Tag Archives: GoFundMe

Pixel Scroll 12/4/23 Cool Carbonite Hand Luke 

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(1) POWELL ARRESTED. Longtime fan Rickland Powell was arrested December 1 in connection with “assaulting a female child who is known to him” according to the Middlesex (MA) District Attorney.  Their press release follows.

Powell is on the list of people who have been banned from Arisia. Prior to that he worked on Arisia over the past couple of decades in positions ranging from Division Head to logistics and art show help.

(2) UNCATCHABLE. Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ “Maybe We Already Have Runaway Machines”, a discussion of David Runciman’s The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States, and AIs,  is a rather Strossian article in The New Yorker.

…Yet we citizens of modern states have always labored under the shadow of a partly mitigated alignment problem—a “mismatch between the drives of these artificial persons and the needs of the planet,” as Runciman describes it—that provides a frame, a vocabulary, and a sense of foreboding as we seek to process the automation on the horizon. The concern about unaligned machines is that even if we can program, so to speak, their ultimate ends, we can’t necessarily anticipate the instrumental subgoals they might pursue as an intermediate measure. If you instruct a machine to complete a task, the likeliest instrumental subgoal is to “gain control.” If the danger of the alignment problem seems indistinct or preposterous, Runciman suggests, you haven’t been paying attention….

“… States and corporations reflect two different sides of our contemporary fear of machines that have escaped human control. One is that we will build machines that we don’t know how to switch off, either because we have become too dependent on them or because we can’t find the off switch. That’s states. The other is that we build machines that self-replicate in ways that we can no longer regulate. They start spewing our versions of themselves to the point where we are swamped by them. That’s corporations….”

(3) FOLLOW-UP ON ALASKAN MUDSLIDE. Max Florschutz wrote in November that his mother survived the mudslide in his hometown of Wrangell, Alaska but at that time he did not know the fate of his father. Unfortunately, his father passed on. He has an update in “Emergency News and Classic Being a Better Writer: Horizontal and Vertical Storytelling” at Unusual Things.

(4) BEST XX. Esquire’s list of “The 20 Best Books of 2023” is topped by a genre work.

…Our selections range from debut works by emerging voices to new outings for canonical writers. They delve into everything from prisons to shipwrecks, ghost stories to extraterrestrials, American dreaming to American failures. Whether you’re into novels, short stories, memoirs, or nonfiction, we’ve covered the whole waterfront here with a bumper crop of incredible books. They’re all worth their weight in gold (believe us, we know exactly how much they weigh).

Below, here are Esquire’s 20 best books of the year…

Ranked number one:

Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Ever since his breakout debut, Friday Black, we’ve been eagerly awaiting Adjei-Brenyah’s sophomore outing. Nearly five years later, it arrived this past spring, and it surpassed all expectations. In a dystopian United States, the prison-industrial complex has gone private, leaving incarcerated people with no choice but to compete for their freedom in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment system. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker have traveled together for years as Links in the same Chain-Gang, but as Thurwar nears her freedom, she contemplates how to bring dignity to her multi-racial and multi-gendered coalition of fellow gladiators. Reading Chain-Gang All-Stars in a nation addicted to violent sports that brutalize athletes of color, Adjei-Brenyah’s acerbic vision lands like a lightning bolt of truth.

Read an exclusive excerpt here at Esquire.

(5) WILKINS GOFUNDME. Cory Doctorow signal boosted an appeal to help Pacific Northwest bookseller Duane Wilkins.

Nearly every sf writer who’s ever toured the west coast knows Duane – he’s the encyclopedically knowledgeable sf buyer for the U Washington Bookseller, who has organized some of the best sf signings in Seattle history. He’s a force of nature.

He’s also broke. A two-week hospital stay left him drowning in medical debt – despite being insured! – and now he’s being threatened by a collection agency.

Now, Duane is forced into participating in one of the most barbaric of contemporary American rituals, fundraising to cover his medical debt. He’s raised $6k of the $10k he needs (I just pitched in $100).

If you can afford to help out someone who’s done so much for our community, please kick Duane whatever you can spare.

Shawn Speakman, who set up the GoFundMe (“Please Help Duane Wilkins Pay His Medical Debt”) says there are reward for certain levels of donation. (Also note – as of this writing the appeal has brought in $15,567).

I told him that I’d help him relieve that debt and raise some extra funds for any future situation that might require aid.

That’s where you come in.

If you donate $10 or more, Grim Oak Press will email you free ebooks of our amazing anthologies Unfettered, Unfettered II, Unfettered III, Unbound, and Unbound II. These are filled with amazing SF&F short stories. Google them to view their incredible author line-ups.

And if you donate more than $20 to Duane’s GoFund Me, several of these writers are willing to give free ebooks of some of their novels. Starting with me and my newly-edited edition of The Dark Thorn.

I hope you will consider donating to Duane’s GoFundMe and help spread word about it. Together, we can help one of our best SF&F booksellers….

(6) MONSTER MASH. They’re at it again: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Official Trailer is coming to theaters April 12, 2024.

(7) FAITHFUL EEYORE. John Boston reviews the latest (in 1968) issue of Amazing at Galactic Journey. “[December 4, 1968] Sign Me Up (January 1969 Amazing)”.

In this January’s Amazing, on page 138, there is an editorial—A Word from the Editor, it says, bylined Barry N. Malzberg—which suggests a different direction (or maybe I should just say “a direction”) for this magazine.  First is some news.  There will be no letter column; Malzberg would rather use the space for a story.  Second, “the reprint policy of these magazines will continue for the foreseeable future,” per the publisher, but “A large and increasing percentage of space however will be used for new stories.”

Pointedly, the editor adds, “it is my contention that the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition, much less the readers during its absorption.  Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past, science-fiction has only within the past five or six years begun to emerge from its category trap only because certain intelligent and dedicated people have had the courage to wreck it so that it could crawl free. . . .  I propose that within its editorial limits and budget, Amazing and Fantastic will do what they can to assist this rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category and we will try to be hospitable to a kind of story which is still having difficulty finding publication in this country.”

As far as I know fifty years later Malzberg is still disappointed in science fiction. G.W. Thomas took inventory of some of his past predictions for the genre in “The Fate of Science Fiction According to Barry N. Malzberg” at Dark Worlds Quarterly.

(8) MEDICAL UPDATE. Erwin “Filthy Pierre” Strauss, who fell down some stairs at Smofcon thie weekend, suffered a broken wrist and was taken to New England Hospital, wrote Kevin Standlee yesterday. “They expect to keep him at least one more night. Sufford and Tony Lewis will retrieve him from the hospital when he is released.”

(9) TIM DORSEY (1961-2023). Crime novelist Tim Dorsey, who wrote about the eccentricities of Floridians long before Florida Man became a meme, died November 26. The New York Times obituary is here: “Tim Dorsey, Who Turned Florida’s Quirks Into Comic Gold, Dies at 62”.

…Mr. Dorsey gave his books comic titles that reflected the blend of Jimmy Buffett and Raymond Chandler that filled their interiors.

“The Maltese Iguana,” published this year, was Mr. Dorsey’s most recent book.via HarperCollins

He reveled in the diversity of Florida — the dog tracks and swamps around Miami, the Redneck Riviera along the Panhandle, the morass of state politics in Tallahassee, the nostalgic weirdness of the Keys.

His novel “Atomic Lobster” (2008), Mr. Dorsey said in an interview with Powell’s Books, was “the dissection of a Florida neighborhood populated almost entirely by degenerates, con men, the terminally dysfunctional, golf freaks, trophy wives, and prescription-abusing retirees in Buicks tying up traffic. In other words, a documentary.”

Some people considered Serge to be Mr. Dorsey’s alter ego, but he corrected them. Serge was, he said, his ego, living the kind of life and doing the sorts of things he would love to do if not constrained by conscience and the law….

(10) TODAY’S WISDOM.

From Wole Talabi:

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Flying McCoys wondered how to get hold of Batman if the Batlight went out.
  • Tom Gauld decodes some highly technical terminology so the layperson can understand it.

(12) LEGACY. Bobby Derie looks at an example of the Japanese Cthulhu Mythos in “The Cthulhu Helix (2023) by Umehara Katsufumi (梅原克文)” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

… Which is why The Cthulhu Helix works as a Lovecraftian novel. The characters are all conscious of Lovecraft’s legacy, but for them it’s all shorthand and metaphor, a way to frame and discuss these complex ideas and relationships without getting bogged down in Elder Signs and other minutiae. The particular approach Umehara took is fairly Derlethian, but that’s not surprising considering when and where it was published….

(13) SEEKING SUBSCRIBERS. Sunday Morning Transport’s free-to-read story for December is “Deconstruction in the Form of a Cat God” by LaShawn Wanak.

LaShawn Wanak opens with talking cats; then the tale only grows more wondrous — and we can think of nothing better

(14) CASTING CALL. Slashfilm tells readers “How David Tennant Ended Up Playing Huyang In Star Wars”.

… It’s brilliant casting, if I may gush for a moment. I love him in both franchises. I think part of the appeal is that David Tennant’s voice is pretty recognizable; “Doctor Who” fans have a built-in feeling that this is a wise person who has centuries of universal knowledge behind whatever he’s saying. I suppose you could say the same thing for fans of “Good Omens” (where he plays a fallen angel who has been around for all of time) who only discovered Tennant’s Huyang in “Ahsoka.” Of course, his performances are great across the board, but there is something to be said for many audience members having immediate feelings about him from his past work…. 

(15) IT’S GOOD FOR YOU. “Neuroscience Says 1 Rather Brainless Activity Can Lower Your Stress and Make You More Productive” says Inc.com. And we’re all into brainless activities, right?

…The activities included coloring in a mandala, doodling within or around a circle marked on a paper, and having a free-drawing session, each for three minutes, with rest periods in between. During all three activities, there was an increase in blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which forms a part of the wiring for our brain’s reward circuit. 

“This shows that there might be inherent pleasure in doing art activities independent of the end results,” said the study’s lead author.

The advantages of creating art go beyond just the pleasure of the activity itself. According to surveys before and after the art-making activities, participants who engaged in art-making felt more creative and were better able to solve problems….

(16) AI CON GAME. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4’s documentary programme File on Four has taken a fascinating look at how artificial intelligence (A.I.) is being used by criminals to con victims. A crime that, if written as a story a decade ago, would be decidedly SFnal.  A.I.-generated deep fakes are no longer restricted to images but also to voices and even video.  In the programme, the presenter gets a researcher to train an A.I. to simulate the presenter’s voice and then gets the A. I. to phone his mother: someone who arguably best knows what his voice sounds like. His mother is completely taken in by the A.I. voice.

The programme reveals that the banks, which have been using voice identification as an added security measure, are in an arms race with criminals. One A.I. researcher has even refused to let his bank use voice identification on his account!

Artificial intelligence, or AI, makes it possible for machines to learn – and in the future it will perform many tasks now done by humans. But are criminals and bad actors ahead of the curve? AI is already being used to commit fraud and other crimes by generating fake videos and audio; fast emerging threats that form just part of a potential new crime wave. File on 4 investigates.

You can listen to the half-hour programme here: “File on 4, Artificial Intelligence: The Criminal Threat”.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended, strangely enough, has an opinion about how Transformers: Rise of the Beasts should have ended.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/27/23 He’s The Man, The Man With The Pixel Touch. He Scrolls So Much

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(1) SFPA POETRY CONTEST DEADLINE APPROACHING. Poets have until August 31 to submit entries to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association’s 2023 Speculative Poetry Contest. The contest is open to all poets, including non-SFPA-members. Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories:

  • Dwarf (poems 1–10 lines [prose poems 0–100 words])
  • Short (11–49 lines [prose poems 101–499 words])
  • Long (50 lines and more [prose 500 words and up])

Line count does not include title or stanza breaks. All sub-genres of speculative poetry are allowed in any form.

Prizes in each category (Dwarf, Short, Long) will be $150 First Prize, $75 Second Prize, $25 Third Prize. Publication on the SFPA website for first through third places. There is an entry fee of $3 per poem.

The contest judge is Michael Arnzen, who holds four Bram Stoker Awards and an International Horror Guild Award. He has been teaching as a Professor of English in the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University since 1999, and has work forthcoming in Weird Tales, Writing Poetry in the Dark and more. He also is a past Secretary/Treasurer of the SFPA. 

The contest chair is R. Thursday (they/them), a writer, educator, historian, and all-around nerd. They placed second in the 2021 Rhysling Award for Short Poems, and the 2022 Bacopa Formal Verse Contest. Their work has been published in Vulture Bones, The Poet’s Haven, Crow and Quill, Eye to the Telescope, Sheepshead Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Book of Matches, and many other fine journals.

Entries are read blind. Unpublished poems only. Author retains rights, except that first through third place winners will be published on the SPFA website. Full guidelines here.

(2) WARREN LAPINE MEDICAL UPDATE. Sff publisher and editor Warren Lapine suffered a cardiac event on August 7. His partner Angela Kessler has started a GoFundMe to pay for substantial costs not covered by insurance: “Help Warren Recover”.

As you may have heard my husband, Warren Lapine, had a cardiac event on August 7th that caused his heart to stop. CPR was started immediately by a friend and he was then airlifted to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he was stabilized. He underwent a number of tests that failed to turn up a reason for his heart stoppage, and therefore an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) was implanted to make sure he doesn’t die if this happens again. Since the doctors and tests were unable to determine why Warren’s heart stopped, there will be lots of follow up anointments and tests, all of which will have to be paid for somehow….

(3) READING OUT LOUD TO KIDS. “Most parents want more time reading to young children, study shows” reports the Guardian.

The study, commissioned by the children’s publisher Ladybird and run by Censuswide, found that 33% of parents with children under five wished they had more confidence to read with their child. Reading out loud and doing character voices were cited as reasons for doubting their confidence.

Of the more than 1,000 parents surveyed, three-quarters said that they wished they had more time for shared reading. The study, conducted between late June and early July this year, also found that 77% of parents who read with their children do so before bedtime – between 6pm and 8pm – with low levels of joint reading reported at other times of the day.

(4) BLOCH’S COMICS. The Robert Bloch Official Website has added a new section on Comics, detailing Bloch works adapted to comics and graphic novels.

The Comics page is accessible through the Other section. Here’s one example:

​​“A Song of Pain and Sorrow!” 
Appears in Heroes Against Hunger #1 (DC Comics); May 1986. A benefit book, with proceeds going toward hunger relief in Africa. 24 writer-artist teams collaborated, with each taking 2 facing pages (Bloch: pp. 18-19.)

(5) DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS. “Stepping Into Raymond Chandler’s Shoes Showed Me the Power of Fiction” – a guest essay by Denise Mina in the New York Times.

“The Second Murderer” is the first Philip Marlowe book written by a woman. Me.

Marlowe is, of course, the most famous creation of Raymond Chandler, perhaps the most famous of American crime novelists. Reading Chandler was always a guilty pleasure of mine, his vision of 1930s Los Angeles unfolding vividly for me all the way in cold and rainy Glasgow. On the one hand, there is his glorious writing, his blue-collar heroes and the occasional profound observations about the human experience. But there’s also his liberal use of racial slurs, his portrayal of people of color and homosexuals as grotesque caricatures and the fact that his work is suffused with misogyny. It takes a strong stomach to read a story in which a woman needs a slap to calm her down.

Crime fiction was, and is, anti-feminist. That’s why I chose to write it in the first place…

…Surrounded by maps and books and printouts of shabbily framed screen shots, I transported myself from cold and rainy Glasgow to a late September heat wave in 1939 in Chandler’s Los Angeles. I tried to retain his wonderful, playful language but update his values. My Marlowe novel features something few Chandler novels ever did: women with inner lives and ambitions that go beyond getting a boyfriend. In my version of Chandler’s 1930s Los Angeles, there’s a rich Hispanic community and a vibrant gay subculture. That’s my prerogative.

Some might accuse me of shoehorning my politics into a canonical series — but the work is already politicized, no shoehorn required. As the literary theorist Stanley Fish argued, there is no such thing as point-of-viewlessness. In all cultures, through all time, the status quo is profoundly political. It simply masquerades as neutral…

(6) SF IN BAWLMUR. [Item by Michael J. Walsh.] The Baltimore Banner, an online Baltimore “newspaper”, ran an article “New to Baltimore? Check out these books.” And one of the books is by local SF author Sarah Pinsker:

‘We Are Satellites’ by Sarah Pinsker

A story about how technology can divide families, written by an award-winning science fiction author based in Baltimore.

Reader review: “I recommend We are Satellites by local Sarah Pinsker. The book is set in the near future, but interwoven in the story are the locations like the aquarium.” — Emanuel

(7) TURN THESE LEAVES. “What to read this autumn: 2023’s biggest new books” – the Guardian’s recommendations include these works of genre interest.

Dystopian visions
In Julia (Granta, Oct), Sandra Newman opens out the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four by looking at that novel’s events from a female point of view. From Julia’s life in a women’s dormitory through her affair with Winston Smith and torture by the Thought Police, on to a meeting with Big Brother himself, it’s a fascinating reflection on totalitarianism as refracted through Orwell’s times and our own…

Uncovered Terry Pratchett
A Stroke of the Pen (Doubleday, Oct) assembles early short stories by the late Discworld creator, written under a pseudonym for newspapers in the 70s and 80s and only discovered after superfans combed through the archives. Expect comic fantastical fragments riffing on everything from cave people to Father Christmas….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 27, 1922 — Frank Kelly Freas. I’ve no idea where I first encountered his unique style on a cover of a SF book, but I quickly spotted it everywhere. ISFDB says his first published artwork was the cover of Weird Tales for November 1950. He had a fifty-year run on Astounding Science Fiction from October 1953 according to ISFDB and through its change to the Analog name — amazing. Yes, he won ten Pro Artist Hugos plus one Retro-Hugo, an impressive feat by anyone. There several decent portfolios of his work. (Died 2005.)
  • Born August 27, 1929 — Ira Levin. Author of Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil. All of which became films with The Stepford Wives being made twice as well having three television sequels which is definitely overkill I’d say. I’ve seen the first Stepford Wives film but not the latter version. Rosemary’s Baby would also be made into a two-part, four-hour miniseries. He got a Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. (Died 2007.)
  • Born August 27, 1945 — Edward Bryant. His only novel was Phoenix Without Ashes which was co-authored with Harlan Ellison and was an adaptation of Ellison’s pilot script for The Starlost. He won two Nebulas for his short stories “Stone”and “giANTS”, which also were nominated for the Hugo, as was his novelette “The Thermals of August”. I’m personally familiar his short fiction in the Wild Cards anthologies. Phoenix Without Ashes and all of his short stories are available in digital form. (Died 2017.)
  • Born August 27, 1952 — Darrell Schweitzer, 71. Writer, editor, and critic. For his writing, I’d recommend Awaiting Strange Gods: Weird and Lovecraftian Fictions and Tom O’Bedlam’s Night Out and Other Strange Excursions. The Robert E. Howard Reader he did is quite excellent as is The Thomas Ligotti Reader.
  • Born August 27, 1957 — Richard Kadrey, 66. I’m admittedly way behind on the Sandman Slim series having only read the first five books. The series concluded a few years back with King Bullet.  I also enjoyed Metrophage: A Romance of the Future and I’ve still got The Grand Dark on my interested to be read list.
  • Born August 27, 1965 — Kevin Standlee, 58. He attended his first con in 1984, L.A. Con II. Later he co-chaired the 2002 Worldcon, ConJosé, in San José. One source says he made and participated in amateur Doctor Who films in the late 1980s. I wonder if he played Doctor Who? And I wonder if we can see these films? 

(9) DO HOBBITS LOVE IT? Chapters Tea offers “Second Breakfast” (sound familiar?)

Small batch hand blended English breakfast tea with a touch of Merry’s gold petals (fortunately they do not glitter.) Perfect for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, and afternoon tea. Enter our fan drawn rendition of the realm of hobbits where friendship, nature, and the simple pleasures of life come first. Inspired by, but not affiliated with, our favorite series with a ring.

(10) ASTRONOMER’S SWEEPING IMAGINATION. Maria Popova introduces readers to “Stunning Celestial Art from the 1750 Astronomy Book That First Described the Spiral Shape of the Milky Way and Dared Imagine the Existence of Other Galaxies” at The Marginalian.

…In 1750, Wright self-published his visionary and verbosely titled book An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, Founded upon the Laws of Nature, and Solving by Mathematical Principles the General Phaenomena of the Visible Creation, and Particularly the Via Lactea (public domain). With his keen aesthetic sensibility — he was also an architect and garden designer — he commissioned “the best masters” to illustrate his theories in thirty-some scrumptious plates populated by comets, planets, and other celestial splendors observed and conjectured….

(11) FILE FOREVER. “WordPress’ 100 Year Plan: Putting A Price On Your Legacy” by Ernie at Tedium.

… And so, when I see the news that WordPress parent Automattic has announced that it is going to charge $38,000 to keep your website online for 100 years, something they call the “100 Year Plan,” I immediately am compelled to do the math on that equation. And even though that is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people, it breaks down to just over $30 a month—which, honestly, is about the price it costs to purchase solid web hosting these days….

…But if WordPress is going to charge $38,000 for this service, they should do things to make it valuable as a public resource. They should promote this content! From what we know of history, people often find success after their passing, and sometimes, stories resurface with just a little spark. If it leads to a licensing deal, it could help support both estates of those who have passed and maybe even those who don’t have $38,000 but deserve a home in this archive. Automattic should consider just offering this service to important cultural figures for free as a way to help broaden interest in the endeavor.

But more importantly, they should hire people to professionally curate this content, promote it, and offer strategies for people to research it. I think a guarantee that you’re going to have your content online for a long time is great. But what I think would be even better is a guarantee that efforts will be made to ensure it can still find an audience over time….

Hell, Automattic’s Jetpack can’t even effectively promote the material being published this very day. Do not give them a dime!

(12) QUIZ FOR AI. Science asks, “If AI becomes conscious, how will we know?” It will tell us, right? (But what if it lies!)

In 2021, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines—and got himself fired—when he claimed that LaMDA, the chatbot he’d been testing, was sentient. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, especially so-called large language models such as LaMDA and ChatGPT, can certainly seem conscious. But they’re trained on vast amounts of text to imitate human responses. So how can we really know?

Now, a group of 19 computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers has come up with an approach: not a single definitive test, but a lengthy checklist of attributes that, together, could suggest but not prove an AI is conscious. In a 120-page discussion paper posted as a preprint this week, the researchers draw on theories of human consciousness to propose 14 criteria, and then apply them to existing AI architectures, including the type of model that powers ChatGPT.

None is likely to be conscious, they conclude. But the work offers a framework for evaluating increasingly humanlike AIs, says co-author Robert Long of the San Francisco–based nonprofit Center for AI Safety. “We’re introducing a systematic methodology previously lacking.”…

(13) MEDIA DEATH CULT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid, over at YouTube’s Media Death Cult is having a quick 8-minute look at The Death Of Grass (also known as No Blade Of Grass) by John Christopher filmed on location in a…  errrr… grassy field… “The Death Of Grass – The Birth of Barbarism”.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The American Museum of Natural History illustrates “Human Population Through Time (Updated for 2023)”.

It took most of human history for our population to reach 1 billion—and just over 200 years to reach 8 billion. But growth has begun slowing, as women have fewer babies on average. When will our global population peak? And how can we minimize our impact on Earth’s resources, even as we approach 10 billion?

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Rich Lynch, Michael J. Walsh, Steven French, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

Pixel Scroll 7/19/2023 Sometimes A Great Alien Nation

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(1) WRITER LOSES EYE TO GUN VIOLENCE; FUNDRAISER STARTED. Sff author Jessie Kwak of Portland, OR was severely injured in a drive-by shooting last weekend while leaving the Mississippi Street Fair. “Author shot in eye near Mississippi Street Fair in Portland: ‘My left eye exploded'” at KGW8.

Jessie Kwak spent most of Saturday among hundreds of others enjoying the Mississippi Street Fair in North Portland. For the science fiction author, it was a special chance for her to sell her books at a booth, along with her friend and fellow author, Mark. Just after 8 p.m., the pair walked to Mark’s car, which was parked at North Kerby Avenue and North Failing Street. As they prepared to drive away, they heard gunfire.

“It was just kind of like, pop, pop, pop, pop, like somebody set off a string of fireworks,” Kwak said. “The windshield exploded and my left eye exploded and I realized that wasn’t fireworks, and so I ducked down.”

Mark drove Kwak, 40, to Legacy Emanuel Hospital about four miles away. Kwak’s husband, Robert Kittilson, took photographs of his wife’s injured face, which was covered in blood. The photos are difficult to look at, but the couple hopes those who see them will see the impact of gun violence for what it is, not just a statistic to ignore

There’s a GoFundMe to help with medical bills and loss of freelance income. “Help Jessie recover from a traumatic eye injury”. The appeal has raised almost $8,000 of the $20,000 goal in the first 24 hours.

Hi, I’m Jessie, a self-made freelance writer and author. On Saturday, July 15th, I was selling books at a local street fair with another author friend. As we were leaving, someone in the car ahead of us started firing their gun into the street nearby. A bullet ricocheted into our windshield, and glass and bullet fragments hit my face and entered my left eye. I was rushed to the hospital immediately, but it was clear that the bullet had done severe damage to the eye.

On Sunday, July 16th, I went under for a 5-hour surgery to reconstruct my left eye. Doctors said it was in pieces and had to be put back together like a puzzle. The CT scan revealed that bullet fragments were embedded deep in my eye and had damaged the retina. Another surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, July 19th to remove the bullet fragments and if possible repair the retina.

It will take time to learn to live with one eye, and as a freelancer, I won’t be able to work as I recover. And no work means no income.

This fundraiser is to help pay for medical treatment, lost income and clients, and for future legal expenses.

I have been watching as gun violence has been increasing in our country, and in retrospect, I know that I am very very lucky. Many families don’t get a second chance to hug their loved ones tight.

I want to take this opportunity to show you the real person behind the statistic, and that this was not a freak accident, but the result of a systemic issue we are facing here in the United States.

(2) HUMMINGBIRD PRIZE. The winner of the 2023 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize has been announced.

Winner: ‘Field’s Nocturne No. 10 in E Major’ by Matt Lumbard

Sonny wakes to the smell of coffee and the sight of his Grampa slipping suspenders over his shoulders, looking at the woodstove and muttering: “It’ll burn itself out.”

The editors also picked their own winner, by sff author Chip Houser.

Editors’ Choice: ‘Separate Worlds’ by Chip Houser

The first time the earth tolls, we’re all in our separate worlds doing what we do.

(3) AWARDS META. Daniel Dern suggests the Award Award, featuring categories like the “Most ingenious nomination process”. What others would you suggest?

(4) BACK IN THE TOY BOX. Masters of the Universe has been returned to development hell says Variety: “’Masters of the Universe’ Movie Dead at Netflix”. What will Cora think?

…Set on the planet Eternia, “Masters of the Universe” largely focuses on the conflict between He-Man, a blonde muscle god, and his devious nemesis Skeletor. The characters formed a much-loved 1980s animated series, which developed a cross-generational fan base during its syndicated runs. For the latest film iteration, the budget came in at over $200 million with cameras set to roll this February, sources said. Last spring, however, Netflix was confronted with a stunning stock drop that saw the powerful streamer shed $50 billion in value after investors became concerned about the company’s subscriber losses.

In the aftermath of the sell-off, Netflix film head Scott Stuber and chief content officer Bela Bajaria tried to reassure the industry that they still had money to spend amid their Wall Street woes. However, sources close to “Masters of the Universe” said after that point the streamer refused to shell out more than $150 million to see up-and-comer Allen (“American Horror Story,” “A Haunting in Venice”) pick up He-Man’s sword. A source familiar with Netflix said the stock drop was irrelevant to budget issues on “Masters,” noting that its content spend has been flat at $17 billion for two years, despite market fluctuation….

(5) WE PAUSE FOR A COMMERCIAL MESSAGE. Meanwhile, the Mark Twain House & Museum is adding a dose of grumpiness to the Masters of the Universe mix by hosting the virtual event “The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood”. Register here – choose your own price, minimum $2.50 (free to Twain House members).

Brian “Box” Brown unravels how marketing that targeted children in the 1980s has shaped adults in the present. The He-Man Effect shows how corporate manipulation brought muscular, accessory-stuffed action figures to dizzying heights in the eighties and beyond. Bringing beloved brands like He-Man, Transformers, My Little Pony, and even Mickey Mouse himself into the spotlight, this graphic history exposes a world with no rules and no concern for results beyond profit. 

(6) CHARLES E. NOAD OBITUARY. David Bratman has written a tribute to the late Charles E. Noad at Kalimac’s corner. It begins:

Charles was a mainstay of the Tolkien Society, the UK-based organization, and an absolute monument for Tolkien studies for all that he didn’t write very much. Besides doing bibliographical work for the TS, his most valuable contribution was as proofreader for most of the posthumous Tolkien volumes, in the History of Middle-earth series and elsewhere. At this his ability to catch glitches was unsurpassed. He could quite literally tell whether a period (the full stop at the end of a sentence) was in italics or not. As a support to Christopher Tolkien, the editor of these volumes, he was more than invaluable….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

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

A work by S. M. Stirling provides our Beginning this Scroll. Now I’ll admit that I am not that familiar with him which is not to say that there aren’t works by him that I do like deeply such as The Peshawar Lancers and The Lords of Creation series which consists of The Sky People and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. The latter is extraordinary work.

He has been nominated for many awards, winning the Lord Ruthven Award which is given for significant contributions to the field of horror literature for his A Taint the Blood novel, and a Dragon Award for the Black Chamber novel in the Best Alternate History Novel category. It was nominated for a Sunburst was awarded to a Canadian novel in previous year.

Mike choose Island in the Sea of Time, the first novel in the Nantucket series, published by Roc Books twenty-five years ago. 

And now for the Beginning…

March, 1998 A.D. 

Ian Arnstein stepped off the ferry gangway and hefted his bags. Nantucket on a foggy March evening was chilly enough to make him thankful he’d worn the heavier overcoat; Southern Californian habits could betray you, here on the coast of New England. Thirty-odd miles off the coast. The summer houses built out over the water were still shuttered, and most of the shops were closed—tourist season wouldn’t really start until Daffodil Weekend in late April, when the population began to climb from seven thousand to sixty. He was a tourist of sorts himself, even though he came here regularly; to the locals he was still a “coof,” of course, or “from away,” to use a less old-fashioned term. Everybody whose ancestors hadn’t arrived in the seventeenth century was a coof, to the core of old-time inhabitants, a “wash-ashore” even if he’d lived here for years. This was the sort of place where they talked about “going to America” when they took the ferry to the mainland.

He trudged past Easy Street, which wasn’t, and turned onto Broad, which wasn’t either, up to the whaling magnate’s mansion that he stayed in every year. It had been converted to an inn back in the 1850s, when the magnate’s wife insisted on moving to Boston for the social life. Few buildings downtown were much more recent than that. The collapse of the whaling industry during the Civil War era had frozen Nantucket in time, down to the huge American elms along Main Street and the cobblestone alleys. The British travel writer Jan Morris had called it the most beautiful small town in the world, mellow brick and shingle in Federal or neoclassical style. A ferociously restrictive building code kept it that way, a place where Longfellow and Whittier would have felt at home and Melville would have taken a few minutes to notice the differences. 

Mind you, it probably smells a lot better these days. Must have reeked something fierce when the harborfront was lined with whale-oil renderies. It had its own memories for him, now. Still painful, but life was like that. People died, marriages too, and you went on. 

He hurried up Broad Street and hefted his bags up the brick stairs to the white neoclassical doors with their overhead fanlights flanked by white wooden pillars. The desk was just within, but the tantalizing smells came from downstairs. The whalers were long gone, but they still served a mean seafood dinner in the basement restaurant at the John Cofflin House.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 19, 1883 — Max Fleischer. Animator, film director and producer. He brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman to the screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations including the Rotoscope and Stereoptical Processes. You can see Betty’s first screen appearance here in the 1930 Cartoon, “Dizzy Dishes”. (Died 1972.)
  • Born July 19, 1924 — Pat Hingle. He portrayed Jim Gordon in the Burton Batman film franchise. Genre wise, he had roles in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Carol for Another Christmas, Mission: Impossible, The Invaders, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Amazing Stories and The Land Before Time. He would reprise his Gordon role in the Batman OnStar commercials. (Died 2009.)
  • Born July 19, 1927 — Richard E. Geis. I met him at least once when I was living out there in Oregon. Interesting person. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer twice; and whose science fiction fanzine Science Fiction Review won Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine four times. The Alien Critic won the Best Fanzine Hugo (once in a tie with Algol), and once by himself. And yes, I enjoyed reading the Science Fiction Review. I’ve not read any of his handful of genre novels, and certainly haven’t encountered his soft-core porn of which there’s a lot. (Died 2013.)
  • Born July 19, 1950 — Richard Pini, 73. He’s half of the husband-and-wife team responsible for creating the well-known Elfquest series of comics, graphic novels and prose works. They are also known as WaRP (as in Warp Graphics). It’s worth noting that characters based on works by the Pinis appear in Ghost Rider (vol.1 issue 14).
  • Born July 19, 1957 — John Pelan. Committed (more or less) the act of opening serial small publishing houses in succession with the first being Axolotl Press in the mid-Eighties where he’d published the likes of de Lint and Powers (before selling it to Pulphouse Publishing) followed by Darkside Press, Silver Salamander Press and finally co-founding Midnight House. All have been inactive for quite awhile now and he’d been editing such anthologies as Tales of Terror and Torment: Stories from the Pulps, Volume 1 for other presses though even that has not happened for some years as near as I can tell. As a writer, he had more than thirty published stories and he had won both a Stoker for The Darker Side: Generations of Horror anthology and an International Horror Guild Award for his Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium anthology. (Died 2021.)
  • Born July 19, 1969 — Kelly Link, 54. First, let me note that along with Ellen Datlow, she and her husband Gavin Grant were responsible for the last five volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. They all did an absolutely magnificent job. All of her collections, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble are astonishingly good. And she’s much honored having three Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, an Otherwise Award, a Sturgeon Award and received a MacArthur Genius Grant. She was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. And Hugos. She won a Hugo at Interaction for her “Faery Handbag” novellette, her “Magic for Beginners” novella was nominated at L.A. Con IV, and finally Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet was nominated at Nippon 2007 for Best Semi-Prozine (her husband Gavin Grant was also nominated). 
  • Born July 19, 1976 — Benedict Cumberbatch, 47. Confession time: I really didn’t care for him in the Sherlock series, nor did I think his Khan In Star Trek Into Darkness was all that interesting but his Stephen Strange In Doctor Strange was excellent. He did do a superb job of voicing Smaug inThe Hobbit and his Grinch voicing in that film was also superb. I understand he’s the voice of Satan in Good Omens… 

(9) WIZARDS IN TRAINING. This is a pretty cute set of bookends (and middle!) “The Journey To HOGWARTS Illuminated Bookend Collection Featuring A Detailed HOGWARTS Express On Its Journey Back To HOGWARTS Castle” from the Bradford Exchange.

(10)  ARE FANS NO LONGER ALIENATED? “’The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks’ podcast explores internet outrage and its aftermath” at WBUR.

1999’s “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” introduced audiences to a technological marvel: Jar Jar Binks, cinema’s first major motion-captured character. But the comic-relief alien also became the target of one of the internet’s first hate campaigns, with vitriol spilling over to the actor who played Jar Jar as well.

The new podcast “The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks” tells this story and how it informs online discourse today. Here & Now‘s Celeste Headlee speaks to podcast host Dylan Marron, also known for his writing work on “Ted Lasso” and his podcast “Conversations with People Who Hate Me.”

Here’s the direct link to the podcast: “The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks”.

Jar Jar Binks became one of the most polarizing figures in cinematic history when he made his debut in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 1999. He was even named “the most annoying movie character of all time” by Complex Magazine. After the release, Ahmed Best, the man who played Jar Jar, was hit with the full force of the backlash — and it nearly destroyed him. The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks is a six-part journey through the early internet to understand how one of the first-ever online hate campaigns began, and to right what we got so wrong about Jar Jar the first time around.

(11) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. “High altitude balloons spy on dark matter” at Popular Science.

High altitude balloons have drawn a lot of fire lately. In February, the US military shot down a spy balloon potentially operated by the Chinese government and an “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that was later revealed to likely be a hobbyist balloon.

So, when people caught sight of another large balloon in the southern hemisphere in early May, there was concern it could be another spy device. Instead, it represents the future of astronomy: balloon-borne telescopes that peer deep into space without leaving the stratosphere.

“We’re looking up, not down,” says William Jones, a professor of physics at Princeton University and head of NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) team. Launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on April 15, the nearly 10-foot-tall telescope has already circled the southern hemisphere four times on a football stadium-sized balloon made from polyethylene film. Its three onboard cameras also took stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae galaxies to rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The findings from SuperBIT could help scientists unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of dark matter, a theoretically invisible material only known from its gravitational effects on visible objects….

(12) THE SHIPPING NEWS. The Last Voyage of the Demeter has the dirt on Dracula.

Based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. When the Demeter finally arrives off the shores of England, it is a charred, derelict wreck. There is no trace of the crew.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Fanac.org now hosts the venerable Castle of Terrors made in 1964 by the UK’s Delta Science Fiction Film Group.

This fannish production from Harry Nadler and the Delta SF Film Group gives us a slapstick parody of horror movies, replete with well known British fans of the day. There are angry villagers, damsels in distress, and scary monsters, as well as less well-known horror tropes like food fights in this 20 minute amateur extravaganza. In “Castle of Terrors” you can feel just how much fun Delta Group was having (and get a clear sense of their love for slapstick). Bill Burns, who provided this and other Delta Films tells us “The individual films date from 1963 to 1970, and were made on 8mm silent film to which a magnetic stripe was later added and the sound dubbed on. They were then shown mercilessly at club meetings and Eastercons, and suffered accordingly.” For more about the Delta SF Film Group, see the Fancyclopedia article and see the text of Bill’s talk at Manunicon (2016 Eastercon) here.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/17/23 In Space, HAL Can’t Hear You Telling Him To Open The Pod Bay Door

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(1) CULTIVATING HYBRIDS. Paul Kraus’ article on “Hybrid Conventions” begins with a statement of philosophy wrapped in the definitions of major terms. Then Kraus lists what’s needed to make a hybrid convention successful.

When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, all of the Sci-Fi conventions I volunteer with had to cancel or switch to an online format. Since the Pandemic has stabilized, it is not over, we have just learned more or less how to live with it, conventions have gone back to in-person events. But, we realized that there is a demand for online Sci-Fi convention activities. There are people who cannot attend in-person for a variety of very good reasons, from health and age related to cost and time. There is a market for online Sci-Fi convention activities.

A couple notes on terminology before I go on. Many people refer to these online activities as ‘virtual‘, as in ‘virtual convention’, ‘virtual panel’, ‘virtual attendees’. I realized this is disrespectful to those involved. The people are not ‘virtual’, so they are not ‘virtual attendees’, they are real people who are online or remote attendees. I avoid the use of the term ‘virtual’ for this reason.

The other term I want to define is ‘hybrid‘. I have heard that term used to describe a whole variety of things related to in-person and online activities. In my view a true ‘hybrid activity’, be it a convention, panel discussion, reading, or anything else is an activity with both an in-person component and an online component where the goal is for the experience to be as similar as possible between the in-person and online activity. So a ‘hybrid panel discussion’ would support both in-person panelists as well as online panelists on an equal footing, the audience would also consist of both in-person and online people on an equal footing. Hybrid is not running a couple online tracks of programming at the same time as an in-person convention. Hybrid is not streaming a couple tracks of programming (or events) from an in-person convention. Hybrid is about creating, to the best of our ability, the same experience for people whether they are in-person or online.

You will notice that I use the term ‘activity‘ in many places below where you might think I should be using ‘convention’. I do this on purpose as a convention may be in-person but still have aspects or activities that are hybrid.

Should All Conventions Be Hybrid?

The answer to this an an unequivocal no! There are many different factors that should determine whether a convention should attempt to be hybrid. Beyond the obvious factors of staffing (hybrid does require more staff with different skill sets) there are factors such as cost (can the convention get good enough Internet at their hotel / facility at a cost they can afford) and impact on in-person attendance (will an online offering draw from the in-person attendance and the convention risks missing a hotel block commitment). Each convention is unique and needs to examine their individual situation to decide if they can successfully be hybrid. Some may think they can, and try for a year or two, only to decide they cannot. Others my know themselves well enough to know they cannot do a good job with a hybrid convention. Others may decide to not hold a hybrid activity but to hold, at different times, both an in-person activity as well as an online activity. I expect that a small percentage of SciFi conventions will be able to successful transition to being a hybrid convention. This is OK. Every convention needs to do what they can do well, without overtaxing staff….

(2) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted her photos from the July 12 Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series where Farah Rose Smith and Michael Cisco were the guests.

(3) SHORE THING. “Mystery object: Australian police warn public away from huge cylinder found washed up on WA beach”. The Guardian has educated guesses about what it is.

A giant metal cylinder has washed up on a beach in Western Australia, baffling locals and posing a mystery to police.

The huge copper-coloured cylinder was reported to police by local residents on Sunday, having washed up on a beach near Jurien Bay sometime earlier.

The cylinder looks to be substantially damaged and was found leaning on its side….

…Dr Alice Gorman, an expert in the field of space archaeology, said she believes the object is a fuel cylinder that came from the the third stage of India’s polar satellite launch vehicle rocket, as many have suggested on social media.

“It’s surprising because it’s such a large fragment,” she said. “And it makes you wonder what was going on at the time, if maybe a marine weather event dislodged it and brought it ashore….

(4) NERDS IN TRANSLATION. 2023 Best Fanzine finalist Nerds of a Feather has launched a GoFundMe appeal to pay for translating their Hugo Voter Packet selections into Chinese, understandably titled “Help translate Nerds of a Feather into Chinese!” (It’s already online, in English, here.)  Co-editor Joe Sherry says:

We’re hoping to be able translate as much of our voter’s packet into Chinese but apparently hiring a translator costs money (and time) and we’ve got a short novel worth of content in our voter’s packet.

Every dollar raised goes to translation with the goal of having the packet done by the beginning of September. We have a translator lined up to start early August. If for some reason we raise more than we need, we’ll donate the extra to charity.

(5) MAUREEN KINCAID SPELLER COLLECTION. A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller edited by Nina Allan will be released by Luna Press Publishing on September 12 and is available for preorder. The cover is by Iain Clark.

MAUREEN KINCAID SPELLER [1959-2022] was a reviewer, critic and lifelong science fiction fan. Active in SF fandom from the early 1980s, Maureen started reviewing for the BSFA magazine Vector in 1986. She served on the jury of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, chaired the Tiptree Award and taught the SF Foundation Critical Masterclass in 2016. Her criticism has appeared in a wide variety of venues, and her extended critical analysis of the 2012 BSFA and Clarke Awards was shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Related Work.

In 1999 she was nominated for a Hugo in the Best Fan Writer category. Her passionate advocacy of new critical voices saw her appointed Senior Reviews Editor of the groundbreaking speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons in 2015.

Editor Nina Allan says, “When Maureen fell ill in the spring of 2022, my first reaction, like that of many, was one of profound shock. Her untimely death has robbed us all, not only of her presence, but of the work she was yet to do. Maureen had long spoken of her desire to put together a collection of her criticism, and the original intention for this volume was that she would personally be involved in the selection and curation of her favourite pieces. Time was sadly against us, but the desire to preserve Maureen’s work, to have it readily available to audiences old and new, has never felt more urgent. A Traveller in Time is by no means a complete collection – there is lots more out there to discover – but my hope is that it presents a faithful snapshot of Maureen as she was in life: spirited, passionate, knowledgeable and endlessly curious.”

(6) HE KNOWS OPPENHEIMER. Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster Oppenheimer will be released this week and Robert J. Sawyer is primed to give expert commentary to members of the media, having done two years of full-time research before writing his 2020 novel The Oppenheimer Alternative. He shared that knowledge in a File 770 interview, and other experts agree he knows what he’s talking about:

  • Martin Sherwin, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (the basis for Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer), says “Oppenheimer fans will be intrigued by Sawyer’s novel.”
  • Gregory Benford, physicist at University of California Irvine, says: “The feel and detail of the Manhattan Project figures is deep and well done. I knew many of these physicists, and Sawyer nails them accurately.”
  • Perimeter Institute physicist Lee Smolin, the author of The Trouble with Physics, agrees: “I know the history of this period well and I’m one or two degrees of separation from many of these people. Sawyer’s portrayals ring true to me. I loved it!”

For interviews, please contact publicist Mickey Mikkelson: [email protected] or 403-464-6925.

(6) NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM, PLEASE. “Stanley Kubrick Estate Approves ‘Dr. Strangelove’ Stage Adaptation” — IndieWire tells how it happened.

Amid the “Oppenheimer” anticipation, another bomb has been dropped: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” will be adapted as a stage production on the West End.

The project, led by “Veep” and “Avenue 5” creator Armando Iannucci, is the first-ever adaptation of a Kubrick property. Kubrick’s widow, Christiane Kubrick, confirmed the upcoming play based on the 1964 political satire film starring Peter Sellers.

“We have always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley’s work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn’t changed from how he finished it,” Christiane told the BBC. “But we could not resist authorizing this project: the time is right, the people doing it are fantastic, and ‘Strangelove’ should be brought to a new and younger audience. I am sure Stanley would have approved it too.”…

(7) BEN KINGSLEY PHONES HOME. Jules opens August 11.

Jules follows Milton (Kingsley) who lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town, but finds his day upended when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. Before long, Milton develops a close relationship with the extra-terrestrial he calls “Jules.” Things become complicated when two neighbors (Harris and Curtin) discover Jules and the government quickly closes in. What follows is a funny, wildly inventive ride as the three neighbors find meaning and connection later in life – thanks to this unlikely stranger.

(8) ALLAN SCOTT (1952-2023). UK author Allan Scott died July 17 reports Andrew Porter. The SF Encyclopedia notes his first pro genre publication was “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters (1982). He co-authored books The Ice King (1986) with Michael Scott Rohan, and also the fantasy novel A Spell of Empire: The Horns of Tartarus (1992) On his own, Scott wrote The Dragon in the Stone (1991).

(9) MEMORY LANE.

2007 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Michael Chabon is the source of our Beginning.  A fantastic writer, I’m going to also single out his work as writer and showrunner on Picard, and he has been working on a series adaptation of Kavalier and Clay for at least four years. 

So the novel that is the source of our Beginning is The Yiddish Policeman’s Union which Mike says it is very good.  It was published sixteen years ago by Harper Collins.

It won a Hugo at Devention 3 and a Sidewise Award along with being nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. 

So let’s see how this novel begin…

Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

“He didn’t answer the phone, he wouldn’t open his door,” says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman’s nightmares. “I had to let myself into his room.

The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.

“Did you touch anything in the room?” Landsman says. 

Tenenboym says, “Only the cash and jewelry.” 

Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 17, 1889 — Erle Stanley Gardner. Though best remembered for the Perry Mason detective stories, he did write a handful of SF stories, all of which are collected in The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner. They were originally published in Argosy from 1928 to 1932: “The Human Zero”, “Monkey Eyes”, “New Worlds”, “Rain Magic”, “A Year in a Day”, “The Man with Pin-Point Eyes” and “The Sky’s the Limit”. It is not available from the usual digital suspects but Amazon has copies of the original Morrow 1981 hardcover edition at reasonable prices. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 17, 1944 — Thomas A. Easton, 79. SF critic and author who wrote the book review column in Analog from 1979 – 2009. His Organic Future series is quite entertaining and I’m reasonably certain I read Sparrowhawk when it was serialized in Analog. 
  • Born July 17, 1954 — J. Michael Straczynski, 69. Best known rather obviously for creating and writing most of Babylon 5 and its short-lived sequel Crusade. He’s also responsible for as well as the Jeremiah and Sense8 series. On the comics side, he’s written The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor and Fantastic Four. Over at DC, he did the Superman: Earth One trilogy of graphic novels, and has also written Superman, Wonder Woman, and Before Watchmen titles. There’s an animated Babylon 5 film soon, but the fate of the rebooted series, who knows?  
  • Born July 17, 1965 — Alex Winter, 58. Bill in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequels Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Bill & Ted Face the Music. And though I didn’t realize it, he was Marko in The Lost Boys. He directed two Ben 10 films, Ben 10: Race Against Time and Ben 10: Alien Swarm. He also directed Stephen Hawking + Zoe Saldana: Quantum is Calling, a short film that has cast members Keanu Reeves, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Paul Rudd. 
  • Born July 17, 1967 — Kelly Robson, 56. I just got done reading her brilliant “Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach”.  Her collection Alias Space and Other Stories has all of her short fiction up to 2020, so go feast up upon them. These and the “High Times in the Low Parliament” and “A Human Stain” novellas are to be had the usual suspects. 
  • Born July 17, 1976 — Brian K. Vaughan, 47. Wow. Author of  Ex Machina, Pride of Baghdad, Runaways, Saga, Y: The Last Man, and his newest affair, Paper Girls. And yes, he’s won Hugo Awards. You could spend an entire summer just reading those series. In his spare time, he was a writer, story editor and producer of the television series Lost during seasons three through five. And was the showrunner and executive producer of the Under the Dome series.

(11) DOCTOROW WRITE-IN FOR CLARION. In support of Clarion’s summer  fundraising drive they’re hosting a series of Write-Ins, or hour-long writing sprints, with favorite SFFH authors and Clarion alums. These events will be free to any who are interested.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 7/18 we kick things off with the inimitable CORY DOCTOROW!

Join Cory and a group of your peers this Tuesday, July 18th 5PM PDT (8PM EDT), for a Write-In! We’ll engage in some timed writing sprints and, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a brief update on Cory’s WIP, “The Bezzle.”

Participation is FREE! Just register by 3PM PDT on Tuesday. Click the link to register.

(12) BY ALL MEANS. Last week Neil Gaiman was asked whether people should go see movies while the writers and actors are striking. His answer went viral.

(13) FROM TOY STORE TO SCREEN. JustWatch compiled a list of top 10 films based on toys, and compared the popularity of these productions finding out that the clear leader is the Toy Story franchise. Four movies of the series made the list, collecting a total of 35.6%. Its close competitor turned out to be Transformers franchise, with Transformers taking first place, followed by Bumblebee in 6th, and Transformers: The Last Knight in last place.

The following graphic contains the top 10 Barbie movies, with Barbie’s first ever movie: Barbie in the Nutcracker taking up third place and surpassing Barbie: Princess Charm School by only 1%. Barbie of Swan Lake and Barbie as Rapunzel go head to head, landing at 5th and 6th place with a difference of only 0.1%

(14) A NEW YORK DRAGONFLY MINUTE. [Item by Michael Toman.] A comparison of 138 species finds that dragonflies perceive changes in their environment five times faster than humans and 400 times faster than starfish. “Small and speedy animals perceive time faster than big, slow creatures” reports New Scientist.

Fast-moving animals – especially small ones, creatures that fly and top ocean predators – perceive time more quickly than others. That is, they can process more frames per second than slow-moving animals lower in the food chain, such as starfish, according to a comparison of more than 100 species.

“We already know that different animals perceive time differently from us,” says Kevin Healy at the University of Galway in Ireland, who presented the results at a meeting of the British Ecological Society on 20 December. But he wanted to find out, “If you’re a predator, do you have faster eyes than if you’re an herbivore?”

He and his colleagues began by reviewing previously published research on the flicker fusion test, a common measure of the rate at which animals perceive the passage of time. During the test, researchers increase the frequency of a flashing light until an animal sees it as a continuous glow, indicated by the reaction of light receptors in the animal’s retina.

“It’s kind of like measuring the frame rate of your eyes,” says Healy. Humans, for example, can detect light flickers at speeds up to 65 flashes per second. That means they can perceive changes in their environment 65 times per second….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George revisits the “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Pitch Meeting”.

Step back into the pitch meeting and revisit the completely factual accurate conversation that led to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Complete with commentary from Ryan George who is now several years older!

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

Pixel Scroll 6/22/23 You Are An Odd Fellow But I Must Say…. You Scroll A Good Pixel

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(1) DROPPING THE PILOT. The Horror Writers Association said goodbye to HWA Admistrator Brad C. Hodson today.

Message from the HWA Board of Trustees

The HWA and its administrator, Brad C. Hodson, have officially parted ways. Brad has served the HWA for many years and, in addition to performing his numerous administrative duties, he has helped to shepherd some wonderful initiatives, such as Horror University and health insurance for our members. We appreciate his hard work and dedication, and we wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors.

As President John Edward Lawson stated at the General Meeting at StokerCon 2023, we are terminating the administrator position and instituting a new role: Executive Director. Our Treasurer, Max Gold, will be the interim Executive Director. We are grateful he has accepted this responsibility and are looking forward to working with him in this capacity.

We will begin to phase out the [email protected] email address, but Max will still be receiving emails through it. You can also email him at [email protected].

(2) HEADS ARE ROLLING. “The Flash’ Flopped. Is Turner Classic Movies Paying the Price?” asks Vanity Fair.

When Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav anointed the newly-merged company with its slogan “the stuff that dreams are made of,” he paid homage to the classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon. Since then, he’s often touted his appreciation for cinema—rescuing Jack L. Warner’s old desk from storage so he could work from it, moving into Robert Evans’s former Beverly Hills home, and declaring Turner Classic Movies “the history of our country” at the network’s film festival in April.

As TCM general manager Pola Changnon told IndieWire earlier this year, Zaslav’s assistant ensured that “he had TCM on in his office all the time.” On Tuesday, after 25 years with the company, Changnon parted ways with TCM—the first in a string of top brass exits that now include TCM’s senior vice president of programming and content strategy Charles Tabesh, vice president of studio production Anne Wilson, vice president of marketing and creative Dexter Fedor, and TCM Enterprises vice president Genevieve McGillicuddy, a TCM representative confirmed to Vanity Fair. Michael Ouweleen, president of Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Discovery Family, and Boomerang, and TCM alum, will take charge, per a company memo. According to the outlet’s sources, layoffs in TCM’s public relations department are expected to follow.

The gutting of TCM’s top creatives comes in the days after a major flop for Warner Bros. The Flash, a superhero blockbuster meant to link Zack Snyder’s regime at DC Studios with James Gunn’s new era, made just $55 million at the North American box office over the weekend. That’s after both the studio poured hundreds of millions into production and advertising and Zaslav himself labeled it the best superhero movie he’s ever seen.

There’s no definitive correlation between the flattening of TCM and the failure of The Flash, but it’s hard not to see it as one of a brand’s entities paying for the sins of another….

(3) HEAR FROM MANON STEFFAN ROS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Yesterday’s  B. Beeb Ceeb Radio 4 arts programme Front Row had an interview with yesterday’s winner of the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, Manon Steffan Ros, author and translator of The Blue Book of Nebo, which is juvenile SF and rather good. It first came out in 2018 in Welsh as Llyfr Glas Nebo but then was republished in English last year hence eligible for this year’s Carnegie.

 It concerns the notes of a young woman who looks after her son who was only six when the world ended…

 I note that McCormac, who recently passed, most famous post-apocalyptic, The Road, concerned a father looking after his son and this year’s The Last of Us TV series had a boy being looked after in a post-apocalyptic setting (gosh, I enjoy the end of the world as long as it is firmly in SF). So it’s good to see a mum come to the fore.

(4) ABOUT SFWA SELLING T-SHIRTS… [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] In the File 770 comment section a few days ago, I mentioned there might have been a SFWA t-shirt long before the current offerings on the SFWA merch page.

Was able to find mine way at the back of a drawer today, so here’s a photo. I misremembered it as being based on a SFWA Bulletin cover; the original illustration was for SFWA FORUM, the members-only pub where writers clashed heads and competed to see who had the ugliest letterhead. (Members’s letters were xeroxed and pasted up for the Forum letter pages back then, including the letterheads.) I think the t-shirt dates from the late 1990s or early 2000s. 

(5) FULL HOUSE. James Davis Nicoll points us to “Five Novels Featuring Political Scandals and Skulduggery” at Tor.com. One of them is —

A Thunder of Stars by Dan Morgan and John Kippax (1970)

The first volume in the Venturer 12 series begins as all interstellar patrol series should, with extensive Commissioning Board hearings to determine the best candidate for the position of captain of the Venturer. Commander Tom Bruce is clearly that man. However, certain elements want someone else and will cheerfully accept any pretext for rejecting Bruce.

When Bruce orders the destruction of an out-of-control spacecraft, Bruce’s opponents seem to have the ammunition they need. True, the ship was headed for Earth and Bruce saved millions by having it destroyed. However, this is not the first time Bruce has ordered the deaths of innocents. Now his enemies have pretext for getting the Minos IV incident on record.

This is the sort of narrative universe in which tough men are often forced to make hard decisions, so it should be no surprise Bruce had a good reason to kill the Minos IV colonists. What should raise eyebrows but doesn’t is that Bruce’s executive officer is an ex-lover who plans to use her position to police which crewmembers sleep with Bruce. I can see no way in which that could go horribly wrong.

(6) FUNDRAISER. Michael A. Banks died June 19 (see item #10 in the June 20 Scroll). His daughter, Susan, has launched a GoFundMe to cover end-of-life expenses in “Funeral for Mike Banks”.

Hi, my name is Susan and I’m trying to raise enough to cover basic expenses related to the death of my dad, Mike Banks. My dad was a lot of things, he was a talented writer, a raconteur, and a storyteller. He loved sci fi , history, and Hawaiian shirts. He loved dogs. While he was great at using words to bring people like Ruth Lyons and Powell Crosley to life on the page, like a lot of writers, he lived a freelance life and wasn’t great at planning for the future or what would happen after he was gone.

At the end of February, Dad was diagnosed with end stage cancer that had started in his lungs and spread to his bones, liver, and spine. Within a few weeks, we learned it had also spread to his brain.

He remained upbeat and positive, even as his cognition declined. His dogged determination to soldier on to make one last trip to Kroger or the hardware store led to a fall, a broken hip, and then a series of falls that kept him in the hospital and too weak to receive radiation and chemotherapy. His decline accelerated and he passed on June 19th, less than four months from his diagnosis.

His positivity was so enduring and infectious, we were unable to get him to make a will or to do a lot of things people do for end of life.

My goal is to give him the send off he deserves and to be able to settle his estate without having to incur a large amount of debt.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1975 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Now let’s talk about Katherine MacLean. Short fiction was her strength which is perhaps why her only Hugo nomination was at Detention for her “Second Game” novelette. She wrote some fifty short pieces of genre fiction but only five such novels. 

Our beginning comes from one of them, Missing Man, which was published by Berkley/Putnam in 1975. The novel is a fix-up of MacLean’s three Rescue Squad stories including the Nebula Award winning novella of the same name. It would also be a Nebula-nominated novella. 

The novel is a Meredith Moment at the usual suspects.

Now go read our Beginning….

I was heading uptown to the employment office. The sidewalk was soft and green and dappled with tree shadows; the wind was warm. 

I stopped by a snack machine, looked at the pictures of breakfast, and watched a man put in his credit card and get out a cup of coffee. He was a young guy, a little older than me. I could smell the coffee. I’d had hot water for lunch and dinner yesterday and hot water for breakfast. It felt good in my stomach but my legs felt weak. 

The vibes of morning are always good. People walked by, giving out a kind of cheerfulness. I was blotting up that feeling until suddenly it seemed right that the snack machine should give out some free food just to be friendly. 

I shoved my credit card into the slot and pushed levers for a cup of coffee with two creams and two sugars and some hot buttered scrambled eggs. My hands started shaking. My mouth watered. I could smell from people’s windows the perfume of bacon and toasted plankton and hot butter on hot toast. 

The machine blinked a red sign, “000.00 balance,” and my credit card rolled out of the slot. I reached for it and dropped it. The man drinking coffee looked at my shaking.

The machine blinked a red sign, “000.00 balance,” and my credit card rolled out of the slot. I reached for it and dropped it. 

The man drinking coffee looked at my shaking hands and then at my face. Hunger doesn’t show on the outside. I’d lost a hundred pounds already and I wasn’t even skinny yet. He couldn’t feel my vibes. I have a kind of round, cheerful face, like a kid, but I’m big. 

I picked up the card and grinned at him. He grinned back.

“Hard night?” he asked sympathetically, meaning had I spent a night with a girlfriend? 

I made an “okay” sign with one hand and he whistled and went away grinning, giving out happy vibes of remembering great long sex nights when he’d had the shakes in the morning. 

I tried two more snack machines in the next three blocks. No food. The best food machines in lower New York City are in the artists’ and sculptors’ commune. 

Artists don’t like to cook when they’re working on something.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 22, 1894 — George Fielding Eliot. ISFDB has scant listings from him and Wiki is not much better but shows “The Copper Bowl” in Weird Tales in the December 1928 issue and notes that thirty years later he had “The Peacemakers” in the Fantastic Universe in January 1960 edition. Stitching this together using the EofSF, I’ll note he wrote Purple Legion: A G-Man Thriller, a really pulpish affair. As Robert Wallace, he wrote “The Death Skull Murders”, one of the Phantom Detective stories, a series that came out after The Shadow and ran for a generation. (Died 1971.)
  • Born June 22, 1947 — Octavia E. Butler. Let’s note that she’s a multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and she became in 1995 the first genre writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. As regards her fiction, I’d suggest the Xenogenesis series shows her at her very best but anything by her is both good and challenging. I’m pleased to note that iBooks and Kindle have everything of hers available. (Died 2006.)
  • Born June 22, 1949 — Edward M Lerner, 74. I’m here today to praise the Ringworld prequels that he co-wrote with Niven, collectively known as Fleet of Worlds which ran to five volumes. Unlike the Ringworld sequels which were terribly uneven, these were well written and great to read. I’ve not read anything else by him
  • Born June 22, 1949 — Meryl Streep, 74. She’d make the Birthday list just for being Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her and her epic battle there with Goldie Hawn. She’s the voice of Blue Ameche in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and a very real Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. She’s the voice of Felicity Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox, based off the on Dahl’s 1970 children’s novel. She voices Jennie in a short that bring Maurice Sendak’s dog to life, Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life. She’s The Witch in Into The Woods. I think that is it. 
  • Born June 22, 1953 — Cyndi Lauper, 70. Ok I’m officially old as I’m thinking of her as always young. Genre-wise, she played a psychic, Avalon Harmonia, on the Bones series. She also has one-offs in series as diverse as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Shelley Duvall’s Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. She also has a dramatic acting credit, Jenny (Ginny Jenny/Low-Dive Jenny) in Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. 
  • Born June 22, 1958 — Bruce Campbell, 65. Where to start? Well let’s note that Kage loved him so I’ve linked to her review of Jack of All Trades. I personally like just as much The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and think it’s well worth checking out. I think his work as Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise can be both brilliant and godawful, often in the same film. The series spawned off of it is rather good. Oh and for popcorn reading, check out If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, his autobiography. 
  • Born June 22, 1973 — Ian Tregillis, 50. He is the author of the Milkweed Triptych trilogy which is frelling brilliant. He’s contributed three stories to Max Gladstone’s The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, a rather good serial fiction narrative (if that’s the proper term), and he’s got another series, The Alchemy Wars, I haven’t checked out. He’s also a contributor to George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series which I’m beginning to suspect everyone has been involved in.

(9) OCTOTHORPE.  Episode 86 of the Octothorpe podcast is “The Joy of Hemispheres”.

John Coxon can do one, Alison Scott don’t like cricket, and Liz Batty will never get to bed. We discuss Chengdu and the Hugo Awards, new COVID ventilation advice, Seattle in 2025, Pemmi-Con, Glasgow 2024, the Clarke Award, the UK Games Expo, Ben Aaronovitch and cricket. Phew!

(10) HEY, IT COULD HAPPEN. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Theory: Is Pelia Actually Simka from Taxi?” wonders Slashfilm. Danielle Ryan presents the evidence. Beware spoilers.

The U.S.S. Enterprise has a new face in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 2, but the actor who plays her is pretty familiar to film and TV fans. Carol Kane has starred in everything from “The Princess Bride” to “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” but one of her earliest roles seems to have found its way into the DNA of her “Star Trek” character, Chief Engineer Pelia. 

…At the end of the first season, Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak) died heroically while fighting the Gorn, and now Pelia is going to step into his shoes. The mysterious Pelia is a Lanthanite, a member of an alien species new to “Star Trek” lore that seems to bear some similarities with the El-Aurians. (The most well-known El-Aurian is Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”) Both appear to look just like humans and are extremely long-lived, though whether or not the Lanthanites have psychic abilities is yet to be seen. If Pelia’s actions in the premiere are any indication, they just might be. She’s either psychic or incredibly observant, because she’s on the ball. In the season 2 premiere of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” we get to learn a little bit about her, and she reminds me of Simka Dahblitz-Gravas, Kane’s character from the 1980’s sitcom series, “Taxi.”…

(11) BRADBURY RARITY OFFERED. A Bradbury first edition autographed to oldtime LASFS member R.A.Hoffman. On eBay: “Dark Carnival – Signed Presentation Copy From Ray Bradbury In 1947 First Edition”.

BRADBURY, RAY. Dark Carnival. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1947. First Edition of the Author’s First Book. Signed and inscribed by Ray Bradbury. The inscription reads (in upper case): “For Bob Hoffman, With fond remembrances of many pleasant evenings of Prokofieff, Gliere, Rozsa and others – and the old days of record making – With all my best from your friend, Ray Bradbury May 29, 1947.” The book is in near fine condition with the barest hint of edge wear, a trace of rubbing to the gilt stamping at the spine with all letters legible and present, and with faint dusting at page edges in a very good bright dust jacket some light soiling to rear panel, thin lines of foxing to the tops and folds of the flaps, and the usual light wear to the edges as this jacket was too large for the book, and some minor wear to the top and bottom edges of the spine. Enclosed in a custom black clamshell box. Presentation copies contemporary with publication and to personal friends are very rare. R.A. Hoffman was the “Art editor” and one of the founders of the magazine – ‘The Acolyte’. He was a member of the Clifton’s Cafe where the LASFAS group would gather (Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Roy Squires, Robert Heinlein, and ‘the other RAH as Rah liked to quip). Although not scarce signed, a true presentation copy [at the time of publication] is indeed scarce! William F. Nolan – author of ‘The Bradbury Companion’ has noted that the book was released “October, 1947.” Perhaps to the general public it was; this copy is one of the earliest known inscriptions dated by the author, “May 29, 1947.” An attractive copy.

(12) DCEU IMMURED? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The Hollywood Reporter has what seems to be a scathing story about the DC Extended Universe movies in its latest digital issue. The article is firmly entrenched behind a paywall, though you can read a small excerpt at the link. It’s unclear, of course, if the story itself is as negative as the headline, but said headline is pretty darn negative

(13) THAT’S DISTURBING. Gizmodo says, “Soon You Can, but Really Shouldn’t, Pre-Order This Flame-Throwing Robodog”.

…When Boston Dynamics finally started selling Spot, it’s four-legged robot, it came with one stipulation: users couldn’t use it to harm people. But while the creators of the Thermonator aren’t actively promoting it as a weapon, you don’t want to be within 30 feet of a flamethrower strapped to the back of a robodog….

(14) MIXED UNBLESSING. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] God, I simply enjoy the end of the world… but only if it is firmly SF. As an environmental scientist, I’ve seen the writing on the wall for over half a century…  So this week’s Nature editorial is something of a curate’s egg.

The world’s plan to make humanity sustainable is failing. Science can do more to save it

There is no planet B, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are heading for the rocks. Researchers around the world must do their bit to change that….

 The key, bottom line message is…

 Implicit — and to a degree explicit — in all this is changing how science itself is done. The report [from UN science advisors] argues that the actions that steer the world towards a sustainable path must be rooted in science that is multidisciplinary, equitable and inclusive, openly shared and widely trusted, and “socially robust” — in short, responsive to social context and social needs. As the authors acknowledge, for that to happen, global science needs to evolve. Knowledge needs to be more accessible than it is at present, and the production of that knowledge needs to be more open, too, recognizing, for example, the value of Indigenous and local knowledge to sustainable innovation.

Hard to argue with that… but with war-mongering and partisan political leaders wanting to put their country first, good science may not be enough. (Just saying.)

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Bruce D. Arthurs, John Coxon, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jake.]

Pixel Scroll 6/21/23 How I Met My 900 Grandmothers

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(1) MEDICAL UPDATE. Ursula Vernon told Filers the latest in a comment today:

Thanks, all! Just catching up—it’s been quite a week, but at least there’s now a treatment plan in place. I’m gonna live, just gonna be a gnarly few months. (I will be a bald wombat soon, but my husband points out that he watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture repeatedly in his youth, and not because of the acting.)

She went into more detail on Twitter. Thread starts here.

(2) APPEAL TO SUPPORT STRIKING WGA WRITERS. At Daily Kos, Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier ask readers to “Help a writer in need” – them! (Familiar names because years ago they used to participate in Loscon programming.)

The Writers’ Guild’s strike is entering its 50th day. My wife and I are members, and this is starting to hurt in the pocketbook. Right now, for example, a major studio owes us $150,000 but because of the standard “Act of God”-type clause, payment will be deferred until after the strike is over. Fortunately, like most older writers, we have learned not to rely entirely of the largesses of Hollywood. We have our own small press, BLACK COAT PRESS, established in 2003 — coincidentally the year I joined Daily Kos.

Black Coat Press publishes English-language translations of French science fiction, fantasy and mysteries (dare I add, award-winning translations), as well as a line of translated French comics. If you buy 5 books, you get a 40% “bookstore” discount. Most of our books are priced around $20, and most are also available as ebooks (specify if you prefer EPUB or PDF files) for around $5.

Needless to say, we support the strike, but I fear this may well be one of toughest fight we ever faced as a Guild. (I’ll be happy to discuss why I think so in the comments.) So purchasing book(s) from us would come as a great help at this time. And frankly, we have published many truly ground-breaking books in the fields of SF and fantasy. (See this article published in The Fantasy Hive for example.)

Visit our website. If you can afford it (and only if!, please consider buying some books from us. Thank you very, very much in advance.

(3) GOFUNDME BRINGS NEEDED HELP. David Gerrold has thanked contributors to his GoFundMe (“Help Move David Gerrold’s Family To Vermont”) which has raised over $31,000 in a week. He says, “We’re still a little short of the target, but two of the bigger problems can now be handled. If the universe doesn’t throw any more crap at us, we’re going to be okay.”

(4) BE CAREFUL OUT THERE. “Safety Dispatch: Author Safety for Small Events” at the SFWA Blog.

Small events can be some of the most rewarding experiences for an author. Signings, readings, classes, and panels offer an opportunity to connect directly with readers. They also offer some unique challenges when planning for safety….

Planning

  • Think about safety. Is safety a pressing concern? Are you experiencing harassment, or is another attending author the target of harassment? If you have experienced harassment, are there indicators that someone will attend one of your events? Have they made direct threats?
  • Are there other aspects of the venue, like location or time, that increase the need to think about safety?

(5) EKPEKI JOINS ICFA BOARD. Congratulations to Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. He told Facebook readers yesterday:

The ICFA virtual conference coordinator position I occupied has been made a board position, & I’m now officially a member of the board of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA)

At the link you can read the letter ICFA sent him.

(6) PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH WITH CARE. From last October, but it’s news to me! “The Lensman Cometh” by Steve J. Wright. It begins —

(To the tune of “The Gasman Cometh” by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, to whom I apologize unreservedly.)

‘Twas on a Monday morning that the Lensman came to call,
Boskonians had dropped a bunch of Eich all round the hall.
He pulled out his DeLameter and swiftly saved the day,
But then there came Imperials dressed in tones of white and gray.

(Oh, and they all have mooks for the hero guy to punch…)

(7) CLARION INSTRUCTOR READING SERIES. Each summer the Clarion Workshop’s visiting instructors give public readings at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. Here is the 2023 schedule of events:

Andy Duncan – June 28th, 7pm

ANDY DUNCAN returns this summer for his third stint as a Clarion Workshop instructor! His honors include a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, three World Fantasy Awards, and awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Science Fiction Research Association. His latest collection is AN AGENT OF UTOPIA, from Small Beer Press; he narrates nine stories on the Recorded Books audio edition. His non-fiction project WEIRD WESTERN MARYLAND is ongoing. A former board member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, he tweets @Beluthahatchie and lives in Maryland’s mountains, where he’s a tenured English professor at Frostburg State University.

Alaya Dawn Johnson – July 5th, 7pm

ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON is the author of RACING THE DARK, THE SUMMER PRINCE, which was long listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and LOVE IS THE DRUG, which won the prestigious Nebula (Andre Norton) Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. In a return to adult fiction, TROUBLE THE SAINTS, was published by Tor in 2020 and won the World Fantasy Award. In the past decade, her award-winning short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2015, FERAL YOUTH, THREE SIDES OF A HEART and ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS. In Mexico, where she has made her home since 2014, Johnson has recently received her master’s degree with honors in Mesoamerican Studies from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Tochi Onyebuchi — July 12th, 7pm

TOCHI ONYEBUCHI is the author of GOLIATH. His previous fiction includes RIOT BABY, a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Awards and winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Ignyte Award for Best Novella, and the World Fantasy Award; the Beasts Made of Night series; and the War Girls series. His short fiction has appeared in THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, and elsewhere. His non-fiction includes the book (S)KINFOLK and has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR, and the HARVARD JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN PUBLIC POLICY, among other places. He has earned degrees from Yale University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

Anjali Sachdeva — July 19th, 7pm

ANJALI SACHDEVA’s short story collection, ALL THE NAMES THEY USED FOR GOD, was the winner of the 2019 Chautauqua Prize. It was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, Refinery 29, and BookRiot, longlisted for the Story Prize, and chosen as the 2018 Fiction Book of the Year by the Reading Women podcast. Her fiction has been published in MCSWEENEY’S, LIGHTSPEED, and THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING, among other publications, and featured on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. Sachdeva worked for six years at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, where she was Director of Educational Programs. She is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Investing in Professional Artists grant from the Heinz Endowments and the Pittsburgh Foundation. She currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, and in the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College.

Rae Carson & C.C. Finlay — July 26th, 7pm

In January 2015, CHARLES COLEMAN FINLAY (C.C. Finlay) became the ninth editor of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. He is also the author of the Traitor to the Crown historical fantasy trilogy, which began with THE PATRIOT WITCH, and a stand-alone fantasy novel, THE PRODIGAL TROLL. He’s published more than forty stories since 2001, many of which have been reprinted in volumes of the YEAR’S BEST FANTASY, YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, BEST NEW HORROR, and other anthologies. Some of his short stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sidewise, and Sturgeon awards, and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. In addition to Clarion, he has instructed at the Clarion Young Authors workshop, the Alpha Writers Workshop, and the Odyssey Online Workshop.

RAE CARSON’s debut novel, THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS, was published in 2011, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Award and the Andre Norton Award, and it was the winner of the Ohioana Book Award for Young Adult Literature. It was also selected as 2012 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults by Young Adult Library Services Association. The Fire and Thorns Trilogy was a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, as was her Gold Seer Trilogy. Beginning in 2017, she has written several tie-in stories for the Star Wars universe, including the novelization of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. In 2021, she released her most recent novel, Any Sign of Life. In addition to her novels, her short fiction has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.

(8) AMAZING VENUE. Marcin Klak came home from Sweden and wrote a glowing Eurocon report for his blog Fandom Rover: “Konflikt – Eurocon with An Astounding Venue”.

… Yet even should the convention be held in a fantastic gothic cathedral it would be bad without the people. And in this regard Konflikt presented itself from the best angle. I was very happy for how the socializing worked. Everything started the day before with a precon party in Williams Pub. The pub also became the palce to visit on every subsequent evening. It was not very big but every day I managed to find a place to sit. In most occasions I was starting at a “Polish table” which later was turning into more international one. Thanks to that I not only enjoyed the company of well known friends but also met some new people.

I was also very glad for the interactions I had at the con itself. I talked with friends who helped me to run the Glasgow 2024 table and with those who were around. The con was also occasion to refresh some of the friendships with people I met before at Swecon in 2016 (and a few times later). Obviously I also had the chance to talk to complete strangers who are not strangers any more….

(9) GRANT CONAN MCCORMICK (1955-2023). Kentucky fan and past publisher of FOSFAX Grant McCormick died June 19 Joseph T. Major told Facebook readers. Major also quoted this tribute to Grant from Carolyn Clowes:

“I’ve never known anyone like Grant. He was a huge intellect and a gentle spirit. I never heard him feel sorry for himself or be angry or rude to anyone. He was generous and sweet and smart as a whip. He always tried to make the best of his circumstances, and he had a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. I am so glad I knew him. We all loved Grant, and we’ll miss him forever.”

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1958 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

I really, really love Robert Sheckley.  There was of Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains written with Harry Harrison, along with The Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming series with Roger Zelazny. Yes he liked writing with others. Though he did write The Tenth Victim by himself, a fine novel indeed. 

His only Hugo nomination was at Detention for Immortality, Inc., the source of our Beginning this time. No, Retros don’t count here. It was published as Immortality Delivered by Aviation Books sixty-five years ago with cover art by Ric Binkley, and serialized by Galaxy Magazine the same year as “Time Killer”.

Now our Beginning…

Afterwards, Thomas Blaine thought about the manner of his dying and wished it had been more interesting. Why couldn’t his death have come while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger’s charge, or climbing a windswept mountain? Why had his death been so tame, so commonplace, so ordinary? 

But an enterprising death, he realized, would have been out of character for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just the quick, common, messy, painless way he did. And all his life must have gone into the forming and shaping of that death—a vague indication in childhood, a fair promise in his college years, an implacable certainty at the age of thirty-two. 

Still, no matter how commonplace, one’s death is the most interesting event of one’s life. Blaine thought about his with intense curiosity. He had to know about those minutes, those last precious seconds when his own particular death lay waiting for him on a dark New Jersey highway. Had there been some warning sign, some portent? What had he done, or not done? What had he been thinking? Those final seconds were crucial to him. How, exactly, had he died.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 21, 1932 — Lalo Schifrin, 91. Argentina-American pianist and composer of the music for the original Mission: Impossible series along with The Four Musketeers (1974 version), The Amityville Horror, The Mask of Sheba, The Hellstrom Chronicle, THX 1138, The Cat from Outer Space and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to select some of his work.
  • Born June 21, 1938 — Ron Ely, 85. Doc Savage in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, a film I saw a long time ago and remember little about. He was also, fittingly enough, Tarzan in that NBC late Sixties series. Somewhere Philip Jose Farmer is linking the two characters…  Other notable genre roles included being a retired Superman from an alternate reality in a two-part episode “The Road to Hell” of the Superboy series, and playing five different characters on the original Fantasy Island which may or may not be a record.
  • Born June 21, 1947 — Michael Gross, 76. Ok, I’ll admit that I’ve a fondness for the Tremors franchise in which he plays the extremely well-armed graboid hunter Burt Gummer. Other than the Tremors franchise, he hasn’t done a lot of genre work as I see just an episode of The Outer Limits where he was Professor Stan Hurst in “Inconstant Moon” (a Niven story) and voicing a  few Batman Beyond and Batman: The Animated Series characters. 
  • Born June 21, 1940 — Mariette Hartley, 83. She’s remembered by us for the classic Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays”, though, as OGH noted in an earlier Scroll, probably best known to the public for her Polaroid commercials with James Garner. She also had a role as psychologist Dr. Carolyn Fields in “Married”, an episode of The Incredible Hulk. 
  • Born June 21, 1964 — David Morrissey, 59. His most well-known role is playing The Governor on The Walking Dead (which is a series that I’ve not seen and have no interest of seeing as I don’t do zombies) but I saw his brilliant performance as Jackson Lake, the man who believed he was The Doctor in “The Next Doctor”, a Tenth Doctor adventure which was an amazing story. He was also Theseus in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Greek Myths, and played Tyador Borlú in the BBC adaption of China Mieville’s The City & The City. I’ll admit that I’m not at all ambivalent about seeing it as I’ve listened to the novel at least a half dozen times and have my own mental image of what it should be. He has also shows up in Good Omens as Captain Vincent.
  • Born June 21, 1965 — Steve Niles, 58. Writer best- known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark and Batman: Gotham County Line. I’ve read his Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories and the graphic novel — great bit of horror! Sam Raimi adapted 30 Days of Night into a film.
  • Born June 21, 1969 — Christa Faust, 54. It does not appear that she’s written any original fiction save one novel with Poppy Z. Brite called Triads but she’s certainly had a lot of media tie-in work including novels set in the Final Destination, Friday the Thirteenth, Fringe, Gabriel Hunt, Nightmare on Elm Street, Supernatural and Twilight Zone universes. Did you know there’s an entire ecology of novels, fan fiction, a game, comics, even an encyclopedia guide, September’s Notebook — The Bishop Paradox made around Fringe? I hadn’t until I was researching her. One of the perks of doing this. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Thatababy’s joke “reminded me of one of Our Wombat’s books” says Kathy Sullivan.

(13) UPROAR ABOUT AI-GENERATED CREDITS IN NEW MARVEL SERIES. “’Secret Invasion’ Opening Credits Use AI, Prompting Backlash” reports Deadline.

Marvel’s Secret Invasion is already causing a commotion on social media, though not for reasons that the studio may have hoped.

The series, which debuted on Wednesday with just one episode, has touched a sore spot after director Ali Selim confirmed to Polygon that the opening credits were generated by artificial intelligence. Designed by Method Studios, Selim said he thought that the idea of using AI for the opening credits fit into the themes of the show.

“When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it — it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?” he said, adding that he doesn’t “really understand” how the artificial intelligence works, though it piqued his interest.

(14) NIMONA. [Item by Steven French.] I absolutely loved the graphic novel – and who could resist a knight called Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin?! “Nimona review – a shapeshifter and a knight join forces in queer science fantasy” in the Guardian.

… What has emerged is a buoyant and good-humoured LGBTQ+ parable, set in a kind of retro-futurist kingdom, super-modern and hi-tech in every way but with a medieval-style queen and a court of knights who have competed hard for the honour of the title “sir”. One of these is Ballister Boldheart (voiced by Riz Ahmed), a lowborn person of colour in love with fellow knight Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), and Ballister is about to be officially dubbed in a gigantic stadium ceremony halfway between the Hunger Games and the Super Bowl….

(15) LEONARD COHEN WAS RIGHT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Then she get you on her wavelength…” “Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact” reports Scientific American.

… Looking at synchrony between bands of brain waves is one way of understanding what’s going on between interacting brains. Another is to look at the activity of specific neurons. “Ultimately our brains are not a soup of averages. They consist of individual neurons that do different things, and they may do opposite things,” U.C.L.A.’s Hong says. Hong and his colleagues were among the first to go looking for this level of detail and study interacting brains neuron by neuron. What they found revealed even more complexity.

Like Yartsev, Hong first doubted that the interbrain synchrony he and his team observed in animals—in their case, mice—was real. He hadn’t yet read the literature on synchrony in humans and told Lyle Kingsbury—at the time a student of Hong’s and the lead scientist on the research and now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University—that there must be something wrong. There wasn’t. Using a technology called microendoscopic calcium imaging, which measures changes in induced fluorescence in individual neurons, they looked at hundreds of neurons at the same time. In pairs of interacting mice, they established that synchrony appeared during an ongoing social interaction. Further, synchrony in mouse brains arose from separate populations of cells in the prefrontal cortex, which Hong calls “self cells” and “other cells.” The former encodes one’s own behavior, the latter the behavior of another individual. “The sum of activity of both self and other cells is similar to or correlated with the sum of activity in the other brain,” Hong says.

What they are seeing goes well beyond previous research on so-called mirror neurons, which represent both the self and another. (When I watch you throw a ball, it activates a set of mirror neurons in my brain that would also be activated if I were doing the same thing myself.) In contrast, the self and other cells Hong and Kingsbury discovered encode only the behavior of one individual or the other. All three kinds of cells—mirror, self and other—were present and aligning in the mouse brains….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Brutal! “Talent Shows Need One Mean Judge” and Ryan George is that judge. (Hasn’t the same guy left comments here, too?)

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

Pixel Scroll 6/17/23 Whoever Lives In Glass Pixels Should Not Throw Scrolls

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(1) MEDICAL UPDATE. Ursula Vernon got a biopsy on a lump, and the results are unfortunate.

(2) MOVING WORDS. David Gerrold has opened a GoFundMe appeal to “Help Move David Gerrold’s Family To Vermont”. He offers a couple of free ebooks as an incentive to go to the link and read the whole thing.

…As many of you know, we’re planning to move to Vermont as soon as we can. It’s about the right schools for the kids, the right environment for Sean and Alyce’s health and work, and the right place for me to (eventually) retire. We have been working hard to get this house in shape, get all of our paperwork in order, and find a place that suits our specific needs.

…Right now, I’m the sole support of my family. I’m doing my best, but there’s a WGAW strike, so there are options that are on hold and if the past is any guide, will probably evaporate when the strike ends. Alyce has a toddler and a baby to take care of, so going back to work is out of the question for her. For various reasons, Sean has to rethink his career options, so he’s concentrating on being the best dad he can, and that’s fine with me too. Being a dad is good for him and good for the kids.

So right now, it’s all on me. I’ve got some resources, just not enough. So, I’m asking for a little help. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated. It will get us where we need to be….

(3) THE GATES WE KEEP. Norman Spinrad’s latest “At Large SF” asks how to “Save The SF Magazines From AI, Amazon, And SFWA?” But is this a cure?

It is no secret that the three traditional ink and paper SF magazines, Asimov’s, Analog, and Fantasy and Science Fiction, are in deep trouble, and perhaps not as obviously so are the main online SF magazines. All of them are overrun with AI created submissions and how what was once SFWA, a professional SF writers’ union in all but name, has become just as much a part of the problem, if not worse.

When the SFWA, of which I was one of the creators, if you wanted to be a full member, as I remember, you had to have published 3 stories in magazines accepted as professional, or one novel published by such a book publisher.

This more or less continued while I was three time president, and until fairly recently. In those days, there were no more that 1000 full members of SFWA, but rather rapidly it has now become bloated by about 2500 members of all sorts of memberships which you can join and remain as long as you pay for one the various levels of available membership. And you can also buy even more sorts of official SFWA stuff, a perfect fannish economic operation.

Back in the day, you could write “Member of SFWA” on the header of your submission as long as it was true, and it could mean some thing to an editor, and it might get your story read above the slush pile….

And SFWA membership now plays the same lucrative game. Now since anyone could email anything anywhere without having print it, put it into an envelope, and mail it into the slushpile, anyone can do likewise for free, and of late, you don’t have to really be human, to make the slushpiles even more enormous.

And to make matters worse, since sales in book stories or even drug stores have largely disappeared,, the magazines were forced to largely resort to online subscriptions, meaning Amazon, which has now stopped serving them.

What is more, the SF magazines have for some time become just about the last magazines containing any real short stories, and if they should disappear, so might the literary short story, period.

What can be done about this? It seems to me that the magazines are making a big mistake worrying about what to do about the AI submissions and trying find ways to filter them out of the slushpiles. The answer to that, of course, would be AI slush readers, which at least could be easily taught to recognize each other, if not to recognize the 10% of literary interest.

So what I propose is to look backwards instead of forward to the original SFWA. Call it simply the SF Society. It could be the top of the SFWA or it could be independent, it doesn’t matter. As the original SFWA, there is a membership requirement of say the same 3 published stories by the approved magazines or maybe books too, but with a difference.

If you are a member of the SFS you are entitled to say so on your submissions to any SFS approved publications. But the SFS does not approve the publishers, they approve themselves! They just understand that the SFS mark on a submission means that the writer is a member and they can read it atop of the slushpile, it’s not a requirement, it’s a service.

But where does that leave would-be writers who believe they have what it takes to join the SFS? Look backward. There have long been SF writing schools where you must not just pay but where you must send a story and have it be accepted by a literary board as sufficiently promising.

But SFS is not a school. It has its own literary approval board for the sufficiently promising writers. So who is on the approval board?

Look much further back to Plato’s REPUBLIC. Plato was skeptical of democracy, so he wrote what amounted to the very first skeptical fiction in the form of the non historical Atlantis, ruled by proper philosophers such as himself. And who had selected them? Philosophers who had already been approved by other such philosophizers and so far up the line.

Okay, this is not democracy, but we are not talking about selecting rulers. An SFS approval board could be self-elected SFS member volunteers. Or even magazine editors as well who might want to serve and were approved by the SFS approval board….

(4) TIDHAR Q&A. “Pulp Fiction: PW Talks with Lavie Tidhar” at Publishers Weekly.

An unlikely cast is pulled into the hunt for lost pulp classic Lode Stars in World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar’s metafictional sci-fi romp The Circumference of the World (Tachyon, Sept.).

What inspired this story?

It began so long ago it’s hard to say! The very early seeds for it were born on Vanua Lava in Vanuatu, back in 2007, where the first section of the book takes place. I became interested in the little-known story of the WWII Coastwatchers there and climbed to their hill fort, which is much as it appears in the novel. But that was just one strand; then I had to wait for the others to materialize.

And how did they?

The black holes came from a novelette I wrote that was also called “Lode Stars.” I ran into someone who told me they thought there was more to it, which haunted me because I realized they were right. The section about hapless book dealers in 2001 London was conceived of as a trip to a vanished past. All those bookshops are long gone, and I was trying to catch a bit of the soul of that world before it disappeared. Which, in a way, is the whole theme of the book: how much of what we are is what we remember and what happens if those memories are lost?…

(5) COSY DELENDA EST. Cora Buhlert does an impressively thorough roundup of the players and viewpoints represented in the recent social media flash about “cosy horror” in “Same Old Debate, New Clothes: The Cozy Horror Controversy”. She begins:

Sigh. It’s that time of the year again and we’re having the same old debate again whether some interlopers are trying to ruin the purity of the genre and gentrify it by writing and reading the wrong sort of books.

This time around, the focus is not Hopepunk or what a certain podcast termed Squeecore, but cozy horror, cozy fantasy’s spookier sibling.

The current debate seems to have been sparked by an episode of the Books in the Freezer podcast about cozy horror (which I haven’t listened to yet), which received some pushback on Twitter, and in particular by a recent article on The Mary Sue by Julia Glassman on the cozy horror phenomenon and the backlash against it. Though the term “cozy horror” isn’t new. Here is an article by Jose Cruz from Nightmare Magazine, a horror mag, about cozy horror from 2021 and I’m pretty sure Cruz didn’t invent the term either. The phenomenon is much older anyway. What is now called cozy horror goes back to the ghost stories of the nineteenth century. A genre that – as Jess Nevins pointed out on Twitter – has triggered criticism and backlash for almost two hundred years now. And the reason was that ghost stories were mostly read and written by women. So yup, it’s plain old misogyny….

And Cora ends:

… In short, it’s all depressingly familiar and I probably should have just ignored this latest flare-up of this ages old argument, but the whole cozy horror debate annoyed me enough to put in my two cents.

Cora’s conclusion reminds me of a favorite H. L. Mencken remark, that it is best to spend life sitting in the brewery drinking beer, but sometimes he couldn’t help but rush out and break a bottle over someone’s head.

(6) HWA PRIDE. The Horror Writers Association blog continues its thematic interviews in “A Point of Pride: Interview with Lee Mandelo”.

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

Anything that provokes strong feeling, I’m into that—and horror, alongside erotica, devotes itself so well to powerful, bodily emotions. As a weird gay child of the ’90s, I was probably destined to love horror. There was such a huge boom in scary books, movies, and so on by LGBTQ+ artists going on during that decade. Unsurprising, given things like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, alongside government abandonment and surging social persecution through the late ’80s onward. I didn’t have that context as a kid, but I had the materials, and they left strong impressions on me! 

Looking back now, I feel like being drawn to horror—a place where stories about being an “outsider” and also experiencing extreme dread and fear could be made somehow safe to explore, in their own strange way—was only natural.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1978 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Vonda N. McIntyre is an author I’m well familiar with as I’ve read her Dreamsnake (we get our Beginning this Scroll), The Moon and the Sun and The King’s Daughter. Anyone read her Starfarers series? I’ve not but it looks potentially readable and certainly how she came to write it is a fascinating story indeed. 

Pocket Books decided to have her do novelizations of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. She created names for Trek characters that later became canon, including Hikaru Sulu, and Kirk’s mother Winona.

She’s won a number of Awards including one at Seacon ’79 for Dreamsnake which was also nominated for a Ditmar. She won a Nebula for Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand novelette (also nominated for a Hugo) and another one for her The Moon and The Stars novel. 

Another one I feel left us far too early though she had seven decades of life.  She died of metastatic pancreatic cancer. Damn.

Here’s our Beginning…

The little boy was frightened. Gently, Snake touched his hot forehead. Behind her, three adults stood close together, watching, suspicious, afraid to show their concern with more than narrow lines around their eyes. They feared Snake as much as they feared their only child’s death. In the dimness of the tent, the strange blue glow of the lantern gave no reassurance. 

The child watched with eyes so dark the pupils were not visible, so dull that Snake herself feared for his life. She stroked his hair. It was long, and very pale, dry and irregular for several inches near the scalp, a striking color against his dark skin. Had Snake been with these people months ago, she would have known the child was growing ill.

“Bring my case, please,” Snake said.

The child’s parents started at her soft voice. Perhaps they had expected the screech of a bright jay, or the hissing of a shining serpent. This was the first time Snake had spoken in their presence. She had only watched, when the three of them had come to observe her from a distance and whisper about her occupation and her youth; she had only listened, and then nodded, when finally they came to ask her help. Perhaps they had thought she was mute. 

The fair-haired younger man lifted her leather case. He held the satchel away from his body, leaning to hand it to her, breathing shallowly with nostrils flared against the faint smell of musk in the dry desert air. 

Snake had almost accustomed herself to the kind of uneasiness he showed; she had already seen it often.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 17, 1903 — William Bogart. Yes, another one who wrote Doc Savage novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, some with Lester Dent. Between 1949 and 1947, he or they wrote some fifteen Doc Savage novels in total. Some of them would get reprinted in the late Eighties in omnibuses that also included novels done with Lester Dent. (Died 1977.)
  • Born June 17, 1927 — Wally Wood. Comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work on EC Comics’ Mad magazine, Marvel’s Daredevil, and Topps’s landmark Mars Attacks set. He was the inaugural inductee into the comic book industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and was later inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (Died 1981.)
  • Born June 17, 1931 — Dean Ing. I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Soft Targets which I really liked and I know I read all of his Man-Kzin Wars stories as I went through a phase of reading all that popcorn literature set in Niven’s universe. (Died 2020.)
  • Born June 17, 1941 — William Lucking. Here because he played Renny in Doc Savage: Man of Bronze. (I know I’ve seen it, but I’ll be damn if I remember much about it.)  He’s also had one-offs in Mission: Impossible, The Incredible Hulk, The American Hero, The Quest, Voyagers, X-Files, The Lazarus Man, Millenium, Deep Space Nine and Night Stalker. (Died 2021.)
  • Born June 17, 1953 — Phyllis Weinberg, 70. She’s a fan who was married to fellow fan Robert E. Weinberg (died 2016). They co-edited the first issue of The Weird Tales Collector, and she co-edited the Weinberg Tales with him, Doug Ellis and Robert T. Garcia. She, along with Nancy Ford and Tina L. Jens, wrote “The Many Faces of Chicago” essay that was that was in the 1996 WFC guide. The Weinbergs co-chaired the World Fantasy Convention In 1996.
  • Born June 17, 1982 — Jodie Whittaker, 41. The Thirteenth Doctor who did three series plus several upcoming specials. She played Ffion Foxwell in the Black Mirror‘s “The Entire History of You”, and was Samantha Adams in Attack the Block, a horror SF film. I like her version of The Doctor a lot with David Tennant being my other favorite modern Doctor. 
  • Born June 17, 1982 — Arthur Darvill, 41. Actor who’s has in my opinion had two great roles. The first was playing Rory Williams, one of the Eleventh Doctor’s companions. The second, and to my mind the more interesting of the two, was playing the time-traveler Rip Hunter in the Legends of Tomorrow, a Time Lord of sorts. (And yes, I know where the name came from.) He also played Seymour Krelborn in The Little Shop of Horrors at the Midlands Arts Centre, and Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe.  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) A DWAYNE MCDUFFIE CALL OUT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] In the next-to-last and final episodes of the WB’s The Flash series, Chester (who, a season or so ago replaced Cisco as Team Flash’s science/tech nerd) (in Chester’s case, as a blerd), uttered, in moments of surprise/stress: “Sweet N.K. Jemisin!” and “Dazzling Dwayne McDuffie!”

The late Dwayne McDuffie wrote a lot of comics and an animated series, including, for DC, some Justice League, Batman, and others, see The DC Universe by Dwayne McDuffie  (I’m using HooplaDigital links; should be available in hardcopy from many libraries and comic/book stores, digitally presumably also from DC, probably ditto ComiXology and Libby.)

I know him best for co-founding Milestone Comics in the early 1990s which, per Wikipedia, “focused on underrepresented minorities in American comics”, including Static (also became an animated series), and my favorite, Icon, (see Icon Vol. 1: A Hero’s Welcome and Icon Vol. 2: The Mothership Connection.)

Milestone comics were published and distributed by DC, but were, at the time, in separate universes… which led to multi-part crossover, with, IIRC, one of my favorite cover gimmicks, namely little sticky-plastic decals of the characters (similar to Colorforms, but I don’t think that term’s been genericized) on a sealed-plastic bag (so I don’t think I opened that copy, I’d have to check my Milestone box…).

As of a few years ago, the Milestone Universe got shuffled/merged into DC main continuity, along with some character rebooting. (E.g., Virgil “Static” Hawkins, last I checked, was working at STAR Labs.)

(11) PICARD AND FRIENDS. Deadline has a superlative interview with the Picard cast: “’Star Trek: Picard’s Patrick Stewart, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes”.

DEADLINE: Do you remember your first meeting with one another, way back in 1986?

JONATHAN FRAKES: I do remember the first time I met Patrick. We’d been called into the makeup trailer to meet the great king of makeup, Michael Westmore. Patrick and I introduced ourselves to one another, and we got right into a cricket versus baseball conversation that eventually led to him becoming a big LA Dodgers fan [laughs].

GATES McFADDEN: I was doing a play with Linda Hunt called The Matchmaker, down in La Jolla. Patrick came down to see it. We went out to dinner and it was all very exciting; we found we had a lot of mutual friends who were in the Royal Shakespeare Company. We talked all night. We both said, “I don’t know, I’m nervous about this whole thing…”

PATRICK STEWART: I remember people telling me not to worry about signing a six-year contract. They said, “You’ll be lucky to make it through the first season.” You cannot revive an iconic series, that’s what they told us. I was told, “Get a plane ticket, come over here, do the show, make some money for the first time in your life, and work on your tan, then you can go home.”

FRAKES: You have to remember, audiences were not ready for a bald English captain with a French name. And a Klingon on the bridge, and a blind guy driving. It was a very strange environment and people were skeptical to say the least. I didn’t know anything about Star Trek. Neither did Gates, or Brent [Spiner], or Patrick. I think [Michael] Dorn did, and I know your space son, Gates, Wil Wheaton did. But we had different tastes in television — in spite of the fact that my wife, the wonderful Genie Frakes, had a poster of Captain Kirk on her bedroom wall when she was a kid [laughs].

McFADDEN: Brent said the same, that we just didn’t know if this was a good idea.

Johnny, do you remember the first time I met you? We went to a costume fitting the day before a shoot, and I was so excited and intense about it all. It was a silly scene in a shopping mall. I said, “Can we rehearse? Can we go over the scene?” You looked at me and just said, “Sure.” After about three times, you were like, “I think we’ve got it.” It was a four-line scene [laughs]. But I’d never done anything like this; committed to a series like that.

STEWART: Of course, I found out eventually that I was also signing up for six years of Jonathan Frakes.

FRAKES: Hey, now [laughs].

(12) SFF STALWART. Linda Hamilton of Terminator, Resident Alien and Beauty and the Beast fame has been cast in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 reports Variety.

“Stranger Things” Season 5 is adding Linda Hamilton to its cast. The announcement was made Saturday as part of Netflix’s annual Tudum event.

Exact details on the character Hamilton will be playing are being kept under wraps….

(13) BACK IN THE BLACK. On CBS Saturday Morning, “Black Mirror” Charlie Brooker discusses the show’s return.

“Black Mirror,” the science-fiction series, has released a new season after four years. Ahead of the release of the new episodes, “CBS Saturday Morning” sat down with Charlie Brooker, the creative mind behind the show. Jeff Glor reports.

(14) THE ENCELADUS FIZZ. “A ‘Soda Ocean’ on a Moon of Saturn Has All the Ingredients for Life” reports the New York Times.

Enceladus — the sixth-largest of Saturn’s 146 moons — has a liquid ocean with a rocky floor under its bright, white and frosty surface. Ice volcanoes spew frozen grains of material into space, generating one of the many rings circling the planet.

Now, a team of researchers has discovered that those icy grains contain phosphates. They found them using data from Cassini, a joint NASA-European orbiter that concluded its study of Saturn, its rings and moons in 2017. It is the first time phosphorus has been found in an ocean beyond Earth. The results, which add to the prospect that Enceladus is home to extraterrestrial life, were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We weren’t expecting this. We didn’t look for it,” said Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin who led the study. He described the realization that they had found phosphates (chemicals containing the element phosphorus) as a “tantalizing moment.”

With the discovery of phosphorus on the ocean world, scientists say they have now found all of the elements there that are essential to life as we know it. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in human bones and teeth, and scientists say it is the rarest bio-essential ingredient in the cosmos. Planetary researchers had previously detected the other five key elements on Enceladus: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur (the last of which has been tentatively detected).

(15) CAN’T FLY AWAY. Scientific American focuses on “The Mystery of Australia’s Paralyzed Parrots”.

…Cases of what is called lorikeet paralysis syndrome (LPS) have been increasing over the past decade, says veterinarian Claude Lacasse of the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital in the eastern Australian city of Brisbane. It is now considered one of Australia’s most significant wildlife diseases. But scientists are baffled as to what is causing it….

Native to Australia’s eastern seaboard, rainbow lorikeets dwell in forest and scrubland and in leafy coastal suburbs. They are the country’s most common backyard bird. The charismatic parrots typically drink the nectar of the fragrant blossoms of native trees and shrubs. But widespread habitat loss, heavy rains that damage blossoms and severe wildfires have increasingly driven lorikeets to other food sources, including fruit, seeds and, strangely, even meat. This increasing variety in their diet is one reason it’s so difficult to identify what’s making them sick….

To take on the mystery, Phalen and his team set up a citizen science project on iNaturalist, a social network for biodiversity observations, asking people in LPS hotspots to take photographs of wild lorikeets feeding on plants.

(16) DIGITAL AFTERLIVES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] What’s it all about? Search me.  Some say 42, but other may want more than a two digit answer (no raising of fingers here).  And then again, what happens next? Is there an afterlife? Gosh, I hope not.  Too much trouble with this one.  Besides, if there was an afterlife it must be awfully crowded by now. (Still, I suppose one benefit might be finally being able to meet aliens?) Anyway, this week Isaac Arthur ponders digital afterlives…

For as long as we have had history and likely before, people have contemplated a life after this one, but might we one day create artificial afterlives? And if so, will we create heavens or hells?

This last reminds me of an Iain Banks novel…

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Christopher Rowe, Danny Sichel, Daniel Dern, Cora Buhlert, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Jones.]

GoFundMe To Help David Alexander McDonald Move

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Arizona writer and composer David Alexander McDonald is having to move for the reasons given below and needs help with covering the expenses. A friend has started a GoFundMe appeal for donations at “Moving Costs for David”.

McDonald told File 770 about himself and what’s happening:

I’m legally still Steven E. McDonald, which I maintained due to it being a known byline (plus Jim Frenkel threatened to kneecap if I buried it.) I’m also David Alexander McDonald, composer/musician, veteran of the Cassette Underground and known in ambient music, and occasionally in industrial (I’ve appeared on charity albums several times recently.)

As an SF writer I’ve not been that prolific, with just a few novels, shorter works, and poems to my name (plus several million words of music writing.) 

Anyway, to cut to it…someone in the management company that owns the building I’m about to not be living in has taken a dislike to me, partly over my owning a lot of books and music (go figure, why would anyone do that?) and fired off a non-renewal notice. No explanation at the time; it’s all been scrambling after the fact, much of it contradictory. Meanwhile, I’m on a fixed income, using a payee, and finding a place has been impossible because as soon as these landlords realize you’re not hauling in 3x the rent it’s instant rejection.

So, I’m going to need to put things in storage for a time. I have a place to crash, but it’s in Bisbee, quite some distance from Tucson, where I currently live. The ongoing expenses should be covered, and it’s likely I can get into subsidized housing.

But meanwhile I need money to pay for movers, for shuttles to Tucson for medical appointments (right now we’re trying to figure out if I really have cancer, and if I have an aortic aneurysm brewing, plus deal with dermatitis and my eyes.) 

Pixel Scroll 4/1/23 Shhh. Be Vewy Quiet, I’m A Pixel and I’m Hunting Filers

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(1) VOTING OPENS IN SFWA ELECTION AND REFERENDUMS. Full SFWA members have until April 11 to vote in this year’s SFWA Board of Directors election and respond to two referendums on whether English-language translations and speculative poetry should be allowed to count toward SFWA membership eligibility.

BOARD ELECTION

Candidates for President: Jeffe Kennedy*

Candidates for Secretary: Jasmine Gower*

Candidates for Director-At-Large (three [3] positions open): Phoebe Barton, Chelsea Mueller, Anthony Eichenlaub, Christine Taylor-Butler*

Oghenechovwe Ekpeki is also running for SFWA Director-at-Large, as a write-in.

* = currently serving on the Board

REFERENDUMS. Genre writers of poetry and translators of fiction cannot currently use those portions of their paid work as part of their catalog when applying to join SFWA or to upgrade their membership classification. Two resolutions dealing with those qualifications are up for a vote:

(I) Paid SFF and related genre poetry sales shall be considered for the purposes of determining eligibility for membership in SFWA.

(II) Payment for SFF and related genre translation work shall be considered for the purposes of determining eligibility for membership in SFWA by the translator.

(2) WELL, I’M BACK. The Chengdu Worldcon’s English language website is operational again after being down for several days. Naturally it never occurred to the committee to announce the outage before it began, or explain it while it was happening. They told Facebook readers today:

Our official website of 2023 Chengdu Worldcon has come back after upgrades. Please visit the previous address to checkyour membership status, purchase new memberships and to participate in the 2023 Hugo Awards nomination. For any inquiry, please contact us at：

[email protected]

en.chengduworldcon.com

Thanks for your patience and have a good weekend ahead!

(3) HOUR OF POWER. Well, maybe forty-two minutes anyway. BBC Radio 4 Front Row on Thursday included coverage of the Naomi Alderman novel The Power – a topical item as it has just been made into a TV series. “Front Row, Ria Zmitrowicz on The Power, The ENO’s The Dead City and God’s Creatures reviewed”.

The trailer for The Power is online.

The Power, is an emotionally-driven global thriller, based on Naomi Alderman’s international award-winning novel. The world of The Power is our world, but for one twist of nature. Suddenly, and without warning, teenage girls develop the power to electrocute people at will. The Power follows a cast of remarkable characters from London to Seattle, Nigeria to Eastern Europe, as the Power evolves from a tingle in teenagers’ collarbones to a complete reversal of the power balance of the world.

(4) WRONG ENOUGH TO WIN. [Item by ErsatzCulture.] The April 1 edition of the BBC quiz show Pointless Celebrities (which should be available online to UK iPlayer users here) opened with a question asking the contestants to complete the names of a set of science fiction novels.

For anyone unfamiliar with Pointless, it’s roughly an inverted Family Fortunes/Feud, where surveys have been done of 100 members of the public, but here contestants have to pick the least popular answers. If a completely incorrect answer is put forward, that’s scored as 100 points. The eight contestants are split into four teams of two, and in the opening round, one member of each team has to choose one of 7 questions to answer, and then the other members of each team have to choose from a second set of 7 questions. The aim is to come out of that round with the lowest total score, with the team having the highest score being eliminated.

All but one contestant went for a correct answer – the offender being Children of Dune.  Whilst it’s not surprising to me that the Vonnegut and Cixin Liu novels aren’t well-known to the general public, I was surprised to see how low the James, Haig and St. John Mandel works scored.

There is a series of screencaps from this part of the game in Ersatz Culture’s post at Mastodon, “An episode of Pointless Celebr…”

(5) FLAME ON! Carriesthewind’s Tumblr is the source of the rant “The IA’s ‘Open Library’ is Not a Library,…” quoted by Seanan McGuire at Seanan’s Tumblr.

…Yesterday’s district court ruling DID NOT CHANGE ANY SUBSTANTIVE COPYRIGHT LAW IN THE U.S. I cannot emphasize that enough. Regardless of whatever you think of the ruling, it was applying already existing law to the facts.

This is because the Internet Archive’s “Open Library” absolutely violates existing copyright law. It just does! They broke the law, they had plenty of notice they were breaking the law and harming authors (more on that below) and just think the law shouldn’t apply because they don’t like it.

The Internet Archive’s “Open Library” is not a library….

But what really got Carriesthewind steamed was a line in IA’s statement about the decision “The Fight Continues” which says — “It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online.” That provoked this response:

…How DARE you cloak your theft in the real struggles authors face with unfair licensing models. How DARE you pretend you are on the side of authors when you are stealing their works, and they have made it quite clear that they would like you to stop, please. And how DARE you frame it in this “for exposure” bullcrap that ignores the real struggles that authors have to eat, to get healthcare, to get any sort of fair pay and wages for their work, and instead pretend that all authors should care about is whether or not their books can be read online….

(6) COURT REJECTS A BOOK BAN. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] CNN is reporting: “Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be replaced within 24 hours”. Although no SFF titles are specifically mentioned in the article as having been targeted for the bans, there is a statement that the library cut off access to thousands of digital titles because they weren’t able to restrict access to two of the books they wanted to ban unless they banned access to the ALL the digital titles — so that’s what they did (!@#@!)  and I’m sure that impacted access to a lot of SFF digital titles. Also I figure that the Filers are interested in book banning/unbanning just as a general topic.

A federal judge in Texas ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours, according to an order filed Thursday.

Seven residents sued county officials in April 2022, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books deemed inappropriate by some people in the community and Republican lawmakers were removed from public libraries or access was restricted.

The lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio claimed county officials removed books from the shelves of the three-branch public library system “because they disagree with the ideas within them” and terminated access to thousands of digital books because they could not ban two specific titles….

(7) STEAMY IN SEATTLE. Clarion West is promoting “Steamy in Seattle, a Paranormal Romance Tea Party”, an in-person event also being streamed online. Takes place May 5 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. Pacific. Buy admission for the in-person experience at the link above, or register for the free online version.

Meet authors Gail Carriger and Piper J. Drake as they discuss the paranormal romance genre and their own work in steampunk, shapeshifter romance, and romantic thrillers! Grab a steaming cup of tea and some delicious treats prepared by the Seattle Central College culinary students, or tune in via livestream.

Location: One World Restaurant on Seattle Central College campus (Capitol Hill neighborhood) and streaming worldwide!

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1958 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

The Muppet Show used to have a segment called “Pigs in Space.” Well this Social Justice Credential counterpart called “Cats in Space”, with a dollop of ever so cute kittens added in, appeared long before Heinlein’s Pixel came into being. 

Our Beginning this Scroll is of Ruthven Todd’s Space Cat and the Kittens. It was published sixty-five years ago by Scribner’s. It’s the fourth, and last, of a children’s books series involving Flyball, a cat who, yes, lives in space. 

The preceding books which, like this one are illustrated by Paul Galdone, are Space Cat, Space Cat Visits Venus and Space Cat Meets Mars. Without giving anything away, let me just say that there will be a lot of cats, not a few kittens and a considerable comical situations as the series goes on. 

They are available in both hardcover and from the usual suspects.

Yes there are spoilers here, so go away if you don’t want to read them as this Beginning tells us about how these cats… Oh that would be giving something away, wouldn’t it? 

And here it is…

They were in and out of everything. When you thought you had cornered one of the red and gray bundles flashing among the crates in the storeroom, you would suddenly become aware that you had been attacked from behind by another. With its sharp claws unsheathed it was scrambling up your back. 

Still, everyone on the Moon not only put up with them but liked them. This was only right, for their parents were the most famous cats in the whole of space. Flyball, their father, had not only been the first cat to leave Earth for the Moon, but he had also been the first cat on Venus and on Mars. 

On Mars he had found his wife. Moofa was the last of the Martian fishing cats. Red as any firetruck, with darker stripes that ran from her head to her tail, she had lived on the fish that she caught in the Martian canals.

Now Moofa and Flyball had these two kittens—Marty and Tailspin. Marty was the older brother by a few minutes and was as proud of it as if he had arranged it himself. 

At first glance the kittens, showing both their father’s gray and their mother’s red, looked exactly alike. Then a second look showed that Tailspin had a pure gray tip to his tail while Marty’s tail was red all the way. 

The kittens had been born on the Moon and both Moofa and Flyball agreed that it was an ideal place for kittens, even though there were neither mice nor birds for them to chase. 

On the Moon they were almost as light as feathers and could jump the most tremendous distances. Still, they found, it was just as hard to catch one’s tail on the Moon as it was on Earth. They knew about Earth, for they had visited it on the shuttle-rockets which went back and forth all the time. 

The Earth, the kittens thought, was rather a dull place. A jump that on the Moon would carry them across a room, on Earth was only an ordinary little pounce.

So please name other SF where cats are characters in the story.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 1, 1875 — Edgar Wallace. Creator of King Kong, he also wrote SF including Planetoid 127, one of the first parallel Earth stories, and The Green Rust, a bioterrorism novel which was made into a silent film called The Green Terror. Critics as diverse as Orwell, Sayers and Penzler have expressed their rather vehement distaste for him.  Kindle has an impressive number of works available. (Died 1932.)
  • Born April 1, 1883 — Lon Chaney. Actor, director, makeup artist and screenwriter. Best remembered I’d say for the Twenties silent horror films The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera in which he did his own makeup. He developed pneumonia in late 1929 and he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer which he died from. (Died 1930.)
  • Born April 1, 1926 — Anne McCaffrey. I read both the original trilogy and what’s called the Harper Hall trilogy oh so many years ago when dragons were something I was intensely interested in. I enjoyed them immensely but haven’t revisited them so I don’t know what the Suck Fairy would make of them. I confess that I had no idea she’d written so much other genre fiction! And I recounted her Hugo awards history in the March 7 Pixel Scroll (item #9). (Died 2011.)
  • Born April 1, 1930 — Grace Lee Whitney. Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek. She would reach the rank of Lt. Commander in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Folks, I just noticed that IMDB says she was only on eight episodes of Trek, all in the first fifteen that aired. It seemed like a lot more at the time. She also appeared in in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. By the last film, she was promoted to being a Lt. Commander in rank. Her last appearance was in Star Trek: Voyager’s “Flashback” along with Hikaru Sulu. Oh, and she was in two video fanfics, Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. (Died 2015.)
  • Born April 1, 1942 — Samuel R. Delany, 81. There’s no short list of recommended works for him as everything he’s done is brilliant. That said I think I’d start off suggesting a reading first of Babel- 17 and Dhalgren followed by the Return to Nevèrÿon series. His two Hugo wins were at Heicon ’70 for the short story “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” as published in New Worlds, December 1968, and at Noreascon 3 (1989) in the Best Non-Fiction Work category for The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965.  I will do a full look at his awards and all of his Hugo nominations in an essay shortly. 
  • Born April 1, 1960 — Michael Praed, 63. Robin of Loxley on Robin of Sherwood which no doubt is one of the finest genre series ever done of a fantasy nature. He also played Phileas Fogg on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, an amazing series that never got released on DVD. It has spawned a lively fanfic following since it was cancelled with names such as Spicy Airship Stories which I admit I’m going to go read.
  • Born April 1, 1963 — James Robinson, 60. Writer, both comics and film. Some of his best known comics are the series centered on the Justice Society of America, in particular the Starman character he co-created with Tony Harris. His Starman series is without doubt some of the finest work ever done in the comics field. His screenwriting is a mixed bag. Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Well, that’s him. He’s much, much better on the animated Son of Batman film. And I’ll admit that James Robinson’s Complete WildC.A.T.s is a sort of guilty pleasure.
  • Born April 1, 1970 — Brad Meltzer, 53. I’m singling him for his work as a writer at DC including the still controversial Identity Crisis miniseries and his superb story in the Green Arrow series from issues 16 to 21 starting in 2002.  He and artist Gene Ha received an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (or One-Shot) for their work on issue #11 of Justice League of America series. 

(10) KELLY LINK INTERVIEW. Electric Literature declares, “Kelly Link Makes Fairy Tales Even Weirder Than You Remember”.

Chelsea Davis: Rules—often arbitrary, always ominous—shape many fairy tales, and most of the stories in White Cat. Don’t let anyone enter the front door; don’t visit your lover unless it’s snowing; and (my favorite) don’t hunker down for the night in a home that doesn’t have a corpse inside. How do explicit rules activate or shape a story?

Kelly Link: I love thinking about rules! I’m deeply interested in the relationship that we have with them as members of a family, or a social group, or a culture. They mark out the territory in which we (or our characters) live our lives. When thinking about imaginary people, a useful approach is to consider what rules they live by, which rules they break, and the consequences or freedoms that occur as a result.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated and horrified by all sorts of rules: Don’t wear white after Labor Day! Wear pantyhose with skirts. Never wear navy and black together. Don’t take candy from a stranger. 

I was a preacher’s kid, and aside from all the familiar stuff about virginity, and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, there were weirder, more interesting rules about not eating shellfish, or wearing certain fibers together, or not suffering a witch to live. (Though the two rules about loving your neighbor as yourself, and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you still seem like good practice.)…

(11) EKPEKI GOFUNDME CONTINUES. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s GoFundMe fundraiser for visa processing & legal fees has reached 20 percent of its $17,500 goal.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki recently experienced visa complications that left him unable to attend the NAACP Image award ceremony, where he was a nominee for his work co-editing the anthology Africa Risen. These visa issues will also prevent him from attending the 44th Afrofuturism-themed International Conference For The Fantastic In the Arts as a guest of honour or be a visiting fellow at Arizona State University.

Because of these issues, Ekpeki is crowdfunding for a new visa that allows him the range of activities his burgeoning literary career demands.

Specifically, this crowdfunding is for a new visa and the associated legal and application fees. Ekpeki has already connected with a lawyer experienced in this legal area who will assist with the application.

(12) JEOPARDY! David Goldfarb notes that Thursday’s Jeopardy! episode had a category in the Double Jeopardy round called “Quoth the Title”. It hit one SFF trilogy in the middle, at the $1200 level:

Philip Pullman quoted Milton, “Unless the almighty Maker them ordain” these “to create more worlds”.

Returning champion Lisa Srikan tried, “What are men?” Jacob Lang was perhaps influenced by this to respond, “What are children of men?”. Sharon Stone (not that one) declined to guess. This isn’t quite at the level where I would just assume that every Filer would know it: the clue was looking for “His Dark Materials”.

Goldfarb also tuned into Friday’s Jeopardy! episode and enjoyed several more SFF-related clues. 

In the first Jeopardy round, 

“Hey, Big Spender” for $200:

If you’ve really got all that dough, why don’t you buy Action Comics #1 from 1938, which saw the debut of this otherworldly hero

Jen Petro-Roy responded correctly.

In the Double Jeopardy round,
“Oh, the Literary Places You Don’t Want to Go!”: $1200: 

The Sprawl is a rough city with an artificial gray sky in “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, a novel from this cyberpunk master

Jen knew William Gibson.

“Literary Places”: $2000: 

The idyllic school Hailsham harbors grotesque deeds in “Never Let Me Go” from this Japanese-born author

Jen messed up the name Kazuo Ishiguro: “Kashiguro” was not accepted. The other two didn’t answer.

“Last Lines of Movies”: $800: 

“Oh, no. It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Jen knew it.

“Literary Places”, $400: 

Isla Nublar off Costa Rica sets the scene of this 1990 Michael Crichton novel that bioengineers some terror

Brittany Shaw knew this one.

(13) APRIL FOOL’S DAY. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club blog tried its best to keep the holiday alive.

(14) FURTHER APRIL FOOLISHNESS. James Davis Nicoll reviews an essential volume of the science fiction canon in “By Klono’s Silk Unmentionables!”

Time erodes all, including our collective memory. Even what is preserved in print can be subject to caprice; once well-known works can be forgotten. Take, for example, that classic space opera: Thorne Smith’s Lensmen….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Meanwhile, this trailer for Trolls Band Together is not an April Fool – but maybe it ought to be!

After two films of true friendship and relentless flirting, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) are now officially, finally, a couple (#broppy)! As they grow closer, Poppy discovers that Branch has a secret past. He was once part of her favorite boyband phenomenon, BroZone, with his four brothers: Floyd (Golden Globe nominated electropop sensation Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric André; Sing 2), Spruce (Grammy winner Daveed Diggs; Hamilton) and Clay (Grammy winner Kid Cudi; Don’t Look Up). BroZone disbanded when Branch was still a baby, as did the family, and Branch hasn’t seen his brothers since. But when Branch’s bro Floyd is kidnapped for his musical talents by a pair of nefarious pop-star villains—Velvet (Emmy winner Amy Schumer; Trainwreck) and Veneer (Grammy winner and Tony nominee Andrew Rannells; The Book of Mormon)—Branch and Poppy embark on a harrowing and emotional journey to reunite the other brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate even worse than pop-culture obscurity.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, David Goldfarb, Jennifer Hawthorne, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Danny Sichel, ErsatzCulture, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/26/23 I Need A Little Pixel In My Scroll

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(1) MEMBERS WILL HEAR FROM GLASGOW 2024. Glasgow 2024 told Facebook readers they will shortly be emailing all WSFS Only Members and Unconverted Friends with personalized instructions on how to become an Attending member, which will save people between £20 and £50 on what it will cost to become an Attending Member after the end of April.

Those who are not already members but plan on attending Glasgow 2024 in-person you should become a member before the end of April when, for example, Adult rates will rise from £170 to £190. If this is too much to pay out right now, by opting into the installment plan people can fix the rate at £170 and pay over time.

If people want help joining, or want to know their current status, email [email protected]

(2) FURRY CON INTERRUPTED BY BOMB THREAT. On Friday, the first day of Motor City Furry Con in Ypsilanti, MI Fox 2 News says the con was evacuated after a reported bomb threat. However, nothing was found and the con resumed for the rest of the weekend.

WWJ News Radio interviewed people who were there: “Evacuations underway at Motor City Furry Con in Ypsilanti”.

…Speaking to the crowd, a man who identified himself as chairperson for the convention said organizers received an email from an unidentified person who “actually did threaten us with a bomb.”

The chairperson added: “What’s going on right now is we’ve got the police here to sweep the hotel. There’s gonna go and investigate — probably your rooms, I’m sorry — but they are gonna look through the hotel and make sure we are safe.”

Cassidy, who traveled to Michigan from Vancouver for the event, said the police showed up as everyone was evacuating. Eventually, officers ushered everyone away from the hotel onto a nearby golf course.

“There wasn’t really a large panic because in some ways the furry fandom is unfortunately getting used to this. It’s kind of becoming part of daily life to some degree, I think where we all understand that someone can just call something in,” Cassidy said.

“And this is actually the third time at a convention this month that there’s been a police presence.”

(3) IT’S THE PITS. Cora Buhlert has posted a new Masters of the Universe action figure photo story on her blog. “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: ‘The Prisoner of Castle Grayskull’”.

Like any good castle, the mystical Castle Grayskull from Masters of the Universe also has a dungeon and indeed the Castle Grayskull playset has always been equipped with a practical trapdoor that allows you to drop intruders from the throne room straight down into the dungeon.

However, beneath the regular dungeon of Castle Grayskull, there is also a second, deeper dungeon that extends steadily downwards, because Castle Grayskull sits on top of a bottomless abyss named the Dwell of Souls. This lower dungeon is populated by all sorts of monsters and represented in all versions of the Castle Grayskull playset by a sticker of a metal grate with all sorts of monsters trying to get out. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the portal to the underworld located underneath Castle Joiry in C.L. Moore’s stories “Black God’s Kiss” and “Black God’s Shadow” or the monster-infested dungeon underneath the Scarlet Citadel from the eponymous Conan story by Robert E. Howar. I doubt this is a coincidence, because Masters of the Universe draws a lot of inspiration from vintage sword and sorcery and pulp SFF in general

Unsurprisingly, people have been fascinated by the dungeon sticker and the monsters living underneath Castle Grayskull for forty years now. I mean, it’s monster-filled dungeon beneath a castle, so who wouldn’t be fascinated by what’s down there? However, little was known about the creatures that live beneath Castle Grayskull until very recently….

(4) LOOKING AHEAD. Brian Keene shared this unexpected sentiment in his newsletter today, “Letters From the Labyrinth 326”:

…For many years, people in our business used to say “Don’t mess with Brian Keene’s family, Brian Keene’s money, or Brian Keene’s genre.” These days, I don’t give a crap about the genre. It can collapse into rubble tomorrow and that would be okay with me. That was how I found it when I arrived on the scene, and I did my part to rebuild it into something better, but the older I get, the more I’m convinced it needs to be reduced to ashes and rebuilt from time to time….

(5) THREE GENRE WINNERS. The winners of the 2023 Waterstones Children’s Book Prizes are genre books.

Nadia Mikail has been named Overall Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for her debut novel, The Cats We Meet Along The Way, which also won the Older Reader’s Category. 

M.T. Khan’s Nura and the Immortal Palace won the Younger Readers’ category and Kim Hillyard’s Gretel the Wonder Mammoth took the category for Illustrated Books

(6) CASTRO SEEKS FINANCIAL HELP. Adam-Troy Castro opened a GoFundMe for “Chemotherapy and Other Medical Expenses”.

I have run five fundraisers in about as many years, and I am getting used to apologizing for starting this well-worn route again. Believe me, I don’t want to.

Past Fundraisers included one when Judi needed ankle surgery, one when she and I lost our home, one when Judi died and left me penniless, one when car troubles and medical expenses loomed.

I have just closed that last fundraiser because events have yet again changed.

In September, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer, a tumor the size of a fist.

I required scans, iron infusions, many visits, and lots of arguing with my insurance provider.

When the tumor was removed in December, I lost a foot of bowel and discovered that the category-3 tumor had begun to spread to my lymph notes. In late January I will commence chemotherapy.

And this is where I am, at the beginning of another year’s deductible.

This is what I have been told: the entire process of chemotherapy will fall under my deductible. 800 dollars per treatment for six months. I will also require post-surgical scans, more tests and iron infusions. plus lots of unforeseeable disbursements to take care of me while I endure what will be a bumpy ride. There will be drugs to manage the symptoms, some quite expensive. And then I will need many check-ups to see if the treatment is effective.

At the same time, a separate issue but a real one, I am rapidly going blind from cataracts. Treatment for that has been delayed as the cancer takes precedent. That will involve outpatient surgery.

So yeah, right now, holding on to life is costing more than it costs to live.

And here’s the thing.

I know that this is another round of “Adam is in trouble.”

I would rather not be having one. Trust me. I would so much love to do things like travel.

I am more grateful for prior assistance than I can possibly tell you.

But this is what is going on, and I thank you, so thank you, for considering even the smallest donation to what is shaping up to be the battle of my life, only a year and a half removed from the loss of Judi and what I previously imagined to be the battle of my life….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1959 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Some truly great things come in small servings, and it is with Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies-“. First published by the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the March 1959 issue after it was rejected by Playboy. It actually had a previous smaller release in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag on Gnome Press.

It develops themes that were in a previous work, “By His Bootstraps”, published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the pen name Anson MacDonald. 

So given its shortness and the possibility, however remote I’ll admit, that some Filer might have not experienced it, I won’t say anything about it. All will I say is that I love the story and think that it’s one of his best.

The Australian 2014 Predestination film was based upon this story. The film which stars Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook gets a stellar eighty-four rating from the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

Spider Robinson does a brilliant narration of it, and I know it’s been done as an audio work quite a number of times going back decades. Anyone care to list them? 

And now our quite amazing Beginning…

All You Zombies—” 2217 Time Zone V (set) 7 Nov 1970 NYC—“ Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10.17 p.m. zone five or eastern time November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time & date; we must. 

The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, immature features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile. 

Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “—at four cents a word. I write confession stories.” 

If he felt nasty, he would wait for somebody to make something of it. He had a lethal style of in-fighting, like a female cop—one reason I wanted him. Not the only one. 

He had a load on and his face showed that he despised people more than usual. Silently I poured a double shot of Old Underwear and left the bottle. He drank, poured another. 

I wiped the bar top. “How’s the ‘Unmarried Mother’ racket?” 

His fingers tightened on the glass and he seemed about to throw it at me; I felt for the sap under the bar. In temporal manipulation you try to figure everything, but there are so many factors that you never take needless risks. 

I saw him relax that tiny amount they teach you to watch for in the Bureau’s training school. “Sorry,” I said. “Just asking, ‘How’s business?’ Make it ‘How’s the weather?’” 

He looked sour. “Business is okay. I write ’em, they print ’em, I eat.”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 26, 1850 — Edward Bellamy. Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is really the only work that he’s remembered for today. He wrote two other largely forgotten works, Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process and Miss Ludington’s Sister: A Romance of Immortality. (Died 1898.)
  • Born March 26, 1920 — Alex Comfort. No smirking please as we’re adults here. At least allegedly. Yes, he’s the author of The Joy of Sex but he did do some decidedly odd genre work as well. Clute at EoSF notes that his “first genuine sf novel, Come Out to Play (1961), is a near-future Satire on scientism narrated by a smug sexologist, whose Invention – a potent sexual disinhibitor jokingly called 3-blindmycin (see Drugs) – is accidentally released over Buckingham Palace at the Slingshot Ending, presumably causing the English to act differently than before.” (Died 2000.)
  • Born March 26, 1924 — Peter George. Welsh author, most remembered for the late Fifties Red Alert novel, published first as Two Hours To Doom and written under the name of Peter Bryant. The book was the basis of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. (Died 1966.)
  • Born March 26, 1931 — Leonard Nimoy. I really don’t need to say who he played on Trek, do I? Did you know his first role was as a zombie in Zombies of the Stratosphere? Or that he did a a lot of Westerns ranging from Broken Arrow in which he played various Indians to The Tall Man in which at least his character had a name, Deputy Sheriff Johnny Swift. His other great genre role was on Mission: Impossible as The Great Paris, a character whose real name was never revealed, who was a retired magician. It was his first post-Trek series. He of course showed up on the usual other genre outings such as The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Outer Limits, Night Gallery and Get Smart. And then there’s the matter of “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.  If you find it on the web, do not link to it here as all copies up are illegally there. (Died 2015.)
  • Born March 26, 1953 — Christopher Fowler. I started reading him when I encountered his Bryant & May series which though supposedly not genre does feature a couple of protagonists who are suspiciously old. Possibly a century or more now. The mysteries may or may not have genre aspects but are wonderfully weird. Other novels by him are I’d recommend are Roofworld and Rune which really are genre, and Hell Train which is quite delicious horror. (Died 2023.)
  • Born March 26, 1950 — K. W. Jeter, 73. Farewell Horizontal may or may be punk of any manner but it’s a great read. Though I generally loathe such things, Morlock Night, his sequel to The Time Machine, is well-worth reading reading. I’ve heard good things about his Blade Runner sequels but haven’t read them. Opinions?
  • Born March 26, 1985 — Keira Knightley, 38. To my surprise, and this definitely shows I’m not a Star Wars geek, she was Sabé, The Decoy Queen, in The Phantom Menace.  Next up for her is Princess of Thieves, a loose adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. Now I didn’t see that but I did see her in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl as Elizabeth Swann. (She’s in several more of these films.) I saw her as Guinevere, an odd Guinevere indeed, in King Arthur. Her last role I must note was as The Nutcracker and the Four Realms in which she was the Sugar Plum Fairy! 

(9) WHY DID THEY BLOCK ME? John Scalzi supplies the answer for one Twitter user.

(10) FACING YOUR DEMONS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Yup. It’s a real thing. I heard about it on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! “Facing the demons: can Dungeons & Dragons therapy heal real-life trauma?” in the Guardian.

…According to practitioners, D&D can be used to treat everything from exploring gender – you can take on a character whose identity is completely foreign to yours – to recovering from traumatic events. “Trauma disconnects us from ourselves, and one of the first things we get disconnected from is our imagination and creativity,” Cassie Walker, a clinical social worker, told Wired last year. Role-playing has the potential to lighten up therapy sessions, and invigorate clients whose expressiveness may have been dulled by past events.

Today, Connell is especially interested in working with young women and girls to use the game to build self-esteem and assertiveness through play. “It’s a great place to practice skills and step into those aspirational traits to be the person you want,” she said….

(11) INTERSTELLAR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Science fiction (and science nonfiction) author, Les Johnson (whose day job is at NASA), was recently interviewed via email for an article in Forbes about interstellar travel. “NASA Technologist Talks What’s Needed For Interstellar Travel”.

What should we be doing to make interstellar travel possible?

“We need to bring back funding for basic research and development and run away from the notion that all R&D must have a near-term return on investment,” said Johnson.

Some form of warp drive is likely the most feasible way to enable realistic Star Trek-styled travel since each warp factor is a multiple of the speed of light cubed. As Johnson explains in “A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars,” Warp drive “uses tremendous energies to change the shape of space-time, allowing the ship to cross normal, albeit warped/compressed/expanded space very quickly.”

In a now-famous 1994 refereed paper, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre describes a warp drive that “works mathematically and would allow a starship to appear to be traveling faster than light, while not really doing so,” Johnson notes in his book.

(12) SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. “Mathematicians Discovered a New 13-Sided Shape That Can Do Remarkable Things” at Popular Mechanics. See image at the link.  (There’s also more discussion in a Twitter thread that starts here.)

Computer scientists found the holy grail of tiles. They call it the “einstein,” one shape that alone can cover a plane without ever repeating a pattern.

And all it takes for this special shape is 13 sides.

In the world of mathematics, an “aperiodic monotile”—also known as an einstein based off a German phrase for one stone—is a shape that can tile a plane, but never repeat.

“In this paper we present the first true aperiodic monotile, a shape that forces aperiodicity through geometry alone, with no additional constrains applied via matching conditions,” writes Craig Kaplan, a computer science professor from the University of Waterloo and one of the four authors of the paper. “We prove that this shape, a polykite that we call ‘the hat,’ must assemble into tilings based on a substitution system.”

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