Pixel Scroll 1/18/23 Scroll Me Once, I Am The Pixel, Scroll Me Twice, I Am The File

(1) RIGHTS ACQUIRED. A novel George R.R. Martin co-authored with Daniel Abraham and the late Gardner Dozois has been optioned for a movie. Variety has the details: “George R.R. Martin, Exile Content Pact on ‘Hunter’s Run’ Film Rights”.

…The sci-fi tale is the only one among Martin’s body of work that features a Latino lead, making it a natural fit for Exile Content which has produced a slew of content in Spanish and English.

Based on the sci-fi novel co-penned by Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham (“The Expanse”), “Hunter’s Run” follows Ramón Espejo who ekes out a living as a day laborer on a distant planet where he finds his living conditions no better off than what he left on planet Earth. He escapes but finds himself on the run for the murder of an interplanetary diplomat….

The novel itself took thirty years to finish, for reasons explained in the Wikipedia: “Hunter’s Run”.

…In 1976, science fiction author and editor Dozois conceived of a story beginning with a man floating in darkness. Dozois conceived of Ramón’s name, ethnicity (feeling that Hispanic protagonists were underrepresented in science fiction) and his basic situation, but the story did not proceed far. The following year, while working as a guest instructor at a Catholic women’s college at the invitation of Martin, his friend and colleague, Dozois read the story out loud. Martin thought the story was interesting and waited for Dozois to finish it, but Dozois found himself unable to do so. In 1981, Dozois suggested that Martin continue the story instead, which he did, bringing the story to the beginning of the chase sequence. Martin hit on the idea of expanding the story to a 500-page novel exploring the ecosystem of São Paulo..

After his writing on the story stalled in 1982, Martin handed it back to Dozois, suggesting they alternate working on it until it was done. However, Dozois was unable to come up with any ideas on how to proceed and the book remained in his desk drawer until 2002, when he and Martin decided to bring the story to the attention of a third author, Daniel Abraham. Abraham completed the story, and titled Shadow Twin, it was published by Subterranean as a novella in 2004. Dozois then went back and reworked the manuscript into a 380-page novel, renamed Hunter’s Run, for publication in 2007….

(2) STAY TUNED. Zack Snyder’s own longtime-in-hatching project Rebel Moon is finally on the way says The Hollywood Reporter: “Rebel Moon Netflix Release Date: Zack Snyder Movie Hits in December”.

Netflix has set a date for Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon. The space epic will bow Dec. 22 on the streaming service, Netflix revealed Wednesday as part of a broader look at its 2023 slate.

Snyder originally developed Rebel Moon as a potential Star Wars feature more than a decade ago, before Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. “This is me growing up as an Akira Kurosawa fan, a Star Wars fan,” Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter in July 2021. “It’s my love of sci-fi and a giant adventure. My hope is that this also becomes a massive IP and a universe that can be built out.”…

(3) NOT AGAINST THE LAW? [Item by Daniel Dern.] Behind a paywall, more from the New York Times on the not-dead indie romance author: “A Fake Death in Romancelandia”

… She had not heard again from the police and sounded confident that she would not face charges, saying the family had not received substantial donations after her online death announcement; she had offered the detectives access to her bank accounts to prove it. She did admit feeling remorse for the fans who had grieved her loss.

“I’m sorry for their mourning, but from a legal standpoint, I did nothing wrong,” she said. “Morally, I might have done something wrong. But legally, there’s nothing wrong.”

(4) WHAT IF YOUR BOOK IS ALREADY INSIDE THE PICKET LINE? Dan Kois, a mainstream author, discusses the “HarperCollins strike: why publishing my first novel has me deeply conflicted” at Slate.

Today, my first novel is being published. It’s the culmination of seven years of work and, uh, a large number of years of dreaming of writing a novel. Publication day for a debut novel can be a little overwhelming, I’m told—you’ve got all those TV news producers begging you for interviews. (They haven’t called me yet, but I assume they will soon.) Overall, though, pub day ought to be a time of joy, if slightly nervous joy: A thing you made, and care deeply about, is finally making its way into the world!

But for me, and for a lot of other authors this winter, publication day is feeling a little bittersweet. That’s because we’re being published by HarperCollins.

About 200 HarperCollins publishing employees, primarily younger assistants and associates, have been on strike since November. Their demands are not outlandish and reflect the issues facing junior employees across publishing: They want the company’s minimum starting salary increased from $45,000 to $50,000. They want the publisher to address diversity issues at the company. They also want to ensure all eligible employees are in the union.

… So what do owe the young striking employees of HarperCollins? Should I be delivering public statements about my support for the union? Sure, that’s easy. But is that enough? Isn’t the success of my book also success for a company that’s currently behaving in a way I can’t agree with? Should I be withholding my labor and refusing to promote my book entirely?

No, said Rachel Kambury, a striking associate editor at HarperCollins. “That’s not your responsibility,” she said. “We don’t want to harm HarperCollins authors.” Indeed, the striking workers aren’t asking customers to boycott Harper titles, and have even created a Bookshop.org affiliate page where you can buy Harper books (here’s a great example!) while also contributing to the union’s strike fund, which supports workers who haven’t gotten paid for two months now….

And Publishers Weekly posted a lengthy article about the strike, the company’s intransigence, and its prospective effects on the industry: “Who Wins in the HarperCollins Union Labor Dispute?”

As the HarperCollins labor dispute rolls into a new year, the company’s unionized employee strike is now the longest in the union’s more than 80-year history at the top publisher. Since the initial employee walkout on November 10, the dispute has caught the attention of all publishing sectors, with many anticipating the outcome as a test case for how labor unions could change business operations. But for many publishing industry veterans, whether that change is positive or negative remains to be seen.

Indeed, some smaller independent publishers—mostly outside of New York City—are concerned that the public nature of the strike, with wage demands made public, is raising unrealistic financial expectations. Smaller publishing operations can’t afford to match wages at the Big Five publishing companies. Moreover, despite the double-digit profit margins that the publicly-traded publishers have posted in recent years, publishing is generally a low margin business. Sales gains during the initial years of the COVID-19 outbreak notwithstanding, the industry typically has marginal growth in annual sales, and “flat is the new up” has long been an unofficial business slogan. A lengthy, very public strike only adds to the industry’s challenges, with many agents and authors wanting the dispute to be resolved quickly and immediately so the industry can get back to business.

As of January 18, unionized employees have missed 50 work days, amid numerous stories about HarperCollins’ low pay, particularly for entry-level employees….

(5) MARVEL MOVIES RETURNING TO CHINA SCREENS. “China ends de facto ban on Marvel films after more than three years” reports the Guardian.

China has ended its de facto ban on Marvel films, with superhero flicks Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania both locking in surprise release dates, after a three-and-a-half-year gap that has cost Disney hundreds of millions in ticket sales.

The films will be released in February, after the lunar new year, marking the first Marvel releases in the world’s second-largest theatrical market since Avengers: Endgame in 2019.

Foreign film releases are approved or denied by regulators at the China Film Administration, which is part of the Chinese Communist party’s propaganda department. The CFA routinely blocks the release of foreign films to maintain censorship and protect the domestic film industry.

The CFA has never explained why Marvel films have been blocked since mid-2019….

…The readmittance of Marvel films comes as the US and China work to repair relations, and amid other signs of China’s government easing its hardline approaches on the private sector.

(6) KINSMAN HISTORY MAKER. The Tribune-Chronicle in Warren, Ohio ran a profile about a famous local author: “Valley author found success in the stars”.

Edmond Moore Hamilton was a popular author of science fiction stories and novels through the mid-20th century. During his career, he wrote more than 30 science fiction novels and 400 stories.

… On Dec. 31, 1946, Hamilton married fellow science fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett in San Gabriel, California, and in 1951 moved with her to a farmhouse in Kinsman, where they worked side by side for a quarter-century, but rarely shared the task of authorship….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1993 [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

I am not making the assumption that all of us here love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fiction but I deeply, madly do. At forty one novels and a number of related works including the Hugo nominated The Science of Discworld, there’s a lot of great reading to be had.

And let’s not forget a music adaptation by Steeleye Span of one of his novels. As the Green Man reviewer says, “It may be an example of retrospective inevitability now that it has actually happened in the form of the Wintersmith CD, however.  In any case, the end result is one that is overwhelmingly a credit to all concerned; worthy of the names involved and their reputations.” 

And of course, Discworld has food.  Tonight, I’ll offer up one of my favorite quotes by him on that subject. Don’t worry — there’s more food to follow by him. 

Our quote this Scroll is from “Theatre of Cruelty”, a Discworld short story that Terry Pratchett wrote in 1993. It has an interesting history as it was first written for W. H. Smith Bookcase magazine and then was slightly changed before being published in the program of OryCon 15, and finally in The Wizards of Odd, a compilation of fantasy short stories.

Pratchett allowed it to be published sort as a feral thing online, so you can find the full text, well, pretty much everywhere. Here’s a nicely formatted copy.

And here’s the excerpt from it that I promised. 

There is such a thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato sauce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish ‘n’ chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can’t use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don’t apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It’s just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort, and seek it out. It’s as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 18, 1882 A.A. Milne. Oh, Pooh has to count as genre, doesn’t he? A talking, honey loving bear? Certainly that an exhibition entitled “Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic” appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows his place in our culture. There’s also Once on a Time, a rather charming fairy tale by him. And though it isn’t remotely genre, I wholeheartedly recommend The Red House Mystery, a Country House Mystery that’s most excellent! (Died 1956.)
  • Born January 18, 1932 Robert Anton Wilson. Conspiracy nut or SF writer? Or both? I think I first encountered him in something Geis wrote about him in SFR in the Eighties. Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy is just weird and might or might not be a sequel to The Illuminatus! Trilogy. But the absolutely weirdest thing he did I think is an interview titled Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell. Yes, he frothed at the mouth on Campbell and Joyce in it! (Died 2007.)
  • Born 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.)
  • Born January 18, 1943 Paul Freeman, 80. Best remembered I’d say for being the evil René Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He also played Professor Moriarty in Without a Clue which had Michael Caine as Holmes and Kingsley as Watson. He played Frederick Selous on two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. His last genre appearance was the new The Man Who Fell to Earth series.
  • Born January 18, 1953 Pamela Dean, 70. 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 a great deal of fun reading. Much of her short stories are set in the Liavek shared universe created by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly. Alll of these 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.
  • Born January 18, 1955 Kevin Costner, 68. Some of his genre films are Robin Hood: Prince of ThievesWaterworldThe Postman and the recent Dragonfly. Bull Durham is one of my go-to films when I want to feel good. He also was Jonathan Kent in both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. On the baseball side of things, I really like his Field of Dreams — his acting in it as Ray Kinsella is quite excellent. Not quite as superb as he was as “Crash” Davis in Bull Durham but damned good.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro shares the latest in alien transportation.

(10) LET THERE BE MOMENTARY LIGHT. “Inside the nuclear fusion breakthrough that could be a step to unlimited clean energy in the distant future” CBS’ 60 Minutes has posted their coverage as a text article in addition to the video recording.

…Last month, the nearest star to the Earth was in California. In a laboratory, for the first time, the world’s largest lasers forced atoms of hydrogen to fuse together in the same kind of energy producing reaction that fires the sun. It lasted less than a billionth of a second. But, after six decades of toil and failure, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proved it could be done. If fusion becomes commercial power one day, it would be endless and carbon free. In other words, it would change human destiny. As you’ll see, there’s far to go. But after December’s breakthrough, we were invited to tour the lab and meet the team that brought star power down to Earth.

Uncontrolled fusion is easy–mastered so long ago the films are in black and white. Fusion is what a hydrogen bomb does, releasing energy by forcing atoms of hydrogen to fuse together. What’s been impossible is harnessing the fires of Armageddon into something useful. 

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory helps maintain nuclear weapons and experiments with high-energy physics. An hour east of San Francisco, we met Livermore’s director, Kim Budil, in the lab that made history, the National Ignition Facility. 

Kim Budil: The National Ignition Facility is the world’s largest, most energetic laser. It was built starting in the 1990s, to create conditions in the laboratory that had previously only been accessible in the most extreme objects in the universe, like the center of giant planets, or the sun, or in operating nuclear weapons. And the goal was to really be able to study that kind of very high-energy, high-density condition in a lot of detail….

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: High on Life”, Fandom Games is not just honest, but brutally honest.

…From Rick and Morty creator and alleged domestic abuser Justin Roiland comes a brand new video game that’s exactly the thing that you would expect from him. It’s a space adventure where every joke goes on two minutes too long – High on Life.

Witness what happens when Justin Roiland decides to bring his vision to life in game and experience a world that feels like a cheap knockoff of a thing made by the same guy… 

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 1/11/23 A Song Of Fur And Mice

(1) BRINGS THE MESSAGE. During last night’s Golden Globes ceremony CNN reports “Michelle Yeoh would not be played off during Golden Globes acceptance speech”.

Michelle Yeoh won best performance by an actress in a musical or comedy motion picture for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” at the Golden Globes on Tuesday night, a career first for the veteran actress.

Though she had to stop her acceptance speech momentarily to threaten violence to the Golden Globes powers-that-be for trying to play her off (joking, “Shut up, please; I can beat you up”), her remarks centered on her journey in Hollywood.

“I remember when I first came to Hollywood, it was a dream come true until I came here … Someone said to me: ‘You speak English?’ And then I said: ‘Yeah, the flight here was about 13 hours long, so I learned,” she said….

… “We all know that it’s so hard,” she added on Tuesday night. “I think any immigrant that comes here will tell you how difficult it is and of sometimes failing and not being able to find it.”

(2) SOME WINDOWS OPEN, OTHERS DON’T. Public Domain Review’s post “Happy Public Domain Day 2023!” begins with a caution about what’s not entering public domain this year.

…Each January 1st is Public Domain Day, where a new crop of works have their copyrights expire and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose. Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain, but there are three definitions which cover most cases. For these three systems, newly entering the public domain today are:

  • works by people who died in 1952, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (e.g. UK, Russia, most of EU and South America);
  • works by people who died in 1972, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (e.g. New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia);
  • films and books (incl. artworks featured) published in 1927 for the United States.

We normally have Canada listed in the second system above, but in a disappointing development, there’ll be no new published works entering the public domain in Canada next year (nor for the next 20 years) after they retroactively extended copyrights on published works from life of the author plus 50 years years to plus 70 years.

There will also be no new sound recordings entering the US public domain this year. Last year we saw a mammoth release of historical sound recordings become copyright-free, but it won’t be until 2024 that those from 1923 will join them.

Some of you may have been following our advent-style countdown calendar which revealed day-by-day through December our highlights for these new public domain entrants. The last window was opened yesterday, and while such a format was fun for the slow reveal, for the sake of a good gorgeable list we’ve exploded the calendar out into a digestible array below….

(3) THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, AND THE NOT-SO-QUICK. “A romance author was believed to be dead. When she appeared to return, the story got more complicated”CNN tries to sort it out.

In September 2020, fans and friends of Susan Meachen received devastating news. The romance writer’s Facebook account posted a message saying she had died. A later post claimed she had taken her own life and suggested her actions were the results of online bullying by others in her thriving, close-knit online writing group.

Over the next two years, her fellow writers and loyal followers helped keep her memory alive through her published works. However, her Facebook account made a shocking claim this month: Meachen was still alive, and she wanted to return to writing.

“Let the fun begin,” the post concluded.

The bizarre post plunged Meachen’s fans and fellow writers into confusion and rage. Did the woman they had considered a friend, a colleague and a mentor stage a devastating, years-long ruse? Those who spoke to CNN say the scandal has threatened to upend the trust and collaboration that keeps their independent publishing community going. More than that, their search for answers after years of mourning has only turned up more questions….

Camestros Felapton also looked at the coverage given to these developments by Michael Gallagher and Declan Finn, who tried to inject their Upstream Reviews blog into the story, in “Twists…”.

…So getting more mainstream promotion by accounts oblivious to the nature of the site was a bit of a coup for them, all fuelled by the possible-zombie Susan Meachen replying to their direct message. However…it is now unclear if Susan Meachen did reply to them at all. After publishing the responses, claims have been made that the Twitter account they DM’d is fake.

Upstream Reviews has since retracted the responses from Susan Meachen…

(4) A LITTLE LIST. Eric Adelson has assembled “An unofficial list of the most influential science fiction works ever” for the Washington Post.

On a Monday evening last September, a NASA spacecraft intentionally blasted into an asteroid in deep space. The goal was planetary defense — protecting our planet from the kind of wayward rock that could end civilization as we know it. The unprecedented moment seemed surreal, with a camera from the craft sending footage back to Earth of a large asteroid getting bigger and bigger until — pow! — impact. It was both incredible and credible — equal parts jaw-dropping and successful in its proof of concept.

Who could have imagined such a thing?

Well, science fiction writers did.

“Crashing big things into celestial objects goes all the way back to the 1930s stories of Edmond ‘World Wrecker’ Hamilton,” Lisa Yaszek, regents professor of science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, wrote in a text message. “In ‘Thundering Worlds,’ we throw Mercury at an invading alien army to save the rest of the solar system.”…

(5) COLLECTORMANIA. Heritage Auctions sent out an email promoting its top 2022 sales. Among them was the “Margaret Hamilton ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ Hourglass from The Wizard of Oz” that went for $495,000, and the “Dracula (Universal, 1931). Fine/Very Fine on Paper. Insert” that fetched $228,000. And there were many more comics and game items at the top of the list.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

2000 [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Metheglin from Charles de Lint’s Forest of the Heart

Metheglin figures into Charles de Lint’s Forest of the Heart because the theme here is based heavily upon the pre-British Greenman imagery and the myth that comes out of it, and one the characters here is Welsh. 

There’s also a very great scene of a Celtic music session in this novel.

You can read the first chapter, courtesy of Charles, here.

She took a sip, bracing herself, but the liquid went down smooth as silk, with the full-body of a fine brandy. Not until it had settled in her stomach did she realize the kick it had. She gasped and her eyes began to tear. But a fluttering warmth spread through her and the sour taste was finally gone. The liqueur held a faint bouquet of honey and herbs, of a field of wildflowers. It was like drinking a piece of summer and for a moment she almost thought she could hear the buzz of bees, feel the heat of a hot summer’s day.

‘Wow,’ she said and peered into the mouth of the flask. She caught a glimpse of a light, yellowish-amber liquid. ‘What is this stuff?’

‘Metheglin,’ the man told her. ‘A kind of Welsh whiskey made from hops and honey. Have some more,’ he added when she started to hand the flask back.

Ellie did, this time rolling the liquid around in her mouth before finally swallowing it. She looked down at the flask, noting the fine filigree worked into the metal before her eyes teared up again. She drew in a sharp breath, savoring the bite of the cold as it hit the roof of her mouth.

‘So where would you find it in a liquor store?’ she asked. ‘Under whiskeys or…you said it was made from hops. That’s like beer, right?’

Except she’d never tasted either a whiskey or a beer that was this good.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 11, 1906 John Myers Myers. Ahhh, Silverlock. It would have made a Hell of a movie with the right script and such. I read the NESFA Edition which has the Silverlock Companion in it which is very useful as you know the novel’s very meta indeed. If you don’t have this, it was reprinted separately later. Thirty years after Silverlock was published, The Moon’s Fire-Eating Daughter novella came out. Myers claims it’s a sequel to the novel. There are three different publishers selling it on the usual suspects, all three legit. (Died 1988.)
  • Born January 11, 1923 Jerome Bixby. His “It’s a Good Life” story became the basis for an episode of the original Twilight Zone episode under the same name and which was included in Twilight Zone: The Movie. He also wrote four episodes for the original Star Trek series: the Hugo nominated “Mirror, Mirror”, and “Day of the Dove”, “Requiem for Methuselah”, and “By Any Other Name”.  With Otto Klement, he co-wrote the story upon which the Hugo nominated Fantastic Voyage series, and Isaac Asimov novel were based. Bixby’s final produced or published work so far was the screenplay for The Man from Earth film. (Died 1998.)
  • Born January 11, 1930 Rod Taylor. First genre role would be as Israel Hands in Long John Silver. He would follow that up with SF film World Without End (which you probably heard of), The Time Machine (which I suspect you’ve heard of), Colossus and the Amazon Queen (Taylor claims to have rewritten the script), The Birds (I don’t like it), Gulliver’s Travels and last, and certainly least, The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy. (Died 2015.)
  • Born January 11, 1937 Felix Silla. He played Cousin Itt (sic) on The Addams Family in a role invented for the show. The voice was not done by him but rather provided by sound engineer Tony Magro in post-production. He was also responsible for the physical performance of Twiki on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century though the voice was supplied by Mel Blanc or Bob Elyea. And he played an unnamed Ewok on Return of the Jedi. (Died 2021.)
  • Born January 11, 1952 Diana Gabaldon, 71. I have friends who read her and enjoy immensely her Outlander series. They also avidly look forward to every new episode of the Outlander television series. Any of y’all fans of either? 
  • Born January 11, 1961 Jasper Fforde, 62. I read and thoroughly enjoyed every one of his Thursday Next novels with their delightfully twisted word play as I did his Nursery Crimes series. I’ve not, though I may be wrong, read his Shades of Grey books and I know I’ve not read the Dragonslayer series though I’ve heard Good Things about them. 
  • Born January 11, 1963 Jason Connery, 60. Son of Sir Sean Connery. He’s best known for appearing in the third series of Robin of Sherwood, a series I loved dearly (including the music which was done by Clannad which I’ve got live boots of). He also played Jondar in the “Vengeance on Varos” story on Doctor Who during the Sixth Doctor era (my least favorite Doctor by far). He was Ian Fleming in Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming. And he was a young Merlin in Merlin: The Quest Begins.
  • Born January 11, 1972 Amanda Peet, 51. Not a long SFF précis but an interesting one none-the-less.  She first shows up voicing Maria Montez in Battle for Terra. She was then Harlee in Martian Child which is at least genre adjacent. She was ASAC Dakota Whitney in The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Say did you know that Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey was paid for in part by NASA? Way cool. She voiced Ranger in it. 

(8) CAP’S NEXT ADVENTURE. Tensions erupt between Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson as Captain America: Cold War begins. The upcoming crossover between Captain America: Sentinel Of Liberty and Captain America: Symbol Of Truth, kicks off in April. More information here from Marvel. 

It’s all been leading to this! Last year, a new era of Captain America began as both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson picked up the shield and embarked on separate journeys in the pages of Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, and Carmen Carnero’s Captain America: Sentinel Of Liberty and Tochi Onyebuchi and R.B. Silva’s Captain America: Symbol Of Truth. This April, the two Captains will reunite for Captain America: Cold War, an explosive crossover event that will make them question everything they believe in…and each other….

(9) DR. ARTIE MATIC. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] What could be more helpful than having your mental and emotional health evaluated by something that doesn’t have a brain or emotions? How about doing so without your knowledge or permission? Ars Technica reports “Controversy erupts over non-consensual AI mental health experiment”.

On Friday, Koko co-founder Rob Morris announced on Twitter that his company ran an experiment to provide AI-written mental health counseling for 4,000 people without informing them first, The Verge reports. Critics have called the experiment deeply unethical because Koko did not obtain informed consent from people seeking counseling.

Koko is a nonprofit mental health platform that connects teens and adults who need mental health help to volunteers through messaging apps like Telegram and Discord.

On Discord, users sign into the Koko Cares server and send direct messages to a Koko bot that asks several multiple-choice questions (e.g., “What’s the darkest thought you have about this?”). It then shares a person’s concerns—written as a few sentences of text—anonymously with someone else on the server who can reply anonymously with a short message of their own….

(10) GO AND CHANGE YOUR ARMOR. The Daily Record remembers “The abandoned Scottish mine that starred as a Monty Python filming location”.

Nestled away in Perth and Kinross is an abandoned mine that may look unimpressive to most, but will be instantly recognisable to any Monty Python fan.

Tomnadashan Mine was constructed in the 19th century by John Campbell, 2nd Marquess of Breadalbane, in an attempt to mine copper, gold, and sulphur. This venture proved unsuccessful and the mine was deserted after his death.

It wasn’t until over 100 years later that the mine would gain a second life as the backdrop for one of the most iconic scenes in comedy history. Those who have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail will no doubt be familiar with the Rabbit of Caerbannog….

(11) STILL A VIRGIN. “Attempt at First Satellite Launch From Britain Fails” reports the New York Times.

Britain’s attempt to get into the space launch business on Monday night came up short when a 70-foot rocket stuffed with satellites failed to reach orbit, Virgin Orbit, the company providing the launch service, said.

An hour after takeoff from an airstrip in Cornwall, in southwest England, a modified Boeing 747 released the rocket, which fired away as planned. It was supposed to take nine satellites up into low orbital positions 300 or more miles above the Earth. But Virgin Orbit said in a statement on Tuesday that the system had experienced an “anomaly” while the rocket’s second-stage engine was being fired. It had been traveling at more than 11,000 miles per hour when the mission ended prematurely.

Dan Hart, the chief executive of Virgin Orbit, said in the statement that “the first-time nature” of the mission had added layers of complexities, and that a “technical failure” appeared to have occurred. “We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process,” he said.

People in Britain’s space industry said the goal — launching satellites from British soil for the first time — would have huge importance even though Virgin Orbit, which was founded by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, is a California company….

(12) PREHISTORIC COSTUME COMPETITION. [Item by Michael Toman.] “Humans First Started Wearing Clothes At Least 300,000 Years Ago, New Research Finds” at Open Culture.

Artist’s conception….

That people wore clothes back in the Stone Age will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who grew up watching The Flintstones. That show, never wholly reliant on established archaeological fact, didn’t get too specific about its time period. But it turns out, based on recently published discoveries by a team of researchers from the University of Tübingen, the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, and Leiden University, that Stone Agers were dressing themselves as early as 300,000 years ago — over one hundred millennia earlier than previously thought.

“This is suggested by cut marks on the metatarsal and phalanx of a cave bear discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany,” says the University of Tübingen’s site. The location of such marks indicate that the bear was not simply butchered but carefully skinned….

(13) SPIN DOCTORS. Inertia by Mark Everglade (Rockhill Publishing) features a young geophysicist, Ash, and her father who must solve the ecological crisis of a planet spinning out of control, using the latest cybernetics while evading an oppressive regime profiting off the destruction. 

Gliese 581g is the last remaining colony of the human race, located twenty light years from Earth. The planet was once tidal locked to its sun, with one side draped in darkness and the other half always bright. This changed after a radical group called O.A.K. increased the planet’s rotation to bring daylight cycles to all in the name of equality. All was not well, however, as decades passed, and new generations dealt with continual floods as the newfound sunlight melted the icecaps. Entire neighborhoods went aquatic from rising sea levels. Soon, the planet was spinning out of control, with sunrises occurring every few hours.

Ash and her father discover a research lab where Severum uncovers a connection between Geosturm and the Old Guard, a scion of the now defunct Government of Evig Natt led by Eduardo Culptos. The Old Guard seek to restore their power over the hemisphere by accelerating the planet’s rotation at breakneck speed, exacerbating the negative ecological effects, as they convince the public that the planet was better off in darkness. They’re motivated by the wealth they obtained back when light was scarce and commodified, and seek a restoration of their influence.

The book is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Author Mark Everglade has spent his life studying social conflict. He runs the website www.markeverglade.com where he reviews cyberpunk media and interviews the greats.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Screen Junkies’ “Honest Trailers: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” begins with a spoiler warning. So we’ll not blab further in this introduction.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 1/13/21 The Scroll Is A Harsh Mistress

(1) OVERVIEW OF THE NEW LOTR SERIES. Amazon just unloaded Parler but now they’re bringing back Sauron? What are they thinking? io9 has the story: “Amazon Reveals Lord of the Rings TV Show Details—Sauron Returns”.

…Confirmed via a synopsis provided to TheOneRing.net, Amazon Studios revealed that the series—currently filming in New Zealand with a cast that seems about as large as the population of a small country on top of that—is indeed set in the Second Age, “thousands” of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The show will concern itself with characters “both familiar and new” as they reckon with the fact that the Dark Lord Sauron has returned to cast shadow and flame across Middle-earth.

(2) WORLDCON HOTEL NEWS. “Owner of DC’s Wardman Park Hotel files for bankruptcy” reports WTOP. The hotel is where DisCon III, the 2021 Worldcon, would be held if an in-person 2021 Worldcon is possible:

Wardman Hotel Owner LLC, an affiliate of Pacific Life Insurance Co., has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and has ended its management contract with Marriott International.

The 1,152-room Wardman Park, one of the largest hotels in D.C., opened in 1918, during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Pacific Life permanently closed the hotel just before filing for bankruptcy protection, and is seeking to sell the property, which could clear the way for the property’s redevelopment.

The Chapter 11 petition was filed Jan. 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Marriott and Pacific Life have been locked in legal disputes since shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic led to the hotel’s temporary closure in March 2020.

…The owner’s bankruptcy filing Monday came the same day that neighboring historic hotel the Omni Shoreham reopened.

The DisCon III committee hasn’t posted a response to the latest development, but last October they did address their plans for an alternative to the Wardman Park if needed. The chairs wrote in the convention’s newsletter [PDF file]:

As you can imagine, we have uncertainty related to the Coronavirus but planning and activities continue. The status of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel is unclear. Litigation between the owners was filed 2 September and settled at the end of September. At the start of October, Marriott filed a lawsuit against one of the entities that owns the hotel. What a mess! The hotel itself does not have an official statement at this time, and we are in close touch. Our Facilities team does have the room blocks for both the Marriott and the Omni Shoreham set up, and our current plan is to release those in January 2021.

(3) BOOM BOOM BOOM. James Davis Nicoll names “Five Books Featuring Space Travel Powered by Atomic Bombs”. Strange that I’ve read four of these but only remembered the nukes from one of them.

Nuclear explosives can be used to address many urgent issues: a shortage of mildly radioactive harbours, for example, or the problem of having too many wealthy, industrialized nations not populated by survivors who envy the dead. The most pressing issue—the need for a fast, affordable space drive—wasn’t solved until the late 1950s. Theodore B. Taylor and others proposed that the Bomb could be used to facilitate rapid space travel across the Solar System. Thus, Project Orion was born….

(4) SOMETHING ELSE THAT’S SURGING. “Online D&D provides relief during the COVID-19 pandemic” – the Los Angeles Times profiled D&D players.

… Players and scholars attribute the game’s resurgent popularity not only to the longueurs of the pandemic, but also to its reemergence in pop culture — on the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” whose main characters play D&D in a basement; on the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”; or via the host of celebrities who display their love for the game online.

Liz Schuh, head of publishing and licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, isn’t surprised by the game’s reanimated popularity. Revenue was up 35% in 2020 compared with 2019, the seventh consecutive year of growth, she said.

Many newcomers purchase starter kits packed with character sheets, a rule book, a set of dice and a story line. New dungeon masters may buy a foldable screen to hide their rolls and anything else they’d like to keep from the player-characters. Once the introductory journey ends, players pore through other adventure books for sale — or conjure an original odyssey.

“The first few days of news [of the virus] coming out globally, at the top of every hour all the alarms were going off at the company,” said Dean Bigbee, director of operations for Roll20, an online tabletop gaming platform. “The amount of new account requests were so high that the systems thought that we were under a denial-of-service attack. But they were legitimate. They were accounts from Italy, and then France, following the paths of lockdowns across the world.”

(5) FORTIES SF’S POWER COUPLE SPEAKS. G.W. Thomas at Dark Worlds Quarterly put together a fine link compilation: “In Their Own Words: Interviews with Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton”, who married in 1946 and put Kinsman, Ohio on the map.

Here are some interviews given by Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton. They range from artsy film magazines to the cheapest of fanzines. My favorite is the audio clip from Youtube when Leigh and Ed were the guests of honor at the 1964 (PacifiCon) WorldCon. It is somehow revealing to hear what their voices sounded like and to glean a little of their personalities beyond the printed page….

Included are Q&A’s conducted by one of fandom’s best interviewers, Paul Walker, such as his Leigh Brackett interview from Luna Monthly #61 [1976] [Internet archive link].

(6) STRAIN OBIT. Actress Julie Strain, whose genre resume is mostly erotic horror movies, has died reports Joblo.com: “R.I.P.: Julie Strain, B-movie legend and Penthouse Pet, has died at age 58”. This is the third time her death has been announced, however, news sources are satisfied this time the news is accurate.

Last January, it was mistakenly announced that B-movie legend and 1993 Penthouse Pet of the Year Julie Strain had passed away. The announcement was quickly retracted – but in a sad twist of fate, friends and family are confirming that Strain has passed away almost one year to the day after that erroneous report. She was 58 years old.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1991 — Thirty years ago at Chicon V, Lois McMaster Bujold‘s The Vor Game  as published by Baen Books wins the Hugo for Best Novel. Runners-ups were David Brin‘s Earth, Dan Simmons’ The Fall of Hyperion, Michael P. Kube-McDowell’s The Quiet Pools and Greag Bear’s Queen of Angels. It would nominated for the HOMer as well.  A portion of this novel had appeared in the February 1990 issue of  Analog magazine in slightly different form as the “Weatherman” story.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 13, 1893 – Clark Ashton Smith.  Poetry, prose, graphic art, sculpture.  One novel, two hundred thirty shorter stories, seven hundred poems; a dozen covers, a hundred thirty interiors; five dozen posthumous collections.  Pillar of Weird Tales with Howard and Lovecraft.  “I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.”  (Died 1961) [JH]
  • Born January 13, 1933 – Ron Goulart, age 88.  Eighty novels, a hundred fifty shorter stories.  Book reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Venture.  Comic-book stories and prose about The Phantom; scripts for Marvel.  Inkpot Award.  Detective fiction, including half a dozen books featuring Groucho Marx.  Nonfiction, e.g. The Great Comic Book ArtistsComic Book Encyclopedia.  [JH]
  • Born January 13, 1937 – George Barr, age 84.  Decades-long career as a fanartist; here is a cover for Amrahere is one for Trumpet; two Hugos as Best Fanartist; Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon XXVI, at MidAmeriCon the 34th Worldcon.  Also developed a career as a pro.  Here is The Dying Earth.  Here is the Sep 86 Amazing.  Here is Adventures in Unhistory.  Artist GoH at ConAdian the 52nd Worldcon.  Fifty illustrated limericks for Weird Tales.  Fan and pro, two hundred covers, seven hundred interiors.  Artbook Upon the Winds of Yesterday.  [JH]
  • Born January 13, 1938 Charlie Brill, 83. His best remembered role, well at least among us, is as the Klingon spy Arne Darvin in “The Trouble with Tribbles”. And yes, he’ll show in the DS9 episode that repurposed this episode to great effect. He was the voice of Grimmy in the animated Mother Goose and Grimm series, as well having one-offs in They Came from Outer SpaceThe Munsters TodaySlidersThe Incredible HulkWonder Woman and Super Train. Not even genre adjacent but he was a recurring performer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. (CE) 
  • Born January 13, 1945 Joy Chant, 76. Chant is an odd case as she only wrote for a short period between 1970 and 1983 but she produced the brilliant House of Kendreth trilogy, consisting of  Red Moon and Black MountainThe Grey Mane of Morning and When Voiha Wakes.  Her other main work, and it is without doubt absolutely brilliant, is The High Kings, illustrated lavishly by George Sharp and  designed by David Larkin with editing by Ian and Betty Ballantine. It is intended as a reference work on the Arthurian legends and the Matter of Britain with her amazing retellings of the legends.  I’ve got one reference to her writing Fantasy and Allegory in Literature for Young Readers but no cites for it elsewhere. Has anyone actually read it? (CE) 
  • Born January 13, 1957 – Claudia Emerson.  Five poems for us in Son and Foe.  Eight collections.  Poetry editor for Greensboro Review.  Pulitzer Prize.  Acad. Amer. Poets Prize.  Poet Laureate of Virginia.  Elected to Fellowship of Southern Writers.  Donald Justice Award.  (Died 2014) [JH]
  • Born January 13, 1960 Mark Chadbourn, 61. I’ve read his Age of Misrule series in which the Celtic Old Gods are returning in modern times and they’re not very nice but they make for very entertaining reading. It’s followed by the Dark Age series which is just as well crafted. His two Hellboy novels are actually worth reading as well. (CE)
  • Born January 13, 1968 Ken Scholes, 53. His major series, and it’s quite worth reading, is The Psalms of Isaak.  His short stories, collected so far in three volumes, are also worth your precious reading time. He wrote the superb “The Wings We Dare Aspire” for METAtropolis: Green Space. (CE) 
  • Born January 13, 1972 Una McCormack, 49. She’s the author of The Baba Yaga and The Star of the Sea, two novels  in the delightful Weird Space series. She’s also written myriad Trek novels including a Discovery novel, The Way to the Stars, and the first Picard novel, The Last Best Hope. She’s also a writer of Who novels having five so far, plus writing for Big Finish Productions. (CE) 
  • Born January 13, 1979 – Bree Despain, age 42.  Six novels, a couple of shorter stories.  Took a semester off college to write and direct plays for inner-city teens.  Felt she wasn’t special enough to be a writer, decided to study law.  Hit by a pickup truck.  Thought it out again.  First book sold on 6th anniversary of collision.  [JH]
  • Born January 13, 1980 Beth Cato, 41. Her first series, the Clockwork Dagger sequence beginning with The Clockwork Dagger novel is most excellent popcorn literature. She’s fine a considerable amount of excellent short fiction which has been mostly collected in  Deep Roots and Red Dust and Dancing Horses and Other Stories. Her website features a number of quite tasty cake recipes including Browned Butter Coffee Bundt Cake. Really I kid you not. (CE) 
  • Born January 13, 1981 – Ieva Melgave, age 40.  Her “Siren’s Song” has been translated from Latvian into English.  Interviewed (in English) in Vector 281.  [JH]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ALIENS OMNIBUS. Marvel invites fans to jump on the Aliens Omnibus when the volumes arrive in April and August.

Cover by Mahmud Asrar

The classic comic book tales set in the iconic—and terrifying—world of the Alien franchise are being collected in brand-new hardcover collection starting in April with Aliens Omnibus Volume 1. And in August, fans of the iconic franchise can enjoy even more of these thrilling comic book stories with Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2.

A rogue scientist’s genetic experiments create a horrific new alien king! A ragtag unit of Colonial Marines battles a xenomorph infestation on a space station — and the survivors face a pack of bizarre hybrids! An investigator must solve a murder on a deep-space alien-research station! But what dread music will a deranged composer make with an alien’s screams? And can a synthetic xenomorph rebel against its sadistic creator? Plus: Flash back to an alien attack in the 1950s! And witness the fate of England as aliens overrun the Earth! This rare collection includes: Aliens: Rogue #1-4, Aliens: Colonial Marines #1-10, Aliens: Labyrinth #1-4, Aliens: Salvation, Aliens: Music Of The Spears #1-4 and Aliens: Stronghold #1-4 — plus material from Dark Horse Comics #3-5, #11-13 And #15-19; Previews (1993) #1-12; Previews (1994) #1; and Aliens Magazine (1992) #9-20.

Exclusive direct market variant cover by Paul Mendoza

(11) THE REAL SPACE COMMAND. “U.S. Space Command to be headquartered in Huntsville, Ala.” reports station WAFF.

The permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command will be located at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal.

According to a statement from the Secretary of the Air Force, Huntsville was confirmed as the preferred location for the U.S. Space Command Headquarters.

The Department of the Air Force conducted both virtual and on-site visits to assess which of six candidate locations would be best suited to host the U.S. Space Command Headquarters. The decision was based on factors related to mission, infrastructure capacity, community support and costs to the Department of Defense.

(12) AUDIOBOOK NARRATION. In AudioFile’s latest Behind the Mic, narrator Joniece Abbott-Pratt shares her thoughts about recording Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer, on AudioFile’s list of the 2020 Best Young Adult Audiobooks.

Listeners meet Tarisai as a lonely younger girl growing up with a distant mother, and we feel her astonishment when she’s brought to the palace in Aristar and meets the prince — and discovers her new friend is the person her mother cursed her to kill. This vibrant and multilayered fantasy audiobook comes to life with Joniece’s evocative narration.

“You watch her save the world… and that was really cool, to be inside of a story of a young woman that got to stand in her truth and in her power. You watch a princess mature into a queen.”—Narrator Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Read AudioFile Magazine’s review of Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko.

(13) COOK BOOKS. Get stacks of Glen Cook novels via this new Bundle of Holding deal.

Adventurer! This Glen Cook Bundle presents novels by fantasy and science fiction author Glen Cook from Night Shade Books. Best known for his Black Company dark military fantasies, Cook has also written the eight-book Dread Empire epic fantasy series, the Starfishers and Darkwar trilogies, and many free-standing novels. This all-new fiction offer gives you nearly two dozen Glen Cook novels in both ePub and Kindle ebook formats for an unbeatable bargain price.

For just US$7.95 you get all five titles in our Glen Cook Sampler (retail value $69) as DRM-free ePub and Kindle ebooks

… And if you pay more than the threshold price of $25.97, you’ll level up and also get our entire Complete Collection with eight more titles…

(14) ON SECOND THOUGHT. He’s a busy man, you know.

(15) HELICONIA WINTER. Richard Paolinelli handed out the 2021 Helicon Awards [Internet archive link] yesterday, some to bestselling sff writers, two to L. Jagi Lamplighter and Declan Finn, but if you want to know what’s really on Richard’s mind look at this entry on the list:

  • John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award – J.K. Rowling

Paolinelli also presented awards named for Melvil Dewey and Laura Ingalls Wilder, which he created after their names were removed from two American Library Association awards in recent years.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers:  Cyberpunk 2077” on YouTube, Fandom Games says that Cyberpunk 2077 is “the most anticipated release since Cup And Ball 2″ and that it lets gamers wallow in a world which is “not cool, not fun, and everything’s broken.”

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

Pixel Scroll 10/19/18 That Pixel Is Not Dead, It’s Just Pining For The Scrolls

(1) NOW A FOURTH BODY. Andrew Liptak reveals The Redemption of Time at The Verge“How a fan fiction for Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem became an official novel”

Since the publication of The Three-Body Problem, the first installment of Cixin Liu’s epic science fiction trilogy about making contact with an alien civilization, the series has gone on to earn the Chinese author enormous acclaim and legions of fans worldwide — including President Barack Obama. Next year, Tor Books will publish a new novel set in the same world, titled The Redemption of Time, but it won’t be by Liu. Instead, the book is written by Baoshu, an ardent fan of the series who originally published it online as a novel-length fan fiction story — one that became so popular that the trilogy’s publisher decided to release it as an official novel.

On Liptak’s personal blog he admits coming late to the trilogy, and shares what he got out of it: “From the beginning to the end: Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy”.

The most impressive thing that I found with the trilogy as a whole was the scale that Liu was writing at. Reviews and blurbs for the series teased that it spanned the entire future: from the 1970s all the way to the heat death of the universe, and he manages to do that, in a really interesting way.

(2) WEEKEND AUDIO PLAY. SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie touts “Something for the weekend, a 45-minute radio play from BBC Radio 4, free to listen to for next 4 weeks.”

Following an unspecified disaster the internet and power system has collapsed and been down for several years.  Two people – grandfather and granddaughter seek to escape Britain for France.  Global warming is the least of their problems.

This radio play reverses current immigration and Brexit concerns.

(3) JWC’S LONG VERSION OF WHO GOES THERE. John Betancourt has started a Kickstarter to fund publication of “Frozen Hell: The Book That Inspired The Thing”. He says, “It turned up in Campbell’s papers in a university archive. (Thanks for the discovery goes to Alec Nevala-Lee, who was researching Campbell at the time for his book, Astounding, which comes out in November.)”

In 1938, acclaimed science fiction author John W. Campbell published the novella Who Goes There?, about a team of scientists in Antarctica who discover and are terrorized by a monstrous, shape-shifting alien entity. The story would  later be adapted into John Carpenter’s iconic movie The Thing (following an earlier film adaptation in 1951). The published novella was actually an abridged version of Campbell’s original story, called Frozen Hell, which had to be shortened for publication. The Frozen Hell manuscript remained unknown and unpublished for decades, and it was only recently rediscovered. Frozen Hell expands the Thing story dramatically, giving vital backstory and context to an already incredible tale. We are pleased and honored to  offer Frozen Hell to you now, as Campbell intended it. You will be among the first people to ever read this completed version of the story.

Robert Silverberg will write the introduction.

How well is Betancourt’s Kickstarter doing? Well, with 42 days remaining, it has raised $11,592 of its $1,000 goal. So, rather well!

(4) VERDICT ON HALLOWEEN. NPR’s Monica Castillo reports on “‘Halloween’: This Time, Laurie Strode Is Locked And Loaded”.

Trauma is not neat and pretty to deal with; it is not easily diagnosed, it does not vanish on its own, and its lingering effects can touch those around us. In the latest sequel to the long and winding Halloween series, trauma plays an important role in the narrative arc of famed final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). You might remember her from the original 1978 John Carpenter film, which saw her screaming, running, discovering her friends brutally murdered, then fending off a serial killer to protect the kids she was babysitting.

The BBC summarizes: “Halloween: Jamie Lee Curtis reboot gets mixed reviews”

The 2018 version marks the 11th instalment in the horror series, which began in 1978.

The reviews, which have been published ahead of the film’s release on Friday, range between two and four stars.

(5) NOW HAUNTING THE MENU. Did you know Burger King has unleashed the Nightmare King burger? It has a green bun! They say that scientists have shown you get 3-1/2 more times the nightmares eating the Nightmare King than you do with the other fear-inducing items on the Burger King menu!

(6) VENOM. NPR’s Stephen Thompson, Glen Weldon, and Lars Gotrich discuss good and bad points in “Venom: Oh It’s Gooey, But Is It Good?” — all audio. good and bad points (mostly good) of differences from MCU epics.

In Venom, Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who’s trying to rebound from a major setback in his career. But Eddie’s plans are halted when he’s overtaken by a violent — and gooey — alien symbiote.

(7) BLOODY HELL. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story “MVPs of Horror: How Stanley Kubrick made the elevators bleed in ‘The Shining'”, has an interview with Kubrick’s personal assistant, Leon Vitali, who says the bloody elevator scene was a real short with a real elevator and could only be done on the first take because the set up was so complex.

From those ghostly twin girls to that chilling dog man, Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 horror masterpiece, The Shining, is awash in terrifying imagery that seeps off the screen and into moviegoers’ nightmares to this day. But there’s one scene that scared the legendary filmmaker himself so much, he couldn’t be on the Overlook Hotel set the day it was filmed. That’s the iconic “elevator of blood” sequence, a static shot of an elevator door slowly opening as a veritable sea of the sticky red stuff comes pouring out, covering the walls, furniture, and even the camera lens.

(8) A SENSATION IN AMERICA. At Print, “A Celebration of Spain’s “Golden Generation” Comic Book Artists”, with a gallery of images:

Roach begins his history with Madrid’s and Barcelona’s turn of the 20th century humor magazines and goes on to chronicle its development and expansion to England, the States, and worldwide. It concludes with Spain’s contemporary gifted innovators like David Aja, Javier Olivares, and Guillem March. But his primary focus is on the 1970s and ’80s, an era he terms the “Golden Generation.”

This was when Spanish artists first caused a sensation in America, as Warren magazines began to publish Esteban Maroto, Luis Bermejo, Fernando Ferna?ndez, Jose Ortiz, and many others in its Creepy/Eerie/Vampirella horror comics line.

(9) TIL THE PIPS SQUEAK. Greedy bookstore landlord news from Publishers Lunch:

At a press conference at [NYC] City Hall on Wednesday promoting the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, bookseller Sarah McNally said that the landlord for her bookstore on Soho’s Prince Street — which will close and relocate at the end of June 2019 — wanted to raise her rent from $350,000 a year to $850,000 a year, reported by Politico’s Rosa Goldensohn on Twitter. The legislation would establish requirements for lease renewal terms. McNally noted, “It would’ve helped to have the non-binding arbitration and mediation.”

The city of San Francisco, in partnership with the nonprofit Working Solutions and the Small Business Development Center, gave 11 independent bookstores at total of $103,000 in grants. The Bookstore SF Program, dubbed “a pet project of the late Mayor Ed Lee,” aims to revitalize indies as community center, and also provides municipal services “including technical assistance on marketing, human resource consulting, and help negotiating long-term leases.”

(10) A MERCURY MISSION GETS OFF THE DIME. BBC provides lots of good geeky detail about the mission in “Mission to Mercury: BepiColombo spacecraft ready for launch”.

Europe and Japan are set to launch their joint mission to Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.

The partners have each contributed a probe to be despatched on an Ariane rocket from French Guiana.

The duo, together known as BepiColombo, are bolted to one another for the seven-year cruise to their destination, and will separate once they arrive.

It’s hoped their parallel observations can finally resolve some of the many puzzles about the hot, oddball planet.

(11) COWAN OBIT. James Cowan (1942-2018) passed away on October 6 reports Jack Dann. Cowan was the author of A Troubadour’s Testament, Letters From a Wild State, and the novel A Mapmaker’s Dream, which won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal.

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • October 19, 1953 — Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was first published. Trivial Trivia:  The true first is the paperback because the hardback was not shipped for another week.
  • October 19, 1979 Meteor premiered, starring Natalie Wood, Sean Connery, and Karl Malden.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born October 19, 1903 – Tor Johnson (Karl Oscar Tore Johansson), Professional Wrestler and Actor from Sweden. especially known for his appearance in Plan 9 From Outer Space, although he had a number of other genre roles in films such as The Monkees’ Head, Mighty Joe Young, Ghost Catchers, The Unearthly, and Bride of the Monster, and a guest part in an episode of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.
  • Born October 19, 1940 – Sir Michael Gambon, 78, Actor of Stage and Screen from Ireland who is best known to genre fans as Professor Albus Dumbledore from the Hugo-nominated Harry Potter films (a role he picked up after the passing of Richard Harris, who played the character in the first two films), but also had roles in Toys (for which he received a Saturn nomination), Mary Reilly, Sleepy Hollow, and the Hugo finalist Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. He has had guest roles in episodes of The Jim Henson Hour, Doctor Who, and Tales of the Unexpected, and played an acerbic storyteller or possibly tomb robber in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He has also done voice roles in animated features including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Paddington, and The Wind in the Willows, in which he voiced very nicely The Badger.
  • Born October 19, 1943 – Peter Weston, Writer, Editor, Conrunner, and Fan from England who founded the Birmingham Science Fiction Group (the longest-lived fan group in the U.K.), and chaired several conventions, including the 1979 Worldcon. His fanzines Zenith and Speculation received 8 Hugo nominations, and his memoir With Stars in My Eyes: My Adventures in British Fandom was a Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Book. He was the TAFF delegate in 1974, was Guest of Honor at several conventions, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the long-running fanzine convention Corflu, and received the Doc Weir Award (the UK Natcon’s Life Achievement Award).
  • Born October 19, 1943 – L.E. Modesitt, Jr., 75, Writer of more than 70 novels and 10 different series, the best known of which is his fantasy series The Saga of Recluce. He has been Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, including a World Fantasy Convention.
  • Born October 19, 1945 – John Lithgow, 73, Actor of Stage and Screen and Producer with a multitude of genre appearances including lead roles in Twilight Zone: The Movie, Buckaroo Banzai, 2010, Harry and the Hendersons, and the TV series Third Rock from the Sun.
  • Born October 19, 1946 – Philip Pullman, 72, Writer and Scholar from England who is best known for the His Dark Materials series, the novels of which have received the Carnegie Medal and nominations for World Fantasy, Lodestar, Whitbred, and Prix Imaginaire Awards. He has been Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the Finnish Natcon.
  • Born October 19, 1948 – Jerry Kaufman, 70, Writer, Editor, Conrunner, and Fan who, while in Australia as the DUFF delegate, created a Seattle bid for the Australian Natcon which actually won the bid (temporarily, for a year, before it was overturned and officially awarded to Adelaide). He was editor of, and contributor to, numerous apazines and fanzines, two of which received Hugo nominations. With Donald Keller, he founded and ran Serconia Press, which published criticism and memoirs of the SF field. He served on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and served as Jurist for the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Award. He has been Fan Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a Westercon.
  • Born October 19, 1949 – Jim Starlin, 69, Comics Writer, Artist, and Illustrator. If you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ve seen the Marvel characters Thanos and Drax the Destroyer which he created. He also worked for DC and other companies over the years. He and Bernie Wrightson produced Heroes for Hope, a 1985 one-shot designed to raise money for African famine relief and recovery, which included contributions from genre writers such as Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, and Edward Bryant. He’s also written a number of genre novels in collaboration with his wife Daina Graziunas. He has been nominated for a number of comics industry awards, winning an Inkpot Award and receiving a British Fantasy Award nomination for Best Comic. Last year he was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
  • Born October 19, 1951 – Peter Cannon, 67. To say he’s a Lovecraftian scholar is an understatement of the first order. Both of his master theses, A Case for Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Lovecraft’s New England, are considered exemplary fifty years on. His “You Have Been in Providence, I Perceive” looks at the strong influence of Sherlock Holmes upon Lovecraft. Cannon also wrote superb fiction; he did “Pulptime” in which Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long and Holmes team up to solve a Lovecraftian mystery. He has written several short stories in the Cthulhu Mythos genre with an element of parody in them. Before you complain about what I left out, this is but a mere taste of his writings. Feel free to add commentary on what you like best about his work.
  • Born October 19, 1964 – J. Kathleen Cheney, 54, Writer who has appeared on the SFF scene in the last 10 years and has produced numerous novels and shorter works in six different series (the novel Dreaming Death is a particular favorite of JJ’s). Her novella Iron Shoes received a Nebula nomination, and the novel The Golden City was a finalist for Locus Best First Novel.
  • Born October 19, 1969 – Roger Cross, 49, Actor from Jamaica who moved to Canada. He played a lead role in the series Continuum and has had parts in genre films The Chronicles of Riddick, War for the Planet of the Apes, the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, X2, Doomsday Rock, Voyage of Terror, The Void, and the adaptations of Dean Koontz’ Hideaway and Sole Survivor.

(14) COMICS SECTION.

(15) MORE PUBLISHING HUMOR. From Linsey Miller —

(16) FRANKIE AT 200. Starting tomorrow in South Pasadena, “Frankenstein Meets Little Women | A Monster Mash”.

In conjunction with the Fall South Pasadena Arts Crawl, the South Pasadena Public Library presents an exhibition featuring the artwork of 11 accomplished artists and illustrators. The artwork—much of it created specifically for this exhibition—is inspired by two beloved literary classics that are celebrating anniversaries in 2018: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein marks its 200th anniversary and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women its 150th.

The opening reception is Saturday, October 20, 7:00-9:00 p.m. in the Library Community Room at 1115 El Centro Street, South Pasadena, California, 91030. Throughout the following week the Library will host related programs, including a Louisa May Alcott living history performance, an artists’ panel discussion, a screening of Bride of Frankenstein (1935), an illustrated talk titled “Frankenstein Dissected” and a closing reception. For more information, visit the Library’s website: www.southpasadenaca.gov/library.

Frankenstein Meets Little Women: A Monster Mash is curated by performer and educator Valerie Weich. Weich founded Literary Lives, an educational performing arts outreach program for students and has performed throughout Southern California as Louisa May Alcott. Since 2012 Weich has been researching the lives of Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at The Huntington Library as an Independent Scholar in order to develop a new one-woman presentation about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

(17) FACES OF SCIENCE. Roald Dahl collaborator “Sir Quentin Blake brings science pioneers to life” – a local exhibit out of reach of most Filers, but article has several of the illos. These new works will be on display at London’s Science Museum from October 19.

Illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has brought his own unique style to pictures of some of the world’s most celebrated scientists.

Sir Quentin, known for humorous work in children’s books, has made a set of five works depicting 20 women and men.

Pilot Amy Johnson is there, as is spinning machine creator Sir Richard Arkwright.

The pictures were the idea of the Science Museum and will hang outside its Wonderlab: The Equinor Gallery.

(18) FANHISTORY. I missed reporting these Fanac.org features when they first came out –

  • Pacificon II (1964) Worldcon) – Hugos & Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton Guest of Honor Speeches

Pacificon II, the 22nd World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Oakland, CA in 1964. In this [36 minute] audio with images, Toastmaster Anthony Boucher awards the Hugos (in under 7 minutes!), and Guests of Honor Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton give their speeches. It’s great fun; Tony Boucher is witty and thoughtful, Leigh Brackett is open and sincere, and Ed Hamilton is surprisingly funny, with anecdotes and personal reminiscences. Learn the secret of the Boys Club of Science Fiction. Hear the tale of throwing a body out of a spaceship near Saturn. Get a real understanding of what it feels like to sell your first story.

Leigh Brackett wrote both SF and Mystery (and was cowriter of the screenplay for “The Big Sleep”). Edmond Hamilton appeared in print before the first SF magazine was published and was still publishing at the time of this speech. Of him, Tony Boucher says, “No one has ever destroyed so many suns so well.” This material was provided by The Southern California Institute for Fan Interests (SCIFI), and Jerome Scott, Director of Projects for SCIFI in LA.

 

  • MidAmeriCon (1976) Worldcon – Masquerade winners

MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Kansas City in 1976. There were some very impressive costumes in the 1976 Worldcon Masquerade. This brief (7 minute 45 second) video brings you the award presentation for the winners (including “dishonorable mention”) and a look at the costumes and costumers. You’ll see Sally Rand, Bruce Pelz and Filthy Pierre among others. Don’t miss the Martian costume!

 

(19) THAT’S SOME (N)ICE MUSIC. The bergs are alive… with the sound of music? “Scientists Learn To Hear The ‘Songs’ Of Ice Shelves”

The “whistling” of the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica’s largest, is beautifully eerie. It’s also potentially a divining rod for changes to shelves’ composition that can be monitored in real time.

To arrive at their new recording, twelve scientists working on the ice shelf burrowed 34 tools for measuring seismic activity into it, expecting to monitor its internal vibrations. They noticed, however, that surface wind glazing over the “firn” — the top layer of snow of the shelf — was feeding the sensors below.

What was at first considered to be “inconvenient ambient noise,” as the glaciologist Douglas R. MacAyeal put it in a summation of the new findings, ended up yielding valuable insights about the health of the shelf itself. The shelf’s song changes as its surface does; strong storms can rearrange the snow dunes atop it, causing that ice to vibrate at different frequencies — how fast the seismic waves travel through the snow changes as air temperatures at the surface fluctuate, in turn giving scientists data on the shelf’s structural integrity. Meaning whether or not it will break up, and thus raise sea levels.

 

(20) PUNCH BROTHERS, PUNCH WITH CARE. Daredevil has become famous for its epic one-shot fight scenes.  In episode 4, Daredevil fakes his way into prison to get information about The Kingpin, then has to fight his way out.

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

Haffner Press Seeks Hamilton Pre-Orders

Stephen Haffner of the Haffner Press has moved the launch of The Collected Edmond Hamilton (2 vol.) and The Collected Captain Future to May 1, in time for the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. He says it took a little more time to assemble the last of the ephemera needed to complete the first three volumes, which will go to the printer at the end of February.

A compelling reason to order these three volumes well in advance of publication is that Haffner will throw in a facsimile of Edmond Hamilton’s first “book,” The Metal Giants.” This fragile 40-page rarity was an early mimeograph effort by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) and was advertised as available in Science Fiction Digest, October 1932.

You know there has to be something to this Captain Future stuff – Bob Tucker ran Leo Margulies’ long letter plugging the Captain’s magazine in a 1939 issue of Le Zombie.

Something else you can order at the Haffner Press site is the $150 signed/slipcased edition of The Worlds of Jack Williamson. There are just 75 copies available of – don’t say you weren’t warned.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Haffner Press Announces
Collected Edmond Hamilton

Steven Haffner is taking pre-orders for the first several volumes of the newly-announced Collected Edmond Hamilton.

• The Metal Giants and Others: The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume One
• The Star Stealers: The Complete Tales of the Interstellar Patrol, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Two
• The Collected Captain Future, Volume One: Captain Future and the Space Emperor

See the full press release after the jump.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter.]

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