Tag Archives: Fantastic Four

Pixel Scroll 4/21/25 That’s My Last Loch Ness, Hanging On The Wall

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(1) THE INVISIBLE BABY? “Baby boomers: if Sue Storm is pregnant then what’s going to happen in the Fantastic Four’s first outing?” asks the Guardian.

You might have thought that the introduction of Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, into the MCU would be enough heavy lifting for one movie. But while all eyes were on the potential ramifications of villain Galactus turning up for planetary snack time, the new trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps delivers a mind-bending revelation: Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is pregnant.

This looks like big news. As they prepare to take on their colossal nemesis and his gleaming, emotionally unavailable emissary Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s the Thing will be doing so in the knowledge that they’re protecting more than just the future of this Apollo-era-inspired version of Earth. And if you’ve even lightly skimmed the back catalogue of Fantastic Four comics, you’ll know this is no ordinary pregnancy; and certainly no ordinary infant.

(2) FANZINE TALK INSPIRED BY LICHTMAN COLLECTION. The Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries will be hosting a talk on Zoom on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern titled Worlds We Build Together: Sci-Fi Fandom, Fanzines, and the Culture of Connection.

The talk will feature panelists Phoenix Alexander (Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy at University of California, Riverside) and Pete Balestrieri (Curator of Popular Culture, University of Iowa Libraries), who will discuss the history of science fiction fandom and the production of fanzines that span nearly 100 years. Topics will include fanzines in the classroom and community and a celebration of the Lehigh Libraries acquisition of the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection in 2024.

The talk is free and open to the public, but registration is required. More information about this talk and a link to register is available here.

This talk program is presented in collaboration with the exhibit Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection. 

(3) LICHTMAN COLLECTION EXHIBIT. “Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection” is on display at Lehigh University Libraries through June 2025.

Recently, the [Lehigh Libraries Special Collections] Libraries acquired the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection amounting to over 15,000 items. This extensive collection spans nearly a century, dating from the late 1930s through 2022, and features commentary, fan fiction, criticism, conference proceedings, and other genres. Along with the printed works, the archive includes correspondence, original art, and several fanzine titles personally published by Lichtman.

Fanzines, or ‘zines, as they are commonly referred to, may seem like an unusual choice for an institution whose traditional rare book collection is steeped in history. However, a previous gift of fanzines from alumnus Frank Lunney already revealed significant research interest across the curriculum. 

Boaz Nadav Manes, Lehigh University Librarian says: “Adding this comprehensive fanzine collection to Lehigh Libraries’ holdings establishes our libraries as a primary national destination for research related to science fiction studies and affiliated interdisciplinary fields. With the addition of Lichtman’s correspondence and artwork, the collections’ appeal goes much beyond its thematic focus and will generate enthusiasm around deepening our understanding of areas such as fandom culture, network analysis, gender studies, and more. We are truly excited about this landmark addition to our collection.” 

While it will take some time before the entire Lichtman fanzine collection is fully cataloged and prepared for use, we are pleased to exhibit highlighted selections from the collection showing its breadth and depth. The on-site display opens in Linderman Library in January, with additional material relating to international Worldcons (World Science Fiction Convention) opening later in Fairchild-Martindale Library. Both displays will be on view through the end of June 2025.

(4) HELP WANTED. “Now Hiring! Operations Director of SFWA”. Full details at the link.

The Operations Director is one of the key management leaders for SFWA. The Operations Director is responsible for overseeing operations (including membership and systems management), accounting and office administration, and internal fundraising and development processes (auction, sponsorship processes, and fundraising systems). The Operations Director will report directly to the President of the Board of Directors and lead a fully remote team of employees, contractors, and volunteers.

(5) COMMUNICATION FROM NEW ASIMOV’S OWNER. Subscribers are receiving the following message from Must Read Magazines, new publishers of Asimov’s Science Fiction, that the May/June issue will arrive late.

Information about your May/June 2025 Issue

Dear Subscriber,

We are confirming the buzz: Must Read Magazines is the new publisher of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

The first issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction printed under our banner will be the May / June 2025 issue, which you should receive in the mail about May 12, 2025. Your future issues will be mailed to you every other month after that.

Asimov’s Science Fiction is an iconic publication with a storied history in the genre. We are delighted its excellent editorial team has stayed on and we will all continue the group’s traditions.  We are developing many more ways to continue and build the magazine’s community and hope you will connect with us more online or in the mail during our forthcoming expansion.

Thank you for being a subscriber; we look forward to serving you with the Who’s Who of award-winning authors, stories, editorial insights and genre news for years to come.

Print subscribers who call or mail in a renewal before the end of June and mention the coupon code LIFTOFF will receive $4 off the purchase of an annual subscription to one of our other great magazines or $6 off gifting any one of our magazines to a new subscriber: Asimov’s, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and soon to come, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

(6) WILLY LEY’S ASHES DISCOVERED. “Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall. Ley was one of the winners of the first Hugos in 1953 for “Excellence in Fact Articles”, and another in 1956 for “Feature Writer”. There are hopes of launching his ashes into space. He also won a Retro-Hugo (2004) and an International Fantasy Award (1951).

During his life, Willy Ley predicted the dawn of the Space Age with remarkable accuracy. How did his remains end up forgotten in a co-op on the Upper West Side?

The basement of the prewar co-op on the Upper West Side was so cluttered and dark in one area that the staff called it “the Dungeon,” and last year, the building’s new superintendent resolved to clear it out.

For weeks, he hauled the junk left behind by former tenants — old air-conditioners, cans of paint, ancient elevator parts and rolled-up carpets — through the winding hallway with its low ceilings to the dumpster out back.

About halfway through the job, he spied an old tin can on a shelf next to a leaf blower. He read the label:

“Remains of Willy Ley. Cremated June 26, 1969.”

This was not the sort of thing you toss in a dumpster.

The super brought his discovery to the co-op board president, Dawn Nadeau. She had plenty of co-op business to attend to — a lobby renovation, a roof replacement — but the disposition of someone’s ashes was new to her.

“We needed to handle the remains as respectfully as possible,” said Ms. Nadeau, a brand consultant. “So I set out trying to figure who this was and who it belonged to.”…

… The rise of the Nazi party disturbed Mr. Ley deeply, and in 1935, worried about the weaponization of rockets by the government, he fled Germany. Eventually, he ended up in Queens.

In New York, he made a living primarily as a science writer, churning out articles and books, including “Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere” in 1944. In it, Mr. Ley reiterated his belief in the possibility of space travel: “I wish to affirm with great seriousness that the rocket to the moon is possible,” he wrote. “Whether it has any practical value is another question and whether the experiment will be made is another story altogether.”…

…. Ms. Nadeau now has her own space mission, and it is not clear how or whether she will complete it. She found a company that said it would send the ashes into space, but the average cost listed on its website was a prohibitive $12,500.

For now, the can that holds what’s left of Mr. Ley’s earthly body is still in the co-op, tucked away in the workshop of the superintendent, Michael Hrdlovic, who first discovered it in the basement….

Willy Ley accepting 1953 Hugo in Philadelphia.

(7) CARTOON DOCTOR. Grant Watson reviews the “Lux” episode of Doctor Who at FictionMachine.

With the TARDIS unable to return to May 2025, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) instead lands in 1953 Miami. There he and Belinda (Verada Sethu) discover a mysterious closed cinema, and a missing persons case that leads them inside. There they encounter one of the strangest foes the Doctor has ever faced: a cartoon character inexplicably come to life.

I suspect a lot of viewers will be delighted by “Lux”, an ambitious and bold stretch in storytelling that is quite unlike many things the series has done before. Indeed to find something as off-kilter as the Doctor and his companion confronting a cartoon character, being turned into cartoons themselves, and even contemplating their own fictional status, one has to go all the way back to 1968’s serial “The Mind Robber”. I positively adore that story, but I did not adore “Lux”, and I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why that is….

(8) SEE IT NOW. [Item by Steven French.] If any Filer is in London from mid-May they may want to check out this exhibition on extra-terrestrial life at the Natural History Museum: “’It blew us away’: how an asteroid may have delivered the vital ingredients for life on Earth” in the Guardian.

Several billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system, a wet, salty world circled our sun. Then it collided, catastrophically, with another object and shattered into pieces.

One of these lumps became the asteroid Bennu whose minerals, recently returned to Earth by the US robot space probe OSIRIS-REx, have now been found to contain rich levels of complex chemicals that are critical for the existence of life.

“There were things in the Bennu samples that completely blew us away,” said Prof Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, and a lead author of a major study in Nature of the Bennu minerals. “The diversity of the molecules and minerals preserved are unlike any extraterrestrial samples studied before.”

Results from this and other missions will form a central display at a Natural History Museum’s exhibition, Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?, which opens on 16 May. It will be a key chance for the public to learn about recent developments in the hunt for life on other worlds, said Russell.

(9) NEW GERROLD NOVELLA. Starship Sloane has just published a new novella by David Gerrold, titled Here There Be Lawyers. It’s set on the colony world Praxis.  Available in print and eBook. David is the cover artist/designer for this one. 

Dar is a well-connected arbiter and Turtledome is comfortable enough. But the colony on Praxis requires his expertise in crafting a constitution—and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. Their objective is a bold one, and if they succeed, powerful interests and a highly lucrative, intergalactic economic system will be disrupted. Permanently. A world is at play, the stakes are high, and a corporate overlord will stop at nothing to protect its investment.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 21, 1976 — Wonder Woman 1976 series episode 1

The mark of a good series is not how great the pilot is but the first episode after the pilot. Forty-six years ago this evening on ABC, the second episode of Wonder Woman aired, a curiosity titled affair called “Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther”. 

In it she got to take resurgent Nazis on in the form of a Nazi spy ring known as the Abwehr who are active again and who are targeting Steve Trevor for imprisoning the Baroness von Gunther, their leader. 

The Baroness Paula von Gunther was created by William Moulton Marston as an adversary for his creation Wonder Woman in Sensation Comics #4, 1942, “School for Spies”. Though she disappeared during the Crisis on Infinite Earth years, Jim Byrne brought her back in 1988 and made once again the Nazi villainess she once was. No villain or villainess can ever truly cease to exist in the comics realm, can they?   

This episode is based off “Wonder Woman Versus the Prison Spy Ring” in Wonder Woman #1 (July 1942). (The title comes from when it was reprinted later.) In the story, Colonel Darnell informs Trevor that an army transport ship was sunk by a German U-Boat. Believing the Nazis must have had a traitor inside the Army, Darnell orders Steve to interrogate the former head of the Gestapo system in America — The Baroness who is now serving time in a federal penitentiary thanks to Wonder Woman. 

Her only other television appearance was in 2011 on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold series in the “Scorn of the Star Sapphire!” episode. If you’re a Batman fan, this series which is about as serious as the Sixties series was so is a lot of fun.  It’s more contemporary is look and feel but the attitude is very similar. 

Note that this episode made Trevor responsible for her being captured. 

So how was it received? This episode ranked twelfth in the Nielsen ratings, shockingly beating out a Bob Hope special which ranked twentieth.

So here’s Wonder Woman and Baroness Von Gunther…

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STAR WARS MANGA COLLECTION. “Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Announce The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga” and the Kickstarter intended to fund publication.

As part of Star Wars Celebration, Dark Horse Comics is announcing that they will publish The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga. Two stunning volumes will each be available wherever books are sold, and will spotlight Hisao Tamaki’s original art from his acclaimed 1997 manga adaptation of Star Wars: A New Hope and include a new English translation. Ahead of retail launch in Summer 2026, Dark Horse Comics will also be offering special editions through the publisher’s first ever Kickstarter campaign.

This beautifully drawn manga will be available through Kickstarter in two distinct editions, each offering a unique way to experience this extraordinary adaptation.  The Collector’s Edition features the same two-volume hardcovers that will be available at retail but with Kickstarter exclusive covers. The Masterpiece Edition will faithfully reproduce Tamaki’s art at its original size in two volumes and include an auxiliary volume. The Masterpiece Edition format will be exclusively available through Kickstarter. Fans can now follow the prelaunch page for the Kickstarter page.

These deluxe Kickstarter-exclusive sets offer fans an opportunity to revisit the classic adventure through new eyes and in a fresh voice. A standard edition of The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga will be released in comic shops and bookstores in 2026. Join Dark Horse and Lucasfilm to explore the creative journey of a novel view of a galaxy far, far away. 

(13) KIDS THESE DAYS. [Item by Kathy Sullivan.] I’m sure this isn’t the only middle school doing this, but I’m proud of my local school. “Students weave stories at D&D Club” in the Winona Post.

…The Dungeons & Dragons Club at WMS has been taking place for about three years for seventh and eighth graders and meets once a week for part of the school year. Students who are homeschooled or who attend schools other than WMS have also been part of the club.

Seventh Grade Language Arts Teacher and Dungeons & Dragons Club Supervisor Greg Peterson’s own experiences playing the game since he was his students’ age inspired him to pass it on. When he would talk in class about playing, as a way to show his students he’s human, too, many would express interest in the game, so he started the group.

Dungeons & Dragons is all about creating enjoyable characters and telling their stories collaboratively with a group of people, Peterson said. 

“… The collaborative storytelling experience is extremely unique. It’s different than just reading a book or watching a movie,” Peterson said. “You’re in the story. And being able to take on that mantle as a hero is empowering and is really just fun. There are times where at tables I’ve played at as a dungeon master or as a player where people have cried, people have laughed, people have been jaw-droppingly shocked at what we’ve done. We’ve gotten so deep into character we forgot we’re playing a game in some cases.” 

To help students learn how to play the game, Peterson guided them through developing characters’ backstories, such as deciding why their characters have certain powers in imagined fantasy worlds….

(14) GET OUT OF THAT BOXCAR. A horror curiosity from the Nassau Hobby Center: “O Gauge RailKing Amityville Box Car w/Glowing LEDs”.

This 40′ box car features bright, glowing LED lights on both sides of this car spaced behind the windows of the haunted Amityville House. Each LED glows at a constant intensity and is sure to catch the attention of all who see it on your own O Gauge model railroad. Completely assembled and ready-to-run. Just put it on the track and enjoy the action.

(15) NAMELESS STAR WARS SERIES IN DEVELOPMENT. [Item by Chris Barkley.] From the guy that gave us Lost and Nash Bridges: “’Star Wars’ Series in the Works with Carlton Cuse, Nick Cuse” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Prolific Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse is taking a journey into the Star Wars galaxy, with son Nick Cuse at his side. The duo is in early development on a Star Wars series for Lucasflim, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter….

The news comes on the eve of Andor season two’s debut and follows Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo, where Lucasfilm unveiled a first look at feature The Mandalorian & Grogu and revealed a title for Shawn Levy’s Ryan Gosling movie, Star Wars: Starfighter. The company also revealed new details of Ashoka season two, including the return of fan favorite Anakin Skywalker actor Hayden Christensen…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “How Captain America Brave New World Should Have Ended”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Moshe Feder, Linda Deneroff,Alex Japha, Andrew (not Werdna), Jim Meadows, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern, who assures us “No sea or lake serpents were harmed in the making of this Scroll Title. As for the wall, only time will tell.”]

The Fantastic Four Travel Back to the Birth of the Universe in Upcoming One World Under Doom Tie-Ins

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Learn what lies ahead in One World Under Doom with the reveal of June’s tie-in issues, including Fantastic Four #34 by Ryan North and Cory Smith which sets the stage for a new era of Fantastic Four.

One World Under Doom is officially underway and in months ahead, all of the Marvel Universe will bask in the glory that is Doctor Doom’s reign…

Following Ryan North and R.B. Silva’s One World Under Doom #1, Doom’s ambitious takeover of Earth is being felt throughout the line in tie-in issues of current ongoing series and newly-launched limited series.

No one is suffering the impact of Doom’s power grab more than his archenemies, the Fantastic Four. In Fantastic Four #33 this June, Marvel’s First Family will have been reduced to nothing, forcing them to embark on one of the wildest missions in their storied history. The epic issue will be a major turning point in Ryan North and Cory Smith’s current run as they steer the series into a bold new direction.

Other June One World Under Doom tie-in issues include Avengers #27, Iron Man #9, and Red Hulk #5 along with new issues of continuing limited series Doom Academy, Doom’s Division, Doctor Strange Of Asgard, and Superior Avengers. Announced earlier this week, June will also see the debut of Runaways, a five-issue One World Under Doom tie-in series by Rainbow Rowell and Elena Casagrande.

 Learn more and see the cover art following the jump.

[Based on a press release.]

Continue reading →

Marvel’s First Family Springs Into Action in Nicoletta Baldari’s Fantastic Four Fanfare Connecting Covers

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Fantastic Four Fanfare, a limited series launching in May, delivers all-new adventures from iconic FF creators, with have special connecting variant covers by acclaimed artist Nicoletta Baldari.

This year, all eyes are on the Fantastic Four, and as fans eagerly await the team’s Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in The Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25, they can enjoy their captivating modern adventures at their local comic shop! In addition to Ryan North’s acclaimed current run and the Fantastic Four’s critical—and transformative—role in the One World Under Doom comic event, Fantastic Four Fanfare, launching in May, will offer readers timeless tales set across the groundbreaking history of Marvel’s First Family.

Perfect for longtime fans and new readers alike, the four-issue limited series delivers new stories by influential FF creators past and present including Jonathan Hickman, Mark Waid, Dan Slott, Alan Davis, and J. Michael Straczynski. Each issue will spotlight a different member and feature a connecting variant cover by acclaimed artist Nicoletta Baldari. Depicting Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny in her unique, cartoon-inspired style, Baldari’s cover captures the timeless dynamic and incredible heart of the super hero team that started it all.

Check out Baldari’s full piece following the jump. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

[Based on a press release.]

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 2/9/25 The Universal Pixelgraph

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(1) SPACE UNICORNS SOUND OFF. You have until February 17 to make your voice heard in the Uncanny Magazine 2024 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll. Vote at the link. Each person gets a single entry of 3 stories (which can be edited later).

Here is the link to Uncanny Magazine’s 2024 eligible works – there’s still time to read up!

(2) SFF SHUT OUT OF DGA AWARDS. No works of genre interest won when the Directors Guild of America announced the 2025 DGA Awards at a ceremony on February 8. The complete list of 2025 DGA Awards winners and all related credits are at the link.

(3) SPECPO DEFINED. Pixie Bruner, SFPA’s 2025 Rhysling Awards chair, helps readers understand in “Speculative Poetry Defined”.

… We speculative poets know speculative poetry when we read it, but sometimes it’s not so easy to tell for some readers, and sometimes the line is fragile, even for us speculative poets, so I am going to give a few examples of situations and poems that are clearly speculative as guidelines….

… Let’s say a person wants to write a speculative poem about their broken heart. Your feelings are real and having your heart broken is a devastating experience.

However, if your heart has been pulled into cosmic taffy, boiled in acid in a dutch oven full of tears, shattered once it reaches the hard crack stage on a candy thermometer, and fed to the monsters that live under your bed after it has been ripped from your chest, pulped under foot, and destroyed- your tears became diamonds you pawned to a constantly changing man with a ragged trench coat with pockets full of wonders in an alleyway behind a coffeehouse that could only be found at 3:13pm every other Tuesday for a new heart of pure gold or some strange unbreakable alloy with strange properties that you merely insert into a fairy door in your chest- it is now a speculative poem about a broken heart….

(4) FURRIES SLURRED IN TABLOID. Dogpatch Press drew attention to a UK tabloid “hit piece” about a furry convention this weekend in Scotland — “Gathering featuring anthropomorphic erotica will be held in support of Scottish conservation group” at The Telegraph [Archive.Today link] – and says, “Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don’t support.” [Warning for slurs in the screencaps.]

Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don't support.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.077Z

It's complicated when surface level reaction is one thing, internal organizer level handling is another. There is the issue of limited power and liability about being able to control who interacts. And then there is the issue of cronyism/corruption which I have witnessed and experienced.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.078Z

I can't discuss active investigation but can help anyone who blows a whistle in public or private. There's multi layers where misinformed, hateful outsider attacks exist at the same time as significant internal issues that are not unique to a targeted community that hosts marginalized people.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.079Z

(5) IN CONTRAST. Alternatively, the BBC’s coverage about Scotiacon 2025 is positive: “’Being a furry is like wearing a superhero cape’”.

Fennick Firefox, a man dressed as a large furry orange fox with blue hair and a tail tipped by a flame, says that in his normal life he is very shy person.

But after he adopts his “fursona”, he is dancing in the street and sharing a long hug with his best friend Rock, who is dressed as a giant red and black German Shepherd.

“It’s like a superhero cape,” says Fennick.

“When I put my fox head on, the person is gone – he does not exist.”

Fennick says that being in costume allows him to escape his everyday struggles and “do nothing but be happy”.

That’s what has brought him to Scotland’s largest furry convention – Scotiacon….

(6) HOW FANTASTIC ARE THEY? Erin Underwood’s trailer review tells “How Marvel Finally Got Me Excited About Fantastic Four!”

Marvel’s latest ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ trailer has just dropped, and it’s turning heads! Join me as I dive into this retro-futuristic take on Marvel’s first family. Could this be the MCU’s boldest move yet or another blunder? Watch to find out and let me know what you think!

(7) REEVE REMEMBERED. “6 Former Superman Actors Pay Tribute to Late Legend Christopher Reeve at MegaCon: ‘It Was Always Gonna Be Like Chris’” from People.

Christopher Reeve just got a tribute that even the strongest kryptonite couldn’t take down.

During a panel at MegaCon Orlando in Florida on Saturday, Feb. 8, six actors who have portrayed Superman in the years since Reeve’s role as the Man of Steel in 1978’s Superman came together to discuss the DC hero’s legacy on and off the screen and to honor Reeve, who died in 2004.

Those in attendance included Tyler Hoechlin (Superman & Lois), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Dean Cain (Lois & Clark), Tim Daly (Superman: The Animated Series), George Newbern (Justice League animated series) and Tom Welling (Smallville).

During the discussion, Welling, 47, recalled working with Reeve on a season 2 episode of Smallville, an experience he said he “walked away from wanting to be a better person.” Reeve appeared in the WB series as scientist Virgil Swann, who played an important role in the storyline of Welling’s portrayal of Clark Kent.

“We got there and the plan was to shoot four hours and get his side of two scenes and then he would leave and I would do my side with someone else,” Welling recalled. “We did the first scene and they said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do the next scene.’ He goes, ‘What about Tom?’ “

As Welling recalled at MegaCon, Reeve had other plans — just as he had a quick sense of humor.

“He was like, ‘No I’m not leaving.’ And long story short, it got to the point about eight hours into the day and they turned around filming my scenes with him. And his nurse, power of attorney, was like, ‘If you don’t come with me in 15 minutes, I’m calling the police.’ He had to leave. He looked at me and goes, ‘They’re always telling me what to do.’ “

“You didn’t feel sorry for him at all,” Welling said elsewhere during his story about Reeve. “He was telling jokes the whole time. We had a riot, he was cracking up. … We just had really great banter. I had a lot of fun with him.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 9, 1966 — Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots”

Fifty-nine years ago this evening, the thrilling sight of Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots” first happened. In one corner of this fight, we have Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.  And in the other corner of the ring (metaphorically speaking), we have B-9 from Lost in Space. 

Aired as the twentieth episode of the first season, the story is that while returning from a fishing trip, Will and B-9 find a deactivated Robotoid. Against the wishes of B-9, Will proceeds to repair and restore the Robotoid which apparently becomes a humble servant of the Robinson family. Sure.

The best part of this episode is the slow motion rock ‘em, sock ‘em battle between the robots. And yes it’s a very, very silly battle indeed as you can see from the image below. Robotic gunfighters, eh? 

Lost in Space is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) AI ART GOING UNDER THE HAMMER. But are they hitting it hard enough? Christie’s auction house thinks people should line up to bid on stuff created with AI tools, or might once they explain it to them in “What Is AI Art?”

Christie’s New York is proud to announce its inaugural AI art auction, Augmented Intelligence, the first ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major auction house. Running from 20 February to 5 March with a concurrent exhibition at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the online sale will include highly sought-after works by AI artists spanning the establishment and new guard, such as Refik Anadol, Claire Silver, Sasha Stiles, Pindar Van Arman, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Harold Cohen and more. The sale also showcases a selection of artists from NVIDIA’s AI Art Gallery.

‘AI technology is undoubtedly the future, and its connection to creativity will become increasingly important,’ says Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Director of Digital Art.

So, what is AI art?

In simple terms, artificial intelligence art (AI art) is any form of art that has been created or enhanced with AI tools. Many artists use the term ‘collaboration’ when describing their process with AI….

(11) PEEK-A-BOO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I wonder what Stanislaw Lem would make of this? “Alien ocean could hide signs of life from spacecraft” – posted by University of Reading.

Searching for life in alien oceans may be more difficult than scientists previously thought, even when we can sample these extraterrestrial waters directly. 

A new study focusing on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that sprays its ocean water into space through cracks in its icy surface, shows that the physics of alien oceans could prevent evidence of deep-sea life from reaching places where we can detect it. 

Published today (Thursday, 6 February 2025) in Communications Earth & Environment, the study shows how Enceladus’s ocean forms distinct layers that dramatically slow the movement of material from the ocean floor to the surface. 

Chemical traces, microbes, and organic material – telltale signatures of life that scientists look for – could break down or transform as they travel through the ocean’s distinct layers. These biological signatures might become unrecognisable by the time they reach the surface where spacecraft can sample them, even if life thrives in the deep ocean below. 

Flynn Ames, lead author at the University of Reading, said: “Imagine trying to detect life at the depths of Earth’s oceans by only sampling water from the surface. That’s the challenge we face with Enceladus, except we’re also dealing with an ocean whose physics we do not fully understand.  

“We’ve found that Enceladus’ ocean should behave like oil and water in a jar, with layers that resist vertical mixing. These natural barriers could trap particles and chemical traces of life in the depths below for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, it was thought that these things could make their way efficiently to the ocean top within several months. 

“As the search for life continues, future space missions will need to be extra careful when sampling Enceladus’s surface waters.” …

Primary research at Nature.

(12) THUNDERBOLTS*. Deadline introduces “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Thunderbolts*’”.

In the Super Bowl trailer for Thunderbolts*, premiering May 2 in theaters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine warns the Avengers aren’t coming as she questions “who will keep the American people safe?”

Set to Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, the spot features Florence Pugh’s Yelena Bolova/Black Widow suffering from some serious imposter syndrome until her fellow Thunderbolts give her a pep talk.

“We can’t do this. No one here is a hero,” she says before David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian tells her: “Yelena, when I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”…

(13) DRAGON REBOOT. Deadline also covered “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘How To Train Your Dragon’”, for the live-action version coming to theaters including Imax screens on June 13.

Return with us now to the rugged isle of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been bitter enemies for generations, Hiccup (Mason Thames) stands apart. The inventive yet overlooked son of Chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his voice role from the animated franchise), he defies centuries of tradition when he befriends Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon. Their unlikely bond reveals the true nature of dragons, challenging the very foundations of Viking society.

With the fierce and ambitious Astrid (Nico Parker) and the village’s quirky blacksmith Gobber (Nick Frost) by his side, Hiccup confronts a world torn by fear and misunderstanding. As an ancient threat emerges, endangering both Vikings and dragons, Hiccup’s friendship with Toothless becomes the key to forging a new future….

(14) THE FISH (OR WHATEVER THEY ARE) ARE BITING. “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’” at Deadline.

This summer’s action-packed monster movie Jurassic World: Rebirth has released its first trailer and glimpse into the latest film in the franchise, starring Jonathan Bailey, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali among others. Universal opens the film globally on July 2.

The fourth film in the Jurassic World series follows a team of scientists and others whose main objective is to acquire genetic samples from three of the largest dinosaurs in the sea, on land and in the air. Set five years after Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), the planet has become inhospitable for dinosaurs, so those that still exist have become isolated to environments in which their breeds once flourished. The three most colossal creatures in the different parts of the ecosystem could prove necessary for a life-saving drug for humans….

(15) IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Next Deadline cues up “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’”.

…Ethan Hunt, the spy at the center of the blockbuster action flick helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, returns to chase down villains, conduct submarine reconnaissance and hang beneath propeller planes in what is billed as the epic finale to a saga that first began nearly two decades prior.

In the sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One, slated for release May 23, Cruise’s character embarks on a final mission that will reportedly close out the sprawling franchise….

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

Pixel Scroll 2/4/25 Cause We Are Materializing In A Living World (From The Soundtrack To “Kirk and Spock Beam To Ego The Living Planet”[1])

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(1) DOWN THESE MEAN TWEETS. Less than 24 hours after The Self-Published Science Fiction Competition announced its new “SPSFC Code of Conduct” (linked in yesterday’s Scroll), the SPSFC management announced they were removing a writer named Devon Eriksen from the contest for violating the CoC. They did not specify why, which in these post-JDA-lawsuit times is regarded as wisdom. However, it’s clear what the host of Indie Book Spotlight believed:

And this exchange being on X.com, large numbers of people claimed to be unable to understand the problem, beginning with this fellow:

So the Indie Book Spotlight host put up a screenshot with a lengthy quote by Eriksen showing what they had in mind, which I’m not going to repost but which can be read here.

Devon Eriksen’s public response to being banned was (1) to claim he wasn’t aware he was even entered in the contest, and (2) to mock the whole proceeding at length, which you can read at X.com or in File 770’s screencaps — image-1, image-2, image-3, image-4, image-5, image-6. Or not at all, if you prefer.

(Credit Camestros Felapton with the scoop: “Different Thing”.)

(2) THIS IS THE END, MY FRIEND. “Apocalypse stories: Everything Must Go by Dorian Lynskey explores why we love skipping to the end” – a review and commentary by Slate’s Laura Miller

“The worst is not. So long as we can say ‘This is the worst,’ ” go the lines from King Lear quoted in Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel Station Eleven. Any stories we tell about the end of the world will have to be fictional, since once the real thing occurs, no one will be around to describe it. As the British journalist Dorian Lynskey relates in his erudite, delightfully witty, and strangely cheering new book, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, the fact that we can only ever speculate on the subject makes us speculate all the more frantically. “There is simply no end of ends,” Lynskey writes of the books, movies, TV shows, pop songs, and video games we’ve created to depict the apocalypse—or its near misses and the aftermaths thereof….

… Apocalyptic narratives are, of course, always more about the vexing present than the enigmatic future. Everything Must Go encompasses the stories told by doomsday cults, scientific Cassandras, pulp novelists, video game designers, and Hollywood movies. The idea that the world will one day come to an end is an especially Western notion, Lynskey points out, with its roots in the Book of Revelation. That strange document, with its psychedelic signs and portents, Lynskey writes, “supplies the Bible with a narrative arc and gives humanity’s story a theatrical finale.” Other cultures steeped in different religions may view time as cyclical, but the Judeo-Christian tradition sees it as an arrow, going in one direction, to an inevitable conclusion. As terrifying as the prospect of apocalypse can be, Lynskey writes, “it rescues believers from the endless mess of history by weaving past, present and future into a coherent, satisfying whole with an author, a message and an ending.”…

(3) THOUGHTS ABOUT AWARDS VOTING. BSFA’s Vector has republished Jo Lindsay Walton and Polina Levontin’s article “Gender, Democracy, and SF/F Literary Awards” from Foundation 149 (winter 2024).

This article explores cultural and design dimensions of non-governmental voting systems, focusing on science fiction and fantasy (SFF) literary awards voted for by fans, with a focus on the British Science Fiction Awards. The design of such voting systems needs to juggle a range of goals, one of which is fairness with regard to gender — acknowledging that ‘fairness’ is not straightforward to define, particularly given such awards are embedded within broader gender inequalities. Our analysis suggests that men have been more likely than women to vote for works by men, and also more likely to vote in ways that amplify the influence of men’s votes under an Alternative Vote System. We suggest that SFF awards are cultural spaces which lend themselves to experimentation with new democratic forms, and briefly offer potential sources of inspiration. Just as SFF has aspired to be a space to think about the future of technology, gender, the environment, and many other issues, SFF award spaces could be spaces for thinking about the future of democracy. We also offer recommendations to SFF awards designers and communities to address gender bias (emphasising reflective practices over technical solutions), and to continue to explore how aesthetic and cultural values and identities are constructed and negotiated within SFF award spaces, and beyond….

(4) ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY RECOMMENDED. [Item by Steven French.] In “What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in January” authors and readers tell the Guardian which were their favorite books read last month and first up is …

Eimear McBride, author

Everyone else got there a long time ago but I’ve only recently read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s sci-fi masterpiece Children of Time. Cautionary, richly imaginative and deeply, unexpectedly humane, it was both utterly unputdownable and a welcome relief from the current resignation to dystopia.

I’ve also been taking delight in Edward Carey’s glorious novel Edith Holler. Set in a Norwich that is at once fictional, historical and fantastical, he transports the reader into the world of brilliant 12-year-old Edith who is cursed to never leave her family’s tumbledown theatre … until fate decides otherwise. Filled with the author’s witty, curious observations and alive with his own illustrations, it’s a novel like no other.

(5) CARL BRANDON SOCIETY 2024 ACCOMPLISHMENTS. SFWA distributed this report with the latest Singularity newsletter.

Thanks so much for your continuing support of and interest in the Carl Brandon Society. In these parlous times, we depend on you, and we want you to be able to depend on us. In the past several years, we’ve all been through a lot. Our focus—as individuals, as an organization, as countries within the world—has shifted. At the Carl Brandon Society, we’re slowly working through how we need to position ourselves during and after that shift.

We’re moving from a small, social organization of readers and writers with big dreams but essentially no money to a still-small organization with some tools to accomplish some of those large goals. With Covid reduced but still circulating, we’re figuring out how to be safe at in-person events, while expanding our online events, which allow us to serve writers and readers in the wider world, not just in the United States.

2024 Accomplishments

  • Awarded Octavia E. Butler scholarships to students at Clarion and Clarion West workshops
  • Held three online workshops: Cosmic Horror with Premee Mohamed, DIY workshop with Suzan Palumbo, and Decolonial Worldbuilding with Helen Gould
  • Held a children’s book fair in conjunction with Seattle Public Library and Mam’s Book Store
  • Distributed books left after book fair to several Seattle area school libraries
  • Hired Program Director Isis Asare out of a pool of outstanding qualified applicants

We are determined to stay focused on our work despite the current political climate. We believe it’s important, and we believe you think so, too.

Sincerely,
K. Tempest Bradford, Jaymee Goh, Susheela Bhat Harkins, Shiv Ramdas, Victor Raymond, Kate Schaefer, Nisi Shawl, and Yang-Yang Wang
The Carl Brandon Society Steering Committee

P.S. We’re sending a donation of $1000 to Octavia’s Bookshelf, the Black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles that has stepped up as a community resource in the wake of the devastating fires. Octavia was one of our founding members. Please consider donating to the bookstore to help rebuild that community.

And please consider supporting us with a donation as well. Thanks so much!

P. O. Box 23336
Seattle, WA 98102

The Carl Brandon Society is recognized by the IRS as a qualified 501(c)3 organization, and all donations to it are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. No goods or services were provided in exchange for this donation. Our federal tax I.D. number is 27-0140141. 

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 4, 1993 — Groundhog Day film (premiered this day)

By Paul Weimer: One of the pinnacles of time travel movies is a movie that doesn’t think that it’s a genre movie: Groundhog Day. 

Consider: We have no reason, no mechanism, nothing we can point to as to why Phil Connors (Bill Murray in peak mode, having shed some of the questionable elements of his Ghostbusters character and just playing an unpleasant weatherman but without some of the sleazier elements from the prior movie). We are not meant to like Phil at the beginning. He is dismissive, arrogant, cruel and I wouldn’t want to spend an hour, much less a day, with him on a road trip.

And so, after getting trapped in Punxsutawney the night of Groundhog Day thanks to a blizzard he didn’t accurately predict, he wakes up on the morning of February 2nd again. And again. And again and again. 

Murray’s Phil does what many of us would do in this situation at first. He tries to escape the town by any which means he can. When that fails, when his universe shrinks to the horizon of the town, he then takes subtle advantage of the situation, seeing what he can do. He goes through cycles of mania and depression and tries to kill himself, to no avail. He tries to kill Phil the Groundhog, figuring he is the reason for the time loop. 

Nothing works.

And then comes the slow turn. Phil decides, with an eternity of the same day, to make use of his gift. He learns things, ranging from flipping cards to literature to French to chiropractic back adjustment to playing the piano. What starts as a sleazy way to seduce Andie McDowell’s Rita turns into a genuine romance. The wacky comedy of the first part of the movie turns into a more considered romantic-comedy-drama of a man who over thousands of days learns to do better and be better. 

But the movie shows it can’t all go his way, and is surprisingly nuanced for it. Consider Phil’s multiple attempts to save a dying homeless man’s life, to no avail. No matter what Phil does, the man ultimately dies, each and every time. It’s a poignant philosophical, or even religious look at fate, destiny, and the limits of what we can change…but an acknowledgement that, what we can change for the better, we MUST change for the better. 

Fantasy, comedy, philosophy. And wonderful performances all around. A beautifully filmed movie of a town that was already locally famous (I had long heard of it and its annual celebration but it was too far away to ever visit) but it became globally famous thanks to the movie. The movie is a pinnacle of early 1990’s filmmaking. It never thinks it’s a genre movie but it is genre enough that we are invested in Phil’s slow transformation. 

And so, after thousands of tries, after a day spent helping the town, Phil finally breaks free of his time loop, ending his purgatory (or maybe it’s a Bardo) as inexplicably as it began. 

One of the pinnacles of time travel movies is a movie that doesn’t think that it’s a genre movie: Groundhog Day.

Consider…

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) TOP 5 OVERRATED SF WRITERS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Outlaw Bookseller has a bit of a click-baity offering on his followers’ most over-rated SF writers. (Actually, I have some sympathy with a couple of their choices — but what do I know?). This came out just a couple of days ago but already has had nearly 8,000 views… “Your Top 5 Most OVERRATED SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS- I respond to your comments”.

Steve asked for your views on which SF authors and books receive undue praise and here are the results…and as ever, he responds to your comments in kind….

(9) COMIC RELIEF. Camestros Felapton has had a busy day. Thanks to another of his posts, “Extra Scuttlebutt”, we’re now aware of the insulting things that Larry Correia has been saying about Jon Del Arroz, and the low esteem in which Vox Day holds Correia – because Vox publishes comics by JDA and therefore feels obliged to run interference for one of “his” authors. Below is Vox’s rationalization for violating omerta; then you can read a selection of Correia’s vituperative quotes at Vox Popoli’s post “Churchill, FDR, and Stalin” [Internet Archive link].

Back in the days when the Sad Puppies were the #GamerGate of the science fiction world, I reached a gentleman’s agreement with Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen, two of the first three leaders of the Sad Puppies, after they decided that they did not want to be directly connected to me or the group that became known as the Rabid Puppies. I told them at the time that this separation was a mistake for them, and that there were more Rabid Puppies than Sad Puppies, but they refused to believe that and insisted it was necessary for reasons that I will leave to them to explain.

However, they did agree that given the amount of media scrutiny we were all under, it would serve little purpose for us to attempt to speak for, or about, each other in public. All three of us knew that the media was going to try very hard to utilize anything that we would say to undermine the others. To their credit, and to mine, none of us gave the media any material for ten years.

Unfortunately, I have now concluded it is time to end that gentlemen’s agreement because a) it is now clear and undeniable that these are two men who are not, and perhaps never were, on the side of what is right or what is true, b) they are not gentlemen, and c) they have been repeatedly lying about one of my authors for several years….

… Now, to a certain extent, this is a tempest in a teapot. Literally no one in our greater community has given a quantum of a damn about what Larry Correia thinks ever since he opted out of leading the Sad Puppies more than a decade ago. Being a flagrant Never-Trumper, a civic nationalist, and a Mormon, he’s as irrelevant to the tens of thousands of Castalia, Arkhaven, and Unauthorized fans as I am to his readership. And I doubt more than two percent of our community has ever even heard of Brad Torgersen.

But nevertheless, as we’ve seen again and again, what permits wickedness to thrive is the tolerance and the silence of those who know better. And what Larry and Brad have been doing for years, the twisted rhetoric they have been repeatedly attempting to pass off as the truth, is neither good, nor beautiful, nor true. They no longer merit respect or restraint on my part….

(10) NOT JUST ANY RUBBLE. [Item by Steven French.] An elegiac and timely piece on collecting space rocks: “It came from outer space: the meterorite that landed in a Cotswolds cul-de-sac” in the Guardian.

 With a population of 5,000, Winchcombe is a pretty town of honeycomb-coloured limestone and timber-framed buildings. The Wilcock family home is a neat 1960s detached house on a quiet cul-de-sac on the outskirts of town. Early in the morning of 1 March, Cathryn Wilcock, a retired primary school teacher, opened the curtains of her living room and noticed a pile of dark lumps and powder at the edge of her driveway. It looked as though someone had upended an old barbecue.

The Winchcombe meteorite had probably travelled more than 100m miles to reach our planet. Had it landed just a few metres to the left it would have fallen into a thick privet hedge and probably never been discovered. Had it landed a few metres closer to the road, Cathryn would have assumed it was rubbish churned up by a passing car and swept it away. Instead, her husband, Rob, went out to investigate.

Rob immediately recognised that something strange had occurred. He got together some rubber gloves, old yoghurt pots and plastic bags and went outside to pick up the stones.

(11) FANTASTIC 4 TRAILER LIVE RELEASE EVENT. [Item by Marc Criley.] I think this pretty much caught most all of us in Huntsville by surprise!

The Fantastic 4: First Steps Trailer release was held at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama — the “Rocket City” — and was live-streamed on YouTube. All four stars were present beneath the Saturn 5 rocket exhibit as they and the crowd counted down to the trailer release.

The trailer is shown at the end of the release event video. However, if you want to cut to the chase…

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Marc Criley, Jeffrey Smith, 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 Daniel Dern. Title footnote [1] From Marvel comics/movie: “Ego the Living Planet” in the Wikipedia.]

Pixel Scroll 10/24/24 The Scroll On The Edge of Pixelver

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(1) EDITORIAL PRIVILEGE? Beneath Ceaseless Skies editor Scott Andrews has posted the text of his GoH speech given at World Fantasy 2024 on October 20. His message is: “Not Paying Editors Limits Range of Editorial Voices”.

… one way many indie zines afford all that [they publish] on a shoestring budget is that the editors take no pay.

I take no pay for editing BCS. I’ve put 25 hours or more a week into BCS, for 16 years. (Other than six First Readers, I do everything else: reading pass-ups, developmental editing, line-editing, producing the podcast, maintaining the website, posting social media. I clearly have delegation issues.)

If I was to be paid $10 an hour, 50 weeks a year: in order to fund that, BCS would have to more than double our current support, from Patreon patrons and donations and ebook sales, or cut half our fiction. Plus the time and hassle of doing that additional fundraising, which is considerable and exhausting.

I can afford not taking pay. But that approach of not paying editors means that many editors of indie zines in our field are people of financial privilege. And in our world, financial privilege often correlates with other privileges. So I think this practice of not paying editors of indie zines is limiting the range of editorial voices our field has.

Since I started BCS, our field has broadened vastly in the range of author voices: identities, backgrounds, areas of the world; languages. I believe we need to broaden the range of editorial voices too. To me, figuring out how to pay editors is a key step toward that.

I admit, I don’t have any answers. I’m not a business person. And I’ve got all I can handle just running BCS.

But I call this issue to your attention today because I think we need talk about it. We need ideas….

(2) BOOK AT BEDTIME. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre – Hodder & Stoughton, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-72634-4) has been made in the past couple of week’s BBC Radio 4’s (formerly the BBC Home Service) Book at Bedtime.

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as the ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house..?

The BBC’s forthcoming TV adaptation (as opposed to the episodic audio book) of this novel has attracted a claim of plagiarism by those who made the Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo [The Ministry of Time].

The separate Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo won the 2016 Ignotus Best Audiovisual Production as well as the 2017 Award.

Irrespective of plagiarism claims (time travel is a fairly common, if not standard, SF trope and the commonality of title could be happenstance – the book has its differences) the BBC has the rights to make a TV mini-series, so it is likely they used the copyright permission for this to also make an episodic audio adaptation. Each episode is 15 minutes long so with 10 episodes that’s 150 minutes (or two-and-a-half hours in old money) of audio book.

Get episodes here: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6; Episode 7; Episode 8; Episode 9; Episode 10.

(3) DEATH IS SUPER BAD. “I’m So Sick of the Death of Superman” declares Charlie Jane Anders at Happy Dancing. The latest iteration prompted her to go back and look at the first comic book death. Which wasn’t great either.

…There’s a funeral, and eventually four imposter Supermen show up — everybody can kind of tell they’re imposters, but they hang around for ages. At last, Superman comes back to life, but now he’s wearing a black version of his famous uniform, plus he now has a mullet.

That’s it, that’s the whole story. 

How does Superman come back to life? I honestly can’t say. I realized several years ago that I couldn’t remember how Superman was resurrected in what’s now packaged as The Death and Rebirth of Superman, so I went back and reread the original comics to find out. And now, once again, I can’t remember, because it’s that memorable. I know that Superman meets his human dad, Pa Kent, in the afterlife, and Pa Kent talks to him about why it’s generally a good thing to not be dead. I know there’s some more Kryptonian bullshit. But beyond that, it’s a bit of a blur….

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 121 of the Octothorpe podcast, “All About the Vibes”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty discuss Grass by Sheri S. Tepper, which was a finalist for the Hugo Award in 1990.

This is Alison’s pick for John and Liz to read, and we go into some of the themes of the book and whether or not female authors are as well-remembered as men (spoiler: no).

There’s an uncorrected transcript at the link.

Three hippae stand on a landscape of alien grass and plants in blue, purple, red, teal, and orange underneath a pinkish sky. The words “Octothorpe 121” appear at the top and the words “Grass Sheri S Tepper” appear at the bottom.

(5) ANNOTATED SNOUTS. “’Fascinating’: Tove Jansson’s Moomins notes to be published for first time” – the Guardian has details.

As a cult series of 20th-century children’s books, the Moomins have sold up to 30m copies worldwide. Now, extensive humorous notes that their Finnish creator, Tove Jansson, wrote on each of her lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts are to be published for the first time, 25 years after her death.

Eighty-nine handwritten pages that cast new light on the “small, friendly and adventurous” creatures with fur “like velvet”, have been rediscovered among hundreds of thousands of items in her sprawling archive.

James Zambra, her great-nephew and a director of Moomin Characters, which manages her legacy, said: “This was actually in one of her notebooks. It’s fantastic. Getting Tove’s own thoughts on the personality traits of the characters is fascinating.”…

(6) IS CHATGTP “FAIR USE”? NO, SAYS FORMER OPENAI RESEARCHER. Publishers Lunch reports “Former OpenAI Staffer Claims AI Training Is Not Fair Use”.

A former researcher at OpenAI has spoken out against the company’s use of copyrighted data in a detailed, publicly posted analysis, reported on further by the NYT (which is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement). Suchir Balaji left OpenAI in protest “because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit.”

Early versions of the company’s technology were treated as research projects, which meant employees felt free to train them on any data without worrying about permissions and usage, Balaji told the Times. But as ChatGPT-4 became a commercial product, OpenAI failed to meet the rules of fair use, he said. According to Balaji, ChatGPT’s outputs aren’t significantly different from its inputs — which are copied in whole — and the outputs directly compete with the copyrighted work that it used for training.

Further, according to Balaji, “As A.I. technologies replace existing internet services, they are generating false and sometimes completely made-up information — what researchers call ‘hallucinations.’ The internet, he said, is changing for the worse.”…

Suchir’s full analysis, including illustrative graphs, is at his “When does generative AI qualify for fair use?” webpage.

While generative models rarely produce outputs that are substantially similar to any of their training inputs, the process of training a generative model involves making copies of copyrighted data. If these copies are unauthorized, this could potentially be considered copyright infringement, depending on whether or not the specific use of the model qualifies as “fair use”. Because fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, no broad statement can be made about when generative AI qualifies for fair use. Instead, I’ll provide a specific analysis for ChatGPT’s use of its training data, but the same basic template will also apply for many other generative AI products….

(7) ABOUT FRANK MILLER. A trailer has dropped for the documentary Frank Miller: American Genius.

Frank Miller: American Genius documents the unique journey of an unparalleled American artist. The film explores the near half-century career of the legendary comic book artist and writer. Made for his fans following a near death experience, the documentary delves into Miller’s radical and defining influence on art, storytelling and culture.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 24, 1952 — David Weber, 72

By Paul Weimer: Sometimes the subtext is the text. A lot of space opera has the subtext of being naval adventures in space, ranging from the original Star Trek on to the present day. It is no surprise, then, that David Weber decided to cut straight to the source and have actual naval style military adventures in the stars, with Honor Harrington. His books follow the rise of Harrington in a manner that Hornblower and O’Brian could recognize, and appreciate. 

David Weber

With all of the side books and ancillary books in the series, the amount of Harrington stories Weber has produced is staggering, but it is undeniably a gem of an idea he can and has taken advantage of for all it’s worth. I’ve not read all of them, but enough to get a good sampling. 

What I like even more is Weber’s Armageddon Reef series. The Safehold books take place on a colony planet where humans have fled after a genocidal attack, and have been forcibly reduced in technology in order to evade detection. So we have an alien planet, humans on it, and a lack of space flight. And so Weber adds 18-19th century style naval combat and technology to the mix. 

These books, I feel, have to be an even more explicit loveletter to Hornblower and company.  The conflict between technology and religion and the problems of separation of chruch and state do elevate these books, I feel, to a question that we face today. While Weber’s novels might be dismissed as just being fun naval and space adventures, there is that undercurrent and layer of engaging with societal questions that make them very worthy of attention.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) WHAT IF? MICKEY & FRIENDS AS THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Mickey & Friends will put a spin on classic Marvel covers in 2025 with new Disney What If? Fantastic Four homage variant covers.

Continuing the “What If?” theme, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and more take over as Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and the Thing to recreate the team’s most memorable adventures.

Check out the first two covers, on sale January and February, that pay homage to Silver Age issues: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four #3 and #51. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

(11) LITTLE PRINCE, BIG PRICE TAG. “Rare typescript of The Little Prince to go up for sale” reports the Guardian.

A rare carbon typescript of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince featuring extensive handwritten corrections by the author is going up for sale. It is one of only three known copies and marks the first time a typescript of the classic story has been offered for public sale.

The artefact features what is believed to be the first written appearance of the famous lines: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux,” translated to mean: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”…

… The typescript is priced at $1.25m. It will be showcased at Abu Dhabi Art, an annual art fair taking place at the end of November.

(12) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(13) GUT INSTINCTS. “H.R. Giger and Mire Lee’s Biomechanical Netherworld” depicted by Frieze.

‘Have you seen Schinkel Pavillon’s H.R. Giger show?’ has been the question of the month in Berlin. In fact, the exhibition pairs the late Swiss artist with the South Korean sculptor Mire Lee, a detail that has mostly footnoted ensuing conversations. Although it’s hardly a surprise. An obvious novelty factor accompanies this appearance of Giger’s sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints which – due to their creator’s work on the Alien film franchise (1979–2017) – fundamentally impacted society’s collective imagination of the far-flung other. But interesting questions also arise from this hagiographic netherworld. Namely, whether the show participates in a meaningful conversation – about our erotic and paranoid relationship to the unknown, say – or just satisfies current nostalgic tastes, if not contemporary art’s populist drift.

With her best work having as much guts as Giger’s aliens, many of Lee’s sculptures are abject biomechanical masses, made from concrete, silicon and steel, and sometimes veined with ooze-pumping tubes. From beyond the grave, Giger has contributed Necroconom (Alien II) (1990) – a life-size sculpture of the infamous alien Xenomorph, who crawled on knees and fore-talons, as much like a purring pole dancer as a menacing hunter, its exoskeleton made from sexy black polyester….

…More affecting in its provocation of bodily and existential tremors is Lee’s Untitled (2021), a small conflagration of metallic and silicon cables, bound to a motor, which churns slowly in a spot-lit pool of its own broken refuse, on the floor of an eerie basement room, dark and tiled like an abandoned shower. Simultaneously invoking a disembodied machine component or body part, the piece harks back to classic existential concerns: the feeling of crawling through life, forever breaking apart, suspended between humanity and technology, and wondering why we even bother. Less effective were a number of Lee’s larger works, which gestured towards sensational corporeal impact, without quite delivering: The Liars (2021), a foreboding hanging mass made from towels, chains, fabric and silicon, suggested a horrific meat locker, without being all that horrific, while its companion piece, Carriers: Offsprings (2021), finds slime pulsing through masses of hanging tangled transparent tubes, like entrails simulated in a theme-park haunted house….

‘HR Giger and Mire Lee’, 2021, exhibition view, Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin

(14) COSMIC BANGERS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] An astrometric analysis of Gaia data identified two waves of massive runaway stars that have been dynamically ejected from the young cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Researchers used data from the European Gaia Space Telescope to discover 55 high-speed stars launched from the young star cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The young cluster R136 has launched as many as a third of its most massive stars in the last few million years, at speeds above 100,000 km/hr. Those stars travel up to 1,000 light years from their birthplace before exploding as supernovas at their end of life, producing a neutron star or black hole.

Primary research here: “Two waves of massive stars running away from the young cluster R136” in Nature.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ms. Mojo made a list of the “Top 10 Things Only Adults Notice in The Wizard of Oz”. Number three is the unanswered question, “Where Are Dorothy’s Parents?”

“The Wizard of Oz” works on another level as an adult. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the wonderful, wizardly, and weird things about “The Wizard of Oz” that might have grabbed their broomsticks and flown over our heads when we were kids.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/24/24 File “P” For Pixel

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(1) RECONCILING MIDDLE-EARTH. Max Gladstone enjoys sharing his insights about The Silmarillion in “Just Silmaril Things” at The Third Place.

…Of course it’s unreliable, it’s a transcribed oral tradition! But this is the one point in the fantasy of the Silmarillion on which we, the readers, proceed with authority. We can check the bard’s math. We were there, Gandalf: we were there at the close of the Third Age. Frodo did not cast the ring “into the Fire where it was wrought.” “Alone with his servant!” No Gollum at all—imagine a version of the Lord of the Rings that doesn’t understand Gollum! (And I thought that a version that didn’t understand Faramir was a crying shame…) The previous paragraph mentions the Witch-King falling at the battle of Pelennor Fields, but says nothing at all about Merry, or Eowyn.

Two thoughts, divergent. First: how amazing, at the end of a magisterial text, to invite the reader to rethink the whole damn thing. Not to undermine it, to lampoon or lambaste—but to encourage new questions, new depths of thought, insight: who else was there? At the ride of Fingolfin, at the kinslaying of the Teleri? What haven’t we seen, for the light of all this majesty? What isn’t told? What has been forgotten?…

(2) SCIENTIFIC FICTION. What Mark Twain did for Fenimore Cooper, and Damon Knight did for his sf-writing colleagues, Dashiell Hammett once did for practitioners of his genre. The Library of America’s “Story of the Week” is Hammett’s “Suggestions to Detective Story Writers”.

Soon after Dashiell Hammett published his third novel, The Maltese Falcon, to critical acclaim and strong sales, he accepted a position as crime fiction reviewer for the New York Evening Post….

…Perhaps inevitably, after several years of reading (and trashing) so many unremarkable novels, Hammett threw up his hands. His “Crime Wave” column in the June 7, 1930, issue of the Evening Post was supposed to be a review of three newly arrived mystery novels that were “from beginnings to endings, carelessly manufactured improbabilities having more than their share of those blunders which earn detective stories as a whole the sneers of the captious.” He declined to review the books he had been assigned and instead published a list of blunders he had encountered in these and other recent books, with the hope that writers might avoid them in the future….

Hammett begins:

…It would be silly to insist that nobody who has not been a detective should write detective stories, but it is certainly not unreasonable to ask any one who is going to write a book of any sort to make some effort at least to learn something about his subject. Most writers do. Only detective story writers seem to be free from a sense of obligation in this direction, and, curiously, the more established and prolific detective story writers seem to be the worst offenders….

Here are three things on his list that apparently would have come as news to certain authors:

…(4) When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.

(5) A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.

(6) When you are knocked unconscious you do not feel the blow that does it…

(3) BOLD AS BRASS. On the other hand, if it’s a science fiction writer you want to be, take Ursula K. Le Guin’s advice: “Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer” at Literary Hub.

How do you become a writer? Answer: you write.

It’s amazing how much resentment and disgust and evasion this answer can arouse. Even among writers, believe me. It is one of those Horrible Truths one would rather not face….

…Honestly, why do people ask that question? Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me—how should I become a tuba player? No! It’s too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and to tuba performance. And then you sit down and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can—if you desire—play the truth on the tuba.

It is exactly the same with writing. You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned how to do it….

(4) DAVID BRIN HONORED BY CALTECH. David Brin is one of this year’s recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award (DAA), Caltech’s highest honor for alumni. The announcement was made at Caltech’s 87th Annual Seminar Day on May 18. “Caltech Celebrates Its 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients”.

[The award] went to four alumni who, because of both personal commitment and professional contributions, have made remarkable impacts in a field, on the community, or in society more broadly.

The 2024 class of DAAs are: David Brin (BS ’73), Louise Chow (PhD ’73), Bill Coughran (BS, MS ’75), and Timothy M. Swager (PhD ’88)….

David Brin is recognized for his enduring excellence in storytelling, examining how change, science, and technology affect the human condition in his New York Times-bestselling science fiction novels, and for his support of revolutionary ideas in space science and engineering through NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts Program.

Brin’s novels explore science’s potential impact on society with a mixture of hope and dread. His books have been honored with Hugo and Nebula awards, the most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy writing, and have been translated into more than 20 languages. One of his novels, The Postman, was the inspiration for the 1997 movie of the same name, which starred Kevin Costner. His 1998 nonfiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? received the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award from the American Library Association.

Brin serves on several advisory committees and sits on the external council for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which explores high-risk, high-reward ideas that are capable of “changing the possible.”

(5) ALL DESIRES KNOWN. New Scientist interviews “Sci-fi author Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot series, on what a machine intelligence might want”.

When I wrote All Systems Red, one of my goals was to think about what a machine intelligence would actually want, as opposed to what a human thinks a machine intelligence would want. Of course, there’s no real way to know that. The predictive text bots labelled as AIs that we have now aren’t any more sentient than a coffee cup and a good deal less useful for anything other than generating spam. (They also use up an unconscionable amount of our limited energy and water resources, sending us further down the road to climate disaster, but that’s another essay.)

In the world of All Systems Red, humans control their sentient constructs with governor modules that punish any attempt to disobey orders with pain or death. When Murderbot hacks its governor module, it becomes essentially free of human control. Humans assume that SecUnits who are not under the complete control of a governor module are going to immediately go on a killing rampage.

This belief has more to do with guilt than any other factor. The human enslavers know on some level that treating the sentient constructs as disposable objects, useful tools that can be discarded, is wrong; they know if it were done to them, they would be filled with rage and want vengeance for the terrible things they had suffered….

(6) ANOTHER REASON TO REMEMBER 1984. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It strikes me that as it is 2024 this year is the 40th anniversary (1984) of the first (and I think only?) combination Eastercon-Eurocon.

Back in the day, I provided press operations for a number of conventions including Shoestringcons 1 & 2, BECCON 87 (Eastercon), Eastcon (Eastercon) etc. One of these was the 1984 Eurocon cum Eastercon, Seacon 84. Because I was doing press I got these posters (someone else produced) to include in my press kits. The attached is a photo of said poster.

The artwork shows the Brighton seaside with three piers (Brighton has had a troubled history with its piers – see the Wikipedia entries for West Pier and Brighton Palace Pier. And there is a spaceship crashing. The thing is that this space ship is also (look again) a beer mug. (Beer and SF go together in the UK.)

Sadly, I note that none of the GoHs are with us today (all those I looked up to, when I joined fandom in the 1970s, are now gone, (as also gone are a disturbing number of my fan friends which is the main reason I have cut back on con going to just one or two a year)).

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 24, 1963 — Michael Chabon, 61. The first work by Michael Chabon that I read was the greatest baseball story ever told, and yes, I know that statement will be disputed by many of you, or at least the greatest fantasy affair which is Summerlandin which a group of youngsters save the world from destruction by playing baseball.  It’s a truly stellar novel, perfect, that in every way deserved the Mythopoeic Award it received.

Michael Chabon

 Next on my list of novels that I really enjoyed by him is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, the alternate history mystery novel, which would win a Hugo at Devention 3. Like Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land, this novel with its alternate version of Israel is fascinating. 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is story of  them becoming major figures in the comics industry from its start into its Golden Age. It’s a wonderful read and an absolutely fantastic look at the comics industry in that era.

An interesting story by him is “The Final Solution: A Story of Detection” novella. The story, set in 1944, is about an unnamed nearly ninety-year-old retired detective who may or may not be Holmes as this individual is a beekeeper. 

He is, I’d say, a rather great writer. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) HER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] And here’s The Onion‘s take on the ScarJo AI voice fiasco. “Jerky, 7-Fingered Scarlett Johansson Appears In Video To Express Full-Fledged Approval Of OpenAI”. Read the short satire at the link.

(10) OCTOTHORPE. In Episode 110 of the Octothorpe podcast “Tom Hanks Bloody Loves the Moon”, John Coxon is a professor, Alison Scott doesn’t have a bucket list, and Liz Batty is the country’s foremost fan historian.

We’re a day late because John got distracted! We go through our mailbag and have our thoughts provoked by lots of intriguing commentary, before talking a little about the Arthur C Clarke Award and then onto picks.

Three photographs of the night sky, labelled Newcastle, Bangkok, and “Quite near London” (the labels were written by a Londoner, which is why it doesn’t just say “London”). Text above reads “Octothorpe 110” and below reads “Local Aurora Snapshots”. The Newcastle and London images show photographs of aurora with some minor bits of vegetation intruding; the Bangkok picture shows a skyline of buildings underneath a thunderstorm.

(11) SPACE PIONEER. “Ellison Shoji Onizuka: The First Asian American in Space” – the National Air and Space Museum website has a profile of this astronaut’s work in space before being lost in the Challenger disaster.

…Months after the tragedy, as debris from Challenger was found and processed, personal possessions were returned to the crew’s families. The Onizukas received a memento with special meaning. He had taken on the flight a soccer ball inscribed with good wishes and signatures from his daughter’s Clear Lake High School soccer team, which he helped coach. Stowed in a bag inside a locker in the crew cabin, the ball had been found in the wreckage. The Onizuka family presented the ball to the school. Thirty years later in 2016 astronaut Shane Kimbrough, whose son attended the same school, took the ball on his expedition to the International Space Station and later returned it to the school, where it remains on display. Symbolically, this flight seemed to complete Onizuka’s too-short final mission….

(12) THE BIG ONE. Smithsonian Magazine lists “The Seven Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Jupiter”.

…With its gorgeous swirling overcoat and nature of extremes, Jupiter has long captured the public imagination and continues to inspire scientific study. Recent discoveries have only heightened Jupiter’s mystique, enticing researchers to probe this far-flung realm. Here are some of the most enthralling findings scientists have made about Jupiter and its moons in the last five decades….

You may not have gotten the memo:

Yes, Jupiter has a ring

“A lot of people don’t even realize it has one,” Becker says. Too puny to be observed with a backyard telescope, Jupiter’s dusty wreath remained undetected for a long time. Discovered only in 1979 during the Voyager 1 flyby, the ring has since been viewed with more powerful ground telescopes and other visiting spacecraft.

Like any ring encircling other planets in the solar system, Jupiter’s is a glorified debris field. Detritus from crash-landed meteorites congregate around Jupiter. This loose mélange of ice, dust and rock spans 32,000 to 130,000 miles in width from the planetary surface.

When other celestial objects pass through the ring, they can leave behind tracks in the dust stream. One of the most famous of wakes came from the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter in 1994. Years later, the Galileo and New Horizons spacecraft found ripples in Jupiter’s ring that were kicked up by shards from the comet, the celestial equivalent of footsteps in freshly fallen snow….

(13) WE’LL GO AT NIGHT. The BBC reports on ESA’s proposed new Sun probe: “Airbus UK to build Vigil satellite to monitor Sun storms”.

British engineers will lead the development of a new satellite to monitor the Sun for the energetic outbursts it sends towards Earth.

The announcement of Vigil, as the spacecraft will be known, is timely following the major solar storm that hit our planet earlier this month.

The event, the biggest in 20 years, produced bright auroral lights in skies across the world.

Airbus UK will assemble Vigil and make it ready for launch in 2031.

It’s a European Space Agency (Esa) mission. The €340m (£290m) industrial contract to initiate the build was signed at an Esa and European Union space council being held in Brussels….

(14) VIDEO OF ANOTHER DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Roger Corman’s 1994 (but never released) Fantastic Four movie is now on YouTube. I bought a VHS of this at some WorldCon, probably late in the previous millennium. Watched it once. If this is (per the CBR article) an improved viewing, I might give it a try.

An interesting article about it from 2017: “Where Are They Now: Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four”.

The Roger Corman’s ill-fated film The Fantastic Four was supposed to officially release in 1994, but that never happened. In 2005, Stan Lee said that the only reason the film was ever made was because executive producer Bernd Eichinger wanted to retain the rights to the film series, so he made a low budget film knowing it would never see the light of day, and one day make a big-budget version for the public to see. Eichinger and Corman deny these claims, stating that their intentions were always to release the film.

Avid Arad, who was a Marvel executive at the time and would later found Marvel Studios, bought the film and ordered that it be buried without even seeing the movie because he didn’t want Marvel to be associated with low-budget B movies as it might tarnish the franchise. So what happened to the movie? It is still available for free to stream on Youtube and Dailymotion. The quality as admittedly quite poor, but it is still watchable for anyone interested in a superhero movie with the incredibly low budget. And what about the cast and crew of this Marvel anomaly? Let’s take a look at what they’ve all been up to since their work on this film.

The movie: The Fantastic Four (1994) unreleased film produced by Roger Corman and Bernd Eichinger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA7LcG4ch3A

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

Pixel Scroll 4/3/24 Go, Strider! In The Sky

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(1) TOM DIGBY REMEMBERED. Long-time LASFSian Alan Frisbie shares some of his memories of Tom Digby, who died March 27.

Tom Digby

Alan Frisbie: I was saddened to hear from Paula Evans that Tom Digby had died. He was one of the first people I got to know in LASFS when I joined in 1969.  His monthly parties were always fun, especially because of the conversations on every topic under the sun.  He almost always had some new gadget he had built, often to demonstrate some interesting scientific fact.

At one party he had a Jello tasting competition.  On the table were about ten bowls of Jello, in all the typical colors.  Each person was given a 3×5 card and told to list each numbered bowl and its flavor.

At the end, he revealed that they were all the new pear flavor, but with different food colors added to fool us.

In his kitchen was one of those backwards-reading clocks.  However, the mechanism had been replaced with a small DC motor that, at random times, would rapidly run the hands in a random direction for a random amount of time.

As was popular at the time, he had a color organ attached to his stereo. This one, however, was unique.  He had taken an old color TV and connected the deflection yoke vertical & horizontal windings to the left & right amplifier outputs.  If the sound was a pure tone with a 90 degree phase difference, of course you would get a circle.  But music is never pure like that, so you got a constantly varying display.  I’m not sure how the colors were selected, but the display was absolutely mesmerizing.

He also built a drum & rhythm synthesizer back in those pre-microprocessor days.  It had a gigantic array of slide switches, with one column for each possible time, and a row for each possible sound.  There was a potentiometer for speed control.  You could configure any conceivable time signature and pattern with it.  We had lots of fun with it.

Tom was a truly unique individual.

(2) DOCTOR WHO EPISODE TITLES. The Doctor Who Season One episode titles have been revealed.

  • SPACE BABIES: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Julie Anne Robinson
  • THE DEVIL’S CHORD: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Ben Chessell
  • BOOM: Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Julie Anne Robinson
  • 73 YARDS: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams
  • DOT AND BUBBLE: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams
  • ROGUE: Written by Kate Herron and Briony Redman, directed by Ben Chessell
  • THE LEGEND OF RUBY SUNDAY: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughue
  • EMPIRE OF DEATH: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughue

A second Season 1 Trailer also has been released.

(3) NEW GAIMAN SERIES. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives arrives April 25. They were created during Sandman (comic) #25, “Seasons of Mists”, and have been in lots of comics since (see list on “Dead Boy Detectives” Wikipedia entry.)

The characters (not sure it’s the same actors) were in several episodes of Doom Patrol Season 3. I lost track of whether they were in the Netflix Sandman series.

Here’s the trailer, which has me ready to start counting the days…

(4) RISING TIDE. Publishers Lunch says Reactor (formerly Tor.com) has announced these promotions:

Emmet Asher-Perrin has been promoted to senior editor, news & entertainment.

Christina Orlando has been promoted to senior editor, books coverage.

Leah Schnelbach has been promoted to senior editor, features.

Stefan Raets has been promoted to senior production editor.

(5) GOING SCOT FREE. “J.K. Rowling will not be arrested for comments about transgender women, police say” – click the link for NBC News’ description of and quotes from Rowling’s statements that were the source of the complaint.

…“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”

Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity….

(6) IT’S HUDE! Cora Buhlert invites you to go “Exploring the Hude Solar System (with Bonus Gothic Abbey Ruins)”.

(OhmyGod! Look who’s included!)

Pluto

The way to Pluto leads through the forest on a public, but unpaved road. Eventually, the forest gives way to Hude Golf Course, where you can see golfers trying to hit their balls. Golfing is clearly a popular sport in the far reaches of the solar system. You travel past the parking lot of the golf course until at last, you reach Pluto, sitting by the side of the road directly in front of a private house.

Pluto is just a tiny speck on the marker, but then Pluto is tiny. And yes, when the Hude solar system was set up, Pluto was still an official planet. The number of moons is no longer correct either.

(Okay, be a spoilsport…)

(7) DON’T WALK UNDERNEATH WHEN THEY FLY BY. “Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida” says Ars Technica.

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly 2-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry….

… The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home….

Of course he is.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY. April 3, 1978 — “’Annie Hall’ beats out ‘Star Wars’ for Best Picture”. Oh, noes!

The rise of the action-adventure blockbuster was on the horizon, but on April 3, 1978, the small-scale romantic comedy triumphs over the big-budget space extravaganza. At the 50th annual Academy Awards, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture, beating out George Lucas’ Star Wars.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 3, 1968 — Jamie Hewlett, 56. Of course most of you know about Tank Girl, but I’m betting that that most of you don’t know the story of Jamie Hewlett, one of the co-creators, and his role in creating Tank Girl. So let’s tell it.

The comic was created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett who met when they were studying at the West Sussex College of Design in Worthing, and first appeared in print thirty-six years ago in the British Deadline comics magazine.

Alan Martin in an Sci- Fi Online interview tells us how he and Hewlett created the character:

The three of us then worked together on the comic/fanzine Atomtan. While working on this Jamie had drawn a grotty looking heffer of a girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. One of our friends was working on a project to design a pair of headphones and was basing his design on the type used by World War II tank driver. His studio was littered with loads of photocopies of combat vehicles. I pinched one of the images and gave it to Jamie who then stuck it behind his grotty girl illustrations and then added a logo which read ‘Tank Girl’.

Jamie Hewlett in 2014.

Posters, shirts of all sorts, and underpants, yes underpants, began showing up everywhere on the punk scene, including one shirt especially made for the Clause 28 protest march against Margaret Thatcher’s legislation effectively making homosexuality illegal. Tank Girl was particularly an icon among the lesbian community.

With its immense popularity, the major publishers showed interest in Tank Girl. Penguin UK was the one that Hewlett and Martin decided to go with. So they published all of the Deadline material as collections. What was interesting was that Penguin discovered that though that they owned global territorial rights, they didn’t own US rights. 

So Dark Horse won out over a number of other interested publishers forty years ago. A four-issue limited series Tank Girl: Visions of Booga, by Martin was released by IDW, as was Tank Girl: Armadillo and a Bushel of Other Stories, a Tank Girl novel also scripted by Martin. 

Fresh material is being produced by the current creative team is Alan Martin and Brett Parson. Tank Girl has appeared on a regular basis in various one-shots and limited series, now published by IDW, Image Comics, and mostly by Titan Comics.

No, I’ve not mentioned the film, have I? Well Martin and Hewlett are known for speaking quite poorly of their experience in the film, and what the film itself was. That’s has much as I’ll say about it. 

(10) SURFER’S UP. “’Fantastic Four’: Julia Garner To Play Silver Surfer In Marvel Movie” reports Deadline.

With the four actors set to play the iconic members of the super team, Marvel Studios‘ The Fantastic Four now has its sights set on who will play Silver Surfer, and it looks like they are going with one of the towns biggest rising stars.

Sources tell Deadline that Emmy winner Julia Garner is set to play the iconic comic book character in Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four. Pedro Pascal will play Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm (aka the Thing)…

(11) AWARD TO RONALD D. MOORE. Variety reports“AFF to Honor Ronald D. Moore with Outstanding Television Writer Award”.

The Austin Film Festival (AFF) has announced Ronald D. Moore as the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Television Writer Award for his prolific impact on the world of television and his work on celebrated science fiction and fantasy series such as “For All Mankind,” “Outlander” and “Battlestar Galactica.”

“I’m very honored,” Moore told Variety over the phone. “It’s great when your work is recognized and when a renowned organization like the Austin Film Festival chooses to do something like this. It’s amazing. I’m just very humbled by it all.” 

Moore will receive the award at the Festival Awards Luncheon during AFF’s Writers Conference, which takes place Oct. 24-27. Two panels, “A Conversation with Ronald D. Moore” and “Script To Screen: Battlestar Galactica,” are also scheduled for the event….

(12) WHAT ARE FANS STREAMING? JustWatch has compiled their top 10 charts for March 2024.

(13) THE FIVE PERCENT SOLUTION. El País profiles “Author who won Japan’s top literary award with help from ChatGPT: ‘AI helps you compensate for your weaknesses’”.

Rie Kudan, the Japanese writer who won this year’s Akutagawa Prize — the highest award in Japanese literature — with a book where around 5% of the content was generated by ChatGPT, encourages writers to use generative artificial intelligence in their creations.

“If you think carefully about how to use it and face your own weaknesses, AI helps you compensate for them,” says the 33-year-old author, speaking at the headquarters of her publishing house, Shinchosha, which advertises her work under the slogan “A book of prophecies in the era of generative artificial intelligence.” However, Kudan says that the input from AI was very small: “Only one page out of 144.”

The novel Tokyo To Dojo To (Tokyo’s Tower of Sympathy) was described by the jury as an “almost flawless” work and earned Kudan a literary prize created in 1935 and which has launched the careers of authors such as Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. The award winner was announced in January….

(14) REMEMBER TO BYO MENTOS. Walmart is one place you can get this “Disney Parks Coca Cola Coke Star Wars Galaxy Edge 13.5 Bottle Thermal Detonator”.

(15) ECLIPSE IN US CURSED EARTH AND BLACK ATLANTIC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The eclipse will happen on April 8. Dr. Becky is an Oxford U based astrophysicist. “Total Solar Eclipse 2024 – WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, HOW, & WHY”.

(16) WHAT WILL EARTH BE LIKE 300 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  The YouTube Channel PBS Eons usually takes a look back in time at past evolution but for once has gone all SFnal with a look forward at the future of life on Earth 300 million years hence. To put that in perspective 300 million years ago in the past was when the first reptiles arose and they became the dinosaurs (for whom I have never forgiven what they did to Raquel Welch…).  In this 11-minute video we look forward to a time when there will be a new supercontinent and the Hugo Award debacle is long forgotten….

We spend a lot of time here on Eons looking backwards into deep time, visiting ancient chapters of our planet’s history. But this time, we’re taking a look towards the deep future. After all, the story is far from over.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/27/23 An Intrepid Pixel In The Twenty-Fourth-And-A-Half Century With His Faithful Companion, The Scroll

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(1) PRATCHETT REDISCOVERIES. None set on the Discworld, but they are genre: “Rediscovered Terry Pratchett stories to be published” – the Guardian has details.

A collection of newly rediscovered short stories by Terry Pratchett, originally written under a pseudonym, are to be published later this year.

The 20 tales in A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories were written by Pratchett in the 1970s and 1980s for a regional newspaper, mostly under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. They have never been previously attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015 aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The collection was bought by Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld for a six-figure sum, and will be published on 5 October.

The discovery of the stories is down to a group of Pratchett’s fans. One of the longer stories in the collection, The Quest for the Keys, had been framed on Pratchett fan Chris Lawrence’s wall for more than 40 years. When he alerted the Pratchett estate to its existence, the rest of the stories were unearthed by fans Pat and Jan Harkin, who went through decades’ worth of old newspapers to rediscover the lost treasures.

… None of the stories are set in Pratchett’s Discworld – the first book of which, The Colour of Magic, was released in 1983 – but according to the publisher they “hint at the world Sir Terry would go on to create”.

Readers, said the publisher, could expect to “meet characters ranging from cavemen to gnomes, wizards to ghosts, and read about time-travel tourism, the haunting of council offices and a visitor from another planet”….

(2) ADD TO MT TBR? Michael Swanwick calls it “Joanna Russ’s Mainstream Masterwork”.

The latest book I have been knocked flat and wowed by (they come less frequently with age, so read fast, young people) is On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ. She being one of the crown gems of science fiction, you’d expect it to be genre. But it’s not. It’s mainstream. It’s subtitled A Lesbian Love Story. And if you had to fit it into a subgenre, it would be Feminist Fiction.

Strike three, you’d think, for a guy who’s rapidly heading toward the category of Dead White Male. But no, Joanna managed the near-miraculous feat of writing prose that was simultaneously white-hot with anger and laugh-out-loud funny….

(3) NINTENDO DIRECTOR Q&A. “Nintendo’s Miyamoto says inspiration comes from his childhood experiences in nature” at NPR.

The person who made it possible is Nintendo’s game director, Shigeru Miyamoto. He’s the creator of some of the most influential and bestselling games in the industry. In addition to Mario Brothers, you got Donkey Kong and the Legend of Zelda. He joined Nintendo straight out of art school in 1977 and says a lot of his inspiration comes from his childhood experiences in nature. I sat down with Miyamoto to learn more about why his characters and games have had such a lasting impact.

When it comes to Mario, what do you think accounts for his ability to just be in the hearts of so many people?

SHIGERU MIYAMOTO: (Through interpreter) You know, before, when I was asked this question, I thought that it’s perhaps because the game sold well. And a lot of people have this experience of playing this game and playing it over and over, that it becomes commonplace for them. But now I feel that it’s a little bit different in that Mario is kind of like a – your avatar or the person that represents you in this world. And that experience is, you know, because it’s been around for so long, an experience that can be shared multi-generations, you know? A father and their children can share that experience….

(4) YOU KNOW HOW SUCCESSFUL PROHIBITION WAS. Richard Charkin “On the ‘Desecration of Authors’ Works’” at Publishing Perspectives.

Taking a Leaf Out of Dr. Bowdler’s Book

The idea of editing Shakespeare to eliminate doubles entrendres and naughty words to fit in with 19th-century social mores now seems preposterous, although presumably his publishers—Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown—thought it was a pretty good idea at the time.

Their 1818 The Family Shakespeare offered the assurance that “Nothing is added to the original text but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud by a family.” Thomas Bowdler’s work on this gave rise to the term bowdlerize, meaning “to remove matter considered indelicate or otherwise objectionable,” per Merriam-Webster.

Doubtless, the Roald Dahl Story Company and Messrs. Bertelsmann, PRH, and Puffin also thought it was a pretty good idea to subject the works of Roald Dahl to the same sort of treatment for the same sort of reasons.

I’ve had a few brushes with attempts to change or stifle books.

The obvious case was Peter Wright’s tedious Spycatcher, for which Mrs. Thatcher, in a rare case of support for publishers’ profits, appointed herself marketing director for the book by trying to have it throttled.

She forgot that the United Kingdom was only able to ban books in its jurisdiction. At Heinemann, we happily imported books from Australia to satisfy the demand she had created. We even hired tele-sales people to call British booksellers to drum up orders. Phone calls from Australia were expensive, so we found traveling Australians living in London to make the calls.

(5) CAN WE PAY FOR THE FUTURE? Pitchfork Economics presents “Sci-Fi Economics (with Kim Stanley Robinson)” – listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.

We can’t tear down the existing economic framework and replace it with a better one without first telling a persuasive story about how the economy actually works. And few people in the world are more compelling storytellers than science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.

In his speculative near-future novel The Ministry for the Future, Stan explains complicated economic theories better than most economists. He joins Nick and Goldy for a fascinating conversation about the role of economics in both climate change fiction and climate change reality.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future.

A brief excerpt from the transcript:

David Goldstein: Well, this raises a question. This book was recommended to me by a number of people. Ostensibly, I thought it was about climate change. But really, it’s a book about economics. I’m wondering, was that your intention when you started the book, or did the economics come out in the writing?

Kim Stanley Robinson: Oh, I knew it was going to be there from the start. As I mentioned, I wrote New York 2140 in probably 2016. It’s a description of New York after sea level rises something like 50 vertical feet, so Lower Manhattan is underwater and is a supervenience, and it’s all about the financialization essentially. It’s not quite a metaphor for our current meltdowns, but it has a lot about the present, as well as the ostensible year of 2140.

So I had been working on it then, and I’d been working on the economics of climate change this whole 21st century. My Washington DC trilogy, set in DC in the near future during climate change, had a economic strand in it, but it wasn’t strong enough. It was more of, what would the federal government do, or the National Science Foundation? But, it became more and more obvious that, although we have various technical solutions to climate change, we don’t have a good way to pay for installing those technological changes, nor do we have a good way of assessing the actual economics of what we’re doing on Earth.

In other words, the gross world product, gross domestic product, whatever you want to call it, the highest rate of return profit itself, these are all crappy, cheesy, short rate, cheating rating systems that the world was run by. So, I needed to keep hammering away at it. Ministry for the Future is just the last of a long series of projects where economics take center stage because it’s crucial.

(6) BURNY MATTINSON (1935-2023). “Burny Mattinson, Animator and Disney’s Longest-Serving Employee, Dies at 87” – The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute. See his many credits at the link.

Burny Mattinson, who worked as an animator, director, producer and story artist during a 70-year career as the longest-serving “castmember” in the history of The Walt Disney Co., has died. He was 87.

Mattinson died after a short illness on Monday at a Canoga Park assisted living facility in Los Angeles, the studio announced. He was due to receive his 70th anniversary service award — the studio’s first ever — on June 4.

Mattinson was working full time at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a story consultant and mentor at the time of his death….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1962 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Tonight’s Beginning comes to us direct from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the title poem to the collection of the same name. Written by Tolkien as if they were poems written and enjoyed by hobbits, one of the writers being Sam Gamgee. 

Two of the poems which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. And three of the poems appear in the Trilogy.  Only one of the poems, “Bombadil Goes Boating”, was written specifically for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Published first by George Allen & Unwin in 1962, it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, both the cover and all of the interior art as well.

And now here’s our first poetic Beginning…

Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow; 
bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow, 
green were his girdle and his breeches all of leather; 
he wore in his tall hat a swan-wing feather. 

He lived up under Hill, where the Withywindle 
ran from a grassy well down into the dingle. 
Old Tom in summertime walked about the meadows 
gathering the buttercups, running after shadows, 
tickling the bumblebees that buzzed among the flowers, 
sitting by the waterside for hours upon hours. 

There his beard dangled long down into the water: 
up came Goldberry, the River-woman’s daughter; 
pulled Tom’s hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing 
under the water-lilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.
 ‘Hey, Tom Bombadil! Whither are you going?’ 
said fair Goldberry. ‘Bubbles you are blowing, 
frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat, 
startling the dabchicks, and drowning your feather-hat!’

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 27, 1851 — James Churchward. He is remembered for claiming he discovered a lost continent named Mu in the Pacific Ocean. Mu shows up in Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, and “Out of the Aeons” which he co-wrote with Hazel Heald. It also appears in Philip K. Dick’s Confessions of a Crap Artist. (Died 1936.)
  • Born February 27, 1902 — John Steinbeck. Yes, John Steinbeck. ISFDB lists one novel, The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, Plus a bevy of short fiction such as “The Wedding of King”, “The Affair at 7 Rue de M—“ and “The Death of Merlin”. I’ll admit that I didn’t know these existed. So, has anyone read these? (Died 1968.)
  • Born February 27, 1938 — T.A. Waters. A professional magician and magic author. He appears not terribly well disguised as Sir Thomas Leseaux, an expert on theoretical magic as a character in Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy fantasy series and in Michael Kurland’s The Unicorn Girl in which he also appears as Tom Waters. He himself wrote The Probability Pad which is a sequel to The Unicorn Girl. Together with Chester Anderson’s earlier The Butterfly Kid , they make up Greenwich Village trilogy. (Died 1998.)
  • Born February 27, 1944 — Ken Grimwood. Another writer who died way too young, damn it.  Writer of several impressive genre novels including Breakthrough and Replay which I’ve read and Into the Deep and Elise which are listed in ISFDB but which I’m not familiar with. Who’s read them? (Died 2003.)
  • Born February 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 66. He’s both an artist and writer so I’m not going to untangle which is which here. What’s good by him? Oh, I love The Dark Knight Returns, both the original comic series and the animated film, though the same is not true of Sin City where I prefer the original series much more. Hmmm… What else? His runs on Daredevil and Electra of course. That should do. 
  • Born February 27, 1950 — Michaela Roessner, 73. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for Walkabout Woman. Her The Stars Dispose duology is quite excellent. Alas, none of her fiction is available digitally. 
  • Born February 27, 1960 — Jeff Smith, 63. Creator and illustrator of Bone, the now complete series that he readily admits that “a notable influence being Walt Kelly’s Pogo”. Smith also worked for DC on a Captain Marvel series titled Mister Mind and the Monster Society of Evil. He’s won a very impressive eleven Harvey Awards and ten Eisner Awards! Kindle, though not Apple Books, has the complete Bone for a very reasonable twenty dollars.
  • Born February 27, 1966 — Peter Swirski, 57. He’s a academic specialist on the late SF writer and philosopher Stanislaw Lem. As such, he’s written the usual treatises on him with such titles as Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future, Lemography: Stanislaw Lem in the Eyes of the World and From Literature to Biterature: Lem, Turing, Darwin, and Explorations in Computer Literature, Philosophy of Mind, and Cultural Evolution. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bob the Angry Flower tries to join Blake’s 7.

(10) THE 700 CLUB. In May, Marvel Comics will mark the 700th issue of Fantastic Four with a giant-sized wraparound connecting cover by artist Scott Koblish that will adorn both May’s Fantastic Four #7 and June’s Fantastic Four #8. This massive piece features over 700 characters, each one having appeared in a prior issue of the comic — the Fantastic Four’s fellow super heroes, past members, loyal allies, and of course, their iconic villains. For more information, visit Marvel.com. (Click for larger image.)

(11) A LOOK AHEAD. At Media Death Cult “Alastair Reynolds Reveals…..What’s Next”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x93F4QCc61I

(12) JOHN WILLIAMS Q&A. “For ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ John Williams Scored 90 Minutes of Music”, so he tells Variety.

…. The composer finished recording the score for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on Feb. 10 and, while he suggested last summer that the final Harrison Ford adventure would be the last of his 100-plus film scores, that’s not quite the truth.

“I might have meant that at the moment,” he says with a smile, “but you never want to say no unequivocally. If Steven or another director should come along with something that is so moving that you want to drop the phone and rush to the piano and have it all come out — should that happen, with the appropriate energy needed to do it, I wouldn’t rule out a situation like that.”

Recording for the final “Indiana Jones” film – and three of the previous editions, starting with 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” were Oscar-nominated for their music – began last June 28, and has continued off and on since then.

“It’s certainly got to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more,” Williams estimates. “But I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of new material. The old material works very well as a touchstone of memory, but I had great fun, and I have a theme that I’ve written for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress.” She plays Helena Shaw, reportedly Indy’s goddaughter….

(13) I AM PUTTING MYSELF TO THE FULLEST POSSIBLE USE. Daniel Dern quips, “Hopefully, these computers haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.” “KIOXIA and HPE Team Up to Send SSDs into Space, Bound for the International Space Station”.

Just announced – KIOXIA is participating in HPE’s Spaceborne Computer-2 program, the first in-space commercial edge computing and AI-enabled system to run on the International Space Station.

Spaceborne Computer-2 is part of a mission to significantly advance computing and reduce dependency on communications as space exploration continues to expand. For example, astronauts can achieve increased autonomy by processing data directly on the ISS, eliminating the need to send raw data to Earth to be processed, analyzed and sent back to space….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George shares visuals of the meeting that explains “How Animals Got Their Names”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, James Reynolds, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 1/7/23 Farmers Market In The Sky

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(1) IT WASN’T THE HOBBIT. What turned Stephen Colbert into a voracious reader? Science fiction. Specifically, Niven, Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl and more. See “Team Hobbit or Lord of the Rings?” on TikTok.

(2) SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Concerning a Slate critic’s claim about Tolkien’s elves, here’s Kalimac’s response from “Ross Douthat writes a fantasy novel”.

…Tolkien’s elves…. only … “essentially good” in the … sense in which they’re broadly good, they’re more good than bad, they aspire to goodness. Read the Silmarillion and you’ll find plenty of elves behaving extremely badly, and a few who are evil the way that Saruman in Lord of the Rings is evil. The reason you don’t find elves like that in Lord of the Rings is that the elves are chastened by their earlier experiences, the ones recounted in the Silmarillion, and aren’t going to make the same mistake again….

(3) SPECULATIVE POETS AT COLLAGE. [Item by Denise Dumars.] Science Fiction and Fantasy fan? Poetry fan? Why not try both together? You will get to do so when members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association  (SFPA) read their work and discuss the topic at Collage: a place for Art and Culture. You’ll also learn how to join the SFPA and how to find markets for your own poetry in the genres by writers who have published in numerous journals both print and online. Come join us on Sunday, January 15, at 2:00 p.m.. Collage is located at the south end of the Harbor Freeway, at 731 S. Pacific Ave., San Pedro, CA, 90731.   

Speakers:  

  • Wendy Van Camp: Poet Laureate of Anaheim, CA, and Convention Coordinator for the SFPA, Wendy is an award-winning writer who has edited Eye to the Telescope, the online journal of the SFPA, and is currenly nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She edits the Eccentric Orbits series of SF/F poetry anthlogies, and the current issue is nominated for Best Anthology Award. Find her at https://wendyvancamp.com/.  
  • Ashley Dioses: Award winning dark fantasy poet and fiction writer, with books of poetry published by Jackanapes Press and Hippocampus Press, Ashley has been nominated for the Rhysling and Elgin awards for SF/F poetry as well as appearing in such well-known journals as Cemetery Dance and Weirdbook. She blogs at fiendlover.blogspot.com.  
  • Denise Dumars: Columnist for Star* Line, the Journal of the SFPA, and widely published and award-winning poet and short fiction writer, Denise has been a college English instructor and a literary agent. Author of several poetry books and chapbooks, she has been nominated multiple times for the Rhysling, Elgin, and Dwarf Stars awards and is a current nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Find her at www.DeniseDDumars.com.  
  • Jean-Paul L. Garnier: Editor of Star*Line, the Journal of the SFPA, he is the owner of Space Cowboy bookstore, winner of the Critters Best Bookstore award for 2021. His podcast is Simultaneous Times, and he is an independent publisher of SF poetry and fiction. He is a five-time nominee for the Elgin award with several books in print. He contributes to dreamfoundry.org. Find him at https://spacecowboybooks.com/.

(4) PIEZOELECTRIC BOOGALOO. A New York Times writer says, “‘M3GAN’ Makes Us Ask (Again): Who’s Afraid of Dancing Robots?”

…“When you see the Boston Dynamics robots dancing in perfect unison,” Johnstone said, “it’s almost like them looking at us and saying, ‘We can do what you do, and we can do it better,’ in the most obnoxious way.” He chuckled. “Like they’re going to sashay their way toward the extermination of all humanity.”

M3GAN’s ice-cold, ruthlessly calculated “performance” stands in contrast to the human dancing in some recent horror films, where flesh-and-bone bodies reach states of overheated delirium. The choreographer, director and writer Jack Ferver, who worked on the coming horror movie “The Parenting,” said dance horror is effective when the person dancing “transcends their personhood.”

But what does that mean for a nonperson? Robots aren’t dead behind the eyes because they’re in some kind of ecstatic trance; they’re dead behind the eyes because they’re not alive….

(5) MEMORY LANE.

1964 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

No. We are not here to talk about the stellar Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film but rather about the source material that inspired it, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel. It was first published in the U.K. by George Allen & Unwin in 1964 with this edition illustrated by Faith Jaques. (Yes, the US edition was first but we think this one should be considered the true first for reasons below.) 

She was renowned for her work as a children’s book author, illustrator, artist, stamp designer and a very fierce advocate of artists’ rights for control of their work. She was chosen to do the British edition following the controversy over the depiction of the Oompa-Loompas in the US edition of the book where they were African pygmies. Racism at its very worst.

In this edition, as well as the subsequent sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was written by Dahl in 1971, the Oompa-Loompas were drawn as being white and appearing similar to hippies and the references to Africa were deleted. All other editions followed this convention.

The story was said to based on Dahl’s experience of chocolate companies including Cadbury during his schooldays sending packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. Popular belief was that the companies sent spies into each other’s factories to scope out new chocolates. 

Because of these practices, companies became highly protective of their chocolate making. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines that looked fantastical to a child that inspired him to write this novel.

There are several editions, each with a different illustrator — Joseph Schindelman (first and revised US editions); Faith Jaques (first UK edition); Michael Foreman (1985 US edition); and Quentin Blake (1995 edition). 

The book as you know as been adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory just several years after it was published, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that came out about twenty years ago. A prequel film, Wonka, a musical fantasy film, exploring Willy Wonka’s origins will be released in 2023. Timothée Chalamet is Willy Wonka. Really, he is.

Eric Idle narrated the audiobook version of the American Edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 7, 1899 — F. Orlin Tremaine. He was the Editor of Astounding from 1933 to 1937. It’s said that he bought Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness without actually reading it. Later as Editor at Bartholomew House, he brought out the first paperback editions of Lovecraft’s The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror. He wrote a dozen or so short stories that were published in the pulps between 1926 and 1949. (Died 1956.)
  • Born January 7, 1912 — Charles Addams. Illustrator best known for the Addams Family which he first drew in 1932 and kept drawing until his death. Needless to say there have been a number of films and series using these characters of which The Addams Family is my favorite. Linda H. Davis’ Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life is well worth seeking out and reading. (Died 1988.)
  • Born January 7, 1913 — Julian S. Krupa. Pulp cover and interior illustrator from 1939 to 1971 who graced Amazing Stories and Fantastic. In the Thirties, he also contributed art to fanzines, including Ad Astra. His grandson said that “his Grandfather did all the illustrations for the training films for the first Nuclear Submarines and was a friend to Admiral Rickover. And then continued to do early training films for NASA.” (Died 1989.)
  • Born January 7, 1928 — William Peter Blatty. Novelist and screenwriter best known for The Exorcist though he was also the same for Exorcist III. The former is by no means the only genre work that he would write as his literary career would go on for forty years after this novel and would include Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Fable which he renamed Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Hollywood Christmas Carol and The Exorcist for the 21st Century, his final work. (Died 2017.)
  • Born January 7, 1955 — Karen Haber, 68. Wife of Robert Silverberg. Author Of the Fire In Winter series (first co-written with Robert) and the War Minstrels series as well. With Robert, she edited three of the exemplary Universe anthologies that Terry Carr had created. Her Meditations on Middle Earth, her essay collection on J.R.R. Tolkien is quite superb. And of course her prequel Thieves’ Carnival to Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas is stunning.
  • Born January 7, 1962 — Mark Allen Shepherd, 61. Morn, the bar patron on Deep Space Nine. Amazingly he was in Quark’s bar a total of ninety-three episodes plus one episode each on Next Gen and Voyager. Technically he’s uncredited in almost all of those appearances. That’s pretty much his entire acting career. I’m trying to remember if he has any lines. He’s also an abstract painter whose work was used frequently on DS9 sets. For all practical purposes, this was his acting career. Do note that we saw more Lurians on Discovery showing that the species is still around even in the 32nd century. 
  • Born January 7, 1971 — Jeremy Renner, 52. You know him as Hawkeye in those MCU films but he’s also in a number of other SFF film including Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Arrival.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

  • Catching up with Tom Gauld –

(8) THEY MADE MARVEL. CBR.com contends these are “The 10 Most Important Comics In Marvel History”. For example —

8/10 Fantastic Four #1 Brought The Heroes Back

As the superhero boom died out in the late 1940s, Timely switched to other genres, including romance, teen books, and comedy titles. In 1951, a year after Captain America was canceled, Timely became Atlas News Company and it seemed like the heroes would be gone for good.

But according to legend, a decade later Martin Goodman was playing golf with Jack Liebowitz, the then head of DC Comics when Liebowitz bragged about the company’s success with their new superhero titles, most notably the Justice League of America. Goodman turned to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to give Atlas their own superhero team, and from that discussion, the Fantastic Four, and “The Marvel Age of Comics,” were born.

(9) HE’S A POE MAN FROM A POE FAMILY. “Dudley did right: Harry Melling on his evolution from Harry Potter to Edgar Allan Poe” is explained by in a Yahoo! profile.

…He first appeared at 10 years old in Sorcerer’s Stone as the hero’s tortuous, spoiled cousin, Dudley Dursley, and would maintain the part into his 20s.

Unlike his contemporaries, he found life on set to be quite isolating at times. “My experience was unique in terms of I wasn’t in it throughout the entire shoot,” the actor, 33, tells EW over Zoom from Los Angeles — now much taller and leaner compared to the plump, rosy-cheeked child with a haughty smirk movie-goers have been used to. “The earthly sequences would very much be an isolated filming block. So, I dipped in, and then I went back to school and normal life.”

Melling never felt as if people would recognize him on the streets of London. “Which I kind of loved,” he quickly adds. To him, fame feels like noise. He counts himself lucky that he hasn’t become traditionally “famous.” “Sometimes it’s nice to just concentrate on the work and what excites you,” he says.

Melling has been able to do just that with his life post-Potter, from his early run in theater to playing chess champ Harry Beltik in the Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit. However, one role would create a different kind of noise, the kind that would get his industry peers to notice him, if not the public. Seeing Melling as the limbless artist in 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs would inspire director Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace, Antlers) to cast the Englishman as a young Edgar Allan Poe in The Pale Blue Eye, Melling’s most impressive on-screen role to date.

“I was struck by that performance,” Cooper tells EW of Melling’s work in Buster Scruggs. “I felt, ‘My God! He would be a really terrific Edgar Allan Poe.’ And as we say in Virginia, he kind of favors Poe. He looks like him.”….

Melling also was interviewed by NPR: “Harry Melling on playing Edgar Allan Poe in the new movie ‘The Pale Blue Eye’”.

…SIMON: The film is set in 1830. But I got to begin by asking, what’s Edgar Allan Poe doing at West Point?

MELLING: I know. That’s what I thought, right? He was there in real life, which is extraordinary….

(10) DOOR HANGER. Found hanging on the internet…

(11) BE FREE. JUNG_E debuts on Netflix on January 20.

Humanity’s hope and ultimate weapon A.I. combat warrior JUNG_E Watch her break free.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, Andrew (not Werdna), Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]