(1) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Meg Elison and Clay McLeod Chapman on Wednesday, October 12, 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Meg Elison

Meg Elison is a Philip K. Dick and Locus award winning author, as well as a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise finalist. A prolific short story writer and essayist, Elison has been published in Slate, McSweeney’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Clay McLeod Chapman

Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, and for film and television. His upcoming novel Ghost Eaters hit shelves on September 20th, from Quirk Books. He lives in Brooklyn.

Masks welcome at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

(2) THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] This somber new three part documentary by film maker Ken Burns is among the most sobering, heartbreaking, and horrifying indictments of humanity that I have ever encountered. It was extremely difficult to watch but, as an American Jew, mere hours away from the start of Yom Kippur, I remain struck by the similarities between the rise in Fascism in the early nineteen thirties, leading to the beginnings of Nazism in Germany, and the attempted decimation of the Jewish people in Europe and throughout the world, with the repellant echoes of both racial and religious intolerance, and the mounting hatred and suspicion of the Jewish communities and population residing presently in my own country of birth, these United States.

I am reminded of the disturbing adage that “those who forget the lessons (and atrocities against mankind) of the past are condemned to repeat them. While I have struggled these many years to keep my observations and postings limited to appreciations of films, music, and the arts, I can no longer, in clean conscience, remain silent as the clear signs of domestic and international Fascism are once again on the rise.

Perhaps these concerns have no place in this setting and personalized forum, but I can no longer keep silent as the horrific remnants of Nazism and racial genocide reach out their despicable tentacles from the graves of millions once more, threatening to consume both America and our planet in the decimation of freedom by the frightened zealots of bigotry, stupidity, and arrogance.

The warning signs are unmistakable as fear and hatred threaten enlightenment, while intolerance escalates alarmingly among those broadcasting their supposed patriotism as an end to democracy in what was once proclaimed as “The Land of the Free, and The Home of the Brave.” Intolerance must not be permitted to cloak itself yet again in the guise of patriotism to the detriment of free thought and speech.

We alone are responsible for the course and degree of our own success or failure. No other people or group can truly symbolize or camouflage our personal dissatisfactions. To hide our grievances and individual frailty beneath the cloak of blame is not only dishonest, but cowardly. For America to thrive and endure, freedom of expression, as well as the embrace and cultivation of our differences, is essential if we are, indeed, to survive the smoldering, unforgiving passage of time.

Never Again …

(3) NEW WSJ SF CRITIC. Liz Braswell has begun her reign as the Wall Street Journal’s science fiction and fantasy columnist. The WSJ is paywalled, however, here is the beginning of her current piece, “Science Fiction & Fantasy: Global Myths, Brave New Worlds”.

As a lifelong reader of all things folklorish and fantastical, like many of my American contemporaries, I grew up on a diet of European tales and legends—a satisfying but ultimately limited fare. These days readers have an enormous range of stories to delight them as contemporary fantasy engages with an ever-widening pool of cultural sources that encompass the world’s collective mythologies. This season publishers have presented readers with a veritable feast for the imaginative mind….

(4) HE DRAWS THEM IN. “Illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis Wins Klaus Flugge Prize” reports Publishing Perspectives. “When a parent walks the aisles of a bookstore, it’s not a book’s story that grabs them. It may not even be the title. It’s the artwork.”

Illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis has won the 2022 Klaus Flugge Prize for Pierre’s New Hair, illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis, editor Emilia Will, designer Jade Wheaton (Tate Museum).

The book is described as being “about a bear obsessed with looking good but also desperate to show the world his roller-skating flair.”

In accepting the award—which is personally funded by Klaus Flugge rather than by the Andersen Press that Flugge founded—Hollis is quoted, saying, “Winning  the Klaus Flugge Prize is invigorating.

… Hollis wins the program’s purse of £5,000 (US$5,555) and helps bring needed attention to the work of illustrators—like translators, far too often overlooked for their critical importance to publishing. …

(5) MIGHTY STEEDS. File 770’s coverage of the National Toy Hall of Fame and the comments from Breyer horse fan Cat Rambo and Masters of the Universe fan Cora Buhlert caught the eye of the Breyer History Diva: “Test Color Bears and Other Dreams”.

…A discussion about Breyer on a Science-Fiction Fandom news web site!?! If some of the names are not familiar to you, Cat Rambo was President of the SFWA from 2015-2019, and Cora Buhlert just won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer….

(6) MEMORY LANE.  

1972 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel (1972)

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that I am very fond of British Country  House mysteries, be the written form such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (which yes I know has became several excellent filmed versions including one with the beloved David Suchet) or filmed works such as Robert Altman’s rather good Gosford Park.  

Fifty years ago this year, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied in Tinsel was published by the Collins Crime Club. It was the twenty-seventh novel to feature Inspector Roderick Alleyn.  It was late in the series, so there would only be five more as she’d live but a decade more. 

(Lovely title, eh? Guaranteed to catch the eye of the shopper in a bookstore nigh unto Christmastime when they’re desperately shopping for that mystery lover they’re buying for as you can see from the image below with its excellent design on the Collins Crime Club edition. Very Christmasy I’d say.)

In a brief recapping that really has no spoilers to speak of, his wife Troy Alleyn is at Hilary Bill-Tasman’s manor for Christmas time to paint a portrait of her husband and, while she’s there take part in the Christmas festivities that includes a Pageant along with the other guests who being in a Marsh novel are, to put it mildly, rather eccentric. Troy is enjoying these festivities until one of the Pageant’s players wanders off into the bitterly cold, snowy night. So her husband, Sir Roderick Alleyn is called upon to figure out what happened.

I liked it. It is a light affair I grant you, but it is a perfectly done Christmas Manor House mystery that any fan of Golden Age mysteries will no doubt enjoy very much. 

For reasons I’ve never figured out, she is considered a second rate mystery author when compared to Agatha Christie when I think is very, very unfair. (Reviews of her writings are often exceedingly harsh.) She’s just as good a writer as Christie was. I wonder if a large part of that bias was based in her not being properly British as she from New Zealand originally. British readers and critics can be harshly xenophobic.

The Blackstone edition audio version as narrated by Wanda McCaddon is available to Audible members for free. Need I say that’ll I will be listening to it? It’ll be interesting to see how it comes across as an audio drama. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born October 2, 1911 — Jack Finney. Author of many novels but only a limited number of them genre, to wit The Body Snatchers, Time and Again and From Time to Time. He would publish About Time, a short story collection which has the time stories, “The Third Level” and “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime”. The film version of The Body Snatchers was nominated for a Hugo at Seacon ‘79. He has a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. (Died 1995.)
• Born October 2, 1919 — Edward Wellen. Mostly remembered for the most excellent mysteries he wrote in great number that showed up in the Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and other outlets. He’s here because he wrote an ongoing column in Galaxy called Spoofs with first one in July entitled “Origins of Galactic Slang”. It was followed by similar Galactic Origins well call them for lack of a better term spoofs over the following decade. He wrote a fair amount of short fiction, all if it quite good, most, if not all, is collected in two digital Golden Age Metapacks. (Died 2011.)
• Born October 2, 1932 — Edmund Crispin. He’s well remembered and definitely still read for his most excellent Gervase Fen mystery series. It turns out that he was the editor of the Best SF anthology series that ran off and on between 1955 and 1972. Writers such as Kuttner, Moore, Blish, Bradbury and Von Vogt had stories there. These anthologies alas to my knowledge are not available digitally or in hard copy.  (Died 1978.)
• Born October 2, 1944 — Vernor Vinge, 78. Winner of five Hugo Awards, though what I consider his best series, the Realtime/Bobble series, was not one of them. And he won the Robert Heinlein Award in 2020. I’m also very fond of his short fiction, much of which is collected in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. 
• Born October 2, 1948 — Avery Brooks, 74. Obviously he’s got his Birthday write-up for being Benjamin Sisko on Deep Space Nine, but I’m going to note his superb work also as Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk which are aren’t even tangentially genre adjacent. He retired from acting after DS9 but is an active tenured theater professor at Rutgers. 
• Born October 2, 1950 — Ian McNeice, 72. Prime Minister Churchill / Emperor Winston Churchill on Doctor Who in “The Beast Below,” “Victory of the Daleks,”  “The Pandorica Opens,” and “The Wedding of River Song,” all Eleventh Doctor stories. He was an absolutely perfect Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Frank Herbert’s Dune and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune series. And he voiced Kwaltz in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 
• Born October 2, 1953 – Walter Jon Williams, 69. The last thing I read by him was his most excellent Dagmar Shaw series which I highly recommend. I also like his Metropolitan novels, be that SF or fantasy, as well as his Hardwired series. I’m surprised how few Awards that he’s won, just three with two Nebulas, both for shorter works, “Daddy’s World” and “The Green Leopard Plaque”, plus a Sidewise Award for “Foreign Devils”.
• Born October 2, 1954 — Diane Carey, 68. A major contributor to the Trek multiverse of novel. I mean really, really major contributor. I learned there are lines of Trek novels that I never knew existed. She uses three pen names (Lydia Gregory, Diane Carey, and D. L. Carey) which helps when you’re pumping out a lot of product. She has novels in the Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise. So nothing surprising there you say. Then under Diane Carey, she has the New Earth series and there’s at three other series which extrapolate off the existing series. She also did a novel about Kirk as a cadet at Starfleet Academy. 

(8) WESTERCON ARCHIVES. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] The minutes of the 2022 Westercon Business Meeting, the current Westercon Bylaws as of the end of Westercon 74, and links to the video recordings of the Westercon 74 Business Meeting and the Committee of the Whole on 2024 Westercon Site Selection are now posted on the updated Westercon Business page at http://www.westercon.org/organization/business/

(9) LET THE DICE FLY. A profile of the makers of Rubikon in Variety: “Inspired by ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Rubikon’ Grapples With Questions of Morality”.

In Leni Lauritsch’s gritty sci-fi thriller “Rubikon,” the final frontier could well be humankind’s last refuge.

The film, which stars Julia Franz Richter, Georg Blagden (“Versailles”) and Mark Ivanir, screens in the Zurich Film Festival’s Focus Competition.

Set in a dark future in which a polluted and barely sustainable Earth is plagued by corporate armies battling for depleting resources as the wealthy live in air domes that protect them from the contaminated atmosphere, the story centers on three astronauts aboard the space station Rubikon, where scientists have developed a possible means of survival, a sustainable algae project to provide oxygen and food….

(10) WAIT A MINUTEMEN. “Hold fire: Re-enactors fear being targeted by NY gun law” – the Brooklyn Eagle has the story.

Some historical battle re-enactors in New York are holding their musket fire because of worries over the state’s new gun rules — an unplanned side effect of a law designed to protect the public’s safety.

The law that went into effect this month declares parks, government property and a long list of other “sensitive” places off limits to guns. The rules were geared more for semiautomatic pistols than flintlock weapons, but re-enactors who fear being arrested if they publicly re-stage battles from the colonial era to the Civil War are staying off the field.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration insists that historical battle re-enactments are still OK, and some have still taken place this month. But persistent skepticism among event organizers and participants has resulted in some cancellations, like an 18th century encampment and battle re-enactment planned for last weekend north of Saratoga Springs.

“We’ve been getting reports from units that were supposed to attend that they don’t feel comfortable transporting muskets or bringing muskets to the site,” said Harold Nicholson, a re-enactor involved in the event at Rogers Island. “And so at that point, we decided that it was probably best not to (go ahead).”

The consternation stems from a law quickly approved after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated New York’s requirement that people must demonstrate an unusual threat to their safety to qualify for a license to carry a handgun outside their homes.

Hochul and her fellow Democrats in control of the state Legislature responded with a law that set strict new licensing criteria and limited where handguns, shotguns and rifles can be carried. Some re-enactors looking at the letter of the law have concluded the old-style weapons they use could place them in the crosshairs of the new rules….

(11) WOULD YOU BUY IT FOR A QUARTER? Coinweek tells us that a “New Coin From CIT Features Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft”. It’s issued by Palau.

One side depicts the tentacled head of Cthulhu above the sea. Its tentacles are wrapped around a sailing ship, which is tiny in comparison; in the field incuse 2022.

The other side features numerous tangled tentacles, and between them the silhouette-like portrait of H.P. Lovecraft. Legend H. P. LOVECRAFT / 1890 / 1937. Above, the coat of arms of Palau with the circumscription REPUBLIC OF PALAU 20 $.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Kevin Standlee, Steve Vertlieb, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]