John Hertz on Fuzzy Pink Niven (1940-2023)

Philip Jose Farmer, Larry Niven, and Fuzzy Pink at the St. Louiscon, the 1969 Worldcon.

By John Hertz (reprinted from Vanamonde 1575): Marilyn Wisowaty Niven (1940-2023) was “Fuzzy Pink” to me and perhaps to you. She and Larry Niven met in 1967, and were married in 1969, until death did them part. She left us for After-Fandom on December 3rd. She’d been wrestling with ill health for some while. As Larry told me by telephone, it finally was too much for her.

In the Sixties at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology her bedroom slippers, or I’ve also heard it was sweaters, led Fran Dyro, her roommate, to call her Fuzzy Pink Roommate; “Fuzzy Pink” stuck. She was graduated S.B. in 1962. The first woman graduate from M.I.T. was Ellen Swallow (1842-1911; S.S. + an A.M. from Vassar the same year; later Ellen Swallow Richards) in 1873, but there still weren’t many women nine decades later,

The M.I.T. SF Society (MITSFS, “mits-fiss”) had 10,000 books then (70,000 today); Fuzzy Pink maintained an index, naturally called the Pinkdex. She was instrumental in forming NESFA, the New England SF Association; when it established a Fellowship in 1976 (“created to honor those people who have made a significant contribution to NESFA and to the furtherance of its aims. The Fellowship is modeled after academic fellowships Fellows are awarded the postnominal abbreviation F. N.”, NESFA Fellowship), she was made a Founding Fellow, along with Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Judy-Lynn & Lester del Rey, Jill & Don Eastlake, Suford & Tony Lewis, Elliott Shorter, Col. Harry Stubbs, Leslie Turek.

She joined LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in 1968, was on our Board Of Directors by the time of our first clubhouse in 1973, earned our Evans-Freehafer service award in 1982, was Fan Guest of Honor at Loscon X (our local SF convention; Loscon XLIX was 24-26 Nov 23) in 1983. Her APA-L zine was Fuzzily. She sometimes signed things “Fuzzily, Pink”.

She was a friend to costumers and did some herself. By Heicon (28th World Science Fiction Convention, Heidelberg, 1970) Larry had begun the Trantorcon in 23,309 bid for the 21,370th Worldcon — a big world by then — or maybe a Galacticon — Lazarus Long says “I’ll be there, Will you?” — and he & Fuzzy were in the Masquerade (SF cons’ costume competition) as “The Trantorcon in 23,309 Committee” (l was later added to the concom; it’s true we haven’t published a Progress Report in a few decades, but there’s still a long time before site-selection voting). Somewhere I have a Bea Barrio drawing of Larry in a crown and Fuzzy Pink in something fuzzy.

She made lace; she led a workshop on that at Noreascon Ill (47th Worldcon, 1989; many things happen at Worldcons), co-chaired the Int’l Old Lacers, Inc. (Int’l Org. of Lace, Inc., since 2012), annual convention in 1992, and edited lace magazines. She won table-setting contests at the LA County Fair.

For years there was LASES Poker, often at the Nivens’. My father taught me there were two kinds Of Poker, 5-Card Draw or 5-Card Stud, and crazy games like Baseball (7-Card Stud, 3s and 9s Wild; if dealt a 4 up, you get another face-down card; if dealt a 3 up, you match the “pot” or fold; best5 of 7 wins). Baseball was mild in LASFS Poker, with games like Werewolf, Vampire, Girdle Sale in Yankee Stadium, and Soft Shoe where you could shuffle off to bluff a low. Fuzzy was patient and good-humored throughout.

I looked at a book on a table one night at the Nivens’ and asked “What’s that?” Fuzzy said It’s a Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, try it, you’ll like it. Soon I was driving all over town to find the rest of them in bookshops. See “The English Regency and Me”, Mimosa 29.

When I learned she had gone I wrote to Larry,

     I had a hot fudge sundae for her — and you. We got acquainted because of “Inconstant Moon”.

     I saw her sense of whimsy — I’ll use a greater word, and say “comedy”; her brilliant mind — many Who have that, flaunt it, which she never did; her craftsmanship; her sense Of — I’ll use another big word — beauty; in these last times, her — another big word, I can’t help it — dignity, which also she never flaunted. I’m trying to remember that, according to my religion, she’s been released.

     My special gratitude to her is for sparking the Regency Dancing adventure. I’d never have thought of it. When Rich Lynch asked me to write it up for Mimosa, he wouldn’t let me minimize it. I try to remember that.

     It mustn’t go without saying that she was a wonderful hostess. That mustn’t be minimized either.

     I’ve written this poem. It’s an acrostic (read down the first letters of each line) in unrhymed 5-7-5-7-7-syllable lines, like Japanese tanka.

“Friend to levity”
Under another regime
Zeroed approval;
Zest, among us, counts for more.
Your light, flavor, nourished us.

At the funeral Larry said “She loved you.” Somehow I didn’t cry, I just said “l loved her too.” Tim Griffin read my poem aloud. The urn had Forever in our hearts.


S. B. = Scientiae Baccalaurea, Latin, Bachelor (female; from graduates’ wearing laurel crowns filled with berries, for the fruits of their studies; bachelor = a knight with no standard [in the heraldic sense] of his own who fights under another’s standard, and bachelor = unmarried man, are another story) of Science; A.M. = Artium Magistra, Latin, Master (female) of Arts. Harry Stubbs wrote SF as Hal Clement. Trantor, see Asimov’s Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), Second Foundation (1953); Lazarus Long, see Methuselah’s Children (R. Heinlein 1958). “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, A. Dubin & H. Warren 1933. “Inconstant Moon”, L Niven 1971. “Friend to levity” e.g. Heyer, The Unknown Ajax ch. 9 (1959).

The fuzziest, pinkest photo ever taken of Fuzzy Pink Niven — by Len Moffatt at the 1972 Westercon.

Pixel Scroll 7/12/23 You Can Scroll Scroll Scroll, You Can Pixel Pixel Pixel, But You Got To Know The Metastory

(1) THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON PERN. As soon as Threads started up, Catherynne M. Valente realized she needed to remind everyone she knows that “Mark F***king Zuckerberg Is Not Your Friend”.

…I’m not even very surprised at how many suspiciously-positive posts and memes I saw the millisecond Threads launched. Or how many big names and brands who’d refused to move to any of the other available competitors, not even so far as to hold a username and a server on Mastodon, the one most usable most quickly, just in case, suddenly had thriving Threads feeds. This is Facebook. It’s been several interminable minutes. We all know how this works. Bots, farms, artificial boosting, algorithms, astroturfing, paying influencers, brands, and celebrities to migrate without saying they were paid. We are not new here. Asking Facebook to not fake engagement and steal data is like asking Canadian goose not to rip anyone’s face off. That is, fundamentally, what it does and what it’s for.

What did surprise me? Well, it’s pretty fucking weird how the launch of Threads, which is ostensibly, you know, a company and a profit-generating service, almost immediately did a sickening costume reveal and became Mark fucking Zuckerberg’s Redemption/Woobiefication tour, and only like four non-Nazi people and one of their alt accounts are pushing back on that because everyone rushed to join this thing with a smile on their lips and a song in their heart a big anime heart-eyes for the guy we all knew was Noonian Soong’s first janky and obviously evil Build-a-Bloke workshop project three weeks ago.

Seriously, have we all lost our entire screaming minds?…

She has assembled acres of evidence about Zuckerberg’s and Facebook’s track record in case you forgot.

(2) BOTH A SPRINT AND A MARATHON. Cora Buhlert is doing the July Short Story Challenge again and she hasn’t missed a day yet: “The 2023 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day”.

… What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next….

(3) QUITE THE VARIETY. Rich Lynch’s diverting My Back Pages #28 is available to download from eFanzines.

The 28th installment of my personal time capsule is a “I think we’re finally escaping the pandemic” issue and has essays involving cheap hotel rates and a very expensive personal boondoggle, big balloons and a small cat, scary rollercoasters and not-so-scary sci-fi movies, notable edifices and ordinary-looking spring blossoms, artificial satellites and a very real sense-of-wonder, a long walking tour and a relatively short drive, a famous quote and a semi-obscure composer, a smart chatbot and a dumb stunt, complex machinations and elegant simplicity, drowsy Worldcon attendees and rousing march music, photos of the heavens and an underground fallout shelter, an extended hotel stay and a brief mountain climbing career, specialized historical research and an eclectic museum, National Poetry Month and The Year of the Jackpot.  And also an ‘Un-bucket List’ – hey, *everybody* ought to have one of those!

(4) THE HOBBIT: COMPARING RANKIN/BASS WITH PETER JACKSON. [Item by Dann.] The first episode of the Cinema Story Origins Podcast Hobbit series dropped a couple of days ago.  Paul J. Hale announced it on Facebook:

This whole episode is the first chapter of the book, the first 8 minutes of the Rankin/Bass Animated film, and the first 45 minutes of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”.

A big chunk is about J.R.R. Tolkien, another chunk is Jackson’s prologue, but pretty much the rest of it takes place inside Bag End (Bilbo’s house). But I do some extra digging here and there, some stuff about the origin of The Dwarves in Tolkien’s Legendarium, and some extra info and context for certain things.

This is a large project, and I’m already started on Part 2. I have no clue how long these are all going to be. I want these episodes to be meaty on the Tolkien end, and lighter on the Jackson end, but we’ll see… I’m going to try hard to have this done by the end of summer but I can’t guarantee that. I really hope you enjoy this first chapter in the CSO Hobbit Series.

The CSO page for the episode is here: “The Hobbit: Part 1”

The link to the Apple podcasts page is here: Cinema Story Origins: CSO 011a The Hobbit Part 1”.

I’ve listened to the first episode.  Paul opens with roughly 20 minutes of history about JRR Tolkien.  Some of the broad strokes are well known to Tolkien fans; his wartime service, his position as editor of the Oxford English dictionary, etc.  There were a couple of morsels that were new to me.  For example, the first line of The Hobbit originated from a very unusual circumstance.

As with all CSO series, Paul Hale is comparing and contrasting the original book with the movie versions.  In this case, he is comparing the book the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit and with the Peter Jackson trilogy films.  While Paul makes it clear that he thinks that making three films for a single book is excessive, he deals with the trilogy films as they exist and not as he might want them to be.  Paul’s focus is on delving into the book and how the film creators interpreted the book.  I believe that he will be only lightly touching on the many elements of the Jackson movies that do not exist in the book version of the story.

The first episode ends as Bilbo is rushing out the front door to meet the dwarves.  The runtime is ever-so-slightly over 2 hours.  Paul’s style makes every moment entertaining and informative.  He sprinkles in audio stingers and other verbal bon mots to keep the presentation lively.

(5) AS FRIGHTENING AS DISCOVERING FIRE. Game Thinking TV brings us an interview with Gödel, Escher, Bach author Doug Hofstadter on the state of AI today”.

Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, reflects on how he got interested in the mind and consciousness, how he came to write Gödel, Escher, Bach, and why he is terrified by the current state of AI.

(6) HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEBB TELESCOPE! The James Webb Space Telescope today celebrated its “First Year of Science With Close-up on Birth of Sun-like Stars”.

From our cosmic backyard in the solar system to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, NASA has released Webb’s image of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. 

“In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time. Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Webb is an investment in American innovation but also a scientific feat made possible with NASA’s international partners that share a can-do spirit to push the boundaries of what is known to be possible. Thousands of engineers, scientists, and leaders poured their life’s passion into this mission, and their efforts will continue to improve our understanding of the origins of the universe – and our place in it.”

The new Webb image released today features the nearest star-forming region to us. Its proximity at 390 light-years allows for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1995 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Stephen Baxter’s a truly prolific writer, he’s written close to fifty novels now with the Long Earth series that he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett being my favorite work by him.  He’s written essays and short fiction beyond counting. Since there are fifteen collections of his short fictions, I’m guessing that most of it has been collected. 

So what is our Beginning the Scroll? It’s The Time Ships, the sequel to The Time Machine, which was published by HarperPrism twenty-eight years ago. 

It was nominated for a Hugo at the third L.A. Con.  It also nominated for a BFA and a Clarke. It won the BSFA, John W. Campbell Memorial and Philip K. Dick Awards.

Shall we take a look at our Beginning?

The attached account was given to me by the owner of a small second-hand bookshop, situated just off the Charing Cross Road in London. He told me it had turned up as a manuscript in an unlabelled box, in a collection of books which had been bequeathed to him after the death of a friend; the bookseller passed the manuscript on to me as a curiosity–‘You might make something of it’–knowing of my interest in the speculative fiction of the nineteenth century. 

The manuscript itself was typewritten on commonplace paper, but a pencil note attested that it had been transcribed from an original ‘written by hand on a paper of such age that it has crumbled beyond repair’. That original, if it ever existed, is lost. There is no note as to the manuscript’s author, or origin. 

I have restricted my editing to a superficial polishing, meaning only to eliminate some of the errors and duplications of a manuscript which was evidently written in haste.

What are we to make of it? In the Time Traveller’s words, we must ‘take it as a lie–or a prophecy … Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction …’ Without further evidence, we must regard this work as a fantasy–or as an elaborate hoax–but if there is even a grain of truth in the account contained in these pages, then a startling new light is shed, not merely on one of our most famous works of fiction (if fiction it was!), but also on the nature of our universe and our place in it.

I present the account here without further comment. Stephen Baxter

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 12, 1923 James E. Gunn. Writer, editor, scholar, anthologist. Hugo winner at ConStellation (1983) for Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. MidAmeriCon (1976) presented him with a Special Committee Award for Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction. The This Immortal series based on his novel by that name received a Best Dramatic Presentation nomination at Heicon ’70. Not surprisingly, he won a First Fandom Hall of Fame Award. (Died 2020.)
  • Born July 12, 1933 Donald E. Westlake. Though he specialized in crime fiction, he did dip into the genre on occasion such as with Transylvania Station with a lovely cover by Gahan Wilson. You can think of it as a Clue style novel.  With monsters. He wrote with his wife Abby. On the horror end of things was Anarchaos. And he wrote a lot of genre short fiction, some fifty pieces by my count. Meteor Strike: Science Fiction Triple Feature has three of his SF stories is available from the usual suspects for ninety-nine cents. (Died 2008.)
  • Born July 12, 1947 Carl Lundgren, 76. He co-founded ASFA (Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists of America), and won 4 Chesleys, including Artistic Achievement. At the tender age of eighteen, he was co-chairman of the first media SF convention, The Detroit Triple Fan Fair which featured comics, movies and various things of a SF nature. At Chicon IV, he was nominated for Best Professional Artist but lost out to Michael Whelan.
  • Born July 12, 1946 — Charles R. Saunders. African-American author and journalist, much of his fiction is set in the fictional continent Nyumbani (which means “home” in Swahili). His main series is the Imaro novels which he claims are the first sword and sorcery series by a black writer. (Died 2020.)
  • Born July 12, 1970 Phil Jimenez, 53. Comics illustrator and writer. He was the main artist of Infinite Crisis, a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. He also did the awesome first issue of Planetary/Authority: Ruling the World, and was responsible for the first six issues of Fables spin-off, Fairest.
  • Born July 12, 1976 Gwenda Bond, 47. Writer, critic, editor. She’s written a prequel to the Stranger Things series, Suspicious Minds, and I’m very fond of the two novels (The Lost Legacy and The Sphinx’s Secret) so far in her Supernormal Sleuthing Service which she wrote with her husband Christopher Rowe.  And she penned the Dear Aunt Gwenda section of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet that Small Beer Press published in the early part of this millennium. 

(9) DEAD AND ALIVE. Animation World Network is on hand when “‘Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead’ Comes to Crunchyroll”.

It’s alive! Crunchyroll has officially acquired the streaming rights for the zombie horror comedy anime series Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, which began its simulcast on July 9 with new subtitled episodes dropping weekly. The animated series, based on the hit manga series of the same name, is streaming on Crunchyroll in the United States; Canada; Australia; New Zealand; Latin America; Europe; the Middle East; North Africa; and the Indian subcontinent.

In the series, with three years under his belt at the company from hell, Akira Tendo is mentally and physically spent, all at the ripe old age of 24. Even his crush from Accounting, Saori, wants nothing to do with him. Then, just when life is beginning to look like one big disappointment, the zombie apocalypse descends on Japan! Surrounded by hordes of hungry zombies, Akira comes to the marvelous realization that he never has to go to work again and may now pursue his bucket list!

(10) NOT ALL THE BOTTLES ARE VINTAGE. ScreenRant points out the “10 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation 29 Years Later”.

10. TNG’s Holodeck Dangers Were Problematic

While several of TNG’s holodeck episodes included fun stories, there’s one thing about them that never made sense. While it’s understandable that the holodeck would need safety protocols, there is no logical reason why anyone (or anything) should be able to turn those safety protocols off. In TNG season 1’s “The Big Goodbye,” the safety protocols get mistakenly turned off by a probe scan, nearly resulting in the death of an Enterprise crewmember. In “Elementary, Dear Data,” the holodeck computer creates an adversary, Professor James Moriarty (Daniel Davis), who nearly takes over the Enterprise. It makes no sense that Starfleet would put holodecks on their most important ships when such catastrophic failures are possible.

(11) LOOKING GOOD. Okkto has a lot of suggestions about how you can get rid of that money burning a hole in your pocket. They have a page full of “’The Rocketeer’ Officially Licensed Collectibles” that includes this watch.

And artist Scott Nelles offers everything from a pulpy ray gun to this King Kong bank (cast in aluminum and bronze, and weighing four pounds!)

Sand-cast aluminum and bronze coin bank, depicting Kong climbing the Empire State Building. A pulpy and charming addition to your home or office, this coin bank will be a conversation piece and unique accent to your décor. Unscrew the pieces to collect your saved-up coins. Designed and hand cast by Scott Nelles in his studio/foundry in Elk Rapids, Michigan. 

(12) PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT AND THEY’LL GET RICH. And Heritage Auctions would love for you to spend even more on these rarities: the Mars Attacks and Monsters from Outer Limits trading card sets.

There are 2 highly controversial trading card sets, that are very sought after today, that I would like to discuss a little about. Today they may seem a bit tame, but back in the 60s these were created by Topps with a pseudonym Bubbles, Inc. so that the company could distance the Topps name with the anticipated uproar that they would eventually create. The trading cards had a lot to do with aliens in space! Have you guessed it yet?….Did you guess Mars Attacks and Monsters From Outer Limits? If you did, then you are correct!

The infamous Mars Attacks was first released in 1962 by Topps via their Bubbles Inc banner, originally named “Attack from Space” on the test prototype launch. The standard 2.5”x3.5” set was 55 cards total in a $.05 pack of 5 cards with a piece of gum. All 55 cards tell a very graphic and gruesome story of Martians attacking Earth and eventually Earthlings attacking back. On the front of each card, there are colorful depictions of a progression of Mars attacking. The backs tell an explanation of what is depicted in the pictures on the front of the card. The cards and the concept were invented by Len Brown.

The drawings were mainly done by Norman Saunders and the story was created by Woody Gelman. It didn’t take long for these very graphic cards depicting Martians brutally killing humans and animals, gory death scenes, and sexual inuendos to create an upset with many parents. The parents were understandably upset because these very colorful cards of horror were marketed for kids. Lawsuits came one after another and Topps worked quickly to sensor 13 of their more violent pictures to be reprinted and dispersed. However, this never happened because a very large suit came forward from the community of parents and halted the production completely. Fortunately, for collectors, this meant the original set of 55 is very rare and valuable….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Here’s the official trailer for Wonka.

Based on the extraordinary character at the center of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl’s most iconic children’s book and one of the best-selling children’s books of all time, “Wonka” tells the wondrous story of how the world’s greatest inventor, magician and chocolate-maker became the beloved Willy Wonka we know today.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cliff, Dann, Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 6/4/23 Wednesday’s Pixel Is Full Of Scroll

(1) CHIANG CALLS AI “A POOR CHOICE OF WORDS”. Behind a paywall in the Financial Times: “Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: ‘The machines we have now are not conscious’”.

…Before we have had a chance to order, the proprietor, who also doubles as the waiter, turns up with two steaming bowls of peppery red lentil soup. The flavours instantly awaken my taste buds: salty and pungent. As we dive in, Chiang, in his contemplative way, takes issue with my observation that his fictional worlds and the one we’re inhabiting are getting uncomfortably close together.

“The machines we have now, they’re not conscious,” he says. “When one person teaches another person, that is an interaction between consciousnesses.” Meanwhile, AI models are trained by toggling so-called “weights” or the strength of connections between different variables in the model, in order to get a desired output. “It would be a real mistake to think that when you’re teaching a child, all you are doing is adjusting the weights in a network.”

Chiang’s main objection, a writerly one, is with the words we choose to describe all this. Anthropomorphic language such as “learn”, “understand”, “know” and personal pronouns such as “I” that AI engineers and journalists project on to chatbots such as ChatGPT create an illusion. This hasty shorthand pushes all of us, he says — even those intimately familiar with how these systems work — towards seeing sparks of sentience in AI tools, where there are none.

“There was an exchange on Twitter a while back where someone said, ‘What is artificial intelligence?’ And someone else said, ‘A poor choice of words in 1954’,” he says. “And, you know, they’re right. I think that if we had chosen a different phrase for it, back in the ’50s, we might have avoided a lot of the confusion that we’re having now.”

So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics….

(2) CHICON 8 WILL SHARE SURPLUS. The Chicon 8 Worldcon committee informed Facebook readers today the 2022 event has a surplus. Here’s how they will distributed it:

We are delighted to tell you that Chicon 8 has achieved a modest budget surplus, despite the challenge of a pandemic environment which reduced our membership numbers and increased our costs. This means that we will have funds to pass along to the next three Worldcons, as well as some other fannish organizations.

Additionally, we are offering a partial reimbursement to all qualifying staff, volunteers and program participants. You should have received the email last weekend, so do check your spam filters! Questions can be sent to reimbursements @ chicon.org

(3) POORFEADING. My reprinting “TYPOS by Mike Glyer” today reminded John Hertz of the popular poem “Ode to a Typographical Error” at Mighty Red Pen. The first two lines are:

The typographical error is a slippery thing and sly;
You can hunt till you are dizzy, but it somehow will get by.

(4) ON THE FRITZ. And while we’re on the subject, Andrew (not Werdna) suggested we check out the typos (at least two) on the back of this edition of Robert Silverberg’s Great Tales of Science Fiction.

(5) CELEBRITY BRUSH. Buzzfeed found “17 Stories From Former Classmates Of Celebs” – one of them writes sff.

Quite a while back, a since-deleted Reddit account asked, “Those who went to high school with celebrities, who were they and what were they like?”…

16. “My cousin went to high school with George R. R. Martin [the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the series adapted into Game of Thrones] and recalled having a freshman lit class with him. When it was time for everyone to read their stories, George’s was BY FAR the best. Apparently, the entire class simultaneously dropped their jaws. Guy’s a talent. Oh, and apparently, he was a typical nice dude.”

(6) PLAY IT AGAIN, CARL. MeTV says “The music of Kolchak: The Night Stalker shares roots with Star Trek and Trilogy of Terror”.

From the first frame in the opening sequence of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, the music sets the tone. First, our protagonist whistles us a tune, a homespun melody that grounds us in Carl Kolchak’s world. Quickly, though, the playful music swells into a nearly-overwhelming orchestral score, contrasting the simpler sounds with blood-pressuring raising crescendos.

The title music is indicative of what’s to come. Carl Kolchak is seemingly a simple-enough man, however, his exploits are anything but. What could be a simple series about a regular newspaper reporter turns into a monster-of-the-week horror show. It’s a testament to the cast and crew that this tone is so expertly balanced.

Chief among the creatives who influenced the series’ direction is the show’s various composers. Initially, for the made-for-TV ABC movies featuring Kolchak, those duties were handled by Bob Cobert. Cobert was, himself, no stranger to television shows that go bump in the night; that’s his work soundtracking the vintage vampire soap opera Dark Shadows. You might also recognize his work in Trilogy of Terror, another terrifying made-for-TV flick.

The theme for the television series, though, was composed by Gil Mellé. That’s Mellé’s melody that Kolchak whispers in the opening moments. Shows like Ironside and The Night Gallery were all the better for their Mellé scores…. 

(7) YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. “20 Books to 50K is worse than KBoards now” opines Joe Vasicek.

I don’t think I have posted a single thing to the 20 Books to 50K Facebook group that hasn’t been declined by the moderators. None of my posts have been political, and I’ve gone out of my way not to throw any bombs.

Even in the wokest days of KBoards, before I was banned from that site (and just before they fell off a cliff in terms of being the main gathering place online for indie authors), the moderators were never this harsh.

Online communities have a life cycle, and in the later stages they either fall apart because the trolls take over, or the moderators become too tyrannical. Apparently, that now applies to real-life communities too, now that we all spend most of our time online. Right now, 20 Books is in perhaps the most advanced stage of a moderator takeover that I’ve ever seen….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2003[Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Our Beginning is that of “A Night on the Barbary Coast”, a short story by Kage Baker that was first published in The Silver Gryphon anthology edited Marty Halpern and Gary Turner and published by their Golden Gryphon Press twenty years ago. Check out the contents on ISFDB — if you’ve not read it, you’ll want to.  Oh and the wrap around illustration is by Tom Canty.

Kage and I as I have mentioned before had a long conversation ongoing in email and on the phone for years before her death. We were planning a Concordance consisting of interviews with her characters and other materials but she became too ill too fast for it to happen. Pity that as it would been a lot of fun to do. 

Gods and Pawns where it was reprinted along with other Company stories is available from the usual suspects. The Silver Gryphon is about two dollars currently on ABE Books. Signed copies are considerably more. 

And here’s our Beginning…

I’d been walking for five days, looking for Mendoza. The year was 1850. 

Actually, walking doesn’t really describe traveling through that damned vertical wilderness in which she lived. I’d crawled uphill on hands and knees, which is no fun when you’re dressed as a Franciscan friar, with sandals and beads and the whole nine yards of brown burlap robe. I’d slid downhill, which is no fun either, especially when the robe rides up in back. I’d waded across freezing cold creeks and followed thready little trails through ferns, across forest floors in permanent darkness under towering redwoods. I’m talking gloom. One day the poets will fall in love with Big Sur, and after them the beats and hippies, but if vampires ever discover the place they’ll go nuts over it. 

Mendoza isn’t a vampire, though she is an immortal being with a lot of problems, most of which she blames on me.

I’m an immortal being with a lot of problems, too. Like father, like daughter. 

After most of a week, I finally came out on a patch of level ground about three thousand feet up. I was standing there looking down on clouds floating above the Pacific Ocean, and feeling kind of funny in the pit of my stomach as a result—and suddenly saw the Company-issue processing credenza on my left, nicely camouflaged. I’d found Mendoza’s camp at last. 

There was her bivvy tent, all right, and a table with a camp stove, and five pots with baby trees growing in them. Everything but the trees had a dusty, abandoned look. Cripes, I thought to myself, how long since she’s been here? I looked around uneasily, wondering if I ought to yoo-hoo or something, and that was when I noticed her signal coming from… up? I craned back my head.

An oak tree rose from the mountain face behind me, huge and branching wide, and high up there among the boughs Mendoza leaned. She gazed out at the sea; but with such a look of ecstatic vacancy in her eyes, I guessed she was seeing something a lot farther away than that earthly horizon.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 4, 1936 Bruce Dern, 87. Here for Silent Running, a film I’d completely forgotten I’d seen until compiling this Birthday. It’s the directorial debut of Douglas Trumbull who went on to much more famous projects. Dern also shows up in a number of other genre films such as The Incredible 2-Headed TransplantThe HauntingThe Astronaut Farmer and Freaks. Needless to say, you’ll find him on series such as The Outer LimitsAlfred Hitchcock Presents and Land of the Giants
  • Born June 4, 1951 Wendi Pini, 72. With husband Richard, responsible for Elfquest. Over the years Elfquest has been self-published by the Pinis through their own company Warp Graphics, then Marvel Comics, then the Pinis again, more recently DC Comics and then Dark Horse Comics. Everything prior to 2013 is free online. Be prepared to spend hours lost in great reading! 
  • Born June 4, 1960 Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 63. If you’ve not discovered the delights of her Diving Universe series, you’re in for a treat — it’s that good. Her Retrieval Artist series is one that can be read in no particular order so is a great deal of fun no matter where you start. Nor let us forget the Spade/Paladin series, I think we can call it a series, which is quite delightful.  Ten Little Fen is the first novel in that series. Oh, and she won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her Website is here; don’t miss her appreciation of A. J. Budrys.
  • Born June 4, 1960 Bradley Walsh, 63. His first genre was on The Sarah Jane Adventures as Odd Bob Elijah Spellman aka The Pied Piper in “The Day of the Clown” story. His major genre role video wise however is Graham O’Brien, companion to the Thirteenth Doctor. Now it’s worth noting that he has a lot of theatre experience that is genre having appeared in multiple versions of AladdinCinderellaJack & the Bean StalkPeter Pan and Snow White.
  • Born June 4, 1964 Sean Pertwee, 59. Let’s see, where did I see him first? Oh, of course, playing Sheriff Hugh Beringar on Cadfael but that’s not genre, is it? Captain Heinz in “Trenches of Hell, Part 2 “,  on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was his first genre role followed being Pilot Smith on Event Horizon and Macbeth in a UK film of that name the same year. He did a bit of low-budget horror playing Bradley Cortese in Tale of the Mummy and likewise in being Sergeant Harry G. Wells in Dog Soldiers. There were some fairly low budget SF as well, say Father in Equilibrium. Not to mention Brother Proteus in Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie which I dearly want to see! All of which gets redeemed by his Inspector Lestrade in Elementary, a stunning take on that character. And then there’s his Alfred in Gotham.
  • Born June 4, 1972 Joe Hill, 51. I’ve met him once or twice down the years as he shows up here in Portland for signings at both book shops and comic shops. Nice guy like his father. Actually the whole family is amazingly nice. Locke & Key is a superb graphic novel series and I’m fond of all of his short stories, particularly those collected in 20th Century Ghosts. I’ve got Full Throttle, his latest collection in my digital reading pile. I notice that though he’s not yet won a Hugo, he’s won a fistful of Stokers, many BFAs, a World Fantasy Award and even an International Horror Guild Award.  
  • Born June 4, 1975 Angelina Jolie, 48. I really liked her two Tomb Raider films and thought Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a really cool film with her role being quite magnificent. I never saw her early Cyborg 2 undertaking but think Hackers and her role as Kate “Acid Burn” Libby was rather good. I’ve not seen her Maleficent films. 
  • Born June 4, 1991 Jordan Danger, 32. She is best known for her role as Zoe Carter on Eureka. (Now inexplicably renamed A Town Called Eureka in syndication.) She also showed up in Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators which as horror is genre of sorts, plus the SF films, Higher Power and Beyond the Sky. And even a vampire film, Living Among Us. All low budget, all straight to DVD productions.

(10) TO START YOUR WEEK. Sunday Morning Transport seeks to encourage subscribers with this free read, “Hibernation Heirloom”.

For June, we begin with Chelsea Mueller’s evocative view of motherhood’s pressures and expectations. ~ Julian and Fran, June 4, 2023

(11) ROBERT J. SAWYER PROFILE. The Chengdu Worldcon’s latest “Dialogue with Sci-Fi Heavy Hitters” is: “Robert J. Sawyer: Go to Chengdu and You Will Meet the Best Sci-Fi Fans in the World”.

…Robert J. Sawyer’s latest sci-fi novel Download released this month also revolves around the two core themes. In the novel, humans have uploaded their consciousness into the meta-universe, opening up an alternative way of life. But suddenly, something happened. Some people vanish forever, and the survivors have to return to the real world.

The inspiration for the novel comes from Sawyer’s own feelings during the pandemic. “Before the pandemic, we were free to meet, to gather, to touch each other, to hug loved ones. Then the life we had taken for granted took a big hit and many had to connect online. So I thought, what if one day humans could only survive digitally and never return to the real world? Or what if they were suddenly forced to return to the real world after getting used to digital existence?”

Nor were his feelings confined to this point. “For decades, sci-fi writers have depicted various possible plagues, but when a plaue actually arrived, the world was still unprepared. People never learn from their mistakes, and this hasn’t changed for thousands of years.” Sawyer tells.

“And one thing hasn’t changed too. No matter how much convenience the Internet can provide, how exciting the video games can be, nothing can replace real human connection, laughter and clinking glasses, eye contacts, and soft breathing by the ears. Digital life has never been the direction of human evolution. In this era of rapid advances in AI, it is more vital than ever to appreciate human contribution and value.” Sawyer claims….

(12) WILLETT’S FIRST NOVEL BACK IN PRINT. Soulworm, the debut novel of Edward Willett, now the award-winning author of more than 20 novels and twice that many nonfiction books, has been made available once more in a new edition from Shadowpaw Press Reprise.

This YA fantasy novel, originally published in 1997, was written in the 1980s while Willett was news editor of the Weyburn Review newspaper, and is set in Weyburn in 1984—which nowadays gives it a Stranger Things vibe, although at the time it was a present-day tale.

Willett is an Aurora Award winner for Marseguro (DAW) and for Best Fan Related Work in 2019 for The Worldshapers podcast, and a Saskatchewan Book Award for Spirit Singer in 2002.

The story

For years, Liothel has waited in vain for her powers to manifest themselves, so that she can become a full-blown Warder, defender of the realm of Mykia from the mind-controlling spirit creatures known as soulworms. But when a soulworm escapes from the Warden’s citadel through a magical portal into the parallel world of Earth, it is her spirit that, entirely by accident, is sent in pursuit.

She finds herself, a helpless, unsuspected observer, in the mind of Maribeth, a teenage girl in the small Canadian prairie city of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, in 1984—and discovers the soulworm has possessed Maribeth’s best friend, Christine.

Somehow, she must find a way to save Earth from the plague of death and destruction the soulworm and its offspring will release if allowed to spread across the unprotected planet. Only she knows the danger—and only she can stop it.

(13) “NOT TODAY”. Michael Toman suggests those who have read Connie Willis’ novel Passage could be interested in this item: “Scientists saw a surge in brain activity in dying patients that could finally help explain mysterious near-death experiences” at MSN.com.

…The researchers found that two out of four of the dying patients experienced a swell of gamma waves — the brain activity associated with lucid dreams and hallucinations — even after their hearts had stopped, according to Smithsonian Magazine.  

Scientists have long thought that the brain dies with the rest of the body, but the latest study suggests that people may retain a certain level of consciousness that lends to dream-like, out-of-body experiences as they die, Vice reported

“The discovery of the marked and organized gamma activities in the dying brain suggests that [a near-death experience] is the product of the dying brain, which is activated at death,” the lead author of the study, Jimo Borjigin, told Vice. 

“As far as I am concerned, our study may be as good as it will ever get for finding neural signatures of near-death consciousness,” Borjigin told Vice, adding that the “only thing better than this is to have the patients survive to tell the tale that correlates with the detected neural signatures.”…

(14) PROVING LOVE. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Gwendoline Christie and Oliver Chris, was captured live from the Bridge Theatre in 2019. Watch now on National Theatre at Home:  

‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ A feuding fairy King and Queen of the forest cross paths with four runaway lovers and a troupe of actors trying to rehearse a play. As their dispute grows, the magical royal couple meddle with mortal lives leading to love triangles, mistaken identities and transformations… with hilarious, but dark consequences. Shakespeare’s most famous romantic comedy will be captured live from the Bridge Theatre in London. Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Oliver Chris (Green Wing, NT Live: Young Marx), David Moorst (NT Live: Allelujah!) and Hammed Animashaun (The Barber Shop Chronicles) lead the cast as Titania, Oberon, Puck and Bottom.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Daniel Radcliffe series arrives July 10 reports Collider: “’Miracle Workers: End Times’ Release Date Finally Set at TBS”.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we feel great. After several months of delay, TBS has finally set a new release date for its anthology series Miracle Workers. The upcoming fourth season, formally titled Miracle Workers: End Times, premieres on the network on Monday, July 10.

End Times primarily follows a warrior named Sid (Daniel Radcliffe) and a warlord named Freya (Geraldine Viswanathan), a couple who must now face one of their biggest challenges yet: acclimating to a suburban lifestyle. Because even dystopia comes with its own share of modern day struggles. Based on previously released trailers, Sid and Freya try their best to find normalcy in their new setting, offering support for each other through every up and down. Additionally, Steve Buscemi will play Sid’s boss, and from the current glimpses of him, things won’t be smooth sailing.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Vincent Docherty, John Hertz, Andrew (not Wernda), Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]

TYPOS by Mike Glyer

This article first appeared in 2003 in Marty Cantor’s fanzine No Award.


No title in fanzine history has ever made a promise more certain of being kept than “Typos by Mike Glyer.”

This article is really about fandom’s great and infamous typos but after I put the word at the top of my draft as a placeholder I realized the letterhacks will be circling my own mistakes like sharks. Just let it be said no attempt is being made to dishonestly inflate the count with deliberate mistakes. I’ve shied away from that sort of humor since an embarrassing experience in junior high school.

Back then I used to write a daily journal in a spiral notebook that I carried in my shirt pocket. Another student, Lee Pierson, thought something so secret must be worth knowing. He grabbed my notebook out of my pocket and ran off to read it. Lee was probably the smartest kid in school — he graduated as a National Merit Scholar – which may help explain why he thought the teasing would be even more delicious if he copyedited every page of the journal before he gave it back. Having no comeback for his critique of my grammar, I weakly countered another point, claiming, “Some of those misspellings are intentional!” This merely invited Lee to have the last word: “Intentional misspellings are meaningless when true errors abound.” 

I’ve taken Lee’s axiom to heart, filing it alongside other famous rules of writing like those given by Mark Twain in “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” Whether or not I decide to obey any of those rules in this piece – would you notice if I did “eschew surplusage”? – every typo in this article will be genuine.

More than that, every one will be mine, a rarity in my experience with No Award. This time Marty Cantor will actually cut-and-paste the article from my word processing file. Previously, it’s been his inexplicable habit to print out a copy and retype my entire contribution from scratch. I shudder to think about those past experiences. Can you imagine anything more difficult to decipher than something I’ve allegedly copedited, filtered through Marty’s typing? Not even those 10 million monkeys with keyboards trying to produce Shakespeare can randomly equal that mess.

Fortunately (and here we finally arrive at the original topic: surplusage definitely has not been eschewed!), Marty and I publish our work in the fanzine medium, where readers tolerate a certain number of typos.

What is that number? I don’t know. You should ask the scientist who tells the FDA how many bug particles are allowed in a hot dog. Today scientists can be trusted to make these kinds of measurements. On the other hand, America’s 19th century men of science could not. David Peck, lecturer on the medical aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition, says Captain William Clark spelled mosquito three different ways in his journal — never once getting it right! Clark’s guesses were musquetors, misquitoes, and musquitor. Of course, such mistakes are completely overshadowed by his great accomplishments and all the hardships he endured. If Marty Cantor routinely killed and ate grizzly bears for dinner nobody would say a word about the typos in No Award, either. Or much of anything besides “Yes, sir! How high, sir?”

Fanzine readers don’t merely tolerate typos. They actively exploit them as if they were the cultural equivalent to chromosomal mutations. The right typo can lead to immortality. Fans always sang parody lyrics to well-known tunes, but America’s resurgent interest in folk music during the 1950s opened the way for Lee Jacobs to make the typo that fans have embraced as the name of the activity. He submitted a manuscript titled “The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music” to SAPS. Official editor Wrai Ballard declared it unmailable, triggering a controversy that helped make this typo a permanent part of the fannish lexicon.

Walt Willis’s typo “poctsarcd” also earned enduring fame, as Harry Warner explained in A Wealth of Fable:

“While [Walt Willis] was corresponding at a great rate with Lee Hoffman, brief messages were crossing the Atlantic almost daily on postcards. For some reason Lee failed to mail any postcards for several days. Walter concernedly sent her one with the query, ‘What, no poctsarcds?’ Lee explained to him that she had been unable to find any ‘poctsarcds,’ after looking for them in every store in Savannah. Willis, publishing fanzines by a printing press at this time, immediately produced an ample stock of poctsarcds, clearly identified as such in the imprint, kept some for himself and sent the rest to her.”

Filk has become the common label for a popular fan activity, while poctsarcds keeps its place in the lexicon as one of the passwords fans use to show they are initiated into a deeper level of fannish knowledge. Besides dropping references to fanhistorical typos, the other ways fans demonstrate their great knowledge is by being able to answer questions like “Who sawed Courtney’s boat?” and avoiding the convention hotel where the Association of Narcotics Agents has started moving in.

Fandom’s occasional transformation of typos into hallmarks of sophistication is a contrast with the mundane world, though it only extends so far. The typos that are adopted into the regular fannish vocabulary are as rare as lottery winners. And Lee Pierson’s comment that intentional typos are devalued by too many ordinary typos, a writer’s equivalent of Gresham’s Law, helps explain why very few fanwriters are clever enough to profit from deliberately using them. Though the possibility that it occasionally works is implied in a passage from The Enchanted Duplicator by Walt Willis and Bob Shaw:

“’Horrible?’ laughed Kerles. ‘Everyone fights shy of me on account of these Typos, but actually they are quite agreeable fellows. Look, they will even do tricks for me.’ So saying, he stretched out his Shield of Umor, which was large and brilliantly polished, and gave a word of command. Instantly several of the Typos jumped neatly over the Shield, performing somersaults and such other odd antics that Jophan burst out laughing.”

Mostly, though, typos just make the writer look dumb. If he happens to be writing something that annoys anyone, critics will quickly find a way to point that out because we are trained to interpret sloppiness as evidence of sloppy thinking, even when it’s only sloppy typing.

It’s never wise for me to post my first reaction to a hot topic on an e-mail listserve anyway, and less so because I inevitably sabotage the effort by overlooking typos or the presence of extra words that ought to have been erased when a line was rewritten. I should stay out of arguments with fans who are also professional editors because in no time at all they make me sound sillier than monkey #10,000 on the Shakespeare project. 

Typos routinely turn into comic relief for readers on the sidelines of these arguments. LA fans who devoted thousands of words feuding with Charles Korbas, the white supremacist contributor to APA-L, weren’t above noticing the time he missed the comma and hit the next key over, giving himself a Korbasm.

It doesn’t require an argument or feud for mistakes to come under the magnifying glass, a friendly rivalry will work just as well, like the one between LASFS and NESFA. One year the LASFS voted the Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement (the “Forry Award”) to Hal Clement. When the plaque arrived in Boston they noticed it actually said “Liftime Achievement,” tarnishing the effect, though it was a science-fictional sounding typo. Then a fanzine reporting on Hal’s win got another part of the name wrong, referring to it as the “Folly Award.” After that both coasts had a lot to say about the Folly Award for Liftime Achievement.

Typos committed by corporations, even the LASFS, are always regarded as blemishes on their image. Fans also can tend to be overbearing about mistakes of English usage by those for whom it is a second language. When some fans read Japanese animé subtitles they dread examples of “fortune cookie” English. On this very point, Fred Patten reported in his Apa-L-zine ¡Rábanos Radiactivos! an ironic fact: “Pioneer [Entertainment] has a minor public image problem due to a unique situation regarding its horror TV series Hellsing. Several characters’ names are deliberately spelled in ways that look like clumsy mistranslations…. Of course Hellsing itself looks like a misspelled reference to vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula. This is at the insistence of Japanese author Kouta Hirano, who also does not want it revealed that the apparent misspellings are a requirement. No explanation; he just wants it that way.”

It’s impossible to think about typos without recalling my most humbling fanpublishing experience: editing the 1998 Mythcon progress reports. The committee was full of scholars, research librarians, and plain old perfectionists, every one of them an infinitely better copyeditor than me. I might have graciously admitted that from the start and appreciated the extra help. But I seemed to be having trouble navigating my zeppelin-sized head through doorways at the time. Each time I e-mailed a draft progress report to the committee I cringed to see the huge e-mails full of corrections coming back. Of course, the bottom-line improvement was well worth it.

Far beyond any copyediting I endured, though, is what John Hertz righteously committed on behalf of the late Rick Sneary.

Sneary’s idiocyncratic spelling was a fannish legend. As Harry Warner gently wrote, “Illness in childhood prevented him from suffering the subjection to old, tired ways of spelling words that afflicts most of us. As a result, he frequently improvised novel spellings that often cast a new light on a word or entire phrase.”

Whether Rick wanted his text kept intact or not, most faneditors could not help cherishing the opportunity to participate in his legend by laboriously transcribing every word as he had typed it. Actually, Rick’s close friend Len Moffatt is quite certain that Rick hoped the editors would clean up the mistakes.

When John Hertz was working on the memorial collection of Sneary’s writing, Button-Tack, Mark Manning forwarded the text of a letter where he had painstakingly reproduced all of Sneary’s misspellings. Obedient to Sneary’s preference, John Hertz copyedited all of them away.

We should all have such a friend. In fact, I do!

Pixel Scroll 6/3/23 A File Forever Pixeling Through Strange Scrolls Of Thought, Alone

(1) MARVEL VS DC: CONTEST OF THE CHAMPIONS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 has just broadcast a documentary (just under half-hour) on DC and Marvel Comics. Most of it fans will already know, but there are some things in there folk might not! For example, I never knew that at one time, DC copied Marvel’s grittier art style despite internal management misgivings. You can access it here.

Marvel and DC, the two titans of America superhero comics, have been locked in cosmic battle for over six decades – raging across publishing, radio, TV, movies, gaming and animation.

It’s one of the greatest rivalries in the history of pop culture, ferociously debated by generations of readers, fans and industry creatives alike.

While both companies are now worth billions, this wasn’t always the case.

This feature goes back to their early comic book roots, where DC comics and young upstart Marvel both had offices in 1960s Manhattan – and yet differed widely in their approach to the genre, posing very distinct ideas of what our superheroes should be – and as a result, what it means to be human. Do we want to look up to the skies or do we really want to see a reflection of ourselves? Are our heroes other, outsiders like gods – or are they basically people like us, who gain strange powers but keep their flaws? Readers had a choice.

The creative rivalry between Marvel and DC comics has always been more than a question of sales or market share. It is a fascinating culture clash of ideals, morals and even politics. It has constituted one of the greatest post-war, pop-culture wars of our times.

(2) TAFF EBOOK. Rob Hansen’s British SF Conventions Volume 1: 1937-1951 was released June 1 as a free downloadable ebook on the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund website. If you enjoy it, a donation to TAFF is welcome.

The cover photo from the London Festivention (1951) shows the editors of six of the seven fanzines then being published in the UK. From left to right: Mike Tealby (Wonder), Derek Pickles (Phantasmagoria), Fred Robinson (Straight Up), Walt Willis (Slant), Bob Foster (Sludge), Vince Clarke and Ken Bulmer (Science Fantasy News).

From Rob Hansen’s Foreword

Surprisingly, there were five conventions organized, announced, and held in the UK during World War Two despite travel under wartime conditions being a difficult and sometimes dangerous affair. For example, the train taking Cardiff fan Terry Overton to one of those conventions pulled out of the station during an air raid as bombs rained down on his (and my) home city. The NORCONs were only cons in the most basic of senses but 1944’s Eastercon was the most ambitious convention the UK had ever seen, as you will discover.

Hansen’s already published book 1957: The First UK Worldcon  fits into this sequence as volume 3.

(3) DRIVE-IN TRIVIA. MeTV asks “Can you complete the titles of these vintage ‘monster’ movies?” It wasn’t easy but I managed to miss two of these softballs.

What would the landscape of horror be like without the famous monsters? For decades, audiences have screamed, laughed and even sometimes jeered at the creatures lurching across the screen. Some nightmares are done so well that they haunt you for years. Others look so cheap and tacky that they become famous for how terrible they look.

We’ve collected a dungeon full of classic horror and sci-fi flicks with “monster” in the title. You may recognize some of these movies from Svengoolie! See if you can complete their full, frightful names.

(4) IT MIGHT BE FILK. John Hertz took inspiration from a recent G&S-themed Scroll title (Pixel Scroll 6/1/23 Three Little Muad’Dibs From Sand Are We) to supply the verse:

Three Muad’Dibs who, all unwary,
Come from Atreides’ seminary,
Free from the Wallach IX tutelary,
Three Muad’Dubs from sand.

Everything is a source of fun.
Paul isn’t safe, his solitude’s done,
Dune is a joke that’s just begun.
Three Muad’Dibs from sand.

Three Muad-’Dibs from sand are we,
Pert as a *pop-hop* well can be,
Filled to the brim with melange glee,
Three Muad’Dibs from sand.

(5) CUE THE CHORUS. Meanwhile another poet soon will be represented in space: “Poem bound for Jupiter’s moon Europa ties Earth to the watery world” reports Axios.

U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón on Thursday revealed her poem that will fly to Jupiter’s moon Europa aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper mission.

The big picture: The mission follows in the tradition of others — like NASA’s Voyagers — that have sent pieces of art representing humanity into the cosmos.

What’s happening: The poem uses water as a thread that binds Earth — and all of its humans — to Europa, a moon with an ocean beneath its icy shell.

  • “We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow,” Limón writes. “And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain.”
  • The poem is going to be engraved in Limón’s handwriting and affixed to the spacecraft, expected to launch in October 2024.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

1987[Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Lawrence Watt-Evans’ “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” story is where our Beginning comes from this Scroll. Though Mike of course selected it, I too have read it with great delight.

So the story won a Hugo at Nolacon II, and had a Nebula nomination as well.

It was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in their July 1987 issue. 

I’m going to praise him for having up-to-date social media and for dropping out of Twitter. Check out the links to those sites from his ISFDB page 

So here’s the first chapter of that story….

Hamburgers Harry’s was a nice place–probably still is. I haven’t been back lately. It’s a couple of miles off I-79, a few exits north of Charleston, near a place called Sutton. Used to do a pretty fair business until they finished building the Interstate out from Charleston and made it worthwhile for some fast-food joints to move in right next to the cloverleaf; nobody wanted to drive the extra miles to Harry’s after that. Folks used to wonder how old Harry stayed in business, as a matter of fact, but he did all right even without the Interstate trade. I found that out when I worked there. 

Why did I work there, instead of at one of the fast-food joints? Because my folks lived in a little house just around the corner from Harry’s, out in the middle of nowhere – not in Sutton itself, just out there on the road. Wasn’t anything around except our house and Harry’s place. He lived out back of his restaurant. That was about the only thing I could walk to in under an hour, and I didn’t have a car.

This was when I was sixteen. I needed a job, because my dad was out of work again and if I was gonna do anything I needed my own money. Mom didn’t mind my using her car – so long as it came back with a full tank of gas and I didn’t keep it too long. That was the rule. So I needed some work, and Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers was the only thing within walking distance. Harry said he had all the help he needed–two cooks and two people working the counter, besides himself. The others worked days, two to a shift, and Harry did the late night stretch all by himself. I hung out there a little, since I didn’t have anywhere else, and it looked like pretty easy work – there was hardly any business, and those guys mostly sat around telling dirty jokes. So I figured it was perfect. 

Harry, though, said that he didn’t need any help. 

I figured that was probably true, but I wasn’t going to let logic keep me out of driving my mother’s car. I did some serious begging, and after I’d made his life miserable for a week or two Harry said he’d take a chance and give me a shot, working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight A.M., as his counterman, busboy, and janitor all in one.

I talked him down to 7:30, so I could still get to school, and we had us a deal. I didn’t care about school so much myself, but my parents wanted me to go, and it was a good place to see my friends, y’know? Meet girls and so on. 

So I started working at Harry’s, nights. I showed up at midnight the first night, and Harry gave me an apron and a little hat, like something from a diner in an old movie, same as he wore himself. I was supposed to wait tables and clean up, not cook, so I don’t know why he wanted me to wear them, but he gave them to me, and I needed the bucks, so I put them on and pretended I didn’t notice that the apron was all stiff with grease and smelled like something nasty had died on it a few weeks back. And Harry–he’s a funny old guy, always looked fiftyish, as far back as I can remember. Never young, but never getting really old, either, y’know? Some people do that, they just seem to go on forever. Anyway, he showed me where everything was in the kitchen and back room, told me to keep busy cleaning up whatever looked like it wanted cleaning, and told me, over and over again, like he was really worried that I was going to cause trouble, “Don’t bother the customers. Just take their orders, bring them their food, and don’t bother them. You got that?”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 3, 1901 Maurice Evans. Ahhh the amazing work of make-up. Under the make-up that was Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes was this actor. Though this was his most well-known genre role, it wasn’t his only ones — he was in a Thirties Scrooge as poor man, on Bewitched as Maurice, Samantha’s father, on Batman as The Puzzler in “The Puzzles are Coming” and “The Duo Is Slumming”, in Rosemary’s Baby as Hutch, and finally in Terror in the Wax Museum as Inspector Daniels. Oh, and he showed up on Columbo as Raymond in “The Forgotten Lady”. No, not genre — but I love that series! (Died 1989.)
  • Born June 3, 1905 Malcolm Reiss. It’s uncertain if he ever published any genre fiction but he’s an important figure in the history of our community as he edited in the Thirties through the Fifties, Jungle StoriesPlanet StoriesTops in Science Fiction and Two Complete Science-Adventure Books. Fletcher Pratt, Ross Rocklynne, Leigh Brackett and Fredric Brown are but a few of the writers published in those magazines. (Died 1975.)
  • Born June 3, 1905 Norman A. Daniels. Writer working initially in pulp magazines, later on radio and television. He created the Black Bat pulp hero and wrote for such series as The AvengersThe Phantom Detective and The Shadow. He has three non-series novels, The Lady Is a WitchSpy Slave and Voodoo Lady. To my surprise, iBooks and Kindle has a Black Bat Omnibus available! In addition, iBooks has the radio show.  (Died 1995.)
  • Born June 3, 1947 John Dykstra, 76. He was one of the founders of Industrial Light & Magic. That means he’s responsible for the original visuals for lightsabers, the space battles between X-wings and TIE fighters, and much of the other Star Wars effects. Can’t list everything he later worked on, so I’ll single out his work on Battlestar Galactica, the sfx for Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, the visual effects on X-Men: First Class, and visual effects supervisor on Doolittle.
  • Born June 3, 1950 Melissa Mathison. Screenwriter who worked with Spielberg on  E.T. the Extra-TerrestrialTwilight Zone: The Movie and the charming BFG, the latter being the last script she did before dying of cancer. She also did absolutely splendid The Indian in the Cupboard which was directed by Frank Oz. (Died 2015.)
  • Born June 3, 1958 Suzie Plakson, 65. She played four characters on the Trek franchise: a Vulcan, Doctor Selar, in “The Schizoid Man”(Next Gen); the half-Klingon/half-human Ambassador K’Ehleyr in “The Emissary” and “Reunion” (Next Gen); the Lady Q in “The Q and the Grey” (Voyager); and an Andorian, Tarah, in “Cease Fire” (Enterprise).  She also voiced Amazonia in the “Amazon Women in the Mood” episode of Futurama. Really. Truly. By the way, her first genre role was in the My Stepmother Is an Alien film as Tenley. She also showed up in the Beauty and the Beast series as Susan in the “In the Forests of the Night” episode.
  • Born June 3, 1949 Michael McQuay. He wrote two novels in Asimov’s Robot City series, Suspicion and Isaac Asimov’s Robot City (with Michael P. Kube-McDowell) and Richter 10 with Arthur C. Clarke. The Mathew Swain sequence neatly blends SF and noir detective tropes – very good popcorn reading. His novelization of Escape from New York is superb. (Died 1995.)
  • Born June 3, 1964 James Purefoy, 59. His most recent genre performance was as Laurens Bancroft in Altered Carbon. His most impressive was as Solomon Kane in the film of that name. He was also in A Knight’s Tale as Edward, the Black Prince of Wales/Sir Thomas Colville. He dropped out of being V in V for Vendetta some six weeks into shooting but some early scenes of the masked V are of him. And let’s not forget that he’s Hap Collins in the Sundance series Hap and Leonard which was steaming on Amazon Prime before the idiots there pulled it. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Macanudo is there when puberty comes to 2001.

(9) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] Friday’s episode of Jeopardy! had a category in the first round called “Their Middle Initial”, where each clue gave us a person’s given name and surname and asked for…oh, you guessed.

The $1000 level was:

Of sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula Le Guin

One of the contestants did in fact know it.

(10) SPACE CHOW. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Nope, it’s not Rice-A-Roni. But, this San Francisco firm is competing in the Deep Space Food Challenge, sponsored by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. The goal is to find ways to meet the food needs of astronauts on long-term space missions, such as one to Mars. Making the food interesting (as well as nutritious) is important from a psychological standpoint. “Does this look appetizing? If you go to Mars, it may be your meal” at CNN Business.

As part of a NASA competition called the Deep Space Food Challenge, a San Francisco based design firm shows CNN its ideas for tasty treats astronauts can grow themselves and even grill while on a long flight to Mars.

(11) JUSTWATCH. Here is the sff that JustWatch found people had on their screens in May.

(12) DINO SKINNER ARRESTED. “Vandal Causes $250,000 in Damage to ‘Jurassic Park’ Exhibition, Police Say” – the New York Times has the story.

A newly opened dinosaur exhibition in Atlanta based on the blockbuster series of “Jurassic Park” movies has been temporarily shut down after an intruder broke in and caused $250,000 in damage, the police said. One man is in custody.

On Monday, officers from the Atlanta Police Department responded to a burglary call at Jurassic World: The Exhibition, where a manager said he discovered several exhibits had been damaged, according to a police report.

The exhibition, which has made stops in North America, officially opened Friday at Pullman Yards, a large entertainment venue east of downtown Atlanta. The show promises to immerse audiences in scenes inspired by the films and features life-size dinosaur models.

Officials for the exhibition said security footage showed four suspects before they entered the property on Sunday night. One suspect was later seen “sitting on top of one of the dinosaurs ripping off the skin covering,” the report said….

… Michael Mattox, the executive vice president of Animax Designs, the company in Nashville that constructed the dinosaurs, told Fox5Atlanta last week that it took 18 months to design and build them.

About 140 artists, engineers and other creative people were involved in the production of the dinosaurs, he said.

(13) STEEL MAGNOLIAS.  “Japan will put a wooden satellite into orbit next year” reports TechSpot.

Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan have determined that wood from magnolia trees could be the ideal construction material for a satellite due to launch into space next year.

Test results from a recent experiment aboard the International Space Station among three wood specimens revealed magnolia to be the most versatile. The samples, which were exposed to the harsh conditions of space for 10 months, returned to Earth this past January.

Analysis showed magnolia experienced no decomposition or damage like cracking, peeling, or warping. Furthermore, there was no change in the mass of the wood samples before and after their exposure in space….

(14) STARLINER STANDS DOWN. “Boeing finds two serious problems with Starliner just weeks before launch” reports Ars Technica. People are surprised this kind of problem was discovered so late in the process.  

A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was “standing down” from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21 to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle.

Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner, said two spacecraft problems were discovered before Memorial Day weekend and that the company spent the holiday investigating them. After internal discussions that included Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun, the company decided to delay the test flight that would carry NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station.

“Safety is always our top priority, and that drives this decision,” Nappi said during a teleconference with reporters.

Two issues

The issues seem rather serious to have been discovered weeks before Starliner was due to launch on an Atlas V rocket. The first involves “soft links” in the lines that run from Starliner to its parachutes. Boeing discovered that these were not as strong as previously believed.

During a normal flight, these substandard links would not be an issue. But Starliner’s parachute system is designed to land a crew safely in case one of the three parachutes fails. However, due to the lower failure load limit with these soft links, if one parachute fails, it’s possible the lines between the spacecraft and its remaining two parachutes would snap due to the extra strain.

(15) UFO STUDY. The May 31 public meeting by the NASA team tasked with studying UAPs (UFOs) is archived on YouTube. “NASA’s UFO study team holds a public meeting”. Over 3.5 hours of talks, charts, stats, etc. 

Other coverage includes “NASA reveals findings on unidentified objects” at CNN Business and “UFOs: Five revelations from Nasa’s public meeting” at BBC News.

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, David Langford, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Rhymes with “Banter”

By John Hertz (reprinted from Vanamonde 1543):

      Many ways to think
      Arrive through what others tell.
      Restrain no freedoms,
      Tolerate discords, knowing
      Yet nutrition comes from them.

Marty Cantor (1935-2023) left our stage Saturday morning, April 29.  Advanced cancer, which for a while had been held back by treatment, finally overcame him.

He was active in fanzines.  His fanzine Holier Than Thou (with Robbie Bourget, then his wife) was a three-time Hugo finalist; his later No Award (I wrote to him “You are worthy of No Award and No Award is worthy of you”) too was applauded; he helped run Corflu IX (fanziners’ convention; corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, largely historical by Corflu I but once indispensable) and chaired Corflu XXXIV; he served three separate terms as Official Collator of APA-L (its sole officer; APA or apa = amateur press ass’n, in which contributors’ fanzines are collated and the whole then distributed to each); he helped found LASFAPA (L.A. Scientifiction Fans’ Apa, our old word scientifiction by then historical) and served as its Little Tin God (sole officer; accused of taking a high-handed attitude to the apa rules and behaving like a little tin god, he so changed his official title, LTG for short, then began the HTT fanzine; when Corflu XXII was called “Corflu Titanium” [Ti = 22] and people were given elemental nicknames, his was Tin); he (with Mike Gunderloy, Mike Glyer, Mark Sharpe) brought Shangri-L’Affaires into one of its bursts of life (clubzine of the L.A. Science Fantasy Society, begun in the 1940s, Retrospective Hugo finalist); he (with Glyer) published the 6th Edition of The Neo-Fan’s Guide; he edited and published Phil Castora’s memoir Who Knows What Ether Lurks in the Minds of Fen?; he edited De Profundis (a later LASFS clubzine; “LASFS” as if rhyming with a Spanish-English “màs fuss”).

He and Robbie were elected DUFF (Down Under Fan Fund) delegates to Aussiecon II the 43rd World Science Fiction Convention; each wrote a DUFF report, both published head-to-tail like Ace Books’ double titles; his was Duffbury Tales.  He was an agent for the successful Britain in ’87 bid to hold the 45th Worldcon.  He was given the Evans-Freehafer (LASFS’ service award).

From the mid 1950s through the early ’60s he was a folksinger and instrumentalist (also a poet published in the little magazines of that time), playing 6-string and 12-string guitar, gut-bucket, jug, washboard; he carried two guitars strapped to his motorcycle from coffee-house to coffee-house; Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002) taught him an open-C guitar tuning; he jammed with Jim Kweskin (1940-  ), David Lindley (1944-2023), the New Lost City Ramblers.

Later he managed a tobacco shop and then was the only full-time clerk at another, from which he managed to get leave for his DUFF trip five months into his employment.  During those years he was often seen with a pipe; so portrayed on the cover of Duffbury Tales.  Later than that he managed a U-Haul shop; later than that, his apartment building, hosting tabletop board games in the garage when COVID-19 precautions eased.  He and Robbie met at Chicon IV the 40th Worldcon, were married the next January; divorced after sixteen years; no children; managed to stay on good terms.

One of our more cynical – and self-deprecatory – sayings is The Golden Age of science fiction is 12.  Cantor found SF fandom at 40.  He joined the LASFS in May 1975.  His Evans-Freehafer Award came in 2016.

He hated snow.  One day Charles Curley driving along an L.A. freeway noticed the mountains could be seen clearly (they were sometimes obscured by smog) and were covered with snow.  Here in Los Angeles!  Practically on Cantor’s doorstep – aha!  So Curley recruited some friends and shovels and a tarpaulin and a pickup truck; drove into the mountains; loaded the tarp with snow; and in the still of the night drove to Cantor’s place and piled snow by the outdoor entrance.  Cantor was really touched that they cared enough about him to pull this stunt, but added “Don’t ever do that again.”

He didn’t forsake classical music.  In his school orchestra he had been Principal of Second Violins (an orchestra has two violin sections, Violin I and Violin II, with different parts), calling for both musical quality and leadership.  As an adult he loved Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (1878) and Praetorius’ Terpsichore (1612) – two very different works, in case you don’t know.

In print, including electronic media, he could be vigorous in his opinions.  He did not keep his mundane political views away from his fanac (our old word for fan activity); for example, in APA-L he waxed wroth upon such subjects with Karl Lembke, who also did much for the LASFS (chaired the Board of Directors twenty years, substantial donor, E-F Award 2010) and local conventions (often ran Hospitality, contributing his own cooking and brewing; chaired Loscon XXXII) but was as firmly on the Right as Cantor was on the Left.  Yet Cantor punctiliously enagaged in fanac with people whose views were far from his – e.g. Lembke.  It was a point of honor with him.

May his memory be for a blessing.

About Those FAAn Awards

By John Hertz: In case you wondered, the FAAn Awards are the Fan(zine) Activity Achievement Awards.

“Faan” was originally a put-down – it meant someone whose attitude seemed to be “more fannish than thou”.  More a’s – like “faaan” or “faaaan” – made it worse.  It was pronounced with a sheep-bleat.

That meaning, like much fanspeak of those days, has faded.  But naturally it came to mind when we first thought of awards for fanzines, to supplement the Hugos, like the Nebula Awards from SFWA (the SF Writers’ Association), or the Chesley Awards from ASFA (Ass‘n of SF Artists).  We proclaimed that we ourselves were faans.  Modesty?  Self-deprecation?  So be it – or, because we’re speaking of the past, so was it.

That first thinking was in the mid-1970s.  Our Gracious Host had a part.  The first thinker was that fine fannish fellow (and, incidentally, my long-time friend) Moshe Feder.  The FAAn Awards were first given at Midwestcon XXVI in 1975.  That continued until 1980.  Then there was a long pause – also, for better or worse, very fannish.  The Awards re-awakened in 1995 and have since been presented at the fanziners’ con Corflu (corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable).

Corflu has a Website; you can read more of the Awards’ history there, or in Fancyclopedia III, or both, even.

This year’s FAAn Awards were given at Corflu XL (Belfast, Northern Ireland; 31 Mar – 2 Apr). Their Administrator was Nic Farey.  He’s published the details of voting here.

Don’t know Fanzineland?  At Bill Burns’ Website eFanzines you can see many winners of FAAn Awards.  You might also try looking for them in Fancyclopedia III.  Don’t have, or maybe even don’t want, electronics?  Fan activity on paper is still happening.  Rikki-tikki-tavi’s motto in the Kipling story is “Run and find out.”  I’m for it.

Lee Gold’s First Valhalla Novel

By John Hertz (reprinted in part from Vanamonde 1519):Absent Without Leave (2021) is the first of three novels about Valhalla by Lee Gold. The second is Into the Darkness (2022). The third should appear any day now.

You can’t hold copyright in a title. So the publisher, knowing there were other books called “Absent Without Leave”, put “Valhalla” before each of Gold’s. Look for them under “V”.

I happened upon Absent in a bookshop. Gold has said it “isn’t about the ancient Norse or … Vikings…. a modern … arrived at Valhalla [but isn’t] content [with] train[ing] to fight and die in Ragnarök [Norse, “the gods’ twilight” or “final destiny”, often prophesied as a climactic battle ending the world]. She wants to stop Ragnarök from happening!” The narrator telling us all this wants to remain anonymous, but slips often enough (“Oops,” p. 100) that we can infer who it is.

Ancient legend attracts and stymies many of us.  Ooh, how colorful! Aiee, how could they think that? Introducing someone more like Us than like Them has often enough proved slippery: few stories succeed when there’s no one we can stand: few succeed when rather than run down an alien world they exalt it: comedy is trickier than ever, how shall we know what’s laughable? what if it’s laughable to Them but not to Us? And a bookful of allusions, or comedy, or both (those aren’t the same, even I know they aren’t), may not amount to a story.

Gold has a sense of story. And Absent shows thought, attention, wit.

Lee Gold has done so much in with for fandom (prepositions are idiomatic; I haven’t remembered from whom [Michael Flanders 1922-1975? — although I suspect he was quoting a schoolbook about Latin] I first heard “of, to, or for, by, with, or from”) that it’s a pleasure to be acquainted with her.

She and her husband Barry edited Along Fantasy Way, the Fan Guest of Honor book for Tom Digby at ConFrancisco the 51st World Science Fiction Convention; the electronic may see her 2014 revised edition at ConChord (ConChord 1983-2015 was a Southern California filkers’ convention; its Website continues; filk our home-made music, from a 1950s typographical error; Digby was a Guest of Honor at ConChord XX).

Once in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons with Lee Gold as Dungeonmaster my companions and I encountered strange — that may be redundant — vague fuzzy creatures. When one of us with magic powers cast the spell Detect Magic, the rest found ourselves infuriated: Why did you do that?? What a wretched thing to do! You’d better stand over there, away from us! Undaunted, the magician thought “Well, I’ll protect us from them” and cast the spell Sleep. Suddenly the creatures were fluffy, plainly had four legs, were seen to be white brown and black, and bleated. They were typos; they had turned the first spell into Detest Magic, the second into Sheep.

Gold’s contributions to filking led her to become editor-publisher of Xenofilkia; her contributions to fantasy role-playing games led to her becoming editor-publisher of Alarums & Excursions; both periodicals are ongoing.

I’ve said Cross-cultural contact is homework — oops, there goes half my readership — since you didn’t run away, I’ll continue with you — both of you — for science fiction. Or maybe speculative fiction, which I think should include both science fiction and fantasy, even though Heinlein thought it shouldn’t.  Gold inter alia knows Norse and Japanese lore, getting published Land of the Rising Sun and GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System) Japan, and Vikings.

Oh, and if you know what Tuckerizations are, and you know who Robin_Johnson is, this one isn’t, just as there are other books called Absent Without Leave. This one just makes two Robin Johnsons I’m a fan of.

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #72

WORLDCON 80 – A PICTORIAL ESSAY 

By Chris M. Barkley and Juli Marr.

AUGUST 30, 2022 – TRAVEL DAY

My partner Juli and I set out on a beautiful morning for Chicago. One of our favorite sights is the immense Meadow Lake Wind Farm (which generates 801.25 megawatts of electricity) consisting of 301 turbines, just northwest of  Lafayette, Indiana. I have always been in awe of the size and scope of this modern marvel of engineering.

We arrived at dusk and were treated to the enchanting vista of Chicago at night by the river…

SEPTEMBER 1ST

Blues Brothers Cap

Since I was going to be dwelling in the hometown of the Blues Brothers, I thought it would be appropriate to be attired properly.

Galaxy ‘s Edge Editor Lezli Robyn and myself by Juli Marr

One of the first people Juli and I met at Chicon 8 was Galaxy’s Edge Editor and Arc Manor Assistant Publisher Robyn Lezli, who was a large display of books and magazines with her benevolent (and generous) boss, Shahid Mahmud.

Journey Planet

On my way to the Press Office, Christopher Garcia threw a copy of Journey Planet (paperboy style) as we passed each other. Here is a photo of it in mid-flight…

One of the first things I unpacked for the Press Office was this item. When the staff assembled that first morning, I told them in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that if they stepped out of line, I would not hesitate to blow the Illuminated Death Star Beach Ball up! Needless to say, it remained deflated during the duration of the convention.

SEPTEMBER 2

After several delays (and escapades) involving the United States Department of State and airline hijinks, Nigeria’s rising literary star (and double Hugo Finalist), Oghenechowe Donald Ekpeki finally arrived at Chicon 8. I greeted him at the Galaxy’s Edge table in the Dealer’s Room with two facemasks and an envelope with some valuable personal papers. Needless to say, everyone was overjoyed to see him…

Myself, Laura and Navia Moorman, photo by Juli Marr

Also on hand were my daughter, Laura, her husband Charlie (not pictured, unfortunately) and my granddaughter, Navia. They were here to witness my (possible) Hugo Award acceptance speech on Sunday. I may have felt the sting of disappointment by not winning but I was so incredibly happy they were all there.

 Chicago By Day…

Dan Berger, Juli Marr and Sushee Blat pondering

So here are my Press Office mates, Dan Berger, Juli Marr and Sooshe Blat Harkins, pondering where we should go for dinner along the Chicago Riverwalk. Rest assured, we did eat that evening…

Chicago After Dark…

SEPTEMBER 3RD

Day Three of Chicon 3, another beautiful morning.

The Chicon 8 Hugo Award

 On my way to the Press office, I made some time Saturday morning to stop by the Exhibit Hall and check out this year’s Hugo Award trophy. This magnificent award was handcrafted by the renowned Chicago artist and business entrepreneur Brian Keith Ellison of BKE Designs.

Chicon 8 Panelists

Ah, FINALLY, a photo from a Chicon 8 panel. Here are the panelists of “Movie Year in Review: A Curated Look at Genre Films (2021–2022)” moderated by yours truly.  From left to right are: Matthew S. Rotundo, Daryll Mansel, Joshua Bilmes and Deirdre Crimmins. We had fun. You should have been there.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Seanan Maguire

I was checking up on how Mr. Ekpeki was getting along in the Dealer’s Room when up ZOOMED fellow Hugo Award Finalist Seanan Maguire on her scooter. They both knew of a photo opportunity when they saw it…  

Regency John Hertz

It’s Saturday Night so you know it’s time for another magnificent appearance by fandom’s favorite, and most regal, Masquerade Judge, John Hertz!  

Masquerade Ensemble

And here is a wide shot of all the Chicon 8 Masquerade contestants. I apologize for it being out of focus; I BLAME the three apparitions lighting up in the middle of the photo. I don’t recall who they are but let’s face it, they lit up the joint that evening.

SEPTEMBER 4TH

Breakfast of Champions

It’s THE BIG DAY! And that calls for a BIG BREAKFAST, courtesy of the Chicon 8 Staff Lounge. I hadn’t had a bowl of Rice Chex in AGES. (As a kid, I used to inhale whole boxes in a single sitting. Ah, those were the days…). Anyway, kudos to everyone who helped kept us fed during the convention.   

Juli and I are very sneaky. We knew in advance that Sunday was Lezli Robyn’s birthday so we planned something a little special for her. The day before we left, we packed and wrapped her gift specially for her. We have both known for years that Lezli is a bit, uh, accident prone. After the fifth or sixth incident we started threatening to just roll her in bubble wrap, for her own safety and protection. Well at Chicon 8, we decided on this preemptive strike before disaster struck again. As you can see, a nice birthday card was placed on top of the package. And you can see Lezli’s reaction as she realized that bubble wrap was all that was left in the box. All for her. We were later informed by sources that she used the bubble wrap as a pillow (in an appropriate place, mind you) when she needed to nap. You’re welcome, Lezli, anytime. 

Catherynne Valente

After delivering Ms. Robyn’s gift, I stole a few minutes from my Press Office duties to have a novel by Catherynne M. Valente signed. We met before when she had a signing at Joseph Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati where I worked for many years. She remembered me and enthusiastically remarked that she had a great time and would love to return for a visit someday. I told her I would pass the word along.  

As the day wore on, the more nervous I became. Since there wasn’t much going on that afternoon, I turned my attention to writing a Hugo Award acceptance speech and a concession speech (which was published on File 770 that very evening). Everyone wished me luck but deep down, I knew that I was long shot to actually win. (And, as it turned out, I was right, finishing second in the nomination count and fifth overall in the vote standings.)

O. Donald Ekpeki and myself, photo by Juli Marr

At the Chicon 8 Hugo Award Reception, Mr. Ekpeki and I were recessed to the nines!

Hugo Award Fan Writer Finalists, photo by Juli Marr

Your 2022 Hugo Award Finalists in the Fan Writing Category; from left to right, Jason Sanford, myself, Paul Weimer and Bitter Karella. 

The Crowd gathers for the start of the Hugo Awards Ceremony.

My Date, My Love and My Partner, the lovely and vivacious Juli Marr.

My Fellow 2022 Hugo Award Finalist Steven H Silver and his partner, Elaine Silver. 

Chuck Serface

My Fellow 2022 Hugo Award Finalist Chuck Serface.

Our 2022 Hugo Award Ceremony Hosts, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders.

Olav Rokne and Myself at the After Party, photo by Juli Marr

Two Hugo Losers commiserating, Olav Rokne and myself (being subtly photobombed by Vincent Docherty) at the Chengdu Hugo Reception.

Laura Moorman and myself, photo by Juli Marr

My daughter Laura and I at the Glasgow Bid Party.

My daughter Laura is seen here holding the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form for Dune (Part 1). The award was offered for photos by Chicon 8 Advisor Dave McCarty, whom we thank profusely for the opportunity.

SEPTEMBER 5TH AND 6TH

John Hertz and Myself, photo by Juli Marr

And it’s all over but the shouting. Here John Hertz and I are watching the proceedings, counting down until the dead dog parties start… 

Myself, Jonathan P. Brazee and Maurizio Manzieri, photo by Juli Marr

After Closing Ceremonies, Juli and I met author Col.Jonathan P. Brazee and Hugo Award Finalist (Best Professional Artist) Maurizio Manzieri outside the hotel on their way to an early dinner.   

Berger, Berger and Blat-Harkins

As we wind down a day after Chicon 8 has officially ended, we shared a final meal with Dan Berger, Terry Berger and Sooshe Blat Harkins, who were a tremendous help in the Chicon 8 Press Office. 

Your humble correspondents

A final portrait from Chicago of your humble correspondents, myself and Juli Marr. Until next time, Goodbye and Good Luck… 

Some of the Stories

By John Hertz

Great in several ways,
Like-minded among many,
Yet sharp-eyed (mostly),
Energetic — but Quis nar-
Rabit narrantem?  
Aha!

Happy anniversary to File 770.

Are we doing our part to help Glyer keep wind in the sails?  Are you?

File 770 is still called “Mike Glyer’s News of SF Fandom”.

So far as I know there’s no staff of mild-mannered (or other) reporters for this great metropolitan newszine.  Just Glyer, and us.

He has a nose for news and sometimes finds things.  But why should he have to do all the work?

If you’re one of the folks whose names appear at the bottom of the day’s Pixel Scroll, with Glyer’s thanks for some of the stories, thanks from the rest of us too.

If you aren’t – the great Catholic priest and comedian Ronald Knox once answered a correspondent “You say that you are no philosopher; well, why not become one?”

Or as I sometimes say – though I’m not a Catholic priest, anyhow – try it, you might like it.

I’ve written about diversity, doors (one, anyhow), and deaths; birthdays and books; clubs and conventions; friends and fanzines.

What might you do?

That Latin up there is “Who shall narrate to the narrator?”

Another comedian, James Thurber – who was also not a Catholic priest – and who, alas, didn’t live to see Alex Panshin’s book The Thurb Revolution – said “I have done nothing but make fun of weakness and folly; wisdom, strength, goodness have never been my subjects.”

You can do things his way or not.  Freedom, it’s wonderful.