24 The Golden Pixels Of The Scroll

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELF. The Horror Writers Association blog continues its “Nuts & Bolts” series with “Author Todd Keisling on Self-Advocacy for Writers”.

Nobody becomes a writer because they had childhood dreams of negotiating contracts. Like it or not, according to author Todd Keisling, it’s part of the job for authors without an agent. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Todd talks about what authors – particularly beginners – should know about self-advocacy.

Q: What do you mean by self-advocacy, where writers are concerned?

A: I mean just that: You have to advocate for yourself. Not every writer has the luxury of an agent to review and negotiate contractual matters. I certainly didn’t, not for many years, and over time I learned from others what to watch out for, what was acceptable, and when to walk away. If a writer has no representation, it’s necessary to be their own advocate and speak up when a publisher isn’t doing what they said they would, or if a contract isn’t worded to your liking. No one else is going to speak up for you, so you have to do it yourself.

Q: What mistakes do beginning writers tend to make in that regard?

A: The biggest mistake I’ve seen (and one that I’ve made myself) is jumping into a contract as soon as it’s offered. Contracts are legally binding agreements, but many young writers are so enamored by an offer of publication that they will sign it without reading it. Another mistake is not taking the time to research the publisher, or to research the market and determine if what said publisher is offering is a standard deal or not. I’m talking about pay rates, percentages, rights, and more.

Q: What are some red flags that writers should look out for?

A: Any legal language that says the writer is financially responsible for any part of the process. That’s a huge red flag. Money flows to the writer, always.

Rights grabs are a big one. If a publisher is seeking all rights — worldwide print rights (regardless of language and region), film, audio, graphic novel — with little or no compensation, that’s a huge red flag. Especially if the publisher has no history of acting on those rights.

Term limits are another — you don’t want a publisher to own the publishing rights in perpetuity. Those terms should be spelled out in the contract. Lack of a rights reversion clause is another one I look for. A reversion clause will spell out how and when your rights revert back to you in the event the publisher files bankruptcy or goes out of business….

(2) BOMBADIL FINALLY GETS HIS 15 MINUTES OF FAME. In an Interview with actor Rory Kinnear, the Guardian reporter reveals that they haven’t read LoTR very carefully (hello, Barrowdowns?!!): “Rory Kinnear: ‘I congratulate everyone who is on the brink of baldness’”.

… Kinnear’s next appearance will be in the second season of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. He’s playing Tom Bombadil, a mysterious, magical, much-beloved character from JRR Tolkien’s classic, but one never before seen on screen. Viewed by Tolkien as a personification of nature, and the oldest being in Middle-earth, Bombadil doesn’t intervene in any of the goings-on in the books. Having been around since the dawn of time, he’s above the petty notions of good and evil.

That makes him a tricky character to adapt. Neither Ralph Bakshi, director of the 1978 animated retelling of the story, nor Peter Jackson, the film-maker behind the multi-Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, thought him worthy of inclusion in their versions. Bakshi said Bombadil “didn’t move the story along”, a view shared by Jackson. Even JD Payne, co-showrunner of The Rings of Power, told Vanity Fair that the character was “anti-dramatic … the characters kind of just go there [to Bombadil’s home] and hang out for a while, and Tom drops some knowledge on them.”

What drew Kinnear to a character so inconsequential no director ever wanted to go near him before? His partner, it turns out. Kinnear had been approached by the producers of the series in late 2022 about joining the cast. But having never read the books or seen any adaptations, he was in the dark about the significance of the character. He got off the phone and went downstairs to tell his partner, fellow actor Pandora Colin, about some character called Tom Bombadil.

“She looked at me and said: ‘You’re kidding?’” he recalls. “It’s her favourite part of the books. I usually like her taste, so I thought I’d better read them and start preparing. It was mainly from her reaction that I was interested. Inconsequential, dramatically, as Tom may be, he’s obviously left an impression on fans.”’

(3) OCTOTHORPE. Winner of the 2024 Best Fancast Hugo Octothorpe has dropped episode 116: “I’m Not Absolutely Sure I Voted”.

The live episode from Glasgow 2024 is here! We know you all expect the live episodes to be a bit less structured and organised than the recorded ones, but the three of us had had even less sleep than usual and so it’s a bit more chaotic than usual… normal service will resume in 117!

Spontaneously generated transcript here.

John, Liz and Alison (I know, listener, I know) are looking off to the right holding their Hugo Awards as people take photographs of them on the stage at the SEC Armadillo.

(4) FRESH HORROR. Gabino Iglesias, author of House of Bone and Rain, reviews three new horror books in the New York Times: Nicholas Belardes’s The Deading (Erewhon Books, 280 pp., $28); Cherie Priest’s The Drowning House (Poisoned Pen Press, 418 pp., paperback, $16.99); and Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays (Tor Nightfire, 294 pp., $26.99).

(5) FURTHER PERSPECTIVES ON NEIL GAIMAN. Maureen Ryan, a critic, journalist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has thoughts on Neil Gaiman, creative gods, American Gods and rotten pedestals at Burner Account.

…It sounds like some of these women approached the media before and didn’t get anyone to take on their stories. If you’ve wondered, I’ve never been approached by anyone with allegations like the ones that recently came to light. And while I would be very surprised if there is not further coverage of this matter, I know from extensive experience that these kinds of investigations take time. A lot of time.

Time, care and attention are required to do this kind of reporting properly, in ways that show compassion and consideration to the survivors, and in ways that pass muster with fact-checkers, editors and lawyers. (Legal review of my book, for example, took about a year, and some stories I’ve done have gone through several months of legal review, especially when the subject of a story has the resources to hire a lot of lawyers, spin doctors and crisis PR firms. Having to engage for months with all those hired guns is about as pleasant as you’d think.)

Because folks have asked, I am not working on any kind of Gaiman followup. In part because I have other commitments that take precedence. In part because what I have to say about these kinds of behaviors, patterns, dynamics and abuses is in my book (and in my previous decades’ worth of in-depth reporting on Hollywood).

And in part because I have already reported on Gaiman, somewhat indirectly, and I did not enjoy a significant aspect of the fallout of that experience.

In 2018, I began hearing about massive issues affecting the TV adaptation of Gaiman’s book American Gods. The debut season’s showrunners had been fired abruptly, and the second season, according to my sources, was in deep trouble. I pitched a story to Lesley Goldberg, a friend and a longtime reporter/editor at The Hollywood Reporter — and it turned out she’d been hearing similar things, so we teamed up. As it happened, our sources didn’t overlap much, which was actually a good thing: Between us, we’d gathered a large array of people with a wide range of perspectives, all of whom were saying similar things about the acrimonious chaos behind the scenes.

We worked really hard on that piece, and I felt — and still feel — confident of our sourcing and diligence. What we published, I believe, was not just accurate but prophetic. American Gods certainly wasn’t perfect in its first season, but it was bold, stylish, had a lot of potential and was a solid televisual interpretation of the book. Gods was a far inferior drama in Season 2, and the chaos behind the scenes apparently continued until it was finally cancelled after three seasons. At one point, the following became a running joke among myself and a couple of journalist friends: The shortest roster in Hollywood was the one listing experienced showrunners who hadn’t been asked to take over American Gods.

People are allowed to react to reported pieces however they want, and the folks at or near the center of a story may well have a very different perspective than I do as a journalist. That’s all fine, and that’s not something I generally get worked up about. What I want you to understand about what follows is that I wasn’t upset by the fact that Gaiman had a reaction to that story, or that he appeared to have a reaction that didn’t align with my own impressions. What pissed me off was the nature of that reaction and how it made me feel as an experienced professional.

After the story came out, and then when Season 2 of American Gods finally emerged months later, on social media and in interviews, Gaiman had things to say about our reporting. What pissed me off were remarks that made us sound like pesky little irritants who didn’t know what we were doing. Speaking for myself, I felt he conveyed the impression that we didn’t talk to anybody important or deeply informed or who had knowledge of the real story. (We did.)…

…When I saw Gaiman’s comments in various spheres, I felt some kind of way about this supposed champion of women being so gratingly, condescendingly dismissive of the work of two women who had, at that point, half a century’s worth of journalism experience between them. (Two queer women as well, though anyone reading the piece may not have known that.)

After that, whenever I saw his “approachable cool guy” routine on social media, or saw him touted as an ally or feminist, I rolled my eyes pretty hard. Back when all this was going on, I thought about saying some of the above online, because for a while there, I was pretty angry about the way our work was dismissed so arrogantly. But I didn’t say anything in public, in part because I knew it might come off as sour grapes or pettiness.

An even bigger reason I stayed silent was that, after more than 30 years of acclaim, attention and adoration in comics, film, book publishing and TV, Neil Gaiman has a lot of strident defenders and superfans, and …honestly, that intimidated me. Having had other stan armies hatemob me in the past, I did not have the bandwidth to potentially endure a lot of enraged superfans coming after me….

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 18, 1950 – Destination Moon. Seventy-four years ago on this date, Destination Moon, produced by George Pal and an uncredited Walter Lantz premiered in the United Kingdom. (It premiered earlier in New York City on June 27.)

It’s based off Heinlein‘s Rocketship Galileo novel. That novel, one of his juvenile works, had been published by Charles Scribner’s Sons just three years before the film came out. Heinlein wrote in Expanded Universe that publishers initially rejected the script feeling that journeying to the Moon was “too far out”.

It was directed by Irving Pichel from the screenplay by Alford Van Ronkel, Robert Heinlein and James O’Hanlon. Heinlein was also the technical adviser.

It starred John Archer, Warner Anderson, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson. Oh, and an appearance by Woody Woodpecker, who helps explain how rockets work. Really, he does appear here.

Matte paintings by Chelsey Bonestell, already known for similar artwork, was used for the lunar landscapes. These were used for the departure of the Luna from Earth; its approach to the Moon; a panorama of the lunar landscape; and the spaceship’s landing on the lunar surface.

I can’t find any production notes so I’m unable to tell you about how the SFX was done. A pity that. If anybody knows, do tell.

Critics were mixed with Bob Thomas of the Associated Press saying, “Destination Moon is good hocus-pocus stuff about interplanetary travel” whereas Isaac Asimov meanwhile not surprisingly said in In Memory Yet Green that it was “the first intelligent science-fiction movie made.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a so-so 48% rating. It however did rather well at the box office returning ten times its half million-dollar production budget.

It would be voted a Retro Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at the Millennium Philcon.

It is not in the public domain, but the trailers are and here is one for you. So as always in such circumstances, do not offer up links to it.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal discusses curse breaking.
The Argyle Sweater leaves everybody wondering where they are.
From Rasmus Julius:

A joke in any language.@File_770 pic.twitter.com/gRzzJKiE8K
— Lise (?????????Massachusetts-havet) Andreasen (@lise_andreasen) August 18, 2024

(8) FICTION TAXONOMY. [Item by Steven French.] Mark Haddon on the difference between ‘literary’ and genre fiction: “Author Mark Haddon: ‘Bodies are such a good source of drama’” in the Guardian.

…One difference between what you might loosely call literary fiction and genre fiction is a kind of decorous avoidance of the overly dramatic. I always think of the sex scene in The Well of Loneliness: “And that night they were not parted.” Come on! Let’s see what happens! Or the Hilary Mantel story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, which pulls away at the end. In genre fiction – horror, police procedural, whatever – that’s where the story would start, isn’t it? Keep the camera running. You get to the end of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These and think the drama is about to start: now the real difficulties will happen; now you have a family….

(9) SHAKE AND BAKE. “Pompeii Wrecked by Earthquake at Same Time as Vesuvius Eruption, Research Shows” – an unlocked New York Times article.

…“The effects of seismicity have been speculated by past scholars, but no factual evidence has been reported before our study,” Dr. Sparice said, adding that the finding was “very exciting.”

The team focused on the Insula of the Chaste Lovers. This area encompasses several buildings, including a bakery and a house where painters were evidently interrupted by the eruption, leaving their frescoes uncolored. After excavation and careful analysis, the researchers concluded that walls in the insula had collapsed because of an earthquake.

First, they ruled out hazards such as falling debris as a primary cause of the destruction — a deposit of stones under the wall fragments in the insula suggested it did not crumble during the eruption’s initial stage. Then they compared the damage to known effects of seismic destruction — for example, on historical buildings.

The excavation also revealed a pair of skeletons covered with wall fragments in the insula. One skeleton even showed signs of having attempted to take cover. According to the researchers, bone fracture patterns and crushing injuries observed in modern earthquake victims are evidence that these unfortunate Romans were killed by a building collapse….

(10) KILLING THE MESSENGER. “’Incredibly rare’ dead sea serpent surfaces in California waters; just 1 of 20 since 1901” – Yahoo! has the story.

Nothing marks the sign of impending doom like the appearance of the elusive oarfish, according to Japanese folklore. Hopefully it’s just a myth, since one was recently found floating in Southern California waters for only the 20th time in nearly 125 years.

A team of “sciencey” kayakers and snorkelers found the dead sea serpent while they were out for a swim at La Jolla Cove in San Diego over the weekend, according to Lauren Fimbres Wood, a spokesperson for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

A number of people, including the team of scientists and lifeguards, worked together to get the oarfish from the beach to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility, Fimbres Wood told USA TODAY on Friday.

Only 20 oarfish have washed up in the state since 1901, making the sighting of the deep-sea fish “incredibly rare,” according Scripps’ in-house fish expert Ben Frable.

…The belief that the sight of an oarfish in shallow waters is an omen of an impending earthquake dates back to 17th century Japan, according to reporting by Atlas Obscura.

The fish, also know as “ryugu no tsukai,” were believed to be servants of the sea god Ryūjin, according to Japanese folklore.

It’s believed that “Ryugu no tsukai,” which translates to “messenger from the sea god’s palace,” were sent from the palace toward the surface to warn people of earthquakes, USA TODAY reported.…

(11) ALL M. NIGHT LONG. NPR celebrates as “The Sixth Sense’ turns 25”.

Twenty-five years ago this month, one film and one filmmaker became synonymous with the big plot twist.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SIXTH SENSE”)

HALEY JOEL OSMENT: (As Cole Sear) I see dead people.

MA: Now, after all this time, if you still have not seen “The Sixth Sense,” we are not going to ruin it for you. But it’s no spoiler to say that the film became a phenomenon, and its director, M. Night Shyamalan, an overnight sensation. His career has had some ups and downs since then. He currently has a film out called “Trap.” But it was his breakthrough film that reimagined the psycho thriller….

But if you don’t mind spoilers, I offer my review “Sixth Sense and Sensibility”.

…I think everyone went to see Sixth Sense twice: the second time to admire the way they’d deceived themselves about what was happening when they saw it the first time….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Mr. Sci-Fi” Marc Scott Zicree has posted a Space Command Rough Cut with no finished VFX, music, color correction, sound mix, etc. He’s still gathering funding:

To find out about purchasing shares in Space Command, email [email protected] — Thanks!

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Lise Andreasen, John Coxon, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Bruce D. Arthurs.]

Pixel Scroll 8/3/24 Krypton Through The Tulips

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW POSTS WORLDCON CONVENTION GUIDE. Glasgow 2024’s Convention Guide is available for the public to download from this link. The guide is also available through the members portal. portal.glasgow2024.org

(2) TL;DR WORLDCON PROGRAM. For comparison, Scott Edelman has scanned the Discon II (1974) program – all four pages of it. See it on Facebook.

(3) SARAH J. MAAS BANNED IN UTAH SCHOOLS. “It’s official: These 13 books are now banned from all public schools in Utah” at the Salt Lake City Tribune. Six of the 13 titles were written by the same fantasy romance author, Sarah J. Maas. Another, Oryx & Crake, is by Margaret Atwood.

…The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code….

(4) HOMETOWN HERO. Texas Highways devotes a short sidebar to Austin-based horror novelist: “Author Gabino Iglesias Tackles Monsters and Myths”.

Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was in ruins: 95% of the island was without power, half the population didn’t have tap water, and there was at least $90 billion in damage.

That catastrophic moment of grief and wreckage is the setting of Gabino Iglesias’ latest, House of Bone and Rain, the follow-up to 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home. The latter earned the Austin-based author a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel—the only Latino writer to achieve the horror genre’s highest honor—as well as a movie deal with Sony.

For House of Bone’s protagonist, Gabe, and his childhood friends, death is omnipresent in the wake of the storm. But after one of their mothers is gunned down at a club, they begin to look for answers in an even more dangerous world of drug kingpins, gang brutality, ghosts, and Lovecraftian monsters. Inspired by a tragedy that happened in the author’s own life prior to his move to Texas in 2008, the gothic coming-of-age tale induces emotional gravity as the characters navigate the loss of home and youth.

“The inciting incident with the mother getting shot, that actually happened to me and my friends,” Iglesias says. “I think I started formulating that story in my head in the summer of 1999—because when I actually sat down to write it, it was all there 20 years later.”…

(5) BBC SCRUBS ANOTHER WHO ITEM. “UK Stabbings Suspect Previously Appeared In Doctor Who Charity Advert” – Deadline has the story.

The BBC has removed a six-year-old Doctor Who charity advert from all its platforms, following the discovery that it starred the teenager who has been named as the suspect in this week’s Southport stabbings.

Axel Rudakubana, now aged 17, has been charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder following the attack in northern England on Monday July 29, in which three young girls died, and several were left critically injured in a multiple stabbing that occurred in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The Times newspaper reports that the 2018 video sees Rudakubana, then aged 11, emerge from the famous Tardis in a brown trench coat and tie, similar to clothes worn by the show’s former star David Tennant.

(6) HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS. Members will vote in the 2024 Horror Writers Association Elections for Officers and Trustees between August 19 and August 25. There is only one announced candidate for the offices of President and Secretary. Five candidates will vie for three Trustee positions.

The elected officers shall hold their respective offices for terms of two years, beginning on November 1 and ending on October 31.

FOR PRESIDENT

Angela Yuriko Smith

FOR SECRETARY

Becky Spratford

FOR BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Linda Addison
Patrick Barb
James Chambers
Ellen Datlow
Cynthia Pelayo

(7) INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER. In “The Word-Hoard: Clark Ashton Smith” at Muse from the Orb, Maya St. Clair shares a list of exotic words she learned by reading Smith’s fiction.

Clark Ashton Smith was a weird fiction writer and poet of the 30s, a multitalented storyteller-artist-sculptor-craftsman from northern California. Initially acclaimed as a local poet and wunderkind, his fantastic poetry and stories eventually found success in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. Mostly an autodidact, Smith lived with his family in an out-of-the-way cabin and did not pursue more than a middle school education. Instead, he drew from inspirations — Baudelaire, Poe — and resources at hand — the Oxford Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica — to create his trademark maximalist style. His work attracted the attention of a fellow “obscure companion in the realms of the macabre,” H.P. Lovecraft, and the two maintained a spirited correspondence until Lovecraft’s death. (Smith sent Lovecraft a carved dinosaur bone.)¹ Robert E. Howard likewise thought that Smith was excellent, and wrote Smith that he would sacrifice a finger “for the ability to make words flame and burn as you do.”

(8) CHEATERS EVER PROSPER. Literary Hub asks, “Did You Know That Poetry Used to Be an Actual Olympic Sport?”. Truth! And did you know there was something shady about the first winners? Also truth!

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe easily won the decathlon in the first modern version of the event. The grueling, ten-part feat was not the only addition to the burgeoning modern games. Other events that debuted at the 1912 Olympics included architecture, sculpture, painting, music… and literature.

… The artistic jury would “only consider subjects not previously published, exhibited or performed, and having some direct connection with sport.” The [1912] Stockholm literature competition had fewer than ten entrants, but included Marcel Boulenger, a French novelist who won a bronze medal in fencing (foil) at the 1900 Olympics, French Symbolist Paul Adam, and Swiss playwright René Morax. The gold was awarded to two Germans, Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, for their work “Ode to Sport.” The jury was effusive in their commendations, calling the piece “far and away the winner,” because it “praises athletics in a form that is both literate and athletic.” The narrative ideas “are arranged, classified, and expressed in a series that is flawless in logic and harmony.”

Yet Hohrod and Eschbach never existed. They were pseudonyms for Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who had just won the very competition he organized….

(9) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET FURRY. The Guardian echoes the question “’Why are people always pointing the finger at furries?’: inside the wild world of the furry fandom”.

The first thing that hits you when you press through the revolving doors of the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention centre in Rosemont, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, is the wall of sound. A cacophony of laughter and karaoke, pumping bass and gleeful, shouting voices. The second is the odour. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, coffee, alcohol, baby powder and deodorant. But the other senses fade out when your eyes start to process what they’re seeing. Because the thing that makes entering this lobby so sensationally surreal – the kind of experience you usually have to lick rare Amazonian frogs to achieve – is what people are wearing. In December 2023, I attended the Hyatt Regency for a convention called Midwest FurFest. It’s a gathering, one of the biggest in the world, for an often-misunderstood community known as “furries”, which is why about half the crowd – and there are nearly 15,000 people here this weekend – are dressed head to toe in massive, flamboyantly colourful, furry animal costumes….

(10) MAVERICK KONG. Maverick Theater, a small 75-seat venue in Fullerton, CA will present King Kong as a stage play through August 25.

Back for its 5th year! An original Maverick Theater stage adaptation of the 1933 film by Merian C. Cooper. The play is based on the Delos W. Lovelace novel, which is the same storyline and dialogue from the original film with only minor changes and additions. The overall show will have a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek feel but all the characters will be played honest and as true to the original; even the man in the monkey suit.

The Maverick Theater’s special effects team known as “Maverick Light & Magic” will take on the beauty and the beast adventure using a live compositing* process of multiple video sources. Similar to the process Willis O’Brien used to create the original King Kong. Actors will be interacting with live rear screen projections to create the illusion of Kong.

(11) MISSION: OLYMPOSSIBLE. “Tom Cruise to rappel off Stade de France in Olympics closing ceremony” reports the Guardian.

He’s scaled the world’s tallest building, dangled mid-air from a plane, set records for holding his breath underwater and, when he broke his foot shooting a rooftop parkour scene, just kept on running.

Now Tom Cruise, the 62-year-old movie star committed to a relentless dice with death, will take on his most high-profile hair-raiser to date: rappelling 42 metres (137ft) from the roof of the Stade de France as part of the Olympic Games closing ceremony this month.

The live broadcast will then reportedly cut to prerecorded footage of Cruise zipping through the streets of Paris on a motorbike, then on to a plane bound for California, clutching the Olympic flag all the while.

When he arrives stateside, he disembarks the plane by chucking himself out of the window, before skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. He then passes the flag to assorted athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they relay it round Los Angeles – the host city for the next games in 2028.

Cruise has been shooting the new Mission: Impossible movie in London and Paris since the new year, and sightings of him speeding around the French capital earlier this summer had been credited to that production.

Likewise, residents of Los Angeles are now so accustomed to his fondness for near-lethal stunts that the sight of Cruise falling from a huge height on to on the Hollywood sign in March raised few eyebrows.

It is believed the actor himself approached the International Olympic Committee and suggested the show-stopping sequence himself, having previously helped carry the torch through LA as part of its relay en route to Athens in 2004….

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 3, 1904 – Clifford D. Simak. (Died 1988.)

By Paul Weimer: The rural science fiction writer.

A lot of the science fiction writers of his time and age were big city enthusiasts and wrote their science fiction presents and futures extolling the city and its virtues, be it on Earth or another planet, or even planetwide cities.

Clifford Simak was different, very different. Much of his science fiction and fantasy could be considered rural, or pastoral, and my reading of him always seemed to come back to those liminal spaces between the civilized world and the wilderness. Themes of self-reliance, and yet community with others living in that same sort of space. An essential paradox that describes rural life…and Simak’s fiction.

And of course, always, Dogs. Aside from the rural life and setting of many of his stories, dogs, sometimes normal, often superintelligent or sentient, pop up everywhere. The themes of what dogs mean to humans: intelligence, companionship, loyalty and fidelity, are themes that one can find in Simak’s work whether or not there is an actual dog in it.

There are many fine Simak stories and novels I’ve read and enjoyed, from the “Big Front Yard”, one of the best first contact alien stories out there, to the strange and surreal “Shakespeare’s Planet”, “The Goblin Reservation”, and many more. Way Station, with its immortal caretaker of a rest stop for interstellar tourists, is particularly fun.

The one Simak story that stands above the novels, novellas and others for me is “Desertion”, part of the City cycle of future history stories that he wrote. “Desertion” is the one set on Jupiter, as the commander of a base around Jupiter is confronted with the fact that everyone he has sent out onto Jupiter, transformed for the purpose into Jovians…has disappeared and never come back. Our protagonist, X, and his dog, eventually come face to face with the stunning truth of what happened to their comrades. It is powerfully moving, as is much of Simak’s work.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit is unsafe in space.
Pardon my Planet surprises with what was in second place.
Rubes prefers the stoned version.
Tom Gauld might be saying the opposite of “Death will not release you”.

My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/NFCwK08Je0
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) August 3, 2024

(14) SHELL GAME. “Un oeuf is enough: have we had our fill of movie Easter eggs?” asks the Guardian. No, of course not, they were just kidding.

…Easter eggs, that is, those fan-centric surprises with which the modern blockbuster is sprinkled, or in this case cluttered.

They take many forms: unpublicised cameos, in-jokes that only franchise devotees would clock, surprise scenes stowed away in the end credits, abundant references to other movies, even allusions to controversies on the sets of other movies. The Easter eggs in Deadpool & Wolverine belong to all these categories and more. There are so many, in fact, that it’s tempting to ask: which came first, the movie or the eggs?

Whatever the style of Easter egg, the point is the same: to encourage, flatter and reward the deepest possible level of fan engagement and to keep completists coming back for more….

…Given the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Easter eggs are likely to remain a staple item on the menu. “I grew up watching Wayne’s World, which operated on much the same lines,” says [film critic] McCahill. “But I fear, after Deadpool & Wolverine, every big Hollywood movie is now just going to be a series of meme-able moments. Directors should be storytellers, not winkers. And as with their chocolate equivalents, Easter eggs should be consumed in moderation.”

(15) SOUNDS LIKE THE BOSS. “Hank Azaria, voice from the Simpsons, fronts a Bruce Springsteen cover band” is interviewed by NPR’s Weekend Edition.

SCOTT SIMON: But that’s really Hank Azaria, the voice behind many characters from the long-running “Simpsons” – also the pharaoh in “Night At The Museum” and Jim Brockmire, the plaid-clad sports announcer. And he’s now the presence behind Hank Azaria & The EZ Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen cover band that debuted this past week at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. The six-time Emmy award-winning actor joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us….

(16) WITH FRICKIN’ LASERS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “A $500 Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Hack Computer Chips With Lasers” according to WIRED.

IN MODERN MICROCHIPS, where some transistors have been shrunk to less than a 10th of the size of a Covid-19 virus, it doesn’t take much to mess with the minuscule electrical charges that serve as the 0s and 1s underpinning all computing. A few photons from a stray beam of light can be enough to knock those electrons out of place and glitch a computer’s programming. Or that same optical glitching can be achieved more purposefully—say, with a very precisely targeted and well timed blast from a laser. Now that physics-bending feat of computer exploitation is about to become available to far more hardware hackers than ever before.

At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they’re calling the RayV Lite. Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies….

…Their goal in creating and releasing the designs for that ultra-cheap chip-hacking gadget, they say, is to make clear that laser-based exploitation techniques (known as laser fault injection or laser logic state imaging) are far more possible than many hardware designers—including clients for whom Beaumont and Trowell sometimes perform security testing at NetSPI—believe them to be. By demonstrating how inexpensively those methods can now be pulled off, they hope to both put a new tool in the hands of DIY hackers and researchers worldwide, and to push hardware manufacturers to secure their products against an obscure but surprisingly practical form of hacking….

(17) WILL SPACEX BAIL OUT BOEING? Futurism voices strong opinions about this: “It’s Sounding Like Boeing’s Starliner May Have Completely Failed”.

It looks like NASA officials might be seeing the writing on the wall for the very troubled Boeing Starliner, which has marooned two astronauts up in space for almost two months due to technical issues.

An unnamed “informed” source told Ars Technica that there’s a greater than 50 percent probability that the stranded astronauts will end up leaving the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, with another unnamed person telling the news outlet that the scenario is highly likely.

NASA officials are more cagey about what’s happening on the record, a marked contrast from previous weeks when they expressed confidence in the Starliner’s ability to safely bring back the astronauts.

“NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”…

… Many signs are now pointing towards SpaceX rescuing the stranded astronauts, according to Ars. These signs include the space agency giving more than a quarter million dollars to SpaceX for a “SPECIAL STUDY FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE,” and SpaceX actively training for the likely situation of the company sending a Dragon capsule to the space station to bring the astronauts home.

If SpaceX does get the green light, expect the Starliner project to be shoved into the proverbial dumpster, according to Ars‘ analysis.

It would be a bad look all around, because it would mean the American government had funneled a total of $5.8 billion into malfunctioning junk.

If this scenario happens, with Starliner not deemed safe enough for human travel, we hope politicians and others investigate what went wrong, given that SpaceX has managed to build the immensely more reliable Dragon capsule at 50 percent less cost than Boeing’s spacecraft….

(18) PITCH MEETING. Ryan George has to deal with a lot of questions in “Superman II Pitch Meeting”.

Released in 1980, “Superman II” is a sequel to the super popular Superman I, and it was also followed by Superman III. They really nailed the numbers on these. Superman 2 continues the Man of Steel’s adventures as he battles Kryptonian villains including General Zod amidst the growing popularity of superhero films during the late 70s and early 80s. Superman II definitely raises some questions though. Like where did Marlon Brando go? Why didn’t Lex Luthor just shut his lights? Why are snake bites so painful? Why did Superman have to give up his powers and then get them back so easily? What was with that cellophane S? To answer all these questions, check out the pitch meeting that led to Superman II.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon played “Password with Elmo and Cookie Monster”. Bird is the word…

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

Pixel Scroll 5/31/24 Scroll Dol! Pixel Dol! File A Dong Dillo!

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ARISTOTLE! In 2017 The New Yorker considered “Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them” Aristotle isn’t the only one who had an opinion.

Consider the yeti. Reputed to live in the mountainous regions of Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal. Also known by the alias Abominable Snowman. Overgrown, in both senses: eight or ten or twelve feet tall; shaggy. Shy. Possibly a remnant of an otherwise extinct species. More possibly an elaborate hoax, or an inextinguishable hope. Closely related to the Australian Yowie, the Canadian Nuk-luk, the Missouri Momo, the Louisiana Swamp Ape, and Bigfoot. O.K., then: on a scale not of zero to ten but of, say, leprechaun to zombie, how likely do you think it is that the yeti exists?

One of the strangest things about the human mind is that it can reason about unreasonable things. It is possible, for example, to calculate the speed at which the sleigh would have to travel for Santa Claus to deliver all those gifts on Christmas Eve. It is possible to assess the ratio of a dragon’s wings to its body to determine if it could fly. And it is possible to decide that a yeti is more likely to exist than a leprechaun, even if you think that the likelihood of either of them existing is precisely zero….

(2) IGLESIAS REVIEW COLUMN. Gabino Iglesias reviews four new horror books in the New York Times, Stephen King’s You Like It Darker: Stories (Scribner), Layla Martínez’s debut novel, Woodworm (Two Lines Press), Christina Henry’s The House That Horror Built (Berkley) and Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots: Stories (Norton).

(3) SOME PIG! [Item by Dann.] Author Paul Hale has released the first episode of his next series for the Cinema Story Origins podcast. This time around, he will be comparing and contrasting the book and movie versions of “Charlotte’s Web”. “Charlotte’s Web Part 1”.

(4) SPEED UPDATING. The latest in Joe Vasicek’s continuing series at One Thousand and One Parsecs is “How I would vote now: 2018 Hugo Award (Best Novel)” – a decision made easier by the fact that he didn’t read three of the books at all, and only read “the first couple pages” of a fourth.

How I Would Have Voted

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
No Award

Everything else from this year is pretty much terrible, in my opinion. I skipped The Stone Sky, Provenance, and Raven Strategem because those were all series that I had already DNFed….

A fourth finalist that he actually started was Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2140.

(5) CCB CASE ANALYZED. At Writer Beware a guest post looks over a case involving “Disney, Books, and the Copyright Claims Board”.

Writer Beware has been covering the Copyright Claims Board since it started accepting cases in 2022. A small claims court for copyright matters, the CCB offers an alternative to the expensive court battles that previously were the only path to resolving copyright disputes, providing creators with a streamlined, inexpensive method of adjudicating cases of infringement, misuse, and other alleged malfeasance…..

Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today says:

…Overall, the CCB did a good job. Though it cited the most recent Supreme Court ruling, which was handed down just four days before this final determination was published, the CCB didn’t get bogged down needlessly in the injury rule/discovery rule debate. Instead, it turned to the Raging Bull case, allowing the case to move forward but only looking back three years.

That filing delay deeply hurt the claimant. Not only did the vast majority of the alleged infringement take place during the excluded time, but much of the relevant evidence was also from then. Key pieces of that evidence were simply gone.

As the CCB pointed out, the burden of proof is on the claimant. While Disney may have some responsibility, there wasn’t enough (or any) evidence to prove it. If the case had been filed before 2018, things might have progressed very differently.

It is a frustrating case. As small as the infringement may have been, it feels like someone should be held responsible for it. However, the evidence simply didn’t support holding Disney accountable. If this case had been filed earlier or targeted Hoopla directly, there might have been a different outcome.

Ultimately, I think the CCB made the right call, even if my sympathies lie with the author and her publisher….

(6) FANS B.C. Atlas Obscura finds that “Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’ ‘Longhairs,’ and ‘Lions’” – a study that encompasses sports, theater, and finally, science fiction.

THE EXACT ORIGINS OF THE modern term “fan” are disputed, but most look to the 1880s, where it was first used by American newspapers to describe particularly invested baseball enthusiasts. But “fan” was just one of the words the press, leagues, clubs, and baseball enthusiasts themselves were using at the time. They were called “enthusiasts,” but also a whole host of other names, from “rooters” to “bugs” to “fiends” to “cranks,” sometimes spelled—as in the German word for “sick”—as “krank.”…

… This, of course, stretches across the history of fandom: Differences like age, geography, approach, and values can lead to different groups forming around the same thing. Trekkies versus Trekkers, for instance, or Holmesians versus Sherlockians. “How you name yourself says a lot about what you think of yourself and your very intense passions,” Cavicchi says. “But at the same time, another name or variation on the name, or another use of your name, maybe in a derogatory sense, may say something about what the culture thinks about you.” Modern fandom terms like “stan” and “fangirl” can connote very different things depending on the speaker—overly emotional and uncontrollable to a critic, or a term of in-group recognition to fellow fans….

(7) TAKING POPCORN OUT OF THE MOUTH OF A SUPERHERO. Does this popcorn bucket need a trigger warning? Consider it given. “Ryan Reynolds unveils hilarious ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ popcorn bucket” at Entertainment Weekly.

Dune began this war, but Ryan Reynolds isn’t backing down from it. Following the popularity of the Dune: Part Two custom popcorn bucket (which was shaped like the gaping jaws of a sandworm), Reynolds unveiled Deadpool and Wolverine‘s own bucket on Thursday….

…Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige teased that the bucket would be “intentionally crude and lewd” at CinemaCon, and now we get to see it for ourselves.

Similar to the Dune bucket, the top of the Deadpool and Wolverine popcorn container is shaped like a mouth — Wolverine’s mouth, that is. If you’ve ever wanted to shove your hand down the clawed mutant’s throat…well, now’s your chance….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 31, 1993 — Total Recall, the one and only true Total Recall, premiered on this date in Los Angeles thirty-four years ago. So let’s talk about it.

As you most likely know, it’s based off Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” which not surprisingly can be found in the We Can Remember It for You Wholesale collection.

Ronald Shusett who wrote the original script for Alien, not the one that was filmed, bought the film rights to it fourteen years prior to it making it to the screen. It went through at least four studios over sixteen years, some forty script drafts, seven different directors and a potential cast of what seemed like hundreds. In other words, what is called development hell.

It didn’t get better as it was being film when the De Laurentiis company went bankrupt. Oh well.

Schwarzenegger wanted to play that role but had been dismissed as inappropriate for the lead role by, well, everyone including the De Laurentiis company, but he convinced the Carolco Pictures to purchase the rights and develop the film with him as the star.

In 2024 terms, the film cost two hundred million dollars. Quite a bit given that Foundation is only costing Apple five point five million an episode for the current season. Cost overruns were so common that the bankers gave up trying to figure out what it’d cost to make it. No, none jumped out windows but I bet they thought about it…

Shusett was the co-director here along with Frederick Feitshans. Why him? Because he’d directed Schwarzenegger on Conan the Barbarian and he wanted him here. If you’re getting the idea, that is a vanity project of Schwarzenegger, you’re not far off as the shooting script was also approved by him.

Setting him aside, it had a lead cast that you’ll (mostly) recognize— Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox. Each went to be a major star save Rachel Ticotin. The other three you’ll know as being in any number of genre films though Stone is best known for Basic Instinct which cannot ever be stretched under any circumstances to be genre adjacent and shouldn’t even be really considered for its police procedural angle really. Seriously no one went to see it for that.

It’s an entertaining film that I like. I’m amazed Gary Goldman, a film producer, director, animator, writer and even voice actor, was able to make sense of the nearly forty scripts that everyone had a hand in – even Dan O’Bannon at one point. But he did. He even went back to the original script based off the Dick work. Verhoeven read each one of these, bless him, and highlighted those he wanted Goldman to reference.

Yes, the specials effects by Industrial Light & Magic were extraordinary, as is the actual physical work that had to done like The Earth train station which was filmed in the Mexico City Metro and all of the exterior Mars scenes took place at the Valley of Fire State Park in Overton, Nevada.

The critics were mostly either unfavorable or meh on it with a few impressed. Even when they praised the production values and Schwarzenegger’s performance, they really, really criticized the violent content.

It turned to be one of the year’s most successful films. On its release, the film earned approximately $261.4 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year.

I rewatched it a few years back. Does it hold up well? The Suck Fairy says yes and I agree.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit reports there are some things everyone must watch.
Non Sequitur demonstrates a problem that might be unfamiliar today.

(10) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(11) DON’T LOSE YOUR WAY WHEN YOU CHOOSE YOUR WAY. “These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books” – Atlas Obscura unveils an example.

Reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book can feel like being lost in a maze and running through twists and turns only to find dead ends, switchbacks, and disappointment. In the books—for those not familiar with them—you read until you come to a decision point, which prompts you to flip to another page, backward or forward. The early books in the series, which began in 1979, have dozens of endings, reached through branching storylines so complex that that trying to keep track of your path can seem hopeless—no matter how many fingers you stick into the book in order to find your way back to the key, fateful choice. You might end up back at an early fork again, surprised at how far you traveled only to reemerge at a simple decision, weighted with consequences that you couldn’t have imagined at the beginning.

The last installment of the original “Choose Your Own Adventure” series came out in 1998, but since 2004, Chooseco, founded by one of the series’ original authors, R.A. Montgomery, has been republishing classic volumes, as well as new riffs on the form of interactive fiction that seemed ubiquitous in the 1980s and ’90s. The new editions also carry an additional feature—maps of the hidden structure of each book….

…The meat of “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories are gender-neutral romps in worlds where there are no obviously right or wrong moral choices. There’s danger around bend, usually in the form of something like space monkeys, malicious ghosts, or conniving grown-ups. Even with a map, there’s no way to find out what really comes next without making a choice and flipping to another page….

(12) BROOKER Q&A. “Black Mirror Season 7: Charlie Brooker Talks AI, USS Callister Sequel” in The Hollywood Reporter.

…In the conversation below, Brooker reveals what inspired him to create the episode (while musing about what a sequel could look like) and weighs in on the AI conversation now, while also discussing the upcoming seventh season of Black Mirror and the show’s first-ever (and highly anticipated) sequel to the Emmy-winning season four “USS Callister” episode.

***

The timing of the release of “Joan Is Awful” may be the most Charlie Brooker thing that has ever happened. What was it like to watch that play out as the AI conversation began to explode?

It was really odd. So, I must have written it in June-July in 2022. When we shot it, it was September-October. It was just before ChatGPT launched. I think it was about a week later that ChatGPT came out and suddenly, everyone was talking about generative AI and how all creative jobs were going to be replaced, pushed out or automated. There’s also a lot of raw animal panic that takes over as a writer as soon as you see some of that generative AI output. I’d seen some of [AI chatbot app] Midjourney, the image generating stuff.

For a while I had wanted to do a story about a news network that bills itself as satire that isn’t showing news but is showing satirical content, which is photorealistic imagery of political figures either being humiliated or looking heroic. And the idea that was a strange way of doing propaganda that they could claim was satirical, but that was ridiculous and absurd. It was a funny and disturbing idea, but I couldn’t work out quite what the story was.

Then I was watching The Dropout, the Hulu drama about the Theranos scandal starring Amanda Seyfried, with my wife and we were discussing how weird it would be — because it was dramatizing very recent events — if you were Elizabeth Holmes watching this and it’s getting so up to date that in a minute, she’s going to put the TV on and see The Dropout. And so those two ideas kind of glommed together: of AI-generated imagery starring real figures — and a dramatization of somebody’s life that’s depicting them in a terrible light. (Laughs.)

As “Joan” came out, I knew it was timely. That season was originally going to be a season of all horror stories called Red Mirror. I was part way into the season and then I had this idea and I thought: It’s not horror. I mean, it’s existentially terrifying, but it’s not horror. It’s definitely a very Black Mirror idea. So I thought, “Fuck it, OK” [about the Red Mirror idea]. I felt like it had to be done now. I definitely couldn’t wait for another season to do it. So when the ChatGPT conversation caught fire and when it became a huge issue because of the strikes, I was slightly wiping my brow with relief that we got the episode out before. The timing of it was surreal. Hopefully, it added to the conversation….

(13) ANOTHER ENTRY RAMP. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] …On the infinite helical slide into the bottomless pit. “Hollywood Nightmare? New Streaming Service Lets Viewers Create Their Own Shows Using AI” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Fable, the studio behind the viral AI-generated ‘South Park’ clips, has announced a streaming platform that allows users to create their own content.

Generative artificial intelligence is coming for streaming, with the release of a platform dedicated to AI content that allows users to create episodes with a prompt of just a couple of words.

Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.

The endeavor marks the tech industry’s further encroachment onto Hollywood as it eyes the exploitation of AI tools embroiled in controversy over their potential to streamline production and the possibility they were created using copyrighted materials from creators they could eventually displace. Amid the industry’s historic dual strikes last year, in which the use of AI emerged as a contentious negotiating point, Fable released an AI-generated episode of South Park to showcase its tech. While some mocked it for its comedic misses, others pointed to the video as a leap forward in the tech and proof of concept that AI tools will soon allow viewers to more actively engage with content, possibly by creating their own. It also demonstrated the threat the tech poses to creators whose labor could be undermined if it’s adopted into the production pipeline.

“The vision is to be the Netflix of AI,” says chief executive Edward Saatchi. “Maybe you finish all of the episodes of a show you’re watching and you click the button to make another episode. You can say what it should be about or you can let the AI make it itself.”…

(14) CAN THE NEXT MUMMY BE A WHALE OF A TALE? World of Reel reports “’The Mummy’ Sequel in the Works, Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz to Return”.

According to Daniel Richtman, “The Mummy” franchise has a new sequel in development over at Universal — Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz set to return in their respective roles. If you remember, the franchise abruptly ended after 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” — budgeted at $175 million— barely made a profit.

The 1999 original was written and directed by Stephen Sommers and was a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and grossed over $416 million worldwide. The film’s success spawned two direct sequels, 2001’s “The Mummy Returns,” and 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.”

“The Mummy” was an incredible success for Universal on home video, selling 7 million units on VHS and 1 million on DVD, making it that year’s best-selling live-action VHS and second best-selling DVD. This all resulted in Universal grossing over $1 billion in home video sales. It seemed as though everyone you knew owned a copy of this movie.

Fraser is hot right now and is in the comeback phase of his career. In 2023, he won an Oscar for “The Whale” and has been piling up projects ever since….

(15) VOYAGER NOW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science journal there is a look at the Voyager probe, its recovery from computer failure and the mystery region of space it is now entering. It appears that pulses of Solar plasma are hitting the interstellar medium boundary causing reverberations or it could be plasma clouds from another star…. “Voyager 1 science resumes after interstellar crisis”.

Before a computer crash, venerable NASA probe entered mysterious new region of space Voyager 1, the first earthly object to exit the Solar System may be traversing a plasma cloud from another star.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/30/24 Hold Your Vibranium

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ANGELS IN SPITE OF AMERICA. It’s never too late to read Tobes TAFF Ting for the first time – the report of Tobes Valois’s westbound TAFF trip to the USA and the 2002 San Jose Worldcon (ConJosé) is the latest addition to the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s library of free ebooks.

It consists partly of his own confession “extracted by torture” in a dramatic two-hour event at the 2005 UK Eastercon. Also included are campaign details, his online trip notes, eye-witness accounts of his doings in the USA, commentaries, photographs and artwork.

(2) NEW HORROR. Gabino Iglesias’s New York Times review column “Alien Terrors, Vampire Conspiracies and More in 4 New Horror Books” discusses Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Oracle (Tor Nightfire, 376 pp., $29.99); C.J. Tudor’s The Gathering (Ballantine, 336 pp., $29); S.A. Barnes’s Ghost Station (Tor Nightfire, 377 pp., $27.99); and The Black Girl Survives In This One: Horror Stories (Flatiron, 354 pp., $19.99), edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell.

(3) NO NEED TO STAY BETWEEN THE LINES. Hugo finalist The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted their contribution to the Hugo Voter Packet on Google Drive as a freely available download: UHBC Voter Packet 2024.pdf.

(4) WHEN YOU’RE YA AT HEART. “More than a quarter of readers of YA are over the age of 28 research shows” – the Guardian has details.

Young adult fiction such as The Hunger Games, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and the Heartstopper graphic novels might be aimed at teenagers – but new research has shown that more than a quarter of readers of YA in the UK are over the age of 28.

Research commissioned by publisher HarperCollins, in collaboration with Nielsen Book, the UK book industry’s data provider, suggests that a growing number of adult readers have been reading YA fiction since 2019. According to the report, 74% of YA readers were adults, and 28% were over the age of 28. The research suggests this is due to behavioural changes described as “emerging adulthood”: young people growing up more slowly and delaying “adult” life. The feelings of instability and “in-betweenness” this can cause has led to young adults seeking solace in young adult fiction – and for some these books remain a source of comfort as they grow older….

(5) BEST NEW BOOKS FOR KIDS AND TEENS. And for the rest of us. The Guardian’s Kitty Empire delivers a “Children’s and teens roundup – the best new chapter books”.

Lauren Child brings a light touch to big issues [with Smile], Elle McNicoll explores autism – and a secret society is at work in Paris’s sewers [Keedie],

The column also reviews The Wrong Shoes written and illustrated by Tom Percival, The Whisperwicks: The Labyrinth of Lost and Found by Jordan Lees, Piu DasGupta’s debut, Secrets of the Snakestone, and Yorick Goldewijk’s Movies Showing Nowhere, translated from Dutch by Laura Watkinson.

(6) BSFA’S SF THEATRE COLUMNIST. Kat Kourbeti launches a new column on SF theatre titled Infinite Possibilities in the British Science Fiction Association’s critical journal Vector, starting with the latest issue.

The first iteration of the column tackles the current trends in UK theatre (and to a lesser extent Broadway), which see many well-known film IPs receive the musical treatment to varying degrees of success, and compares these trends to the last decade, during which time the UK had many original and thought provoking speculative theatre productions on the big stages across London and elsewhere.

Vector is available to all BSFA members in digital or print form. Articles and reviews of individual plays will also be appearing on the Vector website.

(7) BUT DID THEY GO IRONICALLY? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Remember the horribly failed Willy Wonka “Chocolate Experience” a while back in Scotland? Well, it has now spread to LA. Sort of. This time, however, there were no disappointed children, since children were not allowed at this THC-infused adult version. “Viral Glasgow Willy Wonka ‘Chocolate Experience’ inspires Los Angeles event” at NBC News.

Two months after a Willy Wonka-inspired “Chocolate Experience” in Scotland failed so spectacularly that it cemented itself in internet meme history, a similar event in Los Angeles attracted dozens of people hoping to take part in a re-creation of the absurd experience.

The original event in Glasgow, Scotland, had promised ticket buyers an immersive candy wonderland only to deliver a sparsely decorated warehouse. Faced with a crowd of crying children and shouting parents, the Fyre Fest-like event shuttered just halfway through the day.

“Willy’s Chocolate Experience LA”— organized by a collective of local artists unaffiliated with those behind the Glasgow event — had a similar vibe. This time, however, attendees knew what they were signing up for.

Held in a worn-down warehouse embellished with a few candy cane props, the one-night only pop-up event stayed true to the underwhelming decor of the Glasgow event, complete with artificial intelligence-generated art. Attendees were even offered two complimentary jellybeans, just like in Glasgow.

… Scottish actor Kirsty Paterson — who became known as “Meth Lab Oompa Loompa” — was a key participant in the event. Also present was a local actor donning the persona of “The Unknown” — the random and slightly unsettling masked character who went viral for scaring the children who attended.

This Los Angeles experience, however, was not catered to children. Attendees, who paid $44 per ticket, mingled and laughed with one another as they consumed THC-infused cotton candy, Oompa Loompa-themed cocktails and some not-so-PG on-stage performances….

(8) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born April 30, 1938 — Larry Niven, 86.

By Paul Weimer: One could write a whole book about his early work, but I am here today on his birthday to discuss his later work, what I read of it anyway. Niven, like a number of writers, became less and less aligned with the kinds of SFF I was interested in as time goes by, but he lasted longer than many.

Take The Burning City. Years after The Magic Goes Away stories (still some of the best sword and sorcery out there), Niven teamed up with Jerry Pournelle to write a novel set in The Magic Goes Away verse. It’s set in a version of Los Angeles in the distant prehistoric past, a Los Angeles that occasionally burns down again and again (Fire Gods are so temperamental). Some of the magic of Niven, and some of the magic of the Niven and Pournelle combination, are here. Other things feel a lot like men shouting at clouds. (A group of antagonists clearly meant to be the IRS, for example, feels like leaden and unwanted political point making). But the brilliance of Niven sometimes shines through.

Larry Niven, Steve Barnes and Jerry Pournelle at the LA Annual Paperback Show in 2015. Photo by Alex Pournelle. Used by permission.

Rainbow Mars is a book whose contents are published in the wrong order. The titular work is a novella, one of the Svetz series and a capstone to the stories of his time traveler going back in time and winding up tangling with all sorts of supernatural creatures. In Rainbow Mars, he winds up dealing with a number of different SFF Martian landscapes and creatures, and a world-killing Yddgrasil. But this novella is first in the book, and then the rest of the Svetz stories come after it. It is my opinion that is the absolute wrong way to appreciate what Niven is doing in the Svetz stories and his cleverness is wasted thereby.

Finally, a few words about Achilles’ Choice. Co Written with Steven Barnes, Achilles’ Choice is the story of Jillian. In a world where winning Olympic medals means personal power, and where winning Olympic medals means taking a drug that, if not managed afterwards (expensively), means death, the devil’s choice of the title becomes clear right away and is a Niven novel which runs on theme more than anything. Is it better to have an obscure, low life, safe and cossetted, or to risk greatly, in the hopes of getting great glory. Jillian of course goes for the latter, just as Achilles did, and the unfolding of that choice runs through the novel. It may be a standalone “lesser” Niven, but I think him and Barnes team up here as well as they did in the first couple of Dream Park novels.

Happy Birthday, Larry Niven!

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur is ready to turn gravity into a political cause.
Candorville gets a crank call from the future.

(11) ALIEN EARTHS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Arguably one of SF’s commonest tropes is alien life. So this week’s BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week is of interest, it being on Alien Earths. “Book of the Week: Episode 1 – Are we alone in the cosmos?”

Lisa Kaltenegger, the astronomer and world-leading expert in the search for life on faraway worlds takes us on a mind-bending journey through the cosmos, asking, are we alone? Pippa Nixon reads.

Astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger’s eye-opening guide to the cosmos uses Earth’s diverse biosphere as a template to search for life on other planets beyond our galaxy. Working with a team of tenacious scientists from a variety of disciplines she has come up with an ingenious toolkit to identify possible life forms on planets far from Earth. Her enthusiasm and her expertise in the newest technological advances reveal the possibilities for whole new worlds. Perhaps, she muses aliens might be out there gazing back at us.

Lisa Kaltenegger is the Founding Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modelling potential habitable worlds . She is a Science Team Member of NASA’s TESS mission and the NIRISS instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. The recipient of numerous international prizes and awards, including a European Commission Role Model for Women of Science and Research, she was named one of America’s Young Innovators by Smithsonian Magazine. Asteroid Kaltenegger7734 is named after her.

(12) FALLOUT TV ADAPTATION PERFORMANCE. JustWatch’s new graphic covers TV shows based on popular video games. Amazon Prime is the latest streaming platform to find success with Fallout, their latest production and one of the most anticipated releases of 2024, and JustWatch wanted to see how it stacks up against similar adaptations.

Developments relevant to this report include Amazon’s release of Fallout, as well as HBO Max’s runaway hit, The Last of Us, and Paramount’s Halo.

Key Insights:

All 3 adaptations have IMDb scores higher than 7, even though they vary in first week success
Even though The Last of Us was a runaway success, “Fallout” has still managed to dominate the global market during its first week of availability
Even though Fallout is more popular, The Last of Us has a higher rating on IMDb

The report was created by pulling data from the week following the release of Fallout, and compared it to other video game adaptation titles with similar themes. JustWatch Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity, including: clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >40 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.

(13) EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Even Rolling Stones (no, not those Stones) can be spaceflight fans. While visiting Houston to kick off their latest tour, the Stones’ Mick Jagger made a visit to the Johnson Space Center. “Mick Jagger visits Johnson Space Center as Rolling Stones kick off nationwide tour” at Good Morning America.

… The collection of photos Jagger shared on Instagram showed the 80-year-old rock star exploring various parts of the station and posing in front of a sign in a control center that read “Welcome to Mission Control Mick Jagger” with his face in the center of the sign.

In another photo, Jagger peers down at his hands using what appears to be a virtual reality headset. The photo collection also includes shots of the music legend posing inside what appears to be an equipped spacecraft….

(14) USING EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE OINK. In the Guardian: “’We used pig squeals to create their shriek’ … how we made Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (the 1978 version).

… You see a banjo player on the street with his dog a few times – the music was played by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Later we see the dog has the banjo player’s face – the result of Donald’s character striking the pod they were sleeping next to and causing an organic accident – man and beast have become one. For that effect, the dog was wearing a mask. We smeared something sweet on the front so its tongue came out through the mouth.

Ben Burtt, who had done the sound design for Star Wars, created the shriek made by the pods when they identify someone who’s still human, mixing pig squeals with other organic sounds….

(15) INCIPIENT DINO CHOW. “Jenna Ortega Exit Confirmed In ‘Jurassic World: Chaos Theory’ Trailer” says Deadline.

Netflix has dropped the official trailer for Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, the animated follow-up sequel series to Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, and there’s one name that is conspicuously missing. Jenna Ortega, who voiced Brooklynn in Camp Creatceous, is not listed in the voice cast for Chaos Theory, or seen in the trailer, and we’ve confirmed she will not be returning for the new series. Chaos Theory picks up with Brooklynn seemingly killed by a dinosaur attack. According to Ben (Sean Giambrone), she was targeted, and the other members of the Nublar Six are now in danger…

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

Pixel Scroll 4/15/24 No, cats do not have magical powers. Really they don’t. Would they lie?

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TODAY’S 40,000. [Item by Anne Marble.] A little Warhammer news… The official Warhammer Official X.com account just posted “In regards to female Custodians, there have always been female Custodians, since the first of the Ten Thousand were created.”

Weirdos trying to "debate me bro" the official warhammer account are so goofy. pic.twitter.com/70yCI3GFUB
— CerberusXt (@CerberusXt) April 14, 2024

(It was in response to (this question in a longer thread.)

It’s fascinating to read the responses to this. Many fans are demanding they show them where this is shown in the lore. They are debating the official account.

Fans like these make me think, “Don’t make me have to feel sympathetic toward Games Workshop!”

From what I understand, this probably is retconning. But Warhammer is no stranger to retconning. They’re famous for retconning.

Angry fans are declaring that Games Workshop is going to kill the existing fanbase over this. They’ve accused them of “gaslighting” the fans. They are crying about “woke.” Some are claiming that they are returning the merchandise they were just about to buy all because of this. (Sure…)

People are predicting this is the “end” of Games Workshop. (They’ve been predicting this ever since 3D printing made it easier for people to make their own models.) Some are even blaming this stance on the fact that Vanguard and Group and BlackRock are now among the investors in Games Workshop.

But these are also the types of fans who do a lot of gatekeeping. If a fan has a different opinion, they call that fan a “tourist.” One dude was calling the people behind official lore “tourists.”

According to an older post by one of their well-known writers (Aaron Dembski-Bowden), this bit of lore was up for discussion years ago. But a “former IP overlord” said the characters couldn’t be women because the minis had already been produced, and they were all male.

The lore does say there are no known women Space Marines — and there are various theories about why. But Space Marines are also so altered that they are very different from what some would consider a stereotypical man. From what I have read, the Space Marines are sterile and asexual and chemically castrated.

Some people have been collecting screencaps of the responses. Also here. Here’s a selection:

The Fandom.com definition of a Warhammer 40k Custodian says Custodians are part of the Adeptus Custodes — the elite altered bodyguards of the Emperor. In comparison, the famous Space Marines the defenders of all humanity. And the Custodians are more powerful than them.

Also, while there is a lot of lore about the Space Marines, there is less lore about the Custodians.

For another perspective, I found some women fans who were upset because they thought it was badly done — and some who believed it was pandering to them. But most of the opposition seems to come from guys who use “woke” a lot. Some want to contact the Warhammer Community Outreach Manager about the change. Does that mean they are asking for the manager?

Disclaimer: I’m not a Warhammer player. However, I’ve been fascinated by the gaming system ever since I ran across a Warhammer Fantasy book called Warhammer City. I found Warhammer 40K even more fascinating because it’s so over-the-top. (It’s supposed to be.) So I ended up buying some of their novels.

(2) DON BLYLY MEDICAL UPDATE. Bookseller Don Blyly’s celebration of Uncle Hugo’s fiftieth anniversary was followed by a trip to the hospital, but he’s back at work already as he explained in his latest How’s Business? newsletter.

The week of the 50th Anniversary Sale was “interesting”. For many years I heard the warnings about chest pains, and for many years I’ve had chest pains, but not quite like the medical advice described them. Often, the pain seemed to be between my ribs, more often on the left side, but I didn’t think the pains were accurately reporting on where the problem was located. And often I would let out a couple of large burps or farts and the chest pains would completely go away, so it seemed like the pains were not related to my heart.

On the Monday after the anniversary I had a different kind of chest pain, a kind of pressure in the center of my chest, and it did not go away (but became somewhat less) after a couple of belches, and I started worrying a bit. But Ecko had a doggie dental appointment Wednesday morning to have a tooth pulled that it had taken a month to set up, so I thought I’d get through that first if my pain didn’t get any worse. My chest pain stayed about the same through Wednesday, and Ecko got through the extraction and was ordered to only have soft food for 2 weeks. Thursday morning my chest pain was worse, so I went over with the staff of the store what to do if I had to go to the emergency room. Just before noon the order of new t-shirts and sweatshirts arrived, a couple of weeks earlier than expected, and I wrote the check to the shirt guy. Before I could start unpacking the 5 large cases of shirts, the pain became so bad that I decided to drive Ecko home, made arrangements for my son to pick her up at home after he got off work, and drove to the Abbott-Northwestern emergency room.

It seems that one of the arteries in my heart was 99% blocked, and they quickly put in a stent. The other arteries were partially blocked, but not enough to justify any more stents. Swallowing a fist full of pills every day for the rest of my life is supposed to clear the other arteries and prevent a repeat of the heart attack. After a couple of days they ran an echo-cardiogram to determine how much my heart had been damaged. The doctor who interpreted the results told me that my heart was functioning at 45-50%. I said that I didn’t feel that bad. She said that nobody’s heart functions at 100% according to the standard used for the test–a perfectly healthy heart functions at 55% on the test, and that I would be back to 55% within a couple of months. So, no permanent damage, but I’m supposed to take it easy for a while.

About 48 hours after the stent was installed I got out of the hospital, and about an hour later got to the store to see how things were going. A LOT of mail orders had come in while I was in the hospital, and Jon had pulled all the books and put them in piles so that I wouldn’t have to run all over the store finding them to process the orders. And a lot of boxes of new books had arrived. It took several days to get through all of that, and even longer to get through all the e-mails that had piled up. But for several days I mostly sat in front of the computer and didn’t even think about going to the basement.

The hospital has been dribbling out the bills to the insurance company, and the insurance company has been letting me know how much I’m responsible for. So far, the hospital has billed over $110,000, and so far I’m only responsible for $200….

(3) TUNES FROM THE TARDIS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Not surprisingly given (some of) what I watch/listen to on YouTube, the YouTube Music app on my phone (which I’m not sure I’ve previously used, certainly not recently or muchly) burped up this (below) amusing item. I’m not enough of a Whovian to appreciate all the references, but enjoyed it natheless, and no doubt some of you more so. (And it turned out to be part of a playlist, which rabbit hole I timesinkedly explored, and will share my faves here, in days to come.) Doctor Who playlist.

(4) PAYING IT FORWARD. Gabino Iglesias shares some wisdom about anthologies in an X.com thread that starts here. Some excerpts follow:

I made many mistakes when I was starting out, so I like to share the things I’ve learned. If you’re starting out, here are some things to keep in mind about anthologies and editors: (a ????)
— Gabino Iglesias (@Gabino_Iglesias) April 13, 2024

2. Anyone who asks you to pay to be in a book is a predatory asshole. Tell those people to go die in a tire fire. You spent time and effort writing, and should be treated like so.
— Gabino Iglesias (@Gabino_Iglesias) April 13, 2024

(5) HIGH-PRICED DETECTIVE. From Newser we learn a “Handwritten Sherlock Holmes Draft Could Fetch $1.2M”

A rare, handwritten manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is up for sale this June at Sotheby’s, and it’s expected to fetch up to $1.2 million, breaking past sales records of his works. It’s the only handwritten copy of Conan Doyle’s second novel in existence, Smithsonian Magazine reports, and how this particular work was commissioned comes with a fun bit of history. According to CNN, the story begins in 1889 with Conan Doyle having dinner in London with JM Stoddart (an editor of US literary magazine Lippincott’s Monthly) and fellow author Oscar Wilde.

When Stoddart asked what the writers were working on, Conan Doyle committed to publishing a second Sherlock Holmes novel for the magazine, while Wilde said he’d submit his work in progress, The Picture of Dorian Gray. “It’s hard to think of two contemporary authors who might be less similar than Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde,” Sotheby’s book specialist Selby Kiffer tells CNN. “And yet there they are at a dinner table together and talking about what they’re currently working on.”…

(6) SENDAK EXHIBITION IN LA. The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles will host “Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak” from April 18-September 1.

Wild Things Are Happening is comprised of more than 150 sketches, storyboards, and paintings by Sendak drawn from the collection of The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Presented alongside landmark pictures for Sendak’s own books will be examples of artwork he created for such celebrated publications as The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell, A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, the Little Bear series by Else Holmelund Minarik, and Zlateh the Goat by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Designs for many of Sendak’s opera, theater, film, and television productions are also featured. His impact on the broader world of the performing arts is illuminated through his collaboration and friendship with directors, composers, playwrights, and visual artists, such as Carroll Ballard, Frank Corsaro, Spike Jonze, Tony Kushner, and Twyla Tharp. The exhibition will also highlight Sendak’s love of Mozart and the way the composer’s life and work influenced not only Sendak’s designs for Mozart’s operas, such as The Magic Flute, but also key books including Outside Over There and Dear Mili. As Sendak stated, “I love opera beyond anything, and Mozart beyond anything.”

This groundbreaking exhibition also adds new depth to audiences’ understanding of Sendak’s life—as a child of Jewish immigrants, a lover of music, someone with close personal relationships—and how it dovetailed with his creative work, which drew inspiration from writers ranging from William Shakespeare to Herman Melville. From portraits that he made of loved ones to archival photographs of family members to toys he designed as a young adult, the exhibition brings Sendak and his work to life in three dimensions….

Interior art for Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life. Originally published in 1967.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 15, 1933 — Elizabeth Montgomery. (Died 1995.) The beauty of these Birthdays is that I can decide that one series that a performer did is enough to be worthy of a write-up. So it is with Elizabeth Montgomery and her ever-so-twinkly role as the good witch Samantha Stephens on the Bewitched series.

I loved that series and still do. Bewitched is one of those series that the Suck Fairy keeps smiling every time she comes near it. Obviously she too has very fond memories of it.

Sol Saks in interviews said that the Forties film I Married a Witch based on Thorne Smith’s partially-written novel The Passionate Witch, and John Van Druten’s Broadway play Bell, Book and Candle, adapted into a 1958 film of the same name, were his inspirations for the pilot episode. These films were properties of Columbia Pictures, which also owned Screen Gems, the company that would produce Bewitched.

Bell, Book and Candle is the prime story source as that has the good witch Gillian Holroyd, played by Kim Novak, casting a love spell on Shep Henderson as played James Stewart to have a fling with him but she genuinely falls for him.

Bewitched debuted sixty years ago this Autumn. It would run on ABC eight seasons, for two hundred and fifty episodes.

Let’s discuss the other cast of Bewitched. Dick York was Darrin Stephens, her husband and I thought that he was a perfect comic foil for her. Dick Sargent would replace the ailing York for the final three seasons. It’s been too long since I’ve seen the series but I think I remember his chemistry with her being a little less smooth.

So the next major cast member was Agnes Moorehead as Endora, Samantha’s mother. She worked fine in her role which was that she disapproved of her daughter’s decision to marry a mortal. She often times casts spells on Darrin for her own amusement, but mostly to try to drive Darrin away from Samantha. (It didn’t work. At all.) Despite that, she is the most frequent houseguest and one of the most loyal members of Samantha’s family who dotes on her grandchildren, Tabitha and Adam.

Then there’s his boss, Larry White, who was played by David Tate, and he was well cast in that role, and many crucial scenes took place at the Madison Avenue advertising agency McMann and Tate where Darrin worked.

So that brings us to Elizabeth Montgomery. She began her performing career in the the Fifties with a role on her father’s Robert Montgomery Presents television series. She’d also be a member of his summer theater company.

She turned out to be very popular and was kept busy performing consistently from there on. She’d have two genre roles prior to Bewitched, the first being as Lillie Clarke on One Step Beyond in “The Death Waltz” and, because everyone seemingly has to be in at least an episode of it, on The Twilight Zone as Woman in “Two”. The only other actor here is Charles Bronson as, oh guess, Man. It’s a piece of pure SF by Montgomery Pittman who also wrote the scripts for “The Grave” and “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank”.

So now we come to her in Bewitched, and the role that she was perfect for. It’s hard to write her up here without noting sexism of the time as her beauty was definitely the attraction for many of the viewers as opposed to her talent according to some of the news articles at the time. Or so said the critics.

But talented she was, displaying a deft comedic touch that I’ve seen in few female performers since her as she never overplayed her role, something that would’ve been oh so easy to do. She was Samantha Stephens, the very long-lived witch who defied witchery tradition and married a mortal.

Do note that it openly depicted them sleeping together and sexually attracted to each other. No separate beds here.

The first episode, “I Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha” was filmed a short while after she gave birth to her first child.

She was intelligent, not reserved and depicted as more than a match for anyone who might get in her way. Unusual for a female character of that time.

I have over the years rewatched many of the episodes, and they do hold up rather well provided you like Sixties comedy. I think this along with such shows as My Favorite Martian and The Munsters are some of the finest comic genre work done.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal on unicorns.
Peanuts – a 1956 reprint – has a low-tech way to send a message to the future.

(9) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] This is a little belated, but I thought you might like to hear about SFF or genre-adjacent clues on last Thursday’s Jeopardy! episode.

In the first round:

Unreal Estate, $800:

The English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is where this animal lover has his medical practice

Alison Betts tried “What is James Herriot?” but it was Brian Hardzinski who had the correct response, “Who is Doctor Dolittle?”

Abbreviated Television, $400:

In the ‘90s we had “ST: DS9”

Brian: “What is Star Trek: Deep Space 9?”

$800:

Don’t space out (or do) with “FAM”

Triple stumper, nobody made the attempt. This was Apple TV+’s alternate history space show, “For All Mankind”.

“T.P.”, $400:

Kyle MacLachlan was the clean-cut FBI agent investigating a murder in the very strange title town of this series

Returning champion Lee Wilkins gave us, “What is Twin Peaks?”

Unreal Estate, $400:

On his third voyage, this man travels to the flying island of Laputa, where the people are so lost in thought they notice little else

Alison: “Who is Gulliver?”

Double Jeopardy round:

Some Timely Words, $1200:

This 6-letter word means to go back in fictional time & rewrite the past of a character or narrative for a new work

Brian: “What is retcon?”

Final Jeopardy: Space Shuttles

2 space shuttles were named for craft commanded by this man, who died far from home in 1779

Lee: “Who is ?” — no answer.

Brian: “Who is Cook?” Correct. The vessels: Discovery and Endeavour.

Alison: “Who is Cook?” She was the game’s winner.

(10) MAS ECLIPSES. “Meet The Country About To Have Three Solar Eclipses In Three Years” – Forbes arranges the introduction.

What if your country suddenly had three major solar eclipses in three years? As the world’s attention fades from Monday’s “Great American Eclipse,” there’s a realization that there’s not another one in the U.S. until 2033. So where is the next eclipse?

It’s in Spain. Then Spain again, and again.

A few years ago, Argentina and Chile staged two total solar eclipses—one a glorious sight and another a rain-affected, COVID-affected event—but it’s another Spanish-speaking country that is about to take the eclipse baton….

(11) USE THE FORCE. The Guardian’s Harry Cliff submits “The big idea: are we about to discover a new force of nature?”

… There are four forces that we already know about. Gravity governs the grandest scales, marshalling the planets in their orbits and shaping the evolution of the universe as a whole. Electromagnetic force gives rise to a vast range of phenomena, from the magnetic field of the Earth to radio waves, visible light and X-rays, while also holding atoms, molecules and, by extension, the physical world together. Deep within the atomic nucleus, two further forces emerge: the vice-like “strong force”, which binds atomic nuclei, and the “weak force”, which among other things causes radioactive decay and enables the nuclear reactions that power the sun and the stars.

Studying these forces has transformed our understanding of nature and generated revolutionary new technologies. Work on electromagnetism in the 19th century gave us the electric dynamo and radio broadcasts, the discovery of the strong and weak forces in the 1930s led to nuclear energy and atomic bombs, while understanding gravity has made it possible to put astronauts on the moon and to develop GPS satellites that can tell us our location anywhere on Earth to within a few metres. Uncovering a fifth force would be one hell of a prize.

Hints that physicists may be on the brink of making such a breakthrough have been accumulating over the past decade. The first tranche of evidence comes from particle physics experiments here on Earth, the results of which appear to conflict with our current best theory of fundamental particles, the standard model.

Notwithstanding its rather uninspiring name, the standard model is one of humankind’s greatest intellectual achievements, the closest we have come to a theory of everything, and has passed almost every experimental test thrown at it with flying colours. So far at least.

However, the BaBar experiment in California, the Belle experiment in Japan and the LHCb experiment at Cern have all spied exotic fundamental particles known as “beauty quarks” behaving in ways that go against the predictions of the standard model. Meanwhile, just outside Chicago, Fermilab’s Muon g–2 experiment has been busily studying another type of fundamental particle called a muon, finding that it emits a slightly stronger magnetic field than expected.

The most exciting explanations for these anomalies involve hitherto unknown forces of nature that subtly alter the way beauty quarks transform into other particles or mess with the muon’s magnetism. …

(12) SF² CONCATENATION SUMMER SEASON EDITION. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its seasonal edition of news, articles and reviews. A couple of the articles may be of interest to those attending the Glasgow Worldcon later this summer….

v34(3) 2024.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2024

Newscast for the Summer 2024. This includes within it many key sections. See also the master newscast link index that connects to all its SF/F genre and science news sub-sections.
Article on Britain’s New Worlds magazine – Jonathan Cowie
SF Worldcon publications policy – Peter Tyers
British Fantasycon 2023 – Ian Hunter
Glasgow: An introduction for visiting SF folk – Ian Hunter
The English dictionary for visiting Americans – A UK Worldcon resource
33rd Festival of Fantastic Films 2023 – Great Britain – Jonathan Cowie
Gaia 2024 – Annual whimsical SF and/or science snippets and exotica
Ten years ago exactly. One from the archives: The Anglo-Romanian Science & Science Fiction Cultural Exchange Re-visited
Twenty years ago exactly. One from the archives: The Greg Bear interview
Twenty years ago exactly. One from the archives: SF, Globalization and China – Lavie Tidhar
Thirty years ago exactly. One from the archives: When the Children Read Fantasy – Terry Pratchett

v34(3) 2024.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v34(3) 2023.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have a feeling in my water (never a good sign) that this might be based on a Blake Crouch novel…? I have to confess I have a shameful weakness for Blake Crouch and have read four or five of his novels. They are light reads, more thrillery, but most have a decided SF riff which are great fun (if careful not to look at plot too closely). Anyway, see what you think…

A man is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could’ve lived, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from a most terrifying foe: himself.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/21/24 Mr. Sandworm, Bring Me A Dream

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MASTER OF SF. Vernor Vinge died March 20. One of the many callbacks to this distinguished sf author’s genre contributions comes from the Hugo Book Club Blog: “A Tribute To Vernor Vinge”.

…“Singularity is the point at which our old models will have to be discarded, where a new reality will reign,” Vinge wrote. “This is a world whose outlines will become clearer, approaching modern humanity, until this new reality obscures surrounding reality, becoming commonplace.”

One of these forays into singularitarianism helped launch an entire subgenre of science fiction. First appearing in a Dell paperback alongside George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers, the story True Names offered a blueprint for cyberpunk that would influence and inspire everything from blockbuster movies to role playing games and television series….

(2) CIXIN LIU ON PRODUCTIVITY ISSUES. [Via Zionius on Weibo] On Wednesday, Singapore newspaper The Straits Times published an article tying in with the release of the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem. The piece includes a few quotes from Liu himself, where he talks about his activity in recent years, and his sympathy with one of his peers, George R.R. Martin.

While he yearns to see Martin place the long-delayed sixth book, The Winds Of Winter, in the hands of publishers, Liu, 60, also sympathises with his 75-year-old peer’s plight – Liu himself has been through a long fallow period.

“The Winds Of Winter has been delayed for 10 years. As a writer who also writes fantasy literature, I completely understand this, because I have not been able to publish a new work for more than 10 years,” Liu tells The Straits Times in an e-mail interview…

Other than Of Ants And Dinosaurs (2010), a work that imagines a war between the two species of the title, Liu has not produced a new novel since.

“Martin has at least published other works during that time, and I had done almost nothing,” he says.

(3) A LIFELINE TO SANITY. The Guardian calls it, “’A fascinating insight into pandemic psychology’: how Animal Crossing gave us an escape”.

“Today is the first day of your new life on this pristine, lovely island. So, congratulations!” says Tom Nook, the benevolent tanuki landlord, a few minutes into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (Nook is often besmirched online, but you can’t argue that he’s extremely welcoming.) Many players read this comforting message at a destabilising and frightening time in the real world: Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on Nintendo Switch on 20 March 2020, a few days before the UK entered its first Covid lockdown.

This was fortuitous timing. When we were all stuck at home, the game let us plant our native fruits, tend to our flowers and see what the town shop had on offer, repaying our extensive loans (interest-free, thankfully) to Tom Nook as a way of escaping the chaos and daily death tolls. We opened the gates to our islands and welcomed friends and strangers into our pristine little worlds. As real life crumbled, we started anew with bespectacled cats, sheep in clown’s coats and rhinos who looked like cakes.

The game’s sudden popularity caused Nintendo Switch sales to skyrocket among pandemic-induced shortages. New Horizons had sold 44.79 million units by December 2023 – nearly three-and-a-half times more than any other game in the Animal Crossing series, which has been running since 2001. It’s the second best-selling Switch game to date, behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe….

(4) BOT AND PAID FOR. Annie Bot has already been called “A sharp take on a sex robot that becomes human” in a paywalled New Scientist review:

I opened the novel with low hopes, because the idea of a robot learning to be human, then chafing at its bonds, seemed a bit old hat. How wrong I was. Right from the first page, the book is coruscating, unexpected and subtle….

Now Glamour has interviewed author Sierra Green in a Q&A titled “Annie Bot Is a Chillingly Prescient Novel That Asks What Happens When a Sex Robot Realizes Her Worth”.

…The character of Doug felt so real to me (a man who would rather have a sex slave robot than a real human companion), which is scary, to say the least. What does his character represent to you, and why do you think it is important to demonstrate these types of men in the media?

This is a complicated subject. I think it’s important to try to understand what in our society encourages a man to feel like he ought to be in control, even when he’s not. No one likes to feel helpless, but men can feel doubly conflicted when they are denigrated because society has taught them that they deserve respect. Suddenly they have to reassess the entire system. When we see a character like Doug who is lonely and wants to be in control, we understand why he’s reaching out for a connection. We’re not surprised that men turn to the internet for pornography, and Annie is just a step beyond that. What matters to me is that Doug learns from his situation. He experiences deep shame, isolation, and rage, but he’s also willing to reflect on how to become a better man, a better human. Almost despite himself, he takes risks that lead him where he needs to go.

Do you think if Stellas really existed, a lot of men would buy them?

Yes. Women would buy them too, or the male Handy models. People will buy a new toy whether it’s good for them or not….

(5) MONSTER MASHER. Radio Times says “Doctor Who needs Steven Moffat – despite what he might say”.

…Every showrunner has brought something incredible to Doctor Who, from Russell T Davies’s famously skillful writing to Chris Chibnall’s bold new directions, but there’s something that Moffat brings to the show that no other writer does.

He remains unmatched as Doctor Who’s monster maker. By his own admission, his creations are simple and actually a little formulaic, usually riffing on a childhood fear to create a chilling physical embodiment of our nightmares. But it doesn’t get old – because he does it so well.

Moffat’s first episodes, a season 1 two-parter, introduced the Empty Child. Arming his creation with a haunting catchphrase (“Are you my mummy?”) and a gruesome physicality (I’ve never forgotten that transformation scene), he immediately ensured his first Doctor Who monster would be one for the ages. But it was far from his most iconic.

In season 3, Moffat penned what is widely described as one of Doctor Who’s best ever episodes, Blink, creating an all-time classic monster, the Weeping Angels….

(6) A TILT TOWARD NORTH AMERICA. “Doctor Who’s schedule change is inevitable – but still heartbreaking” opines Radio Times.

With the decision being made to debut new Doctor Who episodes at midnight on BBC iPlayer, many Whovians have expressed their disappointment. They argue that the choice was made for US-based audiences, and it undeniably was.

When the first two episodes are released on BBC iPlayer at midnight on Saturday 11th May, they will also be available on Disney Plus at 7pm ET on Friday 10th May, before BBC One airs them again later in the day on Saturday.

This means that while viewers on the US East Coast can enjoy the premiere episode in the late evening, UK fans will have to stay up into the late hours of the night to watch, diminishing the event nature and experience of watching the series…

(7) NEW HORROR. Gabino Iglesias reviewed Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher Of The Forest, C.J. Cooke’s A Haunting In The Arctic, Tim Lebbon’s Among The Living, and Amanda Jayatissa’s Island Witch in “Demons, Haunted Forests and Arctic Nightmares in 4 New Horror Novels” for the New York Times in February.

(8) SPUR AWARDS. The Western Writers of America have presented the 2024 Spur Awards. Complete winners list at the link – there do not appear to be any genre works among them. Not even Thomas Goodman’s Best First Novel The Last Man: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery has much to do with jolly old elves.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 21, 1946 – Timothy Dalton, 78. Timothy Dalton made his film debut sixty-eight years ago as Philip II of France in The Lion in Winter. I remember him distinctly in that role. Of course, I’ve watched that film enough times that I think I’ve memorized much of the script.

He would do two Bond films, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill. He made a decent Bond, but then I think the only true Bond was Connery.

Now doing a dive into his genre roles, he was Prince Barin in Flash Gordon, and had a major role as film star Neville Sinclair, one of baddies in The Rocketeer. An absolutely amazing film which is why it got a nomination for a Hugo at MagiCon.

And he was Lord President Rassilon in “The End of Time”, the last Tenth Doctor story. He made a rather impressive Time Lord indeed.

I’ll finish up with his role as the Chief on the DC Universe/Max Doom Patrol series which just wrapped up. It was a great role for him, and a most excellent series indeed.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Crankshaft longs for a sci-fi invention.
Bliss has a not unexpected twist.
Eek! mentions aging problems.
Rhymes With Orange knows the dangers of unlabeled umbrellas.

(11) TRAINING FOR WAR. James Bacon reviews an issue of Battling Britons, “The Fanzine of Vintage British War Comics”, for Downthetubes.net: “In Review: Battling Britons 6 – Planes, Trains and Giant Vampire Bats!”.

The Book: The latest issue of a fanzine dedicated to British war comics, offering articles, reviews and features on comics such as Commando, still published, and vintage comics such as Battle Picture Weekly, War Picture Library, including items on strips such as “Black Max”, “Dredger”, “Maddock’s Marauders”, “Kommando King” and more…

…Editor and publisher Justin Marriott often writes about subjects that are close to my heart, and this issue he looks at Commando comics that feature trains. He starts this with a fabulous laugh out loud list of the ten things he has learned from reading comics which featured trains. It’s a light hearted and humorous approach, and then lists some 30 Commando stories, and discusses them briefly….

(12) NOT JUST LOOKING AT THE PICTURES. And Downthetubes.net founder John Freeman suggests, “Comics: The Answer to The UK’s Literacy Crisis?”

We’re used to Spider-Man saving the world from the Green Goblin and a multiverse of masked miscreants. But new research by Comic Art Europe, and a separate research project by the National Literacy Trust, suggests that he could have the super-powers to do something even more valuable – something our government has signally failed to do: turn us into a nation of readers again

That’s the view, at least, of Lakes International Comic Art Festival chair Peter Kessler MBE, in an article for the latest issue of Books for Keeps magazine.

“A unique project has been unfolding in a primary school in North Manchester,” he notes, discussing the Comics and Literacy Project the Festival worked on as a partner of Comic Art Europe, launched in 2021, supported by The Phoenix comic, its full, interim report here on the Festival web site.“Abraham Moss is a typical, hard-working community school in an underprivileged area. Most of its students are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and it has a higher-than-average number in receipt of the Pupil Premium subsidy given to disadvantaged students. The school has spent two academic years participating in a Europe-wide research project entitled Comics and Literacy. The aim of the project: to analyse and quantify the impact of exposure to comics on young people.

“The results are jaw-dropping….”

(13) FANAC ZOOM NOW ONLINE. You can view the two-part FANAC History Zoom: “The Women Fen Don’t See” with Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith on YouTube.

Part 1 –

Description: Women did not magically appear in fandom with the advent of Star Trek, but have been part of science fiction fandom since the earliest days. They’re faneds, and convention chairs, writers and artists, club fans and costumers. Sometimes, they’re all of the above. Our impressive panelists (see bios on the bottom) Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith talk about why early female fans have received less credit than they deserved, or been overlooked entirely, and describe the contributions of a number of them…In this recording (Mar 2024, part 1 of 2), our panelists talk about how this research began, and why women that were cranking the mimeos, writing fanzine articles and going to conventions were not even regarded as fans. Early fan historians didn’t correct this impression, reflecting the attitudes of society and ignoring women’s contributions to fandom, especially married women. In this recording, you’ll learn about what fans did say about women in the community, “the radical hoax of Lee Hoffman”, and Miss Science Fiction 1949 (and the Fake Geek Girl response that ensued).

Women discussed in this part 1 include Jean Bogart, Pam Bulmer, Daphne Buckmaster, Marion Eadie, Helen Finn, Nancy Kemp, Trudy Kuslan, Lois Miles, Frances Swisher, and Jane Tucker. There’s a lot of information, a little hero worship and a dive into those hard-to-research women whose fanac was not primarily in fanzines. The discussion continues in Part 2. For more fan history, go to https://fanac.org and https://fancyclopedia.org. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our channel.

Bios:

Claire Brialey – Claire encountered fandom in her early teens, in the mid-’80s, after having read SF for five or six years. She’s a fanzine fan and co-editor of Banana Wings, as well as having won the 2011 Best Fan Writer Hugo. She’s a former President of ANZAPA and a conrunner (up to and including the Worldcon level). She’s worked on clubs, fan funds, and awards administration. She is one of the Guests of Honor of the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow. And she still enjoys reading and watching SF.

Kate Heffner – Kate Heffner (she/they) is a PhD researcher at the University of Kent England in the Department of History and an adjunct faculty member in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. She is completing her dissertation entitled ‘A Fanzine of Her Own: Femme Fans in the Post-War Era.’ She is the recipient of the 2022 Peter Nicholls prize for best essay and a former judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award. For the last several years, she has also been adding to Fancyclopedia.org.

Leah Zeldes Smith – A retired journalist, Leah has been an actifan for more than 50 years, since she was a young teenager. She is a fanzine fan, and her zine STET was nominated for the Best Fanzine Hugo 3 times (1993, 1994, 2001). She’s a DUFF winner (93). She’s been involved with APAs, clubs and convention running. Leah’s involvement in documenting fanhistory dates back several decades. She has been a mainstay of Fancyclopedia, and has made thousands of updates to the site. Recently she’s pulled together a list of Fandom Firsts.

Part 2:

Description: Women did not magically appear in fandom with the advent of Star Trek, but have been part of science fiction fandom since the earliest days. They’re faneds, and convention chairs, writers and artists, club fans and costumers. Sometimes, they’re all of the above. In this part 2 of the session (Mar 2024), our panelists Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith continue to talk about why early female fans have received less credit than they deserved, or been overlooked entirely, and describe the contributions of a number of them.

Women discussed here include Ina Shorrock, Bobbie Gray, and Ethel Lindsay. There’s more about Femizine, the impact that early female fans can have on younger generations today, and whether women fans today will experience the same sorts of erasure. At about 32 minutes in, Q&A from the audience begins, with the difficulty of researching women fans, especially those that change their names multiple times, and anecdotes of Nan Gerding, Lynette Mills, Fuzzy Pink Niven, and Noreen Shaw. Maggie Thompson contributes a wonderful anecdote about her mother SF author Betsy Curtis and Tony Boucher. The recording concludes with a welcome discussion of how women have been treated in fandom in recent years.

(14) OSCARS A RISING TIDE FOR THESE ACTORS. JustWatch asked: (1) Which movies featuring Oscar-winners Emma Stone and Cillian Murphy are the most popular with audiences? (2) Are their 2024 Oscar-winning pictures at the top?

Key Insights

Poor Things is topping our popularity ranking, with an overall popularity of 48.6% among global audiences. The Favourite, her other Oscar winning performance, is no surprise in second place. Followed by La La Land, which was also a top contender during the 2016 Oscars. Surprisingly, Cruella ranked lower on the list, even though it was a big budget Disney project.

Oppenheimer blew away Cillian Murphy’s other movies, garnering more than 60% of global popularity. Inception, another Christopher Nolan project, took second place. Dunkirk, A Quiet Place, and The Dark Knight also ranked in our top 1010.

We created this report by using our JustWatch Streaming Charts, which are calculated by user activity, including clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >40 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.

(15) DON’T BOTHER ME, I’M BUSY. The form letter Robert A. Heinlein devised to answer his mail is making the rounds again. In the Seventies when I heard this existed I wrote him a fan letter in hopes of receiving a copy in reply, and I did — though it was a later variation than this one. (Click for larger image.)

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Arriving in theaters on September 9: “’Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Trailer: ‘The Juice Is Loose’ In Sequel Teaser”. Let Deadline lead the way.

… The logline: Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Ortega), discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem….

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

Pixel Scroll 2/28/24 Two Scrolls Diverged In A File, And I — I Took The One Less Pixeled By

Posted on February 28, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) WONKA EVENT SCAM, WITH AI ‘HELP’. [Item by Tom Becker.] A Willy Wonka-themed event closed immediately upon opening due to complaints from disappointed customers. UK correspondent Mark Plummer says there is a long-standing tradition of disappointing special experiences. A Christmas show turns out to be a muddy field with a donkey with reindeer horns tied to its head.

The Glasgow Willy Wonka fiasco is interesting because of its use of AI. The AI-generated images used to sell the show include total gibberish. Who would not want to experience a “Twilight Tunnel™” with features like “TWDRDING”, “DODJECTION”, “ENIGEMIC SOUNDS”, “SVIIDE”, and “UKXEPCTED TWITS”? Or “ENCHERINING ENTERTAINMENT” with “exarserdray lollipops, a pasadise of sweet treats”? “Cops called after parents get tricked by AI-generated images of Wonka-like event” at Ars Technica.

Actors were given AI generated scripts that were pathetically bad. They showed the guests responding “with a mix of excitement and trepidation” to the trite lines and meager offerings of candy. “The AI-Generated Script From the Fake Willy Wonka Experience Is Beyond Wild” says The Mary Sue.

And then there was the AI generated character of the Unknown, “an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls.” At this point the children started crying and ran away. “Willy Wonka Experience Actor Says Event Had AI-Generated Script, Unknown Character, and No Chocolate” reports IGN.

The promoter behind the House of Illuminati also sells AI-generated books on Amazon. “’Willy Wonka’ Huckster Sells AI-Written Vaccine Conspiracy Books” at Rolling Stone.

Scams have always been with us, but now they are glitzier and weirder than ever. Who could possibly have predicted this? (Besides Cory Doctorow and thousands of others.)

(2) VERTLIEB NOMINATED FOR RONDO “BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR”. Congratulations to Steve Vertlieb whose File 770 article “Subversion of Innocence: Reflections on ‘The Black Cat’” is a finalist for the 2024 Rondo Hatton Awards. Steve’s article is an analysis of the sumptuous, Grand Guignol, pre-code Gothic decadence of Universal Pictures’ horrific Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi classic of 1934.

Public voting has begun for the 22nd Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. You’re invited to vote for your favorites in any or all 28 categories. Click the link for instructions and the complete ballot. The deadline to participate is midnight April 16. Mail Votes (and your name) to David Colton c/o [email protected].

(3) WORMSIGN. Io9 interviews the filmmaker: “Denis Villeneuve Talks Making Dune: Part Two an Epic Theatrical Experience” at Gizmodo.

io9: Got it. I love that both movies have this weird little moment before the studio logo of some kind of Dune language statement. Is that something you have to okay with the studio? Because ultimately it’s their movie and you’re putting your mark before their logo. Was there any pushback and what was your thinking in doing that?

Villeneuve: The first time in Part One, the truth is that as we were doing sound design and developing ideas for sound, we came up with this language that was developed by Hans Zimmer that I absolutely adored. And there was this idea of putting a statement right before the logo to own the space. And maybe it was a reaction at that time, an arrogant reaction by me, but I didn’t get any pushback. Everybody loved the idea. And I love it when you watch a movie and it’s not a slow-down descent, it’s an abrupt start. You put away the parking lot and your concern about dinner. [Slap noise] Right away, it’s like, “Okay, guys, listen.” A bit like in theater when you have the boom at the beginning to say to the audience, “Okay, quiet down, we start right now.” I love that.

(4) CONLANG IN CINEMA. And The New Yorker devotes a whole article to “’Dune’ and the Delicate Art of Making Fictional Languages”.

A trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” features the boy prophet Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, yelling something foreign and uninterpretable to a horde of desert people. We see Chalamet as the embodiment of charismatic fury: every facial muscle clenched in tension, his voice strained and throaty and commanding. A line at the bottom of the screen translates: “Long live the fighters!”

The scene fills barely a few seconds in a three-minute trailer, yet it establishes the emotional tone of the film and captures the messianic fervor that drives its plot. It also signals the depth of Villeneuve’s world-building. Part of what made his first excursion into the “Dune” universe such an experiential feast was its vivid, immersive quality, combining monumental architectural design with atmospheric soundscapes and ethereal costuming. We could see a few remnants of our world (remember the bit with the bagpipes?), but the over-all effect was transportive, as if the camera were not a piece of equipment but a cyborgian eye live-streaming from a far-flung alien civilization. Chalamet’s strange tongue is part of the franchise’s meticulous set dressing. It’s not gibberish, but part of an intricate linguistic system that was devised for Villeneuve’s adaptations.

Engineered languages such as the one Chalamet speaks represent a new benchmark in imaginative fiction. Twenty years ago, viewers would have struggled to name franchises other than “Star Trek” or “The Lord of the Rings” that bothered to invent new languages. Today, with the budgets of the biggest films and series rivalling the G.D.P.s of small island nations, constructed languages, or conlangs, are becoming a norm, if not an implicit requirement. Breeze through entertainment from the past decade or so, and you’ll find lingos designed for Paleolithic peoples (“Alpha”), spell-casting witches (“Penny Dreadful”), post-apocalyptic survivors (“Into the Badlands”), Superman’s home planet of Krypton (“Man of Steel”), a cross-species alien alliance (“Halo”), time-travelling preteens (“Paper Girls”), the Munja’kin tribe of Oz (“Emerald City”), and Santa Claus and his elves (“The Christmas Chronicles” and its sequel).

A well-executed conlang can bolster a film’s appearance of authenticity. It can deepen the scenic absorption that has long been an obsession for creators and fans of speculative genres such as science fiction and fantasy….

(5) MORE TBR. NPR’s “Here and Now” program recommends “Black genre fiction to pick up this History Month”. There are lists for romance, horror, thriller/mystery and —

Speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy

“Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
“Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead
“PET” by Akwaeke Emezi
“We Cast a Shadow” by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
“Conjure Women” by Afia Atakora
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” by Marlon James
“An Unkindness of Ghosts” by Rivers Solomon
“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin
“Binti” by Nnedi Okorafor
“Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson
“Riot Baby” by Tochi Onyebuchi
“Rosewater by Tade Thompson
“Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delany
“Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

(6) EXPERT EYE. In Gabino Iglesias’ column “4 New Horror Novels That Are as Fresh as They Are Terrifying” for the New York Times, the Stoker-winning author reviews new books by Emily Ruth Verona, Jenny Kiefer, Christopher Golden and Tlotlo Tsamaase.

(7) ANIME ART GOING UNDER THE HAMMER. Heritage Auctions will run “The Art of Anime, Dragon Ball, and More Animation Art Showcase Auction” on March 23-24.

Heritage Auctions celebrates the world of anime with its largest showcase sale, “The Art of Anime, Dragon Ball, and More,” on March 23-24. This event features over 700 lots, including an extensive collection from the iconic Dragon Ball series, celebrating its decades-long journey from its inception in Weekly Shonen Jump. The auction spans a wide range of anime titles, offering production art, promotional materials, model kits, and action figures. Highlights include rare items from Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and more, alongside unique finds like Akira T-shirt prototypes. This showcase aims to reconnect fans with the unforgettable moments of their favorite anime series.

Here’s an example of what’s up for bid: “Dragon Ball Z Goku, Gohan, Master Roshi, Piccolo, and Cel Ice | Lot #85069”.

Some of Dragon Ball Z‘s most famous characters take a break from training and put on their ice skates in this incredibly rare hand-painted production cel featuring our beloved protagonist Goku, accompanied by his son Gohan, Piccolo, Master Roshi, and even the heinous Cell in his imperfect form! Possibly created for a TV commercial, this four-layer 12-field production cel offers sensational full-figure images of the characters with Gohan and Cell stopping as skillfully as they fight.

(8) “HOMAGE” TO WARD SHELLEY’S HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION ON DISPLAY IN THE CHENGDU SF MUSEUM. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The SF Museum in Chengdu has been re-opened to the public for almost exactly a month now, and whilst I’ve been trawling the likes of Bilibili and Xiaohongshu for any coverage, there hasn’t been much I thought that I thought was worth writing up and submitting to File 770.

However, tonight I encountered the image below in a small XHS gallery. I’d not noticed it before; whether that’s because it has been newly added to the museum, or simply that previous posters didn’t consider it worth taking pictures of, I don’t know. I’ve not tried to read any of the Chinese text, but the English subtitle reads:

Together, let’s write imaginative explorations of the future science fiction world

which I assume relates to the Post-It notes shown on the left of the image.

Readers may well find this image vaguely familiar. For those who don’t, it bears a startling resemblance to Ward Shelley’s “The History of Science Fiction”.

That earlier image was included in a talk that was part of “[the] First Industrial Development Summit of [the] World Science Fiction Convention”, which also had Ben Yalow as a speaker. Whether that earlier presentation was the genesis for this new display, who knows?

Ben Yalow at Industrial Development Summit.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 28, 1909 — Olan Soule. (Died 1994.) Olan Soule, an actor who had at least two hundred and fifty performances in his career. So let’s look at this career that I find so interesting.

First genre role? That’d be Mr. Krull, a boarding house resident in The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Remember Captain Midnight? From the third year on the radio serial, Soule had the role of L. William Kelly, SS-11, the second-in-command of the Secret Squadron. When it became a television series where it was rebranded Jet Jackson, Flying Commando, he was scientist Aristotle “Tut” Jones for the entire series. He was the only actor who performed on both the radio and television shows.

Olan Soule on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

He was in two Twilight Zone episodes, the first as IRS agent in “The Man in Bottle” and then as Mr. Smiles in “Caesar and Me”. The letter was the one with that evil ventriloquist dummy. Brrrr. The former which involves a couple and a genie I just don’t remember.

He was on My Favorite Martian as Daniel Farrow in one of my favorite episodes, “Martin’s Favorite Martian”.

He would appear as a newscaster on Batman in “The Pharaoh’s in a Rut”.

He voiced Mister Taj in the English language version of Fantastic Planet. One seriously effing weird film.

And now for a roll call of his other genre appearances: One Step Beyond, Bewitched, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Fantasy Island.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus – could this be Pluto’s revenge?

(11) REALLY EDUCATIONAL COMICS. “A Boom in Comics Drawn From Fact” – the New York Times says “One in four books sold in France is a graphic novel. Increasingly, those include nonfiction works by journalists and historians.”

Soon after the journalist and historian Valérie Igounet heard about the killing of Samuel Paty, the schoolteacher whose 2020 murder by an Islamist extremist shocked France, she knew she wanted to write a book about him.

Paty, who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to students during a class on freedom of expression, was murdered near the middle school where he taught in a Paris suburb. “I absolutely wanted Samuel Paty’s students to be able to read this book,” Igounet said, “and it was obvious that a 300-page book with footnotes would be reserved for a different kind of readership.”

Instead, Igounet decided to produce a comic book: “Black Pencil: Samuel Paty, the Story of a Teacher,” based on two years of reporting and made with the illustrator Guy Le Besnerais, was published in October. It meticulously reconstructs the events leading up to the murder while also showing Paty’s daily life in the classroom. Le Besnerais’s illustrations are accompanied by Paty’s handwritten notes, newspaper clippings and messages exchanged by his students in the weeks before he was killed.

One in four books sold in France is a comic book, according to the market research company GfK, and a growing number of those are nonfiction works by journalists and historians. In the past year, they have included titles such as “M.B.S.: Saudi Arabia’s Enfant Terrible,” a biography of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by Antoine Vitkine and Christophe Girard; “What Are the Russians Thinking?” based on the cartoonist Nicolas Wild’s conversations about the war in Ukraine during a 2022 trip to Russia; and “Who Profits From Exile?,” by Taina Tervonen and Jeff Pourquié, which looks at the economics of European immigration….

(12) FANAC FAN HISTORY ZOOM IN MARCH. “The Women Fen Don’t See” is the last FANAC Fan History Zoom for this season. The March 16 event promises to be an exceptionally interesting program on a topic that is often overlooked in fannish annals.

The Women Fen Don’t See

With: Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

Saturday, March 16, 2024. Time: 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, Noon PDT, 7PM London (GMT), and Mar 17 at 6AM AEDT in Melbourne. To attend, send a note to [email protected]

[Click for larger image.]

(13) NEUROMANCER TO TV. “Apple Orders ‘Neuromancer’ Series Based on William Gibson Novel” reports Variety.

Apple TV+ has ordered a series adaptation of the William Gibson novel “Neuromancer,” Variety has learned.

The 10-episode series hails from co-creators Graham Roland and JD Dillard. Roland will also serve as showrunner, while Dillard will direct the pilot. Skydance Television will co-produce with Anonymous Content.

Per the official logline, the series “will follow a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.”…

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. From The Simpsons several years ago, “What about Ray Bradbury?”

Martin is running for class president, and this is his platform.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ersatz Culture, Tom Becker, Kathy Sullivan, Joe Siclari, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 12/16/23 To Say Nothing Of The Pixels

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MURDER. James Davis Nicoll assigned the “Young People Read Old SFF” panel a series of Hugo finalists to read. We’ve reached the end:

The final installment¹ in Young People Read Old Hugo Finalists is Lois McMaster Bujold’s 1989The Mountains of Mourning. One of Bujold’s popular Miles Vorkosigan stories, Mountains is a murder mystery. Through Miles’ eyes, Bujold explores certain aspects of Barrayaran life generally kept off-stage thanks to the series’ focus on the aristocracy.

Mountains won the Best Novella Hugo, beating The Father of Stones by Lucius Shepard, A Touch of Lavender by Megan Lindholm, Time Out by Connie Willis, and Tiny Tango by Judith Moffett. I’ve not read the other finalists so I cannot compare them to the winner. I can say that Mountains was the first Bujold I read. It is the reason I have a shelf full of Bujold novels.

Fans liked it. I liked it. But did the Young People like it?…

Nicoll says the next project, debuting in 2024, is Young People Read Old Nebula Finalists.

(2) THEY LIVE! Galaxy is also being resurrected by the same company that has announced the relaunch of Worlds of IF. “Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951 (FIRST-EVER WEBZINE REISSUE + new bonus content!)” at Starship Sloane Publishing.

I am happy to announce that this magazine, like its sister publication, Worlds of IF, is also being revived and relaunched by Starship Sloane Publishing Company, Inc.

This might be a slow process, as we are wonderfully busy with the booming relaunch of Worlds of IF already, and I have no desire to make things overly frenetic. The idea is to methodically breathe new life into Galaxy. It seems only fitting that these two magazines should walk hand in hand once again. I will be keeping this celebrated magazine skinny, minimalist in style, and highly selective. The quality of work will speak for itself….

… I do this for the love of creativity and science fiction. But I also strive for simplicity. If something becomes a self-imposed, burdensome form of work, I reevaluate. I will not place stressful expectations on myself here. A strict publishing schedule? Very unlikely. But semiannually sounds about right, I suppose….

(3) GONE IN POINT SIX SECONDS. The MinnPost believes people should be concerned with “Protecting physical media in an age of streaming”.

It’s been repeated, echoed and understood ad nauseam that we live in the streaming era.

We get it. Something that streamers may not understand, however, is that nobody owns their digital media.

The $12.99 spent through Amazon Prime Video to purchase “Barbie” is not “your” copy of the film. A person only has access to it until Amazon decides it doesn’t want to support the licensing anymore. This concept is not new or nuanced, but it is lost. The constant shuffling of online media between major streaming conglomerates has resulted in physical media’s futility in the eyes of the general public. We indeed live in the streaming age, but it’s also an age where the cultural impact of art preservation is needed more than ever.

This sentiment is not a condemnation against people using services like Netflix and Spotify. The convenience factor of these platforms is undeniable. However, combing through records, DVDs and books at local businesses should become something other than ancient practice.

Art preservation is at the forefront of this streaming puzzle because of the cultural significance of owning physical media. Much like artifacts, art has been replaced, lost and not protected. Now, instead of encouraging ownership of your favorite titles, businesses that still champion the physical media medium are fighting an uphill battle.

With all the revenue that floods in through streaming platforms, physical media becomes a nuisance to the profit margins of online Fortune 500s.

So, when a seemingly neglected and inevitable problem like this presents itself, the starting point of where to spark the renaissance can get blurred. Viewers, listeners, patrons and readers should look to local shops that allow physical media literacy to return to the mainstream….

(4) REVIEWERS’ PROTEST. Courtney Tonokawa told review blog readers ”I’m Participating in the St. Martin’s Press Reviewer Boycott!” in November at Courtney Reads Romance.

This is a brief post throwing my support behind the ongoing St. Martin’s Press reviewer boycott, which started in late October (as far as I’m aware; if anyone has more conclusive timeline information, please let me know). It is in response to a few major issues, like the general favoritism of white reviewers for ARCs over reviewers of color and, more recently, the behavior of a marketing employee in response to recent escalation in violence between Israel and Palestine, with said employee spewing Islamophobic and queerphobic rhetoric on their socials. All receipts and a more thorough recap of events can be found at the “Readers for Accountability” website here, along with a list of the boycott demands, screenshots, graphics, and all other relevant information.

But until those demands are met, in short addressing the actions of their employee and their action plan for the future, I am joining my fellow reviewers in withholding reviews and any other promo for St. Martin’s Press, and invite anyone else interested to join.

As Courtney’s post says, the allegations are documented at the “Readers for Accountability” website. Their overview of the complaints follows:

The boycott of St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and other related imprints is a direct response to the publishers lack of accountability regarding one of their employees. This employee, who we will not name here, posted Islamophobic, Queerphobic, and anti-Palestinian content on their personal social media. This content was shared in Instagram stories and was brought to our attention by Palestinian activist and BookToker @vivafalastinleen. Leen noted that while she is on the St. Martin’s Press influencer list, she never seemed to receive any of the ARCs she requested. Additionally, Leen noticed that her white counterparts would receive ARCs regularly. She began to question if this was a symptom of the employee’s bigotry when she was sent screenshots of a marketing Islamophobic employee sharing racist, Islamophobic pink washing content to their stories.
Leen attempted to reach out to St. Martin’s Press when the employee’s posts came to light, but struggled to receive a response and was largely ignored. Other influencers and content creators reached out as well with similar results. However, Leen did eventually receive email from Brant Janeway. However, the response was dismissive and defensive with no action being taken to investigate.

The boycott was officially enacted after ten days of radio silence from St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday books. During those ten days, content creators were emailing, DMing, commenting, and making videos to demand that St. Martin’s Press make a statement to no avail. As such, Leen created a video that provided other creators with context for the boycott. This video also included a large amount of screenshots and context into why those screenshots are so dangerous. Twitter likes were also included so as to provide evidence of how deep the employee’s bigotry runs. Demands were issued for St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books in hopes and readers will continue to boycott the publishers and related imprints until those demands are met.

(5) WHO IS NUMBER ONE? Kim Ju-sŏng tells Guardian readers “’I repeatedly failed to win any awards’: my doomed career as a North Korean novelist”.

…I believe the reason my writing received poor evaluations lay primarily in my choice of genre. All of my stories took place in Japan, or had zainichi as the main characters. In North Korea these were dismissed as “foreign works”, the catch-all term for anything about the wider world. Like anywhere, in North Korean literary circles there is a fair amount of specialisation, and each writer has his or her own style and character.

The most highly regarded genre, it goes without saying, is No 1 literature – that is, works about members of the ruling Kim family. This is not a genre that just anybody can write. In order of esteem, the genres of North Korean literature are:

1) No 1 works: stories about the achievements and personalities of the Kim family.

2) Anti-Japan partisan works AKA revolutionary works: stories set within the colonial-era independence movement.

3) War works: stories set during the Korean war.

4) Historical works: stories set during the Yi, Koguryo or Koryo dynasties.

5) Real-life works: stories about ordinary society from the postwar to the present.

6) South Korean works: stories set in South Korea.

7) Foreign works: stories set anywhere outside Korea.

I was involved with foreign works. Aside from No 1 works, writers had free choice of any genre, and we were also free to move around and experiment between genres. But only the most elite, accomplished writers were permitted to produce No 1 works….

(6) STRANGER THAN FICTION (BUT NOT FOR LONG). [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] People have seen me complain that I didn’t sign up to live in the cyberpunk dystopia we live in now, and thought I was exaggerating.

Nope.

Brian Krebs is probably the premier computer security journalist in the US. As I understand it, he had a column in the Washington Post, until the Post’s editors got freaked out by the number of what the police, and perhaps the FBI, considered “credible death threats”. My favorite story is from one of his investigations, the FBI followed the target, then suckered him to travel from eastern Europe to Guam, where he was arrested, extradited, and spent several years in US jails.

If you want to see the kind of thing he does… “Ten Years Later, New Clues in the Target Breach” at Krebs on Security.

Then tell me I’m exaggerating.

I’ve actually got a short story based on him that I’ve been trying to sell, but I guess it’s not “character-driven” enough (that I sincerely hope never happens, although he and his family have been swatted several times).

(7) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books presents episode 70 of the Simultaneous Times podcast. Stories featured in this episode:

“I Hope I Call You Back” by Tara Campbell – Music by Phog Masheeen – Read by Heather Morgan

“The Escape” by Jean-Paul L. Garnier – Music by Fall Precauxions – Read by the author

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 16, 1917 — Arthur C. Clarke. Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of one of my of all time favorite writers, however, this will be not be an all-inclusive look at him, but what I like for his films and writings. So let’s me get started now…

As regards short works, Tales from the White Hart is without doubt the stories I like above all others. Like Niven’s Draco Tavern stories or those of Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers, I adore stories told in a bar setting, and these are quite splendid.

Those are hardly his only great short stories. NyCon II would give him Hugo Award for “The Star” story which is wonderful, “The Nine Billion Names of God” got a well-deserved Retro Hugo at Noreascon 4, and Loncon 3 likewise honored “How We Went to Mars”. And I loved “A Meeting with Medusa” as well.

Arthur C. Clarke receives Hugo Award from chairman Dave Kyle at the 1956 Worldcon, NyCon II.

Which collection you pick up is your choice — The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke currently being published legitimately in ebook format by Open Road Media has somewhere around ninety stories in it and is an excellent choice. It has “The Nine Billion Names of God” in it, another story of his I should note I love.

Novels? Well let’s start with The Fountains of Paradise if only because I got to actually got to see the setting in Sri Lanka that it’s based off of. Every bookshop there had copies of it. And it certainly deserved the Hugo it got at Noreascon Two.

I also have on my reading list the Hugo-nominated A Fall of Moondust, one of the better lunar colonization novels ever written; and likewise The Sands of Mars is a worthy look at using and that planet.

Now we come to Rendezvous with Rama which won a Hugo at DisCon II. Damn that’s a fascinating novel. I re-read maybe a decade back and I’m please to say that the Suck Fairy broke her toe trying to tarnish its reputation.

So films. Well it in my mind’s eye, there is but one film only and that is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve seen it in cinema once, many times on a small screen. It’s wonderful. Yes, it got a Hugo at St. LouisCon.

That’s it for him. Have a good evening.

Alice Turner and Arthur C. Clarke. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Tom Gauld remembers a school tradition.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/KfRD5H8Avk
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) December 12, 2023

And Gauld finds an ability to predict the future can have bittersweet results.

Books of the Year! My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/Dn6Rly0nj2
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) December 10, 2023

(10) TUTTLE ROUNDUP. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” for the Guardian includes The Reformatory by Tananarive Due; The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow; Him by Geoff Ryman; and Audition by Pip Adam

(11) CURATED HORROR. Gabino Iglesias picked “The Best Horror Books of 2023” for the New York Times. The column begins:

There were a ton of amazing horror books published in 2023, and as a genre, horror delivered so much — from fresh takes on vampire stories to historical works that looked at racism and misogyny. That made selecting just 10 titles for this list a formidable task. So consider this a personal pantheon of favorites from 2023.

Some of the books on this list are easy reads and some will challenge you. Some are long and multilayered while others have a great sense of humor or unfurl at breakneck speed. Some adhere to a classic understanding of horror and others aim to redefine it. The important thing is that they are all outstanding.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is known for her ability to stylishly jump from genre to genre, and in SILVER NITRATE (Del Rey, 318 pp., $28), she goes full-blown horror. The book follows Montse, a sound editor navigating the macho culture of the film industry in Mexico City in the ’90s, and her best friend, Tristán, a soap opera star whose career is withering, as they help a horror director shoot a scene that’s really a ritual to break an awful curse. It’s a creepy, fast-paced tale filled with Nazis on the run and more. The novel is also Mexican to the core — it celebrates the country’s history, culture and films. This book pulls you in with its lovable, deeply flawed characters and gripping plot, and wows you with its eerie atmosphere and deft blend of historical fiction, horror and black magic….

(12) THE HOLE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science journal there is an interesting piece that may explain the dark matter conundrum. Could tiny, primordial black holes made during the Big Bang, hiding in stars account for the missing mass??? “Do tiny black holes from cosmic dawn hide within giant stars?”

“…Might itty-bitty black holes from the dawn of time be lurking in the hearts of giant stars? The idea is not so far-fetched “

This month, an enormous dark and cool spot, known as a coronal hole, opened up on the Sun’s surface—almost as if it were being swallowed by a black hole.

(13) CHRISTMAS SF BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It’s that time of year again to remind folk seeking SF/F books for themselves or as Christmas presents for others that the SF² Concatenation seasonal news page has forthcoming Science Fiction and forthcoming fantasy book listings from the major SF/F book imprints over here in Brit Cit. Back when last season’s news page was posted, these titles were all forthcoming but now, with the festive season fast approaching, most of these are now out. With just six shopping days to Christmas, there’s just time to order from your favourite genre bookshop. Happy Crimble…

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

Pixel Scroll 11/30/23 Too Much Pixel And No Scroll

Posted on November 30, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’. Gabino Iglesias is the new horror columnist for the New York Times. He told told readers on X.com, “It’s a dream come true. Can’t wait to bring you all the horror goodness starting in January. Long live horror.”

(2) LUKYANENKO EVENT AT WORLDCON VENUE. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Sergey Lukyanenko will appear December 1 in an event at the Worldcon venue.

In the Friday 24th Scroll, it was mentioned that Sergey Lukyanenko would be making four appearances in Chengdu between December 1st and 4th. Today (November 30th) I saw a Weibo announcement indicating there will be an additional event on December 1st; notably, this one takes place at the SF Museum that was the venue for the Worldcon. I think this may be the first time that the museum has been used or open to the public since the con?

There was also a new Weixin/WeChat blog post from his publisher yesterday (Wednesday 29th); curiously this does not mention the event at the SF Museum.

(3) GOLDMAN FUND UPDATE. Dream Foundry reports that they were able to fully fund everyone who applied within the preferred window for the Con or Bust initiative to assist Palestinian creators and fans of speculative fiction in attending the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

They still have funds remaining for 2024 and will continue taking applications on a rolling basis. They say –

Don’t self reject! Anyone who is a citizen of Palestine or a member of the Palestinian diaspora qualifies and is encouraged to apply.

Applications for the 2025 Worldcon will open in summer of 2024.

(4) FURIOSA TRAILER. The first official trailer has dropped for Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth star in Academy Award-winning mastermind George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the much-anticipated return to the iconic dystopian world he created more than 30 years ago with the seminal “Mad Max” films. Miller now turns the page again with an all-new original, standalone action adventure that will reveal the origins of the powerhouse character from the multiple Oscar-winning global smash “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The new feature from Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures is produced by Miller and his longtime partner, Oscar-nominated producer Doug Mitchell (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Babe”), under their Australian-based Kennedy Miller Mitchell banner. As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.

(5) A GOOD TONGUELASHING. “Adam Sandler’s ‘Leo’: A Crotchety Old Lizard Helping Kids Be Kids” at Animation World Network.

Hitting Netflix [on November 21] is Leo, a clever and charming coming-of-age animated musical comedy starring noted actor and comedian Adam Sandler as a curmudgeonly 74-year-old iguana, stuck living for decades in an elementary school class terrarium, who plots his escape – complete with an odd bucket list – after learning he only has one year to live. At the same time, he can’t help but offer friendly advice to a bunch of kids who each must take him home for a weekend, only to discover – and swear to keep secret – that he can talk…

… The idea for the film gestated with Sandler for eight years. “Basically, I had the idea of looking at an elementary school graduation, almost like in Grease, the kids’ last year of elementary school, and how you’re moving on to the big leagues after that,” he shares. “And me and my friend, Paul Sado, were working on that idea. And then I told Robert Smigel about it, and he said, ‘What about if you do it that year, but through the eyes of a class pet that’s been involved in that grade forever?’ And we got excited, and that’s when everything got flowing.”…

(6) PAGE-TURNER. Jay of Tar Vol On posted an extra-large magazine review this month, with thoughts on 35 different works of short SFF and a little bit of related non-fiction. “Tar Vol Reads a Magazine: November 2023”.

… the piece that inspired me to pick up this issue [of Asimov’s] in the first place: “Berb by Berb” by Ray Nayler. This story is connected to some of his other work that I haven’t yet read, but it makes an acceptable standalone, delivering a heartfelt tale of one person trying to do the best they can in a world that has gone to pieces around them. It’s a theme Nayler returns to often, and it makes for a good read every time. ..

(7) HOME IS THE SPACEMAN. Neil Clarke tells about his adventures at the Chengdu Worldcon in his Clarkesworld editorial, “This Would Have Been Longer”. He was impressed by how many children were at the con, and participated in the Hugo ceremony.

…Oh! That’s me up there with “little astronaut” after unexpectedly winning the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form. Those are two of the hosts of the event on the left and the gentleman on the right is convention Co-Chair Chen Shi, who presented the category. I actually had a speech written this time, but in the moment, I opted to abandon it and try to speak from what I was feeling instead. Probably not the brightest thing to do, but I wanted to say something to the kids watching now or later. I let them know that I was once like them and never believed that I would someday be up on this stage accepting an award I considered the domain of my childhood heroes. I told them that I hoped to be in the audience and watch them win one someday. I encouraged them to try, told them it wasn’t easy and that people might tell them it wasn’t possible . . . but it is.

After the ceremony, I was whisked off to do interviews. They had maybe two dozen reporters from a variety of outlets present and asking questions. It kept me from enjoying part of the after party with friends, but how often does a Hugo winner get that kind of attention? I understood and appreciated the novelty of it, and besides, they weren’t asking me about AI, so that’s progress, right?…

(8) YOU’VE HEARD HER WORK. [Item by Steven French.] “Jane Horrocks: ‘I’d love to be a baddie in a Tarantino movie’”, so she told the Guardian. Horrocks voices Babs, one of the chickens in Chicken Run and also starred with Anjelica Huston in Jim Henson’s film of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.

When did you discover you had an amazing voice? chargehand
From starting impersonations, really. My first impersonation was Julie Andrews when I got The Sound of Music album when I was nine. I fell in love with sounding like Julie. My mum and dad were massively into Shirley Bassey and I found I could impersonate her and Barbra Streisand. That’s when I started to realise that utilising my voice was going to be a good thing for me. It’s brought me a lot of pleasure, and I’ve made people laugh, which is great.

(9) NEW TO U.N.I.T. A disabled character is featured in the latest episode of Doctor Who. The actress discusses her role with Radio Times. Beware spoilers, maybe; I’m not sure.

“She is just so fun and feisty and ballsy – she’s just so much fun to play,” Doctor Who star Ruth Madeley says of her character Shirley Anne Bingham. “I’d love to be more like Shirley in my real life, I have got nowhere near that much cool in me!”

Madeley made her spectacular on-screen Doctor Who debut in The Star Beast as UNIT’s 56th scientific advisor. In the space of the 57-minute special, she got David Tennant’s Doctor out of some very sticky situations – and took absolutely none of his nonsense.

“Overall she is not overly impressed by anyone or anything, which I love about her because I am the complete opposite. That’s really fun to play,” Madeley tells RadioTimes.com….

(10) WHO PREVIEW. “Doctor Who debuts new scene from next episode Wild Blue Yonder” at Radio Times.

The veil of secrecy surrounding the next episode of Doctor Who, Wild Blue Yonder, is slowing beginning to lift, with the BBC dropping a first-look clip….

… In the new clip, Donna is left panicked when the TARDIS disappears, with the Doctor promising to return her home to her daughter Rose. But it appears someone – or something – is watching them……

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 30, 1906 — John Dickson Carr. (Died 1977.) As you know, we don’t do just sff genre Birthdays here and so it is that we have here one of my favorite mystery writers, John Dickson Carr. Indeed I’m listening to The Hollow Man, one of his Gideon Fell mysteries.

He who wrote some of the best British mysteries ever done was himself not British being American. Oh the horror. He did live there for much of the Thirties and Forties, marrying a British woman.

Dr. Fell, an Englishman, lived in the London suburbs. Carr wrote twenty-seven novels with him as the detective. I’m listening to The Hollow Man because it’s considered one of the best locked room mysteries ever done. Indeed, Dr. Fell’s discourse on locked room mysteries in chapter reprinted as a stand-alone essay in its own right.

All of the Fell novels are wonderful mysteries. The detective himself? Think a beer drinking Nero Wolfe who’s a lot more outgoing. Almost all of the novels concern his unraveling of locked room mysteries or what he calls impossible crimes. Of these novels, I’ve read quite a number and they’re all excellent.

Now let’s talk about Sir Henry Merrivale who created by Carter Dickson, a pen name of John Dickson Carr. (Not sure why he bothered with such a thinly-veiled pen name though.) Merrivale was like Fell an amateur detective who started who being serious but, and I’m not fond of the later novels for this, become terribly comic in the later novels. Let me note that Carr was really prolific as there were twenty-two novels with him starting in the Thirties over a thirty-year period. One of the finest is The White Priory Murders which was a Wodehousian country weekend with yet another locked room mystery in it.

He also, as did other writers of British mysteries, created a French detective, one by the name of Henri Bencolin, a magistrate in the Paris judicial system. (Though I’ve not mentioned it, all of his mysteries are set in the Twenties onward.) Carr interestingly has an American writer Jeff Marle narrating the stories here and he describes Bencolin as looking and feeling Satanic. His methods are certainly not those of the other two detectives as he’s quite rough when need be to get a case solved.

There are but four short stories and five novels of which I think The Last Gallows is the best.

With Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle, Carr wrote some Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes collection. Not in-print but used copies available reasonably from the usual suspects.

He was also chosen by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1949 to write the biography of the writer. That work, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is in-print in a trade paper edition.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

The Far Side shows space invaders with really bad luck.

(13) ARTILLERY AND JOSEPHINE. Haley Zapal is the first reviewer I’ve seen who is genuinely enthusiastic about Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Find out why in “Review: Napoleon” at Nerds of a Feather.

…The scenes where men and horses fall into the water are brilliant and artistic. There are things in Napoleon that I definitely have never seen before, and that’s wild considering director Scott is nearing 90. There is also absolutely brutal gore that makes Saving Private Ryan seem like Hogan’s Heroes….

(14) IT’S WASHED. Applause to Arturo Serrano for being one of the rare folk reviewing The Marvels who talks about the movie instead of its box office. But he’s no fan of the movie either: he rates “On the woes of ‘The Marvels’” only 5on a scale of 10 at Nerds of a Feather.

Someone at Marvel Studios should have pointed out that being simultaneously a sequel to WandaVision, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion and providing two sequel teases was too much weight to load onto the shoulders of one movie. But we’ve played this tune before: Marvel movies are doomed to be mere links in a neverending chain, each forgettable villain is just there to get the pieces in position for the next entry, what you see isn’t most of what the director intended, and so on. To keep going to theaters for a Marvel movie is by now a thoughtless habit, like grabbing one more potato chip when you know you’re full….

(15) IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. The New York Times covers “A Video Game That Doubles as a World War I History Lesson”. “Last Train Home tells an overlooked story of the Czechoslovak Legion’s evacuation across Russia in the embers of the Great War.”

… Foregrounding historical accuracy was a priority for Ashborne’s first original game, Last Train Home, which retells the Legion’s rolling evacuation eastward across Russia in the embers of the war. Its journey for homebound ships at the port of Vladivostok was tangled in Russia’s internal conflict between Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik armies….

…Jos Hoebe, the founder of BlackMill Games and a longtime producer of World War I shooters, said video game developers had a responsibility to get details correct, especially when a particular battle or event has few depictions in popular culture. For his games, Hoebe digests historical documents in an attempt to understand the average soldier and shed light on overlooked aspects of combat.

“It feels like we’re responsible for creating the image that people have of this theater of war,” Hoebe said.

Last Train Home is a real-time strategy game in which the player orders specialized squads around rural battlefields. Scouts clear the fog of war, riflemen charge at enemies — usually the Bolshevik Red Army — and medics heal wounds. Another significant portion of the game is managing the armored train and exhausted infantry while fighting disease, starvation and the cruel Siberian cold…..

(16) THE DOOR INTO WINTER. Here’s an interesting artifact at Fullerton Arms Ballintoy: Giant’s Causeway North Coast Guesthouse and Restaurant in Ireland.

In 2016, Storm Gertrude ripped up some centuries-old beeches from the avenue known as Dark Hedges, (familiar to Game of Thrones fans as the Kingsroad). Ten doors, fashioned from the fallen trees, were carved with scenes from the cult TV show and placed in 10 pubs with Thrones connections in Northern Ireland. A fierce dragon embellishes the deep-brown polished door in Ballintoy’s Fullerton Arms. From the pub, it’s 20 minutes’ walk down a dramatic winding road to the cliff-ringed harbour, used to film scenes involving Theon Greyjoy in the Iron Islands. The steep climb back up will help build an appetite for the pub’s rope-grown mussels or seafood chowder, and Northern Irish specialities such as champ (mash with spring onions).
Doubles from £60 B&B

(17) NONE DARE CALL IT “LIP-SYNCHING”. A ventriloquist and his dummy sing “’Time Warp’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.

“Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a song by Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, and Richard O’Brien as sung by Terry Fator and Walter In this video Terry is singing live without moving his lips, 100% guaranteed!

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

2022 Shirley Jackson Awards

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Mike Glyer

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on July 15 at Readercon 32 in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The juried award is given for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

NOVEL

[TIE]

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books)
Where I End by Sophie White (Tramp Press)

NOVELLA

The Bone Lantern by Angela Slatter (PS Publishing)

NOVELETTE

What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (Amazon Original Stories)

SHORT FICTION

“Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” by Kim Fu (Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe (Nictitating Books)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, edited by Doug Murano (Bad Hand Books)

[Via Marion Deeds.]

File 770

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Tag Archives: Gabino Iglesias

Pixel Scroll 8/18/24 The Golden Pixels Of The Scroll

Pixel Scroll 8/3/24 Krypton Through The Tulips

Pixel Scroll 5/31/24 Scroll Dol! Pixel Dol! File A Dong Dillo!

Pixel Scroll 4/30/24 Hold Your Vibranium

Pixel Scroll 4/15/24 No, cats do not have magical powers. Really they don’t. Would they lie?

Pixel Scroll 3/21/24 Mr. Sandworm, Bring Me A Dream

Pixel Scroll 2/28/24 Two Scrolls Diverged In A File, And I — I Took The One Less Pixeled By

Pixel Scroll 12/16/23 To Say Nothing Of The Pixels

Pixel Scroll 11/30/23 Too Much Pixel And No Scroll

2022 Shirley Jackson Awards