Tag Archives: Ellen Klages

Pixel Scroll 9/6/21 I Fought The Laws Of Newton, Thermodynamics, Robotics And Grammar, And All But One Of Them Laws Won

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(1) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Ellen Klages and Mari Ness via livestream on Wednesday, September 15 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Link to come.

Ellen Klages

Ellen Klages is the author of three acclaimed MG novels: The Green Glass Sea, White Sands, Red Menace, and Out of Left Field, which won the New-York Historical Society’s Children’s History Book Prize.  Her adult short fiction — fantasy and some SF — has been translated into a dozen languages and been nominated for or won multiple genre awards. Ellen lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.

Mari Ness

Mari Ness has published short fiction and poetry in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Fireside, Apex, Diabolical Plots, Strange Horizons, and Daily Science Fiction. Her poetry novella, Through Immortal Shadows Singing, is available from Papaveria Press, and an essay collection, Resistance and Transformation: On Fairy Tales, from Aqueduct Press.  She lives in central Florida under the direct supervision of two magnificent cats.

(2) COUNTING THE DOLLAR SIGNS FOR 2020 COMICS. Comichron has published its “Industry-wide Comics and Graphic Novel Sales for 2020”. Lots of stats and graphs at the link.

Combined comics and graphic novel sales hit a new high in the pandemic year of 2020, according to a new joint estimate by ICv2‘s Milton Griepp and Comichron‘s John Jackson Miller. Total comics and graphic novel sales to consumers in the U.S. and Canada were approximately $1.28 billion in 2020, a 6% increase over sales in 2019. The increase was due to strong sales of graphic novels online and in mass merchants and strong digital sales, which overcame big declines in comic and book store sales.

“The challenges of retailing in the pandemic had profound impacts on the market, including the acceleration of trends that have been in place for years,” Griepp said of the 2020 estimates. “The book channel increased its share dramatically vs. comic stores, and graphic novels increased their share vs. periodical comics, while digital sales were turbocharged.”

Numlock News also did a Q&A with the person who oversees the report: “John Jackson Miller on the huge growth of the comic book industry – by Walter Hickey”.

Comichron and your partners at ICV2 released your 2020 comic book sales report. It was a really surprising and very complex year in comics, very tumultuous to say the least, but the number was up year-over-year.

That’s right. Part of the key is it depends on where do you work in the business, what the business looked like, because not every part of the business was under the same constraints. The graphic novel part of the market, and, in particular, the young adult part of the market typified by books like Dog Man, these are all part of the book channel which never really shut down, those books continue to circulate and the best selling kids graphic novels had the additional advantage that the Walmarts of the world that are kind of like the music industry where they only stocks the hits.

Places like that, which had been declared essential services, which never shut down and had small selections of graphic novels, they continue to sell all through the pandemic and there’s a dynamic that happens where the best sellers became really best sellers. You have that part of the market, which was continuously running. Digital is a sector that has kind of, I don’t want to say stagnated, but it had reached its level a few years ago and had not really gone anywhere. But during the pandemic, there’s a stretch there where the physical comics aren’t coming out, people can’t get to the comic shops, and also you have some of the major publishers basically going direct to video.

They basically took their poor selling titles and didn’t even go to press at all with them, but they went directly to digital on those. That’s supplemented that part of the market and so we have a significant increase in digital downloads, the comics you can pay for and actually get to keep, as opposed to the subscription model comics that are digital. Then the direct market, which, for the first quarter of 2020 was doing fine, it was ahead for the year and then we have in succession, a few things that happened. We had DC’s printer Transcontinental had to close temporarily. Diamond, the exclusive distributor for at the time all of the major publishers, it judged that it needed to pause as well, because there were going to be comics piling up at stores that weren’t open….

(3) EVERYTHING’S UP TO DATE IN KANSAS CITY. Fanac.org has added video of the “MidAmeriCon (1976) Worldcon – Hugo and other Awards, with Bob Tucker & Pat Cadigan”.

MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Kansas City in 1976. In this recording, Toastmaster Bob Tucker orchestrates a relatively compact ceremony, nevertheless with time and space for a little fannish humor, with the assistance of Pat Cadigan. The evening includes the awarding of the E. Everett Evans Big Heart Award, and a heartfelt presentation by Lester Del Rey of the First Fandom award given to Harry Bates. Ben Bova and Joe Haldeman are among the Hugo recipients accepting awards. The recording is a little damaged in places, but very watchable. Video and video restoration provided by David Dyer-Bennet and the Video Archeology Project.

(4) RU12? BBC Culture expounds on “The 100-year-old fiction that predicted today”.

One day in 1920, the Czech writer Karel Capek sought the advice of his older brother Josef, a painter. Karel was writing a play about artificial workers but he was struggling for a name. “I’d call them laborators, but it seems to me somewhat stilted,” he told Josef, who was hard at work on a canvas. “Call them robots then,” replied Josef, a paintbrush in his mouth. At the same time in Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg), a Russian writer named Yevgeny Zamyatin was writing a novel whose hi-tech future dictatorship would eventually prove as influential as ?apek’s robots.

Both works are celebrating a joint centenary, albeit a slippery one. Capek (pronounced Chap-ek) published his play, RUR, in 1920 but it wasn’t performed for the first time until January 2021. And although Zamyatin submitted the manuscript of his novel, We, in 1921, it was mostly written earlier and published later. Nonetheless, 1921 has become their shared birth date and thus the year that gave us both the robot and the mechanised dystopia – two concepts of which, it seems, we will never tire. As Capek wrote in 1920, “Some of the future can always be read in the palms of the present”….

(5) FRANK HERBERT Q&A. From Seventies video archives: “DUNE Author Frank Herbert on Environmentalism”.

Frank Herbert, author of the ‘Dune’ series, discusses environmentalism in this 1977 interview with WTTW’s John Callaway.

(6) JUDITH HANNA. Fanzine fan Judith Hanna died September 6 of cancer. She is survived by her husband, Joseph Nicholas. The Australian-born Hanna was a member of the Sydney University Tolkien Society. She emigrated to the UK in the early Eighties. She was a member of the Australia in ’83 bid committee. Hanna wrote for many fanzines, and with Nicholas published Fuck The Tories, which won the Nova Award in 1990.She was a reviewer for Vector and Paperback Inferno, among others. Her fanwriting was selected for Fanthology ’88, Fanthology ’89, and Fanthology ’93.  

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • 1953 – Sixty-eight years ago on this date, the first Science Fiction Achievement Awards, which would be nicknamed the Hugo Awards, are presented during the 11th World Science Fiction Convention. This Worldcon was informally known as Philcon II. Isaac Asimov was the Toastmaster that year. Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man won for Best Novel, The award for Best Professional Magazine went to Astounding Science Fiction as edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., Hanes Bok was voted Best Cover Artist, Virgil Finlay won for Best Interior Illustrator, Willy Ley won it for Excellence in Fact Articles, the Best New SF Author was Philip José Farmer and #1 Fan Personality was Forrest J Ackerman. 

(8) TODAY’S DAY.

  • September 6 – Read A Book Day

Sumiko Saulson says this is how “HWA Celebrates Read a Book Day”:

September 6 is National Read a Book Day, one day a year that is set aside to encourage all of us to curl up with a good book. The Horror Writers Association would like to take this time out to honor and celebrate the international horror writing community, and the book lovers all over the world who love to read the scary books we write.

Many of us have bookshelves filled with tomes of terrifying tale and bone chilling anthologies of monstrosities of every kind. But when it comes to books, we’re sure you will agree that there is really no such thing as too much of a good thing.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 6, 1904 — Groff Conklin. He edited some forty anthologies of genre fiction starting with The Best of Science Fiction fromCrown Publishers in 1946 to Seven Trips Through Time and Space on Fawcett Gold in 1968. The contents are a mix of the obscure and well-known as Heinlein, Niven, Simak, Dahl, Sturgeon, Lovecraft and Bradbury show up here. He was nominated at NyCon II  for Best Book Reviewer which Damon Knight won (there’s a category that got dropped later), and was nominated at Millennium Philcon for a Retro Hugo that went to John W. Campbell Jr. Exactly one of his anthologies, Great Stories of Space Travel, is available at the usual suspects. (Died 1968.)
  • Born September 6, 1943 — Roger Waters, 78. Ok, I might well be stretching it just a bit in saying that Pink Floyd is genre. Ok, The Wall isdefinitely genre I’d say. And quite possibly also The Division Bell with its themes of communication as well. Or maybe I just wanted to say Happy Birthday Roger! 
  • Born September 6, 1953 — Elizabeth Massie, 68. Ellen Datlow, who’s now doing the most excellent Year’s Best Horror anthology series, was the horror and dark fantasy editor for the multiple Hugo Award winning Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror where she selected Massie’s “Stephen” for the fourth edition. A horror writer by trade, Massie’s also dipped deeper into the genre by writing a female Phantom graphic novel, Julie Walker Is The Phantom in Race Against Death! and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Power of Persuasion novel. Massie is also a two-time Bram Stoker Award winner.
  • Born September 6, 1953 — Patti Yasutake, 68. She’s best remembered  for her portrayal of Nurse Alyssa Ogawa in the Trek universe where she had a recurring role on Next Generation and showed up as well in Star Trek Generations and Star Trek First Contact. In doing these Birthdays, I consulted a number of sites. Several of them declared that her character ended her time as a Doctor. Not true but it made for a nice if fictional coda on her story. She was cast as a doctor in episodes of several other non-genre series.
  • Born September 6, 1972 — China Miéville, 49. My favorite novels by him? The City & The City which won a Hugo at Aussiecon 4 is the one I’ve re-read the most followed closely by Kraken. Scariest by him? Oh, that’d King Rat by a long shot. And I’ll admit the dialect he used in Un Lun Dun frustrated me enough that I gave up on it. I’ll hold strongly that the New Crobuzon series doesn’t date as well as some of his other fiction does. Now his writing on the Dial H sort of horror series for DC was fantastic in all ways that word means.
  • Born September 6, 1972 — Idris Elba, 49. He was Heimdall in the Thor franchise, as well as the Avengers franchise. First genre role was as Captain Janek in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and later he was in Pacific Rim as Stacker Pentecost. He’s the Big Bad as Krall in Star Trek: Beyond. His latest genre role was as Robert DuBois / Bloodsport in last Suicide Squad film.
  • Born September 6, 1976 — Robin Atkin Downes, 45. Though he’s made his living being a voice actor in myriad video games and animated series, one of his first acting roles was as the rogue telepath Byron on Babylon 5. He later shows up as the Demon of Illusion in the “Chick Flick” episode of Charmed and he’s got an uncredited though apparently known role as Pockla in the “Dead End” episiode of Angel. He does the voice of Edward in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and he‘s Angelo on the 2016 Suicide Squad. (There’s a small place in a database Hell for film makers who make films with the same name.) 
  • Born September 6, 1976 — Naomie Harris, 45. She’s Eve Moneypenny in Skyfall, Spectre and the still forthcoming No Time to Die. This was the first time Moneypenny had a first name. She also appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as Tia Dalma. And lastly I’ll note she played Elizabeth Lavenza in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the National Theatre. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) GET YOUR KICKS IN YEAR ’66. Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus tells us how things went at this year’s (1966) Worldcon in Cleveland: “[September 6, 1966] The Greatest (SF) show on Earth! (1966 Worldcon and Hugo Awards)”.

There are many science fiction conventions in the United States, from New York’s Lunacon to Westercon, held in San Diego this year!  But the granddaddy of them all is the annual Worldcon, which travels from city to city as various fan groups are able to submit a winning bid to the con’s members.

This year, Cleveland won the honor, and so the convention representing the three cities of Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Detroit was appropriately called “Tricon.”  More than 800 fen (plural of fan, natch) descended upon the Sheraton-Cleveland (the historic “Renaissance”) hotel for a long weekend of fun and fannery.  Even the best rooms at this ancient hotel were tiny, and several complained of dusty closets.  Luckily, we spent little time in our rooms!…

(12) IN A HOLE IN ITALY THERE LIVED A HOBBIT. Dream comes true: “‘What is this if not magic?’ The Italian man living as a hobbit” reports The Guardian.

Nicolas Gentile, a 37-year-old Italian pastry chef, did not just want to pretend to be a hobbit – he wanted to live like one. First, he bought a piece of land in the countryside of Bucchianico, near the town of Chieti in Abruzzo, where he and his wife started building their personal Shire from JRR Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth.

Then, on 27 August, alongside a group of friends and Lord of the Rings fans dressed as an elf, a dwarf, a hobbit, a sorcerer and humans, he walked more than 120 miles (200km) from Chieti to Naples, crossing mountains and rivers, to throw the “One Ring”, a central plot element of The Lord of the Rings saga, into the volcano crater of Mount Vesuvius….

… In Bucchianico, the festival of the Banderesi is organised every year. It is one of the oldest festivals in Europe – celebrated for almost 500 years and in which people wear medieval clothes, sing songs, dance and prepare typical local dishes.

“Those are hobbit clothes,” says Gentile. ‘‘I realised that I have always lived in the Shire. The only thing missing was to become aware of it and build a village….”

(13) URBAN VISION. CNN covers somebody else’s idea of living the dream: “Plans for $400-billion new city in the American desert unveiled”.

The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined his vision for a 5-million-person “new city in America” and appointed a world-famous architect to design it.

Now, he just needs somewhere to build it — and $400 billion in funding.

The former Walmart executive last week unveiled plans for Telosa, a sustainable metropolis that he hopes to create, from scratch, in the American desert. The ambitious 150,000-acre proposal promises eco-friendly architecture, sustainable energy production and a purportedly drought-resistant water system. A so-called “15-minute city design” will allow residents to access their workplaces, schools and amenities within a quarter-hour commute of their homes.

Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region, according to the project’s official website….

(14) ON THE GRIPPING HAND. Captain Toy has posted Michael Crawford’s “Review and photos of Captain Picard First Contact Star Trek sixth scale action figure”.

…We don’t get a ton of extras this time, but we get a couple key features.

He comes wearing a set of relaxed hands, and there’s a set of fists and two sets of specific gripping hands you can swap in. These are designed to work with the other accessories, and their sculpts are just about perfect for the purpose.

He also has the phaser and tricorder, specific in design to the film. I mentioned the fantastic details earlier, but it’s worth talking about again. If you have good enough eyes, you’ll be able to read the screen on the tricorder.

The tricorder has the same two piece design as the earlier releases, with a strong magnet that holds the top and bottom together. This is a fantastic design, allowing the tricorder to be open or closed without any hinge that would be obvious or easy to break.

They also use magnets to hold the tricorder and phaser holsters to the uniform. This is a design carried over from QMX, but they do it better, with stronger magnets that are pretty much invisible to the eye….

(15) STUNNING. NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day – description below. And here’s a key to everything that appears in the photo.

Firefly Milky Way over Russia
Image Credit & Copyright: Anton Komlev

Explanation: It started with a pine tree. The idea was to photograph a statuesque pine in front of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. And the plan, carried out two months ago, was successful — they both appear prominently. But the resulting 3-frame panorama captured much more. Colorful stars, for example, dot the distant background, with bright Altair visible on the upper left. The planet Saturn, a bit closer, was captured just over the horizon on the far left. Just beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, seen in the upper right, an Earth-orbiting satellite was caught leaving a streak during the 25-second exposure. The Earth’s atmosphere itself was surprisingly visible — as green airglow across the image top. Finally, just by chance, there was a firefly. Do you see it? Near the image bottom, the firefly blinked in yellow several times as it fluttered before the rolling hills above Milogradovka River in Primorsky Krai, Russia.

(16) SEND IN YOUR MEDIA TO RODDENBERRY TRIBUTE. “’Star Trek’ Creator Gene Roddenberry To Be Honored With ‘Boldly Go’ Campaign” – Deadline has the story.

The family foundation for Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is launching a month-long campaign on Wednesday to inspire hope for the next 100 years.

In partnership with Paramount+ satellite company Planet and Academy Award-winning technology company OTOY, the campaign (“Boldly Go”) is part of the celebration of the legacy of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in what would have been his centennial year.

The campaign will launch at Paramount+’s red carpet event on September 8, featuring Star Trek actors LeVar Burton, George Takei, Patrick Stewart, and others. Gene’s son Rod Roddenberry, founder of the Roddenberry Foundation and president of Roddenberry Entertainment, will appear on a panel about Star Trek’s legacy. The celebration will be live streamed for free at StarTrek.com/Day starting at 8:30 PM ET.

The “Boldly Go” campaign will call on Star Trek fans and citizens around the world to submit photos and videos describing their hopes for the next 100 years….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Youtuber LadyKnightTheBrave’sThrough The Gate: A Stargate SG-1 Retrospective.

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

2020 Prix Imaginales Finalists

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The 2020 Prix Imaginales finalists were announced on May 2.  

The Prix Imaginales recognize the best works of fantasy of the year published in France in six categories, with a prize of 1,000 euros for the first five categories and 500 euros for the last two.

A jury composed of critics, journalists and specialists selected the nominees: Jacques Grasser (Président), Stéphane Wieser (Directeur du Festival), Christophe de Jerphanion, Natacha Vas-Deyres, Lloyd Chéry, and Frédérique Roussel.

The awards would have been given at Imaginales, the Festival of the Imaginary Worlds in Épinal, France, this weekend, however, it is one of the myriad events cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

[NOTE: The Prix Imaginales is a different award than the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.]

Catégorie roman francophone / French novel

  • Jean-Luc A. D’ASCIANO, Souviens-toi des monstres (Aux Forges de Vulcain)
  • Jean-Laurent DEL SOCORRO, Je suis fille de rage (ActuSF)
  • Catherine DUFOUR, Danse avec les lutins (L’Atalante)
  • Franck FERRIC, Le Chant mortel du Soleil (Albin Michel)
  • Alex NIKOLAVITCH, Trois coracles cinglaient vers le couchant (Les Moutons électriques)

Catégorie roman étranger traduit / Foreign Novel translated into French

  • Katherine ARDEN, L’Ours et le rossignol [The Bear and the Nightengale] (Denoël) Translated into French by Jacques COLLIN
  • Brian CATLING, Vorrh [The Vorrh] (Fleuve) Translated into French by Nathalie MEGE
  • Marina and Sergueï DIATCHENKO, Vita Nostra – Les Métamorphoses 1 (L’Atalante)  Translated into French by Denis SAVINE
  • Shaun HAMILL, Une cosmologie de monstres [A Cosmology of Monsters] (Albin Michel) Translated into French by Benoît DOMIS
  • Jo WALTON, Pierre-de-vie [Lifelode] (Denoël) Translated into French by Florence DOLISI

Catégorie jeunesse / Youth category

  • Isabelle BAUTHIAN, Face au dragon (Projets Sillex)
  • Anthelme HAUCHECORNE, Moitiés d’Ame – Chroniques des cinq trônes (Gulf Stream)
  • Samantha SHANNON, Le Prieuré de l’oranger (De Saxus) Translated into French by Benjamin KUNTZER et Jean-Baptiste BERNET
  • Flore VESCO, L’Estrange malaventure de Mirella (L’École des loisirs)

Catégorie illustration / Illustration

  • François BARANGER, Les Montagnes hallucinées 1 (Bragelonne)
  • Daniel  CACOUAULT, Alice au pays des merveilles (Bragelonne)
  • Armel GAULME, Les Carnets Lovecraft (Bragelonne)
  • Jesper EJSING, Elsewhere (Caurette)

Catégorie nouvelle / Short Story

  • Gardner DOZOIS, Épées et magie  (Pygmalion)
  • Thomas GEHA, Chuchoteurs du dragon et autres murmures (Elenya)
  • Ellen KLAGES, Caligo Lane, Passing Strange (ActuSF)
  • Pierre PEVEL, Contes et récits du Paris des merveilles (Bragelonne)

Catégorie prix spécial du Jury / Special Jury Award

  • Christelle DABOS, La Passe-miroir (Gallimard)
  • S.T. JOSHI, Lovecraft je suis providence tomes 1 et 2 (ActuSF)
  • Roland LEHOUCQ, Loïc MANGIN, Jean-Sébastien STEYER, Tolkien et les sciences (Belin)
  • Alexandre SARGOS, Tolkien à 20 ans (Au diable Vauvert)
  • Jean-Sébastien STEYER, Anatomie comparée des espèces imaginaires de Chewbacca à Totoro (Le Cavalier bleu)

Pixel Scroll 2/5/19 Recycling Day: Leave Your Blue Bins On The Shoulders Of Orion Tomorrow

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(1) FANTASY LIST. ReedsyDiscovery offers its list of “The 100 Best Fantasy Series Ever”. It’s in alphabetical order by title – I was briefly worried, because if somebody wanted to put A Song of Ice and Fire in first place for some reason that could make sense, but it took me a moment to understand why Lord of the Rings was down around number 60.

I’ve read a dozen of these – you’re bound to do better!

(2) NEW BOOKS OUT. Vulture features “A Conversation With Marlon James and Victor LaValle”.

The other day, Victor LaValle, a Queens-born author who employs the form of the fairy tale as a barbed hook to lure readers into serious treatments of race, parenting, and the internet, ordered dim sum with Marlon James, a Jamaican author of sweeping social epics that delight in challenging all the conventions of narrative. Both have book projects out this week. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is James’s highly anticipated follow-up to the Man Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. LaValle has co-edited a new speculative anthology, A People’s Future of the United States, prompting 25 of today’s biggest SFF writers to contemplate the future — and dark present — of the country….

MJ: I gotta say, that’s maybe the first time anybody’s ever mentioned that I write about sex. I actually kinda screamed.

VL: Did you feel all right with me talking about that aspect of it?

MJ: Absolutely! I don’t mind people writing about the violence, but it tends to be all they write about.

VL: For a black writer writing about gangsters, violence is almost the go-to. But sex is absolutely a part of your work in such a big and vital way, as another form of — not just violence but as communion, communication. I was talking about this with my wife, and she pointed out that none of the reviews of your last book mentioned sex at all. So as I was reading this one, I was like, It’s here, too. I just need to say, people should talk about sex.

MJ: Literary realism has this sort of indie-film attitude toward sex. Violence is violent, but sex isn’t sexy. It’s compulsive; nobody’s happy; they enjoy the cigarette way more than the sex. Sometimes I read these novels, none of which I’ll name, and I go, It’s not that hard to enjoy sex, people.

(3) KLAGES INTERVIEW. Juliette Wade and her team take another Dive Into Worldbuilding with “Ellen Klages and Passing Strange”. See the interview in video (below) or read the synopsis at the link.

I asked Ellen what had been the initial seed of this novella. As it turns out, the novella has a very long history! Ellen told us that she started writing a novel or a short story or something in 1977 when she was 22 or 23, and had just moved to San Francisco, and just figured out that she was queer. She ended up wandering around a lot, learning about Mona’s and many of the other locations that appear in the novella. She did a lot of research and did what she described as cosplaying Haskel and Netterfield with her love of the time. She told us she thought it would be a novel. She had four scenes typed, and would read the scenes every few years and say to herself, “Damn, I should do something with that.”

Then, years later, Jonathan Strand asked her for a novella for Tor.com. By that point, Ellen says, she had four or five folders full of notes and photographs put together from all her years of research. At that point she did 3 1/2 more months of research before writing. She read about a dozen books on Chinatown. She said she started there because it was “the thing I knew I had to get right.” She filled eighty pages with notes, most of which didn’t get used. One page, which she showed us on video, was filled with Haskel’s signature. She explored the gay and lesbian historical archives about Mona’s.

Three of the characters in the story, Babs, Polly, and Franny, have appeared in other works of Ellen’s fiction. In “Out of Left Field,” Babs and Franny appear as relatives of the main characters. Polly appears in “Hey, Presto!” and Franny in “Caligo Lane.”

(4) EARLY MERLIN. Text of a source probably used by Malory when writing his Arthurian legends has been found: “Centuries lost ‘Bristol Merlin’ uncovered at city’s Central Library”

A chance discovery, hidden away in a series of 16th-century books deep in the archive of Bristol Central Library, has revealed original manuscript fragments from the Middle Ages which tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend.  

Academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham are now analysing the seven parchment fragments which are thought to come from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, dating back to the 13th century.

Parts of the Vulgate Cycle were probably used by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) as a source for his Le Morte D’Arthur (published in 1485 by William Caxton) which is itself the main source text for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend in English, but no one version known so far has proven to be exactly alike with what he appears to have used.

(5) ONE FOR THE FILES. Colette H. Fozard, Co-Chair of the DC in 2021 Worldcon bid, writes:

I wanted to let you know that we made our bid filing with Dublin 2019 Site Selection and it has been accepted as complete by the Site Selection Administrator.

(6) ANNIE BELLET 10 YEARS IN SFF. Celebratory thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/anniebellet/status/1092839390169260032

(7) EMSHWILLER OBIT. Author Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019), winner of World Fantasy Con’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2005) has died. The SFWA Blog has an obituary:

Author Carol Emshwiller (b.Carol Fries, April 12, 1921) died on February 2nd, 2019.   Ms. Emshwiller began publishing science fiction in 1954, with the story “Built for Pleasure.”  Emshwiller built a reputation as a short fiction author and Ursula Le Guin said that she had “one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.”

…SFWA President Cat Rambo remembers,

Carol Emshwiller was one of the greats of short story writing, right up there with Grace Paley, James Tiptree Jr., Ursula K. Le Guin, and R.A. Lafferty, and she pushed its edges in order to do amazing, delightful, and illuminating things–just as she did with her longer work. As a short story lover, I am gutted by this loss to the writing community and plan to spend part of today re-reading Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, with its beautifully incisive and unflinching stories.

This photo from Melissa C. Beckman shows the author in front of a portrait of her painted by her late husband Ed Emshwiller.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 5, 1904 – William S. Burroughs. I’m going to confess that I’ve read nothing by him so everything I know about I’ve absorbed by reading about him and seeing his fiction turned into films. So though ISFDB lists a number of his works as SF, I’ve not a clue what they’re like. So educate me please. (Died 1997.)
  • Born February 5, 1922 – Peter Leslie. Writer in a number of media franchises including The Avengers, The New Avengers (and yes they are different franchises), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. ISFDB also lists has writing in the Father Hayes series but I don’t recognize that series. (Died 2007.)
  • Born February 5, 1934 – Malcolm Willits, 95. Author of The Wonderful Edison Time Machine: A Celebration of Life and Shakespeare’s Cat: A Play in Three Acts which he filmed as Shakespeare’s Cat. He also co-edited Destiny, an early Fifties fanzine with Jim Bradley.
  • Born February 5, 1940 – H.R. Giger. Conceptual designer in whole or part for Aliens, Alien³, Species and Alien: Resurrection to name a few films he’s been involved in. Did you know there are two Giger Bars designed by him, both in Switzerland? And yes they’re really weird. (Died 2014.)
  • Born February 5, 1964 – Laura Linney, 55. She first shows up in our corner of the Universe as Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill on The Truman Show before playing Officer Connie Mills in The Mothman Prophecies (BARF!) and then Erin Bruner in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She plays Mrs. Munro In Mr. Holmes, a film best described as stink, stank and stunk when it comes to all things Holmesian. Her last SF was as Rebecca Vincent in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

(9) LEAPING V. LOOKING BEFORE. Jason Heller tells other dreamers not to wait. His thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092832459719200769
https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092840756589383682

A bunch of sff authors begged to differ.

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1092884323777372161

(10) ON THE RADIO. Genre was shut out at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2019 but there’s the link in case you want to see the results. However, the winner in the Best Actress category is known to fans from her work on Torchwood.

BEST ACTRESS

WINNER: Eve Myles, 19 Weeks, director Helen Perry, BBC Cymru Wales, BBC Radio 4

(11) KLINGON CUTLERY. Police in Northwest England raided the home of a teenager and seized a cache of weapons including one that was … more esoteric. The BBC reports “A replica of a weapon wielded by a race of alien warriors in the sci-fi TV show Star Trek has been seized by police from a 17-year-old boy’s bedroom.” They did not, however find a ChonnaQ or D’k tahg. “Star Trek Klingon blade seized from Widnes teen’s bedroom”

The Widnes Police also posted about the raid on their Facebook page — some of the comments are quite amusing:

Nina : This is what happens when you remove Kahless from schools and everything else! Thoughts and prayers.

Michael Z. Williamson: Remember when young British males were REQUIRED to have a longbow? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

(12) OH, THE HUMANITIES. “Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds” by Julie Philips is the cover story on the new issue of Humanities, published by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

When she found her way into science fiction and fantasy, those genres turned out to be well suited to her imagination, her curiosity, and her subversive suspicion that man was not the measure of all things. From the very beginning, in interviews and essays, Le Guin championed science fiction’s literary value. She did it most memorably in a 2014 speech when she accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (or what writer China Miéville in the documentary calls “the welcome-to-the-canon award”). In that speech, she described herself and her colleagues as “realists of a larger reality.”

(13) I FEEL PRETTY. Call it a more modern take on the Island of Misfit Toys (SYFY Wire: “Second trailer for musical UglyDolls movie feels like a mix of Trolls, Toy Story, and Inside Out”).

STX Entertainment has unveiled the second trailer for its animated UglyDolls movie via The Ellen Show, and the message of what looks to be a Trolls redo is actually very resonant for us all: Don’t shy away from what makes you different; embrace it.

The new trailer also explains where the singing UglyDolls come from — they’re factory rejects compared to the “normal” dolls of our world, and are left discarded in a town all their own. They’re all pretty much happy until a renegade by the name of Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson) wants to explore the wider world and find the kid who will love her. Along with her friends, Moxy will travel to the Institute of Perfection, which pairs dolls with humans.

[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Juliette Wade, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, rcade, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day microtherion.]

2018 Gaylactic Spectrum Best Novel Award

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The 2018 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel was announced  November 24 at Chessiecon in Timonium, MD. The award’s Best Short Fiction and Best Other Work categories have been rolled over to the 2019 awards cycle.

The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards honor outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy and horror which include significant positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues.

WINNER

  • Passing Strange – Ellen Klages (Tor.com)

SHORT LIST

  • The Adventure of the Incognita Countess – Cynthia Ward (Aqueduct Press)
  • Amberlough – Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor Books)
  • The Black Tides of Heaven – JY Yang (Tor.com)
  • The Cult of Ocasta – Mark Allan Gunnells (Evil Jester Press)
  • An Excess Male – Maggie Shen King (Harper Voyager)
  • Hexslayer – Jordan L. Hawk (JLH Publishing)
  • The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic – F.T. Lukens (Duet Imprint / Interlude Press)
  • Tremontaine, Season 1 – created by Ellen Kushner; Ellen Kushner et al (Serial Box / Saga Press)
  • An Unkindness of Ghosts – Rivers Solomon (Akashic Books)

2018 Best Novel Other Nominees

Best Novel consideration is given to individual novel length works by a single author/authorial team. Works must have been originally published in North America in 2017 to be eligible unless an exception is granted by the judging team.

The following titles were reviewed to validate their eligibility for award consideration and were considered by the judging team. Appearance on this list is not an indication of quality or quantity of GLBT or genre content, however many of the titles in the list of other nominations contain significant positive LGBTQ+ content and would be of interest to readers.

  • Amatka by Karin Tidbeck (Vintage)
  • Autonomous: A Novel by Annalee Newitz (Tor Books)
  • Avalon Knight: Gentleman’s Club by N.T. Herrgott (CreateSpace Independent)
  • The Bone Mother by David Demchuk (ChiZine Publications)
  • The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire (DAW Books)
  • Christopher Wild by Kathe Koja (Roadswell Editions)
  • Creatures of Will & Temper by Molly Tanzer (Mariner Books)
  • Devils Glen by Matthew Speak (Kindle Press)
  • Draakenwood by Jordan L. Hawk (JLH Publishing)
  • The Edge of the Abyss by Emily Skrutskie (Flux)
  • Extraction by B R Sanders (The Kraken Collective)
  • Forever Konrad: A Vampire’s Vampire by Martin Goodman (PS Publishing)
  • The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (Harper Collins)
  • In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan (Small Beer Press)
  • Invisible Soft Return:\ by Roberta Degnore (CreateSpace Independent)
  • New Praetorians 1:  Sienna McKnight by R. K. Syrus (Yuan Kun Publishing)
  • The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager)
  • Recombinant Love by K’Anne Meinel (Shadoe Publishing)
  • Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)
  • Skythane by J. Scott Coatsworth (Dreamspinner Press)
  • Summerwode by J Tullos Hennig (DSP Publications)
  • Surrogate by Jeanne G’Fellers (Supposed Crimes)
  • Tyack & Frayne #7: Preacher, Prophet, Beast by Harper Fox (FoxTales)
  • Tyack & Frayne #8: Underhill by Harper Fox (FoxTales)
  • Undertow by Jordan L. Hawk (JLH Publishing)
  • The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)

[Via Locus Online.]

Pixel Scroll 10/22/18 Scrolls Are From Mars, Pixels Are From Venus

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(1) STFNAL MUSIC. Out of Mind, the new album by the band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, includes two songs inspired by Philip K. Dick and one by Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. Here are the notes for “When I Was a Ship” —

This song was inspired by Ann Leckie‘s Ancillary series. The main character had once been a warship, whose artificial mind had been distributed within the ship, and also within many ancillaries – prisoners who have had their minds wiped. The ship itself and all of the other ancillaries was destroyed, leaving just one fragment of the mind left in one body.

And here’s a section of the lyrics —

That I was designed as a warrior slave
When I was an asset
I think I remember
The communal song
Of curious pleasure
The many mouths
The single phrase
Compounded eye
And reflected gaze
I am the last
I am my remains
All of my others
Dissolved in the flames

Leckie (who also likes their previous album When the Kill Code Fails) told readers of her blog where to find the new song –

You can hear “When I Was A Ship” on Spotify. You can also purchase it at Bandcamp,

Spotify requires registration.

(2) LEVAR BURTON READING SFF. The three most recent installments of LeVar Burton Reads: The Best Short Fiction, Handpicked by the World’s Greatest Storyteller feature —

  • Episode 34: “Singing on a Star” by Ellen Klages
  • Episode 35: “Yiwu” by Lavie Tidhar
  • Episode 36: “Morning Child” by Gardner Dozois

(3) A KILLER COMPLAINS. Christian Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, now serving time in San Quentin for the murder of LASFS member John Sohus, has written a complaint to the New York Review of Books about Walter Kirn’s book about him.

Please forgive the extreme delay of this letter in response to Nathaniel Rich’s review of Walter Kirn’s book about me [“A Killer Con Man on the Loose,” *NYR*, May 8, 2014]. To the whole business I can only say that I barely ever knew Mr. Kirn. … His reasons for wanting retroactively to insert himself so deeply into my life, calling himself a “close friend,” seem either purely commercially motivated or perhaps speak to a deeper pathology on which I do not have the expertise to comment.

(4) FUNDING FOR A PUNK ROCK FUTURE. Editor Steve Zisson and associated editors are in the final week of a Kickstarter appeal to fund publication of A Punk Rock Future, their anthology featuring sf/f/h stories mashing up genre fiction and punk rock music.

Why now for this anthology? A punk strain not only runs through music and art but right through the heart of SFFH (think cyberpunk, steampunk, solarpunk, silkpunk, hopepunk, ecopunk, or whatever punk).

…It is the forward-thinking science fiction and fantasy community that is propelling all things punk into the future.

Want a recent published example of the kind of story you’ll read in A Punk Rock Future? The Big So-So by Erica Satifka in Interzone. Or read Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula Award winner, Our Lady of the Open Road, published in Asimov’s. These influential stories were inspirations for this anthology.

The big news is that we will have stories from both writers in A Punk Rock Future!

The anthology will feature 25 stories by Erica Satifka, Sarah Pinsker, Spencer Ellsworth, Margaret Killjoy, Maria Haskins, Izzy Wasserstein, Stewart C Baker, Kurt Pankau, Marie Vibbert, Corey J. White, P.A. Cornell, Jennifer Lee Rossman, M. Lopes da Silva, R. K. Duncan, Zandra Renwick, Dawn Vogel, Matt Bechtel, Josh Rountree, Vaughan Stanger, Michel Harris Cohen, Anthony Eichenlaub, Steven Assarian and more to come.

The appeal has brought in $2,557, or 51 percent, of its $5,000 goal, with seven days to go.

(5) MUGGLES GOT TALENT. ULTRAGOTHA recommends this high school Harry Potter dance video posted by MuggleNet.com on Facebook.

(6) THE HOLE MAN. The Boring Company wants to give you a free ride. (No, not a Free Ride.) The Verge reports that “Elon Musk says the Boring Company’s first tunnel under LA will open December 10th.”

The rapid transit tunnel that Elon Musk’s Boring Company is digging beneath Los Angeles will open on December 10th, and free rides will be offered to the public the following night, Musk tweeted on Sunday evening.

The two-mile test tunnel underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, is a proof of concept for an underground public transportation system, which aims to transport passengers and vehicles beneath congested roadways on autonomously driven electric platforms called “skates.” The skates will theoretically transport eight to 16 passengers, or one passenger vehicle, along magnetic rails at speeds of up to 155 mph (250 km/h), Musk tweeted.

(7) PINOCCHIO ANTIFA? “Guillermo del Toro to direct new stop-motion Pinocchio for Netflix” – Entertainment Weekly has the story.

Fresh off his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins for The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro is ready for his next project — and it’s one he’s been working on for a long time. Netflix announced Monday that it’s teaming up with del Toro for a stop-motion musical version of Pinocchio that is the director’s “lifelong passion project.”

Although Disney famously created an animated version of Pinocchio in 1940 (widely regarded to be among the studio’s greatest artistic achievements), the fairy tale was first written by Italian author Carlo Collodi in 1883. Del Toro’s version in particular will draw heavily from illustrator Gris Grimly’s 2002 edition, but will still pay homage to the story’s Italian origins — this Pinocchio will be set in 1930s Italy, under the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

(8) RONNEBERG OBIT. Joachim Ronneberg has died at the age of 99 — “Joachim Ronneberg: Norwegian who thwarted Nazi nuclear plan dies”. Described as the most successful act of sabotage in WWII, he and his team destroyed the world’s only heavy-water plant.

In 1943, he led a top-secret raid on a heavily-guarded plant in Norway’s southern region of Telemark.

The operation was immortalised in the 1965 Hollywood film Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born October 22, 1919 – Doris Lessing, Writer, Poet, and Playwright born in Iran, who moved to Zimbabwe and later to England. Although considered a mainstream literary writer, she produced a number of genre novels, including the epic science-fiction quintet Canopus in Argos: Archives; about which, when it was disparaged by mainstream critics, she stated: “What they didn’t realise was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.” She was Guest of Honor at the 1987 Worldcon, and received many literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. She died in 2013 at the age of 94.
  • Born October 22, 1938 – Christopher Lloyd, 80, Actor with genre credentials a mile deep, including as Doc Brown in the Hugo- and Saturn-winning Back to the Future movies and animated series, as Uncle Fester in the Hugo- and Saturn-nominated The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, as the alien John Bigbooté in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and as the relentless Klingon nemesis Commander Kruge in the Hugo finalist Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Other genre films in which he had roles include the Hugo-winning Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Angels in the Outfield, InSight, The Pagemaster, the My Favorite Martian remake, R.L. Stine’s When Good Ghouls Go Bad, and Piranha 3D (which, judging by the big names attached, must have involved a hell of a paycheck).
  • Born October 22, 1939 – Suzy McKee Charnas, 79, Writer who is probably best known for The Holdfast Chronicles, a series of four books published over the space of twenty-five years, which are set in a post-apocalyptic world and are unabashedly feminist in their themes. She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1975 based on the strength of the first volume, Walk to the End of the World, which won a Retrospective Tiptree Award. The second volume, Motherlines, was delayed in publication because (this being the late 70s) several publishers would agree to publish it only if the main characters were changed to men – an offer which she refused. Her novella Unicorn Tapestry was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won a Nebula, her other works have received numerous Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, Tiptree, Stoker, Sturgeon, and Lambda nominations and wins, and she has been Guest of Honor at several conventions including Wiscon and Readercon.
  • Born October 22, 1939 – Jim Baen, Publisher and Editor who started his literary career in the complaints department of Ace Books, becoming managing editor of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973, then a few years later returning to Ace to head their SF line under Tom Doherty, whom he followed to Tor Books in 1980 to start their SF line. In 1983, with Doherty’s assistance, he founded Baen Books. In defiance of ‘conventional wisdom’, starting in 1999 he made works available via his Webscriptions company (later Baen Ebooks) in DRM-free ebook format; he gave many ebooks away for free on CDs which were included with paper books, and made many books and stories available online for free at the Baen Free Library. This built a loyal following of readers who purchased the books anyway, and his became the first profitable e-book publishing service. He edited 28 volumes in anthology series: Destinies and New Destinies, and with Jerry Pournelle, Far Frontiers. He was an active participant on Baen’s Bar, the readers’ forum on his company’s website, where he discussed topics such as evolutionary biology, space technology, politics, military history, and puns. He received eight Hugo Award nominations for Best Editor and three Chesley Award nominations for Best Art Director. He was Publisher or Editor Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the 2000 Worldcon (where OGH interviewed him on the program), and was posthumously given the Phoenix Award (for lifetime achievement) by Southern Fandom. He passed away from a stroke at the too-early age of 62, but his legacy endures in the continued success of Baen Books.
  • Born October 22, 1952 – Jeff Goldblum, 66, Oscar- and Saturn-nominated Actor, Director, and Producer whose extensive genre resume includes the Hugo-winning Jurassic Park and its sequels, the Hugo-nominated The Fly and its sequel, and the Hugo-nominated Independence Day and its-very-definitely-not-Hugo-nominated sequel. Other roles include the genre films Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Earth Girls Are Easy, The Sentinel, Threshold, Transylvania 6-5000, Mister Frost, Thor: Ragnarok, and Hotel Artemis. In July 2018, a 25-foot statue of him appeared next to London’s Tower Bridge to mark the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park.
  • Born October 22, 1954 – Graham Joyce, Writer and Teacher from England whose works ran the gamut from science fiction to fantasy to horror. His novels and short fiction garnered an impressive array of award nominations in a 22-year span, and he took home trophies for six British Fantasy Awards, one World Fantasy Award, and four Prix Imaginaire Awards, as well as an O Henry Award. He served as Master of Ceremonies at Fantasycons in the UK, and was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a World Fantasy Convention. His thriving career was cut short by cancer at the age of 59.
  • Born October 22, 1956 – Gretchen Roper, 62, Singer, Filker, Conrunner, and Fan. Growing up in a family where mutilating lyrics was a sport prepared her for joining fandom and filkdom at the age of 18. After meeting and marrying co-filker Bill Roper, they co-founded Dodeka Records, a small publisher of filk tapes and CDs which frequently sells their wares at convention Dealer tables. She has run the filk programming for numerous cons, and has been Filk Guest of Honor at several conventions. She received a Pegasus Award for Best Humourous Song, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2008. She was made a member of the Dorsai Irregulars, an invitation-only volunteer convention security team which has a lot of overlap with the filking community, in 2001.
  • Born October 22, 1958 – Keith Parkinson, Artist and Illustrator who began his career providing art for TSR games, and then moved on to do book covers and other art, as well as working as a game designer. In 2002, he became the art director for Sigil Games Online. He was a finalist for a Best Original Artwork Hugo, and earned 9 Chesley Award nominations, winning for each of his covers for the first two volumes of C.J. Cherryh’s Rusalka series. He was a recipient of NESFA’s Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist, and was Artist Guest of Honor at several conventions. Sadly, he died of leukemia just after his 47th birthday.

(10) COMIC SECTION.

  • Half Full shows why a couple of Star Wars characters don’t hang out at the beach very often.
  • This classic Basic Instructions strip teaches one to be careful of books with forewords by Stephen King
  • There should be a prize for figuring out which sff story could have inspired this Bizarro joke.

(11) TIMELAPSE SFF SCULPTURE. On YouTube, artist Steven Richter has posted time-lapse videos of his creation of a number of genre sculptures. These include:

  • Voldemort

  • Venom

And quite a few more.

(12) COLD CASE. BBC discusses “The bones that could shape Antarctica’s fate” — aka who was really there first? It could matter if the current protocols are allowed to expire in 2048.

In 1985, a unique skull was discovered lying on Yamana Beach at Cape Shirreff in Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands. It belonged to an indigenous woman from southern Chile in her early 20s, thought to have died between 1819 and 1825. It was the oldest known human remains ever found in Antarctica.

The location of the discovered skull was unexpected. It was found at a beach camp made by sealers in the early 19th Century near remnants of her femur bone, yet female sealers were unheard of at the time. There are no surviving documents explaining how or why a young woman came to be in Antarctica during this era. Now, at nearly 200 years old, the skull is thought to align with the beginning of the first known landings on Antarctica.

(13) AIRPORT ANXIETY. John Scalzi has a growing suspicion that all glory is fleeting —

(14) ROAD THROUGH TIME. BBC reports “A14 road workers find woolly mammoth bones” and woolly rhino bones. Did you know there was such a thing as a woolly rhino?

A spokesman they were “the latest in a series of fantastic finds” from the team working on the A14.

So far, they have also unearthed prehistoric henges, Iron Age settlements, Roman kilns, three Anglo-Saxon villages and a medieval hamlet.

(15) SABRINA. The entire first season– 10 episodes– of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina become available to stream on Netflix this Friday.

(16) 1001 NIGHTS ART. NPR posts newly republished images by Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen — “Long-Lost Watercolors Of ‘1001 Nights’ Bring New Life To Age-Old Tales”. May be NSFW where you are.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nielsen’s work, Taschen published all 21 of his original illustrations, reproduced directly from the never-before-seen original watercolors.

The extra-large coffee table book delivers an experience of its own — the prints are meticulously curated and presented in a blue velvet box, as if the book itself was a tale to unveil.

(17) WITCH WORLD REVIEWED. Galactic Journey’s Rosemary Benton reviews a prime Andre Norton novel, newly released in 1963 — “[October 22, 1963] A Whole New Fantasy (Andre Norton’s Witch World)”

When the subject of magic is approached in any of Norton’s writing there is never any easy solution lying right below the surface. Her flaire for piecing out information and not revealing more than what the characters themselves know keeps the reader on edge, as well as humble. This sense that there are always bigger forces at play, yet are never fully explained, teases the rational mind of the reader and allows for there to be doubt that anything “magical” can be easily quantified by rational, scientific method. It’s very disquieting when Norton’s established and venerated forces, like the witchcraft of the Women of Power and the Axe of Volt, are threatened by something indefinable that is even older and more powerful – travel across dimensions.

(18) QUICK SIPS. Charles Payseur finds a thread running through the stories in the October Clarkesworld — “Quick Sips – Clarkesworld #145”.

The October issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is all about survival. Or, I should say, about finding out what’s more important than survival. These stories take settings that are, well, grim. Where war and other disasters have created a situation where just holding onto life is difficult. Where for many it would seem obvious that it’s time to tighten one’s belt and get down to the serious business of surviving. And yet the stories show that surviving isn’t enough, especially if it means sacrificing people. That, without justice and hope beyond just making it to another day, surviving might not be worth it. But that, with an eye toward progress, and hope for something better (not just the prevention of something worse), people and peoples can begin to heal the damage that’s been caused and maybe reach a place where they can heal and find a better way to live. To the reviews!

(19) CODEWRITERS CODE. But for Jon Del Arroz’ wholehearted endorsement — “SQLite Created a Code Of Conduct And It’s AMAZING” [Internet Archive link] – it probably wouldn’t have come to my attention that SQLite, a library of public domain resources for a database engine, posted a Code of Conduct based on a chapter from The Rule of St, Benedict.

Having been encouraged by clients to adopt a written code of conduct, the SQLite developers elected to govern their interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community in accordance with the “instruments of good works” from chapter 4 of The Rule of St. Benedict. This code of conduct has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years, and has served as a baseline for many civil law codes since the time of Charlemagne.

This rule is strict, and none are able to comply perfectly. Grace is readily granted for minor transgressions. All are encouraged to follow this rule closely, as in so doing they may expect to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives. The entire rule is good and wholesome, and yet we make no enforcement of the more introspective aspects.

Slashdot’s coverage “SQLite Adopts ‘Monastic’ Code of Conduct” says the response has ranged from laughter to hostility, an example of the latter being —

https://twitter.com/joshbressers/status/1054365681150541825

On the other hand, Vox Day hopes it will be widely adopted [Internet Archive link].

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “First Bloom” on Vimeo is a cartoon showing an Imperial Chinese love story, directed by Ting Ting Liu.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W – have we really not used that one before? It didn’t come up on my search.]

Pixel Scroll 7/20/18 The Pixie With the Moxie Is The Scroll That Is Droll

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(1) JAMES GUNN CANNED BY DISNEY. The director’s offensive tweets were unearthed and have led to him being fired by Disney according to Yahoo! Entertainment — “Disney Drops James Gunn From ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Franchise After Offensive Tweets”.

Director James Gunn has been dropped from Disney’s Marvel franchise “Guardians of the Galaxy” over old tweets.

“The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” said Alan Horn, chairman of  Walt Disney Studios, in a statement.

Gunn, the writer-director of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise, apologized late Thursday after a series of old (now deleted) tweets resurfaced in which the filmmaker made what he admitted were “offensive” jokes about taboo topics like rape and pedophilia.

Gunn frequently tweets about his opposition to President Donald Trump, and thus drew the ire of fans of the president such as right-wing provocateur Mike Cernovich, who began posting a series of old tweets by Gunn, many of which were subsequently deleted.

Online sleuths then dug up dozens of old tweets of the sort Gunn admitted were “offensive,” many from between 2008 and 2011.

“Expendables is so manly I f–ed the s– out of the p-ssy boy next to me,” he wrote in one.

“The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped and it’s like ‘whew this feels great, not being raped!’” read a tweet from February 2009.

Deadline’s coverage adds these details: “James Gunn Fired From ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Franchise Over Offensive Tweets”.

Disney and Marvel had never announced that Gunn would direct the third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy, but Gunn certainly declared it on social media. And after Guardians of the Galaxy 2 last summer grossed $863 million worldwide, to the original’s $773 million, there was every expectation he would remain at the helm. After all, the sly humor and tone that just crushed his career trajectory helped fuel the irreverently humorous tone of the Guardians franchise.

Unsurprisingly – “James Gunn Won’t Appear At Comic-Con After Being Axed From ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’”. Deadline has the story.

James Gunn, who was fired today from Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise after past offensive tweets surfaced, will not make a planned appearance at Comic-Con in San Diego today where he was set to appear on Sony Pictures’ Hall H session to tout an upcoming horror film he is producing.

Gunn has made the following response:

(2) WORST TOWN ON TV. Reason.com’s Glenn Garvin says don’t even stop there for gas — “Stephen King’s Nightmare Town Castle Rock a Distillery of Horrors”.

…Hulu’s new series Castle Rock is clearly an attempt to answer a question that has occurred to nearly every King reader multiple times over the years: Do the folks in this town ever notice the unholy frequency with which their neighbors fall into quicksand pits, get ravaged by their house pets, or are driven insane by mundane household items purchased at pawn shops?

Oh, yes they do, and you’ll have a creepy good time as Castle Rock follows their efforts to figure out why their town is such a demonic piece of crap. One of the lead investigators is even a Realtor, who I imagine faces some serious professional challenges in a town like this. (“It’s very cute little Cape Cod at an owner-was-murdered-by-a-jealous-neighbor-for-having-sex-with-the-ghost-of-Elvis price!”)

(3) CATCHING UP WITH THE PRISONER. It’s news to me! Apparently this sequel came out 20 years ago. Titan Comics is bringing it back.

Cult classic The Prisoner has been captivating audiences and firing imaginations since it first aired in the UK in 1967 and in the US the following year. Now fans can go even deeper into The Village with this official graphic novel sequel set twenty years after the events of the iconic TV series.

Originally published in 1988, Shattered Visage tells the story of former secret agent Alice Drake, whose round-the-world solo voyage is interrupted when she is accidentally shipwrecked and washes up on the shores of The Village. There she encounters Number Six, finds out what has become of Number Two, and discovers the true purpose of The Village.

Titan Comics, a licensee of ITV Studios Global Entertainment, are delighted to release this long out-of-print classic with new material, including character sketches and notes from writer/artist Dean Motter . Fans can finally get their hands on the unmissable next chapter in THE PRISONER saga for the first time in years.

(4) HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOR.COM. As part of Tor.com’s tenth anniversary celebration, Stubby the Rocket chronicles “15 Rituals The Tor.com Office Has Developed”.

Tor.com has existed on the internet for 10 years. And when you work in an office and you also work on the internet, where one day gives you a week’s worth of events to react to, you develop a lot of shorthands and rituals to get through the day….

6.) Dressing Up The Office, Part 1: Unicorn Lamp/Rocket Lamp

We had an in-office fundraiser for our unicorn lamp, and we adore it. (We also gave each color of the unicorn a different name after trying and failing to apply a single name.) Then we had an in-office fundraiser for a rocket lamp as well. It makes the place more homey, particularly during the darker parts of the year, and reminds us that we are all unicorns on the inside and rockets on the outside.

(5) RAMBO ACADEMY. The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers has posted a new list of classes. Notably, Seanan McGuire will be teaching a new class, an Ann Leckie’s doing her awesome space opera class again. Cat Rambo says if money’s an issue, see the info about scholarships below: “Classes for the Rambo Academy through October”.

Free scholarships: If you cannot afford a class but really want to take one, apply for a Plunkett Scholarship. Each class has a slot reserved for such a student, and the sole criteria is that you can’t afford the class but really think it would be useful for you. To apply, mail me with your name, the class name/date, and a brief statement about why you want to take the class. QUILTBAG and PoC candidates are especially encouraged to apply. The Plunkett Scholarships are named for Edward Plunkett, who wrote as Lord Dunsany. Scholarship recipients will be notified the week before the class.

(6) SCHNEPP OBIT. Jon Schnepp (1967 – 2018): US actor, animator, director; died July 19, aged 51. Animation work includes Aqua Teen Hunger Force (18 episodes, 2000-02), Space Ghost Coast to Coast (eight episodes, 1995-99), Metalocalypse (62 episodes, 2006-12); he has a voice role in The Oracle of Outer Space, due out later this year.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 20, 1969 – How could it be 49 years already?

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

  • July 20, 1976 — Viking I landed on Mars to explore the surface of the Red Planet. The first robots on Mars, Viking I and its successor gave scientists their first information about the planet’s surface, including information they hoped would allow people to walk there. Although the Viking probes found no evidence of life on Mars, they returned detailed pictures of the planet and information about the soil’s composition. (John King Tarpinian will eat a Mars bar after he finishes his Moon Pie.)

(8) PROBABLY SOMETHING BUT NOT A TUX. The message Worldcon 76 sent to encourage Hugo nominees to dress up for the ceremony generated a certain amount of resentment, and things were already touchy before Paul Cornell’s tweet threw gasoline on the fire. Cornell soon banished it from Twitter. However, there’s a screencap in Kay Taylor Rea’s response —

Some of these selected tweets were direct comments on Cornell’s, while others addressed the general conversation rippling through the sff community.

Alternatively –

(9) ON THE RUNWAY. Meanwhile, Jodie Whittaker made a fashion statement wearing a hood at “Comic-Con 2018”

In the midst of this year’s Her Universe fashion show, founder Ashley Eckstein stepped forward and apologized for a last-minute addition to the line-up, a model who was late but who really wanted to walk the runway. And since it was the day of Comic-Con in which the new Doctor Who crew had been introduced, it was appropriate that the model would be wearing some new Whovian fashion.

From the moment she stepped on to the runway, though, the model looked familiar. Head down, hair dangling, it was clear she was almost made for the jacket that looked like the 13th Doctor’s. Of course, it’s because she is the 13th Doctor, making a surprise appearance for fans and to talk with an excited Eckstein.

 

(10) TAKEI MEMOIR. A graphic novel about George Takei’s childhood in a California concentration camp in WWII will come out next year: “George Takei Memoir ‘They Called Us Enemy’ Coming in Summer 2019”.

With immigration and the detention of migrant children in the news, IDW Publishing has announced details of They Called Us Enemy, a graphic novel memoir of George Takei’s childhood in American internment camps.

To be released in summer 2019, They Called Us Enemy will be co-written by Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott, with art from Harmony Becker. Its plot revisits the actor and activist’s childhood as one of 120,000 Japanese Americans held in American concentration camps run by the United States during the Second World War.

According to the publisher’s official description, the book is “Takei’s firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s tested faith in democracy and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?”

“It has always been my mission in life to raise the awareness of the unjust imprisonment of Japanese Americans in barbed-wire prison camps during World War II,” Takei told The Hollywood Reporter. “But I had no idea how chillingly relevant that dark chapter of American history would be to our times today.”

(11) DOOR DRAGONS. Here’s a chance to avoid missing the party:

(12) HE’S GOT THAT COVERED. Let Boing Boing tell you about the latest nuisance filing: “Trademark troll who claims to own “Dragon Slayer” now wants exclusive rights to book covers where someone is holding a weapon”.

Austin’s Michael-Scott Earle, last seen around these parts when he filed a trademark on the phrase “Dragon Slayer” for use in fantasy novel trademarks, has found a new depth to plumb: he’s filed a trademark on book covers “one or more human or partially human figures underneath, at least one of the figures holding a weapon; and an author’s name underneath the figures; wherein the title/series and author’s name are depicted in the same or similar coloring.”

(13) NIGHTMARE. Charles Payseur connects you with short fiction — “Quick Sips – Nightmare #70”.

The pair of stories from Nightmare’s July issue focus on people trapped in situations where they don’t have a lot of power, mostly because of their age. They weigh in on opposite sides of the specrtum, though, one character made vulnerable because of his old age, put in a home where he might be preyed upon at any moment and aware always of his own approaching death. The other piece focuses on a young person in a stifling household, living with rules that aren’t designed to protect him so much as to make his parent’s life easier. In both situations, the toxicity of the environment manifests in ways great and small (and sometimes furred) and forces the characters to choose if they’ll stay and try to face them or try to escape from a power they might not be able to defeat head on. Let’s get to the reviews!

(14) LEST DARKNESS PALL. Nature has a line on “A planet the colour of charcoal”.

A hot and gaseous planet orbiting a distant star is one of the darkest ever found.

Astronomers led by Teo Mo?nik at Keele University, UK, used NASA’s Kepler telescope to study a star called WASP-104, which lies roughly 144 parsecs from Earth in the constellation Leo. Earlier observations had documented a dimming of WASP-104’s light every 1.76 days, indicating that a planet was regularly crossing the star’s face. But Mo?nik’s team could not detect starlight reflecting off the planet, as scientists usually expect after discovering a new world. That led the researchers to conclude that the planet is nearly pure black in colour.

(15) TOAD IN THE HOLE. That’s what Ellen Klages ordered in Episode 72 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Ellen Klages

…And then move on to this episode’s guest, Ellen Klages, who won the Nebula Award in 2005 for her novelette, “Basement Magic.” Her novella, “Wakulla Springs” (co-authored with previous guest of the show Andy Duncan), was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards and won the World Fantasy Award in 2014.

She won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, the Lopez Award for Children’s Literature, and the New Mexico State Book Award for Young Adult Literature for her first novel, The Green Glass Sea. She has served for twenty years on the Motherboard of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. Her novella “Passing Strange” was one of the finalists for this year’s Nebula award.

Our venue for this episode was the relatively new Whitfield at Ace Hotel. This was certainly the most picturesque setting for a meal I experienced in Pittsburgh, because the building which housed both hotel and restaurant was a century-old former YMCA.

We discussed why it took 40 years from the time she wrote the first sentence of her Nebula Award-nominated story “Passing Strange” to finish the tale, what a truck filled with zebras taught her about the difference between storytelling and real life, how cosplaying helped give birth to her characters, what she finds so fascinating about creating historical science fiction, why revising is her favorite part of writing, the reason she’s the best auctioneer I’ve seen in my lifetime of con-going, what she teaches students is the worst mistake a writer can make, how her collaboration with Andy Duncan gave birth to an award-winning novella, whether she still feels like “a round peg in genre’s polyhedral hole” as she wrote in the afterword to her first short story collection, and much more.

(16) ON THEIR WAY. Tor.com’s Lee Harris promised readers A Pair of Solarpunk Novellas from Becky Chambers without giving a definite date when they’ll come out.

Ever since I read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet I’ve wanted to work with Becky. She has a lightness of touch that makes you want to keep turning the page. So, when I contacted her and she suggested we work together on a couple of solarpunk books I was delighted. There’s a lot of darkness in the world, today, and I can’t wait to bring you Becky‘s trademark adventure style, wrapped up in a bundle of positive SF. It’s what we need, right now.

(17) CAPITAL CATS. In our national’s capital, a credential census is planned: “Washington, D.C., Is Counting All Its Cats. It Will Take 3 Years And $1.5 Million”.

…Various groups are working to spay and neuter stray cats or facilitate cat adoptions. Thousands of cats each year are spayed or adopted.

But groups like the Humane Rescue Alliance “have little sense if their programs are the lion’s share of adoptions in the city, or if their trap-neuter-return program is effective in helping to control the cat population,” Fenston writes.

It’s not easy to gauge a city’s cat population by eye alone.

“Cats are hard to see,” conservation biologist Tyler Flockhart told The New York Times. “You see very few cats when you’re out walking around. And that’s because they’re secretive animals. When you see a cat, there is almost certainly more than one there.”

(18) UNCREDENTIALS AND GAMING. Linda Holmes of NPR made the connection — “Put Your Face In It: How Gaming Helped Me Understand My Dog”

When I am walking my dog around the neighborhood now, I imagine him going boop-boop-boop as he wanders along wondering what he should approach, much as I do when I walk from my Stardew Valley farm to the place where I will once again sell my virtual parsnips. And when he sees an empty Doritos bag lying on its side on the street, I realize that he is having the same experience I did the first time I picked up an imaginary oyster on the imaginary beach. He is saying to himself, “This could be some wonderful and magical key to a benefit yet unrealized! This could be magic! This could taste delicious! This could transport me to another dimension!” Most importantly, he is thinking what I am always thinking any time I fail to investigate anything: “But what if I really neeeeeed it?” And he is pushing the only button he has. His action button.

(19) SUGGEST A NAME. But Spacy McSpaceFace need not apply: “Wanted: Inspiring name for Europe’s 2020 Mars rover”. This time suggestions will go to a panel instead a popular vote.

Here’s your chance to name the European rover that will go to Mars in 2020.

Currently called ExoMars, the six-wheeled robot needs something a bit more engaging and inspiring for when it lands on the Red Planet.

Astronaut Tim Peake is leading the hunt for a great moniker.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steve Green, David Doering, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, DMS, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 2/3/18 As God Is My Witness, I Thought Pixels Could Scroll!

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(1) QUEEN OF PULP. Twitter’s Pulp Librarian today did a retrospective of illustrator Margaret Brundage, “the Queen of Pulp,” with lots of her Weird Tales covers from the 1930s. Jump on the thread here —

(2) ELLEN KLAGES DONATES CLARION WEST INSTRUCTORSHIP. Clarion West announced Karen Lord is the recipient of “The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship 2018”.

The Sally Klages Memorial Instructorship will be awarded in 2018 in memory of Sally Klages, with love from her sister Ellen Klages….

Ellen Klages’ tribute begins —

Sally was a writer. I never heard her say that she wanted to be one; she simply proclaimed, proudly, that she was. She wrote every day in tiny, cramped cursive: working on her autobiography, lectures to her Invisible Friends, instructions about how life ought to be led.

Like many of us, she owned dozens of notebooks and countless pens, and was never without them. She once packed a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of pens and markers into her carry-on bag for a two-hour flight, “in case one runs out.” Writing was her joy, her recreation, her solace.

Sally was born with Down Syndrome. As far as she was concerned, that wasn’t a handicap — it was what made her special. And she was. She was Valedictorian of her class at Northeast Training Center, and an employee at Columbus State University for 17 years. She was one of the founding members of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio (DSACO), she was on the board of the National Down Syndrome Conference, and was a featured speaker there in 1989. An active participant in the Special Olympics, she won more than three dozen medals in swimming, diving, track and field, bowling, and cross-country skiing….

[Via Locus Online.]

(3) PICACIO AT THE MIKE. In “Your 2018 Hugo Awards MC Is….” John Picacio tells why he is proud to be Worldcon 76’s choice.

Today, the 76th World Science Fiction Convention has announced me as the Master of Ceremonies for this year’s Hugo Awards in San Jose, CA, while also announcing that the Hugo Awards’ Nominations Period is now open! Having won two Hugos for Best Professional Artist, I know how much the Hugos mean to the sf/f field, and it’s a huge honor to serve this stage in front of my colleagues and heroes. Worldcon 76 asked me to be the 2018 Hugo MC last August so it’s been fun keeping that under wraps the last five months, even after being announced as this year’s Artist Guest of Honor.

There’s some history that comes along with this role.

  • I’m the first visual artist to ever be a Hugo Awards MC. I think this could perhaps be a harbinger of Hugo Ceremonies to come. Many of our best visual creators — such as Brom, Todd Lockwood, Ruth Sanderson, Gregory Manchess, and more — are becoming author / artist / storytellers, conjuring the words and pictures of their own bestselling books and media. Our next generation of illustrators are aspiring to tell their own stories, just as much as becoming hired guns. I suspect there will be more artists following through the Hugo MC door behind me, and they’ll likely come from this expanding universe of hybrid, contemporary artists.
  • I’m only the third Worldcon Guest of Honor to also serve as Hugo Awards MC at the same Worldcon. I believe Connie Willis and David Gerrold are the only others to do this in the con’s 76-year history. We must all be insane. ?.
  • I’m especially proud to be the first Mexicanx to ever serve as a Hugo Awards MC. I love being first, but the most important thing is that I’m not the last. With the daily assaults upon our DREAMers, villainizing of our culture by racists, and terroristic threats against our citizens, we’re living in an important moment for Mexicanx north and south of the border. I’m looking forward to sharing my spotlight with all of them.

(4) WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT. 2016 Clarke Award judge David Gullen discusses what the experience taught him about his own fiction writing: “Things I Learned Judging the Arthur C. Clarke Award” at Medium.

At some point during reading those 113 books it occurred to me what a difficult thing writers are trying to do and just how many different things each author is trying to get right. It’s not just character and plot and pace and tension, world-building, good dialogue, effective exposition, setting story questions and keeping story promises, it’s also trying to get that motivating vision in your head down onto the page. Even a pretty ordinary book takes a lot of effort. If you assume each of those books took 6 months to write?—?and many would have taken more?—?that is 57 years of effort, not far from the entire productive life of a single person.

(5) THE WRITER’S EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER. A tweet from Annie Bellet.

https://twitter.com/anniebellet/status/959950368456130560

(6) READERCON PRUNES PROGRAM INVITE LIST. Several older, white male writers who have participated on Readercon’s program in previous years have posted to Facebook over the past month that they have been notified they won’t be on this year’s program, or simply haven’t received the expected invitation. There’s no reason they have to be happy about it, and understandable if it triggers a bit of insecurity and resentment. However, the whiff of controversy around this development is not completely unlike Jon Del Arroz’ certainty that politics were the real reason he was rotated off BayCon programming.

Allen Steele wrote on Facebook yesterday:

The other convention I’ve usually gone to in the past, but will no longer attend, is Readercon. I’ve been an invited guest since Readercon 2 (had to skip the first one because of a schedule conflict), and have attended most of the 36 previous conventions … and then last year, without any sort of notice or explanation, I wasn’t invited. I was recovering from last year’s pancreas operation, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to show up anyway, but I wondered why nonetheless.

This year, I have an explanation … just not a good one. It appears, in an effort to be fair to young new writers, Readercon has been sending out form email letters to older authors such as myself (everyone known to have received the letter is male and above age 50), telling them that they’ve been dropped from the program participant list and therefore will not be invited guests.

Oh, we’re still welcome to attend, if we pay the registration fee. In fact, because of our exalted former status, we’re entitled to a 25% discount … if we go to a private registration site and enter the password (get this) PASTPRO.

So not only have we been told that we’re not welcome to come as professionals, we’re also being told that we’re no longer professionals, period.

I haven’t received the letter … but neither have I been invited. As I said, I wasn’t invited last year either, nor was I ever offered a reason why. To their program chair, I sent a polite letter calmly explaining why the letter is demeaning, insulting, and for the convention disastrously short-sighted; the response I got was a “so sorry you feel that way” blow-off. This pretty much confirms that I’ve been cast into the outer darkness for being … well, let’s not go there. And even if I’m not on the “past pro” list, I won’t come to a convention that would treat my friends and colleagues this way.

I mention this because I usually see at Readercon quite a few people who follow this page. Sometimes they bring copies of my books so I can sign them, and they need to know in advance not to use valuable suitcase-space. Sorry, guys … this year, it’s Boskone and the Hong Kong SF Forum only. At least those conventions still have respect for senior authors.

A month ago Ian Randall Strock said he got the letter and named two others who’d received it:

It seems Readercon has begun their apparently new tradition of uninviting past guests. Last year, it was Darrell Schweitzer. Today, I got the letter, as did Warren Lapine.

Anyone else get the email (under the subject line “Thank you for your service to Readercon”) starting out “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll be straightforward: you won’t be receiving an invitation to participate in programming for Readercon 29.”?

Another thought occurs: are they only doing this to folks who are also dealers, thinking we’ll be there anyway? I’ll have to run the numbers to see if it’s worth attending.

Readercon 29 takes place July 12-15 in Quincy, MA.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 3, 1993 — Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in television syndication.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY SUBCREATOR

  • Born February January 3, 1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien [never mind….]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Mike Kennedy sends Pearls Before Swine with an observation that sounds just like the kind of dismal thing Kurt Vonnegut would come up with. So you’ll love it, right? (?)
  • John King Tarpinian discovered a horrific satirical cereal box in Off the Mark. (Was that a description or a pleonasm?)
  • JJ admires Grant Snider’s The Specter of Failure at Incidental Comics.
  • Via RedWombat –

https://twitter.com/RosemaryMosco/status/959809459735363584

(10) ARE YOU SURPRISED? Mental Floss tempts readers with “16 Surprising Facts About Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451”. Some are no more surprising than this —

  1. BRADBURY DID NOT WRITE FAHRENHEIT 451 IN NINE DAYS.

A popular apocryphal story is that Bradbury hammered out Fahrenheit 451 in just over a week. That story is wrong: It was the 25,000-word “The Fireman” that he wrote in that time period. The author would later refer to the short story as “the first version” of the eventual novel. But over the years, he would often speak about “The Fireman” and Fahrenheit 451 interchangeably, which has caused some confusion.

  1. HE WROTE HIS FIRST VERSION ON A RENTED TYPEWRITER IN A LIBRARY BASEMENT.

Bradbury and wife Marguerite McClure had two children in 1950 and 1951, and he was in need of a quiet place to write but had no money for renting an office. In a 2005 interview, Bradbury said:

“I was wandering around the UCLA library and discovered there was a typing room where you could rent a typewriter for 10 cents a half-hour. So I went and got a bag of dimes. The novel began that day, and nine days later it was finished. But my God, what a place to write that book! I ran up and down stairs and grabbed books off the shelf to find any kind of quote and ran back down and put it in the novel. The book wrote itself in nine days, because the library told me to do it.”

  1. HE SPENT $9.80 ON TYPEWRITER RENTAL.

Bradbury’s nine days in the library cost him, by his own estimate, just under $10. That means he spent about 49 hours writing “The Fireman.”

(11) NOT YOUR TYPICAL FLORIDA MAN STORY. From Futurism, “Florida Man Becomes First Person to Live With Advanced Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm”.

Prosthetics have advanced drastically in recent years. The technology’s potential has even inspired many, like Elon Musk, to ask whether we may be living as “cyborgs” in the not-too-far future. For Johnny Matheny of Port Richey, Florida, that future is now. Matheny, who lost his arm to cancer in 2005, has recently become the first person to live with an advanced mind-controlled robotic arm. He received the arm in December and will be spending the next year testing it out.

The arm was developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab as part of their program Revolutionizing Prosthetics. The aim of the program, which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to create prosthetics that are controlled by neural activity in the brain to restore motor function to where it feels entirely natural. The program is specifically working on prosthetics for upper-arm amputee patients. While this particular arm has been demoed before, Matheny will be the first person to actually live with the prosthesis. The program does hope to have more patients take the tech for a longterm test run, though.

(12) FROM SOMEWHERE BESIDES LAKE WOEBEGONE. Since the firing of Garrison Keillor A Prairie Home Companion has a new host and a new name – Cat Eldridge reviews “Live from Here, the show formerly known as APHC, hosted by Chris Thile” at Green Man Review.

… Where Kellior was the sedate, downbeat host who wanted you to be part of the Lake Woebegon community, Thile is more than a bit manic, bouncing around in delight apparently as he gets to interact with musicians and other folk who he obviously admires a lot. APHC put me to sleep, LFH is definitely designed to keep me actively listening.

Shovel & Rope, a really good Americana couple, is dok good a bluesy travel song as I listen this moment. (By now I’d usually have decided to turn Kellior off.) Some minutes later, Gabby Moreno is playing a very lively (I think) a Tex-Mex song. Need I say Thile is really excited like her being on Live from Here?

… I’m an hour in and still not even close to tuning out though the comedy riff just now was meh but I’m not a fan of most such comedy anyways. That segued into a very nice and quite tasty bit of jazzy music by Snarky Puppy which is enhanced by the production team cleverly positioning mics in the audience which is more than a bit raucous all show long which they really demonstrate when Chris musically deconstructs  ‘I’ll Be There’ in words and music….

(13) FAR SIDE OF THE KERFUFFLE. Most of the post is more abuse, so won’t be excerpted here, but Vox Day hastened to say Foz Meadows won’t be getting an apology from him: “I’ll take ‘things that will never happen’”. He adds —

Third, Dave Freer didn’t sic me on anyone about anything. I don’t recall having any communication with him in years. I just checked my email and I haven’t received even a single email from him since I set up my current machine in April 2016. Nor have I spoken to him.

(I’m not creating an Internet Archive page for this one so people can somehow feel okay about insisting on reading the insults.)

(14) COUGH IT UP. Add this contraption to the list of things science fiction never predicted: “When The Flu Hits Campus, The Gesundheit Machine Will Be Ready”.

Those sick enough will get sent around the corner to a room with a crazy-looking, Rube-Goldberg-like contraption known as the Gesundheit machine.

For half an hour, the student sits in the machine. As the student breathes, the machine collects whatever virus they’ve got from the droplets in their breath.

The researchers will then use the student’s contacts to try to figure out how infections spread from person to person: “roommates, study buddies, girlfriends and boyfriends,” Milton says. “We’re going to swab them every day for a week to see if they get infected.”

If the student’s contacts get infected, researchers will try to pin down whether they got the bug from the original subject or someone else.

“We’re going to deep sequence the genetic code of the agent to see if it was really exactly the same thing,” Milton explains. He’s aware that confirming that your roommate gave you a horrible flu could ruin some perfectly nice relationships, but it’s for science.

(15) MELTING, MELTING. BBC tells how “Space lasers to track Earth’s ice”.

Ice is the “climate canary”. The loss, and the rate of that loss, tell us something about how global warming is progressing.

In the Arctic, the most visible sign is the decline of sea-ice, which, measured at its minimum extent over the ocean in September, is reducing by about 14% per decade.

At the other pole, the marine floes look much the same as they did in the earliest satellite imagery from the 1960s, but land ice is in a negative phase.

Something on the order of 160 billion tonnes are being lost annually, with most of that mass going from the west of the White Continent.

(16) STAR WARS MEETS PETER RABBIT. Daisy Ridley is still a rebel. And a rabbit.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Bill, JJ, John King Tarpinian, John Picacio, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Mark Hepworth, Chris Garcia, Will R., Vox Day, StephenfromOttawa, Christopher Rowe, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jamoche.]

2017 Novellapalooza

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[Editor’s note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]

By JJ: I’m a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last couple of years, I’ve done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015 and 35 of the novellas published in 2016 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).

Last year, the result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I decided to do it again this year.

The success of Tor’s novella line seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, and Book Smugglers jumping on the bandwagon, as well as the Big 3 magazines and the online fiction venues – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. Toward the end, I’ve gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis.

It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book in such a case, and to discover that, indeed, the book doesn’t really do much for me.

Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn’t, stories I didn’t expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers’ thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?

Please feel free to post comments about any other 2017 novellas which you’ve read, as well.

(Be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

Read more…

Pixel Scroll 5/31/16 Every Bark a Doorway

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(1) ATTACKING CREATORS. Devin Faraci at Birth. Movies. Death. lit up the internet with the claim “Fandom Is Broken”.

… Last week the AV Club ran an excellent piece about the nature of modern fan entitlement, and I think it’s fairly even-handed. The piece covers both the reaction to an all-female Ghostbusters reboot but also the hashtag that trended trying to get Elsa a girlfriend in Frozen 2. The author of that piece, Jesse Hasenger, draws a line between the two fan campaigns, rightly saying that whether driven by hate (Ghostbusters) or a desire for inclusion (Frozen 2) both campaigns show the entitlement of modern fan culture. It’s all about demanding what you want out of the story, believing that the story should be tailored to your individual needs, not the expression of the creators….

The old fan entitlement has been soldered onto the ‘customer is always right’ mindset that seems to motivate the people who make Yelp so shitty. I’m spending a dollar here, which makes me the lord and master of all, is the reasoning (I don’t even want to speculate about whether or not modern fans spend their dollars on licensed, legal products – that’s an essay for another weary day). It’s what makes people act like assholes to servers, and somehow it’s become the way ever-growing segments of fans are behaving towards creators. It’s been interesting watching so many people bring up Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in the Captain America fracas; one of part of it is that their Jewishness allows angry, petulant fans to throw down a social justice bomb but it also speaks to how modern fans see many modern creators. They’re nobody compared to the ones who invented this stuff. The modern creator is the server, and they should be going back into the kitchen and bringing back a Captain America cooked to their exact specifications, and without any sort of complications or surprises. This is what fans have always wanted, but the idea of being consumers – people who are offering money for services rendered – only reinforces the entitlement.

And so we have these three elements – one old as fandom itself, one rooted in technological advances and one impacted by the corporatization of storytelling – coming together in such a way to truly break fandom. I wish this was the part of the essay where I come to you with a hopeful pep talk about how we can all be better, but I just don’t see a positive solution. If anything, I see things getting worse – creators walling themselves off from fans while corporate masters happily throw vision and storytelling under the bus to appease the people who can get hashtags trending. “You can’t always get what you want” is a sentiment that belongs to another era when it comes to mass storytelling. I recently read Glen Weldon’s excellent The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture and the arc of fandom it sketches out is a profoundly disheartening one, with Batfans morphing from monkish annotators of the character’s fictional history into crusaders harrassing anyone on the internet who sees Batman differently than they do….

(2) THE RISING OF THE DOUGH. More details about the Sons of Anarchy cast payment problems at a Houston convention this past weekend from Official Ava Jade Cosplay: “Space City Comic (Con) – Thousands Swindled, Contracts Broken and Many Still Looking for Answers”:

The previously included statement about the rooms not being paid for has been retracted-  A representative from the staff contacted me and informed me that I was misinformed about the exact situation. There was a mishap regarding the hotel check in. The credit card for the room was for the reservations and not for incidentals. Upon checking in, some cast members had to pay cash for the incidentals, instead of putting their own credit card up, and risking being charged upon checking out.  The cast was NOT charged for their room.  I was informed during the interview, that there was a problem checking in the hotel due to the credit card not being accepted, it later was realized that we should clarify to what extent.   When Mr. Hunnam took his check to the bank to cash it, he found out that the check that was given to him was written from an account that had been CLOSED. This happened to the entire cast. Many of the actors went to the promoters office to demand payment, where the promoter ended up calling the cops because he was “being held hostage”. The cast was in no way held him hostage, but wanted answers and payment.  The panel schedule was completely jacked up, the cast was not given the correct times for photo ops and for panels. The Friday panel was canceled due to the AVI team refusing to allow anyone onstage until they were paid. They were promised payment upfront, instead they weren’t paid and pulled the plug on the event. The cast was all there, waiting to go on. It seems that the event promoter broke the contract not once, but TWICE.

Bleeding Cool wrote a story of its own based on the Official Ava Jade post with the dramatic headline, “Police Called On Cast Of Sons Of Anarchy After They Demanded Space City Comic Con Pay Up”. Houston police were helpful in protecting the convention staff from an irate customer —

Comments from volunteers included this, from Shelley Montrose,

This will be the last Saturday/Sunday that I volunteer at any Comic Convention. I was shouted at more in the 6 hours that I volunteered on Saturday than I was in the entire year last year. Friday was amazing and Saturday in my LAST 2 MINUTES there HPD had to intervene as a grown man came into my face and threatened to “choke me to death, rape me, and burn me like on YouTube.” I decided not to come to my scheduled 8 hour volunteer shift on Sunday. I thought my life was in danger. One of Charlie’s bodyguards ran over to help me before the guy got to me. Honestly, I thought the guy was gonna to hit me. After reading this article I think I understand what happened a little bit better. I can’t even explain how horrible it was the tell people who traveled all the way from England, China, Australia,etc., that the $800-$3000 that they spent on a prepaid ticket will not be honored at the desk at the majority of the sons of anarchy autograph sessions , and that they would have to go to the ATMs on the inside of the convention ( because all the ATMs on the outside of the entrances were broken ) in order to get money to pay cash for any autographs or photo ops they wanted with the celebrities.I personally ended up going to the ATM to help people pay for the prepaid tickets that they purchased for autographs with the celebrities. I won’t even go into how much that puts me back on my budget, including but not limited to my rent, utilities, and food.I was with Charlie Hunnam for almost four hours, and He pulled it together for all of his fans. Anyone that was there saw me standing beside Charlie Hunnam, I was taking pictures of them with him, knows that he was very giving to fans as well as professional. I feel like I did a good job of keeping the fans calm, entertained, and happy until they got to Charlie Hunnam .Ron Perlman was also professional as well. When I left he was still excepting those bogus tickets that people had pre-purchased.

(3) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Speaking of grand theft – Swedish astronomers theorize Planet 9 is a stolen exoplanet.

New research suggests the mysterious and controversial “Planet 9” isn’t an original member of our solar system. According to a new computer simulation developed by astronomers at Lund University in Sweden, the ninth planet is an exoplanet — stolen by the sun from its original host star.

“It is almost ironic that while astronomers often find exoplanets hundreds of light years away in other solar systems, there’s probably one hiding in our own backyard,” researcher Alexander Mustill said in a news release….

 

(4) EXCELLENCE IN FILKING. SF Site News reported that nominations have opened for the 2016 Pegasus Awards, given by the Ohio Valley Filk Festival.

pegasus logo

Any member of the worldwide filk community is eligible to win. Past Nominees have hailed from the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Singapore as well as the United States.

The nomination and ballot procedure is similar to that of the Hugo, except that one does not need to be a paid member of the convention to nominate or vote. Anyone with an interest in Filking or Filk music can place a nomination and/or vote.

The results are tabulated, the winners determined, and the award is presented at the Pegasus Awards Banquet...

There are currently six Pegasus award categories, including two floating categories that are different each year.

Fans suggested nominees and songs through the Brainstorming Poll, and the results can be seen on these pages:

Ballots must be received by 12:01AM PDT, August 1, 2016, whether cast online or by mail.

(5) BEWARE GAME OF THRONES SPOILER. Here’s something George R.R. Martin revealed at Balticon 50:

According to Vanity Fair, Martin appeared at a convention in Baltimore called Balticon to read aloud to those in attendance a new chapter from his forthcoming book The Winds of Winter. During his time in front of the crowd, the author announced that Brienne of Tarth is the descendant of Ser Duncan the Tall.

For those who don’t know, Ser Duncan the Tall is one of Westeros’ most famous knights, making this connection with Brienne particularly noteworthy, especially when considering he’s one of Martin’s favorite characters.

(6) MORE SHOOTING. ScienceFiction.com says “’Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ Gets Planned Reshoots After Disney’s Rumored Unhappiness”.

Many films that are destined for the big screen get re-shoots or planned production times after an initial cut of the film has been done where the crews can go back and shoot additional or replacement footage for certain scenes.  It’s a fairly common practice, although the re-shot and re-edited scenes are usually minimal in nature, comparative to the overall plot of the film.  Rumor has it, however, that the upcoming Star Wars spinoff, ‘Rogue One,’ has heavy reshoots planned by parent company Disney, who is unhappy with how the film has fared so far with test audiences.

There has only been one trailer released so far for the film, which was actually met with great enthusiasm from the fans.  However, a cool-looking trailer does not directly equate to a successful and well-received film — look no further than this very franchise’s ‘Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace’ for evidence of such.

(7) WHO BLABBED? Cora Buhlert shares Cap’s secret with us:

(8) SFWA YA JURORS. “Andre Norton Award Jury Announced” at the SFWA Blog.  

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announce the members of the jury for the 2016 Andre Norton Award. Throughout the coming year, the jury will be compiling its list of picks for the Norton Award. This year for the first time, SFWA will release a Norton Honor list of the top 15-20 books compiled from member votes and jury picks.

Chair Ellen Klages says, “Speculative fiction is a literature about exploration, possibilities, and dreams. The Andre Norton Award honors the best SF/F works written for the people who will create the future — children and young adults. What they read today will influence them — and the world — for decades to come.”

The jury members are: Ellen Klages (jury chair), E.C. Myers, Fran Wilde, Leah Bobet, and Jei D. Marcade. Read their bios at the linked post.

(9) SFWA SFWA. Cat Rambo notes anyone can watch the SFWA Chat Hour, 1st edition, on YouTube, “complete with annoying echo that we will fix next time.”

Come hear Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) officials and staff Cat Rambo, M.C.A. Hogarth, and Kate Baker talk about the recent Nebula conference weekend, current SFWA efforts, and what’s coming in 2016 in the first episode of the biweekly SFWA Chat Hour.

 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born May 31, 1961 — Lea Thompson, known to the world for other things but to fans for Howard the Duck and Back to the Future.

(11) BUTLER CONFERENCE. UC San Diego will be the site of “Shaping Change: Remembering Octavia E. Butler Through Archives, Art, and Worldmaking”, a conference from June 3-5 that is open to the public.

Shaping change

50 years from now, how have we shaped change (through art, activism, and archives) in the world? What have we left behind that that we can draw from our presents and pasts? What lessons in Butler’s life and writing will help forestall what seems like the inevitable collapse of human civilization?

Organized by Shelley Streeby (UC San Diego) and Ayana Jamieson (founder, Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network), the event will feature talks from: Adrienne Maree Brown, Aimee Bahng, Alexis Lothian, M. Asli Dukan, Ayana Jamieson, Krista Franklin, Lisa Bolekaja, Melanie West, Moya Bailey, Nisi Shawl, Ola Ronke, Rasheedah Phillips, Shelley Streeby, Sophia Echavarria, Ted Chiang, and Walidah Imarisha.

(12) MEETING ABOUT MEDUSA. Steven Baxter and Alastair Reynolds will speak at Foyles Bookshop in Charing Cross Road (tickets required) on June 4.

Foyles talk

Join us for a conversation with two leading figures in science fiction, Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter, as they discuss their new collaboration The Medusa Chronicles. Inspired by the classic Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s short story ‘A Meeting with Medusa’, The Medusa Chronicles continues the story of Commander Howard Falcon over centuries of space-exploration. One of the most compelling novels of either author’s career, it combines moments of incredible action with an intricately-realised depiction of an expansive universe.

Stephen Baxter is the author of more than forty novels, including the Sunday Times bestselling Long Earth series, co-authored with Sir Terry Pratchett, and the acclaimed Time’s Eye trilogy, co-authored with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. He has won major awards in the UK, US, Germany, and Japan. Born in 1957 he has degrees from Cambridge and Southampton.

Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews universities, has a Ph.D. in astronomy and worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency before becoming a full-time writer. An award-winning as well as bestselling writer, with more than thirteen published novels to his name, Locus described him as ‘the most exciting space opera writer working today’.

Together, Reynolds and Baxter will talk about Clarke’s influence on their own writing, the themes that underpin his work, and how they were inspired to continue his story, as well as their bodies of work as a whole. This will be followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask their own questions and a book signing.

This event is in association with The Arthur C. Clarke Award and SFX.

(13) BYO LIFE ON MARS. SpaceReview.com sifts its favorite ideas from the many conferences about human expeditions to the red planet, in “A Year on Mars”.

How many humans on Mars conferences do we need in a year? That thought came to mind during the recent Humans to Mars (H2M) Summit in Washington, DC. There are a lot of them, especially in Washington. There were at least six humans-to-Mars related public events in Washington in 2015, not counting the NASA-sponsored human Mars landing site selection workshop in Houston. Now 2016 is shaping up the same way. Last Tuesday following the H2M conference, the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning DC-based think-tank, held a talk “Beyond the Moon: What will it take to get astronauts on Mars?” The Mars Society was in Washington last August and will be back in September, and there will probably be at least one or two other Mars-related meetings or lectures that will happen later this year. And not everything is happening in Washington: the same week as the H2M conference there were a series of talks on Mars at the International Space Development Conference in Puerto Rico.

Some, but not all, of this attention to the humans to Mars subject is due to the success of the movie The Martian and the book that inspired it. But the subject is also culturally bigger than that: witness the attention that Mars One got last year, both positive and negative, and NASA pushing the theme hard as well (every time somebody uses the hashtag #JourneyToMars an angel gets its wings.) Human missions to Mars, or at least talking about humans on Mars, is all the rage these days, and H2M has made a pretty impressive effort at taking the lead.

H2M seems to have upped its game recently. Their website is slick, featuring computer animations and links to video recordings of most of the presentations at their conference, much of which was live-streamed….

(14) ATTENTION ANN LECKIE. “Tea in space” might be a highly scientific idea. Scientists say it could be used to create useful materials for astronauts visiting Mars.

Former Prime Minister William Gladstone said: ‘If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.’

It may also one day help astronauts on Mars.

The humble cup of tea holds the key to new ‘wonder materials’, new research suggests.

The bacteria found in tea could lead to breakthroughs in water filtration and technology.

(15) THIS IS STRANGE. An sf novel hidden in Reddit posts? The BBC interviewed the anonymous author.

The plot ranges across the CIA, hallucinogenic drugs, humpback whales, Nazis and the death of Michael Jackson. But just as mysterious and intriguing is the way in which what is being dubbed ‘The Interface Series’ is emerging into the world.

If you watched the TV-series Lost, you’ll probably be familiar with that feeling of confused anticipation as you hope for several threads of narrative to tie together. Over the course of this month, a new kind of mystery, for a new kind of audience, has been unfolding on Reddit – the online bulletin board where people post articles and comments on threads about a bewildering range of subjects….

The posts appeared in threads about a bizarre range of seemingly unconnected topics including: a debate about whether pirates really did have parrots, the responses to somebody seeking advice about how to help a relative with a drugs problem and the comments under a video of a cat sliding down stairs.

But these weren’t just random nonsensical rants. There is a theme that ties them all together; ‘The Flesh Interfaces’ which seem to be “portals of some kind, made of thousands of dead bodies, which transport biological matter to some unknown place and returns it inside a fleshy sack, heavily dosed with LSD.”

(16) DAILY TRIVIA. George R.R. Martin, wrote 14 episodes of the Beauty and the Beast TV series, which ran from 1987-90.

(17) JOHNSON TRIBUTE VIDEO. See part one of the George Clayton Johnson Memorial held at the Egyptian on February 26.

[Thanks to Wendy Gale, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Will R., Cat Rambo, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Arifel.]

SFWA Hosts An Out-of-this-World Auction At Worldcon

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Become a fantastic character, take away something beautiful and unique, or get killed (fictively) by your favorite author at the Charity Auction hosted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) at this year’s Worldcon on Sunday, August 23, at 1 p.m. in Convention Center Hall C – Guinan’s Place.

Auction items include:

  • Tuckerizations and critiques from SFWA authors like Greg Bear, David Brin, Cory Doctorow, Alaya Dawn Johnson (the first she’s ever done), Nancy Kress, Larry Niven, Mike Resnick, and John Scalzi;
  • A voicemail recording by Mary Robinette Kowal;
  • Handcrafted items from Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Lynn Scarborough, and Carrie Vaughn;
  • Artwork from M.C.A. Hogarth and Ursula Vernon;
  • An appearance on Paul Cornell’s GeekPlanetOnline podcast;
  • A lifetime subscription to Lightspeed Magazine; and
  • Personalized invective from Neil Gaiman and Chuck Wendig.

Some offerings have special connections to this year’s Worldcon:

  • A beaded creature created by Guest of Honor Vonda N. McIntyre,
  • A script from Guest of Honor David Gerrold, and
  • Tuckerizations and critiques from Hugo nominees Annie Bellet and Jenn Brozek

Signed books and ARCs from Kevin J. Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, and Gene Wolfe will also appear.

Ellen Klages

Ellen Klages

Nebula Award winning writer Ellen Klages serves as auctioneer for the hour-long event. Klages says, “An auction is like a shopping cabaret, bread-and-circuses with prizes. You are entertained, you laugh, you come away with one-of-a-kind treasures. And…your donations support SFWA’s efforts to help writers in need. A win-win-win.”

Proceeds go to the SFWA Givers Fund, which funds the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, Legal Fund, and other grants.

Steven H Silver, Events Coordinator, says, “SFWA has been holding charity auctions (and accepting the proceeds from other charity auctions) for as long as SFWA has had its Emergency Medical Fund and its Legal Defense Fund. These auctions give SFWA the opportunity to ensure these funds remain solvent and at the same time give readers and fans an opportunity to interact with their favorite authors in a variety of ways and come away with oftentimes unique items.”

Founded in 1965 by author Damon Knight, SFWA is a professional organization for authors of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. SFWA informs, supports, promotes, defends and advocates for its members as well as for professional genre authors at large.