25 We Have Scrolled Our Birthfile For A Mess Of Pixels

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) HARLAN’S HUGE SCRAPBOOKS. J. Michael Straczynski told the Harlan Ellison Facebook Club about his latest archival project. And when you get to the end don’t worry, people have already pointed him at Fanac.org.

With the first phase of Harlan’s publishing program done and the next one in progress; with the house almost entirely repaired now, and the paperwork formally begun to declare the place a historical/cultural landmark, we’re moving forward in other areas.

As part of that, we’re in the process of scanning the contents of Harlan’s scrapbooks. These are beasts. The eleven books are about four feet long and three feet wide, with an average of 150 pages with anywhere from 5-10 photos, letters, reviews, articles and other items covering the span of Harlan’s life and career. (So about 1,650 pages with a tick over 13,000 individual items.)

(We are having a trusted firm that does scans of legal documents, house blueprints and other items where discretion and professionalism are forefront, do the scans of each full page of each scrapbook. The files are then given to me, which I’m currently going through to crop each and every item into a separate image, label/annotate them, date them, organize them, and color-correct those that are faded or damaged.)

This process will probably take a full year to complete, and really can’t be delegated because if I hire somebody they won’t know the references or history, so I’d have to go through them anyway. When they’re all in hand, we will include them as an aspect of a website that is nearly completed, about which more soon.

The reason I’m telling you all this: it’s not a secret that Harlan was deeply involved in fandom in his early years. What I didn’t realize, until I started to get very granular about the files, is just HOW deep the rabbit hole went. Not only was he attending conventions and fan events back in the 50s, he often wrote for the convention newsletter/magazine, took tons of photos, wrote reviews of some of the cons and had this whole years-long catalog of what are essentially first-person narratives about the early days of fandom.

For historical value, it feels like something specific to fandom should be done with at least some of this information, but I’m not sufficiently au courant about that world to even know where to begin….

(2) MURDERBOT CLIPS. “Murderbot — An Inside Look”. “Killer instincts. Zero social skills”. Murderbot premieres May 16 on Apple TV+.

In a high-tech future, a rogue security robot (Alexander Skarsgård) secretly gains free will. To stay hidden, it reluctantly joins a new mission protecting scientists on a dangerous planet…even though it just wants to binge soap operas.

(3) GOOD OMENS QUOTE. “’Good Omens’ Star David Tennant Shares His Thanks for Being Able To Deliver Closure To Fans” at Movieweb.

David Tennant has finally addressed returning for a third and final outing for Good Omens, the Amazon and BBC fantasy series based on the works of the once beloved and now highly controversial author, Neil Gaiman . While Good Omens was initially slated for a third season, following a series of allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, the series will instead return for a final 90-minute episode to wrap things up.

Tennant recently took part in The Assembly, which sees members of the public being given the opportunity to ask a celebrity any question they like. During Tennant’s turn, a group of autistic, neurodivergent, and learning-disabled participants were given the chance to question the former Doctor Who star, with one asking him, “Someone you’ve worked with, a friend, has been canceled for some quite serious allegations. How has that affected you?” After requesting clarification, the interviewer replied, “He worked on Good Omens, and that’s been stopped, and how has it affected you?”

While avoiding saying his name, Tennant did address a change of “personnel,” and is ultimately grateful that they have been given the opportunity to finish the Good Omens story.

“We’re doing ‘Good Omens’ again. We’re going back to do the final. We’re doing a final. There’s been a slight rejig with the personnel. But we still get to tell that story which I think, it would have been very difficult to leave it on a cliffhanger. So, I’m glad that’s been worked out.”…

(4) AKA LISA BEN. [Item by Andrew Porter.] “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” at NBC News. Known in fandom as “Tigrina.” Note: in 1947, seriously doubt the zine was reproduced “by photocopier.” Thanks to Moshe Feder for the link (posted on Facebook).

In 1947, Edythe Eyde was a secretary working at RKO Radio Pictures in Los Angeles. A speedy typist who often completed work ahead of schedule, her boss told her: “Well, I don’t care what you do if you get through with your work, but … don’t sit and read a magazine or knit. I want you to look busy.”

The literary-minded lesbian saw an opportunity. Gay culture was largely underground, and it was difficult for “the third sex” to meet like-minded others. Using a Royal manual typewriter and carbon paper, making six copies at a time, the 25-year-old launched Vice Versa — “a magazine dedicated, in all seriousness, to those of us who will never quite be able to adapt ourselves to the iron-bound rules of Convention.”…

… Though not identifying as a SciFi writer, Edye was an enthusiastic consumer of horror stories and fantasy; a card-carrying member of the Fourth World Science Fiction Convention Society; and, to the delight of the modern admirer, can be seen in a 1945 photo in a bikini top reading the pulp magazine Weird Tales….

(5) MARTIAN CHRONICLER. “75 Years Ago, The Martian Chronicles Legitimized Science Fiction” writes Bradbury biographer Sam Weller at Literary Hub.

“I recall Midwestern summer nights, standing on my grandparents’ hushed lawn,” Ray Bradbury told me in 2010, “and looking up at the sky at the confetti field of stars. There were millions of suns out there, and millions of planets rotating around those suns. And I knew there was life out there, in the great vastness. We are just too far apart, separated by too great a distance to reach one another.”

For the young Bradbury, who would grow up to make that great vastness feel, to many, as almost as tangible as home, there was one celestial body more captivating than any other: Mars.

Mars: The fourth planet from our sun, some 140 million miles from us on average. The only planet in our solar system, other than our own, deemed by scientists and stargazers over the centuries to be—possibly, at one time—hospitable to life.

The planet has been part of our collective imagination for centuries, from the tales of ancient mythology, to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, to David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars. Ray Bradbury may have been yet another in a long line of artists dreaming about Mars, but he was the first science fiction writer to elevate the planetary tale beyond the marginalized gutter of “genre fiction,” with his 1950 story cycle The Martian Chronicles…

(6) TAKING THE FUTURE BACK. “To ‘Reclaim Future-Making’, Amazon Workers Published a Collection of Science Fiction Stories”. Link is to the Slashdot story (with comments), and there’s a link to the zine itself.

Its goal was to “support workers to reclaim the power of future-making“. A 2022 pilot project saw over 25 Amazon workers meeting online “to discuss how science fiction shed light on their working conditions and futures.” 13 of them then continued meeting regularly in 2023 with the “Worker as Futurist” project (funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, according to an article by the project’s leaders in the socialist magazine Jacobin). “Our team of scholars, teachers, writers, and activists has been able to pay Amazon workers (warehouse workers, drivers, copy editors, MTurk workers, and more) to participate in a series of skill-building writing workshops and information sessions….”

And when it was over, “the participants were supported to draft the stories they wanted to tell about The World After Amazon….”

Six months ago they held the big launch event for the book’s print edition, while also promising that “you can read the workers’ stories online, or download the book as a PDF or an ebook, all for free.” The Amazon-worker stories have tempting titles like “The Museum of Prime”, “The Dark Side of Convenience”, and even “The Iron Uprising.” (“In a dystopian future of corporate power, humans and robots come together in resistance and in love.”)

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 28, 1948 — Terry Pratchett. (Died 2015.)

By Paul Weimer: Sir Terry Pratchett. How does one talk about one of the greatest fantasy writers in the modern history of the genre? As is my wont here as I do these birthdays, I will do it from a personal perspective.

I first came across Pratchett’s work in the early 90’s, as his works had started making their way across the Atlantic. I read The Colour of Magic and found it funny, but slight. I did follow up with The Light Fantastic and Sourcery and decided I was done with Pratchett. And I was, for about a decade.

Enter my friend Scott.

Scott, part of the Amber Diceless Community and inarguably my best friend for a good long period while he was alive, had a number of fandoms over which he enthused. Amber, of course. Tolkien. Michael Scott Rohan. And, as it so happens, Terry Pratchett. So one fine day, we got to discussing it and I told him of my experience and how I had stopped. He considered this a challenge to be overcome and pushed Guards! Guards!, Pyramids (his personal all time favorite) and others from his collection into my hands.

It was then that I started to “get” Pratchett, once he was out of his relatively early phases. I highly enjoyed the adventures of the Watch, and the Librarian (L-Space for the win). The witches are fun but not my all time favorite. But I kept up reading the Pratchett, finally caught up, and read them all the way to Unseen Alchemicals. Scott, his family and I watched a couple of the movies and at that point were able to critique and understand where they deviated from the books and why.

I became a Pratchett fan, in the end.

He was taken from us far too soon. In Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, in that verse, he wrote much longer and created a new civilization as counterpoint to Ankh-Morpork, popular enough to have people engage in a VR version of it in the mid 21st century. I wish those novels could have been written, or if I could sneak a shadow or two over from ours and grab them and bring them back to our world (although his daughter might have strong opinions on that).

Pratchett’s works, once he matured into his full powers, are full of social commentary, insightful observations, fantastic writing, and a lot of heart. Since everyone has an opinion on where to start the Discworld novels, I will offer mine. Guards! Guards!. It is his earliest in his “full flowering” of writing. If you don’t like it, Pratchett is not for you. If it is… happy reading to you. You have a lot of fun in store.

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Pratchett. May your work survive the great winnowing and be enjoyed by generations to come.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Birdbrains tries to explain.
Crankshaft imagines a writer’s dream.
Eek! prioritizes a monster’s cat.
Pardon My Planet predicts a pill.
Rubes witnesses a crime outside of Troy.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal defines consciousness.
Tom Gauld contributed a Jane Austen cartoon to the Guardian.

Tom Gauld also made the English language do tricks.

(9) JACK KIRBY AT THE MUSEUM. The “Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity | Skirball Cultural Center exhibit opens May 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Delve into the six-decade career of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby (1917–1994). This exhibition goes beyond the page, featuring original comic illustrations, fine art, and commercial art—many on view for the first time—and his experiences as a first-generation Jewish American whose faith remained important throughout his life.

Captain America. The Fantastic Four. The Avengers. OMAC. The X-Men. The Black Panther. Mister Miracle. The Incredible Hulk. The New Gods. These iconic superheroes are among the best-known of the many characters first brought to life by comic book artist Jack Kirby (1917–1994). Over the course of an extraordinary six-decade career, Kirby created some of the most enduring characters and storylines in the history of American comics. Along the way, he expanded the emotional and intellectual horizons of the comic book medium, championed diversity, and helped establish the visual vocabulary of modern popular culture.

Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity traces his experiences as a first-generation Jewish American born to immigrant parents in Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side, a soldier who fought in World War II, a successful commercial artist who worked in marginalized creative industries, a mentor to a generation of younger comic creators, a resident of New York and Los Angeles, and a proud family man whose Jewish faith remained important throughout his life. This exhibition features original comic illustrations alongside Kirby’s other works, many on view for the first time, considering his fine art and commercial art as equally significant and worthy of recognition.

Today, Kirby remains a pivotal figure in American popular culture, and his influence in the worlds of comics, film, animation, graphic design, and pop art is evident more than thirty years after his passing.

(10) TRAILER PARK. Inverse introduces a new Alien trailer with the hook, “46 Years Later, An Iconic Sci-Fi Franchise Just Gave Its Origin Story A Horrific Rewrite”.

…In a new trailer called “Gestation,” we get the inside view of how the xenomorph grows into a facehugger, its first stage after it emerges from its egg. No previous version of Alien has shown this process in such detail, and while the various images of cells dividing and reforming feel very much like the show’s possible opening credits, we’re also seeing how the series is visualizing its defining biological process….

“Alien: Earth Season 1 Teaser | ‘Gestation Complete’”. Coming to FX on Hulu in Summer 2025.

When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley.

(11) CLICK (AND SQUAWK) BAIT. “Google Is Training a New A.I. Model to Decode Dolphin Chatter—and Potentially Talk Back” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

Dolphins are clever communicators. The animals use complex clicks, squawks and whistles to call out to each other, fight and attract a mate. Now, Google says it is developing a large language model (LLM) that can make better sense of those vocalizations—and, maybe, allow humans to talk back.

Over the last 40 years, researchers at the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) have collected audio and video of a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in the Bahamas. The new artificial intelligence model, called DolphinGemma, is trained on that database. It listens to the dolphins’ vocalizations, identifies patterns and predicts what comes next, just as LLMs do with human language.

Using A.I. “could give us the opportunity to see patterns that, from a human perspective, we may not look at,” says Thea Taylor, who manages the Sussex Dolphin Project in England and is not involved with Google’s work, to Melissa Hobson at Scientific American. Relying on the LLM can also speed up the data analysis process, which would take a human more than 100 years by hand.

Researchers with Google, the WDP and Georgia Tech are also working on a device called CHAT, or Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry. The wearable technology will allow researchers to generate dolphin-like sounds made up by A.I. to refer to specific items that dolphins enjoy, like seagrass or sargassum.

A pair of divers wearing the CHAT device will swim alongside a dolphin, “asking for” an object with the made-up sound and passing it back and forth. Then, if a dolphin mimics the sound that corresponds to seagrass, for example, a researcher will reward them by handing it over.

“By demonstrating the system between humans, researchers hope the naturally curious dolphins will learn to mimic the whistles to request these items,” notes a statement from Google. “Eventually, as more of the dolphins’ natural sounds are understood, they can also be added to the system.”

Taylor tells Scientific American that the researchers will need to make sure they aren’t unintentionally training the dolphins. Even if the animals repeat the sound, she says, “we have to think whether that’s actually an understanding of language—or whether it’s the same as teaching a dog to sit because they get a reward.”

(12) WATCH THE WATCH. Last week Neil Armstrong’s Gold Omega Speedmaster sold for US$2,125,000 with RR Auction.

This rare “Tribute to Astronauts” edition (No. 17) is one of just 26 pieces presented to NASA astronauts. It features an engraved caseback commemorating Neil Armstrong’s Gemini 8 and Apollo 11 missions. Personally owned and worn by Armstrong, the watch remains unpolished and in excellent condition and carries the added distinction of being one of the very first gold Speedmaster.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/18/25 Esprit de L’Ascenseur Spatial — [Things I Wish I’d Said While Descending The Space Elevator]

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) PEABODY AWARDS 2025 NOMINEES. This year’s nominees for the George Foster Peabody Awards program were released on April 17. The awards honor what are described as “the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and online media.”

Here are the nominees of genre interest.

Children/Youth

Spirit Rangers (Netflix)

Spirit Rangers is an animated series on Netflix that follows three Chumash and Cowlitz siblings who transform into animal heroes to protect their California national park, blending Native stories, environmental themes, and adventure. As the first U.S. kids’ show created and showrun by a Native American, with an all-Native writers’ room and deep tribal collaboration, it offers authentic, joyful, and empowering representation for Indigenous communities.(Laughing Wild / Netflix)

Interactive & Immersive

1000xRESIST

This genre-blending narrative adventure game uses time, memory, and shifting gameplay styles to explore themes of identity, resistance, and intergenerational trauma, rooted in the emotional aftermath of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Created by a majority Asian-Canadian team, the game sets players in a haunting future shaped by a global pandemic and alien occupation, challenging them to reckon with historical memory. (sunset visitor 斜陽過客 and Fellow Traveller)

Tchia

In Tchia, players embark on a tropical open-world adventure to rescue the protagonist’s father from the tyrannical ruler Meavora, exploring a physics-driven sandbox across beautiful islands. Inspired by New Caledonia, the game features creative gameplay and immerses players in the culture and language of the island nation. (Awaceb)

Documentary

The Space Race (National Geographic Channel)

The Space Race tells the powerful, long-overdue story of Black NASA astronauts who overcame systemic racism to claim their place in the U.S. space program. The films centers on Ed Dwight, the nation’s first Black astronaut trainee who was denied flight but paved the way for future generations. Decades later, Dwight finally reached space at age 90, turning his personal victory into a historic moment of justice. (National Geographic Documentary Films, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Algeria Films & Cortés Filmworks)

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (HBO | Max)

After a devastating accident left him paralyzed, Christopher Reeve became a powerful symbol of resilience, using his platform to inspire hope and advocate for disability rights. Throughout it all, he remained a passionate actor, filmmaker, and devoted family man, with his wife Dana as his unwavering support. (DC Studios / HBO Documentary Films / CNN Films)

(2) FUNDRAISING FOR FELIX FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. “Propane gas leak caused home explosion in Northwest Austin” reports NPR station KUT.

The home explosion in Northwest Austin that injured six people and damaged two dozen homes was caused by a substantial propane gas leak inside the home, according to Travis County Fire Marshal Gary Howell.

In a statement, Howell said there are no suspicious or criminal circumstances surrounding the incident.

“While this investigation is entering its final stages, it is important to remember that there is still a long road of recovery ahead for those who were affected by this tragic event,” he said. “There are still two people in critical condition at area hospitals.”

The house on Double Spur Loop near U.S. Highway 183 and Spicewood Springs exploded the morning of April 13. The blast was heard more than 15 miles away in Georgetown, according to the Austin Fire Department.

Community members have raised more than $36,000 for the Felix family, who owned the home.

Samantha Leer, whose house was damaged by the explosion, started another fundraiser for her neighbors to help with the rebuilding process. She said many homes, especially those closest to the explosion, need thousands of dollars in repairs.

“As a neighborhood we’re all still wrapping our heads around what happened and where to start to begin putting our lives back together,” Leer said on the GoFundMe page. “We’re all in an insurance ‘hold’ while we wait for the investigation to be completed. Our houses are damaged, our lives are displaced, so I am hoping … we can start putting some of the pieces back together both physically and mentally.”

(3) COMPARING GENRE ARTISTS. Steven Heller calls “Frank Frazetta, the Norman Rockwell of Horror” at PRINT Magazine.

Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) was not just a horror magazine artist whose purpose was to create fantasies that scare the bejesus out of the average mortal. He was an artist first, and storyteller second. His art is reminiscent of late 19th-century European symbolism, notably that of the French Odilon Redon and the Austrian Alfred Kubin—but Frazetta’s paintings express an American essence similar to Norman Rockwell (had Rockwell decided to paint menace instead of tranquility).

Picture a Rockwell image of a typical country doctor examining a young lad … except instead of a calm, caring man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope, the same personage wears animal skin and a spiked helmet, brandishing a heavy steel sword with a sharp serrated blade, poised to carve the heart of his young, trusting patient. And rather than a benign, handsome white-clad nurse assisting the doctor, there’s a busty, muscular she-wolf bedecked with slithering serpents and a bloodied scythe. Frazetta and Rockwell share the same tools but see through different eyes. Each captured the affection of their respective loyal fans, but it’s doubtful there’s much crossover of those bases…

(4) CELEBRATE BOOKS. Witness History explains “The origin of World Book Day” at the BBC.

In November 1995, a proposal of having an annual day focused on celebrating books was put forward at the UNESCO conference in Paris.

The idea came from a long-established Spanish celebration ‘The Day of Books and Roses’.

The first World Book Day was on 23 April 1996.

Although some countries now celebrate World Book Day on different dates, it’s marked on 23 April in the majority of countries.

Pere Vicens is a book publisher from Barcelona in Spain and one of the creators of World Book Day. He tells Gill Kearsley the origins of this now annual event.

(5) IN PRAISE OF SINNERS. “Sinners Is a Sumptuous Southern Vampire Delight” – Paste Magazine’s Tara Bennett is a fan.

Give it to writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) for coming at Sinners, his first horror feature, with the intentionality of a PhD student with something to prove. There’s no shortage of existing lazy or derivative vampire movies that he could have easily bested with modest effort. Instead, Coogler cracked the history books, collected his A-list family of collaborators, including composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and ever-trusted leading man Michael B. Jordan, to cinematically (with a capital C) transport the audience to a 1930’s Jim Crow Mississippi ripe for all kinds of delicious trouble.

Coogler’s Sinners screenplay is original but it most certainly carries the baton for what Misha Green explored in her mashup of horror, the supernatural and Black oppression in her HBO series, Lovecraft Country (2020). Although that series was ultimately too broad with its ambitions, Coogler wisely stays hyper-focused on just two monsters – the vampire and bigoted Whites who wear hoods. Coogler weaves vampiric metaphors into the societal oppression of the Old South and asks the audience to consider, which is worse?

Sinners is told through the world-weary eyes of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (a finely-tuned dual performance by Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after first surviving WWI, and then the organized crime gangs of Chicago….

(6) CORRECTION. Correcting yesterday’s Scroll, Andrew Porter now says, “Judy-Lynn del Rey piece ONLY available on broadcast versions of this, NOT at link!!!”

Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 54.

Very minor spoilers here if you’ve not been watching the recent series. You’ve been warned.

Of the modern Doctor Whos, the one performed by David Tennant is my favorite by far. (It won’t surprise you that Tom Baker is my classic Doctor.) I liked him from the very first time that he appeared, in “The Christmas Invasion”. (Spoiler alert from here out.) The fact that he won’t finish his transition until he inhales the fumes from a dropped flask of tea. Oh, what a truly British thing to have him do!

Christopher Eccleston was good but I thought that he didn’t have long enough to fully settle into the role so I felt his character was more of a sketch than a fully developed character. His certainly would have been a better Doctor if he’d decided to stay around, but he didn’t.

Tennant, on the other hand had three series plus some specials, he’d also be the Doctor in a two-part story in Doctor Who spin-off, Sarah Jane Adventures, “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith”.

He got the proper time to settle into his character. And what a character it was — intelligent, full of humor, sympathetic and just alien enough in his quirkiness to believable that he wasn’t human.

Oh, and the stories. So, so great. Those along with his companions made for ever so great watching. My favorite companion? Not picking one as each had their own unique effect on the series and him — Rose Tyler, Donna Noble and Martha Jones, all made fine companions in very different ways.

If I could pick just one story from his run, it’d be “The Unicorn and The Wasp” with Agatha Christie as a character and Donna Noble as the companion. And it was a country manor house mystery!

Yes, I know he came back as the Fourteenth Doctor.

It’s certainly not his only genre role, and yes he played several Doctor Who roles before being the Tenth Doctor. He had a role in the BBC’s animated Scream of the Shalka and appeared in several Big Finish Productions. I think I read he played a Time Lord in one of them.

Now let’s see about his other genre roles… One of my favorite series, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), had him as Gordon Stylus in the “Drop Dead” episode. The Quatermass Experiment film had him as Dr. Gordon Briscoe.

He was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Barty Crouch Jr., a fine performance he gave there. I like the films, found what I read of the first novel dreadfully boring.

In How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which I think has awesomely cute animation, he voices Spitelout Jorgenson, a warrior of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. Need I say more? I think not. DreamWorks Dragons was another series in which he voiced this character.

In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he had a short run there as Huyang. Huh. He even voiced a character in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, one called Fugitoid, a sort of android figure.

He’s the voice of Dangerous Beans in The Amazing Maurice off Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

The last role I’ll mention is his Jessica Jones one and one that honestly made me not watch the series. No, I’ll not say why as that’d be a major spoiler. He was called Kevin Thompson / Kilgrave.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Free Range brings us a writing horror story.
Jerry King refuses the newest model
Nancy finds the pattern.
Non Sequitur is given a sign.

(9) FIONA MOORE’S BOOKSHELF. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #32: Fiona Moore”. Photo at the link.

…On the top shelf, there’s a BFI Guide to Metropolis, and on the lower one, McGilligan’s exhaustive biography of its director, Fritz Lang. Metropolis is my favourite movie, in part because no two versions are ever the same. The original was lost, meaning that only a cut-down 90-minute version made for the US market survived, but over the years people added in found footage, or reordered things to make more sense. And since it’s silent, you don’t have to just use the original soundtrack; Moroder famously did a techno version, and I’ve seen the movie with accompaniments by a free jazz band and by an Irish harp. It’s fitting because the movie itself is one with resonances all over the political spectrum. These days, I think one could read it as a warning of what happens when billionaires form alliances with vindictive tech-bros and try to “disrupt the workplace”, and how the intellectuals and the workers need to come together to fix the damage….

(10) DESERT ISLAND DISC. [Item by Steven French.] One from the margins… “Super spicy! Jack Black’s Minecraft song Steve’s Lava Chicken becomes shortest ever UK Top 40 hit” in the Guardian.

Actor and musician Jack Black has made UK chart history, with the shortest ever song to reach the Top 40: his novelty track Steve’s Lava Chicken is just 34 seconds long.

The spectacularly silly song reaches No 21 this week, and is taken from A Minecraft Movie, the video game spin-off film, which has earned $570m (£430m) so far at the global box office – and caused cinemas to be overrun by the game’s young and high-energy fanbase.

Black performs the song in the film as the character Steve, as he shows the other protagonists around the alternate universe, the Overworld, and hymns the virtues of chicken cooked in lava (“Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack / Ooh, super spicy, it’s a lava attack”).

(11) WAYS TO SUPPORT NASA. The Planetary Society today wrote to members:

NASA science is facing a potential dark age.

News broke on April 11 confirming rumors that the White House Office of Management and Budget is working on a proposal that would cut the NASA science budget in half. If enacted, this budget would force the premature termination of dozens of active, productive spacecraft, and would halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA.

In response to these proposed cuts, The Planetary Society has launched a campaign for citizens to write to their representatives and voice their concerns. We urge Americans who support space exploration to share their support of NASA science.

(12) QUANTUS INTERRUPTUS. [Item by Steven French.] A watched quantum pot never boils – how the quantum Zeno effect reveals just how weird the quantum world is: “The quantum Zeno effect: how the ‘measurement problem’ went from philosophers’ paradox to physicists’ toolbox” at Physics World.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a quantum system. Specifically, you are an unstable quantum system – one that would, if left to its own devices, rapidly decay from one state (let’s call it “awake”) into another (“asleep”). But whenever you start to drift into the “asleep” state, something gets in the way. Maybe it’s a message pinging on your phone. Maybe it’s a curious child peppering you with questions. Whatever it is, it jolts you out of your awake–asleep superposition and projects you back into wakefulness. And because it keeps happening faster than you can fall asleep, you remain awake, diverted from slumber by a stream of interruptions – or, in quantum terms, measurements.

This phenomenon of repeated measurements “freezing” an unstable quantum system into a particular state is known as the quantum Zeno effect (figure 1). Named after a paradox from ancient Greek philosophy, it was hinted at in the 1950s by the scientific polymaths Alan Turing and John von Neumann but only fully articulated in 1977 by the physicists Baidyanath Misra and George Sudarshan (J. Math. Phys. 18 756). Since then, researchers have observed it in dozens of quantum systems, including trapped ions, superconducting flux qubits and atoms in optical cavities. But the apparent ubiquitousness of the quantum Zeno effect cannot hide the strangeness at its heart. How does the simple act of measuring a quantum system have such a profound effect on its behaviour?

(13) BLACK MIRROR HIGHLIGHT. The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reminisces: “Plaything – how Black Mirror took on its scariest ever subject: a 1990s PC games magazine”.

Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.

The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker….

Pixel Scroll 2/17/25 We All Need Somebody To Scroll On

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are moving to a new home soon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their news release also said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Factory problem fixed?

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

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

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

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

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

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

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

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

And so, too, Andre Norton.

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

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

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

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

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

Ave Atque Vale, Andre Norton.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

The primary research is here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN WILL RECEIVE NO PROCEEDS FROM GOOD OMEN GRAPHIC NOVEL KICKSTARTER. Rhianna Pratchett today pointed to a Kickstarter update from the Pratchett estate about the Good Omens graphic novel.

“Good Omens graphic novel update – January 2025”

[We] had locked refunds of the Good Omens graphic novel in mid-November due to where we were in the production process, however will no longer maintain this freeze in light of new articles and allegations. While we cannot speak further on the subject at present, we have chosen to reopen a short refund window for those who would no longer like to support the graphic novel, until Friday 7th February 2025. Please contact us via email or Kickstarter message.

It has also been agreed that Neil Gaiman will not receive any proceeds from the graphic novel Kickstarter. Given the project management, production and all communication has always been under the jurisdiction of the Estate on behalf of Good Omens at large, this will not fundamentally change the project itself, however we can confirm the Kickstarter and PledgeManager will now fully be an entity run by, and financially connected to, the Terry Pratchett Estate only.

A number of tiers also come with author merchandise and books; we have been working on a system in the back end to remove or swap out particular rewards from tiers, should you wish to continue with the project, but not receive these specific items. In this instance, please contact us via Kickstarter or the email listed on the project FAQ and we will endeavour to alter your orders, to swap items in of an equivalent value, where we are able.

Given the point in the production process, we cannot extend refunds beyond this new deadline, but will honour requests in this window – the only exceptions will be tiers where rewards have already been actioned, such as cameos, and custom or rare items on higher level tiers. In the instance of cameos, should backers wish to have their name removed from the postcard (Archangel) or not receive their cameo print (God), we are able to alter this, but not the cameo itself.

If you do get in touch, we aim to get back within a few days; if you have not heard back within a week, please chase up your query.

Good Omens in all its forms is very special to us, and we know that for many fans the landscape has shifted. We appreciate the sensitivity of this issue, and will be working through all queries in the coming weeks.

We will continue on our journey with Crowley and Aziraphale, and all of our surrounding plans, in some form. Thank you for being part of the journey with us.

The Terry Pratchett Estate (Good Omens HQ)

David Tennant’s Facebook page also posted a truncated version of the statement, and notes that the Kickstarter has raised £2,419,973 to date. Colleen Doran is doing the artwork for this book, as File 770 has reported from time to time.

(2) DOES GAIMAN STILL HAVE REPS? Deadline has been trying to get statements from Neil Gaiman’s various agents about whether they still represent him. No statements have been provided. However, Deadline reported today his name has disappeared from the public client list of one of them: “Neil Gaiman Dropped By Agent Casarotto Ramsay After Misconduct Claims”.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months.

Gaiman’s profile was quietly scrubbed from Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ website, meaning he no longer appears on pages listing its film, TV, and theatre clients.

Internet archives show Gaiman’s profile, which included trailers for his screen work, was live on the agency’s website as recently as last October, months after the initial allegations were published. The author denies wrongdoing.

Casarotto Ramsay & Associates failed to respond to repeated requests for comment about whether it continues to rep Gaiman. Gaiman has been contacted for comment. His long-time literary agent is Writers House’s Merrilee Heifetz, who has been approached for comment. Gaiman has also been repped by CAA, who have been contacted….

(3) FILK HISTORY ZOOM. The next FANAC Fan History Zoom on February 22 will be about filk fandom. Edie Stern will interview Margaret Middleton. To attend, contact fanac@fanac.org.

(4) DOES YOUR BOOK HAVE A BELLY BUTTON? “Books written by humans are getting their own certification” says The Verge. Self-certification. Because no one would ever lie about this, right?

The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.

The Guild says its “Human Authored” certification aims to make it easier for writers to “distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets,” and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access. The project was first announced back in October in response to a deluge of AI-generated books flooding online marketplaces like Amazon and its Kindle ebook platform.

Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications….

(5) AI NAY NAY? Steve J. Wright discusses in fascinating detail the brain, intelligence, why the very different operations of a computer do not resemble either of the former, and his skepticism about artificial intelligence in “The Little Man Who Isn’t There”.

…So, Artificial Intelligence, if it is achievable at all with current technology (and I suspect the technology which might make it achievable is some way in the future) will necessarily operate in a way which is radically, fundamentally different from human intelligence. So different that communicating with it, or even recognizing that it’s there, will present significant technological challenges. So why are we so happy – well, why are some of us so happy – to believe that Artificial Intelligence is with us here and now, ready to correct our grammar and do our homework for us?

Wright’s article includes a rather amusing callback to Sixties chatbot ELIZA.

“Ah,” says the knowledgeable reader, “he’s going to talk about ELIZA.” Yes, I am absolutely going to talk about ELIZA, because it is such a very good example. Created by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1967, ELIZA is credited as the first chatbot; it was designed to emulate a psychotherapist, using a fairly limited set of stock responses which identified key words in its interlocutor’s messages and fitted them into templates for replies. And it had people convinced that it was a real person, that no mere machine could possibly understand them as well as ELIZA did. Now look at those dates again, and consider just how much technical progress there has been on the hardware end of things since then. ELIZA is not a sophisticated program. If you are the sort of weirdo who has a “smart” home, you probably have light bulbs with enough capacity to run ELIZA. Your fridge probably has enough computing power to run ELIZA and perform its normal fridgely duties (maintaining optimum temperatures and levels of energy usage, keeping an inventory of its contents and their expiry dates, and snitching on you to Amazon about your chocolate ice cream habit.)

So, since a rinky-dink little gizmo like ELIZA can successfully con people into believing it’s human, what chance do our poor gullible brains stand against modern technology?

(6) THESE THINGS MUST BE HANDLED DELICATELY. “Sale of Wicked Witch’s hat from the ‘The Wizard of Oz’ sparks fraud lawsuit” reports the LA Times. (Article republished on MSN, so not behind a paywall). There are three known existing Wicked Witch hats used in filming of The Wizard of Oz. Schneider acquired one in 2019 for $100,000, from Profiles in History, a movie memorabilia house that Heritage acquired two years later. He later consigned it to Heritage for a big Hollywood memorabilia auction. The owner of another Witch’s hat, Michael Shaw, also decided to sell his. And in addition, Shaw was consigning an authentic pair of the ruby slippers. Here’s the rest of the story….

…In July 2023, Schneider agreed to consign his hat to Heritage and the item was given a value of $200,000 for insurance purposes, according to his lawsuit.

However, Heritage pulled Schneider’s hat from an auction in which another Wicked Witch’s hat owned by Michael Shaw…

In August, [Heritage Auctions senior director Brian] Chanes called Schneider and offered him a quick private sale of the hat for $250,000. Instead of taking it to auction, the hat worn by actor Margaret Hamilton would be sold directly to Shaw, who had expressed interest. The price was “more than any Hat had previously sold for,” Chanes told him, according to the complaint.

A few months later, Heritage began promoting a December auction of movie memorabilia that included Shaw’s three Oz pieces….

…According to the suit, Heritage launched a promotional tour of Shaw’s items, holding events in New York, London and Tokyo.

Shaw is not a defendant in the lawsuit against Heritage.

During the auction held on Dec. 7, the ruby slippers sold for a record $32.5 million and the hat hammered down for $2.93 million, which was nearly 12 times the amount Schneider received for his hat. Like other houses, Heritage receives a commission on the items sold at auction.

“It’s very unusual to have an item plucked out of an auction and get an offer like that from the auctioneer,” Schneider said. He says the house violated its fiduciary obligations to him, having failed to disclose the level of market interest in the hat or its planned roadshow for the auction.

Schneider alleges that Heritage struck the deal with him as a “device for HERITAGE or its executives to get ownership at a deep discount while also favoring Mr. S by making his Hat the only one in the auction,” states the suit….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 30, 1924 — Lloyd Alexander. (Died 2007.)

By Paul Weimer: In the mid 1980’s, Disney came out with The Black Cauldron, an animated fantasy movie. This was the “wilderness years” of Disney before the boom that started with The Little Mermaid. (The Black Cauldron came out the same year as Return to Oz) It looked interesting, and I was now at a point where I could go and see such movies on my own. Sure, it was an animated movie probably aimed at a younger audience than who I probably was, but I was game. (The fact that it was rated PG drew my attention and convinced me to see it). I enjoyed it deeply even if apparently few others did at the time. (Again, see above, Wilderness Years)

So it goes.

Naturally, the movie led me to the Lloyd Alexander book. I didn’t realize at the time that The Black Cauldron is actually the second in the Prydain series, but having seen the movie loosely based on it, I wasn’t lost at the time and when I finally did read The Book of Three (the first in the series) sometime thereafter, I saw how sneakily the filmmakers had been inspired by that book for helping to establish Taran, as well as The Black Cauldron itself. So I could and did happily read the book and the sequels, and so being hooked on Alexander’s work thereby.

I had only the smallest amount of knowledge of Welsh mythology at the time I read the Pyrdain series, the mythology books I had read to that point were focused on the Greco-roman and the Norse. The tales of the Mabinogion that Alexander’s series was based on did later, some years on, inspire me to investigate and learn about Welsh mythology in much more detail. So I have Alexander to thank for that.

And in general, Alexander is a novelist who I am glad I did not “miss”. There is a swath of authors I managed to miss because I felt myself too old by the time I found them (Susan Cooper comes to mind, although I did read her a few years ago). Alexander is in that class, while writing for a younger audience, his strong use of theme, decently three-dimensional female characters (although still cross about Eilonwy’s losing her magical powers) and the sheer verve and quality of the writing and the language.

That quality of writing extended to all of the other work I’ve read of him, from the meditation on war that is The Kestrel, to the Vesper Holly adventure archaeology series. He’s definitely an excellent gateway to much further reading and I think that he still stands up as someone to introduce a young reader to fantasy.

My only regret is that I didn’t discover his work sooner.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Peanuts from 1958 – could this be futurism?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows the origin of paying for stories.

(9) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 127 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Hello Buoys”, John Coxon is incoherent, Alison Scott is excited, and Liz Batty is romantic. An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here.

Episode 127 is here. We discuss the latest juicy gossip from the Belfast Eastercon, we hear from Claire Brialey of Croydon, and we pick things that aren’t games!

Alt text: A flowchart entitled “How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon”. The boxes culminate in “console yourself with Octothorpe 127”, and the various options are listed below, but the original file is linked in the show notes in case that’s more helpful to the partially sighted. How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon Are you going to Reconnect? Of course!/Not sure Oh go on it will be a laugh Oh all right then/No... Are they in the bar? Yes! I can't see them Are you quite sure? Check again Oh wait... there they are No sign Is there another bar? Yes! Nope Are they on programme? Yes! No Wait till the moderator asks for questions But it's Octothorpe Live! Is your joke very funny? Obviously! Excellent! Good to know. COME AND SAY HELLO until then... Are they asleep or on the loo? No, they look chill Er, yes? Oh, that's a shame Console yourself with Octothorpe 127

(10) THE NEXT TENTACLE. “’Squid Game’ Season 3 Release Date Set at Netflix”. Variety tells what it is.

“Squid Game” Season 3 will premiere June 27, following the major cliffhanger finale that Season 2 ended on.

“Squid Game” Season 2, which consisted of seven episodes, debuted Dec. 26. The installment was filmed back-to-back with Season 3, assuring there would be a much shorter wait between seasons than there was for Season 2 and Season 1 (which debuted in 2021, and was not originally written as an ongoing series).

In Season 2, Gi-hun, aka Player 456 (played by Lee Jung-jae), returns to the sadistic competition three years after winning 45.6 billion in South Korean won as the sole survivor of the event, in order to now put an end to Squid Game and save the lives of the players around him….

(11) SUPER ADVERTISING. The commercials aired during the Super Bowl have a reputation for creativity and entertainment. If you’re likely to watch them, whether during the broadcast or later on YouTube, here’s Deadline’s scouting report of the movie promos that will be part of the lineup, most of them of genre interest: “Super Bowl Movie Trailers 2025: What to Expect”.

…This year, count on the following to air either pre, during or post-game:

Disney, the No. 1 studio of last year with more than $2.2 billion in domestic box office, has always had a presence at the Super Bowl. It won’t be a surprise if it shows off wares for upcoming pics Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stich (May 23) and Pixar’s Elio (June 13). We understand they’ll only be showing off two out of three of their upcoming Marvel Studios movies, a batch that includes the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), summer kickoff Thunderbolts* (May 2) and Fantastic Four: The First Steps (July 25)….

Universal, the No. 2 studio with $1.88B domestic in 2024, will be wowing with trailers for Dean DeBlois’ live-action take of his How to Train Your Dragon (June 13) and the Scarlett Johansson-Mahershala Ali-Jonathan Bailey starring Jurassic World Rebirth (July 2) from Gareth Edwards. Don’t be surprised if you catch a Blumhouse title, like a M3GAN 2.0 (June 27). You’ll remember how Uni previously stunted the first installment with dancing M3GAN dolls on talks shows and popular landmarks like the Empire State Building.

Paramount is no stranger to the Super Bowl, even when its sister CBS network and Paramount+ isn’t broadcasting it (Fox has the game this year). This year, the buzz is that Par will air spots for the Jack Quaid comedy thriller Novocaine (March 14), the Smurfs animated musical movie starring Rihanna (July 18) and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. …

Nothing to do with genre, however, you can already watch the “Hellmanns Super Bowl Commercial 2025” which reunites the When Harry Met Sally stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in an update of their deli scene.

(12) ALL’S FAIR. The answer to the Guardian’s question is microcollectibles, apparently: “Evil toilets, terror food and billionaire Squishmallows: my eye-popping day at the UK’s giant toy fair”.

A chubby baby dinosaur waddles down a pink carpeted aisle, narrowly avoiding an army of Care Bears tramping in the other direction. Nearby, a sales rep shows off a collection of insect-breeding habitats, just as Pikachu scampers around the corner, bumping into her neat display. Across the hall, inventors show off their fiendish new board games, magicians demonstrate glowing plastic thumbs, while others grapple with instructions by a table covered with thousands of tiny plastic bricks.

Welcome to the Toy Fair, in London’s Kensington Olympia, the UK’s biggest bonanza of toys, games and hobbies, where the world’s manufacturers converge to peddle their latest wares, as retailers scour the endless stands for the hottest new trends. It’s a mind-boggling place of plushies and puzzles, remote-control cars and mud kitchens, and more plastic than you would find at a petrochemical convention. Here, the £3.4bn business of fun is taken very seriously indeed, with NDAs galore and not a child in sight. So where is the toy world heading in 2025?…

Fans of the YouTube phenomenon, Skibidi Toilet, can now buy the official toy line at Walmart, Target and Amazon. The line includes the Mystery Surprise Toilet, Collector Figures, Mystery Plush and more.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Lise Andreasen, Joe Siclari, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Juli Marr, Meredith, JJ, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Jones.]

Pixel Scroll 9/3/24 Nor Shall My Blog Sleep In My Hands, Till I Have Built Mount Tsundoku On My Bedroom’s Clean And Handy Nightstand

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ANIME BANZAI IS SORRY. In the midst of apologizing for cancelling this year’s event, Utah’s Anime Banzai told Facebook followers their demise was primarily due to a committee member embezzling over $99,000. A criminal case is in progress. However, as they are still on the hook for their venue, the group says they are planning a three-day “Farewell to Banzai” party.

…We want to reiterate our remorse for losing sight of why we started this convention in the first place. It was our actions – and in fact, our inaction – over the years that caused a great deal of lasting hurt to former staff, volunteers, guests, and attendees. Concerns were brought to us time and time again, and we should have listened to them and taken action. We didn’t, and for that, we are truly sorry. You deserved better from us.

Additionally, we want to apologize for the frustration, confusion, and heartache that followed our decision to cancel Anime Banzai 2024. We see now that this decision felt like a violation of the trust and loyalty our community has shown us for almost two decades. The financial state of the organization, lack of staffing, and the event’s dwindling reputation made it seem like cancellation was the only feasible way to move forward. We realize now that we may have been too hasty, and should have explored more options before enacting what we saw as the only solution.

This time, we are listening. We are acting. We want to do what we can to make things right for those of you that are mourning the abrupt loss of the convention, as well as those financially impacted by the choices we made.

As some of you may know, a few years ago Banzai was the victim of significant embezzlement. A former staff member drained the organization’s accounts of almost 99,000 dollars, resulting in a criminal case that is still ongoing. Despite this, the convention continued to spend as though the accounts were full, making payments, purchases, and reservations that were beyond the organization’s means. This is something we should have noticed sooner. We should have stepped in and put a stop to recurring payments we could no longer afford, and cut costs wherever possible. We were not paying attention, and now find ourselves in a dire financial situation.

We do not currently have the funds to refund everyone who has already paid to attend the event, and have been working these last few weeks to plan something that would still provide attendees with something of value. With this in mind, we have decided to use the venue – which we can no longer cancel – to host a 3-day Farewell to Banzai party….

(2) GLASGOW WORLDCON REPORT AT SF². [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has an advance post up ahead of its autumnal edition later this September of a first-timer’s review of the Glasgow Worldcon. This is the first of a few con reports SF² Concatenation are planning. More will appear in the spring edition in January.

Attending this year’s Worldcon in Glasgow (8-12 August, I made it for the middle three days) was a big deal for me. As a first-timer – and solo at that – I knew I needed a strategy. As a tabletop gamer and environmental activist of many years standing, this wasn’t my first time turning up to a large building populated by strangers with hats, beards and a certain personal flamboyance. But Worldcon was different – a nearly entire Scottish Event Campus with 7,081 in-person attendees and a little over 600 watching online; a mix of sub-cultural gathering, international literary festival and hard-nosed networking opportunity. In the face of this, being a mere spectator was not an option conducive to my own sanity…

You can see the rest of first-timer Tim Atkinson’s review of the Glasgow Worldcon conrep at the link.

Station welcome. More low-key fannish than Chengdu’s ostentatious buses. We’re here for the beer not the marketing images.

(3) IS CLIMBING OVER THE DOCTOR A PATH TO POWER? From Deadline we hear “Conservative Party Leadership Hopeful Says She’s ‘Not Afraid Of Doctor Who’ As She Devotes Majority Of New Campaign Vid To Spat With David Tennant”.

Kemi Badenoch launched her campaign on X yesterday and unveiled a 30-second video prior, in which she focused almost solely on her very public spat with Tennant. Tennant, who played the 10th Doctor, told Badenoch to “shut up” in July due to her views on trans rights and she responded at the time that she “will not be silenced.” Big anti-trans names including JK Rowling also rushed to Badenoch’s defense, calling Goblet of Fire star Tennant part of the “gender Taliban” in a ranty X post.

In the new campaign vid, which can be watched in full below, Badenoch said: “When you have that type of cultural establishment trying to keep Conservatives down you need someone like me, who’s not afraid of Doctor Who, or whoever, and who’s going to take the fight to them and not let them keep us down. That’s not going to happen with me.” The vid begins with a clip of Tennant criticizing her….

Tomorrow, I launch my @renewal2030 campaign to be the next leader of our great Conservative Party.

Join me at 11.00am, here on X! pic.twitter.com/yAalIDVM9M
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) September 1, 2024

(4) GAME WRITING. John David Beety kicks off a five-part series “Playtesting Game Narratives” with “Introduction to Game Writing and Playtesting” at the SFWA Blog.

In science fiction and fantasy (SFF) terms, game writing is exactly what it sounds like: writing for games. Calling oneself a game writer, however, is akin to declaring oneself a scientist. Divisions within game writing include game media, such as board games and video games; forms, such as planning dialogue trees and naming collectible cards; and publishers, from solo efforts to some of the world’s largest corporations.

This post introduces a series on playtesting, the process of improving games through hands-on feedback. Think of it as an editing pass for games, though with a twist. Unlike prose writing, which usually presents a single, stable experience for readers, games depend on player choices to create a range of experiences, from an early Game Over to a grand finale years in the making. Playtesting allows games to deliver great experiences for the greatest number of players.

By playing through a game and observing other players, playtesters can identify problems to fix, such as consistent reports of a disliked quest or a moment when story and gameplay mechanics seem to clash. Playtesters can be game-makers or outside parties, and it’s not uncommon to see the game-writing equivalents of authors and beta readers side by side in a multiplayer game’s playtesting sessions.

Future posts will offer specific insights on playtesting from experts in board games, card games, tabletop role-playing games, and video games. Here are brief overviews of those four game types, and the writing opportunities they provide….

(5) WORLDWIDE SERIES AWARD SUBMISSIONS OPEN. The Sara Douglass Book Series Award is taking entries through September 30.

ABOUT THE AWARD

This year, the Sara covers series ending (in original publication anywhere in the world) between January 2021 and December 2023.
The current judging year is deliberately excluded. This permits an earlier submissions deadline to allow adequate time for the judges to consider all works entered.
The Sara Douglass Book Series Award is not an Aurealis Award as such, but a separate, special award conferred during the ceremony (like the Convenors’ Award for Excellence).

GENERAL ELIGIBILITY

For the purpose of the Sara Douglass Book Series Award, a “series” is defined as a continuing ongoing story told through two or more books, which must be considered as ending in one of the years covered by the judging period.
This award is to recognise that there are book series that are greater as a whole than the sum of their parts – that is, the judges are looking for a series that tells a story across the series, not one that just uses the same characters/setting across loosely connected books. It is anticipated that shortlisted works will be best enjoyed read in succession, with an arc that begins in the first book and is completed in the last.
The series may be in any speculative genre within the extended bounds of science fiction, fantasy or horror (that is, if a book would be considered on an individual basis for one of the novel, or possibly novella, categories in the Aurealis Awards, the series may be considered here).

(6) PETE KELLY Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog did an “Interview with Pete Kelly, Poet-in-residence for the Dracula Society”.

Pete Kelly: The Society was founded in October 1973 by two London-based actors, Bernard Davies and Bruce Wightman. The Society’s field of interest embraces the entire Gothic literary genre, and incorporates, too, all stage and screen adaptations, and the sources of their inspiration in myth and folklore. Trips are organized to locations of interest in the UK and abroad. There are regular meets in London with guest speakers, discussions, film and video screenings. My responsibilities are to deliver a poem for each quarterly voices from the vaults magazine and to perform at each meet, the first performance was June 15^th so had been rehearsing like mad as it’s been two years since I did anything live. The response was brilliant though even got a wow or two from the audience.

Can you tell us about yourself as both person and poet?

Pete Kelly: Bonkers and passionate. Though not classically trained, I love when things get weird pushing my understanding of this thing called life. Being an underdog myself I will always root for them be it writers, bands or in any walk of life. I feel the big hitters have their support in place so I give new talent what help I can give. Also I generally see fresher ideas coming through with them, bucking trends for more fertile imagination. Writing poetry pretty much mirrors who I am, solitary at times venturing off into my own world. The conventional is more horrific than horror…

(7) SHE BRINGS THE HEAT. On Facebook, Tom Digby (not the California fan), shared a photo of Margaret Atwood wielding a flamethrower.

Margaret Atwood, the 84-year-old Canadian novelist and poet, is pictured here attempting to burn an ‘unburnable’ copy of her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” with a flamethrower.

A single unburnable copy was created to raise awareness about increasing censorship; her dystopian science fiction novel, which centers around one woman’s quest for freedom in a totalitarian theocracy where women’s rights are completely suppressed, has been the subject of numerous censorship challenges since its publication in 1985.

The unburnable copy was auctioned off after her flamethrowing attempt, raising $130,000 for PEN America, a literary and free expression advocacy organization.

As Atwood famously asserted in her poem “Spelling”: “A word after a word after a word is power.”…

(8) JAMES DARREN (1936-2024). Actor James Darren died September 2 at the age of 88. He gained fame as “Moondoggie” in three Gidget movies. Fans knew him best from his work in the 1966 TV series Time Tunnel, and cameos as the holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Ninein the 1990s. Full details at Deadline.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Cornered shows why the snack room is popular with one customer.
Carpe Diem knows who missed lunch.
Bob the Angry Flower features HopeBot.
Bob the Angry Flower follows with HopeBot vs. NopeBot.

(10) SUNDAY OFFERING. Sunday Morning Transport, a 2024 World Fantasy Award finalist, posted its monthly free story “The Memorial Tree” by Alaya Dawn Johnson. As they say, “Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors.”

(11) SUSPICIOUS DEALINGS WITH DALEKS. Crime doesn’t pay. (Not even fake crime?) “A Dallas Writer Was Investigated for Selling Secrets to the Daleks” – the Dallas Observer says it happened. “There’s really an FBI file out about Paul Riddell’s supposed double-dealings with Dr. Who’s Nemeses.”

Paul Riddell is one of Dallas’s best eccentrics. He is the former owner of the Texas Triffid Farm, a now closed gallery of carnivorous plants named after aliens from a John Wyndham novel. Previously, he published science fiction essays for the likes of Clarkesworld, but these days he writes strange stuff at the Annals of St. Remedius on Substack.

In 1987, though, Riddell worked for Texas Instruments, employee number 800069, at Trinity Mills (now Carrollton). This is back when TI was designing the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile), which would seek and destroy enemy radar-based air defenses. The weapon was used to enforce no-fly zones during the first U.S.–Iraq War. For obvious reasons, this made the workings of the HARM very important to keep secret.

Riddell had a boss, a nice guy from a Mormon family who Riddell says, “had clearly heard of this ‘humor’ thing people did and was desperately trying to learn it.” His boss’s attempts led Riddell to joke back with him, though Riddell’s wide-ranging pop culture experience sometimes left the man perplexed….

… One day, the manager came up to Riddell and clapped him on the back. “Sell any secrets to the Russians this weekend?” he asked. Riddell replied, “No, but I sold a few to the Daleks.”…

… Riddell’s boss knew none of this and wasn’t great at humor, either. Working at a top-secret-security-clearance facility, he thought it best to report Riddell as a possible enemy agent. The matter kept climbing up the chain of command, with each person questioning Riddell….

(12) ANOTHER FBI FILE. And if you want to see the FBI’s 1974 report mentioning Harlan Ellison, click the link: “Harlan Ellison : Federal Bureau of Investigation” at the Internet Archive.

(13) NOT “CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK”. “AI worse than humans at summarising information, trial finds” – Crikey has details of the Australian study.

Artificial intelligence is worse than humans in every way at summarising documents and might actually create additional work for people, a government trial of the technology has found.

Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence.

The test involved testing generative AI models before selecting one to ingest five submissions from a parliamentary inquiry into audit and consultancy firms. The most promising model, Meta’s open source model Llama2-70B, was prompted to summarise the submissions with a focus on ASIC mentions, recommendations, references to more regulation, and to include the page references and context.

Ten ASIC staff, of varying levels of seniority, were also given the same task with similar prompts. Then, a group of reviewers blindly assessed the summaries produced by both humans and AI for coherency, length, ASIC references, regulation references and for identifying recommendations. They were unaware that this exercise involved AI at all.

These reviewers overwhelmingly found that the human summaries beat out their AI competitors on every criteria and on every submission, scoring an 81% on an internal rubric compared with the machine’s 47%….

(14) SAY CHEESE. From Reuters: “Exclusive: U.S. researchers find probable launch site of Russia’s new nuclear-powered missile”.

Two U.S. researchers say they have identified the probable deployment site in Russia of the 9M730 Burevestnik, a new nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile touted by President Vladimir Putin as “invincible.”

Putin has said the weapon – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO – has an almost unlimited range and can evade U.S. missile defenses. But some Western experts dispute his claims and the Burevestnik’s strategic value, saying it will not add capabilities that Moscow does not already have and risks a radiation-spewing mishap….

(15) JUSTWATCH TOP 10S. JustWatch has released the streaming movie and TV rankings for August 2024.

(16) SUBTERRANEA TRAILER. “Kenyan Sci-Fi Series ‘Subterranea’ Set at Showmax, Trailer Unveiled” – Variety introduces the trailer.

Award-winning Kenyan director Likarion Wainaina returns to Showmax with “Subterranea,” a new science fiction series. The streaming platform has unveiled a trailer for the eight-part show.

Wainaina, known for his award-winning superhero film “Supa Modo,” brings together a cast of Kenyan talent for this psychological experiment-turned-apocalyptic tale. The story follows eight participants trapped in an underground bunker after a global catastrophe….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, David Doering, Kathleen Pardola, Cath Jackel, Rich Lynch, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]

Pixel Scroll 7/13/24 Those Aren’t Lightning Bugs, They’re Pixels

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING ON MY SUMMER VACATION. I don’t know how much material will make it into today’s Scroll because I have been very busy creating a series of posts about rules change proposals being submitted to the WSFS Business Meeting in Glasgow.

(2) BLOCH’S HUGO. Robert Bloch’s 1959 Hugo Award for Best Short Story “The Hellbound Train” sold at auction on eBay for $2,766.00 last night.

(3) GET YOUR NITPICKER READY. “75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time – What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?” asks Esquire. And after looking at this list, the questions I have are not what I’d have expected. For one: Is Excession really Iain M. Banks’ best novel?

Over two years ago, we published a version of this list featuring 50 books. But why stop at 50? Now, as part of our latest Summer Fiction Week, we’ve cast a wider net and expanded the list to 75 titles. Choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. We also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre—to borrow a great sci-fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Now, in ranked order, here are the best science fiction books of all time….

(4) LATEST TUTTLE COLUMN. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup” in the Guardian covers Curandera by Irenosen Okojie; The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman; The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer; an Toward Eternity by Anton Hur.

(5) BIG RIVER, MANY TRIBUTARIES. Cedar Sanderson offers helpful tools for strategizing what Amazon book categories to choose when marketing a self-published book on that platform: “Categories on Amazon” at Mad Genius Club.

…This post will be Amazon-centric, as I haven’t published a book wide in years. Still, much of the information will be useful elsewhere as well, just not in the same way as it is for the biggest bookseller in the world.

It used to be that you could put your book in up to ten categories. This was changed in the latter part of 2023, and you can now select three categories. Categories are the broad buckets Amazon uses to help readers find books they like, so as you can imagine, it’s important to put your book in the best categories. Which also means not putting them into the broadest categories – a book placed into ‘fantasy’ is a tiny minnow swimming in a whole ocean, while a book placed into something like ‘dark fantasy horror’ is a trout in a fishing hole, and much more likely to find a reader who really wants it.

KindleTrends has a great (and free!) tool for researching categories on Amazon.

BookLink also has a ton of free tools for researching, and while you can use it to find the best categories for an already-published book, you could also enter the ASIN of a book that is very similar to a planned publication, to give you some guidance while you are setting your new book up. Their website isn’t the easiest to use, so read carefully….

(6) THE REAL MCCOY. “Captain Kirk’s Original ‘Star Trek’ Phaser Heads to Auction” – The Hollywood Reporter expects it to go for six figures.

The prop weapon and a communicator used by William Shatner on the original series will go on display at the Comic-Con Museum before heading to auction in November.

Fans of Star Trek, get set to be stunned.

A original phaser and communicator used by William Shatner’s James T. Kirk on the 1960s NBC series will be on display starting Monday at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego. The iconic props, created in 1966, have not been seen in more than 50 years, organizers say, and will be available to purchase through auction.

Don Hillenbrand, a veteran Star Trek prop collector and researcher, has authenticated the phaser and communicator using a “screen-matching” method that identifies unique details and flaws on the props to verify they indeed were the ones seen in the series.

The original owner of both pieces, a late relative of the current owners, was a Hollywood prop veteran who is believed to have acquired them from a former employee at Paramount Pictures, home of Star Trek.

The pistol-like phaser and communicator, which features a spinning dial, will be at the museum through July 28, then will go on the block at a Julien’s Auctions/TCM Hollywood event Nov. 9 in Los Angeles. Each piece is conservatively estimated to sell for $100,000 to $200,000….

(7) WHAT CRESSIDA COWELL LIKES. “On my radar: Cressida Cowell’s cultural highlights” – a Guardian profile. Including an item about David Tennant’s next series, which isn’t sff but don’t you want to know anyway?

Children’s author Cressida Cowell was born in London in 1966. In 2003 she published the first of 12 books in the How to Train Your Dragon series; since then, they have been adapted into several feature films, including the Academy Award-nominated 2010 animation. Her other book series include the Treetop Twins and The Wizards of Once. Between 2019 and 2022, Cowell was the Waterstones children’s laureate. She lives in London with her husband; they have three children. Here Be Dragons, an exhibition co-curated by Cressida Cowell and one of her dragon creations, Toothless, is at the Story Museum in Oxford until July 2025….

6. Television

Rivals

The first trailer for Disney+’s forthcoming TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals has dropped, starring the always magnificent David Tennant. I bet he will have an absolute whale of a time playing Lord Tony Baddingham. Rivals was one of my go-to comfort reads when I was in my 20s, so very nostalgic for me and so many others. Everything David touches seems to turn to gold, from Hamlet to Broadchurch to Staged to Good Omens, and the lead director of Rivals is Ted Lasso’s Elliot Hegarty, so I have high expectations for this.

(8) WESTERCON MINUTES HOT OFF THE PRESS. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] Linda Deneroff turned around the minutes and new bylaws for Westercon very quickly, even with five ratified bylaw amendments and two new ones for consideration next year. Here’s the announcement post: “Westercon Official Papers Updated for 2025”.

The Westercon Bylaws & Business page has been updated with the minutes of the 2024 Westercon Business Meeting held at Westercon 76 in Salt Lake City, links to the video of the Business Meeting, and the updated Bylaws for use at the 2025 Westercon (Westercon 77).

The Business Meeting ratified five amendments to the Bylaws, including removing the “traditional” date of Westercon (which was never a requirement). The meeting then gave first passage to two amendments: one would clarify the official name of Westercon and the other would suggest (but not required) that Westercons be held sometime between May and August each year. The full text of the amendments, which must be ratified at Westercon 77 in Santa Clara, California, is in the updated Bylaws document.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 13, 1940 – Sir Patrick Stewart, 84.

By Paul Weimer: Where does one begin, or end, with Stewart’s oeuvre? I first came across him as Leodegrance in the movie Excalibur, which is perhaps the most fever-dream of all the adaptations of King Arthur and the Round Table that I’ve ever seen. Then, some years later, he was of course Gurney Halleck in the David Lynch Dune movie, and that itself was a fever dream of an adaptation of an unfilmable novel.

So it was with excitement when I found out that he would be Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the reboot of Star Trek as a TV Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sure, the series took a few years to find its feet and even Picard took some time to establish his character (I remember him being weirdly francophilic to the point of excess in the early seasons) but once Picard had the character, he gave us a character arc and journey that went through Locutus, through the movies, and all the way to his titular series. Picard’s growth and development has been a part of my adult life.

Sir Patrick Stewart, from The Smithsonian Magazine.

And then there is of course, Professor X. Yes, McAvoy has mostly taken up that mantle, since. And there are the animated adaptations. But when I saw Stewart as Professor X in Multiverse of Madness in that alternate world Strange and Chavez wound up in, I cheered in delight. Patrick Stewart was and does remain my Professor Charles Xavier, and how I envision him in my mind to this day. (And he makes a wonderful double act with Ian McKellen’s Magneto, a chemistry between the two that no other actors or adaptations have managed to really match.

Stewart has done a slew of other stuff, too, and I’ve consumed a lot of it. One fun bit I will mention is a videogame: Lands of Lore. It was one of the early videogames in the early 1990’s that featured extensive voiceovers, done by Stewart himself (in his role as a dying king). It felt like a return to his fantasy King Arthur days. And of course, since I am a Roman Empire enthusiast, although it is not genre, how can I miss his portrayal of Sejanus in I, Claudius?

Truly one of the best actors of all time.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Free Range discovers a litigious Sasquatch.
Reality Check re-enacts a painful inspiration.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal takes the fun out of villainy.
Tom Gauld tries to spoil summer reading but fails.

My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon pic.twitter.com/j4zqTtHXW8
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) July 13, 2024

(11) 100 YEARS OF ANIMATION ART EXHIBIT. [Item by Marc A. Criley.] The exhibit “A Journey into Imagimation: Over 100 Years of Animation Art from Around the World” just opened at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama, and will run through September 29, 2024.

A Journey into Imagimation celebrates the ongoing history of animation production since the creation of this magical art form. The exhibition presents 140 rare and recognizable objects, including original cels, drawings, and models that feature a full range of animation techniques from the groundbreaking traditional animation of Gertie the Dinosaur, created by Winsor McCay in 1914, to many of today’s digitally supported animations, including The Simpsons and Toy Story.

The exhibition includes well-recognized animations from such movies and cartoons as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Mighty Mouse, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Jetsons, Mary Poppins, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Simpsons, The Ren and Stimpy Show, The Lion King, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Toy Story, as well as popular commercials for Raid, Pillsbury, Clearasil, and Lipton Brisk Ice Tea and the music video for Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract.

(12) SUPER PALS. “’His skincare regime alone would bankrupt you’: Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman bring banter and bromance to London” and the Guardian listens in.

The enduring friendship between the actors Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman was unpacked in irreverent detail in London on Friday, as the pair premiered their new movie, Deadpool & Wolverine.

The stars, who frequently tease one another both in the press and on X, take the leads in Marvel’s latest blockbuster, which sees foul-mouthed superhero Deadpool (Reynolds) exhume and then team-up with the beleaguered Wolverine (Jackman), seven years after his apparent death in 2017’s Logan.

Speaking at a press conference, Reynolds and director Shaun Levy said they had been scrambling for ideas to continue the franchise until Jackman agreed to return. Rejected pitches included a film in which it is revealed Deadpool was the hunter who shot Bambi’s mother.

(13) WHAT HE SAID. Meanwhile, Hank Green has been studying modern English.

There is sigma rizz in this view of life, with its skibidi grindset, having been originally yapped into a few gyatts or into one; and that, whilst this ohio has gone mewwing on according to the quirked up law of gravity, from so sussy a beginning alpha forms most skibidi and most…
— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 13, 2024

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Marc A. Criley, Jeffrey Smith, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 7/6/24 This Evening Jonathan Hoag Renounces His Unpleasant Profession

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

From the Tom Baker / Doctor Who “The Android Invasion”

(1) CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS AUTHOR Q&A. “Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: ‘Satire is a way to make myself less depressed’” in the Guardian.

…His first novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, now out in paperback and currently on the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C Clarke science fiction award (announced on 24 July), takes place in a future in which live-streamed combat between death-row convicts has become prime-time entertainment. [Nana Kwame] Adjei-Brenyah, born and raised in New York, was speaking from his home in the Bronx.

Where did Chain-Gang All-Stars begin?
I’d been working with this group to try to end solitary confinement in New York state, because it’s known pretty much universally to be torture. I actually got involved with them because they were trying to support my former school district – it was being mismanaged and children of colour were being treated poorly – but the group [Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow] was also interested in the rights and outcomes of people who are incarcerated. I’m interested in systems that get us to buy into violence and trick us into stepping on each other’s heads – literally, metaphorically – and I view the prison system as a huge version of that. Ninety-nine per cent of people in prison are impoverished and suffering from mental health problems and diseases of addiction. The idea that you can put humans in cages only stifles our ability to respond to these systemic issues with compassion. Carceral solutions to serious human problems perpetuate those problems.

Why did you address the subject by writing a satirical dystopia?
The speculative nature of the story helped me feel more comfortable getting extremely specific about the brutal statistical realities of prison. I don’t deny I’m writing a dystopia, but dystopia is really just a point of view that depends on your proximity to violence.…

(2) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WEARY. “Election result celebrated by David and Georgia Tennant with ‘amazing’ Doctor Who reference” – The Independent sets up the photo.

David and Georgia Tennant have celebrated the General Election results with an “amazing” Doctor Who callback.

After a night of humiliation for the Conservative Party, who were beaten in a historic landslide by Labour, Rishi Sunak, before falling victim to an embarrassing prank by a YouTuber, conceded to Keir Starmer, calling the result “sobering”….

(3) COMPANIONSHIP. “Doctor Who’s Russell T Davies explains how Varada Sethu’s cameo in ‘Boom’ led to her being cast as Ncuti Gatwa’s companion” at GamesRadar+.

“I think we might as well just be simple with this, because we’ve already said she’s not coming back as Mundy Flynn,” Davies tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on July 10 and features Doctor Who on the cover. “It’s one of those very simple situations, like with Freema [Agyeman, who appeared in ‘Army of Ghosts’ before being cast as companion Martha Jones]: when you cast a great actor, you need a new companion.”Sethu played Mundy Flynn in ‘Boom‘, the third episode of season 1. Written by former showrunner Steven Moffat, it takes place on the wartorn planet of Kastarion 3, and Mundy is a marine who the Doctor and Ruby encounter after the Doctor steps on a landmine….

…”I was watching, like, the fifteenth edit of ‘Boom’, loving her,” Davies continues. “Every time I watch her, I think, ‘God, she’s brilliant’, I literally think she’s brilliant. I used to watch her thinking, ‘God, what a shame we can’t work with her again.’ I was thinking, ‘Should we go back to the 51st century, could we meet her again?’ and then I suddenly went, ‘Oh, let’s just cast her again. We’ve done that before. Lovely.’…

…Davies concluded by teasing what’s to come, claiming: “Good stuff ahead. Completely new character, again, a completely new story and that’s a great new story that will run across eight episodes.”

(4) FROM BRIDGERTON TO GALLIFREY. “’Doctor Who’ showrunner teases Nicola Coughlan cameo in Christmas episode” at Geo News.

Nicola Coughlan, who rose to fame after starring in Netflix’s regency era drama Bridgerton, has reportedly landed another role.

Steven Moffat, who is the director of Doctor Who, recently sat down for a confessional on Ireland AM, and weighed in on the Christmas special episode of the popular sci-fi series.

He also revealed the name for this episode, which is called, Joy to the World and continued to say, “Nicola is wonderful in it.”

“I’m not allowed to say anything about it. At least I think I’m not allowed to say anything about it so I’ll just shut up,” he also teased and added that Nicola “will break your heart.”

(5) OH-OH! Inverse takes us “Inside The Secret James Bond Reboot That’s Happening Right Now”.

…Written by Kim Sherwood, the novels Double or Nothing (March 2023) and A Spy Like Me (April 2024), tell a new kind of James Bond story, one that utterly reboots the canon of character and smarty, focuses on various new Double O agents. In doing so, Sherwood pulls off a radical pivot for the Bond franchise.

“What I’m doing I think is a structural shift where I’m turning it into an ensemble cast,” Sherwood tells Inverse. “Fleming was writing in this very traditional quest narrative structure where Bond was a kind of medieval knight. He’s given a mission and he sets out from the castle. He’s always on his own. But he’s part of a Double O section. He’s inherently part of a wider world.”

Tackling the wider world of 007 seems like something that should have already happened. And to some extent, it has. There were The Moneypenny Diaries in 2005, as well as a 2017 comic book miniseries about Bond’s CIA ally, Felix Leiter. But none of these spinoffs are quite as extensive or reboot-y as Sherwood’s Double O series.

“Growing up, I loved things like comic books or Star Trek, which lean into this idea of the extended universe and really big ensemble casts,” Sherwood says. “Those casts can be 25 characters deep, and every single one of them can carry the show. So that’s what I’ve grown up loving and being inspired by. That’s the direction that I’ve taken this expansion of Bond.”

Both of Sherwood’s “Double O” novels are masterclasses in world-building. The Double O section is now headed by Moneypenny, who, in this version of the timeline, rose through the ranks with Bond. A male version of M still oversees the Secret Service in general, but he’s a kindly grandfather figure who Sherwood says she modeled on Patrick Stewart. Meanwhile, the gadget expert “Q” (most recently played by Ben Whishaw in the films) is essentially an AI in this version, a quantum computer that assists MI6 with various intelligence gathering and tech problems….

(6) WHY THE WASP FACTORY WAS NEEDED. This is not the best week to lead with Neil Gaiman, but don’t hold that against Iain Banks. The Guardian has organized an anniversary tribute: “’An explosion of talent’: Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory at 40”.

[Neil Gaiman:] It was 1984, and the publisher Macmillan was holding a small event for booksellers, and had invited a tiny handful of journalists along as well. They would be announcing upcoming titles, trying to get the booksellers excited about them. I was one of the journalists, but I only remember one author and one book from that afternoon. The author’s editor, James Hale, was thrilled about a first novel, which Macmillan would soon be publishing, and which James had discovered on the “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. The author had been asked to say a few words to the assembled booksellers about himself and his book.

The author had dark, curly auburn hair and a ginger beard that was barely more than ambitious stubble. He was tall, and his accent was Scottish. He told us that he had really wanted to be a science fiction writer, that he had written several science fiction books and sent them out to publishers without attracting any interest. Then he had decided to “write what he knew”. He had taken his own obsessions as a young man, his delight in blowing things up and his fascination with homemade implements of destruction, and he had given them to Frank, a young man who also liked blowing things up but went much further than the author ever had. The author was Iain Banks, of course, and the book was The Wasp Factory…

…Iain needed to write a book that would be published, and he did. A book that was unflinchingly readable, dragging the reader in and through….

(7) JON LANDAU (1960-2024). Film producer Jon Landau died July 5. Variety notes:

…Landau, a longtime producing partner to James Cameron, was behind three of the top four highest-grossing movies of all time. Landau helped make history with “Titanic,” the first film to cross $1 billion at the global box office. He topped that movie’s record-breaking grosses twice, with 2009’s “Avatar” and its sequel, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

Before his death, Landau was deeply involved in the production of the “Avatar” sequels. Cameron is planning to fill his blockbuster sci-fi franchise with five movies in total, with the fifth tentatively coming out in 2031….

Landau’s genre producing credits include: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989); Solaris (2002); Avatar (2009); Toruk: The First Fight (2016; TV movie); Alita: Battle Angel (2019); and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 6, 1927 — Janet Leigh. (Died 2004). Janet Leigh. Alfred Hitchcock. A perfect pair it turned out. And Psycho is all that I’ll be talking about.

MAJOR SPOILER NOW. I MEAN IT.

Yes, she was in Psycho. Forty-seven minutes into film, she is showering when a shadowy figure brutally kills her character Marion by stabbing her over and over so the blood runs copiously.

Leigh receiving instructions from Alfred Hitchcock to film the shower scene in Psycho (1960). By Shamley Productions , Paramount Pictures.

It took a full week to complete from set-up to filming, seventy camera setups, using fast-cut editing of seventy eight pieces of film, and apparently a naked stand-in model for rehearsal (Marli Renfro who appeared in many men’s magazines of the days and appeared on the cover of the September 1960 edition of Playboy) in a mere forty-five second impressionistic montage sequence, and both inter-cutting slow-motion and regular speed footage. (I say apparently but read on as to why that is disputed.)

Hitchcock would later acknowledge that while Leigh’s face is seen that it is her, otherwise it is Renfro. And later contradicts himself in yet another interview. And then changes his mind yet again.

Yet another individual, Rita Riggs, who was in charge of the wardrobe, stated that it was Leigh in the shower the entire time, explaining that Leigh did not wish to be nude and so she devised many things including pasties, moleskin, and bodystockings, to be pasted on Leigh for the scene. I must say this sounds quite silly.

Now it has to be noted that in Psycho – Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller says all the actual shower footage in the film was of her and the only time Renfro was used was in an overhead shot that was eventually cut due to censors’ concerns.

At this point, we’ll never know, will we? Now keep in mind that Renfro is still alive and has continued to give interviews, insisting that it is she.

The question is where is the unedited film? That is the question that goes unanswered though the likely answer it seems is that it no longer exists.

END OF MAJOR SPOILER, REALY IT IS. SO IT WAS ALL SPOILERS THIS TIME.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ends Franklin W. Dixon’s writing career before it starts.
Reality Check features a monstrous prank.

(10) ASTRONOMY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST. Smithsonian Magazine makes it possible for us to “See Ten Awe-Inspiring Images From the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest” The photo gallery is at the link.

For generations, skywatchers and hobbyists around the world have admired the beauty of the cosmos.

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest channels that wonder into dazzling images, taken by amateur and professional astrophotographers as they vie for a £10,000 ($12,750) grand prize. The contest, arguably the biggest astrophotography competition in the world, is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in England and is in its 16th year.

…. The 2024 Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist, unveiled on Tuesday, includes an aurora shaped like a dragon, a total solar eclipse and a breathtaking shot of the Milky Way in a desert sky.

A panel of art and astronomy experts judges the contest. The overall winners will be announced on September 12….

(11) THE MOTION STOPPED – FOR ALMOST 30 YEARS. The New York Times knows “How Stop-Motion Yetis Emerged From Film Hibernation”.

Movies like “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers” arrived in theaters later than expected because of last year’s actors’ strike, and Hollywood experienced significant production setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic.

But “The Primevals,” about a group of researchers who discover gigantic yetis and other prehistoric creatures, made those movie delays look minuscule when it was released in theaters in March.

It was filmed in 1994.

The live-action movie, which was delayed because of funding woes and then the death of its director, David Allen, incorporates a stop-motion animation technique in which puppets are painstakingly photographed and brought to life through a series of frames, as with a children’s flipbook. The retro look conjures up an earlier era of filmmaking, before computer-generated imagery took over visual effects.

“It’s like an archaeological find,” said Juliet Mills, who plays one of the movie’s researchers. “It’s like entering a time machine watching this film.”

Mills and the other actors had doubted that the movie would ever reach theaters. Even before Allen died, the film’s development had been plagued by outsize expectations and financial challenges….

… Allen had originally envisioned pushing the boundaries of what could be accomplished with stop-motion animation, Endicott said. In the decades since, however, computer-generated imagery had become an essential tool for animating films.

“By the time he was working on it in the ’90s, the movie became a comment that stop-motion still had a voice in a world of C.G.I.,” Endicott said.

Allen died in 1999. Despite his final wishes, the movie’s puppets collected dust in a storage unit for nearly two decades.

While rewatching an old version of “The Primevals” in 2018, Endicott recalled Allen’s directive and recommitted himself to releasing the film, even if it was an unfinished version. By this time, Band’s production company Full Moon Features had also become more profitable, so there were fewer funding hurdles. Endicott and a group of Allen’s friends and fans recreated some of the puppets and completed more of the animations, and Richard Band created an orchestral score….

(12) SPACE TRAVEL CONTMINATES MOON — WELL THEY SAID ALL THESE WORLDS WERE OURS EXCEPT EUROPA ALONE… [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Reported in this week’s Science journal comes the news that our visits to the Moon are contaminating its natural water ice trapped in permanently shadow areas…

Orbital spacecraft have observed thin surface deposits of water-ice in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of craters near the Moon’s poles. Any free water molecules hop across the lunar surface until they are either destroyed by sunlight or reach one of the PSRs, where they remain indefinitely. Rocket exhaust contains water, so Farrell et al. calculated how much water reaches PSRs from lunar landings. They found that the six Apollo landings contributed less than 1% of the surface water in PSRs, implying that most is natural. However, a single Artemis landing will increase PSR surface water mass by more than 20%, polluting the record of natural water on the Moon.

The primary research is here.

(13) DO ALIEN OPTIMISTS HAVE A FINE-TUNING PROBLEM? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Aliens are a key SF trope. But I am fascinated when there is serious discussion in the academic literature. Here’s the latest from Prof. David Kipping at the Cool Worlds Lab. “Crowded or Lonely? The Statistics of Alien Life”.

New research paper from the Cool Worlds Lab! Today we explore the implications of a classic result in statistics but applied to alien life for the first time. The result implies a startling conclusion, the cosmos is either teeming with intelligent civilisations, or we’re essentially alone. Join us today as explore how this works and what the implications might be.

(14) SOLARIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes a look at Stanislaw Lem’s classic Solaris. And for once we get a behind the scenes look at how Moid pulls these vids together. The 12-minute video is below….

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

Pixel Scroll 6/25/24 Everybody Must Get Scrolled

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TENNANT LENDS SUPPORT. “Doctor Who actor David Tennant wears trans rights T-shirt by Canadian designer: ‘You will have to go through me’” at Yahoo!

…In an effort to get more attention for their cause, Brocksom started sending T-shirts to creators with large followings. A friend encouraged them to send one to actor Tennant, whose child identifies as non-binary. Tennant is no stranger to allyship, often speaking up and wearing Ts and pins in supports of the LGBTQ+ community on red carpets and awards ceremonies.

Last year, at the press launch for Good Omens‘ second season, he wore a shirt that read: “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks.”

Brocksom’ husband found an address for Tennant’s fan mail and they mailed him a package of T-shirts with all their designs.

“I didn’t think it would go anywhere,” Brocksom tells Yahoo Canada. “I thought he’d wear one to a doctor’s appointment with his kids or something, and then the message would be out there.”

On Friday, Brocksom woke up to hundreds of T-shirt orders. Tennant’s wife, Georgia, had posted a photo of him wearing their “You will have to go through me” T-shirt on Instagram where she has more than 410,000 followers. The actor and his family attended their children’s school Pride events….

(2) BIRTHDAY HONOURS. This came out June 14 but it’s news to me! “The King’s Birthday Honours List 2024”. No sff figures listed that I can see, but Bookseller spotted a bunch of authors and other contributors to the arts.

Monica Ali, Joseph Coehlo, and Niall Ferguson were among the authors recognized on the King’s Birthday Honors List in the U.K., the Booksellerreported. …

Niall Ferguson, who was awarded a knighthood, told the Oxford Mail, “When an individual is honored by the King, implicitly his formative influences are the real recipients of the honor.”

Children’s Laureate Coelho (OBE) was recognized for services to the arts, to children’s reading and to literature. Other authors on the honors list include Susie Dent (MBE), Rory Cellan-Jones (OBE), and Jamila Gavin (MBE).

Richard Charkin (OBE for services to literature), a recent past president of the International Publishers Association, former CEO of Macmillan Publishers, executive director of Bloomsbury from 2007 to 2018, an executive at a range of other publishers, and author of the memoir, My Back Pages…

Other honorees include Jenny Brown, founder of literary agency Jenny Brown Associates, who was given an OBE for services to literature; Nicholas Poole, past CEO of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (OBE for services to libraries, to the arts and to museums); and Di Speirs, audio executive editor for books at the BBC (MBE for services to broadcasting and to literature).

Also honored were Sarah Hosking (MBE), who founded Hosking Houses Trust, as well as librarians Sally McInness and Julie Kay.

(3) CAT CANCEL CULTURE. At Camestros Felapton, “A Cat Reads Hyperion by Dan Simmons” begins with this howl against injustice.

[From the desk of Timothy the Talking Cat]

As the foremost editor in Science Fiction, I was once again shocked not to win the Locus Award for Best Editor despite my impressive track record of not just editing books but also editing small wildlife into a variety of interesting shapes. I immediately cancelled my subscription to Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly in protest as I don’t have a subscription to Locus but, let’s face it, they are all in on it, they are all part of the Big Magazine cabal controlling the media and if we don’t all chip in and send a message that the ordinary folk will not put up with this kind of nonsense then where will be? In my case, I’d be in the drawing room with nothing to read because those spiteful wretches at Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly refused to send me this month’s edition on the spurious grounds that I hadn’t paid them. It is cancel culture gone mad when publishers start boycotting tax-payers just for having opinions….

(4) CROWDFUNDING A LADY ASTRONAUT COLLECTION. Mary Robinette Kowal today launched a Kickstarter appeal for Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts, a collection of 9 short stories in the Lady Astronaut Series written by her, including one written just for this collection….

In 1952, an asteroid slammed into Washington, DC and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, triggering a climate crisis that threatens life on Earth.

Through four novels and numerous short stories, readers follow the pioneering women who strive to save humanity. The series’ primary protagonist, Dr. Elma York, a pilot and experienced mathematician, battles misogyny and social anxiety while planting her flag as the first Lady Astronaut. She and her fellow scientists reach for the Moon and beyond, bringing lasting change for humanity.

Through the Lady Astronaut Universe, Kowal has shone a light on the real-life accomplishments of women in space science and inspired a new generation entering STEM fields.

In the opening hours the Kickstarter has already scored pledges in excess of its $30,000 goal.

(5) SF IN BULGARIA & ROMANIA. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] With a friend of mine and a fan from Romania we published a paper in Locus. It is available online now: “SF in Bulgaria & Romania: How Many Dwarfs Does It Take to Match a Giant?” by Valentin D. Ivanov & Cristian Tamaș. From the June 2024 issue of Locus magazine. Locus hardly needs advertisement help, but the speculative fiction in our countries always does!

Here’s an excerpt:

Outside of the vast English-speaking fandom lies a tapestry of diverse and weakly interlinked communities from the countries with small language bases. These languages, and the nations that speak them are often – because of inertia, rather than ill intent – perceived as “minor.” Indeed, they are minor in one critical aspect: as literary markets. This circumstance has a profound effect on their literature….

Attentive readers may have noticed the careful choice of words in the title. The speculative fiction communities of “minor” countries do not want to fight the giants. We aspire to become a giant ourselves, albeit multifaceted, multilingual, and multicultural, by means of teamwork and cooperation….

(6) NEW UNITS. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] More stuff I never knew existed. “Minotaur Sex: The Best New Smut Genre” in New York Magazine.

…Human-monster pairings are what sets monster romance apart from its close cousin, the wildly successful genre of romantasy, a genre epitomized by Sarah J. Maas’s blockbuster A Court of Thorns and Roses series. In those books, more established and more human-adjacent paranormal creatures like elves, dragons, and fae dominate the stories, and humans are reduced to bit players, if they figure into the books at all. But in monster romance, we’re usually in a world that’s vaguely similar to Earth, or at least connected to it in some way. For many readers, ACOTAR was the gateway drug to other books with nonhuman characters. Others found their way there via fanfic, where the themes that dominate these books became established over the years via an iterative, collaborative process that gradually hardened into tropes. They generate reams of conversation. In one popular TikTok, Laura Whitney at first seems to scoff at monster-romance readers by saying, “People are literally out here reading monster romance?” Then she whispers, “Which ones?” So many people appreciated the 3,712 recommendations generated in the comments that 18,900 people have bookmarked the post.

When I first told friends about the latest turn my reading had taken, I got a lot of blank stares at first but soon fell into a delightful text exchange with a friend who has a Ph.D. and who also read Morning Glory Milking Farm. She sent me a link to Hermione Granger–Draco Malfoy fanfic that she said had taught her a lot about BDSM. I started to realize that, though many of us may be out here walking around with the latest literary fiction from Riverhead or Pantheon in our tote bags, our phones runneth over with stories of men with tails and two dicks….

(7) IF ONLY IT WAS MINUS GODZILLA. Mark Roth-Whitworth warns us: “A Review of Godzilla Minus One (all spoilers).”

This was an amazing movie, and should have had more Oscar nominations. It probably would have, if a) it had been made in the West, or b) it didn’t have Godzilla in it. The acting was wonderful. All the other good things people have said about it are true. However, they all missed the, well, kaiju in the room.

This was not a monster movie….

(8) JOHN MADDOX ROBERTS (1947-2024). The SFWA Blog has posted a tribute — “In Memoriam: John Maddox Roberts”. He died May 23 at the age of 76. Here is an excerpt:

John Maddox Roberts…, also writing as Mark Ramsay, was a prolific and best-selling science fiction, fantasy, historical, and mystery writer over the course of thirty-five years. He was the author of many novels set in ancient Rome, including Hannibal’s Children and its sequel The Seven Hills, and the SPQR series, the first of which, now titled The King’s Gambit, was an Edgar Award finalist in 1991….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 25, 1903 — George Orwell. (Died 1950.)

By Paul Weimer: Big Brother. For genre fans, Orwell begins, and often ends at 1984. (Sometimes Animal Farm as well.) Sure, Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell’s contribution to letters is far greater than that. “Shooting an Elephant”, as it turned out, was the first piece by Orwell I read, before 1984, back in High School. I had heard of 1984, but not yet read it, and so when we were assigned the story to read and discuss, I was enthusiastic to engage with a story that was post-colonial in the midst of the end of British Colonialism.

Animal Farm isn’t serious as a speculative work. Through and through, Animal Farm is an allegory and a rather pointed one. I read that next, and I didn’t need a teacher to see just how perfect an allegory it is. You may have seen the animated movie, which had the ending changed to remove some of the bite of that inescapable allegory. Accept no substitutes, read the original.

But now we come to 1984. I’ve had 1984 as a fixture in my genre life ever since I picked it up in my early 20’s. Room 101 and the rest blew me away, and I realized I had seen bits of the John Hurt movie a decade earlier and not realized what I had seen. It was a sharp blow to come across scenes in the book that my dim memory of the movie foreshadowed. It only enhanced and pressed upon me the power of the narrative of Winston Smith’s story.

1984 has cropped up in my genre life in other forms, too, than the movie and the novel. On a rainy day exploring London before Worldcon in 2014, my traveling companion and I found ourselves by a theater that was showing an adaptation of 1984. So the idea of seeing proper London theater, featuring 1984, was irresistible. My friend and I wandered around that area of the West End, eager for evening to come to see the performance.

It was a fascinating (if brutal) metanarrative of 1984, deconstructing the world of the Party from a future where the Party had fallen. Rapt, I bought a copy of the 1984 play after the performance. I would also find — but not attend — the play again in 2017 in Melbourne, delighted that the dark 1984 play had “followed me” on my Down Under Fan Fund trip. Given what I choose instead to do, perhaps I should have seen it again after all.

I’ve read and watched and listened to other versions of 1984, from audio dramas to movies. 1984 continues to follow me in my genre life. Big Brother really is watching me.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus illustrates gate keeping.
The Argyle Sweater knows about super-sizing.
Existential Comics brings us “Sauron the Economist”.

(11) GREEN LANTERN GETS GREEN LIGHT. (Of course I had to use that headline.) “Green Lantern Series Finally Happening at HBO” says The Hollywood Reporter.

HBO is at long last signing up with the Lantern Corps.

The premium cable outlet has given a straight-to-series order for Lanterns, based on the long-running Green Lantern characters — specifically John Stewart and Hal Jordan — from DC Comics. Chris Mundy (Ozark) will serve as showrunner on the eight-episode drama and co-write the series with Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, Lost) and Eisner Award winner Tom King, known for his work on several Batman titles, Mister Miracle and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow for DC Comics.

The (ahem) green light for Lanterns comes almost five years after what was then HBO Max began developing a Green Lantern series with producer Greg Berlanti — the mastermind of the DC Arrow-verse on The CW and one of the writers of the 2011 Green Lantern feature film that starred Ryan Reynolds….

(12) BACK TO BARBARELLA. Here’s the first trailer for the Sydney Sweeney Barbarella (2025).

A remake of the 1960s cult classic Barbarella is currently in the works with Sydney Sweeney set to star…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Maybe it’s time for another look at the “Young Frankenstein (1974) Bloopers & Outtakes”!

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, Valentin D. Ivanov, Dann, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Daniel Dern (via Robert Zimmerman’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, of course).]

Pixel Scroll 6/18/24 Destination: Moon Wedding

Posted on June 18, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TAKE A FLYER ON THE FIRST WORLDCON. You have three days left to bid on this “First World Science Fiction Convention Flyer (1939)” at Heritage Auctions.

Relive the magic of going to the First world Science Fiction Convention with this vintage flyer for the legendary event! The event was chaired by Sam Moskowitz; the Guest of Honor was Frank R. Paul, and other attendees included John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, Harry Harrison, Forrest J. Ackerman, and many more influential figures in pulps, comics, and genre fiction at large. Held in conjunction with the New York World’s Fair, the event was a great success and WorldCon continues to this day. The flyer measures 9″ x 12″ has a horizontal page-length crease, other small creases, toning, and handling wear. In Very Good condition. From the Roger Hill Collection.

(2) OKORAFOR SELLS ‘DEATH OF THE AUTHOR’. “Gollancz signs Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘future classic’” – The Bookseller has details.

Gollancz has signed Nnedi Okorafor’s “tour-de-force”, the Death of the Author.

Editor Brendan Durkin acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Fiona Baird at WME. North American rights went to Julia Elliott at William Morrow in a seven-figure deal after a deal negotiated with Angeline Rodriguez and Eric Simonoff at WME. French rights have been pre-empted by Ailleurs & Demain. The novel will be published in early 2025.

Death of the Author is an “exhilarating” story about a disabled Nigerian American woman who writes a science fiction novel that becomes a bestselling phenomenon, but her success comes at a price. Billed as a “sweeping narrative” for fans of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow,Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the story is “a multi-threaded meta drama examining the relationship between storyteller and audience”.

Okorafor said: “Death of the Author is the most ambitious and naked work I’ve ever written. I’m so proud of it. I’ve been writing it in my head for 30 years. It brings together so many of my many parts, my contradictions, fusions and my weirdness. The title comes from a famous essay by French scholar Roland Barthes, an essay that I’ve always loathed but also chewed on throughout my years working on my PhD in literature. I want readers to come away from this novel with questions, answers, and a refreshed love of what we as human beings are and what we’re capable of. Also, I wanted to tell a really good story.”…

(3) MUPHRY’S LAW VISITS MIDDLE-EARTH? David Bratman dismantles “nitwit Tolkienists” at Kalimac’s corner.

I’m not going to name this book, because I haven’t finished reading it yet, but it’s not the only recent book on Tolkien to begin by rudely and inaccurately denouncing all previous Tolkien studies for failing to fit the standards of the author’s own perfect and unimpeachable work.

Once it gets past that, it does have some interesting and original things to say, but I was stopped cold by this sentence:

Merry … finally contributes to the fighting in a decisive way, using his magic sword to slay the Black Rider, thus saving Éowyn’s life.

There are about three things wrong with this sentence….

And he details the specific problems are at the link.

(4) PICTCON 1. Farah Mendlesohn has announced plans to run a one-day PictCon1 in Perth, Scotland on Saturday, October 18, 2025.

I’m going to run a one day convention in Perth, Scotland in 2025. PictCon1: 18th October, Guest of Honour, Francesca Barbini. Tickets: £30/£20/ dealer tables £10. If you are fan based in Scotland or anywhere it’s easy to get to us from, please do come!

Francesca T Barbini is a writer, editor and translator from Rome, Italy. In January 2015 she founded Luna Press Publishing, an award-winning small press, home of speculative fiction in fiction and academia.

PictCon1 is a small convention, running just one day at the Salutation Hotel on South St, Perth. The focus is on Science Fiction and Fantasy books, games, art etc, produced in Scotland or by Scots, but there are no rigid rules. This is the first year.

(5) BOOKSHOP’S UNEXPECTED BONANZA. “Award-winning author who passed away donates over 2,000 books to Paisley shop” – Daily Record reveals Christopher Priest’s estate is the donor.

…However, despite having no obvious connection to Abbey Books in Paisley, the author’s family donated more than 2,000 creations to the store – a record according to Brian Hannan, who works there….

Brian said: “I was gobsmacked to see box after box of books being carried into the shop. We didn’t know where to put them and had to clear an area in front of the till as well as stack them in the office.

“We already have 40,000 books so we’re hardly desperate for more stock but this was an offer we could not refuse. For an author so well known as Christopher Priest to choose us as the recipient of his massive library was an honour….”

(6) LETTING THE AIR OUT OF THE INFLATABLE CASH. Filmsite lists the “Top 100 Films of All-Time – Adjusted For Inflation”. Two sff films are in the top five.

Gone With the Wind (1939)
This Civil War-era love story with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh has seduced generations of moviegoers.
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
George Lucas’ space western with aliens, revolutionaries and high-tech effects spawned sci-fi’s biggest franchise of six films.
The Sound of Music (1965)
Julie Andrews headlines the von Trapp family saga that celebrates the triumph of good over Nazism.
E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Spielberg enchants audiences by showing how suburban kids could help a magical, little alien get back home.
Titanic (1997)
Romance, life-or-death stakes and spectacular effects make household names of director James Cameron and star Leonardo DiCaprio.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 17, 2005 — Doctor Who’s “The Parting of the Ways”. Segueing from my post of yesterday’s Scroll concerning “The Unicorn and The Wasp” episode, we will examine the last episode of season one, “The Parting of the Ways”, which saw Christopher Eccleston end his all too brief tenure as the Doctor and David Tennant begin his reign in that role.

It aired on this date nineteen years ago on BBC. It was an all too brief time for the parting of a Doctor after the series ended a sixteen-year hiatus. Why am I saying all too brief a time? That’s because Christopher Eccleston would have the shortest tenure at that point as a Doctor at just one series – and still does.

So let’s talk about the first modern Doctor. There is, I think, a lot to like in him and I would’ve really preferred to have seen what Christopher Eccleston could have done with his iteration of the Doctor given the usual three years and out.

Unlike Jodie Whittaker who I thought was stellar in her role but got let down by her scripts far too often, Eccleston had really great scripts, be it “The End of the World” where he takes Rose to witness the destruction of Earth billions of years from now, or a favorite of mine, “In “The Empty Child” where Captain Jack Harkness has unleashed a nanoplague that in WW II has turned everyone into gas mask wearing zombies. They really are chilling looking and I mean that in all aspects.

Unlike previous Doctors who one and all leaned quite frankly towards the eccentric looking side of things and yes, that included my beloved Fourth Doctor, his look was stripped down motorcycle gear being worn by an anonymous intelligence officer who could’ve been on Spooks and no one would’ve noticed him at all.

I don’t know who decided on his look but it definitely made a statement that this wasn’t the classic Who.

I loved every aspect of the single series that he did— the stories, the performers, the stellar practical effects and the more than state of the art special effects. A splendid series which gave everything we needed in a contemporary Doctor including a well-chosen primary companion in Rose.

So how to see him out? Well that would mean, SPOLIER ALERT!, him taking on oldest enemy, the Daleks. And not just any Daleks, but the Grand Poobah of them, the Emperor Dalek. Notice how alien races use Earth terms? Or how unimaginative British SF script writers can be? I digress.

So the plot here which continues the story started in “Bad Wolf” in brief is that those Dalek have taken over Satellite Five in the year 200, 000 in order to make more Daleks by harvesting human corpses. Gross. The Doctor in turn plans to use the transmitter there to wipe out every Dalek in existence forever while sending Rose home to keep her safe. What could possibly go wrong? Did I mention Jack Harkness is involved with what happens here?

It’s an extremely well-crafted exit for him, and I consider it to have an exceptionally well done regeneration scene, a belief shared by critics in general.

What I will say though it would have been great to see Eccleston continue in the role, David Tenannt was so good that I was delighted starting with “The Christmas Invasion.” He got three thirteen-episode series plus Christmas specials.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Reality Check compares literary ancestries.
The Argyle Sweater finds it makes a difference when you drop a silent “e”.
1 and Done reveals a legendary character once had vision problems.
One Big Happy tries rewards.
Last Place Comics begins a series with Lasso Man:

A series of comics of Photoshop tools as superheroes: A mega-thread (1/7) pic.twitter.com/zh3cYCAfWu
— Zach | Last Place Comics (@lastplacecomics) June 17, 2024

(9) MACK REYNOLDS GOES TO A CON IN 1949. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The people who run the SFF Audio podcast found something interesting, and scanned it, and posted it online: Mack Reynolds’ article “My Best Friends Are Martians” about the business of writing science fiction, as published in the March 1950 issue of Writer’s Digest.

It’s accompanied by a “Capsule Report on a StF Convention” and an analysis of the concept of science fiction fandom (“a phenomenon almost unbelievable. There is absolutely nothing like it in any other fiction field”).

This link is just the con report by itself.

(10) BUMPING UGLIES. The New York Times says a scientist theorizes “A Big Whack That Made the Moon May Have Also Created Continents That Move”.

Some 4.5 billion years ago, many scientists say, Earth had a meetup with Theia, another planetary object the size of Mars. When the two worlds collided in a big whack, the thinking goes, debris shot into space, got locked into the orbit of the young, damaged Earth and led to the formation of our moon.

But the collision with Theia may have done more than that, according to a study published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The impact may have given rise to something else: plate tectonics, the engine that drives the motion of Earth’s giant continental and oceanic plates and causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the eventual remaking of our planet’s surface about every 200 million years.

Earth scientists have long studied and debated the origin of plate tectonics, and other theories have been offered. Qian Yuan, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the new paper, and his colleagues make the case for the Theia collision as the source of plate tectonics. They reason from computer simulations that the event produced the heat needed in Earth’s early days to get the process going.

Tectonics starts with superheated plumes of magma from close to Earth’s core rising and sitting beneath the planet’s plates. The plumes can weaken the crust, and lava can erupt and push aside overriding plates….

(11) THEY’RE BAAAAAACK. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Remember those “monoliths“ that kept cropping up during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic? They’re back. Or at least one is. “’Mysterious’ monolith similar to column seen in 2020 appears in Las Vegas desert: Police” at ABC News. (Click the link for a short video.)

I know President Biden is fond of his aviator shades, but if it comes down to a dogfight with the returning aliens, I’ll take President Whitmore, thank you.

A reflective monolith, similar to one that became an Internet sensation during the height of the pandemic in 2020, was seen in Las Vegas in what local officials are dubbing a mystery.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department took to X on Monday to share two photos of the long, vertical slab of metal that allegedly appeared over the weekend on a hiking trail near Gass Peak on the northern side of the Las Vegas area….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/3/24 Shhhh, I’m Hunting Pixels

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MICHELE LUNDGREN RUNNING FOR MICHIGAN LEGISLATURE. Detroit resident Michele Lundgren, wife of Carl Lundgren, co-founder of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) and creator of hundreds of sff book covers, was charged last July as a Michigan fake Trump elector. The case has been slowly progressing, with the preliminary exam for Lundgren and other defendants expected to resume May 28. But in the meantime, Lundgren has declared her candidacy for the state legislature: “Michigan ‘fake elector’ takes on top Democrat in bid for state House” reports Bridge Michigan.

Michele Lundgren knows she’s a long shot candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives.

She’s a Republican living in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, and a political newcomer with little name recognition. She’s also challenging one of the most powerful Democrats in the state — and fighting felony charges for allegedly trying to help overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

But the 74-year-old Cass Corridor resident says she’s serious about taking on House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, telling Bridge Michigan she feels strongly about representing the party she believes in.

“I’m a novice, and I don’t have any real background in political science or politics,” she said. “But when somebody steps up and says, ‘We’ve got no one else,’ I make an effort to try to learn as much as I can and represent our party and our district as best as possible.”

Lundgren is unopposed in the Republican primary in Michigan’s 9th state House District, meaning she’s a lock for the general election. That’ll likely be against Tate, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former professional football player who helped deliver Democratic majority control in Lansing….

… “That someone who is…one of the fake electors that have been charged with felonies is running against our leader, our speaker of the state House — the idea of it is almost hard to fathom,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes told Bridge. “It’s a little shocking to me.”…

…A preliminary exam for Lundgren and other defendants is expected to resume May 28. If the judge sends the case to trial, it’s unlikely it will be resolved by the Nov. 5 general election.

Lundgren and other co-defendants maintain that they did nothing wrong. Calling the ongoing case a “nightmare,” Lundgren said she believed she was putting her name to a sign-in sheet for a meeting and was unaware it would be passed off as an elector document….

This will be Lundgren’s second campaign for the 9th district seat. She was defeated in 2022 by a Democrat who received 91% of the vote.

(2) WHO’S WHO. Just in case there isn’t enough controversy in the Guardian, they commissioned Martin Belam to give us “The greatest Doctor Who – ranked!” Fortunately, he was 100% right about who deserves to head up this list. (I will now beat a quick retreat to my bomb shelter…)

1. David Tennant
Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors, 2005-10, 2022-3

His second bite of the cherry just about elevates David Tennant above Tom Baker. Tennant agreed to step into the role after Eccleston’s abrupt departure, not knowing how successful the 2005 revival would be, then discovered he’d inherited a monster. His time in the role is littered with stories that put the character most through the emotional wringer (Midnight/Human Nature/The Waters of Mars) and some of the most comedy gif-able moments, which made him the perfect Doctor for the social media age. By 2009, Tennant’s Doctor Who was the BBC One Christmas ident and the show had ubiquitous cultural capital again.

Whether by accident or design, his brief return with Catherine Tate in 2023 delivered three enjoyable specials and worked as a convenient way to soft reboot the show for the Disney+ era. Over to you, Ncuti …
Best story: Blink. Iconic performance: Midnight

(3) PLENTY MORE WHERE THEY CAME FROM. That ranked list of Doctor Who’s might need to leave room: “48 Years Later, The Oldest Sci-Fi Show Could Finally Explain Its Weirdest Mystery” says Inverse.

…In 2020, then-showrunner Chris Chibnall decided the answer was — both. The Time Lords established a rule of 12 regenerations, but the Doctor had lived countless lives before having their memory wiped of said lives. Retroactively, the faces glimpsed in “The Brain of Morbius” accounted for some of those past lives, and, most prominently, Jo Martin’s dangerous Fugitive Doctor was among those lost Doctors, too. But who were those other secret Doctor Whos? It seems possible that the new version of the show might finally give us an answer.

According to a new quote from current Who showrunner, Russell T Davies, the story of “The Timeless Children,” established during the Jodie Whittaker era, will continue in Season 2 of the newly relaunched series. “That storyline’s a gift handed to me by Chris Chibnall, and it’s an honour to take it on from him,” Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. “There’s so much story in it! We’re dealing with it in what we’re shooting now for Season 2.”

It’s not super shocking that Davies is picking up the threads from the Chibnall era in the Ncuti Gatwa era. The three David Tennant/Catherine Tate specials already made it clear that the Doctor’s origin story of having been adopted is still very much on his mind, especially in the episode “Wild Blue Yonder.” But if Season 2 of the new era is doubling down on the Timeless Child, and the Doctor’s time working for the clandestine group called the Division, then it seems possible we’ll learn at least a little bit about the identity of some of those other Doctors….

(4) ORIGINS OF H.G. WELLS. The University of Calgary’s Nickle Galleries is exhibiting “H.G. Wells: A Scientific Romance” through July 19.

H.G. Wells: A Scientific Romance explores the inspired beginnings of Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946), an early and major figure in what was to become science fiction. Trained in the sciences, Wells intended to be a teacher. Instead, poor health led him to pursue freelance journalism and write science-infused adventure stories known as “scientific romances.”

This exhibition traces Wells’ extraordinary early output, in the 1890s, of influential short stories and commercially successful novels that established him as a prescient and prolific writer, thinker, and cultural presence. Take a time machine back to fin de siècle London to see the future as Wells imagined it.

For those who can’t visit in person, there is a virtual tour available at Thinglink.

Also, some of the highlights are displayed in this series of videos.

(5) GOOGLE DOC GONE. WIRED can describe “What Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs”, however, no one has been able to find out why it happened to this writer. Chuck Tingle doesn’t know either, however, he is a source for this article.

… When she saw the word inappropriate in the notification, Renee worried her work had been dinged for its spice. “I thought I was the problem,” she says. “I thought I had somehow messed it up.”

But she hadn’t. At least, she hadn’t messed it up in any way she could hope to avoid in the future. Google never specified which of her 222,000 words was inappropriate. There were no highlighted sections, no indicators of what had rendered her documents unshareable. Had one of her readers flagged the content without discussing it with her first? Was it a malicious attack on the files? Had someone at Google decided her content was too spicy?…

While it’s still unclear what exactly happened to Renee’s docs, or if it’s just a fluke, the effects of mishaps like this are complex. Even though it’s now commonplace, there can still be unease around letting major corporations store personal writing. For authors who write about sex, say, or queer people trying to find a voice, hearing that your content could be flagged as “inappropriate” can have a chilling effect. The problem, says bestselling pseudonymous author Chuck Tingle, is that companies like Google now function like utilities. “It’s the same as water and electric,” he says.

Tingle would know: His “Tinglers,” erotica pieces he releases as Kindle Singles, led to his contract at Macmillan for the queer horror novels Camp Damascusand Bury Your Gays. Those early singles were written without the benefit of editors, often within a matter of hours. They’re sloppy. “They’re punk rock,” he says, but they also helped him build a community around the “underdog genres” of erotica, horror, and comedy that his work falls into. If Amazon decided to stop selling his Tinglers, it would be a big blow, even though he now has a book deal…

(6) NO POC ON THEAKSTON 2024 LONGLIST. “’It really isn’t good enough’: crime novel of the year award criticised for entirely white longlist” in the Guardian.

The Theakston Old Peculier crime novel of the year has faced criticism after its 2024 longlist did not feature a single book by an author of colour.

The UK and Ireland’s most prestigious prize for crime fiction is awarded to the best crime novel published each year in paperback. The winner is voted for jointly by the awards’ academy and the public, and is presented each year at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate. The longlist is selected by the academy from all the titles submitted by publishers. This year’s longlist comprised 18 books, none of which is by an author of colour.

“It’s very pale …,” thriller writer Sarah Pinborough commented on Facebook after the list was announced last Thursday, sparking a debate among a number of authors.

“A big question is, how does the festival go from having a Black Woman as its Programme Chair in 2011 – me! – to where it is now?” commented crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell. “Who’s on the committee? How did they get chosen? What is the duration of time for someone to be on the committee? This should all be underpinned in clear and transparent policies and documentation … Because currently it really isn’t good enough.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 3, 1985 — Becky Chambers, 39. Raise your hand if you like the female-centered fiction of Becky Chambers. I certainly do. Quite a bit in fact. I say female-centered because apparently she garners more than a few complaints that there’s no strong male characters here. You know of the type Heinlein only wrote of. Like Hazel Stone. Sorry I couldn’t help myself.

Shall we start with the Wayfarers series? The books in the series are The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Each is most excellent and quite unique in its own manner.

The first book was first self-published through a Kickstarter campaign before being picked up by Hodder & Stoughton. Harper and with the otherwise alien crew of Wayfarer are fascinating. It reminds me a bit of Rambo’s Disco Space Opera novels in its depiction of aliens.

A Closed and Common Orbit would be nominated for a Hugo at Worldcon 75. Sidra, a Lovelace AI installed in a body kit and Pepper, a tech expert originally from an Enhancement Colony who’s her companion are the main characters here. Oh, this is was quite a tale indeed.

Like the preceding novel, Record of a Spaceborn Few was nominated for a Hugo, this time at Dublin 2019. I’ll not spoil it here, but suffice it to say that it deals with something that gets ignored in mass exodus from Earth story lines. Of course the series itself garnered a Hugo this year.

The final of the four novels is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Here we have the Five-Hop One-Stop, call it a bar if you will on a planet that serves on a rest, refuelling and supply depot for ships transiting through wormholes, where a group of strangers must cooperate to survive when something catastrophic happens. That these characters are wonderfully portrayed is what matters here. This is my second favorite novel in the fourth series after the first.

Her final work I’ll note here, setting aside for the moment her short fiction, is her To Be Taught, if Fortunate story which follows four astronauts as they travel beyond the Solar System on a research mission to explore potential life in other systems. Enough plot details. Fascinating story tightly told which won at CoNZealand.

She has written about a baker’s dozen pieces of short fiction thus far. One in The Vela shared universe serial that is space opera I think. There is, and I’ve not read it, “A Good Heretic”, a short story set here which to be found in the Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers anthology.

I think Apple should pick up the Monk & Robot series as both A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy would adapt well to the video with the proper budget that Apple could give them. Well and that they’d give Chambers a full say in adapting them. Robots, monks, tea. Cool.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal knows that writing the other is hard.
Dick Tracy depends on a comic typo.

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to devour a Georgian dinner with Dan Parent in Episode 224 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

My guest this episode is Dan Parent, an artist and writer who’s worked for Archie Comics for 35 years. I was excited to talk with him for many reasons, a big one being how little I know about the inner working of that company, which I’ve only touched on briefly for you back during my lunch with Howard Bender in Episode 204.

Parent started at Archie immediately after graduating from the famed Joe Kubert School, another topic I was happy to explore. In 2010, he introduced the first openly gay character in Archie Comics when he created Kevin Keller in Veronica #202, which he wrote and drew. That character eventually got his own title with the publication of Kevin Keller #1 in 2012.

Parent’s been involved with several crossover titles which expanded the Archie universe, such as Archie vs. Sharknado in 2015, and the six-part crossover Archie Meets Batman ’66 in 2018. Parent’s creator-owned work includes Die Kitty Die, which he collaborated on with artist/writer Fernando Ruiz in 2016, and which I found to be a delightful spoof of the comics business and many of the characters I loved as a kid. In May 2013, Parent was presented with the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book….

(10) SF FROM A TO Z. [Item by Dann.] New/aspiring author Mike Burke posted something he wrote a while back. It was a writing prompt/challenge. He had to write a 26-word long story where the first letter of each word corresponded with each successive word of the alphabet: “A twenty-six word story challenge”. Read it at the link.

(11) EVERYONE’S A CRITIC. “An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush” at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

…Imagine taking the most annoying parts of science fiction and Libertarianism, isolating them, and then somehow blending them up into a cursed musical slurry. Then, infuse that slurry with a distinctive incel vibe, and presto! You’ve got one of the most powerful contraception options on the market.…

(12) NOT SUCH A LONG TIME AGO. “How Engineers Created a Flying ‘Star Wars’ X-Wing” in Smithsonian Magazine.

Seeing a Star Wars X-wing starfighter won’t require a trip to a galaxy far, far away.

This year, just in time for May 4—Star Wars Day—the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has unveiled a drone outfitted with X-wing body shells that resembles the popular spacecraft from the films. The display resides at the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

The large drone, a Boeing CV2 Cargo Air Vehicle (CAV), represents a milestone for remotely piloted aircraft in the United States, says Roger Connor, who curates the museum’s vertical flight collection. Weighing more than 1,000 pounds, the drone was the first remotely piloted electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft of its size approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for public demonstration, Connor says.

In December 2019, two drones fitted with add-ons to look like X-wings, including the one displayed at the museum, flew above a crowd of spectators for the opening of the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The aircraft, which has a wingspan of 20 feet 2 inches and is more than 24 feet long and 7 feet tall with the X-wing costume on, will be on loan indefinitely from Disney and Boeing….

[Thanks to Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Dennis Howard, Gary Farber, Bill, Dann, Daniel Dern, Lise Andreasen, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

File 770

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Tag Archives: David Tennant

Pixel Scroll 4/28/25 We Have Scrolled Our Birthfile For A Mess Of Pixels

Pixel Scroll 4/18/25 Esprit de L’Ascenseur Spatial — [Things I Wish I’d Said While Descending The Space Elevator]

Pixel Scroll 2/17/25 We All Need Somebody To Scroll On

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Pixel Scroll 9/3/24 Nor Shall My Blog Sleep In My Hands, Till I Have Built Mount Tsundoku On My Bedroom’s Clean And Handy Nightstand

Pixel Scroll 7/13/24 Those Aren’t Lightning Bugs, They’re Pixels

Pixel Scroll 7/6/24 This Evening Jonathan Hoag Renounces His Unpleasant Profession

Pixel Scroll 6/25/24 Everybody Must Get Scrolled

Pixel Scroll 6/18/24 Destination: Moon Wedding

Pixel Scroll 5/3/24 Shhhh, I’m Hunting Pixels