Tag Archives: Jared Shurin

Pixel Scroll 4/18/25 Esprit de L’Ascenseur Spatial — [Things I Wish I’d Said While Descending The Space Elevator]

Posted on by
19

(1) PEABODY AWARDS 2025 NOMINEES. This year’s nominees for the George Foster Peabody Awards program were released on April 17. The awards honor what are described as “the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and online media.”

Here are the nominees of genre interest.

Children/Youth

  • Spirit Rangers (Netflix)

Spirit Rangers is an animated series on Netflix that follows three Chumash and Cowlitz siblings who transform into animal heroes to protect their California national park, blending Native stories, environmental themes, and adventure. As the first U.S. kids’ show created and showrun by a Native American, with an all-Native writers’ room and deep tribal collaboration, it offers authentic, joyful, and empowering representation for Indigenous communities.(Laughing Wild / Netflix)

Interactive & Immersive

  • 1000xRESIST

This genre-blending narrative adventure game uses time, memory, and shifting gameplay styles to explore themes of identity, resistance, and intergenerational trauma, rooted in the emotional aftermath of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Created by a majority Asian-Canadian team, the game sets players in a haunting future shaped by a global pandemic and alien occupation, challenging them to reckon with historical memory. (sunset visitor 斜陽過客 and Fellow Traveller)

  • Tchia

In Tchia, players embark on a tropical open-world adventure to rescue the protagonist’s father from the tyrannical ruler Meavora, exploring a physics-driven sandbox across beautiful islands. Inspired by New Caledonia, the game features creative gameplay and immerses players in the culture and language of the island nation. (Awaceb)

Documentary

  • The Space Race (National Geographic Channel)

The Space Race tells the powerful, long-overdue story of Black NASA astronauts who overcame systemic racism to claim their place in the U.S. space program. The films centers on Ed Dwight, the nation’s first Black astronaut trainee who was denied flight but paved the way for future generations. Decades later, Dwight finally reached space at age 90, turning his personal victory into a historic moment of justice. (National Geographic Documentary Films, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Algeria Films & Cortés Filmworks)

  • Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (HBO | Max)

After a devastating accident left him paralyzed, Christopher Reeve became a powerful symbol of resilience, using his platform to inspire hope and advocate for disability rights. Throughout it all, he remained a passionate actor, filmmaker, and devoted family man, with his wife Dana as his unwavering support. (DC Studios / HBO Documentary Films / CNN Films)

(2) FUNDRAISING FOR FELIX FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. “Propane gas leak caused home explosion in Northwest Austin” reports NPR station KUT.

The home explosion in Northwest Austin that injured six people and damaged two dozen homes was caused by a substantial propane gas leak inside the home, according to Travis County Fire Marshal Gary Howell.

In a statement, Howell said there are no suspicious or criminal circumstances surrounding the incident.

“While this investigation is entering its final stages, it is important to remember that there is still a long road of recovery ahead for those who were affected by this tragic event,” he said. “There are still two people in critical condition at area hospitals.”

The house on Double Spur Loop near U.S. Highway 183 and Spicewood Springs exploded the morning of April 13. The blast was heard more than 15 miles away in Georgetown, according to the Austin Fire Department.

Community members have raised more than $36,000 for the Felix family, who owned the home.

Samantha Leer, whose house was damaged by the explosion, started another fundraiser for her neighbors to help with the rebuilding process. She said many homes, especially those closest to the explosion, need thousands of dollars in repairs.

“As a neighborhood we’re all still wrapping our heads around what happened and where to start to begin putting our lives back together,” Leer said on the GoFundMe page. “We’re all in an insurance ‘hold’ while we wait for the investigation to be completed. Our houses are damaged, our lives are displaced, so I am hoping … we can start putting some of the pieces back together both physically and mentally.”

(3) COMPARING GENRE ARTISTS. Steven Heller calls “Frank Frazetta, the Norman Rockwell of Horror” at PRINT Magazine.

Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) was not just a horror magazine artist whose purpose was to create fantasies that scare the bejesus out of the average mortal. He was an artist first, and storyteller second. His art is reminiscent of late 19th-century European symbolism, notably that of the French Odilon Redon and the Austrian Alfred Kubin—but Frazetta’s paintings express an American essence similar to Norman Rockwell (had Rockwell decided to paint menace instead of tranquility).

Picture a Rockwell image of a typical country doctor examining a young lad … except instead of a calm, caring man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope, the same personage wears animal skin and a spiked helmet, brandishing a heavy steel sword with a sharp serrated blade, poised to carve the heart of his young, trusting patient. And rather than a benign, handsome white-clad nurse assisting the doctor, there’s a busty, muscular she-wolf bedecked with slithering serpents and a bloodied scythe. Frazetta and Rockwell share the same tools but see through different eyes. Each captured the affection of their respective loyal fans, but it’s doubtful there’s much crossover of those bases…

(4) CELEBRATE BOOKS. Witness History explains “The origin of World Book Day” at the BBC.

In November 1995, a proposal of having an annual day focused on celebrating books was put forward at the UNESCO conference in Paris. 

The idea came from a long-established Spanish celebration ‘The Day of Books and Roses’. 

The first World Book Day was on 23 April 1996. 

Although some countries now celebrate World Book Day on different dates, it’s marked on 23 April in the majority of countries. 

Pere Vicens is a book publisher from Barcelona in Spain and one of the creators of World Book Day. He tells Gill Kearsley the origins of this now annual event.

(5) IN PRAISE OF SINNERS. “Sinners Is a Sumptuous Southern Vampire Delight” – Paste Magazine’s Tara Bennett is a fan.

Give it to writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) for coming at Sinners, his first horror feature, with the intentionality of a PhD student with something to prove. There’s no shortage of existing lazy or derivative vampire movies that he could have easily bested with modest effort. Instead, Coogler cracked the history books, collected his A-list family of collaborators, including composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and ever-trusted leading man Michael B. Jordan, to cinematically (with a capital C) transport the audience to a 1930’s Jim Crow Mississippi ripe for all kinds of delicious trouble.

Coogler’s Sinners screenplay is original but it most certainly carries the baton for what Misha Green explored in her mashup of horror, the supernatural and Black oppression in her HBO series, Lovecraft Country (2020). Although that series was ultimately too broad with its ambitions, Coogler wisely stays hyper-focused on just two monsters – the vampire and bigoted Whites who wear hoods. Coogler weaves vampiric metaphors into the societal oppression of the Old South and asks the audience to consider, which is worse?

Sinners is told through the world-weary eyes of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (a finely-tuned dual performance by Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after first surviving WWI, and then the organized crime gangs of Chicago….

(6) CORRECTION. Correcting yesterday’s Scroll, Andrew Porter now says, “Judy-Lynn del Rey piece ONLY available on broadcast versions of this, NOT at link!!!”

Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 54.

Very minor spoilers here if you’ve not been watching the recent series.  You’ve been warned.

Of the modern Doctor Whos, the one performed by David Tennant is my favorite by far. (It won’t surprise you that Tom Baker is my classic Doctor.) I liked him from the very first time that he appeared, in “The Christmas Invasion”.  (Spoiler alert from here out.) The fact that he won’t finish his transition until he inhales the fumes from a dropped flask of tea. Oh, what a truly British thing to have him do! 

Christopher Eccleston was good but I thought that he didn’t have long enough to fully settle into the role so I felt his character was more of a sketch than a fully developed character. His certainly would have been a better Doctor if he’d decided to stay around, but he didn’t. 

Tennant, on the other hand had three series plus some specials, he’d also be the Doctor in a two-part story in Doctor Who spin-off, Sarah Jane Adventures, “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith”. 

He got the proper time to settle into his character.  And what a character it was — intelligent, full of humor, sympathetic and just alien enough in his quirkiness to believable that he wasn’t human. 

Oh, and the stories. So, so great. Those along with his companions made for ever so great watching. My favorite companion?  Not picking one as each had their own unique effect on the series  and him — Rose Tyler, Donna Noble and Martha Jones, all made fine companions in very different ways. 

If I could pick just one story from his run, it’d be “The Unicorn and The Wasp” with Agatha Christie as a character and Donna Noble as the companion. And it was a country manor house mystery! 

Yes, I know he came back as the Fourteenth Doctor.

It’s certainly not his only genre role, and yes he played several Doctor Who roles before being the Tenth Doctor. He had a role in the BBC’s animated Scream of the Shalka and appeared in several Big Finish Productions. I think I read he played a Time Lord in one of them. 

Now let’s see about his other genre roles… One of my favorite series, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), had him as Gordon Stylus in the “Drop Dead” episode. The Quatermass Experiment film had him as Dr. Gordon Briscoe. 

He was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Barty Crouch Jr., a fine performance he gave there. I like the films, found what I read of the first novel dreadfully boring. 

In How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which I think has awesomely cute animation, he voices Spitelout Jorgenson, a warrior of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. Need I say more? I think not.  DreamWorks Dragons was another series in which he voiced this character. 

In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he had a short run there as Huyang.  Huh. He even voiced a character in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, one called Fugitoid, a sort of android figure.

He’s the voice of Dangerous Beans in The Amazing Maurice off Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

The last role I’ll mention is his Jessica Jones one and one that honestly made me not watch the series. No, I’ll not say why as that’d be a major spoiler. He was called Kevin Thompson / Kilgrave.

David Tennant

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) FIONA MOORE’S BOOKSHELF.  Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #32: Fiona Moore”. Photo at the link.

…On the top shelf, there’s a BFI Guide to Metropolis, and on the lower one, McGilligan’s exhaustive biography of its director, Fritz Lang. Metropolis is my favourite movie, in part because no two versions are ever the same. The original was lost, meaning that only a cut-down 90-minute version made for the US market survived, but over the years people added in found footage, or reordered things to make more sense. And since it’s silent, you don’t have to just use the original soundtrack; Moroder famously did a techno version, and I’ve seen the movie with accompaniments by a free jazz band and by an Irish harp. It’s fitting because the movie itself is one with resonances all over the political spectrum. These days, I think one could read it as a warning of what happens when billionaires form alliances with vindictive tech-bros and try to “disrupt the workplace”, and how the intellectuals and the workers need to come together to fix the damage….

(10) DESERT ISLAND DISC. [Item by Steven French.] One from the margins… “Super spicy! Jack Black’s Minecraft song Steve’s Lava Chicken becomes shortest ever UK Top 40 hit” in the Guardian.

Actor and musician Jack Black has made UK chart history, with the shortest ever song to reach the Top 40: his novelty track Steve’s Lava Chicken is just 34 seconds long.

The spectacularly silly song reaches No 21 this week, and is taken from A Minecraft Movie, the video game spin-off film, which has earned $570m (£430m) so far at the global box office – and caused cinemas to be overrun by the game’s young and high-energy fanbase.

Black performs the song in the film as the character Steve, as he shows the other protagonists around the alternate universe, the Overworld, and hymns the virtues of chicken cooked in lava (“Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack / Ooh, super spicy, it’s a lava attack”).

(11) WAYS TO SUPPORT NASA. The Planetary Society today wrote to members:

NASA science is facing a potential dark age.

News broke on April 11 confirming rumors that the White House Office of Management and Budget is working on a proposal that would cut the NASA science budget in half. If enacted, this budget would force the premature termination of dozens of active, productive spacecraft, and would halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA.

In response to these proposed cuts, The Planetary Society has launched a campaign for citizens to write to their representatives and voice their concerns. We urge Americans who support space exploration to share their support of NASA science.

(12) QUANTUS INTERRUPTUS. [Item by Steven French.] A watched quantum pot never boils – how the quantum Zeno effect reveals just how weird the quantum world is: “The quantum Zeno effect: how the ‘measurement problem’ went from philosophers’ paradox to physicists’ toolbox” at Physics World.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a quantum system. Specifically, you are an unstable quantum system – one that would, if left to its own devices, rapidly decay from one state (let’s call it “awake”) into another (“asleep”). But whenever you start to drift into the “asleep” state, something gets in the way. Maybe it’s a message pinging on your phone. Maybe it’s a curious child peppering you with questions. Whatever it is, it jolts you out of your awake–asleep superposition and projects you back into wakefulness. And because it keeps happening faster than you can fall asleep, you remain awake, diverted from slumber by a stream of interruptions – or, in quantum terms, measurements.

This phenomenon of repeated measurements “freezing” an unstable quantum system into a particular state is known as the quantum Zeno effect (figure 1). Named after a paradox from ancient Greek philosophy, it was hinted at in the 1950s by the scientific polymaths Alan Turing and John von Neumann but only fully articulated in 1977 by the physicists Baidyanath Misra and George Sudarshan (J. Math. Phys. 18 756). Since then, researchers have observed it in dozens of quantum systems, including trapped ions, superconducting flux qubits and atoms in optical cavities. But the apparent ubiquitousness of the quantum Zeno effect cannot hide the strangeness at its heart. How does the simple act of measuring a quantum system have such a profound effect on its behaviour?

(13) BLACK MIRROR HIGHLIGHT. The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reminisces: “Plaything – how Black Mirror took on its scariest ever subject: a 1990s PC games magazine”.

Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.

The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker….

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

Pixel Scroll 2/15/25 When The Scroll Is Pixelled Up Yonder, I’ll Be There

Posted on by
19

(1) THRILLERS OF GENRE INTEREST. CrimeReads shows an interesting group of cross-genre thrillers will arrive in bookstores this year: “Speculative Murder Mysteries and Alternative History Thrillers Out in 2025”. Here’s a promising example.

Cory O’Brien, Two Truths and a Lie
(Pantheon, March 4)

It’s hard to believe this is Cory O’Brien’s debut, given the sophisticated plotting and world-weary tone—Two Truths and a Lie already feels bound to be a classic.  O’Brien channels the spirit of Hammett and Chandler in his futuristic ode to Chinatown and The Long Goodbye, set in a future Los Angeles mostly inundated with water and home to a wide variety of scrappy denizens, hustling con artists, and veterans of the AI wars (both human and machine). The scruffy antihero narrating me tale is a former drone operator turned fact checker who finds himself embroiled in a Byzantine plot featuring erased memories, manipulative rich people, and dark secrets, with more twists than a mid-century candy wrapper. The conclusion is logical, devastating, and necessary.

(2) FREE YOUR HEAD. [Item by Steven French.] Ed Finn, founder of the Centre for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University has an interesting essay on the significance of science fiction in the magazine Issues in Science and Technology: “Step Into the Free and Infinite Laboratory of the Mind”.

Science fiction is a free, infinite laboratory of the mind that allows its audience to envision possible futures in context. By centering characters—people—instead of technologies, writers have to offer concrete answers to those nagging questions which can be so easy to gloss over when an invention or discovery exists only as a concept. Who will own it, use it, pay for it, maintain it? Where will it be installed or deployed? What does it look like, smell like, feel like? How does it actually work? Does it need to be plugged in? What if you drop a piece of toast into it? What else must be true in the future for this thing to exist? These questions create what I call speculative specificity: The craft of effective storytelling pushes authors and readers to play out second- and third-order consequences and to imagine the full context of a changed future.

(3) KIPPLE-IN-TRAINING. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #22: Nick Seeley”.

The shelf just over my workspace is something like my literary inbox, full of things I’m reading, things I want to read next, things I’m repeatedly revisiting, and a few curiosities. Most of them are new, the books I’m finding most interesting right now, but some have been on this shelf (or its equivalent, in other apartments) for years. I think I started Just Kids a decade ago, but found it too beautiful and heartbreaking to finish. It waits. Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Call Out has posed a similar challenge, though it’s only been there a few months.

The copy of Hugo Williams’ All the Time in the World was given me at the beginning of my junior year of college, more than a quarter century ago, by my uncle’s then-girlfriend. She had spent a lot of the previous summer hanging out with me and my high school buddies, smoking dope on the roof of my parents’ house, listening to The Sundays and Robyn Hitchcock and Gilmour-era Floyd on Walkman speakers, talking about life and dreams and travel. The book wasn’t the type of thing I usually read back then, but it grabbed me and never let go. The world Williams bummed his way through with that charming mix of naivete and insight felt so different from the one I’d heard about in terrifying American newscasts: somehow more hopeful, even as it emerged from the devastation of global war; inviting, vast, strange. Williams transformed my simple desire to GTFO of the DC suburbs into a wanderlust that eventually drove me halfway around the world myself, and never really let me go. This is one of the books I’ve dragged with me the whole way, along with my battered copies of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, my complete Eliot, and a few volumes of Stephen Dobyns’ poetry….

(4) SEEKING A SIGN IN VAIN. The Bookseller, the UK Bookseller Association’s near-weekly magazine, reports “Cultural sector ‘fears being sidelined’ on AI as UK refuses to sign ‘sustainable use’ statement at Paris summit”. (Behind a paywall.)

The cultural sector feared they might be sidelined during the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action summit held in Paris on 10th and 11th February, and it seems their fears were well founded. In addition, the UK, along with the US, refused to sign a statement on the “inclusive and sustainable use of AI”.

On 7th February, 34,396 creators from all cultural fields in France signed a petition, launched by four collection agencies and published by the daily newspaper Le Parisien, to express their concern over copyright and the future of their professions in the face of the AI onslaught.

Also ahead of the summit, 40 international cultural organisations published a call for intellectual property to be respected. The International Charter on Culture and Innovation specified five principles: “AI model providers must respect fundamental rights, including copyright and related rights, in particular by diligently seeking and respecting the express wishes of rightsholders; effective and full transparency towards rightsholders on the copyrighted works and content used to train AI models; encouraging operators of AI models to seek licences, within the framework of authorisations duly negotiated with rightsholders; appropriate and fair remuneration for the use of works and content protected by intellectual property rights; and effective sanctions for non-compliance with these principles.”

The French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) was disappointed by the summit’s final Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet, which the UK and US refused to sign. SNE director Renaud Lefebvre regretted that it ignored the call “on which we worked actively so that all the actors converged on fundamental principles”, the French trade publication Livres Hebdo reported….

(5) AGAINST MIMICRY. In Christopher Norris’ commentary at The Bookseller he says “We Need a New Moral Right” to address AI. (Behind a paywall.)

The UK book trade stands at a crossroads. Artificial intelligence is reshaping the way content is created, marketed and consumed. While technological progress often brings opportunities, it also introduces challenges that demand urgent attention. One such challenge is the rise of AI-generated works that mimic the style of real authors. These works can be passed off as original, eroding the integrity of authorship and undermining the trust that underpins the book industry. Existing moral rights under UK copyright law – such as the right to attribution or the right to object to false attribution – fall short in addressing this issue. It is time for the industry to consider the introduction of a new moral right: the Right to Protection Against AI Mimicry….

(6) AUTHOR REMINDS ABOUT UK’S COPYRIGHT PROTECTION HISTORY. Also at The Bookseller, “Jeanette Winterson hits out at UK government over AI plans, arguing books shouldn’t be ‘fodder for Big Tech”, (Behind a paywall.)

…Winterson told The Bookseller: “I’m asking the British government today to protect the copyright of writers and artists in this country, and to understand that what we do is not just data. It’s not just content, and it’s certainly not there for big tech to read because they can.

“In 1710 Britain became the first country to operate a copyright law under Queen Anne. Later in the 19th century, Dickens fought for copyright because, although the world changes, piracy doesn’t, and the smash and grab attitude doesn’t. And writers, creators deserve better.”

She added: “Most people don’t make a fortune out of this stuff. They do it because it is their life’s work, their mission, their passion, and they deserve to be protected. It matters. I want you to reconsider so that we become more than fodder for big tech.”

Winterson’s criticisms of the government’s proposals on AI follow those by the bestselling authors Kate Mosse, who said an “opt-out solution won’t work”, and Richard Osman, who told the Guardian using copyrighted work without permission or payment is “theft” and will “harm” the creative industries…

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Red Dwarf series (1988)

Thirty-seven years ago, the Red Dwarf series first aired on BBC Two. It was created by Doug Grant and Rob Naylor who based it off their Dave Hollins: Space Cadet that aired in the BBC Radio 4 series Son of Cliché show also produced by them.

As of two years ago, seventy-four episodes of the series have aired, including one feature-length special, concluding the twelfth series. The cost has had myriad changes with only Chris Barrie as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Julesas as Cat and Robert Llewellyn as Kryten being there for the entire series. 

Because Grant and Naylor not only directed the series but wrote the material and frequently changed everything as the series went along, critics came to be sharply divided on the series. The changes often caused them to seriously loathe Grant and Naylor. Or love them. No middle ground at all. Of what they said, Grant and Naylor “didn’t care one fuck”. That’s a direct quote. 

BBC gave them two hundred fifty thousand pounds per episode by the end of the run of the series, about three hundred thirty thousand dollars currently. Not a big budget but enough. It’s now broadcasting on Dave which is a British free-to-air television channel owned by UKTV, a joint venture of the BBC and Thames TV.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) NEW METHOD FOUND OF INFERRING THE PRESENCE OF EXOPLANETS OR EXOMOONS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There is a new way of inferring the presence of exoplanets/exomoons.  Daniel Yahalomi, David Kipping, Eric Agol and David Nesvorny, who are currently US based astronomers, have just published a paper as to a new method of inferring the presence of an ‘invisible’ planet or moon in a star system. In essence they are looking at transit (eclipse) data: that is data of a star dimming a little as an exoplanet passes in front of it as seen from the Earth. First a few basics…

A planet orbiting a star such that it periodically blocks (transits or eclipses) some of the star’s light as seen from the Earth will do so with a specific regularity.  So far, literally thousands of exoplanets have been detected this way. However, the transit method only really works with planets orbiting close to their star: planets further away are less likely to transit and so be ‘invisible’. However, if a (single) planet is detected regularly orbiting a star then it should do so very regularly but around 70% of transit detections do not have this regularity!  Now, if the transiting planet had a moon then this could cause a perturbation (or wobble or variation) in the period of the transiting planet we can see: in techno-speak this is known as the ‘perturbation of transit timing variations’ (PTTV). With an exo-moon this would likely (in most cases) have a high frequency: the Moon orbits the Earth many times in a year. Alas, many PTTVs don’t show this. So what is going on?

An alien observing a transiting Earth would see a deviation in transit time from orbit variations due to an ‘invisible’ Jupiter

Now, if there are two planets transiting we can see them and can see how much starlight each blocks and so can work out their size and orbital distance.  But suppose we cannot see the other (‘invisible’) planet then there are a myriad of possibilities as to the ‘invisible’ companion’s size and orbital distance from its star.  What the astronomers have done is to calculate a lot of the possible combinations and depict these as a graph.  Doing this creates a complex picture/pattern but one with two lines or ‘edges’.  This then is the situation with two planets in a star’s system and one of them is invisible. What it means is that one visible and one invisible planet by themselves in a star system have a predicted range of PTTVs.

What the astronomers then did is to look at the planet systems from whom we can clearly see transits of two companion planets.  Surprisingly, what they found was that there were over a dozen that had planets with PTTVs below the lower edge in their graph. This simply should not happen!  What this means is that these two planet systems must have a third, ‘invisible’ party be it another planet or an exo-moon. The astronomers now have a way of inferring an invisible third planet or exo-moon in known two planet star systems even if only one planet is transiting.

What astronomers now need to do is to look at the 70% with PTTVs of the thousands of planets for whom we have transit data. There must be literally thousands of ‘invisible’ third planets or exo-moons whose presence we should be able to clearly infer.

If all this seems a little complicated, Brit astronomer based in the US, and team member, David Kipping, at the Cool Worlds has made 19-minute video on this.  See also their paper: Yahalomi, D. A., et al (2024) “The Exoplanet Edge: Planets Don’t Induce Observable TTVs Faster than Half their Orbital Period”. Pre-print.

To summarise this all even further into a single sentence, what this does is to infer a three-body problem from a two-body system from a series of single body transits.

“From Wobbles to Worlds – Discovery of The Exoplanet Edge!” at Cool Worlds.

(10) WHAT’S LOST, DOC? ThePulp.Net talks about the script for “The lost Doc Savage movie” of the Seventies.

With the on-again/off-again possibility of a new movie or TV series based on the Doc Savage pulps seemingly always in the Hollywood news, it’s worth looking back at a Doc Savage movie that never was.

In summer 1978, the television network ABC was looking at a script for a TV movie based on the Man of Bronze’s adventures. The script, titled Doc Savage: The Mind Assassins, was being offered to the network by Universal Studios.

This script might have been lost forever had it not been for one Leon Manuel Jr. “I’ve had this script since 1978. Someone who knew I collected scripts found it in the trash and gave it to me,” Manuel said in a note.

That rescued script was written at the behest of producer Allan Balter by journeyman television writer Barry Oringer, who had scripted scores of episodes for classic TV series such as Ben Casey, The Virginian, The Fugitive, The Invaders, I Spy, Mannix, Medical Center, and Barnaby Jones.

Balter, who died in 1981, had written or produced for, among other TV programs, Mission: Impossible, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Six Million Dollar Man, and a pair of made-for-TV Captain America movies.

The Mind Assassins reads like what it is supposed to be: a 1970s action-adventure movie of the week….

(11) FLASH INSIGHTS. Rocky Watches Movies makes a promise: “Flash Gordon (1980): 20 Things You Never Knew!” Rocky could be right – for instance, I never knew that lead actor Sam Jones was discovered on The Dating Game.

Get ready to blast off into a world of mind-blowing trivia with our deep dive into the iconic 1980 film, Flash Gordon! From shocking behind-the-scenes secrets to hidden details you never noticed, we’re uncovering the ultimate truth about this campy sci-fi classic.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/3/25 Never Send A Pixel To Do A Scroll’s Job

Posted on by
14

(1) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to split a pastrami sandwich with Martha Thomases in Episode 244 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast. Edelman adds, “Those not interested in my conversation with a comics guest because they only care about science fiction should know I devoted seven minutes of the intro to eulogizing Barry Malzberg.”

Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases is a freelance journalist who has been published in the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, and more. She’s a VP of Corporate Communications at ComicMix.com as well as a weekly contributor there. From 1990-1999 she was Publicity Manager at DC Comics. She also worked as a researcher and assistant for author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner’s Song, On Women and Their Elegance, and Harlot’s Ghost. She created Dakota North with Tony Salmons for Marvel.  Next year, A Wave Blue World will publish Second-Hand Rose, her graphic novel with Richard Case.

We discussed her theory that your popularity in high school determines whether you’ll move to New York, why she was into DC rather than Marvel at the start of her comics fandom, Denny O’Neil’s explanation of the true difference between Metropolis and Gotham City, the realization she had at 35 as to the true reason her parents allowed her to read comics, the weirdness of Little Lotta and Baby Huey, why she was more nervous meeting Denny O’Neil than she was meeting Norman Mailer, how Dakota North was born, our mutual love for the She-Hulk TV series, selling comics to comics fans vs. selling them to potential readers who don’t yet know they’d like comics, and much more.

(2) WRITER BEWARE. Victoria Strauss has full details of legal charges against scammers and what they did in “Karma’s a Bitch: The Law Catches Up With PageTurner Press and Media” at Writer Beware.

…The CEO and VP of one of the worst publishing scams of the past few years have been arrested in California.

Some background. The scam in question is PageTurner Press and Media, one of the biggest and most brazen of the vast array of publishing/marketing/fake literary agency/impersonation scams operating out of the Philippines….

…PageTurner operates as a type of pig butchering scam (where victims are tricked into handing over their assets via escalating demands for money). The most elaborate of its schemes involve multiple false identities and company names, with victims handed around between them. Most writers I’ve heard from were fleeced to the tune of low- to mid-four figures, but many lost substantially more–tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands in some cases. The largest payout I know of was extracted from an author who was recruited to buy costly re-publishing packages, then pressured into paying for hugely expensive marketing schemes, and ultimately targeted by one of PageTurner’s fake film companies and convinced to purchase a screenplay, treatment, PR campaign, and more, all for eye-popping amounts of money. All told, this author lost in excess of $600,000….

…On December 9, 2024, Sordilla was arrested in California, along with Innocentrix VP Bryan Navales Tarosa (who, like many individuals involved in these scams, started his career as a sales rep for Author Solutions). Sordilla and Tarosa are both residents of the Philippines, but were visiting the USA at the time.

One day later, authorities arrested Gemma Traya Austin, a US resident and PageTurner’s registered agent, who according to an August indictment in the US Court of the Southern District of California of all three individuals on charges of mail and wire fraud, was responsible for PageTurner’s US bank accounts. (These have been seized; they reportedly contained nearly $5 million.)…

(3) MORE RICHARD MORGAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Having got through to the semi-finals of the BBC’s Christmas University Challenge a few days ago, SF author, Richard Morgan’s Queen’s College Cambridge team last night (2nd January) faced Churchill College Cambridge (that’s twice they have faced a fellow Cambridge college).  This time they did not get it so easy as the two teams of alumni (the regular University Challenge has teams of current students) were more even matched. Indeed, Richard’s performance was not so sure-footed. There was even one SF/F book related question on horror to which Richard gave the answer ‘Arthur Machen’ when in fact it should have been M. R. James….

And the competition was close, ending in an almost nail-biting-down-to-the-elbows 95-95 draw.  This necessitated a tie-breaker question and Queen’s won! This means that we will see Richard and his team in the finals tonight. “University Challenge Christmas 2024 E09 – Churchill, Cambridge v. Queens’ Cambridge”.

(4) DIGITAL D&D SLOT MACHINE ON THE WAY. “Wizards of the Coast Goes All In On New D&D Gambling Game” at Dungeons and Dragons Fanatics.  

In news which came as a surprise to many Dungeons & Dragons fans, Hasbro recently announced a licensing deal with the gambling company Global Games to produce a number of new products. This includes an upcoming digital slot machine entitled Dungeons & Dragons: Tales of Riches, which will be hitting casinos and online iGaming platforms sometime in early 2025.

It’s a somewhat controversial move for Hasbro given the often negative connotation of gambling among many consumers, but also speaks to some of the growing financial pressures Hasbro is facing and the value of licensing global intellectual properties like D&D….

… It’s not entirely clear why Hasbro has decided to license out the Dungeons & Dragons brand to a global online casino distributor, but like many business decisions it likely comes down to dollars and cents. Global gambling is a highly lucrative market and the potential licensing revenue could be significant (although neither Games Global or Hasbro has provided any information on the financial details)….

(5) TOUR DE FORCE. Visit another writer’s bookshelves in “Shelfies #17: David Agranoff”. (Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.) 

…My office is designed so that when I am sitting at the desk I can reach and grab any resource material or actual Philip K. Dick novel without getting up.

You can see that I have the books in three stacks. Between the stacks, I have the seven books I most often use or reference. (Pot-Healer, Time Slip, Scanner Darkly, Eye in the Sky, High Castle, Do Androids, and my favorite, Three Stigmata)….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born January 3, 1892 — J.R.R. Tolkien. (Died 1973.)

By Paul Weimer: If Isaac Asimov (see January 2nd’s scroll) was one of the two midwives of getting me into science fiction.  J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the two midwives of getting me into fantasy (the other, absolutely no surprise to any of you, was Roger Zelazny).  I think I’ve told the story before of how I got into his work. The next weekend, the newest issue of TV proclaimed that they were going to show all three Tolkien movies — The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King. I had a week, friends as a ten-year-old reader of genre to read the extant Tolkien canon.  

I read The Hobbit, and then blitzed through The Lord of the Rings in short order. I bounced off of The Silmarillion and would not try it again for another decade. But I felt armed and ready for the animated movies. 

Lord, I was not ready for “Where there’s a Whip, there’s a Way”. But, then, no one really is.

But back to Tolkien himself, he was in fact, my ur-Epic Fantasy as well as being the ur-Epic Fantasy for most of modern fiction. I measured a lot of the epic fantasy of the 80’s and 90’s by the roads of Middle Earth.  His worldbuilding, his prose, his iconic and mythic writing draws me in again, and again, and again. 

J.R.R. Tolkien

(7) COMICS SECTION.

  • xkcd teaches us how to fold an Origami Black Hole. (Don’t miss the note that appears when you mouse over the cartoon.)
  • Bizarro knows late night thoughts.
  • Candorville bridges the generational divide.
  • Curses did everything but the work.
  • Heart of the City learns about fanfiction.
  • Thatababy has a strangely logical explanation.
  • Brewster Rockit finds out who replaced Baby New Year.

(8) SFF ON JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] This was the final of the “Second Chance” tournament, in which 9 players who had come in second in regular play were brought back to compete for a spot in the upcoming Wild Card tournament. The first round of play had a category “Sci-Fi Fill In”. The players took it in reverse order.

$1000: Richard K. Morgan’s tale of cyberwarriors: “Altered ___ “

Kaitlin Tarr responded correctly: “What’s ‘Carbon’?”

$800: By Ursula K. Le Guin: “The Left Hand of ___ “

Colleen Matthews gave us “What is ‘Darkness’?”

$600: Rick Deckard is on the hunt: “Do Androids Dream of ___  ___ “

Colleen knew it was ‘Electric Sheep’.

$400: A Harlan Ellison classic: “I Have No Mouth & I Must ___ “

Will Yancey tried “What is ‘Speak’?” but of course this was wrong. Colleen and Kaitlin didn’t know this either, so it was a triple stumper. (Honestly I think this was a misstep by the clue-setters in terms of difficulty.)

$200: A full-course meal available from Douglas Adams: “The Restaurant at the End of the ___ “

Colleen got it: “What is ‘the Universe’?”

(9) KEEPING DOCTORS AWAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Apple+ is free this weekend (Jan 3-5):

https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2024/12/get-a-free-all-access-pass-to-apple-tv-the-first-weekend-of-2025

And this article covers a bunch of other (all legit) ways to get Apple+ free. (We’re currently halfway through the free-with-Roku 3-month deal.)

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-tv-plus-free-trials

Here’s the BestBuy URL, which I suspect is (non-Roku-users) best bet (other than Apple’s 1-week free trial):

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-free-apple-tv-for-3-months-new-or-qualified-returning-subscribers-only/6484512.p?skuId=6484512

My A+ rec’s include Ted Lasso; Shrinking (with Harrison Ford), Slow Horses. (None of which are sf, FWIW).

BTW, Apple offers the first episode of each series free, without having to subscribe first.

(10) HADFIELD Q&A. “Business Daily meets: Astronaut Chris Hadfield” – hear the interview at BBC Sounds.

Colonel Chris Hadfield is a former fighter pilot who became an astronaut and served as a commander of the International Space Station (ISS). While in orbit he became a social media star, posting breath-taking pictures of earth, as well as videos demonstrating practical science and playing his guitar. 

These days, the Canadian invests in businesses and has written several best-selling fiction and non-fiction books. 

In this programme, Chris Hadfield tells Russell Padmore how he was influenced by Star Trek, and the Apollo missions to the moon, as a child. He outlines why he welcomes private investment in space and he explains how he has become known for being the musical star in orbit.

(11) I TAKE MY T. REX ON ROUTE 66. “How did dinosaurs travel millions of years ago? Prehistoric highway may hold answers” on NPR’s “Morning Edition”. (Linking to this story again as an excuse to use Dern’s title.)

The discovery of a “prehistoric highway” in the United Kingdom could reveal more about how dinosaurs traveled millions of years ago.

(12) WHY WASN’T I TOLD? The New York Times says there’s Broadway production of Our Town with Jim Parsons as the Stage Manager, and it’s closing January 19. The supporting cast includes some other notables from TV like Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes.

Kenny Leon brings Thornton Wilder’s microcosmic drama back to Broadway, starring Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) as the Stage Manager. Zoey Deutch and Ephraim Sykes play the young lovers, Emily Webb and George Gibbs, with Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes as Mr. and Mrs. Webb; Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs; Donald Webber Jr. as Simon Stimson and Julie Halston as Mrs. Soames. (Through Jan. 19 at the Barrymore Theater.) Read the review.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Nancy Lebovitz, Nickpheas, David Goldfarb, 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 Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 11/13/24 I’ve Been To Pixels But I’ve Never Scrolled To Me

Posted on by
11

(1) DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE. Paul Lynch’s book Prophet Song, set in a near future Ireland, is the 2024 Fiction Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lynch’s novel also received the Booker in 2023.

(2) THE BOOKSHELF IS THEIR COSTAR. Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin have launched a weekly newsletter called Shelfies, in which they get people to talk about their favorite bookshelf, and their connection with the books on it. Shurin declares, “It is unashamedly us snooping at people’s shelves.”

Take a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves! We love books – and we’re the sort of people who love checking out other people’s collections! With Shelfies, we’ve asked a wide range of readers, authors and collectors from all walks of life to share not just their shelves with us – but the books that changed them.

From novelists to video game designers, scientists and film makers, and from London to Singapore, Ghana, Australia and New York and all points in between, Shelfies is a unique dose of book love directly into your inbox – sharing our love of books, with you.

(3) AMAZON EDITORS PICKS OF THE YEAR. Today Amazon posted: “Announcing the Best Books of 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors”. These two novels of genre interest are listed:

  • The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

(4) SFPA OFFICER ELECTION RESULTS. Starting January 1, 2025, Diane Severson Mori will be Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.

(5) ONCE MORE INTO THE AIRLOCK, DEAR FRIENDS. On the Seattle Worldcon 2025 blog, Cora Buhlert pays tribute to a Poul Anderson novel that was a Hugo finalist in 1961, the last time the Worldcon was in the city. “Fantastic Fiction: Knights versus Aliens: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson”.

Science fiction often begins with a question of “what if”? And in 1960, Poul Anderson asked just such a question: What if aliens attempting to invade the Earth encountered a troop of medieval knights? And what if the knights won the ensuing struggle? This is the premise of The High Crusade, one of the most offbeat and entertaining science fiction novels of the early 1960s….

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboys Books of Joshua Tree, CA has produced the eightieth episode of their Simultaneous Times podcast with stories by Elena Sichrovsky and Colin Alexander.

From the pages of Radon Journal.

Stories featured in this episode:

“Tonight We’re Wearing Waste Bags” by Elena Sichrovsky; Music by Patrick Urn; Read by Jenna Hanchey

“Dreamer, Passenger, Partner by Colin Alexander; Music by Phog Masheeen; Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: The Running Man (1987)

By Paul Weimer: Possibly the best of the Schwarzenegger SF movies of the late 1980’s. Yes, better than The Terminator, better than Predator, possibly on a par with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Running Man remains a biting satire of fascism, authoritarianism, consumerism, game shows, and a whole lot more. 

The authoritarian hellhole that the United States, using violent game shows as an opiate to the masses is really on point, decades later, rather more plausible than ever. Some of the best (and by best, I mean scary) are some of the commercials and interstitial bits in between the actual Running Man show. The show where a man climbs a rope, trying to grab dollars with a vicious pack of dogs underneath him…or the neo-Puritanism revealed when an announcer shockingly reveals Amber may have had several lovers in a year.

Arnold strides through this film and carries it on his charisma, as a package deal with Richard Dawson, who plays Damon Killan as an evil version of his Family Feud persona. They have the best rapport and the movie sings when they finally meet each other. (I was surprised on a rewatch how long the movie actually takes to put the two of them in the same room as each other). I also think the movie hits the right level of action, adventure, social commentary, and humor. 

And then there are the betting pool scenes. Long before betting truly has taken over sports, and a lot of other things, the betting on the TV show seemed to me at the time to be “over the top” (who would bet on a game show)?  Naive me didn’t believe it…but in the years since, it makes absolute and corrosive sense that the general public would in fact bid on the game show and the deaths on the show. I mean, if The Running Man was made today, Draftkings would be advertising on The Running Man.

Sadly, given recent events…I think it might be too naive in thinking that the ending, where the crimes of the state being revealed lead to revolution and change, can actually be realistic in this day and age. But I can dream, right?

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Cora Buhlert celebrated the recent holiday with “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Halloween Special: ‘The Tomb of Sibor’”.

I don’t have any Egyptian looking trinkets in my collection, so this Olmec head my Dad brought back from Mexico years ago will have to do.

…“Remember, girls, we are looking for the Lost Tomb of Sibor. Scorpia, since your people hail from the Crimson Waste, you have knowledge of this wasteland that the Horde lacks…”

“Yes, but…”

“So I get why you need Scorpia. But why am I here, Shadow Weaver?”

“Because you are Force Captain, Catra. And because Scorpia didn’t want to go without you.”

“I’ll get you for this, Scorpia.”

“So lead the way, Scorpia. You do know where the tomb is, don’t you?”

“Yes, but… I don’t think this is a good idea, Shadow Weaver. The Tomb of Sidor is an accursed place. My people shun it and never go there.”

“Silly barbaric superstition. The Tomb of Sidor contains something of great value to the Horde and I mean to retrieve it for Lord Hordak. And now go, Scorpia. Take us to the Tomb.”

“Yes, but it’s your funeral.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Hush, Catra, she’ll hear you.”…

(10) WET WORK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It may be that there are sub-surface mini-seas on some of the moons of Uranus!

The Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 revealed an unusually off-centred planetary magnetic field. Nine US and one Brit researchers have now re-examined the Voyager Solar wind data set. It reveals that Uranus was hit by a Solar windstorm at the time of the craft’s encounter with the planet. This Solar windstorm offset the planet’s magnetic field.

Similar observations in the Saturn system reveal that when its moons with sub-ice surface water orbit outside of the protection of Saturn’s magnetic field, probes cannot detect water-group ions; this is because they have been swept away by the Solar wind. The researchers therefore hypothesise that the absence of water-group ions when Voyager 2 passed by might not be due to an absence of moons sub-surface water but due to the Solar windstorm that was raging at the time that swept those ions away.  It could be that some of Uranus’ moons do have sub-surface water. They hypothesise that Uranus’s two outer moons, Titania and Oberon, are more likely candidates for harbouring liquid water oceans.

The primary research paper is Jasinski, J. M. et al. (2024) “The anomalous state of Uranus’s magnetosphere during the Voyager 2 flyby”. Nature Astronomy, Pre-print.

(11) MOOR OR LESS. “Utility in Britain Offers Free Electricity to Grow Clean Energy” – a New York Times article. Link bypasses the paywall.

Were Heathcliff to roam the blustery moors around Wuthering Heights today, he might be interrupted by a ping on his cellphone saying something like this: The wind is raging, so power is cheap. It’s a good time to plug in the car.

OK. So the 18th-century literary occupants of these windswept hills received no such pings.

But Martin and Laura Bradley do. They live in Halifax, an old mill town below the wuthering, or windy, heights of West Yorkshire. And when a squall kicks up, producing a surplus of electricity from wind turbines on the moor, their phones light up with a notification, like one that informed them of a 50 percent discount one Saturday in October….

…Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest electricity supplier, runs nine wind turbines on those hills. When it’s gusty, and power is abundant, it offers discounts. The Bradleys say they save upward of 400 pounds ($517) a year. Octopus says it not only attracts customers but also persuades communities that they benefit from new energy infrastructure.

“We’ve got these famously bleak, windy hills,” said Greg Jackson, the company’s chief executive. “We wanted to demonstrate to people that wind electricity is cheaper, but only when you use it when it’s windy.”…

(12) THE DEATHS FROM TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES IN THE USA HAVE BEEN GREATLY UNDERESTIMATED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In climate-change science fiction, people die in major climate events: cf. the film The Day After Tomorrow or the climate fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson.

In the real world, people die all the time and this enables demographers to calculate the number of expected deaths. Usually only a score or more deaths are associated with US tropical storms.  These are due to obvious things like drownings or being hit by wind-blown debris.

Two US demographers have now looked the number of excess deaths (those above the expected death rate) between 1930 and 2015. They have found that there are an average of 7,000 – 11,000 excess deaths in the months following a tropical storm or hurricane. These deaths are mainly from infants (less than 1 year of age), people 1 – 44 years of age, and the black population. (Presumably the elderly were safe in a refuge while young adults were protecting property and so in harm’s way? But the very elderly also took a big hit.) The researchers did not look at the death certificates of all (around 100,000) those excess deaths over this eight-and-a-half decade period and so do not know exactly what it was they died of. This, they say, needs to be the subject of future research.

The primary academic paper is Young, R. & Hsiang, S. (2024) “Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States” Nature, vol. 635, p121-128.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Disney Debuts ‘The Boy & The Octopus’, Taika Waititi’s Holiday Tale Starring a CG Cephalopod” – Animation Magazine introduces the four-minute short.

A Disney Holiday Short: The Boy & The Octopus follows the journey of a child who discovers a curious octopus has attached to his head during a seaside vacation. After returning home, the boy forms a true friendship with the octopus by introducing his new companion to his life on land — harnessing the power of the Force with his Jedi lightsaber, playing with his Buzz Lightyear action figure, and imagining Santa Claus’ route around the world with the map on his wall — before taking the lovable octopus out into the world to experience the joy of the holidays, hidden under his Mickey Mouse beanie….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]

Big Book of Cyberpunk TOC Released

Posted on by

The Big Book of Cyberpunk arrives September 26. Editor Jared Shurin tells File 770, “As with any attempt at a definitive collection, I suspect (and hope) it will provoke conversation!”

At over a thousand pages it is the largest anthology of the genre to date, representing a half-century of global cyberpunk, with authors from over two dozen countries.

Shurin’s table of contents includes Delany’s “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”, and by anticipating the later cyberpunk movement that way Shurin makes a down payment on the debate.  

The U.S. edition can be preordered from a variety of sellers (see list here.) The UK edition is coming in 2024.

  1. Yasser Abdellatif – “Younis in the Belly of the Whale” (2011) – translation by Robin Moger
  2. K.C. Alexander – “Four Tons Too Late” (2014)
  3. Madeline Ashby – “Be Seeing You” (2015)
  4. Ryuko Azuma – “2045 Dystopia” (2018) – first translation by Marissa Skeels
  5. Jacques Barcia – “Salvaging Gods” (2010)
  6. Greg Bear – “Petra” (1982)
  7. Steve Beard – “Retoxicity” (1998)
  8. Bef – “Wonderama” (1998) – first translation by the the author
  9. Bruce Bethke – “Cyberpunk” (1983)
  10. Lauren Beukes – “Branded” (2003) 
  11. Russell Blackford – “Glass Reptile Breakout” (1985)
  12. Maurice Broaddus – “I Can Transform You” (2013)
  13. Pat Cadigan – “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
  14. Myra Çakan – “Spider’s Nest” (2004) – translation by Jim Young
  15. Beth Cato – “Apocalypse Playlist” (2020)
  16. Suzanne Church – “Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop” (2012)
  17. Samuel R. Delany – “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” (1968)
  18. Paul Di Filippo – “A Short Course in Art Appreciation” (1988)
  19. Philip K. Dick – “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (1966)
  20. Cory Doctorow – “0wnz0red” (2002)
  21. Candas Jane Dorsey – “[Learning About] Machine Sex” (1988)
  22. George Alec Effinger – “The World As We Know It” (1992)
  23. Greg Egan – “Axiomatic” (1990)
  24. Isabel Fall – “Helicopter Story” (2020)
  25. Minister Faust – “Somatosensory Cortex Dog Mess You Up Big Time, You Sick Sack of S**T” (2021)
  26. Fabio Fernandes – “WiFi Dreams” (2019) – translation by the author
  27. Taiyo Fujii – “Violation of the TrueNet Security Act” (2013) – translation by Jim Hubbert
  28. Ganzeer – “Staying Crisp” (2018)
  29. William Gibson – “The Gernsback Continuum” (1981)
  30. William Gibson and Michael Swanwick – “Dogfight” (1985)
  31. Eileen Gunn – “Computer Friendly” (1989)
  32. Omar Robert Hamilton – “Rain, Streaming” (2019) 
  33. Karen Heuler – “The Completely Rechargeable Man” (2008)
  34. Saad Hossain – “The Endless” (2020) 
  35. Gwyneth Jones – “Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland” (1996)
  36. Richard Kadrey – “Surfing the Khumbu” (2002)
  37. Khalid Kaki – “Operation Daniel” (2016) – translation by Adam Talib
  38. James Patrick Kelly – “Rat” (1986)
  39. John Kessel – “The Last American” (2007)
  40. Cassandra Khaw – “Degrees of Beauty” (2016)
  41. Christian Kirchev – “File: the death of Designer D” (2009)
  42. Aleš Kot – “A Life of Its Own” (2019) 
  43. Nancy Kress – “With the Original Cast” (1982)
  44. Naomi Kritzer – “Cat Pictures Please” (2015)
  45. Lavanya Lakshminarayan – “Études” (2020)
  46. David Langford – “comp.basilisk.faq” (1999)
  47. Oliver Langmead – “Glitterati” (2017)
  48. Fritz Leiber – “Coming Attraction” (1950)
  49. Jean-Marc Ligny – “RealLife 3.0” (2014) – first translation by N.R.M. Roshak
  50. Arthur Liu – “The Life Cycle of a Cyber Bar” (2021) – translation by Nathan Faries
  51. Ken Liu – “Thoughts and Prayers” (2019)
  52. Steven S Long – “Keeping Up with Mr Johnson” (2016)
  53. M. Lopes da Silva – “Found Earworms” (2019)
  54. James Lovegrove – “Britworld™” (1992)
  55. Nick Mamatas – “Time of Day” (2002)
  56. Phillip Mann – “An Old-Fashioned Story” (1989)
  57. Lisa Mason – “Arachne” (1987)
  58. Tim Maughan – “Flyover Country” (2016)
  59. Ken MacLeod – “Earth Hour” (2011)
  60. Paul J McAuley – “Gene Wars” (1991)
  61. Sam J. Miller – “Feral Arcade Children of the American Northeast” (2021)
  62. Misha – “Speed” (1988)
  63. Janelle Monáe and Alaya Dawn Johnson – “The Memory Librarian” (2022)
  64. Sunny Moraine – “I Tell Thee All, I Can No More” (2013)
  65. Michael Moss – “Keep Portland Wired” (2020)
  66. T.R. Napper – “Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang” (2015)
  67. Kim Newman – “SQPR” (1992)
  68. Mandisi Nkomo – “Do Androids Dream of Capitalism and Slavery?” (2020)
  69. Jeff Noon – “Ghost Codes of Sparkletown” (2011)
  70. Brandon O’Brien – “fallenangel.dll” (2016)
  71. Craig Padawer – “Hostile Takeover” (1985)
  72. Victor Pelevin – “The Yuletide Cyberpunk Yarn, or Christmas_Eve-117.DIR.” (1996) – first translation by Alex Shvartsman
  73. Harry Polkinhorn – “Consumimum Igni” (1990)
  74. Gerardo Horacio Porcayo – “Ripped Images, Rusty Dreams” (1993) – first translation by the author
  75. qntm – “Lena” (2021)
  76. Jean Rabe – “Better Than” (2010)
  77. Yurei Raita – “The Day a Computer Wrote a Novel” (2019) – translation by Marissa Skeels
  78. Cat Rambo – “Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars” (2006)
  79. Paul Graham Raven – “Los Pirates del Mar de Plastico” (2014)
  80. Justina Robson – “The Girl Hero’s Mirror Says He’s Not the One” (2007)
  81. Pepe Rojo – “Grey Noise” (1996) – translation by Andrea Bell
  82. Nicholas Royle – “D.GO.” (1990)
  83. Rudy Rucker – “Juicy Ghost” (2019) 
  84. Erica Satifka – “Act of Providence” (2021)
  85. Nisi Shawl – “I Was a Teenage Genetic Engineer” (1989)
  86. Lewis Shiner – “The Gene Drain” (1989)
  87. John Shirley – “Wolves of the Plateau” (1988)
  88. Zedeck Siew – “The White Mask” (2015) 
  89. J.P. Smythe – “The Infinite Eye” (2017)
  90. Neal Stephenson – “The Great Simoleon Caper” (1995)
  91. Bruce Sterling – “Deep Eddy” (1993)
  92. Bruce Sterling and Paul Di Filippo – “The Scab’s Progress” (2001)
  93. Charles Stross – “Lobsters” (2001)
  94. E.J. Swift – “Alligator Heap” (2016)
  95. Wole Talabi – “Aboukela52” (2019)
  96. Molly Tanzer – “The Real You™” (2018)
  97. K.A. Teryna – “The Tin Pilot” (2021) – translation by Alex Shvartsman
  98. Jeffrey Thomas – “Immolation” (2000)
  99. Lavie Tidhar – “Choosing Faces” (2012)
  100. James Tiptree Jr. – “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973)
  101. Vauhini Vara – “Ghosts” (2021)
  102. Marie Vibbert – “Electric Tea” (2019)
  103. Corey J. White – “Exopunk’s Not Dead” (2019)
  104. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne – “The State Machine” (2020) 
  105. Neon Yang – “Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points” (2014) 
  106. E. Lily Yu – “Darkout” (2016)
  107. Yun Ko-eun – “P.” (2011) – first translation by Sean Lin-Halbert
  108. Alvaro Zinos-Amaro – “wysiomg” (2016)

Pixel Scroll 2/1/22 Pixelled In The Scroll By A Chuck Tingle Pixel Scroll Title

Posted on by

(1) MAKING MAUS AVAILABLE. Shelf Awareness says one Tennessee bookseller is crowdfunding the means for local students to read Maus in the wake of a school board decision: “Tenn. Comic Shop’s Maus Fundraiser Garners $90K”.

After the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, about the Holocaust, from its eighth-grade curriculum last week, Nirvana Comics in Knoxville, Tenn., started a GoFundMe campaign to provide students with free copies of the graphic novel.

… The [Jewish Telegraphic Agency] reported that Penguin Random House negotiated a deal to sell 500 additional copies of Maus to Nirvana at a reduced price to give away to students. Actor Wil Wheaton shared Nirvana’s story on social media, and “that’s when it really, really exploded,” Davis said. 

The GoFundMe campaign opened on January 28 with a goal of $20,000; as of this morning it had raised more than $90,000, from more than 2,800 donors. Although Nirvana Comics initially had planned to provide copies to local students, they will now donate copies to students anywhere in the U.S.

Students can request a copy of Maus from the store on Facebook or Instagram.

(2) AFROFUTURISM IN LEGO. CNN Style invites you to “Meet the Ghanaian Canadian Lego sculptor building a Black universe”. (The Official LEGO Shop also has a feature on the same artist in “Celebrate Black Creators”.)

…In his “Building Black: Civilizations” series, Nimako reimagines medieval sub-Saharan African narratives. His “Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE” piece, which is made up of around 100,000 Lego bricks and can be found in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, is named after the capital city of a medieval Ghanaian kingdom. The artist explores medieval West Africa and reimagines what it would look like 1,000 years in the future.

Nimako hopes for an “inclusive future” that acknowledges the history of anti-Black racism and how “utterly disruptive” it is, and recognizes the role of Afrofuturism in allowing people to “envision a better world.”

“My wife always says, ‘all movements of resistance are rooted in that imagination.’ You have to imagine the freedom, the emancipation. You have to imagine this struggle being over. You have to project that in order to rise up, in order to resist. What else are you resisting for, if not for that Promised Land?” he said. “Even art is a form of resistance and it’s been used as a form of resistance for a very long time.”…

(3) BEST PUNISH THE WORLDCON HUGO. What do you think about “An Anti-Raytheon Protest Vote at This Year’s Hugos?” Doris V. Sutherland is working to make it happen.

…Before I should go on, I should mention that the practice of nominating short, emotive pieces like acceptance speeches or angry blog posts in Best Related Work — thereby taking spots that could have gone to longer works which took time, effort and research to construct and will better stand the test of time — is itself controversial. My views are conflicted. I would generally agree with this stance (my personal solution would be to split Best Related Work into long-form and short-form categories) but I have considerably stronger feelings about the deal with Raytheon. So, while I would like to see this Best Protest Vote practice to end, I don’t beleive that 2022 is the right year for it to end. I would like to see a Hugo ballot this year that includes an uncompromising renunciation of last year’s Raytheon sponsorship….

(4) LASFS HISTORY ZOOM. Fanac.org’s “Spring History Zoom” schedule is now up here. The first session is “Death Does Not Release You – LASFS Through the Years” with Craig Miller (M), Tim Kirk, Ken Rudolph and Bobbi Armbruster, on February 26, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. To RSVP, or find out more about the series, please send a note to fanac@fanac.org.

LASFS is unique – in its history and impact on fandom. LASFS has a clubhouse, a long list of professional writers that have been members, and has had an incredibly active fan group over the decades. Los Angeles area fandom has produced innumerable fanzines, six Los Angeles Worldcons (and many other conventions). Join us for a session with our real world AND fannishly accomplished participants – convention runners (including a Worldcon chair), a noted fan and professional artist, and a fanzine editor, all past or present LASFS members – in conversation about Los Angeles fandom from the inside.

(5) A READY PLAYER. On Twitter, Ira Alexandre is ramping up the campaign to get the Worldcon to add a Best Video Game category. They foreshadow “a full-length, more detailed explanation” forthcoming on Lady Business. Thread starts here.

(6) PIECES OF EIGHT. Cora Buhlert posted a new Fancast Spotlight today, this time for Octothorpe, which is created by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty: “Fancast Spotlight: Octothorpe”. 

Alison: I have been wanting to do a podcast ever since the very beginning of podcasts, but it turns out that if you want to do a podcast, you have to find someone who’s daft enough to do the editing for you. Because otherwise podcasts don’t happen, do they? So if you want to run your own podcast the core thing you need is somebody who’s up for doing the editing.

Liz: I didn’t have any desire to be on a podcast, or to start a podcast, or really to do any work around a podcast. But John had asked me “Do you want to do a podcast?” and I said, “Maybe?” And then there was a coronavirus, and now I literally have nothing else that I need to be doing on a Sunday afternoon, so let’s do a podcast! And I am just constantly amazed that we have made it almost 50 episodes, and there appear to be at least ten people actually listening.

(7) KANE ADAPTATION ANNOUNCED.  [Item by Cora Buhlert.] According to The Hollywood Reporter, there is an adaptation of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane novels and stories in the works: “Action Fantasy ‘Kane’ Adaptation in the Works From Vertigo”. Personally, I’d be happy if there was a decent print edition of the Kane novels and stories available again. Also, my inner pedant bristles at calling the Kane stories epic fantasy, because they’re sword and sorcery.

Kane is very able for producers Roy Lee, Andrew Trapani and Steven Schneider.

The trio has secured the adaptation rights to the long-sought-after series of Kane fantasy novels and short stories by cult fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner.

…Kane’s adventures take place in a visceral world steeped in ancient history, with bloody conflicts and dark mysteries. Wagner wove gothic horror elements into this pre-medieval landscape, taking Kane on fantastic sagas involving war, romance, triumph and tragedy.

(8) ONE READER’S APPROACH. Tika Viteri tells “How I’m Decolonizing My Sci-Fi Reading” at Book Riot.

… One of the ways I am working to decolonize my science fiction reading is to diversify it. White cisgender male authors are vastly over-represented in science fiction, and they come from the dominant gender and race of the English-speaking world, whether they are consciously buying into the narrative or not. A good way to mitigate that narrative is to read it from different perspectives, and those perspectives are usually written by authors who are either non-white and/or not male.

If you haven’t yet read the Binti trilogy of novellas by Nnedi Okorafor, it is an excellent place to start. As an author, she specifically identifies with Africanfuturism, which is a genre (along with Afrofuturism) that has been regularly blowing my mind since I was introduced to it. Our heroine, Binti, has been accepted at a prestigious university off-planet, but her journey is interrupted when her ship is attacked and she is the only survivor. The series handles interspecies biases, what it means to broker peace, and what happens when the fate of worlds rests on the shoulders of one young woman. Reviews are full of phrases like “ground-breaking” and “unique,” and I wholeheartedly agree….

Another of Viteri’s recent articles for Book Riot is “Literary Scandals: Who Was the Real-Life Dracula?”

… [Bram] Stoker famously kept to himself, editing his public image ruthlessly. In contrast to [Oscar] Wilde, and perhaps in reaction to what he perceived to be Wilde’s recklessness regarding his sexual exploits, he retreated farther and farther into the closet, going so far as to say in 1912 that all homosexuals should be locked up — a group that definitely, in retrospect, included himself.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1971 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Fifty-one years ago at Noreascon where Robert Silverberg was Toastmaster and Clifford D. Simak (pro) and Harry Warner, Jr. (fan) were Guests of Honor with Tony Lewis as the Chair, Larry Niven won the Hugo for Best Novel for Ringworld. It was published by Ballantine Books in October of 1970. 

Other nominated workers were  Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero, Robert Silverberg’s Tower of Glass, Wilson Tucker‘s The Year of the Quiet Sun and Hal Clement’s Star Light. 

It would also win the Locus, Nebula and Ditmar Awards. Locus would later include Ringworld on its list of All-Time Best SF Novels before 1990.

Algis Budrys found it in his Galaxy Bookshelf column to be “excellent and entertaining, woven together very skillfully and proceeding at a pretty smooth pace.” 

It would spawn three sequel novels with The Ringworld Engineers nominated for a Hugo at Denvention Two which was the year Joan D. Vinge’s The Snow Queen won and a prequel series, Fleet of Worlds which was co-written with Edward M. Lerner. (I really like the latter.) One film and three series have been announced down the decades but none to date have been produced. Indeed Amazon announced this as a series along with Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Greg Rucka’s Lazarus five years ago but none got developed. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 1, 1884 — Yevgeny Zamyatin. Author of We, a dystopian novel. He also translated into into Russian a number of H.G. Wells works and some critics think We is at least part a polemic against the overly optimistic scientific socialism of Wells. The Wiki writer for the Yevgeny Zamyatin page claims that We directly inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Dispossessed and Brave New World. No idea if this passes the straight face test. What do y’all think of this claim? (Died 1937.)
  • Born February 1, 1908 — George Pal. Producer of Destination Moon (Retro Hugo at Millennium Philcon), When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds (which I love), Conquest of Space, The Time Machine, Atlantis, the Lost Continent, Tom Thumb, The Time Machine, Atlantis, the Lost Continent, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (another I love)and his last film being Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze which is not so great. Can we hold a George Pal film fest, pretty please? (Died 1980.)
  • Born February 1, 1942 — Terry Jones. Member of Monty Python who was considered the originator of the program’s structure in which sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punchlines. He made his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail whichwas nominated for a Hugo at MidAmeriCon, which he co-directed with Gilliam, and also directed Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson’s 1986 film Labyrinth, though little of that draft remains in the final version. Let’s not forget Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud and him which won a Hugo at Intersection for Best Original Art Work. (Died 2020.)
  • Born February 1, 1942 — Bibi Besch. Best remembered for portraying Dr. Carol Marcus on The Wrath of Khan. Genre wise, she’s also been in The Pack (horror), Meteor (SF), The Beast Within (more horror), Date with an Angel (romantic fantasy) and Tremors. She died much, much too young following a long battle with breast cancer. (Died 1996.)
  • Born February 1, 1946 — Elisabeth Sladen. Certainly best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who. She was a regular cast member from 1973 to 1976, alongside the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), and reprised her role down the years, both on the series and on its spin-offs, K-9 and Company (truly awfully done including K-9 himself) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (not bad at all). It’s not her actual first SF appearance, that honor goes to her being a character called  Sarah Collins in an episode of the Doomwatch series called “Say Knife, Fat Man”. The creators behind this series had created the cybermen concept for Doctor Who. (Died 2011.)
  • Born February 1, 1954 — Bill Mumy, 68. He’s had a much longer career in the genre than even I knew. And I probably overlooked something. His first genre roles were at age seven on Twilight Zone, two episodes in the same season (Billy Bayles In “Long Distance Call” and Anthony Fremont in “Its A Good Life”). He makes make it a trifecta appearing a few years later again as Young Pip Phillips in “In Praise of Pip”.  Next for him he played an orphaned boy in an episode of Bewitched called “A Vision of Sugar Plums” and then Custer In “Whatever Became of Baby Custer?” on I Dream of Jeannie, a show he revisited a few years as Darrin the Boy in “Junior Executive”. Ahhh his most famous role is up next as Will Robinson in Lost in Space. It’s got to be thirty years since I’ve seen it but I still remember and like it quite a bit. He manages to show up next on The Munsters as Googie Miller in “Come Back Little Googie” and in Twilight Zone: The Movie In one of the bits as Tim. I saw the film but don’t remember him.He’s got a bunch of DC Comics and Marvel roles as well — Young General Fleming in Captain America, Roger Braintree on The Flash series and Tommy Puck on Superboy. He’s Lennier, one of the most fascinating and annoying characters in all of the Babylon 5 Universe. Enough said. I hadn’t realized it it but he showed up on Deep Space Nine as Kellin in the “The Siege of AR-558” episode. Lastly, and before our gracious Host starts grinding his teeth at the length of this Birthday entry, I see he’s got a cameo as Dr. Z. Smith in the new Lost in Space series. 
  • Born February 1, 1965 — Brandon Lee. Lee started his career with a supporting role in Kung Fu: The Movie, but is obviously known for his breakthrough and fatal acting role as Eric Draven in The Crow, based on James O’Barr’s series. Y’ll know what happened to him so I’ll not go into that here except to say that’s it’s still happening and damn well shouldn’t be happening, should it? (Died 1993.)

(11) STAND BY FOR NEW. “DC is re-writing all of its major events since the ’80s with a stunning reveal in Justice League Incarnate #4” – GamesRadar+ broadcasts the warning.

If you’ve read any of the big DC Comics superhero events from 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths to now, everything you know is about to change.

In February 1’s Justice League Incarnate #4, DC’s de facto chief writer Joshua Williamson and co-writer Dennis Culver have re-contextualized the major events in DC multiversal history from the ’80s to now. Although this Justice League Incarnate limited series has been a story unto itself, it continues to move pieces around on DC’s ‘big picture’ chessboard towards another Crisis-level event in the very near future.

Anything more we could say on Justice League Incarnate #4 would be spoilers, so…

(12) THE PANELS THROUGH TOMORROW. Jared Shurin has harnessed the power of modern computing to spew forth the commonest denominators in convention programming since the A-bomb went off. Thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/straycarnivore/status/1488514051999248384
https://twitter.com/straycarnivore/status/1488514059494375429

(13) MOST POPULAR VIEWS. While we’re waiting for someone to produce Sanctuary Moon, here’s what people are enjoying according to JustWatch.

Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies and TV Shows in the US in January (01.01.-31.01.22)

Rank*MoviesTV shows
1Ghostbusters: AfterlifeStation Eleven
2DuneA Discovery of Witches
3Free GuyResident Alien
4Spider-Man: HomecomingPeacemaker
5Spider-Man: Far From HomeThe Book of Boba Fett
6EternalsArchive 81
7Don’t Look UpGhosts
8The Amazing Spider-ManSnowpiercer
9Spider-ManThe Expanse
10Venom: Let There Be CarnageDoctor Who

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

(14) LOOK OUT BELOW. “Nasa reveals how it will destroy International Space Station at the end of its life” reports MSN.com.

…The plan assumes that lifespan will come to an end in January 2031. But the work to do so could start a year or more in advance, when the International Space Station’s orbit starts to fall towards the Earth.

Because of the ISS’s vast size, it will not burn up in the atmosphere, and so its descent will have to be precisely controlled in order to be safe. Nasa hopes to do so by gradually manoeuvring the spacecraft so that it drops down to Earth.

Those manoeuvres will be done partly by using the propulsion built into the ISS, as well as by the vehicles that visit. Nasa says that it has already examined the visiting vehicles for whether they would be able to provide enough thrust to help with the de-orbit – and found that a number of them do, with work continuing to expand that list further.

Eventually, the track of the space station’s fall will be lined up so that the space station will fall towards what it calls the “South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area”, or SPOUA. That area is known as the “oceanic pole of inaccessibility” since it is the part of Earth furthest from land – and it is so remote that often the closest human beings are the International Space Station’s astronauts as they float overhead.

Nasa will aim for a specific region known as “Point Nemo”, which is not only remote but almost entirely uninhabited….

(15) LOFTY CONCERNS. Here’s something else you don’t want to be under if it drops out of the sky. WIRED’s Rhett Allain is worried about “What Happens If a Space Elevator Breaks”.

…OK, back to the space elevator. If we can’t build a tower from the ground up, we can hang a 36,000-kilometer cable from an object that’s in a geostationary orbit. Boom: That’s the space elevator.

To get this to work, you would need a large mass in orbit—either a space station or a small asteroid. The mass has to be large so that it doesn’t get pulled out of orbit every time something climbs up the cable.

But perhaps now you can see the problem with a space elevator. Who wants to make a 36,000-kilometer-long cable? For a cable that long, even the strongest material, like kevlar, would have to be super thick to prevent it from breaking. Of course, thicker cables means more weight hanging down below, and that means the higher parts of the cable have to be even thicker to support the cable below. It’s a compounding problem that seems essentially impossible. The only hope for the future of space elevator construction is to figure out how to use some super strong and lightweight material like carbon nanotubes. Perhaps we will make this work someday, but that day is not today.

What About a Falling Elevator Cable?

In the first episode of Foundation, some people decide to set off explosives that separate the space elevator’s top station from the rest of the cable. The cable falls to the surface of the planet and does some real damage down there.

What would a falling space elevator cable look like in real life?….

(16) SHIELDS UP! Here’s a clip of what 2021’s Dune would look like with 1984 technology.  Which, if you’re as old as I am, you maybe thought you’d already seen. From the Corridor Crew.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: The Witcher, Season 2,” the Screen Junkies say that there’s a lot of grunting and deep signs in season 2 of “The Witcher,” but characters are obsessed with how bad they smell (tying into that Old Spice ad!) and much of the series has “a plot line as boring as the phrase ‘elf migration crisis’ would imply.”  The narrator is bothered by the character growth in the show because “I haven’t grown since eighth grade!”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Rob Thornton, Soon Lee, N., Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Will R., Brian Z., Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 3/31/18 It’s An Honor Just To Be Pixelated

Posted on by

(1) FAREWELL, PORNOKITSCH. Yesterday Anne Perry and Jared Shurin signed off their long-running sff blog: “Pornokitsch: The Exit Interview”. The existing content will remain online for some time to come.

Anne: …As you say above, Pornokitsch is what we wanted it to be: a home for thoughtful, fun (and funny) essays about… whatever. Back when it was just the two of us writing for the site, that’s what we did. And it’s been a pleasure to watch the site bloom with much, much more of that…

By and large, I’m happy to say that I think I wrote more or less exactly what I wanted to write for the site. There are a few reviews I would do differently now, if I could go back in time. But we  founded Pornokitsch as a way of talking about the pop culture we love with the humour and intelligence we wished to see in those conversations, and at the end of the day, I think we – and our many brilliant contributors over the years – have done just that.

Jared: On that note… We’ve mentioned our amazing contributors: words and art, regular and guest, past and present. We owe them a huge, huge thanks for all of their hard work and help and patience. Thank you all.

Anne: We owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks also to all the publishers – editors, marketers and publicists – who offered us books to review and put quotes from us on the actual books, zomg. And, finally, thanks also to our tolerant and very supportive families, enthusiastic friends and – most of all – our readers over the years.

For those arriving too late, they created a kind of postmortem FAQ on their “Bye!” page.

How can I check if you verbally flensed my favourite piece of pop culture? I need know whether or not I should hate you forever.

An index of features and reviews can be found here.

Is there some Pornokitsch memorabilia that I could cherish forever?

Nope. Buy one of our contributor’s books instead.

(2) PUPPY FREE. I like how this was the fifth point in John Scalzi’s “Thoughts On This Year’s Hugo Finalist Ballot” at Whatever.

  1. To get ahead of a question I know someone will ask, no, there’s not any “puppy” nonsense this year. It appears the changes in nominating finalists to reduce slating had their intended effect, and also, the various puppies appear to have lost interest slamming their heads into this particular wall. This makes sense as it provided no benefit to any of them, damaged the reputations and careers of several, and succeeded only in making their rank and file waste a lot of time and effort (and money). They’ve gone off to make their own awards and/or to bother other media, which is probably a better use of their time. There was an attempt by a cadre of second-wave wannabe types to replicate slating this year, but that unsurprisingly came to naught.

In its stead are excellent stories and people, all of which and whom got on to the ballot on the strength of their work. Which is as it should be.

(3) IT’S BEEN AWHILE. Piet Nel said on Facebook about Sarah Pinsker’s “Wind Will Rove” (from Asimov’s, September/October 2017), a Best Novelette Hugo finalist —

This is the first time since 2013 that a story from Asimov’s has made the final ballot of the Hugos.

(4) NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER. J.R.R. Tolkien on Elvish:

(5) GRIMOIRES. In the Horror Writers Association Newsletter, Lawrence Berry discusses a source of “Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them)”.

Do genuinely forbidden, occult treatises exist in the modern world?

Yes, definitely.

Who has them and how do I get a look?

The great libraries of the world, private antiquarian collectors, and the Vatican’s Secret Archives all house works on satanism and witchcraft. An interested party would need to earn scholar’s credentials or have someone very good at creating false identities counterfeit them. A wide and nimble knowledge of Olde English, Middle English, Latin, Arabic, ancient German and Italian, along with gifted insight into the science of cryptography would help—a person could be burned at the stake for the sin of heresy in more centuries than not and grimoires were often written in code. It would also be wise to attain a master’s knowledge of very old books themselves—the paper they were penned on, the material used to construct the covers, the ink used in the illuminated borders and illustrations, the quality and flow of period quills and brushes. Authentic editions, with provenance, sell for a great price, and forgeries are rampant. An equally lavish fee is charged for a single reading of the rarest, genuine, and powerful spell-books.

(6) SFF AUTHORS ON GENDER PANEL IN HONG KONG. In conjunction with the Melon Conference 2, the University of Hong Kong recently held a seminar on Gender in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Mlex interviewed an attendee about what the panelists had to say in “Hong Kong Science Fiction Scene – Gender in SFF” for Yunchtime.

To find out more about the Hong Kong Science Fiction and Fantasy scene, Yunchtime reached out to Dr. Christine Yi Lai Luk, at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Univeristy of Hong Kong, who attended the panel discussion….

YUNCHTIME: How did the seminar and panel discussion live up to the proposed topic?

LUK: There is plenty of room for improvement, I’d say. It is a panel of three women SF writers, but they did not explore “the world of women in SF” as advertised in the above description. It is more appropriate to call the seminar “women/gender and SF” because it is just three women talking about their SF work.

YUNCHTIME: How about the panelists, can you describe briefly some of their thoughts or comments?

LUK: I think Becky Chambers‘ views were the most relevant to the proposed topic. Chambers revealed how she was drawn into the world of SF from an early age onward. Raised in a space science-heavy family (her father is a rocket engineer and her mother an astrobiologist), she was introduced to SF and space fantasy movies as early as she could remember.

Her favorite SF novel of all time is “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula LeGuin (a lot of nods from the audience as the name was dropped). She said writing SF gives her confidence as she is an introvert.

I think her experience reflects a certain gender norm in the SF realm: Unlike the blondy sorority type of girls, girls who are into SF are perceived as shy and nerdy, and incapable of drawing the attention from the opposite sex (except maybe from Wookie-dressed superfans).

Tang Fei does not write in English, only in Chinese. Her Chinese works are translated into English and they draw attention in the English-speaking world partly because her works are banned in China. Actually, Tang Fei is a pen name.

Because the conference was being held entirely in English and due to the language barrier, Tang Fei’s sharing was not effective as we could have hoped. She only managed to say a few sentences in English (with a very soft voice). Then, during the Q&A, she was relying on the organizer, Nicole Huang, to act as her interpreter.

The main thing I caught from Tang Fei is that in the future, human beings will exist in disembodied form and thus the only “gender” issue for SF writers to engage in will be purely on the psychological aspect.

Zen Cho talked about her upbringing in Malaysia and her identity as an English-speaking Hokkien among mainstream Malays. She did not identify herself as a SF writer, but as a fantasy writer. I don’t think she has said anything remotely relevant to gender.

(7) STEELE AND SF IN HONG KONG. Mlex also covered “Hong Kong Science Fiction Scene – Allen Steele on the Melon Conference 2018” for Yunchtime.

YUNCHTIME: What is your impression of Fritz Demoupolis? Is he a big SFF fan? Demoupolis is a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist, do you think he sees a business opportunity for the SFF genre in Hong Kong and China?

STEELE: Fritz Demopoulos is an interesting fellow … a California-born ex-pat who came to Hong Kong about 20 years ago and has stayed to make his fortune. My brother-in-law did much the same thing, so I’m familiar with this sort of entrepreneurship. He’s most definitely a SF fan. He discovered the genre through finding his father’s beat-up copy of Asimov’s Foundation and has been reading SF ever since. He knows the field, is familiar with major authors both old and new, loves the same movies and TV shows the rest of us do, and overall is an example of a highly-successful businessman who also happens to be something of a geek.

Melon is Fritz’s brainchild — he’d have to explain to you why he gave it that name — and it’s unique among SF gatherings. As I said, it’s not a con in the conventional sense — yes, that’s a deliberate pun; stop groaning — but rather a symposium that’s sort of academic without being stuffy or pretentious. The people Fritz invited to be speakers were SF writers — a few Americans like myself, but mainly young Asian authors— scientists from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and a number of Hong Kong-based entrepreneurs working in both emerging technologies like AI and also mass media

(8) HAWKING OBSEQUIES. Henry Nicholls, in the Reuters story “Friends, Family, Public Flock To Funeral of Physicist Stephen Hawking,” says that Hawking’s coffin had white “Universe” lilies and white “Polar Star” roses and a “space music” composition called “Beyond The Night Sky” was played.

The 76-year-old scientist was mourned by his children Robert, Lucy and Timothy, joined by guests including playwright Alan Bennett, businessman Elon Musk and model Lily Cole.

Eddie Redmayne, the actor who played Professor Hawking in the 2014 film “The Theory of Everything” was one of the readers in the ceremony and Felicity Jones, who played his wife, Jane Hawking in the film also attended the service.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 31, 1840 — President Van Buren issued executive order establishing 10-hour workday for federal employees.
  • March 31, 1987 – Max Headroom aired on TV.
  • March 31, 1995 – Tank Girl debuted in theaters.
  • March 31, 1999 – The Matrix premiered.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) WHICH COMES FIRST? THE PRESS RELEASE. In “The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens” the Washington Post says, “Their pampered birds wear diapers and have personal chefs — but lay the finest eggs tech money can buy.”

…In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock (spending as much as $20,000 for high-tech coops). By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own.

Like any successful start-up, broods aren’t built so much as reverse engineered. Decisions about breed selection are resolved by using engineering matrices and spreadsheets that capture “YoY growth.” Some chicken owners talk about their increasingly extravagant birds like software updates, referring to them as “Gen 1,” “Gen 2,” “Gen 3” and so on. They keep the chicken brokers of the region busy finding ever more novel birds.

“At Amazon, whenever we build anything we write the press release first and decide what we want the end to be and I bring the same mentality to the backyard chickens,” said Ken Price, the director of Amazon Go, who spent a decade in San Francisco before moving to Seattle. Price, 49, has had six chickens over the past eight years and is already “succession planning” for his next “refresh.”

(12) ENERGIES IMAGINED. In “Fuelling the Future” on Aeon, Aberstywyth University historian Iwan Rhys Morus analyzes Robert A. Heinlein’s 1940 story “Let There Be Light” in an analysis of how sf writers created stories about new power sources.

Heinlein needed the sunscreens to make his future work; that is, to answer the problem of how technological culture might flourish in a world of diminishing resources. This was not a new problem, even in 1940, and it is an increasingly pressing one now. The question of what is going to fuel the future has never been more urgent. Is it going to be wind or wave power? Will fuel cells, solar panels or even the holy grail of fusion be the answer to our problems? Or are we going to frack ourselves into oblivion? If we want to better understand how we speculate about future energy now, then we need to appreciate the extent to which those speculations have a history, and that their history (from the early Victorian period on) contains such fictions as Heinlein’s story as often as, and frequently mixed in with, highly technical debates about the characteristics and requirements of different modes of energy production and consumption.

(13) RUSS’ INFLUENCE. The Baffler’s Jessa Crispin, in “No Mothers, No Daughters”, an excerpt from her introduction to a new edition of Joanna Russ’s How to Supress Women’s Writing, says “I came at Russ sideways…seeing her name-checked by the punk rock chicks who created their own culture through zines an mix tapes when they failed to see themselves through thee wider culture.”

Reading Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, I wondered, what the hell is it going to take? For decades we have had these types of critiques. We have had books and lectures and personal essays and statistics and scientific studies about unconscious bias. And yet still we have critics like Jonathan Franzen speculating on whether Edith Wharton’s physical beauty (or lack of it, as is his assessment of her face and body) affected her writing, we have a literary culture that is still dominated by one small segment of the population, we have a sense that every significant contribution to the world of letters was made by the heterosexual white man—and that sense is reinforced in the education system, in the history books, and in the visible world.

This complaint wasn’t even exactly fresh territory when Russ wrote her book, which I do not say to diminish her accomplishment. It is always an act of bravery to stand up to say these things, to risk being thought of as ungrateful. Your small pile of crumbs can always get smaller.

But what is it going to take to break apart these rigidities? Russ’s book is a formidable attempt. It is angry without being self-righteous, it is thorough without being exhausting, and it is serious without being devoid of a sense of humor. But it was published over thirty years ago, in 1983, and there’s not an enormous difference between the world she describes and the one we currently inhabit.

(14) THE MARCHING GENIUSES: At Featured Futures, Jason’s prepared another list of bright literary lights in the Summation: March 2018

The fifteen noted stories (nine recommended) come from the 112 (of about 560,000 words) that I’ve read with a publication date between February 26 and March 31. The printzines were decent, with Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF and Interzone (the latter reviewed for Tangent) being represented by more than one story from their bi-monthly issues. On the web, Lightspeed has two from just this month while Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash
Fiction Online, and Nature also make appearances.

(15) JDA SIGHTING. Kilroy was there.

Or as JDA put it in his press release (!) –

Today was a step forward for the cviil rights of conservative-libertarians in SF/F, as I attended the Hugo Award Nomination ceremony without harassment from the Worldcon 2018 staff. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am 1. not disruptive at Worldcon events — or any convention, as FogCon proved and 2. that the discrimination I face from them was for reasons other than my being a danger to any guests (since I am clearly not, and they clearly didn’t think I was here).

The Worldcon Staff was uninviting — a nearly all white group I might add — not seeming to want to have a Hispanic author in their presence. It is something we will have to overcome in fandom together in time.

(16) GRAND THEFT LUNCH. SFF cannot keep up with stories like this from the real world!!!! Begin here —

https://twitter.com/zaktoscani/status/979448251546927104

(17) IN CHARACTER. Jeff Goldblum in his Thor: Ragnarok character in a short film “Grandmaster Moves To Earth.” From 2017, but it’s news to me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLvkFer6aOY

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Mlex, Chip Hitchcock, John  King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Jason, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

Pixel Scroll 12/27 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fifths

Posted on by

(1) ORPHAN BLACK TEASER. BBC America says Orphan Black Season 4 has started production and will be shooting in Toronto through March.

Tatiana Maslany returns to her Emmy®-nominated role as multiple clones in 10 new episodes in Spring 2016.

Season 4 of the drama will see leader-of-the-pack, Sarah, reluctantly return home from her Icelandic hideout to track down an elusive and mysterious ally tied to the clone who started it all — Beth Childs.  Sarah will follow Beth’s footsteps into a dangerous relationship with a potent new enemy, heading in a horrifying new direction. Under constant pressure to protect the sisterhood and keep everyone safe, Sarah’s old habits begin to resurface. As the close-knit sisters are pulled in disparate directions, Sarah finds herself estranged from the loving relationships that changed her for the better.

 

(2) UNDERSTANDING CONTRACTS. Fynbospress provides a wide-ranging introduction to contracts for creators in “When do you need a contract?” at Mad Genius Club, a post that does much more than merely answer the title question.

This isn’t just for court; this is when you’ve submitted a rough draft to a copyeditor and found out they only did the first third of the book and the last chapter , or when you paid a cover artist $500 and they returned one proof of concept, then stopped answering emails. This is for when the small press gives you a horrid cover, no release press, and you have some real doubts about your royalty statements. This is for when you’ve agreed to turn in a sequel, and you find out your spouse has cancer, and nothing’s going to get done that’s not medically related. It’s for when you get the avian flu and aren’t going to make your slot with your editor, and aren’t sure you could make a pushback date, either, or the house washes away in a flood and you weren’t even thinking about when your cover artist finished her painting and wants paid.

(3) NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS. Lela E. Buis in “Safe spaces and personal self defense” conflates safe spaces with the convention antiharassment policies of which she disapproves.

Reading through the proposed convention policies, safe spaces apparently mean that no one can annoy you. When some evil lowlife approaches and says something that disturbs or upsets you, then you should be able to just say “no, go away” and they are required to do so. It means that you can cruise through the convention experience without worrying about anything. If anyone fails to do what you ask, then all you have to do is complain to management and they’ll take care of the lowlife who’s bothering you, pitching him/her out on the street. This is really an ideal situation, where nobody ever has to hear things they don’t want to hear, or deal with situations they don’t want to be in.

However, when you always depend on management to protect you, then you’re not taking personal responsibility for your own well-being. You end up with no self-defense skills….

(4) CHROMIUM SÍ IN AMERICA. “Here’s How Captain Phasma Got Her Silver Armor” explains Andrew Liptak in an intro to a video at io9.

Gwendoline Christie has certainly made her mark in the Star Wars universe as the silver-armored Captain Phasma. This short video shows where that armor came from, and it’s hilarious.

(5) NO SPOILERS. Joe Vasicek’s spoiler-free first impressions of the new Star Wars movie at One Thousand and One Parsecs.

Was it campy? Yep. Was it rife with scientific inaccuracies? Oh heck, yes! Were parts of it over the top? Yeah, probably. But these were all true of the original Star Wars, too. The stuff that really mattered was all there: good writing, solid plot, believable characters, awesome music, and that grand sense of wonder that drew us all into Science Fiction in the first place.

(6) SPOILERY AND FUNNY. Emma Barrie’s “The Confused Notes of a Star Wars Newbie Who Felt Compelled to See The Force Awakens” is a high comedy journal of watching The Force Awakens.  Paragraph two only spoils the original Star Wars trilogy, so that’s safe to quote….

Even as a member of the uninitiated minority, I did know some basic stuff about Star Wars, because how could I not? My birthday is May 4, so there’s that. I knew Darth Vader is bad and has the voice of Mufasa. I knew Han Solo is a person (though I thought it was Hans Solo). I could definitely pick Chewbacca out of a lineup. Princess Leia is Carrie Fisher (whom I primarily associate with hating that wagon-wheel table in When Harry Met Sally). She has those Cinnabon hair swirls and at some point wore a gold bikini (info gleaned from Friends). Lightsabers are kind of like fancy swords. Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.

(7) SPOILERY AND SERIOUS. David Brin was greatly relieved to find things to complain about in “J.J. Abrams Awakens the Force” at Contrary Brin.

Okay we saw it.  Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SW:TFA), on Christmas Eve.  And although I am lead author — and “prosecuting attorney” — of the book Star Wars on Trial, and hence a leading critic of the series, I must admit that:

(1) The newest installment of the franchise — directed by J.J. Abrams under Disney management — has none of the deeply objectionable traits of Episodes I, II, III and VI that I denounced in that controversial tome. Abrams and Disney shrugged off the lunacies George Lucas compulsively preached in those vividly colorful-yet-wretched flicks….

(8) SPOILERY TROLLING. Nick Mamatas is like one of those basketball players who in the parlance can create his own shot. If there was nothing in The Force Awakens to complain about, Nick would not be inconvenienced in the slightest. His review is at Nihilistic Kid.

Like any Star Wars film, it makes little sense. I’m not even talking about the inexplicable political economy of the galaxy that has both intelligent robots and people hanging out in tents with dirt floors, or the horrifying reactionary theme of an entire galaxy being held a prisoner of fate by about a dozen closely related individuals.

Is that last part so unrealistic, Nick? Think of Queen Victoria’s family ties.

(9) A FAN OF PEACE. I thought Hank Green was a science fiction fan (among other things) yet he exhibits a practically unfannish lack of interest in quarrelling with his fellow fans about Important Genre Definitions.

(10) FIVE IS ALIVE. At The Book Smugglers, “Jared Shurin’s Five Terrific 2015 Titles That’ll Tie Awards in Knots”  actually contains seven titles. Did he think nobody would count? Or was he worried File 770 wouldn’t link to his post without a “fifth” reference? Never fear, Jared, your praise for “A Small, Angry Planet” deserves to be shared.

Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

It lurked (and won The Kitschies) as a self-published work at the start of 2015, but as far as the ‘stablishment is concerned, this utterly glorious, brilliantly progressive and undeniably joyous space opera didn’t exist until the UK release in February and the US release soon after. It has been on multiple ‘Best Of’ lists (Waterstones, Guardian, Barnes & Noble), and hopefully that translates to even more well-deserved recognition. The awards scene is dominated by a) Americans and b) traditional publishing, so this book’s… er… long way… to market should hopefully pay off with further acclaim.

(11) SMACKIN’ WITH THE PUPPIES. George R.R. Martin finally froze comments on “Puppies at Christmas” after two days spent duking it out with trolls. Martin’s last entry in the discussion might also be taken as a reply to the coverage here the other day:

When people behave badly (in fandom or out of it), or do things that I find immoral or unethical, I reserve the right to speak out about it, as I did about Sad Puppies 3 last year.

When, on the other hand, I see behavior I regard as positive, I am also going to speak out about that… regardless of whether my words are going to be “spun” to suit someone else’s narrative. So far, what I am seeing on the Sad Puppies 4 boards is a step in the right direction… a spirited literary discussion that includes everyone from Wright and Williamson to Leckie and Jemisin. That’s good.

If it turns into something else later, well, I’ll revise my opinion or raise objections. But I am not going to deal in hypotheticals. Right now what I see is people talking books.

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 27, 1904 – Peter Pan by James Barrie opens in London.
  • December 27, 1947 — The first “Howdy Doody” show, under the title “Puppet Playhouse,” was telecast on NBC.
  • December 27, 1968 — The Apollo 8 astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders — returned to Earth after orbiting the moon 10 times.

(13) RESTATE OF THE ART. “How Weinstein Co. Distribution Chief Erik Lomis Rescued 70MM Cinema For Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’” at Deadline Hollywood.

Lomis had an 18-month lead before Hateful Eight would hit the screen, and he promptly began scouring eBay and interfacing with film warehouses and antique collectors across the country “pulling the equipment, checking it and Frankenstein-ing it together. Configuring the lens took six months alone. They needed to be adjusted to today’s stadium auditoriums, which from the booth to the screen have a shorter throw versus the lens on the older machines which had a longer throw due to the sloping floor auditoriums,” explains Lomis. For the first six months, Lomis was picking up 70MM projectors at affordable prices, but once word slipped out that it was for a Tarantino film, collectors tripled and quadrupled their asks.  Essentially, to make three solid working projectors, one needed to pull parts from as many as five projectors.  Gears, shafts, bearings and rollers were the typical replacements. At times, these parts were manufactured from scratch off original blueprints. On average, Schneider Optics made a lens a day during production to restore this antiquated technology.

(14) SIR TERRY. Rhianna Pratchett  in The Guardian — “Sir Terry Pratchett remembered by his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett”.

…The reaper came for my father much earlier in his life in the form of Death from his world-famous and much-loved Discworld novels. Death was a towering, cloaked and scythe-wielding skeleton who had a penchant for curries, a love of cats and TALKED LIKE THIS. We got a number of tear-inducing letters from fans who were nearing the end of their lives and took great comfort in imagining that the death that came for them would be riding a white horse called Binky. Dad had done something with more success than anyone else – he made Death friendly.

For me, as for many of his fans, it was his gift for characterisations like this that made his books pure narrative gold. Dad was a great observer of people. And when he ran out of actual people, he was a great imaginer of them. Both his grannies come through in his witch characters, while there’s a fair chunk of me in Tiffany Aching and Susan Sto Helit, Death’s adoptive granddaughter. …

(15) THE JAVA AWAKENS. “Designers Create Star Wars-Themed Coffee Concept” at Comicbook.com.

Graphic designer Spencer Davis and product designer Scott Schenone have come up with “Dark Brew Coffee House,” a concept that imagines what a Star Wars-themed coffee shop would look like.

(Lots more thematic imagery displayed at Dark Brew Coffee House.)

Dark Side coffee

(16) DARK OUTSIDE. Then could we change this to the Darthburger?

[Thanks to DLS,and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Shao Ping.]