24 …And The Pixel May Learn To Scroll

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SARAH LANGAN

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

DAVID LEO RICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

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

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

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

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

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

(10) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple TV+ wants another helping of Sugar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 9/22/24 The Only Living Scroll In New Crobuzon

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SOMETHING HE LEARNED FROM BILBO. Peterson Pipe Notes reminds pipe smokers “Today is Hobbit Day!—Tolkien & Peterson”.

Today (September 22nd) is Hobbit Day, marking the beginning of Tolkien Week 2024. Many observe the day with a birthday cake—in honor of Bilbo and Frodo, whose birthdays are today. I’m thinking just as many celebrate with a tankard of beer from the Prancing Pony (yes, it comes in pints) and as many more with a pipe of good tobacco.

It’s fairly common knowledge that one of the dharma doors to pipe smoking of the past 50 years or so is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was in fact mine, when in my first nine weeks of high school I was marooned at home with mononucleosis. After finishing my day’s academic work—which took about 90 minutes—I’d spend the remainder reading at whim. That reading was drawn mostly from Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which included books by such greats as Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, E. R. Eddison, David Lindsay, George MacDonald, and of course Tolkien. I was so taken with Middle Earth that I knew I needed to learn to smoke a pipe. My dad, a very irregular pipeman at the time, had two Kaywoodies in a drawer in the living room. Armed with one of them and some Cherry Royale (from Ted’s Pipe Shoppe in Tulsa), I took my first steps on the road….

(2) THE BRADBURYS. “On Maggie Bradbury, the woman who ‘changed literature forever.’” at Literary Hub.

Ray Bradbury met his first girlfriend—and his future wife—in a bookstore. But they didn’t lock eyes over the same just-selected novel, or bump into each other in a narrow aisle, sending books and feelings flying. It was a warm afternoon in April 1946, and 25-year-old Ray Bradbury—an up-and-coming pulp fiction writer—was wearing a trench coat and carrying a briefcase while he scanned the shelves at Fowler Brothers Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. Naturally, Marguerite McClure—Maggie—who worked at the bookstore, “was immediately suspicious.” Someone had been stealing books, but hadn’t yet been caught. So she struck up a conversation. “I expected him to slam his briefcase down on a pile of books and make off with a few,” she said. “Instead, he told me he was a writer and invited me to have a cup of coffee with him.”

Coffee became lunch became dinner became romance; Maggie was the first woman Ray had ever dated, but he managed all right, and they were married on September 27, 1947.

“When I got married, all my wife’s friends said, ‘Don’t marry him. He’s going nowhere,’” Bradbury said in his 2000 commencement address at Caltech. “But I said to her, ‘I’m going to the moon, and I’m going to Mars. Do you want to come along?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ She said yes. She took a vow of poverty, and married me. On the day of our wedding, we had $8 in the bank. And I put $5 in an envelope, and handed it to the minister. And he said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘That’s your pay for the ceremony today.’ He said, ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘You’re going to need this.’ And he gave it to me. And I took it back.”…

(3) STAND UP TO AI. SF Standard takes notes as “Comedian John Mulaney roasts SF techies at Dreamforce”.

“Let me get this straight,” John Mulaney said. “You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?”

Everyone inside the auditorium at the Moscone Center groaned. Any notion that the award-winning comedian would play the corporate gig safe (and clean) were thrown out the window Thursday, when Mulaney, closing the Dreamforce festivities, started roasting his host, Salesforce, and the audience sitting right in front of him…

… The comedian rounded out his Dreamforce appearance by thanking attendees “for the world you’re creating for my son … where he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot.”…

(4) AMAZING AND FANTASTIC SIXTIES REVIVAL. In “Fantastic Fiction: The Amazing and Fantastic Cele Goldsmith” at Seattle Worldcon 2025, Cora Buhlert introduces us to a historic prozine editor.

By the 1950s, the once venerable Amazing Stories, the oldest science fiction magazine, and its sister magazine Fantastic were deep in the doldrums. Both magazines were bottom-tier markets, publishing formulaic stories by the same handful of authors under various pen names.

All this changed in 1955, when a young Vassar graduate named Cele Goldsmith arrived at Ziff-Davis Publishing to work as an assistant to Howard Browne, the editor of Amazing and Fantastic, and his successor Paul Fairman. When Fairman left in 1958, Cele Goldsmith found herself editor of two ailing SFF magazines at the age of only 25….

(5) THEME PARK TURNAROUND. [Item by David Doering.] Here’s the latest on the resurrection of Evermore. “Name revealed for new fantasy-themed venue at former Evermore Park property” reports ABC4.com.

As new owners have taken over the former home of Evermore Park, they’ve been hatching excitement through an interactive experience that slowly unveils information about the future of the venue. In the latest reveal, the owners announced what the new venue’s name will be — “The Realm Town.”

Michelle and Travis Fox, bought the 13-acre property from Brandon Fugal earlier this year after the owners of Evermore Park shut its gates in April. Since then, the Foxes launched the “Hatch the Egg” initiative, where participants complete quests through an app, much like Pokémon Go. As players solve clues, details for the future plans of the park are revealed as its undergoing renovations. Players also join in on the opportunity to win prizes and join in on special in-person events….

(6) TOUCHPOINT WILL CLOSE. A press has made an agreement with the Authors Guild to address complaints that drew the attention of Writer Beware: “Authors Blast TouchPoint Press for Unethical Business Practices” at Publishers Weekly.

After hearing from dozens of authors about the poor business practices of TouchPoint Press, the Authors Guild said Friday that it has reached a deal with TouchPoint founder Sheri Williams, under which Williams agreed to pay authors overdue royalties and revert rights back to any author who has not yet received them. In addition, according to Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger, Williams has agreed to close the press, which bills itself as a “traditional royalty-paying publisher” of adult and children’s books.

Rasenberger said that, over the last two years, 35 to 40 authors have contacted the Guild with concerns about TouchPoint’s failure to fulfill its contractual obligations and that, as of last week, there were 26 open cases. Problems about TouchPoint had also been raised by Writer Beware, whose Victoria Strauss who says she started receiving “a handful of complaints” as far back as 2015….

(7) TRANSCENDENCE: BAH, HUMBUG. Mark Roth-Whitworth found a lot to challenge in Isaac Arthur’s video about “Transcendence”. He shared his criticisms at his blog in “Transcendence, and a response”, including this one:

…Then let’s consider very advanced aliens. Remember, I mentioned how close technologically to us they needed to be? Suppose they were so advanced that they glanced at us, thought “seen that before thousands of times, ignore them till they reach the point where they have something to say beyond our equivalent of “run, Spot, run”. Maybe they have whatever they’re perceiving in their transcendence that’s far more interesting or important than primitives like us? Why should we matter, if they’re that advanced? If they have nothing we need, like the remote tribes in the Amazon who are being attacked by illegal loggers, miners, and farmer, why would they pay attention to us?

Then there’s the idea of transcending the universe. What evidence do we have that there is a beyond this one? Perhaps some immensely advanced beings might want to skip the Big Crunch as the universe is recreated in a new Big Bang….

(8) CROSS-GENRE NOIR. “Spooky Sleuthing: 5 Noir and Detective Films That Feature the Supernatural” at CrimeReads.

… As the days grow shorter and we head into spooky season—the Halloween decorations are on sale at Costco, in any case—it’s a good time for fans of detective and noir fiction to consider supplementing their viewing list with a few movies that combine the best parts of their favorite genre with the weird and occult. Here are some recommendations:…

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): How did Quentin Tarantino end up scripting a vampire movie that’s like nothing else in his extensive filmography? Legend has it that special makeup effects Robert Kurtzman needed a horror script for his up-and-coming effects studio, KNB EFX Group, and paid a young Tarantino $1,500 plus the makeup effects (re: buckets of blood) for the latter’s “Reservoir Dogs.” But Kurtzman couldn’t find a studio willing to fund the film with him as the director, and eventually Tarantino, his fame on the rise, guided the script into the hands of his buddy Robert Rodriguez….

(9) A PEEK INTO NEW WORLDS AT 60. “Michael Moorcock is Back: New Worlds 60th Anniversary Issue Global Exclusive Video”. Information about ordering a copy is at the link.

Steve Andrews previews the 60th Anniversary issue of New Worlds magazine, celebrating MM taking on its editorship in 1964 and with a cast of groundbreaking contributors, changing SF and Literary Fiction for the better, forever. At the time of posting this video, not even Moorcock himself has seen a finished copy, but you see one here!

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born September 22, 1971 — Elizabeth Bear, 53.

By Paul Weimer: I knew Elizabeth Bear before she broke big in genre. That’s not a boast, per se, that’s an observation that she was part of the small and intense community of people who were involved in the fandom of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, based on the work of Roger Zelazny. Bear attended many of the same small cons as I did revolving around the game. (Other authors in the “Secret Amber Cabal” (as named by Scott Lynch) include people like Genevieve Cogman, Jane Lindskold, and I guess, myself.)

But back to Bear. Her ambitions and efforts to be a writer were something I was both aware and interested in, from the very beginnings of her career. I loved her novel trilogy debut that started with Hammered. I was delighted and not surprised when her Whiskey and Water series eventually brought a Marlowe as a character on the screen. Her ability to write fantasy and science fiction in equal measure has always enchanted me. The Eternal Sky fantasy novel series. Carnival, which was once the “if you must read one Bear novel, read this one) book (nowadays, that might be Machine or Ancestral Night).

Bear’s novels are accompanied by a strong short fiction oeuvre as well, although I think she works better for me as a writer at the longer lengths. Although I admit her Hugo awards (one for short story and one for novelette) might make me less than completely accurate in that regard. But I think the longer lengths, especially in hitting the marks in completing series (such as recently, the Origin of Storms, which completed the Lotus Kingdoms books VERY fantastically) proves that she works the long form best.

Bear is also one of the leaders of one of my local cons, 4th Street Fantasy, and so helps foster the genre conversation for her fellow readers, writers and fans.

And she is a very good friend. Happy birthday Bear!

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! has a credential-caused delay.
Frank and Ernest have lined up the top talent.
The Argyle Sweater features obscure equipment from Sesame Street.
Tom Gauld wonders who will break the bad news to them.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/85h5MsMbGO
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 15, 2024

(12) MAD ABOUT YOU. CBS News’ Sunday Morning show visited the exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum: “How Mad Magazine’s humor created a revolution”.

Nestled the rolling hills of rural Massachusetts. swathed by manicured grounds, sits the Norman Rockwell Museum. And there, side-by-side with the wholesome works of America’s most beloved illustrator, is the world’s dumbest cover boy: Alfred E. Neuman.

“It’s sacrilegious! It’s an outrage!” laughed political cartoonist Steve Brodner. “But I do think if Norman Rockwell were here, he’d laugh his head off. He’d think this was fantastic.”

(13) LOST COMPLETELY. “10 best episodes of ‘Lost’ ranked for 20th anniversary” by Entertainment Weekly. If you watched the series, maybe you have an opinion, too.

It’s been 20 years since Oceanic flight 815 crash landed on a mysterious island, and TV has never been the same. Cue the blurry title card, because it’s time to celebrate two decades of Lost.

When the ABC drama premiered Sept. 22, 2004, it introduced a large ensemble of compelling characters and intriguing mysteries portrayed cinematically in ways that had never been attempted before on TV. And as the series continued for six seasons, it raised more questions than it answered as the mythology got more and more complex — flashbacks became flash forwards and then flash sideways, and don’t even get us started on the frozen donkey wheel. Debates still rage amongst fans about whether the castaways were dead the whole time, what was up with those cursed numbers, and what the island really was….

4. “Pilot” (season 1, episode 1-2)

From the very first moment Jack opened an eye in the middle of a mysterious jungle up to the final seconds with Charlie’s iconic and chilling delivery of, “Guys, where are we?,” Lost debuted a pitch-perfect TV pilot. Introducing an ensemble this large and a mystery this complex in only two episodes of broadcast TV should have been impossible. But J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof hooked viewers immediately — and ultimately changed the TV landscape forever. The Emmy-winning episode featured juicy, head-scratching twists (An unseen, but definitely heard, violent monster! A polar bear in the tropical jungle! A French distress call looped for 16 years!) and continued to raise the intense stakes as the survivors learned help may not be coming at all … because they crashed over 1,000 miles off-course, so any rescue attempt would be looking in the wrong place. The flashbacks also subverted expectations as viewers learned the castaways aren’t who they first appeared to be with the reveal that it was actually leading lady Kate who was the handcuffed prisoner onboard the flight. Like the survivors, we truly had no idea what was in store from the rest of the series after these two episodes, but the premiere instantly made it clear that this was no ordinary sci-fi/fantasy thriller.

(14) THE LITTLE DUCK. Beware! This Disneyland Paris commercial from 2018 may wring your heartstrings! (Or put a crimp in your gizzard – I know about some of you….)

(15) GET READY FOR WEDNESDAY. “’Wednesday’ Season 2 Trailer, Release Date on Netflix, Jenna Ortega” – TVLine has the rundown.

… Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays Wednesday’s mother Morticia Addams, promises that “Season 2 is going to be bigger and more twisted than you can ever imagine.” And don’t feel bad that you only get to see bits and pieces: “If we showed you any more, your eyes would bleed,” Ortega warns in a perfect Wednesday deadpan. “And I’m not that generous.”…

(16) PORTRAIT OF JENNIE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen this romantic fantasy, beginning when I was a kid, and watched it on Channel 11 in NY—and called the station, begging them to show all the film, including the final segments which were tinted, and a scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Technicolor.

That final scene included, uncredited, Nancy Davis, Anne Francis, and Nancy Olson, as teenagers! “Portrait of Jennie (1948) Filming Locations”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 8/7/24 With A Purposeful Pixel And A Terrible Scroll He Pulls The Spitting Godstalk Down

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CRANKY DRAGON AWARD FINALIST. It’s not the Dragon Awards that Tom Kratman is upset with — in contrast to those who are miffed because they dropped Cedar Sanderson. Kratman welcomes his book’s appearance on the ballot because it lets him count coup on Publishers Weekly which gave it a bad review.

That Publisher Weekly’s review concluded:

….A deeply conservative ideology runs throughout, often given voice through Sean’s observations about the differences between past and present: “The Democratic Party of my time,” he tells a 1960s Democrat, “is a wholly owned subsidiary of a new class of amazingly rich, denationalized and globalist plutocrats.” He follows this up with digs at LGBTQ rights and the sexual revolution (arguing it actually “reduced women’s choices”), and Kratman does nothing to differentiate the views of his character from the philosophy of the book itself. While the author’s flair for fight scenes is undeniable, there’s little else to recommend this.

(2) BOOKMARK THIS. The Photography Team at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow is posting “Worldcon Photos” to Flickr. Obviously, there will be more when the convention really starts on August 8.

(3) BRISBANE IN 28 UPDATE. Today Random Jones, chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid, sent a progress report subscribers:

The bid for Worldcon in Brisbane began in 2020, with the intention to bid for the 2025 Worldcon. However the pressures of dealing with a world with Covid and the massive changes that resulted from those years caused the committee to realise that 2025 was not feasible, and the bid was retargeted towards 2028.

Earlier this year the committee determined it was time to pass the baton on to a new and reinvigorated committee, and from this we are now a few days out from the start of Worldcon Glasgow 2024 full of energy and the desire to get the job done.

My name is Random Jones and I am the chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid committee. I am the head of a small but dedicated bunch of fans who are intending to make our Worldcon the best that not only Brisbane has to offer, but the whole of Australia and the South Pacific region.

Over the next 2 years until the site selection vote, we want to make sure people truly believe that we are a fantastic option to hold Worldcon, and that we have the both the dreams and the ability to make it happen.

Glasgow Worldcon: Brisbane in 28 will be present at Glasgow Worldcon, 8 to 12 August, 2024. We will be running a table in the fan-tables section plus holding a party on the Thursday night. Come along and get a badge ribbon, learn what a Tim Tam Slam is, and possibly discover the truth about drop bears. There may also be fairy bread, but we can’t make any guarantees at this stage.

We will also be present at the Future Worldcons Q&A session which will be held on Friday August 9 at 13:00 BST in the Carron room. Vix will be there as our representative, and will be doing a small presentation and answering any questions people have.

(4) CHENGDU DELEGATION AT GLASGOW WORLDCON. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] On Tuesday 6th July, Hugo winner RiverFlow posted on Weibo a list of Chinese people who were known to be attending the Glasgow Worldcon in person.

Amongst the list of Hugo finalists and fans – some of whom wrote reports from last year’s Worldcon that were mentioned in Pixel Scrolls in late 2023 and early 2024 – there is a line item about a mysterious “Chengdu delegation”, with the parenthesized caveat that River doesn’t know who might be part of this delegation.

Whilst this could be a delegation representing the Chengdu Worldcon, this is perhaps unlikely for a variety of reasons. A perhaps more plausible answer is that it relates the retooled Tianwen Program which in its recent press announcement, explicitly mentioned the involvement of people from Chengdu local government. Other possibilities might be promotion for the Chengdu SF Museum, or parties interested in the ASFiC/EASFiC proposal (item E.12 on the Business Meeting agenda).

This delegation item doesn’t seem to refer to representation of Chengdu-based science fiction publishers such as Science Fiction World or Eight Light Minutes Culture, as staff from those organizations are listed in separate items in River’s post.

As an aside, it is unclear if the Panda Study trip covered in posts earlier this year is still going ahead. There was a Chinese-language update in late March (which didn’t get written up for File 770), which has a schedule indicating that the group would have arrived in London on Tuesday 6th, before heading to Glasgow on the 9th. That piece also states that the trip would involve a previous Hugo winner and/or one of the “Four Kings” of Chinese SF, saying that more details would be released 3 months in advance. The apparent lack of any such details becoming public may well indicate that the trip has been cancelled. No-one I’ve spoken to about it is aware of any updates since that one in late March.

(5) EVERMORE OVERHAUL COMING. [Item by Dave Doering.] Great news on Utah’s answer to Disneyland. Evermore revived! “Evermore’s new owners to reveal hints about opening with interactive clues, cash prizes” at KSL.com.

Evermore Park is soon to be nevermore. Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal announced the private sale of the now-defunct fantasy adventure theme park Monday.

“I am thrilled to see the venue transition into its next chapter, now in progress,” Fugal said. “The new owners have an extraordinary vision.”

Evermore had struggled for years with its operating model, pandemic setbacks and financial woes until ultimately defaulting and being evicted from the property owned by Fugal.

New owners Travis Fox and Michelle Fox want Utahns to get excited about plans for the park through their community “Hatch The Egg” tournament. Anyone 18 or older can sign up, whether as individuals or families, to receive clues and compete for a chance to win cash prizes.

Details about the park’s new direction and opening will be revealed over the course of several months via tournament clues. The tournament’s grand prize of $20,000 and the grand reopening date will be announced Nov. 21…

(6) GALAXY MAGAZINE RETURNS WITH ISSUE 263. Galaxy Science Fiction magazine is back. Originally running from 1950 to 1980, Starship Sloane Publishing has revived the classic magazine for a contemporary audience, featuring both authors from its original run and beyond into today’s global SF landscape, with works spanning seven countries.

With fiction, essays, poetry and art by: Eugen Bacon, F. J. Bergmann, Eliane Boey, Ronan Cahill, A J Dalton, Bob Eggleton, Zdravka Evtimova, David Gerrold, Richard Grieco, Rodney Matthews, Bruce Pennington, Daniel Pomarède, Gareth L. Powell, Christopher Ruocchio, Paulo Sayeg, Robert Silverberg, Nigel Suckling, & Dave Vescio

Cover art by Bruce Pennington.

Galaxy #263 will be available in digest paperback and as a free PDF download at Galaxy SF.

(7) FAN IS NOW VEEP CANDIDATE. Nicholas Whyte notes that Politico lists Tim Walz’s status as an sf fan as one of his defining characteristics. The link goes to a January 2019 Twin Cities.com / Pioneer Press headline: “Minnesota, meet your new governor: teacher, coach, soldier, sci-fi fan — and eternal optimist”.

From POLITICO’s 55 facts about Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz:https://t.co/Omby24d2d9 pic.twitter.com/ldJYWMGupe
— ???????????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????? ???????? (@nwbrux) August 7, 2024

(8) OUT OF THE STARTING GATE. Michael Capobianco finishes his overview of the first year of SFWA in “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 2)” at the SFWA Blog.

… Damon Knight was now president of SFWA, Editor/Writer/Publisher of the Bulletin, and chair of a one-person Contracts Committee/Griefcom. It was at about this point that SFWA was becoming unmanageable for one person. Enter Lloyd Biggle, Jr., the newly elected Secretary-Treasurer. Biggle struck Knight as someone who was “sucker enough to take that job (Secretary-Treasurer) and do it conscientiously,” which was apparently an extremely accurate assessment.

Knight recalled in Bulletin #54, “Lloyd not only served two terms as Secretary-Treasurer and did dozens of other jobs for the organization, he set up the trustee system and served on it for years, while I got out after two terms and lay in a hammock. Furthermore, it was Biggle who proposed the annual SFWA anthology as a means of making money for the organization. And from that came the idea of the annual awards and the trophies and the banquets and this whole apparatus. Of course, it had crossed my mind that we might do something like that eventually, but in the beginning, we were too poor. It was our share of the royalties that made it possible.”…

(9) WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. Steve Stred wants people to know how he was treated by DarkLit Press: “Speaking Up: My DarkLit Experience”.

I’m just seeing that it looks as though DarkLit Press is pulling all the books & closing up shop. It doesn’t surprise me with the number of authors who pulled their books – myself included – and I very well might’ve been the first one whose book had been published (a few pulled them when the new crew took over before publication) and out in the wider world, when the rights were requested to be returned.

But, behind the scenes I’ve already seen screenshots labelling me as the ‘trouble maker,’ and the reason this is happening. Which, if you know me and have even a passing idea of what’s gone on behind the scenes, you’ll know that is furthest from the truth. I try really hard to support everyone, cheer everyone on, and have helped with the Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant (how I miss that!) and trying to get the Canadian Horror Writers Association up and running….

These are just two of many incidents Stred lists:

– DarkLit had been known to post sales/preorder numbers. So and so has hit 1000 preorders! So and so has sold 2000 copies etc etc. From when my book went up for preorder, I asked monthly either through DM or emails for updates on the preorder numbers. As of writing this – on August 6th, 2024 – I’ve never been shown a single report, nor given any numbers.

– During the weekend before launch, I had a number of DarkLit authors reach out asking how my experience had been, and I was forthcoming. They shared lack of royalty payments, having to chase down being paid for royalties or even receiving a report, and this was both prior to and after the leadership/ownership take over….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

August 7, 1960 — Melissa Scott, 64.

By Lis Carey: Melissa Scott was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1960, and grew up there. She discovered science fiction when she broke her arm in gym class, and was sent to the school library until it healed. The librarian offered her a science fiction book and suggested she try it. She was hooked, and proceeded to exhaust the resources of every library she had access to.

Melissa Scott at Bucconeer in 1998. Photo by Dbrukman

Following in her father’s footsteps, Melissa attended Harvard College, in Cambridge, MA, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history, and helped produce a college-sanctioned science fiction magazine, which led to the formation of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. From there, she enrolled in the graduate history program at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. (Both Cambridge and Waltham are within the metropolitan area generally referred to as “Boston,” by those from more distant parts who might find Boston’s actual boundaries a surprise.) While at Brandeis, she earned her PhD in comparative history, and sold her first novel, The Game Beyond.

The other thing Melissa did in Greater Boston was meet her partner, Lisa A. Barnett. They settled in Portsmouth, NH, and were together for 27 years, until Lisa’s death from breast and brain cancer, in May 2006.

Melissa has written two dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as short stories. Three of those novels, the fantasy novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, and the alternate history fantasy novel, The Armor of Light, were co-written with Lisa. Can I just express here how much I enjoyed the Points novels, and truly treasure The Armor of Light?

Some of my other favorite books of Melissa’s are the Silence Leigh trilogy (Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth), Dreamships, and Trouble and Her Friends.

Melissa’s books typically feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters, but their sexuality is rarely the point of the story. The characters’ sexuality is just a feature of the characters, and the cultures they live in. When she started publishing, this was new and exciting—at least for me. The one exception to the characters’ sexuality being just part of the characters and not the point of the story is Shadow Man, where a drug used to survive interstellar travel causes an increase in intersex births. This leads the culture recognize and accept five body types—except on the relatively isolated planet of Hara, where they recognize only two, male and female.

Trouble and Her Friends, Point of Dreams, and Death by Silver won Lambda Literary Awards for gay/lesbian science Fiction. Melissa also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986.

After Lisa’s death, Melissa moved to North Carolina, near where her mother grew up. She has continued to write fantasy and science fiction, including more Points novels, more original science fiction, and both Star Trek and Stargate: Atlantis tie-in novels, as well as collaborations with other authors.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur introduces another unwanted superhero.
Off the Mark illustrates horror reading.
Bizarro eavesdrops on a frustrated prince.
Carpe Diem finds a different evolutionary path still has a familiar problem.
Loose Parts visits alternate history.

(12) MEDICAL UPDATE. “Daisy Ridley Reveals She’s Been Diagnosed with Graves’ Disease: ‘I Didn’t Realize How Bad I Felt’” at Yahoo!

Daisy Ridley is opening up about her health, revealing in a new interview that she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in September 2023.

The actress, 32, discussed her experience with the autoimmune disorder in the cover story for the September/October issue of Women’s Health, which dropped on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

“It’s the first time I’ve shared that [Graves’],” said Ridley, who had previously shared her struggle with endometriosis and polycystic ovaries.

Graves’ disease is an immune system condition that affects the thyroid gland, according to Mayo Clinic. It causes the body to make too much thyroid hormone….

(13) TERF BATTLE. The New York Times finds “A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened.”

There are more than 3,600 shows in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most will struggle to get even a single newspaper review. Yet for months before the festival opened on Friday, one play was the subject of intense global media attention: “TERF,” an 80-minute drama about J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, and her views on transgender women.

Before anybody had even read the script, a Scottish newspaper called the play, which imagines Rowling debating her views with the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies, a “foul-mouthed” attack on the author. An article in The Daily Telegraph said that “scores of actresses” had turned down the opportunity to play Rowling. And The Daily Mail, a tabloid, reported that the production had encountered trouble securing a venue.

On social media and women’s web forums, too, “TERF” stirred outraged discussion.

The uproar raised the specter of pro-Rowling protesters outside the show and prompted debate in Edinburgh, the city that Rowling has called home for more than 30 years. But when “TERF” opened last week, it barely provoked a whimper. The only disturbance to a performance on Monday in the ballroom of Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms came from a group of latecomers using a cellphone flashlight to find their seats. About 55 theatergoers watched the play in silence from the front few rows of the 350-seat capacity venue….

… But the muted response to the show itself suggests that fewer British people are riled by the debate than the media coverage implies — or at least that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, outrage can quickly vanish.

The play’s title, “TERF” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist — is a pejorative label that Rowling’s critics have applied to her for years. Rowling has gotten into heated debates about gender issues on social media, and she published an essay in 2020 accusing transgender activists of “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.” Critics have accused her of being transphobic or anti-trans, which she has denied. Through a spokesman, she declined to comment for this article….

(14) CRUSHING LAWSUIT. “Crew of Titan sub knew they were going to die before implosion, according to more than $50M lawsuit” – AP News has the story.

The family of a French explorer who died in a submersible implosion has filed a more than $50 million lawsuit, saying the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the sub’s operator of gross negligence.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded during a voyage to the famed Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip aboard the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a company in Washington state that has since suspended operations.

Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit. He was regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable people about the famous wreck. Attorneys for his estate said in an emailed statement that the “doomed submersible” had a “troubled history,” and that OceanGate failed to disclose key facts about the vessel and its durability….

…The lawsuit goes on to say: “The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”…

(15) THIS HOAX IS UNUSUAL FOR BEING FONDLY REMEMBERED. “A giant sea monster shows up on Nantucket 87 years after an elaborate hoax” – NPR attends the celebration.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Eighty-seven years ago, a local artist perpetrated a spectacular prank on the residents of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island. The artist, Tony Sarg, was big in his day. Edgar B. Herwick III of member station GBH was on Nantucket yesterday for a re-creation of the monstrous hoax.

EDGAR B HERWICK III, BYLINE: In the summer of 1937, artist, entrepreneur and notorious prankster Tony Sarg took his penchant for high jinks to grand new heights with a long con of sorts that began weeks before the main event.

DARIN JOHNSON: He met up with two of his fisherman friends who he coaxed into going to the newspaper and telling the newspaper that there was a sea monster spotted out in the water.

HERWICK: That’s Darin Johnson, CEO of the American Theater for Puppetry Arts and Sarg scholar. Later, these so-called firsthand accounts were augmented in the press with photos of enormous reptilian footprints on a South Shore beach, whipping the townsfolk into a frenzy.

JOHNSON: And then, on August 19, they blew up this giant balloon and floated it out in the water, and it became this huge national media sensation.

HERWICK: And it was a monster balloon – a 125-foot green monster named Morton. Parade balloons may be Sarg’s greatest legacy. After all, he designed the very first ones for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1927. But he’s also considered by some the father of modern American puppetry….

HERWICK: It’s that all-too-forgotten legacy that inspired the historical association to dub this the Summer of Sarg on the island. And yesterday was its centerpiece, Sarg Community Day….

(16) RECOMMENDED. [Item by Ed Fortune] Here is the trailer for Emily Carding’s award-winning show: Quintessence, coming to Hall 2, Sunday, August 11, 2024, at the Glasgow Worldcon. “Quintessence by Emily Carding”.

A combination of cataclysmic events results in the extinction of the human race, leaving behind an AI being programmed to recreate humanity when the time is right, with the complete works of Shakespeare as a guide to the human spirit. Humanity must thrive… but at what cost? This original sci-fi storytelling show was inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and will leave you wondering who the real monster is. Originally created in collaboration with the London Science Museum, written and performed by award-winning actor Emily Carding (Richard III (A One-Woman show)).

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, Lis Carey, Daniel Dern, Dave Doering, Ed Fortune, Random Jones, 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 Dann.]

Pixel Scroll 4/10/24 Floppy Discworld

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW 2024 TOWN HALL. Register at the link for Glasgow 2024’s “Town Hall Event: Hugo, Lodestar and Astounding Awards” happening Saturday, April 20 at 7:00 p.m. BST.

This event will be a Town Hall with key members of the Hugo Admin and WSFS team from Glasgow 2024 who will be discussing the Glasgow 2024 awards process and timeline.

The event will be moderated taking questions in advance. If you wish to submit a question for consideration please do so below. There may not be enough time to cover all questions.

The registration for event is free and will be also be live streamed on our youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@Glasgow2024

(2) IT’S OVER AT EVERMORE. [Item by Dave Doering.] KSL.com reports the final closing of our Disney-esque Evermore Park fantasy land in Utah. Sadly, Covid has claimed yet another victim. “Utah immersive fantasy park Evermore shutting down; property owner promises a ‘new attraction’”. I might hope that Brandon Sanderson would step up with another $35M campaign to create a Brand-a-land there…

Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove will not be forevermore.

Officials confirmed Tuesday the fantasy theme park is shutting down, citing challenges with its operating model and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as reasons for its closure.

Evermore Park was a year-round fantasy adventure experience where guests accomplished adventures or quests in a medieval and Victorian-inspired village.

Brandon Fugal, the property owner of the 12.75 acres Evermore Park is located on, said the tenants who run the “experiential-themed attraction” have closed the park’s doors permanently. Fugal owns Evermore Park Investments LLC, which owns the real estate and 27 “old-world” structures that comprise the park.

“That said, the real estate where Evermore Park was located is being repositioned to unveil a new attraction and project that is going to be announced,” Fugal said….

…”They have defaulted and have been evicted from the property,” Fugal said of the park’s operators. “In the wake of these challenges, I am confidentially working with a new enterprise that will be unveiling exciting new plans.”…

(3) JON SNOW BACK ON ICE. ScreenRant has learned from actor Kit Harington that the “Game Of Thrones Jon Snow Spinoff Series No Longer In Development At HBO”.

The Jon Snow spinoff of Game of Thrones is no longer in active development at HBO. Though the main series ended in 2019, the fantasy franchise is continuing with multiple prequel series based on the works of George R.R. Martin, including House of the Dragon and the upcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. It was first reported in 2022 that a Jon Snow spinoff series, which would act as a sequel to Game of Thrones following Kit Harington’s character, was in development.

Now, during an exclusive interview with Screen Rant promoting Blood for Dust, Harington confirmed that the Jon Snow spinoff series is no longer in development. The actor says the project was previously in the developmental stage, but “currently, it’s not” and “it’s off the table” because they “couldn’t find the right story to tell.” Though it’s no longer in active development, Harington hopes they can revisit the project sometime in the future.

(4) GARETH POWELL Q&A. CanvasRebel magazine invites readers to “Meet Gareth Powell”.

Gareth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

As far back as I can remember, I have wanted to be a storyteller. I studied creative writing at University and was fortunate to count Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore as early mentors. I always wrote, but real life and its accompanying financial pressures stopped me from pursuing writing as a career until the turn of the millennium, when I realised I was turning thirty and entering a whole new century. If I was ever going to give it a go, now was the time.

Once I’d made that decision, it took ten years until my first novel saw publication. Since then, I’ve written another eleven published novels, three short story collections, three novellas, and a non-fiction guide to life as an author.

Writing takes a lot of hard work and it helps if you’ve amassed a lot of experience that you can draw on to make your work authentic. I guess sometimes you have to put a few miles on the clock before you can write about the journey….

(5) SAMANTHA MILLS ONLINE EVENT. Space Cowboy Books will host an “Online Reading and Interview with Samantha Mills” on Tuesday, April 30 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Free registration at Eventbrite. Get your copy of the book here.

A loyal warrior in a crisis of faith must fight to regain her place and begin her life again while questioning the events of her past. This gripping science-fantasy novel from a Nebula and Locus Award-winning debut author is a complex, action-packed exploration of the costs of zealous faith, brutal war, and unquestioning loyalty.

Five gods lie mysteriously sleeping above the city of Radezhda. Five gods who once bestowed great technologies and wisdom, each inspiring the devotion of their own sect. When the gods turned away from humanity, their followers built towers to the heavens to find out why. But when no answer was given, the collective grief of the sects turned to desperation, and eventually to war.

Zenya was a teenager when she ran away from home to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people and city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Zenya became Winged Zemolai.

But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is cast out, and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai fights for her life, she begins to understand the true nature of her sect, her leader, and the gods themselves.

(6) PETER HIGGS (1929-2024). Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the mass of subatomic particles, died April 8 at the age of 94. The Wikipedia explains the background of his prediction of the existence of a new particle which came to be called the Higgs boson, It was finally detected in 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The discovery of the Higgs boson prompted Stephen Hawking to note that he thought that Higgs should receive the Nobel Prize in Physics which he did, shared with François Englert in 2013.

And that’s the background to this gag, which Higgs played along with:

A little nod to Peter Higgs, to mark his passing. I interviewed him at Cheltenham Science Festival a few years ago, and asked him to sign this silly note, which he was delighted to do! There are only two of these in existence (a certain other Irish comic has the other). RIP. pic.twitter.com/vgI6yx50FN
— Dara Ó Briain (@daraobriain) April 9, 2024

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born April 10, 1957 — John M Ford. (Died 2006.) Paul Weimer wrote our Birthday this time. (Cat Eldridge says, “I bribed him with chocolate.”)

John M Ford has, sadly after his passing, become one of my heart writers. Years ago I came across one of my favorite novels, period, The Dragon Waiting. Possibly one of the best alternate history novels ever written, and simultaneously introduced me to a new point of view on Richard III.

It was not until I started going to 4th Street Fantasy con, of which he is practically a patron saint, that I really have grasped just how wide and broad his work really is. Space Opera? Early Cyberpunk? Urban Fantasy? The writer who Ford reminds me of, today, is Walter Jon Williams: a ferocious and restless talent. Ford’s last and incomplete novel, Aspects, a steampunk-esque fantasy novel, only cements that sentiment.

Ford’s work is not for everyone. It is work that not only rewards close attention, it demands it in order to enjoy it. In that way think if we wanted to reconstruct Ford, in addition to Walter Jon Williams, we’d add a lot of Gene Wolfe as well.

Finally, Ford’s writing and style has more than a touch of the mythic and definitely the poetic. There is joy in reading his work line by line, be its setting or sharp dialogue. So to complete this reconstructIon, add a helping of Roger Zelazny as well.

Given my love of these three, now you see why Ford is one of my favorites. And taken from us all too soon.

John M. Ford portrait, January 2000. By David Dyer-Bennet. CC BY-SA 2.5

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a Berlitzkrieg – a bilingual pun. You’ll all get it – and you won’t be allowed to give it back!
Bliss brings us the latest in alien pop culture.

(9) NEW BRUST. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Lyorn — Steven Brust’s 17th Vlad Taltos novel — is out! (I’ve just placed a library reserve) Published by Macmillan.

As I recall, Brust’s series can be read in any order, the most common choices between chron-published, or book-chron. So if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading any or all of the prior 16, you can start here and then backfill based on availability. Or alphabetical order, or by word count, up to you.

(10) CASH OFFENDS NO ONE. Good news for Chinese fans of these games: “Blizzard and NetEase Settle Their Beef, Returning Warcraft to China” at the New York Times. The companies involved found the right price.

The Chinese company NetEase said on Wednesday that it had struck a deal to distribute titles from Microsoft’s Blizzard Entertainment, restoring access to popular video games like World of Warcraft for Chinese gamers.

More than a year ago, NetEase and Blizzard called an end to their long-running partnership when renewal talks turned testy, with both sides accusing each other of bad-faith negotiations. An uproar ensued among Chinese gamers, upset about losing access to a slew of popular titles from Blizzard’s parent company, the U.S. game developer Activision Blizzard.

NetEase said on Wednesday that it had reached the new deal with Microsoft, which acquired Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal in October. The two companies said they had also agreed to distribute NetEase titles on Microsoft’s Xbox game device….

(11) FLAME ON. Variety admires the “’Borderlands’ Trailer at CinemaCon: Cate Blanchett With a Flamethrower”.

Even Eli Roth can’t believe that two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett was willing to learn to twirl guns and shoot baddies in “Borderlands,” the director’s gonzo adaptation of the popular video game.

Roth noted that since people loved seeing Blanchett wield a baton in “Tár,” where she portrayed a fictional world-famous conductor embroiled in controversy, the filmmaker said he might as well “put a flamethrower in her hand.”

In “Borderlands,” Blanchett sports a fiery red bob and is surrounded by the starry ensemble of Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black and “Barbie” breakout Ariana Greenblatt. The story follows Blanchett as Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past. She reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora and forms an unexpected alliance to find the missing daughter of Atlas….

This trailer is from a month ago – quite entertaining all the same.

(12) JOKER SEQUEL GOES GAGA. “Joker: Folie à Deux: trailer for Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga musical sequel released” – and the Guardian listens in.

The first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, the musical sequel to Joker starring Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, has been revealed.

The sequel sees Phoenix return as Arthur Fleck, the titular aspiring standup comedian turned villain, and Lady Gaga as Dr Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist assigned to treat Fleck at Arkham Asylum, who falls in love with him and becomes his accomplice Harley Quinn.

The title is a reference to a psychiatric syndrome in which a delusional state is shared by two people.

Unlike Joker, Joker: Folie à Deux will be a musical and is expected to include 15 numbers, Variety reported, with most of them being covers of pre-existing songs, including That’s Entertainment from the 1953 musical The Band Wagon, which was also famously sung by Judy Garland. The trailer features the 1965 song What the World Needs Now Is Love….

(13) SNL DOES SFF. From last weekend’s Saturday Night Live with guest host Kirsetn Wiig. One skit is fantasy – isn’t it? The other is definitely horror!

Jumanji

Pilates

(14) HOW WAS THE ECLIPSE FOR YOU? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Lots of media coverage this side of the Black Atlantic on the eclipse as seen across a vast swathe of the Cursed Earth. For example, the BBC’s photo gallery: “Solar eclipse: Stunning images as darkness descends on North America”. And the science research “Total solar eclipse: The 4-minute window into the Sun’s secrets”, also from the BBC.

Meanwhile PBS Space-Time has looked at how eclipses helped the ancients work out the basic astronomy of the Solar System. They knew, from the mid-day shadow of an upright pole of known length measured at both ends of a north-south line many miles long, the curvature of the Earth, hence its size. They could then see from the Earth eclipsing the Moon the Earth’s shadow on the Moon and so work out the comparative size of the Earth to the Moon. Knowing the Earth’s size it was then possible to calculate the Moon’s size. Knowing the Moon’s size, and the size it appears to us, enabled them to work out the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Then using Venus eclipsing, or rather transecting, the Sun from different places on the Earth, they could then work out the distance to Venus….

(Meanwhile, those who have attended my bio-astronomy talks over the years will recall that some corals not only have daily growth rings (due to daily temperature changes) but also monthly bunches of rings due to the reproductive cycle triggered by tides which are caused by the Moon, as well as yearly super bunches outside of the tropics due to cooler winters. By looking at fossil corals tens of millions of years ago it is possible to work out how many, months and days there were in the year back then. And so it is possible to see that the Moon was closer to the Earth and orbited faster back then. Plugging in the distance between the Earth and the Moon it is possible to see how fast the Moon is retreating from the Earth and also how the Earth’s day has been getting longer… But I digress (if you want to know more you’ll have to ask me to give the talk at your con). Back at the plot you can see the 16-minute PBS Space-Time video here…

(15) THE STARSHIP TROOPERS VOTING CONTROVESY SOLVED??? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Grammaticus Books takes a bit of a dive into Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to see how much of a right-wing military state it was.

A detailed look at all of the evidence and passages contained within Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal military-science-fiction novel, Starship Troopers, to determine once and for all who could vote in his Terran Federation. And who could not vote. Resolving the broad and widespread false beliefs so prevalent among the fandom and across the internet.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/5/22 It’s Files And Pixels I Recall, I Really Don’t Know Scrolls At All

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) DIVORCE ANNOUNCEMENT. From Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, “A joint statement from me and Neil”.

Hi Everyone.

This is a joint statement from me and Neil.

Neil is posting this on his blog as well. (And I posted it over on mine, as this is a closed post).

After many years of marriage, we have made the difficult decision to divorce. While we will no longer be partners in marriage, we will remain in one another’s lives as co-parents committed to raising our wonderful son in a loving and compassionate environment. We deeply appreciate everyone respecting our family’s privacy so we can focus on our son and entering this new chapter in our lives.

(2) FIRE DAMAGE TO ILIAD BOOKSHOP. Awful news for local booklovers. “Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood temporarily closed after being damaged in fire” at CBS Los Angeles. Apparently it could have been much worse.

According to the store owner, a flier left behind has him suspicious that he was the target of an antisemitic act of violence.

The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood will be temporarily closed after being damaged in a fire on Friday.

Firefighters rushed to the store located on Cahuenga Boulevard at around 11 p.m. Thursday evening, acting quickly enough to prevent the flames from spreading throughout the massive bookstore. The fire did however leave some noticeable scorch marks on the front entrance of the store, and while the interior only suffered smoke damage, with some charred books left behind, the allegedly targeted attack leaves much more of an impact on the owners.

(3) UTAH THEME PARK ACTIVE AGAIN. [Item by David Doering.] Evermore Park in Utah had seemed to be a Covid casualty as of January 2021, however, it’s currently open Fridays and Saturdays, and a few special days. “Utah’s Evermore Park”.

YouTuber Jennie Nicholson has a lengthy review/documentary about the place.

(4) SFF ON STAGE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Sarah Hemming reviews A Dead Body In Taos, which is at Wiltons Music Hall (wiltons.org.uk) through November 12. The play is about how Sam comes to New Mexico to bury “her estranged mother, Kath.”

Kath’s will was “changed very recently to benefit Future Life Corporation, a mysterious biotech facility. Then there’s the even more jaw-dropping discovery that the same institution has worked with her mother, uploading her thoughts and memories to create a post-life AI Kath. When the enraged Sam threatens to contest the will, udnead Kath pleads with her. If Sam succeeds, the technology will be switched off and Sam will have ‘killed’ her mother. Soon Sam, understandably, is thrashing round her mother’s empty house, drinking heavily…

…The drama also has echoes of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, delving into science fiction to ask thorny ethical questions. Churchill’s play uses cloning to consider identity, parenting, relationships, and to ask: if you had the chance to start over, would you take it? Similar dilemmas emerge in Farr’s drama. Kath’s motives for ‘living’ on, we learn, include the desire to repair her relationships with Sam and her former lover, Leo. Meanwhile, the digital world brings a new twist to existential issues that in previous centuries have fueled religious debate. What is the essence of a human being? Can you outwit mortality? Can you find redemption?”

(5) BIG, BIGGER, AND BIGGEST LITTLE NEMO. [Item by Daniel Dern.] My copy of the new 704-page, 9.31-pound Winsor McCay: The Complete Little Nemo (per my July 13, 2022 scroll item, and pre-ordered from Bud’s Art Books) arrived earlier this week.

Here’s a side-by-side of with Vol I of the Fantagraphics 1989 six-volume set and with Vol 1 (of 2) of Sunday Press’s original-full-size collections, along with a regular-size paperback book for size reference/comparison.

(6) KEEPING THE HOME FIRES FROM BURNING. Camestros Felapton asks “Is nice conflict possible?” and devotes a post to ideas about how to manage blog arguments.

I don’t know about everybody else but I hate it when everybody is upset. I also like having arguments about things. It’s fun (to me) to make points, dig up facts, pull apart what people have said and expose the flaws. The problem is the first part, arguments about things are also arguments between people.

Part of the reason why I’ve been tolerant of trolls around here is a troll basically advertises themselves as 1. being an arsehole and 2. up for an argument. Unfortunately, trolls run away but also drive away nice people. Obnoxious people are also people who want to make arguments personal as quickly as possible.

(7) MICHAEL THORSEN DIES. LASFSian Michael Thorsen, a member of the club’s Board of Directors, died November 5 in hospital where he was being treated for numerous medical issues. His brother, Jeff, notified the club.

Thorsen joined LASFS in 1992. He was honored for club service with the Evans-Freehafer Award in 2000. He also is commemorated on club lists, such as the Bringers of Fire, who used to set up the BBQ at clubhouse events, and the Luminaries, who crowdfunded a lightning improvement. His levels of financial contributions to the club also are recognized with the titles Sacred Mighty Mystic Uru Gavel (don’t ask, I have no idea), and Patron Saint.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1951 — [By Cat Eldridge.] In a special screening on this date in Buffalo, When Worlds Collide premiered in the States seventy-one years ago. (It wouldn’t premiere until two days later everywhere else in the States.) It was the second SF by George Pal after the previous year’s Destination Moon which as know was based on Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo.

All I’m going to say about the film is that storyline was about the coming destruction of the Earth by a rogue star called Bellus and the emergency efforts to build a space ark to transport a group of men and women to Bellus’ single planet, Zyra. Yes, a star. Somebody really needed a much better grasp of astronomy.

The source material was When Worlds Collide, a 1933 science fiction novel co-written by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie; they also co-authored the sequel After Worlds Collide. It was first published as a six-part monthly serial on September 1932 through February 1933 in Blue Book magazine, illustrated by Joseph Franké. Blue Book magazine was a sibling magazine of Red Book magazine.

Rip Van Ronkel, who co-wrote the screenplay for Destination Moon, was hired to do the script. Neither the critics nor the audience liked it at all as Bosley Crowther of New York Times said at the time “Mr. Pal barely gets us out there, but this time he doesn’t bring us back”, so the studio pulled the financing for the After Worlds Collide sequel.

It get referred to in The Rocky Horror Show theme song and in the film version as well.

Look very closely in The Wrath of Khan and you’ll see two cargo containers labeled “Bellus” and “Zyra” in the Genesis Cave.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 5, 1903 — H. Warner Munn. Writer and Poet known in genre for his early stories in Weird Tales in the 1920s and 30s, his Atlantean/Arthurian fantasy saga, and his later stories about The Werewolf Clan. After making two mistakes in his first published genre story, he compensated by becoming a meticulous researcher and intricate plotter. His work became popular again in the 1970s after Donald Wollheim and Lin Carter sought him out to write sequels to the first novel in his Merlin’s Godson series, which had been serialized in Weird Tales in 1939. These novels were published as part of their Ballantine and Del Rey adult fantasy lines. The third novel in the series received World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Award nominations, he himself was nominated three times for the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and he was Guest of Honor at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention. He won the Balrog Award for Poet twice in the 80s, and received the Clark Ashton Smith Award for Poetry. (Died 1981.)
Born November 5, 1938 — Jim Steranko, 84. His breakthrough series was the Sixties’ “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” featured in Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales and in the subsequent debut series. His design sensibility is widespread within and without the comics industry, affecting even Raiders of the Lost Ark and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as he created the conceptual art and character designs for them. He was inducted into the comic-book industry’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.
Born November 5, 1940 — Butch Honeck, 82. Sculptor and Fan who learned mechanics, welding, machining, and metal finishing as a teenager, then went on to build a foundry and teach himself to cast bronze so he could create shapes that were too complex for welding. His bronze fantasy sculptures, which depict dragons, mythical creatures, wizards, and other fantasy-oriented themes, use the lost wax method with ceramic shell molds and are characterized by intricate details, mechanical components, humor, and surprise. He has been Artist Guest of Honor at several conventions, was named to Archon’s Hall of Fame, and won a Chesley Award for Best Three-Dimensional Art.
Born November 5, 1942 — Frank Gasperik. Tuckerized in as a character in several novels including Lucifer’s Hammer as Mark Czescu, and into Footfall as Harry Reddington aka Hairy Red, and in Fallen Angels, all by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. He was a close friend of both and assisted Pournelle on his Byte column. To my knowledge, he has but two writing credits which are he co-wrote a story, “Janesfort War”, with Leslie Fish that was published in Pournelle’s War World collection, CoDominium: Revolt on War World, and “To Win the Peace” co-written with Leslie Fish which was published in John F. Carr’s War World: Takeover. He was a filk singer including here doing “The Green Hills of Earth”. (Died 2007.)
Born November 5, 1949 — Armin Shimerman, 73. Quark on Deep Space Nine. And Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer who if I remember correctly came to a very bad end. He had the recurring role of Pascal on Beauty and the Beast. He also played Professor George Edward Challenger in the later Nineties Lost World film
Born November 5, 1960 — Tilda Swinton, 62. Her take as Rosetta/Ruby/Marinne/Olive in Teknolust might be the most weird genre role she’s done but I like her take as The White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mind you her Gabriel in Constantine was frelling strange…
Born November 5, 1964 — Famke Janssen, 58. Her first genre role was Xenia Onatopp in the Bond film GoldenEye and her longest running genre role was as Jean Grey / Phoenix (Dark Phoenix) in the X-Men film series. Counting horror which I do, she’s got a number of genre appearance including Lord of Illusions, The Wolverine, House on Haunted Hill, Deep Rising and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Born November 5, 1970 — Tamzin Outhwaite, 52. She was Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint on Paradox, a SF police series that ran for just five episodes and received really harsh reviews. Her only other SF role was as the Captain in an Eleventh Doctor story, “Nightmare in Silver” which was scripted by Neil Gaiman.

(10) SUMMON THE CORONER’S JURY. Entertainment Weekly does an autopsy on Westworld: “Farewell to Westworld, which destroyed itself with three big mistakes”.

… The second mistake was simpler: Westworld just overdosed on twists. The series kept trying to outdo 1’s timeline tomfoolery, with ever-crazier results….

(11) MIDDLE-EARTH WALKABOUT. The BBC’s Open Country aired a segment called “Tolkien Land”, featuring John Garth, now available on BBC Sounds.

Tolkien once remarked that reviewers, “seem to think that Middle-Earth is another planet!” In fact the Shire, Isengard and the horses of Rohan are much closer to home than you think. Tolkien had a car in the 1930’s and used to drive out of Oxford and visit sites that definitely filter into the books he wrote. Now Miles Warde has been out with Tolkien expert John Garth to find traces of Tolkien Land at Faringdon Tower and the Rollright Stones. There’s also a brief appearance for Sarehole near Birmingham, where the young Tolkien grew up, plus archive of the great writer talking about where his books may have been based.

John Garth is the author of The Worlds of JRR Tolkien – the places that inspired Middle-Earth.

(12) FAREWELL TO BOOTH. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna gves an appreciation for George Booth, the great New Yorker cartoonist who died at 96. “No one drew funnier dogs”. [Registration may be required.]

The greatest cartoonists ever to grace the pages of the New Yorker have not merely rendered gags. They drew a universe. And no world has been more immersive than what Emma Allen, humor editor at the magazine, calls “Boothville.”

All those twitchy English bull terriers and quirky cats. The blunt couples who, with gaping dark maws for mouths, let you sense their volume. There are ramshackle front porches and naked light fixtures and no-frills curtains. Then there is the characteristic menagerie of low-rent household items that feel not only alive but also beautiful through his eyes….

(13) KITCHEN GEAR FROM ASGARD? Imagine running along behind Thor wielding one of these. That is, provided Thor is running to pick up a fresh-baked pizza. Hand Made Viking/Pizza Hatchet with 8.5 ” Long Blade.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In Death and the Lady: When the Grim Reaper Knocks, presented by The New Yorker, Geoff Bailey and Lucy York Streuver explain that you should be polite when the Grim Reaper pays you a visit!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, David Doering, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 1/17/21 He Was A File, She Was A Scroll, Can I Make It Any More Obvious?

Posted on January 17, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) NICHOLAS WHYTE TAKES ON 2021 HUGO & SITE SELECTION DUTIES. DisCon III’s new WSFS Division Head is Nicholas Whyte, who announced on Facebook he is taking the place of Jared Dashoff, who resigned in response to the committee’s internal handling of some new Hugo policies that have since been revoked.

… I have been appointed the new Division Head of the WSFS Division, which is the part of the Worldcon that admininsters the Hugo Awards, the Business Meeting which reviews the rules, and the Site Selection process for the 2023 Worldcon (currently contested between Chengdu, China and Memphis, Tennessee) – the three obligatory things that every Worldcon must do.
I was previously the Administrator of the Hugo Awards in 2017 and 2019, and one of the deputy administrators last year; and also Division Head for Promotions at the London Worldcon in 2014. I had not anticipated having any executive role this year, but life does not always work out as we expect.
The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year’s Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).
I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it’s clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.

(2) OLDEST SFF BOOKSTORE. “At Bakka-Phoenix, the beloved sci-fi and fantasy bookstore, you can let your geek flag fly” in the Toronto Star.

In the summer of 1982, Margaret Atwood walked into Bakka Books looking for a copy of “The Hobbit.” Robert J. Sawyer, the celebrated Canadian science-fiction writer who was then working behind the counter, couldn’t believe his luck.
“It was pretty amazing — she knew all about the store and how we specialized in fantasy and science fiction,” Sawyer recalls of his encounter at the bookstore when it was in its first home on Queen Street near John Street.
Atwood’s visit to pick up some Tolkien was a testament to the role the bookstore (now named Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction and Fantasy Bookstore) plays in the literary community — not just in Toronto but beyond city borders too. On the cusp of celebrating its 50th anniversary, Bakka-Phoenix is the oldest sci-fi and fantasy specialty bookstore in the world. It’s long been a hub for aficionados of a genre that is rarely awarded more than a couple of shelves at most big-box bookstores. It’s the kind of bookstore that’s for fans of space operas and dystopian fiction, for readers hungry for the latest William Gibson saga and for those on the prowl for a rare Harlan Ellison story collection. “Bakka has always been a mecca to me,” says Sawyer.

(3) CAPTAIN JACK. Deadline reports “’Torchwood’ Star John Barrowman Touches Fans With Ianto Shrine Visit”

Actor John Barrowman, who portrayed Captain Jack Harkness on Torchwood, has set off a Twitter frenzy with a post depicting a visit to a show landmark in Cardiff, Wales.
Barrowman posted a selfie in front of a shrine to the show’s Ianto Jones, who was Capt. Jack’s lover on the show and tragically died in his arms in a mini-series episode, Children of Earth.
On Friday, Barrowman paid an incognito visit to the impromptu shrine set up to honor the Ianto character in Cardiff, a site near where the series was filmed. The shrine is still very popular with fans 11 years after the television series death….

https://twitter.com/JohnBarrowman/status/1350107921179418624

(4) EVERMORE PARK ALSO A COVID CASUALTY. [Item by David Doering.] As of yesterday, Evermore Park has cancelled any future performances at the park and has let the creative team go. Basically, the park will only be open for event rentals and strolling through. A sad loss due to Covid. Had it opened one year before or one year later, it might well have made it. “Evermore Park cancels winter production, dozens of employees laid off” at Yahoo!

Dozens of employees at Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove were laid off this week after it was decided there would be no winter-themed production, as well as other financial issues largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(5) A REAL FANNISH TED TALK.FANAC.org will host a fannish TED talk on Saturday, January 23 when author, editor, and past Worldcon chair Ted White will be interviewed by John D. Berry via Zoom. Time: 4 pm EST. Participants are limited. To get the Zoom log-in, please RSVP to fanac@fanac.org .

Ted White will be talking about his long history in fandom and some of the interesting people he has encountered along the way. Ted is considered by many to be the current patriarch of fannish fandom. He has been active since the very early 1950s, both publishing fanzines and in clubs from Virginia to New York. We have more different fanzine titles of Ted’s on FANAC.org than any other faned. In addition to the many titles he edited on his own, he has published many collaborative fanzines going back to the 1950s.
Ted has also chaired several conventions, including the 1967 Worldcon – the last Worldcon in New York. As a professional in the science fiction field, he has written stories, articles, and novels. He was the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic magazines, and has written extensively about the music industry.
John D. Berry has known and worked with Ted for over 50 years so he knows the questions to ask. And Ted has said that no topic is off the table.

(6) HORROR CELEBRITY. “’Glamour Ghoul’ reveals Vampira, Hollywood’s ‘original Goth’” – Scott Bradfield reviews her biography in the Los Angeles Times.

You didn’t need to be a pubescent boy (or his father) to fully appreciate the charms of Maila Nurmi — a.k.a. Vampira — when she first appeared on late-night KABC-TV in the spring of 1954. But it didn’t hurt. She was tall, beautiful and frightening and she screamed like a banshee, climaxing each howl with a lewd lick of her full lips, which even in black-and-white glistened bloodily. Her pale body was almost a caricature of an hourglass figure, like one of those inexplicably bountiful women featured in the pinups of Joaquin Alberto Vargas, for whom Nurmi had modeled only a few years earlier. But what made Vampira most memorable was the jokes she slyly delivered at machine-gun speed: pop, pop, pop. She came heavily armed with oodles of sexy, macabre puns and she wasn’t afraid to use them.
In the early days, Vampira was asked by a Los Angeles Tribune columnist to tell a little bit about herself.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she said. “I was born in Lapland. … I have an owl for a house pet. I have a 19-inch waist, 38-inch bust and 36-inch hips. My earliest recollection as a child is that I always wanted to play with mice. I’m very anti-social. I simply detest people. I don’t like snakes; they eat spiders, and I’m very fond of spiders.” Asked how she felt about children, she didn’t miss a beat: “Oh yes … delicious.”…

(7) BATWOMAN SPEAKS OUT. “New Batwoman Javicia Leslie always wanted to be a superhero” she tells the Washington Post.

Last year, Javicia Leslie was asked on a podcast what she wanted her next acting role to be.
“I said I wanted to be a superhero,” Leslie recalled recently toThe Washington Post.
In July, just two months after stating her desire, the star of “God Friended Me” and “The Family Business”answered the call to a bat-signal put up in the sky just for her — finding out she was the new star of the CW’s “Batwoman.” The announcement instantly made her the new face of the network’s successful tradition of televised superheroes….
… One norm going away is the trademark black eye makeup that every on-screen bat-hero since Keaton has worn under the mask — Rose eventually parted with itand Leslie will also decline.
“Being a woman of color, it was important that we didn’t black out my eyes,” Leslie said. “We wanted to play with light instead of playing with darkness to help accentuate me being a black woman in playing this role.”

(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

Rod Serling wore Botany 500 brand suits.

— Source: Wikipedia

(9) BOB SURYAN OBIT. Bob Suryan died January 17. The Norwescon group made the announcement.

Bob Suryan has passed away today. He was very active in the Seattle Astronomical Society, and Norwescon (including chairing a couple of the conventions). He loved history and folks enjoyed chatting with him about all sorts of things. He had his ups and downs with health over the years and about a week and half ago was admitted to the hospital due to lots of pain. Sadly this turned out to be stage four lung cancer.

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

January 17, 1992 — Freejack premiered. It starred Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins. The screenplay was written by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett (who was also the producer) and Dan Gilroy. We consider it to be very loosely adapted from Robert Sheckley’s Immortality, Inc. (Great work. The serialised version as “Time Killer” in Galaxy was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel.) It was not at the time well-liked by either critics or reviewers, not is it currently liked among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes as it is carrying a 25% rating and there’s a lot who have expressed an opinion — over fourteen thousand so far. (CE)

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

January 17, 1899 — Nevil Shute. Nevil Shute. Author of On the Beach. It originally appeared as a four-part series, The Last Days on Earth, in the London weekly Sunday Graphic in April 1957. It was twice a film. He has other SF novels including An Old Captivity which involves time travel and No Highway which gets a review by Pohl in Super Science Stories, April 1949. There’s In the Wet and Vinland the Good as well. (Died 1960.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1923 – Alva Rogers. Changing the name of the prozine Astounding to Analog has been applauded by some; AR wrote a Requiem. Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon XV. Co-chaired Baycon, the combined Westercon XXI and 26th Worldcon, famous in song and story. Co-edited Rhodomagnetic Digest 62, its last issue; AR’s wife Sidonie wrote a profile of Al haLevy and AR drew one. After SR died, AR married Andi Shechter, famous in song and story. (Died 1982) [JH]
January 17, 1927 — Eartha Kitt. Though you’ll have lots of folks remembering her as Catwoman from the original Batman, she appeared in but four episodes there. Genre wise, she was in such series as I-Spy, Mission: Impossible, Matrix, the animated Space Ghost Coast to Coast and the animated My Life as a Teenage Robot. Film wise, she played Freya in Erik the Viking, voiced Bagheera in The Jungle Book: Mowgli’s Story and was Madame Zeroni In Holes. (Died 2008.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1930 – Dean Dickensheet. Active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Soc.) during Shangri L’Affaires days, was the Bartender in The Musquite Kid Rides Again. Next door, edited Men and Malice; Great Crimes of San Francisco. His part in Coventry was a reminder of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Died 1983) [JH]
January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones, 90. His first SF appearance was in Dr. Strangelove as Lt. Lothar Zogg. And I think I need not list all his appearances as Darth Vader here. Some genre appearances include Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Flight of Dragons, Conan the Barbarian as Thulsa Doom and I actually remember him in that role, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, did you know the 1995 Judge Dredd had a Narrator? Well he’s listed as doing it, and Fantasia 2000 as well. (CE)
January 17, 1935 — Paul O. Williams. A poet who won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for The Breaking of Northwall and The Ends of the Circle which are the first two novels of his Pelbar Cycle. I’ve not read these, so be interested in your opinions, of course. (Died 2009.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1952 – Tom Deitz. A score of novels. Guest of Honor at Phoenixcon 8. Gainesville State College faculty member of the year, 2008. Phoenix Award. Co-founded local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) barony. (Died 2009) [JH]
January 17, 1962 — Jim Carrey, 59. His first genre film is Once Bitten whose content is obvious from its name and which get a mere thirty-nine percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. The ‘dorable Earth Girls Are Easy was next followed up by Batman Forever in which he played a manic Riddler that I rather liked, then there’s the The Truman Show which was way cool. So may we not talk about How the Grinch Stole Christmas? (SHUDDER!) We settled last year that we think that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is genre. And I think that I’ll stop there this time. (CE)
Born January 17, 1967 – Wendy Mass, Litt.D., age 54. Ray Bradbury volume for Authors Teens Love. Of course I put that first, what Website do you think this is? A score of novels for us, half as many others; nonfiction e.g. Stonehenge, John Cabot. Schneider Award for A Mango-Shaped Space. Has read The Phantom Tollbooth and The Secret Garden. [JH]
January 17, 1970 — Genndy Tartakovsky, 50. Like Romulan Ale, animation style is a matter of taste. So while I like his work on Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars, I can understand why many SW fans don’t as it’s definitely an acquired taste. He also is responsible for directing the animated Hotel Transylvania franchise. (CE)
Born January 17, 1971 – Nomi Burstein, age 50. Technical writer, freelance editor. Collects neologisms, e.g. jan howard finder’s “bytelock”. Fanzine, Burstzine (with husband Michael Burstein). Years of patiently fielding questions about Jewish observance. Co-founder (with MB) of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet. [JH]
Born January 17, 1981 – Rachelle Rosenberg, age 40. Color artist for Marvel, e.g. this and this and this. [JH]

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Don’t just snarf it down is The Far Side’s advice.

(13) YOU SAY YOU WANT AN EVOLUTION. “How ‘WandaVision’ Star Elizabeth Olsen Transformed Her Performance For Every Genre-Bending Episode”, a Q&A at Yahoo! Entertainment.

What was the difference between what you did the ’50s, versus when you were in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s?
The ’70s women were allowed — it was almost like there is was a relaxation of women and social behavior, and so that would affect their voices and the tone that they can take. Instead of it being kind of a higher and level [like in the ’50s]. The ’70s, even though it’s this really strange “Brady Bunch” aspirational time in sitcom land, women were able to have a bit more control, something that grounded them a bit more in their voice. Then as we got into the ’80s, there were the teachable moments, and how sincere everything was, that was really funny. And then as we move into the arts and into the ’00s and the 2010s, the sitcom becomes really cynical. The humor, like “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Modern Family” becomes incredibly cynical. And that’s what we found comforting for whatever reason as a society.
It was fun when we were in this boot camp to not only chart the physical changes, as tools, but to also [discover] what comedy was for that time. “Rosemary’s Baby” is a film and “Brady Bunch” is on television, it doesn’t make any sense to me. But for whatever reason, that’s what that’s what the consumer was watching at home.

(14) UNDER THE LIGHTS. Cheryl Morgan fills in Cora Buhlert’s readers about her online zine – “Fanzine Spotlight: Salon Futura”.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?
When I set up Wizard’s Tower Press, one of the things I wanted to do was create a semiprozine for non-fiction. It turned out that there wasn’t a market for such a thing at the time, and it closed after 9 issues. Then last year I saw Nicholas Whyte bemoaning the lack of interest in the Fanzine category of the Hugos. I’d already come to the conclusion that I needed some form of discipline to ensure I made time to read and review books, so I decided to relaunch Salon Futura as a fanzine. Thus far it has worked in that I have read a lot more books. I figure that if I ever get on the Hugo ballot again there will be a flood of new people voting in that category to stop me winning, and that will be the other objective achieved.

(15) VINTAGE OPINIONS. Gilbert Seldes lectures on science fiction in this 1953 recording of a WNYC broadcast “Science fiction writing” from The NYPR Archive Collections.

This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.
Seldes discusses the science fiction genre. He opens with a story about a science fiction story about the atomic bomb preceding the actual bomb, and the government’s response.
He speaks of the symbolism of the extraterrestrial as a symbol for invaders from behind the Iron Curtain.
Seldes notes that there is a lot of science fiction that he does not deem to be of good quality, but does speak very highly of Ray Bradbury and H. G. Wells

(16) CHINESE SFF MOVIE. The Shimmer Program announced “Another Chinese science fiction film, ‘The Soul’ has been released on big screen! The thriller is adapted from Jiang Bo’s story ‘The Soul Transplanting Skill’ and directed by Cheng Wei-hao.” (The Soul is not to be confused with Pixar’s Soul).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdqjNWDhT34

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, John Hertz, JJ, David Doering, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Joe Siclari, Olav Rokne, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 8/26/20 Down To Starseeds And STEM Again

Posted on August 26, 2020 by Mike Glyer

(1) ROFCON 2020. Eric Flint and Ring of Fire Press will host the inaugural Ring of Fire Con (RoFCon I), a virtual convention, from September 11-13, with panels, guests, and signing opportunities. Attendance is free – register at the link.

Among the guests attending will be: Steven Barnes, David Brin, DJ Butler, Eric Flint, Charles Gannon, Cecelia Holland, Tom Kidd, Mercedes Lackey, Jody Lynn Nye, Christopher Ruocchio, Tom Smith, David Weber, and Toni Weisskopf.

Walt Boyes, Editor, Grantville Gazette and Ring of Fire Press adds:

Not only do we have a great guest list, but we are also teaching marketing for authors, how to get published, and recruiting new authors. We have dealt with issues of race, sex, gender, and nationality and prejudice around the world. We are looking for authors to write in the 1632 Universe who are non-traditional. We encourage women, LGBTQ+, and Persons of Color to look at writing for us. We publish bimonthly, The Grantville Gazette, which is a SFWA approved venue that pays SFWA professional rates.

(2) BRADBURY CENTENNIAL RECORDING STILL PLAYING. You can hear last Saturday’s Ray Bradbury Read-A-Thon of Fahrenheit 451 anytime through September 5.

Readers from across the United States will join William Shatner (actor), Neil Gaiman (author), Marlon James (author), Marjorie Liu (author), P. Djèlí Clark (author), Dr. Brenda Greene (author), Alley Mills Bean (actress), James Reynolds (actor), Tananarive Due (author), and Steven Barnes (author) to bring this relevant work to social media. Susan Orlean (author) provides an afterword.

(3) ONLINE BRADBURY EXHIBIT. The South Pasadena Public Library provides a virtual tour of its Bradbury holdings in “Ray Bradbury: Celebrating 100 Years”.

…Bradbury, in his later years, was a frequent visitor to South Pasadena. In fact, Bradbury chose the South Pasadena Public Library as the location of his 90th Birthday Celebration. In 2010 South Pasadena City Council declared August 22nd Ray Bradbury Day….
In 2013 the South Pasadena Public Library named the conference room in honor of the late Ray Bradbury, for his work as lifelong advocate for public libraries. The Ray Bradbury Conference Room currently hosts a collection of Bradbury books and artifacts, including ephemera, photographs, artwork, and first edition prints. On the walls of the Conference Room hang a brick from Ray Bradbury’s home in Los Angeles (now demolished) and a portion of drywall from Bradbury’s home office, where much of his writing was conducted….

(4) 2020 HINDSIGHT. Few fans really expect science fiction writers to predict the future. But what about mainstream authors who can’t even predict the present? Consider this Amazon customer review of Honeysuckle Season by Mary Ellen Taylor.

This novel is set in Virginia during two time periods: the early 1940’s, and the summer of 2020. Chapters alternate between the two time periods. The story was enjoyable, but every time I came to a chapter set in 2020, I asked myself, “when is the author going to say something about Covid-19?” The answer is — never. I found that very disturbing and distracting. The author apparently wrote the book before the pandemic, and made the assumption that summer 2020 would be just like other summers, with large wedding parties, no social distancing, etc. Bad assumption.

(5) WORLDCON PUBLICATION ARCHIVE. Fanac.org is making the move to a different interface for accessing Worldcon Publications. (And it looks very good!)

If you’ve been paying attention to recent newsletters and flashes, Mark Olson has put together a new, easier-to-love format for Worldcon pubs. All the worldcon pubs are searchable PDFs and you’ll also find bidding material, and even ephemera. You can find it all at http://fanac.org/conpubs/Worldcon/.
The format and the link for photos and audio stay the same for now, and over the next few days (or maybe weeks) we will migrate completely to the new approach. For a little while, worldcon pubs may be available the old way as well, but one by one those will be cleared out. If you have any worldcon pubs bookmarked, then please be aware that those bookmarks will not be valid for too much longer. All hail Mark Olson, king of the Worldcon pubs! And most seriously, a heartfelt thanks to Mark from a webmaster who really didn’t want to start coding again. (Aug 22)

(6) EVERMORE ASKS FOR HELP. Yesterday’s Scroll reported Utah’s Evermore Park is in financial straits. The owners have launched a GoFundMe appeal: “Helping Evermore Park Through COVID-19”. It’s raised $13,693 of the $100,000 goal in the first 24 hours.

Evermore Park is small business in Pleasant Grove, Utah that creates an immersive experience that exists purely to allow everyone who enters to discover their own imagination. We aim to tell unique stories that inspire, educate, and allow guests to escape–even just for a little while–to a world that allows you to be the hero. We need your help to keep this project going during COVID-19.

We opened our doors in September of 2018. From the moment the doors were officially opened, we have been creating magic and allowing guests to interact with our characters and park in ways that few other businesses have even come close to attempting….

(7) POST-APOCALYPTIC HOLLYWOOD. “A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog” in Bright Lights Film Journal is Stephen Harris’ fine-grained and thoroughly disturbing study of the story’s evolution to a film by L.Q. Jones.

…Alternately humorous, disturbing, satiric, violent, tender, vicious, somber, fantastic, and familiar, A Boy and His Dog and its adaptations have become the most referenced and influential landmarks of a sub-genre that has often been disregarded as escapist, clichéd, and one-dimensional. In order to understand how the text became so important, the history of Ellison’s original story and its film adaptation must be traced and explicated. In this article, I will compare and contrast Ellison’s definitive novella, L. Q. Jones’s early screenplay draft, and his final film adaptation and its promotional campaign to show how content is transformed, often radically, once it leaves the hands of its creator, and how certain differences in these texts come to exist.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

August 26, 1953 — War of The Worlds premiered. It was produced by George Pal, and directed by Byron Haskin. It starred Gene Barry and Ann Robinson with narration by Sir Cedric Hardwicke. The Martian war machines were designed by Al Nozaki, and the sizzling sound effect would be used again as the first Trek phaser sound. (You know what novel it was adapted from.) The film was both a critical and box office success with its earnings making it the top SF film of the year. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a 71% rating.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born August 26, 1901 – Earle Bergey. A hundred sixty covers for us, a handful of interiors; much more, thousands all told, adventure, aviation, detective, sports, Western. He was a prominent – hmm – “pin-up” artist; but look at this cover for Zane Grey’s Spirit of the Border. This famous cover for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes may arouse – ahem – indignation now, but is very funny if you’ve actually read the book, and if I may, suggests – sorry – the question “Who’s exploiting whom?” and the realization that we heterosexual men have more to be ashamed of than we thought. He could also do this. (Died 1952) [JH]
Born August 26, 1904 — Christopher Isherwood. I’ll first note, though not genre, that he wrote Goodbye to Berlin, the semi-autobiographical novel which was the inspiration for Cabaret. Genre wise, he co-wrote Frankenstein: The True Story with Don Bachardy, The Mortmere Stories with Edward Upward, and one short story in the Thirties, “I am Waiting”. (Died 1986.) (CE)
Born August 26, 1904 — Peter Lorre. I think his first foray into genre was in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea film as Comm. Lucius Emery though he was in Americanized version of Casino Royale which an early Fifties episode of the Climax! series as Le Chiffre. (James Bond was called Jimmy. Shudder!) Other genre roles were in Tales of Terror as Montresor in “The Black Cat” story, The Raven as Dr. Adolphus Bedlo and The Comedy of Terrors as Felix Grille. (Died 1964.) (CE)
Born August 26, 1911 — Otto Oscar Binder. He’s best remembered as the co-creator with Al Plastino of Supergirl and for his many scripts for Captain Marvel Adventures and other stories involving the entire Marvel Family. He was extremely prolific in the comic book industry and is credited with writing over four thousand stories across a variety of publishers under his own name. He also wrote novels, one of which was The Avengers Battle the Earth Wrecker, one of the series created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist and co-plotter Jack Kirby. (Died 1974.) (CE)
Born August 26, 1911 – Gerald Kersh. He has been described as “hammering out twenty novels, twenty collections of short stories and thousands of articles”. Harlan Ellison wrote, “you will find yourself in the presence of a talent so immense and compelling, that you will understand how grateful and humble I felt merely to have been permitted to associate myself with his name as editor.” The Secret Masters is ours, as are a hundred seventy shorter stories. (Died 1968) [JH]
Born August 26, 1926 – Thomas Clareson, Ph.D. Edited Extrapolation 1960-1987; essayist, correspondent, there and elsewhere, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, NY Rev SF, Riverside Quarterly. Bibliographic studies, critical anthologies. First President of the SF Research Ass’n; its Clareson Award, named for him, began 1995. Pilgrim Award. Robert Silverberg’s Many Trapdoors may be the title of the year for 1992. (Died 1993) [JH]
Born August 26, 1949 – Fred Levy Haskell, 71. Involved at the start, therefore a Floundering Father of Minn-stf (stf from Hugo Gernsback’s word scientifiction, pronounced “stef” or “stiff”, the latter funnier since false) though he later said he was out getting a sandwich at the time. Fanziner, chaired Corflu 6 (fanziners’ con; corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable). Fan Guest of Honor at LepreCon 4, Archon7 (which for years I’ve been saying should be pronounced Arch on, but what do I know?), Minicon 22. Note his two-part unhyphenated surname. Recently, see here. [JH]
Born August 26, 1949 — Sheila E Gilbert, 71. Co-editor-in-chief and publisher of DAW Books with Elizabeth R (Betsy) Wollheim. For her work there, she has also shared the Chesley Awards for best art director with Wollheim twice, and has received Hugos by herself for Best Professional Editor (Long Form). (CE)
Born August 26, 1958 — Wanda De Jesus, 62. She’s Estevez in Robocop 2, a film that had its moments but rarely, and she has two other film genre roles, Lexie Moore in Captain Nuke and the Bomber Boys, and Akooshay in Ghosts of Mars. Series wise, she has a number of one-offs including Babylon 5, Tales from The Darkside, SeaQuest DSV, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child and voicing a character on one of the Spider-Man series. (CE)
Born August 26, 1965 – Elizabeth Isaacs, 55. Four novels for us. Runs an authors’ group Writers, Etc. going between writers and motion pictures. Master’s degree magna cum laude (and Phi Beta Kappa) from Austin Peay State U., studied classical opera. Ranks Great Expectations about the same as The Time Machine, both below Nineteen Eighty-Four; fear not, all three below Blueberries for Sal. [JH]
Born August 26, 1970 — Melissa McCarthy, 50. Yes, I know she was in the rebooted Ghostbusters. Fanboys across the net are still wetting their pants about that film. I’m much more interested in Super Intelligence in which she is playing a character that has an AI who has decided to take over her life. It reminds me somewhat of Naomi Kritzer’s Hugo Award winning “Cat Pictures Please” premise. (And we are not talking about The Happytime Murders in which she was involved.) (CE)
Born August 26, 1993 – Nancy Yi Fan, 27. First novel at age 12, NY Times Best Seller. Oprah Winfrey said this showed NYF was smart, which misses the point, but Errors in the direction of the enemy are to be lightly judged. A prequel and sequel followed. Her pets, suitably, are birds. [JH]

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal finds trolley problems…uh… problematic.
Grant Snider did this comic for the Bradbury Centennial:

Happy 100th birthday to the late Ray Bradbury! Here's a Bradbury-inspired comic from my new book, I WILL JUDGE YOU BY YOUR BOOKSHELF pic.twitter.com/RLwNNrmJyV
— Grant Snider (@grantdraws) August 22, 2020

(11) MUSIC FOR THE SPHERES. Pitchfork invites readers to “Meet the Man Who Used Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, and Other Fascinating Music to Try to Lure Aliens to Earth”.

When NASA launched the Voyager spacecrafts to explore the cosmos in 1977, they sent along the Golden Record—and with it, music from around the world—as a snapshot of humanity, should intelligent lifeforms ever find it. But what if the aliens tuned in to the radio instead?
From 1971 to 1998, a man named John Shepherd probed that hypothetical question with astonishing dedication. Aiming for interstellar contact, he beamed everything from reggae to Steve Reich straight from his grandparents’ living room in rural Michigan, broadcasting between six to eight hours every day. He then expanded his operation—called Project STRAT—into a separate building on his grandparents’ property, complete with scientific equipment of his own design. Though Shepherd eventually ended the radio arm of Project STRAT due to the high cost of maintenance, he is now the subject of a touching new short film, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, which recently arrived on Netflix…

(12) CANON CAN NOT. Aidan Moher seeks to obliterate the very idea — “Personal Canons: There Is No Universal Canon”.

I am not the same person I was yesterday, and tomorrow I will be a new me.
Over time, my personal SFF canon has changed and evolved as I’ve grown older, discovered new writers, and pushed myself into corners of the genre that I would never have experienced if not for my involvement in the broad and diverse SFF community. As time flows, we’re changed by our experiences, our values adapt to encompass new thoughts and emotions, and so canon is always evolving to envelop who we are becoming….
Even canon lists generally accepted at the time they’re published become defunct just a few years later, and, as the genre adapts, new works draw on new influences. Just go look at some old lists of “SFF canon” from earlier decades, or even 11 years ago on the web. I haven’t even heard of half those books, let alone read them. If SFF canon looks like a reading list for a History of Science Fiction 101 course, it’s missing the point of how the genre is a conversation with itself and the outside world of politics, sociology, and humanity.
As DongWon Song said, “The idea of the canon is outdated, colonialist, racist, sexist, and anti-queer. It’s easy to say that this is only true because old stuff is colonialist, racist, sexist, and anti-queer, but that’s a bullshit cop out.”
There is no universal SFF canon.

(13) SOUTH ASIAN SFF. “What South Asian sci-fi can tell us about our world” is an unsigned 2019 article attributed to the Asian News Network.

My first encounter with a work of desi science fiction was very much by accident.
During my undergraduate studies at the English department at Karachi University, while idly browsing through a professor’s personal collection on her desk, I came across Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream, a English-language short story set in a feminist utopian world written by a Bengali Muslim woman in 20th century colonial India.
Up until then, my study of literature had been mostly white, mostly male authors, an unsurprising fact when we take into account the (Western) literary canon’s inherent whiteness and maleness, as well as the institutional history of English departments as tools of the colonial project — teaching works of English literature in the British Empire’s overseas colonies was originally part of the overarching goal of “civilising the natives.” In the words of 19th century British politician Thomas Macaulay, “a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” (gotta love that British sense of entitlement and arrogance).
… This dismissal of the genres of science fiction and fantasy (SFF) as low-brow, trashy or pulp or, at the very least, unimportant, is not just a desi stance, although it might be a bit more pronounced here. The snobbish attitude towards SFF has historically been prevalent in academic and literary circles (although things seem to be changing in the West now), even as popular culture is filled with beloved works of science fiction and fantasy films and television shows.
But the dismissal of the SFF genre, or the broader umbrella of speculative fiction, has excluded from the South Asian literary discourse a rich tradition of desi works of science fiction and fantasy, as well as the fascinating speculative fiction words being written by contemporary South Asian writers today. This makes conversations about South Asian literature woefully homogenous and, frankly, much more uninteresting than they might otherwise be.

(14) LUCRATIVE FAILURES. Sarah A. Hoyt, who often has bad things to say about traditional publishing, added some more today in “Docking Author’s Tails” at Mad Genius Club.

…But why would publishers want properties that aren’t selling that well? Why not just give the IP back, after they set the book up to fail? Why set the book up to fail at all?
Ah. Because of the long tail. In the era of ebooks, which you don’t need to store in warehouses, and which you can have out in unlimited numbers with no additional cost, the more books you have in your catalogue, no matter how little each of them sells, the more money you make.
Say you have 50k books in your catalogue, some of them so old you’re interpreting ebook rights from penumbras and emanations, and each sells two copies a month, and makes you $4 apiece…. You’re getting a very healthy income.
Heck, it’s better than having a mega bestseller. Because a mega bestseller might get uppity and sue. But if each of those books is making under $5 a month, chances are you don’t even need to send out a statement.
Honestly, ponzi scheme architects go in awe of traditional publishers in the era of ebooks.
And, you know, when I realized that, everything fell into place: why careers keep getting shorter and shorter. Why, even with indie competition, writers are treated worse and worse. Why some publishers are buying the things they are (well, you know, if you don’t mean each book to make a lot of money, you might as well promote your comrades. Besides, they need publishing credits, so they can get teaching jobs.)
Is my insight necessarily true? I don’t know. It fits my experience and that of other midlisters. And — if the older authors I heard are right — it explains why bother setting books up to fail.

(15) THIS SCOTTISH DINOSAUR DID NOT HAVE A KILT. “Dinosaur fossil dating back 166 million years found by academic on remote Scottish island” – Yahoo! News has the story.

A stegosaurian fossil dating back 166 million years was stumbled upon by an academic as she ran along a remote island beach, proving dinosaurs roamed further in Scotland than first thought.
Scientists say the 19-inch fossil found on the Isle of Eigg is “hugely significant” as it is the first unearthed outside the Isle of Skye, a neighbouring island in the Inner Hebrides.
The object is believed to be the limb bone of a stegosaurian dinosaur, such as a stegosaurus, which are known for their plate-backed appearance and herbivore diet…

(16) WON’T WALK AWAY FROM THIS ONE. “Tenet: Behind The Scenes” on YouTube is a promotional feature that lets people know that when a 747 crashes into a building in the film, it’s an actual 747.

John David Washington is the new Protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s original sci-fi action spectacle “Tenet.”
Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. Not time travel. Inversion.

[Thank to Cat Eldridge, JJ, John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Dan’l Danehy-Oakes, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, Lise Andreasen, Walt Boyes, rcade, David Doering, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/25/20 Headless Pixel

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW BEOWULF. Maria Dahvana Headley’s “new, feminist translation of Beowulf“ was released today by Macmillan.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world—there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us.

Read Headley’s Introduction here.

…And so, I offer to the banquet table this translation, done by an American woman born in the year 1977, a person who grew up surrounded by sled dogs, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and bubbling natural hot springs nestled in the wild high desert of Idaho, a person who, if we were looking at the poem’s categories, would fall much closer in original habitat to Grendel and his mother than to Beowulf or even the lesser denizens of Hrothgar’s court.

I came to this project as a novelist, interested specifically in rendering the story continuously and clearly, while also creating a text that feels as bloody and juicy as I think it ought to feel. Despite its reputation to generations of unwilling students, forced as freshmen into arduous translations, Beowulf is a living text in a dead language, the kind of thing meant to be shouted over a crowd of drunk celebrants. Even though it was probably written down in the quiet confines of a scriptorium, Beowulf is not a quiet poem. It’s a dazzling, furious, funny, vicious, desperate, hungry, beautiful, mutinous, maudlin, supernatural, rapturous shout.
In contrast to the methods of some previous translators, I let the poem’s story lead me to its style. The lines in this translation were structured for speaking, and for speaking in contemporary rhythms. The poets I’m most interested in are those who use language as instrument, inventing words and creating forms as necessary, in the service of voice. I come from the land of cowboy poets, and while theirs is not the style I used for this translation, I did spend a lot of time imagining the narrator as an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another. I saw it with my own eyes.

(2) RAISEDWULF. “Raised By Wolves continues to look wild as hell in new trailer for Ridley Scott’s HBO Max series” says A.V.Club.

Members of the very small but very vocal group of Alien: Covenant supporters (and its smaller Prometheus chapter) are probably a little extra excited for Raised By Wolves. HBO Max’s new sci-fi series is executive produced by Ridley Scott, who also directed the first two episodes of a story that definitely looks like it’s treading thematic territory similar to Covenant—or what might’ve come after Covenant if Scott had been allowed to complete his trilogy. Scripted and created by Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners), Raised By Wolves follows a pair of androids (including one played by Amanda Collin, serving serious Michael Fassbender android vibes) raising human children on a distant planet, where they’re teaching the little kiddos to be atheists. Everything is just fine until some other humans show up with their strong religious views and hatred of robots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnwttF7uv1I

(3) ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN AT BAKER STREET. Netflix dropped a trailer for Enola Holmes, based on the novels by Nancy Springer about Sherlock Holmes’s little sister.

When Enola Holmes—Sherlock’s teen sister—discovers her mother missing, she sets off to find her, becoming a super-sleuth in her own right as she outwits her famous brother and unravels a dangerous conspiracy around a mysterious young Lord. Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Sam Claflin, with Henry Cavill and Helena Bonham-Carter.

(4) FOCUS ON FEAR. S.M. Carrière lets everyone know “Fans Can Be Scary” at Black Gate.

…However, there is absolutely no way that fans should get to dictate the way a story unravels. They do not get to demand of an author to end the series in the way that is not what the writer envisioned, or what the story demanded of them. Fans have no right to force the inclusion of events that do not ring true for that author or the story they’re trying to tell.
Yet, large clusters of fans believe that it is, in fact their right. Those folks, it seems, are not above threatening to end the careers of the author(s) that displeased them, some even going so far as to send death threats. No example of this sticks in my mind than the threats sent to author Veronica Roth, who displeased fans by killing off her protagonist (bold move. I can respect that), leaving the love interest to deal with that trauma.
…What scares me even more, however, is the idea that someone with too much time and a deeply entrenched sense of entitlement might show up at my door one day. I’ve heard first hand accounts of this happening to YouTubers and other celebrities, and the idea alone is enough to make me hyperventilate. Perhaps my home in the country will be an underground bunker…
This fear is, of course, compounded by gender. I’ve worked my fair share of gigs in retail with overly amorous clientele. I’ve been stalked by blokes who thought that a friendly sales person was actually a flirt. I’ve been hounded by men insistent that I am their future wife and they would treat me so well, if only I could be made to see it. I’ve had some of those men turn aggressive and threatening when I state in no uncertain terms that I am not interested. I’ve lost sleep and had panic attacks (and before anyone decides to explain to me that it’s not that bad, I highly recommend a little site called When Women Refuse).
Fans showing up at my door, even if just for a chat or an autograph, would absolutely trigger all of this nonsense. They would be a thoroughly unwelcome presence in my space. The utter lack of concern they show for a person’s need for privacy and even their mental well-being is frightening. Just thinking about it is making me get clammy.

(5) NASA. A Dublin 2019 Worldcon Special Guest is in the news.

https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1298279772116652035

(6) GET UP TO SPEED. Nisi Shawl’s “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction” is an annotated list of 40 black science fiction works that are important to an understanding of the history of Black Science Fiction. Shawl comments in the introduction —

…Just one caveat before you start ordering and downloading and diving into things: some of these works could be construed as fantasy rather than science fiction. The distinction between these two imaginative genres is often blurred, and it’s especially hard to make out their boundaries when exploring the writing of African-descended authors. Why? Because access to the scientific knowledge from which SF often derives has been denied to people of the African diaspora for much of history. And the classification of what is and is not scientific knowledge hasn’t been under our control–it’s frequently a matter of dispute. Also, it’s sometimes difficult to understand the history of black science fiction without reference to the history of black fantasy.
Keeping in mind how inextricably the two genres are interwoven, I include works of fantasy in this history of black science fiction crash course reading list, though I’m careful to note their presence with a parenthetical F at the end of each entry, thusly: (F).

(7) STAY THE COURSE. And Worlds Without End has created a “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction Reading List” to help readers track their progress, plus a “Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge” on reading “Speculative Fiction by Authors of Colour”. (Note: You must be a logged in member of WWEnd to join this challenge. Join WWEnd).

(8) ESSENCE OF WONDER. This week’s Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron features “Nisi Shawl on Music, Spirituality, and the Creative Process”.

Nisi Shawl will join Gadi to co-host a show on music and spirituality in the creative process. Nisi will be joined by Iya Oshunmiwa for a discussion of West African religious traditions and how Nisi’s work relates to those traditions. Oshun Miwa is a Priest of Oshun and professional storyteller?. Nisi and Gadi will explore the role of music in Nisi’s life and work, and we’ll also have a reading from Nisi’s work.

(9) CLASHING THE SYMBOLS. Ros Anderson holds forth “On the Difficulty of Finding a Distinct Human Voice for an AI heroine”, and finds help in a thousand-year-old book.

…I stopped reading the AI books once I hit the first unfathomable equation. Instead, I found myself carrying The Pillow Book around with me, as if it were a balm that I wanted always to have on hand. In Japan, The Pillow Book is a set school text. It has been hailed as one of the earliest works of literature by a woman. But I believe that what has truly given it longevity—across a whole millennium—is Sei’s own distinctive, seductive voice.
Her writing feels like a witty and perceptive friend, cutting in her opinions, but never too serious. Some have even called Shonagon—mistakenly—shallow. The Pillow Book has been described as a 1,000-year-old proto-blog. It has some of that same immediacy and intimacy. That sense of fun.
When I went to my friends’ café each morning to write my own book, The Pillow Book would be tucked in my bag. Something of its timeless narrator slipped a circuit and made it into my writing too. Sylv.ie’s voice began to emerge: a mix of politeness, restraint and disarming honesty. Naïve and rather snobbish, but with a clear, outsider’s eye.

(10) FANFUND AUCTION AT COLUMBUS VIRTUAL NASFIC. [Item by Michael J. Lowrey.] The Fanfund Auction at the Columbus in 2020 Virtual NASFIC has closed, with total sales of US$549.01. Items sold ranged from chapbooks, to naming rights in a new shared universe. to a knitted lace shawl, to private cocktail classes, to a crocheted Irish steampunk textile postcard.

Even though it was a NASFIC, participants included (at a minimum) fen from Germany, Ireland, Poland, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

(11) DE-BOOK ‘EM, DANNO. Smithsonian Magazine has “The Inside Story Of The $8 Million Heist From The Carnegie Library”.

…There are two types of people who frequent special collections that are open to the public: scholars who want to study something in particular, and others who just want to see something interesting. Both groups are often drawn to incunables. Books printed at the dawn of European movable type, between 1450 and 1500, incunables are old, rare and historically important. In short, an incunable is so valued and usually such a prominent holding that any thief who wanted to avoid detection would not steal one. The Oliver Room thief stole ten.
Visitors and researchers alike love old maps, and few are more impressive than those in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, commonly known as the Blaeu Atlas. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s version, printed in 1644, originally comprised three volumes containing 276 hand-colored lithographs that mapped the known world in the age of European exploration. All 276 maps were missing….

(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

August 25, 1951, Space Patrol’s “A Big Wheel Named Ferris” first aired. The series was created by Mike Moser who was the series writer along with Norman Jolley. The principal cast was Ed Kemmer, Lyn Osborn, Ken Mayer, Virginia Hewitt, Nina Bara and Bela Kovacs. Although aimed at children, it had a sizeable adult following for its fifteen-minute and half-hour versions. Books, comic books and a radio series were soon to be added. Even toys would be offered to the viewers. You can watch this episode here.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born August 25, 1909 — Michael Rennie. Definitely best-remembered as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. He would show up a few years later on The Lost World as Lord John Roxton, and he’s got an extensive genre series resume which counts Lost in Space as The Keeper in two episodes, The Batman as The Sandman, The Time Tunnel, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. (Died 1971.) (CE)
Born August 25, 1913 – Walt Kelly. Having acknowledged Herriman’s Krazy Kat as immortal and unique, what does that leave for Kelly’s Pogo? There is something sublime about the Kat; but Pogo is superb. If the Kat is brandy, say Delamain, Pogo may be bourbon, say Willett. Here is a sample. Here is another. Judith Merril put Pogo in No. 6 of her Year’s Best SF. Fantagraphics is up to vol. 6 of a complete run. (Died 1973) [JH]
Born August 25, 1930 — Sir Sean Connery, 90. Best film? From Russia with Love. Best SF film? Outland. Or Time Bandits you want go for silly. Worst film? Zardoz. These are my choices and yours no doubt will be different. (CE)
Born August 25, 1947 – Michael Kaluta, 73. Fifty covers, two hundred fifty interiors. Interviewed in Realms of Fantasy. Artbooks The Studio (with Jones, Windsor-Smith, Wrightson), The MK Collection, MK Series 2, Dream Makers (with Grant, Heller, Moore, Vess, Wrightson), Echoes, Wings of Twilight, MK Sketchbook vols. 1-4. Comics, music albums, role-playing games, collectible cards; airplane-nose art and flight-unit patches. Here is the Baycon ’87 Program Book. Here is Davy. Here is Vector 276. Here is Deep Signal. Shazam Award. Inkpot. Chesley for Artistic Achievement. Spectrum Grand Master. [JH]
Born August 25, 1955 — Simon R. Green, 65. I’ll confess that I’ve read pretty much everything he’s written save his NYT best-selling Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. (Shudder! I did see it.) Favorite series? The Nightside, Hawk & Fisher and Secret History are my all-time favorite ones with Drinking Midnight Wine the novel I’ve re-read the most. His only active series now is the Ishmael Jones fantasy mystery and it’s quite excellent. (CE)
Born August 25, 1956 – Chris Barkley, 64. Con-goer; several hundred including some three dozen Worldcons when I last tried to count; I often find him doing Press Relations. Campaigned for a Young Adult award; we now have the Lodestar. Accessibility and diversity, too, get his labors. Vigorous contributor to File 770. Fan Guest of Honor at Windycon 2019. “You have to walk a fine line between your utter conviction that you are right AND feeling flexible enough in your beliefs that you can admit you are wrong or can compromise.” [JH]
Born August 25, 1958 — Tim Burton, 61. Beetlejuice is by far my favorite film by him. His Batman is interesting. Read that comment as you will. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is definitely more Dahlish than the first take was, and Sleepy Hollow is just damn weird. (CE)
Born August 25, 1959 – Georges T. Dodds, Ph.D., 61. Essays, reviews, in Argentus, SF Site, WARP. Edited The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men. Did an adaptation of Lemina’s To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers. Note that his reviews include The Ghost Book of Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax; Mary Shelley’s Last Man; and Brooks’ Freddy the Detective. [JH]
Born August 25, 1967 – Laura Anne Gilman, 53. Thirty novels, six dozen shorter stories, some with co-authors, some under other names; more outside our field. Managed a wine-tasting room awhile. Interviewed in After Hours, Apex, Electric Velocipede, Fantasy, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Strange Horizons. “Writer, editor, tired person”. Amen. [JH]
Born August 25, 1970 — Chris Roberson, 50. Brilliant writer. I strongly recommend his Recondito series, Firewalk and Firewalkers. The Spencer Finch series is also worth reading. He’s also written two Warhammer novels, Dawn of War and Sons of Dorn, and Is publisher with his wife Allison Baker of Monkey Brain Books. He won a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History for his O One novella which I’ve not read. (CE)
Born August 25, 1971 – Lisa Papademetriou, 49. A dozen novels, some under another name; more outside our field; many for young adults, but your mileage may vary. Ranks The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about the same as The Wave in the Mind. [JH]
Born August 25, 1987 — Blake Lively, 33. She was Adaline Bowman in The Age of Adaline, a neat meditation upon life and death. She also played Carol Ferris in that Green Lantern film but the less said about it the better. Her very first role was as Trixie / Tooth Fairy in The Sandman at age eleven. (CE)

(14) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater finds a sci-fi angle to Ancestry.com.
Heathcliffe pulls a joke out of its Oz.

(15) THEME PARK ON THE ROCKS. “Evermore faces financial ruin after failing to pay contractors” — Utah Business has the story.

“My wife [Patrice] and I have cried many nights over this project,” says Ken Bretschneider, founder and CEO at Evermore Park. “This is not a position we wanted or should have gotten into.”
Only eight years ago, Bretschneider invested more than $37 million (and counting) of his own fortune largely from the sale of his previous startup DigiCert in 2012 to build a sort of live-action theme park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. He hired dozens of contracted construction workers to bring his medieval vision to life, but as plans became more and more grandiose, Bretschneider found himself strapped for cash and unable to make payments to the teams building the park.
Bretschneider claims he’s been fighting for additional funding something he says has been hard to procure for a unique project such as this but until he does, he owes millions of dollars in construction, mechanic, and landscaping fees to workers across the valley who have yet to be paid, sparking a number of controversies across the state….

(16) DREAM FOUNDRY WRITING CONTEST. The Dream Foundry Writing Contest is taking submissions through October 11, 2020. The contest will be judged by Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine. Full guidelines here.

We’re looking for complete and finalized stories of speculative fiction of up to 10,000 words. This year, we’re proud to announce monetary prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.
1st: $1000; 2nd: $500; 3rd: $200
There is no submission fee. All rights remain with the creators.

At the Dream Foundry blog there’s “An Interview with the Dream Foundry’s Writing Contest Coordinator Vajra Chandrasekera”.

Professional development spaces for emerging writers are not necessarily easily accessible to those who need it most. How do you see opportunities like the Dream Foundry’s writing contest fitting into the professional development of new and upcoming writers?
I think nine-tenths of “professional development” for a short story writer at the beginning of their career is learning how to make their own practice effective. This means figuring out what they want to write about and what they’re good at writing, and writing more stories where they do those things, ideally at the same time. Sometimes it’s just that a contest gives you a clearly defined set of constraints to work within, which can be very productive. Sometimes it’s good to hang out in a discord with a bunch of other people who are trying to solve the same problems you are—so you can commiserate and share experiences and animal pictures, if you’re into that sort of thing, and even if not, these are good spaces to eventually share knowledge about the industry, too.

(17) DREAM FOUNDRY ART CONTEST. The new Dream Foundry Art Contest coordinator is Dante Luiz, an illustrator and occasional writer from southern Brazil. He is one of the two Art Directors for Strange Horizons, and his first graphic novel was published in 2020 by comiXology Originals (CREMA, written by Johnnie Christmas).

The Dream Foundry Art Contest will run from 1 September 1 to November 1, 2020. The first place winner for the art contest will receive $1000. Guidelines are located here.

(18) LIFESAVING APP. From the creator of The Oatmeal.

About
This app was designed by Matt Inman, creator of The Oatmeal.

It was built and developed by Nick Inman, Matthew’s brother.
FAQ
When will it be available in the Google Play store?
It will be available at some point in space and time.
The app didn’t work for me! What should I do?
Try vigorously shaking your phone and rebooting your router.
If that fails, try blowing profusely into your phone’s charge port.
If that fails, accept that the universe is fundamentally against you.
Just please don’t email us about it.

Does this app work on dogs?
No. That’s why it has the word “cat” in the title.

What about tigers?
Yes, it is tiger-compatible.

(19) ANOTHER ORDINARY DAY ON THE INTERNET. Think of your experiences on Facebook. Ever wonder how you got into arguments you don’t even want to be in? Ever had to block someone? Now think of having to deal with 800 times as much of it as you do. Okay. Now you’re ready to hear Larry Correia explain “About My ‘Tone’ On Social Media” [Internet Archive] on Monster Hunter Nation.

…I had one last month, with 8,000 comments, where I ended up blocking over 100 people in 24 hours. That was nuts.
Apparently, where all these people come from, blundering into a stranger’s living room and screaming in his face is a “conversation”. And if you don’t put up with their endless abuse, you’re obviously a bad person.
Awesome. I’ll be the bad guy.
And it is bipartisan. Though I’d say 80% of the time I’m yelled at by annoying leftists, 15% it’s annoying right wingers, and 5% Too Fucking Insane To Register On Any Regular Political Scale.
That’s for controversial posts. For regular, boring, not controversial posts at all, I can count on getting lots of “helpful” suggestions. These mean well, but then never stop coming, and most of them are so awful they really make my head hurt. You’re right, sir, I should totally install more electrical outlets into my closet. Why thank you, ma’am, I should totally disregard my decade of professional experience and write my books according to your really awful suggestions.
Then there’s the people who think they are funny, who aren’t. I’ve heard the same tired jokes 10,000 times. I can’t post about the availability of a new product without Shut Up And Take My Money memes, and I can never mention food spicier than white bread without listening to dozens of people whine about how weak their bowels are…

(20) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Gizmodo warns “Trillions of Rogue Planets Could Be Careening Through Our Galaxy”. And none of them are insured.

A new estimate suggests the Milky Way contains more free-floating planets than stars. It’s a big claim, but an upcoming mission might actually prove it.
Rogue planets in our galaxy could number in the tens of billions and possibly even trillions, according to new research published in the Astronomical Journal. If confirmed, it means the Milky Way hosts more unbound, starless planets than it does stars. This estimate was developed in preparation for the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES), a five-year mission that’s scheduled to start in about five to six years.

(21) THE SHAPE OF THINGS THAT ARE PRESENT. “Johannes Kepler and COVID-19: 400 Years of Mathematical Modeling” on the Library of Congress Blog.

…Because viruses have such small genetic codes they have to be very efficient when it comes to building their shapes. Many, such as COVID-19, have polyhedral designs. A polyhedron is a three-dimensional shape with flat faces that are made of two-dimensional polygons. They have straight edges and sharp corners. As geometric figures, they have been studied since the time of the ancient Greeks.
In the early 17th century the astronomer Johannes Kepler, perhaps best known for his derivation of the laws of planetary motion, was fascinated by these shapes. In 1619, exactly 400 years before the outbreak of COVID-19, he produced a book called “Harmonices Mundi” (“Harmony of the Worlds”) that peered into and tried to understand these simple yet mysterious forms. The Library has copies of this work in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

(22) DOMESTIC FELICITY. What will SJWs think of the idea you can heat your home with cats? “Cat v panel heater: Which is better?” at New Zealand blog One Roof.

… How many cats do you need to heat an energy-efficient home?
It’s the question on everybody’s lips. Well, maybe not everyone’s lips, and it’s possible this is a niche topic, but it is relevant.
A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours – the metric commonly used by power companies to show you how much energy you’re using.
These numbers are important when it comes to the design and building of energy-efficient homes, as the heat output of random things like cats can lead to overheating.
For example, to be certified Passive House, a building must have an annual heating demand of less than 15kWh per square metre to maintain a comfortable temperature.
For a typical Kiwi house of 150sqm, the annual energy demand would be 2250kWh. The number of cats required, therefore, would be 17.35, but let’s avoid chopping cats and round up to 18 whole cats.

(23) WILL THEY MAKE YOU GLAZE OVER? Food & Wine promises “These New Dunkin’ Beers Are Made with Actual Donuts”.

At this point, an endless parade of brands is dabbling in craft beer collaborations: bands like The Flaming Lips, clothing lines like L.L. Bean, and even the mustard maker French’s. But few companies have been as aggressive in their beer collab-ing ways as Dunkin’. After some early experiments in 2017 (a pumpkin brown ale with Catawba Brewing and a coffee stout with Wormtown Brewery), the donut and coffee chain found a lasting (and larger) partner in 2018 with the Massachusetts-based Harpoon Brewing. That year, the two brands released their Dunkin’ Coffee Porter. Then, in 2019, Harpoon Dunkin Summer Coffee Pale Ale hit shelves.
Now, for the 2020 fall season, Harpoon and Dunkin’ are releasing a full lineup of four beers—including three new brews, two of which are billed as the first beers to ever be made with actual Dunkin’ donuts. And tapping into craft beer’s biggest trend, one of those is even a donut-infused hazy IPA!
Arriving this September, Harpoon and Dunkin’ are bringing back their popular Coffee Porter for the third consecutive year—and it arrives alongside a trio of new creations: Harpoon Dunkin’ Pumpkin, Harpoon Dunkin’ Boston Kreme, and Harpoon Dunkin’ Jelly Donut. The first of the three is described as a “Spiced Latte Ale” inspired by the seasonal espresso drink. The “light in color and easy-drinking” 5.2 percent ABV ale is “brewed with real pumpkin, pumpkin pie spices, and a splash of coffee” to create “a perfect blend of all the autumn flavors we love, with just a touch of espresso-like roast.”…

(24) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: Fall Guys, Ultimate Knockout” on YouTube, Fandom Games takes on a multi-player game where you “use five percent of your brain” to maneuver your character through a course “that’s somewhere between Battle Royale and a Japanese game show.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Rich Horton, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, David Doering, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

Pixel Scroll 5/4/19 Pixellation Of The Scroll Nation

Posted on May 4, 2019 by Mike Glyer

(1) MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU. John Stratman posted a 16-bit “Super Nintendo inspired version of the trailer for Star Wars Episode 9.” SYFY Wire explains —

His awesome contribution to May The 4th is a sly homage to old-school 16-bit video games of yore applied to the official trailer for Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. Stratman is notorious for his slick remastered trailers in 8-bit and 16-bit style,

(2) HE DIDN’T MEAN IT. WIRED’s “Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy” podcast hastens to reassure us that “Ian McEwan Doesn’t Hate Science Fiction”. In case you care.

In a recent interview British novelist Ian McEwan seemed to suggest that science fiction is only about “traveling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots,” in contrast to his own novel Machines Like Me, which he says explores the “human dilemmas” involved with artificial intelligence. Science fiction fans bristled, questioning whether McEwan had ever actually read any science fiction, but McEwan now insists that he’s been misunderstood.
“I was a little taken aback at how some rather offhand remarks of mine should cause such a storm,” McEwan says in Episode 359 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And actually I’ve read a fair amount of science fiction over a lifetime.” …
“I actually put a nod towards Blade Runner in Adam’s final speeches, after he’s been attacked by Charlie,” McEwan says. “There’s a very self-conscious nod to that famous farewell in the rain.”
And while science fiction works like Blade Runner are a definite influence on Machines Like Me, McEwan notes that there are many other influences as well. “I’d be very happy for my novel to be called science fiction, but it’s also a counterfactual novel, it’s also a historical novel, it’s also a moral dilemma novel, in a well-established traditional form within the literary novel,” he says. “I’m very happy if they want to call my novel science fiction, even honored. But it’s much else, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

(3) MARVEL CONTENT FOR LIBRARIES AND SCHOOLS. Rakuten OverDrive now offers Marvel Digital Graphic Novels to public libraries and schools.

Marvel Entertainment has teamed up with Rakuten OverDrive, the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools, to offer 600 graphic novel and comic collection titles to public libraries and schools worldwide. Library patrons and students of participating public libraries and schools can borrow digital versions of renowned titles including Avengers, Black Panther, Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men and more. Visit overdrive.com to find a library or school near you.
Marvel Entertainment joins OverDrive’s catalog of millions of ebooks and audiobooks including over 31,000 graphic novels and comics from prominent publishers such as DC Comics, Image Comics, IDW, Valiant, Izneo and Titan Comics. Libraries and schools can select from this catalog to build their individual digital collections.
…Readers can embark on the Marvel adventure in a variety of ways. Public library patrons may download Libby or choose to read on a computer browser. Libby provides an easy, user-friendly experience and is compatible with all major devices, including iPhone®, iPad®, Android™, Windows® and “send to Kindle®” [US only]. Students of participating schools can use Sora, the student reading app, or enjoy via computer browser. Through the Sora app, students have easy access to both the school’s and local public library’s digital collections anytime, anywhere. In both cases, the title will automatically expire at the end of the lending period and there are no late fees.

Daniel Dern notes/adds:

1, Good news, free!
2, Takes a little patience. It looks like each library has a finite # of concurrent per-item licenses, so you may have to search other library systems, and hope that your credentials will let you borrow from it.
3, The price is right.
4, Like all digital comic reading, works best on a big-enough display, either your desktop, or an iPad Pro 12.9. Probably good ’nuff on slightly smaller tablets, but (I suspect) often frustrating in terms of any tiny print, etc.

(4) CINEMATOGRAPHY AS GENRE. NPR’s Mark Jenkins reviews “‘Shadow’: An Epic Tale Of Feudal China That Gradually Shades Into Fantasy”.

…While Shadow is loosely based on historical events, the story’s mythic nature is announced not by the movie’s story but by its look. The ravishing costumes and sets are all in black, white, and watery shades of gray, as if they’d been conjured from Chinese calligraphy and ink paintings.
One of Zhang’s visual signatures is a billowing sheet of brightly colored cloth, a device that dates to 1990’s Ju Dou, set in a fabric dying plant. The closest equivalents in Shadow are seen in the king’s receiving chamber, outfitted with more than a dozen large banners. They’re emblazoned with black-on-white script, its loose penmanship as traditional as Lao Zai’s spare score, composed for venerable Chinese instruments.
In the film’s first half, the only bits of color are the characters’ pinkish skin and an occasional sprig of gray-green vegetation. Later, of course, there will be blood.
Shadow doesn’t rush to battle, unlike such earlier Zhang martial-arts spectaculars as Hero and House of Flying Daggers. The movie spends about an hour sketching the backstory and observing the machinations that will lead to war….

(5) CUMBERBATCH LENDS VOICE TO TOLKIEN PROJECT. The Express reports: “Benedict Cumberbatch waives £7m fee for charity film”.

The star stepped in at no cost – and at short notice – to narrate the film about the death of the great-grandson of Hobbit creator JRR Tolkien from the devastating disease. Cumberbatch, who starred in the film version of the classic fantasy novel, commands up to £7.5million a film. But after hearing from Royd Tolkien, whose brother Mike died aged 39, he waived his fee in a secret deal.
The film portrays Mike’s battle with the neurodegenerative disease and the bucket list he left for actor and film maker Royd, 49, which included a canyon swing tied to a chair.
“Benedict made the most noble, private and breathtaking tribute to my brother,” Royd said. “On his deathbed [Mike] told me he’d left a secret list with 50 challenges I had to complete around the world.
“We made a film of my journey and the detailed narration is a key part.
“The budget was finished and I was devastated. It needed a big name, but I felt Mike’s spirit and just rolled the dice.
“Benedict is my favourite actor so I simply emailed to ask a colossal and free favour.
“I was on urgent deadline and realistically expected nothing in return.”

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 4, 1858 — E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on more than 60 books, forty of which were children’s literature, at least some of which are fantasy or supernatural horror. I strongly recommend The Complete Book Of Dragons, the 1975 edition which collection previously unpublished material, and Man and Maid which collects most of her short story horror. (Died 1924.)
Born May 4, 1940 — Robin Cook, 79. Well he is genre, isn’t he? Or at least genre adjacent? I’ve never actually read any of his best selling books so one of y’all that has will need tell to me how truly genre friendly he is.
Born May 4, 1943 — Erwin Strauss, 76. I’m not sure I can do him justice. Uberfan, noted member of the MITSFS, and filk musician. He frequently is known by the nickname “Filthy Pierre” which I’m sure is a story in itself. Created the Voodoo message board system used at a number of early cons and published an APA, the Connection, that ran for at least thirty years. Tell me about him.
Born May 4, 1949 — Kim Mohan, 70. Editor and author of the Cyborg Command RPG based on an outline by Gary Gygax. He was Editor of TSR’s The Dragon magazine for several years which led to his becoming editor of Amazing Stories from 1991 to 2000.
Born May 4, 1974 — James Bacon, 45. Editor along with more folk than I can possibly mention here of the Hugo-winning Journey Planet magazine from 2009 to the present. Also editor of Exhibition Hall, a Steampunk Zine he edited with Christopher J. Garcia and Ariane Wolfe for some years.
Born May 4, 1977 — Gail Carriger, 43. Ahhhh, lovely mannerpunk she writes! I think I first noticed her with the start of the Finishing School series which she started off with Etiquette & Espionage some six years ago. Moirai Cook does a delightful job of the audiobooks by the way. I also the two novellas in her Supernatural Society series as well.
Born May 4, 1995 — Shameik Moore, 24. He voices Miles Morales, the teen-ager who would become Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which I review here. It’s by far the best film I’ve seen this year and I urge you to go see it now.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark remembers that Star Wars speed record a little differently.

(8) ISS BECOMES A GAS STATION. “Nasa instrument heads to space station to map CO2” – BBC has the story.

Nasa has sent up an instrument to the International Space Station (ISS) to help track carbon dioxide on Earth.
OCO-3, as the observer is called, was launched on a Falcon rocket from Florida in the early hours of Saturday.
The instrument is made from the spare components left over after the assembly of a satellite, OCO-2, which was put in orbit to do the same job in 2014.

(9) LIGO. Apparently there’s an app for that — “Gravitational waves hunt now in overdrive”.

…The alert on Mansi Kasliwal’s phone went off at two in the morning. Shrugging off the sleep, she squinted at the message. It was from LIGO, the Nobel Prize-winning scientific collaboration that operates gravitational wave detectors.
A far-off violent event had sent ripples in space-time through the Universe, to be picked up by LIGO’s sensor in Louisiana, and it looked from the data like there should be visible “fireworks”, too.
Thanks to the smartphone revolution, she could react without leaving her bed. A few taps on the screen, and the Zwicky Transient Facility, a robotic telescope on Mount Palomar, was reprogrammed to start the hunt.
LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, and its European counterpart, VIRGO, have just completed upgrades that mean they should be spotting space-distorting events several times each week – collisions of black holes, of neutron stars, and even more exotic phenomena.
And since they started running again at the start of April, expectations are holding up: two in the second week; three last week.

(10) MONOLITH. “How Avengers put Disney at the top of the charts” – and Chip Hitchcock wants to know, “Will Endgame take the title for all-time inflation-adjusted gross from Gone With the Wind?”

Avengers: Endgame broke all box office records last weekend and has confirmed Disney’s dominance in global cinema.
More than 90% of the value of all tickets sold in UK cinemas last weekend was for Avengers: Endgame.
Within five days it had become the fastest film to break the $1bn sales barrier worldwide.

(11) EVERMORE. It may not be quite as hot a ticket as Avengers:Endgame, but the Utah theme park is making sales says David Doering: “While some suggested the park opening would be delayed, they are now selling tix for opening day on Saturday, May 25th. The show, called World of Mythos, sells regularly for $29/adult, $16/child )<14).on Saturdays, $19 and $9 on Thursdays and Fridays. Mondays are discount day with $14/adults, $9 for kids.”

(12) SLOW HAND. Did he hurt the hand he painted with? Just which hand was that anyway? Analysts speculate that “Leonardo’s ‘claw hand’ stopped him painting”.

Leonardo da Vinci could have experienced nerve damage in a fall, impeding his ability to paint in later life, Italian doctors suggest.
They diagnosed ulnar palsy, or “claw hand”, by analysing the depiction of his right hand in two artworks.
It had been suggested that Leonardo’s hand impairment was caused by a stroke.
But in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the doctors suggest it was nerve damage that meant he could no longer hold a palette and brush.
Leonardo da Vinci, who lived from 1452-1519, was an artist and inventor whose talents included architecture, anatomy, engineering and sculpture, as well as painting.
But art historians have debated which hand he used to draw and paint with.
Analysis of his drawing shows shading sloping from the upper left to lower right, suggesting left-handedness. But all historical biographical documents suggest Leonardo used his right hand when he was creating other kinds of works.

(13) SHOUT OUT/BLOT OUT. Vanity Fair: “Mike Pence Got an Insane Game of Thrones Shout-Out During the Battle of Winterfell”.

[…] co-creator/showrunner D.B. Weiss […] shared with Jimmy Kimmel some of the challenges of their extensive production [of “The Long Night” episode]. In particular, Weiss revealed the long hours and night-shoots took a toll on series star Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), whose usual fluency with the “High Valyrian” language was reduced to improvising gibberish among his fellow Unsullied.
“At one point, Miguel [Sapochnik], the director, starts yelling at Jacob to improvise something in Valyrian … yell to your troops in Valyrian,” Weiss explained. “And Jacob was so tired and so delirious and so out of it that all he could think to yell was, ‘Mike Pence! Mike Pence! Mike Pence!’ So in one of those scenes when Jacob is yelling and pointing—whatever he was saying was dubbed over—but what he was actually saying was ‘Mike Pence! Mike Pence!’”
Not only were Anderson’s lines understandably dubbed in post, but Weiss noted the mask over Anderson’s mouth prevents any recognition of the “Mike Pence!” chant regardless. Probably for the best—Game of Thrones has a history of riling up Washington. […]

(14) COP ON A STICK. A new invention, still in development, promises to make the interaction between police and motorists they pull over safer for both sides. Gizmodo: “Imagine Getting Pulled Over By This Tablet on a Stick”.

Every year, millions of drivers are pulled over and during those stops thousands of assaults and physical altercations happen, resulting in injuries and even deaths to both police officers and suspects. On top of that, there’s also the risk from other vehicles when a stop is made on the side of a busy road. Reuben Brewer […] cobbled together [the first versions] in his garage, [but] he’s now developing his police robot for SRI International in the company’s Applied Technologies and Science Department.
[…] When officers pull over a vehicle,] the robot will help create a safe distance between suspects and the police while they both remain in their vehicles during testing. It’s a telepresence robot that extends on a long arm from a police cruiser to the suspect’s vehicle, facilitating two-way video and audio communications.
[… T]he robot is […] equipped with a barcode reader allowing a driver’s license to be quickly scanned, while a thermal printer can churn out tickets and citations that drivers can tear off like a receipt. As the robot moves alongside a vehicle it also subtly deploys a spike strip under the car, so should a suspect decide to flee, they’ll shred at least one tire in the process. […]

(15) KAMERON HURLEY. Paul Weimer considers the “genre conversation” that leads to Hurley’s new novel in “Microreview [book]: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley” at Nerds of a Feather.

A future world where Corporations dominate the globe, have in effect become the superpowers that rule a rather tired Earth. For the lower classes, those who are not citizens, it’s a rather rough and precarious life. Dietz (who never gets a first name, and in a bit of ledgerdemain their gender is kept relatively unstated and understated) goes from a future and poor Sao Paulo, to fighting Martians on Mars, in what was once Canada, and far beyond. There’s just one problem: The lightspeed technology to move soldiers around has a strange effect on Dietz, and in short order starts to learn they are experiencing her future all out of order. Worse, thar futuie is a dark one in which the war they signed up for is far more terrible than they can imagine.

(16) GENRE IN NIGERIA. Charles Payseur visits a new frontier of sff in “Quick Sips – Strange Horizons 04/29/2019”.

It’s a special release from Strange Horizons to close out April, featuring two short stories and three poems celebrating Nigerian SFF. The works bring a fresh feel to fantasy that weaves magic and creation, persecution and resistance. It finds characters who just want to be free to live their lives being pulled into plots and intrigues that they want no part of but that threaten them all the same. And only through connecting to their power, their families, and the people they have chosen to surround themselves with can they fight back and perhaps fully embrace their potential. It’s a wonderful batch of short SFF, and a treat for readers hungry for more international SFF, so I’ll get right to the reviews!

(17) BEWARE SPOILERS. ScreenRant invites you to step inside the pitch meeting that led to Avengers: Endgame. (“Oh, it’s like Fanservice: The Movie!”) While amusing the viewers Ryan George pretty much gives everything away so BEWARE SPOILERS!

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Chris M. Barkley, Carl Slaughter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]

Pixel Scroll 4/16/19 I Have No Clicks And I Must Swear Mightily Underneath My Breath

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Mike Glyer

(1) ORIGIN STORY. Rudy Rucker posted drafts of two presentations he’s giving at the IOHK Summit in Miami Beach on April 18. The first is — “Cyberpunk Use Cases”.

…My best-known novel is Software, written in 1980. It was one of the earliest cyberpunk novels. The idea behind Software seems simple now.

It should be possible to extract the patterns stored in a person’s brain,
and transfer these onto a computer or a robot.

You’ve seen this scenario hundred movies and TV shows, right? But I was the first one to write about it. In 1980, “soul as software” was an unheard of thought. Hardly anyone even knew the word “software.”
To make my Software especially punk, I made the brain-to-software transfer very gnarly. A gang of scary-funny hillbillies extracted people’s mental software by slicing off the tops of their skulls and eating their brains with cheap steel spoons. One of the hillbillies was a robot in disguise, and his stomach analyzed the brain tissue. Did I mention that I grew up in Kentucky?

(2) BAG ORDINANCE. The Anime News Network posted a wise suggestion “Anime Boston Attendees Remember to BYOB: Bring Your Own Bags”. (Via Petréa Mitchell.)

If you’re heading out to the Anime Boston convention this weekend with the intention of picking up merchandise and art prints from the Dealer’s Hall and Artist Alley, you could run into some trouble if you don’t have reusable bags handy.
Artist Alley and Dealer’s Hall merchants were caught off guard on Monday after convention staff alerted them that the only permissible types of bags must be reusable, recyclable, or compostable with handles. The restriction is due to an ordinance that went in effect in Boston on December 14, 2018. Plastic bags with handles are not allowed and retailers are required to charge customers an additional US$.05 per bag unless the customer brings their own.

(3) HISTORIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Eugene Grant reminds people of Judy-Lynn Del Rey’s impact on the field of sff. Thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/MrEugeneGrant/status/1117665859856629760

https://twitter.com/MrEugeneGrant/status/1117671037905330176

(4) EVERMORE PARK. The summer opening of the “Mythos” theme adventure at Evermore Park in Utah is tentatively scheduled for May 29, says David Doering, “though this could slip.”

MYTHOS
An enchanted festival of fantasy and magic, celebrating the wondrous grace of dragons. Coming Summer 2019.

(5) WOLFE’S BEGINNINGS. The Guardian’s Alison Flood added her tribute to the late author: “Gene Wolfe, ‘magnificent’ giant of science fiction, dies aged 87”.

…When he was named a grand master of science fiction and fantasy by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in 2012, Wolfe recalled living “paycheck to paycheck” with his wife Rosemary and children, and getting three “not terribly good” stories published in a college magazine.
“Then it was time for school to start again, and Rosemary began badgering me for money for school clothes,” he said. “Another story, Car Sinister, sold, and instead of depositing the check I got the manager of the hardware store to cash it for me. I took it to Rosemary: ‘Here’s every dime I got for that story. That’s how much you have for school clothes.’ A few days passed, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor trying to mend a chair. Rosemary came up behind me and said, ‘Shouldn’t you be writing?’ That’s when I knew I was a writer.”

(6) COLE OBIT. Noted sff writer Allan Cole died March 29 reports the SFWA Blog.

Allan Cole, international best-selling author, screenwriter and former prize-winning newsman, died March 29, 2019, of cancer in Boca Raton, FL. He was 75.
Cole was probably best known for the Sten science fiction series, which he co-authored with his late partner Chris Bunch, as well as the critically acclaimed Vietnam novel “A Reckoning for Kings” about the Tet Offensive of 1968.

(7) GARRIOTT OBIT. “My home town astronaut died,” wrote John A Arkansawyer. “My first job was at an all-night gas station on Owen K. Garriott Road (formerly Market). I never met him, but I benefited from his presence in our small city. My kid and my kid’s mom and I went back for a visit the summer after my dad died and spent a great day here: Leonardo’s – Interactive Children’s Museum in Enid, OK. He and his former wife founded it and it’s still going strong.

Dr. Owen K. Garriott, scientist/astronaut, died April 15: “Enid-born astronaut Owen K. Garriott dies at age 88”.
Garriott’s initial space flight on Skylab 3 was from July 28 to Sept. 25, 1973, according to OHS. On this mission, he and his two crewmates conducted major experiments in science and medicine for a total of 1,427 hours in space. In three separate space walks outside the Skylab, Garriott spent 13 hours and 43 minutes.

Helen Walker Garriott, co-founder of Leonardo’s Children’s Museum, died in 2017.

Astronaut Owen Garriott was a good friend and an incredible astronaut. I have a great sadness as I learn of his passing today. Godspeed Owen. pic.twitter.com/rT56PQMwJV
— Dr. Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) April 15, 2019

His son, Richard Garriott, was also an astronaut (he made a pot of money on video games and bought a ticket), and they were the only father-son pair to fly to space (so far).

(8) REED OBIT. Les Reed wrote several Top-40 hits. And at least one genre tune —

Songwriter Les Reed, who died yesterday at age 87, was responsible for such hits as "There's a Kind of Hush," "Delilah," and "It's Not Unusual" — but don't forget the 1967 novelty song "Who's Doctor Who?" performed by Doctor Who companion @WhoFrazer! https://t.co/b0Q0GnoUyq
— Scott Edelman (@scottedelman) April 16, 2019

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 16, 1917 — William “Billy” Benedict. Singled out for Birthday Honours as he was Whitey Murphy in Adventures of Captain Marvel. Yes, that Captain Marvel. Back in 1942, it was a 12-chapter black-and-white movie serial from Republic Pictures based off the Fawcett Comics strip. (Died 1999.)
Born April 16, 1921 — Peter Ustinov. He had a number of genre appearances such as being in Blackbeard’s Ghost as Captain Blackbeard, in the animated Robin Hood by voicing both Prince John and King Richard, as simply The Old Man In Logan’s Run, Truck Driver In The Great Muppet Caper, and in Alice in Wonderland as The Walrus. (Died 2004.)
Born April 16, 1922 — John Christopher. Author of The Tripods, an alien invasion series which was adapted into both a radio and television series. He wrote a lot of genre fiction including the Fireball series in which Rome never fell, and The Death of Grass which I mention because it was one of the many YA post-apocalyptic novels that he wrote in the Fifties and Sixties that sold extremely well in the U.K. (Died 2012.)
Born April 16, 1922 — Kingsley Amis. So have you read The Green Man? I’m still not convinced that anything actually happened, or that everything including the hauntings were in Maurice Allington’s decayed brain. I’m not seeing that he did much else for genre work but he did write Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure under the pseudonym of Robert Markham and his New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction published in the late Fifties, he shares his views on the genre and makes some predictions as there’ll never be a SF series on the boob tube. (Died 1995.)
Born April 16, 1954 — Ellen Barkin, 65. She played Penny Priddy in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a film that should neither get remade nor get sequels, both of which have been proposed. And to my knowledge, her only genre credits are Into the West as Kathleen, and in The Cobbler as Elaine Greenawalt.
Born April 16, 1962 — Kathryn Cramer, 57. Writer, editor, and literary critic. She co-founded The New York Review of Science Fiction in 1988 with David G. Hartwell and others, and was its co-editor until 1991 and again since 1996. She edited with her husband David G. Hartwell Year’s Best Fantasy one through nine and Year’s Best SF seven through thirteen with as well.
Born April 16, 1975 — Sean Maher, 44. Doctor Simon Tam In the Firefly verse. And Dick Grayson (Nightwing) in a staggering number of animated DAC films, to wit Son of Batman, Batman vs. Robin, Batman: Bad Blood, Justice League vs. Teen Titans, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract and Batman: Hush. He showed up on Arrow as Shrapnel in the “Blast Radius” and “Suicide Squad” episodes.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

A Problem Like Jamal thinks this is no Jokering matter.

(11) THE ROLLING STONES. Not just the stones, the builders also traveled — “Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders”. Yes, technically everyone traveled over long-enough time — but they’ve found that Stonehenge was built by relatively recent arrivals.

The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.

Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.

The Neolithic inhabitants appear to have travelled from Anatolia (modern Turkey) to Iberia before winding their way north.

They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.

Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe.

Before that, Europe was populated by small, travelling groups which hunted animals and gathered wild plants and shellfish.

Here a link to the original paper in Nature.

The roles of migration, admixture and acculturation in the European transition to farming have been debated for over 100?years. Genome-wide ancient DNA studies indicate predominantly Aegean ancestry for continental Neolithic farmers, but also variable admixture with local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Neolithic cultures first appear in Britain circa 4000?bc, a millennium after they appeared in adjacent areas of continental Europe….

(12) UNDER THE HAMMER. Here are a couple of the interesting lots in Heritage Auctions’ April 23 Illustration Art Signature Auction.

(13) SFF MOVIE COLLECTIBLES. And Bonhams is running the “TCM Presents … Wonders of the Galaxy: Science Fiction and Fantasy in Film” auction on May 14 in Los Angeles. The catalog is here.

They expect this poster from the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame movie to go for $150,000-$200,000.

(14) CATTY REMARKS. Timothy the Talking Cat resumes his autobiography in “Beyond the Bounds of Genius: Chapter 2”.

Chapter 2: Tim Cat’s Schooldays
Bortsworth Grammar School for the Boys With Fathers Off in the Colonies was an august institution but was also open in other months. For two hundred years it had taught the male offspring of the British Empire’s far flung civil servants. The school specialised in latin, bullying, it’s own idiosyncratic form of Rugby football and petty tyranny and often all four at the same time.
I boarded the school train at Bortsworth Station and immediately got off again as it had reached its destination….

(15) FLAVOR LOST IN SPACE. From Behind a paywall at The Week comes this item:

An Englishman launched a Big Mac hamburger into the stratosphere using a weather balloon–then ate the ‘spaceburger’ upon its return to the ground. Thomas Stanniland said he accomplished the feat with the aid of four canisters of helium, a GoPro camera, a GPS tracker, a polystyrene box, and superglue. After the balloon popped and the burger floated back,he recovered it. ‘It’s been outside, so it’s been a bit crumbly,’ he said after taking a bite. Overall, he described the taste as ‘not nice.'”

(16) THE PROBLEM OF PAIN. That’s a reference I thought of when someone told me the next episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is titled “The Eggplant, The Witch & The Wardrobe Trailer.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz17e02PJZI

(17) HUSKY ROBOTS. Boston Dynamics puts a bunch of their “SpotMini” robot “dogs” together in harness to pull a BD truck… Gizmodo has the story: “These Robodogs Are Even Scarier When They Start Working In a Pack”.

That sound, that sound, as they come marching.
When it’s not frightening the world with videos of back-flipping cyborg supersoldiers, Boston Dynamics likes to have a bit of fun with their robotic creations. Presumably inspired by last month’s Iditarod, the company strapped ten of its SpotMini robots together but instead of pulling a sled, these robo-pups have enough strength to pull a massive diesel truck. Did I say fun? I meant terror-inducing.

That last linked phrase is to a YouTube video:

It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon. For more information visit us at www.BostonDynamics.com/Spot.

[Thanks to David Doering, Avilyn, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, John A Arkansawyer, Bill, Steve Green, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Scott Edelman, Martin Morse Wooster, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

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Tag Archives: Evermore Park

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