Tag Archives: Frankenstein

Pixel Scroll 7/21/24 Did I Ever Tell You About The Man Who Taught His Pixel To Scroll?

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(1) FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] We have had an SFnal real treat over here in Blighty with a fresh take on the Frankenstein mythos in the form of a three-part audio drama, and through the wonders of the world-wide interwebby thingy, you can enjoy it too.  Brian Aldiss constantly told us that the novel Frankenstein was the first true SF novel (with everything genre-related before that being ‘proto-SF’).  And now BBC Radio 4 have aired a three-part audio drama that is a post-modern and an ultra-SFnal revamp of the story.

It is set in the future here a researcher creates an artificial intelligence (AI) based on the Frankenstein author’s (Mary Shelley’s) mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Wollstonecraft was herself well known for her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman hence the title of this audio play, A Vindication of Frankenstein’s Monster.

Starting with Mary Wollstonecraft’s ground-breaking feminist text, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and moving into a radical re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), through to the contemporary world of Artificial Intelligence, Linda Marshall Griffiths’ drama asks what would happen if a woman created a woman?

In the first episode of this three part drama, Lizzie walks through Mary Wollstonecraft’s world at the end of the 18th Century and she has questions.  Tracing Wollstonecraft’s extraordinary life, she is challenged by her bravery, her incredible mind and her capacity to fall in love with the wrong men. But this is not time-travel, Lizzie is creating a Virtual Reality world at the centre of which is Mary Wollstonecraft. But as the ‘AI’ Wollstonecraft comes to life, trapped in her virtual world, she begins to question exactly what has changed for women more than two hundred years after the publication of her manifesto – have women achieved equality and freedom? And Lizzie, pregnant and recently diagnosed with an aneurysm, must decide whether to allow her life to be constrained by her health, her lover Max, her impending motherhood or whether to complete her work, following Wollstonecraft’s journey to Norway…

You can download all three episodes:

(2) WHO TAKES. Charlie Jane Anders’ June newsletter Happy Dancing has “11 Hot Takes About Doctor Who”. Here’s the first one.

1) Doctor Who has wasted some great story seeds from “Genesis of the Daleks”

Steven Moffat has mined this 1975 classic for story ideas at least twice: in “The Magician’s Apprentice”/”The Witch’s Familiar” and more recently in “Boom.” But there’s still some great material that nobody has touched. In particular: the Doctor’s suggestion that “many future worlds could become allies” because of the threat of the Daleks, and that something good could come of the Daleks’ evil… this is something I’d love to see dramatized on screen. (When Terry Nation wrote this line, the memory of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill joining forces against the Nazis was somewhat fresh, but of course that alliance didn’t exactly last.) Also, I’ve long been tantalized by the bit at the very beginning where a Time Lord warns the Doctor about a possible future where the Daleks have won — becoming the only surviving life form in the universe. It would be fascinating to visit that alternate future and perhaps see the Daleks trying to establish it as the main timeline.

(3) A PLUS FOR PHYSICAL BOOKS. “BookTok’s Latest Craze: Books With Sprayed Edges!” at Yahoo!

If you’ve stepped into a bookstore or scrolled Bookstagram and BookTok recently, you’ve likely noticed an increasing number of books with beautiful sprayed edges, or as book lovers call them, “spredges.” This is a design feature where the edges of the book pages are beautifully embellished with color or intricate designs. Sprayed edges might sound like a fun new bookish trend, but they’ve actually been around for centuries. Dating back to the 10th Century, books and sometimes Bibles often had detailed scenes painted on their edges. This practice was called fore-edge painting and now it’s having a renaissance! In recent years, books with sprayed edges have started adorning shelves everywhere, and their immense popularity is only growing. We talked to book pros about why readers are so drawn to this trend, what makes sprayed edges so special and more….

(4) SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAGES. The L.A. Breakfast club will host “Tales from the Comic Book Crackdown with Ben Dickow & Company” on August 14 from 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM. Tickets at the link.

Ben Dickow’s new musical Tales From the Comic Book Crackdown brings to life the dramatic Senate hearings on Juvenile Delinquency of April 21, 1954, which were designed to bring down the comic book industry as a whole. These hearings resulted in years of censorship and repression of the comic book industry.

One man stood up for comics and free expression: 32-year-old Bill Gaines, the most successful comic book publisher of his day, was the sole witness to come forward and testify on behalf of comic books. Despite his best efforts, the authorities carried the day, and Bill almost lost everything.

Mr. Beaser: Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?

​Mr. Gaines: My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.

​Sen. Kefauver [alluding to the cover illustration for Crime SuspenStories #22]: This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?

​Mr. Gaines: Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic….

You can listen to the music online: “Comic Book Crackdown”.

(5) THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. Sterling Ulrich asks “What if Faramir Joined the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings?” at CBR.com.

One of the biggest additions to the extended edition of Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film was a flashback to the moment before Boromir set out for Rivendell. Denethor learned about the upcoming Council of Elrond and wanted to send a representative to ensure that the One Ring was used for the benefit of Gondor. Faramir offered to travel to Rivendell, but Denethor had no faith in his younger son and dispatched Boromir instead….

…On the surface, it seems Faramir’s presence at Amon Hen would have been beneficial. However, the Fellowship’s failures at the Battle of Amon Hen in The Lord of the Rings had consequences that were instrumental to Sauron’s eventual defeat. Merry and Pippin only met the Ents because they ran into Fangorn Forest after escaping their Uruk-hai captors. Likewise, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli only met Éomer because they crossed paths with him while chasing after the Uruk-hai. Without these chance occurrences, Saruman would have had free rein over Rohan, leaving Gondor without help from its neighboring kingdom in the Siege of Minas Tirith….

(6) SUNDAY MORNING TRANSPORT. “Father Ash” by Rachel Hartman is July’s third free read from Sunday Morning Transport.

Remember, this month, we’re running an annual membership drive of epic proportions — so if you haven’t already, please consider signing up, and if you are signed up, please share this link with your friends.

(7) LYUBOMIR NIKOLOV–NARVI (1950-2024). [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] The Bulgarian speculative fiction community lost its doyenne Lyubomir Nikolov–Narvi (1950-2024) on Jul 20. He translated the famous trilogy of J. R. R. Tolkien into Bulgarian and gave the readers many pleasant hours. Nikolov translated from seven languages all together.

He was also an excellent writer on his own – The Tenth Righteous Man (1999) won the fandom award for the best Bulgarian book of the decade – that is, of the last decade of the twentieth century. This amazing novel describes a singularity of sorts – a sudden change in the physical constants gives every person immeasurable destructive power. Will the society survive this challenge?

Nikolov was active until recently – his latest novel appeared in 2022. Ne was known for introducing the game-books in Bulgarian – many kids have learned to read on them. He won an EuroCon (1987), a SotsCon (1989) and many other accolades.

Right now he is probably smoking a pipe in the writers section of Paradise, discussing the fate of Middle Earth with some other esteemed fellows.

More about him here (in Bulgarian, but Google is your friend).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 21, 1948 – Garry Trudeau, 76.

By Paul Weimer: Trudeau as a cartoonist and as a creator has a number of wide ranging credits: Alpha House, where Republican Senators share a house, and hilarity ensues. Tanner, a satirical look at a fake presidential campaign. And many columns in many publications.

But you’re here, and I am here, for Doonesbury. 

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the fifth Rathbun Visiting Fellow, delivers “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life.” By Linda A. Cicero / Stanford University News Service.

Doonesbury had been a fixture of comic strips in newspapers for as long as I was reading physical newspapers, from the 70’s all the way to around 2000 when I moved to California and finally stopped reading physical newspapers on a regular basis. (I would soon just read Doonesbury online)  It felt scandalous, even transgressive for me to read and enjoy the comic, once I was old enough to figure out just what the comic was about, because its politics were very much to the left of the politics of my family.  I suppose if my parents had paid more attention, they might have decried the comic’s politics, but they didn’t pay attention, and so I could read it in peace. 

I was way too young for the Watergate series in Doonesbury, which of course was its first high water mark.  Where I remember Doonesbury hitting a height for me was in 1989 and Tiananmen Square. I remember conversations with my older brother, who was enthusiastic that “China is going to become a Democracy!” in exultation.  I was far more realistic, even pessimistic, and I have Doonesbury to thank for helping me get parallax, perspective and point of view on the events happening in Beijing that year. (And I remember that when the protests turned violent, the strip went into re-runs, and that really helped bring home to me how serious it all was).

Ever since, I’ve paid attention to when people complain or try to get strips of Doonesbury pulled or show anger against it. That’s when I know that such a venerable comic strip, from such a talented and abiding creator as Trudeau, has once again hit a sensitive mark. And his influence and inspiration to multiple generations of political cartoonists cannot be underestimated. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) CLOSER TO THE SKY. If you’re ever near Cusco, Peru, Atlas Obscura says you shouldn’t miss: “Area 21 Cusco – Cusco, Peru”.

AREA 51 MIGHT BE BARRICADED by barbed wire and military guards, but this open-air exhibit welcomes all intrepid travelers. Signs that say Abducción Gratis (“Abduction Free”) and the looming figure of a crashed UFO greet visitors, encouraging guests to meet ET’s distant relatives. Situated atop a hill on the outskirts of Cusco along a winding path, visitors can pose with an assortment of extraterrestrials of all shapes, sizes, and home planets.

However, this is more than a kitschy roadside attraction or opportunity for an Instagram photo-op. The interactive art compilation, crafted by Tupaq Kamariy Candia, perfectly melds Peruvian culture and science fiction, illuminating Peru’s rich history with the cosmos….

(11) I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS. Buffalo NASFiC guests of honor Kaja and Phil Foglio took a stroll outside the convention.

(12) REBEL MOON PODCAST PREQUEL. “Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Announces Surprising Spinoff” at Comicbook.com.

Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon is getting a prequel. Netflix has announced The Seneschal, an upcoming narrative fiction podcast that will take audiences 500 years before the events of Rebel Moon to explore the origins of the robot knights, the Jimmys. The new podcast is set to debut with its first episode on July 29th with five additional episodes dropping weekly wherever you listen to podcasts.

“Now that you’ve met the Jimmys in the movie, I want to tell their story, their creation, and how they came to be,” Snyder said in a video teaser for the podcast. “I can’t wait for you to listen.”

The Seneschal will star Fallout‘s Ella Purnell as the voice of Raina, Naveen Andrews as Grigory, Alfred Enoch as Adwin, Peter Serafinowicz as Bartholomew, and Jason Isaacs as King Ulmer. You can check out the official description of The Seneschal below.

(13) ROSSEAU, LEWIS AND L’ENGLE. The Science Fiction Makers is free to view on YouTube.

The Science Fiction Makers: Rosseau, Lewis and L’Engle is a feature documentary that examines three integral writers who over the past century wrote within the Christian Science Fiction genre. Through interviews with scholars and current writers, reenactments, archival materials and excerpts from their works, we explore a genre that has been counterculture since its beginning. They were outsiders within the larger Sci-Fi genre and they would face harsh criticism, dismissal, and even hostility from all sides for putting their faith and imagination into their writing. In the end, Victor Rosseau, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L’Engle were pioneers of a sub-genre that would doggedly survive and continue to influence popular culture to this day.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/9/24 We Also Walk Cats (But Not Through Walls)

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(1) FIRST LAWS OF ROBOTICS. South China Morning Post has a few details —  “China’s Laws of Robotics: Shanghai publishes first humanoid robot guidelines”.

Shanghai has published China’s first governance guidelines for humanoid robots, calling for risk controls and international collaboration, as tech giants like Tesla showed off their own automatons at the country’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) conference.

Makers of humanoid robots should guarantee that their products “do not threaten human security” and “effectively safeguard human dignity”, according to a new set of guidelines published in Shanghai during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) on Saturday.

They should also take measures that include setting up risk warning procedures and emergency response systems, as well as give users training on the ethical and lawful use of these machines, according to the guidelines.

The document was penned by five Shanghai-based industry organisations including the Shanghai Law Society, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Association and the National and Local Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre.

…China has made it a goal to have mass production of humanoid robots by 2025 and wants global leadership in the sector by 2027, according to a plan published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in November last year.

By 2027, humanoid robots should become “an important new engine of economic growth” in China, the MIIT urged. Robots are expected to be popularised in industries including healthcare, home services, agriculture and logistics, according to the document….

(2) 3RD ANNUAL STURGEON SYMPOSIUM REGISTRATION. Registration is now open for the 3rd Annual Sturgeon Symposium, Oct 24-25, celebrating the groundbreaking work of author and critic Samuel R. Delany. The symposium will include a reading by the winner of the Sturgeon Award for best speculative fiction story published in 2023, scholarly panels, and appearances by Delany himself. Fee waiver available for students and others with financial need. Join us!

Register here: Sturgeon Symposium | Stars in Our Pockets: Celebrating Samuel R. Delany Tickets, Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite T-shirt, lunch, and Thursday reception are included with registration.

More information here, including updates to schedule: 

(3) VIRTUAL STOKERCON PANEL REPORTS. Lee Murray has put together highly informative summaries of two panels convened during the Horror Writers Association’s 2024 Virtual StokerCon event.

Trigger Warning: This article addresses issues of grief, loss, and mental health.

Moderated with compassion by Mo Moshaty, an author-producer with experience working closely with death doulas, the panel commenced with a round-robin of introductions, including the panellists’ relevant work, and also their particular interest in the topic of grief horror. 

Panelists included Mark Mathews, Clay McLeod Chapman, Nat Cassidy, Katherine (Kat) Silva, Ally Malinenko, and Laura Keating.

From the opening comments, it was clear that this was going to be a confronting and also humbling session, with panelists sharing their own experiences of trauma and grief, with their specific experiences discussed in more detail over the course of the panel. 

Moshaty kicked off the discussion by stating that grief, as a universal emotion, touches everyone in society, so it follows that we would want to represent grief in our horror literature. Mark Matthews and Nat Cassidy agreed that horror is a genre that is grounded in grief. Clay McLeod Chapman admitted to feeling inspired and intimidated to talk frankly about the topic, but also that he expected the discussion to be eye-opening and cathartic. He was especially interested in how we move through grief while also tackling it in our work….

Striking a sustainable work-life balance for the long-game in horror takes time and experience. Eric LaRocca, Christa Carmen, Ace Antonio-Hall (Nzondi), Pamela Jeffs, and EV Knight offer their insights in a panel moderated by L. E. Daniels on how to protect our bodies and minds as we navigate dark fiction.

Recently, I had the pleasure to attend the Self-Care for Horror Writers panel offered in the virtual space at StokerCon 2024. Given the close alignment of the topic to the work of the HWA Wellness Committee and our Mental Health Initiative, this panel was a must-view for me, and I wasn’t disappointed. Expertly moderated by Bram Stoker-nominee and Wellness Committee member L. E. Daniels, the discussion was wide-ranging and engaging, with speakers offering insightful gems and tried-and-true strategies for maintaining well-being. Key points are summarised in this report.   

Daniels began by asking her panelists how they have developed a sustainable work-life balance for the long game that is writing, publishing, and writers’ events….

(4) SCOTS GOTHS. [Item by Steven French.] For those who might be in the Edinburgh area in September, here’s an interesting event at the National Library of Scotland – and it’s free! “Treasures: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Scottish Gothic Tradition”, Thursday, September 5 at 17:30 at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Hear from Dr. Emily Alder and Professor Daniel Cook, both leading experts in the field of Gothic literature, as they consider the ways in which Frankenstein and the Gothic permeate Scottish fiction to this day. Chaired by one of our foremost cultural commentators and interviewers, Dr. Alistair Braidwood.

With the recent success of the film adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s ‘Poor Things’, and the debt Gray’s novel owes to ‘Frankenstein’ and Gothic fiction, how might we consider the influence of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece on subsequent writers and their work? Where does James Hogg’s ‘Justified Sinner’, Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, or more recent works by Muriel Spark, James Robertson, Alice Thompson, A. L. Kennedy, and Alasdair Gray fit into a Scottish Gothic tradition?

This event celebrates our new Treasures display, featuring items relating to Byron and Mary Shelley.

(5) RETRO PIXEL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Regarding the July 5 Pixel Scroll’s “(9) SCIENCE EXHIBITION IN LONDON” by Steven French, who wrote, “If anyone happens to be in London over the weekend, there’s some neat stuff going on at the Royal Society…”

Actually, it lasted the previous four weekdays too. I usually go and was, indeed, there this year wearing my climate science hat.

Jonathan Cowie at the Royal Society exhibition

At the exhibition, I am pointing to a graph of past temperatures as revealed by a 900,000 year Antarctic ice core at a particular point called the Mid-Brunhes Event before which glacials were less cold with interglacials being more cold, and after this point where – like today – glacials are colder and interglacials warmer. ‘Why is this so?’ you may well ask. Alas, we don’t know, though theories abound.

Antarctic ice core drilling continues. We are currently looking at another location where the ice hopefully has a record going back over a million years: ideally to 1.5 million years so as to cover the Mid-Pleistocene Transition which saw a major change to glacial-interglacial cycles that was possibly due to the arrival of large, long-term ice over Antarctica and substantive northern hemisphere glacial ice sheets. (At least, that’s the working hypothesis I go with.)

This year, six of us went to the Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition, including another member of the SF² Concatenation team.

If you like science – and many science fiction fans do – then this annual event is worth checking out.

If you need post-exhibition sustenance, the near-by Golden Lion pub is sufficiently off the tourist track that while it is usually busy Mondays to Fridays up until 7.45 it then quietens down. It has hand-pump beers and reasonable hot pub food but note it closes early Mon-Thurs at 10pm. On the way there, you can see typical 19th century West-End London architecture.  Some old buildings have been demolished, but the past decade or so has seen developers knock down buildings but keep the frontage walls: so the building looks the same from the outside but is completely modern inside.

The Royal Society (Britain’s Science Academy) is housed in Germany’s former London embassy up to World War II.  Its (the Society’s) President’s office today has a marble swastika in the floor (under a carpet but conserved as the swastika apparently has a heritage preservation order on it).

Keep an eye out next year in early July for another Royal Society summer exhibition. Avoid the weekend day as that is very crowded (Dublin Worldcon levels of crowding) with parents bringing children.

(6) THE INSTALLMENT PLAN. Eugen Bacon offers an intriguing alternative at Reach Your Apex: “What if you wrote your novel story-by-story, using your strength as an author of short stories?” — “For Writers: Writing the Novel – For Short Story Authors”.

…Maybe you’ve even won or been a finalist in awards with your short story, you’ve been killing it in anthologies—as in editors have you on speed dial, critics raving about your short story (you kinda hog the lot, you’re getting a bit self-conscious about it—maybe not, it’s fucking awesome). And you have a short story collection or three… But your mate, your family, maybe a literary agent… has been on your case, as in: “So where’s that novel?”

And imposter syndrome is creeping in, and you feel you gotta write that effin novel.

Or maybe you’ve written a short story you like so much, you want it as a starting point for a novel. Perhaps more characters are popping up, too many to contain in a short story. Or maybe you want to stretch the story—by timeline or theme or view point. The start is the same, the closing is the same, but the inside of the story is becoming longer. It demands more history, more world-building, a deeper look. Now you really need that novel.

But short stories are your strength. You don’t want to get entangled in a tortured story or a runaway plot. What if the short story is just what it is—the point of it could be lost in expanding it. Who wants a bloody novel? You do. What if the short story has told itself out: do you really need that novel? Yes, bloody yes, every inch of you shouts.

But you do love the energy in a short story—yes, Carver: Get in, get out. Don’t linger.   

So what if you could retain all that you love about the short story, and still write that novel? What if you could write about a moment in time, something experimental and decentralized, something flexible, economic, dynamic, mimetic, metaphoric, immediate, intense—and it’s still a novel?

This is how it happens: What if you wrote your novel story-by-story, using your strength as an author of short stories?…

(7) PIDGIN DROPPINGS.  “Preliminary Notes on the Delvish Dialect” by Bruce Sterling at Medium.

…Also, the human owners/managers of Large Language Models have extensively toned-up and tuned-down these neural network/deep learners/foundation-platforms, so that these “writers” won’t stochastically-parrot the far-too-human, offensive, belligerent, and litigous material that abounds in their Common-Crawl databases.

The upshot of this effort is a new dialect. It’s a distinct subcultural jargon or cant, the world’s first patois of nonhuman origin. This distinctive human-LLM pidgin is a high-tech, high-volume, extensively distributed, conversational, widely spoken-and-read textual output that closely resembles natural human language. Although it appears as words, it never arises from “words” — instead, it arises from the statistical relationships between “tokens” as processed by pre-trained transformers employing a neural probabilistic language model.

And we’ll be reading a whole lot of it. The effort to spread this new, nonhuman dialect is a colossal technical endeavor that ranks with the likes of nuclear power and genetically modified food. So it’s not a matter of your individual choice, that you might choose to read it or not to read it; instead, much like background radioactivity and processed flour from GMO maize, it’s already everywhere.

Technically, this brave-new-world dialect is actually a wide number of different Language-Model idiolects, which arise from different databases and different LLM training methods. Machine-translation AIs speak a thousand human languages at once. Consumer-facing chatbots speak with courtly circumlocutions. LLMs exist that are specially trained for marketing, warfare, cooking, legal boilerplate, code generation, website design. And so on….

(8) HALF PAST HUMAN… [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In recent years I have moved more from the current climate change issue into looking at the deep time evolution of the Earth system as well as that of life. (This is the ‘co-evolution of life and planet’ narrative in case any of you were wondering.) It is a big topic, but one of the things I have been looking at is not just where we have come from (and how) but where we are going. One instance (of a number) is that across deep-time both geology and biology have seen increasing ‘information’: each key step in deep-time evolution has seen increased information (in the geological record) and increased information processing (in the case of biology). However, we (modern humans) are now using technology, starting with using new alloys not found in nature to make ploughs which in turn helped us sustain a larger population and a non-agrarian population which could do things like science (as well as paint pretty pictures etc). And now our technology itself is processing more information.  If DNA were represented as information (and we have already coded all the sonnets of Shakespeare as DNA) then the amount of computer information we hold globally now rivals (if not exceeds – my last data point for this was over half a decade ago) the DNA in life planet-wide….

The other thing that has happened across deep time is that we have seen earlier stages of life incorporated into more advanced stages: for example prokaryotes became incorporated into eukaryotes through endosymbiosis. Which begs the question of whether we will merge with information processing technology…

Here I venture possibly ‘yes’ but not necessarily (biomedical treatments aside) with a huge load of invasive technologies embedded in our bodies like the Star Trek’s Borg.

Instead, we will increasingly interact with technology, and we can all see how our society is (in one sense sadly) increasingly digital.  We increasingly carry technology around with us (smartphones) and even wear it, for example, joggers these days can wear a watch that keeps track of their pulse.

Are we becoming more like cyborgs????

Well, you have had a taste of my musings (if you want more, you’ll have to ask for a talk at a con). But I’m a bio-/geoscientist.  The SF view of cyborgs tends to be more engineering orientated. Witness the $6 million man… we can build him faster, better… Though none of the ladies thought to tell Steve Austin that faster is not always better. But if you do want a more engineering/physics approach to the cyborg trope then it’s Isaac Arthur to the rescue…

It was, this last weekend, sci-fi Sunday over at “Science Futures with Isaac Arthur” where he looked at “Cyborg Civilizations”. Is this where we are heading? Isaac thinks that cyborgs may be a way to colonise the galaxy…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 9, 1944 – Glen Cook, 80.

By Paul Weimer: Glen Cook is a trailblazer whose fingerprints are all over modern fantasy in two separate subgenres.

Let’s put aside some of his interesting single novels  such as Tower of Fear, which is an interesting standalone fantasy novel, and A Matter of Time, where he shows that he can do twisty time travel in a Cold War setting. 

Glen Cook in 2011. Photo by Harmonia Amanda.

First up, Glen Cook doesn’t get enough love, I think, for his Garrett PI series. I’ve seen more prominent authors take up his mantle, but Garrett is the true heir to Lord Darcy (but in a secondary fantasy world) of a private investigator doing his job on the mean streets of TunFaire. The Titular Garrett is a character out of mystery fiction (and really the novels lean more heavily into mystery than the fantasy, for all being in a city of multiple species and magic). Garrett follows a lot of tropes that readers of, say, Raymond Chandler will see right away. Garrett isn’t overly ambitious, he just wants enough to get by day by day, but trouble keeps finding him (and yes, this is hardboiled detective fiction, so the trouble includes the cops (the watch), the mob (the outfit), femme fatales) and much more. I get the sense that Cook had a hell of a lot of run writing them (a dozen or so at this point).  Great literature? No.  Entertaining? If you are a fan of the Chandler school of writing and also like SFF, get thee to a bookseller. I’ve seen the fingerprints of Garett in other characters and authors, but few really capture the idea as well as Cook does.

But it is epic fantasy where Cook really sings and really has had his influence. Even beyond some of his other fantasy series, I am referring here to The Black Company.  Grimdark before Grimdark was ever a thing, the story of a band of mercenaries who get caught up in wars to decide the fate of the world, grey protagonists in a world of black to white and all the shades, The Black Company is one of the ur-texts for writers like Abercrombie, Erikson, and their ilk. (I could see the fingerprints of The Black Company as inspiration for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s House of Open Wounds, for instance). The Black Company members are caught in intrigues between themselves and their superiors, desperately try to survive hopeless battles they are thrown in, and slowly start to learn about their own origins and history. The cast shifts and changes across the series (and sub series), but the core of the idea of an elite mercenary unit working mostly for rather disreputable and treacherous powers is one that holds up to this day. The Bridgeburners, Caul Reachey’s Men, and many others owe their existence to Croaker and his crew.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) CAGE MATCH. Variety reports “Spider-Man Noir Series at Amazon, MGM+ Casts Brendan Gleeson”.

Brendan Gleeson has joined the cast of the upcoming Spider-Man Noir series at Amazon, Variety has learned from sources.

This marks one of Gleeson’s first announced project since his Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated turn in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Gleeson will star in the series opposite previously announced series lead Nicolas Cage as well as the recently cast Lamorne Morris. The show, now titled “Spider-Noir,” was formally ordered to series in May with Cage in the lead role. As previously reported, the show will debut domestically on MGM+’s linear channel and then globally on Amazon Prime Video….

(12) OVERTIME. Futurism takes notes while “Former Astronaut Explains How the Astronauts Stranded in Space Might Be Feeling”.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are still stranded on the International Space Station after Boeing’s plagued Starliner spacecraft finally managed to drop them off last month.

Since then, technical issues affecting the spacecraft have delayed their return journey indefinitely, with multiple helium leaks kicking off an investigation.

Williams and Wilmore were originally meant to return on June 14 — over three weeks ago — and NASA has yet to announce when its latest attempt will be to bring them back down to Earth.

It raises an interesting question: how are Williams and Wilmore feeling about the delay? One former colleague says that the extended stay on board the orbital outpost could actually be a blessing rather than a curse.

“Well, my first reaction was it’s probably good news for the two Boeing astronauts,” retired Air Force colonel and NASA astronaut Terry Virts told NPR. “They’re, you know, they get a few bonus weeks in space. And you never know when your next space flight is going to happen, and so I’m sure the astronauts are happy to get some bonus time and space.”

Virts also argued that the rest of the station’s crew would be “happy” to get some “free labor.”…

… Virts also took the opportunity to send a message to Williams and Wilmore.

“I would just say enjoy it,” he told NPR. “And stay busy. You don’t want to, you know, just sit around. But I know these two, they’re not going to sit around. And I’m sure NASA will have plenty of work for them to do.”

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Astrophysicist Dr Smethurst at Dr. Becky YouTube Channel takes a look at some of the science portrayed in the SF series Battlestar Galactica. 12-minute video below.

In this episode of Astrophysicist reacts we’re watching Battlestar Galactica season 1 episode 1 “33” to pick out the science from the fiction in this sci-fi show. We’re chatting about faster than light speed travel, special relativity including time dilation and length contraction, and Newton’s third law of motion.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Mlex, 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.]

Pixel Scroll 7/5/24 Shhhh, The Pixels Are Resting Right Now, Let’s Not Disturb Them

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(1) SHERYL BIRKHEAD’S FANZINE COLLECTION. [Item by Rich Lynch.] I’m sad to report that my friend Sheryl Birkhead unfortunately is now in the midst of severe vascular dementia.  This is resulting in her being relocated from her house into an assisted living situation.  As a result, her house (in Montgomery County, MD) will be put up for sale soon, and in the near future there will need to be a disposition of her extensive collection of fanzines, many of which are historically valuable.

So, on her behalf, I am looking for indications of interest from university libraries which have existing collections of fanzines.  Sheryl’s collection will be a significant and valuable addition to one of these library collections.

If you have a contact with a university library fanzine collection curator, please pass this information on to him/her. I am the point of contact and I can be reached at [email protected]

Your assistance is appreciated in helping to preserve this valuable collection.

(2) FRANKENSTEIN AND BILBO COMMAND BIG BUCKS. A first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sold for $843,000, and a first edition presentation copy of The Hobbit went for $300,000 in Heritage Auctions’ The William A. Strutz Library, Part I, Rare Books Signature® Auction yesterday. “One For the Books: Inaugural Auction Featuring Selections from William Strutz’s Celebrated Library”.

Frankenstein was published in three volumes on January 1, 1818, by a small London publishing house, Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, with a small print run of 500 copies. The first edition appeared anonymously, and featured an unsigned preface by Percy Shelley, and a dedication to Mary’s father, philosopher William Godwin. Mary Shelley didn’t publicly claim her novel until four years later, when her novel was adapted into a popular play.

Also:

…what is now the most valuable Hobbit in the world, a presentation copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel that realized $300,000.

Bidders also fought over a first edition presentation copy of Tolkien’s 1937 The Hobbit, featuring a dust jacket — likewise the creation of Tolkien — so brilliant-bright its snow-capped mountains seem to burst out of its famously verdant landscape. Tolkien gifted this copy to dear friends, writing inside, “Charles & Dorothy Moore / from. / J.R.R.T / with love / September 1937.”

(3) THE SOUNDEST BITES. The Big Think excerpts Guy P. Harrison’s Damn You, Entropy! 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes: “31 genius sci-fi quotes that offer real-world wisdom”.

…Science is our most effective tool or process for discovering and understanding reality. It also enables us to create technologies with godlike powers. Unfortunately, this comes with the risk of placing too much trust in scientists and too much reliance on technology. The question of who gets to control and benefit most from deadly, invasive, or dehumanizing technology is a common science-fiction theme. 

“When a population is dependent on a machine, they are hostages of the men who tend the machines.” — Robert A. Heinlein, “The Roads Must Roll,” 1940 short story

“Aren’t these the people who taught us how to annihilate ourselves? I tell you, my friends, science is too important to be left to the scientists.” — Carl Sagan, Contact, 1985 novel

“It has undoubtedly occurred to you, as to all thinking people of your day, that the scientists have done a particularly abominable job of dispensing the tools they have devised. Like careless and indifferent workmen they have tossed the products of their craft to gibbering apes and baboons.”  — Raymond F. Jones, This Island Earth, 1952 novel

On the other hand, prominent astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote a science-fiction novel in the 1950s that contained the suggestion that scientists don’t have enough power. 

“Has it ever occurred to you, Geoff, that in spite of all the changes wrought by science—by our control over inanimate energy, that is to say—we still preserve the same old social order of precedence? Politicians at the top, then the military, and the real brains at the bottom.” — Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud, 1957 novel…

(4) SCAM I AM. Victoria Strauss investigates “The Curious Case of Fullers Library and Its Deceptive Link Requests” at Writer Beware.

…All of the websites targeted for Fullers’ link suggestions include resource pages or otherwise offer lists of outbound links, and each suggested link is seeded across multiple recipient sites: for example, a websearch on the rain garden article yields six pages of results, with many different “student” names supposedly responsible for recommending it. The articles are, for the most part, like Nora’s: superficial but not overtly bogus, just the kind of thing that you could believe an enthusiastic young student might find helpful.

As for the sites to which the suggested links direct, in some cases they are a semi-plausible match for the articles they host (for example, an article on paper bag crafts hosted at a printing company, and an article on pickleball hosted at a playground equipment vendor), but more often it’s like the examples above: the article has zero relevance to its host, and isn’t accessible from the host menu. Many of these hosts–some of which are pretty shady-seeming–are home to multiple Fullers-recommended articles.

In other words, Fullers is running a link building scam….

(5) SFF AUDIO DRAMA. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s Radio 4 (formerly the Home Service) airs some excellent audio dramas with some solid SF in the mix.  The latest such offering is The Skies Are Watching.

Heather Haskins went missing two years ago. Discovered aboard a flight without a ticket or identification, she now believes she’s a woman named Coral Goran, it’s 1938, and that she was abducted on the night of Orson Welles’ infamous</I> War of the Worlds <I>broadcast. Her family struggles to come to terms with this turn of events while searching for answers…

Episode 1 airs Friday, July 5 and can for a month be accessed here.

(6) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 5, 1957 — Jody Lynn Nye, 67. 

By Paul Weimer. I mainly know the work of Nye as a collaborator and facilitator, working with other people’s work.  Sure, she has written a slew of short stories, and several novels of her own. But when I think of her work, I don’t think of those as much as I should.  Instead, I think of her work with Robert Asprin, and Anne McCaffrey. 

Neither is a surprise. One of the strong arrows in Nye’s quiver is humor, and collaboration with Asprin on some of the later works in the MYTH series must have seemed natural to both of them when they decided to do it. Both engage in both broad humor and subtle wordplay, laugh out loud at the moment, and later poleaxing bits of humor as profound as they are funny. And coming in as she did late in the series, it provided a fresh infusion of ideas for the MYTH series at the time and helped extend the series into the 2000s. 

Jody Lynn Nye

And then there is Anne McCaffrey. The first thing I read by Nye is not her standalone novels, or MYTH, but rather her guide to Pern. Even then, intensely interested in worldbuilding, of COURSE I had to pick this one up (it would be one of several I picked up, including one on Julian May’s Pliocene exile, the Visual Guide to Castle Amber, et cetera).  I only in retrospect realized that the Nye who wrote this would be the one who collaborated with McCaffrey in the other arena McCaffrey is known more: The Ship Who Sang. That original novella, way back in the 1960’s led to Nye and McCaffrey collaborating on more stories and novels about a sentient spaceship. Nye also continued the series on her own, as did other authors like S M Stirling.  (In point of fact, Nye seems to like to do that, to continue on series. She did it with MYTH and with some other series as well, extending and building them outward. 

And then there is the odd collaborative/shared world Exiled Claw, which is an alternate earth where intelligent bipedal cats (think Kzinti but not as stupidly aggressive ) take on intelligent dinosaurs in a bronze age/early iron age technology verse.  Nye shows off yet another arrow in her quiver in those two volumes. Pity they stopped after two volumes and not even Nye has had the opportunity to write any more. Alas!

It would be a Mythstake, indeed, to discount Nye’s work in the SFF field as “merely” being collaborative. (She also teaches at DragonCon every year, too).  Collaborations and working in other people’s sandboxes is hard, not easier, than original ideas, and Nye has a talent (and clearly, a proclivity) for it.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) SCIENCE EXHIBITION IN LONDON. [Item by Steven French.] If anyone happens to be in London over the weekend, there’s some neat stuff going on at the Royal Society: “Summer Science Exhibition 2024”.

Discover cutting-edge research and innovation at the Royal Society’s unmissable Summer Science Exhibition, taking place from 2 – 7 July 2024, an interactive experience open to everyone with a curious mind. This is a free event and no ticket is required. 

This year, visitors can get hands-on with personal brain scanners, hear real ice core samples from Antarctica, marvel at a chandelier made from a waste product, or learn how stem cells are revealing secrets of the embryo. Find out more about the 14 main exhibits and plan your visit.

One of the exhibits is about “DUNE: The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment”.

DUNE, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, is a cutting-edge experiment developed by the international neutrino physics community to study a broad range of science, including neutrino oscillations, neutrinos from nearby supernovae, and proton decays.

The Near Detector of the experiment will be hosted by Fermilab, IL, USA, with its Far Detector 1300 km away in South Dakota at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). Surprisingly, no tunnel is needed for the neutrinos to travel through because these ghostly particles pass easily through soil and rock as they rarely interact with matter. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LNBF) at Fermilab will deliver a neutrino beam of unprecedented power, which is needed for the detailed measurements DUNE is due to take of such elusive particles.

Probably the most well-known goal of the experiment is to study neutrino oscillations. This has driven the large-scale design of the experiment as neutrinos need to travel a large distance for oscillation to take place. This will help solve some fundamental questions, such as why the Universe is made of matter and not antimatter, and provide more information about the masses and nature of neutrinos….

(10) CHINA SMASH! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Not satisfied, one supposes, with the NASA effort to redirect asteroids in the DART mission, China claims they will one up that by “smashing“ a 30-meter asteroid by 2030. (It might be noted that the smaller asteroid, (Dimorphos) of the double asteroid NASA targeted—the one actually impacted—was ~170-meters and thus much more massive than China’s target.)

All that said, having two nations working on planetary defense is much better than having only a single nation doing so. “China Planning to Smash Asteroid in Planetary Defense Test” at Futurism.

China is planning to launch a spacecraft with the aim of smashing a nearby asteroid, in an impact designed to test the feasibility of protecting against any Earth-threatening asteroids like the one that killed off the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.

Researchers outlined their plans in a recent paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration and spotted by The Planetary Society, saying that a test mission should happen before 2030 and that an asteroid with a diameter of about 30 meters will be the target….

(11) A BOON FROM ARES. The LAist gets a scientist to explain to us “Why a new method of growing food on Mars matters more on Earth”.

That led to a career in space agriculture, figuring out how to grow food on other planets. She credits time later spent living among the Kambeba, an Indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest she is descended from, for her conviction that it is essential that she do more than explore distant worlds. She wants to preserve this one, too.

“It’s a very conscientious topic within the world of space agriculture science,” said Gonçalves, noting that “every single piece of research that we produce must have direct benefits to Earth.”

That ideal makes her latest research particularly timely. She and a team at the Wageningen University & Research Centre for Crop System Analysis found that an ancient Maya farming technique called intercropping works surprisingly well in the dry, rocky terrain of Mars.

Their findings, published last month in the journal PLOS One, have obvious implications for the possibility of exploring or even settling that distant planet. But understanding how to grow crops in the extraordinarily harsh conditions on other planets does more than ensure those colonizing them can feed themselves. It helps those here at home continue to do the same as the world warms.

“People don’t really realize [this], because it seems far away, but actually our priority is to develop this for the benefit of Earth,” said Gonçalves. “Earth is beautiful, and it’s unique, and it’s rare, and it’s fragile. And it needs our help.”…

Intercropping, or growing different crops in close proximity to one another to increase the size and nutritional value of yields, requires less land and water than monocropping, or the practice of continuously planting just one thing. Although common among small farmers, particularly across Latin America, Africa, and China, intercropping remains a novelty in much of the world. This is partly because of the complexity of managing such systems and largely unfounded concerns about yield loss and pest susceptibility. Modern plant breeding programs also tend to focus on individual species and a general trend toward less diversity in the field….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Host David Agranoff is joined by Alec Nevala-Lee and Seth Heasley on Postcards From A Dying World #148 to discuss “SF Hall of Fame #6 Nightfall by Isaac Asimov”.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/25/24 Everybody Must Get Scrolled

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(1) TENNANT LENDS SUPPORT. “Doctor Who actor David Tennant wears trans rights T-shirt by Canadian designer: ‘You will have to go through me’” at Yahoo!

…In an effort to get more attention for their cause, Brocksom started sending T-shirts to creators with large followings. A friend encouraged them to send one to actor Tennant, whose child identifies as non-binary. Tennant is no stranger to allyship, often speaking up and wearing Ts and pins in supports of the LGBTQ+ community on red carpets and awards ceremonies.

Last year, at the press launch for Good Omens‘ second season, he wore a shirt that read: “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks.”

Brocksom’ husband found an address for Tennant’s fan mail and they mailed him a package of T-shirts with all their designs.

“I didn’t think it would go anywhere,” Brocksom tells Yahoo Canada. “I thought he’d wear one to a doctor’s appointment with his kids or something, and then the message would be out there.”

On Friday, Brocksom woke up to hundreds of T-shirt orders. Tennant’s wife, Georgia, had posted a photo of him wearing their “You will have to go through me” T-shirt on Instagram where she has more than 410,000 followers. The actor and his family attended their children’s school Pride events….

(2) BIRTHDAY HONOURS. This came out June 14 but it’s news to me! “The King’s Birthday Honours List 2024”. No sff figures listed that I can see, but Bookseller spotted a bunch of authors and other contributors to the arts.

Monica Ali, Joseph Coehlo, and Niall Ferguson were among the authors recognized on the King’s Birthday Honors List in the U.K., the Booksellerreported. …

Niall Ferguson, who was awarded a knighthood, told the Oxford Mail, “When an individual is honored by the King, implicitly his formative influences are the real recipients of the honor.” 

Children’s Laureate Coelho (OBE) was recognized for services to the arts, to children’s reading and to literature. Other authors on the honors list include Susie Dent (MBE), Rory Cellan-Jones (OBE), and Jamila Gavin (MBE).

Richard Charkin (OBE for services to literature), a recent past president of the International Publishers Association, former CEO of Macmillan Publishers, executive director of Bloomsbury from 2007 to 2018, an executive at a range of other publishers, and author of the memoir, My Back Pages…

Other honorees include Jenny Brown, founder of literary agency Jenny Brown Associates, who was given an OBE for services to literature; Nicholas Poole, past CEO of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (OBE for services to libraries, to the arts and to museums); and Di Speirs, audio executive editor for books at the BBC (MBE for services to broadcasting and to literature). 

Also honored were Sarah Hosking (MBE), who founded Hosking Houses Trust, as well as librarians Sally McInness and Julie Kay.

(3) CAT CANCEL CULTURE. At Camestros Felapton, “A Cat Reads Hyperion by Dan Simmons” begins with this howl against injustice.

[From the desk of Timothy the Talking Cat]

As the foremost editor in Science Fiction, I was once again shocked not to win the Locus Award for Best Editor despite my impressive track record of not just editing books but also editing small wildlife into a variety of interesting shapes. I immediately cancelled my subscription to Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly in protest as I don’t have a subscription to Locus but, let’s face it, they are all in on it, they are all part of the Big Magazine cabal controlling the media and if we don’t all chip in and send a message that the ordinary folk will not put up with this kind of nonsense then where will be? In my case, I’d be in the drawing room with nothing to read because those spiteful wretches at Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly refused to send me this month’s edition on the spurious grounds that I hadn’t paid them. It is cancel culture gone mad when publishers start boycotting tax-payers just for having opinions….

(4) CROWDFUNDING A LADY ASTRONAUT COLLECTION. Mary Robinette Kowal today launched a Kickstarter appeal for Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts, a collection of 9 short stories in the Lady Astronaut Series written by her, including one written just for this collection….

In 1952, an asteroid slammed into Washington, DC and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, triggering a climate crisis that threatens life on Earth.

Through four novels and numerous short stories, readers follow the pioneering women who strive to save humanity. The series’ primary protagonist, Dr. Elma York, a pilot and experienced mathematician, battles misogyny and social anxiety while planting her flag as the first Lady Astronaut. She and her fellow scientists reach for the Moon and beyond, bringing lasting change for humanity.

Through the Lady Astronaut Universe, Kowal has shone a light on the real-life accomplishments of women in space science and inspired a new generation entering STEM fields.

In the opening hours the Kickstarter has already scored pledges in excess of its $30,000 goal.

(5) SF IN BULGARIA & ROMANIA. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] With a friend of mine and a fan from Romania we published a paper in Locus. It is available online now: “SF in Bulgaria & Romania: How Many Dwarfs Does It Take to Match a Giant?” by Valentin D. Ivanov & Cristian Tamaș. From the June 2024 issue of Locus magazine. Locus hardly needs advertisement help, but the speculative fiction in our countries always does!

Here’s an excerpt:

Outside of the vast English-speaking fandom lies a tapestry of diverse and weakly interlinked communities from the countries with small language bases. These languages, and the nations that speak them are often – because of inertia, rather than ill intent – perceived as “minor.” Indeed, they are minor in one critical aspect: as literary markets. This circumstance has a profound effect on their literature….

Attentive readers may have noticed the careful choice of words in the title. The speculative fiction communities of “minor” countries do not want to fight the giants. We aspire to become a giant ourselves, albeit multifaceted, multilingual, and multicultural, by means of teamwork and cooperation….

(6) NEW UNITS. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] More stuff I never knew existed. “Minotaur Sex: The Best New Smut Genre” in New York Magazine.

…Human-monster pairings are what sets monster romance apart from its close cousin, the wildly successful genre of romantasy, a genre epitomized by Sarah J. Maas’s blockbuster A Court of Thorns and Roses series. In those books, more established and more human-adjacent paranormal creatures like elves, dragons, and fae dominate the stories, and humans are reduced to bit players, if they figure into the books at all. But in monster romance, we’re usually in a world that’s vaguely similar to Earth, or at least connected to it in some way. For many readers, ACOTAR was the gateway drug to other books with nonhuman characters. Others found their way there via fanfic, where the themes that dominate these books became established over the years via an iterative, collaborative process that gradually hardened into tropes. They generate reams of conversation. In one popular TikTok, Laura Whitney at first seems to scoff at monster-romance readers by saying, “People are literally out here reading monster romance?” Then she whispers, “Which ones?” So many people appreciated the 3,712 recommendations generated in the comments that 18,900 people have bookmarked the post.

When I first told friends about the latest turn my reading had taken, I got a lot of blank stares at first but soon fell into a delightful text exchange with a friend who has a Ph.D. and who also read Morning Glory Milking Farm. She sent me a link to Hermione Granger–Draco Malfoy fanfic that she said had taught her a lot about BDSM. I started to realize that, though many of us may be out here walking around with the latest literary fiction from Riverhead or Pantheon in our tote bags, our phones runneth over with stories of men with tails and two dicks….

(7) IF ONLY IT WAS MINUS GODZILLA. Mark Roth-Whitworth warns us: “A Review of Godzilla Minus One (all spoilers).”

This was an amazing movie, and should have had more Oscar nominations. It probably would have, if a) it had been made in the West, or b) it didn’t have Godzilla in it. The acting was wonderful. All the other good things people have said about it are true. However, they all missed the, well, kaiju in the room.

This was not a monster movie….

(8) JOHN MADDOX ROBERTS (1947-2024). The SFWA Blog has posted a tribute — “In Memoriam: John Maddox Roberts”. He died May 23 at the age of 76. Here is an excerpt:

John Maddox Roberts…, also writing as Mark Ramsay, was a prolific and best-selling science fiction, fantasy, historical, and mystery writer over the course of thirty-five years.  He was the author of many novels set in ancient Rome, including Hannibal’s Children and its sequel The Seven Hills, and the SPQR series, the first of which, now titled The King’s Gambit, was an Edgar Award finalist in 1991….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 25, 1903 — George Orwell. (Died 1950.)

By Paul Weimer: Big Brother. For genre fans, Orwell begins, and often ends at 1984. (Sometimes Animal Farm as well.)  Sure, Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell’s contribution to letters is far greater than that.  “Shooting an Elephant”, as it turned out, was the first piece by Orwell I read, before 1984, back in High School. I had heard of 1984, but not yet read it, and so when we were assigned the story to read and discuss, I was enthusiastic to engage with a story that was post-colonial in the midst of the end of British Colonialism. 

Animal Farm isn’t serious as a speculative work. Through and through, Animal Farm is an allegory and a rather pointed one. I read that next, and I didn’t need a teacher to see just how perfect an allegory it is. You may have seen the animated movie, which had the ending changed to remove some of the bite of that inescapable allegory. Accept no substitutes, read the original.

George Orwell.

But now we come to 1984. I’ve had 1984 as a fixture in my genre life ever since I picked it up in my early 20’s. Room 101 and the rest blew me away, and I realized I had seen bits of the John Hurt movie a decade earlier and not realized what I had seen. It was a sharp blow to come across scenes in the book that my dim memory of the movie foreshadowed. It only enhanced and pressed upon me the power of the narrative of Winston Smith’s story. 

1984 has cropped up in my genre life in other forms, too, than the movie and the novel. On a rainy day exploring London before Worldcon in 2014, my traveling companion and I found ourselves by a theater that was showing an adaptation of 1984. So the idea of seeing proper London theater, featuring 1984, was irresistible. My friend and I wandered around that area of the West End, eager for evening to come to see the performance. 

It was a fascinating (if brutal) metanarrative of 1984, deconstructing the world of the Party from a future where the Party had fallen. Rapt, I bought a copy of the 1984 play after the performance.  I would also find — but not attend — the play again in 2017 in Melbourne, delighted that the dark 1984 play had “followed me” on my Down Under Fan Fund trip.  Given what I choose instead to do, perhaps I should have seen it again after all. 

I’ve read and watched and listened to other versions of 1984, from audio dramas to movies.  1984 continues to follow me in my genre life. Big Brother really is watching me.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) GREEN LANTERN GETS GREEN LIGHT. (Of course I had to use that headline.) “Green Lantern Series Finally Happening at HBO” says The Hollywood Reporter.

HBO is at long last signing up with the Lantern Corps.

The premium cable outlet has given a straight-to-series order for Lanterns, based on the long-running Green Lantern characters — specifically John Stewart and Hal Jordan — from DC Comics. Chris Mundy (Ozark) will serve as showrunner on the eight-episode drama and co-write the series with Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, Lost) and Eisner Award winner Tom King, known for his work on several Batman titles, Mister Miracle and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow for DC Comics.

The (ahem) green light for Lanterns comes almost five years after what was then HBO Max began developing a Green Lantern series with producer Greg Berlanti — the mastermind of the DC Arrow-verse on The CW and one of the writers of the 2011 Green Lantern feature film that starred Ryan Reynolds…. 

(12) BACK TO BARBARELLA. Here’s the first trailer for the Sydney Sweeney Barbarella (2025).

A remake of the 1960s cult classic Barbarella is currently in the works with Sydney Sweeney set to star…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Maybe it’s time for another look at the “Young Frankenstein (1974) Bloopers & Outtakes”!

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, Valentin D. Ivanov, Dann, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern (via Robert Zimmerman’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, of course).]

Pixel Scroll 5/19/24 Come For The Chocolate, Stay For The Pixels

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(1) SMALL WONDERS IS KICKSTARTING YEAR 2. Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade have launched a Kickstarter to fund the year two of Small Wonders, a monthly online SFF magazine for flash fiction and poetry.

For the past year, Small Wonders has published original and reprint flash fiction and narrative poetry, all tinged with the wonder of other worlds both science fictional and fantastic. Now the magazine is raising funds to cover Year Two, with an initial goal of $11,000. Stretch goals include publishing a Best of Year One collection, an issue guest edited by Premee Mohamed and Chimedum Ohaegbu, and more. Backers can get discounted yearly subscriptions; a Kickstarter-only mini issue with new works by Nino Cipri, Myna Chang, Jennifer Mace, Avra Margariti, and more; and pins and stickers themed to stories and poems from Year One. The Kickstarter runs through June 3.

Each issue of Small Wonders contains three original pieces of flash fiction, three new poems, and three re-printed flash fiction stories. Issues are published as ebooks (mobi, epub, and pdf) at the first of the month, and subscribers can receive every story and poem in their inboxes as they’re published on the website.

The first year of Small Wonders succeeded beyond Cislyn and Stephen’s expectations. It published new authors and poets as well as familiar names such as John Wiswell, Ali Trotta, Premee Mohamed, and Mary Soon Lee. and included multiple Rhysling-nominated poems. They’re excited to see what year two will bring, and hope you’ll be a part of it through the Kickstarter.

(2) VOTE FOR BEST FRENCH SFF SHORT STORY OF 2022. SFSF Boréal invited readers during the month of March to nominate the best French-speaking sff short stories that were published in 2022 in Canada. The four finalists for the Prix Aurora-Boréal have been announced. Members of SFSF Boréal are invited to vote for the best story at this link. Votes must be cast by June 1. The finalists are:

  • Blouin, Geneviève, “La Vie secrète des carapaces” (Solaris 223)
  • Côté, Philippe-Aubert, “À l’Ère des Jumeaux errants” (Les Six Brumes)
  • Kurtness, J.D., “Bienvenue, Alyson” (Hannenorak)
  • Vonarburg, Élisabeth, “Into White”, (Les Six Brumes)

The Congrès Boréal will be held in Montréal, Québec from September 20-22.

(3) THE N-WORD. Wrath James White gives his conclusive answer to using the n-word in dialog: “Make It Make Sense” at Words of Wrath.

Wrath James White

I have been asked several times lately about non-Black authors using the n-word when writing character dialog. Because I am, frankly, weary of answering this question, I decided to answer it here, once and for all. 

So, here’s my answer. It is appropriate for a White author to put the n-word in a character’s mouth if it isn’t done gratuitously (ala Quinton Tarantino) where the word is just shoehorned in unnecessarily to sound cool or edgy. If the dialog feels natural and non stereotypical. If the characters themselves aren’t one dimensional caricatures and are the type of people who would use the word as part of their everyday vernacular. If it’s the appropriate word to use in the moment and another word wouldn’t work just as well, then by all means do it. Wherever another word would be just as effective, don’t do it. 

For example, if your story takes place in the 90s or early oughts, then “dog”, “playa”, “gangsta”, “playboy”, “sistah” and “bruh” would all work just as well in most situations where one Black person is talking to another. Using the n-word in place of these words is a choice and the author should definitely question their motives for making that choice. That is unless you are writing a racist character. 

Obviously, it would be absurd to have a racist character avoid using the n-word unless he’s a closeted racist. Still, even a racist doesn’t use the word in every sentence, and might even use other more creative pejoratives. And, most racists are not blatant in their racism….

…The bottom line, I can’t grant you a pass to use the n-word. Nothing I have said above will guarantee that you won’t get the taste slapped out of your mouth for including it in yourwriting. But, if you do find it necessary to use it, just like I said in a previous article about grossout and gore, make it make sense. Make it feel natural and not like a teenager or adolescent trying to shock their parents. If you don’t think you can pull that off, use another word.

(4) LEFT BEHIND? “Some fight change, while others adapt. It’s a Toy Story sort of deal,” says Ronald Kelly in “Woody, Buzz, & the Changing of the Guard” at Fear County Chronicle.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my place in an ever-growing, ever-changing horror genre. How it once was, how it is now, and if Ol’ Ron has the willpower and stamina to hang in there and keep up the pace with all the new and wildly talented authors who are flooding a market that was once relatively small and limited, both in ranks and growth. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the Pixar movie Toy Story….

You see, I’m Woody. Most of us veteran horror authors are. Woody is old-fashioned, leery of change, and a little hesitant to hand over the reins to anyone else because he likes the position he’s held for so long (Andy’s favorite and the leader of the toys). Deep down inside, he believes that he deserves to retain that position, perhaps indefinitely. Could be that he was pretty special and popular in the past, along with some of his peers (Woody’s Roundup stars Jessie, Bullseye, and even Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2). Woody likes how it is in Andy’s Room because it’s familiar, comfortable, and safe. He feels like he’s the head honcho there… not necessarily giving the orders but holding some measure of respect and authority among those around him. Even the mouthy and cantankerous Mister Potato Head looks to him for stability and guidance….

…Truthfully, very few veteran writers feel contempt and suspicion toward the swell of new storytellers bursting on the scene, but unfortunately some do. They feel challenged by progress and diversity and aren’t receptive to those who want a piece of the action. They also don’t approve of how the rules have changed, and how the dynamic of the writing world is evolving at a rapid pace. The mere thought of the Changing of the Guard horrifies them. We’ve seen it happen in social media in the past few years; an old-dog author bristles at the sudden influx of new talent in the genre and cries foul, sometimes in very volatile and unflattering ways. Some have even gone as far as losing all respect in the genre they helped trailblaze and end up being cast from the ranks for their nearsightedness, prejudice, and insolence….

(5) IN THE BEGINNING. “A Closer Look At Great Animated Title Sequences” at CartoonBrew.

In honor of Saul Bass’s birthday this month, we’re taking a look at some of the greatest animated title sequences from live-action movies (the topic of great credits sequences in animated movies is a subject for another time)….

… As Walt Disney suggested above, opening credits in the early days of movies tended to be straightforwardly informational, often created quickly by in-house art departments superimposing text over static background paintings. Even so, there are a handful of movies from the 1930s and ’40s that contain brief bits of animation during the credits. One great example is the cartoon opening of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). This scene is frequently attributed to Walter Lantz, but was actually directed by Dave Fleischer….

… Maybe the all-time classic title sequence comes from The Pink Panther (1963), by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which not only introduced a cartoon star but also introduced one of the best movie themes ever composed (by Henry Mancini). Looney Tunes director Friz Freleng supervised the sequence, while Freleng’s longtime layout artist Hawley Pratt designed the panther and Ken Harris primarily animated him. Producer David DePatie remembered the movie’s premiere: “The memories of that night will remain with me forever. The projector started to roll and as the Panther first appeared there was a ripple of laughter from the audience which quickly became whistles and roars of approval as the Panther toyed with the various titles. At the conclusion of the main title, the crowd went bananas.”…

(6) REESE WITHERSPOON, LITERARY TASTEMAKER. “When her career hit a wall, the Oscar-winning actor built a ladder made of books — for herself, and for others.” Link bypasses Paywall, courtesy Brad Verter: “Inside Reese Witherspoon’s Literary Empire”

…First and foremost, she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves. “Because that’s what women do,” she said. “No one’s coming to save us.”

Witherspoon, 48, has now been a presence in the book world for a decade. Her productions of novels like “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me” are foundations of the binge-watching canon. Her book club picks reliably land on the best-seller list for weeks, months or, in the case of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” years. In 2023, print sales for the club’s selections outpaced those of Oprah’s Book Club and Read With Jenna, according to Circana Bookscan, adding up to 2.3 million copies sold.

So how did an actor who dropped out of college (fine, Stanford) become one of the most influential people in an industry known for being intractable and slightly tweedy?

It started with Witherspoon’s frustration over the film industry’s skimpy representation of women onscreen — especially seasoned, strong, smart, brave, mysterious, complicated and, yes, dangerous women…

(7) PUBLIC FROCKING. Attention 18th-century re-enactors! “You Can’t Live in the Past, Even in a Period-Accurate Frock” contends the New York Times, although they know where you can get one.

In 2012, not long after he decided to dedicate his professional life to 18th-century wares, Casey Samson spent a weekend at a colonial-era fair in Bardstown, Ky., selling leather mugs out of a tent.

On his first night there, Mr. Samson sat alone by a crackling campfire, smelled the wood smoke and felt as if he had been transported to a different time. He knew then, he said, that he had made the right choice.

Today, Mr. Samson and his wife, Abbie, own and operate Samson Historical, a three-story business that doubles as a pseudo-museum on the downtown square in Lebanon, Ind., about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

On a recent morning, Mr. Samson, 32, walked into a small warehouse tucked behind the retail space and waxed poetic about the shop’s “great wall of waistcoats.” But there was more: “These are original sugar dippers.” And: “One of Abbie’s passions is clay pipes.” And: “All right, so: gun flints.”

There were breeches and bonnets, frocks and cloaks, candles and lanterns, hip kidneys (for extra support) and bum rolls (for that perfect silhouette). And while Samson Historical has 10 full-time employees and manufactures its own merchandise, it also works with about 40 artisans from trades that are teetering on the edge of extinction: blacksmiths, woodworkers, glass blowers, horners. A fifth-generation pipe maker from Germany handcrafts the store’s pipes.

“A lot of what we do,” Mr. Samson said, “is trying to help keep these things alive.”…

(8) MAYBE YOU WONDERED. “How the ‘B Movie’ Got Its Name” at MSN.com.

When the legendary filmmaker Roger Corman died on May 9 at the age of 98, obituaries dubbed him “the King of the B Movies”—or, even more snappily, “King of the B’s.” He earned that sobriquet by churning out hundreds of low-budget productions, often sensationalistic “exploitation films” or genre fare like horror or science fiction….

In the silent era, motion picture studios began using a tiered approach to categorize productions. When Adolph Zukor founded his Famous Players film company in 1912, he used a three-way classification. As Gerald Mast recounted in his 1971 book “A Short History Of The Movies,” Zukor initially divided his pictures into “Class A (with stage stars and stage properties, the artsy films); Class B (with established screen players); and Class C (cheap, quick features).” Mary Pickford started as a “B” actress in 1914, but her movies quickly proved more popular than Zukor’s “Class A” productions.

A two-tiered system with “Class A” and “Class B” films became the industry standard, catching on during the Great Depression when the “double feature” offered two-for-one pricing to attract customers. The main feature would have the prestigious stars and high production values, while the “B” feature would be an inexpensive, quickly produced genre film like a Western. Studios set up “B units” to produce second features, and the slapdash “B movies” were aptly nicknamed “quickies” or “cheapies.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 19, 1946 — André the Giant.  (Died 1993.) This Birthday for André René Roussimoffwho performed as André the Giant came about because (a) I really, really like The Princess Bride film and have seen it way too many times, and (b) I thought that he was charming in it as Fezzik. That said, I knew nothing about him and all his other performances, or his life story, at all.

He was a French professional wrestler of impressive height, seven feet and four inches to be precise. He would wrestle his entire life right up until he died at age forty-six of congestive heart failure after an apparent heart attack in his sleep in the Paris hotel he was staying at in order to attend his father’s funeral. It was likely associated with his untreated acromegaly which had been diagnosed some twenty-five years earlier.

His first genre role was being Bigfoot on The Six Million Dollar Man on “The Secret of Bigfoot, Part 1” and “The Secret of Bigfoot Part 2”. Naturally I’m giving you a photo of him in that role. 

Next up is being the Monster in “Heaven Is in Your Genes” on Greatest American Hero. Monster, just Monster? So, what did he look like there? Ahhh…. They apparently didn’t a budget for creating a monster which explains the generic name. I’m giving you a photo anyway so you can see what he looked like sans makeup. 

Andre the Giant on Greatest American Hero

He got to be in a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Destroyer. He played Dagoth the Dreaming God, the main antagonist of Conan. For some reason, he was uncredited. Considering what he looks like in the film, it was easy for him to go uncredited. 

Andre the Giant as Dagoth

And that brings us to his best and last genre role, that of Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. He’s played as Goldman describes him in his novel, “Fezzik. The timid, large-hearted and obedient giant who accompanies Vizzini. Fezzik loves rhymes and his friend Inigo, and he is excellent at lifting heavy things.”  

Not a long career, but an interesting one I’d say. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Tom Gauld shared his latest:

(11) SAURON TURNS HIS EYE TO YOUR WALLET. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Palantír viewing room included. Hopefully without a working Palantír just in case Melkor find a way to open the Door of Night. I mean, if you thought Sauron was bad news, you sure don’t want to deal with the OG baddy. “$460, 5,471-piece Lego Barad-dûr set comes for LOTR fans’ wallets in June” at Ars Technica. (See the set in detail at the LEGO® Icons website.)

…Sauron, Base Master of Treachery, will keep his Eye on you from atop the tower, which will actually glow thanks to a built-in light brick. The tower includes a minifig of Sauron himself, plus the Mouth of Sauron, Gollum, and a handful of Orcs.

The Lego Barad-dûr set will launch on June 1 for Lego Insiders and June 4 for everybody else. If you buy it between June 1 and June 7, you’ll also get the “Fell Beast” bonus set, with pose-able wings and a Nazgûl minifig. It doesn’t seem as though this bonus set will be sold separately, making it much harder to buy the nine Nazgûl you would need to make your collection story-accurate….

(12) SPACE AT LAST. “90-year-old Ed Dwight, 5 others blast into space aboard Blue Origin rocket” – NPR has the story. (This was Blue Origin’s 25th mission to space. The New Shepard Mission NS-25 Webcast replay is on YouTube.)

Ed Dwight, the man who six decades ago nearly became America’s first Black astronaut, made his first trip into space at age 90 on Sunday along with five crewmates aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

The flawless liftoff from a West Texas launch site marked the first passenger flight in nearly two years for the commercial space venture run by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The approximately 10-minute suborbital flight put Dwight in the history books as the oldest person ever to reach space. He beat out Star Trek actor William Shatner for that honor by just a few months. Shatner was a few months younger when he went up on a New Shepard rocket in 2021.

(13) INDIA’S NEXT MARS MISSION. Space.com says “India’s ambitious 2nd Mars mission to include a rover, helicopter, sky crane and a supersonic parachute”.

India is preparing to launch a family of seemingly sci-fi robots to Mars, perhaps as soon as late 2024.

The Mars Orbiter Mission-2 (MOM-2), or Mangalyaan-2 (Hindi for “Mars Craft”), is set to include a rover and a helicopter, like a robotic NASA duo already on Mars — the Perseverance rover and now-grounded Ingenuity. A supersonic parachute and a sky crane that will lower the rover onto the Martian surface will also be part of Mangalyaan-2, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said last week during a presentation at the Space Applications Centre in Gujarat, India Today reported….

…Media reports from late last year suggest that Mangalyaan-2 will have at least four science instruments designed to study the early history of Mars, analyze its leaking atmosphere, and look for a hypothesized dust ring around the planet generated by its two moons, Phobos and Deimos….

(14) SPEEDING UP TRAVEL TO MARS. “NASA-funded pulsed plasma rocket concept aims to send astronauts to Mars in 2 months” reports Space.com.

An innovative rocket system could revolutionize future deep space missions to Mars, reducing travel time to the Red Planet to just a few months. 

The goal of landing humans on Mars has presented a myriad of challenges, including the need to quickly transport large payloads to and from the distant planet, which, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars, would take almost two years for a round trip using current propulsion technology.The Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), under development by Howe Industries, is a propulsion system designed to be far more efficient than current methods of deep space propulsion, enabling the trip between Earth and the Red Planet to be made in just two months. Specifically, the rocket will have a high specific impulse or Isp, a measure of how efficiently an engine generates thrust. This technology could therefore enable astronauts and cargo to travel to and from Mars more efficiently and rapidly than existing spacecraft, according to a statement from NASA…

(15) THE FINEST SUPERNATURAL TALE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at the Media Death Cult YouTube Channel invites us to consider Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 novelette, ‘The Willows’, as a contender for the grand chief fountainhead of the insidious order.  It did though inspire the likes of H. P. Lovecraft.  You don’t have to buy in to the pronunciation of Danube as ‘dan-noob’ but it is the Moidelhoff way…

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

Pixel Scroll 5/18/24 Come On You Pixels, Do You Want To Scroll Forever?

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(1) R. F. KUANG’S BABEL WINS AWARD AT A CEREMONY AT THE CHENGDU SF MUSEUM. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The Chinese edition of R. F. Kuang’s Babel, as translated by Chen Yang, won the “Best Translated Work” category of the Xingyun (Chinese Nebula) Award.  The award ceremony took place in the Hugo Hall at the Chengdu SF Museum on Saturday May 18.

China.org.cn have published a brief English language article on the awards; a longer Chinese-language report, including all the winners, was published by the Xingyun Award account on WeChat/Weixin, which is where the pictures below are taken from.   A five-and-a-half-hour long video has also been posted to Weibo.

Judging by the logos in the hall and on photos from the event, the awards appear to have been sponsored by Guojiao 1573, an alcohol brand.  The aforementioned WeChat/Weixin report mentions that a member of the Pidu district local government gave a welcoming speech, but the report does not mention if there was any discussion of the 10-year science fiction plan.

(2) TRIPLETS. “Red Dwarf ‘returning to TV with 3 brand new episodes’” promises Radio Times.

It has been reported that long-running sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf will be returning for a new set of three specials in 2025, the first time the show has been seen on-screen since 2020.

British Comedy Guide has reported that one feature-length instalment will be split into three episodes, with filming set to begin in September, and stars Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules and Robert Llewellyn all returning.

Robert Llewellyn reportedy confirmed the news on his Fully Charged YouTube channel, saying: “We knew we were going to do more Red Dwarf, and we’re actually now doing it in the middle of October to the middle of November this year.

“A 90-minute special, three half-hours. So yes, we are making more. I can’t believe I’ve agreed to do it, I’m insane. I’m much too old.”

He previously told the channel: “We’ve all agreed to do more. We’re not going to do a new series, but we’re making something and it should be fun.”…

(3) BEAGLE Q&A. “Peter S. Beagle on his new novel, the hero’s journey, and why villains talk so much” at NPR.

[SCOTT] SIMON: Let me ask you about the wizard in the book ’cause he can’t keep his yap shut about what he’s hellbent on doing. Why is that?

BEAGLE: Well, you can’t possibly blame him. After all, he has been destroyed and come back. He has ridden with dragons. He knows so much about dragons, just not the important stuff. But because of his experience, he thinks he knows more than he does. And that’s fatal. I know that myself.

SIMON: That’s happened to you?

BEAGLE: It has. It has. Not with dragons, particularly….

(4) READ THE ANTHONY AWARD FINALISTS. The 2024 Bouchercon recently posted the Anthony Award Shortlists, and where one can read the short story finalists online.

(5) BWAH! Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook contends there are “25 Great Things About The Phantom Menace”. (Maybe you had trouble thinking of even one?) Seventh on his list —

I have to put “Sound Design” as one item on this list, because if wasn’t, 90% of this list would be me trying to find the onomatopoeia for practically every noise in this movie. The thrum of podrace engines, the clack of droideka feet, the little wibble Gungan energy shields make under fire, and yes, the Naboo blasters that go “bwah!”.

Especially the Naboo blasters that go “bwah!”.

(6) AND BLAB! “Did a Star Wars Producer Just Reveal the Title For James Mangold’s Movie?” asks Collider.

In a recent interview with SFX Magazine, Emanuel referred to the movie with a new title that could signal a significant shift in its direction. He said, “James Mangold’s Jedi Prime is set thousands and thousands of years before [the original trilogy], and I’m really excited to see what happens there.” While that quote does not officially confirm a title change, Emanuel’s use of “Jedi Prime” suggests exciting possibilities for the upcoming film.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 18, 1930 — Fred Saberhagen. (Died 2007.)

By Paul Weimer: I came to Fred Saberhagen through epic fantasy.  I came across a reference to his Empire of the East series in a piece discussing science fantasy and the mixture of the two.  So I sought out that series and started to devour it. The idea of a post apocalypse America now ruled by magic, but the protagonist finds an old tank, and then goes on to find the “g0d” that was once a supercomputer fighting a demon that was once a nuclear bomb…the appeal to me of this was obvious from the start. 

Fred Saberhagen. Photo by Patricia Rogers.

After Empire of the East, I fell into his Books of Swords stories (which are in the same verse although the connection between the two was very very thin), and then, once I had gone with all of those, looked to see what else Saberhagen had written. 

If you are a sophisticated reader, you are probably wondering where Saberhagen’s Berserkers came in. It actually took me a while to make my way to Saberhagen’s most famous creation, with stops in Dracula, Frankenstein, and more before I would finally come across the ultimate killer AI stories. When I watched a Babylon 5 episode that referenced Berserkers, I was absolutely delighted. Beserker’s Planet is probably the oddest one of the whole series, which is much taken up with the ultimate MMA tournament where fighters of different skills from across the planet compete to be the champion (this is all secretly run by a half broken berserker, but for a lot of this book you have no idea it’s even there)

My favorite Saberhagen, overall, though, is a novella, “The Mask of The Sun”, which is about an absolutely interesting artifact that almost works like magic, showing probabilistic results from actions when you put it on. The main character gets hold of this, and it turns out two timelines and timeline/time travelling empires want that same artifact, at any cost. The interesting fillip for me, back then, was that it was timelines and polities based on the Aztecs and the Inca, rather than (at the time) more usual choices.  A Time War with the Inca and Aztecs pushes a LOT of my buttons. And I vividly enjoyed the main character trying to figure out how to have the Inca defeat Pizzaro and the Spanish, sustainably, once he wound up in 16th century Peru. His solution is ingenious and it makes a lot of sense, and overall, the story has a strong playground of the imagination, and shows Saberhagen at his best. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) LIBRARY’S STAR TURN. TrekMovie.com takes us “Inside How ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Transformed A Toronto University Library Into The Eternal Archive”.

Last week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery, “Labyrinths,” featured an unusual location: the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Star Trek fan Michael Cassabon, the Director of Advancement for the University of Toronto library system, assisted the production team on site and wrote about his experiences with the show and what makes the Fisher Library so unique.

… Modern-day Toronto is part of Trek canon (SNW: “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”); for those of you keeping track, the library complex is a few blocks away from where the child Khan Noonien-Singh — the notorious ancestor of La’an — lives, and where an alt-universe Captain Kirk was killed trying to restore the timeline.

It is almost unheard of for filming to take place at the Fisher Library, but a rare exception was made for Star Trek: Discovery. Our library’s leadership believed that this collaboration would be a wonderful opportunity to showcase the enduring relevance of libraries in the human quest for meaning. Libraries connect people to the information they seek in their quest for knowledge. The executive producers dedicated the episode with thanks “to librarians everywhere, dedicated to the preservation of artifacts, knowledge, and truth.”…

(10) LEARNING FROM THE SEVENTIES. Francis Hamit recommends Ken Miyamoto’s ScreenCraft article “25 Years Later: Why The DAZED AND CONFUSED Script Works”.

…So with no major character arcs being explored, surely there’s a compelling plot that takes us through the whole eventual film?

Not so much. Dazed and Confused is lacking in significant plot motivations and devices. There is no conventional plotting of moments beyond the overarching conflict of first-year students getting paddled by seniors. That is the sole piece of evidence of any consistent plot.

Instead, we follow the characters through their first day and night of summer. They drive in cars and bob their heads to now-classic seventies tunes, they play baseball, they smoke pot, they drink, they fight, they make out, and that’s about it….

The script teaches us that not every story needs broad character arcs, crucial plot points, and pinpoint structure. If you have stories that involve multiple characters, you can:

  • Engage the reader and audience by showcasing a specific world that attracts attention and interest
  • Offer characters that are void of the clichés we’ve already seen in multiple films and television series
  • Focus on small story windows to enhance the conflicts and drama
  • Use the multiple characters in creative ways to cut between scenes and showcase small character moment windows
  • Find creative ways to break up the dialogue to heighten each and every word that is spoken
  • Learn when too much is too much in scenes during the rewrite process
  • Set up the collaboration process by writing great characters that call for great casting

So go do likewise in your scripts and just keep livin’. L-I-V-I-N.

 (11) MONTY PYTHON. Eric Idle is fond of this take on King Charles’ portrait:

(12) DYSON SPHERES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There may be seven Dyson spheres within 1,000 light years!

A collaboration of eight, primarily Swedish-based, astronomers have identified seven Dyson sphere candidates within 300 parsecs (about 1,000 light years) of Earth.  The astronomers looked a data from ESA’s Gaia satellite, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and 2MASS of around five million stars.

A Dyson sphere is a theoretical concept seriously developed in 1960 by Freeman Dyson, but actually originating from the novel Star Maker (1937) by Olaf Stapledon. The Dyson sphere is a construct that completely surrounds a star and so captures all of, or most of, its visible light. Similarly, a Dyson swarm is a multitude of small orbiting bodies about a star that captures the majority of its light. While Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms capture visible light, they in turn warm and so give off infra-red (IR) and this IR excess might be considered a ‘techno-signature’ of an extraterrestrial civilisation.

Combing through the Gaia, WISE and 2MASS data, the astronomers come up with 7 possible candidates for Dyson spheres/swarms. The nearest is 466 light years away. All are M-type stars or red dwarfs. The astronomers do point out that there are several alternate natural explanations to the Dyson sphere/swarm suggestions but none of them fully explain the spectra seen from these candidate stars.

See   Suazo, M. et al (2024) Project Hephaistos – II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. vol. 531 p695–707.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The “Young Frankenstein Movie Documentary (with Mel Brooks)” is a 2002 documentary. A bit self-adulatory, but worth it for the amusing anecdotes.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is a 1974 American comedy horror film directed by Mel Brooks. The screenplay was co-written by Brooks and Gene Wilder. Wilder also starred in the lead role as the title character, a descendant of the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and Peter Boyle as the monster. The film co-stars Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Richard Haydn, and Gene Hackman. The film is a parody of the classic horror film genre, in particular the various film adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus produced by Universal Pictures in the 1930s. Much of the lab equipment used as props was created by Kenneth Strickfaden for the 1931 film Frankenstein. To help evoke the atmosphere of the earlier films, Brooks shot the picture entirely in black and white, a rarity in the 1970s, and employed 1930s’ style opening credits and scene transitions such as iris outs, wipes, and fades to black. The film also features a period score by Brooks’ longtime composer John Morris.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/12/24 With A Sprinkle Of Pixel Dust, You Can File Like A Bird

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(1) COMPLAINTS AS FANIMECON DROPS MASKING REQUIREMENT AT LAST MINUTE. [Item by Janice Gelb.] FanimeCon in San Jose made the following announcement on May 12, 12 days before the con starts, and is refusing to provide refunds to people who now don’t feel they can attend safely (not to mention travel arrangement costs and the hotel’s cancellation policy now requires them to pay for one night). “FanimeCon | Masking Policy Change”.

FanimeCon is changing our masking policy from ‘required’ to ‘strongly recommended’ due to feedback from our attendees, staff, and local health partners. Some events may require mandatory masking due space issues and bigger crowds.

The complete policy is here: “FanimeCon COVID-19 Vaccination Policy”.

(2) LIADEN UNIVERSE® IS MARCHING ON. Sharon Lee was happy with Joshua Tyler’s article “The Best Sci-Fi Read You’ve Missed Is Filled With Spies, Romance, And Massive Space Battles Stretched Over 27 Books” at GiantFreakinRobot except for one thing, which she blogged about today: “From the mail bag” at Sharon Lee, Writer.

Despite being largely positive, Mr. Tyler’s piece contains a sentence which has . . . horrified, concerned, and angered some Liaden readers and fans, and thus I find letters in my mailbox.  This blog post is a blanket reply to those letters, and statements of concern.

Mr. Tyler states:  “Sadly, Liaden co-author Steve Miller died suddenly on February 20, 2024. He was 73. It’s unclear if Sharon will continue writing the series without him. As a fan of the series, I hope not.” (bolding is mine)

Now, whether this is opinion or corrigendum, I can’t tell you.  I am not the author of the piece.  In general, it’s wise to assume that what the author wrote is what the author meant, and Mr. Tyler is, as we all are, entitled to his opinion.

What I can say is this:  There are three Liaden Universe® novels now under contract with Baen Books.  I am currently lead on one of those, the sequel to Ribbon Dance.  In addition, before Steve’s death and the attendant dis- and re-organizations engendered by that cataclysm, I was making notes for the sequel to the sequel.  Steve was lead on Trade Lanes, which had become increasingly difficult for him as his heart slowly failed him.  I may or may not be able, eventually, to finish Trade Lanes.  If not, another Liaden book will fill the third slot.

So, for the moment, Mr. Tyler must reside in disappointment.  Sharon will be continuing the series, but, not, as he supposes, “without” Steve….

 (3) TREK’S OWN STORAGE WAR. “Court is the final frontier for this lost ‘Star Trek’ model” reports the LA Times. Junot Diaz posted the text of the Times’ paywalled story on Facebook. It says in part:

In April, Heritage Auctions heralded the discovery of the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise, the iconic starship that whooshed through the stars in the opening credits of the 1960s TV series “Star Trek” but had mysteriously disappeared around 45 years ago.

The auction house, known for its dazzling sales of movie and television props and memorabilia, announced that it was returning the 33-inch model to Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry Jr., son of series creator Gene Roddenberry. The model was kept at Heritage’s Beverly Hills office for “safekeeping,” the house proclaimed in a statement, shortly after an individual discovered it and brought it to Heritage for authentication.

“After a long journey, she’s home,” Roddenberry’s son posted on X, (formerly Twitter).

But the journey has been far from smooth. The starship model and its celebrated return is now the subject of a lawsuit alleging fraud, negligence and deceptive trade practice, highlighting the enduring value of memorabilia from the iconic sci-fi TV series.

The case was brought by Dustin Riach and Jason Rivas, longtime friends and self-described storage unit entrepreneurs who discovered the model among a stash of items they bought “sight unseen” from a lien sale at a storage locker in Van Nuys last October.

“It’s an unfortunate misunderstanding. We have a seller on one side and a buyer on the other side and Heritage is in the middle, and we are aligning the parties on both sides to get the transaction complete,” said Armen Vartian, an attorney representing the Dallas-based auction house, adding that the allegations against his client were “unfounded.”

The pair claimed that once the model was authenticated and given a value of $800,000, they agreed to consign it to an auction sale with Heritage planned for July 2024, according to the lawsuit. However, following their agreement, they allege the auction house falsely questioned their title to the model and then convinced them, instead of taking it to auction, to sell it for a low-ball $500,000 to Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. According to the suit, Eugene Roddenberry, the company’s CEO, had shown great interest in the model and could potentially provide a pipeline of memorabilia to the auction house in the future.

“They think we have a disagreement with Roddenberry,” said Dale Washington, Riach and Rivas’ attorney. “We don’t. We think they violated property law in the discharge of their fiduciary duties.”

The two men allege they have yet to receive the $500,000 payment.

For years, Riach and Rivas have made a living buying repossessed storage lockers and selling the contents online, at auction and at flea markets. In fact, Riach has appeared on the reality TV series “Storage Wars.”

“It’s a roll of dice in the dark,” Riach said of his profession bidding on storage lockers. “Sometimes you are buying a picture of a unit. When a unit goes to lien, what you see is what you get and the rest is a surprise. At a live auction you can shine a flashlight, smell and look inside to get a gauge. But online is a gamble, it’s only as good as the photo.”

Last fall, Riach said he saw a picture of a large locker in an online sale. It was 10 feet by 30 feet, and “I saw boxes hiding in the back, it was dirty, dusty, there were cobwebs and what looked like a bunch of broken furniture,” he said.

Something about it, he said, “looked interesting,” and he called Rivas and told him they should bid on it. Riach declined to say how much they paid.

There were tins of old photographs and negatives of nitrate film reels from the 1800s and 1900s. When Rivas unwrapped a trash bag that was sitting on top of furniture, he pulled out a model of a spaceship. The business card of its maker, Richard C. Datin, was affixed to the bottom of the base.

A Google search turned up that Datin had made “Star Trek” models, although the two men didn’t make the connection to the TV series.

“We buy lots of units and see models all of the time,” Riach said. He thought they would find a buyer and decided to list it on eBay with a starting price of $1,000….

(4) BALLARD’S MACHINED POETRY. The Conversation says “Novelist J.G. Ballard was experimenting with computer-generated poetry 50 years before ChatGPT was invented”.

…Listening recently to the audiobook version of Ballard’s autobiography Miracles of Life, one very short passage seemed to speak directly to these contemporary debates about generative artificial intelligence and the perceived power of so-called large language models that create content in response to prompts. Ballard, who was born in 1930 and died in 2009, reflected on how, during the very early 1970s, when he was prose editor at Ambit (a literary quarterly magazine that published from 1959 until April 2023) he became interested in computers that could write:

“I wanted more science in Ambit, since science was reshaping the world, and less poetry. After meeting Dr Christopher Evans, a psychologist who worked at the National Physical Laboratories, I asked him to contribute to Ambit. We published a remarkable series of computer generated poems which Martin said were as good as the real thing. I went further, they were the real thing.”

Ballard said nothing else about these poems in the book, nor does he reflect on how they were received at the time. Searching through Ambit back-issues issues from the 1970s I managed to locate four items that appeared to be in the series to which Ballard referred. They were all seemingly produced by computers and published between 1972 and 1977….

(5) BLEEPS WITHOUT END. Scott Lynch has a pretty clear idea about how Harlan would respond to Lincoln Michel’s question.

(6) IN A GALAXY OF SFF, ONE CONSTELLATION IS BLINKING OUT. The Verge argues that “Apple TV Plus is turning into the best place for streaming sci-fi”. The article discusses a large number of series. But one of them isn’t going to be around for long.

…More recently, the service has edged toward a darker tone. First there was the debut of Constellation earlier this year, which starred Noomi Rapace as an astronaut who returned to an Earth that’s very different than the one she left. And now we have Dark Matter based on the novel by Blake Crouch, which premieres on May 8th. It’s a multiversal story about a physicist played by Joel Edgerton who gets kidnapped by a parallel version of himself. So far, I’ve watched the first two episodes, and it manages to merge the tone of a tense thriller with the mind-bending nature of time travel, creating the kind of story that intentionally makes you feel unmoored. Also, there are some very large and impressive cubes…

Two days ago Deadline reported “’Constellation’ Canceled By Apple After One Season”.

 Apple TV+ has opted not to continue with a second season of Constellation, its sci-fi psychological thriller series starring Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks. The news comes a month and a half after Constellation‘s eight-episode first season wrapped its quiet run on the streamer March 27.

Created and written by Peter Harness, Constellation stars Rapace as Jo – an astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space – only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing. The action-packed space adventure is an exploration of the dark edges of human psychology, and one woman’s desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all that she has lost.

… Sci-fi is a core genre for Apple TV+ whose roster of series also includes For All Mankind, recently renewed for a fifth season alongside a pickup for a spinoff series, Star City, as well as Foundation, Severance, Invasion and Silo — all slated to return with new seasons.

Apple’s latest entry in the genre, Dark Matter, premiered this week, with Neuromancer, starring Callum Turner, and Murderbot, headlined by Alexander Skarsgard, coming up. The streamer also had an surprise entrant into the space with the mystery drama Sugar, which took an unexpected sci-fi turn last week.

(7) LEIGH EDMONDS’ AUSTRALIAN FANHISTORY. From Bruce Richard Gillespie on Facebook I learned that Norstrilia Press has published Leigh Edmonds’ fanhistory Proud and Lonely: A History of Science Fiction Fandom in Australia. Part One: 1930 – 1961

Proud and Lonely is a new history of science fiction and its fans in Australia, telling the story of its arrival in Australia in the 1920s, and the start here of a sub-culture of fans of the genre.

Historian Dr Leigh Edmonds shows how science fiction was seen as a low form of literature and didn’t get public acceptance until at least the 1970s.

Because of the frequent ridicule, fans of the genre kept quiet about their interest in public. But in private they sought out other fans, locally and overseas. They corresponded, started clubs and published amateur magazines about the genre.

They created a fascinating sub-culture that was a microcosmos of Australian life from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Norstrilia Press in its first incarnation had its major focus on science fiction, and Leigh’s history makes a significant contribution to the study of the field. It will also be of value to people interested in cultural and literary studies.

Proud and Lonely is the first of a two-part history exploring how science fiction fandom developed in Australia, from its beginnings in the 1930s to the first World Science Fiction Convention held in Australia, in 1975.

Part one deals with the early period up to 1961, when government regulations prevented most science fiction from being imported into Australia, and the seeds were sown of a gathering energy that would raise Australia’s profile in the global science fiction community.

Available from bookshops and online.

(8) FROM BROOKLYN TO ROHAN. [Item by Dann.] Mike Burke found himself in the theater department auditioning for a part in Newsies: the Musical.  One of the songs from that production – “Brooklyn’s Here” — seemed to match the narrative of the riders of Rohan arriving at the Pelennor Fields.  And a little filking ensued. “Rohan’s Here!” at Storytelling Skunkworks.

…We are Riders (of Rohan!)

The beacons are lit and Gondor is hurtin’

Facing total disaster for certain

That’s our cue lads, it’s time to come runnin’

Hey Minas Tirith, the calvalry’s comin’!…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 12, 1950 — Bruce Boxleitner, 74. Let’s look at our Birthday celebrant, Bruce Boxleitner, first for the interesting work he did before that series. 

One of my very favorite characters that he played was the top-level unnamed Agency operative Lee Stetson on the Scarecrow and Mrs. King which starred him and Kate Jackson as divorced housewife Amanda King and top-level Agency operative Lee Stetson as they began their unusual partnership and eventual romance after encountering one another in a train station. It ran for four seasons.

Remember Kenny Rogers’ song “The Gambler”? Well, it would afterwards become a series of Gambler movies. Boxleitner played Billy Montanain in three of five films being the sidekick to Roger’s Brady Hawkes character. He was the comic relief in those films apparently. I’ve not seen them. 

Bruce Boxleitner at Phoenix Comicon in 2011. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

He’s been on Outer Limits in “Decompression” as Senator Wyndom Brody in a twisty time travel episode that’d make Heinlein proud. Enough said of that story. He had a recurring role as another politician on the first Supergirl series as President Phillip Baker, a vain, egotistical man. He even played the President of the Planetary Union President on The Orville.

Then there’s Tron where he has the dual roles of Alan Bradley, a programmer at ENCOM Boxleitner and Tron, a security program developed by Bradley to self-monitor communications between the MCP and the real world. It’s an amazing dual for him. He’d reprise, in voice, so I supposed in spirit as well, that role in the animated Tron: Uprising series, and then in I think finally in the animated Tron: Legacy film. 

So that brings us to Babylon 5 commander, Captain John Sheridan. What an amazing role it was for. Lis Carey says of him, “John Sheridan was raised in a diplomat’s family, and enlisted in the military–leading to him becoming a war hero, the only officer to win a battle against the Minbari. When he became the second commander of Babylon 5, he was not well received by the Minbari. Relations obviously improved, while the Earth Alliance was being transformed into a military dictatorship, which Sheridan opposed. In the last season, after confronting the Earth Alliance decisively, he became President of the new Interstellar Alliance, and subsequently married the Minbari ambassador, Delenn.”

Ok, it was a great role and if you haven’t seen it, go see it that’s all I have to say so. I’m ending this now. Have a good night.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) COUNT HIM IN. [Item by Steven French.] Guardian television reviewer Joel Golby becomes one of us: “Doctor Who: even the haters will find it impossible to resist Ncuti Gatwa”.

The injection of Disney cash has definitely helped – the new series looks utterly, hugely epic, but without sliding into the “CGI on top of another layer of CGI” thing that could ruin a still pleasingly British-feeling series like this – and the casting of the two new leads is inspired. If it first came out now, a show like Doctor Who – an infinite number of universes and possible monsters and possible problems and possible ancient villains – would be easy to mess up, push it so it’s too sci-fi, forget to ever come back down to Earth, have Gatwa trapped in a studio for a few months acting opposite a tennis ball. But you’ve got 60 years of lore and an army of fans guarding it and ready to email you if you mess with it too much, and I honestly think that probably helps keep Doctor Who honest. I’ll see you for the Christmas special this year. I think I’ve been converted.

(12) THE PRICE IS A HORROR, TOO. The dramatically-staged Montegrappa Universal Monsters Fountain Pen – Frankenstein edition can be yours for a mere $9,175.

Vintage Hollywood staging and mechanical mayhem are the base ingredients for an homage to a horror icon. Montegrappa’s own strain of mad science brings Frankenstein’s creation back to life, with props and special effects that revisit the magic of a 1931 cinema classic. Energy pulses through its XXL, all-brass body, with ingenious complications to re-animate the senses – bringing fun to high function.

(13) AGED IN THE CROCK, ER, CASK. Nothing to do with sff, except for all the fans who like to drink this sort of thing. And for you, we present Tasting Table’s interview, “Pappy Van Winkle’s Grandson Tells Us 10 Things You May Not Know About Old Rip Van Winkle”.

… Additionally, Van Winkle III noted the 15-year bourbon makes a great cocktail. Now, we know that for some of you, mixing any Old Rip Van Winkle whiskey into a cocktail may sound like blasphemy. But Van Winkle III believes you shouldn’t be worried about mixing high-quality alcohol into a drink. Either way, because the 15-year hits that sweet spot of flavor between younger and older whiskey expressions, Van Winkle III thinks it’s “a fun one to have.”…

I laughed because it reminds me that when LASFS’ Len Moffatt hosted a party he warned the guys that violence would ensue if he found any of us making mixed drinks with his Cutty Sark.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George invites us to step inside the Pitch Meeting that led to Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/26/24 La Scroll È Mobile

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(1) SATURN AWARDS NEWS. Keanu Reeves will be the inaugural recipient of the Lance Reddick Legacy Award when the 51st Saturn Awards take place on February 4. reports Variety.

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films has announced that Keanu Reeves will receive the inaugural Lance Reddick Legacy Award at the 51st Saturn Awards. The entire show will be dedicated to the memory of the late Reddick, who died at the age of 60 in March 2023.

Reeves, who was friends with Reddick, starred alongside him in the “John Wick” action-thriller franchise. Reddick appeared in all four movies as Charon, the concierge at the Continental hotel, where his character interfaced with Reeves’ titular hitman.

Academy president Robert Holguin and Saturn producers Bradley and Kevin Marcus released a statement on Reeves’ forthcoming honor: “This award symbolizes and celebrates not only a performer’s talent, but their character; someone who’s a true goodwill ambassador in the industry. From science fiction (‘The Matrix Trilogy’), fantasy (‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’/’Constantine’) and horror (Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Dracula’/’The Devil’sAdvocate’), Keanu has done it all — not to mention ‘Speed’ and ‘Point Break.’”…

(2) SNUBBED? [Item by Dann.] The Hollywood Reporter has a story about the backlash to the backlash that protested the lack of Oscar nominations for Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.  Media outlets from the New York Times to Slate offered rebuttals suggesting that it’s OK for a successful property to not win every award. “The ‘Barbie’ Oscar Snubs Backlash-Backlash: ‘Everyone Lost Their Minds’”.

The penultimate paragraph includes a quote from a genre fan-favorite:

And finally there was The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg, proclaiming, “[Saying somebody was snubbed] assumes someone else shouldn’t be in there. There are no snubs. That’s what you have to keep in mind: Not everybody gets a prize, and it is subjective. Movies are subjective. The movies you love may not be loved by the people who are voting.”

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Munch MVP sandwiches with MVPs Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan” in Episode 217 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan

Gary K. Wolfe is a science fiction critic, editor, and biographer who’s had a monthly review column in Locus since December 1991. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2006 for the book Soundings: Reviews 1992–1996, and again in 2011, for the book Bearings: Reviews 1997–2001. Over the years, he’s won the Eaton Award from the Eaton Conference on Science Fiction, the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and the British Science Fiction Association Award for nonfiction for the previously mentioned Soundings: Reviews 1992–1996. He’s also (among many other things) edited two wonderful volumes for the Library of America — American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956 and American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958.

Jonathan Strahan is a nineteen-time Hugo Award nominated editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He’s won the Aurealis Award, the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism and Review, the Australian National Science Fiction Convention’s “Ditmar Award”, and the Peter McNamara Achievement Award. As a freelance editor, he’s edited or co-edited more than sixty original and reprint anthologies and seventeen single-author story collections and has been a consulting editor for Tordotcom Publishing and Tor.com since 2014, where he’s acquired and edited two novels, 36 novellas, and a selection of short fiction. Strahan won the World Fantasy Award (Special – Professional) in 2010 for his work as an editor, and his anthologies have won the Locus Award for Best Anthology four times (2008, 2010, 2013, 2021) and the Aurealis Award seven times. He has been Reviews Editor at Locus since 2002.

As the reason I’m with both of them is — together, they’ve been cohosts of The Coode Street Podcast since May 2010, which had 640 episodes live the last time I looked, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast ten times, winning once.

We discussed why The Coode Street Podcast is “the Cheers of podcasts,” the foolish statement made during their first episode which meant there had to be more, the identity of the guest who was most resistant to appearing on their show, the reason the podcast made Paul Cornell want to run, the different interviewing techniques necessary when having conversations with the voluble vs. the reticent, the white whales whom they could never snare, how to make sure we’re speaking to more than just our own generations, their advice for anyone who wants to launch a podcast, the way to avoid getting canned responses out of guests, how their conversational methods have changed over 13 years, whether critiquing books or rejecting stories has ever affected relationships with a guest, and much more.

(4) PRESSURE FOR REGULATION. “The Sleepy Copyright Office in the Middle of a High-Stakes Clash Over A.I.” – the New York Times has the story.

For decades, the Copyright Office has been a small and sleepy office within the Library of Congress. Each year, the agency’s 450 employees register roughly half a million copyrights, the ownership rights for creative works, based on a two-centuries-old law.

In recent months, however, the office has suddenly found itself in the spotlight. Lobbyists for Microsoft, Google, and the music and news industries have asked to meet with Shira Perlmutter, the register of copyrights, and her staff. Thousands of artists, musicians and tech executives have written to the agency, and hundreds have asked to speak at listening sessions hosted by the office.

The attention stems from a first-of-its-kind review of copyright law that the Copyright Office is conducting in the age of artificial intelligence. The technology — which feeds off creative content — has upended traditional norms around copyright, which gives owners of books, movies and music the exclusive ability to distribute and copy their works.

The agency plans to put out three reports this year revealing its position on copyright law in relation to A.I. The reports are set to be hugely consequential, weighing heavily in courts as well as with lawmakers and regulators.

“We are now finding ourselves the subject of a lot of attention from the broader general public, so it is a very exciting and challenging time,” Ms. Perlmutter said.

The Copyright Office’s review has thrust it into the middle of a high-stakes clash between the tech and media industries over the value of intellectual property to train new A.I. models that are likely to ingest copyrighted books, news articles, songs, art and essays to generate writing or images. Since the 1790s, copyright law has protected works so an author or artist “may reap the fruits of his or her intellectual creativity,” the Copyright Office declares on its website.

That law is now a topic of hot debate. Authors, artists, media companies and others say the A.I. models are infringing on their copyrights. Tech companies say that they aren’t replicating the materials and that they consume data that is publicly available on the internet, practices that are fair use and within the bounds of the law. The fight has led to lawsuits, including one by The New York Times against the ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Microsoft. And copyright owners are pushing for officials to rein in the tech companies….

(5) RADIO SILENCE. Looking for comments from Kevin Standlee? We’re told he’s probably seeing the questions, but he’s been told he mustn’t say anything, so don’t be offended about getting no response to the Standlee Signal.

(6) ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL. “Pharrell Williams: Lego Animated Biopic Coming From Focus Features” at Variety.

The musician and superproducer announced that he is teaming with The Lego Group, director Morgan Neville and Focus Features to create “Piece by Piece,” an animated film about his life using the famous toy blocks.

Per the press release, “Uninterested in making a traditional film about his life, Pharrell set out to tell his story in a way that would set audience’s imaginations free. Developed from his singular vision, ‘Piece by Piece’ defies genres and expectations to transport audiences into a Lego world where anything is possible.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 26, 1979 — Yoon Ha Lee, 44. A truly stellar writer.

His first work for us was “The Hundredth Question” story published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the February 1999 issue. May I note that magazine has published some of the finest short fiction I’ve ever had the pleasure to read?

After “The Hundredth Question”, I count just over a hundred short stories and intriguingly nearly thirty pieces of poetry which is a fair amount of genre work I’d say.

Yoon Ha Lee

Quite interesting is that the stories have several series running there — one that runs off with “The Cat Who Forgot to Fly” and runs five stories (I went to read these); then there’s series of stories about dragons, librarians, mermaids, phoenixes and queens. 

So let’s talk about his novels. His Machineries of Empire space opera novels, well space opera is a gross understatement to it mildly, consisting of Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun are splendid works indeed. As a follower of Asian folklore, the fact that these nicely use Korean folklore is a bonus. 

Ninefox Gambit was nominated for a Hugo at Worldcon 75, Raven Stratagem at Worldcon 76 and Revenant Gun at Dublin 2019. None alas won a Hugo.

He likes fox spirits, he really does. (As do I.) So The Thousand World series is a space opera, and yes time that is an accurate term, about thirteen-year-old Min, who comes from a long line of fox spirits. Oh there’s dragons and tigers, oh my here as well. 

I’ve not read his latest novel, Phoenix Extravagant, but magic fueled weaponized armored giants sounds potentially interesting. 

Remember all of those short stories? Well they have been collected,  well I thought most of them had in The Candlevine Gardener and Other Stories but it turned out that those are flash fiction, all sixty five of them as I just discovered, though available are free from his website here.

I just read “The Cat Who Forgot to Fly”. It read like a classic folklore story from well before the 1800s — charming, magical and everyone is fine at the end. All two pages. 

The longer stories can be found in Conservation of Shadows, The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales and Hexarchate Stories.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) SOMETHING ELSE YOU CAN’T SAY. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Can we please stop calling it AI? They’re not actually artificial intelligences, they’re collections of algorithms doing routines based off them. None could pass a Turing test. “George Carlin’s Estate Sues Creators Of AI Version Of Comedy Icon” at Deadline.

Over 50 years ago, the late and great George Carlin listed off the seven words you couldn’t say on television. Based on a lawsuit from the iconic comedian’s estate filed in federal court in California today, at least two of those words may apply to the creators of an AI generated special that uses Carlin’s style and voice to a 2024 effect.

AKA: “a bastardization of Carlin’s real work,”  the copyright infringement complaint says.

“Defendants’ AI-generated “George Carlin Special” is not a creative work,” it goes on to exclaim. “It is a piece of computer-generated click-bait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation.”… 

(10) THE END. Another one from Sam Sykes that tickled me.

(11) VIDEO OF A YEAR AGO. [Item by Danny Sichel.] German band Electric Callboy just (for values of ‘just’ that include ‘over a year ago’) released a very genre-intense video for their song ‘Spaceman’.

Warning: Electric Callboy’s style is a mix of bouncy energetic rave pop and thrashing deathcore growls. They are an extremely non-serious band.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “The Wicked Witch on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1975)”.

David Newell (Mr. McFeely) recollects Margaret Hamilton’s visit to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood filmed at WQED in Pittsburgh. In the episode on scary images, Fred Rogers meets the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in 1938 movie “The Wizard of Oz”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/8/24 Come Gather ’Round Pixels, Wherever You Scroll; And Admit That The Files, Around You Have Rolled

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(1) CREATIVE ARTS EMMYS NIGHT 2. Sff was much less prominently featured among the second night 2023 Creative Arts Emmys Winners. (Note: Some categories had multiple winners.)

Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation

  • Entergalactic; The Simpsons, “Lisa the Boy Scout;” More than I Want to Remember; Star Wars: Visions, “Screecher’s Reach”

Outstanding Costumes for Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Programming

  • Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration; We’re Here, St. George, Utah

Outstanding Makeup for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program

  • Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration

Outstanding Animated Program

  • The Simpsons

Outstanding Emerging Media Program

  • For All Mankind Season 3 Experience

(Click here for a report about “Night One of the 75th Creative Arts Emmy Awards”.)

(2) QUESTION TIME. Steve Davidson opines “The Fannish Inquisition Needs More Than Soft Cushions and Comfy Chairs” at Amazing Stories. Davidson says that in particular the recent Chengdu Worldcon bid and the 2028 Uganda Worldcon bid needed/needs sharp questioning on human rights. (Note that conventions generally abandoned the “Fannish Inquisition” panel title several years ago; at last December’s Smofcon the event was called “Future Worldcon and Smofcon Q&A”.)

…We’d all like to believe that stepping inside a convention transports us from a real world that is flawed with all manner of injustices, mistaken values and ancient moralities into one where the things that really matter are given their due.

But you can’t do that if the host country doesn’t at least respect those values enough to be hands-off.  ANY country that does not operate under one version of a rule of law or another is a potential mine field, because the rules are, in fact, arbitrary, and can change on a political whim….

…Sure, we need to know about the “restaurant scene” in your city, but we also need to know –

How is the LGBTQI community perceived in your culture or country?   Can Transgender individuals be arrested for “wearing the wrong clothing”?  Will I be arrested for having posted something critical of its government or leaders in my Fanzine?  Will my cell phone be scanned?  My internet communications monitored and recorded?  Will I have to hide my necklace with a Cross or a Star of David on it?  Will I be prevented from entering the country because I have the wrong stamps in my passport?  Will I disappear because I held hands with the wrong person in public?  What are my risks if I travel outside the venue?  If I’m female and need a doctor, will a male owner have to be present? Will armed thugs beat me in the street because I didn’t cover my hair?

… I strongly suggest that some additional questions be added to our Fannish Inquisitions.  Questions like:

What kind of government does the host country have?  Where does it fall on the Corruption Perceptions Index?  Why?

Where does the host country fall on the Universal Human Rights Index?  If it’s rating is considered to be low, why is that?

Do individuals identifying as LGBTQI enjoy the same rights and freedoms as those who do not?  If not, why not?  What are the restrictions, if any? What are the consequences for expressing LGBTQI affiliation privately?  Publicly?

Do women enjoy the same freedoms as men?  The same opportunities?  The same protections under the law?…

(3) THEY SAY AI CREPT. [Item by Anne Marble.] The official account for Magic: The Gathering had to admit that some recent marketing images they posted were, in fact, created with AI. As often happens, the company first claimed they were not created via AI. Some have pointed out that perhaps some of the 1,100 people they laid off just before the holidays could have checked the images and kept the company from making this mistake.

And Ars Technica quotes one artist who says he is done with the company after the way this was handled: “Magic: The Gathering maker admits it used AI-generated art despite standing ban”.

…As accusations of AI use in the creation of the promo image grew throughout the day, WotC posted multiple defenses on Thursday (such as this archived, now-deleted post) insisting that the art in question “was created by humans and not AI.” But given the evidence, the situation was too much for veteran MtG artist Dave Rapoza, who has created art for dozens of Magic cards going back years.

“And just like that, poof, I’m done working for Wizards of the Coast,” Rapoza wrote on social media on Saturday. “You can’t say you stand against this then blatantly use AI to promote your products… If you’re gonna stand for something you better make sure you’re actually paying attention, don’t be lazy, don’t lie.”….

(4) IN THE NEWS. Nnedi Okorafor shared happy moment with Facebook readers.

I was featured in New York Times yesterday! A great way to start 2024.

(5) NINO CIPRI SEMINAR. Atlas Obscura Experiences will host a four-part seminar “Thrills & Chills: Horror Story Writing With Nino Cipri” in February/March. Full details and prices at the link.

The horror genre is a funhouse mirror, offering larger-than-life reflections of a culture’s fears and insecurities. Its popularity may rise and fall, but horror is always with us. In this seminar, award-winning author and lifelong horror fan Nino Cipri will guide students through the process of writing horror, from generating ideas to the final revision and submission process. Along the way, we’ll talk about horror’s roots in oral traditions, embracing and subverting tropes, and why we keep coming back to horror even when it can’t compete with real life’s awfulness. This course welcomes writers of all backgrounds and experience who are interested in sharpening their skills and exploring the genre. 

(6) THE BLACK AMAZON. On Bluesky (for those of you with access) Jess Nevins wrote a 26-post story about a “real superhero” in 19th-century Paris. Thread begins here.

The concept of the superhero is as old as human culture. (See: Enkidu, “Epic of Gilgamesh”). But “real” superheroes? Vigilante groups have likely been wearing disguises for centuries. Certainly, the Whiteboys of Ireland (na Buachaillí Bána) in the 18th century did. What about women vigilantes?

(7) THE REINVENTED EDITORS Q&A. Paul Semel interviews “‘The Reinvented Detective’ Editors Jennifer Brozek & Cat Rambo”.

Who came up with the idea for The Reinvented Detective?

Jennifer: This one was all me! I have a deep and abiding love of noir detective stories, as well as mysteries in the future. Think Blade Runner / Blade Runner 2049 or any Philip K. Dick type story.

Also, as a member of Gen X, I grew up without the Internet, and was introduced to it in my formative adult years. I remember things that many people have never been without (contact online access, Google, Amazon, and more). My world has changed enough that I can see how technology changes the face of society and how people interact with each other.

And yet…many of the same problems remain. We all live, love, hate, feud, want. We are still human in all the ways that matter. Which means no matter the circumstances, motivations for crimes remain the same. It’s how we see, solve, and punish those crimes that change. That’s what I wanted the stories to be about, and our authors delivered.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 8, 1944 — Richard Bowes. (Died 2023.) Richard Bowes is a fascinating story.  He started getting published relatively late in life, in his early forties, with three novels in three years — Warchild, Feral Cell and Goblin Market. Warchild and its sequel, Goblin Market are set in an alternate history version of the New York City, his home city. 

Richard Bowes in 2008.

A series of stories, mostly published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, were later reworked into his Minions of the Moon novel which won the Lambda Literary Award. One of these stories, “Streetcar Dreams”, would garner a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

Dust Devils on a Quiet Street is semi-autobiographical but adds in a dose of the supernatural as it centered around 9/11. It got nominated for Lambda and World Fantasy Awards. 

Now my favorite stories by him are his Time Ranger stories mixing fantasy and SF. They’re some of the best such stories and the mosaic novel, as edited by Marty Halpern, From the Files of the Time Rangers, has a foreword by Kage Baker in which she gives her appreciation of his stories. It was nominated for a Nebula Award.

Two of the novelettes that make up this novel,  “The Ferryman’s Wife” and “The Mask of the Rex” were  originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – were also nominated for Nebula Awards. 

(9) THE SOURCE. Gareth L. Powell tries to answer the eternal question “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

… These ideas can be something complex or something simple, and often come in the form of an answer to a ‘What would happen if…?’ question.

The Embers of War trilogy sprang from an article about the Titanic that I was reading in a dentist’s waiting room. There had been other ship losses before the ill-fated liner, but the Titanic carried a radio and was able to call for help, which meant other ships arrived in time to rescue survivors and relay the tale of what had happened. I started thinking about how different things might have been today, when the ship’s radio could have summoned helicopters and planes and fast-response boats – and as I write science fiction, I naturally projected that situation into space. If space travel became commonplace, I thought, there would need to be some sort of rescue organisation for starships in distress. And from there, I went on to build the rest of the universe around that central notion.

My point is, ideas can come from anywhere. You just have to learn to interrogate them.

Read widely, both within and beyond your chosen genre. Expose yourself to nonfiction, biographies, music, art, poetry. The wider you cast your net, the better your chances of finding something at inspires your creative process. It all goes into the compost heap of the imagination, where unexpected connections happen all the time….

(10) FAMILY TIES. Someone followed this Mark Hamill’s post at X.com with a comment: “Seems to have gone better than your meeting with your father.”

(11) YOU DON’T SAY. The Guardian offers advice about “Where to start with: Wilkie Collins”, the 19th-century author.

Monday marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Wilkie Collins, the Victorian writer known for his mystery novels. His writing became foundational to the way modern crime novels are constructed, and his most famous works – The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone – have earned him an international reputation. British crime novelist and Collins fan Elly Griffiths offers a guide for those new to the author’s work.

…the book [No Name] abounds with colourful characters, including the disreputable Captain Wragge and the noble Captain Kirke (a protype of the Star Trek hero?).

(12) AKA TRIBULATION PERIWINKLE. Can scholars identify the works published under the many pen names of Louisa May Alcott? There’s Gould in them thar hills. Max Chapnick tells “How I identified a probable pen name of Louisa May Alcott” in The Conversation.

…Where was this phantom “Phantom” story? Could I find it?

After searching digital databases, I came across one such story, called simply “The Phantom,” with the subtitle, “Or, The Miser’s Dream, &c.” It had been published in the Olive Branch in early 1860, months after Alcott listed having written “The Phantom” in her journals. But the byline under the story read E. or I. – I couldn’t quite make out the first initial – Gould, which wasn’t a known pseudonym of Alcott’s.

So I went to sleep. Sometime later I awoke with the thought that Gould might be Alcott. What if, along with her several known pseudonyms – A. M. Barnard, Tribulation Periwinkle and Flora Fairfield, among others – Alcott had yet another that simply hadn’t been identified yet?

I cannot say for certain that Gould is Alcott. But I’ve encountered enough circumstantial evidence to consider it likely Alcott wrote seven stories, five poems and one piece of nonfiction under that name….

(13) SFNAL ADVERTISING EPHEMERA, CIRCA 1900. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] Liza Daly on Mastodon posted some interesting sample pages from “The Mars Gazette: News from Another World”, a circa-1900 advertising pamphlet, that was an illustrated 16-page story of a traveler to Mars who enlightens the sickly malnourished Martians about the virtues of “Liquid Peptonoids”. (A combination of beef, milk and gluten; vegans, lactose-intolerant, and people with celiac disease, beware!) Daly’s post includes a link to the full pamphlet. Some of the illustrations are kinda neat:

(14) PRIVATE LUNAR LANDING NOW UNLIKELY. “US lunar landing attempt appears doomed after ‘critical’ fuel leak” reports AP News.

The first U.S. moon landing attempt in more than 50 years appeared to be doomed after a private company’s spacecraft developed a “critical” fuel leak just hours after Monday’s launch.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology managed to orient its lander toward the sun so the solar panel could collect sunlight and charge its battery, as a special team assessed the status of what was termed “a failure in the propulsion system.”

It soon became apparent, however, that there was “a critical loss of fuel,” further dimming hope for what had been a planned moon landing on Feb. 23….

This news has implications for a Star Trek-themed payload that is part of the mission: “Vulcan Centaur rocket launches private lander to the moon on 1st mission” at Space.com.

…The company [Celestis] also put a payload called Enterprise on the rocket’s Centaur upper stage. That mission, aptly named, has been decades in the making. It includes DNA from “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, as well as the remains from several actors from the original TV series, including Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley, who played Lieutenant Uhura, Chief Engineer “Scotty” and CMO Leonard “Bones” McCoy, respectively….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “New Lisa Frankenstein Trailer Brings Awesome ’80s Movie Vibes” says SYFY Wire. The movie arrives in theaters on February 9.

There are a lot of genre movies we’re already looking forward to in 2024, and at the moment, Lisa Frankenstein is near the top of the list. With a great roster of talent behind it, a wonderful dark comedy concept, and a blend of warmth and irreverence, it’s exactly the kind of movie we’re ready to see. Oh, and if you love nostalgia vibes, it’s also got that ’80s movie feeling, and lots of it.

Written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) and directed by Zelda Williams in her feature directorial debut, the film follows Lisa (Kathryn Newton), a weird teenager who doesn’t fit in for a lot of reasons, including her taste in men. See, Lisa has a crush, but her crush happens to be on a Victorian man who’s buried in a local cemetery. She visits him, talks to the handsome statue that marks his grave, and dreams of what their life might be like together. Then, a lightning strike unexpectedly reanimates the man (Cole Sprouse), making Lisa’s dreams seemingly come true.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/5/23 Which Items In This Scroll Contain A Hovercraft Full Of Eels?

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(1) INDIE SPIRIT. The 2024 Independent Spirit Awards nominations are out. Full list at Variety: “Indie Spirit Film and TV Nominations 2024 Revealed”.

…The annual honors recognize the best of television, as well as film…. Only new TV shows that have run for one season and were released between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of this year are eligible for awards….

The sff epic The Last of Us received four nominations.

(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB speculative fiction reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Holly Black and S.L. Coney on Wednesday, December 13. The event begins at 7:00 p.m. Eastern in the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Holly Black

Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of fantasy novels, short stories, and comics. She has been a finalist for an Eisner and a Lodestar Award, and the recipient of the Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula, and a Newbery Honor. She has sold over 26 million books worldwide, and her work has been translated into over thirty languages and adapted for film. Her most recent novel is The Stolen Heir.

S. L. Coney

S. L. Coney is the author of Wild Spaces, an Esquire Best of Horror 2023 pick, and named as an author to watch by Publisher’s Weekly. Their short stories have appeared in St. Louis Noir and Gamut Magazine and their story “Abandoned Places” was picked for 2017s Best American Mystery Stories. They still hold seashells to their ears to hear the ocean speak to them, and are still deeply disappointed that their fins never grew in.

(3) SCHOLASTIC DISCONTINUES SEPARATING OUT BOOKS WITH BIPOC/QUEER CHARACTERS. Publisher’s Lunch reports:

Scholastic announced an update to its Book Fairs policy, after separating out books with BIPOC and queer characters and creators from elementary school fairs in a purported effort to protect teachers and librarians who are dealing with legislation that bans such titles. Scholastic apologized and reversed course in October, announcing that they would discontinue the share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice a la carte collection but without additional details about the future of the program.

“From our experience in the fall, we have learned that separating out titles or highlighting titles that might make teachers and librarians vulnerable to serious legal and professional consequences is not the answer,” they state in a release.

Now, Scholastic has announced that books from the separate case—which they now call the Celebrating Voices Collection—will be integrated into the standard book fair case for the spring 2024 season, “joining a number of new titles with a wide array of representation.” All books will be delivered to schools, “which will be able to make their own local merchandising decisions, as they have always done, just like any bookstore or library.”

(4) WOOF. The Worldcon Order Of Faneditors had a collation at the Chengdu Worldcon. This year’s Official Editor (OE), Don Eastlake, has made WOOF #48 a free download at eFanzines.

WOOF is an amateur press association (apa) that has been a feature of Worldcons since 1976 thanks to its originator, the late Bruce Pelz. 

(5) WHAT A STINKER. “Doctor Who: Worst Things The Doctor Has Done” – GameRant has seven of them on its list. They get even worse after this one —

Abandoning Sarah Jane Smith

The Hand of Fear (Season 14, Serial 2)

Sarah Jane Smith first appeared alongside the third Doctor in 1973. She was a determined woman who managed to infiltrate a secret research facility in her first episode, an act that caught The Doctor’s attention. He took her on board the TARDIS as his next companion, and Sarah Jane faced off against the Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master in her time. She even got to witness The Doctor regenerate into the fourth incarnation.

All of this history made it seem even stranger that The Doctor would just abandon Sarah Jane Smith when he is called back to Gallifrey by the Time Lords. He did agree to take her home, but accidentally left her in Aberdeen with the promise of returning to her. However, it is revealed later on during the tenth Doctor’s run that the two never saw each other after that, and that The Doctor chose to abandon Sarah Jane as he did not want to see her grow old.

(6) NEW SFF IN THE NYT. Amal El-Mohtar reviews new books by Vajra Chandrasekera, Avi Silver, Cadwell Turnbull, Michael Mammay and T. Kingfisher in “What’s Behind That Door?” at the New York Times.

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS (Tordotcom, 356 pp., $27.99), by Vajra Chandrasekera, is the best book I’ve read all year. Protean, singular, original, it forces me to come up with the most baffling comparisons, like: What if “Disco Elysium” were written by Sofia Samatar? At the same time, all you need to know about it is contained in its opening:

“The moment Fetter is born, Mother-of-Glory pins his shadow to the earth with a large brass nail and tears it from him. This is his first memory, the seed of many hours of therapy to come.”…

(7) FRANKLY. David Fear’s Rolling Stone review says “’Poor Things’ Is Emma Stone’s Horny, Feminist-Frankenstein Masterpiece”. (To be precise, that’s Frankenstein’s monster, of course.)

…Based on Alasdair Gray’s award-winning 1992 novel, this serrated satire from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite) drops you into Victorian-era London, at the very moment that a young woman steps off the city’s titular bridge. She is Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), and her contemporaries might call her “simple.” Or perhaps “beastly.” She communicates by grunting, smashing plates, and high-decibel screaming. When she’s not gleefully terrorizing the servants, she hobbles unsteadily throughout the house of her guardian, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) — God, for short. A surgeon by trade (and judging from the jigsaw scars on his face, intimately familiar with the scalpel), he spends his off hours exploring the boundaries of bleeding-edge 19th century science….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 5, 1936 — James Lee Burke, 87. James Lee Burke is a writer that I first encountered by way of his Dave Robicheaux series, the once seriously alcoholic former homicide detective in the New Orleans Police Department, Robicheaux lives in New Iberia, Louisiana, and works as a detective for the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

James Lee Burke

The series being set there takes full advantage of its setting. This is an extraordinary series in which people I care about have bad things happen to them and yet I keep reading the series. It has cringe-inducing moments and it is not one to read late at night, but I enjoy it immensely. 

ISFDB lists four novels in this series as having genre elements, all I assume fantasy as Burke doesn’t do SF: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, Burning Angel, Jolie Blon‘s Bounce and A Private Cathedral, the latter the newest novel.  Now I remember the scene in Electric Mist with Confederate Dead that they think might be fantastical. It might, it might not be. To say what I think would be a spoiler. 

His shorter series of which there are currently four are all much shorter than the Dave Robicheaux series which is now at twenty-three novels over thirty three years and has even spawned has two films, the first with Dave Robicheaux played by Alec Baldwin (Heaven’s Prisoners) and then Tommy Lee Jones (In the Electric Mist). I go with the latter as working in this role as the former is too handsome as the character is described in the novels. 

The Billy Bob Holland series which I’ve read is damn good. Billy Bob Holland, an attorney and former Texas Ranger, in Deaf Smith, Texas which the author admits is a sort of love affair to his birth state. The first novel, Cimarron Rose, an Edgar Award for Best Novel. Very impressive. 

Though I’ve not read them yet, I’m very interested in his series using the real life memorable Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland coming of age against the backdrop of the civil rights era in a border town with the problems of that time.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Shoe has a horrible literary pun.
  • Bizarro has a more subtle horror pun.
  • Reality Check mashes up Shakespeare and Spider-Man.
  • Existential Comics wonders a bit about relative perspectives.  Paladins and orcs, on the other hand, aren’t terribly concerned with the nuances of perspective. 
  • xkcd has a strange (of course) solar system navigation aid.

(10) DWAYNE MCDUFFIE GRANT CREATED. “There is now a Dwayne McDuffie Genius Grant Award (as there should be!)” – Popverse has the story.

Dwayne McDuffie is a titan in the world of superhero comics and animation. The Milestone hero Static who you know from all the DC Comics and cartoons? That’s one of his. Marvel’s Damage Control, which is now not only in comics, but the MCU, and board games? That’s one of his as well. And that’s not to mention his foundational work on the animated series Ben 10 and Justice League Unlimited.

Although McDuffie sadly passed away in 2011, his personality and work have lived on through subsequent reprints, re-issues, collections, spinoffs to his work, and the contributions of those he helped along the way. And now if you consider yourself helped by McDuffie – as a reader or watcher of his work, as a collaborator, and/or as a friend – you can help someone on his behalf.

A non-profit organization called the Dwayne McDuffie Foundation has been started by McDuffie’s widow Charlotte (Fullerton) McDuffie, and one of its first acts is partnering with the iconic writer’s childhood school for the gifted with a “significant” scholarship called the Dwayne McDuffie Genius Grant Award….

More details are available in the announcement on the Dwayne McDuffie Facebook page.

… The main beneficiary of the Foundation at this time is Dwayne’s beloved childhood school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan: The Roeper School, a prestigious private institution of learning for gifted students pre-K through high school.

The Dwayne McDuffie Foundation has established a significant scholarship at Roeper called the “McDuffie Genius Grant”—a moniker Dwayne himself always wanted to use.

Beginning in Fall 2023, this annual scholarship is being awarded to a young African-American student entering the Lower School, as Dwayne did, famously reminiscing that at Roeper, he finally “felt at home.”

In February 2024, a ceremony will take place at Roeper, honoring Mr. McDuffie for his humanitarianism and many professional achievements, including his inclusion in The Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture. The faculty and staff of Roeper, present and past, couldn’t be prouder of their alumnus.

(11) BARBENHEIMER Q&A. “Cillian Murphy and Margot Robbie Discuss Barbenheimer Memes, Box Office Success”. Variety thought it would be cute for the two stars to interview each other. Were they right?

ROBBIE: It was all the way along. The fact that it’s Greta Gerwig, people are like, “Greta Gerwig and a ‘Barbie’ movie, what?” And then the pictures of Ryan Gosling and me Rollerblading on Venice Beach came out and went even wider than I was expecting. I’d been thinking big for it, and it still turned out bigger than I expected.

But what about you? Did you think so many people were going to watch a movie about the making of the atomic bomb?

MURPHY: No. I don’t think any of us did. Christopher Nolan was always determined that it would be released in the summer as a big tentpole movie. That was always his plan. And he has this superstition around that date, the 21st.

ROBBIE: Do all his movies come out on that date?

MURPHY: In and around the 21st of July — they always come out then.

ROBBIE: It’s a good date. We picked that day too!

MURPHY: Yeah, I know.

(12) AARGH. “British Museum ends terrible year as punchline in Christmas cracker joke” which is repeated in the Guardian. (And here.)

The British Museum has barely been out of the headlines in 2023. First, there was the theft of 1,500 items from its collection and then it found itself in the middle of a diplomatic row over the Parthenon marbles.

Now the institution’s annus horribilis has been topped off by becoming the punchline in the year’s most popular Christmas cracker joke.

The annual competition, commissioned by the TV channel Gold, asks people to post their festive jokes to X (formerly Twitter) with a winner of the annual poll decided by the British public.

This year’s winner was written by Chris Douch from Oxfordshire who managed to combine a joke about the British Museum’s recent travails with a reference to fruity festive confectionery: “Did you hear about the Christmas cake on display in the British Museum? It was Stollen.”

The annual competition usually produces a topical winner that sends up one of the biggest stories of the year. In 2020, the winner poked fun at Dominic Cummings and his trip to Barnard Castle during the Covid-19 pandemic….

(13) HOLD THAT THOUGHT. A Scientific American article says, “Mars Can Wait. Questions Surround Settlements on Other Worlds”.

As ever-deepening turmoil engulfs Earth, daydreaming about moving to Mars might provide a pleasant break from our everyday predicaments. It is entirely understandable—and human—to grasp onto promises of a better life in a faraway place. But when Martian daydreams, in particular, turn into reality, the picture becomes less pleasant. What promise could a barren, hostile planet like Mars hold? As far as the solar system is concerned, we already inhabit a paradise.

Nevertheless, Mars is on the menu. NASA’s proposed Artemis mission ends with people planting flags on Martian soil in coming decades. China plans a sample return mission to Mars, and India plans to send another orbiter there in 2024. Even Earth’s newest space billionaire, Elon Musk, has joked about spending his last years on Mars, apparently intending to make humans a multiplanetary species…

…At face value, the long-term survival of humanity seems to provide a solid and noble cause for building permanent settlements on Mars. However, for a Mars settlement to truly mitigate extinction risks it must be adequately self-sufficient. This is unlikely to be achieved any time soon, and we may not have the time to wait. Instead, investments in global food security, meteor or comet deflection, pandemic preparedness and global peace appear far more cost-effective than building a settlement off-world. Additionally, some risks may follow us to Mars , such as rogue artificial intelligence, meaning that a settlement on Mars does not lower the total risk of extinction that much. Therefore, while in the long term safeguarding humanity may provide a good reason to settle other planets, it does not give us an urgent one….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “10 Funny James Bond Commercials”.

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