Tag Archives: George Romero

Pixel Scroll 11/3/24 Never Scroll In Against A Pixelian When Death Is On The Line

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(1) BOWERS MUSEUM FANTASY EXHIBITION. [Item by Matthew Sangster.] A touring version of the British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination (which was reviewed on File 770 last year) has now opened at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, CA. (It opened October 26 and runs to February 16, 2025).  A small number of the more fragile manuscripts haven’t travelled, but there are a number of new inclusions, including original concept art from Labyrinth by Brian and Wendy Froude.

Sleeping Beauty (1968) © Royal Ballet and Opera. Tunic worn by Rudolf Nureyev as Prince Florimund in Act III of The Royal Ballet production of The Sleeping Beauty (1968) © Royal Ballet and Opera

Let our landmark exhibition cast its spell as we explore the beautiful, uncanny and sometimes monstrous makings of fantasy. From epic visions to intricately envisaged details, Fantasy: Realms of Imagination celebrates some of the finest fantasy creators, reveals how their imagined lands, languages and creatures came into being, and delves into the traditions of a genre that has created some of the most passionate and enduring fandoms.

Journey from fairy tales and folklore to the fantastical worlds of Studio Ghibli. Venture into lands occupied by goblins and go down the rabbit hole. Explore the realms of the one ring and travel into the depths of Pan’s Labyrinth. And discover how the oldest forms of literature continue to inspire fantasy authors today.

Presented in partnership with the British Library, Bowers Museum invites visitors to discover 160 fantastical items that include costumes, historical manuscripts, rare first editions, drafts of iconic novels, scripts, maps, original artwork, film props, and immersive multimedia experiences.

Gather your fellow adventurers and step into the realms of fantasy as they have never been chronicled before. Who knows where your journey will lead…

(2) TREK MEMORABILIA. Julien’s “Bid Long & Prosper Auction” will take place November 11. Among all the Star Trek costumes, props, and documentation going under the hammer, this “William Shatner Captain James T. Kirk Hero Screen-Matched Communicator Prop” is expected to fetch one of the highest prices, in the six-figure range. (I assume the stopwatch is for scale, not to measure whether Kirk was fastest on the draw.)

(3) GODZILLA AT SEVENTY. LAist recalls “The little-known connection between LA and Japanese monster masterpiece, ‘Godzilla’” — which may or may not have been a good thing, but did mean I got to watch this version on local TV when I was a kid.

Today marks a very special day for a timeless Japanese icon.

On Nov. 3, 1954, the first Godzilla film was released in Japan. The monster flick, which many people saw as an allegory for the Atomic bomb, was a box office hit in the country, and would go on to become a global sensation.

But, “unbeknownst to many people, Godzilla’s international stardom actually began right here in Los Angeles,” said Steve Ryfle, who co-authored the book, Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa.

That’s because for five decades, according to Ryfle, pretty much the only way audiences in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world could see the film was through a highly altered version of the 1954 Japanese original.

And that re-edited version, titled Godzilla King of the Monsters! contained added scenes that were all shot in Los Angeles.

… The studio behind Godzilla — the renowned Toho Studios — was looking to expand into foreign markets, and set up a small export office in L.A.

One of the films they offered up for sale was the monster film, said Ryfle. The people who bought it were not your typical Hollywood execs….

What these American producers did to the original Japanese version was write in an entirely new character named Steve Martin, who is an American wire service reporter stationed in Japan, played by character actor Raymond Burr of Perry Mason fame….

(4) EDEL RODRIGUEZ Q&A. Steven Heller interviews Edel Rodriguez about “Cuban Sci-Fi and Hope for the Future” at PRINT Magazine.

What exactly does this niche of fiction mean?
Some of these stories reflect on what is happening in Cuban culture and politics under the cover of science fiction. It gives writers a way to be social critics in an indirect manner. They can tell stories about corruption, migration, shortages and other social ills in a dystopian setting that is not directly tied to Cuba.

Are the books produced in Cuba for Cuban readers?
The books are written in Cuba by Cuban writers but have mostly been published in Spain. Some of them have been published in Cuba; it just depends on the nature of the writing. The books by the author Yoss are not printed on the island, though they do make their way back to readers there.

Are the writers dissidents?
I don’t think they are dissidents per se, but some have been looked at in a negative light by the establishment. This is why some of their books are often published overseas. I believe that the writer Agustín de Rojas was embraced by Cuban institutions while the writer Yoss was not.

What do you feel is a smart sci-fi scenario? And is there a Cuban narrative?
My favorite thing about these stories is seeing the references to Cuban culture, the conversation style and scenarios which mirror what is happening in the Cuban society. A Cuban narrative is when all goes to hell and the characters are desperately trying to right the ship, whether it be a boat, a country or a spaceship.

(5) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport starts the month with a free read: “Margeaux Poppins, Monster Hunter”. As the editor say –

Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors. If you already subscribe — thank you!

(6) EVERYTHING ROMERO. You can explore the George A. Romero Archival Collection at Digital Pitt.

What’s online?

The online collection contains selections from the George A. Romero Archival Collection including behind the scenes and premiere photos from Night of the Living Dead, as well as posters spanning Romero’s filmography.

What’s in the entire collection?

The George A. Romero Archival Collection documents a creative history of Romero’s work spanning his entire career. It includes drafts and manuscripts for both his produced and unrealized projects, as well as production, publicity, and promotional materials related to his work. It is part of the horror studies collecting area within Archives & Special Collections.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Memory: Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead (1934)

I truly love country house mysteries.  I really do. And they are perfectly suited, the classic ones, for me to listen to, especially this time of year.

There’s A. E. Milne’s The Red House Murder and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. And now let’s talk about Ngaio Marsh and her country house mystery, A Man Lay Dead. 

Ngaio Marsh was born in 1895 Christchurch, New Zealand where she lived until 1928, when she went to London with friends on whom he would base the Lamprey family in the Surfeit of Lampreys novel, her tenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn. But long before that, she would write A Man Lay Dead which as I said is a country house murder. It is the first novel of thirty-two to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published ninety years ago by Geoffrey Bles in London. 

The plot concerns a murder committed during a game of murder mystery at a weekend party in a country house.  

WE ARE GOING TO TELL A STORY HERE, SO GO AWAY UNLESS YOU WANT KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS NOVEL!

A small group of guests at Sir Hubert Handesley’s estate including a man about town, several of his nieces, an art expert, a gossip reporter, and pay attention as Marsh makes sure you notice him, a butler of Russian ancestry.

The murder mystery game in which one of the guests is of course chosen to be the murderer and someone to be murdered by him or her. At the time of the murderer’s choice, he tells the victim they’re dead.

At that point, the lights go out, a loud bell rings, and then everyone comes back to together for yet more drinks and to piece together who did it. It is all intended to be a good hearted diversion, except that the corpse is very, very real.

When the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have solid alibis, so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit. (Alleyn is conveniently investigating a murder connected to a stolen chalice in the area, but he’s called when this murder occurs at uncle’s estate.) 

Will more murders happen? I’m not saying, but this a classic manor house mystery, so what do you think? Need I say? 

NO MORE STORY SHALL BE TOLD, SO COME BACK NOW.

Marsh had being reading a short story by Christie or Sayers, she forgot which, and wondered if she could write a mystery novel set in the Murder Game which was popular at English weekend parties. So she bought some composition books and set down to write.

Marsh regretted this novel immensely once she’d refined her writing skills in years to come. Joanne Drayton noted in Ngaio Marsh: Her life in crime that she would “cringe at the thought of her first novel with its barely plausible story line, shallow characterization and confined setting”.  

Despite her criticisms, the story does work decently, or at least I think it does. Who else has read it, and what are your opinions of it?  I’d say a lot of the manor house mysteries of that period weren’t exactly literary masterpieces by any reasonable measure, but were they meant to be? I think not. 

It would later be adapted for the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series with the Angela North character here being replaced by Agatha Troy who appears in later novels as Alleyn’s romantic interest and eventual wife. 

It, like almost everything Marsh did, is available from the usual suspects. The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series is streaming on Amazon Prime.  

The cover is that hardcover first by Geoffrey Bles. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Breaking Cat News details how Tortimer the Roomba will save the world.
  • Strange Brew has a strange crossover.
  • Tom Gauld wasn’t blinded by science – but by lunch.

(9) COMICS HISTORY UP FOR AUCTION. Christie’s will auction this month “Les Cousins Dalton” by Morris (1923-2001).

The Belgian cartoonist Morris (pen name of Maurice De Bevere) introduced his comic-book cowboy Lucky Luke in 1946. Les Cousins Dalton, an original strip in which our hero defeats four gunslingers at a single stroke after slurping a Coca-Cola, dates from 1958, when Morris was working with René Goscinny, co-creator of Asterix

(10) THE ODDS OF LIFE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Dave Kipping over at the Cool Worlds channel has always been a bit of a sceptic regarding the possibility of life elsewhere, especially technological life.  The reason why some biologists, like Jack Cohen and I, do think that life is fairly common and while intelligent life with technology may be rare, it is not that rare. However, Dave Kipping does have some mathematical arguments on his side (if you go down the Bayesian route — it’s a maths probability thing). However, work the past few years had pushed back evidence for first life to even earlier in the Earth’s life than before, and a recent paper extends the likely lifespan of our biosphere.  So, Dave Kipping has had a re-think and is coming around to our way of thinking…

There’s been some new studies in the fields of palaeontology that have changed my mind about one of the most profound questions – does life start easily on Earth-like planets? Join me today to find out why…

(11) OVER THE GARDEN WALL 10TH ANNIVERSARY SHORT. [Item by N.] Over the Garden Wall, an animated fantasy miniseries that has become an autumnal staple for many, premiered 10 years ago today. In celebration, Cartoon Network has released a stop-motion short with help from Aardman Animations.

Concurrently, Inverse has published an interview with series creator Patrick McHale, who both looks back and looks forward: “10 Years Later, the Creepiest Cult Classic Just Got a Huge Upgrade”.

Here’s an official mirror on X.com which can be seen outside the US.

(12) AI BLIGHT OF THE DAY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Generative AI is a blight, but sometimes it can make things like this – a music video for Game of Thrones in a Trailer Park. “A Song of Rednecks (Official Music Video)”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Matthew Sangster, N., Danny Sichel, 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 Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 5/7/21 Anything You Can Grok, I Can Grok Better

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(1) DOING MINISTRY WORK. Crooked Timber  is having an extended forum on Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For The Future: Below are the posts that have been made so far as part of “The Ministry for the Future seminar”.

Over the next ten days, we’re running a seminar on Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent novel about climate change and how our political and economic system might have to change to stop it, The Ministry for the Future. We’re happy to be able to do this – it’s an important book. Since it came out, it’s had an enormously enthusiastic reception (see e.g. Barack Obama and Ezra Klein). What we want to do in this seminar is not to celebrate it further (although it certainly deserves celebration) but to help it do its work in the world. So we’ve asked a number of people to respond to the book, by arguing it through and, as needs be, arguing with it. Soon after the seminar finishes, we will publish a reply piece by Stan, and then make the seminar generally available under a Creative Commons license. As the pieces are published, I will update this post to provide hyperlinks, to make it easier for people to keep track.

And Adam Roberts didn’t want to be left out – in comments he linked to his review of the book at Sibilant Fricative: “Kim Stanley Robinson, ‘The Ministry for the Future’”.

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to dine with award-winning writer Aliette de Bodard in episode 144 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast. Edelman adds, ”And unless my anxiety overwhelms me, next week, I’ll record the first face to face episode in 14 months … with a fully vaccinated guest over takeout at a picnic table in a public park.”

Aliette de Bodard

It’s time to head off for a Vietnamese meal with the amazing Aliette de Bodard, who’s currently both a Hugo Award and Ignyte Award finalist for her story “The Inaccessibility of Heaven,” published last year in Uncanny.

She’s the author of the Hugo-Award-nominated series The Universe of Xuya, set in a galactic empire born out of Vietnamese history and culture. She’s also written the Dominion of the Fallen series, set in an alternate Paris devastated by a magical war, which includes The House of Shattered Wings, The House of Binding Thorns, and the The House of Sundering Flames.

Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, Subterranean, Tor.com, and other magazines. She’s won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a European Science Fiction Association Achievement Award, and four British Science Fiction Association Awards, in addition to being a finalist for the Hugo and Sturgeon Award. She was a double Hugo finalist in 2019 for Best Series and Best Novella, and was also a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009.

We discussed how best to deal with imposter syndrome, the way the pandemic contributed to her completing a long-unfinished story, the phone call which sparked her to focus on more personal stories, when she realized she was building universes rather than single stories, how anger over Revenge of the Sith gave her insight into the kinds of universes she did and didn’t want to build, why the Shadow and Bone TV adaptation wasn’t the escapist entertainment she hoped it would be, how writers can fight back against the cliches popular culture puts in our heads, whether writers can control the effects of their stories when they have no idea what individual readers might bring to them, how best to use anger appropriately, the importance of a story’s final line, what she wishes she’d known about writing rules when she began, and much more.

(3) A MODEL FAN. Part 2 of Fanac.org’s Zoom session interview with Erle and Steve Korshak is now online. Erle is nearly 98. (Part 1 is here,)

Erle Korshak, founder of the legendary Shasta Publishers, instrumental in the second Worldcon in 1940 (Chicon I), very likely the first SF bookseller, and a Guest of Honor at Chicon 8 (2022 Worldcon), sat with his son, Stephen, and fan historian Joe Siclari for a dive into his 80+ year SF fan career (April 2021). Part 2 of his interview is replete with entertaining anecdotes of well known fans and pros in the field such as Aldous Huxley, Charlie Hornig, and Bob Tucker. Erle recounts a sweet tale of Frank R. Paul drawing on stencil, and a charming story of how he himself came to be the model for the Hubert Rogers cover for Heinlein’s “Revolt in 2100”. You’ll also hear convention stories, art stories and more. Best of all, Erle paints a clear picture of what science fiction fandom was like in the early, early days.

(4) COSTUMERS’ IDEAS ABOUT BEST PRACTICES. Another of Fanac.org’s many recent additions is the Kennedy Masquerade Compendium – even in 1981, they thought it was time to stop reinventing the wheel every year.

…It occurred to me, among others, that more input by costumers would be a GOOD THING. Further, that assembling a consensus of opinion on various aspects of costuming and of Masquerade operation could be a help to future Masquerade Committees. With this in mind, I composed a few tentative rules and sent them out to those costumers whose addresses were in my book, asking for comments, criticisms, and suggestions. Some of the rules were deliberately provocative; and they did indeed provoke the production of enough material for another letter, and then another another. From the answers received, and from some personal discussions, I arrived at this present set of Guidelines. Not everything here is agreed to by every person who contributed, but I have tried to make sure that each suggestion is supported by enough experienced costumers to represent a respectable body of opinion….

(5) HAND-TO-BUTTON COMBAT. ScreenRant presents “The 10 Most Bizarre Weapons In Sci-Fi Movies, Ranked”.

…Science-fiction and technology go hand in hand, with one influencing the other over the years. This had led to both fantastical imaginings and real-world applications. Sci-fi movies usually showcase this relationship using advanced spaceships, robots, and of course, weapons….

8. L.O.O.K.E.R. GUN

Michael Crichton’s Looker was an attempt at holding a mirror up to society’s obsession with media and beauty, while also presenting a mystery about a series of murders of recent plastic surgery patients. Looker was one of the first films to use computer-generated images to create a realistic human character.

The film also featured a truly odd weapon of choice for the killer, which was a gun that emitted pulses of light to hypnotize/blind its victims/give the bearer the illusion of invisibility. The gun was named the Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses, or L.O.O.K.E.R Gun, which means its vague purpose may be secondary to making the acronym work with the title of the film.

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • May 7, 1933 — On this day in 1933, King Kong premiered. It was directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay was written by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose from an idea by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong. Critics mostly loved it, the box office was quite amazing and the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an astonishing ninety eighty percent approval rating. It has been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the fourth greatest horror film of all time.  You can watch it here as it’s very much in the public domain. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 7, 1861 – Rabindranath Tagore.  Five stories, two poems for us available in English.  Composer, painter, philosopher, playwright, poet, social reformer.  First lyricist to win the Nobel Prize.  Two thousand songs; two chosen as national anthems.  Still largely unknown outside Bengal; try this.  (Died 1941) [JH]
  • Born May 7, 1915 — Henry Kuttner. While he was working for the d’Orsay agency, he found Leigh Brackett’s early manuscripts in the slush pile; it was under his guidance that she sold her first story to Campbell at Astounding Stories.  His own work was done in close collaboration with C. L. Moore, his wife, and much of they would publish was under pseudonyms.  During the Forties, he also contributed numerous scripts to the Green Lantern series. He’s won two Retro Hugos, the first at Worldcon 76 for “The Twonky” short story, the second at Dublin 2019 for “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”. (Died 1958.) (CE) 
  • Born May 7, 1918 – Walt Liebscher.  Fanziner best known for Chanticleer.  Harry Warner applauded “the incredible things Liebscher did with typewriter art.  He specialized in little faces with subtle expressions….  The contents page was frequently a dazzling display of inventive borders and separating lines.  Variety was imparted to some pages simply by running down one margin a repeated motif created from various characters”; here is C7 (PDF).  A score of short stories, half a dozen poems.  Correspondent of The Alien Critic, Astounding, Fantasy Advertiser, Voice of the Imagi-Nation, Le Zombie.  Fan Guest of Honor  at Ambercon 2, Archon 6.  Big Heart (our highest service award).  (Died 1985) [JH]
  • Born May 7, 1923 — Anne Baxter. The Batman series had a way of attracting the most interesting performers and she was no exception as she ended playing two roles there, first Zelda and then she had the extended recurring role of Olga, Queen of the Cossacks. Other genre roles were limited I think to an appearance as Irene Adler in the Peter Cushing Sherlock Holmes film The Masks of Death. (Died 1985.) (CE) 
  • Born May 7, 1931 – Gene Wolfe.  Thirty novels, two hundred thirty stories, forty poems.  Correspondent of Algol, The Alien Critic, Fantasy Newsletter, NY Rev of SF, SF Chronicle, SF Commentary, SF Review, Speculation.  Interviewed in Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge, Interzone, Scheherazade, Solaris, StarShipSofa, Thrust, Univers (so spelled, it’s French), Vector.  Two Nebulas, five World Fantasy Awards including Lifetime Achievement, Campbell Memorial Award, Skylark, Rhysling, British SF Ass’n and British Fantasy Awards, SF Hall of Fame, SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) Grand Master. Guest of Honor at AutoClave 1, Baycon ’82, DucKon VIII, Balticon 40, Chambanacon 45-47, Aussiecon Two the 43rd Worldcon.  I can’t omit “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”, “The Death of Doctor Island”, “The Doctor of Death Island”, “Death of the Island Doctor”.  (Died 2019) [JH]
  • Born May 7, 1939 — Francis Ford Coppola, 82. Director / Writer / Producer. THX 1138 was produced by him and directed by George Lucas in his feature film directorial debut in 1971. Saw it late at night after some serious drug ingestion with a redhead who was seriously into Morrison — strange experience that was. Other genre works of his include Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a episode of Faerie Tale Theatre entitled “Rip Van Winkle”, Twixt (a horror film that I’m betting almost no one here has heard of), Captain EO which featured Michael Jackson, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jeepers Creepers and Jeepers Creepers 2. (CE)
  • Born May 7, 1940 — Angela Carter. She’s best remembered for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories where she took fairy tales and made them very adult in tone. Personally I’d recommend The Curious Room insteadas it contains her original screenplays for the BSFA winning The Company of Wolves which starred Angela Lansbury and The Magic Toyshop films, both of which were based on her own original stories. Though not even genre adjacent, her Wise Children is a brilliant, if unsettling look at the theatre world. (Died 1992.) (CE)
  • Born May 7, 1943 – Ned Dameron, age 78.  Fifty covers, twoscore interiors.  Here is Trumpet 12.  Here is Showboat World.  Here (and here) is Sailing to Byzantium.  Here is the Nolacon II Hugo trophy (46th Worldcon).  Here are facing interior pages from Charlie the Choo-Choo.  [JH]
  • Born May 7, 1951 — Gary Westfahl, 70. SF reviewer for the LA Times,  the unfortunately defunct Internet Review of Science Fiction, and Locus Online. Editor of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders; author of Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (with George Slusser) and A Sense-of-Wonderful Century: Explorations of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films. (CE)
  • Born May 7, 1966 – Rachel Ann Nunes, age 55.  A dozen novels for us (some under another name), half a dozen shorter stories, three dozen books all told.  She says she’s “married, mostly grown up, and has seven kids, so life at her house can be very interesting (and loud)….  Her only rule about writing is never to eat chocolate at the computer.”  [JH]
  • Born May 7, 1982 – Bec McMaster, age 39.  Two dozen novels.  She says, “raised on myth and legend … offered her younger siblings to the goblin king many a time.  Unfortunately, he did not accept.”  Has read Jane Eyre, five-sixths of the Lymond Chronicles, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, The Count of Monte Cristo.  [JH]

(8) COMICS SECTION.

The Far Side has a clever Star Trek joke.

(9) BLACK CARTOONISTS. Never-before-collected comics from Chicago’s Black press: It’s Life as I See It curated by Dan Nadel and published by the New York Review Comics.

Between the 1940s and 1980s, Chicago’s Black press—from The Chicago Defender to the Negro Digest to self-published pamphlets—was home to some of the best cartoonists in America. Kept out of the pages of white-owned newspapers, Black cartoonists found space to address the joys, the horrors, and the everyday realities of Black life in America. From Jay Jackson’s anti-racist time travel adventure serial Bungleton Green, to Morrie Turner’s radical mixed-race strip Dinky Fellas, to the Afrofuturist comics of Yaoundé Olu and Turtel Onli, to National Book Award–winning novelist Charles Johnson’s blistering and deeply funny gag cartoons, this is work that has for far too long been excluded and overlooked. Also featuring the work of Tom Floyd, Seitu Hayden, Jackie Ormes, and Grass Green, this anthology accompanies the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition Chicago Comics: 1960 to Now, and is an essential addition to the history of American comics.

(10) WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS. For-profit conrunner Creation Entertainment is revving up an anniversary celebration: “Creation Entertainment’s 55-Year Mission Convention in Las Vegas”. It will take place August 11-15.

The year 2021 marks the 50th Anniversary of Creation Entertainment, the 55th Anniversary of Star Trek, the 20th Anniversary of our convention in Las Vegas, Gene Roddenberry’s 100th birthday year and William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy’s 90th birthday years. It’s the perfect time to celebrate and no city is better than Las Vegas to do just that!

With over 100 celebrity guests, we’ll have multiple tracks of non-stop programming, contests, music, cosplay and surprises, plus partying galore. We’ll immerse our attendees into the positive and loving atmosphere with thousands of other fans, as we all celebrate Gene Roddenberry’s legacy.

(11) PRIVATE ASTRONAUTS. “NASA, Axiom Space to Host Media Briefing on Private Astronaut Mission” says a NASA press release.

NASA and Axiom Space have signed a mission order for the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station and will host a teleconference with media at 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, May 10, to discuss more details about the mission.

NASA has opened up the space station for commercial activities, including private astronaut missions, as part of its plan to develop a robust and competitive economy in low-Earth orbit. NASA’s needs in low-Earth orbit – such as human research, technology development, and in-flight crew testing – will continue after the retirement of the International Space Station. Commercial industry will help meet these needs by providing destinations and transportation capabilities to continue these services as part of a broader low-Earth orbit economy. Enabling private astronaut missions to the station is an important step to stimulate demand for commercial human spaceflight services so that NASA can be one of many customers in low-Earth orbit.

The spaceflight, named Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), is scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2022 for an eight-day mission aboard the orbiting complex. The Axiom Space crew will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida…

(12) A FULLY-OPERATIONAL PLAYTHING. Eric Diaz, in “Kick Off Summer with a Giant Inflatable Death Star Beach Ball” at Nerdist, says that Star Wars fans will want to take this Giant Inflatable beach ball and kick it around the pool, pretending that Stormtroopers inside are flailing because of the powers of the Force!l

…Just think of all the fun you’ll have, imagining the stormtroopers inside. Each rolling around and hitting their dumb helmets on the walls. And all while kicking this Death Star across the park. Or better yet, throw it in your backyard pool. It’s just like when Death Star II crashes on the planet Kef Bir, the ocean moon of Endor. However you decide to play with it, or even just display that big sucker, it sure feels like the past year owes us all a giant inflatable battle station of our own….

(13) UP ALL NIGHT. Netflix dropped a trailer for Awake, a future where people can’t sleep. Airs June 9.

Chaos ensues after a global event wipes out all electronics and takes away humankind’s ability to sleep. But Jill (Gina Rodriguez), an ex-soldier with a troubled past, may hold the key to a cure in the form of her own daughter.

(14) RESCUED ROMERO FILM.  Another trailer dropped for The Amusement Park, a film George Romero directed in 1973 which has been suppressed until now, that has been released on Shudder.

An elderly gentleman goes for what he assumes will be an ordinary day at the amusement park, only to find himself in the middle of a hellish nightmare instead. Shot by George A. Romero between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, The Amusement Park is a bleak, haunting allegory where the attractions and distractions of an amusement park stand in for the many abuses that the elderly face in society. 4K digital restoration commissioned by the George A. Romero Foundation and carried out by IndieCollect.

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