24 Slartibartleby, The Pixeler

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) RETRO HUGOS IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR? “’The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era’ – A Glasgow 2024 panel and my thoughts” at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

The Short: I moderated a panel at Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for our Futures, titled “The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era” on Saturday evening, August 10, 2024. We had a good discussion of the Retro Hugo Awards, warts and all. The title turned out to be prescient; the next day, the WSFS Business Meeting voted in favor of Constitutional Amendment F.19 (No More Retros), which will be up for ratification at Seattle 2025, Building Yesterday’s Futures–For Everyone. More thoughts below.

The Long: I was selected to moderate a panel at Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for our Futures, titled “The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era” on Saturday evening, August 10.

I had applied to be on the panel because I love the Retro Hugo Awards and have loved doing the reading and voting for them, even though I came to have some serious reservations.

I had voted for the the 1944 (43) Retro Hugos in 2019, and the 1945 (44) Retro Hugos in 2020. Paul Fraser at www.sfmagazines.com was especially helpful in gathering and sharing resources that I used for these. I served on several panels for the 1946 Project (and several that were not) at Chicon 8 Worldcon in 2022 that focused on works that could have been nominated if there had been a 1947 (46) Retro Hugo held that year.

Former Hugo finalist Trish E. Matson, Fan Guest of Honor Mark Plummer, Perriane Lurie and Hugo Award winner Cora Buhlert joined me on this panel….

(2) COLLISION COURSE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] No appeal has yet been made by the Internet Archive to the Supreme Court in their copyright case with Hachette, et al. But if they do appeal, the case could see a fascinating intersection with one of the hottest topics in American politics—to wit, The Supremes v. Ethics. “How A Copyright Case Is Shining A Spotlight On SCOTUS Ethics Issues” at Huffpost.

Six out of the high court’s nine justices have published books with the publishers involved in the case. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson have all published books or signed book deals with Penguin Random House. HarperCollins has published books by justices Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch. And Justice Brett Kavanaugh is signed to a book deal with Hachette. (None of the publishers responded to requests for comment.)

The case involves a digital lending library operated by the nonprofit Internet Archive that it expanded during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers challenged the archive’s practice of copying and lending out digital copies of library books with no limit, through what the archive calls its National Emergency Library, as a violation of copyright that threatens authors’ earnings. A district court and the appeals court both ruled in favor of the publishers, finding that the archive’s digital lending practices violated copyright law.

The Internet Archive has not appealed to the Supreme Court yet. A spokesperson for the Internet Archive told HuffPost the nonprofit is still reviewing the appeals court decision. But if the case were to reach the high court, it would raise serious questions about the self-enforcement of conflict of interest rules by the individual justices at a time when the court has been embroiled in ethics controversies, particularly around Thomas’ receipt of gifts from friends and wealthy conservative benefactors….

(3) BOOK BANNING ACCELERATES. The New York Times studies how “New State Laws Are Fueling a Surge in Book Bans”.

States and local governments are banning books at rates far higher than before the pandemic, according to preliminary data released by two advocacy groups on Monday.

Books have been challenged and removed from schools and libraries for decades, but around 2021, these instances began to skyrocket, fanned by a network of conservative groups and the spread on social media of lists of titles some considered objectionable.

Free speech advocates who track this issue say that in the past year, newly implemented state legislation has been a significant driver of challenges.

PEN America, a free speech group that gathers information on banning from school board meetings, school districts, local media reports and other sources, said that over 10,000 books were removed, at least temporarily, from public schools in the 2023-24 school year. That’s almost three times as many removals as during the school year before.

About 8,000 of those bans came just from Florida and Iowa, where newly implemented state laws led to large numbers of books being removed from the shelves while they were assessed.

Lawmakers and those who describe themselves as parental rights advocates favor restricting access to certain books because they don’t believe children should stumble upon sensitive topics while alone in the library, or without guidance from their parents. Many think that some books that have traditionally been embraced in school libraries are inappropriate for minors, including, for example, “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison, which includes references to rape and incest.

The law in Iowa, which went into effect in 2023, prohibits any material that depicts sexual acts from all K-12 schools, with the exception of religious texts. It also limits instruction about gender and sexual orientation until seventh grade. In Florida, a law that took effect before the 2023-24 school year said that any book challenged for “sexual conduct” must be removed while it is reviewed….

(4) THE MINISTRY OF TIME. Coincidentally I just finished reading this novel yesterday, and agree it deserves high praise. “Review: The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley” by Rich Horton at Strange at Ecbatan. Beware spoilers aplenty, however.

…If at first it reads like a convenient use of the time travel device to tell a love story, and a story about the experience of expatriates (either in time or space), with some cli fi mixed in, by the end it’s all of those things plus a book that gloriously and whole-hearted buys into the strangeness and paradoxes of time travel. There is a wild twist at the end, which I only guessed half of in advance. The love story is beautifully handled. The depiction of near future life is fraught and believable. The examination of the expat experience, the depiction of the horrors of the Franklin Expedition, and the intricate plot are very well done….

(5) DIALING BACK. Colleen Doran reveals some personal issues here – “In Which the Artist Chronicles Life With OCD: The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy That is My Art” at Colleen Doran’s Funny Business — ultimately to explain why she now spends little time looking at social media.

I suppose it’s no surprise for me to admit right here in print I’ve had a lifelong problem with OCD. Not as in, “I’m a little OCD because I like a well organized pantry,” but the kind of OCD that sees you spending hours a day doing something repetitively and it kind of ruins your life in small bites of hell.

I posted a snippet of this previously private essay here a short time ago, but here’s the whole lightly edited enchilada from May 2020.

OCD morphs. When I was a kid, it was one set of habits, then it became another set of habits, which I’m not going to belabor, because they’re all weird and embarrassing.

Early on I knew nothing about what was happening because who had ever heard of it, and no internet. I assumed it was a willpower issue, and trained myself to turn my nervous energy into something productive, like channeling that prickly power into drawing comics.

I had no idea that this is a foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy, so go me….

(6) GRRM Q&A. Daniel Roman interviewed GRRM while they were both in Glasgow for the Worldcon. “The George R.R. Martin interview: On fandom, writing, and his work beyond Westeros” at Winter Is Coming. Roman obligingly avoided areas that would be de rigeur for a journalist: “There were a few topics we agreed ahead of time to steer clear of, like Martin’s long-awaited sixth Song of Ice and Fire novel The Winds of Winter, or the HBO shows Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.”

WiC: Yeah, I went to Discon in Washington D.C. in 2021. That’s the only other one I’ve been to so far.

GRRM: Well, they’re very big these days and they have multi-tracks of programming. Those early Worldcons had one track of programming, and they had panels. And there was a room where a panel was, the panel would have four or five people on it, but they certainly weren’t inviting guys like me who had published four stories, you know? Every panel was all big names. So I would go to a panel, it’d be Isaac Asimov, and talking to Frederick Pohl, and talking to Harlan Ellison, and you know, then there would be another panel…but no one was asking me to be on a panel yet. You had to pay your dues in those days, and little by little, I did pay my dues. I actually [chuckles], as I said, I won the Hugo in ’75…it still didn’t get me on any panels. The first time I was put on a panel was ’77. But they were great opportunities to see friends, to make professional contacts, and once I started getting on panels and doing autographings, to promote myself.

(7) IS THIS HEAVEN? NO, IT’S IOWA. CrimeReads looks back to the Seventies and the challenge of “Bringing Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution to the Big Screen”. Novelist Meyer also wrote the screenplay.

…Meyer has a special talent as an adaptor of other people’s work, but quickly learned that it isn’t as easy when the material you are adapting is your own. “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was relatively early in my career,” he observes, “and it was me working with my own material. I’ve listened to many authors talking about adapting their own material, and they have a great deal of difficulty in being ruthless. It happens with directors too. You can have a shot you really love, and it was very hard to get . . . it’s a beautiful shot. But if you discover it doesn’t belong in the movie, you have to accept that it has to go.”

Meyer’s early inclination to wordiness wasn’t because he began his career as a novelist, but instead is due to his time in college at the University of Iowa. “I was a theater major, and so I started out with a sort of stage orientation. That means dialogue. As a beginning screenwriter, I started out writing tons of dialogue because I thought it was like a play. But in screenwriting imagery dominates dialogue, and if it’s too talky it doesn’t feel cinematic. You have to be ruthless. I have learned since that time to write very, very spare stuff . . . descriptions, dialogue, everything. It is just the bare minimum of what you need. Certainly with my own stuff, I never had the feeling that it was so wonderful that it was incapable of improvement.”…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Mike Glyer.]

Born September 23, 1971 – Rebecca Roanhorse, 53. Entering the field with a roar, Rebecca Roanhorse’s first published sff story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience^TM” (Apex Aug 2017) won both the Hugo and Nebula, and helped her win the Astounding Award for best new writer in 2018.

She has written two novels in the Star Wars universe, Resistance Reborn (2019) and Dark Vengeance (2020). However, she’s best known for being what Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s John Clute describes as “an advocate of the concept of Indigenous Futurism”, exemplified by her novels Trail of Lightning and Black Sun (both Hugo and Nebula finalists; the latter an Ignyte winner), and Storm of Locusts, and her short story “A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy” (also an Ignyte-winner).

Black Sun and Fevered Star are part of the Between Earth and Sky series, joined this summer by a third book, Mirrored Heavens.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro lists some nearly supers.
Carpe Diem is having a bad day.
Breaking Cat News for September 22 was missing on a few sites. And now we know why – it crossed several genres!
Wizard of Id complains about pet people.
Tom Gauld overhears a wistful voice.

My latest @newscientist cartoon. pic.twitter.com/0RTeddIae4
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 23, 2024

(10) ‘BOLTS TRAILER. Is this news to us? It came out in May. “’Thunderbolts’ Trailer: Marvel Recruits Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan” in Variety.

…In the upcoming superhero pic, starring “Captain America” mainstay Sebastian Stan and “Black Widow” cast members Florence Pugh and David Harbour, reformed Marvel villains are forced to team up to conduct covert operations on behalf of the U.S. government.

“Everyone here has done bad things,” Pugh says in the trailer, brought face to face with the rest of the team. “Shadow ops, robbing government labs, contract kills. … Someone wants us gone.”…

(11) CASH THAT GLOWS IN THE DARK. The Royal Canadian Mint has struck a 1 oz. Pure Silver Glow-in-the-Dark Coin commemorating “Canada’s Unexplained Phenomena: The Langenburg Event”.

A 50-year-old story of UFOs at a farm near Langenburg, Sask. — a town 220 kilometres east of Regina — is being celebrated by Canada Post and the Canadian Royal Mint with a new coin.

The story of the UFOs and the five crop circles from 1974 have prompted Canada Post and the Royal Canadian Mint to issue a coin that commemorates the event. “The Langenburg Event” coin is the seventh in the Canada’s Unexplained Phenomena series.

The coin is one ounce of pure silver, glows in the dark, and can be purchased online for C$140.

Coin #7 brings you a close encounter of the second kind.

Some crop circles are harder to dismiss… and that’s what makes Saskatchewan’s most famous UFO/UAP incident so intriguing! Viewed from the witness’s perspective, the Langenburg Event is the seventh unusual encounter re-told as part of our popular Canada’s Unexplained Phenomena series of coins.

On the morning of September 1ˢᵗ, 1974, a farmer was swathing his fields near the town of Langenburg, Saskatchewan, when he noticed five highly polished, steel-like objects at the edge of a slough. Upon closer look, he noticed these unusual saucer-shaped objects were rotating rapidly and hovering just above the ground. He continued to observe them until they suddenly rose up, emitting a strange vapour as they silently disappeared into the sky. But the objects hadn’t vanished without a trace; according to the RCMP incident report, they left behind “five different distinct circles, caused by something exerting what had to be heavy air or exhaust pressure over the highgrass,” which was curious enough to warrant serious attention both locally and worldwide.

… A blacklight flashlight (included) activates the glowing colour effect on your coin’s reverse, which presents a view of the five mysterious objects described by the eyewitness. When the blacklight paint technology is activated, these objects are seen emitting an eerie glow as they fly away, leaving radioactive circular patterns in the field below.

An image of King Charles in profile is on the back, which if you think of it as a disembodied head probably helps the theme along.

(12) SOUND TRACK FOR THE SPANISH DRACULA. The LA Opera invites audiences to relive Hollywood’s Golden Age with a rediscovered classic film at the historic United Theater: “LA Opera Spanish Dracula with Live Orchestra”. Daily performances October 25-27.

While Bela Lugosi was vamping it up in front of the cameras by day, a night crew shot an alternate version of Dracula in Spanish — same sets, same story, new cast. This second incarnation of the classic, starring Carlos Villarías, was largely forgotten until a recent renaissance, and many now hail it as the superior version.

See it on the big screen (with English subtitles) as Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados leads the LA Opera Orchestra in a live performance of a new LAO-commissioned score by Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla (The Last of Us, Brokeback Mountain), who’ll also star as a featured performer.

(13) YUCKTASTIC. Beware! The Disgusting Food Museum tries to live up to its name!

Food is so much more than sustenance. Curious foods from exotic cultures have always fascinated us. Unfamiliar foods can be delicious, or they can be more of an acquired taste. While cultural differences often separate us and create boundaries, food can also connect us. Sharing a meal is the best way to turn strangers into friends.

The evolutionary function of disgust is to help us avoid disease and unsafe food. Disgust is one of the six fundamental human emotions. While the emotion is universal, the foods that we find disgusting are not. What is delicious to one person can be revolting to another. Disgusting Food Museum invites visitors to explore the world of food and challenge their notions of what is and what isn’t edible. Could changing our ideas of disgust help us embrace the environmentally sustainable foods of the future?

The exhibit has 80 of the world’s most disgusting foods. Adventurous visitors will appreciate the opportunity to smell and taste some of these notorious foods. Do you dare smell the world’s stinkiest cheese? Or taste sweets made with metal cleansing chemicals?…

For example, there are these “Disgusting Christmas Foods”. Here’s one of the tamer examples on the list.

Christmas Tinner

… a more modern type of craziness – the video game retailer GAME in the UK sells Christmas Tinner every year, a full Christmas dinner in a can. They started selling them in 2013 and has now added a vegan and a vegetarian option.

The Christmas Tinner layer list in full:

Layer one – Scrambled egg and bacon
Layer two – Two mince pies
Layer three – Turkey and potatoes
Layer four – Gravy
Layer five – Bread sauce
Layer six – Cranberry sauce
Layer seven – Brussel sprouts with stuffing – or broccoli with stuffing
Layer eight – Roast carrots and parsnips
Layer nine – Christmas pudding

The tin will run you £2, but sadly it’s currently out of stock.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I remember the Larry Niven ‘Known Space’ story “Neutron Star” in which a spaceship with an impervious hull came too close to a neutron star and nobody knew why the crew inside were smeared across the inner hull…

And then there was the Arthur Clarke mini-short in a similar vein, “Neutron Tide” in which a battle cruiser did something similar and all that was left was a ‘star mangled spanner’.

What larks.

But what of the real thing?

Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time looks at a black hole’s tidal properties.

If you track the motion of individual stars in the ultra-dense star cluster at the very center of the Milky Way you’ll see that they swing in sharp orbits around some vast but invisible mass—that’s the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole. These are perilous orbits, and sometimes a star wanders just a little too close to that lurking monster, leading to its utter destruction in the spectacular phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event. We’ve never seen a TDE in the Milky Way, but we’ve seen them in distant galaxies—and we now know how to spot stellar destructions so extreme that they reveal properties of the black hole itself.

Over a quarter million views since Friday.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/18/24 Mission of Anti-Gravity

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) HIRING AN EDITOR. “New Writers Ask About Editors: How Can I Tell If an Editor Can Edit?” – Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff answers the question with some interesting advice at Book View Café. Some is positive. Then, there is a list of warning signs.

…I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Red Flags you might see waving during this process. For example:

The “after” samples contain errors the editor induced or didn’t catch in their own “before” sample.
The edits indicate the editor was manufacturing problems—choosing different words than are in the sample, without clarifying or enhancing meaning … possibly even making changes that take the meaning further away from the spirit of the selection.
The editor goes significantly beyond what was asked and essentially reworks your prose. My late writing partner, Michael Reaves, referred to that behavior as “peeing on your story.” You cannot address it, however, with editor obedience classes….

(2) DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALISTS. The finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize were announced August 14. There is one work of genre interest, in the fiction category, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

Inspired by the Dayton Accords which ended the Bosnian War, the annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the first and only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States, honors writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace. Based on that criteria, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation is pleased to announce the following 2024 book award finalists in the categories of fiction and nonfiction. The winners will receive a $10,000 cash prize, and the first runners-up will receive a $5,000 cash prize.

The 2024 fiction finalists are:

A History of Burning by Janika Oza (Grand Central Publishing)
Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Algonquin Books)
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Grove Atlantic)
River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (Berkley)
The Postcard by Anne Berest (Europa Editions)
We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hasan (ECW Press)

The 2024 nonfiction finalists are:

An Inconvenient Cop by Edwin Raymond with Jon Sternfeld (Viking)
Built From the Fire by Victor Luckerson (Random House)
All Else Failed by Dana Sachs (Bellevue Literary Press)
Red Memory by Tania Branigan (W.W. Norton)
The Talk by Darrin Bell (Henry Holt)
Who Gets Believed? by Dina Nayeri (Catapult)

(3) HBO DENIES GRRM. “HBO boss dismisses Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin’s House of the Dragon concerns, says season 2 did ‘really, really well’” | GamesRadar+ according to GamesRadar+.

HBO boss Casey Bloys has rejected the notion that viewers were split over their reaction to House of the Dragon season 2.

When asked by Deadline whether House of the Dragon has a shot at next year’s Emmys after – in the outlet’s words – the fanbase were “divided” over the most recent season, Bloys replied, “I’m not sure the fans were divided by season 2.”After the interviewer then made reference to George R.R. Martin’s recent deleted blog entry (which criticized certain aspects of the recent season), Bloys seemingly joked, “Yes, maybe one fan was. But no, the show did really, really well. I expect that will be in competition.”…

(4) SHELLING OUT. “Britain’s Guardian in Talks to Sell Observer Newspaper to Tortoise Media” according to Adweek’s “Morning Media Newsfeed.”

The owner of The Guardian confirmed that it is in talks to sell The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, to Tortoise Media. (BBC News)

Tortoise said negotiations include a commitment from it to invest more than £25 million ($33 million) over the next five years in the editorial and commercial renewal of the title. (Reuters)

Founded in 1791, The Observer was bought by Guardian Media Group in 1993. Since then, it has coexisted with The Guardian, which will remain a seven-day-per-week digital operation regardless of the outcome of the negotiations. (The Guardian)

(5) TARDIS ANTAGONIST. “’Doctor Who’: Archie Panjabi Cast As Villain In New Season” reports Deadline.

Emmy Award winner Archie Panjabi (Under the Bridge, Snowpiercer) will star as a villain in Season 2 of Doctor Who, sources tell Deadline. The BBC and Disney+ series is set to return in 2025.

Details regarding her character remain under wraps. BBC and Disney+ declined to comment for this story.

Panjabi joins Ncuti Gatwa, who currently stars as the titular Time Lord; Millie Gibson, who plays his companion Ruby Sunday; and Varada Sethu, who will serve as the fifteenth Doctor co-companion Belinda Chandra….

(6) VASTER THAN EMPIRES. “When Hodor Got His Penis Prosthetic on ‘Game of Thrones’: ‘Holy God, Look at the Size of It!’” at Vanity Fair. (Is this Game of Thrones prop going to auction sometime?)

Okay, Kristian, could you take your robe off now, please?”

Paul says this softly but matter-of-factly. Can I? It’s being presented as a choice, but he knows and I know that it isn’t a choice at all. Can I? I pause. Paul is the head makeup artist in our Raven unit. He looks at me with a sympathetic half smile. I know this is going to hurt, but it’s my job, he’s saying without saying anything. I have agreed to this, after all. David and Dan did run through this with me at the Fitzwilliam Hotel. Why the hell did I say yes? I think. But the nude scene has been signed and sealed: the scene where Hodor emerges from bathing pools completely naked for ten, maybe fifteen, seconds. I will be undressed for less time than it would take me to text a friend, yet it has played on my mind for weeks. Come on, Kristian, I think. Just get this over and done with….

…Next comes the hard part. Paul turns to fetch the prosthesis. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing it twice already, but its size has grown in my imagination in the intervening weeks, like a looming obelisk….

(7) JOHN CASSADAY (1971-2024). The New York Times has reported the death of comics artist John Cassaday, on September 9. “John Cassaday, Award-Winning Comic Book Artist, Dies at 52”.

John Cassaday, an award-winning comic book artist best known for his runs on Planetary, a series he helped create about a trio of adventurers investigating strange events, and Astonishing X-Men, on which his work offered readers a new entry point to a decades-old franchise, died on Sept. 9 in Manhattan. He was 52.

Tara A. Martinez, his partner, said he died of cardiac arrest in a hospital.

In a medium known for its often fantastical scenarios, Mr. Cassaday’s drawings conveyed a sense of realism. Nowhere was that more evident than in his work on Planetary, which he created with the writer Warren Ellis. His work on that series “rightfully put him on the map,” Mark Waid, a comic book editor and writer, wrote on Facebook…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: The Addams Family series (1964)

There are series I refuse to rewatch lest the Suck Fairy with her steel toed boots stomps all over it. One is The Addams Family series, which premiered on ABC this evening fifty ago, is definitely one of them. I unreservedly loved that series so I won’t rewatch.

Or so I thought until I changed my mind recently and did watch the first few episodes on Prime with a fair degree of angst and trepidation. It was, to my relief, still wonderful. So you can go back to that spooky place. Yes!

The Los Angeles Times in its obituary of David Levy explained how he came to create the series: “The idea for the series came to Levy when he was strolling with a friend down New York’s 5th Avenue and passed a display of Addams’ books. One, ‘Homebodies,’ showed the entire group of Addams characters in a family portrait on the cover. Levy was stopped in his tracks by the sight and told his friend: ‘There’s a hit series!’”

Now let’s talk about the characters here. Who wasn’t perfect? Be it John Astin as Gomez Addams or Carolyn Jones as his wife Morticia, they played their roles perfectly. And no, I’m certainly not forgetting Wednesday, their child. (Surely the name comes from the English folk poem, Wednesday’s child is full of woe), Uncle Fester or Thing. Not to mention Lurch played oh-so-well by Ted Cassidy.

It had pets, presaging to a great extent what Lio would have. Aristotle was Pugsley’s pet octopus and Fang was his pet jaguar. Addams Family had a lion called Kitty Kat, and they piranhas, Tristan and Isolde. Zelda was their vulture. Morticia had a very large carnivorous plant named Cleopatra and Wednesday has a pet tarantula by the name of Homer.

It didn’t last nearly as long as I thought did — just two seasons totaling sixty-four episodes shot in glorious black and white.

Halloween with the New Addams Family aired eleven years after the series went off the air with new characters added in. Seven years after the series was cancelled, the animated version of The Addams Family aired for sixteen episodes. It’s notable for a young Jodie Foster voicing Pugsley Addams. Only Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy returned in voice acting roles.

Gold Key Comics produced a comic book series in connection with the show, but it only lasted three issues.

I am not going to deal with the films here as that would take us down too long here. I’ll do those when the anniversary for the first film comes up.

It streams on Amazon. It has a perfect a hundred percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. That’s right, a perfect score.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! complains about super cheaters
Frank and Ernest find a sale.
Off the Mark commiserates.
The Argyle Sweater has a concern about a name.

(10) LIKE THE EIGHTIES. [Item by Steven French.] The latest Guardian gaming newsletter includes a review of an anthology of 80s style games by little known games developer UFOSoft – “little known” because the company is actually fictional:“Pushing Buttons: UFO 50 is an anthology of pure nostalgia – and the games are good, too”, a column by the Guardian’s Keza McDonald. (The game’s website is here: UFO 50.)

I filed this issue of Pushing Buttons late, because I have become obsessed with a 1985 strategy game about armies of warring dinosaurs. It’s called Avianos, and it’s part of an anthology of 50 games made in the 1980s by a little-known but influential developer, UFO Soft.

One minor detail: UFO Soft is fictional. All the games in this collection were made by a small group of modern developers. This anthology, UFO 50 (out today), is at once a tribute to imaginary 1980s game history and real 1980s game history. It impeccably imitates the look, feel and experimental creativity of the era, without the technical limitations.

These games aren’t mini-games – they’re substantial. I’ve played one Metroid-styled space adventure for over an hour and I don’t think I’m anywhere near completing it. I did complete the dinosaur war game, and it took a whole morning. I’m stuck currently midway through a game about guiding a little chameleon through predator-ridden levels. …

(11) AN ORPHAN AGAIN. Variety reports “’Orphan Black: Echoes’ Canceled at AMC After One Season”.

…The series aired its one and only season at the basic cabler beginning in June in the United States. The season finale, which now serves as the series finale, aired on Aug. 25 The show aired on AMC, BBC America, and streamer AMC+.

Krysten Ritter starred in “Echoes,” which served as a followup to the hit BBC America series “Orphan Black.” The cast also included Keeley Hawes, Amanda Fix, Avan Jogia, Rya Kihlstedt, and James Hiroyuki Liao.

The official series description states that it “follows a group of women as they weave their way into each other’s lives and embark on a thrilling journey, unravelling the mystery of their identity and uncovering a wrenching story of love and betrayal. Ritter plays Lucy, a woman with an unimaginable origin story, trying to find her place in the world.”

(12) IS FUTURE SPACE STATION JEOPARDIZED? Futurism says “The Company NASA’s Hired to Build the Next Space Station Seems to Be in Big Trouble, Firing 100 Employees and Unable to Pay Bills”.

Axiom Space, the space company NASA picked to develop a private successor to the International Space Station, is in big trouble

As Forbes reports, the startup is struggling to pay the bills and has laid off at least a hundred employees, while cutting the pay of those who remain.

That leaves its plan to develop a module that can dock with the ISS before detaching to form its own space station on thin ice. And the clock is ticking, because the ISS is set to be retired by NASA in 2030, two years sooner than anticipated.

In other words, the company is quickly running out of time and is years behind schedule. As a result, Axiom Space was forced to “radically change the design” of the station, per Forbes.

However, according to Forbes‘ reporting, investors are balking at funding the development of a much smaller station that could end up being less commercially lucrative — and possibly even more expensive….

… To bring in some much-needed cash, Axiom Space started selling seats for trips to the ISS on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Netflix Debuts the First 4 Minutes of ‘Twilight of the Gods’” and Animation Magazine makes sure we don’t miss it.

The bloody battle between mortals and Norse gods is night, with Zack Snyder’s hotly anticipated adult animated series Twilight of the Gods premiering Thursday, September 19. Rousing the troops, Netflix today debuted the first four minutes of the show on TUDUM as part of its Geeked Week reveals…

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

Pixel Scroll 9/14/24 Scrollchak, The Night Pixel

Posted on September 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) RING TIME. Robin Anne Reid’s newsletter Writing from Ithilien offers a collection of links to interesting discussions of the Rings of Power series in“The Vibes Around ‘Tolkien’”.

I love reading what fans who love the show have to say about it, and I’m having great fun reading those posts (including the ones I’ve linked to above!). Let’s just say I enjoy all the varied vibes around a text that is now part of the greater global “Tolkien” phenomenon, i.e. connected to all the things, even if I don’t much like that particular instance!

(2) BALANCED IN THE SCALES AND FOUND WANTING. Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter does a roundup of all the complaints about the two epic series adapting George R.R. Martin and Tolkien in “’House of the Dragon’ and ‘Rings of Power’ Facing Epic Headaches”. (Got to love the article’s illustration of a sword-wielding GRRM on a flying dragon.)

… As for Rings [of Power]s’ ratings, third-party services show a steep drop from the series’ debut season. The spin from Amazon goes like this: Of course the ratings are down, they were so huge last time. There is something to this. Even Prime Video hits like Fallout and The Boys haven’t matched Rings’ season one on a global basis (Fallout did top the show in the U.S.). Amazon says the new season is doing well internationally and is on track to be a Top 5 season for Prime Video….

…Then there is Dragon, whose problems are more interesting. The second season incensed some fans after spending eight episodes leading to a massive cliffhanger — a climactic battle sequence that was pushed from a shortened season two to season three, apparently for budget reasons (which has led to more “David Zaslav ruins everything” chatter online). In the ratings, the season dipped about 10 percent from the show’s first season, but the numbers do remain high.

Two weeks ago, saga author (and Dragon co-creator and executive producer) George R.R. Martin, who has been complimentary about Dragon in the past, posted on his blog that he was going to reveal “everything that’s gone wrong” with the show. Smart money could have been wagered on this never happening — surely HBO would do everything in its power to persuade Martin not to post.

But last week, Martin did, and the result was fascinating…

(3) SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE 2024 LONGLIST. The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2024 longlist was released September 4. The Prize is a celebration of Canadian literary talent. The 12 titles were chosen from 145 books submitted by publishers across Canada. There is one longlisted work of genre interest:

Anne Michaels for her novel Held, published by McClelland & Stewart

The other longlisted works are:

Caroline Adderson for her short story collection A Way to Be Happy, published by Biblioasis
Shashi Bhat for her short story collection Death by a Thousand Cuts, published by McClelland & Stewart
Éric Chacour for his novel What I Know About You (translated by Pablo Strauss), published by Coach House Books
Corinna Chong for her novel Bad Land, published by Arsenal Pulp Press
Anne Fleming for her novel Curiosities, published by Knopf Canada
Conor Kerr for his novel Prairie Edge, published by Strange Light
Claire Messud for her novel This Strange Eventful History, published by W. W. Norton
Loghan Paylor for their novel The Cure for Drowning, published by Random House Canada
Deepa Rajagopalan for her short story collection Peacocks of Instagram, published by House of Anansi Press
Jane Urquhart for her novel In Winter I Get Up at Night, published by McClelland & Stewart
katherena vermette for her novel real ones, published by Hamish Hamilton

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In Episode 118 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Och Aye, Sci-Fi”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty continue their discussion of the Worldcon. (There’s a rough-and-ready transcript here.)

We round off most of our discussion of the Glasgow Worldcon, including talking about Halls 4 and 5, communications, Worldcon structures, and publications. Thanks to Sara Felix, this week, for providing our lovely artwork.

Three pins of armadillos flying colourful spaceships are on top of a piece of paper with blobs of glue that look like planets. The lettering “Octothorpe 118” appears above in a similar style to the pins.

(5) JOURNEY PLANET. Journey Planet 84 “Workers’ Rights In SFF” is available at this link. File 770 promoted the zine with this post.

Contributor Joachim Boaz has cross-posted his article from the issue about Clifford D. Simak at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations: “Exploration Log 5: ‘We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak”.

My article on organized labor in the 1940s and ’50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak went live! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve spent the last half year researching and reading religiously for this project–from topics such as Minnesota’s unique brand of radical politics to the work of contemporary intellectuals like C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) whom Simak most likely read.

(6) SUPREME GENRE READER. The New York Times learns “Ketanji Brown Jackson Looks Forward to Reading Fiction Again”. (Paywalled.) “The Supreme Court justice has been drawn to American history and books about the ‘challenges and triumphs’ of raising a neurodiverse child. She shares that and more in a memoir, ‘Lovely One.’”

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which books and authors stick with you most?

Pretty voracious. My favorite childhood books were Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” series. I really identified with Meg. I also liked Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” And I went through a Nancy Drew phase.

Which genres do you … avoid?

I don’t think I’ve indulged in reading fiction in many years. I hope to get back to doing so, now that our daughters are grown, but I would avoid anything that would qualify as a horror story. I don’t like to be frightened.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

I am gearing up to read “Parable of the Sower,” by Octavia Butler, soon. I have it both in paper and as an audiobook, which helps.

(7) TUTTLE REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle’s latest sff review column for the Guardian takes up The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera; Withered Hill by David Barnett; Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud; The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei; and The Specimens by Hana Gammon. “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup”.

(8) BOB WEATHERWAX (1941-2024). [Item by Andrew Porter.] The New York Times reports a star dog trainer died August 15.

Bob Weatherwax, a Hollywood dog trainer who carried on his father’s legacy of breeding and coaching collies to play Lassie, the resourceful and heroic canine who crossed flooded rivers, faced down bears and leaped into the hearts of countless children, died on Aug. 15 in Scranton, Pa. He was 83.

One of his uncles trained Toto for “The Wizard of Oz” (1939).

Mr. Weatherwax also trained other dogs seen in Hollywood films, including Einstein, the Catalan sheepdog in “Back to the Future.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig, 88. Walter Koenig’s our Birthday Honoree this Scroll. He really has had but two major roles, though he has also appeared in a number of other roles.

The first was as the Russian born Enterprise navigator Pavel Chekov on the original Trek franchise. He went on to reprise this role in all six original-cast Trek films, and later voiced President Anton Chekov in Picard.

I like the Chekov character even if on viewing the series decades later I cringed on the quite obvious stereotype.

A much better character was played by him in the form of Alfred Bester (named in homage of that author and a certain novel) on Babylon 5. He wasn’t at all a sympathetic character and eventually was wanted for war crimes but was still a fascinating character. His origin story is established in J. Gregory Keyes’ Psi Corps trilogy written after the series was cancelled and is considered canon.

He showed up in The Questor Tapes as an administrative assistant, Oro, for two episodes of Starlost.

Moontrap, a SF film with him and Bruce Campbell, would garner a twenty-eight percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Alienable, a sort of comic SF horror film which he executive produced, financed, wrote and acts in has no rating there.

He’s Fireman Frank in Unbelievable!!!!! which apparently parodies Trek. The film has over forty cast members from the various Trek series. The film follows the omicron adventures however unintentional of four astronauts including one of who is a marionette. I cringed when I watched the trailer. I really did. Anyone see it?

Not surprisingly he acts in one of those Trek fanfics, Star Trek: New Voyage as his original character.

Finally he appears via the wonder of digital technology in the Hugo-nominated “Trials and Tribble-ations”.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit should have declined the invitation.
Cornered illustrates do it yourself versus premade.
Carpe Diem wants to drop a subject.
Tom Gauld does his own version of a popular meme.

My cartoon for the @GuardianBooks autumn reading special. pic.twitter.com/BPnvERXvKG
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 14, 2024

(11) NO SAVING THROW. All 25 quit: “Annapurna Interactive Entire Staff Resigns” reports Variety.

The staff of Annapurna Interactive, the games division of Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna, has resigned en masse after a deal to spin off the group fell through, Bloomberg reports.

Founded in 2016, Annapurna Interactive has partnered with boutique game studios for several critically acclaimed titles, including “Stray” (pictured above), described as a “third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed, neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity,” as well as “What Remains of Edith Finch,” “Outer Wilds” and “Neon White.”

The staff exodus came after a breakdown in talks between Ellison and Nathan Gary, formerly president of Annapurna Interactive, to spin the gaming unit off as a separate company. “All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,” Gary and the other employees said in a joint statement Thursday to Bloomberg. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.”

(12) STREET ART. James Bacon told File 770 readers today about “Dublin Street Art”.

Chris Barkley says his hometown deserves a look, too: “Cincinnati Wins A Top Spot For The City’s Street Art And Murals” at Islands.

…And, to those that know the Queen City, it’s no surprise that Cincinnati took the street art crown in 2024’s USA Today and 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. The annual competition, which counts down top tens around the country, uses a panel of experts to determine ten nominees with street art chops. Then, they leave voting to readers to decide the winners. This year, Cincinnati, which has been among the nominees going back to 2021, finally took the top spot, thanks to the more than 300 stunning murals dotting the city’s neighborhood streets….

There’s a more extensive photo gallery at ArtWorks Cincinnati.

(13) BLOCH SCRIPT ON EBAY. The Dave Hester Store of Storage Wars fame would be happy to sell you a screenplay from Robert Bloch’s estate, part of his personal archives: “1961 ‘The Merry-Go-Around’ By Robert Bloch”, based on Ray Bradbury’s “The Black Ferris”. Haven’t been able to determine whether it was produced. Taking bids, starting at $99.

(14) PRACTICING FOR ARTEMIS. NPR learned “How the crew of NASA’s Artemis II prepares for a mission to the moon”. It’s an audio report.

This time next year, NASA plans to send its first crewed mission to the moon. NPR’s Scott Detrow meets the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission, to see how the team is preparing.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/5/24 The Good, The Bad And The Igli

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) FILM BASED ON GAIMAN BOOK SUSPENDED. “Disney Halts ‘Graveyard Book’ Film After Neil Gaiman Allegations” reports Variety.

Disney is hitting pause on its adaptation of “The Graveyard Book” in the wake of sexual assault allegations leveled against the book’s author Neil Gaiman.

The film from director Marc Forster hasn’t been thrown out entirely, but development was halted for a variety of reasons, including the claims about Gaiman.

Published in 2008, “The Graveyard Book” follows a young boy who is raised by graveyard ghosts following his family’s murder. The film adaptation had not yet entered pre-production and did not have any confirmed casting. Gaiman had no involvement with the film….

(2) DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT (WESTEROS) HISTORY. HBO and the House of Dragons showrunner answered criticisms of the series levied by George R.R. Martin in a now-deleted blog post: “HBO Responds To George R.R. Martin’s Dig At Creative Decisions Made On ‘House Of The Dragon’: ‘Showrunner Required To Make Difficult Choices’” at Deadline.

…“There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book Fire & Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon, both in production and at HBO,” the statement reads. “Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it.”

Showrunner Ryan Condal also addressed the challenge of adapting Fire & Blood for the small screen on the latest installment of the Official Game of Thrones podcast. He called Martin’s tome a “history book” that doesn’t necessarily come with fully fleshed-out moments or characters.

“As dramatists, I think we have to approach this history, though it is fictional, as anyone would do, as trying to adapt a chapter from real history,” Condal said. “So we have to construct this three-dimensional reality and this full story for the world to inhabit and provide the characters with internal lives and flaws and desires that might not necessarily have made it into the historical account. Now there are plenty of opportunities in reading Fire & Blood to say, well, there was actually a flaw or a desire or something that does not make it into the record, but it’s often an incomplete picture. So really a lot of what we do is, as dramatists and adapters of this is coloring in the lines that we’re given … and a lot of that color is ultimately our own.”…

And in “George R.R. Martin fears ‘House of the Dragon’ season 3 ‘butterfly effect’ over cut character” Entertainment Weekly adds this timing detail:

…Coincidentally, Martin’s blog entry, which remains taken down, first published on the same day HBO released the final episode of the official Game of Thrones podcast’s current season. It includes an interview with Condal, who talks about the decision to remove Maelor from the season 2 narrative.

“Frankly, this goes back to our first season and trying to adapt a story that takes place over 20 years of history, instead of a story that takes place over 30 years of history,” the showrunner said. “We had to make some compromises in rendering that story so that we didn’t have to recast the whole cast multiple times and really just, frankly, lose people. I mean, we were walking right up against the line with it in season 1, and I think we did a really great job. I think the response to season 1 sort of extolls that.

“But the casualty in that was that our young children in this show are very young — very, very young — because we compress that timeline,” he continued. “So those people could only have children of a certain age and have it be believable where it didn’t feel like we weren’t hewing to the realities of the passage of time and the growth of children in any real way. People look at that stuff and, particularly with a show like this, they look at it very closely. So it was a choice made. It did have a ripple effect, and we decided that we were going to lean into it and try to make it a strength instead of playing it as a weakness.”…

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Some very sad news about author Howard Andrew Jones has been shared by Sean CW Korsgaard:

To fantasy fans, sword-and-sorcery lovers, and Hanuvar fans everywhere… I share some devastating news.
Howard Andrew Jones has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Keep him and his family in your thoughts, and if ever he or his work meant anything to you, let him know. pic.twitter.com/FR2MZVWgXQ
— Sean CW Korsgaard (@SCWKorsgaard) September 5, 2024

(4) AD CAMPAIGN RESET. “Finally, A New ‘Megalopolis’ Trailer is Released” – and World of Reel breathes a sigh of relief.

Here we go again. Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” has a new trailer, and this time without any of the AI-aided fake quotes. They’re going with a new angle here. No “Coppola is a misunderstood artist” shtick.

On August 21, less than 24 hours after backlash commenced, Lionsgate took down the “Megalopolis” trailer, apologized for the fabricated critics quotes and fired the marketing consultant responsible for the mess up.

There is nothing conventional about “Megalopolis,” and it’s become quite difficult for Coppola/Lionsgate to market this film. This is the first official trailer for the film, not counting the teaser, which comes to us just 22 days before it’s set to be released in theaters….

(5) SHAZAM! In case you ever wondered, here’s the official answer to “How Does Shazam Tell People His Name?” at DC Comics. It’s not the “Gotcha!” I imagined….

How does Shazam tell people his name?

From 1940 until 2011, he called himself “Captain Marvel.” He only started using the name “Shazam” in 2011. At first, during Geoff Johns’ Justice League run, there was a sort of intentionality clause where he would only transform while saying “Shazam” if that’s what he wanted to do. From about 2018 to 2023, though, he just avoided saying his name out loud altogether. These days, he’s been going by “The Captain,” so it’s largely a non-issue.

(6) SCREEN TIME. The New York Times has viewing recommendations. The link bypasses their paywall: “Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now”. “Among this month’s picks, there’s a blend of sci-fi and Hindu mythology, plus Nicolas Cage in postapocalyptic times.”

(7) HOLLY LISLE (1960-2024). [Item by Anne Marble.] Author Holly Lisle died August 27. Of course, she is remembered for her fantasy and SF books, starting with Fire in the Mist for Baen (a Compton Crook Award winner). She also published The Secret Texts series with Warner Aspect and the World Gates series with HarperCollins. She also delved into paranormal romantic suspense, and co-wrote books with Mercedes Lackey and S.M. Stirling, among others.

But many writers remember her first as a mentor. This started from her original personal website and then the original Forward Motion for Writers website. (I was one of the first to get an invitation to “kick the tires” on the Forward Motion website.) She also wrote beloved articles and e-books on many aspects of writing, and taught classes on her sites and for Writer’s Digest. Holly believed in paying it forward, so she gave a lot of her time and energy to mentor aspiring writers.

J.A. Marlow has a tribute at Forward Motion for Writers: “In Remembrance of Holly Lisle: Writer, Teacher, and Inspiration”. There is an official notice of Holly’s death on her Holly’s Writing Classes forum. (You can see the announcement even if you have not signed up for the forum, but you can’t access anything else on the forum.) There is also a Facebook post from her daughter through the Alone in a Room with Invisible People page.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

September 5, 1992 — Anniversary: Batman: The Animated Series

I’m simply amazed that I’ve not talked before about Batman: The Animated Series, my favorite animated series bar none. It first aired on this date thirty-two years ago with the “On Leather Wings” featuring Man-Bat, a typically bizarre Batman villian.

But I’m getting ahead myself just a bit. So let’s start at beginning, shall we?

The very, very beginning of course, is who created the Batman character, which, as you know is Bob Kane who is again credited here and Bill Finger who once again is unfairly not. Rat bastards.

The series was developed by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and Eric Randomski. Dini would be one of many writers on the show. One of the others I recognize is Michael Reaves who was also a writer on the most excellent Gargoyles series.

If you’ve seen it, you’ve no doubt admired it’s amazing visual style. It was unlike anything that went before it. Well, you can thank Bruce Timm for that. He says a great deal of the style came from the acclaimed Superman cartoons of the 1940s, that the Fleischer Studios did with the blimps, police, cars, fashions and much more all taken from the 40s.

The Music? That was inspired by the Tim Burton Batman film.

Most of the villains are from the comics — Mad Hatter, Two-Face, Clock King, though Harley Quinn, the companion of the Joker, was created here. She then, because she was so popular, got added to the comics.

Oh, the voices.

Kevin Conroy is Bruce Wayne / Batman. Now considered by almost all Batman fans to be the definitive Batman, animated or not. Seriously a lot of fans, don’t think anybody else should be playing Batman whoever it is. I think more than a few of them think that should be a film with him playing Batman. He certainly made the character come alive. He changed his voice enough so that Bruce sounded different, which is an amazing thing to do.

I always found the Dick Grayson / Robin to be meh character, so I’m not really qualified to say well the casting of Loren Lester was there. I’ll leave that to y’all.

I just learned that two actors played Alfred Pennyworth who, unlike Robin, I did love a lot as a character. He’s been a character well done in animated and live Batman setting alike. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. played him in all but three episodes of the series. Clive Revill did those — “On Leather Wings”, “Christmas with the Joker” and “Nothing to Fear”.

We round the primary voice cast out with some fine actors with Bob Hastings as Commissioner James Gordon, Melissa Gilbert as a quite fun Barbara Gordon / Batgirl, Robert Costanzo voicing a grumbling Detective Harvey Bullock. Finally, there two women who voiced Officer Renée Montoya — Ingrid Oliu and Liane Schirmer. Loved that character!

The only villain I need mention here is obviously The Joker though be other I could go on The Scarecrow here is scary as Hell in one incarnation.

But it’s the portrayal of him, both is the animation itself, and as voiced by Mark Hamill. Was there ever a more perfect match? Really, I mean that the animated Joker looked unhinged, looked evil, looked well, I’m not sure how to describe him, but the look was perfect for the role, and then Hamill sounded like he was having a perfect time. He’s given interviews talking about being The Joker and he says he had an incredibly delightful time doing so. I believe it was his first animated role, but he’s done dozens of animated roles since and is doing still doing them.

A quick check on IMDb, shows that he played the Joker a total of 15 times. That’s once more than Two-Face showed up here as a villain. Actually, he’s got one more appearance since he had The Return of The Joker film. Now that’s an interesting film because it exists in two versions one of which is PG-13 rated. Why it is I cannot say as that would be a massive spoiler.

Need I say it was universally adored. I think not. There were 109 episodes over three seasons, a more than decent run I’d say. I noted The Return of The Joker (which is actually a Batman Beyond film but ties into series obviously as The Joker and, oppps, can’t say as that’s a spoiler too, isn’t it?) but there are two more films set in this series, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which got a theatrical release, and Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero.

I didn’t know til now it was a direct-to-video release. It was produced as a tie-in to Batman & Robin. Its release was delayed until the following year due to that film being a financial and critical disaster. Don’t judge Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero by Batman & Robin, because it’s quite excellent.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem forgot the sippy cup.
Fowl Language repeats a classic.

(10) WONDER WOMAN’S DAUGHTER. “DC Comics Confirms Wonder Woman Spinoff Trinity Series From Tom King” at Bleeding Cool. Images at the link.

…A month ago, Bleeding Cool scooped the news that Trinity, the daughter of Wonder Woman, would be getting her own series. written by Wonder Woman writer Tom King. We also stated that “Bleeding Cool gets the tip-off that Trinity will see three different versions of Trinity from different times: the toddler, the middle-grader, and the older teenager previously seen in Trinity’s stories, but all existing together and working together at the same time.”

And in today’s Trinity Special: World’s Finest, which collects the Wonder Woman Trinity backup strips from Wonder Woman written by King and drawn by Belen Ortega, we get a special coda. An exclusive preview. With all three versions of Trinity together, sat on the sofa, discussing their current plight….

As Bleeding Cool also reported, they are on a quest to find their father, the identity of whom is meant to be revealed in Wonder Woman #14, along with the birth of Trinity….

(11) STUFFED TO THE GILLS. Variety explains “How ‘Astro Bot’ Packed in 150 PlayStation Character Cameos”.

When PlayStation‘s “Astro Bot” launches Friday, it will give PS5 owners access to a brand new, fully fleshed out story starring the little robot whose previous claim to fame was teaching gamers all the cool new features for the Sony gaming console launched in 2020 through pre-loaded title “Astro’s Playroom.”

Four years later, Astro has broken out of his playroom and is on a bigger mission: Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sony Interactive in an easy-entry platformer that features more than 150 cameos of beloved PlayStation characters from across mega hits and deep cuts, including “God of War,” “Ratchet & Clank,” “Ape Escape” and many more.

(12) BLACK MYTH: WUKONG. [Item by Steven French.] Following up on a previous post: “How Black Myth: Wukong put China’s games industry under the microscope” in the Guardian.

A Chinese game called Black Myth: Wukong has been the biggest hit of the summer, selling 10m copies in just three days, according to its developer Game Science, with over 1 million people playing it every day on games marketplace Steam. China’s homegrown games industry is absolutely massive, but concentrated almost entirely on mobile phones: this is the country’s first successful blockbuster console and PC game, which makes it very interesting in itself. It’s also a massively successful single-player game arriving on the back of a few high-profile multiplayer flops, which suggests there is still more of a market for this kind of adventure than video game execs like to believe.

But Wukong has been grabbing headlines for other reasons, too. Back in November, IGN put together a report compiling crude, vulgar public comments from a number of Game Science staff, some of whom are very well-known in China’s games industry. IGN also spoke to several women who expressed their disappointment and despair over omnipresent sexism in games and in China more broadly. It is a very interesting and well-researched article that doesn’t so much point the finger at Game Science specifically as set it within the context of a bigger Chinese feminist struggle. But of course, it attracted the ire of an increasingly vocal swathe of “anti-woke” gamers that has found a gathering-place on YouTube and social media, some of whom accused IGN of trying to sabotage Black Myth: Wukong by making things up.

As a result, willingly or not, Black Myth: Wukong became a kind of talisman for the video game culture wars. This was not helped when, a few weeks ago, advance copies of the game were sent out to streamerswith guidelines prohibiting the discussion of Covid, the Chinese games industry and “feminist propaganda”, alongside more usual prohibitions against fetishisation and offensive language. It is normal for advance copies of games sent to influencers (though not to press) to come with conditions, but “feminist propaganda” was definitely a new one.’…

(13) MORE ABOUT STARLINER’S PROBLEMS. According to Futurism, “NASA Engineers Were Disturbed by What Happened When They Tested Starliner’s Thrusters”.

…At first, NASA remained adamant that it was simply a matter of routine procedure to investigate the mishap before imminently returning Wilmore and Williams on board Starliner. The agency repeatedly fought off reports that the two astronauts were “stranded” in space, arguing that engineers just needed a little more time to figure out the issue.

But it didn’t take long for NASA to change its tune. While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews‘ Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline.

A Teflon seal in a valve known as a “poppet” expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters’ performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren’t entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit.

During a late August press conference announcing its decision to send Starliner back empty, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich admitted that “there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters.”

“People really want to understand the physics of what’s going on relative to the physics of the Teflon, what’s causing it to heat up and what’s causing it to contract,” he admitted. “That’s really what the team is off trying to understand. I think the NASA community in general would like to understand a little bit more of the root cause.”

While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings….

(14) MINECRAFT MOVIE TEASER. “The live-action Minecraft movie gets a weird and wonderful first trailer, but all I can think about is Jack Black as Steve” is GamesRadar+’s reaction.

…Speaking to GamesRadar+ previously, Black joked that he thinks he deserves an Oscar for playing Steve – the real MVP of the trailer. “Oh, you know I’m playing Minecraft all the time. Whenever I’m not filming I’m playing Minecraft because an actor prepares,” he told us.

“I like to be in that Minecraft headspace. I like to know the rules, and I like to get little, like, things like, ‘Oh, in the game you pickaxe like this. You hit stuff like that,’ then I do that in the movie. I think the members of the Academy will appreciate my research later. I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting an Oscar for this one…”

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

Pixel Scroll 9/4/24 Oh Mr Pixel, Send Me A Scroll

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) PUFNSTUF FOR BREAKFAST. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] The ninety-nine-year-old Los Angeles Breakfast Club hosted a breakfast for Sid Krofft today. At age ninety-five Sid was very gregarious, and still does a Sunday podcast. Special guests included H.R. Pufnstuf and Johnny Whittaker.

Sid talked about his career as a puppeteer, starting at age 15 in Burlesque. People that crossed his path, from Mae West and Liberace to Jim Nabors and the Queen of England. We forget that along with his psychedelic kids show he and his brother also produced Donnie & Marie.

The Pufnstuf costume was made by a cosplayer, a young lady. [Click for larger images.]

(2) BEWARE ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’ SPOILER. Like, stop before you read this Variety headline!! “George R.R. Martin Calls Out ‘House of the Dragon’ Changes, Maelor Cut”. Martin wrote – then deleted – a Not A Blog post titled “Beware the Butterflies” detailing his criticism of a change to his story made by the House of Dragons series. The Google cache file is still available.

…It is a bloody, brutal scene, no doubt. How not? An innocent child is being butchered in front of his mother.

I still believe the scene in the book is stronger. The readers have the right of that. The two killers are crueler in the book. I thought the actors who played the killers on the show were excellent… but the characters are crueler, harder, and more frightening in FIRE & BLOOD.   In the show, Blood is a gold cloak.   In the book, he is a former gold cloak, stripped of his office for beating a woman to death.    Book Blood is the sort of man who might think making a woman choose which of her sons should die is amusing, especially when they double down on the wanton cruelty by murdering the boy she tries to save. Book Cheese is worse too; he does not kick a dog, true, but he does not have a dog, and he’s the one who tells Maelor that his mom wants him head.   I would also suggest that Helaena shows more courage, more strength in the book, by offering her own own life to save her son.   Offering a piece of jewelry is just not the same.

As I saw it, the “Sophie’s Choice” aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral.   I hated to lose that.   And judging from the comments on line, most of the fans seemed to agree.

When Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons.    I did not argue long, or with much heat, however.   The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit.   And Ryan had what seemed to be practical reasons for it; they did not want to deal with casting another child, especially a two-year old toddler. Kids that young will inevitably slow down production, and there would be budget implications.   Budget was already an issue on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, it made sense to save money wherever we could.   Moreover, Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince Maelor, simply postponing him. Queen Helaena could still give birth to him in season three, presumably after getting with child late in season two. That made sense to me, so I withdrew my objections and acquiesced to the change.

I still love the episode, and the Blood and Cheese sequence overall.   Losing the “Helaena’s Choice” beat did weaken the scene, but not to any great degree. Only the book readers would even notice its absence; viewers who had never read FIRE & BLOOD would still find the scenes heart-rending.   Maelor did not actually DO anything in the scene, after all.   How could he? He was only two years old.

There is another aspect to the removal of the young princeling, however.

Those of you who hate spoilers should STOP READING HERE.

(3) RUSHDIE’S LATEST AWARD. “Iceland: Salman Rushdie Wins Halldór Laxness Literary Prize” reports Publishing Perspectives.

Iceland’s biennial Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize is to be awarded to Salman Rushdie on September 13.

This is a €15,000 prize (US$16,598) designed to highlight internationally recognized authors whose work contributes to “narrative art, echoing the rationale of the Swedish Academy when Halldór Laxness received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.”…

…In its rationale for the selection of Rushdie as the awards fourth recipient, the jury writes that the author’s books are “captivating, philosophical, and enlightening stories for readers willing to explore new worlds.

“For readers around the world, Rushdie’s image—having continued to write his novels despite the fatwa issued by the Iranian clerical regime following the publication of The Satanic Verses and the assassination attempt he faced in the United States two years ago—has become a symbol of courage and unyielding will.”…

(4) APPLY FOR SLF WORKING CLASS WRITERS GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation will be accepting applications for the 2024 Working Class Writers Grant from September 1 through September 30, 2024. Full information at the SLF website.

Since 2013, the $1,000 Working Class Writers Grant has been awarded annually to speculative fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, who have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction due to financial barriers which make it hard to access the writing world. Such lack of access might include an inability to purchase a computer, books, and tuition, or to attend conventions or workshops. Often, these writers, many of whom work more than one job, have less time to write. The SLF seeks to bring more of these marginalized voices into speculative fiction.

Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant.

(5) SCRIBES BACK HOTEL BOYCOTT. “Hollywood Writers Join Union Boycott of Beverly Hills Hotels” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

Around 40 Hollywood writers have joined a hotel union boycott of two Los Angeles hotels, the Cameo Beverly Hills by Hilton and the Beverly Hills Marriott.

The Good Place creator Mike Schur, Emily in Paris writer and co-executive producer Grant Sloss, The Simpsons writer and executive producer Ian Maxtone-Graham and Abbott Elementary supervising producer and writer Brittani Nichols are among the scribes that joined the campaign, spearheaded by the major Los Angeles-area hospitality union Unite Here Local 11. One Day at a Time co-showrunner Mike Royce, Halt and Catch Fire writer and executive producer Angelina Burnett and Two Sentence Horror Stories writer Liz Alper also joined the boycott on Labor Day weekend.

Unite Here Local 11 initiated the campaign against the two Remington Hospitality-operated properties last month after the Cameo’s existing union contract expired and the union and employer were unable to come to an agreement. (The Cameo was formerly the Mr. C Beverly Hills.) In early August the union also filed a wage theft complaint with the California Labor Commission, alleging that housekeepers were performing unpaid work prior to their shifts starting and that workers were not able to take mandated rest breaks due to the volume of work….

(6) VISITORS TO A SMALL PLANET. [Item by Steven French.] Tony Milligan of King’s College University of London, summarizes his recent paper on alien visitations: “Belief in alien visits to Earth is spiralling out of control – here’s why that’s so dangerous” at The Conversation.

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO.

The figures are even higher in the US – and rising. The number of people who believe UFO sightings offer likely proof of alien life increased from 20% in 1996 to 34% in 2022. Some 24% of Americans say they’ve seen a UFO.

This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What’s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we’d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.

In a paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, I argue that the belief in alien visitors is no longer a quirk, but a widespread societal problem….

… All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.

Too much background noise about UFOs and UAPs can also get in the way of legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology, the science dealing with such matters, has a far less effective publicity machine than UFOlogy….

(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. [Item by Steven French.] Some interesting essays on futures, world building and the imagination: Imaginary Papers, Issue 19, a quarterly newsletter from Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. Philipp Kürten discusses For All Mankind. Chinelo Onwualu recalls pop culture’s “Reality Crisis in the 1990s”. Christopher Cokinos describes taking part in a simulated Moon mission.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Xena: Warrior Princess (1995)

Twenty-nine years ago Xena: Warrior Princess first aired in syndication by MCA TV (which did it for the first two years of this followed by Universal Television Enterprises doing so for a year and Studios USA Television Distribution doing so for the rest of the run). Before ending its six years run, there would be one hundred and thirty-four roughly forty-eight minute episodes.

It was created by John Schulian and Robert Tapert. Schulian’s previous genre credits included writing for Tremors. Tapert, of course, created Hercules: The Legendary Journeys that same year, along with Christian Williams. Busy year for New Zealand series production, eh?

The executive producers were R.J. Stewart and Sam Raimi. The former, other than co-creating Xena, just created Cleopatra 2525; Raimi of course has a long list including directing the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and the Evil Dead franchise.

The real reason watching was and is now if you catch it on the streaming services now, Xena as performed in that amazing leather outfit by Lucy Lawless, and companion Gabrielle as played by Renee O’Connor. Their adventures episode in and episode out were always worth watching.

A number of fascinating secondary cast were here as well. Bruce Campbell, Karl Urban, Kevin Smith, Alexandra Tydings — all these performers were fun.

NBC announced a reboot, but the Gods were merciful, and it got cancelled.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Lio has two books battling for his interest.
Reality Check updates Homer.
Crankshaft keeps up the suspense of teaching Fahrenheit 451.
Rhymes with Orange celebrates in Latin.
Strange Brew finds out why a shop is popular with alien invaders.

(10) REUBEN AWARDS. The winners of the National Cartoonists Society’s 78th Annual Reuben Awards were announced on August 24.

Reuben Award for 2023 NCS Cartoonist of the Year

Hilary B. Price

2023 Divisional Reuben Award-Winners

Advertising/Product Illustration – Chuck Dillon
Book Illustration – Tom Richmond
Comic Book – Jay Stephens
Editorial – Michael De Adder
Gag Cartoon – Dan Misdea
Graphic Novel – Sarah Bollinger
Magazine/Newspaper Illustration – Nick Galifianakis
Newspaper Comic Strip – Tauhid Bondia
Newspaper Panel – Wayno
Online Comic Long Form – Evan Dahm
Online Comic Short Form – Sarah Andersen
Variety Entertainment – Chuck Dillon

(11) LEGENDARY REVIVAL Boing Boing has learned “A ‘long lost’ 70s superhero comic is finally being published”.

As the name suggests, The Legendary Lynx is the stuff of legends—a 70s feminist superhero classic whose pages were long believed to be lost in a labyrinthine conspiracy of murder, drugs, and intellectual property theft.

Or at least, that’s how the fictional comic book is framed in the pages of Secret Identity, Alex Segura’s pulpy crime thriller about the 70s comic book industry. The book’s twisty noir plot centers around a queer Latina woman working as a secretary at a comic book company who has to hide her identity to order to get recognized as an actual writer with her book, The Legendary Lynx. But a few behind-the-scenes betrayals cause more complications for poor Carmen Valdez, leaving her comic pages and identity unknown for years (in the story’s world, anyway.)

Real-life author Alex Segura has teamed up with artist Sandy Jarrell to create a metafictional “reprint” of the “long lost” issues of The Legendary Lynx from within the world of Secret Identity.

“…THE LEGENDARY LYNX was created by writer Harvey Stern and artist Doug Detmer, two creators who died under mysterious circumstances before and shortly after the series was first published. Though originally credited solely to Stern as the writer, diligent research has uncovered that Stern co-created the script and story to the Lynx’s seminal debut by renowned novelist and writer Carmen Valdez. For the first time ever, she is given proper credit in this volume.

“(But in reality, ‘The Legendary Lynx’ is no reprint. Crafted by LA Times Book Prize-winning novelist Alex Segura in his 2022 work, ‘Secret Identity’ – a story that continues in the follow-up, ‘Alter Ego,’ – and brought to life by artist Sandy Jarrell’s masterful artwork, this series blurs the lines between fiction and reality in the best way possible – the remastered pages of this forgotten gem, restored to its former glory and presented anew for readers hungry for adventure.)…”

(12) MCMURTRIE Q&A. Shelf Awareness for Wednesday, September 4, 2024 “Reading with… John McMurtrie”:

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In my childhood brain, little had as much magical allure as the wardrobe through which four young siblings travel in these stories. And I can still conjure the taste of my own version of Turkish Delight; I didn’t know that the stuff actually existed until years later, and its flavor was far more disappointing than what my mind had imagined.

Book you’ve faked reading:

Any Harry Potter book. Easier than admitting the truth and having fellow parents at bygone kiddie parties look at me aghast, shocked that I was not a member of the J.K. Rowling cognoscenti.

Book you’re afraid to read again for fear that it’d be a letdown:

Dune by Frank Herbert. As a child, I was taken in by the sandworms and magical spice and political intrigue–the earnest gloom and doom of it all. Perhaps best left undisturbed, frozen as a memory from long ago.

(13) FUNGAL BOOGIE. This isn’t exactly the “Mushroom Dance” from Fantasia. “Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild” at ScienceAlert.

Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells.

But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom?

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species Pleurotus eryngii (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface.

Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom’s electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device’s movements.

“By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment,” says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 korydg.]

Pixel Scroll 8/30/24 Pixel Scrollflake – Lawfan

Posted on August 30, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) STAND BY. The Daily Beast keeps an eye on George R.R. Martin’s blog, where they learned “George R.R. Martin Has Big Problems With HBO Prequel ‘House of the Dragon’”. But George hasn’t said what they are yet.

In a blog post on Friday, author George R. R. Martin said he’s almost ready to speak out about what he thinks went wrong with House of the Dragon Season 2.

“I do not look forward to other posts I need to write, about everything that’s gone wrong with HOUSE OF THE DRAGON… but I need to do that too, and I will,” Martin wrote. “Not today, though.”

It’s a surprising comment from the author, as he’s so far largely avoided saying anything too negative about the series. Even when Game of Thrones turned into a widely-panned disaster in season 8, Martin avoided any severe criticism of the showrunners.

However, fans have speculated for a while now that Martin is frustrated by some of the HotD creative decisions. The HotD showrunners have taken some major liberties with the source material, and they’ve been met with mixed reception from the fandom for it….

(2) DEAD AGAIN. A Neil Gaiman property bites the dust. Deadline reports “’Dead Boy Detectives’ Canceled After One Season At Netflix”. It is based on a comic by Gaiman, who was one of the series’ executive producers.

The first season, which dropped on April 25, will now be the final season for the show, which was originally set up at Max.

The news is not entirely surprisng. Dead Boy Detective spent only three weeks in Netflix’s Top 10 for English-language series, peaking at #2 in Week 1 behind phenom Baby Reindeer.

Based on the comics of the same name by Neil Gaiman and part of The Sandman Universe, Dead Boy Detectives followed Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), “the brains” and “the brawn” behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts… who solve mysteries.

(3) IN PRAISE OF AGE OF MYTHOLOGY. [Item by Steven French.] This week’s gaming newsletter from the Guardian rides a wave of nostalgia: “By Odin’s beard! 22 years on, Age of Mythology is still the god of strategy games”.

While normal people have been getting excited about Oasis reforming, this week I have been totally preoccupied by another blast from the past: Age of Mythology: Retold. For anyone who didn’t spent most of 2002/3 playing games on the family computer while insisting to their parents that they were “educational”, Age of Mythology was a spinoff from the Age of Empires strategy game series. Where Age of Empires II had me playing through the loosely historical campaigns of the likes of William Wallace, Joan of Arc and Genghis Khan, Age of Mythology was instead stuffed with Greek, Norse and Egyptian monsters and stories. Now it’s back, with a story that still offers maximalist mythological fun and so many mini war scenarios that I’d forgotten about that I feel like I’m enjoying them afresh.

You still order your little army men around on the screen, sending them to battle other little army men while you build larger, more sophisticated towns and send villagers to labour in fields, mines and forests to get you resources (which you can use to buy new, better little army men). But in Age of Mythology, you aren’t just playing God – you are one. You can intervene in mortals’ affairs with lightning bolts, healing auras, and meteor storms. As your civilisation progresses, you choose minor gods to complement your abilities and units. You can send a hydra or a colossus or elite Myrmidons into battle alongside your archers and cavalry, and heroes such as Jason and Hippolyta can join the fray, doing extra damage to your enemies’ mythical monsters.

When I was 14, Age of Mythology was absolutely my jam. I was very into my ancient civilisations. At the time I think I still wanted to be an Egyptologist and I was, rather tragically, learning Latin. I remember struggling bravely on my own heroic arc through the long, difficult campaign, in which you guide Atlantean general Arkantos through all three mythological realms. You start off with the Greeks, participating in the fall of Troy, merrily recreating the bit of the myth where Zeus rains thunderbolts down from heaven to tip the scales (though under my control, it was in favour of Agamemnon’s army). Later you join the Egyptians, before ending up in the Norselands, via the underworld. It misses no opportunity to namedrop a God, hero or creature that mythology nerds will enjoy….

(4) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles (1999)

The animated Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles first aired in syndication from the Bohbot Kids Network a quarter of a century ago.

It was produced by Co-Executive Producer’s Verhoeven-Marshall Flat Earth Productions with Richard Raynis as Co-Executive Producer.

As it’s loosely based off both Heinlein’s novel and Verhoeven‘s film that made sense. I say very loosely as this is much more fleshed, with less, dare I say it?, violence for the sake of violence undertaking that the Starship Troopers, the film, was.

The series takes elements of the film and Heinlein’s novel, such as the Skinnies, powered armor suits and drop pods. The series also adds some original elements such as the war starts on Pluto while omitting the political aspects of both.

Now Duane Capizzi who later wrote the Superman: Doomsday film was one of the actual producers. He was writer and producer of The Batman series, a neat take on that character. Executive producers are just there for their money. Really they are.

The voice cast was rather large and consisted largely of no one you’ll recognize without Googling them.

The series would last one season before being canceled by Columbia TriStar Television and Sony Pictures on a cliffhanger, as the last four episodes weren’t produced which makes absolutely no sense. You can see the trailer here.

The fan club — of course it had a fan club though I think it largely went absent without official leave — had put all the episodes up on the dedicated channel on YouTube. That is long gone. As always please don’t provide links to any pirated copies that are up.

For the complete set, your best place is eBay. It’ll still be at least fifty dollars. Is it worth it? Oh yes.

(5) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus stresses the importance of names.
Bizarro has a battle of the bands.
Crankshaft has a supporter.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal discusses farming techniques.

(6) JUSTWATCH MARKET STATS. JustWatch is now reporting on ad supported on demand streaming providers in the US. Their report is based on the 13 million monthly users on JustWatch in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen.

AVOD market shares in Q2 2024
At the top of charts, Tubi TV successfully garners more shares than YouTube and The Roku Channel combined (27%). Meanwhile, Freevee has a strong hold in 2nd place with twice the size of The Roku Channel.

Market share development in 2024
Leading growth into 2024 are Tubi TV and The Roku Channel with a strong +1% increase by June. Meanwhile, Freevee struggles to keep its hold, losing a -1% of shares.

(7) WARP FACTOR OOPS! [Item by Steven French.] Who hasn’t asked this question?! “What if you flew your warp drive spaceship into a black hole?” Phys.org tries to supply an answer.

Warp drives have a long history of not existing, despite their ubiquitous presence in science fiction. Writer John Campbell first introduced the idea in a science fiction novel called Islands of Space.

These days, thanks to Star Trek in particular, the term is very familiar. It’s almost a generic reference for superliminal travel through hyperspace. Whether or not warp drive will ever exist is a physics problem that researchers are still trying to solve, but for now, it’s theoretical.

Recently, two researchers looked at what would happen if a ship with warp drive tried to get into a black hole. The result is an interesting thought experiment. It might not lead to starship-sized warp drives but might allow scientists to create smaller versions someday. The paper is published in the journal Physics Letters B.

Remo Garattini and Kirill Zatrimaylov theorized that such a drive could survive inside a so-called Schwarzschild black hole. That’s provided the ship crosses the event horizon at a speed lower than that of light.

Theoretically, the black hole’s gravitational field would decrease the amount of negative energy required to keep the drive going. If it did, the ship could pass through and somehow use it to get somewhere else without getting crushed. Furthermore, the mathematics behind this idea points the way toward the possible creation of mini-warp drives in lab settings….

(8) DOUBLE DOOM. Nature reports “This unlucky star got mangled by a black hole — twice”. “Bursts of light hint that a star in a nearby galaxy was partially shredded in 2022 and 2024 and might be in for another round.”

A star in a nearby galaxy has been spotted being almost destroyed by a supermassive black hole not just once, but twice — and could have another brush with destruction soon.

Almost every large galaxy is thought to house a supermassive black hole at its centre. When a star passes too close to such a black hole, it is stripped of material, releasing a burst of light. The star is typically torn apart, but if it survives, the event is called a partial tidal disruption.

Zheyu Lin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues found that a star in a galaxy not far from the Milky Way endured partial tidal disruptions in both 2022 and 2024. The team identified these events by observing similar bursts of light from the galaxy’s centre.

The researchers suggest that what they call the “unluckiest star” orbits near to its galaxy’s supermassive black hole and undergoes a partial tidal disruption each time it comes closest to the black hole. The team hopes to observe a third partial tidal disruption in the next two years.

You can see the research paper here.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/25/24 Pixel ScrollRight Of The Mounties

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION AWARD. The idea of the Location Managers Guild Award is truly Hollywood insider stuff. It’s “meant to spotlight outstanding filming locations that sent the tone and enhance the narrative for international features, television and commercials.” There are genre winners, of course. “Location Managers Guild Awards 2024” at Deadline.

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A PERIOD TELEVISION SERIES
Fallout
Paul Kramer, Chris Arena, Mandi Dillin / LMGI, David Park / LMGI, Paul van der Ploeg

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION SERIES
Fargo Season 5
Mohammad Qazzaz / LMGI, Luke Antosz / LMGI

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A TV SERIAL PROGRAM, ANTHOLOGY, MOW OR LIMITED SERIES
Ripley
Robin Melville / LMGI, Giuseppe Nardi / LMGI, Fabio Ferrante, Shane Haden

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A PERIOD FEATURE FILM
Oppenheimer
Justin Duncan /LMGI, Dennis Muscari, Patty Carey-Perazzo, T.C. Townsen

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A CONTEMPORARY FEATURE FILM
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1
David Campbell-Bell, Enrico Latella / LMGI, Jonas Fylling Christiansen, Niall O’Shea, Ben Firminger

OUTSTANDING FILM COMMISSION
Film in Iceland
True Detective: Night Country

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A COMMERCIAL
Toyota: Present from the Past
Mark Freid / LMGI, Paul Riordan / LMGI

(2) LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS BOOKS. Charlie Jane Anders names “10 Literary Books That Made Me a Better Science Fiction Writer” at Happy Dancing.

… As I wrote a while back, the appearance of literary merit means people will give your work more of a chance in spite of weird experiments, but it also means the reader might pay a bit more attention to the nuts and bolts of the story (at least sometimes.) In a good literary story, this relationship with the ideal reader leads to more attention to detail: the sentence-level prose, but also the small details of people’s lives and inner states….

6) Possession by A.S. Byatt

I re-read this book just a few months ago, because my upcoming novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster has a similar literary detective story at its heart. And when I think about the current vogue for Dark Academia stories, Possession feels like a foundational text to me. The story of two young scholars who stumble upon a long lost letter that hints at a secret affair between two Victorian poets, Possession fairly burns with the joy of discovery and textual analysis. That’s the thing that I really discovered when I re-read this book: the poetry of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte is vitally important to the story and to their love affair, and the “clues” in the story are as much about the beauty of their writing and metaphors as any love letters. I’ll probably be writing more about Possession as the release date of Lessons in Magic and Disaster grows closer, so stay tuned….

(3) CAN THE PRICE BE RIGHT? “AMC to release new Batman popcorn bucket” – Batman News has details.

…AMC Theaters will have a Bat-Signal popcorn bucket available on Aug. 28 that will sell for $34.99. A new collectible cup of the Batmobile will also be available for $11.99, but a combo can be purchased for $44.99….

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(4) ARMED LIBRARIAN. “Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned in the book banning wars” – behind a paywall at the LA Times.

A MANDA JONES is a Louisiana middle-school librarian who sleeps with a shotgun under her bed and carries a pistol when she travels the back roads.

Threats against her began two years ago after she spoke out against censorship and was drawn into the culture wars over book banning. She was condemned as a pedophile and a groomer and accused of “advocating teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds.” The Christian right targeted her, and she found herself in the news warning that conservatives in her state and across much of the country were endangering libraries and intellectual freedom.

“I never expected any of this,” said Jones, who lives in Livingston Parish. “It’s a huge weight to feel all that attention. I’m just a school librarian from a two red-light town.”

Jones’ cautionary and disquieting testament to the nation’s divisiveness is told in her new memoir, “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America,” a blunt, angry, searching and redeeming story about a woman engulfed by forces and designs she never imagined. It is a glimpse into a family and a small town that reads like a chapter out of “The Scarlet Letter” or “The Crucible,” narratives whose themes of fear, superstition, rage and religion are again permeating the nation’s political moment, including Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s recent comments that “Democrats want to put sexually explicit books in toddlers’ libraries.”…

(5) ANALYSIS OF A CONVOLUTED PUBLISHING HISTORY. Rich Horton decides it’s time for another look at a classic: “Review: Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith” at Strange at Ecbatan.

… I don’t really want to say more about the plot. There is at the same time a lot going on, but in an odd way not. Some of it seems a bit arbitrary, some doesn’t quite convince, and some is fascinating. But still at all pretty much works. The novel isn’t at a level with Smith’s greatest works, but parts of it are. At time it reaches the incantatory heights Smith could achieve, and it hints throughout at a really important story — the story of the Underpeople (which is also central to “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”, and which perhaps is ultimately key to the entire Instrumentality future history.)….

(6) HOWARD WALDROP REMEMBRANCE EVENT. George R.R. Martin tells readers about the video portion of a memorial for Howard Waldrop, held June 29, at Not a Blog.

…I was not able to be there in person (we were in London at the time) but there was no way I could not be a part of a remembrance for H’ard, so I taped some remarks and sent them to Robert Taylor, who was organizing the event.   I went on rather a long time, as it happens, but Howard and I had a long history and I am a wordy bastard in any case, as many of you know. My tape ended up coming in around 45 minutes long, and could easily have gone three hours if I’d just kept talking. There are so many stories to tell.

That was too long for the Austin memorial, so Robert and his team kindly cut and trimmed it for the event.   I do have the longer version and will likely post it here… probably later rather than sooner.   For now, we have this; not only my video, but all the other speeches and stories as well, from some of Howard’s pals. (Some, not all. Howard had friends all over the world.

Parts of this may bring a tear to your eye.   Other bits will make you laugh.   Laughter was one of Howard’s gifts….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 25, 1955 – Simon R. Green, 69. I’ve had email conversations with our Birthday honoree, Simon R. Green. He’s a fascinating, friendly person.

I first read the Deathstalker series which, like everything he writes, is part of the same multiverse. Owen Deathstalker, reluctant heir to the ancient Deathstalker name and a very minor historian, will come to lead a rebellion against the powerful and corrupt empire ruled by The Iron Bitch. Every SF trope is here — crashed alien starships, rogue computer hackers, clones and espers to name but a few. Yes, it’s space opera but not to be taken too seriously.

Moving sideways for a movement, he did a stellar job with his Forest Kingdom fantasy series which plays it more straight I think save SLIGHT SPOILER such touches as a butterfly collecting dragon END SLIGHT SPOILER. The connected Hawk and Fisher series of two Guardsman in Haven, a corrupt seaport, solving magical mysteries is wonderful.

Remember how I said everything was in the same multiverse? Hawk and Fisher show up in Strangefellows, just having a drink. Strangefellows being the bar in Nightside, the pocket universe beneath London where John Taylor is the only detective, as told in the Nightside series. Great setting, fascinating characters, weird stories.

The Secret History series involved the Droods, an ancient family that watches over the world and protects it from mostly supernatural and magical threats. They have a magical armor they, well, protects them from everything. Great series. This and the Nightside series were wrapped in one novel, Night Fall.

I should note that all of the must be read from the beginning. There is significant plot development as each series moved along. Characters change, situations develop.

The Ghostfinders of the Carnacki Institute, an ancient and very secretive government department , exist to deal with ghosts, and live by the motto “We don’t take any shit from the Hereafter”. The plots here are thinner than in his other series but I find the character interesting enough to like the series.

Ishmael Jones is someone who cannot afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar. Why so? Because it’s been sixty years since the alien starship made him human and he hasn’t aged at all. These are really fun because Ishmael Jones simultaneously believes he’s human and alien, and views everything that way. Stories are quite good.

A freestanding novel of note is Drinking Midnight Wine about a small English town (actually where he was born) where good in all sorts of magical forms pushed back against evil in yet more magical forms. There’s an Angel, but trust me when I say that you wouldn’t want to meet her.

He’s too prolific to cover everything here and I noticed I skipped the excellent Giden Sable series. Oh well.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Arlo and Janis found something escaped from a little shop.
Eek! documents a performance complaint.
Wannabe gives writing tips, but are they any good?
Pardon My Planet finds something is super hard to hide.
The Far Side solves a super problem of its own.

(9) NOW WITH EXTRA ADDED EVIL. “’Rings of Power’ Returns, With More Creatures and More Evil”. Link bypasses New York Times paywall.

… In April last year, the production for Season 2 sprawled across several sites around Windsor, England. Shuttle cars sped hundreds of crew members and craft makers between vast studios and forests. For about eight months, nearly 90 cast members spent hours in hair and makeup to be transformed into elves, dwarves, orcs and other Middle-earth dwellers.

A building housed racks of costumes and specially molded or 3-D-printed trinkets and armor. Outdoor sets the size of playgrounds plunged the actors into a court in Númenor or the trenches of an orc camp. And nearby, machinery waited in a muddy field to film a gritty battle scene inspired by films like “Saving Private Ryan.”

“I kept saying constantly on set: more blood, more dust, more mud, more everything,” Charlotte Brandstrom, who directed four of the upcoming season’s episodes, said in an interview. (Some scenes set in Rhûn were also filmed in the Canary Islands.)

This, after all, might be the most expensive series in TV history, a blockbuster prequel that reportedly cost Amazon $715 million for its first season, and premieres the first three episodes of its second season on Thursday…

(10) BITE ON. [Item by Steven French.] Do we need another zombie series? If it has Sue Johnston biting someone’s nose off, then yes please! “‘Sue Johnston’s first day on set, she was biting someone’s nose off’: Ben Wheatley on his zombie drama Generation Z” in the Guardian.

… The old eat the young. That is the back-of-a-beermat pitch for new Channel 4 drama Generation Z. And because the Z stands for zombie, the eating is meant literally. “I loved the idea of a horror story about societal breakdown, told from the perspective of different generations,” says its writer-director Ben Wheatley. “Once I started writing it, I couldn’t stop.”

The film-maker’s first original series for TV begins with an army convoy crashing outside a care home. The subsequent chemical leak turns the residents into marauding monsters who attack local youngsters. “It’s a bit of a Brexit metaphor,” admits Wheatley. “But it’s by no means binary. We discuss it from each generation’s viewpoint, exploring the notion that boomers have ruined the lives of the young. Because it’s a genre piece, that’s basically by biting their hands and eating their brains.”…

(11) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Dan Monroe investigates “Whatever Happened to The LAST STARFIGHTER?” at Movies, Music & Monsters.

(12) ZERO FAMILY VALUES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] From Netflix Anime. Very violent. Very bloody. Very NSFW. Gizmodo warns: “Terminator Zero’s New Trailer Shows the Bloody War to Come”.

…While writing Zero, Mattson keyed in on three core Terminator pillars: killer robots, “fear and dread around nuclear holocaust,” and family-centric stories. If the first two films are respectively about “a man and woman making a baby” and “a mother’s love for her son,” this series is about a fractured family coming together again. In his eyes, you don’t get Terminator without those three tenets, they’ve all led to an enduring franchise aiming to make a comeback and take some new swings.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/12/24 I Came Upon A Scroll Of God, He Was Pixeling Down The Road

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BEST NOVEL WINNER TESH INTERVIEWED. [Item by Nickpheas.] Front Row, the main BBC Radio 4 arts show includes an overview of the recent Hugo controversies and an interview with Emily Tesh following her Best Novel win: “BBC Radio 4 – Front Row, Emily Tesh and the Hugo Awards”.

This year’s WorldCon – the World Science Fiction Convention – took place in Glasgow and pop culture critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reports on the international gathering where the winners of the Hugo Awards 2024 were announced last night.

Emily Tesh on winning the Best Novel prize at this year’s Hugo Awards with her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory.

(2) SPREAD THE WORD. Maybe fans should have been told this was DNQ – then by now everybody would know it.

Is this yet another one of those honors that people aren’t going to know happened unless I brag like hell about it a thousand times?

OH WELL THEN. ????
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD????? (@Nnedi) August 12, 2024

(3) BEAUTY SHOTS. Richard Man has received his 2023 Hugo Award trophy and has posted a gallery of beautiful photos of it on Facebook. They include close-ups of the based and its artistic panda sculpture. Here’s the first in the series.

(4) GLASGOW 2024 PHOTO TEAM. And you can see the Worldcon in all its glory in this gallery of “Worldcon Photos” at Flickr.

(5) LOST IN TRANSLATION. Glasgow 2024 apologized for problems at last night’s Hugo ceremony with onscreen cards in rendering Chinese names. One commenter thinks the apology underplays the extent of them.

The Hugo Awards ceremony didn't just have "mistakes in the Chinese captions." It literally turned characters in author Baoshu's and Han Song's names into square boxes with a X, and left out Gu Shi's name in Chinese altogether… It also failed to list Baoshu's translator Xueting. https://t.co/Q0ZJ0lLGQI pic.twitter.com/w1UnCELqDX
— Yilin @ WorldCon Glasgow (@yilinwriter) August 12, 2024

(6) WEE, SLEEKIT, COWRIN, TIM’ROUS BEASTIE. Cora Buhlert, who is headed home at this hour, shared a “Brief Worldcon Update – and a Fannish Poem”. The title of the poem is “The Phantom of the Armadillo”. You might be able to guess what it’s about from the first two lines. See the rest at the link.

There’s a spectre haunting Glasgow,
a spectre by the name of Dave…

(7) DARKLIT PRESS. Publishers Weekly has compiled the available information about the meltdown in “A Grim Fate Befalls Horror Publisher DarkLit Press”.

A metaphorical bloodbath has occurred at Canada-based independent horror publisher DarkLit Press, with authors clawing back rights, publicly splitting with the company, and claiming royalties have gone unpaid. A year ago, DarkLit was announcing new imprints and developing its audio offerings, but its website and social media accounts have gone black, and the company is not listed in the Canadian Business Registry….

(8) CAMERON Q&A. “James Cameron Interview: Avatar 3, Alien: Romulus, Terminator Zero” in The Hollywood Reporter.

There has been a lot of conversation in the last few years about UAPs [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] along with USOs — Underwater Submerged Objects — which you brought to the pop culture forefront with The Abyss. You’ve spent so much time on and in the ocean. Have you ever seen anything that you cannot explain?

I’ve seen some geological formations that were intriguing that I really wanted to understand better that I don’t think have been well observed before. I’ve photographed new species — things that were not immediately identifiable. But I’ve never seen anything that couldn’t be explained in the sense of some extraterrestrial phenomenon. Now, “belief” is a principle that I don’t have. I don’t believe things. I admit the possibility of things because the universe is infinite and obviously much stranger than we think, and much more complex than we think — that’s what makes science so appealing. But I don’t make broad statements like, “Well, I believe there must be extraterrestrial life; the universe is so big.” Yeah, it’s really big — and getting here would be a really, really big problem if there is even life out there, and if that life is intelligent. How are they crossing light years of space? I studied physics before I became a lit major, and people have no concept of the magnitude of that problem from a physics standpoint. I have a pretty good grasp of where physics was in 1972 — which basically is laughable at this point — but I keep up.

(9) MY ALIBI. There we go – Xiran Jay Zhao and George R.R. Martin are each other’s alibis for not turning in their next book.

Sorry our sequels are so late, we're too busy partying pic.twitter.com/rWKSpJh7IC
— Xiran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) August 12, 2024

(10) NOW WITH ADDED DRAGONS. Erin Underwood Presents brings viewers a“House of the Dragon, Season 2 Review – Here’s why it’s actually a good season”. (Did you have doubts?)

House of the Dragon, George RR Martin’s A Game of Throne’s prequel, enters its second season with the Targaryen’s internal succession war at its peak — and it’s tearing the Seven Kingdoms apart. Plus, there are so many DRAGONS. Check out my new review of season 2.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born August 12, 1931 – William Goldman. (Died 2018.)

By Lis Carey: William Goldman was a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He won two Academy Awards in writing categories—Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President’s Men (1976).

But the work for which we best know and love him is The Princess Bride, both novel and film.

William Goldman. Photo by Bernard Gotfryd

The Princess Bride is, As You Know, Bob, the film adaptation of William Goldman’s “good parts version” of S. Morgenstern’s long political satire, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version.

Except, of course, S. Morgenstern never existed, and Goldman only wrote the “good parts,” including “footnotes” referencing fictional bits of the politics, etc., of the kingdoms of Florin and Guilder, and the frame story of a grandfather reading the story to his grandson. The adaptation for the film was, fortunately, written by Goldman himself, and is remarkably true to the novel. A grandfather reads to his grandson the “good parts version” of Princess Buttercup; her true love Westley; Buttercup’s evil betrothed, Prince Humperdinck; and of course the giant Fezzik, Inigo Montoya, Vizzini the Sicilian, and assorted other people of questionable character.

Altogether, it’s a lovely package of wit, humor, fantasy, adventure and romance. With positive critical reception but only modestly successful at the box office, it has become a cult classic. Lines from the movie are happily quoted by fans who have seen it, and those who never have, because it’s just so darned quotable and engaging.

“Inconceivable!”

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” (Solid advice, that one.)

It’s a pure delight, and has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it on Disney+, if so inclined.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus points out why a planet has a bad reputation
Doug Eat Doug shows that horror readers start young
Strange Brew whispers a secret.
Wumo mixes realities.

(13) PAGING THROUGH THE SF HALL OF FAME. David Agranoff’s new Postcards from a Dying World podcast episode is about “SF Hall of Fame #7 The Weapons Shop by AE Van Vogt”.

In 1970 Avon Books published a landmark anthology “Science Fiction Hall of Fame” featuring 16 classic short stories that represent landmark tales of the genre. The stories were voted on by the members of the new (at the time in the late 60s) organization Science Fiction Writers of America. In this series, I will be joined by a panel of different guests to break down these stories and talk about the authors in the book.

In this episode, I am joined by two experts on Philip K Dick. Wait a second I thought this episode was about AE Van Vogt. It is.. but the Canadian Golden Age author was a massive influence on PKD, so I was interested in introducing two Dickheads to Van Vogt. So joining me is the Total Dickhead blogger – Professor David Gill and author/publisher/editor Keith Giles of Quior Books.

(14) COMIC-CON PROGRAM BOOK IS FREE DOWNLOAD. [Item by Bill.] The San Diego Comic-Con’s program book is released as a PDF. It contains much of SF interest. Find it here.

(15) DISNEY LEGENDS AT D23. The star-power was turned up bright this past weekend at the D23 Expo in Anaheim.

“Lindsay Lohan, Jodie Foster Honor Disney Legend Jamie Lee Curtis” in Variety.

Jamie Lee Curtis has always been legendary, but now it’s official: she was named a Disney Legend on Sunday during the D23 Expo.

Lindsay Lohan took the stage to queue up a montage of Curtis’ most memorable roles, telling the crowd, “I have been able to have the pleasure of working with Jamie Lee Curtis. And the magic of Jamie Lee Curtis is that she is timeless. Every character she plays is different, and she always brings something unique to the role. And I feel so blessed to have Jamie as a friend in my life, and I feel lucky to work with a woman that I admire so much.”

Jodie Foster surprised the crowd after Lohan’s introduction to further lionize Curtis, saying, “There are many things that my bestie Jamie and I have in common,” recalling their upbringing as young women in Hollywood.

“Here are many of the absolutely freaky things that you may not know about her: You probably don’t know she eats dinner at 3 or 4, and is asleep by 7:30. She gets up at 3 a.m., she saves the world and she online shops a little bit,” Foster continued.

“She is so thoughtful and so generous, such a supportive and kind cheerleader, that it just makes me want to punch her,” Foster said with a laugh. “Is that wrong?” Foster then presented Curtis with her own embroidered pair of Mickey Mouse ears….

“Harrison Ford Accepts Disney Legend Award in Touching Speech at D23” in Variety.

…After a montage of Harrison’s most iconic work, Ford took the stage to an enthusiastic standing ovation. Referencing one of his most iconic “Star Wars” moments, he told the crowd, “I love you, too” (a more direct version of Han Solo’s famous response, “I know.”)

He continued, “I love the life you’ve given me. I love the people that I’ve had the opportunity to work with. Nobody does anything in this business for long. We work in collaboration, no matter what who we are and what we’re doing.”

Ford called himself an “assistant storyteller,” adding, “The stories are for you, about you, about us,” Ford said as he choked back tears. “To be able to work in that area is a privilege.”….

“Angela Bassett, Kelly Ripa, James Cameron and More Honored as Disney Legends at D23” reports Variety.

Angela Bassett was recognized for three decades of work with Disney, including her role in Touchstone’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” narration of National Geographic’s The Flood and the Disney+ docuseries “The Imagineering Story,” and, most recently, her Oscar-nominated performance as Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”…

…“Titanic” director James Cameron was also among the honorees, recognized for his work on the “Avatar” film franchise, for which he’s currently in post-production for the third entry, with a planned fourth and fifth in pre-production. He’s also behind several documentaries made in partnership with National Geographic, including the Emmy-winning “Secrets of the Whales” and Emmy-nominated “Secrets of the Elephants.” He also executive produced the OceanXplorers series, due in fall 2024 from National Geographic….

…Ripa began her career as an actor on the soap opera “All My Children” and the sitcom “Hope & Faith.” She’s best known for her work on morning television as the co-host of ABC’s “Live,” which she’s appeared on since 2001….

…Bassett, Cameron and Ripa were joined by fellow Disney Legend honorees Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Harrison Ford, Frank Oz, John Williams, Miley Cyrus, costume designer Colleen Atwood, Disney Parks cast member Martha Blanding, the late Marvel comic artist Steve Ditko, animator Mark Henn, and imagineer Joe Rohde….

(16) FREAKIER FRIDAY. And once D23 is over, everybody goes back to work. “‘Freaky Friday 2’ Title Revealed as ‘Freakier Friday,’ Brings Back Lindsay Lohan’s Rock Band Pink Slip And Loads of Cameos” – Variety has the story.

…“It feels like no time has passed,” Curtis told the ecstatic crowd.

Lohan revealed the two had stayed in touch over the years and said, “We’re very close.” To which Curtis replied, “It feels like we’re picking up where we left off.”

And with that, the trailer for Nisha Ganatra’s “Freaky Friday 2,” starring Curtis and Lohan was revealed…

(17) PRIDE OF DISNEY. A trailer has dropped for Mufasa: The Lion King – in theaters December 20.

Exploring the unlikely rise of the beloved king of the Pride Lands, “Mufasa: The Lion King” enlists Rafiki to relay the legend of Mufasa to young lion cub Kiara, daughter of Simba and Nala, with Timon and Pumbaa lending their signature schtick. Told in flashbacks, the story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka—the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny—their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.

(18) IS CONSCIOUSNESS DOWN TO QUANTUM EFFECTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time takes a look at Nobel laureate Roger Penrose’s idea that the brain might enable consciousness through quantum effects: the brain might be a quantum computer, his rationalization being known as orchestrated objective reduction. Basically, we think – outside the box – like quantum and not analogue computers.

Now, the arguments against this are that physicists currently entangle atoms in vacuums at very, very cold temperatures: conversely, brains are warm and wet. (We biologists like things warm and wet.) Subsequently, in the mid-1990s, an anaesthetist, Stuart Hameroff, suggested microtubules found in brain cells might have the macromolecule, the tubulin protein, Penrose was looking for as many anaesthetics work by impairing microtubule function.

The latest news is that a paper has been published showing that molecules in microtubules exhibit superradience and superradience (as you all know well?) is a phenomena arising out of quantum entanglement.

Now, just because a molecule exhibits supperradience by itself is not proof that the molecule can behave in an entangled quantum way, however it is at the very least corroborating evidence and so we can file this in the ‘interesting’ drawer.

Also, don’t be quick to rule out the ‘warm and wet’ problem just because physicists find it difficult. In biology we think that photosynthesis (how plants harness sunlight’s energy) likely relies on quantum effects: it is possible that quantum coherence and electron tunneling are involved in photosynthesis. Quantum_biology is a thing.

Finally, let’s think of the SF implications of all of this. Given the number of microtubules in the brain and given the number of calculations quantum computers can do, then to get General Artificial Intelligence (that’s 2001 HAL level of A.I.) we would need a very, very large quantum computer and that seems a very long way off and is certainly not something we can do with conventional, analogue computers. If this is so, then it may mean our getting a powerful A.I. capable of conscious, independent thought is unlikely… This, some may say, could be good news. I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over. But nobody ever listens…

That’s everything in a nutshell. Matt O’Dowd explains it with a little more detail (and fortunately with no heavy mathematical equations). You can see the 19-minute video here.

Nobel laureate Roger Penrose is widely held to be one of the most brilliant living physicists for his wide-ranging work from black holes to cosmology. And then there’s his idea about how consciousness is caused by quantum processes. Most scientists have dismissed this as a cute eccentricity – a guy like Roger gets to have at least one crazy theory without being demoted from the supersmartypants club. The most common argument for this dismissal is that quantum effects can’t survive long enough in an environment as warm and chaotic as the brain. Well, a new study has revealed that Penrose’s prime candidate molecule for this quantum activity does indeed exhibit large scale quantum activity. So was Penrose right after all? Are you a quantum entity?

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

What’s It All About: Alfies

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Mike Glyer

George R.R. Martin has revived the Alfie Awards, which he gave at a private banquet in Glasgow on August 10. See Locus Online coverage with photos here: “2024 Alfie Awards”.

Xiran Jay Zhao (left off the 2023 Astounding Award ballot), and R.F. Kuang (whose Babel was disqualified in 2023) received theirs in person. Two more Alfies were announced for others disqualified in 2023, fan writer Paul Weimer, and BDP candidate Sandman (discreetly omitting Neil Gaiman’s name)

Tfw you got disqualified from the Hugo Awards last year for proven political censorship but then George RR Martin rings you up to give you a consolation prize ????

Congrats and solidarity with fellow winners RF Kuang and Paul Weimer (who unfortunately couldn't be at the dinner)! pic.twitter.com/UAnUgR7fA8
— Xiran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) August 11, 2024

Martin held the original Alfies ceremony in 2015, the first year the Sad and Rabid Puppies monopolized the Hugo ballot. “This year all of us were losers,” Martin said, explaining that the Alfies, each made from a streamlined 1950s hood ornament, were his attempt to take a little of the sting off.

He named “The Alfies” in honor of Alfred Bester, whose book The Demolished Man won Best Novel at the first-ever Hugos in 1953. He explained on his blog that year:

It was for those ‘invisible losers’ that I decided to create the Alfies. If one accepts that the Hugo has value, these writers had suffered real harm thanks to the slates. There was no way I could hope to redress that… but I could make a gesture. In the door of my room in KC in 1976, Alfie Bester told us that winners can become losers. If so, losers can become winners too. I would give my own awards… and of course I’d name them after Alfie. So that’s how the Alfies came about.

As it turned out, Martin gave more Alfies in 2016. He didn’t give Alfies in 2017. And after that the purpose of them changed to just being nice tokens for people he thought should be honored. One Alfie was given in 2018 to John Picacio for the Mexicanx Initiative. At Dublin 2019 he presented Jane Johnson and Malcolm Edwards with Alfie Awards for Editing. But in 2024 they have resumed their original purpose of calling attention to people unjustly denied their place on the Hugo Ballot.

[Thanks to Meredith for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 8/10/24 Mere Pixel Scroll Won’t Thrill Me At All

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LEARN ABOUT CHINESE SFF FILM AND TV. A technical problem prevented Xueting C. Ni from participating virtually in a Glasgow 2024 program item, however, the good news is that they distilled the information they wanted to present into this video now available on YouTube: “Glasgow Worldcon: Chinese Scifi Film And TV”.

(2) XIRAN JAY ZHAO TEACHES GRRM A TRICK. Or tries to. They’re both at Glasgow 2024. Afterwards they tell fans, “I’m not telling any of you exclusive top secret information about Winds of Winter.” So there.

Teaching George RR Martin how to do a finger heart ???? pic.twitter.com/7YRUiOYand
— Xiran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) August 9, 2024

(3) DAVE SIGHTING, FOLLOWED BY DAVE SLIGHTING. Ursula Vernon could hardly avoid hearing about this moment at a hotel across from the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon site. For reasons.

And the encounter has already inspired Great Art.

(4) GUFF WINNERS ASSEMBLE. Many of the GUFF delegates past and present at Glasgow 2024 took a group photo.

GUFF delegates past and present @Glasgowin2024 ???? #glasgow2024 pic.twitter.com/FZDQsFSgzc
— Kat Clay (@kat_clay) August 9, 2024

(5) IT IS THE END, MY FRIEND. The last Keith Kato Chili Party happened at Glasgow 2024. Here’s the ribbon:

(6) MORE DARKLIT TESTIMONY. John Durgin has added his account about the problems authors are having with DarkLit Press in “Kosa and the DarkLit debacle”, an open Patreon post.

…There are a number of reasons I’m coming forward now. First off, I had a number of friends who still kept their books with DarkLit, and I didn’t want to possibly hurt their titles by burying the press. Now that the press is folding, that doesn’t matter anymore. Secondly, I’ve seen many of those who spoke up get attacked for doing so by the press. Making Yolanda out to be a villain when we all knew it wasn’t true. Bashing Austrian Spencer’s editing quality when everyone knows he’s a top notch editor (never mind the fact that even if he DID provide a below average edit, he was still OWED money.) And then making Steve out to be some trouble maker for dropping facts that I can tell you are 100% correct.

The lack of accountability from day one was an issue that many of us discussed in private. We all wanted DarkLit to work. We had established a bond and supported one another wholeheartedly, had no reason to wish any ill will on the success of the publisher….

… It wasn’t until we grilled the new leadership and didn’t accept the vague answers we were given that we finally discovered they didn’t even have access to all the sales numbers yet. This was another massive red flag.

It was these issues along with seeing the things they said to try and ruin the image of anyone who spoke out that led me to pull my book. I can tell you things got pretty heated in the discord group. I can also tell you there was no damn misogyny in those heated exchanges. Many of the authors who had issues with the way things were headed were female. It really bothers me that Caitlin used that today when that is the furthest thing from the truth. We were left in the dark. We wanted information, and too often didn’t find it out until we wouldn’t take no for an answer. We would have demanded that transparency no matter who was in charge. …

Durgin refers to this statement from Caitlin Marceau, who was Editor-in-Chief of DarkLit Press.

This is an unwinable situation. No matter what I do, it’s never enough. I’ve been harassed for months over this. If you’re looking for my statement, here it is. If you’re looking for my apology, you won’t find it. I’m done apologizing for the mistakes a man made. pic.twitter.com/cfssph2eOg
— Caitlin Marceau ???????????????? (@CaitlinMarceau) August 9, 2024

(7) JIM CAUGHRAN (1940-2024). Longtime fan Jim Caughran, Fancyclopedia 3’s first editor, died August 6 at the age of 83. He discovered fandom in the 1950s while a teenager living in Nebraska.

He was in the cast of the cult favorite fan movie The Musquite Kid Rides Again in 1960 as “Doc Eney”. He was a member of FAPA, The Cult and OMPA. John Trimble published A Fanzine for Jim Caughran in May 1962.

In the last decade Jim wrote several letters of comment to File 770. He lived in Toronto at the time of his death.

(8) MARY WINGS (1949-2024). Pioneering creator of queer comics Mary Wings died July 3. “She was the first openly gay woman to write a comic book about lesbians. She went on to write detective novels with a queer woman in the lead.” The New York Times paid tribute: “Mary Wings, Pioneering Creator of Queer Comics, Dies at 75”. The link bypasses the paywall.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! Illustrates a moment in Hulk’s history.
Speed Bump adds a trick to the trick.
Carpe Diem brings us art by a robot. It’s exactly what you’re thinking.
Rubes thought it was funny at the time.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal tells an alien joke.
Tom Gauld knows who the bears would rather meet.

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social
My cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books. pic.twitter.com/Ht7YGOMvPq
— Benzie, the puppies Penn & Teller, and Richard (@rdaily) August 10, 2024

(10) HISTORIC ANIMATION ART. Here are a couple more treasurers up for bid in Heritage Auction’s “The History of Animation – The Glad Museum Collection Signature® Auction” running from August 16-19.

The Band Concert RARE Color Model Cel Setup with Master Production Background (Walt Disney, 1935).

Created for the very first shot in Walt Disney’s monumental theatrical short The Band Concert, presented is an unbelievably rare original color model cel setup displayed on its Master production background. A detailed, elaborate image, this complete setup features the whole band: Goofy, Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Peter Pig, Paddy Pig, and the one and only Mickey Mouse as conductor. Directed by Wilfred Jackson (1906 – 1988) and released on 2/23/1935, The Band Concert is notable for being the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon in color….

Superman (The Mad Scientist) Superman and Daily Planet Building Production Cel with Key Master Background (Max Fleischer, 1941).

When the Mad Scientist fires his powerful death ray at the base of the Daily Planet, compromising the structure of the tall building, it’s up to the Man of Steel to stop the potential catastrophe. From Superman, or The Mad Scientist, the first animated appearance of the iconic superhero, we proudly present a magnificent and unbelievably rare Key Master setup showing the Last Son of Krypton displaying his powers by holding the collapsing building mid-flight with his bare hands.

(11) HOBBIT ANTECEDENTS. “Fossils suggest ‘hobbits’ roamed Indonesian island 700,000 years ago” – from a paywalled LA Times story.

Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood about 3½ feet tall — earning it the nickname “hobbits.”

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were 2.4 inches shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits — named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores — evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They’re thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don’t yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research — and fossils — are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada’s Lakehead University.

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.

(12) SKELETON CREW. “’Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ Trailer Unveiled At Disney D23” and Deadline would like to tell you about it. Premieres December 3 on Disney+.

The first trailer for the new Disney+ Lucasfilm series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew dropped in the Honda Center room at Disney’s D23 in Anaheim on Friday

Jude Law came onstage and said the series harkens to the Amblin kid fantasy films of the 1980s ala The Goonies.

“I fell in love with Star Wars when I was a 10-year-old boy,” he said. “[This] series is told from the perspective of the kids.”…

…In the clip, young kids are zipping around a space academy environment. They come across a tunnel in the woods, zip down, find a ship, fly through hyperspace, encounter big monsters and fire off turret guns. Oh, and Law plays a Jedi. It’s very young-skewing….

(13) D23 BRINGS PLETHORA OF DISNEY NEWS. The Hollywood Reporter has a long list of additional news announced at Disney D23: “D23: All the Updates from Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar from 2024 Panel”.

Bob Iger got a rock star-worthy welcome Friday night, as roughly 12,000 screaming fans gave the Disney CEO a standing-ovation as he kicked off a super-sized panel at D23.

“Wow. That was more than a warm welcome,” Iger told the crowd, adding, “Boy did I miss you.”

It was a homecoming for Iger, who was temporarily retired two years ago during the last D23, which is a chance for Disney’s to show off upcoming projects from Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century….

The article has new information learned at D23 about Agatha All Along, Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, Fantastic Four, Captain America: Brave New World, The Mandalorian & Grogu, Andor, Frozen III, Zootopia 2, The Incredibles 3, Hoppers, Toy Story 5, Inside Out TV spinoff, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Monster Jam, and Moana 2.

Here are two of the trailers presented:

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

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Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

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