Tag Archives: John Scalzi

Pixel Scroll 9/24/23 The Decimated Pixel Of Doom

Posted on by
37

(0) WGA/AMPTP REACH DEAL. Shortly after the Scroll was posted, I received this news item reported by Variety: “Deal! WGA, AMPTP Agree to Deal After 146-Day Writers Strike”.

Hollywood heaves a sigh of relief. The WGA and major studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that promises to end the 146-day strike that has taken a heavy toll across the content industry.

Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached the finish line Sunday after five consecutive days of negotiations. Day 4 on Saturday mostly involved lawyers for the guild and AMPTP hashing out the fine print of language around complicated and groundbreaking additions to the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement. The nitty-gritty details of language around the use of generative AI in content production was one of the last items that the sides worked on before closing the pact.

“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional – with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the WGA Negotiating Committee wrote in an email to sent to members at 7:10 p.m. PT (Full text below).

The three-year contract will be sent to WGA members for a ratification vote. After nearly five months on strike – the work stoppage began May 2 – it’s highly likely to pass muster with the WGA’s 11,000 members, especially with the enthusiastic endorsement of WGA leaders. As momentum built this week, negotiators began to look at the approach of the Yom Kippur holiday on Sunday as a soft target deadline….

(1) HUGO VOTING DEADLINE. Voting for 2023 Hugo Award, Astounding Award and Lodestar Award closes less than a week from now on September 30 at 11:59 p.m. Hawaiian Time.  Don’t miss your chance to cast and update your ballot before the deadline.

(2) YOU STEPPED OUT OF A DREAM. I dreamed last night I was watching a stand-up comic perform. He got to part of a story where emergency vehicles were responding to a situation and he was imitating the siren/bell/electronic squawks they made — which was surprising (and possibly unlikely) he could do with his voice alone, but it was mentally up to me to decide when he had made enough different noises to be funny but without doing too many to kill the joke. Apparently I woke up at the point I decided he’d done enough.

(3) FIFTH ELEMENTS. New Scientist presents “Five of sci-fi’s best corporate villains, according to author John Scalzi”. Read fast – New Scientist lets you read for a few seconds before blocking with a request that you register for an account to continue reading.

In my latest novel Starter Villain, the book’s protagonist, Charlie Fitzer, inherits his mysterious uncle’s vast corporate empire – only to discover that underpinning it all is a supervillainy business that rivals anything that James Bond’s adversaries might have ever imagined.

While my book takes place in today’s world, there are definitely unexpected elements (wait until you meet the cats!) that make for a mash-up of wild science fiction and modern corporatised evil. But of course, Starter Villain isn’t the first work to blend the two concepts.

Submitted below, for your approval, are five cinematic (non-007) works from across several decades that have offered up the sort of villains who show up in my novel….

One of his choices is:

Aliens(1986): In the original Alien (1979), it is clear that the Weyland-Yutani corporation that has sent the crew of the Nostromo to pick up a murderous, extraterrestrial egg values its military branch’s profits more than humans. But in this excellent and rather tonally different sequel, that corporate ethos is given a face in Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a striving middle-management type who just doesn’t understand why Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) can’t see the financial opportunity the aliens offer the company. Appropriately, it’s the aliens themselves who eventually show him the error of his ways.

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Chengdu Science Fiction Season. I’m not sure how officially these are associated with the Worldcon, but there have been a few events under the “2023 Chengdu Science Fiction Season” branding, which include the Chengdu Worldcon name and panda logo on their photos and videos.

On September 15th, writer 泽泽 / Ze Ze gave a talk at a Chengdu primary school about the history of SF, which apparently went as far as explaining the difference between hard and soft SF.

This is another talk to schoolkids, this time by La Zi (aka Latssep), who works at SF World magazine, and co-edited one of the Best Fanzine finalists.  This line caught my eye:

First of all, [La Zi] started by talking about three “major science fiction events” that happened around us, the World Science Fiction Conference, The Wandering Earth, General Secretary Xi’s speech…

That’s the Google Translate rendering, but I also put that text through the DeepL and Vivaldi Lingvanex translators, and they all came out with similar results.

This took place on September 16 in Chengdu, and featured Best Short Story finalist Lu Ban alongside a moderator and a couple of others.

I’m not sure when exactly this took place.  The Friday post talks about an event that happened this afternoon (Sunday 24th), but has a video of the panel, so whatever happened today can’t have been that panel?  (I think that panel may have been streamed live, per the text in the top right of the video?)  The panelists include one of the Worldcon division heads, and a couple of writers who’ve had  stories published in English translation.

The people on stage, from left:

  • The lady hosting the panel is 陈曜 / Chen Yao aka Sara Chen, who works at SF World magazine, and is one of the Worldcon division heads.
  • The guy in the black North Face polo shirt is 谢云宁 / Xie Yunning, who won the Xingyun Best Novel award in 2021, but doesn’t seem to have had anything published in English.
  • Third panelist (guy with glasses) is 阿缺 / A Que, who has had several stories published in Clarkesworld, and also one in the Sinopticon anthology.
  • The lady in the blue top is 程婧波 / Cheng Jingbo, who has also had a few stories translated into English, and has an SFE entry https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cheng_jingbo
  • Fifth panelist (guy with glasses)  天瑞说符 / Tianrui Fu, webnovelist. He has a translation of one of his works available on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Die-Mars-Chinese-science-fiction-ebook/dp/B07YH2HXR7 ), but from a very quick skim, it doesn’t look like anyone who was a native speaker was involved in the translation.
  • Rightmost panelist: 张玉乐 / Zhang Yule, president of a university SF society

Early on, after giving an overview of what Worldcons are, and a bit of background about the Hugos, between 17:45 and 20:05, Chen Yao namechecks all the Hugo finalists that SF World has published, has scheduled to publish in the future, or employs (in the case of the editor finalists), all of which were on the recommendation list mentioned in the Scroll a couple of months ago. I’m sure none of that is an attempt to influence Hugo voters….

(5) THE GODS THEMSELVES. “Krapopolis Review: Dan Harmon Sitcom Off to Promising Start” declares Variety.

Ever since the success, demise, rebirth and extended afterlife of the NBC-turned-Yahoo sitcom “Community,” the showrunner Dan Harmon has largely avoided the strictures of network TV. With his cynical streak and meta references, Harmon’s niche sensibility was always an awkward fit for a mass audience; even when “Community” was on the air, it was perpetually on the verge of cancellation. As television expanded rapidly in the 2010s, Harmon found a more natural home in cable and streaming. Despite the departure of “Rick and Morty” co-creator and star Justin Roiland amid allegations of sexual assault, the hit show is now entering its seventh season on Adult Swim; earlier this year, Harmon helped adapt the web comic “Strange Planet” into a series for Apple TV+.

With the animated half-hour “Krapopolis,” however, Harmon makes his official return to a broadcast network. Airing on Fox, “Krapopolis” is at least guaranteed the stability “Community” never enjoyed; ahead of its premiere on Sept. 24, the show has already been renewed through Season 3. And due to the ongoing strikes, “Krapopolis” is now, by default, one of the tentpoles of its network’s fall schedule, with new live-action series postponed until further notice.

That’s a heavy load to bear for an amusing, high-concept riff on the family sitcom set in an extremely loose rendition of ancient Greece. Physically weak and intellectually arrogant, 29-year-old Tyrannis (Richard Ayoade) is a man ahead of his time, so he’s recruited his warrior sister Stupendous (Pam Brady) and scientist half-brother Hippocampus (Duncan Trussell) to help him build a modern city-state. (“He tells powerless people they’re powerful and they like that, so they give him all their power,” one citizen says of Tyrannis’ skill set.) But first, Tyrannis must persuade the skeptical, not least among them his own parents: vain goddess Deliria (Hannah Waddingham) and Shlub (Matt Berry), a manticore-like hybrid of several different creatures….

(6) SFF THAT IS UNEXPECTEDLY PREDICTIVE. Gizmodo says this is “The Summer That Reality Caught Up to Climate Fiction”.

…What once sounded outlandish, like material for a dystopian novel, is looking more and more like reality. So what is a writer of fiction supposed to do? For decades, authors have speculated what the world might look like when the climate from hell arrives. Consider American War by Omar El Akkad, set in 2074 during the outbreak of a civil war set off by a ban on fossil fuels, when Florida is erased from the map and Louisiana is half-underwater. In the six years since the book’s publication, the United States has become the most deeply polarized democracy in recent history; the intensity of heat waves and other disasters have eclipsed expectations. Earlier this year, the magazine Writer’s Digest called American War an “all-too-realistic cautionary tale.”

But El Akkad never intended it to be realistic at all. I asked him if it felt like the novel was starting to come true. “I thought that the way I had structured it was enough of an extrapolation that I wouldn’t have to deal with precisely the question you’re asking,” El Akkad told me. “And that has been obliterated in the last few years. That, to me, is terrifying.”

Extreme weather has melted the distinction between fact and fiction. As El Akkad described it, global warming doesn’t feel slow and steady; it feels more like falling down the stairs, with big drops that shake your expectations. One moment, you’re taking a nap in your house; the next, you’re running for your life from a wildfire. This year, a naturally hotter weather pattern called El Niño started setting in, adding extra heat on top of the climate change we’ve become accustomed to. July was the planet’s hottest month on record, clocking in at 1.5 degrees C (2.4 F) warmer than the preindustrial average. The disasters this summer serve as a preview of what the world could see during a typical year in the early 2030s. We no longer need authors or scientists to imagine it; real-world experience does the trick for anyone who’s paying close attention…..

(7) HWA LATINX INTERVIEW SERIES. “Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Javier Loustaunau” is the latest in the Horror Writers Association blog’s series.

What inspired you to start writing?

I grew up in a house surrounded by books so there was never a moment where I did not think I was going to write, it felt like everyone must write for there to be this many books. Really, I was just impatient to grow up a little and become a better writer, somebody who did not have to lean so hard imitating other writers. One thing that helped me as a writer was when I reached out to the Marvel editorial asking for help on becoming a comic book writer and I got a response from Stan Lee (or more likely his assistant) telling me it does not matter what I write but I need to write every single day if I want to improve. So I wrote letters, I wrote reviews, I wrote poems, I translated, I journaled… but I made sure I always wrote every single day. 

(8) SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. Rebecca F. Kuang shares literary and cultural recommendations with the Guardian in: “On my radar: Rebecca F Kuang’s cultural highlights”. The second item is —

2. Fiction

Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, translated by Benjamin Moser

A few months ago, I hosted a friend from Colombia who was touring my university. After a morning walk in the cemetery, we ended up at the campus Barnes & Noble, where we picked out favourite novels for the other to read. Rather predictably, we went for the Nobel laureates – I chose for her Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and she chose Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. She also included a random bonus pick – a short, translated novel by Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, which I enjoyed so much I have since copied out the following passage about writing in several letters to friends: “All this, yes, the story is history. But knowing beforehand so you never forget that the word is the fruit of the word, the word must resemble the word. Reaching it is my first duty to myself. And the word can’t be dressed up and artistically vain, it can only be itself. Well, it’s true that I also wanted to arrive at a sheer sensation and for it to be so sheer that it couldn’t break into a perpetual line.” The word can only be itself. Good advice for every time I sit down to write….

(9) REST IN PEACE TACO CAT. Cat Rambo shared this sad news today:

Earlier this year Taco was part of our Cats Sleep on SFF series in “Proud Pink Sky” – photo at the link.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 24, 1922 — Bert Ira Gordon. He not only wrote but directed such films as Serpent Island, King Dinosaur, The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs. the Spider, Village of the Giants and Empire of the Ants. Aren’t those truly deliciously pulpy SF film titles?  (I need more adjectives, I truly do.) Forrest J Ackerman nicknamed him “Mr. B.I.G.” a reference to both his initials and his films’ tendency to feature super-sized creatures. (Died 2023.)
  • Born September 24, 1930 — Jack Gaughan. Artist and illustrator who won the Hugo several times including once for Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist in the same year. Most of his work from 1970 onward was for Ace and DAW. He illustrated the covers and hand-lettered title pages for the unauthorized first paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings which Ace released in 1965. Here’s those covers he did for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. (Died 1985.)
  • Born September 24, 1934 — John Brunner. My favorite works by him? The Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar which won a Hugo at St. Louiscon and The Sheep Look Up. I’m also fond of The Squares of The City which was nominated for a Hugo at Tricon. What’s your favorite works by him? (Died 1995.)
  • Born September 24, 1936 — Jim Henson. As much as I love The Muppet Show, and I’ve watched every show at least twice, I think The Storyteller is his best work. That’s not to overlook Labyrinth, The Witches, (yes I know it’s now considered misogynistic) The Dark Crystal and the first two Muppets films which are also excellent. (I think they really did far too many Muppets films.) (Died 1990.)
  • Born September 24, 1945 — David Drake, 78. I’d say his best-known solo work was the Hammer’s Slammers series. He has also written the Royal Cinnabar Navy series which are space operas inspired by the Aubrey–Maturin novels which i be not read. Opinions please on if I should do so. He has also drafted story ideas that were then finished off by co-authors such as Karl Edward Wagner, S.M. Stirling, and Eric Flint. He’s very, very well stocked at the usual suspects. Usual suspects for those of you are curious being Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo. 
  • Born September 24, 1945 — Ian Stewart, 78. Mathematician and writer. He makes the Birthday Honors for the four volumes in The Science of Discworld series he wrote with Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett. It was nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000. Each of the books alternates between the usually absurd Discworld story and serious scientific exposition. (All four volumes are available from the usual suspects.) He would write a number of genre novels, none of which I’m familiar with. Anybody here read his works? 
  • Born September 24, 1957 — Brad Bird, 66. Animator, director, screenwriter, producer, and occasionally even a voice actor whom I’m going to praise for directing The Iron Giant (nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000), The Incredibles (winner of Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form at Interaction), Incredibles 2 and Tomorrowland. He’s the voice of Edna Mode in both the Incredibles films, a most excellent role indeed. 
  • Born September 24, 1965 — Richard K. Morgan, 58. The Takeshi Kovacs novels are an awesome series that I’ve read at least twice which are why I haven’t watched the Netflix series. His fantasy series, A Land Fit For Heroes, is still on my TBR To Be Listened To pile. I read the first of the Black Man series and will admit that I was far from impressed. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro is kind of a police procedural. Sort of.
  • Brewster Rockit is a didactic strip about the OSIRIS-Rex mission, with a surprise twist at the end.
  • Tom Gauld reveals another benefit of reading.
  • And Tom Gauld knows something about co-workers’ social lives.

(12) SHRINKING COMICS SECTION. Cartoonist Dave Kellett on X reports Gannett Newspapers is cost-cutting and has limited ALL its 200 papers to just these 34 comics.

The Daily Cartoonist has a list of “The Gannett 34”.

The USA TODAY Network/Gannett group has released a list of the selected 34 comic strips and panels that local editors and publishers will* choose from to run in their newspapers – not all will run in all (any?) of the papers.

The chosen strips and panels:

Group 1: Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Dennis the Menace

Group 2: Garfield, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues, Pickles, FoxTrot

Group 3: Pearls Before Swine, Jump Start, Ziggy, Marmaduke, Non Sequitur, Crabgrass

Group 4 Crankshaft, Luann, Baldo, Frank & Ernest, The Born Loser   

Group 5: B.C., Wizard of Id, Close to Home, Argyle Sweater, Mother Goose, Rose is Rose

Group 6: Hi & Lois, Mutts, Curtis, Shoe, The Lockhorns

(13) DRAGONSLAYER. On the “DARK DISNEY – Part 1: Dragonslayer (1981)” episode of Erik Hanson’s Cradle to the Grave podcast the host is joined by guests Clay McLeod Chapman, Junot Diaz, and Stephen Bissette.

Have you ever wanted to see a Disney movie where the Princess gets her foot chewed off by a baby dragon? Well, look no further, Dragonslayer has you covered! Here to chat about said foot-chewing are 3 of the biggest Dragonslayer fans I could find: Author Clay McLeod Chapman, Author Junot Diaz, and comic book writer / artist Stephen Bissette. Together we dive deep into the era known as “Dark Disney” and come to the realization that Disney has ALWAYS BEEN DARK!

(14) I COULD HAVE HAD A V-2.  The National Air and Space Museum blog article “Restoring the Museum’s V-2 Missile” goes into fascinating detail about the history of the components in the museum’s V-2, and the painstaking research to explain which of the paint jobs applied over the years might be the most historically accurate.

One of the icons of the Museum’s location on the National Mall has been the black-and-white German V-2 ballistic missile. Ever since the building opened in July 1976, it stood in Space Hall, which in 1997 was revised to become Space Race. That rocket, currently off display, will return in a new guise, with green camouflage paint, when the hall reopens in a few years as RTX Living in the Space Age….

In a parallel project, Duane Decker of the Preservation and Restoration Unit redid the V-2 launch stand, which is original German mobile launch equipment transferred by NASA Marshall in 1975. Painted black, it was used to support the missile in Space Hall/Space Race. When he stripped it, he found no original paint. I consulted with Tracy Dungan, who supplied 1944 images that showed German stands painted in “dark yellow,” the late-war Wehrmacht vehicle camouflage. Duane painted ours in that color and it will once again support the rocket when it goes back on display in RTX Living in the Space Age. 

This time the stand and rocket will be on top of a pedestal in the Missile Pit, the hole in the center of the gallery floor that allows taller rockets to fit under the roof. Lifted up to floor level, visitors will be able to see the stand and the rocket much as they would have looked during the V-2 campaign of 1944-1945. I very much look forward to the day when we again assemble and mount this important and deadly icon of the missile and space age.

The Museum’s V-2 rocket in the Space Race exhibition in 2006.

(15) SUCCESSION. The Guardian says “Studio Ghibli to be acquired by Nippon TV after struggle to find a successor to Miyazaki”.

Weeks after the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki made his long-awaited comeback, the studio he founded almost four decades ago has secured its long-term future, easing concerns over its struggle to find a successor.

Studio Ghibli said this week that the company would be acquired by the private broadcaster, Nippon TV, which promised to continue building on Ghibli’s global success.

Miyazaki – widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest animators – founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, leading it to a string of successes, including an Oscar in 2003 for Spirited Away.

The studio built a loyal following around the world with films like My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, while Miyazaki was nominated for two further Academy Awards – for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and The Wind Rises in 2014 – the same year he was chosen to receive an honorary Oscar.

The agreement with Nippon TV, which will become Ghibli’s biggest shareholder, came after Miyazaki, 82, and its president, 75-year-old Toshio Suzuki, failed to persuade Miyazaki’s son to take over the running of the studio….

(16) HONEY, I’M HOME. “In a first, NASA returns asteroid samples to Earth” – NBC News has the story.

A capsule containing precious samples from an asteroid landed safely on Earth on Sunday, the culmination of a roughly 4-billion-mile journey over the past seven years.

The asteroid samples were collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which flew by Earth early Sunday morning and jettisoned the capsule over a designated landing zone in the Utah desert. The unofficial touchdown time was 8:52 a.m. MT, 3 minutes ahead of the predicted landing time.

The dramatic event — which the NASA livestream narrator described as “opening a time capsule to our ancient solar system” — marked a major milestone for the United States: The collected rocks and soil were NASA’s first samples brought back to Earth from an asteroid. Experts have said the bounty could help scientists unlock secrets about the solar system and how it came to be, including how life emerged on this planet….

And — “NASA collected a sample from an asteroid for the first time — here’s why it matters” – The Verge will be happy to explain.

(17) A PART OF ONE PIECE. Gizmodo thinks “Jamie Lee Curtis May Have Achieved Her Dream of Being in One Piece” based on this Instagram.

(18) ANIME EXPLORATIONS. The prospect of Jamie Lee Curtis being cast in One Piece is also one of several topics taken up in episode 12 of the Anime Explorations Podcast, “Shirobako”. Another is Anime industry figures referenced in Shirobako. And Vampire Hunter D.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/26/23 Scrolls Guaranteed To Get Filers Commenting, Or Double Your Pixels Back

Posted on by
29

(1) HUGO VOTER PACKET. Joe Yao of the Chengdu Worldcon committee fielded a question online about the packet.

First, he pointed out that one is coming, as noted in this brief reference in a July 10 story on the Chengdu website:

The Hugo Awards Subcommittee of the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon will also provide paper ballots and Hugo Packet for each category of the finalists.

Then he shared this status report:

And here I would like to update the process of the Hugo Packet. We asked all the finalists to submit their works to the packet no later than July 25 (today), and we are still collecting works from them. Our goal is to release the packet for members to download by end of July.

(2) TURNOVER ON BUFFALO NASFIC COMMITTEE. Immediately following Buffalo’s confirmation as site of the 2024 NASFiC in the site selection vote last weekend, chair Wayne Brown released a new committee list. It was the first time that two significant members of the bid heard about changes that affect them.

Alex von Thorn told Facebook readers:

Marah Searle-Kovacevic has been removed as vice-chair of the #BuffaloNASFiC2024 convention. I have also been effectively demoted from Finance division head to “Treasurer” (so that I would not be doing budget, planning, or registration). As of Tuesday, when we found out by way of an org chart posted to Discord, we are no longer working on the convention.

…Marah feels like the pattern of disrespect and mistakes has been building for a while and she doesn’t think the chair wants our participation other than in tertiary roles. I’m annoyed and frustrated but that is secondary. Marah’s leadership and track record of accomplishment is indispensable and irreplaceable. As a Buffalo native and resident for more than thirty years, and with decades of experience working on WSFS conventions, she is knowledgeable and motivated to work on a WSFS conveniton in Buffalo; unfortunately it doesn’t seem that this will be it. The chair doesn’t value experience; he has said explicitly he wants no connection to or involvement with the SMOF community of experienced conrunners. He only respects people he knows personally and only wants input from people who agree with him. That’s not me, it’s not the job of a treasurer, and although she’s better at finding reconciliation and consensus, ultimately it’s not her either.

…The sticking point for Marah is that she doesn’t like being fired via an org chart update…

(3) WHO’S ACCEPTING THE CHENGDU OFFER. Chris Barkley will be going.

I will try to spot other names as they surface, although this is coming up at precisely the moment “X” (formerly Twitter) has provoked a lot of writers to focus their efforts on other platforms making it less easy to search for announcements.

(4) WHO’S DECLINING THE CHENGDU OFFER. Gideon Marcus told File 770 readers that no one from Galactic Journey will utilize the offer.  

“Full disclosure: I’m not going, would not go, and cannot go. But one of our team is.”

Strike that. After consideration, and impressed by the actions of fellow nominees who have declined invitations because of Chengdu’s problematic GoH choice, we have decided there will be no Galactic Journey representative at Chengdu.

The Hugos, of course, belong to all of us, so we’ll still be voting.

(5) MEDICAL UPDATE. Congratulations to Adam-Troy Castro who announced on Facebook today, “There is ‘no cancer.’ I will need regular checkups for a while, plus maintenance of my port, but it is gone, gone, gone.”

(6) FULL DISCLOSURE: THEY’RE COMMERCIALS. “’Alf’ reboot: Ryan Reynolds revives character with sponsored content” reports USA Today.

Ryan Reynolds is indulging his love for ’80s nostalgia, and it’s out of this world.

Reynolds is rebooting Alf, the furry brown alien of the eponymous sci-fi comedy from the 1980s, with a series of sponsored content shorts on his Maximum Effort Channel. The “Deadpool” star previewed some of the extraterrestrial hilarity in a trailer montage posted Monday.

In the video, Alf can be seen discussing and using various products with their human friend Eric, including mobile network operator Mint Mobile, doorbell camera brand Ring and television streamer Fubo.

The Maximum Effort Channel, which launched in June as part of a deal with Fubo, acquired the rights to the “Alf” sitcom and will incorporate branded segments called “Maximum Moments” into reruns of the original series….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1950 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

C.M. Kornbluth, a member of the Futurians, provides us with our Beginning this Scroll.  He participated in the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, the oldest APA in existence.  And he’s a member of the First Fandom Hall of Fame. 

He got nominated for six Hugos of which he won but one at Torcon II for “The Meeting” short story.  It was only his Award win until a Retro Hugo for “The Little Black Bag” novelette at The Millennium Philcon. 

Well he did garner a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for The Syndic but I’ll admit I’ve mixed feeling about those Awards. Just me I’ll admit but I’m quite sure about libertarian futurists and their criteria for these Awards.

So “The Little Black Bag” which is our Beginning first appeared in the July 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The cover art is a still from the Destination Moon film.

The story is in Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 which was edited by Robert Silverberg and is available from the usual suspects.

And now for our Beginning…

Old Dr. Full felt the winter in his bones as he limped down the alley. It was the alley and the back door he had chosen rather than the sidewalk and the front door because of the brown paper bag under his arm. He knew perfectly well that the flat-faced, stringy-haired women of his street and their gap-toothed, sour-smelling husbands did not notice if he brought a bottle of cheap wine to his room. They all but lived on the stuff themselves, varied with whiskey when pay checks were boosted by overtime. But Dr. Full, unlike them, was ashamed. A complicated disaster occurred as he limped down the littered alley. One of the neighborhood dogs–a mean little black one he knew and hated, with its teeth always bared and always snarling with menace–hurled at his legs through a hole in the board fence that lined his path. Dr. Full flinched, then swung his leg in what was to have been a satisfying kick to the animal’s gaunt ribs. But the winter in his bones weighed down the leg. His foot failed to clear a half-buried brick, and he sat down abruptly, cursing. When he smelled unbottled wine and realized his brown paper package had slipped from under his arm and smashed, his curses died on his lips. The snarling black dog was circling him at a yard’s distance, tensely stalking, but he ignored it in the greater disaster.

With stiff fingers as he sat on the filth of the alley, Dr. Full unfolded the brown paper bag’s top, which had been crimped over, grocer-wise. The early autumnal dusk had come; he could not see plainly what was left. He lifted out the jug-handled top of his half gallon, and some fragments, and then the bottom of the bottle. Dr. Full was far too occupied to exult as he noted that there was a good pint left. He had a problem, and emotions could be deferred until the fitting time.

The dog closed in, its snarl rising in pitch. He set down the bottom of the bottle and pelted the dog with the curved triangular glass fragments of its top. One of them connected, and the dog ducked back through the fence, howling. Dr. Full then placed a razor-like edge of the half-gallon bottle’s foundation to his lips and drank from it as though it were a giant’s cup. Twice he had to put it down to rest his arms, but in one minute he had swallowed the pint of wine.

He thought of rising to his feet and walking through the alley to his room, but a flood of well-being drowned the notion. It was, after all, inexpressibly pleasant to sit there and feel the frost-hardened mud of the alley turn soft, or seem to, and to feel the winter evaporating from his bones under a warmth which spread from his stomach through his limbs.

A three-year-old girl in a cut-down winter coat squeezed through the same hole in the board fence from which the black dog had sprung its ambush. Gravely she toddled up to Dr. Full and inspected him with her dirty forefinger in her mouth. Dr. Full’s happiness had been providentially made complete; he had been supplied with an audience.

“Ah, my dear,” he said hoarsely. And then: “Preposserous accusation. ‘If that’s what you call evidence,’ I should have told them, ‘you better stick to your doctoring.’ I should have told them: ‘I was here before your County Medical Society. And the License Commissioner never proved a thing on me. So, gennulmen, doesn’t it stand to reason? I appeal to you as fellow memmers of a great profession–“‘

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 26, 1883 — Edwin Balmer. Together with author Philip Wylie, he penned When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide. The first was made into the 1951 movie by George Pal. He also wrote several detective novels and collaborated with William MacHarg on The Achievements of Luther Trant, an early collection of detective short stories. The latter are not genre, despite being listed as ISFDB as I’ve read them. (Died 1959.)
  • Born July 26, 1928 — Stanley Kubrick. I’m reasonably sure 2001: A Space Odyssey was the first film I saw by him but Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was the one that impressed me the most. A Clockwork Orange was just damn depressing. And I’m not a horror fan as such so I never saw The Shining. Barry Lyndon is great but it’s not genre by any means. (Died 1999.)
  • Born July 26, 1945 — M. John Harrison, 78. Winner of the Otherwise Award. The Viriconium sequence, I hesitate to call it a series, starting with The Pastel City, is some of the most elegant fantasy I’ve read. And I see he’s a SJW as he’s written the Tag, the Cat series which I need to take a look at again. He’s also been a major critic for the past thirty years reviewing fiction and nonfiction for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. He’s lightly stocked at the usual suspects though the Viriconium sequence is there at a very reasonable price.  And his short stories are excellent, so may I recommend Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020?
  • Born July 26, 1945 — Helen Mirren, 78. She first graces our presences as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She next shows up in a genre role as Alice Rage in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, Peter Sellers’ last film. She’s Morgana in Excalibur and then leaps into the future as Tanya Kirbuk in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. She voices the evil lead role in The Snow Queen, and likewise is Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
  • Born July 26, 1954 — Lawrence Watt-Evans, 69. Ok I’ve now read “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” which won him a short fiction Hugo at Nolasco II. It also was nominated for a Nebula and won an Asimov’s Reader’s Poll that year. It’d be his only Hugo. Yes, I’ve read him other fiction by him as well — his War Surplus series is quite excellent.
  • Born July 26, 1957 — Nana Visitor, 66. Kira Nerys on Deep Space Nine which for my money is the best of the Trek series to date and I’m including the present series in that assessment. After DS9 ended, Visitor had a recurring role as villain Dr. Elizabeth Renfro on Dark Angel. In 1987, Visitor appeared as Ellen Dolan in a never developed series pilot for Will Eisner’s The Spirit with Sam J. Jones as The Spirit. And she had a brief role in Torchwood: Miracle Day.
  • Born July 26, 1971 — Mary Anne Mohanraj, 52. Writer and editor. Founder of Strange Horizons. She has one genre novel, The Stars That Change, six works published in the Wild Cards Universe, and many piece of short fiction. She also an anthology, Without A Map, co-edited with Nnedi Okorafor.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Luann finds it hard to explain a distinction that’s important to writers.

(10) UHURA’S SCRIPTS AND THE WITCH’S HAT. “Paul Allen estate donates thousands of rare music, film and sci-fi artifacts to Seattle’s MoPOP” – GeekWire has details.

Thousands of one-of-a-kind artifacts from Paul Allen’s collection, spanning decades of cultural relevance, are headed to Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, the institution he helped found 23 years ago….

They include:

  • Handwritten lyrics by David Bowie for “Starman” from the early 1970s.
  • Motorcycle jacket worn by Prince in his 1984 film “Purple Rain.”
  • A collection of Nichelle Nichols’ (Lt. Nyota Uhura) hand-annotated scripts from the “Star Trek” television and film series (1965-1998).
  • The iconic hat worn by Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”
  • A full-size flying “Spinner” vehicle from the 1982 film Blade Runner.

…Several dozen artifacts from the bequest are currently on display in MoPOP exhibits, including “Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction;” “Fantasy: Worlds of Myth & Magic”; “Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film”; “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses.” The artifacts will also be incorporated into future exhibitions and loaned to other museums and institutions worldwide….

(11) OHIOANA WINNER. “The Kaiju Preservation Society is a 2023 Ohioana Book Award Winner” announced John Scalzi on Whatever. He also posted this graphic of the other category winners.

(12) A GAME? “Seen at CVS…” says Daniel Dern.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Interstellar Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/24/2023 Because The Scroll Belongs To Pixels

Posted on by
37

(1) CHENGDU’S UNIQUE OFFER. The Chengdu Worldcon committee is offering financial and other assistance to at least some Hugo finalists so that they can attend the convention. File 770 has tried to learn who is being offered the help. The Chengdu committee has yet to respond. File 770 is aware of some individual pros and fans who have been contacted. Here is a screencap of the message provided by an uncredited recipient.

File 770 contacted a sampling of finalists to ask if they’d received the message. The following people commented for the record.

John Scalzi got the offer. “I did and I passed, in part because I am already counterscheduled.” 

Ursula Vernon also received the offer: “Whether it was for the Best Novelist or Best Novella, I couldn’t tell you, but I know at least one other person who’s gotten the offer. (I am unable to attend due to health, which takes any questions of whether or not to accept such off my plate.) …They offer visa help though, which, having visited China, is arguably worth more than all the accommodations! ‘Writer’ is not a profession that the people giving visas look kindly on—when I went to Tibet, I listed my occupation as ‘jewelry maker’.”

On the other hand, Olav Rokne, an editor at the fanzines Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog and Journey Planet, said, “Neither Amanda nor I have received such an offer…. So far, nothing for either of the fanzine finalists that I was a part of.”

(2) PICKET DUTY. George R.R. Martin says this year’s strike is “the most important of my lifetime” in “Actors Join the Strike!” at Not A Blog.

…The SAG contract ended on June 30, but the actors gave AMPTP every chance to reach an equitable agreement by extending negotiations to July 12.  That proved to be a futile gesture.  The studios did not move an inch from their previous positions, and still refuse to address some of the most important issues on the table, including AI and payments and residuals from streaming.   They gave the actors no choice but to walk.

As for the writers… well, the studios are not even TALKING to us.   All negotiations between AMPTP and the WGA shut down back in May when the strike started.  It is hard to reach any agreement when  the other side won’t even come to the table.

I joined the WGA in 1986 and have been through several strikes with them.  We made gains in all of them, but some issues are more important than others… and this year’s strike is the most important of my lifetime.  An unnamed producer was quoted last week saying the AMPTP strategy was to stand fast until the writers started losing their homes and apartments, which gives you a hint of what we’re facing.

But we ARE facing it.  I have never seen such unity in the Guilds; the strike authorization votes for both SAG and WGA were as close to unanimous as we are ever likely to see….

Although Martin’s overall deal with HBO was suspended on June 1, he’s not idle.

…I still have plenty to do, of course.   In that, I am one of the lucky ones.   (These strikes are not really about name writers or producers or showrunners, most of whom are fine; we’re striking for the entry level writers, the story editors, the students hoping to break in, the actor who has four lines, the guy working his first staff job who dreams of creating his own show one day, as I did back in the 80s).

Last week we had a great meeting with the producers on THE IRON THRONE, the stage play we’ve been working on the past few years.  The scripts for that one are coming along well, and it’s got me very excited….

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Eisner-winning comics artist Colleen Doran told her Patreon supporters (in a public post) she has recovered after being in danger of losing sight in one eye.

…I’ve had other things on my mind. But we are amazed and delighted to win the Eisner Award for Neil Gaiman’s CHIVALRY.

…In even better news (something I really wasn’t talking about until I was sure how things would go,) I was blinded in the left eye in a freak accident which caused an extremely painful corneal ulcer. Still have no idea what happened. But what seemed to be a minor issue had me in the emergency room in a matter of hours. I was in imminent danger of permanently losing sight in the eye, or losing the eye entirely.

…. And I practiced my life as an artist with one eye. Just in case.

I can draw with one eye tied behind my back, and was showing work to my pro peeps to see if they could tell what was drawn with both eyes and what was drawn with one eye.

It’s super not pleasant though, and for awhile my eye was so sensitive to light that even light in my good eye hurt the bad one. I spent days sitting in the dark feeling pretty dark.

Yesterday was the first day I was able to get back to a full slot at the drawing board, as my sight has almost completely returned to normal.

Yesterday was a very good day…

(4) X. John Scalzi is “Preparing My X-it” after today’s rebranding of Twitter as X. He’s not really leaving, he says he will be posting much less frequently. Will he miss it? And what is he moving on to?

…But, one, having your career predicated on how many followers you have on a single site is fraught anyway, and two, this is the nature of social media, isn’t it? Think of all those bands who had hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers on MySpace and then that imploded. And then, three, not everything is about the sheer number of followers. I loved being on Twitter not because I had tens of thousands of people to market to, but because I was having fun. And today, I’m having fun in other places; at the moment I’m especially having fun on Bluesky. Bluesky is tiny and invite-only and at the moment absolutely fucking useless to market one’s self on, and I kinda love it and the conversations I’m having on it. So there’s that….

(5) DOWNLOAD TWO CHINESE FAN WRITERS’ HUGO PACKETS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Two of the Chinese Hugo finalists for Best Fan Writer have made their Hugo voter packet submissions publicly available.

  • Arthur Liu aka HeavenDuke aka 天爵 – PDF can be downloaded at this link in either Chinese or English.
  • Riverflow (河流) – PDF — riverflow-pack.pdf; contains both Chinese and English

Both of these include bilingual material that was previously published in Journey Planet and at Strange Horizons; the English language Arthur Liu packet also includes 3 machine-translated essays that hopefully we were able to bash into a moderately acceptable state in the few days we worked on them.  (And as the tweet says, all the errors that didn’t get caught – of which I’m sure there’ll be many – are on my head.)

(6) LA IN 2026. The LA in 2026 Worldcon bid had a table at Pemmi-Con. Thanks to Kevin Standlee for the photo of bid chair Joyce Lloyd.

Their old website has been replaced by “LA in 2026 – Adventure Awaits!” They’re taking presupports here.

Are you stuck in the daily grind, yearning for a taste of the extraordinary? Dreaming of vistas untouched, of stories untold? Welcome!

Join us and embark on a journey where the journey itself is the destination.

LA in 2026 – we don’t just explore places, we uncover stories. We’re not just explorers of mountains, oceans, or galaxies. We’re pioneers of imagination. We traverse magical kingdoms, navigate mythical seas, walk through enchanted forests, and soar with dragons. We don’t just chase the sun, moon, or stars – we unlock the secrets of the cosmos and dance with time.

They have not yet identified the city or venue they are bidding for, although the site selection vote will be held in Glasgow in a little over a year from now.

In addition to Joyce Lloyd, the website names these other members of the bid:

  • Bobbi Armbruster: Vice Chair, Chicon 7; over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Sherri Benoun: Co-Chair, World Fantasy 2019; over 30 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Bert Boden: Over 20 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Steve Cooper: Co-Chair, Loncon 3, 2014; over 20 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Genny Dazzo: Over 30 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Bruce Farr: Co-Chair, World Fantasy 2019, 2001 and 1991; over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Lea Farr: Co-Chair, World Fantasy 2001; over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Sara Felix: Chair, ArmadilloCon 32, 2012; over 20 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink: Over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Shaun Lyon: Co-Founder & Program Director, Gallifrey One (33 years); over 30 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Karin May: DH Staff Services, Chicon 8; over 5 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Christian B. McGuire: Chair, LA Con IV, 2006; Co-Founder & Chair (13 years), Gallifrey One; over 30 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Helen Montgomery: Chair, Chicon 8; Vice Chair, Chicon 7; over 20 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Elayne Pelz: Over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Jerome Scott: Over 30 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Randy Shepherd: Chair, LoneStarCon 3, 2013; Vice Chair, LoneStarCon 2, 1997; over 20 years of Worldcon and convention experience
  • Ben Yalow: Co-Chair, Chengdu 2023: over 40 years of Worldcon and convention experience

(7) WHEN WIKIPEDIA WORKS RIGHT. Immediately after Michele Lundgren was charged as a Michigan fake Trump elector somebody tried to add that information to the first paragraph of her husband Carl Lundgren’s Wikipedia entry.

The attempt ran afoul of Wikipedia’s policy to avoid “Coatrack articles”.

Typically, the article has been edited to make a point about something else. The nominal subject is functioning as an overloaded coat-rack, obscured by too many “coats”… 

A coatrack article fails to give a truthful impression of the subject. In the extreme case, the nominal subject gets hidden behind the sheer volume of the bias subject(s). Thus the article, although superficially true, leaves the reader with a thoroughly incorrect understanding of the nominal subject….

Good call!

(8) MEMORY LANE.

“Beginnings”, written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer, is moving to a weekly schedule. One will appear in the Scroll each Wednesday.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 24, 1878 — Lord Dunsany whose full name and title was a jaw dropping Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany. So ISFDB lists him as genre for the Jorkens body of work among works. H’h. Gary Turner, who some of you will recognize from Golden Gryphon Press and elsewhere, reviewed The Collected Jorkens: Volumes One, Two, and Three, for Green Man, so I’ve linked to the review here. They also list The King of Elfland’s Daughter which I’m going to link to another review on Green Man as it’s an audio recording with a very special guest appearance by Christopher Lee. (Died 1957.)
  • Born July 24, 1895 — Robert Graves. Poet, historical novelist, critic. Author of, among other works, The White Goddess (a very strange book), two volumes called the Greek Myths, Seven Days in New Crete which Pringle has on his Best Hundred Fantasy Novels list and more short fiction that bears thinking about. (Died 1985.)
  • Born July 24, 1916 — John D. MacDonald. Primarily a mystery writer whose Travis McGee series I enjoyed immensely and which I re-read recently survived the Suck Fairy hovering over my shoulder the entire time despite the misogyny and somewhat regressive politics therein. He wrote a handful of genre works including the sublime The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything. ISFDB lists a collection, End of the Tiger and Other Short Stories, which I presume is genre. Presumably. (Died 1986.)
  • Born July 24, 1936 — Mark Goddard, 87. Major Don West, the adversary of Dr. Zachary Smith, on Lost in Space. Other genre appearances were scant. He played an unnamed Detective in the early Eighties Strange Invaders and he showed up on an episode of The Next Step Beyond which investigated supposed hauntings as Larry Hollis in “Sins of Omission”. Oh, and he was an unnamed General in the Lost in Space film.
  • Born July 24, 1945 — Gordon Eklund, 78. He won the Nebula for Best Novelette for “If the Stars Are Gods”, co-written with Gregory Benford. They expanded it into a novel which was quite good as my memory says. So would anyone care to tell the story of how he came to write the Lord Tedric series which was inspired by an E.E. Doc Smith novelette? If the Stars Are God is available at the usual suspect as well as Cosmic Fusion, which according to Amazon “was originally written between January 1973 and September 1982, a mammoth 300,000-word epic novel of ‘science fiction, sex, and death.’”
  • Born July 24, 1951 — Lynda Carter, 72. Wonder Woman of course. But also Principal Powers, the headmistress of a school for superheroes in Sky High; Colonel Jessica Weaver in the vampire film Slayer;  Moira Sullivan, Chloe Sullivan’s Kryptonite-empowered mother in the “Prodigy” episode of Smallville; and President Olivia Marsdin in one version of Supergirl. 
  • Born July 24, 1964 — Colleen Doran, 59.  Comics artist and writer. Work particularly worth noting includes Warren Ellis’ Orbiter graphic novel, Wonder Woman, Legion of Superheroes, Teen Titans, “Troll Bridge” by Neil Gaiman and her space opera series, A Distant Soil. She also did portions of The Sandman, in the “Dream Country” and “A Game of You”. She’s tuckerised Into Sandman as the character Thessaly is based on Doran. Her work has received the Eisner, Harvey, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild Awards.
  • Born July 24, 1981 — Summer Glau, 42. An impressive run of genre roles as she was River Tam in the Firefly franchise, followed by these performances: Tess Doerner in The 4400, Cameron in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Bennett Halverson in Dollhouse (is this worth seeing seeing?), Skylar Adams in Alphas and lastly Isabel Rochev who is The Ravager in Arrow. And she appears as herself on The Big Bang Theory in “The Terminator Decoupling” episode. Another series I’ve not seen. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater remembers why one character was dropped from Star Wars.

MUTTS tells us how to calm the Hulk down.

(11) BIGGER THAN A BLOCKBUSTER. While Barbie blew up box offices all over this past weekend, Oppenheimer definitely did not bomb. “Box Office: ‘Barbie’ Opens to Record-Setting $155 Million, ‘Oppenheimer’ Shatters Expectations With $80 Million Debut” in Variety.

“Barbenheimer” is more than just a meme. It’s a full-fledged box office phenomenon.

Over the weekend, moviegoers turned out in force for Greta Gerwig’s neon-coated fantasy comedy “Barbie,” which smashed expectations with $155 million to land the biggest debut of the year. But they also showed up to see Christopher Nolan’s R-rated historical drama “Oppenheimer,” which collected a remarkable $80.5 million in its opening weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of ticket buyers refused to choose just one movie between the seemingly different blockbusters from auteur directors with sprawling casts and twin release dates. So they opted to attend same-day viewings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” turning the box office battle into a double feature for the ages….

(12) ENDER’S GAME. IRL. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “UK Defense Ministry: Russian children to be taught combat drone operation” reports Kyiv Independent.

…Russian children are to undergo training to learn how to operate combat drones, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported in its July 24 intelligence update.

British intelligence cites Artem Sheikin, a Russian senator, who announced that the curriculum will include lessons in terrain reconnaissance and countering Ukrainian drones.

The move highlights how Russia considers the use of drones “an enduring component of contemporary war.”

The training will be part of the “Basics of Life Safety” course. From Sept. 1, 2023, high school students will be taught how to operate an assault rifle, hand grenade skills and combat first aid, as well as the training on drones, as part of the syllabus.

“Russia’s renewed emphasis on military induction for children is largely an effort to cultivate a culture of militarized patriotism rather than develop genuine capability,” according to the report….

(13) IN HIS CUPS. Camestros Felapton analyzes a book’s recipe for success “Review: Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree”.

…The premise is simple. In a D&D-like world, a sword-wielding orc becomes tired of the life adventuring, treasure-finding, dungeon-crawling, monster-slaying shenanigans and decides to quit that life and instead open up a coffee shop. The main obstacle is in this world only the inventive gnome civilisation even knows what coffee is. It is a simple idea, one I’ve even heard called “obvious” (presumably because coffee shops feature in a subset of fan fiction) but as with copyright, the issue is never the obviousness of an idea but its actual execution. In this case, the idea is executed very well indeed….

(14) FUTURAMA. New York Times TV critic Margaret Lyons subheads this review: “I’m nostalgic, but I also want that nostalgia to be ridiculed.”

‘Futurama’

When to watch: Now, on Hulu

“Viewers must binge responsibly, the same way they smoke cigarettes or drink bleach,” quoth Philip J. Fry in this new revival of “Futurama.” Easy enough; Hulu is releasing episodes weekly, which contributes to the throwback vibe.

“Futurama” has been canceled and revived a few times since its initial run on Fox from 1999-2003. In some ways, its superior ability to spring back to life set an un-meetable standard for other shows: An animated series untethered to reality and about giant leaps forward in time has an advantage over live-action series with more specific expiration dates. If anything, the show’s taut sense of humor has become more mainstream, and now it is a contemporary with its descendants.

If you can’t have a good time watching “Futurama,” maybe you can’t have a good time….

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Dariensync, Ersatz Culture, 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 Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 7/9/23 Most Of Us Agree That Everyone Knows That Bacon Holds The Pixels Together

Posted on by
49

(1) HOW THE BESTSELLER LIST IS WON. Several authors responded to Sarah Pinborough’s question about whether certain kinds of sales affect the UK bestseller lists.

(2) THE FUTURE IS NOW. “’It’s not climate change, it’s everything change’: sci-fi authors take on the global crisis” in the Guardian.

… a new generation of writers now believes it is impossible to write “near future” sci-fi without putting the climate emergency at the forefront of their speculative fiction. For many, this is because they are living through the crisis and can imagine all too easily what may happen if real-life behaviour doesn’t change….

… [EJ Swift says] “Climate breakdown is escalating so rapidly that events which 10 years ago might have seemed like the distant future are happening now. Everything is filtered through that lens – even when it’s not the main focus, climate anxiety is there in the periphery.”

Other recent books dealing with the devastation to the climate include Kate Sawyer’s The Stranding, which begins with the striking image of two strangers sheltering in the mouth of a dead, beached whale as a calamitous extinction event hits the world, Susannah Wise’s This Fragile Earth, in which the complete failure of all technology brings into focus our uneasy relationship with nature, and Sarah K Jackson’s Not Alone, about a mother and son surviving in the aftermath of a microplastics storm that has decimated the population.

The science fiction writer Adrian Tchaikovsky, known for his huge, widescreen space opera novels set in distant galaxies, is turning his attention to the climate crisis next year with a horror novella called Saturation Point….

(3) PARSING THE 2023 HUGO BALLOT. John Scalzi shares insights “about why the Hugos are the way they are these days: Why Tor seems to get a lot of nominations, for example, and why diverse groups are represented in the finalist list as they are, and whether the Hugo voters are an insular and monolith bloc” in “Hugo Neepery, Via Reddit” at Whatever.

… If you are wondering how marginalized groups have started to become widely represented in SF/F awards (as they are not just in the Hugos, but also the Nebulas, the Locus and the World Fantasy Awards) there are three factors I want you to consider. The first is the (relative) decline of the “Big Three” short fiction magazines in SF/F (Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF) and the commensurate rise of a series of online short fiction publishing venues like Uncanny, Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons (among others). The Big Three ran on Silent, Boomer and Elder GenX writers, and the market forces for the genre those writers came up in was heavily cis and white and male. The newer venues, by inclination and necessity, cultivated younger generations of writers from more diverse backgrounds. When the Big Three declined and the online magazines rose, their respective stables of authors more or less rose or declined with them, in terms of award consideration.

The second thing to consider is who is buying science fiction and fantasy, both in the magazine and in the publishing houses. Surprise! The editorial stratum of SF/F/H is not the straight, white and (predominately but not exclusively) male enclave it was before; the editorial bench of SF/F/H publishing (and publishing generally) is much more queer and of color than it has been in years past. They are interested in publishing more than just the “usual suspects” in SF/F/H as defined by previous decades and — this is important — the diverse SF/F/H they are acquiring is selling very well. This will naturally have an impact on what is considered at awards time.

The third thing to consider with respect to the Hugos specifically is that close to a decade ago a group of right-wing fans and writers, alarmed by what they saw as left-wing, SJW, politically-correct, etc work creeping into the awards, decided to try to run slates of work to counter that trend. This did not go well, in no small part because their tactics energized a very large group of fandom to counter their actions, including a significant number of more progressive Hugo voters. When the “takeover” of the Hugos failed, most of these right-wing folks flounced from the Hugo voting pool; some of the more progressive voters stayed and continue to vote today. This is reflected in what gets nominated and thus, what eventually becomes a finalist….

(4) CAN YOU BLAME HIS PARENTS? “Calvin and Hobbes’ Creator Already Answered Fans’ Darkest Question” claims MSN.com. The comic’s creator Bill Watterson gave an unexpectedly deep answer to an interviewer.

…WEST: The parents are really an interesting part of the strip. In a way they’re foils, but the thing that interests me is that it’s extremely rare for them to express any love for Calvin. Is that simply because it doesn’t have any comic potential, or is it something inherent in their characters?

WATTERSON: Again, I feel like I’m falling into the trap of psychoanalyzing the characters and I don’t want to say, “Well, this character acts this way,” because that’s confining. I think the way they relate to Calvin is more a reflection of my misanthropic tendencies than any literary concern.

Many strips have, you know, the funny character, the straight man, the foil — those characters are stereotypes and fairly flat. The role of these characters in the strip is entirely defined by their function as a member of a social group or age group, or whatever, and I’m trying to avoid that as much as I possibly can. I try to make each character, even the ones that aren’t that important, a unique personality that, over time, will develop. Some of the minor characters appear less often than Calvin and Hobbes, but, hopefully, over years, each one will become a unique personality that will be every bit as complex and interesting as Calvin and Hobbes.

In other words, I don’t want the parents to simply function as parents. I want them to be unique individuals as well. They are parents, of course, and, as sane people, they have to react to Calvin’s personality. What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position, to the extent that I can, and I know that if I was Calvin’s dad or Calvin’s mom that I would not react to him with the gooey sentimentality that sometimes appears in other strips. Given Calvin’s usual behavior, I think his parents show admirable restraint in theirs….

(5) IT MIGHT HAPPEN. “Neil Gaiman Adapting Samuel R. Delany’s Nova as a Series” reports CBR.com.

…The report comes from a New Yorker profile on the 81-year-old Delany, which mentioned that Gaiman was adapting Nova for a Prime Video series. Gaiman was briefly interviewed for the article, and called Delany a profound influence whose work inspired him to attempt a similar sophisticated tone in his comics such as The Sandman. “I was used to very functional prose,” Gaiman said, calling the author by his nickname Chip. “Chip felt like I’d taken a step into poetry… There was no limit to how good you could be in your chosen area.” Prime Video has not yet confirmed a Nova series at this time….

(6) SUPERMAN. Animation World Network reports “‘My Adventures with Superman’ Episode 1 Now on YouTube”.  

Adult Swim has released the first full episode of My Adventures with Superman on YouTube – or you can watch it below. The series, which features Jack Quaid as Clark Kent, Alice Lee as Lois Lane, and Ishmel Sahid as Jimmy Olsen, is Warner Bros. Animation and DC’s newest animated series. The first two episodes are now streaming on Max. One new episode will debut every Thursday at midnight on Adult Swim and the next day on Max. It is unknown if future episodes will hit YouTube as well.

A serialized coming-of-age story, My Adventures with Superman follows 20-somethings Clark Kent, the bright and driven Lois Lane, and their best friend Jimmy Olsen as they begin to discover who they are and everything they can accomplish together as an investigative reporting team at the Daily Planet….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2010 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

South Africa is one of those countries just starting to get known for its genre fiction. Though it goes back a century in terms of a history of science fiction being created there, that fiction like the greater culture there has been irretrievably changed by Apartheid and the novel Mike has chosen this time is one of those works. 

Lauren Beukes is our author this time, she’s written six novels including the forthcoming Bridges, some of which are SF, some of which are mysteries. 

Great mysteries too though the cringe factor is really high in them. Blood and gore everywhere. Now the SF she has written is first rate — imaginative storytelling that is noticeably different has it is, well, rooted in South African history and culture. One most of us aren’t familiar with. 

Zoo City was published in trade paper thirteen years ago by Umuzi / Random House Struik. The cover art is by Joey Hi- Fi.  It would win both a Clarke Award and a Kitschie, and be nominated for a BSFA, Otherwise, and a World Fantasy Award.

And now for our Beginning…

In Zoo City, it’s impolite to ask. 

Morning light the sulfur color of the mine dumps seeps across Johannesburg’s skyline and sears through my window. My own personal bat signal. Or a reminder that I really need to get curtains. 

Shielding my eyes—morning has broken and there’s no picking up the pieces—I yank back the sheet and peel out of bed. Benoît doesn’t so much as stir, with only his calloused feet sticking out from under the duvet like knots of driftwood. Feet like that, they tell a story. They say he walked all the way from Kinshasa with his Mongoose strapped to his chest. 

The Mongoose in question is curled up like a furry comma on my laptop, the glow of the LED throbbing under his nose. Like he doesn’t know that my computer is out of bounds. Let’s just say I’m precious about my work. Let’s just say it’s not entirely legal.

I take hold of the laptop on either side and gently tilt it over the edge of my desk. At thirty degrees, the Mongoose starts sliding down the front of the laptop. He wakes with a start, tiki tavi claws scrabbling for purchase. As he starts to fall, he contorts in the air and manages to land feet first. Hunching his stripy shoulders, he hisses at me, teeth bared. I hiss back. The Mongoose realizes he has urgent flea bites to attend to. 

Leaving the Mongoose to scrolf at its flank, I duck under one of the loops of rope hanging from the ceiling, the closest I can get to providing authentic Amazon jungle vines, and pad over the rotten linoleum to the cupboard. Calling it a cupboard is a tad optimistic, like calling this dank room with its precariously canted floor and intermittent plumbing an apartment is optimistic. The cupboard is not much more than an open box with a piece of fabric pinned across it to keep the dust off my clothes—and Sloth, of course. As I pull back the gaudy sunflower print, Sloth blinks up at me sleepily from his roost, like a misshapen fur coat between the wire hangers. He’s not good at mornings.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 9, 1906 — Walter Sande. He’s best remembered for being on Red Planet Mars, The War of the Worlds and Invaders from Mars, but he also showed up playing a heavy in such serials as The Green Hornet Strikes Again! and Sky Raiders, the latter being at least genre adjacent. He’s had a recurring role as Col. Crockett on The Wild Wild West, and one-offs on Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Lost in Space and Bewitched. (Died 1971.)
  • Born July 9, 1911 — Mervyn Peake. Best remembered for the Gormenghast series which is quite delightfully weird. Most fans hold that there are but three novels in the series (Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone) though there’s a novella, “Boy in Darkness”, that is a part of it. Peake planned a fourth book, Titus Awakes, but it was barely begun when he died. Maeve Gilmore, Peake’s widow, wrote the manuscript of a version titled Search Without End which remained unpublished until decades after her death. It incorporates a fragmentary text written by Peake. The Gormenghast series has been adapted for radio three times and television once, and it was announced in 2018 that Gaiman is writing the script for an adaptation. (Died 1968.)
  • Born July 9, 1944 — Glen Cook, 79. Yes, I’ve read his entire excellent Black Company series. I’ve also mostly liked his far lighter Garrett P.I. series (though not the last novel for reasons I’ll not discuss here) which it seems unfortunately he’s abandoned. And I really should read the Instrumentalities of the Night as I’ve heard good things about it. I’m really, really surprised not only that he hasn’t won any awards, but how few he’s been nominated for.
  • Born July 9, 1945 — Dean Koontz, 78. The genres of of mystery, horror, fantasy and science fiction are all home to him. Author of over a hundred novels, his first novel was SF — it being Star Quest (not in print) published as an Ace Double with Doom of the Green Planet by Emil Petaja. ISFDB claims over half of his output is genre, I’d say that a low estimate. 
  • Born July 9, 1954 — Ellen Klages, 69. Her story “Basement Magic” won a Nebula Award for Best Novelette. I strongly recommend Portable Childhoods, a collection of her short fiction, published by Tachyon Publications, my favorite publisher of fantasy. They released another collection from her, Wicked Wonders, which is equally wonderful. Passing Strange, her novel set in 1940s San Francisco, which won a BSFA Award and a World Fantasy Award, is also really great. Ok, I really like her.
  • Born July 9, 1970 — Ekaterina Sedia, 53. Her Heart of Iron novel which was nominated for a Sidewise Award for Alternate History is simply awesome. I’d also recommend The Secret History of Moscow and the recent The House of Discarded Dreams as well, the latter is a fantastic audio work which is narrated by Robin Miles. It’s worth noting that the usual suspects list several collections by her, Willful Impropriety: 13 Tales of Society, Scandal, and Romance and Wilfill Impropriety that ISFDB doesn’t list. They’re quite superb it turns out as is Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy for which she won a World Fantasy Award. She had a story out just last year, “Ghost Shop”, in Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World.  She’s amply stocked at the usual suspects. She’s also very deeply stocked at the audio suspects as well which sort of surprised and delighted me as I’ve added a number of her works to my To Be Listened to list, including The House of Discarded Dreams which sounds really fascinating in the manner of Gaiman’s Sandman.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • JumpStart involves some surprisingly early memories of Isaac Asimov.
  • Herman shows aliens getting their own first encounter.
  • Six Chix has a cool librarian joke.

(10) BEWARE THE BLINDING LIGHT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] No, not the blinding light of atomic explosions in the Oppenheimer biopic, but the blinding light of full nudity, at least one sex scene, and an on-again-off-again love triangle. All involving Oppenheimer himself. 

One guesses this may be how the flick gained its R rating. Which doesn’t mean those things were inserted just for titillation, apparently they are true to his complicated story. “It Appears The R-Rated ‘Oppenheimer’ Will Be The Sauciest Movie The Decidedly Un-Saucy Christopher Nolan Has Ever Made” at Uproxx.

Christopher Nolan movies do love — sometimes. Memento and Inception feature dead wives who haunt their heroes. There’s a tragic love triangle in The Dark Knight and a tragic love quadrangle in The Prestige. That’s it! What he doesn’t do is sex and/or nudity. Oppenheimer, his forthcoming film about the “father of the atomic bomb,” is going to change that. If you thought the film’s R-rating — Nolan’s first since 2002’s Insomnia — was due to graphic A-bomb carnage…well, you may be right about that. But it’s also because there’s apparently a fair amount of kink….

(11) TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE. Tour the wild animal bridge inspired by the life of P-22, the fabled mountain lion of Griffith Park. NBC Los Angeles invites you to “Take a free tour of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing”.

… This celebrated span, in short, will do an immeasurable amount of good for an incredible number of critters that both roam and home in the area.

That important education? It comes courtesy of the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougers campaign, which is shedding an informative light on the upcoming Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing via several docent-helmed tours at the Agoura Hills site.

The under-construction skyway, or “wildway” if you prefer, will allow animals to move safely above the 101 freeway, significantly (and safely) expanding their frontiers.

And while the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which broke ground in the spring of 2022, still has a ways to go before the jubilant ribbon-cutting, supporters of urban wildlife can take a look at the progress now and find out more about the bridge’s development and progress….

(12) SHIFTING GEARS. This is a good time to revisit the question “What Is the Antikythera Mechanism, the World’s First Computer?” Smithsonian Magazine answers it in this 2015 article.

After 2,000 years under the sea, three flat, misshapen pieces of bronze at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens are all shades of green, from emerald to forest. From a distance, they look like rocks with patches of mold. Get closer, though, and the sight is stunning. Crammed inside, obscured by corrosion, are traces of technology that appear utterly modern: gears with neat triangular teeth (just like the inside of a clock) and a ring divided into degrees (like the protractor you used in school). Nothing else like this has ever been discovered from antiquity. Nothing as sophisticated, or even close, appears again for more than a thousand years.

For decades after divers retrieved these scraps from the Antikythera wreck from 1900 to 1901, scholars were unable to make sense of them. X-ray imaging in the 1970s and 1990s revealed that the device must have replicated the motions of the heavens. Holding it in your hands, you could track the paths of the Sun, Moon and planets with impressive accuracy. One investigator dubbed it “an ancient Greek computer.” But the X-ray images were difficult to interpret, so mainstream historians ignored the artifact even as it was championed by fringe writers such as Erich von Däniken, who claimed it came from an alien spaceship. It wasn’t until 2006 that the Antikythera mechanism captured broader attention. That year, Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in Wales and his team published CT scans of the fragments, revealing more details of the inner workings, as well as hidden inscriptions—and triggering a burst of scholarly research…. 

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Smoking Causes Coughing” is French comedy with 50’s sf flair.

After a devastating battle against a diabolical turtle, a team of five avengers – known as the TOBACCO FORCE – is sent on a mandatory retreat to strengthen their decaying group cohesion. Their break goes wonderfully well until Lézardin, Emperor of Evil, decides to annihilate planet Earth… But will they repair their relationship in time for a final epic battle?

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Daniel Dern, 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 SocialInjusticeWorrier.]

Pixel Scroll 7/6/23 The Felix Felis Flattus Sat On The Mat

Posted on by
55

(1) DRAGON PRESERVATION SOCIETY? A Twitter user with 90K followers who goes by the handle Aristophanes claims to be incensed that works like John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society become Dragon Award finalists. As a remedy he is calling for people to band together and nominate all the works on his ticket. Can the Dragon Awards be saved? How would we know if they aren’t? Thread starts here.

The Dragon Award’s policy is to encourage people to campaign for fan support. Always has been. So this appeal violates no rule, written or otherwise. My only question about his list is — can it really be a Dragon Awards slate without a book by Declan Finn on it? This will be the first one without him I’ve ever seen!!

(2) FOUNDATION. Apple TV+ has released a second trailer for “Foundation — Season 2”.

More than a century after the Season 1 finale, tension mounts throughout the galaxy. As the Cleons unravel, a vengeful queen plots to destroy Empire from within. Hari, Gaal, and Salvor discover a colony of Mentalics with special abilities that threaten to alter psychohistory itself. Meanwhile, the Foundation and Empire are on a collision course for war with the fate of humanity in the balance.

(3) HOW MANY NAMES? Best Semiprozine finalist Strange Horizons tells how this year’s Hugo Administrator clawed back the progress SH had made in getting their full team listed. (They weren’t the only ones affected by the policy change, of course.) Thread starts here.

(4) JMS AT SDCC. “Babylon 5 Cast Set for San Diego Comic-Con 2023” reports the SDCC Unofficial Blog.

…While writer and series creator J. Michael Straczynski has been teasing for months that he will be at the convention with lots to talk about the new animated film, Babylon 5: The Road Home, we’ve got our first look at just what that appearance will likely entail.

The upcoming animated film continues the story of the 1990’s space opera series, as John Sheridan unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Most of the cast is returning for the film, including Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan, Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova, Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari, Bill Mumy as Lennier, Tracy Scoggins as Elizabeth Lochley and Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander.

Patricia Tallman revealed on Instagram that she will indeed be at the convention — and so will most of her castmates.

Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Tracy Scoggins, and Patricia Tallman will be signing in the Sails Pavilion on Saturday, July 22 from 11am-12pm, which certainly ups the odds of a panel with cast in appearance.

Patricia Tallman will also be signing on her own from 2:30pm-7pm on both Thursday, July 20 and Friday, July 21, and fans can pre-order her Pleasure Thresholds, a Babylon 5 Memoir, for $30 (or $40 if you purchase at the con). Copies can be autographed and personalized…. 

(5) IO9 COLLIDES WITH THE UNPLEASANT FUTURE. “‘F*cking Dogsh*t’: G/O Media Editor Tears Into Management Over ‘Embarrassing’ AI-Generated Article ‘Riddled With Basic Errors’” at Mediate.

James Whitbrook, the deputy editor of G/O Media’s Gizmodo and its subsection io9, tore into management on Wednesday after the company published a “shoddily written” AI-generated article “riddled with basic errors.”

After it was revealed last week that G/O Media would begin rolling out articles generated by artificial intelligence, GMG Union — which represents many of the news outlets under G/O Media’s banner, including Gizmodo — protested the introduction of “computer-generated garbage” which “erodes trust in us as journalists, damages our brands, and threatens our jobs.”

Despite the protests of the union, however, G/O Media moved forward with its controversial decision this week.

“A Chronological List of Star Wars Movies & TV Shows” by “Gizmodo Bot” appeared on G/O Media’s tech and science news website on Wednesday, only to be swiftly ridiculed by social media users for messing up the chronological order of the franchise.

In a Twitter post, the deputy editor of the site revealed he had only been “informed approximately 10 minutes” before the article went live and that “no one at io9 played a part in its editing or publication.” In his own “personal comment,” Whitbrook added, “It’s fucking dogshit.”

Whitbrook also published the letter he sent to the management of G/O Media, which read:

“For 15 years, io9 has grown an audience that demands quality coverage of genre entertainment, from critical analysis, to insightful explainers, to accurate news and industry-shaping investigative reporting. These readers have grown io9 into one of the best performing desks at Gizmodo, G/O Media’s flagship site in terms of traffic, and they have done so by rigorously holding this team and the colleagues that came before us to a standard of expertise and accuracy that we have been proud to achieve. The article published on io9 today rejects the very standards this team holds itself to on a daily basis as critics and as reporters. It is shoddily written, it is riddled with basic errors; in closing the comments section off, it denies our readers, the lifeblood of this network, the chance to publicly hold us accountable, and to call this work exactly what it is: embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful of both the audience and the people who work here, and a blow to our authority and integrity. It is shameful that this work has been put to our audience and to our peers in the industry as a window to G/O’s future, and it is shameful that we as a team have had to spend an egregious amount of time away from our actual work to make it clear to you the unacceptable errors made in publishing this piece.”

(6) BURP! The Guardian, meanwhile, is there when “Authors file a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ‘ingesting’ their books”. One of them is Paul Tremblay.

Two authors have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, claiming that the organisation breached copyright law by “training” its model on novels without the permission of authors.

Mona Awad, whose books include Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World, filed the class action complaint to a San Francisco federal court last week.

ChatGPT allows users to ask questions and type commands into a chatbot and responds with text that resembles human language patterns. The model underlying ChatGPT is trained with data that is publicly available on the internet.

Yet, Awad and Tremblay believe their books, which are copyrighted, were unlawfully “ingested” and “used to train” ChatGPT because the chatbot generated “very accurate summaries” of the novels, according to the complaint. Sample summaries are included in the lawsuit as exhibits….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2010 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Catherynne M. Valente’s an amazing individual. I’m proud to say that I’ve had coffee with her as she lives here in this city. And her writing is just as stellar as she is. 

No Hugos so far but she has won Otherwise and Mythopoeic Awards for The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden (both Awards) and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (Mythopoeic). She also has won an Andre Norton Award.

Her other great series is the Fairyland series centered around twelve year-old September. And that’s all I’m saying about this delightful affair. Our Beginning is from the debut novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. 

It was first published online on her site but she’s taken that down. The first print edition was by Feiwel and Friends thirteen years ago. It was an independent publisher that has since been acquired by Macmillan.

So here’s our Beginning…

EXEUNT ON A LEOPARD In Which a Girl Named September Is Spirited Off by Means of a Leopard, Learns the Rules of Fairyland, and Solves a Puzzle 

Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parents’ house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were very large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her and flew to her window one evening just after her twelfth birthday. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage-driver’s cloak, and green jodhpurs, and green snowshoes. It is very cold above the clouds in the shantytowns where the Six Winds live. 

“You seem an ill-tempered and irascible enough child,” said the Green Wind.

“How would you like to come away with me and ride upon the Leopard of Little Breezes and be delivered to the great sea, which borders Fairyland? I am afraid I cannot go in, as Harsh Airs are not allowed, but I should be happy to deposit you upon the Perverse and Perilous Sea.

“Oh, yes!” breathed September, who disapproved deeply of pink-and-yellow teacups and also of small and amiable dogs.

“Well, then, come and sit by me, and do not pull too harshly on my Leopard’s fur, as she bites.” 

September climbed out of her kitchen window, leaving a sink full of soapy pink-and-yellow teacups with leaves still clinging to their bottoms in portentous shapes. One of them looked a bit like her father in his long coffee-colored trench coat, gone away over the sea with a rifle and gleaming things on his hat. One of them looked a bit like her mother, bending over a stubborn airplane engine in her work overalls, her arm muscles bulging. One of them looked a bit like a squashed cabbage. The Green Wind held out his hand, snug in a green glove, and September took both his hands and a very deep breath. One of her shoes came loose as she hoisted herself over the sill, and this will be important later, so let us take a moment to bid farewell to her prim little mary jane with its brass buckle as it clatters onto the parquet floor. Good-bye, shoe! September will miss you soon.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 6, 1945 — Burt Ward, 78. Robin in that Batman series. He would reprise the role in voicing the character in The New Adventures of Batman and Legends of the Superheroes, and two recent animated films, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and Batman vs. Two-Face. (Has anyone seen these?) The latter are the last work done by Adam West before his death. 
  • Born July 6, 1946 — Sylvester Stallone, 77. Although I think Stallone made a far less than perfect Dredd, I think the look and feel of the first film was spot on for the film which was something the second film, which had a perfect Dredd in Karl Urban, utterly lacked. And Demolition Man and him as Sergeant John Spartan were just perfect. 
  • Born July 6, 1950 — John Byrne, 73. A stellar comic book artist and writer. He’s done far too much to detail here so I’ll just single out that he scripted the first four issues of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, was the writer and artist on the excellent Blood of the Demon from 1-17 and responsible for Spider-Man: Chapter One which took a great deal of flak. 
  • Born July 6, 1951 — Rick Sternbach, 72. Best-known for his work in the Trek verse starting with ST: TMP where he designed control panel layouts and signage for the Enterprise. He’s next hired for Next Gen where communicator badge, phasers, PADDs and tricorders are all based on his designs. These designs will also be used on DS9 and Voyager. He also pretty much designed every starship during that time from the Cardassian and Klingon to the Voyager itself. He would win the Best Professional Artist Hugo at SunCon and IguanaCon II.
  • Born July 6, 1951 — Geoffrey Rush, 72. First genre role is like the Mystery Men series which I’ll bet everyone has forgotten, followed by House on Haunted Hill, Finding Nemo and some other genre work as well with his major genre role being as Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. And I’ll include his role in Shakespeare in Love as Philip Henslowe even if strictly speaking it’s not genre related as I really, really love that film. 
  • Born July 6, 1952 — Hilary Mantel. Though best remembered as the author of the Wolf Hall franchise, she’s actually written some genre fiction. The Mysterious Stranger involves supernatural occurrences in a small British town in the Fifties; and Beyond Black is about a psychic who sees more than she wants to. She also indulged in alternative history in the short story, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983”. (Died 2022.)
  • Born July 6, 1980 — Eva Green, 43. First crosses our paths in Casino Royale as Vesper Lynd followed by Serafina Pekkala in The Golden Compass, and then Angelique Bouchard Collins in Dark Shadows. Ava Lord in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (weird films those definitely are) with a decided move sideways into being Miss Alma Peregrine for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. And she was Colette Marchant in Dumbo. She’s got two series roles to her credit, Morgan Pendragon in Camelot and Vanessa Ives in Penny Dreadful.

(9) TITAN COMICS GOODIES AT SDCC. The Titan Booth #5537 at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 will be the place to get some limited availability merchandise. Some of it looks pretty cute, like these pins.

  • Doctor Who: Thirteen Piece TARDIS Enamel Pin Collection

Titan Booth #5537 at SDCC 2023 is the only opportunity for US Doctor Who fans to buy this EXCLUSIVE Thirteen Piece TARDIS Enamel Pin Collection. Please note: this beautiful, one-of-a-kind TARDIS collection will be available from Titan Booth #5537 from Preview Night (Wednesday July 19th). Numbers are EXTREMELY LIMITED. First come, first served.

And there will be some collectible figures available, too.

  • Doctor Who: Fourteenth Doctor 3″ Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure
  • Doctor Who: Fourteenth Doctor 3″ Classic TITAN Vinyl Figure

David Tennant’s upcoming Fourteenth Doctor arrives in San Diego as a pair of separately-packaged, separately-available EXCLUSIVE 3” TITANS Vinyl Figures. Both releases (3” Kawaii Fourteenth Doctor and 3” Classic Fourteenth Doctor) are available from Titan Booth #5537.

  • My Hero Academia: Dabi 3″ Glow-In-The-Dark Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure
  • My Hero Academia: Shigaraki 3″ Glow-In-The-Dark Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure

My Hero Academia TITANS Viny Figures return to Titan Booth #5537 as a pair of separately-packaged, separately-available San Diego EXCLUSIVE 3” Kawaii TITANS Vinyl Figures. Both releases (Dabi and Shigaraki) feature Glow-In-The-Dark effects and are available from Titan Booth #5537.

(10) CARVING UP THE STREAMING MARKET. JustWatch has shared their graphs about the market shares of streaming services for the second quarter in 2023.

SVOD market shares in Q2 2023
Prime Video continues to hold down the streaming crown in the US with a 1% lead over global giant, Netflix. Major players: Max and Disney+ also face similar challenges with a 2% gap separating the two.

Market share development in 2023
Newly rebranded streaming giant: Max (formerly HBO Max) displays positive development, gaining +1%; Paramount+ also won with a +1% increase in shares. On the other hand, Disney+ and Hulu drop in shares, suffering -1% losses each.

(11) SURF’S UP. Nature reports “Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time”. “Using beacon stars called pulsars, a decades-long effort has found space-time ripples that are light years wide.”

Gravitational waves are back, and they’re bigger than ever.

After the historic first detection of the space-time rattles in 2015 using ground-based detectors, researchers could have now rediscovered Albert Einstein’s waves with an entirely different technique. The approach tracks changes in the distances between Earth and beacon stars in its Galactic neighbourhood called pulsars, which reveal how the space in between is stretched and squeezed by the passage of gravitational waves.

Whereas the original discovery spotted waves originating from the collision and merger of two star-sized black holes, the most likely source of the latest finding is the combined signal from many pairs of much larger black holes — millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun — slowly orbiting each other in the hearts of distant galaxies. These waves are thousands of times stronger and longer than those found in 2015, with wavelengths of up to tens of light years. By contrast, the ripples detected since 2015 using a technique called interferometry are just tens or hundreds of kilometres long.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George shows the many advantages that would come our way “If We Stopped Using Numbers”

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

Pixel Scroll 6/11/23 The Pixel. It Destroyed Its Scroll. Yes. YES. The Pixel Is Out

Posted on by
20

(1) THESE FEET ARE MADE FOR WALKING. How have I not covered this before? The North American Bigfoot Center in Boring, Oregon.

The Exhibit Halls are an admission area.  Dozens of displays feature a wide array of bigfoot evidence and historical artifacts.  Our life-sized sasquatch replica (nicknamed “Murphy”) acts as a centerpiece of the exhibit hall and is a popular backdrop for family photos.  We feature short documentaries and films in our small theater, as well as on the displays themselves.  

(2) AGREE OR DISAGREE? Inverse writer Ryan Britt insists “You Need To Watch The Most Misunderstood Sci-Fi Movie On Netflix ASAP”.

…Saying Dune was bad in 1984 because it was either too dense or not enough like the book, isn’t a great criterion, because there are so many other examples of great sci-fi/fantasy adaptations that work in spite of (or because of?) these kinds of so-called flaws. Game of Thrones is pretty dense, and people love that. Meanwhile, again, Blade Runner is a rowdy departure from Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and that’s probably why it’s good. Plus, it bears mentioning here that the actual events of the film, in the broad strokes, do unfold pretty much the way Herbert wrote it. And, leading up to the film’s release, Herbert’s praise of Lynch was effusive, calling it a “visual feast” and saying that Lynch captured many of his scenes perfectly, with “some of them [scenes] … better” than in his novel.

Okay, so, perhaps you’re now convinced that it’s not cool to hate on the Dune 1984 from a Frank Herbert-purist point of view. Perhaps you’re also now convinced that this was a noble attempt with all the best intentions. This still might not convince you to fire it up on Netflix. You’ve heard (or remember) that aspects of the film are rough and haven’t aged well. Here’s the thing: You’re right. This Dune is rough, and some of it really doesn’t work. It’s tonally incongruous at times, and yes, you sometimes do feel the movie rushing through the plot points, which is weird because, at other times, the movie feels slow….

Yeah, by the time I happened to wind up seated behind Frank Herbert at the 1985 Hugo ceremony I’d heard he liked the movie a lot, so I had to forgo making any Mystery Science Theatre 3000-style jokes to the fan beside me while the trailer ran. (Right, MST3K didn’t even start airing for another three years, but you know what I mean.)

(3) ACCOUNTANTS NOT ACCOUNTABILITY. “Jurassic Park at 30: Spielberg’s sleek blockbuster remains a grave warning” says the Guardian’s Scott Tobias.  

In the face of various leadership disasters, it’s become common meme-ing practice in recent years to note that the mayor of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – the man who wanted to keep the beaches open, even as a Great White was feasting on a buffet of tourists – is still the mayor in Jaws II. Point being, there are rarely any consequences to arrogance and ineptitude, especially if a person has a certain folksy charisma and is only considered guilty of pursuing the almighty dollar.

The world is run by the mayors of Jaws. And when Spielberg adapted Michael Crichton’s bestselling sci-fi/adventure Jurassic Park, he found another one in Dr John Hammond, an avuncular industrialist who rushes to make a theme park out of cloned dinosaurs. As played by Richard Attenborough, Hammond is a white-bearded grandpa with a twinkle in his eye, eager to open a prehistoric zoo where no expense was spared but all corners were cut. It’s hard to understand him as a villain, though, because Spielberg sees a little of himself in a commercial visionary bringing wonders to the masses. He’s just another fool in charge.

Thirty years later, Jurassic Park has only burnished its reputation as one of Spielberg’s finest blockbusters, despite sequels and reboots that keep discovering new frontiers in insulting an audience’s intelligence. But as technology continues to advance, there are more John Hammonds than ever, promoting an astounding future that can feel like an endless beta test, full of bugs that these self-styled geniuses have no ability to anticipate, much less resolve. Though the film feels like Jaws 2.0 in many respects, it also finds Spielberg in a slyly cynical, even self-lacerating mood: he knows what it’s like to create eye-popping spectacles that can be merchandized on T-shirts and lunch boxes. Hammond is his worst image of himself….

(4) THE MONEY KEEPS ROLLING IN. Seems like a strange juxtaposition of articles to follow the digs at Jurassic Park capitalism with this report from Variety that “’Spider-Verse 2′ Surpasses Box Office Gross of First Film in 12 Days”. And few enjoy a strange juxtaposition more than I do…

After less than two weeks of release, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has surpassed the entire box office run of its predecessor, 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

Over the weekend, the comic book sequel hit $226 million in North America and $390 million globally. It now stands as Sony’s highest-grossing animated release in history. The original film, also a box office winner, tapped out with $190 in North America and $384 million globally.

Despite competition from Paramount’s “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which opened to $60 million and targets a similar audience of younger males, “Spider-Verse” added $55 million in its second weekend of domestic release, a decline of 55% from its huge $120 million debut….

(5) YOUR MONEY’S WORTH. Entertainment Weekly talks to everyone involved in the live action, stunts, and effects to learn “How Rings of Power crafted that stunning battle sequence”.

…Here, some of the filmmakers behind The Rings of Power’s biggest episode break down how they crafted that epic battle sequence — from complicated stunt work to careful cinematography. Directed by Charlotte Brandstrom, the episode is entirely centered in the Southlands of Middle-earth, where elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and human Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) lead a scrappy band of villagers as they fight back against a horde of invading orcs. Later, the regal Númenórean cavalry arrives, led by Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s queen-regent Míriel, setting up a grand clash on horseback. 

It’s a massive moment, where multiple story lines converge for the first time. Much of the action is centered in the Southlands village, and the production team constructed the set from scratch, nestled into a bucolic valley in New Zealand. Legendary stunt coordinator and second unit director Vic Armstrong remembers wandering around the set while it was still being built, sketching out action sequences in his head. “That’s the moment I like best, getting creative and dreaming up ideas,” he says with a smile. “It’s like you have to deliver a big cake, and the location tells you what the ingredients are, so you can build up to that lovely tasty cake at the end.”…

(6) MEMORY LANE.

2015 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Canadian author Leah Bobet this time and she is someone that I’d never, as far as I can remember, heard of. She was the last editor of the online Ideomancer zine (fiction, poetry and reviews) which you can read here.

She also contributed quite a bit of fiction to Shadow Unit, the collaborative story created by Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull.  

Our Beginning is An Inheritance of Ashes: A Novel which is also that which gave her the only Awards she has to date, a Prix Aurora Award and the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. The latter think this is a Young Adult novel. 

It is but one of two novels to date, the other being Above. She’s written much, much more short fiction, some forty pieces to date, and thirty-six poems as well.

Now that Beginning… 

PROLOGUE 

Eight Years Before, Midsummer

“HALLIE?” THE VOICE WHISPERED AROUND THE BROKEN chairs and cobwebs, and I breathed out because it wasn’t my father. 

Uncle Matthias edged past the snapped spinning wheel, over a pile of fishing nets set aside for mending. “You can come out, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s over.” My ears still rang with Papa’s roaring swears, with Uncle Matthias’s voice pitched low to cut. They didn’t bother whispering anymore when they fought. Marthe had nudged her foot against mine—I’m right here—when Papa started to growl, but I wasn’t half as big or strong as my older sister. When the first dish had flown, I’d run for the smokehouse—and I hadn’t looked back. 

Deep behind my junk barricades, I swallowed. “Who won?”

“Nobody.” Uncle Matthias’s light steps stopped in front of me. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I scowled. Of course it mattered. I would feel that win or loss in the weight of Papa’s footsteps on our farmhouse floorboards, in whether being slow on my chores tomorrow would mean an indifferent smile or a bucket of water across the face. I peeked out from behind the scratched table leg. “Who won?” 

Uncle Matthias sighed. “Your father did,” he said, and my shoulders sagged with relief. “Come sit with me, kiddo. You’ll get splinters down there.” 

My uncle’s careful hands lifted me from my tangled fortress, carried me—even though I was much too big for carrying—to Great-grandmother’s red brocade stool. He set me down gently, a thin, hardy brushstroke of a man, and I pulled my knees up to my chest. There were new islands in the mess of the smokehouse floor: clothes, tools, two pairs of walking boots.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 11, 1927 — Kit Pedler. In the mid-1960s, Pedler, who was a scientist, became the unofficial scientific adviser to the Doctor Who production team. He would help create the Cybermen. In turn, he wrote three scripts for the series: “The Tenth Planet” (with Gerry Davis), “The Moonbase” and “The Tomb of the Cybermen” (also with Gerry Davis). Pedler and Davis also created and co-wrote Doomwatch which ran for three seasons on the Beeb. (Died 1981.)
  • Born June 11, 1933 — Gene Wilder. The first role I saw him play was The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles. Of course, he has more genre roles than that starting out with Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory followed by Blazing Saddles and then Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein. He was Sigerson Holmes in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, a brilliantly weird film who cast included Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Roy Kinnear and Leo McKern!  I’ve also got him playing Lord Ravensbane/The Scarecrow in The Scarecrow, a 1972 TV film based based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Feathertop”. (Died 2016.)
  • Born June 11, 1945 — Adrienne Barbeau, 78. Swamp Thing with her is quite pulpy. She’s also in the Carnivale series, a very weird affair that never got wrapped up properly. She provided the voice of Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series. And she was in both Creepshow and The Fog. Oh and ISFDB lists her as writing two novels, Vampyres of Hollywood (with Michael Scott) and presumably another vampire novel, Love Bites. Anyone here read these? 
  • Born June 11, 1959 — Hugh Laurie, 64. Best known as House to most folks which I just watched in its entirety. His most recent genre role was as Mycroft Holmes in the Holmes and Watson film. He’s had past genre roles in The Borrowers, the Stuart Little franchise, Tomorrowland, Blackadder: Back & Forth and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased). He also appeared in Blackadder.
  • Born June 11, 1968 — Justina Robson, 55. Author of the excellent Quantum Gravity series which I loved. I’ve not started her Natural History series, so would be interested in hearing from anyone here who has. I was surprised that she hasn’t picked up any Hugo nominations so far, although her work has been up for other awards quite a few times.
  • Born June 11, 1970 — Jane Goldman, 53. She’s a English screenwriter, author and producer who’s done a lot of work but I’m going to list but a few of her works including the screenplay for the Hugo winning Stardust, the same for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, based on the Ransom Riggs novel, The Limehouse Golem screenplay off Peter Ackroyd’s novel and a screenplay on spec off Bill Willingham’s Fables series that never got financed. She was also a fan of the X-Files as she wrote two volumes of The X-Files Book of the Unexplained. 
  • Born June 11, 1971 — P. Djèlí Clark, 52. I’m very much enjoying A Master of Djinn which made my Hugo nominations list. It follows his “The Haunting of Tram Car 015” novella, a 2020 Hugo finalist, and “The Angel of Khan el-Khalili” and “A Dead Djinn in Cairo”, short stories, all set in his Dead Djinn universe. I’ve not read his “Black Drums” novella which garnered a Hugo nomination at Dublin 2019, nor the “Ring Shout” novella which got a Hugo nomination at DisCon III, so I welcome opinions on them. And I see his “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” short story also got a 2019 Hugo nomination.  

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Crabgrass relates Toy Story’s impact and delivers a bonus sff reference.
  • Lola shows one dog’s idea of a safety precaution.
  • Wallace the Brave demonstrates how a little imagination can be very motivating.

(9) I ALREADY GET IT, THANKS. MSN.com has the “10 Weirdest Punchlines in Far Side Comics History” – and their explanation for every joke is something I promise you can be safely skipped.

(10) IT’S A MASSACRE. Mashable names “Every TV show that’s been canceled in 2023 so far, from ‘Avenue 5’ to ‘Ziwe’”.

As we reach the midpoint of 2023, it’s time to take a look back at the scripted dramas, comedies, and genre-bending series that have been taken off our weekly TV schedules. The wave of cancellations can be attributed to a myriad of factors including the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike or streaming services looking to save a few bucks in tax money….

There are four genre casualties from this provider alone:

HBO / Max

  • Avenue 5 – Canceled after 2 seasons
  • Doom Patrol – Canceled after 4 seasons
  • Pennyworth – Canceled after 3 seasons
  • Titans – Canceled after 4 seasons

(11) GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE. John Scalzi put up two photos and — at least among his commenters — it’s not at all close which one they want to be his official author photo.

(12) SPACE TO WRITE. “Why Wouldn’t NASA Want to Use Pencils in Space? Here’s The True Story” says Science Alert.

…But why such a big brouhaha in the first place?

As it turns out, there are certain things that you don’t want floating around in space. Pencil detritus is one of them. The lead could snap off, which presents a hazard; but neither do you want flammable wood shavings floating loose in a spacecraft, or the microscopic particles of electrically conductive graphite that shed from a pencil as it writes.

Any minute particles that can get lodged in delicate machinery are a hazard in space, and the particles that come off pencils were cause for significant concern. Fire, in particular, is a serious safety issue in spacecraft, and one NASA doesn’t treat lightly after a fire killed all three members of the Apollo 1 mission in 1967.

The ballpoint pens of the time were also hazardous. The first commercially successful ballpoint pen was introduced in 1945, and the pens, according to Fisher Pen Company founder Paul C. Fisher, “leaked everywhere”. Droplets of ink are also not something you really want floating around a space capsule….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 6/5/23 A Baby Pixel Is So Cute In Its Scroller Pushed Along By Its Nanny Filer

Posted on by
24

(1) 2025 WORLDCON SITE SELECTION UPDATE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon Bid News for June reports theirs was the only bid filed, and the only one that will be on the official ballot. (If another one appears it could still be a write-in.)

Seattle filed its site selection paperwork in April which was acknowledged and approved! According to the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Constitution, bid documents for opposing bids must be filed no later than 180 days before the opening of the administering convention. No other bids were filed, so Seattle will be the only bid on the printed ballot. We could not be more excited! Supporting memberships are still on sale through our website, and we hope to have strong voter turnout in October.

… Watch for announcements on how to vote in site selection remotely. Barring an unlikely loss to a write-in campaign, we also plan to sell upgrades to supporting members who do not participate in site selection which allow them to purchase attending memberships to the Seattle Worldcon for a similar cost. Stay tuned for more!

(2) DROPPED LEAVES ARE HEARD FROM. At Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss shares a group statement provided to her by 17 current and former clients of New Leaf Literary. “Call For Change: Current and Former New Leaf Literary & Media Authors Speak Out”.

…Agents parting ways with agencies is not uncommon; however, it is inexcusable for an agency of New Leaf’s caliber to lack clear internal and external protocols for such situations….

(3) SFF EVENT IN BERLIN. Cora Buhlert’s conreport is up: “Cora’s Adventures at Metropol Con in Berlin, Part 2: The Con”. Here’s an excerpt covering a panel about sf in divided postwar Germany.

…The panel was very interesting and went into what distinguished East German science fiction from West German and Western science fiction in general. One of the points made was that since East Germany has an official vision of what the future would look like, namely a Socialist utopia, the questions East German science fiction asked was not so much, “What will the future look like?”, because they already knew, but “How do we get there?” and “How do we do this?” The above-mentioned novel Andymon by Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller is actually a good example for this, because it’s about some young people landing on a planet they’re supposed to colonise, only that the planet is not as advertised, so they have to figure out how to make it habitable anyway.

Emma Braslavsky pointed out that by the 1980s, when East Germany was visibly declining and falling apart (which tracks with what Aunt Metel told me, namely that East Germany continued improve and progress, albeit slowly, into the 1970s, then it stagnated and gradually fell apart), the Socialist Utopia was more of a promise, much like Christmas. Just sleep one more night and Christmas – Socialism is here and everything will be wonderful. Emma Braslavsky also noted that when she watched things like Star Trek on West German TV (a large part of East Germany could and did watch West German TV), someone muttered some complete nonsense like “Reverse the polarity” and it actually worked.

Even though the panelists grew up in two very different countries and systems, there were some things that united all of them. For example, it was never easy to be a budding SF fan in a small rural village or town, whether in East or West Germany, because library selections were limited and books or comics not always easily available in local shops….

(4) CATHERINE LUNDOFF Q&A. Oliver Brackenbury’s So I’m Writing a Novel… podcast devotes episode 66 to the “Queen of Swords Press”.

When most of us think about publishing we tend to think of one of the Big Five (Four? How many are we down to now?), but there is a whole world of smaller, independent publishers to explore!

Wanting to learn more about that world, Oliver spoke with Catherine Lundoff about her own experiences launching and running Queen of Swords Press.

(5) AUTHORS GUILD RECOMMENDS NEW AI CONTRACT CLAUSES. The Authors Guild is introducing four new model clauses concerning AI to its Model Trade Book Contract and Model Literary Translation Contract. “AG Introduces New Publishing Agreement Clauses Concerning AI”.

…In addition to the recent clause preventing the use of books in training generative AI without an author’s express permission, the new clauses require an author’s written consent for their publisher to use AI-generated book translations, audiobook narration, or cover art. These clauses can benefit publishers and the publishing industry at large by maintaining the high quality craftsmanship that consumers are used to.

The Authors Guild also urges publishers to identify any books that contain a significant amount of AI-generated text. This summer, the Guild will be publishing AI guidelines for authors and publishers containing each of these conditions.

The purpose of these demands is to prevent the use of AI to replace human creators. The Authors Guild strongly believes that human writing, narration, and translation are vastly superior to their AI mimics. Moreover, as an ethical matter, the Authors Guild opposes relying on these tools to replace human creators, in part because current AI content generators have largely been trained on pre-existing works without consent. The Guild stands in solidarity with human creators in other industries, who like authors, face professional threats from AI-generated content flooding the markets for their work….

We encourage publishers to adopt these clauses and authors and agents to request that they be added to their contracts.

Clause Relating to Authors’ Use of AI
Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Authors shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [5%] AI-generated text. 

Audio Book Clause (For Use With Audiobook Grants)
With respect to any audiobook created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not permit or cause the Work to be narrated by artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human narrator, without Author’s prior and express written consent.

Translation Clause (For Use With Grants of Translation Rights)
With respect to any translations created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not translate or permit or cause the Work to be translated into another language with artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human translator, without Author’s prior and express written consent. For purposes of clarification, a human translator may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the translation, provided that the translation substantially comprises human creation and the human translator has control over, and reviews and approves, each word in the translation.

Cover Design Clause (For Book Contracts)
Publisher agrees not to use AI-generated images, artwork, design, and other visual elements for the book cover or interior artwork without Author’s prior express approval. For purposes of clarification, a human designer may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the creation of artwork for the Work, provided that the human artist has control over the final artwork and the artwork substantially comprises human creation.

(6) GAMES KIDS PLAYED. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight today” is for a book called D20 or Die!: Memories of Old School Role-Playing Games from Today’s Grown-Up Kids, edited by Jim Beard.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

Because no matter what the theme is, they will see themselves in the personal essays. That’s the beauty of these books, I think, that we all have these shared experiences and we like to see echoes of our own lives in what we read. Beyond that, if you love RPGs and began playing as a kid, you’re going to love this book.

(7) CLARKE CONTENDERS. The list of 97 books submitted for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award has been posted: “5 judges, 988,172,368 possible shortlist combinations”.

As is now traditional, we’re publishing below the full list of eligible titles received by the Clarke Award from which our official shortlist selection is decided.

This is released as an open-source resource to showcase the breadth and diversity of UK science fiction literature as part of its ongoing commitment to self-accountability and supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the publishing industry and science fiction community.

This year’s judging panel received 97 eligible titles submitted by 40 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.

The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023 are:

(8) SPOCK FAMILY TREE. All I can say is that I’m glad this isn’t a trivia quiz. “Star Trek: Every Spock Family Member, Explained” at ScreenRant.

The Vulcan known as Spock was one of the most important characters in Star Trek, and many of his family members also played key roles in the franchise. Ever since his debut in Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock has been an integral part of Star Trek lore, and so has his kin. As the series progressed, more and more of Spock’s family tree began to be fleshed out, and it was clear that Spock was one of the most connected individuals in the Alpha Quadrant. From villains to ambassadors, Spock’s family was just as important as he was in shaping the franchise….

Here’s one member you might have overlooked.

Perrin

When Sarek returned in The Next Generation, he was accompanied by a new wife who filled much the same role that Amanda did. Because of the large gap in the Star Trek timeline between TOS and TNG, it could be assumed that Amanda died of old age, and Perrin, a human woman, eventually married Sarek. Because of Sarek’s advanced age, she was a companion and caretaker to him, and she was very protective of his important image as he began to succumb to Bendii syndrome in TNG season 3, episode 23, “Sarek”. Unlike Amanda though, Perrin did not get personally involved in Sarek and Spock’s affairs.

(9) WHO NEEDS MARKETING? There’s a whole book blaming insufficient marketing for the failure of John Carter to become a blockbuster, which might make you wonder if this plan will work. “Studio Ghibli to Release Miyazaki’s Final Film With No Trailer, No Marketing” – The Hollywood Reporter explains why.

… The forthcoming film, which opens in Japan on July 14, is easily the most anticipated movie coming to Japanese theaters in years — and exceedingly little is known about it. (U.S. and international release dates for the film have not yet been set.)

Ghibli previously described the film as “a grand fantasy” loosely inspired by Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, a coming-of-age story about the emotional and philosophical development of a young boy after the death of his father….

In the interview, [lead producer Toshio] Suzuki also contrasted Ghibli’s approach for How Do You Live? with the usual marketing methods of Hollywood.

“There’s an American movie — ah, I almost said the title out loud! — coming out this summer around the same time [as How Do You Live?],” he said. “They’ve made three trailers for it, and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.”…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

2007 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Elizabeth Bear’s “Tideline” reminds me how great the short stories are by a writer whose novels I usually am reading, such as the ever so excellent White Space series.

This story was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in their June 2007 issue. It’s been reprinted a number of times and Primes Books published it in the Shoggoths in Bloom collection they released which is available from the usual suspects at a very nice price. 

It’s also in The Best of Elizabeth Bear from Subterranean Press which I need not say will set you back many a penny.

The audio series StarShipSofa in their number thirty-nine production has it as the lead piece here.

And now the Beginning to this story…

Chalcedony wasn’t built for crying. She didn’t have it in her, not unless her tears were cold tapered glass droplets annealed by the inferno heat that had crippled her. 

Such tears as that might slide down her skin over melted sensors to plink unfeeling on the sand. And if they had, she would have scooped them up, with all the other battered pretties, and added them to the wealth of trash jewels that swung from the nets reinforcing her battered carapace. 

They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded like a spider’s palps beneath the turreted head that finished her pointed end, her polyceramic armor spiderwebbed like shatterproof glass. Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb. She was nearly derelict. 

The beach was where she met Belvedere.

Butterfly coquinas unearthed by retreating breakers squirmed into wet grit under Chalcedony’s trailing limb. One of the rear pair, it was less of a nuisance on packed sand. It worked all right as a pivot, and as long as she stayed off rocks, there were no obstacles to drag it over. 

As she struggled along the tideline, she became aware of someone watching. She didn’t raise her head. Her chassis was equipped with targeting sensors which locked automatically on the ragged figure crouched by a weathered rock. Her optical input was needed to scan the tangle of seaweed and driftwood, Styrofoam and sea glass that marked high tide. 

He watched her all down the beach, but he was unarmed, and her algorithms didn’t deem him a threat. Just as well. She liked the weird flat-topped sandstone boulder he crouched beside. 

The next day, he watched again. It was a good day; she found a moonstone, some rock crystal, a bit of red-orange pottery, and some sea glass worn opalescent by the tide.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 5, 1908 — John Russell Fearn. British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp magazines. A prolific author, he also published novels as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms such as Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong and others. As himself, I see his first story as being The Intelligence Gigantic published in Amazing Stories in 1933. His Golden Amazon series of novels ran to over to two dozen titles, and the Clayton Drew Mars Adventure series that only ran to four novels. (Died 1960.)
  • Born June 5, 1928 — Robert Lansing. He was secret agent Gary Seven in the “Assignment: Earth” on Star Trek. The episode was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have starred Lansing and Teri Garr, but the series never happened.  He of course appeared on other genre series such as The Twilight Zone, Journey to the Unknown, Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (Died 1994.)
  • Born June 5, 1931 — Barbara Paul. Writer of mysteries, some twenty or so, and a handful of genre novels. Her novels feature in-jokes such as her Full Frontal Murder mystery novel which uses names from Blake’s 7. Genre wise, she’s written five SF novels including a Original Series Trek novel, The Three-Minute Universe, which is available at the usual suspects. (Died 2022.)
  • Born June 5, 1946 — John Bach, 77. Einstein on Farscape, the Gondorian Ranger Madril in the second and third movies of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Also a British body guard on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. And he was the body double for shooting of Saruman in place of Christopher Lee, who was unable to fly to New Zealand for principal photography on The Hobbit film series.
  • Born June 5, 1953 — Kathleen Kennedy, 70. Film producer responsible for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, her first film, and later produced the Jurassic Park franchise.  She’s been involved in over sixty films, I’d say of which at least half are genre, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark as an associate to Steven Spielberg. Amblin Films with her husband and Spielberg has produced many of the genre’s best loved films.
  • Born June 5, 1960 — Margo Lanagan, 63. Tender Morsels won a World Fantasy Award for best novel, and Sea-Hearts won the same for Best Novella. She’s an alumna of the Clarion West Writers Workshop In 1999 and returned as a teacher in 2011 and 2013.
  • Born June 5, 1976 — Lauren Beukes, 47. South African writer and scriptwriter. Moxyland, her first novel, is a cyberpunk novel set in a future Cape Town.  Zoo City, a hardboiled thriller with fantasy elements is set in a re-imagined Johannesburg. It won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a Kitschies Red Tentacle Award for best novel. (I love the name of the latter award!) And The Shining Girls would win her an August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. Afterland was on the long list for a NOMMO. Much of her short fiction is collected in Slipping: Stories, Essays, & Other Writing. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Sheldon witnesses an Uber reservation being placed for “Mister Gandalf”.

(13) IT’S CRACKERS. Although visiting Space Cowboy Books might be a better reason for driving to Joshua Tree, while you are in town you could pick up a snack: “Cheez-It Gas Station Pops Up in California Desert” at Food & Wine.

…From Monday, June 5 through Sunday, June 11, anyone who needs a road trip snack-break can visit the Cheez-It Stop to pick up several bags of orange crackers. The Cheez-It Stop has been equipped with the world’s first (and so far, its only) Cheez-It Pump which will spray bags of Cheez-Its through your open car window. And best of all, it’s completely free to take advantage of the pump and feed your Cheez-It cravings. 

Regardless, you just have seven days to visit the Cheez-It Stop before it disappears into the desert’s memory. It can be found at 61943 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, California and will be open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT every day between now and Sunday.

(14) HITS THE SPOT. Food & Wine also tells how “Wes Anderson and Dogfish Head Collaborate on ‘Asteroid City’ Beer”

…The Delaware-based beermaker has brewed up its own homage to the film called Asteroid City Lager, and it collaborated with the director himself to design the label. According to Dogfish Head, Asteroid City Lager was brewed with a combination of regeneratively grown pilsner malt, Tuxpeno corn malt, and Michigan-grown Zuper Saazer hops. The beer was then finished with a Pennsylvania lager yeast, which the brewery says is “a nod to the 1950s era during which Asteroid City takes place.” 

… The beer’s eye-catching label pays tribute to the film’s desert landscapes and to the Asteroid City billboard that shows the fictional town’s biggest tourist attraction, a giant crater left by a meteor….

(15) CHOCOLATE ORTHODOXY. I can confirm this will be a controversial opinion in our neck of the woods.

(16) WOOLLY BULLY. [Item by Michael Toman.} Should we fear the “footfall” of a “Mega Bo Peep?” “Asteroid the size of 28 sheep to ram past the Earth” reports The Jerusalem Post.

Baaaad news? How big is the asteroid coming toward Earth in 2023?

Asteroid 2023 HO18 is estimated by NASA to have a diameter of as much as 50 meters. In imperial measurements for American readers, that would be 164 feet or just under 55 yards.

But to use a more creative metric, consider the humble domesticated sheep (Ovis aries). These animals are widespread throughout the world and while there are a wide number of breeds, they are all still part of the same species.

(17) HELLO, COUSIN. Smithsonian Magazine wonders whether “A 146,000-Year-Old Fossil Dubbed ‘Dragon Man’ Might Be One of Our Closest Relatives”.

Three years ago, a Chinese farmer made an unusual donation to a university museum—a giant, nearly intact human skull with strange proportions and an unusual backstory. The man’s family had been hiding the fossil since it was unearthed at a construction site in Harbin nearly 90 years ago.

After geochemical detective work to locate where the fossil was likely found, and painstaking comparison of its distinctive features with those of other early humans, some of the scientists investigating the find believe the cranium from Harbin could represent an entirely new human species—Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” If so, they further suggest it might even be the human lineage most closely related to ourselves.

“The discovery of the Harbin cranium and our analyses suggest that there is a third lineage of archaic human [that] once lived in Asia, and this lineage has [a] closer relationship with H. sapiens than the Neanderthals,” says Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University. If so, that would make the strange skull a close relative indeed since most humans today still have significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA from repeated interbreeding between our species….

(18) ANOTHER EARLY HOMININ BREAKTHROUGH. “Homo naledi had a brain one-third the size of humans but displayed intelligence far beyond, according to new discovery” – ABC News has the story.

Bigger brains may not equate to higher intelligence after all, according to a remarkable discovery about an early hominin.

Homo naledi, a hominin discovered in the Rising Star cave system in Africa’s Cradle of Humankind in 2013, had human-like hands and feet but a brain a third of the size of humans — a characteristic researchers previously attributed to a marker of far less intelligence than its Homo sapien relatives.

But the assertion that bigger brains make for a smarter species may have been disestablished now that scientists have made a harrowing journey into the Rising Star cave and discovered that the species — which lived about 335,000 to 236,000 years ago — buried its dead and marked the graves. It is the first non-human species in history known to do so, paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer in Residence Lee Berger told ABC News.

…The researchers began to hypothesize that Homo naledi buried its dead during continued excavations in 2018 and in July 2022, those hunches were not only proven but amplified once Berger and his team found skeletal remains of Homo naledi and then carvings on the wall above them to mark those laid to rest there.

The symbols included triangles, squares and a sort-of “hashtag” sign, as in two cross-hatching equal signs, Berger said. However, it is unclear what these carvings meant, and researchers will be delving into whether there is a “random chance” that Homo naledi used the same symbols as humans or if they were obtained from some sort of shared ancestry.

(19) REH SCHOLARSHIP. A video of the “Glenn Lord Symposium”, i.e. the academic track of the 2023 Robert E. Howard Days, is available for viewing on YouTube. 

1)Dr. Dierk Gunther, Professor of English Literature at Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo His presentation: “Through the Eyes of an Ophirean Woman: Thoughts Concerning the Racism of Robert E. Howard’s The Vale of Lost Women.” 2) Brian Murphy, Howard Scholar His presentation: “Far Countries of the Mind: The Frontier Fantasy of Robert E. Howard.” 3) Dr. Willard Oliver, Professor of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville His presentation: “Robert E. Howard and Oil Booms: Crime, Disorder and Reality.”

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “You Won’t Believe Who Did the LEGO Sequence in ‘Across the Spider-Verse’” says Collider. But you will.

…After Collider’s special screening, a member of the audience asked Dos Santos how hard it was to put the LEGO dimension together. Surprisingly, Dos Santos revealed the whole scene was created by the 14-year-old Youtuber LegoMe_TheOG, known for recreating movies and TV shows trailer and full scenes with LEGO pieces. A few months before Across the Universe hit theaters, LegoMe_TheOG made a viral recreation of the movie’s first teaser. After that, producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller brought him to the project….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/30/23 Wouldn’t You Love To Teach The File To Scroll In Pixel Harmony?

Posted on by
27

(1) MEMORIAL DAY CONTINUED. Rob Hansen forwarded the link to a Find-A-Grave page devoted to PFC Alden L Ackerman (1924-1945), Forry’s brother, who died in the Battle of the Bulge.

He also sent this link to the Fancyclopedia page on War, which at the bottom has a list of fans and writers who died in World War II that we know of.

Sam Moskowitz paid tribute to them at Newarkon II (1946) the first post-war con: Fantasy Times 12. Read his speech at the link.

(2) GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN. Cora Buhlert is still working on her Metropol Con report. However, she has completed her post about her adventures in Berlin before the con began. Includes a visit to an awesome bookstore: “Cora’s Adventures at Metropol Con in Berlin, Part 1: Pre-Con Wanderings”.

…In many ways I was reminded of one of my first visits to Berlin in the spring of 1990, when the Wall was already open, but East Germany still existed as a state. At the time, we decided to walk from the Victory column in (West) Berlin to the Brandenburg Gate. Because the Wall and the Gate were open, we just walked through and had our passports stamped by the friendliest East German border guard I’ve ever seen and just kept walking into East Berlin, walking along famous streets and buildings we knew existed, but had never actually seen, until we reached Alexanderplatz (BTW, I tried to walk that memorable route again from the other side and gave up halfway through, because it’s a very long walk and I’m no longer 16), got tired and decided to take the train back to West Berlin. So we went to Friedrichstraße station and looked at the network plan on the platform, only to find a huge gray hole where West Berlin should be. So I went to a train attendant and told him, “We need to go back to West Berlin to Uhlandstraße station [at any rate, I think it was Uhlandstraße], but West Berlin doesn’t exist on your map, so which train do I need to take?” The East Berlin train attendant apologised for the maps – they hadn’t gotten around to replacing them yet – and told me which train to take….

(3) THE CWCU. Literary Hub’s Joel Cuthbertson is a fan: “In Praise of Sci-Fi Legend Connie Willis’s Cinematic Universe”.

Whenever a film buff brings up The Philadelphia Story, I like to shock them with blasphemy. A foundational Hollywood picture, the 1940 film stars Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Katherine Hepburn at the height of their powers, a nuclear trio of contrasting charms, the suave versus the folksy versus the imperious. My sin is that I prefer its slick remake. Released in 1956, High Society is not as edgy, complicated, or electric. The star trio—Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Grace Kelly—still radiates, but gently and casually. Aside from adding musical numbers, the film’s main goal is to capture an echo of interwar charm in Technicolor.

If this is an elaborate way to introduce Connie Willis, sci-fi’s queen of time travel fiction, we find ourselves already close to the heart of her work, which thrives on unlikely crossovers. A devotee of Golden Age cinema, Willis has authored at least ten standalone novels and dozens of novellas and short stories. She’s the kind of movie enthusiast guaranteed to have an opinion on Bing versus Cary and Grace versus Katherine, and the kind of novelist to include the debate as a plot point.

Her newest, The Road to Roswell (out June 27th from Del Rey), is an ode to westerns, road trip movies, late-night creature features, and any scene where a guy and a gal share a look and know they’re in love. But it’s only the latest in a long line of film-loving fiction. In 1995, her sci-fi satire Remake took aim not only at Hollywood’s IPO vampirism but its faddish moralism as well. This was before there was a single Star Wars prequel….

(4) NO SEX, PLEASE, WE’RE FANNISH. At Vox.com, Aja Romano talks about the rise of Puritanism in fanfiction and elsewhere on the internet: “Fandom, purity culture, and the rise of the anti-fan”.

How did the internet become so puritanical? On social media, outspoken anti-sex advocates increasingly cry “gross” at everything from R-rated rom-coms to fictional characters and queer people having sex to consenting adults with slight age gaps to dating short people. They see oversexualization in just about everything. They often accuse the things they dislike of being coded fronts for pedophilia, and the people who enjoy those things of being sexual predators. These social media users frequently form enclaves that turn as nightmarish and troubling as the things they’re ostensibly trying to police.

This dovetails with what we’re being told right now about Gen Z and sex: They’re having less casual sex, they hate dating, they’re more reserved about relationships in general. It’s easy to pigeonhole online anti-sex police as being teens and young adults, a.k.a. “puriteens.” Because so much of this comes down to carnal horror, you might assume that everyone who’s horrified is a teen who just hasn’t arrived at a mature view of sex and other adult activity. Such anti-sex zeal increasingly forces sex-positive communities back into the internet’s underground. It also aids and abets the larger cultural shift toward regressive attitudes and censorship of sexual minorities and sex-positive content.

Yet overwhelmingly, the common thread among this new generation of “antis” — a broad label for people who are opposed to sexual content in media — isn’t that they are minors who are scared of sex. It’s that none of them distinguish between fictional harm and real-world harm. That is, regardless of their ages, they believe fiction not only can have a real-world impact, but that it always has a real-world impact.

(5) TURNING THE PAGE ON A NEW SEASON. Amal El-Mohtar picks new sff novels for summer by authors Fonda Lee, Martha Wells, Nick Harkaway, Kelly Link and Emma Törzs: “The Magic (and Malaise) of Families” in the New York Times.

….Emma Törzs’s INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE (William Morrow, 407 pp., $30) is astonishing and pristine, the kind of debut I love to be devastated by, already so assured and sophisticated that it’s difficult to imagine where the author can go from here.

In Törzs’s world, books of magic, all written in human blood, can do incredible things when someone feeds them a drop of blood and reads them aloud. Abe Kalotay collected these books to protect them from falling into the wrong hands, and raised his daughters, Joanna and Esther, as stewards of a beautiful and dangerous library that had to be kept hidden at all costs; in Esther’s infancy, her mother was murdered by powerful people who wanted the books….

(6) SCENE PAST ITS OFF-SALE DATE. “’Monty Python’ Star John Cleese Says ‘Life Of Brian’ Scene Won’t Be Cut Despite Modern Sensitivites” reports Deadline.

The Monty Python crew always looked on the bright side of life when it came to its classic film parody, The Life of Brian.

But Monty Python star John Cleese insists he never said that he would remove a politically incorrect scene from a stage adaptation of Life of Brian, even though the film’s 1979 sensibilities will not draw quite the laughs it once did, owing to the rise of trans issues awareness.

Cleese claims it was “misreported” that he was planning to cut the “Loretta” scene for an upcoming stage adaptation of the religious satire film. Instead, he said he has “no intention” of removing it.

The scene in question features a male character declaring that he wants to be woman named “Loretta,” and wants to have a child. Cleese’s character tells the man that the notion is ridiculous, while another suggests that they all advocate for his right to childbearing.

“I want to be a woman. … It’s my right as a man,” the character claims “I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t you oppress me!”

Obviously, times have changed the impact of that humor….

(7) BOOK ‘EM, DANNO. “Wake Up Besties, the Barbie and Ken Mugshot Meme is Everywhere”. People have been running with it, creating their own version using other characters.There’s a roundup of several dozen of these tweets at Gizmodo.

After an eagle-eyed Twitter user (@kojironanjo) realized that the Barbie trailer was ripe for meme-ification, Twitter fandom did what fandom does best, and immediately took the joke to the extreme. Reaching all corners of the world, fandoms immediately drew their favorite pairings using the Barbie mugshot screenshots as inspiration. With Margot Robbie’s concerned Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s cheesing Ken, the absurdity was truly just too good.

The key is having one character look slightly terrified and utterly baffled and possibly regretting every choice that has ever led to them getting their mugshot taken and the second character has to be a complete and total himbo, just an absolute dummy, no thoughts, just vibes….

Here’s an example:

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2013 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria is the source of our Beginning this time.

It was published by Small Beer Press, the source of oh so many wonderful publications, a decade ago. It’s now available from the usual suspects. Josh Hurley’s the narrator of the outstanding audio version. 

It was her first novel and it won the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, the BFA Robert Holdstock Award and the World Fantasy Award. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer the same year.

She has now published two genre novels. Oh, and The White Mosque A Memoir by her is outstanding. It’s about a trip to Uzbekistan in search of the followers of a century-gone Russian Mennonite religious leader. (Her bio says she’s Somali and Mennonite.) 

And now for the Beginning…

Childhood in Tyron

As I was a stranger in Olondria, I knew nothing of the splendor of its coasts, nor of Bain, the Harbor City, whose lights and colors spill into the ocean like a cataract of roses. I did not know the vastness of the spice markets of Bain, where the merchants are delirious with scents, I had never seen the morning mists adrift above the surface of the green Illoun, of which the poets sing; I had never seen a woman with gems in her hair, nor observed the copper glinting of the domes, nor stood upon the melancholy beaches of the south while the wind brought in the sadness from the sea. Deep within the Fayaleith, the Country of the Wines, the clarity of light can stop the heart: it is the light the local people call “the breath of angels” and is said to cure heartsickness and bad lungs. Beyond this is the Balinfeil, where, in the winter months, the people wear caps of white squirrel fur, and in the summer months the goddess Love is said to walk and the earth is carpeted with almond blossom. But of all this I knew nothing. I knew only of the island where my mother oiled her hair in the glow of a rush candle, and terrified me with stories of the Ghost with No Liver, whose sandals slap when he walks because he has his feet on backwards.

My name is Jevick. I come from the blue and hazy village of Tyom, on the western side of Tinimavet in the Tea Islands. From Tyom, high on the cliffs, one can sometimes see the green coast of Jiev, if the sky is very clear; but when it rains, and all the light is drowned in heavy clouds, it is the loneliest village in the world. It is a three-day journey to Pitot, the nearest village, riding on one of the donkeys of the islands, and to travel to the port of Dinivolim in the north requires at least a fortnight in the draining heat. In Tyom, in an open court, stands my father’s house, a lofty building made of yellow stone, with a great arched entryway adorned with hanging plants, a flat roof, and nine shuttered rooms. And nearby, outside the village, in a valley drenched with rain, where the brown donkeys weep with exhaustion, where the flowers melt away and are lost in the heat, my father had his spacious pepper farm.

This farm was the source of my father’s wealth and enabled him to keep the stately house, to maintain his position on the village council, and carry a staff decorated with red dye. The pepper bushes, voluptuous and green under the haze, spoke of riches with their moist and pungent breath; my father used to rub the dried corns between his fingers to give his fingertips the smell of gold. But if he was wealthy in some respects, he was poor in others: there were only two children in our house, and the years after my birth passed without hope of another, a misfortune generally blamed on the god of elephants. My mother said the elephant god was jealous and resented our father’s splendid house and fertile lands; but I knew that it was whispered in the village that my father had sold his unborn children to the god. I had seen people passing the house nudge one another and say, “He paid seven babies for that palace”; and sometimes our laborers sang a vicious work song: “Here the earth is full of little bones.” Whatever the reason, my father’s first wife had never conceived at all, while the second wife, my mother, bore only two children: my elder brother Jom, and myself. Because the first wife had no child, it was she whom we always addressed as Mother, or else with the term of respect, eti-donvati, “My Father’s Wife”; it was she who accompanied us to festivals, prim and disdainful, her hair in two black coils above her ears. Our real mother lived in our room with us, and my father and his wife called her “Nursemaid,” and we children called her simply by the name she had borne from girlhood: Kiavet, which means Needle. She was round-faced and lovely, and wore no shoes. Her hair hung loose down her back. At night she told us stories while she oiled her hair and tickled us with a gull’s feather.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 30, 1908 — Mel Blanc. Where to begin? Yes, he delightfully voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and a multitude of other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. Blanc made his debut in 1940 “A Wild Hare”. Did you know that he created the voice and laugh of Woody Woodpecker but stopped doing it after the first three shorts as he was signed then to an exclusive Warner contract? His laughs did continue to get used however. Blanc, aware of his talents, fiercely protected the rights to his voice characterizations contractually and legally. (Died 1989.)
  • Born May 30, 1914 — Bruce Elliott. His fifteen stories in The Shadow magazine in the late Forties are generally held in low esteem by Shadow fans because of his handling of the character, best noted by the three stories in which the Shadow does not appear at all in his costumed identity. Oh, the horror! He also wrote three genre novels — The Planet of Shame, Asylum Earth and, errr, The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck. And he had stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction including “Wolves Don’t Cry” and “The Last Magician”. (Died 1973.)
  • Born May 30, 1919 — Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes. British author best known for his ghost and horror stories though his first published work was the SF novel The Man from the Bomb in the late Fifties. The Monster Club, a series of linked tales, is a good place to start with him if you’ve not read him and it became a film with Vincent Price co-starring John Carradine. He won the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, and also a British Fantasy Society Special Award. (Died 2001.)
  • Born May 30, 1922 — Hal Clement. I’m reasonably sure Mission of Gravity was the first novel I read by him though I’ve not re-read it so the Suck Fairy not been tested. Much to my surprise, his only Hugo was a Retro Hugo for a short story, “Uncommon Sense” which he got at L.A. Con III. He did get the First Fandom Award. My favorite novel by him is Mission of Gravity, and I’m also fond of The Best of Hal Clement which collects much of his wonderful short work. He’s reasonably well stocked at the usual suspects. (Died 2003.)
  • Born May 30, 1936 — Keir Dullea, 87. David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact. I know I saw 2001 several times and loved it but I’ll be damned if I can remember seeing 2010. He’s done a number of other genre films, Brave New World, Space Station 76, Valley of the Gods and Fahrenheit 451. And lest we forget he was Devon in Starlost. 
  • Born May 30, 1952 — Mike W. Barr, 71. Writer of comics and sf novels. Created along with Jim Aparo Looker (Emily “Lia” Briggs), a hero in the DC Universe. She first appeared first appeared in Batman & the Outsiders #25. He worked for both major houses though I’d say most of his work was at DC. He wrote the “Paging the Crime Doctor” episode of Batman: The Animated Series. 
  • Born May 30, 1971 — Duncan Jones, 52. Director whose films include Moon (2009) which won a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation-Long Form and a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, and Source Code (2011) which was nominated for both a Hugo and a Ray Bradbury Award. He also directed Warcraft (2016), which up to that year was the highest grossing video game adaptation of all time. He is totally not best known for being David Bowie’s son. (Alan Baumler)

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) JOCULARITY. In the New York Times, Paul Rudnick reveals “What Would Happen if a Robot Tried to Write ‘Law & Order’?” – and a number of other shows.

As the strike by unions representing thousands of film and TV writers approaches its second month, the role that A.I. might play in writing scripts remains one of the biggest issues. While the Writers Guild of America has expressed a willingness to work with A.I. as a tool, some producers are dreaming bigger: They want to replace humans with chatbots. What might A.I.-written scripts look like? Here’s a guess:

Prompt: An episode of any “Law & Order” series.

Scene 1

DETECTIVE: Someone has killed this dead body.

Scene 2

DETECTIVE: Did you kill that dead body?

CRIMINAL: No! I’m not a criminal!

Scene 3

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Did you kill that dead body? And remember, you’re under oath.

CRIMINAL: No! Yes! But it was during a double-cross over a deal for buttcoin.

JUDGE: Spell check!

(12) COSPLAY, BOOKS, AND SCIENCE ALL IN ONE PLACE. The Baltimore Banner has a gallery of photos from last weekend’s convention: “Welcome all aliens to Balticon”. Includes a photo at the autograph table with a kind of what-was-strange-about-the-dog-in-the-night caption that tells about Adam Stemple (often mentioned here on File 770) but doesn’t name the other person in the picture – who happens to be John Scalzi.

Welcome, aliens! Balticon 57 is the area’s oldest science-fiction convention and by far the largest. It’s also the first of such conventions each year.

Balticon can be described as a “Big Tent” four-day celebration of science fiction and fantasy hosted by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society at the at Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel….

(13) TINY TYRANOSAURS. At Vanity Fair, Anthony Breznican has a great article about the making of the alien invasion TV show V: “The ‘V’ Files: The Shocking Legacy of an ’80s Sci-Fi Cult Classic”.

Even 40 years later, V is still getting under people’s skin. The writer, producer, and director Kenneth Johnson has never stopped getting fan mail about the miniseries he created back in 1983, which rattled America with its depiction of cold-blooded authoritarians conquering the world. The invaders in red jumpsuits, dark glasses, and ball caps were actually beings from another planet, but Johnson intended the sci-fi drama to be more than mere escapism. To him, it was a warning.

When he gets new letters from viewers, Johnson opens them hoping they got the message, which seems as obvious to him now as it did back then. “I got to thinking, God, how would everyday people feel if suddenly there was a sea change in our life that turned it all around, if suddenly some hyper power rolled over us, just like the Nazis rolled into Europe?” he says. But in recent years, far-right conspiracy theorists, QAnon followers, and garden-variety lunatics have instead homed in on the fact that V’s extraterrestrials were secretly reptilians disguised as humans to mislead us. Many harbor a sincere belief that a reptoid cabal really does control the world. “I’ve gotten emails over the years and letters from people on the fringes who say, ‘Oh, you get it!’” Johnson says. “‘You know that there are lizards among us!’”…

(14) CAN YOU IMAGINE? Collections Etc. brings you a Fully-Functioning Tiny Arcade Atari 2600 Console – how bizarre!

Fully functional, detailed mini replica of the Atari 2600 game has all the classic features of the system you loved in the 80s! 10 games include Combat, Warlords, Millipede, Tempest, Centipede, Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids, Breakout, and Pac-Man! Includes hi-res TV with adjustable screen, iconic 2600 joystick and classic game console. Req. 3 “AAA” batteries (sold separately). Plastic. Ages 8 years & up. TV is 6″L x 5″W x 4″H.

(15) UNSEEN MENACE. Fear The Invisible Man will be released in the UK on June 13.

Outline: In an intriguing narrative, a youthful widow from Britain offers sanctuary to a former medical school comrade who has mysteriously acquired the ability to render himself unseen. As his seclusion intensifies and his mental stability unravels, he plots to unleash a merciless wave of slaughter and dread throughout the city, with the widow serving as the sole harbinger of his existence.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Rob Hansen, Cora Buhlert, Michael J. Walsh, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l Danehy-Oakes.]

Cats Sleep on SFF: The End of All Things

Posted on by
6

Katrina Templeton introduces us to a rare cat who really is sleeping on sff:

This is Winter. Poor boy isn’t doing so well right now, so I grabbed a random book from my room and tucked it under him. I really hope, now that I look at it, that it doesn’t turn out to be apropos. We could use all the best wishes and help we can get right now.

There is a “Winter Needs Help!” GoFundMe active right now. Check it out.

Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

Pixel Scroll 5/10/23 Not Just Another Scroll Title. This One Has Heart. And Humanity. Four Pixels!

Posted on by
20

(1) “BIGOLAS DICKOLAS WOLFWOOD ENERGY”? [Item by Soon Lee.] Four years after release, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone rocketed up to number 6 in the Amazon overall book rankings (it’s number one in a number of categories). And it is all thanks to a recommendation tweet from an account named “Bigolas Dickolas”, a fan account for the “Trigun” anime. Amal El-Mohtar tweeted a link.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a Hugo, Nebula, and BSFA winner so it’s not like it wasn’t critically acclaimed. I loved it. But for a book to climb into the Amazon Top 10 four years after release is not something that happens. Let alone it happening because an anime fan account tweeted about it. Stunned and delighted reactions all round.

My TL;DR

Bigolas Dickolas has done for “This is How You Lose the Time War” what “Stranger Things” did for “Running Up That Hill”.

Several more write-ups here:

DongWon Song (Amal El-Mohtar’s agent) commented:

(2) THIS IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT MODERATION. Charlie Jane Anders’ Happy Dancing newsletter offers “Some (Probably) Worthless Thoughts About Content Moderation”. Spoiler: They are far from worthless.

… Twitter has long had a feature where you can choose to see notifications only from people you follow, which is great in theory. If you have that box checked on Twitter, you’ll only see replies and quote-tweets from the people you’ve decided to trust — but in practice, if your tweet gets a ton of hostile replies and quote-tweets, you will absolutely know about it. It’ll show up if you look at the permalink for your actual tweet, but also your trusted followers will inevitably start arguing with the folks you don’t follow. Plus, it requires a lot of willpower to avoid looking at a swarm of replies or quote-tweets when you know they’re there.

Plus as I’ve said above, even if you decide you don’t want to see hate group posts, you’ll still find out about it if they target you. It’s impossible to ignore at a certain point.

Here’s a good place to mention that I’m enjoying Bluesky a lot so far — a ton of Black Twitter folks who were turned off by Mastodon’s well-documented racism problem are hanging out there, along with many other folks I enjoyed chatting with on Twitter. But I’m also very aware that I’m enjoying it, in part, because it’s still a small community and we’re at the start, rather than the end, of the “enshittification” process*….

(3) AI IS MY COPILOT. [Item by Anne Marble.] If you see people getting upset with publishers asking for AI submissions, here is one example. In a Special Submissions Call, Space and Time Magazine is asking authors to collaborate with AI for a unique issue. This submissions call did not go over well…

Here are the first two of many tweeted responses:

(4) GREMLINS PREQUEL ARRIVES. Animation World Network has the story: “Max Shares ‘Gremlins: Secrets of The Mogwai’ Official Trailer”.

Max (formerly HBO Max) has dropped an official trailer and poster for Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, the highly anticipated 3DCG animated prequel series to the iconic Gremlins film franchise. The show debuts May 23, followed by two new episodes released weekly on Thursdays.

The new series takes viewers back to 1920s Shanghai, where the Wing family first meets the young Mogwai called Gizmo. Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 Gremlins film) accepts the dangerous task of taking Gizmo home and embarks on a journey through the Chinese countryside. Sam and Gizmo are joined by a teenage street thief named Elle, and together, they encounter—and sometimes battle—colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. Along their quest, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins….

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, from executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tze Chun premieres May 23 on Max.

(5) J.M. COSTER MEMOIR. “Your Tongue Remembers” is introduced by Sarah Gailey as “Jen Coster’s reflections on language, food, and what it means to be loved.”

…During my childhood, my parents were learning English while I was forgetting the little bit of Chinese that I knew. We spoke to each other in fits and starts, each of us hurt (in the exact same but also completely different ways) by the lack of understanding. With my grandmother, I barely spoke at all. She didn’t know English, and I was eventually too ashamed of my broken Chinese to try.

And yet, China was my first home, and Chinese was my first language. At some point in my early life, it was all I knew. Even though I don’t remember what it was like to have those musical words fall from my mouth at the speed of thought, there are certain shapes my mouth still knows how to make, certain tones my ears still know how to hear—things my mind and body have held on to as a record of my past.

The words that my tongue remembers, though it’s clumsy in the shaping of them, are mostly related to food.

It always comes back to food.

I don’t know what it’s like to have to make concessions related to cultural identity, for success to require the rejection of things that make up the fabric of you, for victory to feel like surrender. But I do know what it feels like to grieve the loss of something I never really had in the first place….

(6) EKPEKI TAKES ON IAFA ROLE. International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) announced on Facebook they have appointed Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki as their Virtual Conference Coordinator.

(7) CSSF WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY. Applications are being taken for the online CSSF Speculative Fiction Writing Workshop. 

This intensive, 2-week creative writing course will be taught online by RB Lemberg, author of the acclaimed novellas The Four Profound Weaves (2020) and The Unbalancing (2022) and finalist for the prestigious Nebula Award for best science fiction or fantasy published in the United States.

Lemberg will bring their expertise in writing and publishing speculative fiction—an umbrella category that includes science fiction, horror, fantasy narratives, magical realism, and the like—to instruct students in the creation and polishing of their own imaginative work. Students will read an assortment of SFF short stories for discussions of craft and stylistic choices, and participate in writing exercises and peer review workshops. Each class member should come prepared with at least one short story they are prepared to share and revise. 

June 12 – June 23, 2023 (Monday – Friday)

4:30 – 7:30 pm (Central US/Canada), with synchronous and asynchronous elements. 

Cost and Enrollment:

NON-CREDIT-SEEKING STUDENTS: $500 for 2-wk session – Register here

CREDIT-SEEKING KU STUDENTS: Enroll via https://classes.ku.edu/ – ENGL 757 (Summer 2023)

Small scholarships available – 1st come, 1st served. Email us with your name, contact information, institution (if applicable), connection to the Gunn Center (if any).

(8) 2024 STURGEON SYMPOSIUM DESIGN CONTEST. If you have an inspiration for next year’s Sturgeon Symposium t-shirt design it could be worth $250 to you.

The J. Wayne & Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction (CSSF) is dedicated to research and education in science fiction and other speculative forms, such as fantasy, horror, Afrofuturism, fanfiction, and neo-Gothic narratives. We believe that through our encounters with different worlds, we come to know the one we all share; we also become better equipped to create new possibilities within it. Our ongoing mission is to foster a global community of students, scholars, artists, educators, and enthusiasts who are interested in exploring the limitless potential of the human imagination, whether that be to question, to play, or to dream about the future.

The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, offered annually for the best published science fiction short story of the previous year, will be presented at the Sturgeon Symposium, where scholars, artists, educators, students, and enthusiasts come together to discuss and learn about new work in the field. The winning design will be featured on T-shirts sold to generate funds for the 2024 symposium and on flyers used to promote the event. Help us showcase the limitless potential of the human imagination!

The 2024 Sturgeon Symposium will be honoring the foundational work of Samuel R. Delaney to the field and study of Science Fiction. Inspired by his 1984 science fiction novel, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, the theme of this year Design contest is “Stars in Our Pockets.”

To Enter:

  • Submit your original design(s) by 11:59 pm on 18 August 2023 to [email protected]. Include name, email address, and phone number with entry.
  • File(s) should be submitted as a .pdf, .jpb, .png, .ai, or .eps with dimensions of 1500px by 1500px.
  • Designs should be front of t-shirt only and can include up to 4 colors.
  • Transparent artwork preferred. Avoid gradients.

Judges will consider:

  • how well each design celebrates the concepts of science fiction and/or the speculative
  • how well each design represents KU’s Gunn Center for the Study of SF
  • how well each design builds energy for the 2024 Sturgeon Symposium

By entering the contest, you agree and acknowledge that:

  • You have read, understood, and will abide by the contest rules, terms, and conditions.
  • If your design is selected as the winning entry, you grant the Center for the Study of Science Fiction a non-exclusive license to reproduce, distribute, display, and create derivative works of your submitted design (the “Work”) on promotional materials and marketing materials such as t-shirts, posters, brochures, and digital media.
  • You warrant that you are the original creator of the Work and that it does not infringe upon the rights of any third parties, including, but not limited to, copyright, trademark, and rights of publicity or privacy.

Winner will be announced at the Sturgeon Award ceremony, Date and Time TBD Questions? Contact The Gunn Center for the Study of SF – [email protected] https://sfcenter.ku.edu/

This is last year’s winning design:

(9) MEMORY LANE.

2019 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day was her Nebula-winning debut novel. It was also nominated for a Compton Crook Award. Those folk in Baltimore have stellar taste in SF novels, don’t they?

It is a wonderful read (no spoilers there) and I surprised to learn that she wrote but one more novel to date. I’ve read this novel but haven’t read We Are Satellites, so am very interested in what y’all think of it.

A Song for a New Day was published by Berkley Books. 

And here is her splendid Beginning. Warning: fatal violence involving Muppets occurs here. It really does. 

172 Ways 

There were, to my knowledge, one hundred and seventy-two ways to wreck a hotel room. We had brainstormed them all in the van over the last eight months on the road. As a game, I’d thought: 61, turn all the furniture upside down; 83, release a pack of feral cats; 92, fill all the drawers with beer, or, 93, marbles; 114, line the floor with soapy plastic and turn it into a slip ’n’ slide; etc., etc. 

In my absence, my band had come up with the one hundred and seventy-third, and had for the first time added in a test run. I was not proud. 

What would Gemma do if she were here? I stepped all the way into their room instead of gawking from the hallway and closed the door before any hotel employees could walk past, pressing the button to illuminate the DO NOT DISTURB sign for good measure. “Dammit, guys. This is a nice hotel. What the hell did you do?”

“We found some paint.” Hewitt’s breath smelled like a distillery’s dumpster. He lingered beside me in the vestibule.”

“You’re a master of understatement.” 

All their bags and instruments were crammed into the closet by the entrance. The room itself was painted a garish neon pink, which it definitely hadn’t been when I’d left that morning. Not only the walls, either: the headboards, the nightstand, the dresser. The spatter on the carpet suggested somebody had knifed a Muppet and let it crawl away to die. For all the paint, Hewitt’s breath was still the overwhelming odor.

“Even the TV?” I asked. “Really?” 

The television, frame and screen. Cable news blared behind a drippy film of pink, discussing the new highway only for self-driving cars. We’d be avoiding that one. 

JD lounged on the far bed, holding a glass of something caramel colored. His shoes were pink. The bedspread, the site of another Muppet Murder.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 10, 1863 — Cornelius Shea. As SFE puts it, “author for the silent screen and author of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), prolific in many categories but best remembered for marvel stories using a fairly consistent ‘mythology’ of dwarfs, subterranean eruptions, and stage illusion masquerading as supernatural magic.” To my surprise, only two of his novels are in the Internet Archive. (Died 1920.)
  • Born May 10, 1886 — Olaf Stapledon. Original and almost unimaginable, Last and First Men, his first novel (!) written in 1930 extends over two billion years. Who could follow that?  He did, with Star Maker, over 100 billion years. Their range, imagination, and grandeur may still be unequaled. He was, however – or to his credit – depending on how you see things – an avowed atheist.  Odd John, about a spiritual-intellectual superman, may be tragic, or heroic, or both. Darkness and the Light was nominated for a Retro-Hugo At WorldCon 76 as was Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord at CoNZealand. He was the first recipient of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2001 and voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2014. (Died 1950.)
  • Born May 10, 1891 — Earl Askam. He played Officer Torch, the captain of Ming the Merciless’s guards, in the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. It’s his only genre appearance though he did have an uncredited role in a Perry Mason film where the SJW credential was the defendant in a Perry Mason murder case, The Case of Black Cat. I haven’t seen the film but it’s got cool poster. (Died 1940.)
  • Born May 10, 1899 — Fred Astaire. Yes, that actor. He showed up on the original  Battlestar Galactica as Chameleon / Captain Dimitri In “The Man with Nine Lives” episode. Stunt casting I assume.  He had only two other genre roles as near as I can tell which were voicing The Wasp in the English-language adaptation of the Japanese Wasp anime series, and being in a film called Ghost Story. They came nearly twenty years apart and were the last acting roles that he did. (Died 1987.)
  • Born May 10, 1963 — Rich Moore, 60. He directed Wreck-It Ralph and co-directed Zootopia and Ralph Breaks the Internet; he has worked on Futurama. Might be stretching the definition of genre (or possibly not), but he did the animation for “Spy vs. Spy” for MADtv. You can see the first one here.
  • Born May 10, 1969 — John Scalzi, 54. Bane of Puppies everywhere. Really he is — successful, white and writing SF very much that is in the mode of writers like Heinlein. How dare he? And yes, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by him. What would I recommend if you hadn’t read him? The Old Man’s War series certainly is fantastic, with Zoe’s Tale bringing tears to my eyes. The Interdependency series is excellent as well. I really have mixed feelings about Redshirts in that it’s too jokey for my taste. I will note that his blog is one of a very few which I read every post of.

(11) COMIC SECTION.

  • Bizarro once again lives up to its name with this Pinocchio joke.
  • Arlo and Janis find a clever use for a 2001 reference.
  • Thatababy calls out a buttinski named Batman.
  • Dog Eat Doug isn’t that funny but it does reference a well-known sff writer.

(12) KAIJU AND OTHERS. The birthday boy and Michi Trota featured today in episode 142 of the AMW Author Talks podcast: “John Scalzi & Michi Trota”.

Acclaimed science fiction author John Scalzi discusses his recent book The Kaiju Preservation Society and the science fiction genre with fellow award-winning science fiction writer Michi Trota.

This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.

(13) APPLY FOR LEONARDO. Applications are being taken for the “Leonardo Imagination Fellowship”, hosted by Arizona State University, through June 2.

Leonardo and the Center for Science and the Imagination are proud to announce our second Imagination Fellowship, starting in August 2023. In this virtual, global program, fellows will develop experimental media projects exploring diverse aspects of Planetary Health Futures, including but not limited to issues of climate, human well-being, interspecies relationships, democracy, emerging social structures, and safeguarding the Earth’s habitability for humans and other life forms. Applications are due on June 2, 2023 at 11:59pm MST.

Fellows will reflect on how their projects support, align with and add new complexity and nuance to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They should also substantively engage with the notion of experimental media, charting new territory in areas like expanded reality, immersive storytelling, worldbuilding, and more. Projects should embrace global perspectives and invite global participation, and demonstrate commitment to justice and equity.

Each fellow will produce a discrete media artifact, and will be supported in collaborative, cross-disciplinary experimentation with practice and process throughout the fellowship period. Examples of outputs or deliverables include, but are not limited to experimental publishing projects, from books and novellas to zines and networked texts; expanded reality projects, from virtual and augmented reality to mixed reality; games and interactive experiences; films and video installations; sonic environments and acoustic experiences.

We invite fellowship applications focusing on a range of themes. Each fellow will connect their work with one of the following themes at Leonardo-ASU or the Center for Science and the Imagination. In the first phase of their fellowship the fellows will identify a specific existing CSI or Leonardo project to focus on, building on its networks, communities, and creative outputs. Some exemplar projects are listed for each theme below.

ACCESS

PLANETARY FUTURES

LEARNING FUTURES BRAIN/MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS

  • Futures of Learning and Education, connecting with the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project*
  • Imagination, Cognition, and Consciousness, connecting with Applied Imagination Project
  • Speculative Fiction for Institutional Transformation, connecting with the Applied Sci-Fi Project

*While several of these existing projects are rooted in Arizona, we welcome global connections, extensions, and expansions in fellowship projects that connect to these regional efforts.

Fellowship Details

  • The Imagination Fellowship Program will offer up to 3 virtual fellowships, beginning in August 2023, and running through April 2024.
  • Fellows will receive $6,000 per fellow for the period of 9 months. There is no separate production budget. Fellows are free to use their stipend to support production needs.
  • Applications are due Friday, June 2, by 11:59 pm Arizona time (UTC-7).

For further questions, please reach out to [email protected].

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. When my daughter was very young we used to watch The Wiggles. So it didn’t take much to rouse my curiosity about Defunctland’s YouTube video, “The Awful Wiggles Dark Ride”.

In Defunctland, Kevin and company return with stories of defunct rides, parks, and themed entertainment experiences. Whether it’s Disney, Universal, Six Flags, or a hastily built World’s Fair, Defunctland looks at the stories behind their incredible failures.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Soon Lee, Anne Marble, Kathy Sullivan, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]