Tag Archives: GoFundMe

Pixel Scroll 11/3/22 And When The File Breaks The Pixel Will Scroll

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(1) GATHERING NOMINATIONS. The BSFA Awards 2022: Longlist Nominations are open. According to their tweet anyone can suggest works. However, only BSFA members have a vote in the outcome.

(2) THE STARS MY QUESTIONATION. LearnedLeague has another SF-related quiz, this one written (“smithed” in LL parlance) by Filer Frasher Sherman. “Invasions From Outer Space: Film and TV” can be found here.

David Goldfarb says 1778 people played the quiz, which is a pretty good turnout for a One-Day.

(3) CALLS FOR HELP. Here are two GoFundMes for SFF writers who need help with medical expenses:

 R.S.A. Garcia: “Help R. S. A. Garcia Pay for Cancer Expenses”. (The full medical details and the reasons for the appeal are at the link.)

…However, this past week, the doctors found some worrying signs of endometrial cancer and have recommended a full hysterectomy, in addition to the other procedures. The recovery time required and the need to do reconstructive surgery means that I don’t expect to be able to work again for another 6 months to a year.

I was let go from my job when I had my surgery. Since then, my sister’s has been covering all our household expenses but we now find ourselves in a difficult situation.

…My medical costs are mounting with a minimum of two surgeries planned for the next six months and potentially as many as four. The results of my biopsy on November 25, will determine the next phase of my treatment. We’re already in debt and have liquidated our insurance policies to try to keep afloat.

So we’re asking for your help….

James A. Moore: “The Hits Keep Coming”. The appeal at the link contains the grim details, as related by its organizer, Christopher Golden.

…There will be time and many costs involved, but this GoFundMe is really meant only as a bridge to help Jim get to wherever they will end up next. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could endure a string of events like this, but Jim endures. Please help if you can, and if you can’t donate anything, please share with anyone you think will be able to do so…. 

(4) WHERE EREWHON IS NOW. Tor.com reports that Erewhon Books has been acquired by Kensington Publishing.

Kensington Publishing recently acquired fellow independent publisher Erewhon Books.

Erewhon—established in 2018, which boasts a lineup of authors including C. L. Polk, E. Lily Yu, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Cassandra Khaw—is now an imprint of Kensington. The acquisition includes Erewhon’s backlist as well as their titles coming out through 2024. Editorial oversight will continue under Erewhon Publisher Sarah Guan, with the rest of the Erewhon team also joining Kensington. Starting in 2023, Penguin Random House Publisher Services will begin distributing all of their books….

Erewhon was founded by Liz Gorinsky, who left in March to “pursue other projects”.

(5) SCREENING THE ALIENS. Either the big screen or the little. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight” is for “The Aliens Are Here – Extraterrestrial Visitors in American Cinema and Television by Fraser A. Sherman”.

Tell us about your book.

The Aliens Are Here: Extraterrestrial Visitors in American Cinema and Television looks at how movies and TV have portrayed Earth’s encounters with beings from other worlds. Each chapter takes a different topic — alien invaders, aliens as refugees, alien/Terran love stories, UFO abduction films, genre mashups — and looks at related films, themes and tropes. Then I spotlight one to three movies or TV shows relevant to the chapter topic. The alien monsters chapter, for instance, has The Thing From Another World, The Thing and The Andromeda Strain.

(6) TAKING NOTES. Laura Anne Gilman chats with CrimeReads about her new historical fantasy novel. “History Is Shouting…All You Need to Do Is Listen”.

… As every historian, pro or amateur, knows, history repeats itself. That is, events happen in a cyclical pattern, over and over, in varying lengths of time. The story of history is a reminder even when we think that we’re learning from experience, that learning never seems to stick for more than a generation or two before dissipating into mist. Or, as I like to put it, history repeats itself because it knows we’re not listening. And it will get louder and louder until we do.

Which for the political scientist and pundit may be depressing as hell, but for the historical novelist it’s a candy store just waiting to be plundered. All that wild, wonderful detail you literally couldn’t make up without someone calling hijinks, actually happened….

(7) BAEN SALE. Baen Books’ Veteran’s Day November Ebook Sale is on. Click through for a list of Baen authors with military service and the titles of their ebooks being offered at a $1 discount. Sale ends November 30, 2022. Available wherever Baen Ebooks are sold.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1934 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead

I truly love country house mysteries.  I truly do. There’s A. E. Milne’s The Red House Murder and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas as novels and Gosford Park and Knives Out as the modern exemplars of it in films. And here we have a woman born and raised far from Britain, in New Zealand to be precise, with a country house murder. 

Ngaio Marsh was born in 1895 Christchurch, New Zealand where she lived until 1928, when she went to London with friends on whom he would base the Lamprey family in the Surfeit of Lampreys novel, her tenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn. Then after she spent time in both countries.

So let’s us talk about A Man Lay Dead which as I said is a country house murder. It is the first novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1934 by Geoffrey Bles in London. 

The plot concerns a murder committed during a detective game of murder at a weekend party in a country house.  But she hasn’t really developed the character of Alleyn yet so another character is focused on.

WE ARE GOING TO TELL A STORY HERE, SO BEWARE!

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

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

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

Alleyn has his holiday with Troy to investigate a murder connected to a stolen chalice in the area, but he’s called when this murder occurs at uncle’s estate.

NO MORE STORY TO BE TOLD, SO COME BACK AND I’LL POUR VINTAGE BRANDY

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

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

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

It, like almost everything Marsh did, is of course available from the usual suspects.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 3, 1921 — Charles Bronson. He didn’t do a lot of genre acting but I’ve got him in One Step Beyond as Yank Dawson in “The Last Round” and he’s in The Twilight Zone in “Two” as The Man opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as The Women. He was also in Master of The World which is based on the Verne novel Robur the Conqueror and its sequel Master of the World. (Died 2003.)
  • Born November 3, 1931 — Monica Vitti. She’s best remembered in the English-language movie-going world for her performance as the lead agent in Modesty Blaise. It‘s rather loosely based upon the Modesty Blaise strip by Peter O’Donnell, who co-wrote the original story upon which Evan Jones based his screenplay. (Died 2022.)
  • Born November 3, 1933 — Ken Berry. He’s receiving Birthday Honors for Disney’s The Cat from Outer Space in which he was Dr. Frank Wilson. No, the cat wasn’t Goose. Nice idea though. And he played seven different roles on the original Fantasy Island. Also, like pretty much everyone else. he was a guest performer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. I know it’s not genre, I just find that amusing. (Died 2018.)
  • Born November 3, 1933 — Jeremy Brett. Still my favorite Holmes of all time. He played him in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in a total of 41 episodes. One source said he was cast as Bond at one point, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career. Lazenby was cast instead. I can’t actually say it’s fact, but it is a great story. (Died 1995.)
  • Born November 3, 1933 — Aneta Corsaut. If you saw The Blob, the original Fifties version, she was Jane Martin. Her only other genre film work was as an uncredited tourist mother in Blazing Saddles. And unless I’m mistaken, she had no other genre series work at all though she was popular in Westerns. She is best remembered for playing Helen Crump on The Andy Griffith Show. (Died 1995.)
  • Born November 3, 1952 — Eileen Wilks, 70. Her principal genre series is the World of Lupi, a FBI procedural intertwined with shapeshifters, dragons and the multiverse. Highly entertaining, sometimes considered romance novels though I don’t consider them so. The audiobooks are amazing as well! I re- listened to several of them recently and the steel booted Suck Fairy saw her boots rust away.
  • Born November 3, 1956 — Kevin Murphy, 66. Best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo for nine years on the Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was also the writer for the show for eleven years. I’m surprised the series was never nominated for a Hugo in the Long Form or Shot Form. Does it not qualify?
  • Born November 3, 1963 — Brian Henson, 59.  Can we all agree that The Happytime Murders should never have been done?  Wash it out of your consciousness with Muppet Treasure Island or perhaps The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you want something darker, he was a puppeteer on The Witches, and the chief puppeteer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he voices Hoggle in Labyrinth.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Tom Gauld extols the advantages of shopping at a haunted bookshop.

(11) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. The Guardian has many good things to say about Neptune Frost, an Afrofuturist movie that a couple of people have been pushing for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo next year: “Neptune Frost review – exhilarating Afrofuturist musical battles exploitation”.

Black Panther 2 is imminent, but in many ways the extraordinary Neptune Frost is the real Afrofuturist deal: a transgressive socialist Wakanda with an exoskeleton of punk geopolitics bolted on. As well as a denunciation of the western techno-centric order, it’s a musical lesson in conscious collaboration between the developed and developing world that Hollywood could learn from – instead of just piggybacking on African aesthetics. Filmed in Rwanda but set in Burundi, the story was developed by US musician Saul Williams – drawing on material from his recent albums – and his Rwandan wife Anisia Uzeyman; they share the directorial credit…

(12) PASSING THE HELMET. Guardian reports on “‘A joke that went out of control’: crowdfunding weapons for Ukraine’s war”.

By Christmas, 50 hardly used FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carriers (APCs), until recently the property of the British army, and currently in warehouses in secret locations across the UK, will arrive on the frontline in Ukraine’s war with Russia in time for the toughest winter conditions.

The transfer, the largest of such APCs to Ukraine, is not due to British munificence nor to procurement by the Ukrainian ministry of defence.

It is instead just the latest example of the extraordinary scale and indeed speed of the crowdfunding campaigns that have been powering the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war.

The fundraising appeal for the armoured vehicles – tagline “Grab them all” – had only been launched on Wednesday by the Serhiy Prytula charity foundation, named after its founder, a popular comedian and TV presenter with a sizeable online following….

(13) JEOPARDY! Unlike tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants, Andrew Porter recognized what the right response should be.

Final Jeopardy: Novel Locales

Answer: This place from a 1933 novel lies in the valley of the Blue Moon, below a peak called Karakal.

Wrong questions: What is the Big Valley?; What is Brigadoon?; What is Xanadu?

Right question: What is Shangri La?

(14) FELINES OF FAME. Can there be any doubt we want to know this? “The 10 Most Famous Cats In Animated TV Shows” according to CBR.com. (I can’t find any I would kick out, but I wish Top Cat was on the list.)

…From the earliest animations, where they were nothing more than silent presence, to the more modern takes, where they have plenty of sasses to share, these felines are more than the fond memories they give their fans. Most people likely have a fictional cat that they remember, and going back to watch the series they’re from can bring nostalgia and a ton of laughs….

(15) DON’T LET IT HANG YOU UP. Rory Cellan Jones explains how cell phones can for the first time take pictures in this 2001 clip from the BBC that dropped today.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Stardew Valley,” Fandom Games says this game is so soothing “it’s like Animal Crossing went to therapy.”  But the game offers an escape by “having adventures you could never have in real life: owning your own home, forming meaningful relationships, and finding satisfaction in your work.” But if you’re tired of doing chores, head to the underground caves where you can slay demons and dinosaurs!

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Cora Buhlert, David Goldfarb, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title debit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 10/30/22 I’ve Looked At Scrolls From Both Sides Now

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(1) GETTING HITCHED. Congratulations to Brian Keene on his successful marriage proposal to Mary SanGiovanni. Read about it in Keene’s “Letters From the Labyrinth 305”. (And see the proposal video on TikTok.)

… What I neglected to mention was that I intended to propose to Mary during that trip. Centralia is an abandoned mining town that has been on fire underground for nearly 100 years, and was the basis for many things in the horror genre, including Mary’s favorite — the Silent Hill franchise. The ghost town has special significance for us, as we took a trip there together very early in our relationship, and have continued to go back at least once a year for the last eleven years.

While Centralia’s original graffiti highway was destroyed during the pandemic, there are still plenty of roads there with graffiti on them (as well as abandoned buildings deep on the woods and hidden entrances into the mines, if you know where to look). So, John Urbancik and I drove up there the week before, and I spray-painted a proposal on what used to be a residential side street. This was known as Plan E.

Plans A through D were considered, however…

Click through to find out those imaginative but ultimately discarded options.

… People have already begun inviting themselves to the wedding, and Christopher Golden and Rio Youers have started planning hijinks, so everything is going about as you’d expect so far. I have been assured that I can DJ our reception, so that’s okay.

Oh, and the honeymoon is going to be a cross-country book signing tour so stay tuned for that. It was Mary’s idea. I wanted to go to Alaska or Easter Island but she needs to sell copies of Alien: Enemy of My Enemy, so a honeymoon tour it is….

(2) KEEPING COUNT. “Liaden Universe® InfoDump Number 130” has a roundup of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s forthcoming publications, how to get signed copies, and what ebooks will be available. It also tells where you can see them early next year, and clocks some remarkable career milestones.

CONVENTION APPEARANCES

Lee and Miller have applied to be in-person panelists at Boskone 60 (February 17-19, 2023). There is a new process in place this year, and we’ve not yet heard back concerning our applications. More news when we have some.

Lee and Miller will be Writer Guests of Honor at Heliosphere, April 28-30, 2023 in Piscataway NJ. Artist Guest of Honor will be David Mattingly.

CAREER MILESTONES
*As above, Salvage Right is the 25th Liaden Universe® novel.
*It is also Lee and Miller’s 29th collaborative novel, and 100th collaborative work.
*It is Sharon Lee’s 34th novel.
*And! It brings Lee-and-Miller’s total lifetime collaborative words written to Three million, seven hundred fifty-eight thousand, four hundred and eight.

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Ryk E. Spoor needs the help coming from his “A Series of Unfortunate Events” Gofundme even more than before. He wrote today:

As many of you know, my hope that things would settle down has not QUITE worked out as I planned…. as I’m writing this from the ICU of our local hospital, having had a heart attack.

I appreciate very much everything all of you have done for us, and ask that you share the fundraiser around again, as obviously this is going to add a quite significant expense to our household.

(4) SCARE IN THE AIR. Shat chats with Ethan Alter of Yahoo! Entertainment about his great Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet”. “William Shatner explains why his classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode still frightens flyers” at Yahoo!

… “Nightmare” was a more ambitious episode than the small-scale “Nick of Time,” which also meant that The Twilight Zone‘s budgetary restraints were more evident, at least to Shatner. Specifically, he found himself skeptical of the episode’s gremlin, who was played by stuntman Nick Cravat in a costume that didn’t exactly strike fear into the star’s heart. “What was amusing was the acrobat who was in a little furry suit on the wing of the [plane],” Shatner says now. “There were times when I looked at him, and I thought: ‘This is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever done!'”…

(5) MEMORY LANE.

1985 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Bradbury’s Crumley Mysteries

Although Bradbury was far better known for his genre writings, he did from time to time write rather good mysteries, mostly as short stories and scripts. So is the case with the Crumley Mysteries, penned over an eighteen-year period starting in 1985.

They were by no stretch of the imagination his first as he’d been writing mysteries in a shorter form since the Forties, but these are his first full-length mysteries. There are three here — Death Is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics and Let’s All Kill Constance.

They are all set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, which is definitely a setting that Bradbury really likes. They have the same two primary characters, detective Elmo Crumley and the narrator who is never named. He set the entire premise up with a short story, included in the Subterranean 2009 collection of these novels, Where Everything Ends. It is a rather weak take on the premise compared to the three novels. 

I’ve read them and I think the first two are quite excellent. The third one, Let’s All Kill Constance, I think is just weak with a mystery that just doesn’t hold up.

Our Green Man reviewer noted that Bradbury created great characters in these novels: “Crumley, the cop who just happens to also be a writer; Fannie, the 380-pound sedentary soprano; A.L. Shrank, the psychiatrist with the downbeat library; Cal, the incompetent barber with the ragtime past; and John Wilkes Hopworth, the ex-silent film star who still pines for former love Constance Rattigan.”

This is Bradbury so don’t expect hard-boiled anything here. These novels are what you get when a writer is kinder gentler so everything is indeed soft-boiled and no, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Bradbury gives us a somewhat idealistic version of the era and the people inhabiting it.

It is available used on AbeBooks and the like. I won’t say it’s particularly affordable as it’s not. 

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 30, 1896 — Ruth Gordon. You’ll likely best remember her as Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby. (Trust me, you don’t need to see Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby.) She’s quite excellent as Cecilia Weiss in The Great Houdini, and that pretty much sums up her genre work save Voyage of the Rock Aliens which keeps giving me the giggles. Serious giggles. (Died 1985.)
  • Born October 30, 1923 — William Campbell. In “The Squire of Gothos” on Trek — a proper Halloween episode even if it wasn’t broadcast then — he was Trelane, and in “The Trouble With Tribbles” he played the Klingon Koloth, a role revisited on Deep Space Nine in “Blood Oath”. He appeared in several horror films including Blood Bath, Night of Evil, and Dementia 13. He started a fan convention which ran for several years, Fantasticon, which celebrated the achievements of production staffers in genre films and TV shows and raised funds for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a charitable organization which provides assistance and care to those in the motion picture industry with limited or no resources, when struck with infirmity and/or in retirement age. (Died 2011.)
  • Born October 30, 1951 — P. Craig Russell, 71. Comic illustrator whose work has won multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards. His work on Killraven, a future version of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, collaborating with writer Don McGregor, was lauded by readers and critics alike. Next up was mainstream work at DC with his work on Batman, particularly with Jim Starlin. He also inked Mike Mignola’s pencils on the Phantom Stranger series. He would segue into working on several Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné projects. Worth noting is his work on a number of Gaiman projects including a Coraline graphic novel.  Wayne Alan Harold Productions published the P. Craig Russell Sketchbook Archives, a 250+-page hardcover art book featuring the best of his personal sketchbooks.
  • Born October 30, 1951 — Harry Hamlin, 71. His first role of genre interest was Perseus on Clash of The Titans. He plays himself in Maxie, and briefly shows up in Harper’s Island. He was Astronaut John Pope in the genre adjacent Space miniseries. On the stage, he’s been Faust in Dr. Faustus. 
  • Born October 30, 1958 — Max McCoy, 64. Here for a quartet of novels (Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx, Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs and Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone) which flesh out the back story and immerse him in a pulp reality. He’s also writing Wylde’s West, a paranormal mystery series.
  • Born October 30, 1972 — Jessica Hynes, 50. Playing Joan Redfern, she shows up on two of the most excellent Tenth Doctor stories, “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood”. She’d play another character, Verity Newman in a meeting of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, “The End of Time, Part Two”. Her other genre role was as Felia Siderova on Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) in the “Mental Apparition Disorder” and  “Drop Dead” episodes.

(7) GHOSTPLUSTERS. The New York Times needs its clicks, too: “The Dos and Don’ts of Living in a Haunted House”.

…Many Americans believe that their home is inhabited by someone or something that isn’t a living being. An October study from the Utah-based home security company Vivint found that nearly half of the thousand surveyed homeowners believed that their house was haunted. Another survey of 1,000 people by Real Estate Witch, an education platform for home buyers and sellers, found similar results, with 44 percent of respondents saying that they’ve lived in a haunted house.

Researchers attribute increasing belief in the supernatural to the rise of paranormal-related media, a decline in religious affiliation and the pandemic. With so many people believing that they live with ghosts, a new question arises: How does one live with ghosts? Are there ways to become comfortable with it, or certain actions to keep away from so as not to disturb it?…

(8) ZERO SUM GAMERS. [Item by Michael Kennedy.] Business Insider writer Samantha, Delouya argues that Meta is trying to follow Google’s lead in stealing back market share from Apple. So, does that make Meta’s vision of the metaverse the next Android? Well, maybe not. “Mark Zuckerberg is trying to do what Google did with Android — but he learned all the wrong lessons”.

… However, there’s one main difference between Google’s attempt to escape Apple’s supremacy and Meta’s gambit: there was already proof of consumer demand for the product Google was allegedly duping. Apple had sold 1 million of its first-generation iPhones just 74 days after its introduction.

Google’s pivot paid off. Will Meta’s? 

Google saw where Apple was going and continued to develop its Android platform to match Apple’s iOS. The company has also continued to invest in making its smartphones, a device it knows people want.

Google’s bet paid off. Android is now the dominant mobile operating system worldwide. 

But Google was a fast follower; Meta’s pivot could be more dangerous because it’s investing in a largely untested product: the metaverse. 

“It’s a massively huge risk, and I think the primary risk is there are no tangibles right now,” Zgutowicz said. 

Some analysts on Wall Street are skeptical Meta will pull this off. 

“Even if the Metaverse does turn out to be the immersive hardware-based vision that Meta articulates, will Meta really be the winning hardware provider to consumers?” Martin asked in a recent note. ….

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ahrvid Engholm, “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 10/13/22 What About Their Pixels? They Don’t Need Those!

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Illo by Teddy Harvia

(0) Today is Scroll Lite because at 8:40 a.m. the manager of a tree trimming crew banged on my door to tell me they were going to work on the big tree across the driveway from where I live, and given the alternatives I chose to be away from home all day. So please fill in the important things that are missing with your comments!

(1) DOCTOR’S LAST HOUSE CALL. In “Doctor Who unveils trailer for Jodie Whittaker’s final episode”, Radio Times outlines what we learn about “The Power of the Doctor”, which will air October 23.

…The Master (Sacha Dhawan) will return for the Thirteenth Doctor’s exit, while the Daleks and the Cybermen – including Ashad (Patrick O’Kane), also known as the Lone Cyberman – will also appear.

Returning to help the Doctor, Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) in this epic battle for survival will be two companions from classic Doctor Who – Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and Sophie Aldred (Ace).

Two more familiar faces will also appear in the special: Vinder (Jacob Anderson) and Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) will both be back, having last appeared in Doctor Who’s last full series in late 2021….

(2) OCTOTHORPE.  John Coxon is clever, Alison Scott has lost her composure, and Liz Batty is confused by WSFS. They spend a lot of time talking about Glasgow 2024, and their gorgeous art this week is by Sara Felix. Listen to Octothorpe 68 here: “It Made John Laugh”.

(3) GOFUNDME APPEAL. Author Ryk E. Spoor has started a fundraiser to help him overcome “A Series of Unfortunate Events”.

… I’m Ryk E. Spoor, best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy, but my main job is as a technical proposal writer at a local tech firm.

Several recent events have upset my monetary tightrope walking lately, including unexpected expenses for illnesses, repairs, etc. Most recently, my main publisher, Ring of Fire Press, has just ceased operations. This immediately deprived me of two anticipated payments, and more in the future. Moreover, even if I were to immediately choose another publisher and they were to quickly prepare all my back catalogue for reissue, it’d be months before I’d likely see any money coming in.

To put the cherry on top, I have just gotten COVID for the second time, my wife is ill and may have it, and there are a lot of expenses coming due now that I simply cannot meet.

So if you can give anything at all, it will be tremendously appreciated….

(4) WHEN CRIME IS IN FASHION. Olivia Rutigliano nominates these as “The 10 Best Hats in Crime Movies” at CrimeReads. But first! The hats that you won’t find in this list:

…I like hats. I like hats a lot. I don’t wear them enough, but that’s beside the point. Crime film is full of excellent hats, and I have selected what are, to my mind, the ten absolute best. Then again, all of film history is full of excellent hats, but this is a crime website, so I must show restraint. I’ll say up front that there is no Indiana Jones stetson, and no Freddy Krueger fedora, and no Annie Hall wide-brimmed bowler, and no Willy Wonka orange velvet top hat, and no scarf-heavy Holly Golightly chapeau du matin.

And, again, I’m trying to keep to most iconic hats. For the Corleone-family diehards, I’ll just say right now that the gray homburg hat Al Pacino wears in The Godfather isn’t quite indelible enough, I’m sorry. Also, I’ll just say up here, I wish The Tailor of Panama had more panama hats in it….

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 13, 1906 — Joseph Samachson. In 1955, he co-created with artist Joe Certa the Martian Manhunter in the pages of Detective Comics #225. Earlier he penned a couple of Captain Future pulp novels around 1940 under a house name. (House names often blur who did what.) He also wrote scripts for Captain Video and His Video Rangers, a late Forties to mid Fifties series. (Died 1980.)
  • Born October 13, 1914 — Walter Brooke. You know him for muttering a certain word in The Graduate but he’s earlier noteworthy for being General T. Merrit in Conquest of Space, a Fifties SF film, one of many genre roles he did including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The Munsters, Marooned, The Return of Count Yorga and The Nude Bomb (also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart). (Died 1986.)
  • Born October 13, 1923 — Meyer Dolinsky. He wrote the script for Star Trek’s “Plato’s Children” plus for Mission: Impossible, Science Fiction Theater, World of Giants (which I never heard of), Men into Space and The Outer Limits. (Died 1984.)
  • Born October 13, 1923 — Cyril Shaps. He appears in a number of Doctor Who stories,  to wit The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara which means he’s appeared with the Second, Third and Fourth Doctors. He was also Mr. Pinkus in The Spy Who Loved Me, and he was in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady as Emperor Franz Josef. The latter stars Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee as Holmes and Watson. (Died 2003.)
  • Born October 13, 1952 — John Lone, 70. He played the villainous Shiwan Khan in The Shadow, and he was the revived ice man Charlie in the Iceman. His first film role ever was Andy the Cook in the Seventies King Kong.
  • Born October 13, 1969 — Wayne Pygram, 63. His most SFish role was as Scorpius on Farscape and he has a cameo as Grand Moff Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith because he’s a close facial resemblance to Peter Cushing. He’s likely best recognized as himself for his appearance on Lost as a faith healer named Isaac of Uluru.
  • Born October 13, 1969 — Tushka Bergen, 53. She first shows in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as The Guardian at the age of sixteen. She’s got one-offs in the Fantasy Island, Angel, FreakyLinks and The Others series, and an appearance in the Journey to the Center of the Earth series. The FreakyLinks episode is titled “Subject: Edith Keeler Must Die”.
  • Born October 13, 1976 — Jennifer Sky, 46. Lead character conveniently named Cleopatra in Sam Raimi’s Cleopatra 2525 series. (Opening theme “In the Year 2525” is performed by Gina Torres who’s also a cast member.) She’s had guest roles on Seaquest DSV, Xena, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she was Lola in The Helix…Loaded, a parody of The Matrix which scored 14% at Rotten Tomatoes. 
  • Born October 13, 1983 — Katia Winter, 39. She’s best known for being Katrina Crane on Sleepy Hollow, and Freydis Eriksdottir on Legends of Tomorrow. She also was Swede in Malice in Wonderland which is very loosely based off its source material. She’s currently Gwen Karlsson in Blood & Treasure which might be genre. So how is Sleepy Hollow? I’ve never seen it. 

(6) REASONS TO READ. Mark Kelly reviews Jim Al-Khalili’s The Joy of Science at Views from Crestmont Drive.

…[Two] things attracted me to it. First, of the eight chapters, one of them is called “It’s more complicated than that,” and it echoes a point made in Slate recently (which I discussed here) that Occam’s Razor is not necessarily true, it merely often is. I shouldn’t say echo — this is the book by the author of that Slate article. Second, this point in particular supports one of my themes in this blog, that too many people in the world think in terms of black and white, and all social issues are obviously right or wrong, with no nuance or shades of gray (or color) in between. Simplex, complex, multiplex, and so on.…

(7) STEPHEN FRY VISITS RARE BOOKS LA. First posted three years ago.

(8) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers:  Hocus Pocus,” the Screen Junkies say this 1993 Disney movie, besides being both one of the darkest movies in Disney history, from the time when a comedy film was “shown in real theaters and shot in real locations with real song and dance numbers,” as opposed to the new Disney+ Hocus Pocus 2, “which meets Disney’s content quota for Q3.” The film is “like what if the Three Stoges did a Halloween special–and were ladies.”  SJWs will want to stay for the closing comments, read by Thackeray Binks the talking black cat!

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

Gofundme Appeal to Help Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Attend World Fantasy Convention

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Photo (right) by Richard Man.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki made it to the Worldcon in Chicago after a suspense-filled visa application process and is able to stay in the U.S. til next February. While he’s here he’d like to attend the World Fantasy Convention 2022 being held in New Orleans from November 3-6. He’s also asking help in covering the extraordinary expenses caused by the last-minute travel changes to get to Chicon 8.

“Send Oghenechovwe Ekpeki to World Fantasy Con” is a Gofundme started by Jason Sanford.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the first African editor to be a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, with the awards to be presented at the 2022 World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans. He’s nominated in the best anthology category for the first ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, which he edited and published. Ekpeki would like to maximize the opportunity of being in the States and attend the World convention. It’s an opportunity that would normally cost infinitely more without a visa and were he out of the country.

A successful previous fundraiser brought Ekpeki to this year’s Worldcon, where he was a finalist for two Hugo Awards. However, his gruesome battle with the US embassy in Nigeria for a visa and exorbitant fees and repeated payments resulting from that (including last-minute changes to his international flights) resulted in costs far exceeding what that fundraiser brought in. So this new fundraiser would also mop up those expenses as well.

The costs to be covered by this fundraiser are:

  • WFC Registration: $250
  • Flight to and from convention plus expenses: $1000
  • Hotel (5 nights): $1250
  • Resolving fees and payments from WorldCon 2nd visa hassle and resulting last-minute flight changes: $1500
  • Total: $4000

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki explained for File 770, “My visa is for 2 years. Though not a straight stay. I have to go out and in severally. At intervals. This first interval is 6 months. So I’m good till February.” Then he will go back out and return in March when he is a guest of honor at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts.

Before then he’d like to maximize the benefit of his trip to the U.S. by going to World Fantasy Con. “I am attending WFC because think about it, I’m already here. No need for visa hassle. Already went through that. No need for cross continental flights which are Uber expensive. Already did that too. It’s actually cheaper for me to attend. Since I already paid a humongous price to be here. It’s maxing out the work I took to get here attending. It’d be a loss of some of that effort if I didn’t.

“Another thing. A huge part of the reason for the Gofundme isnt just the WFC but to mop up the WorldCon expenses which were infinitely more than people know. Almost the entire money I crowdfunded was finished on just getting a visa interview appointment. People don’t know what it is leaving a Third World country for the U.S. Corruption plus racism plus discrimination.

“Then the whole war and another interview. Then cross continental flights booked within 24 hours of flying time. You know how expensive flights get when they are close? That’s thousands of dollars. Not my fault, because I got visa a day before the event. Then I missed a flight, booked another same day flight. I flew across 3 continents to get here.

“Then they forced me to book a return ticket I wouldn’t need. Cuz racism. Even though I had a visa. It’s been my own money, plus loans and so much more ingenuity the average person can’t imagine.

“Some of this is to recover those unexpected costs. But it made sense for me too. It would be penny wise pound foolish, a loss of a great chance not to attend World Fantasy Con, too. I want to max out my allotted stay, the six months. Because why do all that, and not?”

Gofundme for the Thomas Family

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After spending over a month in the hospital, doctors have confirmed there’s nothing more they can do for Caitlin, 19-year-old daughter of Lynne and Michael Thomas. Jim C. Hines has started a Gofundme to help the Thomases: “Lynne and Michael Thomas”. Hines wrote in his appeal:

The Thomas family is facing one of the hardest things imaginable: the loss of 19-year-old Caitlin to medical complications from Aicardi Syndrome.

Caitlin has been hospitalized for more than a month. One or both of her parents, Michael and Lynne, have been with her the entire time. But medical tests have now confirmed there was nothing the doctors could do to resolve Caitlin’s recent complications. On October 7, Michael announced that they are in the end phase of Caitlin’s life.

Lynne and Michael are devastated, as are all of us who know them and Caitlin.

I’ve spoken a bit with Michael. It sounds like the medical costs of Caitlin’s treatment are covered. End-of-life costs are another matter.

The goal of this fundraiser is to cover those end-of-life expenses, and to hopefully provide a financial cushion to allow the Thomases to spend their remaining time with Caitlin – and when the time comes, to grieve – without also having to worry about money. All donations will go directly to Michael and Lynne (with the exception of GoFundMe’s processing fee).

Lynne, Michael, and Caitlin are well known and loved in science fiction and fantasy circles. Lynne and Michael are co-editors of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Caitlin is a familiar presence at SF/F conventions. Their family has touched countless lives.

Thank you for your support.

Donate here.

Pixel Scroll 6/8/22 Goodness, Gracious, Great Scrolls Of Fur

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(1) BIG RESPONSE. The “Send Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki to Worldcon” GoFundMe appeal passed its $7,000 goal in just over a day. A total of $7,460 has been raised from 156 donors at this writing.

(2) WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE. [By Mike Kennedy.] OK, so it wasn’t as big as the Moon (or even a pizza pie) but the “love tap” that the James Webb Space Telescope received was from an object bigger than expected. “NASA’s new powerful space telescope gets hit by larger than expected micrometeoroid” at The Verge.

NASA expected the JWST to be hit by quite a few micrometeoroids over its lifetime, but also expected them to be typically smaller than a grain of sand. One of the impacts received so far, though, was from an object bigger than that (though NASA hasn’t said just how big). It damaged one of the mirrors enough to cause a “marginally detectable effect in the data.“ Controllers are still working on it, but they feel they can make sufficient adjustments to the mirror to partially cancel the data distortion.

…Since its launch, JWST has already been hit by at least four different micrometeoroids, according to a NASA blog post, but all of those were small and about the size of what NASA expected the observatory to encounter. A micrometeoroid is typically a small fragment of an asteroid, usually smaller than a grain of sand. The one that hit JWST in May, however, was larger than what the agency had prepared for, though the agency didn’t specify its exact size. NASA admits that the strike, which occurred between May 23rd and May 25th, has caused a “marginally detectable effect in the data” and that engineers are continuing to analyze the effects of the impact….

(3) THE DECLARATION OF SWEETWEIRD. Charlie Jane Anders promulgated “The Sweetweird Manifesto” this week. The post names plenty of works she regards as examples and creates a retroactive history of the form.

…And here’s where I should admit that sweetweird isn’t actually a formal movement, and nobody except for me has been using that term. I wrote in my recent writing advice book Never Say You Can’t Survive that I’m burned out on “grimdark” storytelling that revels in nastiness and extreme violence, and instead I’m ready for “sweetweird.”… 

What is Sweetweird?

The core idea of sweetweird is: the world makes no sense, but we can be nurturing, frivolous and kind. We don’t have to respond to the ludicrous illogic of the world around us by turning mean and nasty, or by expecting everyone else to be horrible. At the very least, we can carve out friendly, supportive spaces in the midst of chaotic nonsense, and maybe help each other survive.

Instead of demanding that the universe stop being a farrago, we embrace the strangeness and make it our own. The unrealness of our consensus reality liberates us, because it undermines the fiction of “normality” and creates a space for us to be our authentic eccentric selves. Decency without conformity, joy that doesn’t depend on a false sense of stability. Affectionate silliness….. 

(4) FREE READS. Aliette de Bodard alerted fans that two of her short stories are available to read for free:

“Sword of Bone, Halls of Thorns” at The Sunday Morning Transport is a story about an exorcist, a talking sword, creepy vegetation and how the choices we make haunt us beyond death and rebirth. 

“The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute” is a reprint available in Uncanny Magazine. Basically it’s Utena-inspired sapphic shenanigans set in a 19th Century Vietnamese-esque academy. (if you don’t know the anime Utena, let’s just say it involves magical duelling, a princess and a whole hell of a lot of queerness, and it’s one of my absolute favourites–a formative watch for me). 

(5) ARTIST Q&A. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association’s SPECPO blog posted “An Interview with Austin Hart, Star*Line 44.3 Cover Artist, by Jean-Paul Garnier (editor)”.

What led you into the visual arts, and what inspires you to create?

I just admired people that could draw from an early age. I had a couple of uncles that were good artists, and my dad is an architect and my mom is good at drawing even though she doesn’t do it much. I remember some kids in my classes in elementary school that were good artists early on and just trying to keep up with them. Marvel and Image comics and trading cards were very popular and I liked drawing characters and weapons from RPGs. I remember finding out about Robert Crumb, and later Frank Frazetta, early on and that raised the bar in my head for what was possible, but I could never be as good as they are. I am more impressed by pros who can do quick lose expressive sketches with very few lines than people who can make a fully rendered drawing or painting. I am very envious of those types of pros.

(6) SFF’S OWN LOST CAUSE MYTH. Camestros Felapton took notes on a 95-minute YouTube chat between host Ethan Van Sciver and guest Larry Correia: “Watching You Tube so you don’t have to: Larry & Ethan edition”.

…What sustained me through what was an extraordinarily dull experience was the question on whether the elephants in the room would get mentioned. Put these guys together and there are two elephants: one quite significant and based in Switzerland and one less so and based in California.

… In short, EVS and LC had a lot in common to talk about! You won’t be surprised to discover that they didn’t talk about it either…

…After that, we get a garbled history of the Puppy campaigns. Events get shoehorned together and the absence of Vox Day from the story looms ever larger. It becomes this big mysterious thing as to why people might think of the Sad Puppy 2 campaign as being racist and misogynistic (hint: Vox Day aside from anything else). The absence of Day from the narrative enables this spin that the pushback against the Sad Puppy campaign from a diversity perspective was wholly irrational…

(7) THE WORLD NEEDS A HERO. DC dropped this trailer for Black Adam today. Only in theaters October 21.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1984 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Thirty-eight years ago on this day, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, the sequel to the Hugo-winning Raiders of the Lost Ark, premiered. It’s actually a prequel to that film. Once again it’s directed by Steven Spielberg from a story by George Lucas. The screenplay was by the husband and wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, best known for American Graffiti which yes involved both George Lucas and Harrison Ford. 

Harrison Ford was of course back along with Kate Capshaw, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Philip Stone and Ke Huy Quan. Capshaw would marry Spielberg seven years later and yes they are still married, bless them! 

I’ll admit that Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom was nearly not as fun for me as Raiders of the Lost Ark but critics loved it, with Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun-Times review saying it was “the most cheerfully exciting, bizarre, goofy, romantic adventure movie since Raiders, and it is high praise to say that it’s not so much a sequel as an equal. It’s quite an experience.”  

And Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily Postwas equally exuberant: “Indie, you will be happy to learn, hasn’t changed a bit. Played with gruff determination by the appealingly rugged Harrison Ford, he continues to set quite a pace for himself in Spielberg’s rip-roaring, boldly imaginative sequel to his blockbuster hit.” 

It’s worth noting that It did get banned in India which as one who spent considerable time in Sri Lanka is something I fully understand as there are truly disgusting Indian stereotypes in that film.

It was fantastically profitable as it cost just under thirty million in production and publicity costs and made ten times that at the box office in its initial run! 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes are very fond of it, giving it an eighty-four percent rating. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 8, 1910 – John W. Campbell, Jr.  Author of half a dozen novels, a score of shorter stories like “Who Goes There?” and “Forgetfulness.” For 34 years he edited Astounding, renamed Analog, and a short-lived fantasy companion, Unknown (see Fred Smith’s Once There Was a Magazine). Ushered in the Golden Age of SF. Won 17 Hugos, of which nine were Retrospective, all but one for editing (the exception: Retro-Hugo for “Who Goes There?”). On the other hand, in his ASF editorials he supported many forms of crank medicine, and promoted Dianetics, and specious views about slavery, race, and segregation, all of which was well-known in sf fandom. In the Sixties he rejected Samuel R. Delany‘s Nova for serialization saying that he did not feel his readership “would be able to relate to a black main character.” Focusing on his foundational contributions, his name was put on the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, but after 46 years it was renamed the Astounding Award when a winner called him out for “setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day.” (Died 1971) [OGH]
  • Born June 8, 1915 — Frank Riley. He’s best known for They’d Rather Be Right (co-written with Mark Clifton) which won a Hugo Award for Best Novel at Clevention (1955). Originally published in serialized form in Astounding unlike his eight short SF stories that were all published in If. Sadly he’s not made it into the digital realm yet except for scattered stories. (Died 1996.)
  • Born June 8, 1917 — George D. Wallace. He’s here for playing Commando Cody in the early Fifties Radar Men from the Moon movie serial. He would later show up as the Bosun on Forbidden Planet, and had minor roles late in his career in Multiplicity, Bicentennial Man and Minority Report. He also played a Star Fleet Admiral in “The Man of the People” episode of The Next Generation. (Died 2005.)
  • Born June 8, 1926 — Philip Levene. He wrote nineteen episodes of The Avengers including creating the Cybernauts which won him a Writer’s Guild Award, and served as script consultant for the series in 1968–69. He also has three genre acting credits, one as a Supervisor in “The Food” episode of Quatermass II; the second as a Security Guard in the X the Unknown film, and finally as Daffodil in Avenger’s “Who’s Who” episode. (Died 1973.)
  • Born June 8, 1928 — Kate Wilhelm. Author of the Hugo–winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. She also won a Hugo for Best Related Book and a Locus Award for Best Nonfiction for Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. SFWA renamed their Solstice Award the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. She established the Clarion Workshop with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson. (Died 2018.)
  • Born June 8, 1946 — Elizabeth A. Lynn, 76. She is well known for being one of the first genre writers to introduce gay and lesbian characters as an aspect of her stories. So in honor of her, the widely known A Different Light chain of LGBT bookstores took its name from her novel of that name. Her best known work is The Chronicles of Tornor series. Her Watchtower novel won a World Fantasy Award as did “The Woman Who Loved the Moon” story. 
  • Born June 8, 1947 — Sara Paretsky, 75. Best best known for her private detective novels focused on V.I. Warshawski, she has one genre novel in Ghost Country. It too involves V.I. Warshawski and may or may not involve things of supernatural nature. I haven’t encountered it, so I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has. 
  • Born June 8, 1973 — Lexa Doig, 49. Cowgirl the hacker on TekWar,the post-Trek Shatner series that he actually made sense in as opposed to Barbary Coast. She was also Andromeda Ascendant/Rommie on Andromeda and Sonya Valentine on Continuum, and the voice of Dale Arden in the animated Flash Gordon series. One-offs in Earth: Final Conflict, The 4400, Stargate SG-1, Eureka, V, Smallville, Supernatural and Primeval: New World. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Mannequin on the Moon has a wonderful word processing gag.
  • Crankshaft is about someone who hasn’t kept up with the times. (Which it usually is, come to think of it.)

(11) HEAD OUT ON THE HIGHWAY. This bookseller delivers – the entire store! “Rita Collins Drives a Traveling Bookstore Around the United States” at Today.

From May to October, you can find Rita Collins, 70, in the front seat of a white Sprinter van, driving across America. In this era of RVs and #vanlife Instagram photos, Collins’ ride is set apart. Rattling around, in the back of her van, is a fully functional used bookstore.

While stopping in small towns and cities around the U.S., Collins relishes in the wonder that comes across people’s faces when they realize this van is not like any other. Whether she’s parked outside of a book festival, coffee shop or farmer’s market, Collins finds herself having the same conversation, encouraging people to climb the wooden steps and take a peek inside….

Like most traditional bookstores, St. Rita’s Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary has floor-to-ceiling shelves organized by genre, overhead lighting and a carpet on the floor. The main difference, of course, is that it’s on wheels. The bookstores’ 600 volumes are set at a 15 degree angle to keep them from falling as Collins drives from state to state — so far, she’s been to 30, and has traveled cross-country three times. 

(12) HERE COMES THE PITCH. “’Ms. Marvel’ directors presented a PowerPoint to Kevin Feige to convince him to include animation, inspired by ‘Into the Spider-Verse’” at MSN.com.

…With past shows like “Moon Knight,” “Hawkeye,” “Loki,” and “WandaVision” taking on a more serious tone, here comes a standout show that’s refreshingly light.

You can give some of that credit to filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.

The Moroccan-Belgian filmmakers (known collectively as Adil and Bilall) instantly saw “Ms. Marvel” as a show that should be filled with color, life, and celebration of culture….

Adil and Billal felt animation would make the show pop. So they compiled a presentation with things that inspired them and headed to the Marvel Studios offices to pitch how they would direct the series to studio head Kevin Feige and his team.

“Kevin walked in and I have to admit, I was a little starstruck,” Bilall said. “We did this whole PowerPoint presentation and we told them that this is our influences for the show. ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ was a big one because of the animation.”

“For us, the animation was something we always wanted to put into it,” Adil added. “We wanted to portray that dream world of Kamala Khan and the comic book aspect to it. We were afraid that Kevin would say no because it’s different from the other shows of the MCU.”

(13) THEY ROCK TO THE TREES. A 2015 article at Hollywood.com involving Andy Serkis, The Imaginarium, motion capture, and animation — with a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey — tells how an “Andy Serkis meeting inspired Coldplay’s chimp video”.

A chance meeting between British rocker Chris Martin and actor Andy Serkis inspired the band to embrace motion-capture technology for a new music video.

The musicians were transformed into chimps in the promo for their new single Adventure Of A Lifetime using techniques pioneered in Hollywood movies such as Avatar and The Lord of The Rings.

It has now been revealed the idea came about after frontman Chris bumped into Andy on a plane, and the pair discussed the actor’s experiences with motion-capture on films such as King Kong and the Planet of the Apes series.

The rockers spent six months making the short clip, and used “full motion performance capture rigs” to transform themselves….

Coldplay – Adventure Of A Lifetime (Making Of Video)

Coldplay – Adventure Of A Lifetime (Official Video) – YouTube

(14) HERMAN, LILY, & GRANDPA, OH MY. ScreenRant invites us to watch “’The Munsters’ Return in First Trailer for Rob Zombie Movie”. The Munsters will premiere this fall on Universal All Access.

…Today, Universal released the first teaser for the film, which is practically a shot-for-shot remake of the original Munsters opening credits, complete with the classic Munsters theme song. It makes it pretty clear that if you were expecting Zombie to turn The Munsters into a stereotypical Rob Zombie movie full of blood and guts, you were mistaken. (Zombie has already said, this is not an R-rated reimagining; it’s a PG-rated tribute.)…

(15) X MINUS TWO. Paramount Plus promises this is “the dumbest science fiction movie ever made!” Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, streaming on June 23,

In perhaps the dumbest space movie ever made, Beavis and Butt-head are sentenced to Space Camp by a “creative” judge in 1998, leading to a trip on the Space Shuttle, with predictably disastrous results. After going through a black hole, they reemerge in our time, where they look for love, misuse iPhones, and are hunted by the Deep State. Spoiler: They don’t score.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Alasdair Beckett-King asks, “What happens if you merged King of the Hill and Lord of the Rings?” in “Return of the King of the Hill of the Rings”.

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

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Hears from Amazon; GoFundMe Is Successful

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Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

The GoFundMe launched after Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki reported Amazon KDP shut down his account and took his royalties raised $5,568 in one day. In the meantime, his author page and books have since been restored on Amazon.com.

Jason Sanford, who organized the fundraiser said in an update:

Thanks again to everyone who donated to support Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki! We have wrapped up the fundraising campaign. The science fiction and fantasy genre has some amazing people in our fandom, as proved by this campaign funding in less than 24 hours.

Because the campaign was successful, Ekpeki will soon release both the Kindle edition of the Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology and the Bridging Worlds anthology for free download. He’ll also be sharing more info on his dealings with Amazon during all this.

As Amazon proved in their horrible dealings with Ekpeki, it is far too easy for companies to cut the access authors, editors and SF/F fans around the world need to fully take part in our genre. No company should have a monopoly on who can be a SF/F lover and fan!

Sanford’s comments are also available in a Twitter thread here. 

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki says he received a phone call from someone at Amazon who saw his social media campaign and that this is the explanation he was given about the shutdown:

Pixel Scroll 5/13/21 Sympathy For The Pixel

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(1) STRANGE DOINGS AT EBAY. The online sales site eBay has reorganized a large number of categories and reclassified products into them. The new U.S. table is here: US_Category_Changes_May2021_NFT-update.

If you do a search for “comics” on that page, you’ll find that eBay has decided to retire the categories for “Superhero,” “Platinum Age”, “Golden Age”, “Silver Age”, etc. All listings are being moved into a general Comics & Graphic Novels category.

(2) LEVAR BURTON BOOK CLUB. “LeVar Burton launches a new book club: See first three picks” reports Entertainment Weekly.

The LeVar Burton Book Club launches Tuesday via the “social reading app” Fable, with selections handpicked by the actor. To start off, he’s chosen three books that “represent how my identity as a reader has been shaped,” he says: James Baldwin‘s semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Octavia Butler‘s modern sci-fi classic Parable of the Sower, and the essay and poetry collection The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. (Baldwin’s book will serve as the first month’s pick, with three new titles being revealed every three months.)

“For me, if I’m going to start a book club, I’m going to begin with who I am and my story as a reader,” Burton tells EW. “Obviously, there are hundreds of books that have shaped my identity as a reader, and these three are really representative of an important aspect of that journey for me.”

And while all three are by Black authors, Burton takes care to emphasize that to view his book club as an exclusively Black book club “does me and the literature that I promote a great disservice.”

“I know I have demonstrated over time that my attitude towards literature is ecumenical,” he says. “As it happens, the first three books are by people who look like me, and if one wants to pigeonhole that, then that would be, in my estimation, their shortcoming. It’s nothing more than a starting point that reflects who I am.”

(3) KENYAN BOOKTUBERS. SFF history is being made! Thread starts here.

(4) MACHADO Q&A. CBC Radio posted a transcript of their interview with Carmen Maria Machado: “Author fights to keep her queer memoir on a Texas high school reading list — dildo and all”.

A couple weeks ago, author Carmen Maria Machado got a message from a friend that a video was circulating online that involved her memoir and an angry mom wielding a pink strap-on dildo.

The clip was from a Feb. 25 school board meeting in Leander, Texas. The woman was upset that Machado’s memoir, In The Dream House, was on an approved reading list for high school students.

The book, which chronicles Machado’s experience of being in an abusive relationship with another woman, contains a sex scene involving a dildo. The protesting parent read it aloud during the meeting while waving the sex toy around, according to the Austin American Statesman. 

That’s how Machado learned that her book is one of several that are up for review in Leander because of parents’ complaints. They are part of a book club program that allows students to pick and read one book each semester from a list of 15 chosen by their teachers for their grade level.

The school board told KVUE ABC that it has already removed six books from the program and is devising a policy to exclude “inappropriate literature for the assigned students’ ages.”

Also on the potential chopping block are books by Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult and Jacqueline Woodson, who, along with Machado, have penned an open letter with the free expression organization PEN America demanding the books remain available to students.

Machado spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off on Wednesday. Here is part of their conversation….

After this particular meeting, there’s a spokesperson for Leander [Independent] School District who said: “Our goal is to explore what the community feels are age-appropriate materials for classroom reading.” Is there a valid argument? Do you think that In The Dream House is a book that is age-appropriate for that group?

Professional educators chose the book for their students. This all started because a bunch of teachers were like: We want this book on this list. And that is their job. That is what they’re supposed to be doing.

Certainly there are books that are appropriate for certain ages, but I think saying that students at 17 and 18 can’t read anything with sex in it, and that there’s no value in a book like that for those students when your teachers have said otherwise, the people who you pay to educate your kids, that strikes me as very odd and very disingenuous.

The community is also not a monolith. Like, there are gay teens at that school. There are gay people in Leander, Texas. There gay people in Texas…. And it feels a little, I think, strange that this very conservative religious group can sort of make the agenda for all the other students.

Because the parents who want this, their kids did not have to read the book. They could have chosen a different book. They’re trying to remove the book from the list for all the students. So I don’t think it’s really about age-appropriateness. I mean, there’s a reason they they target books with gay content.

(5) SFWA AUCTION. The “Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association Online Silent Auction!” is in progress and will continue through May 17. It has raised $5,060 so far.

In addition to autographed books and manuscripts and other collectibles, the featured items include virtual career coaching and manuscript feedback sessions like these:

  • Virtual Career Coaching from N. K. Jemisin

A one-on-one 30-minute virtual career session with 2020 MacArthur Fellow N. K. Jemisin, the first writer to ever to win three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel.

  • Virtual Career Coaching from Catherynne M. Valente

A one-on-one 30-minute virtual career session with Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction.

  • Virtual Manuscript Feedback from Mary Robinette Kowal

The winning bidder on this item will enjoy a 30 minute Zoom discussion providing feedback on a story or an excerpt of a longer work, up to 3,000 words. An amazing opportunity to receive personal feedback from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal.

(6) CHAIR-ITABLE CAUSE: [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Colin Howard did much of the cover art for Doctor Who‘s VHS releases. See his covers here for “The Android Invasion” and “The Green Death”. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis ten years ago which has affected his mobility. Currently, there’s a fundraiser to help him: “Fundraiser by Michelle Howard : Please help me get Colin back outside in nature”.

… Colin was diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis 10 years ago, this ridiculously talented artist, nature lover and extrovert.

Progressively as MS does it has taken away his mobility, his confidence and he has become more and more isolated. Unable to get outside with ease, making everything he does exhausting and unenjoyable.

We did buy a manual wheel chair, however it is heavy and he is now unable to use his arms to self propel and it’s so cumbersome and there is no pleasure or enthusiasm for him to use it. It’s become easier for him to stay home…. not good.

After doing tons of research I stumbled across this amazing wheel chair. For those of you who know Col, you’ll know what a huge fan of formula one he is. So you’ll know why I’ve chosen this model of wheel chair…. it has formula one technology… carbon fibre and super light….

(7) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

May 13, 1994 — On this day in 1994, The Crow premiered. It was directed by Alex Proyas, written by David J. Schow and John Shirley. It was produced by Jeff Most, Edward R. Pressman and Grant Hill.  It starred Brandon Lee in his final film appearance as he was killed in a tragic accident during filming. It’s based on James O’Barr’s The Crow comic book, and tells the story of Eric Draven (Lee), a rock musician who is revived to avenge the rape and murder of his fiancée, as well as his own death. Critics in general loved it, it did well at the box office and audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a ninety percent rating. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 13, 1907 – Daphne du Maurier.  Two novels, a score of shorter stories for us; a dozen other novels, three dozen other shorter stories, three plays, nonfiction e.g. The Winding Stair about Francis Bacon, memoirs.  “There are few strains more intolerable in life than waiting for the arrival of unwelcome guests,” The House on the Strand ch.13 (1969) – quoted as a reader’s favorite line on her Website.  (Died 1989) [JH]
  • Born May 13, 1937 — Roger Zelazny. Where do I start? The first half of The Amber Chronicles are a favorite as is The Isle of The Dead,  Eye Of The Cat, Home is The Hangman, To Die in Italbar, and well, there’s very there’s very little by him that I can’t pick him and enjoy for a night’s reading. There’s to my knowledge only one thing he recorded reading and that’s a book he said was one of his favorite works, A Night in the Lonesome October. (Died 1995.) (CE)
  • Born May 13, 1940 – Rachel Ingalls.  One novel, ten shorter stories for us.  British Authors’ Club Award.  British Book Marketing Council named one of those ten, the novella “Mrs. Caliban”, among the twenty greatest from America since World War II.  (Died 2019) [JH]
  • Born May 13, 1945 – Maria Tatar, Ph.D., age 76.  Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages & Literatures, and Chair of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore & Mythology, at Harvard.  Among her publications, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, The Annotated African American Folktales (with Henry Gates).  “Alice [notice I don’t have to identify it any further – JH] is the world’s greatest book.  It’s one of the deepest books.”  [JH]
  • Born May 13, 1946 — Marv Wolfman, 75. He worked for Marvel Comics on The Tomb of Dracula series for which he and artist Gene Colan created Blade, and the Crisis on Infinite Earths series in which he very temporarily untangled DC’s complicated history with George Pérez. And He worked with Pérez on the direct-to-DVD movie adaptation of the popular “Judas Contract” storyline from their tenure on Teen Titans. (I’m not going to list his IMDB credits here. Hell he even wrote a Reboot episode!) (CE) 
  • Born May 13, 1949 — Zoë Wanamaker, 72. She’s been Elle in amazing Raggedy Rawney which was a far better fantasy than Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ever waswhere she was Madame Hooch. And she was Cassandra in two Ninth Doctor stories, ”The End of the World” and “New Earth”. (CE)
  • Born May 13, 1951 — Gregory Frost, 70. His retelling of The Tain is marvelous. Pair it with Ciaran Carson and China Miéville’s takes on the same legend taking an existing legend and making it fresh it through modern fiction writing is amazing. Fitcher’s Brides, his Bluebeard retelling is an fantastic novel though quite horrific. (CE) 
  • Born May 13, 1951 – A.J. Austin, age 70.  Two novels (with Ben Bova), nine shorter stories.  Interviewed Forry Ackerman and Mike Resnick for Thrust.  Ten years hosting a midday call-in radio program in Connecticut.  [JH]
  • Born May 13, 1957 — Frances Barber, 64. Madame Kovarian, a prime antagonist during the time of The Eleventh Doctor showing up in seven episodes in totality. Fittingly she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. I’ve got her doing one-offs on Space Precinct, Red Dwarf and The IT Crowd.  (CE) 
  • Born May 13, 1981 – Kieran Yanner, age 40.  A dozen covers, half a dozen interiors; games; Magic: the Gathering cards; concept art.  Here is Before They Were Giants.  Here is Demon in White.  Here is Ghen, Arcanum Weaver.  [JH]
  • Born May 13, 1983 – Nate Ball, age 38.  Mechanical engineer, pole vaulter, beatboxer.  Eight Alien in My Pocket science-adventure chapter books for kids.  Here is Blast Off!  Here is Ohm vs. Amp. [JH]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) BBC VS. FANFIC? iNews says “Doctor Who fans feel ‘demonised’ by BBC crackdown on fan fiction”.

But recently a number of fanfic creators have received worrying demands from the BBC to remove their work from the public domain, arguing that they are infringing on copyright. Under the question “Can I create Doctor Who fan fiction?” on the show’s online FAQ page, the BBC advises that while anyone is “welcome to write Doctor Who fiction for your own enjoyment, but we should remind you that it is not permitted for you to publish this work either in print or online.”

The rules – which were published in 2014 – were unknown to the majority of creators but were widely shared on Twitter this week in response to the BBC’s demands. In response, 21-year-old student Jamie Cowan has started a petition calling for the BBC Studios, the production company behind Doctor Who to offer the fans a seat at the table in these decisions.

Cowan’s petition is at Change.org: “Petition of concern about BBC Studios approach to Doctor Who fan content”. His reference to video clips suggests the BBC’s issue is about more than written Who stories. The petition only has 166 signatures as of this moment.

… The current experience of BBC Studios staff contacting fanfiction and fan audioplays about the own original non-profit ventures – is concerning.

The manual targeting of those who use clips of the show for review purposes or for ‘Top 10’ videos that strongly promote the episodes that they are discussing – is concerning.

We, of the Doctor Who fandom – both creators and the viewers of said creators – call upon you to make a strong reconsideration of the actions you are taking against passionate fans who are doing no damage to the sales or marketability of the brand….

(11) DISNEY RIDES UPDATE HITS A BUMP. “Disney takes ‘woke’ steps toward inclusivity, but sparks a conservative backlash” finds Yahoo! Entertainment.

…The “wench auction” was among the first to go in the exodus of classic-but-problematic Disney scenes. In 2018, the popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride got an overhaul when a redhead who had once been sold as a bride became a pirate instead.

Two years later, the theme park giant announced it was overhauling the Splash Mountain flume ride to lose its story line inspired by “Song of the South” — an outdated Disney film that the company no longer makes available to view because of its rosy view of post-Civil War plantation life. More recently, the company announced updates to the classic Jungle Cruise ride to remove “negative depictions of ‘natives’” and add new elements, just in time for a new movie out this summer….

But these changes aren’t taking place without pushback. Fans created a petition to “save” Splash Mountain from the new theme. Disney-focused sites are full of users who decry what they see as a progressive agenda in the parks, and announcements about updates are typically greeted with threats of a boycott. People who vocally advocate for revisions are often subjected to abusive messages….

The updates in the parks follow a shift in the company’s films over the past several decades. Anne Zimmermann, a lecturer in the Rollins College English department in Winter Park, Florida, said Disney’s princesses started becoming more inclusive, assertive and even feminist over the past couple of decades.

“Today’s generation, they are kind of expecting this of Disney, and they will tell you it’s long overdue,” said Zimmermann, who uses Disney stories in her classes.

At the same time, Disney has recognized that some of its older films include outdated and racist cultural stereotypes and has added warnings on its streaming platform or removed those movies from children’s profiles.

“They’re moving not just toward not being racist, but anti-racist,” Zimmermann said. “Changing the parks continues their own narrative of change.”

Her students visit Disney parks for field research — or, more recently, explore rides online — and flag those that strike them as problematic.

For now, there’s a laundry list of other nominees for eventual updates: the Peter Pan ride for stereotypical depictions of Indigenous people; a ride in Epcot’s Mexico area that includes broad stereotypes; Dumbo, which is based on a movie that includes racist tropes. Fan sites circulate longer lists of what rides might be under the microscope next, occasionally with outraged remarks: It’s a Small World, Hall of Presidents, Country Bear Jamboree.

Disney isn’t saying what is next, but the company has dedicated a team to making sure that updates are done right.

“You create experiences that will make people feel welcome, seen and heard and to let them know that their stories are just as important,” Carmen Smith, creative development and inclusion strategies executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a video. “And so my responsibility is to look at what do we have now and does it resonate with our guest in making them more reflective of the world we live in.”

(12) TOXIC AVOIDER. Alan Yu interviews Amy Ratcliffe about her book A Kid’s Guide to Fandom at NPR: “How Kids Can Avoid Toxic Fandoms”.

…So how do fans navigate these communities, to find the good parts while being aware of the bad? It’s about teaching kids that there are … many other people who like the same things that they do in the same enthusiastic ways and hopefully, helping kids feel more comfortable and confident.

Amy Ratcliffe, managing editor for the pop culture site Nerdist, addresses this as part of her new book, A Kid’s Guide to Fandom. She says it’s the book that she wishes she could have had when she was a young fan looking for others like her. Ratcliffe remembers growing up as a fan of the Wheel of Time series, using her family’s dial-up internet to visit online forums.

She says her objective is for kids to be aware of fandom, “that other people like the same things that you like … even if it’s one other person, like you’re not alone.”

“I still hear stories about young girls being bullied because they like Star Wars; they think they’re the only kid,” she says. “It’s about teaching kids that there are … many other people who like the same things that they do in the same enthusiastic ways and hopefully, helping kids feel more comfortable and confident.”

No one gets to decide who is a “real” fan

Ratcliffe explains in her book that some fans can become gatekeepers, people who want to decide who is or is not a “real fan.” Fans, she says, should never have to prove themselves.Ratcliffe herself has run into gatekeepers; once, at a Star Wars convention, a man saw her Rebel Alliance tattoo, “looked at the tattoo, looked at my then-boyfriend who was with me, and was like … completely serious by the way, no sarcasm, like, ‘oh that was really nice of you to get that tattoo for your boyfriend.'”

Her advice for younger fans who want to find communities is to start with groups or places that they know: a local library, or a game shop they go to with their family; to trust their instincts when they feel something is off; and to get an older sibling, a parent, or guardian involved….

(13) HE FINALLY GOT TO SPACE. In Heritage Auctions’ May 21 – 22 Space Exploration Signature Auction one of the items up for bid is this Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Flown Silver Robbins Medallion with a lot of history behind it:

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Flown Silver Robbins Medallion, Serial Number 43F, Personally Presented by Deke Slayton to and Directly from the Estate of NASA Legend Chris Kraft, with Slayton’s Signed COA and Handwritten Letter of Appreciation. This 35mm sterling silver medal is one of only ninety-three flown (of 285 minted) aboard the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first international manned space effort, July 17-19, 1975, with U.S. crewmembers Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, & Deke Slayton and Soviet crewmembers Alexei Leonov & Valery Kubasov. The obverse features the mission insignia depicting the docking maneuver above the Earth and the names of the mission and crewmembers. The reverse features the title “First Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Space Flight” and the engraved dates. The serial number is on the rim along with the sterling and Robbins hallmarks. This mission effectively ended the “Space Race” between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. We seldom are able to offer flown examples of this mission’s medal and this one is likely the nicest we have ever handled. A great candidate for grading and encapsulation.

If this were just a Robbins medal with astronaut or even crewmember-provenance, it would be desirable and valuable. When the history behind it is revealed, it becomes a very special item indeed. Deke Slayton was one of the original “Mercury Seven” but was the only one who never flew into space due to being grounded in 1962 with an atrial fibrillation. Ten years later, he was cleared to fly on Apollo-Soyuz with Dr. Kraft’s blessings. On December 1, 1975, Slayton met with Kraft and presented this medal to him loose in an envelope hand-addressed ” Dr. Chris Kraft/ Personal“. Additionally, inside was a December 1st-dated typed letter signed on NASA letterhead that reads: “I hereby certify that Apollo-Soyuz medallion, serial number 43F, was flown in space aboard the Apollo Command Module from July 15, 1975, through July 17, 1975, and that this medallion was presented to Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., on December 1, 1975. [signed] D. K. Slayton“. 

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