Tag Archives: Daniel Dern

Pixel Scroll 9/3/23 Have Jetpack Will Pixel, Eventually, Maybe, Perhaps

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(1) RIP MICHAEL TOMAN. South Pasadena librarian Michael Toman, who decided to become one of the rare people who pitch in every day with ideas for the Scroll, died earlier this week. How he will be missed! He was found dead at home on Saturday by a friend, writer William F. Wu, who checked after people hadn’t heard from him for days. Wu and Toman have been friends since they met in 1974 while Wu was attending Clarion at Michigan State, and Toman was visiting after having attended the year before.

I appreciated the pipeline he had to Clarion workshop news — and it turns out that his fellow Clarion ’73 alums included another frequent contributor here, Daniel Dern, as well as authors Alan Brennert, Darryl Schweitzer Jeff Duntemann and Stuart Stinson, among others.

(2) HOW TO GET WESTIN HVP COLLECTION. Best Fan Writer Hugo finalists Örjan Westin has made available online their collected 2022 Micro SF/F stories which appear in the Hugo Voter Packet.

Right. I write stories that are short enough to fit a tweet (up to 280 characters), and I post them to Twitter and other social media platforms under the moniker MicroSFF. There is no set schedule, nor, usually, much deliberation; I get an idea, I write a thing, I post it.

(3a) NYT ON MORMON YA WRITERS. As seen in the Sunday New York Times Style Section (mostly likely paywalled): “An Unexpected Hotbed of Y.A. Authors: Utah”

A tight-knit community of young-adult writers who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has yielded smashes like “Twilight.” But religious doctrine can clash with creative freedoms.

Daniel P. Dern briefly notes: “The list includes not just Orson Scott Card (as I expected) but also several major, major authors who I hadn’t realized were Mormons.”

(3b) THE ANSWER. “Revealed: how Hitchhiker’s Guide author predicted rise of ebooks 30 years ago” in the Guardian. I don’t suppose he was the only one, however, it is interesting to see what he thought about the idea.

…In the late 1990s, at least a decade before Amazon’s e-reader first came on to the market in 2007, the author and humorist made a series of notes uncannily predicting the rise of electronic books.

But Adams, who died in 2001, did not live to see his musings, spread over three A4 pages, become reality. He wrote: “Lots of resistance to the idea of ebooks from the public. Particularly all those people who 10 years ago said they couldn’t see any point typing on a computer.

“I believe this resistance will gradually disappear as the electronic book itself improves and becomes smaller, lighter, simpler, cheaper, in other words more like a book.”

Adams’s notes are presented in their original handwritten form in a new book, 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams….

(4) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. “Doctor Who regeneration wins TV Moment of the Year at Edinburgh TV Awards’ and Radio Times has the story. (Complete list of winners at the link.)

Doctor Who, The Traitors and BBC One all took home trophies at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival Awards….

In the only award voted for by the public, the scene in Doctor Who that saw Jodie Whittaker regenerate into David Tennant – from the episode The Power of the Doctor – was crowned TV Moment of the Year….

(5) THEY KEPT WATCHING THE SKIES. An amazing overview of how different cultures drew constellations. “Figures in the Sky” at Visual Cinnamon.

… Let’s compare 28 different “sky cultures” to see differences and similarities in the shapes they’ve seen in the night sky. Ranging from the so-called “Modern” or Western constellations, to Chinese, Maori and even a few shapes from historical cultures such as the Aztecs.

Take the star Betelgeuse. This red supergiant is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. In proper darkness, you can even see that it shines in a distinctly red color. It’s part of one of the easiest to distinguish modern constellations known as Orion, named after a gigantic, supernaturally strong hunter from Greek mythology.

The visualization below shows how Betelgeuse has been used by 17 cultures (out of the 28) to form constellations, each represented by a different color. …

(6) MARILYN LOVELL. Marilyn Lovell died September 2 at the age of 93 reports Deadline: “Marilyn Lovell Dies: Apollo 13 Commander’s Wife Was Symbol Of Courage During Accident”.

Marilyn Lovell, whose stoic comportment during the touch-and-go Apollo 13 flight accident gave the world hope that all would turn out well, died on August 27 in Lake Forest, Illinois, at 93. Her husband of 71 years, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, was at her side.

Her husband named a small mountain on the moon Mount Marilyn in her honor during his Apollo 8 moon flight in 1968.

Marilyn Lillie Lovell was born on July 11, 1930, in Milwaukee, WI. She was the youngest of five children. She graduated from Milwaukee’s Juneau High School, where she met her future husband, James A Lovell, Jr.

…In the Apollo 13 film, Tom Hanks played Capt. Lovell. Kathleen Quinlan played Mrs. Lovell and was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. Marilyn Lovell was later a part of several Apollo 13 documentaries….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 3, 1810 — Theodor von Holst. He was the first artist to illustrate Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1831. The interior illustrations consist of a frontispiece shown here, title page and engraved illustrations. To my knowledge, this is his only genre work. (Died 1844.)
  • Born September 3, 1934 — Les Martin, 89. One of those media tie-in writers that I find fascinating. He’s written the vast majority of the X-Files Young Readers series, plus a trio of novels in the X-Files Young Adult series. He’s also written two Indiana Jones YA novels, and novelizations of Blade Runner and The Shadow. 
  • Born September 3, 1943 — Mick Farren. Punk musician who was the singer with the proto-punk band the Deviants. He also wrote lyrics for Hawkwind. (Can we consider them genre?) His most well-known genre work was the The Renquist Quartet about an immortal vampire.  The Renquist Quartet is available at the usual suspects.  Not at all genre, he wrote The Black Leather Jacket which details the history of the that jacket over a seventy-year span up to the mid-eighties, taking in all aspects of its cultural, political and social impact. (Died 2013.)
  • Born September 3, 1954 — Stephen Gregg. Editor and publisher of Eternity Science Fiction which ran from 1972 to 1975 and again for a year starting in 1979. It had early work by Glen Cook, Ed Bryant, Barry N Malzberg, Andrew J Offutt and Roger Zelazny. (Died 2005.)
  • Born September 3, 1969 — John Picacio, 54. Illustrator who in 2005 won both the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist and the Chesley Award for Best Paperback Cover for James Tiptree Jr.’s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. He’s also won eight other Chesley Awards. He was the winner of the Best Professional Artist Hugo in 2012, 2013, and 2020. And I’m very fond of this cover that he did for A Canticle for Leibowitz which was published by Eos seventeen years ago.
  • Born September 3, 1971 — D. Harlan Wilson, 52. Author of Modern Masters of Science Fiction: J.G. Ballard, Cultographies: They Live (a study of John Carpenter) and Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction. No, I’ve no idea what the last book is about. And I’m absolutely sure that I don’t want to. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro once again lives up to its name with this visit to a specialized museum.
  • Eek! shows a set of superhero costumes that didn’t make the cut.

(9) NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE. More information from Buckaroo Banzai fandom. Yesterday we ran the link to World Watch One August 2023, which includes interviews with Carl Lumbly, Dr. Damon Hines, and Billy Vera. The group that publishes the online magazine also has a Facebook page. And they host a Buckaroo Banzi FAQ website as well.

(10) ART DETECTIVE WORK. [Item by Brick Barrientos.] The mystery of who painted the 1976 cover of A Wrinkle in Time has been solved. Spoiler alert: it’s Richard Bober. However, the detective story is totally worth reading. “Artist: Known — Illustrator for ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ gets long-overdue credit” at WBUR.

…Sarah: I find the colors of the cover and the painting so freaky, and I could not tell you why. They just caused this weird, low-level hum that’s really just full of dread in my heart.

Amory: But for Sarah, a self-proclaimed “gloom” and “fancier of […] magics both macabre and melancholy” as her blog proclaims… a painting that can induce a low level hum of DREAD in your heart? That’s a pretty exciting thing! Sarah wanted to include this piece in her forthcoming book, “The Art of Fantasy.” But…

Sarah: I couldn’t even remember what it was from….

Here’s the blog post about the search: “A Mystery That Should Not Exist: Who Is The Cover Artist For This Edition Of A Wrinkle In Time?” at Unquiet Things.

(11) A BRIDGE NOT TOO FAR. [Item by Brick Barrientos.] It’s not speculative fiction related but really worth reading. Like the Wrinkle in Time artwork story it’s a great detective story of why a pedestrian bridge was built in the Twin Cities. “The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge” at TylerVigen.com

This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It’s not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn’t connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?

I often have curious thoughts like this, but I dismiss most of them because if I answered all of them I would get nothing else done. But one day I was walking out of a Taco Bell and found myself at the base of the bridge….

(12) CREATURE FEATURED. “Review of Creature from the Black Lagoon” at Captain Toy. Lots of photos at the link.

Since NECA announced they were picking up the Universal Monsters characters in their 7″ action figure line, I have been anticipating one in particular. While I’m a huge fan of the entire stable of characters, having spent my childhood watching them every Saturday afternoon on Sir Graves Ghastly, there was one that has always been at the top of the pack – the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

It isn’t because this was the best film they produced. Frankenstein was far superior, and Dracula was a better overall movie as well. But CFTBL had something they did not – one of the top three best ‘man in a rubber suit’ creature designs of all time.

The suit was designed by Milicent Patrick, an animator for Disney who also created the terrific Metaluna Mutant and Moleman. She was fired from her role as a designer by Bud Westmore after the Creature started to gain notoriety, because he had taken sole credit for the Creature design and wanted to keep it that way.

As is the norm with this series, I assmue there is both a color and black and white version. I’m looking at the color tonight, as I’ve usually (though not exclusively) stuck with the color versions. I also haven’t seen the black and white yet anywhere. There was also a Glow in the Dark release, put out as a SDCC exclusive.

Expect to pay around $38, depending on the retailer….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Brick Barrientos, Daniel Dern, Dan Berger, Steven French, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Tom Becker.]

Reduced Budgets Impacting Upcoming TV/Video Seasons and Projects

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By Daniel Dern: According to an article I read in today’s paper, some series and movies and books will do their best to cope with reduced budgets. Here’s an advance — and still tentative — partial list:

  • Law and Side-Order
  • Guardian of The Galaxy
  • Star Trek: Mildly Different Worlds
  • Superm and Loi
  • Have Space Suit, Going Across Town
  • Ancillary Shuttle
  • Stranger in a Strange County
  • RingMoon
  • The Wonder Months
  • The Righteous Cubic Zirconiums
  • Lord of the Ringlets (The Fellowship Of The Six)
  • Some Creatures Small
  • Buffy The Vampire Injurer
  • Cheer
  • Five Is All We’ve Got, Hope That’s Enough
  • The Sub-Network Effect
  • Sandmound
  • The Year’s Pretty Good Science Fiction
  • The Left Thumb of Darkness
  • Indiana Jones and the Magic Eight-Ball Of Destiny
  • Micrometeor Township
  • The Lincoln Paralegal
  • NCIS: Hoboken
  • File 335

Pixel Scroll 8/4/23 Brush Up Your Star Trek

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(1) THIRD SELF-PUBLISHED SCIENCE FICTION COMPETITION OPENS TODAY. Hugh Howey’s third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) is now taking submissions. Are you an indie science fiction writer looking for a wider audience? Check the guidelines here. Submit here.

(2) CHIANG AND BENDER IN CONVERSATION. UW Professor of Linguistics Emily M. Bender talks with award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang about the nature of creativity and the role of the author amid rising concerns about AI-generated storytelling. Moderated by Jeopardy! champion and Phinney Books owner Tom Nissley. November 10, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.

This event is a fundraiser for Clarion West. VIP tickets and meet-and-greet reception go on sale on Monday, August 7.

(3) CLARION WEST FALL CLASS SCHEDULE. Registration is open now.

Fall classes are here! We’ve got an exciting line-up of instructors, classes, and workshops. Registration is open now. Come learn with us!

(4) BOGUS BARKER. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss reports on somone impersonating her in “Dogging the Watchdog: In Which a Scammer Tries to Troll Me”.

…If you read here regularly, you’ll know that I’ve written a lot of posts about the impersonation scams that are becoming increasingly common. Well, an enterprising scammer recently decided to turn the tables…by impersonating me…

The [email protected] email address, of course, is bogus, and the scammer has added “literary agent” to my resume (which I am not, even though people sometimes mistakenly believe I am). And for added authenticity, a photo of me! Swiped from my personal Facebook page. (I’m sure the scammer would have preferred something unflattering, but I rarely post photos of myself–this post should make it clear why–so they didn’t have a lot to choose from.)

Obviously I would not want anyone to be defrauded in my name, so I enlisted a couple of the writers to write back to see what would happen. After a week with no replies, it seemed pretty clear that–as I’d half-suspected, especially given the stupidity of the fake email address –the email was a trolling attempt and not a bona fide scheme to scam.

Trolling doesn’t deliver the emotional satisfaction the troll craves unless the trollee knows they’re being trolled, though. And the scammer did want me to know…. 

(5) OLD BRIDGE (NJ) PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE FICTION DISCUSSION GROUP DISBANDING. Evelyn Leeper told MT Void readers today:

After twenty years of meeting, the Old Bridge Public Library science fiction discussion group is disbanding.  Given that the last few meetings have been only three or four people, that sounds a bit more dramatic than it really is.  Our final book was THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press, ISBN 978-1-534-43100-3) and all three of us disliked it, so we have referred to this as THIS IS HOW YOU KILL THE DISCUSSION GROUP.  The book swept all the major awards for novellas, so we are clearly in some sort of minority here.

But it was not really the book that killed the group, but the gradual drifting away of members.  We tried both Zooming and in-person meetings. but though we had weathered the pandemic, the return to other opportunities for socializing et al made it harder to get people to attend….

(6) BACK TO THE FUTURE MUSICAL. The Hollywood Reporter favorably reviews “’Back to the Future: The Musical’ Review: Stage Adaptation on Broadway”.

…The creators of Back to the Future: The Musical weren’t taking any chances.

The production, newly arrived on Broadway after a London engagement that snagged a 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Musical, begins with the stirring main theme of the 1985 film’s score, garnering loud cheers from the audience. The book, with some minor exceptions, recreates the screenplay beat for beat and in some cases line for line. And the performances hew closely to those of the movie’s lead actors, with Hugh Coles, playing Marty McFly’s father George, imitating Crispin Glover so closely that it’s hard to tell whether it’s tribute or appropriation.

None of this is surprising, considering that original co-screenwriter Bob Gale has written the musical’s book and original composer Alan Silvestri, in collaboration with Glen Ballard (Ghost, Jagged Little Pill), its score. What is surprising is how effective and damn fun it all is.

(7) REFERENCE DIRECTOR. Daniel Dern’s Scroll title, inspired by the musical Star Trek episode, he would like to remind everyone, is a reference to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate — which, by coincidence, came from a Cole Porter musical as did the song that kicked off the musical episode.

(8) CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHER REMEMBERED. The Washington Post’s recalls the impact on children’s literature of Ursula Nordstrom (1910-1988) in “The fighter behind many of the most beloved children’s books of all time”.

…Hired as a clerk in 1931 at what was then Harper & Brothers (later Harper & Row, now HarperCollins), Nordstrom became an assistant in the department of books for boys and girls five years later. In 1954, she became the first woman elected to the Harper board of directors, and its first female vice president in 1960. She was referred to (and referred to herself) as the Maxwell Perkins of children’s literature. Perkins was an editor who built his career and reputation on seeking out and supporting new writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Over more than three decades, beginning in earnest in 1940, Nordstrom shepherded, chivied and gently bullied some of the greatest works of children’s literature into life. Those books included “Goodnight Moon,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Harriet the Spy,” “Little Bear,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little,” “Bedtime for Frances,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Freaky Friday.”

Nordstrom’s spectacular eye for talent and many “firsts” as a mid-century career woman were not the most remarkable things about her. She believed in truth for children, even when it made adults uncomfortable. She prioritized children’s needs over reactionary parental qualms and rallied a fierce defense of realistic themes in books for young people. Her stance should be recognized, now more than ever, as a model for fighting back against censoriousness, grandstanding and patronizing of children masquerading as protecting them…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 4, 1923 — Paul Schneider. He wrote scripts for the original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Starlost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He’s best remembered for two episodes of the Trek series: “Balance of Terror” and “The Squire of Gothos.” “Balance of Terror,” of course, introduced the Romulans. (Died 2008.)
  • Born August 4, 1937 — David Bedford. Composer who worked with Ursula K. Le Guin to produce and score her Rigel 9 album which the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says is ‘a work that is musically pleasant although narratively underpowered.’ I’ve not heard it, so cannot say how accurate this opinion is. The not usual suspects such as iTunes have as their Meredith Moment for just seven dollars. (Died 2011.)
  • Born August 4, 1944 — Richard Belzer. A long non-genre career as John Munch, for 23 years starting on Homicide: Life on the Street and then Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and related series which made him only the third actor ever to play the same character in six different prime time TV series. In the Third Rock from The Sun series as himself, also the Species II film and an adaption of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, along with series work too in The X-Files, The Invaders, Human Target, and a recurring role in the original Flash series to name a few of his genre roles. (Died 2023.)
  • Born August 4, 1950 — Steve Senn, 73. Here because of his Spacebread duology, Spacebread and Born of Flame. Spacebread being a large white cat known throughout the galaxy as an adventuress and a rogue. He’s also written the comic novels, Ralph Fozbek and the Amazing Black Hole Patrol and Loonie Louie Meets the Space Fungus. 
  • Born August 4, 1968 — Daniel Dae Kim, 55. First genre role was in the NightMan series, other roles included the Brave New World TV film, the second Fantasy Island of three series, recurring roles on Lost, Gavin Park on Angel and Lieutenant John Matheson on Crusade, the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade series, Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed and voice work on Justice League Unlimited.
  • Born August 4, 1969 — Fenella Woolgar, 54. Agatha Christie in “The Unicorn and The Wasp” episode of Doctor Who, my favorite episode, where she more than capably played off against David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. Her only other genre was as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.
  • Born August 4, 1981 — Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 42. Yes, she’s done a genre performance or so. To be precise, she showed up on Fringe in the first two episodes of the second season (“A New Day in the Old Town” and “Night of Desirable Objects”) as Junior FBI Agent Amy Jessup. She was also in the “First Knight” episode of Knight Rider as Annie Ortiz, and Natasha in “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Lose” on Century City, a series most of you have likely never heard of. 

(10) DOCUMENTING POP CULTURE. Steven Heller interviews ephemera collector and student of popular culture Richard Marschall: T “What To Do With All This Ephemera” in PRINT Magazine.

What do the comics, satiric magazines and newspapers in your holdings teach you? And what do they say, through your books and exhibits, to your audience?

…But I never wanted to deconstruct to the point of denying construction in the first place. In
the 1970s I reveled to a popular culture symposium that invited me because of my “informed” attitudes on the comics as an art form. Yet every speech, roundtable and Q&A dealt with comics as mere conduits—“What did Dick Tracy say about crime?” Not, “What expressive dynamics did Chester Gould employ to communicate in revolutionary ways?” Arrested development. This academic myopia was maddening. The graphics community at one time was similarly dismissive, as you know as well as anyone, may I confidently say?

So even unconsciously I amassed a collection of comics, sections, clips, original art, magazine runs, bound volumes of newspapers, books, toys, postcards, posters and such … with the goal, instinctive as it actually was, to be in a position to document all this, and with a mature cultural perspective. And, no less earnestly, to help others who sought to do so….

(11) YOU ARE THERE. A day like any other day, but — Ersatz Culture says this news story involves his local library!

(12) WIMPS. [Item by Steven French.] Dark stars observed! No it’s nothing to do with the John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon movie. Astronomers have closely examined recent images produced by the James Webb Space Telescope and concluded that they reveal ancient stars powered by dark matter. “Stars powered by dark matter may have been seen by the JWST” at Physics World.

… In 2007, Freese and colleagues proposed the possibility of “dark stars”, which may have been common in the early universe. While composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, these exotic stars would be fuelled by “dark matter heating” rather than nuclear fusion. This could involve a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). WIMPs have evaded discovery for decades in Earth-based detection experiments, but according to Freese’s team, the sheer density of dark matter in the early universe could cause them to interact far more frequently with regular matter during the formation of some of the earliest stars.

In the early universe, “WIMPs could have annihilated into photons, electron-positron pairs, and other particles, which collided with the hydrogen in collapsing clouds,” Freese explains. “These particles then get stuck inside the cloud, and deposit all the energy from the mass of the dark matter particles into the cloud. The cloud then stops collapsing, and instead turns into a ‘dark star’.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of the space elevator was popularized by Arthur Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise.

The idea is that a cable from the equator (Ceylon/Sri Lanka was geographically moved in Clarke’s novel) to a large satellite/small asteroid, in geosynchronous orbit, can be used to haul payload very cheaply into Earth orbit.

This concept has been further explored before by Isaac Arthur on his Science Futurism channel. Isaac has just taken this concept further by considering the advantages of a space elevator on the Moon…

A Space Elevator on the Moon, made of mundane materials, could be built with modern technology, and allow ultra-cheap freight off the Moon

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

Pixel Scroll 7/31/23 Have Space Suit, Will Accessorize

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(1) SERGEY LUKYANENKO WILL BE WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Starting tomorrow, Chengdu Worldcon GoH Sergey Lukyanenko will join a whistlestop tour of Russia “Book beacons of Russia. Reading August 2023”. The TASS publicity release says:

“Reading August” [is] a book expedition from Murmansk to Vladivostok, which will be held for the first time from August 1 to August 20. The book expedition will light up the “Book Beacons of Russia” in cities along its way.

… For the first time in history, a unique book expedition by train and other means of transportation will travel with a cultural program throughout Russia and cover more than 30 regions of the Russian Federation, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok….

In another news item, Sergey Lukyanenko, appointed by Putin to the Russian Federation’s Civic Chamber in April, was on hand when the group convened on June 20. He appears for about two seconds in the video report on the session here.

Sergey Lukyanenko, smiling, at left.

Finally, Lukyanenko is a judge in “The final of the literary competition ‘Project of Special Importance’ 2023”. What makes it “special” is that one of the entries was produced with ChatGPT and has made the finals.

The neural network reached the final of the literary competition for authors and readers of audiobooks “Project of Special Importance”. It is not yet known which text from among the finalists belongs to artificial intelligence, the [ChatGPT] neural network. The name of the laureate will be announced at the award ceremony in October in St. Petersburg.

The works of the participants are evaluated by science fiction writers Sergey Lukyanenko, Andrey Vasiliev, Vadim Panov, Max Glebov, professional audiobook readers and dubbing actors Kirill Golovin, Marina Lisovets, Dmitry Cherevatenko, Inga Brik and others. A total of 644 applications were received for the competition, 50 readers and 39 writers reached the final, stories in the genres of production novel, post-apocalypse, science fiction and cyberpunk were accepted for participation. The evaluation took into account the plot, intrigue, language style and emotional impact on the reader. The full list of finalists can be found on the website.

… The winner of the competition – the author of the text, who took 1st place, receives 250,000 rubles, 2nd place – 150,000 rubles, 3rd place – 100 thousand rubles. A prize fund of 400,000 rubles is distributed among the finalists. Among the readers, 10 winners are determined, who receive 50,000 rubles each.

(2) HELP SEATTLE IN 2025 WORLDCON BID RAISE FUNDS FOR CANCER RESEARCH. The Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid has formed a Base2Space team to climb the Space Needle on October 1 and raise funds for cancer research. The climb is 832 steps from street level to the observation deck, rising 0.1 miles high, or about 1/620 of the distance to space. They promise to take pictures from the top, showing the city which members of the science fiction community will have the chance to visit if Seattle wins the (so far uncontested) site selection vote to host the 2025 Worldcon. The black and white image shows what the Space Needle looked like in 1961, the last time Seattle hosted a Worldcon. 100% of donations go to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Please give generously: Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid – Base 2 Space.

(3) ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVED. “Octavia Butler Avenue Designated in Lake Forest Park, Wash.” reports Publishers Weekly.

The city of Lake Forest Park, Wash., dedicated a section of 37th Avenue NE to science fiction and fantasy author Octavia E. Butler on Saturday, July 29. Admirers of the author, who died in 2006, can now walk a three-block stretch known as Octavia Butler Avenue, passing the midcentury modern home where the author lived from 1999–2006 and wrote her final novel, Fledgling.

Lake Forest Park city councilmembers Phillippa Kassover and Tracy Furutani led the initiative to establish the honorary landmark, which covers three residential blocks, from NE 162nd to NE 165th Street. In the shade of an oak tree at the dedication ceremony, Kassover explained that Butler had moved to the Seattle suburb because she “wanted a home with a garden from which she could walk to a grocery store and had access to a cultural center and a good bookstore via bus, as she did not drive.” (Third Place Books Lake Forest Park is a short walk away.)

Kassover acknowledged Butler’s visionary fiction, “her prescient warnings about authoritarian leaders, and her many accolades, including being the first science fiction author to receive a Macarthur Genius Award.” Furutani called Butler’s novels “more Orwellian than we might suppose,” noting Butler’s Afrofuturist and social justice vision. Butler wrote Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and the Xenogenesis trilogy, and received Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards.

Those honoring Butler at the ceremony included Kassover and Furutani, along with Lake Forest Park deputy mayor Tom French, councilmember Semra Riddle, Clarion West science fiction and fantasy workshop writer Caren Gussoff Sumption, scholar Sheila Liming, and musician Terry Morgan, who befriended Butler after she moved to the neighborhood.

(4) MEDICAL UPDATE. Sff author Michael Flynn, who was hospitalized with an infection early this month, was released from the hospital yesterday he announced on Facebook. Good news!

(5) CHENGDU AND UNCANNY MAGAZINE. Michael Damian Thomas and Lynne M Thomas, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of Uncanny Magazine report that Uncanny Magazine was invited to send a representative to the Chengdu Worldcon “on the convention’s dime, but none of our team will be attending the convention.”

Of course, notes Michael, “In the case of Lynne and me, we are no longer able to attend any conventions that require flying or are too far away from a children’s hospital due to our daughter Caitlin’s palliative care.”

(6) SLIP-SLIDING AWAY. AV Club explains why “Loki can’t escape Jonathan Majors in season 2 trailer”.

…. After fracturing the Sacred Timeline at the end of the first season, Loki has lots of issues, including the fact that he’s “time slipping.” Unfortunately, the Time Variance Authority’s repairs guy (Ke Huy Quan) can’t fix it, although he does make for a delightful addition to the cast.…

(7) POOL PARTY FOR MICHIGAN FALSE ELECTORS. Michigan’s Grand New Party PAC announced a fundraising pool party in Oakland County this week for the false electors facing felony charges. There is no mention of Michele Lundgren by name in the publicity.

(8) ABOUT TODAY’S TITLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Heinlein’s Kip Russell wanted interoperable oxygen tank fittings, among other things. Larry Niven’s Belters [[IIRC, notes DPD]]] had designs painted on theirs. What would you add to yours?

(9) TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency warns about “Dangerous Children’s Picture Books That Could Be Lurking in Your Home”. Like this one —

The Giving Tree
A story of handouts. Flat-out socialism. Not to mention the climate-thumper extremism of giving the tree feelings. “Oh no, a tree is sad. It turns into a pathetic little stump. Whatever will we do?” Ridiculous.

(10) PAUL REUBENS (1952-2023). Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian who gained fame in character as Pee-wee Herman, died July 30 of cancer.

An Instagram released after his death quotes him: “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

The Los Angeles Times’ obituary describes his iconic character:

…Accompanied by a talking chair and pterodactyl named Pterri, Reubens established his place in the pop-culture zeitgeist with a maniacal laugh, form-fitting gray suit and red bow tie while embodying the man-child who ran amok on Saturday mornings during the TV run of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” The CBS series aired from 1986 to 1990 and then yielded the big-screen adaptations “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton, and “Big Top Pee-wee” in the 1980s. Stage shows followed in more recent years., as did Netflix’s 2016 follow-up “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” produced by Judd Apatow….

However, Reuben’s’ career was derailed by criminal charges, first in 1991 — he ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure — then in 2004, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge in a plea bargain with prosecutors who agreed to drop charges concerning child pornography.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 31, 1932 — Ted Cassidy. He’s best known for the role of Lurch on The Addams Family in the mid-1960s. If you’ve got a good ear, you’ll recall that he narrated The Incredible Hulk series. And he played the part of the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” on Trek and provided the voices of the more strident version of Balok in the “The Corbomite Maneuver” episode and the Gorn in the “Arena” episode. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. “The Napoleon’s Tomb Affair” episode (SPOILERS), he was Edgar, who kidnapped, tortured, and repeatedly attempted to kill Napoleon and Illya. And failed magnificently. I watched a few months back. (Died 1979.)
  • Born July 31, 1950 — Steve Miller, 73. He is married to Sharon Lee, and they are the creators of the vast and throughly entertaining Liaden universe. (And where would one would start? And go from there?  Do tell.) I was surprised though they’ve won both a Golden Duck and Skylark that they have never been nominated for a Hugo. 
  • Born July 31, 1955 — Daniel M. Kimmel, 68. His essays on classic genre films were being published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction from 2005–2010 and are now in the Space and Time magazine. He is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Shh! It’s a Secret. And he was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work at Chicon 7 for Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies.
  • Born July 31, 1956 — Michael Biehn, 67. Best known in genre circles as Sgt. Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks in Aliens and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. He was also The Sandman in a single episode of Logan’s Run. Though not even genre adjacent, he was Johnny Ringo in the magnificent Tombstone film. Likewise he was in The Magnificent Seven series as Chris Larabee.
  • Born July 31, 1959 — Kim Newman, 64. Though best known for his Anno Dracula series, I’d like to single him out for his early work, Nightmare Movies: A critical history of the horror film, 1968–88, a very serious history of horror films. It was followed up with the equally great Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten.
  • Born July 31, 1962 — Wesley Snipes, 61. The first actor to be Blade in the Blade film franchise where I thought he made the perfect Blade. (There’s a new Blade actor though their name escapes me right now.) I also like him as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. And he was Aman in Gallowwalkers, a Western horror film that is really, really bad. How bad? It gets an eleven percent rating by audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Born July 31, 1976 — John Joseph Adams, 49. Anthologist of whom I’m very fond. He did The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West. He was the Assistant Editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for nearly a decade, and he’s been editing both Lightspeed Magazine since the early part of the previous decade. He is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Nominated for the Hugo many times, he won for the Lightspeed prozine at Loncon 3 (2014) with Rich Horton and Stefan Rudnicki, and at Sasquan (2015) with Horton, Rudnicki, Wendy N. Wagner and Christie Yant. 

(12) HORROR WRITING GENERATIONS. Brian Keene hosts a panel sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, “Back in the Day (part 1)”.

Back In The Day (Part 1) hosted by Brian Keene, he speaks with panelists about what has changed in publishing and horror fiction over the years… and what hasn’t

He’s joined by David J. Schow, John Skipp, Chet Williamson, and Douglas E. Winter. 

(13) OPPOSITE OF OPPENHEIMER. “Where are the ‘violet hues’ and ‘bath of heat’? Australian scientists review what Oppenheimer gets wrong” in the Guardian.  

Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but not always accurate.

Its portrayal of the first atomic bomb detonation, for example, lacked the “violet hues” and heat wave of the real thing.

“Some characters even made comments like ‘quantum mechanics is hard’, which I disagree with – it’s only hard if someone hasn’t explained it properly,” says Dr Kirrily Rule, an instrument scientist who works with the thermal triple-axis spectrometer Taipan at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).

Rule gives Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Manhattan project four stars, saying it’s exciting and suspenseful but the science is “brushed over”.

“As a physicist watching the movie, I think they could have been much clearer on the science involved … I believe Nolan used such high-level jargon as a confusing element to the film intentionally….

In an article where people complain about making science look too hard, it’s comical to see this as the last line:

This article was amended on 28 July 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the sound wave boom resulting from the 1945 Trinity detonation travelled at the speed of light.

(14) REVISED OPINION. Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative, immediately went to see the movie and gave it an overall positive review.

We saw Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer last night as it was meant to be seen: in 70 mm IMAX.

It’s a very good film; I recommend it. That said, is it the best cinematic treatment of the subject? No, that’s still the 1989 movie Day One.

And is Cillian Murphy going to win the Academy Award for Best Actor? No, I don’t think so; his is an awfully one-note version of Oppie, who was much more complex (and much more charming) than Murphy’s portrayal would indicate….

However, a week later he told his newsletter subscribers that his enthusiasm has cooled:

…For all of Christopher Nolan’s posturing that his Oppenheimer is an important film, and how, in his own words, it “poses the most unsettling questions,” he completely cops out, showing us only the Trinity test explosion in New Mexico and not the dropping of the bombs on the living, breathing cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, Nolan portrays the famous moment in which Oppenheimer says he fears he has “blood on his hands” to Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, but, in his film, we never get any real sense of Oppenheimer’s regret or of the horrors of nuclear war. Sadly, despite the IMAX format, most scenes in Oppenheimer aren’t very memorable either visually or emotionally.

(15) EARLY DISNEYLAND. Shorpy recently posted “Moonliner: 1960”. Image at the link.

Circa 1960, the TWA “Moonliner” rocket at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland in Anaheim, California. (With Richfield Oil’s “Autopia” in the background.) At 76 feet, the Moonliner was the tallest attraction in the park. This medium format transparency is part of a recent donation to Shorpy from the family of California photographer Mary Baum (1925-2012). View full size.

I remember that rocket. And the ride — which was a circle of theater seats around a circular screen. The “launch” was b&w film taken by a camera on a V-2.

(16) SECOND SIGHT. “Queen legend Brian May helped NASA ace its asteroid-sampling mission” and Space.com tells how.

Queen guitarist Brian May and Dante Lauretta, the chief scientist of NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission, have collaborated on a book about the asteroid Bennu — and it’s not a PR stunt.

OSIRIS-REx snagged a sample of Bennu in October 2020 and is currently speeding toward Earth with the precious space-rock material, which is scheduled to touch down here on Sept. 24.

Unbeknownst to the world, May, voted the greatest guitarist of all time by readers of Total Guitar magazine earlier this year, had actually been hard at work for years leading up to the sampling attempt, helping to process images captured by NASA’s flagship space rock explorer to find a suitable landing spot on the treacherous surface of asteroid Bennu. The work proved harder than Lauretta and May had expected, as the 1,722-feet-wide (525 meters) Bennu turned scientists’ understanding of asteroids upside down…. 

OSIRIS-REx wasn’t fitted with a stereo camera. May, however, knew a way around this limitation, as he had previously produced 3D images of Comet 67P, the target of the Rosetta mission, and of Pluto as seen by New Horizons, by carefully selecting and aligning images taken by a single camera from different angles. 

The OSIRIS-REx cooperation, however, put the musician’s commitment to science through a test. As data from OSIRIS-REx started pouring in, the scientists realized that Bennu’s surface was not at all what they had expected and designed their mission for. Instead of mostly smooth, beach-like plains of sand occasionally strewn with smatterings of bigger rocks, they found a body covered in boulders that sometimes rose against the asteroid’s barely existent gravity in formations tens of feet tall. Understanding what the researchers were truly facing from the two-dimensional snapshots captured by OSIRIS-REx’s cameras was nigh impossible. And so May quickly got to prove his scientific worth.

(17) STUCK TO THE FUTURE. “This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape” at IEEE Spectrum.

…What sets CFS’s technology apart is its use of high-temperature superconducting tape, which is layered and stacked to create extremely strong electromagnets that will shape and confine the unruly plasma and keep the bulk of the charged particles away from the tokamak’s walls. The company believes that this novel approach will allow it to build a high-performance tokamak that is much smaller and less expensive than would be possible with previous approaches….

Daniel Dern asks, “Yeah, but would it keep the Ringworld from breaking?”

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Kevin Black, Dann, Michael Damian Thomas, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/19/2023 Sometimes A Great Alien Nation

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(1) WRITER LOSES EYE TO GUN VIOLENCE; FUNDRAISER STARTED. Sff author Jessie Kwak of Portland, OR was severely injured in a drive-by shooting last weekend while leaving the Mississippi Street Fair. “Author shot in eye near Mississippi Street Fair in Portland: ‘My left eye exploded'” at KGW8.

Jessie Kwak spent most of Saturday among hundreds of others enjoying the Mississippi Street Fair in North Portland. For the science fiction author, it was a special chance for her to sell her books at a booth, along with her friend and fellow author, Mark. Just after 8 p.m., the pair walked to Mark’s car, which was parked at North Kerby Avenue and North Failing Street. As they prepared to drive away, they heard gunfire.

“It was just kind of like, pop, pop, pop, pop, like somebody set off a string of fireworks,” Kwak said. “The windshield exploded and my left eye exploded and I realized that wasn’t fireworks, and so I ducked down.”

Mark drove Kwak, 40, to Legacy Emanuel Hospital about four miles away. Kwak’s husband, Robert Kittilson, took photographs of his wife’s injured face, which was covered in blood. The photos are difficult to look at, but the couple hopes those who see them will see the impact of gun violence for what it is, not just a statistic to ignore

There’s a GoFundMe to help with medical bills and loss of freelance income. “Help Jessie recover from a traumatic eye injury”. The appeal has raised almost $8,000 of the $20,000 goal in the first 24 hours.

Hi, I’m Jessie, a self-made freelance writer and author. On Saturday, July 15th, I was selling books at a local street fair with another author friend. As we were leaving, someone in the car ahead of us started firing their gun into the street nearby. A bullet ricocheted into our windshield, and glass and bullet fragments hit my face and entered my left eye. I was rushed to the hospital immediately, but it was clear that the bullet had done severe damage to the eye.

On Sunday, July 16th, I went under for a 5-hour surgery to reconstruct my left eye. Doctors said it was in pieces and had to be put back together like a puzzle. The CT scan revealed that bullet fragments were embedded deep in my eye and had damaged the retina. Another surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, July 19th to remove the bullet fragments and if possible repair the retina.

It will take time to learn to live with one eye, and as a freelancer, I won’t be able to work as I recover. And no work means no income.

This fundraiser is to help pay for medical treatment, lost income and clients, and for future legal expenses.

I have been watching as gun violence has been increasing in our country, and in retrospect, I know that I am very very lucky. Many families don’t get a second chance to hug their loved ones tight.

I want to take this opportunity to show you the real person behind the statistic, and that this was not a freak accident, but the result of a systemic issue we are facing here in the United States.

(2) HUMMINGBIRD PRIZE. The winner of the 2023 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize has been announced.

Winner: ‘Field’s Nocturne No. 10 in E Major’ by Matt Lumbard

Sonny wakes to the smell of coffee and the sight of his Grampa slipping suspenders over his shoulders, looking at the woodstove and muttering: “It’ll burn itself out.”

The editors also picked their own winner, by sff author Chip Houser.

Editors’ Choice: ‘Separate Worlds’ by Chip Houser

The first time the earth tolls, we’re all in our separate worlds doing what we do.

(3) AWARDS META. Daniel Dern suggests the Award Award, featuring categories like the “Most ingenious nomination process”. What others would you suggest?

(4) BACK IN THE TOY BOX. Masters of the Universe has been returned to development hell says Variety: “’Masters of the Universe’ Movie Dead at Netflix”. What will Cora think?

…Set on the planet Eternia, “Masters of the Universe” largely focuses on the conflict between He-Man, a blonde muscle god, and his devious nemesis Skeletor. The characters formed a much-loved 1980s animated series, which developed a cross-generational fan base during its syndicated runs. For the latest film iteration, the budget came in at over $200 million with cameras set to roll this February, sources said. Last spring, however, Netflix was confronted with a stunning stock drop that saw the powerful streamer shed $50 billion in value after investors became concerned about the company’s subscriber losses.

In the aftermath of the sell-off, Netflix film head Scott Stuber and chief content officer Bela Bajaria tried to reassure the industry that they still had money to spend amid their Wall Street woes. However, sources close to “Masters of the Universe” said after that point the streamer refused to shell out more than $150 million to see up-and-comer Allen (“American Horror Story,” “A Haunting in Venice”) pick up He-Man’s sword. A source familiar with Netflix said the stock drop was irrelevant to budget issues on “Masters,” noting that its content spend has been flat at $17 billion for two years, despite market fluctuation….

(5) WE PAUSE FOR A COMMERCIAL MESSAGE. Meanwhile, the Mark Twain House & Museum is adding a dose of grumpiness to the Masters of the Universe mix by hosting the virtual event “The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood”. Register here – choose your own price, minimum $2.50 (free to Twain House members).

Brian “Box” Brown unravels how marketing that targeted children in the 1980s has shaped adults in the present. The He-Man Effect shows how corporate manipulation brought muscular, accessory-stuffed action figures to dizzying heights in the eighties and beyond. Bringing beloved brands like He-Man, Transformers, My Little Pony, and even Mickey Mouse himself into the spotlight, this graphic history exposes a world with no rules and no concern for results beyond profit. 

(6) CHARLES E. NOAD OBITUARY. David Bratman has written a tribute to the late Charles E. Noad at Kalimac’s corner. It begins:

Charles was a mainstay of the Tolkien Society, the UK-based organization, and an absolute monument for Tolkien studies for all that he didn’t write very much. Besides doing bibliographical work for the TS, his most valuable contribution was as proofreader for most of the posthumous Tolkien volumes, in the History of Middle-earth series and elsewhere. At this his ability to catch glitches was unsurpassed. He could quite literally tell whether a period (the full stop at the end of a sentence) was in italics or not. As a support to Christopher Tolkien, the editor of these volumes, he was more than invaluable….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1998 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

A work by S. M. Stirling provides our Beginning this Scroll. Now I’ll admit that I am not that familiar with him which is not to say that there aren’t works by him that I do like deeply such as The Peshawar Lancers and The Lords of Creation series which consists of The Sky People and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. The latter is extraordinary work.

He has been nominated for many awards, winning the Lord Ruthven Award which is given for significant contributions to the field of horror literature for his A Taint the Blood novel, and a Dragon Award for the Black Chamber novel in the Best Alternate History Novel category. It was nominated for a Sunburst was awarded to a Canadian novel in previous year.

Mike choose Island in the Sea of Time, the first novel in the Nantucket series, published by Roc Books twenty-five years ago. 

And now for the Beginning…

March, 1998 A.D. 

Ian Arnstein stepped off the ferry gangway and hefted his bags. Nantucket on a foggy March evening was chilly enough to make him thankful he’d worn the heavier overcoat; Southern Californian habits could betray you, here on the coast of New England. Thirty-odd miles off the coast. The summer houses built out over the water were still shuttered, and most of the shops were closed—tourist season wouldn’t really start until Daffodil Weekend in late April, when the population began to climb from seven thousand to sixty. He was a tourist of sorts himself, even though he came here regularly; to the locals he was still a “coof,” of course, or “from away,” to use a less old-fashioned term. Everybody whose ancestors hadn’t arrived in the seventeenth century was a coof, to the core of old-time inhabitants, a “wash-ashore” even if he’d lived here for years. This was the sort of place where they talked about “going to America” when they took the ferry to the mainland.

He trudged past Easy Street, which wasn’t, and turned onto Broad, which wasn’t either, up to the whaling magnate’s mansion that he stayed in every year. It had been converted to an inn back in the 1850s, when the magnate’s wife insisted on moving to Boston for the social life. Few buildings downtown were much more recent than that. The collapse of the whaling industry during the Civil War era had frozen Nantucket in time, down to the huge American elms along Main Street and the cobblestone alleys. The British travel writer Jan Morris had called it the most beautiful small town in the world, mellow brick and shingle in Federal or neoclassical style. A ferociously restrictive building code kept it that way, a place where Longfellow and Whittier would have felt at home and Melville would have taken a few minutes to notice the differences. 

Mind you, it probably smells a lot better these days. Must have reeked something fierce when the harborfront was lined with whale-oil renderies. It had its own memories for him, now. Still painful, but life was like that. People died, marriages too, and you went on. 

He hurried up Broad Street and hefted his bags up the brick stairs to the white neoclassical doors with their overhead fanlights flanked by white wooden pillars. The desk was just within, but the tantalizing smells came from downstairs. The whalers were long gone, but they still served a mean seafood dinner in the basement restaurant at the John Cofflin House.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 19, 1883 — Max Fleischer. Animator, film director and producer. He brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman to the screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations including the Rotoscope and Stereoptical Processes. You can see Betty’s first screen appearance here in the 1930 Cartoon, “Dizzy Dishes”. (Died 1972.)
  • Born July 19, 1924 — Pat Hingle. He portrayed Jim Gordon in the Burton Batman film franchise. Genre wise, he had roles in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Carol for Another Christmas, Mission: Impossible, The Invaders, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Amazing Stories and The Land Before Time. He would reprise his Gordon role in the Batman OnStar commercials. (Died 2009.)
  • Born July 19, 1927 — Richard E. Geis. I met him at least once when I was living out there in Oregon. Interesting person. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer twice; and whose science fiction fanzine Science Fiction Review won Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine four times. The Alien Critic won the Best Fanzine Hugo (once in a tie with Algol), and once by himself. And yes, I enjoyed reading the Science Fiction Review. I’ve not read any of his handful of genre novels, and certainly haven’t encountered his soft-core porn of which there’s a lot. (Died 2013.)
  • Born July 19, 1950 — Richard Pini, 73. He’s half of the husband-and-wife team responsible for creating the well-known Elfquest series of comics, graphic novels and prose works. They are also known as WaRP (as in Warp Graphics). It’s worth noting that characters based on works by the Pinis appear in Ghost Rider (vol.1 issue 14).
  • Born July 19, 1957 — John Pelan. Committed (more or less) the act of opening serial small publishing houses in succession with the first being Axolotl Press in the mid-Eighties where he’d published the likes of de Lint and Powers (before selling it to Pulphouse Publishing) followed by Darkside Press, Silver Salamander Press and finally co-founding Midnight House. All have been inactive for quite awhile now and he’d been editing such anthologies as Tales of Terror and Torment: Stories from the Pulps, Volume 1 for other presses though even that has not happened for some years as near as I can tell. As a writer, he had more than thirty published stories and he had won both a Stoker for The Darker Side: Generations of Horror anthology and an International Horror Guild Award for his Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium anthology. (Died 2021.)
  • Born July 19, 1969 — Kelly Link, 54. First, let me note that along with Ellen Datlow, she and her husband Gavin Grant were responsible for the last five volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. They all did an absolutely magnificent job. All of her collections, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble are astonishingly good. And she’s much honored having three Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, an Otherwise Award, a Sturgeon Award and received a MacArthur Genius Grant. She was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. And Hugos. She won a Hugo at Interaction for her “Faery Handbag” novellette, her “Magic for Beginners” novella was nominated at L.A. Con IV, and finally Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet was nominated at Nippon 2007 for Best Semi-Prozine (her husband Gavin Grant was also nominated). 
  • Born July 19, 1976 — Benedict Cumberbatch, 47. Confession time: I really didn’t care for him in the Sherlock series, nor did I think his Khan In Star Trek Into Darkness was all that interesting but his Stephen Strange In Doctor Strange was excellent. He did do a superb job of voicing Smaug inThe Hobbit and his Grinch voicing in that film was also superb. I understand he’s the voice of Satan in Good Omens… 

(9) WIZARDS IN TRAINING. This is a pretty cute set of bookends (and middle!) “The Journey To HOGWARTS Illuminated Bookend Collection Featuring A Detailed HOGWARTS Express On Its Journey Back To HOGWARTS Castle” from the Bradford Exchange.

(10)  ARE FANS NO LONGER ALIENATED? “’The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks’ podcast explores internet outrage and its aftermath” at WBUR.

1999’s “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” introduced audiences to a technological marvel: Jar Jar Binks, cinema’s first major motion-captured character. But the comic-relief alien also became the target of one of the internet’s first hate campaigns, with vitriol spilling over to the actor who played Jar Jar as well.

The new podcast “The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks” tells this story and how it informs online discourse today. Here & Now‘s Celeste Headlee speaks to podcast host Dylan Marron, also known for his writing work on “Ted Lasso” and his podcast “Conversations with People Who Hate Me.”

Here’s the direct link to the podcast: “The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks”.

Jar Jar Binks became one of the most polarizing figures in cinematic history when he made his debut in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 1999. He was even named “the most annoying movie character of all time” by Complex Magazine. After the release, Ahmed Best, the man who played Jar Jar, was hit with the full force of the backlash — and it nearly destroyed him. The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks is a six-part journey through the early internet to understand how one of the first-ever online hate campaigns began, and to right what we got so wrong about Jar Jar the first time around.

(11) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. “High altitude balloons spy on dark matter” at Popular Science.

High altitude balloons have drawn a lot of fire lately. In February, the US military shot down a spy balloon potentially operated by the Chinese government and an “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that was later revealed to likely be a hobbyist balloon.

So, when people caught sight of another large balloon in the southern hemisphere in early May, there was concern it could be another spy device. Instead, it represents the future of astronomy: balloon-borne telescopes that peer deep into space without leaving the stratosphere.

“We’re looking up, not down,” says William Jones, a professor of physics at Princeton University and head of NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) team. Launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on April 15, the nearly 10-foot-tall telescope has already circled the southern hemisphere four times on a football stadium-sized balloon made from polyethylene film. Its three onboard cameras also took stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae galaxies to rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The findings from SuperBIT could help scientists unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of dark matter, a theoretically invisible material only known from its gravitational effects on visible objects….

(12) THE SHIPPING NEWS. The Last Voyage of the Demeter has the dirt on Dracula.

Based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. When the Demeter finally arrives off the shores of England, it is a charred, derelict wreck. There is no trace of the crew.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Fanac.org now hosts the venerable Castle of Terrors made in 1964 by the UK’s Delta Science Fiction Film Group.

This fannish production from Harry Nadler and the Delta SF Film Group gives us a slapstick parody of horror movies, replete with well known British fans of the day. There are angry villagers, damsels in distress, and scary monsters, as well as less well-known horror tropes like food fights in this 20 minute amateur extravaganza. In “Castle of Terrors” you can feel just how much fun Delta Group was having (and get a clear sense of their love for slapstick). Bill Burns, who provided this and other Delta Films tells us “The individual films date from 1963 to 1970, and were made on 8mm silent film to which a magnetic stripe was later added and the sound dubbed on. They were then shown mercilessly at club meetings and Eastercons, and suffered accordingly.” For more about the Delta SF Film Group, see the Fancyclopedia article and see the text of Bill’s talk at Manunicon (2016 Eastercon) here.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, A. P. Howell, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

“Barbenheimer” Poster Art

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By Daniel Dern: With both movies opening July 21, Barbie-Oppenheimer mashups are a thing…

…First up is a stellar mashup poster created by artist Sean Longmore. 24 x 40 prints are available to purchase for $40. The poster has a retro look that has Cillian Murphy from Oppenheimer in the left corner of the poster as Margot Robbie’s Barbie poses next to him. The left further contrasts the right as an explosion can be seen around Murphy’s head as the bright and vibrant Barbie Land can be seen bleeding through in the background of the right side. Various side characters from both films fill out the bottom with Ryan Gosling’s Ken placed smack in the middle.

Including even a video, from the above post:

…The mock movie poster contains a nod to an explosion of pink behind Robbie, a central theme in the promotion of Barbie, which meshes with the nuclear theme in Oppenheimer. Mission Impossible 7‘s Tom Cruise may have also aided in creating the Barbenheimer phenomenon, as some fans noted that reports of Cruise being ‘Pissed off’ that Oppenheimer will replace MI7 on IMAX screens after a week were followed up by promoting Barbie and Oppenheimer as a double-feature…

…Created and shared by Bosslogic on Instagram, the crossover poster imagines Margot Robbie’s Barbie spectating an appropriately pink atomic blast on the far horizon of Barbie Land. In the bottom right corner, a mashed-up title reads “Barbie: The Destroyer of Worlds” in reference to Oppenheimer’s infamous quotation of the Bhagavad Gita as he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”…

…”I think it’s a great opportunity to put some positivity out into the world and a chance to be aspirational for younger kids,” Robbie said of the film in a 2019 interview.…

New fan art imagines Barbie and Oppenheimer as one mythic movie in the style of a classic Hollywood poster. Both movies, which release in theaters on July 21, hail from acclaimed directors in Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig and feature starry ensemble casts led by Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy as their titular characters. However, the two movies themselves are actually quite different, as one is a comedy set in the glitz and glam of Barbie Land, while Oppenheimer is a bleak, partially black-and-white biopic chronicling the creation of the first nuclear weapons….

…Doing God’s work, Twitter user Shadow Knight has curated a Twitter thread (above) of the best examples – and some of them are truly, er, something. From a La la Land inspired dance-off to a Drew Struzan-style painted character collage, a few of these fictional posters would definitely be enough to coax us into the cinema – if only out of sheer curiosity….

Related Twitter thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/shadowknightdk/status/1680288331693977600

Pixel Scroll 5/22/23 A Pocket Full Of Pixels, A Universe Made Of Scrolls

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(1) TREK CREWS SUPPORTING STRIKE. “Star Trek Actors Join Writers On Trek-Themed Picket Lines In LA And NYC” – TrekMovie.com has the story.

…The WGA West and the WGA East both called for Star Trek writers to picket on Friday at the Paramount in Hollywood and at the Manhattan headquarters of Netflix. Star Trek writers showed up at both locations, joined by actors and others who have worked on the franchise.

Strange New Worlds writer/co-executive producer (and WGA strike captain) Bill Wolkoff shared a group photo from Hollywood. Writers and actors from Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy can all be seen showing their support….

…In New York, Lower Decks voice actress (and Starfleet Academy writer) Tawny Newsome shared photos that included actors Anthony Rapp (Discovery) and Celia Rose Gooding & Jess Bush (Strange New Worlds)….

… TNG actress Denise Crosby met up with Picard showrunner Terry Matalas.

(2) WHEATON KERFUFFLE. Meanwhile, Wil Wheaton launched his own front by criticizing a Jeopardy! host. Comic Sands has the story: “Wil Wheaton Slams Ken Jennings For Crossing WGA Picket Line”.

Wheaton wrote on Facebook:

“This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this. Your privilege may protect you right now, but we will *never* forget.”

The post has since blown up on social media, so Wheaton added some more information in an edit:

“This is getting more attention than I expected or wanted, and I don’t want this to be about me being disappointed by a choice Ken Jennings made.”

“I want attention and energy focused on supporting the writers who are fighting for their professional existence, opposed by billionaires who are keen to ruin my entire industry.”

This afternoon Wheaton told Facebook followers that The National Enquirer was trying to milk the story even more.

Hey, isn’t this neat? The National Enquirer asked me to comment on a story they are running, claiming I “publicly threatened” Ken Jennings.

Here’s what they sent:

To Whom It May Concern:

The National Enquirer is preparing to publish a story reporting Wil Wheaton has publicly threatened Jeopardy host Ken Jennings for crossing the writer’s picket line.

The story quotes Mr. Wheaton’s Facebook message which stated, “This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this.”

It also points out that Mr. Wheaton is close friends with Mr. Jennings’ competition for permanent hosting duties on Jeopardy — Mayim Bialik.

Here is my entire response, in the *cough* unlikely event *cough* they edit it for space or somesuch:

Your clumsy efforts to misrepresent me, to mislead your readers, to distract from the issues underlying the strike, have not gone unnoticed. But since you asked, let me be clear: I didn’t threaten anybody. That’s laughable. I’ve been threatened. It sounds like, “be careful on your way home tonight.” It doesn’t sound like “I will remember that you betrayed us when it was convenient, and other people will, too.”

I support organized labor without exception and will never cross a picket line. I stood (and stand) with and for my fellow union members. Hollywood is a notoriously dishonest industry that runs on relationships and trust. We tell stories and make stuff up for a living! We need to know who we can trust and who we can’t; who stands with us, and who will sell us out. It’s not a threat; it’s a fact.

You would do well to inform your readers that regulatory capture, the monopolization of entertainment companies, and the incomprehensible greed of a handful of billionaires threaten my entire industry and countless people I love. WGA (and possibly my union, SAG-AFTRA) members are fighting for our careers, our families, our healthcare and the future of our industry. The billionaires across the table are fighting for bigger yachts.

I’m deeply disappointed with Ken. I think he’s a great host, an obviously sensational player, and the couple times I’ve met him, I’ve enjoyed our conversations. The fact is, he has an enormously high profile, and his choices affect the writers of his show and the entire WGA in a meaningful way that people pay attention to. He is certainly more influential, and can have a more direct impact, than me. I hoped he would use that privilege to put the needs of the many ahead of the greed of the few. He didn’t, and speaking only for myself, I will remember that. That isn’t a threat; it’s keeping a promise to my fellow workers, and honoring the sacrifices of all who came and fought before us.

Wheaton added a little snark in the comments.

(3) THE NUMBER OF YOUR DOOM. In “The Annals of Not So Terrible Fates”, Camestros Felapton has devised a foolproof table that you can use to foretell your terrible ending.

A doom awaits you! To learn your fortune you must meddle with the dark forces of pseudonumerology…

Here is my result:

15. Overtaken by Artificial Intelligence
A self-driving care overtakes you on the road in a way that you find disrespectful.

I suppose it’s completely in character that my fate contains a typo.

(4) THEY’RE HERE! [Item by Steven French.] Excellent list by Nina Allan, author of Conquest: “Top 10 strangest alien invasion novels” in the Guardian. At number nine:

9. Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
With its jump cuts and tessellations, Okorafor’s playful, almost filmic account of an alien expedition to the city of Lagos feels unlike any alien invasion story you might have read before. Science fiction cohabits with fantasy to produce a vigorous, gorgeous mutation teeming with deft postmodernist touches: chapters told from non-human points of view, snapshots of reportage, moments when Okorafor breaks the fourth wall to ask how readers might have reacted had they been there. A joyously experimental text, Lagoon shimmers with the delirium and chaos that might be expected from an alien visit.

(5) GRAPES OF WRATH. Jason Sanford devoted a Genre Grapevine to “the Sudowrite Controversy and the Increasing Pushback Against AI”, a free post on Patreon. It includes a brief interview with Amit Gupta, Co-Founder of Sudowrite.

…On May 17, Gupta’s fellow Sudowrite co-founder James Yu announced the launch of Story Engine. As Yu wrote on Twitter, “Our awesome team worked with hundreds of novelists for months to build the ideal interface for writers and machines to collaborate on a narrative. … Story Engine is the first serious tool for long-form AI writing.”

In the video attached to the announcement, Yu said Story Engine would allow authors to “write an entire novel in just a few days.”

As Yu noted, previous AI writing models had difficulty staying on track with a story “for more than a few paragraphs,” meaning most “AI products were optimized for short generations.” Story Engine evidently fixes this by allowing people to provide the system with character information, overall plot points, themes, and more data tailored for longer-form stories. This helps the AI remain focused on generating a story that would, in Yu’s words, stay true to the “author’s vision.”

And the reaction from the writing community to this development? Perhaps this headline in Gizmodo best sums that up: “Sudowrite Launches Novel-Writing AI Software for Pseudo-Writers.“

To say that Yu’s announcement was ratioed hard is an understatement, with his tweet receiving by May 21 over 8.2 million views but only 182 regular retweets and 963 likes. Instead, there were over 4,500 quote retweets where people generally ripped into the announcement….

(6) TODAY’S 10,000. Horror movies were banned in Australia for two decades? News to me! Daniel Best tells that history in “Charles Higham and the Fate of the 1965 Bulletin Ban List”.

Horror movies were formally banned in Australia in mid-1948. This ban wasn’t announced with any great fanfare, rather it was a subdued series of articles in newspapers and tabloid magazines that stated the premise of the ban – all horror films from 1949 onwards would be subject to an instant ban, with no exceptions. Films already in the country, which had been passed by the censor and dated pre-1948, would be exempt from the ban. Thus the status quo was established, and it remained this way for over twenty years.

(7) MARTIN AMIS (1949-2023). Martin Amis died May 19 at the age of 73. His genre-related contributions include Time’s Arrow (1991), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. As described in the Wikipedia —

Notable for its backwards narrative – including dialogue in reverse – the novel is the autobiography of a Nazi concentration camp doctor. The reversal of the arrow of time in the novel, a technique borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) and Philip K. Dick‘s Counter-Clock World (1967), is a narrative style that itself functions in Amis’s hands as commentary on the Nazis’ rationalisation of death and destruction as forces of creation with the resurrection of Nordic mythology in the service of German nation-building

According to ISFDB he wrote a fair amount of short sff, featured in two collections, Einstein’s Monsters and Heavy Water and Other Stories.

He was the son of author Kingsley Amis.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2013 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Rebecca Campbell was not an author I was aware of before Mike picked her this afternoon for the Beginning. It turned that she is a quite fascinating person who, as she says on her most excellent site, writes “weird stories about climate change and ghosts, mostly, though aliens and parasites sometimes show up, too, and I will always love archives and libraries”. 

NeWest Press published her The Paradise Engine a decade ago. It’s her only novel to date according to ISFDB, though she has written some novellas and a generous amount of short fiction. Our Beginning is from The Paradise Engine. 

And for her Beginning…

A Ghost Story

The first ghost appeared at the end of August, when Jasmine had already been gone for months. That was too bad because she was the only person Anthea knew who would recognize a ghost when she saw one, or know what to do about it.

Anthea didn’t know a ghost when she saw one, though she was the one haunted. She also didn’t know what had happened to Jasmine, but whatever it was, it was probably over. She knew only this: Jasmine was last seen just northwest of the city, on a highway that curled uphill along the coast and the mountains. She was last seen early in June, in the company of a bearded Caucasian male apprx. 30 yrs of age, who carried an army surplus backpack and was otherwise without distinguishing characteristics. Anthea could determine, then, that Jasmine was last seen facing southeast, hitching northwest along a highway that grew pineapple weed on its shoulders. Pineapple weed smelled like chamomile tea when it bruised, as it would do under Jas’s runners when she stood for long stretches, one thin arm reaching out into the traffic and the other propped on her hip. Given how hot June had been, Anthea also knew Jasmine was kneecapped by heat waves that rose from the highway, so she seemed to float above the asphalt. To the drivers who did not pick them up, they might have been a mirage, or ghosts from the early ’70s.

Jasmine would have enjoyed being mistaken for a ghost, especially one that smelled of chamomile. She and the man walked northwest all day. Sometimes where the shoulder was narrow, she slithered halfway down the ditch and he’d turn around to help her to her feet. They were still walking when the sky turned purple and rusty orange over the mountains. Jas’s arms crossed over her chest. She shivered with dehydration and the sun-ache in her temples, the tight wrinkle of a burn on her nose and forehead. After that night no one saw anything, and so Anthea is unable to determine how much longer they walked north and west. This little film plays out in her head sometimes, unresolved.

That was months before the haunting, though, which had its start very early on a Sunday morning at the end of August. Anthea was asleep when it began, and she mistook the first visitation for a dream. In the dream a dark-haired man told her something very important she should not forget in a voice that had the texture of a shellac 78 on an old turntable. She listened politely to the man for a long time, unable to grasp his words though she felt their urgency. Just as she began to understand what the man wanted her to know, the squirrels in the attic started fighting, as they often did in the early morning. Half-awake and still listening to the distorted voice in her dream, she sat up and hit the angled wall above her head, and then stood and thumped the ceiling with the heel of her hand.

By the time Anthea was fully awake—still hitting the plaster, the squirrels still fighting overhead—the phone was ringing and she forgot even that she should not forget the antiqued voice of her dream, and so the second supernatural event of Anthea’s life passed her without remark. She picked up the phone beside the bed, but no one was there.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 22, 1859 — Arthur Conan Doyle. I read the Holmes stories a long time ago. My favorite is The Hound of the Baskervilles as it allows him to develop a story at length. Favorite video Holmes? Jeremy Brett.  Looking at ISFDB, I’m see there were more Professor Challenger novels than I realized. And the Brigadier Gerard stories sound suspiciously comical… (Died 1930.)
  • Born May 22, 1900 — Wallace West. His first two short stories were “Loup-Garou” in Weird Tales, October 1927 and “The Last Man” in Amazing, February 1929. He published continuously through the Sixties though only averaged a story a year. Interestingly his first two novels were about Betty Boop in the Big Little Books format: Betty Boop in Snow-White: Assisted by Bimbo and Ko-Ko and Betty Boop in “Miss Gulliver’s Travels”.  He wrote four genre novels, only a few of which are available from the usual suspects. (Died 1980.)
  • Born May 22, 1901 — Ed Earl Repp. His stories appeared in several of the early pulp magazines including Air Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories. Some were collected in The Radium Pool (just three stories), The Stellar Missiles (another three stories) and Science-Fantasy Quintette (five this time with two by L. Ron Hubbard). He also had one SF novel written in 1941, Rescue from Venus. He turned to writing scripts for Westerns and never wrote any fiction thereafter. (Died 1979.)
  • Born May 22, 1907 — Hergé. He is best remembered for creating The Adventures of Tintin which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is much less remembered for Quick & Flupke, a short-lived series between the Wars, and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko which lasted well into the Fifties. (Died 1983.)
  • Born May 22, 1914 — Sun Ra. As SFE says he “played and released a large quantity of music, mostly in the postwar period, all of it inflected by his fascination with outer space, Alien encounter, Ancient Egypt (whose Sun god inspired his working name) and Atlantis.” It’s well worth reading the fascinating SFE entry on him. (Died 1993.)
  • Born May 22, 1964 — Kat Richardson, 59. Her Greywalker series is one of those affairs that I’m pleased to say that I’ve read every novel that was been published. I’ve not read Blood Orbit, the first in her new series, yet. Has anyone here done so? Her Blood Orbit novel won an Endeavour Award which is given for a science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author and is given by a panel of judges chartered by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. 
  • Born May 22, 1968 — Karen Lord, 55. She’s a Barbadian writer. Her debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, retells the story “Ansige Karamba the Glutton” from Senegalese folklore; The Best of All Possible Worlds and The Galaxy Game are genre novels as is her edited New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range shows the moment of surprise in an alien robbery.
  • Macanudo has an equation that yields horror.  
  • Thatababy finds out what happens to a superhero who signs too many checks.

(11) SOMETHING FOR WAR GAMERS AND AUTHORS OF MILITARY SF. [Item by Francis Hamit.] We have the smartest military in the world.  Seriously.  You can’t attain flag rank now without a PhD or three Masters degrees.  This article is a very thoughtful analysis of urban combat and why it matters. “Decided among the Cities: The Past, Present, and Future of War in Urban Environments” at Army University Press.

Cities not only possess cultural and psychological value for combatants, but they are also sociologically and geographically anchored to multiple aspects of military key terrain. Cities sit astride, near, or encompass major ground routes (road and rail), major water crossings such as large bridges, and logistical and power projection hubs for sea and air. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine provides an immediate example of the importance of cities themselves and what cities contain. Moreover, the importance of cities is apparent with a study of history. However, even with history and current events, there is faint acknowledgement of the importance of the urban fight in military theory, and it has limited coverage in U.S. Army doctrine. When acknowledged, urban operations are largely discussed in commentary on their inherent difficulty, the natural aversion to costly fighting characteristic of urban combat, and with the recommendation to bypass or avoid city fights altogether. However, as history and recent examples in Ukraine demonstrate, conflicts often are decided among the cities. The physical and infrastructure characteristics of cities naturally and geographically can make control of them critical for victorious military campaigns. The one who can seize and hold the city controls, or just denies, crucial capabilities to military operations…

(12) 3 MOVIE ALERTS: THESE STREAMS YOU MIGHT WANT TO CROSS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Within the past month or so I’ve finally been able to see a few films that had been on my “watch at home when they’re available at no additional cost” (as in, on streaming services I subscribe to, or as DVD/BluRay loans through the local library): Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and Peter Pan & Wendy.

The first two I’m going to say close to zero about other than “now available this way” (nor should I need to say more):

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount Plus).

Lots of fun! It’s got dungeons! It’s got dragons! (But no dice or dice-rolling)

It’s nice to see a fantasy flick that doesn’t require backstory, doesn’t involve an orphaned/prophesied/etc. protagonist, is done-in-one (in terms of wrapping up the plot), and is focusing on a less-than-the-fate-of-everything plot.

One perhaps helpful note: If, like me, you’re on P+’s cheaper with-commercials tier, you’ll be happy to know they sensibly frontloaded a handful of commercials up front, and did not interrupt the movie (and included a note that they were doing it, just before the actual commercials).

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Display+)

While clearly part of the Marvel movie universe too-many-moving parts flow chart/timeline, this movie doesn’t require you to know much. Having seen the two previous Ant-Man movies can’t hurt; beyond that, knowing about the Thanos “snap” (from the past two Avengers flicks) resulted in many characters (including Scot Lang/Ant-Man) missing five years of normal timeline.

Another nice aspect in Q-mania is that, by taking place mainly in the Quantum Realm, that solves the super-hero universe conundrum, e.g., “so where are all the other (Marvel) heroes when all heck is breaking loose?” Answer, in this case: not in Quantumville.

Recommended.

Peter Pan & Wendy (Disney+)

I’m not a fan of the original book — as I discovered some years back while volunteer-literacy-tutoring. The first 20-30 pages are treacly enough to rot out even the toughest teeth — for no clear-to-me reason I watch many of the films — perhaps Robin Williams and the rest of the superb cast of Hook (I’ve still got the DVD, and, I think, also the laserdisk) deserve credit for that (and have read many of the post-Barrie books).

PP&W is based on the original book/movie/story-that-we-know, with a fair amount of edits, deletions and additions, all of which I heartily applaud. Princess T Lily (played by Alyssa Wapanatâh, who is, per IMDB, a member of the Bigstone Cree First Nation). The Lost Boys, while retaining their group’s name, include girls. And there’s more backstory connecting Peter and Hook. (Not all watchers/reviewers felt positive about this, e.g., this ComicsBookReview one.)

To be fair, I don’t recall thinking much of the 2015 Pan; (starring Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard, FYI) was the one where the big rocky scene had pirates and singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (here’s the video excerpt, in case you doubted my memory).

Same memory says I liked the 2003 Peter Pan…probably one reason it didn’t do well at the box office was that some other pirate movie debuted around the same time, starring that guy who played Edward Scissorhands, which grabbed more attention.

Now, back to waiting for the The Flash movie.

(13) MASSED MINDS PRODUCTION. Can someone be an AI writing addict? “Sci-fi author ‘writes’ 97 AI-generated books in nine months” reports The Register.

Sci-fi author Tim Boucher has produced over 90 books in nine months, using ChatGPT and the Claude AI assistant.

Boucher, an AI artist and writer, claims to have made nearly $2,000 selling 574 copies of the 97 works.

Each book in his “AI Lore” series is between 2,000 to 5,000 words long – closer to an essay than a novel. They are interspersed with around 40 to 140 pictures, and take roughly six to eight hours to complete, he told Newsweek. 

Boucher’s superhuman output is down to the use of AI software. He uses Midjourney to create the images, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude to generate text to brainstorm ideas and write stories…. 

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It was Sci-Fi Sunday over at Isaac Arthur’s Futures and this month’s topic Co-existence with Aliens. He opines, “One day we may encounter intelligent aliens, but can we ever hope to understand their psychology and coexist with them if we do?”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Christian Brunschen, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Juli Marr, Francis Hamit, Steven French, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

An SFnal Weekend in Toronto

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A Slide-Show Report: Even without a con, Toronto can still be SFnal

By Daniel P. Dern: I don’t think I’ve been to Toronto since the 2003 WorldCon (not counting catching the VIA Rail Trans-Canada to Vancouver, a decade ago) — a lot more tall buildings there or going up! — but even without a con happening, Toronto still has its SF moments (and things of interest to SF fans)…as this photo essay from late April shows.

1: Toronto, One Floor Up!

From Billy Bishop Airport, Toronto is only a short ferry ride or tunnel walk away. From the latter, is this an elevator — or a portal? What would be on the next level up — or down?

2: Oh Cone-ada! A geo-local Ben & Jerry’s flavor.

3: Yesterday Was Monday — Thanks to the many historic facades fronting newer Toronto buildings, it often felt like we were walking through scenes from Theodore Sturgeon’s 1941 story “Yesterday Was Monday.”

4: This bar is clearly ready for Star Wars Day.

5, 6: No nearby open coffee shop? Streetside coffee ATM to the rescue! My kind of (machine) server!

7: And how about (on weekends) a cannoli to go with your coffee.

8: And something to read, while coffee-and-cannoli-ing.

9: Rob Sawyer was out of town getting an award, so we didn’t get to say hi, but I found this collection at ABC Books, so I bought it, along with The Art of Eating, a lovely five-book compendium (including “How To Cook A Wolf” which I already own) of MFK Fisher’s food/cooking writings.

10: One way IRL browsing/shopping occasionally beats online — I hadn’t known this Lev Grossman book, Warp, which he wrote years before his The Magicians, existed, until I saw it on my way out of ABC Books, a well-stocked, well-organized used book store on Yonge Street; snagged it, and went back to the register. This is a re-issue, and includes a new forward; here’s Grossman talking about it, in a 2016 Time.com article “Lev Grossman on Reissuing His First Novel, Warp”. I now see that my library has it, ditto other bookstores, etc. but my phone wasn’t getting data service (tsk!), and the price was reasonable, so I bought rather than having declined-opportunity regrets.

11: Yesterday Is Still Monday.

12: Maybe I’m just not getting out enough these days, but “Cheese Tea” is something I don’t think I’ve seen before. (I’m not a fromage-ivore, so I didn’t try it.)

13: OTOH, it’s been too long since I’d had Ethiopian food. (This was the vegetarian sampler; I’d ordered something else.)

14: Over at the St. Lawrence Market, food stalls included a non-online, non-board Game purveyor, with stuff you don’t see in your average supermarket or butcher.

15: Caution: May contain alarm clock parts.

16: Sliders, But Not The Movie

17: Technology you don’t see around much these days.

18: Proper masking for credentials.

Daniel Dern Review: Conan – Blood of the Serpent

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Conan – Blood of the Serpent: The All-New Chronicles of the Worlds Greatest Barbarian Hero by S.M. Stirling

[Mini-ish Book Review: S.M. Stirling’s Conan – Blood of the Serpent — if you like Conan, you’ll like this one.]

Review by Daniel Dern: If you are a fan of (or otherwise enjoy) Robert E. Howard’s Conan (“the Cimmerian” aka “the Barbarian”) stories, you’ll enjoy reading S.M. Stirling’s new (hardcover, December 2022; paperback scheduled for September 2023) Conan – Blood of the Serpent (TitanBooks/Penguin/Random House).

If you aren’t (or consider that you used to be), but enjoy well-written sword-and-some-sorcery fantasy (e.g. Leiber’s Fafhrd/Gray Mouser) you still might. (Otherwise, feel free to skip to the next item or scroll.)

Note, the Amazon listing includes some negative reviews along with positive ones. The only downer review comment (of those I read) I agree with is, coulda had a better cover.

Even if you aren’t a Conanophile, don’t give up on Howard too quickly. He wrote, as I just learned from his Wikipedia entry Robert E. Howard bibliography, an astonishing (perhaps even amazing and astounding 🙂 ) volume of other characters and genres, including his “humorously over-the-top adventure stories” Sailor Steve Costigan, “an A.B. mariner and amateur boxer, with a heart of gold — and a head of solid wood.”

I recall enjoying them when I found a different collection of these stories in my public library a decade or two ago.

(For a more current collection of fisherman/sailors with much less boxing, I commend you to Philip Wylie’s Crunch & Des stories, available in a Best-Of or two collections, last I checked.) (Yes, same Wylie who wrote When/After Worlds Collide, Gladiator, Finnley Wren, Generation of Vipers, The Disappearance, and other sf and non-sf.)

(OK, enough digressions, back to the mini-review.)

Having written numerous pre-tech warrior/fighting books (e.g., his “Emberverse” series), S.M. Stirling brings (what feels to me like) quite adequate knowledge of combat, soldiering, and pre-tech life.

Chronologically, Blood of the Serpent takes place interstitially early on in Howard’s “Red Nails” Conan tale. (The full text of “Red Nails” is included in the book, after “Blood…”, offering a good comparison of Stirling’s to Howard’s style.) The plot of course involves a mix of shlepping through various terrains, swording, sorcerying, and scheming — showing Our Burly Hero, similar to Superman in the current Superman and Lois TV series, using his brain as well as his brawn.

Stirling’s Blood… is faithful to the character and canon, including some references to a few other Conan tales.

It’s possible Stirling may write more Conan books, but, given that this one’s events shim into “Red Nails”, it seems unlikely any such would be a direct series/saga continuation of Blood of the Serpent.

Groundhog Minute

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By Daniel Dern: The first of these very short time travel/loop movies showed up in my YouTube feed. What I thought was a trailer for a cool movie turned out to be a complete very short movie… and led my finding (and watching) a few more same/similar-themed shorts.

  • Lazy Boy — A man discovers his La-Z-Boy recliner is a 1-minute time machine.
  • Coffee Time – Time Travel Short Film