(1) HUGO SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEMENT COMING ON FRIDAY. The Glasgow 2024 committee will announce the Hugo finalists at Eastercon.
(2) BUTCHER WILL MISS NORWESCON 46. Writer guest of honor Jim Butcher has contracted COVID-19 and will be unable to travel to Norwescon this weekend. The committee adds, “While this is disappointing to all of us who wished to see him, we sincerely wish him the best for a speedy recovery, and hope to see him again in the future.”
(3) EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports “The Oxford English Dictionary’s latest update adds 23 Japanese words” including:
Isekai, a Japanese genre of fantasy fiction involving a character being transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world … A recent example of the genre is Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, in which 12-year-old Mahito discovers an abandoned tower, a gateway to a fantastical world.
(4) FANDOM BEFORE THE DATE WHICH SHALL LIVE IN INFAMY. First Fandom Experience will release the third book in the series on April 5 at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Chicago: “Introducing Volume Three of The Visual History”.
Science fiction fandom in 1941 played out in a panoply of wisdom, foolishness, belief and incredulity. Less mired than previous years in the economic shackles of the Great Depression, fans let loose in ways both expected and surprising.
The year began with a bang – the noisy implosion of the ascendant Queens Science Fiction League, torn apart by rancor among New York factions stewing since 1938. In early December, fans in America were forced to face the threat of imminent dystopia as insidious products of science and engineering rained down on sailors at Pearl Harbor.
Between these bookends, fans read and wrote and gathered and argued and published in profusion – mostly in good humor.
The perennial questions persisted. What’s the purpose of the fiction we inhale like oxygen? What role do fans play in the world? Are we somehow better than others? What’s the point of organizing? Perhaps these debates were reason enough to come together.
Fans flocked together. Small but vibrant clubs coalesced in Boston, Minneapolis, northern New Jersey and central Michigan. Regional gatherings established communities and annual conferences that still endure….
(5) THE RIGHT STUFFY. Futurism amusingly tells how “AI-Powered Children’s Toy Agrees to Stop Responding, But Keeps Butting Into Conversation Again”. The article is based on the video review below.
Late last year, Claire “Grimes” Boucher, acclaimed musician and mother of three of billionaire multi-hyphenate Elon Musk’s children, announced an OpenAI-powered line of toys called “Grok” — not to be confused with Musk’s AI chatbot of the same name, as the two are currently entangled in a nasty custody battle….
… At first, the AI companion appeared to have no issues following Murdock’s orders.
“Hey Grok, can you just chill for a second,” he asked it.
“Sure thing, I’ll just float here and enjoy the cosmic breeze,” Grok answered….
Made by Curio, the product website is here: “Grok AI Toy”.
(6) KEEP ON TREKKIN’. How does the Star Trek franchise keep us coming back? “Star Trek’s Future: ‘Starfleet Academy,’ ‘Section 31,’ Michelle Yeoh and Chris Pine” at Variety.
…“Strange New Worlds” is the 12th “Star Trek” TV show since the original series debuted on NBC in 1966, introducing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a hopeful future for humanity. In the 58 years since, the “Star Trek” galaxy has logged 900 television episodes and 13 feature films, amounting to 668 hours — nearly 28 days — of content to date. Even compared with “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Star Trek” stands as the only storytelling venture to deliver a single narrative experience for this long across TV and film.
In other words, “Star Trek” is not just a franchise. As Alex Kurtzman, who oversees all “Star Trek” TV production, puts it, “‘Star Trek’ is an institution.”
Without a steady infusion of new blood, though, institutions have a way of fading into oblivion (see soap operas, MySpace, Blockbuster Video). To keep “Star Trek” thriving has meant charting a precarious course to satisfy the fans who have fueled it for decades while also discovering innovative ways to get new audiences on board.
“Doing ‘Star Trek’ means that you have to deliver something that’s entirely familiar and entirely fresh at the same time,” Kurtzman says….
(7) WIZARDLY HIRING PRACTICES. I’m sure you wanted to know, too, but were just too shy to ask. CBR blurts out the question on your behalf: “Why Did Dumbledore Hire So Many Bad Teachers in Harry Potter?”
In the Harry Potter franchise, one thing that is made abundantly clear about Headmaster Albus Dumbledore is that he is the greatest wizard who has ever lived. Brilliant, wise, compassionate, and with a charming personality to boot, if not a bit quirky. He represents the archetype of the wizened mage, who provides the protagonist with guidance throughout their journey. Even those who despise him respect his power and intelligence. Yet, he was not a flawless person, with many skeletons in his closet. One in particular affected a majority of his students for a time: the professors he hired for Defense Against the Dark Arts were not always the best….
(8) UNFORGETTABLE HOWARD. Arnie Fenner, who published some of his work in small press, adds his tribute to the late “Howard Waldrop” at Muddy Colors.
…No one wrote like Howard Waldrop: no one could. He saw stories in virtually everything and telling them just the way he thought they should be told was far more important to him than the time they took to write or the amount of money he was ultimately paid—or not paid—when they were eventually published. His knowledge was encyclopedic and while there are wags who might know a little bit about a fair number of subjects, Howard knew a lot about a lot of things; he may have written fiction but there was always something factual, some history, to be learned from each story. He was, very much, a writer’s writer and he never compromised in the creation of his work; plus he was also a visual writer—an extension of growing up a comic book fan—one who literally painted vivid pictures with his words and who always created memorable scenes that could be a treasure trove for illustrators….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 27, 1942 – Michael York, 82. What’s your favorite Michael York role? For me, it’s not any of his later roles but rather as D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeersback fifty years ago when he was thirty years old, and its sequels, The Four Musketeers (The Revenge of Milady) and The Return of the Musketeers. It was a role that he apparently played with great relish.
He was busy in this period as he also was in Cabaret as Brian Roberts, a bisexual Englishman, one of lead roles there. He has an affair with Sally, one of the other leads.
I’m not convinced he slept at all as I just found that also he was in a version of Lost Horizon, billed as “A musical fantasy adventure film”. Often cited as one of the worst genre films of all time, it currently holds a fourteen percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
But as all the best actors seem to do, he would show up in a production of Murder on the Orient Express, as Count Rudolf Andrenyi.
Just three years after he played D’Artagnan he was cast as Logan 5, a Sandman, in Logan’s Run, a 1977 Hugo nominee at SunCon. I remember sort of liking it when I saw it back then but not enough to have watched it again since then. What’s your opinion of it? An of course his acting in it?
He’s got a lead role in The Island of Dr. Moreau as Andrew Braddock, his last genre role in film for twenty years until he played Merlin in A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, a role I dearly want to see. Though I’m not interested in seeing him in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery as Basil Exposition, as those films to me are badly done.
He voices Bob Crachit in a late Nineties Christmas Carol that, shall we say, is way less that faithful to the source material and adds such things as Scrooge’s pet bulldog, Debit. Seriously it does. Tim Curry is Scrooge here. That’s it for film as far as I’m concerned.
Now for genre television. He was on The Wild Wild West as Gupta in “The Night of the Golden Cobra”; Batman: The Animated Series in the “Off Balance” episode as Count Vertigo; on seaQuest DSV in the recurring role of President Alexander Bourne; on Babylon 5, in the extraordinary role of David “King Arthur” McIntyre in the “A Late Delivery from Avalon” episode; multiple roles on the animated Superman series; in Sliders as Dr. Vargas in “This Slide of Paradise” (that series started fine but lasted way, way too long, yes I’m editorializing); King Arthur again in A Knight in Camelot; he voiced a truly awesome Ares in the Justice League Unlimited’s “Hawk and Dove” episode; and finally we have two voicings on Star Wars: The Clone Wars of the Dr. Nuvo Vindi character. He retired from acting a decade ago.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Loose Parts has its own ideas about the way dinosaurs really looked.
(11) SNAZZY THREADS. “Discovering Worldcon: Masquerade, Costuming, and Cosplay” — Vince Docherty outlines convention costuming history at the Glasgow 2024 website. Lots of photos. (But none of Vince…)
…SF conventions in Glasgow started in 1978, and grew during the 1980s. They also featured a costume competition and, usually, a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with full audience interaction! (I even dabbled a little bit myself, including entering the contest once as ‘Riff Raff’ from Rocky Horror—fortunately in pre-internet times, so hopefully no photos exist!) Fans from Glasgow and the rest of the UK have continued to actively participate in costuming in the decades since….
(12) SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIMING. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Shanghai-based English-language news site Yicai Global reported that the CEO of a company linked to Three-Body Problem has been found guilty of homicide, and sentenced to death.
The former chief executive officer of a unit of Yoozoo Interactive, which used to own the rights to ‘The Three-Body Problem,’ has been found guilty of poisoning the Chinese gaming firm’s chairman on the same week that the Netflix version of one of China’s most successful sci-fi novels began to broadcast.
Xu Yao, who joined Yoozoo Pictures in 2017, was sentenced to death for intentional homicide and handed an additional six-year sentence for administering dangerous substances, the Shanghai Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said today in a first-instance verdict. Xu has also been deprived of his political rights for life.
The trouble started soon after Netflix linked arms with Yoozoo Interactive, whose other subsidiary Three-Body Universe had bought the rights to Chinese science fiction novelist Liu Cixin’s trilogy, to produce an English-language version of ‘The Three-Body Problem’ in September 2020.
Xu, who had resigned from the firm in January 2019, had a disagreement with Lin, a hugely successful and ambitious film and game producer, over company matters and deliberately poisoned his food around Dec. 14 or Dec. 15, 2020, the court said.
Xu also had a conflict with two other colleagues, both surnamed Zhao, and he poisoned them as well between September and December 2020, but not fatally.
Lin fell ill on Dec. 16, 2020 and was told by doctors that he had been poisoned, according to earlier statements from the Shanghai-based company. The next day Lin called the police who conducted an investigation and detained Xu. Lin passed away 10 days later.
There is similar coverage at The Independent, CBS News, and the New York Post. There was also a paywalled article in The Times by Adam Roberts a few days ago, before the verdict came down. Searches for “xu yao” or “yoozoo” on other China-based English-language news sites such as China.org.cn or Global Times failed to come up with any results.
Comments on Weibo indicate that Xu Yao was involved in the early deal-making stages of the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem,
(13) RANKING 100 RANDOM SF BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I do not know if you have come across the YouTube Channel Bookpilled but it is the channel of a die-hard SF reader. I do know that many of you SF book readers will know of, if have not read, most of the 100 books that he has just randomly picked from his collection. Here he rates them.
Do you agree with him? Disagree with him? Agree with him in part?…
Do you, like him, have happy accidents?
I don’t know about you but there were three or four in here that he rates fairly well that I don’t have in my own collection. Check out his vid below.
(14) DRIVEN TO SUCCESS. The Takeout has a photo gallery of “8 of the Most Iconic Food Vehicles”.
Everyone remembers their first Wienermobile sighting. Maybe you were driving down the highway with friends and it suddenly appeared on the horizon: a gleaming hot dog that’s 11 feet tall, 27 feet long, and 8 feet wide. The unmistakable red and yellow of America’s favorite giant frank on wheels is always a thrill to encounter. Why travel to a roadside attraction when it can drive to you?
That image pops immediately to mind, no doubt. Here’s one that’s a little less familiar.
Nearly identical in size to the Wienermobile, the Planters NUTmobile debuted in 1935 and is manned by “Peanutters” who drive Mr. Peanut around the country. A Nutmobile was transformed into an INN a NUTshell retreat (help) in 2021, allowing people to book a night in the vehicle, which was outfitted as a sort of snack-themed fever dream camper.
(15) A DERN MINUTE’S WORTH OF “WHERE THIS CAME FROM”. [By Daniel Dern.] The reference behind today’s title, “The DiskWorld Turned Upside Down (Because ‘RingWorld’ Here Wouldn’t Make Sense, Would It?)”.
Via, for us folkies, Leon Rosselson’s song of that name (I’m pretty sure he wrote it — I know it’s on his albums, and I believe I’ve heard him sing it, live, way back when), although he got the notion/phrase from the the 1640s version, and LR’s song was subsequently-ish done by Billy Bragg and, most recently, the phrase became part of a song in Hamilton.
[OGH adds: That last is probably because “The World Turned Upside Down” was played during the surrender ceremony at Yorktown, the climactic moment of the American Revolution.]
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended has remastered their 12-year-old Ghostbusters tribute.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, Frank Catalano, Olav Rokne, Ersatz Culture, 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 Daniel Dern.]
