Tag Archives: Emily Hockaday

Pixel Scroll 12/12/24 Somewhere Over The Ringworld

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(1) AWARD UPDATE. Emily Hockaday, Analog/Asimov’s Senior Managing Editor, says the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices usually presented at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has been put “on hiatus over 2025 due to personal commitments, but we hope to offer it again the following year.”

(2) CHRISTIE’S SFF ART AUCTION SCORECARD. Christie’s has posted the results of its December 12 “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction. Sandra Miesel speculates, “The price for the Ender’s Game art must be some kind of record!” The John Harris cover art fetched ten times its estimated value.

(3) A BIT OF ALL RIGHT. Who says the internet has no sense of humor? (Oh, I did… Never mind.) Camestros Felapton lightens our day with “Dahrk Snarl the Blood-Axe Wielder: A Cosy Vignette”.

[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, how wonderful to meet you in person.
[Snarl] I need a job.
[Simon Goquickly] Of course, of course and this is quite a resume you have here!
[Snarl] I got the wizard to write it.
[Simon Goquickly] Ah, I see – that would be Karl the Angstomancer, the cursed conjurer of Battlehaven. How is he these days?
[Snarl] Dead. Eaten by a beetle.
[Simon Goquickly] Oh dear. Eaten by beetles! What a ghastly fate.
[Snarl] A bettle. Just the one. Karl was in very small pieces at the time….

(4) ART VS. ARTIST. Nathan Deuel, a teacher at UCLA, discusses literary writers in terms that will be familiar to sff fans: “Writers I Have Met; Or, On Learning That Cormac McCarthy Was a Creep” at Literary Hub.

…The clock is ticking and I need to teach Bradbury and I’m speed-reading a Vanity Fair piece with growing alarm. Had I wanted to know more than what I already knew about Cormac? What do we know about Thomas Pynchon, for instance? How much was life enhanced by reading those New York Times profiles of Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, or Lore Segal?…

…I need to get to class. I’m walking and trying to puzzle out how I feel and why I think I am so mad. What do we search for in stories? It’s one thing to teach Bradbury’s ideas about state control and personal freedom. It’s another thing to walk to class and try to privately mourn… what? That Cormac was a bad dude? That one of my favorite writers was a monster? Here’s the deal: I do not know what to think and I can’t say exactly why….

..How much did it matter whether or not I had met the author? What role did imaginary or real people play in whether a book had the juice to keep us thinking about it years later? Why do stories stay with us and demand reading and re-reading? What was I learning as I struggled to reckon with what I knew and had not known about Cormac?…

…Just what am I getting at, with my paltry memories of famous writers? In my most cherished little stories, I seem to care whether or not writers were nice to me and people like me. The imbalance is inescapable. The world is cruel. Why do we write and why do we read? What power do we grant others over us? Especially when they’re so good at telling us stories we want to hear?…

(5) AI IS CONTROVERSIAL POINT IN ANIMATION INDUSTRY DEAL. “Animation Guild Leaders Say They’re Voting ‘No’ on Tentative Deal” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

Tensions over The Animation Guild‘s controversial new tentative contract spilled into public view on Tuesday as the ratification vote for the deal began.

Three members of the union’s sprawling negotiating committee posted on social media that they personally will be voting “no” on the tentative contract that they helped to bargain, primarily due to concerns about provisions covering generative AI. But that same day, the union’s chief negotiator said the agreement improved on recent deals “by a good margin” and warned that not ratifying the agreement could be “dangerous,” risking losing more work in Los Angeles.

The Animation Guild’s 56-person negotiating committee consisted of a “table team” of 29 members that met across the table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and a support team of 27 members. Both teams weighed in on proposals and changes to proposals, but only the table team voted on the tentative agreement — and largely voted favor of the deal. Two of the negotiating committee members that posted on Tuesday were part of the support team, while one served on the table team.

“I believe the AI and outsourcing protections in this contract are not strong enough — and in my opinion — could lead to the loss of lots of jobs,” Mitchell vs. The Machines writer-director Mike Rianda posted on Instagram on Tuesday. Adding that there were gains in the contract, like pay increases and health benefits improvements, Rianda argued that the pact’s A.I. protections give “sole power to the employer to make us use A.I. however they see fit.”…

(6) OVERSHADOWED. “Westeros Conquered Middle-earth” in Matt Goldberg’s opinion at Commentary Track.

It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.

While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.

Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy….

(7) TOLKIEN’S HERSTORY. Meanwhile GameRant+ is still betting on our willingness to click on LOTR-related links like “The Strongest Female Characters In Middle-Earth”. I know I am….

…Plenty of the movers and shakers in Middle-earth are women, starting in the realm’s earliest history and carrying right through to the later times when the last of the Elves finally sailed into the West. The protectors of Doriath, the foe of Morgoth, and the slayer of the Nazgul were exploits carried out by the strongest women in Middle-earth.

Number one on the list is still waiting for her close-up:

Melian

Wife Of King Thingol And Mother Of Luthien

Out of all the notable characters in Middle-earth, Melian is one of the few who has yet to appear in any on-screen adaptations. A Maiar on the same level as the Wizards who would follow in her footsteps, Melian chose a different life when she arrived in Middle-earth. The Vala she served was Yavanna, and when she met Prince Elwe, who would eventually become King Thingol, she took on a mortal form to be his queen.

Melian not only protected her husband’s kingdom using her power, but she also mentored a young Galadriel, who would use the same magic to protect her realm of Lothlorien. Melain and Thingo had one child, a girl named Luthien, who would challenge her mother when it came to heroic exploits.

(8) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out an open call for its “Illustration of the Year 2025”, a piece of original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured on the SLF website, monthly e-newsletter and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag throughout the year. Submissions are being taken through January 15, 2025. The winner will be announced in February 2025. Full guidelines at the link.

The winning artist will receive $750.00 and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on the SLF’s website and social media and in a press release.

(9) A MUSEUM FOR BOGUS BOOKS. “’These are magic books’: bringing imaginary works of literature to life” – the Guardian tells how it’s being done.

At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure – squabbled over by her mother and husband Ted Hughes, it supposedly disappeared in 1970 – or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy, the influential treatise on theater thought to have burned at a Benedictine Abbey in 1327 (at least, according to Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose). The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist….

…“It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to even consider having an exhibition of the imaginary,” said [Reid] Byers, a multi-hyphenate bibliophile who has also worked as a Presbyterian minister, a welder and a C language programmer, on a recent tour of the exhibition….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born December 12, 1976 — Tim Pratt, 48.

By Paul Weimer: In both his straight up name and his pen names, Pratt has written a slew of novels, having “graduated” to novels after a run of shorter fiction that culminated with his Hugo award winning story “Impossible Dreams”. That short story’s parallel universe heart is something that I see and encounter again and again in his fiction. Parallel universes, adjacent dimensions, demiplanes, and the like populate many of his novels, one way or another. 

It was in his Pathfinder tie-in work that I first started reading his novels, proceeding through the kindle serial Heirs of Grace and into his even more ambitious work. I want to highlight these two. 

The Axiom novels are a fun trio of space opera novels, revolving around a freight and salvage ship, the White Raven, accidentally finding the secret to a dread Alien race, the titular Axiom, whose awakening would spell doom for humanity. The crew of the White Raven, in a breezy trio of reads that belie their doorstopper status catapult themselves from frying pans to fires as they are literally on the front line of trying to protect humanity from an existential threat.

But it is the Doors of Sleep books that I think Pratt really hits all cylinders. The premise is deceptively simple, our protagonist Zaxony has, for reasons slowly revealed in the unfolding of the story, been granted a blessing and a curse. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new parallel world. As far as he can tell, he can’t ever “go back”, either. And so with a tone often reminiscent of Doctor Who and Sliders, Zaxony finds himself traveling from world to world.  

The novel is clever in that it starts us in media res, Zaxony has been through this for nearly three years of personal time when the novel begins, so we get to see how he’s adapted and tried to deal with his gift. In fashion reminiscent of both Doctor Who and Sliders, it emerges that Zaxony isn’t the only person who can travel the worlds…but Zaxony’s gift makes him a target.  The pair of novels go down easy and are a fun read and are my current Tim Pratt favorites.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) THE 442ND. Airing now at the BBC World Service or available from BBC Sounds for another year, “Purple Heart Warriors”.

Time-travelling drama about the Japanese American legends of US military history – inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd Regiment fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two. An original six-part drama, released from 9th December 2024. Written by Oscar nominee Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe.

(13) A TOUR OF DEVELOPMENT HELL. Sifting Variety’s annual list of unproduced scripts, Gizmodo has culled “The 10 Most Intriguing Sci-Fi and Horror Scripts on This Year’s Black List”.

…Here are the 10 we would be most excited to see from the 2024 list (via Variety; you can check out the full list here), all hailing from the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy realms….

For one example:

The 13th Hour by Anna Klassen

“When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.”

Something tells us there will be consequences, eventually, for the tinkering kids—their magical control of time notwithstanding.

(14) SMASH THE STATE (BUT NOT THE POTTERY). Nature has a report based on a study titled “There and back again: local institutions, an Uruk expansion and the rejection of centralisation in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala region” from Cambridge Core.

Excavations in northeastern Iraq have unveiled neatly stacked bowls dating to more than 5,300 years ago that bear evidence of organized societies and whose abandonment points to eventual rejection of the state.

Mesopotamia was home to the world’s most ancient cities and state institutions, such as the Copper Age Uruk civilization. Claudia Glatz at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her collaborators excavated a Copper Age site that, in its final phase, shared close cultural ties with Uruk. They found mass-produced bowls with bevelled rims (pictured) that indicate the existence of institutions that fed large numbers of people, perhaps labourers, often with meat stews, traces of lipids on the pottery and nearby animal bones suggest.

The team found evidence of multiple consecutive periods of occupation at the site, but no signs that it was ultimately abandoned because of violent attacks or a natural disaster. Urbanism did not make another appearance in the region for some 1,500 years. The evidence suggests that the region’s population deliberately dispersed — and that the formation of state-level institutions is not an inevitable trend, the authors write.

(15) EFFECT MASKING COVID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature:

What would have happened if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn high-grade masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? A modelling study1 has estimated just how sharply transmission might have dropped.

Determining the effect of masks on viral transmission is difficult, and most studies so far have been affected by limitations such as small sample sizes. To overcome this issue, Richard Sear at the University of Surrey, UK, developed a model of transmission using data from the UK National Health Service COVID-19 app. The app, which ran on mobile phones between 2020 and 2023, logged information about infections and the length of time users came into contact with each other.

Sear built on a previously published analysis2 of 240,000 positive COVID-19 tests and 7 million contacts — instances in which app users were notified that they had been exposed to the virus. He estimated that if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn N95 or FFP2 masks — both highly effective at filtering particles — the rate of COVID-19 transmission would have dropped by a factor of 9.

Research here: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.064302

(16) COZYING UP TO SPACE JUNK. “Spacecraft makes daring approach of metal object in Earth’s orbit” – Mashable has details.

A Japanese spacecraft has made a daring approach to a discarded rocket in Earth’s orbit.

The mission — undertaken by the satellite technology company Astroscale — intends to eventually remove the 36-foot-long spent rocket stage, but has first tested its ability to rendezvous with the problematic object (one of 27,000 space junk objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit).

The pioneering space endeavor is called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J.

“Ending 2024 with a historic approach!” Astroscale posted online. “Our ADRAS-J mission has achieved the closest ever approach by a commercial company to space debris, reaching just 15 meters [almost 50 feet] from a rocket upper stage.”

This rocket stage, weighing three tons, is the upper part of the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) H2A rocket, which launched the Earth observation GOSAT satellite in 2009. The greater space debris removal mission is part of JAXA’s “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project, which seeks a proven way to remove problematic space junk from orbit…

(17) SMALL BUT TOUGH. CNN learns that “’Conan the Bacterium’ is extremely radiation-resistant for a surprising reason”.

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.

Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….

…“We’ve long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the ‘magic’ potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough….,” said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement.

Previous research has shown that Deinococcus, known as the most radiant-resistant life-form in the Guinness World Records, can survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. The hardy bacteria can also withstand acid, cold and dehydration.

…For [a] previous study, the team measured the amount of manganese antioxidants in the cells of the bacteria. The researchers found that the amount of radiation that a microorganism could survive was directly related to its amount of manganese antioxidants. So the more manganese antioxidants present, the more resistance to radiation….

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Pixar – Outtakes/Bloopers Collection” compiled in years gone by.

Watch and enjoy a wonderful compilation of hilarious bloopers from three hit Pixar films; A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Sandra Miesel, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 12/11/24 If You Stare At A Scroll Too Long, It Dissolves Into Pixels

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(1) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. For Andrew Porter it was a short walk to yesterday’s City Tech SF Symposium in Brooklyn. He brought his camera with him and shot these photos during the “Asimov/Analog Writers Panel”.

L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, moderator Emily Hockaday, senior managing editor of Analog and Asimov’s SF magazines. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Emily Hockaday. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Sakina Hoefler. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(2) SKYWALKER SHELTERS IN PLACE. The Franklin Fire has forced several well-known celebrities to evacuate, but some haven’t left.

The Franklin fire is raging through California’s Malibu coast, causing evacuations and ravaging homes while some celebrities like Mark Hamill shelter in place.

Hamill took to Instagram on Tuesday to share with fans that he would not evacuate his California home, with the “Star Wars” star telling his 6.2 million followers on the platform to “stay safe.”

“We’re in lockdown because of the Malibu fires. Please stay safe everyone! I’m not allowed to leave the house, which fits in perfectly with my elderly-recluse lifestyle,” Hamill wrote.

Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke is also one of the celebrities in the affected area, saying on Facebook that he evacuated the area with his wife Arlene.

The Franklin Fire continued to explode in size overnight and covers 3,983 acres as of Wednesday morning with 7% containment, according to CalFire. Late Tuesday night, officials said 2,667 had burned. It was fueled by strong Santa Ana winds and low humidity, a dangerous combination prompting red flag warnings in the region through Wednesday evening….

Others who have evacuated include Cher, Eagles rocker Don Henley, and Cindy Crawford.

(3) PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a nominee in documentary category for the 36th annual PGA Awards. The complete list of nominated documentaries is at the link. That is the first and only PGA category announced so far.

(4) THESE GHOSTS WANT TO BE SEEN. [Item by Steven French.] The UK’s “Society of Authors calls for celebrity memoir ghostwriters to be credited” – the Guardian tells why.

The SoA’s call comes following writers expressing frustration in recent months about celebrities writing books at a time when author incomes are in decline. Last year, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown was criticised over her novel, Nineteen Steps, which was ghostwritten by Kathleen McGurl. While Brown publicly acknowledged McGurl’s work in an Instagram post, critics said that McGurl’s name “should be on the cover”.

(5) GHOSTLY GIFTS. [Item by Steven French.] If anyone happens to be in the Chicago area: “Ghoulish Mortals – St. Charles, Illinois” in Atlas Obscura.

JUST WEST OF CHICAGO, THERE is a little spot of spooky in the charming downtown of St. Charles, Illinois. Ghoulish Mortals is made up of equal parts immersive haunted house-style vignettes, macabre art gallery, and pop culture collector gift shop.

Haunting organ music leads you down the quaint downtown sidewalks and into the dark mysterious doors. As you make your way exploring through the shop, you will travel through a haunted mansion, a fortune teller’s tent, an 80s living room inspired by Stranger Things, a killer clown circus, abandoned hospital operating room, cannibal swamp cabin, and even come face to face with Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. 

If you love horror movies, true crime, the occult, oddities, or fantasy, leaving this shop empty-handed is nearly impossible!

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES PODCAST. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents episode 81 of “Simultaneous Times – Eric Fomley & Adele Gardner”. Stories featured in this episode:

(7) RHYSLING AWARD CHAIR NAMED. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2025 Rhysling Award Chair will be Pixie Bruner.

Pixie Bruner (HWA/SFPA) is a writer, editor, mutant, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, GA, with her doppelgänger and their alien cats. Her collection The Body As Haunted was published in 2024 (Authortunities Press). She co-curated and edited Nature Triumphs : A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Literature (Dark Moon Rising Publications). Her words are in/forthcoming from Space & Time Magazine, Hotel Macabre (Crystal Lake Publishing), Star*Line, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Dreams & Nightmares, Angry Gable Press, Punk Noir, and many more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs are all her fault.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Thirty-two years ago, The Muppet Christmas Carol premiered, directed by Brian Henson (in his feature film directorial debut) from the screenplay by Jerry Juhl. 

Based amazingly faithfully off that beloved story, it starred Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge with a multitude of Muppet performers, to wit Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Ed Sanders, Jerry Nelson, Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes, Russell Martin, Ray Coulthard and Frank Oz, to name just some of them. 

I must single out Jessica Fox as the voice of Ghost of Christmas Past, a stellar performance indeed. 

Following Jim Henson’s death in May 1990, the talent agent Bill Haber had approached Henson’s son Brian with the idea of filming an adaptation. It was pitched to ABC as a television film, but Disney ended up purchasing it instead. That’s why it’s only available on Disney+ these days. 

Critics in general liked it with Roger Ebert being among them though he added that it “could have done with a few more songs than it has, and the merrymaking at the end might have been carried on a little longer, just to offset the gloom of most of Scrooge’s tour through his lifetime spent spreading misery.” 

Ebert added of Caine playing Scrooge that, “He is the latest of many human actors (including the great Orson Welles) to fight for screen space with the Muppets, and he sensibly avoids any attempt to go for a laugh. He plays the role straight and treats the Muppets as if they are real. It is not an easy assignment.” 

They did give him his own song which showed us the cast.

Those songs were by Paul Williams, another one of his collaborations with the Jim Henson Company after working on The Muppet Movie.

Box office wise it did just ok, as it made twenty-seven million against production costs of twelve million, not counting whatever was spent on marketing. And that Christmas goose. 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather ungloomy rating of eighty-eight percent.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ‘INNER LIGHT’ WRITER HAS SHOW IN DEVELOPMENT. Inverse reports: “32 Years Later, One of Star Trek’s Most Celebrated Writers is Launching a Gritty Sci-Fi Show”.

The writer responsible for the most celebrated episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is launching a new gritty sci-fi series. As reported by Deadline, Morgan Gendel — writer of TNG’s “The Inner Light” — has just secured a deal with Welsh broadcaster S4C, Hiraeth Productions, Canada’s Fun Republic Pictures and Karma Film, to develop a new “eco-thriller” science fiction show currently titled Isolation. The in-development series will focus on an ensemble of characters attempting to combat climate change in the near future, who also encounter an extraterrestrial force capable of direct contact with human minds.

“There’s a whole ‘Inner Light,’ kind of linkage here, to the extent that both deal with alien technology and the human brain,” Gendel tells Inverse. “And you’ve got a team thrown together isolated from humanity to one extent or another. Those are not intentional [parallels]. My writing often puts people in a pressure cooker to see what emotions or truths boil out of them.”…

(11) SURREALISM OF GENRE INTEREST. John Coulthart assembles a gallery of “The art of Jean Ransy, 1910–1991” at { feuilleton }.

… All the same, Jean Ransy may fit the Surrealist bill even if he doesn’t seem to have had any lasting connections with those groups who regarded themselves as the official guardians of the Surrealist flame. Ransy was Belgian artist which makes him Surrealist by default if you subscribe to Jonathan Meades’ proposition that Belgium is a Surrealist nation at heart. (Magritte wasn’t a Surrealist, says Meades, he was a social realist.)

Ransy’s paintings appear at first glance like a Belgian equivalent of Rex Whistler in their pictorial realism and refusal to jump on the Modernist bandwagon. Whistler and Ransy were contemporaries (Whistler was born in 1905) but Whistler’s paintings were much more restrained even when outright fantasy entered his baroque pastiches. The “metaphysical” vistas of Giorgio de Chirico are mentioned as an influence on Ransy’s work so he was at least looking at living artists, something you never sense with Whistler. There’s a de Chirico quality in the tilted perspectives and accumulations of disparate objects, also a hint of Max Ernst in one or two paintings….

Le chemin de ronde au visage soleil (1985).

(12) JUSTWATCH SHARES 2024 TOP 10 LISTS. What were the most-watched movies and TV shows on streaming services in 2024? JustWatch compiled these year-end Streaming Charts based on user activity, including: clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >45 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.

2024 was packed with standout streaming hits. Movies like “Civil War”, “Oppenheimer”, and “The Fall Guy” drew huge audiences with their mix of action and drama. On the TV side, shows like “Shogun”, “Fallout”, and our streaming charts champion “The Bear” kept viewers hooked all year long. Whether it was blockbuster films or binge-worthy series, there was something for everyone. These titles set the tone for another exciting year in entertainment.

(13) WE STAND CORRECTED. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian says people have jumped to the wrong conclusion about an image in the trailer we ran yesterday: “Emaciated zombie in 28 Years Later is not Cillian Murphy, sources confirm”.

When the trailer for Danny Boyle’s belated zombie sequel 28 Years Later released on Tuesday, the less-than-rosy-cheeked appearance of the first film’s star, Cillian Murphy, did not escape comment.

A scene in which a strikingly skinny member of the undead suddenly rears up, naked, behind new star Jodie Comer was taken as confirmation of rumours that Murphy had returned for an appearance in the new film….

…Yet the Guardian can reveal that the actor playing “Emaciated Infected” in the film, due for release in June 2025, is not Murphy but rather newcomer Angus Neill.

Neill, an art dealer specialising in old masters, was talent-spotted by Boyle, who was much struck by his distinctive looks. Neill also works as a model, with his professional profile suggesting he has a 28-inch waist….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George takes us inside the “Elf Pitch Meeting” – one of the retro reviews stockpiled in anticipation of his baby arriving.

Will Ferrell is one of the most successful comedy actors of our time – but back in 2003, it was kind of a surprise to see him leading a Christmas movie as a giant non-elf. Elf ended up becoming a holiday classic, but it still raises some questions. Like what happened to that poor nun? Why didn’t the news reporter follow up on anything? Is Buddy the elf actually kind of creepy? So check out the pitch meeting that led to Elf to find out how it all came together!

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

Heartbeat of the Universe Virtual Release Party

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The Heartbeat of the Universe collects poems from the top writers in the science fiction and literary genres, including voices such as Jane Yolen, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, Jessy Randall, and many others. These poems, selected by editor Emily Hockaday from the pages of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Analog Science Fiction and Fact over the past decade, examine the Universe’s smallest particles and largest astral phenomena. These poems travel through time, speak to and from the dead, explore the body and quantum physics, all depicting the human condition and allowing readers to learn more about their universe and themselves. The book is available to preorder from Interstellar Flight Press.

There will be a virtual release party/reading on April 4 beginning at 6:00 p.m. Central via Zoom. Register free at Eventbrite.

Featured Readers

  • Jane Yolen
  • Ian Goh
  • Robert Frazier
  • Mary Soon Lee
  • Kristian Macaron
  • Annie Sheng (D.A. Xiaolin Spires)
  • Josh Pearce
  • Holly Day
  • Jackie Sherbow
  • Leslie Anderson
  • Timons Esaias
  • Ashok Banker
  • Jessy Randall
  • Stewart C Baker

Advance praise for The Heartbeat of the Universe: Poems from Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2012–2022 edited by Emily Hockaday.

Connie Willis: When I first started reading science fiction as a teenager, I always loved discovering the occasional poem tucked in among the short stories and novelettes in the Year’s Best collections, and I was so happy when Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine carried on the tradition of including poetry in their definition of what science fiction could be.  And now this!  It’s a true delight to see so many wonderful poems in one place!  And such an infinite variety!  There are poems here exploring virtually everything you can think of: —aliens, ants, quantum entanglement, grocery stores, 1950s sci-fi movies, math, music, Marie Curie, the National History Museum, messages from (and to) the dead, and poetry itself—and ranging from the elegiac to the soaring, the nostalgic to the futuristic, the harsh to the contemplative.  A truly galactic collection of science fiction’s best poems and poets!

Fran Wilde: The Heartbeat of the Universe gathers poems into a story of the world, past, present, and future, as seen through sound and rhythm, wonder and science. It is a collection that spins and weaves—using both experimental and formal structure—a core connectivity: that we are all, each of us, in every moment, speculative and liminal, and the poetry that recognizes this is truly special. My heartfelt congratulations to the authors and editors of this magnificent book.

Bryan Thao Worra, former SFPA President (2016-2022): This collection constitutes an important step in keeping our appreciation of speculative poetry alive and well, with a remarkable sampling of the diverse voices and approaches poets featured in Analog and Asimov’s over the past decade. In an age when so many challenge the role of poetry in science fiction and fantasy, the editors have taken great care to remind us of how much has been achieved, and how more is yet possible. A commendable achievement, and I look forward to returning to this collection in the years ahead.

Table of Contents (Click for larger image.)

Pixel Scroll 4/14/20 You’re The Nosferatu, On The Grave’d Durante

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(1) TOPICAL TV IDEAS. The Vulture asked TV’s idle talent to take up the challenge: “If I Wrote a Coronavirus Episode”. Tagline: “Tina Fey, Mike Schur, and 35 more TV writers on what their characters would do in a pandemic.” If you scroll way down there’s one for Picard, although most of the others are funnier. By comparison, this bit for Sheldon Cooper is spot on —

“I’m not one to brag, but I was practicing social distancing back when it was called ‘Who’s the weird kid alone in the corner?’ And at the risk of sounding like a hipster, I was washing my hands 30 times a day before it was cool. I do, however, miss being with my friends. Sitting around eating Chinese takeout, sharing my scientific ideas and correcting theirs … that’s my happy place.” —Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D., The Big Bang Theory (Chuck Lorre and Steve Molaro)

(2) SUPPORT AVAILABLE FOR WRITERS. Publishers Lunch has a standing free reference page listing organizations that offer emergency grants to authors and other creators. Two examples:

Poets & Writers has created a COVID-19 Relief Fund to “provide emergency assistance to writers having difficulty meeting their basic needs.” They will provide grants of up to $1,000 to approximately 80 writers in April. The board allocated $50,000, which has been supplemented by gifts from supporters including Michael Piestch and Zibby Owens.

We Need Diverse Books will provide emergency grants to diverse authors, illustrators, and publishing professionals “who are experiencing dire financial need.” They will give grants of $500 each, and are limiting the first round of applications to 70.

(3) A WORD IN DEFENSE. From Publishers Weekly:“Internet Archive Responds to Senator’s Concern Over National Emergency Library”.

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle is defending the legality of the organization’s National Emergency Library initiative to a U.S. Senator who last week raised concerns that the effort may be infringing the rights of authors and publishers.

…In his three-page response to [Senator] Tillis, Kahle rejected those criticisms, and explained the creation of National Emergency Library using the Senator’s constituents to illustrate its utility.

“Your constituents have paid for millions of books they currently cannot access,” Kahle explained, adding that North Carolina’s public libraries house more than 15 million print book volumes in 323 library branches across the state. “The massive public investment paid for by taxpaying citizens is unavailable to the very people who funded it,” he writes. “The National Emergency Library was envisioned to meet this challenge of providing digital access to print materials, helping teachers, students and communities gain access to books while their schools and libraries are closed.”

Kahle further maintained that “the vast majority” of the books in the National Emergency Library, mostly 20th Century books, are not commercially available in e-book form, and said the collection contains no books published in the last five years.

“[For] access to those books, readers and students can continue to turn to services like OverDrive and hoopla,” Kahle explained, making what defenders say is a critical distinction: commercial providers offer patrons access to e-books; the National Emergency Library is providing stopgap digital access to scans of paper books that are locked away in shuttered libraries and schools. “That is where the National Emergency Library fills the gap,” Kahle insists.

(4) LEGACY. [Item by Steve Davidson.] From Faaneds on Facebook: A friend is going through the personal effects of a passed fan and came across a number of LOCs by Michael W. Waite. Does anyone here know if there are any family members/friends who would appreciate having these?

(5) HAVE A LISTEN. Wil Wheaton links to his reading of a Doctorow story — “Radio Free Burrito Presents: Return to Pleasure Island by Cory Doctorow”.

I was talking to my friend, Cory, over the weekend, and we decided that we would each read and release something the other had written, because why not?

I’m a huge fan and admirer of Cory both as a human and as a creative person. He’s been my primary mentor since I started writing professionally, and I owe him more than I’ll ever be able to properly repay. It’s not unreasonable to say that, without Cory’s guidance and kindness, I wouldn’t be a published author.

So it’s with excitement (and a little trepidation, because I don’t want to disappoint my friend) that I chose one of Cory’s fantastic short stories from way back in 1999, which he describes this way:

This is the story of the ogres who run the concession stands on Pleasure Island, where Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick turned into a donkey. Like much of my stuff, this has a tie-in with Walt Disney World; the idea came to me on the Pinocchio ride in the Magic Kingdom, in 1993.

You can grab my narration at my Soundcloud. I hope you enjoy it.

(Public domain ebook versions of the story are also available at Project Gutenberg.)

(6) SPACE VERSE. Asimov’s Science Fiction’s Emily Hockaday posted the “National Poetry Month Podcast 2020” today.

Happy National Poetry Month! We have a dozen poems here pulled from past and current issues to celebrate our poets this year. Each of these poems is striking in its own way, and I hope you enjoy the many voices and styles to come. First up is “All Saints Day” by Lisa Bellamy, read by Diana Marie Delgado, followed by “All the Weight” by Holly Day, read by Emily Hockaday, “The Celestial Body” read and written by Leslie J. Anderson, “The Destroyer is in Doubt about Net Neutrality” read and written by Martin Ott, “Unlooping” read and written by Marie Vibbert, “Attack of the 50 foot Woman” read and written by Ron Koertge, “The Language of Water,” by Jane Yolen, read by Monica Wendel, “Archaeologists Uncover Bones, Bifocals, a Tricycle” read and written by Steven Withrow, “Objects in Space” by Josh Pearce, read by R.J. Carey, “Small Certainties” by Sara Polsky, read by Emily Hockaday, “Palate of the Babel Fish” read and written by Todd Dillard, and finally “After a Year of Solitude” by Lora Gray, read by Jackie Sherbow.

(7) SOUNDS PRETTY NUTTY. In the Washington Post, as part of his annual celebration of Squirrel Week, John Kelly has a piece about the Norse god Ratatoskr, a squirrel with a giant horn in the center of his head who ferried messages up and down the great World Tree. “Meet Ratatoskr, mischievous messenger squirrel to the Viking gods”. Incidentally, long before there was File 770, Bruce Pelz’ Ratatosk was the fannish newzine of record.

…Most of what we know about the stories Vikings told each other comes from Snorri Sturluson, who was an Icelandic poet and lawyer, a combination not quite so rare then as now. Snorri (1179-1241) was ambitious. He journeyed from Iceland to Norway to ingratiate himself with leaders there and pick up skills….

(8) IN WORDS OF MORE THAN ONE SYLLABLE. “’I May Have Gone Too Far In A Few Places’ And 9 Other Famous George Lucas Star Wars Quotes” compiled by ScreenRant.

In May of 1944, George Walton Lucas Jr. was born, twenty-three years later, he graduated from USC, and a decade after that he changed the world forever by releasing Star Wars. The Star Wars franchise is a phenomenon like no other, and nobody, not even the maker himself, could have predicted its impact.

The headline quote is #9. Here is ScreenRant’s commentary:

…Before The Last Jedi came to be, the prequels were the kings of controversy. After seeing a rough cut of his film in 1999, Lucas said the famous quote to a small screening room “I may have gone too far in a few places.”

Ironically, in behind the scenes videos of The Phantom Menace, Lucas talks about how the key to these types of films is not to go too far. This quote shows Lucas’ self-awareness and references the disjointedness of the movie.

(9) SULLIVAN OBIT. Ann Sullivan, the Disney animator behind The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, has died at the age of 91. She is the third member of the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home to die as a result of the coronavirus. The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute.

… Sullivan re-entered the business in 1973, when she started at Filmnation Hanna Barbera. She later returned to Disney, landing credits on studio titles from the late-1980s to the mid-2000s. Sullivan worked in the paint lab on…1989’s The Little Mermaid…and 1992’s Cool World. She painted for the 1990 short The Prince and the Pauper; 1994’s The Lion King; 1995’s Pocahontas; 1997’s Hercules; 1999’s Tarzan and Fantasia 2000; 2000’s The Emperor’s New Groove; and 2002’s Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. Sullivan also is credited as having worked as a cel painter on 1994’s The Pagemaster and for performing additional caps and painting on 2004’s Home on the Range.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • April 14, 2010 — In the United States, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (in French, Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec) premiered. It was directed by Luc Besson from his own screenplay. It was produced by Virginie Besson-Silla, his wife.  It starred Louise Bourgoin, Mathieu Amalric, Philippe Nahon, Gilles Lellouche and Jean-Paul Rouve. It was narrated by Bernard Lanneau. It is rather loosely based upon “Adèle and the Beast” and “Mummies on Parade” by Jacques Tardi. Critics world-wide loved it, and the box office was very good, but the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a oddly muted 54% rating. Be advised the Shout Factory! DVD is a censored PG rating version but the Blu-Ray is uncensored. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 14, 1929 — Gerry Anderson. English television and film producer, director, writer and if need be voice artist.  Thunderbirds which ran for thirty-two episodes was I think the best of his puppet based shows though Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Fireball XL5 and Stingray are definitely also worth seeing. Later on, he would move into live productions with Space: 1999 being the last production under the partnership of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. (Died 2012.)
  • Born April 14, 1935 — Jack McDevitt, 85. If you read nothing else by him, read Time Travelers Never Die as it’s a great riff on the paradoxes of time travel. If you’ve got quite a bit of time, his Alex Benedict space opera series is a fresh approach to conflict between two alien races.
  • Born April 14, 1936 — Arlene Martel. No doubt you’ll best remember her as T’Pring in Star Trek’s “Amok Time” as it was a rather memorable episode. She also had roles in one-offs in a lot of genre series including Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Mission:Impossible, The Delphi Bureau, I Dream of Jeannie,  Man from Atlantis, My Favorite Martian,  The Six Million Dollar Man and Battlestar Galactica. (Died 2014.)
  • Born April 14, 1949 — Dave Gibbons, 71. He is best known for his work with writer Alan Moore, which includes Watchmen and the Superman story ”For the Man Who Has Everything” (adapted to television twice, first into the same-named episode of  Justice League Unlimited and then more loosely into “For the Girl Who Has Everything”.) He also did work for 2000 AD where he created Rogue Trooper, and was the lead artist on Doctor Who Weekly and Doctor Who Monthly
  • Born April 14, 1954 — Bruce Sterling, 66. Islands in the Net is I think is his finest work as it’s where his characters are best developed and the near future setting is quietly impressive. Admittedly I’m also fond of The Difference Engine which he co-wrote with Gibson which is neither of these things. He edited Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology which is still the finest volume of cyberpunk stories that’s been published to date. He’s won two Best Novelette Hugos, one for “Bicycle Repairman” at LoneStarCon 2, and one at AussieCon Three for “Taklamakan”.
  • Born April 14, 1958 — Peter Capaldi, 62. Twelfth Doctor. Not going to rank as high as the Thirteenth, Tenth Doctor or the Seventh Doctor on my list of favorite Doctors, let alone the Fourth Doctor who remains My Doctor, but I thought he did a decent enough take on the role. His first genre appearance was as Angus Flint in the decidedly weird Lair of the White Worm, very loosely based on the Bram Stoker novel of the same name. He pops up in World War Z as a W.H.O. Doctor before voicing Mr. Curry in Paddington, the story of Paddington Bear. He also voices Rabbit in Christopher Robin. On the boob tube, he’s been The Angel Islington in Neverwhere. (Almost remade by Jim Henson but not quite.) He was in Iain Banks’ The Crow Road as Rory McHoan (Not genre but worth noting). He played Gordon Fleming in two episodes of Sea of Souls series. Before being the Twelfth Doctor, he was on Torchwood as John Frobisher. He is a magnificent Cardinal Richelieu in The Musketeers series running on BBC. And he’s involved in the current animated Watership Down series as the voice of Kehaar.
  • Born April 14, 1977 — Sarah Michelle Gellar, 43. Buffy Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, I watched every episode. Great show. Even watched every bit of Angel as well. Her first genre role was as Casey “Cici” Cooper in Scream 2 followed by voicing Gwendy Doll in Small Soldiers. Her performance as Kathryn Merteuil in Cruel Intentions is simply bone chillingly scary. I’ve not seen, nor plan to see, either of the Scooby-Do films so I’ve no idea how she is Daphne Blake. Finally, she voiced April O’Neil in the one of latest animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films. 
  • Born April 14, 1982 — Rachel Swirsky, 38. Her “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window”  novella (lovely title that) won a Nebula Award, and her short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” would do a short while later. Very impressive. I’ve read her “Eros, Philia, Agape” which is wonderful and “Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia” which is strange and well, go read it. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) BE YOUR OWN VILLAIN. We’ve heard the saying that everyone is the hero of their own story. In contrast, Brian Cronin reminds readers about “That Time That Jerry Siegel Plundered the Funny Pages to Defeat Superman” at CBR.com.

In Meta-Messages, I explore the context behind (using reader danjack’s term) “meta-messages.” A meta-message is where a comic book creator comments on/references the work of another comic book/comic book creator (or sometimes even themselves) in their comic. Each time around, I’ll give you the context behind one such “meta-message.”

Today, we look at Jerry Siegel plunder the Funny Pages as he, himself, becomes the villain of a Superman story involving other newspaper comic strips!

The whole thing went down in the opening story in 1942’s Superman #19 (by Siegel, Ed Dobrotka and John Sikela)… 

(14) DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. ScreenRant tries to explain “Just What is the Direct Market In Comics and Where Did It Come From?”

With the coronavirus pandemic grinding the comic book industry to all halt, there has been much talk about what is to be done with the “direct market”. But just what exactly is the direct market, and how did it come to be? And perhaps more pressing, what will happen to the direct market in a post-COVID-19 world?

Believe it or not, there was a time comic books were purchased outside of comic book shop, carried by newsstands, grocery stores, and even gas stations. However, the comic book shop model, primarily engineered by Phil Seuling in 1972, offered several advantages. The system was known as the “direct market” because it bypassed traditional newspaper and magazine distributors. It offered a much more diverse line of content than the newsstands, including comic books aimed at an adult audience. One of the primary advantages for the distributor was that the comic books were unreturnable unlike newsstands, which would traditionally return all unsold merchandise…. 

Much history ensues. Then —

…Because of all of these factors and more, the future of the direct market is looking increasingly uncertain. In addition to the growing concern that many retailers will have to close their doors due to the coronavirus, the comic book industry itself seems destined for an overhaul. Some comic book shop owners are considering the possibility of re-negotiating with Diamond, while others are considering trying to bypass the current distribution system altogether. The direct market has served the comic book industry well for nearly fifty years, but it might be time to ask – what will best serve the comic book industry for the next fifty?

(15) GOOD REASON TO PREEN THEIR PLUMAGE. In “Adri and Joe Talk About Books: The Hugo Awards”, Adri Joy and Joe Sherry talk about their Hugo nomination for Nerds of a Feather, and some of the other works they’re glad made the final ballot.

Adri: There have been a few feelings knocking around! And about an hour of my life in which it has been unclear whether I should cry, shout, laugh, breathe, throw up, and indeed if I could do any one of those things without the others happening too.

Also, while I’ve definitely experienced the post-announcement Twitter love before, CoNZealand’s decision to schedule a streamed announcement at a timezone that worked for as many Hugo-voter-heavy countries as possible, and the general enthusiasm for people to get online at the moment and hang out, meant that the announcement feed and stream just felt so full of frenzied excitement and love for everyone. Definitely a very heightened moment and, yeah, I’ll absolutely take that finalist status, even if I was already swanning around Dublin wearing the “Finalist” badge ribbon last year.

Joe: I absolutely enjoyed that youtube sidebar chat during the announcement, even if it ultimately did amount to a bunch of people just mashing their keyboards at the same time in excitement.

(16) I’LL TAKE ‘DUBIOUS PRODUCT NAMES’ FOR $100. [Item by Daniel Dern.] This is what comes from not having any Humanities majors in your company… There’s enough obvious cheap-shot jokes that I’m not even going to bother including one here. From PRwire: “Pepperdata Introduces New Kafka Monitoring Capabilities for Mission-Critical Streaming Applications”.

With Streaming Spotlight, existing customers can integrate Kafka monitoring metrics into the Pepperdata dashboard, adding detailed visibility into Kafka cluster metrics, broker health, topics and partitions.

Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform and acts as the central hub for an integrated set of messaging systems. Kafka’s architecture of brokers, topics and data replication supports high availability, high-throughput and publish-subscribe environments. For some users, Kafka handles trillions of messages per day.

Managing these data pipelines and systems is complex and requires deep insight to ensure these systems run at optimal efficiency….

(17) HALL OF FAME. R. Graeme Cameron has finally received the hardware, and I enjoyed his description on Facebook.

Since I was not present when Eileen Kernaghan, Tanya Huff and myself were inducted into the CSFFA Science Fiction Hall of Fame during the Aurora Awards ceremony at Can-Con last year, CSFFA planned to present the plaque to me (and I assume to Eileen) at the Creative Ink Festival in May this year. But, as we all know, Covid-19 forced the CIF to cancel.

Consequently, CSFFA elected to mail me the plaque….

The Janus-like trophy features on one side the visage of an aging knight representing venerable fantasy, blended with vegetation and rather resembling a forest-spirit Don Quixote, an ancient book to the right of his beard, and on the other side the fresh face of a proud, young aviatrix representing the cutting edge of science fiction as perceived back in the 1930s, a rocket ship in flight just to the right of her neck. A most splendid and evocative trophy. Each inductee gets a plaque like this one. The trophy is on display throughout the year in various libraries.

(18) HIGH-SPEED HYPERLOOP PROJECTS WILL BEGIN OPERATION NO EARLIER THAN 2040. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Let’s make notes in our calendars so we can check whether they’re right…

Economics, not technology, pose the largest barriers to building the Hyperloop according to a new Lux report: “High-speed Hyperloop projects will begin operation no earlier than 2040”.

Lux has found that, while the Hyperloop concept is technically feasible, it will require significant development to become cost-effective. The Hyperloop differs from conventional rail because it operates in a vacuum system that reduces aerodynamic drag, thus enabling higher speeds and greater energy efficiency. There are four main design elements creating technical challenges with the Hyperloop: pillar and tube design, pod design, propulsion and levitation of the pods, and station design.

Lux Research found that pod design is the fastest-growing area for Hyperloop patent activity, with a focus on improving comfort and performance. Customer comfort is important due to the compact, enclosed spaces with no windows, which can increase the likelihood of customers getting sick. Optimizing pod performance is key to minimizing drag and reducing costs because pod design choices have a significant impact on tube design and aerodynamics. Propulsion and levitation systems have the least patent activity, in part due to the fact that Hyperloop will likely adapt magnetic levitation, or maglev, technology.

One of the biggest technical challenges will be identifying the optimal system pressure and minimizing leakage of the vacuum system, which, if higher than expected, can increase operating costs and reduce top speeds. “Selecting the Hyperloop’s tube pressure is the most important factor impacting cost, for both operational expenses and the initial capital needed for tube design and construction,” says Lux Research Associate Chad Goldberg….

(19) IN FRANCE. Is this anywhere near Remulac? Reuters reports: “Space scientists use COVID-19 lockdown as dry run for Mars mission”.

French space scientists are using the COVID-19 lockdown as a dry run for what it will be like to be cooped up inside a space craft on a mission to Mars.

The guinea pigs in the experiment are 60 students who are confined to their dormitory rooms in the southern city of Toulouse – not far removed from the kind of conditions they might experience on a long space mission.

When the French government imposed movement restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, space researcher Stephanie Lizy-Destrez decided to make the most of a bad situation, and signed up the student volunteers.

It’s not an exact simulation of space flight: tasks such as picking up samples from a planet’s surface using a lunar rover do not feature, and the students can break off from their virtual space journey for a daily trip outside.

Instead, they conduct computer-based tasks such as memory tests and mental agility tests. They keep a daily journal, and every five days have to complete a questionnaire.

(20) SOCIAL DISTANCING EARTH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Spacecraft BepiColombo’s handlers have published a GIF of Earth as seen from the craft during a recent flyby. BepiColombo was slingshotting past Earth on its way to a Mercury survey mission. BC presumably wished us well in handling COVID-19, and made sure to stay far enough away not to pick up the virus. “BepiColombo takes last snaps of Earth en route to Mercury”.

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission completed its first flyby on 10 April, as the spacecraft came less than 12 700 km from Earth’s surface at 06:25 CEST, steering its trajectory towards the final destination, Mercury. Images gathered just before closest approach portray our planet shining through darkness, during one of humankind’s most challenging times in recent history.

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

“An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact” Symposium Videos Online

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Over 100 scholars, writers, editors, fans, and City Tech students and faculty participated in the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on “An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact” held December 12.

The New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn hosted a combination of scholarly presentations, an editors’ roundtable, writers events, and a keynote address by SF writer Mike Flynn. And they invite you to view the day’s proceedings in this collection of “Videos from the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact”.

Keynote Address by Mike Flynn

  • Introduction:   Trevor Quachri

Opening Remarks

  • Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, New York City College of Technology
  • Jason W. Ellis, Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology

Editors Panel

  • Moderator: Frank Wu.
  • Panelists: Stanley Schmidt, Trevor Quachri, Emily Hockaday

Marginalized Voices and Feminist Futures

  • Moderator: Lisa Yaszek
  • Marleen Barr, “Rachel Rodman’s “The Evolutionary Alice” As Fractured Feminist Fantasy”
  • Adam McLain, “Visualizing Gendered Voice in Ninety Years of Astounding and Analog”
  • Marie Vibbert, “Visible Women in Astounding and Analog”

Writers Panel

  • Moderator: Emily Hockaday
  • Panelists: Phoebe Barton, Leah Cypess, Jay Werkheiser, Alison Wilgus, Frank Wu

Critical Issues in Analog SF

  • Moderator: Lavelle A. Porter
  • Sharon Packer, “Simian Cinema, Darwinian Debates, and Early Analog SF Stories”
  • Stanley Schmidt, “Humor in Analog”
  • Edward Wysocki, Jr., “Just the Facts: Articles in Campbell’s Astounding and Analog”

Teaching with SF Collections

  • Moderator: Lucas Kwong
  • Jason W. Ellis, “Introduction to the City Tech Science Fiction Collection”
  • Zachary Lloyd, “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching with Science Fiction”

Celebrate Analog’s 90th Anniversary

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“An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact: The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium,” takes place on Thursday, December 12. Held in conjunction with City Tech College in Brooklyn, this daylong symposium is free and open to the public. It convenes at 285 Jay Street, Room A105 and runs from 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.

The event will feature papers from distinguished academics, readings from Phoebe Barton, Leah Cypess, Alison Wilgus, Frank Wu, Jay Werkheiser, and a keynote speech from Michael Flynn. Stanley Schmidt, Trevor Quachri, and Emily Hockaday will also participate on an editorial panel. Copies of the official 90th anniversary issue will be given away. The full program for the day can be found here.

City Tech will provide breakfast and lunch, so they ask interested parties to please RSVP (even tentatively) for headcount. RSVP here.

Pixel Scroll 11/12/19 You Don’t Bring Me Vacuum Flowers

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(1) X FACTOR. LAist interviews comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz: “Abstract Expressionism Gave ’80s X-Men Comics Their Superpowers — And This LA Artist Was The Mastermind”

He evolved his style over several issues of Moon Knight, then started putting it into comic book covers. Marvel offered him the chance to be the artist on X-Men — but he turned it down.

“Because, I told them, I want to do some experimentation. I want to just push and see what’s possible. So I don’t want to take Marvel’s flagship characters and drive them into the ditch,” Sienkiewicz said.

But he found a way in sideways. X-Men writer Chris Claremont came to him and asked if he wanted to work on X-Men spinoff New Mutants, and with more free range, he took the assignment as part of his quest to help change the perception of what comics are.

He used abstract expressionism, doing art that was more about the feeling than about being exactly true to reality. He describes his own work as being drawn well enough to look like what it’s supposed to, but that he’s more interested in what the people and the story feel like.

(2) PLAGIARIZED STORY? Pro-paying short story outlet Daily Science Fiction has published a story apparently plagiarized from another online source. Today’s story “No Time For Guilt Now” [Internet Archive link] credited to Abdullahi Lawal, is a copy of Avra Margariti’s “Ephemera”  [Internet Archive link] which ran in The Arcanist earlier this year. (Wayback Machine links to the respective pages are provided in case either original gets taken down.)

Several readers took notice in comments on DSF’s Facebook page. DSF has yet to respond either there or on its own website.

The Arcanist tweeted this reaction:

Update: Daily Science Fiction’s Jonathan Laden subsequently took down the story and posted this statement: “Apologies”.

A reader (and contributor) let us know that today’s story was evidently plagiarized from another story published by another site on the internet.

Please visit the Arcanist to read Ephemera by Avra Margariti.

We are reaching out to both the Arcanist and to Avra Margariti to make amends for our error in accepting this story as original by another writer.

(3) BEST FOOT FORWARD. SYFY Wire assesses “The best shoes in genre movies”. This is the kind of investigative reporting we need more!

Aliens (1986)

Sometimes a movie taps up a brand to design a shoe for a specific outfit and scene, which is how Reebok came to birth the Alien Stomper. A basic model of a basketball shoe provided the foundation for the sneaker that was worn by those operating the yellow Power Loader. A close-up reveals the Reebok logo in a moment of product placement. The sneaker saves Ripley in the climatic airlock sequence; which informed how the shoe was constructed, as designer Tuan Le explains — it needed to slip off with ease. On the 40th anniversary of Aliens, Reebok released a limited run of this iconic model.

(4) ASF IS CENTERPIECE OF SYMPOSIUM. “The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium: An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact” takes place December 12 from 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. at the New York City College of Technology, 285 Jay St., A105, Brooklyn, NY 11201. In addition to participants from academe are Analog veterans Stanley Schmidt, Trevor Quachri, Emily Hockaday and others from sff.

The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium celebrates “An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.” Bringing together SF writers, scholars, and fans, the conversations today will reflect on the past, comment on the present, and contemplate the future of Analog SF. Linked to these discussions is the role of SF in a college of technology that recognizes the importance of the genre through its Science Fiction class and support for the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, an archival holding of over 600-linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and scholarship. Together, we will explore these connections.

(5) UNEXPECTED CONNECTION. [Item by Rob Thornton.] Ursula K. Le Guin is the only science fiction author that is discussed in Harold Bloom’s last book,The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon, which is a collection of essays about significant authors in America. According to Max Rubin, president and publisher of the Library of America, Le Guin and Bloom knew each other. “He “lived and breathed literature”—Library of America remembers Harold Bloom, 1930–2019”.

“Poetry…was always more important to Bloom than prose. Later in life he came to a real appreciation for the poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin and enjoyed a friendship with her via email.”

(6) THE FUTURE IS NOW. BBC’s David Barnett says it’s time to ask, “Are we living in  Blade Runner world?”.

…This may sound far-flung from our own reality, but as the opening credits tell us, the film is set in Los Angeles, November 2019. In that sense, Blade Runner is no longer science fiction. It’s a contemporary thriller. The question is: in the 37 years between Blade Runner’s release and its setting – our present – how close have we come to the future presented in the movie?

…However, beyond particular components, Blade Runner arguably gets something much more fundamental right, which is the world’s socio-political outlook in 2019 – and that isn’t particularly welcome, according to Michi Trota, who is a media critic and the non-fiction editor of the science-fiction periodical, Uncanny Magazine.

“It’s disappointing, to say the least, that what Blade Runner ‘predicted’ accurately is a dystopian landscape shaped by corporate influence and interests, mass industrialisation’s detrimental effect on the environment, the police state, and the whims of the rich and powerful resulting in chaos and violence, suffered by the socially marginalised.”

In the movie the replicants have a fail-safe programmed into them – a lifespan of just four years – to prevent a further revolution. Trota believes there is “something prescient in the replicants’ frustration and rage at their shortened lifespans, resulting from corporate greed and indifference, that’s echoed in the current state of US healthcare and globalised exploitation of workers.” She adds: “I’d have vastly preferred the flying cars instead.”

(7) JOIN SLF. The Speculative Literature Foundation has launched a fundraiser for its operating needs, a reading series, and a major project —  

THE PORTOLAN PROJECT. We’ve set ourselves an ambitious goal for 2020 — to develop the Portolan Project, an open-source creative writing resource — sort of a Khan Academy for fiction.

We’ve begun interviewing masters of the field (including so far George R.R. Martin, Nalo Hopkinson, Kate Elliott), on aspects of craft. We’re building out a free website to host those interviews, along with syllabi, lesson plans, individual lectures and assignments on aspects of craft (plot and structure, language and style, setting and world building, etc.), the writing business, and the writers’ life.

We’re also interviewing emerging writers from across the planet, developing a better understanding of the international speculative fiction landscape, and the challenges and opportunities for writers in both independent and traditional publishing. We have academics helping us build a searchable database of speculative literature, to make it much easier to find stories that are relevant to you and your own work.

SLF Director Mary Anne Mohanraj encourages people to become dues-paying members and to volunteer.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • November 12, 1995 — The rebooted Invaders premiered on Fox.  Directed by Paul Shapiro, it starred Scott Bakula, Elizabeth Peña, DeLane Matthews, Richard Thomas and Terence Knox. Invaders Roy Thinnes very briefly appeared as David Vincent. The two ninety minute episodes were intended as a pilot for a series that never happened. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 12, 1917 — Dahlov Ipcar. Though primarily an artist and you really should go visit her website, she wrote three amazing young adult novels between 1969 and 1978 which are The Warlock of Night, The Queen of Spells and A Dark Horn Blowing. She lived but thirty miles north of here and I was privileged to meet her a few times. Lovely lady! (Died 2017.)
  • Born November 12, 1922 — Kim Hunter. She portrayed the chimpanzee Zira in the Planet of the Apes films For the first three outings. Her first genre role was also her first film role, as Mary Gibson in the early Forties movie The Seventh Victim. She’s June in A Matter of Life and Death, and Amanda Hollins in The Kindred. She has one-offs on Project U.F.O., Night Gallery, Mission Impossible and even appeared on The Evil Touch, an Australian horror anthology series. (Died 2002.)
  • Born November 12, 1929 — Michael Ende. German author best known for The Neverending Story which is far better than the film.  Momo, or the strange story of the time-thieves is a charming if strange novel worth your time.   The rest of his children’s literature has been translated from German into English mostly by small specialist presses down the years. Unlike The Neverending Story and Momo, which I’ve encountered, I’ve not read any of these. (Died 1995.)
  • Born November 12, 1943 — Julie Ege. A Bond Girl On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as Helen, the Scandinavian girl. She also appeared in Hammer ‘s Creatures the World Forgot and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. And in The Mutations which got released under the alternative title of The Freakmaker. She had a role in De Dwaze Lotgevallen Von Sherlock Jones which got dubbed into English as The Crazy Adventures of Sherlock Jones. (Died 2008.)
  • Born November 12, 1943 — Wallace Shawn, 76. Probably best remembered as the Ferengi Grand Nagus Zek on Deep Space Nine, a role he only played seven times. He was also Vizzini in the beloved Princess Bride, and he played Dr. Elliott Coleye in the My Favorite Martian film.
  • Born November 12, 1945 — Michael Bishop, 74. David Pringle included his Who Made Stevie Crye? novel in Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946-1987, high praise indeed. Though slightly dated feeling now, I’m fond of his Urban Nucleus of Atlanta series. And Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas is simply amazing.
  • Born November 12, 1952 — Max Grodénchik, 67. He’s best known for his role as Rom, a recurring character on Deep Space Nine. He has a long genre history with appearances in The Rocketeer, Here Come The Munsters, Rumpelstiltskin, Star Trek: Insurrection (scenes as a Trill were deleted alas), Tales from The Crypt, Sliders, Wienerland, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Bruce Almighty.
  • Born November 12, 1982 — Anne Hathaway, 37. She starred as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment in The Dark Knight trilogy. More impressive she was The White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, and she was Agent 99 in the remake of Get Smart! No, not as good as the original but fun none-the-less.

(10) EUPHEMISMS FOR DOLLARS. The Publishers Lunch news service shared an intriguing bit of intelligence with potential contributors.

The Key

A handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together.

“nice deal”: $1 – $49,000
“very nice deal”: $50,000 – $99,000
“good deal”: $100,000 – $250,000
“significant deal”: $251,000 – $499,000
“major deal”: $500,000 and up

(11) READY FOR TAKEOFF. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum gives you a video ride-along: “Douglas DC-3 Moved to Udvar-Hazy Center”.

One of our collections staff takes you through the process of lowering, disassembling, and transporting large artifacts like the Douglas DC-3. These artifact moves are part of the multi-year renovation project at the National Air and Space Museum in DC to transform the museum from the inside out.

(12) DEALING WITH MOLD. Cnet says the Discovery Season 2 Blu-Ray gives fans an earful: “Star Trek: Discovery exclusive clip shows Vulcan-ear options”.

The clip shows two different Vulcan-ear options for actor James Frain in his role as Spock’s father, Sarek. We also get a look at how Kelpien faces are made.   

The clip comes from Creature Comforts: Season Two, a behind-the-scenes feature that takes fans into the design process behind the characters, from make-up to making molds. It includes a one-on-one discussion with makeup artist James McKinnon and Mary Chieffo (L’Rell).

(13) HEDGEHOG MAKEOVER. The Hollywood Reporter introduces “New ‘Sonic’ Trailer Sees Redesigned Character With Bigger Eyes, Less Teeth”.

The film’s original trailer dropped in April, and led to a deluge of mockery and fan backlash on social media for the way Sonic looked. The reaction was so negative it led to the film’s director Jeff Fowler announcing that his team would rethink Sonic’s design, all of which led to a three-month delay to the release date. 

(14) TRAILER TIME. Pixar In Real Life is a hidden-camera show on Disney+ that watches what happens when people meet live versions of Pixar animated characters on the street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4yQtvf-n3s

(15) AGE, SOCIAL MEDIA, BROKEN FRIENDSHIPS. Laura Lippman confesses she “is bummed by the ways in which friendships end as one gets older” in “The Art of Losing Friends and Alienating People” at Longreads.

…As a friend, I frequently break the first rule of fiction: I’m all tell, no show. I’m not going to remember your kid’s birthday, or even yours, despite Facebook’s helpful nudges. When you’re in a crisis, I won’t know the right questions to ask. I blame my Southern parents for placing so many topics in the forbidden zone. I grew up being told it was rude to discuss age, income, health, feelings. I often think that’s why I became a reporter.

I have a list in my head of all the friends I let down. It’s not long, but it’s longer than I’d like, and it’s probably longer than I know. Most of those friends have forgiven me, but I never lose sight of my failures. It’s like a stain on a busily-patterned rug; once you know where to look, your eye goes there every time. I know where to look. I am aware of my misdeeds. Every friend who has ever called me out on being a bad friend had me dead to rights.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” on Vimeo is a surreal film about a rationalist scientist who discovers religion in a surreal manner.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, JJ, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Edmund Schluessel, Rob Thornton, Andrew, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Review: Terror at the Crossroads – Tales of Horror, Delusion, and the Unknown, edited by Emily Hockaday and Jackie Sherbow

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By Cora Buhlert: As a reader and writer, I like stories that cross genre boundaries. Therefore, the anthology Terror at the Crossroads – Tales of Horror, Delusion, and the Unknown sounded like something right up my alley.

Editors Emily Hockaday and Jackie Sherbow have combed the pages of Dell’s stable of fiction magazines, i.e. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and assembled a wide range of stories that sit at the intersection between mystery and crime fiction on the one hand and science fiction, fantasy and horror on the other. All stories were originally published between 2010 and 2017.

Now I am somewhat familiar with Analog and Asimov’s, though I’m not a regular reader of either magazine due to the difficulties of getting hold of them in Germany. Alfred Hitchcock’s and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, however, were completely unfamiliar to me. I know that they exist, but I have never read a single issue of either mag. That said, I am an avid reader of short mystery fiction, albeit mostly in German. And in Germany, the genre we call “Krimi” is a lot broader than the US mystery genre and encompasses not just mysteries, but also crime fiction, thrillers, suspense and noir. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised that the stories in this anthology that originated in the two mystery magazines were a lot more varied and experimental than the rather narrow definition of “mystery” in the US sense as “a story about an investigator solving a crime, usually a murder” would suggest.

Quite the contrary, traditional whodunnits were definitely in the minority, even among the stories that originated in the two mystery mags. “Monsieur Alice is Absent” by Stephen Ross, in which a young trainee teacher suspects her more experienced colleague may be a serial killer and sets out to prove it, is probably the closest this anthology gets to a traditional murder mystery. Meanwhile, “Exposure” by A.J. Wright might have been a classic whodunnit under different circumstances. After all, there is a murder, linked to another unexplained death decades ago, and there even is a massive red herring. But instead of following the investigator as they solve the case, we view the events through the eyes of a teenager who is connected to both the victim, the murderer and the unexplained death that links them.

Other stories fall under the broader crime fiction umbrella and tell how and why a crime was committed. The best of these is probably “The Widow Cleans House” by Jason Half, which tells the story of failing relationship, where the fact that a crime was committed only becomes clear at the very end. In fact, most of the crime stories in this anthology involve murders committed inside families and relationships. Other examples are “Pisan Zapra” by Josh Pachter, “Alive, Alive-Oh!” by O.A. Tynan and the above mentioned “Exposure” by A.J. Wright. Coincidentally, all of these stories are straight crime fiction without any speculative elements.

There also are a number of supernatural crime stories such as such Zandra Renwick’s “A Good Thing and a Right Thing”, where a psychic at an archaeological dig witnesses a centuries old crime. In Barbara Nadel’s “Nain Rouge”, a man hunts a folkloristic imp across the ruined cityscape of Detroit. The conclusion is truly chilling, in more ways than one. Meanwhile, Kathy Lynn Emerson’s “Lady Appleton and the Creature of the Night” is a delightful murder mystery turned werewolf tale set in Elizabethan England. Kit Reed’s fine story “The Outside Event” starts off as a pointed look at the cutthroat rivalry at an exclusive writing retreat, where the narrator’s fellow writers mysteriously vanish, and then turns into a tale of gothic horror halfway through. And in some stories such as Tara Laskowski’s “The Monitor”, a meditation on the stress and fears of new motherhood and the ambiguous feelings of a woman towards her newborn child, there is no crime at all, just a pervading sense of dread.

As might be assumed from an anthology drawn from such a broad range of sources, the settings of the stories vary widely in time and space from Viking Greenland and Elizabethan England via several contemporary or near contemporary Earth settings to a nameless planet in the far future. Even the contemporary and near future Earth stories don’t all share the same familiar US/UK settings. No, there are also stories set in Canada, Ireland, France, Spain, Greenland, Turkey, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. Though only one story, “Still Life No. 41” by Catalan author Teresa Solana, was originally penned in a language other than English.

It’s also notable that many of the stories set outside the English-speaking world nonetheless feature British or American protagonists. What is more, a few of these stories carry an unpleasant whiff of colonialism. In some cases, this is intentional such as with Josh Pachter’s “Pisan Zapra”, which traces the revenge of an expat woman in Malaysia on her cheating husband. Hereby, Pachter manages to capture a certain type of self-centred western expat in South East Asia, for whom the locals are invisible except as servants or lovers, very well. At any rate, the story immediately reminded me of the time I spent in Singapore as a young girl. And yes, the bored expats holed up in their country clubs are just as unpleasant in real life as they are in this story, though the expat wives I encountered never resorted to murder (and neither did their husbands), but instead came crying to my mother about their wayward husbands.

On the other end of the scale is “The Empty Space” by Kurt Bachard, a story about a trio of selfish English people visiting a Turkey that is pure Orientalist cliché and seemingly populated only by fakirs and dancing girls. If not for a brief mention of air travel, the story might just as well have been set in the days of the Ottoman Empire, though the depiction of Turkey would have been a cliché even then. The protagonists of “The Empty Space” are so unpleasant (and not deliberately as in “Pisan Zapra”) that you do not care when something awful happens to one of them.

In fact, self-absorbed, whiny and downright unpleasant protagonists are a problem with several of the stories. Examples include “The Empty Space” as well as Teresa Solana’s “Still Life No. 41”, whose museum curator protagonist comes across as a spoiled brat who only cares about her career, even in the face of a dead body appearing in the very museum where she is working. “Alive, Alive-Oh!” by O.A. Tynan features a failed writer  as the protagonist, who is not only a stereotypical entitled white man, but who also literally gets away with murder and is subsequently rewarded with an adoring girlfriend and the second bestseller he craves. The story might work, if it were satire, but I fear it isn’t. “Notes Towards a Novel of Love in the Dog Park” by Louis Bayard is another story with an unlikable writer protagonist (in fact, entitled writer and artists are something of a theme in this anthology), who has nothing better to do than stalk a random couple she sees in the park and plot revenge upon them when it turns out that they are not what she wants them to be.

Quite a few of the stories in this anthology use unusual narrative structures and experiments with form. Megan Arkenberg’s “Final Exam” is a clever story which recounts the intertwined stories of a failing marriage and an invasion by shambling Lovecraftian horrors in the form of a multiple-choice test. The amusing “Lonely Hearts of the Spinward Ring” by Paddy Kelly is told in personal ads, while David Brin’s “Crysalis” is a collage of laboratory reports, interview snippets and literary quotes. Meanwhile, Louis Bayard’s “Notes Towards a Novel of Love in the Dog Park” takes the form of a writer’s brainstorming notes. And Kit Reed’s “The Outside Event”, yet another story with a writer protagonist, combines snippets from the writer’s unfinished novel with messages sent to her boyfriend and confessional tapes in the style of certain reality shows to tell a story of gothic horror at an exclusive writing retreat.

But the best of the stories that experiment with form is Will McIntosh’s “Over There”. The premise is that three graduate students of physics conduct an experiment and manage to split reality in two. From the moment of the split on, the story continues in two columns which recount events “over here” and “over there”. Eventually, both strands combine again for the devastating conclusion. “Over There” is not a pleasant story at all and the ending is a true gut punch, but it’s probably the strongest story in this anthology. At any rate, it’s the one that stayed with me the longest.

Another unsettling story that crosses over into horror territory is “The Deer Girl Hitches a Ride” by Seth Frost, a disturbing road trip across a post-apocalyptic America, where the titular deer girl is not the strangest or most terrifying thing the protagonist encounters. Meanwhile, Rachel L. Bowden’s “The Persistence of Memory” follows two outsiders on the cusp of adolescence in a story that feels very reminiscent of Stephen King’s “The Body”. There is a science fictional twist as well – after all, this is an Analog story – but it feels tacked on.

As always with such anthologies, there are some stories that just don’t work. Sadly, most of them are science fiction. One example is “Day 29” by Chris Beckett. The story is chock full of great ideas and fascinating worldbuilding details, but eventually goes nowhere and even wimps out of a dark turn of events that seems to have been set up previously.

Meanwhile, David Brin’s “Chrysalis” is  exactly the sort of story that gives hard science fiction a bad name. It’s basically a biology lecture, complete with cardboard thin characters and jargon-laden “As you know, Bob…” infodumps, in search of a plot. When it finally finds one, the plot is a hoary old “Thou shalt not mess with things man was not meant to know” chestnut that has been with our genre since Frankenstein. Alex Nevala-Lee’s “Cryptids” is better at combining biology and fiction, though in the end the story is still too long and once again turns out to hinge on a very old genre trope indeed, in this case the idea that prehistoric animals have somehow managed to survive in secluded parts of the world.

All in all, this anthology is a mixed bag with some excellent stories, plenty of mediocre ones and a handful of truly bad ones. If you like both science fiction, fantasy and horror as well as mystery and crime fiction and stories that combine those genres, you’re sure to find something to enjoy here.

Cora Buhlert is a teacher, writer, translator, and reviewer living in Bremen, Germany, the city where she was born. She has a Master’s Degree in English, and has taught English linguistics, technical English, and high school English to German students, in addition to performing translations of technical documents. The author of speculative fiction, crime fiction, romance, poetry, and nonfiction, she blogs about her own and others’ works at her website.