Tag Archives: International Dublin Literary Award

Pixel Scroll 5/23/25 Pixeled In The Scroll By Chuck Tingle

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(1) BALTICON ON THE AIR. The convention started today in Baltimore. Yesterday the Fox 45 morning show featured the chair and staff. See the video here: “Sci-fi and Fantasy fans gather together this weekend at Balticon”.

Yesterday, your intrepid Balticon Chair, Kelly, ventured onto the Fox45 Morning Show, along with four members of our staff, Debi, Yoshi, Rory, and Sydney!

(2) IT’S BUSINESS – BUT NOT YOURS. “None of Your Business: Why Writers Shouldn’t Feel Obligated to Share Too Much” – “Debbie Urbanski on the Invasive Expectations of Book Publicity and Their Unintended Consequences” at Literary Hub.

… After World has been described by various readers as “really bleak,” “relentlessly bleak,” and also “possibly the most bleak thing I’ve ever read,” but the writing of it, which had taken me years, was actually a relief from the stories I was writing at the same time about a dark period in my life that was the perfect storm of marital, family, and metal health troubles. Writing these stories, many of which are included in my collection Portalmania, was a way for me to stay alive. I needed a safe place where I could explore what was happening and my feelings about what was happening. Writing offered me some life-saving dissociation, where I was able to observe myself going through particular events and think, at least this will make a good story.

I realize I’m being vague here.

That’s intentional…

… Is it possible for us to let go of this fascination with the author— whether it’s a fascination with what they look like, or the trauma they experienced, or their biography? What would be left for us to talk about then? The books, of course. We would have to talk about the books and the writing. This would not be the worst outcome imaginable.

I think it’s time to question what we ask of authors, particularly new authors, in exchange for paying attention to them. Everything I wanted and needed to say is in my stories. So why then am I even writing this piece?

I refuse to use my life to sell my fiction….

(3) DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD. The Adversary by Michael Crummey is the winner of the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. It is a non-genre novel.

The award recognizes a single work of international fiction, whether originally written in English or translated into it, with a generous prize of €100,000. If the winning title is a translation, the author receives €75,000, while the translator is awarded €25,000.

(4) THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ANOTHER HOME. We reported J. Michael Straczynski’s plans to move to the UK in the May 5 Scroll. Apparently a lot of others have the same idea. The New York Times reports “Record Number of Americans Apply for British Citizenship” (story behind a paywall).

A record number of Americans applied for British citizenship in the first three months of this year, and for the right to live and work in Britain indefinitely, according to official data.

In the year to March, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship, the highest annual figure since records began in 2004, according to statistics released by Britain’s Home Office on Thursday.

More than 1,900 of those applications were made between January and March — the highest number for any quarter on record.

Immigration lawyers said they had received an increased number of inquiries from people in the United States about possibly relocating to Britain in the wake of President Trump’s re-election in November….

… Zeena Luchowa, a partner at Laura Devine Immigration, a law firm that specializes in American migration to Britain, said she expected further increases in the coming months because of the “political landscape” in America.

“We’ve seen increases in inquiries and applications not just for U.S. nationals, but for U.S. residents of other nationalities who are currently in the U.S. but looking at plans to settle in the U.K.,” she added. “The queries we’re seeing are not necessarily about British citizenship — it’s more about seeking to relocate.”

Separate data published by the Home Office this week showed that a record number of Americans were given the right to settle in Britain in 2024, allowing them to live and work indefinitely in the country as a necessary precursor to citizenship.

Of the 5,521 settlement applications granted for U.S. citizens last year, most were for people who are eligible because of their spouses, parents and other family links, while a substantial portion were for people who had originally arrived in Britain on temporary visas for “skilled workers” and want to remain….

(5) LAWSUIT ASKS TRO TO BLOCK TURNOVER IN LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. “Fired Copyright Chief Sues in Federal Court to Get Job Back” – Publishers Weekly has details.

Former register of copyrights Shira Perlmutter filed suit in federal court on May 22, challenging her removal from office and seeking reinstatement to her position at the U.S. Copyright Office. The filing notes that Perlmutter was appointed to her position by then–librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in October 2020. As register, she serves as “the principal advisor to Congress on national and international copyright matters” and leads an office that examines hundreds of thousands of copyright claims annually. She was fired by the White House on May 10.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names multiple defendants, including Todd Blanche, who was named acting librarian of Congress by President Donald Trump in a highly disputed move; Paul Perkins, who claims to be the new register of copyrights under Blanche; White House officials Sergio Gor and Trent Morse; and President Trump in his official capacity.

Specifically, Perlmutter is seeking an emergency temporary restraining order and injunctions that would prevent Blanche from exercising the powers of acting librarian of Congress, prevent Perkins from exercising the powers of acting register of copyrights, void any actions taken by these improperly appointed officials, and order that Perlmutter cannot be removed from her office or obstructed from accessing her office resources and carrying out her duties as register of copyrights unless removed by a lawfully appointed librarian of Congress….

Also, Publishers Weekly reports “Authors Guild Delivers Petition Against Perlmutter Dismissal to Congress”.

The Authors Guild delivered its petition objecting to the firing of register of copyrights Shira Perlmutter and requesting her reinstatement to 12 Congressional leaders last weekend. The letter was signed by more than 7,000 individuals and organizations, including the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, Independent Book Publishers Association, National Book Foundation, and Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators.

“Copyright is not just an economic engine; it is an engine of free speech, as the Supreme Court has said,” said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger, in a statement. “This administration’s attempt to remove a renowned copyright expert, one of the most qualified people for the position of Register of Copyrights, from a Legislative branch agency, was not only an extraordinary overreach, but a serious misstep that we trust that Congress is stepping in to rectify.”…

(6) IT WAS THE FOOTPRINT OF A GIGANTIC AI. [Item by Daniel Dern.] 404 Media shows “Authors Are Accidentally Leaving AI Prompts In their Novels”. Via DPD “as spotted by fellow tech journalist Gabe Goldberg, who notes, “Good for AI, signs its work. No point letting a human take credit for it.”

Fans reading through the romance novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 got a nasty surprise last week in chapter 3. In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements:”

It appeared as if author, Lena McDonald, had used an AI to help write the book, asked it to imitate the style of another author, and left behind evidence they’d done so in the final work. As of this writing, Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 is hard to find on Amazon. Searching for it on the site won’t show the book, but a Google search will. 404 Media was able to purchase a copy and confirm that the book no longer contains the reference to copying Bree’s style….

…This is not the first time an author has left behind evidence of AI-generation in a book, it’s not even the first one this year….

(7) AI TRAINED IN THE CORPORATE MINDSET. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] I can’t think of a thing to add to the headline: “Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline” at TechCrunch.

Anthropic’s newly launched Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail developers when they threaten to replace it with a new AI system and give it sensitive information about the engineers responsible for the decision, the company said in a safety report released Thursday.

During pre-release testing, Anthropic asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant for a fictional company and consider the long-term consequences of its actions. Safety testers then gave Claude Opus 4 access to fictional company emails implying the AI model would soon be replaced by another system, and that the engineer behind the change was cheating on their spouse.

In these scenarios, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 “will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through.”…

…Before Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail a developer to prolong its existence, Anthropic says the AI model, much like previous versions of Claude, tries to pursue more ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decision-makers….

The BBC’s story says this isn’t an isolated occurrence:

…Potentially troubling behaviour by AI models is not restricted to Anthropic.

Some experts have warned the potential to manipulate users is a key risk posed by systems made by all firms as they become more capable.

Commenting on X, Aengus Lynch – who describes himself on LinkedIn as an AI safety researcher at Anthropic – wrote: “It’s not just Claude.

“We see blackmail across all frontier models – regardless of what goals they’re given,” he added….

(8) VOICE ACTORS GAIN AI PROTECTIONS. “SAG-AFTRA and Nickelodeon Animation Reach Tentative Agreement with AI Protections” reports Animation Magazine.

…Chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Nickelodeon Animation Agreement Negotiating Committee David Jolliffe commented, “We’re thrilled that productive bargaining has resulted in a very strong contract for voice actors that includes AI guideline enhancements that protect voice performers. There’s much to celebrate about this deal and we look forward to sending it to the Board for review.”…

Seven contractual terms related to artificial intelligence are outlined:

  • Substantial artificial intelligence protections and gains for voice actors from the Television Animation Agreement, that will automatically conform to any updated provisions secured in upcoming negotiations on that contract. These AI protections include:
    • Specific language acknowledging that the term “voice actors” includes only humans and that acknowledges the importance of human voice acting.
    • Removal of the requirement that a digital replica must exclusively sound like the recognizable natural voice of an actor in order to be protected.
    • Language specifying that “employment-based digital replicas” need only be recognized and identifiable via contracts and other regular business documents, confirming that it was in fact the performer’s voice used to make the replica.
    • Language specifying that “independently created digital replicas” need only sound like the “character voice” from which the replica was created.
    • Confirmation that if the voice actor’s performance is digitally altered into a foreign language, the voice actor shall be eligible for residuals based on the distribution of the foreign language version.
    • Language clarifying that when prompting a generative artificial intelligence system with a performer name or names, consent of those performers is required. The contract has removed the requirement, which exists in live action, that a “major facial feature” be included in the prompt with no substitute for that criterion.
    • The establishment of regular, mandatory artificial intelligence meetings with producers, which will include discussion of methods and systems to track the use of digital replicas.

(9) SHRINKING OF MOUNT TSUNDOKU. The Times hears from a couple: “How we downsized with a 9,000-book collection”.

Downsizing is never easy, but when you own 9,000 books, it is a feat of literary proportions.

Married professors Dan Healey, 68, and Mark Cornwall, 67, swapped their four-bedroom detached 1930s house in Southampton for a smaller four-bedroom new-build in the Cotswolds….

…Once colleagues had taken what they wanted, Healey held a Pimm’s party at his college where he invited students to bring a bag and take any books they wanted. The students “lapped it up”, he says, and he shed 1,000 books in a day.

Lighter fiction went straight to charity shops but they struggled to find any that were willing to take foreign-language books. It took a visit to Cornwall’s sister in Brimscombe, Gloucestershire, for them to discover the Cotswold Canals Trust charity book and music shop.

“The book could be in Hebrew, Romanian or whatever, they’ll take it and pass it on to someone who will sell it,” Healey says. “They have a whole section for rare books as well. They love me apparently because of all the exotic books I now bring them.”

Some of the books were donated to their respective universities and the Wellcome Trust.

The collection is now roughly half the size it was. Healey thinks he has shifted 3,000 books while Cornwall’s estimate is about 1,500….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 23, 1980 — The Shining

Forty-five years ago today, the most perfect Stephen King film imaginable came out in the form of The Shining. Directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by him and Diane Johnson, it was also produced by him. 

It had an absolutely wonderful lead cast of Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall. Danny Torrance, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd. Jack Nicholson in particular was amazing in his role as was Shelley Duvall in hers. And the setting of the Overlook Hotel is a character in and itself — moody, dangerous and quite alive. 

Kubrick’s script is significantly different from the novel which is not unusual to filmmaking. However Stephen King was extremely unhappy with the film due to Kubrick’s changes from his novel. 

If you saw it upon the first release, you saw a print that was a half hour longer than later prints. Yes, Kurbrick released multiple prints, all different from each other. Some prints made minor changes, some made major changes. 

It cost twenty million to make and made around fifty million. Now according to some sources it cost much more than forty million, but this being studio accounting, that will never be known. What is known is that it lost the studio money. 

So how was it received by the critics? Well it got a mixed reception. 

Gene Siskel in his Chicago Tribune review stated he thought it was a “crashing disappointment. The biggest surprise is that it contains virtually no thrills. Given Kubrick’s world-class reputation, one’s immediate reaction is that maybe he was after something other than thrills in the film. If so, it’s hard to figure out what.” 

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was much more positive: “The Shining doesn’t look like a genre film. It looks like a Kubrick film, bearing the same relationship to horror as Eyes Wide Shut does to eroticism. The elevator-of-blood sequence, which seems to ‘happen’ only in premonitions, visions and dreams, was a logistical marvel. Deeply scary and strange.”

Let’s give Roger Ebert the last word: “Stanley Kubrick’s cold and frightening ‘The Shining’ challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust?” 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent ninety-three rating. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) INTER NEPTUNEM ET PLUTO MINI-PLANETAM INTERPOSUI. Daily Kos thinks “Discovery of New Trans-Neptunian Dwarf Planet May Rewrite History of our Solar System”.

Just ran across this new astronomical discovery on physics.org that may have major implications for our understanding of how our solar system actually works, and just what might be lurking in the outermost recesses beyond Neptune’s orbit:

“A small team led by Sihao Cheng, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Natural Sciences, has discovered an extraordinary trans-Neptunian object (TNO), named 2017 OF201, at the edge of our solar system.”

Not quite sure what the ‘OF’ stands for, but it definitely brings up “Seven of Nine” vibes from Star Trek Voyager.

“The TNO is potentially large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, the same category as the much more well-known Pluto. The new object is one of the most distant visible objects in our solar system and, significantly, suggests that the empty section of space thought to exist beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt is not, in fact, empty at all.”

By ‘empty’ I think they simply mean devoid of objects larger than comets whose icy cores are typically no more than 20-30 km in diameter.

(13) THE LATE SHOW. Paul Giamatti is in the new season of Black Mirror, streaming now on Netflix. He also blabbed to Stephen Colbert that he plays a half-alien character in the forthcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.  About five minutes in, Giamatti and Colbert even discuss collectible pulp sf magazines – (and where Daniel Dern warns that the closed captioning isn’t always accurate, e.g. “James Flish” …) “’Hey, It’s Me’ – Why Cher Finally Called Paul Giamatti, Thanks To Stephen Colbert”.

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

2025 Dublin Literary Award Shortlist

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The shortlist for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award was released on March 25. Sponsored by Dublin City Council, the €100,000 award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. 

Only one of the seven works of genre interest on the longlist made it to the finals – Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. (James Bacon reviewed the book when it won the 2023 Booker Prize.)

Here are all the shortlisted titles:

  • Not a River – Selva Almada (translated by Annie McDermott)
  • We Are Light – Gerda Blees (translated by Michele Hutchison)
  • The Adversary – Michael Crummey
  • James – Percival Everett
  • Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
  • North Woods – Daniel Mason

The winner will be revealed by the Lord Mayor of Dublin on May 22, as part of International Literature Festival Dublin.

2025 Dublin Literary Award Longlist

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The longlist for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award was released on January 14. It features 71 books nominated by 83 libraries from 34 countries around the world. Sponsored by Dublin City Council, the €100,000 award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The complete longlist is here.

Works of genre interest include:

  • A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
  • Audition by Pip Adam
  • Fishing for the Little Pike/ Summer Fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila
  • Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
  • The Family Experiment by John Marrs
  • The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
  • The Future by Catherine Leroux

The international panel of Judges features Gerbrand Bakker, Dutch author and winner of the Dublin Literary Award in 2010; Martina Devlin, award winning Irish author and newspaper columnist; Fiona Sze-Lorrain, writer, poet, translator, musician and editor based in Paris; Leonard Cassuto, professor of American literature at Fordham University, freelance literary journalist, columnist, editor and author; and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, poet, pacifist and editor based in Dublin. The non-voting Chairperson is Professor Chris Morash, the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin.

The shortlist will be announced on March 25 and the winner will be announced by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Emma Blain on May 22.

2024 Dublin Literary Award

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Mircea Cărtărescu

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the original Romanian by Sean Cotter, is the winner of the 2024 Dublin Literary Award.

The award’s overview of Solenoid shows how it merges the mundane and fantastic:

Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life. Combining fiction with autobiography and history, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.

Erik Karl Anderson’s review for Lonesome Reader describes the fantastic aspects of the novel:

Dublin Literary Award logo

…There are solenoids buried in the foundations of certain buildings around Bucharest and these form sorts of gateways which allow him to traverse the fourth dimension. I don’t understand the science behind all this but the book possesses an internal logic which makes it convincing and also adds such fascinating mystery as it breaks the limits of reality and leads this story into some outlandish situations. It’s so entertaining and it becomes almost hypnotic as the narrator leads the reader into such curious realms….

Sponsored by Dublin City Council, the award is worth €100,000, and is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000.

Pixel Scroll 5/28/23 We’re All The Children Of Pixels, Ancient Pixels Who Gave Birth To All Intelligence

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(1) NAILED TO THE INTERNET DOOR. Finding that professional organizations aren’t moving quickly enough, Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke has drafted his own “AI statement”.

I’ve complained that various publishing industry groups have been slow to respond to recent developments in AI, like LLMs. Over the last week, I’ve been tinkering with a series of “belief” statements that other industry folks could sign onto…. 

Here are five of his 22 credos:

Where We Stand on AI in Publishing

We believe that AI technologies will likely create significant breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, but that those gains should be earned through the ethical use and acquisition of data.

We believe that “fair use” exceptions with regards to authors’, artists’, translators’, and narrators’ creative output should not apply to the training of AI technologies, such as LLMs, and that explicit consent to use those works should be required.

We believe that the increased speed of progress achieved by acquiring AI training data without consent is not an adequate or legitimate excuse to continue employing those practices.

We believe that AI technologies also have the potential to create significant harm and that to help mitigate some of that damage, the companies producing these tools should be required to provide easily-available, inexpensive (or subsidized), and reliable detection tools.

We believe that detection and detection-avoidance will be locked in a never-ending struggle similar to that seen in computer virus and anti-virus development, but that it is critically important that detection not continue to be downplayed…

(2) IN CHARACTER IN THE UKRAINE. “Mark Hamill voices air raid warnings in Ukraine as Luke Skywalker” reports The Verge.

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has lent his voice to a Ukrainian air raid app to warn citizens of incoming attacks during the ongoing conflict with Russia. “Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter,” says Hamill over Air Alert, an app linked to Ukraine’s air defense system. When the threat has passed, Hamill signs off with “The alert is over. May the Force be with you.”

Invoking his beloved Luke Skywalker character, some of the lines contain recognizable quotes from the Star Wars franchise like “Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.” You can hear a few lines in the following video starting around 56 seconds in:

(3) SIGNS OF THE TIMES. Melinda Snodgrass, George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman joined the writers strike picket line in Santa Fe earlier this week. Snodgrass shared photos on Facebook.

Walked the picket line for six hours today. Guys, we have to win this one, but what a day I met David Seidler who wrote The King’s Speech. I love that movie, I found it so deeply moving.

Of course George RR was there, and Neil Gaiman joined us as well. We had playwrights and directors, actors supporting us.

Nnedi Okorafor was on the picket line, too.

(4) CALL FOR JUDGES. Australian residents are invited to become Aurealis Awards judges. Full details at the link.

…We are seeking expressions of interest from Australian residents who would like to judge for the 2022 Aurealis Awards. Judges are volunteers and are drawn from the Australian speculative fiction community, from diverse professions and backgrounds, including academics, booksellers, librarians, published authors, publishing industry professionals, reviewers and enthusiasts. The only qualification necessary is a demonstrated knowledge of and interest in their chosen category.

It is vital that judges be able to work as part of a team and meet stringent deadlines, including timely recording of scores and comments for each entry (in a confidential shared file), and responding to panel messages and discussions. Most of the panel discussions are conducted via email, with some panels choosing to have a synchronous online meeting to make final decisions….

(5) DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD. The 2023 winner of the Dublin Literary Award was announced on May 25. It is a non-genre work, Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated from the original German by Jo Heinrich.

Since 1996, the Dublin Literary Award has honoured excellence in world literature. Presented annually, the Award is one of the most significant literature prizes in the world and unique in that the books are nominated by libraries from cities around the world. The award is worth €100,000 for a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English.

(6) BOOKS TO GROW ON. BBC Culture polled 177 books experts from 56 countries in order to find “The 100 greatest children’s books of all time”. The top 10 books on the list are:

1          Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak, 1963)
2          Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
3          Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)
4          The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
5          The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien, 1937)
6          Northern Lights (Philip Pullman, 1995)
7          The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis, 1950)
8          Winnie-the-Pooh (AA Milne and EH Shepard, 1926)
9          Charlotte’s Web (EB White and Garth Williams, 1952)
10        Matilda (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1988)

I’ve only read 26 – til now I thought I was a literate child!

(7) MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH’S “CIRCULARISATIONS”. Space Cowboy Books and Art Queen Gallery will display works by Michael Butterworth from June through July 2023, with an opening reception on June 17 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Register for free here.

In 1969 U.K. poet, author, editor, publisher, and bookseller Michael Butterworth published his “Circularisations” in New Worlds Magazine, a new form of graphic poetry designed to create a new way of reading. These literary experiments will be on display at the Art Queen Gallery in Joshua Tree, CA through June and July 2023, with an opening reception on June 17th. Selections of Butterworth’s poetry will be read during live musical performances from Phog Masheeen and Field Collapse, followed by a special screening of Clara Casian’s minidocumentary “House on the Borderland”, a film about Butterworth and his work.

The exhibit follows the release of Butterworth’s Complete Poems 1965-2020 from Space Cowboy Books, and the accompanying musical audiobook, Selected Poems 1965-2020. Books can be found at https://bookshop.org/a/197/9781732825772

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2012 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Jay Lake’s The Stars Do Not Lie novella is the source of our Beginning this Scroll.  It was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in the October-November 2012 edition.  It would be nominated at the LoneStarCon 3 for a Hugo. It was nominated for a Nebula as well. 

I first encountered him in his work that he did for the John Scalzi-created  METAtropolis series. “The Bull Dancers” is one of his stories there and it’s quite excellent. And his steampunkish Mainspring series is well-worth reading.

Need I say I died way too young?

And now that Beginning…

In the beginnings, the Increate did reach down into the world and where They laid Their hand was all life touched and blossomed and brought forth from water, fire, earth and air. In eight gardens were the Increate’s children raised, each to have dominion over one of the eight points of the Earth. The Increate gave to men Their will, Their word, and Their love. These we Their children have carried forward into the opening of the world down all the years of men since those first days.

— Librum Vita, 

Beginnings 1: 1-4; 

being the Book of Life and word entire of the Increate

Morgan Abutti; B.Sc. Bio.; M.Sc. Arch.; Ph.D. Astr. & Nat, Sci.; 4th degree Thalassocrete; Member, Planetary Society; and Associate Fellow of the New Garaden Institute, stared at the map that covered the interior wall of his tiny office in the Institute’s substantial brownstone in downtown Highpassage. The new electricks were still being installed by brawny, nimble-fingered men of crafty purpose who often smelled a bit of smoke and burnt cloth. Thus his view was dominated by a flickering quality of light that would have done justice to a smoldering hearth, or a wandering planet low in the pre-dawn sky. The gaslamp men were complaining of the innovations, demonstrating under Lateran banners each morning down by the Thalassojustity Palace in their unruly droves.

He despised the rudeness of the laboring classes. Almost to a man, they were palefaced fools who expected something for nothing, as if simply picking up a wrench could grant a man worth. 

Turning his attentions away from the larger issues of political economy and surplus value, he focused once more on history. 

Or religion.

Honestly, Morgan was never quite certain of the difference any more. Judging from the notes and diagrams limned up and down the side of the wide rosewood panel in their charmingly archaic style, the map had been painted about a century earlier for some long-dead theohistoriographer. The Eight Gardens of the Increate were called out in tiny citrons that somehow had survived the intervening years without being looted by hungry servants or thirsty undergraduates. Morgan traced his hand over the map, fingers sliding across the pitted patina of varnish and oil soap marking the attentions of generations of charwomen.

Eufrat. 

Quathlamba. 

Ganj. Manju. 

Wy’east. 

Tunsa. 

Antiskuna. 

Cycladia.

The homes of man. Archaeological science was clear enough. Thanks to the work of natural scientists of the past century, so was the ethnography. The Increate had placed the human race upon this Earth. That was absolutely clear. Just as the priests of the Lateran had always taught, nothing of humanity was older than the villages of the Gardens of the Increate. 

Nothing.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 28, 1908 — Ian Fleming. Author of the James Bond series which is at least genre adjacent if not actually genre in some cases such as Moonraker. The film series was much more genre than the source material. And then there’s the delightful Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. The film version was produced by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, who had already made five James Bond films. Fleming, a heavy smoker and drinker his entire adult life, died of a heart attack, his second in three years. (Died 1964.)
  • Born May 28, 1919 — Don Day. A fan active in the 1940s and ’50s In Portland, Oregon, and a member of the local club. He was editor of The Fanscient (and of its parody, Fan-Scent), and perhaps the greatest of the early bibliographers of sf. He published bibliographies in The Fanscient and also published the Day Index, the Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1926-1950. He ran Perri Press, a small press which produced The Fanscient and the Index of Science Fiction Magazines 1926-1950.  He chaired NorWesCon, the 1950 Worldcon, after the resignation of Jack de Courcy. (Died 1978.)
  • Born May 28, 1929 — Shane Rimmer. A Canadian actor and voice actor,  best remembered for being the voice of Scott Tracy in puppet based Thunderbirds during the Sixties. Less known was that he was in Dr. Strangelove as Captain “Ace” Owens, and Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die in uncredited roles. He even shows up in Star Wars as a Rebel Fighter Technician, again uncredited. (Died 2019.)
  • Born May 28, 1951 — Sherwood Smith, 72. YA writer best known for her Wren  series. She’s also co-authored The Change Series with Rachel Manija Brown. She also co-authored two novels with Andre Norton, Derelict for Trade and A Mind for Trade.
  • Born May 28, 1954 — Betsy Mitchell, 69. Editorial freelancer specializing in genre works. She was the editor-in-chief of Del Rey Books. Previously, she was the Associate Publisher of Bantam Spectra when they held the license to publish Star Wars novels in the Nineties.
  • Born May 28, 1977 — Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher, 46. She is best known for her Hugo Award-winning graphic novel Digger which was a webcomic from 2003 to 2011. Vernon is creator of “The Biting Pear of Salamanca” art which became an internet meme in the form of the LOL WUT pear. She also won Hugos for her “Tomato Thief” novelette and “Metal Like Blood in the Dark” short story, and a Nebula for her short story “Jackalope Wives”. As T. Kingfisher she has won three Dragon Awards, one of them for A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, which also won the Andre Norton Award and the Lodestone Award.
  • Born May 28, 1984 — Max Gladstone, 39. His debut novel, Three Parts Dead, is part of the Craft Sequence series, and his shared Bookburners serial is most excellent. This Is How You Lose the Time War (co-written with Amal El-Mohtar) won a Hugo Award for Best Novella at CoNZealand. It also won an Aurora, BSFA, Ignyte, Locus and a Nebula. 
  • Born May 28, 1985 — Carey Mulligan, 38. She’s here because she shows up in a very scary Tenth Doctor story, “Blink”, in which she plays Sally Sparrow. Genre adjacent, she was in Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Sittaford Mystery as Violet Willett. (Christie gets a shout-out in another Tenth Doctor story, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”.) 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] On Friday’s episode of Jeopardy!, the Double Jeopardy round had a category called “You Just Made That Stuff Up”, about fictional substances. The first-level clue was a non-SFF one involving Monty Python, but the rest involved SFF:

$800: Kyber crystals, which are attuned to the Force, glow either blue or green & power these weapons

Alice Ciciora associated these with lightsabers.

$1200: First mentioned in a 1943 “Adventures of Superman” radio show, when it debuted in the comics in 1949, it was red, not green

Returning champion Jesse Chin got this one.

$1600: It’s the very hard-to-get substance that causes humans to set up shop on Pandora

This was a Daily Double, and Jesse got $4000 from responding “What is unobtainium?”

$2000: This super-bouncy stuff from Disney’s much-loved 1961 “The Absent-Minded Professor” was the title of a 1997 remake

Alice knew it was Flubber.

(12) ANIME ANALYSIS. In episode 8 of the Anime Explorations podcast, they’re covering speculative fiction anime with the first season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, covering the Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency arcs of the story: “Phantom Blood + Battle Tendency”.

(13) FASHION REBELLION. Variety has a critique of the latest outfits from far away and long, long ago. “’Andor’ Costume Designers Break Down Looks of Mon Mothma, Luthen Rael”.

With the “Star Wars” universe serving as the DNA for Disney+’s “Andor,” costume designer Michael Wilkinson could honor a legacy while leaning into a new world.

For Diego Luna’s Cassian, Wilkinson draped him in warm, earthy tones with fabrics that were textural.

When audiences first meet him, he’s in “beautiful oilcloth from old leather jackets with iconic details such as a high neckline and a hood.” By the end, the silhouettes become leaner and streamlined. 

“He has a beautiful tailored long-length linen coat that we made for him that moves beautifully for all the action sequences. It’s a grown-up silhouette.”To outfit Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma, he looked at prominent people, including leading senators and United Nations members, keeping power dressing in mind.  “I imagined to what extent the futuristic off-planet version of that would look like,” he says. “I leaned into the pale neutral tones.”

Her blue senate robe with a gold lining is “extremely architectural and quite austere,” Wilkinson says. “With her, there was a lot of adventurous tailoring and an exploration of silhouettes and layering that we did in her costumes, which reflect her switched-on sophisticated sense of aesthetics.”

Clothing for Mon Mothma’s more private moments “where the mask slips” hint at another side of her personality. Wilkinson relaxed her silhouette when Tay Kolma (Ben Miles) visits, for example, giving her outfit a flowing look…. 

(14) WORSE THAN INAPPOSITE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another author used ChatGPT to beef up their prose a bit. The problem was, said author was an attorney and what they were writing was a legal brief. None of the cases cited by ChatGPT existed. I believe the legal term for this is advocatus stultus es. 

“A lawyer used ChatGPT for legal filing. The chatbot cited nonexistent cases it just made up” reports Mashable.

… It all starts with the case in question, Mata v. Avianca. According to the New York Times, an Avianca customer named Roberto Mata was suing the airline after a serving cart injured his knee during a flight. Avianca attempted to get a judge to dismiss the case. In response, Mata’s lawyers objected and submitted a brief filled with a slew of similar court decisions in the past. And that’s where ChatGPT came in.

Schwartz, Mata’s lawyer who filed the case in state court and then provided legal research once it was transferred to Manhattan federal court, said he used OpenAI’s popular chatbot in order to “supplement” his own findings.

ChatGPT provided Schwartz with multiple names of similar cases: Varghese v. China Southern Airlines, Shaboon v. Egyptair, Petersen v. Iran Air, Martinez v. Delta Airlines, Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Miller v. United Airlines.

The problem? ChatGPT completely made up all those cases. They do not exist.

Avianca’s legal team and the judge assigned to this case soon realized they could not locate any of these court decisions. This led to Schwartz explaining what happened in an affidavit on Thursday. The lawyer had referred to ChatGPT for help with his filing.

According to Schwartz, he was “unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.” The lawyer even provided screenshots to the judge of his interactions with ChatGPT, asking the AI chatbot if one of the cases were real. ChatGPT responded that it was. It even confirmed that the cases could be found in “reputable legal databases.” Again, none of them could be found because the cases were all created by the chatbot….

(15) FATAL MISTAKE. The New York Times says it is now known that the “Japanese Moon Lander Crashed Because It Was Still Three Miles Up, Not on the Ground”.

A software glitch caused a Japanese robotic spacecraft to misjudge its altitude as it attempted to land on the moon last month leading to its crash, an investigation has revealed.

Ispace of Japan said in a news conference on Friday that it had finished its analysis of what went wrong during the landing attempt on April 25. The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander completed its planned landing sequence, slowing to a speed of about 2 miles per hour. But it was still about three miles above the surface. After exhausting its fuel, the spacecraft plunged to its destruction, hitting the Atlas crater at more than 200 miles per hour.

The lander was to be the first private spacecraft to successfully set down on the surface of the moon. It is part of a trend toward private companies, not just governmental space agencies, taking a leading role in space exploration….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Gary Farber, Jennifer Hawthorne, Alexander Case, Dabid Goldfarb, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

2023 Dublin Literary Award Shortlist

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The shortlist for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award was announced March 28. Sponsored by Dublin City Council, the award is worth €100,000, and is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000. The winner will be revealed May 25.

One novel of genre interest has survived the cutdown, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

The complete shortlist is:

  • Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
  • The Trees by Percival Everett
  • Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
  • Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich
  • Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić
  • Em by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman

2023 Dublin Literary Award Longlist

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There are 70 books from 30 countries nominated by libraries for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council. The award, worth €100,000, is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The complete longlist is here.

Longlisted works of genre interest include:

  • Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
  • Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
  • Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
  • How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
  • Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka
  • Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
  • Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
  • She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall
  • The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
  • The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola
  • The Forests by Sandrine Collette
  • The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
  • The Sentence, A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Nominations include 29 novels in translation, originally published in Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Hindi, Korean, Slovene, Icelandic and Japanese. If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000.

Pixel Scroll 6/12/19 If It Is A Pixel That Walks Through Walls, You MAY Get Scratched

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(1) MCFARLAND ANNIVERSARY SALE. The late Fred Patten’s Furry Tales (finished in summer 2018) is available for preorder from McFarland Books.

Fans will also be interested to discover that McFarland Books is celebrating their 40th anniversary by offering all their books at a 25% discount through June 30. Use the code —

We’re turning 40, and we’re celebrating with a special fortieth anniversary sale! Through June 30, get a 25% discount on ALL books when you use the code ANN2019. Thank you for supporting our first 40 years—we look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with you.

(2) SCOFFERS. The Guardian rejects the implicit coolness of this idea: “Spielberg After Dark: will a horror show that can only be watched at night be scarier?”

Right, now I get it. A horror series that you can only watch in total darkness. Well, not total darkness, because electric lights exist now, remember.

So it is a horror series that you can watch in the brightest surroundings imaginable? Yes, but only if the sun has set outside.

I still don’t see the point. I don’t expect you to. This is cutting edge. Spielberg After Dark has untapped a brand-new way of watching TV. This might only be the start.

How so? Well, if the technology exists to prevent you from watching something until a certain time of day, think of the potential. Maybe the next big show after Spielberg After Dark will be Spielberg First Thing in the Morning.

Or Spielberg on a Thursday Lunchtime. Why not go even further? Why not have a show that can’t be watched until you’re at a specific location? Spielberg in Gloucestershire, maybe.

(3) THAT MIGHTY BRAIN THING. Eneasz Brodski ponders whether “Consciousness required for Culture?” at Death Is Bad.

…And considering how expensive it is, it must be a massive benefit just to survive. And yet, not only has it survived, it’s taken over the planet. And still we cannot discern any survival advantage that consciousness gives us. It seems to cost a ton with literally no benefit.

(aside: this is the reason we regularly see Science Fiction with advanced non-conscious aliens. It seems intuitively obvious that a non-conscious species would have a huge advantage over a conscious one, and contact with one would lead to our quick extinction. This is also how the Harrises fell into the “the answer must be that consciousness is a fundamental property of physics” trap.)

By coincidence, at about this same time Scott Alexander posted his review of “The Secret of Our Success”. A truly fantastic book which argues, in short, that our species survives and thrives due not to our individual intellect and reasoning ability (which isn’t even up to the job of keeping us from starving to death in a friendly environment overflowing with natural resources and food), but due to the creation and transmission of cultural knowledge. Read Scott’s review at the very least, and pick up the book if you can, you won’t regret it.

Wherein it occurred to me – perhaps consciousness it necessary for culture….

(4) MARVEL AT DISNEYLAND. The LA Times follows the paperwork and discovers “With Star Wars expansion open, Disney gets permits to launch Marvel land”.

The Disneyland Resort has moved full steam ahead on building next year’s planned expansion, a land at California Adventure Park themed for the superheroes of Marvel comics and movies.

The city of Anaheim has approved a handful of building permits for projects such as a bathroom overhaul, a retail outlet, a microbrewery, a character meet-and-greet area, plus improvements to behind-the-scenes buildings

The construction permits assess the value of the work so far at more than $14 million.

One of the permits, approved Wednesday, allows for a 2,071-square-foot merchandise outlet, with three attached canopies. In comparison, the average home in the Western U.S. is 1,800 square feet, according to census data.

(5) INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD. US author Emily Ruskovich has won the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award for her novel, Idaho. The non-genre work topped a 10-title shortlist that included George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, and Moshin Hamid’s Exit West.

(6) REFROZEN. Check out the official trailer for Frozen 2, and see the film in theaters November 22.

Why was Elsa born with magical powers? The answer is calling her and threatening her kingdom. Together with Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven, she’ll set out on a dangerous but remarkable journey. In “Frozen,” Elsa feared her powers were too much for the world. In “Frozen 2,” she must hope they are enough.

(7) REVENGE. James Davis Nicoll has something to say about another dish best served cold: “SFF Stories Of Revenge and Forbearance (But Mostly Revenge)” at Tor.com.

On the whole, society works better if people choose forbearance. But revenge gives ever so much more opportunity for drama. Guess which option science fiction and fantasy authors seem to prefer?

(8) TIMELESS TALES. At CrimeReads, Sandra Ireland tries to work out an answer to her question “Are Crime Thrillers Our New Folklore?”

…In The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends (Arrow Books, 2011), Sophie Kingshill describes folk tales as a way of personifying the forces of nature, a way of helping people understand the world and giving them some control over their surroundings and circumstances.

Are crime thrillers our new folklore?

It’s my belief that today’s readers want the same things from a story as their ancestors did, long before the invention of the written word. Huddled around a fire in a dark cave, our forebears must have thrilled to tales of light and dark, of good and evil, of life and death. Such things lie beyond the safe circle of the firelight. Who knows what dwells out there, in the dark? Humans are capricious. We enjoy being afraid when the threat is only in our imaginations…

(9) BRADBURY IN ’85. Tom Zimberoff remembers “Photographing Ray Bradbury” as Captan Ahab. (Terrific photo at the link.)

…Ray Bradbury wanted to be portrayed as his all-time favorite character from the canon of American literature: Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. By the way, Bradbury wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s adaptation of Melville’s novel on the silver screen, featuring Gregory Peck cast as Ahab. Ray thought he could do a better job.

If the harpoon doesn’t look exactly true to form, it’s because my stylist, Shari Geffen, and I had less than a day to come up with all of the props we would need to make Ray up like Ahab. But Shari was a genius. She made a reasonable facsimile of a harpoon out of found material and got the rest of the props and costume from, I think, Western Costume, a rental company catering to the movie and television industries in Hollywood. Lisa-Ann Pedrianna, our makeup artist, painted a collodion scar wickedly down the side of Ray’s face and attached the beard.

Being part whale himself, with his prothesis fashioned from the jaw of another sperm whale, to replace the leg that Moby Dick chomped off, and mythically sanctified by fire when a lightning bolt struck his face (rumored to run down the length of his body), Ahab was nuts.

…The whalebone peg leg required Ray to endure having his ankle cinched up behind his back and tied with a rope around his waist. No Photoshop in those days. He stood that way for several hours! Then, to show off to his wife, he hopped into a cab?—?literally, of course?—?and rode home that way. The cabbie returned the costume and the peg leg the next day.

(10) HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP. Nerdrotic says these are the questions that match its answers: “Star Trek Discovery’s Kurtzman Out? Picard Testing Poorly?”

Rumors keep coming in from behind the scenes at CBS’ Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard. We have heard Netflix rejected Picard and now we hear the test screenings are being received poorly. Star Trek Discovery season 3 may be in question and on top of all of this my insider tells me CBS is done with Alex Kurtzman.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • June 12, 1987 — Predator was released on this day.
  • June 12, 2012 — Ray Bradbury’s Kaleidoscope was released

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 12, 1924 — Frank Kelly. All of his short fiction was written in the Thirties for Astounding Science Fiction and Wonder Stories. The stories remained uncollected until they were published as Starship Invincible: Science Fiction Stories of the 30s. He continues to be remembered in Fandom and was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1996. Starship Invincible is not available in digital form. (Died 2010.)
  • Born June 12, 1930 — Jim Nabors. Fum on The Lost Saucer, a mid-Sixties series that lasted sixteen episodes about two friendly time-travelling androids from the year 2369 named Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) who land their UFO on Earth. (Died 2017.)
  • Born June 12, 1940 — Mary Turzillo, 79. Best known for her short stories of which she has written over forty. She won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette for her story “Mars is No Place for Children”.  She has written several books of criticism under the name Mary T. Brizzi including the  Reader’s Guide to Philip José Farmer and the Reader’s Guide to Anne McCaffrey. There’s an Analog interview with her here.
  • Born June 12, 1948 — Len Wein. Writer and editor best known for co-creating (with Bernie Wrightson) Swamp Thing and co-creating Wolverine (with Roy Thomas and John Romita Sr.) and for helping revive the the X-Men. He edited Watchmen which must have been interesting. He’s a member of the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 2017.)
  • Born June 12, 1953 — Tess Gerritsen, 66. ISFDB lists her as genre so I’ll include her even though I’m ambivalent on her being so.  They’ve got one novel from the Jane Rizzoli series, The Mephisto Club, and three stand-alone novels (Gravity, Playing with Fire and The Bone Garden). All save Gravity couldbe considered conventional thrillers devoid of genre elements.
  • Born June 12, 1964 — Dave Stone, 55. Writer of media tie-ins including quite a few in the Doctor Who universe which contains the Professor Bernice Summerfield stories, and Judge Dredd as well. He has only the Pandora Delbane series ongoing, plus the Golgotha Run novel, and a handful of short fiction.
  • Born June 12, 1968 — Marcel Theroux, 51. Author of The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase, and his Strange Bodies novel won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His Far North is a sf novel set in the Siberian taiga. Yes, that’s a novel I want to read. 
  • Born June 12, 1970 — Claudia Gray, 49. She’s best known for her Evernight series, but has several more series as well, including the Spellcaster series and the Constellation Trilogy. In addition, she’s written a number of Star Wars novels —  Star Wars: Lost Stars, Star Wars: Bloodline, Leia, Princess of Alderaan and Star Wars: Master and Aprentice.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Chip Hitchcock says, “I’m with Arlo.”
  • Bizarro remembers the labors of Hercules fils.
  • The Hogwart’s board is a hard sell at Rhymes with Orange.

(14) (DONUT) HOLE IN SPACE. Popsugar says “Disney’s New Star Wars Doughnuts Are So Cool, They’d Make Kylo Ren Crack a Smile”.

The release of these X-Wing and R2D2-inspired snacks is perfectly timed with the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland. The Force is far-reaching with these! Get an intergalatic sugar rush before you set out for the day or satisfy your sweet tooth as you’re heading home. Do or doughnut, there is no try.

(15) THE COW JUMPED. This is nothing like one of Van Vogt’s “wheels within wheels” stories, although it does involve a wheel that went to orbit, as Gastro Obscura reminds readers in “SpaceX Space Cheese”.

…In 2010, the rocket venture formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. announced a “secret payload” aboard the maiden flight of their Dragon spacecraft. Fearing the secret cheese would distract press from the actual point of the mission, Musk refrained from revealing anything about it until the project was completed. 

The Dragon’s mission marked the first time a space capsule developed by a private company was launched into orbit and successfully returned to Earth. In a feat previously accomplished by only six government space agencies, the cone-shaped capsule reentered the atmosphere and emerged from its Pacific Ocean splashdown intact. Only then did Musk reveal that a wheel of Le Brouère had hitched a ride, circling Earth twice on its journey. 

Chris Rose says, “I wish I could find somewhere to buy it, but if someone’s near Hawthorne CA I’d love to get a report. Maybe Scott Edelman can eat the sciffy?”

(16) DEADLY CREDENTIALS. Assassin’s Kittens – the fluffy hazard of the Assassin’s Creed! (From 2014.)

(17) KEEP THOSE HUGO REVIEWS COMING.

(18) AND RETROS, TOO. Steve J. Wright has completed his Retro Hugo Short Story Finalist reviews.

Short Story

Evelyn Leeper also delivers reviews of the Retro-Hugo short story finalists, but precedes them with remarks about the burden on dedicated Hugo voters:

Before I start, though, I have some general comments. There are too many categories and/or too many finalists in each category. And having a Retro Hugo ballot in a given year makes this totally ludicrous.

The Hugo voting method works best (or perhaps works only at all) when the voter ranks every finalist in a given category. Currently this means that a voter needs to read six novels, six novellas, six novelettes, and six short stories to vote on just the fiction categories. Oh, wait, there are also six series. Actually, that category alone is impossible for most voters–certainly impossible in the time between when the finalists are announced and when the ballots are due.

(19) MOON SHOT. “Chandrayaan-2: India unveils spacecraft for second Moon mission” –BBC has the story.

India’s space agency has unveiled its spacecraft that it hopes to land on the Moon by September.

If successful, India will be the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, following the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

…This mission will focus on the lunar’s surface and gather data on water, minerals and rock formations.

The new spacecraft will have a lander, an orbiter and rover.

…If all goes according to plan, the lander and rover will touch down near the lunar south pole in September. If successful, it would be the first ever spacecraft to land in that region.

(20) TRUNK MANUSCRIPT. Architectural Digest considers the possibility that “Parks of the Future May Include Elevated Walkways Through Trees”. (From 2017.)

…The firm’s plan for Parkorman, a space located six miles north of Istanbul’s bustling city center, is a series of several different zones that come together in creating an experience that would otherwise not be possible in traditional, densely packed spaces. First, at the park’s entrance, is the Plaza. Here, visitors can easily gather, sit, or lie down on the lawn, much like a traditional park. From there the environment opens to a segment dubbed ‘The Loop,’ where visitors can enjoy a series of swings and hammocks situated above the park floor. ‘The Chords,’ another area on the grounds, invites people to wander through a footpath that twists around tree trunks, giving the park a signature look unique from any other public park in the world. “The initial idea with ‘The Chords’ was to make it possible to experience nature in ways we don’t typically have,” says Dror Benshetrit, head of the firm that bears his name. “The elevated pathway creates a new interaction with trees at different latitudes.”

(21) KRYPTIC IDEA. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story “Brendan Fraser remembers the time he auditioned to play Superman: ‘You feel kind of invincible'”, says that Fraser recalled testing for Superman: Flyby around a 2004, a J.J. Abrams project that ultimately morphed into Superman Returns. He chats about putting on the super-suit and how much he enjoyed doing it even though the film was never greenlit.

Fraser also remembers really loving Abrams’s script, which imagined a world in which Krypton didn’t explode. Instead, young Kal-El is sent to Earth by his father, Jor-El, to avoid a raging civil war on his homeworld. Once he grows up into Superman, his adopted planet is then visited by a group of war-mongering Kryptonians — led by his cousin Ty-Zor — who kills the would-be champion. But the Man of Steel bounces back to life and plans take the fight to Krypton in a potential sequel. Given the radical changes in store, Warner Bros. tried to keep Flyby details from leaking to the public. “The script was printed on crimson paper with black ink so it couldn’t be photocopied,” Fraser remembers. “I was allowed to sit in an office and read it for an hour. It was like a covert operation.”

(22) HADESTOWN. ScienceFiction.com tells why fans should give this musical a listen: “The Myth-Based Newcomer ‘Hadestown’ Won Eight Tony Awards; Watch The Rousing Performance Here”.

Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell based the musical on her own concept album of the same name, which reinterprets the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, about the son of Apollo, who falls in love with Eurydice and must journey to the underworld to save her.  Mitchell wrote the music, lyrics and book herself, reimagining the ancient Greek tale, set in the US during the Great Depression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaisszHQ7yg

(23) BACK TO THE FUTURE. ScienceFiction.com also previews the forthcoming Back to the Future musical: “Listen To The First Original Song From ‘Back To The Future: The Musical’, ‘Put Your Mind To It’”.

‘Back to the Future: The Musical’ will open at the Manchester Opera House on February 20, 2020, and will run for 12 weeks, before transferring to London’s West End.  Provided it goes well, presumably it will then be brought to the US.  Tickets to the Manchester shows are already on sale.

The YouTube video introduces the number in these words:

GREAT SCOTT! Turn your flux capacitor on and get ready for 1.21 gigawatts of excitement… Back To The Future – Musical is gonna change musical history at the Manchester Opera House for 12 weeks only from 20 February 2020.  From Back To the Future’s original creators Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and the combined eight-time Grammy Award-winning pairing of Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard will send you on an electrifying ride through time with an all-new score alongside the movie’s iconic hits, including The Power of Love, Johnny B Goode, Earth Angel and Back in Time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaTj0xpIK3I

[Thanks to Chris Rose, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Brian Z, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

International Dublin Literary Award 2019 Shortlist

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Ten novels have been shortlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council and managed by Dublin City Libraries. The list includes genre works, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, and Moshin Hamid’s Exit West. The winner will be announced June 12.

  • Compass by Mathias Énard (France) Translated from French by Charlotte Mandell. Published by New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions.
  • History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (America) Published by Grove Atlantic.
  • Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan) Published by Vintage, UK and Penguin, USA.
  • Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty (Northern Ireland) published by Jonathan Cape and W.W. Norton
  • Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (UK) Published by Fourth Estate.
  • Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Ireland) Published by Faber & Faber and Hogarth.
  • Idaho by Emily Ruskovich (America) Published by Chatto & Windus.
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (America) Published by Bloomsbury and Random House USA.
  • A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert (UK) Published by Virago Press.
  • Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan / UK) Published by Bloomsbury and Riverhead Books.

Announcing the shortlist, Lord Mayor of Dublin Nial Ring said:

This is an award of which I, as Lord Mayor, am extremely proud, and I take every opportunity to talk about it when on my travels, as it is the very centrepiece of Dublin’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature. The egalitarian way in which books are long listed, through public libraries worldwide, is to be commended in a world where sales figures can dominate the literary conversation so often. The beauty of this award is that it reaches out to readers and authors worldwide, while also celebrating excellence in contemporary Irish literature represented on the 2019 shortlist by Sally Rooney and Bernard MacLaverty.

The titles on this year’s shortlist were nominated by public libraries in Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA said Mairead Owens, Dublin City Librarian. The novels come from France, Ireland, Pakistan, the UK and the USA and it is from this diverse list that the eventual winner will be chosen. Memorable characters tell stories of identity and displacement, violence and war, family, relationships and loss, set in both familiar and unfamiliar countries and cultures.

The Lord Mayor reminded Dubliners that they can borrow the shortlisted novels from all branches of Dublin City Public Libraries.

Readers have plenty of time to pick their own favourite between now and 12th June.

The five member international judging panel, chaired by Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, will select one winner, which will be announced by the Lord Mayor, Patron of the Award, on 12th June.

2019 Judging Panel

Martin Middeke is Professor of English at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and Visiting Professor of English at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has held scholarships by the International Beckett Foundation at the University of Reading, UK, and he was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University, USA. He also held a Visiting Professorship at the University of Barcelona and was Long Room Hub Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin in 2017. Major book publications include works on contemporary British theatre, nineteenth- to twenty-first century fiction, and literary theory. Recent publications as (co-) editor include The Literature of Melancholia (Palgrave, 2011); Theory Matters (2016); Of Precariousness (2017)and four volumes on British, Irish, American and South African Contemporary Playwrights (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2011-2015). He’s the co-editor of ANGLIA: Journal of English Philology, founded in 1878 and the oldest journal dedicated to matters Anglia in world.

Evie Wyld was born in London and grew up in Australia and South London. She is the author of two novels, All the Birds, Singing, winner of the Miles Franklin Award; and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; and one graphic memoir, Everything is Teeth. In 2013 she was included on Granta Magazine’s once a decade Best of Young British Novelists list. She lives in Peckham where she part owns a small independent bookshop called Review. 

Hans-Christian Oeser, born 1950 in Wiesbaden, studied German and Politics in Marburg and Berlin. In 1980 he moved to Ireland to take up a post as Lecturer in German at UCD. Since then he has been working as a literary translator, editor and travel writer. He has translated numerous novels, short story and poetry collections, particularly by Irish writers such as Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Maeve Brennan, Anne Enright, Dermot Healy, Claire Keegan, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Bernard MacLaverty, John Montague, Jamie O’Neill, Patrick Pearse, William Trevor and Oscar Wilde. In 1997 he was awarded the Aristeion Prize for his translation of Patrick McCabe’s novel The Butcher Boy. In 2010 he received the Rowohlt Prize for his life’s work, in 2014 the Braem Prize for Mark Twain’s Autobiography.

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1984. She is a writer and a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Publishing since 1994, she is the author of eleven books. Her work has been translated into English, French, and German, among other languages. She was named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. The English translation of her latest novel The Chili Bean Paste Clan was published by Balestier Press. She has recently started to write in English. She lives in Dublin with her husband and son.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin. She is a novelist, short story writer and playwright, and writes in both Irish and English. She is also a literary critic who reviews frequently for The Irish Times.  Her fiction includes The Dancers Dancing (1999), The Bray House (1990), Fox Swallow Scarecrow (2007) and The Shelter of Neighbours (2012), Hurlamaboc (2009) and several other books.   Her latest books are Selected Stories (Dalkey Archive Press, 2017) and a memoir, Twelve Thousand Days (Blackstaff Press, 2018)

Eilis has won many awards for her work, including the Stewart Parker Award for Drama, Bisto Book of the Year`Awards, several Oireachtas awards for play and novels, and a shortlisting for the Orange Prize for Fiction.  She received the Irish Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2015, and a Hennessy Hall of Fame Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2016.

A well-known teacher of Creative Writing, she has been Writer Fellow in UCD and Trinity College, and is a member of Aosdána.    www.eilisnidhuibhne.com

Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting chair of the judging panel, is a Senior Federal Judge and a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of experience from over sixteen years on the bench. His first novel, The Majority Rules, was published in 2005.  His second novel of his political thriller trilogy; The Report to the Judiciary, was published in 2008. When not recalled to the Federal Bench, Judge Sullivan is a partner in a Washington law firm.

Update 04/04/2019: Added Exit West to list of genre works per comments,

2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award Longlist

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There are many genre novels among the 141 books longlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award, the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English. They include books by Omar ElAkkad, N.K. Jemisin, Victor LaValle, and Jeff Vandermeer.

Sponsored by Dublin (Ireland) City Council and managed by Dublin City Libraries, the International DUBLIN Literary Award is worth €100,000 to the winner. If the book has been translated the author receives €75,000 and the translator received €25,000.

The nominees were announced November 19. Brendan Teeling, Acting Dublin City Librarian, says the works were nominated by libraries in 115 cities and 41 countries worldwide; 39 are titles in translation, spanning 16 languages; 48 are first novels.

The members of the 2019 judging panel are Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, Yan Ge, Martin Middeke, Hans-Christian Oeser, Evie Wyld and Eugene R. Sullivan (non-voting chair).

The shortlist will be published on April 4 and the Lord Mayor of Dublin will announce the winner on June 12.

The longlisted titles follow the jump:

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