Pixel Scroll 5/7/25 The Compleat Pixeller In Scroll

(1) NEW SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 DEVELOPMENTS. Last night Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond and Program Division Head SunnyJim Morgan published their promised statement detailing how ChatGPT was used in the program panelist selection process. (See File 770’s coverage here: “Seattle Worldcon 2025 Tells How ChatGPT Was Used in Panelist Selection Process”.)

Some public announcements by departing program participants have been spotted:

  • Leah Ning of Apex Books has written a two-page “public record” of the reasons for withdrawing as a Seattle Worldcon 2025 program participant. Read it at Bluesky.
  • Philip Athans has also dropped out of the program – announcement on Bluesky.

Cora Buhlert has written a link compilation post, “Robot Hallucinations”, that also features a long exposition about what ChatGPT returned when she ran her own name through the prompt. The notorious prompt namechecks this blog, about which Cora says, “File 770 is a good resource, but it’s not the only SFF news site nor is it free of bias. So privileging File 770 as a source means that any bias it has is reproduced.” Which is true as far as it goes, however, I believe the reason Seattle included 770 was to corral news about code of conduct violations.

Frank Catalano recommends this Bluesky thread by Simon Bisson as “what appears to be a good analysis of the Seattle Worldcon AI prompt from a well-regarded and experienced tech journalist.” It begins here: “So I looked at the ‘query’ that Worldcon used, and as someone who has written at least two books on enterprise AI and many many developer columns on how to build AI apps, and, well, the slim hope that I’d had that they may have done things right has been dashed.” (Coincidentally, Bisson was once a frequent commenter here.)

(2) A LOT OF THAT GOING AROUND. Publisher’s Lunch reported today that the Mystery Writers of America apologized in a Bluesky post for using AI-generated animations of Humphrey Bogart and Edgar Allan Poe in a video shown at the Edgar awards ceremony on May 1

(3) AFUA RICHARDSON GOFUNDME. A GoFundMe – “Aid Afua’s Path to Recovery” – has been started to fund medical expenses of comics creator Afua Richardson, a featured artist at Dublin 2019.

Like most artists, she is not insured and has to come out of pocket for medical expenses after her major surgery. Please help her on her path to recovery.

Afua Richardson is known for her work on Genius and World of Wakanda. Other stories she has drawn for include X-Men, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and the Mighty Avengers for Marvel Comics; and Wonder Woman Warbringer and All-Star Batman for DC Comics; and Mad Max. She also worked with U.S. Representative and civil rights leader John Lewis to illustrate Run, a volume in his autobiographical comic series co-written with Andrew Aydin. She won the 2011 Nina Simone Award for Artistic Achievement for her trailblazing work in comics.

(4) PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION HALTS CUTS TO IMLS. “R.I. District Court Grants Preliminary Injunction in IMLS Case” reports Publishers Weekly.

In welcome news for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and two more federal agencies targeted for dismantling by a presidential executive order, the District Court of Rhode Island has granted 21 states’ attorneys general the preliminary injunction they sought in Rhode Island v. Trump. In response to the evidence and to an April 18 motion hearing, chief judge John J. McConnell Jr. granted the states’ motion, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the executive order violates the Administrative Procedures Act, separation of powers principle, and the Take Care clause of the U.S. Constitution.

From the first paragraph of his order, Judge McConnell upheld that Congress controls the agencies and appropriates funding, and he referred to “the arbitrary and capricious way” the March 14 order was implemented at the IMLS, Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). He determined that the EO “disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated.”

Notably, the order’s timing closely coincided with FY25 congressional appropriations. On March 15, the day after issuing the EO, President Donald Trump—a named defendant in the case—approved the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, mandating FY2024-level funding for IMLS and other agencies through September 25, 2025. In 2024, IMLS was appropriated $294,800,000, so the same amount was approved for FY25.

In some cases, IMLS is issuing checks, fulfilling its statutory obligation…

(5) TONY AWARD NOMINEES. File 770 lists the many “2025 Tony Award Nominees” of genre interest at the link.

(6) RACE MATHEWS (1935-2025). Charles Race Thorson Mathews, a founding member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club in 1952, and holder of its membership number 1, died May 5. Race suffered a broken pelvis from a fall three weeks ago, and had been going downhill since. He died May 5 at the age of 90.

Fancyclopedia 3 recalls he sold off his collection to fund the courtship of his wife, and mostly gafiated in 1956 following his marriage.

He subsequently went into politics. He opened Aussiecon 1 in 1975, while he was a member of federal parliament. By 1985 he was Minister for the Police and Emergency Services for the State of Victoria and at Aussiecon 2 gave the opening address. Mathews was kind enough to let File 770 publish his speech, which was rich in fanhistorical anecdote. (It can be found at File 770 57, p. 16 (part 1) and File 770 58, p. 2 p15 (part 2).)

Mathews was the author or editor of numerous books on politics, cooperatives and economics.

He is the subject of a biography, Race Mathews: A Life in Politics by Iola Mathews, Monash University Press, 2024.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 7, 1931Gene Wolfe. (Died 2019)

By Paul Weimer: Were I to do this birthday properly and proud, I’d do a Gene Wolfe piece that had unreliable narration, used a prodigious and positively unwonted vocabulary, possibly footnoted, and definitely something to be re-read, re-examined and thought over for years. 

Unfortunately I am not Gene Wolfe, and frankly, few other others in the SFF genresphere have ever dared to try and approach him. His is the kind of work that like few others, you can read and re-read over a lifetime, and get not just nuggets but whole veins of new and exciting ideas. His ideas have influenced my RPG scenarios and ideas for years.

Jack Vance may have invented the Dying Earth, but Gene Wolfe codified it and made it a whole subgenre of his own with the New Sun books, which is where i began his work. I did begin a bit in the deep end, but a friend (and at the time one of the players in my TTRPG) said that I just had to read Gene Wolfe. And so I did.  Did I understand my first read through of Severian’s story? Not as much as I thought I did. Read number two went much better, and I keep thinking I need a read number three–I’ve made a couple of abortive attempts at it but the siren song and responsibility of new work keeps me from doing so.

After Beyond the New Sun, I went to the Long Sun (generation ships for the win!) and then moved on. I loved the Wizard Knight series with its Yggdrasil like setup of worlds (you all know how much I enjoy worldbuilding, even as I sometimes mistype Discworld for Ringworld and my editor misses it 😉 ). I think the Fifth Head of Cerberus might be his most accessible work, an entry point if you want to try Wolfe without going for some of the more elusive works. I think The Land Across is also a good entry point as well, and feels timely and relevant with its capricious rules in the government of the country our narrator visits (also makes me think of Miéville’s The City and the City). 

I’ve not read all of his oeuvre, but I’ve tried most of it. I’m weakest on his short stories and need to catch up on those (I’ve read Castle of Days of course, and found out recently a friend found a copy of the Castle of the Otter for a bargain price in a used bookstore. What a rare find!)

My favorite Wolfe are probably the Latro books (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon). These books are almost as if Gene Wolfe decided. “Paul Weimer needs books just for him).  Latro is a Roman mercenary, circa 470s BC serving as he will in the Mediterranean as a soldier. He’s had a head injury and so cannot remember events of the previous day (50 First Dates, anyone?).  However, he can see the various supernatural beings that populate the landscape that no one else can.  The books are masterpieces of information holding and withholding as we, the reader can piece together things that Latro clearly misses, all in one of the best all time favorite set of settings. Sure, you’ve got to work hard to really get these books, but that’s the secret of all of Wolfe’s work. If you want to read it, be prepared to do the home work. Sure, this series and much of Wolfe’s work is not a casual read (and I’ve tried audio and audio and Wolfe do not work for me), but Wolfe was Umberto Eco in full SFF guise. If that is what you are ready for, or in the mood for, Wolfe’s works await you.

I never got to meet him in person, alas.  Requiescat in pace.

Gene Wolfe

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE. “Hugo 2025: Flow” is another compelling review of a Hugo finalist by Camestros Felapton.

…Simple plot. The characters are a cat who is a cat. A labrador who is very much a labrador. A lemur that is a bit obsessed with stuff. A capybara that is a bit stoical. A secretary bird who possibly is a transcendental messenger of cosmic forces whose role is to usher the cat into a meeting with the divine to maybe save the world or maybe that’s a dream. So straight forward stuff.

Of course, I’m being intentionally obtuse. The film uses simple parts to tell a complex story with many thought provoking aspects, an intentionally unresolved mystery and a strong religious themes without any overt religion or religious messaging….

(10) FALLING ON HIS SWORD A SPECIALTY. Gary Farber reminds File 770 “I’m still willing to make sacrifices for fandom.”  He wanted to be sure we didn’t miss his offer on Facebook —  

Now I’m thinking I could volunteer to a Worldcon so they could have another body they could offer up to resign to take the blame for whatever Inevitable Embarrassing Scandal is happening in that half of that year before the con.

I wouldn’t need any actual skills. I could just have a title, and then be duly fired/resign when someone needs to be fired/resign in order to take the blame.

Future Worldcon Committees, I’M AVAILABLE!

Sandra Bond suggests his title should be, “Gary Farber, Omelas Fan.”

(11) MYERS-BRIGGS-SKYWALKER. “Woman wins £30,000 compensation for being compared to Darth Vader” – the Guardian has the story.

Comparing someone at work to the Star Wars villain Darth Vader is “insulting” and “upsetting”, an employment tribunal has ruled.

A judge concluded that being told you have the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi baddie is a workplace “detriment” – a legal term meaning harm or negative impact experienced by a person.

“Darth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting,” the employment judge Kathryn Ramsden said.

The tribunal’s ruling came in the case of an NHS blood donation worker Lorna Rooke, who has won almost £30,000 after her co-worker took a Star Wars-themed psychological test on her behalf and told colleagues Rooke fell into the Sith Lord’s category….

… In August 2021, members of Rooke’s team took a Star Wars themed Myers-Briggs questionnaire as a team-building exercise.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people into 16 categories based on how introverted they are, level of intuition, if they are led by thoughts or feelings and how they judge or perceive the world around them….

…Rooke did not participate as she had to take a personal phone call but when she returned a colleague, Amanda Harber, had filled it out on her behalf and announced that she had the same personality type as Vader – real name Anakin Skywalker.

The supervisor told the tribunal this outcome made her feel unpopular and was one of the reasons for her resignation the following month….

(12) FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. [Item by Cliff.] When truth is stranger than science fiction….. “AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court” – the Guardian tells how it was done.

Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021.

Three and a half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of.

“To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” says a video recording of Pelkey. “In another life, we probably could have been friends.

“I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do,” Pelkey continues, wearing a grey baseball cap and sporting the same thick red and brown beard he wore in life.

Pelkey was 37 years old, devoutly religious and an army combat veteran. Horcasitas shot Pelkey at a red light in 2021 after Pelkey exited his vehicle and walked back towards Horcasitas’s car.

Pelkey’s appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement. Stacey Wales, Pelkey’s sister, told local outlet ABC-15 that she had a recurring thought when gathering more than 40 impact statements from Chris’s family and friends.

“All I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?” Wales said….

…Wales and her husband fed an AI model videos and audio of Pelkey to try to come up with a rendering that would match the sentiments and thoughts of a still-alive Pelkey, something that Wales compared with a “Frankenstein of love” to local outlet Fox 10.

Judge Todd Lang responded positively to the AI usage. Lang ultimately sentenced Horcasitas to 10 and a half years in prison on manslaughter charges…

(13) TRAILER PARK. Dropped today — The Long Walk (2025) Official Trailer.

From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen King’s first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mocking Jay – Pts. 1&2 , and The Ballad of the Songbirds & Snakes), comes THE LONG WALK, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?

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

Pixel Scroll 3/16/25 Scroll Titles Considered As A Matrix Of Silly Fannish Puns

(1) ELGIN AWARDS NEWS. Members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) have until May 31 to nominate books for the 2025 Elgin Awards.

The Elgin Awards, named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, are presented annually by SFPA for books published in the preceding two years in two categories, Chapbook and Book. 

2025 Elgin Chair: Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Only books of speculative poetry first published during 2023 and 2024 are eligible. Books containing fiction as well as poetry are not eligible. More than half of the poems in the book must be unequivocally speculative as determined by Chair. Translations into English are eligible.

(2) PETER DAVID FUNDRAISER. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Peter David, in addition to having written many fine issues and runs of comics (Hulk, Young Justice, Spider-Man, Supergirl, etc.), and sff (including Star Trek novels), and TV episodes (including Babylon 5) and games, wrote a wonderful, informed-and-informative opinion column “But I Digress…” for the Comic Buyers Guide (which, I see, there are two book collections of).

Now he (and his family) need our help! I see that the GoFundMe has already done remarkably…but it hasn’t yet reached its goal. As of 6:30PM ET today (Sunday, March 16), it’s reached around 55% of its goal.

Here’s the link — “Help Peter David” at GoFundMe.

And here’s the CBR.com article where I saw it – “Comics Icon Peter David Needs Our Help” — with (my) caveat that this article’s link to the GoFundMe has got lots of tracking/etc stuff in their link… I’m planning to use the link I provided just above to make my own donation, later tonight.

(3) CLIPPING STILL WORKING IN SFF. From the Guardian: “Daveed Diggs’ sci-fi rap trio Clipping: ‘We are at war all the time. It’s one of the great tricks of capitalism’”.

As a child, Daveed Diggs and his schoolfriend William Hutson drew pictures inspired by the space-age album covers of funk legends Parliament, filled with gleaming UFOs and eccentric interplanetary travellers. Diggs would grow up to become an actor, winning a Tony award as the first person to play the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. He’s since voiced Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid’s live-action remake and appeared in Nickel Boys, which was nominated twice at this year’s Oscars. But away from Hollywood and Broadway, he’s still dreaming up fantastical sci-fi worlds with Hutson – now through one of the most imaginative, harrowing projects in underground rap.

Along with Hutson’s college roommate Jonathan Snipes – who had a similar childhood experience, inspired by the otherworldly paintings adorning classical albums – the friends formed Clipping in Los Angeles in 2010. Over Hutson and Snipes’s production, Diggs weaves blood-soaked horror stories about racial violence or fables of enslaved people in outer space. On their new album Dead Channel Sky, he raps with mechanical precision over warped rave music, creating a noirish cyberpunk world of hackers, clubgoers, future-soldiers and digital avatars.

Their music has earned them nominations for sci-fi’s highest honour, the Hugo awards, and it’s made all the more distinctive by Diggs’s decision to avoid using the first person in his lyrics. “In an art form that is so self-conscious, is it still rap music if we take that out?” he says on a video call alongside his bandmates. “We discovered pretty quickly that it is, but that it also opened possibilities.” His raps feel like cinema or musical theatre, narrating action and voicing dialogue with characters of – generally – ambiguous gender and race. “What we’ve found from fans is that, because we don’t have much to do with these characters ourselves, it has allowed people to put a lot of themselves into them, to come up with reasons why this stuff is happening, and make links between songs we didn’t think of.”…

(4) GRRM ON FRANK HERBERT. “’I Think He Was a Little Bothered That All They Wanted Was Dune’: George R.R. Martin Discusses ‘Dune’ and Frank Herbert” at Collider.

During the interview, Martin mentioned that he wanted to see his novel Fevre Dream adapted. He also admitted that there were potential issues that might hinder it getting made, especially as it is a historical horror novel about vampires on a steamboat set in the 1850s. However, Martin maintained that, as long as the source exists, the stories can still be told. “But Frank Herbert probably didn’t think Dune would ever be made. Well, they made it, but you know what happened there,” Martin said, implying the 1984 film’s mixed reception. “If Frank had lived long enough and seen what they’re doing now, that would be great, but he’s gone.”…

…Martin recalled his brief interactions with Frank Herbert and the Dune author’s own experience with his wildly popular series, saying:

“Frank made Dune, which was one of the great, great books in the history of science fiction. But I know him a little, not a lot, just over conventions, and I think he was a little bothered that all they wanted was Dune. ‘Give us another Dune. Give us another Dune. Give us another Dune.’ He wrote other good books. He wrote Under Pressure, a deep-sea novel about exploration. He wrote The Santaroga Barrier. That’s all of us writers. We want our other children to get some attention, too.”…

(5) TEXAS GOVERNOR LIES ABOUT FURRIES. “Greg Abbott cites debunked furries claim in latest school voucher push” reports the Houston Chronicle.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. 

The Texas Republican told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is “alive and well” in communities across the state, and that lawmakers needed to ban it. 

He endorsed newly filed legislation by state Rep. Stan Gerdes called the “Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education (F.U.R.R.I.E.S) Act,” which would prohibit any “non-human behavior” by a student, “including presenting himself or herself … as anything other than a human being” by wearing animal ears or barking, meowing or hissing. The bill includes exceptions for sports mascots or kids in school plays.

Gerdes’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bill didn’t have any immediate cosponsors.

Abbott’s remarks appeared to call back unfounded rumors from 2022 that public schools across the country were catering to students who identified as animals. In one instance, the GOP chair in Williamson County falsely claimed Round Rock schools were lowering cafeteria tables for furries…. 

(6) KEN LIU Q&A. “Pantheon: Sci-Fi Author Ken Liu Discusses TV Series Adaptation & More” at Bleeding Cool.

Pantheon, the animated TV series that adapts stories by Hugo award-winning Science Fiction author Ken Liu, is one of the most ambitious Science Fiction series on television. It depicts the Singularity from the point of view of a grieving young girl and her family as they discover her late father has been illegally uploaded into a digital consciousness as part of a tech corporation’s plans for the next step in human evolution. Pantheon is a complex and ambitious Science Fiction series, covering topics like the uploading of human consciousness, The Singularity, Quantum entanglement, and the moral, ethical, philosophical, and existential questions that come with it, along with a commentary on capitalist exploitation…

Congratulations on the complete story of “Pantheon” finally becoming available. Can you take us back to how you came up with the original stories that ended up in “The Hidden Girl and Other Stories”? Did you just start with one before you felt inspired to explore the ideas further?

[Ken Liu] Thank you! It’s such a pleasure to talk about Pantheon. The show is based on seven stories I wrote: “The Gods Will Not Be Chained,” “The Gods Will Not Be Slain,” “The Gods Have Not Died in Vain,” “Carthaginian Rose,” “Staying Behind,” “Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer,” and “Seven Birthdays.” Collectively, I refer to them as the “Singularity” stories. Six of them can be found in my collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories.

The three “Gods …” stories were originally written for the Apocalypse Triptych anthologies edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. From these, you get the basic plot line of Maddie and her dad and the uploaded “gods.” The other stories are set in the same universe and explore the world before, after, and during the apocalypse of UIs taking over the world.

However, I didn’t write the three Apocalypse Triptych stories first. I’ve been exploring the concept of consciousness uploading in fiction for over two decades (the very first story in this universe, “Carthaginian Rose,” was my first published story, all the way back in 2002).

Why have I been writing about this subject so much? The idea of uploading minds is old and quite popular among some groups in Silicon Valley (for whom the success of uploading always seems to be just about a decade or so away). On the one hand, from a materialist perspective, it seems easy to accept the idea that human consciousness can run on different hardware, including upgraded hardware that could unlock our full potential. On the other hand, it also seems that if you “upload” in the manner described in my stories, the uploaded version would not be a “continuation” of you, at least not from the perspective of the you that dies in the process. The premise, uniting boundless hope with existential horror, is irresistible to the imagination. Stories that explore this theme, such as Pantheon and the video game SOMA, tend to generate a lot of debates among fans precisely because of this paradox.

(7) WE HAVE LIFTOFF. “From Start to Finish, Framestore Visualizes ‘Wicked’” at Animation World Network.

Leading VFX and animation studio Framestore had the recent good fortune of working from previs to postvis to final on Jon M. Chu’s award-winning hit musical adventure, Wicked. On the film, Framestore Pre-Production Services devised the camera angles and movements for sequences involving Nessarose Thropp’s levitating wheelchair, Elphaba taking flight, and Doctor Dillamond.

“The chorography is similar, from action scenes through to musical numbers,” notes Christopher McDonald, Visualization Supervisor, Framestore.  “A great starting point is to look at storyboards to get a representation of whether it’s a set or location and then block out the action literally from a top-down perspective. That’s a strong basis because it’s always something you can refer back to once you’ve got that basic blocking in place.  On “Defying Gravity,” in particular, we worked quite closely with the stunt team, which had a bunch of tests that were done with the various rigs.  They had all of these concepts for movements that Elphaba was going to perform at certain points during the song.  Then it was a case of figuring out how do we fit this in? How is it going to look? How are we going to shoot it?  Those are the building blocks for scenes like that.” …

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cora Buhlert.]

March 16, 1961Todd McFarlane, 64.

By Cora Buhlert: Todd McFarlane, comic creator, toymaker and noted baseball fan, was born on March 16, 1961, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He fell in love with both comics and baseball at an early age. His attempts to become a professional baseball player never worked out. His attempts to become a professional comic artist did. 

I first became aware of McFarlane’s work – no, not via Spider-Man or Spawn – but via the obscure DC Comics series Infinity Inc. which featured the children of DC‘s golden age superheroes, the Justice Society of America, engaging in some superheroing of their own. The series ran from 1984 to 1988, McFarlane provided the art from 1985 to 1987. 

I was always more of a Marvel fan and bought my first issue Infinity Inc. by accident, because I mistook a green-skinned woman on the cover of an issue for She-Hulk.The green-skinned woman turned out to be Jennie-Lynn Hayden a.k.a. Jade, daughter of the golden age Green Lantern Alan Scott, but this comic I had bought by accident nonetheless intrigued me enough that I started reading the series regularly. I loved the premise of the kids of established superheroes forming their own group as well as the soap operatic antics, particularly the love triangle between Fury, Nuklon and Silver Scarab. The dynamic and engaging art by the then unknown Todd McFarlane certainly didn’t hurt either.

The love triangle I had followed with bated breath eventually concluded with Fury and Silver Scarab marrying, which annoyed me, because I was team Nuklon, and I moved on to other comics. So did Todd McFarlane. First, he worked on Batman: Year Two and then moved over to Marvel to work on The Incredible Hulk

In 1988, Todd McFarlane got his big break, when he took over pencilling duties on The Amazing Spider-Man. The friendly neighborhood web slinger was a perfect match for McFarlane’s overly detailed art style. McFarlane depicted Spider-Man swinging in mid-air in dynamic, contorted poses and turned his webbing, usually depicted quite plainly, into an elaborate tangle of individual strands.

 The highly detailed art style of Todd McFarlane and other artists who came up in the late 1980s like Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld or Erik Larsen was much criticized in later years – not without reason, because McFarlane was much better at covers and splash pages than at visual storytelling. But in the late 1980s this style felt like a breath of fresh air, because it was so different from anything that had gone before.

 The career trajectories of the superstar comic artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s – Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld – are remarkably similar. All three took over a mainstream Marvel title – The Amazing Spider-Man, The Uncanny X-Men, The New Mutants – and gained lots of acclaim for their work on these already popular titles. They created characters popular to this day – McFarlane’s most famous Marvel creation is Venom – and achieved superstar status. In response, Marvel relaunched these titles with a flashy number one issue with multiple variant covers that became some of the bestselling American comic books of all time and also launched the comic speculation bubble of the 1990s. 

 But trouble was brewing behind the scenes. The young superstar artists wanted more creative control on the titles they were working on and also clashed with veteran Marvel writers and editors. Marvel made concessions in order to keep their most popular artists happy, gave them co-creator credit on certain characters and also let them take over writing duties, whereby it quickly became apparent that McFarlane, Lee and Liefeld were much better artists (and even that is debatable, given the notable weaknesses particularly of Rob Liefeld) than writers. In McFarlane’s case, Marvel editors were not happy with McFarlane’s increasingly dark and violent art and storylines for Spider-Man, traditionally a more light-hearted character.

 These simmering issues exploded in 1992, when Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portaccio and Jim Valentino left Marvel to form Image Comics, an umbrella publisher for independent comic creators. McFarlane’s launch title for Image was Spawn, based on a character McFarlane had created as a teenager. Spawn No. 1 was a huge success and sold 1.7 million copies, making it the bestselling independent US comic of all time. McFarlane is still president of Image Comic to this day. 

As a teenage comic reader, I knew nothing about the behind the scenes clashes at Marvel. All I knew was that all my favorite artists all left at the same time and started new titles, while over at Marvel the X-Men and Spider-Man books began their long decline. I did buy several Image titles, but very few of them appealed to me as much as the Marvel work by those same artists did. Spawn I dropped after a few issues, because it didn’t appeal to me at all. Other problems quickly became apparent as well with comics delayed for weeks and months. Spawn was one of the more consistent Image titles and came out with relative regularity. And because McFarlane realised that he was a better artist than writer, he hired various well-regarded writers for Spawn.

Todd McFarlane gradually lost interest in the ongoing Spawn comic and expanded into other fields. He made headlines by spending huge amounts of money on collectible baseballs and tried to enter the film business with led to a Spawn movie in 1997. In 1994 he also founded Todd Toys, renamed McFarlane Toys after Mattel insisted that they owned the rights to the name “Todd”, which was also the name of Barbie’s younger brother (who was ironically discontinued shortly thereafter). McFarlane Toys started off by producing action figures based on the Spawn comic series and branched out into action figures based on videogames, music, sports, horror films, anime and many other franchises. In 2018, McFarlane Toys also took over the DC Comics license from Mattel

Once again, Todd McFarlane made a huge splash with his entry into the toy industry. Like his artwork, his action figures were a lot more detailed and realistic than action figures had been up to this point. Ironically enough, they also shared many of the same weakness, because while the figures were beautiful, they were also stiff and hard to pose. The character selection was lacking as well. For example, the DC Multiverse action figure line from McFarlane contains endless variants of Batman and Superman, including offbeat designs such as a Batman figure with an electric guitar, but lesser-known characters, particularly female characters (which McFarlane claims don’t sell and also turn little boys into serial killers – yes, really) were few and far between. Even a classic looking Wonder Woman was nigh impossible to find, let alone characters like Huntress or Jade, to whom I’d been introduced by McFarlane’s artwork almost forty years ago.

 McFarlane’s biggest impact on the toy world, however, was indirect. Because in 1999, Jim Preziosi, Eric Treadway, H. Eric “Cornboy” Mayse and Chris Dahlberg, four sculptors working at McFarlane Toys to bring those beautiful action figures to life, left the company to form Four Horsemen Studios, an independent toy design company which designed the Masters of the Universe 200X and Classics lines as well as the DC Universe Classics line for Mattel, the Marvel Legends line for ToyBiz, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line for NECA as well as the Mythic and Cosmic Legions lines for their own company. Many of the toys in my collection were designed by them.

Todd McFarlane is the subject of much criticism, a lot of it well deserved. However, he also changed the industries in which he worked – both comics and toys – forever. Image Comics broke through the stranglehold of Marvel and DC on the US comic market and offered a home for creator owned comics, while McFarlane Toys turned action figures from toys for kids into collectibles for adults, a market toy companies had barely explored before.   

Todd McFarlane

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) CREEPERS, FICTIONAL AND REAL. [Item by Steven French.] Interesting interview with Róisin Lanigan who has ‘remade’ the haunted house genre for the rental age in her new novel (and cites The Amityville Horror, of course): “Róisín Lanigan: ‘I moved to London and got bedbugs’” in the Guardian.

Why was horror the right approach?

I’m a big horror fan. I was reading a lot about haunted houses, and thinking about how all haunted house stories are essentially about owning property and the huge burden that places on you psychologically. And then I was thinking, I wonder what the equivalent is for us, as millennials who rent? Alongside that, I was seeing a lot of my friends – and myself – beginning to live with their partners much earlier than we had been conditioned to think you might do so, for financial reasons.

That then brings complications, if you’re not quite ready to make that step. So the book is a ghost story set in the rental crisis, but it’s also about this young woman’s experience of a situation that she finds increasingly intolerable, and how she has no outlet to express that….

(11) BLACK HAIR ANIMATION UPGRADE. “An animation breakthrough makes it possible to more accurately illustrates Black hair” at NPR.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Whether it’s video games or animated movies and TV, you may have noticed that Black characters have matching hairstyles time and time again – often flat, two-dimensional and straight up unrealistic hairstyles. And this isn’t a coincidence. While advancements in depicting straight hair have been happening by leaps and bounds, Black hair animation has been stuck, until now.

A.M. Darke, an artist, game maker and professor in UC Santa Cruz’s Department of Performance, Play and Design, co-authored algorithms last month that animate three major characteristics of Black hair. Professor Darke joins us now to talk about her research. Thanks so much for being here.

A M DARKE: Thank you so much for having me.

RASCOE: What are these three attributes that could be illustrated in animation?

DARKE: So I’ll start by saying that whenever you’re tackling a research problem, you get to define, you know, what features matter and are important. So with straight hair, there have been certain features that say, oh, OK, if we hit this look, then we’ve got it, right? We’ve succeeded. For Black hair, that hadn’t happened. My part in this research is defining those targets. So the three targets that I defined to say, OK, these are essential features of Afro-textured hair was phase locking, switchbacks and period skipping. So I want to break that down.

RASCOE: Yeah, let’s start with the first one.

DARKE: So, phase locking is what we’re calling the kind of spongy matrix that happens when you have coilier and kinkier hair textures. So before the hair actually turns into sort of a defined curl, you kind of have this matrix of hair that – I say it’s kind of spongy because it’s sort of like each strand is sort of going in different directions.

RASCOE: Well, that’s my hair under my wrap right now.

DARKE: (Laughter).

RASCOE: That’s what my hair is. It is spongy, and it is not quite curled and then going in all different directions. And then what’s the next thing?

DARKE: Switchbacks – they’re the – sort of a secret sauce for adding a level of realism. For those of you who are old enough, we used to have telephone cords, and they were stretchy, and you might stretch the telephone cord, and it gets a kink in it. And so that is a switchback. It’s just when the curl doubles back on itself before rejoining or going in a different direction.

RASCOE: And then what’s that final third thing that you came up with in the paper?

DARKE: Period skipping – so this was another essential feature. And to simplify it, period skipping is really the frizz factor. So if you think about a coil and each sort of wave, we’ll call those periods. In clumped curls, all of the hairs are spiraling in the same direction, and that’s what we see as a defined curl. But as we know, curly hair very rarely just falls in line, and so you’ll have hairs that break out of the pattern, and so they skip the period. That is what gives the appearance of, like, frizzy or undefined hair….

(12) OLD SPICE SUPERHERO SCENTS. I must have missed these when they came out. The Batman and Superman variants are mainly offered on eBay and through some Amazon vendors. On the other hand, “Krakengard” is currently available as part of the Old Spice Wild Collection..

“Krakengard Wild Collection deodorant”

  • Old Spice Krakengard men’s deodorant overpowers even the burliest stink with good-smellingness for a full 24 hours
  • Krakengard deodorant smells like citrus, fresh herbs, and the unspeakable power of the ancient ocean
  • Emerge from the open ocean smelling like the man-nificent beast you are

(13) THE FIRING NEXT TIME. Late with this too. From Gizmodo in January: “This Atari Asteroids Watch Shoots at Space Rocks to Tell the Time”. The manufacturer’s website — Nubeo Watches – has sold out of most but not all the variations. eBay has some, including “pre-owned”.

Traditional mechanical watches have a timeless quality only matched by the ageless, simple joy of classic arcade titles like Asteroids. To celebrate the 45th anniversary of Asteroids, Atari, and watchmaker, Nubeo released a slate of limited-edition wristwatches with a watch hand in the classic triangular, alien-blasting spaceship.

Atari and Nubeo’s Asteroids collection includes five styles with similarly colored bands. Each watch face features a classic scene from the original 1979 arcade hit, including a field of vector graphics-style asteroids and flying saucers. The spaceship doesn’t move across the screen, but it spins in the center while constantly firing at an incoming alien bogey.

(14) HOMEWARD BOUND. “Crew arrives on ISS to replace astronauts ‘stranded’ in space for nine months” reports NPR.

A four-person crew entered the International Space Station early Sunday morning, part of a mission to relieve two astronauts who will now return to Earth after a protracted stay on the orbital base.

The arrival of the replacement crew means that NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore can now go home after more than 9 months in space. Their trip to the ISS in June was supposed to last just over a week, but it morphed into a much longer expedition when their Boeing Starliner spacecraft ran into technical problems and was sent back to Earth without a crew.

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers — as well as Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — floated through the ISS hatch at 1:35 a.m. ET. Sunday morning….

…Williams and Wilmore — along with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — are set to depart the ISS for Earth no earlier than Wednesday, depending on weather conditions….

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

Pixel Scroll 11/6/24 Scroll Low, Sweet Chariot, Coming For To Pixel Me Home

(1) ANIMAG HOF INDUCTEES. “Nine Honorees Receive Animag’s Hall of Fame Awards at World Animation Summit’s Opening Night Gala”. Animation Magazine listed the recipients of the 2024 Hall of Fame awards. Short bios at the link.

  • Pete Docter, CCO, Pixar Animation Studios. 
  • Lisa Henson. CEO of The Jim Henson Company
  • Claudia Katz, Executive Producer, Rough Draft Studios.
  • Joel Kuwahara, Co-founder, Head of Production, Bento Box [Studio of the Year Award]. 
  • Nick Park, Creator-Director, Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl. 
  • Kevin Michael Richardson, Voice Actor.
  • Kay Wilson Stallings, EVP, CCD & Production Officer, Sesame Workshop. 
  • Raymond Zibach. Production Designer, The Wild Robot. 
  • Eric Bauza. Voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Woody Woodpecker and many other characters.

(2) TED CHIANG AND KELLY ROBSON CONVERSATION. On the Toronto Public Library’s YouTube channel: “Ted Chiang: Soulful Science Fiction”.

“Has there been an alternate universe as alternate as this universe? Will people accept a story where the universe is this weird?” —Ted Chiang Celebrated science fiction writer Ted Chiang takes the Appel Salon stage us to discuss his beloved short story collections. In conversation with Kelly Robson on October 24, 2024. Please note that this video will only be up until December 2, 2024.

(3) FRONT ROW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4’s art show Front Row has had an SFnal edition.  First up was an interview with the makers of the new Christopher (Superman) Reeve documentary. Next was an interview with author Samantha Harvey whose book, Orbital, has been short-listed for this year’s Booker. It is set on the International Space Station.  Apparently, it is not SF but ‘space realism’.

Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui talk about their new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which uses never-seen-before family archive to tell the story of the famed Superman actor. He became a champion of disability rights after being left paralysed from a horse riding accident.

The final of Front Row’s interviews with the authors on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist – Samantha Harvey on her novel Orbital.

You can download an .mp3 of the programme here: “Front Row, Christopher Reeve documentary, Booker author Samantha Harvey on Orbital”.

(4) LEZLI ROBYN GOFUNDME. Francesca Myman has started a GoFundMe to “Help Lezli Robyn Deal with Medical Challenges”. The goal is $4,500. At this writing they’ve raised $2,390.

Those of you who know Lezli Robyn know that she has had a terrible run of medical bad luck for years now, from near-blindness to an excruciating case of occipital neuralgia which requires her to have nerve blocks every two months in order to function. She also had to have her thyroid radiated/fried several years back due to a thyroid storm that nearly took her life, and now unfortunately she’s facing the opposite problem: extreme hypothyroidism.

She was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday October 30 for myxedema — doctors said she was at severe risk of going into a myxedema coma, which is life-threatening….

…She went to the ER with severe tiredness, stroke-like symptoms and an almost-inability to move her left side. She was remarkably chipper mentally for all of this, because her spirit is strong, but myxedema means that your organs are essentially shutting down because they’re out of fuel. Myxedema also results in swelling from the buildup of carbohydrate and sugar compounds in the skin and tissue….What is certain is that the swelling contributed to a freak case of Quincke’s disease, which is when your uvula swells up and obstructs your breathing, meaning that she has had to puree her food to eat it and was constantly choking. It was terrifying to listen to my lovely Lezli rasping and choking as she fought that off.

She IS fighting, but this is all very debilitating and as you may recall from earlier this year she’s already been put through the wringer like no one else I have ever seen. She’s managed to edit and travel for work, and is definitely still her lovely, down-to-earth, and funny self, but can’t work during the current situation.

What’s the financial situation? She won’t even let me tell you all of it, but I’m sure you can imagine how expensive the many hospitalizations were before the new insurance kicked in. There will still be high expenses associated with this new six day hospitalization….

(5) WON’T BE MISSED. Ember Wars author Richard Fox has been banned from Author Nation’s annual Las Vegas event for violating its Code of Conduct reports crusading journalist (and Fox’s friend) Jon Del Arroz.

Author Nation, formerly known as 20BooksTo50K, asks all who want to participate on the program to complete a form. According to Del Arroz, in “Author Nation Book Conference Cancels Science Fiction Author Richard Fox For Refusing To Comply With Gender Pronouns” [Internet Archive link] at Fandom Pulse, this is what Richard Fox entered in the space for “Pronouns”:

JDA continues, “he [Fox] received a call later in the evening after filling out the form. He was told the ‘ethics and safety committee’ removed him from the panel.”

(Oh, and when someone posted some praise about Author Nation’s Code of Conduct on Facebook on September 27, Richard Fox added a “Haha” icon in response.)  

Richard Fox first shared his unique personality with File 770 in 2019 by making the false charges reported in “Perjury, Not Piracy Is The Problem” and “Brought to You By The Letter Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!”

(6) STRANGER THINGS 5. Variety has the details: “Stranger Things 5 Sets Release for 2025, Episode Titles”.

The fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” will debut in 2025, Netflix announced on Wednesday. To celebrate Nov. 6, 1983, a.k.a. “Stranger Things Day” — the day Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) was abducted into the Upside Down — the streamer also released a video revealing the titles for the final eight episodes, which will conclude the supernatural story of Hawkins, Indiana.

The episode titles are “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of…,” “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazotz,” “The Bridge,” and “The Rightside Up.”…

… The most delightful detail in the video is arguably the reveal that the season takes place in the fall of 1987, four years after the events of the first season — which debuted eight years ago, in 2016.

(7) WAS INTERACTIVE A BUST? The Verge reports “Netflix is removing nearly all of its interactive titles”.

Netflix will delist just about all of its interactive shows and films as of December 1st, the company confirms to The Verge. Netflix’s “Interactive Specials” page lists 24 titles, but only four will remain: Black Mirror: BandersnatchUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the ReverendRanveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild.

The removal of the titles marks a disappointing conclusion to Netflix’s earliest efforts into interactive content. The company first launched the interactive titles in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and I remember being wowed (and horrified) by paths in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

In addition to specials based on franchises like Carmen Sandiego and Boss Baby, Netflix also tried ideas like a daily trivia series and a trivia game you could play with a friend. But the relatively few titles available suggests the format wasn’t much of a hit — Puss in Book has apparently been gone for a while….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 6, 1914Jonathan Harris. (Died 2002.)

Jonathan Harris was the ever not-to-be-trusted Doctor Zachary Smith, of course, on Lost in Space. But before we get to that role, we should mention several of his previous genre roles. 

Well, I would but it turns out that all he had was two minor roles on Twilight Zone. If Zorro is genre adjacent which is really stretching it, he was Don Carlos in Disney’s Zorro.

So, Doctor Zachary Smith. 

In the pilot, not seen by the general audience until the late Nineties, there was no Doctor Smith. The marooning of the Space Family Robinson and their spaceship, the Jupiter 2, came about as the result of a meteor storm. The staff came to feel that an antagonist was needed, and so certain scenes were re-filmed with Smith having snuck aboard, with his extra weight having thrown the delicately-balanced ship badly off course. 

An outright villain on a small craft was a bad story idea and Jonathan Harris very well knew that such a villain would not be tolerated or kept around for very long, even if he were not killed off. Fond of the role as written for him, not to mention staying as a cast member, he and the writing staff kept rewriting his story as the series went so he’d be much, less evil, more sympathetic and even comical. 

However, it is my opinion, and that of many reviewers, that this change resulted also in a change in the show, turning the series from a mostly SF series to more much lighter series, more comical in tone.

He remained typecast as a villain showing up as such as Mr. Piper on Land of the Giants, The Ambassador on Get Smart and the voice of Lucifer on the original Battlestar Galactica. He did play an occasional lighter role such as Johann Sebastian Monroe on Bewitched in the “Samantha on the Keyboard” episode.

Worth noting is he played Commander Isaac Gampu, the head of the Space Academy, on the children’s series of the same name. It was produced by Filmation and aired Saturday mornings on CBS for just one season of fifteen episodes in 1977.

He did so many voices on so many animated shows that I couldn’t even begin to list them all here. It made up the bulk of the work that he did with A Bug’s Life, Buzz Lightyear of Star CommandMy Favorite MartianSpider-Man and Toy Story 2, ones where I recognized his voice.

Jonathan Harris

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) GET READY FOR THESE LEGO SETS OF GENRE INTEREST. “LEGO Captain America: Brave New World Sets Just Launched” – find out the price tag at Comicbook.com.

The fourth movie in the Captain America series, Captain America: Brave New World, is set to release on February 14, 2025, which is going to arrive faster than you think. LEGO is getting us prepared with the first wave of sets for the film. The lineup includes a new Captain America Construction figure, the Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle set, and two LEGO Brickheadz figures of Captain America & Red Hulk….

  • Captain America Construction Figure (76296): Stands at 11-inches tall and made of 359 pieces, this Construction Figure is also poseable like a regular action figure! / $34.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
  • Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle (76292): This battle set includes multiple mini-figures: Captain America and Falcon (both with opening wings), Red Hulk and Ruth Bat-Seraph. The jet also includes an operable cockpit that fits any of the mini-figures and two stud blasters. 223 pieces. / $54.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
  • Captain America & Red Hulk Figures (40668): This Brickheadz set is 202 pieces with each figure measuring about 3-inches. Captain America includes his wings and shield. / $19.99 / Available for pre-order on December 1st at LEGO.com

“LEGO Marvel X-Men: The X-Mansion”Comicbook.com can tell you about this one, too.

This set will be packed with details like a Cerebro element, switchable Danger Room items, an exploding cupola, a motorcycle for Wolverine, as well tons of graphical nods to the X-Men franchise. As noted, it will also include a buildable Sentinel and 10 minifigures, 5 of which are all-new for this set. These figures include Professor X in his wheelchair, a new variation of Jean Grey, Gambit, Iceman and Bishop. There’s also Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue. 

(11) HOW WUDE! “58 Years Later, One Star Trek Actor Reveals the Secret to the Show’s Most Iconic Aliens” and Inverse has the quote.

…Vulcans also have a bit of an edge and a reputation for being direct to the point of being rude. And Star Trek’s latest Vulcan, Gabrielle Ruiz, understands this paradox perfectly.

“There’s a menace to their honesty,” Ruiz tells Inverse. “They’re such snobs. They’re just so sophisticated and snobby that you just want to be a part of the clique, I think.”…

… Since the Season 2 episode “Wej Duj,” Ruiz has voiced the no-nonsense Vulcan T’Lyn on the animated comedy, Star Trek: Lower Decks. 

 Like many Vulcans in Star Trek canon, T’Lyn is often the funniest character in any given scene, and part of that stems from that relentless honesty Ruiz says is essential to playing Vulcans. Sometimes Vulcans are trying to be funny, and sometimes they’re funny by accident. But in Ruiz’s opinion, it’s all down to looking at the template created by the actors who came before her.

“My rule is simple,” Ruiz says. “I literally say it’s equivalent to ‘What would Jesus do?’ It’s How would Leonard Nimoy say it? How would Spock say it?”…

(12) WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STARLINK. [Item by Steven French.] Does it ever dream of becoming a ‘real’ satellite, I wonder?! “World’s first wooden satellite launched into space” in the Guardian.

The world’s first wooden satellite has been launched into space as part of study on using timber to help reduce the creation of space junk.

Scientists at Kyoto University expect the wooden material to burn up when the device re-enters the atmosphere – potentially providing a way to avoid generating metal particles when a retired satellite returns to Earth.

These particles may negatively affect the environment and telecommunications, the developers say….

(13) THAT OTHER REASON FOR THE SEASON. The mission to save Christmas comes to theaters November 15. Red One Official Trailer 2.

(14) SILO SEASON 2. “Watch first 5 minutes of ‘Silo’ season 2 premiere”Entertainment Weekly introduces the clip.

Apple TV+’s dystopian thriller returns for season 2 on Friday, Nov. 15, but you don’t have to wait until then to find out what happens to Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) after she finally ventured outside her home silo only to discover the existence of other silos close by. We’ve got the beginning of the premiere for you to watch right… now….

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

Pixel Scroll 10/3/24 I Don’t Think He Knows About Second Pixel Scroll

(1) GOFUNDME FOR HOWARD ANDREW JONES. Friends have started “A Call to Help Howard Andrew Jones and His Family” at GoFundMe.

In August, Howard Andrew Jones wrote that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer––multifocal glioblastoma – and that, “People I trust––my doctors and my family––inform me it will be fatal, and we are deciding now on a course of action to make the most of the time I have left.” This GoFundMe shall go to forthcoming medical bills in the months to come and any other funding the family might need.

At this writing the appeal has raised $22,345 of the $35,000 goal.

(2) SCARE UP THE VOTE. The Scare Up the Vote event by members of the horror community hopes to raise funds and awareness to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The live online event at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on October 15 will include appearances from Stephen King, Joe Hill, Mike Flanagan, Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Cynthia Pelayo, Paul Tremblay, Gabino Iglesias, Victor LaValle, Alma Katsu, Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone), and Don Mancini (creator of Chucky). Follow the YouTube page for the livestream: “Scare Up the Vote” YouTube page.

(3) GOLDSMITHS PRIZE SHORTLIST. The finalists for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize were announced October 2. None of the six are detectably of genre interest:

  • All My Precious Madness (Mark Bowles, Galley Beggar Press)
  • Tell (Jonathan Buckley, Fitzcarraldo)
  • Parade (Rachel Cusk, Faber)
  • Choice (Neel Mukherjee, Atlantic)
  • Spent Light (Lara Pawson, CB Editions)
  • Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking (Han Smith, JM Originals).

The prize, worth £10,000 and run in association with the New Statesman, was open to novels published between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024, written in English by citizens of the UK or Ireland, or authors who have been resident in either country for three years and have their book published there.

The winner will be announced on November 6. 

(4) BOOK FREEDOM. Publishers Weekly reports “In Arkansas, Book Banners Dealt Another Legal Setback”.

In yet another major win for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has ordered the Crawford County Public Library in Arkansas to stop segregating books deemed inappropriate by some local residents into special “social sections,” and to return the books to general circulation.

In his September 30 opinion and order, U.S. district court judge P.K. Holmes III held that “it is indisputable” that the creation and maintenance of the library’s so-called social sections “was motivated in substantial part by a desire to impede users’ access to books containing viewpoints that are unpopular or controversial in Crawford County.” In a preliminary injunction, Holmes ordered county officials to dismantle the sections and return the books to general circulation, as well as to refrain from “coercing” library staff to censor books.

The decision comes in a lawsuit first filed in May 2023 by three local parents, who challenged the county’s quorum court, the library board, and the library’s interim director for a policy that created special sections and classifications for segregating books, mostly LGBTQ content. Among their defenses, county officials argued that moving the books to special sections did not amount to book banning. But Holmes said the evidence showed that “viewpoint discrimination was a substantial motive” for the creation of the “social sections,” and that the policy held “profound” First Amendment implications….

(5) PAY THE WRITER. “The SoA responds to results of The Bookseller’s survey on advances and royalties” at The Society of Authors (UK).

recent survey launched by The Bookseller on advances and royalties revealed that 52% of respondents had experienced payment issues with their publishers.

The survey found that among those who experienced issues with payment, ‘around 18% experienced problems with both advances and royalties, 17% only with advances [and] with around the same number experiencing problems only with royalties’….

(6) ZOOMING INTO FANHISTORY. Fanac.org will host a Zoom FanHistory session featuring globetrotting Australian fan Robin Johnson on October 26. To attend, send a note to fanac@fanac.org

FANAC FanHistory Zoom Session
Robin Johnson: Traveling Fan from Oz

Robin Johnson, interviewed by Perry Middlemiss & Leigh Edmonds 

October 26,2024 – 7PM EDT, 4PM PDT, 12AM London, 10AM AEDT Sunday, Oct 27 Melbourne

(7) DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS. “Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Other Toxic Fans: How Hollywood Is Fighting Back”Variety has the details.

… Still, toxic fandoms have grown so pernicious that they’ve become a fact of life for many — and so powerful that while talent, executives and publicists will privately bemoan the issue, fear of inadvertently triggering another backlash kept several studios from speaking for this story even on background. (As one rep put it, “It’s just a lose-lose.”)

Those who did talk with Variety all agreed that the best defense is to avoid provoking fandoms in the first place. In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project.

“They’re very vocal,” says the studio exec. “They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.’” These groups have even led studios to alter the projects: “If it’s early enough and the movie isn’t finished yet, we can make those kinds of changes.”

Several studio insiders say they often put their talent through a social media boot camp; in some cases, when a character is intentionally challenging a franchise’s status quo, studios will, with the actor’s permission, take over their social media accounts entirely. When things get really bad — especially involving threats of violence — security firms will scrub talent information from the internet to protect them from doxxing….

(8) NEW GERROLD NOVELLA COMING THIS MONTH. David Gerrold’s new SF novella Praxis will be released October 22 by Star Traveler Press, an imprint of Starship Sloane Publishing.

A lifetime in the Labor Corps—or colonize a new world. For Jamie and José, not much of a choice. But Praxis wouldn’t be easy. To survive there, you had to depend on each other. And that requires honesty that few possess. Praxis is a bold experiment in society building, a monosexual colony, with no promises of survival and no return trip. But it’s got potential. You just have to build a new civilization—on the other side of the universe.

It is a compelling story that explores social issues without skimping on the hard science fiction. 

The foreword is by John Shirley and the cover art is an original piece by Bob Eggleton commissioned for the book. F. J. Bergmann did the book design and layout and Justin T. O’Conor Sloane is the editor and publisher.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

October 3, 2017 — Anniversary: Blade Runner 2049

Science fiction fans live in hope, especially when it comes to sequels, prequels, and other works. Maybe this time it will be good. Maybe the magic will return. Maybe the horse will sing.

Maybe.

I won’t claim to be one of the seventeen people who saw the original Blade Runner in the theaters in 1982, my exposure came when versions of it arrived on videotape, but it had become one of my core SFF experiences. And so in 2017, upon the announcement of its forthcoming release, I was extremely interested in what Denis Villeneuve (whose Arrival I had loved) could do with the film. 

I saw it opening weekend, because it was my birthday weekend, and I wanted to treat myself. I had been led to expect spectacle and visuals, and I wanted the large screen, and in those days before the Covid Pandemic, I had no inhibitions in doing so. And so I sat down to see what Villeneuve had wrought. 

If the original Blade Runner is a noir classic pinpricked and studded with moments of beauty, Blade Runner 2049 was a large, sprawling epic on the screen, pinpricked and studded with moments of different kinds of beauty. Such visions, taking the future of Los Angeles from Blade Runner and adding a level of inexorable environmental devastation that we get right in the first scene and all the way to the finale at the devastated, buried Las Vegas. A twisty, twisted tale that wraps around the shed snake skin of the original film. And a story, and revelations that are of a piece, and feel like they belong in a Philip K. Dick story. The bones of the movie and its revelations.

This film doesn’t and didn’t work unless you were steeped in the original, sometimes too much for its own good.  But even for its long run time, around every corner, there was so much to see and take in. The long running time can work against it, but it gives us so much of the world to inhabit and see and explore. 

Is it the original? No. Does it depend too much on the original?  In some ways, trying to follow up on a classic movie was an impossible task. Had Villeneuve gone for another noir piece (even more than the mystery chassis of this film), it would have felt like too much of a copy. If there was no acknowledgement of the original, it would have felt like a betrayal of the original. I think that Villeneuve made the Blade Runner universe his own in a way that Ridley Scott did with his original movie. He understood the assignment and I think he hit the mark.

And long before Barbie, this movie helped cement Gosling as someone far more than just his good looks and charm. And to see Harrison Ford again, of course, was a pleasure. And Ana de Armas. And Robin Wright. And thanks to Blade Runner 2049, for better or worse, we got two Dune movies from Villeneuve. The template for those two movies is here. 

And now I need to rewatch it. Maybe you should give it a try, if you haven’t. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) UR SID TO JOIN LEE-MILLER ARCHIVE AT TEXAS A&M. Sharon Lee today informed fans of the Liaden Universe®:

Long-time Friends of Liad will recall Ur Sid, an eight-inch tall Teddy bear, dressed in a Scout uniform.  Ur Sid attended the conventions that Steve and Sharon couldn’t make, hobnobbing with the Famous, and, like every good fan, collecting buttons and memorabilia.

The authors would occasionally meet Ur Sid at worldcons, and were always happy to see him.  But his purpose was to be an Ambassador at Large for the Liaden Universe®, and in that he succeeded very well, indeed.

Ur Sid traveled between cons via the Bumpy Passage, a refurbed Scout ship that had seen better days, and he sent reports back to the Friends of Liad listserve.

Those reports are sadly lost. However, Ur Sid also kept a diary. From it, we learn that his first WorldCon was ChiCon 2000.  His last con, though it’s not noted in the diary, was Heliophere 2023, where Steve and Sharon were Writer Guests of Honor. He attended the Teddy Bear Tea, and charmed the room, as always.

All good adventures do finally come to an end.  Ur Sid stopped travelling when the Bumpy Passage suffered a catastrophic failure of its Struven Unit.  Subsequently, he spent some years with Friend of Liad Sarge, who reunited him with the authors at PhilCon 78, in 2014.

Ur Sid is about to embark on his last trip, via FedEx.  He will be escorting a shipment of Liaden Universe® books to the Lee and Miller Archive at the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M.  Once that duty is accomplished, Ur Sid will become part of the permanent archive.  He’ll be keeping a Very Close Eye on Steve and Sharon’s Literary Legacy.  And charming the curators, of course.

Link to the Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Archive (note that the papers are still being processed).

(12) HAVE THEY GONE NUTS? “Nutter Butter, Are You Okay? The Brand’s Unhinged Social Media Has Customers Concerned” reports Delish.

You probably haven’t thought much about Nutter Butter since the cookie was in your lunchbox in the third grade. However, the snack brand has taken an interesting route to regain cultural relevance.

Nutter Butter has been posting completely unhinged TikToks for weeks now. No one seems to understand the brand’s bizarre approach, but it seems to be working. People are talking about Nutter Butter again, and the account has amassed millions of video views and hundreds of thousands of followers.

We’ll just leave these Nutter Butter TikToks here for evidence…

And while no one can’t seem to make any sense of it, that’s kind of the point. We got in touch with Nutter Butter to ask what was going on.

“Nutter Butter embraces its nuttiness, departing from a perfectly curated feed to experiment with the surreal side of the internet,” a spokesperson for the brand told Delish. “Our social channels create a realm of extreme absurdity and deep lore by going where no other cookie has gone before. Follow us as we push the boundaries of creativity to take you on unexpected adventures.”…

(13) SIM CRADLE TO GRAVE. Variety has details about how “‘The Sims 4’ to Launch ‘Life and Death’ Expansion Pack Featuring Grim Reaper Career, Funerals, Afterlife and Reincarnation”.

… “In the Reaper Profession, Sims with an affinity for the afterlife can become Grimterns and work their way up to Reaper as they make a career out of facilitating the next phase of life for Sims,” per “The Sims” developers. “Work with Grim at the Netherworld Department of Death (N.W.D.D.) and even head off into the ‘field.’ Sims in this profession can experience reaper training with the all-around-good-guy-training-dummy, Kenny, maintain Grimtern Sims’ scythes, practice reaping souls on practice dummies, and determine causes of deaths for reaped souls. At higher levels, Sims in this Career can even determine which souls they’ll reap and which they’ll return to life. Once retrieved, souls can be placed in the Netherworld Portal to meet the soul quota. Grimterns who meet the soul quote are eligible to become Employee of the Month.”…

(14) DOXX EVERYONE IN SIGHT? According to Gizmodo, “This Facial Recognition Experiment With Meta’s Smart Glasses Is a Terrifying Vision of the Future”.

Two college students have used Meta’s smart glasses to build a tool that quickly identifies any stranger walking by and brings up that person’s sensitive information, including their home address and contact information, according to a demonstration video posted to Instagram. And while the creators say they have no plans to release the code for their project, the demo gives us a peek at humanity’s very likely future—a future that used to be confined to dystopian sci-fi movies….

… An Instagram video posted by Nguyen explains how the two men built a program that feeds the visual information from Meta Ray Ban smart glasses into facial recognition tools like Pimeyes, which have essentially scraped the entire web to identify where that person’s face shows up online. From there, a large language model infers the likely name and other details about that person. That name is then fed to various websites that can reveal the person’s home address, phone number, occupation or other organizational affiliations, and even the names of relatives….

(15) SECOND DINOSAUR ASTEROID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC have just reported that research has uncovered a second dinosaur-killing asteroid.  However this is not new news as the headline suggests as a couple of paragraphs in reveals that this discovery has previously been covered by the BBC themselves. What is new is a more detailed survey whose results have just been published in Nature: “3D anatomy of the Cretaceous–Paleogene age Nadir Crater”. See the pictures below.

Ripley once said of other monster creatures, we should “nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”  Having two giant asteroids, one for the western and one the eastern hemisphere was a good way to be sure.

I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another movie pulled out of the vault & given the Pitch Meeting treatment. “Superman III Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/11/24 I’ve Clicked To Scroll It Stealthily In Narnia

(0) File 770 was crashed most of the afternoon. Customer Service said high bot traffic is to blame. That may be fixed now. Let me quote Alan Arkin to whoever is sending these bots my way: “Argo fuck yourself!”

(1) LIFE IN PANDEMIC TIMES. “Station Eleven 10th anniversary: Emily St. John Mandel on what she’d change” at Slate. “Emily St. John Mandel on her eerily prescient sci-fi classic—and what she’d change about it now.”

You’re in a unique position in that you wrote a pandemic book in 2014, then had the TV adaptation come out in 2021. You experienced people’s responses to art about pandemics before COVID, during COVID, and now. I’m curious what the differences may have been.

I remember absorbing a lot of comments online to the effect of How did you predict this? Which I absolutely did not. There was always going to be another pandemic. What was interesting to see was the differences in the way between how I imagined a pandemic would be and how it actually is. In the Station Eleven pandemic, the mortality rate is insane. It’s like 99 percent or something. I didn’t have to go that far. It turns out society gets extremely disrupted extremely quickly, with vastly lower numbers than that.

Something I hadn’t anticipated was the in-between state of pandemics. For all my research into pandemics, I’d kind of thought of a pandemic as a binary state. You’re either in a pandemic or you’re not in a pandemic. But I remain fascinated by the month of February 2020 in New York City—we knew it was coming, but we didn’t believe it. It’s this uneasy territory wherein it’s very hard to make informed, reasonable decisions around risk management when you’re kind of in a pandemic and kind of not. We’re kind of there again now. Obviously, it’s much better than it was, but I do a lot of events where typically people will be unmasked at this point, but often there are a few people in the audience wearing a mask, and that is absolutely rational, and also being unmasked is rational at this point. That was something I just didn’t expect.

One thing that doesn’t ring true to me about the book anymore isn’t necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can’t even imagine that happening.

(2) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. Two of the five National Book Award longlists were announced yesterday reports Publishers Weekly, for Translated Literature and Young People’s Literature. The shortlists come out October 1. The winners will be announced during an awards ceremony in New York City on November 20.

The works of genre interest in the 10-book longlists are named below.

Translated Literature

  • The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless)
  • Woodworm by Layla Martínez, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott (Two Lines)
  • Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Scribner)

Young People’s Literature

  • The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)

(4) WILL GAIMAN STEP BACK FROM GOOD OMENS? According to Deadline: “’Good Omens’: Neil Gaiman Offers To Step Back From Season 3”.

Neil Gaiman is understood to have offered to step back from the third and final season of Prime Video‘s fantasy drama Good Omens.

Deadline revealed on Monday that pre-production had paused on the BBC Studios-produced show in the wake of allegations made by four women against Gaiman, which he denies. This came after Disney’s planned feature adaptation of Gaiman’s 2008 YA title The Graveyard Book also was put on pause.

Now, we understand that Gaiman has made an offer to Amazon and producers to take a back seat on the latest season so that it can continue amid crisis talks over the Terry Pratchett adaptation’s future. Deadline understands Gaiman’s offer is not an admission of wrongdoing following a podcast from Tortoise Media that chronicled accounts of two women, with whom he was in consensual relationships, who accused him of sexual assault. Another two have since come forward. Gaiman’s position is that he denies the allegations and is said to be disturbed by them. His rep did not respond to a request for comment….

(5) WOT’S THAT? TV Guide says “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Has an Accent Problem”.

Tom Bombadil made his The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debut this week, played by character actor Rory Kinnear in a voluminous beard and wig. Known for his role in The Fellowship of the Ring (notably cut from the Peter Jackson movie), Bombadil is enigmatic yet silly; a mythic figure who hints at ancient wisdom while living out his days as a jovial, eccentric hermit. And like his harfoot neighbors, Rory Kinnear’s version speaks with a strong regional accent, playing into a recurring problem throughout the show.

Tolkien’s linguistic worldbuilding is famously sophisticated, and The Rings of Power puts a lot of work into its use of constructed languages like Quenya. Unfortunately its English-language choices are nowhere near as thoughtful, embracing clumsy stereotypes from around the British Isles. The most uncomfortable example is the nomadic harfoot community in Season 1; they’re the only characters who speak with Irish accents.

Writing in The Irish Times, critic Ed Powers described these “twee and guileless” harfoots as “a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis.” He made the convincing argument that they reflect offensive images of Irish culture as “pre-industrial and childlike.” Unfortunately the show’s accent problems don’t stop there.

Overseen by American showrunners, the accent choices in The Rings of Power are deeply rooted in unexamined classism and regional stereotypes.….

(6) SUZANNE PALMER FUNDRAISER. “Fundraiser for Suzanne Palmer by Meguey Baker : Changing Suzanne’s Story: Emergency Funds for a Writer” at GoFundMe.

Let me tell you about Suzanne. She’s a writer, a world-builder, and a dear friend of mine over the past three decades. We need art to live. We need stories and storytellers. We need Suzanne. It’s easy to think that artists just make art, but they also have lives, and bills, and accidents that are terrible, or hilarious, or both, depending on the telling.

So when she told me the story about her kid stepping through the ceiling, plaster raining down on their sister’s bedroom below, it was with the smile of a writer who sees the humor in the misadventure. I knew it would become a family legend. But when she told me about being crushingly tight on funds due to payment for her work being months late, I knew that was no laughing matter.

I’m asking us all to step up….

(7) ANALYZING CONCORD’S FAILURE. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s the latest gaming news from the Guardian“Sony’s big-budget hero shooter Concord failed spectacularly – here’s where it went wrong”.

As is now traditional, right after I’d filed last week’s Pushing Buttons, huge gaming news broke: Sony was pulling its hero shooter Concord from sale just two weeks after launch – because nobody was playing it. Everyone who bought it on PlayStation 5 and PC was refunded, and the future of the game is now unclear.

This is a brutal sequence of events. Sony bought the makers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, in 2023. Concord had been in development for eight years, and it was an expensive game, with bespoke cinematics and a long-term plan that would have cost $100m or more to develop. In its two weeks on the market, it sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to estimates. This is a shocker, even compared with the year’s other bad news for developers and studios.

Much has been written about why Concord flopped so spectacularly. As Keith Stuart pointed out in his review of the game, it launched into a crowded genre, the hero shooter, in which many players already have their preferred game (Overwatch, Valorant or Apex Legends, to name three). Sony’s marketing of the game also seemed to fail, in that almost nobody knew about Concord before it arrived. (I barely knew about it, and it’s my job to know these things.) Criticisms, too, were levelled at its characters and design: it was generic and didn’t have any particularly interesting gameplay ideas.

The failure of Concord is also symbolic of the existential-level problems in modern game development: they are so expensive to create, and they take so long that a game can miss its moment years before it is released. All this makes publishers risk-averse, but if you’re simply trying to recreate what’s popular, it’ll be out of date by the time it’s finished….

(8) DID DISNEY MUFF THE MOFF? “Lucasfilm Sued for Recreating Grand Moff Tarkin Actor Peter Cushing’s Image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at IGN.

Peter Cushing

Disney subsidiary Lucasfilm is being sued over its recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin actor Peter Cushing’s image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

As reported by The Times, a friend of Cushing has alleged Disney did not have permission to recreate the actor’s image with special effects for Rogue One. Disney tried and failed to have the case dismissed for a second time on September 9, 2024.

The plaintiff Kevin Francis is suing Lucasfilm through his film company Tyburn Film Productions and also brought claims against Rogue One producer Lunak Heavy Industries, the late executors of Cushing’s estate, and Cushing’s agency Associated International Management.

Francis claimed he must give authorization for any recreation of Cushing’s image following an agreement made between him and the actor in 1993, one year before his death at age 81.

Lucasfilm claimed it didn’t think it needed permission to recreate Cushing’s image due to his original contract for Star Wars (the 1977 film which became Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope) and the nature of the special effects. It also paid around $37,000 to Cushing’s estate after being contacted by his agent about the recreation.

On September 9, deputy High court judge Tom Mitcheson dismissed the appeal, stating the case should go to trial. “I am also not persuaded that the case is unarguable to the standard required to give summary judgment or to strike it out,” he added. “In an area of developing law it is very difficult to decide where the boundaries might lie in the absence of a full factual enquiry.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born September 11, 1952Sharon Lee.

By Lis Carey: She is best known as one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, creators of the popular and very enjoyable Liaden Universe series of novels and stories. Her solo works include two Maine-based mysteries, a fantasy series set in the fictional Maine town of Archer’s Beach, and several dozen short stories, both sf and fantasy.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in 2017.

It may interest some to know that her “day jobs” over the years have included (in addition to a lot of secretarial work) advertising copy writer, call-in talk host, nightside news copy editor, freelance reporter, photographer, book reviewer, and deliverer of tractor trailers.

 Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, she met fellow beginning new writer Steve Miller. They married in 1980, around the time Sharon made her first professional sale, “A Matter of Ceremony,” to Amazing Stories.

 In 1988, Sharon and Steve moved to Winslow, Maine, and lived there until 2018, when they moved “into town,” to Waterville, on the other side of the Kennebec River. Throughout their writing lives, they’d been carefully supervised by a succession of cats, and this remains true for Sharon. She currently has three Maine Coon cats, including veteran editorial cats Trooper and Firefly, and the new apprentice, Rook.

Sharon is working on the next Liaden book, Diviner’s Bow. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series, but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) KISSES FROM SPACE. [Item by lance oszko.] Orbital Author Reading gives new meaning to Book Launch. “Kisses from Space”. “Kisses from Space – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital”.

Polaris Dawn Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon invites you to embark on a celestial journey as she reads Kisses from Space, a children’s book published by Random House. Inspired by the resilient spirit of the young patients at St. Jude, Anna’s heartwarming tale comes to life by bridging the gap between the cosmos and our earthly hearts. These courageous children, in turn, have lent their creativity to the book by crafting artwork inspired by its whimsical illustrations. As you immerse yourself in the magic of Kisses From Space, know that every page turned contributes to a noble cause: supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

(12) WESTEROS: EVERYTHING MUST GO. Heritage Auctions is running “HBO® Original Game of Thrones The Auction”, an huge event offering over 2,000 costumes, weapons, props, and set decorations, from October 10-12. For example:

…Among the essential pieces in this auction, my favorite is Oathkeeper, a Valyrian steel sword. Although initially forged for Jaime Lannister (through Tywin Lannister) from Eddard Stark’s legendary sword “Ice,” it was later gifted to Brienne by Jaime with the poignant directive, “It was reforged from Ned Stark’s sword. You’ll use it to defend Ned Stark’s daughter.” Oathkeeper thus became a symbol of Brienne’s journey from an underestimated sole female heir, whose worth was once seen as limited to marriage, to her rise as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard….

(13) DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO BABYLON-I-AY? Live Science celebrates a “Babylonian Map of the World: The oldest known map of the ancient world”.

…This tablet, which depicts how Babylonians perceived the world thousands of years ago, is peppered with details that offer insight into an earlier time. For example, the ancient world is shown as a singular disc, which is encircled by a ring of water called the Bitter River. At the world’s center sits the Euphrates River and the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon. Labels written in cuneiform, an ancient text, note each location on the map, according to The British Museum. …

(14) CHINA’S MARS PLANS. “China aims for historic Mars mission ‘around 2028’ as it vies for space power” reports CNN.

China’s historic attempt to bring samples from Mars to Earth could launch as soon as 2028, two years earlier than previously stated, according to a senior mission official.

The country’s Tianwen-3 mission would carry out two launches “around 2028” to retrieve the Martian samples, chief mission designer Liu Jizhong said at a deep-space exploration event in eastern China’s Anhui province last week.

The projected mission launch is more ambitious than a 2030 target announced by space officials earlier this year, though the timeline has fluctuated in recent years. A 2028 target appears to return to a launch plan described in 2022 by a senior scientist involved with the Tianwen program – a mission profile that would see samples returned to Earth by 2031.

The latest remarks follow China’s landmark success retrieving the first samples from the far side of the moon in June.

It also comes as an effort by NASA and the European Space Agency to retrieve Mars samples remains under assessment amid concerns over budget, complexity and risk. The US space agency, which first landed on Mars decades ago, said it is evaluating faster and more affordable plans to allow for a speedier result than one that would have returned samples in 2040….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Once upon a time on Letterman: “James Earl Jones presents things that only sound cool when he says them.”

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

Pixel Scroll 8/4/24 Portmanteau’s Complaint

(1) HWA’S USE OF NDA’S EXPLAINED. Horror Writers Association President John Edward Lawson explains why their organization requires elected officers and trustees, paid employees, and certain committee chairs or volunteers (but not all volunteers) to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Ten-part thread starts here.

(2) THE STATE OF HORROR. Ellen Datlow, Brian Keene, Lisa Wood, Lisa Kröger, Maxwell I. Gold, moderated by Angela Yuriko Smith, recently discussed “The State of Horror 2024”, part of the HWA “Halloween in July” program set up to help fund scholarships and educational programs year-round.  

(3) SUCCESS! Good news. Chris Barkley reports the GoFundMe to “Help Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Attend the 2024 Glasgow WorldCon” has fully funded.

(4) EKPEKI PROGRAM. And he’s got a visa. Here’s his Glasgow 2024 schedule. Click for larger images.

(5) NOMMOS. He’ll be one of the hosts of the “Nommo Awards Winners Event” explained by JAYLit, the Journal of African Youth Literature.

An exceptional evening awaits guests of the forthcoming Glasgow 2024 Worldcon in a special evening dedicated to the 2024 winners of the Nommo Awards for the best in African Speculative Fiction

The event will feature presentations by renowned African writers Tendai Huchu, Wole Talabi, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Nnedi Okorafor, with sponsorship from Tom Ilube.

The Nommo Awards, in their 7th edition, honour excellence in four categories: The Ilube Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, and the Nommo Awards for Novella, Short Story, and Graphic Novel. Finalists from Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone highlight the diverse talent in African speculative fiction.

Organised by The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS), the awards celebrate works in genres like science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more. The event receives support from Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon, Glasgow 2024, and the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA).

Join in celebrating the creativity and innovation of African writers at the Nommo Awards 2024 on Saturday, August 10, 2024, at 17:30, at the Lomond Auditorium. The ceremony will last for 60 minutes.

(6) RUH-ROH. “Warner Bros. Discovery Unplugging Boomerang Streaming Service” reports Deadline.

Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down the Boomerang streaming service and moving some of its programming, which includes many classic cartoon series, onto Max.

The kids-and-family move is set for September 30, according to an email to subscribers.

It comes in the same year as a similar strategic shift by Paramount Global, which shuttered Noggin and moved its content onto flagship Paramount+.

Boomerang, which began as a cable network in 2000 featuring a range of animated classics like Scooby DooTom & Jerry and Loony Tunes, became a streaming service in 2017. In more recent years, it expanded into original programming….

(7) SOME ARE MORE FANTASTIC THAN OTHERS. What did theme park blog AllEars hear? “’They Designed an Entire Land Around the Worst Movie I’ve Seen in My Life’ – Fans React to Latest Epic Universe News”.

Universal just revealed the first in-depth look at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, one of the five new lands coming to the new park. While many Universal and Harry Potter fans have been extremely excited to hear more about this new land, it appears that the announcement hasn’t exactly landed the way Universal wanted it to with some fans…

It is true that the second and third Fantastic Beasts films did not do too well, especially compared to the first. The first film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has a 7.2/10 rating on IMDB, while the second film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, has a 6.5/10 rating. The last film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, has the lowest rating of 6.2/10….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 4, 1964 Jaroslav Olša Jr, 60. That we doing the Birthday of Czech fan Jaroslav Olša Jr. is entirely the credit of Our Gracious Host as he will explain later on with a charming tale of their encounter.

Today’s the sixtieth birthday of Jaroslav who currently is the Czech Consul General in Los Angeles. (OK I’m foreshadowing why Mike will be telling a tale.) He’s also done diplomatic service in Zimbabwe, South Korea and the Philippines — very impressive. 

In our corner of things. Jaroslav’s a SF editor, translator and bibliographer. That in itself is also quite impressive, isn’t it? 

Jaroslav Olša Jr. Portrait by Svenkaj.

Let’s start off with his amateur work. Jaroslav started the major Ikarie XB fanzine back in the Eighties which turned into their sf monthly magazine Ikarie which had a twenty-year run before becoming the still published XB-1. He was assistant editor there for a time.

In the period after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. with Alexandre Hlinka he also started the AFSF press which was active until the late 1990s, publishing some seventy titles including such as selections of the best stories by SF writers and also novels by Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Silverberg and Kim Stanley Robinson to name a few. 

If you were at Conspiracy ’87 in Brighton, you might have him as he was there. And he attended many other international conventions. 

Finally, before I let Mike have the last words here, I should note that he was responsible for twenty years for the Czech Encyklopedie literatury science fiction (“Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Literature”, 1995) co-editing it with Ondřej Neff. He also has edited about a dozen sf anthologies; has compiled bibliographies of Czech and Slovak fanzines; and often contributed to Locus.

Mike: In 2019 Jaroslav Olša, jr. invited me to a nice lunch in Westwood – making sure we had the restaurant’s front window seat. That was nice. We discussed science fiction and what he could do in that line when he became Consul General of the Czech Republic in LA. And first thing, he gifted me with copies of several sff publications he’d helped produce, including a copy of XB-1, the longest-running monthly publication in the Czech Republic, which began life as Olša’s fanzine Ikarie XB (1986-1989). He also gave me a copy of a Czech SF anthology (English translation). Since then, he’s hosted a lot of cultural events in LA, including one in conjunction with an in-person LASFS meeting.  A very fannish fellow!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK. You may have seen it elsewhere, however, a Bluesky user recently posted a copy of the travel voucher Buzz Aldrin filed on his return from the Moon in 1969. Only $33.31, and the itinerary is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

(11) FAN MAIL FROM SOME FLOUNDER. Attention dads — having AI write your letter to your daughter isn’t cool. “Google pulls Gemini AI ad from Olympics after backlash”The Verge has the story.

Google is not winning any gold medals for its Olympics ads this year. After days of backlash, the company has decided to pull its controversial “Dear Sydney” ad from Olympic coverage.

In the 60-second ad, a father seeks to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to her Olympic idol, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The premise is the sort of treacly ad you’d expect to see at the Olympics, but things take a twist when instead of helping his daughter write a letter, he just has Gemini do it for them. “This has to be just right,” he says, before prompting Gemini to tell Sydney how inspiring she is, that his daughter plans to break her record one day, and to add a “sorry, not sorry” joke at the end.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Cool Worlds asks whether Dyson Spheres are possible…?  I recall when Niven’s Ringworld and some bright wags from MIT (I think — though my memory may be dodgy) pointed out that it’d be unstable. So if true for a ringworld then must be too for a Dyson sphere….

The idea of a Dyson sphere was a radical proposal by the physicist Freeman Dyson, an enormous shell of material enveloping a star. Dyson’s idea may be over half a century old, but interest in looking for such objects has only grown in the decades since. But how would such structures work? Are they physically even possible? And what might someone use them for? Today, we dive into the physics of Dyson spheres.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/1/24 Yes, Those Pixels Are Looking At You Reading This Scroll, So Be Good

(1) JEFFE KENNEDY RESIGNS AS SFWA PRESIDENT. Science Fiction and Fantasy Association President Jeffe Kennedy announced to members today that she has resigned the office. Her statement says in part:

…I’ve served in this role for over three years and on the Board of Directors for more than seven years. It has been a privilege and an honor to serve this organization.

However, the last several months have been particularly demanding in my personal life, and I have come to the realization that I can no longer provide the focused attention SFWA needs from its President. Without going into too much detail, I continue to be the sole caregiver and financial support for my disabled husband, whose progressive condition is worsening. In addition, my stepfather of twenty years passed away suddenly, widowing my elderly mother for the third time, and I am in the process of taking over all of her finances and care. These family obligations will require far more attention than I could have anticipated when I accepted the nomination to serve a second term as SFWA President.

My legal and fiscal responsibility to SFWA—and my own personal integrity—prevent me from commenting on any issues related to SFWA’s administration and operations. Throughout my tenure I did my best to serve the organization and all of its constituents with sincerity and respect, and to fulfill all of the duties I was elected to perform. Now it is time for me to step back….

(2) OGHENECHOVWE DONALD EKPEKI TRAVEL FUNDRAISER. Chris Barkley has opened a GoFundMe to “Help Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Attend the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon”.

…The African Speculative Fiction Society has provided sponsorship to attend but Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is still in need of funding for other travel and visa expenses, hence this GoFundMe effort. He would like to raise $7500.00.

He has won the Nebula, Locus, Otherwise, Nommo, British & World Fantasy awards and was a finalist in the Hugo, Sturgeon, British Science Fiction and NAACP Image awards.

He is a finalist in the Nommo Award in two categories, best short story and best novella, which will be presented at the Worldcon in Glasgow this year….

(3) GREATNESS REMEMBERED. Rich Horton reviews “An Infinite Summer, by Christopher Priest” for Strange at Ecbatan.

To repeat myself: The late Christopher Priest (1943-2024) was one of the greatest SF writers of his generation. He made an early splash with novels like Inverted World and A Dream of Wessex (aka The Perfect Lover), followed by The Prestige, which was made into a successful movie by Christopher Nolan, and then by any number of stories and novels in his Dream Archipelago sequence. I wrote an obituary of him for Black Gate here…. 

(4) HE SHOT FIRST. [Item by Steven French.] From the Guardian’s readers interview with Malcolm McDowell: “‘Kubrick had stewed pears and sour chicken for lunch because Napoleon did’”.

If they ask you to appear in Star Trek again, would you say yes? Nicens_boi

I mean, you can’t top killing Captain James T Kirk. I suppose I could go back and kill old Patrick Stewart … I got a lot of flak from unhappy Trekkies, but there were also a lot of happy Trekkies who’d had it with old Bill. I think he overstayed his welcome. It was good for him to move on. I’m a great admirer of Shatner. He’s 90-odd. He’s still working. He’s been an astronaut. Good god, he wipes the floor with us young guys. I once made a surprise visit when he was being interviewed on stage. They introduced me: “And the one that killed Captain Kirk.” He went: “You shot me in the back.” I never thought the producers got it right, because they didn’t send him off in a glorious manner. Shot in the back on a bridge that collapses was not a noble end to a great character.

(5) BBC COVERS VIDEO GAME ACTORS STRIKE. “SAG-Aftra strike: ‘They’re crushing human beings beneath their feet’”.

When actor Jennifer Hale talks, you listen. Her delivery is measured and surgically precise, yet her tone has a warmth that most ASMR creators would envy. She could read the phone book and you’d pay attention.

It’s unsurprising, then, that her voice is her livelihood, and that she takes the threat to her industry posed by AI so seriously.

“They see that the work of our souls is nothing more than a commodity to generate profits for them,” she says of several of the major gaming companies. “They don’t see that they’re crushing human beings beneath their feet in blind pursuit of money and profit, it’s disgusting.”

From Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series to Samus Aran in the Metroid titles, Hale’s list of gaming credits is as long as your arm and her voice is familiar to millions.

Hale is one of the most high-profile voice actors in the world. She’s joined 2,500 members of the US actors union SAG-AFTRA who perform in games, by striking until games divisions of prominent companies like Activision, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney and EA agree to protections around the use of artificial intelligence (AI)….

(6) WHERE AI ACTUALLY WORKS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last night’s BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row had a rather disturbing item on AI and film script selecting. “Dramatizing MPs, Jon Savage on LGBTQ and music, Stirling Prize shortlist, Screenwriters v AI”

Apparently, it typically takes a week to read and assess and write a report on a submitted film script and proposal but now an AI can do it in five minutes!!!! They did a trial run and it seems to work even if it is not quite there yet… but you can bet it will be soon.

This was the last item on the programme so skip to the final 10 minutes

With voice actors and motion capture performers in the US currently on strike over AI protections, the place of AI in the culture industries remains highly contested. The Writers Guild of America may have settled their strike but film critic Antonia Quirke explores whether screenwriters still have something to fear from the algorithm…

(7) WHO WINKED. If the TARDIS can travel anywhere in time and space, surely it can do this: “Doctor Who boss says breaking the fourth wall is ‘part of the show going forward’” in Radio Times.

While Doctor Who has not been afraid to break the fourth wall in the past, and have characters speak directly to the viewers watching at home, Russell T Davies’s new era has been notable for its particularly prominent usage of the device.

Not only has Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor done it, winking to camera near the end of The Devil’s Chord, but Anita Dobson’s mysterious Mrs Flood has done it on multiple occasions, including at the very end of the most recent season.

Now, speaking at San Diego Comic-Con, Davies has addressed these fourth wall breaks, saying: “It’s part of the show going forward, breaking the fourth wall.”…

(8) CHRISTMAS SPECIAL CLIP. “Doctor Who debuts first-look at 2024 Christmas special with Nicola Coughlan” – a video shown last week at Comic-Con is shared by Radio Times.

…The clip was introduced by guest star Nicola Coughlan, who confirmed that the episode’s punning title refers to her character Joy, “a determined woman whose life is changed forever when she meets the Doctor”.

The sequence – which you can watch below – sees the Doctor zip from Manchester in 1940 to Italy in 1962, then to Mount Everest in 1953 and finally to London in 2024, where he meets Joy.

Coughlan’s character is, of course, attempting to fend off a Silurian with a hair dryer when the Time Lord appears to deliver a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte… only in Doctor Who….

(9) TARAL WAYNE (1951-2024). Eleven-time Best Fan Artist Hugo finalist Taral Wayne, Fan Guest of Honor at the 2009 Worldcon, died July 31. Steven Baldassarra, who had heard from him earlier in the day and was bringing over a few things, says when he arrived there was no answer to his knock at the door or to phone calls. The building superintendant was asked to open the door and check. They found Taral lying down in his living room, unresponsive. Paramedics were summoned but were unable to revive him.  

Baldassarra’s announcement ends with this fine tribute:

I knew Taral for just over 30 years. And while some people may have known Taral for being curmudgeonly, stubborn, fractious, and condescending, I also got to know the man who was also genuinely warm, gentle, impish, thoughtful and even vulnerable.

Taral had a ferocious intellect and was an exceptionally talented graphic artist; I could see how hurt he was for not getting his chance in the sun in becoming a financial success with his graphic work and illustration. But despite all that, Taral did what he had loved, and was contented living by the beat of his own drum.

Taral was truly a wonderful friend, and I am truly blessed to have had known him and having had him as part of my life.

I knew Taral for 45 years and will miss him a lot. File 770’s obituary will appear later this evening.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 1, 1986 Howard the Duck film (1986). Thirty-eight years ago a certain cigar-smoking fowl was let loose upon unsuspecting film goers. Many of whom promptly left the cinemas they were in. That was Howard the Duck based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name.

He was hatched from the minds of writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The former says that he based him off his college friend Howard Tockman. One assumes very, very loosely off that individual. His first comic appearance was fifty-one years ago so he’s a very old duck at this point.

Before we get to the film, we should know that he has appeared elsewhere. Starting in 2014, the character, voiced by Seth Green, appeared in cameos in several Marvel films, to wit the first Guardians of the Galaxy film and the last of those (at least so far) as well the fantastic animated Guardians of the Galaxy series also voiced by Green) and Ultimate Spider-Man (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson there), and finally the What If…? Series where he was also voiced by Green.

I’m thinking there’s a live action appearance by him after the Howard the Duck film rather recently but I’ll be buggered if I can remember what it is. Anyone remember what it was? It was brief that I know and I can almost picture it. I remember there was a female next to him so I must’ve seen the film if I remember that. But that is all I remember.

Now for how Howard the Duck, the film. It came out the year that AliensStar Trek IV: The Voyage HomeLittle Shop of Horrors, and Labyrinth came out. Tough competition indeed. And wasn’t that a fantastic year for genre films? Every film I’ve mentioned here got nominated Conspiracy ’87 with Aliens winning the Hugo. Only Big Trouble in Little China and The Fly aren’t here, and they, too, came out that year. 

So the film, yes I am getting it now, was written by rather unusually by the producer  Gloria Katz and the director George Huyck. I’ve seen that particular combination do a script before. They certainly had the credits as writers, she having written the scripts for American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; his scripts were the same as they were a couple that scripted together.

So you now know who directed and produced this film. Lucas co-produced it. It was Lucas who suggested adapting the comic book following the production of American Graffiti which they were of course involved in. (He wrote it with them. Talented man that he is.) Lucasfilm was the production company. 

Ok I can’t defend it, I really can’t. There’s nothing about the film that’s not considered a rotten, smelly sulphurous mess. Its humor was considered juvenile at best, the performances, well, just awful and the story cringingly bad. In the years since, I’ve deepened my belief that it’s among the worst films ever made. It currently holds a thirteen percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch. Really ouch.

However, one criticism I am puzzled by to the day. The vast majority of comments online plus professional and amateur critics take umbrage at what Howard the Duck looks like. This makes no sense. Given the limitations of translating a two-dimensional comic duck into an actual physical creature, I thought that they did a fine job.

Remember almost thirty years on, they’d avoid this need with the Rocket Raccoon creature by simply being an entirely digital being. Today Howard would be the same. So yes, a much better one for that. 

What they did was create a rather large custom puppet, which had an individual inside. That being Jordan Prentice in his first, errr, acting gig. He however didn’t provide the voice as that was the work of Chip Zien who was The Baker in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods musical. The film version is well-worth seeing.

If I remember correctly it’s the worst film Lucas ever produced both from a critical viewpoint and certainly from a financial as well. It cost at least thirty-seven million dollars to produce (not counting distribution costs including the millions to print up films) and had box office receipts of that amount. Now keep in mind that Roger Ebert did an essay on it whereas his research said it was an even split, so Lucasfilm would’ve made back eighteen million thereby losing eighteen million on this. Ouch. Really ouch.

I keep hearing rumors of a sequel but I can’t imagine Disney who owns the rights now having any interest in doing so as they’ve been losing money on a lot of their MCU series right now. 

I saw it once in the theatre. Did I want to ever see it again? What do you think? It’s worse than the Super Mario Bros was and that’s saying quite a bit.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) AVENGERS DISSEMBLE! “Jeremy Renner Says Robert Downey Jr. Kept His Marvel Return a Secret From the Original ‘Avengers’ Cast: ‘The Son of a B—- Didn’t Say Anything!’” – so he tells Variety.

… “No! I had no idea. The son of a bitch didn’t say anything to me,” Renner said. “We’re good friends. There’s the Avengers family chat. The original six. He said not a peep. I got online and started blowing up his phone like, ‘What’s going on? You’ve been hiding this from us the whole time?’ It’s exciting news. I’m really, really excited about it.”…

(13) HOLLYWOOD RELICS. Atlas Obscura pinpoints “11 Horror Film Sets Where You Can Revisit Your Greatest Fears”.

There’s no better way to get into the Halloween spirit than turning off the lights and scaring yourself out of your skin with a good horror flick. But if watching them (and rewatching them) on the small screen just isn’t enough any more, why not try to see some of the real-life locations where these cult classics were filmed?

In Washington, D.C., 75 steps offer a shortcut between Prospect Street NW and Canal Road NW, and if you visit at night you’ll recognize the site where Father Karras plummeted to his death in the 1973 film The Exorcist. The steps were padded with rubber during filming, and they have since been designated a historic landmark. In Morocco, just outside Ouarzazate, in a place known as Hollywood’s “door to the desert” sits a desolate, American-style gas station, home to rusted-out vehicles and dust covered props. It was plopped there for the 2006 remake of the Wes Craven classic, The Hills Have Eyes, and now just confuses anyone who sees it without knowing the backstory….

(14) SKELETON CREW. “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Release Date Finally Revealed” at ScreenRant.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s release date has finally been confirmed by Lucasfilm…. As one of many upcoming Star Wars TV shows, Skeleton Crew naturally has a lot of hype surrounding it. This excitement is only bolstered by Skeleton Crew‘s place in the Star Wars timeline, with the show expected to tie into the likes of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.

… Lucasfilm has finally confirmed the release date for the show via People. As evident, anyone interested in the continuation of Star Wars’ New Republic era will not need to wait much longer with Skeleton Crew‘s confirmed release date of December 3, 2024. With confirmation of when the show will be released on Disney+ finally being provided, the wait for more updates and the show’s eventual premiere will only grow in both difficulty and anticipation….

(15) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA NO LONGER A PEACOCK TALE. Variety reports “’Battlestar Galactica’ Reboot No Longer in the Works at Peacock”.

The project was first announced back in 2019 ahead of Peacock’s official launch as part of the streamer’s initial slate of original programming. It was never formally ordered to series, though, and has been in development ever since. Exact story details never emerged, but the show was said to be set in the same continuity as the 2003 “Battlestar Galactica” series.

The reboot was a passion project for Sam Esmail, who was executive producing via Esmail Corp. under the company’s overall deal with studio UCP. Chad Hamilton of Esmail Corp. was also an executive producer. Michael Lesslie had originally come onboard as the writer of the reboot in 2020, but it was reported that he left the project in 2021…

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

Pixel Scroll 7/16/24 Oh You’ll Never See My Shade Or Hear The Sound Of My Feet, While There’s A Scroll Over Pixel Street

(1) GLASGOW 2024 DELAYS BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA. The WSFS Standing Rules required publication of this year’s Business Meeting Agenda by July 17. However, Glasgow 2024 today announced that agenda “will be delayed until Friday, 19th July 7pm (BST/UTC+1)”. X.com thread starts here.

Glasgow 2024 has received 50 items, including new business and items passed on from the prior Worldcons. And they have put up this chart to justify the delay in producing the agenda.

In the meantime, File 770 has published the text of more than 20 of these proposals. Here are the links.

  • Motion to Abolish the Retro Hugos Submitted to 2024 Business Meeting
  • WSFS 2024: Motion to Add Human Rights and Democracy Standards to Worldcon Site Qualifications
  • WSFS 2024: Three Resolutions
    • SHORT TITLE: APOLOGY RESOLUTION
    • SHORT TITLE: CHENGDU CENSURE RESOLUTION
  • SHORT TITLE: MAKE THEM FINALISTS RESOLUTION
  • WSFS 2024: Cleaning Up the Art Categories
  • WSFS 2024: Meetings, Meetings, Everywhere
  • WSFS 2024: Transparency in Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: Irregular Disqualifications and Rogue Administrators
  • WSFS 2024: Independent Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: No Illegal Exclusions
  • WSFS 2024: When We Censure You, We Mean It
  • WSFS 2024: And The Horse You Rode In On
  • WSFS 2024: Three Standing Rules Change Proposals
  • SHORT TITLE: “NO, WE DON’T LIKE SURPRISES, WHY DO YOU ASK?”
  • SHORT TITLE: “STRIKE 1.4”
  • SHORT TITLE: MAGNUM P.I.
  • Two More Proposed WSFS Constitutional Amendments for 2024
  • SHORT TITLE: MISSING IN ACTION
  • SHORT TITLE: THE WAY WE WERE
  • WSFS 2024: Popular Ratification
  • WSFS 2024: Site Selection by the Worldcon Community
  • Also along the way File 770 has published these drafts. Whether they have been submitted, or their final wording, is not known at this time.

    File 770’s reprints from the Journey Planet #82 “Be the Change” issue included two more proposals. Whether any or all were submitted to the Business Meeting is not known.

    (2) LAST DAYS TO VOTE FOR THE HUGOS. There are only four days left to vote in the 2024 Hugo Awards and to download this year’s Hugo Voting Packet. 

    Voting closes at 20:17 GMT on 20 July because that will be 55 years *to the minute* since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first landed on the moon in 1969!

    Instructions about how to vote and the way to download the Hugo Voting Packet are on the Glasgow 2024 website.

    (3) COMMUNITY ANSWERS OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF’S CALL. “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf Is Getting Closer And Closer To Funding Goal To Keep Doors Open” reports Blavity. At this writing, Octavia’s Bookshelf has raised $83,780 of the $90,000 goal.

    ….According to Pasadena Now, the Black woman-owned business Octavia’s Bookshelf was founded by Nikki High, a former corporate communications employee at Trader Joe’s who left corporate America to accomplish one of her biggest goals: owning a bookstore. The name of her shop was inspired by Octavia Butler, who was known for her science fiction novels. When she opened her doors in February 2023, she was immediately embraced by her neighborhood and got more than enough support to move into a bigger space.

    Due to traffic slowing down in the store, High is asking her community and the general public for help to remain in business; she set up a GoFundMe page….

    …Due to lack of funding, she was forced to cut the shop’s regular events, group discussions, children’s readings and workshops, but she hopes to be able to offer these services again soon once she raises enough money.

    Despite the hurdles she faces, High is unwilling to throw away her dreams.

    “I still know that this is a viable business,” High told Pasadena Now, “and this space is crucial to our community.”

    (4) LEGGO MY LEGO. “Get bricks quick: collectible Lego sets fuel growing black market” says the Guardian.

    A black market for highly valuable Lego sets is being built brick by brick, and authorities are trying to knock it down.

    Lego sets are highly sought after, by kids and their parents as well as adult collectors.

    But it’s not all fun and games. Bad actors who know the resale value of these sets are increasingly cashing in, while law enforcement aims to bust such Lego theft rings.

    Police in Oregon last week recovered 4,000 stolen Lego sets worth more than $200,000, according to law enforcement. Ammon Henrikson, 47, the owner of a retail store called Brick Builders in Eugene, was arrested and accused of knowingly purchasing the allegedly stolen goods for a fraction of their retail price and then reselling them, a local CBS channel reported….

    Two people were arrested in Los Angeles last month in connection with more than 2,800 stolen Lego sets. In April, California police arrested three men and a woman after discovering stolen Lego sets worth a combined $300,000. Some of the stolen sets included the 921-piece Millennium Falcon, typically priced around $85, the 6,167-piece Lord of the Rings Rivendell set, worth $500, and the 1,458-piece Porsche 911 set, worth $170.

    Meanwhile, overseas, French police announced in 2021 that they had begun building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specializing in Lego….

    (5) CLARION WEST MATCHING. The Clarion West Writers Workshop can leverage your donation this week. More information here.

    The Sherman Family Foundation has offered a Week Five Matching Challenge, doubling any donations made this week up to $2,000! Donations made to Clarion West support free and low-cost programming for writers and readers year-round.

    (6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books presents episode 77 of their monthly podcast “Simultaneous Times” with Phoenix Alexander & F.J. Bergmann.

    Stories featured in this episode:

    • “Loamblood” by Phoenix Alexander — read by the author
    • “Surgery for Dummies” by F.J. Bergmann — read by Jean-Paul Garnier

    Music by Phog Masheeen. Theme music by Dain Luscombe

    Heather Wood in 1988. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

    (7) A. HEATHER WOOD (1945-2024). Publishing pro and folk singer A. Heather Wood died at Stony Brook Memorial Hospital on July 15 at the age of 79. At one time she was assistant to Tor’s President and Publisher Tom Doherty, and a consulting editor for Tor Books. She was also well-known in the folk music community as part of The Young Tradition, a 60s English group.

    We applied a tiny bit of that musical talent on Noreascon Three’s (1989) program SF Tonight, where I played Ed McMahon to Tappan King’s Johnny Carson, and Heather Wood was our kazoo-playing answer to Doc Severinsen.

    She also was known as part of World Fantasy Convention’s “Musical Interlude,” which featured pros singing in a folk revue.

    Her website, which lists her many accomplishments, is here.

    (8) IVAN GEISLER (1944-2024). [Item by Jeanne Jackson.] Ivan Geisler, longtime member of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, passed away July 2, 2024 of congestive heart failure and old age.

    I was first informed this afternoon by Sherry Johnson, his ex-wife. Although Ivan was quickly found by his neighbors after his passing, and his dog Brownie returned to the shelter Ivan had adopted her from, there had been some difficulty locating contact information for friends and relatives.

     According to Sherry, memorial arrangements have not yet been organized. As Ivan was a veteran of the United States Army, it is likely the Veterans’ Administration will be involved in his funeral.

     Ivan joined DASFA over 30 years ago. He was a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy, and also an avid amateur astronomer—he was an active member of the Denver Astronomical Society long before he found his way into DASFA.

    (9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

    [Written by Paul Weimer.]

    July 16, 1928 Robert Sheckley. (Died 2005.)

    By Paul Weimer: I came to Robert Sheckley’s work through an oblique angle. Somehow, through all of the reading I did in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I missed or didn’t recognize, his short story work (although it’s dollars to donuts I came across a story of three in the many anthologies I read during that period. (And a check in the writing of this shows a couple of Sheckley stories in 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories).  But I didn’t recognize his work and his genius and his skill until 1992. 

    Sheckley in the 1990s. Photo by John Henley

    Yes, it wasn’t until the movie Freejack came around that I started looking for Sheckley’s work specifically, since the movie proudly announced in its credits that it was based on “Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley”.  Yes, this is the movie where Emilio Estevez is a car driver transported to the future, with Mick Jagger (!) of all people as the major antagonist.

    The name sounded familiar even so, and so, as was my practice at the time (Total Recall leading me to Philip K. Dick in similar fashion), I decided that I needed to investigate his work, starting with Immortality, Inc. The novel was very different than the movie by a long show, but I was immediately hooked on his writing. 

    I found his work sharp, twisty, clever, devilishly entertaining, and especially for his short stories, with a sting in the tail. It was no wonder to me that his work has been so adapted so frequently, and with such great effect. And while science fiction is generally not explicitly in the prediction business, “The Prize of Peril” pretty accurately and sharply predicts and shows the consequences of television devoted and focused on Reality Television for clicks. “The Perfect Woman” shows the consequences of wanting the perfect mate, straight from the factory, and the consequences of a lack of quality control.  

    My favorite Sheckley story might surprise, but it is “Death Freaks” from the “Heroes in Hell” shared world verse. With the ability of throwing anyone who is anyone into their shared world version of Hell, the editors got a story from Sheckley involving the Marquis de Sade, Baudelaire, Lizzie Borden, Jesse James, and an 8th Century BC Greek Hoplite. Sheckley, perhaps out of all of the authors in the series, best “understood the assignment” and let his imagination run wild.  It’s a story that’s a lot of fun and full of the unexpected, entertaining all along the way. That’s what Sheckley could, and did do, with his fiction.

    (10) COMICS SECTION.

    (11) LADY DEADPOOL. “New ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Teases Even More of Lady Deadpool” promises Yahoo!

    Ten days ahead of the film’s release, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine has a new trailer and TV spot.

    Set to the tune of Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey,” one of the first shots in the trailer shows the mysterious Lady Deadpool’s red boots and up past her signature belt to show the ends of blonde hair without landing on her face.

    And a week ago was this: “Deadpool & Wolverine & The Bachelorette”.

    Everyone seemed to like the Deadpool Bachelorette spot last night but can we talk about the episode? Thought Jenn made some strong choices, except for sending my countryman Brendan packing. Marcus is easy on the eyes, Grant was a little much and the day trading thing, but I get it. Two Sams will get confusing so slightly leaning towards Sam N. Jenn’s mom might have been the highlight and Melbourne, Australia, felt like a Hugh shout out so bit of a lowlight there. Overall, great start. What was I talking about again?

    (12) FOR MONSTER TOURISTS. Atlas Obscura lists “11 Museums Dedicated to Monsters”.

    Monsters have roamed the human consciousness as long as there has been one, from tales around the campfire, to the tomes of antiquity, to the modern cineplexAnd sometimes those monsters leap off the page or the screen, and out of our imaginations. Sightings of cryptids and other frightful creatures have spanned millennia, often taking place in the darkest corners of the world. Luckily there are lots of ways to get to know these fantastical creatures—especially when enthusiasts create museums or exhibits dedicated to their lore….

    …In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is a museum dedicated to the state’s most widely known cryptid: the Mothman. The only collection dedicated to the half-moth, half-man creature, the Mothman Museum celebrates this harbinger of misfortune, who has been spotted in Appalachia on and off since 1966. Much further in the past, stories of massive sea monsters off the Icelandic coast have stricken fear into the hearts of sailors. The Skrímslasetrið in Bíldudalur, Iceland, covers the history of these encounters. According to the museum, two of the monsters most endemic to Iceland’s waters are the hafmaður (Sea Man) and the skeljaskrímsli (Shell Monster), but there are more. From a four-legged beast that terrorized 18th-century France to an amphibious water demon in Japan, here are a few of our favorite places to get up close to monsters in relative safety…

    (13) READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP. “Gnatalie is the only green-boned dinosaur found on the planet. She will be on display in L.A.” announces NBC News.

    The latest dinosaur being mounted at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is not only a member of a new species — it’s also the only one found on the planet whose bones are green, according to museum officials.

    Named “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) for the gnats that swarmed during the excavation, the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaur’s fossils got its unique coloration, a dark mottled olive green, from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.

    While fossils are typically brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green is rare because celadonite forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that typically destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic activity around 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to replace a previous mineral….

    (14) IT’S A TWISTER AUNTIE EM! “What Twisters gets right — and wrong — about tornado science” opines Nature

    When Hollywood producers showed up a few years ago at Sean Waugh’s office, he couldn’t wait to show them his thunderstorm-tracking equipment. Waugh, a meteorologist at the US National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, is a big fan of the 1996 film Twister, which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as leaders of a tornado-chasing research team. And now, Hollywood was asking Waugh his opinion on how the science in the next film in the Twister franchise should look.

    On 17 July, when the film is released internationally, the world will see how Waugh’s recommendations panned out. Like its predecessor, the new Twisters film focuses on characters who are storm chasers: Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a researcher traumatized by past weather disasters and Glen Powell a social-media star racing for footage of the biggest and baddest tornadoes. But science has an even bigger role in the plot of the new film than it had in the original, say Waugh and other researchers who worked as consultants for Twisters. It not only shows advanced radar data and highlights links between climate change and tornadoes, “it’s an incredible opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists”, Waugh says….

    (15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s Battlefield Earth Pitch Meeting” tells why the movie was made – not that you didn’t already know.

    [Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Anne Marble, Joe Siclari, Jeanne Jackson, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

Pixel Scroll 7/7/24 Little Pixels, On The Viewscreen. Little Pixels, Made Of Tickie-Scrollie

(1) HAPPY THIRD! Sunday Morning Transport is hosting a summer celebration which begins with this free read – a story by Scott Lynch: “Selected Scenes from the Ecologies of the Labyrinth”.

July marks our third (We can’t believe it’s been two and a half years!) summer — and we’re celebrating with four great free reads. Yes, you read that right, a whole month of free goodness from The Sunday Morning Transport — by Scott Lynch, Margaret Dunlap, Rachel Hartman, and Paolo Bacigalupi. We hope you love these and all our stories as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays….

(2) HELP NEEDED TO FIGHT CANCER. “Help R. S. A. Garcia Pay for Cancer Expenses” at GoFundMe. People have been responding generously to R.S.A. Garcia’s urgent call for help in order to afford needed blood tests – the medical reasons for which are detailed in the updates at the link. Garcia recent won a Nebula for the short story, “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200”.

…And thank you all for getting me to $48,000 in just about a week! Amazing!

I still have a way to go to get to $55,000 so I’ve moved my appointments back a week to try to get enough funds to pay for them.

For now, I was able to do some blood tests and I hope that they’ll give clearer answers. My oncologist has also switched some of my meds, but I had to keep taking the Zoladex, so I’m still getting some heart symptoms. Hopefully, we’ll figure out what’s going on there soon.

Please share and donate if you can. The sooner I reach my goal the sooner I can complete my other investigative procedures and work on treatment….

(3) INFORMATION PREVENTION. [Item by Steven French.] The internet has caused the biggest crisis in human communication since the arrival of the printing press, the award-winning dystopian author Naomi Alderman has said. “Naomi Alderman: ‘Whatever happened to talking? We’ve lost the ability to swap ideas’” in the Guardian.

The writer of The Power, a 2016 feminist science fiction novel, said we are living through the “third information crisis”, in which digital communications have eroded in-person communication and entrenched disagreement.

“If you have a person in front of you, you can have a conversation and, ideally, through sharing experience and empathy, you may come to some new position that recognises what you’re both bringing to that conversation,” she said. “This can never happen with a book, TV show, tweet, someone’s ranty YouTube video. Increasingly, I think that leads us to be vulnerable to a kind of fundamentalism, to ‘I’ve got my view and I’m sticking to it’.”

Alderman is exploring the impact of the internet on human communication for a new five-part documentary series for BBC Radio 4, The Third Information Crisis, which begins tomorrow….

(4) BID ON BLOCH’S HUGO. Robert Bloch’s 1959 HUGO AWARD for Best Short Story is up for bids on eBay. Of added interest is that the seller is “Official Dave Hester Store” – Hester being one of the regulars on the old Storage Wars show.

17th World S F Convention 1959 HUGO AWARD – Best Short Story 1958 – THE HELLBOUND TRAIN by Robert Bloch Trophy

We believe this award came from Mr. Robert Bloch estate.

Robert Bloch (1917-1994) American fiction writer primarily of crime psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. Best known as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock.

“That Hell-Bound Train” is a fantasy short story by American writer Robert Bloch. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in September 1958 and in 1959 Robert Bloch was awarded the 1959 HUGO AWARD.

The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The award is administered by the World Science Fiction Society.

Award is 8-3/4″W x 8-3/4″D x 19″H including the 4-3/4″H wooden stand.

Award is in good vintage condition with signs wear, peeling, discoloration and a tarnish to the plaque. There are small chips and scratches to the wooden base. Please see photos.

(5) PROOF OF LIFE. Kevin Standlee has posted video of the Westercon 76 Business Meeting.

The Westercon 76 Business Meeting received the results of Westercon 78 (2026) Site Selection, ratified all of the pending amendments to the Westercon Bylaws passed on from the Westercon 75 Business Meeting, and passed two new bylaw amendments that clarify the official name of the convention and broaden the suggested range of dates for holding the convention. As with the previous wording that was in the Bylaws, the suggested range of dates (anytime during the months of May, June, and/or July) are not required, only suggested. These two bylaw amendments will be up for ratification at Westercon 77, which will be held in conjunction with BayCon 2025. The exact wording of the Bylaw amendments will be published in the minutes of the Westercon 76 Business Meeting and the 2024-25 version of the Westercon Bylaws, Standing Rules, and Draft Agenda for 2025, which we will publish when the Business Meeting staff releases it, which we expect to happen before the end of July 2024.

(6) BAYCON TO HOST WESTERCONS 77 AND 78. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] BayCon will host both Westercon 77 (2025) and 78 (2026), after the members of Westercon 76 in Utah voted to award the right to host Westercon 78 to a bid from BayCon’s parent non-profit organization. BayCon 2025 was previously awarded the right to host Westercon 77, as announced on June 14, 2024.

19 members of Westercon 76 in Utah voted in the 2026 Site Selection election. BayCon received 13 of the votes cast. The summary of votes is available here.

The write-in bid for BayCon 2026 applied to a bid filed by the Society for the Promotion of Speculative Fiction on July 2, 2024.

A more detailed breakdown of votes cast per day will be in the minutes of the Westercon 76 Business Meeting

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 7, 1968 Jeff VanderMeer, 56.

By Paul Weimer: In some ways, Jeff Vandermeer, although he didn’t know it, helped get me into reviewing and criticism. Back around 2000, I started to get interested seriously in science fiction and fantasy and the field of SFF. I think I’ve mentioned before elsewhere that this is when I cast my first Hugo ballots, was reading Locus assiduously, etc.  I also got interested in reviewing. 

Jeff VanderMeer

In those wild days, getting into reviewing and getting arcs and books and getting involved in that community was easy, although no one would really see my work extensively for years. I was mostly reading reviews and not writing my own at this point, though. One of the reviews read in a newsletter was for City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff Vandermeer. Given my usual tastes, this book sounded off-the-wall bonkers and way outside my comfort zone. But the reviewer, whose name sadly I cannot remember alas, convinced me of two things: I wanted to write reviews myself, to help be a signpost to others. And, germane to this birthday, to try Jeff Vandermeer.

I was stunned by the visceral, immersive, New Weird experience that City of Saints and Madmen, in its original form gave me.  I bought the later edition, too (sadly both were lost in book moves) and started reading Vandemeer ever since. He does sit outside my typical comfort zone on a number of levels (much like M John Harrison does) but his fearlessness in trailblazing the New Weird, to this day, makes him one of my must-reads. 

While I still have a strong affinity for Ambergris and the stories and novels set in it, I think my favorite is the braided, twisting, self-referential and convoluted and so out there Annihilation trilogy. I think that, even more than Ambergris, is the work that you hand someone who wants to try Vandermeer.  If you like this, you will like the rest of his work. If not, you will not.  The movie adaptation, which takes from more than just the first novel, is an interesting adaptation. It sits somewhat skewed from the main texts, but given the whole New Weird aesthetic and mindset…it makes it a good movie FOR that reason. 

And Vandermeer, along with his wife Ann, is a pretty damn good anthologist, in the bargain. (The Time Traveler’s Almanac my favorite of these.)

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Eek! settles a dispute. Did you know Godzilla has big enough hands to play this game?
  • Foxtrot proposes new shows.
  • The Argyle Sweater shows what cowpokes and writers have in common.

(9) SIMAK: A SERIES OF Q&AS. Joachim Boaz shares the clippings in “Exploration Log 4: Six Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)” at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. They include a Luna interview conducted by the brilliant interviewer Paul Walker, and an interview in Janice Bogstad and Jeanne Gomoll’s Janus conducted by Bill Brohaugh.

The first interview is:

Scholar and author James E. Gunn recorded a video interview with Clifford D. Simak in 1971 at World Science Fiction Convention in Boston.

Simak charts his earliest writing efforts, including his lost first manuscript, and his first experiences reading science fiction. He read Haggard, H. G. Wells, and Poe. And then in high school he picked up an early issue of Amazing felt a thrill that such a magazine existed. Soon he realized that he too could write for the magazines:at that time “there wasn’t too much competition and if a man could write anywhere near complementary [to what was in the magazine] you could sell.” He compares the early scene to the present in which “it’s much harder for a young writer to break in.”

He traces his early career across Midwest–North Dakota, Minnesota, etc.–as a newspaperman. His perambulatory existence prevented him from continuing his SF writing as “there’s no such thing as an eight-hour day or a 40-hour week” at the smaller newspapers. A more stable newspaper job in Minneapolis allowed him to return to science fiction. He discusses his influential letter exchange with a young Asimov, his early pulp work, and the restrictions that knowing too much about a topic places on the imagination. Simak conveys pride that his stories for John Campbell, Jr. placed “ordinary characters” in strange science fictional situations….

(10) DID YOU MISS MIDNIGHT? “George Clooney’s Post-Apocalyptic Space Movie Shouldn’t Have Flown Under the Radar” argues Collider.

…The Midnight Sky seemed to come and go without much attention, but it’s not hard to see why. It’s a film that features beautiful works of visual effects (which even received an Academy Award nomination), yet wasn’t available to be seen in theaters due to the theatrical shutdowns related to the COVID-19 virus. Additionally, audiences may have been skeptical about a cold, realistic version of a post-apocalyptic event when they were dealing with their own mental health issues during the height of the lockdown. Factors out of Clooney’s control prevented the film from getting the rollout it deserved. But The Midnight Sky is a beautiful examination of human achievement that shows just how grandiose the science fiction genre can be….

(11) LIVING 22 MINUTES IN THE PAST. FOR 378 DAYS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A trip to “Mars“ has ended for 4 NASA crewmembers. For over a year, they lived in isolation in a simulated Mars habitat—including an up to 22-minute one-way time delay to communicate with their base “back on Earth.” “Volunteers who lived in a NASA-created Mars replica for over a year have emerged”NPR has the story.

Four volunteers who spent more than a year living in a 1,700-square-foot space created by NASA to simulate the environment on Mars have emerged.

The members of the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog mission — or CHAPEA — walked through the door of their habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday to a round of applause.

“Hello. It’s actually just so wonderful to be able to say hello to you all,” CHAPEA commander Kelly Haston said to the assembled crowd.

Haston and the other three crew members — Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones — entered the 3D-printed Mars replica on June 25, 2023, as part of a NASA experiment to observe how humans would fare living on the Red Planet.

The volunteers grew their own vegetables, maintained equipment, participated in so-called Marswalks and faced stressors that actual space travelers to Mars could experience, including 22-minute communication delays with Earth.

The 378-day endeavor was the first of three NASA missions the space agency has planned to test how humans would respond to the conditions and challenges of living on Mars, where it says it could send astronauts as soon as the 2030s. NASA’s second CHAPEA mission is scheduled for the spring of 2025, and the third is slated to begin in 2026….

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

Pixel Scroll 7/3/24 The Magic Morlock, So Pixeled And So New

(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF RESCUED BY CROWDFUNDING. A  GoFundMe appeal reopened to keep Octavia’s Bookshelf in business raised its target amount almost immediately reports Pasadena Now: “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Relaunches Urgent Fundraiser to Stay Open”.

A fundraiser to save a local bookstore has raised almost $70,000 in a matter of days.

Nikki High, founder and owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, has reopened a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for her struggling bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf. 

In a heartfelt social media post, she revealed her heavy heart, tired soul, and months of sleepless nights, and said she needed transparency with her community….

As Nikki High explained in her GoFundMe call:

We managed to open last year to great support and lots of excitement. This past year has been some of the most rewarding and difficult times in my life.

Bookselling is a tricky animal and being a Black Women entrepreneur adds another level of hardship that I was not quite prepared for.

Being underresourced but determined, I have fought through the highs and lows of retail. I’ve made some mistakes, and I’ve learned so much. Of all the sleepless nights and hardships, it’s the community we’ve built that has kept me going and reaffirmed to me that Octavia’s Bookshelf is a space we need to keep in our community.

To be completely transparent, we need an urgent influx of cash to keep us afloat right now. The coffers are dry and the reserves are non existent. We are being faced with tremendous financial mountains to climb to get here we need to be to be sustainable and I need your help once again…

The bookstore, named for Octavia Butler, opened its doors on February 18, 2023, at 1361 North Hill Ave, in Pasadena. 

(2) CORY PANSHIN Q&A. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Alexei Panshin’s widow on their collaborations together, Robert A. Heinlein, other subjects. “Interview with Cory Panshin” at One Geek’s Mind.

John Grayshaw: How did you and Alexei become writers and critics of science fiction?

We both started off as SF and fantasy readers from an early age and then as  fans. Alexei has written detailed accounts of his pathway in a couple of places, but the short version is that as a teenager he began subscribing to fanzines. Then he received a typewriter as a high school graduation present and the idea struck him that he should be a writer. He started out by writing a novel which was very amateurish. (As I recall from the one time I read the manuscript, it was something like a spaceship full of librarians seeking refuge from an evil empire.) He made better progress doing book reviews for fanzines, as well as short stories, of which he wrote about twenty between 1960 and 1965.

As for me, it’s a little more complicated, since I didn’t launch right into writing the way Alexei did. When I was twelve, I started trying to write a spy novel, and only got a few pages in. I recently found that old notebook and discovered to my surprise that I’d kept adding pages on and off for the next four years before giving up entirely and launching into a science fiction story about a spaceship crew that goes astray in hyperspace and finds itself battling a jabberwock that attacks them with its eyes of flame.

That might have been the beginning and end of my abortive science fiction writing career, but that fall I started my freshman year at Harvard College, where my roommate Leslie Turek and I discovered we had a lot in common; but also that Harvard was not particularly geek-friendly, being primarily dedicated to grooming the scions of the ruling class. So instead, we found our way to the MIT Science Fiction Society, where we were quickly drafted to co-edit the MITSFS fanzine and from there got drawn into science fiction fandom.

There weren’t a lot of women in fandom at that time, so it was easy for us to get noticed. Alexei spotted me in costume at the 1966 Worldcon and we were married in 1969. Around the same time, my fellow MITSFS member Fuzzy Pink married Larry Niven, while Leslie became actively involved in convention-running and eventually chaired the 1980 Worldcon.

Except for occasional con reports and other fanzine articles, I wasn’t doing much writing in the late 60s, but once I married Alexei we discovered a mutual interest in theorizing about the nature of science fiction and began to do critical writing in collaboration….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to gab over garlic bread with Sally Wiener Grotta in Episode 229 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Sally Weiner Grotta

Sally Wiener Grotta’s latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction stories, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the North Atlantic ReviewDreamForgeAcross the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and others.

Her previous books include Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (co-authored with Daniel Grotta), and the novels Jo Joe, which was a Jewish Book Council Network book, and The Winter Boy, which was a Locus Magazine Recommended Read. Sally is also co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia Salon reading series. Plus she’s also an award-winning journalist and photographer who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents.

We discussed when we first met (and can’t quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she’d fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question “what if?,” why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing workshop which caused that Grand Master to say “what a darling monster,” when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.

(4) MTV NEWS THROWN LIFELINE BY INTERNET ARCHIVE. “Search MTV News Articles Archive at Wayback Machine” reports Variety.

In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news — removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet — the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news.

You can search the MTV News archive on the organization’s Wayback Machine at this link. Prior to Internet Archive aggregating the MTV News pages into a collection, there was no way to locate articles based on search terms.

Paramount shut down the MTV News division as part of a larger round of layoffs in May 2023… 

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 3, 1937 Tom Stoppard, 87. I was delighted to discover that playwright Tom Stoppard has crafted far more genre than I thought, considering I all I knew he had done was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is adjacent genre if not actually genre). If you’ve not seen it yet, it is quite delightful. 

He scripted Brazil, which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. Brazil was actually part of the Trilogy of Imagination, all written or co-written by Gilliam, which consisted of Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Not my favorite of those three films by any means but certainly interesting to catch at least once I’d say. 

Tom Stoppard

He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. Now I like that film a lot but not as much as Raiders of The Lost Ark, which I consider perfect. The Suck Fairy broke her buckles when she tried to sully Raiders of The Lost Ark’s reputation recently. 

He did one genre adjacent script, the adaptation of the Robert B. Parker and Raymond Chandler novel Poodle Springs for television. Chandler had completed four chapters before his death, so on the occasion of the centenary of Chandler’s birth, Parker was asked by the estate of Raymond Chandler to complete the novel. No, I’ve not read it for the same reason I don’t watch films or series off novels that I really like — I prefer the originals, thank you. 

Let’s not overlook Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman. Any film with Geoffrey Rush in it is certainly going to be worth seeing and if the script is written by Stoppard in some fashion as it was here, it’s likely that the dialogue is going to be stellar. It certainly is here. 

He was even involved in the largest SF franchise ever as  he did the dialogue polish of George Lucas’s Revenge of the Sith screenplay. Polish? Interesting phrase there. 

(6) COMICS SECTION.

(7) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(8) STARLOST AND FOUND. [Item by Michael Burianyk.] Any SF fan who was around in the early 70s will remember the TV series Starlost. Canadian writer Den Valdron is running a Kickstarter for his Starlost Unauthorized book which has six more days to go to reach its stretch goal. Den is a good writer (who has written unauthorized works discussing ‘Dr Who’ and ‘Lexi’) with a lot of energy and will bring a lot to understanding this little known piece of Science Fiction history in the context of Canadian cultural identity. I think the whole project is timely and is worthy of support. Starlost Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron”.

(9) CHURCH ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES FROM OUTER SPACE. Atlas Obscura introduces us to the “Cathedral of Salamanca’s Astronaut – Salamanca, Spain”. (Image at the link.)

…The thing that makes old hoaxes so frustrating is that they are hard to tease out from their actual history. Something fabricated in the 1600s made to look like it is from the 1400s can be very hard to pick out. The astronaut on the Cathedral of Salamanca is not in fact a hoax, but an approved and modern addition to the Cathedral, however it has all the earmarks of something which may provide for great confusion some 500 years from now.

Built between 1513 and 1733, the Gothic cathedral underwent restoration work in 1992. It is a generally a tradition of cathedral builders and restorers to add details or new carvings to the facade as a sort of signature. In this case after conferring with the cathedral, quarry man Jeronimo Garcia was given the go-ahead to add some more modern images to the facade.  He included an astronaut floating among the vines, a dragon eating ice cream, a lynx, a bull, a stork, a rabbit, and a crayfish….

A Scottish abbey, likewise, has a modern addition — a xenomorphic spout: “’Alien’ Gargoyle – Paisley, Scotland”. (Image at the link.)

…In 1991, the abbey underwent some necessary restoration work. Twelve of its 13 gargoyles were so badly ruined from water damage they had to be removed. The work was carried out by an Edinburgh-based stone masonry company, which replaced the carvings with newer models.

Apparently, some of the stone masons had a bit of fun with their creations. One of the gargoyles is certainly unique, which is fitting, as medieval tradition holds that no two gargoyles can look the same. The creature bears a strong resemblance to H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph from the Alien franchise. As the films were popular throughout the 1980s and early ‘90s, it’s likely one of the workers drew a bit of inspiration from its otherworldly antagonist….

(10) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “G. Rossini: Duetto para dos Gatos- Duet for Two Cats”. A YouTube commenter explains, “When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. When you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

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