Tag Archives: John P. Moore

Pixel Scroll 10/28/24 John Pixel Is Dead, He Scrolled On His Head

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(1) DETECTING AI-GENERATED TEXT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The rise of large language model AI provides not only boons in tidying up text (of particular benefit to some users such as those with English as a second language or those suffering from, say, dyslexia) but comes with issues when used nefariously by those wishing to pass off AI generated text as their own creativity. Manual checks on text come with the risk of relatively high false positives as well as false negatives. Mandatory archiving all AI generated text comes with both compliance and privacy issues, so this leaves digital watermarking.

AI-generated text (and images) is already causing problems in science with fake paper submissions and also in science fiction where magazine editors have been receiving AI-generated works causing some bodies to come up with rules to govern their use, or banning, AI, one recent body doing so is the Horror Writers Association.

The latest issue of Nature has as its cover story (and an accompanying editorial such is this subject’s importance) on a new digital watermarking system developed by researchers at Google DeepMind in London. Their system is called SynthID-Text. File770 readers interested in this should check the original, open access, paper (I am not a computer scientist and this is definitely outside my comfort zone) but the way it works is to generate ‘tokens’ which are synonym words generated from the text’s context. A number of tokens are needed for the system to work.

Both the researchers and Nature say that this research is an important step in establishing an effective watermarking system, but both the researchers and Nature also clearly note that there are still many hurdles to overcome. For example, it is possible to wash out such digital watermarks by simply running through the AI-generated text through another large-language-model AI.

Currently, both the US and EU are considering legislation and respective bodies to oversee AI. China has already made digital watermarking mandatory and in the US the state of California is thinking of doing the same.

Meanwhile, DeepMind has made SynthID-Text free and open access. Yet, as said, the hurdles are great and there is still a long way to go. As the Nature editorial makes plain, ‘we need to grow up fast’.

The paper is Dathathri, S. et al ((2024) Scalable watermarking for identifying large language model outputs. Nature, vol. 634, p818-823.

The editorial is Anon. (2024) AI watermarking must be watertight to be effective. vol. 634, p753.

(2) OPEN LETTER. Literary Hub reports “Hundreds of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions” – among them are Jonathan Lethem, China Miéville, Junot Díaz, Marilyn Hacker, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and Carmen Maria Machado. They have signed an open letter titled “Refusing Complicity in Israel’s Literary Institutions”, text available at Google Docs. It says in part:

…We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

  1. Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or
  2. Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law. 

(3) CHANGING OF THE TAFF GUARD. Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey imparts the latest Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund news:

Sarah Gulde has returned home “after many days” and has as of today taken over North American TAFF admin duties, allowing Mike Lowrey to retire.

Sarah Gulde, of course, was the 2024 TAFF winner and went to the Worldcon in Glasgow.

(4) THE WITCHING HOUR GOES HIGHBROW. Midnight book release events began to market Harry Potter, and initially most (but not all) subsequent ones were for genre works. Not anymore. Publishers Weekly points out that Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and Haruki Murakami’s The City and its Uncertain Walls, translated by Philip Gabriel have or will get the midnight treatment this year: “Literary Publishers Embraces the Midnight Release Party”.

The midnight book release party, which sees patrons descending on bookstores at 12 midnight to get their copy of a buzzy new book, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Still, it has evolved considerably in its short lifespan. The rise of the midnight release in the book business can be traced back to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which debuted in the U.S. in 1998. But it was the strict embargo put on the fourth book in the series, before its publication in 2000, that helped popularize the late-night bookstore gatherings.

While this trend began with books for younger readers—Stephanie Meyers’s Twilight series and the final installment of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series also got the midnight release treatment—it hasn’t stayed that way. In the years since, bookstores have held midnight release events for the likes of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments….

(5) ARCHIPELACON 2. The week after Midsummer will be the highlight of the European sci-fi summer of 2025! This will be when the 2025 Eurocon, or Archipelacon 2, comes to Mariehamn in the Åland Islands of Finland.

Date and venue: June 26–29, Culture and Congress Center Alandica (Strandgatan 33, Mariehamn).

“We wanted to organise a second Archipelacon because the first one was so great that people still get dewy-eyed remembering it. Mariehamn is exactly the right place for this type of event. It is a place where land and sea, Finland and Sweden, small town idyll and world history all come together,” says Karo Leikomaa, chairperson of Archipelacon 2.

Guests of Honour:

Ann VanderMeer (USA): editor, anthologist, acquiring editor for Tor.com and Weird Fiction Review, and Editor-in-Residence for Shared Worlds.

Jeff VanderMeer (USA): writer, environmental activist, and friend of many baby raccoons. Has recently published Absolution, the fourth part of the award-winning Southern Reach Trilogy. The New York Times calls it “his strangest novel yet”.

Mats Strandberg (Sweden): purveyor of fine Swedish horror, set in the most mundane of environments: conference centres, care homes and the very weird world that exists on board the massive passenger ferries between Finland and Sweden. His book Blood Cruise (Färjan) will be made into a TV series by the Swedish public service broadcaster SVT, set to be broadcast in late 2025.

Emmi Itäranta (Finland) writes her books in both Finnish and English. Her debut, The Memory of Water (Teemestarin kirja), was produced as a feature film in 2022 and set the tone for her work, which often explores environmental themes. She has since published two more novels, The Weaver (Kudottujen kujien kaupunki), and The Moonday Letters (Kuunpäivän kirjeet). Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. 

“Being selected as the 2025 Eurocon is a great honour, and also recognition of the work that the Finnish and Nordic fandom has done. The first Archipelacon proved that large international conventions can be organised in Finland, and Worldcon 75 in Helsinki in 2017 demonstrated what Finnish, Nordic and international fandom can achieve together,” says Leikomaa.

Archipelacon 2 memberships are on sale on the con’s website.

Memberships are capped at 1,000. By the beginning of October, well over half of the memberships had already been sold.

Adult membership costs 40 euros, for 13–26-year-olds the membership fee is 20 euros, and for children 5 euros. The price will remain the same all the way.

(6) HOLD THE PHONE. “Publication of The Martian Trilogy Will Be Delayed” — here’s Amazing Stories’ official announcement.

The Martian Trilogy’s release will be delayed and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s introduction to that book has been removed from the contents.

This follows the release of serious allegations made against Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki of “unethical behavior and bad faith dealings” by Erin Lindi Cairns, a South African author, which has since been supported by statements from others, including a detailed statement by Jason Sandford.

This is a huge blow to the team that worked on this book, to John P. Moore’s legacy, and to the science fiction community at large, as this will delay the release of what is considered to be an important chapter in the history of Black science fiction and its contributions to the genre…

They are now looking at a mid-2025 release date.

(7) GABINO IGLESIAS REVIEWS. Yesterday we had the link to the September column, which is why we are able to come back so soon with the link for Gabino Iglesias’ next New York Times column “New Horror for Readers Who Want to Be Completely Terrified” (behind a paywall). In October he reviewed Yvonne Battle-Felton’s new novel, Curdle Creek (Holt, 292 pp., $27.99), Kevin J. Anderson’s Nether Station (Blackstone, 308 pp., $27.99), Nick Cutter’s The Queen (Gallery, 374 pp., $28.99), and Del Sandeen’s debut, This Cursed House (Berkley, 374 pp., $29).

(8) KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES. California’s governor has a proposal to encourage film and TV productions to stay in-state. “Newsom To The Rescue: Governor Supersizes California’s Film & TV Tax Credits To Get Hollywood Back To Work” – Deadline has the story.

… In an announcement this afternoon at Raleigh Studios, the Governor will reveal that he aims to boost the state’s tax credits from their present level of $330 million a year to around $750 million annually, I’ve learned

The whooping increase will not take place immediately, and is subject to approval by the Democratic majority legislature in the Golden State’s 2025-2026 budget. However, in this election year of close down ticket races, Sunday’s announcement is intended to swell confidence locally for an industry and a workforce that has seen production in L.A. and across the state dramatically shrink and jobs dry up over the last year or so, sources say….

… Also, besides the more than doubling of California’s credits, which were established in their current form in 2014, the increase will make the Golden State the top capped source for production tax incentives in the nation — at least on paper. Presently, with a $280 million expansion last year, New York state offers about $700 million in capped incentives. However, that number is augmented by a patchwork quilt of other offsets and exemptions available to productions in various specific jurisdictions in the Empire State.

While states like New Jersey, Nevada, and Utah have been putting more tax credit money on the table, Louisiana and Georgia still remain among the top rivals to California. Coming out of the shutdown of production during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and industry wide layoffs and cost-cutting measures, the Peach State, like California, hasn’t anywhere near fully rebounded. Having said that, while California has more production than anywhere else overall, Georgia, especially Atlanta, still attracts more big budget productions on average that anywhere else in the U.S.A.

It doesn’t hurt that costs in Georgia are generally much lower than on the West Coast, and that the state has an uncapped incentive program that ranges from around $900 million to $1.2 billion per annum. Movies or TV shows that shoot in the Southern state receive a 20% base transferable tax credit. As accounting execs at Disney, Netflix and everyone else in town will tell you with no small sense of disbelief, productions also easily receive a 10% Georgia Entertainment Promotion “uplift” if they include the state logo in their credits for five seconds or, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development, an “alternative marketing promotion.”

This new increase recommended Sunday by Gov. Newsom will certainly shake up the tax credit status quo….

(9) THE OTHER CHOSEN ONE. Variety tells what happens when “Timothée Chalamet Makes Surprise Appearance at Lookalike Contest”.

A sea of 20-something boys, with a mix of defined jawlines, hazel eyes and mops of curly hair congregated at New York City’s Washington Square Park on Sunday afternoon to take part in a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest. But in a surprise twist, around 30 minutes after the contest kicked off, the real-life Chalamet made a surprise appearance in the middle of the crowd.

Chalamet snuck his way through the packed mob, hiding behind a black mask and baseball hat, before sneaking up on two doppelgangers posing for photos. Once he got to the middle, he took off his mask for the big reveal as shrieks quickly erupted across the park….

… The lookalike contest was promoted the past few weeks through flyers posted across the city, in addition to a public Partiful invitation promising a $50 cash prize for the winner. By Sunday morning, the event had more than 2,500 RSVPs.

Chalamet pulled up behind one of the more popular lookalikes, 22 year-old Spencer DeLorenzo who spent much the afternoon posting for photos. At one point, he was even hoisted on a chair as the crowd cheered him on…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Media Anniversary: It Came From Outer Space film (1953)

Seventy-one years ago It Came From Outer Space premiered, the first in the 3D films that would released from Universal-International. It was from a story written by Ray Bradbury. The script was by Harry Essex.

Billed by the studio as science fiction horror — and I’ll get to why in the SPOILERS section — it was directed by Henry Arnold who would soon be responsible for two genre classics, Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man, the latter of which as you might remember won a Hugo at Solacon in 1958.

HORROR, ERRR, SPOILERS, ARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN. BEWARE!

Amateur sky watcher (as played by Richard Carlson) and schoolteacher Ellen Fields (as played Barbara Rush) see a large meteorite crash near the small town in Arizona. Being curious and not at cautious (who is in these films?), they investigate.

Putnam sees the object and knows it is a spacecraft but everyone else laughs at him. People start disappearing. (Cue chilling music.) The sheriff opts for a violent answer, but Putnam wants a peaceful resolution.

In the end, a Bradburyan solution happens, atypical of these Fifties pulp SF films and the aliens get what they need to leave without anyone, human or alien, dying. 

YOU CAN COME BACK NOW FROM UNDER THE TABLE. 

The screenplay by Harry Essex, with extensive input by the director Jack Arnold, was based on an original and quite lengthy screen treatment by Bradbury off the fore mentioned story by him. It is said that Bradbury wrote the screenplay and Harry Essex merely changed the dialogue and took the credit. There is no actual written documentation of this though, so it may or may not be true. You know how such stories get their beginning. 

It made back twice its eight hundred thousand budget in the first year. 

Many, many critics took to be an anti-communist film about an invasion of America. However, Bradbury pointed out that “I wanted to treat the invaders as beings who were not dangerous, and that was very unusual.” 

Twenty years ago, Gauntlet Press published a collection of essays about It Came from Outer Space. Bradbury contributed an introductory essay plus a number of other pieces. There’s also the four screen treatments Bradbury wrote before the final screenplay along with photos, original ads, marketing posters, reviews and quite a bit more. 

Final note: It Came from Outer Space is one of the classic films mentioned in the opening theme (“Science Fiction/Double Feature”) of The Rocky Horror Show theatre performance and the film.

It Came From Outer Space is streaming on Peacock and Prime.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) WITNESS THE SCOPE OF MARVEL’S NEW ULTIMATE UNIVERSE. An epic connecting cover by Josemaria Casanovas will run across every Ultimate series over the next few months, starting with this week’s Ultimate X-Men #8.

The second year of Marvel Comics’ new Ultimate Universe is on the horizon. To celebrate, a special connecting cover by acclaimed artist Josemaria Casanovas will run on upcoming issues of each current Ultimate title—Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man, Bryan Hill and Stefano Caselli’s Ultimate Black Panther, Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men, Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri’s Ultimates, and the just announced fifth ongoing Ultimate series, Chris Condon and Alessandro Cappuccio’s Ultimate Wolverine. An homage to Jim Lee’s iconic X-Men #1 cover, the breathtaking 6-part piece teases upcoming storylines and characters from future issues—including the long-awaited return of the creator of this exciting universe, the Maker.

Check out the full piece below. For more information, visit Marvel.com. [Click for larger image.]

(13) MOOMIN IN THE MUSEUM. [Item by Steven French.] Ahead of next year’s 80th anniversary of the Moomin stories, the Helsinki Art Museum is putting on an exhibition of Tove Jansson’s paintings, including a number of large murals (and if you look closely at Party in the City, from 1947, you can see a certain big nosed, pot bellied figure, hidden away beside a vase on the edge of the festivities!). “Tove Jansson murals, with hidden Moomins, seen for first time in Helsinki show” in the Guardian.

The exhibition, entitled Paradise, at the Helsinki Art Museum focuses for the first time on the murals and frescoes Jansson was commissioned to paint on the walls of factory canteens, hospitals, nurseries and even churches – long before Moominmania conquered the world and the adventures of Snufkin, Snork Maiden and Little My became a Finnish secular religion.

“By the end of her life, Tove was most famous as a writer,” said the artist and author’s niece, Sophia Jansson, now president of the board of the company that manages her copyright. “But she always saw herself first and foremost [as] a painter. It was only later that her reputation as the ‘Moomin woman’ overtook her.”

See more information about the exhibition at the Helsinki Art Museum website.

Tove Jansson: Bird Blue, 1953 (detail). © Tove Jansson Estate. Photo: HAM / Maija Toivanen.

(14) A LOT OF THIS GOING AROUND. Another publication won’t be telling you their pick for President: “The Starfleet Gazette Will Not Be Endorsing a Candidate for President of the United Federation of Planets” — McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has the scoop.

… The Starfleet Gazette will not be endorsing a candidate in the upcoming election for president of the United Federation of Planets. This decision was not made lightly, but neither of the two candidates—decorated Starship Voyager Captain Kathryn Janeway or The Borg—has shown us a real path to endorsement, and we must stay true to our priorities: journalistic integrity and not pissing off The Borg….

(15) WHEN EYES RETURN FROM ORBIT. Futurism reports “Space Tourist Alarmed When Vision Starts to Deteriorate”. But it was a short-lived phenomenon.

Scientists are still trying to understand the toll that spaceflight takes on the human body.

With SpaceX’s civilian Polar Dawn mission, which lasted five days and wrapped up last month, we’re getting an opportunity to observe the effects on more or less average humans — rather than the elite, highly trained government astronauts who are normally the ones that spend so much time in orbit.

Some of what they’re reporting sounds a little worrying. At the top of the list: inexplicably malfunctioning eyeballs.

“My vision acuity started to deteriorate those first few days,” Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a former US Air Force pilot who served as pilot of the mission, told CNN of the journey.

… As it turns out, Poteet’s faltering vision wasn’t the end of the crew’s optic oddities. Jared Isaacman, the mission’s commander and a billionaire entrepreneur, told CNN he saw “sparkles or lights” when he closed his eyes, a mysterious symptom related to space radiation that other astronauts have reported…

… What caused Poteet’s vision to deteriorate is likely a condition known as spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome, or SANS. This is believed to be the result of a microgravity environment, which causes the optic nerve to swell, and fluids in the eye and brain to shift.

SANS is still poorly understood. All four crew members wore high-tech, cyberpunk-looking contact lenses to measure intraocular pressure throughout the mission, in the hopes of teasing out its causes.

Poteet said his vision quickly returned to normal once he was back on Earth. But as SpaceX engineer and the mission’s medical officer Anna Menon told CNN, the effects — if unaddressed — could be disastrous in the long term….

(16) TOP SF BOOKS – MAYBE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  BookPilled has just re-ranked his top 15 SF books. Like or dislike his ratings, the titles are interesting. I’m guessing that most of you will have nearly all the books in his top chart, and even if you haven’t you will probably know of them. Personally, it was good to see a Bob Shaw in the mix. Alas, poor old Alan Dean Foster…  There are one or two authors in Pilled’s list I have not read, but that might be a Brit-N.America divide thing (?). Anyway, see if you agree with him… “Ranking All the Books from Every Top 15 Sci-Fi List”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 10/26/24 No One Gets Out Of Here Without Singing The Blue Pixels

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(1) THE DAY OF HER RETURN. “Susanna Clarke Wrote a Hit Novel Set in a Magical Realm. Then She Disappeared” – an unlocked New York Times article.

The book, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,” instantly launched Clarke as one of the greatest fantasy writers of her generation. Critics placed her in the pantheon alongside C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien; some compared her sly wit and keen social observations to those of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Readers devoured the novel, which went on to sell more than four million copies.

“I had never read anything like it in my life,” said Alexandra Pringle, the former editor in chief of Bloomsbury, which commissioned a first print run of 250,000 copies. “The way that she created that world, a world apart from our world but absolutely rooted in it, was so utterly convincing and drawn with such precision and delicacy.”

The novel reshaped the fantasy landscape and blurred the boundaries with literary fiction, making the Booker Prize long list and winning a Hugo Award, a major science fiction and fantasy prize. Clarke went on tour across the United States and Europe, and Bloomsbury later gave her a hefty contract for a second novel….

… Not long after the novel’s release, Clarke and her husband were having dinner with friends near their home in Derbyshire, England. In the middle of the meal, she felt nauseated and wobbly, got up from the table, and collapsed.

In the years that followed, she struggled to write. Her symptoms — migraines, exhaustion, sensitivity to light and fogginess — made working for sustained periods impossible. She wrote scattered fragments that never cohered; sometimes she couldn’t finish a single sentence. At a low point, she was bed-bound and mired in depression.

Clarke stopped thinking of herself as a writer….

… Now, two decades after her groundbreaking debut, Clarke is returning to the magical world of Strange and Norell….

… Clarke, who is deeply private and found the experience of sudden fame “very, very peculiar,” planned to write a sequel once things quieted down. But not long after her book tour, she collapsed, and never quite recovered. Over the next decade, she lost faith in her ability to write at all.

“You’ve got the years when you haven’t written kind of weighing on you,” she said.

Over time, Clarke slowly found her way back to writing. She learned to manage her symptoms, and discovered she could stay on track by working in 25-minute bursts. Her brain fog receded….

(2) FREE HARRYHAUSEN EXHIBIT IN UK. The Guardian shares “Cyclops, Martians and Myths: the art of Ray Harryhausen – in pictures” from a free exhibition at Waterside’s Lauriston Gallery in Sale, Greater Manchester (UK) which opened today. It examines the workings of Ray Harryhausen, the great animators, and is inspired by filmmaker John Walsh’s book Harryhausen: The Lost Movies. Plenty of artwork at the Guardian link.

(3) MOORE HASN’T CHANGED HIS MIND. [Item by Steven French.] Alan Moore is a tad scathing about current fandom in this Guardian essay: “’Fandom has toxified the world’: Watchmen author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and Trump”.

About a decade ago, I ventured my opinion that the adult multitudes queueing for superhero movies were potentially an indicator of emotional arrest, which could have worrying political and social implications. Since at that time Brexit, Donald Trump and fascist populism hadn’t happened yet, my evidently crazy diatribe was largely met with outrage from the fan community, some of whom angrily demanded I be extradited to the US and made to stand trial for my crimes against superhumanity – which I felt didn’t necessarily disprove my allegations.

Ten years on, let me make my position clear: I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies. At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement….

…There are, of course, entirely benign fandoms, networks of cooperative individuals who quite like the same thing, can chat with others sharing the same pastime and, importantly, provide support for one another in difficult times. These healthy subcultures, however, are less likely to impact on society in the same way that the more strident and presumptuous fandoms have managed. Unnervingly rapidly, our culture has become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in. Our entertainments may be cancelled prematurely through an adverse fan reaction, and we may endure largely misogynist crusades such as Gamergate or Comicsgate from those who think “gate” means “conspiracy”, and that Nixon’s disgrace was predicated on a plot involving water, but this is hardly the full extent to which fan attitudes have toxified the world surrounding us, most obviously in our politics….

(4) YES, ACTUALLY READ THEM. The McConnell Center is launching the “Why You Should Read Series” of YouTube lectures and podcasts touting well-known books.

Over the next year, the McConnell Center invites you to join us on the project to discover our next great reads. We are asking authors and experts to tell us why WE should read the books that helped shape them or those that have significantly impacted human history. 

We all know we need to read more, and millions of books are on shelves with new ones printed daily. How do we sort through all the possibilities to find the book that is right for us now?

The schedule includes lectures about these works of genre interest:

Oct. 29 – “Why You Should Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,”  Dr. Amy Sturgis

Nov. 29- “Why You Should Read Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower,” Dr. David Anderson 

Dec. 03- “Why You Should Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451,” Dr. Gary Gregg

Dec. 05- “Why You Should Read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,” Dr. Gary Gregg

Dec. 12- “Why You Should Read Mary Shelley’s The Last Man,” Dr. Amy Sturgis

(5) DRAGONS IN THE FAMILY. Hear Witness History’s episode “My dad created Dungeons & Dragons” at BBC Sounds.

In 1970, father of five Gary Gygax was fired from his job as an insurance underwriter in Chicago, in the United States of America. It may sound like a mundane event to read about but, believe it or not, this moment actually changed the gaming industry forever. 

Gary is the creator of table-top roleplay game, Dungeons & Dragons. In the 50 years since its release, D&D has generated billions of dollars in sales and now boasts more than 50 million players worldwide. 

However, Gary’s story is not one of riches and success. Luke Gygax witnessed the incredible highs and lows of his father’s life first hand. He shares his memories of that time with Matt Pintus.

(6) VANDERMEER Q&A. “Jeff VanderMeer on How Scientific Uncertainty Inspires His Weird Fiction” – he tells the story in Scientific American.

This month VanderMeer continues this weird saga with the publication of the fourth Southern Reach novel: Absolution. …“I’m interested not only in science but in the narrative of science, how science corrects itself over time,” he says in a video call from his home in Tallahassee, Fla. Like weird fiction, he adds, “science can’t ever explain everything because we are continually learning new things.”…

You write in a tradition called weird fiction. Uncertainty about how the universe works is a hallmark of the genre. Do you see any similarities between weird fiction and science?

At its best, weird fiction actually does something entirely different than what science does; it provides a venue outside of philosophy, science and religion to explore the unknown while incorporating elements of all three. At the same time, it features a lot of what you might call “scientific expeditions” into the unknown, where characters try, through rational methods, to know the unknowable. If they fail, it’s not necessarily a failure of science but a failure of the tools they were using or of the composition of the expedition. I find that quite interesting because failure exists in science, too, which sometimes appears in the form of bias. One of the more obvious examples is the pervasive idea that a fertilized human egg is a passive thing, that it’s the man that provides the active component of conception, when the relationship is much more complex than that. But because a lot of male scientists were the first to research this phenomenon, the more passive narrative persists.

Another outlandish example of bias can be found in a book called Penguins from the 1960s, which starts out as a beautiful, general book about penguins. But by chapter three, it is incredibly clear that the researcher who wrote the book hates this other [penguin] researcher. He’s writing about evolution but starts to make the book more about proving this other scientist wrong. In a way, this book of science also becomes a work of fiction because it’s shot through with the idiosyncrasies of the person writing it.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 26, 1971 — Jim Butcher, 53.

By Paul Weimer: I could spend this entire memorial talking about the Dresden Files, very easily one of the tentpoles of modern urban fantasy, but even though I own a version of the RPG, it is not one of my heart series. Urban fantasy is only a secondary or even tertiary interest of mine in the urban fantasy landscape, and while he made his reputation with it, I think Jim Butcher’s work turns more interesting when he moves away from Harry Dresden.

Jim Butcher

Such as the Codex Alera. I got to hear the first two books in the Codex Alera in early audiobook form–when you had to change CD after CD to listen to the book. Given that I was driving thousands of miles to the Canadian National Parks with my friends, we had a lot of time for audiobooks (and in fact, this was the trip that convinced me that listening to audiobooks was the best way to eat up miles on the long drives I would soon start taking on my own). 

And so, on this trip, I was introduced to Tavi (short for Octavian) and his secondary world fantasy world. I picked up immediately the world seemed Roman-flavored and wondered right from the beginning if this was a parallel world…or it was in fact a disguised portal fantasy. (In fact, Butcher combined the ideas of a lost Roman Legion and Pokemon to do the worldbuilding). Tavi’s coming of age, his growing relationship with Kitai (whom he accidentally gets bonded to) and the fact he starts from an inability to do magic (he gets better) makes him very different, and very appealing, as a protagonist.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Non Sequitur is present at the beginning of a now familiar problem.
  • The Argyle Sweater criticizes bad comics language.
  • Diamond Lil watches a series of monster films – or is it a medical documentary?
  • Rhymes with Orange finds a problem you can solve without a spoonful of sugar.
  • Wumo breaks some bad news to Netflix subscribers.
  • Tom Gauld has already started celebrating:

(9) THE GODS THEMSELVES. [Item by Steven French.] Kate Gardner from Physics World pulls from the archives a book review that Isaac Asimov wrote for the magazine and recalls her own engagement with his fiction: “Gems from the Physics World archive: Isaac Asimov”.

I was introduced to Asimov through what remains the most “hard physics”-heavy sci-fi I have ever tackled: The Gods Themselves (1972). In this short novel, humans make contact with a parallel universe and manage to transfer energy from a parallel world to Earth. When a human linguist attempts to communicate with the “para-men”, he discovers this transfer may be dangerous. The narrative then switches to the parallel world, which is populated by the most “alien” aliens I can remember encountering in fiction.

Underlying this whole premise, though, is the fact that in the parallel world, the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, is even stronger than it is in our own. And Asimov was a good enough scientist that he worked into his novel everything that would be different – subtly or significantly – were this the case. It’s a physics thought experiment; a highly entertaining one that also encompasses ethics, astrobiology, cryptanalysis and engineering.

(10) THE FIRST SPACE OPERA BY A BLACK SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR TO BE REPUBLISHED. The Experimenter Publishing Company, home of Amazing Stories, has announced plans for the November release of The Martian Trilogy: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction and the Illustrated Feature Section.

 In 1930, Black science fiction author John P. Moore wrote and submitted three interconnected stories and he sold them to The Illustrated Feature Section, a syndicated insert published in many Negro newspapers throughout the U.S.

His stories were featured under the insert’s “Amazing Stories” section heading.

 Now, for the first time in 94 years, John P. Moore’s story is available once again, along with compelling commentary from Lisa Yaszek, Regents’ Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech and editor of the ground-breaking anthology The Future is Female; Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, famed Nigerian author and editor (02 Arena, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, Nebula, WFA); Brooks E. Hefner, Professor of English at James Madison University; author of Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Era of Jim Crow; Steve Davidson, publisher of Amazing Stories, along with graduate and undergraduate students at Georgia Tech contributing supporting research, biographical and historical materials.

John Jennings, UC Riverside Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, Hugo Award-Winning artist (Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Presentation) has crafted a fantastic cover honoring Aaron Douglas, a pioneering figure in the Harlem Renaissance and reflecting the spirit of Black imagination expanding into the cosmos.

With the release of these rediscovered stories, we learn that not only was there a Black Amazing Stories published during the formative years of the genre, but that Black Science Fiction is not a newcomer to the field. Rather, it enjoys as rich and deep a history as the science fiction we are more familiar with, and one that found its beginnings in its own Amazing Stories!

The Martian Trilogy gathers together three interconnected space opera tales featuring the first trip to Mars, the civilizations discovered there, interwoven with a tale of love and loss.

 Additional features include an examination of the Illustrated Feature Section, biographies of the editors and publishers – including William Bernard Ziff Jr., who would come to be the publisher of the more familiar Amazing Stories a few short years following the release of The Martian Trilogy – a critique of the stories, a reflection on the impact of this rediscovery on the history of the genre, historical timeline, and bibliographic materials.

The Martian Trilogy: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction and the Illustrated Feature Section will be released November 9th, 2024, available through the Amazing Stories website, and can be ordered from most independent bookstores and will be available through B&N, Amazon, and other online book outlets. It will be published in print, electronic, and audiobook editions.

(11) A VAMPIRE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: THANK GOD! Fantastic Books  is releasing a new edition of Bloodsuckers right now, timed to coincide with “the most consequential presidential election in American history.” But aren’t they all?

It’s been a horrific election season. Supporters on both sides are quite certain the other candidate can’t be human. Maybe we’d be better off voting for an actual monster!

Should being outed as a real vampire disqualify one from running for the presidency of the United States? Michael A. Ventrella’s hilarious Bloodsuckers answers that question.

Disgraced journalist Steven Edwards considers the “Batties”—the loonies who believe that vampires are real and Norman Mark is one—just another crazy tin-foil-hat extremist group. Then someone shoots at Mark, changes into a bat, and flies away before Steve’s eyes, leaving him as the prime suspect. With the help of the Batties, Steve goes underground. The only way he can establish his innocence is by proving vampires exist—not an easy task while on the run from both the FBI and the bloodsuckers.

(12) RAQUEL PLEASING BIG IMPACT! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]

There have been a number of large meteor strikes on the Earth with arguably the most famous being the one that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago… (I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch…) That asteroid was estimated to be about six miles across. However, there have been much larger impactors much earlier in the Earth’s history. Here, a problem for scientists has been that the longer back in time one goes, the less surviving strata there is (plate tectonics subducts and re-mixes old surface crust).

Yet rocks of the Archaean Eon (4 – 2.5 billion years ago) record at least 16 major impact events, involving asteroids larger than the dinosaur one (and I have told you about Raquel Welch – I really have never forgiven them).

Researchers have now analysed the Fig Tree Group strata in South Africa which features impact geology from a 20 – 35 mile wide asteroid that hit 3.26 billion years ago: it was some ~50 to 200 times larger (a real Raquel pleaser) than the dinosaur impactor. They looked at carbon isotopes. Most carbon is in the form of C-12 isotope but some is in the form of C-13 (we can forget C-14 which is radioactive and used in carbon dating, but as that has a half-life of under 6,000 years there is none in geology billions of years old). The thing is that photosynthesis preferably selects for C-12 so carbon from life has even less C-13 even if early life used different photosynthesis from the sort plants use today. Using such carbon isotopic analysis, researchers have shown that the impact 3.26 billion years ago had a detrimental affect on Earth’s primordial life (well, that was always going to be a tad obvious) but surprisingly life rebounded and did even better than before! This, the researchers suggest, is because the asteroid churned up iron from deep in the Earth and this iron early photosynthesisers could use and the benefits took place just a few thousand years after the impact (see far left of diagram below for estimated time frames)

The primary research is Drabon, N., et al (2024) Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchaean surface environments and life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 121 (44), e2408721121 and is open access.

This story appears in the daily File770 ahead of coverage in seasonal SF² Concatenation just in case you could not wait. (Gosh, we don’t half look after you….)

Why is this research important SFnally? Well, the larger the biosphere – the more living biomass there is – the greater the opportunities for speciation, hence biological evolution. So it could be that large asteroid impacts early in Earth’s history could have helped evolution in its long march from simple Prokaryotes, through Eukaryotes, to multicellular species like you. If other Earth-like planets have a similar history with large, early asteroid strikes, as seems likely, then this could reflect part of the commonality of the rise of life on Earth-like planets elsewhere in the Galaxy.

(13) PRICE OF STADIUM FOOD. Here’s Vincent Price handing out Dodger Dogs at Dodger Stadium in 1965.

One reason there have always been questions about what Dodger Dogs are made from….!

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