Tag Archives: D.G. Valdron

Pixel Scroll 10/30/24 John Pixel’s Not The Boogeyman. He’s Who You Send To Scroll The Boogeyman

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(1) NEW 2030 WORLDCON BID. The Edmonton in 2030 Worldcon bid unveiled its Bluesky page today: “Edmonton Bidding for 2030 Worldcon” at File 770.

(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present James Patrick Kelly and James Teel Glenn on Wednesday, November 13, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for his short fiction. He has also written five and half novels, a dozen or so plays and some embarrassing poetry. His column “On The Net” is a regular feature of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. He is an early adopter, a shade gardener, a cross-country skier, and an open water swimmer, so it helps that he lives on a lake in New Hampshire. KGB is one of his favorite places to read and this will be his eighth visit to Fantastic Fiction since 2000. His new novella, Moon and Mars, will be out from Asimov’s in the January/February issue.

Teel James Glenn

Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times–on stage and screen, for forty-plus years as a stuntman, swordmaster, storyteller, book illustrator, bodyguard, actor, and haunted house barker. He has dozens of novels and stories published in over two hundred magazines including Weird Tales, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. His novel A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure won best novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award. He can be found at in wild Weehawken NJ and at TheUrbanSwashbuckler.com.

(3) ANOTHER EKPEKI ISSUE RAISED. Dare Segun Falowo is a winner of the inaugural Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award For Disability In Speculative Fiction, an award created by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. Today Dare shared on Bluesky a bad experience with Africa Risen co-editor Ekpeki about Dare’s support for the idea that writers in anthologies should share credit for awards won by editors. Thread starts here.

And ‪Bogi Takács emphatically supports the practice of writers in anthologies sharing credit with the editor(s) for the book’s awards:

(4) THE BIRD OF CRIME BEARS BITTER FRUIT. [Item by Steven French.] Two thumbs up from the Guardian for The Penguin: “Batman who? Why The Penguin is TV’s biggest surprise of the year”.

…Between Falcone and Oz, this show is like watching two scuzzy raccoons fight over the last slice of rancid pizza in a back alley from the depths of DC hell. Neither is prepared to end up second best, and both have shown themselves capable of mass murder to avoid having to settle for it. It reminds me of that scene in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in which Heath Ledger’s Joker snaps off a pool cue and invites two wannabe goons to fight to the death for the chance to be one of his henchmen.

One reason many fans might consider watching The Penguin is the expectation that Robert Pattinson’s Batman is likely to turn up at some point to show both who’s really in charge. In reality, both the showrunner, Lauren LeFranc, and Reeves have said that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, but the splendid thing about the show is that we barely miss the caped crusader. This is Gotham at street level, the city’s grimy underbelly exposed in all its filth and fury, while Batman’s place is above the city’s streets, looking down on the scum below like an avenging dark angel. Who knew that one of those unfortunate wretches scurrying about the gutter might just be capable of carrying an entire show on his doughy shoulders?

Sure, the ultimate expectation is that the Penguin will at some point climb his way up the greasy pole of power to become an A-list villain for Pattinson to take down in a future movie. But right now, watching Farrell shuffle through the shadows like a cross between Machiavelli and Harvey Weinstein after a fight with a dumpster, the whole thing is so engrossing that there’s absolutely no rush.’…

(5) DAREDEVIL. “Daredevil: Born Again trailer teases Punisher return, hints at Bullseye” – Radio Times has the story.

A trailer spotlighting Marvel’s upcoming Disney Plus releases has emerged online, with a 20-second teaser for Daredevil: Born Again included within it.

The teaser is sure to get fans excited for the revival show, which is set to arrive in March next year and will see Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock once again face off against Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin….

(6) LOST ELLISON. Michael Burianyk compares two of “The Lost Visions of Harlan Ellison” in his latest blog post.

There’s been an interesting juxtaposition of recently published books that shed light on two of the most notorious events in Science Fiction history – “The Last Dangerous Visions” and “The Starlost”, both involving the venerated writer, Harlan Ellison….

… In his long introduction to the anthology, Straczynski recounted the saga of “The Last Dangerous Visions”, his close friendship with Ellison and the revelation that Ellison suffered from bipolar disorder and clinical depression which went untreated until close to Ellison’s death in 2018. His mental condition is cited as the reason he was not able to concentrate on big projects and gather the spiritual energy to finish the grand undertaking he had conceived….

(7) A ROBOT GROWS IN BROOKLYN. [Item by Andrew Porter.] According to John Boston:

Appeared on the local Nextdoor.com site, allegedly “the product of a welding training program and is based on a graphic novel hip hop character.”   It resides in Borough Hall Park, and hard by the federal district court for the Eastern District of New York and the main Brooklyn Post Office.

From the pages of the first-ever hip hop comic book, written by Eric Orr in 1986, to the streets of the Boogie Down Bronx and finally to the streets of Paris, Rappin’ Max Robot is alive and standing 18 feet tall.

Andrew Porter adds:

I saw them installing it Monday, when I walked by having just gone to the Post Office (visible at right background). It’s about 20 feet high.

Made a comment to the workers, “You’re gonna have to oil up that robot!”

This is exactly where much of the Brooklyn Book Festival too place, on this plaza.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 30, 1977 — Malka Ann Older, 47.

By Paul Weimer: I remember when she burst onto the scene with Infomocracy.  It was in wake of her talented brother Daniel Older’s own SF literary debut with Half-Resurrection Blues, and I do wonder if Infomocracy got play and visibility because Malka Older was his sister. As for me, I had not read Blues and picked up Infomocracy solely on the strength of its idea of a new, atomized, political system with strengths and advantages, but problems of its own. It depicts a vibrant, multicultural and inclusive future (with one SF “gimmie” to make it happen), and it knocked my socks off. When I told Malka that I truly didn’t know that she was Daniel’s brother, her reaction was a somewhat skeptical “Really?!”

But it’s true. I don’t know everything in SF.

I think her Mossa and Pleiti novels, starting with The Mimicking of Known Successes walk a fine line between being “cozy” and comfortable reads, and being furiously inventive medium-term science fiction. They are so well written, and so different in some fundamental ways than Infomocracy that it really shows her range and ability. 

But my favorite Older work is her collaboration with Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Curtis C. Chen in Ninth Step Station. Ninth Step Station is a collaborative cyberpunk crime drama published by Serial Box and showcases the writers’ talents showing a divided and dangerous Tokyo in the near future. It combines the political power and intrigue from the Infomocracy novels with the (later) mystery and investigation of the Mossa and Pleiti novels and serves as a bridge between the two types of works. 

Malka Older

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) HORRIBLY YOUNG. [Item by Steven French.] “What’s it like to be the spine-chilling child in a scary film?” The Guardian asked the actors who played them: “’After the shoot, we had a party in a slaughterhouse’: horror movies’ creepiest kids reveal all”.

When Danielle Keaton was seven, her homework was to open her eyes as wide as possible and stare. She had just secured a role in director John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned – a horror film about inhuman psychic children with violent tendencies – and had to perfect her creepy glare. “We had to practise not blinking for a very long time,” says the actor and coach, now 38 and based in LA. “We would have to look in a mirror and hold the stare without laughing.” On set, the children would have staring contests with Superman star Christopher Reeve…

(11) SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE: PORTALS AND NEXT YEAR’S ONE-DAY SPECIALS. [Item by David Goldfarb.] LearnedLeague just had a One-Day Special quiz entitled “Just Images Portals” — the “Just Images” part means that each question has a picture associated with it, which may be required to answer the question correctly. You can find the questions here, although unfortunately you need to be a LearnedLeague member in order to view the pictures.

I got 8 right out of 12, placing 211th out of 1,167 players.

Also next year’s One-Day Special schedule has now been set. Here are the ones that seem to be SFF-related. Notes in parentheses are from me:

  • Elemental Masters
  • Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
  • Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet
  • What We Do in the Shadows
  • Victorian Fiction (not an SFF subject, but SFF-related because the quiz will be written by SF fan and anthologist Rich Horton – DG)
  • The Stormlight Archive
  • Goblins
  • Watchmen
  • Ghost
  • Dragon Age
  • Mass Effect
  • Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
  • Learn Zoology with the Animorphs
  • Actors in Star Wars & Other SF/Fantasy IP
  • Personification of Death in Literature
  • Tolkien’s Other Work (after three quizzes on The Lord of the Rings and one on The Silmarillion, now we move on to the Other Work – DG)
  • The Last of Us
  • Famous Luxembourgers (not directly SFnal, but sure to have a question on Hugo Gernsback at least – DG)
  • Sapphic Fantasy
  • Batman ’66 (to be written by SF fan Tom Galloway – DG)
  • xkcd2
  • Mars 2
  • Apocalyptic Fiction
  • Songs about Superman
  • Furry Fandom 101

(12) RIDERS OF THE PURPLE WHOPPER. A little late with this story – but it was news to me! “Burger King’s Addams Family Menu Has Landed — Here’s What’s in It” at Food & Wine.

…This year, the King is celebrating Halloween with a group of people who have been creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky for more than 80 years. That’s right: Burger King has teamed up with the Addams Family for a special menu that will launch on Thursday, October 10, with four new Addams-inspired items. 

Two of them are:

Wednesday’s Whopper

This sandwich takes all of the trappings of a classic flame-grilled Whopper, tops it with Swiss cheese, ketchup, lettuce, mayo, onions, pickles, and tomatoes — and serves it up on a purple bun. (The violet bun gets its signature shade from purple potatoes.) 

Thing’s Rings

The Addams Family’s long-time companion, Thing, was just a disembodied hand — which means it is perfectly designed to grab a few crispy onion rings right out of the package. During the month of October, BK’s rings come in a special Addams-family-designed sleeve. 

There’s also Gomez’s Churro Fries and Morticia’s Kooky Chocolate Shake.

(13) FOR NATIONAL CATS DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Which was yesterday in the U.S. The latest issue of Marvel Meow, from Marvel’s Infinity line, many of which (including this issue) are digitally available free, and without needing a (free) Marvel.com account. “Marvel Meow Infinity Comic (2022) #19”.

MARVEL MEOW IS BACK! To kick off, the Spider-Men and Doc Ock take on their biggest battle yet–finding homes for stray cats!

(14) CHINESE ASTRONAUT SCULPTURE. Interesting photo from the Brooklyn Eagle.

(15) SHROUDS OF WITNESS. Ryan George is in time for the Halloween season with his video “Super Scary and Definitely Real Ghost Evidence”.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Posted by MGM: “Halloween With The Addams Family (Full Episode)” (legit).

A pair of bank robbers are welcomed as Halloween trick-or-treaters by Morticia and Gomez. The creepy atmosphere of the house, Morticia’s smoldering holiday punch, and Lurch’s ominous presence impel the crooks to abandon their plans to add Addams money and jewelry to their bank loot.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, 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 Randall M.]

Pixel Scroll 7/3/24 The Magic Morlock, So Pixeled And So New

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(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF RESCUED BY CROWDFUNDING. A  GoFundMe appeal reopened to keep Octavia’s Bookshelf in business raised its target amount almost immediately reports Pasadena Now: “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Relaunches Urgent Fundraiser to Stay Open”.

A fundraiser to save a local bookstore has raised almost $70,000 in a matter of days.

Nikki High, founder and owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, has reopened a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for her struggling bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf. 

In a heartfelt social media post, she revealed her heavy heart, tired soul, and months of sleepless nights, and said she needed transparency with her community….

As Nikki High explained in her GoFundMe call:

We managed to open last year to great support and lots of excitement. This past year has been some of the most rewarding and difficult times in my life.

Bookselling is a tricky animal and being a Black Women entrepreneur adds another level of hardship that I was not quite prepared for.

Being underresourced but determined, I have fought through the highs and lows of retail. I’ve made some mistakes, and I’ve learned so much. Of all the sleepless nights and hardships, it’s the community we’ve built that has kept me going and reaffirmed to me that Octavia’s Bookshelf is a space we need to keep in our community.

To be completely transparent, we need an urgent influx of cash to keep us afloat right now. The coffers are dry and the reserves are non existent. We are being faced with tremendous financial mountains to climb to get here we need to be to be sustainable and I need your help once again…

The bookstore, named for Octavia Butler, opened its doors on February 18, 2023, at 1361 North Hill Ave, in Pasadena. 

(2) CORY PANSHIN Q&A. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Alexei Panshin’s widow on their collaborations together, Robert A. Heinlein, other subjects. “Interview with Cory Panshin” at One Geek’s Mind.

John Grayshaw: How did you and Alexei become writers and critics of science fiction?

We both started off as SF and fantasy readers from an early age and then as  fans. Alexei has written detailed accounts of his pathway in a couple of places, but the short version is that as a teenager he began subscribing to fanzines. Then he received a typewriter as a high school graduation present and the idea struck him that he should be a writer. He started out by writing a novel which was very amateurish. (As I recall from the one time I read the manuscript, it was something like a spaceship full of librarians seeking refuge from an evil empire.) He made better progress doing book reviews for fanzines, as well as short stories, of which he wrote about twenty between 1960 and 1965.

As for me, it’s a little more complicated, since I didn’t launch right into writing the way Alexei did. When I was twelve, I started trying to write a spy novel, and only got a few pages in. I recently found that old notebook and discovered to my surprise that I’d kept adding pages on and off for the next four years before giving up entirely and launching into a science fiction story about a spaceship crew that goes astray in hyperspace and finds itself battling a jabberwock that attacks them with its eyes of flame.

That might have been the beginning and end of my abortive science fiction writing career, but that fall I started my freshman year at Harvard College, where my roommate Leslie Turek and I discovered we had a lot in common; but also that Harvard was not particularly geek-friendly, being primarily dedicated to grooming the scions of the ruling class. So instead, we found our way to the MIT Science Fiction Society, where we were quickly drafted to co-edit the MITSFS fanzine and from there got drawn into science fiction fandom.

There weren’t a lot of women in fandom at that time, so it was easy for us to get noticed. Alexei spotted me in costume at the 1966 Worldcon and we were married in 1969. Around the same time, my fellow MITSFS member Fuzzy Pink married Larry Niven, while Leslie became actively involved in convention-running and eventually chaired the 1980 Worldcon.

Except for occasional con reports and other fanzine articles, I wasn’t doing much writing in the late 60s, but once I married Alexei we discovered a mutual interest in theorizing about the nature of science fiction and began to do critical writing in collaboration….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to gab over garlic bread with Sally Wiener Grotta in Episode 229 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Sally Weiner Grotta

Sally Wiener Grotta’s latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction stories, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the North Atlantic Review, DreamForge, Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and others.

Her previous books include Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (co-authored with Daniel Grotta), and the novels Jo Joe, which was a Jewish Book Council Network book, and The Winter Boy, which was a Locus Magazine Recommended Read. Sally is also co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia Salon reading series. Plus she’s also an award-winning journalist and photographer who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents.

We discussed when we first met (and can’t quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she’d fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question “what if?,” why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing workshop which caused that Grand Master to say “what a darling monster,” when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.

(4) MTV NEWS THROWN LIFELINE BY INTERNET ARCHIVE. “Search MTV News Articles Archive at Wayback Machine” reports Variety.

In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news — removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet — the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news.

You can search the MTV News archive on the organization’s Wayback Machine at this link. Prior to Internet Archive aggregating the MTV News pages into a collection, there was no way to locate articles based on search terms.

Paramount shut down the MTV News division as part of a larger round of layoffs in May 2023… 

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 3, 1937 — Tom Stoppard, 87. I was delighted to discover that playwright Tom Stoppard has crafted far more genre than I thought, considering I all I knew he had done was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is adjacent genre if not actually genre). If you’ve not seen it yet, it is quite delightful. 

He scripted Brazil, which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. Brazil was actually part of the Trilogy of Imagination, all written or co-written by Gilliam, which consisted of Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Not my favorite of those three films by any means but certainly interesting to catch at least once I’d say. 

Tom Stoppard

He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. Now I like that film a lot but not as much as Raiders of The Lost Ark, which I consider perfect. The Suck Fairy broke her buckles when she tried to sully Raiders of The Lost Ark’s reputation recently. 

He did one genre adjacent script, the adaptation of the Robert B. Parker and Raymond Chandler novel Poodle Springs for television. Chandler had completed four chapters before his death, so on the occasion of the centenary of Chandler’s birth, Parker was asked by the estate of Raymond Chandler to complete the novel. No, I’ve not read it for the same reason I don’t watch films or series off novels that I really like — I prefer the originals, thank you. 

Let’s not overlook Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman. Any film with Geoffrey Rush in it is certainly going to be worth seeing and if the script is written by Stoppard in some fashion as it was here, it’s likely that the dialogue is going to be stellar. It certainly is here. 

He was even involved in the largest SF franchise ever as  he did the dialogue polish of George Lucas’s Revenge of the Sith screenplay. Polish? Interesting phrase there. 

(6) COMICS SECTION.

(7) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(8) STARLOST AND FOUND. [Item by Michael Burianyk.] Any SF fan who was around in the early 70s will remember the TV series Starlost. Canadian writer Den Valdron is running a Kickstarter for his Starlost Unauthorized book which has six more days to go to reach its stretch goal. Den is a good writer (who has written unauthorized works discussing ‘Dr Who’ and ‘Lexi’) with a lot of energy and will bring a lot to understanding this little known piece of Science Fiction history in the context of Canadian cultural identity. I think the whole project is timely and is worthy of support. “Starlost Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron”.

(9) CHURCH ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES FROM OUTER SPACE. Atlas Obscura introduces us to the “Cathedral of Salamanca’s Astronaut – Salamanca, Spain”. (Image at the link.)

…The thing that makes old hoaxes so frustrating is that they are hard to tease out from their actual history. Something fabricated in the 1600s made to look like it is from the 1400s can be very hard to pick out. The astronaut on the Cathedral of Salamanca is not in fact a hoax, but an approved and modern addition to the Cathedral, however it has all the earmarks of something which may provide for great confusion some 500 years from now.

Built between 1513 and 1733, the Gothic cathedral underwent restoration work in 1992. It is a generally a tradition of cathedral builders and restorers to add details or new carvings to the facade as a sort of signature. In this case after conferring with the cathedral, quarry man Jeronimo Garcia was given the go-ahead to add some more modern images to the facade.  He included an astronaut floating among the vines, a dragon eating ice cream, a lynx, a bull, a stork, a rabbit, and a crayfish….

A Scottish abbey, likewise, has a modern addition — a xenomorphic spout: “’Alien’ Gargoyle – Paisley, Scotland”. (Image at the link.)

…In 1991, the abbey underwent some necessary restoration work. Twelve of its 13 gargoyles were so badly ruined from water damage they had to be removed. The work was carried out by an Edinburgh-based stone masonry company, which replaced the carvings with newer models.

Apparently, some of the stone masons had a bit of fun with their creations. One of the gargoyles is certainly unique, which is fitting, as medieval tradition holds that no two gargoyles can look the same. The creature bears a strong resemblance to H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph from the Alien franchise. As the films were popular throughout the 1980s and early ‘90s, it’s likely one of the workers drew a bit of inspiration from its otherworldly antagonist….

(10) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “G. Rossini: Duetto para dos Gatos- Duet for Two Cats”. A YouTube commenter explains, “When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. When you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Scott Edelman, Michael Burianyk, Daniel Dern, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #84: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions

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Chris M. Barkley

Unburdening Myself of Unfinished Business

By Chris M. Barkley: 

ITEM ONE: As we emerge from the cold and cloudless days of January and February, you would think that the prospect of sunny days, baseball, international football (soccer), the open swimming pools and children playing outside would bring some joy to my soul.

Every year for the past forty years or so, the coming of the so-called “Daylight Savings Time” fills me with sadness, anxiety, moodiness and lastly, anger. (Yes, I only appear to be a mild-mannered reporter for a daily metropolitan daily sf news zine.)

Because myself and most of my fellow North Americans have lost an hour’s sleep. And why?

Because the farmers, blah, blah, blah. And the kids getting on the bus in the dark, blah, blah. And commerce and businesses flourish, blah, blah, blah… 

When I was a young lad in the mid-1960’s, the prospect of time travel (in this fashion) was novel and exciting. Forward into the future and then returning back into the past a few months later was a perfectly appealing idea to my young mind.

But, as I got older, my priorities and attitude towards DST gradually changed. Just the thought of the approaching date brought on bouts of gnawing and persisting dread. Changing the clocks forth and back became (and still are) a hassle. And the loss of an hour’s sleep every spring is just plain wrong.

 I’m not going to bore everyone with its history, musings, opinions or statistics about whether we should choose to sat in “standard” or “daylight” time or why the DST should be hunted down with pitchforks and torches, staked through the heart and left burning in the noonday sun. 

Instead, I will leave you with a well known Native American aphorism:

“Only a white man would have you believe you could cut a foot off the top of the blanket, sew it onto the bottom of the blanket, and you’d be left with a longer blanket.”

Contact your congressional representative and Senators; they are the only ones who can kill this stupid and unhealthy abomination once and for all.

Enough. Said. 

ITEM TWO: On the morning of February 5, 2024, my audio interview with Dave McCarty was published here on File770.com.

As many of you may know, I distribute the daily “Pixel Scroll” and other standalone news items on eight sff Facebook groups and on the Bluesky app. (I have mostly avoided posting on X/Twitter since September 2023.) If there is something more important or pressing at hand, like an exclusive interview with Dave McCarty for example, I post a File 770 link to a more widespread group of forty groups…well, actually, thirty-nine as of today. Let me explain…

That particular morning, I started posting the interview to my usual group but when I came up to the Washington Science Fiction Association, I had to pause because I was served with a notice that stated that my posting privileges had been suspended:

“Your profile been (sic) suspended in this group. The admin has temporarily turned off your ability to post, comment and earn contribution points in the group until February 23, 2024, 10:19 AM.”

I was flabbergasted for several reasons, the first of which was that I had not received any notice of the suspension from any of the administrators, there was no previous indication of any trouble before that day. 

Since I was locked out of the page, there was no way to send a message to an admin, so I decided to shout out on my own page:

To the Washington Science Fiction Association Facebook Page:

While posting my latest File 770 column this morning, I found out that the admins of the Washington Science Fiction Association suspended my posting privileges on their page for three weeks. Apparently they found my most recent dispersing news on a regular basis either offensive and/or disturbing.

I have done my best to pass along vital and accurate information there for some time and I am HIGHLY upset that I was suspended without notification or an adequate explanation. Do I need to point out the parallels to what happened recently regarding the Chengdu Long List nominees?

As a journalist, I resent being effectively censored in this fashion; sf fans have every right to be informed, whether the news is for good or for ill, especially during these tumultuous times in sf fandom.

While I recognize that they have every right to run their page as they see fit, I find this action egregious, unnecessary and a disservice to the other members of the group. As a result of these actions I will be leaving the group later today.

Chris B.

During the course of that day, several friends offered advice and support, which, for the most part, I appreciated. Several suggested I reach out to the administrators to find out what the problem was. I wasn’t very receptive to doing that because I was very upset and the aggrieved party; so why would I do that? 

Two friends intervened on my behalf and made inquiries on my behalf. One reported in a direct message:   

“Sent your message to the three admins. I’m guessing what set this off was the piece with the McCarty interview.”

I did not hear back from anyone else about this that day. And so, at a little after 10pm, the Washington Science Fiction Association page had one less member. 

My other friend sent me the following message in the early morning hours of the next day:

“Chris, you were paused by the moderator because they were traveling and could not monitor posts.”

I sent back the following message:

“Well, that’s a troubling explanation. Was this applied to everyone? Or just me? Because without a notification to me or on the page, it felt like I was being targeted.

Also  the period of time described in the suspension notice wasn’t for a period of days but weeks. 

So yeah, I’m having a hard time believing this.”

As of today, I have not been contacted by any of the admins involved nor have I been given an adequate explanation for their actions or offered an apology.

My reason for airing my grievance here and now is two-fold; this incident has been simmering with me for over five weeks and I felt the need to let loose before I lose my sanity, self esteem or both. Secondly, this is not my first rodeo with unresponsive page admins and frankly I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with social media and Facebook in particular.

And at its best, Facebook is a wonderful tool to keep in touch with friends and share ideas and opinions. But I am beginning to realize that for me, the pervasive and oftentimes intrusive effects of social media may outweigh its benefits. 

Lately, I have been contemplating leaving Facebook for good. Incidents like this just nudge me a little further towards doing that.

ITEM THREE: And then there was the matter of D.G. Valdron’s essay on Medium.com.

On February 18, Mr. Valdron, who describes himself on the website as a “Canadian Speculative Fiction and Pop Culture writer”, published an article that was ominously titled “Moral Compromise and the Lesson of the Hugos”.

Mr. Valdron, in an imperious and somewhat solemn tone, vaguely (and, mind you, without attribution) outlined the problems regarding the Chengdu Worldcon:

In 2023, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Chengdu, China.

This was a little bit controversial, given the Chinese government’s genocidal actions regarding Ughyers and Tibetans, their authoritarian police state shtick, etc. But everyone went along with it. Why rock the boat?

The problem came with the Hugo Awards.

Now, the thing with the Hugos, is that everyone submits nominations, the Hugo Awards Committee vets the nominations, and a final list gets put out for the fans and convention members to vote on by secret ballot. Now, that’s how I understand it. I might have gotten some detail wrong, but I believe that’s the gist. It doesn’t matter.

Here’s what matters:

The Hugos were corrupted. The Hugo Awards Committee turns out to have been screening out the works of American, English and Chinese creators, on behalf of the Chinese government. Basically, anyone whose novel or background was critical of the Chinese government, or even politically sensitive, like mentioning Tibet, was dropped from the list.

But you know what strikes me?

It’s how trivial this is.

Forgive me, I’m sure it’s important to the people involved. Careers and friendships ended, a community rocked.

But let’s get a grip. Most people in North America have never even heard of the Hugos. Most people in North America are not science fiction writers, or readers. Hell, most people in North America are not readers.

The Hugos aren’t the Nobels, or the Pulitzers. In the larger scheme, they’re a minor award, restricted to a literary/social subculture which might result in a few extra sales and an ego boost.

No one’s life was at risk. No one’s freedom was imperiled. No huge sums of money, no public safety.

This was a small trivial thing.

In my cynical side, I suspect that most times, people would make the wrong moral choice, but hopefully, in the face of more pressure, or intimidation or incentive than this. Maybe I just want people to suffer more.

Anyway, we’ve been down this path before you and I. Sorry to belabour it. How we treat each other is a hobby horse of mine. I’ve had my tests, and I’ll have more. I’ve dealt with them.

What about you?

I’m SO GLAD you asked, sir.

Now, to be fair, Mr. Valdron is entitled to his opinion. And granted, what happened with the Chengdu Worldcon and the 2023 Hugo Awards is definitely not as important as the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, the current battle between democracy and fascism in the United States or our ever increasing concerns over climate change and various environmental crises all over the world.

What really ticked me off about D.G. Valdron’s article is his rather cavalier attitude towards what happened, the Hugo Awards and general air of disapproval of the fandom that supports it.  

Fantasy, science fiction and horror is, despite the bleating of insufferable academics and mainstream literary critics, a vital part of the tree of literature, and whose roots run a millenium or two deep.

Modern sff literature (and fandom) started over a hundred years ago when teenagers in the US and United Kingdom began to correspond, meet, talk and write about their mutual fascination. 

And out of those meetings came conventions, cosplay, and generations of aspiring publishers, writers, editors, artists, game creators, filmmakers, and commentators, like myself.

I have had the privilege of growing up in a period of this history to witness sff grow from being considered a freakish sideshow to becoming a dominant force in world culture.

And the Hugo Awards, for better or worse, have provided all of us with an invaluable anecdotal, year by year snapshot of what people thought about fantastic literature and the visual arts. Readers, writers, editors, artists and publishers look to it as a bellwether of the field’s vitality. 

So, no this is NOT “a small trivial thing,” Mr. Waldron.

And I find it very disappointing to see a member of our own community like yourself thinking so little of the situation as to look down your nose at the sff fandom and its history under the pretense of high handed criticism.

There is a term for this Mr. Waldron. 

It is called “bad form”.

ITEM FOUR: Having a little notoriety in your life can be fun. I have been a fan guest of honor at three conventions (Windycon in 2019, Astronomicon in 2021 and Confusion in 2023), a panelist art auctioneer at local, regional conventions and at Worldcons. I’ve been nominated for a Hugo Award twice (and may have even won one).

But speaking personally, I don’t go out of my way to seek it out. I know myself well enough to know that if my ego were well fed on a regular basis it would be to the detriment of myself and my family and friends.

So, as you can well imagine my quandary as the Chengdu Worldcon story grew exponentially, my name (as well as my co-author, Jason Sanford) popped in all sorts of media outlets like the Guardian (UK), NBC News, the Associated Press and the New York Times among others.

I was even interviewed by Andrew Linbong for National Public Radio, which, as a listener of fifty-plus years, was the thrill of a lifetime as far as I’m concerned.

But, there’s a downside as well. While I and Jason received universal praise for our reporting, we were also reminded that there are a lot of cranks out there who were more than willing to let the air out of tires, so to speak.

There were several that stood out; sff author Larry Correia was irked because of Jason and I had previously reported on and commented negatively against his involvements in the Sad/Angry/Rabid Puppy wars a decade ago. Frankly, having someone like Correia upset with me is a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. (See my post on Bluesky.)

My partner Juli alerted me that some wag on Reddit had heard my interview with Dave McCarty and had come to the startling conclusion that I was actually in cahoots with him to cover up his complicity in the scandal. To which I replied that he had obviously seen far too many episodes of The Traitors reality competition show to be reasoned with. 

I was very heartened when I read that both Samantha Mills (author of the acclaimed short story “Rabbit Test”) and Adrian Tchaikovsky (who wrote The Children of Time series) had both decided not to acknowledge their Hugo Awards in the wake of the Chengdu scandal. 

Adversely, I received a bit of backlash from some people once I let it be known that I was going to keep my Hugo Award more as a keepsake and family heirloom than a personal achievement. 

I might have felt the same way as Ms. Mills and Mr. Tchaikovsky if I was sitting at home watching the Hugo Awards Ceremony at home and found out later that my presence on the ballot was dubious at best and that many Chinese writers and fans were most likely disenfranchised from the process.    

But, I went to China, had the time of my life, made the speech of my life and felt a close affinity for this award I thought I had rightly won. If anything, I wanted to be reminded of the trip, the people I met and befriended and the devastating revelations that followed.

Well, for a very vocal fringe minority of people, keeping this Hugo Award was tantamount to rooting for Lex Luthor, killing baby seals, helping the Houston Astros win the 2017 World Series or actually being a communist.

I laughed off nearly all of this outrage as either sour grapes, jealousy, pettiness or “virtue signaling”. In the course of all of this sturm and drang, I posted the following on Bluesky:

This generated a (unnecessarily snarky) response from @afab boyfriend:

It’s responses like these, that seemingly come out of the social ether that occasionally bother me, referring back to my general unease about social media. I don’t know this person and they CLEARLY don’t know me and yet it seems my comment struck a nerve that needed a pointed response. And I get it; I admit that in the past, I too, have sought out people I don’t know to comment on how reprehensible I thought their opinions or positions were, but tried to do so from a reasonable point of view and not to make it personal enough to hurt someone’s feelings.

THIS comment was meant to be both condemning AND personal. 

But, I decided to take the high road:

I followed that up with:

Case Closed, @afab boyfriend.

ITEM FIVE: Last week, this happened:

My response was:

Two things happened after I posted this; two days later, on Sunday March 10th, I fumbled my understanding of GMT time and Eastern Daylight Time (DAMN YOU AGAIN, DST) and as a result, both Juli and I logged onto the Glasgow Worldcon site three hours too late to nominate anything for this year’s Hugo Awards for the first time in more than a decade.

Even more ironically, I began to hear from friends and acquaintances who openly stated that despite my recusal of future nominations in my speech at the Chengdu Hugo Award Ceremony and my public statement on March 8th, people were still nominating me in the Best Fan Writer category.

Their reasons ranged from they viewed my “win” in Chengdu as invalid and they wanted me to have another chance or that my works from 2023 were quite worthy of consideration.

I have to admit that the idea of being nominated again in light of what happened last year excites me, but the other side of that coin brings feelings of despair. 

Do I actually deserve another nomination? Would I be depriving someone else of a nomination? And, what if I get that email in the next week or so; am I allowed to change my mind? 

My partner Juli says that she will abide by and support any decision I make, which is one of the many reasons why I love her so much.. The few friends I have asked about this dilemma all said I should take the nomination.

Right now, I have no idea what I should do.

Watch this space, readers…

Pixel Scroll 2/20/24 The Scroll Of Theseus

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(1) IN THE BEGINNING. Philip Athans asks everyone, “Don’t Be Hatin’ On Prologues (Again)” at Fantasy Author’s Handbook.

… Anyway, once again we’re being told that all prologues are bad, no books should ever have a prologue, and all authors who write prologues are bad, and anyway, it’s best to just skip over them if one should have the nerve to appear….

…Let’s take this monumental misconception in two parts. First, the notion that prologues are optional and no one reads them.

As both an editor and a reader I have never in my life skipped a prologue or in any way went in thinking it was not necessary to the story. Not one time, not ever. This notion is so alien to me I can’t even begin to understand the origin of it.

Richard Lee Byers, author of Called to Darkness and The Reaver (neither of which happen to have prologues) tried to help: “…the assumption is that the prologue is an info dump. Beyond that, even if it’s exciting in its own right, there’s a feeling that if Chapter 1 switches to different characters or is Ten Years Later, you’ve thrown away whatever narrative momentum you might have built up.”

There should never be an assumption that a prologue is an info dump, because prologues should never be info dumps—not ever, not under any circumstances. And yes, even if your world is really complex and you’ve spent years worldbuilding and you’re sure no one will understand your story unless you “set the scene” or teach them all about your amazing world, and all that nonsense. If this is what your prologue is doing, that’s why your book is being rejected, not because it has a prologue, but because it has a crappy prologue….

(3) HISTORY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. Canadian sff author D.G. Valdron writes about “Moral Compromise and the Lesson of the Hugos” on Medium.

… Well, the Hugos Scandal isn’t the battle for Civil Rights. But the sort of moral compromise and coercion that King criticized is on display here, and it’s frightening how unnecessary it was, how shallow virtue turned out to be.

How do we really act, how do we really think or behave, how virtuous are we if we are genuinely tested, if there’s a real push. How often have you bowed your head and simply gone along to get along.

And how brave will you be when there are real consequences? When taking a stand actually can get you arrested, or get you fired from your job, or get you beaten up? How principled are you, when there’s money involved, either to lose or to gain? When principles mean some form of inconvenience? When principles mean going against the crowd?

Sadly, I think that most of us won’t be. We’ll be just like the Hugo folk….

(4) THE FIRST. “’No one had done it before him’: the groundbreaking stories of Black astronauts” – the Guardian discusses the documentary film The Space Race.

…Glover describes the tension of code switching between his professional and personal lives. He is a military officer and Nasa astronaut – he will pilot the upcoming Artemis II mission that will orbit the moon – but also a Black man in America. “Is it really possible to have a double consciousness? No, but you almost have to think of it that way: there’s a bit of me that I am at home and then there’s a bit of me that I am at work, and the overlap is kind of small.”…

(5) STEVE MILLER (1950-2024). Sff author Steve Miller died this afternoon. His wife and co-author Sharon Lee told Facebook readers:

He went downstairs to take a walk at about 4:30. At about 5:30, I thought he’d been awhile and went downstairs to see what was going on.

He was on the floor, unconscious, and not breathing. I called 911, and did CPR until the ambulance and EMTs arrived. They did everything they could, but his heart just wouldn’t beat on its own.

Miller’s health had been failing; he recently wrote his own obituary, which Sharon Lee has allowed File 770 to post (see “Steven Richard Miller (July 31, 1950 – February 20, 2024)”.)

Steve and Sharon Lee declared themselves partners in life and in writing in 1978. They married in November 1980, and moved from Maryland to Skowhegan, Maine, in October 1988 after the publication of their first joint novel, Agent of Change, the first in what was to become a long series of space opera novels and stories set in their original Liaden Universe®. A book in that series, Scout’s Progress, won the 2002 Romantic Times Book Club Reviewers Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Steve was an active member of fandom in earlier years, as Director of Information of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society for some time, and as vice-chair of the bid committee to hold the 1980 Worldcon in Baltimore (they lost to Boston).

The SF Encyclopedia says Steve began publishing work of genre interest with “Shalgiel” for Flux Magazine in 1976, one of his few solo works. He began collaborating with Sharon with “The Naming of Kinzel: The Foolish” (June 1984 Fantasy Book); and all his novels have been with Lee, primarily the Liaden Universe® sequence. 

Steve ran his own small press from 1995 through 2012, specializing in chapbooks containing 2-3 short stories set in the Liaden Universe® and other settings from books by him, Sharon Lee and other authors.

For awhile Steve and Sharon ran Bookcastle & Dreamsgarth, Inc., a genre bookstore with a traveling convention SF art agency component.

Steve and Sharon were honored together in 2012 with NESFA’s Skylark Award, given for contributions to SF in the spirit of E.E. “Doc” Smith.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 20, 1926 — Richard Matheson. (Died 2013.) Now we come to Richard Matheson. So where shall I start?  From a genre viewpoint, we should start with the Hugo he would share at Solacon for The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold from Matheson’s screenplay based off his novel. 

What next? Well The Twilight Zone, of course. He scripted thirteen episodes of which “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with William Shatner is certainly the best-known. I’d also single out “Little Girl Lost” for just being out really, really scary, again it’s based off a story of his. Also, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” became part of the Twilight Zone film.

Richard Matheson

Oh, sweet mother, he was prolific! I mean really, really prolific. Just cinema films alone totaled up to at least twenty-eight: television work adds another thirty-four. So no, I’m not covering these in detail, am I? 

Matheson’s famous novel I Am Legend was made into three movies – but he wondered in an interview why it kept being optioned when no one ever made a movie that actually followed the book. He hated The Last Man on Earth, so he’s credited as Logan Swanson instead. It got made twice more, as The Omega Man, and much later as I Am Legend with Will Smith.

Now where was I? (The phone rang from a medical office. Lots of those these days.) Ahhh, series work. 

The Night Stalker was his greatest success. The Night Stalker first aired in January 1972, and garnered the highest ratings of any television movie at that time. Matheson would receive an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay. 

He scripted but a single episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., “The Atlantis Affair” and none of the other U.N.C.L.E. series. 

He did “The Enemy Within” episode of the Trek series, not one that I consider to be all that great.

Remember in the Jack Palance Birthday I mentioned Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dan Curtis’ Dracula? Well guess who the scriptwriter was for it?

He’s the scriptwriter of The Martian Chronicles, the good, the bad whatever of that series. Seen it at least three times, still love the original version much more.

He was involved in Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics. The first and much shorter segment, The Theatre, was expanded and scripted by him from a Serling outline. 

Now his fiction. 

Thirty novels which with the exception of the ones of the ones I’ve already noted and The Shrinking Man and The Night Stalker novels, I recognized absolutely nothing. What I found fascinating is that half of the nearly thirty novels had become films. Nearly all with him writing the scripts for them. 

Short stories. Oh yes. And as I’ve mentioned previously, many of them were adapted by him into scripts for such series as The Twilight Zone. He’s got literally dozens of collections but not being one who’s read him deeply, I cannot recommend what ones are the best to acquire.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) HOW EDUCATIONAL! The New York Times declares, “It’s Alive! EC Comics Returns”.

EC Comics, which specialized in tales of horror, crime and suspense, and was shut down in the “moral panic” of the 1950s, is making a comeback.

Oni Press will publish two new anthology series under the EC Comics banner. The first, Epitaphs From the Abyss, coming in July, will be horror focused; Cruel Universe, the second, arrives in August and will tell science fiction stories.

Hunter Gorinson, the president and publisher of Oni Press, said the new stories will interpret the world of today, much as EC Comics explored the American psyche of the 1950s. The cover designs will feel familiar to EC Comics fans: Running down the top left is a label declaring the type of story — “Terror” or “Horror” or “Science-Fiction” — and the logo evokes the bold colors and fonts of past series like “Tales From the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.”

The series are a partnership between Oni and the family of William M. Gaines, the original publisher of EC Comics, who died in 1992. Gary Groth, the editor of The Comics Journal, told The New York Times in 2013 that EC Comics was “arguably the best commercial comics company in the history of the medium.”….

 (9) IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE. “I Went to Hogwarts for Seven Years and Did Not Learn Math or Spelling, and Now I Can’t Get a Job” is a 2020 humor piece from The New Yorker.

Dear Headmaster McGonagall:

I am a recent Hogwarts graduate, and, although my time with you was a literal fantasy, I unfortunately did not learn a lot of basic skills, like math or spelling, at your skool.

You may say, “Why do you need arithmetic? You’re a wizard. You can do magic!” To which I reply, sure, for some wizard careers that’s great, but other wizards work in middle management and just want a normal nine-to-five gig. When I graduated, I thought that all I would need was my wand and a couple of choice incantations, but these days, without at least a little algebra, you’re not even qualified to work in Bertie Bott’s retail department…

(10) ARTIFICIAL SURE, INTELLIGENT? MAYBE. Not including any copies of the images was an easy choice: “The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images” at Science Integrity Digest.

… The authors disclose that the figures were generated by Midjourney, but the images are – ahem – anatomically and scientifically incorrect.

Figure 1 features an illustration of a rat, sitting up like a squirrel, with four enormous testicles and a giant … penis? The figure includes indecipherable labels like ‘testtomcels‘, ‘senctolic‘, ‘dissilced‘, ‘iollotte sserotgomar‘ and ‘diƨlocttal stem ells’. At least the word ‘rat‘ is correct.

One of the insets shows a ‘retat‘, with some ‘sterrn cells‘ in a Petri dish with a serving spoon. Enjoy!…

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Lise Andreasen, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, John A Arkansawyer, 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 Daniel Dern.]