Tag Archives: crime

Pixel Scroll 4/16/25 It’s Been A Long File Since I Pixel Scrolled

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(1) WSFS BUSINESS MEETING TOWN HALLS IN MAY. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon committee today reminded members they will be hosting two Business Meeting Town Halls where members can learn how to participate in the business meeting process. They will be on Zoom, and recorded for later playback. The committee has yet to announce how to attend and RSVP. The available information is here on the convention website: “Business Meeting Town Hall”.

  • Town Hall One: May 4 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
  • Town Hall Two: May 25 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON WILL HOLD CONSULTATIVE VOTE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon also announced they will hold a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: (1) the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and (2) the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

As when Glasgow 2024 did this, there is no constitutional authorization for the poll, and it is not binding on the Business Meeting.

…The purpose of this exercise is simply to test whether a consultative vote of Worldcon members is feasible, and to learn lessons about how it might someday be formally adopted as a part of the WSFS decision-making process. We chose these two proposals in particular because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.

The consultative vote results will be used solely to inform the Seattle Business Meeting of the preferences of a larger sample of the membership than might otherwise be able to attend. Glasgow 2024’s consultative vote allowed over 1,200 WSFS members to share their opinion on a proposed amendment.

The consultative vote will run from May 1 to May 31 and may be accessed at the same site and in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting—so you can do both at the same time!

(3) A DATE THAT SHALL LIVE IN INFAMY. Convention History is shocked, shocked I tell you, by the party in Room 770.

(4) MARK EVANIER DID NOT OUTGROW COMICS. [Item by rcade.] The comic book writer Mark Evanier remembers the 1960s divide between fans of science fiction and comic books. “Fandom Freedom” at News From ME.

…One older female fan used to lecture me that Comic Book Fandom was an unfortunate outgrowth of Science-Fiction Fandom and oughta stay that way…or better still, disappear entirely. What they read was for sophisticated adults and what “we” read (drawing a firm, uncrossable line with that “we” there) was for the kiddos. Her suggestion was that there was something wrong with us for not outgrowing it.

The last such lecture I got — this would have been around ’73 — was from a guy wearing Spock ears and brandishing a plastic phaser that fired little multi-colored discs….

(5) THINKING INSIDE THE BOX. “A new chapter for publishing? Book subscription services launch their own titles” – the Guardian tells how it works.

Book subscription services are magic. A few clicks of a form and a bunch of new books , selected by talented curators, turn up at your door – often with collectible perks such as special cover designs and art. In a world saturated by choice and trends, not only is the choosing done for you, but you’ll often have a less conventional, better rounded and precious bookshelf collection to show for it.

This is presumably why there’s a strong appetite for such services: UK fantasy subscription box FairyLoot has 569,000 followers on Instagram alone, and many bookshops have started sending out their own boxes.

Now, some of these businesses have decided not just to sell books, but to publish their own: In January, FairyLoot announced a collaboration with Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House, while last week Canada-based subscription service OwlCrate launched OwlCrate Press….

(6) REASONS TO WATCH. Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie discuss an award-winning film in SF 101’s “Go With The Flow” episode.

Flow (2024) is an extraordinary film – Latvia’s most successful of all time, and winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film. Colin and Phil discuss whether it counts as science fiction (of course it does!), and what makes this delightful movie tick.

If you haven’t seen the film, we think we give you enough of flavour of it for the discussion to make sense, and hopefully to inspire you to watch it.

(7) FASCINATING MARQUEE. Tony Gleeson ran the photo below on Facebook with this introduction:

The venerable Vista Theatre in East Hollywood: it’s been everything from a porno palace to a repertory house. It’s been featured in scenes for numerous movies (the one that comes to mind is “Throw Mama From the Train”). It’s now owned by Quentin Tarantino and offers some pretty unusual fare.

When he gave permission for File 770 to reprint it, Gleeson added:

One thing I love is the coffee shop attached to the theatre (it used to be called the Onyx many years ago and had the best blackout chocolate cake) is now called Pam’s Coffy and features a portrait of Pam Grier. There is also a mini-Grauman’s Chinese footprint walk in front.

(8) THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK. “No Bids Filed for 2027 Westercon” reports Kevin Standlee at the Westercon website.

No bids filed to be on the ballot to select the site of Westercon 79, the 2027 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference. Although there will be no bids listed on the ballot, there will be space for write-in bids, and bids can still file the necessary papers (specified in Section 3.4 of the Westercon Bylaws) before the close of voting at 6 PM Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7) on Saturday, July 5, 2025. The election will take place during Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California. Should no valid bids file by the close of voting, or should None of the Above win the election, the site of Westercon 79 will be determined by the Westercon Business Meeting on Sunday, July 6.

We will post the 2027 Westercon Site Selection ballot on the Westercon website by the end of April. All members of BayCon 2025 are members of Westercon 77 and all members are eligible to vote. Members can vote by postal mail (there will be no electronic voting) or in person at Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025.

To file a bid, or to ask any questions about the Westercon Site Selection process, contact Kayla Allen, the 2027 Westercon Site Selection Administrator, at siteselection2027@westercon.org.

(9) ART SPIEGELMAN AND JUDY-LYNN DEL REY PROFILED. Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series. At the end of the program, they’re also running a short documentary about Judy-Lynn Del Rey. It starts about 1 hour 40 minutes into the 2-hour program.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 16, 1921 – Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov. (Died 2004.)

Peter Ustinov showed up in Logan’s Run as the Old Man; he had the lead role in Blackbeard’s Ghost as Captain Blackbeard based on the Robert Stevenson novel; he was Charlie Chan in Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (it’s at least genre adjacent, isn’t it?). He’s The Caliph in stellar Thief of Baghdad; a truck driver in The Great Muppet Caper and finally he has the dual roles of Grandfather and Phoenix in The Phoenix and the Carpet.

He voiced myriad characters in animated films including that of Grendel in Grendel Grendel Grendel based off John Gardner’s novel Grendel, in Robin Hood, he voiced Prince John and King Richard; and in The Mouse and His Child, he was the voice of Manny the Rat. 

Now I’m going to admit that my favorite role by Peter Ustinov was playing Poirot which he did in half a dozen films, which he first in Death on the Nile and then in Evil Under the Sun, Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man’s Folly, Murder in Three Acts and Appointment with Death. He wasn’t my favorite Poirot as that was David Suchet but it was obvious that he liked performing that role quite a bit. 

Peter Ustinov

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) IN A BRICKYARD FAR, FAR AWAY. Gizmodo says get ready – “Lego Is Celebrating Star Wars Day With a Ton of Sets”.

The start of May is always a good time for Star Wars fans, but for Lego Star Wars ones, it’s also a time to fear the brick-maker coming down on your wallet with all the fury of a fully armed and operational battle station. This year is no exception, with Lego announcing a ton of sets ready to drop next month–including its next crowning entry in the Ultimate Collector Series line.

Today Lego announced that its annual May the 4th releases will be spearheaded by a new 2,970-piece take on Slave I as it appeared in Attack of the Clones. Renamed here as simply ‘Jango Fett’s Starship’ (aligning with prior merchandise moves away from the “Slave” naming around the ship’s return in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett), the new set includes a detailed interior cockpit which can house two new minifigures of Jango and a young Boba, an openable landing ramp and bomb hatch to place one of the ship’s legendary-sounding seismic charges in, and a display stand to have the ship posed in either landing or flight mode.

Jango’s starship will cost $300, and will release on early access for Insiders on May 1, before releasing widely on May 4….

… If you don’t want to grab Jango’s ride but still want to try and nab that Kamino set, then good news: Lego is also releasing another eight brand new Star Wars sets on May 1. Covering the whole gamut of the franchise, the releases see the first set inspired by Andor season 2, a new U-Wing, two Brickheadz releases inspired by A New Hope and the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, Rebels icon Chopper entering the buildable droid series, two new entries in the collectible helmet line, and even a buildable version of the Star Wars logo…. 

From the Lego Shop itself, the “Best Star Wars™ Gift Ideas for Adults” has photos of all the character helmets and other items mentioned above.

Fans who admire the pilots of the Star Wars™ galaxy can now showcase their passion with the LEGO® Star Wars AT-AT Driver™ Helmet (75429), inspired by the helmets worn by the pilots of the formidable AT-AT Walkers in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back™….

…For even more ways to put the heroes and villains of your favorite galaxy on display, check out the complete selection offered by the LEGO Star Wars helmet collection. From helmets inspired by Mandalorians and Clone Troopers to bounty hunters and Dark Lords of the Sith, there is something for every Star Wars fan to add to their collection.

(13) BUT ARE THOSE BRICKS PLASTIC OR GOLD? Just make sure you lock up your house after you buy those collectible Legos. The New York Times warns, “Worth Thousands on the Black Market, Lego Kits Are Now a Target of Thieves”.

It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars.

Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man, valued as high as $16,846.

The children’s toys have even become something of an investing opportunity for those savvy enough to know what to look for.

But with the eye-popping price tags comes a dark side: Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves.

Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories.

Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif.

Joshua Hunter, the owner of Crush Comics, said that members of his staff found the store’s stolen comic books for sale on eBay within hours of the theft.

The store worked with law enforcement and alerted other small business owners, including Five Little Monkeys, a toy store that recently had $7,000 worth of Lego stolen, to solve what turned out to be a spree of burglaries in the area.

Five Little Monkeys was able to recover a lot of its stolen Lego, said Meghan DeGoey, the company’s marketing director, but the theft was only the latest in what has been a growing problem.

“It’s been a problem for probably, I mean, forever, but it’s really ramped up in the last five, six years,” she said.

Five Little Monkeys has eight stores around the Bay Area, said Ms. DeGoey, and Lego stands out among its top-stolen items.

“People are really brazen when they’re going to steal,” she said, describing the way thieves will sometimes come into a store and walk right out or “do some like crazy misdirect and have a second person that tries to distract us.”…

(14) BUSINESS SHOULD NOT BE BOOMING. “Bahamas suspends SpaceX rocket landings pending post-launch probe” reports Reuters.

The Bahamas’ government said on Tuesday it is suspending all SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landings in the country, pending a full post-launch investigation.

“No further clearances will be granted until a full environmental assessment is reviewed,” Bahamian Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said in a post on X.

The Bahamian government said in February after SpaceX’s first landing in the country that it had approved 19 more throughout 2025, subject to regulatory approval.

The Bahamas’ post-launch investigation comes after a SpaceX Starship spacecraft exploded in space last month, minutes after lifting off from Texas.

Social media videos showed fiery debris streaking through the skies near South Florida and the Bahamas after the spacecraft broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off.

Following the incident, the Bahamas said debris from the spacecraft fell into its airspace. The country said the debris contained no toxic materials and added it was not expected to have a significant impact on marine life or water quality.

The Starship explosion was not connected to the Bahamas’ Falcon 9 landing program with SpaceX.

(15) IS THAT SPACE ROT? “Webb telescope detects a possible signature of life on a distant world”  in the Washington Post.

A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world,according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.

The planet,known asK2-18b, is 124 light-years away, orbiting a red dwarf star. Earlier observations suggested that its atmosphere is consistent with the presence of a global ocean. The molecule purportedly detected is dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth it is produced by the decay of marine phytoplankton and other microbes, and it has no other known source. The astronomers want to observe the planet further to strengthen the evidence that the molecule is present….

… “This is the first time humanity has ever seen biosignature molecules — potential biosignature molecules, which are biosignatures on Earth — in the atmosphere of a habitable-zone planet,” he added.The habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone is the distance from a star that could allow water to remain liquid at the planet’s surface.

K2-18b, which is within ourgalaxy, the Milky Way,cannot be seen by any telescope as a discrete object. But it has a fortuitous orbit that crosses its parent star as seen from Earth. Such transits dim the starlight ever so slightly, which is how many exoplanets have been discovered. The transits also change the starlight’s spectrum in a pattern that — if observed with instruments on a telescope as advanced as the Webb — can reveal the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.

In 2023, Madhusudhan and colleagues reported that two instruments on the Webb had detected carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of K2-18b, as well ashints of DMS. …

(16) SF² CONCATENATION  SUMMER 2025 EDITION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its seasonal edition of SF and science news and reviews. Also in the mix are some articles, convention reports as well as some archive items from its well over 30 years history and a load of standalone book reviews. Something for everyone.

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2025

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, rcade, Olav Rokne, Kevin Standlee, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]

Pixel Scroll 2/21/25 As I Was Listening To Charles Ives, I Met Ningauble Of the Seven Eyes

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(1) SFWA ANNOUNCES DATE OF NEBULA FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT. SFWA President Kate Ristau recently introduced members to Nebula Conference Project Manager, Sherine Mani saying, “Sherine is an events manager who has run conferences for Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits, as well as fan cons like CrimeCon.”

Ristau also spotlighted Nebula Award producers, Rebekah Postupak and Josh Storey. Both were assistant producers last year.

The Nebula Awards Finalist Announcement will be presented live on YouTube on March 12 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

(2) WORTH MORE THAN ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD. Apparently, because the BBC thinks “Luke Skywalker’s Star Wars medal could sell for up to £476k”. It will go on the block during Propstore’s “Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction” in March.

A medal given to Luke Skywalker after he destroyed the Death Star in Star Wars could sell for up to £476,000.

Propstore, based in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, is selling the Medal of Yavin, worn by future Jedi master Luke during the first film in the franchise.

The medal is also believed to have been worn by Harrison Ford – who played Han Solo – during rehearsals for the 1977 film, later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

Brandon Alinger from Propstore said the item held a “special place in cinematic history”.

It goes on sale in Los Angeles in March with a price estimate of $300,000 to $600,000 (£238,000 to £476,000).

The medal came from the collection of props master Gerard Bourke, who worked on the original Star Wars films shot at Elstree Studios.

Propstore claimed it was the “first and only medal to be offered for public sale” after its team researched the prop….

(3) RUSHDIE ASSAILANT CONVICTED. “Man Who Stabbed Salman Rushdie Is Found Guilty of Attempted Murder” – the New York Times has the story (behind a paywall).

A jury in western New York on Friday found a New Jersey man guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of the author Salman Rushdie, which left him partially blind.

The conviction of the man, Hadi Matar, 27, followed harrowing testimony from Mr. Rushdie, 77, who said he had been struck by his attacker’s dark, ferocious eyes. He told the jury that at first he felt he was being punched, but then he realized he had “a very large quantity of blood pouring out” onto his clothes.

Mr. Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a talk at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater on Aug. 12, 2022, about how the United States has been a safe haven for writers and other artists in exile.

Shortly before the talk was set to begin, a man wearing dark clothing and a face mask rushed onstage and stabbed Mr. Rushdie repeatedly.

Mr. Matar was also found guilty of assault on Friday for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, one of the founders of a project that offers refuge for writers. Mr. Reese had been onstage to moderate the talk.

Mr. Matar, who is scheduled to be sentenced on April 23, faces up to 32 years in prison. He also faces federal terrorism-related charges.

The attack occurred in front of more than 1,000 people. Afterward, Mr. Rushdie was airlifted to a hospital with a trauma clinic in Erie, Pa. He spent 17 days there before he was transferred to N.Y.U. Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation center in New York City, where he stayed for nearly a month….

(4) SHELFIES. The latest to share about his accumulated books with Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin is “Paul Graham Raven” in Shelfies #24. (Photos at the link.)

…As is probably obvious, I keep books either because I haven’t read them yet and fully intend to, or because I have read them already, and intend eventually to read them again. This exercise has made me realise that the latter category is necessarily growing faster than the former, which means I should probably stop buying books (an extremely expensive habit in Sweden) and catch up on my re-reads.

(Like that’s gonna happen any time soon.)

(5) THE OSCAR FOR DUNE 2? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Adrian Horton makes the case for Dune: Part 2: “Why Dune: Part Two should win the best picture Oscar”.

A common complaint I’ve heard about Dune: Part Two is that it is too similar to the first Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s audacious gamble to adapt just half of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi tome and hope for another greenlight from Warner Bros. This is correct. Part Two, like its predecessor, is arcane, surprisingly weird, oddly structured and deeply uninterested in pandering. This is actually a compliment, because though I have seen Part Two six times and still do not totally understand the Bene Gesserit, the film, like its predecessor, is a strange creature in modern cinema: a true blockbuster – a cinematic behemoth that makes millions, generates memes and cements the ever-vanishing movie star – that harnesses the full power of the art form….

(6) WHEN IAIN BANKS HELPED MAKE IT THE FULL MONTY. [Item by Steven French.] For my comfort read over Christmas and New Year I chose the fourth volume of Michael Palin’s diaries, covering the period 1999 to 2009, and there in the entry for September 14 2009 I discovered that Iain Banks, while a student at Stirling University, was an extra (a knight no less) in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail! [Click for larger image.]

(7) IT’S THE NANONEWTONS THAT KILL YOU. [Item by Steven French.] Who hasn’t wondered about this?! “What would happen if a tiny black hole passed through your body?” at Phys.org.

In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: Could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead to a messy end. But it turns out the scientific answer is a bit more interesting.

On the one hand, it’s clear that a large enough black hole could kill you. On the other hand, a black hole with the mass of a single hydrogen atom is clearly too small to be noticed. The real question is the critical mass. At what minimum size would a black hole become deadly? That’s the focus of a new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server….

…But if the black hole passed through your head, that would be a different story. Tidal forces could tear apart brain cells, which would be much more serious. Since brain cells are delicate, even a force differential of 10–100 nanonewtons might kill you. But that would take a black hole at the highest end of our mass range….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (2013)

Two of my favorite individuals, Charles de Lint, who would later win a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and Charles Vess, who received a Hugo at Dublin 2019 for Best Professional Artist and a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, collaborated on The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, a follow-up to their A Circle of Cats. 

Twenty years ago, it would win the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, an award that until this moment I’d not heard of. My bad for not knowing of this award. 

If you’ve not encountered this novel, it’s considered a young adult work, but I’d recommend for anyone interested in a good read grounded in Appalachia folklore with the fantastic artwork of Vess profusely illustrating it. You can read the Green Man review here. And here’s our review for A Circle of Cats as well. I’ve got one of his signed prints for A Circle of Cats in my apartment over the desk where I’m write this review.

It is available from the usual suspects, but you really should get the hardcover edition as it should be read that way as holding it and admiring the illustrations by Vess that way are extraordinary. You should be able to get a copy from the local bookstore as it is readily available. 

Of course it has cats, lots of cats. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) CAPACIOUS CAPE. “DC Comics to Relaunch Batman With New #1 Issue and New Costume” reports IGN.

2025 is definitely shaping up to be a huge year for DC’s flagship Batman comic. Current writer Chip Zdarsky just ended his run with Batman #157, paving the way for Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Hush 2 storyline in March. And once Hush 2 is over, DC will be relaunching Batman with a new #1 issue, new writer, and new costume.

As revealed at the ComicsPro retailer event, the new volume of Batman will be written by Matt Fraction (Uncanny X-Men, The Invincible Iron Man). Current Batman artist Jorge Jimenez is remaining on board, though as mentioned, he and Fraction have designed a new costume and new Batmobile to ring in the new series. Batman is trading in the black and gray suit for a more vintage-inspired blue and gray costume. Check out the new Batsuit below:

(11) KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES. [Item by Steven French.] There are some absolutely stunning shots of aurorae here: “2024 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year” at Capture the Atlas.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George hilariously sends up “How Bomb Timers Work In Movies”.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/12/25 When The Scroll Rolls Over, We Will All Be Pixeled

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(1) KRESS Q&A. Asimov’s “From Earth to the Stars” department brings us a  “Q&A With Nancy Kress”

AE: What is your process?
NK: For any story with real science (or rather, real-to-a-point science; if it were all real it wouldn’t be science fiction), I research first.  The characters, like Kenda and Dayson, might already be in my mind, but characters have to actually do things, and the majority of those things should be connected in some way to the science.  So I begin with reading, note-taking, and playing with the concepts and details of the science, be it genetic engineering, stellar physics, or—in this case—the Earth’s geomagnetic sphere (which is not a sphere but an elongated shape that extends from the center of the Earth to several hundred miles into space.)  Because I knew next-to-nothing about geomagnetism, this involved a lot of study, a lot of going “Huh?” and then “Huh!”  Also a lot of cursing; I am not trained as a scientist.  Research not only grounds a story in actual science, it can also suggest plot ideas, and I ended up with as many pages of story ideas as research facts.
Next all this gets reviewed and a loose outline emerges.  Actually, to call it an “outline” is to vastly overstate.  It’s one or two pages labeled MASTER SHEET which pretty much ends up mastering nothing, but at least it’s something to point out which direction I am hypothetically going and a few possible pathways to get there.  Not so much GPS as a faded, dog-eared, slightly outdated Atlas roadmap that lacks all the new roads, collapsed bridges, and accidents on Interstate 90.

(2) GREENE’S REPLY. YouTuber Daniel Greene has responded in a 1-minute video to the sexual assault allegations reported in yesterday’s Scroll: “In Response To Naomi King’s Allegations”. Here is the transcript:

Hello, my name is Daniel Greene. This is an important message in response to various false allegations made against me by Naomi King of alleged sexual assault in a campaign launched on YouTube and more.

Let me be clear: I had consensual sex with Naomi King. Yes it was an affair that my then girlfriend and now fiance took several years to move on from. I also have clear and convincing evidence to prove everything was consensual.

Myself and my team are now planning to sue Naomi King in a court of law. The communication Naomi King has inaccurately used against me online has greatly damaged me and others to date. I also have many other pieces of evidence which prove my innocence.

Look for more communication from me based on truth and fact in the near future. Naomi King took time to launch a campaign against me and I will need time to communicate my truth as well more soon.

A commenter with the handle @ndrew7707 left these exceptionally worthwhile remarks after Greene’s video:

I doubt you’ll read through these comments, but just in case: I’ve never SA’d anyone, but I have cheated and sexually harassed people. I am a survivor of SA, though, and one that looked a lot like the situation described. Between this Naomi’s video about the cease and desist letter, it’s pretty clear to me that this is, in fact, a pattern of behavior that you’ve been denying for a long time. And I get it. Painful is an understatement for how it feels to fully admit to yourself the kind of person you’ve turned yourself into by following that impulse time and time again and learning new ways to hide it and justify it to yourself. So, please, take this from someone who does want you to get better: DO NOT sue them. Not just for their sake, but yours, and all the people you’ve hurt before this and the people you will hurt in the future if you don’t make real changes. Get out of the public eye, get into a treatment program, find a therapist that’s a social worker so that they can walk you through the change process and help you construct barriers to these thoughts and actions, including people who fully know the extent of what you’ve done and are willing to work with you to keep them in check. You cannot do this on your own. I know this comment section is full of people calling you a terrible person, and I don’t blame them. What you did is terrible, disgusting, all those things. But the most terrifying part of this is that you are not fundamentally, irredeemably bad. Very few people, if any, are. You are just a person who’s made a lot of bad decisions, and you are fully capable of making better ones. So, please, from one person who has unlearned abusive behavior: do not try to save your channel, your reputation, your career. Take the stability you’ve been able to build for yourself and actually get help. That is a privilege that should not be taken lightly. You might feel like you’re dying, but that’s normal. Feel that shit fully. Ask yourself for the rest of your life how you make certain you never treat someone else like that again. There is life to be lived on the other side of this, but you gotta figure out what that looks like without this attention, manipulation, and ill-gotten satisfaction you are clearly addicted to. And it is an addiction. Codependents Anonymous helped me tremendously for this reason, but I’d suggest some one-on-one treatment first before putting yourself in any group situation which will undoubtedly have survivors in it. I unsubscribed, but I’ll be back to remind you if you keep trying to do this. It’s bullshit, we all know it. It’s ok if the channel falls apart, it really is. There are a million other things one can do with the gift that is our one, finite, human life. Don’t waste yours on excuses.

(3) PEAK DOCTOR. Den of Geek says these are “The Doctor Who Episodes that Define Each Doctor”. The Fifth Doctor is the one I’m least familiar with, so let’s pick his segment to excerpt here.

The Fifth Doctor – Earthshock (1982)

…To younger fans (and by “younger” here I mean, “People in their 30s and 40s”) the Fifth Doctor has undergone a bit of a memetic evolution. Among the Doctors of the classic series, he was the Young One. We see him being chummy with David Tennant in the Children in Need “Time Crash” short, and hanging out with Tegan in “The Power of the Doctor”, and we watch Peter Davison in “The Five-ish Doctors” and he seems… nice. A bit grumpy. Definitely not on a par with the likes of McCoy, Ecclestone and Capaldi when you need a Doctor to go dark.

Yet what you forget about Tegan is that she’s the companion who left the TARDIS in “Resurrection of the Daleks” because it was too fricking violent. If you watch this charming collection of times the Doctor has shot someone to death with a gun, the Fifth Doctor is better represented than most – especially when you consider that in context, the Fourth Doctor is being framed in most of his scenes, and the Second Doctor is carrying a couple of big torches.

The show had been on the air for 20 years, and a battle was raging over whether it was going to be dark and grown-up and edgy now its audience was growing up, or be a kids’ show forever. And one of the definitive strikes in that battle was “Earthshock”, where the show killed off Adric. Sure, Adric will never rank well in our “Top 10 Least Annoying Doctor Who Companions” listicle, but if Star Trek: The Next Generation murdered Wesley Crusher, it’d still be considered a dark move.

It set the tone that would eventually lead to the All-Time-Favourites-List regular, “Caves of Androzani”….

(4) L.A. SWATTER SENTENCED. “L.A. teen ‘serial swatter’ sentenced to 4 years in prison” in the LA Times (behind a paywall).

A Lancaster teen was sentenced to four years in prison after making more than 375 hoax calls that included threats to detonate bombs, conduct mass shootings and “kill everyone he saw,” authorities said.

The calls targeted high schools, colleges and universities, places of worship, government officials and individuals across the United States, according to prosecutors.

The serial swatter, 18-year-old Alan W. Filion, pleaded guilty to making interstate threats to injure others, which frequently led to massive law enforcement responses and rendered officers unavailable to assist with other emergencies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He made hundreds of calls from August 2022 to January 2024, according to his plea agreement.

Filion was both a recreational swatter and a swatter-for-hire who advertised his services of mass disruption on social media platforms, prosecutors said.

In a January 2023 social media post, he claimed that when he swatted someone, he usually got police “to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies.” In some instances, officers entered the targeted buildings with their weapons drawn and detained individuals who were inside, prosecutors said.

He was arrested in January on Florida charges connected to a threat he made to a religious organization in Sanford, Fla., prosecutors said. Filion threatened to commit a mass shooting at the site and claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails….

(5) STOP SWIPING SAYS FEDERAL JUDGE. “Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US” reports WIRED.

Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States.

In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedented AI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor, finding that the company’s copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence’s actions.

“None of Ross’s possible defenses holds water. I reject them all,” wrote US District Court of Delaware judge Stephanos Bibas, in a summary judgment….

…Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor on the question of fair use. The fair use doctrine is a key component of how AI companies are seeking to defend themselves against claims that they used copyrighted materials illegally. The idea underpinning fair use is that sometimes it’s legally permissible to use copyrighted works without permission—for example, to create parody works, or in noncommercial research or news production. When determining whether fair use applies, courts use a four-factor test, looking at the reason behind the work, the nature of the work (whether it’s poetry, nonfiction, private letters, et cetera), the amount of copyrighted work used, and how the use impacts the market value of the original. Thomson Reuters prevailed on two of the four factors, but Bibas described the fourth as the most important, and ruled that Ross “meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute.”…

(6) TONY LEWIS (1941-2025). “Dr. Tony Lewis, one of the last surviving founders of NESFA, Chairman of Noreascon, and longtime Press Czar of NESFA Press passed away yesterday at home,” announced Gay Ellen Dennett on Facebook today. “Both Suford and Alice [his wife and daughter] were by his side. Further information will be posted when known.”

Tony Lewis

Fancylopedia notes Anthony R. Lewis co-founded the New England Science Fiction Association in 1967. He chaired the Boston Worldcon of 1971, Noreascon.

He was active for many years in compiling the NESFA Index to Science Fiction Magazines. He invented the term “recursive SF” (any sf story that refers to sf) and wrote An Annotated Bibliography of Recursive Science Fiction (NESFA Press).

Space Travel by Ben Bova and Anthony R. Lewis from Writer’s Digest Books was nominated for the 1998 Best Non-Fiction Book Hugo and Concordance to Cordwainer Smith, Third Edition by Anthony R. Lewis from NESFA Press was nominated for the 2001 Best Related Book Hugo.

Among his many talents he was a well-known (and skilled) auctioneer. 

He was an active member of SFWA.

Tony is survived by his wife, Suford (they married in 1968) and daughter Alice.

File 770 will post a fuller tribute later this evening.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (1970)

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser faced each other across the two thieves sprawled senseless. They were poised for attack, yet for the moment neither moved.

Each discerned something inexplicably familiar in the other.

Fafhrd said, “Our motives for being here seem identical.”

“Seem? Surely must be!” the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing this potential new foe, who was taller by a head than the tall thief.

“You said?”

“I said, ‘Seem? Surely must be!'”

“How civilized of you!” Fafhrd commented in pleased tones.

“Civilized?” the Mouser demanded suspiciously, gripping his dirk tighter.

— “Ill Met in Lankhmar” 

Fifty-four years ago at the first Noreascon, Fritz Leiber would win the Hugo for Best Novella with “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, a Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser tale. It was also be awarded a Nebula Award for Best Novella. 

The other Hugo nominees that year were “The Thing in the Stone” by Clifford D. Simak, “The Region Between” by Harlan Ellison, “The World Outside” by Robert Silverberg and “Beastchild” by Dean R. Koontz.

It was first published in the April 1970 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A prequel to the series, Leiber had by that time been chronicling the pair’s adventures for some thirty years. 

The story is the third one in Ace’s 1970 Swords and Deviltry paperback collection. It is available from the usual sources as are the later volumes. Audible has them as well. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 12, 1950 — Michael Ironside, 75 .

I most remember Michael Ironside for his role as Lieutenant Jean Rasczak in Starship Troopers. There wasn’t much great about that film but I thought that he made much of that character. 

Do I need to say that I’m not covering everything he’s done of a genre nature? Well most of you get that. Really you do. So let’s see what I find interesting.

Scanners is one weird film. It really is. And he was in it as Darryl Revok, the Big Baddie, a role he perfectly played. 

Next he got cast as the main antagonist in another of my favorite SF films, this time as Overdog McNab in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Who comes with these names?

Then there was Total Recall where he was Agent Richter, the ruthless enforcer of Cohaagen, the source of everything corrupt on Mars. Great role that fit his gruff voice and frankly even gruffer looks absolutely perfectly.

One of his major ongoing roles was in the V franchise, first as Ham Tyle, a recurring role in V: The Final Battle, and then playing the same character in all episodes of V: The Series.

Now we come to my favorite of his roles, in one of my favorite series, seaQuest 2032, where he was Captain Oliver Hudson. Great series and an absolute fantastic performance by him! Pity it got cancelled after thirteen episodes. 

Finally, he has one voice acting role I loved. In the DC universe, he was Darkseid, the absolute rule of Apokolis. He voiced him primarily on Superman: The Animated Series, but also on the Justice League series as well, and to my surprise on the HBO Harley Quinn series as well.

Michael Ironside

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) TRUE GRIT. Warner Bros. has an awards eligibility website – “WB Awards 2024”. One section is devoted to Dune: Part II, and includes items like “The sounds of Arrakis come to life” – about riding a sandworm.

(11) LATEST ITERATION OF CIVILIZATION. The New York Times reviews Civilization VII: “The Crises Are Simulations, but the Lessons Are Real” (behind a paywall).

Unhappiness is a dreaded condition in the Civilization game series. Unhappy citizens stop working, stop researching scientific pursuits and, worst of all, start rioting.

In the new Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, which introduces three historical ages and a mounting series of crises during the transitions between them, my ancient Persian empire was running smoothly and expanding with ease. Then, suddenly, things struggled to feel cohesive. The game declared that my empire had fractured “as once-loyal settlements seek their own path forward.”

The unhappiness in my cities and towns grew so severe that several outlying settlements began trashing their districts and looking to outside civilizations for support. While I worked at putting out fires started by rioters, my neighbor Napoleon swooped in and quickly conquered one of my towns. This started a territorial war that only deepened the unhappiness of my population. Soon, half my towns were in revolt.

While following your chosen civilization’s path in Civilization VII, from the rough-hewed settlements of the past to the glistening megalopolises of the future, you move through ages that transform not just your technologies, government and civic policies, but also the broader identity of your civilization itself.

With its precipitous rises and falls, Civilization VII, which will be released on Tuesday for PCs, Macs and consoles, is a departure for the series. Although past iterations have had revolts, diplomatic incidents and civic upset, they tend to feel less closely connected to the ways that historical forces can boil over into crisis and conflict.

The violent and chaotic cuts here accurately reflect a world history where many things can happen all at once and often with surprising swiftness. History doesn’t always move forward in the routine, turn-based lock step of the 4X genre (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) that Civilization popularized. More often, root causes like financial instability, cultural changes and oppressive hierarchies stay below the surface until emerging in a cacophony of war, revolution and natural-disaster-fueled chaos….

(12) HOT GAS STATION. “Nuclear Rocket Fuel Test Success Paves the Way for Faster Space Travel” – Extremetech has the story.

A new test of nuclear propellant fuel under space-like conditions has been hailed as a success by NASA and General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), in what is considered one more step on the road to nuclear-powered rocket engines. Such designs have long been suggested as a more efficient method of space travel and could cut interplanetary voyages down to just a few weeks.

While this latest test doesn’t make nuclear-powered rocket engines viable just yet, it’s an important step on the journey. This latest batch of tests was conducted at the compact fuel element environmental test (CFEET) facility at NASA MSFC, as per Space.com. It cycled the nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) fuel up to 2600 Kelvin (4,220 Fahrenheit) and back down again several times, using superheated hydrogen… 

(13) SAVE MY ASS. “NASA Calls in Webb Telescope to Track Recently Identified Hazardous Asteroid” reports Gizmodo.

Faced with the (very low probability) threat of an incoming asteroid impact, NASA is bringing out the big guns. The agency will employ its powerful Webb space telescope to monitor newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.

Based on current estimates, asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.1% chance of impact on December 22, 2032. Although the odds are still in our favor, there are currently no other known large asteroids with an impact probability above 1%, according to NASA. The space agency tends to take these matters quite seriously, which is why it plans to collect additional observations of the space rock using the Webb telescope in March to refine the current estimates, NASA revealed in a recent update.

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile discovered the asteroid on December 27, 2024. Shortly after its discovery, the impact probability of the asteroid was set to 1.3%. However, additional observations increased the asteroid’s chances of crashing into Earth to 2.3% as of yesterday, before dropping slightly to 2.1% this morning. These odds are preliminary, and more observations of the asteroid are desperately needed….

(14) ASK ANY VEGETABLE. Boing Boing isn’t convinced. “Fancy science journal caught publishing nonsense term ‘vegetative electron microscopy,’ doubles down”.

A completely made-up scientific term is making the rounds in academic journals, and instead of being “oops!” one major publisher is basically saying “this is fine!”

As reported in Retraction Watch, A sharp-eyed Russian chemist (going by the extremely cool pseudonym “Paralabrax clathratus”) spotted the weird phrase “vegetative electron microscopy,” which makes about as much sense as “photosynthetic hammer” or “reproductive calculator.” The term has somehow snuck into nearly two dozen published papers, including one whose senior author is an editor at prestigious publisher Elsevier.

When called out on this obvious nonsense, Elsevier basically said “No no, it’s fine! It’s just a shorter way of saying ‘electron microscopy of vegetative structures'” which is like saying “vegetative car” is a dandy way to describe “a car that drives past vegetables.”…

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

Pixel Scroll 9/13/24 A Pixel For Ecclesiastes

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(1) A SCOOP ABOUT PINSKER. Maryland ice cream chain The Charmery has created a flavor in honor of Sarah Pinsker’s book Haunt Sweet Home. Pinsker gives this description:

The apple brandy is a smoked apple brandy, and the book features an orchard and an apple tree specifically and also a smoke machine. The toffee bits are for fun and because it’s fall and it turns out into a deconstructed caramel apple.

(2) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. The 2024 longlists in the Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry categories have been released. (We covered the Translated Literature and Young Adult categories the other day.) The complete lists are at Publishers Weekly: “2024 National Book Award Longlists Announced”. These are the works of genre interest:

FICTION

  • Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda (Norton)
  • James by Percival Everett (Doubleday)

NONFICTION

  • Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle (Random House)
  • Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
  • Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Tiny Reparations Books)

(3) A TOURNAMENT IN CRIME. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Who says we’re not living in a cyberpunk dystopia? This is gruesome… and real. “The Dark Nexus Between Harm Groups and ‘The Com’” at Krebs on Security. Brian Krebs is one of, if not the, premier computer security journalist in the US. This introduction is followed by discussion of numerous criminal investigations.

A cyberattack that shut down two of the top casinos in Las Vegas last year quickly became one of the most riveting security stories of 2023. It was the first known case of native English-speaking hackers in the United States and Britain teaming up with ransomware gangs based in Russia. But that made-for-Hollywood narrative has eclipsed a far more hideous trend: Many of these young, Western cybercriminals are also members of fast-growing online groups that exist solely to bully, stalk, harass and extort vulnerable teens into physically harming themselves and others….

… Collectively, this archipelago of crime-focused chat communities is known as “The Com,” and it functions as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network that facilitates instant collaboration.

But mostly, The Com is a place where cybercriminals go to boast about their exploits and standing within the community, or to knock others down a peg or two. Top Com members are constantly sniping over who pulled off the most impressive heists, or who has accumulated the biggest pile of stolen virtual currencies.

And as often as they extort victim companies for financial gain, members of The Com are trying to wrest stolen money from their cybercriminal rivals — often in ways that spill over into physical violence in the real world….

(4) THE BOOK THAT PROVIDED THE SPARK. The Booker Prizes quizzed “The 2024 longlistees on the book that inspired them to become a writer”.

Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

This is difficult. I’m going to say Waterland by Graham Swift. I think it’s the strength and quality of Swift’s world-building, his gorgeous, layered storytelling flair and the sheer conviction of that novel that made me itch to write. It made me think, not, ‘I could do that’ but ‘I wonder if I could ever do that?’

I haven’t reread it, I don’t dare. But I’ve since read other books by Swift and my admiration’s undented.  

(5) HAWAIIAN AI. [Item by Chris Barkley.] In today’s news: WIRED reports that a local newspaper in Hawaii is now broadcasting news on Insta using AI-generated presenters who can “riff with one another,” in hopes of drawing in new audiences — but audience members are creeped out. Remember the old TV show, Max Headroom? I didn’t have Max Headroom: Nightmare Dystopia Edition on my 2024 bingo card. But, here we are. “An AI Bot Named James Has Taken My Old Job” at WIRED.

It always seemed difficult for the newspaper where I used to work, The Garden Island on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai, to hire reporters. If someone left, it could take months before we hired a replacement, if we ever did.

So, last Thursday, I was happy to see that the paper appeared to have hired two new journalists—even if they seemed a little off. In a spacious studio overlooking a tropical beach, James, a middle-aged Asian man who appears to be unable to blink, and Rose, a younger redhead who struggles to pronounce words like “Hanalei” and “TV,” presented their first news broadcast, over pulsing music that reminds me of the Challengers score. There is something deeply off-putting about their performance: James’ hands can’t stop vibrating. Rose’s mouth doesn’t always line up with the words she’s saying….

James and Rose are, you may have noticed, not human reporters. They are AI avatars crafted by an Israeli company named Caledo, which hopes to bring this tech to hundreds of local newspapers in the coming year.

“Just watching someone read an article is boring,” says Dina Shatner, who cofounded Caledo with her husband Moti in 2023. “But watching people talking about a subject—this is engaging.”

The Caledo platform can analyze several prewritten news articles and turn them into a “live broadcast” featuring conversation between AI hosts like James and Rose, Shatner says. While other companies, like Channel 1 in Los Angeles, have begun using AI avatars to read out prewritten articles, this claims to be the first platform that lets the hosts riff with one another. The idea is that the tech can give small local newsrooms the opportunity to create live broadcasts that they otherwise couldn’t. This can open up embedded advertising opportunities and draw in new customers, especially among younger people who are more likely to watch videos than read articles.

(6) IT STARTED AT LUNCH. The Astounding Analog Companion hosts a brief “Q&A With David Gerrold”.

Analog Editor: What is your history with Analog?
David Gerrold: I have a long personal history with Analog. My first year of high school was at Van Nuys High. The library was a good place to hang out at lunch time and they had a subscription to Astounding. I started working my way through every issue they had. Astounding represented (to me) the high point of science fiction magazines….

(7) EARLIER FLIES. The Guardian signal-boosts that an “Early version of Lord of the Flies with different beginning to go on display” at the University of Exeter this month.

 Lord of the Flies, the story of a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves, is considered to be one of the greatest works of literary history, taught to schoolchildren around the world.

But the novel by Sir William Golding didn’t always begin with the schoolboys crash-landing on the island. Instead, an original version of the manuscript, which was written in a school exercise book with the cover torn off, describes how they had been evacuated out, in the midst of a nuclear war, and their plane shot down in an aerial battle.

The alternative version of the dark societal tale will now go on display to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the book being published.

Golding’s manuscripts, notebooks and letters will also be shown in the exhibition at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Old Library, University of Exeter later this month.

(8) INFORMING THE NEXT GENERATION. You know this. Not everybody does. Steven Heller interviews Mythmaker author John Hendrix in “C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Together Again” at PRINT Magazine.

Most readers know their books and the genre they propagated, which has launched scores of films, podcasts, games and toys. But how many fans knew that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were good friends who spent much of their time together arguing the spiritual pursuits of humankind? John Hendrix, a graphic novelist who is an extraordinary biographer (a novel graphicist), has created a new form of graphic—comic—book, The Mythmakers, in which he uses “a dual biography as an avatar for telling a deeper story about the origins of fairy tales.” Below we talk about his relationship to Lewis, Tolkien and their shared religious beliefs….

You state that, “they longed to make stories like the ones they loved. But their quarry was much more elusive.” What was their quarry? Was it simply “joy”?
The thing that drew Lewis and Tolkien together initially was their love of Norse mythology. But underneath the love of those stories was a longing for something they could not put their finger on. They would say most of us feel it when we read a great story. C.S. Lewis called this longing for longing by the German word “sehnsucht.” Lewis said this: “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” And Tolkien described joy as a feeling that reaches “beyond the walls of our world.” Both of these authors came to believe that stories and fairy tales allow humanity to access truths that are unknowable in any other way….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Kolchak: The Night Stalker series (1974)

Fifty years ago this evening Kolchak: The Night Stalker first aired on ABC. It was preceded by The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler films, both written by Richard Matheson. 

It was based off a novel by Jeff Rice who Mike has some thoughts about here.

It was remade nineteen years ago as The Night Stalker with Stuart Townsend as Carl Kolchak. It lasted ten episodes. It was set in Los Angeles instead of Chicago. Need I say more? 

Let’s talk about Darren McGavin for a moment. He was perfect for this role. Though only fifty-two when the series was shot, he looked a decade older and quite beat up. That suit he wore could have been acquired second hand. Or fourth hand. And that hat — I wonder how many they had in props that were exactly identical. 

The actor himself had certainly had some interesting times with four divorces by then, and this was not his first time portraying a world-weary investigator. He was the title character in the short-lived Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series in the Fifties. It lasted a year.

(Please don’t link to it as the copyright holder keeps deleting it off YouTube so it still in copyright. Copyrights are complicated things, aren’t they?) 

Now Kolchak: The Night Stalker did not break the pattern of having a beautiful woman around as it had Carol Ann Susi as the recurring character of semi-competent but likable intern Monique Marmelstein in a recurring role.

And I really liked the character of his boss, Tony Vincenzo as played by Simon Oakland, who was quite bellicose and had no clue of what Kolchak was doing. Good thing that was, too. 

Ahhh the monsters. Some were SF, sort of — a murderous android, an invisible ET, a prehistoric ape-man grown from thawed cell samples, and a lizard-creature protecting its eggs. Then there were the fantastic ones — Jack the Ripper, a headless motorcycle rider, vampires, werewolves, witches and zombies to name but a few he tangled with. 

It has become a favorite among viewers of fantasy which currently carries a most excellent eighty percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes — but it was a ratings failure complicated by Darren McGavin being unwilling to do more episodes and only lasted one season before being cancelled.  

Chris Carter who credits the series as the primary inspiration for The X-Files wanted McGavin to appear as Kolchak in one or more episodes of that series, but McGavin was unwilling to reprise the character for his show. He did appear on the series as retired FBI agent very obviously attired in Kolchak’s trademark seersucker jacket, black knit tie, and straw hat.

C.J. Henderson, who won a World Fantasy Award for his Sarob Press, wrote three Night Stalker novels — Kolchak and the Lost World, Kolchak: Necronomicon and What Every Coin Has. There have been other novels and shorts published. Three unfilmed scripts for the TV series have survived, “Eve of Terror”, written by Stephen Lord, “The Get of Belial”, written by Donn Mullally, and “The Executioners”, written by Max Hodge.

Let’s see if it’s streaming anywhere… It is available on Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBC of course. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) OBI-WAN ACTOR ON WALK OF FAME. Ewan McGregor’s star was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday. And his castmate Hayden Christensen paid tribute:

…Christensen noted that McGregor, who played Anakin’s mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi, was just “the nicest person” during their initial conversation, telling him all about how excited he was to work with him and to begin their lightsaber training together. 

“He’s just beyond kind to me, and it was immediately apparent to me that I was meeting someone truly special. Not just as an actor, but as a person, and that I was meeting a friend,” Christensen said. He then teased, “A friend who would later go on to chop off both my legs and leave me for dead on the side of a volcano, but I guess I kind of had that coming.”

McGregor burst into laughter and turned toward the crowd after Christensen’s joke, which was a quick nod to Anakin’s fate after his heartbreaking battle against Obi-Wan at the end of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith….

(12) SCULPTOR’S TRIBUTE TO SERLING. WBUR says it will be unveiled this weekend: “Rod Serling, creator and narrator of iconic ‘Twilight Zone,’ honored with hometown statue”.

It’s been 65 years since Rod Serling’s iconic “The Twilight Zone” hit the TV airwaves in 1959. The show, known for its eerie music, aliens, lugubrious tone and 1950s-style special effects, aired for only 6 years. But its impact and life in re-runs created generations of fans who also find meaning in the themes it tackled: racism, corporate greed and man’s inhumanity.

Serling, who famously said, “Everybody has to have a hometown, and mine’s Binghamton,” has been honored annually at SerlingFest in Binghamton, New York. This year’s event, which begins Friday, will conclude with the unveiling of a six-foot-tall bronze statue of Serling at Recreation Park, a short walk from his childhood home…

A photo-illustrated article about creating the statue is here: “Rod Serling Statue Progress Report – Rod Serling Memorial Foundation”. This is an artist’s conception of how it will look.

(13) THE TELLTALE TEETH. “Cave discovery in France may explain why Neanderthals disappeared, scientists say” – Yahoo! has the story.

When archaeologist Ludovic Slimak unearthed five teeth in a rock shelter in France’s Rhône Valley in 2015, it was immediately obvious that they belonged to a Neanderthal, the first intact remains of the ancient species to be discovered in that country since 1979.

However, the once-in-a-lifetime find, nicknamed Thorin after a character in “The Hobbit,” remained a well-kept secret for almost a decade while Slimak and his colleagues untangled the significance of the find — a fraught undertaking that pitted experts in ancient DNA against archaeologists.

“We faced a major issue,” said Slimak, a researcher at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. “The genetics was sure the Neanderthal we called Thorin was 105,000 years old. But we knew by (the specimen’s) archaeological context that it was somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 years old.”

“What the DNA was suggesting was not in accordance with what we saw,” he added.

It took the team almost 10 years to piece together the story of the puzzling Neanderthal, adding a new chapter in the long-standing mystery of why these humans disappeared around 40,000 years ago.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Cell Genomics, found that Thorin belonged to a lineage or group of Neanderthals that had been isolated from other groups for some 50,000 years. This genetic isolation was the reason Thorin’s DNA seemed to come from an earlier time period than it actually did.

(14) AUTHENTIC? Archie McPhee is offering Possum Flavored Candy, prompting Andrew Porter to wonder, “What DOES possum taste like?!?” He’s a city boy, you know.

Not only does this candy have an adorable possum on the tin, but it also has the flavor of possum! Great for roadkill aficionados or people who are possum-curious. Just leave a tin in the lunchroom of your office and let the fun begin.

(15) ZACK SNYDER EPIC. Animation Magazine tells readers “Love Is a Battlefield in New ‘Twilight of the Gods’ Trailer”.

Netflix today debuted the official trailer and key art for Zack Snyder’s animated Norse mythology epic Twilight of the Gods. The new preview gives us a glimpse at the blood-soaked meet-cute between Sigrid and Leif, their disastrous wedding and Sigrid’s quest for revenge against the gods who took away her family.

The eight-episode series premieres September 19. The same day, creator/executive producer/director Zack Snyder will appear at the first-ever Geeked Week LIVE show in Atlanta. (Details here.)

(16) TUNES IN ORBIT. Polaris Dawn astronaut Sarah Gillis, a violinist, released a new music video from space this morning, accompanied by a round-the-world orchestra: Rey’s Theme by John Williams.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Michael J. Walsh, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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 Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 9/7/24 You Are Like A Pixel Scroll, There’s Files In Your Skies

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(1) SANS CLUE. Cora Buhlert declares, “The Guardian is Clueless about Masters of the Universe”.

…That said, the casting of Alison Brie has attracted more mainstream attraction than the casting of Galitzine and Mendes, probably because Brie is better known. And so Ben Child, who has a weekly geek media column in The Guardian, penned a spectacularly clueless article about the proposed live action Masters of the Universe movie.

Even the headline is terrible: “Can Travis Knight’s He-Man movie do for boys what Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did for girls?”

Yes, we all know how fiercely gendered the toy industry is, but must we really perpetuate those shitty stereotypes, especially when we know they’re wrong? Because in the 1980s, Mattel found to their own surprise that forty percent of all Masters of the Universe toys were sold to girls, which is what prompted the introduction of She-Ra. The 1980s Filmation cartoon was eagerly watched by both boys and girls and though Masters of the Universe fandom skews male, there are plenty of female fans, me among them. This isn’t surprising either, because Masters of the Universe has always featured plenty of impressive female characters such as Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress, Queen Marlena and of course, She-Ra and her entire supporting cast. Finally, there are plenty of male Barbie collectors as well….

… The main problem with the article is that Ben Child seems unable to view Masters of the Universe as anything other than a joke…

(2) FORMER BOARD MEMBER, NOW 404 ERROR. Sarah Gailey, who was on the NaNoWriMo “writers board” is no longer, as explained in “Some Thoughts on NaNoWriMo”.

…It’s reasonable for people to have reacted badly; the “statement” they released was very silly. To say “we will not take one of two positions, but we will say that one of those positions is classist and ableist” is not the deft rhetorical maneuver that NaNoWriMo seems to think it is. The arguments themselves around this so-called classism and ableism wave off the actual existence of writing communities, critique groups, beta readers, and critique partners; they also ignore the creative realities of the impoverished and disabled artists, marginalized authors, and indie authors who have been working all this time without the help of language learning model software that was trained on work stolen from their peers and colleagues. …

And this is the statement Gailey sent to Kilby Blades, Interim Executive Director of NaNoWriMo:

And Gailey said:

… I haven’t heard anything back. As of the time I’m writing this, the urls for the staff page and the Writers’ Board page are returning 404 errors. So does the url for my pep talk. …

(3) GOOD OMENS THIRD SEASON STILL HAPPENING. “’Good Omens’ season three on track at Amazon despite Neil Gaiman allegations” reports Screen Daily.

The third season of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens is understood to be going ahead as planned at Amazon Prime Video, even though Disney has paused a feature adaptation of Gaiman’s novel, The Graveyard Book, following allegations of sexual assault against the UK author and screenwriter….

Amazon officially greenlit the third season of fantasy drama Good Omens in December 2023. Screen understands plans have not changed for the third season starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant to start filming in early 2025 in Scotland. Gaiman is executive producer, writer and showrunner of the series that is based on a book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett.

Gaiman is also executive producer and a screenwriter on Anansi Boys, a Prime Video series based on Gaiman’s novel of the same name. While production wrapped on the series last year, no official release date has been set. Screen understands there are no plans to not stream the series….  

(4) CRIME ACTUALLY DOES PAY. For seven years! “FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist” – Ars Technica tells how the scheme worked.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged a North Carolina musician with defrauding streaming services of $10 million through an elaborate scheme involving AI, as reported by The New York Times. Michael Smith, 52, allegedly used AI to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by nonexistent bands, then streamed them using bots to collect royalties from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

While the AI-generated element of this story is novel, Smith allegedly broke the law by setting up an elaborate fake listener scheme. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced the charges, which include wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge.

Smith’s scheme, which prosecutors say ran for seven years, involved creating thousands of fake streaming accounts using purchased email addresses. He developed software to play his AI-generated music on repeat from various computers, mimicking individual listeners from different locations. In an industry where success is measured by digital listens, Smith’s fabricated catalog reportedly managed to rack up billions of streams.

To avoid detection, Smith spread his streaming activity across numerous fake songs, never playing a single track too many times. He also generated unique names for the AI-created artists and songs, trying to blend in with the quirky names of legitimate musical acts. Smith used artist names like “Callous Post” and “Calorie Screams,” while their songs included titles such as “Zygotic Washstands” and “Zymotechnical.”

…The district attorney announcement did not specify precisely what method Smith used to generate the songs….

(5) BULGACON. Начална страница (bulgacon.org) – Bulgacon, the Bulgarian national convention – takes place September 21-23 with Ian McDonald and Farah Mendlesohn as guests of honor. Dr. Valentin D. Ivanov reports, “Many panels will be in English and the committee is considering opening the online panels to everybody.”

(6) LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF: NARNIA AND MURDERBOT. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Question 1 on day 9 of the current regular LearnedLeague season asked us:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Magician’s Nephew are all books set in what mythical realm?

(I’ve spoiled the answer in my header, but I daresay very few Filers would have had any trouble with it.) This had a get rate of 89%, with no single wrong answer getting to 5% of the submissions.

In the most recent off-season there was a One-Day Special about File 770’s favorite rogue death machine: follow this link to see Murderbot for Everyone. As the title suggests, the questions try to include general-knowledge paths to the answers as well as knowledge of the books themselves. I actually didn’t do all that well on it: 9 right out of 12, and only 63rd percentile in the scoring. Filers may enjoy seeing if they could have done better.

(7) FLASH SF NIGHT. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents “Flash Science Fiction Night” online on Monday September 9 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register to attend for free here.

This is the last Flash Science Fiction Night of the season! Join us online for an evening of short science fiction readings (1000 words or less) with authors Jenna Hanchey, Eric Fomley, and Marie Vibbert. Flash Science Fiction Nights run 30 minutes or less, and are a fun and great way to learn about new authors from around the world.

(8) SFWA TOWN HALL COMING. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Board will conduct the organization’s first SFWA Town Hall for members on September 10, 2024.

This event is part of the ongoing effort to foster communication with the membership, talk about what the organization is current doing and planning, and to take an opportunity to listen.

By working together, the board can address concerns and begin writing the next chapters in the history of SFWA.

(9) TRIBUTE TO BROTHER. Inverse remembers, “40 Years Ago, a Cult Classic Sci-Fi Movie Beat John Carpenter to the Punch”.

…Compared to the bloated multiverse era where “less is more” is an alien concept, 1984 cult favorite The Brother from Another Planet seems like it’s been beamed in from an entirely different celestial body. Its $350,000 budget — a small sum even for the time — would be lucky to cover 30 seconds of a Marvel flick. Its special effects are limited to a few glowing lights and a deformed toe. And far from delivering any grandstanding speeches, its superhero is entirely mute.

The titular Brother, who’s not even given the luxury of a name, is an extra-terrestrial whose powers are far more intuitive (he can hear voices from the past by touching his surroundings) than communicative. But thanks to a nuanced performance from future Emmy winner Joe Morton, he still manages to convey the emotional complexities of the immigrant experience (just to make it clear the film is allegorical, his primitive spaceship crashlands on Ellis Island)….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Land of the Lost series (1974)

By Paul Weimer. “Marshall, Will and Holly, on a routine expedition…”

Before Buck Rogers, or Battlestar Galactica, or reruns of TOS Star Trek, the first genre shows I can recall watching, in the misty lands of the 1970’s, were reruns of the Sid and Marty Krofft TV shows, including and most especially, Land of the Lost. 

What was not to love in those days? The Marshall family trapped in another world. Dinosaurs! Lizardmen! Weird alien technology crystals? I watched the show avidly, until it fell away from TV screens, and other tv series took their place in my mind in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  And I mostly didn’t think about Land of the Lost for two decades.

Until Bubble Boy.

Bubble Boy was a 2001 film, and I can’t really counsel you to seek it out and watch it. It has a young Jake Gyllenhaal playing the titular immunocompromised character who goes on adventures despite being in a bubble. But he is as sheltered emotionally and otherwise as he is physically, having not been allowed to even watch much TV.  One of the shows he has been able to watch was, in fact, Land of the Lost…and very early in the movie, the titular character does a “punk rock version” of the theme song.  It brought me back immediately to my young watching of the show.  That song really is an earworm.

Later on, a few years later, I met a friend who was obsessed with the show, and insisted I watch it again. So, with the suck fairy an idea that had not formulated in popular culture, but was in my mind, I decided to rent it on Netflix DVDs and rewatch it. I was nervous it was more going to be than wasted time, that my fond distant memories of the show would burst like a bubble.

Yes the show is cheesy, the special effects not so much, and it is a kids tv show…but I was surprised at how much I liked the show for what it was. 

Watching the entire arc from start to finish, I saw the creative seeds of genius in the show (and also saw at least one episode I had missed back in the day. Crucially, an episode written by Larry Niven (!) where the Marshalls try to paddle out of the Land of the Lost, run into a Confederate Gold miner and discover they are, in fact, in an enclosed pocket universe. Combine that with the crystal powered pylons that allow time and space travel, a time loop episode and more, the strong SF roots of the show came to mind. 

And then there is Enik. Poor, poor Enik, the intelligent Sleestak..who thought he had traveled into the past to see the barbaric ancestors of his high-tech civilization. And the soul crushing realization he gets when he realizes that he has in fact traveled far to the future, and his high-tech civilization is doomed to fall to barbarism. Heady stuff for a kids TV show, eh?

Land of the Lost crops up again, visually and otherwise in fantasy novels and tv series. In the novel Paragaea, for instance, the main character, trapped on another planet, stumbles onto a jungle temple ruin, complete with Sleestaks, described exactly in terms of the tv series. 

But the remake movie with Will Farrell? Skip it. Just skip it. I’ve never seen the reboot series, either (that is apparently currently on Apple TV).

“When I look all around, I can’t believe the things I found…”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) CAMPY CRANIUM. “New horror musical arrives in Ypsilanti just in time for Halloween” – The Eastern Echo has details.

Getting antsy for the spooky season? Kick off those calendars with the premiere of “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!”, a new musical written by Ypsilanti-area vocalist and stage director Carla Margolis.

Inspired by the 1960s cult classic of the same name, the musical is a reimagining that takes audiences through the infamous, campy storyline with an all-new original soundtrack. When a brilliant yet, reckless scientist’s fiancé is decapitated in a car accident, he uses a magical serum to keep her head alive. The head, while completely immobile, keeps its ability to sing and talk.

Fans of the movie can expect a more serious look at the same themes found in the original. 

“It focuses on bodily autonomy for women; now that it’s more perilous than ever, I don’t really address it specifically, but there was definitely an inspiration. There’s a lot of misogyny baked into this story,” Margolis said. 

Margolis’ unique take is rooted in a time period when feminist themes were less accepted in media, and that elevates the script to new levels, they said….

(13) ALL ABOARD FOR ALL ALONG. “How Marvel expands ‘WandaVision’ corner of MCU with ‘Agatha All Along,’ ‘Vision Quest’” – Entertainment Weekly interviews a Marvel TV exec and a showrunner.

…These two shows will broaden what Schaeffer refers to as “the WandaVision corner” of the MCU, and Winderbaum says Agatha All Along, titled after Hahn’s chart-topping song of the same name as performed in that first series, “really led the charge.”

The premise kicks off when a mysterious goth teen who’s obsessed with witchcraft (Joe Locke) helps Agatha break free of Wanda’s spell, only now she’s completely left without her powers. This “Teen,” who’s been hexed by…someone so that he can never share his name or any identifying information with other witches, plants the idea of traversing the Witches’ Road, a mystical realm that faces wanderers with deadly trials. If conquered, Agatha could regain all her magic once more. She just needs a coven to pull it off. Enter Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal, Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu, Sasheer Zamata’s Jennifer Kale, and Ali Ahn’s Alice Wu-Gulliver….

(14) SAIL SIGHTED. “NASA spacecraft captures 1st photo of its giant solar sail while tumbling in space” – Space has the story.

On April 23, NASA launched a solar sail protype to orbit around our planet — a piece of technology that could very well revolutionize the way we think about spacecraft propulsion. Then, on Aug. 29, the agency confirmed this sail successfully unfurled itself in outer space. Yet, we still didn’t have official photographic evidence of this for some time. 

Now, as of Sept. 5, we indeed do. NASA has released the first image of the open solar sail, formally called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and stated that the spacecraft from which the sail was released will continue to send back more footage and data as time goes on….

… As NASA says in the statement, it’s important to first remember there are four wide-angle cameras in the center of the spacecraft anchoring the sail. 

Near the bottom of the image, one camera view shows the “reflective sail quadrants supported by composite booms” while at the top of the photo, we can see the back surface of one of the craft’s solar panels. Most spacecraft are lined with solar panels because that’s how they power themselves up: with sunlight.

“The five sets of markings on the booms close to the spacecraft are reference markers to indicate full extension of the sail,” the statement says. “The booms are mounted at right angles, and the solar panel is rectangular, but appear distorted because of the wide-angle camera field of view.”…

(15) WHIP IT. Gizmodo says “Bear McCreary Wants to Bring an Obscure Lord of the Rings Song to Rings of Power”.

The soundtrack for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel has afforded composer Bear McCreary a canvas as vast as Middle-earth to play with: Howard Shore-ish riffs, unique orchestral pieces, and increasingly in season two, lots of song work. We already know the lumbering hill-troll Damrod is getting his own heavy metal infused piece this season, and this week, McCreary weaved one of Tolkien’s own poems into a beautiful song to welcome Tom Bombadil to the show. But the composer has a much more obscure, and much more intriguing ditty from the franchise’s adaptive past he wants to make a nod to.

That song? “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way” from the Rankin Bass adaptation of Return of the King. “I’m looking. I’m looking for the moment,” McCreary said in a recent Instagram live chat of his desire to bring the song to Rings of Power (via /Film). “It hasn’t happened yet but I would love to make that happen.”

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, David Goldfarb, Paul Weimer, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ken Richards.]

Pixel Scroll 7/31/24 There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Ugly Chickens

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(1) GLASGOW 2024 PROGRAMME. The Glasgow 2024 Programme is live. Explore the full programme from the Worldcon website via ConClár at “Glasgow 2024 Programme Guide”. Users can search participant names, and individual program items.

They remind members, “Live streams and recorded streams of much of the programme will also be available on our online platform, so if you aren’t able to attend something you can always go back and rewatch at your leisure.”

(2) SILVERMAN, TREMBLAY AND COATES LOSE MOMENTUM IN SUIT AGAINST OPENAI. The judge has tossed another claim in a suit about AI copyright violation brought by celebrities in a state court due to a Federal law preempting it. “Sarah Silverman Lawsuit Against OpenAI Suffers Setback As Judge Trims Case” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Top authors suing OpenAI over the use of their novels to train its artificial intelligence chatbot have hit a stumbling block, with a federal judge narrowing the scope of their case.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Tuesday evening dismissed a claim accusing the Sam Altman-led firm of unfair business practices by utilizing the works of authors — including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay and Ta-Nehisi Coates — without consent or compensation to power its AI system.

The writers’ primary claim for direct copyright infringement was left untouched.

In February, the court dismissed other claims for negligence, unjust enrichment and vicarious copyright infringement. It denied dismissal of the unfair competition law claim, but lawyers for the authors tweaked it after lawsuits from Silverman, Tremblay and Michael Chabon — all of whom originally brought their own class actions — were grouped together. OpenAI seized upon the changes for a second try at dismissal, which was challenged by the plaintiffs.

In the order, Martínez-Olguín not only found that the company is allowed to move to dismiss the claim but that the Copyright Act bars it. She said that the law “expressly preempts state law claims” relating to works “within the subject matter of copyright.”

The authors argued that the unfair business practice at issue was using their works to train ChatGPT without permission. But since the allegedly infringed materials are copyrighted books and plays, they cannot bring a state law claim, which the court concluded should be under the purview of copyright law….

(3) UKRAINE’S READERS. The Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board says “Book reading, from the war trenches to the bedrooms of children, has helped Ukrainians assert their cultural independence and mental toughness.” “Ukraine’s freedom, book by book”.

…Fighting a war for their survival has turned many Ukrainians into avid book readers, eager to find solace, freedom, wisdom, or, perhaps, empathy. They are aware of Russian forces trying to wipe out Ukrainian culture by, for example, destroying more than a hundred libraries.

In May, the country’s largest printing house, Factor Druk, was badly damaged by Russian missiles. Donors quickly pledged to restore the book publisher. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likened the attack to events in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” the temperature at which book paper ignites. Since the invasion, more than one hundred books have been printed for children to help them cope with the war’s trauma. The number of bookstores has expanded significantly. From May 30 to June 2, the country’s annual book festival in Kyiv drew 35,000 visitors, up from 28,000 last year…

(4) SUCCESSFUL HUMAN TRAFFICKING STING AT COMIC-CON. “Comic-Con Human Trafficking Operation: 14 People Arrested” – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

Fourteen people were arrested and 10 victims were recovered in a human trafficking sting during Comic-Con over the weekend, authorities said.

The operation to recover victims of sex trafficking and target sex buyers using the San Diego convention was initiated from July 25-27, according to the California Department of Justice’s San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force.

“Unfortunately, sex traffickers capitalize on large-scale events such as Comic-Con to exploit their victims for profit,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta shared in a statement. “These arrests send a clear message to potential offenders that their criminal behavior will not be tolerated. We are grateful to all our dedicated partners involved in the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force, whose collaboration has been invaluable. We take great pride in our office’s commitment to uplifting vulnerable Californians by offering them assistance and guidance when they need it most.”

… Officials said after the nine adult potential victims and a 16-year-old juvenile were recovered, adult and juvenile support service advocates were there to provide support as needed….

(5) OF WHAT NATURE? Orion Magazine bids us “Return to Area X” with Helen Macdonald’s introduction to Acceptance: A Novel by Jeff Vandermeer.

…I came to Acceptance in a kind of hermeneutic fever, burning with questions and desperately wanting answers on the true nature of Area X, even though I knew the categories question and answer were ones Area X would laugh at. The novel opens with a scene from Annihilation: the death of the psychologist on the twelfth expedition (we learn she is the Southern Reach’s director). This time we are given the scene from her point of view, and Acceptance takes us forward in this way, switching between multiple timelines and revisiting characters we already met but only partially knew—Gloria, the psychologist/director, whose girlhood on that coastline has abiding relevance for her actions in the story; John Rodriguez, aka “Control,” a word whose multiple meanings—the exercise of power, an experimental necessity, and an institutional role—are bound up in his fate; Saul, the lighthouse keeper and former preacher, whose story is a tender and terrible tragedy; Ghost Bird, the biologist’s double, a person made by Area X and whose relationship to it is thus both complicated and transformative—and a whole panoply of other characters, some new, all made anew, rebuilt and recast. As I read, my questions about Area X became less insistent; what I wanted was to follow this cast of characters to better understand their various compasses and motivations: what pulled at them, what pushed them, what brought them to each other, and which beacons drew them, willingly or unwillingly, on their journeys, for Acceptance is, of course, a book of journeys both metaphysical and physical…

(6) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Christopher Rowe and James Chambers on Wednesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

CHRISTOPHER ROWE

Christopher Rowe was born in Kentucky and lives there still. Neither of these facts are likely to change. He has been a professional writer of speculative fiction since before the turn of the millennium. His stories and books have been reprinted and translated around the world, and have been finalists for every major award in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Theodore Sturgeon awards. He is the author of one of the most well-regarded collections of recent years, Telling the Map (Small Beer Press), and of two critically acclaimed novellas, These Prisoning Hills and The Navigating Fox (Tordotcom Publishing). He likes golden retrievers, good food, and giant robots. He probably watches more professional bicycle races than you do, but who knows?

JAMES CHAMBERS

James Chambers is a Bram Stoker Award and Scribe Award-winning author. He is the author of A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road; the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, the novellas, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God and Three Chords of Chaos, and the original graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and A New York State of Fright as well as Where the Silent Ones Watch, forthcoming from Hippocampus Press.

(7) PRESENT AT THE CREATION: SFWA. Michael Capobianco is putting together an organizational history. Here’s the first installment: “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 1)”.

On January 15, 1965, Damon Knight, a well-known author, critic, and co-founder of the Milford Conference writer’s workshop, sent an announcement by US Mail to every professional science fiction writer he could locate, asking for $3 from anyone who wanted more of the same. Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was born.

It was not the first attempt to create an organization of American professional science fiction authors, and there were genre writer precursors. In the 1930s, The American Fiction Guild was formed to help pulp writers with their business concerns; it’s mainly remembered now because L. Ron Hubbard was president of its NY chapter. Mystery Writers of America, arguably a model for some aspects of SFWA, had been established in 1945. MWA’s membership policy was not one of those aspects, however.

Writing in the 10th-anniversary issue of the SFWA Bulletin, SFWA’s primary publication through most of its existence, Knight talks about attending a meeting of the MWA and realizing that most of the attendees were not writers: “I knew that about 70 percent of that audience was composed of hangers-on, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. And I made up my mind that if I ever did start SFWA, it would not be like that.”…

(8) SENDS GREETINGS. [Item by Krystal Rains.] Dr. Gregory Benford had a couple appointments yesterday and thought to send a photo to share, so folks knew he was doing well.

(9) YSANNE CHURCHMAN (1925-2024). English actress Ysanne Churchman died July 4 at the age of 99. The Guardian obituary recalls:  

Alongside many small character roles on television, Churchman voiced Sara Brown in the puppet series Sara and Hoppity (1962) and Soo the computer in The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980), a time-travelling Play for Today, and its sequel, Another Flip for Dominick (1982).

In Doctor Who, she mustered a squeaky falsetto voice as Alpha Centauri, a diplomat from the hermaphrodite hexapod species featured in the stories The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974), with Stuart Fell wearing the costume. She returned to voice the part again in the 2017 adventure Empress of Mars.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

July 31, 1950 – Steve Miller. (Died 2024.)

By Lis Carey: Steve Miller was one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, who created the thoroughly satisfying and fun Liaden Universe® series.

Steve was an active member of fandom, along with being a writer. Some of his notable fan activities included being Director of Information of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and serving as Vice Chair of the bid committee to hold the 38th World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore. (They lost to Boston.)

Meanwhile, Steve was working on his writing skills. He attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1973, wrote for fanzines and sold stories to semi-professional markets. He made his first professional sale, a short story called “Charioteer,” to Amazing Stories, for the May 1978 issue.

Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. Photo at Legacy.com

Steve and another science fiction writer just at the beginning of her career, Sharon Lee, married in 1980. Sharon has mentioned that they started collaborating very early, and the big thing that came out of that was the Liaden Universe®. Loosely speaking, it’s space opera, but individual novels and recurring themes include political intrigue, adventure, coming of age, first contact, and romance. The current count of Liaden novels stands at 26, and there are also dozens of short works in the series, many of which have been gathered together, for your convenience, in the Liaden Constellation collections, of which there are now five.

Steve himself was a lively, fun, friendly guy, and the Liaden stories are lively and fun, too. He and Sharon were regulars at Boskone for quite a few years, and very welcome. Sadly, Steve died at home on February 20, 2024, at home in Waterville, Maine.

Sharon Lee is working on the next Liaden book. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) GET READY FOR DC CASH. The U.S. Treasury tells comics fans about “A New Coin & Medal Series Coming In 2025”. The webpage includes a survey asking the public to score which superheroes they want to show them the money.

We’ve joined forces with DC—celebrating comic book art as a uniquely American artform. This new series promises to surprise and delight comic aficionados and coin collectors alike!

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman launch the series in 2025, but who will join them?

This is where we need YOU! Help us choose six more DC Super Heroes—three each for 2026 and 2027.

Take the super quick survey below and vote for the DC Super Hero you want included in this epic collection!

Your Hero, Your Choice!

The press release tells how many coins will be in the series: “Mint Collaboration with Warner Bros, DC Super Heroes”.

…The new series will feature nine iconic superheroes depicted on 24-karat gold coins, .999 fine silver medals, and non-precious metal (clad) medals. Debuting in summer 2025 with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the three-year series will include six additional DC characters—three each in 2026 and 2027.

Beginning on July 10 and continuing through August 11, 2024, the Mint invites the public to vote for the DC Super Heroes they would like to see included in this series. Public participation ensures that this multi-year series represents the most beloved of DC’s Super Heroes. The public may vote in this survey by visiting: www.usmint.gov/dc.

(13) GOING BOLDLY LOWER. Animation Magazine returns from Comic-Con to tell how “’Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Boldly Goes on with IDW Comics”.

While the show will be embarking on its fifth and final animated series mission this fall, the misadventures of the U.S.S. Cerritos B-crew will continue in a new Star Trek: Lower Decks comic book! Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, IDW Publishing has unveiled a first look at the ongoing series inspired by the hit Paramount+ adult animated comedy.

Writer Ryan North and artist Derek Charm, the Eisner-nominated duo behind Star Trek: Day of Blood – Shaxs’ Best Day, reunite to kick-off this next chapter of Starfleet history, featuring the lovably flawed characters from the show.

… “Just when you thought we couldn’t go lower… we’re back with the first ever ongoing Lower Decks series,” said IDW Group Editor Heather Antos….

(14) ALIEN STAR WILL PERFORM SHAKESPEARE. “Sigourney Weaver Sets West End Debut As Prospero In Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’” reports Deadline.

Sigourney Weaver will make her West End stage debut as storm-creating sorcerer Prospero in The Tempest and Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will play sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing when director Jamie Lloyd returns Shakespeare early this winter to the historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a landmark venue in Covent Garden owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Weaver, star of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies and James Cameron’s Avatar epics, last starred in one of Will’s plays when she played Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice. 

(15) SQUID GAME DROPS ON BOXING DAY. “’Squid Game’ Season 2 Sets Premiere Date, Series to End With Season 3” – Variety has details.

“Squid Game” Season 2 finally has a premiere date at Netflix, with the streamer also announcing that the hit Korean drama has been renewed for a third and final season.

Season 2 will drop on Dec. 26, while the third season will premiere in 2025. The premiere date and final season announcement were made via a video, which can be viewed below.

In addition, series creator, director, and executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk posted a letter to fans in which he wrote in part, “I am thrilled to see the seed that was planted in creating a new Squid Game grow and bear fruit through the end of this story.”

… The official description for Season 2 states:

“Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 remains determined to find the people behind the game and put an end to their vicious sport. Using this fortune to fund his search, Gi-hun starts with the most obvious of places: look for the man in a sharp suit playing ddakji in the subway. But when his efforts finally yield results, the path toward taking down the organization proves to be deadlier than he imagined: to end the game, he needs to re-enter it.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George tees up “The Acolyte Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Lis Carey, Steven Paul Leiva, Krystal Rains, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/22/24 Or The Pixel May Learn To Scroll

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(1) HAS DARK REGIONS PRESS REACHED THE END? Dark Regions Press is a small press founded by Joe Morey in 1985, specializing in horror and dark fiction. His son, Chris, is the current owner.

Their business website is down and one of their published authors William Meikel is calling it the “End Of The Line At Dark Regions Press”.

… With them also taking on the Dark Renaissance books when that venture folded, Dark Regions Press ended up as home to a lot of my material – more than fifteen books in total, and I was always happy to see it there, given the tremendous production values that the company put into their products, particularly the hardcovers…

So, from a purely selfish viewpoint, I’ve been mostly happy there.

But over the years there have been many rumblings of discontent, from both authors and customers, and it’s been getting increasingly hard for me to ignore them. I’ve pulled some of my work for them in recent years, and just last month was asking them to release rights back to me on some others… maybe my spidey-senses were tingling just enough to try to tell me something.

And now there’s the current shitshow.

The website is down, the company is up for sale (although my books are still being sold on the online sites), and Chris Morey, the owner, is incommunicado. I’ve seen reports of customers being over $1000 in the hole on preorders, and of people waiting for many years for books that now look like they’ll never arrive. I can’t begin to imagine how much money is owed, given the number of people I see complaining over the past few days. It’s turned into one of the all time great small press publishing clusterfucks.

Right now I’m trying to get in contact with them to find out exactly what’s going on, but I think this is the end of the line for me there whatever happens to them now.

Brian Keene remembers reporting issues with that publisher before:

Bev Vincent on X.com shared this link showing Dark Regions Press announced in April it was for sale: “Profitable online business with 17,000 customers for sale – in business since 1985 — Dark Regions Press”.

Weird House Press shared what they know in a Facebook post on July 20.

It has come to our attention that Dark Regions Press has gone dark and their site has come down with no word to customers. We are aware that DRP owes a lot of books to a lot of customers. While Weird House is a separate entity from Dark Regions, many of you know that Chris at DRP is Joe’s son and that Joe used to own Dark Regions over a decade ago. As such, we feel compelled to make a statement and share what we know.

Some of you may be aware that Joe at Weird House was helping Dark Regions to fulfill some of the books they were behind on, including Transmissions from Punktown and Wolf Hunt 3. Weird House lent some of its resources to Chris to finish these books and fulfill orders. Small press is a tough business however, and we could only afford to help out so much. We had hoped that with the aid we lent to Chris and DRP the company could recover and make good on their commitments to customers. Unfortunately, Dark Regions seems to have needed more help than Weird House could afford to give.

As for what is happening with DRP, we honestly don’t know at the moment. We at Weird House were unaware of Dark Regions taking down their site. We only became aware of this when it was brought to our attention by a reader. Chris at DRP didn’t inform Joe or anyone else at Weird House of his intention to take down the site. At this point, we still don’t know the status of the company.

We wish that there was more we could do, but the truth is, Joe left Dark Regions many years ago. While we sympathize with those impacted by the actions of DRP, Chris and Dark Regions are responsible for their unfulfilled orders. We simply can’t afford to pay for the failings of another business because of a shared last name.

We will continue to share any information as it comes to us. Feel free to reach out to us via email or facebook messenger if you have any questions or concerns.

(2) THE SECOND SHALL BE FIRST. ScreenRant says there are “8 Book Trilogies Where The Second Book Is The Best”.

Book trilogies often suffer from second-book syndrome, with the middle installment feeling like a slow and unnecessary bridge between the opening and conclusion — though there are a few lucky trilogies where the second book is the best. Trilogies tend to struggle when it comes to balancing their stories, and when this happens, the middle typically suffers. This is why so many book trilogies peak with the first installment, though some manage to make a comeback during the finale, even after a lackluster second novel.

Then there are the rare trilogies that successfully navigate their second books, using them to raise the stakes and move the story forward ahead of the final chapter. In some cases, the middle novel is even the best of the series, as endings don’t always stick the landing….

At the top of their list:

1. The Farseer Trilogy By Robin Hobb (1995-1997)

Second Book: Royal Assassin

Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is considered a fantasy classic, and while all three books deserve their reputations, Royal Assassin stands out as the best. The Farseer Trilogy tells the tale of Fitz, and it continues well beyond this series. But this trilogy sets the stage for the rest of the Elderlings books, and it does a compelling job of it. Assassin’s Apprentice is a great start, but the later books surpass it. Again, the first book in any trilogy bears the burden of introducing characters and world-building elements that make it slower and more difficult to get into.

(3) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Crypt Keeper taken from The Mystic Museum this weekend in Burbank, CA.

(4) MEANWHILE, BACK IN SCOTLAND. [Item by Steven French.] No, not that Glasgow festival!! “Glasgow’s independent game festival: an anarchic showcase of Scotland’s thriving virtual world” in the Guardian.

Walking through the doors of this boutique video game festival, you are immediately greeted by a bullet hell shoot-em-up with a painterly twist. In ZOE Begone!, you dodge and unleash attacks at blistering speed before the game erupts into a euphoric shower of pointillist colour, dazzling the eyes and punishing the thumbs. Next to it sits Left Upon Read; at first glance, a dark-fantasy Quake clone, but one that gives you the bizarre task of checking text messages on a smartphone as you slice your way through a dungeon. These are subversive games, taking well-worn design tropes and breaking them in witty, playful ways.

Rule-breaking is a major theme of Glasgow independent game festival, the latest iteration of an event previously known as Southside games festival. It took place last weekend at Civic House, nestled in the shadow of the M8, the concrete eyesore that carves through Glasgow and connects the city with the wider central belt. On display are more eccentric and smaller-budget games than those you see on shelves, all made by developers who either live within Glasgow or a short train ride away….

(5) GOING FOR THE BIGGEST BANGS. “’We pursued it to the point where we got a solid no’: Harrison Ford and Sandra Bullock Were Far from the Biggest Star Who Flat Out Rejected The Big Bang Theory Request” – Fandomwire has the story.

The Big Bang Theory wasn’t just a ratings juggernaut—it was a casting magnet for big names. But even the biggest magnets have their limits, as the show discovered with a few near misses that would have sent fan theories into overdrive….

…Forget the whispers of Harrison Ford as Professor Proton or Sandra Bullock as a mystery love interest. Big Bang almost landed a true legend: Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey). In an interview with TV Line, creator Chuck Lorre revealed his dream casting for the absentee Howard Wolowitz Sr.—Howard’s mysterious father….

(6) DEBORAH P KOLODJI (1959-2024). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association today announced the passing of its former president, Deborah P Kolodji, on July 21.

Deborah P. Kolodji

She was an integral part to the growth and continuance of the speculative poetry community and the SFPA. A lifelong champion and educator of short form poetry, Debbie was well-respected through many writing communities. Her influence, talent and passion will be missed. She was the creator of the Dwarf Stars Award, and we believe she remains a giant in the cosmos.

She was the inaugural recipient of SFPA President’s Lifetime Service Award in 2023. The citation told about her many career highlights:

[She was] the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group, the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America, and a member of the board of directors for Haiku North America. She has given hundreds of haiku workshops over the past 15 years and recorded two Poetry Pea videos, one on “Exaggerated Perspective” in haiku (which referenced scifaiku) and one on speculative haiku.

She has long been an advocate for speculative haiku and scifaiku, writing several articles for mainstream haiku journals, including one in Terry Ann Carter’s book, Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Literary Forms. She presented a talk on scifaiku at the 2007 Haiku North America in Ottawa as well as being on a haiku panel at the 2007 WorldCon in Montreal. She has given several scifaiku workshops at ConDor as well as participating in a scifaiku slam in San Diego.

The Dwarf Stars Award came out of Kolodji’s advocacy for short form poetry, and she edited several volumes of the Dwarf Stars anthology, including the first one.  As SFPA president, she created Eye to the Telescope with Samantha Henderson, and co-edited the first issue.  The Vice President position was added to the SFPA board under her administration, and the SFPA also held its first poetry contests. 

A native Californian, she has a degree in mathematics from the University of Southern California. With over 1,000 published haiku to her name, her first full-length book of haiku and senryu, highway of sleeping towns, from Shabda Press, was awarded a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award from The Haiku Foundation. Her e-chapbook tug of a black hole won 2nd Place in the Elgin Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Her new book, Distance, was co-authored with Mariko Kitakubo of Tokyo. This book was written in a collaborative form called “Tan-ku,” a conversation in tanka and haiku, where the tanka were written by Mariko and the haiku by Deborah….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

1974 – A Midsummer’s Tempest by Poul Anderson.

By Paul Weimer: Shakespeare, no surprise, is extremely popular and common to reference, allude and outright steal from by science fiction and fantasy authors. And why not? The Bard’s work is immortal, after all, and while most of his work is not genre as we understand it, plenty of it touches upon or outright waltzes into fantasy.  But what if everything that Shakespeare wrote was true, especially the fantastic bits. What if Shakespeare’s work were history, not fantasy and quasi-history?  Faeries, wizards, ghosts and more were all established facts in the world?

That’s the conceit of Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer’s Tempest, fifty years old this year.

The setting is the early 17th century in this alternate world, and we are in the midst of the English Civil War. The Roundheads and the Cavaliers are in deadly contention. Charles the First is on the edge of defeat. Prince Rupert, in our timeline, is one of the most interesting characters of the period with a varied career ranging from Cavalry officer to colonial governor, and cousin to several English Monarchs. In this world and timeline, in the course of the book, he teams up with the ward of his captor (love, true love, friends) and together they go through a whirlwind set of plots involving Titania and Oberon, the books of Prospero, and a lot more in their efforts to try and preserve Charles I as king of England. Chases, escapes, magic, romance and much more.

And if you like cinematic universes and multiverses, this novel is also for you. This novel features The Old Phoenix, an inn that connects to multiple worlds in Anderson’s verse, and Rupert meets characters from other Anderson universes in the process. A decade before Heinlein tried it in Number of the Beast, the appearance of the Old Phoenix in A Midsummer’s Tempest helps knit together a lot of the fantastic verses and worlds of Anderson’s worlds.

Oh, and did I mention the characters speak in blank verse, and sometimes outright poetry, in the bargain, with plenty of allusions to a slew of Shakespeare’s plays in the bargain?

This is one of the lighter, funnier and confectionary of Anderson’s oeuvre. Some of his work can be fraught with doom, dark destiny and a vision of fighting against fate bravely but in vain.  A Midsummer’s
Tempest is the exception that proves the rule. The protagonists win, true love prevails, and the book ends in a proper marriage, Shakespeare style.

About the only other novel that even tries to come close to Anderson’s approach here is John M Ford’s The Dragon Waiting, which is pretty good company for A Midsummer’s Tempest to share.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) SCIENCE FICTION HOMEWORLDS ONE-DAY SPECIAL ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] An SFF-related One-Day Special quiz appeared on LearnedLeague over the past weekend: Science Fiction Homeworlds. I got 8/12, which was good for 95th percentile since some of the ones I knew were relatively obscure to the LL community. (I didn’t do better because it branched out into media and video game franchises that I haven’t followed.)

(10) HE DID “PAY THE WRITER”. “Ryan Reynolds Paid Deadpool Writers From His Own Salary to Be on Set” he told Variety.

Ryan Reynolds recently spoke to The New York Times ahead of the release of “Deadpool and Wolverine” and remembered the humble beginnings of his R-rated superhero franchise. The actor said the first “Deadpool” movie finally got off the ground at 20th Century Fox after he’d already spent a decade trying to get it made. Reynolds even paid out of pocket for his screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be on set because the scrappier production was not that of a normal comic book tentpole.

“No part of me was thinking when ‘Deadpool’ was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”…

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, David Goldfarb, Anne Marble, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]

Pixel Scroll 7/12/24 And It Seems To Me You Lived Your Life Like A Pixel In The Scroll

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(1) ALEC BALDWIN INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER CASE DISMISSED. CNN witnesses the moment when “Judge Throws Out Case Against Alec Baldwin”.

There were stunned faces across the courtroom as Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer abruptly started into her ruling on the motion to dismiss Alec Baldwin’s indictment….

…The judge began with an explanation that dismissing any case requires her to read through a formal and lengthy statement.

At that moment, members of the gallery — the general public, court officers and journalists — began to turn and look at each other in disbelief that a dismissal appeared imminent.

Looks of both shock and elation began to cross the faces of some of Baldwin’s family members and his guests in the audience as the judge detailed line by line why she was throwing out the case.

Baldwin’s sister Beth wiped her eyes with a tissue.

Members of the Baldwin family cried and embraced after the judge finished her order with, “Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted.”

Here are the issues that led to the judge’s decision:

…The judge in the trial of actor Alec Baldwin had halted testimony in the case and sent the jury home for the day before reaching her decision this evening to dismiss the indictment.

Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer had been considering a new motion by the actor’s legal team to have the case thrown out based on allegations of wrongdoing by investigators.

The motion stems from testimony given by a crime scene technician on Thursday about some ammunition delivered to the sheriff’s office after the conviction of “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, which Baldwin’s team claims was not properly disclosed to the defense. 

Several rounds of ammunition were brought to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March after the first trial concluded by retired police officer Troy Teske, a friend of the armorer’s father, crime scene technician Marissa Poppell testified. 

Teske allegedly told investigators he believed the ammunition could be associated with the “Rust” incident, Poppell said. However, the crime scene technician said the items were catalogued separately and were not included in the Rust inventory or tested to see if they matched the lethal round….

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listers to savor a seafood pancake with Ai Jiang in Episode 230 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Ai Jiang

We chatted with the Bram Stoker Awards ceremony a mere two days in the future, where she was nominated in the Long Fiction category for Linghun. And even though as you’ll hear she had doubts she had a chance of winning — she won!

And that’s not the only thing she won following our conversation, for a week later, her I am AI won a Nebula Award. I am AI is also currently on the final ballot for the Hugo Award, where she’s also up for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. But that’s not all when it comes to Ai Jiang and awards. She won an Ignyte Award for her poem “We Smoke Pollution,” received a Nebula Award nomination for her short story ““Give Me English,” was part of the Strange Horizons collective nominated for a semiprozine Hugo Award, and has been nominated for a British SF Association Award and Aurora Award as well.

Her fiction has also appeared in the magazines Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, The Dark, Kaleidotrope, The Deadlands, Planet Scumm, and others, as well as in such anthologies as Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk Tales, Step Into the Light: An Anthology of Daylight Horror, and Mother: Tales of Love and Terror. Her short story collection Smol Tales From Between Worlds was published last year.

We discussed why being nominated for multiple awards may actually have made her Imposter Syndrome worse, what the Odyssey workshop taught her which helped her finish her first novel (and whether that book might be too ambitious a debut), the novels which made her want to be a writer, what makes us power on in the face of rejection, how writing is like competitive badminton, the secret to writing successful flash fiction, the book she was given which turned her from a pessimist into an optimist, what she learned from her “soul-draining” career as a ghostwriter, how an editorial suggestion turned Linghun from flash fiction into a novella, the most daunting aspects of revision, and much more.

(3) WHO, TREK SHOWRUNNER SUMMIT MEETING. “Comic-Con: Star Trek, Doctor Who to Appear at Joint Panel” reports Variety.

In a show of geek unity, the executive producers and showrunners of the “Star Trek” TV universe and the “Doctor Who” Whoniverse — Alex Kurtzman and Russell T Davies, respectively — will appear in a panel together at San Diego Comic-Con. The panel, which will be held on Saturday, July 27 at the largest fan gathering in North America, will kick off celebration of the first “Intergalactic Friendship Day” on July 30, an effort by the two franchises to foster greater connection and fellowship between their fandoms. (The celebration lines up with the International Friendship Day, created in 2011 to bring together people across the planet.)

Under the banner of “Friendship is Universal,” “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who” will headline a gallery experience in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego during Comic-Con, which will feature original costumes and props from both franchises, along with photo opportunities and friendship bracelet giveaways….

(4) SHIELD BEARER. Animation World Network rings the bell as “Marvel Drops ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Teaser Trailer”.

The Cap is back in cinemas… finally! Anthony Mackie returns to “wield the shield” as Captain America in the upcoming superhero adventure from Marvel Studios. The Falcon, played by Mackie in previous MCU films, officially took on the mantle of Captain America in the finale of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which ran on Disney+ in 2021.

In the new film, after meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his MCU debut, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red….

(5) HOBBIT ACTORS GO PUB CRAWLING. “Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan Talk ‘Billy And Dom Eat The World’”.

Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan’s food travelog series Billy and Dom Eat the World gave the pair a chance to renew their Lord of the Rings fellowship with Ian McKellen.

In the first episode of their six-part series from Dash Pictures and new distributor Abacus Media Rights, Boyd and Monaghan, who played Pippin and Merry in Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy, visit Gandalf — sorry, McKellen — at his east London pub The Grapes on the bank of the River Thames.

“It happened we were looking at London pub culture and it just so happens Ian McKellen has a pub,” Boyd told Deadline in an exclusive interview. “He told us why he ended up in that part of London, and what pubs mean to Britain.”…

(6) GET READY TO HEAR A DIFFERENT RING CYCLE. The Lord of the Rings musical will run from July 19-September 1 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Steve H Silver notes that this is a heavily revised version of the Lord of the Rings Musical that premiered in Toronto and London in 2006.

(7) “CAN’T HE SHUT UP?” “Will Ferrell Says James Caan Told Him ‘You’re Not Funny’ on ‘Elf’ Set and Acting ‘Too Over the Top’; Caan Later Called Him ‘Brilliant’ After Seeing the Film” in Variety.

Will Ferrell revealed during an interview on the “Messy” podcast (via IndieWire) that his late “Elf” co-star James Caan was not a fan of his performance as Buddy the Elf until he saw the final cut of the Christmas movie at the film’s premiere. Ferrell said that Caan told him at several points during production that he just wasn’t funny, although Ferrell admitted to driving Caan “crazy” on set while playing the overenthusiastic Buddy.

“James Caan, may he rest in peace, we had such a good time working on that movie,” Ferrell said. “He would tease me. I like to do bits but I’m not like ‘on’ all the time. In between set ups, [Caan] would be like, ‘I don’t get you. You’re not funny.’ And I’m like, ‘I know. I’m not Robin Williams.’ And he was like, ‘People ask me: “Is he funny?” And I’m like, “No, he’s not funny.”‘ It was all with love but at the same time…”

Hear the complete podcast here: “MeSsy with Christina Applegate & Jamie-Lynn Sigler”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 12, 1923 – James E. Gunn. (Died 2020.)

By Paul Weimer:  For me, James E. Gunn’s work falls into two distinct buckets.

Harlan Ellison and James Gunn in 1966. Photo by and copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

The first is his own fiction. When I think of novels like Transformation, or The Listeners, or Gift from the Stars (sadly, my reading of his work is far from complete), I think of his work as old-school High-Minded Science Fiction in the grand tradition.  Characters and sometimes even plot are secondary. But theme and ideas? That’s where Gunn’s work shines. There are a lot of Gunn novels and stories about contact, and often first contact with aliens, and it is the ideas and themes of those novels and story that resonate, and show power, from back at the beginning of his career, all the way to the end. The Big Damn Idea, and often, because this was Gunn, several of them intersecting together. Like in Transformation, which has transcendentalism running head-to-head against planetary sized AIs, in a space opera story that spans a good chunk of the galaxy in the process. That was Gunn’s power chords and he could surely play them.

The other half was his work as an educator, and his meta-science fictional interests. He wrote and anthologized in this mode to lengths and degrees perhaps only the likes of Silverberg or Dozois could match.  Where Gunn resonates for me in this best is his epochal and genre-defining series The Road to Science Fiction. It’s not so modest ambition takes the history and development of the field from Gilgamesh all the way to the present day of their writing. I had started with Volume Three, by pure chance and accident, and it was that volume that, for example, that I discovered authors like Joe Haldeman (yes, even before The Forever War, his story “Tricentennial” amazed me. I devoured that book, and searched far and wide to get volumes 1, and 2, and then later 4 five and 6.  I’ve lost copies over the years, and really need to recollect those volumes (the tangled rights mean that ebooks are never going to happen) so that I can have at a hand the breadth and selections Gunn made, as well as the interstitial and introductory manner that helped me understand *why* he picked those stories.  That legacy, even more than his own work, remains with me still.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SF 101. Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie review the short story finalists for the 2024 Hugo Award in “Hugos Where I Goes” in episode 44 of the Science Fiction 101 podcast.

(11) IT’S NOT IN CLEVELAND. It’s Metropolis, wink wink. “Filming for the new ‘Superman’ movie has been happening in Cleveland” and NPR is looking in.

It’s not a bird or a plane — it’s the “Man of Steel.” Filming is underway in Cleveland for a new Superman movie to be released in the summer of 2025….

… KABIR BHATIA, BYLINE: The Man of Steel was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who met in Cleveland as teenagers at Glenville High School.

BHATIA: Filming for this latest Superman story started at a beach in a nearby state park. That’s where tents, a barracks and old Jeeps were used to create a retro Army base. Then the production moved downtown, to Cleveland’s Public Square. That’s where Will Tabar takes his daily coffee break.

WILL TABAR: Looks like they got Metropolis official park benches here in the middle of Public Square. We also have multiple new bus stops going in, replacing our RTA with the Metropolis MTAs.

BHATIA: It’s Cleveland in disguise as a 1980s version of the city where Superman and his alias, Clark Kent, lives and works….

(12) GEE-WHIZ. “Scientists design spacesuit that can turn urine into drinking water” reports the Guardian.

A sci-fi-inspired spacesuit that recycles urine into drinking water could enable astronauts to perform lengthy spacewalks on upcoming lunar expeditions.

The prototype, modelled on the “stillsuits” in the sci-fi classic Dune, collects urine, purifies it and can return it to the astronaut through a drinking tube within five minutes.

The suit’s creators hope it could be deployed before the end of the decade in Nasa’s Artemis programme, which is focused on learning how to live and work for prolonged periods on another world.

“The design includes a vacuum-based external catheter leading to a combined forward-reverse osmosis unit, providing a continuous supply of potable water with multiple safety mechanisms to ensure astronaut wellbeing,” said Sofia Etlin, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University and co-designer of the suit….

(13) MARGINAL IMPROVEMENTS. “Can artificial intelligence boost creativity? Yes — but at a price” NPR has learned.

…Oliver Hauser, an economist at the University of Exeter in the UK who studies artificial intelligence, wanted to try and answer the basic question of whether AI could increase creativity….

…To try and get some hard data on this squishy question of creativity, Hauser teamed up with Anil Doshi at the University College London School of Management. They recruited nearly 300 people, who Doshi says did not identify as professional writers. “We asked them to write a short, eight-sentence story,” he says.

Around one-third of the writers had to come up with ideas on their own, while others were given starter ideas generated by the chatbot ChatGPT 4.0. Those that got help were divided into two subgroups: one that got a single AI-generated idea, and one that got to choose from up to five.

Crucially, Doshi says, both the human-only and AI-assisted groups had to write the stories themselves….

…The results, published today in the journal Science Advances, found that stories written with AI help were deemed both more novel and useful. Writers who had access to one AI idea did better, but those who had access to five ideas saw the biggest boost — they wrote stories seen as around 8% more novel than humans on their own, and 9% more useful. 

What’s more, Doshi says, the worst writers benefited the most.

“Those that were the least inherently creative, experienced the largest improvement in their creativity,” he says.

So AI really does appear to make people more creative. But there’s a plot twist: When Hauser and Doshi looked at all the stories, they found a different effect.

“Collectively speaking, there was a smaller diversity of novelty in the group that had AI,” Hauser says.

In other words, the chatbot made each individual more creative, but it made the group that had AI help less creative.

Hauser describes the divergent result as a “classic social dilemma” — a situation where people benefit individually, but the group suffers….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mark Roth-Whitworth, John A Arkansawyer, Steven H Silver, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Kaboobie.]

Brendan DuBois Arrested on Child Pornography Charges

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Mystery and sff author Brendan Dubois turned himself in yesterday on an arrest warrant for possession of child sex abuse images reports Seacoastonline, a New Hampshire news site.

DuBois, of Exeter, N.H., was arrested Wednesday on six felony counts of possession of child pornography. Seacoastonline reports:

…DuBois was processed and is being held in preventative detention. He is scheduled to be arraigned on July 11 at the 10th Circuit Court in Brentwood.

[Exeter Police Chief Stephan R.] Poulin said police, working in conjunction with the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, opened the investigation in March into the crime of possession of child sexual abuse materials in the town of Exeter.  A search warrant was later executed, which led to DuBois’ arrest.

The Exeter Police Department was assisted in the case by Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce detectives from the Portsmouth, Dover, Pelham, Epping, Manchester police departments, the NH State Police, and the Massachusetts State Police….

A bestselling mystery writer known for his Lewis Cole novels, DuBois has also partnered with his mentor and “the most published author in the world,” James Patterson, on several books, including The Summer House, Blowback and the recently released Cross Down.

He is also widely known in the sff field where he has published several dozen short stories, one of which, “Resurrection Day”, won the Sidewise Award for alternate history in 2000. He authored a three-book series, The Alien Resistance, published by Baen. And he wrote a guest post on File 770 in 2021 about his appearance on Jeopardy.

Severn River Publishing, which published the Lewis Cole novel Terminal Surf, has removed DuBois’ biography page and other references to the book from its website.

“We are deeply disturbed by the serious allegations against Brendan DuBois,” the company said in a statement published by CBS News. “While we respect the legal process, we have decided to immediately suspend all promotion and sales of Mr. DuBois’ books. We believe these steps are necessary to uphold our values and maintain the trust of our readers, authors, and the publishing community.”

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(1) NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! Annalee Newitz calls Paul Linebarger (aka Cordwainer Smith) “The Sci-Fi Writer Who Invented Conspiracy Theory” in The Atlantic.

…Linebarger, who died of a heart attack in 1966 at age 53, could not have predicted that tropes from his sci-fi stories about mind control and techno-authoritarianism would shape 21st-century American political rhetoric. But the persistence of his ideas is far from accidental, because Linebarger wasn’t just a writer and soldier. He was an anti-communist intelligence operative who helped define U.S. psychological operations, or psyops, during World War II and the Cold War. His essential insight was that the most effective psychological warfare is storytelling. Linebarger saw psyops as an emotionally intense, persuasive form of fiction—and, to him, no genre engaged people’s imagination better than science fiction.

I pored over Linebarger’s personal papers at the Hoover Institution propaganda collection while researching my forthcoming book, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. Boxes of his studies on the politics of China and Southeast Asia are filed alongside his fiction manuscripts and unpublished musings on psychology. Here, I realized, was an origin story for modern conspiracy politics, which blur the line between sci-fi plots and American patriotism—they came from a psywar operative. Put another way, an agent of what some would now call the “deep state” had devised the far-out stories that politicians like Greene use to condemn it. Perhaps, if she and others knew this, they might not be so eager to blame space lasers and vaccine microchips for what ails our nation….

(2) WESTERCON 76 UTAH HOTEL RESERVATIONS OPEN. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] Westercon 76 has updated their hotel/venue web page with their hotel booking information. I published a post on the Westercon.org site about it{ “Westercon 76 Utah Opens Hotel Reservations”.

The short version is “use the link on the convention hotel/venue page” or “use group code WET when booking through Hilton.com.  

(3) MAKING BOOK. These suspects are from the nation, not the U.S. state — “Georgians arrested over cross-Europe thefts of rare library books”. The Guardian tells how the crime was committed.

Police have arrested nine Georgians suspected of running a sophisticated criminal operation stealing valuable antique books – including an original Alexander Pushkin manuscript – from national libraries across Europe.

Shelves of 19th-century Russian-language literature had been ransacked over two years across several countries and replaced with fakes, Europol, the EU police agency, revealed on Thursday.

The University of Warsaw, which was among the targets, last year reported the theft of first editions of works by the influential authors Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol.

Europol said the suspects allegedly sometimes posed as academics to gain access to the books in order to make counterfeits of “outstanding quality”.

While in the reading rooms “they would meticulously measure the books and take photographs before handing them back” – only to return days, weeks or months later to swap them with near perfect copies.

In other cases they “relied on a more crude approach” and simply staked out the collection in national libraries, decided what was of interest and later broke in and stole the books, police said….

(4) MARK D. BRIGHT (1955-2024). Black comics creator Mark D. Bright died March 27. The Comics Journal’s in-depth tribute begins:

Issue #257 of DC’s House of Mystery wasn’t short on talent when it hit the stands in late 1977. Like all issues of that horror anthology, it had its fair share of clunkers, but you couldn’t fault the art team. Joe Orlando (on the cover), Ernie Chan, Michael Golden, Arthur Suydam… and in between these heavy hitters was a three-pager by a newcomer named Mark D. Bright, raised in Montclair, NJ, and not yet a graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He would have other names in credit boxes throughout the years: M.D. Bright, “Doc” Bright, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Bright would go on to a long and storied career, doing well-regarded work for both Marvel and DC throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He was also the co-creator of Icon with Dwayne McDuffie, one of the cornerstones of Milestone Comics, and co-creator of the oddball superhero comedy series Quantum and Woody with frequent collaborator Christopher Priest. Bright passed away on March 27, 2024, leaving the world of comics a much poorer place….

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born April 28, 1948 — Terry Pratchett. (Died 2015.)

By Paul Weimer: It took a second bite at the apple for me to fall for the works of Terry Pratchett.  My first attempt was in the 90’s, when I had vaguely heard about his work, and picked up The Color/Colour of Magic.  I thought it was fine and I also tried the Light Fantastic and Sourcery.  But it really didn’t gel for me. I thought at the time Pratchett was an okay writer, and maybe the humor wasn’t quite what I was looking for in fantasy at the time.  (To be fair, the humor in those early Discworld novels is a lot broader than the later more refined ones). 

Terry Pratchett in 2011.

It took over a decade and my late friend Scott to get me to try Pratchett again.  Scott was passionate about a number of writers. Zelazny, which we had in common. Lois M. Bujold, which we also had in common. Michael Scott Rohan. And Terry Pratchett.  Scott encouraged me and “talked me through” finding where I would best enjoy Pratchett’s oeuvre.  I found an affinity for Pyramids (and the best Mathematician on all of Discworld), but when it came to The Night Watch, I really started understanding the Discworld Project and what it was doing.  From then on, Pratchett was on auto-buy.  Vimes and company remained my favorite, although The Librarian is probably my single favorite minor character, if only for the fantastic idea of L-Space. 

Beyond Discworld, there is also Good Omens of course, and also the Long Earth series. The latter feels a lot more the work of his co-author Stephen Baxter than Pratchett but there are moments, scenes, images where the utter magic of Terry Pratchett’s work and writing and humanism comes through. 

One of my not-in-a-Pratchett bits that involves Pratchett is a bit in the late Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End. In that novel, in its (now a) alternate history, Pratchett went on to write many many more Discworld novels, and became so popular that people would use VR to cosplay as being from the new area of the Discworld these imaginary novels were set (basically an entrepot more along the lines of Alexandria, Egypt).  I could wish, Zelazny style, to walk into that world and bring home copies of those “lost” Pratchett novels. I would love to read them. 

And, sadly I never got to meet him in person. My loss. 

Happy birthday.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

  • Off the Mark agrees that there’s always leftovers.
  • Bizarro takes us inside a reactive museum.

(7) DOUBLE FEATURE. The Flights of Fantasy Film Festival will show The War of The Worlds (1953 — 4K Restoration) and ten of the Best George Pal Oscar-Winning Puppetoons (restored in Technicolor®) at the Historic 1931 Regency Westwood Theater in LA on Wednesday, May 22 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets at the link.

Scheduled to appear are special guests director Joe Dante (Gremlins), Ann Robinson (star of War of the Worlds), and director-producer Arnold Leibovit (The Puppetoon Movie, The Time Machine 2002). These distinguished guests will offer their unique perspectives and insights, sharing behind-the-scenes stories and discussing the lasting impact of George Pal’s work on the world of cinema. Maxwell DeMille (master of ceremonies) is a prominent figure in reviving old Hollywood glamour through vintage-themed events. His commitment to authenticity has made him a leading figure in the vintage entertainment scene, and he also hosts film screenings and lectures on classic Hollywood culture.

(8) PRODUCTS LAUNCH. Gizmodo promises “Lego’s Gorgeous New Space Sets Shoot You Into the Stars”.

…This morning Lego revealed two more entries in its 2024 campaign to bring the ethos of its classic space sets across its various lines: for Lego Art, there’s a beautiful, buildable recreation of the Milky Way, containing 3,091 pieces for you to build into a technicolor spiral galaxy and hang on your wall. For those looking for something a little less macro-scaled, but still high on detail, the new 3,601-piece Artemis Launch System, part of the Lego Icons series, includes a mobile launch tower, a rocket support and crew bridge, and then of course a multistage rocket, complete with 2 solid-fuel boosters. The model also even includes a small brick-built recreation of the ESA Orion spacecraft, which can be put into the rocket or as part of a separate display stand, highlighting Artemis’ mission to further explore the Moon….

See photo galleries of both at the Lego website:

(9) METAL DETECTIVE. “Spacecraft approaches metal object zooming around Earth, snaps footage” – at Mashable.

A spacecraft has carefully approached and imaged a large hunk of metal orbiting Earth — a step in tackling humanity’s mounting space junk woes.

The delicate space mission, undertaken by the Japanese satellite technology company Astroscale, used its ADRAS-J satellite to travel within several hundred meters of an abandoned section of a noncommunicative, derelict rocket, proving it could safely observe in such close proximity…

(10) PIGS NOT QUITE IN SPACE. William Shatner has taken this flight before – a clip from a 1996 Muppets Tonight episode. Watch it on YouTube.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Jeffrey Smith, Kevin Standlee, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]