Tag Archives: How It Should Have Ended

Pixel Scroll 3/4/22 24 Views Of Mt. Tsundoku By Hokufile

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(1) WHO IS NUMBER ONE. The “Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson” Kickstarter was almost at $22 million when I looked earlier today. It’s now the Most Funded Kickstarter in history.

Yesterday the New York Times talked to Sanderson about his success in “Fantasy Author Raises $15.4 Million in 24 Hours to Self-Publish”.

…“If Amazon’s grip on the industry is weakened, that’s good for the publishers — they are very much under Amazon’s thumb right now,” Sanderson said. “I don’t want to present this as ‘Brandon versus Amazon.’ Amazon’s great. But I think that in the long run, Amazon being a monopoly is actually bad for Amazon. If they don’t have competition, they will stop innovating.”

He also wanted to play around with bundling and upselling. Traditional publishers, he said, offer few products and few options. The array of packages on Kickstarter range from $40 for four e-books to $500 for the four books in all formats, plus eight boxes of “swag.”

“What I can do with the Kickstarter,” he said, “is I can say, ‘hey, if you really want to have more, we will give you more.’”

(2) FIRESIDE WILL STOP PUBLISHING IN 2022. Brian J. White, Executive Editor and Owner of Fireside, announced yesterday that the magazine will stop publishing later this year.

… When I stepped back in as owner last year, I had big hopes of taking Fireside forward for years to come. But unfortunately life had other ideas, between major increases last fall to my responsibilities at my day job and a series of difficult life events that have made it impossible for me to continue Fireside while maintaining any semblance of mental and physical health. Compounding that, even though we made progress in adding subscribers, Fireside is still losing a lot of money each month, and the circumstances described above also got in the way of implementing additional plans to bring in more funds.

This was a really difficult decision to make, but between the time and financial considerations, I can’t find a path forward. Fireside has an incredible legacy, and I don’t want that to be marred by a slow, struggling death. The best thing for the magazine is to allow it to close with grace and dignity once we’ve published all the stories and poems we currently have under contract, as well as two books that have been in the works for a long time….

…While Fireside Magazine will no longer be accepting submissions, we have enough content under contract to continue publishing into September, both through our usual ebooks and weekly stories released online. Everything we’ve published in the magazine will remain available online….

(3) LETTER FROM UKRAINE. Charles Stross posted an open letter from his Ukranian translator: “A letter from Ukrainian artists to the world artists”.

… We believe that not all Russian citizens are fans of Putin’s regime and not all of them justify this war. We know that plenty of Russians feel scared to use their voices and speak up against Putin’s regime. Many believe it is none of their business. Yet, there are also many who believe in the righteousness of Putin and his propaganda.

So, we plead with you — writers and visual content creators that have big audiences of readers and followers in Russia. To them, your opinion and your words matter. Your stand on the war in Ukraine matters. Please, stand by us as we fight for our values, our democracy, and our freedom. For the simple right to be Ukrainians and live in Ukraine. Your powerful voices can influence these Russian readers and followers. To encourage them to be brave, connect with their values, and take a stand on ending this ruthless war.

Please, take to your platforms and address your Russian and Ukrainian audiences. The first ones need your encouragement to believe in the power of their voices against Putin’s regime. The second ones are in desperate need of support and kindness….

(4) MEANWHILE, IN MOSCOW. Repression is ramping up in Moscow – and every other Idaho town. Boise State Public Radio reports “Idaho librarians could face jail time for lending “harmful” books”.

…House lawmakers could soon consider whether prosecutors could criminally charge librarians for allowing minors to check out sexually explicit materials.

Giving explicit material to kids has been a crime in Idaho since at least 1972, but public libraries, including those at colleges and universities, are exempted from that law.

Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt (R-Eagle) wants to cut that exemption, meaning librarians could face up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine any time they lend explicit materials to someone under 18….

(5) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman encourages listeners to eat enchiladas with Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Paul Tremblay in episode 166 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is the author of the award-winning novels novels A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), which won the Bram Stoker Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (2016), which won the British Fantasy Award, and The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), which won the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Award. His most recent novel is Survivor Song, published in 2020, with The Pallbearer’s Club due out later this year. He’s also the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep till Wonderland, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, and writing as P. T,. Jones along with Stephen Graham Jones, Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly. His short story collection Growing Things and Other Stories was published in 2019. He is the co-editor of four anthologies including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan), and is on the board of directors and is one of the jurors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.

We discussed his legendary hatred of pickles, what it was like writing a pandemic novel before a pandemic only to see it published in the middle of one, if reviewers would have reacted differently to his zombies had Survivor Song been published any other year, his feelings about the description of him as a postmodernist, our shared love of ambiguity in fiction, whether horror having a moment means horror will also have an end, the one passage in his most recent novel which caused an argument with his editor, what’s up with the movie adaptations of his books, and much more.

(6) THE CALCULATION IS IN. Mary Robinette Kowal’s gala commemorating the 70th Anniversary of The Meteor (the event which precipitates The Calculating Stars) did more than $8,000 in gross sales as part of her effort to support HIAS in Ukraine for the crisis response work that they are doing.

(7) GUARDIANS OF JUSTICE. BGR promises “Netflix’s new superhero show might be the weirdest thing you ever watch”.

…People have no definitive idea what to make of Netflix’s newly released superhero series, The Guardians of Justice. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from the fact that reviews and user reaction is absolutely all over the place — to say nothing of the fact that the trailer for this streaming series, which is about a group of superheroes who confront evil after “their fearless leader self-destructs” — left me utterly speechless. In an “I have no idea what to even think” or “what is going on here” sort of way.

First of all, the show switches between animation and live-action, which takes some getting used to. The voice cast includes Diamond Dallas Page, Sharni Vinson, Denise Richards, and RJ Mitte. And there’s a kind of Adult Swim aesthetic that people either love or can’t stand….

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Leanna Renee Hieber and John C. Foster on March 16 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. This will be an in-person event at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Leanna Renee Hieber

Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, narrator and award-winning author of Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy novels for Tor and Kensington Books such as the Strangely Beautiful, Eterna Files, Spectral City series and A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts. Featured on TV shows like Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown discussing Victorian Spiritualism, Leanna lectures around the country on paranormal and 19th century subjects.

John C. Foster

John C. Foster is the author of the forthcoming horror novel, Leech, the recent crime thriller Rooster and four other horror novels, the most recent of which is Mister White. His stories have been collected in Baby Powder and Other Terrifying Substances. He lives in Brooklyn with the actress Linda Jones and their dog Coraline.

(9) FANAC.ORG FANHISTORY ZOOM PART 2. The LASFS family reunion continues in the second part of Fanac.org’s latest fanhistory Zoom: “Death Does Not Release You – LASFS (Pt 2 of 2)”.

In part 2 of this FANAC Fan History Zoom Session (Feb 2022), the LASFS family reunion continues. Craig Miller (TV writer and producer, Worldcon chair, and LASFS member), Ken Rudolph (filmmaker, fanzine editor, former LASFS officer), Tim Kirk (professional artist, awarded many Fan Artist and Professional Artist Hugo Awards), and Bobbi Armbruster (professional and fan meeting and convention organizer) continue their conversation. Despite some early audio problems, the talk ranges from other Los Angeles fan subgroups like the Bixel Street Irregulars (40s), the Petards (late 60s-80s) and the Blackguards (60s), to well-known fans and professionals of the Los Angeles area to untimely deaths. Tim Kirk tells the wonderful story of how his Master’s Thesis and a little luck resulted in his breaking through to the professional art field. There are even some convention stories, including the surprising origin of Loscon. If you’re interested in the first big Heinlein blood drive, plans for the Last Dangerous Visions, or how many people could fit in the clubhouse kitchen, settle back and enjoy the recording.

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

2011 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Eleven years ago, The Adjustment Bureau film premiered. It is based off the Philip K. Dick “Adjustment Team” short story that was first published in Orbit Science Fiction (No. 4, September–October 1954). (It’s available in The Adjustment Team and Other Selected Stories from the usual suspects for just a buck ninety nine.)  

Written and directed by George Nolfi, who previously wrote the genre film Timeline, it had a lot of producers — Bill Carraro, Michael Hackett, Chris Moore, plus George Nolfi in his third role in the film. It had an absolutely amazing cast: Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Michael Kelly, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery and Terence Stamp. 

It did exceedingly well at the box office making nearly one hundred thirty million against just fifty million in total costs. Rather great I’d say. 

So how was the reception for it? Mostly excellent really though a few reviewers I admit were really puzzled by it as romance and SF is a combination they don’t grok. The reviewer at the Washington Examiner said that it “is that rare thing, an intelligent romance” while 7M Pictures stated of it that is “a fantastic piece of science fiction told in the flavor of a classic Twilight Zone episode.” And the Examiner summed it up nicely this way: “It’s rare when a film is able to blend together two different genres so well, especially when they are two genres that you don’t normally see together, in this case, science-fiction and romance.”

It does not get that a great rating at Rotten Tomatoes among audience reviewers garnering just sixty-seven percent. Not bad, but not overwhelming. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 4, 1905 — Frank Utpatel. Artist who may have done some interior illustrations for Weird Tales, he’s remembered for his Arkham House book covers that began with Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth novel in 1936. He would do covers for Ashton, Howard, Derleth, and Lovecraft. One of my favorite covers by him is for Derleth’s The Casebook of Solar Pons but then I like all of his Solar Pons covers and their obviously Holmesian riff. (Died 1980.)
  • Born March 4, 1914 — Ward Kimball. He was part of Walt Disney’s original team of animators, known as the Nine Old Men. Keep in mind that he did not create characters but animated them, which he did to great ability — Jiminy Cricket, the Mad Hatter, Mickey Mouse, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. He eventually became an animation director at Disney starting with Fantasia, and he worked on Mary Poppins. (Died 2002.)
  • Born March 4, 1923 — Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore CBE HonFRS FRAS. Astronomer who liked Trek and Who early on but said later that he stopped watching when “they went PC – making women commanders.” Despite that, he’s here because he shows up in the debut Eleventh Doctor story, “The Eleventh Hour“. And he was also in the radio version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Died 2012.)
  • Born March 4, 1923 — Patrick Moore. He held the record as the presenter of the world’s longest-running television series with the same original presenter, BBC’s The Sky at Night.  He was a genre writer with six such novels to his name, one co-written, and a lot of related non-fiction, one that garnered him a Hugo nomination at Interaction, Futures: 50 Years in Space: The Challenge of the Stars, that was co-written with David A. Hardy. (Died 2012.)
  • Born March 4, 1965 — Paul W. S. Anderson, 57. If there be modern pulp films, he’s the director of them. He’s responsible for the Resident Evil franchise plus Event Horizon, Alien V. Predator, Pandorum and even Monster Hunter. 
  • Born March 4, 1966 — Paul Malmont, 56. Author of the comic strips The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril and Jack London in Paradise which blends pulp tropes and SF elements including using as protagonists Heinlein and Asimov. He wrote the first four issues of DC’s excellent Doc Savage series with artist Howard Porter. While a marketing executive at DC he created the DC Daily video series, now over four hundred and fifty episodes long. 
  • Born March 4, 1973 — Len Wiseman, 49. Producer or Director of the Underworld franchise. Director of the Total Recall remake. Also involved in Stargate, Independence Day, Men in Black and Godzilla in the Property Department end of things. He is the Sleepy Hollow series creator and producer for much of it, wrote the pilot as well. (Is it worth watching? I’ve not seen any of it.) Producer for much of the Lucifer seriesas well and is the producer for the entire series of the rebooted Swamp Thing. Also produced The Gifted. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater probably should be spelled “Aaarggghyle” after this bad superhero-themed pun.
  • Bizarro makes an okay joke in the foreground, but studying the gags in the background is even more entertaining.  

(13) CLICK AND LEARN. What writer whose initials are Ray Bradbury helped inspire lyricist Bernie Taupin? Far Out Magazine knows: “The story behind Elton John song ‘Rocket Man’”.

…The opening lines, which read: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour: 9am. And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then,” was conceived by Taupin while he was driving to his parents in Lincolnshire, England. Anxious that he’ll forget the lines, he drove some back roads as fast as he could to put it down on paper. Until he reached their house he had to “repeat it to himself for two hours,” which was “unfortunate” but also worthwhile given the magnanimous status the song achieved….

(14) AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. SYFY Wire assures us that John DiMaggio will voice Bender in the forthcoming Futurama revival. A bit of closure to a “crisis” that might have gone completely unnoticed had it happened this week.

Good news… again… everyone! Bendergate is finally over. Actor John DiMaggio has officially settled his pay dispute with 20th Century Studios and will return as the voice of Bender for Hulu’s upcoming revival of Futurama. To quote the booze and cigar-loving robot specifically programed for bending girders (and partying): “It’s gonna be fun on a bun!”…

(15) CONREP IN THE WIND. SF2 Concatenation has just tweeted the link to an advance-post of a Windycon con report. This is ahead of their full seasonal edition slated for April 15 (but which may be held till April 20 if the Hugo short-lists are announced Easter weekend).

By Sue Burke: “The 2021 Windycon in Chicago, USA”.

In some ways, Windycon 47 unfolded normally, with panels, music, theatre, gaming, an anime track, art show, dealer’s room, and even the season’s first snowfall, right on time. It happened in the usual place, the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center. But the 47th annual Windycon should have taken place two years earlier in 2020. Instead, due to CoVID-19, a pared-down Zoom event 13th-15th November 2020, called Breezycon, offered a taste of the “family” feeling of the convention’s long history….

(16) BUSTED. Got to love the New York Times headline: “‘After Yang’ Review: Do Androids Dream of Sheep, Babysitting, Being?”

…Repairing Yang proves unsurprisingly more challenging than poking around under the hood of a car. Yang is a secondhand model, “certified refurbished,” yet used nevertheless. And while his warranty is still valid, the store where he was procured, Second Siblings, is out of business. “I told you we should have just bought a new one,” Kyra chides Jake with the old I-told-you-so sigh. In the future, men still take care of the big household chores; wives berate their husbands for making foolish decisions; and some families live in swoon-worthy houses with floor-to-ceiling windows and open-floor plans….

(17) THE NEXT BIG THING IS STILL PRETTY SMALL. “Two pillars of biological dogma upended by discovery of huge bacteria with nuclei” – Daily Kos analyzes the impact.

…The proposed new species, Thiomargarita magnifica, is about 50 times larger than any other known bacterium, and it’s also the only bacterium we know of to keep its DNA inside a membrane-bound structure.  Either of those discoveries by itself would be very significant, so this double whammy really is a rare find.  Game changer!  Paradigm shift!  And all that jazz!  Microbiologists sure seem impressed…

(18) MADAM I’M ADAM. A time-traveling pilot teams up with his younger self and his late father to come to terms with his past while saving the future. Comes to Netflix on March 11.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Superman and Batman kibitz in this latest video from How It Should Have Ended that dropped today. “How Spider-Man No Way Home Should Have Ended”.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/16/21 A Pixelness In The Scroll

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(1) COLBERT’S LOTR CAST REUNION RAP. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Stephen Colbert (of The Late Show) is a self-proclaimed Lord of the Rings fanatic (both the books and the movie series).His show is going on hiatus after this week for the rest of the year and Colbert bemoaned the fact that he will not be on air to celebrate Sunday’s 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of the first LOTR movie directed by Peter Jackson.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert assembled Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Andy Serkis, Hugo Weaving, pro rappers Killer Mike and Method Man, plus bandleader Jon Batiste, host Colbert, and (for reasons unknown) Anna Kendrick, to create a rap video that pounds home the dominance of the LOTR movie trilogy.

(2) LEE AND MILLER’S FREE HOLIDAY STORY. Steve Miller says he “is in a strange land far away from Worldcon” —

The plan was that our new Liaden story would hit the interwebz while we were off at Worldcon, but we dropped that plan awhile back due to the pandemic. The story came out on time, but we’re home in Maine! FWIW I had several convention dreams last night (guess I’m missing the whole crew!), but it still isn’t the same.

Yesterday some folks were having a hard time finding the new release, though, so this is a direct link to “From Every Storm A Rainbow”, our official free online Liaden Universe holiday story for 2021, which follows pretty hard on the heels of our recent “Bread Alone” chapbook, which ran a week or so as “#1 new release” under SF anthologies right at Thanksgiving. “Bread Alone’s” on sale in many venues now, but here’s the Amazon link.

Have a good holiday season, a good year, and we’re still hoping for Chicago….

Bests wishes from all of us here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory …

(3) CLARION WEST IS HIRING. The annual Clarion West Writers Workshop is looking to fill several positions – Six-Week Workshop Facilitator, Residential Workshop Administrator, and Communications Specialist. See Jobs – Clarion West for the details.

Do you believe that stories are important? Do you want to work with a diverse and passionate team to bring emerging writers to the field of speculative fiction? Do you want to support more writers of color and from traditionally underrepresented communities? Take a look at our open opportunities and see where your expertise can grow Clarion West.

(4) SITE SELECTION CONTINUES. Rich Lynch sent along this photo he took of DisCon III’s at-con Site Selection voting area.  

(5) ON YONDER SHOREHAM. Highlander tweeted a video walkthrough from the first day of DisCon III. I see John Hertz in his beanie appears around the 25-second mark.

(6) HALL COSTUMES. Ian Randal Strock tweeted a photo of cosplayers at DisCon III dressed as the TARDIS and two Doctor Who nemeses.

(7) MOFFAT TEASES WHO FANS. Radio Times plucked some juicy quotes from an hour-long conversation about Steven Moffat’s career hosted by the Oxford Union: “Steven Moffat talks Russell T Davies’ ‘fantastic’ plans for Doctor Who”.

…“I had no idea Russell was going to do that,” Moffat told Oxford Union. “He told me the night before, he sent me an email and I read it. I was just coming home from a restaurant and I thought: ‘Is that real? I’ll see if that email is still there in the morning.’

“Then I phoned him up and said, ‘Have you read [behind-the-scenes Doctor Who book] The Writer’s Tale? Have you read it? Because I think you should’,” continued Moffat. “He said, ‘I want to do it again, I’m excited, I’m thrilled.’”…

View the complete Q&A session on YouTube.

Writer of Doctor Who and Sherlock, Steven Moffat has won an Emmy award, five BAFTA Awards and four Hugo Awards. He had been a fan of Doctor Who since childhood, and is responsible for some of the most famous episodes including ‘Blink’ and ‘Silence in the Library.’ In 2015, he was appointed an Order of the British Empire for his services to drama

(8) SIGNED BY EGO. Rob Hansen has posted a real rarity at his THEN British fanhistory website – the text of a 1940s chain letter with Arthur C. Clarke as one of the participants: “FAN-MAIL (1941)”.

Here’s something I never thought I’d ever see – one of Clarke’s WW2 chain-letters. Yet, amazingly, this one has survived after 80 years. And finally seeing one has, I think, enabled me to figure out the how these chains worked, an explanation of which appears after the scans. I described them in THEN as essentially operating like APAs, but the logistics involved were a bit more complicated than that.

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1987 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Thirty four years ago, A Muppet Family Christmas first aired on ABC. It was produced not by Jim Henson (though he did executive produce it) , a rare thing indeed, but rather by Peter Harris and Eric Till from a script by Jerry Juhl who had earlier scripted the most excellent Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. For a Muppet film, it had an unusually large cast, to wit Gerry Parkes, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Caroll Spinney, Kathryn Mullen, Karen Prell and David Rudman. 

This is one of the rare Muppet productions to feature the Muppets that were associated with all four of the major Muppet franchises: Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies (who are seen here as actual puppets instead of their usual animated selves), The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. 

If you’ve saw it on TV and then watched it later on the North American DVD and VHS release, you might’ve notice that a lot of the original film was missing. That was because the Henson company only secured broadcast rights, not subsequent rights to songs like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” weren’t available. 

Critics generally like it. Myles McNutt of the A.V. Club said of it that was “a love letter to the Muppets as a wide-ranging, meaningful part of viewers’ childhoods.” Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a most cheery eighty-eight percent rating. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 16, 1917 — Arthur C. Clarke. When I was resident in Sri Lanka courtesy of Uncle Sam in the early Eighties, nearly every American ex-pat I ran into was reading The Fountains of Paradise. The tea plantations he described therein are very awesome.  I never saw him but he was well known among the small British community there and I passed by his residence one day. I’ll admit that I’ve not read that much by him — Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama and that novel are the only long form works by him I’ve read.  I’ve read a lot of short fiction including of course Tales from The White Hart. I’m certain I’ve read The Nine Billion Names of God collection as well. And I’ve seen 2001 myriad times but I’ve never seen the sequel. (Died 2008.)
  • Born December 16, 1927 — Randall Garrett. Randall Garrett. Ahhh, Lord Darcy. When writing this up, I was gobsmacked to discover that he’d written only one such novel, Too Many Magicians, as I clearly remembered reading more than that number. Huh. That and two collections, Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates, is all there is of this brilliant series. (The later Lord Darcy collection has two previously uncollected stories.) Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. is named in honor of Garrett.  I’ll admit I’ve not read anything else by him, so what else have y’all read? (Died 1987.)
  • Born December 16, 1928 — Philip K. Dick. Dick has always been a difficult one for me to get a feel for. Mind you Blade Runner is my major touchstone for him but I’ve read the source material as well, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and I’ve read a lot of the shorter works, so I’d say that saying he’s a challenging writer is a Good Thing. I was surprised his only Hugo win was for at The Man in The High Castle at DisCon though Blade Runner would pick up one at ConStellation. (Died 1982.)
  • Born December 16, 1937 — Peter Dickinson. Author who was married from 1991 to his death to Robin McKinley.  He had a number of truly great works, both genre and not genre, including Eva, The Tears of the Salamander and The Flight of Dragons. The Ropemaker garnered a well-deserved Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. His James Pibble upper-class British mystery series are quite excellent as well. (Died 2015.)
  • Born December 16, 1957 — Mel Odom, 64. An author deep into mining franchise universes with work done into the Buffyverse, Outlanders, Time Police, Rogue Angel (which I’ve listen to a lot as GraphicAudio as produced them as most excellent audioworks) and weirder stuff such as the Left Behind Universe and Tom Clancy’s Net Force Explorers, both I think game tie-ins. 
  • Born December 16, 1961 — Jon Tenney, 60. He’s best known as Special Agent Fritz Howard on The Closer and continued in its spinoff Major Crimes, but he does have genre creds. He played Jimmy Wells in The Phantom, Martin Jordon in Green Lantern, and Lt. Ching in two episodes in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He also showed up on Tales from the Crypt, Outer Limits and neXt
  • Born December 16, 1967 — Miranda Otto, 54. She was Éowyn in the second and third installments of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film franchise. (I stopped watching after The Fellowship of The Rings.) She‘s Zelda Spellman in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Mary Ann Davis in Spielberg’s version of The War of The Worlds. She also played Wueen Lenore inI, Frankenstein which had an amazing cast even if the tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes gives it a five percent rating meaning the critics really didn’t like it.

(11) GUESS WHAT? This March, make way for the new Sorcerer Supreme!

With Doctor Strange dead, another sorcerer has taken the title, or should we say Sorceress? Clea, mistress of the Dark Dimension and Stephen Strange’s powerful partner, will rise to the challenge of defending earth from mystical and otherworldly danger in writer Jed MacKay’s STRANGE #1! Featuring artwork by AMAZING SPIDER-MAN artist Marcelo Ferreira, this all-new ongoing series will spin directly out of the story still unfolding in MacKay’s DEATH OF DOCTOR STRANGE. 

.. Here’s what MacKay had to say about continuing this unprecedented Doctor Strange saga:

“After the apocalyptic events of The Death of Doctor Strange, there’s a new Sorcerer Supreme in residence at 177A Bleecker Street, and a new Doctor Strange- Clea Strange. And she’s got her work cut out for her- when she’s not fighting off the magical gangsters of the Blasphemy Syndicate, or battling undead super-monsters, she’s going after what’s hers: the late Stephen Strange. Clea is of the Faltine, that race of Warlords and conquerors, and like her relatives Dormammu and Umar, she will not be thwarted in her desires, not even by the mysterious Harvestman standing in her way.”

(12) NOW PLAYING. You can listen to Connie Willis and Nalo Hopkinson’s LOA Live appearance to promote American Christmas Stories on Soundcloud or watch the program on the Library of America website.

(13) FLICK PICKS. Wired presents its list of “The Best Sci-Fi Movies of 2021”. They start with Dune, but let’s skip ahead to one you haven’t read a million words about:

… Perhaps, at this stage, you’d prefer your women on the more visible side of things. If so, consider the French film Oxygen (Netflix), whose main—nearly only—character is a scientist played by the marvelous Mélanie Laurent. She wakes up in an AI-controlled cryogenic pod and must figure out how to escape it before the titular oxygen runs out. Who put her there? Where even is there? Soon enough, she begins to remember a man. A husband. The love of her life. Who died in a horrible pandemic back on Earth. Yes, that’s it: She’s part of a mission to save the human race, predicted to die out completely in two generations….

(14) A BIG DEAL. Radio Times fills us in on the new owner’s ambitions for Bad Wolf: “Doctor Who’s Bad Wolf could be biggest drama producer in UK, says Sony”.

Sony Pictures has invested £50 million into Welsh drama producer Bad Wolf, in the hopes of helping the maker of Doctor Who and His Dark Materials reach its “zenith”.

Wayne Garvie, Sony’s president of international production, recently revealed his hopes that Bad Wolf could become “the biggest drama producer in Britain and in Europe” (via BBC News).

He said: “We have invested in a company that has not reached its zenith. We have [another] company called Left Bank Pictures who make The Crown, which you may have watched, and which is Britain’s biggest drama company. And we built that together with the founders of the company over about eight years or so.

“And we want to do the same with Bad Wolf. There is no reason why Bad Wolf should not be or could not be the biggest drama producer in Britain and in Europe. And that is our ambition.”

(15) KEEPING TRACK OF CENSORSHIP. “School Library Journal Starts a Library Censorship Tips Hotline” reports Book Riot.

…In response to this wave of censorship attempts, the School Library Journal has opened a library censorship tips hotline, which allows library professionals to report censorship attempts anonymously. Hopefully, this will give a more complete picture than the ALA numbers and shed light on censorship happening that is not getting covered on the news. The censorship tips hotline form asks for name and email (both optional); the library/school district, and state; and a comments field: “Tell us who is behind the objection—parents, school board members, or other parties—and how the district/library responded. Was challenge policy followed? Let us know anything else relevant.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The How It Should Have Ended gang have an opinion about Spider-Man.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, N., Steve Miller, Rob Thornton, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton, part of “The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners” series.]

Pixel Scroll 11/30/21 I Can Scroll This All Day!

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(1) WISCON CALLS FOR HELP. Kit Stubbs, Treasurer for SF3, WisCon’s parent not-for-profit organization, and WisCon 2022 co-chair, has written a long post – “Let’s Save WisCon!” – explaining that to survive the con needs an infusion of volunteers, and to raise a substantial amount of money (primarily because of commitments in its hotel contract).

…WisCon’s roots are grounded in white feminism, and WisCon continues to struggle with racism and with finding ways to center attendees of color who have been harmed. The Town Hall marks a key point in our antiracist work to bring WisCon, particularly as experienced by our attendees and volunteers of color, into better alignment with our values—even if this means that white attendees will have to sit with discomfort.

Working towards a more antiracist con is just one of the major challenges that we face. Unless we, the WisCon community, also take significant action this year in terms of finances and our volunteer pool, within the next few years we will no longer be able to run WisCon.

Why? What’s going on?

Right now, in addition to pushing harder on antiracism, WisCon is facing big challenges on two other fronts: money and labor.

TL;DR:

  • We don’t have enough funds to pay for what happens if we don’t fill our contracted block of hotel rooms, and we can’t afford to cancel the hotel contract. We need about $76k in additional income to our general fund by the end of WisCon 2022 to put the con back on solid financial footing.  Thanks to a generous donor, the first $5k we raise will be matched. Donate now to double the power of your donation!
  • We are in a volunteer shortage crisis. It takes a LOT of people to make WisCon happen, and we lack dozens of volunteers in key positions.
  • The Board of SF3 (WisCon’s parent nonprofit) and WisCon organizers are already starting to work on these challenges. There are many things, both large and small, that you can do to help!…

(2) OMICRON VS. DISCON. The Worldcon is two weeks away, so it’s of great concern to people planning to travel to the con that Biden administration officials are considering stricter testing requirements for all travelers to the U.S. amid omicron variant concerns: “Stricter coronavirus testing being weighed for all travelers to U.S.” reports the Washington Post.

The Biden administration is preparing stricter testing requirements for all travelers entering the United States, including returning Americans, to curb the spread of the potentially dangerous omicron variant, according to three federal health officials.

As part of an enhanced winter covid strategy Biden is expected to announce Thursday, U.S. officials will require everyone entering the country to be tested one day before boarding flights, regardless of their vaccination status or country of departure. Administration officials are also considering a requirement that all travelers get retested within three to five days of arrival.

In addition, they are debating a controversial proposal to require all travelers, including U.S. citizens, to self-quarantine for seven days, even if their test results are negative. Those who flout the requirements might be subject to fines and penalties, the first time such penalties would be linked to testing and quarantine measures for travelers in the United States.

The two testing measures are detailed in a draft public health order written by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that is under review by officials at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department and the White House. The self quarantine-related measures are not in that draft but could be added later if the proposals win broader sign-off, said the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the order has not been finalized….

(3) DISCON III ATTENDING MEMBERSHIP PURCHASE DEADLINE. Meanwhile, DisCon III advises that people can pre-register for an Attending membership in the 2021 Worldcon up until December 8. After that, Attending memberships must be purchased in person at the Omni Shoreham.

Virtual and Supporting memberships will still be available to buy online after December 8th, right up to and during the convention.

The convention is hybrid with ten tracks of programming available for Virtual members, including concerts and the Hugo Awards ceremony. In-person Day Passes will be available on-site at the Registration Desk for those who cannot attend all five days. Complete membership information can be found here.

(4) 2023 SITE SELECTION DEADLINES. Be aware of the deadline that applies to whichever method you plan to use to vote in 2023 Worldcon Site Selection.

  • Paper ballots sent via mail must be received by December 7.
  • Emailed ballots (in one of the accepted formats, such as PDF) must be received by noon EDT December 14.
  • Voting continues in person at DisCon III until 6 PM EST on Friday, December 17, 2021.

(5) DISCON III GETS GOOGLE GRANT FOR PANEL CAPTIONING. DisCon III chair Mary Robinette Kowal underscored yesterday’s announcement about the availability of ASL and CART captions for the convention’s panel programs and events:  

(6) SFF IN INDIA. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, books columnist Nilanjana Roy, a mainstream novelist who has tried to write fantasy, discusses the rise of sf and fantasy in India.

I recently asked Samit Basu, an old friend and the author of 10 books, including the wildly popular Gameworld trilogy, about the boom in Indian SFF, especially dystopian fiction.  Indian SFF writers have one thing in common with their better-known Chinese peers, Basu explained.  ‘You can’t really talk about present-day society in an analytical or critical manner without some risk,’ he said, ‘but you can use technological and social metaphors to talk about the present in genre fiction.”…

…In this climate, SFF offers writers such as Praywag Akbar, whose 2017 novel Leila —which is set in the 2040s and features cities where communities are segregated by high walls–a little more leeway.  The legal scholar created an equally compelling dystopia in his 2020 novel, The Wall:  his protagonist Mithila steps into a world of failed revolutions where, briefly, ‘none could tell the difference between rebel and citizen.’  The story continues in a second volume called The Horizon, which was published this month.

(7) CRYPTO CRIME. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from an article by Cristina Criddle behind a paywall in the Financial Times.

Star Wars Stormtrooper helmets by artists including Sir Anish Kapoor and David Bailey have been photographed and turned into non-fungible tokens and sold for millions of pounds without their consent.

Curator Ben Moore took photographs of some of the helmets from a project called Art Wars, created by more than 300 artists since 2013, and sold for them for cryptocurrency as NFTs on the trading platform OpenSea yesterday.

More than 1,000 ethereum (L 5m) had been transferred since the collection of 1,138 images was put on sale yesterday.  One NFT attributed to Kapoor sold for 1,000 ethereum.  Another work attributed to Bailey sold for 120 ethereum.

(8) SCHEDULE YOUR SMOFFING. SMOFcon Europe takes place December 3-5 in Lisboa, Portugal, and the convention’s Programme is now online.

(9) MARRIAGE IS WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER. “Shatner beams down to Brunswick Trekkies’ wedding” at CentralMaine.com.

Region 10 School Board member Jim Grant and Amy Wells Grant were married in Ticonderoga, New York about two weeks ago, on a replica of the set “Star Trek.” Among those in attendance — the original Capt. Kirk.

…Positioned behind an altar that served as a prop on the original Star Trek set, Shatner delivered some opening remarks, and then recited his original lines from a 55-year-old wedding ceremony scene featured in the episode “Star Trek: The Balance of Terror.”

“Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all shipmasters have had one happy privilege, and that is uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony,” said Shatner, reading from the script. “And so, we are gathered here today with you, James, and you, Amy, in a sight of your fellows, in accordance with our laws and our many beliefs so that you may pledge your love to one another. Please kiss the bride.”…

(10) BIGGEST B.O. In case you’re curious, Yahoo! has a list of “The 10 highest-grossing movies of all time at the worldwide box office” (not adjusted for inflation.)

We turned to Box Office Mojo for its data on worldwide box office grosses to determine the top 10 highest-grossing movies in the world. Aside from Disney movies, the list also includes entries in Universal franchises like “Fast and Furious” and “Jurassic World.”…

(11) MEMORY LANE.

2004 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Seventeen years ago at Noreascon 4, Neal Gaiman wins the Short Story Hugo for “A Study in Emerald” which neatly merged the Holmesian and Cthulhu Mythos. It was first published in the Shadows Over Baker Street anthology as edited by John Pelan and Michael Reaves. Other nominated works were “Paying It Forward” by Michael A. Burstein, “Robots Don’t Cry” by Mike Resnick, “Four Short Novels” by Joe Haldeman and “The Tale of the Golden Eagle” by David D. Levine. You can read it at Gaiman’s site in its original wonderfulness here.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 30, 1835 — Mark Twain. It’s been decades since I read it but I still know I loved A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. His other genre work, The Mysterious Stranger, in which Satan might be visiting us, went unpublished in his lifetime and it’s only relatively recently with the University of California Press editions of all his completed and uncompleted versions in one volume that a reader can see what he intended. Anyone here who’s read it? (Died 1910.)
  • Born November 30, 1906 — John Dickson Carr. Author of the Gideon Fell detective stories, some of which were decidedly genre adjacent. The Burning Court with Fell is on this list as is his vampire mythos backstoried novels, Three Coffins and He Who Whispers. And I really should note his Sir Henry Merrivale character has at one genre outing in Reader is Warned. (Died 1977.)
  • Born November 30, 1945 — Billy Drago. Best remembered, I think, as the evil John Bly in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. series. He was certainly booked in a lot of genre roles as he has appearances in Cyborg 2, Sci-Fighters, Supernatural and X-Files. He also played the demon Barbas in the original and definitely best Charmed series. He also was in Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, a film I’m sure no one was begging for. He was in the Masters of Horror “Imprint” episode, which Showtime pulled due to “disturbing content” which you can read about here. (Died 2019.)
  • Born November 30, 1950 — Chris Claremont, 71. Writer in the comic realm. Best known for his astounding twenty-year run on Uncanny X-Men starting in 1976. During his tenure at Marvel, he co-created at least forty characters. Looking at his bibliography, I see that he did Sovereign Seven as a creator owned series with DC publishing it.  And then there’s the matter of Lucas providing the notes for The Chronicles of the Shadow War trilogy to follow the Willow film and then contracting our writer to make them exist.  Anyone ever encountered these?
  • Born November 30, 1955 — Kevin Conroy, 66. Without doubt, best known for voicing Batman on Batman: The Animated Series which is my Batman. Justice League Action saw him reprise that role with the other characters often noting his stoic personality.  I’ve not seen it, but on Batwoman, he plays Bruce Wayne in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Two” episode.  Bruce Timm likes his work in the Batman 75th Anniversary Short Batman: Strange Days (here) which is interesting as he only says one word though he grunts nicely.  (CE)
  • Born November 30, 1955 — Andy Robertson. A fan and editor who worked as an assistant editor on Interzone and contributed myriad reviews and interviews. He published some fiction and edited two anthologies based on the works of William Hope Hodgson’s Night Lands, Volume 1: Eternal Love, featuring tales set in Hodgson’s world, and William Hope Hodgson’s Night Lands Volume 2: Nightmares of the Fall. Alas, they never made into digital editions. (Died 2014.)
  • Born November 30, 1957 — Martin Morse Wooster, 64. He discovered fandom in 1974 when he heard about “a big sci-fi con” in downtown Washington where admission was $10 at the door.  He had ten bucks, and so attended Discon II at 16.  A year later, he discovered fanzines through Don Miller, and discovered he liked writing book reviews.  He has been turning them out ever since.  In 1975, he was one of twelve founders of the Potomac River Science Fiction Society, which split from the Washington Science Fiction Association, and regularly attends PRSFS meetings to discuss books.  He has contributed to File 770 since 1978 – the first year it was published.

(13) NEW COMICS SUBSCRIPTION PLATFORM. “A New Publishing Platform for Comic Books Will Give Creators a Greater Stake” – the New York Times tells how.

Many comic book characters anchor global franchises, but their creators — or the writers and artists who helped make them popular — have not always shared in that success. Zestworld, a new subscription-based platform that is set to be introduced in early 2022, is hoping to change that.

Zestworld will allow comic book writers and artists to present new work and reap the benefits — and help monetize their creations if they are made into collectibles or adapted for TV, movies or other media. The creators will be stockholders in the company.

“In setting out to build this, we started with the problem statement that this industry is broken for creators; and it’s broken in publishing and TV and film; it’s also broken in events and collectibles,” Chris Giliberti, the founder and chief executive officer of Zestworld, said during a recent telephone interview. “We wanted to build something that’s useful across all areas of their business — anywhere they generate income.”

One investor in Zestworld is the venture capitalist firm Seven Seven Six, which was founded by Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit…. 

(14) WITH EVERY WORD, SHE DROPS KNOWLEDGE. Cat Rambo’s new book You Sexy Thing is out this month! She spent a few minutes with Rapid Transmission’s  Joseph Hurtgen and talked about her writing process, working with an editor, and her love for gaming: “Cat Rambo: You Sexy Thing”.

How has your work as an editor, including your time at Fantasy Magazine, informed your writing?

Certainly editing has made me a better writer, more attentive to the nuances of comma placement and sentence structure. But it’s also made the way I work with editors different, I think, or at least helped me advance more quickly to the point where I understand what a difference a good editor can make, and how awesome an ally they can be in producing something that you’re really proud of. For example, I had a story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction earlier this year, “Crazy Beautiful,” that I absolutely love, and it was C.C. Finlay’s excellent edits that took it to the next level, in my opinion, including a major change that involved removing the vast majority of the quotes from art critics that I’d included and leaving only the Bob Ross quote that starts it off. Similarly, with You Sexy Thing, my editor, Chris Morgan caught all sorts of little snags and played a major part in making it the smooth read that it is (I think!)…

(15) TOPOLOGIC BOOKSTORES. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Hard to believe some of these aren’t (just) CGI. Either way, some are good candidates for my Zoom background library: “The world’s wackiest bookstore? Inside the amazing new Shenzhen Zhongshuge shop in China” – photos at Daily Mail Online.

Designer Li Xiang’s own website tells what it all symbolizes: “Shenzhen Zhongshuge”. (There’s also a large gallery of photos.)

…When I received the design assignment for Zhongshuge in Shenzhen last year, I had led the designs for several completed Zhongshuge across China. In the process of researching the cultural background of this city, I realized that I could design a space which could become a symbol of Shenzhen itself as an inclusive and vibrant city of migrants, paying tribute to all those who have struggled to make history in this city.

Thus, this retail space, which seems to have grown out of a giant art installation, was born. Straddling the earth and sky, it is examined as an otherworldly presence that creates a subtle experience of unease mixed with familiarity, making the space a proposition posing silent questions to the viewers….

(16) ARE THE SCARES THERE? The New York Times ponders the cultural question “When Is a Horror Movie Not a Horror Movie?”

A few days before Halloween, the @NetflixFilm Twitter account put out a call: “What movie isn’t technically a horror movie but feels like a horror movie to you?” Included was a photo of a freaky-eyed Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”

Twitter being Twitter, some of the responses were flip, like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Cats.” But there were also heavy hitters like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Parasite.” Children’s films, including “Pinocchio” and “Bambi,” made the cut. It just goes to show, horror is what scares you, not me.

Horror has always been an elastic and regenerative genre. It lifts from and melds with just about every type of cinema: comedy, sci-fi, action, romance, fantasy, documentary. Its flexibility extends as far back as the monstrous love story in “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) and as current as the blood-drenched melodrama of “Malignant.”

But how do you know if you’re watching a horror movie when there’s no killer or monster, exorcism or blood? It’s a decades-old question that’s being asked about new films that blur the line between a movie with horror and a horror movie….

(17) WHAT’S THAT I SMELL? Aubtu introduces us to “Luxurious Perfumes Inspired By Disney Villains That Are Extremely Breathtaking”. (However, these appear to be designs, not products available for sale.)

…Today, we are honored to introduce to you some amazing artworks of Ruby Spark – a talented young artist who specializes in drawing and illustrating. Obsessed with the beautiful costumes of Disney villains, Ruby came up with a brilliant idea of designing perfume bottles based on these iconic outfits, and they are all not surprisingly extremely gorgeous and fascinating! 

#3 Yzma from “The Emperor’s New Groove”

(18) I NEVER DRINK…WINE. Could there be something you don’t know in this list of “20 Surprising Facts About ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’” from Mental Floss?

8. COPPOLA HIRED EIKO ISHIOKA UNDER THE EDICT THAT “THE COSTUMES ARE THE SETS.”

According to Coppola, the original amount budgeted for sets in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a massive chunk of the film’s total cost—so much so that he worried he’d go over budget if he actually stuck to the elaborate set designs his original production designer planned. So, he hired different production designers, scaled down the sets, and brought in legendary art director Eiko Ishioka to transform his vision of Dracula into something different.

With Ishioka, who later admitted she’d never seen a Dracula film before working on Coppola’s project, the director crafted a philosophy that “the costumes are the sets,” putting all the focus on his actors and what they were wearing, with the sets themselves acting as mere backdrops for the performances. Inspired by everything from insects to symbolist painters to The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (which is homaged in Dracula’s final costume of the film), Ishioka set about crafting everything from a dress centered on snakes for Lucy Westenra to an insect-like straightjacket for Renfield. For Dracula’s first appearance as a vampire, she also ditched the classic cape in favor of a long, flowing crimson robe, which remains one of the film’s most famous visuals.

Ishioka won the Academy Award for costume design in 1993 for her work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This trailer from How It Should Have Ended about Venom;  Let There Be Carnage (with guest stars Spider-Man, Deadpool, and Baby Shark) dropped today/

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Nicholas Shectman, Olav Rokne, Daniel Dern, Joseph Hurtgen, James Bacon, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson, with dual credit to Daniel Dern for a similar suggestion.]

Pixel Scroll 11/17/21 Our Shelves Shall Not Be Emptied, From Birth Until Life Closes

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(1) EVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET. A genre novel, The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, has won the 2021 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. The award ceremony will be held in person December 1 at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, CT. The novel also won a Bram Stoker Award this year.

(2) ROOT AND BRANCH. The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian’s exploration of “How Your Family Tree Could Catch a Killer” ends with a genetic genealogist’s efforts to find the rest of the story about George R.R. Martin’s ancestors which was first explored on the PBS series Finding Your Roots.

…[CeCe] Moore had first encountered the case years earlier, through “Finding Your Roots.” She began working on the show in 2013, after Henry Louis Gates, Jr., heard her speak in Burbank and hired her on the spot. At first, his producers were skeptical, but within a few episodes Moore had established herself as a force. “We have five geneticists who vet her work,” Gates told me. “There were a couple of things she found that were so astonishing to me—I was, like, ‘We’re going to triple-check this,’ and each of the geneticists said, ‘No, CeCe is absolutely right.’ ”

George R. R. Martin had come on the show hoping to learn more about the family of his father, Raymond….

The genetics indicated that Raymond’s father was not Louie [Martin] but another man, an unknown Ashkenazi Jew.

For Martin, the news was wrenching. “It’s uprooting my world here!” he told Gates on the set. “It doesn’t make any sense! So I am descended from mystery?” After the taping, Martin followed the show’s production crew to a local restaurant, wanting to talk more about what they knew. In the years that followed, he and his sisters strove to solve the mystery, to no avail.

It upset Moore that her work, intended to give people a sense of ancestral belonging, had left Martin with only disconnection. She continued to work the case….

And she thinks that she found the answer, which is revealed in the article.

(3) VINDICATED. Nicholas Whyte has been vindicated. It’s about a professional matter, but comes with a little genre-related highlight. Twitter thread starts here. Some excerpts:

 In April and October last year, the Spanish online newspaper OK Diario published two stories including completely false statements about me, in particular about my alleged contacts with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who I have never met or even communicated with….

I complained to the Spanish Comisión de Arbitraje, Quejas y Deontología, which has now published its official decision on the matter, finding completely in my favour and against OK Diario. Sometimes it’s worth pushing back to set the record straight….

OK Diario then complained that they had not had a chance to respond….

Now the Comisión de Arbitraje, Quejas y Deontología del Periodismo reports that in fact OK Diario submitted no evidence whatsoever to support their story, and the Comisión has reinstated its original decision vindicating me. (With a quote from Carl Sagan.)

That quote in the RESOLUCIÓN WHYTE is:

Aunque, siguiendo la conocida máxima del pensador Carl Sagan, “la ausencia de 6 pruebas no es prueba de ausencia”, no es posible pedir al señor Whyte que justifique documentalmente una aseveración negativa.

In English: “The absence of proof is not the proof of absence.”

(4) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. The National Book Award winners were announced today. None of the works of genre interest won. The full list of winners is here. They will receive $10,000 and a bronze sculpture. See the online video ceremony here.

(5) IN TRANSLATION. Tove Jansson’s Notes From An Island has just been translated into English by Thomas Teal. Read an excerpt at Granta.

… Failing to wait when what you’re waiting for is your own majestic goal, that’s just unforgivable.

What was I thinking that time at Vesuvius? I’d really like to know. I mean, there he was, acting up a bit, and I was there! I was nineteen years old, and I’d waited all my life to see a mountain spitting fire. The moon was out, fireflies too; the earth was aglow – and what did I do? I dutifully took the tourist bus back to the hotel in order to drink my tea and go to bed! Who takes the time to sleep when a thing is finally happening? I could have stayed there all night and had Vesuvius all to myself….

(6) SOCIAL IMMEDIATELY. Don’t Look Up arrives in select theaters December 10 and on Netflix December 24.

Based on real events that haven’t happened – yet. DON’T LOOK UP tells the story of two low-level astronomers who must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.

(7) BIG BIRD ALMOST EATS MOON. “A partial lunar eclipse, the longest in 580 years, is coming Thursday night” – MSN.com has details.

Skywatchers on Thursday night will be treated to a near-total lunar eclipse as the full moon is plunged into the blood-red light cast by Earth’s shadow. The spectacle will be visible from all of North America, with the exception of eastern Greenland, including the entire Lower 48, Alaska and Hawaii, as well as parts of South America and Russia.

Though it’s technically not a total lunar eclipse, it’s about as close as one can get to totality without actually being there. At peak, 97 percent of the moon will be covered by the umbra, or the darkest part of Earth’s shadow. Only a sliver on the bottom left of the moon will remain faintly illuminated.

A striking element of Thursday night’s eclipse will be its duration — 3 hours, 28 minutes and 24 seconds, according to Space.com, which it says makes it the longest partial eclipse in 580 years….

(8) HAVE FUN STORMING THE CASTLE. Going under the hammer in Heritage Auctions’ Books Signature Auction on December 9-10 is this “Princess Bride Production Sign. Circa 1987”. The current bid is $500. Feel free to spend more – as you wish!

(9) ANGRY ROBOT BOOKS PRESENTS. Dan Hanks has been busy celebrating the release of his action-packed, humorous, fantasy adventure, Swashbucklers on November 9 —  “a Ghostbusters meets The Goonies tale of nostalgia for childhood, parenthood, British folklore, and Christmas…but make it less Santa, more Gremlins!”

On November 18 Dan will be hosted by Adam Simcox, author of The Dying Squad a fantasy and crime mash-up, with a spectral police force made up of the recently deceased. See their conversation on YouTube or Facebook beginning 8:00 p.m. GMT / 3:00 p.m. Eastern

Celebrate the long-awaited release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife as they talk about their favourite movies in the series, lots of other 80s gems, the supernatural beings in their books, and general mayhem I suspect! Join the Live Chat on either platform to submit your own favourite Ghostbusters movie, or scene, or indeed any other cult classic from the era you loved!

 (10) GET READY FOR WEIRD TALES CENTENARY. Publishers Weekly reports “Weird Tales Partners with Blackstone Publishing”.

Blackstone Publishing has inked a deal with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy brand Weird Tales and its flagship publication of the same name. Under the agreement, Blackstone will publish 50 books under the Weird Tales Presents brand over the course of five years, including original novels, anthologies, and compilations. Blackstone will publish the books in print, e-book, and audiobook editions.

Blackstone will also distribute the digital and audio versions of the Weird Tales magazine. The first novel under the new partnership is set to be released in fall 2022, followed by 100 Year Weird Tales Commemorative Anthology, which reimagines original works from the 1920s and 30s, in fall 2023. 

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

2001 — Twenty years ago 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.  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. 

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

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

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 17, 1925 — Raymond Jones. Best remembered for This Island Earth, which of course became the basis of the Fifties film. He didn’t win any Hugos but was nominated for two — the first at NyCon 3 for “Rat Race” and the second, a Retro Hugo, for “Correspondence Course” at L.A.con III. SFE calls Renaissance: A Science Fiction Novel of Two Human Worlds his best novel. (Died 1994.)
  • Born November 17, 1931 — Dennis McHaney. Pulp writers in particular seem to attract scholars, both amateur and professional. Robert E. Howard was not an exception. So I give you this individual who between 1974 and 2008 published The Howard Review and The Howard Newsletter. Oh, but that was hardly all he did as he created such pubs as The Fiction of Robert E. Howard – A Pocket Checklist, Robert E. Howard in Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet and The Souk and The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Quick Reference Guide. A listing of his essays and other works would take an entire page. It has intriguing listings such as Frazetta Trading Cards, The Short, Sweet Life and Slow Agonizing Death of a Fan’s Magazine and The Films of Steve Reeves. (Died 2011.)
  • Born November 17, 1936 — John Trimble, 85. Husband of Bjo Trimble. He has assisted her in almost all of her SF work, including Project Art Show. They were GoHs at ConJose, the 2002 Worldcon. He’s a member of LASFS. He’s been involved in far too many fanzines and APAs too list here.
  • Born November 17, 1943 — Danny DeVito, 78. Oscar-nominated Actor, Director, and Producer whose best-known genre role was as The Penguin in Batman Returns (for which he received a Saturn nomination), but he also had roles in Matilda (which he directed, and which was based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name), Mars Attacks!, Men in Black, Big Fish, Junior, and the black comedy cult film Death to Smoochy, about an anthropomorphic character actor, which JJ thought was hilarious. He provided the voice for the credential detective Whiskers in Last Action Hero, as well as for characters in Look Who’s Talking Now, Space Jam, the My Little Pony movie, Hercules, The Lorax, Animal Crackers, and  Dumbo.
  • Born November 17, 1966 — Ed Brubaker, 55. Comic book writer and artist. Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives I’d consider his first genre work. Later work for DC and Marvel included The Authority, Batman, Captain America, Daredevil, Catwoman and the Uncanny X-Men. If I may single out but one series, it’d be the one he did with writer Greg Rucka which was the Gotham Central series which has been rumored to be in development for TV. It’s Gotham largely without Batman but with the villains so GPD has to deal with them by themselves. Grim and well-done. He’s a member of the writing staff for the Westworld series where he co-wrote the episode “Dissonance Theory” with Jonathan Nolan. 
  • Born November 17, 1978 — Rachael McAdams, 43. Primary cast as Clare Abshire in the The Time Traveler’s Wife which was she followed up genre wise by being Irene Adler in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. She also plays Christine Palmer in Dr. Strange. Her sole series work is apparently as Christine Bickwell in the “Atavus High” episode of the Earth: Final Conflict series.
  • Born November 17, 1978 — Tom Ellis, 43. Currently playing Lucifer Morningstar in the rather excellent Lucifer series created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg from The Sandman series. It’s quite good. Also had roles in Doctor Who as Tom Milligan in the Tenth Doctor story, “Last of the Time Lords”, Once Upon a Time, Messiah, The Strain and Merlin. 
  • Born November 17, 1983 — Christopher Paolini, 38. He is the author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance. In December of last year, The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, the first book in a series called Tales of Alagaësia, was published. A film version of the first novel came out in 2006.

(13) WATERSTONES. The 2021 Waterstones Book of Year shortlist includes some titles of genre interest. See the titles in The Guardian: “Cosy crime and Greek myth retellings: the Waterstones book of the year shortlist”.

(14) VOTE FOR AN IRISH BOOK AWARD. The shortlists for the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards has been announced and the awards are open for voting by anybody with an e-mail address: “An Post Irish Book Awards 2021 shortlists revealed”. There is no SFF category, but they have a crime and thriller category. Plus, Noel King, a poet with whom Cora Buhlert shared a TOC many years ago, is nominated in the poetry category.

(15) THE HUMAN RACES. “Mystery and Prehistory: PW Talks with Jeff Smith” at Publishers Weekly.

Smith returns with Tuki: Fight for Fire (Cartoon Books, Dec.), a comics series that combines research and fantasy, and is set during the period in prehistory when multiple humanoid species coexisted.

… Were there places where you had to guess about the science?

The biggest leap I had to make was: Could Tuki talk? There’s debate on either side, scientifically. But when you look at the underside of our ancestors’ skulls, a few million years ago, they had a voice box long enough to modulate sound. Also, molds from inside the skull show they had Broca’s areas, which is a major speech center in the brain. So, if they didn’t have speech, they were the first ones with all the equipment…

(16) IN PLAIN SIGHT. You’re not surprised to learn that Jon Del Arroz is evading his Twitter ban (with more than one account, actually) by posting as “The Real JDA” at the @LeadingHispanic, are you?

(17) AND THE HORSE HE RODE IN ON. Cora Buhlert has penned “The Tale of Declan, Disruptor of Doors”, the misadventures of Declan Finn in Italy retold as a sword and sorcery tale. It harkens back to an indignant rant from that Sad Puppy about his travels abroad during the pandemic.

In an age undreamt of, after the Supreme Lord of Darkness descended from his mountain to lead the Hounds of Sadness in their assault against the sinful cities on the coast, but before the scarlet plague swept the land, there lived in a barbaric country a young bard named Declan.

Declan was a rising star among the bards of his land. His name was spoken with admiration in the taverns and around the camp fires. Last year, he had even been runner-up in the bardic contest of the Great Dragon Atalanta, losing only to Bryan, the Grand Hunter of Witches. Declan was still sore about that…..

(18) HELLO, MASTER CHIEF. A teaser dropped for Halo the Series which is coming to Paramount+ next year.

(19) GHOST-FILL-IN-THE-BLANKERS. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson showed up on Fallon last night and chatted about Ghostbusters and even showed outtakes from the original movie before they secured the rights to use “Ghostbusters” in the title.

(20) HOW IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED. The How It Should Have Ended gang, including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, takes on Shang-Chi in this video which dropped today.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/21/21 You Go To War With The Pixel You Have, Not The Scroll You Wish You Had

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(1) BUJOLD ANNOUNCES NEXT PENRIC NOVELLA. Lois McMaster Bujold showed off the cover of the next Penric & Desdemona tale, Knot of Shadows.

Knot of Shadows

When a corpse is found floating face-down in Vilnoc harbor that is not quite as dead as it seems, Temple sorcerer Penric and his chaos demon Desdemona are drawn into the uncanny investigation. Pen’s keen questions will take him across the city of Vilnoc, and into far more profound mysteries, as his search for truths interlaces with tragedy.

(2) A FUTURE FOR CON OR BUST? Kate Nepveu is looking for volunteers to help revive Con or Bust, or the foundation will be dissolved. “Do you want to revive Con or Bust?”

… From 2009 through 2019, I ran Con or Bust, which helped people of color/non-white people/BIPoC attend SFF conventions. Since 2019, it’s been dormant; but it remains a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation with various assets. I’ve decided that it’s time either to actively hand it over to someone willing to revive it, or to formally wind it down….

Con or Bust raised funds through a yearly online auction and distributed those funds to literally hundreds of BIPoC fans to help them attend SFF conventions. More detail on Con or Bust’s history is available at the Wayback Machine.

…If I don’t hear from any plausible candidates for new leadership, I will distribute Con or Bust’s current funds to other charities with aligned purposes and formally dissolve it as a corporation. I will make a full report on those steps here.

Please feel free to leave questions in the comments here; you can comment without logging in, but I do ask that you sign your “anonymous” comment with a name or a pseudonym for continuity of conversation.

Finally, please distribute this link far and wide!

(3) SEMIPROZINE FOCUS. Cora Buhlert is expanding her Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project to include semiprozines, particularly the smaller ones that get very little attention.

 Here’s an introductory post to the series: “Introducing Semiprozine Spotlights”.

… Even though that definition is very specific, there are actually a lot of magazines which meet it. The semiprozine directory has a lengthy list of Hugo eligible semiprozines and there are several I know of that are not yet listed.

Semiprozines range from the very well known to the obscure, so I thought it was time to shine a light on the many great semiprozines that are out there and decided to interview the editors and staff of various semiprozines. I hope this series will be of interest not just to potential Hugo nominators, but to everybody who is looking for great SFF short fiction….

And here’s the first spotlight: “Semiprozine Spotlight: Space Cowboy Books Presents Simultaneous Times”.

Tell us about your magazine.

Space Cowboy Books Presents: Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast, released on the 15th of each month. We create audio adaptations of stories by contemporary science fiction authors from all over the world, set to original soundtracks created by our team of composers. When possible we do cast readings of the stories, and we have featured works by authors such as: David Brin, Rudy Rucker, Michael Butterworth, and tons of other wonderful contemporary writers. …

(4) KEEP FIT WITH FRODO. Apparently you can simply walk there – in your imagination. “This Lord Of The Rings App Allows You to ‘Walk to Mordor’” – Nerdist has the story, and a link to the TikTok video mentioned in the excerpt.

Ever wonder just how far Frodo and Sam walked in The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Thanks to one Middle-earth fan on TikTok by the name of DonMarshall72, we know. They estimate that from the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom spans an enormous 2,765.6 kilometers. Or, about 1,718.5 miles. And Frodo and Sam both walked barefoot. So if these halflings could do it, what is your excuse not to? Why not get motivated to walk like a Hobbit, so to speak?

Well, as with most things these days, there’s an app for that. And it’s named, appropriately enough, “Walk to Mordor.” The existence of this app comes to us via a story on CNET. The author used the Hobbits’ journey in the films to motivate herself to get back up on that treadmill and start exercising again. The Walk to Mordor app actually outdoes the journey in the films. It accounts for the longer distance recorded in Tolkien’s book….

(5) EH, NO. On Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out the News, Mark Hamill’s answer is that if he was hypothetically offered a trip on Jeff Bezos’ rocket: “That’d be a hard sell for me”.

Virtue Signal’s Kylie Weaver asks Star Wars icon Mark Hamill if, like Star Trek’s William Shatner, he’d accept an invitation for Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.

(6) MAKING IT SO. Assisted by a horror novelist, Raquel S. Benedict  on the Rite Gud podcast explores “How Books Happen, With Gretchen Felker-Martin”.

In this episode, horror author Gretchen Felker-Martin joins us to talk about her gritty post-Apocalyptic trans novel Manhunt (spoiler free) and how an idea becomes a traditionally published book. We talk about the myth of overnight success, how much money novelists actually make (it is not much), the writing process, agents, research, and dealing with controversy.

(7) HEAR FROM FANTASY AUTHORS.  Orbit Live is hosting two more author Q&As in the coming weeks.

Join Lucy Holland and Alix E. Harrow for a conversation about their books, myths and ancient stories, and rewriting the role of women in history. Plus, they’ll be answering your questions!

Lucy Holland [she/her] is the author of Sistersong, out in October from Redhook. As Lucy Hounsom, she is also the author of the Worldmaker series.

Alix E. Harrow [she/her] is the author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches, out now in trade paperback from Redhook.

Join fantasy authors Andrea Stewart and Evan Winter for a conversation about their books, magical creatures both forbidding and friendly, and writing middle books in series. Plus, they’ll be answering your questions!

Andrea Stewart [she/her] is the author of The Bone Shard Daughter (one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2020) and its sequel, The Bone Shard Emperor, out from Orbit in November.

Evan Winter [he/him] is the author of The Rage of Dragons and its sequel The Fires of Vengeance, both out now from Orbit.

(8) LOCAL COLOR. I’m shocked to discover I’ve only been to half the places on KCET’s list of “10 L.A. Landmarks Made Even More Famous by Hollywood Horror Flicks”. Amd jere’s a connection that knocks me out —

2. Franklin Canyon Lake, Franklin Canyon Park — from “Creature from the Black Lagoon”

Another famous “horror lake” can be found near the so-called “Center of Los Angeles” — at Franklin Canyon Park, whose circa 1914 reservoir has most famously served as Mayberry’s fishin’ pond in “The Andy Griffith Show” and the lagoon where “Gill Man” lived in Universal’s “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954)….

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • 1977 – Forty-four years ago this day,  Damnation Alley premiered. It was directed by Jack Smight from the screenplay by Alan Sharp and Lukas Heller which was based somewhat on the Roger Zelazny novella that was nominated for a Hugo at Baycon. (“Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip José Farmer and “Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey  tied for the Hugo for Best Novella at Baycon that year.) It starred George Peppard as Major Eugene “Sam” Denton and Jan-Michael Vincent as 1st Lt. Jake Tanner. It bombed and was pulled quickly.  Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a thirty-four rating. The network TV version that aired on NBC television in 1983 featured alternate footage and additional scenes that were deleted from the earlier version. It was very much a ratings success. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 21, 1904 — Edmond Hamilton. One of the prolific writers for Weird Tales from the late Twenties to the late Forties writing nearly eighty stories. (Lovecraft and Howard were the other key writers.) Sources say during that same period Hamilton wrote for all of the SF pulp magazines then publishing.  His story “The Island of Unreason” (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best SF story of the year. This was the very first SF prize awarded by the votes of fans, which one source holds to be a precursor of the Hugo Awards. From the early Forties to the late Sixties, he work for DC, in stories about Superman and Batman. He created the Space Ranger character with Gardner Fox and Bob Brown. On December 31, 1946, Hamilton married fellow SF author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett. He’s been nominated for three Retro Hugos — for his Red Sun of Danger novel at L.A. Con III, his “Exile” short story at Anticipation, and for his Captain Future series at CoNZealand. And he’s been voted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1977.)
  • Born October 21, 1914 — Martin Gardner. He was one of leading authorities on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll’s two Alice books is still a bestseller. He was considered the doyen (your word to learn today) of American puzzlers. And, to make him even more impressive, in 1999 Magic magazine named Gardner one of the “100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century”.  Cool! (Died 2010.)
  • Born October 21, 1929 — Ursula K. Le Guin. Writer, Artist, Editor, Poet, and Translator. She called herself a “Narrative American”. And she most emphatically did not consider herself to be a genre writer – instead preferring to be known as an “American novelist”. Oh, she wrote genre fiction with quite some brillance, be it the Earthsea sequence, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or Always Coming Home. Her upbringing as the daughter of two academics, one who was an anthropologist and the other who had a graduate degree in psychology, with a home library full of SF, showed in her writing. She wrote reviews and forewards for others’ books, gave academic talks, and did translations as well. Without counting reader’s choice awards, her works received more than 100 nominations for pretty much every genre award in existence, winning most of them at least once; she is one of a very small group of people who have won both Hugo and Nebula Awards in all four fiction length categories. She was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the 1975 Worldcon; was the second of only six women to be named SFWA Grand Master thus far; was given a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement; and was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In later years, she took up internet blogging with great delight, writing essays and poems, and posting pictures and stories of her cat Pard; these were compiled into a non-fiction collection, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, which won a posthumous Hugo for Best Related Work. Her last Hugo was at Dublin 2019 for The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition which was illustrated by Charles Vess. (Died 2018.)
  • Born October 21, 1933 — Georgia Brown. She’s  the actress who portrayed Helena Rozhenko, foster mother of Worf, in the Next Gen’s “Family” and “New Ground” episodes. She was Frau Freud in The Seven-Percent Solution, a most delicious film indeed, and was Rachel in “The Musgrave Ritual” episode of the Nigel Stock fronted Sherlock Holmes series. (Died 1992.)
  • Born October 21, 1945 — Everett McGill, 76. Stilgar in the first Dune film. Earlier in his career, he was a Noah in Quest for Fire. Later on, he’s Ed Killifer in License to Kill, and on Twin Peaks, he’s Big Ed Hurley. He was also Rev. Lowe in Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, a werewolf flick that actually remarkably has a decent rating of fifty-five percent  at Rotten Tomatoes!
  • Born October 21, 1956 — Carrie Fisher. In addition to the original Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars Holiday Special, The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, she was in Amazon Women on the Moon, The Time Guardian, Hook, Scream 3, and A Midsummer Night’s Rave. And yes, she appeared in The Rise of Skywalker through the use of unreleased footage from The Force Awakens. (Died 2016.)
  • Born October 21, 1971 — Hal Duncan, 50. Computer Programmer and Writer from Scotland whose first novel, Vellum: The Book of All Hours, won a Spectrum Award and received nominations for World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Kurd Laßwitz, Prix Imaginaire, and Locus Best First Novel Awards, as well as winning a Tahtivaeltaja Award for best science fiction novel published in Finnish. His collection Scruffians! and his non-fiction work Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions were also both finalists for British Fantasy Awards. An outspoken advocate and blogger for LGBTQ rights, he was a contributor to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project.
  • Born October 21, 1973 — Sasha Roiz, 48. I know him only as Captain Sean Renard on the excellent Grimm series but he’s also been Sam Adama on Caprica as well, a series I still haven’t seen. And he’s also been on Warehouse 13 in the recurring role of Marcus Diamond though I admit that I don’t remember him in that role. He even showed up once on Lucifer as U.S. Marshal Luke Reynolds.
  • Born October 21, 1974 — Chris Garcia, 47. He’s editor of The Drink Tank and several other fanzines. He won a Hugo Award at Renovation with co-editor James Bacon for The Drink Tank after being nominated from 2010 to 2013. He was nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo three years straight starting in 2010. His acceptance speech for the Hugo at Renovation was itself nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Hugo at Chicon 7. I can’t begin to list all his feats and honors here. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Garfield watches a frustrated genre game show contestant.

(12) WHITTAKER’S VALEDICTORY. “Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker on the next Doctor and leaving the show” at Radio Times.

,,,Speaking to press including RadioTimes.com, Whittaker addressed her impending exit from the BBC sci-fi series and what she thinks her replacement will be in for.

On how it feels to leave the role of the Doctor behind, she said: “We’ve been very present in it – but you have to honour the show, and honour everything. Me and Chris [Chibnall, showrunner]… There was this thing of like, ‘We want to do three seasons.’ But no one holds you to that. So there was always a conversation [about how long to stay]. It was always fluid.

“But when you commit to that decision… you know, I can’t imagine it being written— like, this Doctor is Chris’s Doctor. For me, it’s right [to leave now], but if everyone comes up to you forever, going, ‘I’m a Doctor Who fan’ – then that’s an absolute joy because it’s been such a pleasure.”

Whittaker added, though, that she’ll nonetheless be “filled with a lot of grief” having left the series. “Even thinking about it, it makes me upset,” she said. “But this show needs new energy. The Doctor – the joy of this part is, you hand on your boots. And I don’t know who, but whoever that is, what a thing to be able to go, ‘You’re going to have a right time!’.”

(13) GET ME OUT OF HERE. Doctor Who showrunner “Chris Chibnall says it took ‘longer than expected’ to leave Doctor Who” reports Radio Times.

…Chibnall will exit alongside the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, and while we wait to find out who will be cast as the next Time Lord, Chibnall has been chatting to press, including RadioTimes.com, ahead of series 13. As you’d expect, the subject of his departure came up and it turns out that he stuck around for longer than he thought he would.

“It’s taken longer than expected if we’re being honest. I’ve been throwing batons at people for about a year now. And finally, someone’s picked it up,” Chibnall said on the search for his replacement.

“We had that conversation right at the start, and I hope you can see that the atmosphere is so team-oriented and so positive, it is a proper family atmosphere. This cast and this crew are so close – you wouldn’t want to do it with other people, because it’s just been its own little, discrete show. And then the next version will be its own discrete show, just as Peter [Capaldi]’s era was, and Matt [Smith]’s era was, and David [Tennant]’s was.”

While the Cloister Bell may be sounding on his time in charge, Chibnall insists he has nothing but fond memories of his time on Doctor Who.

“You couldn’t enjoy it any more than we’ve enjoyed it. It’s been such a laugh and such a privilege,” he said. “And I think we’ve been deliberately very mindful of being in the moment. Obviously, I’ve known Russell and Steven [Moffat] for a long time and part of their advice was just: ‘Enjoy it while you’re doing it, because afterwards you really miss it.’”…

(14) THE FALLING OFF THE CLIFF NOTES. With pandemic restrictions easing, book clubs are meeting in-person again. How can people bluff their way through now? To the rescue – “Stephen Colbert’s Book Club For People Who Want To Sound Like They Read The Book”.

(15) ANOTHER DYNAMIC DUO. In Something More Than Night, Kim Newman, author of Anno Dracula, reimagines the lives of Raymond Chandler and Boris Karloff as collaborators in this a horrifying tale.

Hollywood, the late 1930s. Raymond Chandler writes detective stories for pulp magazines, and drinks more than he should. Boris Karloff plays monsters in the movies. Together, they investigate mysterious matters in a town run by human and inhuman monsters.
 
Josh Devlin, an investigator for the DA’s office who scores high on insubordination, enlists the pair to work a case that threatens to expose Hollywood’s most horrific secrets. Together they will find out more than they should about the way this town works. And about each other. And, oh yes, monsters aren’t just for the movies.

(16) BRIDGE OVER UNTROUBLED WATERS. I landed in the hospital before I could report this bit of news — “Winnie-the-Pooh Poohsticks bridge sold for £131k to Sussex landowner”  in The Guardian.

To Winnie-the-Pooh fans, the bridge over the river on the edge of the forest where Pooh invents a new game is up there with heffalumps and pots of honey and the Hundred Acre Wood.

It is where Pooh one day accidentally drops a fir cone in the water on one side of the bridge, only to spot – to his astonishment – the cone reappearing on the other side. “And that was the beginning of the game called Poohsticks.”

Now the original bridge has been sold for £131,625, more than double the top end of the presale estimate of £40,000 to £60,000. Its new owner is Lord De La Warr, who owns the 2,000-acre Buckhurst Park estate in East Sussex, which incorporates the wood made famous in AA Milne’s children’s books.

… The original bridge was dismantled and placed in storage. It was later reconstructed and restored, and relocated to Kent after a private sale.

Now, said Rylands, Winnie-the-Pooh fans would again be able to set eyes on it, although games of Poohsticks may be ruled out in order to preserve the bridge for future generations….

(17) NO BONES ABOUT IT. A dinosaur goes under the hammer – it must have been a very big hammer. BBC News has the story: “Big John, largest known triceratops skeleton, sold at auction”.

The skeleton fetched a European record price of €6.65m ($7.74m; £5.6m).

Some 66 million years ago, Big John roamed modern-day South Dakota in the US, where the dinosaur’s bones were unearthed in 2014.

With its huge collared skull and three horns, the plant-eating triceratops was a giant of the Cretaceous period.

A private, anonymous collector from the US bought Big John’s skeleton, which was put on public display at the Drouot auction house in Paris last week.

(18) A TRACTOR BEAM – CURE FOR SPACE JUNK. This week’s Nature reports on a study that shows “Non-magnetic objects induced to move by electromagnets”.

A set of electromagnets has been used to move metal objects without touching them, even though the objects are not magnetic. This method could potentially be used like a ‘tractor beam’ to move hazardous objects in space.

Imagine trying to catch a fragment of a rocket nozzle in orbit above Earth’s atmosphere. The fragment is travelling faster than a bullet, and tumbling rapidly end over end. Around 27,000 orbiting pieces of such debris are large enough to be tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network, and they constantly threaten active spacecraft and satellites. If the debris were magnetic, then magnets could be used to safely grab hold of the objects and dispose of them — but orbital debris tends to contain little or no magnetic material….

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] The How It Should Have Ended gang takes on The Suicide Squad, with guest stars Superman, Batman, and Deadpool.  

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Karl-Johan Norén, Raquel S. Benedict, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cora Buhlert, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bonnie McDaniel.]