I’m spending the day accompanying my mother to an in-office surgery, so this will be Scroll Lite. Cat has run up the birthdays. I hope you’ll add in the comments whatever other links of sff interest deserve to be Scrolled today.

(1) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.  

2006 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Sixteen years this evening on SyFy, the Eureka series premiered. I was fascinated with it from the very first episode and watched it all the way through. Set in the fictional town of Eureka located apparently in Oregon (though it also showed up in California and Washington), the group of mad geniuses at Global Dynamics engage in creating technologies that are, well, science fictional in nature. It did not, to my surprise, get nominated for any Hugos.

SPOILER TIMER. REALLY MAJOR SPOILER! GO AWAY! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! 

I love how it ended with our Sheriff leaving town to take his daughter to University meeting himself on the road first coming to town with her. I wonder if the co-creators of Andrew Cosby who helped found BOOM! Comics and Jaime Paglia, who go on to be the Executive Producer on The Flash series as well a writer there, had that in mind all along? It’s a very cool coda to the series.

MAJOR SPOILER DONE! NOW YOU CAN LOOK BACK. 

I was always impressed with its rather large ensemble cast and how each character managed to developed over time. And stories were allowed their proper time to unfold, no hurrying things there. And the digital effects were stellar too. 

The setting of the small town anchored of course by its cafe where everyone could encounter everyone else in the town was archetypally perfect. And really, really sweet. Pie, anyone?

I’m also please that it was allowed a proper wrap-up, so that like Farscape with The Peacekeeper Wars, we weren’t left wondering how The Story ended. 

There’s been two BOOM! Box series and three novels (Substitution Method, Brain Box Blues and Road Less Travelled). 

It’s streaming oddly enough on Peacock. NBC must have been one of the investors in SciFi as Warehouse 13 is streaming there to.  I believe it’s also free on Amazon Prime and Roku. 

(2) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born July 18, 1913 — Red Skelton. Comedian of the first order. The Red Skelton Hour ran for three hundred and thirty-eight episodes.  I remember Freddie the Freeloader. He’s here because ISFDB says he wrote A Red Skelton in Your Closet which is also called Red Skelton’s Favorite Ghost Stories. He also has cameos in Around the World in Eighty Days and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, both of which I consider at least genre adjacent. (Died 1997.)
• Born July 18, 1938 — Paul Verhoeven, 84. Responsible for Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Hollow Man and Robocop. He’s made films nominated for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation three times (Starship Troopers, Total Recall and Robocop) but has not won it. 
• Born July 18, 1943 — Charles G. Waugh, 79. Anthologist who is amazingly prolific. I count over two hundred anthologies, most done with co-anthologists, and many done with Martin Greenberg. Oft times a third anthologist would be listed, i.e. Poul Anderson for Terrorists of Tomorrrow, or Isaac Asimov for Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series. His latest is Killing London done just a year co-edited with Don Wismer.
• Born July 18, 1980 — Kristen Bell, 42. Veronica Mars. Genre, well not really, but a lot of y’all watch it. A favorite series of Charles de Lint.  She also voiced Jade Wilson in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies which I highly recommend as it’s highly meta.
• Born July 18, 1982 — Priyanka Chopra, 40. As Alex Parrish in Quantico, she became the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Is it genre? Maybe, maybe not, though it could fit very nicely into a Strossian Dark State. Some of her work in her native India such as The Legend of Drona and Love Story 2050 is genre as is Krrish 3, an Indian SF film she was in. She’s got a key role in the Matrix Resurrections film. No, I’m not saying what it is as many of you haven’t seen it yet. 

(3) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Stephen Fry narrates this video by advocates in Britain calling for a four-day work week.

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