s caring for her sister, who has cancer. She has three loves: horror movies, her white Volkswagen and her childhood friend Tristán Abascal, a tall, handsome, washed-up actor. Montserrat is abrasive and nerdy; Tristán, “more Cantinflas than James Bond,” is smooth, but also a goof. When he reaches out to reconnect, it means he’s between relationships; this time he also needs to borrow her car.

The plot is set into motion only after a long conversation between the two friends and Abel Urueta, Tristán’s neighbor and a once-famous Mexican horror film director. Over whiskey, he talks about a production he never completed, “Beyond the Yellow Door,” which was co-written by Wilhelm Ewers, a Nazi occultist who believed that silver nitrate film was “a perfect medium for sealing spells.” But when Ewers died before “Beyond the Yellow Door” wrapped, his magic went haywire, destroying the highly flammable nitrate prints of the film, and inflicting a curse on the cast and crew.

Urueta, who has one last canister stashed in his freezer, has an idea: If Montserrat and Tristán help him finish the project, perhaps the curse could be lifted….

 (14) THE THREE LAWS. Behind a paywall in the Boston Globe, Jay Houlihan’s letter to the editor reminds readers “Author Isaac Asimov saw AI’s risks. Now we’re rapidly facing them down.”

Re “Dan Hendrycks wants to save us from an AI catastrophe. He’s not sure he’ll succeed.” (Ideas, July 9): The potential for catastrophic results from advanced technology is not a new idea. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov identified and addressed the risk in a 1942 short story, through his Three Laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Though it may have taken us 80 years to reach the point where this risk is on the near-term horizon, Asimov was nothing if not prescient. Much like climate change, we may be rapidly approaching a point with artificial intelligence where reverse is no longer an option.

(15) MORE ON ASIMOV. Wailin Wong just hosted an episode of The Indicator podcast on NPR about how Asimov’s Foundation series inspired fans to pursue careers in economics. “How Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ helped set two economists on their career path” on The Indicator from Planet Money at NPR.

When we talk about classic economic texts, you might think of something like Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations.” But how about the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov?

One of the big ideas at the heart of this science fiction saga is that math can predict and shape the future. We hear from two economists who tell us how the ideas in Foundation helped set them on their career path.

(16) WHEN THE WORLD DISCOVERED TOLKIEN WROTE OTHER THINGS. “Talking Tolkien: On The Tolkien Reader” by Rich Horton at Black Gate.

The Tolkien Reader was first published in 1966 by Ballantine Books in the US; in response to the greatly expanding popularity of The Lord of the Rings, driven by the paperback editions from Ballantine (and the pirated edition from Ace.) This was an attempt to bring a varied sampling of his work to readers hungry for more. I read it myself in the early ’70s, after I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. As an introduction it reprints a piece Peter Beagle did for Holiday (perhaps at the instigation of Alfred Bester?) called “Tolkien’s Magic Ring”, which primarily discusses the Middle-Earth books.

It’s a good and varied collection throughout, and really does the job of showing a different side to Tolkien (though not THAT different!) from that seen in The Lord of the Rings. I’ll be looking at each of the sections separately, and slightly out of order, in that I think the best part by far is Tree and Leaf, which comes second in the book….

(17) SHELVES OF THE AGES. “Halls of Ancient Wisdom: 7 Remarkable Ancient Libraries” at Ancient Origins.

2.    The Library of Ashurbanipal – A King’s Passion Project

Much older than the library of Alexandria, Ashurbanipal was founded in Nineveh, Assyria in the 7th century BC. It was one of the earliest, and most remarkable libraries, in the ancient world and was named after its founder, King Ashurbanipal.

Built as part of the royal palace, this ancient library held an extensive collection of clay tablets written in the cuneiform script, the most widespread form of writing in the ancient Middle East. After the library’s destruction, it’s estimated around 30,000 of these tablets were salvaged, giving us an idea of just how significant this repository of knowledge was. 

King Ashurbanipal built the library to highlight his empire’s vast intellectual prowess. He was a leader who valued intellectualism and was renowned for his patronage of learning. The collection held texts from all the civilizations the Assyrians had interacted with, making it a melting pot of knowledge from ancient Mesopotamia, Sumer, Babylon, and beyond. Not just a storehouse of ancient knowledge, the library was a center for early scholarship and attracted scribes, scholars, and translators who studied and translated texts from different languages. 

Sadly, the library’s heyday was short-lived. It’s believed the library fell alongside Nineveh itself in 612 BC when it was raided by the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians. The library’s ruins were discovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849. Thankfully, the fires that were meant to destroy the tablets actually preserved them and now the majority of the library’s knowledge resides in the British Museum. 

(18) SCORN AND DEFIANCE; SLIGHT REGARD, CONTEMPT. Matt Berry and Peter Capaldi really let it rip in this episode of Letters Live.

Possibly one of our favourite letter exchanges ever, and at London’s Freemasons’ Hall back in 2016 Matt Berry and Peter Capaldi joined us to give an incredible, hilarious reading. In 1675, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire instructed his army to attack a fortress belonging to the Zaporozhian Cossacks. They were quickly and heavily defeated. Rather than surrender, the Sultan then wrote to the Cossacks and demanded that they submit to him. This fiery exchange was the result.

(19) ISAAC ARTHUR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Isaac Arthur has had his ‘Sci-fi Sunday’ which this time looks at “Robots & Warfare”. Given the recent developments in AI this is timely. Isaac not only has a degree in physics, he also served with the US Army…

Robots play an ever greater role in every aspect of our lives, including the battlefield, but what will their role be in the wars of the future?

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s video “90s Time Traveler Discovers Meta’s THREADS App” is a riot. (“I know a still from Blade Runner when I see one…”)

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Michael A. Burstein, Alec Nevala-Lee, Kathy Sullivan, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/24/23 My Pixel Threw Out All My Old Scrolls And All That’s Left Is This Godstalk

(1) TROLLING FOR DOLLARS. Victoria Strauss advises how to handle a certain kind of litigation threat in “When the Copyright Trolls Came for Me” at Writer Beware.

If you’re a writer who’s serious about a career, you probably have some form of online presence: a website, a blog, an Instagram account. You may make use of images and/or videos created by others–to add visual interest to your blog posts or newsletters, decorate your website, and/or engage your readers and followers. For example, the header image at the top of this post.

If you use images online, you need to be aware of copyright trolls….

The full article is at Writer Unboxed: “When The Copyright Trolls Came for Me”. And part of the advice is to actually have rights to the images you used online.

The Importance of Protecting Yourself

The resources I consulted in my research for this post agree that copyright trolling is on the rise—and as my experience shows, you don’t have to infringe to be a target. In that environment, it makes sense to do what you can to defend yourself.

What does that include?

  1. First and most obvious, if you use images, make sure you have the proper licenses and/or permissions, or that the images are free to download under a Creative Commons license, such as photos from sites like Pixabay and Unsplash (though do read the license terms: there may be restrictions on use, such as a requirement for attribution—and yes, trolls come after people for messing that up too). Giving credit to the image creator and/or linking back to the source is polite, but it won’t protect you from copyright claims….

(2) NEW BLOCH TRIBUTE. The Robert Bloch Official Website launched just one week ago, and today Jim Nemeth announced a major update: the Stories page is greatly expanded, providing the most comprehensive list of Bloch’s published stories to date.

 (3) A REAL HE-MAN. Cora Buhlert shows off two Masters of the Universe figures.

(4) TINGLE BOOK AD. “Chuck To The Future” is an appeal to preorder Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus.

“No, no buckaroo, the Hugo Awards are fine. We’ve gotta help Chuck Tingle!”

(5) TINGLE BOOK TOUR. And Chuck Tingle has been dropping announcements about book tour appearances with colleagues – you’ll be able to tell them apart, he’ll be the one with a bag over his head.

With Nicola Griffith in Seattle.

With Catriona Ward in Minneapolis.

With N.K. Jemisin in New York.

(6) REGRETS, I’VE HAD A FEW. “Our Way” is a parody of the Frank Sinatra hit “My Way” about the DC Extended Universe.

The Flash marks the end of the DCEU run as we’ve known it. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman sing goodbye to the DCEU and reminisce on the good, the bad, and the weird that the DC Comics movie universe entailed

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2015 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Becky Chambers as you all well know is the author of the Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series which is where our Beginning comes from this Scroll, as Mike choose wisely in selecting The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first novel in that series. It is one of my favorite novels, period.  

The novel itself surprisingly didn’t garner any Awards though it was nominated for an  Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer, a Grand prix de l’Imaginaire and a Kitschie for Best Debut Novel. No Hugo nomination though. 

And now for a rather superb Beginning…

As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file. None of this information was new, but it wasn’t pleasant to wake up to. 

She wasn’t supposed to be awake yet, not for another day at least, but that was what you got for booking cheap transport. Cheap transport meant a cheap pod flying on cheap fuel, and cheap drugs to knock you out. She had flickered into consciousness several times since launch—surfacing in confusion, falling back just as she’d gotten a grasp on things. The pod was dark, and there were no navigational screens. There was no way to tell how much time had passed between each waking, or how far she’d traveled, or if she’d even been traveling at all. The thought made her anxious, and sick.

Her vision cleared enough for her to focus on the window. The shutters were down, blocking out any possible light sources. She knew there were none. She was out in the open now. No bustling planets, no travel lanes, no sparkling orbiters. Just emptiness, horrible emptiness, filled with nothing but herself and the occasional rock. 

The engine whined as it prepared for another sublayer jump. The drugs reached out, tugging her down into uneasy sleep. As she faded, she thought again of the job, the lies, the smug look on the official’s face as she’d poured credits into his account. She wondered if it had been enough. It had to be. It had to. She’d paid too much already for mistakes she’d had no part in.

Her eyes closed. The drugs took her. The pod, presumably, continued on.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 24, 1947 Peter Weller, 76. Yes, it’s his Birthday today. Robocop obviously with my favorite scene being him pulling out and smashing Cain’s brain, but let’s see what else he’s done. Well, there’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a film I adore. And then there’s Leviathan which you I’m guessing a lot of you never heard of. Is Naked Lunch genre? Well Screamers based on Philip K. Dick’s short story “Second Variety” certainly is. Even if the reviews sucked.  And Star Trek Into Darkness certainly qualifies. Hey, he showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise
  • Born June 24, 1950 Mercedes Lackey, 73. There’s a line on the Wiki page that says she writes nearly six books a year. Impressive. She’s certainly got a lot of really good series out there including the vast number that are set in the Valdemar universe. I like her Bedlam’s Bard series better. She wrote the first few in this series with Ellen Gunn and the latter in the series with Rosemary Edgehill. The SERRAted Edge series, Elves with race cars, is kinda fun too. Larry Dixon, her husband, and Mark Shepherd were co-writers of these. 
  • Born June 24, 1950 Nancy Allen, 73. Officer Anne Lewis in the Robocop franchise. (I like all three films.) her first genre role was not in Carrie as Chris Hargensen, but in a best forgotten a film year earlier (Forced Entry) as a unnamed hitchhiker. She shows up in fan favorite The Philadelphia Experiment as Allison Hayes and I see her in Poltergeist III as Patricia Wilson-Gardner (seriously — a third film in this franchise?). She’s in the direct to video Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return as Rachel Colby. (Oh that sounds awful.) And she was in an Outer Limits episode, “Valerie 23”, as Rachel Rose. 
  • Born June 24, 1961 Iain Glen, 62. Scots actor who played as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones, he’s also  well known for his roles as Dr. Alexander Isaacs/Tyrant in the Resident Evil franchise; and he played the role of Father Octavian, leader of a sect of clerics who were on a mission against the Weeping Angels in “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone”, both Eleventh Doctor stories.
  • Born June 24, 1982 Lotte Verbeek, 41. You most likely know her as Ana Jarvis, the wife of Edwin Jarvis, who befriends Carter on Agent Carter. She got interesting genre history including Geillis Duncan on the Outlander series, Helena in The Last Witch Hunter, Aisha in the dystopian political thriller Division 19 film and a deliberately undefined role in the cross-world Counterpart series. 
  • Born June 24, 1988 Kasey Lansdale, 35. Daughter of Joe Lansdale. Publicist at Tachyon Books and a really nice person. Really she is. And yes, she’s one of us having written The Cases of Dana Roberts series, and edited two anthologies, Fresh Blood & Old Bones and Impossible Monsters. In her father’s Hap and Leonard collection Of Mice and Minestrone, she has “Good Eats: The Recipes of Hap and Leonard”. 
  • Born June 24, 1994 Nicole Muñoz, 29. You’ll perhaps best remember her for role as Christie Tarr (née McCawley) in the Defiance series. Her first role was playing a Little Girl in Fantastic Four. Likewise she was A Kid with Braces in The Last Mimzy, and yes, Another Girl, in Hardwired. The latter was written by Michael Hurst, and has apparently nothing to with the Walter Jon Williams novel of the same name.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Yo_runner reveals the superpower of reading.

(10) NO ONE WILL WANT TO LEAVE. Architectural Digest takes readers to “The 9 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World”. One is in Chengdu, China.

Dujiangyan Zhongshuge Bookstore (Chengdu, China)

When Dujiangyan Zhongshuge Bookstore opened in 2020, it was hard to escape news coverage of the surreal masterpiece. The company is known for its maximalist bookstores, and this location—with its tower book spirals and sculptural shelves—was no exception. In her book, Stamp recommends a visit to a similarly extravagent sister store, the Taizhou City branch.

(11) CHANNELING THE FUTURE. MeTV analyzes “Five predictions from ‘TV of Tomorrow’ that came true, and five that didn’t”.

3. Interior Design

While maybe not to the extent in this exaggerated cartoon, many rooms today are constructed with special attention given to the furniture’s placement in relation to the TV. While most of us aren’t installing a bathtub in the living room, televisions are nonetheless often the anchor, or focal point, in a room’s design. 

(12) PRIME DIRECTIVE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] You’ve probably heard that Amazon Prime Day is coming on July 11-12th. A few Prime Day sale prices are reserved as “invitation only“. (You can request, but are not guaranteed, an invitation.)

This year, a trio of those deals have genre connections — stands for the 4th & 5th generation Echo Dot styled as Darth Vader, a Storm Trooper, or the Mandalorian. They’ll be 25% off the usual price. Check them out here.

(13) THE DINOS MAY BE DEAD BUT THEIR BONES STILL MOVE. Science News investigates “How ‘parachute science’ in paleontology plays out in 3 countries”.

In the Cretaceous Period, roughly 100 million years ago, the dinosaur Ubirajara jubatus probably turned heads with its feathers, shoulder rods and flashy displays. In 2020, the petite theropod made headlines as the first feathered dinosaur discovered in the Southern Hemisphere (SN: 12/14/20).

Today, the dinosaur is notorious for different reasons: Shortly after the news of its discovery, its backstory quickly drew some red flags.

The fossil had been unearthed in Brazil’s Araripe Basin, yet no Brazilian researchers were involved in its study. The researchers initially said they found the fossil in a Brazilian museum and brought it to a German museum in 1995 for further study, yet that museum later revealed it bought the fossil in 2009 from a private company. That company imported the fossil to Germany in 2006, yet it’s not clear if that import was legal.

U. jubatus isn’t unique in this sense. A supposed four-legged, 120-million-year-old snake (Tetrapodophis amplectus), for example, also made an unsanctioned trip from Brazil to Germany (SN: 7/23/15). And then there’s a roughly 90-million-year-old shark (Aquilolamna milarcae) from Mexico with a fantastic wingspan, which may have been purchased by a private collector through a legal loophole  (SN: 3/18/21).

These and many other cases of fossil fishiness are part of a long trend of what some call “parachute science” (or in this case “parachute paleontology”) and “scientific colonialism.”

These umbrella terms describe practices where scientists from high-income countries travel to middle- and low-income countries to study or collect fossils and fail to collaborate with or involve local experts. Or they skirt local laws around fossil collection and export. Sometimes the fossils are removed from their home countries under dubious or outright illegal circumstances. In other cases, the scientists purchase fossils from dealers, smugglers or private collectors in their own countries. The trend is linked to the legacy of colonialism, as many of the lower-income countries also happen to be former European colonies, while the higher-income ones are former colonizers….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “We Don’t Talk About Pluto” is a parody of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Disney’s Encanto. Written in tribute to the Pluto formerly known as “planet”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Rich Lynch, Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 5/6/23 My God, It’s Full Of Pixels

(1) LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well Mike, I had to pass through London last night on my way to and from Mars (“Public Lecture: Extra-terrestrial Fieldwork; the adventures of an Earth-bound Astronaut”; got to hold a piece of Moon rock — long story) anyway we were going for a drink after and there were police everywhere, armed ones too (not just longbows but these newfangled gun things) and loads of black Diamlers escorted by police. Then I went to the library today and I was the only person there.  This has never happened before!  Something’s up I tell you….

To business.  Today’s science trawl….

The Fermi Paradox: Searching For Dyson Spheres. I have to say I am rather skeptical that a long-lived, advanced technological civilisation will end up constructing a big dumb object even if they are great fun concepts to explore in SF. Loved Bob’s Orbitsville and Niven’s Ringworld. Long-lived alien civilisations thinking big will also think long-term because the structures are a huge, long-term investment (as well as because their civilisation is… er… long-lived). Here, there are better and more effective strategies to ensure a civilisation’s thriving long-term. Yet some scientists do take big dumb objects with seriousness (cf. the recent grabby aliens discussion – check out the video link within the afore link).  Given that, how would we set about detecting, say, something like a Dyson sphere? This week, Isaac Arthur takes a deep dive into spotting these objects as part of a SETI strategy and goes on to ponder as to whether it would be possible for an advanced civilisation to hide their Dyson sphere from us…

Many believe civilisations which survive the challenges of technology will inevitability build Dyson Spheres encompassing their entire sun. So how do we find these megastructures if they exist?

(2) AT THE FRONT. The Hollywood Reporter visited the picket line on May 4 to hear reaction to the AMPTP’s a point-by-point document reacting to the WGA’s version of events, in particular, the writers’ furor over not actively working to regulate artificial intelligence. “Writers Strike: How the Studios’ Retort Went Over at the Picket Lines”.

… Outside the Warner Bros. Discovery lot in Burbank — which, alongside Netflix, has been among the most trafficked picketing spots — THR caught up with WGA negotiating committee co-chair David Goodman to get an instant reaction to the AMPTP missive.

“I took a quick glance,” said Goodman, who did mention seeing the part about AI in which the studio statement claimed “writers want to be able to use this technology as part of their creative process, without changing how credits are determined, which is complicated given AI material can’t be copyrighted.”

“That’s a very telling comment,” Goodman added, the audio of his interview just barely discernible over the insistent roar of car horns beeping their support for picketers. “We need a guarantee from them that literary material will be written by a human being. It’s a very easy ask. For them to make that commitment doesn’t hurt their bottom line at all. … They say they are our partners. Make that commitment and say, ‘We are only going to work with writers who are human beings.’ It’s crazy that I have to say it.”…

(3) BLADE SHEATHED. Obviously, a lot of productions are being affected – here’s one specific example: “Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Delayed Due to Writers Strike” reports Variety.

Marvel Studios’ “Blade” is going back into hibernation.

Due to the ongoing writers strike, Marvel has shut down pre-production on the superhero reboot, which is set to star Mahershala Ali as the titular vampire hunter alongside Aaron Pierre, Delroy Lindo and Mia Goth. Production was expected to start in Atlanta within the month for an anticipated Sept. 6, 2024 release. Marvel Studios first announced it was reviving “Blade” — after Wesley Snipes originated the character on screen in a feature film trilogy from 1998 to 2004 — at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019.

This isn’t the first time Disney has had to delay production on the film. Last October, Disney pushed “Blade” from a 2023 release to 2024 after the original director, Bassam Tariq (“Mogul Mowgli”), left the project two months before filming was set to begin.

(4) TINGLE SHOWS LOVE FOR STRIKERS. Chuck Tingle has put up a new Tingler, free, on his Patreon, in support of the writers’ strike: “Not Pounded By The Physical Manifestation Of My Own Screenwriting Because I’m On Strike And I Deserve To Be Fairly Compensated For My Labor While Studio CEOs Take Record Salaries”.

AUTHORS NOTE: greeting buckaroos. this tingler is given to all FOR FREE in solidarity with writers guild buds who are currently making their voices heard and striking with incredibly reasonable demands.

the wga is asking that any donations go to the ENTERTAINMENT COMMUNITY FUND which is used to directly help those in the entertainment industry in need and who will feel the financial burden of not working during a strike. 

as i said this tingler is free HOWEVER if you have the means you can donate the amount a tingler usually costs (three dollars or MORE if you would like) to the charity fund and support. just click the link and when it says ‘gift designation’ select ‘film and television’

DONATE HERE 

if you would like to know other ways you can support those currently on the picket line click here 

LOVE IS REAL – chuck

(5) NOT AN ENDORSEMENT OF THE PATRIARCHY. Camestros Felapton has been to the movies: “Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (some spoilers)”.

The third and apparently final of James Gunn’s Marvel series reveals the underlying question of the series: what (or who) makes a good dad? The daddy issues of the series have never been subtle with Volume 1 featuring the truly appalling dad of both Gamora and Nebula in the form of Thanos. The purple Titan did not meet his ultimate fate until the Marvel Endgame crossover but in between time, we met Peter Quill’s dad, Ego the Living Planet. Given that ego took the physical form of veteran space-dad Kurt Russell, he looked like a better proposition than genocidal Thanos. Alas, Ego was also a mass murderer. A surprise last minute contender for best dad came in the form of Yondu, the Ravager who kidnapped/adopted Peter but while vastly better than either Thanos or Ego, he’s still not a great dad.

So volume 3 takes on to the next Guardian’s dad issues. In this case not Rocket Racoon’s literal dad but rather his creator…. 

(6) NETWORKING. The Spider-Man Saturday morning cartoon show has arrived! (In 1968…) Jason Sacks is a big fan of the theme song. The stories? Not so much. “[May 6, 1968] Does Whatever A Spider Can! (Spider-Man Cartoon)” at Galactic Journey.

Most every weekend since September (football pre-emptions notwithstanding), we’ve been granted the pleasure of watching a certain web-head soar through the concrete towers of New York, stalking a never-ending crew of slightly inept criminals while evading the slings and barbs of the editor of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson.

Every weekend I perk up when I hear this fun theme song. Seriously, you should pop out to see if your local Korvettes sells the 45 of this song because it (pardon the pun) swings!…

(7) TOBIAS BUCKELL VIRTUAL EVENT. Space Cowboy Books will host an “Online Reading & Interview with Tobias S. Buckell” on Tuesday May 16 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for free here.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories is Tobias S. Buckell’s seventh short fiction collection and is comprised of 15 stories, several of which are original to the collection or were previously only available through his Patreon. This collection ranges from galactic adventures to intimate explorations of humanity—sometimes in the same story—rich with a sense of wonder and deft storytelling.

Get your copy of Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance here.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1989[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Suzy McKee Charnas was one of our most amazing writers. She would win a Hugo at ConFiction for her “Boobs” short story and more than a handful of other awards. 

Our Beginning this Scroll is that of her “Beauty and the Opéra or the Phantom Beast”, a story first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in their July 1989 issue. 

If you’re looking to read it now, it’s in her Stagestruck Vampires & Other Phantasms collection published by Tachyon. It’s got eleven of her eighteen short fiction works. And yes, it’s available from the usual suspects. 

And now get ready for a most metafictional Beginning. I really mean that…

As of this writing, I have not had the pleasure of meeting Suzy McKee Charnas face to face. She lives in the sunny desert paradise of Albuquerque (or, as Homer Simpson once charmingly and perhaps fittingly referred to it, “I’ll be quirky”), while I inhabit the benighted non-Euclidean warrens of Providence. I suspect that one day sooner or later we will meet, given the melting-pot allure of the science-fiction and fantasy convention circuit, and I fully expect that encounter to be a pleasant one, with its share of mutual surprises and confirmations. But right now, despite a lack of non-virtual time together, I still feel I can describe Ms. Charnas to you well enough that you’ll be able to recognize her, should you chance to bump into her. 

Suzy McKee Charnas is a human-sized sentient female lizard named Walter Drake who boasts a human lover. 

She is a lonely tarot-card expert named Edie, charged with shepherding a child messiah through peril. She is a nervous housewife named Fran who is obsessed with a strange circle of mushrooms on her lawn.

She is a young girl nicknamed “Boobs” Bornstein who finds herself transformed into a vengeful supernatural entity. 

She is a misshapen recluse living beneath the Paris Opéra house with an abducted child bride. She is a middle-aged psychiatrist named Floria who finds herself forming a fatal identification with a patient named Dr. Weyland, a man who believes he is a vampire. 

And perhaps most vividly, she is Dr. Weyland himself, immortal, anguished, jaded, violent, a curse to humanity and his own peace of mind.

But wait, I hear you protest: these are only Charnas’s characters, not her true self. Charnas is the historically locatable woman who debuted in the SF world some thirty years ago, with her excellent post-apocalypse novel Walk to the End of the World (later followed by three sequels). She’s the writer who’s won a Hugo and a Nebula and a Mythopoeic Society Award, the one who has had successes in the theater. That’s the gal we need you, as introducer, to describe.

Well, I reply, if your interest is that shallow, I imagine you can find pictures of Charnas easily enough, on her various dustjackets or with the help of Google. But those photos won’t help you identify what’s really unique and important, the inner essence of Charnas, the soul-glow that will allow you to spot her amidst a mob much more readily than by knowing mere tilt of head or jut of jaw, curve of lip or wrinkle of brow. No, those inner qualities are only apprehendable by diving into her stories and getting acquainted with her characters. For what is an author if not the composite of those she chooses to write about?

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 6, 1914 Randall Jarrell. Author of the ever-so-charming The Animal Family which is illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Go read it – you’ll be smiling afterwards. The Anchor Book of Stories has more of his genre friendly stories. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States. (Died 1965.)
  • Born May 6, 1915 Orson Welles. Certainly the broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” in 1938 was his pinnacle of genre success but for the Federal Theatre Project he also did a 1936 adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast. That is was known as the Voodoo Macbeth might give you an idea of what he did to it. He would later do a more straightforward film of Macbeth. (Died 1985.)
  • Born May 6, 1931 Jack Sharkey. Author of several humorous SF novels, It’s Magic, You Dope! and The Secret Martians. He also wrote an Addams Family franchise novel, The Addams Family. His two novels are in print at the usual suspects. (Died 1994.)
  • Born May 6, 1946 Nancy Kilpatrick, 77. Fangoria called her “Canada’s answer to Anne Rice”. I know that I’ve read something of her fiction but I’ll be damned if I remember what it was. I do strongly recommend the anthology she edited Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper as it’s a most excellent horror collection. 
  • Born May 6, 1952 Michael O’Hare. He was best known for playing Commander Jeffrey Sinclair on Babylon 5, a role he left after the first season.  Other genre appearances were limited — he played Fuller in the 1984 film C.H.U.D, was Jimmy in the “Heretic” episode of Tales from the Darkside and appeared as a thug on the subway train in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. And yes he’s one of many Babylon 5 actors who died well before they should’ve. (Died 2012.)
  • Born May 6, 1961 Carlos Lauchu, 62. Anubis, the captain of Ra’s personal guard, in the original Stargate film which I watched recently and the Suck Fairy enjoyed the curried popcorn we had while we watched it and said that it was still most excellent. His only other genre acting was Slice in Spy Hard and two appearances in the Monsters anthology series. 
  • Born May 6, 1961 George Clooney, 62. In From Dusk till Dawn, he was Seth Gecko.  His first genre film was Return of the Killer Tomatoes where he was Matt Stevens. Of course, he was Batman in Batman & Robin, a grand mess of a film. Later, he’s Devlin in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, and voices the lead role in Fantastic Mr. Fox. He’s Lieutenant Matt Kowalski in Gravity, and in Tomorrowland he’s Frank Walker, an inventor who breaches other dimensions. His last genre film to date is The Midnight Sky, where he races to a crew of astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe set in a post-apocalyptic world.

(10) DEEP MYSTERY. “’Silo’ review: Apple’s sci-fi slow burn is a dystopia lover’s dream” says Mashable.

…Silo welcomes us into the mile-deep home of Earth’s last 10,000 inhabitants. Made up of hundreds of levels, the titular silo is an incredible feat of engineering — and of TV production. Like Apple’s 2021 sci-fi series FoundationSilo is exceptionally polished, boasting everything from lush indoor farms to hulking mining machines. Each of these environments is rendered with an enormous amount of care. The end result is a futuristic world that looks and feels lived-in, right from the moment you lay eyes on it.

Whether through visuals or through dialogue, Silo‘s world-building doesn’t let up. As we learn, no one knows who built the silo, or why. A rebellion from more than a century ago led to the destruction of the silo’s history, so now citizens use retro technology, if they use any at all. Anything from the “before times” is considered a forbidden relic, to be immediately turned over to the frightening judges in Judicial. If you ever try to discover anything about the silo’s origin, you are sent outside. It’s a death sentence, as Earth is now a toxic wasteland… or is it?

Despite Judicial’s orders, there are those in the silo who firmly believe they are being lied to, and wish to uncover the truth. Among them are IT worker Allison (Rashida Jones), her husband Sherriff Holston (David Oyelowo), and mechanic Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson)….

(11) KULSKI Q&A. HWA continues its series: “Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with K.P. Kulski”.

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

Ok, time to talk about horrible secrets—no just kidding, but in all openness, I was not the horror aficionado that many in the community are (and love them for). I remember in 5th grade feeling triumphant because I forced myself to watch Nightmare on Elm Street and I could finally talk about it with the kids at school. Subsequently, I lived my own version of Nightmare on Elm Street, absolutely terrified by the thought I’d meet Freddy when I fell asleep. I have always had a strong imagination and deep love for stories and could freak myself out without any help.

But I was rather obsessed with ghosts and mysterious supernatural occurrences. Remember Unsolved Mysteries? Oh god, I watched so much of that show. Any mention of a haunting I was there. I went to a little Catholic school for middle school and we had this basement library and it always had plenty of books on what was claimed to be real hauntings. Photos of apparitions and all that…I checked out every single book in that little dank place. And scared myself out of my mind, I might add.

Ultimately, horror chose me and I’m so glad it did.

(12) RIVERDALE SPOILER. A viewer reports that a recent episode of Riverdale “had Jughead discover that the comic book company he was working for had plagiarized stories from his favorite author, Brad Raybury. They had the editor named All Fieldstone saying that they never heard back from the author, so they thought he had passed away.  Lots of fun for those who remember the EC comics and how Ray got his credit. And payment.” Comicon confirms in this recap post.

Jughead (Cole Sprouse), however, only has himself to blame if Brad Rayberry (Riverdale‘s answer to Ray Bradbury, played by Christopher Shyer) doesn’t want to be his mentor anymore, because stealing his manuscript? In what universe was that going to be well-received? It was interesting, though, to see Jughead’s reaction to Rayberry suggesting he use his own experiences for story fodder. Jughead has never had any problem cribbing other people’s lives for inspiration but his own? Why, the mere suggestion…

(13) SCIENCEY FICTION. NPR recommendations: “3 works in translation tell science-driven tales”. For example –

Ten Planets

Yuri Herrera can make anything seem more than real. Signs Preceding the End of the World (2015), the first of his novels to appear in English, turns a young Mexican girl’s voyage across the U.S. border into a mythological epic. The Transmigration of Bodies (2016) and Kingdom Cons (2017) mix contemporary Mexican criminal culture with that of medieval European courts. All three books, translated by Lisa Dillman, bend and reinvent language, adding an element of hyperrealism to his writing even on the sentence level. In Ten Planets, Herrera’s first story collection and his first foray into science fiction, he relies on what the narrator of one of his stories calls “the illusion of precision” to make the unreal — or, at least, the unknowable — seem just as oversaturated as the real worlds he writes so uniquely and well.

(14) SOLID WOOD. “Watch a Traditional Japanese Carpenter Make 190+ Different Joints, All Without Nails, Screws, or Glue”Open Culture makes it easy by rounding up three YouTube videos in this post.

Before the internet, it would have been hard to imagine that people around the world would one day be unable to get enough of traditional Japanese carpentry, and specifically traditional Japanese joinery. And before Youtube, who could have predicted that videos showing each and every step of a woodworking project — without narration, or indeed explanation of any kind — would find an enthusiastic viewership? At the intersection of these two surprising phenomena stands that channel H Carpenter, whose unadorned, methodical, and detailed portrayals of wooden joint-making have racked up millions upon millions of views….

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

Pixel Scroll 4/29/23 Don’t Go Chasing Waterscrolls, Please Stick To The Pixels And The Clicks That You Know

(1) HUGO NOMINATING DEADLINE 4/30. The deadline for submitting nominations to the 2023 Hugo Awards is tomorrow, April 30 at 11:59 p.m. Hawaiian time.

Eligible voters can submit or make change to their selections up until the deadline. Submit nominations here. The committee says:

The nomination traffic is often heavy in the final moments of the process, which can sometimes slow down the process. Please nominate in advance of the deadline to make sure your selections are counted appropriately.

If you have any problems in accessing the website or other questions about the nomination, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

(2) WFA SHORT ON ANTHOLOGIES. Ellen Datlow has a word for fantasy publishers:

The deadline for consideration is June 1 – and note: that’s when judging ends. As Peter Dennis Pautz has said, “If, for instance, something is received on May 31 the judges may well have only one day to read it before their deliberations conclude. Anything received after June 1 will receive little or no consideration.”

(3) A LOOK IN THE MIRROR. “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: ‘The Story of Keldor (In His Own Words)’” | Cora Buhlert

This story was inspired by getting a new toy in the mail, namely the Masters of the Universe Origins He-Skeletor figure. So who is He-Skeletor? Well, best let him tell his story himself.

“I am Keldor, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull…”

“…and this is Panthor, my fearless friend.”

“Meow.”

“And yes, I know you think you know how this story goes, but trust me, you don’t.”

(4) STAND BY TO READ. Publisher Weekly stokes the hype machine for Chuck Tingle’s horror novel Camp Damascus, coming from Tor Books: “Chuck Tingle Goes Mainstream…ish”.

…To a niche corner of the internet, Tingle has since achieved superstardom due to his delightfully outrageous book covers. All sport stock image collages and titles that take on a Mad Libs quality, generally beginning “Pounded in the Butt by….” Tingle then fills in the blank with whatever supernatural creature, sentient object, or personified concept strikes his fancy. (Pounded by President Bigfoot is on the tame end of the spectrum; things get more high-concept in Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, which realizes its conceit through some unexpectedly intricate sci-fi worldbuilding.)

These covers have earned Tingle the nickname My Favorite Author I’ve Never Read, but he hopes that Camp Damascus will make this moniker obsolete. Asked about his decision to traditionally publish, Tingle cites the opportunity to grow his readership: “I am constantly striving to prove love to a broader audience.”…

Camp Damascus is never sleep-with-the-lights-on scary, but it conjures a menacing atmosphere. Though the book is crawling with demons, it’s the humans that truly terrify. This was intentional.“Writing horror for any marginalized group,” Tingle says, “you have to recognize that what is happening in the dang world—without any supernatural elements—is already traumatic.”…

(5) NEXT TRIBUTES. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in theaters November 17, 2023.

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES follows a young Coriolanus (Tom Blyth) who is the last hope for his failing lineage, the once-proud Snow family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With his livelihood threatened, Snow is reluctantly assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a tribute from the impoverished District 12. But after Lucy Gray’s charm captivates the audience of Panem, Snow sees an opportunity to shift their fates. With everything he has worked for hanging in the balance, Snow unites with Lucy Gray to turn the odds in their favor. Battling his instincts for both good and evil, Snow sets out on a race against time to survive and reveal if he will ultimately become a songbird or a snake.

(6) THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE. The New York Times makes a strike sound almost inevitable: “Hollywood, Both Frantic and Calm, Braces for Writers’ Strike”.

Writers scrambling to finish scripts. Rival late-night-show hosts and producers convening group calls to discuss contingency plans. Union officials and screenwriters gathering in conference rooms to design picket signs with slogans like “The Future of Writing Is at Stake!”

With a Hollywood strike looming, there has been a frantic sprint throughout the entertainment world before 11,500 TV and movie writers potentially walk out as soon as next week.

The possibility of a television and movie writers’ strike — will they, won’t they, how could they? — has been the top conversation topic in the industry for weeks. And in recent days, there has been a notable shift: People have stopped asking one another whether a strike would take place and started to talk about duration. How long was the last one? (100 days in 2007-8.) How long was the longest one? (153 days in 1988.)

“It’s the first topic that comes up in every meeting, every phone call, and everyone claims to have their own inside source about how long a strike will go on and whether the directors and actors will also go out, which would truly be a disaster,” said Laura Lewis, the founder of Rebelle Media, a production and financing company behind shows like “Tell Me Lies” on Hulu and independent movies like “Mr. Malcolm’s List.”

Unions representing screenwriters have been negotiating with Hollywood’s biggest studios for a new contract to replace the one that expires on Monday. The contracts for directors and actors expire on June 30….

(7) MISSED CONNECTION. Dark Worlds Quarterly’s G.W. Thomas profiles “Albert dePina, Space Opera Specialist”. DePina, like Ray Bradbury, got a lift from Henry Hasse – so it’s surprising that although this article does mention Bradbury, it does not note that Hasse also co-authored Bradbury’s first sale.

Albert dePina was a name blazoned across the covers of Planet Stories in 1944. He was never a prolific writer, not a professional in terms of volume. But dePina was a fan. Writing with Henry Hasse, he produced ten stories over ten years, 1943 to 1953. (Robert) Albert dePina died in 1957. (He is not to be confused with the comics creator, Alberto dePina 1907-2002). Sadly, there is little solid information on him….

(8) PUTTING A LIGHT ON INJUSTICE. Among Cora Buhlert’s most recent “Non-Fiction Spotlights” is one about “The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum by Glen Cadigan”.

Tell us about your book.

The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum is a cradle to grave biography of the comic book artist best known for co-creating the All New, All Different X-Men for Marvel, and before that, for revitalizing the Legion of Super-Heroes at DC. It tells the story of how he went from an enthusiastic fan and aspiring pro in the ’60s to the driving force behind the X-Men reboot in the ’70s to a down-on-his luck-creator in the early 2000s, fighting for his life in a veteran’s hospital while Marvel was making millions off his creations as he made nothing.

It’s a story about justice and injustice, both on the page and off.

(9) CARRIE FISHER WILL BE ADDED TO WALK OF FAME. Actress Carrie Fisher will be honored posthumously by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4th, Star Wars Day. The star, in the category of Motion Pictures, be unveiled near the historic El Capitan Theatre at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard at 11:30 a.m.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1953[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Our Beginning tonight is short but oh-so- sweet.  It is from Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man which was published by Shasta Publishers in 1953. 

As you know, the version printed in Galaxy in January, February and March won a Hugo at Philcon II.

The novel is dedicated to Galaxy’s editor, H. L. Gold, who made suggestions during its writing. 

Yes, it’s one of my favorite novels, both to read and to listen to. Gerard Doylle narrates the novel and does a fantastic job of doing so.

Without further notes, here’s our Beginning…

IN THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE there is nothing new, nothing different. What may appear exceptional to the minute mind of man may be inevitable to the infinite Eye of God. This strange second in a life, that unusual event, those remarkable coincidences of environment, opportunity, and encounter… all may be reproduced over and over on the planet of a sun whose galaxy revolves once in two hundred million years and has revolved nine times already. 

There are and have been worlds and cultures without end, each nursing the proud illusion that it is unique in space and time. There have been men without number suffering from the same megalomania; men who imagined themselves unique, irreplaceable, irreproducible. There will be more… more plus infinity. This is the story of such a time and such a man… 

THE DEMOLISHED MAN.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 29, 1887 H. Bedford-Jones. Pulp writer of whom only maybe ten percent of his twelve hundred stories could be considered genre but some such as the Jack Solomon novels, say John Solomon, Argonaut and John Solomon’s Biggest Game are definitely genre. Like many of the early pulp writers, he used a number of pen names, to wit Michael Gallister, Allan Hawkwood, Gordon Keyne, H. E. Twinells and L. B. Williams. Wildside Press published in 2006 a collection of his short stories, The House of Skulls and Other Tales from the Pulps. (Died 1949.)
  • Born April 29, 1908 Jack Williamson. By the end of his long career in sff he had won eight lifetime achievement / grand master honors, and been inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I’ll frankly admit that he’s one of those authors that I know I’ve read a fair amount by can’t really recall any specific titles as I didn’t collect him either in hard copy or digitally. A quick bit of research suggests the Legion of Space series was what I liked best when I was reading him. Aussiecon Two awarded him a Hugo for Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction (1985), and Millennium Philcon saw him get one for his “Ultimate Earth” novella (2000), which also won the Nebula. (Died 2006.)
  • Born April 29, 1923 Irvin Kershner. Director and producer of such genre works as the Amazing Stories and seaQuest DSV series, Never Say Never Again, RoboCop 2 and The Empire Strikes Back. By the way, several of the sources I used in compiling this Birthday claimed that was the best Star Wars film. (Died 2010.)
  • Born April 29, 1943 Russell M. Griffin. Author of but four novels as he died far too young of a heart attack. The Makeshift God was his first novel, I remember that novel as being a rather excellent dystopian affair, and Century’s End was even bleaker. He wrote but nine stories. He alas has not made into the digital realm yet. (Died 1986.)
  • Born April 29, 1946 Humphrey Carpenter. Biographer whose notable output includes J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography; he also did the editing of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, and is responsible for The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and their Friends. He also wrote the engaging Mr. Majeika children’s series which is most decidedly genre. (Died 2005.)
  • Born April 29, 1960 Robert J. Sawyer, 63. Hominids won the Hugo for Best Novel at Torcon 3, and The Terminal Experiment won a Nebula as well. Completing a hat trick, he won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan too. Very impressive.  And then there’s the FlashForward series which lasted for thirteen episodes that was based on his novel of that name.  Interesting series that ended far too soon. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side shows why it can be dangerous to work as a scientist.
  • The Far Side notes there are hazards to working as an artist, too.
  • Tom Gauld displays a librarian’s idea of good architecture.

(13) CONAN COMICS WRITER INTERVIEWED. The Rogues in the House podcast interviews Jim Zub, writer of the new Conan comics for Titan.

(14) THEY MADE IT SO. “‘The Bridge Is Yours:’ You Can Now Virtually Visit Every Star Trek Enterprise Bridge” says Gizmodo. (The direct link is: “U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D (2364) – Roddenberry Archive”.)

Save for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and—obviously—Star Trek: The Lower Decks, most of the action for Star Trek takes place upon the fabled bridge. Over the course of Star Trek’s over-five decade runtime, there have been more than one fan who has imagined themselves working under lights at their station. You can close your eyes and imagine yourself among a crew of like-minded people sharing in that optimistic hope for the future that the show was known for. Finally, there’s now a way to truly put yourself into the captain’s chair of whatever version of the show was your favorite and watch through the viewscreen at all the twinkling stars and imagine where you too might boldly go.

To commemorate the end of Star Trek: Picard’s third and final season, on Thursday the Roddenberry Archive created a new web portal that includes dozens and dozens of accurate 3D models of the famed Starship Enterprise alongside an inside look at its bridge….

(15) FRANK TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH. Kevin Smith, director of Dogma, Clerks, Mallrats and many other at least SFF-adjacent movies and showrunner of Masters of the Universe: Revelation, opens up about his struggles with mental health at People: “Kevin Smith Tells PEOPLE About His Recent Mental Health Crisis”.

One morning last January, film director Kevin Smith awoke in terror, convinced he was losing his mind.

The next day Smith, 52, checked into Arizona’s Sierra Tucson treatment center where he spent the next month in intensive therapy, learning how several childhood traumas had led him to create and hide behind a “larger than life” public persona he calls “the other guy” that eventually usurped his core sense of self.

“It was scary,” he says, speaking about the incident—that he describes as a “complete break from reality”—publicly for the first time in this week’s PEOPLE.

“At that moment, I wouldn’t have been averse to not being around any longer. I called a friend and said, ‘I’m in a weird, dark place. I need to go somewhere and get help.'”…

(16) SCI-FI LONDON FILMS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sci-Fi London has just announced its initial tranche of films for this year’s fest 31st May to 6th June 2023.

Even if you are not in the London region, you can check out the trailers below and keep an eye out for the DVD.

All the films are recent and a good few are having their UK, some even, World, premiere at the fest.

There will also be six thematic sessions of short films among much else.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] The Dad-at-Arms podcast has a great interview with Netflix producer Ted Biaselli: “Revolution News! Dad-at-Arms Interview: Netflix MOTU Producer Ted Biaselli”. It’s a Masters of the Universe podcast, so the interview focuses on Masters of the Universe: Revelation, but Biaselli worked on a lot of Netflix SFF shows like Wednesday, The Dark Crystal and Castelvania. He also offers some excellent insights into the workflow of an animated TV episode is made and how long it takes. For example, I had no idea that they record the dialogue first and then do the animation, though it makes sense.

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