The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tor.com)
BEST NOVELETTE
Two Truths and a Lie, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)
BEST SHORT STORY
“Metal Like Blood in the Dark”, T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine, September/October 2020)
BEST SERIES
The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
BEST RELATED WORK
Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley (FSG)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY OR COMIC
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (Harry N. Abrams)
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM
The Old Guard, written by Greg Rucka, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Netflix / Skydance Media)
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM
The Good Place: Whenever You’re Ready, written and directed by Michael Schur (Fremulon / 3 Arts Entertainment / Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group)
BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM
Ellen Datlow
BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM
Diana M. Pho
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
Rovina Cai
BEST SEMIPROZINE
FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, publisher Troy L. Wiggins, executive editor DaVaun Sanders, managing editor Eboni Dunbar, poetry editor Brandon O’Brien, reviews and social media Brent Lambert, art director L. D. Lewis, and the FIYAH Team.
BEST FANZINE
nerds of a feather, flock together, ed. Adri Joy, Joe Sherry, The G, and Vance Kotrla
BEST FANCAST
The Coode Street Podcast, presented by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe, Jonathan Strahan, producer
BEST FAN WRITER
Elsa Sjunneson
BEST FAN ARTIST
Sara Felix
BEST VIDEO GAME
Hades (Publisher and Developer: Supergiant Games)
LODESTAR AWARD FOR BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK (not a Hugo)
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Productions)
ASTOUNDING AWARD FOR THE BEST NEW WRITER, SPONSORED BY DELL MAGAZINES (not a Hugo)
Emily Tesh (2nd year of eligibility)
Network Effect by Martha Wells, art by Jaime Jones
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi_Vo, art by Alyssa Winans
It’s official – Captain Jack is back for the Doctor Who Christmas special, with John Barrowman’s immortal Time Agent set to join the TARDIS team in Revolution of the Daleks.
Of course, this isn’t as big a shock as it might have been. Jack Harkness already popped up once after a decade away from Doctor Who in series 12’s Fugitive of the Judoon, and fans had long suspected this could be followed by a larger onscreen return. After all, he hasn’t even met Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor yet!
But now that his festive presence has been confirmed, we have to wonder… is this just the start of Jack’s new era in the TARDIS? Does John Barrowman already have a key cut for Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff? Is Jack’s coat currently being dusted off for another adventure?
Bertelsmann, owner of Penguin Random House, is buying Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS and will make it part of PRH, the company announced. The deal should close in the second half of next year, subject to the usual closing procedures as well as regulatory approval. The deal is reportedly for more than $2 billion. PRH is the largest trade book publisher in the world, and both it and S&S have substantial distribution operations.
ViacomCBS had put S&S up for sale in March, saying the publisher was “not a core asset.” At the time, ViacomCBS was reportedly asking at least $1.2 billion for S&S. Bertelsmann publicly expressed interest in September; News Corp., owner of HarperCollins, was also interested in the company.
In a memo to staff, PRH CEO Markus Dohle said in part, “I have long admired the team at Simon & Schuster and the books they publish, and I am incredibly excited to welcome our new colleagues to Penguin Random House. Simon & Schuster’s distinguished legacy of publishing notable authors, perennial bestsellers, and culture-shaping blockbusters is a natural complement to our publishing programs and catalogs around the world.”
Referring to the merger of Penguin and Random House and other PRH acquisitions, he said, “As we have demonstrated, we can successfully unite company cultures and prestigious publishing teams while preserving each imprint’s identity and independence. Simon & Schuster aligns completely with the creative and entrepreneurial culture that we nurture by providing editorial autonomy to our publishers, funding their pursuit of new stories, ideas, and voices, and maximizing reach for our authors….”
(3) 100 MORE TBR. The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2020” has plenty of good reading even if there are just a few titles that register as genre — and of those, none I’ve heard of. Mind you, I’m generally not impressed to see the dismissive phrase, “Well, I never heard of it,” and I’m counting on you to remain equally unmoved when I say it; I’m just reporting. Besides, some of you probably have heard of them and can say something on their behalf.
The SFWA Airship Nebula will be returning in June 2021… Captaining the ship this year, SFWA is also very pleased to announce that L.D. Lewis is joining the Nebula Conference team.
Lewis is an award-winning SF/F writer and editor, and serves as a founding creator, Art Director, and Project Manager for the World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated FIYAH Literary Magazine. She primarily writes stories of ordinary Black women and femmes with extraordinary powers in equally extraordinary worlds.
Coming off the success of helming FIYAHCON last month, L.D. will be acting as the project manager for all of the exciting year-round events associated with the Nebula Conference. We hope you join us in welcoming L.D. aboard.
With smaller events leading up to our main conference, the team is working on elevating our content and offerings again this year, and celebrating the best that science fiction and fantasy have to offer with our annual Nebula Awards ceremony.
So, please join us for another weekend full of professional development, workshops, and opportunities to network in one of the coolest virtual spaces there is. There will be more dance parties, karaoke, and social meet-ups around special interests. We’ll also be bringing back our conference-specific mentorship program and office hours.
…Diversity is about getting the most differently informed points of view on a panel because that is a valuable thing. Because it means we all get a chance to learn new and interesting aspects to a topic. And sometimes it is about making sure that the voices that have not been able to contribute in the past for one reason or another get a chance to take part in the conversation by reaching out to them.
We need to rethink the ways we create [convention] programming. Consider this art form, the quilt. A practical item made beautiful, and often a way to use up excess fabric or recycled rags. One variant is the “crazy quilt,” which uses up odds and ends in irregularly shaped patches, sometimes with embroidered details. Crazy quilts can be beautiful, but not by nature. When they are it is the result of serendipitous accident or the creation of someone experienced and talented at putting those scraps together. Programming should not be a crazy quilt made up of the varied scraps of material different participants pull out of their pockets.
Quilts with deliberately created patterns can be extraordinarily beautiful, and this is where our programming metaphor comes in. The Multiverse [Con in Atlanta] was such a quilt, pulling from those eight tracks and interspersing them in a rhythm that made the convention’s quilt far greater than the sum of its yardage. Partially because they realized the world is not binary—a thing that’s hard to do sometimes in America in a political scene which doesn’t acknowledge that people can agree on one thing and not another.
The democratisation of conventions created by the move online has been heartening, because conventions have previously been limited to the people of means and those who the first group was willing to club together and help. The Hugos are voted on by people who have the money to afford the membership fee; the Nebulas, while voted on by F&SF writers, are still limited to those writers with the money for a membership fee. (One reason why I worked to find ways to reduce or ameliorate that fee when holding SFWA office.) One of the things that has come out of 2020, in fact, has been this democratisation, which has made the conventions available to people who historically and geographically were barred from them due to factors over which they had no control….
(6) CHANGING OF THE GUARD AT F&SF. On The Coode Street Podcast Jonathan and Gary K. Wolf devote Episode 538 to a parlay with the incoming and outgoing editors of F&SF, Sheree Renée Thomas and Charles Coleman Finlay.
…Charles Coleman Finlay, who for more than five years has carried on the grand tradition of editing The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Sheree Renée Thomas, who picks up the mantle as new editor beginning with the March/April 2021 issue. We talk about the magazine’s distinguished history, the challenges of maintaining an iconic magazine in a radically changing short fiction field, and their own experiences as SF readers, writers, and editors.
(7) BE A MEDIEVAL SURVIVALIST. In “A Survival Guide to Medieval Fairy Tales” at Medievalists.net, Marta Cobb looks at great medieval romances such as Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain And The Green Knight to discover the moral lessons these romances convey, particularly in dealing with the supernatural.
Rule 1: Know the signs
The border between the supernatural world and our own can be extremely permeable. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when the supernatural has intruded upon more normal life, such as when the Green Knight barges into a holiday feast (it is not that the Green Knight wears green clothing but that his skin and hair and even his horse are completely green). Sometimes, however, the signs are more subtle, such as a deer that leads a knight away from his friends and into the unknown or a boat that sails away in the absence of sailors. In the case of Sir Lanval, it can be a mysterious woman in an opulent tent….
(8) KOBAYASHI OBIT. Japanese author Yasumi Kobayashi (1962-2020) died November 23 at the age of 58. His short story “The Man Who Watched the Sea” won the Hayakawa Award for best short story in 1998.Two more were nominated for the Seiun Award for best short story in 2003 and 2004. He was nominated as “Best Foreign Author” in the Chinese-language Galaxy Awards in 2009.
(9) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
November 25, 1998 — Babylon 5 ended its five year run with the “Sleeping in the Light” finale. In the year 2281, twenty years since Sheridan died on Z’ha’dum and twenty years since the Interstellar Alliance was formed, Sheridan realises his time is running out and calls his old friends for one last get-together before embarking on one final journey. In the process, he learns that his fate and that of Babylon 5 remain interconnected. Trivia note: The worker who throws the final switch to shut down the station is played by Straczynski.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 25, 1904 – Amelia Reynolds Long. Pioneer female SF author; one novel, a score of short stories for us. “Reverse Phylogeny” is in Conklin’s fine SF Adventures in Dimension. Also detective fiction, poetry. Here is a tribute site. (Died 1978) [JH]
Born November 25, 1920 — Ricardo Montalbán. Khan Noonien Singh and the first Mr. Rourke. Armando and Grandpa Valentin Avellan as well. I’m picking those as four most memorable roles he’s played and they just happen to all be genre in nature. Oh, and is Khan Noonien Singh the only occurrence of a non-crew character carrying over from the original series into the films? I suspect not but I can’t think of anyone other. If there is, I’m sure one of you will tell me. (Died 2009.) (CE)
Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. My favorite ones by him? Orion Shall Rise for the mix of personal scale story with his usual grand political stories, and all of the Flandry and van Rijn stories. I also enjoy his Time Patrol stories as well, and the two Operation Luna tales are quite fun. He was quite honored with seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. I’m currently reading the first two volumes of his NESFA short fiction series which I will review here soon. (Died 2001.) (CE)
Born November 25, 1926 — Jeffrey Hunter. Best known for his role as the first Captain Christopher Pike in the original pilot episode of Star Trek and the later use of that material in “The Menagerie” episode. Other genre work included Dimension 5, A Witch Without A Broom, Strange Portrait (never released, no print is known to exists), Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Journey into Fear and The Green Hornet. (Died 1969.) (CE)
Born November 25, 1941 – Sandra Miesel, 79. Two novels, half a dozen shorter stories; anthologies; Myth, Symbol, and Religion in “The Lord of the Rings”; Against Time’s Arrow (Poul Anderson); more than a hundred essays, forewords and afterwords, letters, reviews; collection of fanwriting, Sweetmeats (Jerry Kaufman, ed.); much other work outside our field. Guest of Honor at Rivercon III. [JH]
Born November 25, 1953 – Michael “Orange Mike” Lowrey, 67. Why orange? So he dresses – inside and out: he has sixty pairs of orange underwear. Fanzine, Vojo de Vivo; he is also an Esperantist. Fan Guest of Honor at ICON 25. Elected the 2020 TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate. Often seen here. In case you wonder, he doesn’t wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day – but only then. [JH]
Born November 25, 1953 — Mark Frost, 67. He’s best known as a writer for Hill Street Blues (I know it’s not genre but superb nonetheless) and as the co-creator with David Lynch of Twin Peaks in which he’s been involved with in other roles as well. He had a hand in writing both of the not well regarded Fantastic Four films. He was also one of the Executive Producers of the very short lived All Souls series. (CE)
Born November 25, 1963 – Tony Daniel, 57. A dozen novels, forty shorter stories, a dozen poems. “The Infuence of ‘The Song of the South’ on Lucius Shepard” in NY Review of SF. Interviewed in Lightspeed. “Life on the Moon” was a Readers’ Choice in Asimov’s. [JH]
Born November 25, 1972 – D.A. Adams, 48. Five books about the Brotherhood of Dwarves; others outside our field. Likes C.S. Lewis and Toni Morrison. Has read The Glass Bead Game and Absalom, Absalom! [JH]
Born November 25, 1974 — Sarah Monette, 46. Under the pen name of Katherine Addison, she published The Goblin Emperor which garnered the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. She won the Spectrum Award in 2003 for her short story “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland”. Her first two novels Mélusine and The Virtu are quite wonderful and I highly recommend her Iskryne series that she co-wrote with Elizabeth Bear. (CE)
Born November 25, 1980 – Licia Troisi, 40. Astrophysicist; she is currently the best-selling Italian fantasy author. Fifteen novels. “If you don’t read, you cannot write. Read everything, not only your favorite genre.” [JH]
Born November 25, 1986 — Katie Cassidy, 34. Best remembered as Laurel Lance / Black Canary in the Arrowverse, primarily on Arrow but also Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. She was also Ruby on Supernatural, Patricia “Trish” Washington on Harper’s Island and Kris Fowles on A Nightmare on Elm Street. (CE)
(12) RACE AND SF. The Fifth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the topic of Race and SF was held on November 19 via Zoom. (See the full program here.) You can watch the videos of each session, access links to expanded presentations, and hear SF writers reading their stories in this roundup of the event — “Videos from The Fifth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Race and Science Fiction” at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY website.
(13) DESTROY TO CREATE. This post contains the whole recipe for reproducing classic silent film actor Buster Keaton’s trademark hat — “’How To Make a Porkpie Hat’ by Eleanor Keaton” – published nine years ago, but it’s news to me!
…My favorite memory of Buster making his hat is when we were in Germany in 1962 to promote the screenings of The General. He needed a new hat. Buster went to a little hat shop next to our hotel in Frankfurt and pointed out the hat he wanted to the little elderly man who ran the shop. Buster pantomimed everything, as he did not speak German and the shopkeeper did not speak English. Buster tried on the fedora and liked it. He then pantomimed scissors, and the shopkeeper handed Buster a pair of shears. Buster proceeded to tear the entire hat lining out, fold down the crown and cut the brim. The old man looked like he was about to have a stroke because Buster had not yet paid for the hat. When Buster finished and placed the hat on his head to test it, the old man recognized who Buster was and what was taking place in his hat shop.
Never underestimate the popularity of Pocket Monsters. A box of unopened, first edition base set Pokémon trading cards recently sold for a whopping $360,000 at Heritage Auctions’ Comics & Comic Art Auction. The item, which is over 20-years-old, was purchased by Thomas Fish, president of Blowoutcards.com. “I am thrilled to purchase this pedigree box,” Fish said in a statement.
His winning bid shattered the previous world record, also held by Heritage Auctions, which sold a similar set last September for $198,000. Demand for the still-shrink wrapped box was reportedly so heated, that online offers broke the record before bidding even officially began.
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Trailers: The New Mutants” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say that the final X-Men movie “looks like a long pilot episode for a series the CW passed on” and where the producers saved money by not having a dialect coach and by having the mutants rarely use their powers.”
[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Bill, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, John A Arkansawyer, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
In the first clip released for the upcoming season, we see that, thanks to the memory-affecting nature of the regeneration, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor will discover the gender right along with the rest of us. She can’t even remember who she is, just that she’s “looking for a doctor,”…
“Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works.”
Travellers who refuse to hand over their phone or laptop passwords to Customs officials can now be slapped with a $5000 fine.
The Customs and Excise Act 2018 – which comes into effect today – sets guidelines around how Customs can carry out “digital strip-searches”.
Previously, Customs could stop anyone at the border and demand to see their electronic devices. However, the law did not specify that people had to also provide a password.
The updated law makes clear that travellers must provide access – whether that be a password, pin-code or fingerprint – but officials would need to have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
“It is a file-by-file [search] on your phone. We’re not going into ‘the cloud’. We’ll examine your phone while it’s on flight mode,” Customs spokesperson Terry Brown said.
If people refused to comply, they could be fined up to $5000 and their device would be seized and forensically searched.
Worldcon 76 in San Jose, California this past August was a busy time. Thousands of science fiction and fantasy writers, readers, artists, publishers, and fans of every stripe travelled across the country and, in some cases, around the world to celebrate the best in SF.
We (Gary and Jonathan) had a wonderful time while we were there and managed to record four special episodes. Our final conversation is one of our favourites. Alec Nevala-Lee‘s Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction is a fascinating and probably definitive examination of Astounding, John W. Campbell and the writers who made up that time. Andy Duncan, a long-time friend of the podcast, also just published “New Frontiers of the Mind”, his first story for Analog (successor to Astounding) which examines the connection between Campbell and Rhine. Both Alec and Andy sat down with us in San Jose to discuss Campbell, Astounding, and their own work.
(5) FREEMAN DYSON. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination’s Into the Impossible podcast features Freeman Dyson — Episode 19 – Nature Has More Imagination.
In a ranging conversation, associate director Brian Keating interviews the preeminent scientist and thinker Freeman Dyson, discussing his career in science and letters, the role of creativity and subversiveness, the perils of prizes, and how nature always shows more imagination than we do.
(6) AMERICA ON POTTER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] In a morning TV appearance to promote her new book American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, America Ferrera also talked about other books that she finds important (Today Show: “America Ferrera says these are the books that inspire her”). She particularly enthused about the Harry Potter series, saying of her young son Sebastian (who goes by Baz), “Baz is only four months old. I cannot wait to read Harry Potter to him so I can read it again. I can’t wait to see him discover that whole world. Every night we read Goodnight Moon. I could recite it right now. That’s his nightly book. A good children’s book is genius. I love reading to him.” She also mentioned that her husband reads to the boy, saying, “My husband reads to him in the mornings. He wants to expose him to all kinds of reading. He’s read him A Brief History of Time out loud. If Baz grows up and becomes a physicist, it’s because he read that book out loud.”
The First – Hulu’s series about the first manned mission to Mars looks and sounds like many millions of bucks. It’s full of moments of breathtaking cinematography backed by a sweeping orchestral score. But all that grandeur often seems to be in service of obscuring the fact that The First has so little to say about its putative topic. Despite what promotional materials may have promised, the season takes place on Earth, after an accident during the launch of the first stage of a semi-private venture to the red planet leaves the rest of the project in jeopardy. Tech visionary Laz Ingram (Natasha McElhone) brings in former astronaut Tom Hagerty (Sean Penn), with whom she had previously feuded, to lead the next mission and help convince the public and politicians not to pull funding. But even this logistical, political, and technical challenge isn’t where the show’s heart really lies. Instead, The First turns out to be much more of a character drama, about the kind of people who choose to risk their lives on a long, arduous, dangerous journey into the unknown, and the people they leave behind….
We are profoundly sad to confirm that the legendary artist Carlos Ezquerra has passed away. It is difficult for us to put this into words, but we have lost someone who was the heart and soul of 2000 AD… https://t.co/FJI1K97SPhpic.twitter.com/fDKy47lTEr
2000 AD is profoundly saddened to confirm that artist Carlos Ezquerra has passed away at the age of 70.
One of the all-time greatest comic book artists, the Spanish illustrator was one of the titans of 2000 AD.
Originally from Zaragoza, Carlos began his career in Barcelona, drawing westerns and war stories for Spanish publishers. Breaking into the UK market on romance titles like Valentine and Mirabelle, he was head-hunted for the new IPC title Battle Picture Weekly where he drew Rat Pack, Major Eazy and El Mestizo.
In 1976, he was asked to create a new character, the future lawman Judge Dredd, for a new weekly science fiction comic called 2000 AD. Thanks to his enduring partnership with John Wagner, Dredd was to become one of the world’s most recognisable comic book characters, with Carlos there to apply his inimitable style to some of the biggest stories in the strip’s history, such as The Apocalypse War, Necropolis and Origins.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
October 1, 1957 — The Brain From Planet Arous premiered on this day
October 1, 1958 — National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) founded
October 1, 1968 — Night of the Living Dead premiered
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]
Born October 1, 1872 – James Allen St. John, Artist who is particularly remembered for his illustrations for the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, although he illustrated works of many authors. There are two recent collections of his work, J. David Spurlock’s Grand Master of Adventure: The Drawings of J. Allen St. John and The Paintings of J. Allen St. John: Grand Master of Fantasy by J. David Spurlock and Stephen D. Korshak. It is said that Frank Frazetta was a student of his, but I was unable to confirm that.
Born October 1, 1914 – Donald A. Wollheim, Editor, Publisher, Writer, Fan. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Wollheim “one of the first and most vociferous SF fans.” He was a founding member of The Futurians and a member of First Fandom; The Immortal Storm by Sam Moskowitz and The Futurians by Damon Knight are both essential reads on his contributions to early fandom. His first story, “The Man from Ariel”, was published in the January 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. His David Grinnell-penned novels are quite good, as are the ones under his own name. He co-edited the World’s Best SF anthologies for 26 years, and his editorship of imprints such as Avon and his founding of DAW Books were key to the development of the genre as we now know it.
Born October 1, 1922 – Terry Jeeves, Member of First Fandom, Fan Artist, Editor, Writer, and Organizer. He helped found the British Science Fiction Association in 1958, later serving as chair and as editor of its zine, Vector, for two years, and was one of the first fans recognized with the Doc Weir Award for service to British Fandom. He published a fanzine of his own, Erg, for over 40 years. His A Checklist of Astounding in three parts covers the years 1930 to 1959, and he was credited for assisting with Michael Ashley’s complete index of the prozine in 1981. He was contributing letters and fan art to fanzines right up until his death in 2011 at the age of 88.
Born October 1, 1928 – Laurence Harvey, Actor best known as The Manchurian Candidate, who had appearances on genre shows including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Night Gallery, and roles in other genre movies including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and The Winter’s Tale.
Born October 1, 1935 – Dame Julie Andrews Edwards, 83, Actor, Writer, and Producer from England known for lead genre roles in Mary Poppins and the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella, playing the Queen in the Ruritanian films The Princess Diaries, and lending her voice to various animated feature characters, including the Queen in the Shrek movies. In 1974 she published a children’s novel, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.
Born October 1, 1943 – Sharon Jarvis, 75, Writer, Editor, and Fan. Co-wrote 3 different SFF novel series under the pen names of H. M. Major, Johanna Hailey, and Jarrod Comstock. Author of 3 volumes of True Tales of the Unknown for Bantam Books and fannish essays such as “To Con or Not” Parts Two and Three (though curiously the first part is not to be found) as published in the Cranky Bitches series in Fantasy Newsletter in 1983, and editor of the 1985 non-fiction anthology Inside Outer Space: Science Fiction Professionals Look at Their Craft, which contains contributions from some of the big names in genre writing.
Born October 1, 1944 – Rick Katze, 74, Attorney and Fan. I’ll just quote Fancyclopedia 3, which does him justice:
A Boston-area con-running fan. He is a member of NESFA and MCFIand was a member of SCIFI. He has been an officer of both NESFA and MCFI. He has worked on many Boskones as well as a number of Worldcons. A lawyer, professionally, he was counsel to the Connie Bailout Committee and negotiated the purchase of the unpaid non-fannish debt [of ConStellation, the 1983 Worldcon in Baltimore which went into the red for more than $150,000 – that’s $380,000 in today’s dollars] at about sixty cents on the dollar.
He chaired Boskone 21, Boskone 28, Boskone 41, and Lexicon 8, and edited many books for NESFA Press, including the six-volume Best of Poul Anderson series. He was made a Fellow of NESFA in 1980. He appeared in the fannish musical Back to Rivets.
Born October 1, 1948 – Mike Ashley, 70, Editor and Anthologist, and that is somewhat of an understatement, as the Mammoth Book series by itself has thus far run to thirty volumes including such titles as The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy and The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures. He also did The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, which features commentary by him. He’s done a number of genre related studies including The History of the Science Fiction Magazine with Robert A. W. Lowndes, and Out of This World: Science Fiction But Not As You Know It.
Born October 1, 1950 – Natalija Nogulich, 68, Actor best known to genre fans as Admiral Necheyev in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, who has also had guest roles in numerous genre series including Dark Skies, The Pretender, Charmed, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Born October 1, 1954 – Paul Park, 64, Writer and Teacher whose Ruritanian novels were nominated for World Fantasy, Tiptree, and Sidewise Awards, and whose SFF novels and stories have been finalists for Nebula, Clarke, Tiptree, BSFA, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, and Kurd Laßwitz Awards.
Born October 1, 1960 – Elizabeth Dennehy, 58, Actor who played Lt. Commander Shelby in the Emmy-nominated Star Trek: The Next Generation two-part episode “The Best of Both Worlds”, guest roles on Quantum Leap, Charmed, and Medium, and parts in Gattaca, The Last Man on Planet Earth, Red Dragon, and Hancock.
Born October 1, 1962 – Hakeem Kae-Kazim, 56, Actor from Nigeria with the Royal Shakespeare Company who has appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines, The Jinn, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Slipstream, Global Effect, the TV miniseries King Solomon’s Mines and The Triangle, has had guest roles on Gotham, Scorpion, The Adventures of Sinbad, and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and has provided voices for numerous videogames including editions of World of Warcraft, Lego Star Wars, Halo, Final Fantasy, and The Golden Compass.
Born October 1, 1969 – Zach Galifianakis, 49, Actor, Writer, and Producer who had a main role in the series Tru Calling, appeared in the films A Wrinkle in Time, The Muppets and The Muppets: Most Wanted, and has done voices in animated features including The Lego Batman Movie.
Born October 1, 1973 – Rachel Manija Brown (an Eldridge favorite, as she has reviewed for Green Man Review), 45, Writer of the Change series with Sherwood Smith, and Laura’s Wolf, first volume of the Werewolf Marines series. Author of SFF stories, poems, and essays including “The Golden Age of Fantasy Is Twelve: SF and the Young Adult Novel” published in Strange Horizons.
Born October 1, 1989 – Brie Larson, 29, Actor, Writer, Director and Producer. Her earliest genre appearance was a guest role on Touched by an Angel at the age of 9. In addition to a guest spot on Ghost Whisperer, she appeared in the movies 13 Going on 30, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Kong: Skull Island. She directed and starred in the indie film Unicorn Store, is the star of the upcoming Captain Marvel movie, and will appear in the next Avengers film.
(11) BELATED BIRTHDAY
Born September 30, 1949 – D Potter, Editor, Photographer, and Fan, was a New York and then Bay Area fanzine fan. She participated in numerous Amateur Press Associations (APAs), pre-internet fanzine-sharing and discussion groups – often focused on a specific subject of interest – which distributed copies and letters via group meetings and snail mail, including Apa-nu, A Women’s APA, APA-Q, Myriad, Mixed Company, Spinoff, MISHAP, FAPA, and Intercourse. She was founder and Original (or Collating) Editor of the music discussion ALPS, and Fan Guest of Honor at Balticon 16 in 1982. Although she passed away last October, her website can still be seen at http://onyxlynx.blogspot.com.
(12) A BIRTHDAY LETTER OF COMMENT. Sheila Williams sent a correction to our birthday listings —
My thanks to whoever included me in the list of September 27, 2018 birthdays. Just wanted to mention an error, that I’ve only seen once before. The first sentence reads “Sheila Williams, 62, Editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine for the past thirteen years, following twelve years before that working under Isaac Asimov and Gardner Dozois at the magazine, which is a remarkable achievement.”
Actually, I worked at the magazine for 22 years before becoming editor. I joined Asimov’s in June 1982 (hired by Cathleen Moloney) and just celebrated my 36th year on the staff. In addition to Cathleen, Gardner, and Isaac, I also worked with Shawna McCarthy during her entire tenure as editor of the magazine.
If anything, Jon Snow’s direwolf lived up to his name in Season 7 of “Game of Thrones.”
Throughout the course of seven episodes, the King in the North’s constant companion didn’t show up once. Ghost was an actual ghost.
This despite the fact that the wolf would probably come in handy in confrontation with zombie hordes, undead polar bears and the Night King, who’s taking down dragons with pinpoint accuracy like he’s plaid-wearing, retired sniper Mark Wahlberg in any Mark Wahlberg movie….
Because of his son’s name [Kal-El], I tell him, there’s an online campaign to make him the next Superman. “Oh, I think my Superman days are long gone,” he laughs with a little pat of his belly. He would be an amazing villain in it, I reply. His eyes light up. “Oh, that would be GREAT! I’d make a great Lex Luthor!”
(16) CONTINUED NEXT ROCK. BBC says “Prehistoric art hints at lost Indian civilisation” — petroglyphs estimated up to 12,000 years old — which makes them pre-“civilization”, back in the hunter-gatherer era.
“Our first deduction from examining these petroglyphs is that they were created around 10,000BC,” the director of the Maharashtra state archaeology department, Tejas Garge, told the BBC.
The credit for their discovery goes to a group of explorers led by Sudhir Risbood and Manoj Marathe, who began searching for the images in earnest after observing a few in the area. Many were found in village temples and played a part in local folklore.
“We walked thousands of kilometres. People started sending photographs to us and we even enlisted schools in our efforts to find them. We made students ask their grandparents and other village elders if they knew about any other engravings. This provided us with a lot of valuable information,” Mr Risbood told the BBC.
(17) THE LONG WAY HOME. James Davis Nicoll’s youth have returned! And the Young People Read Old SFF panel has been assigned Walter M. Miller Jr.’s “The Will.”
SF 68 was a South African radio show that ran in, well, 1968. Producer Michael McCabe went on to produce the more successful Beyond Midnight. SF 68 adapted a number of American SF stories to radio play form, many by authors I would not have expected to sell rights to an Apartheid era South African program. If there is a story behind that, I have not heard it.
Walter M. Miller is best known for his Canticle For Leibowitz (of which there is a top notch adaptation far too long for this project). Indeed, the rest of his body of work has been essentially eclipsed by Canticle. Still, there are pieces while not as iconic as Canticle are worth consideration. “The Will” for example demonstrates a laudable understanding of the true utility of time machines other, Hugo-winning, works manifestly do not. But perhaps my volunteers will not agree with me.
In a copy of [Dr. Alessandro] Strumia’s presentation seen by Motherboard, Strumia frames his presentation as an effort to get to the bottom of the “mainstream” and “conservative” positions about gender equality in physics and science more generally. Strumia framed his presentation as an attempt to “use data to see what is right.”
A number of slides show what Strumia described as data about the percentage of women in different fields, sexism in citations, sexism at conferences, and gender asymmetry in hirings. These data items conflict with a number of other studies that point to rampant discrimination in STEM, however. For example, a study published earlier this year by Pew Research found that nearly half of women in STEM say sexual harassment is a problem and that they have experienced some form of discrimination.
Strumia’s presentation also claimed sexism against men, on the grounds that scientists were killed in wars and that universities have made hiring decisions based on equal gender representation “irrespective of merit.”
According to [Dr. Jessica] Wade, who wrote an op-ed for New Scientist about Strumia’s talk, his presentation “claimed that women weren’t as good at physics, were promoted too early, and received disproportionate funding given their ability.”
(19) POWERS AND PRATCHETT. FTL Publications has posted video of some classic author interviews:
This is a 2-part interview with Tim Powers at the Arcana convention in St. Paul on October 1, 2004. Tim talks about his novels, including The Drawing of the Dark, The Annubis Gates, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, The Stress of Her Regard, and Declare. He also discusses the writing process.
Sir Terry Pratchett (d. 2015) is interviewed at Minicon by Jim Young (d. 2012) on March 26, 2005 in Bloomington, Minnesota, USA. The author talks about his writing, meeting J. K. Rowling, and how he received the OBE.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, James Davis Nicoll, Andrew Porter, Carl Slaughter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Joel Zakem, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) ALSO #METOO. In a follow-on to Myke Cole’s mea culpa as reported in the February 15 Pixel Scroll (item #3) about a thread on industry harassment at School Library Journal, author Janci Patterson, in a post entitled “Sexual Harassment, Apologies, and Forgiveness” explains how Cole’s willingness to own, and apologize for, his past behavior has made a huge difference in her life:
That is what it was like being a woman in publishing who had been harassed. I watched people discrediting the women who spoke up on the basis of their comments being anonymous. If it was true, why would they need anonymity?
I knew why. After Zoe Quinn, women in my position all know. We are all one internet post away from being Zoe Quinn.
And then Myke apologized. If you haven’t yet, take a minute and read what he wrote. What he says describes my experience exactly. It’s a damn good apology. He admits to what he did, in specific terms. He expresses that he was unaware that he did it, but he doesn’t treat that as an excuse. He addresses his victims directly and says he’s sorry. He expresses additional sorrow. He talks about both what he’s going to do to make reparations and also how he’s going to address his behavior going forward.
Reading that changed the whole world for me. I had been watching the cultural shifts in our post-#metoo, post-Weinstein-scandal world, but for me, this was the final piece. In that moment, I went from a scared woman with a difficult secret to a woman who could speak authentically. Who could tell the truth. No one could jump on me in any kind of credible way anymore. It was true. It happened. Myke admitted it was true. He saw the hypocrisy in his feminism. He owned it.
He set me free.
Another SFF author who was mentioned in the comments on the SLJ thread, Dan Wells, also posted his thoughts on harassment and being willing to step up and do better:
I have always believed that you should believe a woman who says she’s been harassed, so I believe these women, too.
And then I was accused of being a harasser.
And then the same woman recanted her accusation.
I do not know who this woman is, as she posted anonymously both times, but I want to take this opportunity to pubicly accept her apology, and to thank her for coming forward.
But here’s the thing: I believed her. Obviously I didn’t believe that I had assaulted someone and then forgotten about it, or anything ridiculous like that. But I was – and am – willing to believe that without intending to and without noticing I had done something to make a woman feel uncomfortable or unwelcome or unsafe…
I could have raged against the injustice of this comment – and to be perfectly honest, a part of me did – but the more useful, more helpful response was to sit down and take a good hard look at myself and my actions. What have I been doing, and what can I do in the future, to make the conventions I attend and the spaces I inhabit safer for other people?
Recanted accusation or not, I found some stuff I need to work on. Not a long history of abusive behavior, but a tune-up on boundaries, and on thinking before I speak.
So given that I’m not big on photos with famous people (but definitely not above walking past autograph alley to oogle them and say, without fail, “oh, they’re shorter than I expected”), and I am not really a collector of toys or comics, why would I ever attend these things? Two simple reasons: to meet up with professionals attending who are good friends and to watch my tiny human
lose.
his.
shit.
Little Dude Tolbert (hereafter referred to LDT) will be four in June, and he’s developing into quite the little protogeek.
The hero of the ComicCon we spent the day at is the gentleman who modded his R2D2 to give hugs. We had to chase our son down multiple times throughout the day only to find this happening. pic.twitter.com/wW1NnbbTKh
Since the first of the year I’ve written a couple of times about Spectacle Magazine, a new quarterly speculative fiction publication (see here and here for previous articles). The magazine is published and edited by Kevin Hale and Danny Dumas and aims to be a high-end venue for thought-provoking fiction and non-fiction focused on SF/F themes.
Three days ago the Spectacle’s editors sent out a number of story acceptances. Normally you’d expect authors to be excited about acceptances, but news quickly spread that many of them were not happy with the contract terms being offered. I personally had multiple authors contact me about issues around the contracts they were offered…
There are several issues there, including with derivative rights. At worst this derivative rights grab could allow Spectacle to create films or video games or nearly anything else using the stories they purchased and the authors wouldn’t be able to object.
There are also other issues with the contract, such as not laying out when the work would be published or that the rights will revert to the author in the case the story is never published.
Shortly afterward, Spectacle Magazine published the following tweet:
Another author on Twitter noted, with astonishment:
It seems that you have all managed to have a conversation about possible errors without anybody slinging insults. As an added bonus, it seems to have ended on a positive note. This is downright heartwarming.
(4) DEADLINE EXTENDED. Worldcon 76 has announced that the deadline for submissions to their Academic Track have been extended to March 1, 2018:
Participants in the Academic Track will have a chance at winning a “Best Academic Track Paper” cash prize from The Heinlein Society. This $250 prize will be awarded based on the presentations as given at Worldcon 76. Given this new opportunity, we will extend the submission deadline to March 1st.
(6) TAKING CREDIT. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in her latest column “Business Musings: Editorial Encroachment”, comments on the recent trend she’s been seeing of editors requiring equal authorial credit on books:
Last week, as I was searching for a friend’s book on Amazon, I made a loathsome discovery. My friend’s book, which is up for preorder, lists her name and the name of someone else on the byline.
I had never heard of that someone else. So I clicked on the preorder, and what did I see? A cover, with just my friend’s name on it.
So I glanced up at the title. Beneath it was this byline:
My Friend (Author), Annoying Person (Editor)
I went through the roof. My friend wrote that book. She hired Annoying Person to edit the book.
I looked up Annoying Person and found her terms and conditions. She sounds like a fairly knowledgeable editor. She only handles copy editing and line editing (although it sounds like she would have a pretty heavy hand). She explicitly says she does not do developmental editing.
Which means she has done exactly nothing on this book. She didn’t come up with the concept. She didn’t brainstorm the characters. She didn’t improve the plot. She didn’t imagine the setting.
All she did was tweak the words.
So why the hell is she getting credit for this book?
Rusch explains in detail why she believes that going along with this is damaging to an author’s brand, and offers advice to authors who are faced with such contracts by their editors.
(7) CHESHIRE CATS. In a Twitter thread, lindsay beth explains how your SJW Credential always manages to magically appear, despite not having been in any of the places you’ve looked: (click the date/time stamp to read the whole thread)
When you're looking everywhere for your cat–in all the usual hiding places, underneath beds and in boxes, behind chairs and closet doors–and you can't find them only for the cat to appear out of nowhere a moment later you know the cat's been in Catspace
(8) NEBULOSITY. Filer Cora Buhlert has posted “Some Thoughts on the 2017 Nebula Award Nominees”, and offers her thoughts on the shortlists of the various categories as well as some possible trends.
In general, what’s notable about the adult fiction categories is that Uncanny dominates the short fiction categories, followed by Tor.com and Clarkesworld. Tor.com absolutely dominates the novella category, while Orbit dominates best novel. The decline of the big three print magazines continues. F&SF and Asimov’s managed to garner one nomination each, while Analog didn’t get any at all. Only a single nominee in the fiction categories is self-published. Thematically, I don’t see a clear trend beyond a preferences for works with historical settings.
Buhlert’s piece contains more detailed analysis of individual entries, as well as of the levels of diversity reflected by the shortlist authors.
(9) DOCTOR WHEN. The Gallifrey Times says that during the February 21 BBC Worldwide Showcase Panel at Liverpool’s Echo Arena, it appeared to be confirmed that Doctor Who will be returning in October 2018.
In the background, we see a promotional photo of the Thirteenth Doctor with some text that reads:
(10) ACHIEVEMENT GATEKEPT. Experienced gamer and blogger Mysty Vander describes how she conquered her social anxiety to attend a gaming convention in 2017, only to be confronted with outrageous sexism, in “Honey, Let the Real Gamers Play”:
We reached a point where my Gunslinger passed a search check nobody else did. I had found a letter. My character was quiet, stoic, and kept to herself – she likely would only divulge the necessary information. When the GM took the letter out, he handed it to the man playing Freya instead of myself. Okay…that’s fine, not a big deal, as long as I get to read it in the end (being partially deaf at a convention, I truly needed to read it with my own eyes to understand all of it).
That didn’t quite happen. Freya’s player read it, passed it along to the older man beside him, and then the note went no further. “Oh, so we need to find the South Gate?” Freya inquired.
The player beside him responded, “Seems like it,” and handed the note back to the GM.
“May I see the note?” I asked.
Without hesitation, the player playing Freya responded, “No need, we know what it meant, sweetie,” he said with a smile.
Born February 25, 1966 – Alexis Denisof (The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy)
Born February 25, 1966 – Téa Leoni (Deep Impact, Jurassic Park III)
Born February 25, 1971 – Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things)
Born February 25, 1986 – Jameela Jamil (The Good Place)
(13) BUG REPORTS. In xkcd’s 2018 CVE List, Randall Munroe details the most recently-discovered Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures of software, of which we must all be wary. Be sure to mouseover the image for a special Security Disclosure.
(14) DEBUNKING THE MYTHS. In “Hugo Myth Season Again”, Cheryl Morgan dispels the idea that nominators must have read exhaustively in order to be legitimate nominators:
Voting is open for this year’s Hugo Awards, and consequently I need to get back to dispelling the strange ideas about the Hugos that seem to proliferate at this time of the year.
This post has been inspired in particular by the latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast where Gary and Jonathan do their usual fine job, but don’t quite get everything right.
Something that they do get right is the “I haven’t read enough” myth. Every year people trot out the idea that if you haven’t read “everything” then you are not eligible to nominate. This is nonsense.
However, Morgan says that there is another persistent myth to which even the Coode Street Regulars have fallen, which must be corrected:
Finally we come to the bit where the podcast goes totally off the rails. Jonathan resurrects one of the best known zombies of Hugo lore, the idea that the Hugos were once for science fiction only and were later changed to include fantasy. This is not entirely Jonathan’s fault. He got the story from Justin Ackroyd. I have had this discussion with Justin before. He was wrong then and he is still wrong now.
(15) I GOT YOUR EXHIBIT RIGHT HERE. Filer von Dimpleheimer, after seeing the announcement in the February 18 Pixel Scroll (item #21) that the exhibit “A Conversation Larger Than the Universe: Science Fiction and the Literature of the Fantastic from the Collection of Henry Wessells” would be taking place at The Grolier Club, stopped by when he was in the neighborhood. You can see his photos of the exhibit here.
– photo by von Dimpleheimer
(16) INADVERTENT DOXXING. In an article entitled “Furry Website Leaks Real Identities”, Medium contributor Sky raises some issues for concern regarding the registration software system used by a number of fannish conventions.
A “feature” in the popular convention registration system ‘Convention Master’ lets anyone find out your fursona name just by typing your real name.
The software is used widely by many conventions, especially in the furry scene. Civet Solutions, the maker of the software, boast “over one hundred and fifty thousand registrations processed.” If you’ve ever attended a furry convention, there’s decent odds they have your data on file… and are now leaking it with no plans to ever stop.
During online pre-registration, you enter your first and last name to see if you have an account at that convention. Unfortunately, anyone can do this. If you’ve ever pre-registered for that convention, or registered on site in a previous year, you have an account. And everyone can see you’ve attended that con with just your first and last name.
Even worse, your fursona name is also displayed.
Yep, that’s right. Anyone can find your fursona name if they know your real name.
Known affected furry cons:
Alamo City Furry Invasion
Califur
Fur-Eh!
Furlandia
Pacific Anthropomorphics Weekend
Scotiacon
Vancoufur
Wild Prairie Fur Con
Known affected non-furry cons:
Arisia
RustyCon
The article’s author discusses potential personal and professional implications of the public accessibility of members’ information, as well as possible avenues for remediation. They have also added a follow-up:
UPDATE NOTE: This article was updated with a section of feedback from Civet Solutions at the end of the article. Although the real name look-up feature in question will unfortunately not be removed from the software in future, I encourage you to read the update over to better understand their point of view and their future development plans.
(17) OLD PEOPLE READ YOUR SFF. In the past, James Davis Nicoll took requests on a commission basis only. However, he has now opened a Suggestion Box. There’s no guarantee that the work you suggest will be reviewed; however, submissions are welcome.
One of my biggest personal goals with these reviews – I mention this in the introduction to every column, and unpacked it a bit in my Month of Joy post – is to bring more, and different, deserving SFFnal comics, webcomics and graphic novels to the attention of SF&F readers.
That’s especially important when when it gets to be Hugo nomination season; I want to see a diverse, inclusive, smart Best Graphic Story category that reflects the breadth of the material that’s out there, and I want other genre readers to have the chance to find and fall in love with those comics, like I have.
I think the main thematic preoccupation probably belongs primarily to the film, which is really about self-destruction. It’s about the nature of self-destruction in a literal sense: cells have life cycles and stars have life cycles and plants and the universe and us. You, me, everyone. But also psychological forms of self-destruction.
It was born out of a funny kind of preoccupation I started to have, that everybody is self-destructive, which is a strange thing to notice. I think a lot of self-destruction is very obvious. [Gestures to cigarettes on the table.] That’s an obvious self-destruction, right? And if a friend of yours is a heroin addict or an alcoholic, that’s an obvious kind of self-destruction. But there are also… You’ve also got friends, or people you encounter, who are super comfortable in their own skin, and very self-possessed, and feel like they have understood some sort of secret to existence that you’re not party to. And then you start to see, no, that’s not quite right. It’s more complicated than that. And fissures and fault lines appear, and between the fissures and the fault lines, you see bits of behavior that doesn’t really make sense – like they’re dismantling things in their lives for no good reason.
Anticipation for the movie has been high since the release of the first trailer last fall. But recently, some, including the advocacy group Media Action Network for Asian Americans, have accused the film of whitewashing the roles played by Portman’s and Leigh’s characters, saying the characters on which they are based are of Asian descent and Native American descent, respectively, in the trilogy. In a statement, Alieesa Badreshia, an MANAA board member, said that writer-director Alex Garland “exploits the story but fails to take advantage of the true identities of each character.”
Others have pointed out that revelations of the two characters’ ethnic backgrounds are not made until subsequent books in the series.
In response to the criticism, Garland provided the following statement to TIME:
This is an awkward problem for me, because I think whitewashing is a serious and real issue, and I fully support the groups drawing attention to it.
But the characters in the novel I read and adapted were not given names or ethnicities. I cast the film reacting only to the actors I met in the casting process, or actors I had worked with before. There was no studio pressure to cast white. The casting choices were entirely mine.
As a middle-aged white man, I can believe I might at times be guilty of unconscious racism, in the way that potentially we all are. But there was nothing cynical or conspiratorial about the way I cast this movie.
While Portman, Leigh and Novotny are white, co-stars Thompson and Rodriguez are women of color. Oscar Isaac, who plays Portman’s character’s husband in the film, is of Guatemalan and Cuban descent.
[Thanks to Cora Buhlert, James Davis Nicoll, Jason Sanford, Kim Huett, RedWombat, ULTRAGOTHA, and von Dimpleheimer for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 Contributing Editor of the Day JJ.]
Hampus Eckerman adds, “I do recommend that game as a very good way of activating oneself for jogs or long walks. There is an additional game called Zombies, Run! 5k Training by the same creators for people who aren’t fit enough to jog as yet. It works as a prequel and lets you do basic exercises and gradually increased walk/runs for eight weeks to get fit enough to hit the main game. The main game works as a radio theatre, where your progress is checked by GPS and where (configurable) zombies sometimes attack you, forcing you to increase your pace.”
We’re hosting over 170 events in 36 states and 25 countries.
A kayak exploration through the largest ship graveyard in the Western Hemisphere. A private tour of the world’s original nuclear power plant. A classical concert in an abandoned hilltop spy station outside Berlin. What discoveries await you?
When you first posted Folding Beijing for free on a Tsinghua university server, was that also for pleasure?
Yes, when I was in school, I had lots of time.
I am very surprised that studying physics, especially quantum physics, gave you a lot of time?
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t become a scientist! I was a good student, but not one good enough to become a scientist. Probably 95% of the physics students entered other fields after graduation. Only 5% to 10% of the top students became real physicists.
Is sci-fi an effective tool for investigating social issues?
I think science fiction is perhaps the freest genre for me to set my characters and everything else according to my opinion. Because in pure literature, I need to make sure I have the whole background and the reality of the people. You cannot just change the reality, if you do that the readers will be like ‘oh no! Life isn’t like that’. In science fiction you’re free, you can set the stage and tell readers, life is this, and you can form other stories on that stage. In my longer novel, I created one society on Mars and another on Earth, and then I can compare different policies and methods in these two places. The two societies can mirror each other. This is the kind of freedom I cannot find anywhere else.
(5) COODE STREET ADDRESS. The April 2 edition of The Coode Street Podcast promotes “A New Theory of Science Fiction.” The podcast is looking at Robinson’s New York 2140 which Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan claim is more in keeping with the Heinlein thesis that capitalism can fix Big Problems without a change in political and social structures. And they believe it’s also critiquing the controversial usage of info dumps and the belief that they’re particular to SF.
They also cover the history of the Crawford Award, the ICFA and Gary’s new History of Science Fiction.
Scotland is a veritable mecca for Harry Potter fans, considering J.K. Rowling herself lives there and wrote a large majority of the series there. Everywhere you turn, you can see Rowling’s inspiration or something that could easily be found in one of the films. While our Harry Potter travel bucket list can take you all over the world, it’s important to make a stop at where it all began: the Elephant House Cafe in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The cafe in the heart of Edinburgh touts itself as the birthplace of Harry Potter, because Rowling spent countless hours in this shop penning Harry Potter. She sat in the back of the restaurant, overlooking Edinburgh Castle and Greyfriars Kirkyard, where a grave for a man named Tom Riddell can be found.
(7) BROWN OBIT. Chelsea Brown (1942-2017), best remembered as a cast member on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in the Sixties, passed away March 27 at the age of 74. She also had a genre credit — as Rosey Grier’s love interest in The Thing With Two Heads (1972). As the New York Times explains —
In that film, the head of an ailing bigot, played by Ray Milland, is grafted onto the body of a death-row inmate played by Mr. Grier, a former defensive lineman in the N.F.L. Car chases, gunfights and bickering ensue.
Mr. Grier and Mr. Milland eventually reach Ms. Brown. At first undaunted by Mr. Grier’s second head, she moves in for a kiss, then quickly withdraws and deadpans, “Honey, I know you don’t like to answer a lot of questions — but, but, how did that happen?”
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
April 10, 1981 – The Howling was released in theaters.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born April 10 – David Langford
(10) TIME’S A-WASTIN’! There’s less than a week left to vote in the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards and Steve Vertlieb would like people to take a look at his nominated blog.
My blog, BETTER DAYS; BENNER NIGHTS, has been nominated for BEST BLOG OF 2016 in this year’s annual RONDO AWARDS competition. To vote for my series of articles, just send your selection (along with your name and E-Mail address) to David Colton whose voting address is [email protected] prior to Sunday night, April 16th, 2017, at midnight.
Thanks sincerely for your consideration of my work. It’s an affectionate remembrance of the Saturday Matinee and 1950’s television when classic cliffhanger serials thrilled and excited “children of all ages”… when careening spaceships and thundering hooves echoed through the revered imaginations and hallowed corridors of time and memory…and when Buster Crabbe lovingly brought “Flash Gordon,” “Buck Rogers,” and “Captain Gallant Of The Foreign Legion” to life in darkened movie palaces all over the world. Return with us now to “those thrilling days of yesteryear” when Zorro, Hopalong Cassidy, “Space Patrol,” Ming, The Merciless, and Larry “Buster” Crabbe lit the early days of television, and Saturday afternoon motion picture screens, with magical imagery and unforgettable excitement.
We’ve had some queries about upcoming publications, and upcoming appearances, and, and — herewith an attempt to get them all in one place, for you, and for us. Please note that the list is probably not complete; it’s only as complete as far as we know, as of Right Now.
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC, has been backing far-out aerospace concepts for almost 20 years. It started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, modeled after the Pentagon’s DARPA think tank.
NIAC’s latest crop of 22 tech projects was announced this week, and they include a few concepts that were virtually ripped from the headlines of science fiction’s pulp magazines. Here are our favorite five:
Flying airships of Mars: The idea of sending airships floating through the Red Planet’s skies dates back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels of the early 20th century.
One big problem: Mars’ actual atmosphere is so thin that an airship would have to maintain a vacuum to become buoyant. That’s exactly what Georgia Tech’s John-Paul Clarke intends to do with an experimental double-shelled, reinforced vacuum airship….
After an opening week like that there’s only one thing we can do… And what better way to make the anthology better than with more stories? We’ve got more great writers lined up – people who will bring a fresh angle to the theme, people whose writing we love – and they’re poised and ready to go, right now. The first target is nice and easy, as well…
Experimental Hip Hop group, Clipping are not a stereotypical Hugo nominee but I’d be hard pressed to name an album that is so tightly linked to the Hugo tradition. Science fiction themes are not new to popular music from David Bowie to Janelle Monae but Splendor & Misery approaches science fiction from a different direction musically. Rather than reaching for the broader aesthetics of SF visuals, Splendor & Misery dives directly into science fiction as both a narrative and as a distinct historical genre.
(15) THOSE TRAD PUB JUNKIES. Claire Ryan (intentionally) revives the Sad Puppies favorite argument in “The Hugo Awards are irrelevant”.
I went to Amazon.com, and I took a look at the current bestsellers for sci-fi and fantasy in Kindle. I found a couple of self-published authors immediately. Let’s not hash out the same tired arguments that the indies are somehow less worthy or less talented, please. Clearly the readers don’t think so. Hugh Howey and Amanda Hocking probably have more readers than all the current Hugo Best Novel finalists put together, and they’ve never even been nominated.
(16) LONDON CALLING. Shhh! Please remember, Jonathan McCalmont abhors attention.
The novel ballot looks pretty good and indeed, I’ve already read three of the nominees, all of which were pretty good (and two of which were in my nominations). Ninefox Gambit is the clear front-runner for me, with its intricate worldbuilding and simple, pulpy plot. A Closed and Common Orbit ranks a distant second, but I liked its focus and positive attitude enough to throw it a nomination. All the Birds in the Sky has a great, whimsical tone to it, but of the novels I’ve read, it’s the one that could fall behind some of the things I haven’t read yet. Speaking of which, Cixin Liu returns to the ballot with Death’s End, the conclusion to the story begun in the Hugo-winning Three Body Problem and the one I’m most looking forward to catching up with (even if it requires me to read the second novel, which I never got to last year). Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning has been on my radar for a while, but I never pulled the trigger. It sounds like it has potential for me. N.K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate rounds out the nominees. A sequel to last year’s Hugo-winning The Fifth Season, a book that I have to admit that I did not enjoy at all. Well written and executed, but it felt a little too much like misery-porn for my liking, and thus I’m not particularly enthused about reading the sequel. I realize this puts me in the minority here, but it’s got me seriously considering not actually participating this year. I really don’t want to return to that gloomy world of suffering and despair, as well written as it may be…
He’s able to restrain his enthusiasm about some of the others.
(18) RED, WHITE AND BLUE. But somebody in their comments says they use Russian rockets – “Building on ULA’s Heritage, Setting the Pace for the Future of Space Launch.”
As a new era dawns, ULA continues to set the pace in space launch. Building on a heritage extending to the early days of American space launch, ULA is bringing future innovations to the table to support human launch from American soil and next-generation technology that will create transportation infrastructure to support a permanent human presence in space.
[Thanks to JJ, Hampus Eckerman, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
