Tag Archives: dragons

Pixel Scroll 2/2/25 Don Simpson And The Escaped Typos

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(1) FANTASY TAKES CENTER STAGE. The Guardian’s “Bookmarks” newsletter says, “Fantasy appears to be having a ‘moment’ (quite a long one as it happens)”

“Increasingly fantasy has moved more from the fringes towards the centre”, with a rise in writers operating in the genre, says Irenosen Okojie, who founded the afrofuturist festival Black to the Future and whose books include Curandera.

Why is the genre thriving? Readers “need escapism right now in ways that truly speak to our imagination”, says Okojie, and they “like these richly imaginative worlds that explore our lived experiences in dynamic, transformative ways”. Fantasy is also “invested in projecting how worlds different from our own might flourish”, says Matthew Sangster, a professor of romantic studies, fantasy and cultural history at the University of Glasgow.

However, even though the “success of the likes of George RR Martin and Nnedi Okorafor” show fantasy is a “thriving space”, says Okojie, it “always has been”: look at the likes of Ursula K Le Guin and Samuel R Delany.

George Sandison, managing editor at Titan Books – which publishes VE Schwab and Veronica Roth – agrees. Though he often hears that a particular genre is “having a moment”, when it comes to fantasy, he feels as though “that moment has lasted my entire career in fiction, my entire life before that, and for the countless generations required to produce all the work that lit up my brain as a child!”

Fantasy “is arguably at the root of all literature”, he says – even Virginia Woolf. Every work of fiction “imagines a whole new reality”, fantasy “just has a lot more fun with those mental images, turning them into dragons and talking cats, giving them magic powers, and breaking them free of our planet’s geography”. He sees the publishing industry’s categorisations of fantasy as simply telling readers what metaphors and tropes to expect, “to try to sell more books”….

(2) CTHULHU IS ON THE LINE. Christopher Lockett, in “China Miéville and the Banality of Weird”, has a Lovecraft quote from almost a century ago that is still capable of launching discussions:

…Once again, the best articulation of this premise is the opening paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu,” which functions as about as perfect a Lovecraftian mission statement as you’ll find:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (139)”

To be fair to Lovecraft, he was writing in the 1920s and 30s, and he died before the outbreak of WWII. He wrote during the post-WWI crisis of spirit and the more general collapse of faith in such prewar verities as the invariably positive nature of scientific and technological progress. His work shares the alienation and disillusion present in the critical mass of modernism, alongside its often desperate pursuit of meaning in arcana.³ His fascination with and nominal devotion to science, along with his militant atheism, coexisted with his figurations of occultism in a manner entirely consonant with the historical moment: science and technology shorn of utopianism by the horrors of the Western Front, seeming to hint at vaster horrors beyond human ken.

In that respect he was not wrong: the war he didn’t live to see ended in the unthinkable. The Holocaust and Hiroshima would seem to represent the “terrifying vistas of reality” warned of in the passage above and allegorized by such Old Gods as Cthulhu and his monstrous kin. But if those unthinkable events have shown us anything, it’s the basic flaw of Lovecraft’s premise: far from going “mad from the revelation” or fleeing “from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age,” humanity has demonstrated instead an apparently bottomless capacity to make the unthinkable thinkable. Indeed—with the benefit of time, self-rationalization, mythologization, and a massive dose of delusional euphemism—to render the unthinkable banal….

(3) OLD SCAM, NEWLY HATCHED. Victoria Strauss warns about “USA Pen Press: The Ghostwriting Scam of a Thousand Websites” at Writer Beware.

… Ghostwriting scams pose as publishing service providers. Like the similar similar-seeming publishing/marketing scams from the Philippines, they are based overseas, primarily in Pakistan and India, and offer menus of publishing and marketing services designed to attract writers looking to self-publish or to market their books.

Also like the Philippine scams, they frequently take writers’ money and run, or deliver substandard quality, or treat whatever package or service the writer initially buys as a gateway to the writer’s bank account, relentlessly pressuring them to hand over more cash….

… It didn’t take long on USA Pen Press’s website for me to identify it as a ghostwriting scam. Many of the typical markers are there: the prominent advertising of ghostwriting services, of course, but also an array of trad-pubbed book covers to falsely imply USA Pen Press had something to do with them, a header image (see above) with even more false references to famous writers, “testimonials” that all sound alike and in one case reference a different company, awkward English (“How Do the USA Pen Press Work on the Book Covers?” “What the process of Ghostwriting includes?”), and false claims (they say 10+ years in business but as of this writing, their web domain is just 119 days old)….

(4) IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES. [Item by Steven French.] Another day, another piece on Dick and dystopias: “The PKD Dystopia” by Henry Farrell at Programmable Mutter.

This is not the dystopia we were promised. We are not learning to love Big Brother, who lives, if he lives at all, on a cluster of server farms, cooled by environmentally friendly technologies. Nor have we been lulled by Soma and subliminal brain programming into a hazy acquiescence to pervasive social hierarchies.

Dystopias tend toward fantasies of absolute control, in which the system sees all, knows all, and controls all. And our world is indeed one of ubiquitous surveillance. Phones and household devices produce trails of data, like particles in a cloud chamber, indicating our wants and behaviors to companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Yet the information thus produced is imperfect and classified by machine-learning algorithms that themselves make mistakes. The efforts of these businesses to manipulate our wants leads to further complexity. It is becoming ever harder for companies to distinguish the behavior which they want to analyze from their own and others’ manipulations.

This does not look like totalitarianism unless you squint very hard indeed. As the sociologist Kieran Healy has suggested, sweeping political critiques of new technology often bear a strong family resemblance to the arguments of Silicon Valley boosters. Both assume that the technology works as advertised, which is not necessarily true at all.

Standard utopias and standard dystopias are each perfect after their own particular fashion. We live somewhere queasier—a world in which technology is developing in ways that make it increasingly hard to distinguish human beings from artificial things. The world that the Internet and social media have created is less a system than an ecology, a proliferation of unexpected niches, and entities created and adapted to exploit them in deceptive ways. Vast commercial architectures are being colonized by quasi-autonomous parasites. Scammers have built algorithms to write fake books from scratch to sell on Amazon, compiling and modifying text from other books and online sources such as Wikipedia, to fool buyers or to take advantage of loopholes in Amazon’s compensation structure. Much of the world’s financial system is made out of bots—automated systems designed to continually probe markets for fleeting arbitrage opportunities. Less sophisticated programs plague online commerce systems such as eBay and Amazon, occasionally with extraordinary consequences, as when two warring bots bid the price of a biology book up to $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping)….

(5) READING BINGO. If Reddit’s “OFFICIAL r/Fantasy 2024 Book Bingo Challenge!” ends up on the Hugo ballot, that will be because its creators are drumming up support in posts like this: “For Your Consideration: r/Fantasy’s 2024 Bingo Challenge is Eligible for a Hugo Nomination for Best Related Work”. Apparently, they’ve been doing these challenges for ten years. Everybody does eligibility posts now – and you might find the challenge an item of interest in its own right.

(6) ROBERT BLOCH RARITIES. Here’s “What’s New at the Robert Bloch Official Website.

  • Read the first two pages of an operatic Libretto Bloch wrote for Gaston Leroux’s novel, The Phantom of the Opera.
  • IN 1980, Bloch penned a script for the pilot of a proposed weekly TV spinoff series of the (Stephen King) Salem’s Lot TV movie that recounted the further adventures of Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. Sadly, what we have is not the complete script (of 54 pages), rather a random sampling, the only pages available, captured during an auction of the script. Still, an interesting find!

(7) TODAY’S DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Today in the UK is National Yorkshire Pudding Day. Learn more from the Yorkshire Post’s 2020 article “When is it, origins of the side dish, and the best Yorkshire Pudding recipe”. Note, the article includes a recipe.

Depending on who you ask, where you search, or how you feel about it, Yorkshire Pudding and popovers either are or aren’t the same thing, although they’re clearly related. Here’s some of those opinions (and more recipes):

(8) JAY SMITH OBITUARY. Costuming fan Jay Smith died January 27, 2025. The International Costumers Galley announced on Facebook:

Jay Smith was a costumer, attending conventions primarily in California, going back to Equicon. He was an actor and worked Renaissance Fairs and The Great Dickens Christmas Fair, where he was known for his portrayal of Father Christmas. He was beloved for his portrayal of the character for decades at many events.

At the link is a photo of Smith wearing a “Redesign of Superman” from Equicon 1985 by Civi Poth.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Buck Rogers serial (1939)

Eighty-six years ago, the Buck Rogers serial, produced by Universal Pictures, first was in the theaters. It starred Buster Crabbe (who had previously played the title character in two Flash Gordon serials and would return for a third.) Buster was sometimes billed as Larry Crabbe as well as you will note in the poster below. 

I don’t think I need to say that it’s based on the Buck Rogers character as y’all know that as created by Philip Francis Nowlan but for the sake of the few Filers who will nitpick if I don’t I will. 

It was directed by Ford Beebe was Saul A. Goodkind as written by Norman S. Hall, Ray Trampe and Dick Calkins. It would run for twelve chapters of roughly twenty minutes each. 

As I said Buck Roger was Larry “Buster” Crabbe with Constance Moore as Wilma Deering, and Jackie Moran as “Buddy” Wade, an original character who was based on the Sunday strip character Buddy Deering.

It had a really small budget and re-used film footage from the futuristic Thirties musical Just Imagine. 

In 1953, it was edited into the film Planet Outlaws and twelve years later it was edited again into Destination Saturn, and not to stop there, the late Seventies saw the latter release of the latter as Buck Rogers. All three were feature films. 

Not surprisingly, you can watch it online as it’s public domain — here is the first chapter

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS, PLEASE. Popular Science learns that in Poland a “Fire-breathing dragon sculpture not allowed to breathe fire”.

A famous dragon sculpture that spits out real fire is going to be a little less dramatic this month. The Wawel Dragon–or Smok Wawelski–in Krakow, Poland will have to hold its fiery breath so that authorities can see why it has been guzzling too much fuel lately.

Krzysztof Wojdowski, spokesman for Krakow’s road infrastructure office, told the Associated Press that officials will inspect the gas lines and pipes that feed the 19-feet metal dragon to look for ways to reduce energy bills. The sculpture is expected to begin to breathe fire again by March, pending the investigation….

(12) PWNING THE LIBS? The New York Times reports “E.V. Owners Don’t Pay Gas Taxes. So, Many States Are Charging Them Fees.” (Behind a paywall.)

Owners of electric cars in Vermont recently got a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles with some bad news. Starting Jan. 1 they would have to pay $178 a year to register their cars, twice as much as owners of vehicles with internal combustion engines.

In imposing the higher fee, Vermont became the latest state to make people pay a premium for driving electric. At least 39 states charge such annual fees, including $50 in Hawaii and $200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s up from no states a few years ago.

Now, as President Trump rolls back Biden administration measures to promote electric vehicles, Republicans in Congress are considering imposing a national fee to bolster the fund used to finance roads and bridges, a fund that is in dire shape.

The fees are an attempt to make up for declining revenue from gasoline taxes that electric cars, for obvious reasons, don’t pay. They’re an example of how governments are struggling to adjust to technological upheaval in the auto industry.

Environmentalists and consumer groups agree that electric vehicle owners should help pay for road maintenance and construction. But they worry that Republicans, who control Congress, would set the fee at extremely high levels to punish electric vehicle owners, who tend to be liberals…

And yet somehow not all owners of companies that make electric cars are liberals….

(13) THIS IS THE DROID YOU’RE LOOKING FOR. Cool. And really expensive. “RoboCop – ED-209 1/3 Scale Statue”. Price tag: $3,100.

Wikipedia explains:

The Enforcement Droid Series 209, or ED-209, is a fictional heavily armed robot that appears in the RoboCop franchise. It serves as a foil for RoboCop, as well as a source of comic relief due to its lack of intelligence and tendency towards clumsy malfunctions.

The sales pitch says:

Premium Collectibles Studio presents their ED-209 1/3 Scale Statue. Hailing from the sci-fi classic RoboCop, this piece stands nearly 35 inches tall. Featuring every rivet, plate, and movie-accurate feature of the iconic Enforcement Droid, the finish is in a slate gray and matte black. Included is a pedestal base with the OCP logo, making it a striking addition for any RoboCop fan.

(14) I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU. Ryan George does a hilarious Tolkien-themed “When Your Friend Won’t Admit He’s Wrong” bit which some might say is NSFW, though really just for the last couple seconds, and not even then if you work for Frederick’s of Hollywood….

(15) FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES. Once upon a time actor Jonathan Frid, Dark Shadows’ Barnabas Collins, appeared as a celebrity guest on What’s My Line – vampire dentures and all.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Rich Lynch, John Hertz, 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 John Hertz.]

Pixel Scroll 1/7/25 The Fortress Of Scrollitude

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(1) CHANGE MY WORDS? Ira Nayman discusses the elements of “The Professional Editor/Writer Relationship” at the SFWA Blog.

…Many writers resist the editorial process for a variety of reasons. It takes a lot of time, thought and, ultimately, work to craft effective prose fiction; it can be galling to allow a stranger to come along and tell you that it has to be changed. In addition, it can be hard to accept that what you have put so much of yourself into is not perfect exactly as you wrote it. These issues can be overcome with experience. All you need is one great editor to help you see the flaws in a story and guide you through the process of correcting them to see the value in the process….

… My practice as an editor is to couch interpretive input as either a suggestion (“You might want to try…”) or a question (“This is unclear. Might it be better as…?”). If the writer makes a reasonable argument for why the change isn’t necessary, I’m usually willing to accept it (although it is also true that 90% or more of the changes I ask for are accepted by authors). I try to keep in mind that, in matters of artistic interpretation, there aren’t always clear-cut right or wrong answers. While my input makes sense to me given my understanding of how stories work, it is always possible that the writer is in a better position to judge what works for their specific story….

(2) DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 is ready to mourn “The Strange Death of Cultural Originality”. The above was quite interesting. Basic thesis is that before 2000 only 25% of top box office films were sequels or franchise related but after 2000 it is 50%.  Worryingly, it also applies to TV and films. There is an explanation. Competition due to the growth in content delivery formats means that platform deliveries cannot afford to take chances. Conversely, it is possible to argue philosophically, that little is new and that most is a variation, re-hash, mix-n-match of old material….

These days, when you turn on the TV or visit the cinema do you ever think, hang on, I’m sure I’ve seen this before? Maybe you’ve bought the latest crime thriller after seeing it in the bestseller lists and, 50 pages in, you’re overcome with a weird feeling of deja vu? And when you put the radio on in the car, does all the music sound, well, the same? 

If so, don’t worry. It’s not just you. Something strange seems to be happening.

Statistics show that the number of top 20 highest grossing Hollywood films each year which are either sequels or spin-offs has risen from 25% to 50% in the past two decades.

In the 1960s, most TV shows were original formats. Today, a third are spinoffs or multiple broadcasts.

In music, the number of artists on the Billboard Hot 100 has been falling for some time, meaning the big established acts are getting more and more exposure while new acts struggle to break through.

Existing best-selling authors are becoming increasingly dominant in publishing sales.

So is it fair to say that cultural originality is in rather poor health?

Might it even be dead?

Ben Chu spends spends a lot of time thinking about economics, numbers and why the world works in the way it does. In this programme he’s going to ask – if cultural originality is dead, who or what killed it?

(3) SOME STATES RESIST CENSORSHIP OF LIBRARIES. “Librarians gain protections in some states as book bans soar” reports the South Dakota Searchlight.

… Amid a national rise in book bans in school libraries and new laws in some red states that threaten criminal penalties against librarians, a growing number of blue states are taking the opposite approach.

New Jersey joined at least five other states — California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington — that have passed legislation within the past two years that aims to preserve access to reading materials that deal with racial and sexual themes, including those about the LGBTQ+ community.

Conservative groups have led the effort to ban materials to shield children from what they deem as harmful content. In the 2023-24 school year, there were 10,000 instances of book bans across the U.S. — nearly three times as many as the year before, according to a recent report by PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary freedom.

The New Jersey measure not only sets minimum standards for localities when they adopt a policy on how books are curated or can be challenged but also prevents school districts from removing material based on “the origin, background, or views of the library material or those contributing to its creation.”

The law also gives librarians immunity from civil and criminal liability for “good faith actions.”

New Jersey state Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat who introduced the legislation, said until recently he thought that book bans were a disturbing trend, but one limited to other states. But early last year, he went to a brunch event and met a school librarian who told him she faced a torrent of verbal and online abuse for refusing to remove a handful of books with LGBTQ+ themes from her library’s shelves.

https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2024/12/15/state-library-budget-cut-would-hamstring-local-libraries-opponents-say/embed/#?secret=AmvBI5LLAe#?secret=3GwRz4n2Kt “That’s when I realized that I was so horribly mistaken, that these attacks on librarians and on the freedom to read were happening everywhere,” Zwicker told Stateline. “I went up to her and asked, ‘What can I do?’”…

… Legislation differs by state, including in enforcement and how to penalize noncompliant localities.

In Illinois, for example, school districts risk losing thousands of dollars in state grant funding if they violate the state’s new law discouraging book bans. But as the Chicago Tribune reported last month, that financial penalty was not enough to persuade many school districts throughout the state to comply, with administrators saying they are concerned about giving up local control on school decisions.

Several school districts in other states have similarly rebelled.

North of Minneapolis, St. Francis Area Schools’ board last month decided it would consult with conservative group BookLooks to determine which books it will buy for its school libraries. BookLooks uses a 0-through-5 rating system that flags books for violent and sexual content.

Under its rating system, books that have long had a place in school libraries — such as the Holocaust memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel or “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou — would require parental consent to read….

(4) CALLING LA COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. The Light Bringer Project is putting together the first-ever student edition of their literary journal, Locavore Lit. Los Angeles County high school students looking to publish their original fiction are invited to submit original fiction in any genre, between 500 and 5,000 words, through February 21.

Show us your fantastical worlds, your daring adventures, your tragic endings, and your strangely compelling characters.

We will be publishing between five and seven stories, and each chosen author will be paired with a professional illustrator who will work to highlight the story’s themes and imagery.

(5) DRONES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL ARMY. [Item by Francis Hamit.] A glimpse of the future courtesy of the US Army.  I follow this stuff the way other people follow sports. “Imagining a US Army Drone Corps” at the Modern War Institute.

In February 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the creation of the Unmanned Systems Forces. It is no secret that the Ukrainian military has used drones to great effect. Its units continue to innovate with drone tactics, techniques, and procedures and effects in the air, land, and maritime domains. Both belligerents in the Russia-Ukraine War have pledged to build over a million aerial drones each year to fill the skies. Even with the extremely innovative use of the drones (mine laying, incendiary delivery) already observed in Ukraine, history will show that the most important attribute of drones has been their ability to serve as economy-of-force systems. In a grinding war of attrition, drones have allowed the Ukrainian military to protect its limited combat power and threaten a much larger combat force across multiple domains.

The Unmanned Systems Forces that Zelenskyy announced amount, effectively, to a drone corps. US policymakers have taken note of the effectiveness of drones in the conflict and a drone corps may also be coming to the US Army….

… As an Army we are at a critical inflection point and have an opportunity to build a lethal enabling force. A more expansive course of action would involve creating drone units that can operate independently or augment brigade formations to fully leverage the situational awareness and strike capability of the systems. In a zero-growth environment with no major budgetary reallocations, the ready solution is the consolidation of the human-machine integration platoons across a division to build a robotics recon strike squadron (R2S2).,,, 

(6) PETER YARROW (1938-2024). “Puff the Magic Dragon” composer Peter Yarrow, part of the group Peter, Paul and Mary, died January 7. The New York Times tribute says in part:

Peter Yarrow, whose caring and righteous vocals for the trio Peter, Paul and Mary helped establish them as one of the most popular folk acts of the 1960s, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 86.

His death was confirmed by Ken Sunshine, his publicist. Mr. Sunshine said the cause was bladder cancer, which Mr. Yarrow had been battling for the past four years.

On many of the trio’s recordings they split the vocal parts equally, braiding Mr. Yarrow’s precise tenor around Noel Paul Stookey’s gentle baritone and Mary Travers’s warm contralto. But Mr. Yarrow also had some prominent lead vocals as well, fronting such well-known group recordings as “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Day Is Done” and “The Great Mandala,” all of which he either wrote or co-wrote. “Puff” became a No. 2 Billboard hit, while “Day Is Done” grazed the Top 20….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 7, 1912 — Charles Addams. (Died 1988.)

Charles Addams

Ahhh, Charles Addams. No doubt you’re now thinking of the Addams Family and you’ve certainly reason to do so, but let’s first note some other artistic endeavors of his. 

His first published book work in the early Forties was the cover for But Who Wakes The Bugler by Peter DeVries, a silly slice of life novel.  He previously sold some sketches to the New Yorker. 

Random House soon thereafter contracted him for anthologies of drawings, Drawn and Quartered and Addams and Evil. (Lest you ask, the term “anthology” is from his website.)  Four more anthologies, now on Simon & Schuster will follow. 

And there was The Chas Addams Mother Goose, really there was. Here’s his cover for it.

Based on his characters that had appeared in his New Yorker cartoons, 1964 saw The Addams Family television series premiere on ABC. It would star, and I’m just singling them out, John Astin as Gomez and Carolyn Jones as Morticia. 

It lasted just two seasons of thirty-minute episodes. Mind you there were sixty-four episodes. Yes, I loved every minute of it. I have watched it at least three times, as recently as several years ago and it as great now as was when I first watched it decades ago.

Halloween with the New Addams Family is a follow-up film with the primary cast back. No idea why the New is in there.  We also had The Addams Family, an animated with a voice cast with some of the original performers, yet another Addams Family series (each of these largely had just John Astin from the original series).

Think we’re done? Of course, there is The Addams Family with Raúl Julia as a most macabre Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia Addams with Carol Struycken playing Lurch for the first of several times.  I really, really adore this film. 

It was followed by the Addams Family Values which for some reason that I can’t quite figure out I just don’t adore.

Are we finished? No. The New Addams Family which aired for one nearly a quarter of a century after the original series went off the air after but a single season but lasted an extraordinary sixty-five episodes. I need to see at least the pilot for this. 

And then there’s the Addams Family Reunion which had the distinction of Tim Curry as Gomez. I’ve not seen it, so who has? It sounds like an intriguing role for him…

There will be two animated films as well, The Addams Family and The Addams Family 2, neither of which I’ve seen.

Finally let’s talk about licensing. After his death, his wife, Tee Addams, was responsible for getting his works licensed. To quote the website, “The Addams Family, both its individual characters and the Family in its entirety, have a long history of selling products, in print ad campaigns and television commercials alike – from typewriters to Japanese scotch, from designer showcases to perfume, from paper towels to chocolate candies, and all that lies in between.” 

So I went looking for use of the characters. I think the best one I found is the claymation one for M&Ms Dark Chocolate. (And please don’t ask me about the Wizard of Oz M&Ms commercial. That one is still giving me nightmares. Though the FedEx Wizard of Oz commercial is just silly. I mean dropping a FedEx truck on that witch…)

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 7, 1929: Three comic strips debuted

I’ve no idea why three newspaper comic strips were first published on this date. Before you think that can’t be possible, I’ve double-checked and yes, they were. I think it has to do with traditional Christmas holidays at that time in American history, so they’d be launched after those holidays. 

January 7, 1929 — The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. comic strip premiered. Philip Francis Nowlan Was the writer for the first decade with Dick Calkins and Russell Keaton being the artists for the first three years. At its peak in 1934, Buck Rogers appeared in 287 U.S. newspapers. Like many other popular comic strips of that day, Buck Rogers was reprinted in Big Little Books in a reformatted form. 

January 7, 1929  — The Tarzan of the Apes strip was first published.  It was drawn by Hal Foster (the first decade of strips) and Rex Mason (nearly twenty years’ worth) with Don Kraar adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs story.  A full-page Sunday strip began on March 15, 1931, with artwork by Rex Maxon. A dozen artists would draw the strip including Gil Kane and Mike Grell in its waning years. Russ Manning’s portrayal of Tarzan Is considered by many to be the definitive one. We’ve included two strips here, one with him as artist, the first with Hal Foster. 

January 7, 1934 — First published on this date, the Flash Gordon comic strip was inspired by the success of, and created rather obviously to compete with, the already established Buck Rogers strip. The story goes that King Features tried to purchase the rights to John Carter of Mars from Burroughs who refused, so King Features then turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create a similar story. The rest is history. Raymond’s strip would run until 1943 with the various artists and strips continuing for decades.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Carpe Diem has a mirror with a gripe.
  • Loose Parts applies cartoon logic to civil engineering.
  • Rhymes with Orange shows a famous inventor was more ambitious than we knew.
  • xkcd charts the “features of adulthood”.

(10) JESSE HOLLAND Q&A. At WBUR, “Here and Now” host Celeste Headlee speaks with journalist Jesse Holland, author of the forthcoming Marvel/Titan Books anthology Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson, about the state of the Black superhero universe: “Taking stock of the Black superhero universe”. There’s also an excerpt from the book at the link.

(11) WEREWOLF? THERE PUB. [Item by Steven French.] Of marginal genre interest perhaps, but the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, where that famous pub scene in An American Werewolf in London was filmed, regularly gets snowed in during the winter. Here’s the Guardian’s amusing account of the latest ‘lock in’, including this reference to the classic movie: “Popcorn, pints and a pooch’s birthday: life snowed in at the Tan Hill Inn” from the Guardian.

7pm

Headlights are approaching! There’s a knock on the door. In step Chelsey Frankland and Luke Batty, who have somehow managed to get here in a 4×4 from Doncaster. Silence falls as we stare at them, gobsmacked, reminiscent of that scene in the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London. In fact, it’s identical to that scene because we are in the exact room where it was filmed.

(12) SET IN THE PRESENT? Slashfilm invites you to discover “Eight Classic (And Not-So-Classic) Sci-Fi Movies Set In 2025”.

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Welcome to 2025. It’s the future….

…Now we’re actually here in 2025, though, and we can see that few of those old writings came to pass. Indeed, from our standpoint, the future is looking positively bleak. There is a lot of authoritarianism to look forward to, and the curtailing of human rights seems to be on the docket worldwide. As such, we would do well to look back at the sci-fi of the past, perhaps merely as a sociological exercise. What did the writers of previous decades think 2025 would look like? Would we be fighting future Nazis, falling in love with computers, or piloting 100-foot Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots?

One of the films they picked only looked three years into the future – and it’s a future peculiar to The Asylum.

2025 Armageddon (2022)

Schlock-lovers everywhere are likely intimately familiar with The Asylum, a low-budget film studio best known for their mockbusters (that is; clear and open imitations of contemporary blockbuster movies). Just as there was a “Pacific Rim,” The Asylum churned out the zero-budget knockoff “Atlantic Rim.” They did their own “Aladdin.” Their sales model seems to be based on tricking consumers into renting their movies, confusing them for the genuine article. 

At least “2025 Armageddon” acknowledged that model, as one of the film’s opening plot points was two twin sisters (Jhey Castles and Lindsey Marie Wilson) bonding over the Asylum movie “Snakes on a Train,” which their grandmother rented for them, thinking it was “Snakes on a Plane.” 

The purpose of “2025 Armageddon” was to gather the many absurd monsters from multiple other Asylum films, and assemble them in a single gigantic crossover event akin to “Destroy All Monsters.” The film features the Mega Piranha from “Mega Piranha,” the Mega Shark from “Mega Shark,” robot monsters from both “Atlantic Rim” and “Transmorphers,” and the croc monster from “Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus.” There’s even a Sharknado for good measure. These creatures are all manifesting in the real world after a species of aliens watched a bunch of Asylum movies, and mistook them for reality. They used their high-tech monster-making machines to populate the Earth with Asylum monsters, as God intended. 

Michael Paré appears, of course, because it was either him or Eric Roberts.

(13) GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS. “Mathematician Reveals Strange New Enigmas for Time Travelers” – Discover Magazine says it’s time you knew.

First, the good news for time travelers. Physicists have long recognized that nothing in the laws of physics specifically forbids time travel. As far as they can tell, these laws don’t care whether time is running forwards or backwards; they work just as well either way….

…Now the bad news, which comes from Lorenzo Gavassino, a mathematician at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Gavassino has discovered some previously unknown side effects of time travel.

He says the laws of physics may not forbid it but if it is possible, these laws lead to some outlandish consequences, one of which is that any human who made the journey would not be able to remember it. The laws of physics suggest this person’s memory would be wiped clean as soon as they returned to the present….

(14) GALACTIC SQUINTING. “How astronomers used gravitational lensing to discover 44 new stars in distant galaxy” at ABC News.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, history’s largest and most complex space observatory that serves thousands of astronomers around the world, has captured a unique image that revealed 44 individual stars in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years away from the Milky Way, according to a paper published Monday in Nature Astronomy.

Astronomers used Webb’s high-resolution optics and distortion in space to reveal the existence of dozens of previously unknown stars, the researchers said. The detection of a “treasure trove” of stars was only possible because the light from the 44 new stars was magnified by a large cluster of galaxies, called Abell 370, in front of it, according to the Center for Astrophysics.

The technique is known as gravitational lensing, which is when a massive amount of matter — like a cluster of galaxies — creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight, according to NASA. The effect is essentially like looking through a giant magnifying glass….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Exits Examined delves into “The Bizarre History of Dragonriders of Pern”.

What do you get when epic fantasy crashes violently into science fiction? The Dragonriders of Pern baby! This legendary series is packed with telepathic dragons, daring riders, and a world that’s as dangerous as it is fascinating. Set on the planet Pern, where humanity’s survival hinges on their bond with dragons to fight a deadly menace from the skies, these books are a wild mix of adventure, survival, and discovery. In this video, we’re diving into the history of Dragonriders of Pern, exploring its incredible worldbuilding, unforgettable characters, and why it’s still matters.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew (not Werdna), Francis Hamit, 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 Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/26/24 I’ve Never Been To Scroll, But I Kinda Like The Pixels

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(1) WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF (DRAGON) LOVE? “But Do They F*** The Dragon? An Oral History of Dragon Romance” by Bree Bridges at Reactor.

… Fortunately for young Bree, McCaffrey wasn’t the only one infusing fantasy with complicated women in complicated relationships. Maybe it was my love of the way Michael Whelan painted dragons that led me across the library to one of the most romantically charged dragon covers of the ’80s: Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince.

In the (usually 800+) pages of Melanie Rawn’s fantasy novels I found everything I loved: dragons that you sometimes get to talk to, complex and flawed heroines who have to make hard choices and embrace their power, and an acknowledgement that romantic love has a power to shape kingdoms and a magic all its own.

(And dragons. Always, dragons.)

But as much as I adored what I found in the pages of these books, something was still missing. Yes, romance appeared. It was even important sometimes—the lifelong love between Sioned and Rohan impacts the nearly 5,000 pages that follow!…

As for the payoff promised in the title – Bridges has a little list.

… Riding the Dragon, as it were, is hardly a new pastime. I’m just glad it’s got a shiny new brand so we can bring new friends into the fold! You might find your gateway dragon in one of these titles:

Weapons and Wonders by Devin Harnois: Still not sure you actually want to f**k the dragon? That’s okay! Fourth Wing may have become famous for people falling in love while adjacent to dragons, but romance offers great opportunities as well, such as Weapons and Wonders by Devin Harnois where our two heroes fall in love over mechanical magical dragons….

(2) GLASGOW 2024 FAN FUND AUCTION REPORT. Sandra Bond (European TAFF admin) and Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey (North American TAFF Administrator) shared “The League of Fan Funds newsletter” which reports how much money was fan fund auctions raised at Glasgow 2024 and where it’s going.

Bids were taken of £4,420.20 at the Worldcon auction. Net of card fees the total raised by the live auction was £4,390.47.  

The silent auction raised another £603.52 (£610 before fees).  

All the other activities over the table, plus other donations including cash raised in the bar, came to £1,670.49 after fees, plus US$120.  

The total raised was £6,664.48, plus the dollars. The LFF will distribute the money as shown below (after taking into account earmarked donations, fund requirements, and other fundraising plans):

  • TAFF: £2,464.48 + $120  
  • GUFF: £1,700  
  • DUFF: £750  
  • The Science Fiction Encyclopaedia: £750  
  • European Fan Fund: £500  
  • Con or Bust: £500

The report also includes the group photo below taken (by Mike Benveniste) of all the people who could be gathered in one place at the Glasgow Worldcon who’d ever been a fan fund delegate, with an identification key (provided by Alison Scott). (Which is very handy for when you look at someone, say “I know who that is!” and it turns out you’re wrong.) Click for larger image.

You’re also invited to view the “League of Fan Funds” web page maintained by David Langford.

(3) FINIS. Abigail Nussbaum doesn’t think it’s so bad at all: “The Umbrella Academy, S4”.

As a known curmudgeon I am in the weird position of feeling like I should go to bat for this season….

…Every single season of The Umbrella Academy has revolved around the Hargreeves siblings preventing, by the skin of their teeth, an apocalypse that probably wouldn’t have happened without their presence. They are the cause of, and solution to, all the multiverse’s problems. It’s hard to imagine a resolution to that situation that wouldn’t involve taking them all off the board. Emotionally, too, there’s a logic to this entire family going down together. This was never a “change and grow” show. The Hargreeves might make concrete changes in their lives – Viktor transitions, Luther gets married, Diego has a family – but when it comes down to it, they remain a bunch of screwed up people who can only really relate to each other, and that often very dysfunctionally. Ending the show on “I love you… but you’re all such assholes” strikes, I think, the perfect note….

(4) CHARACTER ACTING. Lots of cosplay photos here: “SEE IT! Anime NYC takes over the Big Apple” at amNewYork.

Thousands of manga and anime characters took over the Jacob Javits Convention Center over the weekend for the 2024 Anime NYC convention.

The entertainment mecca, located on 34th Street and 11th Avenue, was overrun with cosplayers adorning the looks of their favorite fictional characters over three days. From cartoonish heroes to video game villains, people of all ages descended on the convention center from Aug. 23 to Aug. 25….

(5) BUT NOW, GOD KNOWS, ANYTHING GOES. [Item by Steven French.] Not entirely sure about that last line here. “Horror films were reviled as one step up from pornography – now the genre is a force to be reckoned with” says the Guardian.

Horror is the little genre that could. While 2024’s tentpole releases were struggling, before the summer’s double whammy of Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, horror never stopped plugging away, week after week, mostly under the critical radar. Films such as Immaculate and Abigail reaped healthy returns, while Oz Perkins’ breakthrough hit, Longlegs, has made almost 10 times its budget. Horror doesn’t require lavish spending or costly stars and its loyal fans will happily turn up to watch any old devil doll, nun or exorcism, ever hopeful of stumbling across an inspired nugget of nastiness….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 26, 1980 – Chris Pine, 44. I was surprised when I decided on Chris Pine for today’s Birthday to learn how varied his genre performances had been. 

Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, is in production. And a spin-off film focused on female Spider-related characters is also in development. So why am I starting off by mentioning a film that’s still in development? It’s because he’s already said he’s voicing Spider-Man aka Peter Parker there. Very cool. More Spiders!

Chris Pine

Next up for him here is another voicing role as Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians. It’s about how they (Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman), who persuade a reluctant Jack Frost to stop the evil Pitch Black from tut turning the world in darkness. Voicing a character properly is essential to giving the being a sense of life that the audience member can relate to. He does a splendid job of making this character do that. I’m very much looking to hearing him do so with his Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse character.

He had yet a third voicing role and it’s got an interesting back story. He voiced Dave in Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, an educational documentary science fiction adventure film. Interesting in itself, but what’s more interesting is that it was brought into being by none other than NASA through a grant from Jet Propulsion Lab via the international Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn which it depicts. 

Oh, and he wasn’t the original individual cast as Dave, that was John Travolta. 

Look now, we’ve live roles. Really we do. 

He played Steve Trevor in both Wonder Woman films. The films are great and he makes a most excellent Steve Trevor I’d say.

A Wrinkle in Time film (I say film as there was also not surprisingly a BBC series as well) has him as Alexander Murry — an astrophysicist in the employ of the American government, husband of Katherine Murry.

Ok, last year he was one of the executive producers of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a heist film set in the Forgotten Realms RPG setting. I am very much not detailing the bidding war between Hasbro and the film companies over the rights to the Forgotten Realms filming rights. Really I’m not. Here he played Edgin Darvis, a bard and former member of the Harpers. Stopping right there.

So what role am I forgetting? Oh that one. James T. Kirk in the Kelvin Timeline. I don’t think of it as a reboot but an alternate timeline entirely as Discovery showed us that such universes exist. So why not two such universes existing simultaneously? Remember Enterprise did that as well.

Does he make a more than merely than just acceptable Captain Kirk? Yes he does. He’s obviously very different than Shatner but just as believable as that character. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) THIS ONE CAN’T KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY. “Bad apple? How Disney’s Snow White remake turned sour” according to the Guardian.

In theory, it must have sounded like a good idea. At least to Hollywood movie studio executives keen to make big bucks by playing it safe with themes and stories that might be familiar to a mass audience.

A modern remake of Snow White: cashing in on the beloved Disney original with fresh stars, A-list names and a fairytale with a happy ending that everyone could enjoy.

It has not turned out that way….

(9) COME ON DOWN! BBC’s Witness History tells the story of “Canada’s first UFO landing pad”.

In 1967, the small town of St. Paul, Canada declared that they were a place that welcomed everyone, even the aliens. They did this by building a giant UFO landing pad, hoping to attract intergalactic tourists. They timed it to coincide with Canada’s centennial celebrations. 

Although most of the town saw it as a light-hearted joke the driving force behind the alien parking space Margo Lagassee, was a firm believer in the outer space community. 

Paul Boisvert who was the part of the original crew behind the landing pad tells Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty how St. Paul became a destination spot for extraterrestrial visitors. 

He also makes clear if aliens do descend on St. Paul he “would be pleased to feed them some Pierogi, Garlic Sausage and Pea Soup.”

(10) COMICS GRADER LOSES DEFAMATION SUIT. “Collectables Evaluator Hit With $10M Verdict for Disparaging Couple’s Comic Book Restorations” – The Legal Intelligencer analyzes the decision. Registration required.

A leading voice in the world of comic book collection was hit with a $10 million verdict Tuesday for falsely accusing a pair of sellers of using faulty techniques to restore high-value comics.

In a determination that included $5 million in punitive damages, a Philadelphia jury found that Certified Guaranty Co. LLC—a company that assesses and grades the quality of collectible comic books—knowingly published defamatory statements about the plaintiffs’ work.

The jury returned its eight-figure verdict after less than an hour of deliberation, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney, Lane Jubb Jr. of the Beasley Firm. Yet during settlement talks, Jubb said, the defendants’ insurance company never offered more than $1 million.

“The bad faith case here is going to be so much easier,” he said.

Jubb said there had been plenty of opportunity to reach a settlement during the lawsuit’s nearly eight-year pendency, but plaintiffs Matthew and Emily Meyers wanted to take their case to trial in order to clear their names in a public forum.

“In a defamation trial, when you have plaintiffs that are telling the truth, they’re willing to try the case to verdict because they know there’s nothing to hide,” Jubb said.

CGC’s attorney, Mark Zaid of Mark S. Zaid P.C. in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment.

The Meyerses—a married couple who started a business restoring and selling collectible comic books—claimed that CGC and one of its primary graders, Matthew Nelson, helped to circulate false rumors questioning the legitimacy and quality of their restorations.

According to pretrial memos, CGC is considered the leading grader of collectable comic books, and the Meyerses sent their books to the company to be rated when they began their business. The plaintiffs asserted that they honed their techniques in part by applying feedback they received from Nelson. But after receiving several grades that they perceived as unfairly low, the Meyerses stopped sending their work to CGC for evaluation.

The plaintiffs claimed that Nelson went on to post comments on a CGC-operated online forum lending credence to false rumors that the company refused to grade the Meyerses’ books because they were not genuine restorations. The plaintiffs alleged that Nelson’s comments “blackened their reputations as legitimate restoration specialists and amounted to a charge of fraud: that they were passing off photocopied fakes as genuine restorations.”

The Meyerses claimed that as a result of Nelson’s statements they had to start selling their restored comics well below their actual values and that past buyers reached out to request their money back on prior purchases.

… According to Jubb, much of the trial centered on the quality of the plaintiffs’ work, with examples of restored comics making appearances as evidence.

“We had some of the rarest comic books on the planet in the courtroom,” Jubb said….

(11) PAWSELLING. Big Hill Books, Minneapolis, Minn., shared feline bookseller Goose’s “Friday to-do list”:

(12) “THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FOR CHILDREN?” Talk about your dark fantasy. Ryan George is “The Guy Who Wrote ‘The Three Little Pigs’”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Sandra Bond, Michael “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Claire Brialey, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/14/24 Petronius T Arbiter Says, I’m Currently Looking For A Door, Or, Even A Window, Into Winter, Which I Plan To Leave Open And Move My Bed Near

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(1) DRAGONS, CARE AND FEEDING. George R.R. Martin has a long exposition about dragons, and not only those of Westeros, at Not a Blog:  “Here There Be Dragons”.

…Dragons need food.   They need water too, but they have no gills.  They need to breathe.  Some say that  Smaug slept for sixty years below the Lonely Mountains before Bilbo and the dwarves woke him up.   The dragons born of Valyria cannot do that.   They are creatures of fire, and fire needs oxygen.   A dragon could dip into the ocean to scoop up a fish, perhaps, but they’d fly right up again.  If held underwater too long, they would drown, just like any other land animal.

My dragons are predators, carnivores who like their meat will done.   They can and will hunt their own prey, but they are also territorial.   They have lairs.   As creatures of the sky, they like mountain tops, and volcanic mountains best of all.  These are creatures of fire, and the cold dank caverns that other fantasists house their pets in are not for mine.     Man-made dwellings, like the stables of Dragonstone, the  towers tops of the Valryian Freehold, and the Dragonpit of King’s Landing, are acceptable — and often come with men bringing them food.  If those are not available, young dragons will find their own lairs… and defend them fiercely.

My dragons are creatures of the sky.   They fly, and can cross mountains and plains, cover hundreds of miles… but they don’t, unless their riders take them there.   They are  not nomadic.  During the heyday of Valyria there were forty dragon-riding families with hundreds of dragons amongst them… but (aside from our Targaryens) all of them stayed close to the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer…

(2) ETHICS OF SPACE TRAVEL AND ALIEN CONTACT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Human beings are mucky creatures. As a bioscientist, and especially as one who engaged in germ-free and also specific-pathogen-free work in my gap year, I am acutely aware that humans are a home to a multitude of microbes and we continually shed them. (My work involved small chambers in which we kept an open agar plate on one side to ensure everything was clean; it was very bad news if ever we came in and something was growing as that meant that that particular experiment had to come to an abrupt end.)  So you can guess my ethical stance as to the proposed human landings on Mars. Yes, I know we defeated the Martians before with microbes, but that was on our own home turf in Blighty: there’s no need for us to contaminate putative Martians on Mars before we have done as much as we can using robots.  (Yes, I know that I constantly tell folk that the machines are taking over the world – though nobody ever listens – but, to be fair, I don’t mind them taking over Mars: I’m not that prejudiced.)

And even our bog-standard Lunar missions have seen us pollute our Moon.  Just a few weeks ago, at the end of May, there was research published that we might have already significantly contaminated Lunar polar ice with water from Apollo lander exhaust and that the proposed Starship craft will further contaminate it to a far, far greater degree. This is going to make ascertaining the origin of Lunar water ice trapped in permanently shadowed areas quite difficult. (Already on Earth we have contaminated Antarctic ice with isotopes from atomic bomb testing which is why those of us looking at palaeoclimatology through ice cores define ‘the present’ as being 1950 – can’t use any ice since then [other than for cooling one’s gin and tonic (it’s a silver lining)].  Betcha didn’t know you lived in the future!)

So, this week’s BBC Radio 4 programme Siedways – the first in a four part series – on the ethics of the search for aliens and alien contact piqued my interest. (Even though the programme trailer mentioned ‘inter-galactic’ aliens… I’d settle for detecting interstellar techno aliens.) Anyway, you can decide how good the panel was for yourself…  Access the programme here: “BBC Radio 4 – Sideways, A New Frontier, A New Frontier: 1. A Message to Ourselves”.

(3) TCA 2024. There are two genre shows among the winners of the Television Critics Awards 2024. (Complete list at the link.) The winners were selected by the TCA’s membership of more than 230 TV journalists from across the United States and Canada.

  • Outstanding Achievement in Family Programming: Doctor Who (Disney+)
  • Heritage Award: Twin Peaks

(4) PEACE IN SFF. “C.S. Lewis, Sci-fi, and the Normality of Peace” by Peter Jacobsen at the Foundation for Economic Education.

…One of the easiest ways to understand what Lewis is doing in Out of the Silent Planet is to look at the context in which he is writing. The book was published in 1938, when sci-fi works like H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds dominated.

In an article “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s ‘Out of the Silent Planet,’” author David Downing argues that much of what Lewis was doing in the Space Trilogy was challenging sci-fi tropes he found objectionable. He says the novel started when “Lewis and his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien agreed that there simply were not enough of their favorite sort of stories available [in the sci-fi genre], so they decided to try their own hand at it.”

Lewis goes out of his way to point out his debt to Wells in the novel, but it’s clear he disagrees with many Wellsian takes on sci-fi. One disagreement in particular stood out to me. Unlike the violent, malevolent Martians in The War of the Worlds, the extra-terrestrials in Lewis’s book are peaceful.

Brilliantly, Lewis makes it clear that the characters, like the reader, share the bias in assuming the creatures will be evil. The protagonist, Ransom, in his first encounter with one species of extra-terrestrial called the sorn, is repulsed and flees the scene. It didn’t help that Ransom was taken by other humans against his will. In that sense he had some reason to fear the sorn. But the only reason he was taken was that the other humans feared the sorn. The sorn simply wanted to talk, but the humans believed it was demanding a sacrifice.

As a reader, this point dawned on me slowly. The natives call the planet that Ransom lands on Malacandra, and there are several rational and animal species on the planet. As I read through the novel, I kept wondering, “Which of these is going to be the bad species? Which alien is the antagonist?”

Ransom shares this thinking. As he continues on the planet, he befriends a different species known as the hrossa who teach him the planetary language. In interacting with the hrossa, he tries to uncover which of the species on the planet rules the others. Which species is in control?

He slowly discovers that things are not as he expected. It isn’t the case that one species violently controls the others. Rather, each one specializes in a few things, and cooperates and exchanges with the others. This seems so foreign to Ransom that he’s skeptical that this could be true at first. However, he slowly discovers that the only hierarchy is a willing submission of all three species to the divine order.

As we continue through the book, Ransom soon discovers that the planet Malacandra is actually what we call Mars. Again, Lewis makes the contrast clear between his own works and works like The War of the Worlds. Mars, despite having been named by humans after the god of war, is a peaceful place.

The Martians are not violent invaders. Ransom asks about violent conflict: “If both wanted one thing and neither would give it… would the other at last come with force? Would they say, give it or we kill you?”

The Hrossa can’t understand why that would ever be necessary. Why would they want something like violence or war?

It’s a beautiful reframing of the issue. Peace is normal….

(5) STREET-LEGAL FLYING SAUCER. Of course, as Jacobsen says above, not everyone is prepared to encounter peace-loving aliens. “A UFO car drove cross-country. Officers thought it was out of this world” – behind a paywall in the Washington Post.

Adam Carnal, a deputy in Crawford County, Mo., wasn’t sure what he would find when he pulled over a flying saucer on Interstate 44 late last month. The vehicle had committed a lane violation, he said, and he wasn’t sure if it was allowed to be on the road in the first place.

As Carnal approached, he recalled the top of the cockpit lifting to reveal two people sporting green, alien-like glasses. The driver raised a hand and gave Carnal a Vulcan salute, the famous gesture from the TV series “Star Trek.”

“I come in peace,” Carnal said the man told him.

The traffic stop was one of four that lifelong alien-enthusiast Steve Anderson experienced during his multiday drive from Indianapolis to the Roswell UFO Festival in New Mexico. After being pulled over twice in Missouri and two more times in Oklahoma, he said, he was also welcomed to Roswell by officers who knew he’d be arriving, awaiting his lunar landing in the parking lot of his hotel.

“I thought, how cool would it be to get to ride in a flying saucer?” he said. “So since I don’t have the technology to make one that flies, I built a driving saucer.”…

…Anderson bought a tiny 1991 Geo Metro and rang up Dennis Bellows, a mechanic friend who had built a few other cars for him. Anderson asked Bellows if he could transform the Geo into a flying saucer, like the kind in old sci-fi movies….

…The car’s bubble-shaped top — adorned with an antenna — took an extra bit of ingenuity. Bellows ultimately warmed pie slices of plexiglass to form the contraption….

… Anderson is used to being stopped by law enforcement while he’s driving the space cruiser — one of roughly 45 cars he keeps at his home in Indiana. He said he often hands over a gag driver’s license identifying him as “Al Ien” and tells officers that he’s from the planet Krypton, before handing over his real identification….

(6) WILL THEY DOUBLE UP OR DOUBLE DOWN? The media asks, “Between ‘Gladiator II’ and ‘Wicked,’ is the new ‘Barbenheimer’ upon us?” Despite CNN’s fervent hope and best effort, the pairing doesn’t click the same way – and is missing a lyrical handle.

This year, two disparate, big-budget films will share a release date: One, an R-rated historical epic stacked with a starry cast of Oscar hopefuls. The other, a musical based on a beloved property with plenty of pink and a Billboard-friendly soundtrack.

Sound familiar?

With “Gladiator II” and the first part of “Wicked” sharing a release date, days before Thanksgiving, movie theaters are nearing their truest chance at another “Barbenheimer,” a viral phenomenon that in 2023 drove audiences to the movie theater by the millions, leaving a massive mark in pop culture and at the box office.

But what will we call it? “Gladiator II” star Paul Mescal thinks “Glicked” (pronounced glick-id) is the portmanteau that suits the prospective double feature best.

“’Wickiator’ doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it?” he said in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I think the films couldn’t be more polar opposite and kind of worked in that context previously, so fingers crossed people come out and see both films on opening weekend.”

But maybe we moviegoers (and Mescal) are getting ahead of ourselves. Tom Nunan, a lecturer at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and TV and the founder of the production company Bull’s Eye Entertainment, isn’t fully sold on “Barbenheimer” 2.0.

… It should be noted that after the smashing success of “Barbenheimer” summer, no release weekends have seen the same double-feature draw, though musings of “Saw Patrol” and “Garfuriosa” pairings did make the rounds online. Those were more jokes about how two seemingly incompatible films could reach the same audiences than genuine attempts at creating a viral trend — in no world does the über-graphic “Saw X” pair well with the kid-friendly “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie.”…

(7) SHANNEN DOHERTY (1971-2024). Actress Shannen Doherty, known in genre circles for Charmed, died July 13 of cancer at the age of 53.

…Doherty starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano in “Charmed” from 1998-2001, at which point her character was replaced by one played by Rose McGowan…

She was best known for her work on Beverly Hills, 90210 and its reboots.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 14, 1939 – Sid Haig. (Died 2019.) This Scroll, we come to honor not a performer who was known as a hero, one who was legendary mostly as a villain, Sid Haig, a role he played in fantasy, horror and SF. 

His most well-known role was as Captain Spaulding in the Rob Zombie films House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and 3 from Hell. Not for those easily offended, nor for those expected a storyline with a plot that make sense, the character is an icon of horror. SPOILER ALERT — Unlike Freddie Krugger, Rob Zombie has so far suggested this character is indeed dead. END SPOILER ALERT. Oh, and Spaulding is named for Groucho Marx’s Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding character from the Thirties Animal Crackers film. 

Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding

He had one major roles in SF, that being the evil Dragos on Jason of Star Command, the series James Doohan was. He appeared in every episode of the two seasons that series ran. Dragos, Jason’s main adversary, intends to rule the galaxy and it is up to Jason and the Star Command to stop him. Haig delightfully played him way over the top in the costume below.

Sid Haig as Dragos

He showed up in Star Trek in as First Lawgiver in “The Return of The Archons”.  I’m reasonably certain everyone here has seen it but if not, the plot is that Enterprise is investigating the disappearance of the USS Archon on the planet Beta III, Kirk and his crew encounter an old-style Western community brainwashed and subservient to a sinister godlike figure called Landru. He was the First Lawgiver. 

The final role that I’m going to was on Batman in two episodes, “The Spell of Tut” and Tut’s Case is Shut”, he’s a minion on King Tut,  the enemy of Batman who created specifically created who was portrayed by Victor Buono as was this character, Royal Apothecary. As you can see, the costume that they gave was quite silly. 

Sid Haig as Royal Apothecary

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Heart of the City finishes her Sunday crossovers.
  • Lio also has a crossover.
  • Thatababy sees some exotic birds.
  • Rubes reminds us wizards have discriminating palates.
  • Tom Gauld encounters declining standards.

(10) TINY L.A. “He built miniatures of LA buildings for fun. Now, Guillermo del Toro is among his fans” at LAist.

Many transplants come to Los Angeles to chase a dream. Kieran Wright kind of just stumbled onto his.

The New Zealander moved to the city about 8 years ago, with the humble goal of soaking in as much of L.A. as he could.

“I wanted to connect with the city as a local would, and I had so much catching up to do,” Wright said. “I started building this picture of L.A. that was different to the one that I had imagined, it turned out to be in the best way possible.”

Those quests took him on drives far and close to places famous and offbeat. Wright was fascinated with the diner, one staple in the American movies and TV shows he watched before moving to Los Angeles. It was at an icon of the genre, Rae’s Restaurant in Santa Monica, where his love for the city, architecture, and Americana all came together to nudge him to try out a hobby — to build miniature replicas of L.A. buildings that are as beautiful as they are painstakingly faithful….

…One of his career highlights, Wright said, came via a purchase notice he got on Twitter. The buyer was filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who would end up collecting several more pieces, including a mini replica of The Formosa Cafe, and The Jim Henson Company.

After Wright delivered the model to del Toro’s house, he asked the director to send him a photo of its final setting when he finds a place for it.

“Sure enough, a couple of days later, he sent me a photo of the miniature surrounded by everything in his house,” Wright said. “He’s got all sorts of interesting oddities and collectibles… and the art fits in there perfectly.”…

(11) STARLINKS IN WRONG ORBIT. [Item by Jeanne Jackson]. Last night [July 11], I watched a Starlink launch on the usual Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Patrol Base right after logging off from my Thursday night writers’ group meeting. Although the thing was hard to see owing to an intense shroud of pea-soup fog on the launching pad, the bird got off just fine. Except for the ground visibility problem (frequent in S. California), everything looked normal. There was a good bit of uncustomary frost on the upper parts of the second-stage engine, but the Spaceflight Now commentator (independent journalist, not part of Space X) thought it was probably harmless. The first stage landed perfectly on its drone barge in the Pacific Ocean.

 I went to bed last night with the erroneous idea that the launch was successful. The second stage had injected everything into orbit, and I’d never heard of Falcon 9 having any trouble with the later circularization burn, a 1 or 2 second shot upon reaching apogee. I entered the launch into the Log, sat down to watch two Perry Mason episodes, took Tillion (my dog) outdoors at midnight, and went to bed.

 Today, I found out otherwise. The 20 Starlink birds had indeed made into orbit—the wrong orbit. Indeed, it was the worst orbit possible short of getting listed as FTO (Failed To Orbit). The circularization burn had not taken place as planned. Instead, there was what the astronautics trade euphemistically calls a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” of the upper stage motor. In plain English, the confounded thing blew itself to bits.

 Oops.

 I’ve made some changes in my Space Flight Log entries for these 20 Starlink satellites, of course.

 Independent sources tell me that the perigees of the twenty comsats were very, very low: mostly around 130-140 kilometers, with a few outliers around 115 and one up at 190. Apogees ran from 250 to 325 kilometers. This is not conducive to long spacecraft lifetime. 130 km is ~80 miles. It’s reported that Elon Musk ordered that the satellites save themselves by using their argon-ion maneuvering thrusters, but this is unlikely to be effective. It normally takes two weeks or more for these low-power, continuous-boost thrusters to move the satellites into their operating orbits, but the projected lifetimes of this bunch are probably measurable in days, if not hours. Each of them has a pair of solar panels giving a 30-meter wingspread, meaning gross quantities of atmospheric drag.

 In other words, Musk’s order is like Jim Kirk ordering Warp 9 when all Scotty has online is a single impulse engine in dire need of repair. Unlike in Star Trek, it ain’t gonna happen.

 I mentioned an anomalous frosty buildup on the 2nd stage engine, upstream of the combustion chamber. The current online buzz has it that this probably came from a small liquid oxygen leak. The frosty buildup may have accumulated enough to clog lines in the 40+ minutes between initial cutoff and reignition for the circularization burn, causing an explosion. The explosion was apparently of insufficient destructive force to prevent satellite deployment.

This has never happened before on a Falcon 9—it certainly isn’t a design flaw. Most likely, somebody goofed at some point during assembly of that upper stage, and nobody else caught the mistake. Either that, or some subcontractor supplied Space X with a faulty part (this has happened before), and no one in Space X tested the part properly prior to installation.

Most likely, the underlying cause of the failure was doing things in a hurry. The only good things about this incident are that astronauts were not involved, and no customer was discommoded by it—Starlink is an in-house operation of Space X. Just imagine what the public outcry would have been, had the payload been a billion-dollar space probe, space telescope, or reconnaissance satellite, paid for by taxpayers rather than corporate stockholders. Never mind the noise had it been a human flight mission.

In the past year or two, Space X has been emphasizing faster and faster launch tempos. Up to now, they’ve gotten away with it, but this is likely to draw them up short for at least a couple or three months while they track down the cause and come up with a remedy for it. Space is a harsh, hostile environment, and rocket science is unforgiving of mistakes.

Faster, better, cheaper—pick any two. And do it right, not do it Tuesday—if you want to deliver a product which satisfies your customers.

(12) PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS – MIND READING THE BRAIN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Nature comes news of brain scans now being sufficiently detailed that we can identify a single language word.  “Ultra-Detailed Brain Map Shows Neurons for Words’ Meanings”.

Ultra-detailed brain map shows neurons that encode words’ meaning. For the first time, scientists identify individual brain cells linked to the linguistic essence of a word…

To an extent, the researchers were able to determine what people were hearing by watching their neurons fire. Although they couldn’t recreate exact sentences, they could tell, for example, that a sentence contained an animal, an action and a food, and the order in which the words appeared…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended takes us to the Villain Pub to contend with “A Despicable QUIET PLACE”.

Fallout, The Last of Us, A Quiet Place – so many apocalypse stories! So what happens when a Ghoul, a Clicker and Death Angel walk into a bar and what do the other villains think about them?

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

Pixel Scroll 1/28/24 Intergalactic Antiques Road Show

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(1) GALAXY QUEST FUNKOS. Slashfilm rejoices: “Cool Stuff: By Grabthar’s Hammer, Galaxy Quest Funko POPs Have Arrived!”

… Funko has revealed three new POP vinyl figures of Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) as Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, Sir Alexander (Alan Rickman) as Dr. Lazarus, and Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) as Tech Sergeant Chen. They’re all given the classic look from the original “Galaxy Quest” TV series, though they’re not intended to be the classic versions of their characters. If they were, Tim Allen’s hair mold would probably look more retro. However, they did depict Fred Kwan with that semi-squinted expression in his eyes, which only really happened when he was fully in character on the show. Personally, I’d like to have a series of “Galaxy Quest” Funko POPs with them looking disheveled, such as Sir Alexander with hair poking out of his torn alien headpiece.

What’s a little disappointing is the lack of the rest of the original crew, with no figures for Gwen DiMarco (Sigourney Weaver) as Lt. Tawny Madison and Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell) as Laredo in sight. Seems like quite an oversight to exclude both the woman and the Black cast members from the movie/series, especially since the packaging for the other figures indicates that there are two other “Galaxy Quest” Funko POPs on the way…

(2) AFTER ACTION REPORT PART II. {By Steven French.] [Part I was in a previous Scroll.] It wouldn’t be a fantasy exhibition in Leeds without *some* mention of JRR! Leeds Central Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination included a couple of displays with Tolkien-related material including one with a photo of his and Edith’s house in West Park, out on the edge of the city, as well as two of his poems that were published in the university student magazine The Gryphon. One, ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ not only features a dragon on its hoard but also makes mention of a ring (!). The other, ‘Light as Leaf on Lindentree’ , from 1925, eventually became the Song of Beren and Lúthien which Strider recited to the hobbits on Weathertop. 

(3) AFTER ACTION REPORT PART III. [By Steven French.] And finally (honest!), no fantasy exhibition would be complete without a dragon or two and Fantasy: Realms of Imagination at Leeds Central Library had its fair share, including this fine example:

Plus an egg or two:

But my favourite was this little fellow, made by the Bermantofts Pottery of east Leeds:

(Bermantofts Pottery also made the ox-blood faïence (glazed terracotta tiles) for the facades of such London Underground stations as Covent Garden and Russell Square)

Even the reading room, with its magnificent ceiling, took part in the spot-the-dragon competition (can you see it?!):

Fun for kids of all ages!

(4) ABOUT THOSE SMOFCON VIDEOS. Ersatz Culture advanced this “Modest Proposal” about the Chengdu panels at SMOFcon:

He’s also posted this at Mastodon, where Cheryl Morgan gave a response that can be read at the link.

(5) TIANWEN. The “Tianwen” project was announced in Chengdu last October with the cooperation of representatives of several professional writers groups and Hugo Award Administrator Dave McCarty. This puff piece encompasses what we know so far: “Tianwen: Unveiling China’s Diverse Science Fiction to the World” at News Directory 3. While the publicity seeks to associate a new literature prize with the Hugo brand, it does not appear to claim a formal connection to the WSFS award.

The announcement and unveiling of the “Tianwen” project at the first Industrial Development Summit of the World Science Fiction Conference is set to revolutionize the Chinese science fiction scene. This global project, launched by the Chinese Authors Association and the Organizing Committee of the World Science Fiction Conference, aims to discover new talents, support science fiction works, and promote the integrated development of the industry.

The project was unveiled by Alai, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, Hiroshi Osawa, Chairman of the Japan Science Fiction Writers Association, and Dave McCarty, head of the Hugo Award Selection Committee. Alai expressed his hope that “Qu Yuan’s romanticism and idealism will be better publicized in ‘Tianwen’”, while Osawa emphasized the impact of the project on shaping the future generation.

The “Tianwen” plan includes the establishment of the Tianwen Global Science Fiction Literature Prize, which will be awarded annually from 2024. This prize aims to encourage new and young writers, focusing on their innovative literary works and expression of new cultural fields. It will serve as an important supplement to the prestigious Hugo Awards and contribute to the diversity of the Hugo culture.

Additionally, the “Tianwen” project will host various activities to promote the integrated development of the global science fiction industry. These include sub-forums, award ceremonies, promotion conferences, creation salons, exhibitions, and industry roadshows.

Liang Xiaolan, the chairman of the World Science Fiction Conference Chengdu 2023, emphasized that “Tianwen” is not only an award and program, but also a platform for the industrial development of national science fiction culture. This initiative aims to elevate Chinese science fiction to a global level and promote exchange and collaboration between China and foreign countries.

With the inclusion of Chinese works in the selection process of the Hugo Awards for the first time, “Tianwen” will play a crucial role in showcasing Chinese science fiction to a wider audience. Dave McCarty views “Tianwen” as a valuable platform for international science fiction exchange, leading the way for the global science fiction industry….

(6) LESS PAIN, MORE GAIN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The Directors Guild of America–the most prominent Hollywood Guild that did not strike last year—has now gotten a bump in several contract areas to more closely match their sibling guilds. You know, the siblings who did walk the picket lines. “DGA, the Guild That Didn’t Strike, Gets Improved Contract Terms” in Variety.

The Directors Guild of America, the Hollywood union that did not strike last year, told members Thursday that it has won additional gains, including a viewership bonus for streaming shows.

DGA members will get a 50% residual bump for work on the most-watched shows on streaming platforms, matching the terms won by the Writers Guild of America.

The DGA also got increases in several other areas, including a .5% increase in pension and health contributions in both the second and third year of the contract.

The DGA agreed to a three-year deal with the major studios on June 3, about a month into the WGA strike. At the time, DGA negotiators did not seek a viewership-based bonus, instead choosing to focus on a 21% increase in streaming residuals to account for the growth in foreign subscribers.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was not obligated to reopen the terms of that deal, which was ratified by 87% of the members. But by doing so, and matching the streaming residual terms obtained by the WGA, the AMPTP helps DGA leadership make the case to its members that they were not disadvantaged by refusing to strike….

(7) BACK TO THE MOON. Maya St. Clair praises Samantha Harvey’s novel in “ORBITAL Review: the stars look very different today” at News from the Orb.

…When literary authors cross over into science fiction, they often do so as enlightened homesteaders, equipped with notions of the field’s backwardness and confidence that their own innovative ideas will reform the backwaters of tropey sci-fi for the better. (Remember when Ian McEwan — in A. D. 2019 — told sci-fi writers that they’d better start “actually looking at the human dilemmas” that would arise with high-level AI?)

Samantha Harvey falls into a different camp, in that she’s not attempting what we might consider “science fiction” — not exactly. I initially found Orbital (2022) because it was displayed the sci-fi section of my library; however, Harvey has described it as “space realism”: a rendering of life in space as humans currently experience it. Orbital takes place in the near future, on an international space station (the ISS in all but name), wherein six astronauts live and work, sheltered from the black void by its narrow walls. Their daily tasks are structured and mundane, and nothing happens in the novel (spacewalks, toilet repairs, floating dinners served in bags) that hasn’t happened in real life. No speculative elements, except a new manned mission to the moon, are introduced.

That being said, sci-fi fans would do themselves a disservice in skipping Orbital. Although it has no aliens or new technology, it’s one of the most inventive and immersive novels I’ve read in a long time.

(8) A HIGH WIRE ACT. That’s what Paul Weimer says readers are witnessing in his review of the final volume of a trilogy by Kevin Hearne, A Curse of Krakens: “Seven Kennings Trilogy and the Power of Story” at Nerds of a Feather.

…Right at the start, we find that this novel, and this trilogy is about the telling of story. A bard with the power of a Kenning, in particular the magical ability to project his voice, begins to tell the war-weary city of the war that they themselves are suffering privation under.  We are in medias res of the Giant’s War, and the bard, we soon learn, has been sent to tell the story of the Giants War and prepare the populace for what is to come next.

But it’s not a simple linear narrative. This is not a simple recitation of facts. The bard has collected and (with his flawless memory) organized a raft of stories from, ultimately, twenty or so points of view. This sounds absolutely unwieldy and unsustainable and it is a high wire act that Hearne works at through the books. Hearne manages it by telling the stories of these characters through the bard in a narratively interesting and engaging order, which is not a straight up order by dates. And by having the bard tell the stories, we can use present day events in Pelemyn itself as a breather and a buffer from the stories he tells. 

What’s more, this ambitious three volume out of order narrative drives plot right up to the “present”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 28, 1981 — Elijah Wood, 43. In Elijah Wood, we’ve an actor that I always enjoy watching. Best known here and in the greater film community for being Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, he has a much more extensive film career.

Elijah Wood in 2011. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

He makes his debut in a blink and you’ll miss it performance as Video Game Boy #2 in Back to the Future Part II; he next has a significant genre role as Nat Cooper in Forever Young, the screenplay being written by J. J. Abram from his story named “The Rest of Daniel”. 

He next shows up as the young Mike Marshall (primary version) in Radio Flyer with Tom Hanks playing, uncredited the older version and the film narrator.  Fantastic film that. 

Then he’s Huck in, well, The Adventures of Huck Finn. Haven’t seen it, but the usual suspects at Rotten Tomatoes who did see this Disney Production did like it and gave it a seventy-three rating.  I know it’s not genre, but I like the story. A lot. 

Elijah Wood in 2019. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Next is SF in Deep Impact where he plays, let me see my notes, Leo Biederman, a teenage astronomer who discovers the Wolf–Biederman comet . Oh look they cast a teenager as a teenager!

Now we have an adult role for him in one of my favorite films — he’s Patrick Wertz in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Good role, wonderfully executed by him. 

Can we skip Sin City pretty please? Yes, I know, and do forgive me here.

He’s got a minor role in, depending in how you frame it, the reboot or new version or remake of The Toxic Avenger. I personally see no reason for such a perfectly trashy film to be made again, do you?

To quote Porky Pig, that’s it folks. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Frazz has a question about lunch.
  • Candorville shares an interesting collection of filk lullabies.
  • Tom Gauld has more about the life of books.

(11) GRAND PRIX. “Graphic novelist Posy Simmonds wins prestigious French comics award” reports the Guardian.

The graphic novelist Posy Simmonds has won the Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics festival – the first time a British artist and author has been awarded the world’s most prestigious prize for lifetime achievement in comics.

Simmonds’s satirical observations on modern British society, interweaving detailed illustration with long literary texts, are held to have redefined the graphic novel genre.

She said of the award: “I was gobsmacked – époustouflée, as you would say in French … It’s extraordinary because if you’re writing or drawing, you work in a room on your own, and it’s then very extraordinary when the book, or your work, or you are given a lot of exposure.”…

(12) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport has another free story – “The Empty Throne” by Benjamin C. Kinney – to encourage new subscribers.

For the final free-to-read story of January, Benjamin C. Kinney takes us to 19th century Budapest, where a young woman wrestles with her father’s angels. Note: Should you be inclined towards tremendous footnotes, the author has linked one at the end of the story for you to peruse.

(13) SQUISHMALLOWS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This Entertainment Weekly article recommends these as Valentine’s Day gifts. Hmpf. Perhaps for one’s young nephew, or niece, but it might be just a little bit ick (or EW) to give an adult love interest a squishy pillow-shaped plush styled after an underage tween/teen. “Harry Potter Squishmallows are available at Amazon just in time for Valentine’s Day”.

… Your wish has been granted with no wand-waving needed, as Harry Potter Squishmallows now exist. The lovable main character has been reimagined into a poofy, cozy plush toy that will delight any HP fan come Valentine’s Day. The Gryffindor legend has his glasses, Hogwarts house robe, and trademark lightning bolt scar all in an ultra-huggable material. 

If you’re interested in snapping up the OG trio, Ron Weasley is also available, and Hermione Granger can be preordered now, too, with the official launch date set for February 13….

(14) THUNDERBOLT FANTASY. A new episode of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up today, where they discuss the second season of the Taiwanese Wuxia Puppet series Thunderbolt Fantasy, with special guest Tom Merritt of the Daily Tech News Show and Sword & Laser Podcast. “Anime Explorations Podcast: Episode 16: Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 2”.

(15) BASKETBALL MOANS. I don’t know. Maybe you can figure it out: “Tyra Banks Nets, Furries Clip Goes Viral” at Buzzfeed.

…The clip that began picking up steam was Tyra on the Jumbotron, covering her eyes with her hands as the two furries leaned over her to caress one another….

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Kathy Sullivan, Alexander Case, 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 10/30/23 If You Give A Scroll A Cookie

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(1) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Hai Ya TV interviews

CGTN posted a 3½-minute subtitled interview on YouTube with the Best Novelette winner.

On Weibo, CCTV followed up their earlier videolink interview with a 20-minute face-to-face interview with him.  This one is also untranslated though.

Jiang Bo also mentioned on Weibo that he’d been interviewed by a TV station in Chengdu, but I’ve not come across any online copy of it.

Robert J. Sawyer speaking at Shanghai bookshop

Per his Facebook, post-Worldcon Robert J. Sawyer embarked on a short signing tour of China.  From Bilibili, here’s a short clip from an event at a Shanghai bookshop, where the aforementioned Hugo finalist Jiang Bo also spoke.

Con reports and commentary

(All of the following quotes/extracts are via Google Translate, with minor manual edits.)

I wasn’t previously aware of Qitongren (骑桶人), but I see he’s had a couple of stories published in English.  He posted his thoughts on the event to Weibo.

In fact, I think this science fiction conference is very similar to Chinese society at this moment, really. Officials are trying to use high-tech digitization and high costs and manpower to create a beautiful, orderly, lively and technologically advanced conference that can bring business benefits and long-term development. However, when it is actually held, various unexpected events and problems will always occur…

But can I put it it? My thoughts are very similar to those of many science fiction writers. No matter how many shortcomings this World Science Fiction Convention has, and how many things are worthy of repeated complaints, after it is over, you will still feel like it was a grand and fantastical event when you think about it again. It’s a sweet dream that you still want to relive over and over again. You still hope that China will have the opportunity to do it again, and you firmly believe that it will be better than this time next time.

(Including La Zi [aka Hugo finalist Latssep], who complained to me during the convention that he was too tired and never wants to hold it again. I believe he must be thinking about this convention again and again. Of course, I also believe that he will not want to be an organizer next time it is held. He just wants to be a guest.)

SF Light Year’s Weibo posts, covered in detail in yesterday’s Scroll, prompted a number of replies, including:

In a “quote tweet”, Baoshu, writer of a Three-Body Problem sequel, and also translator of Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, talked about the hotel situation

In fact, if you can’t [get all con attendees] in one hotel, it’s normal to split it between several hotels. You would need to split it up anywhere. But the problem was the location. There was only one hotel nearby, and the others were seven or eight kilometers away. The round-trip time difference was one hour.

He also “quote tweeted” to make a more general observation:

It is reasonable to say that as this was the first time to hold this convention, so some problems were inevitable, but the problems were so deep that they are indeed a little more than “inevitable”… [laughing and crying emoji]

In another “quote tweet” of an SF Light Year post, Ling Shizhen, who also accepted the Best Fanzine Hugo for Zero Gravity News, said:

As one of the finalists for this year’s Hugo Awards I did not receive any active invitation from the organizers until September 21st this year, after I had asked the relevant people for help to inform the organizers.

Fan Bessie-Gu in turn “quote-tweeted” that Baoshu “QT”, but said that

You can click on SF Light Year’s Weibo to read his first two articles, but my personal experience was still very happy

A couple of days ago, one of the most established figures in Chinese SF, Han Song, ruminated on his overall experience of the con.

When I came back from Chengdu on the 22nd, I went directly from the airport to my workplace, and stayed in the office. I took my first bath in six days today. When the hot water soaked my body, I felt that I was alive. I couldn’t help but be pleasantly surprised. This past week has been intense, even thrilling. And I also had a premonition that I didn’t dare to go home. As a science fiction writer, I see history happening in the future, and as a journalist, I witness history happening now. Here lies the humbleness of human beings and the fragility of life. Reading Jiang Bo’s new work “Sky Sail” and Mo Xiong’s new work “Sequence of Destiny”, I lament the mystery of the universe and the elusiveness of the truth. Last night I dreamed that the science fiction convention was held again, and I gave a speech at the opening ceremony, but I couldn’t remember the content. After waking up, I couldn’t tell which one was more science fictional, reality or science fiction.

Han Song and RiverFlow at the opening ceremony, photo from RiverFlow’s con report

The Puppies controversy mentioned in a news item about the Hugos

A Chinese-language video compiling a variety of news stories posted to Weibo on Saturday 28th included as its final item a piece on the Hugos (from around 10:00 onwards).  It initially covers Hai Ya, but goes on to talk about Cixin Liu’s win for The Three-Body Problem, and then the background with the Sad and Rabid Puppies, and Marko Kloos recusing himself, opening up a slot for Three-Body Problem to become a Hugo finalist and then a winner.

Ken Liu
Sad and Rabin Puppies logos
Marko Kloos

(2) FIVE NIGHTS DELIVERS BOFFO B.O. The New York Times declares “Film Based on Horror-Survival Video Game Is Surprise Box Office Hit”.

An evil pizzeria mascot, Freddy Fazbear, became a surprise box office sensation over the weekend, reinforcing a message that moviegoers have been sending to Hollywood all year: Give us something new.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” sold an estimated $78 million in tickets at theaters in the United States and Canada from Thursday night to Sunday — a total that prompted double-takes in Hollywood because the movie did not play exclusively in theaters. “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which was based on a popular horror-survival video game, also arrived on the Peacock streaming service on Thursday.

“This is more confirmation that moviegoers are looking for something new or, to be precise, getting the chance to see something they love already appear in a movie theater for the first time,” said Bruce Nash, founder of the Numbers, a box office tracking and analytics site.

In contrast, “The Exorcist: Believer,” an effort to revive a 50-year-old horror franchise, flopped in exclusive release in theaters earlier this month, collecting just $26.5 million over its first three days….

(3) NEW BERTH. “Captain Nemo Series ‘Nautilus’ To Air On AMC After Disney+ Cancelation” reports Deadline.

Nautilus, the ten-part series inspired by Jules Verne’s beloved Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, has found a new home.

The series has landed at AMC, where it will air in 2024 as well as on AMC+. The move comes after the Disney+ UK commission was axed by the streamer earlier this summer as part of its content removal plan.

Nautilus tells the origin story of Captain Nemo: an Indian Prince robbed of his birthright and family, a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces that have taken everything from him….

(4) SENSITIVITY EDITING FOR HEYER. “‘You Can’t Hide It’: Georgette Heyer and the Perils of Posthumous Revision” in the New York Times.

…Among her ardent fans, though, she remains revered as the Queen of Regency Romance, a subgenre she essentially created and popularized. Her intricately researched historical narratives are still widely read nearly 50 years after her death; Julia Quinn, whose Regency romance series “Bridgerton” spawned the hit Netflix series, called her “the original.”

To date, Heyer’s books have sold around 20 million copies. But some readers have questioned her enduring popularity in light of offensive ethnic and antisemitic stereotypes that occasionally appeared in her work.

Most troubling to readers is her 1950 Regency romance “The Grand Sophy.” In a pivotal scene, the novel’s heroine confronts a greedy, villainous moneylender named Goldhanger, who is described as a “swarthy individual, with long, greasy curls, a semitic nose, and an ingratiating leer.”

“It’s not a stray comment, it’s a whole antisemitic scene,” said the romance novelist Cat Sebastian, who has read all of Heyer’s romances. “If I recommend her books, it’s with a lot of caveats.”

When Heyer’s American publisher, Sourcebooks, decided to release new editions of her romances this year, they had to strike a precarious balance. Leaving the original scene could repel some readers. But changing it risked provoking a backlash from fans and scholars who see posthumous revisions as a form of literary reputation laundering, or censorship.

After a lengthy back and forth with the Heyer estate, Sourcebooks made small but significant changes to “The Grand Sophy.” In the new version, the moneylender’s name has been changed to Grimpstone. References to his Jewish identity and appearance have been deleted, along with other negative generalizations about Jews.

Acknowledgment of the changes appears on the copyright page, which says “this edition has been edited from the original with permission of the Georgette Heyer Estate.”…

(5) SPHERES FOR FEARS. Christopher Cokinos tells LA Times readers that “’The War of the Worlds’ is much more than scary sci-fi”.

…Today, worries about an attack from the sky reach beyond fiction. No less than physicist Stephen Hawking has warned against humans advertising our presence in the cosmos because our messages could alert hostile beings. The U.S. government now takes seriously reports of UFOs or, in current parlance, “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” (In a twist, some say that if sightings of fast-moving, physics-defying objects are real, the best case would be that they are extraterrestrial. If not, it means other governments have technology America does not.)

Since “The War of the Worlds,” we’ve taken extraterrestrial hostility for granted. We didn’t always.

Wells wrote at the tail end of what was called the “plurality of worlds” debate. Once Galileo showed that Earth’s moon was a physical place and that Jupiter had multiple moons, a theological and philosophical question emerged: Would God waste other worlds by leaving them empty of life? The answer then was probably not. Instead, the expectation was that they’d be populated by beings more intelligent and more rational than Earthlings. There were utopias in the sky! Secular angels!

Wells turned that assumption on its head and used it to convey harsh truths about colonialism and to illustrate fears of war. “The War of the Worlds” explicitly referenced how European colonists waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania. The story also played off worries that a belligerent Germany, even in the late 19th century, could invade England….

(6) NEW FED AI REGS COMING. “Biden to Issue First Regulations on Artificial Intelligence Systems” reports the New York Times.

President Biden will issue an executive order on Monday outlining the federal government’s first regulations on artificial intelligence systems. They include requirements that the most advanced A.I. products be tested to assure that they cannot be used to produce biological or nuclear weapons, with the findings from those tests reported to the federal government.

The testing requirements are a small but central part of what Mr. Biden, in a speech scheduled for Monday afternoon, is expected to describe as the most sweeping government action to protect Americans from the potential risks brought by the huge leaps in A.I. over the past several years.

The regulations will include recommendations, but not requirements, that photos, videos and audio developed by such systems be watermarked to make clear that they were created by A.I. That reflects a rising fear that A.I. will make it far easier to create “deep fakes” and convincing disinformation, especially as the 2024 presidential campaign accelerates….

(7) A GOOD DEAL OF DRAGONS. “’Fourth Wing’ TV Show Coming to Amazon, ‘Iron Flame’ Sequel Rights” – Variety reports the option.

A “Fourth Wing” TV show based on Rebecca Yarros’ best-selling fantasy book series is in the works at Amazon MGM Studios.

Amazon and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, which has an overall deal with the studio, have acquired the rights to not only “Fourth Wing,” but its follow-up “Iron Flame,” which will be released Nov. 7, and the three remaining planned books in Yarros’ “Fourth Wing”-universe, “The Empyrean” book series, from Entangled Publishing….

(8) HIROAKI IKE DIES. Translator Hiroaki Ike passed away on October 27, 2023 the Science Fiction Writers of Japan announced today.

…He was 83 years old. The genres are wide-ranging, and in science fiction, works such as J.P. Hogan’s “Star of the Giants” series (Tokyo Sogensha) and Carl Sagan’s “Contact” (Shincho Bunko) (starting with “Heir to the Stars”) It is known for.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 30, 1896 — Ruth Gordon. You’ll likely best remember her as Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby. (Trust me, you don’t need to see Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby.) She’s quite excellent as Cecilia Weiss in The Great Houdini, and that pretty much sums up her genre work save Voyage of the Rock Aliens which keeps giving me giggles. Serious giggles. (Died 1985.)
  • Born October 30, 1923  — William Campbell. In “The Squire of Gothos” on Trek — a proper Halloween episode even if it wasn’t broadcast then — he was Trelane, and in “The Trouble With Tribbles” he played the Klingon Koloth, a role revisited on Deep Space Nine in “Blood Oath”. He appeared in several horror films including Blood Bath, Night of Evil, and Dementia 13. He started a fan convention which ran for several years, Fantasticon, which celebrated the achievements of production staffers in genre films and TV shows and raised funds for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a charitable organization which provides assistance and care to those in the motion picture industry with limited or no resources, when struck with infirmity and/or in retirement age. (Died 2011.)
  • Born October 30, 1939 — Grace Slick, 84. Initially performing with the Great Society, Slick achieved fame as the lead singer and front woman of Jefferson Airplane and then with Jefferson. “Hyperdrive” off their Dragonfly album was used at the MidAmeriCon opening ceremonies. And Blows Against the Empire was nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation at Noreascon 1, a year that had no winner.
  • Born October 30, 1947 — Tim Kirk, 76. His senior thesis would be mostly published by Ballantine Books as the 1975 Tolkien Calendar. Impressive. Even more impressive, he won Hugo Awards for Best Fan Artist at Heicon ’70, L.A. Con I, Torcon II, Discon II and again at MidAmeriCon. With Ken Keller, he co-designed the first cold-cast resin base used at MidAmeriCon. He also won a Balrog and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award as well.
  • Born October 30, 1951 — Harry Hamlin, 72. His first role of genre interest was Perseus on Clash of The Titans. He plays himself in Maxie, and briefly shows up in Harper’s Island. He also has two choice voice roles in Batman: the Animated Series,  Cameron Kaiser in “Joker’s Wild” and even more impressive as the voice of werewolf Anthony “Tony” Romulus in “Moon of the Wolf”.  Since I know a lot of you like the series, I’ll note he plays Aaron Echolls in Veronica Mars. It isn’t genre, is it? 
  • Born October 30, 1951 — P. Craig Russell, 71.  Illustrator whose work has won multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards. His work on Killraven, a future version of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, collaborating with writer Don McGregor, was lauded by readers and critics alike.  (Yes, that a page from it below.) Next up was mainstream work at DC with I think his work on Batman, particularly with Jim Starlin. He also inked Mike Mignola’s pencils on the Phantom Stranger series. He would segue into working on several Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné projects. Worth noting is his work on a number of Gaiman projects including a Coraline graphic novel.  Wayne Alan Harold Productions published the P. Craig Russell Sketchbook Archives, a 250+-page hardcover art book featuring the best of his personal sketchbooks.
  • Born October 30, 1958 — Max McCoy, 65. Here for a quartet of novels (Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx, Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs and Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone) which flesh out the back story and immerse him in a pulp reality. He’s also writing Wylde’s West, a paranormal mystery series.
  • Born October 30, 1972 — Jessica Hynes, 51. Playing Joan Redfern, she shows up on two of the very best Tenth Doctor stories, “Human Nuture” and “The Family of Blood”. She’d play another character, Verity Newman in a meeting of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, “The End of Time, Part Two”. Her other genre role was as Felia Siderova on Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) in the “Mental Apparition Disorder” and  “Drop Dead” episodes. Her last genre adjacent role is Sofie Dahl in Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.

(10) A MEETING OF MANLY MEN. Bill Higgins told X readers: “Perhaps the night before Halloween is a good time to retweet the story of The Weirdest Thing That Happened To Me At The American Library Association Conference. A bit spooky, but it has a very happy ending.” The thread starts here.

(11) ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN. With the help of past Horror Writers Association President Lisa Morton, the “NPR history podcast ‘Throughline’ examines the rise of Halloween’s popularity”.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Does this sound familiar? Mid-October, buy Halloween candy. Mid-October, begin eating Halloween candy. October 30, buy more Halloween candy. The holiday is now a multibillion-dollar industry, but Halloween traces its roots back about 2,000 years to the Irish countryside and a spiritual celebration known as Samhain. So how did Halloween get so commercial? We turn to the hosts of NPR’s history podcast, Throughline, Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei.

RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: Halloween in early 20th-century America was a holiday just for kids, a night all about mischief and pranks.

LISA MORTON: These pranks are perpetrated mainly by young boys. And the pranks start kind of innocent.

RUND ABDELFATAH, HOST:

That’s Lisa Morton, author of three books on the history of Halloween….

(12) LUGOSI’S LIFE. A biographical profile of an iconic actor: “Behind the Scenes of Dracula: Bela Lugosi’s Journey Into (And Out Of) Stardom” at Audiophix.

…Once Lugosi was 18 years old (in 1900) he knew he was going to pursue a life in the arts. He began his stage work in the early 1900s and found steady work traveling theater companies. This gave him opportunities to take part in plays, operas, and operettas. 

But it was in 1913 that he caught his big break at the Budapest-based National Theater of Hungary. The company cast him in over 30 of their shows, in which he played parts like Rosencrantz in Hamlet and Sir Walter Herbert in Richard III. This humble beginning would later take the actor on much bigger career paths….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Disneyland Unveils Test Droids Roaming The Theme Park – Will This End Well?” Why not? What I see in this video reminds me a lot of the duck parade at the Peabody Hotel.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, 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 1/18/21 Big Pixel In Little Scroll

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(1) COPYRIGHT ALTERNATIVE IN SMALL CLAIMS ENFORCEMENT ACT. Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) sounds unenthusiastic about the new CASE Act which will apply to copyright infringement claims of up to $30,000 and operate outside of the federal court system: “Legal Affairs Committee Alert: CASE Act on Copyright Small Claims Becomes Law” at the SFWA Blog.

…The Copyright Office will set up the tribunal and determine many details governing its use that were not made explicit in the bill. The bill’s passage is good news in general for creators, but it is not a panacea for pursuing copyright infringement claims. Indeed, for most SFWA members, it will likely be of little use, no matter what procedures the Office establishes. That’s because the copyright infringer must voluntarily participate in the process after being notified of the claim. If the infringer is anonymous or difficult to trace, it may be impossible to serve notice of the claim at all. It also only applies to infringers located in the USA, which means it can’t be used to counteract the vast number of overseas pirating websites.

The tribunal will primarily be used in cases in which the rights holder and the infringer both see the benefit of a relatively low-cost method of resolving their dispute. In some cases, a credible threat of escalating the case to federal court may persuade the infringer to participate in the lower cost tribunal. However, it will still not be cheap. Aside from the fee for initiating a claim, whose amount has yet to be set, consulting with a lawyer to present a compelling case will still be necessary, or at least highly advisable. Several groups are looking at arranging lower cost or pro bono legal advice for these cases, and the law does include an option for law students and student legal clinics to act as representatives.

(2) MORE THAN ELIGIBLE. Nerds of a Feather canvassed its contributors and came up with a high-powered list of sff works and series that should be considered for the Hugo: “2021 Nerds of a Feather Hugo Awards Recommended Reading, Part 1: Fiction Categories”.

…The rules for inclusion were simple–just: (a) meet the eligibility criteria; and (b) be “award worthy” (i.e. good). Given the subjectivity of the latter, it should come as no surprise that the selections on our longlist reflect the spectrum of tastes, tendencies and predilections found among our group of writers. You’ll find selections ranging from the obscure and literary to the unabashedly popular and commercial, and from all corners and subdivisions of the genresphere.

That said, this is not – nor does it intend to be – a comprehensive survey of the field. Some books that are undoubtedly “award worthy,” for example, are absent for the simple reason that we haven’t read them yet. Thus we encourage you to think of this as a list of candidates to consider–alongside others…. 

(3) MACPHEE ESTATE SALE CONTINUES. Doug Ellis has put out Spike MacPhee Catalog #5 – SF & Fantasy Art, Books, Magazines & Ephemera Sale, with over 600 items for sale. It’s part of the Spike MacPhee estate sale of original art, books and other material.

From 1977 to 1989, the Science Fantasy Bookstore operated in Harvard Square in Cambridge. Deb and I hung out there when we were in law school and became friends with the owner, Spike MacPhee. Spike was a member of NESFA and also founded the small press, Paratime Press, which published several checklists in the 1970’s. He was also GoH at the first Arisia convention in 1990.

Besides reading SF, Spike was a devoted science art collector. From the late 1960’s into the 1990’s, Spike attended several SF conventions – among them Boskone, Lunacon, Nycon III, Noreascon, Discon, Torcon and Disclave – where he would often buy art at the art show auction. He also became friends with many SF artists of the 1970’s and bought art directly from them as well. Spike remained a passionate fan until he passed away on November 13, 2019.

The PDF catalog with roughly 250 images can be found at this link until January 24. (41 MB file, 114 pages.)

On Facebook, Ellis has posted an image from the catalog with an interesting history:

Among the art that will be that catalog is this piece, done by artist Rick Sternbach in 1974. It was drawn by him on the outside (left side) and inside (right side) of a pizza box, which apparently had contained a pepperoni-hamburger pizza from Franco Pizza House in Cambridge, MA. As related in the Minicon 15 program book from 1979, where Sternbach was Artist Guest of Honor, comes this: “Yessir, Rick, he surely loved to…do pizza box cover artwork. Spike MacPhee, one of the people living at Terminus (the center of a lot of this activity, and Rick’s hang-out, when he was in town), thought a lot of Rick’s work…and he thought that it was his duty to save all those pizza-box covers…”

Definitely a unique piece of art! The pizza box is now in two pieces, as shown in the scan. Pizza not included.

(4) N3F SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNERS. The National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) Short Story Contest Judge Jefferson Swycaffer announced the winners in the January issue of TNFF.

  • First Prize: The Azazel Tree, by Chris Owens, a tale of morality, of absolute good and absolute evil, and one hero who strives to uphold the good, despite the awful cost.
  • Second Prize: The Eternal Secret, by John Yarrow, Heroic Fantasy in the classical mold, a tale that might have been told of Odysseus or Jason, fighting monsters and solving riddles.
  • Third Prize: If Music Be The Fruit of Love, by Jack Mulcahy, a tale of music and love, and how a crisis calls upon us to rise to the level of heroism.
  • Honorable Mention: The Haunting of the Jabberwocky, by Charles Douglas, a truly Carrollian story of wordplay and madness, and how a hero, unarmed, has the greatest weapon of all.

There were twenty-one entries, science fiction and fantasy, mostly from the United States, four from Great Britain.

(5) BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The Science Museum (UK) has combined their digitized collection with their API and their log of pages that have 0 views to create a web tool that will show each visitor a picture of an image that has never been looked at before. You can be the first person to see an object. “Never Been Seen”.

(I saw a page from a 1780 surgical manual and a seton needle and some 19th-century ebony-and-steel forceps)

(6) GERMANY’S OLDEST BOOKSELLER DIES. [Item by Darrah Chavey.] Of possible interest to File770 readers, since we tend to be bookstore fans. The H. Weyhe Bookstore, founded in 1840, is one of the oldest bookstores in Germany, founded before Germany was a country. It was purchased by Helga Weyhe’s grandfather in 1871, and has been in the family since then. Helga Weyhe worked at, and then ran, the bookstore since 1944. She passed away at the end of December or early Jan. at the age of 98. The New York Times has her story here.

(7) HERNANDEZ OBIT. Lail Montgomery Finlay Hernandez, a GoH of the 2014 World Fantasy Con and the daughter of pulp artist Virgil Finlay, died on January 13 from cancer at the age of 71.

She contributed remembrances to Virgil Finlay Remembered: The Seventh Book Of Virgil Finlay (1981) and Virgil Finlay’s Women Of Ages (1982) (see her foreword here: “Lail Finlay Remembers Her Father”) and was closely involved with the publication of The Collectors’ Book Of Virgil Finlay (2019). 

After her house burned down in November 2019 (killing her musician husband), a GoFundMe appeal was launched to help her and her daughter save what they could of her father’s art and papers. (See Pixel Scroll 11/29/19 The Scrolls of Our Teeth item #5.)

(8) LIGHTLE OBIT. Comics artist Steve Lightle died January 8. Yahoo! News has his profile:

As the artist for the popular comic “Legion of Super-Heroes” in the early 1980s, Steve Lightle made a living dreaming up the future, but his own was cut short by Covid-19.

Lightle, 61, died from cardiac arrest in a Kansas City, Missouri, hospital on Jan. 8, just three days after coming down with what he thought was a head cold and just hours after he was rushed to the hospital.

… Best known for his runs on “Legion” and “Doom Patrol” for DC and “Classic X-Men” covers for Marvel, Lightle became a fixture at conventions, never too busy to mentor the next generation. He came across as larger than life and drew visuals that were just as grand.

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • January 18, 1952 –On this day in 1952, Tales of Tomorrow’s Frankenstein first aired on ABC. It would be the sixteenth episode of the first season of the series. It was directed by Don Medford. The episode starred Lon Chaney, Jr. in the role of Frankenstein’s monster and John Newland in the role of Victor Frankenstein. Lon Chaney, Jr. is credited here as Lon Chaney as he was in all his later work. He’s no stranger to playing The Monster as he played the role of The Monster in the Universal Pictures Ghost of Frankenstein a decade earlier. You can watch it here. (CE)

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 18, 1882 – A.A. Milne.  Talented cricketer; among his teammates Barrie, Conan Doyle (whose surname is really Doyle, not Conan Doyle, but never mind that for now), Wodehouse. Twoscore plays, six novels, poems, nonfiction, besides Winnie the Pooh (two books of stories, and usually including two of poetry although the Pooh characters aren’t in them), which nevertheless remains great fantasy, seems timeless, and shows we can fantasize princes or piglets.  (Died 1956) [JH]
  • January 18, 1920 — Constance Moore. She gets Birthday Honors for being in the 1939 movie serial Buck Rogers in which she was Wilma Deering, the only female character in the serial.  Were there ever other female main cast characters in Buck Rogers? (Died 2005.) (CE) 
  • January 18, 1933 — John Boorman, 87. Director who’s responsible for one of the best SFF films ever done, Excalibur with Sean Connery, and one of the worst with that also starred Sean Connery, Zardoz. (He wrote the novel for that one as well.)  He also directed the rather nifty Emerald Forest which Holdstock did a far better than merely good job of novelizing.(CE)
  • Born January 18, 1934 – Hank Reinhardt.  Author, editor, armorer, leading U.S. Southern fan.  Co-founded the first Atlanta and Birmingham SF clubs.  Fan Guest of Honor at DeepSouthCon 19, StellarCon 17, Archon 29.  Rebel Award andRubble Award; Georgia Fandom Award, later named for him.  Two short stories, one anthology, posthumous Book of Swords and Book of Knives.  After his first wife died, married fan and pro Toni Weisskopf.  (Died 2007) [JH]
  • Born January 18, 1935 – Eddie Jones.  Fanartist who developed a spectacular pro career.  TAFF delegate. Fan Guest of Honor at St. Louiscon the 27th Worldcon; Official Artist at Boskone 11, Guest of Honor at Mythcon 1982.  Did the Knight of Pentacles for Bruce Pelz’ Fantasy Showcase Tarot Deck (see here; images and BP’s introduction here, scroll down for Pentacles, they come after Cups).  Eight hundred fifty covers, a hundred interiors.  Here is Vector 37.  Here is the Heicon ’70 Program Book (28th Worldcon).  Here is A Gift from Earth.  Here is City.  Here is R is for Rocket.  (Died 1999) [JH]
  • Born January 18, 1936 – Rhoda Lerman.  Two novels for us, four others, nonfiction, television, films.  One-woman play about Eleanor Roosevelt.  Cultural delegate on first U.S. delegation to Tibet.  Bred champion Newfoundlands.  NY Times appreciation (5 Sep 15) said “her imagination was eccentric … her books didn’t resemble one another.”  (Died 2015) [JH]
  • January 18, 1937 — Dick Durock. He was best known for playing Swamp Thing in Swamp Thing and The Return of Swamp Thing and the following television series which ran for three seasons. His only other genre appearances were in The Nude Bomb (also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart) and “The First” of The Incredible Hulk. He shows up in Die Hard with a Vengeance in a subway scene. No, it’s not genre, I just like that film. (Died 2009.) (CE) 
  • Born January 18, 1942 – Franz Rottensteiner, Ph.D., age 79.  Publisher, editor, translator, critic.  Edited Quarber Merkur (SF journal named for the Quarb Ravine in Austria; Merkur = Mercury) since 1998.  Kurd Laßwitz Prize.  Translated into German e.g. Abe, Dick, Lem, Cordwainer Smith, the Strugatsky brothers.  Fifty anthologies, e.g. in English Views from Another Shore; The Best of Austrian SF.  Ninety biographies e.g. Franke, Hodgson, Le Guin, Malory, Robbe-Grillet, for Das Bibliographisches Lexikon der utopisch-phantastischen Literatur.  Published eighteen volumes of Wells.  [JH]
  • January 18, 1953 — Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, 68. Her best novel is I think Tam Lin though one could make an argument for Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary which Windling claims is her favorite fantasy novel. Her Secret Country trilogy is also a great deal of fun to read. Much of her short stories are set in the Liavek shared universe created by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly. All of the Liavek anthologies  are now available on all major digital platforms. According to the files sitting in my Dropbox folder, there’s eight volumes to the series. They’re wonderful reading. End of plug. (CE)
  • January 18, 1960 — Mark Rylance, 61. He was in Prospero’s Books, an adaption of The Tempest which I really want to see, The BFG and Ready Player One are the films he’s been in. He’s an active thespian  as well with plays of interest to us that’s he’s been being A Midsummer Night’s Dream at  Royal Opera House, Hamlet at American Repertory Theater and Macbeth at Greenwich Theatre to show but a few of his appearances. (CE) 
  • January 18, 1964 — Jane Horrocks, 57. Her first SFF genre role was Pattern in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, scripted off the Joan Aiken novel. A year later, she showed up in The Witches, scripted off the Raoul Dahl novel playing Miss Susan Irvine. She voices Black Widow / Mrs. Plum in Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, and voiced Hannah in the late Ninties Watership Down. (CE)
  • Born January 18, 1984 – C.J. Redwine, age 37.  Seven novels, one shorter story for us; The Shadow Queen a NY Times Best-Seller.  “If the villain isn’t worthy of my heroes, then the story no longer matters.”  Has read The Wizard of Oz, Hamlet, a Complete Stories & Poems of Poe (read his essays too, folks), Anne of Green Gables, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird.  [JH]

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Blondie has a take on ice cream that I hope is a fantasy.

(12) THE BREW THAT IS TRUE. Or maybe — Eats, Shoots, and Leaves? The Republic of Tea has some specials on offer: “Star Wars: The Mandalorian Teas”.

The Mandalorian and the Child continue their journey, facing enemies and rallying allies as they make their way through a dangerous galaxy in the tumultuous era after the collapse of the Galactic Empire. Sip our exotic, Limited Edition teas on adventures throughout your own galaxy. New Season Now Streaming on Disney+

(13) FIERY METAPHOR. Joseph Loconte considers “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Dragons: Exploration of Good & Evil” at National Review.

For its 1937–38 “Christmas Lectures for Children,” the Natural History Society of Oxfordshire announced forthcoming talks on coral reefs, birds, whales, horses — and dragons. The latter topic was taken up by J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor of English literature who had just published The Hobbit, an immensely popular book involving a dragon. Tolkien’s lecture, before an audience packed with children of all ages, tackled a decidedly adult subject: the problem of evil in the world and the heroism required to combat it.

Tolkien began, disarmingly, with a slide show of prehistoric reptiles, including a Pteranodon in flight, to remind his listeners that “science also fills this past with dreadful monsters — many of the largest and most horrible being of a distinctly lizard-like or dragonish kind.” These ancient creatures, he said, embodied legendary qualities found in dragon mythology. The dragons with whom he had an acquaintance “loved to possess beautiful things.” Greed and hatred motivated them. “And how can you withstand a dragon’s flame, and his venom, and his terrible will and malice, and his great strength?”

It probably was not lost on the children present that Tolkien’s mythical dragons sounded a lot like the people who inhabited the real world. The adults might have discerned a more ominous message. Tolkien delivered his lecture on January 1, 1938. Nearly a year earlier, on January 30, 1937, Adolf Hitler had officially withdrawn Germany from the Treaty of Versailles and demanded that its colonies be returned….

(14) DATA FIGURINE. EXO-6 has created a scale model of Lieutenant Commander Data. Twelve inches tall, $189.95. But do I want that face staring at me from across the room?

EXO-6 is proud to present their first 1:6 scale articulated figure from Star Trek™: First Contact – Lt. Commander Data.

When introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data was a one-of-a-kind cybernetic organism, an artificial being that wanted nothing more than be just like the imperfect humans he served with aboard the Enterprise. In the film First Contact the Borg Queen gives him an opportunity to be more human than he ever thought possible, yet he rejects that hope in the service of loyalty to his friends and the rest of humanity.

Data is one of the most popular characters in Star Trek, and no other character better expresses the wonder of discovery that is the heart of Star Trek than this android with a soul. The EXO-6 1:6 scale figure of Data will not only embody the hopefulness of the character, but also bring an element of Brent Spiner’s performance into collector’s homes.

(15) GOT TO HAND IT TO THEM. Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds both weigh in about Garth Nix novel at Fantasy Literature: “The Left-Handed Booksellers of London: Selling books and fighting evil”. Jones’ comments include —

…Nix was inspired to write The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (as he related in his acknowledgements at the end) by a fortuitous comment from a left-handed bookseller in Leith. He pulls on his memories from his first trip to the United Kingdom in 1983 (among other things, he hiked the Old Man of Coniston, a famous mountain in the Lake District) and his past experience working as a bookseller. It was both amusing and engaging as I realized just how many actual British landmarks he has woven into the plot of this novel. And also uniquely British foods — Branston pickle sandwiches were a revelation, and I don’t think I’ll soon recover from checking out pictures of stargazy pie.

(16) BATWOMAN. Did football overshadow the Batlight? “Javicia Leslie’s ‘Batwoman’ Debut Plummets 80% in Ratings From Ruby Rose’s” reports Yahoo!

Javicia Leslie debuted as the new caped crusader on The CW’s “Batwoman” last night, but her start didn’t shine nearly as bright (a Bat signal) as Ruby Rose’s. Sunday primetime was dominated by Fox’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. New Orleans Saints NFL Divisional Playoffs game, which ended just shy of 10 p.m. on the east coast. Due to the nature of live sports, the below Nielsen numbers for Fox should be considered subject to adjustment. Final numbers are expected later today. The new-look “Batwoman” managed just a 0.1 rating last night in the key demo and 663,000 total viewers. Back on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2019, Rose’s “Batwoman” debuted to a 0.5 rating and 1.8 million viewers — meaning last night’s Season 2 premiere was down 80% in the demo from the series debut. 

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Star Trek Beyond Pitch Meeting” on ScreenRant, Ryan George says the producers of the third Star Trek Kelvin movie forgot the super blood and Carol Marcus from the second Star Trek Kelvin movie but thought that Starfleet would place a state of the art starbase right next door to an unexplored area teeming with bad guys.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, John Hertz, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Doug Ellis, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Danny Sichel.]

Pixel Scroll 11/17/19 Maybe Quality Time With the Cats Would Be Better

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(1) XKCD ANSWERS. A New York Times interviewer learned that “Randall Munroe Loves Outdated Views of the Future”.

Your web comic XKCD counts a lot of science fiction fans among its audience. Are you a science fiction fan yourself?

I grew up reading Asimov short stories, and I’ve read some miscellaneous stuff over the years, but I never feel like I’ve read more than a tiny fraction of what’s out there. I honestly don’t read all that many books, at least not compared to a lot of writers I know, and that extends to sci-fi too. But I do occasionally read high-concept/hard sci-fi — the kind of book where something big and physics-y is threatening to destroy the planet and/or universe. I’m also a total sucker for time travel stories.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

Whatever was lying around my house or our town library. I read lots of newspaper comic collections, like “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” and an awful lot of “Star Wars” novels…

(2) TAKEI Q&A. Rosanna Greenstreet, in “George Takei: ‘My dream dinner party? My colleagues from Star Trek, with one exception’”, in the Guardian, doesn’t have George Takei name the exception, but you learn his favorite show tunes.

What would your superpower be?
Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek, said that the strength of the Starship Enterprise was its diverse team working in concert. I would like to have the superpower to bring that kind of society to ours today.

(3) NAMES TO CONJURE WITH. “13 ‘Avengers: Endgame’ actors submitted for Oscars contention” — Disney submitted 13 actors/actresses from Endgame to the Oscars… All in the supporting categories.

Even Martin Scorsese would have to admit that Avengers: Endgame was one of the biggest cinematic achievements of 2019. 

…It looks as though Disney are going to give Avengers: Endgame  a big Oscar push, too, as it has just been revealed that the studio aren’t only aiming for a Best Picture nomination but they’ve also submitted 13 actors in the the Best Supporting categories, too.

That means that Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, Paul Rudd, and Don Cheadle will be hoping for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, while Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, and Brie Larson will be aiming for the Best Supporting Actress category.

(4) HEAR IT FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS. After working on it for six years, Gene Weingarten has a book coming out, and has been sharing all kinds of advice with readers of the Washington Post Magazine.

2. As you are bringing the book in for a landing, resist the urge to assemble your 23 chapters into one long document, because that will make it possible to idly search for words and phrases that you think you might overuse. And that is when you will discover just what a shocking, tedious hack you are. For instance, the number of times I had written “slap-to-the-forehead revelation” (five) was a slap-to-the-forehead revelation to me. Not in a good way.

… So things were going swell, right up until something happened. I think you might suspect what it is.

Man on phone, from TV company: Hi, I’m a lawyer, and …

Me: GO AWAY. (Hangs up.)

Okay, I didn’t really hang up. We kept talking but my nerve endings were atingle. It turned out that the company required me to sign a contract, which they assured me would be routine, simple and no problem whatsoever. It turned out to be seven single-spaced pages. It required me to agree to surrender my work to the company “in perpetuity,” which, from context, as near as I could tell, includes all future time up to and including the eventual Heat Death of the Universe. 

(5) MOUSE AUCTION. “Disneyland ‘Tiki’ birds among vast theme park auction” – Reuters has the story.

The History of Disneyland and Walt Disney World auction will be held in Los Angeles over two days starting on Dec. 7.

There will also be familiar characters up for sale, including animatronic birds from the Enchanted Tiki Room, a bronze statue of Mickey Mouse, and an “It’s a Small World” animatronic doll.

The animatronic birds are estimated to sell between $80,000 and $100,000, while the doll is estimated to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • November 17, 1978 — The Star Wars Holiday Special premiered on CBS. Directed by Steve Binder, it was the first Star Wars spin-off film, set between the events of the original film and The Empire Strikes Back. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has a rating of nineteen percent. 
  • November 17, 2001 — Justice League began on the Cartoon Network. It would under this name and and Justice League Unlimited last five seasons. Ninety one episodes would be produced a cross the two series. Among the voice actors would Kevin Conroy, George Newbern and Susan Eisenberg. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 17, 1925 — Rock Hudson. Best known genre role was as Col. John Wilder in The Martian Chronicles series. He also played President Thomas McKenna in the World War III miniseries which you may or may may not consider SF. That’s it.   (Died 1985.)
  • Born November 17, 1956 — Rebecca Moesta Anderson, 63. Wife of Kevin James Anderson with whom she collaborates more often than not. They’ve done dozens of Star Wars novels including the Young Jedi Knights series, and even one in the Buffyverse. 
  • Born November 17, 1965 — Sophie Marceau, 53. Elektra King In The World Is Not Enough, the 19th Bond Film. Also Eloïse d’Artagnan in Revenge of the Musketeers, Hippolyta in that version of A Midsummer Night’s DreamandLisa / Belphegor in Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre. She’s also one of the voice actors in Nature is Speaking, a Gaian series. 
  • Born November 17, 1958 — Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, 61. She had a recurring role on Grimm, playing Kelly Burkhardt, mother of Nick Burkhardt. And she had a leading role in Limitless as FBI Special Agent in Charge Nasreen ”Naz” Pouran. In the Marvel Universe, she played Marion James, CIA Deputy Director on Marvel’s The Punisher. 
  • Born November 17, 1966 — Ed Brubaker, 53. Comic book writer and artist. Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives I’d consider his first genre work. Later work for DC and Marvel included The Authority, Batman, Captain America, Daredevil, Catwoman and the Uncanny X-Men. If I may single out but one series, it’d be the one he did with writer Greg Rucka which was the Gotham Central series. It’s Gotham largely without Batman but with the villains so GPD has to deal with them by themselves. Grim and well done. In 2016, he joined the writing staff for the Westworld series where he co-wrote the episode “Dissonance Theory” with Jonathan Nolan.
  • Born November 17, 1978 — Tom Ellis, 41. Currently playing Lucifer Morningstar in the rather excellent Lucifer series  created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg from The Sandman series. It’s quite good. Also had roles in Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, Messiah, The Strain and Merlin. 
  • Born November 17, 1983 — Christopher Paolini, 36. He is the author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance. In December of last year, The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, the first book in a series called Tales of Alagaësia, was published. A film version of the first novel came out in 2006.

(8) NO SMOKING PLEASE. Speaking of the burning issues of the day — “John Lewis and Waitrose unite for 2019 Christmas ad – the fiery fairytale of Excitable Edgar”.

In a first for the two ‘& Partners’ brands, John Lewis and Waitrose have combined their festive creative efforts and released a joint Christmas ad, opting for a fairytale spot that – true to form – features a loveable mascot in Edgar the excitable dragon.

The heartwarming story of a little girl, Ava, and her friendship with an excitable young dragon opens ‘far, far, away’ in a quaint, snow-engulfed town as it prepares for Christmas.

Edgar – a toddler-sized, winged and unequally horned dragon – struggles to control his flame breathing. And while he loves Christmas, unfortunately for the town, his over-eagerness often gets the better of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9D-uvKih_k

(9) AUTHOR READINGS IN ORANGE. The Speculative Collective reading series will convene in Orange, CA on January 23, 2020.

The SPECULATIVE COLLECTIVE Winter Salon will celebrate steampunk, weird westerns, and mad science fiction with readings and conversation with local authors Eddie Louise, Michelle E. Lowe, and Jonathan Fesmire. The authors will have books to sign and sell, and time will be set aside to chat and network with like-minded fans of science fiction, fantasy, and all otherworldly genres. Costumes and cosplay welcome. Also, we’ll be discussing the new critique group and writing contest.

SPECULATIVE COLLECTIVE is an author reading series devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and all otherworldly genres.

(10) WHO NEEDS IT? The LA Review of Books presents Isaac Bashevis Singer’s 1963 essay “Who Needs Literature?” translated from Yiddish for the first time by David Stromberg.

…As for literary prose, we often feel like it’s doing well. Books of prose are still bought in hundreds of thousands of copies. But when we look a little deeper into the matter, we see that what we nowadays call “literary fiction” is often far from literary fiction. Works are often sold under the label “novel” that are in fact three-fourths or a 100 percent journalism.

At no other time has the boundary between journalism and literature been so thin and so blurred as in ours. It often seems to me that modern critics suffer from amnesia. They’ve forgotten the elementary rules of the game called literature. It’s no feat to score grand victories in a chess game if, right from the start, one player gets more pieces than another, or if the rules of the game change with each round.

(11) AMAZING. Slashfilm says fans will have one more shot at seeing this actor: “Robert Forster’s Final Performance Will Be in ‘Amazing Stories’ for AppleTV+; Here’s What the Episode is About”

Oscar-nominated actor Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) passed away two weeks ago, but it turns out he completed one final performance before his death that will make it to the screen. Forster will appear in an episode of Amazing Stories, the resurrected anthology series that will debut on AppleTV+. 

When Forster died on October 11, myself and many of his fans thought the last time we’d see him on screen would be in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, the Netflix film which debuted the same day as his death. But according to Deadline, he had also completed work on an episode of Amazing Stories, and the episode will be dedicated to the late actor.

“Dynoman and The Volt,” the relevant episode, is “about an awkward tween boy and his grandpa (Forster) who wrestle with feeling powerless. When a superhero ring Grandpa ordered out of the back of a comic book arrives 50 years late, they discover it has the power to turn them into actual superheroes.” That’s a really fun premise for an episode of television, and in his older age, Forster was so great at playing characters who felt like they were sturdy enough to take what the world threw at them, but also had a tinge of sadness behind the eyes. I eagerly await the opportunity to experience one final performance from him, even if I am exhausted of the conversation around superhero-related media that still seems to be dominating every waking moment in our culture right now.

(12) BANGERS AND MASHUPS. The Wrap looks back: “‘The Big Bang Theory’: 23 Most Memorable Guest Stars, From Stephen Hawking to Carrie Fisher”, a 2018 post.

Carrie Fisher and James Earl Jones: James Earl Jones told IGN that amazingly, before this Season 7 “Big Bang” cameo, he and Carrie Fisher had never met, with Jones always doing his scenes as Darth Vader inside a sound booth. The segment features Jones and Sheldon pranking Fisher, but even funnier is their story that when they finally met, Fisher greeted Jones as “Dad!” 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]

Pixel Scroll 7/28/19 Scrolling To Montana Soon – Gonna Be A Pixel-Floss Tycoon!

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(1) EXPANSE GETS FIFTH SEASON. The Expanse has been renewed for Season 5 at Amazon reports Variety.

The announcement was made during the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Saturday. Season 4 of the series is set to debut on Dec. 13.

“The Expanse” aired its first three seasons on Syfy, with the cable networking having cancelled the series back in 2019. Shortly after it was cancelled, it was reported that Amazon was in talks to continue the series, which is produced and fully financed by Alcon Television Group.

(2) SF AUTHOR’S PREDICTION FULFILLED. A writer for Britain’s Private Eye rediscovered Norman Spinrad’s Agent of Chaos (1967) with its prescient comments about another political leader named Boris Johnson.

(3) SIX WILL GET YOU ONE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] At The Atlantic, contributing writer Dr. Yascha Mounk (Johns Hopkins University associate professor and German Marshall Fund senior fellow) has his own ideas on “How Not to Run a Panel” (tagline: “Panel discussions can be very boring, but they don’t have to be if you follow these six rules.”).

I could write a whole book about the panels that have gone wrong in particularly strange or hilarious fashion: the one where the moderator fell asleep. The one where the opening statements lasted longer than the time allotted for the whole event. The one, high up on the 10th floor, when the acrobatic window washer stole the show.

These exotic horrors notwithstanding, I disagree with Leo Tolstoy: Every unhappy panel is unhappy in some of the same ways.

Mind you, he’s talking about academic panels (his field is political science), but one wonders how much his advice crosses over to convention panels. He elaborates on each of his six points:

1. Don’t have more than four people onstage.
2. Keep introductions to a minimum.
3. Ax the opening statements.
4. Guide the conversation.
5. Cut off the cranks.*
6. Pick panelists who have something to say to one another.

* NB: He’s talking about cranks in the audience. He doesn’t seem to consider cranks on the panel.

(4) THE VERDICT. Camestros Felapton reports from the scene: “Michael Z Williamson’s Wikipedia page has not been deleted”.

For those keeping score, the Michael Z Williamson article on Wikipedia has not been deleted after a long and fractious discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2019_July_21#Michael_Z._Williamson

The outcome of the deletion discussion was ‘no consensus’ i.e. notability wasn’t decided one way or another. This was mainly because of the brigade of trolls who descended on the discussion at Williamson’s request.

While the Wikipedia is keeping the article, the record of the debate preserves these additional facts:

I note that the subject of this article, Michael Z. Williamson, has edited Wikipedia as Mzmadmike. He has been banned from Wikipedia as a result of a community discussion that concluded that Williamson has disrupted Wikipedia through his edits as a Wikipedia user and through comments on social media, which (according to the community discussion) have included canvassing, legal threats (admin-only diff) and harassment of Wikipedians. This has no bearing on the outcome of this deletion discussion, because having an article is not an indication of merit (as a person, author or otherwise), but only of what Wikipedia calls “notability“, i.e., being covered in some detail by reliable sources. But it bears mentioning here as a context of what may be necessary future administrative actions to protect the article and Wikipedia from further disruption.

(5) THE MEN WHO SOLD THE MOON. The New York Times profiles the conflicting family views behind an auction that has already yielded $16.7 million in sales: “‘Would Dad Approve?’ Neil Armstrong’s Heirs Divide Over a Lucrative Legacy”.

Those sales by the brothers, who also pursued a newly disclosed $6 million wrongful death settlement over their father’s medical care, have exposed deep differences among those who knew Neil Armstrong about his legacy — and what he would have wanted.

Some relatives, friends and archivists find the sales unseemly, citing the astronaut’s aversion to cashing in on his celebrity and flying career and the loss of historical objects to the public.

“I seriously doubt Neil would approve of selling off his artifacts and memorabilia,” said James R. Hansen, his biographer. “He never did any of that in his lifetime.”

(6) ERB-DOM ANNUAL GATHERING. Burroughs fans will hold DUM-DUM 2019 in Willcox, AZ from August 1-4.

(7) IN THE LID. Alasdair Stuart’s latest, newly BFS Award-nominated “The Full Lid for 26th July 2019″ includes a look at the first three episodes of The Space Race. An epic dramatized account of the birth and evolution of crewed spaceflight it starts in the future, takes in Gagarin, Armstrong and the rest of the past and throws light on some surprising elements of the story.

As does the deeply eccentric Apollo 11 anniversary coverage. Says Stuart, “I was especially impressed with the choices made by a BBC movie about the flight and the little moments of humanity we glimpse outside the history books in Channel 4’s programming.”

He also salutes “the monarch of the kitchen warriors, the king of the B movie and the crown prince of charming villainy, the one, the only Rutger Hauer. Rest well, sir.”

The Full Lid is free and comes out every Friday.

(8) DRAGON ANATOMY. From the New York Times Magazine: “Judge John Hodgman on Whether a Tail Is Part of the Butt” (January 17).

“Paul writes:  My wife, Samantha, and her grandmother Gigi have a disagreement about whether a creature’s tail is part of his butt.  Gigi says that because poop can get stuck in a butt, it is part of the butt.  Sam argues that a tail  only starts at the butt.  Are tails butts?  (Specifically a dragon’s tail, which is what sparked this argument.)

JOHN HODGMAN SAYS:  “What a surprise twist at the end!  Before we walked through this wardrobe into fantasy land, I was confident in my ruling:  tails are NOT butts, as they have specific balance and display functions.  And also let’s face it:  Poop can get on anything.  But as I am no expert on dragon anatomy, I turned to the actual George R.R. Martin, whose number I actually have, who reports:  ‘Poop can also get stuck to a dragon’s leg, but that does not make it part of the butt.  Dragon poop is hot, by the way.  Fire hazard.'”

Martin Morse Wooster sent the link with a postscript: “How many points do I get for finding George R.R. Martin’s opinions on ‘dragon poop?’”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 28, 1866 — Beatrix Potter. Probably best known for Tales of Peter Rabbit but I’d submit her gardening skills were second to none as well as can be seen in the Green Man review of Marta McDowell’s Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life. (Died 1943.)
  • Born July 28, 1926 — T. G. L. Cockcroft. Mike has his obituary here. Not surprisingly none of his works are currently in-print. 
  • Born July 28, 1928 — Angélica Gorodischer, 91. Argentinian writer whose Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was got by translated by Ursula Le Guin into English.
  • Born July 28, 1931 — Jay Kay Klein. I’ll direct you to Mike’s excellent look at him here. I will note that he was a published author having “On Conquered Earth” in If, December 1967 as edited by Frederik Pohl. I don’t think it’s been republished since. (Died 2012.)
  • Born July 28, 1941 — Bill Crider. Though primarily a writer of horror fiction, he did write three stories in the Sherlock Holmes metaverse: The Adventure of the Venomous Lizard, The Adventure of the St. Marylebone Ghoul and The Case of the Vanished Vampire. He also wrote a Sookie Stackhouse short story, “Don’t Be Cruel” in the Charlaine Harris Meta-verse. (Died 2018.)
  • Born July 28, 1966 — Larry Dixon, 53. Husband of Mercedes Lackey who collaborates with her on such series as SERRAted Edge and The Mage Wars Trilogy. He contributed artwork to Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons source books, including Oriental Adventures, Epic Level Handbook, and Fiend Folio. Dixon and Lackey are the 2020 Worldcon’s Author Guests of Honour.
  • Born July 28, 1968 — Rachel Blakely, 51. You’ll most likely know her as Marguerite Krux on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as that was her longest running genre role. She was briefly Alcmene on Young Hercules, and played Gael’s Mum on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And showed as Penelope in the “Ulysses” episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. 
  • Born July 28, 1969 — Tim Lebbon, 50. For my money his best series is The Hidden Cities one he did with Christopher Golden though his Relics series with protagonist Angela Gough is quite superb as well. He dips into the Hellboy universe with two novels, Unnatural Selection and Fire Wolves, rather capably.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) LE GUIN ON TV. This Friday night on PBS the program American Masters is highlighting Ursula Le Guin. That’s when they’ll air the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin documentary.

(12) JOHNSON’S WALK. In the Washington Post, Hau Chu interviews Richard Kelly, whose obscure 2006 sci-fi film Southland Tales might have been pivotal in advancing the film career of Dwayne Johnson: “The delightfully bonkers film that turned the Rock into Dwayne Johnson”.

…Survey a theater of moviegoers and they all might tell you a different interpretation of what “Southland Tales” is actually about. The short version is that a nuclear explosion has gone off in Texas, thrusting the United States into World War III. Taking place in 2008 Los Angeles at the end of the world, the film consequently delves into the post-Iraq War militarization of the country, the rise of the surveillance state and, naturally, rifts on the space-time continuum.

The movie, which would go on to become a critical and commercial failure, contains a who’s who of character actors, as well as once- and soon-to-be notable stars. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a porn star who simultaneously has a hit single (“Teen Horniness is Not a Crime”) and accurately foretells the imminent apocalypse in a screenplay she’s written. Amy Poehler delivers a slam poetry performance in her last seconds on Earth before she is gunned down by a racist cop played by Jon Lovitz. Justin Timberlake, in a confounding, drugged-out dream sequence, lip-syncs the Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done.”

To steer his often messy but engaging opus — and eventual cult classic — director Richard Kelly needed a truly magnetic force. Enter Johnson.

(13) BRYAN FULLER. [Item by Carl Slaughter.]According to Midnight’s Edge and Nerdrotic, Bryan Fuller pitched the Picard series concept to CBS as one of 5 possible series. Fuller also approached Jeri Ryan and Brent Spiner about starring in it.  Fuller has yet to get any credit it for the Picard show.

(14) ONE VOTER’S DECISION. Rich Horton rolls out his “Hugo Ballot Thoughts, Short Fiction, 2019” on Strange at Ecbatan. Which actually begins with his argument against having AO3 up in the Best Related Works category. But he soon veers back to the topic, such as these comments about Best Novella:

Of these only Artificial Condition was on my nomination ballot, but I didn’t get to The Black God’s Drums until later, and it would have been on my ballot. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach struck me as impressively ambitious – probably the most ambitious of the nominees – but I think the ending is a mess. Still a story worth reading. The Tea Master and the Detective is nice work, not quite brilliant. And, I say with guilt, I haven’t read Beneath the Sugar Sky, which I suspect will be very fine work.

(15) BUTTERFAT CHANCE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Author, crafter, and freelance journalist Bonnie Burton has a knack for spotting odd news—her CNET article “NASA’s Apollo 11 astronauts honored in… a butter sculpture” in this case. (Tagline: “Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins look just as legendary carved in butter at the Ohio State Fair.”)

If you want to celebrate NASA‘s 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, you might as well do it with butter.

At this year’s Ohio State Fair, visitors can see highly detailed, life-sized butter sculptures of the Apollo 11 moon crew — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

There’s also a separate butter sculpture of Armstrong in his spacesuit saluting the American flag while standing near the lunar module Eagle.

Armstrong — who was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio — is considered a state icon for his trip to the moon. In addition, Armstrong bought a dairy farm in Ohio after leaving NASA in 1971. 

You can see the entire butter sculpture unveiling ceremony posted by The Columbus Dispatch on YouTube.

(16) EN FUEGO. Space is getting hotter…but not that much (AP: “New Mexico chile plant selected to be grown in space”). The first fruiting plant to be grown on the International Space Station will be the Española Improved hot pepper. However, it’s said to max out at a relatively modest 2,000 Scoville units, well less than the typical Jalapeño much less really hot hot peppers.

A hybrid version of a New Mexico chile plant has been selected to be grown in space as part of a NASA experiment.

The chile, from Española, New Mexico, is tentatively scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station for testing in March 2020, the Albuquerque Journal reports .

A NASA group testing how to produce food beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and the chile plant was created with input from Jacob Torres — an Española native and NASA researcher.

Torres said the point of sending the chiles into space is to demonstrate how NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat – which recreates environmental needs for plant growth like CO2, humidity and lighting – works not only for leafy greens, but for fruiting crops, as well.

(17) TRAILER BREAKDOWN. New Rockstars answers questions you didn’t even know you had about the newest Star Trek: Picard trailer.

Star Trek Picard Trailer from Comic Con teases the return of Data, Seven of Nine, the Borgs, and more nods to The Next Generation and Voyager! Where will this new Picard series on CBS All Access take Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) after the events of Star Trek Nemesis and First Contact? Erik Voss gets an assist from friend and Trekkie Marina Mastros, who breaks down this Star Trek trailer shot by shot for all the Easter Eggs you may have overlooked! What is the secret identity of the new mystery woman, Dahj? Why are the Romulans experimenting with Borg technology? Has Data really returned, or is it his alternate version, B-4?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Jennifer Hawthorne, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 7/9/19 With Mullets Towards None

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(1) THOUGHTS ON A PROPOSED HUGO CATEGORY. Neil Clarke explains why he opposes “Hugo Proposal for Best Translated Novel”: 

…The biggest problem I have with this proposal is the message it sends not only to domestic readers, but foreign authors, editors, and publishers: translated works are not as good as ours, so we’re making a special category for you so you can get awards too. I don’t believe that’s the intention of those who drafted this proposal. I think they approached it with the best of intentions, but simply got it wrong. For years now, I have been making the case that we should be treating translated and international works as equals: stories worthy of standing alongside those we have routinely seen published. This proposal sends the opposite message, and on those grounds intend to vote no.

Translated works are capable of winning the Hugo without any special treatment. As they point out in their own commentary, three translated works have won since 2015, despite the relatively low number of translations published among a wide sea of domestic releases….

(2) ‘TOPIARY. Juliette Wade’s Dive Into Worldbuilding encounters winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and Nebula nominee “Sam J. Miller and Blackfish City”. Read the synopsis at the link, and/or watch the video:

…There are some utopian elements in the story as well as dystopian ones. A lot of energy problems can be solved. The city uses methane generators to produce light. They also don’t need militarized police. Sam remarked how any place can have both utopian and dystopian elements depending on who you are. To the people who live in the Capital, the Hunger Games world is a utopia.

I asked if this book was strictly speaking science fiction or whether it had fantastical elements. He explained that it is a science fiction story, but that he uses nanites to do things that might seem magical. The nanites allow some humans to bond with animals. That bond could seem fantastical but it has technological underpinnings.

There are people called orcamancers. Sam explained that the origins of the orcamancers are  with illegal pharmaceutical testing that happened in the period between the present and the time period of the novel. Rival drugs were tested on people at different times. This accidentally led to a form of bonding with animals that Sam compared to the daemons in The Golden Compass. He explained that cultural practices regulate why you would bond with particular animals….

(3) CICERO – NOT ILLINOIS. Ada Palmer dives into “Stoicism’s Appeal to the Rich and Powerful” at Ex Urbe

I was recently interviewed for a piece in the Times on why the philosophy of stoicism has become very popular in the Silicon Valley tech crowd. Only a sliver of my thoughts made it into the article, but the question from Nellie Bowles was very stimulating so I wanted to share more of my thoughts.

To begin with, like any ancient philosophy, stoicism has a physics and metaphysics–how it thinks the universe works–and separately an ethics–how it advises one to live, and judge good and bad action. The ethics is based on the physics and metaphysics, but can be divorced from it, and the ethics has long been far more popular than the metaphysics.  This is a big part of why stoic texts surviving from antiquity focus on the ethics; people transcribing manuscripts cared more about these than about the others.  And this is why thinkers from Cicero to Petrarch to today have celebrated stoicism’s moral and ethical advice while following utterly different cosmologies and metaphysicses.  (For serious engagement with stoic ontology & metaphysics you want Spinoza.)  The current fad for stoicism, like all past fads for stoicism (except Spinoza) focuses on the ethics.

(4) DRAGON TRAINER NOW LAUREATE. “How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell named new children’s laureate” – The Guardian has the story.

Cressida Cowell has become the new UK Children’s Laureate.

The author of How To Train Your Dragon, and the Wizards of Once will take over from previous laureate, Lauren Childs..

She said: “Books and reading are magic, and this magic must be available to absolutely everyone. I’m honoured to be chosen to be the eleventh Waterstones Children’s Laureate. I will be a laureate who fights for books and children’s interests with passion, conviction and action. Practical magic, empathy and creative intelligence, is the plan.”

Cressida has also revealed a ‘giant to-do list’ to help make sure that books and reading are available to everyone. It says that every child has the right to:

  1. Read for the joy of it.
  2. Access NEW books in schools, libraries and bookshops.
  3. Have advice from a trained librarian or bookseller.
  4. Own their OWN book.
  5. See themselves reflected in a book.
  6. Be read aloud to.
  7. Have some choice in what they read.
  8. Be creative for at least 15 minutes a week.
  9. See an author event at least ONCE.
  10. Have a planet to read on.

(5) GEEKY GETAWAYS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] For your vacationing pleasure, SYFY Wire has lists and descriptions of 10 hotels “Geek Road Trip: 10 nerdy hotels that’ll turn vacation into a fandom pilgrimage” and 6 Airbnbs “Geek Road Trip: 6 extra-nerdy Airbnb to book for your next vacation” with fan welcoming accommodations. The latter include a Harry Potter themed apartment in Atlanta GA, an ’80s throwback gaming room in Lisbon, Portugal (& other themed rooms in the same building), a Marvel-ous studio apartment in Manila Philippines, a Star Wars suite in Melbourne Australia, a riverside Hobbit hole in Orondo, WA and Pixar paradise (with differently-themed rooms) in Anaheim CA.

(6) NAMELESS DREAD. The series doesn’t have a title yet, but it does have characters: “George RR Martin Says ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Includes the Starks, Direwolves and White Walkers”.

HBO’s untitled Naomi Watts-led “Game of Thrones” prequel pilot may not have Targaryens and dragons — but it does have Starks, direwolves and, of course, White Walkers.

“The Starks will definitely be there,” George R.R. Martin, co-creator and executive producer on the project alongside showrunner Jane Goldman, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Tuesday.

“Obviously the White Walkers are here — or as they’re called in my books, The Others — and that will be an aspect of it,” the “A Song of Ice and Fire” author said, adding: “There are things like direwolves and mammoths.”

The appearance of the Starks, descendants of the First Men, shouldn’t be a shock to fans who remember the prequel — which is reportedly currently filming in North Ireland — takes place roughly 5,000 years before the events of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

(7) THE REEL DEAL. Yahoo! Finance expects big bucks to change hands: “‘Lost’ tapes of first moonwalk to be sold; former NASA intern may make millions”.

A former intern at NASA may become a millionaire when he sells three metal reels that contain original videotape recordings of man’s first steps on the moon.  

The videotapes will be offered in a live auction on July 20th at Sotheby’s New York, but interested parties are able to place bids now at Sothebys.com. The sale coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. The price could reach $2 million.

According to the auction site, Gary George was awarded a cooperative work internship at the NASA Johnson Space Center in June 1973. Three years later, he bought more than 1,100 reels at a government surplus auction for $218, Reuters reported.

(8) GAIMAN’S STUDY. Variety’s photo essay takes you “Inside Neil Gaiman’s Rural Writing Retreat”. (Hey, we have the same interior decorator!)

Although Gaiman has won multiple Hugo Awards, he only keeps one in his office; the others are in his house in Wisconsin. The one he earned in 2016 for “The Sandman: Overture” receives extra special placement not only because of his long history with the franchise (“It had a ‘you can go home again’ quality to it,” he says) but also because “there is something magical in knowing I was awarded it for a graphic novel. I remember I was there, not too long ago, fighting for whether comics could get awards and things like that. But people loved it; it got its audience; it got awards; people cared.”

(9) NATIVE TONGUE TRILOGY EVENT. On Thursday, July 18, there will be a panel discussion on feminist sci-fi with Rebecca Romney, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Bethany C. Morrow, and moderated by Eliza Cushman Rose focusing on “The Legacy of Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue Trilogy”. This event is hosted by The Feminist Press and will be held at Books are Magic, 225 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 9, 1911 — Mervyn Peake. Ok I’ll admit I’ve not read the Gormenghast novels, nor have I seen the various video adaptations. Please tell me what I’ve been missing. (Died 1968.)
  • Born July 9, 1944 — Glen Cook, 75. With the exception of the new novel which I need to read, I’ve read his entire excellent Black Company series. I’ve also his far lighter Garrett P.I. Which unfortunately he’s abandoned. And I should read the Instrumentalities of the Night as I’ve heard good things about it.
  • Born July 9, 1945 — Dean Koontz, 74. The genres of of mystery. horror, fantasy and science fiction are all home to him. Author of over a hundred novels, his first novel was SF — it being Star Quest (not in print) published as an Ace Double with Doom of the Green Planet by Emil Petaja. ISFDB claims over half of his output is genre, I’d say that a low estimate. 
  • Born July 9, 1954 — Ellen Klages, 65. Her novelette “Basement Magic” won a Nebula Award for Best Novelette. I strongly recommend Portable Childhoods, a collection of her short fiction, which published by Tachyon Publications, my boutique favorite publisher of fantasy. Passing Strange, her 1940 set San Francisco novel is really great.
  • Born July 9, 1970 — Ekaterina Sedia, 49. Her Heart of Iron novel is simply awesome. I’d also recommend The Secret History of Moscow as well. It’s worth noting that both iBooks and Kindle list several collections by her, Willful Impropriety: 13 Tales of Society, Scandal, and Romance and Wilful Impropriety that ISFDB doesn’t list. I’m off to buy them now. 
  • Born July 9, 1978 — Linda Park, 41. Best known for her portrayal of communications officer character Hoshi Sato on the Enterprise. Her first genre role was Hannah in Jurassic Park III, she was Renee Hansen in Spectres which Marina Sirtis is also in. She was in some called Star Trek: Captain Pike three years back as Captain Grace Shintal. 

(11) DISTURBING TREND? Yesterday, “Jar Jar Binks spent the day trending on Twitter, baffling Star Wars fans” says SYFY Wire.

Earlier this morning, Jar Jar Binks was inexplicably one of the trending topics on Twitter. No one seemed to understand why, although there have been some theories. The Tampa Bay Times looked into the matter, which traced it back to a meme that predicts your Star Wars fate. While the image had been making the rounds online, it was shared by Mark Hamill earlier this morning, giving it some serious traction. 

(12) VINTAGE 2018 FINNCON. Karl-Johan Norén’s report on his 2018 Nordic Fan Fund trip to Finncon 2018 is up on eFanzines in both epub (preferred) and PDF formats.

…Meanwhile, Hulda and Therese participated in the Klingon language workshop, where they learnt some helpful Klingon phrases and Hulda impressed by showing a basic knowledge of the IPA symbols. Later on, when Hulda accidentally tickled Therese, Therese gave off a very Klingon-like sound, leading Hulda to ask if Klingons are ticklish. That gave rise to a very spirited discussion, including if Klingons would admit that they could possibly be ticklish, and if empirical research was advised…

(13) BUSTED. The Daily Beast reports on Streamliner Lines’ inaugural run through western Nevada: “Redditors Say This Is a Nazi Bus. The Owner Says It’s a Misunderstanding.”

It bans “social justice warriors” and drives across Nevada with a logo that looks suspiciously like a Nazi flag. It’s Reno’s new bus line and the owner says the racist reputation is all just a misunderstanding.

On Friday, Streamliner Lines launched its maiden bus run from Reno to Las Vegas. Streamliner president John Wang told The Daily Beast it ran a little behind schedule (traffic), and sold few tickets (the Nazi reputation). Still, the trip was the first victory for Streamliner, which previously failed inspection on its only bus and has spent the past month embroiled in spats with Redditors over the company’s logo and its ban on some left-wing passengers.

(14) BLADE RUNNER. Titan Comics advertises Blade Runner 2019 as “the first comic to tell new stories set in the Blade Runner universe!”

(15) KORNBLUTH TRIBUTE. Andrew Porter passed along a scanned clipping of Cyril Kornbluth’s obituary in a 1958 New York Times.

(16) UMM, YUM? Gastro Obscura calls her ‘Annabel Lecter’ because “These Made-to-Order Cakes Look Like Beautiful Nightmares”.

English pastry chef Annabel de Vetten crafts what may be the world’s most fantastically morbid confections. Her Birmingham studio and cooking space, the Conjurer’s Kitchen, is filled with feasts of macabre eye candy rendered with ghoulish precision.

Here is a plate heaped with thumb-sized maggots and grubs. There a bloodied human heart lies in a pool of green, molar-strewn slime. A stainless-steel coroner’s table hosts the disemboweled upper-torso of a corpse. It’s flanked by a four-foot statue of a saint, his face melting away to bone. On the counter, the neck of a deer’s partially fleshless head sinks its roots into a bisected flowerpot; a sapling bursts from its skull like a unicorn horn.

(17) THE ART OF FILLING OUT THE HUGO BALLOT. Steve J. Wright moves on to review “Hugo Category: Best Art Book”.

…Taking a look at this year’s offerings – well, the Hugo voters’ packet contains partial content (the images, really) from three of the six, and the full text and images from a fourth, which last was something I really didn’t expect.  I bought one of the remaining two myself… but the last one, Julie Dillon’s Daydreamer’s Journey, is a self-published job funded by a Kickstarter project and put together using indie tools, and the ultimate result was, I figured I could just about afford the book, but then I looked at the cost of overseas shipping, and my wallet instinctively snapped shut.  Pity, really.  Julie Dillon is a familiar name from recent Pro Artist final lists, and a book of her artwork (with accompanying descriptions of her creative process for each piece) would be a very nice thing to have.  The Kickstarter makes it look very enticing indeed….

(18) THEY CAME FROM SPACE. NPR finds that “Moon Rocks Still Awe, And Scientists Hope To Get Their Hands On More”

Darby Dyar says that as a kid, whenever Apollo astronauts returned from the moon, she and her classmates would get ushered into the school library to watch it on TV.

She remembers seeing the space capsules bobbing in the ocean as the astronauts emerged. “They climbed out and then they very carefully took the lunar samples and put them in the little rubber boat,” Dyar says, recalling that the storage box looked like an ice chest.

Nearly a half-ton of moon rocks were collected by the six Apollo missions to the lunar surface. And as the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 first landing mission approaches, NASA has decided to open up a still-sealed, never-studied moon rock sample that has been carefully saved for decades, waiting for technology to advance.

(19) I PRAY FOR ONE FIRST LANDING. Even if it’s not one of Glyer’s Chinese ‘bots I’m sure you’ll cheer when “AI pilot ‘sees’ runway and lands automatically”.

An automatic pilot has landed a plane using image-recognition artificial intelligence to locate the runway.

At large airports, systems on the ground beam up the position of the runway to guide automatic systems.

But in late May a new AI tool landed a small plane carrying passengers, by “sight” alone at Austria’s Diamond Aircraft airfield.

One expert said it could potentially improve flight safety.

The new system, developed by researchers at the technical universities of Braunschweig and Munich, processes visual data of the runway and then adjusts the plane’s flight controls, without human assistance.

Because it can detect both infrared light as well as the normal visible spectrum, it can handle weather conditions such as fog that might make it difficult for the human pilot to make out the landing strip.

Another advantage of the technology is it does not rely on the radio signals provided by the existing Instrument Landing System (ILS). Smaller airports often cannot justify the cost of this equipment and it can suffer from interference.

(20) LE GUIN ON PBS.  THIRTEEN’s American Masters presents the U.S. broadcast premiere of the “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin” documentary on August 2.

Produced with Le Guin’s participation over the course of a decade, American Masters – Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin tells the intimate coming-of-age story of the Portland, Oregon, housewife and mother of three who forever transformed American literature by bringing science fiction into the literary mainstream. Through her influential work, Le Guin opened doors for generations of younger writers like Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon and David Mitchell — all of whom appear in the film — to explore fantastic elements in their writing.

The film explores the personal and professional life of the notoriously private author through revealing conversations with Le Guin as well as her family, friends and the generations of renowned writers she influenced. Visually rich, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin illustrates the dramatic real-world settings that shaped Le Guin’s invented places using lush original animations over her own readings of her work to provide a firsthand experience of her fantastic worlds.

(21) TOUGH TIME AT NASFiC. Artist Newton Ewell had a terrible experience at SpikeCon and wrote about it on Facebook. Friends of his told me he’s okay with sharing it on File 770. (I’m adding this at the last minute, in preference to waiting for tomorrow’s Scroll.)

Have you ever been invited to a convention, only to be treated like you don’t belong there? I have.

Thursday was really hard on me. I felt very unwelcome at Spikecon, and have realized that driving an hour one-way, being shoved off into an unlit corner and having to confront people who hate me just really isn’t my thing.

Frankly, I’m afraid to come back to the convention. Libertarian Loudmouth Guy came by the table yesterday evening to drone on at me like a broken record about the same crap (his skewed politics) as usual. Being buttonholed by wackos who see my skin color and use it as a pretext to spew hateful talk at me does not make a good convention experience. Racist DrawGirl’s grudge against me was on full display. I’m not there to compete with anyone, nor am I there to be hated on by weirdos with strange fetishy grudges. Right-Wing Space Guy still can’t grasp that I don’t want to talk to him either, because of the Trump fanaticism displayed toward me.

I have friends there, but I was isolated from them, making the whole experience into an ordeal for me. I wanted to bring my large pieces, but something said, “don’t”. I’m glad I listened to that inner voice, because if I’d brought them, they’d have been ruined by the rain. I was supposed to have an electrical outlet for my drawing light, but all the outlets were taken up by the USS Dildo-prise people.

I don’t have money to afford driving back out there, let alone commuting back-and-forth, food etc. Being placed into a hostile working environment is too much pain for too little reward.

I realized that being presented with a symbol of racial oppression and corporate greed (a plastic golden spike) really hurt. All I feel from that is the pain and death dealt out to the people who worked so hard to join the two railroads, and it makes me sad. I’m hurt that my art is on all the con badges, but once I get there I’m made into a problem, a bothersome individual who’s not worth having the space I contracted for….

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Contrarius, Robin A. Reid, Trisha Lynn, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]