Tag Archives: Howard Waldrop

Pixel Scroll 11/2/21 Escape From the Other Pixel Scroll (A Sequel)

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(1) ANTITRUST ACTION. “Justice Department sues to stop Penguin Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster” reports CNN.

The Justice Department is suing to block Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster, arguing that the combination of the two book business giants “would likely harm competition in the publishing industry.”

Tuesday’s complaint in United States District Court is one of the first major antitrust actions by the Biden administration.

The publishers said they are prepared to defend the deal in court, calling it “a pro-consumer, pro-author, and pro-book seller transaction.”

Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are two members of the “Big Five,” the industry’s term for the five biggest publishers in the United States.

In a court filing on Tuesday, DOJ lawyers said the companies should not be allowed to combine because it “would give Penguin Random House outsized influence over who and what is published, and how much authors are paid for their work.”

The New York Times has a bit more about the government’s legal arguments: “Justice Dept. Sues Penguin Random House Over Simon & Schuster Deal”.

In a publishing landscape dominated by a handful of mega corporations, Penguin Random House towers over the others. It operates more than 300 imprints worldwide and has 15,000 new releases a year, far more than the other four major U.S. publishers. With its $2.2 billion proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House stood to become substantially larger.

The deal was challenged amid a shifting atmosphere in Washington toward consolidation, where there has been increased scrutiny on competition and the power wielded by big companies like Amazon and Facebook. The move provides a window into how the Biden administration will handle these concerns going forward.

Rather than concerns solely over harm to consumers, the Department of Justice said the acquisition could be detrimental to producers — in this case, authors — in what is called a monopsony, as opposed to a monopoly. The Biden administration filed its case against Penguin Random House in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday.

A combined statement issued by Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster contends:

“DOJ’s lawsuit is wrong on the facts, the law, and public policy,” Daniel Petrocelli, Vice Chair of O’Melveny & Meyers and PRH’s lead trial attorney, said. “Importantly, DOJ has not found, nor does it allege, that the combination will reduce competition in the sale of books. The publishing industry is strong and vibrant and has seen strong growth at all levels. We are confident that the robust and competitive landscape that exists will ensure a decision that the acquisition will promote, not harm, competition.”

PRH and S&S’ attorneys make additional arguments in the linked statement.

(2) CLIMATE FUTURES. The “Crafting Climate Futures: From Story to Policy” webinar on Monday, November 8 is cohosted by ASU’s Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative and the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures at the University of Liverpool. It features three of ASU’s Climate Imagination Fellows—Xia Jia, Hannah Ongowue, and Vandana Singh—along with Kim Stanley Robinson, and the moderator is Adeline Johns-Putra, a professor of literature at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and author of the book Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel. Begins 5:30 a.m. Pacific.

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow presents an opportunity for decisive global action amidst escalating climate chaos. Now, more than ever, we need narratives of positive climate futures alongside coordinated interventions in order to ameliorate the crisis. Join the University of Liverpool’s Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures and the Climate Imagination Fellows at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination for a session dedicated to exploring the stories that might catalyze new understandings and connect narrative interventions to transformations in policy, governance, and culture.

(3) FOR YOUR REFERENCE. Susan Guthmann Henry saw yesterday’s Scroll item about the Texas legislator who has put together a list of 850 books and is demanding that schools in the state tell him if they have these books in their libraries and how much they have spent on them, and the discussion in comments about the seeming random order of the list. “It occurred to me that there might be a way to make the 16 page Matt Krause list ‘easier’ to look through. So, I downloaded it, converted it to a spreadsheet, and made two lists, one that is alphabetical by title and one that is alphabetical by author.” Many thanks! Here are the Excel spreadsheets:

krausebooklist–alpha by authorDownload
krausebooklist–alpha by titleDownload

(4) AS TIME GOES BY. Cora Buhlert discusses the Jirel of Joiry stories by C.L. Moore on the Appendix N Book Club podcast: “C.L. Moore’s ‘Jirel of Joiry’ with special guest Cora Buhlert”.

Cora Buhlert joins us to discuss C.L. Moore’s “Jirel of Joiry”, used book store finds, kisses as stand-ins for sex, the appropriateness of using genre to explore our fear of sexual violence, cozy stories, writers being inspired by their peers, comparing and contrasting Conan and Jirel as characters, employing undead suckers, the influence of comics on the early pulps, her work with Henry Kuttner, fictitious France, C.L. Moore’s reemerging popularity, and much more!

(5) COLD-HEARTED ORB. Jess Nevins reviews John Steinbeck’s lost werewolf murder mystery Murder at the Full Moon: “Nine-10ths of a Triumph: On John Steinbeck’s ‘Murder at Full Moon’” at LA Review of Books.

… At first glance, Murder at Full Moon seems to consist primarily of the clichéd routines and tropes of detective fiction circa 1930: the whodunnit structure; the eccentric but all-knowing detective; the hapless sidekick; the events that abide by “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” laid out by S. S. Van Dine in 1928 and by the “Ten Commandments” for mystery stories conceived of by Ronald Knox in 1929; the gathering of the characters at the end to watch the detective reveal and apprehend the murderer; and so on. A superficial reading of Murder at Full Moon could indeed lead one to claim that it is “a shameless commercial satire of pulp-detective novels” or “a cynical attempt at a standard commercial mystery-thriller.” But what Steinbeck clearly attempted to do, and mostly succeeded at doing, was tell a mystery story about mysteries as they were written in 1930, and to challenge his fellow mystery authors to write more ambitious material in a more intelligent way — to step up their game….

(6) UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Cora Buhlert’s newest Fancast Spotlight interview features Hugo finalist Worldbuilding for Masochists from Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris and Rowenna Miller:  “Fancast Spotlight: Worldbuilding for Masochists”.

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Tide charts — a stack of books on constellation mythology — an elaborately sketched map — a bulletin board covered in illustrations of obsolete technology — research on textiles, naming conventions, architecture and a dozen ways to cook lentils — what could it all mean? 

It means worldbuilding. Big worldbuilding. Elaborate worldbuilding. Obsessive worldbuilding. Dare we say… masochistic worldbuilding?…

(7) LAWRENCE PERSON ON HOWARD WALDROP’S YEAR. Howard Waldrop related the details of his very tough medical year to an audience at Armadillocon, and Lawrence Person has signal-boosted what he said.

These topics were covered at his interview at Armadillocon in October 2021, and as they’re now public knowledge, here is the concise summary of Howard Waldrop’s trials and tribulations from late 2020 through 2021:

  1. He had to deal with an infestation of bedbugs in his apartment.
  2. He was involved in a minor car wreck in a driving rainstorm that totaled his car (but inflicted no serious injury).
  3. Had to deal with the legal fallout from that (since cleared up).
  4. Suffered a series of minor falls.
  5. Found out he had kidney stones that were too large to pass.
  6. Had his kidney stones zapped with lasers via a tube up his urethra (a very science fictional future, but not the one he was hoping for). As a result of which…
  7. “I pissed blood and gravel for a week.”
  8. His power went out for several days as part of the Texas ice storm (second coldest recorded temperature in Austin history).
  9. Suffered a major fall that broke his shoulder ball and socket, and left him unable to reach his cell phone to call for help.
  10. Spent a day crawling around on the floor of his apartment.
  11. Ended up barfing on himself just before Brad Denton and Martha Grenon came to his apartment to check on him.
  12. Went to the hospital, by which time he was already suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis.
  13. Got his bone set and his blood sugar stabilized.
  14. He spent weeks recovering at two different recovery centers.
  15. By which time he was suffering gastrointestinal distress, which was traced to a perforated colon.
  16. Which required the removal of several feet of lower intestine and installing a colostomy bag.
  17. “They’ve removed my ass. I have no ass.”
  18. Moved into an assisted living facility, where he’s recovered nicely. “The food is really good.”

This summary is quite condensed but chronologically accurate and Howard-approved. And I’ve actually spared you a few bodily function details. 

Howard’s close circle of caregivers has been keeping a lid on all this until Howard was recovered enough to reveal it to the public at large.

On the bright side, he lost enough weight that he’s no longer diabetic, and several of his short stories have been optioned for film, including “Heirs of the Perisphere,” “Night of the Cooters” and “The Ugly Chickens,” all in various states of production. And won the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. 

(8) SOMEWHERE IN OUR LITERARY FAMILY TREE. You might need Mental Floss after reading this sentence repeatedly: “’A Dark and Stormy Night’: The History of Literature’s Worst Sentence”. But can it be true that Edward Bulwer-Lytton inspired a forerunner of sf fandom?

…If you want to start a novel, your options for an opening line are just this side of infinite. But if you want to start a novel badly, any cartoon beagle can tell you that there’s only one choice: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

The phrase has become so ingrained in our literary culture that we rarely give much thought to its origin—and when he put pen to paper, it’s likely that author and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton had no idea just how infamous his dark and stormy night would become. Bulwer-Lytton was once as widely read as his friend Charles Dickens, but today he’s remembered almost exclusively for one bad sentence. It’s an ironic legacy for a prolific author who influenced some of the most popular novels in English literature, helped invent sci-fi fandom, laid the groundwork for modern crime fiction, and accidentally sparked a movement for an important social reform.

…Bulwer-Lytton’s 1862 novel A Strange Story is thought to have influenced Dracula, and his 1871 science fiction novel The Coming Race inspired the world’s first sci-fi convention (and gave rise to an exceptionally bizarre Nazi conspiracy theory)….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

2001 – Twenty years ago, Monsters, Inc. was released by Pixar. It was directed by Pete Docter in his directorial debut, and executive produced by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. The screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson from a story by Pete Docter, Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon and Ralph Eggleston. An amazing voice cast consisted of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs and Jennifer Tilly. 

It generated a lawsuit by a poet who said it was based on her “There’s a Boy in My Closet” poem but the Judge refused to issued an injunction stopping the film from opening and eventually said her suit had absolutely no merit. Another suit claimed the lead characters of Mike and Sulley were based on his art. That suit was settled out of Court and the details of the settlement were sealed. 

Critics all loved the film with the Salon critic saying it was “agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time.”  Box office wise, it made nearly six hundred million on a budget of under three hundred million, not counting streaming revenue and DVD sales. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a monstrous ninety percent rating. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 2, 1913 — Burt Lancaster. Certainly being Dr. Paul Moreau on The Island of Doctor Moreau was his most genre-ish role but I like him as General James Mattoon Scott in Seven Days in May. And of course, he’s really great as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams. (Died 1994.)
  • Born November 2, 1924 — Michi Kobi. She was Dr. Hideko Murata in Twelve to the Moon, half of a double feature with either Battle in Outer Space or 13 Ghosts. Unless you consider her doing voices on Courage the Cowardly Dog, an early Oughts animated series, to be genre, this is her only SF work. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 2, 1927 — Steve Ditko. Illustrator who began his career working in the studio of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby during which he began his long association with Charlton Comics and which led to his creating the Captain Atom character. Did I mention DC absorbed that company as it did so many others? Now he’s best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. For Charlton and also DC itself: a complete redesign of Blue Beetle, and creating or co-creating The Question, The Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove. He been inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 2018.)
  • Born November 2, 1941 — Ed Gorman. He’d be here if only for writing the script for the  Batman: I, Werewolf series in which Batman meets a werewolf. Very cool. More straight SFF is his Star Precinct trilogy with Kevin Randle which is quite excellent, and I’m fond of his short fiction which fortunately is showing up in digital form at the usual suspects. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 2, 1942 — Carol Resnick, 79. Wife of that Resnick who credited her according to several sources with being a co-writer on many of his novels. He also credited her as being a co-author on two movie scripts that they’ve sold, based on his novels Santiago and The Widowmaker. And she’s responsible for the costumes that she and Mike wore in five Worldcon masquerades in the Seventies, winning many awards.
  • Born November 2, 1942 — Stefanie Powers, 79. April Dancer, the lead in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. which lasted just one season. (I just downloaded the pilot to watch as I’ve never seen the series.) Did you know Ian Fleming contributed concepts to this series and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well?  She would play Shalon in the crossover that started on The Six-Million Man and concluded on The Six-Million Woman called “The Return of Bigfoot”. 
  • Born November 2, 1949 — Lois McMaster Bujold, 72. First let’s note she’s won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein’s record, not counting his Retro Hugo. Quite impressive that. Bujold’s works largely comprises three separate book series: the Vorkosigan Saga, the Chalion series, and the Sharing Knife series. She joined the Central Ohio Science Fiction Society, and co-published with Lillian Stewart Carl StarDate, a Trek fanzine in which a story of hers appeared under the byline Lois McMaster. 
  • Born November 2, 1980 — Brittany Ishibashi, 41. Ishibashi played Karai in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She’s currently portrays Tina Minoru on Runaways, streaming on Hulu. And she was Maggie Zeddmore in the Ghostfacers webseries. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Take me to your leader is a cliché, so Garfield starts the conversation in another way.

(12) THE UNMITIGATED EIGHTIES. Ed Brubaker talks to Alex Segura of CrimeReads about his new graphic novel, Destroy All Monsters. “Ed Brubaker on 1980s Los Angeles, Private Eye Fiction, and the Changing Face of Graphic Novels”.

…But Reckless is not a nostalgia tour, or an attempt to recapture the magic of previous private detectives or locales. The series motif and past setting allowed Brubaker and Phillips to tell stories set in another time that still reflected a lot of what was going on now.

“I wanted to write about the past from today’s point of view, to show how we got from there to here, how much the decisions of the past made this place, like the ripple effects of corruption and politics through time,” Brubaker said. “This is why the newest book DESTROY ALL MONSTERS has at the heart of it, the fallout of the construction of the 105, and the corridors of vacant houses that stood for something like 12 or 15 years during the court battle over that freeway, and which became a major source of crime and devastation in South LA, predating the crack epidemic, even.”

(13) TAKING THE CARS. Gothamist shows us “The Best Halloween 2021 Costumes On The NYC Subway”. At West 4th Street station, end-point for the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade… 96 photos in the gallery!

After things were understandably subdued last year due to the pandemic, Halloween celebrations were back across the city over the weekend. New Yorkers of all ages tend to take this holiday quite seriously, and after a year of mostly avoiding human contact, everyone seemed more excited than ever to show off their brilliant, clever and often weird costumes while traversing our mass transit system.

Indefatigable photographer Sai Mokhtari, who first started this Subway Halloween project nine years ago (it has become our favorite annual tradition since), went out between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunday to capture all the hottest Halloween looks… in transit. Overall, Mokhtari said, “the subways were more crowded than last year but definitely a far cry from pre-pandemic days (I’d say maybe half as many people overall).”

(14) TIS THE SEASON. Delish held its breath til Halloween was past, and now has gone into full Christmas merchandising mode. To begin with: “Le Creuset Has New ‘Harry Potter’ Kitchen Items”. A $300 Dutch oven is one of them.

Le Creuset is best known for their beloved dutch ovens and baking accessories. This line has a little bit of everything and will be available exclusively on Le Creuset’s website and through Williams-Sonoma. Every piece features a subtle nod to the Harry Potter series, like a blue dutch oven with a golden snitch knob, a red dutch oven with an embossment of Harry’s glasses and a lightening bolt knob, and even a tea kettle with 9 3/4 on the handle as a shoutout to the Hogwarts express.

(15) MOVING PICTURES. Bradbury scholar Phil Nichols is giving an online talk about “Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man at Seventy” on November 16 at 7:00 p.m. UK time as part of the University of Wolverhampton’s Artsfest Online, Free registration here.

Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man – a short story collection very loosely woven together with a fantastical framing narrative – is now seventy years old, and yet it remains a greatly influential work. Dealing with ideas around virtual reality, civil rights, the end of the world, and body art, it has managed to sustain a resonance through to the twenty-first century, despite its 1950s trappings. Individual stories from the collection have been adapted for film, television, radio and stage on multiple occasions, confirming Bradbury’s position as one of the most significant writers of science fiction even as the author tried to escape from the “ghetto” of genre fiction.

In this illustrated talk, Dr Phil Nichols will show how Bradbury’s short-story collection both defines and confines the author.

(16) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter watched three of last night’s Jeopardy! contestants unable to come up with this one:

Category: Fantastical Creatures

Answer: George Langelaan wrote the Playboy short story that inspired this film in which Seth Brundle transforms.

No one could ask, “What is The Fly?”

(17) WHO WATCHED WHAT LAST MONTH. JustWatch compiled this list of the Top 10 Sci-FI Movies and TV Shows in the US in October:

Rank*MoviesTV shows
1DuneFoundation
2Free GuyCowboy Bebop
3VenomLa Brea
4GhostbustersRick and Morty
5TitaneDoctor Who
6The ThingBattlestar Galactica
7Halloween III: Season of the WitchY: The Last Man
8Black WidowThe Twilight Zone
9A Quiet Place Part IIAmerican Horror Story
10The Rocky Horror Picture ShowInvasion

*Based on JustWatch popularity score. Genre data is sourced from themoviedb.org

(18) NO IDLE PAWS HERE. [Item by JJ.] OMG, it’s a subreddit for working credentials – “Purposeful Pusses” at Reddit. Check out the video with Harpo, who works for serious book lovers.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Marvel’s What If…?” the Screen Junkies say this is based on a Marvel series that included “What if Iron Man Fought King Arthur?” and “What if Wolverine Was A Vampire?”  (These are actual comics.)  They say that all the characters sound like AIs barfing out Chandler Bing dialogue. You can also take in Chadwick Boseman’s last performance as the Black Panther.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Joey Eschrich, Jumana Aumir, Cora Buhlert, Lise Andreasen, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

Pixel Scroll 8/28/21 Around The File In 80,000 Pixels, Written By Scrolles Verne

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(1) CLARION WEST ONLINE LEARNING. Clarion West is offering a large number of Online Classes & Workshops over the next three months. Here are just a few examples.

Are you interested in writing and submitting fiction to both “literary” and “speculative” markets? This class will cover submission practices and expectations for both fields, and will discuss key differences and similarities. Along with resources on how to find journals and magazines to submit to, the class will also discuss career-related topics such as MFA programs, speculative writing workshops, and how to apply for writing residencies, grants, awards, and conferences. 

The struggle of every short story is time. How can anyone tell a gripping, heart-wrenching story in so few words? 

One way is to create emotionally engaging characters—someone who will pull the reader into the story and won’t let go, even after the story ends. 

In this class, we will discuss how to create these types of characters in the space of a short story. We will cover topics such as voice, empathy, and reliable narration, as well as what characters can get away with in short fiction that they could not in a novella or novel. 

If you’ve listened to an audiobook or a podcast, then you’re familiar with how audio as a medium can truly transform a story, adding new dimensions and intricacies to what is “on the page.” Relatedly, audiobooks, audio dramas, and podcasting have seen an explosion in growth over the last decade in publishing. Still, the ways in which we experience oral storytelling have remained largely static, even if platforms have changed rapidly. This moment presents a unique opportunity for writers to expand their stories into a market hungry for audiobooks, including short-form stories, novels, and everything in between. 

In this workshop, Zelda Knight will cover step-by-step instructions on what to do and what not to do, common pitfalls, great resources, recommendations for distribution, and an overall insider’s look at how to transform your stories into audio with immersive SFX and narration.

From Lord of the Rings to Star Wars, trilogies are a tried and true way to tell an extended story, and it seems a majority of current science fiction and fantasy series follow the rule of three. However, writing a trilogy isn’t quite as simple as extending the principle of the three act structure. We’ll talk about how to set up your novel for trilogy potential and what to do when your publisher says, “We want a trilogy.” We’ll examine lessons from successful and unsuccessful trilogies and consider when a trilogy is and isn’t appropriate for the story you want to tell. We’ll then discuss how to plan out a story across three books, how to create satisfying narrative arcs within each book as well as over the entire trilogy, and what each book needs to accomplish. And we’ll also cover common pitfalls, such as how to avoid “second book syndrome,” how to create a sense of epic scale without losing focus, how to cover large time jumps, and more. 

(2) AN AMAZING EDITOR IN EVERY WAY. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Brian Murphy, author of Flame and Crimson – A History of Sword and Sorcery, shares his appreciation for Cele Goldsmith Lalli, the underrated editor Amazing Stories and Fantastic in the 1960s who rescued Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser from oblivion, discovered John Jakes and Roger Zelazny (and David R. Bunch) and helped to usher in the sword and sorcery boom of the 1960s: “The Fantastic S&S contributions of Cele Goldsmith” at The Silver Key.

…Goldsmith had a reputation for bucking commercial trends throughout her career and so published Leiber’s less-fashionable S&S. In so doing she improved the climate and conditions that allowed sword-and-sorcery to reach full flower later in the decade with the publication of the unauthorized The Lord of the Rings, the republication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, and the publication of the Lancer Conan Saga…. 

(3) FUTURE TENSE. “’Beauty Surge’, a new short story by Laura Maylene Walter” — “What if your college dorm analyzed your sewage to find out if you’re pregnant or on drugs?” – is the latest story in the Future Tense Fiction series from Future Tense and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives.

Nora shut herself in the dorm suite’s bathroom, the inhaler clutched in her fist. Once she was within range of the ProtectFlo toilet sensor, her eight-digit campus identification code flashed across its display. The light flared from yellow to green, where it would remain until Nora exited. There was no way to circumvent the system unless, of course, one peed outside, maybe in the campus woods, but that would render vital health data inaccessible.

And there’s a response essay by Rolf Halden, director of the Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering. “Are You Entitled to Privacy Over Your Pee and Poop? An expert on wastewater-based epidemiology responds to Laura Maylene Walter’s ‘Beauty Surge'”.

…But there always are those questions we need to ask, again and again: What information is OK to collect? How many people’s human waste needs to be mixed to make the data we collect anonymous? Who owns the data, and who deserves to learn about what it says? If a changing climate or global tourism bring new pathogens into your city and neighborhood, we work to be the first to tell you.

Powerful tools are neither good nor bad; it just depends how they are applied. Wastewater-based epidemiology and other health monitoring tools are no exception….

(4) LOOKING BACKWARD. Cora Buhlert’s new Retro Review is for “’The Green Huntsman’ by Dorothea Gibbons”, who is better known as Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort Farm.

…The name Dorothea Gibbons will not mean anything to most people. However, Dorothea Gibbons is a very well known author, probably one of the most famous mainstream authors ever to publish in Weird Tales next to Tennessee Williams as a sixteen-year-old debut author (and I should really review his debut story some day). For Dorothea Gibbons was none other than British novelist, poet and journalist Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort Farm (which is absolutely genre, even if most people don’t realise it). …

(5) HIJACK THE STARSHIP AGAIN. Rescheduled from 2019 – a live performance of 1971 Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo finalist Blows Against the Empire will take place October 23 at The Newton Theater in New Jersey.

The Airplane Family & Friends reunites Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, Grateful Dead, Bob Weir’s Rat Dog & David Crosby alumni to perform the 50th Anniversary of Paul Kantner / Jefferson Starship masterpiece “Blows Against the Empire”, in celebration of the late Hall of Fame musician’s birthday-next March. The album was recorded in San Francisco in 1970, the results derive from a period of cross-collaboration during late 1969 through 1971 by Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recording at the time in the city.

The credit to Jefferson Starship reflected many things: the ad-hoc all-star line-up; the album being an evolutionary progression from Jefferson Airplane; and finally the narrative concept that tells the story of a counter-culture revolution against the oppressions and a plan to steal a starship from orbit and journey into space in search of a new home. It was the first album to ever be nominated for literary science fiction’s Hugo Award in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation.

(6) ALIEN CHOW CALL. “Science fiction writer Eli Lee dips into her imagination to create fictional worlds and fantastical, quotidian meals of the future.” “Writing for science fiction: Eating unfamiliar food in a familiar world”, a recording available at KCRW.

…In a piece for Vittles, Lee takes inspiration from writer Ursula Le Guin, whose work “Always Coming Home” anchors her fanciful cuisine to the hyperrigional dishes of her native Northern California upbringing. In her first novel “A Strange and Brilliant Light,” Lee delves into her past to create foods in her invented world. Referencing her beekeeper mother’s honey, Lee describes her imaginary dulac cake, allowing the reader to attach their own personal food history and emotions to her fiction.

(7) WALDROP TO THE SCREEN. “The Cooters Are Coming!” announces “The Big Cooter” George R.R. Martin, at Not A Blog. He’s helped produce a film based on a Howard Waldrop story.

…The producers of NIGHT OF THE COOOTERS — in no particular order — are Vincent D’Onofrio, Justin Duval, Joe Dean, Taylor Church, Martin Sensmeier, L.C. Crowly, Greg Jonkajtys, Elias Gallegos, Lenore Gallegos, Amy Filbeck, Joe Lansdale, and Howard Waldrop His Own Self.

And me… though I rather think I may credit myself as The Big Cooter.

When and where will you be able to see NIGHT OF THE COOTERS?

Well, that’s hard to say. We shot everything on green screen, so the post production process is going to be a lengthy one. The ball has now been passed to our friends at Trioscope, who will supply the backgrounds and special effects. We are thinking the final cut won’t be ready until early next year. And once the film is complete… well, alas, I doubt it will be showing at a multiplex near you. It’s a short film, as I said, and shorts just don’t get the distribution of full-length features. They hardly get any distribution at all, sad to say. I expect we will enter COOTERS in some film festivals here and there. Maybe some streamer will pick it up. Maybe we can release it on DVD or Blu-Ray. Maybe we can make a few more Waldrop movies and assemble them all into an anthology of sorts, like CREEPSHOW or TWILIGHT ZONE. One thing I can promise: we will be having a premiere somewhere down the line at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.

Howard never made much money off his stories. I expect his film won’t make much money either. But that’s not point.

Some stories just need to be told. Some movies just need to be made. Call it a labor of love.

(8) COMIC-CON MUSEUM. Held back by the pandemic, the “San Diego Comic-Con Museum to open in November” says the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Comic-Con Museum’s 2019 preview day.

… COVID-19 did more than delay the museum — it also canceled the in-person Comic-Con two years in a row. Not only was it a hit to the pocketbook of the nonprofit that runs the convention, but also San Diego’s tourism industry. The launch of the museum is welcome news to many in the community.

“With the museum’s construction under way,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement, “we’re closer than ever to welcoming a global audience to get a taste of the Comic-Con experience in the middle of our city’s crown jewel, Balboa Park.”

Visitors to the new museum Thanksgiving Week will be only seeing the first phase of the project, which will include exhibits of comic book art, part of an education center, an atrium and artwork from past conventions. Other parts of the three-floor museum, which Comic-Con said will be completed by July 2022, will be worked on as the museum stays open….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1998 – Twenty-three years ago, The New Addams Family premiered on Fox Family. It’s considered a revival of the Sixties series The Addams Family. (To date, it is the last Addams Family television series done, with only a computer-animated feature following it twenty years later.) With the exception of Ellie Harvie who portrayed Morticia Addams here and later was Dr. Lindsey Novak in Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, the cast will not be familiar to you. (Though John Astin would show up in a guest role as Grandpapa Addams.) She won two Leo Awards, given out by the British Columbia film and television industry for her work on this series. It would last two seasons, consisting of seventy-eight thirty-five minute episodes in total. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 28, 1916 — Jack Vance. I think I prefer his Dying Earth works more than anything else he did, though the Lyonesse Trilogy is damn fine too. And did you know he wrote three mystery novels as Ellery Queen? Well he did. And his autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance!, won the Hugo Award, Best Related Book at Aussiecon 4. He won two other Hugos, one for his short story “The Dragon Masters” at DisCon 1, another at NyCon 3 for “The Last Castle” novelette.” (Died 2013.) 
  • Born August 28, 1917 — Jack Kirby. Responsible for a goodly part of modern comics from Captain America and the X-Men to Challengers of the Unknown and the New Gods. I’m very much looking forward to the New Gods film being worked on now that delayed by the Pandemic. He would have been up for a Retro Hugo at MidAmeriCon II for Captain America Comics #1 but it was  ineligible, not having been published in 1940, but in 1941. (Died 1994.)
  • Born August 28, 1948 — Vonda N. McIntyre. I’ve read a number of her works including  Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun which are all phenomenal. Dreamsnake won a Hugo at Seacon ‘79 as well a Locus Award for Best SF Novel and a Nebula nomination. The Moon and the Sun which won a Nebula was based on a short story of hers done has a faux encyclopaedia article “The Natural History and Extinction of the People of the Sea,” that was illustrated by Le Guin. Way cool. (Died 2019.)
  • Born August 28, 1949 — Charles Rocket. A memorable recurring role on Max Headroom as the sleazy corporate executive Grossberg. His genre appearance otherwise are extensive and include Quantum Leap, Wild Palms, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Star Trek: Voyager, X-Files and a lot of voice work including the Batman franchise of course. (Died 2005.)
  • Born August 28, 1951 — Barbara Hambly, 70. Author of myriad genre works including the James Asher, Vampire Novels, The Windrose Chronicles, and the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series. Some Trek work. Her only Award was a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel for Those Who Hunt the Night. She was married for some years to George Alec Effinger.
  • Born August 28, 1965 — Amanda Tapping, 56. She’s  best known for portraying Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. She also starred as Helen Magnus on Sanctuary which I never managed to see. Anyone seen it? She was in The Void which also starred Adrian Paul and Malcolm McDowell. 
  • Born August 28, 1978 — Rachel Kimsey, 43. She voices Wonder Woman on Justice League Action, yet another series that proves animation, not live, is the DC film strong point. Here’s a clip of her voice work from that show. She was Zoe, the old imaginary friend of Frances, on Don’t Look Under The Bed, a supposed horror film that ran on Disney. Disney, horror? And she was a zombie in the “Don’t Let Her Pull You Down” musical video by New Found Glory. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) DUNE WHAT COMES NATURALLY. The Guardian asks: “Will Denis Villeneuve’s Dune finally succeed where others failed?” Videos of the 3 versions at the link.

What kind of fool of a film-maker would proceed with part one of a major fantasy epic without first establishing that the studio backing it will stump up the cash for part two? That was the position Ralph Bakshi found himself in when his divisive 1978 animated take on JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings failed to wow critics, and it’s the one Denis Villeneuve finds himself in with regard to his forthcoming take on Frank Herbert’s space fantasy Dune, which arrives in cinemas and on the streaming service HBO on 22 October.

There is no doubt that the first big-screen take on this tale of interstellar rivalries since David Lynch’s 1984 misfire has hype in spades. Early trailers featuring Timothée Chalamet as the messianic Paul Atreides, as well as a stellar cast including Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem, wowed sci-fi fans. But then, Villeneuve’s previous sci-fi spectacular, Bladerunner 2049, was similarly a fan favourite and earned rapturous reviews, yet ended up with a middling box-office take. All talk of a third movie swiftly evaporated….

(13) WRITER’S CHANGE OF VENUE AFFECTS A MENU. “H.P. Lovecraft Writes Olive Garden’s Dinner Menu” by Sam Woods at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Fried Calamari

Tendrils crusted in grit assail my palate. Begotten of the sea, yet containing the essence of a carnival….

(14) A TWELVE YEAR MISSION. Which is a bit longer than Trek officers are ordinarily involved with: “‘Star Trek’ star Tim Russ helps detect asteroid for NASA’s upcoming mission” reports USA Today.

Tim Russ, who played Lieutenant Commander Tuvok on the sci-fi show “Star Trek: Voyager” is going back to his space roots. On his latest mission, he’s helping detect asteroids for NASA.

Russ and five other citizen astronomers contributed to the detection of Patroclus, an asteroid orbiting Jupiter. 

The purpose of detecting the asteroid is to serve NASA’s upcoming mission in October where it will launch a probe named Lucy into space, according to Russ. NASA said in a statement posted to their website that Lucy will complete a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids: a Main Belt and seven Trojans.

“These Trojan asteroids were captured in Jupiter’s orbit, probably from farther out in the solar system, so they’re more rare and more pristine in terms of what information they might have in their chemical makeup,” Russ tells USA TODAY.

According to NASA, the Trojan asteroids are “stabilized by the Sun and its largest planet in a gravitational balancing act. …These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system, and perhaps even the origins of organic material on Earth.”

Russ helped detect Patroclus using a Unistellar eVscope and eQuinox telescope, a computerized telescope with a built-in GPS that connects to any cellphone.

“It will simply find a starfield on its own and it will figure out where it is. You just punch in the object you want to go see,” Russ says.

(15) LOONEY OR NOT? NASA wants to know if a 3D printer can print useful objects from moon dust — Digital Trends has the story. “NASA Tests 3D Printer That Uses Moon Dust to Print in Space”.

When a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) this week, it carried a very special piece of equipment from Earth: A 3D printer that uses moon dust to make solid material.

NASA is testing out the printing system from company Redwire for use in its upcoming Artemis moon missions, hoping to make use of the moon’s dusty soil (technically known as regolith) as raw material for printing. The idea is to use readily available materials on the moon to make what is required instead of having to haul lots of heavy equipment all the way from Earth.

Engineers have been considering how to 3D print using moon regolith for some time and have demonstrated the process on Earth. But sending a 3D printer into the microgravity environment of the ISS for testing is a big new step in getting the technology ready to use…. 

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Empire introduces the “Full Trailer For Trippy Alan Moore-Penned Noir Thriller The Show” –

We’ve been monitoring the progress of the Alan Moore/Mitch Jenkins brain-bender The Show for nearly a year now. And, as it finally secures a release date, the full trailer for the trippy film has arrived….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Rob Thornton, Lise Andreasen, Michael J. Walsh, Cora Buhlert, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

2021 World Fantasy Awards Final Ballot

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The World Fantasy Awards Association announced the final ballot for this year’s awards on July 21.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT WINNERS

  • Megan Lindholm
  • Howard Waldrop
  • Megan Lindholm
  • Howard Waldrop

2020 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALISTS


NOVEL

  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
  • Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Tor Books)
  • The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press/Titan UK)
  • Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey US/Jo Fletcher Books UK)
  • The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk (Erewhon Books US/Orbit UK)

NOVELLA

  • Ring Shout, or Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
  • “Stepsister” by Leah Cypess (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2020)
  • Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings (Tordotcom)
  • The Four Profound Weaves by R. B. Lemberg  (Tachyon Publications)
  • Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi (Tordotcom)

SHORT FICTION

  • “Glass Bottle Dancer” by Celeste Rita Baker (Lightspeed, April 2020)
  • “The Women Who Sing for Sklep” by Kay Chronister  (Thin Places)
  • “The Nine Scents of Sorrow” by Jordan Taylor (Uncanny Magazine, July/Aug. 2020)
  • “My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2020)
  • “Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots, June 15 2020)

ANTHOLOGY

  • Edited By, edited by Ellen Datlow (Subterranean Press)
  • The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Vol. 1, edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle (Valancourt Books)
  • Shadows & Tall Trees 8, edited by Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)
  • The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Harper Voyager)
  • The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage Books)

COLLECTION

  • The Best of Jeffrey Ford by Jeffrey Ford  (PS Publishing)
  • Velocities: Stories by Kathe Koja (Meerkat Press)
  • Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoka Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton (Soft Skull Press US/Tilted Axis UK)
  • We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman (PS Publishing)
  • Nine Bar Blues: Stories of an Ancient Future by Sheree Renée Thomas (Third Man Books)

ARTIST

  • Rovina Cai
  • Jeffrey Alan Love
  • Reiko Murakami
  • Daniele Serra
  • Charles Vess

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

  • Clive Bloom, for The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic (Palgrave Macmillan)
  • C. C. Finlay, for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fictionediting
  • Jo Fletcher, for Jo Fletcher Books
  • Maria Dahvana Headley, for Beowulf: A New Translation (MCD X FSG Originals  US/Scribe UK)
  • Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, for The Monster Theory Reader (University of Minnesota Press)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL

  • Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Literary Adventure Fantasy
  • Brian Attebery, for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
  • Michael Kelly, for Undertow Publications
  • Arley Sorg and Christie Yant, for Fantasy Magazine
  • Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine

World Fantasy Award Administrator Peter Dennis Pautz thanked the judges and noted the difficulties of the past year: “Again, our tremendous appreciation to the judges: Tobias Buckell, Siobhan Carroll, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Brian Evenson, and Patrick Swenson. The ongoing Covid-19 variants crisis has made this year a particularly daunting one for submissions and considerations, and these incredible people rose to the challenge like the consummate professionals they are.”

The awards will be presented at World Fantasy Convention 2021, to be held in Montreal, Canada from November 4-7.

[Thanks to Peter Dennis Pautz for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 5/4/20 Sufficiently Advanced Scrolls Are Indistinguishable From Pixels

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(1) MURDERBOT READING TOMORROW. The New York Review of Books will host online a “Martha Wells Book Launch Party” on Tuesday, May 5, 2020 at 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. EDT

On the eagerly awaited occasion of the publication of “Network Effect,” Martha Wells’ fifth “Murderbot” story and the first full-length novel in the series, Ms. Wells will read from her work and then be interviewed by guest host/curator Amy Goldschlager.

(2) SHUFFLE AND REDEAL. At the Wild Cards blog, Bradley Denton thinks it’s time for Howard Waldrop to tell the current generation all about how “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway” (which I think of as “Jetboy’s Last Adventure”) became the series’ origin story — “Fifty Minutes Over Manchaca (now Menchaca) Road!”

…HW:  Of course!  And another is – You’ll recall in “The Annotated Jetboy,” where I talk about Danny Deck writing the biography of Jetboy?  Danny Deck is the hero of Larry McMurtry’s novel All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers.  And of course he writes Godot Is My Co-Pilot: A Life of Jetboy.

…Anyway, I was gonna do the Jetboy story about the A-bomb for Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and either Lew or Bud (sf authors Lewis Shiner and Walton “Bud” Simons, both Austin-based at the time, like Howard), I can’t remember which, said, “You should talk to George.  George and that bunch in New Mexico have been playing a superhero role-playing game, and they’ve spent so much time and money on it that they’re trying to find a way to turn it into a book.  You oughta tell him about this Jetboy thing, because it sounds like something that would fit in there.”  If it was Lew I was talkin’ to, he told me to call Bud, and if it was Bud I was talkin’ to, he told me to call Lew.  One or the other of ‘em knew more about it than the other one did, right?

See, I didn’t even know about this.  George hadn’t mentioned it to me in a letter or anything.  So I wrote to George, and I said, “I’ve got a story that might fit with whatever goddamn thing you’re doing.  You should tell me about it.”

So he sent me the prototype Cut and Shuffle, which was all about what was going on in the Wild Cards world before anyone else even knew what it was.  And I said, “Yeah, that sounds about right, I can work with that.  But your timeline is all wrong.”  See, they were gonna start it in the 1980s, with the world having gone on for thirty years.

BD:  Oh, so they weren’t initially going to do an origin story?  They were going to jump into the world of Wild Cards three decades on?

HW:  Right, exactly.  I said, “That’s all wrong!  You gotta tell how all this came about!”  So I got them to tell me all the stuff about Dr. Tachyon, and the virus, and the whole thing, y’know.  And I stuck it sideways into the Jetboy/A-bomb story, and sent it to George.

And of course George says, “When we send you stuff, you should read it!  You got all this stuff wrong!”  I said, “Ah, that’s your job!  You can fix that!”

(3) ANIMAL CROSSING BANK FRAUD. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from a front-page article by Leo Lewis and Robin Wigglesworth in the April 29 Financial Times.

“Savers at Nintendo’s the Bank of Nook are being driven to speculate on turnips and tarantulas, as the most popular video game of the coronavirus era mimics central bankers by making steep cuts in interest rates…

The estimate 12m players of the Japanese gaming group’s cartoon fantasy ANIMAL CROSSING were informed last week about the move, in which the Bank of Nook slashed the interest on savings from 0.5 percent to just 0.05 percent: 1,9m bells, the in-game currency, can be bought online for about $1…

…It did not take long, however, for players to spot that they could defraud the game’s bank by depositing large sums in savings accounts and then ‘time travelling’ by tweaking the console’s internal clock.  The bank duly paid decades of interest, making rapid bell millionaires.  People familiar with the practice said the Bank of Nook rate cut was an effort to curb the practice.  Nintendo has made no official comment on the matter.”

(4) LATER THAN TWILIGHT. It’s official. When the countdown ended, this was the news, says the New York Times — “Stephenie Meyer to Publish a New ‘Twilight’ Book, ‘Midnight Sun’”.

Fans of Edward Cullen, the brooding vampire hero from Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling “Twilight” series, will have something fresh to bite into this summer.

Ms. Meyer announced on Monday that “Midnight Sun,” the new novel in her vampire romance series, will be published on Aug. 4, more than a decade after the original story concluded.

“I thought seriously about delaying this announcement until things were back to normal,” Ms. Meyer said in a statement. “However, that felt wrong, considering how long those who are eager for this book have already waited.”…

(5) WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. There is a new free online workshop with instructors Orson Scott Card, Tim Powers, and David Farland: “The Writers Of The Future Online Workshop”

This free intermediate level writing course includes essays, practicals, and 13 video presentations featuring Writers of the Future judges: David Farland, Tim Powers, and Orson Scott Card.

By the end of the workshop, you should have a short story completed. If you are qualified (see the rules here), you can enter your story in the Writers of the Future Contest. The twelve annual winners will be flown out to Hollywood for the week-long live workshop with a full roster of Contest judges and publishing professionals teaching as well as giving you their advice on how to make it as professional writers.

Enter your email address to start the course. You will also receive Writers of the Future newsletters with writing tips and special offers. You can unsubscribe at any time.

(6) 2020 PULITZER PRIZES. Columbia University today announced the 2020 Pulitzer Prizes, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

There was no genre work among the winners, although 2020 Fiction winner Colson Whitehead has won before for the sff novel Underground Railraod (2017). Indeed, Whitehead now is just the fourth author to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice. The others are Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike. (The winners in journalism are at the link.)

LETTERS AND DRAMA

Fiction
“The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

Drama
“A Strange Loop” by Michael R. Jackson

History
“Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America” by W. Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press)

Biography
“Sontag: Her Life and Work” by Benjamin Moser (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Poetry
“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)

General Nonfiction
“The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care” by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

and

“The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America” by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)

Music
“The Central Park Five” by Anthony Davis, premiered by Long Beach Opera on June 15, 2019

Special Citation
Ida B. Wells

(7) TODAY’S DAY.

“Star Trek Fan Says ‘Happy Holidays’ Instead of ‘May the Fourth Be With You’”. Grumpy Vulcan tells Hard Drive why.

While many people are observing May 4 as Star Wars Day by saying “may the fourth be with you,” local Star Trek fan Lisa Donnelly has opted to instead just say “happy holidays.”

“Star Wars doesn’t have a monopoly on holidays that take place on May 4, you know,” said Donnelly. “There’s National Bird Day, Latvian Independence Day, and one of the non-canonical dates for Star Trek’s Federation Day is right around the corner on May 8. Those days deserve just as much recognition as some manufactured holiday celebrating a science fantasy movie series for kids.”….

And how did it all begin? According to TimeAndDate.com —

The origin of the phrase is thought to date back to May 4, 1979. On this day, Conservatives in the United Kingdom published a newspaper advertisement to congratulate their candidate, Margaret Thatcher, for taking the Prime Minister’s office. The advertisement said “May The Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations”.

(8) NEW STAR WARS MOVIE. Naturally, this is also the logical day for announcing the franchise’s new project. Lisa Richwine, in the Yahoo! News story “Taika Waititi to direct and co-write a new ‘Star Wars’ movie with ‘1917’ screenwriter” says that Disney announced a bunch of Star Wars-related projects on StarWars Day, most notably that Taika Waititi will direct a new Star Wars and co-write it with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, nominated for an Oscar for her work on 1917.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 4, 1962 — The Twilight Zone aired “The Dummy”. It was written by: Rod Serling from an unpublished story by Lee Polk. It was directed by Abner Biberman and produced by Buck Houghton. It starred Cliff Robertson, Frank Sutton and George Murdock.  An average ventriloquist finds he has a not-so-average and quite horrifying dummy. The plot here would later influence many other series including Batman: The Animated Series with their own terrifying animated apparent dummy. 

You’re watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet ‘Willie.’ In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 4, 1909 — Ray Quigley. Here solely for the three covers that he did for Weird Tales in the Forties. He didn’t do a lot of pulp work that I can find but these three are amazing. He did the December 1938 cover with the Dracula-like figure, the September 1940 cover with the nightmarish skull faced Bombers and fInally the May 1942 cover with the really scary living ship. The latter issue had Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch and Dorothy Quick listed on the cover! (Died 1998.)
  • Born May 4, 1913 — John Broome. DC writer during the Golden Age. He’s responsible for the creation of an amazing number of characters including The Phantom Stranger, Per Degaton (with artist Irwin Hansen), Captain Comet and Elongated Man (with Carmine Infantino), Atomic Knight and one of my favorite characters, Detective Chimp. DCUniverse streaming app has his work on The Flash starting on issue #133 and the entire early Fifities run of Mystery in Space that he wrote as well. (Died 1999.)
  • Born May 4, 1920 — Phyllis Miller. She co-wrote several children’s books with Andre Norton, House of Shadows and Seven Spells to Sunday. Ride the Green Dragon, a mystery, is at best genre adjacent but it too was done with Norton. (Died 2001.)
  • Born May 4, 1942 — CN Manlove, 78. His major work is Modern Fantasy: Five Studies which compares the work of Kingsley, MacDonald, Lewis, Tolkien and Peake. Other works include Science Fiction: Ten Explorations, The Impulse of Fantasy Literature and From Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England.
  • Born May 4, 1943 — Erwin Strauss, 77. I’m not sure I can do him justice. Uberfan, noted member of the MITSFS, and filk musician. He frequently is known by the nickname “Filthy Pierre” which I’m sure is a story in itself. Created the Voodoo message board system used at a number of early cons and published an APA, the Connection, that ran for at least thirty years. Tell me about him. 
  • Born May 4, 1956 — Murray McArthur, 63. He first shows on Doctor Who in “The Girl Who Died”, a Twelfth Doctor story before being The Broken Man on The Game of Thrones. He also shows up as a stagehand in the historical drama Finding Neverland before playing Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 
  • Born May 4, 1914 — James Bacon. He was in all five films in the Planet of the Apes franchise, the only actor to do so. He portrayed an ape in each of the films with the exception of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, in which he played a human, General Faulkner. This was the only film of the ‘Ape’ series in which he was credited. He also showed in Roddenberry’s Planet Earth as Partha. (Died 2010.)
  • Born May 4, 1977 — Gail Carriger, 43. Ahhhh such lovely mannerpunk she writes! I think I first noticed her with the start of the Finishing School series which she started off with Etiquette & Espionage some six years ago. Moirai Cook does a delightful job of the audiobooks so I recommend that you check them out. I also love the two novellas in her Supernatural Society series as well. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater has a terrific gag for May the Fourth.
  • Heathcliff isn’t really that funny, however, it does use a gagline drawn from the same source as one of our File 770 mottos.
  • Pearls Before Swine considers the possibility that the lockdown results in people reading more, and better, books.

(12) RIVERS COMING TO A CHANNEL NEAR YOU. For the many Filers who are fans of the series — “Stolen Picture Options Television Rights To Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London”.

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s UK-based production company, Stolen Picture, has optioned the rights to Ben Aaronovitch’s best-selling novel series Rivers of London.

Aaronovitch is currently working on the adaption of the first novel, also named Rivers of London. He will also serve as an Executive Producer on the series alongside Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Stolen Picture CEO, Miles Ketley. 

A Sunday Times best-seller, Rivers of London was first published in 2011, earning Aaronovitch a nomination in the New Writer of The Year category at the National Book Awards in 2011 and has spawned a popular graphic novel series. Each subsequent novel has also charted in the Sunday Times Top Ten Best-Seller list.

The crime/supernatural crossover follows the adventures of Peter Grant, a young mixed race police officer who, following an encounter with a ghost finds himself working for The Folly, a secret Scotland Yard department that deals with supernatural crime. The Times described Rivers of London as “an incredibly fast-moving magical joyride for grown-ups”.The Rivers of London franchise has been published in more than 15 languages and, to date, has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide.

“Nick Frost and Simon Pegg asked me if I wanted to make Rivers of London with them – you think I was going to say no? Stolen Picture have a reputation for making creator led TV with the minimum of corporate bollocks and the maximum of fun. It’s an opportunity I would be bonkers to say no to” says Ben Aaronovitch.

(13) BITING THE SCENERY. Entertainment Weekly invites fans to “See first look at Mark Hamill embracing the dark side as vampire in What We Do in the Shadows”. Photo at the link.

[Mark] Hamill will portray an ancient vampire in Jemaine Clement‘s FX series What We Do in the Shadows and EW has your first look at the character — fangs and all. The episode titled “On the Run,” set to air May 13, will introduce a vengeful enemy from Laszlo’s (Matt Berry) past who appears without warning to settle a personal debt. This causes Laszlo to flee his home and go into hiding.

(14) A HEEP OF TROUBLE. Did Paul Weimer have great expectations for this novel? “Microreview [Book]: The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry” at Nerds of a Feather.

…I should be clear and up front about something: I may be a somewhat biased reviewer in a regard, but not in the way that you might think. You see, good reader, I am a relation but not a direct descendant of Charles Dickens, so that a novel where his literary creation escapes into the real world was and is always one I would be extremely interested in. I’ve read and been interested in Dickens’ work from a young age. His work has always been part of my life.

I can happily report that this novel is extremely literate and considerate with the work of Dickens, what it means and where it comes from. The novel feels like the author’s own coming to terms with Dickens’ work in a real and palpable way, as well as Victoriana and Edwardiana in a real and palpable way.

(15) GEEKS IN ACADEME. “Top 10 Fictional Schools– Geek Culture Countdown Podcast!” – a list from 2019. These are all drawn from sff works, even though “Pop Culture” covers more territory than that.

Susan and Kitty are schooling you on the Top 10 Fictional Schools in pop culture. From prestigious prep academies to borderline lethal boarding schools, which esteemed educational institutions will make the grade?

For example —

2. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters

Located at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Westchester County, New York, this school for mutants has gone by many names- Xavier’s Academy for Gifted Youngsters, the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, X-Haven, and most currently the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach.

This school provides a safe place for young mutants to receive education both in traditional schooling and also the control and understanding of their powers. Kitty Pryde is currently the headmistress. The school motto is “Mutatis Mutandis” meaning “once the necessary changes have been made”.

(16) WHY PROTECTING MOSQUITOS IS A GOOD IDEA. BBC has the answer — “Malaria ‘completely stopped’ by microbe”.

Scientists have discovered a microbe that completely protects mosquitoes from being infected with malaria.

The team in Kenya and the UK say the finding has “enormous potential” to control the disease.

Malaria is spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes, so protecting them could in turn protect people.

The researchers are now investigating whether they can release infected mosquitoes into the wild, or use spores to suppress the disease.

…”The data we have so far suggest it is 100% blockage, it’s a very severe blockage of malaria,” Dr Jeremy Herren, from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) in Kenya told the BBC.

He added: “It will come as a quite a surprise. I think people will find that a real big breakthrough.”

(17) USE THE FORK, LUKE. Or the blowtorch. Do something to save us.  “General Mills Is Releasing A ‘Star Wars’ Cereal With Baby Yoda-Shaped Marshmallows” – the Best Products blog has the story.

…General Mills took to Instagram to reveal its newest creation. As described on the packaging, the cereal consists of sweetened corn puffs with marshmallows. All of the green marshmallows are in the shape of The Child’s head, which is reason enough to give this bite a shot, if you ask us.

[Thanks to JJ, Darrah Chavey, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Olav Rokne.]

2019 Loscon Guests of Honor Announced

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Loscon 46 chair Matthew B. Tepper has announced the 2019 convention’s guests of honor:

Pro: Howard Waldrop
Fan: Edie Stern
Artist: Julie Dillon

The theme of Loscon 46 is “Where Science Fiction Meets Fantasy.”

Loscon 46 will be held November 29 – December 1, 2019, at the LAX Marriott. Further details to be announced later.

Dozois, Martin and Waldrop on Video

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At Capclave 2013 Howard Waldrop, George R. R. Martin, and Gardner Dozois spent two hours talking among themselves on a panel.

According to Howard this is the first time all three have done this, although various members of the trio have paired off in the past.

Here is the video.

[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]

Howard Waldrop Sighting

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 ConQuesT 41 is running in Kansas City this weekend with an excellent slate of guests including Michael Swanwick, Toni Weisskopf and Geri Sullivan. But that’s not all!

Once again on Saturday night there will be a con-within-a-con in the Dawn Patrol suite. To quote Jimmy Hollaman:

As some of you know, this coming weekend is ConQuesT 41. What you might not know is that for the last few years on Saturday night, another convention has been held. Room Con. Basically it’s a convention with in a convention. This year we will be throwing ROOM CON 6.6.6. the con of all Evil, and what a lineup we have. Writer Guest is Howard Waldrop (a national treasure), Artist Guest is Mitch Bentley, Toastmaster is Jim Murray, Fan Guest is Sue Sinor, and last but certainly not least, our returning Musical Guest Bland Lemon Denton (Brad Denton). And for those that drink, you can try a Pale Jimmy, a home brewed beer made just for Room Con. If you have not got to make it to a Room Con yet, please feel free to stop by. Saturday night at 10 we will be opening the doors. Live music, great guest and an art show where you are the artist. Yep come by and create some art with your fellow fans. For more info on Room Con, go to Facebook and look up ROOM CON. There you will find pictures of some of the past Room Cons.

Yes, my sense of humor may be too basic, but something that always gets a laugh out of me is any variation on the nickname “Blind-Lemon-whoever.”

[Via Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol.]

The Perspicacious Post

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Michael Walsh’s Old Earth Books has received another hat tip from the Washington Post’s Michael Dirda for its Howard Waldrop collection:

Old Earth Books (Baltimore). Other Worlds, Better Lives: A Howard Waldrop Reader, Selected Long Fiction, 1989-2003 is a companion to Waldrop’s selected short stories, Things Will Never Be the Same, a volume justly praised by a certain Washington Post reviewer of admirable perspicacity (me). Waldrop parodies and pastiches popular culture and literary tradition with seriously manic brilliance. See, in this volume, his novella-length retelling of the labors of Hercules in 1920s Mississippi, “A Dozen Tough Jobs.”

Snapshots 8

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Here are four developments of interest to fans: 

(1) Preview the artwork Brianna Spacekat Wu sent for File 770, done with an assist from her husband, Frank. He explains: “I helped out a little at the beginning and end, but the vast, vast majority of the work was her.”

(2) There are a lot of librarians in this country who stay informed about electronic storytelling so they can pass the information on to library users. For example, here is what the Imperial County (CA) Free Library blog has to say about three podcastin services, Escape Pod, Pseudopod and PodCastle.

(3) Publishers Weekly’s “Nuts & Bolts” ran an interview with Kelly Link.

(4) Ellen Datlow has news about Howard Waldrop.

[This post includes links from Andrew Porter and Michael J. Walsh.]

Update 10/24/2008: Changed link for Brianna Wu art.

Waldrop Book Gets Another Rave

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Ed Park has penned a superb review of Howard Waldrop’s Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003 for the Los Angeles Times:

It is probably inadvisable to consume Howard Waldrop’s Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003 (Old Earth: 280 pp., $15 paper) in one gulp. Waldrop has a pleasing style and wears his learning lightly; he pokes fun at those books “full of two-dollar words,” in which “the sentences were a mile long, and the verb was way down at the bottom of the page.” But the works gathered here make hay with so many ultraspecific cultural moments that the unwary reader might contemplate suing for whiplash.

[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the link.]