Pixel Scroll 11/8/20 I Know This Defies The Law Of Pixel Scrolling, But I Never Studied Law

(1) GETTING PAID. Joby Dorr advises his fellow artists, “You Should Probably Be Charging More For Your Art”.

The truth is that a huge population of artists are severely undercharging for their work

 Even as the discussion surrounding wealth inequality and fair pay reaches a cultural tipping point, a huge number of independent artists are allowing their services to be hired out at starvation wages. 

 At some point in your journey, every independent artist should write out the following simple equation:

What goes into the equation is your net income over a year, divided by the number of hours spent on producing and marketing your art.

What should come out of the other side of this equation is a per hour rate greater than minimum wage. 

If you’ve never written out this equation for yourself, or you have and your per hour rate is below minimum wage, then please keep reading on. …

(2) CLASSIC SERIES REVIVED. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] A sword and sorcery magazine called Tales from the Magician’s Skull has announced that they will be publishing new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories authorized by the estate of Fritz Leiber: I’m not sure how I feel about this, considering I’m a big fan of the originals. “All-New Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Stories to be  Published in Tales From The Magician’s Skull”.

… The first story in this new series will appear in issue #6 of Tales From The Magician’s Skull. Author Nathan Long has written a new short story starring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. This entertaining tale finds the twain engaged in somewhat honest employment in the theatre trade, in order to pursue somewhat dishonest aims involving the sorcerer’s guild, with a somewhat incomplete plan that only Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser could devise.

(3) QUANTUM UNLEAPED. Australian Geoff Allshorn “ponder[s] the nature of ‘queer science fictions’ and our place as creators, audiences, and participants” in “From Queer to Eternity”.

… My background in science fiction demonstrates my own intersections of the personal with the political. In 1999, as the founder of a Melbourne-based LGBTI science fiction club called Spaced Out, I authored the club’s draft charter. Its goals included a recognition of diversity and a challenge to our science fictional friends and peers:

“We recognise that science fiction is a fun and popular medium and we no longer wish to be excluded from its fiction, art, cyberworlds or other creative forms…” Spaced Out, 1999.

I recall the energy and enthusiasm of the club’s early days: we published a number of newsletters and two fanzines, and our website won an Australian science fiction ‘Ditmar’ award. A professional author and other local luminaries became guests at our meetings while we, in turn, hosted panels at a Worldcon (Aussiecon 3). Our very existence, as both geeks and queers, identified us as a minority grouping within both communities; it was fun to confront double prejudice and it was interesting to see who supported us in either context.

…The irony of how life can come full-circle was emphasised to me in 2012, when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned a six-part series entitled, Outland, telling the story of an imaginary ‘gay science fiction fan club’ that was curiously located within the Australian city which really did have such a club. The series was advertised as being an exploration of inclusion but it excluded its real-life counterparts: its generic disclaimer dissociated its fictional characters from any real-life role models, and its fictional ‘otherness’ was further emphasised by its predominantly white male characters displaying very little real diversity. To me, its stories lacked the excitement of our real-life exploits in Spaced Out, where we had taken ‘one small step’ into groundbreaking territory and attempted to ‘boldly go where no fan had gone before’. Ultimately, Outland inverted media science fiction subtext: whereas LGBTQIA+ SF fans had traditionally sought to interpret ‘otherness’ as metaphoric queerness; we could now interpret our queerness as comprising metaphoric ‘otherness’.

(4) RIBBON BLOCK. “Medal by medal, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘stolen valor’ is laid bare” at The Underground Bunker.

…A 20-year military veteran, PickAnotherID was frustrated not only by Hubbard’s “stolen valor,” but also the incomplete and incorrect criticisms of the medals and ribbons that the Church of Scientology claimed were earned by the Scientology founder.

In the first part, Pick went over the Navy marksmanship awards, which have caused a lot of confusion over the years. And now, he’s on to the medals and ribbons that Scientology claimed for Hubbard when it delivered a photo of them to New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright for his 2011 feature story, “The Apostate.”

Bronzen Kruis
(Bronze Cross – Netherlands)

The Bronze Cross of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was instituted on 11 June 1940 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands while residing in London during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The Bronze Cross is the third highest military decoration still being awarded by the Netherlands for bravery.

The medal itself is not shown in the picture provided by Scientology. It only includes the ribbon at position ‘R4’ of the ribbon block.

The Bronze Cross is a special award for military who behaved courageously or meritoriously in facing the enemy in service for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It may also be awarded to civilians or foreign military who acted in special interest for the safety of the Netherlands. The cross, which corresponds to the British D.S.C., M.C., D.S.M., and M.M., can be given for a single outstanding act, as well as for bravery and enterprise in action over a period of time. It is received after a Royal Decree that is controlled by the Commissie Dapperheidonderscheidingen van het Ministerie van Defensie (Special Committee of the Ministry of Defence) which advises the Minister of Defence and the Dutch Queen. A number of American, Canadian, British and Polish ground and air military personnel have been awarded the Bronzen Kruis for service during WWII. The majority of those awarded to Americans were for actions during the failed Operation Market-Garden, 17-25 September 1944. Several members of the 508 Parachute Infantry Regiment involved in this operation received the Bronzen Kruis. A few were also awarded to Americans, as well as other nationalities, for actions during the the later liberation of the Netherlands.

Hubbard never participated in Market-Garden, or the liberation of the Netherlands. The Commissie Dapperheidonderscheidingen van het Ministerie van Defensie has not included his name among those who have received this award.

Verdict: Stolen Valor

(5) SMALL BUT MIGHTY. Plagiarism Today sorts out conflicting claims in “Hero Forge and the Controversy Over Miniature Copyright”.

…One site, Sky Castle Studios’ Hero Forge, allows users to design and perfect their own custom heroes (using pre-made assets provided by Hero Forge) and then either have Hero Forge send them a physical version of it or, if they prefer, they can download a digital version for printing on their own 3D printer.

However, with this new service came a new controversy: Copyright

The Hero Forge terms of service led many to believe that the site was laying claim to any and all creativity the user brought to the site. However, it’s something of a tempest in a teapot as Hero Forge’s terms of service really only impact a small subset of users and those would-be users likely came to the site with questionable intentions to start with.

(6) YOU DROOGS ARE WARNED. “‘Don’t read Clockwork Orange – it’s a foul farrago,’ wrote Burgess”The Guardian previews a book of Anthony Burgess’ poetry, some appearing in print for the first time.

Previously unpublished love poems written by Anthony Burgess to each of his two wives have been discovered, along with a verse in which he dismissed A Clockwork Orange, the savage satire for which he is best known, as “a foul farrago”, urging people to read Shakespeare and Shelley instead.

They are among dozens of unknown poems that have been found, the majority in his vast archive held by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, an educational charity in Manchester, where the writer was born in 1917.

One poem was found tucked into a book in Burgess’s library, others were on scraps of paper or card, including cigar-boxes and matchbooks. The discoveries will be included in a 450-page book to be published in December, entitled Anthony Burgess: Collected Poems, which brings together around 350 verses, of which a fifth are unpublished.

… Biswell said: “Most of his other books are non-violent and not about teenage boys. But, thanks to the popularity of the film, people were always asking him about A Clockwork Orange.” The previously unpublished poetry includes A Sonnet for the Emery Collegiate Institute, a verse letter urging students not to read that novel: “Advice: don’t read/ A Clockwork Orange – it’s a foul farrago/ Of made-up words that bite and bash and bleed./ I’ve written better books… So have other men, indeed./ Read Hamlet, Shelley, Keats, Doctor Zhivago.”

(7) A TIMELORD IN RETIREMENT. In The Guardian: “Tom Baker: ‘Being loved pleases me very much indeed'”. Registration required to read full interview.

“I miss Waitrose terribly,” Tom Baker says in those unmistakable tones. “And Boots, and the places I used to go without realising how dependent I was on them.”

The year of coronavirus is treating the veteran actor well on the whole, he explains, “because I live in the country and have a garden and some woodland and a cat and a wife”. But there is a melancholy and a reminder of his own mortality when he does venture out. “When my wife and I go for a spin, I drive to Tenterden [in Kent] and – we don’t sob exactly – but it gets solemn as we catch a glimpse of the hardware store, and Boots, and Waitrose, and then we turn round and come home again. Then I go down to the paradise of my woods and think: ‘Well, eventually it will pass.’ Another voice, of course, says: ‘Yes, but by then you’ll be gone.’”

(8) TREBEK DIES. Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has died at the age of 80 reports CNN:

The cause of death was not immediately announced. Trebek revealed in March 2019 he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, triggering an outpouring of support and well wishes at the time.

While Trebek did make a few minor genre acting appearances (like, delivering one line as a Man in Black on an X-Files episode), he was far more profoundly connected to sff through the many fans who competed on his game show over the years. For example, here is a link to Part I of Steven H Silver’s “A Fan in Jeopardy! from File 770 #134 (March 2000).

(9) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • 1975 – Forty-five years ago this weekend, the pilot film for the Wonder Woman series (The New Adventures of Wonder Woman after the first season) aired to quite splendid ratings.. It was called The New Original Wonder Woman and starred Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince, Lyle Waggoner as in the roles of Steve Trevor Sr. & Steve Trevor Jr., and Debra Winger as Drusilla/Wonder Girl. It was the second Wonder Woman film as Cathy Lee Crosby had been her in one a year earlier that did poorly in the ratings.   This series would last for three seasons with the first being on ABC and the last two on CBS. In all, sixty episodes including the film were produced. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born November 8, 1847 – Bram Stoker.  Famous for Dracula, which however accurately or inaccurately based on legend has itself become legendary.  Four other novels, forty shorter stories.  Outside our field, assistant to Sir Henry Irving; theater manager.  (Died 1912) [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1898 Katharine Mary Briggs. British folklorist and author who wrote A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures , and the four-volume Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, and the Kate Crackernuts novel. Her The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors is fascinating read. (Died 1980.) (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1914 Norman Lloyd, 106. Yes, he’s really that old. His best remembered genre role was as Dr. Isaac Mentnor on the Seven Days series. He’s been on Star Trek: The Next GenerationGet Smart! in the form of the Nude Bomb filmand The Twilight Zone, and in a fair of horror films from The Dark Secret of Harvest Home to The Scare. (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1922 – Sol Dember.  A score of covers.  Here is the Mar 58 Galaxy.  Here is the Jul 61 If.  Here is the Aug 63 Worlds of Tomorrow.  Here is the Nov 68 Galaxy.  (Died 2011) [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1932 Ben Bova, 88. He’s the author of more than one hundred twenty fiction and nonfiction books. He won six Hugo Awards as editor of Analog, along with once being editorial director at Omni. Hell, he even had the thankless job of SFWA President. (Just kidding. I think.) I couldn’t hope to summarize his literary history so I’ll single out his Grand Tour series that though it’s uneven as overall it’s splendid hard sf, as well as his Best of Bova short story collections put out recently in three volumes on Baen. What’s your favorite works by him?  (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1936 – Edward Gibson, Ph.D., 84.  Science pilot of Skylab 4.  Two novels.  Edited The Great Adventure, nonfiction by astronauts, cosmonauts.  Humboldt Foundation prize.  Two honorary doctorates.  U.S. Astronauts Hall of Fame.  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1952 Alfre Woodard, 68. I remember her best from Star Trek: First Contact where she was Lily Sloane, Zefram Cochrane’s assistant. She was also Grace Cooley in Scrooged, and polishing her SJW creds, she once voiced Maisie the Cat in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to School. And yes, I know she’s portrayed a character in Marvel Universe. I just like the obscure roles. (CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1954 – Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, 66.  Author, jazz composer.  Three novels for us; five others, nine shorter stories, five screenplays, a dozen songs (with Jim Tomlinson).  Holtby, Whitbread, Booker Prizes.  Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters.  Nobel Prize in Literature.  Order of the Rising Sun.  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1955 Jeffrey Ford, 65. Winner of seven World Fantasy Awards including for The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, an excellent collection, and The Shadow Year which in turn is an expansion of “The Botch Town”, a novella that also won a WFA. His Nebula winning novelette, “The Empire of Ice Cream”, can be heard here. Did you know that he has written over one hundred and thirty short stories?  A wide selection of his writing are available at the usual digital suspects. (CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1956 Richard Curtis, 64. One of Britain’s most successful comedy screenwriters, he’s making the Birthday List for writing “Vincent and the Doctor”, a most excellent Eleventh Doctor story. He was also the writer of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot which isn’t really genre but it’s Roald Dahl which sort of make it genre adjacent. And he directed Blackadder which certainly should count as genre.(CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1978 – Kali Wallace, Ph.D., 42.  Four novels, a dozen shorter stories.  Interviewed in Lightspeed.  Photographer, though she depreciates her ability.  “I now live in southern California.  I do miss having seasons.”  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1982 – Lauren Oliver, 38.  A dozen novels, four novellas.  Phi Beta Kappa at Univ. Chicago.  Wrote her first book on a BlackBerry during subway trips.  NY Times Best Seller.  Has read Austen, Brontë, Hemingway, Huxley, James, Joyce, and thirty Agatha Christie novels.  [JH]

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) COMICS IN THE DAYS OF THE TWO GERMANIES. Cora Buhlert has an article about East and West German comics at Galactic Journey“[October 28, 1965] Knights, Adventurers And Anthropomorphic Animals: Comics In East And West Germany”.

…Inspired by the success of the Disney comics, in 1953 West German artist Rolf Kauka created his own comic magazine called Till Eulenspiegel, named after a popular trickster character from German legend. However, a pair of clever foxes named Fix and Foxi quickly became the most popular characters and in 1955, the magazine was retitled as Fix und Foxi. The two foxes quickly adopted a whole menagerie of animal friends such as the wolf Lupo and his cousin Lupinchen, the mole Pauli and the sister Paulinchen, the raven Knox, the hare Hops, the hedgehog Stops and the mouse Mausi. Other characters to appear in the magazine are “Tom and Klein Biberherz” (Little Beaverheart), a cowboy character and his indigenous friend, and “Mischa im Weltraum” (Mischa in Outer Space), a humorous science fiction comic. Those who have read the Archie comics will find that Mischa looks very familiar.

(13) WAR AND FANTASY. Paul Weimer serves up “Microreview: Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward” at Nerds of a Feather.

…Expanding on that, the physical conflicts, battles and otherwise, is where a lot of the story strength is spent and spent well. With the theme of a impending invasion by the neighboting, dominant Empire and the internal conflict within the Republic, complete with insurgency, and the very violent, Renaissance level world means that there are action sequences that run from duels in a street all the way to set piece battles. The latter is particularly well done, showing the ebb and flow of war and its fortunes, flaws and follies. The pulse pounding roar of physical action is where the narrative kicks into overdrive, and all of the point of view characters (and in at least one case very unexpectedly) get their turns to shine, or at least get dunked in the experience. War is hell, and this book makes no bones about it and secondary characters often have a shockingly short but realistic  life expectancy.

(14) POWERED BY A TARDIGRADE? No, but it should be: “Scientists 3D print microscopic Star Trek spaceship that moves on its own”CNN has a picture.

…The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid.

“By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers,” Samia Ouhajji, one of the study’s authors, told CNN. “This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body.”

(15) THE FINISHED LINE. Adri Joy gives Nerds of a Feather readers her assessment in “Microreview [book]: Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston”.

Master of Poisons took me approximately forever to read. Very little of that is the book’s fault: while Andrea Hairston’s writing style does require more attention than some, packing a great deal of worldbuilding and information into deceptively simple but poetic prose, its certainly no more than I would expect to give to an author of this calibre. It’s not like Master of Poisons doesn’t open with some super intriguing stuff: right off the bat, we’ve got poison deserts, scheming advisors, a deceptively confident first protagonist and a plucky young second one all conspiring to draw me in….

(16) WAYS INDIE BOOKSTORES ARE SURVIVING. On the CBS Sunday Morning news today: “Independent booksellers write a new chapter during COVID-19”.

The Strand Book Store is a New York institution, with four floors of books, and 93 years of tradition. But while it survived a Great Depression, World War II, 9/11 and Amazon, it has struggled during the era of COVID-19. New Yorker contributor Kelefa Sanneh talks with the Strand’s owners, and with the owners of EyeSeeMe, an African-American children’s bookstore in St. Louis, about how independent booksellers are finding ways to cope during the coronavirus pandemic, and about the community of readers that wants them to survive.

(17) MORE TO COME. Clarion West is hosting several more online workshops before the end of 2020, ranging in price from free to $325.

Thursday, November 12 at 4:00 p.m. PDT: Submission Tools with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam 
You’ve written, finished, and edited your short story. What now? Join prolific submitter and rejection expert Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam for a two-hour seminar on the submissions process: formatting, finding markets, writing cover letters, tracking submissions, managing acceptances and rejections, and exploring reprints.
 
Saturday, November 14 at 10:00 a.m. PST: Interactive Fiction with E. Lily Yu 
Award-winning author and narrative designer E. Lily Yu discusses the intricacies, opportunities, complications, and markets for interactive fiction and other branching narratives. How do we bring playfulness? What are the types of nonlinear narrative, and how do we use them? During this class, you’ll outline, implement, and workshop your own Twine game. Basic technical knowledge of how to edit Twine or a Wikipedia article required.

Saturday, November 14 at 12:00 p.m. PDT : Fix It, Jesus! With LP Kindred 
Repurposing the Self, Clichés, Tropes, and Unexamined Bias for New Story – LP Kindred walks you through how to fix these biases in an interactive workshop! 

Sunday, November 15 at 12:00 p.m. PDT: Intro to Freelance Video Game Writing with Whitney “Strix” Beltrán 
Acquiring and creating your first pieces of freelance work: what does that entail? This course focuses on the creative and logistical aspects of freelance game work. Fee structures and appropriate pay will be taught in a later workshop.

Friday, November 20 – Sunday, November 22: Writing the Other Weekend Intensive: Quick & Clean with Nisi Shawl and Tempest Bradford
Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford lead this weekend-long workshop on creating more compelling, well-rounded characters whose identities and cultural experiences are unlike the author’s own, from gender to ethnicity, sexuality to socioeconomic class. Avoid pitfalls of tokenism and appropriation while building your confidence to write the lives of characters with respect and panache.

Sunday, Nov 29, 10:00 a.m. Pacific: Negritude in the 6th Dimension: An Afrofuturist Excursion
A panelshop in partnership with Voodoonauts

The Voodoonauts (Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, LP Kindred, and Hugh “H.D.” Hunter) host a panel and break-out workshop sessions to explore time and craft through a Black Indigenous lens.

(18) SECOND FOUNDATION OF THE WEB. “How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet” at Protocol.

…Eventually, a lot of those gamers realized something. They wanted to talk to their gaming friends even when they weren’t in a game, and they wanted to talk about things other than games. Their gaming friends were their real friends. As luck would have it, in early 2015, a new tool called Discord showed up on the market. Its tagline was not subtle: “It’s time to ditch Skype and TeamSpeak.” It had text chat, which was cool, but mostly it did voice chat better than anybody else.

Early users set up private servers for their friends to play together, and a few enterprising ones set up public ones, looking for new gamer buds. “I don’t have a lot of IRL friends that play games,” one Discord user, who goes by Mikeyy on the platform, told me. “So when I played Overwatch, I started my first community … to play games with anyone on the internet. You’d play a couple of games with someone, and then you’re like, ‘Hey, cool, what’s your Discord?'”

Fast-forward a few years, and Discord is at the center of the gaming universe. It has more than 100 million monthly active users, in millions of communities for every game and player imaginable. Its largest servers have millions of members. Discord’s slowly building a business around all that popularity, too, and is now undergoing a big pivot: It’s pushing to turn the platform into a communication tool not just for gamers, but for everyone from study groups to sneakerheads to gardening enthusiasts. Five years in, Discord’s just now realizing it may have stumbled into something like the future of the internet. Almost by accident….

(19) DEEP PURPLE STATE. In the Washington Post, Steven Zeitchik says that some in Hollywood have decided that with the pandemic and the election we need soothing entertainment, so Barney the dinosaur is coming back in a remake! “Hollywood wants to put you to sleep”

… For much of this entertainment century, Hollywood has had a clear objective: work viewers into as much of a lather as possible. The highest-grossing movies of all time are “Avengers: Endgame” and “Avatar. The most-watched pay-cable show of this era is “Game of Thrones.” All three offer tense standoffs, climactic battle scenes and other high-burn elements. They try to make us sweat.

Such content, researchers have found, can leave a deep mark. A study from Linder College in Oregon revealed that clips from “aggressive” movies activate mental aggression, while research conducted by University College London indicated that action movies can even take a toll on the cardiac muscle.

So modern entertainment leaders have tried another way. Executives at ViacomCBS streaming service Pluto TV licensed a well of content from Ross, the ultimate soothe-meister, and created a channel devoted to him. If you want to see happy little trees spring up everywhere — all 380 episodes of them — they are now available on the platform.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Contrarius, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to Fiel 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]