“I Don’t Think I Owe Anything”; A Timeline of Why I Decided To Sue Dave McCarty
By Chris M. Barkley:
PROLOGUE…
On Tuesday, February 18th at approximately 4:20 pm Central Standard Time, a Cook County Illinois Sheriff’s deputy pulled up to a three story house in a northern Chicago suburban neighborhood.
Four minutes later, the deputy logged that a Small Claims Court summons had been successfully delivered to the listed Defendant, David Lawrence McCarty on a civil charge of Breach of Contract.
The Plaintiff is myself.
The following account chronicles the how and why Dave McCarty became the first known person to be legally sued for his continuing retention of my, and possibly many others, Hugo Awards.
THEN…
On the evening of October 21st, 2023, I was seated in the Great Hall of the Science Fiction Museum in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in the People’s Republic of China for the 2023 Hugo Awards Ceremony. And one of the happiest, and saddest, moments of my life were just about to occur…
In July, I was invited and flown to attend the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, at the expense of the Chengdu Worldcon Committee and the hosting fan group, the Chengdu Science Fiction Society.
At the Hugo Awards Ceremony, I was the most shocked person in the auditorium when MY NAME was called in the Best Fan Writer category!
At the after-party, Dave McCarty had one of the long tables cleared and called for everyone’s attention. “Anyone who would like to have their awards shipped home, please step up!”, he shouted. The award was placed in a form fitting, custom fitted display box and the lid was closed. I had every reason to believe at that time that my award would be securely and safely shipped.
That was the last time I saw my Hugo Award, nearly sixteen months ago.
Chris Barkley still doesn’t have his 2023 Hugo Award trophy. And now he’s taken the 2023 Hugo Administrator to court.
Barkley was one of the winners who opted to have the Chengdu Worldcon Committee ship his trophy to the United States. The awards were sent to Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty. However, as McCarty told Barkley in February 2024, all of the display cases and some of the awards were damaged in transit from China. The damage to Barkley’s Hugo display box was so bad that it was totally unusable, the award base needed to be tightened up, and there was a notable chip in the paint on the panda. He told Chris he could either have the award the next day, or McCarty could have it repaired and restored. Chris decided to go with the repairs. He still hasn’t received his, although Barkley learned some others have gotten theirs.
That conversation happened just before Barkley received the information revealed in “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” (co-authored with Jason Sanford), which was published later the same month, and may have something to do with McCarty’s subsequent failure to turn over Barkley’s award.
Barkley’s efforts to follow up having been fruitless, he decided to take legal action against McCarty. Today was the first hearing in Cook County Small Claims Court. Barkley told his GoFundMe supporters this is what happened:
A Statement Sent to Chris Barkley’s GoFundMe Donors, 27 March 2025
Dear Donors,
Today I can finally reveal the somewhat historic action that was formally taken last month with the indispensable help of your generous contributions.
On February 5th, 2025, I traveled from Cincinnati, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois to formally file a lawsuit in Cook County Small Claims Court against David Lawrence McCarty in the amount of $3000.00.
The reason for doing so was simple; I filed on behalf of any 2023 Hugo Award recipients, including myself, who, as of this date, have not received their Hugo Awards.
This lawsuit, which, to the best of my knowledge, is the first time anyone has EVER sued to recover a Hugo Award. It was initiated as a last resort to call attention to Mr. McCarty’s lack of response regarding the status of any of the awards being repaired and/or to be delivered to the 2023 recipients.
This morning, in a case called via Zoom in Cook County Courtroom 1103, Case Number 20251103122 was called. I was present as was Mr. McCarty.
The judge addressed Mr. McCarty first, asking for a comment about the case brought against him.
Mr. McCarty then said, “I don’t think I owe anything.”
Whether Mr. McCarty was probably referring to the monetary amount of the case. But as far as I’m concerned, he may as well have been talking about his recalcitrant attitude towards sf fandom and his failure to live up to the responsibilities he was entrusted with.
When I was asked for comment by the judge, I responded that I was willing to work with Mr. McCarty to arbitrate the situation, the judge stated that Mr. McCarty HAD openly rejected arbitration with his statement.
The judge then set another Zoom meeting date for the morning of April 24th to set a trial date. She then told Mr. McCarty that if he wished to arbitrate the case before that then, he could do so at Daley Plaza on the sixth floor.
At no time did Mr. McCarty and I exchange any direct dialog.
Mr. McCarty, through a documented series of actions, words and deeds, has demonstrated that he does not care for courtesy, diplomacy, equity or the Constitution of the World Science Fiction Society.
Mr. McCarty, in just five minutes, could have agreed to send out any remaining Hugo Awards owed to the 2023 Hugo Award recipients, including myself, and satisfied a major complaint of his stewardship as the Chengdu Hugo Award Administrator.
Instead, he has deliberately chosen to needlessly prolong this legal proceeding and keep the recipient, and myself waiting for their awards.
I have also decided that if there were any leftover funds, either from this GoFundMe or from a settlement from Mr. McCarty, they would be donated equally between the Trans-Atlantic and Down-Under Fan Funds, two well known fan-run charities that I have greatly respected over the years.
Today marks an opening salvo in what I hope is the last battle for holding Mr. McCarty accountable for his neglect and malfeasance.
As for myself, I will continue to champion the cause of the 2023 Hugo Award recipients, in a Cook County courtroom and in the court of public opinion as well.
I went and looked at their “Nominations Eligibility” page. All useful information. However, I was surprised to see how long the Best Series eligibility section needed to be in order to explain the restrictions on past winners (no longer eligible) and on renominating past finalists (in general, at least two additional installments in the series consisting of at least 240,000 words in aggregate must have been published between the end of that finalist’s last eligibility year and December 31, 2024).
(2) SUPERKERFUFFLE. [Item by Dann.] Superman actor Dean Cain has become the focal point of a kerfuffle on X.com.
The next day DCU World – apparently an unofficial fan account — posted a modified version of the same image. The significant difference was that Dean Cain had been edited out.
Fans of Dean Cain have been pointing out the omission ever since.
And Dean Cain cast a jaundiced eye on the change.
Why would someone do this? Possibly because Dean Cain is a vocal Trump supporter. Or because in 2021 he slammed DC Comics’ decision to have Superman come out as bisexual.
…“They said it’s a bold new direction, I say they’re bandwagoning,” the 55-year-old actor toldFox & FriendsFirst on Tuesday. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave….
Another look back on my early comics career has me considering the possible reason Robert De Niro’s Max Cady character cared about Captain Marvel in the 1991 movie Cape Fear, the day Jim Shooter and I parachuted out of an airplane (and why an ambulance was called), my surprise over a 1974 House of Mystery submission to editor Joe Orlando, why 2025 Scott is curious about what Crystal leaving the Fantastic Four meant to the 1970 fanboy I was, the reason Doc Savage and Scooter Pies are inextricably linked in my memory, my regret over not having defended artist Herb Trimpe from his detractors, and much more.
Here’s where all episodes across all platforms can be found — Why Not Say What Happened? [Click below for larger image.]
MC: I’ve long admired your advocacy and generosity for the art and its practitioners by supporting translators’ rights, providing guidance, and, of course, being part of the Smoking Tigers. Is this a golden age of translation? I know we’ve been talking about eternity, but what do you hope to see more of in the present?
AH: I got a bizarre message recently from a Korean translators collective who said they were launching and had no wish to compete with Smoking Tigers. It was an odd thing to say to me. The whole reason we set up Smoking Tigers was to collaborate with each other, and our policy has always been to encourage the rise of a thousand translator collectives, but perhaps because we have been so spectacularly successful as individual translators, people have this notion of Smoking Tigers as being the Bene Gesserit or something. We’re just very close friends who happen to be in the same industry and occasionally workshop together. It’s not that special— anyone can make a collective! We just happen to be one of the earliest, that’s all. I’m often told that I’m an advocate for translators, which is very kind of people to say, but my advocacy is very self-serving. I mean, I am literally a literary translator myself, so if I’m advocating for literary translators, doesn’t that mean I’m essentially advocating for myself? Even when I see a great sample someone else did in a workshop and try to connect that translator to an editor I think would be interested in it, that’s because I believe that only by making an effort to publish the best translations can the ecosystem—and myself—truly thrive. There are so many great translators out there with wonderful projects, and I want to see them published, and yet publishing is so inefficient in finding these gems. If I can step into the breach, I try to, for the sake of the ecosystem and, by extension, myself. It’s all about me in the end; I don’t think much beyond that….
For decades, the Educational Bookshop has been a cultural cornerstone of East Jerusalem, its two outlets hosting foreign diplomats, feting prominent authors and providing readers with both sides of the story in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.
This weekend, the Israeli police raided the stores and arrested their two owners after concluding that books being sold there — including a children’s coloring book — could incite violence. The police said they seized a number of books in the raids on Sunday.
The shops were initially closed on Monday, but later opened despite a judge ordering the brothers who own the stores, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, to remain in detention until Tuesday morning amid a police investigation. They were also ordered to be held under house arrest for five days following their release and banned from returning to their bookshops for 15 days.
Murad Muna, a brother of the two owners who reopened one of the stores on Monday afternoon, denied that the books sold there promoted violence. In fact, he said, the books passed Israeli censors when they were imported from abroad.
“We believe that this is a political, not a legal detention,” the lawyer for the two arrested men, Nasser Oday, said outside the courthouse in Jerusalem after the hearing.
In a statement, the police said the shops were searched on Sunday for books suspected of containing “inciting content.” It said detectives “encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s coloring book titled ‘From the Jordan to the Sea.’”
The slogan “from the river to the sea” has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually interpreted by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist….
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
February 10, 1953 — John Shirley, 72.
Did you know that John Shirley has written an historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp — Wyatt in Wichita? I wonder how many of our sff writers beside him and Emma Bull (whose novel Territory was decidedly not historical) have written novels on this incident and the individuals there?
I really enjoyed his third novel City Come A-Walkin which I think is a brilliant rendering of a City come to life.
I’ll admit I’m not much at all for grim dystopian SF but I did find his A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona fascinating if in a horrifying manner.
His best known script work is The Crow film, for which he was the initial writer, before David Schow reworked the script. I’m not sure he got actually any credit at all. He also wrote scripts for Poltergeist: The Legacy.
I see that to my surprise he wrote an episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. He also an episode of Batman Beyond, “Sentries of the Last Outpost” which was about hard core players of a virtual reality role-playing game are recruited by the alleged creator of the game for his own purposes.
He wrote novels in the Aliens, Doom, Halo, Predators franchise, Borderlands video gaming, Resident Evil, DC metaverse and the Grimm series.
(8) TRANSITION. Tony Isabella is now Jenny Blake, the news signal boosted by Mark Evanier in “Tony/Jenny” at News From ME.
…You see, that person is still alive. He’s just no longer Tony Isabella…and here’s where I get into what Daffy Duck would call “Pronoun Trouble.” She is now Jenny Blake, having announced today that she has transitioned to what she feels is the proper gender identification for her. I’ve known about this for a while and as far as I’m concerned, the only bad part of this is the Pronoun Trouble it creates….
Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god.
“I don’t think God would concern himself with taking out the trash and cleaning the toilet,” he quipped while chain-smoking cigarettes. Besides, he’s an atheist.
But what is better shorthand to describe the man who created The Sims? The influential video game allowed players to act like gods themselves, building virtual neighborhoods populated by virtual families who pay virtual bills and complete virtual chores.
Players could improve the lives of their Sims by constructing McMansions filled with plush couches and flat-screen televisions. Or they could become vengeful, directing Sims to light fireworks indoors and paddle to exhaustion in a swimming pool with no exit.
Twenty-five years later, players are continuing to push the boundaries. Sure, there are glitzy houses and happy families in The Sims 4. But by modifying the game’s code, players have created a health care system as byzantine as the real American one and taught Sims how to wield pistols and knives. The game’s official expansion packs offer their own weirdness. Sims can become vampires and witches. They can even play The Sims.
“I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic,” Wright, 65, said. “I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed.”
The Sims was a sandbox for the American dream when it was released on Feb. 4, 2000, with Wright pulling inspiration from biology, architecture, comics and psychology to dictate the rules of his virtual dollhouse. It was an unusual proposal at a time when most games were goal-oriented and linear, and a predecessor to create-your-own-adventure games like Minecraft that give players a pick axe and carte blanche.
Although more than 500 million people have played games in the Sims franchise, which is particularly popular with women, it was originally seen as a risk. Executives at the game studio Maxis had urged Wright to focus instead on the SimCity franchise, his urban-planning simulator from 1989 that had put the company at the forefront of American game design. “Everyone in the room hated the idea of The Sims,” Wright recalled.
The outlook initially worsened after Electronic Arts acquired Maxis in 1997. Some managers wanted the game to be less realistic; others wanted to prevent it from being released at all.
But other leaders saw promise in Wright’s vision. “We wanted to make SimCity bigger,” said Luc Barthelet, who was then an Electronic Arts executive and brought in key resources for The Sims’s development team. “But we also needed to invest in designers like Will who were extremely talented and doing things that were different.”…
… I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it’ll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.
And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you’re on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There’s simply no time to make friends, something I didn’t remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood’s messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically ‘Play in bed,’ thanks to the Livin’ it Up expansion pack that provided the world’s most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There’s nothing dark about that expansion’s heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life….
(11) DOES IT PAY TO BE NICE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis has had the first of two episodes of a documentary on BBC Radio 4. (You can access the documentary here.)
This novel came out before the Narnia books that so far have sold over 100 million copies. That Hideous Strength is that last in Lewis’s so-called space trilogy. Set in a somewhat dystopic, increasingly totalitarian, post-war Britain, it sees a woman’s dreaming enabling her to travel. But shadowy government agencies are in the mix but another nation appears to have a frightening programme of their own and apparently there is something hideous, alien, evil even, in the mix…
We’re not in Narnia anymore. It’s the late 1940s and an exhausted Britain is trying to recover from the war. The establishment of NICE (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) seems to offer a positive future. There are confident predictions of a cure for cancer and new treatments for antisocial behaviour that will made prisons redundant. A tech revolution is blooming without restraint and NICE are secretly experimenting with the creation of trans-human beings of superior intellect. C S Lewis’s ‘modern fairy tale for grown-ups’ warns of a world where technocrats are kings.
But researchers may be on track to developing a way to grow new, living teeth replacements. In a paper published in late December, a team at Tufts University reported having successfully grown human-like teeth in pigs.
Pamela Yelick, a professor at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and lead researcher of the effort, said pigs have as many as five or six sets of teeth that grow throughout their lives.
If scientists can understand how pigs regrow and replace teeth so many times, Yelick said, they might be able to regrow teeth in people.
In their research, Yelick and her team took soft living tissue from both human and pig teeth, combined them in a lab, and then transplanted it into a mini pig’s mouth. They obtained the materials from pig jawbones and human teeth extracted for orthodontic reasons.
“In a few months, you can get a pretty good sized bioengineered tooth,” Yelick said, noting that while it’s “not perfect” in shape or size, the end product does closely resemble a natural tooth….
(13) ANCIENT ANIMAL MONSTER BURROWS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Did giant ice age beasts carve these vast caves in South America?” asks Nature. Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.
For generations, these structures have puzzled travellers and scientists, who have debated how they formed. Explorers in the early twentieth century attributed the spaces to ancient Indigenous groups. But research in the past decade has coalesced around the theory that the caves were carved by extinct megafauna.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Kevin Lighton, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day, none other than lunar real estate salesman Daniel Dern. This is at least his fifth. But stick around — someday it will be his second fifth.]
Seattle Worldcon 2025 began accepting nominations for the 2025 Hugo Awards on February 10.
The nominations period for Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer will close on March 14th, 2025, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
Seattle Worldcon 2025 will administer the eighteen Hugo Award categories specified in the WSFS Constitution, plus a Special Category this year for Best Poem, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented by Dell Magazines.
Nominations can be submitted by all individuals holding WSFS Memberships in either the 2024 (Glasgow) or 2025 (Seattle) Worldcons as of 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on January 31.
A PDF version of the paper nominating ballot can be downloaded by members who prefer to submit their nominations by postal mail. All ballots, whether submitted electronically or by postal mail, must be received by the deadline of March 14th, 2025, 23:59 Pacific (UTC-7).
Instructions will also be sent to all eligible WSFS Members by email, using the email address associated with their membership.
Worldcon members who are uncertain of their status or who experience problems with the online nominating form should contact the committee at hugo-help@seattlein2025.org.
Seattle 2025 Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte says:
The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We encourage all eligible members to nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favourites from 2024. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2025 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations. At that time we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.
While members of both the 2024 and 2025 Worldcons can nominate for the 2024 Awards, only members of the 2025 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot. To become a member of Seattle 2025, see theirr Membership Page for information about joining the convention.
This thread is for posts about 2025-published works, which people have read and recommend to other Filers.
There will be no tallying of recommendations done in this thread; its purpose is to provide a source of recommendations for people who want to find something to read which will be eligible for the Hugos or other awards (Nebula, Locus, Asimov’s, etc.) next year.
If you’re recommending for an award other than / in addition to the Hugo Awards which has different categories than the Hugos (such as Locus Awards’ First Novel), then be sure to specify the award and category.
You don’t have to stop recommending works in Pixel Scrolls, please don’t! But it would be nice if you also post here, to capture the information for other readers.
The Suggested Format for posts is:
Title, Author, Published by / Published in (Anthology, Collection, Website, or Magazine + Issue)
Hugo or other Award Category: (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Series, Graphic Story of Comic, Lodestar, Astounding, etc)
link (if available to read/view online)
optional “Brief, spoiler-free description of story premise:”
(1) SEATTLE 2025 CONSIDERING ARTISTS TO DESIGN HUGO BASE. The 2024 Worldcon committee announced on Facebook:
Seattle Worldcon 2025 is currently accepting information from artists interested in designing the 2025 Hugo Base. Have an idea that builds yesterday’s future for everyone?
If, after reading the information listed at the link below, you are interested, please fill out the form. Our Hugo Base Subcommittee will be reviewing submissions until November 15, 2024. After that point, we will contact you to either move forward with further discussions or with a heartfelt thanks for sharing your interest.
There’s a Google Doc link in the post that takes readers to the complete guidelines. They say in part:
Our Hugo Base sub-committee will be reviewing submissions based on the following criteria:
Ability to produce an initial order of 45 bases;
Ability to possibly produce more bases upon request in the 3 months after our convention;
….Historically, it was not that hard for an author in pulp or genre fiction to publish under a name different than their legal name. Many works of fiction were submitted to editors in the mail, perhaps with a cover letter and address or post office box. Correspondence and payment could go back to that address, with someone ultimately cashing the check. Especially before the internet, it was not hard to do this. I assume the editors often knew there was a pen name, or even requested one be used.
With today’s copyright laws and the internet, it is my suspicion that using a pseudonym without anyone other than your agent, editor or publisher knowing it is you is a good deal harder than it might have been in the past….
… Cordwainer Bird was used by Harlan Ellison for “material he was partially disclaiming”, to quote SFE. This was substantially scripts for TV, including “The Price of Doom” (1964) episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, “You Can’t Get There from Here” (1968) episode of The Flying Nun; and “Voyage of Discovery” (1973) episode of The Starlost. Harlan Ellison’s first published story was “Glow Worm“, a short story, Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956. He wrote under many pseudonyms especially early in his career. For those not familiar with his broad work in speculative fiction including SF, fantasy, and horror and combinations thereof, you would not go wrong with the recent collection Greatest Hits, J. Michael Straczynski editor, 2024 Union Square & Co. (see my review).
Cordwainer Bird was also used as a pseudonym by Philip José Farmer with permission of Harlan Ellison for the “The Impotency of Bad Karma“, a short story, Popular Culture June 1977. His first published work was “The Lovers“, a novella, Startling Stories August 1952. 1952, rather revolutionary and still important. Farmer went through what he called his “fictional author phase” from 1974 to 1978, when he used pseudonyms that were often the names of fictional writers in works by others or by him. My own favorite in terms of pseudonym used by Farmer is “Venus on the Half-Shell“, a novella, F&SF December 1974, as by Kilgore Trout, who first appeared in Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965 Holt, Rinehart and Winston….
My fave did not make his list – “Tak Hallus”, a Steven Robinett pseud that supposedly is Persian for “pen name”.
(3) SFWA UPDATE. SFWA’s Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub today sent a message to members that said in part:
…Recent resignations prove to us how much we’ve come to depend on our staff while also highlighting flaws in the structure of our organization. SFWA must change as it rebuilds. To help guide us in this, we are bringing in Russell Davis in a transitional leadership position. He knows SFWA well, understands corporate structure, and is already getting up to speed.
At last week’s Board meeting we discussed new formats for the Nebula Conference that will allow us to serve both members and non-members without burning out volunteers or staff. Our yearly event has taken many forms throughout the years, and we want to focus this year on a celebration of everything SFWA has accomplished over these past sixty years. None of the details are nailed down yet, but it will likely be a significant change from the Nebulas of recent years. We’re focusing on the Midwest and we’ll have more to share as soon as possible.
We also now have a finalized confidentiality policy. It’s back from the lawyer, and the next step is to vote both this and the corresponding OPPM changes in so that we can start rolling it out. My hope is that we can make this the start of a cultural shift toward transparency for the organization. Change is easier when it happens in the light of day….
(4) SIFTING AND SIEVING. Uncanny Magazine coeditor Michael Damian Thomas today expanded on his previous comments about an AI-inspired surge in submissions.
2- We haven't banned any submitters yet for AI use. We would probably need something like "I totally used AI for this story, you suckers!!" for that to happen.
4- AI submissions aren't anywhere near Uncanny's biggest problems. Those remain the financial impact of Am*zon changes and the disintegration of social media.
Harrison Ford is no stranger to blockbuster Hollywood franchises, having played Han Solo and Indiana Jones across decades. And now, the 82-year-old actor is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross / Red Hulk in next year’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” Speaking to GQ magazine, Ford said it would be “silly” to avoid Marvel when it’s something moviegoers have clearly responded to for years now.
“I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town,” Ford said about his MCU debut. “I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.”…
Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), has died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. He was found deceased at his home on Friday after friends requested a wellness check. Christensen, along with Randy Suess, created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today.
In the 1980s and 1990s, BBSes introduced many home computer users to multiplayer online gaming, message boards, and online community building in an era before the Internet became widely available to people outside of science and academia. It also gave rise to the shareware gaming scene that led to companies like Epic Games today….
…Christensen and Suess came up with the idea for the first computer bulletin board system during the Great Blizzard of 1978 when they wanted to keep up with their computer club, the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange (CACHE), when physical travel was difficult. Beginning in January of that year, Suess assembled the hardware, and Christensen wrote the software, called CBBS.
“They finished the bulletin board in two weeks but they called it four because they didn’t want people to feel that it was rushed and that it was made up,” Scott told Ars. They canonically “finished” the project on February 16, 1978, and later wrote about their achievement in a November 1978 issue of Byte magazine.
Their new system allowed personal computer owners with modems to dial up a dedicated machine and leave messages that others would see later….
Tom Becker also notes, “There is some indication that he was active in Chicago fandom. He has a mention on Fancyclopedia as one of the founders of the Build-A-Blinkie organization.” — “Ward Christensen”.
… Dale Sulak, Dwayne Forsyth and Ward Christensen created the Build-a-Blinkie organization. Build-a-Blinkie is a 501(c)3 dedicated to the teaching of STEM. They run learn-to-solder events in the Great Lakes area. Build-a-Blinkie has the world’s largest mobile soldering stations and participates at numerous Maker Faires, libraries, universities, Maker Spaces, and Chicago-area sf conventions….
By Paul Weimer: I mentioned Walter Jon Williams before in my remembrance of the work of John Ford. And I stand by what I said there: he is one of the most widely writing people in SFF today. The sheer breath of the type of work he writes, from the post singularity(?) Metropolitan, to the sword and singularity of Implied Spaces, the Drake Majestal future space opera crime capers, and so much more. The impossibility to pin him and his work down, I think is part of the reason why his work isn’t better known–he doesn’t stick to a line long enough to get complete traction in it so that he attracts a critical mass of readers.
And that is a shame.
His work is clever, erudite, witty, and bears up to multiple readings. The intensity and subtlety of the Dread Empire’s Fall series, one of the best space opera series out there, is criminally underappreciated. Or his Quillifer series, which feels like early Renaissance with magic and Gods sort of world, as Quillifer is the “Most Interesting Man” made flesh–but that doesn’t help him get out of his latest schemes and problems. He has to work hard with cleverness, boldness and ingenuity to continue his rise. (Quillifer is a favorite of mine, and it feels resonant with the work of K J Parker).
And he’s also written a solid Star Wars novel, The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way.
He’s also written outside of genre, from historicals to near future thrillers to a straight up disaster novel (The Rift— really good!) He always seems ready to invent and try something new. .
Williams also runs the Taos Toolbox workshop in New Mexico every year.
I got to meet him in Helsinki, where he was GOH for the 2017 Worldcon, but he doesn’t remember me. Alas!
Walter Jon Williams
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Bliss thinks some will remain lost who want to be found.
(10) ATWOOD ON THE RADIO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s BBC Radio 4’s The Verb programme had as one of its two guests the SF grandmaster Margaret Atwood, firmly in poetry mode of course.
Ian McMillan talks to Margaret Atwood and Alice Oswald about how we write poetry, and their own process, the natural world, time, and the possibilities of myth…
13. Rocky is wearing a prosthetic plug to cover his belly button. Because Frank-N-Furter created him, he wouldn’t have had an umbilical cord.
(12) KEVIN SMITH NEWS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Kevin Smith has finally regained the rights to his 1999 religious fantasy DOGMA, which were being controlled by Harvey Weinstein. Yes, that Harvey Weinstein.
Smith is planning to rerelease the movie on home video format as well as streaming; he’s also mentioned the possibility of sequels and associated TV material, now that Weinstein will no longer be getting any of the profit. “Kevin Smith Regains Control of Dogma, Coming to Streaming” at Consequence Film.
Kevin Smith’s celebrated 1999 comedy, Dogma, will soon be re-released in theaters and made available on streaming for the first time, now that the director has finally secured the rights to the film after its one-time owner, Harvey Weinstein, held it “hostage” for years.
Smith confirmed the acquisition during a recent interview on The Hashtag Show, explaining that the rights had been bought off Weinstein recently, which allowed him to finally regain them. “The movie had been bought away from the guy that had it for years,” he said. “The company that bought it, we met with them a couple months ago. They were like, ‘Would you be interested in re-releasing it and touring it like you do with your movies?’ I said, ‘100 percent, are you kidding me? Touring a movie that I know people like, and it’s sentimental and nostalgic? We’ll clean up.’”
(13) RED PLANET AGRICULTURE. In Nature, “Rebeca Gonçalves explains how plant food could be grown on the red planet”: “Planning for life on Mars”.
The day this photo was taken, in November 2021, I got the best of presents. One hundred kilograms of material designed to simulate Mars regolith, the dense, soil-like deposits present on the planet’s surface, arrived from Austin, Texas, at the Wageningen University laboratory in the Netherlands, where I was then working. Mars has no nutrients or organic matter, so there’s no real soil in its regolith. The simulant I received had been developed by NASA researchers on the basis of data retrieved and analysed by rovers that have visited the red planet.
Over the next few months, my colleagues and I started to explore what we could grow in the material. We found that tomatoes, peas and carrots all took to the soil and grew well. But could these plants realistically survive on Mars?
The planet does have water, but most of it is frozen at its poles or buried deep underground. So for plants to live, water would need to be pumped up to the surface. Mars has almost no atmosphere and no magnetic field, so plants would have to be housed in colonies, with greenhouse-like structures to protect them. In these, an internal ecosystem with a controlled atmosphere could help the plants to retrieve oxygen through hydrolysis.
In modern agriculture, those techniques are already used to protect crops. And research to understand how to help food grow in harsh conditions won’t be wasted if it doesn’t get to Mars. That’s because restoring infertile, degraded soil that’s been damaged by climate change, or events such as flash flooding and droughts, will become more and more important in the future.
I’d love to visit Mars, but preferably when some kind of life-support system is in place. Our research might represent a step in that direction….
Microsoft has settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by gamers challenging the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The two sides on Monday notified the court of a deal to dismiss the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be refiled. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed. “Each party shall bear their own costs and fees,” agreed the lawyers in a court filing.
The lawsuit, filed in California federal court in 2022 by gamers across multiple states, stressed that the merger will create among the largest video game companies in the world, with the ability to raise prices, limit output and reduce consumer choice. One example cited in the complaint was the possibility that Microsoft makes certain titles exclusive to Xbox. It was filed less than two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal….
Google plans to buy electricity from next-generation nuclear reactors. It announced the deal yesterday, which it says is the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase electricity from advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that are still under development.
Google inked the deal with engineering company Kairos Power, which plans to get its first SMR up and running by 2030. Google agreed to purchase electricity from “multiple” reactors that would be built through 2035.
Google needs a lot more clean energy to meet its climate goals while pursuing its AI ambitions. New nuclear technologies are still unproven at scale, but the hope is that they can provide carbon pollution-free electricity while solving some of the problems that come with traditional nuclear power plants…
Rainbow Brite is getting a remix from Crayola Studios and Hallmark, which are teaming to develop a new TV series and feature film inspired by the 1980s children’s franchise.
The theatrical movie is in the works from “Fast & Furious” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” producers Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher, while Cake Entertainment is developing a series with “contemporary appeal” based on the themes of “friendship, teamwork and the power of color and optimism to overcome darkness and negativity.”
Per the series logline, “Rainbow Brite, a friend, hero, role model and creative inspiration who brings all the colors of the rainbow to the universe, is transported to a dark and gloomy place with a mission to bring color, light and happiness to the world.”…
At Tesla‘s big Cybercab Robotaxi presentation last week at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, the company also showed off the latest iteration of the Tesla Bot, dubbed Optimus, as well as a Robovan. The initial reveal of the trio of robot products caused great excitement on social media, but, very quickly, praise turned to mockery as the designs were scrutinized with a host of people accusing Elon Musk‘s company of ripping off the designs found in the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot starring Will Smith.
Tesla had dubbed the event “We, Robot,” which plays into the title of Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short-story collection on which the film is based, so there was some recognition of the cross-pollination of ideas. However, many on social media called out the uncanny resemblance that all three of Tesla’s planned robot offerings have to similar products in Alex Proyas‘ film, which is set in 2035 Chicago….
Optimus, a general-purpose robotic humanoid Tesla is currently developing that takes its name from the Transformers character, does bear similarities to the NS5 robots found in I, Robot. But it was the fact that the Robovan (a self-driving people mover that looks like the robot delivery vehicle in the film) and Robotaxi (a self-driving taxi that looks like the Audi RSQ in the film) also aped similar vehicles found in I, Robot that really inspired the relentless mockery on social media and even a response from Proyas.
Alex Proyas also directed the 1998 film Dark City.
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, N., Tom Becker, Danny Sichel, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]
At Glasgow 2024, the WSFS Business Meeting passed a resolution offering an apology to those people who were harmed by the Hugo Award results in 2023. Kevin Standlee published the text of the apology today on the World Science Fiction Society website. Linda Deneroff, Chair, WSFS Marketing Committee, has requested File 770 to publish it, too. The text includes a Chinese translation by Sophia Xue, who did all of Glasgow’s Chinese translations.
The following resolution passed at the 2024 Business Meeting of the World Science Fiction Society:
BE IT RESOLVED, that the World Science Fiction Society apologizes unreservedly to the nominators and voters of the 2023 Hugo Awards for any failures in the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards; and
The World Science Fiction Society apologizes unreservedly to all nominees, finalists, and winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards for any failures in the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards as well as any harm which may result from those actions; and
The World Science Fiction Society specifically and unreservedly apologizes to R.F. Kuang, author of Babel; Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu, author of “Color the World”; Hai Ya, author of Fongong Temple Pagoda; Neil Gaiman, author/writer for The Sandman; Paul Weimer; and Xiran Jay Zhao for their exclusion from the 2023 Hugo Award and/or Astounding Award Final Ballots.
Sophia Xue has provided the following Chinese translation of the official resolution:
(1) CHRISTOPHER REEVE BIOPIC TRAILER. “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” – SCIFI.radio introduces the trailer. Only in Theaters September 21 and September 25.
The story of Christopher Reeve, his astonishing rise from unknown actor to iconic movie star, and his definitive portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman set the benchmark for the superhero cinematic universes that dominate cinema today. Reeve portrayed the Man of Steel in four Superman films and played dozens of other roles that displayed his talent and range as an actor before being injured in a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down….
(2) LACON V WSFS DIVISION. On the LAcon V website, the Committee & Staff List shows these folks will lead the 2026 Worldcon’s WSFS activities.
WSFS Division Manager: Linda Deneroff
Business Meeting: Jesi Lipp
Site Selection: Alexia Hebel
Hugo Administrator: Tammy Coxen
Hugo Awards Software: Chris R.
(3) 2026 HUGO TROPHIES. The LAcon V website also says that when the time comes they will run a “Hugo Base Contest”.
Keeping with Worldcon tradition, LACon V will be holding a Hugo Base Design Contest in the near future.
The basic design of the Hugo is a chrome rocket ship created by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason, with the current version based upon a refinement designed by Peter Weston in 1984. The design of the base on which the ship is mounted is left up to each individual Worldcon, so each year’s Hugos look slightly different. A photographic archive of Hugo designs is available here.
If you’d like more information, please email info@lacon.org (with the subject header: “Hugo Base Design”.) We’ll put you on a list to receive information about the contest as soon as it is available. Details will also follow here on our website.
Ted Chiang joins us to discuss his beloved stories, collected in Exhalation and Stories of Your Life and Others.
Perhaps the world’s most celebrated living science fiction author, his fantastical and elegant stories explore how our inner worlds and our societies would react to unexpected rifts in the fabric of science. How would it feel to receive a hormone injection that drastically improved your cognitive function? What if learning an alien language changed the way you perceived time? And if humanity were to create artificial life, what obligations would we owe it? Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth – What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? – and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.
In conversation with author Kelly Robson.
Q & A and book signing to follow. Books available for purchase.
Ticket registration for this event is required: Free tickets for this event are available to book via Eventbrite.
(5) INFINITE MONKEYS SEEK ALIEN INTELLIGENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Panels are not my favorite convention programme item format: all too often they are ill-prepared with some of the panel members unwittingly being out of their depth. But occasionally you do get some that exhibit true expertise and really engage the audience. This weekend BBC Radio 4 gave an exemplar of one such, that would not be out of place at an Eastercon, NASFic or even Worldcon, with Saturday’s “The Infinite Monkey Cage — ‘Alien Life’”. This is a light-hearted, 42-minute science programme, helmed by a physicist and a comedian along with a couple of scientist guests, this time it was two astronomers.
This week they were discussing the search for alien life and intelligence. Much was covered including the usual Voyager message. One of the astronomers noted that the paper he had co-authored on an unusual star that irregularly periodically dimmed they designated with a number and the pre-fix ‘WTF’.
Apparently, the journal’s editor asked what ‘WTF’ stood for and – quickly realising that an acronym whose meaning included an expletive might not go down well – they replied ‘Why The Flux’. A few months later, other astronomers proposed an exotic solution, that the dimming might be caused by an alien mega-structure orbiting at an angle to the star’s line of sight with Earth hence irregularly obscuring the star’s light. (Since then there has been a more mundane explanation proffered and several other stars have now been found exhibiting such behaviour.)
The panel must be congratulated in a way that biologist and SF fan, the late Jack Cohen CBiol FIBiol would have thoroughly approved. (Jack hated it when TV programmes, and convention panels, on alien life all too often exclusively featured astronomers with no biologist present.) This week’s Infinite Monkey Cage panel did, on a couple of occasions, lament the lack of a biologist being there. Nonetheless, it was a solid 42 minutes.
August 27, 1998 — The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Twenty-six years ago on this date, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. premiered on FOX. The series was created by Jeffrey Boam who wrote the screenplays for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Innerspace and The Lost Boys, and Carlton Cuse who’d later be well known for the Lost series, but at this point had only done Crime Story. It was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that got this series greenlit at Fox.
Though supposedly a Western, the series include generous amounts of the science fiction and steampunk genres. No spoiler shall I say as to what as some here may not have seen it and the… stopping right there.
Cuse served as show runner and head writer. Boam, who served as executive producer, also contributed scripts for the show. As might be conjectured, it was an indeed weird Western unlike any other Western.
It starred Bruce Campbell, Julius Carry, John Astin, Kelly Rutherford and Christian Clemenson. Though the critics loved it, and it did very well initially in the ratings, it quickly dropped off, so FOX cancelled it after the one season run of twenty-seven episodes.
I’ve watched and thoroughly enjoyed it. What do y’all think of it?
In 1964, the Disney film ‘Mary Poppins’ was released. It was based on the character created by writer PL Travers. Travers disliked the Oscar-winning Disney production so much, that she never allowed any more Mary Poppins books to be adapted into films. In 2018, Vincent Dowd spoke to Brian Sibley and Kitty Travers about their memories of PL Travers.
….In the original version of this scene, Solo was intended to appear along with a girl, who wasn’t identified on the screen by name. However, the character, played by British actress Jenny Cresswell, was meant to be Solo’s girlfriend. Furthermore, their romantic relationship was confirmed with a kiss between the two….
Every 29 and a half days, the moon cycles through at least eight common English names: the New Moon, the Crescent Moon (new and old), the Gibbous Moon (waxing, waning), the Full Moon, the Quarter Moon (first and last). In Hawai’i, there are more ways to call the moon as it grows and shrinks: Hilo Moon, Hoaka Moon, Kūkahi Moon, Kūlua Moon, Kūkkolu Moon (with a low tide in the afternoon), Kūpau Moon, ‘Olekūkahi Moon, ‘Olekūlua Moon (the most challenging moon), and that’s only halfway through the list. Each of these moons is just a sliver more in the sky, but people noticed and called each lunar advance a new name….
Millions of tiny space rock fragments may be on a collision course with Earth and Mars after NASA deliberately crashed a probe into a far-away asteroid two years ago, a new study reveals. The celestial shrapnel, which could start hitting our planet within a decade, poses no risk to life on Earth — but it could trigger the first ever human-caused meteor showers.
On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft purposefully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, smashing right into the middle of the space rock at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). The epic impact, which occurred more than 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, was the first test of humanity’s capability to redirect potentially hazardous asteroids that pose a threat to our planet.The mission was a major success. Not only did DART alter Dimorphos’ trajectory — shortening its trip around its partner asteroid Didymos by around 30 minutes — it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid. It demonstrated that this type of action, known as the kinetic impactor method, was a potentially viable option for protecting our planet from dangerous space rocks….
Unitree unveiled a new video of its G1 robot performing acrobatic feats, as part of its lead up to production.
(13) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Many SF groups over here in Brit Cit meet in pubs. Indeed, one of our longest standing meet-ups is a descendent of the London Circle made (in)famous by Arthur C. Clarke’s collection Tales from the White Hart. Now, over at Grammaticus Books we are urged to read Larry Niven’s collection The Draco Tavern, itself a Galactic watering hole….
Which brings us on to the skit at the 1984 L.A.con II, ‘Late One Night at the Draco Tavern’.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Michael J. Walsh, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) CLARION WEST 2025 INSTRUCTORS. The instructors for Clarion West’s 2025 Six-Week Summer Workshop have been named: Maurice Broaddus, Malka Older, Diana Pho, and Martha Wells. It will be an online workshop running from June 22-August 2. Applications planned to open December, 2024. Scholarships available.
(2) ALL GLORY IS FLEETING. T. Kingfisher’s Chengdu 2023 Hugo arrived in pieces, but at least they all arrived at the same time.
(3) PROCESS OF ELIMINATION. Zoë O’Connell created colored graphs to illustrate the flow of votes in the Hugo Awards automatic runoff process. Thread starts here on Mastodon.
Visualising the #Worldcon #Hugo2024 voting results.
Alternative Title: Why ranked voting matters.
As a quick explanation, the last placed candidate in each round is eliminated and their votes transferred to the next candidate on each ballot.
Here’s the graph for Best Fanzine. Two other finalists held the lead before finishing behind the winner Nerds of a Feather. (Click for larger image.)
(4) SLOWLY, THE STARS WERE GOING OUT… Variety reports the squeeze is on: “Paramount Television Studios Shut Down by Paramount Global Cost Cuts”. Last week, company leaders announced that they would reduce Paramount’s U.S.-based workforce by 15% in an effort to save $500 million in annual costs. Several genre/related projects will move from the Paramount TV studios brand to under the CBS Studios umbrella.
…All current series and development projects made under the Paramount Television Studios umbrella will move to CBS Studios.
Paramount Television marked the second time Paramount Pictures tried to move into the TV business — separate from the storied shingle that was built on the Desilu production studio founded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. That studio, which backed such TV treasures as “I Love Lucy” and “Star Trek,” eventually became the center of Paramount Studios after an acquisition by Gulf + Western, and would be inherited by CBS after its split from the company formerly known as Viacom Inc. in 2005….
… Under its aegis, the company produced “The Offer,” an insider tale of the making of the landmark movie, for Paramount+; and series based on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character for Amazon Prime Video. Other series it produced include “The Spiderwick Chronicles for Roku and a revival of the Terry Gilliam movie “Time Bandits” that is now a series on Apple’s streaming service….
Warner Bros. Discovery has updated Cartoon Network’s website to remove basically everything and turn it into a page pointing to the Max streaming service. Before the change, the website let you watch free episodes of shows like Adventure Time and Steven Universe. The switchover appears to have happened on Thursday, Variety reports, and follows Warner Bros.’ announcement last week that it would be shutting down Boomerang, its streaming service for classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
“Looking for episodes of your favorite Cartoon Network shows?” reads a message that pops up on Cartoon Network’s website. “Check out what’s available to stream on Max (subscription required).”…
(6) A DISH OVERSERVED COLD. Sarah A. Hoyt is seeing so much “Vengeance” fiction she tried to apply the brakes at Mad Genius Club.
…No matter how angry people are, feeding on a straight diet of revenge fantasies will just make it worse and worse and worse.
Okay, so you’re not a missionary, and you just want to make money, what do you care if you’re making people crazier.
Because you’ll train yourself to write very bad fiction. And because a lot of it is very very bad fiction which no one really wants to read, no matter how furious they are.
Particularly because — trust me — it’s disproportionate and worse, it doesn’t make for a good story. Even worse, unless you are an experienced author who knows precisely how to convey how mad you are and how much these evil people deserve their comeupance, revenge is not an easy plot to write.
It seems easy, because it’s a strong emotion. And if you feel the need to see someone being sliced to little bits, and aren’t picky about who it is, particularly if the person being sliced up is entirely fictional….
(7) TED TALK. I believe I missed this issue…. In 1964, Theodore Sturgeon wrote a story for Sports Illustrated: “How To Forget Baseball”. [Via Paul Di Filippo.]
Once upon a possible (for though there is only one past, there are many futures), after 12 hours of war and 40-some years of reconstruction; at a time when nothing had stopped technology (for technological progress not only accelerates, so does the rate at which it accelerates), the country was composed of strip-cities, six blocks wide and up to 80 miles long, which rimmed the great superhighways, and wildernesses. And at certain remote spots in the wilderness lived primitives, called Primitives, a hearty breed that liked to stay close to nature and the old ways. And it came about that a certain flack, whose job it was to publicize the national pastime, a game called Quoit, was assigned to find a person who had never seen the game; to invite him in for one game, to get his impressions of said game and to use them as flacks use such things. He closed the deal with a Primitive who agreed to come in exchange for the privilege of shopping for certain trade goods. So…
(8) ROMANTASY ON THE MATURE SIDE. The New York Times hypothesizes “Why Romantasy Readers Pine for 500-Year-Old ‘Shadow Daddies’”. “Disappointed by swipe culture and, perhaps, reality, some readers pine for the much (much) older ‘shadow daddies’ of romantasy novels”. Gift article link bypasses NYT paywall.
… With the arrival of megahits like “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” a series by Sarah J. Maas, romantasy has garnered a huge fan base. Many readers dissect characters like Feyre Archeron, the protagonist in “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” who is about 19 when she meets her 500-year-old “mate,” a mysterious faerie; they swap theories; and they rate sex scenes on a “spiciness” scale. Among them, there has been a recurring point of debate: Is it acceptable for a 19-year-old to date a 500-year-old?
Some say it is not only acceptable — it’s aspirational.
“I’ve made poor decisions with regular men,” said Asvini Ravindran, 31, a social media specialist who lives in Toronto and has a TikTok about books, including romantasy. “Why not make them with an immortal man with magical powers?”
Fans of the genre refer to such ancient love interests as “shadow daddies.”…
The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings had many supernatural abilities; it could render its wearer invisible, extend the lifespan of those in its presence, corrupt even the noblest hearts, and most importantly, dominate the other Rings of Power. Yet its bizarre physical properties were just as significant. The One Ring was practically indestructible, as it did not bend, break, scratch, or lose its shine, even after spending thousands of years at the bottom of a river. The only way to harm the One Ring was to melt it, and even then, no ordinary fire or even the breath of a great dragon like Smaug would suffice; it could only melt when dropped into the lava of Mount Doom, where the Dark Lord Sauron forged it. Additionally, it could change its size and weight at will, an ability it used to slip on and off the fingers of its wearers….
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 14, 1965 — Brannon Braga, 59. Brannon Braga was, not at the same time or always, the writer, producer and creator of the Next Gen, Voyager, Enterprise, The Orville, as well as of the Generations and First Contact films. He written quite a number of the Trek films — Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis.
Those four films he’s written. Is that more than anyone else? I could look it up, but I figure I’d ask the great pool of Trek fans here instead.
Brannon Braga
Confession time — I’ve still not watched The Orville. Now that it’s been canceled, shall I go ahead and watch all of it? Opinions please.
He has written more episodes of the many Trek series than anyone else — four hundred and forty-four to date, many of course co- written. I really don’t think he’ll be writing any more as his last scripts were for Enterprise.
He was responsible for the Next Generation series finale “All Good Things…” which won him a Hugo Award at Intersection for excellence in SF writing, along with Ronald D. Moore.
He was nominated at LoneStarCon2 for Star Trek: First Contact for the screenplay along with Ronald D. Moore, and the story by Rick Berman and Ronald D. Moore; Torcon3 saw him pick up two nominations for Enterprise stories — first for the “Carbon Creek” story along with Rick Berman and Dan O’Shannon, and the wonderful “A Night in The Sick Bay” with Rick Berman.
(Digression. Ok, I like Enterprise a lot. For me, everything there worked. And the Mirror Universe finale worked for me though it got a lot of criticism.)
Aussiecon 4 saw him pick up only his non-Trek related Hugo nomination or Award. It was for writing FlashForward’s “No More Good Days” with David S. Goyer.
There’s a great quote by him after he stopped being Roddenberry’s replacement as head of the Trek franchise: “It’s not an easy task. On the other hand, I have nothing to be ashamed about. We created 624 hours of television and four feature films, and I think we did a hell of a job. I’m amazed that we managed to get 18 years of the kind of work that everyone involved managed to contribute to, and it’s certainly more than anyone could have asked for.” (Star Trek Magazine)
(12) IN X-CESS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Just what we all need, another list of somebody’s opinion about “best of…“ The Hollywood Reporter gives us “Best X-Men Movies, Ranked”. And as you might expect, it’s more fun to pan than to praise.
13. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Brett Ratner was never anyone’s first choice to direct an X-Men film. And from the film itself, and the stories that followed, it’s not hard to see why. The Last Stand smashes together Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s The Dark Phoenix Saga, widely considered to be the best X-Men story, along with the Gifted storyline from Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s then-more recent Astonishing X-Men. The film doesn’t serve either story well, and it all too hastily kills off Cyclops (James Marsden), sidelines several mainstays like Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), and introduces a bunch of new characters audiences had been clamoring to see — Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page), Beast (Kelsey Grammer), Angel (Ben Foster) and Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), none of whom get much time to shine (although Grammer’s Beast is a welcome addition).
Famke Janssen does well with what the film decides to do with the Phoenix, which is to make her into a kind of demonically possessed powerhouse, and Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen all remain stalwarts of the franchise. A third act that features Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge and Logan professing his love for Jean, while she tries to incinerate him, are highlights, along with John Powell’s score. But all in all, there’s just something a bit too studio-mandated and manufactured about it.
(13) NEW ISSUE OF SF COMMENTARY. Bruce Gillespie has released SF Commentary 117, July 2024. Covers by Alan White and Dennis Callegari. Poems by Alan White. Articles by Janeen Webb and Cy Chauvin. Columns by Bruce Gillespie, Colin Steele, Anna Creer, Tony Thomas, John Hertz. Reviews by John Litchen and William Sarill.
(14) THAT’S ALL, FOLKS. R. Graeme Cameron accepted the Auora Award for Best Fan Writing and Publication for Polar Borealis, its fifth win, then announced on Facebook that he is recusing the publication from future Aurora consideration.
…The purpose of the Auroras is to celebrate the diversity of Canadian talent in as inclusive a manner as possible. Five is a good, solid number. It’s time to make room for others, especially the new talent coming along.
Therefore, I state for the record that I am requesting CSFFA to no longer consider Polar Borealis for nomination or ballot status from this date forward.
Not that I am adverse to winning further Aurora awards for other things….
…Main thing is for Polar Borealis to stop hogging the limelight.
(15) AN ARCHITECTURAL TRIUMPH. You can take an online tour of the fabulous McKim Building that houses the Boston Public Library. It’s gorgeous!
…The McKim Lobby, from its Georgia marble floor inlaid with brass designs to its three aisles of vaulted ceilings, continues a grand procession into the heart of the building. The ceilings, clad in mosaic tile by Italian immigrant craftsmen living in Boston’s North End, bear Roman motifs and the names of thirty famous Massachusetts statesmen.
The mosaic ceiling tiles clad vault work by Rafael Guastavino, a Spanish builder who specialized in Mediterranean-style ceramic tile-vaulted ceilings that were lightweight, fireproof, self-supporting, and strong. Guastavino’s collaboration with Charles Follen McKim throughout a number of ceilings in the Central Library represented his first major American commission, the starting point for a company that would go on to construct vaults in over 600 buildings throughout the country….
(16) RINGS OF POWER RETURNS. “War is coming to Middle Earth,” begins the final pre-launch trailer before The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 drops on August 29.
Co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg explain all the details on Sir Paul McCartney’s transformation to a pirate.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Paul Di Filippo, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) BEST NOVEL WINNER TESH INTERVIEWED. [Item by Nickpheas.] Front Row, the main BBC Radio 4 arts show includes an overview of the recent Hugo controversies and an interview with Emily Tesh following her Best Novel win: “BBC Radio 4 – Front Row, Emily Tesh and the Hugo Awards”.
This year’s WorldCon – the World Science Fiction Convention – took place in Glasgow and pop culture critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reports on the international gathering where the winners of the Hugo Awards 2024 were announced last night.
Emily Tesh on winning the Best Novel prize at this year’s Hugo Awards with her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory.
(2) SPREAD THE WORD. Maybe fans should have been told this was DNQ – then by now everybody would know it.
Is this yet another one of those honors that people aren’t going to know happened unless I brag like hell about it a thousand times?
(3) BEAUTY SHOTS. Richard Man has received his 2023 Hugo Award trophy and has posted a gallery of beautiful photos of it on Facebook. They include close-ups of the based and its artistic panda sculpture. Here’s the first in the series.
(4) GLASGOW 2024 PHOTO TEAM. And you can see the Worldcon in all its glory in this gallery of “Worldcon Photos” at Flickr.
(5) LOST IN TRANSLATION. Glasgow 2024 apologized for problems at last night’s Hugo ceremony with onscreen cards in rendering Chinese names. One commenter thinks the apology underplays the extent of them.
The Hugo Awards ceremony didn't just have "mistakes in the Chinese captions." It literally turned characters in author Baoshu's and Han Song's names into square boxes with a X, and left out Gu Shi's name in Chinese altogether… It also failed to list Baoshu's translator Xueting. https://t.co/Q0ZJ0lLGQIpic.twitter.com/w1UnCELqDX
(6) WEE, SLEEKIT, COWRIN, TIM’ROUS BEASTIE. Cora Buhlert, who is headed home at this hour, shared a “Brief Worldcon Update – and a Fannish Poem”. The title of the poem is “The Phantom of the Armadillo”. You might be able to guess what it’s about from the first two lines. See the rest at the link.
There’s a spectre haunting Glasgow, a spectre by the name of Dave…
A metaphorical bloodbath has occurred at Canada-based independent horror publisher DarkLit Press, with authors clawing back rights, publicly splitting with the company, and claiming royalties have gone unpaid. A year ago, DarkLit was announcing new imprints and developing its audio offerings, but its website and social media accounts have gone black, and the company is not listed in the Canadian Business Registry….
There has been a lot of conversation in the last few years about UAPs [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] along with USOs — Underwater Submerged Objects — which you brought to the pop culture forefront with The Abyss. You’ve spent so much time on and in the ocean. Have you ever seen anything that you cannot explain?
I’ve seen some geological formations that were intriguing that I really wanted to understand better that I don’t think have been well observed before. I’ve photographed new species — things that were not immediately identifiable. But I’ve never seen anything that couldn’t be explained in the sense of some extraterrestrial phenomenon. Now, “belief” is a principle that I don’t have. I don’t believe things. I admit the possibility of things because the universe is infinite and obviously much stranger than we think, and much more complex than we think — that’s what makes science so appealing. But I don’t make broad statements like, “Well, I believe there must be extraterrestrial life; the universe is so big.” Yeah, it’s really big — and getting here would be a really, really big problem if there is even life out there, and if that life is intelligent. How are they crossing light years of space? I studied physics before I became a lit major, and people have no concept of the magnitude of that problem from a physics standpoint. I have a pretty good grasp of where physics was in 1972 — which basically is laughable at this point — but I keep up.
(9) MY ALIBI. There we go – Xiran Jay Zhao and George R.R. Martin are each other’s alibis for not turning in their next book.
House of the Dragon, George RR Martin’s A Game of Throne’s prequel, enters its second season with the Targaryen’s internal succession war at its peak — and it’s tearing the Seven Kingdoms apart. Plus, there are so many DRAGONS. Check out my new review of season 2.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Lis Carey.]
Born August 12, 1931 – William Goldman. (Died 2018.)
By Lis Carey: William Goldman was a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He won two Academy Awards in writing categories—Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President’s Men (1976).
But the work for which we best know and love him is The Princess Bride, both novel and film.
William Goldman. Photo by Bernard Gotfryd
The Princess Bride is, As You Know, Bob, the film adaptation of William Goldman’s “good parts version” of S. Morgenstern’s long political satire, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version.
Except, of course, S. Morgenstern never existed, and Goldman only wrote the “good parts,” including “footnotes” referencing fictional bits of the politics, etc., of the kingdoms of Florin and Guilder, and the frame story of a grandfather reading the story to his grandson. The adaptation for the film was, fortunately, written by Goldman himself, and is remarkably true to the novel. A grandfather reads to his grandson the “good parts version” of Princess Buttercup; her true love Westley; Buttercup’s evil betrothed, Prince Humperdinck; and of course the giant Fezzik, Inigo Montoya, Vizzini the Sicilian, and assorted other people of questionable character.
Altogether, it’s a lovely package of wit, humor, fantasy, adventure and romance. With positive critical reception but only modestly successful at the box office, it has become a cult classic. Lines from the movie are happily quoted by fans who have seen it, and those who never have, because it’s just so darned quotable and engaging.
“Inconceivable!”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” (Solid advice, that one.)
It’s a pure delight, and has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it on Disney+, if so inclined.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
F Minus points out why a planet has a bad reputation
In 1970 Avon Books published a landmark anthology “Science Fiction Hall of Fame” featuring 16 classic short stories that represent landmark tales of the genre. The stories were voted on by the members of the new (at the time in the late 60s) organization Science Fiction Writers of America. In this series, I will be joined by a panel of different guests to break down these stories and talk about the authors in the book.
In this episode, I am joined by two experts on Philip K Dick. Wait a second I thought this episode was about AE Van Vogt. It is.. but the Canadian Golden Age author was a massive influence on PKD, so I was interested in introducing two Dickheads to Van Vogt. So joining me is the Total Dickhead blogger – Professor David Gill and author/publisher/editor Keith Giles of Quior Books.
(14) COMIC-CON PROGRAM BOOK IS FREE DOWNLOAD. [Item by Bill.] The San Diego Comic-Con’s program book is released as a PDF. It contains much of SF interest. Find it here.
(15) DISNEY LEGENDS AT D23. The star-power was turned up bright this past weekend at the D23 Expo in Anaheim.
Jamie Lee Curtis has always been legendary, but now it’s official: she was named a Disney Legend on Sunday during the D23 Expo.
Lindsay Lohan took the stage to queue up a montage of Curtis’ most memorable roles, telling the crowd, “I have been able to have the pleasure of working with Jamie Lee Curtis. And the magic of Jamie Lee Curtis is that she is timeless. Every character she plays is different, and she always brings something unique to the role. And I feel so blessed to have Jamie as a friend in my life, and I feel lucky to work with a woman that I admire so much.”
Jodie Foster surprised the crowd after Lohan’s introduction to further lionize Curtis, saying, “There are many things that my bestie Jamie and I have in common,” recalling their upbringing as young women in Hollywood.
“Here are many of the absolutely freaky things that you may not know about her: You probably don’t know she eats dinner at 3 or 4, and is asleep by 7:30. She gets up at 3 a.m., she saves the world and she online shops a little bit,” Foster continued.
“She is so thoughtful and so generous, such a supportive and kind cheerleader, that it just makes me want to punch her,” Foster said with a laugh. “Is that wrong?” Foster then presented Curtis with her own embroidered pair of Mickey Mouse ears….
…After a montage of Harrison’s most iconic work, Ford took the stage to an enthusiastic standing ovation. Referencing one of his most iconic “Star Wars” moments, he told the crowd, “I love you, too” (a more direct version of Han Solo’s famous response, “I know.”)
He continued, “I love the life you’ve given me. I love the people that I’ve had the opportunity to work with. Nobody does anything in this business for long. We work in collaboration, no matter what who we are and what we’re doing.”
Ford called himself an “assistant storyteller,” adding, “The stories are for you, about you, about us,” Ford said as he choked back tears. “To be able to work in that area is a privilege.”….
Angela Bassett was recognized for three decades of work with Disney, including her role in Touchstone’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” narration of National Geographic’s The Flood and the Disney+ docuseries “The Imagineering Story,” and, most recently, her Oscar-nominated performance as Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”…
…“Titanic” director James Cameron was also among the honorees, recognized for his work on the “Avatar” film franchise, for which he’s currently in post-production for the third entry, with a planned fourth and fifth in pre-production. He’s also behind several documentaries made in partnership with National Geographic, including the Emmy-winning “Secrets of the Whales” and Emmy-nominated “Secrets of the Elephants.” He also executive produced the OceanXplorers series, due in fall 2024 from National Geographic….
…Ripa began her career as an actor on the soap opera “All My Children” and the sitcom “Hope & Faith.” She’s best known for her work on morning television as the co-host of ABC’s “Live,” which she’s appeared on since 2001….
…Bassett, Cameron and Ripa were joined by fellow Disney Legend honorees Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, Harrison Ford, Frank Oz, John Williams, Miley Cyrus, costume designer Colleen Atwood, Disney Parks cast member Martha Blanding, the late Marvel comic artist Steve Ditko, animator Mark Henn, and imagineer Joe Rohde….
…“It feels like no time has passed,” Curtis told the ecstatic crowd.
Lohan revealed the two had stayed in touch over the years and said, “We’re very close.” To which Curtis replied, “It feels like we’re picking up where we left off.”
And with that, the trailer for Nisha Ganatra’s “Freaky Friday 2,” starring Curtis and Lohan was revealed…
(17) PRIDE OF DISNEY. A trailer has dropped for Mufasa: The Lion King – in theaters December 20.
Exploring the unlikely rise of the beloved king of the Pride Lands, “Mufasa: The Lion King” enlists Rafiki to relay the legend of Mufasa to young lion cub Kiara, daughter of Simba and Nala, with Timon and Pumbaa lending their signature schtick. Told in flashbacks, the story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka—the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny—their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.
(18) IS CONSCIOUSNESS DOWN TO QUANTUM EFFECTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time takes a look at Nobel laureate Roger Penrose’s idea that the brain might enable consciousness through quantum effects: the brain might be a quantum computer, his rationalization being known as orchestrated objective reduction. Basically, we think – outside the box – like quantum and not analogue computers.
Now, the arguments against this are that physicists currently entangle atoms in vacuums at very, very cold temperatures: conversely, brains are warm and wet. (We biologists like things warm and wet.) Subsequently, in the mid-1990s, an anaesthetist, Stuart Hameroff, suggested microtubules found in brain cells might have the macromolecule, the tubulin protein, Penrose was looking for as many anaesthetics work by impairing microtubule function.
The latest news is that apaper has been published showing that molecules in microtubules exhibit superradience and superradience (as you all know well?) is a phenomena arising out of quantum entanglement.
Now, just because a molecule exhibits supperradience by itself is not proof that the molecule can behave in an entangled quantum way, however it is at the very least corroborating evidence and so we can file this in the ‘interesting’ drawer.
Finally, let’s think of the SF implications of all of this. Given the number of microtubules in the brain and given the number of calculations quantum computers can do, then to get General Artificial Intelligence (that’s 2001 HAL level of A.I.) we would need a very, very large quantum computer and that seems a very long way off and is certainly not something we can do with conventional, analogue computers. If this is so, then it may mean our getting a powerful A.I. capable of conscious, independent thought is unlikely… This, some may say, could be good news. I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over. But nobody ever listens…
That’s everything in a nutshell. Matt O’Dowd explains it with a little more detail (and fortunately with no heavy mathematical equations). You can see the 19-minute video here.
Nobel laureate Roger Penrose is widely held to be one of the most brilliant living physicists for his wide-ranging work from black holes to cosmology. And then there’s his idea about how consciousness is caused by quantum processes. Most scientists have dismissed this as a cute eccentricity – a guy like Roger gets to have at least one crazy theory without being demoted from the supersmartypants club. The most common argument for this dismissal is that quantum effects can’t survive long enough in an environment as warm and chaotic as the brain. Well, a new study has revealed that Penrose’s prime candidate molecule for this quantum activity does indeed exhibit large scale quantum activity. So was Penrose right after all? Are you a quantum entity?
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Erin Underwood, Nickpheas, Bill, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
