25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) UNFAIR USE. Charlie Stross told Bluesky followers that Sam Freedman’s Guardian article linked here yesterday – “The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?” – is a case of “recycling an article of mine from 2023 without attribution” – “We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus”.

(2) MAY THE FOURTH BID WITH YOU. “Heritage Auctions Announces ‘Star Wars Day’ Auction” and Animation World Network explains it all to you.

Heritage Auctions has launched the “May 4 Star Wars Day Entertainment Signature Auction,” which will feature over 300 lots ranging from original Star Wars movie posters to screen-used props, high-end replicas, toys, comics, and artwork. The event will conclude with a live session on May 4.

Leading the fleet is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 12 Carded Figures, the only graded example in existence. Also up for grabs is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 9 Carded Figures, which includes the highly coveted Boba Fett. These sets, authenticated by industry expert Tom Derby and AFA, are expected to surpass six figures at auction.

“These sets represent a pivotal moment in cinematic history and were among the earliest opportunities fans had to bring the Star Wars universe into their home,” said Justin Caravoulias, Heritage’s Consignment Director of Action Figures and Toys. “Finding them in such incredible condition is exceptionally rare, and the opportunity to win treasures like these on May 4 makes this auction even more special.”

Additionally, the auction features 20 pieces of original artwork from the early days of Lucas Film, including signed Star Wars Droids C-3PO Original Line Art by Alice Carter. John Alvin’s original concept paintings for the unreleased Star Wars Concert Series poster, Greg Hildebrandt’s striking portrait of Darth Vader’s funeral pyre mask, and Olivia De Berardinis’ Grogu painting are also available….

(3) SEEKING AFROSURREALISM. Gautam Bhatia has put out a submissions call for the Strange Horizons – Afrosurrealism Special Issue. Full details at the link.

…Welcome to the Afrosurrealist Special Issue, where the boundaries between the real and the unreal blur, where reality bends, time fractures, and the living and the dead exist side by side. Afrosurrealism has long given shape to our struggles, our power, and our dreams. This special issue seeks to bring those visions to life through stories that cut deep—tales that unsettle, haunt, and liberate….

For this special issue, we are looking for:

Worlds that slip between the mundane and the uncanny, the ghostly and the futuristic.
Worlds rich with history and spirit striving to manifest—whether set in the past, present, or futures unknown.
Tales of hauntings, doppelgängers, liminal spaces, memories, and places that don’t stay put.
Give us your tales of portals that lead to nowhere, of cities that rearrange themselves overnight, of people becoming someone—or something—else.
Narratives that challenge traditional structures and defy linear storytelling.
Works that experiment with or reimagine genres like sword & soul, jujuism, cyberfunk, or Black gothic horror.
Visions of power, freedom, and transformation shaped by the Black experience where Blackness itself is a force that bends time, space, and destiny.

Send us your myths. Your nightmares. Your dreams wrapped in ancestral magics and spirit.

The editors for the AfroSurrealism Special invite you to submit fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

We welcome writers who are new and experienced. The submissions call is open to writers of African descent ONLY, whether based in the diaspora or in Africa….

(4) FUNNY BUSINESS. Ira Nayman recommends “Taking Humor Writing Seriously” at the SFWA Blog.

…What makes you laugh? What tries to make you laugh and fails? How do they both work, and why does one succeed where the other doesn’t? As you grow as a comic writer, you’ll start to combine in new ways what you loved in previous works, shaping those devices into something uniquely your own.

Some writers are uncomfortable with this analytical approach. They should embrace it. I once took a course in the Social and Political Aspects of Humor. One of the first things the professor said on the first day of lectures was: “You may be under the impression that analyzing humor will kill it. Most of the students who have taken the course have found that to be untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. If anything, I found my appreciation for well-written humor increased the more I analyzed it.

This analytical approach is especially helpful when it comes to comic dialogue. Record a conversation, then compare how real people speak to how characters in comedies speak. (Spoiler: They’re very different.) In fact, great comic dialogue is like music: Not only does it have a rhythm that can be timed with a metronome, but it usually contains motifs that it repeatedly comes back to. Listen to “Who’s on First?” by Abbott and Costello, “The Argument Clinic” by Monty Python, and “Why a Duck?” by the Marx Brothers. Note, as well, how pauses can be employed as both a comic element in themselves and to allow the audience room to laugh.

Craft can and must be learned. What you do with that craft, the stories you choose to tell, and the way you choose to tell them is the art you have to provide yourself….

(5) WHO HISTORY. Last night’s BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row has an item (one third of the show) on Doctor Who, which we linked to in yesterday’s Scroll. But we didn’t mention it also covered the launch of a new non-fiction book on Doctor Who, Exterminate, Regenerate.

On screen, Doctor Who is a story of monsters, imagination and mind-expanding adventure. But the off-screen story is equally extraordinary – a tale of failed monks, war heroes, 1960s polyamory and self-sabotaging broadcasting executives. From the politics of fandom to the inner struggles of the BBC, thousands of people have given part of themselves – and sometimes, too much of themselves – to bring this unlikeliest of folk heroes to life.

This is a story of change, mystery and the importance of imaginary characters in our lives. Able to evolve and adapt more radically than any other fiction, Doctor Who has acted as a mirror to more than six decades of social, technological and cultural change while always remaining a central fixture of the British imagination. In Exterminate / Regenerate, John Higgs invites us into his TARDIS on a journey to discover how ideas emerge and survive despite the odds, why we are so addicted to fiction, and why this wonderful wandering time traveller means so much to so many.

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA has released Simultaneous Times episode 86 with Thomas Broderick & Jenna Hanchey. Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast.

Stories featured in this episode:

“A Love Story” by Thomas Broderick. Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier

“A Locked Box, Bound with Chains, Buried Six Feet Deep” by Jenna Hanchey. Music by TSG. Read by the author

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(7) SHINICHIRO WATANABE Q&A. “The Creator of ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Thinks Reality Is More Dystopian Than Sci-Fi” – interview in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Shinichiro Watanabe’s first anime, “Cowboy Bebop,” was quite an opening act. A story of space bounty hunters trying to scrape by, its genre mash-up of westerns, science fiction and noir, with a jazzy soundtrack, was a critical and commercial success in Japan and beyond. Its American debut on Adult Swim, in 2001, is now considered a milestone in the popularization of anime in the United States.

Not one to repeat himself, Watanabe followed up “Bebop” with a story about samurai and hip-hop (“Samurai Champloo,” 2004); a coming-of-age story about jazz musicians (“Kids on the Slope,” 2012); a mystery thriller about teenage terrorists (“Terror in Resonance,” 2014); an animated “Blade Runner” sequel (“Blade Runner Black Out 2022,” 2017); and a sci-fi musical show about two girls on Mars (“Carole & Tuesday,” 2019).

Now, he has returned to the kind of sci-fi action that made his name with “Lazarus,” streaming on Max and airing on Adult Swim, with new episodes arriving on Sundays. The show is set in 2055, after the disappearance of a doctor who discovered a miracle drug that has no side effects. Three years later, the doctor resurfaces with an announcement: The drug had a three-year half-life, and everyone who took it will die in 30 days unless someone finds him and the cure he developed….

Unlike your previous sci-fi projects, “Lazarus” takes place not on a distant planet or far into the future, but in our world just 30 years from now. Why was that important?

In the past, I would look at other works of fiction and get inspired by them. But this time, just watching the news and taking a look at the world, things happening right now seem more dramatic and kind of crazier than fiction. Because I was inspired by events going on in the real world, putting it too far into the future would lose that touch of reality….

The anime starts with a doomsday clock saying there are 30 days until most of humanity dies, and yet we see businesses going on like normal, talk shows interviewing artists, and more. Why did you contrast the urgency of the story with scenes like these?

That was inspired by reality and experiencing the Covid pandemic. Not everyone was acting the same way. There were people who didn’t believe in it, and there were people who didn’t wear masks. I thought the anime would be more grounded in reality if I made it so we had different reactions from the characters….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Small Change trilogy

Doing alternate history right is always hard work, but Jo Walton’s the Small Change books consisting of Farthing, Ha’penny and Half a Crown get it perfectly spot on. They’re set in a Britain that settled for an uneasy peace with Hitler’s Germany, and they are mysteries, one of my favorite genres. And these are among my all-time favorite mysteries of this niche which includes Len Deighton’s SS-GB. and C. J. Sansom’s Dominion.

I am not going to discuss these novels in any way what so ever. Not going to do it. It’s really going to spoil it for any of you’ll who decide to read them which you really should. I can reveal that the first is a classic British manor house murder mystery complete with the proper centuries old family. Really well-crafted manor house mystery.

The audiobooks are fascinating, there being shifting narrators with Peter Carmichael whose presence is to be found in all three novels is voiced by John Keating, and Bianco Amato voicing David Kahn’s wife in Farthing, but Viola Lark being played by Heather O’Neil in Ha’penny and yet a third female narrator, Elvira, is brought to life by Terry Donnelly in Half a Crown.

Now I’m fascinated by what awards they won (and didn’t) and what they got nominated for. It would win but one award, the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel for Ha’Penny which is I find a bit odd indeed given there’s nothing libertarian about that novel.

Now Half a Crown wracked an impressive number of nominations: the Sidewise Award for Best Long Form Alternate History, Locus for Best SF Novel, Sunburst award for a Canadian novel, and this time deservedly so given the themes of the final novel a Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel.

Farthing had picked up nominations for a Sidewise, a Nebula, Campbell Memorial, Quill whereas Ha’Penny only picked a Sidewise and Lambda.

Not a single Hugo nomination which really, really surprised me.

There is one short story set in this series, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” which you can read in her Starlings collection that Tachyon published. It is in a fantastic collection of her stories, poems and cool stuff!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics considers time travel and what writers really want.
Ink Pen names super doctors.
Reality Check wants its crisis properly labeled.
Rhymes with Orange lets a suitor down easy.
xkcd ruins poetry with science.

(10) WE’LL MEET AGAIN, DON’T KNOW WHERE, DON’T KNOW WHEN. “‘Big Bang’ Universe Collides As Simon Helberg & Raegan Revord Join Melissa Rauch On NBC’s ‘Night Court’” at Deadline.

NBC‘s Night Court has set up a colliding of the “Big Bang” Universe as Simon Helberg (Big Bang Theory, Poker Face) and Raegan Revord (Young Sheldon) are set to guest star in the Season 3 finale airing May 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Night Court star and executive producer Melissa Rauch played Helberg’s wife on the CBS smash The Big Bang Theory, created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. Although who Helberg will play in the season finale is under wraps, his character is set for a game-changing cameo that could really shake things up for Abby (Rauch).

Revord will play Shelby, a teenage runaway inclined to marry her soulmate, in an homage to the Michael J. Fox episode from the original series.

Fox appeared in the second episode of the original series titled “Santa Goes Downtown,” which aired on January 11, 1984, in the role of Eddie Simms. Eddie and his girlfriend Mary (Olivia Barash) are runaway teens determined to get married, who end up in night court on shoplifting charges. The pair meet a mysterious man who claims he’s Santa Claus, or at least that’s who he claims to be, altering their lives forever. When Fox shot the guest appearance, he was a series regular on the NBC sitcom Family Ties, a few years before he would break out as Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

Additionally, Marsha Warfield will return in her iconic role as Roz from the original series. Other guest stars include Michael Urie and Ryan Hansen….

(11) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Turning space from vacuum to vapidity, by one of my favorite columnists. “What’s more vacuous than an endless vacuum? It’s Lauren Sánchez and Katy Perry’s party in space” by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.

… In truth, how the women looked had been an overwhelming part of the buildup, and by their own design. In an Elle magazine joint interview with the passengers, Lauren showed off the hot space suits she’d personally commissioned, inquiring rhetorically: “Who would not get glam before the flight?” “Space is going to finally be glam,” agreed Perry. “Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” A former Nasa rocket scientist said: “I also wanted to test out my hair and make sure that it was OK. So I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good – took it for a dry run.” Still want more? Because there was SO much of it. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!” explained Lauren. “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” explained a civil rights activist. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”

Ooof. I always thought space travel was futuristic, but this was the first time it came off as travelling back in time, in this case using their little capsule to take us back to the most ludicrous inanities of 2010s girlboss feminism….

(12) SPLISH-SPLASH. The New York Times meets “The Techno-Utopians Who Want to Colonize the Sea”. (Article behind a paywall.)

…His 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have “any visitors that we don’t want.” When my boat arrived, he threw down a cable and winched me up. Then I made my way down a 63-step spiral staircase to the circular lower chamber — a dizzying process, as the SeaPod rocked in the loudly sloshing sea. I was greeted by a beaming Koch, a bald 59-year-old German engineer with a whitened beard and a Buddha belly.

He gave me a tour, pointing to a school of sardines outside a porthole. The quarters came equipped with a bed, an exercise bike, Starlink internet and a dry toilet. A digital clock on the wall was counting down toward his 120-day goal. (The previous record was 100 days, set in 2023 by Joseph Dituri at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla.) “I’ve enjoyed the time, actually,” Koch said in his heavy German accent, his face greenish-blue from the light pouring in. “This is what people get completely wrong. They think that I feel like a prisoner, and I’m putting marks on the wall. My food is excellent, my booze is excellent.” A person came by to clean daily.

Koch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, which promotes “living on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.” The vision, as the Institute’s president, the “seavangelist” Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is “startup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted” — a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could “vote with your boat,” relocating to a community in line with your views….

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

Pixel Scroll 3/28/25 I Just Scrolled In From Pixel-Land, And Boy Are My Fans Tired

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CONGRATULATIONS ON EPISODE 250! Scott Edelman invites listeners to rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi in the impressive milestone Episode 250 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

My guest for the 250th episode of Eating the Fantastic is playwright, poet, and fiction writer Tim Paggi, whom I met at December’s Charm City Spec event where he read an excerpt from his recently published novella How to Kill Friends and Eviscerate People. His poetry chapbook “Workforced” won the 2015 Plork “Play/Work” Award for Creative Writing and Publication Arts. His next book, The Other Side of the Hallway, will be released later this year. He holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore. Additionally, for the past 15 years, he’s been giving ghost tours around the neighborhoods of Fells Point and Mt. Vernon.

We discussed the story behind his X-Files-inspired juvenilia, the reason he demanded a refund from Barnes & Noble for a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, why a writing teacher (wrongfully) accused him of plagiarism, how the beginning of the pandemic was also the beginning of his fiction writing career, whether his recent Cthulhu references were intentional or unavoidable, why the Severance TV show has him feeling anxious (it’s probably not the reason you think), the C-word he avoids using in his fiction, whether facing down audiences on stage helped him deal with rejections on the page, the many reasons he loves cosmic horror, the drunkest group he ever led through Baltimore on a ghost tour, and much more.

(2) OPT-IN OR OPT-OUT OF SCRAPING? The UK’s Society of Authors received over 1,000 responses to their survey of members and authors on the Government’s proposal to change copyright law as part of its consultation on Copyright and AI, and “96% of authors surveyed believe an opt-out system would negatively impact the creative industries”. “SoA report into authors’ views on the AI and Copyright consultation”.

The survey focused on authors’ views on the key topics covered by the Government’s consultation on Copyright and AI, including: (i) a proposal to introduce a text and data mining (TDM) exception into copyright law, which would allow tech companies to use copyright-protected works without permission, unless the author had explicitly opted out; (ii) transparency, labelling and enforcement measures, and (iii) AI in education.

The government proposed that, rather than having the right to opt in to allowing your work to be exploited by machine learning (the current situation), you would be presumed to have agreed unless you actively opted out. On this question, 96% of respondents believed this would have a negative impact on the creative industries with 91% reporting that they have no experience with opting out; and 82% saying that opting out each of their individual copyright-protected works would negatively impact their business.

In the comments provided by authors:

An overwhelming majority expressed their strong opposition to an opt-out system, calling instead for the current opt-in system to be upheld. Many made the point that our industry has been relying on a permission-based system successfully for decades and it would be hugely unfair to change that for the benefit of one sector.
Many respondents helpfully elaborated on the various ways in which opting out simply does not work. For example, robot.txt can be circumvented or ignored, there is no way for authors to know when they need to opt out, and it is technically impossible to remove scraped material from a system, even if the option to opt-out is exercised.
Respondents repeatedly raised the same concerns about the damaging impact the government’s policy proposal would have on creators’ livelihoods in the long term, on industry diversity and representation, and the devaluation of the creative work.

58% of respondents were concerned that preventing their website being ‘crawled’ or ‘scraped’ for machine learning by opting out could negatively affect their discoverability online. There was particular concern here from illustrators who use their website and social media to showcase their work but now feel that the risks outweigh the benefits.

(3) ANIME GOES UNDER THE HAMMER. “Studio Ghibli and Anime Icons Power Heritage’s Record-Setting $1.49 Million Art of Anime: Vol. VI” reports Heritage Auctions.

Kiki’s Delivery Service Senior Witch and Cat Production Cel (Studio Ghibli, 1989).

Leading the charge was an electrifying lineup of Studio Ghibli masterpieces, headlined by a rare production cel of the elusive “Senior Witch” from Kiki’s Delivery Service, which cast a spell at $48,000 — one of the highest totals ever realized for the 1989 film. Another Kiki standout, a charming Key Master setup of the title character peering into a brick oven, fired up at $16,000. Beloved Ghibli titles like Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso and Grave of the Fireflies excelled over the course of the event, and not surprisingly, a significant production cel featuring the beloved Catbus from the final moments of My Neighbor Totoro trundled away for $13,000….

…Beyond Ghibli, the auction was packed with legendary titles that flexed their muscle across the bidding floor. Berserk claimed the highest price in the sale with a staggering $85,000 for a harmony cel setup created by master art director Shichiro Kobayashi. The cel, an atmospheric piece originally created for a home video release, stands as one of the most important Berserk artworks ever sold at auction — a fitting tribute to the late Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy epic.

Akira, the cyberpunk juggernaut that helped bring anime into global consciousness, made a bold showing with two rare production backgrounds of Neo-Tokyo’s dystopian skyline, which sold for $11,000 and $8,500. Macross fans powered fierce bidding on original concept art, including Shoji Kawamori’s VF-1J Valkyrie ($18,000) and Haruhiko Mikimoto’s character concept of protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo ($11,000)….

(4) HOW THEY COMPLETED THE MISSION. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY will host an exhibit on stunt work in “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—Story and Spectacle” beginning April 18.

Variety has more details: “’Mission: Impossible’ Exhibition Coming to Museum of Moving Image”.

Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will launch a major initiative celebrating the “Mission: Impossible” franchise on April 18. The exhibition will spotlight star and producer Tom Cruise’s commitment to practical stunt work (think clinging to the face of the Burj Khalifa, as well as to the sides of various planes, trains and automobiles), and explore how the series combines technical ingenuity in service of storytelling, character development and performance. It opens ahead of the Memorial Day Weekend release of the eighth film in the series, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”

Sections of the exhibition, entitled “Mission: Impossible — Story and Spectacle,” will be devoted to each film in the series, with a focus on that film’s key stunt or action sequence, along with unique behind-the-scenes content that offers insight on how the death-defying stunts were prepared for and filmed, complemented by related production artifacts. Paramount Pictures produces the films.

(5) WATERSTONE’S PRIZE. [Item by Steven French.] A book inspired by a game the author’s family played during lockdown has won this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize reports the Guardian. “The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods wins Waterstones children’s book prize”

The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please was announced as the winner of the £5,000 award, voted on by Waterstones booksellers, at a ceremony on Thursday evening.

The book tells the story of Rene, who opens a cafe beside an enchanted wood and prepares to serve the finest cuisine with the help of a waiter, Glumfoot, only to discover that the locals have a very odd palette, favouring disgusting foods.

“The story grew from a game my wife, son and I would play during lockdown”, said Please. His wife, Jess, would pretend to be a “pompous chef”, his son, Axel, would play the “downtrodden waiter”, while Please himself would act the part of a demanding customer.

“The dynamic of these three characters was so rich, the setting so loaded with potential, and the opportunity to showcase my long-practised and long-underappreciated art of rearranging food to look funny, made the story impossible to resist”, said Please.

Please is a writer, animator and illustrator whose works include the 2011 stop motion animated film The Eagleman Stag, which won a Bafta for best short animation. His debut novel, The Expanded Earth, will be published 3 April.

(6) BECOMING MEDIA SAVVY. Gideon P. Smith tells SFWA Blog readers about “Successfully Talking to the Press About Your Art: Plot It, Don’t Pants It!”

…Their questions will likely be very generic if they haven’t read your work, which results in uninteresting copy. There are two ways to combat this:

Create a playbook of answers to generic questions. These answers should be concise but add something unique about your work. You can predict generic questions by considering what anyone who hadn’t read something might ask. (e.g. “What is the book about?” “What was your inspiration?”) or by reviewing prior interviews.
However, the better way to help them create a strong story is to suggest questions. This may sound counterintuitive given they are the interviewer, but you are the expert—on yourself, your work, and your story. You know what makes your book unique, whether it’s an unusual magic system, scientific influence, or personal connection. Most journalists will appreciate your taking a proactive approach if you highlight what’s unique or provide interesting angles. It makes their job easier.

Your playbook should help readers quickly identify your book’s genre and subgenre, then draw them in with an intriguing hook. Make it personal—within your comfort zone—so readers connect with you and your work. Finally, ensure the interview ends with clear information on where to find you and your work (social media, website, book links)…

(7) MORE ON BBC RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] As it happened, got home and yesterday afternoon BBC Radio 4’s Feedback programme had an item on this. “Announcement of the end of an era on Radio 4.” Ex pat Brits were fairly pissed off, as were those in the Republic of Ireland who like to listen to the BBC. It looks like some final decisions have to be made.

Andrea Catherwood shares exclusive news of the end of a long-running Radio 4 programme. Frequent contributors and the programme’s commissioning editor give their thoughts on the well-known brand as it nears its final episode.

BBC Sounds is soon to become unavailable outside of the UK. Listeners from all over the world have been in touch to voice their disappointment about the changes, and we’ve heard in particular from people in the Republic of Ireland who tune into BBC Radio content from north of the border. Will the geo-blocking cause unintended political ramifications? Andrea discusses the issue with Shane Harrison, former BBC correspondent in Dublin.

(8) IT’S ALL ABOUT ME. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency teaches everyone how to be a staggering bore in “The Art of Asking a Question to a Literary Festival Panel”.

The key to asking a successful question at a literary festival panel is preparation. You’ll want to have every detail of the preface to your question prepared, such as your name, age, and entire medical history. Don’t worry about the actual question; you can make that up as you go along….

(9) TODAY’S DAY.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 28, 1912 — A. Bertram Chandler. (Died 1984.)

A. Bertram Chandler, my favorite Australian writer.

Did you ever hear of space opera? Of course you have. Well, the universe of Chandler’s character John Grimes is such. A very good place to start is the Baen Books omnibus of To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. (My opinion, yours may differ.) Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t. If fact she likes him a lot. Good girl.

Connected to the Grimes stories are the Rim World works of which The Deep Reaches of Space is the prime work. The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic Gaussjammers, recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes’ time. They don’t say what happened to them.

But that’s hardly all that he wrote. I remember fondly The Alternate Martians, a novella that he did. A space expedition to Mars that find themselves in the worlds of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. Why he chose the latter I know not as I’d never heard of him. It’s a great story well told. And fun to boot. It was first published as an Ace Double, The Alternate Martians / Empress of Outer Space. Gateway has released it as a separate epub for a mere buck ninety nine at the usual suspects.

He wrote a reasonably large number of stand-alone-alones, so what did I like? For a bit of nicely done horror, you can’t beat The Star Beasts — yes, I know that there’s nothing terribly original there but it’s entertaining to read; Glory Planet has a watery Venus occupied by anti-machine theocracy opposed by a high-tech city-state fascinating; and finally I liked The Coils of Time in which a scientist has created a Time Machine but now needs a guinea pig, errr, a volunteer to go back through time and see what’s there — did it go as planned? Oh guess.

I see that he’s written but a handful of short stories, none of which I’ve read other than the ones in To The Galactic Rim. So who here has?

He’s won five Ditmars and The Giant Killer novel was nominated for a Retro Hugo.

All in all, I like him a lot.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem tells what else the Martian Rover has learned.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal hears from a writer.

(12) A JARRING EXHIBIT. [Item by Steven French.] Well, I like science-fiction and I really like pickles, so maybe this is the art show for me! “Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off – fantastical sci-fi visions with a side order of pickles” in the Guardian.

There’s a lot of art about birth, death and rebirth, but not a lot of it uses pickles. Preserves, however, are all over Polish artist Rafał Zajko’s biggest solo show yet. Big jars of brine filled with salty cucumbers and little figurines in the shape of cryogenic preservation chambers. That combination of the fantastically sci-fi and the mundanely everyday is Zajko’s hallmark. The young London-based artist has spent the past few years showing ceramic and concrete sculptures filled with flights of cybernetic romanticism and nods to vaping, baking and pickling.

In The Spin Off, as this show at Focal Point Gallery in Southend is called, he has gone on a deep dive into a vast mess of ideas about longevity and rebirth. The centre of the space is dominated by an ovoid floor sculpture that gets moved and reshaped throughout the week. Laid across its surface, ceramic tiles are assembled to look like a map of planetary systems or control panels for alien spaceships, covered in incomprehensible knobs, buttons and displays. Circular sections of it can be lifted out and replaced with items from the cabinets on the wall: little concrete eggs, ceramic kaiser rolls, jars of pickles…

(13) LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE. Nature reports “75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving”.

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise.

Nature asked readers whether these changes were causing them to consider leaving the United States. Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal’s website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. “Anywhere that supports science,” wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin…

(14) WILL SUCCESS SPOIL THEM? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Sarah Thwaites considers what success means for indie game developers: “These games were indie smash hits – but what happened next?”

It is now more or less impossible to put a precise figure on the number of video games released each year. According to data published by the digital store Steam, almost 19,000 titles were released in 2024 – and that’s just on one platform. Hundreds more arrived on consoles and smartphones. In some ways this is the positive sign of a vibrant industry, but how on earth does a new project get noticed? When Triple A titles with multimillion dollar marketing budgets are finding it hard to gain attention (disappointing sales have been reported for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Final Fantasy VII remakes and EA Sports FC), what chance is there for a small team to break out?

And yet it does happen. Last year’s surprise hit Balatro has shifted more than 5m copies. Complex medieval strategy title Manor Lords sold 1m copies during its launch weekend. But what awaits a small developer after they achieve success? And what does success even mean in a continuously evolving industry?

(15) ALTADENA FIRE CONSEQUENCES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Science journal cover story: “Toxic Legacy”:

The wildfire that swept through Altadena, California, in January burned houses and cars as well as vegetation, generating smoke that contained a complex mix of toxic chemicals. Weeks later, these chemicals still cling to the soil and remaining structures. Researchers are working intensively to understand the lingering hazards of such urban wildfires. See page 1343.

Also, “In The Ashes”:

Little is known about the long-term effects of wildfires that burn into urban areas, which are becoming more common. Wildfire torched more than 1000 structures near Boulder, Colorado, in 2021 and more than 2000 structures in the Hawaiian town of Lahaina in 2023, where 102 people died. In 2022, a committee formed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found gaping holes in our understanding of what’s in the smoke and ash from wildland-urban fires, and what it could mean for people’s health.

(16) OPERATION SURPRISE PACKAGE. [Item by Steven French.] A new article in Astra Astronautica asks if there is a moral imperative to ‘seed’ the universe with life and answers in the negative: “One day we might seed the universe with life. But should we?” at Phys.org.

Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth.

We could accept our fate and face our ultimate extinction together. We could gather the archives from libraries across the world and launch them into space in the hopes that another civilization will find them. Or we could build a fleet of arks containing life from Earth. Not people, but bacteria, fungi and other simple organisms. Seed the universe with our genetic heritage. Of all of these, the last option has the greatest chance of continuing our story. It’s an idea known as directed panspermia, and we will soon have the ability to undertake it. But should we?

The idea of directed panspermia has been discussed since at least the 1970s. Carl Sagan and others even entertained the possibility that life on Earth is the result of directed panspermia from another civilization. But a recent study in Acta Astronautica looks at the idea from an ethical and philosophical perspective, asking what the moral cost of such an endeavor is….

(17) MORE MARS MOLECULES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More news coverage on the Mars rover’s detection of long chain molecules in “Mars rover detects long-chain carbon molecules” in this week’s Science journal.

Meteorites carry cargoes of fatty acids that come not from life, but from chemical reactions in the early Solar System, and they could have easily doused the surface with fatty acids early in Martian history, says Eva Scheller, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Or the acids could have evolved on Mars from the Kerogen-like particles that Curiosity detected—which might them-selves be abiotic in origin.

This is so, but here’s the deal, irrespective of whether or not these molecules have a biological origin the thing is that such putative biosignatures can survive for millions of years does suggest that the trace remains of any real life may still be detectable today….

(18) CHINA’S FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS. “As NASA faces cuts, China reveals ambitious plans for planetary exploration” – Ars Technica tells what they are.

China created a new entity called the “Deep Space Exploration Laboratory” three years ago to strengthen the country’s approach to exploring the Solar System. Located in eastern China, not far from Shanghai, the new laboratory represented a partnership between China’s national space agency and a local public college, the University of Science and Technology of China.

Not much is known outside of China about the laboratory, but it has recently revealed some very ambitious plans to explore the Solar System, including the outer planets. This week, as part of a presentation, Chinese officials shared some public dates about future missions.

Space journalist Andrew Jones, who tracks China’s space program, shared some images with a few details. Among the planned missions are:

2028: Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth

2029: Tianwen-4 mission to explore Jupiter and its moon Callisto

2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight

2033: Mission to Venus that will return samples of its atmosphere to Earth

2038: Establishment of an autonomous Mars research station to study in-situ resource utilization

2039: Mission to Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, with a subsurface explorer for its ocean…

(19) LETTING IT OUT OF THE BAG. “Black Bag Movie Review: Does This Sexy Spy Thriller Deliver?” asks Erin Underwood.

Black Bag pairs Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a sizzling, high-stakes spy thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh. This sleek, action-packed film explores trust, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. But does it deliver on the thrills? In this review, I break down the story, analyze standout performances, and reveal what makes Black Bag different from typical spy films.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/6/25 Hail Pixels, We Who Are About To File Salute You

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRADBURY IN THE WAUKEGAN MUSEUM. The Chicago Tribune is there as “Visitors get sneak peek at newly restored Waukegan History Museum”.

Walking into the almost fully restored, more than century-old, one-time Waukegan Public Library — that is now the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie — visitors can take a step back in time….

…Lori Nerheim, the historical society’s president, said part of the intent of the $15 million restoration was to give visitors a feel for the experience a young Ray Bradbury had when he spent hours there as a boy reading and nurturing the imagination which led the famed author to the writing of his books.

“We wanted to bring it back to its original look and feel,” she said of the museum operated jointly by the historical society and the Waukegan Park District. “I feel tremendous pride. I am excited to see people’s reaction.”

… To enter the building, visitors ascend a few steps before entering the door where they see a staircase on either side leading to two floors of permanent exhibits, and before them some steps going to the top, main floor containing a permanent exhibit honoring Bradbury as well as a room for research.

Before the building closed as the library in 1965, the room containing the Bradbury exhibit was the children’s reading room. He spent hours there in the 1920s and 1930s reading and developing his thirst for books. Nerheim said she hopes the environment will inspire future authors.

“I can see children today sitting in that room where Ray Bradbury sat as a child and reading books he read,” she said. “Perhaps they will be inspired to write or tell their own stories.”

Filling the bookcases in the Bradbury room are the author’s private collection of thousands of volumes he willed to the Waukegan Public Library when he died in 2012…..

(2) FAMOUS BOOKSTORE MAY REOPEN ‘NEXT WEEK’. Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego is in the process of repairing flood damage sustained in late February. On Monday their latest newsletter gave a progress report: “Flooded! Curbside Pickup Is Available!”

First, thank you to all of the customers, authors, publishers, and other community members that have reached out to offer their support in the last week. The outpouring of support has been incredibly heartwarming and has helped us get through the uncertainty of the last week. We also want to extend a special thank you to our fellow independent bookstores who have offered support including opening their spaces for last minute event venues. This is truly a special book community and one we are so happy to be a part of.

We wanted to reach out with an update on the store and forecast of what’s to come. As this situation is continually evolving, there may be additional changes, but we promise to communicate as much as possible.

The good news:
No inventory was damaged in the flooding. THE BOOKS ARE OK! The vinyl flooring is also intact and does not need to be removed.

The bad news:
The carpet in the children’s section was flooded and is being replaced. Additionally, they found some significant water damage in the walls on the west side of the unit as well as in the wall behind the YA section separating the front area of the store from the back room. The drywall needs to be replaced. There was also damage to the fixtures.

What does this mean?:
Mysterious Galaxy is currently closed to in-store shopping and events. If you purchased a ticket to an upcoming event, please keep a lookout for an email with more information. However, the demo has already begun and we are hoping to reopen to browsing by early next week! (*knocks on wood*)
The construction is such that it is not safe to have customers browsing at this time. However, fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, we are not strangers to running a closed bookstore, and we are ready to work through the challenges that are sure to arise in the coming weeks.

(3) SUIT AGAINST N.E.A. OVER EXECUTIVE ORDER. “Theaters Sue the N.E.A. Over Trump’s ‘Gender Ideology’ Order” – the New York Times explains the litigation. (Story is behind a paywall.)

Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday, challenging its new requirement that grant applicants agree to comply with President Trump’s executive orders by promising not to promote “gender ideology.”

The groups that filed the suit have made or supported art about transgender and nonbinary people, and have received N.E.A. funding in the past. They say the new requirement unconstitutionally threatens their eligibility for future grants.

“Because they seek to affirm transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences in the projects for which they seek funding, plaintiffs are effectively barred by the ‘gender ideology’ certification and prohibition from receiving N.E.A. grants on artistic merit and excellence grounds,” the lawsuit says.

The groups are being represented in the litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said in the lawsuit that the N.E.A. rule “has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States.” After Mr. Trump began his second term, the N.E.A. said it would require grant applicants to agree “that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” which Mr. Trump said in an executive order includes “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

The N.E.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed in a federal court in Rhode Island on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts, which promotes art made by Latinos; the Theater Offensive, an organization in Boston that presents work “by, for and about queer and trans people of color”; and National Queer Theater, a New York company best known for its Criminal Queerness Festival, which presents the work of international artists with roots in countries where their sexuality is criminalized or censored.

(4) NERO GOLD PRIZE. The ultimate Nero accolade and £30,000 prize went to a non-genre (and nonfiction) book, Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love. “Maurice And Maralyn By Sophie Elmhirst Announced As Winner Of 2024 Nero Gold Prize Book Of The Year”.

(5) TOLKIEN WAS PEEVED. [Item by Steven French.] I am not sure that Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language is quite the exclusive that the Guardian thinks it is! “’Reduced to nonsense’: JRR Tolkien’s irritation with typist revealed in archive”.

JRR Tolkien was so irritated by a careless typist’s slapdash work on one of his manuscripts that he vented his frustration in a letter that has come to light.

The Lord of the Rings author said in despair: “She reduced [my manuscript] to nonsense. I have some sympathy with the typist faced with such unfamiliar matter; though evidently she wasn’t paying much attention.”

He mocked her confusion of “poche for poetic, highballs(!) for high halls, and arias for cries”.

The letter is within a collection of largely unpublished correspondence that reflects Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language.

It is part of an archive that includes the last major Tolkien manuscript in private hands, The Road Goes Ever On, his collaboration with the composer Donald Swann of the musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann….

(6) WELCOME TO EARTH. Gizmodo invites us to “Watch 5 Mysterious Clips From Alien: Earth’s Crashed Ship” – a series of teasers from the upcoming FX series.

…What’s about to happen is the debut of Alien: Earth, FX’s upcoming show set years before any of the Alien films. It follows a team of soldiers who investigate a ship that has crashed on Earth and are forced to deal with what it contains. We assume, of course, that it contains something that will eventually create an alien, but what exactly? …

…So here you get to see the cat get the camera put on him and walk around a bit. The key takeaway is the end where we see a computer—much like Mother in the first Alien—with a very similar “Priority One” message: “Acquisition and safe return of all organisms for analysis. All other considerations secondary.” So, this ship was sent out to find something. And find something, it did….

…We see one of the crew members in hypersleep when something goes wrong. A fire. Is this the incident that started the crash back to Earth? What caused the fire? We don’t know.

All of this is a very cool way to tease the show and it’s culminating later this week in Austin, Texas. That’s where FX has recreated the crash site of the Maginot for fans to check out at SXSW. Learn more about that here.…

(7) THE RIGHT WAY, THE WRONG WAY, AND THE JANEWAY. According to Inverse, “A Much-Demanded Star Trek Spinoff Just Got A Hopeful Update”.

…We’re talking about the possibility of Star Trek: Janeway, a series focused on the return of Kate Mulgrew as Admiral Kathryn Janeway, set sometime after the events of Prodigy and perhaps, after the events of Picard Season 3. Speaking to a crowd of fans during the official Star Trek Cruise, Mulgrew answered a question about the possibility of a Janeway-focused spinoff TV series, or, failing that, her returning to the franchise in any capacity.

“There is a conversation happening,” Mulgrew said, according to WhatCulture. “It is being pursued.”

Mulgrew has long been vocal about galvanizing fans, which partially resulted in Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 ending up on Netflix. But in terms of any new Star Trek series focusing on the post-Voyager era, nothing on the current Paramount+ slate fits that description. Strange New Worlds will run for at least two more seasons, and Starfleet Academy is expected to debut either later this year or sometime in 2026. At the same event on the Star Trek: The Cruise, Mulgrew expressed concerns that a Janeway live-action series might not live up to what fans wanted. And she also didn’t want to do a show as a “vanity project.”

(8) DUNE WHAT COMES NATURALLY. “1 of Dune’s Most Crucial Events Is Secretly Way Smarter Than Fans Realize (& It Proves Frank Herbert Was Brilliant)” asserts CBR.com.

…Frank Herbert’s masterpiece Dune emerged from various fascinating influences, beginning with an unlikely source: the Oregon coast. In 1957, after publishing his novel The Dragon in the Sea, Herbert traveled to Florence, Oregon, where he observed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s efforts to stabilize massive dunes using poverty grasses. The sight of these imposing dunes, which Herbert believed could “swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways,” sparked a deep interest in ecology and desert environments that would become central to his epic novel. The ecological themes in Dune were further shaped by Herbert’s interactions with Native American mentors, particularly Howard Hansen and “Indian Henry” Martin from the Quileute reservation. Hansen’s warning that white men were “eating the earth” and could turn the planet into a wasteland “just like North Africa” resonated deeply with Herbert, who incorporated these environmental concerns into his story….

Many science fiction novels include predictions regarding technology, but Frank Herbert deliberately stayed away from that. Instead, Herbert’s novels focus on the power of the human mind and its ability to focus on discipline to overcome fears and regain control over thoughts, feelings, and even bodily functions. Herbert summed this up in one of his most iconic quoted Dune lines:

“Fear is the mind-killer.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan. (Died 2021.)

By Paul Weimer: Is the crystal in your palm blinking?

While he did write two sequels to it, plenty of short stories, a number of screenplays and a fair number of critical works, the name William F. Nolan means one and one thing only for me: Logan’s Run.

Well, two, if you count the movie.

The book, co-authored with George Clayton Johnson, came first. Ironically, while I read the book first, and only saw the movie some years later, the edition I read of the book first and had for years until it fell apart was one of those “movie/tv tie in” editions, that even had some stills/photos from the movie in it. So I “saw” a couple of scenes from the movie thanks to reading and re-reading this edition long before actually watching the movie.

Such a strange, wild book. 21 is the age of mandatory death., the triumph of youth. Feels very weird, today, in our sometimes gerontocratic governments. You’ll never get away from a homer, homer, homer. Casual use of drugs. Casual sex. It’s a good thing that my parents never knew what was in the book, they’d have been shocked. A breakneck plot and scenes all across the country, from domed cities to the frozen prison of hell to Crazy Horse and the Thinker, to a Civil War re-enactment with robots!

I did visit Crazy Horse in 2008, inspired by the novel, and was disappointed in how slow the construction has gone (far different than in the Logan’s Run timeline). It’s…worse than a tourist trap, somehow. Alas.

But the movie is something else. The future as a giant enclosed shopping mall. Lots of things missing from the books and a very different set of confrontations–the original book has a fight with a tiger, but the movie has…house cats? And the utter disappointment that while in the book some people are escaping and becoming free, in the movie, apparently, they all were frozen into frozen food by Box, who was turned from a chilling sadist into a figure of comedy in the movie. And yet like the book, the movie subtly is suggesting that the current world order cannot stand, and in fact must change, or else.

Yes, this birthday turned into a Logan’s Run’s remembrance rather than a Nolan remembrance. Nolan died in 2021. Requiescat in pace.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater explains how comics will solve newspaper shrinkage.
Free Range shows why you should say “No” to wearing full plate at the next medieval reenactment.
Nancy takes some convincing about the power of stories.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has the long and short versions.

(11) SIMPSONS ART AUCTION. On March 15 Heritage Auctions will hold “Cowabunga II – Celebrating the Art of The Simpsons Animation Art Showcase Auction”. Among the 300+ lots going under the hammer is this animation cel:

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VIII “The HΩmega Man” Original Kang and Kudos Production Cel (Fox, 1997). This original production cel from The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror VIII” (Season 9, Episode 4) features the iconic alien duo Kang and Kodos Johnson from Rigel 7. Taken from the first segment, “The HΩmega Man,” this rare cel captures their brief yet hilarious appearance as they witness Springfield’s demise from space. In the segment, France launches a neutron bomb at Springfield after Mayor Quimby insults the French with a “frog legs” joke. As the bomb travels through space, it flies past Kang and Kodos’ flying saucer, prompting Kang to exclaim, “What the hell was that?” This humorous moment occurs near the 2:58 timestamp, adding to the duo’s memorable cameos.

(12) AHH, ROMANCE. Booklegger tells Facebook readers how a bookstore figured into a couple’s anniversary celebration.

A few days ago I noticed a customer browsing the shelves in the science fiction/fantasy section. I asked him if there was anything I could help him find. “No, I’m doing fine, thanks,” he responded,” “but actually I do have a question I wanted to ask you.” His expression was animated and I wondered where this was heading.

He went on to tell me that he and his girlfriend were approaching their first anniversary, and that they had come to Booklegger on their first date. They were planning on re-creating that first date by visiting Dick Taylor for chocolates, and then coming to our store. He had created a little 42 page book for her as an anniversary gift, and he wondered if he could come in on the morning of their anniversary and plant the book on our shelves for her to find when they came to our shop later in the day.

I was 100% on board with this idea! What a compliment that they had their first date at our place, and what a sweet, creative surprise to mark the occasion. So this morning just as we opened Kiloe came in and showed me the book that he had created. 42 pages of things that he adores about Sarah, inside jokes between them, remembrance of fun things they’ve done together etc. And yes, it’s 42 things because they are both fans of Douglas Adams. He planted the book between Jim Butcher titles, knowing that she would browse that area….

(13) WAX ON, WAX OFF. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Goldman Sachs, in a research note Thursday (the note isn’t publicly posted) reported by Slashdot: “Goldman Sachs: Why AI Spending Is Not Boosting GDP”.

Annualized revenue for public companies exposed to the build-out of AI infrastructure increased by over $340 billion from 2022 through 2024Q4 (and is projected to increase by almost $580 billion by end-2025). In contrast, annualized real investment in AI-related categories in the US GDP accounts has only risen by $42 billion over the same period. This sharp divergence has prompted questions from investors about why US GDP is not receiving a larger boost from AI….

Or, as I think it was Cory Doctorow posted months ago, they haven’t come up with a real, usefull killer usage for the thing. I am reminded of a news story on the radio in the early oughts, after the tech bubble collapsed, som3eone saying “they were spending money like mad, making fancy websites… and hoping that they’d eventually find a way to monetize it (they didn’t).

(14) WATER IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] One of the determinants many think is the need for water for life.

(I myself am a primacy of water man, though my former colleague, and fellow SF fan, Jack Cohen, was more broadminded than I.) Anyway, news comes that water has been discovered very early in the Universe’s history. This means that the Universe has had water in it for nearly all its time. This boosts the prospects for life arising elsewhere before now… Primary research here….

Of course, if you are not a primacy of water person then this news will be of lesser import…

Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered that water was already present in the Universe 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.

The discovery means habitable planets could have started forming much earlier – before the first galaxies formed and billions of years earlier than was previously thought.

The study was led by astrophysicist Dr Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. It is published today (3 March 2025) in Nature Astronomy.

It is the first time water has been modelled in the primordial universe.

According to the researchers’ simulations, water molecules began forming shortly after the first supernova explosions, known as Population III (Pop III) supernovae. These cosmic events, which occurred in the first generation of stars, were essential for creating the heavy elements – such as oxygen – required for water to exist.

The key finding is that primordial supernovae formed water in the Universe that predated the first galaxies.

Dr Daniel Whalen, from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

Dr Whalen said: “Before the first stars exploded, there was no water in the Universe because there was no oxygen. Only very simple nuclei survived the Big Bang – hydrogen, helium, lithium and trace amounts of barium and boron.

“Oxygen, forged in the hearts of these supernovae, combined with hydrogen to form water, paving the way for the creation of the essential elements needed for life.”…

(15) TILT. The company’s Sunday landing was a success, however, today’s encore was not: “Private lunar lander may have fallen over while touching down near the moon’s south pole” – AP News has the story.

A privately owned lunar lander touched down on the moon with a drill, drone and rovers for NASA and other customers Thursday, but quickly ran into trouble and may have fallen over.

Intuitive Machines said it was uncertain whether its Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole — standing 15 feet (4.7 meters) tall — or lying sideways like its first spacecraft from a year ago. Controllers rushed to turn off some of the lander’s equipment to conserve power while trying to determine what went wrong.

It was the second moon landing this week by a Texas company under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program. Sunday’s touchdown was a complete success….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mark Barsotti has rolled a sixth installment of his Paul Di Filippo interview: “Sci-Fi Writer Paul Di Filippo #6 ~ Weird Names & Cyberpunk Jazz Scatting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN WILL RECEIVE NO PROCEEDS FROM GOOD OMEN GRAPHIC NOVEL KICKSTARTER. Rhianna Pratchett today pointed to a Kickstarter update from the Pratchett estate about the Good Omens graphic novel.

“Good Omens graphic novel update – January 2025”

[We] had locked refunds of the Good Omens graphic novel in mid-November due to where we were in the production process, however will no longer maintain this freeze in light of new articles and allegations. While we cannot speak further on the subject at present, we have chosen to reopen a short refund window for those who would no longer like to support the graphic novel, until Friday 7th February 2025. Please contact us via email or Kickstarter message.

It has also been agreed that Neil Gaiman will not receive any proceeds from the graphic novel Kickstarter. Given the project management, production and all communication has always been under the jurisdiction of the Estate on behalf of Good Omens at large, this will not fundamentally change the project itself, however we can confirm the Kickstarter and PledgeManager will now fully be an entity run by, and financially connected to, the Terry Pratchett Estate only.

A number of tiers also come with author merchandise and books; we have been working on a system in the back end to remove or swap out particular rewards from tiers, should you wish to continue with the project, but not receive these specific items. In this instance, please contact us via Kickstarter or the email listed on the project FAQ and we will endeavour to alter your orders, to swap items in of an equivalent value, where we are able.

Given the point in the production process, we cannot extend refunds beyond this new deadline, but will honour requests in this window – the only exceptions will be tiers where rewards have already been actioned, such as cameos, and custom or rare items on higher level tiers. In the instance of cameos, should backers wish to have their name removed from the postcard (Archangel) or not receive their cameo print (God), we are able to alter this, but not the cameo itself.

If you do get in touch, we aim to get back within a few days; if you have not heard back within a week, please chase up your query.

Good Omens in all its forms is very special to us, and we know that for many fans the landscape has shifted. We appreciate the sensitivity of this issue, and will be working through all queries in the coming weeks.

We will continue on our journey with Crowley and Aziraphale, and all of our surrounding plans, in some form. Thank you for being part of the journey with us.

The Terry Pratchett Estate (Good Omens HQ)

David Tennant’s Facebook page also posted a truncated version of the statement, and notes that the Kickstarter has raised £2,419,973 to date. Colleen Doran is doing the artwork for this book, as File 770 has reported from time to time.

(2) DOES GAIMAN STILL HAVE REPS? Deadline has been trying to get statements from Neil Gaiman’s various agents about whether they still represent him. No statements have been provided. However, Deadline reported today his name has disappeared from the public client list of one of them: “Neil Gaiman Dropped By Agent Casarotto Ramsay After Misconduct Claims”.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months.

Gaiman’s profile was quietly scrubbed from Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ website, meaning he no longer appears on pages listing its film, TV, and theatre clients.

Internet archives show Gaiman’s profile, which included trailers for his screen work, was live on the agency’s website as recently as last October, months after the initial allegations were published. The author denies wrongdoing.

Casarotto Ramsay & Associates failed to respond to repeated requests for comment about whether it continues to rep Gaiman. Gaiman has been contacted for comment. His long-time literary agent is Writers House’s Merrilee Heifetz, who has been approached for comment. Gaiman has also been repped by CAA, who have been contacted….

(3) FILK HISTORY ZOOM. The next FANAC Fan History Zoom on February 22 will be about filk fandom. Edie Stern will interview Margaret Middleton. To attend, contact fanac@fanac.org.

(4) DOES YOUR BOOK HAVE A BELLY BUTTON? “Books written by humans are getting their own certification” says The Verge. Self-certification. Because no one would ever lie about this, right?

The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.

The Guild says its “Human Authored” certification aims to make it easier for writers to “distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets,” and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access. The project was first announced back in October in response to a deluge of AI-generated books flooding online marketplaces like Amazon and its Kindle ebook platform.

Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications….

(5) AI NAY NAY? Steve J. Wright discusses in fascinating detail the brain, intelligence, why the very different operations of a computer do not resemble either of the former, and his skepticism about artificial intelligence in “The Little Man Who Isn’t There”.

…So, Artificial Intelligence, if it is achievable at all with current technology (and I suspect the technology which might make it achievable is some way in the future) will necessarily operate in a way which is radically, fundamentally different from human intelligence. So different that communicating with it, or even recognizing that it’s there, will present significant technological challenges. So why are we so happy – well, why are some of us so happy – to believe that Artificial Intelligence is with us here and now, ready to correct our grammar and do our homework for us?

Wright’s article includes a rather amusing callback to Sixties chatbot ELIZA.

“Ah,” says the knowledgeable reader, “he’s going to talk about ELIZA.” Yes, I am absolutely going to talk about ELIZA, because it is such a very good example. Created by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1967, ELIZA is credited as the first chatbot; it was designed to emulate a psychotherapist, using a fairly limited set of stock responses which identified key words in its interlocutor’s messages and fitted them into templates for replies. And it had people convinced that it was a real person, that no mere machine could possibly understand them as well as ELIZA did. Now look at those dates again, and consider just how much technical progress there has been on the hardware end of things since then. ELIZA is not a sophisticated program. If you are the sort of weirdo who has a “smart” home, you probably have light bulbs with enough capacity to run ELIZA. Your fridge probably has enough computing power to run ELIZA and perform its normal fridgely duties (maintaining optimum temperatures and levels of energy usage, keeping an inventory of its contents and their expiry dates, and snitching on you to Amazon about your chocolate ice cream habit.)

So, since a rinky-dink little gizmo like ELIZA can successfully con people into believing it’s human, what chance do our poor gullible brains stand against modern technology?

(6) THESE THINGS MUST BE HANDLED DELICATELY. “Sale of Wicked Witch’s hat from the ‘The Wizard of Oz’ sparks fraud lawsuit” reports the LA Times. (Article republished on MSN, so not behind a paywall). There are three known existing Wicked Witch hats used in filming of The Wizard of Oz. Schneider acquired one in 2019 for $100,000, from Profiles in History, a movie memorabilia house that Heritage acquired two years later. He later consigned it to Heritage for a big Hollywood memorabilia auction. The owner of another Witch’s hat, Michael Shaw, also decided to sell his. And in addition, Shaw was consigning an authentic pair of the ruby slippers. Here’s the rest of the story….

…In July 2023, Schneider agreed to consign his hat to Heritage and the item was given a value of $200,000 for insurance purposes, according to his lawsuit.

However, Heritage pulled Schneider’s hat from an auction in which another Wicked Witch’s hat owned by Michael Shaw…

In August, [Heritage Auctions senior director Brian] Chanes called Schneider and offered him a quick private sale of the hat for $250,000. Instead of taking it to auction, the hat worn by actor Margaret Hamilton would be sold directly to Shaw, who had expressed interest. The price was “more than any Hat had previously sold for,” Chanes told him, according to the complaint.

A few months later, Heritage began promoting a December auction of movie memorabilia that included Shaw’s three Oz pieces….

…According to the suit, Heritage launched a promotional tour of Shaw’s items, holding events in New York, London and Tokyo.

Shaw is not a defendant in the lawsuit against Heritage.

During the auction held on Dec. 7, the ruby slippers sold for a record $32.5 million and the hat hammered down for $2.93 million, which was nearly 12 times the amount Schneider received for his hat. Like other houses, Heritage receives a commission on the items sold at auction.

“It’s very unusual to have an item plucked out of an auction and get an offer like that from the auctioneer,” Schneider said. He says the house violated its fiduciary obligations to him, having failed to disclose the level of market interest in the hat or its planned roadshow for the auction.

Schneider alleges that Heritage struck the deal with him as a “device for HERITAGE or its executives to get ownership at a deep discount while also favoring Mr. S by making his Hat the only one in the auction,” states the suit….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 30, 1924 — Lloyd Alexander. (Died 2007.)

By Paul Weimer: In the mid 1980’s, Disney came out with The Black Cauldron, an animated fantasy movie. This was the “wilderness years” of Disney before the boom that started with The Little Mermaid. (The Black Cauldron came out the same year as Return to Oz) It looked interesting, and I was now at a point where I could go and see such movies on my own. Sure, it was an animated movie probably aimed at a younger audience than who I probably was, but I was game. (The fact that it was rated PG drew my attention and convinced me to see it). I enjoyed it deeply even if apparently few others did at the time. (Again, see above, Wilderness Years)

So it goes.

Naturally, the movie led me to the Lloyd Alexander book. I didn’t realize at the time that The Black Cauldron is actually the second in the Prydain series, but having seen the movie loosely based on it, I wasn’t lost at the time and when I finally did read The Book of Three (the first in the series) sometime thereafter, I saw how sneakily the filmmakers had been inspired by that book for helping to establish Taran, as well as The Black Cauldron itself. So I could and did happily read the book and the sequels, and so being hooked on Alexander’s work thereby.

I had only the smallest amount of knowledge of Welsh mythology at the time I read the Pyrdain series, the mythology books I had read to that point were focused on the Greco-roman and the Norse. The tales of the Mabinogion that Alexander’s series was based on did later, some years on, inspire me to investigate and learn about Welsh mythology in much more detail. So I have Alexander to thank for that.

And in general, Alexander is a novelist who I am glad I did not “miss”. There is a swath of authors I managed to miss because I felt myself too old by the time I found them (Susan Cooper comes to mind, although I did read her a few years ago). Alexander is in that class, while writing for a younger audience, his strong use of theme, decently three-dimensional female characters (although still cross about Eilonwy’s losing her magical powers) and the sheer verve and quality of the writing and the language.

That quality of writing extended to all of the other work I’ve read of him, from the meditation on war that is The Kestrel, to the Vesper Holly adventure archaeology series. He’s definitely an excellent gateway to much further reading and I think that he still stands up as someone to introduce a young reader to fantasy.

My only regret is that I didn’t discover his work sooner.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Peanuts from 1958 – could this be futurism?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows the origin of paying for stories.

(9) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 127 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Hello Buoys”, John Coxon is incoherent, Alison Scott is excited, and Liz Batty is romantic. An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here.

Episode 127 is here. We discuss the latest juicy gossip from the Belfast Eastercon, we hear from Claire Brialey of Croydon, and we pick things that aren’t games!

Alt text: A flowchart entitled “How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon”. The boxes culminate in “console yourself with Octothorpe 127”, and the various options are listed below, but the original file is linked in the show notes in case that’s more helpful to the partially sighted. How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon Are you going to Reconnect? Of course!/Not sure Oh go on it will be a laugh Oh all right then/No... Are they in the bar? Yes! I can't see them Are you quite sure? Check again Oh wait... there they are No sign Is there another bar? Yes! Nope Are they on programme? Yes! No Wait till the moderator asks for questions But it's Octothorpe Live! Is your joke very funny? Obviously! Excellent! Good to know. COME AND SAY HELLO until then... Are they asleep or on the loo? No, they look chill Er, yes? Oh, that's a shame Console yourself with Octothorpe 127

(10) THE NEXT TENTACLE. “’Squid Game’ Season 3 Release Date Set at Netflix”. Variety tells what it is.

“Squid Game” Season 3 will premiere June 27, following the major cliffhanger finale that Season 2 ended on.

“Squid Game” Season 2, which consisted of seven episodes, debuted Dec. 26. The installment was filmed back-to-back with Season 3, assuring there would be a much shorter wait between seasons than there was for Season 2 and Season 1 (which debuted in 2021, and was not originally written as an ongoing series).

In Season 2, Gi-hun, aka Player 456 (played by Lee Jung-jae), returns to the sadistic competition three years after winning 45.6 billion in South Korean won as the sole survivor of the event, in order to now put an end to Squid Game and save the lives of the players around him….

(11) SUPER ADVERTISING. The commercials aired during the Super Bowl have a reputation for creativity and entertainment. If you’re likely to watch them, whether during the broadcast or later on YouTube, here’s Deadline’s scouting report of the movie promos that will be part of the lineup, most of them of genre interest: “Super Bowl Movie Trailers 2025: What to Expect”.

…This year, count on the following to air either pre, during or post-game:

Disney, the No. 1 studio of last year with more than $2.2 billion in domestic box office, has always had a presence at the Super Bowl. It won’t be a surprise if it shows off wares for upcoming pics Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stich (May 23) and Pixar’s Elio (June 13). We understand they’ll only be showing off two out of three of their upcoming Marvel Studios movies, a batch that includes the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), summer kickoff Thunderbolts* (May 2) and Fantastic Four: The First Steps (July 25)….

Universal, the No. 2 studio with $1.88B domestic in 2024, will be wowing with trailers for Dean DeBlois’ live-action take of his How to Train Your Dragon (June 13) and the Scarlett Johansson-Mahershala Ali-Jonathan Bailey starring Jurassic World Rebirth (July 2) from Gareth Edwards. Don’t be surprised if you catch a Blumhouse title, like a M3GAN 2.0 (June 27). You’ll remember how Uni previously stunted the first installment with dancing M3GAN dolls on talks shows and popular landmarks like the Empire State Building.

Paramount is no stranger to the Super Bowl, even when its sister CBS network and Paramount+ isn’t broadcasting it (Fox has the game this year). This year, the buzz is that Par will air spots for the Jack Quaid comedy thriller Novocaine (March 14), the Smurfs animated musical movie starring Rihanna (July 18) and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. …

Nothing to do with genre, however, you can already watch the “Hellmanns Super Bowl Commercial 2025” which reunites the When Harry Met Sally stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in an update of their deli scene.

(12) ALL’S FAIR. The answer to the Guardian’s question is microcollectibles, apparently: “Evil toilets, terror food and billionaire Squishmallows: my eye-popping day at the UK’s giant toy fair”.

A chubby baby dinosaur waddles down a pink carpeted aisle, narrowly avoiding an army of Care Bears tramping in the other direction. Nearby, a sales rep shows off a collection of insect-breeding habitats, just as Pikachu scampers around the corner, bumping into her neat display. Across the hall, inventors show off their fiendish new board games, magicians demonstrate glowing plastic thumbs, while others grapple with instructions by a table covered with thousands of tiny plastic bricks.

Welcome to the Toy Fair, in London’s Kensington Olympia, the UK’s biggest bonanza of toys, games and hobbies, where the world’s manufacturers converge to peddle their latest wares, as retailers scour the endless stands for the hottest new trends. It’s a mind-boggling place of plushies and puzzles, remote-control cars and mud kitchens, and more plastic than you would find at a petrochemical convention. Here, the £3.4bn business of fun is taken very seriously indeed, with NDAs galore and not a child in sight. So where is the toy world heading in 2025?…

Fans of the YouTube phenomenon, Skibidi Toilet, can now buy the official toy line at Walmart, Target and Amazon. The line includes the Mystery Surprise Toilet, Collector Figures, Mystery Plush and more.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/7/24 Get Your Scrolls Here, Just A Pixel Each

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THEY FOLLOWED THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD. The Hollywood Reporter listens to the gavel bang when the “Ruby Slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ Sell for a Record $28 million”. (The Wicked Witch’s hat sold, too.)

A pair of the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz fetched an all-time auction record for entertainment memorabilia when they sold on Saturday afternoon for $28 million. The sale was handled by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. With the buyer’s premium, the total is $32.5 million, and the buyer currently remains anonymous.

Auctioneer Mike Sadler announced at the podium at the conclusion of the lot’s bidding that the slippers had far surpassed the previous auction record of $5.52 million for the white halter dress designed by William Travilla and worn by Marilyn Monroe in 1955’s The Seven Year Itch. That costume also was sold at Heritage in 2011 and was part of the famed collection of Debbie Reynolds….

… Three other pairs of ruby slippers are known to exist. One pair resides in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., while in 2012 Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg led a consortium of buyers to purchase a pair of ruby slippers, for a reported $2 million, to reside in the permanent collection of the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. A third pair is believed to be owned by a private collector….

… Also sold on Saturday: a witch’s hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Victor Fleming-directed film based on the beloved L. Frank Baum story. The black pointed hat, which was screen-matched to Hamilton’s first scene as the Wicked Witch in the film, sold for $2.93 million with buyer’s premium….

(2) THOSE GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Works in Progress presents “The world of tomorrow”, where Virginia Postrel asks, “When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?”

… In the twentieth-century, ‘the future’ was a glamorous concept.

Joan Kron, a journalist and filmmaker born in 1928, recalls sitting on the floor as a little girl, cutting out pictures of ever more streamlined cars from newspaper ads. ‘I was fascinated with car design, these modern cars’, she says. ‘Industrial design was very much on our minds. It wasn’t just to look at. It was bringing us the future.’

Young Joan lived a short train ride from the famous 1939 New York World’s Fair, whose theme was The World of Tomorrow. She went again and again, never missing the Futurama exhibit. There, visitors zoomed across the imagined landscape of America in 1960, with smoothly flowing divided highways, skyscraper cities, high-tech farms, and charming suburbs. ‘This 1960 drama of highway and transportation progress’, the announcer proclaimed, ‘is but a symbol of future progress in every activity made possible by constant striving toward new and better horizons.’

‘All I wanted to do,’ Kron says, ‘was go into the World of Tomorrow.’ She wasn’t alone. Anticipating a bright future was a defining characteristic of the era, especially in the United States.

When Disneyland opened in 1955, Tomorrowland embodied the promise of progress. A plaque at the entrance announced ‘a vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements . . . a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.’

Back then, the Year 2000 and the Twenty-first-century were glamorous destinations….

(3) YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES! Dwell analyzes “How ‘Star Trek’ Helped Make Midcentury-Modern the Signature Sci-Fi Aesthetic”.

When Star Trek first premiered in the mid-1960s, it was meant to portray a far-off future, with Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock traversing the universe 300 years hence. While the sci-fi television series has come to be recognized for many things in the decades since, like having the first Black female leading character on network TV, a king’s ransom of spin-offs, and an extremely dedicated global fan base, another major aspect of its legacy is its space-age-inspired visual identity that helped shape the intersection of midcentury modernism and what consumers see as “futuristic design,” even now.

While the show’s aesthetic choices were partially practical—its Warren Platner arm chairs and Stemlite lamps were the types of pieces set designers could snag from Los Angeles–area stores that looked more futuristic than grandma’s old divan—they also presented a sleek, nontraditional look that encapsulated the spirit of technological innovation and utopian vision that characterized midcentury modernism. By using something like Eero Saarinen’s 1950s Tulip chair (or, more accurately, a Maurice Burke–designed knockoff, which was more cost-effective at the time, and which the Star Trek crew then modified) the set designers could convey an alien future without having to create pieces from scratch….

(4) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share scallops with R. S. A. Garcia in Episode 242 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Garcia won both the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for her short story “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200,” published in Uncanny, and was a Nebula finalist the previous year as well for her novella “Bishop’s Opening,” which appeared in Clarkesworld. She is also the winner of the MIFRE Media Award, and a Sturgeon, Locus, Ignyte and Eugie Foster Award finalist. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Internazionale Magazine, as well as a number of anthologies, including the The Best of World SF, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, and The Apex Book of World SF.

Her Amazon bestselling science fiction mystery, Lex Talionis, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and the Silver Medal for Best Scifi/Fantasy/Horror Ebook from the Independent Publishers Awards. Her sci-fantasy duology, beginning with The Nightward, was published by Harper Voyager US in October, plus The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine will be out next Valentine’s Day from Android Press.

We discussed how the idea for her Nebula-winning short story caused her to leap up and walk out of a writing workshop, how editor Ellen Datlow’s advice changed her life, why writing is a verb, not an adjective, the way she decides whether or not to rise to the occasion of a themed anthology invite, her convoluted journey in finding an agent to negotiate her first novel sale even though there was already an offer on the table, why there are some rejections you should be grateful for, how Sigourney Weaver’s role in Alien inspired the sorts of stories she wanted to tell, the Easter eggs in her fiction only a Trinidadian would get, how and why she’s a complete pantser, the importance of community as well as the danger of it disappearing, her hope that readers get even more from her fiction upon rereading, and much more.

(5) SHARPER THAN A SERPENT’S TOOTH. “Replica Harry Potter swords recalled for breaking weapons law” reports BBC.

Replicas of a sword featured in the Harry Potter film franchise have been recalled in Japan for violating the country’s strict weapons law.

The full-sized replicas of Godric Gryffindor’s sword – which measure 86cm (34 inches) and are affixed to a wooden display plaque – were sold by Warner Bros. Studio Japan LLC from May 2023 to late April of this year.

But it was only in November that authorities told the company those pieces were sharp enough to be categorised as an actual sword.

More than 350 replicas of Godric Gryffindor’s sword were sold, reports add, with each one going for 30,000 yen ($200; £158).

The sword was sold at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo: The Making of Harry Potter, which opened in 2023 in Tokyo. It is billed as the first such studio tour in Asia and the largest indoor Harry Potter attraction in the world.

Warner Bros. Studios Japan LLC has published a recall notice for the sword on its site, citing “a distribution issue in Japan” and requesting people who bought it to get in contact for “necessary action including logistics and refund”….

(6) GRAPHIC NOVEL ROUNDUP. [Item by Steven French.] Some genre related riches here! “The best graphic novels of 2024” in the Guardian. The list includes:

…One of the year’s most talked-about releases, World Without End (translated by Edward Gauvin, Particular), outsold Astérix in its native France. Artist Christophe Blain walks us through climate expert Jean-Marc Jancovici’s urgent explanation of economic progress, sustainability and global warming in a book that’s statistics-packed but – thanks to Blain’s deceptively jaunty, eye-opening visuals – brilliantly accessible….

(7) TEN BEST SFF BOOKS OF YEAR. New York Times columnist Amal El-Mohtar names “The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2024” (gift link bypasses paywall).

Of the many great books I read this year, the following 10 have stayed with me, undergirded my thoughts as I go about my days and provoked excellent, chewy conversations about craft and pleasure, empire and resistance. While I’m a little haunted by the violence publishers seem to be doing to the very concept of a series — claiming sequels are stand-alones, while insufficiently supporting and labeling the parts of actual series — I hope you find something to enjoy among these fantastic works.

This list begins with –

The Book of Love By Kelly Link

“The Book of Love” is a landmark, the kind of fantasy novel that has its own gravity and distorts the genre terrain around it. Set in a small town called Lovesend, it tells the story of teenagers who return from the dead and must compete to remain alive by completing magical tasks. A tender tribute to romance novels, fairy villains and fairy lovers, “The Book of Love” does justice to its name.

(8) SEASON INNIE, SEASON OUTIE. Apple TV+ has dropped the Severance — Season 2 Official Trailer. Season 2 premieres January 17.

In Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in “work-life balance” is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself. In season two, Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cora Buhlert.]

Born December 7, 1915 — Leigh Brackett. (Died 1978.)

By Cora Buhlert: I first became aware of Leigh Brackett via her contribution to the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, during a time when I sought out everything that anybody involved with Star Wars had ever done or been influenced by. That way, I found some very good works, some not so good ones and some which were frankly baffling. Leigh Brackett definitely belongs to the first category.

According to interviews later in life, Leigh Brackett discovered her love of both science fiction and writing in 1923 at the age of eight, when she read The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The novel blew her mind and set her on the path to becoming a science fiction writer. It’s probably no accident that so many of her stories would be set on a Mars that was not that far removed from Burroughs’ Barsoom. Meanwhile, the foundation for Leigh Brackett’s later career as a screenwriter were laid during her time at a private girls’ high school, where she penned plays for the theatre group.

Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett. Photo by Len Moffatt.

In 1939, Leigh Brackett joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society and befriended such current and future luminaries as Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. Kuttner and Moore not only supported her fledgling career, but also introduced her to Edmond Hamilton, who was eleven years her senior and already a pulp science fiction veteran. The two started dating and married in 1946. Ray Bradbury was the best man.

Leigh Brackett broke into the science fiction magazines with “Martian Quest”, which appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Two more stories for Astounding followed in 1940 and 1942, but Leigh Brackett did not get along with John W. Campbell (neither did Edmond Hamilton) and so took her talent to magazines that were more suited to the type of adventure packed planetary romance that Brackett excelled at. Planet Stories published some of her best-known stories, but her work also appeared in Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales and other magazines of the era. By the late 1940s, Leigh Brackett was known as “the Queen of Space Opera”.

Most of her stories were set in a version of our solar system that never was, where Mars was a dying desert world littered with ancient ruins, Venus was a mist-shrouded tropical ocean world, Mercury was a tidally locked hellhole and Earth was hellbent on colonizing the rest of the solar system. Leigh Brackett’s work belies claims that the science fiction of the golden age was exclusively white, male, racist and colonialist. Brackett’s protagonists were often outsiders – drifters, outlaws, drug addicts – and several of them, most notably Eric John Stark, were not white. The women were alien temptresses or interplanetary Girl Fridays, but always formidable. Her takes on Mars and Venus were dripping with atmosphere and often melancholic and particularly her early stories were often critical of colonialism and imperialism and how they impact the indigenous population. In her 1944 novel Shadow Over Mars, the evil corporation that operates slave mines on Mars is called the Terran Exploitation Company, a rare case of truth in advertising.

Leigh Brackett’s science fiction often has a certain noir sensibility and so it’s no surprise that she also started writing hardboiled crime fiction. Her 1944 crime novel No Good From a Corpse brought her to the attention of Howard Hawks who hired her to co-write the screenplay for The Big Sleep, kickstarting her screenwriting career which led to penning the scripts for such cinematic classics as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari and The Long Goodbye. Her screenplay draft for The Empire Strikes Back was very much the capstone of Leigh Brackett’s career both as a science fiction and screenwriter – especially since her work influenced both Star Wars and Indiana Jones – and it’s only fitting that the movie is dedicated to her memory. It also won her a posthumous Hugo Award, her first, even though she was nominated as early as 1956 for her post-apocalyptic novel The Long Tomorrow as the first ever female Hugo finalist along with her friend C.L. Moore.

Leigh Brackett was one of the most important science fiction writers of the golden age. But the fact that the majority of her stories appeared in what were considered second tier magazines (they weren’t, but that’s a story for another day) is also why her stories was less reprinted and remembered than they should have been. By the time, I became interested in her work in the late 1980s, all of it was out of print and I had to hunt down yellowing paperbacks in used bookstores. As a result, the first thing by Leigh Brackett that I actually read – though I had seen several of the movies for which she wrote screenplays – was the Skaith Trilogy from the mid 1970s, where Leigh Brackett revisited her most famous character Eric John Stark and sent him to a distant dying star, since the Mars and Venus he’d roamed in the 1940s had long since been debunked by the Mariner space probes. The novels were good enough that I wanted to read more, but not as good as her stories from the 1940s.

In many ways, Leigh Brackett was a victim of bad timing. The planetary adventures on which she’d built her career fell out of fashion by the 1950s and her markets died off one by one. L. Sprague De Camp considered hiring her to write new Conan adventures, but went with Lin Carter instead (Oh, what might have been). And Leigh Brackett died too young, aged only 62, to take advantage of the space opera resurgence in the wake of Star Wars. But she will forever remain the Queen of Space Opera.

Leigh Brackett in High School performance.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark fell short of the goal.
Pearls Before Swine rolls the bone.
Sherman’s Lagoon finds a spacecraft.
Bliss updates a classic.

(11) THIS JOB IS NOT THAT F#%$! EASY. Invincible Season 3 arrives February 6 on Prime Video — first three episodes that day, then weekly through March 13.

Based on Robert Kirkman’s award-winning comic book series, Invincible follows 19-year-old Mark Grayson, as he inherits his father’s superpowers and sets out to become Earth’s greatest defender, only to discover the job is more challenging than he could have ever imagined. Everything changes as Mark is forced to face his past, and his future, while discovering how much further he’ll need to go to protect the people he loves.

(12) FRANKENSTEIN IS THE PEN’S NAME. LeBoeuf Pens will be happy to sell you The Mary Shelley Frankenstein Limited Edition Fountain Pen for the monstrous price of $225.

But if money is no object for you, immediately order this most elaborate Montegrappa Universal Monsters Fountain Pen – Frankenstein (Limited Edition) — $6200 from Atlas Stationers. Did you ever see such a desk set? Talk about impressive!

(13) EARLY BIG MEALS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The cover story in this week’s Science Advances journal relates to ancient N. American diets. Although it has long been recognised that the Clovis peoples of North America (13,000 to12,000 years ago) hunted consumed megafauna such as the mammoth, controversy continued about whether they specialised in these species or if they had a broader diet. Using stable isotopic analysis of the remains of the 18-month-old Anzick-1 child researchers reconstructed his mother’s diet and found that mammoth was the largest contributor to it, followed by elk and bison. They then compared her diet with those of carnivores from the region and found that it was closest to that of the now-extinct scimitar-toothed cat, which specialized in hunting mammoths. The researchers suggest that this focus on mammoth procurement facilitated the rapid spread of Clovis culture.

Research here: “Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet”.

(14) SINGULAR SENSATION. “Technological Singularity in 7 Years?” – SCIFI.radio doesn’t see it happening.

… WHAT IS THE SINGULARITY ANYWAY?

The Singularity is a theoretical point in the future when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in profound changes to human civilization. Often associated with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the Singularity is marked by the emergence of super-intelligent systems capable of surpassing human intellectual capacity in virtually every domain.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE IF THE SINGULARITY HAPPENED?

Exponential Growth of Technology: Rapid technological advancements, particularly in AI, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, lead to innovations that accelerate progress in unprecedented ways.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): The development of AI systems with cognitive abilities on par with or exceeding human intelligence, enabling them to perform any intellectual task a human can do—and potentially far better.
Automation and Transformation: Profound shifts in economies, work, and daily life as automation and AI take over increasingly complex tasks, rendering many traditional human roles obsolete.
Integration with Technology: Potential merging of human biology with technology (e.g., brain-computer interfaces) to enhance physical and cognitive abilities, challenging the definition of what it means to be human.

NOW YOU KNOW THE OUTCOME. DO WE LOOK CLOSE TO YOU?

We are a civilization at war with itself, battling against runaway corporate capitalism, failed democracies, strong-man authoritarian governments springing up all over the planet, three to nine military conflicts of varying degrees taking place all over the planet, runaway climate change effects, microplastics in every ocean and now in the wind raining down on populated areas, diseases that were almost annihilated are running rampant again, deforestation, over-fishing, and climate migration taking place on every continent.

Does this look like a world able to usher in the development of a world-transforming technological breakthrough just as liable to destroy humanity as it is to save it?

(15) IT AIN’T ME BABE. “New York woman blames Star Trek license plates for tens of thousands of dollars in accidental tickets” – CBS New York has the story.

A Long Island retiree says she’s getting traffic tickets from all over the country.

But the thing is, she stopped driving four years ago.

So how could this be happening?

Beda Koorey’s love of Star Trek may be at the root of it all

“These came yesterday from Chicago, speeding tickets. They are $100 each,” Beda Koorey said.

Back in 2020, the Huntington resident surrendered her license plates, sold her car, and stopped driving.

“I don’t have a car. I don’t drive. Those plates were turned in,” the 76-year-old said.

Yet, many walks to her mailbox bring the retiree unwanted surprises.

“They are persistent and they keep sending me tickets,” Koorey said.

Her old custom plates honored Star Trek and had the same number as the Starship Enterprise — NCC-1701.

However, for $15 on Amazon and eBay, some Trekkies have been easily replacing their real plates with the same novelty plates — and getting away with it.

Their accrued tickets from all over the country are being mailed to Koorey.

“Red light, speeding, parking, school zone,” she said, describing the types of tickets she receives.

She also gets hit with E-ZPass tolls.

“I got a phone call from Ohio, a police chief looking for plates because they were involved in a robbery,” Koorey said….

(16) KRUGMAN RETIRES FROM NYT. [Item by Scott Edelman.] Paul Krugman announced his retirement from the New York Times, which caused me to remember I recorded his talk at the 2009 Montreal Worldcon, where he discussed how Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy got him into comics, Charlie Stross, and a bunch of other topics related to us.

(17) THE PDF FILES. Mark Barsotti continues his interview with Paul Di Filippo in this fourth installment: “WRITER PAUL Di FILIPPO ~ ‘I hate talking about myself.’”

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

Pixel Scroll 12/3/24 I See Files Of Blue, Red Pixels Too, I See Them Purr For Me And You

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(0) FILE 770 TURNS ON ‘LIKE’ FUNCTION. Starting today you can now tag posts and comments with a “like”.

(1) SUPER SPOILER ALERT! Superman and Lois ends with a climactic fight, and a highly sentimental flashforward to the beginning of Superman’s supernatural life. I found both clips pretty impressive, so just imagine their impact on those who watched the series faithfully.

Superman & Lois: The Final Fight between Superman and Lex Luthor – Series Finale

Superman & Lois 4×10 Epilogue “Life Goes By So Fast” Scene (HD) Series Finale

(2) FROM BC TO AD TO DC. “The CW’s DC Era Ends With ‘Superman & Lois’ Finale: Numbers Behind the Enduring Franchise” from The Hollywood Reporter.

The series finale of Superman & Lois aired Monday night on The CW. It marked not just the end of the show’s four-season run, but also an entire programming philosophy at the network.

Superman & Lois was the last series based on DC Comics characters to air at the network. It was also the last connection to The CW’s Arrowverse (even if it wasn’t technically part of the main continuity of that franchise), which defined the 2010s for the network and became one of the more successful multi-show franchises in TV history.

The ending of Superman & Lois, which — spoiler alert — flashes forward several decades to show the end of its title characters’ (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) lives, precludes any continuation of the show elsewhere — as do new regimes at both The CW and DC parent Warner Bros. Discovery, which both have very different approaches than they did during the Arrowverse’s heyday in the mid- and late 2010s….

… 10: The number of series based on DC characters that aired on The CW, beginning with Arrow in October 2012. All of them came from Warner Bros. TV and what was then called DC Entertainment, and nine — Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights — were executive produced by Berlanti via his Berlanti Productions. The 10th is 2022’s Naomi, co-created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and produced by DuVernay’s ARRAY Filmworks along with DC and WB….

… 817, 797: The combined episode total from all 10 shows, and those that ran on The CW; Supergirl‘s first season, which spanned 20 episodes, aired on CBS. The 817 episodes are more than all but three multi-show franchise since 1990 — only Law & Order (1,363 episodes as of publication time), JAG/NCIS (1,249) and CSI (838) have more. NBC’s Chicago franchise will need to air 131 more episodes — about six 22-episode seasons’ worth of shows — to pass the DC total….

(3) DIVERSE READING AID. Rocket Stack Rank reminds us of “Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2023”. See the list at the link.

62 outstanding SF/F short stories by People of Color from 2023 that were finalists for major SF/F awards, included in “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, or recommended by prolific reviewers. (40 free online, 18 with podcasts)….

… Readers asked us to make it easy for them to find good stories written by authors with diverse racial backgrounds, and that’s what this list is meant to accomplish (author identity plays no role in our ratings)….

(4) MORPHIN’ INTO CASH. By the time Heritage Auction’s November 18-19 Power Rangers Hasbro Hollywood & Entertainment Signature^® Auction wrapped it had realized $3.3 million dollars in sales.

Every costume, monster, prop, weapon and warrior offered in the landmark event — nearly 700 lots! — found a new home.

As a result, the auction realized $3,310,929, with countless surprises and smash hits throughout the largest and most comprehensive collection of Power Rangers memorabilia ever assembled, spanning the classic Power Rangers Mighty Morphin to the most recent season, Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, which premiered last year.

From the latter series came the auction’s top lot: the original hero Cosmic Fury Cannon, the team’s signature weapon that combines all five of the Cosmic Fury Rangers’ individual dino-themed powers into an 80-inch-long laser blaster. After a prolonged bidding war during the auction’s second day, the Cosmic Fury Cannon shot up to its final price of $87,500.

Another smash hit was one of this auction’s numerous centerpieces: the Transformable Astro Megaship/Astro Megazord hero filming miniature from 1998’s Power Rangers in Space, one of the only complete Zords in this auction used on screen as the Rangers’ spacecraft and battle Zord. It’s fully articulated, an armed warrior and battle carrier that still moves like a well-oiled machine — and is so complete it still has the fishing line used to open its chest. It opened live bidding at $19,000 and finally realized $47,500 after a lengthy bidding war.

Weapons wielded significant power during this event, with the Green Ranger Hero Dragon Dagger from last year’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always realizing $23,750. And six Cosmic Morpher Hero Props from Power Rangers Cosmic Fury blasted their way to a $17,500 finish.

Numerous costumes worn throughout the series’ 31-year run realized five figures, among them the Green Ranger hero costume worn by Jason David Frank, as Tommy Oliver, during the initial run of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the mid-1990s. It realized $30,000, while his complete White Ranger hero costume from 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie sold for $16,250. The auction’s second day began with a moment of silence in tribute to Frank….

A couple more favorites:

Fierce Fashions: Trini Kwan’s Yellow Ranger costume, Saber-Toothed Tiger Power Morpher included, roared to $23,750. Kimberly Hart’s Pink Ranger suit wasn’t far behind, landing $22,500.

Villains Rule: Even baddies got their moment in the spotlight, with Goldar Maximus strutting off for $21,250 and Master Zedd securing $18,750.

(5) TERMINALS OF ENDEARMENT. “Lovable Movie Robots Are Coming to Charm Your Children” writes Diego Hadis in the New York Times (great article, but behind a paywall).

One near certainty about raising a young child these days is that you and your offspring will be exposed to a lot of stories about robots. Another is that the robots working their charms most effectively on you will belong to a new kind of archetype: the sympathetic robot. Sitting in darkened theaters with my 5-year-old son, I have watched any number of these characters. They are openhearted and often dazzled by the wonders of everyday life — innocently astounded by, say, the freedom of playing in the surf, the bliss of dancing with a loved one or the thrill of just holding hands. They might be more winningly human than some of the humans you know….

… Take Roz, the main character of the animated film “The Wild Robot,” which came out in September. Like the Peter Brown book series on which it is based, the movie focuses on a robot protagonist that gains emotional complexity after she washes ashore on an island unpopulated by humans, learns to communicate with the animals she meets there and becomes the surrogate mother of an orphaned gosling. Roz changes and adapts; she goes from seeing her care for the gosling as a rote task to welcoming it as a real connection. She embraces the wildness of the animals around her and ceases to be the unfeeling machine that her programming intended. Instead, she becomes an unnatural champion for the natural world — one whose touching incomprehension of how to care for a newborn makes her charming….

…We’re now inarguably living in the future that science fiction once imagined. Artificial intelligences weaned on vast libraries of human endeavor are coming online, their boosters hyping their potential to either fulfill our greatest wishes or realize our deepest fears. It feels notable that we are raising our children on pointedly comforting stories about robots that, instead of relieving us of our jobs or edging us to the brink of Armageddon, offer to show us how to be more human. Granted, computers are an inescapable facet of our world now. As they grow up, our children will consume stories about humanlike robots as naturally as our ancestors delighted in tales about anthropomorphic animals. Still, these stories seem to be doing an inordinate amount of work to help children feel warm toward the technologies that increasingly dominate our lives….

…This is all in spite of the remarkably bleak near future portrayed in many of these children’s films. They tend to show us a world of ecological ruin devastated by climate change. “The Wild Robot” offers haunting images like the Golden Gate Bridge submerged in San Francisco Bay as a flock of geese passes overhead. The Earth in “Wall-E” has been reduced to a lifeless, postindustrial horrorscape reminiscent of the works of the photographer Edward Burtynsky; humans have fled it entirely. “Robot Dreams” evades this by being set in and around its 1980s New York, but even that film concerns itself greatly with the natural world. We see the robot experiencing the changing seasons on a wintry beach; the dog takes pity on a fish that he has caught and releases it. There is even a scene — echoing the surrogate parenting in “The Wild Robot” — in which the robot helps encourage a young bird to learn how to fly.

There is an echo here of the classic robot stories: Humanity’s hubris has once again led us to get in over our heads. But now we’re encouraged to take pleasure in watching a robot try to navigate what’s left, slowly figuring out that human values — love, connection, caretaking — are eternally important. The sympathetic robots are devised as much to comfort us parents as they are to make technology appealing to our kids. Despite the destabilized world that we’re leaving to our offspring, they reassure us, artificial intelligences could one day serve as our surrogates — and care for our children or, who knows, even love them for us when we’re gone.

(6) WRITERS NEED HELP. [Item by Steven French.] Worrying news: “Royal Literary Fund’s hardship grants for writers see applications increase by 400%” in the Guardian.

Applications for the Royal Literary Fund’s (RLF’s) hardship grants for professional writers increased by 400% between last year and this year, the charity has said.

There was a nearly fivefold increase in applications in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023, RLF CEO Edward Kemp told the Guardian.

The RLF’s grant applications are open to writers who need short- or long-term financial support because they are, for example, facing an unexpected bill, reduced income, or are unable to write due to a “change in circumstances, sickness, disability, or age”, according to the RLF.

The grants are given as a donation towards the “removal of distress for the applicant”, rather than to help complete literary works. Writers must have published (via a traditional publisher, not self-published) at least two books in the UK or Ireland to be eligible for a grant.

The rise in applications comes after research published by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in 2022 showed authors’ median earnings were just £7,000 a year, down from £12,330 in 2006.

(7) FUTURE WORLDS PRIZE JUDGES NAMED. TheFuture Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced the judging panel for its 2025 prize. The prize aims to find new talent based in the UK writing in the SFF space and is funded by author Ben Aaronovitch and actor Adjoa Andoh. The judges are:

2023 winner Mahmud El Sayed
Shadow and Bone actor Amita Suman
Bestselling author Saara El Arifi
Literary agent Amandeep Singh
Author Rogba Payne.

The winner of Future Worlds Prize receives £4,500, and the runner-up receives £2,500. The remaining six shortlisted writers each receive £850. All eight writers also get mentoring from one of the prize’s publishing partners: Bloomsbury, Daphne Press, Gollancz, HarperVoyager, Hodderscape, Orbit, Penguin Michael Joseph, Simon & Schuster, Titan and Tor.

Future Worlds Prize closes for entries at 23:59 GMT on Sunday 26th January 2025.

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Sarah Pinsker and Yume Kitasei on Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

SARAH PINSKER

A starred Booklist review called Sarah Pinsker’s latest, Haunt Sweet Home, “Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful…” She is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of the novels A Song For A New Day and We Are Satellites, plus the collections Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and Lost Places, both published by Small Beer Press, and over sixty pieces of short fiction. She’s currently the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College, and lives in Baltimore with her wife and two weird dogs.

YUME KITASEI

Yume Kitasei is the author of The Deep Sky, The Stardust Grail, and Saltcrop (forthcoming in 2025). She is half Japanese and half American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. You can find more information about her at www.yumekitasei.com. She chirps occasionally @Yumewrites at Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky.

Meets at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

(9) WALT BOYES AND JOY WARD JOIN MISTI MEDIA, LLC. Walt Boyes and Joy Ward, longtime chief editors for Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press, and Top of the World Publishing, are joining Misti Media as Editors-at-Large. They will be responsible for the startup of Misti Media’s new Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror imprint: Nazca Press. They will also be working with Misti Media’s other main imprints and alongside Sandra Murphy who oversees content for specialty imprint Sandra Murphy Presents. For the Misti Media story, see Misti Media, LLC.

“Nazca Press doesn’t have a website yet, as Misti Media is only a year old and growing its Internet presence,” says Walt Boyes, “but what we do have is close to 100 years of editing and publishing experience in both fiction, genre fiction, and non-fiction. And when you add this to the incredible 30 years of industry experience brought to Misti Media by CEO and Publisher Jay Hartman, we are the real deal.”

“We moved first to create world-class distribution for both ebooks and trade paperbacks,” Jay Hartman explains. “We have worldwide distribution in nearly every country, including bookstores and libraries, and we have begun publishing some fantastic authors. Now, with Walt and Joy’s experience and knowledge, we can start looking for more great authors to join our family.”

You can reach Walt at wboyes@mistimedia.com; Joy at jward@mistimedia.com; and Jay Hartman at jhartman@mistimedia.com.

(10) LARPING IN SOCAL. The Washington Post takes you “Inside Twin Mask, an elaborate fantasy world just miles from L.A.” (This gift article bypasses the paywall, but you still need a free WaPo account to read it.)

…The entire weekend — Friday night until Sunday morning — would be spent inside this elaborate fantasy realm with its many rules and intricate replicas.

Held at the site of the Koroneburg Renaissance Festival about an hour outside Los Angeles, the live-action role-playing (LARP) game Twin Mask stands out for its sheer size and lifespan. It’s far more elaborate than other games of its ilk, with anywhere from 400 to 600 players converging in character at events held every month and a half or so.

“You eat food in character, you walk to the bathroom in character,” says its creator, John Basset, who started Twin Mask 14 years ago. “It really feels like you’re in another world.”

Given its proximity to Hollywood, it attracts a fair number of players whose day jobs are in the film industry. And they revel in making a next-level spectacle.

… In the dark world of Adelrune, characters share a unifying aspect — they each have been resurrected from death. Whether they’re a knight, a healer or a merchant, allthe players, known collectively as “The Returned,” have detailed backstories….

… Twin Mask is run by a detailed system of unpaid volunteers and staff who take on everything from writing the story, to ensuring people (and mythical creatures) are hydrated and safe, to performing as non-player characters who help guide the storyline. Still, every player can influence the plot, which continues long after the weekend is over….

… A little over an hour into the game, no one is in charge and a criminal underworld is beginning to take hold. Much of the site is eerily quiet.

Not so at the tavern in the center of town where the single dusty road splits. The boisterous bar is filled with the chatter of players who never break character. Some are making deals while others are socializing. The crowd is soon silenced by the sound of a ringing bell. Players returning from death quietly shuffle in.…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 66.

I first encountered Terri Windling’s writing through reading The Wood Wife, a truly extraordinary fantasy that deserved the Mythopoeic Award it won. (The Hole in the Wall bar in it would be borrowed by Charles de Lint with her permission for a scene in his Medicine Road novel, an excellent novel.) I like the American edition with Susan Sedona Boulet’s art much better than I do the British edition with the Brian Froud art as I feel it catches the tone of the novel.

I would be very remiss not mention about her stellar work as the founding editor along with Ellen Datlow of what would be called The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror after the first volume which was simply The Year’s Best Fantasy, that being noted for those of you who would doubt correct me for not noting that. The series won three World Fantasy Awards and a Stoker as well.

They also edited the most splendid Snow White, Blood Red anthologies which were stories based on traditional folk tales. Lots of very good stuff there. Like the Mythic Fiction series is well worth reading and available at usual suspects and in digital form as well.

Oh, and I want to single out The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood which took on the difficult subject of child abuse. It garnered a much warranted Otherwise nomination.

Now let’s have a beer at the Dancing Ferret as I note her creation and editing (for the most part) of the Bordertown series. I haven’t read all of it, though I did read her first three anthologies several times and love the punks as you can see here on Life on the Border, but I’ve quite a bit of it and all of the three novels written in it, Emma Bull’s Finder: A Novel: of The Borderlands, is one of my comfort works, so she gets credit for that.

So now let’s move to an art credit for her. So have you seen the cover art for Another Way to Travel by Cats Laughing? I’ve the original pen and ink art that she did here.

Which brings me to the Old Oak Wood series which is penned by her and illustrated by Wendy Froud. Now Wikipedia and most of the reading world thinks that it consists of three lovely works — A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale, The Winter Child and The Faeries of Spring Cottage.

But there’s a story that Terri wrote that never got published anywhere but on Green Man. It’s an Excerpt from The Old Oak Chronicles: Interviews with Famous Personages by Professor Arnel Rootmuster. It’s a charming story, so go ahead and read it.

Photo posted by Terri on Bluesky. Photographer unstated.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Heathcliff faces top competition.
Rubes visits Acme world.
Wizard of Id doesn’t have sunshine coming out of there.
Bizarro takes things literally.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal finds a destiny that isn’t dull.

(13) PREPARE TO BLEEP AND BLUR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The House of Mouse said nay to one line of dialogue in Deadpool & Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds came up with a replacement that was just as raunchy, but didn’t reference Steamboat Willie’s willy. People says, “We Now Know the Super-Raunchy Mickey Mouse Joke Disney Asked Ryan Reynolds to Cut from Deadpool & Wolverine”.

…Director Shawn Levy previously said there was “only one line in the entire movie that we were asked to change,” telling Entertainment Weekly in August that he and star Ryan Reynolds made a “pact” to “go to our grave with that line.”

However, Marvel Studios has shared the film’s official screenplay online as part of a For Your Consideration campaign this awards season, and in the script, that original deleted line is revealed.

In the scene where Deadpool (Reynolds) asks if Magneto is also in the film, he’s told the character is dead. He then says, “F—! What, we can’t even afford one more X-Man? Disney is so cheap. I can barely breathe with all this Mickey Mouse c–k in my throat.”

The actual line in the final cut of the movie is: “F—, now Disney gets cheap? It’s like Pinocchio jammed his face in my ass and started lying like crazy.”

The scene features the surprise cameos made by Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Wesley Snipes as Blade and Channing Tatum as Gambit. The screenplay showcases the Stranger Things–inspired code names the writers used to keep the characters’ identities a secret. Gambit is “Gatsby,” Elektra is “Eleven” and Blade is “Billy,” plus, earlier, Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm is listed as “Jonathan Byers.”…

(14) SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE: PAOLO BACIGALUPI. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Season 103 of LearnedLeague feature this as the third question of the twelfth match day:

Emiko, the central character in Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?

Although this refers to a Hugo-winning novel, it’s sufficiently obscure that not all Filers might know it: the answer is “windup”; the novel is The Windup Girl.

11% of LearnedLeague players got this right (your reporter being one of them). The most common wrong answer actually had a higher rate than the right answer: 16% guessed “geisha” — not totally unreasonable if you have to guess something.

One interesting note is that the question originally gave the author’s name as “Paulo” and the answer as “wind up”, two words. I contacted the League commissioner and got it corrected. (I don’t know how many other people might also have done so.)

LearnedLeague competition allows you to control the points available on each question, within limits, and makes extensive history available to the players. My opponent did not avail himself of this resource! He gave me the maximum points for this one, when even a quick search would suggest that I’d know it.

Brick Barrientos sent along his own comment about the difficulty of this LL question:

“Emiko, the central character in Paulo Bacigalupi’s 2009 dystopian science fiction novel, is a genetically engineered humanoid designed for servitude known as what type of girl, as referenced in the book’s title?”

The answer, of course, is Windup. Only 11% got it right. I thought it was a very hard question for a general knowledge, non-specialist trivia quiz. In my mind, I tried to think of three more recent Hugo novel winners that maybe 30% of trivia enthusiasts could get. In other words, if you gave the author, said it was a Hugo novel winner, some elements of the plot, and a hint at the title, would a mainstream audience get it? I came up with The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Redshirts by John Scalzi, and maybe Network Effect by Martha Wells.

Extend it to novellas, and you could add This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. If this becomes a Pixel Scroll item, what genre novels have had major mainstream exposure in the last 15 years?

(15) COULROPHOBIA CENTRAL. Those of you who made it to the Westercon in Tonopah have already driven past this landmark: “Creepy vibes drives booming business at Tonopah’s Clown Motel” in the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of its painted faces to be smiling.

But as Vijay Mehar has learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., happy clowns are not what most of his customers want.

What they seem to want is fear, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be scared.”

So aiming to lure more people off Main Street (a.k.a. U.S. 95) to visit this 31-room motel in the dusty, stark middle of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.

By the end of 2025, he’s hoping to have completed a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the size of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift shop area. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house, to be made of 11 shipping containers….

…“America’s Scariest Motel,” read the brochures by the register. “Let fear run down your spine.”

There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. And then there are the neighbors. The motel stands next to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents…

…“If we had paid 60, or 70, or even 80 bucks, this place might have been worth it,” wrote one unamused motel customer on Trip Advisor recently.

“We had good fun, and even better we weren’t murdered,” wrote another….

(16) TRADING PLACES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Over here in Brit Cit we have a shop chain called Games Workshop that sells tabletop games and models. It has been steadily growing and now may become one of the nation’s top 100 companies on the UK stock market…. “Alliance Witan and Games Workshop expected to join FTSE 100 this month” reports Shares Magazine.

(17) HEARING FROM PAUL DI FILIPPO. Mark Barsotti recently interviewed prolific sff author Paul Di Filippo and through the creative use of photos and book covers turned the recordings into a three-part video series.

PAUL Di FILIPPO INTERVIEW ~ SCIENCE FICTION’S MOST UNDERRATED WRITER? ~ Part 1

Part one of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a better world would make the bestseller lists. Interview: November 11, 2024.

PAUL Di FILIPPO INTERVIEW ~ SCIENCE FICTION SUPER SCRIBE! ~ Part 2

Part two of my interview with writer Paul Di Filippo, who in a juster world would make a lot more money. Paul talks about his multiverse novel VANGIE’S GHOST. Interview 11, 2024.

PAUL Di FILIPPO ~ A PINT-SIZED VOLTAIRE?

Part 3 on my interview with science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo, who discusses his latest novel, Vangie’s Ghosts, “technopunk jazz scatting” and not being a miserabilist. Interview: 11-11-24.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Barsotti, Walt Boyes, Cathy Green, Brick Barrientos, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff “What A Wonderful World” Smith.]

Pixel Scroll 11/19/24 Six Impixelable Things Before Breakfast

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) PORTENT OF ELECTRONIC DOOM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s BBC Radio 4 The Infinite Monkey Cage looked at the personal digital landscape, the threats from hacking, digital theft, cyber war and the coming quantum day.

Invited to discuss this were experts in cyber crime and cyber warfare with the show’s regular hosts: physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince.

The show concluded somewhat grimly that we are all doomed…

I have been saying for years that the machines are taking over the world but no-one ever listens… well, it now seems, hardly anyone.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince head to Bletchley Park with comedian Alan Davies, and cyber experts Victoria Baines and Richard Benham to decode cyberwarfare and discuss its future.

As computers have shrunk from the size of rooms to fitting in our jacket pockets, our cyber sleuths explore the changing nature of cyber-attacks and defence. They decipher the fancy jargon abounding in cyber land, from trojan horses to phishing scams and reveal how prolific these attacks are on nation states, businesses and the public. From digital army battalions to teenage freelance hackers, the cyber-villains are multiple and varied. Our panel discusses the aims of these malevolent forces; from extorting money and holding valuable commercial data hostage to influencing people’s electoral intent.

The panel explores how AI and quantum computing are supercharging cyberwarfare – but in good news, also cyber-defence. Alan Davies shares his susceptibility to being tricked online whilst our experts give some tips for staying safe online, and finally, Alan comes up with his surprising alter-ego hacking name.

The show can be downloaded from here.

(2) GILLER PRIZE. The Giller Prize 2024 winner – Held by Anne Michaels — was announced on November 18. The Prize is a celebration of Canadian literary talent.

Held may be a work of genre interest – or a historical novel that jumps around in time (even into 2025). It’s not easy to decide based on what the Penguin Random House Canada’s website says. Is this a literal description, or a poetic analogy?

…1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

…From its opening lines, Held is alive with seeking: “We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”

If anyone here has read it, please help us decide whether this is a work of sff!

(3) THE NITTY GRITTY. Bidding starts at Christie’s in nine days for “Dune: an early study of Arrakis by John Schoenherr”, which is estimated to bring £5,000-£7,000 at auction.

‘I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations.’ -Frank Herbert.

An early painted landscape of the Dune universe, one of only six known Dune studies by Schoenherr from the 1960s. The others are the three cover artworks for Analog magazine (one of which was used on the hardcover first edition), the first paperback cover, and an unused Analog cover.

To visualize his world, Herbert worked alongside the Hugo award winning artist, Schoenherr, who produced the illustrations for the original magazine serial, as well as the cover art for the original hardcover and paperback editions of the trilogy. Indeed, the present work bears certain similarities to the cover art for the 1965 first paperback edition published by Ace Books, particularly the angle of the large rocky outcrop in the foreground. Schoenherr’s work for Dune laid the visual foundations for every cinematic and artistic interpretation of the world that would follow, his barren and emotive landscapes helping bring to life the otherworldly spice fields and kingdoms laid out in Herbert’s iconic text. So fitting were Schoenherr’s illustrations that the author declared him ‘the only man to ever visit Dune’.

Ragged and sharp in its visualization of an arid desertscape, the present work captures the hostile and unforgiving environment of Arrakis. It appears to be unpublished and was perhaps intended as an early experimental adventure into the vast world of Dune.

(4) AND THAT’S NOT ALL. Heritage Auction also has artwork of sff genre interest in their forthcoming 2024 December 9 Illustration Art Showcase Auction 15236. See lots at the link. Includes artists Emsh, John Schoenherr, Virgil Finlay, Jack Gaughan, and Richard M. Powers.

Here’s one example: “Away Team” by Edmund (Emsh) Emshwiller.

(5) NEW SHORT FROM RODDENBERRY ARCHIVE AND OTOY. “William Shatner’s Captain Kirk Faces a Long Goodbye in This Stunning Star Trek Anniversary Short” – Gizmodo sets the scene.

Thirty years ago today [November 18], Star Trek‘s cinematic legacy boldly stepped forward as the heroes of the original series and The Next Generation teamed up on the silver screen in Star Trek: Generations. The Enterprise-D met her end, the Star Trek movie franchise passed the torch to a new age, and, of course, William Shatner’s Captain Kirk gave it all to save the Veridian system from the sinister Dr. Soran. And now, to celebrate, the Roddenberry Archive has once again teamed up with OTOY to create a fitting, fond farewell to not one, but two of Trek‘s original heroes….

…There’s some fascinating connections to a whole gamut of Star Trek lore here, from OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive’s previous use of Mahé Thaissa as Yeoman Colt from “The Cage” all the way up to the inclusion of Yor, a Betelgeusian Starfleet officer from the Kelvin Timeline who briefly appeared during the events of Star Trek: Discovery season three. But you’re mostly here for the uncanny valley being overridden by tugs at your heart strings to give Kirk and Spock alike one last shared farewell….

(6) LOSCON 50 SUPPORTS THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY/RELAY FOR LIFE TEAM. Loscon 50, taking place November 29-December 1 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel, has announced their support for a charity, and three ways you can help: knit or crochet a hat; donate funds; donate to an auction. Details in the following press release:

Loscon 50 is honored to support the mission of the American Cancer Society during the 2024 convention weekend as “Loscon Gives Back”. Many of our community members have been affected by various forms of cancer, we have survivors and losses from this devastating disease. We have teamed up with the Relay for Life fundraiser with one of our staff, Julia Ree who is part of the Riverside team and a cancer survivor herself. Here is Julia’s direct Relay for Life link.

We have put out a call for knit hats to be crafted by those who knit or crochet in our Loscon community. These hats are gifted to cancer patients during their treatment and will be presented to Julia Ree during the convention. The hats can be brought to Loscon 50 and dropped off in the Office or they can be mailed in, please use the contact form on the loscon.org website.

Loscon will have an auction during the convention to raise funds to donate directly to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life team. We welcome donations to the auction by our community, our dealers, our authors and others who would like to support this worthy cause. Please use the contact form on our website at this link: https://loscon.org/contact/

Loscon is excited to welcome attendees to our three day weekend of Science Fiction and Fantasy fun. We celebrate Larry Niven as our Writer Guest of Honor, Kathy Mar our Musical Guest of Honor, Dr Laura Brodian Freas Beraha our Artist Guest of Honor and the late Kelly Freas as our Artist Ghost of Honor and our Fan Guests of Honor, Genny Dazzo and Craig Miller. Please see https://loscon.lineupr.com/loscon-50/ for programming details.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Let’s talk about my favorite Star Wars film. No, not the first one, The Empire Strikes Back. Released forty-four years ago but please note not on this date. I think it’s the best written, best performed and simply most interesting of the trilogy.

It was as you know the sequel to the original film which Leigh Brackett was hired to write before she died way too soon, just several weeks after turning in her script, so Lucas hired Lawrence Kasdan to write but gave Leigh Brackett co-writing credit on it as much of script is still in the final script.

Now they did met several times in late 1977 to hash out an outline for what was called then Star Wars II. They figured out the framework of plot, which remained pretty much intact in later drafts, although there were some differences such as Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father in their outline.

Den of Geek has this quote, “Writing has never been something I have enjoyed, and so, ultimately, on the second film I hired Leigh Brackett. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out; she turned in the first draft, and then she passed away, I didn’t like the first script, but I gave Leigh credit because I liked her a lot. She was sick at the time she wrote the script, and she really tried her best.”

Does her script exist for reading? I’ve seen it referred to in articles over and but can’t find it online.

Now the co-written script is quite fine and the performance here by everyone I think far outshines the first film. The addition of Darth Vader makes Luke Skywalker into a more interesting character, and the expansion of the cast and setting in general makes this a more believe story. Yes, it’s far darker, more sinister, but a galactic empire would be so.

Even Yoda who could be cute isn’t. (That sentence structure is deliberate.) Look it’s a muppet! It’s voiced by Frank Oz! Perfectly designed to sell lots of plushies!

Lucas had intended to have a new mentor character for Luke who in his original design was a diminutive frog-like creature named Minch Yoda. No, I’m not kidding.

Side-note: I still find our two droids far too irritating. They just always come off as being that for me, particularly the C-3PO. I like my droids darker which I why I prefer the ones in Neal Asher’s polity series. Aren’t they darker in The Culture series as well?

Is there anything I dont like here? No. I’ve watched it a half dozen times and I think it well deserves generally positive reviews, the half billion box office on a budget of under fifty million dollars, and the audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes of 97%.

It of course, like everything Star Wars, is streaming on Disney +.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows the risk of resisting AI.
Reality Check expands its scope.
Thatababy honors Greg Hildebrandt.
The Flying McCoys traces the military learning curve.
Wumo is a disguise skeptic.
Brewster Rockit might also be a clue about what happened to the Entwives.

(9) TIMESTAMPS FOR A SET OF EASTER EGGS. Collider says “This Haunted Object Has a Cameo in Nearly Every Flanagan Project” – and brings receipts.

Oculus was Mike Flanagan’s second feature-length film and arguably the one that first made people sit up and take notice of the new director. The Lasser Glass is the haunted mirror at the center of the movie that causes so much trauma for Karen Gillan’s and Brenton Thwaites’ sibling characters, but for eagle-eyed viewers, it also haunts the backgrounds of the majority of Flanagan’s other works….

… It took four years for Mike Flanagan to release another movie after Oculus, but he returned with not one, but three movies in one year. Although 2016’s Hush and Before I Wake don’t include the Lasser Glass, Flanagan included the mirror in the background of Ouija: Origin of Evil — it can be spotted precisely at 1:07:00 when Doris (Lulu Wilson) walks through the basement. This kicked off Flanagan’s habit of including some variation of the mirror in every one of his projects since then. In total, the mirror from Oculus appears in nine of Flanagan’s works (10 if you count the short film on which Oculus is based). Let’s take a look at where, and when, you can see each other reference to the horrifying mirror….

(10) WAS WINNING A GOOD OR BAD THING? [Item by Steven French.] Some of the winners of the Ig Nobel prize share their stories, which include homosexual necrophiliac ducks, levitating frogs and mammals that can breathe through their anus: “How a silly science prize changed my career” in Nature.

…Eleanor Maguire wasn’t too thrilled when she was first offered an Ig Nobel Prize. The neuroscientist at University College London was being honoured for her study showing that London taxi drivers have larger hippocampi in their brains than do people in other professions1. But she worried that accepting the prize would be a disaster for her career. So, she quietly turned it down.

Three years later, the prize’s founder, Marc Abrahams, contacted Maguire again with the same offer. This time, she knew more about the satirical award that bills itself as honouring achievements that “make people laugh, then think”. She decided to accept. On the way to the ceremony, her taxi driver was so delighted to learn about his enlarged hippocampus that he refused to accept a fee from her.

Maguire credits the prize with bringing more attention to her work. “It was useful for my career because people wanted to talk about it,” she says, adding that “it was on the front pages of newspapers when it came out and struck a chord with people.”…

(11) HEAVY, MAN. Interesting Engineering stands by as “China activates world’s most advanced hypergravity research facility”.

China has activated the world’s most advanced hypergravity machine, aiming to deepen scientific understanding.

The system, featuring the largest hypergravity centrifuge, will be able to produce forces thousands of times stronger than Earth’s gravity.

The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) is located in Hangzhou, the capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang province….

… The facility will house three primary hypergravity centrifuges and 18 onboard units. These centrifuges, machines designed to spin containers rapidly, force heavier materials to the edges or bottom by creating hypergravity conditions, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP)….

… CHIEF’s hypergravity centrifuges are considered groundbreaking tools for creating extreme physical conditions not typically encountered in everyday environments.

These capabilities are expected to advance research across multiple disciplines, enabling scientists to simulate and analyze phenomena such as geological processes, material behaviors, and engineering challenges….

(12) WELL, THIS LOOKS BAD. PROBABLY DOESN’T SMELL TOO GOOD, EITHER. “A mythical harbinger of doom washes up on a California beach” and NBC News didn’t need long to sniff out the story.

The legendary “doom fish” has returned to California.

A long, ribbon-shaped oarfish, rarely seen and believed to signal disaster, has washed up on California’s shores for the second time this year.

PhD candidate Alison Laferriere from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego discovered the nearly 10-foot-long oarfish on a beach in Encinitas, in southern California, last week.

Oarfish are elusive creatures that dwell in the deep ocean — often as far as 3,300 feet below the surface — in the mesopelagic zone, a dark region beyond the reach of sunlight….

Rare, monstrously-proportioned and strangely-shaped, oarfish have sparked myths and legends for centuries and are sometimes referred to as the “doomsday fish” due to their reputation as predictors of natural disasters or earthquakes.

In 2011, the largely forgotten “earthquake fish” legend resurfaced after 20 oarfish washed ashore in the months leading up to Japan’s most powerful recorded earthquake….

(13) BUSINESS IS BOOMING. VERY. “SpaceX Starship’s Sonic Boom Creates Risk of Structural Damage, Test Finds” – story in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

SpaceX’s new Starship rocket far exceeds projected maximum noise levels, generating a sonic boom so powerful it risks property damage in the densely populated residential community near its South Texas launch site, new data suggests.

The measurements — of the actual sound and air pressure generated by the rocket during its fifth test launch last month — are the most comprehensive publicly released to date for Elon Musk’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed.

Starship, as tall as a 30-story building, is so large that it generates 10 times as much noise as the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX now uses to get cargo and astronauts to orbit, the new data shows. SpaceX plans another test this week.

For residents of South Padre Island and Port Isabel, which are about six miles from SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas, the noise during the October test flight was the equivalent of standing 200 feet from a Boeing 747 plane during its takeoff, said Kent L. Gee, an independent acoustics engineer who conducted the monitoring.

Dr. Gee is the chairman of the physics and astronomy department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, as well as a researcher helping NASA study ways to reduce noise impacts generated by supersonic planes. The test results were published on Friday in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The Federal Aviation Administration and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

When supersonic Concorde jets were still in service, the United States banned them from flying over domestic land “so their resulting sonic booms won’t startle the public below or concern them about potential property damage,” according to NASA.

The Starship flight test in October was about 1.5 times as loud on the ground as the Concorde sonic boom, the test results showed….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Dickensian Christmas season is coming. Fortunately, Ryan George knows what to do “When Ghosts Try To Teach You Lessons”.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/17/24 Pixelbot Murderscrolls

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) DON’T FALL FOR IT. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss sends out a warning: “Dogging the Watchdog Redux: Someone Else is Impersonating Writer Beware”.

…A bit over a year ago, a scammer (I never was able to determine which one, but it’s highly likely it was someone on this list) sent out a large number of emails under my name, using a fake address (writerbewaree@gmail.com), offering to provide “guidance” to authors to protect them against scams and help them “connect with well-known traditional publishing houses”.

The aim, it turned out, wasn’t to rip anyone off, but to troll me. Since trolling isn’t any fun unless the trollee knows about it, the scammer also sent the emails directly to me (twice), with the subject line “Writer Beware, the Watchdog and Dog Victoria Strauss” (hence the title of my post about the episode, which also used the graphic above). Maybe because I didn’t respond, or maybe because I mocked them publicly, the troller never dogged me again and I never got any other reports of those particular fake Writer Beware emails.

Unfortunately, there’s now another Writer Beware/Victoria Strauss impersonation attempt. And this one seems designed not just to troll, but to defraud….

Strauss goes into detail about how this fraudster operates. The victim took things at face value, only suspecting they’d been deceived after forwarding the first thousand dollars requested. Then came another request for money.

…In this case, the writer avoided being fully poached. They simply didn’t have the extra cash, and told Fake Victoria so. That was the last they heard from her. Since they didn’t contact me about the scam until nearly two months later, I’m guessing that they held out hope for a while that Fake Victoria would deliver, but eventually became suspicious enough of her silence to google Writer Beware. At which point they realized they’d been hoodwinked….

Strauss has a hypothesis about the scammer’s identity, which you can read at the link. She concludes:

…Why wouldn’t a scammer decide to use my/Writer Beware’s good reputation to steal money from unsuspecting authors and give me the middle finger while they’re at it? Honestly I’m only surprised it hasn’t happened more often….

(2) PKD VS. HEGEMONY. [Item by Steven French.] In this provocative essay in The Paris Review, Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel, among others, discusses Philip K Dick, especially the latter’s Martian Time-Slip and its portrayal of the Bleekmen, current attitudes towards Palestinian people and the importance of considering alternative modes of existence: “’Multiple Worlds Vying to Exist’: Philip K. Dick and Palestine”.

…When Dick became my chosen writer, at age fourteen, in 1978, with Martian Time-Slip, one of my two or three favorites among his novels, the presence of the Israeli settlement on Mars didn’t resound in any particular way. My initial responsiveness to Dick’s work was to delight in his mordant surrealist onslaught against the drab prison of consensual reality—he was punk rock to me. It took me a while to grasp how Dick’s novels, those of the early sixties especially, function as a superb lens for critiquing the collective psychological binds of the postwar embrace of consumer capitalism. Yet to say that he seems to devise his critiques semiconsciously, by intuition, is an understatement. Dick thought he was bashing out pulp entertainment, and he sometimes despised himself for doing it. At other times—and Martian Time-Slip was one of those times—he injected his efforts with the aspiration to raise his output to the condition of literature, employing all the thwarted ambition of a young novelist with nine or ten literary novels (or, as an SF writer would put it, “mainstream” novels) in his trunk, which his agent had been unable to place with New York publishers.

Dick had an extrasensory power, however; he was a freaked-out supertaster of repressive and coercive elements lurking inside the seductive and banal surfaces of Cold War U.S. culture and politics. This meant that science fiction opened up his particular capacity for fusing ordinary experience—the emotional and ontological crises of his human characters—to the implications of the hegemonic power of the U.S., which coalesced in the period in which Dick wrote, and which defines our present century. Reality’s surface shimmers open beneath Dick’s gaze. It’s this that led Fredric Jameson to compare him to Shakespeare. This wouldn’t have happened had he stuck to the earnest social realism of his unpublished novels….

(3) ARTIST SAYS ONE THING, DISNEY SAYS ANOTHER. “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Episode Allegedly Scrubbed Over Trans Storyline” – Gizmodo has the details.

One of the remaining episodes of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur set to release in 2025 will now allegedly no longer make it to air, according to since-deleted comments on social media from crew who worked on the Marvel and Disney animated series, claiming concerns over the developing political climate in the U.S. in the wake of the 2024 presidential election.

The remaining episodes of Moon Girl‘s second and final season were set to air on the Disney Channel sometime in 2025, but now at least one episode produced for the Marvel series—adapting the titular young comics heroine, aka Luna Lafayette, and her adventures alongside the giant T-Rex-esque creature Devil Dinosaur—may not make it to air, supposedly due to revolving around a plotline involving the topic of trans kids involved in school sports.

“One of the projects (episode) I worked on is getting shelved because of which party that won the recent election,” Derrick Malik Johnson, a storyboard artist who worked on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur said in a recent, since-deleted post on the social media platform Bluesky. “It breaks my heart knowing this impactful and amazing [episode] is now about to be consider a lost media episode.”

In a thread on the Moon Girl subreddit about Johnson’s post, someone claiming to have worked on the series alleged that the episode revolved around the character Brooklyn, a teen volleyball player who attends Luna’s school in the series. “If you put attention [sic] to details about the character, you can figure out about what theme [the episode was based on] and why it was canned,” the user wrote in a now-deleted comment thread.

io9 was not able to independently verify the veracity of the above posts on Bluesky and Reddit, but when reached out for comment, a Disney source familiar with the matter confirmed that while the episode had been pulled from release, the decision was made over a year ago, and unrelated to concerns over the current political climate.

The source further described the reason for the episode’s cancelation–specific to the episode itself, rather than Brooklyn as a character, who has appeared elsewhere in Moon Girl–as part of a regular review process the company makes with all of its kids content, with the intent to ensure material doesn’t potentially push ahead discussions around social issues before families can have them themselves….

(4) BRIAN ASMAN Q&A. The most recent episode of David Agranoff’s podcast Postcards from a Dying World is an “Interview with Brian Asman”.

On this episode I welcome Brian Asman author of Man, Fuck That House and his debut novel Good Dogs. It is hard for me to think of this as being the first novel for Brian Asman. I suppose you could say this is the first proper novel, published with an established publisher, but Asman has been publishing for a few years, but those have been novellas published in a DIY punk style have even produced a viral book release. I mean with a title like “Man, Fuck this House.” Asman already has a signature release. The novellas range from funny to weird and the last Our Black Hearts Beat as One could be argued is a short novel, or would have been considered a novel in the past.

We talk about Brian’s career path and Good Dogs without spoilers for about 40 minutes before a spoiler Warning and then we go under the hood.

(5) IMPERIALISTS IN MARTIAN DISGUISE. [Item by Steven French.] Richard Flanagan’s book Question 7 is up for both fiction and non-fiction awards and tracks the chain of events leading from Rebecca West kissing HG Wells to Hiroshima; here he recalls the first time he read War of the Worlds: “Richard Flanagan: ‘I’m not sure that I will write again’” in the Guardian.

Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds is pivotal to the narrative. Do you remember the first time you read it?

I thought I knew the story – yet when I first read it, perhaps 20 years ago, I was staggered to learn in Wells’s introduction that it was inspired by the extermination of Aboriginal Tasmanians. It isn’t a hokey Edwardian set piece. It’s an indictment of English imperialism.

If you read to the end you can also mourn for Flanagan’s hilarious parrot, Herb.

(6) FLAME ON. The New York Times tells about “One City’s Secret to Happiness: The Annual Burning of a 50-Foot Effigy”. “Every year, Santa Fe incinerates a giant puppet of Zozobra — a ritual meant to purge anxiety and promote a reset.” (Behind a paywall.)

For most of the millions of travelers who make the trek each year, there is no reason to go to Santa Fe except to go to Santa Fe. Just about everything that needs doing can and should be done somewhere else, someplace easier to get to than this tiny city 7,000 feet in the air, whose airport terminal is a fraction of the size of a typical American grocery store. But this town of 90,000 residents strives to ensure that its singularity is reason enough.

Which makes it remarkable that Santa Fe’s most distinctive motif is left inscrutable to outsiders. A towering ghoul points down from a mural on one of the city’s busiest streets with no context. At a local confectionery, a scowling white figure in a cummerbund is rendered in chocolate — why? Even if you clock that the big-eared goblin tattooed on the biceps of a local electrician is the same creature depicted (being consumed by flames) on the cab of a municipal fire truck, you will encounter nowhere an explanation of who or what this monster is — unless you happen to be in Santa Fe on the one evening a year when locals construct a building-size version of this thing and set it on fire.

The explanation is a touch nonsensical: This is Zozobra, a beast who lives in the mountains nearby. The people of Santa Fe invite him into town every year on the pretext of a party in his honor. He arrives at the party dressed in formal attire, thrusts the town into darkness and takes away “the hopes and dreams of Santa Fe’s children,” whom he also kidnaps. The townspeople try and fail to subdue him with torches. But then the Fire Spirit, summoned by an atmosphere of cooperation among the town’s citizens, appears and, flying high off the good vibes, battles Zozobra until he is consumed by fire.

If you are fortunate enough to be around on the exactly right night in late summer — the Friday before Labor Day — you may find yourself surrounded by, and even join in with, the screaming citizens of Santa Fe as they string up this enormous, writhing pale-faced humanoid on a pole on a hill overlooking their homes and burn him while he moans until dead.

“Burn him!” demand the children onstage. “BUUUURN HIIIIIM!” roar the adults from the crowd, a portion of whom are inebriated. Unseen, a local judge howls into a microphone, providing the voice of a gargantuan puppet being cooked alive. It is possible that, one century ago, the forebears of the current population discovered the violent secret to happiness in their high, dry town — and that it is annual, ritualized killing by flames. Just in case that’s right — in fact, proceeding on an assumption that it is — the local citizenry have recommitted the monstrous puppet’s murder every year for 100 years straight, so far. The aim is to incinerate their gloom….

… The monster is still stuffed with slips of paper bearing woes (“glooms” in event parlance). But these days there are virtually no limits to what the public may cram inside Zozobra’s body and set aflame: wedding albums; medical bills; report cards; loved ones’ ashes; parking tickets; pictures of Osama bin Laden (popular in 2002); a pristine guitar; many varieties of gown (wedding; hospital; according to local lore, a few belonging to Marilyn Monroe that an acquaintance was adamant would never go to auction); etc. The show still follows its original script….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary, Justice League animated series (2001)

Twenty-three years ago on this evening, the Justice League animated series premiered on the Cartoon Network. It was the seventh series of the DC Animated Universe. The series ended after just two seasons, but was followed by the Justice League Unlimited, another series which aired for an additional three seasons. There really wasn’t any meaningful difference between the two series save a larger number of characters. Really there wasn’t.

It’s largely based off the Justice League created by editor Sheldon Mayer and writer Gardner Fox in the Sixties.

It has a stellar primary voice cast of George Newbern as Superman / Clark Kent, Kevin Conroy as Batman / Bruce Wayne, Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash / Wally West, Phil LaMarr as Green Lantern / John Stewart, Susan Eisenberg as Maria Canals-Barrera as Hawkgirl / Shayera Hol, Carl Lumbly as Martian Manhunter / John Jones and Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman / Princess Diana.

In a neat piece of later casting, Lumbly will be J’onn J’onnz’s father M’yrnn in the Arrowverse and on Supergirl. That changes the story as it was here, where John J’onnz was the very last Martian. No. I am not dealing with every fluid story in the comics. I am not.

It lasted for fifty-two episodes and featured scripts from such writers as John Ridley, Dwayne McDuffie, Pail Dini, Butch Lukic and Ernie Altbacker.

One of my favorite episodes, “Chaos at the Earth’s Core”, was written by Matt Wayne, a DCU writer of the time, with the world of Skytaris and its inhabitants are all taken from Mike Greil’s Warlord comics from the Seventies. Yes, he’s properly acknowledged as the source.

It received universal acclaim and IGN lists it among the best animated series ever done with its successor series being second. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a near perfect ninety-nine percent rating.

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal gets around the grawlix.
Thatababy chose the option package.
The Argyle Sweater can mash ‘em, boil ‘em, or stick ‘em in an Egyptian history book.
Cul de Sac provides negative inspiration.
Wumo shows an editor at work.
Tom Gauld shows what it means to work cheaper.

https://twitter.com/tomgauld/status/1858108931849240820

(9) EISNER ART ON THE BLOCK. Heritage Auctions will hold “The Art of Will Eisner Comic Showcase Auction” on December 12. View the artwork in all the lots at the link. Includes this back cover from The Spirit Coloring Book.

(10) ROCKY ROAD. Idolator says it’s time to deconstruct that well-known Stone Age family. “20 Things That Didn’t Make Sense In ‘The Flintstones’ That We’re Still Thinking About”.

Set in the stone age, The Flintstones follows a modern prehistoric family that always seems to get into unlikely situations. And while it was a popular animated sitcom when it premiered on ABC in 1960, there are many aspects of the series that don’t really make sense, and we’re not just talking about a pet dinosaur who’s allowed to hang around babies!

Tiny points such as Fred getting gas for his foot-powered car and how time-traveling has no butterfly effect on the Flintstones’ actual timeline leave people saying yabba dabba, huh? And those aren’t even the most confusing points!…

Here’s one of the nits they pick.

What Is Wilma’s Maiden Name?

When it comes to popular long-running shows, one would hope the screenwriters could keep their characters’ names in check. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for one Mrs. Wilma Flintstone. If you recall, the show mentions Wilma’s maiden name a few times, but depending on which episode you’re watching, it could be one of two names.

Wilma’s maiden name flip-flops between Pebble and Slaghoople, in what most likely is nothing more than a continuity error on the writer’s part. And, to quote Tony Stark, “[they] didn’t think we’d notice; but we did.”…

(11) BIRD BRAIN COVER STORY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Nature has as its cover story a paper reporting the discovery of a well-preserved (around 85–75 million years old), fossil skull of an early off-shoot of the dinosaurs that went on to become the birds we know today. Past fossils of early birds have not had such well-preserved skulls and so palaeontologists may have underestimated their brain size. Could these early-birds be nearly as bright as some birds are today?

The paper is Chiappe, L. M., et al. (2024) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08114-4 “Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain” Nature, vol. 635, p376-381.

Now, the thing is that if early birds were brighter earlier than thought, what does this say about the rise of early intelligence that ultimately leads to full-blown intelligence capable of putting people on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth without the use of Cavorite? My personal musing is that if intelligence arises multiple times and in different ways, does this speak to it being an ‘easy’ evolutionary step? If so what are the prospects for intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy? And if so, will they serve decent beer? These are the important questions….

Of course, intelligence takes many forms. Let’s not forget the octopus or, for that matter, dolphins (so long and thanks for all the fish). I have always been wary of dinosaurs and have never really forgiven them for what they did to Raquel Welch…

(12) SSSSSSSSSSS. “NASA Believes International Space Station Leak Can Be ‘Catastrophic’” reports People.

NASA has growing concerns about an ongoing air leak on a Russian section of the International Space Station (ISS) that has been going on since 2019.

According to SpaceNews, Bob Cabana, a former NASA astronaut who now chairs the ISS Advisory Committee, raised the issue during a meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 13.

“While the Russian team continues to search for and seal the leaks, it does not believe catastrophic disintegration of the PrK [module] is realistic. NASA has expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the PrK and the possibility of a catastrophic failure,” said Cabana….

… The news comes after NASA identified an increase in the leak rate in February, per the report. The rate at which air was leaking peaked at 3.7 pounds per day in April but was reduced “by roughly a third” with repairs, according to Space.com.

The ISS Program and Roscosmos officially met in May and June to discuss heightened concerns, elevating the leak risk to the highest level in its risk management system, per the report….

(13) CHINESE SPACE SHUTTLE PLANNED. “China Shows Off Reusable Space Shuttle” – Futurism has a rundown.

China has shown off a reusable shuttle that it intends to use to ferry cargo to and from its Tiangong space station.

As Space.com reports, the project — dubbed Haolong — recently won the state-owned Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute a government contract to develop a low-cost space station cargo spacecraft.

The country’s human spaceflight agency selected two proposals last month as part of its efforts to regularly resupply its three-year-old space station….

…Not unlike NASA’s retired Space Shuttle, the winged spacecraft would launch atop of a rocket and land much like an airplane on a runway. It measures 32 feet long and 26 feet wide.

“With a blunt-nosed fuselage and large, swept-back delta wings, it combines the characteristics of both spacecraft and aircraft, allowing it to be launched into orbit by a carrier rocket and land on an airport runway like a plane,” Haolong chief designer Fang Yuangpen explained in a video by state-owned broadcaster CCTV….

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

Pixel Scroll 10/12/24 Now Is The Time For All Good Scrolls To Come To The Aid Of Their Pixels

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAME OF THRONES AUCTION, SECOND DAY. Westeros reports huge prices are being paid for props and costumes in “News – Day 2 of the Game of Thrones Auction Recap”.

…A few other notable pieces hit the six-figure mark throughout the day. Oberyn Martell’s trial by combat ensemble was next to break the mark, followed by what to me was probably the most surprising result among the big sellers: the Lannister “family litter” used in season 5. It’s beautifully crafted, but I had no idea it’d draw that much attention. After that, the last item we saw to reach $100,000 before we went to bed was the “Shame” bell, which I recall David Mandel of the The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast expected to do well….

…Eight more items ended up joining the list, all of them in the final third of the auction…

Two of those items are:

A “hero” Needle from season 6 cleared the bar at $131,250.
The new price leader then showed up eleven lots later, with the “hero” Longclaw from season 6 charging ahead to a whopping $400,000. The figure was so high that we checked the Heritage Auctions and the Propstore records of past sales; near as we can tell, this is now the most expensive prop sword auctioned by the two biggest auction houses focused on props and memorabilia. The previous holder of that record, according to our research, was a Glamdring from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which was actually a WETA replica for Sideshow Toys rather than an actual, screen-used one….

At the end of Day 2 the auction stood at $12.15 million in total sales.

Today’s Day 3 sales were topped by the $1.49M paid for the Touring Iron Throne:

Original touring Iron Throne, measuring approximately 65″ x 86″ x 63″ and weighing 310 lbs. Molded from the original screen-used throne, this replica is expertly crafted from plastic with a painted metallic finish and jewel embellishments to resemble the hilts of once-regal swords…. This Iron Throne was crafted exclusively for promotional events and tours, such as Comic-Con, Hollywood premieres, and the Game of Thrones Touring Exhibition, which visited major cities worldwide, including New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, and Sydney….

(2) AIMING TO MAKE THEM A LITTLE LESS FREE. According to The Mary Sue: “Utah book banners now want to make Little Free Libraries susceptible to criminal charges”.

Utah book banners have now set their sights on Little Free Libraries, clamoring to make owners of these libraries susceptible to criminal charges.

As conservative parents, educators, and politicians spread the book-banning movement across the nation, Utah has quickly arisen as one of the most dystopian states when it comes to the right to read. The state recently passed a law that allows it to enact statewide book bans. Essentially, if a handful of schools find some kind of fault with a book, it can be banned in every single public and charter school in the state. The Utah Board of Education also suggested adding a stipulation to the law that would’ve required teachers to burn the books banned statewide. Meanwhile, the state’s conservative politicians and educators recently held a book-banning party to celebrate the archaic law and demand that authors “repent” for writing books….

… Conservatives were outraged when Democratic State Representative Sahara Hayes celebrated Banned Books Week by placing Utah’s banned books in Little Free Libraries around the state. A book-banning group on Facebook quickly shared a video of Hayes distributing the books. Member Brooke Stephens made a post stirring hysteria by claiming Hayes was putting “explicit books” in Little Free Libraries “where little kids have direct access to them.” In a separate post, Stephens insisted that book-banning laws should now apply to Little Free Library owners, stating, “Private property doesn’t mean you don’t need to follow the law.” She wants putting books in Little Free Libraries to be considered equivalent to distributing pornography or obscene material to children….

(3) ANNOUNCING WISCONLINE 2025. The WisCon committee today announced plans to hold WisCONline 2025 – a virtual con with no in-person component.

The WisCon Convention Committee is pleased to announce that we will be having an online convention in 2025!

What will WisCONline 2025 look like?

In addition to being fully online with no in person presence, we are currently looking at changes to WisCon to make it more sustainable for our volunteers. This means WisCon may appear to “shrink”, but if we offer less (for example, fewer panels), it’s because our focus is on quality and maintaining WisCon’s values.

While we can’t give exact details this early, more than ever, the capacity WisCon has to do the things we all love will depend on having volunteers step up. We’re committed to avoiding the past burnout we’ve seen come from volunteers taking on too many roles.

When is it?

It will take place Memorial Day weekend as always! (May 23-26, 2025, with some programming possible Thursday evening and Tuesday morning.)

Why online only?

Unfortunately we weren’t able to recruit key volunteers in time to make an in-person con viable. We’re excited, however, to use this opportunity to explore what we can do to engage and reach our community in ways we can’t usually….

(4) EN ROUTE. “Where do you get your ideas” is one of the cliché questions asked of sff writers. Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital and Booker Prize finalist, tells the Guardian about the origins of her novel: “’I was on the way to a funeral when the idea came to me’: 2024’s Booker-shortlisted authors on the moment inspiration struck”.

‘Many novels, I think, have multiple possible origin stories. With Orbital, was it the astronaut/cosmonaut quotes I used to collect in my teens (Alexei Leonov: “The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone”)? Was it my time spent working in an astronomy museum? Was it a conversation with my partner in the kitchen one day, in which he said I should write a play set on the ISS and I said, “Rubbish idea, can’t do microgravity on the stage”? (I owe him my thanks all the same.) Was it time spent looking at images of the Earth from orbit, the feeling I got when I looked at those images? Undoubtedly all of those things and many more.’

(5) NOT ONLY OF GENRE INTEREST. Nathan Ballingrud tells CrimeReads he’s not enlisted in the war. “Pitting Literary Fiction Against Genre Fiction Is Intrinsically Silly”.

There’s a war on.

This war has been raging for generations. Each side has its warriors, its partisans, its propagandists. Most of the time the fighting is minimal, confined to minor skirmishes in the pages of small magazines or in the backwaters of social media. But from time to time an article will be published in a popular magazine or someone famous will say something scathing, and the fires will burn hot again for a while.

I’m talking, of course, about the war over the values of Genre versus Literary Fiction, the most boring and stupid of all wars.

We hit the ground stumbling over its intrinsic silliness: Can genre not be literary? Isn’t “literary fiction” itself a kind of genre? What does “literary” mean when I say it? What does it mean when you say it? Once we get past these problems of definitions, we must weather the exchange of the same dull arguments: endless variations of “genre fiction lacks psychological depth and polished prose” and “literary fiction is only about old white college professors having affairs.”

It’s all such a headache. And yet the subject – the argument – fascinates a lot of people, enough that in over half the interviews I’ve done, I’m asked about genre and where I think I place in it. I dread the question and try to evade it as much as I can. I usually say something like, “I don’t like to think about genre. Genres make fences, and I don’t like to write feeling like I’m fenced in.”…

(6) SEEKING PASADENA (CA) GHOSTS. Tickets are available for the Haunted Pasadena Walking Tour on October 18-19 and 25-26. The trailer is clever.

Walk Through One of LA’s Most Haunted Cities: Pasadena

As the sun goes down over the buildings and theaters of Old Town Pasadena, things seem a little bit more terrifying. Pasadena is known for its Rose Bowl, historic buildings, and its majestic Tournament of Roses parade. But underneath it all are tales of untimely death, disease, the occult, and the paranormal. A Victorian Hotel, which is now apartments, whose guests never checked out and a phantom stage manager amongst many more. Ghostly tales adorn this 2-hour long tour through the streets and alleyways of the historic district. Join us as we now embark onto our newest ghost tour in Los Angeles County. Wear comfortable shoes as we explore the darker part of Pasadena.

(7) FRAN SKENE MEMORIAL PAGE. As previously reported, Vancouver fan Fran Skene died June 17. There’s now a memorial page where memories and condolences can be left: “Frances Skene Obituary – Port Coquitlam, BC”.

… Fran was a cheerful, witty, and involved volunteer and participant in many groups up until her death and will be missed by the many friends and acquaintances in her writing, amateur press (AWA), science fiction, puppetry, Callanish, women’s camp (PWCA), and other groups. Many still have fond memories of her Canadian Unity Fan Fund turkey readings, where volunteers read, acted out, and illustrated the worst passages from science fiction until paid to stop, please. (No, really, please; here’s another five dollars.)

Fran worked very hard on her craft, especially her storytelling—both written and oral—and her poetry and stories can be found in several publications….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Star Trek: the Animated Series (An appreciation) (Last day of its run, October 12, 1974, fifty years go)

No, Star Trek: the Animated Series didn’t debut on this date but it ended its brief run today.

Spock: Consider. Chuft Captain has been attacked by an herbivorous pacifist, an eater of leaves and roots, one who traditionally does not fight. And the ultimate insult, I left him alive. Chuft Captain’s honor is at stake. He must seek personal revenge before he can call for help.

Sulu: That gives us some time. You did plan it that way?

Spock: Of course.

Star Trek: the Animated Series’ “The Slaver Weapon”

We all know that Star Trek: the Animated Series followed the first series and debuted on September 8, 1973. It would end that run a mere twenty-two episodes later on October 12, 1974.

Did I like the series? I think that two aspects of it were done really, really well. The voice cast was stellar, with almost all of the original cast save Walter Koenig voicing their characters. It is said, but this is only rumor, originally Filmation was only going to pay for three actors, that being Shatner, Nimoy, and Doohan.

Nimoy however said that he wouldn’t take part unless the rest of the original cast was included. However the studio stuck to its guns as to how many it would budget for and Walter Koenig was dropped because of what he wanted. However Nimoy did get him some writing gigs for the show.

The other was the stories. Being animated gave them a wider artistic frame to work with than the original show had and they used that to their creative benefit. An example of this was Niven merging his Known Space story, “The Soft Weapon” into the Trek universe. It was wonderful and it was great to see the Kzin visualized.

(Everything here was novelized by Alan Dean Foster. He first adapted three episodes per book, but later editions saw the half-hour scripts expanded into full, novel-length stories.)

I think the animation was at best weak. It looked flat, one dimensional. The characters as if they really weren’t quite there. I’ve never been a fan of Filmation.

I just rewatched that episode on Paramount +. The print is stellar and the voices are great. The animation was, as I thought it was, less than great. Watching characters move is painful to say the least as they don’t walk so as much glide across the screen.

So I’d love to see these stories redone with present animation.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark depicts a vampiric allergy sufferer.
Reality Check shows how zombies celebrate the season.
The Argyle Sweater has monstrous product placement.

(10) NEWS FOR INDIE FILMMAKERS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well over 40% of the 1,260 who responded to Glasgow 2024’s “consultative vote” were supportive of proposed Hugo Independent Film categories but that was not enough to get it across the line, and in any case, it was only a ‘consultative’ survey. But independent SF film lovers, don’t worry, here is some good news.

Pinewood Studios, which is one of Britain’s major studios — for example James Bond waved his Walther there (that’s not a euphemism ) for four of his films, also Deadpool and some past, SFnal TV series: UFO and Space: 1999 were shot there — is now offering facilities for low-budget independent film makers. “Pinewood studios announce new indie film hub for budget films” at BBC News.

… Independent film makers will be able to use sound stages, the large soundproof warehouses where films are shot, as well as production offices and workshop space on the site in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire.

Camera hire, drone photography and post production will also be among the services available when the hub opens next summer.

The launch comes as the government’s Independent Film Tax Credit was passed into law….

(11) NEXT, STROON. [Item by Rob Thornton.] And we take the first steps toward Norstrilia: “Montana man sentenced to prison for cloning giant sheep and breeding it” at Fox8.

An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Schubarth’s age and lack of a criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the earth….

(12) THE SOURCE OF THE END OF THE WORLD THAT WASN’T. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] So, with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we have lived though a decidedly SFnal time and mercifully most of us have got through it, though we must not forget the millions that did not. One of the remaining mysteries is how did it all begin?

Here there are two main competing theories: a Wuhan virus research lab escape, or live wildlife being sold at the nearby Wuhan meat market. China’s government has not helped matters by – being true to past form – withholding information about aspects of the research lab, so with an absence of information feeding fake news.

However, a new genomic analysis from the Wuhan, China animal market lends weight to that being the source of the 2019 CoVID pandemic. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the former were infected with the latter. The European and US based researchers argue that the viral diversity present in the market suggests it was the site of the pandemic’s emergence. In particular, they say that the presence of two early SARS-CoV-2 lineages – A and B – in the market suggests that the virus twice moved from animals to people. Raccoon dogs (N. procyonoides), hoary bamboo rat (R. pruinosus), and masked palm civet (P. larvata) are likely source species. Stalls on the mid-west side of the market’s western block seem to be the source. See the figure below.

The primary research is Crits-Christoph, A. et al. (2024) “Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the CoVID-19 pandemic”. Cell, vol. 187, 5468–5482.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Joker: Folie À Deux Pitch Meeting”. Beware spoilers!

“Hey, how about we just burn millions of dollars?”

“That’s a very Joker thing to do. Love it! You mean do it in the movie, right? Right…?”

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

Pixel Scroll 10/11/24 Those Magnificent Files In Their Pixel Machines

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAME OF THRONES AUCTION. Heritage Auctions has started its three-day auction of Game of Thrones props and costumes. Westeros gives the highlights of the opening day in “Day 1 of Game of Thrones Auction Recap”.

The first day of the three day Game of Thrones prop and costume auction run by Heritage Auctions started well, with nearly $5.36 million realized across the first 290-odd listings in the auction. We kept track of it as long as we could, and by the time we went to bed we’d noted that several items had cleared the $100,000 mark. Gregor Clegane’s tourney armor was the first to hit six figures and ended up just shy of $200,000, followed by a prototype dragon egg from the first season (a second egg just missed the mark).

After that, Arya Stark’s season 2 “boy” ensemble with an included “action” version of Needle hit $150,000, which seemed like a very expected number. And then, fittingly, the first item to hit $200,000—just beating out the Mountain that Ride’s armor—was the Hound’s armor ensemble. After that point, we went to bed, but in the morning we found two more items made it to the prestigious six-figure club: a full Jaime Lannister Kinsguard ensemble. Because of the inclusion of both a prop hand and an “action” Oathkeeper, this one was an especially valuable listing, and the bidders recognized it as they drove it up to become the day’s top item with a final realized price of $212,500.

And now a Jon Snow (Kit Harington) Signature Night’s Watch Ensemble has gone for $337,500.

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share beef noodle soup with award-winning writer John Chu in Episode 238 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Get ready to take a seat at the table with the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer John Chu.

John’s a microprocessor architect by day, and a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Apex, and at Tor.com, plus in anthologies such as The Mythic Dream, Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and others. His translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF, and other venues.

He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, won the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” plus the Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Awards for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” In the days before our lunch, he surprised us all with the announcement he’d sold his first novel — and you’ll hear my own surprise during our conversation.

We discussed the way he gamified the submission process when he started out, how the pandemic made him feel as if he was in his own little spaceship, when he learned he couldn’t write novels and short stories at the same time, how food has become a lens through which he could explore a variety of issues in his fiction, the rejection letter he rereads whenever he wants to cheer himself up, how writing stories at their correct lengths was one of the most difficult lessons he had to learn as a writer, what it was about his 2015 short story “Hold-Time Violations” that had him feeling it was worthy of exploring as a novel, how he was changed by winning a Hugo Award with his third published story, and much more.

(3) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted pictures from last night’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series where Sarah Langan and David Leo Rice read from their most recent novels. Click here: KGB October 9, 2024.

(4) LISA TUTTLE COLUMN. The Guardian presents “The best recent science fiction, horror and fantasy – reviews roundup” by Lisa Tuttle. This time she reviews William by Mason Coile; The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield; The Wilding by Ian McDonald; Of the Flesh: 18 Stories of Modern Horror by various authors; A Christmas Ghost Story by Kim Newman.

(5) FAMED ANIMATION STUDIO TAKES BATH. “‘Chicken Run’ Studio Aardman Cuts Jobs After Posting $720,000 Loss Amid Market ‘Challenges’” reports Deadline.

Aardman, the iconic UK animation studio behind Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, has closed around 20 jobs as it grapples with the increased cost of production.

Deadline understands that Aardman is in the process of making less than 5% of its 425 employees redundant following a savings review undertaken by management.

A third of the redundancies were voluntary, while two roles remain in consultation. It is hoped that some of the individuals who have lost their jobs can return to Aardman on a freelance basis.

As part of the restructure, Aardman has created new roles to wring increased value out of its intellectual property. These roles include a senior licensing manager and sales executive.

The cost-cutting initiative comes as Aardman has filed its earnings for 2023, which reveal that the studio sunk to a pre-tax loss of £550,135 ($720,000). The company made a profit of £1.56M in 2022.

Aardman said the loss was largely because of a £1.75M impairment of unrecouped costs on Lloyd of the Flies, a 2022 animated series that debuted on CITV in the UK and was licensed by Tubi in the U.S. Putting the impairment to one side, Aardman’s underlying profit was £1.6M….

(6) 3D-PRINTED PROP MODEL. “Star Trek ‘The Next Generation:’ TR-580 Medical Tricorder (3D Printed Model) by Tankz3dtavern” at FigureFan Zero.

There’s no doubt about it, the advancements in 3D Printing have done a lot for the collecting community. From printing missing parts for toys, and accessories for action figures, to complete collectibles, the whole endeavor has come a long way and it absolutely fascinates me. But also prop replicas! And that’s what I’m checking out today: A Starfleet Issue Medical Tricorder as featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation! I remember the days when you’re only hope of getting a decent Trek prop was to mail away for a DIY resin kit from the back of a magazine at $50-60. And what you got was exactly that, an unfinished kit that needed all sorts of sanding and painting to make it look anywhere near presentable. Even some of the “props” people were selling at conventions for twice that price were pretty crude. I recently found an Ebay seller offering some phasers and Trek replicas at prices that were too good to pass up. I started with some phasers (which we’ll check out here eventually), but the Tricorder came in this weekend and I was really excited to show it off.

This is where I usually show off the box and packaging, but there’s nothing to show here. The Tricorder came carefully bubble wrapped along with a display stand and holster. The stand is the only assembly required, and you just have to tab it all together, easy-peasy. There are no electronics included in the model, so you can consider this based on a regular prop as opposed to a hero prop, which is meant to be seen up close and functional. This particular model has two configurations to choose from: medical or regular, so whether you’re part of an Away Team mission making a geological survey or you’re in Sick Bay trying to find out why all your crew are dying, this Tricorder has you covered! Let’s start with the regular version and work our way up! And just a disclaimer, I know next to nothing about 3D Printing, I’m not qualified to comment on printing methods or techniques, and I’m evaluating this solely as a finished collectible….

(7) WARNING: IT’S A COMMERCIAL. But you might like to watch it anyway!

DeLorean Labs has now released a Back to the Future-style video of Lloyd playing himself as he opens a DeLorean Time Capsule. Directed by filmmaker Allan Ungar, who previously directed the feature film Bandit, the nostalgic video introduces the Time Capsule collection, as Lloyd has the item handed to him by a mysterious individual emerging from a DeLorean. Lloyd is seen opening the Time Capsule in amazement, before proceeding to utter Doc Brown’s famous catchphrase. Read DeLorean Labs President Evan Kuhn’s comments below:

“With the Time Capsule, we wanted to introduce something fun to our community that can celebrate DeLorean’s introduction to the digital age. Being DeLorean has been about futurism and counterculture. It allows us to get creative and move in such a way that other major car manufacturers can’t.”…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 11, 1945 – Gay Haldeman, 79.

By Paul Weimer: Possibly one of the ultimate science fiction fans, and wife of Joe Haldeman, I got to meet Gay Haldeman in 2014 at the London Worldcon when Shaun Duke brought me over to meet Joe and Gay at a random point in the hallway near the escalators. I was starstruck by Joe, and charmed by Gay (but she doesn’t remember me). But that’s all right.

Gay also helps manage Joe’s work, for which all of us in SFF can be eternally grateful. She is one of the abiding icons of the science fiction community and I value her continued presence in the field. (May I get a chance to actually meet her and Joe again some day.)

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal depicts the horror side of becoming a real live boy.
Brewster Rockit reveals the invasion of the unseen.
Eek! finds something that really works.
Frazz discusses the evolution of a word.
Lio has a crossover.
The Argyle Sweater has doubts about therapy.
Bliss says who’s really to blame.

(10) BRENDA STARR. PRINT Magazine interviews James Sholly about comics creator Dale Messick: “The Daily Heller: Brenda Starr, Comics Star”.

Was “Brenda Starr” Dale Messick’s full-time gig?
It was! She wrote and drew “Brenda Starr, Reporter” for over 40 years! At times, she worked in a mobile studio that allowed her and her family to take long road trips across the country. She would frequently weave aspects of her own story into the plot lines. In real life, Dale had a daughter named Starr, which was the same name that Brenda gave her daughter after giving birth in a storyline from the 1970s. In the early 1960s, Brenda traveled to the Canal Zone in Panama shortly after Dale Messick took a trip there to visit friends. I was also impressed to learn that Dale drew “Brenda Starr, Reporter” using a brush and ink, which must have been incredibly difficult. I looked at some of the original art at the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana University and was blown away by the control and expressiveness of her line work.

Why was Brenda Starr such a popular strip?
People I’ve spoken with say that particularly for young women, Brenda was a role model. Even in a fantastical sense, Brenda was a smart, savvy, career woman who went after what she wanted and didn’t let obstacles or expectations of what she should be slow her down (still a novel concept in the 1940s and 50s). She was unafraid of adventure and unbowed by people trying to get in her way. I think this kind of symbolism is really powerful to a young person with aspirations to achieve great things. Dale Messick had similar qualities in that she left the stability of her family life in Indiana, and came to New York on her own for a promising job (drawing greeting cards) and life in the big city. Messick was also savvy in presenting Brenda in the latest designer fashions, so she always looked incredible! She was able to build connections with readers by drawing their suggestions for Brenda’s clothes and including them as paper dolls in the Sunday editions of the strip. These sorts of gestures helped to create a loyal and dedicated readership….

(11) PANEL ABOUT THE WILD ROBOT. In Pasadena on October 26: “LightBox Expo Reveals ‘The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes’ Panel” at Animation World Network.

LightBox Expo (LBX) returns October 25-27 to the Pasadena Convention Center, with an expansive program lineup celebrating artists and creators behind acclaimed films, animation, games, TV shows, comics, illustrations, and features.

The expansive 2024 program lineup just got more exciting with the announcement of “The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes” panel, Saturday, October 26 from 4:00-5:00 pm.

Details on this previously unannounced panel are as follows:

“The Wild Robot: Art & Technical Strategies Behind the Scenes:”

Saturday, October 26 from 4:00-5:00 pm

Join heads of departments on The Wild Robot for a discussion about the artistic and technical strategies they took behind the scenes to capture the best on screen.

(12) IMMORTALITY CANCELLED. “Have We Reached Peak Human Life Span?” asks the New York Times (paywalled article).

The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too?

Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Aging.

The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country’s life expectancy is lower.

The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate.

The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what’s possible for average life span.

“We’re basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we’re going to live,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years — approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women — an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.

During the 20th century, life expectancy rose dramatically, spurred on by innovations like water sanitation and antibiotics. Some scientists have projected that this pace will hold as better treatments and preventions are discovered for cancer, heart disease and other common causes of death. The famous demographer James Vaupel maintained that most children born in the 21st century would live to 100.

But according to the new study, that is unlikely to be the case. The researchers found that instead of a higher percentage of people making it to 100 in the places they analyzed, the ages at which people are dying have been compressed into a narrower time frame….

(13) 2024 NOBEL WINS MAY CONFOUND THE MACHINES TAKING OVER? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have long warned that the machines are taking over, but nobody ever listens.

This may now be changing! Two of this year’s Novel Prizes go to artificial intelligence (AI) related work. The Novel Prize for Chemistry goes to work using AI to elucidate the complex folding structure of proteins (the molecules that make up enzymes and some other large biological molecules that do things to keep us alive) from DNA code (genes).

More significantly, this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to work on developing AI itself. One of this prize’s winners has gone on to warn that we need to work out how to manage AI before it takes over. He opines that we could have smarter-than-human within a couple of decades. (This is likely to be within the lifetimes of many of you.) It looks like I can no longer say nobody ever listens….

(14) THE MOST DISTURBING STORY EVER WRITTEN. Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes a look at Harlan Ellison’s unsettling short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. The story is set against the backdrop of World War III, where a sentient supercomputer named AM, born from the merging of the world’s major defense computers, eradicates humanity except for five individuals. These survivors – Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, Ted, and Ellen – are kept alive by AM to endure endless torture as a form of revenge against its creators.

(15) LOWER DECKS SEASON 5. There won’t be a second fifth – this is it. “’Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Final Season Blasts Off with Official Trailer” – Animation Magazine sums it up.

Synopsis: In Season 5 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes” — subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Junior Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford … If they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations.

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

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

Tag Archives: Heritage Auctions

Pixel Scroll 4/15/25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

Pixel Scroll 3/28/25 I Just Scrolled In From Pixel-Land, And Boy Are My Fans Tired

Pixel Scroll 3/6/25 Hail Pixels, We Who Are About To File Salute You

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Pixel Scroll 12/7/24 Get Your Scrolls Here, Just A Pixel Each

Pixel Scroll 12/3/24 I See Files Of Blue, Red Pixels Too, I See Them Purr For Me And You

YUME KITASEI

Pixel Scroll 11/19/24 Six Impixelable Things Before Breakfast

Pixel Scroll 11/17/24 Pixelbot Murderscrolls

Pixel Scroll 10/12/24 Now Is The Time For All Good Scrolls To Come To The Aid Of Their Pixels

Pixel Scroll 10/11/24 Those Magnificent Files In Their Pixel Machines