24 I See Files Of Blue, Red Pixels Too, I See Them Purr For Me And You

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple more favorites:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SARAH PINSKER

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

YUME KITASEI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 66.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo posted by Terri on Bluesky. Photographer unstated.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAUL Di FILIPPO ~ A PINT-SIZED VOLTAIRE?

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

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Barsotti, Walt Boyes, Cathy Green, Brick Barrientos, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff “What A Wonderful World” Smith.]

Something to Be Thankful For: Fantastic Fiction at the KGB Bar with James Patrick Kelly and Teel James Glenn

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Teel James Glenn and James Patrick Kelly. Photo by Ellen Datlow.

By Mark L. Blackman: On the suddenly chilly autumn evening of Wednesday, November 13, the monthly Fantastic Fiction at KGB Readings Series presented two authors with James in their three-barreled names, James Patrick Kelly and Teel James Glenn, who read from newly published works.

Now in its second quarter-century, the Series, co-hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, is held on the second Wednesday of each month at its longtime venue, the Soviet era-themed (so doubly aptly-named) Red Room of the second-floor KGB Bar in Manhattan’s East Village. Readings are free, but the hosts noodgeh the crowd to buy drinks, alcoholic or non-. To paraphrase, support the Bar and support the Series.

After the music was turned off by the bartender’s Apple watch, Datlow invited those not already on it to join the mailing list. The website lists past readers and upcoming readings:

December 11 – Sarah Pinsker and Yume Kitasei
January 8 – Ben Berman Ghan and Jacob Weisman
February 12 – Rebecca Fraimow and Clay McLeod Chapman

(A fuller list may be found at the series’ website.)

She then introduced the first reader of the evening.

James Patrick Kelly, the author of five-and-a-half novels (the half is a collaboration with John Kessel), including Planet of Whispers and Look into the Sun, has worked primarily in shorter forms, and has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for his short fiction. His column “On The Net” is a regular feature in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and his new novella, Moon and Mars, from whose opening he read, will be appearing in the publication’s January/February issue. This was his eighth visit to Fantastic Fiction since 2000 (and, incidentally, my first in person since before the Pandemic).

Mariska, a woman living on the Moon, and her involuntary clone Niha are slated to be in the crew of a colony ship leaving the Solar System (both are Hibernators), but, in view of a recent disaster, there are rumors that, in whole or part, the crew will be replaced. Meanwhile Niha gets a haircut (because “on a starship hair matters”) and Mariska (older than her apparent age) lusts after a Marsboy.

After an intermission, co-host Kressel reiterated information about upcoming readers, added mention of their podcast (at present recordings of past events), and introduced the second reader of the evening.

Teel James Glenn – or “T.J.” – has, in forty-plus years of careers, worked as an actor, stuntman, fight choreographer, swordmaster, and haunted house barker, during which time, as he describes it, he has “killed hundreds and been killed more times on stage and screen,” before turning to committing murders instead in dozens of novels and short stories published in over two hundred magazines including Weird Tales, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. His novel A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure (yes, that Robert E. Howard) won best novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award. His website is TheUrbanSwashbuckler.com.

Without preamble, Glenn “leaped right into it,” reading Chapters 1 and 3 of Not Born of Woman. In 1939 New York, a Romani woman comes to private eye Adam Paradise, a 7’2” scarred not quite human, seeking to recover a family heirloom from a mobster, collateral for her luckless son’s gambling debt. As hints in the story unfold, it becomes clear that Paradise is nearly 200 years old and (it’s not a spoiler if it’s right there on the back cover) the being created by Dr. Frankenstein. He confronts the gangster and, we’re told, eventually the Nazi Bund. Glenn had copies of the book for sale, while Kelly called attention again to the next issue of Asimov’s.

Prior to the readings, Datlow, as usual, wove among the tables, taking pictures of the audience and the two readers. Her photos of the event may be seen on her Flickr page.

Pixel Scroll 10/11/24 Those Magnificent Files In Their Pixel Machines

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAME OF THRONES AUCTION. Heritage Auctions has started its three-day auction of Game of Thrones props and costumes. Westeros gives the highlights of the opening day in “Day 1 of Game of Thrones Auction Recap”.

The first day of the three day Game of Thrones prop and costume auction run by Heritage Auctions started well, with nearly $5.36 million realized across the first 290-odd listings in the auction. We kept track of it as long as we could, and by the time we went to bed we’d noted that several items had cleared the $100,000 mark. Gregor Clegane’s tourney armor was the first to hit six figures and ended up just shy of $200,000, followed by a prototype dragon egg from the first season (a second egg just missed the mark).

After that, Arya Stark’s season 2 “boy” ensemble with an included “action” version of Needle hit $150,000, which seemed like a very expected number. And then, fittingly, the first item to hit $200,000—just beating out the Mountain that Ride’s armor—was the Hound’s armor ensemble. After that point, we went to bed, but in the morning we found two more items made it to the prestigious six-figure club: a full Jaime Lannister Kinsguard ensemble. Because of the inclusion of both a prop hand and an “action” Oathkeeper, this one was an especially valuable listing, and the bidders recognized it as they drove it up to become the day’s top item with a final realized price of $212,500.

And now a Jon Snow (Kit Harington) Signature Night’s Watch Ensemble has gone for $337,500.

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share beef noodle soup with award-winning writer John Chu in Episode 238 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Get ready to take a seat at the table with the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer John Chu.

John’s a microprocessor architect by day, and a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Apex, and at Tor.com, plus in anthologies such as The Mythic Dream, Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and others. His translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF, and other venues.

He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, won the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” plus the Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Awards for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” In the days before our lunch, he surprised us all with the announcement he’d sold his first novel — and you’ll hear my own surprise during our conversation.

We discussed the way he gamified the submission process when he started out, how the pandemic made him feel as if he was in his own little spaceship, when he learned he couldn’t write novels and short stories at the same time, how food has become a lens through which he could explore a variety of issues in his fiction, the rejection letter he rereads whenever he wants to cheer himself up, how writing stories at their correct lengths was one of the most difficult lessons he had to learn as a writer, what it was about his 2015 short story “Hold-Time Violations” that had him feeling it was worthy of exploring as a novel, how he was changed by winning a Hugo Award with his third published story, and much more.

(3) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted pictures from last night’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series where Sarah Langan and David Leo Rice read from their most recent novels. Click here: KGB October 9, 2024.

(4) LISA TUTTLE COLUMN. The Guardian presents “The best recent science fiction, horror and fantasy – reviews roundup” by Lisa Tuttle. This time she reviews William by Mason Coile; The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield; The Wilding by Ian McDonald; Of the Flesh: 18 Stories of Modern Horror by various authors; A Christmas Ghost Story by Kim Newman.

(5) FAMED ANIMATION STUDIO TAKES BATH. “‘Chicken Run’ Studio Aardman Cuts Jobs After Posting $720,000 Loss Amid Market ‘Challenges’” reports Deadline.

Aardman, the iconic UK animation studio behind Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, has closed around 20 jobs as it grapples with the increased cost of production.

Deadline understands that Aardman is in the process of making less than 5% of its 425 employees redundant following a savings review undertaken by management.

A third of the redundancies were voluntary, while two roles remain in consultation. It is hoped that some of the individuals who have lost their jobs can return to Aardman on a freelance basis.

As part of the restructure, Aardman has created new roles to wring increased value out of its intellectual property. These roles include a senior licensing manager and sales executive.

The cost-cutting initiative comes as Aardman has filed its earnings for 2023, which reveal that the studio sunk to a pre-tax loss of £550,135 ($720,000). The company made a profit of £1.56M in 2022.

Aardman said the loss was largely because of a £1.75M impairment of unrecouped costs on Lloyd of the Flies, a 2022 animated series that debuted on CITV in the UK and was licensed by Tubi in the U.S. Putting the impairment to one side, Aardman’s underlying profit was £1.6M….

(6) 3D-PRINTED PROP MODEL. “Star Trek ‘The Next Generation:’ TR-580 Medical Tricorder (3D Printed Model) by Tankz3dtavern” at FigureFan Zero.

There’s no doubt about it, the advancements in 3D Printing have done a lot for the collecting community. From printing missing parts for toys, and accessories for action figures, to complete collectibles, the whole endeavor has come a long way and it absolutely fascinates me. But also prop replicas! And that’s what I’m checking out today: A Starfleet Issue Medical Tricorder as featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation! I remember the days when you’re only hope of getting a decent Trek prop was to mail away for a DIY resin kit from the back of a magazine at $50-60. And what you got was exactly that, an unfinished kit that needed all sorts of sanding and painting to make it look anywhere near presentable. Even some of the “props” people were selling at conventions for twice that price were pretty crude. I recently found an Ebay seller offering some phasers and Trek replicas at prices that were too good to pass up. I started with some phasers (which we’ll check out here eventually), but the Tricorder came in this weekend and I was really excited to show it off.

This is where I usually show off the box and packaging, but there’s nothing to show here. The Tricorder came carefully bubble wrapped along with a display stand and holster. The stand is the only assembly required, and you just have to tab it all together, easy-peasy. There are no electronics included in the model, so you can consider this based on a regular prop as opposed to a hero prop, which is meant to be seen up close and functional. This particular model has two configurations to choose from: medical or regular, so whether you’re part of an Away Team mission making a geological survey or you’re in Sick Bay trying to find out why all your crew are dying, this Tricorder has you covered! Let’s start with the regular version and work our way up! And just a disclaimer, I know next to nothing about 3D Printing, I’m not qualified to comment on printing methods or techniques, and I’m evaluating this solely as a finished collectible….

(7) WARNING: IT’S A COMMERCIAL. But you might like to watch it anyway!

DeLorean Labs has now released a Back to the Future-style video of Lloyd playing himself as he opens a DeLorean Time Capsule. Directed by filmmaker Allan Ungar, who previously directed the feature film Bandit, the nostalgic video introduces the Time Capsule collection, as Lloyd has the item handed to him by a mysterious individual emerging from a DeLorean. Lloyd is seen opening the Time Capsule in amazement, before proceeding to utter Doc Brown’s famous catchphrase. Read DeLorean Labs President Evan Kuhn’s comments below:

“With the Time Capsule, we wanted to introduce something fun to our community that can celebrate DeLorean’s introduction to the digital age. Being DeLorean has been about futurism and counterculture. It allows us to get creative and move in such a way that other major car manufacturers can’t.”…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 11, 1945 – Gay Haldeman, 79.

By Paul Weimer: Possibly one of the ultimate science fiction fans, and wife of Joe Haldeman, I got to meet Gay Haldeman in 2014 at the London Worldcon when Shaun Duke brought me over to meet Joe and Gay at a random point in the hallway near the escalators. I was starstruck by Joe, and charmed by Gay (but she doesn’t remember me). But that’s all right.

Gay also helps manage Joe’s work, for which all of us in SFF can be eternally grateful. She is one of the abiding icons of the science fiction community and I value her continued presence in the field. (May I get a chance to actually meet her and Joe again some day.)

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal depicts the horror side of becoming a real live boy.
Brewster Rockit reveals the invasion of the unseen.
Eek! finds something that really works.
Frazz discusses the evolution of a word.
Lio has a crossover.
The Argyle Sweater has doubts about therapy.
Bliss says who’s really to blame.

(10) BRENDA STARR. PRINT Magazine interviews James Sholly about comics creator Dale Messick: “The Daily Heller: Brenda Starr, Comics Star”.

Was “Brenda Starr” Dale Messick’s full-time gig?
It was! She wrote and drew “Brenda Starr, Reporter” for over 40 years! At times, she worked in a mobile studio that allowed her and her family to take long road trips across the country. She would frequently weave aspects of her own story into the plot lines. In real life, Dale had a daughter named Starr, which was the same name that Brenda gave her daughter after giving birth in a storyline from the 1970s. In the early 1960s, Brenda traveled to the Canal Zone in Panama shortly after Dale Messick took a trip there to visit friends. I was also impressed to learn that Dale drew “Brenda Starr, Reporter” using a brush and ink, which must have been incredibly difficult. I looked at some of the original art at the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana University and was blown away by the control and expressiveness of her line work.

Why was Brenda Starr such a popular strip?
People I’ve spoken with say that particularly for young women, Brenda was a role model. Even in a fantastical sense, Brenda was a smart, savvy, career woman who went after what she wanted and didn’t let obstacles or expectations of what she should be slow her down (still a novel concept in the 1940s and 50s). She was unafraid of adventure and unbowed by people trying to get in her way. I think this kind of symbolism is really powerful to a young person with aspirations to achieve great things. Dale Messick had similar qualities in that she left the stability of her family life in Indiana, and came to New York on her own for a promising job (drawing greeting cards) and life in the big city. Messick was also savvy in presenting Brenda in the latest designer fashions, so she always looked incredible! She was able to build connections with readers by drawing their suggestions for Brenda’s clothes and including them as paper dolls in the Sunday editions of the strip. These sorts of gestures helped to create a loyal and dedicated readership….

(11) PANEL ABOUT THE WILD ROBOT. In Pasadena on October 26: “LightBox Expo Reveals ‘The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes’ Panel” at Animation World Network.

LightBox Expo (LBX) returns October 25-27 to the Pasadena Convention Center, with an expansive program lineup celebrating artists and creators behind acclaimed films, animation, games, TV shows, comics, illustrations, and features.

The expansive 2024 program lineup just got more exciting with the announcement of “The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes” panel, Saturday, October 26 from 4:00-5:00 pm.

Details on this previously unannounced panel are as follows:

“The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes:”

Saturday, October 26 from 4:00-5:00 pm

Join heads of departments on The Wild Robot for a discussion about the artistic and technical strategies they took behind the scenes to capture the best on screen.

(12) IMMORTALITY CANCELLED. “Have We Reached Peak Human Life Span?” asks the New York Times (paywalled article).

The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too?

Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Aging.

The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country’s life expectancy is lower.

The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate.

The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what’s possible for average life span.

“We’re basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we’re going to live,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years — approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women — an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.

During the 20th century, life expectancy rose dramatically, spurred on by innovations like water sanitation and antibiotics. Some scientists have projected that this pace will hold as better treatments and preventions are discovered for cancer, heart disease and other common causes of death. The famous demographer James Vaupel maintained that most children born in the 21st century would live to 100.

But according to the new study, that is unlikely to be the case. The researchers found that instead of a higher percentage of people making it to 100 in the places they analyzed, the ages at which people are dying have been compressed into a narrower time frame….

(13) 2024 NOBEL WINS MAY CONFOUND THE MACHINES TAKING OVER? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have long warned that the machines are taking over, but nobody ever listens.

This may now be changing! Two of this year’s Novel Prizes go to artificial intelligence (AI) related work. The Novel Prize for Chemistry goes to work using AI to elucidate the complex folding structure of proteins (the molecules that make up enzymes and some other large biological molecules that do things to keep us alive) from DNA code (genes).

More significantly, this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to work on developing AI itself. One of this prize’s winners has gone on to warn that we need to work out how to manage AI before it takes over. He opines that we could have smarter-than-human within a couple of decades. (This is likely to be within the lifetimes of many of you.) It looks like I can no longer say nobody ever listens….

(14) THE MOST DISTURBING STORY EVER WRITTEN. Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes a look at Harlan Ellison’s unsettling short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. The story is set against the backdrop of World War III, where a sentient supercomputer named AM, born from the merging of the world’s major defense computers, eradicates humanity except for five individuals. These survivors – Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, Ted, and Ellen – are kept alive by AM to endure endless torture as a form of revenge against its creators.

(15) LOWER DECKS SEASON 5. There won’t be a second fifth – this is it. “’Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Final Season Blasts Off with Official Trailer” – Animation Magazine sums it up.

Synopsis: In Season 5 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes” — subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Junior Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford … If they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/2/24 …And The Pixel May Learn To Scroll

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) DONATE TO HELP DISASTER-AFFECTED BOOK/COMIC SELLERS. The Binc Foundation and MacMillan invite you to “Be a hero to a book or comic seller today!”

Macmillan will match the first $10,000 in total contributions dollar for dollar. There is no better time than right now to Stand with Book & Comic Stores. Your action today gives those who work in book and comic stores a place to call for help when the unexpected happens. Your contribution will give the gift of peace of mind and hope when they are facing the devestating impact from a hurricane, cancer diagnosis, or the threat of losing one’s home.

“Binc and Macmillan Publishers Announce $10,000 Matching Gift to Help Book and Comic People Affected by Hurricane Helene and Other Disasters”.

Thanks to Macmillan Publishers, gifts made to the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation will have double the impact. Macmillan will match all gifts, regardless of size, up to $10,000 to meet the needs of the more than 200 bookstores and comic shops and thousands of store employees potentially impacted by Hurricane Helene. Binc has already received 15 calls for help from book and comic people in the path of destruction–more than 500 miles across six states.

“We are already hearing from book and comic people who are traumatized, unable to find friends and family, and without water and electricity,” said Binc Executive Director Pam French, “and we know there will be more stores in need of disaster relief as the waters recede, the cleanup begins, and cell phone signals return. We are grateful for our friends at Macmillan for their willingness to partner with us in support of bookstores and comic shops.”

The foundation receives requests every day from book and comic store employees and owners experiencing unforeseen emergency financial, medical and mental health hardships, and has helped stores around the country recover after natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Double the impact of a gift to Binc by donating today.

(2) PS MAGAZINE, RIP. This was the renamed Army Motors. History here, including a mention of young contributor Will Eisner: “A Brief History of ‘PS Magazine’ and Its Significance” at Global Electronic Services. In January 2024, it was announced PS Magazine would cease operations on September 30, 2024, after 73 years of publication. Here’s the cover of the final issue.

“PS Magazine: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly” traces its roots back to World War II. Originally called “Army Motors,” the magazine began gaining notoriety and popularity around 1944, when established comic writer and illustrator Will Eisner was assigned to the magazine, bringing the character of Joe Dope along with him.

Eisner’s comics, featuring Joe Dope — a hapless soldier who ignored preventive maintenance practices — and his cast of characters, dealt with topics to which military personnel could relate. In 1951, at the outbreak of the Korean War, Eisner created a replacement magazine for “Army Motors” called “PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly.” It had a new goal: to improve maintenance practices.

In its new format, the magazine became a full-fledged comic book, illustrating educational concepts and timely issues. Soldiers loved it from the start….

These are some covers of old issues created by Will Eisner.

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Sarah Langan and David Leo Rice on Wednesday, October 9, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. At the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

SARAH LANGAN

Sarah Langan’s most recent novels are A Better World, which the Los Angeles Times calls: “A high-water mark in the career of a novelist who’s already won three Bram Stoker Awards,” and Good Neighbors (a Newsweek, Irish Times, and Lit Reactor best book of the year). Her previous novels are The Keeper, The Missing, and Audrey’s Door. She has an MFA from Columbia University, an MS in Environmental Health Science/Toxicology from NYU, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the writer/director JT Petty, their two daughters, and two maniac rabbits.

DAVID LEO RICE

David Leo Rice was born and raised in Northampton, MA, and now resides in Brooklyn. His novels include Angel House, The New House, the Dodge City Trilogy, and The Berlin Wall, named the “#7 Best Indie Book of the 21st Century so far” in Genrepunk Magazine. His first collection, Drifter, was named one of the “10 Must-Read Books of 2021” in the Southwest Review, and his second, The Squimbop Condition, will be out next year. He’s also the co-editor of Children of the New Flesh, an anthology of essays, interviews, and stories responding to the work of David Cronenberg.

(4) BRADBURY SCHOLARSHIP. The latest issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review is now available. NRBR is the online, open access journal of the Ray Bradbury Center at Indiana University. No. 8 (2024) The New Ray Bradbury Review.

In this issue of the Bradbury Review, Roger Terry provides more context for Ray Bradbury’s fictional spaces by recounting some of those non-fictional and biographical connections between Bradbury and the real-life space program.

Following this, John Gillespie takes one of Ray Bradbury’s simplest short stories, “The Rocket Man”, and shows how its unnamed title character is archetypal. The story is shown to be a (possibly unconscious) retelling of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, as well as being intertwined with popular culture of the twentieth-century and beyond.

Devika Yadav further explores Bradbury’s use of outer space as well as other spaces in The Illustrated Man (1951). Despite that collection’s framing story set in rural Wisconsin, and its mixed contents ranging from science fiction to outright fantasy, it famously includes a number of Bradbury’s most memorable and influential space stories, such as the aforementioned “Rocket Man”, “The Rocket” and “Kaleidoscope”.

Paul Donatich, who has written previously for NRBR, makes a welcome return to investigate ways in which Bradbury’s body of work incorporates African American characters. As well as considering the main stories that deal with race (“Way in the Middle of the Air” from The Martian Chronicles and “The Big Black and White Game” from Golden Apples of the Sun being the two which loom large), his essay also weaves in the character of Blind Henry from Death is a Lonely Business, a number of Bradbury fragments originally published in this very journal, and the by now near-mythic “Mister Electrico”. Inevitably, this essay includes some outdated racial words and phrases, but Donatich is careful to contextualise these.

Another regular of NRBR is Jeffrey Kahan, who extends the discussion of race in “Way in the Middle of the Air” to bring in its counterpart “The Other Foot” and—more surprisingly—“The Garbage Collector”, a story he shows to have strong racial connotations. Kahan contrasts the young Bradbury’s actively anti-racist fictions with some of the elder Bradbury’s more contentious non-fiction statements on racial matters.

Christian Wilken then takes us to Bradbury’s “ravine”, that strip of wilderness which divides the fictional Green Town, Illinois, in Dandelion Wine,The Halloween Tree and other works. Using perspectives from Object-Oriented Ontology and New Materialism, Wilken shows Bradbury’s Illinois stories to have commonality with other literature involving children, but also reveals a unique aspect in their existential explorations.

(5) DO CATS HAVE FIREPROOF GIZZARDS? With Camestros Felapton as his amanuensis, “Timothy reads A Wizard of Earthsea”.

…As the seasons turn and the English countryside is consumed by fog and falling leaves and squirrels posting lies about me on Facebook, my thoughts turn to a simple truth. Dragons are cats. Every story about dragons is actually a story about what if cats were giant flying lizards. Like cats, dragons sleep a lot. Like cats, dragons like to be cosy. Like cats, dragons are picky about their food. Like cats, dragons can breathe fire but choose not to. This is why I spend early October, stealing copies of The Hobbit and stacking them in the south paddock in preparation for Smaug Memorial Bonfire. When the setting sun and the last moon of autumn are in the sky, I heft my Cybertruck branded flame-thrower and set light to the pile of books, or at least I would if the axis-of-feeble (the county librarians and the county constabulary) don’t stop me….

(6) JOHN WILLIAMS DOCUMENTARY. “‘Music by John Williams’ Trailer: Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard Produce Documentary on Iconic ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ Composer” at IndieWire. Premieres November 1 on Disney+. View the trailer online: “Music by John Williams | Official Trailer”.

The iconic scores of John Williams will be celebrated with documentary “Music by John Williams.”

The Disney+ film reunites legendary composer Williams with his frequent collaborators Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Kathleen Kennedy, who all produce the documentary. Williams has scored films such as “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” and “Jurassic Park,” and in 2023 made history as the oldest Oscar nominee in any category for “The Fabelmans.” The composer has a total of 54 Oscar nominations and five wins.

“Music by John Williams” will “offer a fascinating and insightful look at the prolific life and career of the legendary composer,” according to the official logline. “From his early days as a jazz pianist to his Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy wins, the documentary takes an in-depth look at Williams’ countless contributions to film, including many iconic franchises, as well as his music for the concert stage and his impact on popular culture.”…

(7) BOB BLOCH INTERVIEW. The Robert Bloch Official Website has added “a mid-1980s interview of Bob by Dennis Fischer where Bob discusses his work and thoughts surrounding the horror anthology film. This interview first appeared in Randall Larson’s CineFan #3.” “Robert Bloch Horror Anthology”.

CineFan: The first anthology film you wrote was Amicus’ TORTURE GARDEN, which led to many other successful multi-story films. Were you satisfied with the finished film?

Bloch: I had my reservations about TORTURE GARDEN. First of all, it wasn’t my title; there are no tortures in it, there is no garden, it’s Octave Mirbeau’s title from his novel of about 1900; it had nothing to do with that. I didn’t particularly care for the way the framing story was handled. They saved a lot of money by handling it the way they did, but I didn’t think it was well done. I have heard that during the Edgar Allan Poe sequence the director decided to improve the ending, and I don’t particularly think he did; it got a little murky. There was also a rather lengthy sequence that was cut out of one of the other episodes in the interests of keeping the film to a certain length for theatrical release. I think that that was supposedly incorporated into some of the television releases, though I haven’t seen it, but it changed the tempo and pace of that sequence considerably….

(8) BOB FOSTER (1943-2024). [Item by Steve Green.] Bob Foster: US comics writer and animation artist, passed away September 30, aged 80. Wrote Marvel’s Toy Story graphic novel and Disney’s Hercules graphic novel; wrote and drew ‘The Evolution and History of Moosekind’ for Crazy, from 1973-1975; wrote the Donald Duck newspaper strip, 1980-89. Screen credits include Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971, assistant animator); layouts on Godzilla (20 eps, 1978-79), The Incredible Hulk (13 eps, 1982-83), Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (24 eps, 1981-83); storyboards on Tutenstein (9 eps, 2004-5).

A former film student, he was drafted into the US Army in 1966, spending two years making educational movies at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, working alongside Steve Stiles (1943-2020).

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 2, 1944 — Vernor Vinge. (Died 2024.)

By Paul Weimer: I heard about Vernor Vinge’s work long before I actually got to read it. True Names, Vinge’s 1982 early look at cyberspace, was famous in SF circles, and also out of print, when I first heard about in the late 1980’s. I had heard his work was visionary but it took a reissue of True Names some years later for me to get what the fuss is all about.

Then of course, in short order came the Deep series, possibly one of the most mindblowing trilogies of books in science fiction (even as I recognize the scale shrunk considerably from book to book). Vinge’s work has always been in conversation with the digital landscape of its time, and of the near future, A Fire Upon the Deep’s FTL communication is Usenet in Space, for example. Rainbow’s End, with its digitization of books, was a herald of the questions we have with the digitization of works and what might be lost in the process (c.f. The Internet Archive). Although the form of the Internet is nothing like True Names, the idea of online versus personal identities is all right there, and before Neuromancer and its kin.

My favorite of his books is Marooned in Realtime. While The Peace War is a fascinating setting and an interesting puzzle book introducing the stasis bubbles, I think Marooned in Realtime, with its small cast of the end of humanity, and an innovative murder in such an environment is the real gem of the pair. I’d like to think you can read Marooned alone without the Peace War, but I think that as fabulous as Marooned is, it does not quite stand alone.

Vernor Vinge’s oeuvre is readily completely consumable, he hasn’t written much, but the shadow of what he writes, even if not intended at the time, casts long over SF, even when he didn’t intend to. I am thinking here of the last, in Rainbow’s End again, and how in that world we got many more novels than in our world did from the amazing Terry Pratchett. If only I could step over to that world and pick up the Discworld novels he never got to write in ours.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss requires kaiju knowledge.
Pearls Before Swine ignites a reading controversy.
The Flying McCoys shows these astronauts have the wrong stuff.
Wumo shows why an author changed genres.

(11) BIRD IS THE WORD. “Robin Animated Movie Focusing On Batman’s Dick Grayson & Jason Todd In The Works At DC Studios” reports ScreenRant.

…On X/Twitter, Gunn has now shared that Dynamic Duo, an animated movie about Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, has been greenlit by DC Studios/Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, and will be released in theaters. Check out Gunn’s post below:

Over the moon excited to announce the newest DC Studios/Warner Bros Pictures Animation greenlit film for theaters, DYNAMIC DUO, the story of Robin… or should I say, Robins, as in Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. The first feature film from the visionary Swaybox, a mix of animation,… pic.twitter.com/IBBMgP1riP
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 1, 2024

He also revealed that the feature-length movie will be made by Swaybox Studios using a cutting-edge blend of animation, puppetry, and CGI. Dynamic Duo‘s script is being written by Matt Aldrich, whose previous work includes Pixar’s Coco and Lightyear. The DC movie is being produced by 6th and Idaho, the production company of The Batman director Matt Reeves…

(12) SECONDS, PLEASE. [Item by Chris Barkley.] Sugar has a decidedly sf “twist” so hell yeah to the renewal! “’Sugar’ Renewed for Season 2 at Apple TV+” – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

Apple TV+ wants another helping of Sugar.

The tech behemoth’s streaming service has picked up a second season of the drama, which stars Colin Farrell as the title character, Detective John Sugar. The first season followed John’s search for a missing woman — and revealed a big twist late in the season that helps set the stage for season two….

(13) THE FUTURE DRAGONSTEEL PLAZA. “Author Brandon Sanderson Unveils Plan to ‘Build a Bookstore'” reports Shelf Awareness.

Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson’s Dragonsteel Entertainment has purchased land next to the former Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with plans to eventually open a bookstore there. The Salt Lake City Tribune reported that Sanderson announced his plan Saturday during a FanX appearance at the Salt Palace Convention Center.

“We’re going to theoretically build a bookstore,” he said on Saturday.

The area will be called Dragonsteel Plaza. Sanderson also revealed that Dragonsteel’s headquarters is now located in a warehouse in Pleasant Grove, which fans cannot visit, but he did show a few photos of the property at the panel.

Dragonsteel had a pop-up store on the vendor floor all three days of the convention.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/29/24 Swamp Thing! You Make My Haploid Graveyard Heart Sing!

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRIAN KEENE INSTALLS A NEW BASKET AT HIS BOOKSTORE. Patrick Tomlinson somehow thought he was entitled to call out Brian’s purity. Anybody could have told him what happens when you yank Brian’s chain.

(2) FLORIDA SUED. “John Green and Jodi Picoult Join Publishers, Authors and Advocates in a Lawsuit Against Florida Book Bans” – People has the story.

A group of book publishers and renowned authors — along with students, their parents and The Authors Guild — are suing the state of Florida for its decision to implement the state’s book-banning law.

On Thursday, Aug. 29, Penguin Random House announced in a press release that it — along with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks — would be filing a suit against the state to challenge House Bill 1069.

Also joining the suit are two students, two parents, the Authors Guild and the individual authors Julia Alvarez (The Cemetery of Untold Stories) Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), Jodi Picoult (By Any Other Name), and Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give).

Back in 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069 into effect, giving parents a say in what books schools can and can’t have in their libraries. The Associated Press reported at the time that the law would require Florida schools to provide a searchable list of all books in their libraries, and school boards have to give notice to the public if adding in new reading materials….

…One of the attorneys representing the group of plaintiffs, Dan Novack said in the press release that the law’s “complex and overbroad provisions have created chaos and turmoil across the state, resulting in thousands of historic and modern classics — works we are proud to publish — being unlawfully labeled obscene and removed from shelves.”…

(3) MAKING A LIVING AS A WRITER (FOR SOME VALUES OF LIVING). Jeff Reynolds applies inflation to sf magazine pay rates of years gone by to argue “The Past Is Not as Rosy as You’ve Been Led to Believe” at the SFWA Blog.

… You could make an excellent living selling shorts during the pulp era. But there’s a truckload of ifs tied to that could. If editors liked you; if you wrote decently; if you churned out work fast enough that your fingers bled; if you didn’t mind being hungry. Being a pulp writer during the Depression years was downright murderous.

I limited my research to pulp’s heyday, the mid-1920s through mid-1930s, and left out the type of magazines referred to as slicks in order to maintain a close comparison with modern genre writers who publish short stories. By 1934, there were as many as 250 monthly pulps operating, publishing stories on topics ranging from war, science fiction, romance, westerns, mysteries, and so on.

The majority of pulps paid one cent per word or less. A few paid two or three cents, and some paid even more for writer exclusivity. But to get to that level, you had to be talented and charming. You also had to write enormous quantities of stories….

(4) GOLDMAN FUND. Dream Foundry’s “Con or Bust” program is taking applications for funding to bring Palestinians and members of the Palestinian diaspora to the 2025 Worldcon. Apply at the link.

Our preferred application window for funding is now open until October 21, 2024 for Palestinians or members of the Palestinian diaspora planning to go to Worldcon 2025 in Seattle. Applicants who apply within this window will be considered together, and hear about their funding amounts in early November. Applications received outside this window will be considered on a first-come-first served basis for as long as funding remains.

We’d love to reach as many Palestinian fans and creators as possible.

(5) THE WATERMELON GRANT. The Watermelon Grant offers $2000 USD in unrestricted funds to an emerging Palestinian creator in the field of speculative arts. The 2025 grant considers works of speculative fiction and poetry. Full guidelines at the link.

The roots of Palestinian and Black American solidarity are deep and storied, stretching back decades and centered in the works, writings, and movements of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and Toni Morrison. In keeping with FIYAH’s pledged solidarity with the Palestinian people, The Watermelon Grant aims to assist emerging Palestinian creators working in speculative artforms throughout the world.

This grant is funded by L. D. Lewis and administered by Dream Foundry’s Incubator Program. To support an expansion of the project, through a donation to the Match Me campaign, tap here.

The Watermelon Grant offers $2000 USD in unrestricted funds to an emerging Palestinian creator in the field of speculative arts. A panel of three judges with expertise in a given year’s accepted format review in full all applications entered through an electronic submissions portal. Applications are judged on a criteria which considers artistic merit and potential impact. One grant is awarded annually (two if our Match Me campaign funds)….

WHAT ARE “SPECULATIVE ARTS?”

Speculative Arts are here defined as works of imagination based in concurrent, alternate, invented, or emerging realities. Works of memoir or nonfiction would be considered ineligible. Rather than just being based in speculative literature, the grant cycles through eligible media every year allowing artists beyond those who work in prose or poetry to enter portfolios of visual media (illustration, photography, etc) or those pertaining to performance arts.

(6) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 117 of the Hugo-winning Octothorpe podcast, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty discuss the recent Worldcon, Glasgow 2024. Listen here: “You Made That Joke Last Time, John”.

We talk mostly about registration, attendance, and programme. Spoiler: we quite liked it, listeners.

There’s an uncorrected transcript at this link.

Three photographs dominate the centre of the image. The left-hand photograph is of a prototype Hugo made of rough wood and cardboard; the centre photograph is of a rough-ish wood base and tin foil rocket but with the actual acrylic and etching, and the right-hand photograph is of the finished Hugo Award. Text below the photos reads “protoprototype”, “prototype”, and “2024 Hugo”. Above, the words “Octothorpe 117” appear.

(7) OCTOTHORPE RECUSES FROM 2025. After winning the Best Fancast Hugo at Glasgow, the Octothorpe crew say they are recusing “for at least the 2025 Hugos”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 29, 1954 — Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 70.

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Kube-McDowell ‘s work in a quasi tie-in novel, Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Odyssey. This was part of a series of novels that Asimov commissioned in the titular city, set somewhere in his Robot-Empire timeline. It started off in the classic amnesia case, with a man on the run and not remembering why, and easing readers into the setting Asimov had created for Kube-McDowell to explore in this and subsequent books. It was entertaining enough that I started to look for other works of his. I came across some stories here and there (especially a couple that wound up as Tales from the Darkside)

And then I struck gold when I found Alternities.

Alternities stands as one of the classic parallel world novels. Walter Endicott, clearly not from our world, stumbles from our world, suddenly, into a world not his own. The singular universe has now fractured into a kaleidoscope (the novel uses the word maze) of alternate realities. The novel, like many alternate history multiverse novels of the period (before and since) heavily thinks about the branch points, the jonbar points, the decisions that lead to each of the major color-coded worlds that we see in the book. There is a lot of speculation as to why the worlds split as they did, and a surprising answer and conclusion, as well. The novel shows his erudition not only in science but in general communication of popular knowledge. Kube-McDowell’s columns and articles on everything from the space program to the idiocy of “scientific creationism” are a testament to his knowledge, curiosity, and ability to explain and bring ideas to his reading audience both in fiction and nonfiction alike.

And he’s a filker on top of all that. Quite the Renaissance man indeed.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Speed Bump shows if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Thatababy exposes the inner workings.
The Argyle Sweater is present at the creation of a famous saying.
Rubes complains about a superhero theme song.

(10) KBG. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Alaya Dawn Johnson and Sarah Beth Durst on Wednesday, September 11 starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Alaya Dawn Johnson

Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of Trouble the Saints, winner of the World Fantasy Award; Reconstruction, her debut short story collection; and The Library of Broken Worlds, recent winner of the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People. Alaya has lived in Mexico for the last decade, where she’s sung in a blues band, gotten her master’s degree, produced a documentary, written novels, fooled around and fell in love. She and her filmmaker partner can normally be found in rural Oaxaca on a haunted mountaintop, where they have half a house, seven dogs and a mare.

Sarah Beth Durst

Sarah Beth Durst is the New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-five books for adults, teens, and kids, including cozy fantasy The Spellshop. She’s been awarded an American Library Association Alex Award, as well as a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Several of her books have been optioned for film/television, and her novel Drink Slay Love was made into a TV movie and was a question on Jeopardy! She lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. Visit her at sarahbethdurst.com.

(11) EBERT’S TEN WORST SF MOVIES. Roger Ebert died in 2013 and missed seeing some stinkers that might belong on this list; however, he probably thought the field of candidates was already pretty crowded: “10 Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, According to Roger Ebert” at Collider.

The science fiction genre asks audiences to suspend belief in the name of scientific and sometimes extraterrestrial wonders. This demands intricate premises that rely on logic and enough of a fictional leap to seem plausible in a world that exists apart from reality.The worst movies of the genre are unable to do any of these things, many of them falling victim to the merciless reviews of the esteemed Roger Ebert. In his reviews of what he deemed the worst sci-fi movies of all time, Ebert cuts through the convoluted and scolds the special effects.

First and worst is Battlefield Earth. Trailing in second place is —

2. ‘Jason X’ (2001)

Directed by James Isaac

With Ebert’s incredible distaste for the Friday the 13th movies, it’s only fitting that he gave the slasher franchise another scathing review for its sci-fi chapter. The tenth installment in the series, Jason X takes place in the year 2455 where a cryogenically frozen Jason Vorhees is transported from the now-research facility at Camp Crystal Lake to space. Aboard the ship, he thaws out and begins terrorizing the crew. The formulaic horror movie swaps the nooks and crannies of the summer camp for a spaceship where the promiscuous crew sneaks away only to be met by the masked slasher.

In one moment of the movie, Jason’s iconic hockey mask and garments are replaced with metallic armor. Jason X calls upon the rules of its former films but also strays so far with its dive into sci-fi. Ebert’s one-star reviewcalled the movie a “low-rent retread” of the Alien franchise but was dismally optimistic there would be a follow-up movie. Laughably terrible and so far out of its element, Jason X is easily considered one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time.

(12) TREKKIN’ TO GONDWANALAND. “Matching dinosaur prints were found an ocean apart in Africa and South America” – NPR follows a prehistoric trot.

Tens of millions of years ago, South America and Africa were part of the same land mass, an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana.

At some point, the two continents we now know started to pull away from each other until there was just a thin strip of land at the top holding them together.

A group of scientists say in new research that matching dinosaur tracks found in modern-day Brazil and Cameroon were made 120 million years ago along that narrow passage before the continents separated.

“There was just a neck of land connecting the two, and that neck of land is the corridor that we’re talking about,” said Louis Jacobs, a professor emeritus of earth sciences at Southern Methodist University.

(13) DRESS REHEARSAL FOR LUCIFER’S HAMMER. Scitechdaily covers the biennial exercise: “NASA Confronts 72% Asteroid Impact Probability: A Planetary Defense Test (scitechdaily.com)

…Asteroid Impact Preparedness

A large asteroid impacting Earth is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future. But because the damage from such an event could be great, NASA leads hypothetical asteroid impact “tabletop” exercises every two years with experts and decision-makers from federal and international agencies to address the many uncertainties of an impact scenario. The most recent exercise took place this past April, with a preliminary report being issued on June 20.

Designing Realistic Impact Scenarios

Making such a scenario realistic and useful for all involved is no small task. Scientists from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which specializes in the tracking and orbital determination of asteroids and comets and finding out if any are hazards to Earth, have played a major role in designing these exercises since the first 11 years ago.

“These hypothetical scenarios are complex and take significant effort to design, so our purpose is to make them useful and challenging for exercise participants and decision-makers to hone their processes and procedures to quickly come to a plan of action while addressing gaps in the planetary defense community’s knowledge,” said JPL’s Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS.

…The Impact Scenario

This year’s scenario: A hypothetical asteroid, possibly several hundred yards across, has been discovered, with an estimated 72% chance of impacting Earth in 14 years. Potential impact locations include heavily populated areas in North America, Southern Europe, and North Africa, but there is still a 28% chance the asteroid will miss Earth. After several months of being tracked, the asteroid moves too close to the Sun, making further observations impossible for another seven months. Decision-makers must figure out what to do.

Leading the exercise were NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the Federal Emergency Management Agency Response Directorate, and the Department of State Office of Space Affairs. Over the course of two days in April, participants gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which hosted the event, to consider the potential national and global responses to the scenario.

(14) THE MAN WHO SOLD THE SUN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] HotHardware.com has learned “California Startup Wants To Sell Sunlight After Dark Using A Giant Space Mirror” Dern ponders, (a) what’s the potential (bad) impact on global warming, and (b) could we use this to sell dark during the day? And c) If earth gets invaded by giant cats, this might be useful.

…Nowack remarked at the International Conference on Energy from Space, “The problem is that solar energy is not available when we actually want it. It would be really great if we could get some solar energy before the sun rises and after sunset, because then you could actually charge higher prices and make a lot more money.” He added, “And we think that reflector-based technologies can solve this problem.”

Reflect Orbital, a California-based startup, wants to send 57 small satellites into low-Earth orbit with 33-square-foot ultra reflective mylar mirrors that would, in theory, bounce sunlight back down to solar farms on Earth. The company made a video (see above) that uses a hot-air balloon to simulate how the technique is supposed to work. If successful, the satellites could provide an additional 30 minutes of sunlight to the solar farms during peak demand times.

There are some possible pitfalls to the idea, however. Thick clouds and stormy weather could potentially block the sunlight from reaching its destination. Seasonal changes that alter the amount of sunlight in certain areas of the world could also present challenges, and the possible environmental impacts of this light reflection have also not been discussed thus far.

The company’s orbital mirror project is scheduled to launch sometime in 2025, and interested parties can “apply for sunlight” over the next few months ahead of the launch….

(15) SCIENTIST BEWARE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] You’ve heard of ‘writer beware’, well now scientists beware as there are some who are out to build up a fake profile. It seems there is a citation black market. Reported in this week’s Nature.

Research-integrity watchers are concerned about the growing ways in which scientists can fake or manipulate the citation counts of their studies. In recent months, increasingly bold practices have surfaced. One approach was revealed through a sting operation in which a group of researchers bought 50 citations to pad the Google Scholar profile of a fake scientist they had created.

The scientists bought the citations for US$300 from a firm that seems to sell bogus citations in bulk. This confirms the existence of a black market for faked references that research-integrity sleuths have long speculated about, says the team.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/4/24 Portmanteau’s Complaint

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) HWA’S USE OF NDA’S EXPLAINED. Horror Writers Association President John Edward Lawson explains why their organization requires elected officers and trustees, paid employees, and certain committee chairs or volunteers (but not all volunteers) to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Ten-part thread starts here.

We handle your credit cards, taxes, Social Security numbers, the details of your business deals, we work with author estates, we have contracts with large publishers and other business partners, we have knowledge of your medical situation or other problems, 2/10
— John Edward Lawson ???? (@bizarroguy) August 3, 2024

come and go frequently as compared to employees, so their level of training is often "in progress" but, more importantly, it's a distributed work system with everyone operating remotely–and much more difficult to track how your information is being handled. 4/10
— John Edward Lawson ???? (@bizarroguy) August 3, 2024

(2) THE STATE OF HORROR. Ellen Datlow, Brian Keene, Lisa Wood, Lisa Kröger, Maxwell I. Gold, moderated by Angela Yuriko Smith, recently discussed “The State of Horror 2024”, part of the HWA “Halloween in July” program set up to help fund scholarships and educational programs year-round.

(3) SUCCESS! Good news. Chris Barkley reports the GoFundMe to “Help Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Attend the 2024 Glasgow WorldCon” has fully funded.

(4) EKPEKI PROGRAM. And he’s got a visa. Here’s his Glasgow 2024 schedule. Click for larger images.

(5) NOMMOS. He’ll be one of the hosts of the “Nommo Awards Winners Event” explained by JAYLit, the Journal of African Youth Literature.

An exceptional evening awaits guests of the forthcoming Glasgow 2024 Worldcon in a special evening dedicated to the 2024 winners of the Nommo Awards for the best in African Speculative Fiction.

The event will feature presentations by renowned African writers Tendai Huchu, Wole Talabi, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Nnedi Okorafor, with sponsorship from Tom Ilube.

The Nommo Awards, in their 7th edition, honour excellence in four categories: The Ilube Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, and the Nommo Awards for Novella, Short Story, and Graphic Novel. Finalists from Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone highlight the diverse talent in African speculative fiction.

Organised by The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS), the awards celebrate works in genres like science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more. The event receives support from Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon, Glasgow 2024, and the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA).

Join in celebrating the creativity and innovation of African writers at the Nommo Awards 2024 on Saturday, August 10, 2024, at 17:30, at the Lomond Auditorium. The ceremony will last for 60 minutes.

(6) RUH-ROH. “Warner Bros. Discovery Unplugging Boomerang Streaming Service” reports Deadline.

Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down the Boomerang streaming service and moving some of its programming, which includes many classic cartoon series, onto Max.

The kids-and-family move is set for September 30, according to an email to subscribers.

It comes in the same year as a similar strategic shift by Paramount Global, which shuttered Noggin and moved its content onto flagship Paramount+.

Boomerang, which began as a cable network in 2000 featuring a range of animated classics like Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry and Loony Tunes, became a streaming service in 2017. In more recent years, it expanded into original programming….

(7) SOME ARE MORE FANTASTIC THAN OTHERS. What did theme park blog AllEars hear? “’They Designed an Entire Land Around the Worst Movie I’ve Seen in My Life’ – Fans React to Latest Epic Universe News”.

Universal just revealed the first in-depth look at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, one of the five new lands coming to the new park. While many Universal and Harry Potter fans have been extremely excited to hear more about this new land, it appears that the announcement hasn’t exactly landed the way Universal wanted it to with some fans…

… It is true that the second and third Fantastic Beasts films did not do too well, especially compared to the first. The first film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has a 7.2/10 rating on IMDB, while the second film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, has a 6.5/10 rating. The last film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, has the lowest rating of 6.2/10….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 4, 1964 — Jaroslav Olša Jr, 60. That we doing the Birthday of Czech fan Jaroslav Olša Jr. is entirely the credit of Our Gracious Host as he will explain later on with a charming tale of their encounter.

Today’s the sixtieth birthday of Jaroslav who currently is the Czech Consul General in Los Angeles. (OK I’m foreshadowing why Mike will be telling a tale.) He’s also done diplomatic service in Zimbabwe, South Korea and the Philippines — very impressive.

In our corner of things. Jaroslav’s a SF editor, translator and bibliographer. That in itself is also quite impressive, isn’t it?

Let’s start off with his amateur work. Jaroslav started the major Ikarie XB fanzine back in the Eighties which turned into their sf monthly magazine Ikarie which had a twenty-year run before becoming the still published XB-1. He was assistant editor there for a time.

In the period after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. with Alexandre Hlinka he also started the AFSF press which was active until the late 1990s, publishing some seventy titles including such as selections of the best stories by SF writers and also novels by Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Silverberg and Kim Stanley Robinson to name a few.

If you were at Conspiracy ’87 in Brighton, you might have him as he was there. And he attended many other international conventions.

Finally, before I let Mike have the last words here, I should note that he was responsible for twenty years for the Czech Encyklopedie literatury science fiction (“Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Literature”, 1995) co-editing it with Ondřej Neff. He also has edited about a dozen sf anthologies; has compiled bibliographies of Czech and Slovak fanzines; and often contributed to Locus.

Mike: In 2019 Jaroslav Olša, jr. invited me to a nice lunch in Westwood – making sure we had the restaurant’s front window seat. That was nice. We discussed science fiction and what he could do in that line when he became Consul General of the Czech Republic in LA. And first thing, he gifted me with copies of several sff publications he’d helped produce, including a copy of XB-1, the longest-running monthly publication in the Czech Republic, which began life as Olša’s fanzine Ikarie XB (1986-1989). He also gave me a copy of a Czech SF anthology (English translation). Since then, he’s hosted a lot of cultural events in LA, including one in conjunction with an in-person LASFS meeting. A very fannish fellow!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal witnesses a close encounter of the disappointing kind.
Eek! demonstrates how to predict a rampage.
Foxtrot reinterprets the night sky.
Frazz studies the moon.
Frank and Ernest report elemental news.
Jumpstart recycles tech trends.
Non Sequitur understands why so little is known about early physics discoveries.
Pearls Before Swine challenges you to solve a mystery.
Thatababy sees a Star Wars character getting a summer buzz cut.
The Argyle Sweater pitches more unwanted shows.
Rhymes With Orange shows kaiju toys.
Tom Gauld knows it isn’t easy to get the message just right.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist pic.twitter.com/gbWPlnXAPp
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) August 4, 2024

(10) CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK. You may have seen it elsewhere, however, a Bluesky user recently posted a copy of the travel voucher Buzz Aldrin filed on his return from the Moon in 1969. Only $33.31, and the itinerary is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

(11) FAN MAIL FROM SOME FLOUNDER. Attention dads — having AI write your letter to your daughter isn’t cool. “Google pulls Gemini AI ad from Olympics after backlash” – The Verge has the story.

Google is not winning any gold medals for its Olympics ads this year. After days of backlash, the company has decided to pull its controversial “Dear Sydney” ad from Olympic coverage.

In the 60-second ad, a father seeks to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to her Olympic idol, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The premise is the sort of treacly ad you’d expect to see at the Olympics, but things take a twist when instead of helping his daughter write a letter, he just has Gemini do it for them. “This has to be just right,” he says, before prompting Gemini to tell Sydney how inspiring she is, that his daughter plans to break her record one day, and to add a “sorry, not sorry” joke at the end.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Cool Worlds asks whether Dyson Spheres are possible…? I recall when Niven’s Ringworld and some bright wags from MIT (I think — though my memory may be dodgy) pointed out that it’d be unstable. So if true for a ringworld then must be too for a Dyson sphere….

The idea of a Dyson sphere was a radical proposal by the physicist Freeman Dyson, an enormous shell of material enveloping a star. Dyson’s idea may be over half a century old, but interest in looking for such objects has only grown in the decades since. But how would such structures work? Are they physically even possible? And what might someone use them for? Today, we dive into the physics of Dyson spheres.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/31/24 There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Ugly Chickens

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW 2024 PROGRAMME. The Glasgow 2024 Programme is live. Explore the full programme from the Worldcon website via ConClár at “Glasgow 2024 Programme Guide”. Users can search participant names, and individual program items.

They remind members, “Live streams and recorded streams of much of the programme will also be available on our online platform, so if you aren’t able to attend something you can always go back and rewatch at your leisure.”

(2) SILVERMAN, TREMBLAY AND COATES LOSE MOMENTUM IN SUIT AGAINST OPENAI. The judge has tossed another claim in a suit about AI copyright violation brought by celebrities in a state court due to a Federal law preempting it. “Sarah Silverman Lawsuit Against OpenAI Suffers Setback As Judge Trims Case” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Top authors suing OpenAI over the use of their novels to train its artificial intelligence chatbot have hit a stumbling block, with a federal judge narrowing the scope of their case.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Tuesday evening dismissed a claim accusing the Sam Altman-led firm of unfair business practices by utilizing the works of authors — including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay and Ta-Nehisi Coates — without consent or compensation to power its AI system.

The writers’ primary claim for direct copyright infringement was left untouched.

In February, the court dismissed other claims for negligence, unjust enrichment and vicarious copyright infringement. It denied dismissal of the unfair competition law claim, but lawyers for the authors tweaked it after lawsuits from Silverman, Tremblay and Michael Chabon — all of whom originally brought their own class actions — were grouped together. OpenAI seized upon the changes for a second try at dismissal, which was challenged by the plaintiffs.

In the order, Martínez-Olguín not only found that the company is allowed to move to dismiss the claim but that the Copyright Act bars it. She said that the law “expressly preempts state law claims” relating to works “within the subject matter of copyright.”

The authors argued that the unfair business practice at issue was using their works to train ChatGPT without permission. But since the allegedly infringed materials are copyrighted books and plays, they cannot bring a state law claim, which the court concluded should be under the purview of copyright law….

(3) UKRAINE’S READERS. The Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board says “Book reading, from the war trenches to the bedrooms of children, has helped Ukrainians assert their cultural independence and mental toughness.” “Ukraine’s freedom, book by book”.

…Fighting a war for their survival has turned many Ukrainians into avid book readers, eager to find solace, freedom, wisdom, or, perhaps, empathy. They are aware of Russian forces trying to wipe out Ukrainian culture by, for example, destroying more than a hundred libraries.

In May, the country’s largest printing house, Factor Druk, was badly damaged by Russian missiles. Donors quickly pledged to restore the book publisher. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likened the attack to events in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” the temperature at which book paper ignites. Since the invasion, more than one hundred books have been printed for children to help them cope with the war’s trauma. The number of bookstores has expanded significantly. From May 30 to June 2, the country’s annual book festival in Kyiv drew 35,000 visitors, up from 28,000 last year…

(4) SUCCESSFUL HUMAN TRAFFICKING STING AT COMIC-CON. “Comic-Con Human Trafficking Operation: 14 People Arrested” – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

Fourteen people were arrested and 10 victims were recovered in a human trafficking sting during Comic-Con over the weekend, authorities said.

The operation to recover victims of sex trafficking and target sex buyers using the San Diego convention was initiated from July 25-27, according to the California Department of Justice’s San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force.

“Unfortunately, sex traffickers capitalize on large-scale events such as Comic-Con to exploit their victims for profit,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta shared in a statement. “These arrests send a clear message to potential offenders that their criminal behavior will not be tolerated. We are grateful to all our dedicated partners involved in the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force, whose collaboration has been invaluable. We take great pride in our office’s commitment to uplifting vulnerable Californians by offering them assistance and guidance when they need it most.”

… Officials said after the nine adult potential victims and a 16-year-old juvenile were recovered, adult and juvenile support service advocates were there to provide support as needed….

(5) OF WHAT NATURE? Orion Magazine bids us “Return to Area X” with Helen Macdonald’s introduction to Acceptance: A Novel by Jeff Vandermeer.

…I came to Acceptance in a kind of hermeneutic fever, burning with questions and desperately wanting answers on the true nature of Area X, even though I knew the categories question and answer were ones Area X would laugh at. The novel opens with a scene from Annihilation: the death of the psychologist on the twelfth expedition (we learn she is the Southern Reach’s director). This time we are given the scene from her point of view, and Acceptance takes us forward in this way, switching between multiple timelines and revisiting characters we already met but only partially knew—Gloria, the psychologist/director, whose girlhood on that coastline has abiding relevance for her actions in the story; John Rodriguez, aka “Control,” a word whose multiple meanings—the exercise of power, an experimental necessity, and an institutional role—are bound up in his fate; Saul, the lighthouse keeper and former preacher, whose story is a tender and terrible tragedy; Ghost Bird, the biologist’s double, a person made by Area X and whose relationship to it is thus both complicated and transformative—and a whole panoply of other characters, some new, all made anew, rebuilt and recast. As I read, my questions about Area X became less insistent; what I wanted was to follow this cast of characters to better understand their various compasses and motivations: what pulled at them, what pushed them, what brought them to each other, and which beacons drew them, willingly or unwillingly, on their journeys, for Acceptance is, of course, a book of journeys both metaphysical and physical…

(6) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Christopher Rowe and James Chambers on Wednesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

CHRISTOPHER ROWE

Christopher Rowe was born in Kentucky and lives there still. Neither of these facts are likely to change. He has been a professional writer of speculative fiction since before the turn of the millennium. His stories and books have been reprinted and translated around the world, and have been finalists for every major award in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Theodore Sturgeon awards. He is the author of one of the most well-regarded collections of recent years, Telling the Map (Small Beer Press), and of two critically acclaimed novellas, These Prisoning Hills and The Navigating Fox (Tordotcom Publishing). He likes golden retrievers, good food, and giant robots. He probably watches more professional bicycle races than you do, but who knows?

JAMES CHAMBERS

James Chambers is a Bram Stoker Award and Scribe Award-winning author. He is the author of A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road; the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, the novellas, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God and Three Chords of Chaos, and the original graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and A New York State of Fright as well as Where the Silent Ones Watch, forthcoming from Hippocampus Press.

(7) PRESENT AT THE CREATION: SFWA. Michael Capobianco is putting together an organizational history. Here’s the first installment: “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 1)”.

On January 15, 1965, Damon Knight, a well-known author, critic, and co-founder of the Milford Conference writer’s workshop, sent an announcement by US Mail to every professional science fiction writer he could locate, asking for $3 from anyone who wanted more of the same. Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was born.

It was not the first attempt to create an organization of American professional science fiction authors, and there were genre writer precursors. In the 1930s, The American Fiction Guild was formed to help pulp writers with their business concerns; it’s mainly remembered now because L. Ron Hubbard was president of its NY chapter. Mystery Writers of America, arguably a model for some aspects of SFWA, had been established in 1945. MWA’s membership policy was not one of those aspects, however.

Writing in the 10th-anniversary issue of the SFWA Bulletin, SFWA’s primary publication through most of its existence, Knight talks about attending a meeting of the MWA and realizing that most of the attendees were not writers: “I knew that about 70 percent of that audience was composed of hangers-on, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. And I made up my mind that if I ever did start SFWA, it would not be like that.”…

(8) SENDS GREETINGS. [Item by Krystal Rains.] Dr. Gregory Benford had a couple appointments yesterday and thought to send a photo to share, so folks knew he was doing well.

(9) YSANNE CHURCHMAN (1925-2024). English actress Ysanne Churchman died July 4 at the age of 99. The Guardian obituary recalls:

Alongside many small character roles on television, Churchman voiced Sara Brown in the puppet series Sara and Hoppity (1962) and Soo the computer in The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980), a time-travelling Play for Today, and its sequel, Another Flip for Dominick (1982).

In Doctor Who, she mustered a squeaky falsetto voice as Alpha Centauri, a diplomat from the hermaphrodite hexapod species featured in the stories The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974), with Stuart Fell wearing the costume. She returned to voice the part again in the 2017 adventure Empress of Mars.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

July 31, 1950 – Steve Miller. (Died 2024.)

By Lis Carey: Steve Miller was one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, who created the thoroughly satisfying and fun Liaden Universe® series.

Steve was an active member of fandom, along with being a writer. Some of his notable fan activities included being Director of Information of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and serving as Vice Chair of the bid committee to hold the 38th World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore. (They lost to Boston.)

Meanwhile, Steve was working on his writing skills. He attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1973, wrote for fanzines and sold stories to semi-professional markets. He made his first professional sale, a short story called “Charioteer,” to Amazing Stories, for the May 1978 issue.

Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. Photo at Legacy.com

Steve and another science fiction writer just at the beginning of her career, Sharon Lee, married in 1980. Sharon has mentioned that they started collaborating very early, and the big thing that came out of that was the Liaden Universe®. Loosely speaking, it’s space opera, but individual novels and recurring themes include political intrigue, adventure, coming of age, first contact, and romance. The current count of Liaden novels stands at 26, and there are also dozens of short works in the series, many of which have been gathered together, for your convenience, in the Liaden Constellation collections, of which there are now five.

Steve himself was a lively, fun, friendly guy, and the Liaden stories are lively and fun, too. He and Sharon were regulars at Boskone for quite a few years, and very welcome. Sadly, Steve died at home on February 20, 2024, at home in Waterville, Maine.

Sharon Lee is working on the next Liaden book. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal demonstrates a sad failure.
Brewster Rockit starts a happier ending.
Eek! gets it just right.
Free Range depicts an almost king.
Jumpstart continues the spider powers theme.
Non Sequitur visits a place with a new definition of “ancient”.
Reality Check says this is what future sibling battles will look like.
Candorville has high hopes.
Rhymes with Orange gets it on the calendar.

(12) GET READY FOR DC CASH. The U.S. Treasury tells comics fans about “A New Coin & Medal Series Coming In 2025”. The webpage includes a survey asking the public to score which superheroes they want to show them the money.

We’ve joined forces with DC—celebrating comic book art as a uniquely American artform. This new series promises to surprise and delight comic aficionados and coin collectors alike!

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman launch the series in 2025, but who will join them?

This is where we need YOU! Help us choose six more DC Super Heroes—three each for 2026 and 2027.

Take the super quick survey below and vote for the DC Super Hero you want included in this epic collection!

Your Hero, Your Choice!

The press release tells how many coins will be in the series: “Mint Collaboration with Warner Bros, DC Super Heroes”.

…The new series will feature nine iconic superheroes depicted on 24-karat gold coins, .999 fine silver medals, and non-precious metal (clad) medals. Debuting in summer 2025 with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the three-year series will include six additional DC characters—three each in 2026 and 2027.

Beginning on July 10 and continuing through August 11, 2024, the Mint invites the public to vote for the DC Super Heroes they would like to see included in this series. Public participation ensures that this multi-year series represents the most beloved of DC’s Super Heroes. The public may vote in this survey by visiting: www.usmint.gov/dc.

(13) GOING BOLDLY LOWER. Animation Magazine returns from Comic-Con to tell how “’Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Boldly Goes on with IDW Comics”.

While the show will be embarking on its fifth and final animated series mission this fall, the misadventures of the U.S.S. Cerritos B-crew will continue in a new Star Trek: Lower Decks comic book! Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, IDW Publishing has unveiled a first look at the ongoing series inspired by the hit Paramount+ adult animated comedy.

Writer Ryan North and artist Derek Charm, the Eisner-nominated duo behind Star Trek: Day of Blood – Shaxs’ Best Day, reunite to kick-off this next chapter of Starfleet history, featuring the lovably flawed characters from the show.

… “Just when you thought we couldn’t go lower… we’re back with the first ever ongoing Lower Decks series,” said IDW Group Editor Heather Antos….

(14) ALIEN STAR WILL PERFORM SHAKESPEARE. “Sigourney Weaver Sets West End Debut As Prospero In Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’” reports Deadline.

Sigourney Weaver will make her West End stage debut as storm-creating sorcerer Prospero in The Tempest and Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will play sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing when director Jamie Lloyd returns Shakespeare early this winter to the historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a landmark venue in Covent Garden owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Weaver, star of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies and James Cameron’s Avatar epics, last starred in one of Will’s plays when she played Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice.

(15) SQUID GAME DROPS ON BOXING DAY. “’Squid Game’ Season 2 Sets Premiere Date, Series to End With Season 3” – Variety has details.

“Squid Game” Season 2 finally has a premiere date at Netflix, with the streamer also announcing that the hit Korean drama has been renewed for a third and final season.

Season 2 will drop on Dec. 26, while the third season will premiere in 2025. The premiere date and final season announcement were made via a video, which can be viewed below.

In addition, series creator, director, and executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk posted a letter to fans in which he wrote in part, “I am thrilled to see the seed that was planted in creating a new Squid Game grow and bear fruit through the end of this story.”

… The official description for Season 2 states:

“Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 remains determined to find the people behind the game and put an end to their vicious sport. Using this fortune to fund his search, Gi-hun starts with the most obvious of places: look for the man in a sharp suit playing ddakji in the subway. But when his efforts finally yield results, the path toward taking down the organization proves to be deadlier than he imagined: to end the game, he needs to re-enter it.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George tees up “The Acolyte Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/15/24 Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Scroll A Pixel

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW 2024 UPDATE. Glasgow 2024 has sent draft program schedules to almost a thousand participants.

We need people to check their email, and their spam, and respond in planorama asap.
If you've any questions, please email programme@glasgow2024.org
(2/2)
— Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures (@Glasgowin2024) July 15, 2024

(2) AUDIBLE REVEALS NEW CALCULATION FOR ROYALTIES. “Audible’s New Royalty Model: More Opportunities for Authors and Publishers”.

…We are now rolling out a new royalty model that prioritizes equity, flexibility, and insight for creators—one that evolved out of ongoing conversations with authors and publishers, and that advances our creator-centric ethos. Under this model, creators are able to monetize more types of content, and listeners will get to discover more innovative storytelling.

Titles in all Audible’s membership offerings can now earn royalties: Audible’s new royalty model means new opportunities for small publishers and independent authors to earn across all membership listening activity. Now more titles—including those currently in Audible Plus, Audible’s all-you-can-listen offering—can generate royalty payments. Depending on the audiences that publishers and creators want to reach, there are new ways to monetize and promote content, which means more flexibility to reach listeners where they are….

How is the new royalty model calculated? Audible takes a member’s plan value (Plus or Premium Plus) and adds the value of any additional credits used, then divides that value among the titles the member listened to over the course of the month. That figure, multiplied by the contractual royalty rate, comprises a creator’s royalty payment….

Publishers Weekly’s coverage, “Audible Rolls Out New Royalty Plan”, observes that “the announcement comes after one of Audible’s most vocal critics, bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, reported in March that Audible officials had approached him to discuss ‘a new royalty structure they intend to offer to independent writers and smaller publishers,’ a plan that Sanderson said was ‘encouraging.’”

(3) BACIGALUPI Q&A. At Colorado Public Radio:“Exhausted by climate fiction, Colorado novelist Paolo Bacigalupi turns to fantasy”.

Sure he has won the biggest prizes in science fiction– the Nebula and the Hugo awards. But Paolo Bacigalupi found himself bereft of inspiration. Penning apocalyptic climate fiction, like 2016’s The Water Knife, had taken its toll….

…The Paonia-based author knew it was time for a change. Then the invitation came.

A wine-importer friend who knew Bacigalupi’s penchant for languages (he’d studied Chinese in college) invited him to Bologna for a crash course in Italian.

The answer was yes…..

…The real-life Bolognese setting inspired Bacigalupi’s new fantasy novel, “Navola.” It takes place in a city-state reminiscent of Florence or Venice during The Renaissance.

His protagonist, Davico di Regulai, is the son of an uber-wealthy merchant and banker. The boy has big shoes to fill, but very different feet, as it were. Armed with a preserved dragon eye that possesses magical powers, Davico struggles to be the man his father and community expect him to be….

Ryan Warner: How did you know it was time for something different?

Paolo Bacigalupi: Well, when you keep trying to write things and you keep failing to actually finish them, or even when you’re starting to try to write, it’s like sticking your finger in a light socket. It is sort of painful and damaging, you think ‘maybe I should do something different.’

Warner: And that’s how it started to feel in the climate change space?

Bacigalupi: Yeah. A lot of what I was doing, the news was bad, and then the stories that you’re trying to tell are extrapolations on the present day, and those are all terrifying. Then you find you’re in this space where your creative world and your regular life are all smashed together, and they’re all really negative and they’re all full of terrors, and it’s not a sustainable space to be. If you spend all of your imaginative time in anxiety, then yeah, it takes a toll and eventually you just break down entirely.

Warner: And if the writer isn’t enjoying it, how possibly could the reader?

Bacigalupi: Yeah. I think that a healthy writer finds pleasure in their work. I think there are unhealthy ways to go about doing good work, as well. The outcome can be good, but the damage internally is bad for the writer.

(4) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on July 10.

A.T. Sayre read and Nat Cassidy read and played his guitar for a very enjoyable evening.

(5) ERIN UNDERWOOD PRESENTS. The latest Erin Underwood videos take up Star Wars fanhistory, and test the relevance of Battlestar Galactica’s 2004 remake.

Star Wars: The Impacts of How Lucasfilm Built its Fan Base

Star Wars fandom holds a unique place as possibly the first ever nurtured fanbase built by a film studio. To understand the evolution of Star Wars fandom, I decided to explore its roots by inviting Craig Miller, former publicity executive at Lucas Film, and Garen Daly, Director of the Boston SciFi Film Festival, to discuss the early days of Star Wars fandom and its lasting impact on the film industry. Watch the video podcast discussion on YouTube and share your thoughts in the comments.

Battlestar Galactica (2004) Series Review – Does this Iconic Sci-Fi Remake Hold Up Today?

It’s been 20 years since they remade the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica, and remakes often struggle to be relevant over time. From the story to the characters and the technology, how does BSG hold up 2 decades later? Watch my review of the full series and let me know if you think Battlestar Galactica holds up as well today … or even better!

(6) NEW FILM PLAYS ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES. “Note To Hollywood: Nobody Faked The Moon Landing” complains Inverse.

It’s getting exhausting calling out Moon landing truthers. Especially when a high-profile rom-com starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson makes a mockery of one of the greatest human achievements in all of history. This weekend, the new film Fly Me to the Moon hits theaters, telling the story of a 1969 advertising executive (Johansson) who is determined to film a “backup” version of the Moon landing in a studio, in case the real one fails. Tatum plays an astronaut, and the two fall for each other, in a silly movie about how the nature of love is a lot like flying to the Moon, or pretending to, or something. All harmless fun, right?

Well, no. While Fly Me to the Moon isn’t presented as a dramatic film purporting to unveil long-lost truths about the space race, it is built upon a frustratingly pervasive conspiracy theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing never took place, or in this case, that NASA would try to use taxpayer dollars to create a hoax. But, the historical and scientific evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon is overwhelming. And, because this movie is dredging up all those conspiracy theories again, it’s worth restating why we know the 1969 Moon landing was very real….

… But outside of heroes like Buzz Aldrin, there is plenty of objective evidence that the Moon landing occurred. In light of the bogus concept behind Fly Me to the Moon, and to get a contemporary reminder of Moon landing evidence Inverse reached out to Dr. Brett Denevi, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, was a vice-chair of Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, is working on the Artemis program.

“There is a whole host of evidence to demonstrate the Moon landings occurred, including images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera,” Denevi told Inverse. As she points out this is a relatively contemporary camera, launched back in 2009. “The camera is used to scout new landing sites like we are doing for Artemis, so it was built to take incredibly detailed pictures.”….

(7) SONGS OF SFF. [Item by Rob Thornton.] This is six minutes of reverb-soaked electric guitar recorded in a bathroom and reminiscent of the banjo in the theme song from the BBC’s Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. All the song titles are from my fave SF/F novels (see “Terminus Est,” “Burning Bright” and “Green Rapture.”). Bonus points if you know my musical nym! “Now And Always” by R Carnassus at Bandcamp.

(8) SDCC PROGRAM DROPS. “San Diego Comic Con Schedule: Best Panels in Hall H and More”. Variety has highlights at the link. Or you can browse the complete Programming Schedule on the Comic-Con website.

San Diego Comic-Con has rolled out its schedule for the 2024 convention this week, which runs from July 25–28. For the first time since 2019, SDCC will unfold without a virtual event, pandemic protocols or labor strike cancelations, marking a return to normal of sorts for the largest annual fan gathering in North America.

Several major franchises will make an appearance at the event, including panels for Marvel Studios, “Star Trek,” “The Penguin,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the “Walking Dead” franchise, “Transformers One,” “Alien: Romulus,” “The Boys” and “Doctor Who.” Here are the highlights, with descriptions from SDCC and/or the panel sponsors….

(9) MEDICAL AWARENESS IN CANADA. CBC News led its post about tick-spread illnesses with the story of MaryAnn Harris, wife of sff author Charles de Lint: “Tick-spread illnesses are on the rise in Canada. Are surveillance, awareness efforts keeping up?”

One morning in Sept. 2021, MaryAnn Harris felt strangely tired. She told her husband, Charles de Lint, that she needed to lie down. Then more worrisome symptoms began cropping up, from nausea to double vision.

The Ottawa couple rushed to a local emergency department.

At first, the cause of Harris’s ailment was a mystery. The ER team ran various tests, and after a few hours with no answers, they sent her husband home due to visitor restrictions put in place during the pandemic.

By the time de Lint came back the next day, his beloved partner of four decades was unresponsive and on life support in the intensive care unit.

“You don’t know what to think, what to feel,” de Lint recalled. “It was just utter panic.”

What followed was a three-year ordeal, as medical teams offered a battery of tests and treatments in hopes of bringing Harris back from the brink of death. She eventually regained consciousness, but by that point, inflammation in her brain stem had left her paralyzed. Harris never left the hospital and died in early June at the age of 71.

The cause of her devastating illness? A little-known virus that spreads through tick bites.

For years, medical experts have warned a rising number of Canadians are being exposed to ticks carrying an array of dangerous pathogens. Lyme disease is the most familiar — and by far the most common — but there’s growing concern about lesser-known threats as well, from various bacterial infections, to the rare Powassan virus that claimed Harris’s life earlier this year.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1974 – Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Fifty years ago, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia was published. (No, not on this day. Just this year.)

Though it is often considered the fifth book of the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin in multiple interviews and her writings has stated that there is no particular cycle or order for what she called the Ekumen novels.

And yes, I can say having read it more than once and those readings being decades apart that the full title does really make sense. Later printings would just call it The Dispossessed. No idea why the change and if Le Guin said why.

It was by published by Harper & Row that year with a stunning wraparound cover by Fred Winkowski. I found only two first editions to be had online, the first $1200, the other substantially more, but that was signed.

Le Guin in the forward to Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume One which includes The Dispossessed says “The Dispossessed started as a very bad short story, which I didn’t try to finish but couldn’t quite let go. There was a book in it, and I knew it, but the book had to wait for me to learn what I was writing about and how to write about it. I needed to understand my own passionate opposition to the war that we were, endlessly it seemed, waging in Vietnam, and endlessly protesting at home. If I had known then that my country would continue making aggressive wars for the rest of my life, I might have had less energy for protesting that one. But, knowing only that I didn’t want to study war no more, I studied peace. I started by reading a whole mess of utopias and learning something about pacifism and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance. This led me to the nonviolent anarchist writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman. With them I felt a great, immediate affinity. They made sense to me in the way Lao Tzu did. They enabled me to think about war, peace, politics, how we govern one another and ourselves, the value of failure, and the strength of what is weak. So, when I realized that nobody had yet written an anarchist utopia, I finally began to see what my book might be.”

So let’s now go on to note that I discovered that the novel has a story set before it, “The Day Before the Revolution” and the character in that story, revolutionary Laia Asieo Odo, is a major presence in The Dispossessed.

But that’s not really why I’m bring the story to your attention. The story is included in the Library of America’s Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels & Stories which has a short essay on what she was feeling after writing the novel which you can read here “Story of the Week: The Day Before the Revolution”. And the story is here “The Day Before the Revolution”.

Now where was I? Ahh it’s 1974, the novel has come out. Among us, it was widely acclaimed, and the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation definitely was appreciative of this as her website lists them this way:

Winner of the 1974 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Locus Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Jupiter Award for Best Novel

And yes, each link takes you to the proper Award site. Stellar webmasters whoever they are. Now interestingly, the Foundation doesn’t include the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. I wonder why. It was also nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award but didn’t win.

As near as I can tell, it has never been out of print in the last fifty years with multiple hardcover, trade and paperback editions. ISFDB lists far too many editions to really make sense of its printing history, so I can’t say definitively.

What I didn’t see is it ever got the small press, lavish edition treatment, but then I’m having a hard time remembering if any of her works did. Come on Filers, help me out here.

In 2019, The Folio Society published a hardcover edition with illustrations by David Lupton and an introduction by Brian Attebery.

On November 17, Harper Perennial will publish a trade paper edition of the book with a new foreword by Karen Joy Fowler.

(11) SEND HIM BACK. “Mexico ‘cancels’ statue of Greek god Poseidon after dispute with local deity” says NBC News.

The gods must be angry — or just laughing at the hubris of humanity.

Authorities in Mexico have slapped a “closure” order on a 10-foot-tall (3-meter) aquatic statue of the Greek god of the sea Poseidon that was erected in May in the Gulf of Mexico just off the town of Progreso, Yucatan.

Mexico’s environmental protection agency said late Thursday that the statue, which appears to show an angry trident-wielding Poseidon “rising” from the sea a few meters from the beach, lacked permits. In the few months it has been up, tourists had gathered to take pictures of themselves with it as a striking background.

But it was symbolically “closed” Thursday — and could be removed altogether — after a group of activist lawyers filed a legal complaint saying the statue offended the beliefs of local Maya Indigenous groups who prefer their own local god of water, known as Chaac.

It’s always been dangerous for humans to get involved in battles between deities. But this one appears to be all about present-day humanity, combining “cancel culture,” social media storms, lawsuits and the one truly fearsome, overpowering force in today’s world: Instagram selfie-fueled tourism….

(12) RECAST BLACK PANTHER? Fandomwire says there’s a call to “’Remove Black Panther 2 from the timeline’: After Harrison Ford Replaces William Hurt as General Ross Fans Demand a New Black Panther in MCU”.

…And after witnessing Harrison Ford replace William Hurt as General Ross, the calls for recasting have amplified within the Marvel fandom, particularly in the instance of Black Panther. Portrayed by the iconic Chadwick Boseman, fans now want the MCU to remove the Oscar-winning Black Panther 2 from the official timeline to facilitate the character’s recasting….

…However, Ford’s casting has also triggered a wave of demand within the Marvel fandom: the demand for Black Panther recasting. Portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman throughout the MCU until his tragic death, the actor’s portrayal has remained iconic and pretty much irreplaceable. Yet, many fans believe recasting him would not be a bad choice, but only add to the legacy of the character he so clearly loved and played.

The MCU has recast several characters throughout its run, with Bruce Banner and Rhodey being some notable examples. These recasting decisions have hardly received as much hate from fans, but instead have triggered the calls for a Black Panther replacement since Boseman’s untimely death in 2020….

(13) NOT SURE THESE ARE THE ROLLING ROADS WE’RE LOOKING FOR. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “FreightTech Friday: Japan’s proposed conveyor-belt highway” at FreightWaves.

In a recent meeting of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the group unveiled plans to combat its transportation and logistics sector labor shortages with construction of an automated conveyor-belt highway running over 310 miles across central Japan.

Known as the Autoflow-Road proposal, the ministry showcased its blueprint for building both aboveground and underground conveyor-belt roads running between Tokyo and Osaka 24 hours a day. According to the ministry, it could move the same amount of freight in a day as 25,000 drivers.

“Automated logistics roads are designed to get the most out of road space by utilizing hard shoulders, median strips and tunnels beneath the roadway. …Our study is examining the impact on road traffic, including on surrounding roads, and costs,” senior official to the ministry, Shuya Muramatsu, told reporters.

The proposal comes as an answer to Japan’s ongoing transportation and logistics labor crisis, as the country begins to cap trucking overtime hours this year.

(14) HOW CAN A FRANCHISE CALLED THE TERMINATOR NEVER END? “’Terminator Zero’ Teases Judgement Day in First Apocalyptic Trailer” at Yahoo!

The Terminator promised he’d be back – and he is. Netflix is teasing a tense apocalyptic return to this world with the first trailer for “Terminator Zero,” its upcoming animated series set in the “Terminator” universe that will premiere on Judgement Day, aka August 29.

This teaser debuts Eiko, voiced by “House of the Dragon” star Sonoya Mizuno, a resistance fighter who is sent back in time to stop Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. “You can’t see it yet, but you’ve been on a collision course your entire life. There’s no going back, not really. It will never, ever stop,” Eiko ominously says in the teaser.

As she gives her warning, the trailer jumps between creepy shots of terminators repairing themselves, explosions and gunfire. “There’s only one thing standing between you and him — me,” Eiko says in the teaser’s final tense moment….

(15) ANDOR RETURNS. Disney+ has dropped a trailer for Andor Season 2 (2025).

The wait is over! Dive into the highly anticipated first look at Andor Season 2 with this electrifying teaser trailer. Following the critically acclaimed first season, Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) journey continues as he navigates the treacherous world of the Rebellion. Set five years before the events of Rogue One and A New Hope, this season promises to delve deeper into the rise of the Rebellion against the oppressive Galactic Empire.

(16) THE END AND BEYOND. “’Stranger Things’ Season 5 First Look Revealed by Netflix” at The Hollywood Reporter.

…Maya Hawke recently told Podcrushed that the eight episodes in the final season of the sci-fi hit will feel like “eight movies,” and noted the episodes are “very long.”

“Our showrunners, Matt and Ross [Duffer], take a lot of responsibility,” she added. “They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved. They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season, and a long time to shoot them.”…

…While season five is the show’s final season, there are additional Stranger Things projects in the works, including: Stranger Things: The First Shadow live on stage in London’s West End and an as-yet-untitled animated spinoff series….

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

Pixel Scroll 6/13/24 You Get A Pixel And You Get A Pixel! Everybody Gets A Pixel!

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS TAKING NOMINATIONS. It’s time for eligible voters to nominate for the British Fantasy Awards 2024. Full details at the link. Voting will remain open until Saturday, June 29.

You can vote for the BFAs if you are any of the following:
– A member of the British Fantasy Society
– An attendee at FantasyCon 2023 (Birmingham)
– A ticket-holder for FantasyCon 2024 (Chester)

For each category, you may vote for up to three titles. There is no requirement to complete all three fields for each category, or to vote for every category. …

A crowdsourced list of suggestions has been created here: http://tinyurl.com/suggestionlist2024. You may vote for titles not on the suggestions list – this is just to help you generate ideas if you need some guidance….

…The four titles or names with the highest number of recommendations will make the shortlist of nominations. In case of a tie, the title with the most recommendations in space “1” will go through – so please rank your votes in order of preference.

(2) WORLDCON 2026 SITE SELECTION OPENS. Glasgow 2024 announced that WSFS Site Selection for the 2026 Worldcon is open. Complete directions for voting are at the link.

Los Angeles (Anaheim) in 2026 is the sole bidder on the ballot. Their website can be found here. Write-in bids are also allowed, however, to be selected they must meet the requirements in the WSFS Constitution and file the necessary documents with the administering Worldcon.

Glasgow 2024 WSFS Members who wish to vote in Site Selection need to purchase an Advance WSFS Membership in the 2026 Worldcon, at a cost of £45.00 (GBP). All members who pay this fee will automatically become WSFS Members of the 2026 Worldcon, regardless of who they vote for (or indeed if they vote at all). All Advance WSFS Membership fees received by Glasgow for the 2026 Worldcon will be passed on to the successful candidate.

There are three ways for you to vote in Site Selection:

We have partnered with Election Buddy, a leading provider of secure voting solutions, to enable easy online voting for Site Selection this year. Full information on how to vote online is provided below. This is the quickest and simplest way to pay your fee and submit your site selection ballot.
Attending Members can vote in person at Glasgow 2024, until the Site Selection desk closes at Noon on Saturday, 10th August.
You can also submit a printed ballot by postal mail. If you wish to use this option, please contact us at siteselection@glasgow2024.org. All postal ballots must reach us by Thursday, 1st August.

(3) WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION. The winner of the 29th Women’s Prize For Fiction is Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan, a non-genre novel.

The only shortlisted genre work was The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord (Gollancz).

The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, and the “Bessie”, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.

(4) NEW TOLKIEN MEMORIAL. With an assist from Neil Gaiman and Roz Kaveney, “JRR Tolkien memorial unveiled at Pembroke College” reports BBC News.

A memorial to The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien has been unveiled at the University of Oxford college where he used to teach.

The bronze sculpture, created by sculptor Tim Tolkien, the writer’s grand-nephew, was revealed at Pembroke College.

Neil Gaiman, who served as master of ceremonies at the event, told the BBC that Tolkien was a “towering figure” who “singlehandedly created an entire genre of literature”.

The college said Tolkien was “one of the college’s most esteemed fellows and a literary giant of the 20th Century”.

The memorial design depicts Tolkien as he looked during his time at Pembroke.

Its Junior and Middle Common Rooms each raised 10% of the funds. The Tolkien Society and the Tolkien Estate also contributed.

The author served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the college from 1925 to 1945.

He also wrote The Hobbit, part of The Lord of the Rings, and critical works such as Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics during his time there.

A special poem was read out at the unveiling by writer and Pembroke alumna Roz Kaveney.

Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Good Omens, said he had been a fan of Tolkien ever since he bought an “ancient green hardcover” of The Hobbit for a penny.

He said: “Even more exciting for me was finding in the school library The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

“I read them over and over and when I got to the end of The Two Towers I’d go back to The Fellowship of the Ring.

“And when at the age of 12 I won the school English prize they said: ‘What do you want? We’ll get you a book.’ And I said: ‘Can I have The Return of the King? I want to find out how it ends.'”

He said hosting the event was “an honour that I’m not worthy of, and that’s fine because none of us are”.

He added: “Being in this place feels huge and strange and very appropriate. Walking the grounds that Tolkien walked, [feeling] just slightly disappointed that there are not enough trolls and elves here as well, but maybe they’ll turn up.”…

(5) WINDS OF CHANGE? Mark Roth-Whitworth opens a discussion of “Cultural changes in fandom”. First on the list:

…Thinking back over the decades I’ve been going to cons, in the last few years, things seem to have changed. For one, there are more writers, and fewer fans on panels….

(6) MALIK & SHAWL EVENT. Usman T. Malik will be in conversation with Nisi Shawl at Hugo house in Seattle next week. It will be a hybrid event. Free registration to see it online is available here.

(7) GENERATIONAL CHANGE IN CHINA. “Escaping the Censors’ Gaze: Lai Wen on Sci-Fi and the Need for Chinese Protest Literature Today” at Literary Hub.

Xinran: What excites you about the literary scene in China today?

Lai Wen: I think Chinese science fiction is particularly good. It’s something that often sucks in the fundamental social conflicts and contradictions of a given time and remodels them through these incredibly creative and vast fantasy worlds. The earliest Chinese science fiction novels weren’t all that great, to be frank, but they still told you a lot about Chinese society, our way of life, our fears and our hopes.

Lu Shi’e’s New China, published at the beginning of the twentieth century was one of the first examples of homegrown Chinese sci-fi/fantasy. The memory of the Opium Wars—the defeat by foreign powers and the vast numbers of the population who remained addicted to the drug—was still raw.

In his novel, one of the central characters is a genius doctor who invents medical techniques that can pull the population out of an opium-induced stupefaction and supercharge their minds. China then goes on to experience a period of intense rejuvenation, emerging as an economic and cultural superpower where peace and prosperity reign. The novel itself is somewhere between wish-fulfillment and prophecy, as many of the novels from that period were.

I think that the creative and original wave of science fiction coming out of China can be understood in the context of our history. Throughout the twentieth century, change was occurring at a frenetic, world-shattering pace. The final Manchu/Qing dynasty ended in 1911 and then power was dispersed amongst hundreds of local war lords jockeying for position; then Kuomintang was able to unite China under a modern nationalization program.

There was the Second World War, the civil war, Mao’s communists, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, until, eventually, the country was opened up under Deng Xiaoping. Today, China has emerged as a dominant global power.

So many Chinese people born in the last hundred years have lived through successive social systems and different economic models compressed into a handful of decades. Chinese science fiction reflects this. During the period of Communist dictatorship, the genre tended to be more sterile, reduced to the level of propaganda for the Party, but in the 1980s and 1990s science fiction went through something of a revival under Deng’s administration.

While censorship was still robust, science fiction and dystopic fantasy enabled cutting political and social commentaries to fly under the radar. Nineteen Eighty-Four made it past the censors, for instance, and many of the classics of Western science fiction were accessible to people during this time, along with Hollywood films such as E.T.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most famous Chinese science-fiction writers lived through this period—writers such as Han Song and, most famously of all, Liu Cixin, whose most successful novel, The Three-Body Problem, has been made into a Netflix series….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 13, 1893 — Dorothy Sayers. (Died 1957.) I’m going to talk about Dorothy Sayers tonight who though she wrote a handful of ghost stories is here because of mysteries. Oh, what mysteries they were.

Her first novel, Whose Body?, was published in 1923. Over the next thirteen years, she would write ten more novels featuring the ever so proper Lord Peter Wimsey who solved mysteries. In Strong Poison, we would be introduced to artist Harriet Vane who Wimsey would fall in love with in an properly upper-class manner. Harriet appears off and on in the future novels, resisting Lord Peter’s proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night six novels later.

Yes, I read all ten of these novels in order some forty years back. I like them better than Agatha Christie novels on the whole as the social commentary here gives them a sharper edge and I think Sayers described her society better than Christie did. Now Christie was way more productive over a much longer period of time as Sayers stopped writing these mysteries, which includes short stories, by the later Thirties in favor of writing plays, mostly on religious themes which were performed in cathedrals and broadcast by the BBC.

So there’s eleven novels and the short story collection, Lord Peter Views the Body, which I’ve not read but now I see is on the usual suspects as a rather good deal of just a dollar, so I’ll grab a copy now. Done.

I’d like to speak about The Lord Peter Wimsey series starring Ian Carmichael of the early Seventies, it covered the first five novels. Carmichael said he was too old to play the part for the romantic relationship of the later novels, but it didn’t matter as the series was cancelled.

I thought it was a rather well-done series and I caught it recently on Britbox, one of those streaming services, and it has help up rather well fifty years on with the Suck Fairy concurring.

He did play Wimsey into the BBC radio series that covered all of the novels and ran at the same time. They are quite excellent and are available on Audible at a very reasonable price.

Finally she wrote, according to ISFDB, a handful of genre stories, four to be precise —“The Cyprian Cat”, “The Cave of Ali Baba”, “Bitter Almonds” and “The Leopard Lady”. Three seem to be fantasy and the fourth, “Bitter Almonds” I’ve no idea about. Anyone have knowledge of these?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Rhymes with Orange features a page turner.
xkcd explains all those weird word math problems.
Carpe Diem offers the correct explanation why one species became extinct.

(10) THE BOYS IS BACK IN TOWN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Season 4 of The Boys, based on Garth Ennis’ comic book series, (all available in digital omnibus editions via Hoopla, etc.) starts up (on Prime) Thursday, June 14 with the first 3 episodes, the following 5 dropping weekly.

Reminder, the Prime spin-off series GEN V takes place between The Boys seasons 3 and 4.

If you haven’t seen Seasons 1-3 and GEN V, watch those first.

Like the comics, The Boys (and GEN V) contains lots of fairly explicit violence, cussing, sex, nudity, and drugs. And a bit of song and dance here and there, but not much.

Also returning, August 8: the 4th and final season of The Umbrella Academy.

(11) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from last night’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings with Grady Hendrix and Bracken McLeod.

(12) GINA CARANO SUIT PROCEEDING. The Hollywood Reporter updates readers: “Mandalorian Lawsuit: How Gina Carano, Disney Are Battling In Court”. “At a Wednesday hearing, a judge expressed skepticism that the Carano’s lawsuit should be tossed before discovery is allowed to take place.”

A federal judge has signaled that Gina Carano‘s lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm over her termination from The Mandalorian will be allowed to proceed as the court considers whether the First Amendment allows private companies to sever ties with employees who publicly clash with their values.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett on Wednesday pushed back on arguments from Disney lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, who argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the company has the “right not to associate with a high-profile performer on a high-profile show who’s imbuing” the Star Wars series with “views it disagrees with” that could turn fans away from the show.

Petrocelli urged the court to find in favor of Disney on its First Amendment defense on dismissal rather than at a later stage of litigation after discovery takes place in which it’s determined whether the case should be allowed to proceed to trial.

“I’m not convinced there are no disputed facts,” Judge Garnett responded. She pointed to allegations that Carano was terminated to deflect attention from Disney’s contentious business decisions at the time, including the company’s contract dispute with Scarlett Johansson and criticism of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which led to the dissolution of its special tax district in the state….

(13) LATEST IN CAPTAIN FUTURE SERIES. Hugo, Locus, and Seiun award-winning author Allen Steele returns to the world of Edmond Hamilton’s classic SF pulp hero with Lost Apollo, a new Captain Future adventure,

The first installment of a two-part story arc takes the cosmic defender and his uncanny crew on a quest across parallel worldlines to save not just our own universe, but countless others!

When an archaic spacecraft unexpectedly comes through a spacetime rift between Earth and the Moon, Curt Newton and the Futuremen intercept it and discover that it’s Apollo 20, a NASA lunar mission from 1973. Yet history doesn’t record there being any further Apollo missions after Apollo 17 in 1972, which can only mean this craft and its crew must have come from a parallel universe … but how, and why?

To discover the answers, Newton enlists the aid of an old foe, a renegade Martian physicist who has unlocked the secret to multiverse travel. Together with the Apollo astronauts, the adventurers lead a military expedition back to the worldline the wayward spacecraft came from, only to discover an unexpected menace awaiting them, a force that threatens Earth … not just one, but many.

Allen Steele’s Captain Future series has been acclaimed by science fiction fans and pulp enthusiasts alike as the blazing return of a classic SF champion. The debut novel, Avengers of the Moon (Tor, 2017) was nominated for Japan’s Seiun Award for Best Foreign Translation. Steele is also the author of an unrelated 1995 novella, “The Death of Captain Future,” which received the Hugo, Locus, and Seiun Awards and was a finalist for the Nebula Award.

Lost Apollo is his sixth Captain Future adventure and his fifth to be published by Amazing Selects.

(14) NANO NEWS. The New Yorker looks at the question “How Will Nanomachines Change the World?”

…In the best case, Santos said, the advent of molecular machines will be less like the invention of an individual tool and more like the creation of a new toolbox. “We have to decide which tool works best for each job,” she told me. Nanomachines bring to mind other innovations for which scientists have found new applications over time. After lasers were invented, in 1960, the military used them to improve guidance systems for smart bombs; now they are used for eye surgery, high-speed Internet, and tattoo removal. Of course, for every technology like the laser, there are many others that never live up to their promise. Directing the right number of molecular machines to the right places, so that they do exactly what they’re made for and nothing more, is much easier in a petri dish than a living body.

Some machines could have untoward interactions with the immune system; others may be harmful to mammalian cells. It will probably be many years before the technologies are tested in humans. “There’s a huge leap between showing something works in a lab and proving it works in people,” Mihail Roco, a senior adviser at the National Science Foundation, who helped create the National Nanotechnology Initiative, told me. “These nanomachines could be a new treatment paradigm, but the human body is enormously complex. Many things we thought would work turned out to be ineffective or toxic.” Still, he went on, “Even if you don’t get exactly what you hoped for, you often learn something useful. You advance knowledge that, down the line, could benefit humanity.”

(15) 2024 NEBULA CEREMONY. The video of the 59th Annual Nebula Awards ceremony is now available on YouTube.

The 59th Annual Nebula Awards took place in Pasadena, California on June 8th, 2024. Hosted by Toastmaster, Sarah Gailey, the evening brought with it a toast to service, remembrance for those we lost in the publishing field, celebration of our finalists and winners of the evening and the induction of the 40th SFWA Grand Master, Susan Mary Cooper.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ellen Datlow, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Anne Marble, Bill, Daniel Dern, Andrew (not Werdna), Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 6/3/24 Rikki Don’t Lose That Pixel, You Don’t Want To Scroll Nobody Else

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE NO BODY PROBLEM. The other day File 770 linked to a report with the good news that Netflix confirmed 3 Body Problem will have a second and third season. Today, Giant Freakin’ Robot took the same story and turned it into a reason for panic: “Huge Netflix Sci-Fi Hit Gets Canceled After Season 3”. Got to get those clicks somehow!

Netflix has long had a reputation for canceling great shows right as they become mainstream hits, and it looks like that won’t be changing anytime soon. The streamer recently revealed that 3 Body Problem will be canceled after season 3.

That means that fans still have two more seasons to look forward to, but it’s not entirely clear how much of the original novels will ultimately be adapted by the show.

At first glance, the news that Netflix has canceled 3 Body Problem after season 3 comes as something of a shock.

After all, the first season was a genuine hit: it currently has a 79 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78 percent audience score….

(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Grady Hendrix & Bracken MacLeod on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. The event begins 7:00 p.m. Eastern at the KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003; Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is the New York Times-bestselling author of How To Sell a Haunted House, The Final Girl Support Group, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and many more. His history of the horror paperback boom of the ’70s and ’80s, Paperbacks from Hell, won the Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction. His books have been translated into 23 languages and sold over a million copies, which means he is guaranteed a seat on the space ark when the earth becomes uninhabitable. You can learn more useless facts about him at www.gradyhendrix.com.

Bracken MacLeod

Bracken MacLeod is a Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and two-time Splatterpunk Award finalist and the author of several books including Closing Costs and 13 Views of the Suicide Woods, which the New York Times Book Review called, “Superb,” though he imagines the reviewer pronouncing that, “supOIB.” Before devoting himself to full-time writing, he’s survived car crashes, a near drowning, being shot at, a parachute malfunction, and the bar exam. So far, the only incident that has resulted in persistent nightmares is the bar exam. So, please don’t mention it.

(3) PHILLY SUMMER AUTHOR EVENTS ~~SCRATCHED~~. Michael Swanwick alerted Facebook fans that the summer Author Events at the Free Library of Philadelphia have been cancelled. Apparently, the entire staff quit this morning. Here’s the announcement in its totality:

Dear Friends,

The entire lineup of scheduled Author Events is cancelled. The Author Events team is no longer with the Free Library Foundation.

With sincere thanks for your support over these many years of our program, “the big, beating heart of literature in Philadelphia,” (Philadelphia Inquirer),

Andy Kahan, Laura Kovacs, Jason Freeman, and Nell Mittelstead

Reasons for their quitting have yet to be reported.

UPDATE: The Philadelpha Free Library has followed up the earlier email with another saying that despite the resignations no Author Events have been cancelled. See the complete text of that email in Todd Dashoff’s comment below.

Here is the later message:

(4) MARK YOUR CALENDAR – AND MAP. Lev Grossman will be taking to the skies on “The Bright Sword Tour”. The full schedule is at the link. The journey starts in Brooklyn and ends at the San Diego Comic-Con

The Bright Sword is coming out on July 16th. I’m going on tour to promote it.

Not in any virtual or zoomy sense, I am actually going to transport my physical corporeal cells all around the USA. And to bits of the UK as well. Any other anglophone nations want a piece of this—Canada, Australia, New Zealand—you just let me know.

I’m really, really looking forward to it. It’s an incredible privilege to be able to travel around and talk to people about books.

There are definitely aspects of it that make me nervous. Like most writers I am a poorly distributed mix of intro- and extro-vert and I’m never quite sure which of these aspects is going to be outward-facing at any given moment.

But mostly I’m just unbelievably excited. My extrovert-face actually loves talking to crowds, especially about books and King Arthur and The Bright Sword, which I have been working on for ten years, and my family got sick of me talking about it about one year into that process, so you can imagine how much stuff I’ve got pent up. I love new places, and food, I don’t mind planes, and I actively, immoderately adore hotels of all kinds….

(5) SECOND FIFTH. “55 Years Ago, Star Trek Delivered Its Worst Finale — And Accidentally Saved the Fandom” claims Inverse’s Ryan Britt. It was the last aired episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. One of Kirk’s revenge-seeking ex-girlfriends engineers a way to swap bodies with him.

…The episode also accidentally fueled an emergent fan phenomenon: slash fiction. As fanfic readers know, the concept of slash fiction, in which fans pair one character with another, derives its name from Kirk/Spock fanfic, which imagined the famous duo as lovers. In “Turnabout Intruder,” after Spock mind-melds with Janet Lester and realizes Kirk is in her body, he holds their hand, treating Kirk like his girlfriend. It’s not subtle. Supposedly, even the actors were aware the story’s gender-role-switching elements prompted all kinds of questions about Kirk and Spock’s true feelings. In a famous outtake, William Shatner jokingly reworked his line to say, “Spock, it’s always been you, you know it’s always been you. Say you love me too.”

We know this because super-fan Joan Winston got herself onto the “Turnabout Intruder” set. In the fan-made essay collection Star Trek Lives! Winston recounted the experience in great detail, including the anecdote about Shatner jokingly professing his love to Spock. By 1972, Joan Winston would become one of the key organizers of the world’s first Star Trek conventions.

In 1970, only 300 people attended the first San Diego Comic-Con. In 1972, Winston brought 3,000 people to the first Star Trek convention. By 1974, Winston’s fourth Star Trek Lives! convention attracted at least 15,000 attendees. Star Trek conventions helped create large-scale genre-themed conventions in general, which is partially why today’s geek landscape even exists. Small fantasy and sci-fi conventions existed before Star Trek, but Trek made the idea of having a big convention possible, and Joan Winston was one of the movement’s key pioneers….

(6) SOUND INVESTMENT. “U.S. Audiobook Sales Hit $2 Billion in 2024” reports Publishers Weekly.

The audiobook market in the United States continues steadily growing, with revenue increasing by 9%, to $2 billion, in 2023, according to the Audio Publishers Association, which published data from its annual sales survey today. The sales survey, conducted by Toluna Harris Interactive, incorporates data from 27 publishers, including Audible, Hachette Audio, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, among others.

In addition, the APA has released highlights from its 2024 consumer survey, carried out by Edison Research, which showed that 52% of U.S. adults, or nearly 149 million Americans, have listened to an audiobook. The survey also found that 38% of American adults listened to an audiobook in the last year, up from 35% reported in 2023….

(7) STOKERCON 2025. The StokerCon 2025 Guests of Honor are:

Paula Guran
Graham Masterson
Gaby Triana
Tim Waggoner

(8) SMALL WONDER KICKSTARTER FUNDS.

We funded! Small Wonders Year 2 is HAPPENING! Thank you all so much!

We still have nearly two whole days to stretch and reach more goals – like our awesome guest edited issue, more sticker unlocks, the best of year 1 anthology, and more! Let's do this!https://t.co/pGswlmtqdX?
— Small Wonders Magazine (@SmallwondersSFF) June 1, 2024

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 3, 1964 — James Purefoy, 60. James Purefoy has an interesting genre history though I’m going to start with his role in Hap and Leonard based off that series created by Joe R. Lansdale. There he was Hap Collins who was imprisoned for refusing to be drafted during the Vietnam War. He and Leonard Pine are rather eccentric private investigators for Hap’s girlfriend Brett Sawyer.

Remember A Knight’s Tale, a film that the Suck Fairy tells me that they don’t even have in their database. He played the dual role of Edward, the Black Prince of Wales and Sir Thomas Colville. It currently not surprisingly has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of eighty percent. It’s one of my favorite films.

James Purefoy at San Diego Comic-Con in 2012.

Next on his genre work is Solomon Kane where he played that character. Based on the Robert E. Howard character, he made a stellar Kane. It currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of seventy-one percent.

He was Kantos Kan, the Odwar, the commanding officer, of the ship Xavarian in the John Carter film. It currently has a much better rating than I was expecting at Rotten Tomatoes rating — sixty percent. Huh.

He is cast in a main role as Captain Gulliver “Gully” Troy / Captain Blighty in the second and third seasons of the Pennyworth series, the prequel to the Gotham series. I like it a lot better than the latter series.

He’s Philippe de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches series based off on Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy, and it’s named after the first book in the trilogy. I read and really loved these novels.

Almost on my list is his performance as Laurens Bancroft in the Altered Carbon series. Yes I read the Richard Morgan trilogy. I thought it was excellently well written story with great characters and a fascinating story. He’s a ruthless billionaire who cares for nothing but what he wants.

What is finally on my list is something I never knew had been done. BBC Radio 4 as part of their Dangerous Visions series broadcast a two-part adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Off the Philip K. Dick work. It stars James Purefoy as Rick Deckard and Jessica Raine as Rachael Rosen. No other cast is credited, a bit odd I think.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater features a mythical moment in food safety.
Mannequin on the Moon lacks a quota.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal reveals an unexpected majority.

(11) MUSEUM STARTED WITH SALVAGED SETS CAN’T OPEN ITS DOORS. Santa Monica’s SciFi World isn’t open despite a “gala opening” on Memorial Day – the LA Times says in its story “A child porn conviction and angry ‘Star Trek’ fans: Inside the drama around a new sci-fi museum” that “The museum’s public opening is delayed indefinitely due to permitting issues with the city”. The full article is behind a paywall.

Sci-Fi World, a new “museum” that promises fans real and replica props, costumes and sets from popular films and TV shows, hosted its opening “gala” on Memorial Day in the historic former Sears building just a couple of blocks from the Santa Monica Pier.

More than a decade in the making, the museum has drawn the interest of “Star Trek” fans worldwide thanks to its genesis story: Superfan Huston Huddleston said he salvaged a replica of the bridge from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” from a discard pile outside of a Long Beach warehouse in 2011. Huddleston, known for his fanatical devotion to science fiction and horror, launched Kickstarter campaigns to restore the prop and open a museum to house it, raising nearly $163,000 in less than two years.

But now Huddleston, 54, has emerged as the nexus of questions swirling around the museum, which, despite the recent gala, did not actually open as scheduled. Some of those same sci-fi fans who were enthralled by the museum’s origin story have since learned that in 2018, Huddleston was convicted of misdemeanor possession of child pornography. He was required to serve 126 days in jail and three years of summary probation, complete 52 weeks of sex offender counseling and pay fines.

In an interview with The Times, Huddleston said he knew that any association with the museum after his conviction would be toxic for an organization that hopes to attract young fans, so he gave up control of the nonprofit and its collection of film and TV ephemera to the museum’s chief executive.

But several Sci-Fi World volunteers past and present told The Times that Huddleston remains active — if not central — in museum operations and preparations for opening. Lee Grimwade, one of the museum’s lead volunteers who quit a day before the gala, said Huddleston is “definitely 100% involved.”…

(12) AI AND SHOW BIZ. “State of Generative AI in Hollywood” — Variety has a roundup. The complete report is behind a paywall.

… It further examines the advancement and potential of video generation models that have gripped the industry, including OpenAI’s Sora and Google DeepMind’s Veo, which were announced in the first half of 2024.

Yet to understand how the tech is actively being used today also requires an understanding of its limitations and challenges. VIP+ digs into the specific factors holding back gen AI implementation as tools used to make the highest production-value content. Ethical use is now central and critical to gen AI decision making for media and entertainment companies, and it is the final focus area of this report.

Research for this special report partly draws from 28 independent interviews conducted on background from February to May 2024 with leaders at generative AI tech and service providers, those in VFX and content localization networks, film and TV concept and storyboard artists, independent filmmakers experimenting with generative AI, ethical technologists and lawyers specializing in entertainment and cybersecurity….

(13) VOICE ACTOR Q&A. “Star Wars Bad Batch: Dee Bradley Baker on Voices, Clones, Show Ending” at The Hollywood Reporter.

If The Bad Batch were a live-action series, it’d most certainly be considered an ensemble show. But given that one actor voiced 22 (!) characters in the final season of the animated series, that term might not quite fit in this case. It’s a point that the voice actor himself, Dee Bradley Baker, humbly acknowledges.

“The Bad Batch is a very different creative ask of an actor, to bring all of these full-fledged, full-bodied characters together in a scene as an ensemble, not as disconnected or one-offs,” says Baker. “This is an ensemble story in the same way that The Clone Wars was originally an ensemble story. It’s just in this particular ensemble, I’m most of the ensemble,” he adds, laughing.

The Disney+ series, which ended its three-season run on May 1, follows Clone Force 99, a special forces squad comprising clone solders who were enhanced with special abilities, in the aftermath of Order 66 (whereby Emperor Palpatine ordered the clones to kill all Jedi). The group is led by stellar tracker Hunter and includes the abnormally strong Wrecker, brilliant Tech and uber marksman Crosshair. The quintet is rounded out with Echo, a regular clone who, after cybernetic modifications, joined up with the Bad Batch. All five of those characters are voiced by Baker, who is an Emmy contender this awards season for his role as Crosshair….

Speaking of fans, what is the voice you get asked to do most often?

[In Wrecker’s voice] They want to hear Wrecker all the time. I always say Wrecker wrecks my voice, but I’ll talk like Wrecker anyway. [Switching to Crosshair’s voice] Also, Crosshair because he meant a lot to many of the fans. He was probably the most interesting character of all of the Bad Batch [switching back to his real voice] because Crosshair really had the arc, the transformational redemption arc, that was his story, and what started out to seem to be sort of an adversarial counter-character ends up being the character that you’re rooting for. And that is finally redeemed with that hug that he gets from Omega. It’s a really beautiful story, it’s an inspiring story, and people are really locked into that. But it’s a lot of fun [in Hunter’s voice] just to switch from character to character [in Tech’s voice] because each one is very different from the other [back to his real voice], and they’re all just different people, and they’re here within me.

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

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