25 God Had Names For All The Pixels. No One Else Knows Them

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) AMANDA PALMER ISSUES DENIAL. “Neil Gaiman’s ex-wife Amanda Palmer denies negligence allegations” reports the BBC.

Amanda Palmer, the ex-wife of British author Neil Gaiman, has denied allegations of negligence and human trafficking made by a woman who worked for the former couple.

Earlier this week, the woman filed civil lawsuits in the US alleging the former couple violated laws on federal human trafficking, with complaints of assault, battery and inflicting emotional distress against Gaiman and negligence against Palmer.

In a short post on Instagram, Palmer, who lives in the US, said she would not respond to specific allegations against her, but broadly denied them.

Gaiman has denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by eight women….

Amanda Palmer’s Instagram statement says:

I thank you all deeply for continuing to respect my recent request for privacy as I navigate this extremely difficult moment. I must protect my young child and his right to privacy.

With that as my priority, I will not respond to the specific allegations being made against me except to say that I deny the allegations and will respond in due course. My heart goes out to all survivors.

(2) RELIGION AS PART OF THE STORY IN SFF. Lancelot Schaubert wants to develop “A formalized schema for imagining and understanding religion in fantasy, science fiction, and other speculative works.” This sophisticated taxonomy is offered as “Schaubert’s Laws of Fantasy Religions”. [Via Camestros Felapton.]

…Part of the problem is that so few people, up until recently at least, have written lovingly about religion in the genre outside of, say, Walter Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz or something like Anathem by Neil Stephenson. These days, Sanderson has written voluminously about many, many types of invented religions and he seems to understand that religion is fundamentally human. There are others, but he seems to be taking up a standard that has lain mostly unwielded on the landscape of the genre for some time. Another post for another day will survey the field, but other titles come to mind (negatively and positively) like Heinlein’s “Methuselah’s Children” and Stranger in a Strange Land (though this can be argued as anti-religion), James Blish’s “A Case of Conscience,” Lord of the World by Hugh Benson, M.P. Shiel’s Lord of the Sea, C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, “The Man” by Ray Bradbury, “Fool’s Errand” by Paul L. Payne, Believers’ World by Robert Lowndes.

I wanted to create a taxonomy that would work no matter what you run through it, sort of a philosophical grid for making these sorts of systems analogous to Sanderson’s Laws of Magic (which works no matter the kind or scale of magic system). It works for me, that’s sufficient.

Here’s one example of Schaubert’s analysis.

…I want to speak to a couple of rights and beliefs in fantasy to show how this ends up being helpful in the narrative.

Mindful of the Cosmology of Tolkien’s legendarium, the light of Ilúvatar is given to Frodo by Galadriel. Sam ends up, in faith, wielding that vial in the depth of Shelob’s darkness. Now Ilúvatar means, more or less, “All father” which indicates “the alone.” And Shelob, being a child of Ungoliant, is a lesser Maia. Sort of a fallen angel, an immortal spirit who feasts on light and spins it into her webs. It’s a statement about proximate good in the reality of Tolkien’s world, but it’s also a statement about the substance of light. And when the undiluted light is unveiled — perhaps even unknowingly — by Sam, it is too much for the demon spider.

So here you have an object, a rite, a belief, and the reality of the world playing at very different levels….

(3) THIS IS THE CASH WE’RE LOOKING FOR. “Prince Andrew’s ex Koo Stark is suing Star Wars producers for £190million” says Bang Showbiz NZ.

Prince Andrew’s ex Koo Stark is suing ‘Star Wars’ producers for £190million.

The 68-year-old actress – who dated Prince Andrew in the early 1980s prior to his now-defunct marriage to Sarah, Duchess of York – starred as Camie Marstrap in the 1977 film ‘New Hope’ but her scenes were cut from the final film.

The scenes in question have resurfaced online in recent times and the character has appeared in various spin-offs over the years, so litigation filed in an LA court claims that the production company has profited off her likeness.

The legal action was brought by actor Anthony Forrest – who also starred in the film as Fixer in scenes that were eventually cut – and it is claimed that their “intellectual property rights were exploited” when the scenes became available online and on DVD.

In the film, Anthony – who also played a storm trooper and appeared in the James Bond film ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ – utters the line: “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for”, and has claimed that he has received no compensation for his work….

(4) DIGITAL GHOSTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The idea of data scraping all that can be had about an individual and using that to train an AI to create a quasi-version of that individual has come up in science fiction, including in an episode of Black Mirror.

Indeed, StoryFile already does this by training a Chat-Bot with an individual’s writing, social media and so forth. However, with generative AI it is possible to go further and create something even more interactive. This week’s BBC Radio 4 programme Sideways takes a look at this as we are now on the cusp of creating digital ghosts.

Amy Kurzweil’s dad is a famous inventor, futurist and pioneer in the field of AI. In 2015, she discovers his aspiration to make an AI chatbot of her late grandfather, Fred. Fred was a musician who dramatically escaped the Holocaust, but he died before Amy was born. Matthew Syed delves into Amy’s fascinating journey with her father to build the ‘Fredbot’ and have an online conversation with the grandfather she never met.

The idea of using AI to simulate conversations with the dead troubles Matthew and raises all sorts of ethical questions. With the help of experts, he discovers how similar concepts were once debated by ancient Chinese philosophers and explores how digital ghosts could affect the grieving process.

Featuring references to the graphic novel Artificial: A Love Story by Amy Kurzweil, published in 2022 by Catapult Books.

You can download the half-hour episode here.

(5) DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER. Longreads’ “Remember the Titans: An ‘Attack on Titan’ Reading List” is a list of recommended articles with brief excerpts (just like the Scroll!)

Despite coming nearly a century after the art form’s birth, Attack on Titan may be one of the most genre-defining anime Japan has produced. The original manga, about a war between humans and the colossal creatures who attack them, has some 140 million copies in circulation. The televised adaptation that began in 2013 expanded anime’s global audience. There’s even a stage musical—performed in Osaka and Tokyo in 2023 and New York City in 2024. And now, the series is officially a piece of history: Next week, the anime’s final two episodes, which first aired in 2023, arrive in movie theaters as a single film.

At the series’ outset, we’re told that the last remnants of humanity erected a network of concentric walls to fend off the Titans, and meet the three preteens living behind those walls who become our initial protagonists. That premise quickly proves to be knottier than expected, however; this is no simple humans-versus-megamonsters kaiju like Godzilla or Pacific Rim. While Hajime Isayama’s saga might begin as a dystopian fantasy, it soon twists into a speculative, discomfitingly realistic meditation on imperialism, war, genocide, hubris, and cyclical violence. ’…

(6) DIRDA SIGNS OFF. Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, who frequently covered sff, has brought his time there to an end (column behind a paywall). Thanks to Scott Edelman for screencapping this part.

(7) TUTTLE REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle’s Guardian column, “The best science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup”, looks at Old Soul by Susan Barker; Model Home by Rivers Solomon; Mother of Serpents by John R Gordon; Symbiote by Michael Nayak; and Waterblack by Alex Pheby.

(8) FRANK HILDEBRAND (1950-2024). Fear of the Walking Dead Frank Hildebrand producer and production manager died November 21 at the age of 73 reported Deadline today.

Born and educated in Zurich, Switzerland, Hildebrand began his filmmaking career in the UK before moving to Hollywood in the 1980s, working on such indie films as Vice Squad (1982) and Once Bitten (1985).

He then went on to line produce and supervise on such films as Triumph of the Spirit (1989), Freeway (1996), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Into the Wild (2007), The Runaways (2010), Fair Game (2010) and The Tree of Life (2011). In recent years, Hildebrand served as a producer on the last seven seasons of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead.

(9) MARIA VON BRAUN DIED. “NASA rocket pioneer Wernher Von Braun’s widow passes away at home in Alexandria, Virginia” – AL.com has the story.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center announced the passing of Maria von Braun, Wernher von Braun’s widow on Friday.

The center said she died Jan. 20 at her home in Alexandria, Va. She was 96.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Planet of the Apes (1968)

By Paul Weimer: You maniacs!

You’ve seen the meme even if you have never seen the Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston as Taylor, finds out he and his crew had just crashed landed on Earth in the far future. He hadn’t seen a new world of apes ruling men…he saw the future of his own society.

So yes, first and foremost Planet of the Apes (forgot the Marky Mark remake and the newest remakes are a different kettle of fish entirely) are a one way time travel story. The sequels they made are in the end not necessary. They are surplus to requirements.

All you need is the original. I saw it on WPIX back in the day, and have seen it many times once. The movie cheats a bit here and there, particularlg with the Moon which would have given the game away earlier.

But it is such a rich and visually interesting movie. The Eden that Taylor and his crew find and where they are captured. The Ape Judges that do the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” bit. The creepy taxidermy of his fellow astronaut. The cave and tunnel shaped dwellings. The excellent makeup and prosthetics for the people playing the Apes.and on and on.

And then the cast, not just Heston, but Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans providing stroke and unmistakable acting and passion even with such a heavy transformation.

And did you know Rod Serling helped write the screenplay?

And now I am definitely due a rewatch.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Animal Crackers knows what we need.
The Flying McCoys is in the midst of super-remodeling.

(12) THE CUT DIRECT. Beau Brummel wouldn’t put up with this either: “Deadpool Creator Rob Liefeld Cuts Ties With Marvel” reports Deadline.

Nearly 35 years after creating Deadpool, Rob Liefeld has reached his boiling point with Marvel.

The comic book creator, who conceived the character in a 1990 issue of New Mutants, publicly cut ties with Marvel as he recounted being snubbed at the July 2024 premiere of Deadpool & Wolverine.

“It was meant to embarrass, diminish, defeat me,” he said in the latest episode of his Robservations podcast, which was titled ‘Marvel: Access Denied!’

The description of the episode reads: “Why I left Marvel Entertainment and won’t look back.”

He recalled being ignored by Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige on the red carpet before finding out he and his family were not invited to the afterparty, the final straw for Liefeld. Meanwhile, Liefeld posed on the carpet with creatives from the movie but later learned those photos were deleted, as he believes they were only taken to appease him.

“At some point, you go, ‘I’ve received the message, and the message is clear,’” added Liefeld.

Previously, Liefeld sent an email to Marvel after they granted Wolverine co-creator Roy Thomas a special spot in the film’s credits, which upset co-creator Len Wein’s widow Christine Valada, a friend of Liefeld. He also inquired about a special mention for himself in the credits, noting he did not ask for money.

“Marvel’s treatment of creators has never been their strength,” he wrote in the email. “Without the worlds, the characters and the concepts that we create — and in this specific case, the world of Deadpool — there are no films to shoot. No blockbusters to distribute. … I am not the easy button at Staples. I am the human imagination behind it all.”

Liefeld added, “Comic book creators cannot continue to be relegated as afterthoughts. This is easy to address. Unless I reach out to address it, it will never manifest.”…

(13) GOTHAM HIJACK. What Vera Drew told the Guardian: “The trans film-maker who remade Batman: ‘There’s a reason all the heroes are queer, mentally ill villains’”.

It started as a joke,” says Vera Drew. “I just took it a little too far.” The 35-year-old former editor for Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder and Tim & Eric is referring to her debut movie: The People’s Joker, a transgender-punk-superhero comedy in which she hijacks DC Comics characters to tell her own coming-out story. The film is set in an apocalyptic Gotham City ruled by Batman, billionaire groomer of teenage boys. Comedy can only be practised by licensed clowns divided into Jokers (male) and Harlequins (female). Enter Joker the Harlequin, played by Drew, who establishes an illegal comedy club specialising in cringe and bad-taste humour.

(14) STAYIN’ ALIVE. Camestros Felapton posted an interesting game review: “Currently Playing: Citizen Sleeper”.

…I’m saying all that because I’m actually enjoying Citizen Sleeper. Functionally, it is really just a text based adventure game with a limited set of locations. It looks better than that, with a nice 3D view of a space-station-city-habitat showing you where you (or rather your character) is. However, the other people you meet are just two dimensional art work with text.

You are a Sleeper, some sort of emulated-human-construct-robot-escaped-indetured-servant. You don’t remember much but you are a fugitive and you have woken on-board a run-down industrial space habitat. You need energy to live but also your body is slowly breaking down and you’ll need cash and technology to stay alive. You need work and you need somewhere safe to sleep. It is a basic struggle to stay alive in a shitty world….

(15) THEY DINED ME WITH SCIENCE! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It’s not just Eating The Fantastic with Scott Edelman that’s reported in File 770, it’s cooking tips too! So, starting with the basics, what is the best way to cook a boiled egg? Well, scientists to the rescue…primary research here. And this week’s BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science tried it out to save you the hassle.

You can listen to the programme here (topic is two-thirds way through).

Science-backed boiled egg recipe:

– You need two pans… and exactly 32 minutes
– Keep one pan at 100 degrees Celsius (boiling) and the other pan at 30 degrees Celsius
– Move the egg between the two every two minutes for 32 minutes

Enjoy!

(16) BLOOPS AND BLEEPS! TVcrazyman adds his own commentary to these “1978 Battlestar Galactica Goofs, Facts, and Bloopers” which does kind of improve them.

(17) LIVE FROM AREA 51. Get a head start on the Super Bowl commercials with “Unidentified Frying Object” featuring Gordon Ramsay and Pete Davidson.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Paul Weimer, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 1/18/25 “All These Pixels Are Just For Us” Said Tom Clickishly

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CLOCK NOT RUNNING OUT ON TIKTOK? Yesterday’s Deadline’s article “Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning TikTok In U.S.” initially reported —

…the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that the app owned by China’s ByteDance must sell itself or be banned in the U.S. on January 19 due to national security concerns….

…Read the Supreme Court’s full TikTok opinion here….

…The ban would take effect under a new bipartisan law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act, signed by President Joe Biden last year….

However, the incoming President said he will probably delay the ban: “Trump says he will ‘most likely’ give TikTok 90-day extension to avoid ban” at NBC News.

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a phone interview Saturday that he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a potential ban in the U.S. after he takes office Monday….

And Deadline subsequently added this update to its article:

TikTok’s CEO has responded to a Supreme Court ruling today that paves the way for the app to be banned on Sunday, thanking the incoming president. “On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” said chief executive Shou Chew in a video posted to the platform.

“We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process,” he said. “As you know, we have been fighting to protect the constitutional right of free speech for the more than 170 million Americans who use our platform every day to connect, create, discover and achieve their dreams.”

(2) WHY WE FIGHT. CrimeReads’ fascinating analysis of “Pride and Prejudice and Nazis: On Aldous Huxley’s Wild Wartime Jane Austen Adaptation” teases out its threads of pre-WWII propaganda.

…But underneath its thick, saccharine coating; the film is something else: a contrived, convoluted morsel of political propaganda. Filmed by on American soil by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, this British adaptation shot directly after the French surrender to the Nazis, released during the Battle of Britain, and co-screenwritten by depressed British idealist Aldous Huxley, managed to transform that famous English book Pride and Prejudice into a partisan plug relying on Depression-era escapism, thematic idealization of a nationalistic Anglocentric tradition, the depiction of highly distracting romantic merriment, and a reassuringly happy ending to prepare and energize Americans for the inevitable: the United States’ joining the Allied Forces overseas to fight in World War II….

…Austen, Jerome, and Huxley place the same emphasis on class, however, in that all three versions have the same classless ending—Jane and Mr. Bingley marry, and Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy marry, despite their class and financial differences. The concept of any Pride and Prejudice adaptation is that is possible to climb up a social ladder, because everyone is equal—or rather, everyone has the ability to be equal. Most of the characters belong in many social circles, and it is possible to find love or friendship somewhere else. Perhaps this is the dominant reason why Huxley chose the Pride and Prejudice story for his anti-war-but-if-you-have-to-fight-then-fight-with-these-guys-esque opus instead of another classical novel (after all, many of other elements of the film Pride and Prejudice that make it jingoistic lie in plot alterations, or aesthetics —changes that could applied to any other story in the adaptation process): Pride and Prejudice is, at its core, a story about good, smart everyday people who make mistakes but learn their lessons just as much as it is a story about how important it is not to form judgments. Huxley nearly abuses this tone by exaggerating it in his own, though; any shred of mystery about the moral of the story is completely detonated throughout. For example, in the film, Mr. Darcy comforts Elizabeth after Caroline Bingley insults her. Elizabeth is shocked, and informs him, “At this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you are so proud.” Mr. Darcy smiles vainly and answers back, “at this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you are so prejudiced.” Huxley spells out the main paradox of the story, killing the main thematic mystery – the only thing left for the audience to wonder is how they can get shipped off to fun, idyllic England. Austen’s tone is inclusive, it’s happy, it’s insightful, and it’s open-minded—so now it fights fascism.

Of course, the aesthetics of the film Pride and Prejudice hide these anti-Nazi sentiments under tons and tons of poofy dresses and behind maypoles. For example, in the script, Huxley and Murfin manage to turn the extravagant Netherfield Ball into a garden party, which the film then turns into a frothy visual circus—where everything appears to be made out of cotton candy and wishes….

(3) LIU CIXIN MUSEUM. “Museum dedicated to sci-fi writer opens” from Chinadaily.com in October 2024.

China launched its first literary museum dedicated to Liu Cixin, a renowned science fiction writer and Hugo Award winning novelist, in Yangquan, Shanxi province, on Sunday.

While accepting the nation’s honor and unveiling the Liu Cixin Sci-fi Museum, Liu, author of the acclaimed sci-fi novel trilogy The Three-Body Problem who grew up in Yangquan, said that he hopes the museum can help the general public gain a better understanding of the sci-fi literature and develop an interest in the genre.

Located at a cultural park, the 700-square-meter museum educates visitors about Liu’s growth, his books and awards, and cultural and creative products derived from his works. Immersive projectors also create an atmosphere mimicking interstellar voyages described in Liu’s novels….

… Yan Jingming, vice-president of the China Writers Association, said that the establishment of the museum is not only an homage to Liu and his works but also serves as a beacon for China’s sci-fi writers and fans.

He said he hopes it will bring like-minded sci-fi novelists together and spark more inspiration and works.

The launch was part of a weeklong sci-fi promotional event in Yangquan that also included a symposium on sci-fi literature and real-world productivity, where Liu shared his thoughts on potential immigration to Mars.

“I would love to go to Mars if it were a round trip,” Liu said, explaining that a one-way journey would not suit him as he had work to do and family members to be with on Earth….

(4) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? Neil Baker returns with more horrible dino movies in “Prehistrionics, Part III” at Black Gate.

We’re off on another adventure filled to the brim with disappointment. 20 films I’ve never seen before, all free to stream, all dinosaur-based.

First on his list, last in his heart:

The Jurassic Dead (2017) Tubi

Just how bad is the CG? Rubbish.

Sexy scientist? Nope.

Mumbo jumbo? Reanimation, dinosaurs, zombies, asteroids.

Just in case you thought I might try to start the year on a high note, might I present this tripe. The premise is simple: a Herbert West type (complete with glowing green reanimating fluid and dead cat) loses his job and decides to destroy the world. Somehow he has a T-Rex, which he zombifies, and then he turns into Immortan Joe and sets off an EMP just as asteroids wipe out some cities. A crack, sorry crap, team of commandos based on 80s action figures must team up with a group of hugely unlikeable civilians to survive.

Everything ends in nuclear devastation. Effects-wise, the dinosaur is a cute, Walking with Dinosaurs puppet, but everything else is shockingly awful green screen composites. Just terrible.

3/10

(5) GAIMAN: ART AND ARTIST. NPR’s popular culture commentator Glen Weldon speaks as “One longtime Neil Gaiman fan on where we go from here”.

…While we don’t know whether these disturbing allegations are true, learning of them naturally leads to a deeply personal, complicated question: How do we deal with allegations about artists whose work we admire — even revere?

I should note: It’s a complicated question for most of us. It’s not remotely complicated for those who rush to social media to declare that they never truly liked the creator’s work in the first place, or that they always suspected them, or that the only possible response for absolutely everyone is to rid themselves of the now-poisoned art that, before learning of the allegations against the creator, they loved so dearly.

Nor is it complicated for those who will insist that a creator’s personal life has no bearing on how we choose to respond to their work, and that the history of art is a grim, unremitting litany of monstrous individuals who created works of enduring, inviolate beauty.

Most of us, however, will find ourselves mired in the hand-wringing of the in-between. We’ll make individual, case-by-case choices, we’ll cherry-pick from the art, we’ll envision ourselves, in years ahead, sampling lightly from the salad bar of the artist’s collected works, and feeling a little lousy about it.

Here’s my personal approach, whenever allegations come out about an artist whose work is important to me: I see the moment I learned of them as an inflection point. From that very instant, it’s on me.The knowledge of the allegations will color their past works, when and if I choose to revisit them in the future. It won’t change how those works affected me back then, and there’s no point in pretending it will. But my newfound understanding of the claims can and will change how those works affect me today, and tomorrow.

To put that in practical perspective: If I own any physical media of their past work, I feel free to revisit it, while leaving plenty of room for the new allegations to color my impressions. But as for any future work — that’s a door I’m only too willing to shut….

(6) HINT: IT’S ZELAZNY. Grammaticus Books asks is he “The MOST DISRESPECTED Science Fiction author of ALL TIME ???” How could you not click on that?

An indepth analysis of the works of science fiction and fantasy author Roger Zelazny. With a focus on his lack of recognition as one of the greats of the SF field. Worthy of mention alongside Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frank Herbert.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 18, 1953 — Pamela Dean, 72.

By Paul Weimer: One of the legends of Minneapolis fantasy writing, Pamela Dean’s work first came to my attention in the same season that also brought such novels as War for the Oaks to my attention. From my perch in New York, work by people like Bull and Dean and Brust (among others) enlightened me to the fact that the Twin Cities was a hotbed of fantasy and science fiction writing.

I started reading her with her classic Tam Lin, which I picked up not long after the aforementioned Bull novel. (I was on a kick to read novels set in Minnesota at that point, you seem, especially by this community). It’s an excellent adaptation and exploration of the Scottish-English story. You know the one. Young man taken by a Queen or noble of Faerie, and the titular Tam Lin must thus be rescued by the love of his life, Janet. You can see the appeal, it is an empowering fantasy that puts a woman in a forward, protagonist position. Since the original reels and songs, it’s been adapted many times by many authors. Dean’s version has the story take place, predictably in Minnesota, setting it at Blackrock College.

But it is the Secret Country trilogy that I think of as her best work, or at any rate my favorite. It’s a conceit that was not new to her, as far as I am aware, it dates back to Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series: the idea that a group of people, playing a game with and imagining a fantasy world, find themselves transported into the realm of the very game that they thought was fiction. The idea is the same, but the Secret country is on the brink of war, there’s a dragon afoot, and so there is far more urgency and threat to the realm than wandering about as in Rosenberg’s series. It is one of the classic portal fantasies into a realm you think you already known.

I’ve gotten to meet Pamela Dean many times at local cons. She might even be able to pick me out of a line up. Happy birthday, Pamela!

(8) MEMORY LANE

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Six Million Dollar Man (1973)

Fifty-two years ago, The Six Million Dollar Man premiered on ABC. It was based on Martin Caidin’s Cyborg. Executive Producer was Harve Bennett, who you will recognize from the Star Trek films. It was produced by Kenneth Johnson who would later do The Bionic Woman spin-off and the Alien Nation film.

Its primary cast was Lee Majors, Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks. Majors had a successful second series shortly after this series was cancelled, The Fall Guy, about heart-of-gold bounty hunters. The Six Million Dollar Man would run for five seasons consisting of ninety-nine episodes and five films. The Fall Guy would run five seasons as well.

Reception by media critics is generally positive. Phelim O’Neil of The Guardian says, “He was Superman, James Bond and Neil Armstrong all rolled into one, and $6M was an almost incomprehensibly large amount of money: how could anyone not watch this show?” And Rob Hunter of Film School Reviews states “The story lines run the gamut from semi-believable to outright ludicrous, but even at its most silly the show is an entertaining family friendly mix of drama, humor, action, and science fiction.”

It’s streaming on Peacock.

(9) MEMORY LANE, TOO.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Demolished Man (1952)

Seventy-three years ago, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man was first published in three parts starting in the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Although he had been writing short fiction since 1939, this was Bester’s first novel.

The novel is dedicated to Galaxy‘s editor, H. L. Gold, who made suggestions during its writing.

Bester’s preferred title was Demolition! but Gold convinced him it was not a good one. Anyone know where the published title came from? Bester or Gold?

The Demolished Man would be published in hardcover by Shasta Publishers the next year. Shasta Publishers was formed by a group of Chicago area fans in 1947.

Critics at the time really loved it.

Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas in their Recommended Reading column for The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy said it was “a taut, surrealistic melodrama [and] a masterful compounding of science and detective fiction.” And Groff Conklin in his Galaxy 5 Star Shelf column exclaimed that it is “a magnificent novel as fascinating a study of character as I have ever read.”

As you know The Demolished Man would win the first Hugo for Best Novel at PhilCon II. It was also nominated for the International Fantasy Award.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark has a frightening brand name.
Pardon My Planet knows you could explain this vampire’s problem.
Tom Gauld’s editor is like Cosby’s refrigerator light – “How do it know?”

My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T10:35:58.069Z

(11) YOU HAVE TO BE EITHER OH-SO-SMART, OR OH-SO-NICE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] In a twist, the words coming from the Merc with a Mouth are just fine. It’s what Nicepool said that Justin Baldoni finds offensive. And has filed a lawsuit over. “How Deadpool Entered Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively Feud With Nicepool” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Half a century ago, a defining question of the Watergate scandal was, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Today, a surprising question has emerged in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal saga: “What did Nicepool say, and when did he say it?”

On Tuesday, a letter from Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman to Disney landed in the hands of the media. Freedman’s legal hold letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige — in which he addressed them as “Bob” and “Kevin” — asked the studio to preserve any documents regarding Baldoni and the creation of Nicepool, a minor character in Deadpool & Wolverine that internet sleuths (and Freedman himself) say star-writer-producer Ryan Reynolds used to mock Baldoni….

… Freedman suggests work on Nicepool came as Reynolds’ wife, Lively, was in the midst of a contentious shoot with her It Ends With Us director-star Baldoni. She later filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, while on Thursday, Baldoni sued Reynolds, Lively and Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane.

So, how (and when) did Nicepool end up in the movie?

The character was developed before the rift between Lively and Baldoni, but sources tell THR that scenes involving Nicepool were shot late in the game following the November 2023 conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“It was all added post-strike,” says one knowledgeable source of the shooting schedule, who says the scenes were filmed in the final days of principal photography, which wrapped up in January 2024.

In other words, the scenes were shot during a high point of tension between Lively and Baldoni….

(12) WHAT WE DID IN THE SHADOWS. “U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

The Biden administration declassified one last piece of information about how it has helped Ukraine: an account of its once-secret support for the country’s military drone industry.

U.S. officials said on Thursday that they had made big investments that helped Ukraine start and expand its production of drones as it battled Russia’s larger and better-equipped army.

Much of the U.S. assistance to the Ukrainian military, including billions of dollars in missiles, air defense systems, tanks, artillery and training, has been announced to the public. But other support has largely gone on in the shadows….

… Last fall, the Pentagon allocated $800 million to Ukraine’s drone production, which was used to purchase drone components and finance drone makers. When President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the White House in September, President Biden said another $1.5 billion would be directed to Ukraine’s drone industry.

American officials said on Thursday that they believe the investments have made Ukraine’s drones more effective and deadly. They noted that Ukraine’s sea drones had destroyed a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and that drones deployed on the front lines had helped slow Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine….

(13) STARSHIP TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED. “F.A.A. Temporarily Halts Launches of Musk’s Starship After Explosion” reports the New York Times. (Behind a paywall.)

The urgent radio calls by the air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration office in Puerto Rico started to go out on Thursday evening as a SpaceX test flight exploded and debris began to rain toward the Caribbean.

Flights near Puerto Rico needed to avoid passing through the area — or risk being hit by falling chunks of the Starship, the newest and biggest of Elon Musk’s rockets.

“Space vehicle mishap,” an air traffic controller said over the F.A.A. radio system, as onlookers on islands below and even in some planes flying nearby saw bright streaks of light as parts of the spacecraft tumbled toward the ocean.

Added a second air traffic controller: “We have reports of debris outside of the protected areas so we’re currently going to have to hold you in this airspace.”

The mishap — the Starship spacecraft blew up as it was still climbing into space — led the F.A.A. on Friday to suspend any additional liftoffs by SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

The incident raises new questions about both the safety of the rapidly increasing number of commercial space launches, or at least the air traffic disruption being caused by them….

(14) BIG BOY REMEMBERS DAVID LYNCH? For some reason there’s a David Lynch memorial at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank – Patton Oswalt posted photos. (Is there some reference involved? Maybe one of you can explain it to me.)

The marginal details of the David Lynch memorial at the Burbank Bob’s Big Boy are what make it.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T19:55:32.073Z

Just saw this one earlier.
— Sam Ebbets (@samebbets.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T21:34:55.074Z

Hold the phone – John King Tarpinian sent me the answer.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Retired Disney Imagineer Jim Shull tells how “Toy Story Land went from a one and done to a Disney- land built in four separate parks. How the toys were Imagineered is the subject in this episode of Disney Journey.” “Imagineering Toy Story Land”.

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

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

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

(*pace Ned Brooks.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s one of his subjects:

Shark Exorcist (2014) Tubi

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

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

Anyone famous get eaten? Nope.

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

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

3/10

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

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

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

December 14, 1978 — Superman the Movie

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro walks the plank.
Ink Pen realizes something is lacking.
The Other Coast knows where to head.
Tom Gauld doesn’t want to overdo.

My cartoon for this weekend’s @theguardian.com books.
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2024-12-14T15:17:18.564Z

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

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

“So please, judge away,” she jokes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 12/3/24 I See Files Of Blue, Red Pixels Too, I See Them Purr For Me And You

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(0) FILE 770 TURNS ON ‘LIKE’ FUNCTION. Starting today you can now tag posts and comments with a “like”.

(1) SUPER SPOILER ALERT! Superman and Lois ends with a climactic fight, and a highly sentimental flashforward to the beginning of Superman’s supernatural life. I found both clips pretty impressive, so just imagine their impact on those who watched the series faithfully.

Superman & Lois: The Final Fight between Superman and Lex Luthor – Series Finale

Superman & Lois 4×10 Epilogue “Life Goes By So Fast” Scene (HD) Series Finale

(2) FROM BC TO AD TO DC. “The CW’s DC Era Ends With ‘Superman & Lois’ Finale: Numbers Behind the Enduring Franchise” from The Hollywood Reporter.

The series finale of Superman & Lois aired Monday night on The CW. It marked not just the end of the show’s four-season run, but also an entire programming philosophy at the network.

Superman & Lois was the last series based on DC Comics characters to air at the network. It was also the last connection to The CW’s Arrowverse (even if it wasn’t technically part of the main continuity of that franchise), which defined the 2010s for the network and became one of the more successful multi-show franchises in TV history.

The ending of Superman & Lois, which — spoiler alert — flashes forward several decades to show the end of its title characters’ (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) lives, precludes any continuation of the show elsewhere — as do new regimes at both The CW and DC parent Warner Bros. Discovery, which both have very different approaches than they did during the Arrowverse’s heyday in the mid- and late 2010s….

… 10: The number of series based on DC characters that aired on The CW, beginning with Arrow in October 2012. All of them came from Warner Bros. TV and what was then called DC Entertainment, and nine — Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights — were executive produced by Berlanti via his Berlanti Productions. The 10th is 2022’s Naomi, co-created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and produced by DuVernay’s ARRAY Filmworks along with DC and WB….

… 817, 797: The combined episode total from all 10 shows, and those that ran on The CW; Supergirl‘s first season, which spanned 20 episodes, aired on CBS. The 817 episodes are more than all but three multi-show franchise since 1990 — only Law & Order (1,363 episodes as of publication time), JAG/NCIS (1,249) and CSI (838) have more. NBC’s Chicago franchise will need to air 131 more episodes — about six 22-episode seasons’ worth of shows — to pass the DC total….

(3) DIVERSE READING AID. Rocket Stack Rank reminds us of “Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2023”. See the list at the link.

62 outstanding SF/F short stories by People of Color from 2023 that were finalists for major SF/F awards, included in “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, or recommended by prolific reviewers. (40 free online, 18 with podcasts)….

… Readers asked us to make it easy for them to find good stories written by authors with diverse racial backgrounds, and that’s what this list is meant to accomplish (author identity plays no role in our ratings)….

(4) MORPHIN’ INTO CASH. By the time Heritage Auction’s November 18-19 Power Rangers Hasbro Hollywood & Entertainment Signature^® Auction wrapped it had realized $3.3 million dollars in sales.

Every costume, monster, prop, weapon and warrior offered in the landmark event — nearly 700 lots! — found a new home.

As a result, the auction realized $3,310,929, with countless surprises and smash hits throughout the largest and most comprehensive collection of Power Rangers memorabilia ever assembled, spanning the classic Power Rangers Mighty Morphin to the most recent season, Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, which premiered last year.

From the latter series came the auction’s top lot: the original hero Cosmic Fury Cannon, the team’s signature weapon that combines all five of the Cosmic Fury Rangers’ individual dino-themed powers into an 80-inch-long laser blaster. After a prolonged bidding war during the auction’s second day, the Cosmic Fury Cannon shot up to its final price of $87,500.

Another smash hit was one of this auction’s numerous centerpieces: the Transformable Astro Megaship/Astro Megazord hero filming miniature from 1998’s Power Rangers in Space, one of the only complete Zords in this auction used on screen as the Rangers’ spacecraft and battle Zord. It’s fully articulated, an armed warrior and battle carrier that still moves like a well-oiled machine — and is so complete it still has the fishing line used to open its chest. It opened live bidding at $19,000 and finally realized $47,500 after a lengthy bidding war.

Weapons wielded significant power during this event, with the Green Ranger Hero Dragon Dagger from last year’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always realizing $23,750. And six Cosmic Morpher Hero Props from Power Rangers Cosmic Fury blasted their way to a $17,500 finish.

Numerous costumes worn throughout the series’ 31-year run realized five figures, among them the Green Ranger hero costume worn by Jason David Frank, as Tommy Oliver, during the initial run of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the mid-1990s. It realized $30,000, while his complete White Ranger hero costume from 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie sold for $16,250. The auction’s second day began with a moment of silence in tribute to Frank….

A couple more favorites:

Fierce Fashions: Trini Kwan’s Yellow Ranger costume, Saber-Toothed Tiger Power Morpher included, roared to $23,750. Kimberly Hart’s Pink Ranger suit wasn’t far behind, landing $22,500.

Villains Rule: Even baddies got their moment in the spotlight, with Goldar Maximus strutting off for $21,250 and Master Zedd securing $18,750.

(5) TERMINALS OF ENDEARMENT. “Lovable Movie Robots Are Coming to Charm Your Children” writes Diego Hadis in the New York Times (great article, but behind a paywall).

One near certainty about raising a young child these days is that you and your offspring will be exposed to a lot of stories about robots. Another is that the robots working their charms most effectively on you will belong to a new kind of archetype: the sympathetic robot. Sitting in darkened theaters with my 5-year-old son, I have watched any number of these characters. They are openhearted and often dazzled by the wonders of everyday life — innocently astounded by, say, the freedom of playing in the surf, the bliss of dancing with a loved one or the thrill of just holding hands. They might be more winningly human than some of the humans you know….

… Take Roz, the main character of the animated film “The Wild Robot,” which came out in September. Like the Peter Brown book series on which it is based, the movie focuses on a robot protagonist that gains emotional complexity after she washes ashore on an island unpopulated by humans, learns to communicate with the animals she meets there and becomes the surrogate mother of an orphaned gosling. Roz changes and adapts; she goes from seeing her care for the gosling as a rote task to welcoming it as a real connection. She embraces the wildness of the animals around her and ceases to be the unfeeling machine that her programming intended. Instead, she becomes an unnatural champion for the natural world — one whose touching incomprehension of how to care for a newborn makes her charming….

…We’re now inarguably living in the future that science fiction once imagined. Artificial intelligences weaned on vast libraries of human endeavor are coming online, their boosters hyping their potential to either fulfill our greatest wishes or realize our deepest fears. It feels notable that we are raising our children on pointedly comforting stories about robots that, instead of relieving us of our jobs or edging us to the brink of Armageddon, offer to show us how to be more human. Granted, computers are an inescapable facet of our world now. As they grow up, our children will consume stories about humanlike robots as naturally as our ancestors delighted in tales about anthropomorphic animals. Still, these stories seem to be doing an inordinate amount of work to help children feel warm toward the technologies that increasingly dominate our lives….

…This is all in spite of the remarkably bleak near future portrayed in many of these children’s films. They tend to show us a world of ecological ruin devastated by climate change. “The Wild Robot” offers haunting images like the Golden Gate Bridge submerged in San Francisco Bay as a flock of geese passes overhead. The Earth in “Wall-E” has been reduced to a lifeless, postindustrial horrorscape reminiscent of the works of the photographer Edward Burtynsky; humans have fled it entirely. “Robot Dreams” evades this by being set in and around its 1980s New York, but even that film concerns itself greatly with the natural world. We see the robot experiencing the changing seasons on a wintry beach; the dog takes pity on a fish that he has caught and releases it. There is even a scene — echoing the surrogate parenting in “The Wild Robot” — in which the robot helps encourage a young bird to learn how to fly.

There is an echo here of the classic robot stories: Humanity’s hubris has once again led us to get in over our heads. But now we’re encouraged to take pleasure in watching a robot try to navigate what’s left, slowly figuring out that human values — love, connection, caretaking — are eternally important. The sympathetic robots are devised as much to comfort us parents as they are to make technology appealing to our kids. Despite the destabilized world that we’re leaving to our offspring, they reassure us, artificial intelligences could one day serve as our surrogates — and care for our children or, who knows, even love them for us when we’re gone.

(6) WRITERS NEED HELP. [Item by Steven French.] Worrying news: “Royal Literary Fund’s hardship grants for writers see applications increase by 400%” in the Guardian.

Applications for the Royal Literary Fund’s (RLF’s) hardship grants for professional writers increased by 400% between last year and this year, the charity has said.

There was a nearly fivefold increase in applications in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023, RLF CEO Edward Kemp told the Guardian.

The RLF’s grant applications are open to writers who need short- or long-term financial support because they are, for example, facing an unexpected bill, reduced income, or are unable to write due to a “change in circumstances, sickness, disability, or age”, according to the RLF.

The grants are given as a donation towards the “removal of distress for the applicant”, rather than to help complete literary works. Writers must have published (via a traditional publisher, not self-published) at least two books in the UK or Ireland to be eligible for a grant.

The rise in applications comes after research published by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in 2022 showed authors’ median earnings were just £7,000 a year, down from £12,330 in 2006.

(7) FUTURE WORLDS PRIZE JUDGES NAMED. TheFuture Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced the judging panel for its 2025 prize. The prize aims to find new talent based in the UK writing in the SFF space and is funded by author Ben Aaronovitch and actor Adjoa Andoh. The judges are:

2023 winner Mahmud El Sayed
Shadow and Bone actor Amita Suman
Bestselling author Saara El Arifi
Literary agent Amandeep Singh
Author Rogba Payne.

The winner of Future Worlds Prize receives £4,500, and the runner-up receives £2,500. The remaining six shortlisted writers each receive £850. All eight writers also get mentoring from one of the prize’s publishing partners: Bloomsbury, Daphne Press, Gollancz, HarperVoyager, Hodderscape, Orbit, Penguin Michael Joseph, Simon & Schuster, Titan and Tor.

Future Worlds Prize closes for entries at 23:59 GMT on Sunday 26th January 2025.

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Sarah Pinsker and Yume Kitasei on Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

SARAH PINSKER

A starred Booklist review called Sarah Pinsker’s latest, Haunt Sweet Home, “Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful…” She is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of the novels A Song For A New Day and We Are Satellites, plus the collections Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and Lost Places, both published by Small Beer Press, and over sixty pieces of short fiction. She’s currently the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College, and lives in Baltimore with her wife and two weird dogs.

YUME KITASEI

Yume Kitasei is the author of The Deep Sky, The Stardust Grail, and Saltcrop (forthcoming in 2025). She is half Japanese and half American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. You can find more information about her at www.yumekitasei.com. She chirps occasionally @Yumewrites at Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky.

Meets at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

(9) WALT BOYES AND JOY WARD JOIN MISTI MEDIA, LLC. Walt Boyes and Joy Ward, longtime chief editors for Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press, and Top of the World Publishing, are joining Misti Media as Editors-at-Large. They will be responsible for the startup of Misti Media’s new Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror imprint: Nazca Press. They will also be working with Misti Media’s other main imprints and alongside Sandra Murphy who oversees content for specialty imprint Sandra Murphy Presents. For the Misti Media story, see Misti Media, LLC.

“Nazca Press doesn’t have a website yet, as Misti Media is only a year old and growing its Internet presence,” says Walt Boyes, “but what we do have is close to 100 years of editing and publishing experience in both fiction, genre fiction, and non-fiction. And when you add this to the incredible 30 years of industry experience brought to Misti Media by CEO and Publisher Jay Hartman, we are the real deal.”

“We moved first to create world-class distribution for both ebooks and trade paperbacks,” Jay Hartman explains. “We have worldwide distribution in nearly every country, including bookstores and libraries, and we have begun publishing some fantastic authors. Now, with Walt and Joy’s experience and knowledge, we can start looking for more great authors to join our family.”

You can reach Walt at wboyes@mistimedia.com; Joy at jward@mistimedia.com; and Jay Hartman at jhartman@mistimedia.com.

(10) LARPING IN SOCAL. The Washington Post takes you “Inside Twin Mask, an elaborate fantasy world just miles from L.A.” (This gift article bypasses the paywall, but you still need a free WaPo account to read it.)

…The entire weekend — Friday night until Sunday morning — would be spent inside this elaborate fantasy realm with its many rules and intricate replicas.

Held at the site of the Koroneburg Renaissance Festival about an hour outside Los Angeles, the live-action role-playing (LARP) game Twin Mask stands out for its sheer size and lifespan. It’s far more elaborate than other games of its ilk, with anywhere from 400 to 600 players converging in character at events held every month and a half or so.

“You eat food in character, you walk to the bathroom in character,” says its creator, John Basset, who started Twin Mask 14 years ago. “It really feels like you’re in another world.”

Given its proximity to Hollywood, it attracts a fair number of players whose day jobs are in the film industry. And they revel in making a next-level spectacle.

… In the dark world of Adelrune, characters share a unifying aspect — they each have been resurrected from death. Whether they’re a knight, a healer or a merchant, allthe players, known collectively as “The Returned,” have detailed backstories….

… Twin Mask is run by a detailed system of unpaid volunteers and staff who take on everything from writing the story, to ensuring people (and mythical creatures) are hydrated and safe, to performing as non-player characters who help guide the storyline. Still, every player can influence the plot, which continues long after the weekend is over….

… A little over an hour into the game, no one is in charge and a criminal underworld is beginning to take hold. Much of the site is eerily quiet.

Not so at the tavern in the center of town where the single dusty road splits. The boisterous bar is filled with the chatter of players who never break character. Some are making deals while others are socializing. The crowd is soon silenced by the sound of a ringing bell. Players returning from death quietly shuffle in.…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 66.

I first encountered Terri Windling’s writing through reading The Wood Wife, a truly extraordinary fantasy that deserved the Mythopoeic Award it won. (The Hole in the Wall bar in it would be borrowed by Charles de Lint with her permission for a scene in his Medicine Road novel, an excellent novel.) I like the American edition with Susan Sedona Boulet’s art much better than I do the British edition with the Brian Froud art as I feel it catches the tone of the novel.

I would be very remiss not mention about her stellar work as the founding editor along with Ellen Datlow of what would be called The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror after the first volume which was simply The Year’s Best Fantasy, that being noted for those of you who would doubt correct me for not noting that. The series won three World Fantasy Awards and a Stoker as well.

They also edited the most splendid Snow White, Blood Red anthologies which were stories based on traditional folk tales. Lots of very good stuff there. Like the Mythic Fiction series is well worth reading and available at usual suspects and in digital form as well.

Oh, and I want to single out The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood which took on the difficult subject of child abuse. It garnered a much warranted Otherwise nomination.

Now let’s have a beer at the Dancing Ferret as I note her creation and editing (for the most part) of the Bordertown series. I haven’t read all of it, though I did read her first three anthologies several times and love the punks as you can see here on Life on the Border, but I’ve quite a bit of it and all of the three novels written in it, Emma Bull’s Finder: A Novel: of The Borderlands, is one of my comfort works, so she gets credit for that.

So now let’s move to an art credit for her. So have you seen the cover art for Another Way to Travel by Cats Laughing? I’ve the original pen and ink art that she did here.

Which brings me to the Old Oak Wood series which is penned by her and illustrated by Wendy Froud. Now Wikipedia and most of the reading world thinks that it consists of three lovely works — A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale, The Winter Child and The Faeries of Spring Cottage.

But there’s a story that Terri wrote that never got published anywhere but on Green Man. It’s an Excerpt from The Old Oak Chronicles: Interviews with Famous Personages by Professor Arnel Rootmuster. It’s a charming story, so go ahead and read it.

Photo posted by Terri on Bluesky. Photographer unstated.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Heathcliff faces top competition.
Rubes visits Acme world.
Wizard of Id doesn’t have sunshine coming out of there.
Bizarro takes things literally.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal finds a destiny that isn’t dull.

(13) PREPARE TO BLEEP AND BLUR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The House of Mouse said nay to one line of dialogue in Deadpool & Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds came up with a replacement that was just as raunchy, but didn’t reference Steamboat Willie’s willy. People says, “We Now Know the Super-Raunchy Mickey Mouse Joke Disney Asked Ryan Reynolds to Cut from Deadpool & Wolverine”.

…Director Shawn Levy previously said there was “only one line in the entire movie that we were asked to change,” telling Entertainment Weekly in August that he and star Ryan Reynolds made a “pact” to “go to our grave with that line.”

However, Marvel Studios has shared the film’s official screenplay online as part of a For Your Consideration campaign this awards season, and in the script, that original deleted line is revealed.

In the scene where Deadpool (Reynolds) asks if Magneto is also in the film, he’s told the character is dead. He then says, “F—! What, we can’t even afford one more X-Man? Disney is so cheap. I can barely breathe with all this Mickey Mouse c–k in my throat.”

The actual line in the final cut of the movie is: “F—, now Disney gets cheap? It’s like Pinocchio jammed his face in my ass and started lying like crazy.”

The scene features the surprise cameos made by Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Wesley Snipes as Blade and Channing Tatum as Gambit. The screenplay showcases the Stranger Things–inspired code names the writers used to keep the characters’ identities a secret. Gambit is “Gatsby,” Elektra is “Eleven” and Blade is “Billy,” plus, earlier, Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm is listed as “Jonathan Byers.”…

(14) SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE: PAOLO BACIGALUPI. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Season 103 of LearnedLeague feature this as the third question of the twelfth match day:

Emiko, the central character in Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?

Although this refers to a Hugo-winning novel, it’s sufficiently obscure that not all Filers might know it: the answer is “windup”; the novel is The Windup Girl.

11% of LearnedLeague players got this right (your reporter being one of them). The most common wrong answer actually had a higher rate than the right answer: 16% guessed “geisha” — not totally unreasonable if you have to guess something.

One interesting note is that the question originally gave the author’s name as “Paulo” and the answer as “wind up”, two words. I contacted the League commissioner and got it corrected. (I don’t know how many other people might also have done so.)

LearnedLeague competition allows you to control the points available on each question, within limits, and makes extensive history available to the players. My opponent did not avail himself of this resource! He gave me the maximum points for this one, when even a quick search would suggest that I’d know it.

Brick Barrientos sent along his own comment about the difficulty of this LL question:

“Emiko, the central character in Paulo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?”

The answer, of course, is Windup. Only 11% got it right. I thought it was a very hard question for a general knowledge, non-specialist trivia quiz. In my mind, I tried to think of three more recent Hugo novel winners that maybe 30% of trivia enthusiasts could get. In other words, if you gave the author, said it was a Hugo novel winner, some elements of the plot, and a hint at the title, would a mainstream audience get it? I came up with The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Redshirts by John Scalzi, and maybe Network Effect by Martha Wells.

Extend it to novellas, and you could add This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. If this becomes a Pixel Scroll item, what genre novels have had major mainstream exposure in the last 15 years?

(15) COULROPHOBIA CENTRAL. Those of you who made it to the Westercon in Tonopah have already driven past this landmark: “Creepy vibes drives booming business at Tonopah’s Clown Motel” in the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of its painted faces to be smiling.

But as Vijay Mehar has learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., happy clowns are not what most of his customers want.

What they seem to want is fear, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be scared.”

So aiming to lure more people off Main Street (a.k.a. U.S. 95) to visit this 31-room motel in the dusty, stark middle of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.

By the end of 2025, he’s hoping to have completed a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the size of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift shop area. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house, to be made of 11 shipping containers….

…“America’s Scariest Motel,” read the brochures by the register. “Let fear run down your spine.”

There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. And then there are the neighbors. The motel stands next to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents…

…“If we had paid 60, or 70, or even 80 bucks, this place might have been worth it,” wrote one unamused motel customer on Trip Advisor recently.

“We had good fun, and even better we weren’t murdered,” wrote another….

(16) TRADING PLACES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Over here in Brit Cit we have a shop chain called Games Workshop that sells tabletop games and models. It has been steadily growing and now may become one of the nation’s top 100 companies on the UK stock market…. “Alliance Witan and Games Workshop expected to join FTSE 100 this month” reports Shares Magazine.

(17) HEARING FROM PAUL DI FILIPPO. Mark Barsotti recently interviewed prolific sff author Paul Di Filippo and through the creative use of photos and book covers turned the recordings into a three-part video series.

PAUL Di FILIPPO INTERVIEW ~ SCIENCE FICTION’S MOST UNDERRATED WRITER? ~ Part 1

Part one of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a better world would make the bestseller lists. Interview: November 11, 2024.

PAUL Di FILIPPO INTERVIEW ~ SCIENCE FICTION SUPER SCRIBE! ~ Part 2

Part two of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a juster world would make a lot more money. Paul talks about his multiverse novel VANGIE’S GHOST. Interview 11, 2024.

PAUL Di FILIPPO ~ A PINT-SIZED VOLTAIRE?

Part 3 on my interview with science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo, who discusses his latest novel, Vangie’s Ghosts, “technopunk jazz scatting” and not being a miserabilist. Interview: 11-11-24.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Barsotti, Walt Boyes, Cathy Green, Brick Barrientos, 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 Jeff “What A Wonderful World” Smith.]

Pixel Scroll 10/10/24 I Ride An Old Anti-Gravity Paint, My Partner Favors Cavorite

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE. Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature reports Publishers Weekly. (There are no genre elements present in the descriptions of Han Kang’s work in “What to read: Han Kang” at NobelPrize.org, or in the “Han Kang” Wikipedia article.)

Han Kang. Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

…One of only 18 women to be awarded global literature’s highest honor, she is the first South Korean writer to win the prize and the first Asian laureate since 2012, when the Nobel was awarded to Chinese author Mo Yan.

“Han Kang’s visible empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives, is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy, the body that administers the prize. “In her oeuvre,” he added, quoting from the Committee’s citation, “Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”…

(2) FORMER FRAZETTA HOME IN FLORIDA UNHARMED BY STORM. Frank Frazetta’s daughter reassured fans that the Frazetta Art Gallery in Boca Raton, FL was undamaged by Hurricane Helene. (This is not the Frazetta Art Museum which is in Pennsylvania.)

The Frazetta Art Gallery still stands. *No the paintings aren’t in there* pic.twitter.com/hixrmZZJ3f
— Sara Frazetta (@SaraFrazetta) October 10, 2024

This paragraph distinguishes the Frazetta Art Gallery from the Museum:

…For Frazetta fans, it’s an essential destination, since it contains dozens of pieces of Frazetta artwork, paintings, newspaper strips, comic book pages, and a nice selection of personal artwork Frazetta executed as gifts for his wife, Ellie, and other family members. The personal work on display gives viewers a true feeling of intimacy, of being part of Frazetta’s inner circle, since most of them have never been reprinted….

(3) ELECTORIAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A few years ago, because of the Sad Puppies Affair (which, contrary to popular belief, was not a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode), there was much debate in fandom as to how we vote on the Hugo short-list. Now, better late than never, this week’s edition of Nature has an article on electoral systems, “Which Is The Fairest Electoral System?”

Scientists hope to explore whether some approaches are more likely to promote democratic resilience or to stave off corrosive partisanship. Such answers might inform policy, but differences in interpretation are inevitable when it comes to politics. “Democracy is a complex system,” says Lee Drutman, a political-science researcher at New America, a think tank in Washington DC. There can be multiple ways to parse the data, he says.

A Hugo-type system is briefly mentioned…

There are sub-variants in FPTP (first past the post) systems: ranked-choice voting, which is used, for instance, in Australia, ensures a majority winner. Voters rank all candidates or parties; the lowest-ranked candidate drops out and their supporters’ second-choice preferences are tallied, and so on until a single candidate surpasses a 50% threshold. And run-off elections, such as those in France, when the two leading parties are voted for in a second round, ensure a direct national face-off.

Interestingly the piece has two conclusions. One that ranked choice has benefits, but a contrary view 2) is that this pushes folk to limited options. Here the article calls for more political parties in the US rather than the two big ones. In Hugo terms this would translate as increasing the number in the short-lists.

(By the way, personally I have no preference: I just share out of interest and am not advocating anything.)

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 120 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Activate Liz” —

We do rather fewer letters of comment than last episode, and then we let Liz do her favourite topic of all: STATISTICS.

Listen here: Octothorpe (Podbean.com). Read the unedited transcript of the episode here.

(5) ATWOOD PICKS A CARD. Margaret Atwood appeared on NPR to publicize her new collection called, Paper Boat: New And Selected Poems: 1961-2023. They played clips of her answers to questions on the Wild Card program. “Writer Margaret Atwood plays a game of ‘Wild Card’”.

MARTIN: When I asked the question [about envy], though, you asked for a definition – envy that you suffered or had to manage or other people’s envy of you?

ATWOOD: Yes.

MARTIN: Is that – does that happen a lot?

ATWOOD: It has, certainly. Yeah. So what I said to young writers who had had a sudden success, I said, within a couple of years, you will have three nasty, vicious personal attacks from people you don’t know.

MARTIN: What were the attacks that were leveled at you in your first couple years of success?

ATWOOD: (Laughter) Some of them were quite funny. So a lot of it had to do with hair – Medusa hair, frizzy hair, you know, name something about hair. Yes, and one of them wrote a satirical fairy tale in which I bit the heads off men and made them into a pile and turned into an octopus. Figure that out.

MARTIN: So you were a Medusa-haired man hater.

ATWOOD: Yeah. And power mad, ladder-climbing…

MARTIN: Oh, power mad?

ATWOOD: Yes. Power-mad, ladder-climbing witch.

MARTIN: Oh, wow. I mean, that’s evocative.

ATWOOD: I thought so too.

(6) REMEMBERING J.G. BALLARD. “Diary: Deborah Levy on J. G. Ballard” at Book Post.

J. G. Ballard, England’s greatest literary futurist, changed the coordinates of reality in British fiction and took his faithful readers on a wild intellectual ride. He never restored moral order to the proceedings in his fiction because he did not believe we really wanted it. Whatever it was that Ballard next imagined for us, however unfamiliar, we knew we were in safe hands because he understood “the need to construct a dramatically coherent narrative space.”

When it came to anything by Ballard, genre really did not matter to me; his fiction could have been filed under “Tales of Alien Abduction” or “Marsh Plants” and I would have hunted it down. Despite our difference in generation, gender, and literary purpose, it was clear to me that he and I were both working with some of the same aesthetic influences: film, surrealist art and poetry, Freud’s avant-garde theories of the unconscious….

…The reach of his imagination was never going to fit with the realist literary mainstream but I was always encouraged by his insistence that he was an imaginative writer.
“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”

Good on you, Jim.

His highly imagined landscapes and abandoned aircraft and stopped clocks and desert sand were located in his head—and anyway he preferred driving fast cars to walking. He once sent me a photograph of the Heathrow Hilton and told me it was his spiritual home. …

(7) BUSTED. Was Chuck Tingle’s “true identity” revealed today? That’s what author C.J. Leede was hoping we’d think, til you-know-who caught them in the act.

WHO IS CHUCK? THE BIG REVEAL pic.twitter.com/Yz2Inhmx34
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) October 10, 2024

(8) THOU SHALT NOT PASS. “The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes” — an excerpt from a 404 Media’s post.

A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.”

The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals.

“A few of us had noticed the prevalence of unnatural writing that showed clear signs of being AI-generated, and we managed to replicate similar ‘styles’ using ChatGPT,” Ilyas Lebleu, a founding member of WikiProject AI Cleanup, told me in an email. “Discovering some common AI catchphrases allowed us to quickly spot some of the most egregious examples of generated articles, which we quickly wanted to formalize into an organized project to compile our findings and techniques.”…

(9) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboys Books presents episode79 of the “Simultaneous Times” podcast with Pedro Iniguez, Lisa E Black, and Addison Smith.

“Sneeze” by Pedro Iniguez. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier)
“Of Course I Still Love You” by Lisa E Black. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the author.)
“Residual Traces” by Addison Smith. (Music by Fall Precauxions. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier.)
Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast produced by Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Barbarella film (1968)

Oh, Barbarella.

I didn’t quite get why it was so controversial when I first saw it, it was a bowdlerized version of the already bowdlerized version Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. This was on a local channel in New York City in the 1980’s. I thought it was a funny but rather goofy looking SF movie, although of course Jane Fonda was something to look at.

(My father was upset at her being in the movie, something I did not understand for years until I understood her politics…and my own family’s politics, better)

I finally got to see the uncut and real version in the early 2000’s on DVD. And then I could finally see what I was missing. Did it add a lot to the actual movie besides the visuals? No, but what visuals! I slotted it in the same space as Woody Allen’s Sleeper, as a science fiction movie that talked about sex, and around sex, a lot. But going on the other visuals, the sets, costume design and props (including the infamous Excess Pleasure Machine) were just mind boggling in both of the versions I’ve seen. Too, the actual cinematography is mesmerizing, the camera knows where to linger, where to bring our attention in sometimes rather chaotic and baroque set pieces. I have not yet seen a 4k version of the film, but that is something I do very much need to see sometime, to see it at the maximum fidelity and clarity.

Is it great cinema? No. But it is great art.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark displays yet another credential trap.
Carpe Diem shows a failed invasion.

(12) DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE COMICS REUNION. “Deadpool and Wolverine officially return in 2025, Marvel confirms” – GamingBible has the story.

…For those who miss the bromance between Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine, you’re in luck because the pair are officially returning in 2025.

Their antics won’t play out on the big screen but upon the pages of comics instead.

The Deadpool/Wolverine series comes from writer Benjamin Percy and artist Joshua Cassara. This partnership, much like Deadpool and Wolverine, is a match made in heaven.

Fans who enjoyed the bloody violence of the film needn’t worry that the comics will strip that action away…

(13) BEGINNING OF A FASCINATION. CrimeRead’s Jeremy Dauber outlines “A Brief History of the Rise of Horror in 19th Century America”.

At the Civil War’s end, under a quarter of Americans lived in cities; by the end of the Great War, the proportion was almost exactly half. All those people moving to the cities—both from rural America and from abroad— changed things. Size created anonymity, the possibility of losing yourself in the crowds, remaking yourself, if you so chose. . . . or getting lost, and not always by your choice. Increasingly, the streets were lit by electric light, and the machines inside them were powered the same way; but that simply swapped a new set of shadows and terrors for the old ones. The horrors of the next decades were, all too frequently, industrial and mass-produced: whether they came from the chatter of guns or the whirr of a film projector, they cast an eye on progress, and murmured about what lay beneath.

Start, perhaps, with that newly electrified white city, Chicago. In 1893, its World’s Columbian Exposition, or World’s Fair, was an announcement of America’s newly flexing muscles: its willingness to be broad-shouldered, to play a leadership role in world affairs, to stride into the future. And yet, inside the city limits, there sat a haunted castle. This castle, though, had no clanking chains, no Gothic ghost or Salem witch; it had a psychopath who used modern tools—the soundproofed room, the knockout gas-bearing pipes, and of course, the three-thousand-degrees-Fahrenheit kiln—to disable, kill, and dispose of guests who checked into his World’s Fair Hotel at 701 Sixty-third Street. And why did H. H. Holmes do it? For his part, when eventually caught, he had a simple, and chillingly modern, explanation: “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”…

(14) I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR. SFFAudio reminds us that once upon a time Robert Bloch urged authors to swear to uphold “ROBERT BLOCH’S CREDO FOR FANTASY WRITERS”.

ROBERT BLOCH'S CREDO FOR FANTASY WRITERS

place your left hand on THE NECRONOMICON and swear to…

1. Never to write a story about a mad doctor, a mad scientist , or a mad professor.

2. Or even a sane one, if that can be avoided.

3. Or if it can't, never to give one of the… pic.twitter.com/2uyB5kkVqN
— SFFaudio (@SFFAudio) October 10, 2024

(15) JUSTWATCH MARKET SHARE REPORT. As the third quarter of 2024 comes to an end, JustWatch has released their latest data report on market shares in the US. As usual, they based our report on the 13 million JustWatch users in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen.

SVOD market shares in Q3 2024
Global streaming giant: Prime Video managed to keep its first-place rank, with a 1% lead against Netflix. Meanwhile, Max is managing to stay ahead of major competitors Disney+ and Hulu.

Market share development in 2024
Disney+ and Hulu both gained momentum with a +1% subscriber boost by September. While Netflix and Max stumbled with a -1% decline each, revealing a shake-up in the streaming rivalry.

(16) IF YOU INSIST ON WATCHING. “Too Scared to Watch Horror Movies? These 5 Tips May Help” says the New York Times (paywalled).

The October ritual of watching horror movies in the lead-up to Halloween can be exhilarating. Unless, of course, you can’t quite stomach the gory and gruesome, or even the spooky and spine-tingling….

…If you’re someone who wants to indulge in the season but dreads jump scares and buckets of blood, here are five tips that could help even the biggest scaredy cats among us start to open up to the world of horror.

The first two tips are:

Embrace the Spoiler

The first and best line of defense is to read the plot in advance. If you’re feeling brave, go for just a synopsis, but there’s no reason to be a hero. I sometimes read an entire plot in great detail before watching, especially with films I know will tap into my weak spot: movies about demonic possession. Unlike with other genres, knowing what will happen in horror doesn’t necessarily detract from the experience of watching. Your heart will most likely still pound. You will probably still jump. And the visuals and sounds will probably still shock. Knowing what comes next may simply help keep the anxiety and uncertainty in check.

The Smaller, the Better

Nothing against the big-screen experience, but going small, by watching on your phone or a tablet, can go a long way. Not only will you have a sense of control that a crowded theater with speakers blaring hellish soundscapes can’t provide, you will also be able to make adjustments. If it gets too loud or chaotic, turn down the volume. If it gets too visually scary, turn down the brightness or flip the device down. Sometimes for the most intense scenes, it’s better to just hear the movie without seeing it, or to watch without sound….

(17) QUITE A TAIL. And for your viewing pleasure, The Copenhagen Post recommends “Reptilicus”.

Next time you’re looking for a Danish film to watch, spare a thought for Denmark’s only giant monster film ‘Reptilicus’ – a 1960s cult-classic with puppets, bad acting, bazookas, and a prehistoric reptilian beast rampaging through Amager…

… Reptilicus is the name for two monster films about a giant, prehistoric reptile which decides to attack Denmark.

Shot simultaneously, one film is in Danish (1961) and the other is from the USA in English (1962). Both films have a near identical cast (except for one actress) and two directors (Poul Bang – Danish, and Sidney Pink – English) who took turns throughout each shooting day to create two of the most iconic, kitsch and downright unintentional masterpieces to grace Danish screens.

The plot tells of a Danish miner in Lapland who accidentally digs up a section of a giant reptile’s tail from the frozen ground. The section is flown to the Denmark’s Aquarium in Copenhagen, where it is preserved in a temperature-controlled room for scientific study.

Of course they don’t put anyone competent in charge of monitoring it but instead choose a bumbling buffoon (the legendary Dirch Passer). The room is left open and the section begins to thaw and regenerate….

(18) FILLING UP WITH GAS. According to TechRadar, “Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges look like giant AA batteries – and could spell the end of lengthy EV charging”.

Toyota is showcasing a series of sustainable developments at the Japan Mobility Bizweek later this month – including its vision of a portable hydrogen cartridge future, which could apparently provide ‘swappable’ power for next-gen hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).

Originally a project of Toyota’s mobility technology subsidiary Woven (formerly Woven Planet), the team produced a working prototype of a hydrogen cartridge back in 2022 but has since developed the idea further… and appears to be running with it.The latest cartridges are lighter and easier to transport, with Toyota claiming the current iteration has been developed with the experience the company has gained in reducing the size and weight of the hydrogen tanks used in its fuel cell electric vehicles….

…Put simply, the cartridges would allow fuel cell electric vehicle drivers to swap out their power source when hydrogen levels run low, rather than having to refuel at a station like you typically would with a fossil fuel-powered car.

But Toyota also feels that these refillable and renewable cartridges could be used in a multitude of situations, such as to generate electricity in a fuel cell to power the home or even providing hydrogen to burn for cooking.

In fact, Toyota and the Rinnai Corporation are exhibiting a stove at Japan Mobility Bizweek that does just that. Similarly, in emergency situations, the hydrogen cartridge could be removed from the car and used to power any applicable device in the case of a blackout, for example….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Paul Weimer, Danny Sichel, Lise Andreasen, 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 Daniel “All Is Wells” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/16/24 We Are The Pixel Makers And We Are The Scrollers Of Scrolls

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE FUTURE IS NOW. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is accepting applications to be on the program already, we learned via Hugo Book Club Blog. Full details here: “Panelists – Seattle Worldcon 2025”.

…All panelists and presenters at Seattle Worldcon 2025 must be members of the convention. Seattle Worldcon 2025 will review and choose panelists and presenters continuously starting in 2024 through early 2025. You can indicate an interest in appearing on program by filling out this form. After brief vetting, we will send interested individuals an invitation to appear on program with a thorough survey form….

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to join Jenny Rowe (and James Tiptree, Jr.) at the Glasgow Worldcon bar in Episode 233 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I returned home from the Glasgow Worldcon less than 48 hours ago, and am still suffering from jet lag, but I’m not so groggy I can’t share with you what was my favorite item on the program there — Jenny Rowe’s one-woman show, Tiptree: No One Else’s Damn Secret But My Own. I loved her performance, and immediately reached out to see whether I could chat with her about channeling James Tiptree, Jr., and how she distilled the life of that brilliant writer into an hour-long arc. Luckily, we were able to connect in the Crown Plaza bar.

Rowe is an actor, improviser and writer who performs and teaches improv internationally. She wrote her solo show about James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon in 2018, was nominated for Best Female Performer at Buxton Fringe ’24, and continues to tour with the production. Her other performances include Read Not Dead (Shakespeare’s Globe) Clean by Sam Chittenden (Best Play Award, Brighton Fringe 2019), Mary Rose by J.M.Barrie (National Tour), and Somewhere in England by Mark Burgess.

A member of Impromptu Shakespeare and Brighton Fringe Comedy Award-winners, The Maydays, since 2006, she has guested on the iO Chicago mainstage with Whirled News Tonight and headlined at improv festivals across Europe. She also writes weird, dark short stories which occasionally get published in weird dark places: one is upcoming in the Map of Lost Places anthology from Apex Books in 2025.

We discussed the serendipitous way she learned James Tiptree, Jr. existed, the differing reactions to her one-woman show from SF vs. non-SF audiences, how she managed to nail Tiptree’s accent (some of which you’ll get to hear), why she ultimately decided not to begin or end the show with a gunshot, how she settled on the structure of her script (and why she decided to leave herself out of the story), the way inhabiting Tiptree affected her feelings about the controversy, why she’d have loved to meet Tiptree but not necessarily want to be her friend, the purpose of the play’s moment of audience participation, and much more.

(3) WHAT OBAMA IS READING THIS SUMMER. There are a couple of genre books on “President Obama’s 2024 Summer Reading List, Reviewed” at Publishers Weekly.

James, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, perhaps is only “genre” to the extent of being a literary experiment similar to Julia, the retelling of 1984. But Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is nearer the genre bull’s-eye as it depends on time travel.

(4) COVID COUNT FROM GLASGOW 2024. Some people tested positive for Covid at the Worldcon, like business meeting secretary Alex Acks, and over a hundred have altogether, including author Pat Cadigan. Janet Ní Shúilleabháin picked up this number from a dedicated channel on the con’s Discord server. X.com thread starts here.

(5) HUH? A dumpster at New College of Florida, located in Sarasota, made the headlines: “Florida college throws away hundreds of books on gender and diversity” reports USA Today. But why is H.G. Wells in the pile?

…On Tuesday afternoon, a dumpster in the parking lot of the school’s Jane Bancroft Cook Library overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center….

…Some of the discarded books included, “Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate,” “The War of the Worlds” and “When I Knew,” a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay….

(6) BILLIONS AND BILLIONS. “Audiobooks are doing better than ever. Just ask Harper Collins” suggests NPR.

Audiobooks are doing better than ever. Just ask Harper Collins. According to a recent earnings call, the publisher revealed audiobook sales exceeded e-books for the first time last quarter. But don’t call it a boom. NPR’s Andrew Limbong has more….

LIMBONG: A couple of those other waves include the rise of podcasting, getting people listening to audio content, and COVID, says Michele Cobb, the executive director of the Audio Publishers Association.

MICHELE COBB: Because people were looking for something that was entertaining, educational and did not involve looking at a screen.

LIMBONG: According to Cobb, the industry enjoyed consistent growth for more than a decade, bringing in $2 billion in revenue in 2023. The Audio Publishers Association did a survey earlier this summer to find out who exactly was listening to all these audiobooks.

COBB: When I started in the industry in, really, 2000, it was older people listening to cassettes. That’s what it was. In today’s world, it is people under 45 who are the majority of listeners, and they are bringing their kids into the fold….

(7) RECOGNIZING TIMES TO COME. Steven Heller explains why he was excited by Octavia Butler’s sff in “Octavia E. Butler’s Convictions on Predictions” at PRINT Magazine.

…In just a few thousand words, Butler responds to a student’s query, “Do you really believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?” The question was referring to Butler’s warnings about, among other real time crises, increasing drug addiction, illiteracy, global warming and untold seeds of doomsday scenarios. “I didn’t make up the problems,” she noted, “all I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”…

(8) BUCKAROO BANZAI. “40 Years Ago, One Wild Sci-Fi Movie Became a Surprising Cult Classic” – Inverse remembers!

…For all of its quirkiness and brazen genre-busting, the singular nature of 1984’s Buckaroo Banzai is its most enduring feature. It’s not perfect, but as a go-to cult favorite of many artists, writers, and fans, revisiting Buckaroo Banzai 40 years after its release reveals a fantastically unique sci-fi film.

Buckaroo Banzai represents a kind of alternate universe of ‘80s pop culture. If Back to the Future hadn’t happened a year later, and if star Peter Weller hadn’t gone on to play RoboCop in 1987, it’s conceivable that Buckaroo Banzai would be the ultimate symbol of ‘80s kitch sci-fi. You’ve got quirky mad scientists, rocket cars, ‘80s blazers, and a rock band, all traits associated with Marty McFly’s far more famous adventure.

The movie’s circuitous story centers on a world-famous scientist and rock star named Buckaroo Banzai (Weller), who travels around with a group of misfits called the Hong Kong Cavaliers. Within the first 20 minutes, we see Buckaroo take a rocket car through a mountain and into another dimension, perform a last-minute life-saving surgery, and lead his band in a set while growing concerned about a suicidal woman in the audience, who seems to be the twin of his long-lost lover….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born August 16, 1934 – Diana Wynne Jones. (Died 2011.) Shall we look at the fiction of Diana Wynne Jones? Now I’m picking just my favorites here.

So what do you pick off the shelf first for reading by her? For me that’s Deep Secret, where the protagonist is Rupert Venables, overseer of the Multiverse, and who’s going to PhantasmaCon. Absolutely fun it is. And the sequel, The Merlin Conspiracy, is just as pleasing.

If there’s essential reading for her by in terms of just plain being intrigued by the idea underlying the book, it’d be The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which is a playful look at the genre. A really playful look.

Fire and Hemlock for her artful merging of the Scottish ballads Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer is amazing. Then there’s the setting here, a small private college. We’ve such a college not far away and her depiction feels spot on to that

I like Howl’s Castle, the best of the three novels in that series, and adore the animated film made off of it.

Diana Wynne Jones. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

Let’s not overlook the exemplary short story collection she did of Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories with the great cover by Dan Craig. Yes, I bought it without opening the book solely because of it. Well and that it was by her.

My final pick, and yes, I’m fully aware how much I’m overlooking in just giving my personal choices, is Archer’s Goon, a boy who finds out something about himself quite unexpected. a family with secrets. A creature who won’t leave their house. What’s not to be intrigued by?

I’m very much looking forward to hearing your choices now.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! didn’t get the results the mad scientist was expecting.
Free Range witnesses a claim to fame.
Mannequin on the Moon wasn’t in danger after all.

(11) DOWN MEMORY LOIS LANE. Teri Hatcher answers a question about that ‘iconic’ shot, in the Guardian: “Teri Hatcher: ‘Would I beat you at pool? It depends on how much we are drinking’”.

What are your memories of the time the picture of you naked wrapped in a Superman cape was reportedly the most downloaded image on the internet? VerulamiumParkRanger

I broke the internet when we still had dial-up. I don’t credit myself with being so fabulous. I do remember the photoshoot, which was to promote the TV show. It took all day. I was wearing a white blouse and pencil skirt because Lois is a reporter from the Daily Planet, with the cape wrapped over. It wasn’t until the last take of the day that someone said: “Could we try the cape without the blouse?” I thought: “What does that imply? Why would Lois Lane be naked under the cape?” We only did it as a lark, but the result was evocative. Now I’m so much older, I still feel proud of it.

(12) FANHISTORIC DINING. Clifton’s Cafeteria, where LASFS once met in the Thirties, will celebrate its latest reopening this weekend says LAist. “Wanna sneak preview of Clifton’s reopening? You can this weekend (if you’re lucky)”.

The famed Clifton’s location (now Clifton’s Republic) is slated to reopen gradually over the next month, starting with a sneak peek of the famed tiki bar, aka Pacific Seas bar, this weekend.

How to get in: To score one of the very limited reservations, you’ll need to sign up for the mailing list via their website. If you’re too late, note that reservations for next weekend, Aug. 23 and 24, will be opening next week. You’ll get alerted via email when they’re live to book. First come, first served.

Backstory: Clifton’s opened in 1938 as a cafeteria space during the Depression on a bustling block on Broadway, offering an escapist adventure. Now rebranded as Clifton’s Republic, the six-story location is owned by Andrew Meieran, who hopes to restore it to its “fantastical wonderland” feeling of yesteryear.

(13) YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS ANYONE’S. “Amazon announces weird-ass cartoon anthology series set inside existing video games” at AV Club.

The video game adaptation renaissance has been going along steadily for long enough at this point that not even a flop like Borderlands—which both feels, and literally is, the product of a world from before the release of either crowd-pleasers like The Super Mario Bros. Movie,or critical darlings like The Last Of Us—is likely to slow it down. Which means that efforts to adapt video games to TV or film now have enough of a runway to get a little strange. Case in point: The reveal today that Prime Video is working with Deadpool director and Love, Death & Robots creator Tim Miller on an animated anthology series titled Secret Level, not based on a single game, but set in the worlds of multiple popular titles.

This is, to put none too fine a point on it, weird. Game companies tend to be aggressively protective of their intellectual property, especially in this day and age—to the point that Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann is an incredibly active force in the creation of the Last Of Us show, overseeing its various tinkerings with oh-so-precious canon. The idea of handing off the brand to outsiders to craft a story set inside your video game universe, which will then sit alongside other games in a larger anthology title, just sounds incredibly strange to our ears. It doesn’t help that the titles reportedly being targeted are decidedly eclectic: Sony’s library of PlayStation titles makes a certain sense, as well as Amazon’s own New World online title. But Deadline also reports that Derek Yu’s Spelunky, a self-published, self-owned indie title, is supposedly in the mix. (It’s also easily the one of these we’re most interested in seeing, since Spelunky‘s beautifully cartoonish style is a great potential fit for an animated short.)…

(14) THE AXE HAS FALLEN. The Hollywood Reporter has learned “’My Lady Jane’ Canceled at Amazon After One Season”.

Like the real Jane Grey, the reign of My Lady Jane turned out to be a short one.

Amazon’s Prime Video has canceled the period drama, which combined romance and alternate-world fantasy. The cancellation comes about seven weeks after Prime Video released all eight episodes of the show’s first (and now only) season.

My Lady Jane, based on a novel by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows, is set in a 16th century England where humans co-exist with shape-shifters who can take the form of either people or animals. Jane Grey (Emily Bader) is an ordinary human, known as a Verity, who becomes sympathetic to the oppressed shape-shifters, known as Ethians — which will become a problem for the ruling class as Jane rises to power….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Deadpool & Wolverine Pitch Meeting”

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Scott Edelman, 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 Andrew (Not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 8/5/24 In A New York Nanite

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) KEN MACLEOD Q&A. The latest Clark Award newsletter, “Carbon-Based Bipeds: Aug 5th”, includes an interview with Worldcon Guest of Honour Ken MacLeod discussing the publication of his first short story collection in 18 years, A Jura for Julia published by NewCon Press, which will be launched at the Con.

…HAL: My memory circuits recall my first Worldcon as a glorious blur. Do you have any recommendations for first time attendees to make the most of their experience at an SF con?

KEN: A glorious blur is a good way to remember a Worldcon! If a Worldcon is your first SF convention, it’s a blast! To make the most of it, look at the programme beforehand and pick what items you’d like to go to. If you don’t know anyone who is going, a quick way to meet new people is to volunteer. Cons always need volunteers, for however long or short a time you have to offer. Don’t be shy. Use the party or conference conversation trick: one person might want to be alone, two might be having a personal conversation, three or more talking and you can wander up and wait for someone to speak to you (or wander off if no one does). It works! …

(2) FOUND IN TRANSLATION. Martin Wisse’s question isn’t really petty at all: “What gets translated and what doesn’t — Martin’s increasingly petty rules about translation” at Wis[s]e Words.

Why does senpai gets to be used untranslated, but kouhai gets translated to junior? You could make the case that it’s just that much less known than senpai that it still needs to, but for a series like this I’d expect the audience to already know it. This isn’t Pokemon after all, but a very dialogue heavy mystery show, one that’s not shy about using proper honorifics or the correct, Japanese name order either. A strange choice either way when you’d normally expect both terms to be translated or kept intact as a pair.

It raises the question of what you translate and what not, what the expectations are for things that English doesn’t really have an equivalent for, like the whole idea of senpai/kouhai, or the use of honorifics to refer to people. I was reminded of what writer/translator Zack Davisson said on the subject of food names two years ago:

“One of my Translation Rules: Thou Shall not Translate Food Names. Food names, as a general language rule in the modern era, are kept in their native language. We collectively learned to say pho. We learned to say pasta primavera. We can say onigiri. Time to retire ‘rice balls.’”

(3) PLAYING MONOPOLY. “Google loses major antitrust case over search monopoly” – the LA Times has the story.

In a major blow to Google, a federal judge on Monday ruled that the tech giant violated antitrust laws by illegally maintaining a monopoly on web searches.

The much-anticipated decision marks a significant victory for federal regulators trying to rein in the power of Big Tech and could send shock waves through the tech world. Other firms, including Apple, Meta and Amazon, also face federal antitrust lawsuits.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his opinion.

The ruling did not include a remedy for Google’s conduct.

Kent Walker, president of Google Global Affairs, said in a statement that the company plans to appeal.

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

Regulators alleged that Google maintained a monopoly on web searches by reaching agreements with browser developers, phone manufacturers and wireless carriers to pre-load their products with the Google search engine as the default….

(4) MAKING A HOUSE A HOME FOR DRAGONS. The New York Times learns “How ‘House of the Dragon’ Turns Fiery Fantasy Into TV Reality”. Link bypasses NYT paywall.

For Ryan Condal, the co-creator and showrunner of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” the creatures are key to the show’s magic, literally and figuratively.

“They are the one fantasy element that we’ve allowed ourselves,” he said. “In our world, in this period, the magic is these dragons.”

But they are also death incarnate. “It’s all metaphor, all allegory for nuclear conflict,” Condal said. “You take the city with an army if you want it to be standing afterward. You can’t do anything surgical with a dragon.”

The ongoing second season of the “Game of Thrones” prequel has included more of these beautiful, terrible beasts than any other in the franchise, including spectacular air battles in the fourth episode, “The Red Dragon and the Gold.” Sunday’s installment, “The Red Sowing,” in which aspiring dragon riders claim new mounts — or die trying — was more grounded, but it presented the most complicated challenge yet.

… “In a big way, Season 1 was proof of concept for the series to come,” Condal said. “We designed Season 1 to tell this hopefully compelling Shakespearean family drama that would build to this final act where we would see the first dragon fight.”

In the resulting skirmish in the Season 1 finale, the young Prince Lucerys Velaryon and his small dragon, Arrax, are killed by Vhagar, the enormous, centuries-old beast ridden by the one-eyed warrior Prince Aemond Targaryen.

“Vhagar fighting Arrax is like a rhino versus a house cat,” Condal said. “But it had the elements: It was a chase, it had two dragons, you had two actors riding on saddles and everything else was digital. It was an entirely virtual sequence, essentially….

(5) DEADPOOL CAMEO SPOILERS. If they haven’t already been spoiled for you, Variety would like to perform that service: “Shawn Levy Explains ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Spoilers and Cameos”. And I guess I can’t pull an excerpt of this one….

(6) GENRE ADJACENT POSSIBILITY FOR FUTURE PRISONER SWAP. [Item by Patrick McGuire.] I read the below-linked Reuters piece about remaining possibly-swapable prisoners after the recent spy swap between Russia and the West (CNN).

One of the names was Boris Kagarlitsky, a onetime politician, later a sociologist and dissident. I knew something about him, but I had lost track and had not known he had been arrested. As far as I know, he has no sfnal connection himself — but his father was Yulii (or Julius) Kagarlitsky, a once-prominent Soviet/Russian sf scholar who knew English.

I thought Julius was fairly well known in American scholarly sf circles in his day, although today I found little about him online in English. I met Boris, for all of a “hello, goodbye,” as a kid of 13 or 14 the one time I visited the family apartment to interview his father, in probably 1975, when I spent academic 1974-75 in the USSR doing dissertation research.

Reuters: “Who are the prisoners who could feature in a future East-West swap?”

…RUSSIAN OR BELARUSIAN DISSIDENTS:

BORIS KAGARLITSKY:

A left-wing academic and Soviet-era dissident, Kagarlitsky was in 2023 charged with “justifying terrorism”, related to his opposition to the war in Ukraine. In February, the 65-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison….

On his father Yulii, who went by Julius in his English publications. Unfortunately, the only Wikipedia citation that I could find for him is in Russian (unless you prefer Ukrainian or Hungarian): “Кагарлицкий, Юлий Иосифович”

But here is a mention in Science Fiction Studies from March 1984:

Professor Kagarlitsky “Disciplined”

On November 2, 1983, the Moscow correspondent of the London Times reported that Professor Julius Kagarlitsky had been arraigned before a disciplinary panel at the Lunacharsky Theatrical Institute and removed from his post. Sources said the move was linked to dissident activities on the part of Professor Kagarlitsky’s son, Boris, who took part in a “new left” discussion group criticizing Soviet society from a Marxist standpoint.

Kagarlitsky, who is the recipient of the Pilgrim Award for 1972 and an Honorary Vice-President of the H.G. Wells Society, needs no introduction to SFS readers. His friends have been aware of the threat to his position for some time—even though his son, who had been held by the KGB for several months, was released without trial in the spring of 1983.

Experience has shown that the Soviet authorities are swayed by international criticism of their actions. It is hoped that SFS readers will make known their feelings about this case, which deals a devastating blow to Soviet scholarship and criticism in our field. We must hope that the victimization of Professor Kagarlitsky will be lifted, and that he will be promptly reinstated in his post. —Patrick Parrinder

Here he is in the Internet Science Fiction Database — Юлий Кагарлицкий (Julius Kagarlitsky) — which, however, lacks mention of his book What Is Science Fiction? (in Russian only), one of his two major books on sf, the other being the biography of H.G. Wells cited in ISFDB, which has an English translation.

(7) JOE ENGLE (1932-2024). Test pilot and astronaut Joe Engle died July 10 at the age of 91. The New York Times obituary says, “He was the first to touch the edge of space and later to go beyond it in two different aircraft, an X-15 and a shuttle. But the moon, to his disappointment, proved out of reach.”

…Mr. Engle was an Air Force captain in 1962 when he was accepted into the Aerospace Research Pilot School, an advanced training ground for astronauts. It was run by Chuck Yeager, the renowned test pilot who had broken the sound barrier in a Bell Aircraft X-1 in 1947.

But Mr. Engle’s application to join a group of astronaut recruits was pulled by an Air Force officer, who told him that he was being selected for another role; he had to wait until school ended in 1963 to learn that he had been assigned to the X-15 program.

The reassignment “thrilled me to death,” he said in a 2004 NASA oral history interview, “because it was a chance to get into place, to fly into space and to do it with a winged airplane, with a stick and rudder.” And he was still young enough to reapply to NASA in the future.

Three experimental X-15 aircraft were flown 199 times by a dozen pilots from 1959 to 1968, each designed to reach the boundary of space, more than 50 miles above sea level, traveling at speeds of up to 4,520 miles per hour. They collected critical data on the effects of hypersonic aerodynamics on men and machines.

Mr. Engle was the last surviving X-15 pilot….

…He earned his astronaut wings on June 29, 1965, when he took the X-15 to an altitude of 280,600 feet, or 53 miles, at 3,431 m.p.h….

…He was part of the support crew for Apollo 10 in May 1969, two months before the first moon landing by Apollo 11. He went on to train as the backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 14 in 1971 and was assigned to to the crew of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Mr. Engle had expected to walk on the moon with Eugene Cernan in Apollo 17. But he was replaced by Harrison Schmitt, a geologist-astronaut (and future U.S. senator from New Mexico), so that NASA could take a scientist into space. Mr. Schmitt had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 18, but that mission was canceled because of budget cuts.

“It’s a lot like when you lose someone very dear to you to something like cancer,” Mr. Engle said in a news conference in August 1971, about being replaced. He added, “It’s a pretty empty feeling.”…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 5, 1966 — James Gunn, 58. Director James Gunn, who you surely know if only for the Guardians of the Galaxy films, has a very interesting career which we’ll look at tonight.

His first film, decidedly not genre, was Tromeo and Julietwhich I’m sure you can figure what its source material was. It definitely would’ve made Shakespeare pale it as quite extreme levels of sex and violence characteristic of almost every Troma film, not to overlook Gunn revised the ending. Anyone here seen it? It has a rather decent 61% rating among audience reviewers over at Rotten Tomatoes.

Far sillier and not at all likely to offend lovers of classic literature, he scripted next Scooby –Doo and slightly later Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Really he did. Rotten Tomatoes gives them, well, let’s just say stink, stank, stunk ratings, but sandwiched in between these, and definitely not silly, he penned Dawn of the Dead. Versatile writer, eh?

His first directing gig (which he scripted as well) was Slither in which the plot such as it is has a meteorite bringing an intelligent alien parasite to Earth. Naturally I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes — it has a strong sixty percent rating among critics and audience reviewers with Allison Shoemaker of Fox 10 Phoenix saying, “Slither is a visceral experience from the first, but as the creature grows, so does the film’s daring.”

So what next? His final work before the film you him know for was Super, described as a black comedy superhero film, again was written and directed by him. A short order cook becomes a superhero without actually any superpowers. Huh. Let me repeat. Huh. It gets a decent 50% at the usual place.

Ok now Disney hires him to write (the first with Nicole Perlman who picked this film because her loved of science fiction, the next two by himself) and direct the Guardians of the Galaxy films. He entered negotiations just two years prior to the film premiering with the possible directors including future MCU directors Peyton Reed and the duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.

Need I say all three films were extraordinarily successful films? At Rotten Tomatoes right now, they carry audiences review ratings of 92%, 87% and 82%. Yes, they did fall off slightly with each film, but an average of 87% is damn good.

Two years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery hired Gunn and Peter Safran to become co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios. That means they’re overseeing yet another reboot of the DC Expanded Universe. (I’ve lost track of how often this has occurred.) This starts with Superman out next year which, no surprise, he’s writing and directing.

Oh, remember that Warner Bros. Coyote v. Acme film still being a Schrödinger’s Roadrunner? (Try to catch that one!) He along with Jeremy Slater and Samy Burch wrote the story for it. Not the script as Burch did that.

What else should I mention? Well, he was one of the Executive Producers on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame; he’s the motion capture for Baby Groot in the first two of the Guardians films; and finally he was Doctor Flem Hocking in The Toxic Avenger IV. Yes, Troma Films produced The Toxic Avenger films.

So why am bringing this film to your attention? Because it is where we connect Gunn to Marvel. The narrator of this film was none other than Stan Lee himself so we can assume that two of them met and spent some time together while filming this, a reasonable assumption indeed.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is an early example of using robots for everything.
Brewster Rockit says beware what fashion statement you’re making.
Free Range has an explanation.
The Argyle Sweater attends a monster’s therapy session.
Rubes introduces a new CSI.

(10) BAD EXAMPLES. CBR.com contends they can point you at “10 Real World Inspirations Behind Batman’s Villains”.

… With the group of foes slowly conceptualized over the years, each had a wider variety of sources that were pulled from— from classic literature to mascots— to build the foundations of these now-iconic characters…

10. Ra’s al Ghul Was Inspired By Two Iconic Dracula Actors

According to Neal Adams, the artist and co-creator of Ra’s al Ghul, the visual design of the head of the League of Assassins was heavily influenced by the iconic actors Jack Palance and Christopher Lee. Both actors are renowned for their portrayals of Count Dracula— for different reasons that both appear in Ra’s.

Palance brought an intense presence to the dark count, while Lee performed with a commanding and aristocratic demeanor. Adams drew inspiration from both of these performances to craft Ra’s al Ghul’s distinct appearance, with the character’s sharp features, piercing eyes, and aura of sophisticated menace echoing the attributes that Palance and Lee brought to their Dracula roles. This inspiration helped to imbue Ra’s al Ghul with a sense of timelessness and an imposing presence, fitting for a character who is not only a master tactician and warrior but also an immortal adversary of Batman.

(11) WILL AI MAKE THEIR JOBS DOA? “Movie Editors and Animators Fear A.I. Will Kill Jobs” – so they tell the New York Time. Link bypasses NYT paywall.

For most of his four-plus decades in Hollywood, Thomas R. Moore has worked as a picture editor on network television shows.

During a typical year, his work followed a pattern: He would spend about a week and a half distilling hours of footage into the first cut of an episode, then two to three weeks incorporating feedback from the director, producers and the network. When the episode was done, he would receive another episode’s worth of footage, and so on, until he and two other editors worked through the TV season.

This model, which typically pays picture editors $125,000 to $200,000 a year, has mostly survived the shorter seasons of the streaming era, because editors can work on more than one show in a year. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, Mr. Moore fears that the job will soon be hollowed out.

“If A.I. could put together a credible version of the show for a first cut, it could eliminate one-third of our workdays,” he said, citing technology like the video-making software Sora as evidence that the shift is imminent. “We’ll become electronic gig workers.”…

(13) CLEVER COMPOSITE. Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is “Milky Way Over Tunisia” by Makrem Larnaout, and it definitely will be recognized by Star Wars fans. Photo at the link.

Explanation: That’s no moon. On the ground, that’s the Lars Homestead in Tunisia. And that’s not just any galaxy. That’s the central band of our own Milky Way galaxy. Last, that’s not just any meteor. It is a bright fireball likely from last year’s Perseids meteor shower. The featured image composite combines consecutive exposures taken by the same camera from the same location. This year’s Perseids peak during the coming weekend is expected to show the most meteors after the first quarter moon sets, near midnight. To best experience a meteor shower, you should have clear and dark skies, a comfortable seat, and patience.

(14) DERRY TEASER. “First Trailer for Welcome to Derry Teases Chilling Prequel to It” at the Express-Tribune.

The highly anticipated prequel to Stephen King’s It, titled Welcome to Derry, has dropped its first trailer, offering a glimpse into the horror that awaits fans. The teaser presents fleeting scenes of the eerie town of Derry, Maine, known for its sinister reputation in King’s universe.

(15) HBO SMORGASBORD. “The Last of Us Season 2 Teaser Features Pedro Pascal in New Footage”: Comicbook.com sets the frame.

“I can’t walk on the path of the right because I’m wrong,” a guitar-strumming Ellie sings in The Last of Us Part II video game. But in HBO’s The Last of Us season 2 — which just dropped its first footage (below) in a trailer for what’s still to come on the Max streaming service in 2024 and 2025 — it’s Joel (Pedro Pascal) who has done wrong. “Did you hurt her?” Catherine O’Hara’s unnamed character can be heard asking in the teaser, referring to Ellie (Bella Ramsey). “No,” a tearful Joel answers. “I saved her.”

The footage, which is featured alongside new looks at HBO Original Series The Penguin, The White Lotus, The Gilded Age, Dune: Prophecy, It: Welcome to Derry, and the Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, also offers a glimpse at season 2 cast members Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced, and Jeffrey Wright, who reprises his role from the game as Isaac Dixon….

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

Pixel Scroll 7/30/24 Then Shall All The Scrolls Be Still And Peace Will Come To Pixelville

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BOOKER PRIZE 2024 LONGLIST. [Steven French.] Several genre or adjacent works tucked away in here! “Three British novelists make Booker 2024 longlist among ‘cohort of global voices’” in the Guardian surveys all 13 books.

Percival Everett, Hisham Matar and Sarah Perry are among the 13 novelists longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. The “Booker dozen” also features works by Richard Powers, Tommy Orange, Rachel Kushner and Anne Michaels.

This year’s “glorious” list comprises “a cohort of global voices, strong voices and new voices”, said judging chair and artist Edmund de Waal….

File 770 has a genre-focused post here: “Booker Prize 2024”.

(2) REJECTING TACIT AGREEMENT. Christopher Golden sends a message “To those of you nodding along with Tom Monteleone…”

A note to certain members of the horror community. I know you’re out there—writers and readers who saw the substack post from Tom Monteleone over the weekend and quietly agree with his estimation of many of the writers who’d received Stoker Awards, or Lifetime Achievement Awards from the HWA. Honestly, it’s easy to do. We get wrapped up in our lives and perceptions and rely on our own experiences and acquired knowledge to filter the information we’re receiving. If you read Monteleone’s screed and agreed with it, even somewhat, maybe you haven’t taken the single moment of wondering if there’s another way to approach it….

… Let’s take a look at some of the authors Monteleone views as unworthy of recognition.

He dismisses Linda Addison mostly, I believe, because she’s best known as a poet. In order to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, Monteleone reminds us, one must have “significantly contributed to and influenced the field.” It’s obvious he views the field as comprised as writers like himself, never considering that one’s contributions and influence do not need to touch you or even enter your awareness to be legitimate and worth celebrating. Linda Addison does not need you to acknowledge her worth to be worthy. She doesn’t need to have been embraced by readers who are not interested in poetry for her contributions to be significant. You don’t need to have felt her influence or even observed it for her to be influential. I wonder how many horror writers have written poetry because Linda Addison makes them sit up and take notice of the art form. I’d wager the number is far higher than the number of authors who took up writing horror novels because they’d read something by Thomas F. Monteleone. Linda has blazed a trail for others to follow, and lit the goddamn path for them. She’s been a mentor and an example to follow. How many can say the same?

And to claim you consider her your friend? Shame on you. Learn something. Instead of assuming Linda’s race is the reason for her recognition, consider that her race is the reason you haven’t educated yourself as to why she has actually been honored….

(3) KSR ON BBC. The Climate Question team interviews Kim Stanley Robinson in this episode of the BBC World Service program: “The Climate Question, Can Science Fiction help us fight climate change?”

The acclaimed US sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson is also a star in the world of climate activism because his work often features climate change – on Earth and beyond. Robinson has been a guest speaker at the COP climate summit, and novels such as The Ministry For The Future and The Mars Trilogy are admired by everyone from Barack Obama to former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. Robinson’s books are not just imaginative but scientifically accurate, and some of their ideas have even inspired new thinking about climate-proofing technology. Kim Stanley Robinson has been talking to the Climate Question team.

(4) STOP PALPATINE! Gizmodo introduces us to a three-book Star Wars tale coming out in 2026 and 2027: “Star Wars’ New Book Trilogy Explores the Politics Behind the Rise of the Rebellion”.

…As you can tell by the cover of the first novel in the series, The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed (writer of the absolutely incredible Alphabet Squadron series) Reign of the Empire will examine the struggle against the Empire through the eyes of some familiar faces. Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera–all with their own differing perspectives on what must be done to stop Palpatine–play key roles in the trilogy, alongside a new cast of original characters as the galaxy begins to reckon with the grip of the Empire. Here’s the official logline for The Mask of Fear:

Before the Rebellion, the Empire reigned.

“In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society!”

With one speech, and thunderous applause, Chancellor Palpatine brought the era of the Republic crashing down. In its place rose the Galactic Empire. Across the galaxy, people rejoiced and celebrated the end to war—and the promises of tomorrow. But that tomorrow was a lie. Instead the galaxy became twisted by the cruelty and fear of the Emperor’s rule.

During that terrifying first year of tyranny, Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera, and Bail Organa face the encroaching darkness. One day, they will be three architects of the Rebel Alliance. But first, each must find purpose and direction in a changing galaxy, while harboring their own secrets, fears, and hopes for a future that may never come, unless they act.

The Mask of Fear will be followed by two more novels: the first written by Resistance Reborn‘s Rebecca Roanhorse, and the second by Fran Wilde…

(5) RHONDI SALSITZ (1949-2024). Prolific sff novelist Rhondi Salsitz, who went into hospice care on June 30, died on July 29 Facebook friends learned today.

She was a 1979 Clarion graduate. Her first published story, “Persephone”, appeared in Damon Knight’s Orbit 21 (1980).

Salsitz was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She told a BookReview.com interviewer:

I started writing short stories when I was in the 3rd grade. I wrote my first science fiction novel when I was in the 5th grade. Needless to say, they weren’t very good but I knew very early on that I wanted to be an author. My mother was a writer …so, I grew up with an inherent love for books and I thought being a writer was probably one of the best things in the world you could be. I spent a lot of my early years trading letters with Walter Farley of Black Stallion fame. He was a wonderful author for a child to communicate with. He always wrote back… He was …very encouraging. …I was very lucky. I was always encouraged.

…I got a lot of rejections for a lot of years before I finally started selling. But I’m stubborn. My dad used to say that if I fell in a river, I’d float upstream. I was determined to get published and I did….

During her career she wrote under many names: Sara Hanover, Emily Drake, Anne Knight, Elizabeth Forrest, Charles Ingrid, Rhondi Greening, Rhondi Vilott Salsitz, Jenna Rhodes, R.A.V. Salsitz, and Rhondi Vilott.

Her eight series included the space opera Sand Wars books and fantasy sequences such as Magickers, Patterns of Chaos, and Dragontales. The 14-book Dragontales series was interactive fiction similar to Choose Your Own Adventures. Salsitz also told the BookReview.com interviewer, “I received hundreds of letters from kids who read those. As a matter of fact, I still run into people who read them when they were younger.”

A 2022 anthology she co-edited with Crystal Sarakas, Shattering The Glass Slipper, boasted a finalist for the 2023 WSFA Small Press Award, R.Z. Held’s story “Ashes of a Cinnamon Fire”.

You can hear Salsitz interviewed by Scott Edelman – another 1979 Clarion grad – at the link for his Eating the Fantastic podcast in 2023.

Rhondi Salsitz at the 1988 ABA. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: July 30, 1966 — Batman (also known as Batman: The Movie) (1966)

So let’s have pure nostalgia for this Scroll which is the Batman film that came out in 1966. Need I say it starred Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin? Of course not. But who were the villain or villians here this time that our cape crusaders dealt with while protecting the citizens of Gotham City and keeping their real identities secret?

I’ll come to that eventually but first let us look at who put the Batman film together. It was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., one of the primary writers for the series who would go one to write the scripts of two best political thrillers ever produced, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. I’d consider The Parallax View to be genre adjacent.

The director was Leslie Herbert Martinson who’s later was responsible for Wonder Woman: Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince? along with episodes of This Immortal, Mission: Impossible, Wonder Woman, Fantasy Island and several other genre series. He produced Rescue from Gilligan’s Island.

Yes, Bob Kane is credited as the creator, but Bill Finger alas goes uncredited.

So most members of the original series cast, with the exception of Julie Newmar as Catwoman are here. She was replaced by Lee Meriwether. I must say that she made a most purrfect Catwoman just as Newmar had.

Those villains are a Rouges Gallery of Gotham City’s criminal masterminds. In addition to Catwoman, we have Cesar Romero as The Joker, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin and Frank Gorshin as The Riddler. I’ll freely admit that Newmar’s Catwoman was by far my favorite of Batman’s foes. She was just the funnest of them, and the one I think the actress liked playing her role most of all the villains.

It premiered in Austin, Texas on this date followed by general release the following weekend.

It cost one point four million dollars and made three point nine million making it a rather nice box office success in those days.

We don’t do Story here even on an almost sixty-year-old films as we got criticized for giving away the plot of a forty-year-old TV episode once. Suffice it to say that if you like liked the series, this is for you; if you’ve not seen the series, it’s still a good piece of entertainment.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 30, 1975 – Cherie Priest, 45.

By Paul Weimer: I started with Priest’s work as many people have done–her Steampunk Clockwork Century novels. Boneshaker came out during a boom cycle for Steampunk fiction, and since I was avidly reading Steampunk at the time (trying to keep up with the trend). I decided to give Boneshaker a try. I loved its alternate American take on a subgenre that for a long while seemed terribly British-centric. With its sequels, Priest proved to me that she could master a subgenre with her characters and sharp writing, and I started picking up novels of interest she’s written ever since.

Cherie Priest in 2009. Photo by Caitlin Kittredge.

Horror and dark fantasy, with mystery and gothic touches, make up her major power chords of books she’s written since, with books like The Toll, or the more recent Cinderwich. Cinderwich shows that, beginning with and since her Clockwork Century novels, she has a really excellent sense and style of making a place come to life. Sure, her characters are fully fleshed and real, and sometimes so badly hurt by events. But it is the locales and places that they inhabit, or are trying to escape from, that really makes her fiction special for me. Grave Reservations, a supernatural mystery that is less Gothic and more quirky, has its Seattle come to life for me, for example.

Her most audacious work, and my favorite, are Maplecroft and Chapelwood. Lizzie Borden in this pair of novels faces off against Cosmic Horrors, with her axe. These two books are exactly for the people excited by that concept and Priest delivers in spades. The really strong use of point of view makes the novels feel inhabited, and alive. (And a really good message about confronting prejudice and hate that make the novels feel endlessly timely). And yes, once again, the settings and landscapes come alive in her writing.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Candorville is about our current alternate timeline.
Saturday Morning Breafast Cereal has a new variation on the trolley problem.
Randall Munroe advances the cause of science!

Chili Tornado Quake https://t.co/3BDa6gj3d9 pic.twitter.com/zZxsEv58Ve
— Randall Munroe (@xkcd) July 30, 2024

(9) HEATHER WOOD’S MUSIC. Thank Goodness It’s Folk devotes an episode of the podcast to “Remembering HEATHER WOOD”, a sff publishing figure who enjoyed even greater musical fame.

James and Sam bring this season of TGIF to a close with a special episode dedicated to the memory of Heather Wood, the inspirational singer and folklorist who sadly passed away this week. Her records with The Young Tradition are benchmarks in unaccompanied harmony singing, nearly sixty years after they formed. We play some of her wonderful solo singing, an absolute belter of a Young Tradition live performance, and some of the music that surrounded them in London in the 1960s where they lived, sang and worked together.

In the second half, Sam is joined by Eliza Carthy to talk about her plans with Martin Carthy to record his latest, and critically important, project “East” – and how you can get involved to help this be born. Sam plays two exclusive, never-before-broadcast live recordings of Martin singing from this project.

(10) MUST HAVE? [Item by Daniel Dern.] Here’s the buy-it link for the book bookbag: “Library Print Shoulder Bag” at TeezAvenue. (They also offer the design as a skirt or a dress.)

(11) HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. You’ve been warned. Variety explains “‘Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shockingly Sweet Eulogy for 20th Century Fox”.

For all the raunchy jokes, club drugs, buckets of blood and meta punchlines, “Deadpool & Wolverine” may be the most sentimental movie of the summer. Hollywood insiders and superhero film fans were stunned to discover that last weekend’s Marvel blockbuster basically amounts to a big, sobbing, “Steel Magnolias”-grade sendoff to 20th Century Fox.

After all, it was at that defunct studio, founded in 1935 and sold by Rupert Murdoch to Disney in 2019, that “Deadpool” first shimmied on-screen in a skintight bondage suit and pistols. It’s also where two decades’ worth of Marvel films were made, most notably the “X-Men” series, which catapulted Hugh Jackman to stardom. These characters first appeared in Marvel Comics but were licensed to Fox, leaving them operating outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the moniker for Disney’s film and TV Marvel adaptations). The merger with Disney changed all that….

(12) AND IF YOU WANT SPOILERS. The New York Times heads this article: “Spoiler Alert: Here’s a Guide to the Cameos in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’”. However, it’s paywalled, so it may be hard to give into the temptation to peek at the list.

(13) BAD TRIP. “Astronaut traveling to Titan loses his grip on reality in 1st ‘Slingshot’ trailer” – Space.com has a synopsis:

Laurence Fishburne…shares the screen with the Academy Award-winning Casey Affleck (“Manchester By the Sea”) and Tomer Capone (“The Boys”) in Bleecker Street’s upcoming outer space thriller, “Slingshot,”…The basic plot revolves around a harrowing 1.5-billion-mile trek to Saturn’s moon Titan and one astronaut’s inability to distinguish nightmares from real-life due to the side effects of a drug meant to induce hibernation sleep for the long haul….

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

Pixel Scroll 7/29/24 No One Scrolls Here These Days, It’s Too Pixeled

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TOLKIEN’S ANSWERS. “’Human stories are always about one thing – death’: Why the shadow of death and WW1 hang over The Lord of the Rings” – at BBC. Includes video of the referenced interview.

In a 1968 interview, the BBC spoke to author JRR Tolkien about his experiences during World War One, how they had a profound effect and influenced his epic fantasy novel, Lord of the Rings.

“Stories – frankly, human stories are always about one thing – death. The inevitability of death,” The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien told a BBC documentary in 1968, as he tried to explain what his fantasy magnum opus was really about.

The novel, the first volume of which was published 70 years ago this week, has enthralled readers ever since it hit the shelves in 1954. The Lord of the Rings, with its intricate world-building and detailed histories of lands populated with elves, hobbits and wizards, threatened by the malevolent Sauron, had, by the time of the interview, already become a bestseller and a cornerstone of the fantasy genre.

To better explain what he meant by the story being about death, Tolkien reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet, which contained a newspaper clipping. He then read aloud from that article, which quoted from Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death, her moving 1964 account of her mother’s desire to cling to life during her dying days….

(2) TOR/SCALZI PARTNERSHIP EXTENDED. With six books still owed on his previous 13-book deal, Tor has signed John Scalzi up for yet another ten books: “Tor Publishing Group and Tor UK Announce Major Multi-Book Deal for Bestselling and Award-Winning Author John Scalzi” at Reactor.

…This new deal marks another long-term commitment by Tor Publishing Group and Tor UK to the works of John Scalzi, with the first book of this new contract tentatively scheduled for 2029.

John Scalzi said of the deal, “It’s rare in publishing to get anything close to continuity—authors go from one publishing house to the next. So I’m especially proud that this contract not only extends my two-decade association with Tor Books, but gives us both an opportunity to build on what’s come before, and make what comes next even better. We have so much planned in the years ahead. I can’t wait for you all to read it.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden commented, “It’s fantastic to know that we’ll be in the John Scalzi business for even more years to come. He’s a remarkable writer and I can’t wait to see what he does next.”…

(3) TAFF WINNER’S ITINERARY. Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund administrator Sandra Bond today issued Taffluorescence 5, containing news of 2024 delegate Sarah Gulde’s movements and other hot news from TAFF. Gulde’s visit to the UK will take her to:

22-26 July: London… 26-29 July: Blackpool (Star Trek con)… 29 July-8 August: Inverurie… 8- 13 August: Glasgow… 13-16 August: Elgin… 16-20 August: Inverness… 20-23 August: Newcastle… 27-30 August: Stoke… 30 August-3 September: Liverpool… 3-10 September: Wrexham… 10-13 September: Neath… 13-16 September: Broadway (Give my regards… oh, that Broadway…) 16 September-11 October: London, Bath, Cornwall, Stratford.

Do not hesitate to give generously when the TAFF hat is passed.

(4) SHADOWY ENDING. The LA Times takes readers “Inside SDCC 2024 with ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ cast”. (Behind a paywall.)

…FX is going all out for “Shadows” at Comic-Con this year for their “farewell tour.” The acclaimed mockumentary comedy series — which earned eight Emmy nominations earlier this month — has announced that its upcoming sixth season will be its last. The Bayfront’s exterior is draped in a gigantic “Shadows” promotional poster, and just below the hotel is an activation area that features one designed to look like the show’s vampire mansion.

Before their panel presentation, the cast and creatives head to an area where they are greeted by fans in full cosplay despite the sweltering heat. The “Shadows” team is then shuttled to the convention center, where it listens in backstage as a packed Hall H receives a sneak peek at the Season 6 premiere. (Berry and Newacheck share a thumbs up when they hear the audience erupt in laughter after a Laszlo moment.) And after their Hall H presentation, they and the rest of their group will be chatting up fans — some in cosplay, some with “Shadows”-themed paraphernalia, all with enthusiasm — as they sign autographs and pose for selfies. As for Season 6, Simms says, “It’s exactly what we wanted to do.”

“We wanted to make a last season that was not sentimental or trying to tie up every loose end,” he says. “Just make [a season] that is super funny and at the end has a good ending, which we’re not going to tell you.”

(5) R-R-R-R MATEY! Deadpool & Wolverine made a lot of money this weekend, its $205 million domestic box office ranking as the eighth biggest opening of all time among any film and by far the biggest launch for an R-rated film, not adjusted for inflation. The first Deadpool was the previous record-holder at $133.7 million. “Box Office: ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Sets Record With $205 Million Debut” at Variety.

…Disney’s superhero sequel has collected $205 million in its opening weekend, ranking as the eighth-best debut of all time ahead of 2018’s “Black Panther” ($202 million) and behind 2015’s “Jurassic World” ($208 million) and 2012’s “The Avengers” ($207 million). Only nine films in Hollywood history have crossed the $200 million milestone in their opening weekends. Ticket sales also easily surpassed 2016’s “Deadpool” ($132 million) to set the record for the biggest R-rated opening weekend ever. The 2018 sequel, “Deadpool 2,” now stands as the third-biggest R-rated debut with $125 million. Among the newest installment’s many benchmarks, “Deadpool & Wolverine” landed by far the biggest start of the year, overtaking Disney’s Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” ($155 million debut).

Internationally, “Deadpool & Wolverine” captured $233.3 million for a staggering global tally of $438 million. After three days of release, the film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, is already the sixth-highest grossing of 2024. Disney spent about $200 million to produce and roughly another $100 million to promote the movie.

(6) DUNE DESIGN. Fonts In Use investigates “The Mystery of the Dune Font” in this 2023 article.

In the six decades since the publication of the original Dune novel in 1965, the science fiction franchise has gone through many different typographic identities. Notable examples include the use of Giorgio for the British paperbacks by NEL (c. 1968) and Albertus for David Lynch’s movie adaptation (1984). But another typeface has even stronger ties to Dune and its author. It appeared on the covers of dozens of books, including the classic Dune trilogy and its sequels, and also on other titles by – or about – Frank Herbert, from various imprints. Strangely enough, the name of this typeface is barely known even among die-hard fans….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 29, 1941 – David Warner. (Died 2022.) Let’s consider David Warner. Where shall we start? I say with his role in Time Bandits where Warner plays Evil Genius, a malevolent being capable of twisting and warping reality. He needs the map to be able to escape the Fortress of Darkness, where he’s been imprisoned. Evil is also different because He understands technology, and in his clawed hands “The world will be different. Because I have understanding.” What’s that he has an understanding of? Digital watches. “And soon I shall have an understanding of cassette recorders and car telephones.” A truly excellent role for him.

Next up in my estimation would be his performance as John Leslie Stevenson and Jack the Ripper in Nicholas Mayer’s exemplary Time after Time which has Malcolm McDowell as H. G. Wells.

As Warner as Jack offhandedly says to Wells, “Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Here, I’m an amateur.” Warner does a bang on the ear of making Jack revel in the violent nature of the present such as the ease in which one can purchase firearms and how killing has become much more efficient because of them.

Jack says, “We don’t belong here? On the contrary, Herbert. I belong here completely and utterly. I’m home.”

So what next? That’d have to be Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the chancellor of the Klingon High Council who hopes to forge a peace between his people and the Federation.

Memory Alpha notes “Jack Palance was Nick Meyer’s original choice for the role. (Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 141) However, Palance proved to be extremely costly to hire as well as slightly hesitant to accept the part.” They need a performer who fitted the script’s description of Gorkon as “savagely tall” and Warner was six feet, two inches tall.

David Warner recognized that the role was not a particularly large one, saying, “I just sat there for one scene and then got killed! Which is fine – I don’t have a problem with that. It’s exposition, setting it all up.” (From Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 47) . He did a lot with what little time had do you agree?

Those are the three performances that I think he’s most memorable in. Did he have other roles which I should note?

He voiced in the Batman: The Animated Series a character named Ra’s al Ghul, a very long live criminal mastermind. He voices him to utter perfection as one who both respects and disdains Batman.

That he’s a man of many roles is beyond dispute as he’s played Doctor Von Frankenstein and The Creature, Reinhard Heydrich who I can only describe as the souless monster that was responsible for the Holocaust; Bob Cratchit, a Professor Summerlee, Lord Mountbatten, The Doctor, Houdini and Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

I’m sure that I missed some interesting performances he did, so feel free to tell me that I overlooked them as you always do.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Jumpstart jumped to the wrong conclusion (started last week).
Lola meets a different family of elves.
Thatababy finds a working prop.
The Argyle Sweater is horrifying once you figure it out.
Caption It is looking for a good Batman caption.

(9) REYNOLDS RAP. The Hollywood Reporter gives reasons for ranking these as the “13 Best Ryan Reynolds Movies”. For example, you probably already forgot this one:

11. Detective Pikachu (2019)

The first thing you think of when you consider that famous yellow cutie that the Pokémon brand was built from probably isn’t Ryan Reynolds. His initial casting as Pikachu, for which he lent his voice and face via motion capture, was initially met with understandable confusion and a share of derision. But somehow, against all odds, it works. A gumshoe Pikachu with missing memories, teaming up with a failed Pokémon trainer, Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), and a cub reporter, Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton), to uncover a city-wide conspiracy is the kind of clever, special effects heavy take on the neo-noir that makes the film appealing for more than just Pokémon fans.

I couldn’t count the names of Pokémon characters I know on one hand, and I didn’t go into this movie as a fan. Yet, I found Rob Letterman’s film to be an engaging fantasy-mystery, and Reynolds’ performance to be a breezy and grounding element in a film entirely set in a lore-heavy fictional reality. As far as video game adaptations go, Detective Pikachu is one of the best, and it doesn’t get overly caught up in minutiae, instead allowing the cast and audience to simply focus on delivering a good time within the framework of a silly, but no less endearing, concept. And as for a bit of film trivia, before Reynolds accepted the role, Hugh Jackman was on WB’s shortlist to voice Pikachu — but he wasn’t quite ready to don the yellow just yet.

(10) KEEP ON DREAMING. Popverse is on hand when “Doctor Who and Star Trek showrunners announce that the two franchises are crossing over… for a mobile game”.

… During San Diego Comic-Con 2024 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunner Alex Kurtzman and Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies came together for a joint event titled Intergalactic Friendship Panel: Star Trek X Doctor Who. This raised some eyebrows, and the anticipation only grew after Saturday’s Star Trek panel. During the panel, Kurtzman was asked about a Doctor Who crossover, and his answer pointed to the crossover panel. “I think you should come to the panel later today and ask the same question,” Kurtzman teased.

Now, we know what that tease was referring to – a crossover between the Doctor Who: Lost in Time and Star Trek Lower Decks: The Badges Directive mobile games. It’s perhaps not the crossover fans were hoping for – we were kind of crossing out fingers for a live-action meetup, but at least one of the panelists has hope that that may happen someday. …

(11) BACK TO THE SILO. Shelf Awareness picked up this Silo news at Comic-Con.

During San Diego Comic-Con, Apple TV+ announced that the second season of the hit series Silo, which is based on Hugh Howey’s sci-fi stories–including the novellas Wool, Shift, and Dust–will premiere November 15 with the first episode, followed by one new episode every Friday through January 17, 2025.

Steve Zahn (The White Lotus, Treme) is joining the season 2 cast..

(12) THE CTHULHU IN THE HAT? H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon for Beginning Readers by R.J. Ivankovic is a droll, Seuss-inspired parody. (No, I don’t know if the Seuss corporate lawyers have heard of it yet.)

So a warning to all,
for what it is worth:
when the monsters arise
they will conquer the earth.

The famous H.P. Lovecraft story Dagon is gracefully retold in anapestic tetrameter and illustrated in a darkly whimsical style by genius poet-artist R.J. Ivankovic.

A sailor escapes in a lifeboat after his ship is attacked by a German raider during World War I. He soon finds himself in more bizarre peril, stranded in a dark, stinking mire on the edge of a mammoth pit. Venturing into the pit, he discovers a monolith covered in weird hieroglyphics and something stranger still that crawls from the slime a creature that may be the vanguard of a vast and monstrous invading army from the depths of the sea.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. It’s ultimately an ad, however, it is cute: “Sand Whiskers and Starlight: The Feline Chronicles of Dune”.

Join us on a pawsome journey as we unveil our beloved feline friends who aren’t just curled up in a cozy corner; they’re out there, backpacking across continents, camping under the stars, floating in cosmic space, time-traveling to study with art masters, seeking enlightenment on pilgrimages, commanding the seven seas and skies, and even hustling in the Big Apple!

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Sandra Bond, Bill, Jim Janney, 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 Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 7/28/24 If You Come To A Scroll In The Road, Click On It

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CONFICTION FINAL FAREWELL PARTY. The 1990 Worldcon will host a bash at Glasgow 2024.

(2) TIANWEN RESURFACES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] From the Red Star News on July 26: 面向全球发出邀请：首届“天问”华语科幻文学大赛在蓉举办新闻发布会. Google Translate: “Invitation to the world: The first ‘Tianwen’ Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition held a press conference in Chengdu”. [Via SF Lightyear.]

Relevant bit via Google Translate, my emphasis:

The first “Tianwen” Chinese Science Fiction Literature Competition is chaired by Wang Meng, a famous contemporary Chinese writer, scholar, former Minister of Culture, and winner of the national honorary title of “People’s Artist”. At the same time, the competition has established a review committee with Alai, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, as chairman, Su Tong, member of the presidium of the China Writers Association, Liu Cixin, director of the Science Fiction Literature Committee of the China Writers Association, and relevant members of the World Science Fiction Association Brand Protection Committee as vice chairmen, who are fully responsible for the selection of entries.

I don’t know whether “relevant members” (plural) could just as easily be “relevant member” (singular), given Chinese (and Japanese) don’t generally make distinction.

(3) CAN’T PHONE HOME. “A Smartphone Can’t Help You Now: How Horror Movies Solve Their Cell Problem” in the New York Times. (Paywalled, unfortuntately.)

A cellphone lies in a rustic Airbnb, smashed by an intruder. Then, when another is procured, a faulty connection interrupts a call to 911.

A navigation map on a smartphone glitches as a driver plunges deep into the woods.

Criminals on a kidnapping job are ordered to surrender their phones “to be completely certain that you can’t be tracked.”

An exasperated partyer in rural Ontario wonders aloud to a member in his group, “How long is it going to take for you to realize there’s no reception out here?”

These are some of the ways that recent horror movies have gotten around what is at this point an age-old problem: the cellphone. In working order, they can render predicaments more solvable and certain situations easier to escape — potentially. Before the late ’90s, there was little need to make such a show of connectivity failure. Lines would go down or get cut, sure, but isolation in the age before mass cellphone usage was easier to come by and therefore easier to believe onscreen. Back then, the tropes didn’t have to trope so hard.

Then came the cell, and movies like “House on Haunted Hill” (1999) and “Jeepers Creepers” (2001) featured characters realizing they were holding useless plastic flip-bricks as their situations grew hairy. (In the former, the possessed house kills the signal before any of its inhabitants; in the latter, young adult siblings bicker over a low battery notification after witnessing what turns out to be a winged demon.) With smartphones, there was even more to neutralize, like GPS maps and internet searches. Movies taking pains to explain away cellphones were so prevalent that by 2009, I could collect more than 40 clips for a supercut exploring this development in the previous decade or so….

At least you can watch the supercut free on YouTube:

(4) STOLEN VALOR – AND MONEY. Nature says, “Hijacked journals are still a threat — here’s what publishers can do about them”.

Late last year, Liverpool University Press (LUP), a UK-based publisher, received a concerning e-mail. A prospective author had contacted the editors asking how much it would cost to publish an article in one of its journals, the International Development Planning Review (IDPR).

This raised suspicions among the editors, because the IDPR doesn’t charge any publication fees. The message also contained a link to the IDPR’s website — but the URL was incorrect. When the editors clicked it, they discovered a counterfeit website with the journal’s branding and an e-mail address that they’d never seen before. The journal had been hijacked.

Hijacked journals are a form of cybercrime in which a malicious third party creates a cloned website to impersonate a legitimate publication. The forgery replicates the original journal’s important details, from its title to its archive and international standard serial number, a code that identifies the publication. The purpose of a hijacking is to generate money quickly by charging illegitimate article-processing fees to unsuspecting researchers. Although the hijackers often publish papers that have been submitted to the fraudulent site, these works are not peer-reviewed nor considered legitimate.

A blogpost in April presented the challenges that LUP faced as a result of the hijacking, including the burden placed on its small editorial team. The intention, according to Clare Hooper, director of journals publishing at LUP, is to alert researchers to the “growing problem of copycat journal websites”….

(5) WRITER BEWARE. Victoria Strauss offers advice about “Evaluating Publishing Contracts: Six Ways You May Be Sabotaging Yourself” at Writer Beware. The intro and first of six bullet points are excerpted below:

These issues are as relevant now as they were years ago, if not more so. I hear all the time from writers who’ve been offered seriously problematic contracts and are using various rationalizations to convince themselves (sometimes at the publisher’s urging) that bad language or bad terms are not actually so bad, or are unlikely ever to apply. For example, I recently evaluated a contract with multiple questionable terms, including net profit royalties and a life-of-copyright grant without adequate provision for termination and rights reversion; the writer shared my concerns with the publisher, which responded with a long explanation for why none of it was actually a problem. The writer chose to sign the contract.

Here are my suggestions for changing some potentially damaging ways of thinking.

Don’t assume that every single word of your contract won’t apply to you at some point. You may think “Oh, that will never happen” (for instance, the publisher’s right to refuse to publish your manuscript if it thinks that changes in the market may reduce your sales, or its right to terminate the contract if it believes you’ve violated a non-disparagement clause). Or the publisher may tell you “We never actually do that” or, more cagily, “We’ve never actually done that” (for example, edit at will without consulting you, or impose the termination fee that’s the price of getting out of the contract early). But if your contract says it can happen, it may well happen…and if it does happen, can you live with it? That’s the question you need to ask yourself when evaluating a contract….

(6) FREE READ. To encourage subscriptions, Sunday Morning Transport has posted “Artists and Fools”.

For July’s fourth, free, story, Paolo Bacigalupi brings us a tale from the world of his new fantasy novel, Navola. We hope you enjoy meeting Pico the artist as much as we have!

(7) ROBERT BLOCH OFFICIAL WEBSITE UPDATE. Two essay contributions from Bloch historian/bibliographer, Randall D. Larson, have been added to the Robert Bloch Official Website’s “By Others” page.

The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert Bloch – Randall D. Larson details Bloch’s body of work involving Lovecraft’s mythos
On “The Feast in the Abbey” – Randall D. Larson examines Bloch’s story and the influence of Lovecraft

(8) GENRE LODGINGS. This 2022 article from Travel & Leisure lets you visit “9 Magical ‘Harry Potter’-themed Airbnbs Around the World” – photos at the link. One of them is:

The Common Room: British Columbia, Canada

Are you a full-fledged Gryffindor? Come stay in The Common Room, modeled after the Gryffindor common room at Hogwarts. The home comes with all the amenities one would need for an ideal getaway, including a kitchen, lofted bed, and Wi-Fi, but it also has the added perk of looking just like the movie set, with framed photos of Snape, a magic broom, and of course, plenty of Harry Potter DVDs for a night in. Book it now starting at $148/night.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1944 – The Canterville Ghost.

Eighty years ago, The Canterville Ghost premiered. It was somewhat loosely on the 1887 short story by Oscar Wilde of the same name as published in two parts in The Court and Society Review, a British literary magazine only published between 1885 and 1888. That wasn’t unusual as a lot of those literary and not so literary magazines failed after a few months, and not an insignificant number lasted just a single issue.

I should note before we go any further that I stopped counting when I found at least nine films had been made of this tale, and at least two series. I’ll only mention one of these, a film in the Nineties with a certain naturally-bald Starship Captain, yes Patrick Stewart, given long flowing hair and a beard as the ghost. So how could I resist showing you him in that role?

The first version is a film very much of its time. The plot had Charles Laughton as a ghost doomed to haunt an English castle, and Robert Young as his distant American relative called upon to perform an act of bravery to redeem him. No one would get hurt in the story, no surprise at all.

Yes, there is redhead here as well in the winsome form of the six-year-old Margaret O’Brien who was born Angela Maxine O’Brien. O’Brien is of half-Irish and half-Spanish ancestry. She was one of the most popular child stars in cinema history and would be honored with a Juvenile Academy Award as an outstanding child actress the year this film came out.

I was looking for a particularly cute photo of her with Simon and I think that I indeed found in it in this one of her sitting on the stairs with him off to the right also sitting. What do you think? Am I right?

Here she plays the Lady Jessica de Canterville, Robert Young is Cuffy Williams and Charles Laughton is the ghostly Sir Simon de Canterville.

The motion picture was shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios with outdoor shots filming done at Busch Gardens in Pasadena, California. Busch Gardens was the almost forty acres of gardens owned by Adolphus Busch. The Hollywood film industry would use the gardens in many films shot in the Thirties onward such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein and Gone With the Wind.

It was directed by Jules Dassin with additional directing by Norman Z. McLeod who went uncredited, The only film I know I’ve seen by Dassin is Night and the City, a stellar British noir work. Now the screenplay was by Edwin Blum who went on to script Stalag 17, an entirely grimmer affair. It was produced by Arthur Fields, just one of three films that he did.

No idea how it did as I can find no box office or production costs for it.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Breaking Cat News recommends reading to beat the heat.
Broom Hilda finds a reason to worry about cons.
Eek! encounters a knight who never surrenders. (Not named “The Knight Who Says ‘Eek!’” – a missed opportunity.)
Free Range illustrates how some parenting techniques go way back.
Red and Rover achieves a childhood dream – oops!
The Flying McCoys has a monster complaint.
The Argyle Sweater remembers these dud video games.
The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee hates snacks with automatic updates.

(11) DEADPOOL DIES? No sooner does his movie make a mint than Marvel Comics announces Deadpool’s daughter, Ellie, will take over as Deadpool following Wade’s death this October in Deadpool #7!

Deadpool is dead—long live Deadpool! It was previously revealed that Wade Wilson will meet his end at the hands of new super villain Death Grip this October in DEADPOOL #6. Following this shocking turn of events, his daughter, Ellie Camacho, will step up as the all-new Deadpool starting in November’s DEADPOOL #7! Just revealed at the Diamond Retailer Lunch at San Diego Comic-Con, Ellie’s new role is the latest twist in what’s been writer Cody Ziglar’s roller coaster of a run. To welcome the new Merc with a Mouth, Ziglar will be joined by guest artist Andrea Di Vito and co-writer Alexis Quasarano in her Marvel Comics debut.

Wade has fallen, and his daughter Ellie has taken up the mantle! Taskmaster continues her mercenary training, but what she really wants is vengeance. And to get that, she’ll need Princess’ help. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

DEADPOOL #7

Written by CODY ZIGLAR & ALEXIS QUASARANO. Art by ANDREA DI VITO.

Cover by TAURIN CLARKE

Variant Cover by MARK BAGLEY

(12) SPOILER, MAYBE? About a Deadpool & Wolverine cameo. “Blake Lively Recalls Meeting Ryan Reynolds on Set of ‘Green Lantern’”. No excerpt. Because spoiler, maybe.

(13) IT IS HIS DOOM. The Hollywood Reporter picks up more news at San Diego Comic-Com: “Robert Downey Jr. Back as Doctor Doom for Two ‘Avengers’ Movies”.

Robert Downey Jr. is set to return to the film franchise as classic Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom for the newly titled Avengers: Doomsday, due out in May 2026, and Avengers: Secret Wars, bowing in May 2027. Kevin Feige also officially confirmed the Russo bros. will direct these next two Avengers films.

Downey became one of the biggest movie stars in the world after launching the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man. His work helped propel the MCU to become the highest grossing film franchise of all time — and he was handsomely rewarded, earning $50 million paydays in the process. Downey retired from the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, in which his character died saving the universe. It’s been a challenge for Marvel to find a protagonist to replace the large hole left by Downey, giving Saturday’s announcement all the more meaning.

“New mask, same task,” Downey told the audience from the stage.

Downey was revealed in an almost religious ceremony as about two dozen olive-robed men with metal, Doctor Doom-like masks walked on stage, joining Feige and the Russo Bros. “If we’re going to bring Victor Von Doom to the screen — he is one of the more complex characters in all of comics … this is potentially one of the more entertaining characters in all of fiction,” said Joe Russo. “If we’re going to do this … then we are going to need the greatest actor in the world.”…

(14) PEACEMAKER RELOADED. “’Wynonna Earp Vengeance’ Reunion Movie Trailer, Streaming Soon on Tubi” – TVLine supplies the introduction:

A frightful phone call and a deadly threat lures Peacemaker’s wielder back to Purgatory in the full trailer for Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, the 90-minute reunion special coming “soon” to Tubi.

(15) HMS SURPRISE. While in town for Comic-Con, Naomi Novik visited the Maritime Museum of San Diego.

I have finally made it on to the HMS Surprise! ????
This replica of a Royal Navy tallship was used in Master & Commander, the film adaptation of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series – one of the sparks behind Temeraire. ????Now at the @sdmaritime pic.twitter.com/lEKLR3fGBP
— Naomi Novik (@naominovik) July 27, 2024

(16) CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS, MINIONUS. “Minions get into the Olympic spirit during Opening Ceremony” from NBC Sports. The video can only be viewed on YouTube – bastards!

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

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Tag Archives: Deadpool

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YUME KITASEI

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Pixel Scroll 7/28/24 If You Come To A Scroll In The Road, Click On It