24 Stand By Your Slan In The High Castle On Zanzibar

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) A DIFFERENT KIND OF MEMORY HOLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.]

Sold! That’s €1,275,000 for lot number 487, Mona Lisa’s left eye. Sold to the gentleman with the monocle in the third row.

Next up for bid we have lot number 488, Mona Lisa’s right eye. This lot has an opening bid of €600,000. And we have 650 from one of the telephone bidders; do I hear €675,000?

“’It could disappear for ever’: Anger over sale of George Orwell archive” reports the Guardian.

George Orwell’s archives provide an invaluable insight into one of the most influential British writers of the 20th century, casting light on how he produced his most memorable books, his sensitivity to criticism, and his fears that legal threats could ruin his work. Now the treasure trove that is the extensive archive of correspondence and contracts amassed by Orwell’s original publisher, Victor Gollancz, could be scattered to the winds in what has been described as an act of “cultural vandalism”.

Crucial correspondence involving the Nineteen Eighty-Four author and Observer correspondent is being offered for sale on the open market, following a decision in 2018 by the publisher’s parent company to sell the archive because the warehouse was closing.

Richard Blair, 80 – whose father Eric Blair wrote under the pen-name George Orwell – is dismayed by the loss: “It’s terribly sad … Once Gollancz material is acquired by private collectors, it could disappear into the ether for ever.”

For £75,000, Peter Harrington, a leading antiquarian bookseller, is currently offering Gollancz papers relating to Orwell’s second novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter. They include his original contract, a letter with his corrections, and a 1934 report by Gerald Gould – then fiction editor of the Observer and a Gollancz manuscript reader – stating that it should be published.

Harrington is also selling letters for £50,000 relating to Orwell’s third novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which show that libel concerns led to key alterations in the final text. In 1936, dismayed by Gollancz’s desired changes, Orwell wrote that he would nevertheless do what he could to meet his publisher’s demands – “short of ruining the book altogether”….

(2) STRACZYNSKI ON LDV. J. Michael Straczynski told Facebook followers he has copies of Last Dangerous Visions in his hands, and shared some extra Tim Kirk artwork that’s in the books. Images at the link.

Four years ago I announced we were compiling and updating THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. Some folks laughed, saying it’d never happen. Today the actual books arrived in advance of the 10/2 pub date. Given the shifting landscape of stories in and out of TLDV, this is as complete as it will ever be, and more complete than it has ever been.

And as a SURPRISE BONUS: artist Tim Kirk, who did the interior art pieces for THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, also painted two alternate TLDV covers for Harlan back in the day. They are included in the book’s endpapers front and back, sans text and in full color, to allow their beauty to come through unimpeded.

(3) FLIPPING HIS LID. BBC keeps an eye on the Propstore cash register as “Indiana Jones’s Temple of Doom hat sells for £490,000 at auction”.

The hat worn by actor Harrison Ford in the second instalment of the Indiana Jones film franchise has sold for nearly half a million pounds at auction.

The brown felt fedora – specifically made for the Temple of Doom film – fetched $630,000 (£487,000) in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Other items of movie memorabilia were sold at the same time including props from Star Wars, Harry Potter and James Bond productions.

Jones, an adventuring archaeologist, is seen with the hat early on in the movie where he and his companions jump from a crashing plane in an inflatable raft….

… The fedora was also worn by Ford’s stunt-double in the 1984 film, Dean Ferrandini, and was sold with previously unpublished photos of the stuntman wearing the now-iconic costume on location.

Ferrandini died last year. The hat came from his personal collection.

The sable-coloured fedora was an update to the original featured in the first Indiana Jones film – Raiders Of The Lost Ark – with a “more tapered” crown then the first, Propstore, the auction house, said.

Created by the Herbert Johnson Hat Company in London, the inside lining features gold monogrammed initials “IJ”.

Also sold at the auction was an imperial scout trooper helmet used in the 1983 Star Wars film Return Of The Jedi – which was bought for $315,000 (£243,000) – as well as a light-up wand used by Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban, which attracted a winning bid of $53,550 (£41,400)….

(4) WELL WORTH READING. The Pinnacle Gazette admires sff authors: “Science Fiction Writers Inspire Reality And Reflect Society”.

… Jemisin’s work demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate the truth of contemporary society, blending enthralling narratives with uncomfortable realities. She’s vocal about wanting equality and justice to resonate within her stories, aiming to help readers confront and understand those themes.

Jemisin’s powerful message extends beyond literature; movie adaptations of her work are currently underway. The merging of cinema with her impactful stories opens new doors for broader audiences….

(5) THE MARTIANS ARE BACK. LA’s Skirball Cultural Center will host “Radio, Propaganda, and The War of the Worlds: An Illuminated Lecture by theatre dybbuk featuring Professor Paul Lerner” on September 1. Tickets and full details at the link.

Hear Professor Paul Lerner discuss Orson Welles’ famous “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast while actors from theatre dybbuk perform excerpts from radio broadcasts and other sources.

(6) A WORD GAME. [Item by Dann.] Under the “fun and games” section of the scroll, I came across Cell Tower a while back. The object of the puzzle is to find all of the words. The letters appear in the correct order, but they may be in consecutive rows. A perfect game is when you find all of the words without having to unselect/correct a word. All words are between 4 and 8 characters long.

My personal trick is to select all of the letters in the words that I find until all of the letters are covered. Then I deselect all of the letters and start selecting each word in turn.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1987 – RoboCop. In my opinion, they should have stopped after RoboCop came out. Oh, the next one with Peter Weller reprising his role had life in it but this film, oh, it’s perfect. So let’s talk about this film that premiered thirty- seven years ago in Los Angeles.

Edward Neumeier, a script reader for Warner Bro. who had no scriptwriting credits before this film, had visited the Blade Runner shooting stage and was fascinated by the idea of whether a machine could have a soul. (Of course, we know RoboCop is human, but I guess we’re supposed to forget that.) He and Michael Miner whose first script was, oh guess, wrote this film.

Their script was purchased just a year before production began by Jon Davison for Orion Pictures who would produce this film.

Now they had considerable trouble finding a director as more than a few said no, so they approached Verhoeven who would also turn it down twice because he did not understand the intent of it, particularly the satirical edge. He was convinced by his wife that he should direct it.

So they had a script, a producer and director, but who to play the star of this film? A fairly long list of possible actors was considered with Orion wanting Arnold Schwarzenegger on the basis of being The Terminator but they were persuaded not to cast him when it was noted that in that costume he’d look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Peter Weller had wanted the role and tested well, so he got the job. It didn’t hurt that he was a relative unknown, so the comparatively low salary didn’t bother him. It also helped that he had a following in the SF community because of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

They had cast Stephanie Zimbalist as Anne Lewis, but she dropped out to be in Remington Steele. (A terribly dated series I discovered the other week — my opinion of course.) Nancy Allen found the script rather interesting and readily agreed to be cast.

In my mind, there’s one more human character of major importance and that’s played by Kurtwood Smith who auditioned for Boddicker and also for the ill-fated Jones. The script said according to later write-ups of the film that Boddicker was scripted to wear glasses so he would look like Heinrich Himmler. Smith in interviews later said he wasn’t told this, and I certainly didn’t see the likeness. Did any of you see it?

Let’s briefly talk about Weller as RoboCop. Remember how smoothly he looked on screen? That was a lie. The suit was a total clusterfuck, sorry Mike, that’s the best word for it — the visor was hard to see out and that meant he couldn’t handle his weapon right, too cumbersome for him to move as he had practiced, and he lost up to three pounds a day while filming because up the weight of it, so he started taking prescription meds which made him, errr, testy.

So he got fired by Verhoeven who considered replacing him with Lance Henriksen but cooler, saner heads prevailed and filming (eventually) resumed.

Did I mention Orion had to increase the budget? More than once?

Of the extensive SFX, I want to mention but one. Well two actually.

The first being Emil’s melting mutation was inspired by The Incredible Melting Man.

Rob Bottin who had previously worked with John Carpenter on The Fog and The Thing designed and constructed Emil’s prosthetics, creating a foam-latex headpiece and matching gloves that gave the appearance of Emil’s skin melting as he said in interviews “off his bones like marshmallow sauce” when his vehicle made the toxic water in that contained immerse him. Cool, very cool.

Then there’s ED-209. The one that RoboCop looks up, not the one he obviously destroyed, was a fully-articulated model of only fiberglass took over four months to build, was seven feet tall, and weighed five hundred pounds. However, all of the other scenes were done by two-foot-high miniature replicas for stop motion animation, all fifty-five shots.

Ok, I’ve prattled on long enough. Did it make money? Was it well received?

Well, the budget wasn’t really high despite Orion (reluctantly) giving it more funding as it cost just under fourteen million and it made nearly four times that at fifty-three million dollars!

Was it well received? What do you think? It nominated for a Hugo at Nolacon II losing to, errr, The Princess Bride. Trying for irony that year, oh voters? I’m going to quote but one critical review from Hillary Mantel of The Spectator: “The film is energetic, visually brilliant and very funny, with a sharp script that is never allowed to hold up the carnage.”

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit notes how the invasion ends.
Thatababy suggests an alternate inspiration.
Rhymes with Orange has a cure for writer’s block.

(9) LA DONNA E MOBILE. “Fortnite is back on mobiles after four years thanks to EU law” – the Guardian tells how it happened.

The video game Fortnite is back on mobile phones, four years after Apple and Google pulled it from their app stores. Android users worldwide can install the game, along with two new titles from the publisher, Epic Games, by downloading the company’s new app store.

However, only iPhone users in the EU can follow suit as Epic becomes the highest profile company yet to adopt the looser restrictions forced on Apple by the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

All three games will also be available on Alt Store PAL, the largest of the independent App Stores launched in the EU under Apple’s new terms, said Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games.

“We’re really grateful to the European Commission for not only passing the DMA law, enabling store competition, but also really going in and robustly holding Apple and Google’s feet to the fire to ensure they can’t just obstruct competition,” Sweeney added….

(10) CROUCH SERIES GETS SECOND BITE. The Verge reports “Dark Matter is coming back for a second season on Apple TV Plus”.

The multiverse of Apple TV Plus’ Dark Matter is about to get bigger as the show heads into its second season. Apple announced on Friday that Dark Matter, Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own 2016 novel about a physicist who gets sucked into multiple alternate realities, has been renewed for a new batch of episodes….

(11) MAD, MAD I TELL YOU. Atlas Obscura contemplates “The Metamorphosis of the Mad Scientist”.

With all due respect to WWII dramas and Emma Stone satires, no genre has done more to unleash the mad scientist upon the world than the horror film. They are one of scary movies’ most famous characters, just behind the Final Girl and doomed quarterbacks. The two most iconic images of the silent era come from Metropolis (1927) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), both chilling stories about the havoc of evil doctors. A century later, the mad scientist continues to haunt our movies, even if the inventions themselves do not. “Today, many of the things that would once have seemed like horror-story fodder are scientific reality,” noted The Atlantic in 2014. “But still, as the boundaries of human knowledge are continually pushed, the trope of the mad scientist endures.”

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George thought someone would want to know how this movie got made: “Blade: Trinity Pitch Meeting”. Really, he did.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/25/24 Everybody Must Get Scrolled

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[From the desk of Timothy the Talking Cat]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was not a monster movie….

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

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

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(10) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus illustrates gate keeping.
The Argyle Sweater knows about super-sizing.
Existential Comics brings us “Sauron the Economist”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 6/17/24 You Gets No Kzin With One RingWorld

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ORWELL VS. KAFKA. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published 75 years ago (June 8, 1949) less than a year before his death. BBC Radio 4 is running a series of programmes on George Orwell and Franz Kafka.

In “Battle of the Adjectives”, Ian Hislop and Helen Lewis explore the two adjectives that have arisen from the writing of both men.

But what exactly do we mean by ‘Orwellian’ or ‘Kafkaesque’? They also find a vivid illustration of the very particular dystopias conjured up by both Orwell and Kafka in the form of the current UK Post Office horizon scandal, hearing from Alan Bates about his experience of striving against injustice in a system that seemed stacked against him.

In episode one of Orwell vs. Kafka: Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Big Brother Is Watching You”, actor Martin Freeman (The Hobbit and Sherlock) reads the novel – there are an additional five more episodes to come.

The year is 1984. War and revolution have left the world unrecognisable. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, is ruled by the Party, and its leader, Big Brother, stares out from every poster. The Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal, and no one is free. Winston Smith works at The Ministry of Truth, carefully rewriting history, but he dreams of freedom and of rebellion. When he falls in love with Julia, their affair is an act of rebellion against the Party. But nothing is secret. And Room 101 awaits.

There is also a dramatization of Kafka’s The Trial.

The most quintessentially ‘Kafkaesque’ of Kafka’s work, The Trial is a sinister satire, charting one man’s descent into self-destruction in the face of a society that has become a machine.

(2) WESTERCON 76 GOH CHANGES. In Westercon 76 Utah’s Progress Report 2 the committee announces new Fan GoHs Dave and Keri Doering have replaced Sally Wohrle, who reportedly dropped out for health reasons.

Jewelry and many-media artist, Darlene P. Coltrain has accepted Artist GoH.

CJ Lawson, who was originally announced as a Guest of Honor, is unable to attend.

The convention takes place July 4-7 in Salt Lake City.

Artist GoH: Darlene P Coltrain. Darlene has spent decades making and selling art at conventions, art-fairs, and galleries. Her early professional work, was lost-wax precious-metal jewelry, and later brass, and even small bronze sculptures. In addition, she’s worked in polymer clay, painted-dyed silks, stencil-prints, beading, etc.

Fan GoH: Dave Doering. Dave is a long-time fan in Utah, with more than 40 years of SF/F activity. It is hard to recall any SF event here that he hasn’t participated in or been on the committee. (Including Chairing a Westercon, and a Costume-Con.) Surprisingly, though he grew up in New York, he had no idea there was organized fandom, until he got to the Beehive State. Since then, he was a founding member of the first SF/F club at BYU, started the Leading Edge magazine at the school, and also began the professional development “Life the Universe and Everything” Con in Provo (#42, this year). In addition, he and his lovely wife Keri are award-winners costumers (including at Costume-cons and Worldcons). Come find out why his tagline is “It’s NEVER boring with Dave Doering!”

Fan GoH: Keri Doering. Founding member of the Utah Costumers Guild, Master-level Award Winning costumer, competing in local, as well as international events (Worldcons, and Costume-Cons) (She has helped behind the scenes, in countless fannish events, including Costume-Con 23 Utah, and Westercon67)

(3) POKÉMON. [Item by Steven French.] Joseph Earl Thomas reflects on being a black Pokémon player: “Pokémon Is All About Reading” in The Paris Review.

… And while I’m never stepping on a court serious with AI or LeBron or Steph—shit, I couldn’t even check Damon Young last year at his local gym—anyone can play against some of the best in the Pokémon game by virtue of its general openness, whereby openness, of course, involves money. Getting out to a Pokémon tournament ain’t like buying Beyoncé or Taylor Swift tickets, but it’s also not getting penny candies from the corner store. Registration might run you around seventy dollars, but that’s the small of it; the real shit is paying for the hotel and travel. Many players move in groups, sharing the cost, at the very least, of housing. Having taken years off from gaming for real for real—between children and changing careers and being deployed to Baghdad and writing the book and all the college-degree collecting and grade-school trips and deaths in the family and living, and living and COVID and calls from school and calls from court and calls from hospitals and calls from the shelter—I have never been part of such a group….

…The potential to play gets me giddy at times, like the boy I was never supposed to be; we were never supposed to be. It encourages one to wonder what’s possible in this smaller social world, the structures of almost-togetherness heaped upon with strangers, how I’m besieged by the naive sincerity I had discarded for survival until now, and how this is also a dimension of being a black man in public. I return to Omari Akil’s provocation about Pokémon GO: the death sentence, they called it, if you’re a black man, lambasting the augmented reality approach to catching Pokémon in the streets as a safety hazard in a racist society—though one could always already guess, given history or intuition, where the best Pokémon or important locales would be, where risk would be assumed and by whom. It’s hard for me to shake the state of any game from what happened today or yesterday, what will happen next year or what went down in the eighteen- or nineteen-sixties. So why then, I ask myself, does this thing here feel so much like life?

(4) WEEKEND BOX OFFICE EXPECTATIONS TURNED INSIDE OUT. Variety runs the numbers: “Inside Out 2 Shatters Box Office Expectations With $150 Million Debut”.

Move over Anxiety, there’s a new dominant emotion at the box office: Joy!

Heading into the weekend, the follow-up film to 2015’s cerebral hit Inside Out was projected to collect $80 million to $90 million. It overtakes Dune: Part Two ($82.5 million) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ($80 million) as the biggest opening of the year. It’s also the first movie since last July’s Barbie ($162 million) to debut above $100 million.

The second “Inside Out 2” also connected at the international box office with $140 million, enough to surpass “Frozen 2” ($135 million) as the biggest overseas animated opening of all time. Turnout was especially strong across Latin America, where it landed the second-biggest opening of all time behind Disney’s Marvel epic “Avengers: Endgame.” Globally, the movie has grossed $295 million to notch the title for biggest animated debut in like-for-like markets at current exchange rates. It carries a $200 million production budget….

(5) POE HOUSE CELEBRATIONS. A “Movie Night” in Baltimore will mark two Poe-related anniversaries.

This year we commemorate two very special anniversaries: the 175th Anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death in Baltimore in 1849 and the 75th Anniversary of The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum established in 1949. Join us festival eve at a special kick-off reception and MOVIE NITE in the glorious and newly-opened M&T Bank Exchange Theatre at France-Merrick Performing Arts Center.

This extraordinary evening includes two panel discussions with special guests Victoria Price, author and daughter of Vincent Price, and Michael Connelly, bestselling author of The Lincoln Lawyer and the Hieronymus Bosch detective series. Q&A followed by a special tribute recognizing the life and career of Vincent Price, and of the passing of the extraordinary film director, Roger Corman, followed by 60th Anniversary screening of their 1964 horror classic, “Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death” starring Vincent Price.

(6) TOWARDS MORE AND BETTER AUTHOR READINGS. Charlie Jane Anders calls on everyone to “Let Authors Read Their Work!” at Happy Dancing.

One thing that bums me out is my sense that people don’t seem to want to listen to authors reading their work in public as much as they used to. (This is a trend that predates covid.) I don’t entirely get it: audiobooks are more popular than ever, but the equivalent a of a live performance of an audiobook isn’t automatically popular….

,,, Listening to a good speaker read some of their own prose tells you things about the text that you will never learn from hearing that same person answer questions about the book. Good prose is immersive and engaging: it draws you in, and tells you a lot about what kind of story you’ll be getting. You can get to know the characters, live in their thoughts, get sucked into their problems.

Here’s the part where I brace myself for dozens of people to email me saying that they went to too many author readings that were dull, interminable, or actually incomprehensible. And yeah, I feel you.

Author readings are an art form, just like anything else. They can be done well or incredibly badly. Some authors are great at writing, but terrible at speaking. Believe me, I know. A big part of curating a reading series was avoiding those authors who were brilliant on the page but mumbled on the stage.

But I believe that most of us can get good at reading our work out loud, because it really is a skill that can be learned. Even introverts can master it!

In fact, I’ve been meaning to compile a set of tips for getting better at reading your work to an audience, as someone who worked on this for years. So I’m going to spend the rest of this newsletter sharing that advice….

A series of substantial tips follows.

(7) ADAM-TROY CASTRO GOFUNDME. “The Cancer is Alas Back, But I am Fighting” says Adam-Troy Castro in an update on his GoFundMe, which is as needed as ever. Fuller medical details at the link.

…So what is happening now is that a surgery, probably one involving my prior surgeon, is being wrangled, and my blood is going to undergo testing at a genetic level to determine what chemo I get this next time, and the same will be done to the little bugger once he’s in a specimen tray, and the good news is that this time, my chemo will be in my immediate neighborhood, not an hour’s drive from me. In all ways not involving whatever side-effects I experience, this will be a smaller impact on my life.

The surgery may be as long as two or three weeks away. It is not scheduled yet. It will be determined. Maybe it’s next Tuesday. Don’t hock on me about demanding it be earlier. We are doing the best we can. People with actual power are already speaking up.

I will change the name of the current GoFundMe and establish that the cancer is back, though I do not expect spectacular uptick in collection, given how frequently fate has returned me to the same well. It will remain open, in any event. I can use the help. But this is the shitty sequel. Let it not be a trilogy….

(8) ONE WEEK LEFT TO SUBMIT FOR IMAGINE 2200. Submissions for the 2024/2024 “Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors” contest close on June 24 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific.

Tory Stephens, Climate Fiction Creative Manager, says, “If you’ve got a great short story in the works and haven’t submitted it yet, we’d love to read it.”

The contest judges are Omar El Akkad and Annalee Newitz.

(9) THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. Abigail Nussbaum rounds up the misrepresentations about artificial intelligence in “AI and Me” at Lawyers, Guns & Money.

…The solution the AI companies have come up with to this problem is essentially fake it until you make it. Insist, loudly and repeatedly, that AI is “inevitable”, that anyone who resists it is standing in the path of technological progress, no different from anyone who futilely resisted the automation of their labor in the past. That non-technology industries are falling for this spin is perhaps unsurprising—motivated, obviously, by the dream of dumping those pesky human employees and freelancers and replacing them with cheap and uncomplaining machines (though, again, I must stress that if AI was priced realistically—and if water and energy for server farms were sanely priced—there is no AI tool that would be cheaper than a human doing the same job). What’s more interesting is that other Silicon Valley companies are doing the same, even though, again, the result is almost always to make their product worse. Google has essentially broken its key product, and Microsoft is threatening to spy on all its users and steal their data, all because a bunch of CEOs have been incepted into the idea that this technology is the future and they cannot afford to be left behind. (This desperation must be understood, of course, in the context of a Silicon Valley that hasn’t come up with a new killer app that genuinely revolutionizes users’ lives since maybe as far back as the smartphone, and where advances in screens, cameras, disk sizes, and computing power have plateaued to a point that no one feels the need to upgrade their devices every year.)…”

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 17, 2007 — Anniversary of “The Unicorn and The Wasp”. If you haven’t seen this episode, go away now. Really. Truly. Everything that follows is spoilers in the extreme. You have been warned.

So one of my best loved episodes of the new series of Doctor Who is “The Unicorn and The Wasp” which aired on this date on BBC America.

It is a country house mystery set in high summer featuring a number of murders. And, to add an aspect of meta-narrative to the story, it has writer Agatha Christie in a prominent role. It would riff off her disappearance for ten days which occurred just after she found her husband in bed with another woman. Her disappearance is a mystery that has never been satisfactorily answered to this day.

Yes, there have been entire books, Queen of Air and Darkness forgive their writers, offering up their theories as to what happened to her.

So the Doctor and Donna Noble arrived at the grounds of that country house just during afternoon tea. When else would they arrive? The Doctor, here played by David Tennant at his very best, uses his psychic power in the form of an identity card, to convince The Lady of The Manor that she has met him previously and invited them for the weekend.

A murder will soon happen when Professor Plum is killed in The Library with a lead pipe. Yes, a Clue board game reference which his plucky companion (Catherine Tate) gleefully notes. And so it goes for the entire episode in a rather delightful manner. It’s silly, it’s fast-paced, and it’s one of the most British episodes that the new Who does. And it’s one that shows how clearly this series is fantasy, not science fiction, as I’ll note when you read on.

The Unicorn of the title is simply the code name of an infamous jewel thief, but The Wasp of the title is a wasp, a bloody big one on that. A wasp that’s the love child of a shape shifting alien who made Her Ladyship pregnant in India forty years ago. A wasp that’s so big that it couldn’t survive in Earth’s gravity, but this is fantasy after all. (I firmly believe that almost all science fiction is fantasy — some are just more blatant about it.) And do keep an ear out for the many, many references to the novels Christie wrote. There’s even a paperback published if I remember correctly millions of the year in the future. See books do survive!

It’s a quite delightful affair which fits very nicely into the genre of Manor House mysteries which of course the future Dame Agatha would write a few of these novels herself. Oh and Agatha Christie was played by Fanella Woolgar, to the far right in the image below, who was cast at the urging of Tennant who may or may not have known that the actress had twice appeared in the Agatha Christie’s Poirot series several years previously. She played Ellis in the “Lord Edgware Dies”, and in “Hallowe’en Party” as Elizabeth Whittaker.

This episode is why one of the many reasons that David Tennant is my favorite actor that played a Doctor in the new Whovian era. (Tom Baker is my favorite of the classic Doctors.) Jodi Whittaker, my second favorite in the modern era, who I believe a great performer that I thought was let down too often by scripts that were less than they could’ve been.

It, like all modern Who, is now available exclusively in the States on Disney+. I downloaded this and my other favorite episodes when they came out.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Rubes puts a funny twist on a familiar confrontation.
Eek! requires knowledge of those unseen to be funny.

(12) CRISTAL PRIZES. Animation Magazine reports “’Memoir of a Snail,’ ‘Flow,’ ‘Percebes’ Take Home Annecy’s Top Prizes”.

The massively popular 2024 edition of the Annecy Intl Festival of Animation came to its exciting conclusion on Saturday with the announcement of the winners of this year’s Cristal prizes. Adam Elliot‘s audience-pleasing stop-motion feature Memoir of a Snail was the winner of the 2024 Cristal for Best Animated Feature, while Alexandra Ramires and Laura Gonçalves’ s Percebese was the winner of the top prize in the shorts category….

(13) THEY’RE GOING APE OVER NEW RPG. A Kickstarter has been launched to fund “The Official Role-Playing Game of the PLANET OF THE APES by Magnetic Press Play”. How well is it going? They’ve raised $198,689 of the $15,000 goal with 24 days left in the campaign. Players are eager.

In a world turned upside down, civilized apes sit at the top of the evolutionary ladder, ruling over a population of primal humans. But this dominion will not go unchallenged. Wayward astronauts arrive to lead an uprising, questioning this madness and the events that led to this topsy-turvy, backward future. Political intrigue, societal conflict, and fantastical, dangerous mysteries abound on this planet ruled by apes!

Built on the celebrated, time-tested D6 System developed by RPG pioneer West End Games, this exciting science fiction adventure series brings a wealth of new features and roleplaying mechanics for a new generation of gamers.

Players will be easily thrust into the PLANET OF THE APES through the new “Magnetic Variant (D6MV)” Rule Set taking full advantage of the unique and popular “Wild Die” system and other unique role-playing systems. Adventures in PLANET OF THE APES will be as thrilling and cinematic as players dare to imagine.

(14) MEGALOPOLIS SECURES U.S. DISTRIBUTION. “Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ Gets U.S. Release in September” – Variety has details.

Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi epic “Megalopolis,” which proved to be wildly divisive after its Cannes Film Festival premiere, has finally found a distributor. Lionsgate has signed a deal to distribute the film in theaters in the U.S. and Canada.

It will be released on Sept. 27. “Megalopolis” is playing in Imax, but it will likely share screens with Christopher Nolan’s 10th anniversary “Interstellar” rerelease. It’ll also have to relinquish those coveted premium large format screens a week later, as “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which was filmed with Imax cameras, lands on Oct. 4….

(15) ORPHAN BLACK: ECHOES STARTS JUNE 23: [Item by Daniel Dern.] “Orphan Black: Echoes — Cast, plot, premiere date, and everything else there is to know” – from Monsters and Critics.

… Orphan Black: Echoes is the name of the next chapter, and while it will be similar to its predecessor, it will also have some notable changes.

The original Orphan Black focused on a series of clones flawlessly played by Tatiana Maslany….

…Orphan Black: Echoes will premiere on Sunday, June 23, at 9/8c on AMC and BBC America.

Full episodes will be available to stream on AMC+….

… Orphan Black: Echoes is headlined by Krysten Ritter, who plays a young woman named Lucy who has undergone a procedure and has no recollection of what happened.

Keeley Hawes is playing Dr. Kira Manning, the daughter of Orphan Black’s Sarah Manning, serving as one of the sequel’s most significant ties to the original.

The impressive cast is rounded out by Avan Jogia (Jack), Amanda Fix (Jules Lee), James Hiroyuki Liao (Paul Darrow), and Rya Kihlstedt (Eleanor Miller).

While 37 years have passed between Orphan Black Season 5 and Orphan Black: Echoes, it is possible that some familiar faces will stop by, thanks to the show’s focus on clones….

According to the Wikipedia — “Orphan Black: Echoes”:

The series stars Krysten Ritter and is set in 2052 in the same universe as Orphan Black…taking place in 2052, thirty-seven years since the end of the original series, Echoes follows the life of the now adult Kira [daughter on one of the original clones] and her wife, as they try to help an amnesiac woman….

(16) LINER NOTES FOR TODAY’S SCROLL TITLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “You Gets No Kzin With One RingWorld”. Notes:

[1] Per Genius.com and other citations, Josh White sang “…you gets…” although no doubt there are versions with “…you get…”

Here’s two recordings by Josh White:

[2] Also per Genius.com:

With “One Meatball”, Josh White became the first African-American to have a million-selling hit. According to his biographer Elijah Wald it was White’s “biggest hit by far, and one of the most popular songs of the 1940s folk revival”.

[3] Song origins: See the comment in [2]; also “The meaning behind the song One Meat Ball by Joshua White”.

Here’s Dave Van Ronk performing it. And here’s further discussions, including references to the precursor “One Fish Ball” and “The Lone Fish Ball”. Hear on YouTube: “David Kelley One Fish Ball”.

And here’s Dave Van Ronk discussing the song’s origins (and then singing it).

Lastly, I’m also not seeing “You Gets No Matzoh With One Gefilte Fish Ball” – the ghost of Alan Sherman, I’m talking to you!

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. With the help of kazoos, a toy xylophone and other classroom instruments, Ray Parker Jr., Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Jimmy Fallon & The Roots render “Ghostbusters” on The Tonight Show. From a broadcast earlier this year.

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

Warner Holme Review: George Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Mike Glyer

Animal Farm: A Fairytale Story by George Orwell. Introduction by Richard Blair. Illustrated by Omar Rayyan. Suntup Editions.

Review by Warner Holme: George Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story is a classic of political allegory. And dozens of versions of the story exist, with even the print variations being noticeably wide. This particular edition, by Suntup, is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous and carefully planned ever put together.

There is a multipage introduction by Richard Blair in which he talks about the history of the book as well as its significance, including the text of a letter of rejection from none other than T.S. Eliot. Blair discusses his personal issues related to the volume, and the influence it had, as well as giving some biogaphical background on George Orwell.

A nice note on the text is included in which Peter Davison expounds upon the history of Animal Farm amd variations in the story, starting with the often removed subtitle of “A Fairy Story” and moving up to such esoterica as a radio version Orwell helped write. It is a delightful bounty of interesting meterial about the volume ajd it’s variations in multiple languages.

Unused prefaces and introductions are included, specifically a version from the Ukrainian Edition and a long lost one that was only recovered in the 1970s. More of Orwell’s writing on the book, these rarely seen gems give a look into the way the author thought of the story he told.

A major selling point for this edition is the gorgeous new illustrations by Omar Rayyan. Each image is detailed and grotesque, the perfect mix of realistic minutia and exaggerated design creating a world that feel very much like what is written in the book. They illustrate, usually quite accurately, events from the book which allow for suitably disturbing imagery, whether due to overt horror or corrupt influence.

The use of pigs as the main antagonists of Animal Farm was always a stroke of genious. They are creatures that are well known to consume a great deal, all but indscriminately. They are violent and dangerous in the rigut circumstances, yet the public in general are very much not aware of that. Those.who do not think (f the creatures as cute usually, instead, merely see them as a useful source of meat. However the most important fact from this point of view comes from the simple detail that they are not kosher. They are not approved of by Judaism. As a result of this they are oftem used as an antisemetic symbol. For a novel published in 1945 (and written significantly before that) it is especially appreciated as it was easy to accidentaly or deliberately seen as such.

As with all Classics there are a number of variations one can purchase for this volume. This one, from Suntup Editions, is not only the most gorgeous of them but one of the most complete. The additional material is gripping and fascinating, and while not quite exhaustive voluminous enough to be appreciated. Indeed one of the most obvious missing pieces by or will on the subject, from his correspondence with Dwight Macdonald, is quoted in the promotional material meaning it is arguably included as well. To anyone who collects high-end volumes, this book is a fantastic piece to add to your collection. To fans of animal farm, if they are willing to spend $200 or more dollars on a book, it is also highly recommended.

(Suntup, 2023)

Often shy and retiring Warner Holme has worn many hats over the years. He has worked in fields ranging from the medical to advertising, but always finds himself most at home among stories and words. He can usually be found in the mid-south, caring for some person or animal, and is almost never more than a meter away from a few books.

Pixel Scroll 6/1/23 Three Little Muad’Dibs From Sand Are We

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) FORD PERFECT. Ryan D’Agostino has a tremendously entertaining profile of “Harrison Ford on ‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘Star Wars,’ Career” in Esquire.

….What you don’t know is what happens when they mess up Harrison Ford’s eggs. The plates come, two Farmer’s Breakfasts. Mine’s good: over easy. As Ford cuts into his first poached egg, I’m asking, “So would you say the character of Indiana Jones has some of your own boyhood—”

He lays down his fork and knife. His shoulders droop in defeat.

The egg white is rubbery, the yolk chalky. He looks up at me.

“You couldn’t have been clearer,” I say.

The waiter, seeing a problem, scurries over, eager and recoiling at the same time. Ford just looks up at the poor guy, not with anger but with something worse: disappointment. It’s not a mean look. It’s a look that says, “We can do better, friend.”

The waiter is smiling and trying to speak, and he looks as if he might cry. “Are they . . . not soft?” He slinks away. Ford tries to refocus….

(2) INDY BEGINNING. And if you have Disney+, Slashfilm says these are “The Essential Young Indiana Jones Episodes You Need To Stream On Disney+”.

…Since these revised mini-Indy movies are appearing on Disney+ for the first time, we picked out the six most important episodes you might want to watch as you count down to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” … though it must be said that every episode is worth your time…

Their list begins with —

My First Adventure

Exactly as the title says, “My First Adventure” is the first adventure of the young Henry Jones, Jr. It begins with a nine-year-old Indy living at Princeton with his parents when his life gets turned upside down when he has to accompany them on a journey around the world. The family heads to Oxford first, where Indy picks up his tutor, Ms. Seymour. They find themselves in Egypt and Indiana Jones helps T.E. Lawrence (yes, the “Lawrence of Arabia”) solve a murder mystery. Then, they travel to Africa, where Indy learns a lot about colonialism, slavery, and languages. It’s a good taste of what the younger side of Indy’s adventures will hold for audiences and an essential introduction to the series.

(3) ANOTHER FIRST FOR EKPEKI. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the first Black winner of the Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers Award editor Sheila Williams told him today. Part of the reason, she adds, is that they published Octavia Butler’s stories, which won major awards, before the Asimov’s SF Readers Award was created.

(4) IT’S REAL! I’M ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN OF IT! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Prepare for a barrage of proclamations that this is a real ET message, and the government is just covering things up by pretending it’s a test. Pfffft!

In what may be the first piece of interplanetary performance art, a message crafted by an artist to look like an extra terrestrial broadcast is coming from a Mars orbiter. Now people are trying to decipher it. “The Race Is On to Crack an Artist’s ‘Test’ Signal From Aliens” in WIRED.

For decades, a dedicated international band of researchers has searched the skies in the hopes of finding some sign that humanity is not alone in the universe. They’re engaged in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. So far, the hunt for an alien signal has turned up only false positives. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from speculating about how people might respond to a real communication attempt. Now, Daniela de Paulis, an artist in residence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, is simulating just such an alien message to see how humans react and whether they can figure out how to decipher it.

Her group’s project, A Sign in Space, began last week by transmitting a mysterious radio signal from the Trace Gas Orbiter, a European Space Agency craft that’s orbiting Mars. Participating astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the Allen Telescope Array in California, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in Italy received the signal, removed the telemetry data, and posted the remaining encoded message on the project’s website for anyone to download. Now it’s up to the people of Earth to crack the code, interpret the message, and—de Paulis hopes—make some art. She and her colleagues are leading a series of online workshops to encourage people to discuss the concept of alien communication, including an event she hosted yesterday at which people shared thoughts and artwork inspired by the project so far….

(5) THE MAN FROM GONDOR. A classic fanfic is now available on the ConChord website, The Tenth Nazgul Affair by William Baker Glass, with illustrations by Richard Paul Glass. Barry Gold has made it available in HTML and EPUB formats.

Napoleon and Illya are engaged in a firefight with several T.H.R.U.S.H. agents when Illya is struck by lightning and ends up in Middle Earth. He helps King Elessar Telcontar (aka Strider) fight off Shelob and one extra Nazgul that somehow survived the destruction of the One Ring.

(6) SOMETHING NICE TO SAY ABOUT AI. Rob Hansen says he’s recently begun using A.I. for extrapolated reconstruction of old photos and sent links to work done on pictures of Forties LASFS members. Bill Burns found the online site to do this and produced this enhanced Tigrina image. Then Hansen followed with Art Joquel and Sam Russell.

Rob adds, “These are extrapolations rather than reconstructions, of course, but I think the results are pretty remarkable. Using A.I. for good; who’da thunk it?”

(7) EARLIEST RAY. Phil Nichols has launched a “Chronological Bradbury!” sequence with the latest episode of his Bradbury 100 podcast.

The idea is to work through Ray Bradbury’s fiction output in the order of publication, discussing each item as we go.

In this first “Chronological Bradbury”, I start right at the beginning, with a discussion of Ray’s earliest published works, which appeared in amateur magazines in 1938.

(8) FUTURE TENSE. The May 2023 entry in the Future Tense Fiction series from Future Tense and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination is Tara Isabella Burton’s “I Know Thy Works”, about an AI designed to compute and uphold our preferred moral systems.

Harry wasn’t a bad person. You just couldn’t take him too seriously, that’s all. Whatever Harry said, whatever Harry did, whatever Harry put down as his meta-ethic, this week, on his Arete profile, be it the ends justify the means or the greatest happiness for the greatest number or do what thou wilt be the whole of the law, Harry never meant a word. Harry changed his meta-ethic more often than he changed his clothes….

It was published along with a response essay “Why it’s so hard to compute ethics” by computer scientist Suren Jayasuriya.

…There’s debate over whether the trolley problem is really the right framing to interrogate ethical choices (specifically whether decisions made in the simulation really reflect what you would choose in real life), and the experiment itself has also been criticized for both its setup and assumptions. But the Moral Machine does provide a fascinating example of an algorithm that observes your ability to make decisions in a handful of tense driving situations, and then spits out a bulleted list of your preferences for saving babies over dogs, and how that compares with the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the people who have taken the test)….

(9) TOOLS FOR FORESIGHT. On Wednesday, June 14 from 12-1 p.m. Eastern, ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination will be hosting a free virtual event, “Reimagining the Future of [X],” exploring how to build collective visions of the future using science fiction and foresight tools.

The event is the fourth and final in the series for the Applied Sci-Fi Project, which seeks to understand the influence of science fiction on technology and the people who build it, and to study the ways that sci-fi storytelling can a tool for innovation and foresight.

We’ll be joined by our opening speaker, science fiction and nonfiction author Annalee Newitz (The Terraformers, Four Lost Cities) and four special guests: sci-fi author and futurist Tobias Buckell (Arctic Rising, “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance”); policy expert, foresight consultant and sci-fi author August Cole (Ghost Fleet, Burn-In); anthropologist Amy Johnson, who researches the use of speculative futures techniques at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center; and Tory Stephens, climate fiction editor at Grist Magazine. The panel will be moderated by CSI’s managing editor Joey Eschrich, who will also share his perspective on CSI’s own “Future of X” book anthologies, contests, and other projects.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1998 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Tricia Sullivan is the writer responsible for our Beginning this time.

A US-born author who moved to the United Kingdom in 1995. Four years later, she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Dreaming in Smoke which is where we get this Beginning. To date, it’s her one Award won.

She writes SF under her own name and fantasy as Valery Leith. She is a very prolific novelist, writing thirteen novels over a period of twenty-two years.

She’s written a double handful of fiction. Interestingly she stopped getting published six years ago. And she stopped updating her blog seven years ago. There’s a story there, isn’t there?

Dreaming in Smoke is a Meredith Moment at the usual suspects.

So here’s our Beginning…

my man’s gone now

The night Kalypso Deed vowed to stop Dreaming was the same night a four-dimensional snake with a Canadian accent, eleven heads and attitude employed a Diriangen function to rip out all her veins, then swiftly crocheted them into a harp that could only play a medley of Miles Davis tunes transposed (to their detriment) into the key of G. As she contemplated the loss of all blood supply to her vital organs it seemed to her that no amount of Picasso’s Blue, bonus alcohol rations, or access privileges to the penis of Tehar the witch doctor could compensate for having to ride shotgun to Azamat Marcsson on one of his statistical sprees with the AI Ganesh. She intended to tell him so–as soon as she could find her lungs. Ganesh was murmuring through her interface.

KALYPSO, IT’S GETTING TOO LOOSE AND KINKY IN HERE.

‘Did you hear that, Azamat? Keep it off my wave!’ she sent, annoyed at being reduced to verbing. She simply didn’t have the resources to image him, for by now the snake had decomposed into a flight of simian, transgressive bees, which were in the process of liquefying her perception of left and right. Everything seen through her right eye became negative and sideways. The alarming part was that it didn’t seem to make any difference.

Marcsson’s response came back as a series of pyrotechnical arrays, which, loosely translated, meant, ‘Relax. It’s only math.’

I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR ABACUS, said Ganesh. KALYPSO, GET YOUR DOZE UNDER CONTROL OR I WILL.

The AI had a point. Kalypso mustered her wits and started cutting sensory intake to the Dreamer, feeling a little defensive about Miles Davis. Maybe she shouldn’t have been listening to the jazz Archives; maybe if she’d endured the boredom of monitoring the feeds between Ganesh and Marcsson she could have cut off the sudden explosion of parameters in the Dream the instant it began. But she had been shotgunning Marcsson for a long time, and he had always been safe. Marcsson had been Dreaming since before Kalypso was even born–he knew what he was doing with the AI, which could take data and weave them into Marcsson’s sensory awareness while he floated in a state of semi-conscious, lucid thought. He could immerse himself in literalized math through Dreams that improved a hundred-fold on the raw visions that humanity had experienced in its sleep for eons. He could be secure in his own safety because he had technique.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 1, 1914 — George Sayer. His Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times won a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies and is considered one of the best looks at that author. He also wrote the liner notes for the J. R. R. Tolkien Soundbook, a Cadmeon release of Christopher Tolkien reading from excerpts from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. (Died 2005.)
Born June 1, 1926 — Andy Griffith. His most notable SFF genre credit is as Harry Broderick on the late Seventies Salvage I which lasted for two short seasons. Actually that was it, other than a one-off on The Bionic Woman. It’s streaming for free on Crackle whatever the Frelling that is. (Died 2012.)
Born June 1, 1928 — Janet Grahame Johnstone, and Anne Grahame Johnstone. British twin sisters who were children’s book illustrators best remembered for their prolific artwork and for illustrating Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians. They were always more popular with the public than they were with the critics who consider them twee. (Janet died 1979. Anne died 1988.)
Born June 1, 1940 — René Auberjonois. Odo on DS9. He’s shown up on a number of genre productions including Wonder Woman, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, The Bionic Woman, Batman Forever, King Kong, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Enterprise, Stargate SG-1 and Warehouse 13. He’s lent both his voice and likeness to gaming productions, and has done voice work for the animated Green Lantern and Justice League series. He directed eight episodes of DS9. And he wrote a lot of novels, none of which I’ve read. Has anyone here read any of them? (Died 2019.)
Born June 1, 1947 — Jonathan Pryce, 76. I remember him best as the unnamed bureaucrat in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He’s had a long career in genre works including Brazil, Something Wicked This Way Comes as Mr. Dark himself, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as Governor Weatherby Swann, The Brothers Grimm, in the G.I. Joe films as the U.S. President and most recently in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote as Don Quixote.
Born June 1, 1950 — Michael McDowell. Screenwriter and novelist whose most well-known work is the screenplay for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. He also did work on Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas though he’s not listed as the scriptwriter. He wrote eleven scripts for Tales from the Darkside, more than anyone else. And he wrote a lot of horror which Stephen King likes quite a bit. (Died 1999.)
Born June 1, 1965 — Tim Eldred, 58. Author and illustrator of Grease Monkey, a most excellent humorous take on space operas and uplifting species. As an illustrator alone, he was involved in Daniel Quinn’s superb The Man Who Grew Young
Born June 1, 1966 — David Dean Oberhelman. Mike has an appreciation of him here. The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America: From H.P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko which he co-wrote with Amy H. Sturgis was published by The Mythopoeic Press. ISFDB lists just one genre essay by him, “From Iberian to Ibran and Catholic to Quintarian”, printed in Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Died 2018.)

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Poorly Drawn Lines’ Astronaut Bill shows friendship is the best. (And if you go to the link, preceding this date are four or five really great cartoons about various other characters.)

(13) MARRIAGE IS WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER. Actor Alex Kingston remembers her time on Doctor Who as the Doctor’s enigmatic time-travelling wife in “Alex Kingston on 15 Years of River Song”, a feature in the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine. This excerpt appears at the link.

“I spoke to Steven [Moffat] on the phone and he said, ‘I’ve got this idea and I need to know if you’re available for it, because if you’re not I can’t write this.’ I let him know when I was available and he told me the outline, but I had to swear not to tell anyone. I’m very good at keeping secrets. Matt, Karen and Arthur had guessed I knew something and tried to persuade me to tell them, but I wouldn’t! Even when we had the script for that episode, the reveal wasn’t in it. They kept those pages out so the crew didn’t know. The actors were given the single pages – I’m not even sure when. And even on shooting day, the pages weren’t there and it was only then, at the last minute, that the crew saw the reveal. They managed to keep the secret and avoid any leaks at all. That takes a lot of doing.”

The season climaxed with THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG (2011), a game-changer that, despite its title, left the status of the relationship between the Doctor and River up to the viewer’s interpretation. “I still get people going, ‘You’re not really married to him because he was a Teselecta!’” Alex laughs, referring to the shape-shifting craft that had taken on the Eleventh Doctor’s form. “I’m like, ‘Thank you very much, I was married to him. I’m his wife!’”

(14) CLIMBING MT. TBR. Lifehacker advises on “How to Actually Read the Books You Buy”. It may be something you already do or it may be news to you. (The actual advice is at the link. Fair is fair.)

…The problem with all of these items is that they are quick to purchase, but take a long time to use. You can add a game to your Steam collection in minutes, but chances are most will take you 20 hours or more to play. (Howlongtobeat.com says Tears of the Kingdom takes 52 hours for the main story alone.)

How many more games will you impulse-buy before you’ve finished that one? How many skeins of yarn will you snap up (they were on sale! And so soft!) before you’ve finished the sweater you’re currently knitting? It’s the same problem as the TBR pile, really. And I promise, there is a solution…

(15) BEFORE 1984. The Guardian reviews “Orwell by DJ Taylor review – a very English socialist”.

…The key to his reading of Orwell is what happened to him in Spain. Though married to Eileen only six months before, he was determined to fight for the Republican cause (“Good chaps, the Spaniards, can’t let them down”) and on his return became far more politically engaged: “at last [I] really believe in Socialism, which I never did before”. But he’d seen bullying and infighting too. For the rest of his life and in his two great novels, this was the war he fought, on behalf of a wholesome, English, sweetly C of E brand of socialism, as opposed to Stalinist totalitarianism….

(16) STRIKES HINDER SCI-FI LONDON. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sci-Fi-London film fest is now go… But sadly rails strikes made its opening day Wednesday difficult for fans to attend except by bus. Rail strike also on Saturday. Nonetheless hoping to make Sunday’s two sessions of shorts and there’s a free cyber tech exhibition and demonstration there too…. 2023-Hackstock.

(17) JAWS: THE OVERBITE. Check out the WTF! photo of a Goblin Shark at the National Geographic.

Swishing through the deep sea, a goblin shark notices a small, yummy-looking squid. The animal inches toward its prey. But as the fish closes in, the snack starts to dart away. So the shark thrusts its jaw three inches out of its mouth! (The jaw is connected to three-inch-long flaps of skin that can unfold from its snout.) The predator then grabs the squid in its teeth. After scarfing down the meal, the shark fits its jaw back into its mouth and swims off….

(18) TURKISH DELIGHT. “Superman towers over the Kremlin: Reiner Riedler’s best photograph” – see it in the Guardian.

…This photo is part of my Fake Holidays series. At the beginning of the project, more than 15 years ago, I went to Lara Beach in Antalya, Turkey, where there is one luxury five-star hotel after another, all along the coastline. On the other side of the road were the tents of the workers who had built the hotels. Luxury hotels are like little ghettoes. You take your plane and your taxi, then you are in the middle of an isolated luxury area.

The Kremlin Palace hotel, where this photo was taken, has an exact copy of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow. I have been to Moscow and seen the original church, which is a focal point – all tourists take a picture there. But here in Turkey, there is a swimming pool in front of the cathedral. I was fascinated. There were many Russian tourists.

I saw a weird guy, an astronaut, walking around the pool. “What’s happening here?” I asked. It turned out the hotel had a huge room with costumes for the entertainers who perform for the tourists. Superman was one of them. I found him by the pool and immediately asked to take his picture. I took about three shots. I chose the photo point, in front of the church with the pool between us, then asked Superman to jump. It was a very childish approach, perhaps, but he did it. The way he jumped was perfect. I felt in the moment: “That’s the picture.”…

(19) IT’S A GUSHER. “James Webb telescope: Icy moon Enceladus spews massive water plume” and BBC News has the photos.

…The new super-plume was spied by the James Webb Space Telescope. Previous observations had tracked vapour emissions extending for hundreds of kilometres, but this geyser is on a different scale.

The European Space Agency (Esa) calculated the rate at which the water was gushing out at about 300 litres per second. This would be sufficient to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a few hours, Esa said.

Webb was able to map the plume’s properties using its extremely sensitive Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

The instrument showed how much of the ejected vapour (about 30%) feeds a fuzzy torus of water co-located with one of Saturn’s famous rings – its so-called E-ring.

“The temperature on the surface of Enceladus is minus 200 degrees Celsius. It’s freezing cold,” commented Prof Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland.

“But at the core of the moon, we think it’s hot enough to heat up this water. And that’s what’s causing these plumes to come out.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/28/22 The Mirror Grok’d

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) F&SF COVER REVEAL. Gordon Van Gelder has shared the July/August 2022 cover for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The cover art by Mondolithic Studios illustrates “Starblind, Booklost, and Hearing the Songs of True Birds” by Rudi Dornemann.

(2) MACMILLAN REMAINS SHUTTERED. “Macmillan Closed Tuesday As Well As They Address Security Incident” reports Shelf Awareness.

Macmillan, which closed yesterday because of “a security incident” on Saturday that involved its servers and internal system, is remaining closed “virtually and physically” today, Tuesday, June 28. The company said it is “making progress,” but it is still unable to process, receive, place or ship orders.

Details of the incident have not been publicized. Publisher’s Lunch (behind a paywall) commented:

…Network “security incidents” — generally some kind of hacking and/or ransomware — have become all too commonplace in recent years, and each one serves as a cautionary tale to all of us. Some are handled quietly and never acknowledged, but among the known incidents with publishing-related companies in recent years, the Barnes & Noble ransomware hack was the most prominent and had the biggest effect on customers, ultimately taking weeks to fully resolve….

(3) 69 IS NOT DIVINE? Amazing Stories’ Steve Davidson recommends some changes in “The Hugo Awards At 69”.

… At the time of its establishment and for the first few years of its existence, the award categories clearly reflected the interests and aspects of SF Fandom that were considered important to its future existence: fiction, the “raison d’etre” of the culture, the magazines that published the fiction and/or the editor’s who managed them, the artists who realized its visions and the people who made and reinforced that culture, the Fans.
Seven categories were initially offered. That’s now expanded to 17 and I’ll submit that the reason(s) some categories may be under-represented and might be eliminated is not because they’ve lost importance over the years, but because the awards themselves have focused on becoming more commercially appealing, rather than on focusing on serving their original purpose, that of self-congratulation and recognition within a fan community.
The Hugo Awards need to reduce the number of categories it covers and refocus its efforts on the writing and Fan categories. (Why Fan categories? Two primary reasons: The body of critical analysis offered by Fans through reviews and essays, commentary and yes, even ridicule and sarcasm, is what continuously redefines and elucidates the field. These efforts sustain the genre and the community that engages with it and should therefore be supported….

(4) ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO BETTER. “Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)” at Open Culture.

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.
Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.
Huxley starts off the letter praising the book, describing it as “profoundly important.” He continues, “The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it.”
Then Huxley switches gears and criticizes the book, writing, “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.”…

(5) PRIDE Q&A’S. The Horror Writers Association blog continues their “Point of Pride” theme in these interviews with Crystal Romero and Damian Serbu.

“A Point of Pride: Interview with Crystal Romero”

Do you make a conscious effort to include LGBTQ material in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
Yes, inclusion or lack of it, is what encouraged me to begin writing. I’ve always wanted to see more people who were like me. So when I began to write original work, I made a conscious effort to include characters of all orientations, but especially lesbians. Not only do I make an effort to include LGBTQ characters in my work, but I also include people of color. In an upcoming short story, I’m including a female bi-racial lesbian and Filipino gay male character. In the story that will follow this one, I’ll be introducing a transgender female character.

“A Point of Pride: Interview with Damian Serbu”

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
I love the creative expression of horror writing. I find horror liberating in a way other genres don’t allow. With horror, there are no rules about what can or cannot happen! The notion of generating a unique monster, plague, demon, or source of evil fascinates me. I wonder what caused the horror to exist. And I ponder how people can over come it. I also think horror writing prompts a writer to get into the raw emotion of being human and in community. Fear is such a base human emotion and at the center of so much of what we think and do. Horror digs into that feeling to reveal the soul of a person.

(6) MIXING HIS INKS. Eddie Robson explains that he loves noir and paranoid Phil Dickian sf so much he decided to combine them! “On Nightmare Noir, Science Fiction, and the Lure of the Gothic” at CrimeReads.

…Meanwhile in SF we can look to the work of Philip K Dick, so often marked by ambiguity and uncertainty, calling into question the nature of reality. Technology’s increasing ability to create artificial things not only returns us to the territory of Frankenstein, it also brings back the essential Gothic quality of the uncanny. This became a familiar mode of SF in the wake of works like Neuromancer and Blade Runner—both of which, incidentally, also draw heavily on crime tropes. (Perhaps the most obvious, and successful, combination of all three is The X Files, which itself draws on key Gothic crime texts like The Silence of the Lambs and Twin Peaks.)…

(7) SQUARING THE CIRCLE. In the Washington Post, Dave Eggers discusses how the Rapid City, South Dakota school system had removed his sf novel The Circle and four other books, including Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home from the high school curriculum and were threatening to destroy the books. He talks about how he worked with an independent bookstore in that city to make the books available and to have the school system do something with the books rather than pulp them. “South Dakota schools banned Dave Eggers’s novel. He investigated why.”

… When the book ban made national news, I talked with Amanda Uhle, my colleague at the publishing company McSweeney’s, about making the banned books available to Rapid City high school seniors.We called Mitzi’s Books, an independent bookseller in Rapid City, and we made an arrangement whereby we would buy books for any seniors who had been deprived access to them. So far more than 400 copies of the five banned books have been provided free to these students….

(8) FROM BABIES TO THE BEATLES. Kay Dee tells what it was like to witness the first worldwide live TV linkup at Galactic Journey. “[June 28, 1967] Around the World in Two Seconds (Our World Global Satellite Broadcast)”

I love how our world is drawing closer every day to some of the amazing futures that science fiction has spread before us. I’ve written before about the importance of satellite communications in connecting this divided planet. Just two days ago, 24 countries around the globe were linked together in the first world-spanning live satellite broadcast, titled – appropriately enough – Our World….

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

2015 – [By Cat Eldridge.] In the usual manner that such things happen, the Humans series debuted here two weeks after it first aired seven years ago on BBC. It was based on the Swedish SF series Real Humans which involved the creation of synths. (Yes, Picard would later use that term.) Channel 4 and Kudos in the United Kingdom, and AMC in the United States were the companies that underwrote it.

It was created by Sam Vincent, largely a voice actor, and Jonathan Brackley who had nothing to his name previous to this. I suspect a ghost writing staff was definitely involved but I cannot prove it. It was produced by Chris Fry who has executive produced a lot of Spooks so it had an experienced hand there.

It had a huge cast including Carrie-Anne Moss and William Hurt. Seriously it did.

It had three seasons of eight episodes each. It did not get a proper conclusion as it was simply cancelled. Ahhh welll.

Too bad, as the British critics really liked it. Mind you the ratings kept slip sliding away.

The Guardian said, “Humans itself won’t compete with Westworld on wild ambition or imagination, and certainly not on budget. But I like it better; it’s more pressingly relevant. And more human.”

And the London Evening Standard said that it provides “a smart and stylish exploration of the joys and perils of putting your very existence into the hands of artificial intelligence… If episode one delivers on its promise, then the journey into the unknown will be a profoundly interesting one.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a brainy eighty-five percent rating.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 28, 1926 — Mel Brooks, 96. Young Frankenstein (1974) (Hugo and Nebula winner) and Spaceballs (1987) would get him listed even without The 2000 Year Old Man, Get Smart and others. Here is an appreciation of Mel on YouTube. (Alan Baumler)
Born June 28, 1946 — Robert Lynn Asprin. I first encountered him as one of the co-editors along with Lynn Abbey of the most stellar Thieves’ World Series for which he wrote the superb “The Price of Doing Business” for the first volume. I’m also very fond of The Cold Cash War novel. His Griffen McCandles (Dragons) series is quite excellent. I’m please to say that he’s well stocked on both at the usual suspects. (Died 2008.)
Born June 28, 1947 — Mark Helprin, 75. Author of three works of significance to the genre, Winter’s Tale, A City in Winter which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and The Veil of Snows. The latter two are tastefully illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. I know Winter’s Tale was turned into a film but color me very disinterested in seeing it as I love the novel.
Born June 28, 1951 — Lalla Ward, 71. She is known for her role as the second actress to play Romana (or Romanadvoratrelundar in full) on Doctor Who during the time of the Fourth Doctor. She has reprised the character in Dimensions in Time, the webcast version of Shada, and in several Doctor Who Big Finish productions. In addition, she played Ophelia to Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet in the BBC television production. And she was Helga in an early horror film called Vampire Circus.
Born June 28, 1954 — Deborah Grabien, 68. She makes the Birthday list for her most excellent Haunted Ballads series in which a folk musician and his lover tackle the matter of actual haunted spaces. It’s coming out in trade paper and ebook editions soon. It leads off with The Weaver and the Factory Maid. You can read the first chapter here. Oh, and she makes truly great dark chocolate fudge. And she sent me miniature palm tree seeds which are growing here now.
Born June 28, 1954 — Alice Krige, 68. I think her first genre role was in the full dual of Eva Galli and Alma Mobley in Ghost Story. From there, she plays Mary Shelley (née Godwin) in Haunted Summer before going onto being Mary Brady in Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers. Now it’s in Star Trek: First Contact in which she first plays the Borg Queen, a role she’ll repeat in the finale of Star Trek: Voyager, “Endgame”. She’s had a number of other genre roles but I will only note that she was Eir in Thor: The Dark World.
Born June 28, 1979 — Felicia Day, 43. She was Vi in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a rather fascinating Dr. Holly Marten in Eureka, and had a recurring role as Charles Bradbury on Supernatural. She also appears as Kinga Forrester in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Baldo might be considered a biography instead of a punchline by the average Filer!

(12) AHMED’S NEW PROJECT. “Saladin Ahmed, Shaka King & Travon Free Team On Webcomic ‘Drac: Son of Dante’” – Deadline has the details.

Saladin Ahmed (Miles Morales: Spider-Man) has partnered with filmmakers Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah) and Travon Free (Two Distant Strangers) to create Drac: Son of Dante—a new, 15-part webcomic series for Tapas Media and Endeavor Content, which is now free to read exclusively via the former company’s website and mobile app. The series’ first two episodes have already launched, with more to come weekly on Fridays.
Drac is said to introduce a new and contemporary mythology around the origins of the iconic goth villain Dracula that will resonate with multicultural and youth audiences alike. The narrative follows Dante, an eerie, flute-playing immortal who finds himself drawn to the human condition against the natural order and better judgment of his species. Dante follows this obsession no matter how much trouble it gets him into — but a conflict for the ages erupts when his monstrous son Drac chooses a human bride….

(13) THE WITCHING HOUR. Hocus Pocus 2 comes to Disney+ on September 30.

Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy reunite for the highly anticipated Disney+ Original Movie “Hocus Pocus 2.” The live-action, long awaited sequel to the perennial Halloween classic, which brings back the delightfully wicked Sanderson sisters for more comedic mayhem, will debut on Disney+ on September 30. It’s been 29 years since someone lit the Black Flame Candle and resurrected the 17th-century sisters, and they are looking for revenge. Now it is up to three high-school students to stop the ravenous witches from wreaking a new kind of havoc on Salem before dawn on All Hallow’s Eve.

(14) TRADING OLD TROUBLES FOR NEW. Fantasy author and podcaster Richard H. Stephens continues his work within the Soul Forge Universe with Dragon Sect: Highcliff Guardians Series Book Two.

The Dragon Witch Wraith has returned.

With the Grim Duke in his place, and a tentative pact with the wizard’s guild, the Queen of the Elves’ only real concern is for her rebellious daughter. Or so she is led to believe.

Buoyed by the news of unrest in the land’s largest city of Urdanya, Duke Orlythe’s new wizard attempts to convince him that a path to the coveted Willow Throne lies within reach of someone bold enough to seize the opportunity.

The return of the Dragon Witch Wraith prompts the ailing high wizard to find a way to thwart his arch nemesis before everything South March has fought for is lost.

Oblivious to the dangers of the world, Princess Ouderling sets out on a quest to locate an ancient dragon, in a desperate attempt to save her mother from an inevitable fate.
Should she fail, the Grim Duke will ascend the throne.

Available from Amazon and Amazon.ca.

At age 17 author Richard H. Stephens left high school and for the next twenty-two years worked as a shipper at a local bakery. At the age of 36, he went back to high school and graduated with honors. He became a member of the local Police Service, and worked for 12 years in a Canadian provincial court system. In early 2017, he left the Police Service to write full-time. Learn more about Richard H. Stephens at his website.

(15) WHAT IS YOUR QUEST? Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy enthusiastically recommends “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”.

How can a film as disarmingly simple as this inspire deep feelings about loss, connection, and the meaning of family? I’m not sure I have the answer; all I know is that I was fighting back tears at the end of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. My daughter Jessie got to see the movie at the Telluride Film Festival last year and has been a proud proselytizer ever since.
I wouldn’t want to burden this charming film with descriptors like “existential” but it’s not misapplied here. At a time when so many of us are feeling disoriented—or disconnected—a movie like this is especially welcome….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the Screen Junkies say that Disney, having brought back Han Solo as a “broke, divorced dad,” and Luke Skywalker as a “gross recluse,” they brought back Obi-Wan Kenobi as a “sad fishmonger whose new mission is to stare at a ten-year-old boy all day.” While they liked Vivian Blair’s work as a young Princess Leia, the series becomes “another round of ‘grumpy man brings a cute, sassy kid to safety’: just like The Mandalorian, Terminator 2, and Aliens.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/15/21 The Filer Who Cried ‘Click’ At The Heart Of The Scroll

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) KOREAN SF THRIVING. Abigail Nussbaum offers a “Quick Book Rec: Tower by Bae Myung-hoon” at Lawyers, Guns & Money.

…In late 2020 and early 2021, someone seems to have decided that it was Korean SF’s turn, with several major works receiving English-language editions (in particular, check out UK-based publisher Honford Star, who have put out handsome editions of several books). At the vacation house where I recently stayed with some friends, these books were available for reading, and today I’d like to talk about one them. Tower by Bae Myung-hoon was originally published in 2009 (the English translation is by Sung Ryu), and its concerns connect with conversations we’ve had on this blog about urbanism, vertical construction, and most importantly, the relationship between capital and citizens….

(2) PRIX AURORA. Aurora Awards voting is now open for members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, who have until September 4 to complete their online ballots. See the list of nominees here.

(3) DRAGON AWARDS. And, of course, Dragon Awards voting has started and will continue until September 4. To vote, fans must first register on the Dragon Awards website: Register Here. Ballots are then emailed in batches every few days through August.

Fans have until Friday, September 3 at 11:59 p.m., Eastern, to register. Voting ends 24-hours later on Saturday, Septenber. 4 at 11:59 p.m., also Eastern.

Winners will be announced on Sept. 5 at Dragon Con

(4) ANIMATION HONOR. While researching an item today I discovered the Writers Guild has a page devoted to the award they gave Craig Miller last year: “Television Writer Craig Miller Named WGAW’s 2020 AWC Animation Writing Award Honoree”.

TV animation writer and WGAW Animation Writers Caucus Chair Craig Miller (The Smurfs, Curious George, Pocket Dragon Adventures) will receive the Writers Guild of America West’s 2020 Animation Writers Caucus Animation Writing Award at November 24’s virtual AWC awards ceremony.
Comic book writer and Miller collaborator Marv Wolfman will present the Guild’s AWC career achievement award to Miller in recognition of his distinguished career and contributions to the animation field….

(5) TRADPUB AT IT’S FINEST. Literary Hub shares “A Legendary Publishing House’s Most Infamous Rejection Letters” – Animal Farm? No thanks. Lord of the Flies – came damn close to being rejected. Paddington Bear? Well, who wants to read about a poor, rudely-treated bear? (A 2019 article.)

T. S. Eliot rejects George Orwell, again: Animal Farm
T. S. Eliot to George Orwell Esq., 13 July 1944:
“I know that you wanted a quick decision about Animal Farm; but the minimum is two directors’ opinions, and that can’t be done under a week. But for the importance of speed, I should have asked the Chairman to look at it as well. But the other director is in agreement with me on the main points. We agree that it is a distinguished piece of writing; that the fable is very skilfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one’s interest on its own plane – and that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver.
“On the other hand, we have no conviction (and I am sure none of the other directors would have) that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time.[. . .]
“I am very sorry, because whoever publishes this, will naturally have the opportunity of publishing your future work: and I have a regard for your work, because it is good writing of fundamental integrity.”
It is that last paragraph that particularly strikes me: in turning down Animal Farm—essentially because it was being rude about our Soviet allies—Eliot was also turning down the unwritten 1984.

(6) NICHELLE NICHOLS NEWS. Although only Los Angeles Times subscribers can read the article “Nichelle Nichols: Conservatorship battle of ‘Star Trek’ star”, this excerpt encompasses the current state of affairs.

A three-way fight over Nichols’ fate involves her only child, Kyle Johnson, who is also her conservator; her former manager Gilbert Bell; and a concerned friend, Angelique Fawcette.
In 2018, Johnson filed a petition for conservatorship, arguing that his mother’s dementia made her susceptible to exploitation. In 2019, Bell filed a lawsuit against Johnson, alleging attempts to remove him from Nichols’ guest home, where he has lived since 2010, and “aggressive and combative behavior.”
Bell says that while living in close proximity to Nichols, he helped to restore her career and financial well-being. According to Johnson, who filed a countersuit against Bell in 2020, Nichols’ home was the place where her former manager “exerted his undue influence and took control over Ms. Nichols’ assets and personal affairs,” misappropriating the star’s income as her health deteriorated and memory faded.
Fawcette, a producer and actress who met Nichols in 2012, entered the legal fight opposing Johnson’s conservatorship petition. Fawcette pushed for visitation rights to spend time with her friend, and she argued for Nichols to stay in Woodland Hills — a scenario that has looked increasingly improbable.
At 88, Nichols no longer occupies the house. Last year, Johnson moved her to New Mexico, where he and his wife live. Johnson declined The Times’ requests to speak with Nichols directly.
Against the backdrop of the #FreeBritney movement around Britney Spears raising public consciousness about conservatorships, Nichols’ former agent and friend have launched court battles to intervene, they said in interviews. Their fear: Nichols is being denied a chance to live out her remaining years as she wants….

#StarTrek fans know her as the iconic Lt. Uhura on the original TV series, groundbreaking at the time for a Black woman to be cast in a non-stereotypical role.

Now, her wellbeing has been called into question.https://t.co/XMnV55QZdI
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 15, 2021

(7) ACE DOUBLE IS A JOKER. At Galactic Journey Cora Buhlert reviews what’s on West German newsstands in August 1966, including a book she deems truly terrible, The Star Magicians by Lin Carter. “[August 14, 1966] So Bad It’s Hilarious (The Star Magicians by Lin Carter/The Off-Worlders by John Baxter (Ace Double G-588))”.

(8) REDEEMING FEATURES. But Cora also sent this link, saying “Because Lin Carter was actually a good editor, even if he was a terrible writer, here is Filer Fraser Sherman’s appreciation for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series of the 1970s, which Carter edited” – “Lin Carter and the Ballantines Changed My Life” at Atomic Junk Shop.

…Thanks to Carter and the Ballantines, I could read George MacDonald’s allegorical Lilith. Clark Ashton Smith’s stylized dark fantasy short stories, collected in Poseidonis, Xiccarph, Hyperborea and more. James Branch Cabell’s cynical tales of less-than-noble knights, with a healthy serving of sex. New authors such as Evangeline Walton, with her retelling of the Welsh Mabinogion and Saunders Anne Laubenthal’s remarkable Alabama Grail quest, Excalibur (some of the covers are in this old post of mine).
It would be a satisfying ending if I could say reading these books shaped my own fantasy-writing style, but I don’t think they did. I did try to write some Dunsanian stories when I started out, but like most writers who imitate a distinctive stylist, the results were … not good (I’m not even going to mention my efforts at imitating Lovecraft — crap, I just did). They did, however, do a marvelous job broadening my taste beyond Conan and Frodo Baggins….

(9) ONWARD AND DURWARD. Adam Roberts analyzes how J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by Sir Walter Scott in “Black Riders: a Note on Scott and Tolkien” at Sibilant Fricative. For example, Roberts finds significant parallels between Tolkien’s work and Scott’s Quentin Durward, such as —

…Schwarz Reiters, Black Riders. It seems to me likely that Tolkien, reading Scott’s adventure story, retained a memory of this episode and reworked it for Fellowship of the Ring: not just men riding black horses, but black men riding black horses, at the behest of a terrible malevolent master, pursuing our heroes across a spacious, late medieval landscape of field, stream and woodland.
One of Scott’s footnotes makes plain that the Schwarz Reiters were historical; but that seems to me only to reinforce the aptitude of the Tolkienian appropriation….

(10) SCHLUESSEL Q&A. Tanya Tynjala launches a new interview series at Amazing Stories: “Meet Edmund Schluessel (Scriptor in Fabula Program)”. See the video at the link.

Months ago I decided to make a program about foreign writers living in Finland, and finally here it is. The name is Scriptor in Fabula and is a different kind of interview.
Three of the writers included are science fiction and fantasy ones, so I decided is a good idea to present them also here, at Amazing Stories.
The first one is Edmund Schluessel a PhD physicist with PGCE teaching qualification that also writes good science fiction. But there is more: An avid socialist activist, he helped organize Finland’s largest demonstration against Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

(11) UNA STUBBS (1937-2021). British actress Una Stubbs died August 12 at the age of 84. US viewers will mainly know her as Mrs. Hudson in Sherlock, but she had several genre roles as well. Here’s an obituary from The Guardian as well as a photo overview of her memorable roles.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

1986 – Thirty-five years ago, the second version of The Fly premiered. This version was directed and co-written by David Cronenberg along with Charles Edward Pogue. It was based on “The Fly” by George Langelaan which first ran in the June 1957 issue of Playboy. The principal cast was Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz. Reception was universally positive for the film with the performance by Goldblum being singled out as the highlight of the film. It grossed over sixty million dollars at the box office against its nine million dollar budget becoming the largest commercial success of Cronenberg’s career. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a rather excellent rating of eighty-three percent. It was nominated for a Hugo at Conspiracy ’87, the year Aliens won.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born August 15, 1917 — John Joseph McGuire. Best remembered as a co-writer with H. Beam Piper of A Planet for Texans, Hunter Patrol, Crisis in 2140 and The Return, all of which I’ve read and really liked. His solo fiction was a bare handful and I don’t think I’ve encountered it. The works with Piper are available from the usual digital suspects as is a novella of his called The Reason Prisoner. It’s listed as being public domain, so’s free there. (Died 1981.)
Born August 15, 1932 — Robert L. Forward. Physicist and SF writer whose eleven novels I find are often quite great on ideas and quite thin on character development. Dragon’s Egg is fascinating as a first contact novel, and Saturn Rukh is another first contact novel that’s just as interesting. (Died 2002.)
Born August 15, 1933 — Bjo Trimble, 88. Her intro to fandom was TASFiC, the 1952 Worldcon. She would be active in LASFS in the late 1950s onward and has been involved in more fanzines than I can comfortably list here. Of course, many of us know her from Trek especially the successful campaign for a third season. She’s responsible for the Star Trek Concordance, an amazing work even by today’s standards. And yes, I read it and loved it. She’s shows up (uncredited) as a crew member in the Recreation Deck scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Bjo and her husband John Trimble were the Fan Guests of Honor at the 60th Worldcon, ConJose. She was nominated at Seacon for Best Fanzine for Shangri L’Affaires, and two years later at DisCon 1 for the same under the Best Amateur Magazine category.
Born August 15, 1943 — Barbara Bouchet, 78. Yes, I’ve a weakness for performers who’ve shown up on the original Trek. She plays Kelinda in “By Any Other Name”. She also appeared in Casino Royale as Miss Moneypenny, and is Ava Vestok in Agent for H.A.R.M. which sounds like someone was rather unsuccessfully emulating The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It will be commented upon by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Born August 15, 1945 — Nigel Terry. His first role was John in A Lion in Winter which is at least genre adjacent as it’s alternate history, with his first genre role being King Arthur in Excalibur. Now there’s a bloody telling of the Arthurian myth. He’s General Cobb in the Tenth Doctor story, “The Doctor’s Daughter”, and on the Highlander series as Gabriel Piton in the “Eye of the Beholder” episode. He even played Harold Latimer in “The Greek Interpreter” on Sherlock Holmes. (Died 2015.)
Born August 15, 1952 — Louise Marley, 69. Winner of two Endeavour Awards for The Glass Harmonica and The Child Goddess. Before becoming a writer, she was an opera singer with the Seattle Opera, and so her works often feature musical themes.
Born August 15, 1972 — Matthew Wood, 49. He started out as, and still is, a sound engineer but he also became a voice actor with his best known role being that of General Grievous in The Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars. He often does both at the same time as on 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness where he was the lead sound editor and provided the ever so vague additional voices. If you’ve been watching The Mandalorian, he was Bib Fortuna in “The Rescue” episode.
Born August 15, 1972 — Ben Affleck, 49. Did you know his first genre role is in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? He’s a basketball player in it. He’s Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. IMDB claims he shows up in a uncredited spot in Suicide Squad as well. He’s reprising his role as Batman in forthcoming Flash. He’s Matt Murdock / Daredevil in Daredevil which I have seen. He’s actually in Field of Dreams too as a fan on the stands in Fenway though he’s not credited. Can I nominate Shakespeare in Love as genre? If so, he’s Ned Alleyn in it.

(14) BURTON’S BATMAN IS BACK. In the Washington Post, David Betancourt discusses Batman 89, a six-issue miniseries designed to recreate the world of the 1989 Tim Burton movie, written by Sam Hamm (who wrote Burton’s film) and designed to include storylines that weren’t in Burton’s movie (such as having a Black Robin, because Robin wasn’t in the Burton film). “Tim Burton never got to make more Batman movies. ‘Batman 89’ is the next best thing”.

…[Artist Joe] Quinones ended up suggesting something that now seems obvious: Why not just ask the person who wrote those Batman movies?Veteran Hollywood writer Sam Hamm is that person.And the result is “Batman 89,” a newsix-issue monthly miniseries featuring a Batman inspired by the performance of Michael Keaton — and a nostalgic joyride for the many hardcore fans of Burton’s two iconic trips to Gotham City.
Quinones sent Hamm a direct message on Twitter and was surprised not only to get a response but to find out Hamm is a fan of his artwork.
Hamm was hesitant about returning to super-heroic tales.He’d written two Batman films (the first with Warren Skaaren, and he was replac
ed on the second by Daniel Waters) along with the first movie script for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s legendary “Watchmen” comic. He’d even worked with Chris Columbus on a Fantastic Four movie that was never made.
“I had a long stretch where I just didn’t want to do comic book [stories]. I had been very much typed as the comic book guy,” Hamm said. Still, he added, “I thought about it for like a day, and I said, I think I can have some fun with this.”
Part of the fun for Hamm and Quinones would be exploring potential plotlines that were ripe for the taking but never used in the first two Batman films. Both agreed that classic Batman villain Two-Face should be this series’ main antagonist. Hamm had included Harvey Dent — played by Billy Dee Williams — in his “Batman” script with the intent of the character eventually transitioning into Two-Face. But Williams never returned to the role, and when Two-Face debuted in Schumacher’s “Batman Forever,” the character was played by Tommy Lee Jones….

(15) RECORD ATTEMPT. A few costumes shy of the Jurassic mark… “Mount Clemens event fails world record attempt for gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs” – see the news video at Flipboard.

A downtown Mount Clemens event Saturday sought to break the world record for the number of dinosaur costumes in one place. The record, which stands at 252, was too large to overcome. But that didn’t mean attendees didn’t have fun.

(16) CLIPPING SERVICE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from a humor piece by Hallie Cantor in the July 30, 2018 New Yorker in which Elon Musk is dealing wiith public relations executives.

MUSK: “Guys, guys, guys, c’mon. I’m a socialist in the manner of Iain Banks.”
P.R. EXECUTIVE 2: “But Iain Banks was pro-union!”
(A large hole opens in the floor beneath Executive 2’s seat, and he disappears into a Hyperloop tube headed for O’Hare International Airport.”

(17) EAR CANDY. Cora Buhlert has a story called “We need to talk…” in episode 42 of the Simultaneous Times podcast presented by Space Cowboy Books.

(18) ON DC’S SHELF. GameSpot spins out the alternate Hollywood History that might have been: “9 Unmade DC Superhero Movies That We Never Got To See”.

…Unsurprisingly, there’s also a huge number of potential DC movies that have been announced or put into development that never made it to the screen. Some of these were new spins of the company’s biggest heroes, developed by big names like JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, and Tim Burton. Others were attempts to make movies based on lesser-known figures that for various reasons never got as far as production. Some were literally a few weeks away from shooting, while others never made it past the script stage.
We’ve picked some of the highest-profile and most interesting examples of these. It’s fascinating to think of how the course of DC’s cinematic journey would’ve been affected had they made it to the screen–Nicolas Cage might have forever been associated with the role of Superman, while we might never have seen Christian Bale and Chris Nolan’s take on Batman. So here’s 9 big DC films that we’ll never see….
9. Justice League Dark
In terms of DC movies that seem like a perfect match of subject and director, it’s hard to think of a better one than Gullermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark. The Pacific Rim and Shape of Water director was attached to a movie version of the supernatural superhero team for several years and recently confirmed that he wrote a full screenplay for the potential movie. But he left the project in 2015, and although Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) was also briefly attached, it remains unmade.
However, while a full Justice League Dark movie doesn’t seem likely any time soon, that doesn’t mean we won’t see some of the characters. Last year it was reported that JJ Abrams is developing several Justice League Dark projects, with a John Constantine series and Zatanna movie both in the works.

(19) PETRI DISHES. In the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri says if Tucker Carlson enjoyed his trip to Hungary, he’s really looking forward to going to Mordor!” “Forget Hungary. Tucker Carlson is all about Mordor now”.

… I am honored to announce I will be speaking next week at the Mordor Summit in Barad-dur at the invitation of Dark Lord Sauron! This is the future of conservatism, and I’m excited to throw open the Overton Window and let in the nazguls.
It was wonderful to spend time in Hungary, a country Freedom House describes as “sliding into authoritarian rule” — but why stop there when I could be in a land Freedom House describes as “under authoritarian rule for two-and-a-half thousand years”? That’s two-and-a-half thousand times more aspirational! That’s 10 times longer than the United States has been a country at all, and hundreds of times longer than we’ve been deliberately sliding away from at least theoretically embracing representative democracy….

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, Cora Buhlert, Alan Baumler, Will R., John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 3/20/21 The Pixels Are Already Here — They’re Just Not Very Evenly Scrolled

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) HOTROOTING. Eddie Kim tells why he looks forward to the production, and shares a Redwall-inspired recipe: “’Redwall’ Netflix TV Series: The Best Food Porn Ever Written” at Mel Magazine. (“GRRM wept,” says N., who sent the link.)

The world of Brian Jacques’ Redwall is rife with every manner of woodland creature, depicting the lives of mice, moles, squirrels, badgers and beyond in mythic detail. As a young boy, I fell in love with everything about the series — the intricately illustrated covers, the sweeping tales of battle and camaraderie and the idiosyncrasies of each animal community. Over the course of 23 (!!) thick novels, Jacques weaves a tapestry of narratives, builds a unique lifestyle, dialect and even diet around various tribes and timelines.
I, being a Korean kid in Hawaii who loved the water, imagined myself as one of the river otters. They played hard, fought hard and adored the spicy flavor of hotroot in their foods. Just like me, I thought as I read another Redwall novel at the dinner table, eating spoonfuls of kimchi stew.
It wasn’t just the otters’ favorite shrimp ‘n’ hotroot soup that I craved; I’m fairly certain the Redwall books radicalized me at a young age into a type-A obsessive about delicious food. No matter whether I was reading Eulalia! or Martin the Warrior, I knew the book would feature page after page of lusty food prose, especially if it was a celebratory feast held in Redwall Abbey or another enclave. The words are straight out of a Chez Panisse menu: “Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, devilled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg … crusty country pasties, and these were being served with melted yellow cheese and rough hazelnut bread.”…

(2) THE FELAPTON CUT. Camestros Felpaton has seen the elephant: “I watched Zak Snyder’s Justice League cut (slowly and pieces)”. (Don’t ask me where the “c” in Zack went.)

…This is very much a Zak Snyder film and contains all his intentional problems. It is pretentious, has lots of slow-mo, odd music-video like sequences, many people starring off into the distance to express their inner feelings and, of course, a colour palette that’s best described as “metallic”. The dialogue is grim. The characterisation is angst. It’s a clever but disaffected teenage kid’s idea that goofy comic books are essays on Nietzsche….

(3) POWER OF FIVE. This link waited patiently to be rediscovered in a cache of unopened February emails: James Davis Nicoll’s “Five SF Works That Explore the Mysteries of Alpha Centauri” at Tor.com.

… Not only is Alpha Centauri the nearest system to ours, two of its three stars are at least somewhat sunlike. Unsurprisingly, science fiction long ago saw the narrative potential offered by Alpha Centauri. Consider these five examples.

He begins with —

Alpha Centauri or Die! by Leigh Brackett (1963)
The Solar System is firmly under the thumb of an authoritarian government determined to bring peace with a stomping boot. While every reasonable need is filled, daily life is regimented and the space lanes are plied solely by robot ships. Not everyone is happy with this arrangement. The malcontents include among them men like Kirby—men with the skills to crew a one-way flight to Alpha Centauri and its known habitable world.
There are, of course, one or two catches. The State forbids such flights. The same robot ships that travel between the solar planets could follow the refugees to Alpha Centauri. Most importantly, there is a reason the Solar System’s authoritarian have never tried to annex Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri’s world may not be home to someone but it is definitely home to something. How it will react to invaders remains to be seen….

(4) GAMING HORROR IS HARD. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the February 10 Financial Times, gaming columnist Tom Faber looks at the recent release of The Medium (set in “an abandoned Soviet resort”) to discuss whether video games can be as scary as horror movies.

I started out with the venerable Resident Evil series, which since 1996 has oscillated between survival-horror and action-oriented adventures, also spawning a surprisingly robust film franchise starring Milla Jovovich. 2017’s Resident Evil 7: biohazard, due a sequel this May, seemed promisingly spooky at first. I arrived at an abandoned house in the Louisiana bayou and felt genuinely unsettled by the ominous creaking noises of the house, the squalid family kitchen and the sculpture out front, a cross between Alexander Calder and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Yes as soon as a monster emerged and I had to start waving an axe around, I mentally flipped into monster-fighting game mode and all the tension abruptly vanished.
Horror needs to be paced slowly to allow tension time to build, to hide its monsters in the shadows, but this is a hard proposition for games, a medium defined by interactivity and action. A new breed of narrative horror games prioritises atmosphere over combat, including Soma and Amnesia by Swedish team Frictional Games, an eerie demo for a cancelled Silent Hill sequel called P.T., and Taiwanese game Devotion, a disturbing tale which was removed from online stores due to a controversial reference to Chinese premier Xi Jinping.

(5) THOSE MONEY QUOTES. Most of the story is behind a Wall Street Journal paywall, however, the introduction is entertaining: “Is It Time to Kill the Book Blurb?”

Pulitzer-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen would have preferred that his forthcoming book, The Committed, have no praise-laden blurbs at all, he says. “Kill it. Bury it. Dance on its grave. They create so much work, emotional labor and guilt, whether one is writing one or one is asking for one.”
Often fawning and sometimes composed after only a casual skim of the book, pre-publication endorsements have been an entrenched part of the publishing industry since Ralph Waldo Emerson mailed a little-known Walt Whitman a note about his first poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. Sensing an opportunity, Whitman’s publisher emblazoned a standout line from Emerson’s letter on the second edition of the book’s spine in gold letters: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. RW Emerson.”
As blurbs multiplied, however, the public’s distaste for them also grew. In 1936, George Orwell claimed that “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers” was causing the public to turn away from novels altogether. “Novels are being shot at you at the rate of fifteen a day,” he wrote in an essay, “and every one of them an unforgettable masterpiece which you imperil your soul by missing.”…

(6) NOT COMING TO A TELEVISION NEAR YOU. That Hashtag Show believes “Star Wars Detours Leaked Episode Gives Us A New Hope for Disney+ Release”. Your lack of faith is disturbing.

Anyone ever heard of Star Wars Detours? No? It’s no surprise, since no one has aired it since its production. Ever since Disney bought up Lucasfilm, they’ve locked up this Star Wars animated parody series in their vaults and never looked back. With the leak of a single episode though, there may be a new hope that Star Wars Detours may come to Disney+.
A few days ago on November 29, 2020; someone leaked a single episode of the never-aired Star Wars Detours series onto Reddit. The episode featured the bounty hunters Zuckuss and 4-LOM attempting to rob Dex’s Diner, with decidedly mixed results. An all-star cast of Lando Calrissian, Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, and more contributed to the situation with utmost hilarity.
No one know who leaked this episode or why. All we know is that as soon as the leak occurred, Disney was just as quick to take it down with a copyright strike. By then though, it might as well have been closing the barn door after the horse already got out. Even Disney can’t make us unsee what we’ve already saw. Yet.

(7) A TITANIC MISSION. How far will it have to sink? “Seven Hundred Leagues Beneath Titan’s Methane Seas”. (Likely behind a New York Times paywall.)

What could be more exciting than flying a helicopter over the deserts of Mars? How about playing Captain Nemo on Saturn’s large, foggy moon Titan — plumbing the depths of a methane ocean, dodging hydrocarbon icebergs and exploring an ancient, frigid shoreline of organic goo a billion miles from the sun?
Those are the visions that danced through my head recently. The eyes of humanity are on Mars these days. A convoy of robots, after a half-year in space, has been dropping, one after another, into orbit or straight to the ground on the Red Planet, like incoming jets at J.F.K. Among the cargo is a helicopter that armchair astronauts look forward to flying over the Martian sands.
But my own attention was diverted to the farther reaches of the solar system by the news that Kraken Mare, an ocean of methane on Titan, had recently been gauged for depth and probably went at least 1,000 feet down. That as deep as nuclear submarines will admit to going. The news rekindled my dreams of what I think would be the most romantic of space missions: a voyage on, and ultimately even under, the oceans of Titan…

(8) TALE END. SYFY Wire broadcasts a promise: “DuckTales creators say series finale is going to have a lot of pay offs”.

…[The] series finale is aiming to go bigger and grander, as it sees Clan McDuck face off against their most devious foes yet: a secret evil organisation called the Fiendish Organisation for World Larceny, otherwise known as F.O.W.L. Led by Bradford Buzzard, F.O.W.L. is not only the biggest and most widespread threat the family has ever gone up against during all this time adventuring, but its also one whose roots began quite close to ~~the Money Bin~~ home, with Bradford having served as the chairman of Scrooge’s company, with a seat on its board of directors at one point….

(9) HOW HE WANTED TO BE REMEMBERED. Only he would have said it in more flattering terms: “’Self-satisfied pork butcher’: Shakespeare grave effigy believed to be definitive likeness” reports The Guardian. An image is included at the article.

…The painted effigy is a half-height depiction of Shakespeare holding a quill, with a sheet of paper on a cushion in front of him. In the 17th century, a Jacobean sculptor called Gerard Johnson was identified as the artist behind it. Orlin believes that the limestone monument was in fact created by Nicholas Johnson, a tomb-maker, rather than his brother Gerard, a garden decorator….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1976 — Forty five years ago, Joe Haldeman wins a Hugo for The Forever War at MidAmeriCon which was held in Kansas City. It had been published by St. Martin’s Press the previous year. The novel would also win a Nebula Award, a Locus Award for Best Novel and the Australian Ditmar Award. It has never been out of print and has a sequel, Forever Peace.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born March 20, 43 B.C.E. – Ovid. Among three great poets of Roman literature (with Virgil and Horace). Known to us, and perhaps best known today, for his Metamorphoses, 15 books recounting fantastic legends e.g. Daedalus; many translations, from Golding’s (1567, used by Shakespeare) to Rolfe Humphries’ (rev. 2018): see this comparing Mary Innes’ (1955); Golding’s; Dryden, Garth & Co.’s (1727); and cussing about them. (Died 17 C.E.) [JH]
Born March 20, 1868 – Ernest Bramah. Orwell said What Might Have Been inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four; WMHB and two others are SF. The Bravo of London and a score of shorter stories about Max Carrados are detective fiction, some being ours too. Timeless for five books about the superb fantastic Kai Lung, who said e.g. “In shallow water dragons become the laughing-stock of shrimps”. Website. (Died 1942) [JH]
Born March 20, 1932 — Jack Cady. He won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, an impressive feat indeed. McDowell’s Ghost gives a fresh spin on the trope of seeing seeing a War Between The States ghost, and The Night We Buried Road Dog is another ghost story set in early Sixties Montana. Underland Press printed all of his superb short fiction into two volumes, Phantoms: Collected Writings, Volume 1 and Fathoms: Collected Writings, Volume 2. (Died 2004.) (CE)
Born March 20, 1941 – Steve Sneyd. SFPA (SF Poetry Ass’n) Grand Master. Six collections e.g. Bad News from the Stars; Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman – he knew very well that omitting a hyphen brought in resonance with posthumous. Four anthologies e.g. Laying Siege to Tomorrow. Nonfiction. Four hundred forty poems, three dozen short stories. Handwritten fanzine Data Dump, 226 issues 1991-2016. A note by me here. Some of where he led me here. (Died 2018) [JH]
Born March 20, 1948 — Pamela Sargent, 73, She has three exemplary series of which I think the Seed trilogy, a unique take on intergenerational colony ships, is the one I like the best. The other two series, the Venus trilogy about a woman determined to terraform that world at all costs is quite good also, and there is the Watchstar trilogy which I know nothing about. Nor have I read any of her one-off novels, so please do tell me about them. (CE)
Born March 20, 1948 — John de Lancie, 73. Best known for his role as Q in the Trek multiverse, though I was more fond of him as Janos Barton in Legend which stars Richard Dean Anderson (if you’ve not seen it, go now and watch it). He also was Jack O’Neill enemy Frank Simmons in Stargate SG-1. He has an impressive number of one-offs on genre shows including The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica (1978 version), The New Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Mission: Impossible (Australian edition), Get Smart, Again!, Batman: The Animated Series, and I’m going to stop there. (CE)
Born March 20, 1950 — William Hurt, 71. He made his first film appearance as a troubled scientist in Ken Russell’s Altered States, an amazing film indeed. He’s next up as Doug Tate in Alice, an Woody Allen film. Breaking his run of weird roles, he shows in up in that not really bad Lost in Space film as Professor John Robinson. Dark City and the phenomenal role of Inspector Frank Bumstead follows for him. He was in A.I. Artificial Intelligence as Professor Allen Hobby, performed the character of William Marshal in Ridley Scott’s phenomenal Robin Hood, and in horror film Hellgate was Warren Mills. His final, to date that is, is in Avengers: Infinity War as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. Two series roles of notes, the first being in the SyFy Frank Herbert’s Dune as Duke Leto I Atreides. Confession: the digitized blue eyes bugged me so much that I couldn’t watch it. The other role worth noting is him as Hrothgar in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands. (CE)
Born March 20, 1955 — Nina Kiriki Hoffman, 66. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won the Bram Stoker Award for first novel. In addition, her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Other novels include The Silent Strength of Stones (a sequel to Thread), A Fistful of Sky, and A Stir of Bones. All are amazingly excellent. Most of her work has a strong sense of regionalism being set in either California or the Pacific Northwest. (CE)
Born March 20, 1959 – Suzanne Francis, age 62. Nine novels, including a novelization of Frozen. From King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England, she went to Dunedin (rhymes with “need inn”), South Island, New Zealand, a UNESCO City of Literature. [JH]
Born March 20, 1965 – Noreen Doyle, age 56. Archaeologist and in particular Egyptologist. Anthologies, The First Heroes with Harry Turtledove; Otherworldly Maine. A dozen short stories. Here is her cover for Spirits of Wood and Stone. [JH]
Born March 20, 1974 – Andrzej Pilipiuk, age 47. Forty novels, two dozen available in English; two dozen shorter stories. Invented Jakub Wedrowycz (there should be a mark like a cedilla under the e, but the software won’t allow it), an alcoholic exorcist; in another series about a thousand-year-old teenage vampire, a 300-year-old alchemist-szlachcianka, and a former agent of CBS, the historical Michael Sendivogius sometimes appears. [JH]
Born March 20, 1979 — Freema Agyeman, 42. Best known for playing Martha Jones in Doctor Who, companion to the Tenth Doctor. She reprised that role briefly in Torchwood and for several Big Finish audioworks. She voiced her character on The Infinite Quest, an animated Doctor Who serial. She was on Sense8 as Amanita Caplan. And some seventeen years ago, she was involved in a live production of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld’s Lords and Ladies held in Rollright Stone Circle Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. It was presented out of doors in the centre of two stone circles. I don’t think it was recorded, more’s the pity. (CE)

(12) NEVER GET AN ARTIST MAD AT YOU. They might do the monster mash – to you!Mental Floss unveils twelve “Secrets of Comic Book Artists”.

…Telling a sequential story across panels and pages is the purview of the comics artist, who must be accomplished in everything from the human anatomy to perspective to lighting. Whether they’re working with a writer or generating their own material, comic book artists must be versatile.
…To get more insight into how these fantasy illustrators operate, Mental Floss spoke to Coller and others. Here’s what they had to say about deadlines, owning their work, and getting penciled-in revenge….
8. COMIC ARTISTS CAN GET REVENGE IN THEIR ART.
It’s not uncommon for artists to use real people as models for their fictional characters—typically background or supporting figures. “You spend so many hours alone with a page that you get bored sometimes,” Jones says. “So you’ll draw your editors in the background.” Other times, it might be someone they’re annoyed with who meets an untimely end. “Maybe someone who has frustrated you becomes a bystander getting crushed.”

(13) DEAL OF THE DAY. Hey, I can’t afford it, but I’ve never seen an author make this offer before.

I mean, shit. Give me a half million dollars and I'll give you the original Word file of my new novel and the computer it was written on, just to be sure. https://t.co/Hu40eT6BA3
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) March 20, 2021

(15) LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE. [Item by David Doering.] I could have written this as an SF short story in the 70s. My home county, Utah County, will perform civil marriages via the Internet (as a Covid protection). However, it soon got noised about not just nationally, but internationally. Now couples in Israel who did not qualify to wed there could be officially married by a Utah administrator. As this article states, Israel will recognize marriages conducted by other countries, however — “Utah finds itself at the center of a new legal battle over Israel marriage rights” — at KSL.

Two Utah rabbis joined an administrative petition this week filed against the Israeli Interior Minister and the country’s population authority in an effort to lift an order that does not recognize civil marriages for Israeli couples completed through a Utah online system.
… Israel carries strict religious rules regarding marriage but recognizes legal marriages done by other states.
…However, once Interior Minister Rabbi Aryeh Deri learned of the practice, he ordered the population authority to stop registering the couples and counting their marriage as legitimate. The petition was filed in an effort to reverse the ban and take it all the way to the country’s Supreme Court….

(15) ON THE REVERSE. In “The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman” at The Paris Review, Halle Butler says admirers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist sf and horror also have to take into account that Gilman was a supporter of nativism and eugenics.

…Herland, Gilman’s sci-fi novel about a land free of men, is an example of this. The inhabitants of Herland have no crime, no hunger, no conflict (also, notably, no sex, no art). They exist together in dreamlike harmony. Held one way, Herland is a gentle, maternal paradise, and the novel itself is a plea for allowing these feminine qualities to take part in the societal structure. Held another, we see how firmly their equality is based in their homogeneity. The novel’s twist is that the inhabitants of Herland are considering whether or not it would benefit them to reintroduce male qualities into their society, by way of sexual reproduction. Herland is a tale of the fully realized potential of eugenics, and for Gilman, it’s a utopia.
All of this is especially troubling when you consider that Gilman was a staunch and self-described nativist, rather than a self-described feminist, as the texts surrounding her rediscovery imply. Nativists believed in protecting the interests of native-born (or “established”) inhabitants above the interests of immigrants, and that mental capacities are innate, rather than teachable. Put bluntly, she was a Victorian white nationalist. When Gilman is described as a social reformer and activist, part of this was advocating for compulsory, militaristic labor camps for Black Americans (“A Suggestion on the Negro Problem,” 1908). Part of this is pleading for racial purity and stricter border policies, as in the sequel to Herland, or for sterilization and even death for the genetically inferior, as in her other serialized Forerunner novel, Moving the Mountain.
These ideas of Gilman’s are hard to reconcile with our current conception of her as a brave advocate against systems of oppression—a political hero with a few, forgivable flaws….

(16) HEATED EXCHANGE. Literary Hub recalls a sophisticated analysis offered to disprove the then-new theory of evolution: “Charles Darwin’s Great Uncertainty: Decoding the Age of Our Planet”.

…[William] Thomson was a man of faith but he had no truck with biblical literalists who believed the earth to be 6,000 years old. His position was that a slowly changing ancient earth stood in direct contradiction with the scientific principles that he had worked so hard to establish—that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that heat tends to dissipate. Using these laws, argued Thomson, it would be possible to estimate the age of the earth and investigate whether it was old enough for evolution to take place.
In April of 1862, he brought out a paper claiming that a thermodynamic analysis of the flow of heat in the earth showed directly that it must be younger than uniformitarians, and by extension Darwin, believed. It starts, “Essential principles of thermodynamics have been overlooked by geologists.” Dissipation was the key to Thomson’s argument. Observations from mine shafts and tunnels showed that the earth’s temperature increases with depth below the surface. Thomson’s friend the Scottish physicist J.D. Forbes, by taking measurements in and around Edinburgh, estimated that the earth’s temperature rose by one degree Fahrenheit for every 50 feet of descent. This persuaded Thomson that the earth was cooling, losing heat to the atmosphere.
Using elegant mathematics, Thomson combined Forbes’s measurements with others relating to the thermal conductivity and the melting point of rock. Even acknowledging uncertainties in the data, he concluded the earth’s age was somewhere between 20 million and 400 million years. This was far too short a time for evolution. Even if the older estimate was true, Thomson argued the earth would have been considerably hotter than it is now for most of its existence. Before around 20 million years ago, the temperature of the entire earth would have been so high that the whole globe was molten rock. Evolution’s requirement that the earth was much as it is now for eons defied thermodynamic sense.
Darwin was shaken. “Thomson’s views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.” “I am greatly troubled at the short duration of the world according to Sir W Thomson.” “Then comes Sir W Thomson like an odious spectre”—these are lines from Darwin’s letters to friends. In turn, his allies felt unqualified to attack the physicist’s arguments and suggested that perhaps evolution worked faster than previously believed, a solution that didn’t satisfy Darwin….

(17) MARTIAN MINERAL WATER. “Mars’ Missing Water Might Be Hiding in Its Minerals” – Smithsonian Magazine has the story.

The Martian landscape is an arid expanse of craters and sandstorms, but scientists have spotted several signs that at one point in its life, the Red Planet was awash with blue waters. Scientists have theorized that much of the planet’s water was lost to outer space as the atmosphere dissipated.
But the planet’s vast oceans couldn’t have been lost to space fast enough to account for other milestones in Mars’ existence. The water must have gone somewhere else. A new study presents a solution: the water became incorporated into the chemical makeup of the ground itself. The research uses new computer models and found that if Mars once had a global ocean between 328 and 4,900 feet deep, then a significant amount of that water might now be stored in the planet’s crust.
The study, published on March 16 in the journal Science and presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, incorporated data collected from Martian meteorites and by NASA’s Curiosity rover….

(18) RADIO ACTIVITY. Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait says a new search tool finds “No alien signals found from 31 nearby Sun-like stars” at SYFY Wire.

The results? They detected 26,631,913 candidate signals. Yes, 26 million. Their new algorithm (which I’ll get to in a sec) screened out 26,588,893 of them (99.84%) as anthropogenic — that is, coming from humans. Radio transmissions, satellites, radar, and all sorts of human tech can emit radio waves, and they were able to find those pretty well and eliminate them.
Of those left, 90% or so were close enough to known radio frequency interference that they could be weeded out as well.
That left 4,539 candidate signals. They checked all those by hand, amazingly enough, and found…
… they too were all from radio interference. So, out of 26 million sources, not a single one was from aliens. Bummer^*.

[Thanks to N., Michael Toman, Jennifer Hawthorne, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John Hertz, David Doering, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

Pixel Scroll 3/11/21 Pixels Are Reactionaries, And The Scrolls Are Missionaries

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) IT’S TIME. Kristian Macaron analyzes “Why I Love Time Travel Stories” on From the Earth to the Stars, the Asimov’s SF blog.

Time travel is never only about the science, rather, the impossibilities.
The science and whimsy of time travel are infinite, complex, and lovely, but I love time travel stories because the quest of traversing Time can explore how possibilities and probabilities shape the person we are in the Present, the person we become in the Future. Fate is more fluid than it would like us to believe.
There are three reasons I love time travel stories. First, it’s a form of storytelling that transcends genre; next, the rules of the time machine or loop are creative and crucial; finally, no matter the plot, Time as a player forces the character to confront the infinity of their impact….

(2) CUTTING OFF CIRCULATION. Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler protests “Amazon’s monopoly is squeezing your public library, too”.

Mindy Kaling has gone missing from the library.
I was looking forward to reading the comedian’s new story collection, “Nothing Like I Imagined.” So I typed Kaling’s name into the Libby app used by my public library to loan e-books. But “The Office” star’s latest was nowhere to be found.
What gives? In 2020, Kaling switched to a new publisher: Amazon. Turns out, the tech giant has also become a publishing powerhouse — and it won’t sell downloadable versions of its more than 10,000 e-books or tens of thousands of audiobooks to libraries. That’s right, for a decade, the company that killed bookstores has been starving the reading institution that cares for kids, the needy and the curious. And that’s turned into a mission-critical problem during a pandemic that cut off physical access to libraries and left a lot of people unable to afford books on their own.
Many Americans now recognize that a few tech companies increasingly dominate our lives. But it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on exactly why that’s a problem. The case of the vanishing e-books shows how tech monopolies hurt us not just as consumers, but as citizens….

(3) BUTLER’S AND OTHERS’ LITERARY ESTATES. The Writers’ Room on NPR discusses “The State Of Literary Estates” with panelists Merrilee Heifetz, literary executor, the Octavia Butler Estate, and former agent for Octavia Butler; Blake Hazard, trustee, F. Scott Fitzgerald Estate and Zelda Fitzgerald Estate; great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald; and Miranda Doyle, intellectual freedom chair, Oregon Association of School Libraries; district librarian, Lake Oswego School District.

Much has been made recently of the literary estate of Dr. Seuss choosing to discontinue printing several of his books due to racist imagery and stereotyping in several titles.
Some right-wing news outlets have decried the decision as an example of cancel culture, despite the estate making the decision independently. Seuss’ story isn’t particularly novel, either. Roald Dahl’s books for children have also been criticized for racist language and the author’s anti-Semitism. At the end of 2020, the Dahl family released a statement in which they apologized for “lasting and understandable hurt” caused by his anti-Semitic comments.
Many online and in the news are continuing to discuss the best way to handle problematic content in significant pieces of art from the past. But others are asking fundamental questions: What’s the purpose of a literary estate? And what’s their role in managing the legacy of an artist or author?

(4) CHINA THEME ISSUE. The British Science Fiction Association’s Vector 293 (Spring 2021) is devoted to the theme of Chinese SF, and is produced in collaboration with guest editors Yen Ooi and Regina Kanyu Wang. “Yen Ooi introduces the issue as well as many of its recurring concepts, such as techno-orientalism. Regina Kanyu Wang takes us through the history of women writing SF in China….” And much more.

One item from the issue is available online: “Chen Qiufan: Why did I Write a Science Fiction Novel about E-waste?” a transcription of a public talk given by the author in 2019.

…Many people have asked me why I wrote a science fiction novel instead of discussing the issue of environmental pollution in a documentary literature, if I wanted to talk about it. But for me, science fiction has a metaphorical role that cannot be found elsewhere. It can transcend the limits of the “present” and incorporate literary symbols that are applicable to all cultures in all countries concerning the imagination of the future. Thus, in science fiction, environmental issues can be generalised to a broader social context, and readers are more willing to consider how their personal actions can affect our environment, or the work and lives of garbage workers they have never met….

(5) SPEAKS VOLUMES. Elizabeth Knox’s “Metaliterary Worlds: On Fictional Books Within Books” includes a paragraph about Clifford D. Simak’s Time and Again. The post begins:

I set out to remind myself about fictional books within books and, researching, discovered how much has been said already about the cursed and forbidden ones. The characters of my novel, The Absolute Book, think about some of these in the course of the story—Lovecraft’s Necronomicon or, in Robert Chambers’ short story collection The King in Yellow, the eponymous play said to drive all who encounter it insane. I wanted to suggest that the Firestarter of The Absolute Book—an ancient scroll box which has survived so many library fires that scholars have begun to imagine it starts them—is cursed in some way. I also wanted to suggest the possibility that the Firestarter might in fact be blessed and revelatory….

(6) GRRM, DEVELOPMENT HELLION. George R.R. Martin has what seems like a pretty exhaustive list of all of his current media projects in his most recent post in “Coming…Eventually…Maybe” at Not A Blog. (This excerpt covers only part of them.)

…I am not quite sure why all these stories seem to be breaking now. The SANDKINGS project has been underway for more than a year (Covid obviously shut things down) and IN THE LOST LANDS for something like six years. We also have an animated feature of THE ICE DRAGON in development at Warner’s (as it happens I wrote “Sandkings” and “The Ice Dragon” within a couple weeks of each other, during a Christmas break from my job teaching college in Dubuque, Iowa — that was a good break).
And that’s just in the feature sphere. In television, as seen here, I am working with Kalinda Vazquez on a pilot for Roger Zelazny’s ROADMARKS, and I am part of the terrific team that is trying to bring Nnedi Okorafor’s WHO FEARS DEATH to series on HBO….

(7) BAILIE OBIT. South African-born character actor David Bailie died March 5 at the age of 83. On TV he played “Dask” in the 1977 Doctor Who serial The Robots of Death, and also appeared in Blake’s 7. In movies, he played the mute pirate Cotton in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. His other film credits include The Creeping Flesh (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), Son Of Dracula (1973), Legend Of The Werewolf (also with Cushing), The Beyond (2017), The House That Jack Built and In The Trap. Bailie reprised his Doctor Who role as Dask in the Kaldor City audio drama series, and he was in Big Finish Productions audio dramas playing the “Celestial Toymaker”. Bailie also was a professional photographer, specializing in portrait photography.

(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

The New York Times article “A Model and Her Norman Rockwell Meet Again” focuses on how the artist often used people in his town as models. For most of them it was their main claim to fame, with one exception —

…The people he painted were real, though. Like Sorenson in “Bright Future,” many lived in or near Stockbridge. William J. Obanhein, the police chief in Stockbridge, posed for Rockwell several times (though he was better known as “Officer Obie” in Arlo Guthrie’s Vietnam-era ballad “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” because he had arrested Guthrie for littering)….

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

March 11, 1971 — On this day in 1971, THX 1138 premiered. It was the first feature film from George Lucas. It was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Lucas and Walter Murch. It starred Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence. A novelization by Ben Bova was published. The film was not a box office success though critics generally loved it and it developed a cult following after Star Wars released, and it holds a ninety percent rating among the audience at Rotten Tomatoes. (CE)

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born March 11, 1921 — F. M. Busby. Together with his wife and others he published a fan magazine named Cry of the Nameless which won the Hugo award in 1960. Heinlein was a great fan of him and his wife with The Cat Who Walks Through Walls in part dedicated to Busby and Friday in part dedicated to his wife Elinor. He was a very busy writer from the early Seventies to the late Nineties writing some nineteen published novels and myriad short stories before he blamed the Thor Power Tools decision for forcing his retirement which is odd as he published a number of novels after that decision came into effect. (Died 2005.) (CE)
Born March 11, 1952 — Douglas Adams. I’ve have read the book and listened to the full cast production the BBC did of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but have absolutely no desire to see the film. Wait wasn’t there a TV series as well? Yes there was. Shudder! The Dirk Gently series is, errr, odd and escapes my understanding its charms. He and Mark Carwardine also wrote the most excellent Last Chance to See. It’s more silly than it sounds. (Died 2001.) (CE)
Born March 11, 1963 — Alex Kingston, 58. River Song in Doctor Who. She’s in a number of different stories with a number of different Doctors and was the eventual wife of the Eleventh Doctor. She was in Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead, as Sheila, and she was Lady Macbeth in the National Theatre Live of Macbeth. Oh, and she’s in the Arrowverse as Dinah Lance, in FlashForward as Fiona Banks, and recently shows up as Sara Bishop on A Discovery of Witches, a series based off the Deborah Harkness novel of the same name. Great series, All Souls Trilogy, by the way. She’s been continuing her River Song character over at Big Finish. (CE)
Born March 11, 1967 — John Barrowman, 54. Best genre role without doubt is as Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood. He reprised the role for Big Finish audiobooks and there’s one that I highly recommend which is the full cast Golden Age production with all the original cast. You’ll find a link to my review here. I see he’s been busy in the Arrowverse playing three different characters in the form of Malcolm Merlyn / Dark Archer / Ra’s al Ghul. He’s also had a long history in theatre, so he’s been in Beauty and the Beast as The Beast / The Prince, Jack and The Bean Stalk as Jack, Aladdin as, well, Aladdin and Cinderella as, errrr, Buttons. (CE)
Born March 11, 1989 — Anton Yelchin. Best known for playing played Pavel Chekov in Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. He also was in Terminator Salvation as Kyle Reese, in the Zombie comedy Burying the Ex as Max and voiced Clumsy Smurf in a series of Smurf films. Really he did. (Died 2016.) (CE)
Born March 11, 1914 – Francis Towner Laney. Active fan in the late 1940s, he left telling us all why in Ah! Sweet Idiocy! (1948). He answered FIAWOL (“Fandom is a way of life”) with FIJAGH (“Fandom is just a [gosh-darned] hobby”); we took things too seriously, he took 130 pages to say; we were a lot of fuggheads, a term he coined, cuttingly, disputably, memorably. (Died 1958) [JH]
Born March 11, 1925 – Christopher Anvil. Twoscore stories about the Federation of Humanity; another dozen about Pandora’s Planet; another nine about War with the Outs; fourscore others; half a dozen collections; two novels; comical, daredevilish, moving. (Died 2009) [JH]
Born March 11, 1953 – Judith Silverthorne, age 68. Six novels for us; nonfiction e.g. Ingrained about pioneer Saskatchewan woodworkers 1870-1930. Two Moonbeam Awards. [JH]
Born March 11, 1964 – Libba Bray, age 57. Nine novels, half a dozen shorter stories. A Great and Terrible Beauty a NY Times Best-Seller. Printz Award for Going Bovine. [JH]
Born March 11, 1970 – Nicole Murphy, age 51. Seven novels, two anthologies, 15 shorter stories. Wrote up Artist Guest of Honour Shaun Tan for the Aussiecon 4 Programme Book (68th Worldcon). Chaired Conflux 4, co-chaired 9. [JH]
Born March 11, 1971 – Jonas Karlsson, age 50. Actor (Guldbagge Award) and author; three novels so far available in English. Born in Salem, the one in Stockholm County, Sweden, not the one in Essex County, Massachusetts. Played Mats, which Swedish-speakers do not rhyme with “Do cats eat bats?”, in Bang Bang Orangutang, a Swedish film which is not SF but who couldn’t love the title? which rhymes in Swedish too. [JH]

(11) SUING FOR SUPER NON-SUPPORT. Joe George is “Ranking the Live-Action Members of Superman’s Supporting Cast” for Tor.com. Did you ever wonder who is the worst Lex Luthor? Here’s George’s candidate:

9. Jesse Eisenberg (DCEU) — Okay, I’m going to lose some of you right away, so let’s get this over with. I dislike all of Zack Snyder’s movies, especially those with Superman in them. But the worst part of his very bad Superman movies is, without question, Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex Luthor. There’s potential here to update Lex from an early 20^th-century mad scientist to a 21^st-century villain like Mark Zuckerberg. But Eisenberg’s jittery, manic take is all irritating style and no substance, coming off as the perfect embodiment of the phrase “a dumb person’s idea of a smart person.”

(12) THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. Mental Floss says these are “14 Things You Might Not Know About ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’”.

3. BEFORE CRITICIZING PROPAGANDA IN NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, GEORGE ORWELL WORKED AS A PROPAGANDIST.
During World War II, Orwell worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation. His role with the BBC Empire Service involved creating and supervising programming that the nation would feed to Indian networks to encourage a pro-Allies sentiment and spark volunteering.
4. GEORGE ORWELL MODELED ROOM 101 AFTER AN OFFICE AT THE BBC.
Nineteen Eighty-Four’s most horrifying setting is Room 101, the Ministry of Love’s torture chamber in which victims are exposed to their worst nightmares. What readers might not know is that Orwell modeled the chilling locale on an actual room.
As a propagandist, Orwell knew that much of what the BBC said had to be approved by the Ministry of Information, possibly in the BBC’s Room 101. He probably drew the name of his nightmare room from there. Curious about what the dreadful room looked like? The room has since been demolished, but in 2003 artist Rachel Whiteread created a plaster cast of the room.

(13) URB BLURB. Science News reviews Annalee Newitz’ nonfiction book Four Lost Cities: “A tour of ‘Four Lost Cities’ reveals modern ties to ancient people”.

… The section on Cahokia (A.D. 1050 to 1350) — located in what is now Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis — offers an unexpected reason for a city’s emergence. Many people link cities with capitalism and trade. Cahokia’s 30-meter-tall pyramids, 20-hectare plazas and a population (at the time) bigger than Paris suggest that spiritual revival can also build a major metropolis. Cahokia and Angkor, which reached its peak from A.D. 800 to 1431 in what is now Cambodia, also show how cities can form when power gets concentrated in a few influential people.
Through touring such diverse cities, Newitz shows that the move to urban life isn’t just a setup for a hero of a story. It’s a common setup for many ancient cultures….

(14) E.T. PHONE ROME. In “Extraterrestrials in the Catholic Imagination”, John C. Wright points out he is one of three sff authors who contributed to Cambridge Scholars Publishing’s essay collection Extraterrestrials in the Catholic Imagination: Explorations in Science, Science Fiction and Religion:

Included:
Sciopods, Blemyae, and the Green Children of Woolpit: “Aliens” in the Catholic Imagination, Premodern Era
Michael F. Flynn
What Has Outer Space to Do with Christ?
John C. Wright
Catholic Questions in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Tim Powers
I was honored to be asked to pen an essay titled “What Has Outer Space To Do with Christ?” for this volume. The burning question of whether soulless and dispassionate Vulcans can be baptized is not necessarily addressed, but questions of like magnitude are.

However, as is only to be expected, Mike Flynn’s essay on Sciopods and Blemyae is the more interesting. It is the first I ever heard about the Green Children of Woolpit — and if you have not heard these names before, prepare to be fascinated.

(15) FAIR HEARING. A reconstructed Neanderthal ear adds a new piece to the puzzle of whether the early humans could speak. “Neanderthals Listened to the World Much Like Us” in the New York Times.

…In the new study, the researchers used high-resolution CT scans of ear structures in five Neanderthals, 10 modern Homo sapiens and nine early hominids from Sima de los Huesos, an archaeological site in what is now Spain, who lived before Neanderthals.
The team created 3-D models of these ear structures and ran the measurements through a software model to calculate the sound power transmission, which describes the way sound energy moves from the environment into the ear canal and winds its way toward the cochlea — essentially how much of the sound energy ultimately makes it to your inner ear.
The researchers used this metric to calculate the occupied bandwidth, which reflects the range of frequencies in which at least 90 percent of the sound power reaches the inner ear — the “sweet spot” of hearing, according to Dr. Quam. This sweet spot is the range we hear best in, where our ears are most tuned to sound.
The study found the Neanderthal ear’s sweet spot extended toward frequencies of 3 to 5 kHz, which are specifically dedicated to consonant production. The researchers believe this optimization toward consonants could be a key sign that Neanderthals had verbal language.
“The use of consonants distinguishes human language from mammalian communication, which is almost completely vowels,” Dr. Quam said. “Like grunts, howls, shrieks.”
In fact, the study found Neanderthals’ sweet spot was the same as modern human hearing, whereas the early hominids from Sima de los Huesos had a hearing range somewhere between chimpanzees and modern humans….

(16) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? Here’s a show I knew would produce a Scroll item sooner or later. And the promise was fulfilled by the opening episode of its fifth season: “First reveal of ‘The Masked Singer’ Season 5 is ‘most famous guest ever’”.

This Wednesday, when guest host Niecy Nash removed the Snail’s stovepipe chapeau and Kermit’s adorable little green noggin popped out of a foxhole in the costume’s back, viewers were united in their excitement and delight over this meta, puppet-within-a-puppet, Russian-doll-like moment. (There was a pair of decidedly less adorable actual Russian Dolls who also performed on Wednesday’s premiere, but I’ll get to them later.) Judge Ken Jeong even declared Kermit the “most famous guest ever” to compete on the show, and — sorry Lil Wayne, Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Tony Hawk, et al — Ken wasn’t wrong. Kermit is an icon… and, as it turns out, he’s not a bad Daryl Hall impressionist either.

Sadly, while Kermit the Snail gave a charming and not-at-all-sluggish performance, as he told Niecy: “It’s not easy being green, but sometimes it’s even harder being a snail!”…

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Rich Lynch.] “Right Up Our Alley” — not exactly genre, but it caught the attention of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. The video footage is not CGI.

[Thanks to Dan B., Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, PJ Evans, Andrew Porter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Daniel Dern, Rich Lynch, John Hertz, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Smith.]

Pixel Scroll 1/2/21 You Put The Mime In The Tesseract And Drink Them Both Together

Posted on January 2, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) DAVID WEBER STATUS. Word of this alarming news went out last night:

David Weber is in the hospital. COVID.

Fuck the whole complete entire world.
— Harry Turtledove (@HNTurtledove) January 2, 2021

After the Turtledove tweet was reposted to David Weber’s author page on Facebook, his wife, Sharon Rice-Weber commented:

He’s doing better right now. I’ll try and keep everyone updated

Best wishes for a full recovery.

(2) NEW YEAR’S WHO. Camestros Felapton combines the features of a review and a complete script rewrite in his analysis of yesterday’s special: “Review: Doctor Who – Revolution of the Daleks”. BEWARE SPOILERS! BEWARE IMPROVEMENTS!

The New Year’s special provides a hit of Doctor Who but that is about all. The episode is inoffensive, it plays around with one interesting idea about the theatre of policing and the aesthetics of fascism but doesn’t know what to do with that. Above all, it exemplifies the frustrating aspects of the Chibnall era. There is always a feeling of a better episode, that is almost exactly the same, lurking around the same pieces….

On the other hand, this fellow found one part of the special to be exceptionally thrilling —

https://twitter.com/JohnBarrowman/status/1345219922389921800

(3) IN BAD TIMES TO COME. Future Tense presents “The Vastation” by Paul Theroux, “a new short story about a future pandemic that makes COVID-19 look simple.”

Steering to his assigned slot in the out-going convoy behind a bulky bomb-proof escort truck, Father said, “We’re going to Greenville,” and looked for my reaction to this surprising announcement. Surprising, not just because Greenville was far away, and where my Mother had been living, but also because I had never been taken outside the perimeter of Chicago….

There is a response essay to the story by physician Allison Bond: “In a pandemic, what do doctors owe, and to whom?”

…Today—as in this story—we fight a deadly contagious disease that has hit some communities much harder than others, and through which xenophobia and racism have been allowed to fester. In Theroux’s story, people are segregated into camps by nationality, into “island[s] of ethnicity, renewed country-of-origin pride and defiance in the enormous sea of rural America.” Perhaps these stemmed from viewing people who are different from oneself as the enemy, and then working to avoid them—something that is already increasingly prevalent in our society, in part thanks to social media.

(4) TRAVEL SAFETY PROPOSAL. “What are COVID-19 digital immunity passports?” — Slate explains.

This week, the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the U.S.
With the FDA expected to approve Moderna’s vaccine imminently, people are already looking forward to a world where travel and gatherings are possible. But for those activities to be maximally safe, the country will either need to reach herd immunity—unlikely until mid-2021 at the earliest, assuming essentially flawless vaccine roll-out and widespread adoption—or to find ways to verify people’s negative tests or vaccination status in advance.
Some companies are looking to digital solutions. Airlines like JetBlue, United, and Virgin Atlantic have begun using CommonPass, an app developed by the Commons Project and the World Economic Forum that shows whether users have tested negative for COVID-19 for international travel. Ticketmaster, too, told Billboard that its “post-pandemic fan safety” plans include digital health passes that verify event-goers’ COVID-19 negative test results or vaccination status. While these digital health passes could become a prerequisite for some activities, widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of the country’s response to COVID-19 so far….

(5) MEMORY WHOLE. The Guardian tries to answer its own question: “George Orwell is out of copyright. What happens now?” The situation resonates with Orwell’s pigs — some works are more out of copyright than others.

Much of the author’s work may have fallen into public ownership in the UK, but there are more restrictions on its use remaining than you might expect, explains his biographer.
George Orwell died at University College Hospital, London, on 21 January 1950 at the early age of 46. This means that unlike such long-lived contemporaries as Graham Greene (died 1991) or Anthony Powell (died 2000), the vast majority of his compendious output (21 volumes to date) is newly out of copyright as of 1 January.
…As is so often the way of copyright cut-offs, none of this amounts to a free-for-all. Any US publisher other than Houghton Mifflin that itches to embark on an Orwell spree will have to wait until 2030, when Burmese Days, the first of Orwell’s books to be published in the US, breaks the 95-year barrier. And eager UK publishers will have to exercise a certain amount of care. The distinguished Orwell scholar Professor Peter Davison fathered new editions of the six novels back in the mid-1980s. No one can reproduce these as the copyright in them is currently held by Penguin Random House. Aspiring reissuers, including myself, have had to go back to the texts of the standard editions published in the late 1940s, or in the case of A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, both of which Orwell detested so much – he described the former as “bollox” – that he refused to have them reprinted in his lifetime, to the originals of, respectively, 1935 and 1936.

(6) STRANGER THAN FICTION. L. Jagi Lamplighter is interviewed by ManyBooks about her work with “A Magic School Like No Other”.

What inspired you to create the Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts?
The original game that the books are based upon took place at a popular magic school from another series. When I sat down to write this series, I had to invent a whole new magic school—and I had to make it something
My son, who was then about nine or ten, had come up with the idea that the colony on the Island of Roanoke had disappeared because the whole island vanished and that there was a school of magic upon it.
I loved this idea, but I didn’t really know much about the area of the country where Roanoke Island is. So I decided it was a floating island that could wander. Then I put it in the Hudson River, near Storm King Mountain, because that is a place I happen to love. I found out there was a small island in that spot that actually has a ruin of a castle on it. I made that island (Bannerman or Pollepel Island) the part of the island that was visible to the mundane world of the Unwary (us.)
I spent hours on the internet looking at photos of all sorts of places—forests, buildings—that I loved. Then I put those photos together to create the island and the school. So Roanoke Island has many things I think are beautiful, paper birch forests, boardwalks by a river, Oriental gardens.
Then I needed to design the school itself. I noted that there were series where the magic school is like a British boarding school and series where the school is like an American boarding school. I wanted something different. So I decided to model Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts after the college I attended. St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland is quite different from most other colleges. Students sit around one large table. They have core groups, other students who are in all your classes. They have tutors instead of professors. They have an unusual system of intramural sports—so strange that every time I put part of it in the book, my editor tags it as too extraordinary to be believable.
I took my experience at St. John’s and spun it into the world of the Hudson Highlands, creating a marvelous place that is delightful to write about and, God willing, a joy for the reader, too.

(7) PULLING CABLE. FirstShowing.net introduces the trailer for “Intriguing Gig Economy Quantum Sci-Fi Film ‘Lapsis’”.

… Struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother, delivery man Ray takes a strange job as a “cabler” in a strange new realm of the gig economy. This film is set in an alternate reality where the quantum computing revolution has begun, but they need to hire people to connect the cables for miles between huge magnetic cubes.

(8) BOLLING OBIT. Pianist, composer, and bandleader Claude Bolling died December 29. The Guardian’s tribute notes —

…He wrote music for over one hundred films … such as The Hands of Orlac (1960), … The Passengers (1977) [released in the US as The Intruder, based on Dean Koontz’s 1973 novel Shattered], The Awakening, a 1980 British horror film [third film version of Bram Stoker’s 1903 novel The Jewel of Seven Stars]. Bolling also composed the music for the Lucky Luke animated features Daisy Town (1971) and La Ballade des Dalton (1978).

(9) DOMINGUEZ OBIT. “Disney Legend” Ron Dominguez died January 1 at 85.

In 1957, Dominguez became the assistant supervisor of Frontierland, moving up to the manager of Tomorrowland in 1962. He became the manager of the west side of Disneyland and in 1974, was named vice president of Disneyland and chairman of the park operating committee.
In 1990, Dominguez became Executive Vice President Walt Disney Attractions, West Coast.

(10) VOYAGER DOCUMENTARY ASKS FOR FUNDS. Comicbook.com gives fans a head’s up: “Star Trek: Voyager Documentary Announces Crowdfunding Campaign”.

The upcoming Star Trek: Voyager documentary is ready to begin crowdfunding. The new documentary would have commemorated Voyager‘s 25th anniversary in 2020, but the coronavirus dashed most of those celebration plans. David Zappone of 455 Studios, the production company behind previous Star Trek documentaries like For the Love of Spock, Chaos on the Bridge, and What We Left Behind, confirmed that filming for the documentary resumed in August. Now it seems the production has reached the point where it’s ready to raise funds from fans. As Voyager star Garrett Wang (Ensign Harry Kim) explains in the announcement video below, fans will be able to donate to the campaign and pre-order the documentary beginning on March 1st.

Click to see the “Special Announcement From Garrett Wang”.

(11) TODAY’S DAY.

January 2 – Science Fiction Day. The date was picked because it’s Isaac Asimov’s birthday. The South Florida Reporter has filled an article with all kinds of intriguing bits of sff history: “The Phrase ‘Science-Fiction’ Is First Found In Print In 1851”.

(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

January 2, 1978 — Blake’s 7 premiered on BBC. It was created by Terry Nation of Doctor Who fame, who also wrote the first series, and produced by David Maloney (series 1–3) and Vere Lorrimer (series 4), with the script editor throughout its run being Chris Boucher. Terry has said Star Trek was one of his main inspirations. It would would run for a total of fifty-two episodes. Principal cast was Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating, Sally Knyvette, Paul Darrow and David Jackson. Critics at the times were decidedly mixed with their reaction which is not true of audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes who give an amazing ninety one percent rating!

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

Born January 2, 1814 – Luise Mühlbach. A score of historical-fiction novels; you can read Old Fritz and the New Era here (Fritz is a nickname for Friedrich; she means Frederick II of Prussia); it has fantastic elements. She says “To investigate and explain … is the task of historical romance…. poesy… illuminated by historic truth…. Show me from history that it could not be so; that it is not in accordance with the character of the persons represented … then have I … presented only a caricature, faulty as a work of art.” (Died 1873) [JH]
Born January 2, 1871 – Nora Hopper. Journalist and poet in the 1890s Irish literary movement; Yeats said her Ballads in Prose “haunted me as few books have ever haunted me, for it spoke in strange wayward stories and birdlike little verses of things and persons I remember or had dreamed of.” There’s a 2017 Trieste reprint. (Died 1906) [JH]
Born January 2, 1920 — Isaac Asimov. I can’t possibly summarize him here so I won’t. My favorite novels by him are the original Foundation novels followed very closely by his Galactic Empire series and I, Robot. I know I’ve read a lot of his short fiction but I’ll be damn if I can recall any of it specifically right now. And I can’t possibly list all his Hugos here. (Died 1992.) (CE)
Born January 2, 1932 – Minagawa Hiroko, age 92. (Personal name last, Japanese style.) Three of her stories are in English, two in Speculative Japan 3-4. Shibata Prize. More famous for detective fiction; Honkaku Award for The Resurrection Fireplace (in Japanese Hirakasete itadaki kôei desu, roughly “I am honored to open it”), set in 18th Century London; Mystery Writers of Japan Award, Japan Mystery Literature Award for lifetime achievement. [JH]
Born January 2, 1948 — Deborah Watling. Best known for her role as Victoria Waterfield, a companion of the Second Doctor. She was also in Downtime, playing the same character, a one-off sequel to a sequel to the Second Doctor stories, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. No Doctors were to be seen. If you’ve seen the English language dubbed version of Viaje al centro de la Tierra (Where Time Began, based off Verne’s Journey to the Center of The Earth), she’s doing the lines of Ivonne Sentis as Glauben. (Died 2017.) (CE)
Born January 2, 1954 – Ertugrul Edirne, age 67. Twoscore covers in German SF. Here is Galactic Trade. Here is On the Great River. Here is Kushiel’s Dart (German title In den Händen der Feinde, “In the Hands of the Enemy”). Here is Not From This World. [JH]
Born January 2, 1959 – Patrick Nielsen Hayden, age 62. Long-time fan, also guitarist (lead guitar in Whisperado). TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate with wife Teresa Nielsen Hayden, both wrote “TAFF in Thirteen Paragraphs”, fanzines e.g. Izzard, Telos, Fan Guests of Honor at MidAmeriCon II the 74th Worldcon where at Closing Ceremonies PNH said “I can’t count the conversations I’ve had with total strangers”, see my con report (at the end, with a poem for each). Meanwhile also active as a pro; now VP, Assoc. Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief at Tor. [JH]
Born January 2, 1967 — Tia Carrere, 54. Best remembered for her three season run as Sydney Fox, rogue archaeologist on Relic Hunter. She’s been in a number of one-offs on genre series including Quantum Leap, Hercules, Tales from The Crypt, Airwolf, Friday the 13th and played Agent Katie Logan for two episodes on Warehouse 13. (CE)
Born January 2, 1971 — Renée Elise Goldsberry, 50. Best known for appearing on Altered Carbon as Quellcrist Falconer. She also performed the Johnny Cash song “Ain’t No Grave” for the end credits in the final episode of that series. Genre wise, she’s had one-offs on Enterprise, Life on Mars, Evil and voice work on DreamWorks Dragons: Rescue Riders, an all too cute series. She was Selena Izard in The House with a Clock in Its Walls. And she appeared on Broadway in The Lion King as Nala. (CE)
Born January 2, 1979 — Tobias S. Buckell, 42. I read and enjoyed a lot his Xenowealth series which he managed to wrap up rather nicely. The collection he edited, The Stories We Tell: Bermuda Anthology of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, is well worth reading, as is his own Tides from a New World collection. And his Tangled Lands collection which won the World Fantasy Award is amazing reading as well. (CE)
Born January 2, 1982 – Aníbal J. Rosario Planas, age 39. (In this Hispanic style two surnames are given, the father’s Rosario then the mother’s Planas.) Drummer and author. Here are a photo, a 150-word teaser from his story Pólvora y vapor (“powder and steam”; in Spanish), and links to his talk (in Spanish and English) about Steampunk Writers Around the World. [JH]
Born January 2, 1983 — Kate Bosworth, 38. She’s Barbara Barga in the SS-GB series done off the superb Len Deighton novel which is definitely genre. She’s both a producer and a performer on The I-Land series where she’s KC, a decidedly not nice person. For a much more positive character, she portrayed Lois Lane in Superman Returns. (CE)

(14) COMICS SECTION.

Speed Bump makes a Martian discovery.
This is Bizarro’s idea of “good news.”

(15) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna notes that Calvin and Hobbes’s last strip was on December 31, 1995, which gives him a chance to praise Bill Watterson and explain why his strip is timeless comedy. In a sidebar, Cavna notes two other important comic strips ended in 1995: Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” and Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” spinoff “Outland.” But he notes that Bill Watterson praised Richard Thompson’s “Cul de Sac” as showing that “the launch of great comics was still possible” and interviews Breathed, who revived “Bloom County” as an online venture in 2015. “’Calvin and Hobbes’ said goodbye 25 years ago. Here’s why Bill Watterson’s masterwork enchants us still.”

…Stephan Pastis, creator of “Pearls Before Swine,” views Calvin as an expression of pure childlike id, yet thinks there is a whole other dynamic that makes many of Calvin’s acts of imagination so appealing.
Watterson “accurately captured how put-upon you feel as a kid — how limited you are by your parents, by your babysitter, by [schoolteacher] Miss Wormwood. You’re really boxed in and all you have is individual expression,” says Pastis, who collaborated with the “Calvin and Hobbes” creator on a week of “Pearls” strips in 2014, marking Watterson’s only public return to the comics page since 1995.
“I think that’s why to this day, some people get [Calvin] tattooed on their bodies,” Pastis continues. “He stands for that rebellious spirit in the fact of a world that kind of holds you down. You get into adulthood, you get held down by your various responsibilities. Calvin rebels against that, therefore he always remains a hero.”

(16) FOR POETS. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) is taking nominations from members for two 2021 awards.

Rhysling Award Nominations: The 2021 Rhysling Chair is Alessandro Manzetti. Nominations are open until February 15 for the Rhysling Awards for the best poems published in 2020. Only SFPA members may nominate one short poem and/or one long poem for the award. Poets may not nominate their own work. All genres of speculative poetry are eligible. Short poems must be under 50 lines (no more than 500 words for prose poems); Long poems are 50+ lines, not including title or stanza breaks, and first published in 2020; include publication and issue, or press if from a book or anthology. Online nomination form here. Or nominate by mail to SFPA secretary: Brian Garrison, SFPA, PO Box 1563, Alameda CA 94501, USA.
Elgin Award Nominations: The 2021 Elgin Chair is Jordan Hirsch. Nominations due by May 15; more info will come by MailChimp. Send title, author, and publisher of speculative Star*Line 8 Winter 2021 poetry books and chapbooks published in 2019 or 2020 to [email protected] or by mail to the SFPA secretary: Brian Garrison, SFPA, PO Box 1563, Alameda CA 94501, USA. Only SFPA members may nominate; there is no limit to nominations, but you may not nominate your own work.

(17) OFF THE MARKET. Such is the draw of iconic movie locations. The LA Times explains the attraction of “Jim Brandon’s South Pasadena home”.

Jim Brandon better get used to unexpected visitors. The writer-producer, whose credits include “Arrested Development” and “Mixed-ish,” just paid about $2.2 million for a South Pasadena home with a special place in “Back to the Future” lore.
The 1985 hit doubles as a tour of L.A. County in many ways, with landmarks such as Griffith Park and the Gamble House popping up throughout the film. Another pivotal scene is set in Brandon’s new yard, where Marty McFly stumbles upon his father being a peeping Tom in the tree out front.
According to the home’s previous owner, filmmaker John McDonald, fans of the movie regularly make the trek to South Pasadena to pay homage — and climb up the now-famous tree to re-create the scene….

(18) MEMORY LANE.

In 1953, the International Fantasy Award was given to Clifford M. Simak for City, his first Award. This collection is sometimes presented as a novel which it is decidedly not as it is a fix-up of the stories “City”, “Huddling Place”, “Census”, “Paradise”, “Hobbies”, “Aesop” and “Trouble with Ants …”. The other nominations were Takeoff by C. M. Kornbluth and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. A Retro Hugo Award at CoNZealand in 2020 would be awarded to it as well.

(19) NOTHING HAPPENING HERE, MOVE ALONG. In December someone pointed out that John C. Wright’s website was displaying an “Account Suspended” sign. My social media searches found no protests or grievances about this – or even that anyone else was aware of it. Wright subsequently explained the cause in “Account Not Suspended”.

My loyal webgoblin called the hosting company and reports that they said that the server was migrated this morning and that various changes are still propagating through their system. The “account suspended” message was a default one. The hosting company confirmed that there’s nothing wrong with the account and that the site hasn’t been pulled offline due to excessive bandwidth or any sort of legal action

(20) EXPANDING UNIVERSE. More Star Wars properties are on the way.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is an all-new animated series from Lucasfilm Animation coming soon to Disney+.

In another new Disney+ series, Star Wars: Andor, Diego Luna will reprise his role as Cassian Andor.

(21) FUTURE FORSEEN. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] “What Will Future Homes Look Like? Filmed In the 1960s” on YouTube is an episode of the CBS News show 21st Century (which ran between 1967-70) called “At Home, 2001” narrated by Walter Cronkite, which tried to predict from the viewpoint of 1967 what homes in the 21st century would look like. Among the predictions: 3-D televisions twice as large as the largest current flat screen, plastic plates that would be molded for each use and then put into a vat to be printed again for the next use, and dinners that were programmed and cooked via computer. The show also saw that computers at home could teach kids and enable people to work at home, and there’s a prediction of something like cable TV. What they got wrong: there is no internet or YouTube.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Michael Toman, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Sam. And that came from Sam’s first-ever comment here!]

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