Tag Archives: George Takei

Pixel Scroll 2/10/25 The Filer Who Sold Another Moon-Based Title

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(1) HUGO HUNTING SEASON STARTS. The Seattle Worldcon today declared “2025 Hugo Nominations Open”.

I went and looked at their “Nominations Eligibility” page. All useful information. However, I was surprised to see how long the Best Series eligibility section needed to be in order to explain the restrictions on past winners (no longer eligible) and on renominating past finalists (in general, at least two additional installments in the series consisting of at least 240,000 words in aggregate must have been published between the end of that finalist’s last eligibility year and December 31, 2024).

(2) SUPERKERFUFFLE. [Item by Dann.] Superman actor Dean Cain has become the focal point of a kerfuffle on X.com. 

On February 8, ScreenRant posted to X.com a photo of six actors who have portrayed Superman.

The next day DCU World – apparently an unofficial fan account — posted a modified version of the same image. The significant difference was that Dean Cain had been edited out.

Fans of Dean Cain have been pointing out the omission ever since.

And Dean Cain cast a jaundiced eye on the change.

Why would someone do this? Possibly because Dean Cain is a vocal Trump supporter. Or because in 2021 he slammed DC Comics’ decision to have Superman come out as bisexual.

…“They said it’s a bold new direction, I say they’re bandwagoning,” the 55-year-old actor told Fox & Friends First on Tuesday. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave….

This was George Takei’s reaction at the time:

(3) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman recalls “The Day I Should Have Defended Herb Trimpe” in Episode 18 of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast.

Another look back on my early comics career has me considering the possible reason Robert De Niro’s Max Cady character cared about Captain Marvel in the 1991 movie Cape Fear, the day Jim Shooter and I parachuted out of an airplane (and why an ambulance was called), my surprise over a 1974 House of Mystery submission to editor Joe Orlando, why 2025 Scott is curious about what Crystal leaving the Fantastic Four meant to the 1970 fanboy I was, the reason Doc Savage and Scooter Pies are inextricably linked in my memory, my regret over not having defended artist Herb Trimpe from his detractors, and much more.

Here’s where all episodes across all platforms can be found — Why Not Say What Happened? [Click below for larger image.]

A F.O.O.M. article about my jump with Jim Shooter

(4) ANTON HUR Q&A. “Mandana Chaffa uses the otherworldly premise of Anton Hur’s novel Toward Eternity as a springboard to discuss Hur’s path to translation, community, and immortality” — “’Making Space for Each Other’: Anton Hur on Toward Eternity, Translation, and Immortality” at Words Without Borders.

MC: I’ve long admired your advocacy and generosity for the art and its practitioners by supporting translators’ rights, providing guidance, and, of course, being part of the Smoking Tigers. Is this a golden age of translation? I know we’ve been talking about eternity, but what do you hope to see more of in the present?

AH: I got a bizarre message recently from a Korean translators collective who said they were launching and had no wish to compete with Smoking Tigers. It was an odd thing to say to me. The whole reason we set up Smoking Tigers was to collaborate with each other, and our policy has always been to encourage the rise of a thousand translator collectives, but perhaps because we have been so spectacularly successful as individual translators, people have this notion of Smoking Tigers as being the Bene Gesserit or something. We’re just very close friends who happen to be in the same industry and occasionally workshop together. It’s not that special— anyone can make a collective! We just happen to be one of the earliest, that’s all. I’m often told that I’m an advocate for translators, which is very kind of people to say, but my advocacy is very self-serving. I mean, I am literally a literary translator myself, so if I’m advocating for literary translators, doesn’t that mean I’m essentially advocating for myself? Even when I see a great sample someone else did in a workshop and try to connect that translator to an editor I think would be interested in it, that’s because I believe that only by making an effort to publish the best translations can the ecosystem—and myself—truly thrive. There are so many great translators out there with wonderful projects, and I want to see them published, and yet publishing is so inefficient in finding these gems. If I can step into the breach, I try to, for the sake of the ecosystem and, by extension, myself. It’s all about me in the end; I don’t think much beyond that….

(5) INCITEFUL? “Israeli Police Raid Palestinian Bookshops in East Jerusalem” reports the New York Times (article is behind a paywall).

For decades, the Educational Bookshop has been a cultural cornerstone of East Jerusalem, its two outlets hosting foreign diplomats, feting prominent authors and providing readers with both sides of the story in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

This weekend, the Israeli police raided the stores and arrested their two owners after concluding that books being sold there — including a children’s coloring book — could incite violence. The police said they seized a number of books in the raids on Sunday.

The shops were initially closed on Monday, but later opened despite a judge ordering the brothers who own the stores, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, to remain in detention until Tuesday morning amid a police investigation. They were also ordered to be held under house arrest for five days following their release and banned from returning to their bookshops for 15 days.

Murad Muna, a brother of the two owners who reopened one of the stores on Monday afternoon, denied that the books sold there promoted violence. In fact, he said, the books passed Israeli censors when they were imported from abroad.

“We believe that this is a political, not a legal detention,” the lawyer for the two arrested men, Nasser Oday, said outside the courthouse in Jerusalem after the hearing.

In a statement, the police said the shops were searched on Sunday for books suspected of containing “inciting content.” It said detectives “encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s coloring book titled ‘From the Jordan to the Sea.’”

The slogan “from the river to the sea” has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually interpreted by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 10, 1953 — John Shirley, 72.

Did you know that John Shirley has written an historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp — Wyatt in Wichita? I wonder how many of our sff writers beside him and Emma Bull (whose novel Territory was decidedly not historical) have written novels on this incident and the individuals there? 

I really enjoyed his third novel City Come A-Walkin which I think is a brilliant rendering of a City come to life. 

I’ll admit I’m not much at all for grim dystopian SF but I did find his A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona fascinating if in a horrifying manner.

His best known script work is The Crow film, for which he was the initial writer, before David Schow reworked the script. I’m not sure he got actually any credit at all. He also wrote scripts for Poltergeist: The Legacy.

I see that to my surprise he wrote an episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.  He also an episode of Batman Beyond, “Sentries of the Last Outpost” which was about hard core players of a virtual reality role-playing game are recruited by the alleged creator of the game for his own purposes.

He wrote novels in the Aliens, Doom, Halo, Predators franchise, Borderlands video gaming, Resident Evil, DC metaverse and the Grimm series. 

Do tell me what else you enjoyed by him. 

John Shirley

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) TRANSITION. Tony Isabella is now Jenny Blake, the news signal boosted by Mark Evanier in “Tony/Jenny” at News From ME.

…You see, that person is still alive. He’s just no longer Tony Isabella…and here’s where I get into what Daffy Duck would call “Pronoun Trouble.” She is now Jenny Blake, having announced today that she has transitioned to what she feels is the proper gender identification for her. I’ve known about this for a while and as far as I’m concerned, the only bad part of this is the Pronoun Trouble it creates….

(9) THE SIMS 25TH ANNIVERSARY. “The Sims Turned Players Into Gods. And Farmers. And Vampires. And Landlords.” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god.

“I don’t think God would concern himself with taking out the trash and cleaning the toilet,” he quipped while chain-smoking cigarettes. Besides, he’s an atheist.

But what is better shorthand to describe the man who created The Sims? The influential video game allowed players to act like gods themselves, building virtual neighborhoods populated by virtual families who pay virtual bills and complete virtual chores.

Players could improve the lives of their Sims by constructing McMansions filled with plush couches and flat-screen televisions. Or they could become vengeful, directing Sims to light fireworks indoors and paddle to exhaustion in a swimming pool with no exit.

Twenty-five years later, players are continuing to push the boundaries. Sure, there are glitzy houses and happy families in The Sims 4. But by modifying the game’s code, players have created a health care system as byzantine as the real American one and taught Sims how to wield pistols and knives. The game’s official expansion packs offer their own weirdness. Sims can become vampires and witches. They can even play The Sims.

“I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic,” Wright, 65, said. “I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed.”

The Sims was a sandbox for the American dream when it was released on Feb. 4, 2000, with Wright pulling inspiration from biology, architecture, comics and psychology to dictate the rules of his virtual dollhouse. It was an unusual proposal at a time when most games were goal-oriented and linear, and a predecessor to create-your-own-adventure games like Minecraft that give players a pick axe and carte blanche.

Although more than 500 million people have played games in the Sims franchise, which is particularly popular with women, it was originally seen as a risk. Executives at the game studio Maxis had urged Wright to focus instead on the SimCity franchise, his urban-planning simulator from 1989 that had put the company at the forefront of American game design. “Everyone in the room hated the idea of The Sims,” Wright recalled.

The outlook initially worsened after Electronic Arts acquired Maxis in 1997. Some managers wanted the game to be less realistic; others wanted to prevent it from being released at all.

But other leaders saw promise in Wright’s vision. “We wanted to make SimCity bigger,” said Luc Barthelet, who was then an Electronic Arts executive and brought in key resources for The Sims’s development team. “But we also needed to invest in designers like Will who were extremely talented and doing things that were different.”…

(10) VISIT FROM THE SUCK FAIRY? However, the Guardian’s Bex April May cries “Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember”.

… I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it’ll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.

And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you’re on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There’s simply no time to make friends, something I didn’t remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood’s messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically ‘Play in bed,’ thanks to the Livin’ it Up expansion pack that provided the world’s most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There’s nothing dark about that expansion’s heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life….

(11) DOES IT PAY TO BE NICE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis has had the first of two episodes of a documentary on BBC Radio 4. (You can access the documentary here.)

This novel came out before the Narnia books that so far have sold over 100 million copies. That Hideous Strength is that last in Lewis’s so-called space trilogy. Set in a somewhat dystopic, increasingly totalitarian, post-war Britain, it sees a woman’s dreaming enabling her to travel. But shadowy government agencies are in the mix but another nation appears to have a frightening programme of their own and apparently there is something hideous, alien, evil even, in the mix…

We’re not in Narnia anymore. It’s the late 1940s and an exhausted Britain is trying to recover from the war. The establishment of NICE (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) seems to offer a positive future. There are confident predictions of a cure for cancer and new treatments for antisocial behaviour that will made prisons redundant. A tech revolution is blooming without restraint and NICE are secretly experimenting with the creation of trans-human beings of superior intellect. C S Lewis’s ‘modern fairy tale for grown-ups’ warns of a world where technocrats are kings.

Part one of a BBC Radio audio drama version of the story can be heard here: “CS Lewis: That Hideous Strength”.

(12) BITE ME. According to NPR, “Scientists grew human-like teeth in pigs. Here’s how and why”. So you won’t have to get dentures, but you will never be able to eat bacon ever again.

But researchers may be on track to developing a way to grow new, living teeth replacements. In a paper published in late December, a team at Tufts University reported having successfully grown human-like teeth in pigs.

Pamela Yelick, a professor at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and lead researcher of the effort, said pigs have as many as five or six sets of teeth that grow throughout their lives.

If scientists can understand how pigs regrow and replace teeth so many times, Yelick said, they might be able to regrow teeth in people.

In their research, Yelick and her team took soft living tissue from both human and pig teeth, combined them in a lab, and then transplanted it into a mini pig’s mouth. They obtained the materials from pig jawbones and human teeth extracted for orthodontic reasons.

“In a few months, you can get a pretty good sized bioengineered tooth,” Yelick said, noting that while it’s “not perfect” in shape or size, the end product does closely resemble a natural tooth….

(13) ANCIENT ANIMAL MONSTER BURROWS.  [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Did giant ice age beasts carve these vast caves in South America?” asks Nature.  Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.

 For generations, these structures have puzzled travellers and scientists, who have debated how they formed. Explorers in the early twentieth century attributed the spaces to ancient Indigenous groups. But research in the past decade has coalesced around the theory that the caves were carved by extinct megafauna.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Kevin Lighton, 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, none other than lunar real estate salesman Daniel Dern. This is at least his fifth. But stick around — someday it will be his second fifth.]

Pixel Scroll 7/17/24 Night At The Space Opera

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(1) FANAC.ORG LOOKING FOR FANZINES TO SCAN AT WORLDCON. Joe Siclari, Mark Olson and Edie Stern say FANAC.org will be travelling to Glasgow next month.

We have arranged with the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon (August 8-12) to have a scanning station at the con, to scan and digitally archive more fanzines. This has been exceptionally helpful and successful at past conventions.

What you can do to help: Please help us grow this digital archive of fandom. If you’re a fanzine editor, bring your old fanzines to the fan table area at the con. If you have convention publications not already online, bring them too (fanac.org/conpubs/). We will scan them onsite and be able to give them back to you at con. Bring memorable and worthwhile fanzines by other editors as well. We will reach out to them for permission before we put them online.

We do have to unstaple and restaple the zines to scan them, and if they are perfect-bound, we may not have time at con.

If you can, please drop us a note (to Fanac@fanac.org) telling us what you are bringing so we can be prepared.

Stop by and say hello: Even if you don’t have fanzines or other pubs to scan, stop by the table and say hello, and pick up your history ribbon. We’d like to see you!

How big is it? The archive has over 24,500 fanzines, 5,000 convention pubs and more than 5,000 photos. It’s over half a million pages and grows every week!

(2) PARADIGM SHIFT? In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviews Chris Nashawaty’s new book The Future Was Now (Flatiron): “1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing”

…So, what is it with this fateful eight? Well, Nashawaty has a solemn case to make. He writes:

“During the eight weeks spanning between May 16 and July 9, Hollywood’s major studios would release eight sci-fi/fantasy films that would not only go on to become cornerstones in the pop culture canon four-plus decades on, they would also radically transform the way that the movie industry did—and continues to do—business, paving the way for our current all-blockbusters-all-the-time era.”

That is quite a claim. Nashawaty is by no means sure that he likes the result—“what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience”—but he proposes that, for most of us, going to the cinema is now “one endless summer,” which is much less sunny than it sounds. Like it or not, we live in a Conanistic world.

Whether or not you buy into this notion of 1982 as a red-letter year, it’s worth asking when the redness first began to dawn. Does Nashawaty, in his soothsaying capacity, even have the right decade? Note the elaborate tribute that he pays not only to Spielberg’s “Jaws” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars”—the first released in May, 1975, the second in June, 1977—but also to another summer hit, Scott’s “Alien,” from 1979, which seemed like a suppurating antidote to the antisepsis of “Star Wars.” (I still don’t comprehend how you can love both of those movies equally. You make your choice, and you stick to it.) Clamp the three together, top them with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which bore the imprint of Lucas and Spielberg, and there, I suggest, you have the precursor of 1982, and a more compelling template for so much that has blazed and crawled across our screens ever since.

Viewed from that perspective, what the filmmakers were doing, when they created the eight works that are covered in “The Future Was Now,” was not crunching through barriers or setting fresh trends. They were cashing in. This is not a lowly skill, or an easy one; indeed, in some respects, it is the raison d’être of the movie trade. But let’s not pretend that Hooper, Lisberger, Meyer, and the rest of the guys were a movement, conjoined by a common iconoclastic purpose.

(3) X MARKS A NEW SPOT. According to Deadline, “Elon Musk Is Moving SpaceX And X From California To Texas”

Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket ship maker SpaceX from California to Texas, blaming a new law   that bars school districts in the state from requiring that parents be notified of changes in their child’s gender identification.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law, the of its kind in the nation, on Monday. It says school staff can’t be required to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.

It also requires the California Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school….

(4) GET READY. “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” will be hosted at UCSD’s Epstein Family Ampitheater on Tuesday, July 23 at 7:30 pm. Reserved seating $25-$75. Tickets at the link.

Join us for a captivating evening as we bring together two iconic actors who have both portrayed the legendary character Sulu in the Star Trek universe. “A Tale of Two Sulus” features George Takei and John Cho in a dynamic conversation that delves into their shared legacy as Starfleet’s esteemed helmsman. Beyond their roles in Star Trek, Takei and Cho are celebrated authors of graphic novels and passionate advocates for social justice. This event promises an engaging exploration of their diverse careers, creative endeavors, and the impactful contributions they have made to important causes. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear from two trailblazing artists whose work continues to inspire and resonate across generations.

George Takei and John Cho. Moderated by Michael Giacchino

(5) COLLISION AWARDS. Animation Magazine has the list of “Animation and Motion Design Winners for the Inaugural Collision Awards”.

[The] Collision Awards, which honor animation across all disciplines (marketing and communications, commercials, TV, film, experimental, game and XR), were announced this morning. The awards honor work by studios, production companies, brands, agencies and individuals with a varied list of categories specifically focused on the intersection of creativity and technical skills unique to this community and inclusive of everyone working in the medium of animation and motion design.

The “Collision Awards 2024 Winner Reel” doesn’t identify what works the various clips come from, but it’s fun to watch.

(6) COMING TO FILM FESTIVALS. “Impressive Full Trailer for ‘Escape Attempt’ – A Cerebral Sci-Fi Short” explains FirstShowing.net.

“We’re here to help them survive. We’re here to free them.” Aggressive has revealed an official trailer for an indie sci-fi short film creation called Escape Attempt, from filmmakers Dan Shapiro & Alex Topaller. This is a full-on, 30 minute hard sci-fi film, which is also being pitched a series pilot. It already premiered at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival last year and won a Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. No idea when it will be out in full to watch, but it’s showing at the Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal next this summer. A soldier escapes from a WWII concentration camp. Once he is out, he finds himself on an unknown planet in an unknown future controlled by a homicidal alien race….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 17, 1954 – J. Michael Straczynski, 70.  

By Paul Weimer: For all the trouble the series had in getting produced, and getting aired, and me finding it on the dial when it was moved yet again, J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 is one of the defining SFF series in my science fiction diet and education.  

Is it a perfect show? No, and part of that is the capricious nature of television and the “unexpected” fifth season which leaves that season weaker than the others. And frankly, I do like Bruce Boxleitner much better as Captain Sheridan than I do Michael O’Hare in the first season as Commander Sinclair. I can kind of see where Straczynski was going to possibly go with Sinclair had he been allowed to do so and he gets it most of the way there (my theory: Babylon Squared would have been a fifth season show, and so Sinclair ends his time here by going back and becoming Valen, after defeating the Shadows). But what we got is pretty darned special to me. I’m on my third iteration of having physical media of the shows (four if you count me trying to videotape episodes back in the 90’s). 

The post Babylon 5 series Straczynski works are of course a mixed bag. The movies are a mixed bag to be sure. Crusade had some interesting ideas but never got a chance to actually do its thing.  I did highly enjoy the animated Babylon 5 movie, The Road Home. I honestly don’t think it works except for deep Babylon 5 fans, but that’s me, so it did feel like coming home. 

Of course, one can’t talk about Straczynski without mentioning his huge impact on a number of different comic runs. I suspect that for a lot of fans, Babylon 5 is off to the side, forgotten. Instead, his fans can talk endlessly about his numerous comic projects and runs. It is his runs with Squadron Supreme, Spiderman, Superman, and a number of others (mostly recently, a new take on Captain America) that for a whole slew of fans defines what Straczynski is a writer. 

I only found out years later after the fact that he was a writer on a weird cartoon I watched in the 1980’s. No, not He-Man, although he wrote for them and was one of the minds behind the original She-Ra.  No, the strange and weird and wondrous Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which had the titular character fight malevolent plant creatures…in SPAAACE.  What can I say, the 1980’s were weird, man.  But it goes to show the wide breadth and interests of Straczynski’s work.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Speed Bump warns that the picture has left the attic.
  • Wizard of Id knows people have heard this motif before!

(9) WHATCHAMACALLIT. “’Alien: Earth’: FX’s ‘Alien’ Series Gets Official Title” – Variety has the story.

FX‘s upcoming “Alien” series has a new title, according to network boss John Langraf and showrunner Noah Hawley: “Alien: Earth.”

… “Alien: Earth” serves as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” which kicked off a franchise that is now comprised of eight films. Alongside Hawley’s series, a new film titled “Alien: Romulus” is set to debut later this summer….

(10) POSTER CHILDREN. Collider presents “All 11 ‘Star Wars’ Movie Posters, Ranked”.

…Not counting the animated Clone Wars movie, there have been 11 movies in the Star Wars series to date: nine encompassing the Skywalker Saga, and two spin-off movies. The posters for all of those are ranked below, based partly on how well they tie to the film they’re attached to, but based mostly on how visually striking they look overall. To those who might disagree, too bad, because “I am the Senate” and have “unlimited power.”

Collider says the worst poster is the one for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

There’s a horse on the poster for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but no room was given to Carrie Fisher, even though she was rather confusingly first billed, owing to prior footage of her being incorporated into the movie. Princess Leia still plays a part in the film, and was likely to be given a bigger one had Fisher not sadly passed away. Han and Luke were featured prominently on other sequel trilogy movie posters, but maybe there was a good reason not to feature Leia here.

There’s a goofy blaster round visible, thanks to Poe (a running theme across the two worst Star Wars posters), Zorii Bliss is featured way too prominently for a character who does basically nothing, and even the apparent clashing of two lightsabers looks clunky. Kylo Ren’s helmet is there, and presumably another Kylo Ren is holding that red lightsaber? And the placement of the Millennium Falcon between Rey and Kylo looks dreadful. This one’s pretty bad overall; a lackluster poster for a lacking (and overlong) movie.

(11) KEEP IT UP. “Former Space Agency Leaders Horrified by Plan to Destroy Space Station, Say It Would Be Easier to Save It” reports Futurism.

…The aging orbital outpost’s demise has been in the works for years now, with NASA hoping to destroy it by 2030, marking the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation in Earth’s orbit.

And not everybody’s happy with the plan. Jean-Jacques Dordain, who was the director general of the European Space Agency when the station was being built, and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin say its life should be extended instead, giving future scientists a chance to continue studying outer space.

“As two among many builders of ISS, we recommend to those in charge to consider other options than destroying” the station, Dordain told Forbes in an interview.

Instead, he argued, the ISS should be transferred “to future generations… leaving them to decide” its fate, he added.

To do it, Dordain and Griffin argue SpaceX’s deorbit vehicle should be used to rescue the station, not destroy it. Such a rocket would increase the ISS’s altitude, not lower it, allowing it to enter a stable orbit much farther from the Earth.

In an open letter published by SpaceNews earlier this month, the two space agency legends argued that boosting the ISS “from its present 400-kilometer altitude to an 800-kilometer altitude circular orbit requires a boost of about 220 meters per second, about the same as required for precise deorbit control.”…

(12) WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN! [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This student has designed and built a model rocket using standard Estes solid fuel rocket motors that can takeoff and land vertically. He designed a two-axis gimbal so that he would have thrust vector control plus the microcontroller and software to integrate sensor data and drive the gimbal to keep the rocket vertical. Separate Estes motors were used for ascent and decent. He also designed landing gear to absorb the shock of any slight off-vertical landing. “High School Student Makes Model Rocket That Can Land Vertically, Like A Falcon 9 Booster” at IFL Science.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), Jeffrey Smith, 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 (and night) Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/16/24 No Clouds Were Shouted At In The Making Of This Scroll

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(1) ON THE 101. Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie are back with episode 43 of the Science Fiction 101 podcast: “Triffids, Cuckoos and Lichen: John Wyndham”.

We’re back, with an episode about the great British SF writer John Wyndham. On many occasions we’ve found ourselves talking about his books – such as The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos – but now we attempt to do them justice with a closer look.

(2) 100%. Philip Athans asserts, “All Fantasy And Science Fiction Is Allegorical” at Fantasy Author’s Handbook.

…I talked a lot about monsters as metaphor, what could be described as the allegorical nature of monsters, in my book Writing Monsters. Of course, I’m not the only person to have ever identified that. In “Re-reading John Wyndham, I” Alexander Adams wrote of the monsters in Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids…

The triffids are not the subject of the story. Indeed, they are little more than a means to hasten the break-up of society and add an element of the unknown to an otherwise mundane catastrophe—widespread blindness. Wyndham is not interested in triffids per se but in examining how societal norms fragment under pressure and how difficult it is for man to adjust his expectations under extraordinary circumstances. Old habits and customs outlive their usefulness; sentiment can undermine necessary pragmatism; excessive ruthlessness can impose intolerably inhumane conditions; good intentions can lead to barbaric outcomes.

Again the emphasis above is mine. This is the allegorical heart of Day of the Triffids.

So then does that mean we all have to become “political writers,” like George Orwell or write overtly allegorical fiction like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in an effort to school our readers on some political, social, economic, or religious stance? No. Of course not. But I maintain that no matter our intentions, we actually all engage in allegory, and everything we write, one way or another, has a theme/message behind that….

(3) STAR TREK, CLARION, AND COMIC-CON PACKAGES. “New UC San Diego initiative features Star Trek stars, new Clarion masterclass and housing during Comic-Con” reports KPBS.

As part of a new initiative to commemorate Comic-Con at UC San Diego, the university will host Star Trek actors and writers George Takei and John Cho, and open their renowned and exclusive Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop to the a public via a one-day masterclass.

The university will also offer campus housing during Comic-Con for all UC affiliates and alumni, any current UC/CSU/community college students and participants in the masterclass. This is significant given that Comic-Con week is a notoriously challenging time to secure a hotel stay.

While UCSD is best known for its contributions to science and technology, it has also built a vibrant arts community. The university hopes sci-fi may bring both worlds closer together….

… UCSD is calling their Comic-Con-adjacent programming “The Science of Story.” It will be centered around the pre-con masterclass offered by the folks responsible for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop….

… This will be the first year that the public can gain access to Clarion through a special masterclass on Tuesday, July 23. It’s a full day of instruction and keynotes about the fundamentals of speculative fiction, and includes lunch and dinner.

Instructors and teaching artists include comic book writer Alyssa Wong (“Star Wars: The High Republic”); fiction writer and poet Isabel Yap (“Never Have I Ever”); O. Henry Prize winner ‘Pemi Aguda (“GhostRoots”); novelist and former physicist Emet North (“In Universes”); and special guest, writer Nalo Hopkinson….

… Another major component of UCSD’s Comic-Con initiative is a series of “Star Trek” events. George Takei and John Cho have both portrayed the character of Sulu at different points in the franchise — and are both writers and graphic novelists. Takei and Cho will hold an evening event to discuss the character, the series and their work as graphic novelists.

“A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” is Wednesday, July 24 at Epstein Family Amphitheater on campus. The following night, the San Diego Symphony will live score a screening of “Star Trek Beyond (2009).”…

Comic-Con housing packages at UC San Diego:

Details and registration here. Comic-Con badges are not included.

The Enterprise Package: Housing only 
Open to UC affiliates and alumni, and students enrolled in any UC, CSU, or California community college.

  • $640 per package
  • Check in: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
  • Check out: Sunday, July 28, 2024
  • Four night single-room stay (with shared common area/restrooms)
  • Free daily breakfast
  • MTS five-day transit pass, eligible for the Blue Line trolley
  • Access badge for public Park & Market events in downtown San Diego (July 24-July 28)

The Starfleet Package: Housing and “The Science of Story” programs
Open to the general public

  • $1,200 per package
  • Check in: Tuesday, July 23, 2024
  • Check out: Sunday, July 28, 2024
  • Five night single-room stay (with shared common area/restrooms)
  • Free daily breakfast
  • MTS five-day transit pass, eligible for the Blue Line trolley
  • Clarion Writers Masterclass (Wednesday, July 24), with lunch and dinner included
  • Access badge for public Park & Market events in downtown San Diego (July 24-July 28)
  • Opening night reception
  • VIP ticket for “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Tuesday, July 23)
  • VIP ticket for “Star Trek in Concert with the San Diego Symphony” at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Wednesday, July 24)
  • Ticket to “JAWS” screening at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Friday, July 26) 

The Holodeck Package: “The Science of Story” programs only (no housing)
Open to the general public

  • $425 per package
  • Clarion Writers Masterclass (Wednesday, July 24), with lunch and dinner included
  • Access badge for public Park & Market events in downtown San Diego (July 24-July 28)
  • Opening night reception
  • VIP ticket for “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho” at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Tuesday, July 23)
  • VIP ticket for “Star Trek in Concert with the San Diego Symphony” at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Wednesday, July 24)
  • Ticket to “JAWS” screening at Epstein Family Amphitheater (Friday, July 26) 

(4) BRADBURY TO BOK. Heritage Auctions’ “2024 June 20 – 23 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction #7374” includes a 5-page “Ray Bradbury to Hannes Bok – Illustrated and Signed Letter (January | Lot #94003”.

Ray Bradbury to Hannes Bok – Illustrated and Signed Letter (January 1, 1941). Written by Ray Bradbury to illustrator Hannes Bok, this five-page letter offers an incredibly juicy window into the personal drama of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

It includes the newsworthy line, “He [Hasse] and I [Bradbury] are both bi-sexual and we both agree that you [Bok] are, too. Don’t fool yourself.” 

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

June 16, 1896 — Murray Leinster. (Died 1975).

By Paul Weimer: Murray Leinster. Not many people get an award named after one of their stories, but Murray Leinster managed that feat.  

Murray Leinster

I read his “Sidewise in Time” (for which the Sidewise Award for Alternate History is named) decades ago. I read it as part of my first full on dunking into Alternate Histories back in the 1980s, when I was trying to read every bit of AH I could get my paws on.  Unlike a lot of those stories and worlds, Murray Leinster instead gives us a sort of a multiverse of worlds, The sheer variety of worlds crammed into the story, a story where temporary conjunctions of parallel worlds throws a bevy of people into alternate worlds, and things from those worlds into our own, showed the pulp sensibilities of Leinster in full.  When I would later read Frederik Pohl’s “The Coming of the Quantum Cats”, I saw the homage to Leinster’s “Sidewise in Time” straightaway.

Alternate history is hardly Leinster’s only badge of honor of prediction, or as a forerunner in the science fiction field. “A Logic Named Joe”, in a time when computers were in their infancy, depicted a world with an internet. In these days with AI and the perils of information on the internet, the story and its plot seems more relevant than ever. But as off kilter as the logics go in that story, even Leinster didn’t predict an internet that, tainted by AI, would offer recipes for pizza that involve glue.

“The Runaway Skyscraper”, one of his earliest stories (and written before “Sidewise in Time” by over a decade) didn’t invent the time travel story. However, it helped give it a form in a 20th Century vein.  For reasons beyond understanding, a skyscraper slips several thousand years in the past, and the building occupants must come together to figure out how to survive…and how to return to their modern day, if they can. 

Leinster is a writer who started in the pulps and kept writing into the 1950’s and 1960’s, managing a transition that very few writers of his era were able to accomplish. His staying power isn’t super dense characterization, it’s his vivid imagination and ideas that he scatters like candy throughout his work. Take his story “Exploration Team” which has an amazing wild alien planet for the protagonist to cross…accompanied by his animal companions, including uplifted bears! 

Oh, and the spaceship in the opening scenes of Starcrash is named the Murray Leinster. 

(6) COMICS SECTION.

(7) ROOMINATIONS. I’m old enough (yes, I’m fucking old, did I forget to mention that?) that I read the Harrison paperback when it came out and had watched the TV show with a comparable title in first run, so as soon as I read the headline…I knew! “Long-Dead TV Show Forced Soylent Green To Change Its Name” at Slashfilm.

…”Soylent Green” was based on the 1966 novel “Make Room! Make Room!” by Harry Harrison. Back in 1984, Harrison was interviewed by Danny Peary for his book “Omni’s Screen Flights – Screen Fantasies: The Future According to SF Cinema,” and Harrison noted that the makers of “Soylent Green” couldn’t use his original title — an allusion to overpopulation — for a mindless reason. It seems the studio felt it was too close to the title of the 1953 sitcom “Make Room for Daddy.”… 

(8) DC COMICS UNIVERSITY. Ngozi Ukazu tells “How Big Barda and Jack Kirby Changed My Life” at DC.

“The Ties That Bind,” an episode from my favorite animated series Justice League Unlimited, opens like this: a woman watches an entire train drop onto a poor, doomed escape artist. It pulverizes him. The woman rushes over and, with amazing strength, flings scraps of the wreckage aside like gift wrap. But the escape artist is already behind her, smug and completely unharmed. This superwoman embraces him, but because she is also extremely annoyed, she scolds him, picking him clean off his feet.

When I watched this unfold for the first time as a teenager, my mind was successfully boggled. I had questions. Namely: “Who is that woman? And, oh my god…is that tiny man her husband?”

This was my introduction to Big Barda and the escape artist Mister Miracle, heroes of Jack Kirby’s epic Fourth World. Barda was brawny, brash, and had a huge bleeding heart—and yes, that Houdini in the red, green, and yellow was her husband, Scott Free. The episode trotted out other incredible Fourth World staples including Granny Goodness and Kalibak, Boom Tubes and Mother Boxes, and even the super-prison, the X-Pit. Needless to say, this animated adventure left a lasting impact on me. Because over the last two years, I’ve had the pleasure of writing and illustrating Barda, the newest DC graphic novel for Young Adults….

…Barda is a graphic novel for teens…but it is also kinda my thesis submission for a master’s degree in Jack Kirby studies from DC Comics University. For two years, I dove headfirst into Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, and I didn’t just read the comics, oh no. To ensure that Barda was developed with precision, I read and watched Jack Kirby interviews, searching for the thematic DNA of New Genesis and Apokolips. I learned about Kirby’s obsession with mythology, religion, and morality, and his fascination with the Free Love movement. And of course, I read my textbooks—New Gods (1971), Mister Miracle (1971), and The Forever People (1971)—to understand the rules of Barda’s world and the cosmic stakes that went with them. Call me a purist, but my focus was narrow. I only deviated to read Walt Simonson’s brilliant solo series Orion—a virtuoso performance. But for the most part, I wanted the story straight from the King himself.

(9) PRAISE FOR METROPOLIS. ScreenRant introduces a Corridor Crew commentary on movie effects: “’So On Point’: Most Influential Sci-Fi Movie Ever Stuns VFX Artists 97 Years Later”.

The most influential sci-fi movie ever made, Metropolis, has stunned a group of VFX artists with its unique practical effects 97 years later, showing why the film still holds up in the present day. The 1927 German silent film showcases a worker’s rebellion against the rich and powerful in a dystopian, futuristic city. Even in the present day, it is regarded as one of the best science fiction movies ever made for acting as a key influence on the genre for almost a century after its release.

Now, Corridor Crew has reaction to the VFX used in Metropolis, stunned by how the practical effects bring the film to life still hold up 97 years later.

Starting at 9:46, the group talks about how the movie used meticulous drawings to make its impressive effects, while mirrors were also used to make convincing shots and scene transitions. Check out what they had to say about the movie below:

“What you’re looking at here is that they’re building a miniature of the set off to one side, and they’re filming the real set on the other side, and in between the two is a mirror at a 45-degree angle. And they’ve lined up their reflection of the miniatures to line up with the real set, and then they scraped off the backing on half the mirror. So you’re seeing through part of it, and seeing the reflection on the other part of it. They used to mirror to do live compositing of two images.

“They don’t have the tools at this era to do hold-out mats on the film and only expose part of it and do the rest. You can do that, but it’s very janky, you’d have to do it very manually. Instead, they have two sets, both full size, and they just have a pane of glass. But this time, they’ve configured the frame that holds the mirror to be able to slide it in and out, and they actually scratched off different pieces of that mirror to make certain parts of the glass transparent, and other parts reflective…”

(10) STEVE’S HEROES. Steve Vertlieb was interviewed for the 30+ Minutes with H. P. Lovecraft podcast – “Meet Your Heroes”.

Steve Vertlieb talks about befriending Horror Writer and Protégé of Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, as well as meeting others he regards as his heroes.

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended is there to record “Super Café – New Suit Jitters”.

Superman is a little anxious about his new suit and the reboot so Batman is offering him some pointers. Deadpool shows up with a little advice of his own.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/9/23 My Mother Did-A Tell Me That I Go Pixel Scroll, And Read All The File Seven

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(1) WHERE HAVE YOU GONE JOE DIMAGGIO? PrimaMedia.ru says on October 9 “Science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko will open the visiting session of LiTR-2023 in Harbin”. Harbin is a city in China. The author will proceed there from another literary event in Vladivostok. But so far there is no coverage on Lukyanenko’s blog or in his social media about his role as a GoH of the Chengdu Worldcon during the week of October 18-22. Speculation whether he is really coming has been fueled by the minimal publicity the Worldcon has given him compared to its other GoHs. However, since Lukyanenko will be crossing the border into China to do something just 10 days before the Worldcon, perhaps he will be there.  

The Sixth Pacific International Festival “Literature of Pacific Russia” (6+), dedicated to the literary heritage of the country and the Far East, and the Fair-Festival of Book and Urban Culture “Red Square. Far East” (6+), a project created by the team of the Moscow International Fair of Intellectual Literature non / fictioN and the Book Festival “Red Square” (6+), will be held in Vladivostok on October 6-8, 2023.

Popular Russian science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko will not only traditionally take part in the sixth LiTR, but will also be part of the international delegation of the festival and will take part in the visiting session of the event (6+), which will be held on October 9 in Harbin (China), at the Institute of the Russian Language of Heilongjiang University, reports IA PrimaMedia.

…Of course, I will communicate in Russian with an interpreter, because, unfortunately, I do not speak Chinese. In general, I have been published in China quite often, especially lately. Just the other day, several novels were published. And I think that in Harbin there will be a sufficient number of readers who came not just to look at such an outlandish foreign guest, but to talk with the author they read…. 

(2) STAR TREK IN CHINA. “’Star Trek’ boldly goes to Beijing for first fan event” reports Yahoo!

Fans of the space adventure franchise “Star Trek” assembled in Beijing on Saturday for the first official activity of its kind to be held in mainland China.

Paramount’s multimedia sensation has a niche following in China, although interest in the science-fiction genre has grown with the recent success of several domestic hits.

“Star Trek Day” is celebrated each year on September 8 to commemorate the 1966 debut of the original US series, which has an ardent global fanbase.

AFP spoke to several fans who gathered at the venue in a central Beijing mall, many clad in the brand’s galactic travel uniforms or the pointed ears of its fictional “Vulcan” species.

“I think it has a kind of space utopia feeling,” said Ma Yuanyuan, 36, a translator and long-time fan.

She said the main appeal of “Star Trek” was the nostalgia it evokes for the early days of space exploration….

(3) STAR TREK ON THE PICKET LINE. NPR is there when “’Star Trek’ stars join the picket lines in Hollywood”.

Photo from NPR.

As Hollywood actors and writers continue their strike against major studios, one special picket line honored Star Trek and its many spinoffs. Castmates from the various generations of the show met on the picket line outside the gates of Paramount Pictures, where they once taped episodes.

Among them was OG Trekker George Takei, who played Lieutenent Sulu in the original 1960s series. He stood alongside LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 1990s. Burton had a message for studio executives who they’ve been on strike against:

“Y’all are losing profits, hand over fist. And I know that there are meetings happening in backrooms all over this town,” Burton said, adding “greed isn’t good for any of us. So let’s get real. Let’s come back to the table. Let’s make a fair and equitable deal and let’s get back to work.”

Takei said actors are struggling to make a living in the changing entertainment industry. “We’re here to ensure that the young actors coming up, building their careers, will have the incentive to keep on keeping on, rather than giving up and opening up a restaurant or something,” he said. “We want them to be able to survive on their art of acting. We’re here in solidarity to support their careers so that they can enjoy the career that LeVar and I have enjoyed.”

Actor Wil Wheaton, who grew up acting in Star Trek: The Next Generation was also on the picket lineand also talked about supporting up-and-coming actors, who are on strike for higher pay, more residuals and protections from artificial intelligence.

“Star Trek teaches us that we can create and sustain a world where everyone works together, where everyone has equal access and equal opportunity,” Wheaton said. “I am out here today to do for the future of my industry what SAG and WGA did for me back in the ’60s. I have a pension and health care and I was able to receive residual checks during the years that I did not work on camera. That really kept me going. And actors are coming up today in a world with streaming. And AI is really a threat that needs to be looked at and negotiated and managed.”…

(4) NEW ‘FREEDOM TO READ’ STATEMENT COMING. Publishers Weekly reports “ALA Seeks Member Input on Freedom to Read Statement Revision”. The schedule is at the link.

When it was first adopted some 70 years ago, the Freedom to Read Statement was considered a landmark document—a pointed response to the censorship running rampant in the McCarthy era. Now, in the midst of another historic attack on the freedom to read, the American Library Association has announced a series of “listening sessions” which could lead to a revision of the statement.

The review will include five virtual sessions, organized by theme and facilitated by an Intellectual Freedom Committee task force focused on revising the statement, which will gather ALA member input throughout the fall of 2023 and submit their findings to the Office of Intellectual Freedom for consideration. ALA leaders are “strongly encouraging” members to attend one or all of the upcoming listening sessions….

(5) SPACE COWBOY BOOKS. The Joshua Tree, CA bookstore has two online events in the coming days.

  • Flash Science Fiction Night Online Event – Online Flash Science Fiction Reading

Tuesday September 12th 6pm PT. Register for free here.

Join us online for an evening of short science fiction readings (1000 words or less) with authors Pedro Iniguez, Tonya R. Moore, and Renan Bernardo. Flash Science Fiction Nights run 30 minutes or less, and are a fun and great way to learn about new authors from around the world.

  • Online Reading & Interview with Eliane Boey

Tuesday September 19th 6pm PT. Register for free here.
Other Minds is a collection of two bold new novellas from Chinese Singaporean speculative fiction author, Eliane Boey

Signal\Tracer
A near-future cyberpunk story set in the digital world of Lion City, ruled by the Administration, for which two agents, Xi and Wei, must regulate an immersive mirror of their decaying Eastern city. That is, until Xi finds avatars controlled by dead users. The more she digs, the more questions are raised about her identity, the system, and her friendship with Wei.
Carrier
Ten years after her flagship project (the deep space hauler, Solar Endeavour) split in half while in orbit, aerospace designer Ming Wen is back, test-flying her new intelligent luxury orbiter, the Infinite Dream. The Dream is her chance at redemption, but also a chance at reconciliation with her estranged twenty-year-old daughter, Cora, who has joined the crew on the voyage. The launch is successful, but the mission might be doomed from the start. An uncanny presence has stowed away aboard the ship and now haunts Ming Wen. But on the Infinite Dream, there is no escape.
Get your copy of Other Minds here.

(6) BROUGHT TO YOU IN LIVING DEATH. Max Gladstone, in  “Conan and the City of the Extremely Online”, finds these Robert E. Howard stories remind him of something. Could it be – the Internet?

…Finally, after substantial eeriness, our heroes encounter Ms Exposition 1933, in this case a tall beautiful princess from prehistoric not-Egypt named Thalis. Conan asks what gives in this weird city. Thalis answers, well, here, I’ll type it out for you:

“Much of the time these people lie in sleep. Their dream-life is as important—and to them as real—as their waking life. You have heard of the black lotus? In certain pits of the city it grows. Through the ages they have cultivated it until, instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic. In these dreams they spend most of their time. Their lives are vague, erratic, and without plan. They dream, they wake, drink, love, eat, and dream again. They seldom finish anything they begin, but leave it half completed and sink back again into the slumber of the black lotus. That meal you found—doubtless one awoke, felt the urge of hunger, prepared the meal for himself, then forgot about it and wandered away to dream again.”

I’ll admit that “vague, erratic, and without plan” got me feeling… targeted with uncomfortable directness. But it was the bit where the guy heats up a meal, then wanders off to check his email, where I felt keenly that Howard was @ me across the decades….

(7) YAEL GOLDSTEIN-LOVE Q&A. “Berkeley author wrote her way through postpartum anxiety by embracing a sci-fi multiverse” in the San Francisco Chronicle.

…Q: So in a way your homesickness and postpartum anxiety led you into this sci-fi multiverse. Were you already a science fiction fan, or did it take you by surprise?

A: It took me completely by surprise. I had always written straight literary realism, and I never anticipated writing in this mashup of genres. But I’ve always read eclectically and I’m a tremendous fan of sci-fi, so in a way it’s predictable that I landed on this idea: What if at the moment of birth the laws of nature briefly change so that different possibilities not only exist side by side, but also affect each other? 

Once I said that, I felt, this is how it actually feels and now I can make sense of it in writing.

Q: Was there something in particular about the postpartum experience you thought sci-fi could explain better than realism?

A: The existential stakes of loving a person the way a parent loves a child. We are saddled with this existential urge to protect our kids, but there’s this profound gap between what we want to do and what we actually can do because we are human and our children are subject to chance. That was the No. 1 thing I wanted to capture with this sci-fi metaphor.

I also see psychotherapy patients, and the thing that most interests me in both careers is the human mind’s infinite depths and surprises. I feel like there are ways in which you can get at the utter strangeness of how our minds work so much better when you aren’t bound by the conventions of realism. Now that I’ve started writing that way, I feel like I’ll never stop….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 9, 1900 — James Hilton. Author of the novel Lost Horizon which was turned into a film, also called Lost Horizon by director Frank Capra. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La. Definitely not genre, but I was intrigued to discovered that he wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips which as you know became a 1939 film starring Robert Donat (who won an Oscar for his performance), and a 1969 remake with Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark. (Died 1954.)
  • Born September 9, 1922 — Pauline Baynes. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien’s lesser known works such as Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major and of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. With the help of cartographers from the Bordon military camp in Hampshire, Baynes created a map that Allen & Unwin published as a poster in 1970. Tolkien’s was generally pleased with that, though he didn’t at all like her creatures especially her Shelob. (Died 2008.)
  • Born September 9, 1935 — Topol. He’s best remembered for his role of Tevye the Dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof, on both stage and screen, but that’s not why he’s getting a Birthday.  No, that’s because it’s because he was Dr. Hans Zarkov in the 1980 Flash Gordon film. He’s got just two other genre appearances, once in Tales of the Unexpected as Professor Max Kelada  in the “Mr. Know-All” episode, and in the Bond film, For Your Eyes Only. (Died 2023.)
  • Born September 9, 1943 — Tom Shippey, 79. Largely known as a Tolkien expert, though I see he wrote a scholarly 21-page introduction to Flights of Eagles, a collection of James Blish work, and under the pseudonym of John Holm, he is also the co-author, with Harry Harrison, of The Hammer and the Cross trilogy of alternate history novels. And early on, he did a lot of SF related non-fiction tomes such as Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative (edited with George Slusser). 
  • Born September 9, 1949 — Jason Van Hollander, 73. A book designer, illustrator, and occasional author. His stories and collaborations with Darrell Schweitzer earned a World Fantasy Award nomination. It was in the Collection category, for Necromancies and Netherworlds: Uncanny Stories. I’m fairly sure he’s done a lot of work for Cemetery Dance which make sense as he’d fit their house style.
  • Born September 9, 1952 — Angela Cartwright, 71. Fondly remembered as Penny Robinson on the original Lost in Space. I rewatched several of them recently and the Suck Fairy was kind to them overall from a nostalgic viewpoint. She, like several of her fellow cast members, made an appearance in the Lost in Space film as a reporter, and again in the rebooted series as Shelia Harris in the “Echoes” episode. She appeared in the Logan’s Run series in “The Collectors” episode as Karen, and in Airwolf as Mrs. Cranovich in the “Eruption” episode.  
  • Born September 9, 1954 — Jeffrey Combs, 69. Though no doubt his best known genre role was as Weyoun, a Vorta, on Deep Space Nine. However, his genre portfolio is really, really long. it starts with Frightmare, a horror film in the early Eighties and encompasses some forty films, twenty-six series and ten genre games. He’s appeared on Babylon 5, plus three Trek series, Voyager and Enterprise being the other two, the Enterprise appearance being the only time an actor played two distinct roles in the same episode.  He’s played H.P. Lovecraft and Herbert West, a character by that author. Each multiple times. 
  • Born September 9, 1958 – Frank Catalano, 65. Half a dozen short stories in F&SF, Analog and others, plus a book review column in Amazing with Buck Coulson and stints as SFWA secretary and Nebula Awards Report editor. Better known for a later 25 years as a tech columnist (1994-2019) plus writing about science fiction for GeekWire, Seattle Times and others. Toastmaster and emcee at several cons, including several Norwescons, plus one fan GoH spot at Rustycon 4. 

(9) OATES ARTICLE. “Joyce Carol Oates on Women and the Roots of Body Horror” at CrimeReads, from the introduction to the anthology A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

Of mythological figures of antiquity, none are more monstrous than harpies, furies, gorgons—Scylla and Charybdis, Lamia, Chimera, Sphinx—nightmare creatures representing, to the affronted male gaze, the perversion of “femininity”: the female who in her physical being repulses sexual desire, rather than arousing it; the female who has repudiated the traditional role of submission, subordination, maternal nurturing. Since these fantasy figures have been created by men, we can assume that the female monster is a crude projection of male fears; she is the embodiment of female power uncontrolled by the male, who has most perversely taken on some of the qualities of the male hero—physical prowess, bellicosity and cunning, an appetite for vengeance and cruelty. As in the most lurid male fantasies of sadism and masochism, the female monster threatens castration and something even more primeval: humiliation….

(10) RECOMMENDATIONS. Lisa Tuttle’s latest installment of “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” for the Guardian covers The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar; Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis; The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord; Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy; and The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly.

(11) IS IT A TWISTER TOP? Mano’s Wine offers another specialty bottle: “The Wizard of Oz Tornado Etched Wine”. The favorite of flying monkeys who own corkscrews.

Embark on a mesmerizing journey with our Wizard of Oz wine bottles. Expertly deep-etched and lovingly hand-painted, these enchanting collectibles capture the essence of the beloved film. Sip from the elixir of nostalgia and let the magic unfold with every pour. Raise your glass to the Emerald City and indulge in a taste of cinematic splendor….

(12) LIGHTSABERS, CAMERA, ACTION! Cass Morris continues sharing her adventures on Disney’s Star Wars-themed Starship Halcyon in “Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 3: Coaxium”.

… 6:30pm: I had been invited to a special meeting down in the Lightsaber Training Pod. The blueshirt outside was asking everyone if they were here for the “advanced lightsaber training” and checking them against a list of the invitees. It’s very intimate — I think there were only about 12 of us in there. (They run this scene several times, I think, so more people than that experience it overall).

Inside, we find not only Saja Tycer, but SK-620 and Rey! I was so glad to see that SK was safe. Rey was so wonderful with this one little girl in particular, giving her the MacGuffin to hold on to during this scene. Saja Tycer introduced us as “the students I’ve been telling you about” and then told us that we’d found a truly incredible Jedi relic down on Batuu: a holocron.

None of us could open it alone. But all of us together, using the Force, got it to open.

And this was another part that was for 11-year-old Cass. The girl who used to stand on her head and try to move objects with her mind. And yes, there’s a metric ton of atmospheric manipulation happening in that room. The lights, the background music, the sound… it’s all perfectly designed to elicit a huge emotional reaction. And it works!…

(13) RECITE AFTER ME. [Item by Scott Edelman.] I was at the AFI Silver Theatre last night watching the world premiere of Married to Comics, a documentary about underground cartoonists Justin Green and Carol Tyler, and spotted this sign over the sink in the men’s room in place of the traditional signs suggesting you sing happy birthday while washing your hands.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Dann.] “I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings….” John Gillespie Magee Jr in High Flight.

Between Earth and outer space is a nebulous line where our atmosphere slips away into nothingness.  Beyond that point lies the playground of the stars, the workplace of astronauts, and the dreams of humanity as demonstrated by thousands upon thousands of movies, books, poems, and songs.

Thin air whips around the Earth just below making flight impossible for all except the most carefully designed of aircraft.  Few winged aircraft ventured into that rarified air.  One of which was the U-2 Dragonlady.  The now venerable reconnaissance aircraft once flew around the world providing valuable intelligence for the American military.

Photographer Blair Bunting had the rare opportunity to not only fly in one of the few remaining TU-2S trainer aircraft, the Air Force arranged for a 2-airplane flight so that he could photograph a second U-2 in flight at high altitude.  His story and a collection of images are presented by The Drive.  He couldn’t touch it but he could see the heavens just a short distance away.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/3/22 I Have Come To Praise Your Furries, Not To Scroll Them

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(1) CHICON 8 ATTENDANCE UPDATE. Registration Area Head Elayne Pelz reported on Facebook that as of 11:15 a.m. Saturday there were 3,308 attendees present at Chicon 8.

(2) HUGO LIVESTREAM. Chicon 8 announced that the Hugo Awards ceremony will begin livestreaming September 4 at 7:45 Central on YouTube. This is the link: Chicon 8 Hugo Awards Ceremony – YouTube. (The ceremony will not be streamed on Airmeet.)

(3) IN GLORIOUS B&W. The Eaton Collection rounded up some of Jay Kay Klein’s photos from Chicon III, the 1962 Worldcon:

https://twitter.com/EatonVerse/status/1565868430602907650

(4) KEEPING THEM DOWN ON THE FARM. Cloudflare.com has done a 180 and kicked Kiwi Farms off the service: “Blocking Kiwifarms”. Kiwi Farms is a forum for discussing figures it deems “lolcows” (people who can be “milked for laughs”), and the targets of threads are often subject to doxing and other forms of organized group trolling, harassment, and stalking, including real-life harassment by users.

We have blocked Kiwifarms. Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare’s services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure.

This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with. However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before….

Vice explains the decision more fully in “Kiwi Farms is Down After Cloudflare Boots The Site As a Customer”.

…This comes just one week after Cloudflare defended the choice to keep the site as a customer.

In August, Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti, known as Keffals, was the target of transphobic raiding and swatting—the dangerous internet harassment tactic involving prank calls to authorities that prompt police to send a SWAT team to someone’s home. Sorrenti alleges that Kiwi Farms members organized this attack, and has been campaigning for Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure company that protects Kiwi Farms from DDoS attacks among other services, to drop the website as a customer….

(5) BURKE RESPONDS TO B56 COC REPORT. Stephanie Burke posted to Facebook her reaction to the Baltimore Science Fiction Society’s Reports of the Results of the Code of Conduct Investigation Concerning Balticon 56.

I have been exonerated by Balticon for all of the bullshit that just happened. I feel that this letter to me is … I don’t know…more about them covering their asses and there still is no real apology to me or to the people who have been dealt with in this manner by the con before… It may be a bit of a reach but this is how I feel.

They say I can come back as a program participant but I am never going back. The thought of going back gives me the shakes and the start of panic attacks. I can never go back. I will miss a lot of my friends and family who are there, but I have to think about my mental health, the lies that were spread about me, and how I was treated. This could happen to anyone at any given time so I say everyone proceed with caution at cons. This was a life-changing experience for me and not in a positive way….

(6) NEW JMS B5 COMMENTARY. After J. Michael Straczynski’s full-length sync-up Babylon 5 commentaries have been offered exclusively on his Patreon page for a while, he releases them on YouTube. Here’s the latest, for “Point of No Return”, the middle of the Messages from Earth trilogy.

(7) ANTICI-PATION. JMS also revealed there is a completed Babylon 5 project that will debut next year at San Diego Comic-Con. Wait for it.

(8) THE HONORVERSE: WHAT’S AHEAD? David Weber has written a long post looking to the future of the Honorverse.

…So, by my calculations, that’s another 22 books I need to get written [with various collaborators] to wrap up my current series plans.

I’m 70 this October. I sold the first novel thirty-three years ago. Since then, I have published (or have currently turned in, awaiting production) 74 solo and collaborative novels, which works out to roughly 2.24 per year. That doesn’t count the anthologies, of course.

I lost roughly 2 years to the concussion, and about a year and a half to the Covid, so let’s call it 30 years, not 33, which brings the production up to 2.5 per year. And let’s assume that I write for another ten years, which (at the moment, and barring any anticipated encounters with mortality) seems entirely plausible. By my calculations, that comes to another TWENTY-FIVE solo and collaborative novels, in the process of which I will be working with some of my collaborators to establish them firmly in the existing universes going forward.

People, like the characters in Richard Adams’ PLAGUE DOGS, I’ll probably still be writing “when the dark comes down.” That means, obviously, that I won’t be “finished” when I leave, but don’t go around thinking that you’re getting rid of me next week!

(9) TAKEI. Look who’s reading the Unofficial Hugo Book Club twitter feed.

(10) MEMORY LANE.  

1977 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Doctor Who’s “Horror Of Fang Rock” (1977)

Doctor Who: “Why am I standing here wasting my time trying to work out its size? If Reuben’s seen it, he can tell us.’”

Leela: “That is what I thought, but of course I am only a savage.’”

Doctor Who: “Come on, savage!”

BritBox streams these so naturally I watched before writing this up. It was every bit as great as I remembered it. Ahhh the sacrifices I make for all of you here! 

This Fourth Doctor story with the much loved Tom Baker in that role, obviously, and Louise Jameson as Leela the barbarian. (See quote above if you think I’m disparaging her.) It was first broadcast in four weekly twenty-five minute episodes on BBC1 from the third to twenty-fourth of September forty-five years ago.

It was directed by Paddy Russell, she also did those honors for another favorite of mine, “Pyramids of Mars”. (Paddy, by the way, was a well-known and much beloved SJW.) In all, she directed parts or the entire of six Who serials.  It was written by Terrence Dicks, not at all surprisingly as this was the period in which he was heavily involved in the series.

HERE IN THE FOG BE SPOILERS! GO AWAY! 

The Doctor and His Companion land along the coast of England, find a dead body and a erratic light in, errr, a Lighthouse. He being he decides to investigate. One of the Keepers, Reuben, tells them about the Beast of Fang Rock (Britain is lousy with such folktales. Really it is.) 

Ahh but being the Doctor soon Aliens abound as they always do, don’t they? And more humans will die. What will the Doctor do? Well he will prevail in the end of course.

END OF SPOILERS. I THINK. MAYBE.

Now this serial was the only one of the original series to have been produced at any BBC studios outside of London.  

Dicks based his script off a poem, “Flannan Isle” written by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, which The Doctor quotes from at the end of the Story.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 3, 1810 — Theodor von Holst. He was the first artist to illustrate Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1831. The interior illustrations consist of a frontispiece and title page engraved illustrations.  To my knowledge, this is his only genre work. (Died 1844.)
  • Born September 3, 1943 — Mick Farren. Punk musician who was the singer with the proto-punk band the Deviants. He also wrote lyrics for Hawkwind. His most well-known genre work was the The Renquist Quartet about an immortal vampire.  The Renquist Quartet is available at the usual suspects.  Not at all genre, he wrote The Black Leather Jacket which details the history of the that jacket over a seventy-year span up to the mid-eighties, taking in all aspects of its cultural, political and social impact. (Died 2013.)
  • Born September 3, 1943 — Valerie Perrine, 79. She has uncredited role as Shady Tree’s sidekick is Diamonds Are Forever in her first film appearance. Her first credited film role is as Montana Wildhack in Sluaughterhouse-Five. She’s Eve Teschmacher in Superman and Superman II. 
  • Born September 3, 1954 — Stephen Gregg. Editor and publisher of Eternity Science Fiction which ran 1972 to 1975 and 1979 to 1980. It had early work by Glen Cook, Ed Bryant, Barry N Malzberg, andrew j offutt and Roger Zelazny. (Died 2005.)
  • Born September 3, 1959 — Merritt Butrick. He played Kirk’s son, David, in The Wrath of Khan and again in The Search for Spock. Note the very young death. He died of AIDS. Well, he died of toxoplasmosis, complicated by AIDS to be precise. (Died 1989.)
  • Born September 3, 1969 — John Picacio, 53. Illustrator who in 2005 won both the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist and the Chesley Award for Best Paperback Cover for James Tiptree Jr.’s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. He’s also won eight other Chesley Awards. He was the winner of the Best Professional Artist Hugo in 2012, 2013, and 2020.
  • Born September 3, 1971 — D. Harlan Wilson, 51. Author of Modern Masters of Science Fiction: J.G. Ballard, Cultographies: They Live (a study of John Carpenter) and Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction. No, I’ve no idea what the last book is about.
  • Born September 3, 1974 — Clare Kramer, 48. She had the recurring role of Glory, a god, or perhaps demon, from a hell dimension that was the main antagonist of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s been a lot of horror films including The Skulls III, The Gravedancers, The Thirst, Road to Hell, Road to Hell, Big Ass Spider! and Tales of Halloween.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • La Cucaracha listens in as a character tells Trump why he needs to return a box of classified stuff.
  • Tom Gauld helps you enrich your vocabulary.

(13) SNAPSHOT. JJ sent along this photo of Cora Buhlert from her Table Talk yesterday at Chicon 8.

(14) THE BORED OF AVON. Mental Floss would like to acquaint you with “5 Writers Who Really Hated Shakespeare”. On the list is —

4. J.R.R. TOLKIEN

While a member of a school debating society in the early 1900s, a teenage J.R.R. Tolkien reportedly delivered a lengthy speech in which, according to his biographer Humphrey Carpenter, he “poured a sudden flood of unqualified abuse upon Shakespeare, upon his filthy birthplace, his squalid surroundings, and his sordid character.” Opinion is divided over whether or not Tolkien upheld these opinions as an adult, but his letters offer up a number of clues: In one, dated 1944, he dismissed reading and analyzing Shakespeare’s works as “folly,” while in another from 1955, he recalls that he “disliked cordially” studying his work at school. 

… In a 1951 letter to his editor Milton Waldman, Tolkien wrote that he had recently invented two new languages to be spoken by the elves in his novels, before adding in a footnote that he intends “the word [elves] to be understood in its ancient meanings, which continued as late as Spenser—a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs.” 

(15) ELVISH HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. [Item by Soon Lee.] Mike Godwin (yes, *that* Godwin) tweeted an Elvis/h filk. And it is delicious. Thread starts here.

(16) INCURABLE. Anthony Lane confesses to having “The Hobbit Habit: Reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’” in a 2001 article from The New Yorker.

…I first took on “The Lord of the Rings” at the age of eleven or twelve; to be precise, I began it at the age of eleven and finished at the age of twelve. It was, and remains, not a book that you happen to read, like any other, but a book that happens to you: a chunk bitten out of your life….

(17) THE RINGS, OH LORD! Vice reports “Astronomers Are Freaking Out Over Bizarre Rectangle-Shaped Rings in Space”. Images at the link.

… In a photograph of the star WR140, as pointed out by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt who reposted the image from the automated @JWSTPhotoBot on Twitter, a spiral of rings and rays fan out from the star’s bright white center. The rings aren’t perfectly circular, but look more like rounded squares, and not even astronomers seem to know what to do with it….

(18) HELPING JOHN WILLIAMS CONDUCT. Some of my daughter’s relatives were at the Hollywood Bowl waving along! And they say during last night’s concert Williams even debuted a piece from the upcoming Indiana Jones movie.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Soon Lee, Daniel Dern, Andrew (not Werdna), Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 3/6/22 What About My Pixel? You’re Lucky You Still Have Your Brown Paper Zine, Small Type

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(1) THEIR BUDGETS CANNA STAND THE STRAIN. Except Scotty isn’t the character in the middle of this social media tempest.“George Takei’s Plea for Americans to Endure Higher Gas Prices to Put ‘the Screws to Putin’ Sets Off a Twitter War” reports MSN.com.

“Star Trek” actor George Takei’s tweet asking Americans to endure paying a little more for food and gasoline as a result of sanctions President Biden imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine caught fire on Twitter Saturday — and that fire is as hot-headed as you probably suspected.

“Americans: We can endure higher prices for food and gas if it means putting the screws to Putin,” Takei tweeted Friday. “Consider it a patriotic donation in the fight for freedom over tyranny.”

Twitter users flocked to Takei’s tweet to express their opinion of his suggestion, with many bashing his perceived wealth in a “HE can endure higher prices” but the average working-class American cannot kind of way. On the opposite side of the argument, Takei’s supporters pointed out that he and his family were sent to Japanese internment camps in Arkansas and California during WWII, so he knows the repercussion of people remaining silent when they should be speaking up…

(2) EXQUISITE TIMING FOR CROWDFUNDING. It’s a good week to launch a Kickstarter, don’t you think? Not that Edward Willett is any newcomer to the idea, with a track record of two previous successes. Willett opens his latest Kickstarter campaign at noon Eastern on March 8 to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume III, the third annual anthology featuring top writers of science fiction and fantasy who have been guests on his podcast, The Worldshapers (www.theworldshapers.com).

Shapers of Worlds Volume III will feature new fiction from Griffin Barber, Gerald Brandt, Miles Cameron, Sebastien de Castell, Kristi Charish, David Ebenbach, Mark Everglade, Frank J. Fleming, Violette Malan, Anna Mocikat, James Morrow, Jess E. Owen, Robert G. Penner, Cat Rambo, K.M. Rice, and Edward Willett; poetry from Jane Yolen; and additional stories by Cory Doctorow, K. Eason, Walter Jon Williams, and F. Paul Wilson.

Backers’ rewards offered by the authors include numerous e-books, signed paperback and hardcover books (including limited editions), Tuckerizations (a backer’s name used as a character name), commissioned artwork, original poetry (from Jane Yolen), audiobooks, opportunities for online chats with authors, short-story critiques, and more.

The Kickstarter campaign can be found here.  The campaign goal is $12,000 CDN.

Most of those funds will go to pay the authors, with the rest going to reward fulfillment, primarily the editing, layout, and printing of the book, which will be published in both ebook and trade paperback formats by Willett’s publishing company, Shadowpaw Press (www.shadowpawpress.com). The special Kickstarter edition for backers will be followed by a commercial release this fall. Stretch goals are simple: for every $5,000 over the goal the campaign raises, the authors will be paid one cent a word more.

(3) BREAKING UP ISS HARD TO DO. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The head of Roscosmos is, as seems usual for him, talking loudly and carrying a big shtick. The Russian space agency has released a video showing cosmonauts waving goodbye to astronauts and splitting the Russian part of the International Space Station from the rest. They then “set sail” and depart from the ISS’s orbit with an impressive (and equally improbable) delta V for such a large mass. “Russia Releases Bizarre Video of Space Station Breaking Apart” at Futurism.

We’re not exactly sure what Russia’s space agency head Dmitry Rogozin is threatening the US with, but he certainly seems to be alluding to… something. A bizarre new video posted by state controlled media RIA Novosti showed the International Space Station breaking apart in an artist rendering after Russian cosmonauts bid adieu.

(4) SF IN TRANSLATION. Cora Buhlert’s newest Non-Fiction Spotlight is for “Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium by Rachel S. Cordasco”, another 2021 non-fiction release that Cora believes deserves a lot more attention than it got.

… Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

This book isn’t necessarily the kind of thing you’d read in one sitting by the fire (though you definitely could!). Rather, it’s the kind of book that you’d read to learn about SF from different source languages. You might read the Finnish chapter if you’re interested in Sinisalo or Krohn. Then, if you’ve picked up a work of Japanese space opera at a bookstore, you could turn to the relevant section to learn about that  language’s wide variety of hard-science-fiction subgenres. You could even use the index to find themes that span the different SFTs and compose reading lists for your book club. Also, that cover is gorgeous (the people at UIP picked it), so it would be a lovely display for your coffee table….

(5) A GRAND MASTER’S UNIVERSE. The good folks of Goodman Games study the strengths of Andre Norton’s Witch World series in “A Look at Andre Norton’s Witch World”

… While many of the novels are good, it’s in the two short story collections, Spell of the Witch World (1972) and Lore of the Witch World (1980) that Norton really kills it. The stories range from straight sword-and-sorcery to horror to the aforementioned fairy tales. Her writing in these is tighter and often even darker than in the seven novels I’ve read. Several of them dig into a regular theme of the series; the place of women in a pre-industrial world. Where physical strength is the determinant of power, Norton makes it clear that women will often be at the mercy of men. It’s not easy and finding some sort of agency, whether with sword or spell, is an often brutal task. I cannot recommend these two collections enough….

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1992 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Thirty years ago, The Lawnmower Man premiered. It is not based off the story by Stephen King by that name and King sued successfully to get paid damages and his name removed from any association with the film. He won further damages when his name was included in the title of the home video release. Some production companies never learn their lesson, do they? 

The film is from an original screenplay called “CyberGod” written by Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett. The latter would later be involved in Virtuosity which like this film was lauded for its groundbreaking computer animation and visual effects. 

It had a rather decent cast in Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright and Geoffrey Lewis. None of which would be back for the sequel, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace which is probably good as no one, and I mean no one, liked that sequel.

So how was the reception for it? Well it made thirty million against costs of ten million, so quite good there. (The sequel bombed at box office. Really bombed.) Now however most, though not all, critics hated it. The Spectator summed it up succinctly as “Gratuitously offensive” and the Washington Post reporter didn’t update his review later: “So loosely based on a Stephen King short story as to constitute fraud, The Lawnmower Man goes right to the bottom of a growing list of failed King adaptations.” 

Now it is worth noting that audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes really, really didn’t like it as they gave it a quite poor thirty-one percent rating. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 6, 1918 — Marjii Ellers. Longtime L.A. fan who was active in the LASFS.  Her offices in the LASFS included Registrar and Scribe. She was known for her costumes at cons. Indeed, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990 from the International Costumers’ Guild. An avid fanzine publisher and writer, some of the fanzines she edited were Masqueraders’ Guide, More Lives Than One,  Nexterday, One Equal Temper, Thousands of Thursdays, and Judges’ Guide. (Died 1999.)
  • Born March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan. Author of the long running Logan’s Run series (only the first was written with George Clayton Johnson). He started out in fandom in the Fifties publishing several zines including one dedicated to Bradbury. In May 2014, Nolan was presented with another Bram Stoker Award, for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction; this was for his collection about his late friend Ray Bradbury, called Nolan on Bradbury: Sixty Years of Writing about the Master of Science Fiction. He’s done far too much writing-wise for me to sum it him up. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award. (Died 2021.)
  • Born March 6, 1937 — Edward L. Ferman, 85. Son of Joseph W. Ferman, the publisher and sometime editor who established F&SF in 1949. He took over as editor in 1964 and continued until 1991. For one year (1969), he edited and published a related magazine called Venture Science Fiction Magazine. Winner of a stellar eight Hugos mostly for Best Professional Magazine. 
  • Born March 6, 1942 — Dorothy Hoobler, 80. Author with her husband, Thomas Hoobler, of the Samurai Detective series which is at least genre adjacent. More interestingly, they wrote a biography of Mary Shelley and her family called The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein which sounds absolutely fascinating. Note to ISFDB: no, it’s not a novel. Kindle has everything by them, alas Apple Books has only the biography.
  • Born March 6, 1942 — Christina Scull, 80. Tolkien researcher and married to fellow Tolkien researcher Wayne Hammond who all her books are co-authored with. Their first was J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, and I’ll single out just The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide and The Art of The Lord of the Rings as being worth your time seeking out.
  • Born March 6, 1957 — Ann VanderMeer, 65. Publisher and editor, and the second female editor of Weird Tales. At Anticipation, Weird Tales, edited by her and Stephen H. Segal, won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. She is also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature. Her The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (with Jeff VanderMeer) won a World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.
  • Born March 6, 1972 — K J Bishop, 50. Australian writer who I really like, author of The Etched City which was nominated for the Aurelias, the International Horror Guild Award and World Fantasy while winning the Ditmar Award. Impressive. She also won the latter for Best New Talent. She’s also written a double handful of short stories, many collected in the Ditmar-winning That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote. 
  • Born March 6, 1979 — Rufus Hound, 43. Ok, I admit it was his name that got him here. He’s also had the good fortune to appear as Sam Swift in “The Woman Who Lived”, easily one of the best Twelfth Doctor stories. He’s also played Toad twice in The Wind In The Willows, a musical written by Julian Fellowes, first in an out-of-town premiere in 2016, then in the West End in 2017. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) MY SUPERHERO IS BLACK Q&A. Entertainment Weekly interviews authors John Jennings and Angélique Roché: “My Super Hero Is Black will tell the other history of Marvel comics”

…These days, Black Panther is one of the most visible superheroes in a superhero-obsessed age, and his 2018 solo film remains one of Marvel Studios’ most acclaimed (it still holds the #1 spot on EW’s own ranking of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). The Falcon and the Winter Soldier recently explored the idea of a Black Captain America, both with Sam Wilson in the present and Isaiah Bradley in the past. Moon Girl, a young Black genius who pals around with a dinosaur, will soon be getting her own animated series.

My Super Hero Is Black will trace how these and other characters moved from the margins to the mainstream thanks to the work of creators like Billy Graham, Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, among others. The book will also feature accounts from prominent Black creators and luminaries about their personal relationships with Marvel heroes….

(10) NOW AT BAT. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna and David Betancourt rank the six actors who have played Batman in films, saying that in their view Robert Pattinson does a good job but Michael Keaton remains the best Batman. (And I guess no spoiler warning is required when they put the result in the headline) “Best Batman actors ranked, from Robert Pattinson to Michael Keaton”.

… The comic-book Bat-world first created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in the ’30s has spawned an entire tireless industry of screen adaptations, from mid-century movie serials to ’60s TV camp to animated titles — with Kevin Conroy and Will “Lego” Arnett especially shining as the voice of Gotham’s odd nocturnal knight.But for the sake of fair comparison, let’s rank the actors who have portrayed a live-action Batman in Warner Bros./DC’s modern film franchise since 1989. Without getting so serious, here is our freewheeling assessment of the Dirty Half-Dozen…

At Yahoo!, Jason Guerrasio repeats the evaluation, except he ranks 10 actors, because he includes everyone back to the Forties series. “Every actor who’s played Batman, ranked from worst to best — including Robert Pattinson”.

Interestingly, both surveys came up with the same number one.

(11) KSR NON-SFF. Publishers Weekly interviews Kim Stanley Robinson about his book The High Sierra: A Love Story in which he shares his admiration of the Sierras.

…What was the hardest part of putting your decades of experience hiking the Sierras into a book?

Memoir. I’ve never done it. I think it’s suspect, and hard in and of itself. It’s a fiction, memoir. You make your past self into a character, and you summarize things that took years, and you’re judging your earlier self. So that was hard.

You’re best known for your science fiction. What impact did the Sierras have on your novels?

My Sierra experience has been crucial to my science fiction because I’ve written science fiction that is aware that we are part of a biosphere, and that planets are actors in the story. They determine societies and individuals and consciousness. I felt that in myself because of my Sierra experiences. I’ve always been writing about planets changing, and my Mars trilogy could be seen as a gigantic climate change novel. So my work hangs together, intellectually, and also emotionally by way of this Sierra anchoring point….

(12) BAUM’S AWAY. A contestant on Friday night’s episode of Jeopardy! guessed wrong. If it hadn’t been about a work of fantasy, Andrew Porter would have let it slide. However….!

Category: The Elements of Literature

Answer: In a work by L. Frank Baum, the Scarecrow & this character are captured by a female giant & turned into a bear & an owl

Wrong question: What is the Cowardly Lion?

Correct question: What is the Tin Man?

(13) OVER HERE. While looking for articles about the claim of lunar ownership registered by the Bay Area’s Elves’, Gnomes’ and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder, and Marching Society, Bill found this Oakland Tribune clipping about their meeting with Arthur C. Clarke during his first visit to America. In July 1952 the club held a banquet where they presented Clarke with the Invisible Little Man award – “a trophy which consists of the base of a statue with no statue, just a pair of mysterious footprints above the inscription…”  The newspaper interview quotes Clarke’s hopes for a chain of communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits.

(Click for larger image)

(14) PAWS FOR REFLECTION. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Saturday Night Live explains that it’s a really bad idea to fire your police and fire fighters and replace them with the Paw Patrol!

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This Austin McConnell video is about the fake 1956 novel I, Libertine which was turned into a real novel by Theodore Sturgeon. I didn’t realize that the broadcasts of Jean Shepherd survive. “This Best-Selling Novel Was A Total Hoax!”.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/16/22 This Page Intentionally Left Indescribable

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(1) WHEN ‘THINGS TO COME’ WAS NEW. The videos featuring the musical score of Things to Come linked in the Pixel Scroll for February 13 prompted John L. Coker III to pass along this transcript of a conversation that he had with David A. Kyle about the movie over 20 years ago.

[David A. Kyle:] H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come was one of the first serious science fiction movies; it considered big problems and big situations, and had a great cast.  This is a picture that was full of idealism, with the viewpoint of the future as one world.  Fans of science fiction had hoped that mankind would all band together and we would all be Earth people.  When we went out to the planets, we would be representing the Earth as a whole, rather than as individual countries. 

The picture was socialistic, as H. G. Wells was, and it was rare when a real science fiction picture came out.  It dealt with real things, and forecast what was going to happen in Europe.  It is set in 1936, when an unidentified enemy bombs England and war starts.  The sky is black with airplanes coming over, all quite visionary. 

I remember when it first came out.  It played in a country theater near my home in Monticello, New York, for three days.  Because I was a young newspaper reporter, I could go into a theater anytime I wanted, and I wouldn’t have to pay.  The movie was so prophetic, and there was also the great music written by Arthur Bliss.  I had recordings of that music at one time, and it was really drummed into my head.  It still haunts me. 

When I went to New York with some of the science fiction fans in the late 1930s, we went to the Ivory Tower.  This was a breeding ground for writers such as Dick Wilson, Donald A. Wollheim and Fred Pohl.  As I came out of the subway, and approached the building, I would run through my head the march from Things to Come.  Time passed, and in 1939 war broke out in Europe, and we began to see the prophecies coming true. 

In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the next year I enlisted.  I became an officer and was sent to Northern Ireland.  It was midnight and I was by myself in my hut, and had my radio on.  Then came the unforgettable music from Things to Come.  I remembered scenes such as the bombing of London and suddenly this creepy crawly feeling went up my back.  There I was, in uniform, a part of the conflict that was going on around me, and I realized I had become part of the picture.  It had come to life.

Six months or so later, I was in London, looking in the publication What’s On.  It listed all of the cinemas, and I noticed that Things to Come was playing.  How could I resist going to see it, being in London with a war going on? 

A few days later I was in the Savoy Hotel with a Canadian officer, and I saw Edmond Chapman, who played the role of Pippin Passworthy, opposite Raymond Massey’s main character.  So there he was, in his R. A. F. uniform, and I went over to him to say hello.  I told him that I had been intrigued by the film that I saw years ago, and that I had gone again to see it the other night.  He had several kind things to say.  It was a thrill for me to be there with a character from the film in uniform, in London, during the war.  It was as if he had somehow come alive from the movie.  It was surreal but so realistic.  I was nearly overwhelmed by the experience.  I’ll never forget it.

Years later, when I was living in England and attending a Rotary meeting, a man across the table from me who had been an entertainer told me that when he was young, he had visited the studios where they were making Things to Come.  He had been an extra on the picture, and appeared in the scene where all of the troops were jumping off of the back of the big ship.  He remembered when H. G. Wells would come around and talk with members of the cast about the picture. 

Science fiction and the cinema and fannish friends all sort of came together.  And, in my time, I was so close to the imaginative world that our writers created that sometimes I felt that I had become part of that world for a short period of time.

1st Lt. David A. Kyle (England, 1943)

(2) IDA KEOGH Q&A. Bob the Alien occasionally takes over author Paul L. Arvidson’s blog and interviews other British SF Association authors. [Via Emily Inkpen.] “Bob the Alien Interviews… Ida Keogh”.

Bob: Well what an interesting specimen we’ve beamed up here. Who are you and why have you got a tail? Other humans don’t seem to.

Ida Keogh : Hi Bob! I’m Ida, creator of words, wrangler of precious metal and occasional mermaid. Thank you for having me. Tails are great, aren’t they? Other humans are missing out.

Bob: Is this mind probe thingy working? It tells me you’re another one of these writer types. What makes you want to do that?

I.K: I have words inside me that need to get out. I love to shape phrases, sculpt paragraphs, stack pages. Sharing my words with other humans makes me glow….

(3) A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] I was wandering around Reddit (being careful not to step into the pools of muck scattered around there) when I found a very cool post from a guy doing a read-through of ALL Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award winners.  He’s posting them on his blog as he gets through them, and I am very impressed (and somewhat appalled) at all the work he’s doing. “The Project” at Don’t Forget to Read a Book. The format of the reviews is explained here.

“Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner” is The Project’s latest post – here’s an excerpt.

…What is there to say about a book that is just what it is? I was unfamiliar with the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, but apparently it is, well, a thing. A brief synopsis of the original: Thomas meets the Queen of Elfland, goes with her for seven years, sees many delights, and returns to the mortal world. He is given the gift of prophecy.

This novel version expands upon the story, offering an introduction to Thomas before he goes to Fairy, exploring his time there, and then chronicling his later life after returning. All of this added content is rather tepid. Song of Achilles is a great demonstration of the power of reimagining a well known tale and offering a new perspective. There is none of that here. No pushing of boundaries, no real expansion of the mythos. Kushner fills in the blanks in the same way that most others likely would as well….

(4) LEVAR BURTON ON TREVOR NOAH. “LeVar Burton Encourages Kids To Read Banned Books: ‘That’s Where the Good Stuff Is’” – Comicbook.com introduces a clip from The Daily Show, “America’s Book Bans: The Latest Culture War Front”. (Burton appears after the 8:30 mark.)

Literacy advocate, Star Trek star, and game show host LeVar Burton wants people, particularly children, to read banned books. The former Reading Rainbow host appeared during a segment about banned books on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. In the piece, Burton attempts to read some seemingly innocuous books only to get cut off because of a book banning for one contrived reason or another. Eventually, Burton runs away after hearing sirens nearby, but not before encouraging folks to read banned books “because that’s where the good stuff is.” You can watch the entire The Daily Show segment below….

(5) DANGEROUS VISIONS AND NEW WORLDS: RADICAL SCIENCE FICTION. On Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27, City Lights in conjunction with PM Press will present a two-day symposium exploring the radical currents of Science Fiction and celebrating the launch of Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre.

Featuring an all-star cast of presenters including Samuel Delany, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michael Moorcock, Cory Doctorow, Marge Piercy, Maitland McDonagh, Annalee Newitz, Jonathan Lethem, Shelley Streeby, Mike Stax, Karen Joy Fowler, Nick Mamatas, Ann VanderMeer, Matt Bell, adrienne maree brown, Daniel Shank Cruz, Lucy Sussex, Mimi Mondal, Vandana Singh, Rebecca Baumann, Meg Elison, Terry Bisson, Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre

Free (Registration Required) There are four sessions to register for on Day One, and another four on Day Two.

(6) MCKENNA’S NEW BOOK. The Fantasy Hive conducts an “Interview with Juliet E. McKenna” about The Cleaving, “a feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends follows the tangled stories of four women: Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere, as they fight to control their own destinies amid the wars and rivalries that will determine the destiny of Britain.” The book will be published by Angry Robots in May 2023.

Can you tell us a bit more about your leading characters, Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere? They’re such iconic characters, how did you approach recreating them?

[Juliet McKenna] Are they so iconic? Everyone knows Morgana and Guinevere’s names, but I can think of half a dozen very different portrayals of them both. This isn’t a problem though. That variety gives me tremendous freedom to come up with my own take. Nimue? The sources can’t even agree on how to spell her name, or exactly what she does, so I’ve got even more leeway. Ygraine’s barely mentioned in so many versions that I pretty much had a blank page there.

My approach to writing all these women has been to make them fully rounded, believable people. Far too often they’re two-dimensional figures who come and go to serve the plot by doing something or having something done to them. I took a longer view. I thought about the ways their experiences would shape their personalities, and how the people they become will influence the choices they make. 

I also looked at the influence they would have on each other. In so many Arthurian retellings women are defined by their relationships to the men at the centre of the story. Their actions only matter when what they do matters to a man. In reality, women have crucial relationships with each other, as mothers, daughters and most of all as friends and allies. There’s no way these women caught up in these events wouldn’t look to each other for support. That opens up these myths in a whole new way….

(7) CELEBRATE FAN ART. 2019 Rotsler Award winner Alison Scott has now got a website to show off her fan art 00 “Alison Scott” at Myportfolio.com. Faneds who would like to use any of this material, or perhaps something made just for them (eventually) should get in touch with Alison. This example was done for DisCon III but fits it perfectly here, don’t you think?

(8) MEAD OBIT. Prolific sff author Melissa Mead, who was born with cerebral palsy, died February 15. Her friend Eliza Ames paid tribute on Facebook.

I’ve struggled all day with how to write something about my friend Melissa Mead. Usually, writing my feelings is not hard, but Missy was a writer too, and a damn good one. Missy was born with Cerebral Palsy. Even that one illness is enough to destroy lives, and it wasn’t the only thing she had to fight her way through. Missy was a fierce fighter, and yet the single kindest person I’ve ever met….

Missy may have been limited by her body, but her imagination knew no bounds. She wrote sci fi and fantasy stories, and they were amazing. Every character felt real and every situation, no matter how fantastic, contained such imagery and forethought that it felt always as if that COULD exist….

Deirdre Saoirse Moen pointed out Melissa Mead’s recent article about disability representation in fiction, “I Don’t Hate Tiny Tim. Really!”, at Stupefying Stories Magazine. It’s brilliant.

Poor Tiny Tim.

I’m not saying that because he has a disability. I’m saying that because everyone, from his readers to his creator, pities him because he has a disability. He doesn’t pity himself, though! He joins in his siblings’ games whenever possible, and they cheerfully take him along with them. And while his father calls him “good as gold,” he’s not a perfect saint. When his father insists that the family drink a toast to his hard-hearted boss, Ebeneezer Scrooge, “Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.”…

(9) MEL KEEFER (1926-2022). Comic book and animation artist Mel Keefer has died at the age of 95. Mark Evanier wrote a tribute at News From ME.

…No one is quite sure how many newspaper strips he worked on but I know of these: Perry Mason, Dragnet, Gene Autry, Mac Divot, Thorne McBride, Willis Barton M.D. and Rick O’Shay. His longest run was with Mac Divot, which ran from 1955 to 1977. A lot of comic strip fans didn’t follow it because it was about golf and newspapers often ran it in the sports section. He ghosted on at least a half-dozen others but the most notable was Bash Brannigan, the strip drawn by “Stanley Ford” (Jack Lemmon) in the movie, How to Murder Your Wife. Mel did all the comic art in the film and when you thought you were seeing a close-up of Lemmon’s hand drawing his character, that was Mel’s hand you were seeing….

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1967 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Fifty-five years ago, Star Trek’s “Space Seed” first aired on NBC. It was the twenty-second episode of the first season and it was directed by Marc Daniel from a teleplay from Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber. The former was both a major writer and a show-runner on the series; the latter did writing for Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Lost In Space and The Time Tunnel. The story was by Weber.

Yes, this is the episode that introduced Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh. He would of course return in The Wrath of Khan which would be nominated for a Hugo at ConStellation the year that Blade Runner won. From my viewpoint, and I know some of you may beg to differ, the only other guest performer worth noting is Madlyn Rhue as Lt. Marla McGivers. 

Director Nicholas Meyer stated in interviews that he wrote McGivers out of his drafts of The Wrath of Khan in order to give Khan more motivation for being pissed off. Anyone remember if Khan made reference to her in the film? I’ve seen it at three times but not in at least twenty years now, so I don’t remember. 

James Blish who was working from the yet script drafts at the time  used the name Sibahl Khan Noonien in his novella  long adaptation for the 1968 Bantam Books’ Star Trek 2 anthology which shows that the name change was a late decision.

Passing references to  the events here appear in here will later make it to Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

Reception at the time of its broadcast was quite positive though the reviewers for Tor.com much later on really didn’t like the relationship between Khan and McGivers saying in their of the episode that it was “really uncomfortable to watch her immediate attraction to him and her easy acceptance of his abusive and controlling behavior”.  

I’m am not, repeat, not going to talk about Benedict Cumberbatch portraying Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. Really, really not going to talk about him doing so. 

Greg Cox wrote a very much not canon novel titled To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh which in great detail gave us the romance of Khan and Givers. I can’t say I’ve got much interest in reading it. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 16, 1933 — Jim Harmon. During the Fifties and Sixties, he wrote more than fifty short stories and novelettes for Amazing Stories, Future Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, If, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and other magazines. Most of his fiction was collected in Harmon’s Galaxy. EoSF says he has one genre novel, The Contested Earth, whereas ISFDB lists two more, Sex Burns Like Fire and The Man Who Made Maniacs. He’s a member of First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 2010.)
  • Born February 16, 1940 — Angela Carter. She’s best remembered for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories where she took fairy tales and made them very, very adult in tone. Personally I’d recommend The Curious Room instead,as 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 and quite unsettling look at the theatre world. (Died 1992.)
  • Born February 16, 1951 — William Katt, 71. Ralph Hinkley, the lead of The Greatest American Hero. A series I know I watched and loved at the time.  In December 1975, he auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker. But didn’t get the role obviously.
  • Born February 16, 1953 — Mike Glyer, 69. Happy Birthday! OGH has won the Hugo Award 11 times in two categories: File 770 won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1984, 1985, 1989, 2000, 2001 2008, and 2016. He himself has won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 2016. The 1982 Worldcon presented him a special award in 1982 for Keeping the Fan in Fanzine Publishing. He even wrote several pieces of genre fiction, “The Six Who Are Boring” and “The Men Who Corflued Mohammed.” 
  • Born February 16, 1954 — Iain M. Banks. I’m certain I’ve read the entire Culture series even though I certainly didn’t read them in the order they were written. My favorites? Certainly The Hydrogen Sonata was bittersweet for being the last ever, Use of Weapons and the very first, Consider Phlebas are also my faves. And though not genre, I’m still going to make a plug for Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. It’s about single malt whisky, good food and his love of sports cars. And yes, Green Man has reviewed it. How could we not, it being by Banks? (Died 2013.)
  • Born February 16, 1957 — Ardwight Chamberlain, 65. The voice of Kosh on Babylon 5. And that quite tickles me as I don’t think they credited it during the series, did they? Most of his other voice work is English-dubbing versions of Japanese anime including Digimon: Digital Monsters and The Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island.
  • Born February 16, 1957 — LeVar Burton, 65. Well y’all know what series he was on and what character he played that he’s best known for so I can dispense with that. And yes, that series did win Hugos, “The Inner Light” did at ConFrancisco and “All Good Things” did at Intersection.  Other genre appearances include The Supernaturals, a zombie film, as Pvt. Michael Osgood, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies voicing Black Lightning and in another zombie film Rise of the Zombies as Dr. Dan Halpern. Plus his acclaimed reading series.
  • Born February 16, 1964 — Christopher Eccleston, 58. The Ninth Doctor, who’s my third favorite among the new ones behind David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker. Other genre work includes 28 Days Later, The Seeker, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (a truly awful film), Thor: The Dark World, The Leftovers, The Second Coming and The Borrowers. He also played Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Barbican Theatre.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) THE ACME OF FILMMAKING. Screen Crush reports “Wile E. Coyote’s Getting a Live-Action Movie Starring John Cena”.

Well, John Cena’s having a good day.

Not only did his HBO Max series Peacemaker get renewed for a second season, he’s also gotten tapped to star in the upcoming live-action Looney Tunes movie Coyote vs. Acme. The concept is vaguely Space Jam-ish, in that it takes place in a world where humans animated cartoons co-exist. (There’s no basketball this time, though.)

The movie will be directed by Dave Green, whose previous efforts include Earth to Echo and the live-action (with CGI) Teenage Mutant Ninja sequel, Out of the Shadows. The premise is actually based on a 1990 New Yorker article titled “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier. (You can read it here.) Here are the specifics of the plot, via Deadline:

The film follows Wile E. Coyote, who after ACME products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hires a billboard lawyer to sue the ACME Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win….

(14) PERSPECTIVE ON TODAY. “George Takei: ‘I maintain that without optimism, we’ve already failed’” – so he tells an interviewer from the Washington Post. The profile includes a long reminiscence of his experience being taken to a WWII Japanese internment camp.

Let me ask you about maybe your defining role, your “Star Trek” role. Having experienced discrimination against Japanese Americans during and after World War II, what did it mean to you to as an actor to be able to take a role that didn’t play to the stereotypes of what Hollywood was portraying at the moment?

I immediately recognized that this was a breakthrough opportunity for me. For one thing, it was steady work if it sold. I was just doing guest shots here and there. And secondly, it was a part of the leadership team. A breakthrough opportunity, not only for me, but for the image of Asians and Asian Americans on television. The creator of the show, Gene Roddenberry, was extraordinary. He said the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth and that it was the diversity of this Earth that the strength of this starship comes from.

(15) GOOD OMENS. “In Pictures: Star-spotting in Bo’ness as Good Omens 2 films with David Tennant and Michael Sheen” — the Edinburgh News has numerous photos of the actors on location in the city the other day.

Fans snapped pictures of stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen as they prepared to film scenes around the Hippodrome Cinema

They were joined by Dame Siân Phillips, while extras wearing feather-adorned caps and 1920s flapper-style dresses walked around the set….

(16) THE (KAURI) HELMET OF BOBA FETT. [Item by Soon Lee.] New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison, who plays the title character on The Book of Boba Fett, was presented with a carved wooden Boba Fett helmet. “Temuera Morrison honoured in Rotorua with Boba Fett kauri carving” at Newshub.

The carver, Graham Hoete a.k.a. MrG carved it out of native kauri and has shared the video of the gifting.

And also some of the carving process.

(17) CHRIS AND ZACH; BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. CNET reports “Star Trek 4 Will Bring Back Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto”.

It’s been six years since the last Star Trek movie, but the wait for the next one is coming to an end. J.J. Abrams, director of 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, announced plans on Tuesday to bring back original cast members for a fourth film.

“We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year that will be featuring our original cast and some new characters that I think are going to be really fun and exciting and help take ‘Star Trek’ into areas that you’ve just never seen before,” Abrams said during the Paramount Investors Day Presentation…

(18) RESCUE RANGERS RETURNING. Disney+ will air new episodes of “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” beginning May 20. The lead voice actors will be John Mulaney as Chip, and Andy Samberg as Dale, which is very intriguing casting.

Rescuing the world takes a pair. A comeback 30 years in the making, the hybrid live-action/CG animated action-comedy catches up with the former Disney Afternoon television stars in modern-day Los Angeles. “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” premieres May 20, 2022, exclusively on Disney+.

(19) CAT BURGLAR. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Because this Netflix cartoon is interactive, you can watch this cartoon animal bash-a-thon over and over!

Classic cartoon craziness meets an interactive quiz in CAT BURGLAR. In this Tex Avery inspired toon from the creators of BLACK MIRROR, the viewer helps Rowdy Cat vex Peanut the Security Pup and break into a museum with the goal of making off with a priceless prize. With an average runtime of ten minutes, and over an hour and a half of animation to choose from, the viewer could play CAT BURGLAR a hundred times and never view the same cartoon twice!

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Rob Thornton, Jennifer Hawthorne, Olav Rokne, Soon Lee, Chris Barkley, Michael J. Walsh, John L. Coker III, Steven French, Alison Scott, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JeffWarner.]

Pixel Scroll 10/13/21 Filed Gruntbuggly, Thy Pixelations Are To Me

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(1) KGB RESUMES IN-PERSON READINGS. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel are very excited to return to in-person readings at the KGB Bar in Manhattan’s East Village. On Wednesday, October 20 at 7:00 Eastern, people will hear from this month’s guests Daryl Gregory and Michael J. DeLuca. (Proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required to enter the KGB Bar; face masks are required when not seated.)

  • Daryl Gregory

Daryl Gregory’s work has been translated into a dozen languages and has won multiple awards, including the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards. His latest books are the Appalachian horror novel Revelator, the novella The Album of Dr. Moreau, and the novel Spoonbenders. He’s lived in multiple towns along the 2,000 miles of I-80, and currently resides in Pennsylvania.

  • Michael J. DeLuca

Michael J. DeLuca has published 30+ short stories in markets including Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mythic Delirium, and Interfictions. His debut novella, Night Roll, was a finalist for the Crawford award in 2020. He’s also the publisher of Reckoning, a journal of creative writing on environmental justice. He lives in the rapidly suburbifying post-industrial woodlands north of Detroit with partner, kids, cats and microbes.

Datlow and Kressel still plan to publish a video recording of the event on YouTube, but the readings will no longer be presented live online. They also will still be providing the audio podcasts as usual. If you’d like to support the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, please click here.

(2) SHAKE’N UP. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Here is a touching tribute by Sir Patrick Stewart to Cecil Dormand, the teacher who encouraged him to start acting: “A moment that changed me: Patrick Stewart on the teacher who spotted his talent – and saved him”. Includes a photo of a young Patrick Stewart with hair.

… Had I sat that test, I might never have met Cecil Dormand, a teacher at the secondary modern where I ended up, who would change my life when I was 12, by putting Shakespeare into my hands for the very first time. It was The Merchant of Venice. He gave copies to most of us and told us to look up Act 4 Scene 1 (or the famous trial scene, as I was to learn). He cast all the speaking roles and told us to start reading. We all did, but silently. “No, no, you idiots, not to yourselves!” he yelled. “Out loud! This is a play, not a poem. It’s life. It’s real.”

The first words – “I have possessed your grace of what I purpose” – was the first line of Shakespeare I ever read. I barely understood a word, but I loved the feel of the words and sounds in my mouth….

(3) MUIR, MARILLIER LIBRARY ZOOMS. The Nelson Public Libraries in New Zealand are hosting two author talks on Zoom that will be open for anyone to attend from home. (Hat tip to SFFANZ News.)

  • Tuesday, October 19 from 7 pm (local time) — Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb series. Info here.
  • Thursday, October 21 from 5 pm (local time) — Juliet Marillier, author of Sevenwaters series, Blackthorn and Grim, and Warrior Bards. Info here.

(4) A LITTLE LIST. Screen Rant clues calls these the “10 Best Fantasy And Sci-Fi Books With Upcoming TV And Movie Adaptations”.

Whether audiences prefer to read the source material ahead of time or go into these shows and movies without expectations, there’s plenty to be excited for in these varied stories. From classics of the genres to more contemporary offerings, there are a slew of popular fantasy and sci-fi books headed for fans’ screens.

(5) CHECKING UNDER THE HOODS. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Dutch Irish writing couple Remco van Straten and Angeline B. Adams remember the nigh-forgotten 1991 Robin Hood film starring Patrick Bergin, which was overshadowed by the other Robin Hood film starring Kevin Costner that came out in 1991. IMO, the Bergin film is much better. Remco and Angeline obviously agree: “Mists and Mummers: Robin Hood”.

It doesn’t have doesn’t have Bryan Adams rasping “Everything I do” and it doesn’t have Kevin Costner, or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio with big hair. Nor does it have Alan Rickman sneering away as the Sheriff of Nothingham. It doesn’t have a the Sheriff of N. at all, actually (nor any other plot points and characters directly lifted from TV’s Robin of Sherwood).  This Robin Hood film  did also come out in 1991, and as a result withered in the shadow of the mega-hit Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…. 

(6) HWA. The “Latinx Heritage in Horror” series at the Horror Writers Association blog features this “Interview with Isabel Cañas”.

Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, and Turkey, among other places, she has settled (for now) in New York City, where she works on her PhD dissertation in medieval Islamic literature and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage. …

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

I have loved Gothic novels for a long time. Two of the most influential books I read in my teen years were Dracula, which I read at 17, and Beloved, which I read when I was 19. Dark fantasy also holds a special place in my heart—I read Holly Black’s Tithe at 14 and have never been the same since. I started reaching for horror as an adult in late 2019, a habit that was accelerated by the pandemic. Reading and writing are my number one form of escapism, and in March 2020, the high fantasies I usually reached for to flee my own anxiety suddenly weren’t cutting it. I needed a headier hit. I needed suspense. I needed someone else’s fear to distract from my own. My attention span was also shattered in those early pandemic days (and still is, honestly), so I frequently turn to short fiction and podcasts. The Dark and Nightmare Magazine are my mainstays, as is Snap Judgement’s Spooked podcast.

(7) INSIDE HORROR. The latest post in the Horror Writers Association’s “Halloween Haunts” series is “Why Do We Like Being Scared?”  Marlena Frank offers a theory:

…As we get near Halloween, I find myself thinking about this often. The difference, I think, is whether the terror is safe or not. Can the bad guy take off his mask and he’s laughing and normal again? Or is the bad guy real and this isn’t a joke?…

(8) STOLEN PUNCHLINE. I saw a headline “Blue Origin Crew Members Concerned About New Uniforms.” But it turned out that this isn’t a photo of William Shatner from today’s flight.

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • 1995 – Twenty-six years ago this day, James Cameron’s Strange Days debuted at the cinema. It was written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow who was briefly married to Cameron but divorced by this time.  It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore.  Ok, it bombed at the box making back only seven million dollars of the over fifty million dollars in production and publicity costs. It really polarized critics at time because of its extreme violence though now those attitudes have changed significantly and it currently has a rather excellent seventy-three percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Apparently Cameron wrote the novelization of the film. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 13, 1906 — Joseph Samachson. In 1955, he co-created with artist Joe Certa the Martian Manhunter in the pages of Detective Comics #225. Earlier he penned Captain Future pulp novels around 1940 under a house name. (House names often blur who did what.) He also wrote scripts for Captain Video and His Video Rangers, a late Forties to mid Fifties series. There’s a lot of his fiction including those Captain Future pulp novels at the usual suspects for very reasonable prices. (Died 1980.)
  • Born October 13, 1914 — Walter Brooke. You know him for muttering a certain word in The Graduate but he’s earlier noteworthy for being General T. Merrit in Conquest of Space, a Fifties SF film, one of many genre roles he did including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The Munsters, Marooned, The Return of Count Yorga and The Nude Bomb (also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart). (Died 1986.)
  • Born October 13, 1923 — Cyril Shaps. He appears in a number of Doctor Who stories,  to wit The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara which means he’s appeared with the Second, Third and Fourth Doctors. He was also Mr. Pinkus in The Spy Who Loved Me, and he was in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady as Emperor Franz Josef. The latter stars Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee as Holmes and Watson. (Died 2003.)
  • Born October 13, 1956 — Chris Carter, 65. Best known for the X-Files and Millennium which I think is far better than X-Files was, but also responsible for Harsh Realm which lasted three episodes before being cancelled. The Lone Gunmen which was a good concept poorly executed managed to last thirteen episodes before poor ratings made them bite the bullet. He retired from doing anything creative after The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
  • Born October 13, 1959 — Wayne Pygram, 62. His most SFish role was as Scorpius on Farscape and he has a cameo as Grand Moff Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith because he’s a close facial resemblance to Peter Cushing. He’s likely best recognized as himself for his appearance on Lost as a faith healer named Isaac of Uluru.
  • Born October 13, 1976 — Jennifer Sky, 45. Lead character conveniently named Cleopatra in Sam Raimi’s Cleopatra 2525 series. (Opening theme “In the Year 2525” is performed by Gina Torres who’s also a cast member.) She’s had guest roles on Seaquest DSV, Xena, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she is Lola in The Helix…Loaded, a parody of The Matrix which scores fourteen percent at Rotten Tomatoes among audience reviewers. 
  • Born October 13, 1983 — Katie Winter, 38. Katrina Crane on Sleepy Hollow, Freydis Eriksdottir on Legends of Tomorrow and Gwen Karlsson on Blood & Treasure which is at genre adjacent. She appeared in Malice in Wonderland, a film best forgotten, and Banshee Chapter, based loosely based on the H. P. Lovecraft “From Beyond” short story. She plays Little Nina in The Boys, the DC superhero series on Amazon Prime. 

(11) IATSE STRIKE THREATENED. “Film TV workers union says strike to start next week” reports the AP, and this could, of course, affect many upcoming genre movies and TV shows.

The union representing film and television crews says its 60,000 members will begin a nationwide strike on Monday if it does not reach a deal that satisfies demands for fair and safe working conditions.

to filming on a broad swath of film and television productions and extend well beyond Hollywood, affecting productions in Georgia, New Mexico and other North American shoots.

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees International President Matthew Loeb said Wednesday that the strike would begin at 12:01 a.m. Monday unless an agreement is reached on rest and meal periods and pay for its lowest-paid workers.

Loeb cited a lack of urgency in the pace of negotiations for setting a strike date.

“Without an end date, we could keep talking forever,” Loeb said in a statement. “Our members deserve to have their basic needs addressed now.”

A strike would be a serious setback for an industry that had recently returned to work after long pandemic shutdowns and recurring aftershocks amid new outbreaks.

… Union members say they are forced to work excessive hours and are not given reasonable rest via meal breaks and sufficient time off between shifts. Leaders say the lowest paid crafts get unlivable wages. And streamers like Netflix, Apple and Amazon are allowed to pay even less under previous agreements that allowed them more flexibility when they were up-and-comers.

“We’ve continued to try and impress upon the employers the importance of our priorities, the fact that this is about human beings, and the working conditions are about dignity and health and safety at work,” said Rebecca Rhine, national executive director of the Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600. “The health and safety issues, the unsafe hours, the not breaking for meals, those were the exception for many years in the industry, which is a tough industry. But what they’ve become is the norm.”

(12) ‘TIS ALMOST THE SEASON. A Broadway production that won five Tony Awards this year is coming to Southern California — A Christmas Carol at the Ahmanson Center Theatre.

Two visionary Tony Award® winners—playwright Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), director Matthew Warchus (Matilda)—offer a magical new interpretation of Charles Dickens’ timeless story starring three-time Emmy® winner Bradley Whitford (The Handmaid’s Tale, The West Wing, Get Out, The Post) as Ebenezer Scrooge; Tony and Emmy Award nominee Kate Burton as Ghost of Christmas Past; and Grammy®, SAG Award, Critics Choice, and Hollywood Critics Association Award nominee Alex Newell as Ghost of Christmas Present/Mrs. Fezziwig.

(13) KNOCK-ON EFFECT. David Gerrold has an extended comment about a Facebook friend he didn’t make.

I won’t identify the author, he’s a fairly well-known guy, published by Baen. I’ve never met him in person, never even exchanged notes on FB, but I read one of his books last year and enjoyed it a lot, so when his name showed up on “People You Might Know,” I sent a friend request.

He replied, “Are you f**king kidding?”

I said, “I respect writers, I enjoyed your book.”

He grunted and snarled and blocked me.

He’s not the only Baen person who has slammed a door in my face.

IMHO, this is another piece of the damage caused by those who set out to disrupt fandom, the Worldcon, and the Hugos. They also succeeded in disrupting the possibilities of friendships and even working relationships for a great many others….

(14) STAR SMACK. George Takei had a snarky reply to actor Dean Cain’s complaint about the forthcoming comics where Superman is bi-sexual.

(15) WEBB WEAVING. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Though progress seems to be earned inch by inch, the much-delayed James Webb Space Telescope is finally nearing its equatorial launch point. If all goes well, it will (finally!) be launched this December. “NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Arrives in French Guiana After Sea Voyage” reports the agency.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope successfully arrived in French Guiana Tuesday, after a 16-day journey at sea. The 5,800-mile voyage took Webb from California through the Panama Canal to Port de Pariacabo on the Kourou River in French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

The world’s largest and most complex space science observatory will now be driven to its launch site, Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, where it will begin two months of operational preparations before its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket, scheduled for Dec. 18.

Once operational, Webb will reveal insights about all phases of cosmic history – back to just after the big bang – and will help search for signs of potential habitability among the thousands of exoplanets scientists have discovered in recent years…. 

(16) OVERCOMER. Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum will be offering “Centennial of a Pioneering Pilot: Bessie Coleman” on November 2 as part of their GE Aviation Lecture Series. It will be presented on YouTube with live closed captioning. Sign up here.

In the 1920s, Bessie Coleman toured the U.S. as a barnstormer, entertaining crowds with her aerial aerobatics and inspiring contemporaries with her boundless determination to fly despite significant racial and gender prejudice. A champion of other early aviators, she planned to open a flight school for African Americans, a dream unfulfilled due to her untimely death in 1926. Coleman has been an inspiration and role model to generations of pilots and an enduring symbol of perseverance. Join us for a panel discussion celebrating Coleman’s centennial achievement, boundary-breaking life, and lasting legacy.

(17) PRODUCT OF FRICTION. In episode 63 of Two Chairs Talking, “And after the fire…”. David Grigg and Perry Middlemiss discuss — and disagree about — “The Bass Rock” and “Notes from the Burning Age” as well as two of the novels nominated for this year’s Hugo Award.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “The Movie Sequel Tutorial” on Screen Rant, written by Ryan George, Juliette Danger plays movie sequel producer Barbara Rarbrarb, who says she gave James Cameron the idea for Avatar 2 “and had him spinning like a top.  She says she takes ideas “that haven’t been squeezed for everything they’ve got just yet.”   And if Two Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or The Martian 2:  Lost My Keys aren’t greenlit, well, just go to the toy store and pick a toy that hasn’t been turned into a movie yet!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, rcade, Cora Buhlert, Jeffrey Smith, Karen B., John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter. Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 9/21/21 I Wish They All Could Be California Scrolls

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(1) DATLOW Q&A. “Curating Horror: An Interview with Ellen Datlow” conducted by Sadie Hartmann at LitReactor.

Your anthologies are all invite-only, correct?

Generally yes, unless I’m co-editing and the other editor wants to screen slush for a week or two. Nick Mamatas wanted to have a two week open reading period for Haunted Legends and so we did—and he passed on about 20 stories to me. Interestingly, although we took a few stories from that period, only one—maybe—was from someone we’d never heard of.

And the HWA anthology Haunted Nights that I co-edited with Lisa Morton had several open slots for an open reading. We had a few volunteers from HWA reading what came in and they passed a few stories on to us. The reason is that I don’t have time to read hundreds of submissions, and for a theme anthology, I don’t want dozens of rejected stories on the same theme floating around.

(2) HEAR HIM. Neil Gaiman will have a cameo role in BBC 4’s production of Lud-in-the-Mist, which will air October 30. “Visit Lud-in-the-Mist for Halloween” at SciFi Bulletin.

Doctor Who writer Joy Wilkinson has adapted the groundbreaking fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist into a play for BBC Radio Drama, which airs in October.

The novel by Hope Mirrlees was published in 1926 and is considered a pioneer of the fantasy genre that is all too often overlooked. Wilkinson aims to put that right – with the help of one of the book’s greatest advocates, Neil Gaiman, who has a star cameo in the production.

…Gaiman has long championed Lud-in-the-Mist as “a little golden miracle of a book” that is among his top 10 favourite novels. Wilkinson was absolutely thrilled when he agreed to play a pivotal role in the cast, which is led by Richard Lumsden, Olivia Poulet and Lloyd Hutchinson, and includes Doctor Who audio drama alumni Ellie Darvill and Jane Slavin.

(3) WALT LOVED TRAINS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This video (which dropped two weeks ago) has Disney historian Don Hahn join with Bill Farmer, who has voiced Goofy and Pluto since 1987, to visit Walt Disney’s train barn, which is now in Griffith Park.  Hahn and Farmer learn that Walt Disney was a major rail fan, and discuss how Disney’s love of trains helped to shape Disneyland. “Exploring Walt Disney’s Railroad Barn With A Disney Legend”.

(4) DEADLY.  This animated marvel series on Hulu is about a monkey assassin. George Takei voices one of the characters – not the title character, however. Marvel’s Hit-Monkey.

After a Japanese snow monkey’s tribe is slaughtered, he joins forces with the ghost of an American assassin, and together, they begin killing their way through the Yakuza underworld. Marvel’s Hit Monkey Season 1 premieres on Hulu on November 17, 2021, with all ten episodes. The Voice cast includes George Takei, Jason Sudeikis, Olivia Munn, Ally Maki, Nobi Nakanishi, and Fred Tatasciore.

(5) WRANGLE OVER DRAGON CON MASK POLICY. Author Michael Z. Williamson, who doesn’t favor required mask-wearing, and anyway says his medical situation precludes it, has been exchanging accusations with the Dragon Con committee where he was going to be on the program and have his usual tables to sell knives: “DragonCon: Racism, Lies, and Borderline Fraud” at The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse.

About two weeks before event, DragonCon suddenly started posting on social media that everyone over age 2 would have to wear a mask, have proof of vaccine (except under 16 can’t get it?), or have a specific test 3 days before (and that last is ridiculous, when an attendee might stop at 12 truck stops on the way there).

Now, my political position on masks aside, I can’t wear one.  That’s literally why I was retired from the military.  Covering my face drops my blood oxygenation to COPD levels.  My wife hits every exemption there is, but good luck getting documentation that anyone considers “Acceptable.”

I inquired with both vendor relations and guest relations, and got told, “Ignore social media, we haven’t heard this and we don’t actually have a policy yet, that will be Thursday.”

Thursday rolls around and the email is, “The policy remains…”

Wait, I thought you didn’t have one yet? “Remains” means that was your policy, but you tried to pretend it wasn’t.

I told them I’d need a rollover by preference or a refund.

“Unfortunately, per policy, it’s too late for a refund or rollover.”

Yet, they were able to change their COVID policy.

So my choice was find someone to cover the show, or forfeit several thousand dollars to the poor, starving, corporate owners of DragonCon.

I withdrew as a guest, and made a public announcement to that effect. I was the 100th.  That seemed notable. In fact, by the end they lost 203 of 641 guests and professionals, or over 30%.

Now, I’m sure a case could be made in court for this being classic bait and switch, and refusing refunds or rollovers to be fraud. But I can’t state that as a fact without a court case.  It certainly smells that way, though….

He got his daughter to run his tables instead. Since the con, Williamson says this is what he’s heard:

…After the show I was told they were so very unhappy that I publicly boasted of being the 100th cancellation. Well, sorry about your feelings, but what about the feelings of 203 guests and families you screwed over by waiting for the last moment? What about the public threats to harass “plague rats” (perfectly healthy people not wearing masks) on your social media, that remained for days before being taken down?  We’re supposed to worship you, but you don’t need to respect the professionals in the field?

Then they unleashed this whopper, claiming the statement was made about me:

” there was a vendor this year who is making an incredibly racist remarks trying to sell his wares. Including things like “buy a knife from someone who speaks American” and “this is made with real metal, not ‘Chineseium’.” Worse than all of that however, was singling out another person in the vendors hall who is also selling knives. It was an Indian couple, and apparently that was why he wanted to specify that he does speak “American”, letting anyone who passed by know another vendor had people who spoke English as a second language at their table “

I’m going to explain why this is complete, unmitigated bullshit…

His explanation follows at the link.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1969 – Fifty-two years ago this week, the pilot of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) premiered on two different British broadcasters though it ran on ITV, the producing network. In the pilot, Hopkirk is murdered during an investigation but returns as a white-suited ghost. It was created by Dennis Spooner who had previously scripted for The Avengers and Doctor Who.  He also created Department S with Marty Berman. It starred Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope and Annette Andre. It ran for one season of twenty-six episodes.  In the States, it was given the really awful title of My Partner the Ghost. The series was remade thirty years later and is notable as the Fourth Doctor actor had an important role in it. It’s currently available on Amazon Prime. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 21, 1866 — H.G. Wells. Writer of The Time Machine, a novella in 1895, being his first genre work. Way, way too many genre works to list here so I’ll single out The War of The Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Invisible Man as works by him that influenced the genre in a very noticeable manner. He also wrote an impressive amount of short fiction and non-fiction as well. (Died 1946.)
  • Born September 21, 1912 — Chuck Jones. He wrote, produced and directed many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner among many others. His work won three Oscars, and the Academy also gave him an honorary one in 1996. He’s responsible for television adaptations of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Horton Hears a Who!, and of course Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Oh, and yes, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century. (Died 2002.)
  • Born September 21, 1947 — Stephen King, 74. I once saw him leaning up against a wall in Bangor outside his favorite breakfast spot nose deep in a paperback novel. I didn’t approach him to see what he was reading so intently. That’s how his native city treated him. Favorite by him? I’m not fond of his novels but I love his novellas and shorter fiction, so Different Seasons, Four past Midnight and Skeleton Crew are my picks. His only Hugo was a Best Related Non-Fiction Book one for Danse Macabre at Chicon IV though Carrie was nominated at Suncon, and his “Obits” novelette was nominated at MidAmeriCon II. 
  • Born September 21, 1947 — Nick Castle, 74. He  co-wrote with director John Carpenter the scripts for Escape from New York and Escape from L.A., but he’s best remembered for directing The Last Starfighter. He was Michael Myers in Halloween, a role he’d later reprise in, errr, Halloween.  His other interesting genre cred was performing the title song of Big Trouble in Little China as The Coup De Villes with Carpenter and Tommy Lee Wallace.
  • Born September 21, 1950 — Bill Murray, 71. Scrooged is my favorite film by him by a long shot followed by the first Ghostbusters film. I’m also fond of his voicing of Clive the Badger in Fantastic Mr. Fox. 
  • Born September 21, 1961 — Mark Allen Shepherd, 60.  Morn, the bar patron on Deep Space Nine. Amazingly he was in Quark’s bar a total of ninety three episodes plus one episode each on Next Gen and Voyager. Technically he’s uncredited in almost all of those appearances. That’s pretty much his entire acting career. I’m trying to remember if he has any lines. He’s also an abstract painter whose work was used frequently on DS9 sets. For all practical purposes, this was his acting career. 
  • Born September 21, 1983 — Cassandra Rose Clark, 38. Her contributions to The Witch Who Came in from the Cold, a serial fiction piece coauthored with Max Gladstone, Lindsay Smith, Ian Tregillis, and Michael Swanwick, are  superb. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and her YA novel, The Assassin’s Curse, was nominated for Young Adult Library Services Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. She was nominated for an Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association for her Sacred Summer collection.
  • Born September 21, 1990 — Allison Scagliotti, 31. One of the primary cast of Warehouse 13, a show that I really, really loved. Her first first genre role was as Jayna, one of the Wonder Twins, on the Smallville series. And she showed up in a crossover episode of Eureka called appropriately “Crossing Over”.  Her last gig is as Camille Engelson on Stitchers. I’ve not seen it but it’s also gotten really great reviews. 

(8) MARVEL FIRES BENNETT. The Mary Sue reports “Marvel Fired Joe Bennett After Alleged Anti-Semitic Cartoons”.

Marvel Comics fired Brazilian artist Joe Bennett and vowed not to hire him for “any future Marvel projects,” following allegations of anti-Semitism and troubling imagery in his artwork. Bennett had previously worked for Marvel Comics for nearly thirty years, beginning in 1994.

… This isn’t the first time Bennett has seemingly attacked members of marginalized communities. He previously mocked the 2019 assault of gay journalist Glenn Greenwald by a far-right Bolsonaro supporter. And just last year, Bennett “liked” transphobic comments on his public Instagram page. He is also an outspoken supporter of Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, a fascist Trump-like leader currently overseeing the devastating spread of Covid-19 throughout his country.

SYFY Wire writer Mike Avila adds:

…But here’s the question I have: Why did it take so long? This isn’t the first time Bennett has been accused of drawing offensive material. It’s not even the first time this year it’s happened. 

Back in February, he was forced to apologize after readers of his and Al Ewing’s hit Immortal Hulk series noticed that Issue #43 had a panel with a jewelry store. In the background, the name of the store is written backward and reads “Cronemberg Jewery” with a Star of David below it. The reason why the lettering was insulting is obvious. But perhaps even more offensive was the Star of David on the jewelry store’s window. It had no bearing on the story at all and there was no indication it was a Jewish-owned business. For some, it was just the perpetuation of a Jewish stereotype in that situation….

(9) SHALKA DOCTOR. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Based on the 2003 animated serial The Scream of the Shalka, artist Lophial did this piece on Richard E. Grant’s Shalka Doctor. Source: Commission of Shalka Doctor for @DrWho42 !

(10) A DECK OF CREDENTIALS. Daniel Dern brings to our attention these Cats Bicycle Playing Cards.

This is THE deck of cards for cat lovers! Cats from Bicycle Playing Cards features illustrated cards by the renowned artist Lisa Parker. This unique playing card deck includes custom cat illustrations on every Ace, Face Card, and Joker. This deck of cards is a must-have for anyone looking to spice up their card game game night and makes the perfect gift for the cat lover in your life!

(11) IRRESISTABLE TITLE. Mark Yon reviews “The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa” at SFFWorld.

…After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone . . .”

If that hasn’t grabbed your attention, this book is not for you. It involves bookshops and masses of books in piles and on shelves that appear to go on forever, the descriptions of which will make a bibliophile sigh in admiration. There’s also some lovely characterisation, especially of Rintaro the acutely shy bookish teenager referred to as a hikikomori here, but also of his wise friend Sayo Yuzuki and the cat named Tiger the tabby. And credit must go here to the sympathetic translation made by Louise Heal Kawai from the original Japanese novel, first published there in 2017.

(12) MARKET NOT OPENED YET. “‘Shang-Chi’ Wins a Warm Asia Greeting. Then There’s China.”  The New York Times

Marvel released “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” with China in mind. Simu Liu, the film’s Canadian lead actor, was born in China. Much of its dialogue is in Mandarin. The cast includes Tony Leung, one of the biggest Chinese-speaking movie stars in history.

The studio’s first Asian superhero movie is a hit, drawing praise and ticket sales in East Asia and other global markets. Perhaps the only place where the movie has not been well received — in fact, it has not been received there at all — is mainland China.

Disney, which owns Marvel, has yet to receive clearance from Beijing’s regulators to show the film in the vast but heavily censored movie market. While the reasons aren’t clear, “Shang-Chi” may be a victim of the low point in U.S.-China relations.

China is also pushing back against Western influence, with increasingly vocal nationalists denouncing foreign books and movies and the teaching of English. They have even criticized Mr. Liu for his previous comments about China, which he left in the mid-1990s, when he was a small child.

Lack of access to the world’s largest movie market could limit how much money the film makes. But in other parts of Asia, the movie has been greeted warmly by audiences for how it depicts a Chinese superhero burdened by a racist back story.

“I was really expecting the movie to be racist,” said David Shin, a Marvel fan in Seoul. “I was surprised at how well they touched upon Asian culture.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the spoiler-filled “Honest Trailers:  Jungle Cruise” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say that, like the ride it is based on, Jungle Cruise is “five percent colorful adventure and 95 percent corny jokes,” that this is the third movie (after Jumanji 2 and The Rundown) where Dwayne Johnson goes into the jungle to capture a bright, shiny object, that Emily Blunt has two Ph.D.’s–in botany and parkour, and that villain Jesse Plemons is “not exactly a Nazi, but not exactly not, see?”

[Thanks to Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Ben Bird Person, Rob Thornton, Chris Barkley, Cora Buhlert, Daniel Dern, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 9/9/21 Please Remove Shoes Before Standing On Shoulders Of Giant

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(1) TAKEI PAYS TRIBUTE TO BJO. [Item by David Doering.] If you didn’t catch it, last night the Paramount+ network put on a Star Trek Day special. They included short retrospectives on past Star Trek series from cast members. For TOS, they had George Takei. He described how the series was rescued for a third season, but then went out of his way with the short time he had to mention Bjo Trimble as the force behind it. His mention received a roar of applause and cheers from the crowd. I was deeply touched by both his highlighting Bjo and the audience’s response.

He went on to say that thanks to the third season, TOS could go into syndication, which is what cultivated a whole world of fans which led…and so on. Today we will have FIVE simultaneous Trek series on TV. Woah. So, SO glad to live to this era! 

(2) WATCH STAR TREK DAY SPECIAL. A recording of the three-hour-plus Star Trek Day livestream celebration is available at Facebook Live today.

(3) YOU WON’T EAT LUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN. They controlled the vertical. They controlled the horizontal. The 1965 Worldcon committee even found a way to tune out Harlan Ellison, writer of Outer Limits’ “Soldier” episode. The Hugo Book Club Blog replays that bit of history in “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bombastic Ego”.

…Though he backed down from that attempt, Ellison was adamant that there should be a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1965, and encouraged other fans to write in nominations for the category … with the apparent belief that if the category was being considered that year, his Outer Limits episode would be a shoe-in.

But the 1965 Hugo Awards operated under a unique set of rules that have not been used since; as per the convention committee, the shortlist was created via “nomination by a panel of experts, selecting from suggestions offered by the membership at large.” In practice, this meant that no matter how many voters included “Soldier” on their nominating ballot, the Hugo Committee could omit it if they so chose….

(4) REMATRIX. The Matrix Resurrections will be in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22.

From visionary filmmaker Lana Wachowski comes “The Matrix Resurrections,” the long-awaited fourth film in the groundbreaking franchise that redefined a genre. The new film reunites original stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in the iconic roles they made famous, Neo and Trinity.

(5) HE’S DEAD, JIM. Did you notice anything missing from the trailer above? Vice tries to explain the absence of a major character: “Is Morpheus Not in The Matrix Trailer Because He Died in The Matrix MMO?”

So you just watched the new Matrix Resurrections trailer and you’re wondering where Laurence Fishburne character Morpheus is. I’ve got bad news for you: Canonically, he’s been dead since the mid 2000s.

As part of an ambitious plan to continue The Matrix franchise after the films, the Wachowskis gave their blessing to a massively multiplayer online game based on the franchise, which launched in 2005. Victim of an overcrowded MMO market, The Matrix Online was canceled only four years later in 2009, and had less than 500 active players by that point. That this game is little known and now impossible to play does not also stop the following from being true: Technically, everything that occurred in that game is canon. The Matrix’s fan wiki considers The Matrix Online canon, and the Wachowskis were heavily involved in the creation of some of the Matrix games. They even appeared in The Matrix: Path of Neo.

According to The Matrix‘s fan wiki, Morpheus’s death was part of an in-game event where the character was, as always, up to some esoteric scheme…

(6) BYO. The real event was cancelled due to Covid, but 15,000 people showed up anyway. “Nevada sheriff says ‘Renegade’ Burning Man kept officers busy with rowdy behavior” reports the Reno Gazette Journal.

Things got a little salty on the playa at this year’s rogue Burning Man, according to the sheriff who has been overseeing the annual festival since 2015.

Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen described this year’s event — held outside the official auspices of the Burning Man organization — as  “people packed in a small space in the heat, no shade or cooling other than nighttime, little respect for your fellow man, and this year add the thick amounts of smoke and no (organized group) to attempt to diffuse situations.”

In addition to an increase in car crashes and open acts of speeding, there was a general “lack of care for fellow participants” over gathering that culminated Monday, Allen said.

He estimated more than 15,000 people flocked to what was dubbed “Renegade” Burning Man after organizers canceled the event for the second year in a row amid the COVID-19 pandemic. https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/pren/sf-q1a2z3be0d353f.min.html Typically, the annual event attracts more than 80,000 people to the playa about two hours north of Reno.

Last year it was estimated that about 5,000 people gathered in the Black Rock Desert even though the arts festival was cancelled.  

(7) CALLING BUGGIRL200. The New York Times profiles the creator of “A T-Shirt Shop for the Semi-Ironic ‘Twilight’ Fan”.

… She started selling them on Depop — a site often used to list “pre-loved” items — but realized, after receiving nearly 80 requests in her first day, that she’d need to scale up. So, she bought a web domain, BUGGIRL200.com (after her TikTok user name), and built her own online store. She has since sold more than 15,000 shirts, each of them reflecting tongue-in-cheek nostalgia for cultural touchstones from the last two decades. 

…This shirt — one of several “Twilight”-themed items Ms. Sinclair has made — was posted by Olivia Rodrigo on Instagram.

Her work has not gone unnoticed by the celebrity class: Olivia Rodrigo, for instance, tagged her friend Iris Apatow — daughter of Judd — in a photo on Instagram of a BUGGIRL200 original that reads as follows: “I think the Twilight movies are AWESOME!!!!! If you don’t think that makes me SEXY and COOL, DON’T FREAKING TALK TO ME!!!!! I am not even kidding.”

The image caught the eye of Dulce Clara, 21, a student in San Marcos, Calif. “‘Twilight’ will forever have a special place in my heart because not only did I grow up watching the movies, but it was actually my first teen romance film,” she said. When she saw Ms. Rodrigo’s post, she said, “I instantly fell in love with the shirt and bought it.”

(8) CHUNG MEDICAL UPDATE. Winchell Chung of Atomic Rockets has announced he is battling cancer.

Ad Astra Games reports on the efforts to keep Atomic Rockets online:

(9) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1978 – Forty-three years ago this week, the Jason of Star Command series was first seen on CBS. It was created and produced by Arthur H. Nadel who was previously responsible for Shazam!, The Secrets of Isis and Space Academy which this is a spin-off of. (The only series of these which I’ve seen is the first. I really liked it at the time. No idea what the Suck Fairy would make of it.) It would last but two seasons of twenty eight episodes.  (The first season episodes were fifteen minutes long and formed one story, the second were thirty minutes long.) James Doohan would be in the cast as Commander Canarvin for the first season before leaving to film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the chief villain here was Sid Haig who had appeared on Star Trek as the First Lawgiver in “The Return of the Archons”. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 9, 1922 — Pauline Baynes. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien’s lesser known works such as Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major and of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. With the help of cartographers from the Bordon military camp in Hampshire, Baynes created a map that Allen & Unwin published as a poster in 1970. Tolkien was generally pleased with it, though he didn’t particularly like her creatures especially her conception of a spider. (Died 2008.)
  • Born September 9, 1929 — Joseph Wrzos, 92. He edited Amazing Stories and Fantastic under the name Joseph Ross from 1965 through early 1967. With Hannes Bok, he edited in 2012, Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration. He won First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, and its Sam Moskowitz Archive Award twice.
  • Born September 9, 1935 — Topol, 86. He’s best remembered for his role of Tevye the Dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof, on both stage and screen, but that’s not why he’s getting a Birthday.  No, that’s because it’s because he was Dr. Hans Zarkov in the 1980 Flash Gordon film. He’s got just two other genre appearences, once in Tales of the Unexpected as Professor Max Kelada  in the “Mr. Know-All” episode, and in the Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.
  • Born September 9, 1943 — Tom Shippey, 78. Largely known as a Tolkien expert, though I see he wrote a scholarly 21-page introduction to Flights of Eagles, a collection of James Blish work. Under the pseudonym of John Holm, he is also the co-author, with Harry Harrison, of The Hammer and the Cross trilogy of alternate history novels. And early on, he did a lot of SF related non-fiction tomes such as Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative (edited with George Slusser). He edited The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories thirty years ago. 
  • Born September 9, 1952 — Angela Cartwright, 69. Fondly remembered as Penny Robinson on the original Lost in Space. She, like several of her fellow cast members, made an appearance in the Lost in Space film. In her case, it was as Shelia Harris in the “Echoes” episode. She appeared in the Logan’s Run series in “The Collectors” episode as Karen, and in Airwolf as Mrs. Cranovich in the “Eruption” episode. 
  • Born September 9, 1955 — Janet Fielding, 66. Tegan Jovanka, companion to the Fifth Doctor. The actress had a rather short performing career starting with the Hammer House of Horror series in 1980 where she was Secretary Mandy on the “Charlie Boy” episode” before landing the Doctor Who gig through 1984 before her career ending in the early Nineties. She was part of the 2013 50th Anniversary The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Her last acting role was voicing Dr. Mendez in the “Breakout” episode of the Australian Prisoner Zero series.
  • Born September 9, 1960 — Hugh Grant, 61. He appeared in The Lair of the White Worm as Lord James D’Ampton and in the remake of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as Mr. Waverly. And he was the Handsome Doctor in Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death, the 1999 Doctor Who special made for the Red Nose Day charity telethon. He’s in the forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons as Forge Fletcher. 
  • Born September 9, 1971 — Henry Thomas, 50. Elliot in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Let’s just say that he’s had a busy post-E.T. acting career for which I will single out his rather good work in Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King and The Haunting of Hill House series. He’s playing Doctor Mid-Nite in the ongoing Stargirl series which I really need to see. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Lise Andreasen supplies a Danish/English translation for the Wulffmorgenthaler 7/9 cartoon published at Politiken.

Good news!  Now that the apocalypse is over, we actually have the resources to rebuild the whole society, just as it was before!  What do you say!?

How about we don’t!  How do you think we ended up here?  Think, Lars!

(12) TILT. Somewhere down the I-10 from me a pop culture mecca is going away: “Pinball Museum Will Auction 1,700 Arcade Games After Closing Its Doors” says the New York Times.

Inside an unremarkable warehouse near Palm Springs, Calif., hundreds of pinball machines once beckoned arcade game aficionados from far and wide, their blinking lights and coin slots a throwback to a time long before Xbox.

But then came the coronavirus pandemic, and the game, one that the museum’s owner said was already a losing proposition because of the economic climate and the cost of real estate and insurance, was over. No flippers could keep the ball in play.

Now, the Museum of Pinball in Banning, Calif., one of the largest museums devoted to pinball machines, is about to do something that once might have seemed inconceivable: It will start on Friday to auction off more than 1,700 arcade games.

The auction will be conducted both online and at the museum itself, where in 2015 a Guinness World Record was set for the most people playing pinball simultaneously: 331.

The collection could be worth as much as $7 million, according to the auctioneer handling the sale, which includes some machines more than 60 years old. The holy grail of the sale could be a “Pirates of the Caribbean” collector’s edition pinball machine from 2018, associated with the Disney franchise, which the auction house said could fetch up to $35,000….

(13) MEET THE CREW. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds cast announcement does major fan service. See the video at StarTrek.com.

(14) CONTROL THAT IMPULSE. That’s the plan, says Yahoo! News: “A 150-Year Old Idea Could Lead To A Breakthrough In Space Travel”.

… Once the exclusive province of science fiction films, space colonization has been moving closer to becoming a reality thanks to major advances in astronautics and astrophysics; rocket propulsion and design, robotics and medicine. Trekkies, along with the otherworldly technology featured in the Star Trek series, have helped define the science fiction universe. One of the most mind-boggling of these technologies from those shows is the “Impulse Drive,” a propulsion system used on the spaceships of many species to get across the galaxy in amazingly short timeframes measured in months or a few years rather than centuries or millennia. 

And now scientists have unveiled the Holy Grail of Space Travel: A real-life Impulse Drive system able to achieve sub-light velocities using zero fuel propellants. After 30 years of tinkering and fine-tuning, a pair of scientists might finally be close to turning science fiction into science fact. 

And, NASA is taking the idea seriously. 

Conventional spaceships burn rocket fuel to achieve escape velocities, maneuver, and even land, in the case of SpaceX rockets. But what if you could build a spaceship that runs entirely on electricity?

That’s exactly what the Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive does.

Jim Woodward, a physics professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, and Hal Fearn, a physicist at Fullerton, have developed the Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) Drive propulsion based on what they say is peer-reviewed, technically credible physics.

With the help of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant, the two scientists have developed MEGA Drive based on the physics described in Einstein’s theory of relativity….

(15) WHAT A TOOL. “Judge Says an AI Can’t Be an Inventor on a Patent Because It’s Not a Person” – MSN.com has the verdict.

U.S. federal judge Leonie Brikema ruled this week that an AI can’t be listed as an inventor on a U.S. patent under current law. The case was brought forward by Stephen Thaler, who is part of the Artificial Inventor Project, an international initiative that argues that an AI should be allowed to be listed as an inventor in a patent (the owner of the AI would legally own the patent).

Thaler sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after it denied his patent applications because he had listed the AI named DABUS as the inventor of a new type of flashing light and a beverage container. In various responses spanning several months, the Patent Office explained to Thaler that a machine does not qualify as an inventor because it is not a person. In fact, the machine is a tool used by people to create inventions, the agency maintained.

Brikema determined that the Patent Office correctly enforced the nation’s patent laws and pointed out that it basically all boils down to the everyday use of language. In the latest revision of the nation’s patent law in 2011, Congress explicitly defined an inventor as an “individual.” The Patent Act also references an inventor using words such as “himself” and herself.”

(16) HIJACK THE STARSHIP. Star Trek: Prodigy is coming to Nickelodeon.

Developed by Emmy Award-winners Kevin and Dan Hageman (“Trollhunters” and “Ninjago”) the CG-animated series STAR TREK: PRODIGY is the first “Star Trek” series aimed at younger audiences and will follow a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search for a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek Franchise – but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBE7d8sH5Rg

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