Pixel Scroll 1/7/22 It’s All Fun And Games Till Someone Pixels A File

(1) WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE DEPLOYMENT WILL AIR. “NASA to Host Coverage, Briefing for Webb Telescope’s Final Unfolding” the space agency announced.

NASA will provide live coverage and host a media briefing Saturday, Jan. 8, for the conclusion of the James Webb Space Telescope’s major spacecraft deployments.

Beginning no earlier than 9 a.m. EST, NASA will air live coverage of the final hours of Webb’s major deployments. After the live broadcast concludes, at approximately 1:30 p.m., NASA will hold a media briefing. Both the broadcast and media briefing will air live on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

As the final step in the observatory’s major deployments, the Webb team plans to unfold the second of two primary mirror wings. When this step is complete, Webb will have finished its unprecedented process of unfolding in space to prepare for science operations.

(2) KETTER INTERVIEWED ABOUT DREAMHAVEN BREAK-IN. The DreamHaven Books break-in reported in yesterday’s Scroll made local news on the Fox affiliate, who interviewed owner Greg Ketter: “Minneapolis comic store owner frustrated after continued robberies”.

(3) BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. “Golden Globes Will Not Be Livestreamed This Weekend” reports Deadline.

The controversy-plagued Golden Globes looks set to return this weekend, but no one will see it online or otherwise. “This year’s event is going to be a private event and will not be livestreamed,” an HFPA spokesperson said. “We will be providing real-time updates on winners on the Golden Globes website and our social media.”

…NBC revealed on May 10 that it would not air the Golden Globes this year due to the diversity issues involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The network, in a statement at the time, said it continues to believe that the HFPA is “committed to meaningful reform” but “change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right.”

(4) LEVAR BURTON. A reminder that the LeVar Burton Reads podcasts are also available on Stitcher. The latest is “To Jump is to Fall” by Stephen Graham Jones.

“To Jump is to Fall” by Stephen Graham Jones

A spy narrates his thoughts as he jumps from an airplane and freefalls toward his government target.

(5) DISCON III PANEL VIDEOS. The recorded panels of the 2021 Worldcon, DisCon III, are now available to attending members and virtual members. The recordings should remain available through the month of January 2022.

1. Go to the DisCon III schedule page: 

https://discon3.org/schedule/

2. Use the Log In button in the top left corner of the page. 

3. On the convention schedule, look for items with a View Replay button.

(6) DISCON III ART SHOW. Lisa Hertel reported on Facebook that DisCon III’s art show sales were approximately $32,000 across 33 artists.

(7) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman worries that the Omicron surge will keep him away from future conventions, but that doesn’t erase the fun he had in D.C. where he recorded five episodes of his podcast, including “Breakfast on Eggs Benedict with Fonda Lee”.

Fonda Lee

Fonda Lee won both a World Fantasy Award and an Aurora Award for her novel Jade City, which was also nominated for Nebula, Seiun, and Sunburst Awards. That first installment of her Green Bone Saga, an epic urban fantasy, was followed by Jade War, which was nominated for both the Dragon and Aurora Awards. Jade Legacy, the third book in her series, was released in November of 2021. Her young adult novels Zeroboxer and Exo were both Andre Norton Award finalists. She holds black belts in karate and kung fu, which probably came in handy when it was time for her to write Shang-Chi for Marvel Comics.

Because Fonda is a fan of Eggs Benedict, we headed to the Lafayette restaurant in the Hay Adams Hotel, where I’d been informed by Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post we could find an excellent incarnation of that dish.

We discussed what it was like finishing the final book in her Green Bone Saga trilogy during the pandemic, her secret for keeping track of near 2,000 pages of characters and plot points, why every book project is terrifying in its own way, how much of the ending she knew at the beginning (and our opposing views on whether knowing the ending helps or hurts the creative process), the warring wolves inside her as she writes the most emotionally difficult scenes, why she starts to worry if her writing is going too smoothly, the framing device that became far more than a framing device, why her natural length for processing ideas is the novel rather than the short story, and much more.

(8) BEBOP PETITION REACHES 100K. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] According to Dazed‘s Günseli Yalcinkaya, the Change.org petition “Save the live action cowboy bebop” has now garnered over 100,000 signatures.

Following news of the cancellation, co-executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach took to Twitter to voice his disappointment: “I truly loved working on this. It came from a real and pure place of respect and affection. I wish we could make what we planned for a second season, but you know what they say, men plan, God laughs.”

…As petition numbers grow by the minute, perhaps it won’t be long until Netflix takes note and we can confidently say: See you soon, space cowboy.

(9) THE BOYS. Amazon Prime dropped a teaser trailer for The Boys – Season 3. Coming June 3.

The Boys is an irreverent take on what happens when superheroes, who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians and as revered as Gods, abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good. It’s the powerless against the super powerful as The Boys embark on a heroic quest to expose the truth about “The Seven”, and their formidable Vought backing.

(10) MILLER OBIT. Wild Cards author John Joseph Miller died January 5 announced DreamForge Magazine.

We are deeply saddened to hear that John Jos. Miller passed away yesterday. Our deepest sympathies to John’s wife, family, and friends. We were fortunate to work with John on Ghost of a Smile in 2019 and Don’t Look Back in the recently released DreamForge Anvil Issue 6. He’s best known for his work in the Wildcard Series edited by George RR Martin. His last story with us, Don’t Look Back, is a Satchel Paige baseball story. John was a Fellow of the Society for American Baseball Research and was an authority on America’s Negro league baseball of the 20th Century. In his honor, read “Don’t Look Back” in Dreamforge Anvil Issue 6.

(11) WILLIAM CONTENTO (1947-2021). William G. Contento known for his annual bibliographical roundups of sff in the Eighties and Nineties (originally with Locus’ Charles N. Brown), died December 13, 2021. His family obituary is here.

…Bill retired in 2012. Bill’s obsession besides his family, was science fiction, a collector, an author and authority on anthologies and source material. Using his cataloging mind, his home computer and working with other collaborators who shared his passion Bill authored and coauthored at least 14 titles. Some of his reference works were more than 500 pages. Eventually he was able to put them on CDs. His indexes are linked by the Library of Congress, The British Library, MIT’s library to name a few. Google his name to see a list of all his labors of love….

(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1961 [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Sixty-one years ago, ITV first aired The Avengers. Original cast was Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee. Hendry left after the first series; Steed than became the primary male character, partnered with a succession of female partners. The series would last for six seasons and one hundred and one episodes. We of course have our favorite female partner but that’s not for us to say here. After it ended in 1969, John Steed would be paired with two new partners on The New Avengers, a series that ran for two seasons in the mid-Seventies.  

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 7, 1899 F. Orlin Tremaine. He was the Editor of Astounding from 1933 to 1937. It’s said that he bought Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness without actually reading it. Later as Editor at Bartholomew House, he brought out the first paperback editions of Lovecraft’s The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror. He wrote a dozen or so short stories that were published in the pulps between 1926 and 1949. (Died 1956.)
  • Born January 7, 1912 Charles Addams. Illustrator best known for the Addams Family which he first drew in 1932 and kept drawing until his death. Needless to say there have been a number of films using these characters of which The Addams Family is my favorite. Linda H. Davis’ Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life is well worth seeking out and reading. (Died 1988.)
  • Born January 7, 1913 Julian S. Krupa. Pulp cover and interior illustrator from 1939 to 1971 who graced Amazing Stories and Fantastic. In the Thirties, he also contributed art to fanzines, including Ad Astra. His grandson said that “his Grandfather did all the illustrations for the training films for the first Nuclear Submarines and was a friend to Admiral Rickover. And then continued to do early training films for NASA.” (Died 1989.)
  • Born January 7, 1928 William Peter Blatty. Novelist and screenwriter best known for The Exorcist though he was also the same for Exorcist III. The former is by no means the only genre work that he would write as his literary career would go on for forty years after this novel and would include Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Fable which he renamed Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Hollywood Christmas Carol and The Exorcist for the 21st Century, his final work. (Died 2017.)
  • Born January 7, 1955 Karen Haber, 67. Wife of Robert Silverberg. I fondly remember reading her Hugo-nominated Meditations on Middle Earth anthology, not to mention the three Universe anthologies she did with her husband which are most excellent. I don’t remember reading any of her novels but it’s hardly a certainty that I didn’t as even when my memory was a lot better than is now, I hardly remembered all the genre fiction I’ve read. So those you’ve read her, please tell me what she’s like. 
  • Born January 7, 1957 Nicholson Baker, 65. Ok ISFDB lists him as having two SFF novels, The Fermata and House of Holes. The Wiki page him lists those as being two out of the three erotic novels that he’s written. Not having read them, are they indeed erotic SFF? I see that ESF say they’re indeed SFF and yes are erotic. H’h. 
  • Born January 7, 1961 Mark Allen Shepherd, 61. Morn, the bar patron on Deep Space Nine. Amazingly he was in Quark’s bar a total of ninety-three episodes plus one episode each on Next Gen and Voyager. Technically he’s uncredited in almost all of those appearances. That’s pretty much his entire acting career. I’m trying to remember if he has any lines. He’s also an abstract painter whose work was used frequently on DS9 sets. For all practical purposes, this was his acting career. 

(14) COMICS SECTION.

  • Lio might be a young Harryhausen.

(15) GET VACCINATED. GeekWire witnesses when “Mr. Spock beams down for vaccine-boosting billboard campaign”.

…The first round of the campaign, organized by Nimoy’s family and L.A. Care Health Plan with the blessing of ViacomCBS, has been in the works in Los Angeles since last May…

(16) BOWIE THE ACTOR. [Item by Alan Baumler.] BBC’s appreciation of the film roles of Davie Bowie, almost all genre. “The underrated genius of David Bowie’s acting”. For some reason, can’t quite put my finger on it, they kept casting him for roles playing someone out of place who did not quite fit in.

… It’s unsurprising that this most mercurial of artists, with his visual sensibility and many alter-egos, would be drawn to film. Yet, while Bowie’s legendary status in music is beyond question, quantifying his contribution to cinema as an actor is more complicated. In the three decades between The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and The Prestige (2006), Bowie appeared in dozens of films but – despite that span of credits – only a few of these roles came close to making the most of his talent. When we leave aside the many cameos – of which the uncontested crème de le crème is Bowie solemnly adjudicating a runway walk-off in Zoolander – and the forgettable flops – the less said about Just a Gigolo, the better – we are left with only a handful of performances. Yet those acting roles that did manage to effectively exploit Bowie’s gifts are easily enough to secure his status as a cinema icon. When matched with an inventive director, Bowie could be an unforgettable screen presence….

(17) DEER DEPARTED. RedWombat’s Bambi rewatch thread starts here.

(18) WAVES OF SFF. Ron Jacobs reviews Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950-1985 in “Some Hazy Cosmic Jive” at CounterPunch.

…If the reader previously dismissed science fiction as juvenile or foolish, this introductory survey of its radical possibilities is heartily recommended. It could easily change your mind. If the reader is already familiar with this genre, this text will come as an intelligent and inspired discussion of the genre during one of its most creative and fertile periods. Visually delightful and intellectually astute, it should provide each and every reader with a list of books to add to their to-read queue.

(19) NOT JUST A PHASE. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist/illustrator Will Quinn did this piece based on the Saul Bass movie Phase IV (1974). It was riffed by Joel and the Bots in the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-) in its KTMA season (1988-1989).

(20) WHERE IT’S AT. I always like to have a science item towards the end of the Scroll.

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Live from 2011, “’Doctor Who on Holiday’ by Dean Gray”.

It combines Green Day’s “Holiday” with Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” and “Doctorin’ The TARDIS” by The Timelords (better known as The KLF). “Doctorin’ The TARDIS” itself takes a sample from “Rock and Roll Part 2″.” From Wikipedia: “Dr Who on Holiday is the second track from the mash up album, American Edit created by Dean Gray (a collaboration of Party Ben and Team 9).

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, Ben Bird Person, Scott Edelman, Will R., Rich Lynch, Nicki Lynch, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 3/14/21 I Am The Pixel, I Speak For The Scrolls

(1) DREAMFORGE ANVIL KICKSTARTER. DreamForge Magazine is becoming DreamForge Anvil Magazine, providing behind-the-scenes looks at what each story means to the author and how it reached its final draft.

There’s a Kickstarter to fund 6 issues in 2021, #1 is online for free right now.

The DreamForge Anvil, SF & Fantasy Stories and How to Write Them Kickstarter has raised $4,275 of its $4,475 goal with six days left.

Our mission is both to present hopeful science fiction and fantasy as well as learn what these stories mean to their authors and how they are constructed. Notes accompanying each story take a look at specific storytelling aspects, both at weaknesses that were addressed by the author and strengths demonstrated in the writing that were appreciated by our team. Complementary essays cover the handling of story hooks, exposition, character development, plot, pacing, world-building, and more.

A special Bradbury-themed Collector’s Edition of Limited Prints by Elizabeth Leggett is available for $600.

(2) FAILING SAFELY. The Space Review tries “Putting the SpaceX-FAA dispute in context”.

…At the launch bases at Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, and Wallops, there are government agencies charged with ensuring safety. The probability of casualty for an operation is assessed both during the planning process and in real time prior to the operation; go/no go decisions are made accordingly. Launches will not be allowed to occur if the 30 in a million requirement is exceeded. At Boca Chica, a privately owned launch complex, that safety task is accomplished by SpaceX, with approval by the Federal Aviation Administration by means of the analyses required by the launch license issued to SpaceX by the FAA.

On December 8, 2020. SpaceX planned to launch SN8 Starship mission from Boca Chica. SpaceX conducted the required flight safety analyses and found that the distant overpressure focusing probability of casualty limits would be exceeded. The company asked the FAA for a waiver of the requirement; the FAA refused. SpaceX launched SN8 anyway, and the vehicle was destroyed during the landing attempt.

We do not know exactly when this situation became known to the FAA, but about fove hours before the planned SN9 launch on January 28, the agency informed SpaceX that the launch was not approved. The FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation into the prior noncompliance and made changes to the launch license as a result. The SN9 mission was launched on February 2.

So, the FAA’s delay of the approval to launch SN9 had nothing to do with the fact that SN8 had crashed and exploded. SpaceX is free to blow up any number of its vehicles and create damage to any of its own facilities, but not free to exceed the national standards for the probability of casualties to the general public. Perhaps, if SpaceX killed off its entire launch site workforce in a mishap, then OSHA might get interested, but it would not be an FAA concern.

Elon Musk has complained that the FAA’s regulatory structure is “fundamentally broken” and called for revisions to the standards that he said had been established back when there were only a relative few launches each year from government launch ranges. But such fundamental revisions would require increasing the allowable casualties in the civilian population. Nothing else would have helped SpaceX launch in December, unless the distant overpressure focusing requirement itself was done away with….

(3) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • March 14, 1994 — On this day in 1994, Robocop: The Series premiered. It stars Richard Eden as the title character. A Canadian produced and directed series that lasted twenty episodes including the pilot, it lacks the graphic violence and intent of Robocop and Robocop 2 that preceded it, and adds a lot more humor. You can see the two-hour pilot episode here. It was adapted from the unused RoboCop 2 script, Corporate Wars which was fromthe writers of the first RoboCop film, Edward and Michael Miner. 

(4) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born March 14, 1869 – Algernon Blackwood.  Radio broadcaster, journalist, dairy farmer, violin teacher.  S.T. Joshi called his work “more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s” (The Weird Tale, 1990).  A dozen novels, two hundred shorter stories; plays.  “My fundamental interest … is … the extension … of human faculty…. of consciousness…. we may become aware of a new universe…. more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.”  Whether or not his notions are true, SF is an artform, which he did well.  (Died 1951) [JH]
  • Born March 14, 1918 – Mildred Clingerman.  Twoscore stories for us; also elsewhere e.g. Collier’sGood Housekeeping.  From her SF we can see that her success in such venues is a sign not of any dullness, but of her acuteness.  She did not write in the big bow-wow strain, as Sir Walter Scott said comparing himself to Jane Austen; some of us passed her by; Boucher didn’t, she was often in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and “Letters from Laura” is in his first-rate Treasury.  Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.  Posthumous collection The Clingerman Files.  (Died 1997) [JH]
  • Born March 14, 1940 – Meade Frierson III.  Co-founder of the Southern Fandom Confederation, a name showing either a very bad or a very good sense of humor, and its President 1970-1983, a term showing likewise.  In the apas Myriad and SFPA (Southern Fandom Press Alliance).  Rebel Award.  Fan Guest of Honor at Windycon IV, Balticon 11, Coastcon 1978 (with wife Penny Frierson).  His Fancyclopedia III entry is worth a look for the Jerry Collins drawing.  (Died 2001) [JH]
  • Born March 14, 1946 – Diana Gallagher Wu, age 75. Three dozen novels, four shorter stories; drew Don Wollheim for the Nolacon II (46th Worldcon) Program Book, won a Best Fanartist Hugo; five-time Guest of Honor at filk cons (there, Orange Mike, I used your link again), two Pegasus Awards, gosh.  [JH]
  • Born March 14, 1948 Valerie Martin, 73. The author of Mary Reilly, which is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde told from the point of view of a servant in the doctor’s house. It is a film of the same name with John Malkovich in the lead role. It was nominated for Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. (CE)
  • Born March 14, 1957 Tad Williams, 64. Author of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Otherland series, and Shadowmarch series as well as the most excellent Tailchaser’s Song and The War of the Flowers. (CE)
  • Born March 14, 1964 Julia Ecklar, 57. She’s the Astounding Award–winning author of The Kobayashi Maru which is available in English and German ebook editions. She’s also a filk musician who recorded numerous albums in the Off Centaur label in the early 1980s, including Horse-Tamer’s Daughter, Minus Ten and Counting, and Genesis.(CE)
  • Born March 14, 1971 Rebecca Roanhorse, born 1971, 50. Her “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™“, first published in the August 2017 of Apex Magazine, won both a Nebula and a Hugo as best short story. She also won the 2018 Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her first novel was Hugo, Nebula and WFA nominee Trail of Lightning. (CE) 
  • Born March 14, 1973 – Martina Pilcerová, age 48. Thirty covers, half a dozen interiors.  Here is Odyssey 5.  Here is Downtown Blues.  Here is SF Chronicle 223 (hello, Andy, what made you go to Google for that joke of mine?).  Here is Cryoburn.  [JH]
  • Born March 14, 1974 Grace Park, 47. Boomer on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. She’s been on a fair amount of genre over the years with her first acting role being the Virtual Avatar in the “Bits of Love” episode of Outer Limits. After that, she shows up on Secret Agent ManThis ImmortalThe Outer Limits again, Star Gate SG-1Andromeda, and oddly enough Battlestar Galactica in a number roles other than her main one. I’m sure one of you can explain the latter. (CE)
  • Born March 14, 1988 – Sara Reine, age 33. Four dozen novels, a score of shorter stories.  “I collect swords, cat hair, and typewriters (which I do use for writing!).  I can usually be found working on my treadmill desk at midnight while my four black cats glare disapprovingly….  I’m an Air Force brat who…. finally gave up on becoming a velociraptor.”  NY Times and USA Today Best-Seller.  Flow chart of her books at her Website.  [JH]

(5) COMICS SECTION.

GoComics assembled a collection of past strips incorporating the theme of the day: “3.14159265359 Comics Celebrating National Pi Day”. Daniel Dern says, “I particularly love 2002’s Frazz.”

…So on this Pi Day, we implore you to consider where we’d be without the crazy number in all of its necessary-rounding glory. Without it, several dozen comic strip characters’ heads would be squares, triangles, rectangles or other things that are not circles.

And here are three new strips with jokes about Pi Day.

Totally unrelated to Pi but very amusing is today’sSally Forth about wild variations on the game of Monopoly.

And Non Sequitur has a clever gag about the time change.

(6) EGGING THEM ON. In a story SYFY Wire gives the more provocative title “Fishing on the Moon?”, they explain why “French researchers believe fish eggs can hatch on the surface of the Moon”.

A new study known as the Lunar Hatch Program was put forth by researchers at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), and theorizes that astronauts could potentially grow and harvest fish on the Moon by utilizing eggs delivered from Earth and H2O obtained from the lunar soil. 

According to the research paper first published in the online journal, Springer, samples of fish eggs were put to the test to see if they could endure simulations of a rocket ride aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. 

IFREMER scientists were pleased to discover that the eggs of two fish species, European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and meagre (Argyrosomus regius), were indeed hardy enough and could easily survive being taken to the Moon.

(7) PRINTING THE WAY TO SPACE. “Orbex to build rocket engines with large custom AMCM 3D printer” reports TCT Magazine.

UK-based space launch company Orbex has revealed it will employ a huge custom 3D printer from EOS’s AMCM (Additive Manufacturing Customized Machines) business to build rocket engines. 

Headquartered in Scotland with design and testing facilities in Denmark, Orbex says this new in-house capability will enable it to ramp up production for more than 35 large-scale rocket engine and main stage turbopump systems per year ahead of its plans to launch rockets from Space Hub Sutherland at the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland in 2022.

The company, which has previously adopted SLM Solution’s metal additive manufacturing technology, plans to produce lightweight and single part structures using custom blends of titanium and aluminium to withstand the extreme pressures and temperature conditions of spaceflight. These printed components will form part of Orbex’s 19-metre long Prime “microlauncher” rocket, designed to deliver small satellites into polar orbits around the Earth and fuelled by bio-propane, a clean-burning, renewable fuel which reduces CO2 emissions by 90% compared to kerosene-based fuels.  

(8) INSIDE A NEBULA. A New York Times article “Seven Tools for Better, Longer Sleep” includes a projector that turns a room into deep space.

  • EncaLife Star Light Galaxy Projector
  • “Sleep” by Max Richter

Like many kids, my son has always thrived on a bedtime routine, including dimmed lights and soothing music. But as he’s gotten older, he’s wanted more than just the traditional night light. While I was showing him a photo on Instagram one day, we came across an ad for a projector that could light up a room like a galaxy, and it was all he could talk about for weeks. After a lot of research (there were several fly-by-night companies in this category that didn’t seem trustworthy; some were even called out as being scams), I landed on the EncaLife Projector (about $80). I liked that the company had taken the time to get the device Google- and Alexa-enabled, and it had clearly spent some time developing the app.

Now, every night, I say, “Alexa, Goodnight Galaxy,” and the room transforms. The main bedroom smart bulb dims and turns purple (we have the Wyze Bulb, one of Wirecutter’s old budget picks). Then the galaxy projector turns on (you can customize the nebula colors and speed of the stars in the app), and our Echo Dot plays selections from Max Richter’s 2015 album “Sleep” (free with Amazon Prime or $10 for MP3), which was composed specifically to facilitate sleep. It may seem like a lot for bedtime, but when your little one says his night light helps him “have good dreams of building Mars rovers for NASA,” it’s hard not to feel like the investment was worthwhile. — Lauren Dragan, senior staff writer

(9) HAVEN’T I HEARD THIS BEFORE? John King Tarpinian accused The Simpsons of stealing a Scroll title, but it just sounds that way. (Click for larger image.)

(10) MINIFIGS. Maybe not genre, but cool! Hey, one of them did speak in a CoNZealand video, come to think of it — Inspirational Women (IWD 2021) – Custom Design Minifigure Set.

This set was created for International Women’s Day 2021, and includes the following minifigures: Ella Fitzgerald (‘The Queen of Jazz’), Boudica (Celtic Queen and Warrior), Audre Lorde (American poet, writer and activist), Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister of New Zealand) and Jane Austen (English novelist).

Printed on to genuine LEGO parts, these minifigs are the most amazing quality and fit into any LEGO enthusiast’s collection. 

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

Pixel Scroll 8/22/20 Unobtainium Glistens Like Chrome In All Of The Federation Parsecs

(1) BRADBURY CENTENNIAL. Here are a few more of the many entries about Ray Bradbury today.

The Martian Chronicles is not a child’s book, but it is an excellent book to give to a child—or to give to the right child, which I flatter myself that I was—because it is a book that is full of awakening. Which means, simply, that when you read it, you can feel parts of your brain clicking on, becoming sensitized to the fact that something is happening here, in this book, with these words, even if you can’t actually communicate to anyone outside of your own head just what that something is. I certainly couldn’t have, in the sixth grade—I simply didn’t have the words. As I recall, I didn’t much try: I just sat there staring down at the final line of the book, with the Martians staring back at me, simply trying to process what I had just read.

The fifth episode of my podcast Bradbury 100 drops today. The theme of the episode is biographies, as my interview guest is Jonathan R. Eller, author of three biographical volumes on Ray: Becoming Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury Unbound, and Bradbury Beyond Apollo.

Jon is also the Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and has done more than anyone to explore Bradbury’s thinking and authorship.

… Bradbury’s poetic, metaphor-filled prose was not easy to adapt to the screen, which is perhaps why there have been far fewer screen versions of his work than that of, say, Stephen King. But there were still a number of significant adaptations of Bradbury’s work for both the small and big screen, including some that he was directly involved in as a screenwriter….

01 – It Came from Outer Space (1953)

With the exception of a handful of short stories adapted for various early 1950s anthology TV shows, this was the first relatively major film based on Bradbury’s work and still remains one of the finest. Oddly, it wasn’t adapted from a published story but an original screen treatment he developed for director Jack Arnold (Creature from the Black Lagoon). 

In the film (the first sci-fi movie to use a 3D filming process), an alien ship crashes on Earth and its crew makes copies of the local townspeople to gather what they need to effect repairs. The aliens are not hostile, but merely want to fix their ship and leave peacefully. This was an unusual idea for the time — the extraterrestrials in most films from the era were decidedly dangerous — and sets It Came from Outer Space apart as a thoughtful yet still suspenseful piece. 

(2) FROM WAUKEGAN. When she was seven years old, Colleen Abel tells LitHub readers, she took something her grandmother said literally: “Growing Up With Ray Bradbury’s Ghost in Waukegan, Illinois”.

…Bradbury, intoning gravely over shots of the artefacts: People ask, Where do you get your ideas? Well, right here. As the camera pans, Bradbury says, Somewhere in this room is an African veldt. Beyond that, the small Illinois town where I grew up. He sits at a typewriter and the keys clatter. One night, watching these credits, my grandmother said to me, “You know, he’s from here.” She meant, of course, from Waukegan, “that small Illinois town” where he grew up and where we sat now in her neighborhood of tiny homes called The Gardens. But I, at age seven, thought she meant here, here in the house we sat in, that he had grown up in the house, perhaps even still lived in the basement which resembled, in its murk and books and clutter, the same office Bradbury sat down to write in during the opening credits of his tv show.

It wouldn’t be a bad premise for a Bradbury story: a young girl, bookish and morbid, discovers an author living in her grandmother’s musty basement. And in a way, he was there. My father’s old room was part of that basement, still set up the way it had been when he lived there, commuting to college and working part-time at a bookstore. One room was floor to ceiling bookshelves and by the time I was in junior high school, I would go down there regularly and pick something out to read. Most of the books were yellowed and falling apart, their covers marked with their original prices: fifteen cents. Among these were a few volumes of Bradbury’s short stories. I would pick one, often The Illustrated Man, and take it back upstairs to the velour armchair and settle in.

(3) “IN AN ATOMIC NUTSHELL.” First Fandom Experience dramatizes young Ray’s fanzine article: “In 1940, Ray Bradbury Asked, ‘Are You Ad Conditioned?’”

The latest video from First Fandom Experience brings to life a three-page screed by a young Ray Bradbury addressing the issue of the incongruous and annoying ads in pulp magazines.

The piece appeared in the Spring 1940 issue of Sweetness and Light, an edgy, satirical fanzine from a faction of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. A full reading of the piece is presented along with historical context and a selection of the offending advertisements. Enjoy!

(4) PIXEL BUDS. Plainly, it’s our duty here to signal boost the review of a product by this name: “Thoughts on Pixel Buds 2: The Buddening” by John Scalzi at Whatever.

1. To begin, they look pretty cool. Like the first generation, they come in their own little charging case, and when they’re nestled in there and the top is flipped open (which is a solidly satisfying tactile experience, by the way), it looks for all the world like a cute little robot with bug eyes (at least in the orange variant).

(5) WEREWOLF. THERE COURTHOUSE. “George R.R. Martin files lawsuit over film rights to a werewolf novella”: the LA Times has the news.

Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin has filed a lawsuit over the film rights to his werewolf novella “The Skin Trade.”

According to the complaint, filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, Mike The Pike Productions was granted an option to the film rights of Martin’s novella in 2009. The company subsequently assigned the option to Blackstone Manor, LLC., the named defendants.

Described as a “werewolf noir,” “The Skin Trade” was originally published in 1988 as part of “Night Visions 5,” a horror anthology that also included stories by Stephen King and Dan Simmons. The story follows Randi Wade, a private investigator who is looking into a series of brutal killings in her small town, which eventually leads to her learning about werewolves and other demons. The story won a World Fantasy Award in 1989.

According to the complaint, Blackstone exercised the option on Sept. 2, 2014, and, per the 2009 agreement, it had five years to start principal photography before the rights reverted to Martin.

The complaint alleges that Blackstone “hastily assembl[ed] a barebones cast and crew” a day before the 2019 deadline “to shoot a handful of scenes” for no other reason than to maintain the appearance that it was making the progress necessary to retain the rights. Martin says the “token” production was “insufficient,” comparing the move to a contractor hurriedly building a gazebo in lieu of the agreed-upon skyscraper when faced with a deadline…

(6) WW84. DC dropped a new trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 at the DC Fandome event.

Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman’s next big screen adventure finds her facing two all-new foes: Max Lord and The Cheetah. With director Patty Jenkins back at the helm and Gal Gadot returning in the title role, “Wonder Woman 1984” is Warner Bros. Pictures’ follow up to the DC Super Hero’s first outing, 2017’s record-breaking “Wonder Woman,” which took in $822 million at the worldwide box office. The film also stars Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Kristen Wiig as The Cheetah, Pedro Pascal as Max Lord, Robin Wright as Antiope, and Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta.

(7) LEFT IN THE SILO. Nicholas Whyte, CoNZealand’s Deputy Hugo Administrator, in “The 1945 Retros that weren’t”, runs the numbers to show why various categories did not make the final ballot.

We didn’t publish the full stats for the 1945 Retro Hugo categories that weren’t put to the final ballot this year, mainly because voting ended only seven days before the Retro ceremony and we had to prioritise fairly ruthlessly.

But after internal discussion, we are publishing them here….

(8) THE SLUSHPILE’S MY DESTINATION. DreamForge Magazine returns with further explanations: “Why We Didn’t Buy Your Story, Part 2”.

What are the numbers again? This time we received over 600 works from hopeful contributors. At a guess, over 2 million words of fiction.

The majority of those writers really tried to send us something they thought we could use. For instance, we’re not a horror magazine. People knew that and sent very little horror. We didn’t get much in the way of apocalyptic dystopia either. Sex and swearing were at a minimum, yet people also recognized we’re not a children’s magazine nor specifically aimed at the young adult market.

By and large, the stories contained hopeful themes, big ideas and presented worlds filled with diversity, empathy, heroism, and hope.

I don’t have the exact numbers, but we read a lot of good stories. Let’s say 25% were “good to excellent.” It could be more. Conservatively, that would be over half a million words.

At $0.06/word, that’s over $30,000 (if we were able to buy all those good stories). While we do a good job of making DreamForge look big-time, that’s more than our annual budget for everything related to the magazine. And if we could somehow invest in all those stories, they would fill our pages for the next 3-4 years.

Second, creating an issue of a magazine is not just about selecting great stories. It’s about creating a reading experience. Think of it as a variety show. If all the stories are literary, philosophical, message pieces with troubled characters navigating complex plots, our readers aren’t going to make it through the whole issue.

Some stories are challenging, and they require a clear head and concentration before delivering a payoff in emotion or thoughtful meaning. And honestly, I don’t want to read those at 11:30 pm after a long day when I open a magazine for a few minutes of relaxation. I check the Table of Contents for a short story that looks light and easy to get through…

(9) ANGUS BUCHANAN OBITUARY. Industrial archaeologist and biographer Angus Buchanan died June 17. He is profiled in The Guardian. There’s a kind of steampunk sensibility to the topic.

Engineers shape economies, landscapes and how people work and live in them. Yet in the past their achievements were little celebrated. Angus Buchanan, who has died aged 90, did much to increase awareness of their endeavours and breakthroughs.

The appearance of his book Industrial Archaeology in Britain as a Pelican Original in 1972 marked a significant step forward for an emerging discipline. It supplied the crucial link between the development of industrial archaeology at regional and national levels in Britain, leading to the conservation, restoration and reuse of buildings, sites and engineering that might otherwise have been lost.

…The culmination of Buchanan’s research came with Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (2002). In building the Great Western Railway and important bridges, tunnels and dockyards, the great Victorian engineer changed the face of the British landscape. Innovations at sea included the SS Great Britain, the first screw-driven iron transatlantic steamship, and his designs revolutionised modern engineering.

The biography provided the first fully documented and objective account, placing Brunel’s significance in a historical context. The desire to avoid concentrating on familiar incidents and the legends surrounding them led Buchanan to a thematic approach rather than a chronology, covering Brunel’s overseas projects and professional practices, and the politics and society within which he functioned, as well as familiar subjects, among them his other major ship, the SS Great Eastern.

The [Bristol Industrial Archeology Society] BIAS had a major influence on the preservation of Bristol’s city docks, thwarting traffic planners who wished to build a major road complex across them. In 1970 the Great Britain was returned from the Falklands to the dry dock where it had been built in 1843, and it is now a popular tourist attraction; nearby is another of Brunel’s masterpieces, the Clifton suspension bridge.

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • August 22, 1957 X Minus One’s “Drop Dead” first aired. Based off of Clifford D. Simak‘s story of that name which was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction in July of 1956,  it’s a superb tale about a planet with a very obliging inhabitant called The Critter and how it serves the astronauts who land there. The radio script was by Ernest Kinoy with the cast being Lawson Zerbe, Ralph Camargo and Joseph Bell.  You can listen to it here.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born August 22, 1880 – George Herriman.  Wrote the immortal and so far unique comic strip Krazy Kat; also illustrated Don Marquis’ poetical tales of Archy and Mehitabel a cockroach and another cat.  Krazy sometimes seems male, sometimes female, which hardly matters; is endlessly the target of bricks thrown by Ignatz Mouse, taking them as a sign of affection; is the subject of protection by Officer Pupp, to whom they are merely illegal.  Other characters, equally unlikely, are also animals (including birds), whom anthropomorphic is equally inadequate for.  Nor does dialectal justly describe the language, nor surreal the landscape.  Here is the theme.  Here is a variation.  Here is an elaboration.  (Died 1944) [JH]
  • Born August 22, 1919 Douglas W F Mayer. A British fan who was editor for  three issues of Amateur Science Stories published by the Science Fiction Association of Leeds, England. He was thereby the publisher of Arthur C. Clarke’s very first short story, “Travel by Wire”, which appeared in the second issue in December 1937. He would later edit the Tomorrow fanzine which would be nominated for the 1939 Best Fanzine Retro Hugo. (Died 1976.) (CE)
  • Born August 22, 1920 Ray Bradbury. So what’s your favorite work by him? I have three. Something Wicked This Way Comes is the one I reread quite a bit with The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles being my other go to regularly works by him. (Died 2012.) (CE) 
  • Born August 22, 1925 Honor Blackman. Best known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers, Bond girl Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts. She was also Professor Lasky in “Terror of the Vervoids” in the Sixth Doctor’s “The Trial of a Time Lord”. Genre adjacent, she was in the film of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary as Rita Vandemeyer. (Died 2020.) (CE) 
  • Born August 22, 1945 David Chase, 75. He’s here today mainly because he wrote nine episodes including the “Kolchak: Demon and the Mummy” telefilm of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He also wrote the screenplay for The Grave of The Vampire, and one for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Enough Rope fur Two”, which he also directed. (CE) 
  • Born August 22, 1946 – Rafi Zabor, 74 Seldom does work from outside our field wholly engage with our spirit.  But The Bear Comes Home is superb.  Naturally we ignore it.  It does have explicit sexual activity, not gratuitous.  In a year when Earthquake Weather could not reach the ballot, of course The Bear could not muster even 5% of the nominations.  Don’t let that stop you now.  [JH]
  • Born August 22, 1948 – Susan Wood.  Her we do recognize.  Met Mike Glicksohn at Boskone 4, 1969; Energumen together to 1973, Hugo as Best Fanzine its last year; both Fan Guests of Honour at Aussiecon (in retrospect Aussiecon One) the 33rd Worldcon though marriage gone.  Three Hugos for SW as Best Fanwriter; Best of SW (J. Kaufman ed.) 1982.  Taught at U. British Columbia; Vancouver editor, Pac. NW Rev. Books.  Atheling Award, Aurora Award for Lifetime Achievement, Canadian SF Hall of Fame.  One Ditmar.  (Died 1980) [JH]
  • Born August 22, 1952 – Chuck Rothman, 68.  Two novels (Atlanta Nights with many co-authors was –), fifty shorter stories.  Interviewed in Flash Fiction Online Nov 15.  Movie-TV-music blog Great but Forgotten.  Einstein and CR’s grandfather.  [JH]
  • Born August 22, 1954 – Gavin Claypool, 66.  Los Angeles area actifan.  LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Society) Librarian.  Won LASFS Evans-Freehafer service award twice; only five people have ever done so.  Reliably helpful to others e.g. at SF cons.  [JH]
  • Born August 22, 1955 Will Shetterly, 65. Of his novels, I recommend his two Borderland novels, Elsewhere and Nevernever, which were both nominees for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature, and his sort of biographical Dogland. Married to Emma Bull, they did a trailer for her War for The Oaks novel which is worth seeing as you’ll spot Minnesota fans in it. And Emma as the Elf Queen is definitely something to behold! (CE)
  • Born August 22, 1963 Tori Amos, 57. One of Gaiman’s favorite musicians, so it’s appropriate that she penned two essays, the afterword to “Death” in Sandman: Book of Dreams, and the Introduction to “Death” in The High Cost of Living. Although created before they ever met, Delirium from The Sandman series is based on her. (CE)
  • Born August 22, 1964 – Diane Setterfield, Ph.D., 56.  Three novels.  The Thirteenth Tale sold three million copies (NY Times Best Seller), televised on BBC2.  “A reader first, a writer second….  The practice of weekly translation from my undergraduate years [her Ph.D., from U. Bristol, was on André Gide] has become an everyday working tool for me: when a sentence doesn’t run the way I want it to, I habitually translate it into French and retranslate it back into English.  It’s like switching a light on in a dim room: suddenly I can see what’s not working and why.”  [JH]

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) SUICIDE SQUAD ROLL CALL. Adam B. Vary, in the Variety story “‘The Suicide Squad’ First Look, Full Cast Revealed by Director James Gunn at DC FanDome” says that director James Gunn revealed at DC Fandome that the cast of The Suicide Squad, coming out in April 2021, includes Margot Robbie and Viola Davis from the 2016 film Suicide Squad but also Nathan Fillion, John Cena, and Peter Capaldi as “The Thinker,” a DC villain from the 1940s.  Principal photography was completed before the pandemic hit and the film is completed and ready to go.

… Among the new cast, Gunn said that he reached deep into the DC Comics canon to find a motley crew of villains to populate the movie, and it appears he brought some invention of his own to the project as well.

(14) A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN. “DC FanDome: Snyder Cut of Justice League to be four hours” at Lyles Movie Files.

…A big question was how the Snyder Cut would get released in HBO MAX. Snyder revealed it will be split into four one-hour segments.

Snyder then teased an entire full uninterrupted version as well with maybe the possibility of a solo purchase version.

(15) SOME CELESTIAL OBJECTS WILL BE RENAMED. “NASA to Reexamine Nicknames for Cosmic Objects”. The full statement is at the link.

Distant cosmic objects such as planets, galaxies, and nebulae are sometimes referred to by the scientific community with unofficial nicknames. As the scientific community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful. NASA is examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

As an initial step, NASA will no longer refer to planetary nebula NGC 2392, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star that is blowing off its outer layers at the end of its life, as the “Eskimo Nebula.” “Eskimo” is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions. Most official documents have moved away from its use. NASA will also no longer use the term “Siamese Twins Galaxy” to refer to NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of spiral galaxies found in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Moving forward, NASA will use only the official, International Astronomical Union designations in cases where nicknames are inappropriate. 

…Nicknames are often more approachable and public-friendly than official names for cosmic objects, such as Barnard 33, whose nickname “the Horsehead Nebula” invokes its appearance. But often seemingly innocuous nicknames can be harmful and detract from the science. 

The Agency will be working with diversity, inclusion, and equity experts in the astronomical and physical sciences to provide guidance and recommendations for other nicknames and terms for review….

(16) HONEST GAME TRAILERS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Fandom Games asks in this Honest Game Trailer, “Destroy All Humans”, since alien invasion is “the only box left on the 2020 bingo card” why not enjoy this 2005 game where you’re an alien mowing down humans and giving bad Jack Nicholson impressions?

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