Tag Archives: John Carpenter

Pixel Scroll 3/26/25 It Takes A File Of Pixels To Make A Scroll A Home

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(1) SALAM AWARD OPENS FOR ENTRIES. The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction, which recognizes emerging speculative fiction writers of Pakistani origin or residence, is taking submissions through July 31. Full guidelines at the link.

Eligible for consideration are original, previously unpublished English-language stories of 10,000 words or less by persons residing in Pakistan, or of Pakistani birth/descent. The full guidelines are at the link.

The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction is named for Dr. Albus Salam, one of the pioneers of science in Pakistan.

(2) TIME FOR NOMMO AWARDS NOMINATIONS. The African Science Fiction Society has announced the 2025 Nommo Awards nominations are now open for works published in 2024.

Only works of speculative fiction by an African published between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2024 anywhere in the world are eligible. 

ASFS members have until May 5 to make nominations. Please read the Nommo Awards eligibility and rules on this link here.

(3) NOTE ABOUT WORLD FANTASY AWARDS SUBMISSIONS. With the June 1 deadline not far off, Peter Dennis Pautz of the World Fantasy Awards Administration has issued a reminder:

I’ve heard from all the World Fantasy Awards judges and their receipt of submissions has been extremely inconsistent, i.e. not all judges have received the same submissions.

As the deadline draws near, we are especially concerned about the lack of submissions from the larger publishers, both in the US and UK.

If you have already sent in your submission, please check your records to ensure that a copy of every work was sent to each judge, in their preferred formats, as detailed in the attachment.

If you haven’t sent your submission as yet, please do so as soon as possible to allow full consideration to your works.

Finally, the judges have also asked that you not send drop box, zip files, or wetransfer links. The links often expire before the judges get to them, and it requires a lot of time to open the links and side load the files to ereaders. Sending three or four titles at a time by email is preferable/

As always, thank you all for your support, your thoughtfulness, and your help.

See the list of judges and their contact information here: “2025 World Fantasy Awards Judges Announced”.

(4) JUDGE’S RULING PAUSES IOWA CENSORSHIP. [Item by Andrew Porter.] “Iowa law banning books including 1984 and Ulysses blocked by US federal judge” reports the Guardian. Books unconstitutionally caught up in the law include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and 1984 by George Orwell.

A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

This is the second time that US district judge Stephen Locher, a Joe Biden appointee, has blocked the ban. The law, Senate File 496, was first approved by Iowa’s Republican-led legislature and governor Kim Reynolds in 2023, however, Locher placed an injunction on it in December 2023 after authors and publishers sued the state.

The preliminary injunction was reversed by the US Eighth Circuit appeals court last August, leading publishers and authors to file a second complaint, arguing that the ban violates free speech and “goes far beyond prohibiting books that are obscene as to minors because it prohibits books with even a brief description of a sex act for students of all ages without any evaluation of the book as a whole”.

In his decision, Locher wrote that the ban has resulted in “forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene”, and that unconstitutional applications of the law “far exceed” constitutional applications….

(5) DIVERSITY TAKES STEP BACK IN UK PUBLISHING. The Guardian learns “UK publishing less accessible to Black authors now than before 2020, industry names say”.

UK publishing is less accessible to Black authors now than it was five years ago, according to some of the biggest names in the industry.

The Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 led to many publishing houses making commitments to address the longstanding racial inequality in the industry. But, ahead of the Black British book festival (BBBF) this weekend, a number of Black literary figures say there has been a noticeable downward shift in the number of Black writers being published.

Selina Brown, who founded BBBF in 2021, said the number of Black authors being pitched to her has dropped dramatically in the last 18 months. She also believes the number of books being published by Black writers has “plummeted”….

…Sharmaine Lovegrove, cultural strategist at Hachette UK, one of the country’s leading publishing houses, co-founded The Black Writers’ Guild and established Hachette’s Dialogue imprint, which focuses on books by, about and for marginalised communities. She said things are harder for new Black authors now than they were pre-2020….

Lovegrove said the industry hasn’t been able to build new, diverse audiences and struggled to talk and cater to Black authors who were often labelled “difficult” for advocating for themselves.

Lovegrove said: “The biggest mistake was seeing it as a trend as opposed to an opportunity to cultivate something meaningful that was missing.”

“It’s as if the industry is saying: ‘It’s all very difficult and these books haven’t done very well so we’re literally not going to try again with someone from the same background’,” she added. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

A report by PA found that “ethnic minority” representation across the industry fell from 17% to 15% in 2024, with a decline in the numbers of Asian and British Asian staff. The number of Black staff remained at about 3% during the same period.

There have been success stories. After selling more than a million copies of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge launched her Monument Books imprint at HarperCollins last year, with the specific goal of finding writers “who can help us understand our past, navigate our present and map new futures”.

But Brown says the impetus of 2020 has faded and new Black authors have often seen their books marketed the same way as other authors despite publishers speaking of wanting to “reach new audiences”….

(6) TOLKIEN’S CARTOGRAPHY. “It’s Tolkien Reading Day” – a Facebook post from yesterday by the Bodleian Libraries. (Click for larger image.)

It’s Tolkien Reading Day, so we wanted to share with you a rather magical treasure from our Tolkien archives and invite you to share your favourite moments as a Tolkien reader.

Pictured is an annotated version of a fold-out map which was included in early editions of the Lord of The Rings. The map shows readers Tolkien’s fantasy world ‘Middle-earth’.

The annotations are by Tolkien himself, and were for the benefit of Pauline Baynes, an artist who was creating an illustrated poster map of Middle-earth.

Baynes ripped the map out of her own 1954 copy of Lord of the Rings and took it to Tolkien, who covered it with notes, including many extra place names that do not appear in the book. Since most were in his own invented Elvish language he helpfully translated some: ‘Eryn Vorn [= Black Forest] a forest region of dark [pine?] trees.’

The annotations give an insight into how vividly Tolkien pictured Middle-earth in his mind, and how thorough his research was. They include a series of geographical pointers about the latitude of key locations: ‘Hobbiton is assumed to be approx. at latitude of Oxford,’. ‘Minas Tirith is about latitude of Ravenna (but is 900 miles east of Hobbiton more near Belgrade). Bottom of the map (1,400 miles) is about latitude of Jerusalem.’

Pictured: MS. Tolkien Drawings 132. copyright Tolkien Estate / Williams College Oxford Programme 2018

(7) MAPPING GENRE LOVE. “The Most Popular Book Genre In Each State” – BookRiot says a research firm came up with a rationale for assigning them. Map at the link.

Are there different preferences for book genres depending on what state you’re in? According to new research from Cloudwards, there are trends in book preferences based on location.

Utilizing Google Trends data over the last 12 months, Cloudwards explored the most searched genre in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. All searches were limited to Google Trends “Books and Literature” category, and the researchers used a variety of common genre terms to determine the frequency of interest in them by state. Some of the genre categories were a little unconventional for the average reader–how do you determine the difference between “fiction” and “family” as terms–but the major genres were included, including romance, fantasy, mystery, and so forth….

… Romance dominated in terms of genre popularity across the US, with 22 states seeing it as their top searched genre. In terms of geographic region, romance was especially popular in the south, with states like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia ranking it as their top genre.

Fiction and poetry tied for next most popular genres, each either nine states reporting it as the most searched genre. The researchers note that these findings aren’t surprising, given that fiction is broad and encompassing. As for poetry, it is likely not surprising to see people looking for more information about poetry; the research here isn’t about poetry being the most read genre, but rather, one of the most researched genres….

(8) REASON TO BE SCARED BY THE PHONE BILL. Atlas Obscura remembers “The Heyday of Horror Hotlines and Why We Still Love to Fear the Phone”.

IT’S NO ACCIDENT FREDDY KRUEGER is the most famous monster of the last 50 years….

…So of course Freddy would capitalize on one of his decade’s definitive devices: the telephone. In the late 1980s you could communicate with Krueger on your home phone (after you “get your parents’ permission,” of course) through the awesome telecommunicative power of the hotline. Dialing 1-900-909-FRED connected brave teens to a running tape of short ghost stories, each introduced by Freddy Krueger like a malevolent MTV VJ throwing to Paula Abdul videos…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER ONE OF FREDDY’S FAVORITE BEDTIME STORIES. AND THIS ONE’S A DREAM—MY KIND OF DREAM: THE KIND YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM…

You can listen to 40 consecutive minutes of this stuff on YouTube, thanks to some intrepid young Gen-Xer who owned a tape deck and I guess was willing to catch hell from their parents when the phone bill arrived….

(9) L.J. SMITH (1958-2025.) L. J. Smith, author of The Vampire Diaries, died March 8 at the age of 66.

Her first book, The Night of the Solstice, written during high school and college, was published by MacMillan in 1987.

The New York Times obituary explains that the Vampire Diaries publisher eventually moved on from Smith to a ghostwriter, and how Smith recovered her characters by writing fanfiction.

…The first three books in The Vampire Diaries series were published by HarperCollins in 1991, and a fourth was released in 1992. But Ms. Smith — whose first agent was her typist, who had never represented a client — told The Wall Street Journal that she had written the trilogy for an advance of only a few thousand dollars without realizing that it was work for hire, meaning she did not own the copyright or the characters….

…In 2009, “The Vampire Diaries” were adapted into a dramatic television series that lasted for eight seasons on the CW Network….

…By 2014, the “Vampire Diaries” book series had sold more than five million copies, but Ms. Smith was no longer writing the authorized version: Alloy Entertainment fired her in 2011 over what its president and founder, Leslie Morgenstein, told The Wall Street Journal were creative differences.

A ghostwriter and then an author using the pen name Aubrey Clark were brought in to complete the final six books in the series. Ms. Smith said in interviews that she had believed that Alloy and HarperCollins wanted shorter books more closely associated with the TV series. They continued to put Ms. Smith’s name prominently on the cover of the books as the series’ creator….

…Eventually, Ms. Smith found an outlet to reclaim her characters — fan fiction, which book lovers have long written and posted, spooling out their own amateur versions of stories and characters even though they did not own the intellectual property and it was often not strictly legal.

In 2013, Amazon created Kindle Worlds, an online service that gave writers of fan fiction permission to write about certain licensed properties, including Alloy’s “Vampire Diaries” series, and to earn money for their ventures.

In 2014, Ms. Smith became the rare celebrated author to produce fan fiction as a way to recoup characters and story arcs she had lost, publishing a novel and novella in an informal continuation of the “Vampire Diaries.” (Kindle Worlds was discontinued in 2018)….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Item by Paul Weimer.]

March 26, 1931 — Leonard Nimoy. (Died 2015.)

By Paul Weimer: It is fitting that Leonard Nimoy’s birthday should only be a couple of days after William Shatner’s. Sure, like Shatner himself, Nimoy is much more than his Star Trek character. But then again, he is the one who felt it necessary to write a book called I am Not Spock. Shatner never had to do the same for Kirk. 

Why that is is because Nimoy brings a human alienness to Spock that no iteration of him since has quite managed. There are several Spocks running around now in movie and series history, but Nimoy’s is the one that sticks, the one that is the definitive article. The brainiac logic-fueled half human…who nevertheless shows real passion and anger in “Amok Time”, and especially at the utter joy that Kirk has in fact survived after all. Or learning the limits of logical action in “The Gaileo Seven”. Nimoy’s Spock was always learning, always growing, always becoming better (a lesson Spiner would apply to Data).  The whole journey of Spock’s death, resurrection, and return to normal through the Star Trek movies shows a whole gamut of emotions and character growth. Nimoy sells all of that. 

But Nimoy was more than that. He was the narrator of In Search Of, and I remember watching that for the first time and wondering why the voice was familiar on the episode, and only learning a couple of months later it was, in fact, “Spock”. I also enjoyed his secondary role in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also directed a number of movies as well, and became a producer, later, in the bargain. When I finally got to watching the original Mission Impossible (which I had only seen scattershot growing up), I was delighted to find he was there, too, as a master of disguise and immersion, Paris.  

Later in life, he had a role in a number of episodes of Fringe.

On top of all that, you probably know about his music, if for nothing else than “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.”. But did you know he was also a rather good photographer? In a world next door, he pursued that to the fullest rather than acting. As it is, the work he has done has been exhibited in major museums. 

Such a diverse and strong and polymathic artistic talent. I wish I could have met him, but he died in 2015.  Requiescat in pace. 

Leonard Nimoy

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Dinosaur Comics poses a past/future riddle.
  • Jerry King has an employer with a risky idea. 
  • Tom Gauld finds a place that didn’t believe in “safety first”.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-03-23T10:49:40.154Z

(12) INTRODUCING BETWEEN A ROCKET AND A HARD SPACE. The International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory is launching Between a Rocket and a Hard Space, the official ISS National Lab podcast. This podcast series dives deep into the discoveries, innovations, and people shaping the future of space, with the first episode now available.

The podcast’s name is a nod to the challenges and complexities of exploring the space environment, with recognition of the far-reaching benefits space-based R&D may bring. Going beyond the launch pad, Between a Rocket and a Hard Space offers exclusive insights from scientists, engineers, and visionaries leveraging the unique environment of low Earth orbit to push the boundaries of research and technology development. But that’s just the beginning. We’ll also hear from policymakers driving the industry forward, financial experts fueling the space economy, and communicators working to inspire the next generation of explorers.

In the first episode, host Patrick O’Neill sits down with ISS National Lab Chief Scientific Officer Michael Roberts to explore the groundbreaking science happening on the orbiting outpost and its real-world impact on medicine, technology, and industry. Roberts will provide an insider perspective into how microgravity is unlocking advancements in drug development, regenerative medicine, advanced materials, and in-space  manufacturing.

Episodes of Between a Rocket and a Hard Space will be available through many major listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Alexa, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, and Castbox.

(13) KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HOLE. “’So Much Good Science’: The Black Hole Visuals In Christopher Nolan’s $759M Oscar-Nominated Sci-Fi Movie Called ‘One Of The Most Accurate Depictions Of The Environment’ By Expert, Who Gives It A Near-Perfect Score” at ScreenRant.

… An expert speaks about the black holes in Intersellar. The 2014 sci-fi movie tells the story of a former NASA pilot named Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who re-enters space exploration in order to help locate a new planet for humans when Earth becomes uninhabitable. The film features a leading cast including McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, Jessica Chastain, and a young Timothée Chalamet. Interstellar made over $758 million at the box office, and ultimately ended up as one of Nolan’s lower-rated films in terms of Rotten Tomatoes score, getting a 73%…

… Speaking with Insider, astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter discusses Interstellar‘s black hole visuals, giving them a high accuracy rating. Sutter said there is “so much good science in the black hole image,” noting how well Nolan’s film maps the behavior of light in relation to a black hole. The expert also explains how Newton’s third law impacts how Cooper is acting in the key black hole scene. Ultimately, he gave Interstellar‘s black hole accuracy a 9 out of 10. Check out the full quote from Sutter below:

So much good science in the black hole image. Light follows the curves, the hills and valleys of spacetime. And these curves are set by massive objects. This is one of the earliest tests of Einstein’s theory of relativity. And black holes bend space a lot, and so what we are seeing is there’s a thing disk called an an accretion disk surrounding the black hole. But if you’re standing on one side of the black hole, light from the back end — which normally you wouldn’t see because you know, black hole in the way — there’s light that’s going up this way but then gets bent and curves right to you.

Newton’s third law is for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And this is in the fundamental basis for space travel. We push against the air to get our airplanes to go. But in space there’s no ground, there’s no air. So we can only push against ourselves. If we throw something away from us, that propels us in the equal and opposite direction. So what I think he’s going for, old Cooper, is to get him away from that orbit, if he pushes something towards the black hole, that will nudge the spacecraft away from that orbit, and give it a safe escape.

The event horizon is the one way barrier. This is the edge of the black hole. This is the point of no return. That if you cross the event horizon, that gravity is so strong, that nothing, not even light can escape.

When Cooper first falls through the black hole, then he goes ‘oh, everything’s black.’ No, like you’re not the only thing falling into a black hole. There’s light from the entire rest of the universe that’s falling in with you. For a supermassive black hole like this, like Gargantua in the movie, you’ve got a handful of seconds from the moment you cross the event horizon to the time you hit the singularity.

That was an incredibly accurate depiction. In fact, it is one of the most accurate depictions of the environment around a black hole ever made. I would give it a 9. Okay a point off because it is not actually dark in there. But honestly, we don’t know what actually happens inside of a black hole, so that’s fair game….

(14) IS THIS A SPOILER? It is if the fan is right. “43 years later, John Carpenter has hinted at who turns into The Thing in the horror movie and one eagle-eyed fan has worked it out” at GamesRadar+

It’s been 43 years since legendary director John Carpenter’s The Thing hit screens, but the mystery behind which character turns into the fearsome monster has remained shrouded in secrecy, until now. And one fan has worked it out.

At a special 4K screening of The Thing at David Geffen Theater on March 22, Carpenter revealed that a scene in the middle of the movie reveals whether Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady or Keith David’s Childs is The Thing. “I think I found that hint,” said Joe Russo (a film fan not the Marvel director) on Twitter.As pointed out by Russo, MacReady is informed that The Thing can replicate at the cellular level, so to be safe they should only drink and eat what they have prepared themselves. Despite the warning, toward the end of the movie, MacReady shares a bottle of liquor with Childs, which could mean that he is either rather forgetful or he is, in fact, The Thing. “As soon as Childs drinks from the bottle, The Thing has won. It’s beaten its most skeptical, final threat,” says Russo…

More details at the link.

(15) ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. “’Avengers: Doomsday’ Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Mackie and More” – Variety covers the announcement. (If you have five-and-a-half hours to spare, you can watch it yourself here: “Avengers: Doomsday | Cast Announce”.)

The Avengers have assembled once again. Marvel slowly revealed the full cast of “Avengers: Doomsday” in a livestream that began Wednesday morning.

Among the returning cast members are Chris Hemsworth as Thor; Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, who debuted as Captain America in last month’s “Brave New World”; his co-star Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres, the new Falcon; Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier; Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man; Tom Hiddleston as Loki; Letitia Wright as Shuri, who took over the Black Panther mantle in “Wakanda Forever,” and her co-star Winston Duke as M’Baku. As previously announced, Robert Downey Jr. will be back as the villain Doctor Doom instead of Iron Man.

The biggest surprises were several returning “X-Men” stars for “Avengers: Doomsday.” The mutant cast includes Patrick Stewart, whose Professor Charles Xavier was killed off in both “Logan” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” but appears to be back; Ian McKellen, who was last seen as Magneto in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”; Kelsey Grammer as Beast, who made a cameo in the post-credits scene of “The Marvels”; Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler from “X2”; James Marsden as Cyclops; Channing Tatum, who played Gambit in “Deadpool & Wolverine”; and Rebecca Romijn, who originated the shape-shifting role of Mystique before Jennifer Lawrence took it over in the “X-Men” prequels.

Some recent Marvel newcomers are also being introduced to the “Avengers” ensemble. They include Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as the Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the Thing from this summer’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”; “Thunderbolts*” stars Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Lewis Pullman as the mysterious Bob; Simu Liu as Shang-Chi; and Tenoch Huerta Mejía, who played the underwater antagonist Namor in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Grammaticus Books takes a look at a  Fritz Leiber fantasy… “Our Lady of Darkness…a look at Fritz LEIBER’S SOUL”.

An in-depth review of Fritz Leiber’s, 1978 dark urban fantasy, OUR LADY of DARKNESS. A thinly veiled autobiography and biopic of Leiber’s life from 1977, from the author most famous for his sword and sorcery tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Michael J. Walsh, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 1/16/25 Let’s Read Our TBR Piles, And Travel Mental Gigamiles

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(1) IS ANYONE STILL PUBLISHING GAIMAN? Publishers Weekly tries to track down whether Neil Gaiman has any works scheduled to come out — “How Neil Gaiman’s Publishers Have Responded to the Sexual Misconduct Allegations” – and discovers it is much easier to get answers from those that definitely haven’t any.

…Gaiman’s literary agent, Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House, did not respond to requests for comment by press time, nor did his public speaking agent, Steven Barclay of the eponymous agency, leaving it unclear as to whether either has dropped him as a client. On Gaiman’s website, a page called “Contacting Neil,” which had listed both agents alongside his Hollywood representation, is now down, although the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine indicates that it was live as recently as last month.

At present, it is unclear if Gaiman, the author of nearly 50 books that have sold more than 50 million combined copies worldwide, has any new forthcoming titles currently under contract, although some publishers have confirmed that if he does, it is not with them. On the trade book side, a spokesperson from HarperCollins, Gaiman’s primary publisher in the United States, told PW that it “does not have any new books by Neil Gaiman scheduled.”

A spokesperson for Norton, which released Gaiman’s 2018 book on Norse mythology as well as an illustrated version last year, confirmed to PW that “Norton will not have projects with the author going forward.”…

In the comics world, a representative from Dark Horse Comics, which has published a number of comics and graphic novel titles by Gaiman as well as the Neil Gaiman Library series, said that the publisher is currently working on a statement, but was unable to comment further. Marvel Comics told the New York Times that it has no books in the works with Gaiman. DC Comics, the publisher of Gaiman’s Sandman series and many of his other comics titles, did not respond to requests for comment; DC had previously announced plans to reprint a classic work by Gaiman in a new format in September….

The article also presents a roundup of recent terse social media remarks about Gaiman by Jeff VandeMeer, John Scalzi, Gail Simone, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Scott McCloud.

(2) FINDING THE ANSWER. Kameron Hurley analyzes “Why Great Art Connects Us Across Time and Space (Even with Monsters)”.

…When people burst into tears when they meet me at an event, it’s not because I write about giant bugs and exploding heads. Those things are cool, yes! But they react that way because they connected EMOTIONALLY with something I wrote. It’s that feeling like “OMG I’m not alone. I feel that TOO!!”

Art is, at its best, a way for humans to connect. We’re holding out a hand saying “I felt this way. Have you ever felt this way too?” And no, not everyone has, and thus those are not people who are going to be yours fans. But many HAVE. And if you’ve done it right, you connect with that person across time and space – and for one glorious moment, we feel less alone.

THAT is great fucking art. THAT is magic. It’s a magic every great storyteller has; heroes and villains alike. Perhaps that’s why we hate it so much when we’ve connected with art made by people who have done monstrous things. It makes us ask if we, too, are monsters.

I know the answer to that.

I connect emotionally with fictional monsters (and the work of people who’ve done monstrous things) all the time. We all do. We are human. We share the multitude of all human emotions and possible actions with the best and worst people in the world. That’s terrifying.

This is why the STORIES we tell ourselves are so important. I changed a lot of who I was by asking myself how the person I wanted to be would act in any given situation. FEELING a monstrous impulse isn’t what makes us monsters. It’s taking the ACTIONS of a monster. It’s being aware enough to choose….

(3) BENEATH THE JERSEY SKIES. “Steven Spielberg’s new UFO movie with Emily Blunt is filming in N.J., casting locals.” – NJ.com has the story. Well, isn’t that a coincidence.

…The filming will take place in March — not long off from Jersey’s brush with drone and/or plane-related, supposedly “unidentified” flying objects at the end of 2024.

The movie, which is as yet untitled — but reportedly (tentatively) titled “The Dish” — also stars Emmy winner Josh O’Connor (”The Crown,” “Challengers,” “La Chimera”), Oscar nominee Colman Domingo (”Rustin,” “Sing Sing”), Oscar winner Colin Firth (”The King’s Speech,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary”) and Eve Hewson (”Bad Sisters”)….

(4) FANTASY MAGAZINE SUBMISSION DATES. Correcting the information released yesterday, editor Arley Sorg says the revived Fantasy Magazine plans to open to submissions January 22-29, and specifically, Jan 22-25 BIPOC writers only, Jan 26-29 general submissions. See submission guidelines at the link.

(5) HOWARD ANDREW JONES DIES. Author and editor Howard Andrew Jones died January 16 of cancer. Known for The Chronicles of Hanuvar series, The Chronicles of Sword and Sand series and The Ring-Sworn trilogy, he has also written Pathfinder Tales, tie-in fiction novels in the world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. He is the editor of Tales from the Magician’s Skull and has served as a Managing Editor at Black Gate since 2004.

In August 2024 he announced that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer––multifocal glioblastoma – and that, “People I trust––my doctors and my family––inform me it will be fatal, and we are deciding now on a course of action to make the most of the time I have left.” 

(6) DAVID LYNCH (1946-2024). Filmmaker David Lynch has died at the age of 78. Deadline says the family did not release the date of death. Never forget – Frank Herbert liked his film Dune.

…The four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker [was] behind Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, The Elephant Man and others [and] also created the ABC drama series Twin Peaks…

…In 2020, he received an Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards….

…Lynch’s career took off during the 1980s. He followed up the success of Elephant Man with Dune, the 1984 take on Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel. While Dune was noted for being a financial bomb at the time, it wound up being the highest-grossing film on the auteur’s résumé with $31.5M worldwide….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 16, 1948 — John Carpenter, 77.

By Paul Weimer: Where does one begin with the large and momentous oeuvre of John Carpenter? With the many-sequeled and rebooted but never equaled Halloween, perhaps? To start there means that we skip the strange and wondrously weird Dark Star. And it skips the gritty Assault on Precinct 13.  Do we instead focus on The Thing, one of the best SF/horror movies ever to be made? To do that would throw shade on The Fog, the amazing ghostly revenge tale in a Northern California town.  

Maybe you should start with Escape from New York, with a vision of NYC after its transformation into a prison that has been imitated (even by Carpenter himself!) but has never, ever been surpassed.  It IS the movie that helped cement the career of Kurt Russell, after all.  But to work there misses the soft wondrous Starman, an amazingly touching movie. 

Or maybe you should start with They Live, perhaps the best indictment of late 80’s trash capitalism that suddenly feels even more relevant, in this year of our lord 2025. Roddy Piper’s character doesn’t have a name, but he isn’t a faceless number, either. And it has one of the longest fights on screen. It’s a bit pointless fight, but it is fun that Piper got to do a whole wrestling match in a John Carpenter film.  But to mention They Live might mean you overlook the absolutely bonkers and fun Big Trouble in Little China. 

My favorites in the Carpenter oeuvre are none of these, although I love all the above movies.  My second favorite John Carpenter movie has to be Prince of Darkness, where an unlikely group of heroes led by Victor Wong (from Big Trouble in Little China) and Donald Pleasance (from Escape from New York) team up to try to stop the literal Devil, anti-God, from coming across from another dimension into our own. It’s a bottle of a movie set in an inescapable church, got dreams from the future, and is nicely tense.  The other one I like even more and is one of my heart movies, is In the Mouth of Madness. In the Mouth of Madness is the best cosmic horror movie, ever, in my opinion, as horror writer Sutter Cane writes extra dimensional monsters into our reality, with Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill as John Trent, insurance investigator, is in search of a book he really, really should not read. In 2018, when I found out that the striking church seen in the film was just outside Toronto, I had to go and visit it while on a vacation in Canada.

And did you know that Carpenter scored a lot of his films? His father was a music teacher, and his love of music led him to really be patient and exacting about the music. Be it Escape from New York, Halloween, Prince of Darkness, or many other of his works, that soundtrack with the heavy use of synthesizers that you are hearing are due to his own musical creation and scoring. His movies have memorable visuals…and sound as well. 

John Carpenter

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 16, 1995 — Star Trek: Voyager premieres  

 “Coffee – the finest organic suspension ever devised. It’s got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it.” — Captain Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager’s “Hunters”. 

Need I say that I liked Janeway a lot? She was a much more rounded, more believable individual than Kirk ever was. Inthe pantheon of Captains, I’d rank her just behind Picard as a character. 

So on this evening thirty years ago on UPN, Star Trek: Voyager premiered. The fourth spinoff from the original series after the animated series, the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine which had my favorite Captain in Benjamin Sisko, it featured the first female commander in the form of Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. 

(She is seen again commanding the USS Dauntless in the animated Prodigy series, searching for the missing USS Protostar which was being commanded by Captain Chakotay at the time of its disappearance. It’s now streaming on Netflix.) 

It was created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor. Berman served as head executive producer, assisted by a series of executive proucers — Piller, Taylor, Brannon Braga and Kenneth Biller. Of those, Braga oil the still the most active with his recent work on the cancelled Orville.

It ran for seven seasons and one hundred seventy-two episodes. Four episodes, “Caretaker”, “Dark Frontier”, “Flesh and Blood” and “Endgame” originally aired as ninety-minute episodes. 

Of all the Trek series, and not at all surprisingly, Voyager gets the highest Bechdel test rating. 

Oh, and that quote I start this piece with in 2015, was tweeted by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti International Space Station when they were having a coffee delivery. She was wearing a Trek uniform when she did so as you can see in the image below. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 126 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I’ve Read Some Novels”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty read out your letters of comment, and then discuss all the things from 2024 that they think are worth a look as we go into award nomination season (and a couple of things they would probably avoid). Then they do picks, in case there weren’t enough opinions.

Get the uncorrected transcript at the link.

A picture of a Belgian waffle that looks like an octothorpe, on a white background, with the words “Octothorpe 126” above and “now with added waffle” below.

(11) DON’T THAT BEAT ALL. “A Frankenstein Filing Error: It’s Alive!” – the New York Times confesses.

…When he died in February 1969, The New York Times wrote of Karloff’s career in an article that featured a photograph of an actor, in costume as the monster.

One problem: The man in the makeup, with the bolts in his neck, wasn’t Karloff.

The image — a publicity photo, copyrighted by Universal Pictures — depicted the actor Glenn Strange, who had succeeded Karloff in the role, playing the monster in subsequent films, including “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” which was released in 1948.

At least one astute reader had spotted the mistake and sent a letter to The Times.

The photograph was seemingly mislabeled around 1948, the copyrighted date on the image, and incorrectly placed in a folder for Karloff, one of the millions of files stored in the Morgue, The Times’s subterranean clippings library. (The Times issued a correction, a copy of which is pasted on the back of the photo in the Morgue.)

Almost 20 years after the first misprinting, in March 1987, the same photo, though cropped tighter and tilted slightly, was used to accompany a letter to the editor that referenced Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Again, the caption incorrectly identified Strange as Karloff….

…. Dr. Jane Bishop of Brooklyn, the same reader who caught the mistake in 1969, wrote to The Times and explained that she had lodged an identical complaint 18 years earlier.…

Some of you who read the File 770 birthdays must feel the same way…

(12) JUSTWATCH REPORT: SVOD MARKET SHARES (2024). As 2024 has come to an end, JustWatch has released its latest data report on market shares in the US. As usual, the report is based on the 17.2 million JustWatch users in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen.

SVOD market shares in Q4 2024: In the final quarter of 2024, Prime Video led provider growth, taking 22% of the overall market. Netflix, its largest competitor, trailed Prime by only 1%. Hulu, Disney+, and Max make up 36% of the streaming market while Paramount+ and AppleTV+ both stayed below 10%.

Market share development in 2024: In Q4 2024, Prime Video and Netflix continued to lead the U.S. streaming market, each holding over 20% of the overall market, with Netflix slightly narrowing the gap between them. Hulu saw steady growth, challenging Max for third place, while Disney+ struggled to gain traction. Smaller platforms in the “Other” category experienced a noticeable rise, reflecting growing interest in alternative services.

(13) NEW GLENN LAUNCH TO ORBIT SUCCESSFUL. “Blue Origin reaches orbit on first flight of its titanic New Glenn rocket” reports Ars Technica.

Early on Thursday morning, a Saturn V-sized rocket ignited its seven main engines, a prelude to lifting off from Earth.

But then, the New Glenn rocket didn’t move.

And still, the engines produced their blue flame, furiously burning away methane.

The thrust-to-weight ratio of the rocket must have been in the vicinity of 1.0 to 1.2, so the booster had to burn a little liquid methane and oxygen before it could begin to climb appreciably. But finally, seconds into the mission, New Glenn began to climb. It was slow, ever so slow. But it flew true.

After that the vehicle performed like a champion. The first stage burned for more than three minutes before the second stage separated at an altitude of 70 km. Then, the upper stage’s two BE-3U engines appeared to perform flawlessly, pushing the Blue Ring pathfinder payload toward orbit. These engines burned very nearly for 10 minutes before shutting down, having reached an orbital velocity of 28,800 kph.

For the first time since its founding, nearly a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin had reached orbit. The long-awaited debut launch of the New Glenn rocket, a super-heavy lift vehicle developed largely with private funding, had come. And it was a smashing success….

(14) DILBERT STARK’S STARSHIP. Elsewhere today – “SpaceX Starship test fails after Texas launch” reports the BBC.

The latest test of Space X’s giant Starship rocket has failed, minutes after launch.

Officials at Elon Musk’s company said the upper stage was lost after problems developed after lift-off from Texas on Thursday.

The mission came hours after the first flight of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket system, backed by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

The two tech billionaires both want to dominate the space vehicle market.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” SpaceX posted on X.

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”…

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

Pixel Scroll 3/26/24 There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy; For Everything Else, There’s Pixel Scroll

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(1) THE ROBOPOCALYPSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Who is the best time traveler?  Well, of course the Doctor is, but then Brit Cit is the epicentre of SF. Nonetheless, across the Black Atlantic, in the home of the Mega Cities and the Cursed Earth, there are other time-travelling franchises…

“He was back….” BBC Radio 4 has just aired a programme dedicated to The Terminator a modern classic SF film that is this year 40 years old: ”I’ll Be Back: 40 Years of The Terminator”.

“It was the machines, Sarah…a new order of intelligence. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.” So says Kyle Reese, time travelling freedom fighter in The Terminator. Released in the perfectly fitting year of 1984, The Terminator was a low budget, relentless slice of science fiction noir, drawing on years of pulp sf to conjure a future nightmare of humanity hunted to near extinction by the machines it created. In 2029, just 5 years away now,
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unstoppable cyborg killer is sent back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, the yet to be mother of humanities saviour to come. Fate, redemption & the destructive power of A.I. all made in the analogue age but still influencing the way many imagine our new age of Artificial Intelligence.

Professor Beth Singler re-visits the making of the film with producer Gale Anne Hurd and explores its lasting influence. Forty years on, and the circular self-contained time travel plot of The Terminator has been cracked wide open letting out alternative timelines and delayed apocalypses: more films, a television show, graphic novels, comics, video games, theme park rides and even memes have spread versions of the original robopocalypse. More than that, the first Terminator has given us a vocabulary and a vision for the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

(2) OVERVIEW OF CHINESE SFF RECOMMENDATION LISTS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] I have finally published my write-up of Chinese recommendation lists: “Chinese SFF recommendation/best-of-the-year lists for works published in 2023”

The following summary bullet points for the Science Fiction World list are a suitable teaser – producing a Chinese recommendation list that doesn’t include any Chinese works first published in the year of eligibility — other than the fanzine — strikes me as an unconventional choice…

Science Fiction World

Links

Summary

  • Recommendations over 6 categories, with between 1 and 5 recommendations in each.
  • No Chinese fiction works first published in 2023 are included in the recommendations.
  • All the recommended novels are in English or Polish, and not yet announced for publication in China.
  • All of the novella and short story recommendations are older stories that were published in English translation in 2023 in a pair of venues.
  • Several of the categories that had recommendations last year – including Best Novelette – have no recommendations this year.
  • The editor recommendations are almost identical to last year – including the works listed.

(3) CLIPPING SERVICE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] I’m a NYTimes digital/paper subscriber, so I can do 10 “gift links”/month. I’ve been told (by somewhat reliable colleagues) that I can share to email lists, groups, etc, which I assume/believe includes F770-type thingies.

If I’m wrong, may the Pallid Ghost of the Gray Lady bite me on the nose (with mild apologies to Johnny Carson).

Note, these share links are only good for “30 days after [I’ve] shared it}…good enough for current readers, not so much for anyone dredging the past.

A) BORKED METAL. “A Rock Fell From Space Into Sweden. Who Owns It on Earth?”

Sweden’s courts have been debating claims to a meteorite that fell north of Stockholm, including whether the right to move around in nature, including on private property, extends to claiming a meteorite….

B) SNAKES IN A SCROLL!  “Now Arriving at J.F.K.: Horses From Iceland and Dogs From the West Bank”.

The ARK, a 14-acre facility at Kennedy International Airport, is often the first stop for animals of all kinds arriving in the United States….

(4) GLORIFIED SPYWARE. “How The BookmarkED/OnShelf App, Created to Help Schools [Navigate Book Bans], Fuels Them Instead” at BookRiot.

In December 2023, BookmarkED—an app designed to “help” educators, librarians, and parents navigate book bans in school libraries—rebranded. Now OnShelf, the app has been making its way into schools in Texas. Freedom of Information Requests obtained new information about how the app is getting into districts in Texas and how the app alerts users to so-called “banned books” in the district. The app is a student data privacy nightmare, and it undermines the professional capabilities of trained teacher librarians in educational institutions.

What Is BookmarkED/OnShelf? A Little About The App’s History

Founded by Steve Wandler, who works in the education technology space, BookmarkED aims to “empower parents to personalize school libraries.” It aims to ensure that parents get to decide the “individual literary journey for their children, based on their personal values and interests,” while teachers and librarians can keep “confidently recommending and providing more personalized books to their students, knowing precisely the learning outcomes they will achieve.” The technology helps libraries “simply and efficiently navigate the ever-changing challenged books landscape.”

BookmarkED soft launched their product during a Texas State Senate Committee on Education meeting on March 30, 2023, two and a half months before Texas passed the READER Act. Wandler noted that the app was developed while working with a superintendent in the state. That superintendent, Jason Cochran, is one of the owners of the app, and as of writing, works as the superintendent of Krum Independent School District. Prior to Krum, Cochran was superintendent at Eastland Independent School District. …

(5) A ROMANTASY MINICON. Publishers Weekly gleans all the details in a long report about last weekend’s event: “A Romantasy Festival Comes to Chicago”.

Romantasy was added as a category in the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2023, a fact mentioned several times at the inaugural Romantasy Literary Genre Festival, held March 22–24 at the Otherworld Theater in Chicago. More than 100 people celebrating the relatively new but rapidly growing genre attended the festival, which included author signings and Q&As, live podcast recordings, a drag tournament called Drag’N Brunch, and daily showings of Twihard!, a musical parody of Twilight. Books were sold on site by local indie bookstore Women & Children First.

The festival kicked off on Friday with a cocktail hour, mixer, and the weekend’s first performance of Twihard! Saturday, the first full day of the festival, began with the recording of the Whoa!mance podcast, hosted by Isabeau Dasho and Morgan Lott, who moderated an author panel with authors Samara Breger, Tamara Jerée, Megan Mackie, and Melanie K. Moschella. During the 90-minute conversation, the authors discussed their creative processes, genre crossovers, worldbuilding, escapism, beloved tropes, queer monsters, and more….

(6) ONE CLICHÉ AVOIDED. Simon Bland interviews several people who made The Thing, including the director, and an actor who didn’t come to a predictable end: “John Carpenter on horror classic The Thing: ‘It was an enormous failure and I got fired’” in the Guardian.

Keith David, who played Childs:

“ What I didn’t think at the time, and wasn’t thinking about until later, was how, traditionally, the Black man is not the guy who lasts to the end. This was one of the first movies where the Black guy lasts to the final scene. I don’t think I’m the only brother who’s ever survived in a horror or sci-fi movie, but I’m certainly one of the few. It was great foresight on John’s part.

I hear lots of theories about the final sequence. We played it various ways; as if I was the Thing, as if it was MacReady, and as if it was neither of us. People wonder why there’s no breath coming out of my mouth in the cold after the station burns down, and say it had to be me. But I say that if I’m downstage of the fire you wouldn’t see steam coming from my mouth because there’s too much heat. That’s how I explain it, but it’s your movie, your experience. The Thing is whoever you think it is.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 26, 1931 – Leonard Nimoy. (Died 2015.) Pointy ears, green skin —  it must be Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. And what an amazing role it was. So what was Roddenberry’s initial conception of the character? Here it is:

The First Lieutenant. The Captain’s right-hand man, the working-level commander of all the ship’s functions – ranging from manning the bridge to supervising the lowliest scrub detail. His name is Mr. Spock. And the first view of him can be almost frightening – a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears. But strangely – Mr. Spock’s quiet temperament is in dramatic contrast to his satanic look. Of all the crew aboard, he is the nearest to Captain April’s equal, physically, emotionally, and as a commander of men. His primary weakness is an almost catlike curiosity over anything the slightest alien. 

“The Cage” — Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

Although Memory Alpha says that Roddenberry settled on Nimoy from the beginning, other accounts say that Martin Landau was an earlier casting consideration for the character, and several sources say DeForest Kelley auditioned for the role as well. Actual history is often far messier than the official version is.

So we get to Nimoy. It’s hard now over a half century on to imagine anyone else in that role, isn’t it? Can you envision Martin Landau in the role, or DeForest Kelley? Especially the latter? I certainly can’t. For better or worse, well better, Nimoy made for me the perfect Spock. 

Cool, elegant, ever so, dare I say it? almost on the edge of being sarcastic if Vulcans could indeed be that. Certainly more fascinating a character by far on the series than Kirk was by far. Yes, Kirk was cast in interesting stories such as “Shore Leave” but Spock was script in and out just more interesting to watch.

So my favorite Spock centered episodes? “Dagger of the Mind” in which marked the introduction of his mind-meld ability; “Amok Time” of course which also has the bonus of when “Live Long and Prosper” first showed up; “Journey to Babel” in we meet his parents, Sarek (Mark Leonard) and Amanda (Jane Wyatt); and “The Enterprise Incident “ for his not really amorous relationship with the unnamed Romulan Commander (yes she gets no name) and the rest of that splendid story.

Leonard Nimoy (Spock) at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison.

I rewatched much of the series recently on Paramount+ as well as all of the other Trek series save the one season of the animated YA series whose name is completely escaping my name are here. (Never did figure out why they cancelled something so cheap to do when Strange New Worlds can cost them as much as ten million dollars an episode.)  He’s still my favorite when I rewatched them. I so wanted a spin-off Spock centered series to have happened after Trek ended. 

Usually I look at a performer’s entire genre career but I think I will look at just a single post-Trek undertaking, being Dr. William Bell in the stellar Fringe series. He decided to do the role after working with Abrams and Kurtzman on the rebooted Star Trek film and was offered with this series the chance to work with them again. He actually retired from acting before the series concluded but continued on here through its ending. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) EARTH ABIDES TO TV. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] TVLine reports that a six-episode limited series adaptation of George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides is about to go into production.

Alexander Ludwig is relocating from Starz to MGM+.

Fresh off the cancellation of Heels, Ludwig will headline the MGM+ limited series Earth Abides, based on the George R. Stewart novel of the same name.

Adapted by showrunner Todd Komarnicki (Sully) and described as “a wildly imaginative new take” on the sci-fi classic, Earth Abides centers on Ludwig’s Ish, “a brilliant but solitary young geologist living a semi-isolated life who awakens from a coma only to find that there is no one left alive but him…

Production on the six-episode series is set to begin in Vancouver on Monday, April 8. MGM+ is targeting a late 2024 release date. 

There is similar coverage at Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.

(10) THESE SUITS ARE MADE FOR WALKING. “’Walking Dead’ Creator Robert Kirkman, Others Beat AMC’s Effort To Get Profits Lawsuit Dismissed” — Deadline tells how they convinced the judge.

The first season of the latest Walking Dead spinoff The Ones Who Live is concluding this weekend, but the latest profit participation lawsuit from zombie apocalypse creator Robert Kirkman, franchise executive producer Gale Anne Hurd and others is far from over.

With heavy emphasis on the $200 million settlement AMC suddenly made in 2021 to end ex-TWD showrunner Frank Darabont and CAA’s nearly 10-year long lawsuit over profits, U.S. District Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha yesterday denied the outlet’s move to have Kirkman, Hurd, David Alpert, Charles Eglee and Glen Mazzara’s mega-millions case dismissed.

“It would be an illogical interpretation of the MFN (most favored nations) provisions and contrary to the reasonable expectations of the parties in entering into the agreements if the court were to allow Defendants, as a matter of law, to provide Darabont and CAA with increased contingent compensation and a greater share of future gross receipts for the series through a settlement agreement—at Plaintiffs’ expense—without providing Plaintiffs the same,” the California-based federal judge wrote in a 13-page ruling filed Monday (read the TWD EP case ruling here).

Having pulled the short stick in a previous suit against AMC, Kirkman, Hurd and fellow TWD EPs sued AMC for $200 million in a November 15, 2022 breach of contract action.

“Plaintiffs are entitled to the same treatment afforded to Darabont with respect to his MAGR interests, they are therefore entitled to have the same valuation applied to their MAGR interests, which, collectively, exceed Darabont’s and CAA’s,” the LA Superior Court filing declared with reference to  modified adjusted gross receipts metric used to gauge profit participation payouts. “As a result, Plaintiffs are entitled to a payment well over $200 million from AMC, in an amount to be proved at trial.”…

(11) DIBS ON LUNA. “Scientists call for protection of moon sites that could advance astronomy” reports the Guardian.

Astronomers are calling for the urgent protection of sites on the moon that are rated the best spots in the solar system for advanced instruments designed to unveil the secrets of the universe.

The prime locations are free from ground vibration, shielded from Earth’s noisy broadcast signals or profoundly cold – making them uniquely well-suited for sensitive equipment that could make observations impossible from elsewhere.

But the pristine spots, known as sites of extraordinary scientific importance (Sesis), are in danger of being ruined by an imminent wave of missions such as lunar navigation and communications satellites, rovers and mining operations, with experts warning on Monday that safeguarding the precious sites was an “urgent matter”.

“This is the first time humanity has to decide how we will expand into the solar system,” said Dr Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. “We’re in danger of losing one-of-a-kind opportunities to understand the universe.”…

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

2023 SFF Hall of Fame Inductees

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Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture has announced the 2023 inductees to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame – author N. K. Jemisin, filmmaker John Carpenter, the Dune franchise, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

N.K. Jemisin

b. 1972

American science fiction and fantasy writer, N.K. Jemisin debuted her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, in 2010. She has since won multiple awards, including the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. She is known for exploring a wide range of themes like cultural conflict, liminal spaces, and the mechanics in systems of oppression.

Her Broken Earth Trilogy (2015-2017) won her the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making her the first Black author to win the award. She is the first author to win the award three years in a row, and the first to win it for each book in a trilogy. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020 and included in Times annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2021.

Jemisin has also worked as a counseling psychologist, an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops, and as the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer at The New York Times. Jemisin’s works have been translated into more than 20 languages and in 2021 Sony’s TriStar Pictures won the rights to The Broken Earth Trilogy with Jemisin adapting the novels for the screen.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Inheritance Trilogy (2010-2011)
Dreamblood Duology (2012)
Broken Earth Trilogy (2015-2017)
Great Cities Series (2020-2022)

John Carpenter

b. 1948

John Carpenter is an American filmmaker and composer known for his horror, action, and science fiction films, most notably the Halloween franchise. Carpenter’s films are characterized by minimalist lighting, panoramic compositions, and distinctive scores.

They include box office hits such as Halloween (1978), one of the most successful independent films of all time, The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), and Starman (1984), as well as cult classics Dark Star (1974), The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), and Escape from L.A (1996).

Raised in a musical home, Carpenter wrote or co-wrote the scores for nearly all his films. His early adoption of synthesizers inspired many electronic artists and recent reissues of several has reinvigorated public interest in his talents as a musician.

While his commercial film success peaked in the 1980s, Carpenter’s legacy as a legendary American filmmaker continues to grow. The U.S. Library of Congress selected Halloween for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2006, and in 2019 Carpenter was presented with the Golden Coach Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Halloween (1978)
The Fog (1980)
Escape from New York (1981)
The Thing (1982)
Starman (1984)
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
They Live (1988)
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Village of the Damned (1995)
Escape from L.A. (1996)
Ghosts of Mars (2001)

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Lost Themes (2015)
Lost Themes II (2016)
Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998 (2017)
Lost Themes III: Alive After Death (2021)

Dune (Franchise)

Considered the world’s best-selling science fiction novel, Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) created a franchise that now includes comics, video games, television shows, and films—and continues to challenge and inspire generations of creators and audiences.

Herbert’s novel, with its more than two dozen prequels and sequels, tells the story of an interstellar empire tens of thousands of years in the future. Vital to this empire is the desert planet Arrakis, the only known source of the spice melange, which is the most valuable substance in the universe. Control of Arrakis, its spice production, and the combined impact on humanity’s development form the axis of a millennia-long conflict that develops throughout the series.

Ambitious screen adaptations include the 1984 film by David Lynch and the John Harrison turn-of-the-millennium TV miniseries. Denis Villeneuve’s cinematic reimagining brought Dune back to the screen in 2021.

Frank Herbert’s original book was honored with the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Hugo Award in 1966. It was praised by The New Yorker as “an epic of political betrayal, ecological brinkmanship, and messianic deliverance.” The novel has been translated into dozens of languages and sold roughly 20 million copies.

RELATED WORKS

Dune, book (1965)
Dune Messiah, book (1969)
The Illustrated Dune, book (1978)
Avalon Hill’s Dune, board game (1979)
Marvel Comics Super Special #36: Dune (1985)
Dune: Blood of the Sardauker, comic book (2021)

Dune, film (1984)
Dune, video game (1992)
Dune, television show (2000)
Children of Dune, television show (2004)
Dune, film (2021)
Dune: Spice Wars, video game (2022)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Film)

1975

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a musical comedy horror film exploring themes of self-expression, the ethics of conformity, and gender and sexual freedom. Initially panned by critics, it has become a landmark cult film with a devoted global fanbase.

Based on Richard O’Brien’s 1973 musical stage production The Rocky Horror Show, it stars O’Brien, Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, and Barry Bostwick, and centers on a young couple seeking help at a remote castle after their car breaks down. They find the castle occupied by extravagantly dressed people celebrating an annual convention led by Dr. Frank N. Furter, an eccentric scientist, and visiting alien, who creates a man named Rocky Horror in his laboratory.

Embracing the show’s affirmation of gender expression, audiences began participating with the film at the Waverly Theater in New York City in 1976, and audience interaction has become an essential part of the Rocky Horror experience. In 2016, a television remake was made starring Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank N. Furter.

Still in limited release in 2023, Rocky Horror is the longest-running theatrical release in film history. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2005.

RELATED WORKS

The Rocky Horror Show, play (1973)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, film (1975)
Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Comic Book, comic book (1980)
Shock Treatment, film (1981)
The Rocky Horror Glee Show, television show (2010)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, television special (2016)

This is the complete list of nominees voted on by the public:

Pixel Scroll 7/11/21 Why, Sir I Shall Call The Pixel Squad. You Are In Need Of Pixelation. They Will Scroll You

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(1) TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. The Salam Award, which promotes imaginative fiction in and about Pakistan, released this video by Mushba Said to remind Pakistani writers they have until midnight July 31 to submit entries for the award. See full guidelines at the link. Participants must either be currently residing in Pakistan, or be of Pakistani birth/descent.

(2) GO ASK ALICE. This article in The New Yorker will pique your interest in the Victoria & Albert’s exhibition about “The Beguiling Legacy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’”.

The origins of Alice’s tumble into Wonderland and its long cultural afterlife—everything from Carroll’s tentative first sketches to cheery, Alice-themed advertisements for Guinness and tomato juice produced a hundred years later (“Welcome to a Wonderland of good drinking!”)—are the subject of a beguiling new exhibition, “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. 

Here’s a link to the Victoria & Albert museum’s webpage about the exhibit: “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser – Exhibition at South Kensington”.

Exploring its origins, adaptations and reinventions over 157 years, this immersive and theatrical show charts the evolution of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from manuscript to a global phenomenon beloved by all ages.

They also offer a virtual reality tour: “V&A · Curious Alice: The Vr Experience”.

From rabbit holes to psychedelic mushrooms, flamingos to hedgehogs, Wonderland is the perfect world to explore in virtual reality. Curious Alice encourages audiences to reward their curiosity by navigating a fantastical landscape, interacting with the book’s famous characters and completing a series of curious challenges. Race against the clock to capture the White Rabbit’s missing glove; solve the Caterpillar’s mind-bending riddles; defeat the Queen of Hearts in a curious game of croquet.

(3) WENDIG AND KHAW. Powell’s Books presents “Chuck Wendig in Conversation With Cassandra Khaw,” promoting Wendig’s new book, on July 29 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for the virtual event here.

A family returns to their hometown — and to the dark past that haunts them still — in The Book of Accidents (Del Rey), a new masterpiece of literary horror by Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of Wanderers…. Wendig will be joined in conversation by Cassandra Khaw, game writer and author of Nothing but Blackened Teeth.

(4) POWER OF SFF POETRY. Sandra J. Lindow reviews Greg Beatty’s poetry collection Cosmic Songs for Human Ears at SPECPO, which includes his 2005 Rhysling winner “No Ruined Lunar City.”

An introductory essay published in 2005, “Driving the Machine Backward Through the Graveyard of Dead Narrative,” explains the evolution of genre poetry through reference to Johanna Russ’s 1971 critical essay, “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials.” Which argues that genre tropes progress through three distinct stages: “Innocence” which seems to be characterized by novelty and sense of wonder, “Plausibility,” which describes how authors use the rules of verisimilitude to support readers suspension of disbelief, and finally “Decadence” where a petrification of genre rules, “stylized, like ballet,” tempts writers to break long established conventions, for instance, combining magic with aliens and dinosaurs. Although Russ writes that it is not possible for a genre to return to Innocence, Beatty argues that it is possible for genre poetry to create a “liminal space” where tropes from fantasy and science become metaphor for human experience, thereby avoiding Decadence and possibly returning to the novelty and energy of Innocence.

(5) IT HAD TO BE SNAKE. The Guardian celebrates “Escape From New York at 40: John Carpenter rebelling against the system”.

With a pirate’s eyepatch and a scowl that seems as fixed and enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile, Snake Plissken, the hero of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, drifts through a cataclysmic future like a man condemned, forced into a mission that, at best, might save a world he doesn’t care about anyway. The allegiances he forges along the way are hard-earned but only temporary, swiftly discarded as he survives one assignment and looks ahead to another one. He is deeply suspicious of authority, too, from the two-faced benefactor who’s forcing him through an impossible gauntlet to an aloof president who’s openly contemptuous of him and others like him.

In other words, Snake Plissken is John Carpenter, and Escape from New York was the first of three films in the 1980s in which Kurt Russell would serve as his charismatic stand-in – an iconoclast who had no home in the new Hollywood, but would take up residence on its fringes. As Plissken runs and guns his way through a Manhattan that’s been turned into maximum security prison, it’s easy to imagine it as an allegory for a film production, where Carpenter weaves his way through an impossible job with the help of fellow ne’er-do-wells that he’ll have to leave behind at the end. If he survives, it’s onto the next gauntlet….

(6) THE SHARP END. Netflix dropped a trailer for season 2 of The Witcher. Premieres December 17.

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • July 11, 2011 — A decade ago, Alphas premiered on Syfy. It was created by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow. It is in the same universe as Warehouse 13 and Eureka, a fact confirmed when Vanessa Calder who is a recurring character on Warehouse 13 appeared in one episode of the series. (Thanks Andrew (not Werdna) for confirming that in a recent Scroll.)  It had far too many Executive Producers and Producers to list here, a puzzle for a series that would last but two seasons and twenty four episodes. It starred David Strathairn, Ryan Cartwright, Warren Christie, Azita Ghanizada, Laura Mennell, Malik Yoba and Erin Way. Critics in general loved it and the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give a most excellent seventy seven rating. Syfy cancelled it on an unresolved cliffhanger. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 11, 1899 — E. B. White. Author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, both of which are surely genre. Along with William Strunk Jr., he is the co-author of the The Elements of Style English language style guide. (Died 1985.)
  • Born July 11, 1913 — Cordwainer Smith. Pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. Most of his fiction was set in The Instrumentality of Mankind series which I know I read once upon a time in fragments. The usual suspects are well stocked with his novels and short stories including Scanners Live in Vain, a most excellent novella. (Died 1966.)
  • Born July 11, 1920 — Yul Brynner. The Gunslinger in Westworld and its sequel Futureword.  He would also play Carson, a human warrior in the post-apocalyptic The Ultimate Warrior. Are we considering The King and I genre or even genre adjacent?  If we are, he played King Mongkut in the short-lived Anna and the King TV series as well. (Died 1985.)
  • Born July 11, 1925 — David Graham, 96. The voice of Daleks in the early years of Doctor Who including two non-canon films, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.; his voice work made him a sought after worker and he’d be used on Thunderbirds, Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar, Timeslip, Moomin, Stingray and even the recent Thunderbirds Are Go. And yes, he’s still doing voice work as his last genre work was for the Nebula-75 series just last year.
  • Born July 11, 1950 — Bruce McGill, 71. His first role was as Director Eugene Matuzak in Time Cop. He later got one-offs in Quantum Leap (twice), Babylon 5, Voyager and Tales from the Crypt. He’s in the television remake of The Man Who Fell to Earth as Vernon Gage. If MacGyver counts as genre, he has the recurring role of Jack Dalton. 
  • Born July 11, 1956 — Amitav Ghosh, 65. Author of the absolutely brilliant The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Really just go read it and we’ll discuss it over a cup of chai masala. His newest work is about the medieval Bengali tale about the forest (Sundarbans) goddess, Bon Bibi.
  • Born July 11, 1958 — Alan Gutierrez, 63. An artist and illustrator, specializing in SF and fantasy cover art. His first professional sale was to the now defunct semi-professional Fantasy Book in 1983. He then began producing work for Baen Books, Tor Books,Pequod Press and other publishers. He has also painted covers for Analog magazine, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and other SF magazines. He’s been nominated for five Asimov’s Readers Awards and two Analog Awards as well. 
  • Born July 11, 1984 — Serinda Swan, 37. She first graces our corner of the multiverse in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as Aphrodite. Later on she’s in Tron: Legacy as Siren #2. Currently she’s Medusa in The Inhumans. She’s got one-offs in Supernatural, Smallville and The Tomorrow People.

(9) PUT TO THE TEST. DUST’s new sci-fi short film release is “Intelligentia”.

Lisa receives a butler A.I. to Turing test, and over the course of the procedure, she discovers the A.I. is not what it seems and her entire world disrupted.

(10) FLIGHT TO THE EDGE OF SPACE. The 70-year-old British billionaire and crew members of Virgin Galactic launched the commercial space plane Unity from New Mexico, reached the edge of space and landed safely back at the spaceport on Sunday. The New York Times posted “Highlights From Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Flight”.

…The rocket plane, a type called SpaceShipTwo, is about the size of an executive jet. In addition to the two pilots, there can be up to four people in the cabin. The particular SpaceShipTwo that flew on Sunday is named V.S.S. Unity.

To get off the ground, Unity was carried by a larger plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet. There, Unity was released, and the rocket plane’s motor ignited. The acceleration made people on board feel a force up to 3.5 times their normal weight on the way to an altitude of more than 50 miles.

At the top of the arc, those on board were able to see the blackness of space as well as the curve of Earth from the plane’s windows. They also got out of their seats and experienced about four minutes of apparent weightlessness. Fifty miles up, Earth’s downward gravitational pull is essentially just as strong as it is on the ground; rather, the passengers were falling at the same pace as the plane around them.

The two tail booms at the back of the space plane then rotated up to a “feathered” configuration that created more drag and stability, allowing the plane to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere more gently. This configuration SpaceShipTwo like a badminton shuttlecock, which always falls with the pointy side oriented down, than a plane.

Still, the forces felt by the passengers on the way down were greater than on the way up, reaching six times the force of gravity.

Branson gets all the attention – but who piloted the mission and were the other crew members?

The pilots are David Mackay and Michael Masucci….

In addition to Mr. Branson, three Virgin Galactic employees joined the flight to evaluate how the experience will be for future paying customers. They were Beth Moses, the chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations.

In 2018 The New Yorker profiled a predecessor in “Virgin Galactic’s Rocket Man”, “The ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.”

At 5 a.m. on April 5th, Mark Stucky drove to an airstrip in Mojave, California, and gazed at SpaceShipTwo, a sixty-foot-long craft that is owned by Virgin Galactic, a part of the Virgin Group. Painted white and bathed in floodlight, it resembled a sleek fighter plane, but its mission was to ferry thousands of tourists to and from space.

Stucky had piloted SpaceShipTwo on two dozen previous test flights, including three of the four times that it had fired its rocket booster, which was necessary to propel it into space. On October 31, 2014, he watched the fourth such flight from mission control; it crashed in the desert, killing his best friend. On this morning, Stucky would be piloting the fifth rocket-powered flight, on a new iteration of the spaceship. A successful test would restore the program’s lustre.

Stucky walked into Virgin Galactic’s large beige hangar. He is fifty-nine and has a loose-legged stroll, tousled salt-and-pepper hair, and sunken, suntanned cheeks. In other settings, he could pass for a retired beachcomber. He wears the smirk of someone who feels certain that he’s having more fun than you are…

(11) SKYSCRAPER CAT. CBS This Morning devoted a short segment to the 3-D cat billboard in Tokyo that was recently covered by the Scroll. Their report includes video callbacks to several previous 3-D billboards.

(12) SO BAD YOU CAN’T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF IT. In “The Schlock-Horror Drive-In That Rose From the Grave”, the New York Times tells about a drive-in revival in Pennsylvania.  

It was about 2 a.m. on a Sunday when the gross-out horror-comedy “Class of Nuke ’Em High” started playing at the Mahoning Drive-In. This was the last screening at TromaDance, an annual showcase of low-budget horror and sex comedies produced by the Queens-based Troma movie studio. Earlier that evening, about 600 cars had piled into the drive-in in Lehighton, Pa., but by 2 a.m., only the die-hards remained. Kevin Schmidt, an extra in the film, was among them.

He had driven to the Mahoning from Summit, N.J., and hadn’t seen the movie projected on screen since it was first shown in Jersey City in December 1986. “This is the only time I can justify driving 100 miles to see a movie,” Mr. Schmidt said much earlier in the evening.

By the time the evening was over, it had been another success for the Mahoning, a 72-year-old drive-in theater that was left for dead just seven years ago….

…Movie screenings at the Mahoning Drive-In often feel like events. Films are shown in double and triple features, sandwiched between older (and often bizarre) movie trailers. You might take in “Escape From New York” and “Invasion U.S.A.,” which play after vintage church advertisements (“Worship at the church of your choice”) or an anti-cable-TV screed (“Don’t let pay TV be the monster in your living room”). It is, in the words of Mr. Schmidt, “a special place.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Director Mel Stuart reminiscences about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in this short from 2011 that Warner Bros. released two weeks ago.

[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Dann.]

Pixel Scroll 1/16/18 You Were Scrolling As A Pixel In A Sci-Fi File When I Met You

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(1) VAN GELDER AUCTION BENEFITS PKD AWARD. Norwescon announced that Gordon Van Gelder, administrator for the Philip K. Dick Award, has put 18 sff books up for auction on eBay, including several first editions and signed editions (and some signed first editions), as a benefit for the award’s administrative fees. The Philip K. Dick Award, is presented annually to distinguished science fiction books published for the first time in the United States as a paperback original. The award ceremony is held each year at Norwescon.

(2) SECOND TAKE. Strange Horizons got some pushback about sexism in Adam Roberts’ review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and has now supplemented the original with an edited version —

Editor’s note: This review has been edited to remove sexist commentary about Carrie Fisher. The original version of this review can be read here. For additional background, please see this Twitter thread.

(3) TRUE GRIT. The BBC reports on “Transport Scotland’s fleet of gritters and their gritter tracker”. Contractors Bear Scotland ran competitions to name the various vehicles, and what roads they’re covering can be viewed online.

Thanks to social media, Transport Scotland’s fleet of light-flashing, salt-spraying kings of the road have become a bit of a sensation.

Followers have been glued to their screens following the roads authority’s Gritter Tracker.

They were surprised to find out the vehicles had humorous names like Sir Andy Flurry, Sir Salter Scott and Gritty Gritty Bang Bang….

The force was with the people of Ayrshire during Tuesday’s snow flurries, their roads were being protected by Luke Snowalker.

Along with strong snow-slaying names like the Ice Destroyer, Snow Queen and Ice Buster, more unassuming gritters like Fred, Jack and Frosty have also been out and about keeping the country moving.

Not forgetting Sprinkles, Sparkle and Ready Spready Go.

(4) ANOTHER HORRIFIC LESSON. Chloe N. Clark continues the excellent Horror 101 series with “Surrounded by Others–Anatomy of a Pod Person” at Nerds of a Feather.

As a child, two of my earliest film-related memories are watching the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and watching the John Carpenter version of The Thing. In both, what stuck with child me was the depiction of a monster who not only could be anyone, but also could be someone that you think you know so well: your crewmate, your friend, your lover. This early exposure to these two films led to a longtime obsession with pod people (which the Thing is not technically, but I’m extending my definition here to any monster who can appear in the exact visage of someone you know and trust). As a child, there was a visceral terror to the idea, because the world was one I trusted. As an adult, while I don’t think pod people are likely, they still strike a certain fear because the concept at the heart of pod people’s terror-making is very much real. In this edition of Horror 101, I’ll be diving into the anatomy of a monster (a thing I’ll do occasionally in this series).

(5) ABOUT THAT VENN DIAGRAM. Sarah at Bookworm Blues was caught up in a kerfuffle yesterday, and analyzes the underlying issues in “On Twitter and Representation”.

While most of the comments I received yesterday were displaying the righteous indignation I’m still feeling, there were a handful of others that made their way to me through various means that said something along the lines of, “I just love reading SciFi and Fantasy. I don’t pay attention to the gender of the author.” Or “Does the gender of the author even matter?”

Comments like that bother me about as much as, “I don’t see your disabilities.” Or “I don’t see color.”

As much as I don’t want to be defined by my chronic illness, or my disabilities, they absolutely are part of who I am, and by refusing to see them, you are, in a way, refusing to see me. You’re only seeing pieces of me. Not seeing my disability doesn’t make it go away. Putting me in a box will limit the reaches of my work, rather than expand it.

In another example, women tend to get paid less than men here in the good ol’ US of A, and not seeing the gender roles in that situation, is refusing to see the problem.

Representation matters. It matters for a hell of a lot of reasons. It is important to show young kids everywhere that they can be, do, accomplish whatever they set their minds to. Seeing disabled characters in literature normalizes disabilities in important ways. It provides education to those who might need it. It also gives me someone I can relate to in the books I read, and that right there is absolutely priceless.

This graphic that I posted yesterday doesn’t just have a dearth of female authors on it, but it also lacks any people of color, disabled authors, LGBTQ authors and basically any minority group at all. It’s a list of white male fantasy authors…

and Robin Hobb.

This is important because, I get pretty fed up with women authors putting out work that’s just as good, if not better, than their male counterparts and not getting equal recognition for it. This isn’t a Divide and Conquer thing, it’s a We’re all in it Together thing. Someone’s effort shouldn’t be seen or overlooked based on any of their minority or majority qualifiers. The fact that when asked for a list of fantasy authors the first ones someone gets are white male, says a whole lot. And the truth is, I think this inequality is so ingrained in our culture that it really isn’t even noticed until something like this happens. Maybe we don’t mean for this to happen, but in a way, the fact that this happens without malice or intent makes it just that much more insidious.

Women have basically cleaned the clock in the past few Hugo Awards, and where are they on charts like this? One of the most awarded, celebrated authors in our genre today is N.K. Jemisin, a black female fantasy author, and she deserves recognition for her accomplishments, but where is it in a list like this, and why in the world didn’t her name come up when someone was polling Twitter for fantasy authors? Nnedi Okorafor is getting her book Who Fears Death turned into a television show, and I’ve seen her name, her image, herself routinely cut off from many articles. Namely, when Vice News tweeted about this deal, and the graphic that followed wasn’t of the author who wrote the book, but of George R R Martin, and the book cover….

And today an alternate version is making the rounds –

(6) JACKET. Neil Gaiman’s cover reveal for the U.S. paperback.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 16, 1939 — The comic strip Superman first appeared in newspapers.
  • January 16, 1995 — Star Trek: Voyager premiered.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 16, 1948 – John Carpenter celebrated his 70th birthday today – no matter what you may have read. Entertainment Weekly caught the competition’s mistake in listing him as deceased.

Happy birthday John Carpenter! Rotten Tomatoes has some bad news…

The mega-popular film review aggregation site mistakenly declared veteran film director dead Tuesday in a since-deleted tweet.

The 70-year-old horror icon is very much alive, though RT seemed to have a different impression when it honored the Halloween and The Thing director’s birthday…

(9) SEARCHING FOR A SIGN. Further Confusion was held this past weekend in San Jos and they have lost track of a convention icon —

https://twitter.com/Carnassiel/status/953393017423060993

(10) CATAPOSTROPHE. Apparently Kazakhstan is switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, and the result is loaded with apostrophes, so the words look like they came from a bad SF novel. The New York Times has the story: “Kazakhstan Cheers New Alphabet, Except for All Those Apostrophes”.

In his 26 years as Kazakhstan’s first and only president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev has managed to keep a resurgent Russia at bay and navigate the treacherous geopolitical waters around Moscow, Beijing and Washington, keeping on good terms with all three capitals.

The authoritarian leader’s talent for balancing divergent interests, however, suddenly seems to have deserted him over an issue that, at first glance, involves neither great power rivalry nor weighty matters of state: the role of the humble apostrophe in writing down Kazakh words.

The Kazakh language is currently written using a modified version of Cyrillic, a legacy of Soviet rule, but Mr. Nazarbayev announced in May that the Russian alphabet would be dumped in favor of a new script based on the Latin alphabet. This, he said, “is not only the fulfillment of the dreams of our ancestors, but also the way to the future for younger generations.”

…The modified Latin alphabet put forward by Mr. Nazarbayev uses apostrophes to elongate or modify the sounds of certain letters.

For example, the letter “I” with an apostrophe designates roughly the same sound as the “I” in Fiji, while “I” on its own sounds like the vowel in fig. The letter “S” with an apostrophe indicates “sh” and C’ is pronounced “ch.” Under this new system, the Kazakh word for cherry will be written as s’i’i’e, and pronounced she-ee-ye.

(11) ON TONIGHT’S JEOPARDY! Rich Lynch says the game show Jeopardy! included an Asimov clue in the first round of tonight’s episode, mentioning the Hugo Award. The returning champ got it right!

(12) WHERE’S THE BEEF? Astronaut John Young, who recently died, once got in trouble for smuggling a corned beef sandwich on a space mission.

Gemini 3 had several objectives, from testing the effect of zero gravity on sea urchin eggs to testing orbital maneuvers in a manned spacecraft, which would aid the future moon landing. But another imperative was to test new space foods. Grissom and Young were sent up with dehydrated packets that they were meant to reconstitute with a water gun.

According to Young’s biography, “A couple of congressmen became upset, thinking that, by smuggling in the sandwich and eating part of it, Gus and I had ignored the actual space food that we were up there to evaluate, costing the country millions of dollars.” The House Appropriations Committee convened to mull over the sandwich incident, and one representative even harangued a NASA administrator, calling the sandwich stunt “just a little bit disgusting.”

Young was given a reprimand, the first ever for a member of a NASA space flight. He eventually regretted smuggling the sandwich into space, especially as the story came up over and over. But Grissom remembered it as “one of the highlights of the flight.” Grissom himself was in hot water for nicknaming Gemini 3’s spacecraft Molly Brown after the musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” (Grissom’s first space flight ended with his capsule sinking into the ocean after re-entry.) Grissom forced irritated NASA administrators to back down after he suggested the name “Titanic” as an alternative.

(13) STARGAZING. From the BBC, “Hubble scores unique close-up view of distant galaxy”.

The Hubble telescope has bagged an unprecedented close-up view of one of the Universe’s oldest known galaxies.

Astronomers were lucky when the orbiting observatory captured the image of a galaxy that existed just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

The image was stretched and amplified by the natural phenomenon of gravitational lensing, unlocking unprecedented detail.

Such objects usually appear as tiny red spots to powerful telescopes.

(14) RATS ACQUITTED! New simulations show “Black Death ‘spread by humans not rats'”.

“We have good mortality data from outbreaks in nine cities in Europe,” Prof Nils Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, told BBC News.

“So we could construct models of the disease dynamics [there].”

He and his colleagues then simulated disease outbreaks in each of these cities, creating three models where the disease was spread by:

  • rats
  • airborne transmission
  • fleas and lice that live on humans and their clothes

In seven out of the nine cities studied, the “human parasite model” was a much better match for the pattern of the outbreak.

(15) RARE CASES. BBC considers “The mystery of why some people become sudden geniuses”. Chip Hitchcock notes, “Readers of old-time SF may recall H. L. Gold’s ‘The Man with English.’”

But until recently, most sensible people agreed on one thing: creativity begins in the pink, wobbly mass inside our skulls. It surely goes without saying that striking the brain, impaling it, electrocuting it, shooting it, slicing bits out of it or depriving it of oxygen would lead to the swift death of any great visions possessed by its owner.

As it happens, sometimes the opposite is true.

After the accident, Muybridge eventually recovered enough to sail to England. There his creativity really took hold. He abandoned bookselling and became a photographer, one of the most famous in the world. He was also a prolific inventor. Before the accident, he hadn’t filed a single patent. In the following two decades, he applied for at least 10.

In 1877 he took a bet that allowed him to combine invention and photography. Legend has it that his friend, a wealthy railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford, was convinced that horses could fly. Or, more accurately, he was convinced that when they run, all their legs leave the ground at the same time. Muybridge said they didn’t.

To prove it he placed 12 cameras along a horse track and installed a tripwire that would set them off automatically as Stanford’s favourite racing horse, Occident, ran. Next he invented the inelegantly named “zoopraxiscope”, a device which allowed him to project several images in quick succession and give the impression of motion. To his amazement, the horse was briefly suspended, mid-gallop. Muybridge had filmed the first movie – and with it proven that yes, horses can fly.

The abrupt turnaround of Muybridge’s life, from ordinary bookseller to creative genius, has prompted speculation that it was a direct result of his accident. It’s possible that he had “sudden savant syndrome”, in which exceptional abilities emerge after a brain injury or disease. It’s extremely rare, with just 25 verified cases on the planet

(16) KEVIN SMITH’S RATIONALE. Sebastian Paris, in “‘Star Wars’: Kevin Smith Weighs In On The Backlash Against ‘The Last Jedi’” on Heroic Hollywood, says that Smith, in his Fatman on Batman podcast, says that one reason many fans were disappointed with The Last Jedi was that they expected Luke Skywalker to be like Obi-Wan Kenobi and were disappointed when he turned out to be someone else.

(17) 2017 IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. Rich Lynch’s 19th issue of My Back Pages [PDF file] is now online at the eFanzines.com website:

Issue #19 absolutely deplores the undearly departed 2017 as one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, and has essays involving historic mansions, convincing re-enactors, subway cars, Broadway shows, urban renewal, pub food, deadly duels, famous composers, iconic catchphrases, tablet computers, 1930s comic books, noir-ish buildings, foreboding edifices, unpaid interns, jams & singalongs, storm warnings, ancient palace grounds, Buddhist temples, worrisome fortunes, sushi adventures, retirement plans, and lots of Morris Dancers.

(18) MUNDANE COMMERCIALS, WHAT ELSE? Should you run out of things to watch, there’s always this collection of Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man In the World” ads – at least 8 minutes worth.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Richard Williams–Animating Movement is a piece on Vimeo by the Royal Ocean Film Society that describes the techniques of the great Canadian animator whose best known work is the Pink Panther and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, IanP, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Greg Hullender, Martin Morse Wooster, Rich Lynch, ULTRAGOTHA, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 7/6/17 Microcosmic Godstalk

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(1) AT THE CORE. James Davis Nicoll returns with a new list: “Twenty Core Speculative Fiction Mysteries Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves”. Here are the first four —

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

White Cat by Holly Black

The Mountains of Mourning by Lois Bujold

Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan

(2) YOUR GUIDE TO MOUNT TBR. Gabino Iglesias devotes his LitReactor column to explaining “10 Things Only Hardcore Bookworms Do”.

  1. Buy the same book more than once

We buy books because they are great and smell good and feel right and occupy empty space and they’re our friends. “I don’t have this edition.” “This cover is too amazing to pass up.” “This one is signed.” “This is the one I had when I was a kid.” “This is only a dollar!” “I’ll keep it around and give it away to someone later.” I’ve even used this one to rationalize the purchase of a third edition of Langston Hughes’ The Dream Keeper and Other Poems: “I mean, I have two editions already, but this one’s illustrated!” Yeah, hardcore bookworms will come up with amazing reasons why they “need” to buy a book they already have. On the other hand, we will also buy the same book twice by accident. It’s there and it’s affordable…and we’re not going to drive home and look through our piles for it: we’re going to buy it again.

  1. Judge people by their books/shelves

I know this one is tough to swallow. I also know some of you will debate that you’re better human beings than me and you are above and beyond judging others. Well, fuck it, I’m being brutally honest here and being judgmental has kept me alive this far, so I’m gonna keep doing it. If you invite me to your house and give me a tour of it and I don’t see a single book, I kinda want to get out of there because who the hell doesn’t own at least a couple of books? A house without books is like a body without a soul. If you do have some books, us bookworms will find a way to sniff them out and study them. Then, silently and with a smile on our faces, we will judge you. John Waters said “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them,” and I think most bookworms agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. Likewise, we will probably change the way we feel about you based on the quality of the books on your shelves. For me, the books you own/read and the way you treat animals are the two factors that lie at the top of the list. You read good shit and you’re good to animals, I’ll get down with you even if you’re a mercenary. Is this horrible? Yes. Is this unfair because “good books” is a subjective term? Yes. Does it matter to us? Nope. Will we change or stop doing it? Yeah…no.

(3) ACT CLEANUP NEEDED. Kisha Bertrand delivers a powerful rant about how trolls are coddled on a certain convention’s OFFICIAL Facebook group: “Shame on you, Dragon Con”.

Earlier today, a black girl posted this Io9 article in the group as she was excited about the movie adaptation and release of Black Panther along with the plethora of cosplay opportunities available to people of color. The post was meant to be positive and celebratory, but we all know what happens when black people get together in excitement of something that positively highlights us in any form of media. Yep. Angry and fragile white folx with their exclamations of, “But what about me? Why does it have to be about race?” and my all time favorite, “You only like it because it’s about black people.” Racist trolls begin crawling out of the woodwork spewing bile and nonsense to whoever will give them the time of day. I mean, god forbid PoC (“people of color” for those of you asleep in the back) are excited about a film involving superheroes who look like us and are at the forefront of the storyline.

Trolls are trolls and we all know they live to stir the pot and poke to get a rise out of people. Most of us know not to feed the trolls. In most cases we look the other way. I tend to bite my tongue because I don’t have the energy to challenge and educate bigots via social media. I’m fucking tired, y’all. I’m SOOO goddamn tired, BUT, there are those instances where trolling goes too far which is what happened today in the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group.

What started out as ignorant incompetence from some random redneck, turned into comments that were not only racist, but anti-semitic, transphobic, ableist and misogynist. It got to a point where it was no longer a matter of ignoring the troll. This guy was threatening people – a group of con goers who will be gathered in my city for Dragon Con in less than two months. People were pissed, myself included. I mean, the racist did refer to me as a monkey when I challenged him. A monkey… how clever.

Regardless of the troll, serious conversations were happening on this post. Some people were actually listening and being educated by PoC putting in the emotional labor to teach them. To be honest, some of these conversations were actually kind of awesome. The majority of white folx were celebrating the film and some of the more stubborn lot were legit backing off and LISTENING. Any PoC will tell you that getting white folx to stop making it about them and actually listen when we talk about our experiences is a pretty big deal. We’re unpacking some complicated stuff in these conversations.

Of course the troll wasn’t having it. He kept on pushing and taunting, reaching into the collection of shitty memes he was no doubt waiting to unleash at the right time – some of which were direct threats to Black and Jewish people specifically. This went on for several hours, all while members of the group were reporting this guy to not only the moderators of the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group, but also sending emails to the Dragon Con staff via dragoncon.org. Strength in numbers right? I was so proud of my extended nerd family of all backgrounds joining together to vanquish the evil troll. We were all just waiting on the moderators of the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group to swoop in, swing the ban hammer, and let us continue with our conversations and celebration of Black Panther and black cosplay. That was, in fact, the whole point of the post to begin with.

I guess banning the troll would have been too challenging for the moderators of the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group because what did they do? Rather than simply remove this terrible waste of human flesh from the group, they deleted the post in its entirety. They essentially swept the issue under the rug AND KEPT THE FUCKING RACIST PIECE OF SHIT TROLL IN THE GROUP.

What makes this terribly tragic (aside from the obvious) is this is NOT the first time such an instance has occurred in the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group. They deleted posts and conversations that came up after the 2016 convention when people wanted to discuss the costumes done in poor taste (e.g. blackface and the burning world trade center towers) and what we as a community could do to stop it. People wanted to discuss what they saw at Dragon Con in the OFFICIAL Dragon Con Facebook group because isn’t that what the fuck the group is for?!?! When members asked why they weren’t allowed to openly discuss these topics, one of the moderators (there are seven of them, five guys, two women, ALL WHITE) simply said, “You’re giving these people the attention they were looking for by discussing it. We just don’t have time to moderate and read through every post.” So your solution is to silence people in the community and ignore it? You don’t have time? Well golly gee, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do as a moderator of a group? MODERATE?!?! If you don’t have the time, maybe don’t volunteer to be a moderator of a group of over 12k members. I dunno. Just using a bit of logic here.

I guess we can expect any post about Black Panther and/or the celebration of black cosplay to eventually be deleted. Posts such as these will almost always bring out the racist assholes who want to stir the pot…because racism and transphobia and anti-semitism and ableism and misogyny sure are fucking funny, aren’t they? Rather than cut away the rot, you slap a band-aid over it and let it continue to fester because, “you don’t have the time”…

This was Dragon Con’s response:

(4) SPECULATIVE POET LAUREATE. The SPECPO blog announced that poet Tracy K. Smith, whose collection, Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, has been named the Poet Laureate of the United States.

Here’s an excerpt of the New York Times’ article:

Now the Library of Congress has named Ms. Smith its new poet laureate, the nation’s highest honor in that field. With the appointment, announced on Wednesday, Ms. Smith will take on a role held by some of the country’s most revered poets, among them Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, W. S. Merwin, Charles Simic and most recently, Juan Felipe Herrera.

Ms. Smith often plays with genre in her work and says it serves as “a distancing device.” Some of the verses in her 2007 collection, “Duende,” were inspired by westerns. Her 2011 collection, “Life on Mars,” which won the Pulitzer, is inflected with dystopian themes and tropes from science fiction. Many of the poems are meditations on cosmic affairs, like the incomprehensible vastness of space and humanity’s efforts to understand our place in the universe, but the collection is also anchored in the personal. The escapist, fantastical themes in the collection are blended with intimate reflections: mournful, elegiac verses about the death of her father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.

“I was thinking about loss, and thinking as someone who was about to become a parent,” said Ms. Smith, who lives in Princeton with her husband, Raphael Allison, and their three children. “The distancing device of science fiction was helpful, and it changed the metaphors.”

(5) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 6, 1990 — George Jetson took Jane and the rest of his gang from the boob tube up onto the silver screen as Jetsons: The Movie.

(6) BOOTS ON THE FACE. In keeping with the great tradition of Vice Presidential speeches about the space program, Mike Pence has made an Orwellian-sounding promise:

Vice President Mike Pence vowed Thursday to make space exploration a priority for the U.S., including the conquering of another planet.

“Our nation will return to the Moon and we will put American boots on the face of Mars,” Pence said during remarks at the Cape Canaveral headquarters in Florida.

(7) KICKOFF. Sports news blog SBNation.com is doing a serial science fiction story (July 5 through 15) about “What football will look like in the future”. The far future.

Danny Sichel sent the link with this endorsement: “Jon Bois is doing some incredible things with the medium, and I say this as someone who really doesn’t care about football.”

The whole thing was kind of dizzying to me – you’ve been warned.

(8) BRAVE NEW WORLD. Visiting the real site behind The Technicolor Time Machine: “The first European settlement in the New World”.

Twenty minutes later, I continued on my journey; it was another 80km to L’Anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site. Stepping out of the car, my nostrils filled with the crisp, briny sea air carried in by a breeze that rippled across the grassy landscape.

It is here, on the northern tip of Newfoundland, that a significant moment in human migration and exploration took place.

In the year 1000, nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus set sail, a Viking longboat, skippered by Leif Erikson, brought 90 men and women from Iceland to establish a new settlement – the first European settlement in the New World.

(9) SCENERY CHEWER. Adam Rowe reprises “The Secret History of J. Jonah Jameson, Comics’ Greatest Supporting Character” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

J. Jonah immediately latched on to Spider-man for a weirdly specific reason: he feared the young hero’s violent actions would lead children to idolize him, and they’d get themselves hurt in the process. “He is a bad influence on our youngsters” is a direct quote from page five of Amazing Spider-Man #1, and a direct summation of Wertham’s views. The parallels get stronger from there: while Wertham compared superheroes to the “Nazi myth” of the Ubermensch, J Jonah contrasted Spider-man against his own son, all-American astronaut John Jameson. Wertham called for comic censorship, and J. Jonah called for Spider-Man to be “outlawed.”

(10) BACK TO THE PRESENT. Marvel has announced the following creative teams and Legacy titles:

FALCON #1: TAKE FLIGHT! PART 1
Written by RODNEY BARNES
Art by JOHN CASSARA

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #709: RETURN TO PLANET HULK PART 1
Written by GREG PAK
Art by GREG LAND

X-MEN GOLD #13: MOJO WORLDWIDE PART 1
Written by MARC GUGGENHEIM
Art by MIKE MAYHEW

X-MEN BLUE #13: MOJO WORLDWIDE PART 2
Written by CULLEN BUNN
Art by JORGE MOLINA

(11) NOT THE SON OF A CARPENTER. But the creator himself! Variety has the story — “John Carpenter Inks Overall Deal With Universal Cable, to Develop Two New Series”.

Horror master John Carpenter has signed an overall deal with Universal Cable Productions (UCP), Variety has learned.

Under the new deal, Carpenter will executive produce scripted programming with UCP for the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment portfolio, as well as for external networks and streaming services, along with his producing partner, Sandy King, under their Storm King Productions banner.

UCP and Carpenter are already in development on “Tales for a Halloween Night” for SYFY. Based on Carpenter’s award-winning graphic novel anthology of stories, the series brings together storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for a collection of horror stories featuring graveyards, sunken ships, and all the things that go bump in the night. A search for a writer is underway. Additionally, UCP and Carpenter are developing “Nightside,” based on the literary series by New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green, with “Scream” TV series co-creator Jill Blotevogel attached to write the script. In the series, Nightside is the secret heart of London where creatures of the night congregate

“John Carpenter is an incredible creator whose dark imagination has left an indelible mark in film and in our dreams,” said Dawn Olmstead, executive vice president of development at UCP. “We are thrilled to have a master of the horror genre join UCP.”

(12) HEAVY DUTY. LHC “double heavy” particle to shine light on strong force.

Scientists have detected a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

The discovery will help researchers learn more about the so-called “strong force” which holds the centres of atoms together.

The existence of the new particle was theoretically predicted but this is the first time it has been identified.

The details of the Xi-cc++ particle were presented at a high-energy physics conference in Venice.

…Nearly all the matter that we see around us is made of neutrons and protons, which form the centres of atoms. These are made up of three smaller particles called quarks which can be either light or heavy.

New arrangement

There are, however, six different types of quarks which combine in different ways to form other kinds of particle. Those that have been detected so far contain at most, one heavy quark.

This is the first time that researchers have confirmed the existence of one with two heavy quarks. According to Prof Guy Wilkinson of Oxford University, there is an intriguing difference between the new particle and the ones that have been discovered before.

“In contrast to other particles of this type, in which the three quarks perform an elaborate dance around each other, a particle with two heavy quarks is expected to act like a planetary system, where the heavy quarks are like two stars orbiting one around the other, with the lighter quark orbiting around this binary system.”

The research team will now measure the properties of the Xi-cc++ to establish how this new arrangement of quarks behaves and how the strong force holds the system together. They also expect to find more double heavy quark particles.

(13) THE SOOTH IS OUT THERE. Looking for the remnants of a volcano bigger than the one that spawned Frankenstein: “The massive volcano that scientists can’t find”.

It was 10 October 1465 – the day of the hotly anticipated wedding of King Alfonso II of Naples. He was set to marry the sophisticated Ippolita Maria Sforza, a noblewoman from Milan, in a lavish ceremony. As she entered the city, the crowds gasped. Before them was a sight so strange and beautiful, it was like nothing they had ever seen before.

….In fact, what Alfonso’s wedding party witnessed may have been more extraordinary than anyone imagined. Many thousands of miles away in the tropics, a giant volcano was making geological history. This was an eruption so big, it produced an ash cloud which enveloped the Earth and led to the coolest decade for centuries.

The blast itself would have been heard up to 2,000km (1,242 miles) away and created a tsunami which caused devastation hundreds of kilometres away. In terms of scale, it surpassed even the 1815 eruption of Tambora, which unleashed energy equivalent to 2.2 million Little Boy atomic bombs and killed at least 70,000 people. Traces of the eruption have been found from Antarctica to Greenland.

The thing is, scientists can’t find the volcano that did it. What’s going on?

(14) FIBER COUNT. Dirty laundry: Are your clothes polluting the ocean?

“Not many people know that lots of our clothes are made of plastic,” says Imogen Napper, a PhD student at Plymouth University, “polyester, acrylic.”

Ms Napper and Prof Richard Thompson study marine microplastics – fragments and fibres found in the ocean surface, the deep sea and the marine food chain.

And in a recent lab study, they found that polyester and acrylic clothing shed thousands of plastic fibres each time it was washed- sending another source of plastic pollution down the drain and, eventually, into the ocean.

(15) MORTALITY TABLES. Robert Chan, in a Yahoo! piece “‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 Peril-o-Meter: Who Dies Next?”, looks at 20 characters on Game of Thrones and ranks them by the likelihood they will be killed.

It’s not easy predicting who will be the next to go on Game of Thrones. Some deaths seem so certain as to be almost predestined (Ramsay Bolton); some were literally predestined (Cersei’s children, Hodor); and some feel like they’re there just to mess with us — Ned Stark’s death basically told us, “This ain’t your grandfather’s fantasy series.” We did pretty well with last year’s Peril-o-Meter, so here are our best predictions for this season on a scale of 1 to 5 — with 1 being “Very Likely to Survive” and 5 being “Call a Mortician.”

 [Thanks to John King Tarpinian, James Davis Nicoll, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Stephen Burridge, Andrew Porter, Jim Henley, and Danny Sichel for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/11/17 There’s A File, Over At The Pixel Scroll Place…

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(1) GIVE ‘EM HELL HARRY! Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the new record-holder for winning the most Olivier Awards.

The Broadway-bound “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” shattered records at the Olivier Awards for London theater here on Sunday night, picking up nine prizes, including best new play, and honors for the actors playing Harry, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy’s son, Scorpius.

The previous record was seven awards for one production.

Jamie Parker took best actor for his portrayal of Harry, while Noma Dumezweni won supporting actress honors as Hermione and Anthony Boyle supporting actor honors as Scorpius.

“Harry Potter” also won for best director (the Tony winner John Tiffany) and for its lighting, sound, costumes and set design. The production had tied the record for the most nominations for any show in Oliviers history, with 11.

The play is expected to open at the Lyric Theater on Broadway in 2018.

(2) BILLIE PIPER TOO. And walking away with the Olivier Award for Best Actress was Billie Piper. The former Doctor Who companion (as Rose Tyler) won for her performance in Yerma.

The extraordinary Billie Piper plays Her, a woman driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child. Simon Stone creates a radical new production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.

(3) PULITZER WINNING OPERA. Rob Thornton points to another sff work that took a Pulitzer Prize yesterday.

Du Yun’s opera “Angel’s Bone,” about a couple who rescues two angels, clips their wings and exploits them for money, has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The jury stated that the work “integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world.” According to the website NewMusicBox, the opera features a “disturbing supernatural story” by librettist Royce Vavrek.

(4) EARLY ADOPTING. How new tech is showing up first in slums:

Cities need new ways to create energy and cut down on waste, and some of the most innovative – and low-tech – solutions may well be found in the parts of town the city authorities are least likely to talk about.

While some bemoan crowded commutes, for slum-dwellers it is access to basic services such as running water or electricity that is the real issue.

And where there is need, there is often innovation.

So can the technology being rolled out in the world’s most deprived urban areas offer not just hope for those who live there but also lessons for the richer parts of the city?

(5) FURRY CONVENTION LOSES ITS PELT. Furry fan news site Flayrah bids adieu: “Rocky Mountain Fur Con canceled following neo-Nazi associations, tax irregularities”.

Colorado furry convention Rocky Mountain Fur Con has been canceled. Funds collected in advance of this August’s event are to be spent on existing liabilities, and refunding attendees and dealers where possible; any remainder will go to the convention charity.

While their official statement cites rising security costs, the closure follows the controversial issues surrounding CEO Kendal Emery (Kahuki Liaru), and the “Furry Raiders” group. It has also been discovered by Flayrah that the convention’s parent company’s Federal tax-exempt status, obtained in 2009, had lapsed, and it had not filed taxes for a period of seven years, while still claiming to be a registered 501(c) non-profit. In this investigative report we can identify the issues that have contributed to the end of Denver’s furry convention.

(6) CALL OF THE WILD CAFFEINE. This conversation sounds familiar.

(7) STAR WARS CHARITY CONTEST. Deadline Hollywood reports “’Star Wars: Force For Change’ & Omaze Kick Off 40th Anniversary Of Sci-Fi Franchise With New Charity Campaign”.

Over the course of four weeks between April 11– May 11, fans may enter at Omaze.com/StarWars for a chance to win once-in-a-lifetime Star Wars experiences including the chance to appear in the upcoming Han Solo movie, tickets to the world premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in Hollywood, or, an overnight stay at Skywalker Ranch. The grand prize is winning all three of these experiences.

Starlight Children’s Foundation is the newest charity to benefit from Star Wars: Force for Change. Through a $1 million grant, Star Wars: Force for Change supports the foundation’s core programs at 700-plus children’s hospitals, clinics, and camps. Over the last three years, Star Wars: Force for Change and UNICEF have raised more than $9M together and saved the lives of 30K-plus children suffering from severe acute malnutrition through the distribution of over 4M packets of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food Packets (RUTF) around the world.

The contest is here.

(8) DUNNING OBIT. Washington State fan Karrie Dunning died April 11. Dunning had been in fandom since the Seventies. She emceed the masquerade at the first Norwescon in 1978. She was part of the Seattle in 1981 Worldcon bid that lost to Denver, and involved with the city’s Vanguard group.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 11, 1939  — Buck Rogers first aired on radio.
  • April 11, 1970 — Apollo 13 was launched, manned by astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert, and Fred Haise.

(10) WARNING, TANNED PECS AHEAD. Erin Horáková deconstructs Captain Kirk, interstellar oinker, in “Freshly Remember’d: Kirk Drift” at Strange Horizons.

I’m going to walk through this because it’s important for ST:TOS’s reception, but more importantly because I believe people often rewatch the text or even watch it afresh and cannot see what they are watching through the haze of bullshit that is the received idea of what they’re seeing. You “know” Star Trek before you ever see Star Trek: a ‘naive’ encounter with such a culturally cathected text is almost impossible, and even if you manage it you probably also have strong ideas about that period of history, era of SF, style of television, etc to contend with. The text is always already interpolated by forces which would derange a genuine reading, dragging such an effort into an ideological cul de sac which neither the text itself nor the viewer necessarily have any vested interest in. These forces work on the memory, extracting unpaid labour without consent. They interpose themselves between the viewer and the material, and they hardly stop at Star Trek.

….Besides, if Star Trek is going to be part of the conversation whether or not the Left wants to claim it (and look at how SFnal texts are being deployed in the discourse for conversation surrounding the Reprise of Fascism—look at how authoritarian forces are deploying the grammar of Star Trek, and at Nu!Trek’s imperial subtexts), then our memory of the text should not actively derange said text to suit political projects we do not necessarily consent to participate in. For these projects live in us and through us, like parasites that make us their unwitting and unwilling hosts. Like dybbuks that possess and consume us, taking our thoughts, our very eyes, and making them their own.

(11) BRAND NAME COMICS. John Carpenter of movie fame is starting a comics series:

Carpenter and his wife and collaborator Sandy King are bringing us Tales of Science Fiction, a monthly anthology series that will show us the darkness and wonder of everything the genre has to offer. The first three-issue arc is called “Vault” and has been written by James Ninness with art by Andres Esparza. The first issue will be available in July, and we’re waiting with baited breath.

(12) THE ONES FANS’ MOTHERS DIDN’T BURN. Drum roll, please. Here is ScreenRant’s list of “The 18 Rarest and Hard To Find Comic Books”.

  1. Detective Comics #27

Of course, this comic had to make it onto the list. While no single issue of Detective Comics is particularly rare, there’s no denying the appeal of the very first appearance of the character described on the cover as “The Batman” – the inclusion of the word “the” in the hero’s title dates back long before Ben Affleck was set to direct a movie of the same name, and even before the animated series The Batman.

There are less than two hundred copies of Detective Comics #27 remaining in the world today, which would mean that it’s actually fairly common compared to some books on this list. In spite of that, though, thanks to its impressive place in the annals of comics, this is one book that you’re unlikely to ever own, as each of the surviving copies of the book are worth at least a six figure sum

(13) GAME THERAPY. Post-trauma visual games may prevent PTSD.

But it turns out the particular brand of disconnection provided by Tetris may reflect a mental state long sought by healers to treat patients who have lived through a trauma.

I’m referring to the idea that some combination of facing negative memories, but also being distracted from them, might help alleviate the vivid psychological scars of trauma. Clinicians and philosophers have tried countless ways of treating trauma and anxiety through the years — of finding, as Roman stoic philosopher Seneca called it, tranquillitas, or peace of mind. And many of them were, in all likelihood, bunk. But the science now shows that activities as simple as playing distracting video games or focusing on eye movements can help patients cope with a tragic experience.

(14) PROFESSIONAL HELP. Remember SFWA’s resources for topics like event accessibility.

(15) SCHOLARSHIPS FOR WRITING CLASSES. Cat Rambo is increasing the number of Plunkett scholarships she offers for her writing classes.

Something I’m trying to do this year is pay things forward as much as possible. Recent technological upgrades means I can now fit more than 8-9 people in a class (can now handle up to twice that many, which is more suited to some classes than others), so I figured one way to do that is to make more class slots available to people who couldn’t otherwise afford the class.

So, each class now has three Plunkett scholarship slots, the third of which is specifically reserved for QUILTBAG and POC applicants. Everyone is encouraged to apply, but I want to make sure it’s getting to a diverse range. The only qualification for a Plunkett is this: you would not be able to afford the class otherwise. Just mail me with the name/date of the class and 1-3 sentences about why you want to take it.

Classes Offered April-June 2017

(16) PUTTING A CAP ON HIS CAREER. If this is what traditional publishers are making writers do, indie authors have one more reason to be thankful.

(17) TAFF FINAL CALL. Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund voting ends April 17 at midnight GMT. Curt Phillips – TAFF Administrator, North America and Anna Raftery – TAFF Administrator, UK/Europe encourage you to participate.

The Loooong 2017 TAFF voting season is finally approaching a conclusion as voting ends this coming Sunday, April 17 at Midnight GMT (that’s UK time), which time marks the end of this year’s Eastercon.  Voting had been extended to allow in-person voting at Eastercon; a longstanding tradition for TAFF and that convention.  UK TAFF Administrator Anna Raftery will be on hand at the convention to take those votes, so please do keep her busy!  And as a special attraction for Eastercon attendees there will be a League of Fan Funds auction during the convention.  Rare and valuable artifacts of fannish loot and booty have been gathered to entice your pounds from your wallets and purses to benefit TAFF, GUFF, and other fan funds including a new one which hopes to benefit fandom in Brazil!  But there’s room for more, so *please* bring along a little loot and booty of your own to donate to the fan fund auction at Eastercon.  *Many* fans will benefit from your generosity!   On-line and postal voting will continue through that time as well both in North America and in the UK/Europe – and all around the planet, for that matter and you can find a link to the ballot and the candidate platforms at David Langford’s excellent TAFF website found at http://taff.org.uk/

No matter who you vote for, thank you for supporting TAFF.  You are contributing to a life changing experience for a fan, and a very noble and worthwhile tradition for all of Fandom.

(18) PRO RATES. Here’s the SFWA market report for April, compiled by David Steffen.

(19) TRACK RECORD. ComicsBeat brings word that a pair of successful moviemakers will shepherd Invincible to the big screen.

First they kicked things off co-writing the 2011 Green Hornet film.

Then they took on the task of adapting and showrunning the current adaptation of Preacher for AMC.

After that, they opted to bring another Garth Ennis-written comic, The Boys to Cinemax.

And today? Variety reports that writing and directing duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg will be writing/directing/producing a big screen adaptation of the Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker superhero saga, Invincible for Universal.

(20) STREAMING SF. Netflix released the SENSE8 Season 2 – Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxsquwLR6Kw

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, lurkertype. Cat Rambo, Cat Eldridge, Rob Thornton, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 1/16/17 I’m A Boxticker, Jim, Not A Pixel!

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(1) DEDICATED TO MEREDITH. It’s ”Appreciate a Dragon Day”.  According to the Donita K. Paul website:

Appreciate a Dragon Day was started in 2004 by Mrs. Paul to celebrate the release of DragonSpell. We encourage you to join us as we celebrate literacy and have some fun!

appreciate-a-dragon-day-e1421395592126-808x380

(2) NEANDERTHALS. Jon Mooallem delivers a thoroughly fascinating account of paleoanthropological research in “Neanderthals Were People, Too” at the New York Times.

For millenniums, some scientists believe, before modern humans poured in from Africa, the climate in Europe was exceptionally unstable. The landscape kept flipping between temperate forest and cold, treeless steppe. The fauna that Neanderthals subsisted on kept migrating away, faster than they could. Though Neanderthals survived this turbulence, they were never able to build up their numbers. (Across all of Eurasia, at any point in history, says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “there probably weren’t enough of them to fill an N.F.L. stadium.”) With the demographics so skewed, Stringer went on, even the slightest modern human advantage would be amplified tremendously: a single innovation, something like sewing needles, might protect just enough babies from the elements to lower the infant mortality rate and allow modern humans to conclusively overtake the Neanderthals. And yet Stringer is careful not to conflate innovation with superior intelligence. Innovation, too, can be a function of population size. “We live in an age where information, where good ideas, spread like wildfire, and we build on them,” Stringer told me. “But it wasn’t like that 50,000 years ago.” The more members your species has, the more likely one member will stumble on a useful new technology — and that, once stumbled upon, the innovation will spread; you need sufficient human tinder for those sparks of culture to catch.

I picked that paragraph because it reminds me of Robert Zubrin’s argument about the need for population growth as a prerequisite in developing a starship.

To achieve a 200-times increase over today’s GDP, we will need a population of 54 billion. We will need energy of 2500 terawatts by the year 2200.

Pounding away at the opposite conclusions reached in Paul Ehrlich’s famous book The Population Bomb, Zubrin said, “If humans destroyed more than they made, the earth would be barren already. The real resource is human creativity.” Every mouth comes with a pair of hands and a brain. If we accept Malthusian advice, and act to reduce the world’s population, we will impoverish the future by denying it the contributions the missing people could have made.

(3) THE AI TROPE. Ann Leckie’s “Vericon 2016 GoH Speech” overflows with interesting ideas, just like her fiction.

The very first robot story–the first ever use of the word “robot” in fact–is a robot uprising story. But when Karel ?apek wrote RUR he wasn’t worried about artificial intelligence. The robots of his story aren’t mechanical, they’re made of some sort of synthetic biological material. And the word “robot” which ?apek famously coined, comes from a Czech word for “slave.” It’s a story about the revolt of people made on an assembly line (the first actual assembly line had debuted just ten years earlier). It’s a story about the rebellion of people who were built to be the cheapest, most efficient workers possible, workers you didn’t have to pay, or feed anything in particular, or take any notice or care of. In other words, slaves. And ?apek ‘s story hit a nerve. It didn’t just give us the word for robot, it is the ultimate model for nearly all the robot uprising stories since. So that model–robots as slaves, with all the assumed dangers attendant on enslaving people who outnumber you–is the model we’re using when we think about super smart machines. This has not been lost on any number of science fiction writers, who have used robot and AI stories to comment explicitly on oppression and racism. But just personally–well, I won’t go into my problems with the whole “slaves in my allegory are machines and the masters are human beings” bit, though that’s kind of icky when you think about it, but on top of that I think it’s a dangerous model to use as a basis for actual, serious real world predictions about artificial intelligence.

(4) AUSSIE FANHISTORY. Now available at eFanzines.com, issues of iOTA, a fanzine with news of Leigh Edmonds’ Australian fandom history project.

Here are a pair of excerpts from iOTA #2:

  • The purpose of this little efanzine is to serve as a progress report on my current history project which is to research and write a history of Australian fandom, focusing on the period between 1956 and 1975. It is also a place where I can publish little bits and pieces of the writing and art of Australia’s fan past to help introduce you to the rich vein of material that previous generations of fans have left us.
  • Fanzine Review what you missed in 1939. Our friend Robin Johnson turns up with the most interesting things at times.  Usually it is old airline timetables – and we share an interest it air transport so we can find hours of harmless interest and amusement in airline timetables – but not on this occasion. This time it was a little fanzines with a pink cover produced in the old fashioned way using carbon paper.  (If you are not aware of this form of reproduction, I’m thinking about writing a little series called something like ‘Reproductive Pleasures’ in some future issues.  Some people have never heard of carbon paper, which means that they are young and happy folk.) This little pink and carbon paper produced fanzine is Ultra 1, produced by Eric Russell in Sydney, bearing the date October 1939.  It is probably the fourth fanzine title to be published in Australia after John Devern’s single issue of Science Fiction Review published in February 1939, Australian Fan News, a single issue of which was published by William Veney, Bert Castellari and Eric Russell in May 1939 and three issues of the JSC Bulletin (Junior Science Club) published by Vol Molesworth and Ken Jeffreys in June 1939.  (Thanks to Chris Nelson for his extensive research in this area.)  Of these early titles Ultra was among the early successful Sydney fanzines, seeing fourteen issues published between October 1939 and December 1941 when the commencement of the Pacific War brought an end to most of this kind of frivolity in Australia.

(5) GERONIMO! Neil Clarke has quit his day job and gone into editing full-time.

I’m quite excited—and a little terrified—by the prospect of taking the leap. There are a bunch of uncertainties, like healthcare costs and filling the income gap between Lisa’s new job and my old one, but we’re close enough to give this career switch a try. As some of you know, this has been a major goal of mine since my heart attack four years ago. At age fifty, and after ten years working part-time, I’m finally going to be a full-time editor!

Naturally, my first priority has to be those uncertainties I mentioned: income gap and insurance. As I see it, I have a few things to target:

  1. I’ve altered the Clarkesworld Patreon goals to include direct salary and healthcare expenses. Would be nice if it was that simple, but I figure it’s worth putting out there….

(6) HOW TO MAKE IT TO THE FINISH LINE.  The New York Times tells “Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books”. Some of these titles are of genre interest.

Even books initially picked up as escape reading like the Hugo Award-winning apocalyptic sci-fi epic “The Three-Body Problem” by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, he said, could unexpectedly put things in perspective: “The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade!”

…To this day, reading has remained an essential part of his daily life. He recently gave his daughter Malia a Kindle filled with books he wanted to share with her (including “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “The Golden Notebook” and “The Woman Warrior”). And most every night in the White House, he would read for an hour or so late at night — reading that was deep and ecumenical, ranging from contemporary literary fiction (the last novel he read was Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad”) to classic novels to groundbreaking works of nonfiction like Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction.”…

(7) CERNAN OBIT. “Gene Cernan, last man to walk on Moon, dies aged 82” reports the BBC.

Captain Cernan was one of only three people to go to the Moon twice and the last man to leave a footprint on the lunar surface in 1972.

The final words he spoke there were: “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind.”

He was the commander of the Apollo 17 mission at the time.

Twelve people have walked on the Moon, and only six of them are still alive today

(8) THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Neil Armstrong, recalling how it felt to look back at Earth from the surface of the moon: “I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 16, 1948 – John Carpenter.

(10) QUOTABLE QUOTE: “In England, I’m a horror movie director. In Germany, I’m a filmmaker. In the US, I’m a bum.” – John Carpenter.

(11) BRANDON EASTON INTERVIEW. From Motherboard, “How Diversity Writing Programs Can Help Sci-Fi Live Up to Its Ideals”.

Motherboard: What do you think is really the problem that people aren’t talking about?

Brandon Easton: A lot of the reason why white writers who are entry level aren’t getting work has nothing to do with diversity programs. It’s because showrunners are hiring their buddies who are also EP’s [executive producers] and co-producer level who have these immense salaries that eat up the budget, so that they can’t hire anybody underneath a story editor level. This is what’s going on. Everyone knows this, yet still you have all these disgruntled writers scapegoating diversity programs instead of talking about the real issue at hand, which is nepotism. If you look at how many people graduate from these programs every year that number is so fucking low, it doesn’t even register as a percentage.

Motherboard: Science fiction has a long history of being open-minded about multiculturalism. Some argue that it’s the most open-minded of the genres. Do you think that’s true?

Brandon Easton: Science fiction as a literary genre, in theory, has open-minded concepts. And the fact is that historically, black writers have not been allowed in because for a while the editors, the people who controlled it, the publishing industry itself, even if someone had a great story – once racial politics were revealed, those people didn’t get to work. Now, if you’re talking about TV and film, there has been some really cool stuff that has progressive undercurrents thematically, but, when it comes to hiring practices we still revert back to straight white men as writers and creators of science fiction. Again, I do believe science fiction in its content itself can be extremely progressive and extremely life affirming, but we’re talking about the content versus the content creators. And I think that’s the issue.

Motherboard: I still think science fiction is special versus the other genres. Not only historically in terms of casting, but because when I read the genre, I don’t care what the race of the writer is. I just want to be blown away. Show me a new way of thinking.

Brandon Easton: I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. What I’m saying is that it helps when people get the opportunity. That’s where the problem is. If you want to be really serious about it, the only genre that’s really helped black people more than anything else has been comedy. Historically, I’m going back to the early 1900s, comedy was the only place where black writers could get a chance to write. Several generations of mainstream black stars came out of comedy: Will Smith, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Jamie Fox, Bill Cosby, Chris Tucker, Eddie Murphy, Steve Harvey, Tyler Perry, Wanda Sykes, Whoopi Goldberg and so many others. Comedy is where African Americans have had a shot, as opposed to science fiction, particularly television, has almost been completely closed to black writers.

(12) PRIZEWORTHY. Jonathan Edelstein’s picks in short fiction – “Another year of awards” at Haibane.

I’ll start with novelettes rather than short stories, because that way I can start with my favorite story of 2016: Polyglossia by Tamara Vardomskaya (GigaNotoSaurus, March 2016). GigaNotoSaurus doesn’t usually get much attention from reviewers and critics, but this is a rich, multi-layered story that is well deserving of an award.

Polyglossia is a story of linguistics, cultural survival, family and resistance to oppression – not necessarily in that order – set in a low-magic fantasy world that suggests the early twentieth century. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of good world-building, and the world of this story is intricately detailed and plausible; more than that, the world-building is integrated into the plot and informs the characters’ actions such that no detail is wasted. The linguistics are also tightly integrated into the plot – the author is a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics with an interest in the philosophy of language, and it shows – and the politics of language and cultural preservation come to play a key part in its resolution. At the same time, the story calls into question what we call family, what duties we owe to our ancestors, and how to balance those duties against the exigencies of politics. Polyglossia is rewarding on several levels – thus far, I’ve never failed to get something new out of it with each rereading – and if I had to pick one story that defined speculative fiction for me in 2016, it would be this one.

(13) STEALING A MARCH. Dan Wolfgang very carefully avoids stepping on Sarah A. Hoyt’s Sad Puppies turf while offering slates for the Dragon Awards and Hugo Awards in “A Very Special Message About Pooka Related Sadness”.

Sad_Pookas--678x381

The post is labeled “satire,” but here are typical examples of the names and works populating the slates:

Best Editor, Long Form

Best Semiprozine

Best Fanzine

(14) ROCKET RESOURCE. Greg Hullender sends word that Rocket Stack Rank has posted its page to help people pick artists for the 2017 Best Professional Artist Hugo.

We’ve added some features to make this easier to use, based on our own use (we’ve both already used it ourselves to make our own nominations) but we’ve realized that Eric and I use it very differently, so we’d welcome feedback from others. As with much else involving awards, there’s no one “right” way, so it’s good to support a number of different ways.

Eric is the artistic one (he can actually draw), so he wants to see several pieces by the same artist and makes judgments on that artist’s style overall. When he sees things he likes, he wants to visit that artist’s site, look at their gallery—even read interviews with the artist.

I don’t know art, but I know what I like. I want to quickly flip through all the pictures, extract the ones that I like, and then winnow down the list. (“Extract” means “Press ctrl-click on the author’s name at the top of the lightbox.” That opens a new tab, with that author’s work at the top of it.)

So this year the list contains eligible pictures as well as some that aren’t eligible (either they’re from last year or else they’re from semiprozines). The award is for an artist, not a particular work, after all, and this provides a bit more context on many of the artists. No one is listed who doesn’t have at least one eligible work, though, and those are highlighted.

Since the usual way to use the list is by opening the lightbox and then flipping through the pictures, we inserted an image of the Hugo rocket to separate artists. Eric found that useful, but I discovered that I paid almost no attention to which artist was which until after I’d selected about fifteen pictures I liked.

Winnowing the list wasn’t that hard (for me—Eric’s process was more sophisticated). I looked at all fifteen just at the thumbnail scale, and dropped three or four that I decided weren’t really as good. I dropped a few more because they really only had one picture I’d liked and the rest looked different. (In one case, I went to the artist’s home page to confirm that other pics in his/her gallery really did look like the single picture I was using to judge.) When I had six, I eliminated one because I didn’t like any of that artist’s pictures that were actually qualified for 2016. (So much for the idea that it’s about the artist, not the art.)

To fill out the Hugo Ballot, I copy/paste the author’s name from the web site and for the example of that author’s work, I use a link to that artist’s place on the main Professional Artists’ page. For example, http://www.rocketstackrank.com/2017/01/2017-professional-artists.html#JulieDillon points to Julie Dillon’s work on our page. (It’s what you get when you click on her name in the lightbox.)

We’d love to know how well this works for other filers and what we might do to make it better.

(15) HIDDEN HISTORY. Lauren Sarner, in “Tim Powers Loves Conspiracies” at Inverse, interviews the author of The Anubis Gates, Last Call and Declare about hanging out with Philip K. Dick and the allure of conspiracy.

What was Philip K. Dick like?

Since his death, there has arisen a kind of caricature of him. If you just read casually, you’d get the impression that he was this drug addled, crazy visionary who imagined God spoke to him. Actually he was a very sociable, funny, realistic, generous, gregarious friend. Not at all the William Blake crazy mystique the general impression has become. If you read his last few books, like VALIS and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, you can see that this was a rational, skeptical, humorous person. But it always does annoy me when people say, ‘Didn’t he like live in a cave and wander up and down the street talking to himself?’

(16) YOU CAN TELL A BOOK (COVER) BY ITS COVER. JJ sent this link — “The Cover of Each Max Gladstone Book Has Predicted the Cover of the Next One” from Tor.com — with a recommendation:

Okay, this is not new, but it is too fucking funny (you have to read all the way to the end for the final cover).

I say it lives up to the hype…

(17) RESURRECTED TALENT. IMDB shows some pretty hefty credits for Citizen Vader (2014):

A lonely widower stalks his deserted mansion, gloomily contemplating ending his own life. His last word may hold the key to what has sent him down this dark path.

 

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)

Aidan Duffy
George Lucas … (characters)
Orson Welles … (characters)

Music Department

Bernard Herrmann … original score music
John Williams … original score music

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Hampus Eckerman, Aziz H.Poonawalla, Cat Rambo, Andrew Porter, and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer Sylvester.]

Pixel Scroll 7/30/16 Two Pixels Diverged In A Scroll, And I – I Took The One That Had The Most Bacon

Posted on by

(1) ALWAYS TO CALL IT RESEARCH. An appeals court affirmed that Luc Besson’s Lockout plagiarized John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

The French filmmaker will have to fork over nearly half a million dollars

An appeals court has ruled that French filmmaker Luc Besson is guilty of plagiarizing from John Carpenter’s 1981 classic “Escape From New York” and must now pay the fellow filmmaker nearly half a million dollars.

As Yahoo reports, Besson has long denied that his 2012 thriller, “Lockout,” was a copy of Carpenter’s Kurt Russell-starring actioner. In Carpenter’s film, Russell plays a former government agent who is tasked with retrieving the U.S. president from the island of Manhattan — which has been turned into a massive prison — after his plane crashes there (thanks, Air Force One, thanks a lot). In “Lockout,” Pearce is a convict sent to a giant space jail who is given the chance to win back his freedom if he can rescue the U.S. president’s daughter, who is trapped in said giant space jail.

The court ruled that Besson’s film had “massively borrowed key elements” of Carpenter’s feature…

[Via Ansible Links.]

(2) MIDAMERICON LOSES HOTEL. The MidAmeriCon II committee announced on Facebook that one of its hotels will be unavailable, and members who reserved there are being shifted elsewhere:

HOTEL UPDATE: The Courtyard/Residence Inn has let us know that their construction has run over schedule and they will not be open in time for MidAmeriCon II. We have been working with their staff and Passkey to contact those displaced to advise them of the situation and to find our members a hotel room with one of our other contracted properties. Please be aware that the new reservations will not be in the individual hotel systems until later this week. Once that occurs, the affected members will be contacted with information on where they have been relocated and provided new confirmations. Any questions can be sent to hotel@midamericon2.org.

(3) FURNISHING THE NEXT STAR TREK. iDigital Times learned that “’Star Trek: Discovery’ Ship Has Its Captain’s Chair”.

Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Bryan Fuller revealed the captain’s chair aboard the starship U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031. It’s very much in line with classic captains’ seats, with the swept open armrests of Jean-Luc Picard’s luxurious, tan cathedra.

 

https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/755178837894270977

(4) THE PRICE OF FAME. Of course, by “the price of fame” we mean what price the fans will pay. CNN Money has the going rates: “Want a picture with Captain Kirk? That’ll be $100”.

Star Trek’s massive 50th anniversary convention starts next week in Las Vegas, and celebrities have posted their prices for photos with fans.

…Resistance is, of course, futile.

Older actors who starred in Star Trek: The Original Series from the 1960s charge higher prices. And the clairvoyant Whoopi Goldberg tops the charts.

(5) OWL SERVICE. A gig on Fiverr: “I will design a Harry Potter Hogwarts Personalized Acceptance Letter for $5”.

acceptance letter

Have you been waiting forever for your special letter to come? OMG! Don’t wait anymore! You can receive your very own letter, stating that you’ve been accepted to Hogwarts and feel the magic! Makes the perfect Hogwarts gift for anyone of any age and it is fully personalised with their very own name and address.!

What you get is a PDF file – when you pay only $5, you have to provide your own bells and whistles….

(6) THE DISNEY-TOLKIEN INTERSECTION. The original story is on Cracked, but this Hello Giggles writer explains it more clearly. Maybe that’s because she’s sober. “This insane theory says ‘Snow White’ is a sequel to ‘Lord of the Rings’” —

While Snow White’s dwarfs seem pretty standard—they’re short, unsocial, and obsessed with treasure—Diplotti explains that Tolkien took many of the names of his dwarves from a centuries-old Norse epic called the Voluspa, which has a section devoted to dwarf names and their meanings. Durin? That’s “Sleepy,” thank you very much. Dwalin, or “Dvalinn” in the “Voluspa,” is torpid, lazy, or sleepy. Oin? That would be “shy,” a.k.a. “bashful.” Well, that’s creepy!

(7) LIFE IS NOT A REHEARSAL. As Kameron Hurley frees herself, she offers hope to other writers: “You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Time”.

Certainly one in a position of privilege does have a moral imperative to state, “This atrocity is wrong.” But when you buckle down to engage the haters on any issue, consider what your end goal is in having that conversation, and consider what other valuable work you could be doing with that time. I can pretty much guarantee you that, say, writing The Geek Feminist Revolution and getting it into people’s hands was worth about a billion times more than spending that time arguing with dudes on the internet who were just there to distract me. They aren’t here to change minds. They are here to keep us from doing the work that changes the world.

We all have a finite amount of time on this earth. Those of us with chronic illness or who have had near-death experiences appreciate that more than others. I feel that it’s my moral imperative to remind you that you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if you did, would you regret how you’d spend the hour, the day, the week, the month, the year before?

My goal is to live the sort of life where I won’t feel I’ve wasted my time if I die tomorrow. It has kept me on target through a lot of bullshit. The truth is that all this shit is made up, and because it’s made up, it can be remade. But only if we focus our efforts on creating the work that moves the conversation forward, instead of letting ourselves get caught up in the distraction.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 30, 1932 — Walt Disney released his first color cartoon, “Flowers and Trees,” made in three-color Technicolor.
  • July 30, 1999 — Blair Witch Project released

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY TERMINATOR

  • Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger

(10) BANG THE GAVEL SLOWLY. Frank Darabont is auctioning off rare Hollywood memorabilia. The Hollywood Reporter explains:

Frank Darabont, the filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption who helped launch The Walking Dead on AMC, is parting ways with some of his most prized possessions.

The director is putting more than two dozen rare items up for the gavel Saturday as part of Profiles in History’s art and movie memorabilia auction — including plenty of items that would make fanboys and fangirls weak in the knees.

“One thing I’ve always known is this amazing art wouldn’t be mine forever. It couldn’t be. We don’t own these things. We can only be their caretakers for a time, enjoying them as much as possible until inevitably they must pass on to the next caretaker” Darabont said in a statement. “For me, that time has come. I won’t lie to you and say that parting with these things is easy. Trust me, it really, really isn’t. But the time for everything passes, and so has my position as caretaker. I will be ever grateful for the joy these wonderful pieces of art have brought me. I can only hope that they will bring their next caretakers (and all caretakers after that, ad infinitum) equal or greater joy.”

And Art Daily has more details about the items going up for auction.

Following the hugely successful sale of Frank Frazetta art from the collection of Dave Winiewicz, this unique auction will be presented in two sessions. Session One, The Frank Darabont Collection, includes original works by master artists Bernie Wrightson, Mike Mignola, Sanjulian, Jack Davis, Will Eisner, Eric Powell, Bob Peak, Rich Corben, Vaughn Bode, a bronze of the “Cyclops” creature by Ray Harryhausen, and rare movie posters including the only known Frankenstein 1941 Italian 4-fogli, and much more.

Session Two comprises a superb collection of vintage comic and illustration artwork featuring the finest original oil paintings by Frank Frazetta ever offered at auction, including “Sea Witch” (pre-sale estimate of $1,000,000 – $1,500,000) and “Bran Mak Morn” (pre-sale estimate of ($450,000 – $550,000), the most expensive Frazetta paintings ever offered at auction. These two paintings have never been offered for sale. The sale also features a wealth of works by “The Studio” artists Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Jeffery Jones, and Barry Windsor-Smith, as well as Spider-Man art by John Romita, a Golden Age cover by Jack Kirby, horror and fantasy art by Richard Corben, an important work by John Buscema, among many other pieces by notable masters of the comic medium. Most of these works have been hidden away in private collections for decades, and this sale represents the first and likely only chance to obtain them.

Bran Mak Morn by Frazetta
Sea Witch by Frazetta

 

(11) AUSTRALIA IS ON THE MOVE – LITERALLY. The BBC tells why “Australia plans new co-ordinates to fix sat-nav gap”

Because of the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates, these local co-ordinates drift apart from the Earth’s global co-ordinates over time.

“If you want to start using driverless cars, accurate map information is fundamental,” said Mr Jaksa.

“We have tractors in Australia starting to go around farms without a driver, and if the information about the farm doesn’t line up with the co-ordinates coming out of the navigation system there will be problems.”

The Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country’s local co-ordinate system, was last updated in 1994. Since then, Australia has moved about 1.5 metres north.

So on 1 January 2017, the country’s local co-ordinates will also be shifted further north – by 1.8m.

Chip Hitchcock commented, when he sent the link: “A fascinating reminder that the world we live on is still changing. (I’d love to see comparable numbers for the US, cf the Grand Canyon docent snarking ‘If you want to go to Europe this is the year, because it will never be any closer.’) The story also quotes a claim that this inaccuracy affects self-driving cars, but I’d hope such cars would rely on immediate observation rather than stored memories of coordinates of fixed objects like curbs.”

(12) THE SHARK, DEAR. The Wrap reviews the sequel a day before it airs on SyFy: “’Sharknado 4’ Review: This Joke Has No Teeth Anymore”.

A joke might be funny the first time, but by the fourth time you hear it, the punchline gets tired.

“Tired” is a good description for “Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens,” which premieres Sunday on Syfy. Although the parody movie is as absurd and silly as the first three installments were, this time around the whole thing feels forced.

On one hand, you can tell stars Ian Ziering, Tara Reid and David Hasselhoff are having fun. Ziering even manages to mock his stint as a Chippendales dancer. But the novelty of this campy killer-shark franchise has clearly worn off, and now the nudges and winks from the made-for-TV flick’s cast and writers border on punishing.

(13) SOUTH KOREA’S GAMERGATE? NPR raises the spectre that “South Korea Is Contending With A ‘Gamergate’ Of Its Own – Over A T-Shirt”.

An online controversy over a South Korean voice actress’s tweeted image of a T-shirt has escalated into what is now being called East Asia’s version of Gamergate — a reference to the vitriolic controversy that pitted gamers, largely men, against women in tech.

Twelve hours after posting a photo of a shirt reading “Girls Do Not Need A Prince,” Kim Jayeon — who had been providing a voice for the popular video game Closers — was out of her job.

Part of the problem was the source of the shirt. It’s put out by Megalia4, a South Korean feminist group.

When Kim’s tweet surfaced on July 18, scores of male gamers demanded that she apologize for supporting what they call a “anti-man hate group.” When Kim refused to budge, they bombarded Nexon, her employer and publisher of Closers, with complaints and refund requests, and soon, she was out.

“We have to be responsive to our customers’ opinions,” Nexon told The Hankyoreh, a South Korean news outlet. “The voice actress exacerbated the issue by posting inflammatory tweets such as ‘what’s wrong with supporting Megalia?'”

(14) HANDICAPPING THE HUGOS: This reader predicts Chuck Tingle will get a rocket.

(15) MACII ONLINE PRE-REG ENDS AUGUST 5.

MidAmeriCon II will be closing online pre-registration for all classes of membership on Friday, August 5, 2016.  Fans planning to attend the convention are encouraged to buy their membership before this date, both to take advantage of the best membership rates and for maximum convenience when they arrive at the convention. Full (five-day) Adult Attending Membership rates will increase from $210 now to $240 at the door, while Young Adult and Military Attending Membership rates will increase from $100 now to $120 at the door. Pre-registered members may collect their badges and other membership materials from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, August 15 and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 16.  Members who can collect their materials on these days can expect to benefit from reduced waiting times.

Full details of all MidAmeriCon II membership categories and rates, as well as at-con opening hours, can be found on the convention website at http://midamericon2.org/home/registration-hotel-member-information/registration/.

(16) YELLOW F&SF DAYS. Paul Fraser at About SF Magazines provides a retro review of “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #5, December 1950”.

(17) TREK BREW. The Nerdist relays plans to “Celebrate 50 years of Star Trek with golden anniversary beer”.

Trek Pale Ale

A quote:

“Star Trek Golden Anniversary Ale: The Trouble With Tribbles” will debut at the premiere of Star Trek Beyond, at the IMAX Embarcadero Marina Park on July 20, and Comic-Con at the San Diego Convention Center on July 21 – 24. It will also available at the “Star Trek Las Vegas” convention at the Rio Hotel & Casino from August 3 – 7, 2016. Then in the fall, Shmaltz will bring Voyage to the Northeast Quadrant to the Mission New York Convention at the Javits Center from September 2 – 4, 2016.

(18) JULES VERNE MOVIE. The Galactic Journey crew was among the first to see what they dubbed “[July 30, 1961] 20,000 Leagues in a Balloon (Jules Vern’s Mysterious Island)”.

Perhaps the most famous of Verne’s protagonists is Captain Nemo, skipper of the magnificent submarine, the Nautilus.  In 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, adapted to film in 1953, Nemo led a one-man crusade against war, sinking the world’s warships in the cause of pacifism.

My daughter and I just came back from the premiere of Mysterious Island, the latest translation of a Verne novel.  It is a sequel of sorts to 20,000 Leagues, though this is not immediately apparent from the beginning.  The initial setting is the siege of Richmond at the end of the American Civil War.  Four Yankee prisoners make a daring escape in a balloon along with an initially wary, but ultimately game, Confederate prisoner.  The film begins with no indication of where it’s going other than the title (and the mention of Nemo in the cast list – an unfortunate spoiler).

(19) APOLLO TREK. Space.com’s Leonard David has a piece about how George Takei and Buzz Aldrin got an assist from William Shatner to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing and the 50th anniversary of Star Trek at Cape Canaveral.

An audience of some 250 people took part in the evening event, which was dominated by a huge Saturn 5 moon rocket perched overhead. The occasion raised funds for Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring children to be passionate about science, technology, engineering, the arts and math.

The anniversary gala was hosted by George Takei, best known for his portrayal of Mr. Sulu in the original “Star Trek” TV series and movies….

Takei had a special surprise video beamed in from one of his “Star Trek” crewmates — William Shatner, who played USS Enterprise Capt. James T. Kirk.

Shatner said he wished he could be present at the Apollo 11 anniversary event. He was in Los Angeles, tied to a previous engagement with the other starship captains of “Star Trek” celebrating the past 50 years, Shatner said.

(20) UNSPARING CHANGE. Black Gate’s Derek Kunsken experiences “A Tremendously Disappointing Re-Read: The Soaked-in Misogyny of Piers Anthony’s Xanth”

How bad is the sexism and misogyny? I mean, can we cut it some slack because it was published in 1977?

Um. No. The 1970s were the 1970s, but there were still lots of remarkable writers creating compelling stories with well-rounded characters back then.

All the female characters in the first two novels occupy a narrow range of man-created stereotyped roles that were already fossils in the 1970s. Anthony has:

  1. the dumb love interest,
  2. the smart love interest,
  3. the nagging love interest, and
  4. the cautionary tales for Bink’s choice of love interest.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Keith Kato, Martin Morse Wooster, Dawn Incognito, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]