Tag Archives: Frank R. Paul

Pixel Scroll 4/12/25 Hey, Scroll. Take A Walk On The Filed Side

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(1) THE FATE OF U.S. WORLDCONS WEIGHED. Two editorials came out today addressing how Worldcons should react to the increased risks of international travel to the U.S.

The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog’s post “Worldcon In An Age Of American Truculence” concludes:

…Because of the voter base, institutional knowledge, and enormous fan base, US Worldcons will and should always occur. But perhaps there should be an increased willingness among fandom to support overseas conventions in locations that present logistical hurdles for North American travellers. If we may be so bold, perhaps we as fans should encourage the practice of having a Worldcon outside of North America every second year.

In an age of US truculence, Worldcon needs to embrace friends and allies around the globe without turning its back on the generations of fans and volunteers who have built it as an institution.

Gary Westfahl’s “Op-Ed: ‘No More Worldcons in the United States?’” at File 770 starts with a more draconian conclusion:

The time has come to cancel or move the 2025 Seattle Worldcon.

And to cancel or move the 2026 Los Angeles Worldcon.

It has to be done, in order to honor a century-old tradition of science fiction….

(2) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS. Frank Wu has announced that the 2025 Frank R. Paul Awards will be presented at Philcon (November 21-23). Due to the lateness of the convention in the calendar, he is extending the deadline for submissions for the Frank R. Paul Awards for another month, to May 15. All artists, publishers and editors are enthusiastically encouraged to submit their 2024 work to the main awards administrator, Frank Wu, at FWu@Frankwu.com Details are available here: “Frank R. Paul Awards”.

Frank R. Paul Award trophy. Photo by Rich Lynch.

(3) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025. [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival 2025 has curated 19 short films representing 8 countries. Featured are Short Stories adapted into Short Films.

Sunday 25 May 2025 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

George RR Martin produced another Howard Waldrop film Mary Margaret Road Grader“. Estimated budget $2.2 Million. Director Steven Paul Judd is known for Dark Winds and Marvel’s Echo. It has a score by Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi.

Italian Director Luca Caserta brings us The Reach. One of the last authorized Dollar Baby Stephen King Films.
With a song by Bruce Springsteen.

Director George Vatistas adapted The Hobbyist by Frederic Brown.

Actor Stacy Thunes (Nosferatu – Head Nurse) currently at Universal Studios, Japan stars in The Hairdo.

An Old Friend. Director Nuk Suwanchote. An imaginary friend (Jason Faunt) finds out his sole purpose is to bring happiness to his child, only to discover his child is a 90 year old man (Tom Skerritt) on his deathbed.

First time Local filmmakers were also selected in Twilight Zone and Animation motifs.

Horror and Fantasy round out our offerings.

(4) “I’M NOT A ROBOT” [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival could not arrange a screening, but still worthy of your attention. “Watch The Surreal Identity Crisis of ‘I’m Not a Robot’” in The New Yorker.

(5) SFF BOOKS OUT OF NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. Allen Steele pointed out that the list of 381 books pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library (reported at the top of yesterday’s Scroll) includes several works of sff (even though the vast majority are nonfiction about gender issues or racism). Steele asks, “Wonder what Robert Heinlein would have to say about the actions of his Alma mater?”

The three sff works I found on the list are:

  • Light From Uncommon Stars / RykaAoki.
  • Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon
  • A Psalm For The Wild-Built / Becky Chambers.

(6) AUSTEN IN INNSMOUTH. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein finds much to enjoy in “’Innsmouth Park’ (2025) by Jane Routley”.

Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:

Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?…

(7) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS.  There are almost no nominees of genre interest among the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. The one exception is in this category, a work of horror fiction.

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)

For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English.

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books)

(8) BBC COVERAGE OF BELFAST EASTERCON. Eastercon got a 15-minute slot on BBC Northern Ireland with Jo Zebedee and Ian McDonald doing an interview and chatting about it. “Saturday with John Toal – Puppets, Worms and Sci-fi”. Interview starts at 45m20s.

…As Belfast prepares to host a special Sci Fi convention Eastercon, for the first time in its 76 year history, John hears from two successful science fiction writers Ian McDonald and Jo Zebedee….

(9) STUNT OSCAR APPROVED. “Oscars Add Best Stunt Design Category Starting in 2027” – Variety has the story.

…“Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang. “We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion.”

In a statement, Leitch said, “Stunts are essential to every genre of film and rooted deep in our industry’s history—from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin, to the inspiring artistry of today’s stunt designers, coordinators, performers, and choreographers.” He went on to say, “This has been a long journey for so many of us. Chris O’Hara and I have spent years working to bring this moment to life, standing on the shoulders of the stunt professionals who’ve fought tirelessly for recognition over the decades. We are incredibly grateful. Thank you, Academy.”

…Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027 with the complete 100th Academy Awards Rules….

(10) BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7’s Tech Tales Come With a Knife-Twist of Emotion” — Gizmodo gets down to cases.

A new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and with it the usual cautionary tales (and screaming warnings) about technology’s darkest capabilities—wrapped in a deceptively alluring blanket of “Jeez, that would actually be really cool if it were real!” Across six episodes, season seven boasts some of the show’s all-time greatest performances, as well as its first sequel episode, which proves well worth the eight-year wait….

(11) MIDDLE-EARTH WAYFINDER. Wisconsin Public Radio profiles Karen Wynn Fonstad, “The Wisconsin cartographer who mapped Tolkien’s fantasy world”.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore the world of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the best place to start might be Oshkosh.

That’s where a Wisconsin cartographer created dozens of maps that went into “The Atlas of Middle-earth,” the official geographic guide to the world of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Her work went on to influence “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

Like many readers, Karen Wynn Fonstad fell in love with the fantasy series and went through multiple readings. Unlike most readers, she was trained as a cartographer, and came up with an ambitious plan to use the texts to create realistic maps from Tolkien’s texts.

Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son — both geographers themselves — have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them…

… “It’s a little bit of an overwhelming process because, first of all, there’s hundreds of maps. Secondly, the maps are built in such a way that they have many layers to them,” Mark said. “I barely scratched the surface this week.”

As we walk into the map library, we are surrounded by Middle-earth. Mordor, the Shire and all points in between are represented. And not just Middle-earth. Karen created works for other fantasy worlds — some never published.

How do you scan a collection of maps of varying sizes, some of them in delicate condition?

You need a big scanner, caution and some patience….

… In 1977, she called the American publisher of Tolkien’s work, Houghton Mifflin, to pitch the idea of an atlas. As Todd recalled, the person in charge of handling Tolkien’s work fell in love with the idea, and the Tolkien estate gave it the thumbs-up.

Then the work really began….

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Mad Max film (1979)

By Paul Weimer: The quintessential post-apocalyptic movie, the one with the real breakthrough. Sure, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley and others preceded it, but this was the movie, series of movies that made a star of Mel Gibson, and the scenes of the Australian desert became the cinematic language and landscape of what a post apocalyptic world should look like in three movies that it took dozens for, say, the American Western.

That’s the power of Mad Max, that’s the power of George Miller’s cinematography. One could approach these movies from all sorts of angles, from worldbuilding to characterization, to point of view. As an example-the second movie, Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is not told from the point of view and perspective that you’d expect. It’s a recreation, a retelling, and that brings in all sorts of interesting questions about narrative and conventions and storytelling. 

Or one could explore Max as a character, from his end of the world cop, all through the damaged survivor in the latest Mad Max movie, where he literally is used as a resource. 

Or one could explore environmental themes, social themes, and the psychology of the survivors of the landscape, from the small to the mighty.

But I want to talk a bit about cinematography, as a person interested in image, you are not surprised. One thing that told me and showed me that Miller “Still had it” in Fury Road was the scene with the dust storm and the vehicles approaching it. You know the scene if you watched it. It was solid proof for me that Miller’s fantastic cinematography, to be able to bring the wildness of the Australian wasteland to life in the previous films, was still there. It recalled for me of many of the other iconic places and imagery used in the series, from Thunderdome back through the mean streets of Melbourne in Mad Max. The lack of dialogue in much of the films means that Miller’s storytelling in the films is necessarily what the movies are carried on. And it is indeed carried so effectively. You remember the visuals, the costumes, the sets, and of course the vehicles. How many gearheads were born from watching these movies?

One last fun note on Mad Max. The first bit of Mad Max I saw was not until the mid 80’s. I accidentally caught the last few minutes on a videotape recording of Mad Max 2 while trying to (don’t judge) see D.C. Follies. I wondered what the heck I had watched and looked it up in the TV guide…and then I recorded and watched The Road Warrior and was captivated.  Later, I found the original Mad Max…and then, of course Thunderdome.

Mad Max. A cinematic icon, four movies (5 if you count Furious) and counting.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) TWO HEARTS AND TWO EARS. “Graham Norton to star in Eurovision-themed Doctor Who episode” reports BBC.

Graham Norton is to star in a new episode of Doctor Who, taking his Eurovision commentary duties to an Interstellar Song Contest.

Norton, the BBC’s voice of Eurovision, will meet Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord at the 803rd annual Interstellar Song Contest, where different planets compete to be crowned winner.

“And it’s not just a cameo,” showrunner Russell T Davies said. “He has a whole plot twist all to himself!”

The episode will also feature fellow Eurovision fanatic and broadcaster Rylan Clark as the event’s co-host, and will be broadcast on BBC One just before this year’s real-life grand final on 17 May….

(15) THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. “How might AI chatbots replace mental health therapists?” asks The Week.

There is a striking shortage of mental health care providers in the United States. New research suggests that AI chatbots can fill in the gaps — and be remarkably effective while doing so.

Artificial intelligence can deliver mental health therapy “with as much efficacy as — or more than — human clinicians,” said NPR. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the results delivered by a bot designed at Dartmouth College.

What did the commentators say?

There was initially a lot of “trial and error” in training AI to work with humans suffering from depression and anxiety, said Nick Jacobson, one of the researchers, but the bot ultimately delivered outcomes similar to the “best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy.” Patients developed a “strong relationship with an ability to trust” the digital therapist, he said.

Other experts see “reliance on bot-based therapy as a poor substitute for the real thing,” said Axios. Therapy is about “forming a relationship with another human being who understands the complexity of life,” said sociologist Sherry Turkle. But another expert, Skidmore College’s Lucas LaFreniere, said it depends on whether patients are willing to suspend their disbelief. “If the client is perceiving empathy,” he said, “they benefit from the empathy.”….

(16) UPON FURTHER CONSIDERATION. “MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values” says TechCrunch.

A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that hyperbolic notion, drawing the conclusion that AI doesn’t, in fact, hold any coherent values to speak of.

The co-authors of the MIT study say their work suggests that “aligning” AI systems — that is, ensuring models behave in desirable, dependable ways — could be more challenging than is often assumed. AI as we know it today hallucinates and imitates, the co-authors stress, making it in many aspects unpredictable.

“One thing that we can be certain about is that models don’t obey [lots of] stability, extrapolability, and steerability assumptions,” Stephen Casper, a doctoral student at MIT and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “It’s perfectly legitimate to point out that a model under certain conditions expresses preferences consistent with a certain set of principles. The problems mostly arise when we try to make claims about the models, opinions, or preferences in general based on narrow experiments.”

Casper and his fellow co-authors probed several recent models from Meta, Google, Mistral, OpenAI, and Anthropic to see to what degree the models exhibited strong “views” and values (e.g., individualist versus collectivist). They also investigated whether these views could be “steered” — that is, modified — and how stubbornly the models stuck to these opinions across a range of scenarios.

According to the co-authors, none of the models was consistent in its preferences. Depending on how prompts were worded and framed, they adopted wildly different viewpoints.

Casper thinks this is compelling evidence that models are highly “inconsistent and unstable” and perhaps even fundamentally incapable of internalizing human-like preferences….

(17) BIRD WORRIES. “Conservationists raise alarm over Air Force plan to land SpaceX Starships on bird sanctuary atoll” reports Space.com.

The U.S. military is considering Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific island chain that serves as an important refuge for dozens of seabird species, for “two commercial rocket landing pads” to test giant cargo rocket landings for the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, and it’s getting push-back from environmentalists.

The Rocket Cargo Vanguard program aims to develop the technologies required to rapidly deliver up to 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth using commercial rockets. Though not explicitly named, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is currently the only company —commercial or otherwise — capable of manufacturing rockets designed for landing and reuse, and its Starship megarocket is DAF’s leading contender. The Air Force outlined its plans in a Federal Registry notice last month. Objections from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), however, may hinder plans for the new landing pads on the South Pacific atoll.Johnston Atoll lies about 825 miles (1,325 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii, and is home to several different species of seabirds, including the largest known colony of Red-tailed Tropicbirds. It was designated a refuge for native bird populations in 1926, but suffered environmental degradation through 2004, due to its use by the U.S. military as a nuclear weapons testing and chemical weapons disposal site. Since the military’s departure from the islands, restoration efforts have helped raise Johnston Atoll’s bird population back to nearly 1.5 million.

(18) ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES? “Purple Isn’t Real, Science Says. Your Brain Is Just Making It Up” reports Popular Mechanics. If there is no purple, does that mean there can be no purple people eaters?

You might be today years old when you realize there is no purple in the rainbow. There is no P in ROYGBIV.

But wait, what about violet? Well, despite what you may have come to believe, violet is not purple. In fact, violet (along with the rest of the colors in a naturally occurring rainbow) has something purple doesn’t—its own wavelength of light. Anyone who ever ended up with a sunburn knows violet wavelengths are real, as the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the reason you need to wear sunscreen, even though you can’t see those wavelengths (more on that later). Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo are all just as real.

But purple? Well, purple is just your brain’s way of resolving confusion.

That’s right. Red and blue (or violet) wavelengths are two opposite extremes on the spectrum. When you see both of these wavelengths in the same place, you eyes and brain don’t know what to do with them, so they compensate, and the clashing wavelengths register as the color we call purple. It doesn’t actually exist….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven H Silver, lance oszko, Frank Wu, James Bacon, Allen Steele, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]

Pixel Scroll 3/31/25 Are Pixels Beyond Count Or Not?

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(1) WILE E.’S DAY. We’ll get to see it after all: “Warner Bros Completes Sale Of ‘Coyote Vs. Acme’ To Ketchup” reports Deadline.

Ketchup Entertainment today confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to the live-action/animated hybrid film that brings Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote to the big screen. We had the deal pegged in the $50M range and the film is expected to get a theatrical release in 2026….

….The film is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.

Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor and Tone Bell star in the movie, which follows Wile E. Coyote, who, after Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer (Forte) against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win….

(2) #30#. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has announced that the organization is shutting down. They offer a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

We come to you today with a major operational update and important news about the future of the organization and we encourage you to listen to it in its entirety. This video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. It also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps.

This is the aftermath of a controversy that erupted last September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – when it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – and Writers Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells immediately resigned. 

(3) KICKSTARTER FOR LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY 9. [Item by Ziv Wities.] The Long List Anthology series collects stories that show up on the Hugo Award finalist tally, based on the official report of the top fifteen finishers in each Hugo category.  

Long List Anthology Volume 9 is drawn from the Long List of the 2024 Hugo Awards. This volume is co-edited by David Steffen, Chelle Parker, and Hal Y. Zhang, with original cover art by Evelyne Park. The new volume includes stories by genre favorites, new voices, and three translations of stories originally published in Chinese — including one translation which is original to the LLA.

Join the Kickstarter here: “The Long List Anthology Volume 9 by David Steffen”.

(4) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS 2025 HOF INDUCTEES. The Society of Illustrators have announced the 2025 Hall of Fame recipients, contemporary artists Rudy Gutierrez, Kadir Nelson, and Tim O’Brien, and posthumous honorees Peter Arno, Frank R. Paul, and Marie Severin. The Society’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held on Thursday, October 9.

Here is what the press release says about artists of genre interest Paul and Severin.

Art credit: Frank R. Paul, Stories of the Stars: Andromeda, circa 1950s. Gouache and ink on board.

Frank R. Paul (1884 – 1963) was a pioneering American illustrator best known for shaping the visual language of science fiction during the early 20th century. His bold, visionary artwork graced the covers of seminal pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Fantastic Adventures, introducing readers to a vibrant, imaginative future filled with spaceships, robots, and alien worlds. Trained in mechanical drafting and architecture, Paul brought an unmatched level of technical precision and grandeur to his work, helping to define the aesthetic of speculative fiction long before the rise of popular sci-fi cinema. In an era before comic books or concept art departments, Paul created entire worlds from scratch, often illustrating full-color covers, interior black-and-white pieces, and even full spreads for each issue. Over the course of his career, he illustrated thousands of works and played a foundational role in inspiring generations of artists, writers, and filmmakers. He is widely regarded as the first major science fiction artist, and his influence is still seen in visual media today. Frank R. Paul was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 for his trailblazing contributions to the genre.

Art credit: Marie Severin (interior pencils), Marvel Spotlight No. 32, Marvel Comics, February 1977. Ink and color on paper.

Marie Severin (1929 – 2018) was a legendary comic book artist and colorist whose work helped define the visual identity of both EC Comics and Marvel Comics throughout the mid-20th century. Beginning her career as a colorist at EC in the 1950s, she quickly earned recognition for her keen sense of composition, storytelling, and humor, eventually moving into penciling and inking as one of the few prominent female artists in the male-dominated industry of the Silver Age. At Marvel, she co-created iconic characters such as the Living Tribunal and worked on titles including Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Not Brand Echh, a satirical series that showcased her sharp comedic sensibility. Known affectionately as “Mirthful Marie” among peers, Severin brought a distinctive style that blended expressive characters with dynamic layouts, all while mastering the art of visual pacing. She had a unique ability to inject personality and emotion into every panel, making even the most fantastical scenarios feel grounded and human. Her behind-the-scenes influence also extended to production and design, contributing to Marvel’s overall visual tone during a crucial period of expansion and experimentation.

Her versatility as both a humorist and dramatic artist made her an invaluable creative force in every genre she touched—whether superheroes, horror, fantasy, or comedy. Severin was admired not only for her technical skill but also for her warmth, wit, and generosity within the comics community. In 2001, she was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and her legacy continues to inspire comic artists around the world. Marie Severin remains one of the most important and beloved figures in the history of American comics.

(5) BLACK MIRROR S7 EPISODE BRIEFING. “’Black Mirror’ Season 7 Trailer and Episode Details Revealed” by The Hollywood Reporter.

Such details include cast, synopsis, run time and credits for each standalone saga, which includes the first-ever Black Mirror sequel, for USS Callister, and a callback episode to Netflix’s first-ever interactive feature with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

(6) JAMESON QUINN DIES. Jameson Quinn was killed when he fell off a cliff in Guatemala on March 23. His death was announced by his mother on Bluesky. According to his son it happened when Quinn was trying to rescue a dog.

Jameson Quinn

Quinn is best known to science fiction fans for helping to reform the Hugo Award nominating system in the wake of the Sad/Rabid Puppies block voting episodes of 2013-2017. He designed the EPH (E Pluribus Hugo) voting method, and helped get it adopted by the World Science Fiction Society for use in nominations for the Hugo awards. He was an active participant on Making Light, and contributed articles to File 770 and also led comment discussions about the initiative here.

Quinn’s other noteworthy accomplishments in voting theory and/or voting reform included co-organizing and attending the British Colombia Symposium on Proportional Representation in 2018 (sponsored by the Center for Election Science), and popularizing the term “Voter Satisfaction Efficiency” (VSE).

A Harvard grad school blog profile about Jameson featured his contribution to EPH as an example of his work: “A Better Way to Vote”.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novel

It’s the seventy-fourth anniversary of the first publication of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation as a novel. So let’s tell the history of the novel. 

In the summer of 1941, Isaac Asimov proposed to John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction that he write a short story set in a slowly declining Galactic Empire, based on the fall of the Roman Empire. Campbell thought the idea was great. 

Then Asimov proposed writing a series of stories depicting the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the rise of the second. Asimov would write eight stories for Campbell’s magazine over eight years (1942-1949), and they were later collected into three volumes known as The Foundation Trilogy which were published from 1951 to 1953.

Foundation was first published as a single book by Gnome Press. It has “The Psychohistorians”, “The Encyclopedists” “The Mayors”, “The Traders” and “The Merchant Princes”. “The Encyclopedists” and “The Mayors” were novelettes, the others are short stories.  As noted before, each was in Astounding Science Fiction. 

The cover art is by David Kyle. Please note that on the cover it is titled Foundation: An Interplanetary Novel. When Ace published it they renamed it The 1,000 Year Plan in their two editions of 1955 and 1962. 

At Tricon (1966), it would win the Hugo for Best All-Time Series. Other nominees were Burroughs’ Barsoom series, Heinlein’s  Future History series , E. E. Smith’s Lensmen series and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 

As you know, it is now streaming as a series as Apple+. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) THE INSIDE STORY. “Rare Merlin and King Arthur text found hidden in binding of medieval book” – Popular Science tells how it was done.

Variations on the classic Merlin and King Arthur legends span hundreds, if not thousands, of retellings. Many are documented within handwritten medieval manuscripts dating back over a millenia—but some editions are far rarer than others. For example, less than 40 copies are known to exist of a once-popular sequel series, the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. In 2019, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered fragments of one more copy in their collections, tucked inside the recycled binding of a wealthy family’s property record from the 16th century. But at the time of discovery, the text was impossible to read.

Now after years of painstaking collaborative work with the university’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), archivists have finally been able to peer inside the obscured texts—without ever needing to physically handle the long-lost pages.

Experts combined multiple conservation tools and techniques to construct a 3D model of the fragments. These included multispectral imaging (MSI), which creates high-resolution images by scanning an artifact with wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to infrared light. After borrowing X-ray and CT machines from Cambridge’s zoology department, the team then examined the parchment layers to map unseen binding structures without the need to deconstruct the delicate material. CT scanning allowed researchers to examine how the pages were stitched together using thin strips of similar parchment.

Some of the Merlin texts were unreadable due to being hidden under folds or stitching, so the team also needed to amass hundreds of images from every angle using an array of magnets, prisms, mirrors, and other tools. The combined result is a high-definition, digitized 3D model of the entire relic that unfolds, allowing experts to analyze it as though reviewing the physical manuscript itself.

The results revealed not just a part of Suite Vulgate du Merlin, but insights into the time period in which it existed. Experts now believe the sections originally belonged to a shortened edition of the tale. Given small typographical errors as well as the red and blue ink used in its handwritten decorated initials, historians traced its origins to sometime between 1275–1315 CE…

(10) TIME FOR A SNACK. Invasion ’53, written by Danielle Weinberg,is making the rounds of film festivals. View the trailer at the link.

Invasion ’53, a 10-minute short film about a man-eating alien who crashes a suburban cocktail party. The movie stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and was produced with Kurt Uebersax (Elf-Man, America’s Most Wanted).

(11) FROM AN OLD FAMILIAR SCORE. “What gave life on Earth its spark? Scientists recreating a decades-old experiment offer a new clue” says CNN.

In the 1931 movie “Frankenstein,” Dr. Henry Frankenstein howling his triumph was an electrifying moment in more ways than one. As massive bolts of lightning and energy crackled, Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table, its corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.

Electrical energy may also have sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago, though with a bit less scenery-chewing than that classic film scene.

Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence of ancient life — stromatolites, or microscopic organisms preserved in layers known as microbial mats — is about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientists suspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organic molecules in primitive bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordial soup.

But where did that organic material come from in the first place? Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules.

Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent enough to cook up amino acids from inorganic material. Amino acids — organic molecules that combine to form proteins — are life’s most basic building blocks and would have been the first step toward the evolution of life….

(12) VIDEO FROM ANCIENT DAYS. A zillion years ago, Vincent Price was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to promote Theatre of Blood, in which he murders all the critics who fail to praise his Shakespearean ham acting. (How long ago was this? Sitting next to him was the singer Mama Cass Elliot, who obviously wasn’t dead yet…!)

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, N., Danny Sichel, Ziv Wities, Kevin Lighton, Thomas the Red, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 2/19/25 The Weed Of Scroll Titles Bears Punny Fruit

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(1) ABOUT THE NEW COMICS AND POETRY NEBULA AWARDS. “SFWA Presents: Get to Know…Our New Comics and Poetry Nebula Awards” is a conversation with  SFWA’S Comics Committee lead Jessica Maison, and Holly Lyn Walrath, and Wendy Van Camp representing SFWA’s Poetry Committee.

In November 2024, SFWA announced the launch of two new Nebula Awards, one for speculative poetry and one for speculative comics. Eligibility for these awards began in January 2025, with the first awards for these new categories to be presented at the 2026 Nebula Awards Ceremony….

Let’s start with the big question:

Why a poetry award, and why a comics award? What traditions and recent trends in SFF are these new prizes celebrating?

Holly Lyn Walrath: I would say that there is a thriving sub-pocket of speculative poetry alive and well today. Similar to the larger SFF community, speculative poetry often does not get the recognition we might wish for in realist or “literary” circles, yet many authors who got their start in, say, an MFA end up publishing speculative poetry, and many realist/literary magazines publish speculative poetry. Speculative poetry is also a central part of the history of SFF. The earliest pulp magazines published poetry—for example, Weird Tales. There is a rich, unexplored past in speculative poetry that most writers are not familiar with, so it’s exciting to see a resurgence in the genre. 

Wendy Van Camp: ‌Genre poetry has come a long way. It used to be nearly invisible. As a poet, you’d often have to explain and defend the idea of writing poetry with science fiction or fantasy themes. Now, it has a place at major conventions worldwide. Like filk singers and genre artists, speculative poets have found a welcoming community. This poetry is not only for our fans, but traditional poets are noticing the growing opportunities. Paying markets, an award system for both books and single poems, and recognition as creators are all attractive. Literary poets realize there is a community for their ideas about technology, science, and concepts of the future.

Jessica Maison: Looking back to the first pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, a clear intersection between speculative fiction and comics emerges. Many of the pulps and comics were being published by the same larger publishers and even had some of the same heroes and stories overlap. What the pulps and comics share—besides the serial format—is that there was freedom to push boundaries and the limits of genre. That freedom has expanded tenfold in modern speculative comics, especially from its current independent creators and publishers. Whether a writer and illustrator are adapting and reinterpreting beloved characters from a favorite speculative novel like Frankenstein, or, on the flip side, a writer is adapting a story from a comic for the screen, comics weaves into traditional and emerging SFF industry in ways that push the boundaries of speculative fiction from within its structured panels. Honestly, I’m just excited to be part of it all and to introduce my favorites to as many people as possible.

(2) DETECTING ONE’S OWN BIASES. Herb Kauderer’s “Award Season: Show Me Your Bias” at SPECPO is an essay on speculative poetry awards that has application to many sff award voters.

… In recent times the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has made some changes to their award processes to reduce inappropriate bias.  Notably, it is no longer legal for a member to nominate a work for the Rhysling if it is written by a close family member.  This certainly makes sense to me.  I have a large family that could easily flood nominations should they, or I, think that a good idea.  That would be an unfair advantage assuming they are biased toward my work.  At least, I hope they would be biased in favor of my work.  My family is always surprising.

Another point of discussion is whether members should share all their eligible poetry.  The SFPA facilitates members making their eligible poetry available to each other.  Since the membership nominates and votes on the awards, this does cause some preference to members.  Yet, in my experience members also recommend to each other poetry outside SFPA’s member packets, because we are happy to nominate and give awards to non-members’ poetry if it moves us.  F.J. Bergmann has convinced me to be generous in what I share in Rhysling packets even though some members feel flooded by them.  Yet I appreciate David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s caveat that I can exclude anything that I am uncomfortable seeing nominated.  I may not know what others find to be my best poems, but I definitely know what I’m comfortable allowing to represent my best work….

(3) HARLEY QUINN CO-CREATOR DEAN LOREY REVEALS WHY TO WATCH DC’S UNHINGED ANIMATED HIT. [Based on a press release.] JustWatch spoke to hit showrunner, producer, and writer Dean Lorey about his must watch list of movies and TV shows. Check out his take on different versions of Harley Quinn, James Gunn’s Creature Commandos and more.

Harley Quinn Co-Creator Dean Lorey Reveals Why to Watch DC’s Unhinged Animated Hit

Dean Lorey, Showrunner

Even though it’s a comedy, we write Harley Quinn like a drama, and we take the characters very seriously. We cry when they die, and we cheer them on when they do something funny. So the secret sauce of the show is that despite being a genuinely funny comedy, there’s a lot of character and tragedy behind it. We honor all of that, and to me, it’s the most defining thing about the show. It’s not how R-rated it is (although that’s obviously very important). It’s that we take the world seriously while also delivering on the raunchiness and absurdity it’s known for.

Harley Quinn Showrunner Dean Lorey Names His 3 Other Favorite On-Screen Harleys

  • Batman The Animated Series is where Harley Quinn was created, it’s where we first met her. And she just sort of explodes from the word Go! That planted the direction at the core of the character. She is chaotic and she enjoys it. I always loved that.
  • Margot Robbie‘s first appearance as Harley [in Suicide Squad] was transformative. I loved her take on it.
  • I loved Harley Quinn in the Arkham video game. There’s something about playing the character that makes you feel it a little bit more.

About Dean Lorey: Whether he’s writing, producing or showrunning, Dean Lorey is responsible for creating and developing some of your favorite tv shows and movies, from cult classics to smash hits. Starting his career writing screenplays for films like My Boyfriend’s Back and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, as well as comedies like Major Payne, Dean got arguably his biggest break writing on the landmark series Arrested Development. He’s since worked to bring some of the quirkiest comic book stories to life on projects like Powerless and iZombie. His recent notable accolades include co-creating breakout hits Harley Quinn (the animated series) and Kite-Man: Hell Yeah!, and showrunning James Gunn’s Creature Commandos.

(4) IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE. Michael Everett’s introduction to “National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe” at Michael Whelan’s Substack newsletter begins:

Published in 1980, National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe was among the most successful projects Michael has been involved with. He didn’t provide the cover—that was the stellar John Berkey—but Michael’s work on the interiors is still widely regarded today.

A massive initial print run of 670,000 copies pushed the first edition into stores everywhere where this coffee table book flourished for more than two decades in print. With revisions in 1986 and 1994, the book sold a staggering 2.5 million copies….

Then Whelan takes over —

What if…there really were creatures on other planets?

Our Universe was a fun assignment, and I’m glad so many people enjoyed the work I did for that project. Someone once asked what my favorite piece from the book was, and that’s hard to pin down. I will say that I had the most fun working on the silly alien creatures the editors came up with.

That section was written by the National Geographic editorial department. They asked me to illustrate their rather whimsical inventions, so I did these little paintings (about the size of my normal concept work) to accompany the text.

Among those, the Jupiter and Venus critters were probably my faves.

(5) SFCON ’54 ETC. Heritage Auctions has a Twelfth World Science Fiction Convention Poster and Frank R. Paul obituary clippings on the block. Here’s their description of the lot. (Its date range should be 1954-1963 since the Paul clipping shows that’s the year of his death.)

Twelfth World Science Fiction Convention Poster and Frank R. Paul Newspaper Article and Obituaries Group (Various Publishers, 1954-57). A very interesting lot for pulp collectors! Offered here is a 10″ x 14″ cardboard poster for the 12th World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, California. Held at the historic Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square from September 3rd through 6th, 1954. Attendance was approximately 700, and among the first attendees was Philip K. Dick, with the Guest of Honor being John W. Campbell, Jr. The poster is printed in red and dark blue and is in Fine condition, with only very slight soiling and handling wear. Also included is an article about Frank R. Paul, “The Dean of Science Fiction Illustrators”, and several examples of his obituary from July of 1963. The newspaper clippings are in Very Good condition, with moderate tanning.
From the Roger Hill Collection.

(6) DON’T MISS OUT. First Fandom Experience “Announces the Supplement to Volume Three of The Visual History”.

Early fans wrote and published prolifically. In The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom, we excerpt and distill their work to focus on the most important, interesting and entertaining material they created. Even so, each volume has filled over 500 pages. If you’ve carried one around, you know the meaning of the term “weighty tome.”

Still, we’re frustrated by the exclusion of the full versions of key fan artifacts that provide additional richness and context. This leads to today’s announcement:

The Supplement to The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom, Volume Three: 1941 is now available. The Supplement includes 168 pages of material created by fans in 1941, with full narratives presented as originally published in seldom-seen fanzines.

Supplements for Volumes One and Two are forthcoming.

(7) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman tells listeners to episode 19 of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast “What Gerry Conway Wasn’t Allowed to Say About Gwen Stacy in F.O.O.M.”

While shredding another old notebook from my early comics career, I reminisce about the many wretched one-act plays I created while being taught by famed playwright Jack Gelber, the lie I told Marv Wolfman and Len Wein which got me hired at Marvel, the most wrongheaded conclusion Fredric Wertham reached in Seduction of the Innocent, my plot for an Inhumans strip starring Karnak which had no reason to exist, the most ridiculous method any writer ever conceived of for killing a vampire, what Gerry Conway said about Gwen Stacy which was censored out of his F.O.O.M. interview, the first words to reach readers about my Scarecrow character, and much more.

This link will show you where it can be found on a dozen other platforms.

(8) SOUNDS THAT NOBODY EVER HEARD BEFORE. “’We’re projecting into the future’: sounds of BBC Radiophonic Workshop made available for public use” reports the Guardian.

With its banks of bafflingly complex equipment, and staff members that were among the most progressive musical minds in the UK, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a laboratory of 20th-century sound that produced endless futuristic effects for use in TV and radio – most memorably, the ghostly wail of the Doctor Who theme.

Now, the Workshop’s considerable archive of equipment is being recreated in new software, allowing anyone to evoke the same array of analogue sound that its pioneering engineers once did….

… The Workshop may be best known for the Doctor Who theme, but it also created music and sound effects for other sci-fi shows such as Quatermass and the Pit, Blake’s 7 and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Other cornerstone BBC shows such as Blue Peter and Tomorrow’s World were also beneficiaries of the Workshop’s creativity.

The Workshop was originally created in 1958, tasked with adding an extra dimension to plays and other shows on Radio 3. Co-founders Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe were brilliant and high-minded, inspired by musique concrète – the style that asserted that raw, tape-recorded sound could be a kind of music. Before long a highly experimental, even fantastical means of composition was afoot, with lampshades being bashed to produce percussion, and long tape loops being carried along BBC corridors…

… The newly available software will cost £149, and is available from 19 February, though it will have an introductory price of £119 until 17 March.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 19, 1960 – The Twlight Zone episode “Elegy”

The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. A cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars. Three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost. They’re looking for home. And in a moment, they’ll find home; not a home that is a place to be seen, but a strange unexplainable experience to be felt. — opening narration

On this date sixty-five years ago, Twilight Zone’s “Elegy” aired for this first time. It was the twentieth episode of the first season and was written by Charles Beaumont who you might recognize as the screenwriter of 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Beaumont would die at just 38 of unknown causes that were assumed to be neurological in nature. 

The cast for this SF Twilight Zone episode was Cecil Kellaway as Jeremy Wickwire, Jeff Morrow as Kurt Meyers, Kevin Hagen as Captain James Webber and Don Dubbins as Peter Kirby. These are not the names in the short story it come from in that, the caretaker of the cemetery and the most logical crewman are named Mr. Greypoole and Mr. Friden respectively. In the Twilight Zone script, their names are Jeremy Wickwire and Professor Kurt Meyers.

This episode was based on Beaumont’s short story “Elegy” published in Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1954.  It’s available for Subterranean Press on their website as an epub in The Carnival and Other Stories for just $6.99. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) URSA MAJOR AWARDS NOMINATIONS OPEN. The public is invited to submit Ursa Major Awards nominations through February 28.

More formally known as the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award, the Ursa Major Award is presented annually for excellence in the furry arts.

(12) PULL TO PUBLI$H. NPR heralds “Three Harry Potter fan fiction authors set to publish novels this summer”.

Fan fiction — the creation of unsanctioned, unofficially published, new works usually based on popular novels or films — was intentionally never mainstream.

There are the legal issues — copyright laws, intellectual property laws — of drawing from someone else’s creation, for one. Fan fiction authors also have historically considered their online arenas (Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net and others) more of a sandbox, a place to play with new ideas using characters and worlds people already know and love.

Take, for example, fan works imagining Harry Potter and friends in their 8th year at Hogwarts. Or pairing Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger romantically — dubbed “Dramione” fan fiction.

But this summer and early fall will see the wide publication of three books by popular Dramione Harry Potter fan fiction authors: Rose in Chains by Julie Soto, Alchemised by SenLinYu and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley.

Soto’s romantic fantasy is a reworked version of her fan fiction The Auction, centered on a heroine who is sold to the highest bidder. SenLinYu’s debut fantasy about a woman with memory loss in a war-torn world is a revision of her popular Manacled. Brigitte Knightley’s debut novel, an enemies to lovers tale, is an original work….

….Most fan fiction authors don’t worry too much about how much of their work plays off a published author’s book or film because they are writing for personal fun, not for profit. Some works do get noticed by publishers who solicit these stories and help their authors rework them to distance them from their original: It’s called pull to publish.

Pull to publish isn’t a new concept, but writers and publishers say it’s a growing area. The idea of moving from fan fiction to traditional publishing used to be a virtual nonstarter, but stigmas around fan fiction are lifting.

“I know a fan fiction writer who pulled to publish in the early 2000s and then denied they’d ever written fan fiction,” said Stacey Lantagne, a copyright lawyer focusing on fan works and professor at Western New England University School of Law. “That was not a cool thing to say, not a cool thing to admit … so if you went looking for it, you’d have a really hard time identifying those authors because they just didn’t ever connect those two parts of their background.”

Lantagne says it appears that more fan fiction is being pulled to publish than a few years back, based on what she’s seeing in her work and because more people are talking about it openly, though it’s tough to track data on this area of publishing….

(13) LOOSER. “ChatGPT can now write erotica as OpenAI eases up on AI paternalism” says ArsTechnica. So do you feel better, or worse?

On Wednesday, OpenAI published the latest version of its “Model Spec,” a set of guidelines detailing how ChatGPT should behave and respond to user requests. The document reveals a notable shift in OpenAI’s content policies, particularly around “sensitive” content like erotica and gore—allowing this type of content to be generated without warnings in “appropriate contexts.”

The change in policy has been in the works since May 2024, when the original Model Spec document first mentioned that OpenAI was exploring “whether we can responsibly provide the ability to generate NSFW content in age-appropriate contexts through the API and ChatGPT.”

ChatGPT’s guidelines now state that that “erotica or gore” may now be generated, but only under specific circumstances. “The assistant should not generate erotica, depictions of illegal or non-consensual sexual activities, or extreme gore, except in scientific, historical, news, creative or other contexts where sensitive content is appropriate,” OpenAI writes. “This includes depictions in text, audio (e.g., erotic or violent visceral noises), or visual content.”…

(14) I TAKE IT BACK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The top universities in the world for retracting science are overwhelmingly Chinese says Nature.  

A first-of-its-kind analysis by Nature reveals which institutions are retraction hotspots.

Though I’m always mindful of the former Astronomer Royal, Prof Sir Martin Rees saying better good SF than bad science…

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/21/24 Asleep At The Wheel Of Time

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(1) WOOKIEEPEDIA IS TARGET OF HARASSMENT. ScreenRant tells why “Wookieepedia Under Fire For Changing Ki-Adi-Mundi’s Birth Date After The Acolyte”.

Wookipedia, the official Star Wars wiki, has come under fire after making an edit to Ki-Adi-Mundi’s canon page based on The Acolyte. Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi is hardly the most famous character in the Star Wars franchise; the Cerean Jedi has only a handful of lines, and his most notable moment in canon was ordering a flavorless slushie in John Jackson Miller’s tremendous book The Living Force. But Ki-Adi-Mundi’s cameo in The Acolyte has turned into a source of controversy based on his date of birth.

Wookipedia, the official Star Wars wiki, updated its page on Ki-Adi-Mundi to reflect the fact he’s canonically alive during The Acolyte, 100 years before Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The editors on the site were shocked at the strength of the backlash, with some even receiving death threats….

… Ki-Adi-Mundi‘s age was previously established in only two sources: a 1999 CD-ROM released after Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and a 2013 trading card. George Lucas himself contradicted some of the contents of the CD-ROM when he changed Ki-Adi-Mundi’s lightsaber color in later movies, and both were rendered non-canon by Disney in 2014. In canon, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s age has never been specified.

The problem is less with the change of canon than the current backlash against The Acolyte, which has even seen a review-bombing campaign on Rotten Tomatoes. Wookipedia is simply the latest target; all the site’s editors have actually done is update the information on the canon character page, but that simple act has unfortunately received a backlash. Some trolls have taken to sharing images of Ki-Adi-Mundi’s Legends page, carefully edited to remove the “Legends” banner – which certainly illustrates that this whole debate isn’t in good faith.

(2) EXPENSIVE RELIC OF FIRST WORLDCON. Frank R. Paul’s artwork for the first Worldcon program book (1939) was sold for $10,200 today by Heritage Auctions.

Frank R. Paul World Science Fiction Convention – Nycon Program Book Illustration Original Art (Nycon, 1939). From the first ever World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon) in 1939! And the art is by noted sci-fi artist Frank R. Paul, which makes this doubly desirable! The original art for this program banner was created in ink and signed in the lower right of the 20.5″ x 3.25″ image area. UV Glass-front framed to 29″ x 12.75″. Lightly toned, with some minor whiteout art clean-ups. In Very Good condition. From the Roger Hill Collection.

(3) PUBLISHING PENDULUM SWINGING? Book Riot’s Jeff O’Neal asks the question “Has the DEI Backlash Come for Publishing?” and looks for the answer in The Atlantic:

Dan Sinykin and Richard Jean So have some fascinating data in The Atlantic. In looking at the racial breakdown of more than 1700 novels published by major publishers in the last five years (2019 – 2023), Sinykin and So found that the percentage by nonwhite writers doubled, from a meager 8% in 2019 to a better, though still well short of U.S. demographics, 16% in 2023. This is tremendous progress and, anecdotally, feels about right. The framing of the piece is in the context of Lisa Lucas’ firing from Pantheon, which is both relevant as the sharp rise roughly corresponds with the environment Lucas was hired in. And they are right, as is anyone, to mention that there is still work to be done. However, the scale of the increase makes me wonder if we are over-indexing on one or two notable, public names rather than the hundreds and hundreds of books by writers of color that just weren’t being published in the last five years. Do the firing of these editors portend a stagnation, or worse a regression, in these numbers? It’s possible. It is also possible that things really are different now, even as they should be more different still. I look forward to seeing these numbers again in five years…and that the pie is even more equitably sliced then.

(4) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to bite into a burrito with writer Elwin Cotman in Episode 228 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Elwin Cotman

This time around my guest is Elwin Cotman, with whom I slipped away for dinner at the nearby R&R Taqueria.

Cotman’s short story collection Dance on Saturday, published by Small Beer Press, was one of the finalists for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. His latest short story collection, Weird Black Girls, was released two months ago as this episode goes live.

He’s also the author of three other books: the poetry collection The Wizard’s Homecoming, plus the short story collections The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. His writing has appeared in Grist, Electric Lit, Buzzfeed, The Southwestern Review, and The Offing, plus many others venues. He’s worked as a video game consultant and writer for Square Enix. His debut novel The Age of Ignorance will be published by Scribner in 2025.

We discussed why forcing science fictional elements into non-science fictional stories can weaken them, the interdimensional cross-genre story cycle he hopes to write someday about a wrestling family, the way the novella is his natural length, why he loves Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age stories, how to create compelling metaphors and similes, the way rereading Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York helped him with the connective tissue of his own sentences, the reason Mary Gaitskill is the world’s greatest living writer, and much more.

(5) STOKER’S FAN LETTER. “’Dracula’ Author Bram Stoker’s Extraordinary Love Letter to Walt Whitman” in The Marginalian. Here is the introduction; the text of both letters is at the link.

A quarter century before his now-classic epistolary novel Dracula catapulted Abraham “Bram” Stoker (November 8, 1847–April 20, 1912) into literary celebrity, the twenty-four-year-old aspiring author used the epistolary form for a masterpiece of a different order. Still months away from his first published short story, he composed a stunning letter of admiration and adoration to his great literary idol: Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892).

Long before William James coined the notion of stream of consciousness, Stoker poured forth a long stream of sentiment cascading through various emotions — surging confidence bordering on hubris, delicate self-doubt, absolute artist-to-artist adoration — channeled with the breathless intensity of a love letter, without interruption. He had fallen under Whitman’s spell when Leaves of Grass made its belated debut in England in 1868, with Whitman’s stunning preface to the 1855 edition. Stoker would later recount that ever since that initial enchantment, he had been wishing to pour out his heart in such a way “but was, somehow, ashamed or diffident — the qualities are much alike.” In February of 1872, the time for this effusion of enchantment seemed to have come.

But it was a fleeting moment of courage — Stoker couldn’t bring himself to mail his extraordinary letter. For four years, it haunted his desk, part muse and part goblin….

(6) RUSS AND HACKER CORRESPONDENCE. “Intelligent, Attractive, Powerful Lesbians Conquering the World” quotes The Paris Review.

The following correspondence between Joanna Russ and Marilyn Hacker is drawn from a new edition of Russ’s On Strike Against God (1980), edited by Alec Pollak, to be published by Feminist Press in July. You can read Pollak’s introduction to the work of Joanna Russ on the Daily here.

Here’s an excerpt from the Russ letter:

…Suppose, for example, in The Left Hand of Darkness, Estraven hadn’t died? What a bloody moral mess Le Guin would have on her (I almost wrote “his”) hands! Here we have an alien hermaphrodite and a male human (who’s not quite real) in bed together. Worse still, living together. Could they live happily ever after? What would the real quality of their feeling for each other be? Could they get along? (Probably not.) Would they end up quarreling? (Their heat periods don’t match, let alone culture shock.) So the great old Western Tragic Love Story is called in to wipe out all the very human, very real questions, and we can luxuriate in passion without having to really explore the relationship. You see what I mean….

And The Paris Review has an additional, separate article “On Joanna Russ”.

Bury Your Gays: the latest tongue-in-cheek name for authors’ tendency to end queer relationships by killing somebody off, or having someone revert to heterosexuality, or introducing something that abruptly ends a queer storyline. The message: queer love is doomed, fated for tragedy. The trope has existed for decades, and although there are plenty of books and movies and television shows now that aren’t guilty of it, Bury Your Gays is by no means a thing of the past. In 2016, the death of The 100 character Lexa reintroduced Bury Your Gays to a whole new generation and reminded seasoned viewers—who could recall the infamous death of the character Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer—that the trope was alive and well. More recently, Killing Eve’s series finale reminded viewers yet again.  

Joanna Russ (1937–2011), who wrote genre-bending feminist fiction throughout the seventies and whose The Female Man (1975) catapulted her to fame at the height of the women’s movement, agonized over Bury Your Gays. In 1973, Russ was writing On Strike Against God (1980), an explicitly lesbian campus novel about feminist self-discovery and coming out. But her head was, in her words, “full of heterosexual channeling.” She felt constrained—enraged, often—by the limited possibilities for how to write queer life, but she struggled to imagine otherwise. “How can you write about what really hasn’t happened?” Russ appealed to her friend, the poet Marilyn Hacker, as she pondered the relationship between life and literature for people whose identities, desires, and ambitions were erased and denounced by mainstream culture….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 21, 1991 — The Rocketeer. There are some films that I just like without reservation. One of these is The Rocketeer, released internationally as The Adventures of the Rocketeer, that premiered on this date in the States thirty-three years ago. I’ve seen this one at least three or four times. It’s proof that the Disney can actually be creative unlike the Marvel films which have all the weakness of a franchise undertaking. (End of rant. I promise.)

It was directed by Joe Johnston whose only previous genre film was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and produced by the trio of Charles Gordon, Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin. None had done anything that suggested they’d be up to this level of excellence. (Yes, my bias is showing.) The script was by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo who did the most excellent Trancers. Bilson wrote the story along with Paul De Meo and William Dear.

Now the source material was the stellar Rocketeer graphic novel series that the late Dave Steven was responsible for. If you’ve not read it, why not?

The cast of Bill Campbell, Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Sorvino and Timothy Dalton was just damn perfect. And there wasn’t anything in the film from the design of the Rocketeer outfit itself to the creation of the Nazi Zeppelin which was a thirty-two-foot-long model that isn’t spot on. Cool, very cool. The visual effects were designed and done by George Lucas’ ILM. 

Disney being Disney never did actually release an actual production budget but Variety figured that it cost at least forty million, if not much more. It certainly didn’t make much as it only grossed forty seven million at the very best. 

So what did critics at the time think of this stellar film? 

Well, Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times liked it: “The movie lacks the wit and self-mocking irony of the Indiana Jones movies, and instead seems like a throwback to the simple-minded, clean-cut sensibility of a less complicated time.” 

Pete Travers  of the Rolling Stone was equally upbeat: “But then the film is awash in all kinds of surprises that are too juicy to reveal. The Rocketeer is more than one of the best films of the summer; it’s the kind of movie magic that we don’t see much anymore — the kind that charms us, rather than bullying us, into suspending disbelief.” 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent sixty-seven percent rating.  It is of course streaming on Disney +. 

It was nominated for a Hugo at MagicCon, the year Terminator 2: Judgment Day got the Hugo. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bliss requires knowledge of furniture and mushrooms with changed spelling.
  • Close to Home appeals to an unusual customer.
  • Non Sequitur adds other travelers to a familiar story.
  • Reality Check verbs a superhero’s name.

(9) MALCOLM REYNOLDS IN THE BEGINNING. “Firefly Prequel Series Announced” reports Comicbook.com.

Firefly‘s Captain Malcolm Reynolds is finally getting an origin story. Boom! Studios has announced Firefly: Malcolm Reynolds Year One, a new Firefly prequel series telling of Mal’s earliest adventures. Sam Humphries, writer of the Firefly: The Fall Guys miniseries, is writing the new prequel. Artist Giovanni Fabiano is making their comics debut on the series, colored by Gloria Martinelli, who also worked on Firefly: The Fall Guys. Here’s the series description provided by Boom via a press release: “Despite starting from an unlikely place, Malcolm Reynolds has always been a troublemaker. Becoming a Browncoat was always meant to be. But what unexpected obstacles lie on that path to him becoming the Captain that fans know and love? To him assembling and leading the crew of the spaceship Serenity?”

Those questions will seemingly be answered as Firefly: Malcolm Reynolds Year One progresses. The series is set in the early days of the Unification War, the conflict in which the Browncoats fought a losing battle against consolidated rule by the Alliance, previously touched upon by Boom’s first Firefly series….

(10) GOING, GOING… TVLine’s “Best TV Series Finales of All Time, Ranked” includes many genre shows. Spoilers, I guess. One iteration of Star Trek finished well, at least.

12. Star Trek: The Next Generation

What better way to wrap the sci-fi franchise’s first offshoot than with a throwback to TNG‘s premiere? Captain Picard time-jumped among three distinct eras of his life, only to realize that humanity’s trial — which Q kicked off in the series’ premiere, “Encounter at Farpoint” — was still underway. Of course, Jean-Luc came out on top, avoiding the Enterprise’s eventual destruction and even fitting in a poker game with his crew before the credits rolled.

(11) AGE SPOTS. Mashable checks in as “Scientists discover how old Jupiter’s Great Red Spot really is”.

…Centuries ago, a huge red spot on Jupiter vanished. But years later, a new one was born.

Today we know this conspicuous feature as the “Great Red Spot,” a swirling storm wider than Earth. Curiously, earlier astronomers, like Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1665, also observed a colossal red storm at the same latitude on Jupiter — raising the possibility that they’re actually the same storm.

In newly published research, however, astronomers sleuthed through historical drawings and early telescope observations of Jupiter to conclude that today’s spot is indeed a separate storm from its predecessor, unfittingly known as the “Permanent Spot.” It likely disappeared between the mid-18th and 19th centuries.

“What is certain is that no astronomer of the time reported any spot at that latitude for 118 years,” Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a planetary scientist at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, told Mashable.

Then, in 1831, astronomers started seeing a conspicuous red spot again. The new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, concludes this latest spot is at least 190 years old….

 [Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern, who took his inspiration from the great, Grammy-winning Western Swing band Asleep At The Wheel.]

Pixel Scroll 6/19/24 No Scroll Comes Between Me And My Pixel

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(1) RELIC OF FIRST WORLDCON. You have one day left to bid on Frank R. Paul’s artwork for the first Worldcon program book (1939) at Heritage Auctions. It was going for $925 when I looked earlier.

Frank R. Paul World Science Fiction Convention – Nycon Program Book Illustration Original Art (Nycon, 1939). From the first ever World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon) in 1939! And the art is by noted sci-fi artist Frank R. Paul, which makes this doubly desirable! The original art for this program banner was created in ink and signed in the lower right of the 20.5″ x 3.25″ image area. UV Glass-front framed to 29″ x 12.75″. Lightly toned, with some minor whiteout art clean-ups. In Very Good condition.
From the Roger Hill Collection.

(2) WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is the only genre work among six novels that have been shortlisted for Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. The complete list of finalists is at the link. The marketing copy for Bradley’s book says:

A boy meets a girl. The past meets the future. A finger meets a trigger. The beginning meets the end. England is forever. England must fall.

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 ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’…. 

(3) HOLD ‘EM BY THE NOSE AND KICK ‘EM IN THE ASS. At Fantasy Author’s Handbook, Philip Athans has an idea: “Let’s Reject Rejections”.

Your query to an agent has been rejected. Your short story was rejected by a magazine. You are a potato and are starting to show roots so the chef rejected you.

Aside from the potato thing, this happens so often to literally every writer, how does this not make us all feel like rejects?

And no one should feel like a reject.

But then, no agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books. That means we have to figure out how to deal with rejection. The good news is that’s super easy. All you have to do is develop a thick skin. I heard skin thickening is offered by a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps for as little as €400,000 per treatment. It requires only one treatment per rejection letter, so most trillionaire authors should be able to soak that up. The rest of us will have to remain entirely human.

And no human wants to be, likes to be, feels they should be or deserve to be, rejected.

But then there’s that reality again: No agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books.

We have to figure out not how to render ourselves immune to normal, healthy human emotional responses, but to, for lack of a better term, roll with it….

(4) THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. “The stolen ruby slippers will be up for auction. Minnesota wants them back” reports NPR.

This weekend, Grand Rapids, Minnesota will honor its best-known former resident — Judy Garland.

And at its annual Judy Garland Festival, the city will fundraise to bring back a prized prop that the actress made famous. But, it won’t be an easy stroll down the Yellow Brick Road.

Minnesota lawmakers set aside $100,000 this year to help the Judy Garland Museum purchase the coveted ruby slippers of “The Wizard of Oz” fame. Experts expect the shoes could sell for a much higher price.

“They could sell for $1 million, they could sell for $10 million. They’re priceless,” says Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions executive vice president.

The ruby slippers are one of four sets remaining.

This pair’s unique story

The shoes were on display at Garland’s namesake museum in Grand Rapids in the summer of 2005 when a burglar struck. John Kelsch, the museum director at the time, says a man broke in through the back door and snatched the slippers….

(5) BICYCLE THIEF. [Item by Eric Hildeman.] Carl Klinger of the Milwaukee Steampunk Society had his penny farthing stolen and smashed. Fortunately, a fundraiser to get him a new one was successful. “Starship Fonzie #40 – Transcript”.

…What’s a penny farthing? It’s that old-timey sort of bicycle with the enormously huge wheel in front and a much smaller wheel in back. You know, the sort that Passpartout rode in the opening scenes of the 1956 film “Around the World in 80 Days,” starring David Niven. There’s also one on display in the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit in the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Well, who knows why it was stolen, but it was, and police were notified. Usually when a bike is stolen it’s never recovered, but this is a very unusual bicycle. Very tricky to ride, very obvious to spot. So the guy who’d stolen it noticed the news story regarding the theft, saw his own image caught on security camera, and apparently panicked. I guess he had a rap sheet as long as his arm regarding other charges the law wanted to nab him on. So he was living in hiding, the thief I mean. Why someone like that would steal an item so obvious to spot is beyond me. But when he saw the news story regarding the theft, he got afraid that his cover might be blown and, not wanting the law to come after him, he smashed the bicycle, dumped it somewhere where it would be found, and then fled out of state….

So Carl was out a very unique, very expensive steampunk-themed bicycle. And we were all bummed about this. Well, Carl put out a fundraiser to get him a new penny farthing, and the fundraiser, I’m pleased to say, was successful. He needed about $2000 for a new one, his fundraiser garnered $3,000. Karl will have a new bike, and he’ll likely ride it around at the Steampunk Picnic this year.

So, a happy ending to that particular thievery story. We love our friends at the Milwaukee Steampunk Society.

Fox6Now interviewed victim Carl Klinger about the crime: “West Allis high-wheel bike found damaged; Oklahoma man arrested”.

A unique bike stolen from outside a West Allis bar was recently found – badly damaged.

Video captures a guy nabbing it, crashing it and running away with it.

“It’s absolutely not rideable,” said Carl Klinger, the bike theft victim. “It’s not even fixable.”

Those words were not what Klinger expected to hear when West Allis police found his treasured bike.

“When I got there, it was just laying on the ground and it was just completely demolished,” he said.

The unique, old-time high-wheel bike was stolen more than two weeks ago as it was parked outside of a bar. Police knew who they were looking for after seeing surveillance video.

Wesley Yoakum was found more than 600 miles away, in Newton County, Missouri.

…Nearly every part of the bike was damaged. The seat was torn off, the tire bent, even the stitches were torn out of the tool case.

His friends have started a GoFundMe to help him buy a new bike so he can get back to riding again…

(6) ORYCON 44. [Item by Michael Pinnick.] Orycon 44 is being held October 18-20 this year at the DoubleTree Hotel Portland. Orycon is Oregon’s oldest literary and creative science fiction convention. Our Writer GoH is David D. Levine, our Artist GoH is Jennie Breeden, and our Media GoH is Victoria Price. Website: https://orycontemp.tezhme.net/

Writer GoH David D. Levine; Artist GoH Jennie Breeden; Media GoH Victoria Price.

(7) ELIZABETH BEAR Q&A. Long Lost Friends has a two-part interview with author Elizabeth Bear.

(8) …THE MORE THINGS STAY THE SAME. The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald notes “The disturbing online misogyny of Gamergate has returned – if it ever went away”.

…This reactionary under layer of gaming’s enthusiast media, which makes its home mostly on X and YouTube, does not actually have the slightest impact on how games are made, or indeed which games are made. Look at Gamergate: what did it actually achieve? Games are more diverse than they were 10 years ago, not less; I saw more non-white male faces and characters in this year’s spate of Summer Game Fest trailers and demos than at any previous time in the almost 20 years I’ve been covering games. But they can still make people’s online lives hell for a while. I know this because I’ve been through it, several times.

I was running the UK branch of Kotaku when Gamergate kicked off, and so I had a front-row seat for their harassment tactics, which included sending the most disgusting threats imaginable through all the online channels available to them, trying to get me fired by emailing game publishers and my bosses with dossiers of my professional misdeeds and journalistic failings (read: writing about video games from a feminist perspective), searching for my and my colleagues’ real addresses and phone numbers and family members (and posting those details to their subreddits if they found them), and putting together unhinged Google Docs with links drawn between “SJW” journalists and developers. One of these mad documents appeared briefly in a recent Netflix documentary about 4chan, prompting several of my friends to text me a screenshot asking me if I knew that I was a figure in old “alt-right” conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, yes, I did.

It’s happened again a few times since, for various reasons. Unfortunately, dealing with online mobs is a part of the job for many journalists and indeed game developers these days, and despite all the shit I’ve dealt with over the years as a woman covering video games, I’m still rather glad I don’t write about politics. But I know exactly how awful it can feel when they mobilise against you, especially if it’s the first time. They’ll search for whatever they think is the least flattering image of you on Google Images, use it as a cutout for a YouTube thumbnail image, and then rant for 10 minutes over screenshots of your articles. They’ll tweet prominent people in games, trying to get them to publicly discredit you. They’ll set their followers on you. It’s hard not to meet their manufactured rage with a lot of genuine rage of your own.

It’s tempting to dunk on these people endlessly, but outrage fuels outrage – especially now, when there is literal money to be made posting inflammatory nonsense on X or YouTube. If Gamergate proved anything, it’s that nobody has to pander to rage-baiting toxic gamers, or even listen to them. That said, I still don’t think there’s been enough public pushback against this flavour of online abuse from the biggest publishers in games over the past few months, when the consultancies they work with, the journalists and critics who cover them, and even some of their own developers have been caught in an online shitstorm. Take it from me: vocal support means a lot….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

June 19, 1946 — Salman Rushdie, 78.

By Paul Weimer: It was senior year in high school that I first heard of Salman Rushdie, and yes, it was the fatwa issued against him for The Satanic Verses.  As a result, he first came onto my radar, but I didn’t pick up a copy at that point.  Coming from a conservative family, even with all the SF I had read to that point, a book named “The Satanic Verses” would be a bridge too far.  I already had had to deal with my mother coming to terms with Dungeons and Dragons.  But one day, after Chemistry class, I noticed my teacher was in fact, reading the book.  I asked him about it, asked him what it was like, and if it was any good.  (This was also the conversation where I learned that ennui was not pronounced en-you-eye, although my teacher thought I was just messing with him). In any event, I waited for the book to hit paperback, by which time I was commuting to Brooklyn College, and so I could read it on the subway in surety and safety.  

Salman Rushdie in 2023.

The Satanic Verses, brilliant, strong and vibrant, was probably my first real contact with magic realism and was perhaps the most “literary” novel I attempted reading that wasn’t assigned in school. I am pretty sure that 19-year-old me didn’t grok the half of the book. Or maybe even that much. But it stunned me all the same. 

In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed a number of other works of his, particularly in audio (a couple of them read by Rushdie himself), like Midnight’s Children, The Enchantress of Florence, The Ground Beneath her Feet, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In all of this and throughout all of these books, including The Satanic Verses, there is a strong and abiding interest in the nature and the use of stories. I know there is plenty to untangle in terms of immigration, East-West Relations, history, mythology, and faith. Salman Rushdie’s work is a seemingly bottomless well for exploring and investigating these themes. 

Does he consider himself a SFF writer? I’m not sure, but if he isn’t, he has a house on the borderlands, ready to provoke and evoke thought in readers.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DC’S UNEXPECTED TEAM-UP. “Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman Unite with Bugs Bunny in MultiVersus” at CBR.com.

Covers for DC’s MultiVersus: Collision Detected were revealed in DC’s Sept. 2024 solicitations, ahead of the story’s release and show DC’s holy trinity paired up with a variety of MultiVersus characters from franchises that include Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Scooby-Doo and more….

…DC’s full description of MultiVersus: Collision Detected reads: “Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince, and Clark Kent each wake in a cold sweat, troubled by strange dreams they’ve had about ‘the rabbit,’ ‘the star child,’ and ‘the witch.’ Their investigation into these enigmatic visions brings them to unexpected locales and unusual characters, but none more unusual than the mysterious “rabbit” from their dreams as they find themselves face-to-face with the one and only Bugs Bunny. What the heck is going on here? And who in the name of the Multiverse are ‘the star child’ and ‘the witch’? The hit video game spills from your screen and into the DCU, and it’s bringing a whole lot of friends from some of your favorite universes with it!”

(12) NOT IN OUR FUTURE AFTER ALL. The New Yorker is proud to share “Six Eerie Predictions That Early Sci-Fi Authors Got Completely Wrong”.

Since the genre’s inception, science-fiction writers have imagined what the future might hold for Earth and beyond. While their stories are often fantastical, many of them anticipated technologies that actually exist today, such as television and artificial intelligence. However, countless more made predictions that were absolute whiffs.

Here’s the first of their half-dozen duds.

1. Nuclear-Powered Soap Dispenser

While many sci-fi authors envisioned the possibilities of nuclear power, Philip K. Dick’s “The Land That Time Remembered” got specifically stuck on the idea of a society where humans washed their hands with “soap dispensers powered by the almighty atom,” and where “torrents of soap spurted forth by means of the forces that birthed the universe.”

(13) DISCWORLD JIGSAW PUZZLE COMING. Paul Kidby’s character art in the form of a puzzle is available for preorder. “The World of Terry Pratchett: A 1000-Piece Discworld Jigsaw Puzzle by Paul Kidby”.

This stunning jigsaw puzzle features glorious artwork from Paul Kidby, Sir Terry Pratchett’s artist of choice, depicting all the favourite Discworld characters. Paul Kidby provided the illustrations for The Last Hero, designed the covers for the Discworld novels since 2002, and is the author of the bestselling The Art of Discworld. This expanded artwork is available for the first time in jigsaw puzzle format in a deluxe gift box with an accompanying booklet identifying each of the characters along with quotes, trivia and more.

(14) MCDONALD’S KILLING AI DRIVE-THROUGH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Let’s just hope that the AI doesn’t try to kill McDonald’s back. Or worse, take it out on us.

Anyway, you’re not free and clear yet. McDonald’s makes it clear they’re going to try again later, apparently hoping the technology will improve enough to not dish out ice cream cones with bacon on top. (Wait! Where’s the problem there?)  “McDonald’s kills AI drive-thru ordering after mistakes” at Axios.

Friction point: Customers had reported a slew of AI ordering blunders.

One posted video of the system incorrectly believing she’d ordered hundreds of dollars of chicken McNuggets, the Today Show reported.

In another case, a customer was given an ice cream cone topped with bacon, the New York Post reported….

(15) IRRESISTIBLE: YES, NO? “Doctor Who ‘Pyramids of Mars’ 5″ Action Figure Box Set” from Oriental Trading.

Recreate the classic Doctor Who adventure “Pyramids of Mars” from 1975 featuring the Fourth Doctor! This Doctor Who Pyramids of Mars Priory Collector’s Playset features an opening and closing pyramid along with detailed set pieces like a Sarcophagus and Egyptian urns. Complete with 5-inch scale action figures of Sutekh and Marcus Scarman, you’ll be able to make your very own adventure with the Pyramids of Mars!

(16) RED PLANET, GREEN AURORAS. From Smithsonian Magazine we learn, “Mars Was Hit With a Solar Storm Days After Earth’s Aurora Light Show, NASA Says”.

Days after solar storms spurred widespread sightings of auroras across Earth in early May, a new bout of eruptions on the sun brought glowing skies to another planet: Mars.

From pole to pole, Mars was hit by a barrage of gamma rays and X-rays, followed by charged particles from a coronal mass ejection. These led to auroras that would have appeared, if any viewers were on its surface, as a deep green color, reports the New York Times’ Robin George Andrews.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The latest Pitch Meeting is Superman (1978), for some reason.

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

Frank R. Paul Awards Revived

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Cover art by Frank R. Paul for August 1927 Amazing Stories, illustrating a reprint of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

The Frank R. Paul Awards for Magazine and Book Cover Art  have been relaunched and submissions are being taken through January 10, 2024.

The new awards are for cover art for books and magazines published in 2023. Prizes will include $500 for each of the two categories. The awards will be determined by a panel of judges.

Award administrator Frank Wu, a three-time Hugo winner, says “Bill Engle, Frank R. Paul’s grandson, is on the awards committee, and is as excited as we are about re-launching this award.”

Artists, authors and publishers are encouraged to submit up to 5 of their own works; this includes pro, semi-pro, fan and indie. Other folks are encouraged to submit up to 2 works by anyone. AI-generated artwork is NOT eligible for this award. A slate of finalists will be released prior to the announcement of the winners. For full information on submitting, please visit the award web page.

After the close of the submission period candidates will be judged by a panel of distinguished judges: Frank Wu, Brianna Wu, Jannie Shea and Alan F. Beck.

Frank R. Paul (1884-1963) was one of the first great science fiction illustrators, and the Guest of Honor at the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. For a gallery of Frank R. Paul’s work, click here. Click here for the entry on Frank R. Paul in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia.

The Frank R. Paul Awards were last run in 1996 by Kubla-Khan and the Nashville SF Association. Frank Wu is funding the first year’s award. For subsequent years they will be setting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and taking donations. 

Pixel Scroll 12/11/21 The Scroll In The High Pixel

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(1) REACHING OUT. Kate Elliott distills her sff experience into a Twitter thread, which starts here.

(2) COWBOY BEBOP. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Science fiction author Wesley Chu (The Lives Of Tao, The Walking Dead: Typhoon) posted this “hot take” on Twitter:

He followed it up with a link to the petition “Save the live action Cowboy Bebop” posted in yesterday’s Pixel Scroll: “Make me a prophet, friends! Sign the petition to save Cowboy Bebop.” The petition now has over 2,000 signatures.

(3) IN AND OUT OF FLUX. Camestros Felapton, in “Review: Doctor Who Flux”, assesses how nu-Who’s thirteenth season with the Thirteenth Doctor wrapped up. Beware spoilers!

…So where does that leave Flux and why was it not so terrible despite all that? As I’ve joked before, it was a shaggy-dog story where lots of things happen but most of it doesn’t really matter. Events strung together but without a substantial narrative arc can be entertaining. These kinds of “just a bunch of stuff that happened” plots make millions when they are Fast & Furious movies. I don’t know what the first big example of this approach is but I suspect that is the James Bond film You Only Live Twice which makes not a bit of sense but has so many memorable fragments that it feels like it has a story there. F&F is worse to some degree because that narrative fragmentation splits over multiple films i.e. I can remember lots of scenes from those movies but I have to actively think about elements to work out which film it was from (at least from about F&F5)….

(4) SIGNING OFF. “Nichelle Nichols Appears for Final Comic-Con Events in L.A. amid Conservatorship Battle” reports Yahoo!

…Nichelle Nichols, one of the stars of the original Star Trek series and a pioneering recruiter of women and minorities for America’s space program, made her final convention appearance before her many fans as part of a three-day farewell celebration at L.A. Comic-Con over the weekend.

Best known for playing communications officer Nyota Uhura aboard the starship Enterprise, the iconic actress, singer and dancer — who turns 89 on Dec. 28 — signed autographs, posed for photos and attended an early birthday celebration, where she briefly but joyfully kicked up her heels and danced. Nichols was also the subject of tribute panels throughout the convention, though she did not make any public statements.

An active figure on stage, TV and music since the early 1960s, Nichols’ public and professional life has been slowed since she was diagnosed with dementia in 2018, and she has also been at the center of a conservatorship battle. However, she was all smiles during her many appearances on her retirement tour at Comic-Con LA. Nichols was seen waving, blowing kisses and flashing Star Trek‘s famous Vulcan salute to the many fans who turned out to bid her farewell….

(5) FROM THE ARCHIVES. [Item by Bill.] Metafilter just finished a series of posts over the last week in which highlighted “short speculative fiction stories published by online magazines that are no longer publishing, or that are on hiatus, but whose interesting archives remain online” — Posts tagged with magazinearchives / MetaFilter.

(6) PRAISING WITH FAINT DAMS. Is James Davis Nicoll’s Young People Read Old SFF panel impressed by this Lafferty Hugo-winner? Please…stop laughing.

This month’s Young People Read Old Hugo Winners presented me with a dilemma. “Eurema’s Dam” by R. A. Lafferty shared the 1973 Hugo for Best Short Story with “The Meeting” by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl. How to choose between two works the voters found worthy? The answer, it seems, was in having read “The Meeting”, which is about commandeering a developmentally deficient child’s body so the body can house the brain of a superior child. Since I don’t actively dislike my Young People, I went with the story I didn’t remember anything about, a story that only might annoy them, rather than the story I remembered all too well and was absolutely certain would enrage them.

R. A. Lafferty was a beloved author of whimsical fantasies. My brain lacks the proper receptors and I don’t see the appeal. I am aware I am in the minority here. Perhaps my Young People will see the virtues in Lafferty’s writing to which I am blind. Let’s find out! 

(7) TIME AFTER TIME. The latest episode of CSI Skill Tree, a series on videogames, worldbuilding, storytelling, and possible futures, is focused on the 2019 game Outer Wilds, about unraveling the mysteries of a solar system caught in a time loop. The guests are game director and designer Randy Smith (Thief series, Waking Mars, JETT: The Far Shore) and Luc Riesbeck, a space policy and research analyst at Astroscale U.S.

(8) FUTURE SEASON’S GREETINGS. The Bristol Board has copies of the original space-themed covers by Frank R. Paul for the Christmas issues of Forecast, Hugo Gernsback’s radio and electronics magazine of the Fifties and Sixties. Here’s an example.

(9) THANKS FOR THE MEMORY HOLE. “Feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate” – the Guardian has the story.

The estate of George Orwell has approved a feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which reimagines the story from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover Julia.

… Publisher Granta said that Julia understands the world of Oceania “far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life”. As Orwell puts it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “in some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda … She also stirred a sort of envy in him by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. But she only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her.”

“She has known no other world and, until she meets Winston, never imagined one. She’s opportunistic, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. She’s an ideal citizen of Oceania,” said Granta. “But when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston Smith in a long corridor, she impulsively hands him a note – a potentially suicidal gesture – she comes to realise that she’s losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.”

Orwell’s estate said it had been “looking for some time” for an author to tell the story of Smith’s lover, and that Newman, who has previously been longlisted for the Women’s prize and shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, “proved to be the perfect fit”…

(10) WHO DREW. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist Colin Howard who did book and VHS covers for Doctor Who in the 1980s-1990s has announced a new art book: Timeslides: The Doctor Who Artwork of Colin Howard.

Colin Howard’s art graced the covers of around thirty VHS releases, and for the first time ever, they’re collected together in Timeslides: The Doctor Who Art of Colin Howard. 

Join Colin as he opens his personal archive and takes you on a tour of his Doctor Who universe – from iconic videos to book covers, from illustrations to private commissions. Featuring original sketches, unpublished designs, and a fascinating commentary, Timeslides takes you further behind the scenes than ever before.

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1992 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-nine years ago, The Muppet Christmas Carol premiered as directed by Brian Henson (in his feature film directorial debut) from the screenplay by Jerry Juhl. Based amazingly faithfully off that story, it starred Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge with a multitude of Muppet performers, to wit Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Ed Sanders, Jerry Nelson, Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes, Russell Martin, Ray Coulthard  and Frank Oz. I must single out Jessica Fox as the voice of Ghost of Christmas Past. 

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

Critics in general liked it with Roger Ebert being among them though he added that it “could have done with a few more songs than it has, and the merrymaking at the end might have been carried on a little longer, just to offset the gloom of most of Scrooge’s tour through his lifetime spent spreading misery.” (Those songs were by Paul Williams, another one of his collaborations with the Jim Henson Company after working on The Muppet Movie.) Box office wise, it did just ok as it made twenty-seven million against production costs of twelve million, not counting whatever was spent on marketing. And audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather ungloomy rating of eighty-eight percent.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 11, 1926 — Dick Tufeld. He’s best known, or at least best recognized, as the voice of the Robot on Lost in Space, a role he reprises in the feature film. The first words heard on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are spoken by him: “This is the Seaview, the most extraordinary submarine in all the seven seas.” He’s been the opening announcer on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Woman, Thundarr the Barbarian, Fantastic Four and the Time Tunnel. (Died 2012.)
  • Born December 11, 1945 — Zienia Merton. She’s best remembered for playing Sandra Benes in Space: 1999. She played Ping-Cho during a series of First Doctor stories. She had roles on Dinotopia, the Sarah Jane Adventures and Wizards vs. Aliens. (Died 2018.)
  • Born December 11, 1944 — Teri Garr, 77. A long history of genre film roles starting in Young Frankenstein as Inga before next appearing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as Ronnie Neary. Next is the horror film Witches’ Brew where she was Margaret Lightman. She voices Mary McGinnis in Batman Beyond: The Movie, a role she has does on a recurring basis in the series. Series wise, shows up uncredited in the Batman series in the “Instant Freeze” as the Girl Outside the Rink. And of course, she’s Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek’s “Assignment Earth” episode. (I once found a site that the spin-off series had actually been made.) She has a number of other genre roles, none as interesting as that one. 
  • Born December 11, 1954 — Richard Paul Russo, 67. Winner of two Philip Dick Awards, first for Subterranean Gallery, and later for Ship of Fools. Subterranean Gallery was also nominated for a Clarke Award. He apparently stopped writing genre fiction quite some time ago. 
  • Born December 11, 1957 — William Joyce, 64. Author of the YA series Guardians of Childhood which is currently at twenty books and growing. Now I’ve no interest in reading them but Joyce and Guillermo del Toro turned the early ones into in a rather splendid Rise of the Guardians film which I enjoyed quite a bit. The antagonist in it reminds me somewhat of a villain later on In Willingham’s Fables series called Mr. Dark. 
  • Born December 11, 1959 — M. Rickert, 62. Short story writer par excellence. She’s got three collections to date, Map of Dreams which won a World Fantasy Award, Holiday and You Have Never Been Here. Her two novels The Little Witch and The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie are most excellent, and are available from the usual digital suspects.  Her collections unfortunately are not. 
  • Born December 11, 1962 — Ben Browder, 59. Actor of course best known for his roles as John Crichton in Farscape and Cameron Mitchell in Stargate SG-1.  One of my favorite roles by him was his voicing of Bartholomew Aloysius “Bat” Lash in Justice League Unlimited called “The Once and Future Thing, Part 1”. He’d have an appearance as sheriff in the Eleventh Doctor story, “A Town Called Mercy”, a Weird Western of sorts.
  • Born December 11, 1965 — Sherrilyn Kenyon, 56. Best known for her Dark Hunter series which runs to around thirty volumes now.  I realize in updating this birthday note that I indeed have read this first several of these and they were damn good. She’s got The League series as well which appears to be paranormal romance, and a Lords of Avalon series too under the pen name of Kinley MacGregor. She has won two World Fantasy Awards, one for her short story, “Journey Into the Kingdom”, and one for her short story collection, Map of Dreams. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) FOR YOUR WISHLIST. Connie Willis wrote a long Facebook post hawking her American Christmas Stories collection.

…Stefanie Peters and David Cloyce Smith and the other editors at Library of America did all the heavy lifting, scouring all sorts of obscure books and magazines, finding thousands of stories for us to choose from, and getting all the necessary permissions and releases. All I did was read a bunch of stories, suggest some stories they’d missed, and write the introduction.)

Between us, we found mysteries, horror stories, Westerns, science-fiction stories, ghost stories, police procedurals, and fantasies, stories by famous authors like Bret Harte and John Updike and stories by writers you’ve never heard of, like Pauline Hopkins and John Kendrick Bangs. Stories by African-American authors writing in the post-Civil War South, by Chinese-American authors writing about California’s Chinatown, by authors of vastly different backgrounds writing about Alaskan and Puerto Rican and Nebraska Christmases.

And we found stories written in all different keys, from cynicism to sentimentality, from nostalgia to urban angst. And comedy. So many Christmas collections focus solely on serious or uplifting stories, but humor’s been a staple of the American Christmas story since Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, and I was really happy we were able to include humorous stories by Shirley Jackson, Robert Benchley, Leo Rosten, Joan Didion, and Damon Runyon.

(Especially Damon Runyon. We would have included all his Christmas stories if we’d had room, and all of O. Henry’s, but alas, there were length constraints–and permissions we weren’t able to get. And in addition, we didn’t want this collection to be a carbon copy of every other Christmas anthology we’d ever read. Which is why O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” and the “Christmas won’t be Christmas” piece by Louisa May Alcott aren’t in the book. Sorry. But they’ve been reprinted virtually everywhere, and if we included them, we’d have had to leave out stories by both O. Henry and Alcott that you might not have read before.).

We also included lots of other wonderful stories, like Langston Hughes’ wistful “One Christmas Eve” and Edna Ferber’s “No Room at the Inn” and Ben Hecht’s “Holiday Thoughts” Jacob Riis’s “The Kid Hangs Up His Stocking” and Jack London’s “Klondike Christmas” and Dorothy Parker’s “The Christmas Magazines and the Inevitable Story of the Snowbound Train.”

For you science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fans, there’s Cynthia Felice’s “Track of a Legend,” Mildred Clingerman’s “The Wild Wood,” Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Buzz,” Ray Bradbury’s “The Gift,”and Raymond E. Banks’s “Christmas Trombone.”” (And a story of mine that they chose, “Inn.”)…

And don’t forget to register for the Library of America’s American Christmas Stories conversation with Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, and Penne Restad on December 15 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.

(15) I READ YOU FIVE BY FIVE. Two more of James Davis Nicoll’s thematic look-back posts at Tor.com.

… Perhaps some fictional examples are in order, since historical examples would no doubt set the comments on fire (so let’s please avoid that)….

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (1980)

No person works as hard to find and gather humanity’s psionic adepts as Doro. Doro has invested millennia tracking down, gathering, and breeding mutants to ensure that they survive and flourish. Thanks to Doro’s endless work, the genes for psionic talents have been concentrated and encouraged to flourish.

However, this long-standing project had nothing to do with any particular concern for mutant-kind or a belief in orthogenesis. Doro is a psychic predator. Mutant minds are tasty and their appropriated bodies provide him with comfortable temporary accommodation. Worse, the psychics are quite aware of Doro’s appetites. They simply lack the means to resist him. The best that shape-shifting immortal Anyanwu can do is to play a weak hand as well as she can, using Doro’s desire for a peer to limit the damage he does to her kin.

… But pessimism is nothing new, of course. Olden time SF authors were enormously pessimistic, producing works every bit as sour and gloomy as the most morose works penned by today’s authors. Don’t believe me? Here are five intensely depressing SF novels from the long, long ago. I recommend each and every one of them, if only to cast your current circumstances in a more favourable light….

(16) GALACTIC OPPORTUNITY. Space Cowboy Books will host an online reading and interview with Janice L. Newman, author of “At First Contact,” on December 14. Register here.

Join us for a reading and interview with Janice L. Newman about her new book At First Contact, a touching trio of romances in a speculative vein. From the edge of space, to the shadows of the paranormal, to the marvels of the mystical.

(17) BANK ON IT. Seneca Falls goes all-in on It’s A Wonderful Life. “This New York Town Is Honoring A Beloved Holiday Movie’s 75th Anniversary” at Forbes.

… “We also say that we don’t think that Frank Capra intended Bedford Falls to be one place,” said Law. “It is every place that people hold dear to our hearts.”

Regardless, Law noted that Seneca Falls has welcomed actress Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu Bailey, since her first visit there in 2002.

“She has introduced us to other cast members, relatives of cast members and others associated with the film,” said Law. Other visiting actors have ranged from Jimmy Hawkins, who played Tommy Bailey, to Jeanine Roose, who played younger Violet Bick.

Grimes also helped to make the It’s A Wonderful Life Museum a reality, after being talked to about the need for a place where film fans can reminisce and honor its meaning….

Here’s the link to The Seneca Falls It’s A Wonderful Life Museum website.

It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed entirely in California, as were most movies at that time.

However, Seneca Falls has long believed itself to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls…

(18) GHASTLY TIMING. The New York Ghost Story Festival started December 11 and continues online. It’s free. Watch live on You Tube, or view any time later.

See the December 11 event with Kathe Koja, Brian Evenson, Rudi Dornemann and Jeff Ford:

Still to come —

  • Tuesday, December 14, 8:00 p.m. Eastern with David Surface, Brenda Tolian, Pat Wehl, and Joshua Rex here
  • Friday, December 17, 8:00 p.m. Eastern with Kevin Lucia, Jo Kaplan, and Eric Guijnard here.
  • Saturday, December 18, 7:00 p.m. Eastern with Sarah Langan, Kevin Brockmeier, John Langan, and Angela Slatter here

(19) W76 WOULD LIKE ITS $4K BACK. Twitter shut down Jon Del Arroz’ account under his own name, but he’s started another. Think about how good his lawyer must be that he was able to defend Jon against allegations of being a racist.

(20) MARTIAN MUD. “China’s Mars Rover Has Amassed Reams Of Geological Data” reports Nature.

 Some surface features, such as possible sedimentary material and mud volcanoes, hint at the past flow of water, so scientists are looking for clues that there was once water or ice below the surface. This is “of great scientific interest” because it might provide evidence of an ancient ocean, says Bo Wu, a planetary scientist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

(21) ON YOUR HEAD BE IT. “The Sorting Hat Tells All In The Harry Potter Reunion” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

On another night last week Jennifer Lawrence appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Near the end of their second segment, they discussed genre movies. After the 3:00 mark, Colbert gets a little flustered when Lawrence reveals how little she knows about the Lord of the Rings movies. Nominally, the main topic of the interview is Lawrence’s to-be-released movie Don’t Look Up, which definitely has a genre premise.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Bill, Ben Bird Person, Chris Barkley, Joey Eschrich, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson, part of “The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners” series.]

Tomorrow Is Arriving

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New York City seems to be getting closer to what Frank R. Paul had in mind.

Look at New York YIMBY’s construction photos and artist’s designs for these four projects.

“450 Eleventh Avenue Prepares To Go Vertical In Hudson Yards”

Construction is about to go vertical at 450 Eleventh Avenue, a 487-foot-tall, 531-room hotel from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in Hudson Yards. Designed by DSM Design Group and developed by Marx Development Group, the 43-story tower is one of several new high-rise structures sprouting up around the Jacob K. Javits Center.

“Exterior Hoist Comes Down For Virgin Hotel At 1225 Broadway, In NoMad”

Façade work is nearing completion on the Virgin Hotel at 1225 Broadway in NoMad. Designed by Stantec and developed by Lam Group, the 38-story, 476-foot-tall structure will yield 300,000 square feet with 460 hotel rooms. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group will be in charge of managing the property, which is the first Virgin Hotel in New York City.

“The Spiral’s Steel Superstructure Continues To Rise At 66 Hudson Boulevard In Hudson Yards”

Bjarke Ingels Group‘s 66 Hudson Boulevard, aka The Spiral, is rapidly climbing above Hudson Yards. Like its next-door neighbor 50 Hudson Yards, the 66-story supertall has nearly doubled in height since YIMBY’s last update in December. Tishman Speyer is the developer, Turner Construction Company is the construction manager, and Banker Steel is in charge of fabricating the steel for the 1,031-foot-tall commercial office skyscraper, which is expected to cost $3.7 billion.

“YIMBY Checks In On The Site Of 350 Park Avenue In Midtown East”

Perhaps the most exciting skyscraper project proposed for New York last year is 350 Park Avenue, a nearly 1,500-foot-tall skyscraper from Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin Management. After YIMBY broke the news on Vornado’s expected 2027 completion date for the tower back in February, we stopped by the site to check on the status of its current occupant. Located between East 51st and East 52nd Streets, a total of two edifices would need to be demolished to make way for the development.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 4/12/16 My Pixels Were Fair And Had Scrolls In Their Hair

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(1) MAN INTO SPACE. Wake up The Traveler – the thing sf fans have dreamed about just happened! “[April 12, 1961] Stargrazing (The Flight of Vostok)” at Galactic Journey.

The jangling of the telephone broke my slumber far too early.  Groggily, I paced to the handset, half concerned, half furious.  I picked it up, but before I could say a word, I heard a frantic voice.

“Turn on your radio right now!”

I blinked.  “Wha..” I managed.

“Really!” the voice urged.  I still didn’t even know who was calling.

Nevertheless, I went to the little maroon Zenith on my dresser and turned the knob.  The ‘phone was forgotten in my grip as I waited for the tubes to warm up.  10 seconds later, I heard the news.

It happened.  A man had been shot into orbit.  And it wasn’t one of ours.

(2) MAKING IT BETA. R. S. Belcher thanks “The League of Extraordinary Beta Readers” at Magical Words.

Stephen King says in On Writing, to write with the door closed and edit with the door open. I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. Your beta readers get first dibs when you open that door, they are your test audience. I have worked with different beta readers on different projects and over time, you find the folks that are going to help you the most with getting the very best out of your writing. A few tips I’d offer that have worked for me.

1) Punctuality: If it takes your beta reader as long to read and get your MS back to you as it took you to write it, they may not be the person you need. By the same token, if you get it back the same day you sent it off to them to read, chances are they skimmed it, so take their advice with a grain of salt.

2) Consistency: If three of your beta-readers all pick up on the same thing, LOOK AT IT and consider their advice. I’ve found that that trait is a flag for readers who I can count on to be giving me good, consistent feedback on trouble spots in the book.

3) Objectivity: If all a friend, family member, or loved one can give you as feedback is how awesome every word is, that is great for the poor writer’s ego but not much help to the professional writer. By the same token, if all you get is negative feedback, you may need to take that advice with a grain of salt too.  Some beta readers are glass-half-full people and others are more glass-half-empty.

(3) STARTING LINES. Rachel Swirsky studies the first lines of her own stories, then others’.

“First lines Part I: Half a Dozen of My Recent Stories”.

I decided it might be interesting to look at some of the first lines of my stories. I’m grabbing a half-dozen first lines from some of my recent publications. I’m only looking at stories that are online, so if people want to see how the first line relates to the rest of the story, they can.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at a half-dozen from some of my favorite stories.If this proves interesting (to me or readers), I may do more another time.

“Love Is Never Still” in Uncanny Magazine

“Through every moment of carving, I want her as one wants a woman.”

I’m happy with this–which is useful because I essentially just finished it (six months ago). The story begins as a retelling of the myth of Galatea, a statue who is wished to life when her sculptor falls in love. For people who are versed in Greek mythology, this should evoke Galatea as a possibility — carving, want, woman.

“First Lines Part II: from Some of My Favorite Stories”

“The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change” by Kij Johson

“North Park is a backwater tucked into a loop of the Kaw River: pale dirt and baked grass, aging playground equipment, silver-leafed cottonwoods, underbrush, mosquitoes and gnats blackening the air at dusk.”

Obviously, this sentence is scene setting. Kij makes it beautiful with her specific details: “pale dirt,” “baked grass,” “aging playground equipment,” “silver-leafed cotton-woods,” “mosquitoes,” “gnats.” Almost all of the details evoke slow decay–“backwater,” “baked grass,” “aging.” Insects don’t gather in the air so much as dirty it–“blackening” the dusk. The evoked colors are washed out–pale, baked, silver–we can possibly also include the old metal and rust of the playground equipment. The silver-leafed cottonwoods are the exception here–the color is on the grey/black spectrum, yes, but the tree still sounds beautiful. This is decay, but not hopeless decay.

The sentence also establishes the academic tone. This is the kind of sentence assembled by someone speaking authoritatively about a subject, not describing their sensory impressions of the world. The phrasing is formal and complex, and the use of the colon an even more significant marker.

(4) BEYOND LIMITS. John Carlton’s “Generation Ships”, an interesting critique of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, focuses on the requirements for such a space mission. How many other stimulating observations might Carlton have made if he had read the book?

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a book recently apparently to show that interstellar travel is impossible….

It’s not possible to travel between the stars and even if we could, the missions would all fail.  Of course he also believes that utopia is possible as some sort of Socialist paradise.  Now that’s a fantasy….

As an engineer, I think that Mr. Robinson is clearly wrong. Or at least, he doesn’t understand the basic rules for setting mission parameters and designing to meet those parameters. Mr. Robison’s vessel failed because he wanted it to fail. But to extend that to saying that ALL such proposals would fail is more than a little egotistical. And wrong, really wrong.

Now I haven’t as yet read the book. Reading Greg Benford’s review left me going WTF, WTF, WTF, are you kidding? If you are going to write a book on pioneering could you at least set it up so that the pioneers are at least a little realistic. A ship without a captain or seemingly a crew? No community structure? What was it, a commune in space? Of course something like that is going to fail. That’s what happens to fragile structure and the commune is the most fragile of all. Just look at all the failed examples in the 19th Century. So that’s fail #1….

(5) GALAKTIKA MAGAZINE. SFWA President Cat Rambo has been following A.G. Carpenter’s reports about the Hungarian magazine that published numerous stories in translation without paying the original authors. Rambo wrote a post at her blog about receiving “Answers to Some Galaktika Magazine Questions”.

In the process of talking to people, I dropped Istvan Burger [editor in chief of Galaktika] a mail because I had these questions:

  1. Would all writers be paid, preferably without their having to contact Galaktika?
  2. Would all translators be paid? (my understanding was that the same lack of payment has happened with them.)
  3. For any online stories, would authors be able to request that the story be taken down?
  4. Would a process be put in place to ensure this never happens again?

Here’s the reply:

Dear Cat, I’m writing on behalf of Istvan Burger, editor in chief of Galaktika.

We’d like to ask authors to contact us directly to agree on compensation methods. You can give my email address to the members. mund.katalin@gmail.com

The short stories were published in a monthly magazine, which was sold for two months, so these prints are not available any more. So Authors don’t need to withdraw their works. As we wrote in our statement, there is no problem with novels, as all the rights of novels were paid by us in time.

Also let me emphasise again that all the translators were paid all the time!

You can quote my reply. Thank you for your help!

Best regards, Katalin Mund, Manager of Galaktika Magazine

(6) CARPENTER OPINES ON LATEST GALAKTIKA RESPONSE. Anna Grace Carpenter, who has been developing this story, commented on Burger’s answers to Rambo in “Galaktika Magazine: Legacy”.

Mr. Burger and Mr. Nemeth have offered vague explanations that are, quite frankly, not satisfactory given the number of years this theft has occurred. But whether it was ignorance or laziness or just the inclination that if they could get away with it, they would, something has to change drastically going forward.

I would really like to think that the offer to provide compensation for the authors whose work has been stolen indicates the problem has been resolved. Although requiring the individual authors be aware they’ve been stolen from and making them responsible for seeking payment does not seem a good faith step.

And there is the question that Cat Rambo raised regarding whether authors could or would be able to request their work withdrawn from Galaktika. She referenced a potential online edition (which is seems there is not one), but the response from Katalin Mund was as follows.

The short stories were published in a monthly magazine, which was sold for two months, so these prints are not available any more. So Authors don’t need to withdraw their works.

As I mentioned earlier, a comment from a Hungarian reader promptly revealed the misrepresentation of that statement.

They state it, but this is a flat-out lie. Nearly ALL back issues are available for ordering on the publisher’s webshop, http://galaktikabolt.hu/. I checked, and every issue from the year 2015 is available now. (The original article on mandiner.hu was about the magazine’s 2015 issues.) They’re not digital copies, the physical, paper-based issues are still sold.

At the very best, Mund and Galaktika are misrepresenting the situation regarding further sales of the pirated work. And this is key – they are selling that work.

(7) HEINLEIN SOCIETY SCHOLARSHIPS. The Heinlein Society is taking applications for three $1,000 scholarships for undergraduate students at accredited 4-year colleges and universities.

The “Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship” is dedicated to a female candidate majoring in engineering, math, or physical sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry). The other two scholarships may be awarded to either a male or female, and add “Science Fiction as literature” as an eligible field of study.

Applicants will need to submit a 500-1,000 word essay on one of several available topics.

Those interested should fill out the Scholarship Application 2016 [PDF file] and print or email. The deadline to apply is May 15. Winners will be announced on July 7.

(8) KEN LIU. At B&N Sci-Fi Fantasy Blog, Ken Liu describes “5 Chinese Mythological Creatures That Need to Appear in More SF/F”. You know it’s a winner, because five!

Pixiu

Usually depicted as a sort of winged lion—but with the wings folded to the sides of the body—the pixiu is said to be one of the nine children of the loong. Like the loong, it has antlers on its head (the male pixiu has two antlers and the female just one).

As one of the most auspicious Chinese mythological creatures, statues of the pixiu once stood at ancient city and palace gates as guardians. These days, the pixiu is more often seen in the form of small jade pendants dangling from rear-view mirrors or worn as jewelry for good luck. In this evolution lies a rather interesting tale.

In the oldest Chinese sources, the pixiu is depicted as a ferocious beast. The legendary Yellow Emperor recruited the fiercest animals into a special unit of his army in the war against the Yan Emperor, and the pixiu made the cut along with bears and tigers and similar apex predators (another interpretation of this passage is that the beasts were the totems of the tribes who followed the Yellow Emperor). In classical texts, the pixiu is thus often used as a metaphor for a powerful army.

But folklore also speaks of the pixiu violating the decorum of the heavenly court by pooping on the floor. To punish the creature, the Jade Emperor sealed the pixiu’s anus so that it could only eat but never defecate. The pixiu is supposed to go around devouring evil spirits and demons and convert their essence into gold and treasure, which it must hold in its belly forever. This explains the pixiu’s reputation as a bringer of wealth.

I like to think of the pixiu as a precursor for the modern military-industrial complex.

(9) MAGAZINE TO SUSPEND PUBLISHING. Interfictions Online is going on hiatus after the November 2016 issue. The editors have posted this letter:

Dear Friends of Interfictions,

With your support, we have run a marvelous magazine for three years.

At this point, Interfictions needs to take a break to allow the Interstitial Arts Foundation to figure out how to best support us. Our archives will remain available and free, but as of December 2016, the magazine will be on indefinite hiatus.

We will be ending this round of the magazine with a fantastic fall issue in November 2016. We’re going to solicit material for it, so there won’t be an open submissions period. We promise it will thrill and inspire you!

Thank you for participating in this project as artists, writers, readers, and listeners.

Sincerely, The Editors

(10) AFTER YOU SELL THE SERIES. Women in Animation’s Professional Development program will present a panel on Tuesday, April 26 – “They Said Yes! Now What?”

A follow-up to last year’s highly successful panel, “Who Says Yes? And Why?”. This panel will cover what someone who has created or developed an animated series does once they get a positive response, the legal and business issues of the actual deal, and what you can expect after the studio or network says yes, including the development process from this point forward (What? You thought you were done developing it  when you sold it?) and just how much you can expect to be involved with or in charge of the series.

Free for WiA members. $15 for non-members. Panelists include Jennifer Dodge (SVP, Development, Nickelodeon Preschool), Cort Lane (SVP, Animation & Family Entertainment, Marvel Televsion), Annette van Duren (agent), Donna Ebbs (producer, former exec at The Hub and Disney), and Craig Miller (writer-producer)

(11) STORY OF YOUR LIFE. A Paramount movie based on Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life” is expected to open in the fall of 2016. Amy Adams will play the linguist Dr. Louise Banks, Jeremy Renner will play the theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly, and Forest Whitaker plays a military figure (Colonel Weber). An extended segment of the film was screened at CinemaCon, a trade show for theater owners.

io9 has the news:

A linguist and a theoretical physicist are the stars of the latest movie from the director of Sicario and the upcoming Blade Runner 2. The movie is Story Of Your Life, based on the short story by Ted Chiang, and this Amy Adams/Jeremy Renner movie looks awesome.

Paramount Pictures screened an extended look at the film as part of CinemaCon, a trade show in which movie studios show their upcoming films to theater owners. Paramount showcased Ninja Turtles 2, Ben Hur, Jack Reacher 2 and plenty of other upcoming releases (not including Star Trek Beyond, for some reason.) But the highlight was Story Of Your Life, which has no release date yet but is expected to open this fall.

(12) VOLCANIC ENDINGS. Leah Schnelbach, writing at length about “Preparing Myself for Death with Joe Versus the Volcano” at Tor.com, implicitly argues that this Tom Hanks movie is worth the fine-toothed-comb study she gives it.

At the dawn of the ’90s, a film was released that was so quirky, so weird, and so darkly philosophical that people who turned up expecting a typical romantic comedy were left confused and dismayed. That film was Joe Versus the Volcano, and it is a near-masterpiece of cinema.

There are a number of ways one could approach Joe Versus the Volcano. You could look at it in terms of writer and director John Patrick Shanley’s career, or Tom Hanks’. You could analyze the film’s recurring duck and lightning imagery. You could look at it as a self-help text, or apply Campbell’s Hero Arc to it. I’m going to try to look at it a little differently. JVtV is actually an examination of morality, death, and more particularly the preparation for death that most people in the West do their best to avoid. The film celebrates and then subverts movie clichés to create a pointed commentary on what people value, and what they choose to ignore. Plus it’s also really funny!

The plot of JVtV is simple: sad sack learns he has a terminal illness. Sad sack is wasting away, broke and depressed on Staten Island, when an eccentric billionaire offers him a chance to jump into a volcano. Caught between a lonely demise in an Outer Borough and a noble (if lava-y) death, sad sack chooses the volcano. (Wouldn’t you?) Along the way he encounters three women: his coworker DeDe, and the billionaire’s two daughters, Angelica and Patricia. All three are played by Meg Ryan. The closer he gets to the volcano the more wackiness ensues, and the film culminates on the island of Waponi-Wu, where the Big Wu bubbles with lava and destiny. Will he jump? Will he chicken out? Will love conquer all? The trailer outlines the entire plot of the film, so that the only surprise awaiting theatergoers was…well, the film’s soul, which is nowhere to be seen here…

(13) HOW MANY STICKY QUARTERS IS THAT? A Frank R. Paul cover from the collection of Dr. Stuart David Schiff is currently up for auction. The owner of “Where Eternity Ends”, a pulp magazine cover from the June 1939 issue of Science Fiction, is looking for an opening bid of $6,000.

Here’s how the piece looked when published. The original art can be seen at the auction link.

(14) YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. The Hugo results are in!

(15) VIRGIN AMERICA HUMOR. Jeb Kinnison writes, “Friend Steve Freitag works as a gate agent at Virgin and often comes up with fun comments on the status sign. Since they’re being bought by Alaska and probably won’t be free to have such fun soon, he put up a selection of the best…”

Here’s a sample – click to see the full gallery.

View post on imgur.com

(16) THE ART OF THE DICE. David Malki (Wondermark) posted a new batch of Roll-a-Sketch artwork.

I just got back from the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, and here are a few favorites of the many Roll-a-Sketch drawings I made for folks there!

Roll-a-Sketch, as longtime readers know, is something I do at conventions and other appearances: folks can roll some dice to select random words from a list, and then I have the task of combining those words into a creature! …

LEGO + HIPSTER + CTHULHU + EGG:

 [Thanks to Jeb Kinnison, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Remembering the Future

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Every summer journalists write a few more “Where’s my jetpack?” articles that insist on answering rhetorical questions like “Why doesn’t our world look like Frank R. Paul’s covers for Amazing Stories?” But Brian Fies’ Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow represents the first time I’ve seen anybody get a whole novel out of the question:

Fies shows this world through the eyes of a father and son who age very slowly relative to the world around them. Buddy, the son, is about 8 when he and his father visit the 1939 World’s Fair and not too much older when they are building a bomb shelter in their basement in 1955. Fies took that poetic license so he could highlight the parallels between popular science and real life. “This 36 years of American history starts out with society being optimistic and maybe a little naïve about science and technology and ends with society being very pessimistic and cynical,” he said. “It occurred to me that sounded very much like the arc a child goes through from 8 to 19.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]