Tag Archives: Gollum

Pixel Scroll 5/29/25 They Came And Took Our Spindizzy Away From Us

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(1) THE BAR’S MY DESTINATION. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another “distraction” for GRRM fans to complain about: “George R. R. Martin’s Cocktail Bar Brings Ancient Apothecary Vibes To Santa Fe’s Drink Scene” says Tasting Table.

Milk of the Poppy logo

…The legendary author, whose literary works have incited television shows, fervent fandoms, and plenty of food- and cocktail-related tributes (including “Game of Thrones”-inspired drinking games), has recently set his sights on a new form of creative expression.

Based in [George R.R.] Martin’s current home of New Mexico, Milk of the Poppy is a cocktail bar named for a medicinal liquid referred to in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series, on which HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is based. The bar boasts medieval-inspired decor with an apothecary theme, ideal for patrons to live out their fandom fantasies and responsibly partake in various libations and food offerings.

Though there have been “Game of Thrones” pop-up bars here and there over the years, one of the most unique things about this establishment is that it isn’t simply another fan-run one-off. Conceptualized by creative director Al LaFleur, the bar has been in the works for some time, even before LaFleur left Los Angeles for New Mexico. If anything, Martin’s investment in this craft cocktail bar indicates a sort of “seal of approval” from the author, whose writing heavily influenced the bar’s robust food and drink offerings.

The dungeon-like feel of the bar is reminiscent of popular “Game of Thrones” scenery, giving patrons enough reason to explore the space for a first-hand (or first-sip) experience of what it would truly be like to eat and drink as one of their favorite characters. Having opened its doors in March 2025, the bar is still relatively new to the Santa Fe bar scene, testing the potent waters of combining fantasy food and drink with real-world applications.

With a menu featuring specialty-themed, potion-like drinks, beer, wine, and a bevy of delicious appetizers, this pop culture bar will hopefully be much more than a flash in the pan, going on to thrive and connect with New Mexico locals and travelers seeking it out. Its namesake drink is a vibrant green cocktail called MOTP Milk Punch that features white armagnac, quebranta pisco, matcha, melon, calpico, and allspice that appears to be worth the visit in itself.

Although fans may be quick to criticize the author for taking longer to complete the long-anticipated “The Winds of Winter,” it’s worth remembering that true art cannot be rushed….

Website: “Milk Of The Poppy”. It’s located in Santa Fe adjacent to GRRM’s Jean Cocteau Cinema and Beastly Books.

(2) MOST PURGED BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE TO NAVAL CADETS AGAIN. AP News reports“Most books pulled from Naval Academy library are back on the shelves in latest DEI turn”.

All but a few of the nearly 400 books that the U.S. Naval Academy removed from its library because they dealt with anti-racism and gender issues are back on the shelves after the newest Pentagon-ordered review — the latest turn in a dizzying effort to rid the military of materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Based on the new review, about 20 books from the academy’s library are being pulled aside to be checked, but that number includes some that weren’t identified or removed in last month’s initial purge of 381 books, defense officials told The Associated Press….

…The purge led to the removal of books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism, and Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Others included “Memorializing the Holocaust,” which deals with Holocaust memorials; “Half American,” about African Americans in World War II; “A Respectable Woman,” about the public roles of African American women in 19th century New York; and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” about the 2012 shooting of a Black 17-year-old in Florida that raised questions about racial profiling.

The Navy on Wednesday could not confirm which books have been returned to the library or if Angelou’s book or the others will remain pulled from shelves….

Three sff works on the original list of 381 were Light From Uncommon Stars / RykaAoki; Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon; and A Psalm For The Wild-Built / Becky Chambers.

(3) AN AUGUST PRESENCE. A Deep Look by Dave Hook continues scanning the 1949 sff offerings with “’The Other Side of the Moon’, August Derleth editor, 1949 Pellegrini & Cudahy”.

The Short: The Other Side of the Moon, August Derleth editor, 1949 Pellegrini & Cudahy, includes 20 stories and an introduction by August Derleth. While I think Derleth’s definition of science fiction is somewhat different than mine, it’s mostly SF and all speculative fiction. My favorites include “Something from Above“, a novelette by Donald Wandrei, Weird Tales December 1930, and “The Earth Men“, a Martian Chronicles short story by Ray Bradbury, Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1948. My overall average rating is 3.57/5, or just below “Very good”. I recommend the twelve stories that were rated “Great” or “Very good”, but I would recommend The Other Side of the Moon itself only to those with a real enthusiasm for stories of the period….

(4) MY PRECIOUS. “PHD Students Bear the Brunt of Science’s ‘Gollum Effect’” reports Nature.

Almost half of the scientists who responded to a survey have witnessed territorial and undermining behav[1]iours by colleagues — most commonly during their PhD studies. Of those affected, nearly half said the perpetrator was a high-profile researcher, and one-third said it was their own supervisor.

Most of the respondents were ecologists, but the organizers suspect that surveys focusing on other disciplines would be similar.

The gatekeeping behaviours that the study documents “damage careers, particularly of early-career and marginalized researchers”, says lead author Jose Valdez, an ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. “Most alarming was that nearly one in five of those affected left academia or science entirely.”

Valdez and his colleagues call the possessiveness shown by many researchers the Gollum effect, after a character in the book The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), whose one goal in life is to hoard an object of power for himself. The study was published in One Earth ( J. W. Valdez et al. One Earth 8, 101314 (2025)….

… Respondents described data hoarding, ideas theft by supervisors and defamation at conferences. “Collaborator has ‘reserved’ important research avenues,” wrote one respondent, “and is actively withholding data from our entire research group”. Another wrote, “I was told I wouldn’t be able to publish anything until the collaborator published their study, which has been in prep for over six years now.”…

(5) DISPUTING THE NARRATIVE. In the view of ComicBook.com, “Sandman Showrunner Sets Record Straight on Netflix Cancellation & Neil Gaiman Accusations”.

The Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg said on Wednesday that the show was not actually canceled over the sexual misconduct allegations against Neil Gaiman. Netflix announced that this series would end with Season 2 back in January, and at the time, the accusations against Gaiman were just beginning to impact many of his adaptations. However, Heinberg told Entertainment Weekly that the streamer, the studio, and the creative team had decided to end the show shortly before Season 1 even premiered. He said that Season 2 was already in post-production when the reports about Gaiman began to circulate, so he doesn’t think it had any impact on the story or content of the new episodes. Still, he said that the announcement of the show’s ending came at “unfortunate timing, for sure.”

“It was a decision we made three years ago,” Heinberg said of the show’s cancellation. The reason, he explained, was actually the content of the original comic book by Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg. The book often goes off on tangents about other characters, where Dream (Tom Sturridge) is only distantly involved. “There are some volumes where he just appears in two scenes,” Heinberg pointed out….

(6) MISSION CONTROL. Kotaku brings us “Mission: Impossible’s Most Impossible Missions, Ranked”.

…This past week we’ve ranked everything from Tom Cruise’s hair in each movie to the franchise’s most irreplaceable characters. In honor of The Final Reckoning dominating the Memorial Day Weekend box offices, we decided to take a different look at the Mission: Impossible franchise by ranking the movies based on the impossibility of the mission. So, before you scream about Phillip Seymour Hoffman being a better villain than any other Mission: Impossible bad guy, or how Tom Cruise didn’t risk his life falling backwards off a helicopter for Fallout not to be the best movie ever, remember, it’s all about the mission, even if you don’t choose to accept it….

The slideshow begins with Mission:Impossible II in last place, and Kotaku’s frank comment —

Not only is it the worst Mission: Impossible, it’s also the least impossible mission.

(7) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Yesterday’s BBC 4 Good Read saw its first 10 minutes devoted to Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Panellist Adrian Chiles’ parents’ Croatian ancestry came in handy when it comes to the novel’s 21st century youth slang….

This week broadcaster and writer Adrian Chiles and musician and sound artist Marty Ware join Harriett Gilbert with their reading suggestions. Martyn nominates A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess which he says has influenced his career as a musician. He even named his band Heaven 17 from a reference in the book. If you can get past the brutality and violence it’s a novel that throws up many moral questions about the nature of good and evil. Both he and Adrian Chiles are fascinated by the use of Russian language throughout the book.

You can download the programme from here.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 29, 2009 — 2081 film

So we have an interesting short film. And no, I had no idea it existed until now as one of my email newsletter had a note about a Kurt Vonnegut story being turned into a film, not completely unsurprising as one of his works did almost become an opera.  So we have 2081 which is based off of his “Harrison Bergeron” story and which premiered on this date sixteen years ago at the Seattle International Film Festival. 

The story was first published in the October 1961 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and was in his Welcome to the Monkey House collection seven years later. Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition has drafts of many of stories there. 

The cast is James Cosmo, Julie Hagerty, Patricia Clarkson, and Armie Hammer. 

The story is one where a future polity is attempting by any means possible to ensure that everyone is absolutely equal. Ruthlessly as the rulers of the 1984 society were doing. That’s a bit of a SPOLER I know. It’s not quite in keeping of the Vonnegut story and that’s something I’ll not say why. 

So what did the critics think of it. Well I didn’t find a lot of them who said anything but I really liked what Mike Massie at the Gone with The Twins site said about this half hour film cost that just a hundred thousand to produce: “’What are you thinking about?’ ‘I don’t know.’ The basic plot, adapted by Chandler Tuttle (who also directed and edited) from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short story, is sensational, serving as a warning and as pitch-black satire. The notion of equality taken to hyperbolic extremes is certainly worthy of cinematic translation, as are the various manifestations of crushing governmental control. True freedom requires disparity.” 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes really liked it giving it a seventy-five percent rating.

You can watch the trailer here. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) KINGFISHER FOR THE ROCKET. Camestros Felapton’s Hugo reading / reviewing continues: “Hugo 2025 Novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher”.

…Not unlike reading Alien Clay, I’m reading a book by an author I’ve read so often that I see her playing on repeated themes and elements in a new setting. Hester’s interest is the breeding of geese rather than gardening but she is very much a recurring kind of Kingfisher character, a smart, often wise, older woman who would like a peaceful life but circumstances prevent it. We are also in Kingfisher re-spinning a classic fairy tale, in this case the Brothers Grimm collected story The Goose Girl (Hester provides the connection to the geese but Cordelia is the titular girl)…

(11) ROBERT BLOCH IN THE FACE OF CHANGING TIMES. Keith Roysdon traces “The Evolution of Robert Bloch” at CrimeReads.

…Bloch, whose novel was the basis of one of the most classic of classic films, told the [Castle of Frankenstein] interviewer that he felt the same insecurities and frustrations of any writer. By the end of the 1960s, he confessed he had his struggles.

“Markets have changed. I will say quite candidly that in the past year, I’ve written five short stories – three of them haven’t been placed because the markets have changed for that sort of material. I would like to write a great deal more fiction, but there is the problem of market accountability. So I write to specification.” Bloch spoke about how things had changed since he wrote for Weird Tales and other magazines in the 1930s. “I feel the times have changed. And they change for every writer. There is no writer living who will end up 30 years later with the same market conditions and the same audience and the same media.”

Bloch was critical of himself: “I’ve always suffered from a shortage of talent. I’m very limited.” He cited his “inadequate” education and the challenge of keeping up with trends. 

“Empathy is the only strength I have. The ability to put myself inside the characters and understand their motivations.”…

(12) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Film and TV model maker warns skill may disappear” reports the BBC.

A visual effects designer who worked on award-winning films and TV shows has warned the art of model-making is at risk of vanishing in the coming decades.

Mike Tucker has worked with Discover Bucks Museum in Aylesbury on an exhibition of original models and props from British science fiction shows, such as Doctor Who.

The artist, in his 60s, said he hoped the displays could inspire a future generation of visual effects artists.

“A lot of the companies, like myself, have either stopped because they’ve not been able to compete with the CGI guys, or just retired out of the business.”

“The number of us who know how to do it is getting smaller and smaller with every passing year,” he added….

…The Beyond the Stars exhibition includes models and props the Oxfordshire resident has worked on, including 1980s’ Daleks, Marvin the Paranoid Android and a model of Starbug from Red Dwarf.

Originally from Swansea, Mr Tucker entered the industry via the BBC’s in-house visual effects department in the 1980s, which closed in 2005.

He recalled: “It had over 100 members of staff when I joined. By the time we closed down we were down to 14 people, because the numbers of shows that required our particular expertise was getting smaller and smaller.

“It’s not dead completely yet. If left unchecked there is going to be a gap in about 10, 15, 20 years’ time of just finding people who know how to do it.”…

(13) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE AUCTION. Heritage Auctions wants the world to know about the June 5 “Masters of the Universe featuring the Artwork of Mark Taylor Action Figures & Toys Showcase Auction”.

Item predicted to fetch the highest bids — Savage/Wonder Bread He-Man Prototype First Shot 

Calling all He-Fans and She-Ravers! Whether you grew up shouting “I have the power!” or just recently fell down the rabbit hole of Eternian lore (blame that catchy theme song), now’s your chance to snag the treasures of a true toy titan.

Of the top three toy sellers in the resale market—He-Man and his colleagues in the Masters of the Universe are the toy that keeps on giving.The popularity of the brand—from a 1980s movie to the original cartoon and toy line, all the way to a new movie coming in 2026-speaks to the enduring appeal of these characters across pop culture, collectibles, and meme culture alike.

Our June 5 Masters of the Universe Showcase Auction is a love letter to the legacy of Mark Taylor—the visionary artist who gave us He-Man, Skeletor, Battle Cat, and a galaxy of unforgettable icons. This isn’t just a toy auction—it’s a trip through the nostalgia-fueled vortex of pop culture greatness.

Featured treasures include:

  • The Savage/Wonder Bread He-Man Prototype First Shot (AFA 80)—a brown-haired, rough-cut warrior straight from Mattel’s pre-launch experimental phase. With ties to a long-lost “Buy 3, Get 1 Free” mail-in offer and whispers of a doomed Conan toy line, this prototype is more than rare—it’s legendary. Graded AFA 80 NM and encased in a deluxe acrylic display with a COA from Tom Derby.

But the true magic? It’s in the art:

  • Original He-Man Concept Artwork by Mark Taylor – Before he became Eternia’s polished protector, He-Man was Torak, Hero of Prehistory—a barbarian bruiser in Viking armor. Taylor’s vision drew heavy inspiration from Frazetta’s fantasy epics, capturing He-Man’s raw, untamed beginnings.
  • Original Skeletor Concept Artwork – Inspired by a terrifying childhood encounter with what Taylor believed was a real corpse (seriously!), early Skeletor—also known as De-Man—was gaunt, ghostly, and haunting. With bare feet, shin guards, and echoes of a “King of Styx” motif, this is the villain as you’ve never seen him: straight from the sketchbook of madness.
  • Castle Grayskull Original Concept Sketch (1979) – The eerie, bone-like fortress came to life in pencil before it ever took plastic form. Signed and dated by Taylor, this haunting 24×19 inch sketch captures his dream of a fortress that wasn’t built—it grew. “I wanted it to be organic… like it’s starting to melt,” Taylor said. And you can own that vision.

Whether you’re a hardcore MOTU collector, a toy history buff, or just someone who knows a good barbarian-sorcerer rivalry when they see one, this auction is your portal to the past-and a future filled with bragging rights.

Explore the full catalog and preview all the epic lots: HA.com/49181

(14) RANKING ALL OF PHILIP K. DICK’S BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult has set himself the Herculean task of ranking all of Philip K. Dick’s books….

It is not a competition but you can see whether or not you agree with him and how he tried to make some very difficult decisions….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/25/24 If A Pixel Scrolls In A File And No Notification Goes Out, Is Yngvi Still A Louse?

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(1) ANTHRO NEW ENGLAND LEADERSHIP TURNOVER. Anthro New England, a furry convention held in Boston, issued statements yesterday and today about the removal of two top officers, Remy and Scales. The specific reasons are not given. Comments in social media are speculative.

Statement May 24

Statement May 25

Remy, one of the officers, replied online:

The account identified with Scales also made comments.

An individual whose X.com account is @psykhedelos announced they have also resigned their position with the con.

(2) CARTOON BY TEDDY HARVIA. Here’s a character who can have it both ways.

(3) SHATNER TO RECEIVE ROBERT HEINLEIN MEMORIAL AWARD. William Shatner accepted the National Space Society’s Robert Heinlein Memorial Award last night at the ISDC: “International Space Development Conference 2024 beams up Star Trek’s William Shatner and more in Los Angeles” reports Space.com.

The stars of Star Trek are about to get a taste of real-life space exploration when they beam into the 2024 International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles this weekend, and you have a chance join them to get your space fix. 

On Friday (May 24), actor William Shatner, who originated the role of Captain James T. Kirk and launched into space on a Blue Origin rocket in 2021, will receive the Robert Heinlein Memorial Award “for his deep impact on public perception of the human expansion into space, which boldly highlighted diversity and inclusion previously unseen on television,” conference officials said in a statement. The award, which is given annually by the nonprofit National Space Society at ISDC, is just one event featuring Star Trek actors. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can learn how to attend the ISDC conference at the at isdc.nss.org.

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” actor Melissa Navia, who portrays helm pilot Lt. Erica Ortegas, will host the 2024 ISDC conference. NSS officials have also recruited her fellow Trek alums in a May 26 panel “Science Fiction to Science Fact” featuring Nana Visitor (Major Kira Nerys on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), John Billingsley (Doctor Flox on “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and other Trek and sci-fi veterans to discuss “how science fiction has, and will continue to, transition into our everyday lives, and ultimately, the exploration of space.” 

But real science fact is the main draw for ISDC, which is expected to draw over 1,000 attendees to its talks at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.

“ISDC 2024 talks will cover the exploration, development, and settlement of the Moon, Mars, and cislunar space; deep space exploration; innovative spaceflight technology; the commercialization of space and space infrastructure; life support systems; collaboration in space; living in space; space solar power; space debris mediation solutions; planetary defense; space law; and both national and international space policy, among others,” organizers wrote in an overview.

This year, the conference’s theme of “No Limits” has drawn in retired astronauts Susan Kilrain and Jose Hernandez, as well as Alan Stern (who leads the New Horizon mission to Pluto and beyond, as well as Vast Space CEO Max Haot, Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and YouTube creators Isaac Arthur and Brian McManus….

(3) RETCON OF THE RINGS. Inverse compares J.R.R. Tolkien to George Lucas in “73 Years Ago, J.R.R. Tolkien Changed Gollum Canon Forever — It’s About to Happen Again”. – It burns! It burns!

…Published in 1937, The Hobbit transformed fantasy literature like no other book before or since. Presented as an intricate middle-grade children’s chapter book, The Hobbit tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, the titular Hobbit, as he is pulled into a great journey beyond his cozy home in the Shire. Along with a company of Dwarves, and Gandalf the Wizard, this proto-fellowship encounters various threats, which all get scarier and scarier as the book progresses. The world-building of The Hobbit is shockingly vivid, and, nearly thirty years later, in 1954, when Tolkien decided to expand his world of Middle-earth into a larger epic with his trilogy of novels — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King — very little adjustment to his landscape was needed. Only two elements had to be heavily revised to make the setting of The Hobbit click: The Ring of Power itself, and its bedraggled former owner, Gollum. And so, in 1951, three years before The Lord of the Rings was published, Tolkien published a new version of The Hobbit.

As extensively revealed by Bonniejean Christensen in the 1975 nonfiction book A Tolkien Compass, “Gollum’s function differs in the two works. In The Hobbit, he is one in a series of fallen creatures on a rising scale of terror. In The Lord of the Rings, he is an example of the damned individual who loses his own soul because of devotion to evil…”

Gollum is not the big bad of The Hobbit and is left behind by Bilbo roughly midway through the book. Crucially, in the original 1937 and 1938 editions of The Hobbit, Gollum is not a depraved maniac addicted to the Ring’s power. Nor is the Ring suggested to be sentient in the original Hobbit. All of those details were altered by Tolkien by 1951 when he changed the text and meaning of Chapter 5: “Riddles in the Dark.”

There are several examples of these changes, but the most relevant alteration is the later suggestion to the reader that Gollum is a crazed murderer and can’t be trusted to be bound by the rules of the riddle game. In the 1937 version, Gollum is just a weird creature.

From the original Hobbit (1937):

“But funnily enough he [Bilbo] need not have been alarmed. For one thing Gollum had learned long ago was to never cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of immense antiquity.”

From the revised Hobbit (1951, 1965, et al.):

“He knew of course, the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played it. But he [Bilbo] felt he could not trust this slimy thing [Gollum] to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws.”

Tolkien tinkered with “Riddles in the Dark” up until 1966, making him something of a George Lucas; continually modifying his story to fit with his other books. This retcon of Gollum’s character was so entirely successful that if you read The Hobbit now, you will only find the latter text. The 75th anniversary of The Hobbit, published in 2012, acknowledges the changes to “Riddles in the Dark,” briefly, in a section toward the front of the book, but the only way to get your hands on the first version of “Riddles in the Dark” — short of buying an extremely expensive 1937 or 1938 Hobbit — is to read Douglas A. Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit, where he elucidates some these changes.

(4) DEEP DICTIONARY DIVE. Greg Cwik reviews a new Ellison compilation edited by J. Michael Straczynski: “Beamed from Within: On Harlan Ellison’s ‘Greatest Hits’” in the LA Review of Books. Harlan’s polysyllabic vocabulary is contagious but not fatal.

…In 1996, the year he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, Ellison defined his writing for us: “What I write is hyperactive magic realism. I take the received world and I reflect it back through the lens of fantasy, turned slightly so you get a different portrait.” Ellison wrote like a man suffering from perpetual fever hallucinations, his stories governed by an inimitable eerie logic….

… Ellison’s writing has the electric shock of a malfunctioning machine, words like sparks spraying out. Yet there is humanity—bitter, yes, and often mean, with lust for life unrequited by the vicissitudes of fate, but Ellison’s best work is endowed with the spirit of man with a big, bruised, beating heart. He was a man fascinated by and disappointed with the society roiling around him, and thus his characters are also often denied penance and peace. Ellison is that rare beast, a writer who suffuses his work with smart-man musings without the boring, masturbatory listing of dead philosophers to boost intellectual credit. Except when he did do that (I’m not judging—I’m doing the same thing). In his nonfiction, he bemoans, with avidity, elitists’ tendency to intellectualize everything, while doing so himself, which he undoubtedly knows, just another layer of irony in the madman’s spiritual coils. He was a complicated, even hypocritical man of singular style and insoluble beliefs. (He also dressed real snazzy.)…

(5) RICHARD M. SHERMAN (1928-2024). “Richard M. Sherman, who fueled Disney charm in ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘It’s a Small World,’ dies at 95”. The AP News profile lists many of his credits, work done with his late brother Robert.

…Sherman, together with his late brother Robert, won two Academy Awards for Walt Disney’s 1964 smash “Mary Poppins” — best score and best song, “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” They also picked up a Grammy for best movie or TV score. Robert Sherman died in London at age 86 in 2012….

…Their hundreds of credits as joint lyricist and composer also include the films “Winnie the Pooh,” “The Slipper and the Rose,” “Snoopy Come Home,” “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Magic of Lassie.” Their Broadway musicals included 1974’s “Over Here!” and stagings of “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in the mid-2000s.

…They wrote over 150 songs at Disney, including the soundtracks for such films as “The Sword and the Stone,” “The Parent Trap,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” “The Jungle Book,” “The Aristocrats” and “The Tigger Movie.”

“It’s a Small World” — which accompanies visitors to Disney theme parks’ boat ride sung by animatronic dolls representing world cultures — is believed to be the most performed composition in the world. It was first debuted at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair pavilion ride….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 25, 1939 – Ian McKellen, 85. Now remember that the following are roles are the ones that I like, not all the roles that he’s done. 

For me, that’d be him playing a nearly ninety-year-old retired detective who’s a beekeeper in Mr. Holmes who given the title of the film is obviously intended to that Holmes. He’s played as an individual who is struggling to recall the details of his final case because his mind is slowly deteriorating. He plays this with considerable dignity. 

Ian McKellen at San Diego Comic-Con 2013. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Yes, I think he made a magnificent Gandalf the White in Jackson’s telling of Tolkien’s story. Note I didn’t say Tolkien’s story as it’s Jackson’s story. Now McKellen pulled off that role as he did not wear a wig or any prosthetics at all. His website detailing the shooting The Fellowship of The Ring says he had very little make-up time either. 

A film that I think that doesn’t get as much love as it should get is The Shadow which I’m very, very fond of. He played Dr. Reinhardt Lane there and did a very nice job of doing it. 

Now he was the narrator of Stardust based somewhat loosely off Gaiman’s novel. And he made a truly magnificent narrator here. Now him narrating an audiobook of that novel would be as delightful as the one Gaiman did which yes I wholeheartedly recommend. 

I’ve not seen it, though I very much want to, but forty-five years ago, the Royal Shakespeare Company production of MacBeth was filmed by Thames Television, and it featured Ian McKellen as Macbeth and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth. That sounds awesome. It’s available on DVD. 

Well those are my favorite roles by him. What are yours? 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) AI LEAVES EGG ON GOOGLE’S FACE.  Or would if Google had a face. “Google AI Overviews Search Errors Cause Furor Online”. (This is an unlocked New York Times article.)

Last week, Google unveiled its biggest change to search in years, showcasing new artificial intelligence capabilities that answer people’s questions in the company’s attempt to catch up to rivals Microsoft and OpenAI….

…The incorrect answers in the feature, called AI Overview, have undermined trust in a search engine that more than two billion people turn to for authoritative information. And while other A.I. chatbots tell lies and act weird, the backlash demonstrated that Google is under more pressure to safely incorporate A.I. into its search engine….

… [T]hings quickly went awry, and users posted screenshots of problematic examples to social media platforms like X.

AI Overview instructed some users to mix nontoxic glue into their pizza sauce to prevent the cheese from sliding off, a fake recipe it seemed to borrow from an 11-year-old Reddit post meant to be a joke. The A.I. told other users to ingest at least one rock a day for vitamins and minerals — advice that originated in a satirical post from The Onion….

(9) ONE WRITER’S FAVE. Chowhound is going to tell you “Why Peanut Butter And Onion Sandwiches Are Named After Ernest Hemingway”.

… Ernest felt onion sandwiches were the perfect meal to enjoy while fishing. Exactly when he began adding peanut butter to the mix is uncertain, but the writer memorialized the PB&O in his novel “Islands in the Stream,” which came out after his death….

…During the Great Depression of the 1930s, an onion stuffed with peanut butter was just one of many fascinating foods, along with dandelion salad and water pie, that was commonly eaten. So a variation on these food combinations isn’t all that out of the ordinary. And, as it turns out, science is on the side of this sandwich. As Marie Wright, chief global flavorist for American food processing giant ADM, told The Takeout, peanut butter and onion complement each other because they both have sulfur-containing compounds…

(10) THE MUNSTERS’ LUCKY NUMBER. SYFY Wire reports “James Wan Eyeing New Take on The Munsters Titled 1313 From Universal”.

The Munsters might be moving back to 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Variety reports that Universal Studio Group is developing a reboot of the iconic monstrous (but friendly!) family from the 1960s sitcom. 

The Munsters, which premiered in 1964 and ran for two seasons, followed the titular family. There was Herman Munster (a Frankenstein’s Monster-type), his wife Lily (a vampire), Grandpa (elderly Count Dracula), daughter Merilyn (a normal-looking young woman), and little Eddie (a werewolf). Despite their monstrous appearances, the Munsters were just as normal as any other red-blooded American family… well, almost as normal. 

The new series — which is still in the works with no details announced yet — is being developed by James Wan of Saw, The Conjuring, Aquaman, Furious 7, and M3GAN fame. Lindsey Anderson Beer and Ingrid Bisu are also listed as developers, per Variety, and Beer will serve as the showrunner and executive producer along with Wan. 

According to the official logline, the upcoming take is described as a horror series that “lives and breathes within the Universal Monsterverse” — suggesting that these new Munsters might not be as cuddly as the original ‘60s incarnation. 

The tentative name for the reboot is 1313, after the family’s address at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. …

(11) THEY’RE THE TOPS. “NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 12 Straight Years”.

For the 12th year in a row, the Partnership for Public Service named NASA the best place to work among large agencies in the federal government. “Once again, NASA has shown that with the world’s finest workforce, we can reach the stars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Through space exploration, advances in aviation, groundbreaking science, new technologies, and more, the team of wizards at NASA do what is hard to achieve what is great. That’s the pioneer spirit that makes NASA the best place to work in the federal government. With this ingenuity and passion, we will continue to innovate for the benefit of all and inspire the world.” The Partnership for Public Service began to compile the Best Places to Work rankings in 2003 to analyze federal employees’ viewpoints on leadership, work-life balance, and other factors of their job.

… Read about the Best Places to Work for 2023 online.

(12) MIGHTY MAKEUP. Paul Williams paralyzes Johnny Carson when he arrives straight from filming “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” in this clip from a 1973 episode of The Tonight Show.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. This week How It Should Have Ended reposted “MAD MAX Fury Road”. It may be news to you!

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

Pixel Scroll 5/9/24 When Pixel Filed, And Scroll Span, Who Then Melted Jack Dann?

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(1) PARDON MY WTF. “Apple Apologizes for iPad Pro Ad After Criticism” – The Hollywood Reporter explains why they need to. (Though they can’t be too sorry because the kerfuffle has helped the ad draw 53 million views.)

Apple is apologizing for an iPad Pro ad that was widely criticized when it debuted earlier this week.

The dystopian spot, titled “Crush,” shows several instruments, including a guitar and piano, being crushed by a hydraulic press. Also among the items being smashed flat are balls that look like emojis and an Angry Birds statue….

Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the spot on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday (it also was posted on YouTube). His post and the YouTube video are still up, but the spot won’t run on TV, according to Ad Age.

“Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Cook wrote….

[One of the many negative comments was,] “Crushing symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements to appeal to pro creators, nice. Maybe for the next Apple Watch Pro you should crush sports equipment, show a robot running faster than a man, then turn to the camera and say, ‘God is dead and we have killed him.’”

(2) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from Wednesday night’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB session where John Wiswell and Anya Johanna DeNiro read from their recent novels.

(3) CHOOSING CONVENTIONS. The new episode of Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast is “Conquering Conventions; Crafting Confidence”. (There’s also an excellent transcript available – yay!)

In this episode, she shares her experiences and insights on convention attendance, from choosing the right ones to the art of mingling without the cringe. Plus, she tackles the ever-present concern of COVID safety in crowded spaces.

Whether you’re a cosplayer or a casual attendee, Mur advises on how to present yourself professionally, connect with industry pros, and enjoy the con experience while staying true to your comfort level. And for those not ready to dive back into the physical con scene, she discusses the merits of virtual conventions and how they can be a great alternative.

(4) LEVAR READS RAY. LeVar Burton Reads “The Toynbee Convector” © 1983 by Ray Bradbury in his latest podcast.

The world’s only time traveler finally reveals his secrets.

(5) ‘THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM’. “New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Coming in 2026, Andy Serkis Directing” – Variety has the story.

Warner Bros. will release the first of its new batch of live-action “The Lord of the Rings” films in 2026, which will focus on Andy Serkis’ Gollum.

Original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy filmmaker Peter Jackson and his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are producing the movie and “will be involved every step of the way,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call Thursday.

The project is currently in the early stages of script development from writers Walsh and Boyens, along with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, and will “explore storylines yet to be told,” Zaslav said.

In a press release from Warner Bros. later Thursday morning, the studio revealed that the working title for the film is “Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” and it will be directed by and star Serkis in his iconic titular role….

…A separate, animated Middle-earth movie, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” is due on Dec. 13 via Warner Bros. and director Kenji Kamiyama. That movie is set 200 years before the events of “The Hobbit.”…

(6) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 109 of the Octothorpe podcast, “But Also a Worrying One”, John Coxon is middle, Alison Scott is even sadder, and Liz Batty is sorry.

We have a bumper mailbag in Octothorpe 109, and we continue our discussion about accessibility in Eastercon before segueing into a discussion of money and privilege with respect to conventions. We also mention the latest news out of Chengdu. Massive thanks to Ulrika O’Brien for the gorgeous cover art this week!

The background is a starry, lightning-filled square in blues, purples, and yellows. Atop that, there is a spaceship, somewhat like a rocket, with engines coming out of the sides. There are yellow lights shining from it, and a ladder reaches up to a central archway. John, Alison and Liz are depicted as silhouettes, regarding it with wonder. Their shadows stretch off the canvas, and they look faintly alien or futuristic in a hard-to-define manner.

(7) SERLING’S TRUNK STORY. “A short story by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling is published for the first time” reports NPR.

…Not long after he returned from the war in 1946, Serling attended Antioch College on the G.I. bill. There, in his early 20s, he penned “First Squad, First Platoon,” a short story which is being published for the first time Thursday in The Strand. It was one of his earliest stories, starting a writing career that Serling once said helped him get the war “out of his gut.”

“It was like an exercise for him to deal with the demons of war and fear,” said his daughter, Jodi Serling. “And he sort of turned it into fiction, although there was a lot of truth to it.”

The story is set on Leyte Island in “heavy jungle foliage” and a “hostile rain that caked mud on weapons, uniforms, equipment.” Each of the five chapters in the 11,000-word story is about a different soldier and how they died….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 9, 1936 — Albert Finney. (Died 2019.) I’m very, very fond of British performers and among them is Albert Finney. So let’s look at the career of this most talent actor.

His first genre performance is as Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge. Scrooge is my favorite Albert Finney film and it is benefitted immensely by the many extraordinary strong performances by actors like him. To give a good sense of him in that role, I feel obligated to show him in his full Victorian regalia. 

That’s followed by being Dewey Wilson in Wolfen, a deeply disturbing film. Wolfen to me is the perfect werewolf film as it is a police procedural firmly within the horror genre. His character here Detective Dewey Wilson along with Diane Venora as Detective Rebecca Neff unraveled the grisly murders that turn-out to be based in First Folk reality. 

He plays Edward Bloom, Sr. Big Fish in the wonderful Big Fish. He’s central character here.  He is a story-teller but his only son, Will, doesn’t enjoy them because he believes they are simply not true. Of course, they are, but they’re just exaggerated. Or are they being so? 

He voices Finis Everglot in Corpse Bride. Now I’d love to tell how he was in that role but I’ll confess and say that I’ve not see that film as I am not a big fan of Tim Burton’s animated work at all. 

He was Kincade in Skyfall. He’s the gamekeeper of Skyfall Lodge and the ancestral Bond family estate in Scotland. He’s got a major role in that film.

He was Maurice Allington in The Green Man based on Kingsley Amis’ novel of the same name. He’s the somewhat inebriated owner and landlord of The Green Man, an inn that he says is haunted by ghosts.  He tells tales of these to scare guests as it amuses, or trying to seduce them to no avail as he’s not at all handsome. But it may be that The Green Man is truly haunted and those ghosts are happy with him…  it’s a great role for him and he play it quite well.

Lastly, I’ll wrap up with Murder on the Orient Express, the 1974 version. I have that poster, an original, not a reproduction, framed and hanging here as I truly love this film. Christie, who lived just long enough to see the film get released and be a box office success, said that Murder on the Orient Express and Witness for the Prosecution were the only movie versions of her books that she liked although she expressed disappointment with Poirot’s moustache as depicted here was far from the creation she had detailed in her mysteries.

She’s misremembering her detailing of that moustache which I confirmed checking the many such novels I have on hand in Apple Books. Most novels have no detailed description at all, and this in The Mysterious Affair at Styles  being typical: “Poirot seized his hat, gave a ferocious twist to his moustache, and, carefully brushing an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve, motioned me to precede him down the stairs; there we joined the detectives and set out for Styles.”

Finney made a most excellent Poirot though many later critics compared him to David Souchet who they consider the definitive version of the character. I always wondered what Dame Christie would have thought of Souchet.  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range might not be teaching what the student wants to learn.
  • Carpe Diem has an unexpected Egyptian traffic sign.
  • Heathcliff’s latest in a week-long series of guest appearances comes from Star Wars.
  • Nathan W. Pyle emphathizes with creators.

(10) GLIMPSE THE NEXT CHAPTER OF NEIL GAIMAN AND MARK BUCKINGHAM’S GROUNDBREAKING MIRACLEMAN SAGA. Miracleman By Gaiman & Buckingham: The Silver Age #1-7 is now available as a complete collection. Catch a glimpse of the action in the new trailer, featuring artwork from all seven issues.

In THE SILVER AGE, Miracleman has created a utopia on Earth where gods walk among men and men have become gods. But when his long-dead friend Young Miracleman is resurrected, Miracleman finds that not everyone is ready for his brave new world! The story that ensues fractures the Miracleman Family and sends Young Miracleman on a stirring quest to understand this world — and himself. It’s a touching exploration of the hero’s journey that ranges from the top of the Himalayas to the realm of the towering Black Warpsmiths — and into the secret past of the Miracleman Family!

 (11) X-MEN ONE-DAY SPECIAL ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] LearnedLeague just had a One-Day Special quiz about the X-Men. It focused more on the comic books than the various adaptations, which suited me just fine. I’m currently scored at 11/12, but I’ve submitted an appeal on the one answer where I was marked wrong. We’ll see if that goes through.

You can find the questions behind this link, although nearly all of them have pictures that people who aren’t LL members won’t be able to see. None of the pictures are absolutely necessary, but at least a couple of them have valuable clues.

(12) VIDEO GAME ANIMATION INSIGHTS. “’Harold Halibut’ brings with handmade charm and stop motion inspirations” on NPR’s “Here and Now”.

“Harold Halibut” is a new sci-fi video game set in an underwater space colony. But it’s got a novel look; all of the characters and sets in the game were made by hand, then 3D scanned and animated digitally….

(13) BRAINS DON’T GROW ON TREES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] 1 cu. mm of brain tissue. 5000 slices. 23 cm of blood vessels. 57,000 cells. 150,000,000 neural connections. Lots of surprises. The Guardian reports “Scientists find 57,000 cells and 150m neural connections in tiny sample of human brain”.

… “The aim was to get a high resolution view of this most mysterious piece of biology that each of us carries around on our shoulders,” said Jeff Lichtman, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard. “The reason we haven’t done it before is that it is damn challenging. It really was enormously hard to do this.”

Having sliced the tissue into wafers less than 1,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair, the researchers took electron microscope images of each to capture details of brain structure down to the nanoscale, or thousandths of a millimetre. A machine-learning algorithm then traced the paths of neurons and other cells through the individual sections, a painstaking process that would have taken humans years. The images comprised 1.4 petabytes of data, equivalent to 14,000 full length, 4k resolution movies.

“We found many things in this dataset that are not in the textbooks,” said Lichtman. “We don’t understand those things, but I can tell you they suggest there’s a chasm between what we already know and what we need to know.”

In one baffling observation, so-called pyramidal neurons, which have large branches called dendrites protruding from their bases, displayed a curious symmetry, with some facing forwards and others backwards. Other images revealed tight whorls of axons, the thin fibres that carry signals from one brain cell to another, as if they had become stuck on a roundabout before identifying the right exit and proceeding on their way…

(14) INSULIN PUMP ISSUE. “FDA Warns on Insulin Pump Problem” at MedPage Today. “This has been a plot point in several movies and tv shows lately,” says Chris Barkley.

A mobile app used with an insulin pump that led to 224 injuries was recalled by Tandem Diabetes Care, the FDA announced today.

The recall is for the 2.7 version of the Apple iOS t:connect mobile app, used in conjunction with t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ technology, the agency said.

The FDA identified the action as a Class I recall, the most serious type. The recall is a correction, not a product removal, and was prompted by a software glitch that may cause the pump battery to drain sooner than expected. Users are being urged to update the app to the latest software….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Adam Savage tells “How Star Wars: Ahsoka’s Jedi Shuttle Filming Model Was Made!”

During the production of Star Wars: Ahsoka, Adam Savage visited the miniatures filming stage set up at Lucasfilm to watch the practical model of Ahsoka’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle being filmed. Modelmaker John Goodson and machinist Dan Patrascu spent four months building the 30-inch model of that T-6 ship for the show–an incredible hero ship model not only equipped with lights, but was fully mechanized with a rotating wing!

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

Pixel Scroll 2/5/24 To Boldly Scroll Where No Fan Has Scrolled Before

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(1) MCCARTY Q&A. Chris Barkley’s audio interview with Dave McCarty was published here overnight: “Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #81”. The audio recording is at Soundcloud. A transcript is here.

(2) SPARE CHANGE? The New Zealand Mint has a line of The Lord Of The Rings™ Collectible coins.

Set in the mythical world of Middle-earth, The Lord of The Rings fantasy saga follows hobbit Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee and a fellowship of characters as they embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring. Considered one of the greatest works of the 21st century, its popularity has spawned numerous adaptions.

Return to Middle-earth with our limited-edition THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ coins. Made from pure gold or silver, they feature characters and landscapes from the epic fantasy adventure films. Crafted in fine detail with themed packaging, they make the perfect memento for any fan!

Famed Middle-Earth locations feature in these gold coins.

And the silver series includes one with Gollum. Heads he wins, tails you lose!

(3) LEST GRIMDARKNESS FALL. [Item by Anne Marble.] Sebastian Milbank, in an article for the British magazine The Critic (called a “contrarian conservative magazine”) refers to “grimdark” as “Grimdull” — and seems to think they are both “liberal” and “leftist.” (Umm, those are not the same thing.) The article also flings darts at Michael Moorcock and Phillip Pullman. And it calls Breaking Bad grimdark?! Boy, does this article ever make a lot of assumptions about the writers (and readers) of grimdark! And it uses a lot of words in which to do so.

For those unblessed (or uncursed) with an interest in contemporary fantasy, the phrase “Grimdark” may suggest the name of some 2000s era Goth club. It’s a recent coinage for an ongoing craze in “gritty” and dark fantasy settings, epitomised and popularised by George RR Martin, becoming the default tone for a whole range of feted fantasy offerings from Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series featuring a dark, brooding protagonist who kills a lot of people — and occasionally feels bad about it — to Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire Trilogy featuring a dark, brooding protagonist who kills a lot of people — and occasionally feels bad about it.

It’s a genre with a number of consistent features. It’s generally in a mediaeval fantasy setting, but shorn of any romance. Characters are overwhelmingly cynical, and those few who exhibit nobility are treated as foolish or naive. Generally a chaotic war is happening, or about to happen. Religion features, but largely as a tool of social control, often portrayed (usually with some real effort given the baseline awfulness) as even more cruel and cynical than the secular world around it. Dark observations about human nature substitute for any moral drama, with characters seeking to outwit, manipulate or overpower one another in a kind of Darwinian struggle for dominance.

It’s a script born of vaguely liberal, vaguely radical, vaguely anarchic sentiments common to most contemporary creative “industries”. But fantasy, with its over escapism and heroic aristocratic setting, presents something of a problem. This is the inner tension of left wing fantasy — how can a genre defined by apparent escapism not end up serving reactionary ends?…

Grimdark author Joe Abercrombie has a very concise takedown:

(4) ALERT FOR CONVENTION EMAIL RUNNERS. Andrew Trembley shared this alert on Facebook.

For y’all running conventions and running convention email, if you haven’t set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, you need to do it yesterday. If you’re reading this on Monday, February 5, literally yesterday, because today is the day Google and Yahoo started refusing mail from many email services that have failed to implement SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

(ETA long version, did not include in the share)

I’m seeing people saying “Google is starting to block more non-Gmail senders.” Now they’re right from the perspective they’re looking at this from, but they’re not seeing the whole picture.

It’s not non-Gmail senders. It’s also not just Gmail.

So what is happening? Bear with me, this is long…

(5) MARY SOON LEE Q&A. Space Cowboy Books hosts an “Online Reading and Interview with Mary Soon Lee” on Tuesday, February 6 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for free HERE.

How-to astronomy poetry to answer vexing questions such as How to Surprise Saturn, How to Blush Like Betelgeuse, and How to Survive a Black Hole.

“Unraveling meaning from partial glimpses of the universe has preoccupied astronomers for thousands of years. Mary Soon Lee’s remarkable collection of poetry traces this journey, capturing the wonder of the celestial bodies that comprise our universe, the elegance of the rules that guide its evolution and the humanity of those who search to better our understanding.” -Andy Connolly, Professor of Astronomy, University of Washington

Mary Soon Lee is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and has won the Rhysling Award, the Elgin Award, and the AnLab Readers’ Award. Her work has appeared in Science, American Scholar, Spillway, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. This is her second collection of science poetry, following on from Elemental Haiku: Poems to honor the periodic table three lines at a time. Born and raised in London, she now lives in Pittsburgh.

(6) FAN FALLOUT. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon committee answered a query on Facebook by saying that neither Dave McCarty nor anyone else from the Chengdu Worldcon team will be involved with their Hugo Awards.

(7) SALAM AWARD OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS. The Salam Award, which promotes imaginative fiction in and about Pakistan, reminds Pakistani writers they have until midnight July 31 to submit entries for the award. See full guidelines at this link. Participants must either be currently residing in Pakistan, or be of Pakistani birth/descent.

(8) DANISH COMPLETIST. “Modstand og håb” at Superkultur is written in Danish, however, Lise Andreasen has provided an English translation in the first comment.

Niels Dalgaard is a patient man – not only in his persistent attempt to collect all the science fiction that has been published in odd corners of the Danish publishing world, but more specifically in this case in his project: to read through the approximately 250 novels that has been published in Danish, which can be placed in the category “youth dystopias”….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 5, 1941 — Stephen J. Cannell. I have come this Scroll to talk of not cabbages and kings but a man who as a mystery writer showed up regularly playing poker as himself in the Castle series with Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle — Stephen J. Cannell. James Patterson, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane were the other such writers here. I’ll talk about his work as a novelist later. 

Nathan Fillion as mystery writer Richard Castle, playing poker with real-life authors Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Stephen J Cannell.

The Zorro rip-off, scripted in its one season by him, The Night Rider, described by IMDB this way, “A refined New Orleans gentleman becomes a masked crimefighter by night, both to uphold law and order and to find the men who murdered his family in order to get their silver mine” is genre the same The Shadow or Doc Savage is in that it’s pulp.

Between that series and what I’m about to note next, scripting shows, the good, the bad and the truly awful made him very wealthy. So he got to produce a series that he said was one he’d to do a very long time ago — The Greatest American Hero.  You know the story of it so I want go into deep detail here, but suffice it to say that he was very happy with its success.

Veering way out of genre, I’m going to note he created Baa Baa Black Sheep (which was renamed Black Sheep Squadron for the second season for reasons unknown by the Powers That Be), a series I really liked.

I’ll note next 21 Jump Street which he created with Patrick Hasburgh which was about the cases of an undercover police unit composed of really great looking young officers specializing in youth crime. Definitely not genre, so why mention it? Because that featured Johnny Depp who would later do so many genre performances. And yes, he’d done one before this series as Greg Lantz in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

He loved making low budget horror films such as The Demon Hunter, The Fairy and Left in Darkness. All shot on all cheap budgets (and this is after he became very wealthy), shot on locations you wouldn’t go without security in armor and shot fast enough you’d suspect use of interesting drugs to keep everyone alert, there’s more than makes sense of these in his IMDB listings. Stephen, you devil. Possibly literally.

Now about that poker game on Castle. All four of those players are there because they are mystery writers. Cannell wrote a series of novels about Shane Scully who was a detective in the LAPD force. I don’t know if they actually played poker in those scenes but I suspect they did. 

(10) SATISFIED FAN. Cora Buhlert heaps praise on a He-Man adaptation: “The Revolution Will Be Televised: Some Thoughts on Masters of the Universe Revolution”.

…So I watched Revelation and it turned out to be not just some nostalgic fun, but so much more. Here was the He-Man story I always wanted to see, a series which took the characters seriously in all their beautiful absurdity and found new depths in them and even managed to make me cry (something western animation in general very rarely does – crying is for anime), while also harkening back to the early 20th SFF which had inspired Masters of the Universe in the first place. Plus, the animation was gorgeous and finally looked as good as the Filmation cartoon looked in my memory, but never in reality, and the voice cast was stellar….

(11) GROUNDHOG DAY CAST REUNION. “Bill Murray celebrates ‘Harold Ramis Day’ Groundhog Day” at CBS Chicago.

This Groundhog Day, Woodstock Willie did not see his shadow — and thus said we should expect an early spring this year.

But at a ceremony in Chicago on Friday, a groundhog named Chicago Harry did not agree.

But first off, why is there a groundhog prognosticating on the trajectory of winter in Woodstock, Illinois? The answer, of course, is that in the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” Woodstock stood in for Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania — home of Groundhog Day celebrations since the 1880s.

Ever since the movie came out 31 years ago, Woodstock Willie has been up there with Punxsutawney Phil in the real Punxsutawney among large-rodent long-range winter forecasters.

Members of the cast of the iconic film reunited for the first time at Navy Pier Friday, marking 31 years since the film was released. But Friday was also about honoring Harold Ramis and commemorating 10 years since his death….

…”I think it’s great that we’re here and, I don’t want to be too Irish, but it’s very nice of Harold to make it a very nice, mild day for today,” Murray said. “He’s up there stirring the clouds around, making that low pressure move out to Indiana and just drenching, ruining those people’s lives over there in Indiana.”

Ramis’ wife, Erica, was in attendance, beaming with pride as many spoke wonders about her husband. She even read a letter from former President Barack Obama encouraging people to enjoy the day as Ramis would. 

The ceremony included re-enactments of Punxsutawney festival emcee Buster Green (Brian Doyle-Murray) knocking at the tree stump with his cane, where a groundhog named Chicago Harry made his prediction.

Ken Hudson Campbell (“man in hallway”), Robin Duke (Doris the waitress), Marita Geraghty (Nancy Taylor), Richard Henzel (the DJ), Don Rio McNichols (drum player), David Pasquesi (the psychiatrist), and Peggy Roeder (the piano teacher) were also in attendance.

And unlike Woodstock Willie, and Punxsutawney Phil, Chicago Harry saw his shadow — and predicted six more weeks of winter after all.

(12) GOING ROGUE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Just learned that the 2000AD strip Rogue Trooper film is at last moving forward. Director Duncan (Moon, Source Code) Jones teased about this back in 2018 and it now looks like a cast is being pulled together. “Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper Movie Cast Announced, Including Hayley Atwell, Sean Bean, and Matt Berry” at IGN.

The cast for Rogue Trooper, the upcoming movie from Moon and Warcraft director Duncan Jones, has been announced. The animated adaptation of the classic 2000 AD comic will be headlined by Aneurin Barnard, Hayley Atwell, and Jack Lowden, and will also feature a number of other well-known British stars such as Sean Bean.

Aneurin Barnard, who previously starred in The Goldfinch and Dunkirk, plays the titular Rogue Trooper, a blue-skinned, genetically-engineered soldier fighting on the toxic battlefields of a seemingly never-ending war. The sole survivor of a massacre that killed his squadmates, he’s on the hunt for the traitor that arranged their deaths. He does this with the aid of three of his killed-in-action squadmates, whose digital personalities still remain conscious after death and are uploaded into Rogue’s gun, helmet, and backpack….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Science Futurism with Isaac Arthur this week took a look at Death Worlds. These are planets on which, once you land, they set out to kill you.  Unlike most of Isaac Arthur’s episodes (other than his monthly ‘Sci-Fi Sundays’) which have a (highly speculative) science take, this one has as much a science fictional approach, starting as it does with the legendary Harry Harrison’s DeathWorld series of the 1960s. Along the way, he gives us a number of SFnal examples… So, pour a mug of builders and sit back for a half-hour episode (it won’t kill you)…

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