Pun ~= (Scroll Title)

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BULWER-LYTTON RIDES OFF INTO THE SUNSET. Last week Scott Rice told fans of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “Au Revoir, Noble Bulweriers!”

It is with deep regrets that I announce the conclusion of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Being a year and a half older than Joseph Biden, I find the BLFC becoming increasingly burdensome and would like to put myself out to pasture while I still have some vim and vigor!

When I initiated the competition in 1983, inviting entrants to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels, I never dreamed that we would receive thousands of entrants from all over the U.S. and the globe, or that the contest would survive for over four decades.

I am especially grateful to our entrants for keeping the contest alive and to our Panel of Undistinguished Judges who dutifully selected each year’s “winners.” And, of course, I would like to thank my daughter, EJ, who has been indispensable the last several years of the contest. It’s been 42 good years but, alas, all good things must come to an end. Rest assured we’re keeping the BLFC spirit alive by maintaining our archive for posterity so that generations and generations hence may witness your greatness!

(2) ERRATA REDUX. The UK’s SF Gateway bookselling site is having a little trouble identifying author “William Rotsler”, co-author with Gregory Benford of Shiva Descending. As Andrew Porter pointed out to them, this is a photo of Robert Silverberg.

It isn’t the first time something like this has happened to Rotsler. When he was the 1973 Worldcon Fan Guest of Honour, the designer of TorCon 2’s program book erroneously ran a photo of John Schoenherr instead of Rotsler. (Coincidentally, Robert Silverberg was the author of that 1973 bio!)

(3) DROPPING FAST. The Guardian reports “US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms”.

The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia….

(4) NEW DAVE HOOK POSTS. A Deep Look by Dave Hook praises “’Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art’, Indrapramit Das editor, 2024 The MIT Press”.

The Short: I recently read Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, Indrapramit Das editor, 2024 The MIT Press. My favorites of the ten short stories were “Encore“, by Wole Talabi, “The Quietude” by Lavie Tidhar, and “Autumn’s Red Bird“, by Aliette de Bodard. The essays and art were great also. My overall rating was 3.88/5, or “Great”. Strongly recommended.

And for an encore, Dave Hook shares “My 2025 Hugo Nominations”. His list includes —

Best Related Work nomination:

I nominated “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion“, Chris Barkley & Jason Sanford Author/Editors, File770/Genre Grapevine, February 14, 2024.

(5) FUTURE TENSE. February’s Future Tense Fiction story is “Mothering the Bay,” by Deji Bryce Olukotun—a story about AI, misinformation, and parenting, set on the BART public transit system in California’s Bay Area.

The response essay, “The Awareness Imperative”, is by educational technologist Babe Liberman.

(6) PAGING CAPTAIN PIKE’S BARBER. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Character Posters” – there are 13 images in the gallery. The Captain looks like he stuck his head out a porthole while the ship was at Warp 3. I rather like the photo of Scotty, though.

Paramount+ reveals new character art for Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

The new character art features Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as First Officer Una Chin-Riley, Ethan Peck as Spock, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La’An Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas and Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M’Benga.

In addition to the main cast, we have recurring guests Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk, Melanie Scrofano as Marie Batel, Martin Quinn as Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, and Carol Kane as Pelia.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is based on the years Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

(7) KAZUO ISHIGURO Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] With a 20th Anniversary special edition of his science fiction novel Never Let Me Go about to be published, Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro is interviewed by the Guardian and discussed his openness to speculative fiction, his own opinion of his prose style and the dangers posed by the increasing use of AI: “’AI will become very good at manipulating emotions’: Kazuo Ishiguro on the future of fiction and truth”.

Never Let Me Go had a long gestation period, as Ishiguro explains in his introduction to a new edition; for many years, it existed merely as thoughts and notes about a group of students whose lifespan – perhaps as the result of a nuclear accident – was markedly different from their peers. The breakthrough came via a combination of external factors and timing: societal interest in the potential benefits and dangers of cloning, at its most headline-grabbing in the shape of Dolly the sheep; and a shift in writing and publishing that made a place in so-called literary novels for the techniques and practices of speculative fiction.

“I gave myself permission to use what traditionally might have been called genre tropes,” Ishiguro explains. “And that wasn’t because I was being terribly brave or anything. I think the climate around me changed; the next generation of writers, people about 15 years younger than me, didn’t see anything weird about it, at least the people I happened to become friends with, David Mitchell or Alex Garland. They were taking their cues from all kinds of places and I really liked their work.”

(8) SIMON FISHER-BECKER (1961-2025). “Simon Fisher-Becker dead: ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Doctor Who’ actor was 63” reports USA Today.

Simon Fisher-Becker, a British actor known for his roles on “Doctor Who” and in the first “Harry Potter” film, has died. He was 63.

Fisher-Becker’s death was confirmed by his agency in a statement issued to USA TODAY on Monday.

“Today, I lost not only a client Simon Fisher-Becker, but a close personal friend of 15 years standing,” the statement said. “I shall never forget the phone call I made to him when he was offered the part of ‘Dorium’ in Dr Who. He had been a fan of the show since he was a child.

“Simon was also a writer, a raconteur and a great public speaker. He helped me out enormously and was always kind, gracious and interested in everyone. My condolences go to his husband Tony, his brother, nieces and nephews and his legion of fans.”

Fisher-Becker portrayed the Fat Friar, a ghost from Hufflepuff, who appeared in 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” In the film, he comes through the floor of the Hogwarts dining hall as several ghosts arrive, including Nearly Headless Nick.

The actor also starred as Dorium Maldovar on the British sci-fi series “Doctor Who.” He played the role in the fifth and sixth seasons of the modern reboot opposite Matt Smith’s Doctor….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway wins the Hugo for Best Novel (1978)

Forty-six years ago at IguanaCon II, where Tim Kyger was the Chair, Harlan Ellison was the pro guest, and Bill Bowers was the fan guest, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway wins the Hugo for Best Novel.

The other nominated works for that year were The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Time Storm by Gordon R. Dickson and Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin.

It was serialized in the November and December 1976 issues of Galaxy prior to its hardcover publication by St. Martin’s Press. A short concluding chapter, cut before publication, was later published in the August 1977 issue of Galaxy.

It would win damn near every other major Award there was as it garnered the John Campbell Memorial for Best Science Fiction Novel, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Nebula Award for Novel and even the Prix Pollo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel published in France. It was nominated for but did not win the Australian Ditmar Award.

It’s the opening novel in the Heechee saga, with four sequels that followed. It is a most exceptional series. I’ve read I think all of them.

I’m chuffed that Pohl was voted a Hugo for Best Fan Writer at Aussiecon 4. Who can tell what works got him this honor?

Gateway of course is available at the usual suspects.

If I’m remembering right, there was talk of a film for awhile.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro has a break-up line.
Brewster Rockit is too ready for a close-up.
The Argyle Sweater gets ready to compress.
Yaffe provides a start.

(11) THE NEXT DISRUPTION. The Guardian asks, “Are AI-generated video games really on the horizon?”

Another month, another revolutionary generative AI development that will apparently fundamentally alter how an entire industry operates. This time tech giant Microsoft has created a “gameplay ideation” tool, Muse, which it calls the world’s first Wham, or World and Human Action Model. Microsoft claims that Muse will speed up the lengthy and expensive process of game development by allowing designers to play around with AI-generated gameplay videos to see what works.

Muse is trained on gameplay data from UK studio Ninja Theory’s game Bleeding Edge. It has absorbed tens of thousands of hours of people’s real gameplay, both footage and controller inputs. It can now generate accurate-looking mock gameplay clips for that game, which can be edited and adapted with prompts.

All well and good, but in an announcement video for Muse, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer caused confusion when he said that it could be invaluable for the preservation of classic games: AI models, he implied, could “learn” those games and emulate them on modern hardware. It’s not clear how this would be possible. Further muddying the waters, Microsoft’s overall CEO Satya Nadella then implied in a podcast interview that Muse was the first step in creating a “catalogue” of AI-generated games.

But Muse, as it stands, can’t create a game – it can only create made-up footage of a game. So just what is this new gaming AI tool? A swish addition to game developers’ tool belts? Or the first step towards an era of AI-generated gaming detritus?…

(12) CLIPPING SERVICE. Filer Lise Andreasen says, “I made a joke!”

(13) MIND INTO MATTER. “Vesuvius Turned a Roman Man’s Brain Into Glass. Now, Scientists Reveal How the Extremely Rare Preservation Happened” in Smithsonian Magazine.

In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the nearby ancient Roman city of Pompeii and the smaller town of Herculaneum under deadly layers of volcanic ash, pumice and pyroclastic flows. But the disaster that demolished the two settlements also immortalized them, preserving everything from the shape of victims’ bodies to frescoes in private villas and library scrolls.

Archaeologists even discovered the remains of a young man whose brain and parts of his spinal cord had turned into glass. Scientists had never seen a glassy soft tissue in nature before—and no one has found anything like it since….

…The recent study, however, supports the 2020 research claiming that the remains are indeed a brain—they found preserved neurons and axons, as well as proteins known to be common in brain tissue. They conclude the vitrification was caused by an ash cloud that arrived in Herculaneum before the pyroclastic flows from the volcano….

…But there’s a catch: “Conditions must have been very, very specific, because the organic tissue must have experienced a heating fast enough not to entirely destroy it (which is instead the most common occurrence) and then fast-cool to turn into glass,” Giordano says to Popular Science’s Andrew Paul.

To achieve those specific circumstances, the skull and spine acted as protective layers, shielding the soft tissue within from a bit of the heat. “The glass that formed as a result of such a unique process attained a perfect state of preservation of the brain and its microstructures,” the team writes in the paper.

Giordano tells Live Science’s Tom Metcalfe that they found charcoal fragments in Herculaneum that supported their idea. These fragments “experienced multiple [heating] events, and the highest temperatures were associated with the early, super-hot ash cloud.”

Benjamin Andrews, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Collin Blinder that the team’s findings are “remarkable.”

“There’s a huge story, a huge wealth of information, contained in these little particles,” he adds.

Not everyone agrees with the new conclusions, however. For example, Alexandra Morton-Hayward, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oxford in England who was also not involved in the research, is not convinced that the glassy material is indeed parts of the man’s brain. She maintains that soft tissue vitrification is “incredibly unlikely,” per CNN….

(14) LUNAR ECLIPSE VISIBLE FROM THE AMERICAS. Coming March 14: “Total lunar eclipse to mesmerise skywatchers in March” reports the Guardian.

This week, the moon experiences a total lunar eclipse, which although not as spectacular as a total solar eclipse is still a beautiful celestial sight to behold.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the full moon passes directly behind Earth, through our planet’s shadow. Skywatchers first see the shadow of Earth creeping across the face of the moon. This is known as the partial phase.

Then, during the total phase, when the moon is engulfed by Earth’s shadow, the lunar surface turns a deep red colour. In the last phase, also known as a partial phase, Earth’s shadow slips off the lunar surface and all returns to normal.

It is a leisurely process, taking more than three hours to complete. On 14 March, the partial eclipse begins at 0509 GMT. The total phase begins at 0658 GMT before returning to a partial phase at 0731 GMT. This final partial phase then ends at 0847 GMT.

Unfortunately for European and African viewers, only the initial partial phase will be visible. Observers in North and South America, however, will be treated to the whole thing. Parts of Asia and Australia will then catch the final partial phase.

(15) FILK HISTORY. “Margaret Middleton – A Shaper of Modern Filk (Part 2 of 2), interviewed by Edie Stern” has been posted by FANAC.org on YouTube.

Title: Margaret Middleton – A Shaper of Modern Filk (Part 2 of 2), interviewed by Edie Stern

Description: FANAC History Zoom: February 2025: Named to the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996, and a long time officer of the Filk Foundation, Margaret Middleton has been instrumental in the shaping of modern filk, as well as a mainstay of Arkansas fandom. She’s published multiple fanzines, including Kantele, and was a founder of the first specialized filk convention, Filkcon 1.

In Part 2 of this 2 part recording, the conversation ranges from Margaret’s taxonomy of filk, to tips for busking at the Farmer’s Market, and to the effect of the internet on filking and the filk community. We also learn about Margaret-when-she’s not filking, including her involvement in the Civil Air Patrol, quilting and her professional responsibilities for “measuring piles of dirt and holes in the ground.” … It’s a wide-ranging conversation, and ends with barbershop quartets, the Ballad of Eskimo Nell (discussed – not sung), the relationship of quilts to filk conventions and audience Q&A…For those interested in the history of filk, this 2 part interview is highly recommended.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/26/24 The Sandmaid’s Tale

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GREAT MARTHA WELLS PROFILE. Meghan Herbst’s “How Murderbot Saved Martha Wells’ Life” in WIRED is fascinating in so many ways. You’ll find reasons of your own. Mine is the revelation how many of the same events Wells and I were at in the 1980s – even an AggieCon — yet I don’t think we ever met.

MURDER IS IN the air. Everywhere I turn, I see images of a robot killing machine. Then I remind myself where I actually am: in a library lecture room on a college campus in East Texas. The air is a little musty with the smell of old books, and a middle-aged woman with wavy gray-brown hair bows her head as she takes the podium. She might appear a kindly librarian or a cat lady (confirmed), but her mind is a capacious galaxy of starships, flying bipeds, and ancient witches. She is Martha Wells, creator of Murderbot.

Hearing a name like that, you’d be forgiven for running for your life. But the thing about Murderbot—the thing that makes it one of the most beloved, iconic characters in modern-day science fiction—is just that: It’s not what it seems. For all its hugeness and energy-weaponized body armor, Murderbot is a softie. It’s socially awkward and appreciates sarcasm. Not only does it detest murdering, it wants to save human lives, and often does (at least when it’s not binge-watching its favorite TV shows). “As a heartless killing machine,” as Murderbot puts it, “I was a terrible failure.”…

…The young Wells dealt with her awkwardness the same way Murderbot eventually would: by immersing herself in far-off realms. She sketched maps of Monster Island, the home of Godzilla, and wrote fan fiction set in the worlds of Lost In Space and Land of the Giants. At the nearby bookstore, she gazed in wonder at the covers of books like F. M. Busby’s Zelde M’Tana, featuring a Black woman in a jumpsuit raising a gun. She picked her way through Phyllis Gotlieb, John Varley, Andre Norton. There was also Erma Bombeck, the witty writer whose local newspaper column on suburban family life, “At Wit’s End,” hit a vein with ’70s housewives. “That was my first real indication that being a writer was a real job,” Wells says….

(2) DEVOUT PARODY. Sister Boniface Mysteries, explains Wikipedia, is a spinoff from the Father Brown TV series that premiered in 2022.

…The series is set in England during the early 1960s. Sister Boniface is a Catholic nun at St. Vincent’s Convent in the fictional town of Great Slaughter in the Cotswolds. In addition to her religious duties at the convent, she makes wine and has a PhD in forensic science (although this is referred to as a MA (Cantab), in the The Forensic Nun episode of Father Brown) allowing her to serve as a scientific adviser to the local police on investigations….

A viewer told The Divergent Universe forum that in recent episodes “’Sister Boniface Mysteries’ does ‘Doctor Who’”.

“Sister Boniface Mysteries”, the less-than-serious and not-very-good “Father Brown” spinoff … has got into the habit of doing parodies of well-known series. There was an episode where a “Blue Peter”-type series was filmed in the village, an episode where an Ian Fleming-adjacent author was trying to cast a James Bond-esque movie role, and this week they hold a Doctor Who convention. Excuse me, a Professor X convention. No, it wasn’t even that, it was “Professor Y”.

“Professor Y” is a tv series that, by whatever stage in the 1960s “Sister Boniface Mysteries” is set, has been cancelled but fans keep the spirit alive and are campaigning for it to be brought back. The police inspector and one of the nuns are big fans. Anyway, the clips of the series they show are actually not all that bad – certainly much less silly and far more credible than, say, Inspector Spacetime. Mark Heap was cast as the actor who played the Professor, and while his performance is perhaps closer to nuWho than 1960s DW, it’s not that bad. And the Dalek-type creatures look fairly good for Dalek-type creatures. The voice actor isn’t Nick Briggs but I thought was trying to sound like him.

Anyway, it gave us three days of DW in a row, sort of.

(3) DERN CHEEP STREAMZ: [Item by Daniel Dern.] Want to watch Dune: Prophecy (on Max), Ted Lasso, Foundation, etc on Apple+? Roku is having some great multi-month deals, “Up to 90% off on 25+ premium subscriptions” including Acorn ($0.99/month for two months, vs $7.99/month)(Murdoch Mysteries, etc) BritBox $3.99/month for two months, vs $8.99/month) (McDonald & Dodds, if nothing else) Max ($2.99/month for six months, vs $9.99/month) (Penguin; other DC flicks’n’shows) Paramount ($2.99/month for two months, vs $12.99) Star Trek; NCIS; The Daily Show, The Late Show etc. “Black Friday Deals | Premium Subscriptions | Roku”.

A Roku account itself is free.

I don’t think you need to buy/have a Roku player (“streaming stick” etc).

There’s a Roku (mobile) app, for your phone, tablet, and (possibly) “smart TV”.

We have/use a Roku player (streaming stick) (no cablebox these days, and the TV is old enough that it won’t, I think, let me add apps directly). — We have the slightly $$ Roku player, for the build-in Ethernet and other features, but the other models are inexpensive (and currently on Black Friday sales as well). (And a second, smaller Roku player&remote, for convenience during increasingly-rare travel.)

‘Nuff watched!

(4) RECOVERED WISDOM. “Ursula K. Le Guin — Book View Café: Navigating the Ocean of Story” is a page at the Ursula K. Le Guin website with a directory of links to 14 recreated copies of posts she wrote for BVC.

In 2015, a few months before the publication of the revised edition of Steering the Craft, Ursula began “an experiment: a kind of open consultation or informal ongoing workshop in Fictional Navigation,” which was hosted at Book View Café. She took questions about writing from readers, and offered generous answers.

These posts were lost in an update at BVC, but we’ve recreated them as best we could with the help of the Wayback Machine. Three other posts appeared only at BVC and not on Ursula’s own website’s blog; those are included here too.

(5) FUTURE TENSE. November 2024’s new Future Tense Fiction story is “A Time Between,” by Kevin Galvin, a story about augmented reality and detective work. It’s paired with a response essay by Jim Bueermann, founder and president of the Center on Policing and Artificial Intelligence: “The Long Arm of Law and Technology”.

…When used for policing, what does technology illuminate—and what does it obscure? Kevin Galvin’s “A Time Between,” a new short story published by Future Tense Fiction, explores these questions through the eyes of Detective Carberry, an older, somewhat disillusioned officer who prefers tangible experiences over the augmented reality technologies that now dominate his fictional universe—and his police department. Carberry is wary of how reality and fiction are becoming increasingly hard to distinguish, and his skepticism comes to a head when he’s tasked with investigating the death of a college freshman who supposedly fell from a dorm-room window, but whose body cannot be found….

Other news: There’s now a dedicated landing page for Future Tense Fiction on the website of their publishing partner, Issues in Science and Technology. You can find it here: https://issues.org/futuretensefiction. It will feature our new fiction and essays, selected stories from the Future Tense Fiction archives, video interviews with authors, and more.

(6) FAN HISTORY IS CALLING. First Fandom Experience’s editors are “Seeking collaborators for research and publishing on the early history of fandom”.

Fan history is replete with stories of individuals whose experience in fandom enabled them to create the foundations of the massive science fiction and fantasy industry we know today. The writings of these early fans also offer unique insights on the US and Britain during the Great Depression and the Second World War.

We hope to engage with students, historians and others with interest and intent to learn, understand and publish these stories.

In support of our work, FFE has assembled an extensive archive of fan material — fanzines, convention material, club ephemera, photographs, correspondence and others — all from the late 1920s to the late-1940s. The physical archive resides in the collections of David Ritter and Alistair Durie, each accumulated over decades. Our exclusive focus on this period also allows us to source supplemental digital material from other private, university and public sources….

… FFE is prepared to facilitate access to the archive for individuals and organizations seeking to research and publish in this area of study. Please reach out to us at: info@firstfandomexperience.org

(7) A MUCH WIDER WORLD. Robin Anne Reid shares her talk “Tolkien’s ‘Absent [Female] Characters’: How Christopher Tolkien Expanded Middle-earth” at Writing from Ithilien.

… I said I’d be looking at how Christopher’s work on the posthumous publications expanded Middle-earth by including more female characters.

And then things just all came together in my head, including the four Éowyn posts I had made in my Substack earlier this year….

… This talk is the start of a larger project which will explore three related topics. The first is how the posthumous publications CJRT edited (from the 1977 Silmarillion to the 2018 Fall of Gondolin)¹ expand the number of female characters in Middle-earth and give us a unique view into alternate and contradictory ideas JRRT explored in his writing process. The second is how academic scholarship on his fiction is still, almost 50 years after the publication of The Silmarillion, overlooking most of the legendarium’s female characters except for a handful in The Lord of the Rings plus Lúthien.² The third is how those of us who are feminists can challenge that tendency by paying more attention to the messy, complex material about female characters in the multiple histories of Middle-earth and by acknowledging and incorporating the valuable work women and non-binary fans have been and are doing with the posthumous publications.³

This talk, and this project, exist in the current Anglophone socio-political context in which some critical theories, such as feminisms, have been dismissed as inappropriately imposing politics (and, the worst of all politics, “identity politics” which is apparently politics by anyone who is not a straight Christian white man) on literature since at least the 1980s. As Sue Kim argues in “Beyond Black and White: Race and Postmodernism in The Lord of the Rings Film”: “It is disingenuous to claim that certain modern politics apply (war, fascism, industrialization, conservation) and others do not (gender, sexuality, race), just as it is disingenuous to say that any one kind of reading necessarily discounts all other readings” (882).⁴…

(8) EARL HOLLIMAN (1928-2024). Actor Earl Holliman died November 25 at the age of 96. Fans know him best as the star of The Twilight Zone’s debut episode “Where Is Everybody?” which aired on October 2, 1959. The Deadline tribute details some of his genre work:

…Holliman had done several guest-starring roles on 1950s TV before making history as the focus of the first episode of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s landmark anthology series that put ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The October 1959 episode “Where Is Everybody?” opened with Holliman’s Mike Ferris wandering in a deserted town, which appears to be populated — coffee is boiling, a jukebox is playing, a cigar is burning — but no one is seen. The unsettling scenario continues to build to a wildly unexpected climax that would be the still-loved series’ signature….

Prior to that he appeared in the Fifties sf film Forbidden Planet. And his career was bookended by a genre TV series:

…He would land a final series-regular role on the syndicated NightMan in 1997. He starred opposite Matt McColm, whose Johnny Domingo becomes the title superhero after a lightning strike. Holliman played his ex-cop dad who appeared in two dozen episodes before being killed off in the Season 2 premiere….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born November 26, 1919 — Frederik Pohl. (Died 2013.)

By Paul Weimer: Frederik Pohl first came to my attention thanks to his multiverse novel, The Coming of the Quantum Cats. I saw the book in a bookstore, was attracted by the cover, hooked by the back matter, bought it and read it quickly and avidly. I had never heard of Pohl before, and if you’ve read these vignettes and have gotten any sense of who I am, you know I had to find more of Pohl’s work. If he could do multiverse novels, what else could he do? What else did he do? Plenty it turns out.

Frederik Pohl as shown on the cover of his 1979 autobiography The Way The Future Was.

Next up came Gateway, the novel for which he is most famous, with its unusual structural style and tone, and a focus that frustrated me then…but now I find brilliant, unique, engaging and makes the book memorable. From Gateway, I read a number of Pohl works and novels over the years. The Space Merchants with its criticism of capitalism that feels every more prescient as the years pass. The wide-ranging epic of the Eschaton trilogy, which brings a near future government agent into conflict with aliens who have orders and information from their far future apotheosis. There is his nonfictional collaboration with Isaac Asimov, This Angry Earth, which was an early 1990’s clarion call to deal with climate change. We did not listen, we did not hear, and now we are paying that price.

And then there were a large number of short stories. A lot of them seem to be awfully funny, such as the subtle The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass, which I managed to read just before reading Lest Darkness Fall (which it references and I then wanted to, and did, read — and then immediately read Harry Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacemaker, which is his sequel to the classic).

The best of these is my favorite Pohl work (even more than The Coming of the Quantum Cats) — Day Million. It tells the story of a typical day in the year 2739. It’s a future to give Rep Nancy Mace fear and loathing. The main character Dora is genetically male but biologically female, and forms a relationship with a starship flying cyborg, with whom she has virtual sex, among a variety of lovers of various kinds. The story is addressed to and written in a point of view addressing the reader in a challenging, direct way, saying that if you are repulsed by this, by this future, just think what Attila the Hun would think of you and your life. It’s a story that feels especially relevant in this year of 2024.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss meets a different breed.
Carpe Diem gets a peek at Ann Darrow’s social media.
Rhymes with Orange reveals the reason for green visitors.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has to go with second choice.

(11) BOOK REMOVAL LITIGATION UPDATE. “Summary Judgment Motions Filed in ‘Tango’ Book Banning Case” reports Publishers Weekly.

With discovery now complete, dueling summary judgment motions have been filed in a closely watched book banning case in Escambia County, Fla., over the removal of Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson’s 2005 picture book And Tango Makes Three.

In a filing this week, the authors, who first filed suit in June 2023, argue that the removal of their book—an illustrated book based on a true story about two male penguins who adopt and raise a penguin chick—was removed based on unconstitutional, anti-LGBTQ+ “viewpoint discrimination” and should be returned to school library shelves.

“Following Florida’s enactment of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and a challenge from a District teacher with a documented history of homophobia, Defendant removed Tango from District school libraries,” the filing states. “There is no dispute that Defendant did so because Tango depicts a same-sex relationship, a viewpoint-discriminatory justification prohibited by the First Amendment.”

In their own motion for summary judgment, lawyers for defendants Escambia County counter they should prevail because school officials have the authority to remove any book from library shelves for any reason, citing a common defense in several book banning cases now underway across the nation—that which books go on library shelves is “government speech” and thus immune from First Amendment scrutiny….

(12) DISNEY CLASS-ACTION SETTLEMENT EXPECTED. Deadline has learned “Disney Will Pay $43M To Settle Pay Equity Class-Action Lawsuit”. “Not even the cost of a slice of cheese for the Mouse,” opines Cat Eldridge.

We now know how much Disney is writing a check for to end the pay equity class-action suit that has loomed over the company for the past five years.

Set to address the up to 14,000 eligible class members of female Disney employees past and present from 2015 to today, the Bob Iger-run fun palace will be paying $43.25 million, according to papers set to be filed later tonight in Los Angeles Superior Court docket.

Far less than the $300 million it was estimated the case could balloon to once if was certified as a class action last December, the official compensation comes a couple of weeks after news broke of a quietly reached October settlement between Disney and the Lori Andrus represented plaintiffs. The whole matter was set to go to trial in May 2025….

… First filed in April 2019 over back pay, lost benefits and more by Disney staffers LaRonda Rasmussen and Karen Moore and heading towards a May 2025 trial, the suit accused the Magic Kingdom of not being so kind with its cash based on gender as opposed to performance. At its core, the suit claimed Disney has violated the Fair Employment & Housing Act and California’s Equal Pay Act in paying men more than women for the same work.

Seeking at least $150 million in lost wages initially, the suit saw repeated big push back from Disney over the year in efforts to have it dismissed and not certified. Exclaiming the whole thing was merely “highly individualized allegations,” Disney’s Paul Hasting LLP team sought to limit the matter to a small contingent of less than 10 women. There was also drama over documents and discovery, with the plaintiffs calling out the Mouse House as dragging their feet with data and paperwork….

(13) FURNISHED FOR ADVENTURE. If you’re ready to part with $295, GW Pens will happily sell you the “GW Dungeon Dice and Pen Set with Field Notes 5E Character Journal”. And the chest it comes in!

Ready to embark on a new dungeon crawl? Be sure to grab your chest of necessities before you go!

This wooden box unlatches to reveal a dragon themed ballpoint twist pen with hand cast resin and Matching hand cast resin dice! The pen and dice are easily kept together in the pictured wooden chest, with faux leather lined insert to keep the dice edges safe from the metal components of the pen. The tray can lift out from the box for a small storage area beneath.

Also included with this set is a Field Notes 5E character journal, helping you track everything you need to know about your character from the first roll of the dice!

The included dice are dense enough to have a nice weight to them, offering true “rolls” and not just stopping on whatever side they land on.

(14) OUR LOOKOUT. [Item by Steven French.] Astronomer Desiree Cotto-Figueora on defending the planet: “I defend the planet from asteroid collisions” in Nature.

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in the Solar System, the majority of which are in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But some of these asteroids, either through collisions, or through gravitational effects or other processes, end up in new orbits that come close to or cross Earth’s orbit. Currently, astronomers think that there are more than 36,000 of these near-Earth asteroids, and at least 2,400 of those are considered potentially hazardous, because they could strike Earth.

I’m part of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission, which aims to detect and characterize 90% of near-Earth asteroids that are larger than 140 metres in diameter. The first step is to work out where they are, but it’s also important to characterize them and understand their fragmentation process so that scientists can design strategies for deflection and disruption, if needed.

Along with my research, I spend a lot of time teaching astronomy and organizing outreach events through my role as coordinator of the Astronomical Observatory at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao. In this photo, I’m standing next to the observatory’s 14-inch telescope. Although it’s a lot smaller than the 42-inch instrument I use for my research, it’s a great tool for connecting people with the Universe. I love seeing how excited kids and adults get when they look through a telescope for the first time and see the rings of Saturn or the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

I’ve loved astronomy and watching space documentaries from an early age. In high school, I started an astronomy club and visited nearby observatories, including the one I work at now. I’m so lucky to have ended up doing work that I’m passionate about. Even now, I don’t think that high-school girl would ever have imagined that one day she’d be working on a NASA mission.

(15) EARTH CALLING THE HIDDEN CITY… “’We didn’t know what it was at first.’ NASA aircraft uncovers site of secret Cold War nuclear missile tunnels under Greenland ice sheet” – Space.com has the story.

NASA scientists conducting surveys of arctic ice sheets in Greenland got an unprecedented view of an abandoned “city under the ice” built by the U.S. military during the Cold War.

During a scientific flight in April 2024, a NASA Gulfstream III aircraft flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet carrying radar instruments to map the depth of the ice sheet and the layers of bedrock below it. The images revealed a new view of Camp Century, a Cold War-era U.S. military base consisting of a series of tunnels carved directly into the ice sheet. As it turns out, this abandoned “secret city” was the site of a secret Cold War project known as Project Iceworm which called for the construction of 2,500 miles (4,023 km) of tunnels that could be used to nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the Soviet Union….

…Construction on Camp Century began in 1959, but the base was abandoned in 1967 due to the costs and challenges of keeping the tunnels from collapsing in the ever-shifting ice sheet…

…The trenches were designed for a type of modified Minuteman IRBM missile known as “Iceman” that would be able to withstand the pressures of launching through the ice sheet. Project Iceworm was ultimately canceled and abandoned along with Camp Century, but the echoes of this era of the Cold War still reverberate throughout the Greenland landscape today…

For more details about the facility watch this “’Camp Century’ Restored Classified Film”.

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

Cats Sleep on SFF: Star Science Fiction

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Joachim Boaz, who introduced us to this new family member in March 2023, sent two photos to show that Cyrus’ SF education continues.

Here’s Cyrus “reading” the first Star anthology!

I know this one doesn’t have a book, but here he is in all his ridiculous glory! haha.

Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

Pixel Scroll 11/26/23 Three Little Muah’Dib’s From Dune Are We

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Program and Registration for the 8th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Science Fiction, Gender, and Sexuality will be held on Thursday, November 30, 2023 from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m Eastern (GMT/UTC -5 hours) online via Zoom Webinar.

To participate in this free event, attendees will need to do these two things: (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!

For those who would like to watch the event without registering, you can join the YouTube Livestream here (click on the top-most video labeled “Live”).

One of the sessions will include these papers:

2:15-3:05pm:
Paper Session 4
Moderator -Leigh Gold
Omotoyosi Odukomaiya – Identity, Otherness and Alterity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater
Nikki Paige Gallant – Romantic Disability Studies: The Female Cyborg in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”
Jacob Adler – Speculative Fiction and the “Illusory Woman”
Jo Ann Oravec – You May Now Kiss the Robot: Human-Robot Marriages in Science Fiction Literature and Movies

(2) TREASURED CHESTS. Adam Roberts begins by reminding readers how Robert E. Howard wrought the original Conan before dryly passing judgment on Robert Jordan’s continuation of the series and its infinite breast references. When Roberts says the “writing throughout is of the calibre one would expect from the author of The Wheel of Time” it is not meant as flattery. “Robert Jordan, ‘The Conan Chronicles: 2’ [‘Conan the Magnificent’ (1984); ‘Conan the Triumphant’ (1983); ‘Conan the Victorious’ (1984)”.

…Conan often swears by ‘Crom’, his god; but Crom is a much more Lovecraftian deity than (say) Thor or Ares:

“Conan’s gods were simple and understandable; Crom was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and death. It was useless to call on Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian’s mind, was all any god should be expected to do.” [Howard, ‘The Tower of the Elephant’ (1933)]

It is splendid, and it lifts the adventuring out of the banality wish-fulfilment. Going through the stories I was struck by how powerful and memorable they are.

+++

From, as they say, the sublime to the ridiculous. Having read Howard I was curious as to how his various continuers compared. They did not, constant reader, compare well….

(3) FACES SHOULD BE RED, NOT JUST THE PLANET. Ars Technica reviewer Chris Lee hears a discouraging word about colonizing Mars: “A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams”.

Let me start with the TLDR for A City on Mars. It is, essentially, 400 pages of “well, actually…,” but without the condescension, quite a bit of humor, and many, oh so many, details. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith started from the position of being space settlement enthusiasts. They thought they were going to write a light cheerleading book about how everything was going to be just awesome on Mars or the Moon or on a space station. Unfortunately for the Weinersmiths, they actually asked questions like “how would that work, exactly?” Apart from rocketry (e.g., the getting to space part), the answers were mostly optimistic handwaving combined with a kind of neo-manifest destiny ideology that might have given Andrew Jackson pause.

The Weinersmiths start with human biology and psychology, pass through technology, the law, and population viability and end with a kind of call to action. Under each of these sections, the Weinersmiths pose questions like: Can we thrive in space? reproduce in space? create habitats in space? The tour through all the things that aren’t actually known is shocking. No one has been conceived in low gravity, no fetuses have developed in low gravity, so we simply don’t know if there is a problem. Astronauts experience bone and muscle loss and no one knows how that plays out long term. Most importantly, do we really want to find this out by sending a few thousand people to Mars and hope it all just works out?

Then there are the problems of building a habitation and doing all the recycling. I was shocked to learn that no one really knows how to construct a long-term habitable settlement for either the Moon or Mars. Yes, there are lots of hand-wavy ideas about lava tubes and regolith shielding. But the details are just… not there. It reminds me of Europe’s dark days of depositing colonies on other people’s land. The stories of how unprepared the settlers were are sad, hilarious, and repetitive. And, now we learn that we are planning for at least one more sequel….

(4) NEGATORY GOOD BUDDY. Far Out Magazine found the tablets listing “Ayn Rand’s 13 commandments for making capitalist movies”. Every one starts with the word “Don’t”.

…An often-revered, equally maligned philosopher and unashamed champion of capitalism, Ayn Rand managed to weave her steadfast and forthcoming ideology into her works as an artistic writer. As a capitalist, Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged mirrored her belief in individualism and the pursuit of material gain….

…When it came to creating pro-capitalist movies, Rand felt that there were specific criteria that directors and writers ought to stick to and in 1947, she wrote the ‘Screen Guide for Americans’, a pamphlet that was meant to heighten awareness in Hollywood studio producers of a growing pro-communist sentiment.

“The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood,” she wrote, “Is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political movies — by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories — thus making people absorb the basic premises of Collectivism by indirection and implication.”…

The 13 commandments are at the link.

(5) WHO REMEMBERS. “’I made the Daily Mail incredibly angry’: stars share their Doctor Who moments – part five” in the Guardian.

Juno Dawson (writer of the Doctor Who: Redacted audio series, 2022 onwards)

When Tegan Jovanka leaves the Doctor, she tells him she can no longer witness the bodies piling up around them. “It’s stopped being fun, Doctor!”, she wails. I often apply that rule to my life, too. If it stops being fun, get out. Some 20 years later, Martha Jones chooses herself over a life of pining after the Doctor. She explains about her university friend’s unrequited love for their flatmate. Martha won’t repeat her pattern, and she gets out. It’s one of the most explicitly feminist moments in the show.”

(6) D.G. COMPTON (1930-2023). Sff writer D.G. Compton, winner of the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, died November 10 reports the Arrowhead SF Foundation.

We received sad news today that David Guy Compton, who wrote as D. G. Compton, passed away this morning at the age of 93 where he had lived in Maine for many years. David was born in London, England in 1930 and moved to the US some years later.

We had the great pleasure of having David visit us in Milford for the Black Bear Film Festival the year DEATH WATCH, the 1979 Bertrand Tavernier film based on his book, THE CONTINIOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE was featured on the main stage. It was a delightful and memorable weekend.

D. G. Compton was always writing, with his most recent novel, SO HERE’S OUR LEO, being published by Wildside Press in April of 2022. Besides THE CONTINIOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE – an “author’s cut” of which was published by NYRB Classics in 2016 — his many wonderful titles include THE STEEL CROCODILE, FAREWELL EARTH’S BLISS, and SYNTHAJOY, as well as numerous crime novels written as Guy Compton and gothic romances as Frances Lynch. David was also an authority on stammering, writing a nonfiction book on the subject, STAMMERING: ITS NATURE, HISTORY, CAUSES AND CURES.

David was awarded the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award and was also honored as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s Author Emeritus in 2007. He is survived by his step son, Toby Savage and many friends. We will greatly miss him.

The best way you can honor David Compton is to go read one of his books.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 26, 1919 — Frederik Pohl. (Died 2013.) He’s one of those writers that I’ve always found I can depend upon for an excellent reading experience. So let’s take a look at him. Now keep in mind this is only about him as a writer, not as an editor.

Eighty-six years ago when he was just eighteen, “Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna”, a poem, was his published work in Amazing Stories in the October 1937 issue as Elton Andrews. His first piece of prose fiction was the first part of “Head Over Heels in Time” published in the Spaceways fanzine, February 1939.

Now let’s get to his novels. Looking him on ISFDB was interesting to say the least. I’ve reading him for around a half century now so naturally I didn’t remember everything that I’d read by him.

I’ll confess that sometimes all I remember of a novels is the cover art but that then triggers enough to tell me if I liked it. And so it with Cuckoo series. Not bad at all they were. Speaking of their cover art, I’m particularly fond of the pulpish artwork for Wall Around A Star.

However the novels that defined him as a writer are those of the Heechee series. Yes, I’ve read the first three novels several times and enjoyed them immensely. Can we not talk about The Annals of the Heechee which I did read? Just once which was enough.

And I’ve not read The Boy Who Would Live Forever, so opinions on it are hereby solicited.

Gateway won a much deserved Hugo at IguanaCon II, as well as John W. Campbell Memorial Award and a Nebula.

Ahhh, Man Plus which was a nominated first a Hugo at SunCon, and won a Nebula. What an amazing novel it is. ISFDB lists a sequel, Mars Plus, which I had no idea existed until now. Who’s read it?

The Space Merchants written with Cyril M. Kornbluth that first was published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as the serial Gravy Planet is truly great in a silly sort of way. It has a sequel, The Merchants’ War, I’ve managed to overlook all this time. There really is too much fiction out there.

Let’s finish off with The Cool War which I think is one of his best novels — fascinating characters, near setting, great story.

No, I didn’t cover his short stories as there’s really no way to break them out and do them justice. If you like his short works, some of which have won Hugos, there’s been some thirty collections published so far.

Bradbury and Pohl with the Red Planet. Photo by Terry Pace.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Thatababy has a very unsafe imaginary friend.
Dog Eat Doug for November 26 is an Alien reference, too.

(9) DISK JOCKEY. Far Out Magazine’s list of “The 10 best-selling DVDs of all time” is composed entirely of sf and fantasy films – though that’s not the common denominator that caught the writer’s eye.

…Understandably, the entire list is made up of children’s flicks, or, at the least, movies targeted at younger audiences, with Disney being behind half of the films on the list, including the three Pixar movies The Incredibles, Cars and Finding Nemo, which sold a grand total of 77,500,000 DVD copies. In addition, Disney was also behind the first two movies in the live-action Pirates of the Caribbean series, with the Johnny Depp-led films selling over 32 million copies.

Elsewhere, there are two superhero movies on the list, one from Marvel and the other from DC. The 2008 Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight sold 19,200,000 copies, just 300,000 under how many Sam Raimi and his team managed to shift for the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man film from 2002….

(10) ANIME EXPLORATIONS. Episode 14 of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up, and includes a Kumoricon 2023 Con Report. The podcast can be found here: “Anime Explorations Podcast: Episode 14: Tsukhime (2003)”.

(11) GONE WITH THE WIND. “‘We are heartbroken’: Coober Pedy loses its famous drive-in – but the opal town has plans for take two” reports the Guardian.

The closure of a drive-in rarely makes the news but Coober Pedy’s is no ordinary drive-in. Since it was built by volunteers in 1965 it has served as a meeting point for the remote opal mining community, itself immortalised on film in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. For decades miners turned up in their utes, still filled with mining equipment and gelignite. As beer was sold at the drive-in, the operators had to ban patrons from bringing along explosives.

But curtains have now closed on South Australia’s last drive-in after furious winds reaching almost 120km/h ripped through the town on 15 November, leaving the screen in tatters. More than half the panels and the underlying structure were ripped away by the wind.

“We are heartbroken as a community,” states the drive-in’s website….

(12) NOT TUNED IN. “Christopher Nolan names the genre he doesn’t ‘really get’” in Far Out Magazine. (Whew, I was worried for a second he might say sff, which would have really been disturbing after five Nebula Award nominations and a win for Inception.)

Yet, while Nolan is a considerable fan of all types of cinema, there is one genre he has admitted that he doesn’t “really get”, confessing that he has little love for the humble movie musical.

“I don’t really get musicals,” he told Scott Holleran, “I always used to say that I would do anything except musicals. Having said which, now that I have kids, I’m re-appraising that. There are a lot of films that [I saw] as a kid that I didn’t really remember as musicals. Like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I completely forgot that it was a musical. I watched it again a few weeks ago and I saw it in a different way. I think as a kid you just accept the groundwork of the film you’re seeing, you’re not judging it as a genre, and you’re much more open”…

(13) FIFTY YEARS OF ZINES. Gothamist reports on a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum called Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines in “Zines are back: Brooklyn Museum exhibit looks at decades of artistry”.

…It includes more than 800 images from the world of zines from the 1970s to today, organized into categories like “The Punk Explosion” and “Critical Promiscuity.”…

…Zines actually began in the 1930s, in mimeograph form. They were the same: cheap, quick, ephemeral and usually self-made publications, but they were related to fan culture.

They started around science fiction fandom, then moved into comic book fandom, then ultimately, in the early ’70s, moved into rock fandom.

There are fan communities that are interested in certain comics or certain types of music.

Part of the ethos of these fanzines is that they’re very open to reader feedback and participation. They welcome correspondence, they welcome contributions, they welcome mentioning other types of zines….

(14) LOSCON FANZINE TABLE. Richard Man took these photos of the fanzine table at this weekend’s Loscon.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Carrie Fisher Roasts George Lucas at AFI Life Achievement Award” in 2005. Four minutes in the fire and he’s well-done.

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

Brown Robin Review: Age of the Pussyfoot

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Mike Glyer

Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl (1966/1969)

Review by Brown Robin: This is an old favorite; I’m happy to report it’s still a favorite. As usual, there are spoilers herein.

Twentieth-century suburban peasant Charles Forrester is brought back to life in the 26th century, after dying horribly and being stored at liquid helium temperatures. He has an awful lot of learning to do to survive in the brave new world he is reborn into, but he’s a slow learner….

He meets Adne cute at his resurrection party, is murdered by a Martian gang, resurrected by the doctors again, hired by an ET, fired by the ET, goes on the lam with the Forgotten Men who live without technological trappings, hunted by that pesky Aresian, is hypnotized into helping his former ET employer escape house arrest, and saves humanity from the Ned Lud society and the Sirians.

You might be induced to strangle Forrester as he blithely stumbles into trouble after peril after contretemps due to his inability to focus on the basics, but I forgive him because it’s difficult to be confronted with new technology without a real support system. The future here is no utopia, it is our world, with its pretensions, its perils, its perquisites, its picayune peeves. In short, it’s Sartre’s hell.

This is Fred Pohl in full Galaxy mode, not a slap-dash effort at satire with a glib denouement and a pivot to the next story. There’s quite a bit of detail and texture providing much food for thought. I especially found the passages about the nature of inflation insightful: if a person as primitive as Forrester, as primitive as I was when I was a child, were willing to forego the high tech lifestyle of the truly advanced human ape, they could still survive on very little money, but the modern condition is prohibitively expensive and requires a little hustle, like living in San Francisco or New York or Tokyo takes today.

Adne provides a good foil for Forrester, as well as an introduction for the reader to a future in which the social contracts have been meaningfully and beneficially shifted. Her children are a hoot, a savvy yet still childish brace of gentle smart-alecks you might encounter at your next family reunion. I enjoyed all the characters in this novel, and the Hawksish dialogue too.

I thought “crawling,” where citizens abase themselves, and commit slander against one another in a drug-induced fugue state sounded like something someone is already organizing on weekends in New Jersey or LA.

In addition to being a witty, droll story, it is a perspicacious prognostication. It seems the Earth has been coasting on a crowd sourced machine-run government, years before the word “crowd source” was coined. It has the feel of our present, the way our excessive casuality, our addictive relationship to play and frivolity, our obsessive need of comfort, convenience, and checking-out from the hard moments have formed a kind of decadent artifice fronting a rotting essence. With just a hint of chaos theory.

The story presents functional immortality, allowing for a system of murder and resurrection through legal means and great fungible wealth, and the human psyche has not yet adapted to such vistas, even in the 26th century. The moment real death faces them, nearly every single human runs to the freezers.

Age of the Pussyfoot remains possibly my pick for best twentieth century sf novel. And funny as ever, if not funnier.

Pixel Scroll 12/2/22 Pixel Plus X

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) STOCKHOLM BIDS FOR 2023 SMOFCON. A group is bidding Stockholm, Sweden at the site of the 2023 Smofcon. Their proposed dates are December 1-3, 2023, and the venue would be a culture center called Dieselverkstaden in Sickla. In Dieselverkstaden there are conference rooms, a public library, a room for indoor climbing, a restaurant and a café. The group has organized several Swecons in the same place.

The convention venue is a culture center called Dieselverkstaden in Sickla, where there are conference rooms, a public library, a room for indoor climbing, a restaurant and a café. Sickla is a suburb of Stockholm.

The bid committee members are Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf (chair) Tomas Cronholm, Britt-Louise Viklund, Marika Lövström, Nina Grensjö, Ann Olsson Rousset, and Shana Worthen.

(2) FREE EDITING PANEL. The Omega Sci-Fi Awards invite anyone, including those writing a story for The Roswell Award or the New Suns Climate Fiction Award, to get ready to edit with the pros.

Free registration here for this one-hour panel on Thursday, December 8 at 12pm PST to hear advice on sharpening short science fiction stories. Featuring: Tamara Krinsky, Howard V. Hendrix, Gwen E. Kirby, and Gary Phillips.

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw on Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

RICHARD KADREY

Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir series. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s “100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime.” Some of Kadrey’s other books include King Bullet, The Grand Dark, and Butcher Bird. He’s also written screenplays and for comics such as Heavy Metal, Lucifer, and Hellblazer.

CASSANDRA KHAW

Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer, and a Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, Ignyte, British Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Locus Award finalist. They have written for video games like Sunless Skies, Gotham Knights, Wasteland 3, and Rainbow 6: Siege. Khaw lives in New York, and spends a lot of time lifting large weights before putting them down.

At the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

(4) WHAT MADE THE POHL HOLE? On August 22 the IAU approved naming a crater on Mars after Frederik Pohl. Which is why his name appears on maps in news articles today bearing headlines like “Giant Asteroid Unleashed a Devastating Martian Megatsunami, Evidence Suggests”.

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that Mars wasn’t always the desiccated dustbowl it is today.

In fact, the red planet was once so wet and sloshy that a megatsunami was unleashed, crashing across the landscape like watery doom. What caused this devastation? According to new research, a giant asteroid impact, comparable to Earth’s Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago – the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Researchers led by planetary scientist Alexis Rodriguez of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona have located an enormous impact crater that, they say, is the most likely origin yet of the mystery wave.

They named it Pohl and located it within an area scoured with catastrophic flood erosion, which was first identified in the 1970s, on what could be the edge of an ancient ocean.

When NASA’s Viking 1 probe landed on Mars in 1976, near a large flood channel system called Maja Valles, it found something strange: not the features expected of a landscape transformed by a megaflood, but a boulder-strewn plain.

A team of scientists led by Rodriguez determined in a 2016 paper that this was the result of tsunami waves, extensively resurfacing the shoreline of an ancient Martian ocean….

(5) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to bite into blood sausage with Tim Waggoner in episode 186 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Tim Waggoner is a writer of dark fantasy and horror whose first short story was published in 1992 and first novel came out in 2001. Since then he’s published more than 50 novels and seven collections of short stories. He’s written tie-in fiction based on Supernatural, Grimm, The X-Files, Alien, Doctor Who, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Transformers, and other franchises, and he’s written novelizations for films such as Halloween Kills, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. His most recent original novel, We Will Rise, was published earlier this year.

He’s the author of the acclaimed horror-writing guide Writing in the Dark, which won the Bram Stoker Award in 2021. He won another Bram Stoker Award in 2021 in the category of short nonfiction for his article “Speaking of Horror,” and in 2017 he received the Bram Stoker Award in Long Fiction for his novella The Winter Box. In addition, he’s been a multiple finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award, and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. In addition to writing, he’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

We discussed whether being a horror writer gives him any special insights into the pandemic, the true meaning of his latest novel’s very specific dedication, the patience the writing life requires, what his agent doesn’t want him to let his editors know, the reason ghost stories have never struck him as scary, how to write about people unlike yourself and get it right, the unusual way he decided which characters would live and which would die, why Psycho was one of the best movie experiences he ever had, the most difficult thing a writing teacher can teach, and much more.

(6) FANCAST ILLUMINATED. Cora Buhlert has posted another Fancast Spotlight for the “Fiction Fans Podcast”.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

We decided to do audio-only because it’s lower-key. Video editing is a lot more effort and also would require that we look at least semi-presentable when recording.

In terms of episode format, we always spend some time chatting about a good thing that’s happened recently and what we’re currently reading (not podcast-related) at the beginning of the episode, before we actually start discussing the book of the week. We like to have an initial section where we talk about non-spoiler themes or character motivations, before we dive in to a meatier full-on spoiler discussion of the book. We figured that if we were listening to a podcast about a book we hadn’t read, we would want a chance to stop listening before any major plot twists were spoiled for us. Be the podcast you want to listen to, right?

(7) WHAT SHOULD WIN THE REH NEXT YEAR? The 2023 Robert E. Howard Awards are open for nominations.

We are pleased to announce the opening of nominations for the 2023 Robert E. Howard Awards starting on November 30, 2022. The Robert E. Howard Foundation has revised the rules and categories for the awards, so please read over the information below. Some categories have changed, and there is a new category for works of fiction. We have also brought back the Black River Award. Under the new rules, nominations are due in to the Awards committee by January 15, 2023, with the Awards committee selecting the top nominees in each category for the final ballot by January 31, 2023. The Final ballot will be uploaded on a website with its address sent out to all current Robert E. Howard Foundation members for voting on the winners on February 15, 2023.

You do not have to currently be a member of the Robert E. Howard Foundation to send in nominees…

(8) DRAWING A CROWD. I hadn’t noticed how this local event is blowing up: “LA Comic Con Expects 140,000 Fans This Weekend — And Plans To Keep Growing” reports LAist.

L.A. Comic Con had a rocky start. In its early years, issues ranged from a lineup without star talent to fire marshals shutting the doors and not letting more people inside.

Cut to this year, when one of its major guests is actor Simu Liu, best known for playing Marvel superhero Shang-Chi. Organizers also managed to bring in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in recent years. Convention CEO Chris DeMoulin notes that getting a current Marvel star is still unusual for L.A. Comic Con — the local convention that’s still not at the same level in the convention world as marquee events like San Diego’s Comic-Con International or New York Comic Con.

Still, what started as a rickety alternative has quickly grown, now featuring a who’s who of guests from the wider universe of pop culture…

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1912 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Peter Pan in Kensington Garden

It of course is a statue of the character in Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, the 1904 novel by Barrie which actually started life two distinct works by Barrie, The Little White Bird, 1902, with chapters 13–18 published in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906, and the West End stage play “Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”, 1904.

It was commissioned and paid for by Barrie and sculpted by Sir George Frampton, a Scottish sculptor best remembered as for having been commissioned by the Royal Family during the Diamond Jubilee to sculpt a statute of Queen Victoria.

Now let’s talk about this statue which is located in London in Kensington Garden. If you should visit, you can find it to the west of the Long Water, in the same spot as Peter lands his bird-nest boat in “The Little White Bird” story. This is close to Barrie’s former home on Bayswater Road.

Barrie hired workers to put the statue in Kensington Gardens without permission from the City of London or the Borough of Kensington.

He published a notice in The Times of London newspaper the following day, May 1, 1912: “There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the south-western side of the tail of the Serpentine they will find a May-day gift by Mr J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived.”

It stands about fourteen feet and is shaped a tree stump, topped by a young boy, about life size for an eight-year-old, blowing a musical instrument, maybe a usually thought to be pan pipes.

The sides of the stump are decorated with mice, rabbits, squirrels and fairies.

Barrie had intended the boy to be based on a photograph of Michael Llewelyn Davies wearing a Peter Pan costume, but Frampton instead, not at all pleased with him as Peter Pan, chose another model, perhaps George Goss or William A. Harwood, though no one is really certain. Barrie was quite disappointed by the results, claiming the statue “didn’t show the Devil in Peter”.

In 1928, vandals tarred and feather sculpture. The bronze surface was exceedingly difficult to clean.

Royal Parks replaced the plinth, the base below the animals and faeries, in 2019, which caused great controversy. It had deteriorated badly due to exposure to weather and salt.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 2, 1937 — Brian Lumley, 85. Writer of Horror who came to distinction in the 1970s, both with his writing in the Cthulhu Mythos and by creating his own character Titus Crow. In the 1980s, he created the Necroscope series, which first centered on speaker-to-the-dead Harry Keogh. His short story “Necros” was adapted into an episode of the horror anthology series The Hunger. His works have received World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Stoker Award nominations; the short story “Fruiting Bodies” won a British Fantasy Award. Both the Horror Writers Association – for which he was a past president – and the World Fantasy Convention have honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Awards.
Born December 2, 1946 — David Macaulay, 76. British-born American illustrator and writer who is genre adjacent I’d say. Creator of such cool works as Cathedral, The New Way Things Work which has he updated for the computer technology age, and I really like one of latest works, Crossing on Time: Steam Engines, Fast Ships, and a Journey to the New World.
Born December 2, 1946 — Josepha Sherman. Writer and folklorist who was a Compton Crook Award winner for The Shining Falcon which was based on the Russian fairy tale “The Feather of Finist the Falcon”. She was a prolific writer both on her own and with other writer such as Mecedes Lackey with whom she wrote A Cast of Corbies and two Buffyverse novels with Laura Anne Gilman. I knew her personally as a folklorist first and that is she was without peer writing such works as Rachel the Clever: And Other Jewish Folktales and Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood that she wrote with T K F Weisskopf. Neat lady who died far too soon. Let me leave you with an essay she wrote on Winter for Green Man twenty five years ago: “Josepha Sherman’s Winter Queen Speech” . (Died 2012.)
Born December 2, 1952 — O. R. Melling 70. Writer from Ireland. For novels by her that I’d recommend, the Chronicles of Faerie series, consisting of The Hunter’s Moon, The Summer King, The Light-Bearer’s Daughter, and The Book of Dreams are quite excellent; the first won a Schwartz Award for Best YA-Middle Grade Book. For more adult fare, her People of the Great Journey: Would You Go if You Were Called? – featuring a fantasy writer who is invited to take part in a week-long retreat on a magical, remote Scottish island – I’d highly recommend.
Born December 2, 1968 — Lucy Liu, 54. She was Joan Watson on Elementary in its impressive seven-year run. Her other genre role, and it’s been long running, has been voicing Silvermist in the Disney Fairies animated franchise. I kid you not. She’s had a few genre one-offs on The X-Files, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and the Rise: Blood Hunter film, but not much overall haughty she did show up in Luke Cage.
Born December 2, 1971 — Frank Cho, 51. Artist and Illustrator from South Korea who is best known as creator of the ever so stellar Liberty Meadows series, as well as work on Hulk, Mighty Avengers, and Shanna the She-Devil for Marvel Comics, and Jungle Girl for Dynamite Entertainment. His works have received Ignatz, Haxtur, Charles M. Schulz , and National Cartoonists Society’s Awards, as well as Eisner, Harvey, and Chesley Award nominations, and his documentary Creating Frank Cho’s World won an Emmy Award.

(11) ANTI-ANTICIPATION. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Comic writer and artist Tim Seeley posted this rather sad Tweet about the effect the rise of toxic fandom has on creators:

Whatever has changed in the last few years of ‘discourse,’ I dunno, but one thing I can say from personal experience is that I used to bite nails in excitement for one of my comic books coming out. Now I dread it to the deepest core of my being.
— Tim Seeley, O-02 in Artist's Alley at C2E2 2024! (@HackinTimSeeley) December 1, 2022

It’s not certain which comic he is referring to. Several people assume that he was referring to the upcoming Masters of the Universe comics, since that normally friendly fandom has attracted a bunch of toxic jerks of late, but the new Masters of the Universe comics won’t be out until February 2023. Personally, I suspect it’s Hexware, which is debuting next week.

(12) SPOILER, MAYBE? “Disney Robbed Us of Maarva’s Choice Words for the Empire in the ‘Star Wars: Andor’ Finale” says The Mary Sue.

…In an interview with Empire Magazine, star Denise Gough talked about her first day on set and let us all know the truth about Maarva Andor’s speech at her own funeral. She really did say “Fuck the empire” in it. “My first day was Ferrix,” she said. “I was given my two Death Troopers – one of whom had to be trained to run like a Death Trooper and not like a musical theatre star – and I couldn’t help myself, I just started doing the [hums the Imperial March]. Then, everyone started doing it.”…

(13) GOSH. The Atlantic’s Marina Koren assures everyone “’2001: A Space Odyssey’ Is the Most Overhyped Space Movie”. (Behind a paywall.)

As the outer-space correspondent at The Atlantic, I spend a lot of time looking beyond Earth’s atmosphere. I’ve watched footage of a helicopter flying on Mars. I’ve watched a livestream of NASA smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. I’ve seen people blast off on rockets with my own eyes. But I have never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This is an enormous oversight, apparently. The 1968 film is considered one of the greatest in history and its director, Stanley Kubrick, a cinematic genius. And, obviously, it’s about space. Surely a space reporter should see it—and surely a reporter should take notes.

What follows is my real-time reaction to watching 2001 on a recent evening, edited for length and clarity. Even though the movie has been out for 54 years, I feel a duty to warn you that there are major spoilers ahead. (If you’re suddenly compelled to watch 2001 first, you can rent it for $3.99 on YouTube.)…

(14) STREAMING LEADERS. JustWatch says this is what people were watching in November.

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

Elizabeth Anne Hull (1937-2021)

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Mike Glyer

Academic, activist and author Elizabeth Anne Hull died August 3 from complications a few months after falling and fracturing her hip. She was 84.

Hull served as President of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1989-90, after editing the SFRA Newsletter from 1981-1984. She was recognized for service to SF research with the organization’s Thomas Clareson Award.

She was a member of the panel for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel intermittently from 1986 until her death. For over ten years, she served as North American secretary for the World SF International Organization for Professionals.

A frequent contributor to Worldcon programs, she co-organized the academic track at Chicon 7 in 2012.

Hull was Professor Emerita of William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, where she taught English and science fiction for over 30 years, earning the school’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1997. The Alumni Association of Northwestern University honored her contributions to her profession with its Award of Merit in 1995.

Active in Illinois politics, she was a former president of the Palatine Area League of Women Voters. In 1996, the National Democratic Party selected Hull as its congressional nominee against the longtime Republican incumbent in the 8th District, however, she was defeated.

She married Frederik Pohl in 1984, her second marriage, his fifth. They first met at the 1976 Worldcon. In 2016, three years after Fred had died, she shared this insight about marriage at The Way the Future Blogs based on a conversation she had with Fred’s third wife:

Long before Fred and I were married, Judy Merril once told me, “Everbody’s crazy in one way or another. We can’t see our own craziness, but we need to look closely at our love object. The most important thing to find out is, in what way is this person crazy? And then to decide whether or not we can, or want to, live with that craziness.”

Together Hull and Pohl edited the international anthology Tales from the Planet Earth (1986). She edited the 2010 anthology, Gateways: Original New Stories Inspired by Frederik Pohl

She is survived by two children from her previous marriage, and two grandchildren.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 2/16/21 We Seem To Be Living In A Golden Age Of Pixel Scroll Titles At The Moment

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) F&SF. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction’s Mar/Apr 2021 cover art is by Mondolithic Studios. Available at www.fandsf.com.

(2) MAKE READERS FEEL. Melinda Snodgrass has posted the text of her speech at the 2021 Life the Universe and Everything conference: “Tears That Speak”.

…When I sit down to write I am making an explicit promise to my reader or my viewer that I will not disappoint them. Now that isn’t a promise I will give them a happy ending (though Connie Willis and I absolutely agree that there is nothing wrong with a happy ending). What I’m promising is that I will give them an earned ending.
This is my reminder that if your story is based on one of these archetypes you best not complicate the story so much that you fail to meet those expectations by trying to be too clever by half, or trying to “redefine fiction or television” or whatever other grandiose notion one might have.
Which brings me to what for me is the most essential rule: Endings matter. In other words you have to “stick the landing”. This is a debate I’ve had with a certain famous fantasy author over many years. He claims that if you have a great journey you will be forgiven for punting the ending. I couldn’t disagree more. If you blow the ending it doesn’t matter how great the journey might have been. A bad ending will taint the entire work whether book or film.
I have my own personal example of this. The video game Mass Effect. It would probably go down as one if the not the greatest game in the history of the industry… but they blew the ending. I loved that game and the ride was amazing, but I cannot bring myself to replay it because I know that dreadful ending is waiting for me. And believe me, if I love a game I will replay it — numerous times — like Dragon Age: Origins….

(3) WAIT FOR IT. Futurism reads the social media tea leaves and concludes “’The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Cannot Release Until 2022”.

…So most of the titles on the [Disney+ preview kit] list are related to Marvel, and the only ones pertaining to Star Wars are the shows about Boba Fett and the Bad Batch (the former being live-action and the latter being animated). With The Mandalorian absent from this list, it appears that the show will not come back in 2021, but rather 2022.
…Disney+ wants to be sure that it has subscribers for as long of a period of time as possible. If The Mandalorian season 3 were to come out in 2022, perhaps even right after The Book of Boba Fett has its season finale, then that would give fans a reason to stick around and stay subscribed for a couple more months. This strategy would be similar to what happened recently on CBS All-Access, where the new Star Trek animated series Lower Decks aired its first season and was immediately followed by season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. It is a strategy that makes a lot of financial sense. The people making the shows try to tell really good stories, but the business side also has to be taken into account in order to sustain the platform that hosts these shows.

(4) PEAK INVENTIVENESS. A novel by S. B. Divya gets the group’s attention in “Hugo Book Club Blog: The Humanity Of Machinehood”.

…One of the recurring themes explored in the book — and one of the reasons it should be considered for the Prometheus Award — is the relationship between government services, the private sector, and do-it-yourself culture. As an example, those wanting to go to space do so through the participation of voluntary hobbyist rocket-ship clubs, while health care is allocated through a system of micro-auctions. Pharmaceuticals are often printed at home with some government oversight, but pill designs come from both giant corporations and from hobbyists. None of these details are delivered by way of polemic, but rather flow naturally within the story.

In such a setting, the most powerful actors seem to be religions, in part because of the unassailable sway they have over their followers. Without giving too much away, there are philosophical aspects to a religion of Neo-Budhism that provide incredible motivations to some of the religion’s adherents. Religion thus is shown to be a tool to navigate and instigate change….

(5) PRIME POHL. Fanac.org has posted recording of a 1963 interview of Frederik Pohl conducted by Fred Lerner: “Science Fiction as Social Criticism” at YouTube.

Frederik Pohl fields questions on everything from how science fiction covers race relations to religion and advertising in this 1963 audio interview (presented with illustrative pictures). Fred Lerner, noted librarian, bibliographer and historian, was just 18 when he interviewed Frederik Pohl, both a professional science fiction writer of long standing, and one of the earliest science fiction fans.

At the time of the interview, in addition to writing, Fred Pohl was editing prominent SF magazines and original anthologies. In this recording, listen for the discussion of his “Space Merchants” to predictions about the advertising industry, his views on fantasy vs science fiction, comments on the best fiction of the period, and even a whiff of “fans are slans”. This thoughtful interview provides not only a perspective on a major author in the field, but on a major editor. It’s worth noting that this is the second interview Pohl did that day. Interviewer Fred Lerner tells us that “the recording engineer was so interested in what Pohl had to say that he forgot to turn on the recorder. Fred Pohl was gracious – and patient – enough to repeat the interview!”

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

February 16, 1967 — On the day in 1967, Star Trek’s “Space Seed” premiered on NBC. Written by Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber, it was directed by Marc Daniels. It guest starred Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh who would repeat this role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan which would be nominated for a Hugo. Benedict Cumberbatch later portrayed Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. (CE)

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born February 16, 1878 – Pamela Colman Smith. Drew the 78 cards of the Waite-Smith Tarot deck in six months, a remarkable achievement in fantastic art. Two books of Jamaican folklore; here is Annacy Stories (spelled Anansi in e.g. the Niven-Barnes book). Illustrated Yeats and Stoker. World War I charity work. Theater programs and illustrations; here is an image from Scheherazade; here is Sir Henry Irving as Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. (Died 1951) [JH]
Born February 16, 1922 – Rusty Hevelin. Fan Guest of Honor at Denvention Two the 39th Worldcon; Fan GoH and Toastmaster at so many SF cons that everyone (including RH) lost count. U.S. Marine in World War II. Antioch College man (as am I); dated Coretta Scott. DUFF (Down Under Fan Find) delegate. Fantascience Digest (with Bob Madle). Dealer, mostly of prozines, at and after Baycon the 26th Worldcon (there have been various other Baycons); instrumental in Pulpcon for thirty years. Moskowitz Archive Award (for collecting); his collection went to Univ. Iowa. Big Heart (our highest service award). First Fandom Hall of Fame. Our Gracious Host’s appreciation here. (Died 2011) [JH]
Born February 16, 1925 – Ed Emshwiller. Over forty years one of our best and most frequent illustrators. Five hundred forty covers, twelve hundred interiors. Here is the Jun 51 Galaxy. Here is Jack of Eagles. Here is Prelude to Space. Here is Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Here is the Apr 60 F&SF. Here is the Program Book for Chicon III the 20th Worldcon. Here is The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller vol. 1 (his wife). Five Hugos. Artbooks Emshwiller: Infinity × Two, Dream Dance. SF Hall of Fame. (Died 1990) [JH]
Born February 16, 1938 – Chuck Crayne. Long vital in Los Angeles fandom; earned its Evans-Freehafer Award (service). Co-chaired Westercon 22 and L.A.Con the 30th Worldcon. Co-founded the NASFiC (North America SF Con, since 1975 held when the Worldcon is overseas). Official Arbiter of The Cult at least as often as George Scithers. Our Gracious Host’s appreciation here. (Died 2009) [JH]
Born February 16, 1951 — William Katt, 70. Ralph Hinkley, the lead of The Greatest American Hero. A series I know I watched and loved at the time. In December 1975, he auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker but didn’t get the role obviously. (CE)
Born February 16, 1954 — Iain M. Banks. I’m certain I’ve read the entire Culture series even though I certainly didn’t read them in the order they were written. My favorites? Certainly The Hydrogen Sonata was bittersweet for being the last ever, Use of Weapons and the very first, Consider Phlebas are also my favs. And though not genre, I’m still going to make a plug for Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. It’s about single malt whisky, good food and his love of sports cars. (Died 2013.) (CE)
Born February 16, 1953 — Mike Glyer, 68. I decide to let one of y’all give him Birthday greeting so let’s Paul Weimer do it: “I first became of the inestimate Mr. Glyer because of seeing his name in Locus, multiple times, for something called File 770. When I found it online and started to read the blog, I only stepped in the middle of a stream of decades long science fiction fandom that has been his pole star. Mr. Glyer’s fandom has been an inspiration and model for myself, and doubtless, many others. I am glad that I have helped in my own small way to help with the edifice of SF fandom that he has created and in a very real way, embodies. Although I still have not yet managed to meet him in person, I am proud to call him a friend. Happy Birthday Mike!” (CE)
Born February 16, 1955 – A.C. Farley, age 66. A score of covers, twoscore interiors (besides his work for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Here is Retief to the Rescue. Here is the Jan 89 Asimov’s. Here is the Nov 90 Analog. Here is Precious Cargo. Here is the Oct 93 TMNT. Here is his Website for Altered Earth Arts. [JH]
Born February 16, 1957 — Ardwight Chamberlain, 64. The voice of Kosh on Babylon 5. And that tickles me as I don’t think they credited it during the series, did they? Most of his other voice work English dubbing versions of Japanese anime including Digimon: Digital Monsters and The Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island. (CE)
Born February 16, 1964 — Christopher Eccleston, 57. The Ninth Doctor who’s my third favorite among the new ones behind David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker. Other genre work includes 28 Days Later, The Seeker, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Thor: The Dark World, The Leftovers, The Second Coming and The Borrowers. He also played Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Barbican Theatre. (CE)
Born February 16, 1968 — Warren Ellis, 53. I think Planetary is bloody brilliant as is Global Frequency and Transmetropolitan. His work on The Authority is not to be sniffed at either, nor should we overlook Iron Man: Extremis. He’s got two rather superb novels, Crooked Little Vein and Gun Machine, that are not genre but which if you like hardboiled detective fiction, I’ll strongly recommend both. (CE)
Born February 16, 1969 – Jennifer Marie Brissett, age 52. One novel, nine shorter stories; essay “Dear Ms. Butler” for Luminescent Threads. Interviewed in Strange Horizons and Uncanny, two good descriptions for her novel Elysium; it won a Philip K. Dick Special Citation. Has read Anna Karenina, The Makioka Sisters, Aeschylus’ Oresteia plays, Watership Down, Don Quixote, four by Wells, two each by Bradbury, Hemingway, Dumas. [JH]

(8) COMICS SECTION.

xkcd uses Star Wars to explain the circular workings of a vaccine.

(9) A TRILOGY IS STILL IN THE CARDS. News items don’t get much shorter than this:

Rian Johnson's Star Wars trilogy isn't cancelled and is still happening, per @sariahwilson pic.twitter.com/Umzxw2XGhR
— Fandom (@getFANDOM) February 16, 2021

(10) DID YOU VOTE FOR HIM? James Davis Nicoll celebrates the U.S. holiday with “Five SF Tales of Presidential Peril” that are not jolly at all!

…When it comes to celebrating the legacies of fictional presidents, well… a system of checks and balances that works as designed doesn’t seem to make for a plot-friendly setting (although it must be reassuring to those who live under it). But authors are in no way limited by reality. They can tweak their settings in any way that makes for a thrilling adventure tale…and they have!….

(11) DO OVER. If the Doctor can’t change history, he can at least change his mind.“Sylvester McCoy says doubts about female Doctor were ‘stupid sexism’” the Guardian’s account based on a Radio Times interview.

The former Doctor Who star Sylvester McCoy has said his initial reservations about a female Doctor were due to “stupid sexism” and that he would like the role to be played next by a person of colour.
McCoy, who played the seventh incarnation of the doctor between 1987 and 1996, was quoted in 2015 as saying: “The Time Lord should never regenerate as a woman.”
He further dismissed the idea of a female Doctor, saying: “I’m sorry, but no – Doctor Who is a male character, just like James Bond. If they changed it to be politically correct, then it would ruin the dynamics between the Doctor and the assistant, which is a popular part of the show. I support feminism, but I’m not convinced by the cultural need of a female Doctor Who.”
But in a new interview for Radio Times, McCoy acknowledged that his initial reservations about the casting of Jodie Whittaker in the role were primarily motivated by sexist inclinations….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Trailers: Lilo & Stitch” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say Stitch sounds “like a cross between Gollum and the Minions” and notes that Disney + changed the cover of a dryer Lilo plays in to a pizza box because they don’t want anyone to think they want kids to play in dryers.”

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, N., JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Olav Rokne, Cat Eldridge, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Meta title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cliff.]

Media Birthday Bonus for September 4

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Mike Glyer

By Cat Eldridge:

THE SHADOW’S “BLACK BUDDHA”

On this evening in 1938, The Shadow’s “Black Buddha” first aired on Mutual Radio. It starred Orson Welles as The Shadow (Lamont Cranston) and Margot Stevenson as Margot Lane. “A shop owner will kill anyone to regain a statue from the Far East, beginning with the lawyer to whom the statue was sold by mistake.” It was sponsored by BF Goodrich Tires. You can listen to it here.

X MINUS ONE’S TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD

On this date in 1956, X Minus One’s “Tunnel Under the World” first aired. It’s based on the short story by Frederik Pohl that was first published in the January 1955 issue of Galaxy. The story is that June 15th keeps repeating each day with a very slight change each day. George Lefferts wrote the script. Cast was Norman Rose, Dean L. Olmquist, Amy Sedell, Elaine Ross, Bob Hastings, Ken Raffitte and Larry Haines. You can listen to the broadcast here.

ROLLERBALL

On this date in 1975, Rollerball premiered in the United Kingdom. It was directed and produced by Norman Jewison. The screenplay was written by William Harrison from his “Roller Ball Murder” story which had first been published in the September 1973 issue of Esquire. It stars James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn and Ralph Richardson. Critics on the whole were unimpressed but it did well at box office, and audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent 67% which is decidedly better than the 14% rating the twenty-five-year-later remake receives.

XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS

On this date in 1995, Xena: Warrior Princess first aired in first-run syndication. It was created by John Schulian and Robert Tapert with development work by R.J. Stewart and Sam Raimi. It was executive produced by Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi. It starred Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor. It would run for six seasons and one hundred and thirty-four episodes. An animated film, Hercules and Xena – The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus, myriad novels and even comics followed. The late Josepha Sherman ghost wrote XENA: All I Need to Know I Learned From the Warrior Princess. A reboot was planned five years ago but canceled.

Pixel Scroll 10/21/19 Oh, This Is The Scroll, It’s A Beautiful Scroll, And We Call It Pixela Scrollte

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Mike Glyer

(1) DALLAS TORNADO. Fanartist David Thayer and his wife Diana had a close call last night but are unscathed themselves:

A tornado with winds of 165 m.p.h. cut a swath through Dallas just a mile south of our house yesterday evening after dark. A powerful gust snapped the trunk of our 70 ft mesquite halfway up and sent it crashing down into our front yard. The only property damage we sustained was to our yard light. Seeing all the destruction in the news this morning, we are thankful we came through relatively unscathed.

(2) AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. Just in case the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs any defense against the negative opinions of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, a couple of well-known figures connected with the MCU have spoken up.

James Gunn:

Many of our grandfathers thought all gangster movies were the same, often calling them “despicable”. Some of our great grandfathers thought the same of westerns, and believed the films of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Sergio Leone were all exactly the same. I remember a great uncle to whom I was raving about Star Wars. He responded by saying, “I saw that when it was called 2001, and, boy, was it boring!” Superheroes are simply today’s gangsters/cowboys/outer space adventurers. Some superhero films are awful, some are beautiful….

Natalie Portman:

I think there’s room for all types of cinema,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the 6th annual Los Angeles Dance Project Gala on Saturday at downtown Los Angeles’ Hauser & Wirth. “There’s not one way to make art.”
“I think that Marvel films are so popular because they’re really entertaining and people desire entertainment when they have their special time after work, after dealing with their hardships in real life.”

(3) HOW EAGER ARE YOU? ESPN will be airing the final trailer for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker tonight during Monday Night Football.

The final trailer. Tune in to Monday Night Football on @ESPN to watch it live. #TheRiseOfSkywalker pic.twitter.com/QAme0H5j0D
— Star Wars (@starwars) October 19, 2019

(4) NAVIGATING THE ROCKETS SAFELY HOME. In “What happened to the 1944 Retro Hugos?”, Nicholas Whyte asks fans to consider the burden of producing a whole run of trophies when it’s this hard to find homes for them after the ceremony. Of course, the job would have been a little easier if the nominees with accepters had won:

…I’m glad to say that we did have a few designated acceptors in the room on the night. Apart from those noted below, Betsy Wollheim was on hand in case her father Donald won (unfortunately he lost in all three categories where he was nominated); June and Naomi Rosenblum were there for their father-in-law/grandfather J. Michael Rosenblum; Stephanie Breijo was there for her great-grandfather Oscar J. Friend; and Harper Collins sent a rep for C.S. Lewis. So, for 66 finalists, we had acceptors on hand for 10. Future Worldcons might like to bear that in mind when planning whether or not to run Retro Hugo Awards.

This is what happened with the trophies, in increasing order of the difficulty we had in dealing with them….

(5) HOUSE CALL. Can it be that we are about to have a visit from the Doctor and his companion? (No, not that one.)

the buckaroo invasion has begun. MY FRIEND CHUCK LIVE IN CITY OF DEVILS (LOS ANGELES) december 14th get tickets quick buckaroos and come prove love is real https://t.co/2VmtaM5DSv pic.twitter.com/jIMzuXo7DT
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) October 16, 2019

(6) TARDIGRADES LITIGATION RESUMES. Plagiarism Today’s Jonathan Bailey urges against a court appeal in “An Open Letter to Anas Abdin”

Three weeks ago, it seemed as if the Tardigrades lawsuit was over. Anas Abdin’s lawsuit was tossed decisively and at an early stage, Abdin himself said, “I respect the ruling and I expect everyone to do so,” and there seemed to be little interest in any kind of an appeal.
However, that respect for the decision did not last long. On Friday, Abdin announced that he was appealing the verdict and was launching a GoFundMe to finance the campaign. As of this writing, that campaign has raised more than $17,500 from more than 470 donors and is inching closer to its $20,000 goal….

(7) CONFACTS. Kees Van Toorn announced that all issues of ConFacts, the daily newsletter of ConFiction, the 1990 Worldcon, have been uploaded on their archival website in flipbook format.

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present David Mack and Max Gladstone on November 20, 2019.

David Mack is a New York Times bestselling author of over thirty novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. His most recent works are The Midnight Front and The Iron Codex, parts one and two of his Dark Arts trilogy from Tor Books. He currently works as a creative consultant on two upcoming Star Trek television series.

Max Gladstone is the author of Empress of Forever, the Hugo finalist Craft Sequence, and, with Amal El-Mohtar, This is How You Lose the Time War, in addition to his work with short and serial fiction, games, screenwriting, and comics. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, John W Campbell /Astounding, XYZZY, and Lambda Awards, and was once thrown from a horse in Mongolia.

The event starts at 7 p.m. in the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.) in New York, NY.

(9) FANFICTION. Sff writer Sara L. Uckelman, Assistant Professor of logic and philosophy of language at Durham University, issued an invitation: “Anyone interested in the paper behind the talk, my paper ‘Fanfiction, Canon, and Possible Worlds’ can be downloaded here.”

…The study of fanfiction from a philosophical point of view raises a number of questions: What is fanfiction? What distinguishes it from ordinary fiction? How can we make sense of what is going on when people create and interact with fanfiction? In this paper, I consider two competing accounts of fanfiction—the derivative or dependent account and the constitutive account—and argue that these competing views parallel two competing ways in which a possible worlds account of fiction can be fleshed out, namely, Lewis’s modal realist account and Kripke’s stipulative view. I further argue that this parallel is not a mere parallel, but provides us with a test of adequacy for the possible worlds accounts: It is worthless to provide a philosophical account of the theoretical foundations of fiction if such an account doesn’t coordinate with the actual practice and production of fiction.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

October 21, 1977 — Damnation Alley premiered. Based somewhat on Zelazny’s novel, it starred George Peppard as Major Eugene “Sam” Denton and Jan-Michael Vincent as 1st Lt. Jake Tanner. It bombed and was pulled quickly. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 34%. For now at least, it’s on YouTube here.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 21, 1904 — Edmond Hamilton. One of the prolific writers for Weird Tales from the late 20s to the late 40s, writing nearly eighty stories. (Lovecraft and Howard were the other key writers.) Sources say that through the late 1920s and early 1930s Hamilton wrote for all of the SF pulp magazines then publishing. His story “The Island of Unreason” (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best SF story of the year. This was the very first SF prize awarded by a vote of fans, which one source holds to be a precursor of the Hugo Awards. From the early 40s to the late 60s, he work for DC, in stories about Superman and Batman. He created the Space Ranger character with Gardner Fox and Bob Brown. On December 31, 1946, Hamilton married fellow science fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett. Now there is another story as well. (Died 1977.)
Born October 21, 1914 — Martin Gardner. He was one of leading authorities on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll’s two Alice books, is still a bestseller. He was considered the doyen (your word to learn today) of American puzzlers. And, to make him even more impressive, in 1999 Magic magazine named Gardner one of the “100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century”. Cool! (Died 2010.)
Born October 21, 1929 — Ursula Le Guin. She called herself a “Narrative American”. And she most emphatically did not consider herself to be a genre writer instead preferring be known as an “American novelist”. Oh, she wrote genre fiction with quite some brilliance, be it the Earthsea sequence, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or Always Coming Home. Her upbringing as the daughter of two academics, one who was an anthropologist and the other who had a graduate degree in psychology, showed in her writing. And the home library of the family had a lot of SF in it. If you’re interested in the awards she won in her career, she garnered the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award. At last she was also awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters It won’t surprise you that she was made a SFWA Grandmaster, one of the few women writers so honored. (Died 2018.)
Born October 21, 1933 — Georgia Brown. She’s the actress who portrayed Helena Rozhenko, foster mother of Worf, in the Next Gen’s “Family” and “New Ground” episodes. She was Frau Freud in The Seven-Percent Solution, and was Rachel in “The Musgrave Ritual” episode of the Nigel Stock fronted Sherlock Holmes series. (Died 1992.)
Born October 21, 1945 — Everett McGill, 74. Stilgar in the first Dune film. Earlier in his career, he was a Noah in Quest for Fire. Later on, he’s Ed Killifer in License to Kill, and in Twin Peaks, he’s Big Ed Hurley. He was also Rev. Lowe in Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, a werewolf flick that actually has a decent rating of 55% at Rotten Tomatoes!
Born October 21, 1956 — Carrie Fisher. In addition to the original Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars Holiday Special, The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the forthcoming Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, she was in Amazon Women on the Moon, The Time Guardian, Hook, Scream 3, and A Midsummer Night’s Rave. (Died 2016.)
Born October 21, 1973 — Sasha Roiz, 45. I know him only as Captain Sean Renard on Grimm but he’s also been Sam Adama on Caprica as well. And he’s also been on Warehouse 13 in the recurring role of Marcus Diamond. He even showed up once on Lucifer as U.S. Marshal Luke Reynolds.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Frazz makes a nifty dinosaur pun.

(13) UNLIKELY BONANZA. Joseph Hurtgen studies the illustration of an economic system in a Hugo-winning novel: “Gateway – Frederik Pohl: A Critique of Capitalism”.

…Consider the name of the alien space station for which Pohl’s book gets its name: Gateway. In the same way that taking highly random and highly dangerous alien space flights is the gateway to potential wealth, the capitalist system is also the gateway to the extreme fortune of the limited few that have, through luck or pluck, benefited most from the system. But no billionaire earns their riches without exploiting populations. Behind every fortune are the underpaid, the underfed, the forgotten, and the have nothings. The capitalist system, most simply defined, is a system of using the work of others and the work of wealth itself, to gain more wealth. It doesn’t take too much mental work to see that people are a form of capital in the capitalist system. Indeed, within capitalism everything is a form of capital. The best capitalist is the individual that figures out how to make more out of what they have….

(14) MYLNE’S GENRE ART. Artist James Mylne has been in the news lately (see, for instance ITV: “Boris Johnson turns into The Joker in new artwork”) for a political commentary that leans heavily on a genre reference. Filers might, therefore, be interested to know that his work has sometimes borrowed from other genre sources also. Example below.

London Artist James Mylne Unveils Ballpoint Joker Boris and Bolsanaro for new Exhibition https://t.co/kZmBdDbl47
— James Mylne (@J_R_M) October 14, 2019

Showing this Stormtrooper helmet I did for @Art_Warz now in Miami then LA! more info: https://t.co/A7i6E5Xexa pic.twitter.com/VonXB0rNgh
— James Mylne (@J_R_M) December 6, 2017

(15) SOLARIS ON STAGE. Those passing through London between now and November 2 can see the play Solaris (nearest tube/metro/underground is Hammersmith).

On a space station orbiting Solaris, three scientists have made contact with a new planet.
Sent from earth to investigate reports of abnormal activity on-board, Kris Kelvin arrives to find one crew member dead and two who are seeing things that cannot be explained.
When her dead lover appears to her, it seems she too has fallen victim to the mystery of this strange planet. Should she return to reality, or is this her chance to turn back time?
Have the crew been studying Solaris – or has it been studying them?
This psychological thriller asks who we are when we’re forced to confront our deepest fears.

(16) ATWOOD PROFILE. Behind a paywall in the October 12 Financial Times, Horatia Harrod has a lengthy interview with Margaret Atwood.

In Oryx and Crake, Atwood wrote about a world decimated by environmental catastrophe; her understanding of the fragility of the Earth and the rapaciousness of its human inhabitants came early. “My father was already talking about this over the dinner table in 1955,” says Atwood, who has been committed to raising awareness of the climate crisis for decades (she promised her 2000 Booker Prize winnings to charities dedicated to endangered animals. “There is so much data and evidence. But people would rather adhere to a belief system that favours them. So, what view of the climate is going to make more money for me?”
Atwood’s mother, meanwhile, was a tomboy, whose favored pastimes were speedskating, horseback riding, canoeing, fishing, not doing housework. “I can’t think of much she was afraid of. This is a mother who chased a bear away with a broom, saying the following word: ‘Scat!’” There were other tough female role models:”Inuit women, who have done some pretty spectacular things. My aunt Ada, who I named a character in The Testaments after, was a hunting and fishing guide, and a crack shot with a .22.”

(17) PLANETARY ANTHOLOGIES MIGRATE. Superversive Press has dropped the Planetary Anthologies line says Declan Finn, whose contribution, Luna, is awaiting publication. (Indeed, a search on Amazon showed Superversive Press books as a whole are now only available from third-party vendors.) However, Finn says another publisher is stepping up.

The Planetary Anthology series is being discontinued.

In fact, even the five anthologies that have been published already have been discontinued. They will no longer be available for sale online from the publisher.

Which is odd for me. Especially after a year where the Area 51 anthology I was in this year was conceived of, edited, and released in 3 months from call for stories to publication.

So, yeah, the original publisher isn’t doing them anymore.

Finn says “the anthologies have all been picked up again by Tuscany Bay Books,” the imprint of Richard Paolinelli whose own unpublished Planetary Anthology, Pluto, will be next to appear. Contributors to these anthologies have included Jody Lyn Nye, Dawn Witzke, Lou Antonelli, Paolinelli, L Jagi Lamplighter, Hans G. Schantz, John C. Wright, Joshua M. Young and many others.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Lego In Real Life TRILOGY” on YouTube, Brick Bros. Productions looks at what happens when common household objects turn into Legos.

[Thanks to Camestros Felapton, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (please roll him a meatball).]

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