25 We All Need Somebody To Scroll On

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) DOCTOR WHO EARLY DAYS. Charlie Jane Anders’ recent Happy Dancing newsletter, titled “Hope Is Important, But So Is Curiosity”, shares some discoveries made while reading The Doctor Who Production Diary: The Hartnell Years by David Brunt.

…Brunt managed to get access to all the paperwork on the making of Doctor Who from 1963 to 1966, the earliest years when people endlessly debated whether the show could last another 13 weeks or just be canceled immediately.

I’ve just been reading about the turmoil the Doctor Who team went through in 1964, around the time they were making “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” This is a super important story, because it’s where the Daleks really cement themselves as epic villains — but also because it sees the show’s first departure: the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan leaves the ship, not entirely by choice.

I had never known that Terry Nation, the story’s writer, had included a new character in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” to replace Susan aboard the TARDIS. This would have been Saida, “a beautiful Anglo-Indian girl, who will eventually replace Susan.” At the end of the story, in Nation’s original scripts, the Doctor leaves Susan behind on Earth, only to be startled to find “a bright and smiling Saida” has snuck aboard the TARDIS. Imagine if Doctor Who had introduced its first BIPOC companion, over forty years before Martha Jones. Alas, the character of Saida was aged up and turned into a white woman named Jenny, who does not join the TARDIS crew after all.

Also, around that same time, William Hartnell, William Russell and Jacqueline Hill were all asking for money — and there was talk about either canceling the show or writing Ian and Barbara in the same episode as Susan. One BBC higher-up even suggested putting the show on a short hiatus and replacing the entire cast, including Hartnell, with new actors. This doesn’t seem to have gone far, but it still boggles the mind. Would the Doctor have regenerated in 1964, two years early? Or would they have found another way to recast the role? It’s hard to imagine.

I clicked the link to the book and found more things you will discover in it:

Which future Doctor Who scriptwriter was the first person approached to write for the series?
How major was the overhaul to the BBC Drama Department under Sydney Newman in 1963, and who first suggested the idea before he even joined the BBC?
How did the series manage to get made, when several people inside the BBC tried to get it cancelled before it even went into production?
How many people turned down the offer of becoming the series’ producer before Verity Lambert was hired?
How long before he appeared as Steven Taylor was Peter Purves contracted for the role?
Was Vicki going to appear in ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’?
Was Katarina originally going to survive that same story?
When was Vicki planned to be burned as a witch?
Was Anne Chaplet going to appear in ‘The Celestial Toymaker’?
On what date was it first decided to write out William Hartnell as the Doctor?
Exactly when was Patrick Troughton contracted to replace him?

(2) MELBOURNE CLUB FINDS NEW MEETING PLACE. Melbourne Science Fiction Club President Alison Barton delivered “Some exciting news for the MSFC” to the group on Facebook today.

We are moving to a new home soon!

As regular members and readers will know, the MSFC was forced to move from its much beloved West Brunswick location about 10 years ago. At the time the (quite extensive) library went into storage, an arrangement which we thought would be temporary. Finding a venue that was willing to home us *and* the library proved to be much more difficult than imagined however. The library has often been a focal point for members, both socially, but also in that “Hey wow, I’ve been wanting to read the final volume in this series for years, but it’s out of print everywhere!” kind of way.

With much thanks to Terencio (whom some might recall as our trivia master extraordinaire of some year), we have settled on a deal with a new location that will enable us to bring the whole library out of storage once more. I’m sure this will be welcome news to many.

Not wanting to leave the library in ‘limbo’ has been one of the reasons I have continued on as President of the club for such a long time, but as mentioned above, I didn’t think it would take quite this long. I announced at last year’s AGM that I would be stepping down at this year’s AGM (which will be held in July), as I need to focus more time on other things. I was a little sad that I might be stepping down before we accomplished this particular goal, so I am very very pleased to know that by the time I leave the library will be in full swing once more.

Please stay tuned for further information about the new venue address and meeting dates. Until we get everything finalised we will continue to meet at St Augustine’s Church Hall, 100 Sydney Rd, Coburg on the third Friday of each month so please keep watching for announcements so that you don’t turn up at the wrong place sometime.

(3) SEATTLE 2025 RATE HIKE MARCH 1. Adult attending membership rates for Seattle Worldcon 2025 are set to increase by $30 on March 1, to a total of $280 ($50 WSFS membership + $230 attending supplement).

Full registration information and a link to the registration portal can be found on the membership page on their website.

(4) SEATTLE 2025 COMMUNITY FUND. Seattle Worldcon 2025 has completed the first round of grants from their Community Fund which offers eligible people memberships and financial stipends to help defray the expenses of attending this year’s Worldcon.

Their news release also said:

If you have applied and haven’t yet been awarded a grant, you are still in consideration for future rounds. The next round of grants will be awarded in March.

We are still accepting applications. You can find details about our focus groups and the application link on our Community Fund web page.

In order to help as many fans as possible attend the event from the Pacific Northwest and around the world, the community fund is still accepting tax deductible donations. You can donate when you register, or by this direct donation link. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far. You are making a difference!

(5) FURTHER REPLY BY DANIEL GREENE. While Naomi King’s YouTube videos charging Daniel Greene with sexual assault have been taken down, Greene has used his archival copies of some of her videos to produce another denial titled “Proving Naomi King Lied With Their Own Words”.

(6) FILMGOERS ASSEMBLE. Apparently, somebody’s surprised. The New York Times reports “Marvel’s New ‘Captain America’ Is No. 1, Despite a Backlash and Poor Reviews”. (Behind a paywall.)

So Disney slowed the pace. Last year, Marvel released one movie (the megasuccessful “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and two Disney+ series. To compare, in 2021 Marvel churned out four movies (with mixed results) and five Disney+ series.

Factory problem fixed?

Maybe: Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” was a runaway No. 1 at the global box office over the weekend. The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to sell roughly $100 million in tickets from Thursday through Monday in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Moviegoers overseas were poised to chip in another $92 million or so.

Maybe not: “Brave New World” received the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-ever grade (B-minus) from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. Reviews were only 50 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a “rotten” rating from the site. Just two Marvel movies rank lower on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, and both quickly ran out of box office steam after No. 1 starts that were driven by die-hard fans and marketing bombast.

“Brave New World” outperformed analyst expectations amid a racist backlash from some internet users and right-wing pundits, who criticized Marvel’s decision to refresh the “Captain America” franchise by giving the title role to a Black actor. (A “D.E.I. hire,” they maintained in numerous X posts, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.) Anthony Mackie, who took over the character from Chris Evans, also came under attack as “anti-American” for a comment he made while promoting the film overseas….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 17, 1912 — Andre Norton. (Died 2005.)

By Paul Weimer: I blame my own eagerness to get to the adult’s book as the reason why I neglected reading Andre Norton for a long long time.

Back in the days of yesteryear, when I first got a library card, I was always clamoring to be allowed out of the children’s section and to be able to get into the adult section. I made such a racket about it that my parents and the librarian consented, and so for years, I went to the adult section of the New Dorp Public Library and left the children’s section behind.

As a result, a number of genre books and entire authors were missed by me. I didn’t read most of the Heinlein juveniles for years, because they were, unbeknownst by me, in the children’s section, and once I had gotten out of that small section of the library, I was not going to go back.

And so, too, Andre Norton.

So I did not come to Andre Norton as a teenager, it wasn’t until I was an adult, and kept hearing her name and seeing references to her work that I started picking it up and reading it. The Time Traders was in retrospect a great place for me to start her work, because it let me scratch my love of history at the same time. So I hunted her work.

I picked up Star Man’s Son 2250 AD, which was actually in the adult section, because of the title, and the image of this poor guy pushing a raft. How could I not want to know what had happened to the world to reduce it to its parlous state? I found it an amazingly detailed, immersive and striking post-apocalyptic story with mutants, a clan looking to claw its way back to prominence and power with the ruined remnants of the old, implacable foes, and a big cat companion all in the bargain.

I read a fair swath of Norton’s novels at that point, enjoying her characters, her worlds, and her ideas (even as recently as a couple of years ago, I am still catching up on her oeuvre now and again to try and plug the gaps.

But the novel that remains with me the most is not a science fiction, or time travel, or fantasy, or post apocalyptic novel at all. And no, not even the expansive and sprawling Witch World novels, which are cromulent science fantasy fun (we all know my love of that subgenre by now, yes?) No, in the heady days of the early 1990’s when I was branching out into historical fiction, sometimes with some fantasy (hello Judith Tarr), it was a historical fictional fantasy novel that poleaxed me in a good way.

I think my interest in the Roman Empire (in a non ironic way, I do think about the Roman Empire frequently) helped fuel my interest (especially the striking cover) of Norton’s co-written Empire of The Eagle novel . I didn’t realize it was one of a series, because the story is so expansive in its self containment. Quintus is a tribune of the empire in the mid 40’s BC. He goes off with the army of Crassus to fight the Parthians. If you know your history, you know that army got pummeled at Carrhae and the army destroyed and Crassus killed. But was that the entire story? Norton invents a march of the survivors far to the east, to China, and a new life for the remnant soldiers. Quintus wants to regain the lost Eagle, but in the meantime he and his comrades need to make a new life impossibly far away from Rome, and deal with the dangers and problems there, including a dread sorcerer. There is magic, a reincarnation romance, and a lot of historical detail, and it wasn’t until I encountered Howard Lamb that I encountered any historical fiction set in this fascinating area. (I would many years later get Historical Atlases of Central Asia and trace Quintus adventures).

Ave Atque Vale, Andre Norton.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 17, 1989 — Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure released

By Paul Weimer: I admit to having slept on Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure when it came out in the theaters back in 1989. That was senior year in High School and I had other concerns on my mind at the time that winter. So it was not until many years later and DVDs became a thing that I was even tempted to try and catch up on it.

And the reason why I did wasn’t even the original movie, but the sequel, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. A friend of mine told me that, despite all appearances, Bogus Journey actually showed some clever use and thought in time travel, doing the things that you wondered why people with time machines never thought to do, especially in the middle of conflicts and fights. So I dutifully put in both movies into my Netflix queue and watched both back-to-back. The fact I was living in California at the time only added to the surrealism of watching these two Southern California slackers be seemingly the basis of future society was all the more surreal for me as a viewer.

Also, this was after The Matrix, so I was, in effect, looking back at the early work of Keanu Reeves that I had missed in the process. Whoa, right?

I found Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to be a lighthearted and extremely funny comedy that never takes itself too seriously, but its inclusive message is one solely needed in this day and age. It wasn’t high art in the least, but the sight gags, the purposefully caricatured portrayals of historical figures, to comedic effect (Napoleon at Waterloo!) and the sense of fun the entire cast was having meant that I watched both movies a couple of times over before returning them. And I kept renting it again and again every couple of years. There is a weird innocent magic to the movie (the sequel is very good but a slightly different kettle of fish) that makes me think of movies like Time Bandits, except for a slightly older target audience.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is coming to Prime in a couple of weeks as of the time of the writing of this. I think a rewatch is in order, don’t you?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Birdbrains finds what everybody’s been looking for.
Bizarro regrets a name change.
Carpe Diem checks in.
Close to Home finds when you’re from Oz it can be hard to get through security.
Reality Check follows police procedure.

(10) WEDNESDAY’S CHIA. Why yes, this is a real product, hard as it is to believe: “Addams Family Wednesday Chia Pet®”.

(11) TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A recent issue of Nature’s cover story looks at asteroid detection and how it’s improving. Bruce Willis would be impressed… “Sight Unseen”.

The detection and monitoring of asteroids is key to protecting Earth from impacts. Large bodies (1 kilometre or more) in the main asteroid belt are relatively easy to spot and monitor but smaller objects (those down to 10 metres in diameter), which have the potential to move closer to Earth more frequently, are far more elusive. In this week’s issue Artem Burdanov, Julien de Wit and colleagues report the detection of 138 small asteroids in the main belt that were previously invisible to standard detection methods. The researchers made use of the JWST’s infrared capabilities that, when combined with synthetic tracking techniques such as merging multiple images, allowed them to spot the unidentified asteroids. The team suggests the JWST’s ability to monitor and study objects that have the potential to strike Earth, such as asteroid 2024 YR4, could make it an important part of future planetary-defence efforts.

The primary research is here.

What they have observed is a distribution of a range of asteroid sizes. All fair enough, but there is an apparent break in sizes at those with a diameter of about 100 metres. This, the researchers say, is suggestive of “a population driven by collisional cascade”.

(12) HELP WANTED. And as a result of such information as that in the previous item, the Guardian reports, “China opens recruitment for ‘planetary defence force’ amid fears of asteroid hitting Earth”.

China has begun recruiting for a planetary defence force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032.

Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection.

The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low – but growing – likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability assessment of it hitting Earth from 1.3% to 2.2%. The UN’s Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, comprising countries with space programs including China, have been meeting regularly to discuss a response.

The ads, posted to WeChat earlier this week, listed 16 job vacancies at SASTIND, including three for a new “planetary defence force”. They invited applications from recent graduates aged under 35, with professional and technical qualifications and “a firm political stance” supporting the Chinese Communist party and an ideology aligned with its leader, Xi Jinping…

(13) GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME. Nature considers “From viral variants to devastating storms, how names shape the public’s reaction to science” in the What’s in a Name podcase.

Categorizing things is central to science. And there are dozens of systems scientists have created to name everything from the trenches on the sea bed to the stars in the sky.

But names have consequences. In our series What’s in a name we explore naming in science and how names impact the world — whether the system of naming species remains in step with society, how the names of diseases can create stigma, or even how the names of scientific concepts can drive the direction of research itself.

In episode two, we’re looking at how the names chosen by scientists help, or hinder, communication with the public.

Well chosen names can quickly convey scientific concepts or health messages — in emergency situations they can even save lives. We’ll hear how the systems of naming tropical storms and Covid-19 variants came to be, and how they took different approaches to achieve the same outcome.

We’ll also consider the language used to talk about climate change, and how the ways of describing it have been used to deliberately introduce uncertainty and confusion….

(14) YOUR CELESTIAL CALENDAR. The Late Night With Seth Myers host is watching the skies, and shares what he expects to see this year in “Seth Lays Out 2025’s Major Astronomical Events”. Many of these will be really happening. Some are facetious….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “David Tennant on playing an evil character in Jessica Jones and geeks out on Doctor Who” on YouTube.

David Tennant rolls the BAFTA dice to break down some of the iconic characters he’s played so far in his career including the Doctor in Doctor Who, The Purple Man in Jessica Jones and Alec Hardy in Broadchurch as well as … himself.. David looks back on how his acting methodology has evolved, which of his characters would vibe the most together and develops a brand new Pet Detective TV show (reluctantly) featuring Michael Sheen.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/16/25 I Just Might Have A Pixel That You’d Understand

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(0) Spent a great Saturday at my brother’s to celebrate my birthday, which is today. And Cat Eldridge celebrated yesterday, because his really is on the 15th. So it’s been a candle-powered 770 weekend.

(1) SFPA ELECTION. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has voted in Brian U. Garrison as their next SFPA President. Brian’s term begins March 1.

The vote breakdown by percentage was:

Brian U. Garrison – 48%
Wendy Van Camp – 38%
Miguel Mitchell – 14%

(2) ONLY A SMOKING CRATER LEFT. Somebody on Bluesky got themselves blocked in a hurry.

(3) GREENE FOLLOW-UP. Naomi King has posted another video about her sexual assault allegations against fellow YouTuber Daniel Greene: “Daniel Greene Situation Part 2”. In relating their history King makes a number of what a lawyer would call “admissions against interest”, statements about their conduct that tend to make a speaker more credible because they make them more vulnerable to criticism.

(4) ALIEN ON HIS MIND. Camestros Felapton’s “Thinking about Xenomorphs” is inspired by Alien: Romulus but (as he says) is not a review. It’s a place for him to express opinions like this one:

….I think I dislike the whole bit that runs through the series of the xenomorphs being some kind of perfect organism. They are weird and nasty and I really like them as monsters, they really are terrifying. They are at their deadliest when people underestimate them or attempt to control them. That aspect of them symbolically punishing ignorance or hubris gives them a supernatural vibe without them ever actually being supernatural*….

(5) ROBOT TRUTH. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] The New Yorker looks at “Doing the Robot, for Your School”.

A huge event, with hundreds of participants, takeout pizza boxes stacked shoulder-high on carts, a jazz-rock band, a d.j., teams from about thirty high schools, robots by the dozen, and robot parts by the (probably) thousands spread out on tables in the cafeteria: it was the first day of the qualifiers for the all-city semifinals in the NYC first Robotics Competition, at Francis Lewis High School, in Queens.

Zigman asked the team to wait a second while he took a group photo, as he had done with other winners. “I love this,” he said, as the kids dispersed. “Look at who was here today. All kinds of kids—African Americans, Indians, West Indians, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews. Our stem centers, which stay open every day until 10 p.m., are just thronged. We have kids working on robots in the halls. Kids are fascinated with this. They work together, help one another, pick up math skills almost unconsciously. Differences of race, religion, your truth, my truth—all of that vanishes. Here the truth is the robots.”…

(6) PRESERVING THE FIRST CAP. In “Saving Captain America” – the Guardians of Memory tell Library of Congress blog readers how they did it.

The original concept drawing of Captain America is in the Print and Photograph Division at the Library of Congress. It is one of the feature artifacts in the Stephen A. Geppi Collection of Comic and Graphic Arts that was donated to the Library in 2018.

Captain America was the creation of Joe Simon who sketched this drawing in 1940 while working for Timely Comics, now Marvel Comics. It was a turbulent time following the Depression with the threat of war in the news. So it is easy to understand the appeal of Captain America, an ordinary man who was given extraordinary powers, a figure who embodied our American ideals. Simon’s character, drawn in black ink, with a patriotic uniform colored with red and blue watercolor, joined the other popular comic superheroes of the day; Superman and Batman.

The drawing arrived at the Library in a gold oval frame that measured roughly 14 x 20 inches.

Shortly afterwards it was unframed by a specialist who discovered a pencil drawing on the back along with several condition problems that prompted her to bring it to the Conservation Division for treatment.

During my initial examination I found that the drawing was on a rectangular sheet that had been cut multiple times and folded up to make the drawing fit into the small frame. The fragile paper had split apart at some of the folds where sticky white tape had been applied to repair them. Patches of gummy adhesive with paper residues from the old window mat attachment were on the front of the drawing. The paper was also badly distorted from being confined in the frame preventing the paper, a hygroscopic material, from expanding during periods of higher humidity.

My goal was to unfold the paper without causing more damage and to remove all the white tape repairs, adhesive, and paper patches. The paper splits and cuts were to be mended and the drawing flattened and housed in conservation quality materials….

(7) RECROSSING THE ATLANTIC. “Lewis Carroll collection given to his Oxford college in surprise US donation” reports the Guardian.

Thousands of letters, photographs, illustrations and books from one of the world’s largest private Lewis Carroll collections have been donated to the UK out of the blue by an American philanthropist.

The extraordinary gift has been made to Christ Church, University of Oxford, where Carroll lectured and where he met Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which celebrates its 160th anniversary this year.

The collection includes more than 200 autograph letters, some of which are unpublished. There are a number to his “child-friends” and their parents, often sending riddles and jokes and copies of books. Some shed light on Carroll’s interest in the theatre.

There are also significant early editions, including the Alice books, The Hunting of the Snark and mathematical works. A copy of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground is inscribed to Alice’s mother by Carroll: “To her, whose children’s smiles fed the narrator’s fancy and were his rich reward: from the author. Xmas 1886.”

Carroll is considered one of the best amateur photographers of his day and the donation includes more than 100 of his photographs. The subjects include his friends and noted figures such as the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 16, 1954 — Iain M. Banks. (Died 2013).

By Paul Weimer: Some of you might think I am fortunate, for I still have plenty of Iain Banks yet to read.

You might ask why I, such an indefatigable reader of science fiction, would be in such a position. And, unfortunately, it is because of the first Banks novel I read, and one that I bounced hard off.
Inversions.

Inversions is the Culture novel that is not a real Culture novel. It’s set on a distant planet, at a medieval level of technology with only the vaguest hints that there is a wider world out there. It’s got alternating points of view, and there is a hint of technology and one bit of implication about one of the characters, it is otherwise a fantasy novel without a scrap of magic or wonder. It’s dry and mundane and I wondered if Banks was for me at all. So I didn’t read Banks for years thereafter. I decided that the Culture could flourish in splendor without me. The Culture didn’t need me as a reader. It had its champions and readers.

And then Banks tempted me to try his work again.

Because Banks wrote a multiverse novel, Transitions. Readers of my reviews and criticism know I am all about multiverse novels, long before the multiverse was a thing. And so when Banks announced he was writing one, I was mildly curious. (And then a friend told me it was fantastic and I needed to read it)

So, I decided to give Transitions a try.

To my delight, unlike Inversions, I found Transitions to be one of the most interesting and innovative novels in the subgenre. Stunningly and engagingly well written, and a fantastic “chase sequence” unlike nearly anything I’ve ever read in cross world books. Philosophical, thoughtful, engaging, and highly literate. It was an eye-opener, and I started to reassess my opinion of Banks’ work. Maybe, I thought, Inversions was an outlier. But Mount TBR is huge and I didn’t read a Banks novel for some years afterwards.

I finally started reading Culture novels with The Player of Games a couple of days ago. Yes, it was for a podcast, and having fondly remembered Transitions, I finally decided to give Banks and The Culture a chance. And I am so glad that I did. I finally got to see this mysterious Culture and its post-scarcity society, put in contact and dealing with a dangerous, avaricious empire. I finally saw what others have seen in the Culture novels in specific and Banks’ work in general. The depth of worldbuilding, psychology, sense of wonder and the big philosophical questions. Big damn space opera but space opera of a metier quite unlike most in the field.

I haven’t had a chance to dip back into The Culture since, however. But one day I will. I am not going to try and re-read Inversions, though.

He passed away in 2013. Requiescat in pace.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee asks a rhetorical question.
Cornered sells a secret.
Free Range does statistics.
Loose Parts’ calculations are not quite on the nose.
Pardon My Planet picks a strange time to thank others.
Bizarro scoffs at predictions.
Speed Bump depicts a Middle Ages complaint.
Wumo tries a questionable meetup.

(10) BEFORE THE IDES OF MARCH. Mashable proclaims, “A dramatic total lunar eclipse is coming. You don’t want to miss it.”

A blood moon is coming.

The entirety of the lower 48 states, the greater Americas, and some regions beyond will witness — weather permitting — a total lunar eclipse the night of March 13 and into the early morning of March 14. This special cosmic event occurs when the moon, Earth, and sun are aligned. Long, red wavelengths of light pass through Earth’s atmosphere and are projected onto the moon in majestic rusty or crimson colors.

(11) THROWING HANDS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The UK has a new entrant in the race to develop our robot overlords. And they have the ~~balls~~ ~~cojones~~ guts to name the company Humanoid. Yet, no one has yet been brave enough to name their bot Hymie. “UK firm unleashes new humanoid robot with hands faster than humans” at Interesting Engineering.

…Humanoid’s mission is to lead the society into a new future where humans and robots interact seamlessly in the same way that people use the smartphones today. This could help to address a whole host of issues, including workforce shortages in certain industries.

“At Humanoid, our team believes in a future where humans and machines work side by side, not in competition, but in harmony,” Sokolov explained in a press statement. “This societal shift will address social issues such as workforce shortages and aging population while giving people more freedom to focus on more creative and meaningful work.”

“The strongest argument in favor of humanoids is that the world is already designed for humans, so they can seamlessly integrate and quickly adapt to existing environments,” he continued. “With a world-class team, Humanoid has ambitious plans for the year ahead. In 2025, we plan to develop and test our alpha prototype for two platforms — wheeled and bipedal. We’re also in ongoing discussions with leading retail companies for potential pilot projects.”…

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

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

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fifth Doctor – Earthshock (1982)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was an active member of SFWA.

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

File 770 will post a fuller tribute later this evening.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (1970)

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

Each discerned something inexplicably familiar in the other.

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

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

“You said?”

“I said, ‘Seem? Surely must be!'”

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

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

— “Ill Met in Lankhmar”

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

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

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

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

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 12, 1950 — Michael Ironside, 75 .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

xkcd takes us inside the atom.
Bizarro makes a mix.
Carpe Diem can anticipate.
Shoe dances around the question.
Thatababy puts Trek lore to work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 2/11/25 Even Pixels Get The Scrolls

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) YOUTUBER DANIEL GREENE ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. A post on Reddit’s r/Fantasy community reports that YouTuber Naomi King, actor, musician, and author, has released a video – “I Received a CEASE AND DESIST from Daniel Greene” – accusing Greene, a sff news YouTuber with over half a million subscribers, of sexually assaulting her in 2023, and having lawyers threaten her with a defamation suit over a comments about SA in a video where he was not even mentioned. Warning: King’s testimony is emotionally wrenching.

Many have noted two of Greene’s most recent YouTube videos headlined Neil Gaiman’s legal and business problems.

(2) OUT OF JAIL BUT STUCK AT HOME. Publishers Weekly reports that two Jerusalem booksellers whose detention was discussed in yesterday’s Scroll have been released: “The Publishing Industry Condemns Israel’s Treatment of Jerusalem Booksellers”.

Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, the co-owners of the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem who were arrested by Israeli police during a raid of the bookstore on February 9, were released on Tuesday. They are under house arrest for five days, and have been ordered not to set foot in their bookstore for 20 days….

(3) ATWOOD ‘BOOK OF LIVES’. “Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood to publish memoir” reports the Guardian.

Margaret Atwood has written the memoir her fans have long been hoping for, it has been announced.

In Book of Lives, which is due to be published in November, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale will recount memories from her unconventional childhood in northern Canada, as well as the story of her writing career, from her early feminist works to her bestselling, award-winning fiction…

(4) THE BLURB DEVOLUTION (ALTERNATE TITLES: OH TO BE A BLURBEL!; BLURBLE-17; BLURBYLON-5; THE BLURB FOR WORLD IS FORRIE J ACKERMAN). [Item by Daniel Dern.] To follow up (topically) on Item #1 from the February 7, 2025 Scroll —

(1) THE BLURB REVOLUTION. “Book blurbs: Authors hate them. Publishers love them. They’re often made-up” says Slate’s Imogen West-Knights.

Here’s an Opinion/Guest Essay from the New York Times (Guest Link included):

“The End of the Blurb. Thank God” by Christopher Buckley.

And here’s some other hits from NYTimes search on “Blurb” (I can provide Guest Links if desired:

“Too Busy Blurbing Books to Write One” by Rebecca Makkai, Feb. 4, 2025

“For the novelist Rebecca Makkai, writing blurbs had become nearly a full-time job. She explains why blurbs matter — and why she’s taking a break.”

“What Are Book Blurbs, and How Much Do They Matter in Publishing?” by Elisabeth Egan Feb. 4, 2025

“An announcement from Simon & Schuster’s publisher left the literary community wondering whether blurbs, the little snippets of praise on a book jacket, are all they’re cracked up to be.”

This leaves me wondering, how many therbligs (“thurbligs”) go into making a blurb?

(5) JANA PULLMAN OBITUARY. Jana Pullman, award-winning book artist and partner of Catherine Lundoff, died February 10. Bryan Thao Worra has written a tribute on Facebook. Here is an excerpt:

Saddened to learn of the passing of Jana Pullman, whom I’d known for twenty years since first meeting her and her partner Catherine Lundoff.

A talented master of book arts, she was widely acclaimed and exhibited, transforming so many wonderful texts into true works of art, including the deluxe edition of my 2008 collection Winter Ink from the Minnsota Center for Book Arts which served as the 20th anniversary Winter Book….

…Our paths crossed so many times in the years since then, and I was always delighted and honored when I had a chance to see her latest masterpieces and her works in progress.

The Minnesota Book Awards named Jana Pullman the winner of the 2013 Minnesota Book Artist Award, a distinction that was well-deserved, recognizing over 30 years of her work at the time. I always found it interesting that she had arrived in Minneapolis in 1997, about the same time that I did. She had roots in Utah, and her attention to detail was legendary. It’s difficult for me to settle on just one favorite of her work, which always kept me inspired and driven in my own approach to the arts and let me prioritize the importance of modern books as art, and how we make a book unique for its reader. I was delighted to see her work on display as part of the Next Chapter catalogue retrospective at the Minneapolis Central Library right before the installation of my own exhibit, Laomerica 50 last year.

I am honored to call her a friend, and she will be missed deeply. I hope more people continue to discover and appreciate her extraordinary work in the years ahead.

(6) CHRIS MOORE (1947-2025). British illustrator and cover artist Chris Moore died February 7 his wife announced on Facebook. He was 77. He produced over four hundred sixty covers, eighty interiors. He modestly titled his collection, Journeyman. Here’s a cover for The Stars My Destination; one for The City and the Stars; one for Hexarchate Stories. He also did covers for many record albums. Here’s his story.

Downthetubes has a tribute: “In Memoriam: Artist Chris Moore”.

…Publisher John Jarrold, commenting on his passing, described Chris as “a great man and a wonderful artist”, while fellow artist Bob Eggleton described the news as “heartbreaking” and, separately, that “I shall always remember his guitar playing, not to mention his stunning art.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 86.

So now we have one of my favorite writers who is on the chocolate gifting list, Jane Yolen. And no, that is not about how I ended up getting written in at length as an ethnomusicologist in The One-Armed Queen; that’s another story involving a successful hunt for a rare volume of fairytales.

Given that she written at least three hundred and sixty works at last count (and that may well be an undercount), the following is but a personal list of works that I like.

Favorite Folktales From Around the World which garnered a well-deserved World Fantasy Award shows her editing side at its very best.

She picked the folktales, some from authors whose names are forgotten, some who we still know such as Homer, Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde, and gave them much need explanatory notes. If you like folktales, I’d consider it essential and quite delightful reading.

The Transfigured Hart poses the delicate question of if unicorns are real and neatly merges that question with a coming of age story, something she handles oh so well. Originally published forty years ago, Tachyon Press, a publisher that should be always be praised for its work, republished it a few years back.

Briar Rose is a YA novel which is a retelling, more or less of the Sleeping Beauty tale. It was published as part of Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale series. The novel won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Like everything else in that series, it’s most excellent. Or as I’ve said before, it’s just what Windling does.

The Great Alta sequence consisting of Sister Light, Sister Dark, White Jenna and The One-Armed Queen. Matriarchal warrior societies will rise and fall and rise again in this tale told with more than a bit of myth, poetry, and song. Brilliantly told with characters that you’ll deeply care about and character you’ll hate.

She also wrote the lyrics for the song “Robin’s Complaint”, recorded on the 1994 Boiled in Lead’s Antler Dance recording on which her son Adam Stemple was the lead vocalist.

Let’s finish off with The Wild Hunt. Myth as interpreted by her and merged with the evocative drawings of Francisco Mora which complement the text perfectly. Dark and dramatic, they bring the tale to life so very well. It’s a work of pure magic which should be destined to become a classic in the world of children’s literature. Don’t buy the Scholastic paperback edition, just the HMH hardcover edition.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem makes a flap.
Dinosaur Comics discusses book covers.
Lio translates for a species.
xkcd’s “Incoming Asteroid” assesses the risks of different size asteroids hitting Earth.
Tom Gauld offers this choose-your-own celebration.

A personalized Valentine’s Card for Bibliophiles. My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T10:40:13.195Z

(9) PUNCTUATION IN THE MCU. Gizmodo thinks “An International Poster Might Have Just Explained Thunderbolts’ Whole Asterisk Deal”.

…The answer might have just been found–and as is the case with the vast majority of supposed Marvel mysteries, the answer might be much more basic (and likely) than any of the wild speculation. As IGN points out, after this weekend’s release of the latest trailer for the movie, a new Japanese international poster for Thunderbolts utilizes the asterisk as the actual reference mark it is: to clarify that that the Thunderbolts are what you get when the Avengers aren’t available….

… But still, this is only a possibility–no doubt we’ll learn the truth of the greatest mystery to have hit the Marvel Cinematic Universe since “Was the Mandarin ever really going to fight Tony Stark in a golf cart in Iron Man 3 just like that Lego set teased?” when Thunderbolts (sorry, Thunderbolts*) hits theaters May 2….

(10) FOUND IN THE DARK. “Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope discovers stunning Einstein ring in warped space-time” – Space.com has an image at the link.

The Euclid space telescope has, by chance, discovered its first Einstein ring, and it is absolutely stunning. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this perfectly circular Einstein ring has allowed researchers to “weigh” the dark matter at the heart of a galaxy almost 600 million light-years away.

The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, which launched in July 2023, spotted its first strong gravitational lens as it began to build the most precise 3D map ever made of the universe ever created. The map will delve back into 10 billion years of cosmic history, helping scientists investigate the mysteries of the dark universe: dark matter and dark energy. Hence Euclid’s unofficial nickname “the dark universe detective.”…

(11) HAND CHECK. [Item by Steven French.] Surprise, surprise, most representations of dinosaurs in media and the toy industry get it wrong: “How Can You Spot an Inaccurate Dinosaur? AO Wants to Know” at Atlas Obscura.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO make “dinosaur hands”?

Try it now: Position your hands the way a T. rex would. Did you bend your wrists forward with your palms facing down, like the front paws of a kangaroo? If you did, we have some bad news for you.

“Overwhelmingly, bipedal dinosaurs had their hands facing one another,” says Steven Bellettini, the host of the paleontology YouTube channel Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong. Early paleontologists assumed that two-legged dinosaurs, like modern mammals, had wrists that were pronated, meaning able to rotate downwards. But evidence discovered in the early 21st century shows that dinosaur wrists actually lacked this range of motion, so their palms faced inwards when their hands were at rest. And yet, inaccurate downwards-pointing hands are still prevalent in pop culture depictions of dinosaurs, leading to a widespread misconception. “It’s the thing that I wind up mentioning practically every episode,” Bellettini adds….

(12) AT THE CORE. [Item by Steven French.] It seems even the Earth’s inner core is being disrupted! “Earth’s mysterious inner core really is changing shape” in Nature.

Earth’s inner core is changing shape, scientists have found.

The discovery resolves a long-simmering controversy about what’s happening at the heart of the planet — which was long thought to be solid and unyielding. But it also opens new questions about how changes in the core could affect the length of our 24-hour day, Earth’s magnetic field and more….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Joyce Scrivner, Christian Brunschen, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade, with an assist from Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 1/2/23 It’s A Wonderful File

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRANDON SANDERSON V AUDIBLE. Brandon Sanderson’s “State of the Sanderson 2022” published on December 22 featured revelations about his efforts to use his market leverage to curb the greed of Audible, Amazon’s dominant audiobook seller.

The four “secret project” novels that will be going to backers of his record-breaking Kickstarter will also be produced as audiobooks and put up for sale, but not on Audible. Here’s an excerpt, and there’s a great deal more information at the link.

AUDIOBOOKS for NON-BACKERS

On the tenth or eleventh of each month a book goes to backers, we will put the audiobooks up for sale. They will be on several services, but I recommend the two I mentioned above. Spotify and Speechify.

The books will not be on Audible for the foreseeable future.

This is a dangerous move on my part. I don’t want to make an enemy of Amazon (who owns Audible). I like the people at Audible, and had several meetings with them this year.

But Audible has grown to a place where it’s very bad for authors. It’s a good company doing bad things.

Again, this is dangerous to say, and I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty. I have an Audible account, and a subscription! It’s how my dyslexic son reads most of the books he reads. Audible did some great things for books, notably spearheading the audio revolution, which brought audiobooks down to a reasonable price. I like that part a lot.

However, they treat authors very poorly. Particularly indie authors. The deal Audible demands of them is unconscionable, and I’m hoping that providing market forces (and talking about the issue with a megaphone) will encourage change in a positive direction.

If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay the creator 70% on a sale. It’s what Steam pays your average creator for a game sale, it’s what Amazon pays on ebooks, it’s what Apple pays for apps downloaded. (And they’re getting heat for taking as much as they are. Rightly so.)

Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of reference, most brick-and-mortar stores take around 50% on a retail product. Audible pays indie authors less than a bookstore does, when a bookstore has storefronts, sales staff, and warehousing to deal with.

I knew things were bad, which is why I wanted to explore other options with the Kickstarter. But I didn’t know HOW bad. Indeed, if indie authors don’t agree to be exclusive to Audible, they get dropped from 40% to a measly 25%. Buying an audiobook through Audible instead of from another site literally costs the author money….

Daniel Green analyzes “The Audible Situation” in this video —

(2) KING’S NEW YEAR’S HONOURS LIST 2023. The King’s New Years Honours list included a knighthood for Queen guitarist Brian May.

Dr Brian Harold May CBE. Musician, Astrophysicist and Animal Welfare Advocate. For services to Music and to Charity. (Windlesham, Surrey)

May also worked as a member of the New Horizons team, for which he wrote a song that debuted during the the New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule on January 1, 2019.

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Actor Jeremy Renner (Marvel’s Hawkeye) was in critical condition after a snow plow accident Variety reported on January 1.

…“We can confirm Jeremy is in critical but stable condition with injuries suffered after experiencing a weather related accident while plowing snow earlier today,” Renner’s rep confirmed with Variety. “His family is with him and he is receiving excellent care.”…

His reps later told Deadline:

“We can confirm that Jeremy has suffered blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries and has undergone surgery today, January 2nd 2023. He has returned from surgery and remains in the intensive care unit in critical but stable condition.”

(4) ROLLING OVER THE RESOLUTION. Owner of Colorado’s Mile High Comics, Chuck Rozanski, advises people to protect their collections, while confessing he still has more work to do on his own.

…Clearly, I am trying to protect our home through these defensive environmental actions, but I want to make note of the fact that I am also trying to protect my many personal collections, including my comic books. Inspiring me is the tragedy of one of our dearest family friends, who lost everything that she owned, including her 50-year comics collection and her vast science fiction books library, to that horrible Marshall inferno. My efforts may in the end prove futile, but at least some houses in otherwise incinerated cul-de-sacs in Louisville survived, so advance planning does at least seem to improve one’s odds. Just saying…

So, what have you done lately to protect your own collection? If you’re like me, probably not enough. I have (for example) vowed for the past nine years to elevate all of my storage cabinets in my personal comics vault to at least an inch above ground level, so that if another 20-inch deluge of rain materializes (as it did upon us in 2013) that the bottom of my storage bins (and everything sitting in the floor) will not get soaked (again). Have I accomplished that incredibly arduous task? Nope. I keep putting it off, while I have instead been traveling endlessly all around the country to buy even more comics. Sigh. I really do mean to be more diligent, but finding the time is truly hard. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to it this winter….

(5) LIGHTS ON. Cora Buhlert renews two series of “spotlight” profiles she’s doing to make people more aware of works eligible for Best Fancast and Best Related Work.

The new “Fancast Spotlight” is for a channel called “Dennis Frey Books”.

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

I do a lot of content on creative writing on Twitch – lessons, reading excerpts from the community and my own books, longer workshops, throwbacks to the first works of different artists… aaaand it’s all in German. Sorry.

If that’s fine with you, there is about 100 hours of writing content from the streams on my YouTube Channel.

Buhlert also did a new “Non-Fiction Spotlight” for “Slaying the Dragon – A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs”.

Tell us about your book.

My book is the shocking and true story of the rise of Dungeons & Dragons and how it almost imploded in the 90s under the weight of terrible management decisions. If you’re interested in an representative sample, Dicebreaker excerpted the disastrous attempt of TSR to create a comic book company in the 90s. https://www.dicebreaker.com/series/dungeons-and-dragons/feature/dnd-comic-books-failed-attempt-tsr-dc-comics

(6) ADDAMS UNKNOWN. David Gerrold reviews Wednesday, which he finds to be such a departure from the established characterizations that he calls it “the Addams Family in name only”.

…And that finally brings me to Tim Burton’s series on Netflix — Wednesday.

It reinvents not only the Addams Family, it reinvents the world they live in.

In the sitcom, in the movies, in the two animated films, the Addams Family exists in a world that is (mostly) normal, even mundane.

In the Tim Burton series, there are monsters, sirens, medusas, werewolves, shapeshifters, and more. Wednesday has an estranged relationship with her parents. Gomez and Morticia are both flawed, they can’t keep their hands off each other, and only Wednesday has the ability to solve their situations.

Also, this Wednesday has visions that clue her in to a horrific past at Nevermore University and the town of Jericho.

So this isn’t the Addams family that we are familiar with, it’s a reinvention. And it’s not the most endearing one….

(7) TODAY’S DAY.

January 2 is National Science Fiction Day. Sure, every day is science fiction day for some of us, but this date was picked for national observance because it’s Asimov’s birthdate.

John King Tarpinian thinks maybe this would be better called ABC Day…after Asimov, Bradbury, & Clarke.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. — C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Turkish delight is a popular dessert sweet in Greece, the Balkans, and, especially Turkey. But most Americans, if they have any association with the treat at all, know it only as the food for which Edmund Pevensie sells out his family.

I don’t know about you but I had no idea what Turkish delight was until I was at University as it wasn’t something that was carried in the stores where I grew up. A friend had a box and offered it up. It was, errr, sweet and chewy. I liked and I’ve since gifted quite a few times.

Turkish Delight, the name we know it by in the West is not inaccurate. The Turkish people make and consume an immense quantity of lokum in a wide range of varieties as it called in Turkey and it’s a popular gift, a sign of hospitality. The candy was invented in the early 19th century, apparently by confectioner Bekir Effendi, though that’s disputed by other Turks who say they invented it.

Most Westerners encounter it first in reading this novel (or possibly the Eighties television series, or the film). As you know, Edmund is tempted by Turkish Delight into an alliance with the White Witch, who has brought eternal winter to Narnia. When Edmund first encounters the witch, she asks him, “What would you like best to eat?” He doesn’t even hesitate.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 2, 1920 — Isaac Asimov. I can hardly summarize everything he’s done here, so I’ll just pick my very short list of favorite works by him which would include the Galactic Empire series, the Foundation Trilogy which a Hugo at a Tricon, The Gods Themselves which won a Hugo at TorCon II and his I, Robot collection. And no, I’ve not watched the Foundation series although I have the Apple + streaming service. Should I watch it? (Died 1992.)
Born January 2, 1940 — Susan Wittig Albert, 82. She’s the author of The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, a series of mysteries featuring that writer. Really. Truly. Haven’t read them but they bear such delightful titles as The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood. She has non-genre series involving an herbalist and a gardening club as well.
Born January 2, 1948 — Deborah Watling. Best known for her role as Victoria Waterfield, a companion of the Second Doctor. She was also in Downtime, playing the same character, a one-off sequel to a sequel to the Second Doctor stories, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. No Doctors were to be seen. If you’ve seen the English language dubbed version of Viaje al centro de la Tierra (Where Time Began, based off Verne’s Journey to the Center of The Earth), she’s doing the lines of Ivonne Sentis as Glauben. (Died 2017.)
Born January 2, 1959 — Patrick Nielsen Hayden, 64. In a fit of exuberance Wiki lists him as a “editor, fan, fanzine publisher, essayist, reviewer, anthologist, teacher and blogger.” Which is true. He’s won three Hugo Awards for Best Editor Long Form (2007, 2010, 2013), won a World Fantasy Award for editing the Starlight 1 anthology (1997).
Born January 2, 1967 — Tia Carrere, 56. Best remembered for her three-season run as Sydney Fox, rogue archeologist on Relic Hunter. She’s been in a lot of one-offs on genre series including Quantum Leap, Hercules, Tales from The Crypt, Airwolf, Friday the 13th and played Agent Katie Logan for two episodes on Warehouse 13.
Born January 2, 1979 — Tobias S. Buckell, 44. I read and enjoyed a lot his Xenowealth series which he managed to wrap up rather nicely. The collection he edited, The Stories We Tell: Bermuda Anthology of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, is well worth reading, as is his own Tides from a New World collection. And his Tangled Lands collection which won the World Fantasy Award is amazing reading as well.
Born January 2, 1983 — Kate Bosworth, 39. She’s Barbara Barga in the SS-GB series adapted from the superb Len Deighton novel. She’s both a producer and a performer on The I- Land Netflixseries where she’s KC, a decidedly not nice person. For a more positive character, she portrayed Lois Lane in Superman Returns.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Six Chix makes a mighty literary New Year’s resolution. It will probably sound familiar to a few of you!
Peanuts On This Day on Twitter brings us an sff-adjacent strip from January 2, 1973.

January 2, 1973 pic.twitter.com/K6D1a9xucD
— Peanuts On This Day (@Peanuts50YrsAgo) January 2, 2023

(11) HERE COMES THE DRAGON-PROWED BOAT. The Los Angeles Times asks “Why is a Swedish billionaire buying up California’s video gaming empire?” In recent years many game makers have been acquired by Lars Wingefors’ company, Embracer.

…Or as the tech-oriented website the Verge put it: “Embracer Group, the company forging one IP portfolio to rule them all.”

The strategy has sparked both criticism and confusion in the gaming world. Some gamers accuse Embracer of sacrificing artistry, while others find the company’s approach scattershot and incoherent. An Embracer developer defends the company’s approach, saying it supports game makers.

“If you look at them from afar, you might wonder what the company is doing,” says Simon Rojder, a programmer who is the founder of Mirage, a game studio in Karlstad that Embracer absorbed in 2016. “What he [Wingefors] does is find people who know what they are doing and then leaves them alone.

“This company is called the big dragon monster of gaming because they soak up everything. But they give you space to do your work. We feel quite independent, even if on paper we are not.”

Today, Embracer oversees 237 games being developed across 132 studios on every continent except Africa and Antarctica. More than 15,000 employees work for Embracer or a company under its umbrella.

In California, Embracer has a foothold in San Francisco, where it owns a studio that developed the free game “Star Trek Online.” Irvine is home to a recently acquired karaoke company, Singtrix, while SpringboardVR, a company focused on arcade development, is in Los Angeles. In Agoura Hills, Embracer runs global marketing for Vertigo Games, a Dutch game studio and virtual reality group. It also has a distribution contract with Exploding Kittens, an L.A. game studio named after the card game, which shot up in popularity after launching on Kickstarter in 2015.

Embracer’s rapid expansion comes as tech, gaming and moviemaking collide in a content race to grab the attention and dollars of any consumer they can. Fueled in part by a boom during pandemic-era lockdowns, the gaming industry’s price tag now rivals those of Hollywood and music…

(12) UNDERFOOT IN THE CRETACEOUS. Elsewhere in Sweden is a place where they study “The Fossil Flowers That Rewrote the History of Life” – read about it in The New Yorker.

The centerpiece of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, in Stockholm, is probably the Fossils and Evolution hall, in which an enormous Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton seems to yawn over crowds of starstruck schoolchildren. Nearby, tourists marvel at a triceratops skull and a velociraptor model. These iconic dinosaurs evolved during the late-Cretaceous epoch and went extinct about sixty-six million years ago, around the time that an asteroid smashed into the planet. It is difficult to think of any event in the history of life that has left a bigger mark on the human imagination. “I don’t think you can compete with the dinosaurs,” Else Marie Friis, a paleobotanist and professor emerita at the museum, told me the first time we spoke.

Friis has come to believe, however, that the disappearance of the dinosaurs was not even the most interesting development of the Cretaceous period. She is more interested in a pair of easy-to-miss boulders near the feet of the T. rex, which bear impressions of some very old angiosperm leaves. Angiosperms, or flowering plants, are so ubiquitous today that one can hardly imagine life without them; they encompass at least three hundred and fifty thousand species, including everything from cactuses to wind-pollinated grasses to broadleaf trees, and far outnumber older plants such as ferns, conifers, and mosses. Yet the first dinosaurs, in the Triassic and Jurassic periods, lived in a world without flowers. The first angiosperms probably bloomed in the early Cretaceous, around a hundred and thirty-five million years ago. They ignited a revolution that reinvented nature itself….

(13) ONE AND DONE. “’1899′ Canceled: Netflix Not Moving Forward With Season 2” says Variety.

“1899” will not receive a second season at Netflix. The news was confirmed by series co-creator Baran bo Odar through a statement shared to his official Instagram. The letter to fans was also signed by Odar’s partner and series co-creator Jantje Freise.

“With a heavy heart we have to tell you that ‘1899’ will not be renewed,” Odar wrote. “We would have loved to finish this incredible journey with a second and third season as we did with ‘Dark.’ But sometimes things don’t turn out the way you planned. That’s life.”

“We know this will disappoint millions of fans out there. But we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts that you were a part of this wonderful adventure,” the statement continues. “We love you. Never forget.”

(14) LA MANCHA AND TATTOOINE. According to Ted Gioia, “Don Quixote Tells Us How the Star Wars Franchise Ends”.

…This is an important shift in the history of storytelling, and we need to pay close attention to it—because this is how Star Wars ends. This is how the Marvel Cinematic Universe loses its mojo. This is how the movie business will eventually reinvent itself.

The key person here is Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). And the amazing thing is that he relied on a knight to kill all the other knights, and clear the way for the rise of the novel.

Cervantes’s knight was the famous Don Quixote, celebrated in the book of the same name. And we could argue endlessly whether this book was, in fact, the first novel. The exact chronology here isn’t the key issue. The more pressing point is that Don Quixote made all the earlier books about knights look ridiculous. In other words, Cervantes pursued the literary equivalent of a scorched earth policy.

The title character in his book is a shrunken and shriveled man of about 50, who has gone crazy by reading too many stories about knights and their adventures. In a fit of delusion, he decides to leave home and pursue knightly adventures himself—but the world has changed since the time of King Arthur, and our poor knight errant now looks like a fool. Other characters mock him, and play practical jokes at his expense—and simply because he believes all those lies in the brand franchise stories.

We start to feel sorry for Don Quixote, even begin cheering for our hapless hero. Thus this protagonist, in Cervantes’s rendering, is both absurd and endearing. This is what raises the novel above mere satire—because we eventually come to admire Don Quixote for holding on to his ideals in the face of a world where they don’t fit or belong.

In other words, there is much to admire in this book, but this three-layered approach to reality is perhaps the most interesting aspect of them all. Here are the three layers:

Don Quixote is just an ordinary man, not a hero by any means.
But in his delusion, he pretends to be a hero, following rules and procedures that are antiquated and irrelevant. They merely serve to make him look pitiful and absurd.
Yet by persisting in this fantasy, he actually does turn into a hero, although a more complex kind that anticipates the rise of the novel. He is the prototype of the dreamer and idealist who chases goals in the face of all obstacles.

The end result was that the old fake stories of knights were now obsolete, but something smarter and more sophisticated emerged in their wake. After Cervantes, readers demanded better stories—and not just the intellectuals and elites. The novel soon became the preferred narrative format at all levels of literate European society.

Believe it or not, this could happen again, even in Hollywood….

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Jennifer Hawthorne, Lise Andreasen, JJ, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/15/22 Is That A Real Pixel, Or Is That A Sears Pixel

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) WISCON NEWS. Today’s “#SaveWisCon Update” has its ups and downs:

We are making AMAZING progress on our work to #SaveWisCon, thanks to your help!

- - We have now raised just over $32,000 in donations of which $30,000 will be matched, for a total of $62,000 raised to support WisCon! This is absolutely incredible, and we are so grateful for everyone who contributed and helped spread the word.
  - 70 people have completed our Volunteer Interest Form to help out with pre-con volunteering. Thank you all!
  - We’ve gained 252 new email newsletter subscribers since November, which is helping us make sure everyone gets the latest con news and updates. Not getting the newsletter? You can sign up here.
  - We have a total of 418 registrations (in-person and online). Our goal is 1,000! Please registerand tell your friends about WisCon, too.

PLUS we are receiving a total of $5,500 in grants from:

We deeply appreciate their support and encourage everyone to learn more about these excellent organizations.

Thanks to your donations and these grants, we’re at roughly $67,000 in total funds raised!

Is this the end of #SaveWisCon fundraising? Are we just done now, forever?

Well…probably not, y’all, for a couple of reasons…

The two main reasons are: (1) It’s “basically impossible” for them to book enough rooms to meet their contract so they will owe a big penalty. That’s an effect of the pandemic and people’s assessment of the risk of in-person events. (2) They have sold only a fraction of the 500 online memberships that are an expected revenue source.

(2) NOT A SWEET SOUND IN THEIR EARS. Appropriate to April 15, the usual income tax filing day in the U.S. (although not in 2022, when it’s April 18), the SFWA Blog posted this: “SFWA Alert: Tax Guidance for Audible/ACX Royalties Reporting”.

…Audible/ACX’s New Tax Reporting Policy: What Authors Should Know
As of January 1, 2021, authors who publish their own audiobooks on ACX and use ACX producers must now declare the producers’ portion of the royalties as income and then deduct those payments as business expenses when they file their taxes. This is because Audible/ACX now reports all of the net earnings from ACX audiobooks on the authors’ 1099-MISC forms, including the earnings it paid over to producers, as the authors’ royalty earning. It has also stopped issuing 1099-MISCs to producers and instead now issues 1099-Ks to producers that meet the income threshold.
With these new accounting practices, Audible/ACX is treating the payments it makes to voice actors, audiobook producers, and studio pros (collectively referred to as Producers in the agreements) as part of the royalties payable to the authors (referred to as Rights Holders in the agreements)—on the notion that it is the authors, not Audible/ACX, who hire the Producers and owe the Producers a share of their own royalties as compensation for recording the book. The new structure makes clear that Audible/ACX is limiting its role to that of a third-party payment settlement service, even though it makes the Producers’ services available to their authors, sets the terms of that engagement (a 50/50 royalty split), and is the one to send payment to the Producers….

(3) MOURNING STAR. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Last night’s episode of Young Sheldon starts with the momentous news, related by the young version of Sheldon Cooper, that Isaac Asimov has died. (Which happened in 1992.) His parents are monumentally dismissive, but others not as much. I can honestly state that more Asimov works are mentioned there than on any other TV show, ever.

All I can say is, hilarity ensues!

It’s Series 5, Episode 18, “Babies, Lies and a resplendent Cannoli,” with the description on my TV, “Sheldon copes with the death of a hero; Missy wants to babysit; Georgie struggles with a big secret.”

Likely available On Demand.

(4) THE ANSWER IS 47. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Sarah Hemming reviews The 47th, a Shakespearean pastiche by Mike Bartlett about the 2024 presidential election which is playing at the Old Vic Theatre (oldvictheatre.com) through May 28. (I reviewed Bartlett’s previous near-future Shakespearean pastiche, King Charles III, here in 2017 “King Charles III”: A Review”.)

(5) RINGO AWARDS 2022 NOMINATIONS OPEN. The Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards return for their sixth year on Saturday, October 29, 2022 as part of The Baltimore Comic-Con. The Ringo Awards include fan participation in the nomination process along with a jury of comics professionals. Fans are welcome to nominate until June 30 at the website here.

Fan and Pro Nominations: Fan and pro-jury voting are tallied independently, and the combined nomination ballot is compiled by the Ringo Awards Committee. The top two fan choices become nominees, and the jury’s selections fill the remaining three slots for five total nominees per category. Ties may result in more than five nominees in a single category. Nominees will be listed on the ballot alphabetically. Nomination ballot voting is open to the public (fans and pros) between April 15, 2022 and June 30, 2022.
Final Ballot Voting: After processing by the Ringo Awards Committee and Jury, the Final Ballots are targeted to be available to comic creative professionals for voting on August 31, 2022 and will be due by September 28, 2022 for final tallying. Presentation of the winners will occur at the Baltimore Comic-Con on the evening of Saturday, October 29, 2022.

(6) NO VIVIAN IN 2022. The Romance Writers of America have postponed the next Vivian Award to 2023. The announcement was made last October – but it was news to me. The decision came in the aftermath of RWA rebranding its annual award (formerly the Rita), and the organization’s decision to rescind one of the inaugural Vivian Awards.

In an effort to provide the VIVIAN Task Force the time needed to thoroughly examine the 2021 VIVIAN contest, the RWA Board has approved the task force’s recommendation to postpone the 2022 VIVIAN Contest. This postponement will give the task force time to conduct a thorough analysis of the inaugural contest and make recommendations for changes to be implemented for the 2023 contest period. Under normal circumstances, our contest period begins in October with marketing and advertising campaigns followed by the recruitment and training of judges and accepting contest entries. However, the Board recognizes that the VIVIAN Task Force needs more than a couple of weeks to break down all aspects of the contest to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses outside of those revealed this year.

(7) LANGELLA OUT OF USHER. Yahoo! reports“Frank Langella Fired From ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ After Netflix Investigation”.

Veteran actor Frank Langella has been fired from Mike Flanagan’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” following a Netflix investigation that found Langella acted inappropriately on set, a source close to the production confirmed to TheWrap on Wednesday evening.
Netflix had no comment on the situation and a rep for Flanagan did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
TMZ reported on Tuesday that Netflix was looking into allegations that the 84-year-old had been accused of sexual harassment, including making inappropriate comments to a female co-star on the set of the limited series….

(8) OH GIVE ME A HOME, WHERE THE PORTAL HAS COME. A new sf western begins today on Amazon Prime: Outer Range.

Outer Range centers on Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin), a rancher fighting for his land and family, who discovers an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming’s wilderness. A thrilling fable with hints of wry humor and supernatural mystery, Outer Range examines how we grapple with the unknown. At the onset of the series, the Abbotts are coping with the disappearance of daughter-in-law Rebecca. They are pushed further to the brink when the Tillersons (the gaudy owners of the neighboring profit-driven ranch) make a play for their land. An untimely death in the community sets off a chain of tension-filled events, and seemingly small-town, soil-bound troubles come to a head with the arrival of a mysterious black void in the Abbotts’ west pasture. Wild revelations unfold as Royal fights to protect his family; through his eyes, we begin to see how time contains secrets held in the past and unsettling mysteries foreshadowed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzAFrTEWSQ

(9) CHRISTINE ASHBY OBIT. Australian fan Christine Ashby, the 1976 Down Under Fan Fund delegate, died at her home on March 29. She was 70 years of age. In 1976 DUFF she attended that year’s Worldcon, MidAmeriCon. Her trip report, The Flight of the Kangaroo, was published about a decade later.

(10) ESSAY: JO WALTON’S SMALL CHANGE TRILOGY. [By Cat Eldridge,] Doing alternate history right is always hard work, but Jo Walton’s the Small Change books consisting of Farthing, Ha’penny and Half a Crown get it perfectly spot on. Set as you know in Britain that settled for an uneasy peace with Hitler’s Germany, they are mysteries, one of my favorite genres. And these are among my all-time favorite mysteries of this sort.

The audiobooks are fascinating as befitting that there being shifting narrators with Peter Carmichael whose presence in all three novels is voiced by John Keating, and Bianco Amato voicing David Kahn’s wife in Farthing, but Viola Lark being played by Heather O’Neil in Ha’penny and yet a third female narrator, Elvira, is brought to life by Terry Donnelly in Half a Crown.

Now I’m fascinated by what awards they won (and didn’t) and what they got nominated for. It would win but one award, the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel for Ha’Penny which is I find a bit odd indeed given there’s nothing libertarian about that novel.

Now Half a Crown wracked an impressive number of nominations: the Sidewise Award for Best Long Form Alternate History, Locus for Best SF Novel, Sunburst award for a Canadian novel, and this time deservedly so given the themes of the final novel a Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel.

Farthing had picked up nominations for a Sidewise, a Nebula, Campbell Memorial, Quill where Ha’Penny only picked a Sidewise and Lambda.

Not a single Hugo nomination which really, really surprised me.

There is one short story set in this series, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” which you can read in her Starlings colllection that Tachyon published. It is is a fantastic collection of her stories, poems and cool stuff!

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 15, 1918 — Denis McLoughlin. No, he didn’t do any genre work that you’d know of. (And I’m not interested in it anyways. This is not about a genre artist.) His greatest fame came from work doing hard-boiled detective book covers produced for the London publishing house of Boardman Books spanning a career that lasted nearly eight decades with other work as well. And oh what covers they were! Here’s is his cover for Adam Knight’s Stone Cold Blonde, and this is Henry Kanes’…Until You’re Dead. Finally let’s look at his cover for Fredric Brown’s We All Killed Grandma. He was in perfect health when he took a revolver from his extensive collection of weapons and committed suicide. No note was left behind. (Died 2002.)
Born April 15, 1922 — Michael Ansara. Commander Kang in Trek’s “The Day of The Dove” as well as a lot of other genre work including a recurring role as Kane on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, multiple roles on I Dream of Jeannie andmyriad voicings of Victor Fries / Mr. Freeze in the Batman series. (Died 2013.)
Born April 15, 1926 — Jerry Grandenetti. In my opinion, his greatest work was as the illustrator who helped defined the look of The Spirit that Will Eisner created. He also worked at DC, mostly on war comics of which there apparently way more than I knew (All-American Men of War, G.I. Combat, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces and Star Spangled War Stories) though he did work on the House of Mystery and Strange Adventures series as well. (Died 2010.)
Born April 15, 1933 — Elizabeth Montgomery. She’s best remembered as Samantha Stephens on Bewitched. Other genre roles included being Lili in One Step Beyond’s “The Death Waltz” which you can watch here. She also had one-offs in The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and voicing a Barmaid in the “Showdown” episode of Batman: The Animated Series. (Died 1995.)
Born April 15, 1959 — Emma Thompson, 63. Professor Sybill Trelawney, Harry Potter franchise. Men in Black 3 and Men in Black: International as Agent O, I am Legend, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle as Polynesia, the extraordinary Tony Kushner derived HBO series Angels in America, Beauty and the Beast as Mrs. Potts, the castle’s motherly head housekeeper who has been transformed into a teapot, Brave, Beautiful Creatures and Treasure Planet voicing Captain Amelia.
Born April 15, 1974 — Jim C. Hines, 48. [Item by Paul Weimer.] Writer, and blogger. Jim C. Hines’ first published novel was Goblin Quest, the tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. Jim went on to write the Princess series, four books often described as a blend of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Charlie’s Angels. He’s also the author of the Magic ex Libris books, my personal favorite, which follow the adventures of a magic-wielding librarian from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, who happens to have the same pet fire-spider lifted from the Goblin novels as his best friend. He has two novels in his Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series. Jim’s novels usually have the fun and humor dials set on medium to high. Jim is also an active blogger on a variety of topics and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer at Chicon 7.
Born April 15, 1997 — Maisie Williams, 25. She made her professional acting debut as Arya Stark of Winterfell in Game of Thrones. She was Ashildr, an immortal Viking woman of unique skills, the principal character of “The Girl Who Died”, “The Woman Who Lived”, “Face the Raven” and “Hell Bent” during the time of Twelfth Doctor. She was also Lucy in the Netflix SF iBoy. She is set to star as Wolfsbane in the forthcoming Marvel film New Mutants, due for release sometime, well who knows, as it keeps getting delayed.

(12) HEROS AND STINKERS. Here’s a research project that will amuse (or bemuse) you: “All The Hobbits From Lord Of The Rings Ranked Worst To Best”. Looper ranks 18 of them.

… There are a lot of hobbits in “Lord of the Rings.” So many, in fact, that we’ve decided to round them all up into a good ol’ worst-to-best ranking. After all, what good is this iconic race of hole-dwellers if we can’t subjectively compare them to each other? Here are all of the hobbits who play at least a minor role in the story, ranked by a general conglomeration of heroics, accomplishments, humor, toughness, and overall importance to Tolkien’s world….
16. Ted Sandyman is a pathetic excuse for a Hobbit
…While he plays a similar part in the book, Sandyman’s role is a bit bigger on-page. He’s in a lengthy scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where he verbally spars with Sam, rebutting his romantic notions of the world. Then he reappears at the end of “The Return of the King,” where it’s revealed that he’s gone over to the dark side, helping Saruman’s minions overrun the Shire and turn it into an industrialized police state….
Ted Sandyman is eventually put in his place, but during his time in the story he proves to be nothing more than a troublemaking bully who runs at the first site of trouble. To the bottom of the list he goes…

(13) WE’RE DOOMED, DOOMED! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] An analysis announced by Nature this week reveals that even if all the agreed actions from last November’s COP26 UN climate change summit were implemented global temperatures could not be kept below the target 1.5°C warming.

The researchers say that to meet this target we are going to have to actively remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Personally, having studied climate change for some decades now, I am all too aware of the difficulties. Indeed, back in 2009 I posted an online essay that concluded it would be difficult to keep warming below 2°C.

Since 2009, there has been a growing body of research pointing in the same direction, of which this Nature paper is but the latest.

Quantifications of the pledges before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) suggested a less than 50 per cent chance of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius…
Limiting warming not only to ‘just below’ but to ‘well below’ 2 degrees Celsius or 1.5 degrees Celsius urgently requires policies and actions to bring about steep emission reductions this decade, aligned with mid-century global net-zero CO2 emissions.

(14) REPEAT AFTER ME. If you have eight minutes to spare you can watch a “Giant ‘Live Long and Prosper’ Supercut” with every appearance of the Vulcan phrase in every Star Trek series. Nerdist gives a rundown —

…This montage (which we first saw at Laughing Squid) includes all the times someone said that phrase, from the franchise’s first days to right now. Characters first told others to “live long and prosper” on the original cast’s show, animated series, and movies. Since then Star Trek characters in The Next Generation, First Contact, Voyager, Enterprise, Lower Decks, and Prodigy have said the phrase, too.
(Uh, can we go back and edit one into Deep Space Nine? Now that we know zero characters ever said the Vulcan salute, it seems weird, right?)

(15) MIXED MEDIA. Daniel Greene’s “Best of the Year 2021” rankings are unusual in that he includes written as well as filmed media, so there’s some nice shout-outs for several notable SF/Fantasy printed works in here.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] The How It Should Have Ended gang takes on the Snyder cut in this video, which dropped Thursday. “How The Snyder Cut Should Have Ended”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Jennifer Hawthorne, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Irwin Hirsh, Joyce Scrivner, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Smith.]

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