Tag Archives: Daisy Ridley

Pixel Scroll 5/10/25 All Around The Scrollberry Bush, The Monkey Chased The Pixel

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(1) GUARDIAN BOOK REVIEWS. Past Best Fan Writer Hugo winner Abigail Nussbaum, and author of 2025 BSFA Award winner Track Changes penned the Guardian’s latest “The best science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup”. Nussbaum cover The Devils by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz, £25), The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Orbit, £20), Land of Hope by Cate Baum (Indigo Press, £12.99), and A Line You Have Traced by Roisin Dunnett (Magpie, £16.99).

(2) MEETING DEATH SCIENTIFICALLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s World Service  has a nifty weekly science programme Unexplained Elements.  This week’s programme was topical with this week’s news of the Pope popping off and the pomp and circumstance ceremony that garnered international attention. It was a topic in which the late Terry Pratchett would have been interested. 

It addressed questions such as when did humans first start burying their dead? The answer seems to be over 100,000 years ago, but this is for anatomically modern humans. Apparently some proto-human species (whose brain capacity was a third of modern humans) may have buried their dead, though the research (currently in peer review) is debatable.  Apparently, the pre-print has been amended to take criticisms into account and while one critic has been convinced, others remain sceptical.

Another topic was that of the biology of graveyards.  Because its ground remains largely untilled, and because of gravestones and the like, there are many micro-environments, and both these factors lead church graveyards have a higher local area biodiversity.

Then there is the issue of a dead person’s digital rights to their social media and online accounts. The European Union’s GDPR is the world’s most robust data protection regulation, though that does not seem to stop firms like Facebook or EventBrite failing to strictly follow it (just look as the small print when you sign up) or even Worldcons who arguably (it would be interesting to test this in court and I could write an essay on this) fail to strictly adhere to its provisions.  Nonetheless, despite GDPR being the world’s gold standard in data protection, the dead have no rights whatsoever under GDPR!

Talking of a dead person’s digital rights (or lack thereof), what of mobile (cell) phones and smartphones, what happens to them when they ‘die’?  Well, fans of Red Dwarf might say that they go to silicon heaven. The reality, however, is for most of them landfill!  Here there are multiple environmental sustainability issues.  All those heavy metals and rare earth elements leech out in landfill causing threats to water tables and other ecotoxicology issues.  And then there is the loss of these elements (which include silver and gold – many kilograms per tonne of mobile phones disposed) to the economy necessitating the mining of replacement elements and the environmental damage that this does.  So the next time a Worldcon tells you that they are ditching recyclable paper from sustainably managed forests (look for the kite mark when buying the paper for publications) don’t accept the Worldcon’s word for it: more greenwash!

It was a fascinating programme. You can access it here.

First up, we delve into the thorny issue of when early humans started to carry out funerary rituals, before turning our attention to graveyards and the life that thrives within these sacred environments.

Next, we are joined Carl Öhman from Uppsala University in Sweden, who reveals what happens to our data when we die and why we should care about it.

Plus, we discuss the precious materials hiding in our old devices, and find out whether animals mourn.

(3) DODGE THE SCAMS. Victoria Strauss points out “Two to Avoid: Book Order Scams and Fake Reviews”. Full details at Writer Beware.

Here are two newish frauds that appear to be on the rise. As with most writing scams these days, they target self-published authors.

The Book Order Scam

I’ve written before about book order scams, in the context of scammers impersonating bookstores such as Barnes & Noble with out-of-the-blue emails promising bulk purchases and big royalties. All the author has to do is pony up thousands of dollars or pounds to cover printing and/or shipping costs (the relevant note here: bookstores do not print the books they sell, and they typically order from the publisher or publishing platform, rather than from the author).

This newer version of the book order scam is somewhat different, arriving not from a bookstore impersonator, but from the self-publishing service provider the writer has hired to publish and/or market their book. That provider isn’t a true self-publishing company, though, but rather one of the many ghostwriting scams that waylay would-be indie authors in order to defraud them….

Fake Reviews

Fake reviews–sometimes just a few lines, sometimes elaborate essays with stars and number rankings–arrive unasked-for, attached to a complimentary email claiming that a book has been “discovered” by book scouts or book evaluators. Or they’re included as part of a pitch for a package of publishing and marketing services, to show how much the service provider believes in the author’s book.

Undoubtedly produced by feeding book blurbs and other info into chatbots, they are essentially bait: affirmation and flattery designed to induce the author to reply, so they can be subjected to aggressive sales pitches for whatever the “reviewer” is selling.

Here are a couple of examples, both sent out by scammers on this list. They’re not just book reviews–they’re PROFESSIONAL book reviews! So much better than just the regular kind….

(4) CHERRYH ANNOUNCEMENT. CJ Cherryh told Facebook followers yesterday she and Jane Fancher won’t be at the Seattle Worldcon – but it’s not the result of any controversy.

Jane and I will not be attending WorldCon despite it being in our state (which some people might want to know)—no controversy, just the expense and the physical buffeting of crowds. While Jane’s got more go-juice than I do, the crowd pressure and distances involved would be pretty exhausting, leaving us sadly low-energy. We’ll still go to friendly ‘little’ cons in driving range, note well, if we know about them!!! and be our brilliant selves, but we’re not up to a full-on WorldCon.

(5) ABOUT THE FEMALE MAN. Farah Mendlesohn’s book Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore is available for preorder from Luna Press Publishing. It will be released in Summer 2026.

Joanna Russ’s writing career was relatively short, running from 1968 to 1987, with a number of essay collections published in the years after that. Her fiction career consists of just six novels and four collections, but each of the novels she published challenged engrained conventions of the genre.

The Female Man was received with shock, horror and vituperation when it was published in 1975. Its fractured narrative, and its direct attack on patriarchy and the straight-jacket of performative femininity, were described as shrill and man-hating. Over the years it emerged as a classic of feminist science fiction, a novel that continues to excite and resonate, and a touchstone for proudly militant feminists.

This exploration of The Female Man offers a close reading of the text, focussing on how the book works, its structures, arguments, humour, and brilliant anger

(6) COMPENSATING FACTORS. “My School Visit was Cancelled. I Fought Back and Won” writers Erica S. Perl in School Library Journal.

As a children’s book author, I love a good mystery. Which is why, last month, after a Virginia elementary school principal abruptly cancelled my visit by email, with no explanation or interest in rescheduling or paying me, I decided to investigate.

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had happened: a parent had complained because of a social media video I had made celebrating Pride month. In it, I mention that Snail, a character in my Whale, Quail, Snail early reader series (illustrated by Sam Ailey), is nonbinary. Most snails are. “It’s a fiction series,” I add, “but that’s a fact.”…

… I wish I could tell you that my story ended amicably with the return of my visit to the school’s calendar. That’s not what happened.

Instead, after I asked for my fee, the principal turned the matter over to the district’s lawyers. The principal then informed the school librarian, who booked my visit, that she might have to pay me out of her own pocket. I told her I would not take her money, no matter what happened. I was extra-outraged that the principal was threatening to make her pay for the “crime” of setting up an author visit.

But my story doesn’t end there. I’m not just a children’s book author. I’m also a former trial lawyer. So instead of walking away muttering about injustice, I spent some quality time with my contract.

That’s right, my author contract. Whenever I am invited to visit a school, my booking agent draws up a contract—and this visit was no exception. According to one clause, if an appearance is cancelled with less than 30 days notice, the school is required to pay my entire fee plus any non-refundable travel expenses. The principal had cancelled on me 28 days before my visit.

And finally, my contract specifies that the contract is governed by the law of the state where I live, not the law of the state where the school is located. So if I wanted to sue for breach of contract, I could simply file papers in my local courthouse (no legal expertise or degree required!).

So, I did. Which is how I got to a different kind of happy ending: the school paid me my fee.

It’s not the win I wanted, because that would have had me standing in front of a gymnasium full of elementary school students. But it is a victory, as I see it, for all authors, especially in this current climate….

(7) KILLER ROBOTS NO LONGER SCIENCE FICTION. [Item by Francis Hamit.] “Unmanned Systems Are Not Revolutionary (But Could Be)” says a post on War Room, hosted by the U.S. Army War College.

Rather than revolutionizing warfare, unmanned systems have emerged as evolutions within the larger information revolution; advancements to be sure, but failing to render conventional militaries obsolete or dramatically reshaping force structures….

(8) PLONK YOUR MAGIC TWANGER. The one answer Smithsonian Magazine knows for sure is the price: “Who Created This Peculiar Painting of a Drooling Dragon? Nobody Knows—but a Museum Just Bought It for $20 Million”. Steven French adds, “Actually the ‘drooling dragon’ looks more like our Patterdale Terrier after he’s spotted the postman!”

Emma Capron, a curator at the museum who was responsible for the acquisition, describes the altarpiece as “wildly inventive” and “full of iconographical oddities,” per the Art Newspaper.

Start with the dragon and its bizarre dog-like face, exaggerated fangs and dripping drool. According to tradition, Satan, disguised as a dragon, swallowed St. Margaret whole. His stomach rejected her and there she appears in the painting, kneeling in prayer, totally unfazed by the event.Next to Margaret, one of the two angels holds a book of song, once thought to be a hymn by the English composer Walter Frye but now identified as musical gibberish. The other angel plucks her mouth harp, “a sound hardly associated with celestial harmony,” as the National Gallery says in the statement….

(9) PEACEMAKER IS BACK. “Peacemaker Season 2 Trailer: John Cena’s DC Superhero Returns” – Variety sets the frame.

… John Cena‘s very R-rated DC superhero has returned in the first trailer for “Peacemaker” Season 2, created by DC Studios co-chief James Gunn. The sophomore season takes place in the rebooted DC Universe, which officially kicked off with Gunn’s animated series “Creature Commando” and continues with his summer tentpole “Superman.” Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl cameo in the trailer and will appear in “Superman.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 10, 1969 — John Scalzi, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I’d read John Scalzi’s blog for years before his fiction. 

I got onto the Scalzi train with his entry in Metatropolis. His story involving a high tech pig farmer had all of the bones of a Scalzi story, from its “I think I know everything” protagonist, to its often snarky sense of humor. While I didn’t fall deeply in love with his work, then or since, I kept reading his work. Redshirts, of course, which still may be my favorite of his novels and stories, helped expand in my mind the metafictional opportunities in science fiction. Lock In is a solid piece of science fictional speculation on how a society might come together and respond to the consequences of a pandemic.  Given that it was written long before Covid…I wonder if Scalzi or, aged fifty six yearswould have reconsidered the novel after the worldwide reaction to the aftermath of the Covid Pandemic. 

Of course the Old Man’s War series is the one that he gets grief for, because it should appeal to the Sad and Rabid Puppies…but it is, in the parlance of today, “too woke”. It’s possible that the existence of such books helped motivate Torgersen and Beale, an irritant to their ideology and worldview (and a counterexample to the idea that Mil-SF must be conservative). Again, I do wonder how Scalzi would write it today, given all that has happened. 

So this is a long way of saying that although it is on my Kindle, I have not yet read When The Moon Hits Your Eye, which seems to have as triggering an idea (the moon turns into cheese. Seriously?) as one can possibly make in the field. But it shows that in the end, Scalzi likes to have fun when writing. He never takes it too seriously, even if he keeps it as rigorous and locked down as the story needs. He’s just telling stories and doing his thing and having the time of his life, and haters can go hang. 

The first time I actually met him in person, he didn’t remember it. He was extremely jet lagged, sitting in a hotel lobby and apparently remembered little from the entire weekend. Due to circumstance (although Scalzi is an excellent DJ, I am told, I am not a dance party goer), I only finally, finally actually got to talk to him at the Glasgow Worldcon. Being part of the photography team did  let me meet and photograph everyone who would hold still.   But did he know who I was? I’m still convinced that he didn’t, and that’s all right. 

John Scalzi’s fiction, too…that’s all right. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) AMAZING STORIES COLLECTION. Amazing Stories: Best of 2024,a collection of  science fiction short stories published by the magazine over the past year, is now available.

Edited by Lloyd Penney, this collection continues Amazing’s nearly century-long tradition of exploring the strange, the speculative, and the sublime.

From lunar labor revolutions to delicate alien diplomacy, these stories represent the vanguard of speculative fiction. Readers will encounter futures both dystopian and dazzling, technologies that reshape identity and time, and characters grappling with the emotional and ethical consequences of scientific progress. Highlights include:

  • “A Short-Lived History of the Stockpiling of Time, in Post-Mono-Heliocentric Space-Times” by K.V.K. Kvas, a mind-bending tale of interstellar economics, identity, and revolt.
  • “Return from Venus” by C.B. Droege, a quiet and touching story about cross-species friendship and the longing for home.
  • “Best Case Scenario” by Susan Oke, a suspenseful diplomatic mission where what you offer—and what you misunderstand—could mean the difference between peace and peril.

With cover art by Hugo Award-winning artist Bob Eggleton and a lineup of diverse voices offering everything from hard science speculation to lyrical philosophical fiction, Amazing Stories: Best of 2024 is a must-have for any SF fan’s collection.

 “Amazing Stories has always been a home for bold, boundary-pushing science fiction,” says Editor-in-Chief Lloyd Penney. “This year’s stories continue that proud legacy—with some of the most challenging, beautiful, and entertaining tales we’ve ever published.”

It is available online at amazingstories.com and in paperback and eBook editions at indie and major retailers worldwide or at this link.

(13) MONSTROUSLY COOL. That’s what your drinks become with an assist from the “Godzilla Ice Mold”.

(14) DAISY RIDLEY’S ZOMBIE ENCOUNTER. JustWatch quotes Daisy Ridley in its Why to Watch feature about her role in the zombie thriller “We Bury the Dead streaming: where to watch online?”

We Bury the Dead is a gripping, emotional thriller set in a world transformed by the undead. In a unique take on the zombie genre, the film follows Ava—a woman tormented by loss—who volunteers with a corpse retrieval unit to search for her missing husband. Set against a surreal yet intimate apocalypse, the story explores love, grief, and the fragile boundaries of what makes us human.

Daisy Ridley says:

The script is beautiful. It’s about grief and watching someone desperately trying to find an answer, even though she doesn’t know what that answer is going to be. The backdrop of the zombies represents this moment for [my character] Ava because she’s neither here nor there emotionally. Ava’s sole purpose is to find her husband. As a means to get to him, she joins the body retrieval unit which volunteers to find people and notify families. The zombies look like our friends and family, so it’s close enough to reality but in a way that doesn’t feel too close. It feels horribly human.

(15) HONEY, I’M HOME! “Soviet-era spacecraft Kosmos 482 plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit” reports AP News.

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.

Its uncontrolled entry was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking. The Russians indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean, but some experts were not so sure of the precise location. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also tracked the spacecraft’s doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.

It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet.

The chances of anyone getting clobbered by spacecraft debris were exceedingly low, scientists said….

…Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty….

…After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft’s grave….

A Russian press release says it fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.

(16) YOUR ALIEN NATION. The BBC explains, “More than half your body is not human”.

More than half of your body is not human, say scientists.

Human cells make up only 43% of the body’s total cell count. The rest are microscopic colonists.

Understanding this hidden half of ourselves – our microbiome – is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson’s.

The field is even asking questions of what it means to be “human” and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result.

“They are essential to your health,” says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, “your body isn’t just you”….

… But genetically we’re even more outgunned.

The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: “We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own…

(17) SCIENCE PAPERS WITH UNDISCLOSED AI USE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is controversial to some, in no small part due to large language models (LLMs) and other A.I. (such as image-generating A.I.) using people’s intellectual property (their written or art works) for A.I. and LLM training without permission or recompense.  This is exemplified by the recent debate over the Seattle’s Worldcon use of A.I. (for example, see (1) in the Scroll here).

Similarly, the use of A.I. has controversies in science.  Indeed, a number of leading science journals, such as Nature, frown on the use of A.I. and/or at least ask science authors to declare any use of A.I. in their submissions. The latest news here comes from a news item in this week’s Nature that hundreds of papers have used A.I without disclosure!

Generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT have quickly transformed academic publishing. Scientists are increasingly using them to prepare and review manuscripts, and publishers have scrambled to create guidelines for their ethical us. Although policies vary, many publishers require authors to disclose their use of A.I….

But science sleuths have identified hundreds of cases in which A.I. tools seem to have been used without disclosure…

…Publishers need to act quickly to resolve issues of dishonest A.I. use.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Rich Lynch, Paul Weimer, Francis Hamit, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 11/21/24 Pixels That Need Pixels Are The Happiest Pixels In The Scroll

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(1) NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS. No winners of genre interest, but omnivorous readers will want to know who received the 2024 awards. Publishers Weekly led its coverage with a joke from the ceremony:

…[L]ongtime Saturday Night Live cast member Kate McKinnon, [was] the evening’s host. “I’m a book awards virgin, so be gentle,” she joked before opening her remarks, appropriately for 2024, with a bit about AI. “Books do more than entertain—they illuminate, they provoke, and, most importantly, they inspire change,” she said. “That was written by CHatGPT. Is that bad?”…

  • YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE: Shifa Saltagi Safadi, Kareem Between (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
  • TRANSLATED LITERATURE: Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, Taiwan Travelogue. Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf Press)
  • POETRY: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living (University of Akron Press)
  • NONFICTION: Jason De León, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling (Viking Books / Penguin Random House)
  • FICTION: Percival Everett, James (Doubleday / Penguin Random House)

(2) WHY DID THEY SAY THAT? T. R. Napper side-eyes “Five Pieces of Awful Writing Advice (from the masters)”. And by masters, we mean Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, and Elmore Leonard. First on his hit parade:

Don’t keep a notebook (Stephen King)

“I think a writer’s notebook is the best way in the world to immortalise bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around.”

Terrible advice, for one simple reason: none of the rest of us are Stephen King. He’s written around 70 books. He writes and writes and writes. Squashed by a fucken van, six weeks in hospital, dusts himself off, keeps writing. Apparently sits down and churns out 6 pages (1500 words) a day, every day, no problem. In terms of idea generation he is a phenomenon. He’s not like you or me.

Don’t get me wrong – ideas will come for the writer. They always do, whether you wish them to or not. But you should write them down. I absolutely have a document where I keep all my big ideas that one day might (or might not) become a short story or a novel. When I go back and look through it every few months, I’ll see some truly stupid thoughts, but I’ll also see a few where I think: I’d forgotten about that. Let’s try it.

(3) WICKED GOOD. The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney weighs in with “’Wicked’ Review: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Beloved Musical”.

… The respective casting of those roles — Ariana Grande as the minimally gifted sorcery student who will go on to become Glinda, Good Witch of the North, and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West — is the movie’s winning hand. Their vocals are clear and strong and supple to a degree many of us have learned not to expect after too many movie musicals that cast merely adequate singers and then Auto-Tune them to death.

Grande and Erivo give Stephen Schwartz’s songs — comedy numbers, introspective ballads, power anthems — effortless spontaneity. They help us buy into the intrinsic musical conceit that these characters are bursting into song to express feelings too large for spoken words, not just mouthing lyrics and trilling melodies that someone spent weeks cleaning up in a studio. The decision to record the songs live on set whenever possible is a major plus….

(4) TIMELESS AND TOPICAL. “Jon M. Chu Embraced the Politics of ‘Wicked’ and Audiences Seeing It Through a Post-Election Lens” on IndieWire.

…[Director Jon M.] Chu embraces that his movie will take on a new layer of meaning for many audience members after the re-election of Trump, but noted that impact is in part because politics has been baked into “Wicked” since its inception. Gregory Maguire’s 1995 book “Wicked” is a meditation on resisting fascist movements, a not-so-subtle theme that carried into its musical adaptation by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. A major underlying storyline of “Wicked” is how leaders, who claim to have the people’s best interest at heart, attack the educated — represented by professor Dr. Dillamond, a talking goat voiced by Peter Dinklage — as they try to rewrite the history of animals and humans co-existence in an effort to strip the animals of their rights, and demonize them as the source of the people’s problems.

Through this lens, Chu acknowledged his film is prophetic, but only because the underlying IP is prophetic. Chu argued the original “Wizard of Oz” movie — released on the heels of the 1930s Dust Bowl (the drought-stricken storms of the Depression), during the rise of fascism, and on the eve of World War II — has always spoken to America in a time of transition. He personally experienced it at two very different political moments that “Wicked” entered his life….

(5) TERMINAL JUSTICE. “How Do You Punish a Machine? (And why would you want to?)” asks Graham Brown at CrimeReads.

…For their wisdom we turn to the ever-instructive eyes of the science fiction writers of the world.

Starting with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke, the classic example of machines becoming sentient, in which HAL9000 commits multiple homicides, wiping out the sleeping crewmen of the Discovery, and then eventually attempts to murder the last surviving astronaut Dave by locking him out of the airlock.  Quite a set of crimes.  But in HAL’s defense, he’d been given conflicting programming and told to lie, factors that many believe caused him to lose his electronic mind.  In addition, he may have been under the influence of the mysterious monolith. HAL might also raise a claim of self-defense. At the time he tried to kill Dave, he knew Dave was intending to disconnect him and shut him down.

Interesting case.  A good lawyer could make an argument for not guilty by reason of insanity and self-defense, but I’m going to say guilty.  To his credit, HAL becomes normal again and sacrifices himself for the crew in 2010 ODYSSEY TWO, perhaps atoning for his terrible crimes…

(6) WHERE PROPHETS ARE WITHOUT HONOR. Cora Buhlert deconstructs the popularity of German band Kraftwerk while simultaneously demythologizing the Autobahn in “A Baffled Guardian Writer Discovers the Autobahn – and the Best German Roadtrip Songs” – an entertaining read!

…This is also where the problem with foreigners driving on the Autobahn comes in. They’re often driving an unfamiliar car, they’re not used to high speeds and also don’t know where and when it’s reasonably safe to go fast. See Tim Jonze starting his Autobahn adventure in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area, where it’s definitely not safe to go fast (and not allowed either). At one point, Jonze also opens the driver’s side window, while going 150 kilometers per hour, which makes me wonder if he’s fucking crazy.

What’s even more hilarious is that while Kraftwerk were on the road a lot in the 1970s, travelling from gig to gig, usually on the Autobahn, often by night, their car was a Volkswagen Beetle. Tim Jonze has apparently never driven a Volkswagen Beetle, but I have, because my parents had one in the 1970s and early 1980s. So I know that they couldn’t go any faster than 130 kilometers per hour and the car started rattling like crazy at approx. 100 kilometers per hour. The Beetle‘s successor, a 1980 Volkswagen Jetta, which I continued to drive until 2008 (I wanted to keep it to hit the thirty year mark, when a car is considered a historical vehicle in Germany and gets a special licence plate, but unfortunately the Jetta fell apart two years before), capped out at 160 kilometers per hour and also started to rattle like mad at anything above 130 kilometers per hour.  So Kraftwerk were travelling at the relatively leisurely pace of approx. 100 kilometers per hour in a Volkswagen Beetle, when they wrote the “Autobahn” song….

(7) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 123 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Infinite Amount of Annual Leave”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty “don’t have any letters of comment but we do have discussion of the Belfast Eastercon, Reconnect, as well as musings on online convention Back to Our Futures and upcoming Worldcons and Eurocons. Plus, Liz read a book.”

An uncorrected transcript is available at the link.

A coffee stain on a piece of paper on which are written the words “Octothorpe 123” and “fully caffineated”.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Rise of the Guardians (2012)

On this day twelve years ago, The Rise Of The Guardians enjoyed its premiere in limited release with its full one that coming weekend.  It is quite possibly my favorite holiday film, though Scrooged, Lion in Winter, The Polar Express are also on the list as well. Oh and the forty year old version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott. 

It was directed by Peter Ramsey and produced by Christina Steinberg and Nancy Bernstein from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire. It was based on William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood series, a most delightful series indeed. 

OK, IT IS TIME FOR A CUP OF HOT CHOCOLATE PREPARED BY THE STEWARDS OF THE POLAR EXPRESS. COME BACK AFTER WE HAVE TOLD THE STORY OF THIS FILM.

The Guardians of Childhood series was a mystical epic of mythological characters fighting darkness to protect childhood dreams. It made very good source material for that aforementioned screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire in which Jack Frost awakens from a very long nap under the ice with his memory gone to discover everyone has forgotten him.

Meanwhile at the North Pole (splendidly realized here), the Man in the Moon warns Nicholas St. North that Pitch Black (who look a lot Mr. Dark in Bill Willingham’s Fables series) is threatening the children of the world with his nightmares. 

He calls E. Aster Bunnymund, the Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy to arms. Each of these is a wonderfully realized character as the Man in the Moon and Nicholas St. North.

A series of truly epic battles to defeat Pitch Black follows lest all the children of the world are permanently beset with nightmares. He is defeated when his own Nightmares sensing he has grown weak drag him down into the Underworld.

DID YOU ENJOY THAT HOT CHOCOLATE? GOOD, COME ON BACK. 

The feature starred the voice talents of Hugh Jackman, Jude Law and Isla Fisher among others. I think it was a stellar voice cast and the animation was splendid. I’ve rewatched it several times, and the Suck Fairy sits on the couch sighing, drinking hot chocolate, stroking a Pixel, and saying that it’s too sweet for her to mess with. The holiday season does bring out the soft side of her. 

It did exceedingly well at the box office taking in over three hundred million on a budget of one hundred and thirty million according to Box Office Mojo, and about half of the critics really liked it such as Derek Adam’s of Time Out who proclaimed “Rise of the Guardians is an effervescent dose of fantasia that’s pretty hard to dislike. Unless, of course, you’re a cynical grump.” The grumpy ones I’ll not quote, but I’ll just say that Old Nick should give them a lump of coal this season.

The audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes is very healthy eighty percent.

Rise of the Guardians can be rented on Amazon Prime.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) THE PAST IS ANOTHER COUNTRY. “In Search of the Moomins in Helsinki: The Enduring Magic of Tove Jannson’s Characters” at Literary Hub. “Christiana Spens Returns to Her Father’s world (and the Beloved Moomin Books)”.

… As we explored Helsinki, perhaps inevitably, I kept thinking of my own father. As we sat in cafes and parks, I wondered which of them he had gone to, which of the museums and islands he had explored. Helsinki felt so familiar that it was as if I had already been here, and yet the more time we spent there, the more I realized that I didn’t know anything about my father’s time here at all.

He had not really told me stories about coming here; he had just gone and come back. I had imagined his times in Helsinki based on the gifts he returned with, the pictures in his books, and later the Moomin stories; but he had not really told me anything himself.

He had written about Alvar Aalto, expressed joy at the sight of herrings or gooseberries or meatballs; I knew he loved the place. He had even tried to build a Finnish summer house, in the same sky blue that was popular here; but he had never been very practical minded, and it had not stood up well to the elements.

Nevertheless, I had lived there for several years as a teenager. Perhaps this experience, living in a weather-beaten wooden Summer House in the woods, is what made Finland itself seem familiar to me, rather than anything my father ever told me about the country.

And yet, now that I was here, I found myself wondering about him anyway; had he gone to Esplanade Park, had he had coffee at Fazer, had he known Rock Church or the Uspenski Cathedral, had he felt this light as I did now? But I didn’t actually know, and I never would; he was not here, only his ghost was.

But the Alvar Aalto buildings were, all the other reminders were. And the Moomins were here, too; in gift shops and cafes, these friendly creatures appeared, giving the whole city the cast of a fairy-tale, along with its mists and sea, its pastel-colored buildings, its ships and cobbled stones….

(11) HUFFIN’ AND PUFFIN. Daisy Ridley answers readers’ questions over at the Guardian: “Daisy Ridley: ‘I made a toilet cake on Bake Off because flushing with the lid up is unhygienic beyond belief’”.

Did those late-night drinking and ceilidh sessions during the filming of The Force Awakens on the Skellig islands in County Kerry give you a taste for old-school, dusty pub culture and creamy stout? Galdove19

I’d never had a Guinness outside Ireland, so I got the good stuff the first time round. We had the sun shining on us every day, which the Irish crew said was unbelievable, although every time I’ve been to Ireland it’s been absolutely glorious. I had to climb about a thousand stairs up Great Skellig. Our unbelievable camera operator had a Steadicam and was climbing up backwards, so I thought: “There’s no way I can complain.” That tamed my own exhaustion. The Skellig islands are an ecological site, so we had to not disturb the puffin population, who were there one day, but had migrated the next, which was eerie and amazing. They obviously weren’t big Star Wars fans and thought: “We’ve had enough of this.”

(12) EXERCISE IN TERROR. [Item by Steven French.] Coming a little late for Halloween: “The health benefits of fright: A haunted house study” at Medical X Press.

…People often engage in activities that elicit fear for recreational purposes, from ghost stories and jump scare pranks to modern horror films and haunted attractions. This haunted house experiment suggests that such experiences may not only provide thrills but also potential health benefits by modulating immune responses.

Further research is needed to confirm the observed effects and explore the mechanisms underlying the relationship between recreational fear and immune function before clinical applications can be considered significant enough to incorporate acute fear into a health care setting….

(13) WHOVILLE’S GOLDEN ARCHES. The Grinch is now in Happy Meal at McDonald’s. So then — are these roast beast nuggets?

(14) JUMPING OUT OF THE WAY. “The International Space Station adjusts its orbit to avoid space debris” – NPR has the details.

NASA says that the International Space Station (ISS) shifted its orbit on Tuesday to avoid a piece of debris.

The debris avoidance maneuver involved firing thrusters on the ISS at 2:09 p.m. CT for 5 minutes, 31 seconds, according to NASA. This adjustment raised the ISS orbit to “provide an extra margin of distance from a piece of orbital debris from a defunct defense meteorological satellite that broke up in 2015,” the agency says.

Had the maneuver not been conducted, the debris would have come within nearly 2.5 miles of the station, NASA also says. The debris was “small,” U.S. Space Forces-Space tells NPR…

(15) INTERNATIONAL STAR WARS SHOW RENEWED. Variety reports, “’Star Wars: Visions’ Series to Return for Third Season”.

“Star Wars: Visions,” a Lucasfilm anthology series of animated shorts from around the world celebrating the mythology of Star Wars through different cultural perspectives, will return for a third season, Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige said on Wednesday.

Feige was a surprise guest at the annual Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific Showcase held in Singapore.

“Star Wars: Visions Volume 3” will debut in 2025 on the Disney+ streaming service. The upcoming series will feature both new and returning anime studios, and return to Japan to celebrate the world of anime through the elements and mythos of Star Wars….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Red One Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/16/24 Beelzebub Has A Pixel Put Aside For Me, For Me, For Me

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(1) LE GUIN BOOK BUNDLE. Recently announced is the “Humble Book Bundle: A Wizard of Earthsea and More by Ursula K. Le Guin”.

You can get the three Earthsea novels for $1, go for an intermediate deal, or buy all 30 books in the bundle for a minimum of $18. The more you choose to pay, the more goes to a selected charity – Literary Arts, this time.

The titles in this bundle are available on Kobo.com. To access them, create or log in to your Kobo.com account. Please note that the content redemption deadline is December 15, 2027 at 11:00 AM PDT.

(2) CONGRATULATIONS! Heather Rose Jones aired Episode 300 of “The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast” (Podbean) today. On her blog, Alpennia, she discusses “Where I Have Been, Where I Will Go” with the series.

…When I first conceived of the Project back in the ‘80s, I wanted to create a sourcebook of historic research to help people create lesbian characters in historic settings. I figured it would be a manageable project because, after all, how much information could there be? (Pause while I glance sideways at my database with over a thousand publications listed.) I started the blog 10 years ago when I concluded that a more rational approach was to create an ongoing annotated bibliography. It would start getting the information out there. It would give me an incentive to start reading and processing all the publications I’d been collecting. And people could search the Project for topics relevant to their own interests. The blog has always had two parallel functions. For those who want a general, high-level understanding, the summaries themselves are available. But for those who want to do their own in-depth research, the Project offers guideposts, bibliographies, and sometimes links to the original publications it’s based on.

In the last year or so, I’ve come back around to the conclusion that my original idea was viable after all. Or, at least, that some version of that sourcebook was a viable idea. I have enough material—between the blog and the podcast—to put together something approaching my original vision: a one-stop sourcebook for people who want information on lesbian-like characters in history. A lot of the text is already written, albeit in a form that will need considerable editing. So the next big step for the Project will be to create that sourcebook.

Since making that decision, I’ve started focusing the podcast essays on creating chapters to fill in the outline I’ve drafted. Soon, I’ll be looking for input and feedback on what potential readers want to see in a resource of this type. But for now, I thought I’d celebrate this podcast milestone by laying out the current vision….

…One of the biggest philosophical issues in the study of queer history is the consideration of how modern gender and sexual identities relate to those in history—if they do at all. So the next section of the book will be exploring that concept and offering tools for thinking about how we can create characters who both reflect their own setting and also offer connection for modern readers. This will start off with my favorite metaphor: that gender and sexuality identities are like prepositions—every language is trying to describe the same physical reality, but speakers of different languages perceive and describe the relationships in that reality differently. It’s a really fun metaphor to explore, though probably no one else is quite as geeky about prepositional semantics as I am. The section will then review various historic models of gender and sexuality and talk about how they both reflected and shaped people’s understandings of their own lives….

(3) GET REJECTED QUICKER! So much for that “money flows to the writer” dictum.After Dinner Conversation will happily take $20 from any writer that wants a prompt decision about their story submission.

Our turnaround time for submissions is 6-8 weeks. Don't feel like waiting? Buy a FAST PASS and skip to the front of the line. You get a quick response, and we keep the lights on! buff.ly/3m2rN47 #opensubs #litmag #literarymagazine #shortstory #fiction #writercommunity

— After Dinner Conversation (@afterdinner.bsky.social) 2024-11-15T16:55:39.679Z

Here’s a bit more about how it works: “After Dinner Conversation – Short Story FAST PASS Submissions”.

What is a “Fast Pass” submission?

Because of the high volume of submissions, we tend to average 2-3 months to read and respond to a new submission. If you purchase a “Fast Pass,” you jump to the front of the line. Only after reading all of our “Fast Pass” submissions, will we go back to reading our regular submissions. (Or, if you are a yearly digital or print subscriber, your story is always moved to the front of the line!)

Accordingly, “Fast Pass” submissions should expect a response in 3-5 business days.

Are my chances of getting accepted better if I use the “Fast Pass” system?

Nope. You get the exact same reading and consideration as everyone else. You just get read first.

What do you do with the extra money?

We keep the lights on at After Dinner Conversation Publishing. Seriously, submitting via the “Fast Pass” is win/win. You get a faster response, and 100% of your money goes to supporting an independent literary publisher.

(4) THE MCCARTY FACTOR. In a new episode of the Wizards and Spaceships podcast, hosts David L. Clink and Rachel A. Rosen revisit “The Great 2023 Hugo Awards Controversy” with whistleblower Diane Lacey. Also discusses of Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford’s report.

In 2023, the Hugo Awards, administered by the World Science Fiction Society, were rocked by scandal. That year, the convention was hosted in Chengdu, China, and a number of popular and acclaimed works, from R. F. Kuang’s Babel to Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow, were deemed ineligible…even though they had enough nominations to appear on the ballot. The controversy engulfed the world of speculative fiction, but what really happened? In this episode, we talk to WorldCon whistleblower Diane Lacey to get her take on what went wrong, who’s to blame, and what we can learn from this moving forward.

(5) GUARDIAN JOINS THE RESISTANCE. …To a movie casting choice. This controversial column is from The Guardian’s “Week in Geek”: “Daisy Ridley’s Rey is now Star Wars’ best big-screen bet – is this a saga without a plan?”

…When the Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk described modern consumer culture as “a copy of a copy of a copy”, he was probably thinking of Ikea churning out coffee tables with all the personality of an overcooked noodle, rather than the next episodes in a long-running space opera known for heroes who use quizzically reversed syntax. Nevertheless, he might easily have been talking about Star Wars, and the once great saga’s descent into self parody in the wake of reports from Hollywood that the future of the franchise on the big screen is to be based on … yep, you read it right … Daisy Ridley’s Rey.

It had already been announced that Rey, whose presence lent the sequel trilogy all the emotional resonance of a damp tea towel, will return for a movie set 15 years after the events of the execrable Rise of Skywalker, as she endeavours to build a new Jedi order. (Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is attached to direct.) That was worrying enough for those fans of the saga still reeling from the most recent episode’s attempts to tie up loose ends by lighting them on fire and hoping nobody noticed. But according to the Hollywood Reporter, Lucasfilm has decided that Rey is now seen as Star Wars’ “most valuable cinematic asset” – admittedly because “the closet is a little bare” following the deaths either on or off screen of pretty much the entire cast of the original trilogy….

(6) HOWARD BRAZEE (1951-2024). Colorado SF fan Howard Brazee died October 18 reports the Denver clubzine DASFAX. The family obituary is here. He is survived by his wife, Patricia, children Lisa and Ian, sisters Linda and Loralee, brother Jonathan (SF author and SFWA director), and grandchildren.

… Howard reveled in Colorado, but he reveled more being a family man, taking great pride and joy in watching Ian and Lisa mature and start their own families. He never lost the joy of childhood, which is why he was always the favorite of the family children. He took his duties as a grandfather, uncle, and grand-uncle to his enormous heart, giving love and support to everyone.

If there was one thing that set Howard apart was that he always had a smile on his face and a ready joke or quip. He raised the spirits of all those around him.

A lifelong science fiction and fantasy fan, he was known to many of the most famous writers in the genres. He and Pat were fixtures at MileHiCon, the largest science fiction conference in the Rocky Mountain region.

Howard was a good man, in every sense of the word, and the world is a better place for his life journey on it….

DASFAx editor Sourdough Jackson adds, “Something Jonathan Brazee once told me is that when he was a small boy, his big brother Howard introduced him to science fiction, in part by reading stories to him.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

November 16, 1952 — Robin McKinley, 72.

By Paul Weimer: I almost missed out on reading Robin McKinley, in my focus to read “Adult novels”. I don’t remember how, in the mid 80’s I came across The Hero and the Crown, but I did, and I was enchanted with Aerin’s story, rising from distrusted daughter of the king, to dragon-slaying hero facing enormous odds with courage, and intelligence. I did read the books in the wrong order, since I read The Blue Sword, next, which The Hero and the Crown is a prequel to, and Aerin appears as a force ghost in, briefly. That confused me, it may have been one of the first times I accidentally read a series out of publication order, but within chronological order. I didn’t know you could do such a thing.  

I kind of lost track of McKinley’s work for a good long time. Too many authors to read, too much thinking that I didn’t really feel the need for more YA (even if her later work was not all YA at all), until I came across one of the best vampire novels out there, from McKinley, Sunshine, which is set in an alternate world where the creatures of the night fought humanity and now have a prickly conflicting relationship, with vampire gangs, pools of black magic and a lot more. 

The worldbuilding of “Sunshine” Rae’s world is fascinating, taking the old tropes of vampires and undead and putting them into a secondary world to be able to play with those tropes and settings and ideas as she likes.  Sunshine, like other McKinley novels, really run strongly on characters and character relationships, especially ones under very heavy fire, both from plot and from others around them. I can see a line from Aerin all the way to Rae, and beyond, in McKinley’s work.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range shows SJW credentials have gained battlefield mobility.
  • Zack Hill says always to call it research.
  • Bliss notes the new signs of the times.
  • Tom Gauld’s TBR pile turns threatening.

(9) GREEN LANTERN STATUE. Burbank has dedicated a third superhero statue: “DC, Visit Burbank, and Warner Bros. Discovery Unveil Green Lantern Statue”.

An iconic member of DC’s Green Lantern Corps stands as a symbol of willpower and keeper of law and order for visitors and residents of Burbank as a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall bronze statue of Green Lantern John Stewart was unveiled today in a special ceremony at Empire Center’s Hangar 28 in Burbank. The statue is the newest product of a partnership between Visit Burbank, DC, and Warner Bros. Discovery, joining celebrated DC Super Heroes Batman, in downtown Burbank, and Wonder Woman, at the entrance to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour.

… The newly installed Green Lantern statue can be viewed 24 hours a day at Empire Center’s Hangar 28 at 1775 N Victory Place, Burbank, CA.

Green Lantern John Stewart Statue

(10) WHY DID EARTH’S FIRST RADIO MESSAGE TO ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS LEAVE OUT HALF OF HUMANITY? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back on Friday November 16, 1974 (around teatime in Britain) a message was sent to the Great Globular Cluster in the constellation of Hercules (26,000 light years away) from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, then the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. It consisted of a series of binary digits, 0s and 1s, which represented numbers and pictures conveying basic information about humanity. One of the pictures was of a crude depiction of a human. Though blocky, it looked far more like a man than a woman. Radio astronomer Frank Drake (he of the famous Drake Equation, then the director of the observatory, was tasked with commemorating what was essentially a new instrument with something of a media stunt.

This week’s Nature has an article on this message. Though the Arecibo message contained an image likely of a man (not a woman), what might seem a sexist choice arguably deserves a more subtle interpretation the article opines:

As the electronic signals from our planet expand ever outwards into space, the world is marking 50 years since humanity broadcast its first radio message intended to get a response from the stars. No reply has been received, and none is expected for millennia, at least. But the form of this message, and others, raises questions about how humans see and portray ourselves — and about the legacies, scientific and otherwise, that any civilization leaves for others…

….Drake wrestled with how to represent a human figure using so few pixels. He hoped to make it unisex, but that version “came out looking more like a gorilla than a human. So, I left it masculine rather than apelike.”

Thus, a picture of only half of humanity was broadcast from the Arecibo telescope. In hindsight, Drake admitted that he might have subconsciously tried to make it look a lot like himself — “as though I were beaming myself up Star Trek style”…

….The Arecibo message demonstrates how the demographics of the scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) affected the character of the messages they sent. As with art, these messages are shaped by our biases, values and identities — mirrors that reflect our histories and cultures. If fields such as astronomy are dominated by a narrow demographic, as they were in the 1970s, then that will be reflected in the design and content of the messages, which might emphasise certain human experiences and perspectives over others…

(11) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Did NASA’s Viking landers accidentally kill life on Mars? Why one scientist thinks so” reports Space.com.

In 1975, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, carrying a mission to unlock the secrets of the Red Planet. Soon, it released twin landers that drifted toward the Martian surface and eventually made history as the first American spacecraft to touch down on the world.

For over six years, Viking 1 continued to orbit Mars’ Chryse Planitia region while its landers collected soil samples using robotic arms and onboard laboratories, marking a groundbreaking chapter in humanity’s exploration of the Martian environment.At the time, however, little was known about environmental conditions of the Red Planet, and the Viking life detection experiments were modeled after culturing techniques commonly used to identify microbes on Earth. These methods involved adding water and nutrients to those aforementioned soil samples, then monitoring for any signs that suggest microbes might be living in the samples. Such signals were associated with responses to the additives — essentially an influx of components needed to complete normal life cycles as we know them — and included things like growth, reproduction and the consumption of food for energy.

One day, both Viking landers reported a potential positive detection of microbial activity in their soil samples, and the findings naturally sparked decades of intense debate. Had we finally found proof of life elsewhere in the universe? However, most scientists now believe the results were negative or — at best — inconclusive. They think it’s more likely that the positive readings have an alternative explanation.

But that’s most scientists.

According to Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany, there may be another facet to this mystery that hasn’t yet been considered: Viking may indeed have discovered life on Mars, but the water-based nature of its life-detection experiments might have unintentionally killed it.

In a recent commentary published in the journal Nature Astronomy, titled “We may be looking for Martian life in the wrong place,” he argues that because Mars is even drier than one of the most arid places on Earth, the Atacama Desert, where microbes obtain water through salts that draw moisture from the atmosphere, any analogous Martian life would be highly sensitive to the addition of liquid water. Even one drop too much could threaten their existence….

(12) IN THE QUEUE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Line Culture has been the subject of much discussion from time to time in sf/f/etc. fandom. This article takes a broader look at Line Culture and how it has been affected by the Internet/social media  “TikTok trends have created massive IRL lines. Don’t fall for the hype” at Mashable.

… Now, let’s talk more tacos. My neighborhood spot, Taqueria Ramirez, blew up last year. It cracked the New York Times‘ Top 100 restaurants and, in turn, became a destination folks would post about online. Last year, there were so many posts about the spot, and, in turn, the lines were godawful. It’d take 45 minutes of queueing up to get a few (albeit delicious) tacos. As a result, I almost never went to the amazing spot I pass every day.

But then a magical thing happened. Ramirez fell off the Times’ Top 100 list. The tacos are no less delicious. They remain the best tacos I’ve ever eaten. But the lines have shrunken by at least 50 percent. What once stretched around the block is like a dozen people long. What changed? You can no longer make a social media post bragging, “I tried the New York Times‘ only taqueria in its list of Top 100 restaurants.” That’s it….

(13) ASTRONAUT COOGAN Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] “Space travel should not be just ‘for the elites’, says new British astronaut” in the Guardian.

She beat a field of more than 22,000 candidates and has a PhD in astrophysics and a background as a Royal Navy reserve, but the newly qualified British astronaut Rosemary Coogan believes that in future space travel should not be restricted to elites.

Coogan, 33, from Belfast, who is the European Space Agency’s (Esa) second British recruit, believes we are entering a revolutionary period of space exploration that will lead not only to the return of humans to the moon but also journeys to Mars and beyond.

“I certainly don’t think space travel, or space generally, should be for the elites,” she said. “I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to [visit] another planet. I think the people who will end up doing these missions will be trained to make sure that it’s a successful mission and that we’re treating other planets with respect, but that’s not the same as saying they’ll be the few elites.”

(14) REPORTING WEIGHTLESSNESS. [Item by Steven French.] And here’s an accompanying piece by a Guardian journalist who accompanied Rosemary Coogan, Britain’s first female ESA astronaut on a zero-gravity flight: “’First instinct is to swim’: my trip on a zero-gravity flight with an ESA astronaut”.

It feels as if I’m hallucinating: as I lie on the floor, the ceiling suddenly sinks towards me and the walls begin to tilt at an impossible angle. It is my first experience of zero gravity on an European Space Agency (Esa) parabolic flight. In theory I know what is going on, but my brain just cannot grasp that it is actually me that is floating, that I’m suspended midair….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, P. J. Evans, Rob Thornton, Sourdough Jackson, 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 Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 8/7/24 With A Purposeful Pixel And A Terrible Scroll  He Pulls The Spitting Godstalk Down

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(1) CRANKY DRAGON AWARD FINALIST. It’s not the Dragon Awards that Tom Kratman is upset with — in contrast to those who are miffed because they dropped Cedar Sanderson. Kratman welcomes his book’s appearance on the ballot because it lets him count coup on Publishers Weekly which gave it a bad review.

That Publisher Weekly’s review concluded:

….A deeply conservative ideology runs throughout, often given voice through Sean’s observations about the differences between past and present: “The Democratic Party of my time,” he tells a 1960s Democrat, “is a wholly owned subsidiary of a new class of amazingly rich, denationalized and globalist plutocrats.” He follows this up with digs at LGBTQ rights and the sexual revolution (arguing it actually “reduced women’s choices”), and Kratman does nothing to differentiate the views of his character from the philosophy of the book itself. While the author’s flair for fight scenes is undeniable, there’s little else to recommend this. 

(2) BOOKMARK THIS. The Photography Team at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow is posting “Worldcon Photos” to Flickr. Obviously, there will be more when the convention really starts on August 8.

(3) BRISBANE IN 28 UPDATE. Today Random Jones, chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid, sent a progress report subscribers:

The bid for Worldcon in Brisbane began in 2020, with the intention to bid for the 2025 Worldcon. However the pressures of dealing with a world with Covid and the massive changes that resulted from those years caused the committee to realise that 2025 was not feasible, and the bid was retargeted towards 2028.

Earlier this year the committee determined it was time to pass the baton on to a new and reinvigorated committee, and from this we are now a few days out from the start of Worldcon Glasgow 2024 full of energy and the desire to get the job done.

My name is Random Jones and I am the chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid committee. I am the head of a small but dedicated bunch of fans who are intending to make our Worldcon the best that not only Brisbane has to offer, but the whole of Australia and the South Pacific region.

Over the next 2 years until the site selection vote, we want to make sure people truly believe that we are a fantastic option to hold Worldcon, and that we have the both the dreams and the ability to make it happen.

Glasgow Worldcon: Brisbane in 28 will be present at Glasgow Worldcon, 8 to 12 August, 2024. We will be running a table in the fan-tables section plus holding a party on the Thursday night. Come along and get a badge ribbon, learn what a Tim Tam Slam is, and possibly discover the truth about drop bears. There may also be fairy bread, but we can’t make any guarantees at this stage.

We will also be present at the Future Worldcons Q&A session which will be held on Friday August 9 at 13:00 BST in the Carron room. Vix will be there as our representative, and will be doing a small presentation and answering any questions people have.

(4) CHENGDU DELEGATION AT GLASGOW WORLDCON. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] On Tuesday 6th July, Hugo winner RiverFlow posted on Weibo a list of Chinese people who were known to be attending the Glasgow Worldcon in person.

Amongst the list of Hugo finalists and fans – some of whom wrote reports from last year’s Worldcon that were mentioned in Pixel Scrolls in late 2023 and early 2024 – there is a line item about a mysterious “Chengdu delegation”, with the parenthesized caveat that River doesn’t know who might be part of this delegation.

Whilst this could be a delegation representing the Chengdu Worldcon, this is perhaps unlikely for a variety of reasons.  A perhaps more plausible answer is that it relates the retooled Tianwen Program which in its recent press announcement, explicitly mentioned the involvement of people from Chengdu local government.  Other possibilities might be promotion for the Chengdu SF Museum, or parties interested in the ASFiC/EASFiC proposal (item E.12 on the Business Meeting agenda).

This delegation item doesn’t seem to refer to representation of Chengdu-based science fiction publishers such as Science Fiction World or Eight Light Minutes Culture, as staff from those organizations are listed in separate items in River’s post.

As an aside, it is unclear if the Panda Study trip covered in posts earlier this year is still going ahead.  There was a Chinese-language update in late March (which didn’t get written up for File 770), which has a schedule indicating that the group would have arrived in London on Tuesday 6th, before heading to Glasgow on the 9th.  That piece also states that the trip would involve a previous Hugo winner and/or one of the “Four Kings” of Chinese SF, saying that more details would be released 3 months in advance.  The apparent lack of any such details becoming public may well indicate that the trip has been cancelled.  No-one I’ve spoken to about it is aware of any updates since that one in late March.

(5) EVERMORE OVERHAUL COMING. [Item by Dave Doering.] Great news on Utah’s answer to Disneyland. Evermore revived! “Evermore’s new owners to reveal hints about opening with interactive clues, cash prizes” at KSL.com.

Evermore Park is soon to be nevermore. Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal announced the private sale of the now-defunct fantasy adventure theme park Monday.

“I am thrilled to see the venue transition into its next chapter, now in progress,” Fugal said. “The new owners have an extraordinary vision.”

Evermore had struggled for years with its operating model, pandemic setbacks and financial woes until ultimately defaulting and being evicted from the property owned by Fugal.

New owners Travis Fox and Michelle Fox want Utahns to get excited about plans for the park through their community “Hatch The Egg” tournament. Anyone 18 or older can sign up, whether as individuals or families, to receive clues and compete for a chance to win cash prizes.

Details about the park’s new direction and opening will be revealed over the course of several months via tournament clues. The tournament’s grand prize of $20,000 and the grand reopening date will be announced Nov. 21…

(6) GALAXY MAGAZINE RETURNS WITH ISSUE 263. Galaxy Science Fiction magazine is back. Originally running from 1950 to 1980, Starship Sloane Publishing has revived the classic magazine for a contemporary audience, featuring both authors from its original run and beyond into today’s global SF landscape, with works spanning seven countries.

With fiction, essays, poetry and art by: Eugen Bacon, F. J. Bergmann, Eliane Boey, Ronan Cahill, A J Dalton, Bob Eggleton, Zdravka Evtimova, David Gerrold, Richard Grieco, Rodney Matthews, Bruce Pennington, Daniel Pomarède, Gareth L. Powell, Christopher Ruocchio, Paulo Sayeg, Robert Silverberg, Nigel Suckling, & Dave Vescio

Cover art by Bruce Pennington.

Galaxy #263 will be available in digest paperback and as a free PDF download at Galaxy SF.

(7) FAN IS NOW VEEP CANDIDATE. Nicholas Whyte notes that Politico lists Tim Walz’s status as an sf fan as one of his defining characteristics. The link goes to a January 2019 Twin Cities.com / Pioneer Press headline: “Minnesota, meet your new governor: teacher, coach, soldier, sci-fi fan — and eternal optimist”.

(8) OUT OF THE STARTING GATE. Michael Capobianco finishes his overview of the first year of SFWA in “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 2)” at the SFWA Blog.

… Damon Knight was now president of SFWA, Editor/Writer/Publisher of the Bulletin, and chair of a one-person Contracts Committee/Griefcom.  It was at about this point that SFWA was becoming unmanageable for one person. Enter Lloyd Biggle, Jr., the newly elected Secretary-Treasurer. Biggle struck Knight as someone who was “sucker enough to take that job (Secretary-Treasurer) and do it conscientiously,” which was apparently an extremely accurate assessment.

Knight recalled in Bulletin #54, “Lloyd not only served two terms as Secretary-Treasurer and did dozens of other jobs for the organization, he set up the trustee system and served on it for years, while I got out after two terms and lay in a hammock. Furthermore, it was Biggle who proposed the annual SFWA anthology as a means of making money for the organization. And from that came the idea of the annual awards and the trophies and the banquets and this whole apparatus. Of course, it had crossed my mind that we might do something like that eventually, but in the beginning, we were too poor. It was our share of the royalties that made it possible.”…

(9) WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. Steve Stred wants people to know how he was treated by DarkLit Press: “Speaking Up: My DarkLit Experience”.

I’m just seeing that it looks as though DarkLit Press is pulling all the books & closing up shop. It doesn’t surprise me with the number of authors who pulled their books – myself included – and I very well might’ve been the first one whose book had been published (a few pulled them when the new crew took over before publication) and out in the wider world, when the rights were requested to be returned.

But, behind the scenes I’ve already seen screenshots labelling me as the ‘trouble maker,’ and the reason this is happening. Which, if you know me and have even a passing idea of what’s gone on behind the scenes, you’ll know that is furthest from the truth. I try really hard to support everyone, cheer everyone on, and have helped with the Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant (how I miss that!) and trying to get the Canadian Horror Writers Association up and running….

These are just two of many incidents Stred lists:

– DarkLit had been known to post sales/preorder numbers. So and so has hit 1000 preorders! So and so has sold 2000 copies etc etc. From when my book went up for preorder, I asked monthly either through DM or emails for updates on the preorder numbers. As of writing this – on August 6th, 2024 – I’ve never been shown a single report, nor given any numbers.

– During the weekend before launch, I had a number of DarkLit authors reach out asking how my experience had been, and I was forthcoming. They shared lack of royalty payments, having to chase down being paid for royalties or even receiving a report, and this was both prior to and after the leadership/ownership take over….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

August 7, 1960 — Melissa Scott, 64.

By Lis Carey: Melissa Scott was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1960, and grew up there. She discovered science fiction when she broke her arm in gym class, and was sent to the school library until it healed. The librarian offered her a science fiction book and suggested she try it. She was hooked, and proceeded to exhaust the resources of every library she had access to.

Melissa Scott at Bucconeer in 1998. Photo by Dbrukman

Following in her father’s footsteps, Melissa attended Harvard College, in Cambridge, MA, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history, and helped produce a college-sanctioned science fiction magazine, which led to the formation of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. From there, she enrolled in the graduate history program at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. (Both Cambridge and Waltham are within the metropolitan area generally referred to as “Boston,” by those from more distant parts who might find Boston’s actual boundaries a surprise.) While at Brandeis, she earned her PhD in comparative history, and sold her first novel, The Game Beyond.

The other thing Melissa did in Greater Boston was meet her partner, Lisa A. Barnett. They settled in Portsmouth, NH, and were together for 27 years, until Lisa’s death from breast and brain cancer, in May 2006. 

Melissa has written two dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as short stories. Three of those novels, the fantasy novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, and the alternate history fantasy novel, The Armor of Light, were co-written with Lisa. Can I just express here how much I enjoyed the Points novels, and truly treasure The Armor of Light?

Some of my other favorite books of Melissa’s are the Silence Leigh trilogy (Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth), Dreamships, and Trouble and Her Friends.

Melissa’s books typically feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters, but their sexuality is rarely the point of the story. The characters’ sexuality is just a feature of the characters, and the cultures they live in. When she started publishing, this was new and exciting—at least for me. The one exception to the characters’ sexuality being just part of the characters and not the point of the story is Shadow Man, where a drug used to survive interstellar travel causes an increase in intersex births. This leads the culture recognize and accept five body types—except on the relatively isolated planet of Hara, where they recognize only two, male and female.

Trouble and Her Friends, Point of Dreams, and Death by Silver won Lambda Literary Awards for gay/lesbian science Fiction. Melissa also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986.

After Lisa’s death, Melissa moved to North Carolina, near where her mother grew up. She has continued to write fantasy and science fiction, including more Points novels, more original science fiction, and both Star Trek and Stargate: Atlantis tie-in novels, as well as collaborations with other authors.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MEDICAL UPDATE. “Daisy Ridley Reveals She’s Been Diagnosed with Graves’ Disease: ‘I Didn’t Realize How Bad I Felt’” at Yahoo!

Daisy Ridley is opening up about her health, revealing in a new interview that she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in September 2023.

The actress, 32, discussed her experience with the autoimmune disorder in the cover story for the September/October issue of Women’s Health, which dropped on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

“It’s the first time I’ve shared that [Graves’],” said Ridley, who had previously shared her struggle with endometriosis and polycystic ovaries.

Graves’ disease is an immune system condition that affects the thyroid gland, according to Mayo Clinic. It causes the body to make too much thyroid hormone….

(13) TERF BATTLE. The New York Times finds “A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened.”

There are more than 3,600 shows in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most will struggle to get even a single newspaper review. Yet for months before the festival opened on Friday, one play was the subject of intense global media attention: “TERF,” an 80-minute drama about J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, and her views on transgender women.

Before anybody had even read the script, a Scottish newspaper called the play, which imagines Rowling debating her views with the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies, a “foul-mouthed” attack on the author. An article in The Daily Telegraph said that “scores of actresses” had turned down the opportunity to play Rowling. And The Daily Mail, a tabloid, reported that the production had encountered trouble securing a venue.

On social media and women’s web forums, too, “TERF” stirred outraged discussion.

The uproar raised the specter of pro-Rowling protesters outside the show and prompted debate in Edinburgh, the city that Rowling has called home for more than 30 years. But when “TERF” opened last week, it barely provoked a whimper. The only disturbance to a performance on Monday in the ballroom of Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms came from a group of latecomers using a cellphone flashlight to find their seats. About 55 theatergoers watched the play in silence from the front few rows of the 350-seat capacity venue….

… But the muted response to the show itself suggests that fewer British people are riled by the debate than the media coverage implies — or at least that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, outrage can quickly vanish.

The play’s title, “TERF” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist — is a pejorative label that Rowling’s critics have applied to her for years. Rowling has gotten into heated debates about gender issues on social media, and she published an essay in 2020 accusing transgender activists of “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.” Critics have accused her of being transphobic or anti-trans, which she has denied. Through a spokesman, she declined to comment for this article….

(14) CRUSHING LAWSUIT. “Crew of Titan sub knew they were going to die before implosion, according to more than $50M lawsuit” – AP News has the story.

The family of a French explorer who died in a submersible implosion has filed a more than $50 million lawsuit, saying the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the sub’s operator of gross negligence.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded during a voyage to the famed Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip aboard the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a company in Washington state that has since suspended operations.

Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit. He was regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable people about the famous wreck. Attorneys for his estate said in an emailed statement that the “doomed submersible” had a “troubled history,” and that OceanGate failed to disclose key facts about the vessel and its durability….

…The lawsuit goes on to say: “The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”…

(15) THIS HOAX IS UNUSUAL FOR BEING FONDLY REMEMBERED. “A giant sea monster shows up on Nantucket 87 years after an elaborate hoax” – NPR attends the celebration.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Eighty-seven years ago, a local artist perpetrated a spectacular prank on the residents of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island. The artist, Tony Sarg, was big in his day. Edgar B. Herwick III of member station GBH was on Nantucket yesterday for a re-creation of the monstrous hoax.

EDGAR B HERWICK III, BYLINE: In the summer of 1937, artist, entrepreneur and notorious prankster Tony Sarg took his penchant for high jinks to grand new heights with a long con of sorts that began weeks before the main event.

DARIN JOHNSON: He met up with two of his fisherman friends who he coaxed into going to the newspaper and telling the newspaper that there was a sea monster spotted out in the water.

HERWICK: That’s Darin Johnson, CEO of the American Theater for Puppetry Arts and Sarg scholar. Later, these so-called firsthand accounts were augmented in the press with photos of enormous reptilian footprints on a South Shore beach, whipping the townsfolk into a frenzy.

JOHNSON: And then, on August 19, they blew up this giant balloon and floated it out in the water, and it became this huge national media sensation.

HERWICK: And it was a monster balloon – a 125-foot green monster named Morton. Parade balloons may be Sarg’s greatest legacy. After all, he designed the very first ones for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1927. But he’s also considered by some the father of modern American puppetry….

HERWICK: It’s that all-too-forgotten legacy that inspired the historical association to dub this the Summer of Sarg on the island. And yesterday was its centerpiece, Sarg Community Day….

(16) RECOMMENDED. [Item by Ed Fortune] Here is the trailer for Emily Carding’s award-winning show: Quintessence, coming to Hall 2, Sunday, August 11, 2024, at the Glasgow Worldcon. “Quintessence by Emily Carding”.

A combination of cataclysmic events results in the extinction of the human race, leaving behind an AI being programmed to recreate humanity when the time is right, with the complete works of Shakespeare as a guide to the human spirit. Humanity must thrive… but at what cost? This original sci-fi storytelling show was inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and will leave you wondering who the real monster is. Originally created in collaboration with the London Science Museum, written and performed by award-winning actor Emily Carding (Richard III (A One-Woman show)).

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, Lis Carey, Daniel Dern, Dave Doering, Ed Fortune, Random Jones, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dann.]

“Star Wars…Nothing
But Star Wars”

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By Steve Vertlieb: The moment that I’d dreamt of and imagined for decades had at last arrived. Nicchi Rozsa, Miklos Rozsa’s lovely granddaughter, said that she’d never seen me look so happy. Here was the moment that I’d longed for … to meet my last living, life-long hero at last. When he smiled at me, and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, I thought that I’d died and gone to Heaven. It was so unforgettably sweet.

John Williams, at the tender age of 87 years, remains the most important motion picture composer on the planet. This weekend marks the release of his final score for Star Wars, and it is truly a momentous event.

Simply one of the greatest moments of my life… Meeting John Williams for the very first time in his dressing room at The Hollywood Bowl in late August, 2010.

Among the many highlights of my pilgrimage to Hollywood in 2017 was an entirely unexpected, nearly miraculous, accidental “close encounter” with the current star of one of the most lucrative and beloved movie franchises in motion picture history. I’m still amazed, two years after this most astonishing occurrence, that our meeting actually occurred, as this remarkable photograph will happily attest to.

While waiting backstage to speak with composer John Williams at the venerable Hollywood Bowl, I noticed that Daisy Ridley’s name was posted on one of the dressing room doors. She hadn’t appeared on stage with Maestro Williams during the Star Wars concert selections, and so I wondered why. I turned to my brother to mention the strangeness of the occurrence when I inwardly gasped at the realization that the young star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and, currently, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was standing just inches in front of me.

Listening to her British accent in conversation with the director of The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, I nudged my brother Erwin, and whispered “I think that Daisy Ridley is standing right in front of me.” Hearing my admittedly excited observation to my little brother, she turned toward me with a big smile and said “Hello.”

She was as delightfully adorable in person as she is as “Rey” on the big screen in the spectacular continuation of the cherished science fiction franchise. I couldn’t help but recall John Williams’ own wonderfully charming admission, upon receiving his A.F.I. Life Achievement Award in 2016, that he didn’t want any other composer but himself writing music for this lovely young actress. I completely understood his feelings upon meeting Miss Ridley.

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #49

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**BEWARE SPOILERS**

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – A Review 

By Chris M. Barkley:

Star Wars – Episode Nine: The Rise of Skywalker (2019, 142 minutes, ****) with Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Kelly Marie Tran, Domhnall Gleeson, Naomi Ackie, Richard E. Grant, Billy Dee Williams, Keri Russell, Ian McDermid AND Carrie Fisher. Screenplay by Chris Terrio and J. J. Abrams, Story by Derek Connelly, Colin Trevorrow, Directed by J. J. Abrams.

“NEVER underestimate a droid.”
General Leia Organa

Last month, I had the privilege of meeting actor Anthony Daniels when his book tour in support of his memoir, I Am C-3PO, stopped at my old place of employment, Joseph Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, Ohio.

As Mr. Daniels personalized my book, I gave him a brief re-telling of my first viewing Star Wars in May of 1977:

While attending Disclave in Washington D.C., I fairly stumbled into discovering that a new movie, Star Wars, was showing at the Uptown Theater on Connecticut Avenue, just a half a mile from the Sheraton Park Hotel. On that Saturday evening, it was one of only 30 places in the entire United States showing the movie. (It rolled out to several hundred more after that weekend.) 

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Saturday’s midnight showing. And when I emerged, dazed and deliriously happy two hours and a minute later, I ran into one of my new fannish friends, future Worldcon chair Michael Walsh. When we spotted each other, we simultaneously and spontaneously started dancing on the sidewalk outside the theater making a spectacle of ourselves.

When I finished my story, Mr. Daniels had a look of utter surprise on his face. After reading the first chapter of his book (which I HIGHLY recommend, by the way), he has stated that he is always surprised and amazed by how many people have been touched in some way by this series of films.

When I first saw what eventually became Episode IV: A New Hope, I was almost twenty-one years old. And amazingly, here I am now, forty-two years later, writing a review of the final film in what is now known as the Skywalker Saga. And what a wild ride it has been over nine feature films, spin off films, several television series and hundreds of novels and comics.

There has been been an immense wave of backlash from detractors of J.J. Abrams and haters of the previous two Star Wars films in advance of the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker. As for myself, I try to stay away from both the hype and the churn of internet spite, least anything disrupt or bias my enjoyment of this film. 

Does anyone out there remember the good old days, when personal beefs and flame wars were either settled within the confines of printed, mimeographed fanzines or in person at sf conventions on panels (or, in some cases, the hallways or the consuite)? Nowadays, all it takes is just a smartphone and two minutes of idle brain farts.   

But alas, I have digressed a bit too much. On with the show… 

[The main review follows the jump]

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 11/27/19 Mr. Turtle, How Many Ticks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Pixel Scroll?

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(1) FACEBOOK FLIES OFF THE HANDLE. Canadian sff author Daniel Arenson somehow ran afoul of Facebook’s moderators by sharing images commemorating the Holocaust on his author page. The problem was unresolved for several days, and even now Arenson is concerned that he will be banned, as he explained in a post on his personal FB page. (As of this writing, the commemorative posts can be seen on Daniel Arenson’s author page.)

An update on my Facebook trouble… I might be banned entirely from the site. If I disappear, I want you to know why.

A few days ago, on my Author Page (separate from this account, which is my personal account) I shared a post that commemorated the Holocaust. It was a project created by a Jewish artist, and included some images of Holocaust victims. Facebook removed the photos, claiming they feature “nudity or sexual activity.”

This seemed to be the work of a bot. I figured it was just a bug in the algorithm. So I applied for a human to review this case, and to potentially restore the photos. A human took a look, told me the memorial photos (created by a Jewish artist) are “hate speech,” and that I’m banned from using Facebook for 24 hours.

Three days went by, and my Author Page was still in “Facebook jail.” Meanwhile, Facebook charged my credit card $1,100 for running ads using that page. The same page I’m locked out of.

I contacted Facebook support, and I finally got a hold of a human. I asked why I was banned, and how long the ban would last. They simply threatened to extend the ban. From their tone, it sounded like they might hit me with even more bans, maybe affecting my personal account (this one) too.

They did not provide reasons why this is happening. I explained that the photos were created by a Jewish artist, who wanted to commemorate the Holocaust. Facebook support staff simply threatened further bans against my account(s).

Today, even on my personal account, I’ve had some trouble accessing the website. Maybe it’s just a Facebook-wide issue, though, and unrelated to my troubles.

If I disappear entirely, this is why. I shared photos by a Jewish artist who wanted to commemorate the Holocaust. Since then, Facebook has been smacking my accounts around, and every time I contact them, it gets worse.

(2) VETERAN OF TM BATTLE SPEAKS OUT. Tara Crescent, after seeing news about Christine Feehan’s effort to trademark “Dark” for a series of fiction works, wrote how burdensome it was for her last year to fight someone else’s attempt to trademark “Cocky.” Thread starts here.

(3) THE AXE. Now who will make jokes about these turkeys? “Netflix Cancels ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Before Your Yearly Thanksgiving Marathon”  reports ScienceFiction.com.

‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ has once again been cancelled. This time by Netflix and right before the show’s anniversary. The series debuted on Thanksgiving in 1988 and would later grow into a yearly marathon. This year, you can still binge on this fan-favorite event but with the sad news that new episodes will not be on the horizon on Netflix.

(4) MIGNOGNA JUDGMENT. Nerd & Tie Trae Dorn reports “Vic Mignogna Ordered to Pay Almost a Quarter of a Million to Defendants in Final Judgement”.

You can read the entire order here, but it boils down to Mignogna being required to pay almost $250k to the defendants. While this is significantly less than the amounts asked for by the defendants (which was a sum roughly around $800k), it’s still a significant chunk of change. Mignogna’s representatives already attempted to file an appeal prematurely, and it is highly likely that they will attempt to do so again. If Mignogna’s potential appeal fails, he will be required to pay significantly more to the defendants as well.

(5) ACCESSIBILITY SUIT AGAINST NY LIBRARY. “Hunters Point Library hit with lawsuit over accessibility issues” – Curbed New York has the story.

Disability rights advocates have filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the brand new Hunters Point Library in Queens prevents people with mobility issues from “full and equal access” to the branch.

The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn federal court by the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York (CIDNY), argues that the Steven Holl Architects-designed library violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After two decades of planning, the $41 million branch opened in Long Island City this September to glowing architectural reviews, but soon came under fire because sections of the library are inaccessible to wheelchair users and others with limited mobility.

Disability Rights Advocates is handling the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs and claims that “inaccessible features pervade” the new branch, and calls out three levels with bookshelves, a reading and small-group space in a children’s section, and a rooftop terrace for featuring accessibility barriers that prevent “full and equal enjoyment” of the library.

“Heralded as a ‘stunning architectural marvel’ and a ‘beacon of learning, literacy and culture,’ the newly-built Hunters Point Library was designed and built with a total disregard for adults and children with mobility disabilities and in flagrant contempt of the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” the 21-page complaint states.

(6) THE DEAR DEPARTED. There will be a special party at this weekend’s Loscon in Los Angeles –

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • November 27, 1981 — Frankenstein Island preimired. Starring John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell, it’s more or less a remake of Teenage Zombies. It was co-produced, written, directed and edited by Jerry Warren who did the latter film as well. The fifteen hundred who have collectively rated it at Rotten Tomatoes give a vote of just seven. 
  • November 27, 2002 — The animated Treasure Planet premiered. It is at least the second telling of Stevenson’s Treasure Island in an SF film setting as there’s an 1987 Italian L’isola del tesoro  (Treasure Island in Outer Space)  series. It went on to be one of the costly box office failures ever as production costs alone were nearly one hundred and fifty million dollars. While it bombed at the theater, it has an impressive 71% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 27, 1907 — L. Sprague de Camp. The Tales from Gavagan’s Bar he wrote with Fletcher Pratt are my favorite works by him. Best novel by him? I’d say that’s Lest Darkness Fall. (Died 2000.)
  • Born November 27, 1935 — Verity Lambert. Founding Producer of Doctor Who. (When she was appointed to Who in 1963, she was BBC Television’s only female drama producer, as well as the youngest.) After leaving BBC, she’d oversee the Quatermass series at Thames. She’d return to BBC to Executive Produce three seasons of So Haunt Me, a supernatural series.  Wiki weirdly has her producing an episode of Doctor Who called “A Happy Ending” in 2006 which doesn’t exist. (Died 2007.)
  • Born November 27, 1942 — Jimi Hendrix. I wouldn’t be including him but the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a long and persuasive essay on him actually being influenced by SF. It has comments such as “for example the title of his second single, ‘Purple Haze’ (1967), though taken by many to encode a reference to drugs, is actually from Philip José Farmer’s novel Night of Light…” That essay is here. (Died 1970.)
  • Born November 27, 1940 — Bruce Lee. His only genre role was as Kato in The Green Hornet which to my utter surprise lasted for just twenty-six episodes between 1966 and 1967. He also appeared on Batman in three episodes, “The Spell of Tut”, “Batman’s Satisfaction”, and “A Piece of The Action”. (Died 1973.)
  • Born November 27, 1951 — Melinda M. Snodgrass, 68. She wrote several episodes of Next Gen while serving as the story editor during its second and third seasons. She also wrote scripts for Sliders, Strange Luck, Beyond Reality, Odyssey 5, Outer Limits and SeaQuest DSV. She’s a co-editor of and frequent story contributor to George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series.
  • Born November 27, 1964 — Rebecca Ferratti, 55. Did you know some of the Gor novels were made into films? Well they were. This actress played Takena, the co-lead, in the ones that were made, Gor and The Outlaw of Gor. They may or may not have been the worst films she was in during her film career…
  • Born November 27, 1974 — Jennifer O’Dell, 45. Her only meaningful  role to date, genre or otherwise, has been that of Veronica on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. She’s had some minor roles such on Charmed and Bones, and appearances on films such as Alien Battlefield but nothing major to date.
  • Born November 27, 1974 — Alec Newman, 45. He played Paul Atreides on the Dune and Children of Dune series. He was Barnabas Collins in the Dark Shadows film, and he had the recurring role of Malik on Enterprise. He was Drogyn, Keeper of the Deeper Well, and an eternally young warrior of good on Angel. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro realized which profession would know how to get the most passengers in a small spacecraft.

(10) PRESENTING BILL. Gallifrey One, the annual Doctor Who convention in LA, announced a coup today — “Pearl Mackie Confirmed for 2020, and More!” 

Ms. Mackie received rave reviews from fans – and critics across the globe – playing the down-to-earth Bill, the series’ first openly gay companion character, including her tour-de-force performances later in the season during the two-part finale and the subsequent Christmas special, both hers and Capaldi’s final adventure “Twice Upon a Time.”

(11) RAPPIN’ REY. On the Tonight Show, Daisy Ridley performed a rap recapping the first eight episodes that make up Star Wars’ trilogy of trilogies. Full lyrics on YouTube here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx2jIjv5g-M

(12) RED-HANDED. “Great auk extinction: Humans wiped out giant seabird”.

“The great auk will always hold a place in my heart,” Dr Jessica Thomas says.

The Swansea-based scientist spent years piecing together an ancient DNA puzzle that suggests hunting by humans caused this giant seabird’s demise.

Dr Thomas studied bone and tissue samples from 41 museum specimens during a PhD at both Bangor and Copenhagen University.

The findings paint a picture of how vulnerable even the most common species are to human exploitation.

…About 80cm (2ft 7in) tall, the stubby-winged and bulbous-billed great auks used to be found all across the north Atlantic – from North America through Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and the UK.

“Being flightless, they were always targeted by local people for food and for their feathers,” says Dr Thomas.

“But around 1500, when European seamen discovered the rich fishing grounds off Newfoundland, hunting intensified.”

…”We looked for signatures of population decline [before 1500],” Dr Thomas said.

One of these signatures might be a lack of genetic diversity, suggesting individuals were inbreeding and the species, as a whole, was becoming vulnerable to disease or environmental change.

“But their genetic diversity was very high – all but two sequences we found were very different,” Dr Thomas said.

(13) DOOOON’T PANIC. “Russian cows get VR headsets ‘to reduce anxiety'”. Now that you mention it, I remember Carnation used to think it was important for milk to come from contented cows…

A Russian farm has given its dairy cows virtual reality headsets in a bid to reduce their anxiety.

The herd donned VR systems adapted for the “structural features of cow heads” and were shown a “unique summer field simulation program”.

Moscow’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food cited research which they say has shown a link between a cow’s emotional experience and its milk yield.

Initial tests reportedly boosted “the overall emotional mood of the herd”.

(14) GENRE BREW. [Item by Bill.] Inner Space Brewing Company, a Huntsville, AL craft brewery, has some SF themes going on.

The tap handle that looks like a Hugo rocket was fabricated by a local Huntsville woodworking shop

Woodtech on Triana Boulevard makes tap handles for local breweries in addition to specialty items for defense companies, wine crates, puzzles, wooden boxes, business signs, trays with old maps of Huntsville, cornhole-game boards and more.

Another beer-space Huntsville-local connection is the Straight to Ale craft brewery, makers of Monkeynaut Pale Ale, which was inspired by Miss Baker, who lived out her life at the local U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

Miss Baker (1957-1984) was a squirrel monkey who in 1959 became, along with rhesus macaque Miss Able, one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States and safely returned.

(15) OUR ROBOT UNDERLORDS? BBC appears to have scooped the local paper on this story — “Call to probe Boston police tests of ‘dog’ robots”.

Massachusetts State Police has been asked to explain how it is using robot dogs, by a civil liberties group.

The police force has spent the past three months testing “Spot” robot dogs alongside some of its officers.

The robots, made by Boston Dynamics, are believed to have helped with several live incidents as well as training scenarios.

The American Civil Liberties Union wants details about how and where the robots were being used.

…A video captioned with the words “MA State Police” and showing the robots opening doors and entering buildings was shared online by Boston Dynamics earlier this year.

“All too often, the deployment of these technologies happens faster than our social, political, or legal systems react,” said the ACLU in a statement given to Techcrunch.

In its letter, the campaign group said it wanted more “transparency” about the use of the robots, the ways in which they would be used and which officers would be deployed with them.

The ACLU said there was a need for regulations governing the use of the robots to ensure they did not trample on established civil rights and liberties or lead to racial injustice.

(16) KNUCKLING UNDER. According to the BBC, “Apple changes Crimea map to meet Russian demands”.

Apple has complied with Russian demands to show Crimea as part of Russian territory on its apps.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in a move that was condemned by most of the global community.

The region is now displayed as Russian territory on Apple Maps and Weather, when viewed from inside Russia.

However, Apple Maps and Weather do not show Crimea as part of any country, when viewed outside Russia.

(17) CTHULHU’S KITCHEN. It’s time to remind everyone “How to Brine a Turkey by H.P. Lovecraft”. In his 2016 article, McSweeneys’ Robert Rooney explains the many advantages of this recipe, beginning with –

A turkey may be so prepared and preserved that, according to Artephius’s Key of Wisdom, “an ingenious Man may raise the fine Shape of a Homunculus out of its Ashes at his Pleasure, so he may, without any criminal Necromancy raise the Shape of any dead Ancestor for study and labor.”

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Well, it’s a commercial. But it’s a cute commercial.

This holiday, follow the magical story of Lucy, a curious 6-year-old with a few questions for her reindeer friends. With the help of her mom’s Surface and Microsoft Translator, she finally gets her chance to ask the most important questions of the season. Microsoft technology empowers and connects everyone on the planet…well, almost everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnmy7IPE08I

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Bill, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]

Pixel Scroll 2/3/18 As God Is My Witness, I Thought Pixels Could Scroll!

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(1) QUEEN OF PULP. Twitter’s Pulp Librarian today did a retrospective of illustrator Margaret Brundage, “the Queen of Pulp,” with lots of her Weird Tales covers from the 1930s. Jump on the thread here —

(2) ELLEN KLAGES DONATES CLARION WEST INSTRUCTORSHIP. Clarion West announced Karen Lord is the recipient of “The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship 2018”.

The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship will be awarded in 2018 in memory of Sally Klages, with love from her sister Ellen Klages….

Ellen Klages’ tribute begins —

Sally was a writer. I never heard her say that she wanted to be one; she simply proclaimed, proudly, that she was. She wrote every day in tiny, cramped cursive: working on her autobiography, lectures to her Invisible Friends, instructions about how life ought to be led.

Like many of us, she owned dozens of notebooks and countless pens, and was never without them. She once packed a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of pens and markers into her carry-on bag for a two-hour flight, “in case one runs out.” Writing was her joy, her recreation, her solace.

Sally was born with Down Syndrome. As far as she was concerned, that wasn’t a handicap — it was what made her special. And she was. She was Valedictorian of her class at Northeast Training Center, and an employee at Columbus State University for 17 years. She was one of the founding members of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio (DSACO), she was on the board of the National Down Syndrome Conference, and was a featured speaker there in 1989. An active participant in the Special Olympics, she won more than three dozen medals in swimming, diving, track and field, bowling, and cross-country skiing….

[Via Locus Online.]

(3) PICACIO AT THE MIKE. In “Your 2018 Hugo Awards MC Is….” John Picacio tells why he is proud to be Worldcon 76’s choice.

Today, the 76th World Science Fiction Convention has announced me as the Master of Ceremonies for this year’s Hugo Awards in San Jose, CA, while also announcing that the Hugo Awards’ Nominations Period is now open! Having won two Hugos for Best Professional Artist, I know how much the Hugos mean to the sf/f field, and it’s a huge honor to serve this stage in front of my colleagues and heroes. Worldcon 76 asked me to be the 2018 Hugo MC last August so it’s been fun keeping that under wraps the last five months, even after being announced as this year’s Artist Guest of Honor.

There’s some history that comes along with this role.

  • I’m the first visual artist to ever be a Hugo Awards MC. I think this could perhaps be a harbinger of Hugo Ceremonies to come. Many of our best visual creators — such as Brom, Todd Lockwood, Ruth Sanderson, Gregory Manchess, and more — are becoming author / artist / storytellers, conjuring the words and pictures of their own bestselling books and media. Our next generation of illustrators are aspiring to tell their own stories, just as much as becoming hired guns. I suspect there will be more artists following through the Hugo MC door behind me, and they’ll likely come from this expanding universe of hybrid, contemporary artists.
  • I’m only the third Worldcon Guest of Honor to also serve as Hugo Awards MC at the same Worldcon. I believe Connie Willis and David Gerrold are the only others to do this in the con’s 76-year history. We must all be insane. ?.
  • I’m especially proud to be the first Mexicanx to ever serve as a Hugo Awards MC. I love being first, but the most important thing is that I’m not the last. With the daily assaults upon our DREAMers, villainizing of our culture by racists, and terroristic threats against our citizens, we’re living in an important moment for Mexicanx north and south of the border. I’m looking forward to sharing my spotlight with all of them.

(4) WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT. 2016 Clarke Award judge David Gullen discusses what the experience taught him about his own fiction writing: “Things I Learned Judging the Arthur C. Clarke Award” at Medium.

At some point during reading those 113 books it occurred to me what a difficult thing writers are trying to do and just how many different things each author is trying to get right. It’s not just character and plot and pace and tension, world-building, good dialogue, effective exposition, setting story questions and keeping story promises, it’s also trying to get that motivating vision in your head down onto the page. Even a pretty ordinary book takes a lot of effort. If you assume each of those books took 6 months to write?—?and many would have taken more?—?that is 57 years of effort, not far from the entire productive life of a single person.

(5) THE WRITER’S EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER. A tweet from Annie Bellet.

https://twitter.com/anniebellet/status/959950368456130560

(6) READERCON PRUNES PROGRAM INVITE LIST. Several older, white male writers who have participated on Readercon’s program in previous years have posted to Facebook over the past month that they have been notified they won’t be on this year’s program, or simply haven’t received the expected invitation. There’s no reason they have to be happy about it, and understandable if it triggers a bit of insecurity and resentment. However, the whiff of controversy around this development is not completely unlike Jon Del Arroz’ certainty that politics were the real reason he was rotated off BayCon programming.

Allen Steele wrote on Facebook yesterday:

The other convention I’ve usually gone to in the past, but will no longer attend, is Readercon. I’ve been an invited guest since Readercon 2 (had to skip the first one because of a schedule conflict), and have attended most of the 36 previous conventions … and then last year, without any sort of notice or explanation, I wasn’t invited. I was recovering from last year’s pancreas operation, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to show up anyway, but I wondered why nonetheless.

This year, I have an explanation … just not a good one. It appears, in an effort to be fair to young new writers, Readercon has been sending out form email letters to older authors such as myself (everyone known to have received the letter is male and above age 50), telling them that they’ve been dropped from the program participant list and therefore will not be invited guests.

Oh, we’re still welcome to attend, if we pay the registration fee. In fact, because of our exalted former status, we’re entitled to a 25% discount … if we go to a private registration site and enter the password (get this) PASTPRO.

So not only have we been told that we’re not welcome to come as professionals, we’re also being told that we’re no longer professionals, period.

I haven’t received the letter … but neither have I been invited. As I said, I wasn’t invited last year either, nor was I ever offered a reason why. To their program chair, I sent a polite letter calmly explaining why the letter is demeaning, insulting, and for the convention disastrously short-sighted; the response I got was a “so sorry you feel that way” blow-off. This pretty much confirms that I’ve been cast into the outer darkness for being … well, let’s not go there. And even if I’m not on the “past pro” list, I won’t come to a convention that would treat my friends and colleagues this way.

I mention this because I usually see at Readercon quite a few people who follow this page. Sometimes they bring copies of my books so I can sign them, and they need to know in advance not to use valuable suitcase-space. Sorry, guys … this year, it’s Boskone and the Hong Kong SF Forum only. At least those conventions still have respect for senior authors.

A month ago Ian Randall Strock said he got the letter and named two others who’d received it:

It seems Readercon has begun their apparently new tradition of uninviting past guests. Last year, it was Darrell Schweitzer. Today, I got the letter, as did Warren Lapine.

Anyone else get the email (under the subject line “Thank you for your service to Readercon”) starting out “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll be straightforward: you won’t be receiving an invitation to participate in programming for Readercon 29.”?

Another thought occurs: are they only doing this to folks who are also dealers, thinking we’ll be there anyway? I’ll have to run the numbers to see if it’s worth attending.

Readercon 29 takes place July 12-15 in Quincy, MA.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 3, 1993 — Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in television syndication.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY SUBCREATOR

  • Born February January 3, 1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien [never mind….]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Mike Kennedy sends Pearls Before Swine with an observation that sounds just like the kind of dismal thing Kurt Vonnegut would come up with. So you’ll love it, right? (?)
  • John King Tarpinian discovered a horrific satirical cereal box in Off the Mark. (Was that a description or a pleonasm?)
  • JJ admires Grant Snider’s The Specter of Failure at Incidental Comics.
  • Via RedWombat –

https://twitter.com/RosemaryMosco/status/959809459735363584

(10) ARE YOU SURPRISED? Mental Floss tempts readers with “16 Surprising Facts About Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451”. Some are no more surprising than this —

  1. BRADBURY DID NOT WRITE FAHRENHEIT 451 IN NINE DAYS.

A popular apocryphal story is that Bradbury hammered out Fahrenheit 451 in just over a week. That story is wrong: It was the 25,000-word “The Fireman” that he wrote in that time period. The author would later refer to the short story as “the first version” of the eventual novel. But over the years, he would often speak about “The Fireman” and Fahrenheit 451 interchangeably, which has caused some confusion.

  1. HE WROTE HIS FIRST VERSION ON A RENTED TYPEWRITER IN A LIBRARY BASEMENT.

Bradbury and wife Marguerite McClure had two children in 1950 and 1951, and he was in need of a quiet place to write but had no money for renting an office. In a 2005 interview, Bradbury said:

“I was wandering around the UCLA library and discovered there was a typing room where you could rent a typewriter for 10 cents a half-hour. So I went and got a bag of dimes. The novel began that day, and nine days later it was finished. But my God, what a place to write that book! I ran up and down stairs and grabbed books off the shelf to find any kind of quote and ran back down and put it in the novel. The book wrote itself in nine days, because the library told me to do it.”

  1. HE SPENT $9.80 ON TYPEWRITER RENTAL.

Bradbury’s nine days in the library cost him, by his own estimate, just under $10. That means he spent about 49 hours writing “The Fireman.”

(11) NOT YOUR TYPICAL FLORIDA MAN STORY. From Futurism, “Florida Man Becomes First Person to Live With Advanced Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm”.

Prosthetics have advanced drastically in recent years. The technology’s potential has even inspired many, like Elon Musk, to ask whether we may be living as “cyborgs” in the not-too-far future. For Johnny Matheny of Port Richey, Florida, that future is now. Matheny, who lost his arm to cancer in 2005, has recently become the first person to live with an advanced mind-controlled robotic arm. He received the arm in December and will be spending the next year testing it out.

The arm was developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab as part of their program Revolutionizing Prosthetics. The aim of the program, which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to create prosthetics that are controlled by neural activity in the brain to restore motor function to where it feels entirely natural. The program is specifically working on prosthetics for upper-arm amputee patients. While this particular arm has been demoed before, Matheny will be the first person to actually live with the prosthesis. The program does hope to have more patients take the tech for a longterm test run, though.

(12) FROM SOMEWHERE BESIDES LAKE WOEBEGONE. Since the firing of Garrison Keillor A Prairie Home Companion has a new host and a new name – Cat Eldridge reviews “Live from Here, the show formerly known as APHC, hosted by Chris Thile” at Green Man Review.

… Where Kellior was the sedate, downbeat host who wanted you to be part of the Lake Woebegon community, Thile is more than a bit manic, bouncing around in delight apparently as he gets to interact with musicians and other folk who he obviously admires a lot. APHC put me to sleep, LFH is definitely designed to keep me actively listening.

Shovel & Rope, a really good Americana couple, is dok good a bluesy travel song as I listen this moment. (By now I’d usually have decided to turn Kellior off.) Some minutes later, Gabby Moreno is playing a very lively (I think) a Tex-Mex song. Need I say Thile is really excited like her being on Live from Here?

… I’m an hour in and still not even close to tuning out though the comedy riff just now was meh but I’m not a fan of most such comedy anyways. That segued into a very nice and quite tasty bit of jazzy music by Snarky Puppy which is enhanced by the production team cleverly positioning mics in the audience which is more than a bit raucous all show long which they really demonstrate when Chris musically deconstructs  ‘I’ll Be There’ in words and music….

(13) FAR SIDE OF THE KERFUFFLE. Most of the post is more abuse, so won’t be excerpted here, but Vox Day hastened to say Foz Meadows won’t be getting an apology from him: “I’ll take ‘things that will never happen’”. He adds —

Third, Dave Freer didn’t sic me on anyone about anything. I don’t recall having any communication with him in years. I just checked my email and I haven’t received even a single email from him since I set up my current machine in April 2016. Nor have I spoken to him.

(I’m not creating an Internet Archive page for this one so people can somehow feel okay about insisting on reading the insults.)

(14) COUGH IT UP. Add this contraption to the list of things science fiction never predicted: “When The Flu Hits Campus, The Gesundheit Machine Will Be Ready”.

Those sick enough will get sent around the corner to a room with a crazy-looking, Rube-Goldberg-like contraption known as the Gesundheit machine.

For half an hour, the student sits in the machine. As the student breathes, the machine collects whatever virus they’ve got from the droplets in their breath.

The researchers will then use the student’s contacts to try to figure out how infections spread from person to person: “roommates, study buddies, girlfriends and boyfriends,” Milton says. “We’re going to swab them every day for a week to see if they get infected.”

If the student’s contacts get infected, researchers will try to pin down whether they got the bug from the original subject or someone else.

“We’re going to deep sequence the genetic code of the agent to see if it was really exactly the same thing,” Milton explains. He’s aware that confirming that your roommate gave you a horrible flu could ruin some perfectly nice relationships, but it’s for science.

(15) MELTING, MELTING. BBC tells how “Space lasers to track Earth’s ice”.

Ice is the “climate canary”. The loss, and the rate of that loss, tell us something about how global warming is progressing.

In the Arctic, the most visible sign is the decline of sea-ice, which, measured at its minimum extent over the ocean in September, is reducing by about 14% per decade.

At the other pole, the marine floes look much the same as they did in the earliest satellite imagery from the 1960s, but land ice is in a negative phase.

Something on the order of 160 billion tonnes are being lost annually, with most of that mass going from the west of the White Continent.

(16) STAR WARS MEETS PETER RABBIT. Daisy Ridley is still a rebel. And a rabbit.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Bill, JJ, John King Tarpinian, John Picacio, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Mark Hepworth, Chris Garcia, Will R., Vox Day, StephenfromOttawa, Christopher Rowe, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jamoche.]

Star Wars: My Force Awakens

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Steve Vertlieb and Daisy Ridley

By Steve Vertlieb: Among the many highlights of my recent pilgrimage to Hollywood was an entirely unexpected, nearly miraculous, accidental “close encounter” with the current star of one of the most lucrative and beloved movie franchises in motion picture history. I’m still amazed, weeks after this most astonishing occurrence, that our meeting actually occurred, as these remarkable photographs will happily attest.

While waiting backstage to speak with composer John Williams at the venerable Hollywood Bowl, I noticed that Daisy Ridley’s name was posted on one of the dressing room doors. She hadn’t appeared on stage with Maestro Williams during the Star Wars concert selections, and so I wondered why. I turned to my brother to mention the strangeness of the occurrence when I inwardly gasped at the realization that the young star of both Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi was standing just inches in front of me. Hearing her British accent in conversation with the director of the latest sci-fi epic, I nudged my brother Erwin, and whispered “I think that Daisy Ridley is standing right in front of me.” Hearing my admittedly excited observation to my little brother, she turned toward me with a big smile and said hello. She was as delightfully adorable in person as she is as “Rey” on the big screen in the spectacular continuation of the cherished science fiction franchise. I couldn’t help but recall John Williams’ own wonderfully charming admission, upon receiving his A.F.I. Life Achievement Award last year, that he didn’t want any other composer but himself writing music for this lovely young actress. I completely understood his feelings upon meeting Miss Ridley.

Take Two: Steve Vertlieb and Daisy Ridley

Pixel Scroll 7/3/17 Hokey Tickboxes And Ancient Pixels Are No Match For A Good Filer At Your Side, Kid

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(1) STAR WARS CARTOONS. In a Yahoo! Movies piece called “New ‘Star Wars’ Cartoon Shorts Debut Online, Bringing Female Heroes in Full Force”, Marcus Errico says that Disney is releasing sixteen three-minute cartoons online featuring female Star Wars heroes,  The first, “Sands of Jakku” is online and has Daisy Ridley in it.

Lucasfilm Animation has produced an initial run of 16 shorts. New shorts will arrive daily at YouTube.com/Disney ahead of their broadcast premiere on the Disney Channel on July 9. Future episodes will center on Princess Leia, Padmé Amidala, Rogue One‘s Jyn Erso, The Clone Wars fan favorite Ahsoka Tano, and Sabine Wren from Star Wars Rebels, with each installment narrated by Maz Kanata and featuring John Williams’s seminal soundtrack.

In addition to Ridley, film stars John Boyega (Finn), Felicity Jones (Jyn) and Lupita Nyong’o (Maz) will reprise their roles, as will key talent from the TV series Clone Wars and Rebels, including Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka), Tiya Sicar (Sabine), and Vanessa Marshall (Hera Syndulla).

“The movies tell these epic heroes’ journeys, big pieces of mythology,” Carrie Beck, VP of Lucasfilm Story and Animation and a producer of Forces of Destiny, told Yahoo Movies earlier this year. “For this, we thought these stories could tell those moments of everyday heroism… the kind of stories that would be appropriate over two to three minutes.”

(2) UNHOLY ROAD TRIP. The LA Times questions “Neil Gaiman on the ‘American Gods’ season finale and what’s on tap for Season 2”.

The first season of Starz’s ambitious “American Gods” ended on the brink of a godly brawl. But Neil Gaiman, an executive producer of the series and author of the book from which it is adapted, teases that his divine road trip across the secret supernatural back roads of the United States is just beginning…

Did you have an emotional reaction to the end of the first season of “American Gods?”

I have all sorts of emotions.…I’m fascinated by how involved people are. How grumpy they are about the fact that, now they got their eight episodes, they have to wait for another season. I love watching the joy of having faces that plug into these characters who were names and descriptions in the book. I’m loving seeing how people argue online. There are people out there who think Laura [Moon, played by Emily Browning] is the best female character that they’ve ever seen on television.And there are people who would pay good money to make sure that she never appears on their screen ever again, but they love the whole series apart from her.

(3) GUESS WHO JOINED GAB. GAB is the new message platform popular with Vox Day, Jon Del Arroz, and others who find Twitter hasn’t always appreciated the way they exercise their freedom of speech.

And, unexpectedly, it now is someplace you can find Brianna Wu:

Why did I join Gab? Well, joining App.net early (another Twitter competitior) was amazing for my career. It was a networking goldmine. The other part is, I’m running for congress in a part of Massachusetts with many conservatives. Listening to the other side helps me be a better candidate.

(4) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS. Top fantastic illustrators Wayne Barlowe, Donato Giancola, Greg Manchess will demonstrate their skills and techniques in an open forum at the Society of Illustrators in New York on July 8 from Noon to 4 p.m.

Plus! Have your portfolios reviewed by renowned art directors Irene Gallo (Associate Publisher, Tor.com/ Creative Director, Tor Books) and Lauren Panepinto (Creative Director, Orbit Books/ Yen Press). 15 minutes reviews. Reservations required

Admission: $50 Non-members | $40 Members | $20 Students/ seniors (Undergrad with valid ID) Price includes the catalog from The Korshak Collection: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature.

(5) SPACE SALVATION. Sylvia Engdahl revives a philosophical debate in “Space colonization, faith, and Pascal’s Wager” at The Space Review.

In his essay “Escaping Earth: Human Spaceflight as Religion” published in the journal Astropolitics, historian Roger Launius argues that enthusiasm for space can be viewed as a religion. He focuses mainly on comparisons with the outer trappings of religion, many of which are apt, but in one place he reaches the heart of the issue. “Like those espousing the immortality of the human soul among the world’s great religions… statements of humanity’s salvation through spaceflight are fundamentally statements of faith predicated on no knowledge whatsoever.”

I think Launius may be somewhat too pessimistic in his assertion that we have no knowledge whatsoever about our ability to develop technology that will enable humans live in the hostile environment of space, but that is beside the point. It’s true that we have no assurance that the colonization of space will ensure the long-term survival of humankind. “Absent the discovery of an Earthlike habitable exoplanet to which humanity might migrate,” Launius continues, “this salvation ideology seems problematic, a statement of faith rather than knowledge or reason.” And the accessibility of such an exoplanet is questionable, since by current knowledge it will not be possible to cross interstellar space rapidly enough to achieve much migration.

It is indeed faith that underlies the conviction that traveling beyond our home world will prevent the extinction of the human race. But Launius’ presentation of this fact seems to imply that it lessens the significance of such a conviction, as if beliefs supported by mere faith were not to be taken seriously. That is far from the case, as the history of human civilization clearly shows. Most major advances have been made by people who had faith in what they envisioned before they were able to produce evidence; that was what made them keep working toward it. Having faith in the future, whether a personal future or that of one’s successors, has always been what inspires human action.

On what grounds can faith without evidence be justified? This issue was addressed by the 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal in what is known as Pascal’s Wager, now considered the first formal use of decision theory. Pascal was considering whether is rational to believe in God, but the principle he formulated has been applied to many other questions. In his words, “Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.” If on the other hand, you bet on it being false and it turns out to be true, you lose everything; thus to do so would be stupid if the stakes are high.

(6) NEXT AT KGB. “Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series” hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Karen Neuler and Genevieve Valentine on July 19 at the KGB Bar. The event starts at 7 p.m.

Karen Heuler

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 100 literary and speculative magazines and anthologies, from Conjunctions to Clarkesworld to Weird Tales, as well as a number of Best Of anthologies. She has received an O. Henry award, been a finalist for the Iowa short fiction award, the Bellwether award, the Shirley Jackson award for short fiction (twice), and a bunch of other near-misses. She has published four novels and three story collections, and this month Aqueduct Press released her novella, In Search of Lost Time, about a woman who can steal time.

Genevieve Valentine

Genevieve Valentine is an author and critic. Her most recent book is the near-future spy novel ICON; her short fiction has appeared in over a dozen Best of the Year anthologies. Her comics work includes Catwoman for DC Comics and the Attack on Titan anthology from Kodansha. Her criticism and reviews have appeared in several venues including the AV Club, the Atlantic, and The New York Times. Please ask her about the new King Arthur movie.

(7) AMBIENT TRIBUTE TO DUNE SERIES. April Larson, a Louisiana ambient/drone/noise musician, has released a tribute album to the original Dune trilogy and the other Dune-related novels on Bandcamp.

It is titled “You Stand in a Valley Between Dunes” and the album features tracks with names such as “The Fall of Ix (Core Instability Mix),” “Lady Jessica,” and “Guild Navigator (Junction).”

April Larson is the representative of a tribe of naga located along the coast of Louisiana. She translates music into sense- data… through a collection of three interlaced brains. She continues her research in oneironautic listening and regularly delivers lectures on relevant tone-clusters to beehives and ghosts.

(8) RYAN OBIT. YouTuber Stevie Ryan (1984-2017): American comedian, actress and writer; found dead by apparent suicide on 3 July, aged 33. She appeared as a version of herself in the experimental thriller John Doe: Diary of a Serial Killer (2015, but apparently never released).

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 3, 1985 — Back to the Future released, features 1981 DeLorean DMC-12.
  • July 3, 1985 — George Romero’s Day of the Dead is seen for the first time.
  • July 3, 1996 – Independence Day was released.

(10) FACE IN A DUFF CROWD. Paul Weimer took this picture on his trip Down Under. I’ve interacted with Ian Mond online but I’ve never seen him before.

(11) SKIFFY AND FANTY POLL. Man, this is a hard one!

https://twitter.com/SkiffyandFanty/status/881901008187789314

(12) BEWARE DOCTOR WHO SPOILER NEWS. You’ve been warned. Tariq Kyle, in “’Doctor Who’ season 10 finale explained: Yes, that is who you think it is” on Hypable, says that the mysterious guy in the end of the Season 10 finale of Doctor Who is in fact William Hartnell (played by David Bradley) and that Hartnell and Peter Capaldi will survive until this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, at which time Capaldi will regenerate.

Doctor Who season 10 just ended with a cliffhanger that none of us saw coming, and if you’re wondering who the mysterious new character is and where they are in the Doctor’s timeline, then check out our explanation!

Obviously, if you haven’t seen the season 10 finale of Doctor Who yet, beware of huge spoilers. If you continue on and you don’t want to be spoiled, then ¯\_(?)_/¯.

(13) CHILL FACTOR. Reason TV has put out a video called “Mark Hamill v. Autographed Memorabilia:  The Revenge of the Dark Side,” which is mostly about Bill Petrocelli of the San Francisco-based chain Book Passage and how his company will be affected by the California autograph law. The impetus for the law was Mark Hamill’s complaining about fake Hamill autographs, which caught the ear of the legislator who had the law introduced.

(14) WHAT AUNT MAY HAS TO SAY. This is not your uncle’s Aunt May: “WATCH: Marisa Tomei on making Aunt May cooler than Peter in Spider-Man: Homecoming”.

What is different is Aunt May herself. Let’s face it, Tiger: May has never been cooler than she is now, as portrayed by Oscar-winning actress Marisa Tomei. She’s much younger than she’s ever been portrayed in the comics or any of the previous Spider-Man feature films. The fact that the age difference between Peter and May is much less adds a new dynamic to their relationship … but, thankfully, not even a hint of sexual tension. (Hey, the actress brought it up, not me!)

SYFY WIRE talked with Tomei about how her Aunt May still worries about Peter, primarily about the fact that he doesn’t seem to have a social life. We also talked about whether May trusts Tony Stark as Peter’s mentor and what she wants to see in an Aunt May action figure.

 

(15) WHAT’S MY LINE? Meanwhile, back in the Sunday funnies: “Spider-Man and His Inker: Wrists Still Going Strong a Half-Century Later”. Joe Sinnott in his studio; several photos.

Joe Sinnott says spider webs drive him crazy, even though he has been drawing them for over 50 years for one of the world’s most famous superheroes.

“They’ve got to be so accurate, and they’ve got to be the same all the time,’’ he said. “It takes me about three days to do two pages.”

At 90, Mr. Sinnott still brings to life the action tales spun by Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, continuing a collaboration begun in 1950 when Mr. Sinnott first went to work for Mr. Lee at what later became Marvel Comics. “Imagine having the same boss for 67 years,” Mr. Sinnott said. He added that they should be in the Guinness World Records book.

With pen and brush, he keeps Spider-Man flying over New York City, soaring from skyscraper to skyscraper, in a never-ending battle against supervillains. “It just takes time putting all those lines, and the tiny spider on Spider-Man’s chest, in such a small space,” Mr. Sinnott said.

(16) WEB REVIEW. The BBC says the new Spider-Man is “fun”.

The makers of Spider-Man: Homecoming have remembered something that the makers of almost every other recent superhero film have forgotten. They’ve remembered that if you’re going to tell a story about someone in a skin-tight costume who can throw cars around like frisbees, then it should probably be fun for all the family. That’s not to say that superhero movies can’t be used to lecture us on the international arms trade, or to examine why allies fall out and turn against each other. But sometimes they should return to their comic-book roots, and offer snazzy, buoyant entertainment for children as well as for their parents – and that’s what the latest Spider-Man film does.

Chip Hitchcock sent the link with a comment: “The story complains that the ‘gauche, geekily enthusiastic youngster with a pubescent squeak of a voice’ isn’t true to the comics; does anyone remember what Parker was like in the very early comics, when he was still in high school (as in the movie)?”

(17) SUNK COST. A first-class ticket to see the Titanic: “The ‘merman’ facing a Titanic mission”

Next year he will be taking dozens of paying passengers down about 12,500ft (nearly 2.4 miles or 3.8km) to the wreck of the Titanic, 370 miles south-southeast of Newfoundland.

OceanGate, the US firm behind the dives, says more people have been into space or climbed Mount Everest than have visited the Titanic’s final resting place.

The firm stresses that it is a survey expedition and not a tourist trip.

Over six weeks from next May, David will make repeated dives in a new carbon fibre submersible called Cyclops 2, designed to withstand depths of up to 4,000m.

On each trip to the bottom of the ocean, he will take three “mission specialists” – passengers who are underwriting the expedition – and a “content expert” with a good working knowledge of the wreck

The expedition doesn’t come cheap. Each one of the 54 people who have signed up for the deep dive is paying $105,129 for the privilege.

(18) LINEUP, SIGN UP, AND RE-ENLIST TODAY. The Washington Post’s Steve Hendrix asks “There are already four-hour lines at Walt Disney World’s new ‘Avatar’-themed attraction. Does Pandora live up to the hype?” And he answers that the Avatar-based “Pandora” section of Disney’s Animal Kingdom is a “trippy, tropical” and “an authentically immersive land that soothes even as it dazzles,” but prepared to wait four hours to get on the two rides in the section.

The Disney iteration, though, takes place generations after the miners have been driven out (hopefully with ample job-retraining for these victims of the War on Unobtanium) and the peacefully gigantic blue Na’vi of Pandora are busy restoring it to space-age splendor. That ingenious conceit allowed planners to combine dystopian ruins (the colossal exo-armor battle suit from the movie’s climax sits rusting outside the gift shop) with lush streambeds and flowering vines.

(19) SUBTRACTION BY DIVISION. Lela E. Buis, in “Does the Hugo really represent fandom?”, totes up the racial and sexual minorities among this year’s Hugo-nominated fiction authors only to find a problem with this diversity. And what is that problem?

So, what are the chances that SFF fandom as a whole would elect this ballot? Remember that taste is never random, but with equal participation I’d expect the SFF readership demographics should roughly match the ballot for a popular award. Assuming that everyone participates, of course.

What does that mean? If the right people were voting for the Hugos the list of winners would look like the Dragon Awards? Is that what this is code for?

(20) APPROPRIATION V. EXCHANGE. K. Tempest Bradford wrote a commentary NPR that declares “Cultural Appropriation Is, In Fact, Indefensible”.

…Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a two-sentence dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a “power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.”

That’s why appropriation and exchange are two different things, Johnson says — there’s no power imbalance involved in an exchange. And when artists appropriate, they can profit from what they take, while the oppressed group gets nothing.

I teach classes and seminars alongside author and editor Nisi Shawl on Writing the Other, and the foundation of our work is that authors should create characters from many different races, cultures, class backgrounds, physical abilities, and genders, even if — especially if — these don’t match their own. We are not alone in this. You won’t find many people advising authors to only create characters similar to themselves. You will find many who say: Don’t write characters from minority or marginalized identities if you are not going to put in the hard work to do it well and avoid cultural appropriation and other harmful outcomes. These are different messages. But writers often see or hear the latter and imagine that it means the former….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for some of these stories and the fried chicken. Other story thanks goes to Rob Thornton, Dann, Steve Green, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, and Cat Eldridge. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]