Tag Archives: David Langford

Pixel Scroll 5/30/25 If They Could Scroll Me Now, That Old Karass Of Mine

Posted on by
37

(1) NANOWRIMO SITE VANISHES. [Item by Dan Bloch.] Earlier this week NaNoWriMo shut down their website without any notice.  People are commiserating on Reddit.

What a freaking waste. A huge, passionate and vibrant community founded on conquering the impossible, brought down by gross mismanagement and a refusal to listen to the community that gave it life.

I’ve been sad about this for a long time, but it’s definitely hitting home today, especially seeing the posts from people freaking out about losing their site data, since NaNoWriMo NEVER officially announced the shutdown on official channels to warn them.

We meant nothing to them, even in the end. Good riddance.

The Wayback Machine’s latest Nanowrimo.org screencap was May 27.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) announced in March that the organization was shutting down. They offered a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

This followed in the aftermath of a controversy that erupted the previous September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – and it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – leading Zriters Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells to immediately resign. 

(2) EXTRA CREDIT READING. Two sff news periodicals posted today:

(3) IGNYTE AWARDS VOTING OPENS JUNE 9. Public voting on The Ignyte Awards will begin June 9.

The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction. Founded by L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, the awards were an attempt to correct representative gaps in traditional spec lit awards and have grown into a coveted and cherished addition to the awards landscape. The Ignytes seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

(4) SAVE WHEEL OF TIME. Did a show ever have so many spokes persons? “Wheel of Time fans band together to save show after cancellation – petition gets over 50,000 signatures” says Radio Times.

Following the cancellation of The Wheel of Time after its third season, a petition has quickly racked up signatures from fans hoping to save the Prime Video fantasy show.

The petition, titled Save The Wheel of Time, has already got over 53,700 signatures and counting, with fans calling for the story to be finished and arguing that it “deserves to be told in full”.

The petition points not only to the third season’s strong critical and fan reception, but also to reported viewing figures, arguing for the show’s continuation by putting it in comparison with other fantasy shows The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and The Witcher….

(5) FUTURE TENSE FICTION. The Future Tense Fiction story for May 2025 is “The Shade Technician,” by Harrison Cook, about urban heat and its health effects, as well as the privatization of critical infrastructure.

The response essay “The Limits of Heat Resilience” is by physician and heat researcher Pope L. Moseley.

Extreme heat is pushing up against our physiological limits. We can’t adapt our way out of the problem—we need to confront it directly.

(6) JOHN SCALZI Q&A. CollectSPACE starts their interview with an anecdote about the author’s research: “John Scalzi reconned Apollo 11 moon rock before turning it to cheese in new novel”.

…”I went to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum very specifically so I knew what the layout of the place was, so I could see the moon rock there for myself and so when I wrote about it, it would be reasonable to what is actually there,” said Scalzi in an interview with collectSPACE. “They had no idea.”

Had the docents approached him and asked why he was interested in the moon rock, they might not have believed him anyway. In “When the Moon Hits Your Eye,” released today (March 25), it is Virgil Augustine, the museum’s (fictional) executive director, who comes to realize what has happened, however impossible it might seem…

Then they follow with more conventional questions about the new book.

collectSPACE (cS): Was there a particular moment in your life that it just struck you, or how do you come up with the idea of writing a book about the moon turning into cheese?

John Scalzi: It was something that had been just rolling around my brain for a while, simply because it was just such an absurd idea that it almost felt like a challenge. You know, was this something that I could make something out of?

cS: Did you search to see if anyone else had written a book about the moon turning to cheese?

Scalzi: I didn’t, but if someone did, it wouldn’t have necessarily stopped me because there are so few super original ideas. you just accept that most of what you’re doing is not about what’s original, but what you can bring to that particular topic that nobody else has.

There are lots of children’s books about the moon being made of cheese, but they’re all picture books, so I felt that this was a pretty safe subject. Also, as soon someone mentions the topic, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s like Wallace and Gromit,’ because they go to the moon and it is cheese [in “A Grand Day Out With Wallace and Gromit” released in 1989].

This was something I was reasonably confident had been unexplored territory in the adult literature format, and certainly in the manner in which I did it, which was to structure it around a lunar cycle, rather than just one or two main characters….

(7) THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD INTERRUPT HARLAN WAS – HARLAN. Edwin L. Battistella reminisces about his introduction to parenthetical phrases in “What I learned from reading Harlan Ellison” at the OUPblog.

When I was in high school, I went through a Harlan Ellison phase….

…Stylistically, what stood out most was his use of parentheses. In the essays, Ellison used them all the time. In a random four-page section I count six parentheticals, some as long as a paragraph. Elsewhere, I found a couple that went on for more than half a page….

…Ellison used the parenthesis to amplify his outrage, to underscore his smart-alecky awareness, and even occasionally to poke fun at himself.

For a time, Elision’s style left a mark on me as a writer. I began including (what I thought were) pointed, witty asides in my essays and correspondence. I got away with it in high school, less so in college, and finally my wife convinced me to give it up. It was, she said, “too cutesy” and “distracting.”

Every now and then, I miss parentheses and trot a pair of parens out, but for the most part I’ve given them up. The style worked for Ellison, who managed to never be too cutesy and whose distractions were interesting, but I could not pull it off….

(8) BREATH MINT OR CANDY MINT? Chris Winkle argues “Why Literary Fiction Is a Genre” at Mythcreants. Here are a couple of excerpts. You’d need to read the article to see him make his case.

…In any widespread discussion of literary fiction, two contradictory ideas are bound to make an appearance. Some people advocate for one or the other, while others embrace both simultaneously. Let’s look at these two competing ideas.

  • Literary fiction as the best fiction. Under this definition, any book of any genre can be considered literary fiction if it is good enough. This means that literary fiction is simply a prestige label given to a wide variety of books we admire. Let’s call this the prestige definition.
  • Literary fiction as a distinct style of fiction. Under this definition, literary fiction has specific characteristics that distinguish it from non-literary books. These characteristics include realism, slow and detailed prose, and experimental style or form. Let’s call this the style definition.

You might think these two definitions would be at war with each other. Conceptually, they are. But while individual literary fans may take one side or the other, the community as a whole isn’t interested in resolving this contradiction. In fact, these definitions coexist by design.

That’s because both definitions are needed to send a bigger message: that literary fiction entails specific characteristics, and those characteristics are superior. Meaning, a book of any genre supposedly becomes better by adopting literary fiction conventions. That’s how it “transcends” its genre and becomes literary instead….

… This is why publishers already treat contemporary literary fiction like a genre. It’s a specific type of fiction that appeals to a specific audience of fans. Business-wise, that’s what a genre is. It’s used to match books with the readers who are inclined to purchase and enjoy them.

However, literary books don’t fit everyone’s idea of what genres are. The prestige definition is only partly responsible for this. I think a greater factor is that we love our favorite genres, so we want them to be more coherent and meaningful than they are. And when we assign meaning to them, it’s easy to make that meaning too restrictive. For instance, if we associate genres with a specific type of setting or plot, then literary books, which are distinguished by characteristics such as prose style, may seem like the odd group out….

(9) JOHN BOARDMAN (1932-2025). By Gary Farber. I was sorry to read Ansible’s report today: “John Boardman (1932-2025), US fan active since 1950 in cons, clubs and APAs, and treasurer of the 1967 Worldcon, died on 29 May aged 92.”

John was among the first fans I met in NYC fandom in the early 1970s; he and his wife Perdita lived within a long walk’s distance from my childhood home in Midwood, Brooklyn, and at the time I was first invited to the Lunarians, the NYC science fiction club that put on the annual Lunacon science fiction convention, the club met at their home, until months later when Perdita, fed up with the way fans left half-filled cups and dirty plates all over their large house, announced that she wouldn’t put up with it any more, and that the club would have to find a new meeting place.

For a time, that was Frank and Ann Dietz (Frank’s second wife) house in Oradell, New Jersey, and then we met at the Lunacon hotel in Manhattan; my memory is a bit shaky at the moment if we were using the Statler-Hilton that year or the Commodore.

John was a true character. Known to some as “the Jerry Pournelle of the left,” he was a professor of physics at Brooklyn College, a leftist, a bit deaf and thus very loud, very opinionated, and thus the parallels to Jerry. John was a founder of Diplomacy-by-mail fandom with his fanzine Graustark, a mainstay of parts of NYC fandom, a bit of a blowhard, but unforgettable.

He was always hale and hearty, speaking with a vibrant and booming voice, one you could hear as soon as you entered a party he was at, always ready for a good argument.

Among other bits of personal history, from his Wikipedia page:

“Boardman earned his BA at the University of Chicago in 1952 and his MS from Iowa State University in 1956. He then attended Florida State University to begin his doctoral studies. However, he was expelled in 1957 due to his involvement with the Inter-Civic Council and more specifically for inviting three black Florida A&M exchange students to a Christmas party.”

Also see Fancyclopedia’s entry on John Boardman.

John Boardman, right, at 1967 PhilCon. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter. “Taken with my trusty Kodak Starflash, I think”

(10) ALF CLAUSEN (1941-2025). “Alf Clausen, Emmy-winning ‘Simpsons’ Composer, Dies at 84” reports Variety. He died on May 29.

… Clausen won two Emmys and another 21 nominations for the long-running animated Fox series. He began scoring the antics of Bart, Lisa and company in 1990, during its second season, and is believed to be the most-nominated composer in Emmy history with a total of 30 nominations overall.

He also won five Annie Awards, also for “Simpsons” music. His long tenure with Matt Groening’s irreverent creation made him one of the most respected creators of animation music in TV history. His nearly 600 original scores for the series are also believed to be a record for the most written for a single TV series in America….

Clausen conducted a 35-piece orchestra every week, something producers insisted upon from the beginning. His unexpected firing in August 2017, a cost-saving move by Fox and “Simpsons” producer Gracie Films, resulted in a firestorm of protests from fans around the world….

Six of Clausen’s pre-“Simpsons” Emmy nominations were for “Moonlighting,” including two landmark episodes: the black-and-white “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” and the “Taming of the Shrew” sendup “Atomic Shakespeare.”…

… He scored nearly 100 episodes of the late 1980s puppet sitcom “Alf” (and when asked about the title, he would often quip, “no relation”)….

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 30, 1922 — Hal Clement. (Died 2003.)

By Paul Weimer: If hard science and physics could be considered “characters” in science fiction, Hal Clement is certainly the person who was able to make them so. Mission of Gravity is the premier look at this, giving an extremely weird and strange, and yet possible high gravity world. Do the characters he populates this world with work as individual characters? Not really, but what you read Clement for is the puzzles and the logic behind the hard science that makes a high gravity-distorted world like Mesklin (the planet of Mission of Gravity) possible in the first place. 

Another novel in this vein that doesn’t get much play or notice, but I ironically read before Mission of Gravity, is The Nitrogen Fix. In this book, Earth’s atmosphere has changed, radically, with the free nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere having combined into a toxic and unbreathable mix of nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and water. Did the aliens who have come to Earth change and terraform Earth for their own purposes? In the end, the transformation of Earth’s atmosphere is a puzzle that is solved, and makes sense, with a big heaping sense of irony to it all. 

Although shared worlds are not a big thing anymore, back in the 1980’s, they were all the rage. I didn’t mention it back when I wrote on Ellison (way too much to write about him) but even Harlan Ellison did a shared world, Medea. His shared planet had a bunch of writers very interested in building a realistic planet and solar system. Clement not only provided an essay on worldbuilding the astrophysics of Medea in the book, but also contributed a story. 

Once again, hard science as a character in Clement’s work. That’s what it means to me. 

Hal Clement at ConFiction (1990). Photo by Frank Olynyk. From Fanac.org site.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) MEMORIES. Steven Thompson, son of famous comics fans Don and Maggie Thompson, tells a great anecdote about the late Peter David on Facebook. It has to do with how Peter made a tribute panel to Don Thompson a terrific memory.

(14) JON DECLES PROFILE. File 770 commenter Jon DeCles – the pen name of Don Studebaker – was interviewed in 2017 by The Press Democrat about the loss of his house in a fire: “Valley fire survivor starting over with prized cuckoo clock that escaped the flames”.

It’s nearly two years since the Valley fire vaporized the Cobb Mountain home of Don Studebaker, a highly literate high-school dropout, science-fantasy writer, stage channeler of Mark Twain, devotee of ancient Greek gods, co-creator of the documentary-worthy Berkeley literary commune of Greyhaven and a decadeslong student of the nearly infinite subtleties and elements of ritual significance of the Japanese tea ceremony.

The 75-year-old Studebaker has no earthly idea when he’ll be able to call in a crane to set a new modular home roughly where the old, conventionally constructed house was. But already he contemplates special placement of the clock.

“The cuckoo is going to be the pièce de résistance,” beamed the gray-bearded, blue-eyed and kinetic Studebaker from alongside the fish-pond porch of the residence off State Route 75 that he dubbed the Rhinoceros Lodge and references fleetingly on his website home.pon.net/rhinoceroslodge. The 1950s country home was devoured along with those of 11 immediate neighbors by the historic south Lake County inferno of Sept. 12, 2015, that killed four people downhill from Cobb, charred more than 76,000 acres and destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings.

Studebaker lost almost everything he owned, but not his German cuckoo clock.

One day in June 2015, three months before the Valley fire, he’d decided for no particular reason that it was time to seek repair of the musical timepiece his wife purchased for him while on an international book tour at least two decades earlier….

… Had it not been in the shop, the clock surely would have burned in the fire that surged down Cobb Mountain toward Middletown that Saturday afternoon two years ago. …

(15) SHAKEN NOT STIRRED, DEEP UNDERGROUND. [Item by Steven French.] A complex of tunnels built after the Blitz is set to become an immersive spy museum and will also feature one of the deepest underground bars in the world: “London tunnels that inspired James Bond creator will become spy museum” reports the Guardian.

During his time in military intelligence, Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, regularly worked with Winston Churchill’s spy organisation based 30 metres below ground in a labyrinth of tunnels in central London.

The Kingsway Exchange tunnels complex, stretching out across 8,000 sq metres beneath High Holborn, near Chancery Lane underground station, hosted the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is said to have inspired Q Branch in Fleming’s novels.

So it seems appropriate that plans to breathe new life into this long-abandoned second world war subterranean network will include a permanent exhibition about the history of military intelligence and espionage.

The Military Intelligence Museum is to collaborate with the London Tunnels company, developing the complex to showcase its original artefacts, equipment, weapons and documents in a modern hi-tech experience at the proposed new £220m London tourist attraction, which is planned to open in 2028.

(16) FEEL FREE TO STEP ON THAT BUTTERFLY. Dete Meserve’s op-ed for Space.com asks “Could time travel tourism be the next space tourism?” I admit it – I clicked.

…Up until recently, physicists believed that time travel to the past was impossible because it required unusual matter or extreme warping of spacetime. However, physicist John D. Norton has developed a new model based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity that shows time travel is mathematically possible.

His model does not rely on strange matter or intense space-time distortion, but uses a simple space-time shape that allows paths to loop back in time. This work suggests that time travel could occur under more ordinary physical conditions than previously thought.

The classic understanding of time travel centers on a fundamental problem: paradoxes. If travelers could alter even minor details of the past, the cascading consequences would either rewrite the present or eliminate the traveler’s own existence — the infamous grandfather paradox. This seemingly insurmountable obstacle led physicist Stephen Hawking to propose his Chronology Protection Conjecture, which essentially argues that the laws of physics themselves forbid backward time travel by preventing the formation of closed timelike curves.

However, groundbreaking research by Dr. Fabio Costa and Germain Tobar at the University of Queensland challenges this assumption. They’ve developed a mathematical model showing that closed timelike curves do not automatically create paradoxes. Their revolutionary model suggests that while time travelers can move and act freely in the past, the universe itself maintains consistency—events would self-adjust to prevent any logical contradictions from occurring.

This revolutionary finding has profound implications. If Norton is right — that time travel won’t require exotic materials — and Costa and Tobar are correct — that time travel doesn’t alter the future — it opens the door for time travel technology to evolve beyond fictional ideas of secret inventions or unpredictable glitches in the universe. Instead, it could follow the trajectory of other breakthrough technologies—gradually becoming accessible, eventually commercial….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Blasters and Blades podcast features author Sharon Lee speaking about a Liaden Universe® novel she co-wrote with Steven Miller: “Episode 578: Ribbon Dance by Sharon Lee”. The book was released in 2024.

Today we were graced with the presence of Sharon Lee, one of the nicest ladies we’ve interviewed! We had Jana S Brown (aka Jena Rey) on as a co-host, and together we produced a kick butt interview about Sharon’s love of reading and speculative fiction. And we talked about her Liaden Universe. This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won’t be sorry!!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Dan Bloch, Joey Eschrich, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Tin Pan Alley” Dern.]

Updated Edition of TAFF Report Anthology Added to TAFF Free Library

Posted on by
1

Orphans no more! David Langford has assembled installments of the reports written by twenty-seven winners of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund in the TAFF Trip Report Anthology: Second Edition.

The update arrives seven years after Langford published the TAFF Trip Report Anthology. This 2025 revision of the original 2017 ebook brings together segments of abandoned, undersized or as yet unfinished TransAtlantic Fan Fund trip reports, plus other related material.

The TAFF winners represented are Wally Weber (1963), Terry Carr (1965), Elliot K. Shorter (1970), Peter Weston (1974), Roy Tackett (1976), Terry Hughes (1979), Stu Shiffman (1981), Avedon Carol (1983), Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (1985), Greg Pickersgill (1986), Lilian Edwards and Christina Lake (1988), Robert Lichtman (1989), Pam Wells (1991), Jeanne Bowman (1992), Abigail Frost (1993), Dan Steffan (1995), Ulrika O’Brien (1998), Maureen Kincaid Speller (1998), Randy Byers (2003), Steve Green (2009), Anne and Brian Gray (2010), Curt Phillips (2014), John Purcell (2017), Michael Lowrey (2020) and Sandra Bond (2023).

Second-edition updates comprise the removal of now-redundant sample chapters by Jeanne Gomoll (1987 – full report published 2020), John Coxon (2011 – full report published 2020), Jim Mowatt (2013 – full report published 2018); a newly unearthed chapter on Greg Pickersgill; and more recent chapters by John Purcell, Michael Lowrey and Sandra Bond.

The cover design incorporates the TAFF eastbound and westbound logos designed by Anne Stokes in 2006. 134,000 words.

This new collection is available from the TAFF Library as a free download, however, in hopes your generosity will be inspired by the delegates’ accounts of their adventures, the page is equipped with TAFF donation buttons ready to take any of three currencies!

The volume will be officially released on April 1, but you don’t actually have to wait, thanks to David Langford who has allowed a soft opening for File 770 readers.

TAFF Library Grows a Pair

Posted on by
1

Two additions to the TransAtlantic Fan Fund Free Ebooks collection are officially arriving on March 1. But you don’t have to wait!

Watto’s Wisom: Zine and Con Writing by Ian Watson.

As a major science fiction author active for well over half a century, Ian Watson needs no introduction. He has also been a regular contributor to SF fanzines and convention publications since the mid-1970s. This nonfiction volume presents a generous selection of more than fifty pieces first published thus: essays, reviews, memoirs, whimsies, polemic, convention reports, the secret histories of how several of his books were written, and brain-boggling speculations on UFOs and other arcana. One highlight is a long and surreally comic memoir of working with Stanley Kubrick on the film script which eventually became A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.

The 93,000-word book is available in multiple electronic formats from the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s website, where they also hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund. Find it here.

As well as the free ebook there’s a trade paperback sold with all proceeds to TAFF. There are plans to have this on sale at Eastercon in Belfast, since Ian will be there with his favorite signing pen.

First published as an ebook for the TAFF site on 1 March 2025. Cover photograph of Ian Watson by Cristina Macía. Approximately 93,000 words.

GUFF: The Incomplete Chronicles. Edited by David Langford

This volume gathers up the chapters of GUFF reports that were unfinished or too short for standalone publication. Donations to GUFF rather than TAFF are encouraged for those who enjoy this one. Download it here.

This ebook brings together the known segments of unfinished Get Up-and-Over/Going Under Fan Fund trip reports. The GUFF winners represented are Joseph Nicholas (1981), Justin Ackroyd (1984), Irwin Hirsh (1987), Roman Orszanski (1990), Eva Hauser (1992), Paul Kincaid (1999), Damien Warman and Juliette Woods (jointly, 2005) and Ang Rosin (2007).

From the Introduction by David Langford

As with its ancestor fund TAFF, a long-standing tradition of GUFF is that returned winners administer the fund until replaced by their successor from the same hemisphere and if possible write a substantial trip report, both for sale in aid of the fund and for the entertainment and edification of fandom. This tradition goes back to before TAFF itself began. A special fund was organized to bring Walt Willis from Ireland to the USA and the World SF Convention in 1952 (an initiative which led directly to the founding of TAFF), and his report The Harp Stateside is regarded as a classic of fan writing.

Many GUFF winners since 1979 have likewise published full-length trip reports (click here for available downloads). Some were waylaid by the horrors of real life and failed even to begin a report; some published instalments in fanzines but didn’t finish. Joseph Nicholas drafted a very long report whose MS was lost in a house move. Irwin Hirsh has published ten instalments, enough to be called a completed report, but wants to add more and is represented here by two chapters about the UK Worldcon he attended. Otherwise, this ebook collects what remains of reports that have been abandoned, or are so brief that they couldn’t plausibly be published as a standalone fanzine in the tradition of The Harp Stateside. There’s a lot of fine fan writing here.

This GUFF-centred companion to the TAFF Trip Report Anthology (2017) is published as an Ansible Editions ebook for the TAFF site on 1 March 2025. Cover artwork by Ian Gunn. 73,000 words.

Pixel Scroll 12/14/24 They Say It’s Only A Paper Shadow Square

Posted on by
21

(1) IT COMES IN THE MAIL*. Whenever David Langford air mails me a paper copy of Ansible there’s always a colorful assortment of British postage stamps on the envelope. I was struck to see on the most recent arrival a singular image – the smile of the Mona Lisa. The smile alone. And without a caption. (But do we need one?)

I wondered if this was a current issue and checked with Langford. He replied that it’s from the Royal Mail’s 1990 “Smiles” set, which also includes Stan Laurel and the UK Dennis the Menace.

Isn’t this a collectible? Not exactly, he explained. “People used to buy commemorative stamps in bulk as an investment, but the bottom dropped out of that market some time ago: there’s at least one UK dealer who acquires these accumulations on the cheap and sells at less than face value to cheapskates who actually use them for postage. As you say, it makes for interesting envelopes!”

(*pace Ned Brooks.)

(2) BRUCE STERLING Q&A. Worldbuilding Agency brings us “deliberate oxymorons: an interview with Bruce Sterling (part 1)”.

Paul Graham Raven: Okay. What’s your elevator pitch, on the rare occasion you meet someone who doesn’t know who you are already? What do you tell them you do?

BS: I would tell them nowadays that I’m the art director of a technology art fair in Turin, Italy….

PGR: As I understand it, that’s almost a kind of return to something you were doing very early on. You were very involved in, I don’t think it was called that then, but the tech-art scene in Austin [Texas] when you were younger, right?

BS: Yeah, I used to hang out with a lot of robotics guys and engineering people, software people and hardware people. I mean, my father was an engineer, so I have a long lasting interest in material culture and how things are made. It was very rare of me to actually do any of that. But now in later life—I mean, this year I turned 70, and I’m actually giving in and doing a lot more hands-on… well, I don’t even like to call it creative work, really.

But I’m very involved in studies of luxury multi-tools. [brandishes multi-tool] This is the Leatherman Free from the USA; as an American in Italy, it’s kind of like a crusade of mine to try to explain to people why an object like this existed, why you might want to use it, and why an American invented it in Eastern Europe. We’re known for distributing tools to our guests and the core of creative artists that surrounds our festival. I found that I could give them like a futuristic lecture about what to do, but they were much, much more interested if I just said to them, “if I gave you this, what would you do with it,” right?. I mean, I’ll put it in a bag—you can have ten! And then they come back and we put what they did on display.

That’s just an intervention that the Turinese invited me to do, and nobody in Austin would have asked me to do such a thing. But in Italian design circles, they have the atmosphere, or the motto really, “proviamo”: give it a shot, prove it, try it out. And proviamo is never just a lecture; proviamo is always a thing. It’s a process or a tool—you know, make a lamp out of plastic bags, make a chair out of styrofoam. That’s a proviamo, very Italian design-centric situation. So I do a lot of that.

I mean, I’m the judge, I’m the art director for our fair. And people come up with these proviamo “innovations”, or just hacks, really. Interventions, you might call them. And I have to judge them and decide whether to show them to the Turinese public, right? So in order to do that, I have to have an aesthetic, and I have to have some idea of what’s worth showing to the public. I mean, we’re publicly funded art fair, you know—it’s my job, really. And so I do a lot of writing for this festival; I write all our pamphlets, do a lot of basically behind-the-scenes art-world politics.

But, you know, I found that this suits me—I find it less tiresome than actually going out and doing futurism for people and getting paid for it. I mean, that situation, which I’ve done a lot, it is like politics, but it’s also kind of psychoanalytic; you’re dealing with people who are in trouble, and you’re trying to sort of gently bend their worldview so they could see some way out of their difficulty. Whereas something like brandishing a Leatherman Free multi-tool on an Italian actually gets to the point, and it stays in his pocket when you leave the room….

(3) SPIRIT OF THE SEASON. “Deadpool & Kidpool Return For DC-Baiting Christmas Promo & They Really Want You To Cost Ryan Reynolds $500k” says ScreenRant.

… Ryan Reynolds has shared a new holiday video in support of the SickKids Foundation, this time appearing as Deadpool alongside Kidpool and Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter to ask for donations for The Hospital for Sick Children. Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, will match all donations up to $500,000 made before midnight on December 24th….

… Due to the characters’ R-rated nature, Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter comes in. Plenty of hilarious DC references follow, including nods to Henry Cavill, Batman, Wonder Woman’s classic costume change by spinning, and more….

(4) GAMERGATE LITIGATION. “‘GamerGate’ lawsuit between video game reviewers hits Brooklyn court” reports the Brooklyn Eagle.

An online battle over video game reporting entered the real world on Wednesday, after one well-known reviewer filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York against a rival, accusing him of orchestrating a harassment campaign that led to her losing her job.

Brooklyn writer Alyssa Mercante, formerly a senior editor at the game review website Kotaku, is seeking damages from California YouTuber Jeff “SmashJT” Tarzia, alleging that Tarzia created hundreds of false and inflammatory posts and videos designed to provoke hate towards Mercante and Kotaku.

Screenshots in Mercante’s lawsuit purport to show Tarzia making comments like “How many times do I need to teach these crazy bitches this lesson?” Other allegations include that Tarzia falsely stated Mercante engaged in prostitution, a crime in New York, and that Tarzia helped to accuse Mercante of antisemitism – a charge that ended with her compelled resignation.

Mercante also seeks to have the court recognize “stochastic terrorism” as a new residual liability tort, defined in the suit as a pattern of escalating harassment. A court in Washington has previously recognized this tort, according to the suit.

Tarzia, in response, is fundraising for a legal defense, and claims Mercante is attempting to silence him through the suit. “Mercante has retained activist lawyers with a clear agenda to bring this ridiculous case against me, and the video game industry to it’s [sic] knees […] This case isn’t just about me. It’s about all gamers,” Tarzia wrote in a post on the conservative crowdfunding website GiveSendGo.

The feud stems from the “GamerGate” controversy, a long-running and vicious online debate – linked to the rise of the alt-right – over the politics of video games. Self-identified GamerGate supporters, including Tarzia, accuse developers and journalists of left-wing bias and favoritism. Opponents, meanwhile, including Mercante, say that those supporters are in reality an organized hate mob, focusing primarily on targeting women and seeking to punish opponents for their political views. Mercante’s former employer, Kotaku, has long been a lightning rod for this debate. The suit claims Tarzia’s campaign began following the site’s publication of an article by Mercante on a popular conspiracy theory.

The suit also touches on the separate, and equally loaded, internet battle over the game streaming website Twitch and the war between Israel and Hamas, in which several observers, including U.S. Rep. Richie Torres, have accused the site of platforming antisemitic creators. Mercante has been previously accused of antisemitism in connection to Twitch, centered around her positive coverage of controversial streamer Hasan Piker and an alleged retweeting of an X post skeptical of reports of rape occurring during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year. According to Mercante, Tarzia’s amplification of the antisemitism claim led to multiple individuals contacting Kotaku’s owners with these accusations, resulting in parent company G/O Media pressuring her to resign.

Mercante is seeking a jury trial in the suit, as well as damages in excess of $75,000.

(5) SCI-FI LONDON IS BACK! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Good news for SF film lovers in Brit-Cit…If Glasgow’s programme of wall-to-wall panels and sparse film stream (it was the first British-hosted Worldcon not have any film screenings) failed to hearten, then fret not, the Sci-Fi London film fest is back!  (Sci-Fi London were the people who co-organised (with the British Film Institute) the Loncon 3 film programme.)

This year’s (2024) event was greatly slimmed-down to a single day of short films, nonetheless some great stuff was in there. The reduction came about due to a cinema chain deciding to close the Stratford community cinema that had been SFL’s home.  However, the latest news is that in 2025 there will be a four-day fest just outside of central London in Finsbury Park around the corner (literally) from its rail and tube/metro station.

As usual, the Fest firmly focuses on screenings with many of the feature films having their first British airing and, if true to form, there should be a few World premieres in the mix.  There will also be some two-hour short SF film sessions and the results of the 48-hour film challenge.  This last takes place earlier in the year in which amateur film makers are given a couple of lines of dialogue and a prop to include and then just two days in which to turn in a film…  One Gareth (The Creator; Star Wars: Rogue One) Edwards was a past SFL 48-hour challenge winner.  The Fest itself sees the short-list screened and winner announced.

If it the same as previous years, then you pay for each film you see but if you are seeing more than several it may be cheaper to get an all-Festival pass.

For those coming from afar wishing to attend, there are nearby hotels including some mid-range budget hotels such as the local Travelodge which provides a good base for central London tourism.

More details as and when on sci-fi-london.com. The dates are June 19-22, 2025. The venue is the Picturehouse Cinema, Finsbury Park.

Stand-by for action. Anything can happen in these four days…

(6) CINEMA TOOTHSOME. In “Jumping the Shark, Part II” at Black Gate, Neil Baker continues to wonder why these movies bite.

…A new watch-a-thon, this one based on a handful of the 500+ shark movies that I haven’t seen (or gave up on). I’m not holding out much hope for these – shark movies are, on the whole, awful, but I know for a fact that some of these are among the worst films ever made. This 20-film marathon is me just trying to understand why they get made, bought and streamed….

Here’s one of his subjects:

Shark Exorcist (2014) Tubi

What kind of shark? A rubbish CG chonk and some possessed ladies.

How deep is the plot? The depth of a small pail.

Anyone famous get eaten? Nope.

Just going by the title, you know this going to be rubbish, but what KIND of rubbish? Actually, this is a step up from the usual rubbish.

Normally, a film with this premise, shot on a camcorder, with acting that ranges from earnest to ironing board, would be acutely aware of their own daftness, and play it for laughs. But Shark Exorcist, bless it, takes itself seriously, and it’s not a hateful experience. I’m not recommending it, but I’m also not tracking down every last copy with a hammer.

3/10

(7) GARNER AT 90. [Item by Steven French.] Interesting interview with Alan Garner, author of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (among other wonderful works): “’It can feel quite mysterious’: Alan Garner on writing, folklore and experiencing time slips in the Pennines” in the Guardian.

His novels have always channelled ideas about time and quantum reality, and he is keen to elide distinctions between art and science: working with Jodrell Bank on what he calls “Operation Melting Snow”, and today describing maths as philosophy, philosophy as a game, creativity as play. What Garner knows for sure is that “I don’t write set books. I keep coming back to the distinction between mysterious, which is OK, and mystical, which is not OK. The thing that ties all creativity together is not something that universities should analyse, but people should just accept as wonder.”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

December 14, 1978 — Superman the Movie

By Paul Weimer: I had heard about Superman the Movie which premiered on this date before I ever saw it, and the first time I saw it was on television in a network television cut. Even then, DC characters were never my primary comic interest, that was marvel. But when Christopher Reeve came on screen, he became Superman for me, in a way that blew away, I must admit, the black and white Superman 1950’s series episodes I had seen. Even with all of the Supermen since, he still is my default mental image. 

And to this day Reeve is still Superman for me. It’s the acting, really in the movie. Sure, on the face of it, everyone should recognize Clark Kent as Superman, or so you’d think. But Reeve’s…call it full body performance as Kent and as Superman are so completely different, so completely alien to each other, that you can watch both people and not believe they were remotely the same person. (Just watch Kent and his body language in the newsroom versus any of the Superman scenes. It’s night and day and it’s a testament to Reeve’s skill as an actor. 

And then there is Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. She is Lois Lane, and I will not be taking any other questions at this time. She does the body language thing as well–compare Lane doing her job versus when she is with Superman. It’s more subtle but it is surely there. 

And then there is Lex Luthor as played by Gene Hackman. He is the Luthor that for years was the Luthor that others reacted to. He brings his A-game to this role, and is every inch Reeve’s equal. It’s kind of amazing to have a supergenius Lex Luthor to be so pedestrian, like the worst used car salesman on the planet, but with enormous resources.  But claiming that version of Luthor himself resulted, as I say, in having everyone else react to that portrayal, which just highlights his portrayal all the more.

And yes, the time travel bit of Superman is absolutely nonsense. I can forgive the movie for it. A movie that has Marlon Brando, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, and Christopher Reeve can be forgiven that misstep.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

My cartoon for this weekend’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2024-12-14T15:17:18.564Z

(10) MICAELA ALCAINO Q&A. At Axios, “Illustrator Micaela Alcaino says it’s OK to judge a book by its cover”.

What they’re saying: “When you go into a bookshop, you do pick up books that you like the look of … there’s power behind good cover design because it will draw people in before even the blurb,” Alcaino tells Axios Latino.

“So please, judge away,” she jokes.

State of play: Alcaino has come up with covers for popular authors like Isabel Allende and Jennifer Saint, and she has also done special editions of massive series, like George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire,” and collectible editions of Leigh Bardugo’s “Six of Crows” duology.

 She was a finalist for Best Professional Artist at the 2024 Hugo Awards, and was shortlisted for Designer of the Year at the British Book Awards after having already won the latter in 2022….

(11) BEST SCIENCE PICS OF THE YEAR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Nature has just posted its science pics of the year.  In the mix: the Etna volcano blowing rings; a Pratchett-like turtle but instead of carrying the world….; a neat picture of Jupiter taken by the Juno probe; meteors over Stonehenge; and Jaws…

These pics will appear in Nature’s double Christmas edition on Thursday December 19.  Apparently, in that edition the correspondence page features a letter from one wag known to Filers… 😉 [Click for larger images.]

(12) PERSEVERANCE CLIMB. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Perseverance has just climbed 500 metres out of Jezero Crater on Mars reaching the top on 11th Dec to get quite a view. See video below. “Perseverance Rover Panorama of Mars’ Jezero Crater”.

Travel along a steep slope up to the rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater in this panoramic image captured by NASA’s Perseverance just days before the rover reached the top. The scene shows just how steep some of the slopes leading to the crater rim can be.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. A multiplied Muppet performs “Ode To Joy”. Now we know why Beethoven didn’t score it for electrical instruments.

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, David Langford, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 10/5/24 O Quam Tu Pixel Es

Posted on by
23

(1) GERMAN TOLKIEN SOCIETY EVENT. The twentieth seminar of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft e.V.) will be a hybrid event. Full details at the link. “Tolkien and His Editors – Tolkien Seminar 2024”

It is not only in Aachen that the 20th Seminar of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft e.V. will take place from 11 to 13 October. You can also follow the conference worldwide via the internet from Friday at 2pm. Listeners and participants can look forward to numerous exciting lectures on this year’s theme “Tolkien and His Editors” by speakers from all over the world….

(2) THE RICHES OF HORROR WRITING? [Item by Michael J. Walsh.] Out of curiosity I looked at the Stokercon2025 hotel rates.  Oh my. $474 a night! (Or more.)

(3) RED DWARF TRIVIA. “Roll up, smegheads! It’s the ultimate Red Dwarf quiz”. The Guardian challenges the show’s fans: “From hologram destruction techniques to the very point of existence itself: how good is your knowledge of the sci-fi comedy classic?”

(4) ANSIBLE EDITIONS. [Item by David Langford.] The Frank Arnold Papers (edited by Rob Hansen), collecting the mostly unpublished essays and reviews of that old-time UK fan, came out as a TAFF ebook in 2017 with a brief introduction by Michael Moorcock. We’ve since unearthed more material, both published and unpublished, that expands the ebook by about a third to 58,000 words. That seemed to be the cue for a first ever paperback edition, which like the revised ebook was officially released October 1.

Frank Arnold was a long-time regular of the London First Thursday science-fiction pub meetings from their beginning in the 1940s until his death in 1987, and kept the famous Visitors’ Book. He had been active in British SF fandom since the very early days of the 1930s. Although he published one SF collection, a handful of articles and several book reviews, most of his nonfiction never appeared in print.

Cover photo, left to right: Ted Carnell, Ted Tubb, and Frank Arnold at the 1952 London convention. Photo from the Vince Clarke collection.

(5) CLI-FI COLLECTION. Grist’s second anthology of climate fiction short stories is being published soon. Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future includes 12 stories from Grist’s recent Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contests. For the first time in book form, you can read these narratives of hope, abundance, solutions, and community resilience for a better future. 

Metamorphosis is available for pre-order right now at the link. It arrives in bookstores October 22.

(6) THE QUALITY OF DISTORTION IS NOT STRAINED. [Item by Steven French.] In this physics-based critique of Constellation and Dark Matter, Robert P Crease and Jennifer Carter pose a crucial question. “Constellation and Dark Matter: the TV series that could change your view of quantum mechanics” at Physics World.

…So are fictional works based on quantum-travel-between-worlds just examples of “harmlessly enabling distortion” (HED, done for a good purpose)? Or should we think of them as examples of “fake artistic distortion” (FAD, done for special effects without caring how science works)? It’s an interesting question especially for philosophers, who have long worried about art having to appeal to its audience’s “sense” of reality, and its tendency to reinforce that sense despite its distortions.

In a similar way, the appeal of TV series based on many-worlds interpretations depends on how agreeably and acceptably they manipulate popular preconceptions about quantum mechanics, such as about time travel, alternate worlds, the reality of superposition, and – most of all – the illusion that the fundamental structure of the world is up to us.

But wouldn’t it be more artistic to portray a universe where quantum systems are what they are – in some cases coherent systems that can decohere, but not via thought control (as in Dark Matter)? If we did that, then artists could speculate about what it’d be like to meet and even trade places with other selves without introducing fake scientific justifications. We could then try to understand if and why we would want or benefit from such identity-swapping, on both a physical and emotional level.

That might really shatter and reconfigure what it means to be human…

(7) YOU’VE SEEN IT. Most likely. “A 400-Acre Movie Ranch Outside Los Angeles Is Listed for $35 Million” – in the New York Times (behind a paywall.)  “Sable Ranch, about 30 miles north of Hollywood, includes an Old West movie set. It has been used for productions like ‘American Horror Story’ and ‘Oppenheimer’.”

When Frank Vacek arrived at Sable Ranch in the 1970s, with its chaparral-covered hills bounded by the mountains of the Angeles National Forest, he instantly saw a California dream.

Mr. Vacek, who with his wife had fled the Nazis in Czechoslovakia three decades earlier, rewrote his fortunes by opening a successful camera shop in downtown Los Angeles in the 1950s. But 30 miles north at Sable Ranch, where cattle grazed amid oak trees, he pictured an even grander second act for his life. He bought the ranch and the property next to it and built an Old West movie set on its land, bringing Hollywood — with its gun shows, cowboys and insatiable appetite for entertainment — to his doorstep.

… In recent years, the ranch has hosted “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Criminal Minds” and “24.” After crews from “Fear Factor” used the ranch in 2001, they returned in 2007 to make another game show, “Wipeout,” where contestants compete in an obstacle course with large pools. So Mr. Hunt built water tanks that could each hold millions of gallons of water — an amenity that attracted Billie Eilish to the ranch in 2021, when she was scouting locations for her underwater music video for “Happier Than Ever.”

“You feel the Hollywood legacy when you’re on the property,” said Aaron Kirman of Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California, who alongside Sam Glendon of CBRE is representing Mr. Hunt in the sale…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 5, 1971 – Paul Weimer, 53. Although he has a few short stories to his credit, Paul Weimer is far better known in science fiction reviewing and criticism circles. Having gotten his real start at places like The Functional Nerds and SF Signal, Paul has, and continues to write, for a number of venues and publications across the internet, from traditional fanzines to guest posts on blogs, and always, always telling people that pre-orders are love. 

Paul had a minor but notable role in the Sad and Rabid Puppies Debarkle (h/t Camestros Felapton), showing up on podcasts and blogs, trying in vain to bridge divides and see multiple viewpoints. 

In addition to writing, Paul is a member of the Hugo finalist Skiffy and Fanty podcast, and has shown up on a wide range of other SFF podcasts as a guest. He also has been playing and running TTRPGs, including Play by Email ones, for decades. 

Paul is known in SFF circles, too, as an enthusiastic amateur photographer who is likely to show up at your con with his camera in tow. At the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, he was a member of the convention’s official Photography Team. As a DUFF Delegate in 2017, he traveled to the Australian and New Zealand Natcons in 2017, and his trip report “What I did on my Summer Vacation” holds the record for most photos in a published Fan Fund report.

After the unpleasantness of being one of the Chengdu Worldcon Ineligibles, Paul won two Hugos at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, for Best Fan Writer, and as part of the team of the Best Fanzine Winner, Nerds of a Feather. He also won an Ignyte award for Best Critics as part of the Nerds of a Feather team.

But he’s really just this guy, you know?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) DEBATE OVERFLOW. Most of you will get it.

(11) TODAY’S THING TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT. Deadline reports “Jim Henson Company Lot On La Brea Not Being Sold To Scientology, Owners Say; “Not In Any Business Dealings With The Church,” Family Declares”.

… Despite reports in the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post and other outlets that the Henson family was unloading the 1917 lot originally known as the Charlie Chaplin Studios, the estate was very specific today that the lot would not be joining Scientology‘s extensive real estate portfolio any time soon

A spokesperson for the Jim Henson family said: “In regards to recent rumors about the sale of the La Brea studio lot, the Henson family is not in any business dealings with the Church of Scientology, and that organization is not in consideration as a potential buyer of the property. It is still the family’s intention to move The Jim Henson Company to a new location it can share with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, but at this time the family is not in escrow with any buyer.”…

(12) PRACTICALLY NEIGHBORS. “Scientists find astonishing planet near to Earth” reports The Independent.

A planet has been found around the closest single star to us.

The planet orbits around Barnard’s star and has been given the name Barnard b. It could be one of a number of planets waiting to be found around that nearby sun.

It was spotted using the the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT).

The newly-discovered planet – called Barnard b – has at least half the mass of Venus and on it a year lasts slightly more than three Earth days.

The findings also suggest there may be three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.

(13) WALKING BACK NEGATIVE TIME. Sabine Hassenfelder demurs from what the clickbait press is saying in “Negative Time is Real, Physicists Confirm. Kind Of.” “Well first of all, this negative time has nothing to do with passage of time. It’s just a way to speak about how a bunch of photons travel through a medium and how their phases shift.”

In a new paper, a group of physicists claims to have confirmed the existence of “negative time.” I had never heard of this, but I had a look at the paper. And I think I have figured it out.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Patrick McGuire, Michael J. Walsh, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Robin Anne Reid, Dann, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 8/9/24 Not Pixels, Nor Mandragora, Nor All The Drowsy Syrups Of The World

Posted on by
16

(0) …Shall Ever Medicine Thee To That Sweet Sleep Which Thou Scrolledst Yesterday

(If I make the headline too long, Jetpack definitely won’t send a subscriber notice. It may be too long as it is! But what a wonderful title.)

(1) FILE 770 MEETUP AT GLASGOW ON SUNDAY. Cora Buhlert on her first day at the Worldcon met several Filers — Chris Barkley, Christian Brunschen, Ingvar, Standback a.k.a. Ziv, but thinks it would be great to have a semi-official Filer meet-up in Glasgow.

Cora proposes that Filers meet her on Sunday at 3:00 p.m.at the free library in Hall 4 and then find someplace to sit down. There are several tables and chairs in the area.

Please take pictures!

(2) SEATTLE 2025 MEMBERSHIP SALE. Through Monday the Seattle 2025 Worldcon is giving a $10 discount on memberships. The deal was announced on Facebook.

In honor of Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures, we have a $10 membership discount that is good from today (Thursday) through Monday!

Go to https://reg.seattlein2025.org/ and click on “Add New Registration”. After you fill out the information, go to “Review and Pay”. Next to “Total Cost”, you will see a button marked “Add Coupon”. Click on it and enter “Glasgow” in the text box.

You’ll go back to “Review and Pay” and the total cost will be adjusted.

(3) WHERE’S WALDO DAVE? Dave McCarty is in Glasgow…somewhere… despite not being allowed to attend Glasgow 2024.

(4) CROATIA’S GIFT. The SFera Science Fiction Society of Zagreb, Croatia has produced an issue of its fanzine Parsek to commemorate there being a Worldcon in Europe. Download Parsek here.

This issue was edited by Emanuel Ježić-Hammer, Jelena Janjić, Vedran Ilic-Dreven and Mila.

In this issue we present a story from the most recent fantasy collection Project Tulip, and two winners of the SPera Prize for Story, from 2019. in 2024 Here’s a review of events on the local SF scene since 2009. years (there we stopped in one of the older numbers), and one film, to show the Americans and English that we also have power armour for the race. Reports and gossip from Glasgow and Rotterdam caught in one of the following issues!

(5) SUPPORT FAN FUND AUCTIONS AT WORLDCON. Courtesy of David Langford, here are the catalogues for two fan fund auctions being held at Glasgow 2024. In person and online bidding is available. One auction is Saturday evening local time, and the other closes on Sunday. The catalogs tell how to bid online.

(6) SAYONARA. [Item by Dave Doering.] After almost 20 years as an institution in fan events in Utah, Anime Banzai abruptly announced it closing down less than two months before its October edition: See their home page, the only heads up on the cancellation: Anime Banzai – Utah’s Premier Anime Convention.

Anime Banzai family

Utah Anime Promotions has been considering the fate of Anime Banzai 2024 after the convention meeting held on 4 Aug (including the harsh realities that shutting down an event like this entail), but events have outpaced that consideration. The problems are too deep to address long term, and while we had hoped to patch things up internally to still successfully run Anime Banzai 2024 as a farewell for attendees and staff, that is no longer possible.

I would like to deeply apologize directly to Artemis and Warky who were spoken of in this meeting, and clearly state that Utah Anime Promotions vehemently rejects all negative claims made against either. The Board has been in communication with you both since then to discuss the situation, and would like to thank that both of you have continued to express a hope that Anime Banzai 2024 could be provided for attendees, even under these circumstances. Hope can be a hard choice to make, and I regret that we won’t be able to assist with that.

Anime Banzai has always operated on a shoe-string budget, with funds diverted back into running each next event and the expenses that lead up to it. Without a convention in Oct where most of the convention funds are generated, we’re honestly not sure what it will look like to take care of outstanding expenses including pre-registration, vendors, etc. While we’re not sure what this path will look like, we will do our best to make things right.

Utah Anime Promotions has let the community down by not being attentive enough to the signs that manifested over time. As years continued, patterns of complacency and detachment grew. Some members of staff pointed this out over time; I’m sorry we didn’t pay better attention.

We have had many great people involved with Anime Banzai over time; inspiring experiences with energetic guests, panelists eager to share their passions with attendees, cosplayers sharing their delight for costuming and embodying characters they love, editors marrying audio and visual for anime music videos, and staff and volunteers who have worked long and hard hours to help things going. Thank you for the uplifting joy, and I hope people can hold on to more of those positive experiences than be burdened by the negative.

This convention was started by a local group of friends, who had the idea of “How hard would it be to start a convention ourselves?” while on a road trip back from a convention in a nearby state. Anime Banzai grew from that seed with the enthusiasm and joy from the community. As Anime Banzai shuts down, I hope that anime fans in Utah can continue that positive spirit. You have been the best part of Anime Banzai; always remember that, and you can continue to be better, shine brighter, day to day.

Utah Anime Promotions: Steven Jones, Daniel Bentley

They say when refunds will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) MORE LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF: BRANDON SANDERSON, OCTAVIA BUTLER, STUDIO GHIBLI, SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY. [Item by David Goldfarb.] We’re in the middle of what’s called the “off-season” in LearnedLeague, when in between regular seasons we have specialty quizzes for one day, and “mini-Leagues” that are more topic-oriented and go for 12 days.

Yesterday we had a One-Day Special about Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Follow the link for the questions, but be warned that they are for serious Sanderson fans. I’ve read every book published in the Cosmere (and a couple that haven’t!) and I got only 8/12. At 56 I don’t have the memory for small details that I used to.

In day 10 of the just-concluded California mini-league (technically “California 2” because there was a previous one on the same topic back in 2007), we had this question:

Give the title of the prescient 1993 dystopian novel by Pasadena-born Octavia E. Butler that has as its protagonist Lauren Olamina, a young woman who creates a religion called Earthseed in a speculative 2024 California, ravaged by climate change and social inequality.

This had a 33% get rate, with no single wrong answer getting to the 5% threshold to be shown.

Filers might also find of interest 1DS’s about Studio Ghibli (the animation studio behind Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Howl’s Moving Castle, among many others) and Speculative Biology (based on books such as Dougal Dixon’s After Man, taking a look at how life on Earth might evolve in the future if humanity were to vanish).

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman keeps the wheel turning even while he’s away at the Worldcon, inviting listeners to breakfast with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam in Episode 232 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of the horror novel Grim Root, which was officially released two days after our chat. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in over 90 publications, such as Popular Science, Lightspeed, and LeVar Burton Reads. Her short story collection Where You Linger & Other Stories and her horror novella Glorious Fiends were both published in 2022.. She’s a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award. By day, she works as a Narrative Designer writing games for a mobile game company. 

We discussed how her new horror novel toys with the tropes of reality TV, the importance of balancing multiple POVs in a novel to keep them all equally interesting, our differing views on the revision process, the three years she spent writing 1,000 words per day (and why she stopped), the message she took from her two Nebula nominations, the importance of community, what she learned about herself by rereading her short stories to assemble a collection, why we both believe in ambiguous endings, and much more.

(10) SUPES ON! [Item by Daniel Dern.] Some Dern current recommendations on TV/streamers:

(a) The Umbrella Academy is re-opened for business: Season 4, the six-episode final season of The Umbrella Academy, dropped on Netflix on Thursday, August 8, 2024. Having so far watched Episode 1, I’m in.

Here’s an article that includes the S4 teaser trailer and other information (I can’t tell if there’s any spoilers but I’ll guess there aren’t.) “’The Umbrella Academy’ Season 4: Cast, Release Date, Teaser Trailer, Character Posters, Script Page, Photos” at Netflix Tudum.

And here’s the amazing Footloose Dance-Off! segment from Season 3, which I don’t think is in any way a spoiler (btw, there’s a nice short making-of documentary somewhere online):

(b) Orphan Black: Echoes (on Prime Video/AMC, Apple+, etc), starring Krysten Ritter (previously in, among other things, Marvel’s Jessica Jones series). This is a 37-years-later (in the show timelines, set in 2052) follow-up to Orphan Black (which starred Tatiana Maslany (who was on the recent HBO/MAX Perry Mason, and was Jennifer Walters in the (great) Marvel TV series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law).

We’re 7 episodes in, and we’re enjoying it. (I’m sure it makes more sense if you’ve seen Orphan Black; since we’ve seen Orphan Black, I can’t speak to that.)

(c) Season 5 of The Boys (over on Amazon) was, unsurprisingly, good. (Met expectations on the lotta violence, cussing, sex, violence, drugs, politics — note, this was all written and filmed several years ago — more violence and cussing, and great acting.)

‘Nuff Scrolled! (or Itemized!)

(11) YOUR MILEAGE PHONING HOME MAY VARY. [Item by Steven French.] Not every child thought ET was cute: “’Sobbing in the aisles’: writers on their most memorable parent-kid film experiences”.

ET: adorable interstellar tyke or nightmarish space demon? As a four-year-old in a multiplex in Aberystwyth, west Wales, I was in the latter camp. From the moment he scuttled out of an eldritch mist like the Demogorgon’s weirdo little cousin, my blood curdled. There were tears, almost instantly. What was this monster? This boggle-eyed gonad? This sentient hammer wrapped in flayed human flesh? And other questions I wouldn’t have had the vocab to ask.

The final straw came when he terrified a tiny Drew Barrymore almost as much as the prospect of runninga talkshow during Writers Guild strikes. I was whisked into an empty lobby, where my mum tried soothing me.

She possibly pointed out that my two-year-old sister was such a fan of ET that every off-camera moment left her yelling: “Where TV?” I forget the exact details – all I remember is the sweet relief of being nowhere near the cinema screen. We left shortly after – not quite the pleasant Welsh holiday movie jaunt my parents had hoped for….

(12) BY ALL THAT’S HOLY. [Item by Steven French.] Good beginning! “No god in the machine: the pitfalls of AI worship” as assessed in the Guardian.

In Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Nine Billion Names of God, a sect of monks in Tibet believes humanity has a divinely inspired purpose: inscribing all the various names of God. Once the list was complete, they thought, he would bring the universe to an end. Having worked at it by hand for centuries, the monks decide to employ some modern technology. Two sceptical engineers arrive in the Himalayas, powerful computers in tow. Instead of 15,000 years to write out all the permutations of God’s name, the job gets done in three months. As the engineers ride ponies down the mountainside, Clarke’s tale ends with one of literature’s most economical final lines: “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

It is an image of the computer as a shortcut to objectivity or ultimate meaning – which also happens to be, at least part of, what now animates the fascination with artificial intelligence. Though the technologies that underpin AI have existed for some time, it’s only since late 2022, with the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, that the technology that approached intelligence appeared to be much closer. In a 2023 report by Microsoft Canada, president Chris Barry proclaimed that “the era of AI is here, ushering in a transformative wave with potential to touch every facet of our lives”, and that “it is not just a technological advancement; it is a societal shift”. That is among the more level-headed reactions. Artists and writers are panicking that they will be made obsolete, governments are scrambling to catch up and regulate, and academics are debating furiously….

(13) ROUGH START AT BIG FINISH. Big Finish, known for its Doctor Who audio adventures (among other things), has experienced problems with its systems upgrades. The chairman has apologized: “A personal message from Big Finish chairman, Jason Haigh-Ellery”.

Over the past 18 months, Big Finish has undergone a transformational change. We have introduced several new systems which control the essential business functions of Big Finish.

These systems, which include stock control, dispatch and shipping tracking, payment gateways and accounting, email and customer service tools, replaced older software that had reached the end of its life.

They were vital upgrades, needed to ensure that we could continue to fulfil orders to our customers, and all the new “behind the scenes” systems have been tested for many months and are working seamlessly. 

The final action of this transformation was the rolling out of our new “shop front”, the Big Finish website and app. 

Unfortunately, it is very clear that here a number of mistakes have been made. In particular, the migration of customer data has not gone as planned, and the browsing experience of the website and app is proving to be a frustration. I sincerely apologise to everyone who has encountered difficulties accessing their purchase library since the relaunch, or who feels let down by how we have managed the process.

I know from seeing the many messages coming in via email and social media that these updates are a cause of worry and concern to many listeners. I would like to reassure each and every customer that no purchases will be lost, all the data is safe, and we are committed to improve the functionality, accessibility and reliability of the website, whatever it takes.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to do so, I would urge you to read the new “How tos” page which explains how to reset your password and update address information the first time you visit the site. We could not carry across any of these details in the upgrade due to the requirements of data protection law. It is not possible to browse your purchased items or order new releases without completing these steps.

The team will keep updating the “Work in progress” page with known issues and our timetable for improvements. As you might imagine, the Big Finish customer service team is currently inundated with messages but they will do their best to answer all queries. I thank you in advance for your patience, understanding and loyalty, and for sticking with us during this difficult period.

Finally, please let me just restate how deeply sorry I am for the inconvenience so many of our loyal listeners are experiencing at the moment. I completely recognise the very valid frustrations being expressed and I hope that you can bear with us as we try our utmost to find the best solution to bring you the best website and app experience at Big Finish. 

(14) D&D GOES POSTAL. The Dungeons & Dragons stamp issue that USPS announced last November was released August 1. “Dungeons & Dragons Stamps | USPS.com”.

(15) SKILL TREE EPISODE: SIGNS OF THE SOJOURNER. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has released another episode of CSI Skill Tree, their series examining how video games envision possible futures and build thought-provoking worlds. In this episode, they discuss “Signs of the Sojourner”, a deckbuilding game set in a hazily sketched post-crash version of the southwestern U.S. that explores themes of community resilience, trust, and the dynamics of conversation.

The guests are Leigh Alexander, a speculative fiction author, critic, and narrative designer for video games including Reigns: Game of Thrones and Neo Cab, and Mia Armstrong-López, a journalist and editor working on issues of science, health, and justice, and managing editor for our Future Tense Fiction series.

 Also, here’s a YouTube playlist with all 16 of Skill Tree episodes thus far.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Dave Doering, David Langford, Scott Edelman, Joey Eschrich, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

First Fandom Awards Given at Glasgow 2024 Opening Ceremonies

Posted on by
16

The recipients of seven First Fandom awards were announced during opening ceremonies of the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon on August 8. Emcee Vincent Docherty named the winners of the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, the Posthumous Hall of Fame Award, and the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award.

FIRST FANDOM HALL OF FAME. This prestigious achievement award has been presented annually since 1963 to a living recipient who has made significant contributions to Science Fiction during their lifetime.  This year, the members of First Fandom have elected Mary & Bill Burns, and David Langford to the First Fandom Hall of Fame for 2024.

POSTHUMOUS HALL OF FAME AWARD. This esteemed award (est. 1994) was created by First Fandom to acknowledge people who should have but did not receive deserved recognition during their lifetime.  This year, the members of First Fandom have inducted Alfred Bester, Michael David Glicksohn, Mike Resnick, and Peter Weston to the First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame for 2024.

SAM MOSKOWITZ ARCHIVE AWARD (“for attaining excellence in Collecting”). This notable award (created in 1998) recognizes not only an impressive collection but what actually has been done with it.  Previous award recipients have published articles and books, made collections available for public viewing, loaned items for other projects, and donated material to be preserved for future generations.  This year, the members of First Fandom have chosen Joe Siclari & Edie Stern as the recipients of the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award for 2024 in recognition of a lifetime of service to science fiction fandom.  

FIRST FANDOM HALL OF FAME

Mary & Bill Burns

Bill and Mary Burns in 2009.

In 1967, British fan Bill Burns and American fan Mary Ensley were both at the NyCon3 Worldcon, but they didn’t meet there.  It wasn’t until three years later that they met in London, where Mary was en route to the 1970 Worldcon in Heidelberg and Bill was working at the BBC.  Bill decided it would be a good idea to attend the Worldcon, and after the couple spent time together at Heidelberg, a long-distance relationship ensued.

Mary imported Bill to New York in June 1971 and the pair were married in late August that year.  They spent part of their honeymoon at the first Boston Worldcon, Noreascon 1, and have been attending conventions together ever since.  They visit the UK around Easter every year and have attended 110 Eastercons between them, as well as many Worldcons.

In 2009 Mary and Bill were joint Fan Guests of Honour at Eastercon LX in Bradford, and they received the same honor at Dublin in 2019, the first Irish Worldcon and the couple’s first-ever convention in Ireland.

Mary is U.S. Marine Corps veteran.  Mary ran the art show at Eastercon for years and then was responsible for on-site registration.  Bill founded www.eFanzines.com in 2000 to “help traditional fanzine publishers make the transition to on-line publication” and he was the recipient of the Doc Weir Award in 2003.

Bill and Mary Burns in 2019. Photo by Rich Lynch.

Bill Burns writes:

Mary and I are surprised and delighted by your announcement!  Having become involved in fandom in the 1960s (1964 in England for me and 1967 in the USA for Mary), we met a good number of the founding members of First Fandom, so it is indeed an honor to be added to the Hall of Fame.

Mary & Bill Burns accepted their award in person.

David Langford

David Langford in 2014.

David Langford, active in British Fandom since the 1970s is best known as a writer, editor and critic who publishes the newszine Ansible.

Over the years, he has worked on many convention committees and their publications, and has often served as Fan GoH.  He was the TAFF delegate in 1980, traveling to Noreascon Two, writing The Transatlantic Hearing Aid (1985) as his trip report.  The Auld Lang Fund was organized to bring him to Aussiecon Three (1999).  He won the 2002 Skylark Award. 

Langford runs Ansible Editions, a small press that publishes both fanand pro material; fan publications include a number of free ebooks from the TAFF website, which he maintains.

As a fan writer, he has received 21 Best Fan Writer Hugo Awards.  Ansible has received 6 Hugo Awards.  He was proof-reader and copy editor for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and received the FAAn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.    (From Fancyclopedia)

David Langford

Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer, who are Fan GoHs at this year’s Worldcon, delivered David Langford’s remarks and accepted the award on his behalf during the Opening Ceremony.

POSTHUMOUS HALL OF FAME

This esteemed award was created in 1994 to acknowledge those people in Science Fiction who should have but did not receive deserved recognition during their lifetime.

This year, members of First Fandom inducted four people into the Posthumous Hall of Fame: Alfred Bester, Michael David Glicksohn, Mike Resnick, and Peter Weston.

Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester (1913-1987) was a science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor, and scriptwriter for comics. He is best remembered for his novels The Demolished Man (winner of the inaugural Hugo Award in 1953), and The Stars My Destination (1956).

In the late-1930s, Bester met literary agent Julius Schwartz, who agreed to represent him.  After Schwartz moved to DC Comics in the early-1940s, he convinced Bester to become a writer of comics.  Bester worked on various titles, including Green Lantern (he is credited with writing the modern Green Lantern oath.) During WWII, he was also the writer for The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. 

In the mid-1940s, Bester wrote radio scripts, including Nick Carter, The Shadow, and others, and began writing for television.  Years later, he wrote travel articles for mainstream magazine Holiday, eventually becoming a senior editor.

He was unable to attend the 1987 Worldcon as GoH, so Julius Schwartz delivered his acceptance speech. The Science Fiction Writers of America named Bester its Grand Master in 1988, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001. (From Wikipedia)

Michael David Glicksohn

Glicksohn 1981 Susan Wood Best Fan Writer
Mike Glicksohn accepts Susan Wood’s 1981 Best Fan Writer Hugo, which she won posthumously.

Mike Glicksohn was a Canadian high school math teacher and the co-editor of the science fiction fanzine Energumen which won the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. Glicksohn was nominated for an individual Hugo in 1977.  He was born May 20, 1946, in Ports-mouth, England, and died March 18, 2011, in Toronto, Ontario.  He was a Guest of Honor at Aussiecon 1, the 33rd Worldcon, in 1975. (Excerpted from Wikipedia)

Susan Manchester and Mike Glicksohn

Mike’s widow, Susan Manchester, writes:

Hurray for Mike! He would be so proud of this!  How very wonderful. Just a few words about Mike’s love of fandom. Indeed, he loved fandom.  He found a family there as many others have done.  As I knew little about fandom when we got married, Mike cut down on the number of cons he attended.  I did not ask him to do this.  When he committed to something he truly devoted himself.  He was that kind of person. 

I know he would feel honoured to receive this award.  And he would feel humbled.  I never knew him to gloat over his accomplishments.  To be remembered in this way would mean so much to him. On his behalf, let me offer his heartfelt thanks for this recognition.

On a personal note, Mike was the love of my life and I still have difficulty in the world without him.  He was an amazing human being.  He has been gone 13 years.

Mike Glicksohn and Einstein. Photo by Rich Lynch.
Enjoying a book
Mike Glicksohn at Happy Hour

Chas Baden and Lynn Boston Baden accepted the award on Susan’s behalf.  Chas said:

Thank you!  Lynn and I have been asked by friends of Mike Glicksohn’s to accept this award and bring it to Toronto so it can be presented to Susan Manchester, Mike’s long-time partner and widow.

I did not know Mike, but I have been told this award honors his lifetime of continuous activity as a genuine SF enthusiast.  He had great influence in fanzines, winning the 1973 Hugo for Best Fanzine for an issue of Energumen.  He also had influence in running conventions, poker games, and a legendary, yearly barbecue/birthday party he ran with Mike Harper called Mikecon.

His influence was not only felt in Toronto, but especially across Canada, the US, England, and Australia, who honored him by naming him the Fan GoH at Aussiecon 1, the 33rd Worldcon, in 1975.

He was a beloved mathematics teacher, and had a long teaching career at a local technical school.  He used poker to teach statistics, and also teach the dangers of playing poker with Mike Glicksohn!

I would like to thank John Coker and First Fandom for the honor of accepting this award.

Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick, Chicon 7 (2012) Photo by John L. Coker III.

Mike will be remembered by many in our community for his love of fandom and his service to many of the early fans.

Mike Resnick (1942-2020) was an American writer of SF, fantasy, horror, and mystery.  He was a seasoned editor, newspaper man, columnist, anthologist, and publisher.  He was nominated for 37 Hugo Awards and won five times.  He was nominated eleven times for the Nebula Award, and he won once.  He was the GoH at Chicon 7.  He was executive editor of the magazine Jim Baen’s Universe, and creator and editor of Galaxy’s Edge magazine.  He sold his first piece of writing in 1957, while still in high school.  His work has been translated into dozens of languages. 

Resnick and his wife Carol were participants in SF fandom from 1962.  Carol created cos-tumes in which she and Resnick appeared at five Worldcon masquerades in the 1970s, win-ning four out of five contests.  He wrote more than seventy novels, published twenty-five collections, and edited more than forty anthologies. As of 2012, he had been GoH at more than 40 science fiction cons and toast-master at a dozen others.” (From Wikipedia)

Mike and Carol Resnick. Photo by Ben Jason. Collection of John L. Coker III.

Mike’s daughter Laura Resnick arranged for Chris M. Barkley to deliver the family’s written remarks.  He kindly did so, and accepted the award plaque on their behalf.  Laura requested that this award be dedicated to her mother, Carol.

Here are the family’s acceptance remarks:

The Resnick family thanks First Fandom for this honor, which would have meant so much to Mike. 

Although many readers over the years knew him as a prolific science fiction writer, he always thought of himself first and foremost as a fan.  This community was his home and his family.  He loved fannish culture, conventions, and hanging out late into the night with his fellow fans.  He had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of fannish history and a great affection and respect for First Fandom.

Somewhere out there in the stars, his spirit is still celebrating the sense of wonder that embodied science fiction and fandom for him.  Thank you.

Peter Weston

Peter Weston (1943-2017) is best known for founding the longest-lived fan group in the U.K., chairing the 1979 Worldcon, and editing the Andromeda series of original anthologies. He was Fan GoH at Noreascon 4, in 2004.

During 1963-1976, he published the award-winning, multi-named fanzines Zenith, Zenith- Speculation, and Speculation, getting four Hugo nominations and a Nova Award.

Peter Weston holding up a Hugo rocket, 2004. Photo by Murray Moore.

For years, Peter’s foundry cast the Hugo rockets for the Hugo Awards.

He organized the Speculation Conferences in Birmingham, UK, co-founded and chaired the Birmingham SF Group in 1971, and helped start Novacon later that year. In 2008, he was inducted into the Knights of Saint Fantony.

Peter was a four-time Hugo Award nominee (1965, 1966, 2005, 2010) and five-time Locus Award nominee (1971-74, 1977).  He received the Doc Weir Award (1975), Nova Award (2007), Fellow of NESFA (2010), and a Lifetime Achievement Award at Corflu 32 in 2015. (From Fancyclopedia)

Acceptance Speech for Peter Weston’s Award

Peter’s daughter Alison Weston prepared an acceptance video.  Here is the text:

Peter Weston, 2005. Photo by Bill Burns.

Hello, Glasgow.  Hello, Worldcon members.

Thank you for honoring my dad, Peter Weston, with the First Fandom [Posthumous] Hall of Fame Award.  Science fiction was my dad’s great passion.

Discovering science fiction as a small boy growing up in post-War Birmingham was a revelation.  It created in him a life-long enthusiasm and opened his mind to infinite possibility, what he always referred to as “a sense of wonder.”

That small boy devoured every science fiction book that he could find.  He would hide on other shelves all the science fiction books he could find in the library, so that no one else could take them out while he was reading and returning the measly two books allowed at a time.  So, to all the Birmingham fans of the same vintage, if you wondered why you could never find anything at the library, now you know why.

Science fiction gave my dad many opportunities to do things, to have adventures, from writing his award-winning fanzines, winning the TAFF in the 1970s [1974] and traveling to the US, chairing the Worldcon in Brighton in 1979, right up to being a Hugo Award nominee for the book about his life in fandom that he wrote in his retirement.

Dad had a lot of other hobbies.  He joined other clubs.  He was a busy man.  But, science fiction was his great passion that stayed with him for the whole of his life.  Apart from his family, it was the thing that meant the most to him.

And, in science fiction fandom, my dad found a community, a community of people who shared his interest, who shared his passion, who shared his curiosity for possibilities yet to be conceived; a community based on a sense of wonder, something that he kept for the whole of his life.

It would have meant a great deal to my dad to be honored here today.  It means a great deal to all of us in our family.  We are very proud of him for the wonderful man that he was.

So, on behalf of my mom and the rest of our family, thank you very much for remembering Peter Weston, lifetime science fiction fan, in the First Fandom [Posthumous] Hall of Fame.  Thank you very much and I wish you a very good Convention.

SAM MOSKOWITZ ARCHIVE AWARD (FOR EXCELLENCE IN COLLECTING)

The Sam Moskowitz Archive Award (created in 1998) recognizes not only an impressive collection but also what has been done with it. 

The members of First Fandom have voted to present this year’s Sam Moskowitz Archive Award to the team of Joe Siclari & Edie Stern.

Joe Siclari & Edie Stern

Joe Siclari and Edie Stern

By Jon D. Swartz: Siclari started in science fiction (SF) fandom in 1965 by collecting everything he could find related to SF and fantasy:  books, prozines, fanzines, and other paraphernalia.  By 1966, he was a fanzine fan.

He has been active in running cons, clubs, collecting and preserving SF and fan history.  From Staten Island, he then moved to Florida in the late 1970s.  Around 2000, he moved back to New York State with his wife, Edie Stern.  Joe is president of FANAC, the sponsor of Fanac Fan History Project; The FANAC Fan History Project YouTube Channel; and, the Fan History Zoom Series.

Stern is a well-known SF club, con, collector, and fanzine fan.  She started in fandom in 1970 by subscribing to fanzines she read about in Amazing Stories.  She is a past chair of SFSFS, head of the 1992 Worldcon program division, co-editor of the SFSFS Shuttle, Tails of Fandom, and Shadow of a Fan, among other SF activities. 

Siclari and Stern are also collectors of SF and fantasy art, and have helped create many special art exhibits at Boskone, as well as at several Worldcons and the World Fantasy Conventions during 2014 – 2018. 

Together, Joe and Edie have received many genre awards, including the 2016 Big Heart Award.  They are both Fellows of NESFA and were named Fan GoH at Chicon 8 in 2022. 

Here’s a note from Joe Siclari and Edie Stern:

We are greatly honored to have been selected to receive the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award. Sam was the first great historian of fandom and we are happy to follow in his footsteps.  He was a contributor to one of my (Joe) earliest fanzines and we both read quite a few books he wrote or edited about the field.  Our goal at www.fanac.com is to archive and disseminate as much of science fiction fandom’s legacy as we can. We, of course, are using electronic means to get the material to readers.

Joe Siclari & Edie Stern accepted their award in person.

Edie Stern
Joe Siclari

[Thanks to John L. Coker III for providing the draft text and supplying the photos.]

Prozine History in TAFF’s “New Worlds Profiles”

Posted on by
1
Photos of Aldiss, Ballard, Brunner, Clarke, Silverberg and White from their New Worlds profiles.

New Worlds Profiles is the latest addition to the downloadable free books available in multiple electronic formats at the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s website, where they also hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund.

David Langford compiled the book and explains in his introduction why fans will want to have it:

For a little over a decade while John Carnell was editor of New Worlds Science Fiction, there was a tradition of running author and artist profiles on the magazine’s inside front cover. These appeared from the eighteenth issue in November 1952 to the 134th in September 1963 […and] often contain opinions and scraps of personal information not elsewhere available. Which seemed a good reason for compiling this collection.

Find the 33,000-word book here. (A paperback edition is also available for sale.)

There are 120 profile features in all, some covering more than one person. Authors represented, often in their own words and many with multiple appearances, include Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Harry Harrison, Philip E. High, Damon Knight, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, E.C. Tubb, James White and John Wyndham. Other profiles are of artists (Alan Hunter, Brian Lewis, Gerard Quinn, Sydney Jordan), editors (John Carnell himself, Groff Conklin, H.L. Gold) and even one television anthology host: Boris Karloff for Out of This World. Also included are contemporary photographs of all the profile subjects, as published in New Worlds itself.

Langford thanks Michael Moorcock for giving his blessing to the collection.

P.S. Given the paucity of women writers in those New Worlds days, it’s more than symbolic that Langford has documented the way a woman was literally erased from this 1957 Hugo Awards photo before it ran in the magazine!

John Carnell (left) accepts a Hugo from John Wyndham at the 1957 London Worldcon, whose secretary Roberta (Bobbie) Wild was “disappeared” in New Worlds. Photo by Peter West.

Pixel Scroll 4/24/24 The City With Two Dates Twice

Posted on by
20

(1) NAOMI KRITZER Q&A. Hear from Naomi Kritzer in this 2024 Minnesota Book Awards roundup: “Meet the Finalists: GENRE FICTION”.

Minnesota Book Award finalist Andrew DeYoung (2023) moderated a discussion between all four 2024 finalists in contention for the Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction: C.M. Alongi, author of Citadel (Blackstone Publishing); Tashia Hart, author of Native Love Jams  (self-published); Naomi Kritzer, author of Liberty’s Daughter (Fairwood Press); Emma Törzs, author of Ink Blood Sister Scribe (William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers).  The Minnesota Book Awards are sponsored by Education Minnesota; Macalester College is the 2024 category sponsor for the Genre Fiction category.

(2) MURDERBOT’S VOICE. AudioFile Magazine has been “Talking with Author Martha Wells” about the audio versions of her series.

…This relatability is part of what has made The Murderbot Diaries so beloved. Golden Voice Kevin R. Free, who has narrated all of the unabridged audiobooks in the series, says that fans regularly reach out to him to tell him that they’ve listened over and over again. “When people say, ‘It’s comforting to me when I listen to this,’ I just feel so happy that I’m bringing people comfort.” Free stresses that he’s also a fan of the books, and he’s quick to give full credit to Wells….

(3) APPLY FOR SLF OLDER WRITERS GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation will accept applications for the 2024 Older Writers Grant from May1 through May 31. The complete guidelines are here.

Since 2004, the $1,000 Older Writers Grant has been awarded annually to writers who are at least fifty years of age at the time of application to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level. These funds may be used as each writer determines will best assist their work. This grant, as with all SLF grants, is intended to help writers working with speculative literature.

Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant. Launched in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the Speculative Literature Foundation addresses historical inequities in access to literary opportunities for marginalized writers. Our staff and board are committed to representing racial, gender, and class diversity at all levels of our organization. This commitment is at the heart of what the Speculative Literature Foundation stands for: equal access to create and advance science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. We strive to enable writers at any stage of their career and of any age, any ethnicity, any gender expression, from any location and of any economic or social status, who want to learn about, or create within, the speculative arts. The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

(4) NEW VOLUME IN THE TAFF LIBRARY. Sue Mason’s Into the Wide Purple Yonder: A Fan Artist in America, a report of her westbound TAFF trip to the USA and the 2000 Chicago Worldcon (Chicon 2000), was published in 2023 by Alison Scott, illustrated with many photographs and artwork by Sue herself. David Langford says it now has been “Added to the TAFF site with the kind permission of Sue and Alison on 24 April 2024.” Cover artwork by Sue Mason.

(5) DOES THIS WARNING SOUND FAMILIAR? Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders devote their latest Our Opinions Are Correct podcast to “Fascism and Book Bans (with Maggie Tokuda-Hall)”.

Science fiction has been warning us about fascism for decades — so why haven’t we listened? How did Nazis become just another monster in our stories, like werewolves or cyborgs? Plus we talk about the new wave of book censorship with Maggie Tokuda-Hall, co-founder of the new organization Authors Against Book Bans.

(6) POWER PACKED. CBR.com lists the “13 Most Powerful Artifacts In The Marvel Universe (That Most Fans Forgot Exist)”. We’ll begin by reminding you about —

#13 — Casket Of Ancient Winters

First Appearance: Thor (Vol. 1) #346, by writer/penciler Walt Simonson, inker Terry Austin, colorist Christie Scheele, and letterer John Workman Jr.

Created by the frost giants, this ancient weapon has limitless power stored within it. The Casket of Ancient Winters can unleash a devastating icy wind that can consume entire worlds. It often gets forgotten because it has been stored in Odin‘s treasure room safely for years.

The Casket of Ancient Winters briefly appeared in the MCU. Loki used it to help the frost giants take over Asgard. His plan was unsuccessful, and the artifact remained locked in Odin’s vault, but it is an endlessly powerful tool that has been seemingly forgotten by Marvel fans.

(7) SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL APPRECIATION OF DEB GEISLER. “In memory of Deborah Geisler: a life of impact” – read the complete article in The Suffolk Journal.

…Geisler was known for her snark and humor, from her cherished pocket constitution to her in-class commentary. In her beloved 1980s Mazda GLC, Geisler was a vibrant presence on campus, one that worked to push her students just as much as she worked to foster their passion for journalism.

Edwards, who had a class with Geisler in the spring of 2020 at the start of the coronavirus in 2020, said her spirit was pivotal to maintaining community and morale throughout Zoom classes.

“Through the transition to virtual learning, Deb made it so all about the students. She put her students before herself, she again always found time to make us laugh. She was very, very flexible. She really was just great,” said Edwards.

Geisler was heavily involved in the Suffolk and Boston communities. At Suffolk, she was the adviser to The Suffolk Voice. Her passion for all things science fiction led her to chair Noreascon 4, the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention, along with her involvement in conventions through the years….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 24, 1930 — Richard Donner. (Died 2021.) Tonight we have Richard Donner who has entered the Twilight Zone, errr, the Birthday spotlight. As a genre producer, he’s responsible for some of our most recognizable productions.

His first such works was on The Twilight Zone (hence my joke above in case you didn’t get it) as he produced six episodes there including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. He’d go on to work in The Sixties on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart!, and The Wild Wild West. He closed out this period by producing Danger Island (which I’ve never heard of) where, and I quote IMDB, “Archaeologists are being pursued by pirates around an island in the South Pacific. On this island, various adventures await them.” It’s at least genre adjacent, isn’t it?

Richard Donner in 1979. Photo by Alan Light.

So forty-eight years ago and then two years later, he directs not one but two now considered classic films in two very different genres. First out was The Omen with an impressive cast far too long to list here that got mixed reviews but had an audience that loved and which birthed (that’s deliberate) a franchise and garnered two Oscar’s nominations.

Next out was, oh guess, go ahead guess, Superman. Yes, it would win a much-deserved Hugo at Seacon ’79. DC being DC the film had a very, very difficult time coming to be and that was true of who directed the film with several sources noting that Donner may have been much as the fourth or fifth choice to do so. Or more.

So what did he do post-Superman? Well something happened during the production of Superman II and he was replaced as director by Richard Lester during principal photography was Lester receiving sole directorial credit.  That being most likely tensions, and that was the polite word, which he had with all of the producers concerning the escalating production budget and production schedule. Mind you both films were being shot simultaneously. 

If you’re so inclined, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released oddly enough when the film came out so I’m assume he had the legal right to do so which I find damn odd. 

He did go on to direct The Goonies. Now I really don’t think it’s genre, but I will say that the treasure map and the premise of treasure make it a strong candidate for genre adjacent, wouldn’t you say? Truly a great film! 

He went on to direct one of my favorite Bill Murray films, Scrooged. The Suck Fairy says she still likes that film and will agree to watch it every Christmas as long as there’s lots of hot chocolate to drink

His last work was a genre one, Timeline, about a group of archaeologists who travel back to fourteenth century France, based on a Michael Crichton thriller.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SUN-RELATED SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] There was a One-Day Special quiz about the Sun recently. Most of it isn’t relevant to our interests, but there were two questions involving SFF:

4.  In the Marvel Universe, Brazilian mutant Roberto da Costa draws powers from the Sun that include super strength, flight, and the ability to generate blasts of energy. What superhero name does da Costa use as a member of both the X-Men and the New Mutants?

Only 17% of players knew this was “Sunspot”.

7.  The 1953 science fiction story “The Golden Apples of the Sun” follows a spaceship tasked with approaching the Sun and trying to literally capture a sample of its material within a giant metal cup operated by a robot hand. The title of the story was taken from a line in the 1899 poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” Name either the author of the sci-fi story (who is American) or the writer of the namesake poem (who is Irish).

45% of players got this one. The poet was William Butler Yeats; I won’t insult Filers by giving the name of the SF author.

If anyone is curious about the whole quiz they can find it by following this link.

(11) WINNING WITH BREATHABLE AIR. NPR explains how “New Catan board game introduces climate change to gameplay”.

In the original version of the popular board game Settlers of Catan, players start on an undeveloped island and are encouraged to “fulfill your manifest destiny.” To win you have to collect resources and develop, claiming land by building settlements, cities, and roads.

A new version of the board game, Catan: New Energies, introduces a 21st-century twist — pollution. Expand responsibly or lose. In the new version, modern Catan needs energy. To get that energy players have to build power plants, and those plants can run on renewable energy or fossil fuels. Power plants operated on fossil fuels allow you to build faster but also create more pollution. Too much pollution causes catastrophes….

(12) SANCTIONS IGNORED. “New Isekai Anime Series Believed to Have Been Outsourced to North Korea” – CBR.com tells what raised people’s suspicions.

…This week, 38North published an article revealing that a North Korean animation studio was believed to have worked on the upcoming anime Dahlia in Bloom. This is despite sanctions currently being observed forbidding businesses from working with state-owned North Korean companies. An analysis of leaked files shows that the North Korean studio was likely April 26 Animation Studio, also known as SEK Studio. 38North adds that the studio is North Korea’s leading animation studio, producing many series for domestic TV.

Analysis of the files has also revealed that instructions in Chinese were provided to the North Korean studio, with 38North adding that a Chinese company likely acted as an intermediary between the North Korean studio, Dahlia in Bloom‘s animation studio and others. Other animated series the studio is believed to have worked on are HBO’s Iyanu, Child of Wonder and Invincible Season 3. Files have also been identified that may suggest a relationship with the Japanese animation studio Ekachi Epilka (Demon Lord, Retry!).

Despite its many risks, outsourcing in the Japanese anime industry is often done due to significantly lower labor costs.…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Phil Foglio recommended a video – “The Process: Inking Old-School”.

[Thanks to Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Michael J. Walsh, David Goldfarb, Daniel Dern, 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 OGH.]

David Langford Wins Doc Weir Award

Posted on by
5

The Doc Weir Award for service to fandom was voted to David Langford during Levitation, Eastercon 2024, this past weekend.

eFanzine’s complete history of the Doc Weir Award begins:

The Doc Weir Award was set up in 1963 in memory of fan Arthur Rose (Doc) Weir, who had died two years previously. Weir was a relative newcomer to fandom, he discovered it late in life – but in the short time of his involvement he was active in a number of fannish areas. In recognition of this, the Award is sometimes seen as the “Good Guy” Award; something for “The Unsung Heroes”.

The award, voted by attending members of Eastercon and presented at the convention, is a silver cup which each winner keeps for a year. It is engraved with the earliest winners’ names, and since space on the cup itself ran out other names have been engraved on silver plates mounted on the cup’s storage box.