“D.I.Y.” by John Wiswell Tor Books, ISBN 009781250870209, August 2022
Review By Lis Carey: The opening of this story does not bring us to a happy world. Climate change has had a major impact, most strongly felt in the heat and the shortage of potable water.
The tech that’s involved here, though, includes magic. The companies expected to address the problem are the great magic academies, among them Ozymandias Academy, where once upon a time, a young man named Noah hoped to become a student. When he’s finally accepted, though, it’s without any financial aid, and his mother, struggling just to support the two of them, has no money. Noah, being a bright young man, puts the blame where it belongs, and in some ways, that sets up later events.
Noah meets up with a podcaster, who goes by MX_POTLUCK, or, to friends, simply “Manny.” Both shut out of any serious magical training, they do their own research and experimentation, including coax water out of the air into glasses. The amounts are small, but it’s a start. They proceed to build on their start, especially as Ozymandia Academy gets more control of the limited water supply, and gets more restrictive, and more elitist, in its distribution of water.
But both Noah and Manny have serious health problems, and when they make a real breakthrough, it coincides with Manny having a major health crisis.
I’ll just say that these are two tough, clever, young men with integrity. This is a more hopeful story than “Rabbit Test,” and I enjoyed it. Sadly, while I think it deserves its nomination, I think “Rabbit Test,” which I will never voluntarily reread, really is the better work.
I received this story as part of the 2023 Hugo Voters Packet.
(1) 2023 WORLDCON CRITICIZED. C. L. Polk, author of a 2023 Hugo finalist, told newsletter readers they want the Hugos taken away from the Worldcon.
…I rebuke Chengdu Worldcon for inviting Sergey Lukianenko, a choice that is so terrible I can’t even make a bitter derisive joke about it. That’s a fucking horrifying choice from all angles and this person should not be honored in this way. And I shouldn’t have to be horrified by even one GOH who supports fucking genocide, but actually there’s two, since Liu Cixin is also invited.
The treatment of Uighyr Muslims in China is an atrocity and I hate it. The attempt to invade Ukraine and re-colonize it with unspeakable violence is an atrocity and I hate that too. I don’t have any clever words for this. it’s fucking evil and gross and thinking about it makes me feel fury. There was no way I would attend or participate, and being on the ballot for the Hugo awards doesn’t change my mind.
Again, I don’t really feel like anyone is surprised that I object to Chengdu worldcon’s guests and I have nothing to say to any of them.
But I wish that the Hugo Award would/could separate itself from Worldcon.
I have had this opinion for ages. yes, the Hugo Award is not Worldcon; it is only presented there, but that’s a distinction that doesn’t register for a lot of people who believe or assume that they are the same thing. They’re not…but.
The Hugo award is like the Aurora Award here in Canada. It has its own organization, just like the Aurora Award here in Canada. But the Aurora Award ceremony in Canada is hosted by different Canadian conventions each year. In 2019, I went to Ottawa for a lovely award ceremony as part of Can Con (please attend this convention; it’s a good one.) The Aurora Award ceremony has been held in Calgary several times. It floats from place to place, year to year, and in that wandering, asserts that it belongs only to itself.
Perhaps the Hugo Award should do that too, to reinforce that it’s not Worldcon – it’s simply that a worldcon bid, by tradition, includes the hosting of the Hugo awards and so they are associated in this way….
…I wish that I could just spend my time celebrating. But there’s more we need to discuss. I’ve wrestled with this for some time.
The ceremony for the Hugo Awards traditionally takes place at each year’s Worldcon. I support Worldcon touring the world; it should not always be in the U.S., especially not as the U.S. becomes increasingly dangerous for visitors and marginalized people.
I am a descendant of many Slavs. One of my first introductions to fantastical literature was my grandmother telling me fairy tales from her ancestors. My great grandfather helped assemble one of the largest collections of Slavic literature in the English-speaking world. He gave the collection to Texas A&M University in the hopes of further spreading knowledge of Slavic culture.
It shouldn’t take that level of connection to be disturbed here. It is repulsive that anyone would platform and celebrate Lukyanenko while he gloats about war crimes. It is the same repulsion I feel when reading reports of the genocide against the Uyghurs, and that I feel when so-called Guests of Honor vocally support that genocide.
So, as a Hugo finalist, I will not be participating in this year’s Worldcon. I will not travel to Chengdu in person. I will not do any virtual programming remotely, either.
The Worldcon community should know how these decisions have hurt us, and that this is how a Hugo finalist feels. I’m grateful that my work is meaningful to you. I hope the community can do better. It deserves better….
(3) PAY THE WRITER. [Item by Anne Marble.] Yilin Wang learned the British Museum was using their translations of poems by Qiu Jin (“China’s Joan of Arc”) — without credit, permission, or payment – and tweeted about it on June 18. Wang translated works that were in the public domain, and the copyright on the translation is owned by Wang.
The translator, Yilin Wang (she/they), has been published in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, and others. (Wang has been covered in several File 770 posts.) Wang was a finalist for the Aurora Award and attended Clarion West Writers Workshop 2020/2021.
On July 10 an organization called the International Intellectual Property Law Association put up a very misinformed article about the topic that could have been considered defamatory because it said the translator was the copyright infringer. It has since been superseded by the version “British Museum Drops Writer’s Chinese Poetry Translations Over Copyright Claims” which ends with an apology by IIPLA for its “wrong interpretation”.
The British Museum has issued an apology following the unauthorized use of translations by writer and translator Yilin Wang in their exhibition titled “China’s Hidden Century.” Wang expressed disappointment on Twitter, stating that their translations of Chinese feminist poet Qiu Jin’s work were included without their consent.
The museum released a press statement acknowledging the incident as an “unintentional human error.” They privately corresponded with Wang and offered compensation for using the translations. Consequently, both Wang’s translations and the Chinese poems they translated were removed from the exhibition. However, the museum’s actions have faced criticism, sparking a broader conversation about the role of translators.
The British Museum, which previously stated it would not remove “controversial objects” from the display, faced criticism from Wang, who described the response as “erasure.” This raises concerns about the museum’s engagement with its curation and power dynamics with non-white contributors. The museum issued a statement acknowledging Wang’s request, removing the translations from the exhibition, and offering financial compensation. However, Wang disputes the sufficiency of the museum’s response….
Vancouver-based writer, translator and poet Yilin Wang has raised enough money to initiate a legal claim against the British Museum, as she continues to accuse the institution of copyright infringement after the museum removed poetry translations from a major exhibition on nineteenth century China.
As of July 10, Wang has raised £17,380 ($22,400) on crowd-funding platform CrowdJustice to work with lawyers in the UK to file a claim against the British Museum in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC), a specialist court that is part of the Business and Property Courts of the High Court of Justice in London. Wang has also retained the services of Jon Sharples, a solicitor specializing in intellectual property and art, from the British firm Howard Kennedy LLP.
,,, Wang told ARTnews Monday she decided to raise money to pursue legal action after exchanging several emails with the British Museum about full reinstatement of Qiu Jin’s poetry with credit for her translations; “reasonable payments” for the use of her work in several different formats; as well as an apology explaining what happened and how the museum would avoid it in the future. Wang said the British Museum initially offered a payment of £150 ($194) for the catalogue. That amount was raised to £600 ($775) after Wang asked for a list of all the places the poetry translations had appeared, but the museum also said it would not reinstate Qiu Jin’s poetry and Wang would not be credited because the work would not be in the exhibit.
“They refused twice,” Wang said. “And that was why I started the fundraiser, because it was just not going anywhere at that point.”…
(4) IN THE FIRST PERSON. The SFWA Blog has more testimony in “The LGBTQ+ Speculative Experience: Part 2”, curated by Elle Ire. Ire is joined by Scott Coatsworth, Nicola Griffith, Jose Pablo Iriarte, and Virginia Black. “Kind of like the Star Trek Experience—lots of diversity that some accept, some fight, and others never see.”
Our exploration of the experiences of various members within the LGBTQ+ spec fic community continues in this blog post. Please see Part 1 for an introduction to the series, disclaimers, and why I began this quest. In Part 2, we’ll look at the publishing choices my interviewees made once they were bitten by the writing bug and examine whether there was a connection between their initial exposure to spec fic and the publishing paths they took….
(5) NEW TRANSLATION PRIZE. The Cercador Prize is a new bookseller-led prize for literature in translation. A wide range of prose works will be eligible.
A new and auspicious distinction, the Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation will be awarded annually by a committee of five independent booksellers. During the initial prize cycle, each committee member will be responsible for nominating two full-length translations published in the U.S. between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023. The Cercador committee’s primary focus will be translated prose works including but not limited to fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and hybrid texts. As nominations are culled from the organic discovery, discussions, and recommendations of the committee, there is no formal submissions process for this prize.
The ten finalists for the Cercador Prize will be announced no later than October 15, 2023 with one winner, chosen by whatever method the committee deems appropriate, to follow. The winning translation will be announced no later than November 15, 2023. A prize amount of $1,000 will be attached and conferred entirely to the winning translator(s). Translators based anywhere in the world are eligible for the Cercador Prize.
The inaugural prize’s five committee members include:
Thu Doan of East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, Calif.
Gary Lovely of Prologue Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio
Javier Ramirez of Exile in Bookville in Chicago, Ill.
Riley Rennhack of Deep Vellum Books in Dallas, Tex.
Spencer Ruchti of Third Place Books in Seattle, Wash. (chair)
(6) HOLLYWOOD BOWL. Steve Vertlieb was in the audience to hear this concert over the weekend. Great poster!
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1971 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Philip Jose Farmer’s the writer who Mike choose this time. Now I know that y’all are very familiar with him, so I don’t feel that I need to go into any depth on him.
I will say that I love the first two novels of the Riverworld saga, plus Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
So the Beginning for this Scroll is To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the beginning of the Riverworld saga, which won a Hugo at the first L.A. Con. It was also nominated for a Ditmar.
It was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons fifty-two years ago. It was originally serialized as two separate novellas: “The Day of the Great Shout” which was printed in the January 1965 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and “The Suicide Express” that was in the March 1966 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. The cover illustration is by Ira Cohen.
And now let’s see how the Riverworld novelstarted off..
His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
He had cried out, “My God, I am a dead man!”
The door to the room had opened, and he had seen a giant, black, one-humped camel outside and had heard the tinkle of the bells on its harness as the hot desert wind touched them. Then a huge black face topped by a great black turban had appeared in the doorway. The black eunuch had come in through the door, moving like a cloud, with a gigantic scimitar in his hand. Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last.
Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness.
Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.
It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness.
A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 11, 1899 — E. B. White. Author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, both of which are surely genre. Along with William Strunk Jr. he’s the co-author of The Elements of Style English language style guide. In a survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte’s Web came in first in their poll of the top one hundred children’s novels. I know I saw the Stuart Little film. It was, errr, cute. (Died 1985.)
Born July 11, 1913 — Cordwainer Smith. Pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. Most of his fiction was set in The Instrumentality of Mankind series which I know I’ve read once upon a time at in fragments. Both iBooks and Kindle are well stocked with his novels and short stories including Scanners Live in Vain, a most excellent novella. (Died 1966.)
Born July 11, 1950 — Bruce McGill, 73. His first role was as Director Eugene Matuzak in Time Cop. He later has got one-offs in Quantum Leap (twice), Babylon 5, Voyager and Tales from the Crypt. He’s in the first television remake of The Man Who Fell to Earth as Vernon Gage. If MacGyver counts as genre and I for one think that it should, he had the recurring role of Jack Dalton there.
Born July 11, 1956 — Amitav Ghosh, 67. Author of the absolutely brilliant The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery. Really go read it and then we’ll discuss it over a cup of chai masala.
Born July 11, 1958 — Alan Gutierrez, 65. An artist and illustrator, specializing in SF and fantasy cover art. His first professional sale was to Rigel Science Fiction, #3 Winter 1982 . He then began producing work for Baen Books, Tor Books, Pequod Press and other publishers. He has also painted covers for Analog magazine, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and other SF magazines.
Born July 11, 1976 — T.L. Morganfield, 47. She is as she says “An Aztec geek; whether it’s history or mythology, I devour it all. It’s a love affair that began in college and has taken over my fiction writing life.” And that’s why I’m recommending her Bone Flower trilogy which is at genre adjacent if not genre. Her Aztec West series bring the Aztec gods into the Old West and is quite entertaining in a weird sort of manner.
(9) JUDGE DREDD. [Item by Olav Rokne.] This was an emotionally challenging book to read. Often damning and enraging. But brilliantly written, and insightful. Michael Molcher’s I Am The Law deserves consideration for Best Related Work next year. “Judge, Jury, Executioner … and Prophet” at the Hugo Book Club Blog.
…The book depicts the creation of Judge Dredd as a response to the rising reactionary moral panics that engulfed British media in the late 1970s. Molcher seems to argue that comics provided a fertile ground outside of the “establishment” media for Judge Dredd writers like John Wagner and Alan Grant. It provided a platform from which they could offer pointed critiques that were later seen as prescient.
“Things that happen in [Judge Dredd] echo, copy, or pressage things that happened in real life maybe a week or two either side. These are comics that were written months before,” Molcher says. “It’s almost Cassandra-like.”
By understanding Judge Dredd, Molcher argues, we can understand the multifaceted political crisis we are facing today. Thus, it might also be considered an important work of social science fiction. Throughout the book, history, sociology, and cultural studies are woven together.
“When you look at the book Policing The Crisis by Stuart Hall — it’s about the moral panic around the mugging crisis of the 1970s — you can’t help but realize that Hall and [Judge Dredd writers] John Wagner and Alan Grant are talking about the same things,” Molcher says….
Philadelphia has some of the strangest museums in the country. There is a Dental Museum with buckets of teeth, a museum dedicated to insects, and Pizza Brain, featuring…pizza. But the strangest collection must be the Mütter Museum.
Part of the College of Physicians, the museum houses a vast store of medical oddities dating back to the 1850s. Although not large, the two-story institution houses hundreds of specimens and maintains a 19th century feel. Visitors can see part of Albert Einstein’s brain, tumors removed from American presidents, and the death cast of the “Siamese twins” Chang and Eng Bunker, who died in 1874. The collection of skulls and diseased body parts defies description. One of my favorite exhibits is a large set of drawers filled with bizarre objects that people have swallowed (including, as I recall, a cast metal toy ship).
As much as I loved the Mütter, I have been careful to bring only visitors I thought would enjoy it. Some people prefer to keep their distance from a display of a 9-foot human colon….
(11) SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. Speaking of gizzards, here’s what Archie McPhee has been up to.
These are some adorable organs! From kidneys to livers, this pack of internal organs is a perfect pick-me-up for a minuscule mortician. While it includes a few unpopular organs, you’ll also get the most popular organ of all time, the heart! (Brain is a close second. Also included.)
Want to make it look like a gnome died in your potted plant? These Itty Bitty Bones are like a tiny archaeological dig in your azaleas. Or, pose them in front of your cat and take a picture! What has little Fluffy been up to?
(12) SLEEPOVER IN A MISSILE SILO. Alta will host a Zoom interview with missile silo owner and enthusiast Gary Baker tomorrow, July 12, at 12:30 p.m. Pacific. Register here.
Would you spend the night in a decommissioned missile silo in Roswell, New Mexico? If your answer is an enthusiastic yes, you’ll want to meet Gary Baker: silo enthusiast and owner of Site 4, one of Airbnb’s most curious rental offerings. Profiled in Mark Wallace’s Alta Journal article “Sleeping in the Barrel of a Gun,” Baker joins Alta Live to detail his passion for missile silos, tell us about “preppers”—people who prepare for the end of the world—and reveal what it’s like to sleep in an underground bunker that was built to withstand a war. This will be a fun one—join us!
(13) THE VIBES. [Item by Steven French.] It turns out that the shape of your brain may be more important than previously thought (presumably by folk with particularly shaped brains …!) “MRI study challenges our knowledge of how the human brain works” at Physics World.
We have long thought that specific thoughts or sensations elicit activity in specific parts of the brain, but this study reveals that structured patterns of activity are excited across nearly the entire brain, just like the way in which a musical note arises from vibrations occurring along the entire length of a violin string, and not just an isolated segment…
This is a preview of the digital audiobook of How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine (Audiobook Excerpt from Chap. 2: An open letter to Jeff Bezos from a small bookstore), available on Libro.fm
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Bill, Anne Marble, Olav Rokne, 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 Daniel Dern.]
The Dream Foundry’s contests for emerging writers and artists will be open to submissions are from April 17 through June 18, 2023. There are no fees to submit.
The full rules and details regarding the contests, including links to submit and full profiles on the judges, are available here:
This contest is for writers who are relatively new to paid or incoming-earning publication of speculative short fiction in English. To be eligible for this contest, all five rules below must be true of the entrant:
You have published a total of less than 4,000 words of paid or income-earning speculative fiction in English.
You have earned a total of less than USD 320 from those words.
You are not a previous winner of the Dream Foundry writing contest.
No AI, machine learning, or large language model tools were used in the story except for checking spelling and grammar.
Cash prizes will be given to the top three entries. First Place: $1000. Second Place: $500. Third Place: $200.
Writing Contest Judges:
Suzan Palumbo is a Trinidadian Canadian speculative fiction writer, two time Nebula Award finalist, editor, and cofounder of the Ignyte Awards. Her debut dark fantasy/horror short story collection, “Skin Thief: Stories” is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock in fall 2023. Her novella “Countess” will be published by ECW Press in 2024. Her writing has been featured in: The Dark Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, The Deadlands, Pseudopod, Podcastle, Anathema: Spec Fic from the Margins, and other venues. A full bibliography can be found at: suzanpalumbo.wordpress.com. She is officially represented by Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. She tweets @sillysyntax and posts on instagram @gothicsyntax. When she isn’t writing, she is usually sketching, listening to new wave, being a silly goth or wandering her local misty forests.
John (@Wiswell) is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He is a winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story and Locus Award for Best Novelette, and a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy awards for short fiction. His work has appeared in venues such as Tor.com, LeVar Burton Reads, Uncanny Magazine, Diabolical Plots, Lightspeed Magazine, Podcastle, Escape Pod, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His debut novel, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, is due out from DAW Books in 2024.
EMERGING ARTISTS CONTEST
This contest is for artists who are relatively new to paid illustration work for speculative publications in English. To be eligible for this contest, all the following rules must be true of you:
You have a maximum of one (1) commissioned/original artwork for the cover of a speculative publication.
You have only two (2) or less non-original artworks (reprint/licensed art) used for covers of speculative fiction magazines or publications.
You have never been nominated for any Hugo award for art, including fan categories.
You are not a previous winner of the Dream Foundry art contest
Cash prizes will be given to the top three entries. First Place, Monu Bose Prize for Art: $1000. Second Place: $500. Third Place: $200.
Artist Contest Judges:
Solomon Robert Nui Enos is a Native Hawaiian artist, illustrator, and visionary. Born and raised in Makaha Valley (O‘ahu, Hawai‘i), Solomon hails from the well-known Enos ‘ohana. Solomon has been making art for more than 30 years and he is adept at artistic expression in a wide variety of media including oil paintings, book illustrations, murals, and game design. A self-described “Possibilist” Solomon’s art expresses an informed aspirational vision of the world at its best via contemporary and traditional art that leans towards Sci-Fi and Fantasy. His work touches on themes like collective-consciousness, ancestry and identity, our relationship with our planet, and all through the lens of his experience as a person indigenous to Hawai’i.
Solomon has exhibited in Biennial X (Honolulu Museum of Art), 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Queensland Art Gallery), CONTACT art exhibitions, and others. His work is held in private collections and in the public collections of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and Hawai’i State Art Museum. He has led numerous community mural projects and has received art commissions for hotels, corporate offices, public buildings, and schools in Hawai’i. His latest works include murals and augmented-reality installations for Google and Disney.
Rumours suggest that Sloane Hong [they/them] is an illustrator, comic artist and tattooer who lurks somewhere deep within the agonising, suburban sprawl of Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. However, these claims have yet to be verified. Documented photo evidence of their work may be found on plaest2k.me or on twitter and instagram using the handle @plaest2k.
(1) TAKES FOUR. Nancy Kress told Facebook readers what qualities a writer needs to have:
In a recent interview that I was recording for my and Robert Lanza’s forthcoming novel, Observer, the interviewer asked, “What qualities do you think an aspiring writer must have?” This is something to which I have given a lot of thought because I am often asked it by attendees at Taos Toolbox. I think there are four necessary qualities: talent, persistence, flexibility, and luck….
(2) DAW ACQUIRES TWO JOHN WISWELL FANTASY NOVELS. Katie Hoffman, Senior Editor at DAW Books, has acquired World rights to two fantasy novels by Nebula Award-winning author John Wiswell, represented by Hannah Bowman at Liza Dawson Associates.
Wiswell’s debut novel, scheduled for Spring 2024, is Someone You Can Build A Nest In. Pitched as Gideon The Ninth meets Circe, this highly-anticipated fantasy is a creepy, charming monster-slaying sapphic romance—from the perspective of the monster, a shapeshifter named Shesheshen who falls in love with a human.
At the core of this dark fantasy is a heartwarming, cozy rom-com. While a chilling tale of generational harm and the struggle of surviving in a hostile world, Someone You Can Build A Nest In also stubbornly offers that possibility that, through surprising connections, we may still discover new definitions of love and relearn our own value. Acquiring editor Katie Hoffman says, “It feeds a growing delight I’ve seen in blending the gruesome and the whimsical, the bloody and the quaint.”
Short summary:
Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she’s fallen in love. Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who usually resides as an amorphous lump in the swamp of a ruined manor, unless impolite monster hunters invade intent on murdering her. Through a chance encounter, she meets a different kind of human, warm-hearted Homily, who mistakes Shesheshen as a human in turn. Shesheshen is loath to deceive, but just as she’s about to confess her true identity, Homily reveals she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give them both a chance at happiness, she must figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with the love of her life.
Someone You Can Build A Nest In will be published by DAW Books in Spring 2024.
(3) HOMETOWN HERO. A local paper, Weser-Kurier, interviewed Cora Buhlert about her Hugo win and the article appeared today. It’s behind a paywall, unfortunately, but you can see the photo of Cora very carefully hugging her Hugo trophy: “Cora Buhlert aus Stuhr gewinnt als erste deutsche Autorin Hugo Award”.
(4) MOORCOCK Q&A. Goodman Games’ interview with Michael Moorcock is now online on their YouTube channel:
A special episode of Sanctum Secorum Live with guest Michael Moorcock. In honor of the forthcoming release of the newest book in the Elric saga, The Citadel of Forgotten Myths.
(5) RHYMES WITH “PLAYED WELL”. John Hertz sends this tribute to the late Bob Madle.
Mighty, he was mild,
All our worlds open to him.
Doors that he had made
Let designers, dreamers through.
Each imagination gained.
An acrostic in unrhymed 5-7-5-7-7- syllable lines.
(6) ANGELA LANSBURY (1925-2022). Actress Angela Lansbury died October 11 at the age of 96. Best known to the TV-watching generation as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, she earlier gained fame with three Oscar nominated roles in Gaslight (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
On Broadway she won several Tony Awards, including one for her turn in Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical play Sweeney Todd.
She appeared in the Disney hit Bedknobs and Broomsticks in 1971, and later featured in other children’s films, providing the voice for Mrs Potts in the animated Beauty and the Beast; and more recently Mary Poppins Returns.
Carl Andor has a thorough roundup of Lansbury’s genre credits in a comment for File 770.
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1973 – [By Cat Eldridge.]
Spock:Consider. Chuft Captain has been attacked by an herbivorous pacifist, an eater of leaves and roots, one who traditionally does not fight. And the ultimate insult, I left him alive. Chuft Captain’s honor is at stake. He must seek personal revenge before he can call for help.
Sulu:That gives us some time. You did plan it that way?
Spock: Of course.
Star Trek: the Animated Series’ “The Slaver Weapon”
So we all know that Star Trek: the Animated Series followed the first series and debuted on September 8, 1973. It would end that run a mere twenty-two episodes later on October 12, 1974.
Did I like the series? I think that two aspects of it were done really, really well. The voice cast was stellar, with almost all of the original cast save Walter Koenig voicing their characters. It is said, but this is only rumor, originally Filmation was only going to pay for three actors, that being Shatner, Nimoy, and Doohan.
Nimoy however said that he wouldn’t take part unless the rest of the original cast was included. However the studio stuck to its guns as to how many it would budget for and Walter Koenig was dropped because of what he wanted. However Nimoy did get him some writing gigs for the show.
The other was the stories. Being animated gave them a wider artistic frame to work with than the original show had and they used that to their creative benefit. An example of this was Niven merging his Known Space story, “The Soft Weapon” into the Trek universe. It was wonderful and it was great to see the Kzin visualized.
(Everything here was novelized by Alan Dean Foster. He first adapted three episodes per book, but later editions saw the half-hour scripts expanded into full, novel-length stories.)
I think the animation was at best weak. It looked flat, one dimensional. The characters as if they really weren’t quite there. I’ve never been a fan of Filmation.
I just rewatched that episode on Paramount +. The print is stellar and the voices are great. The animation was, as I thought it was, less than great. Watching characters move is painful to say the least as they don’t walk so as much glide across the screen.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born October 12, 1875 — Aleister Crowley. Mystic. Charlatan possibly. Genre writer? You decide. But I’ve no doubt that he had a great influence upon the genre as I’m betting many of you can note works in which he figures. One of the earliest such cases is Land of Mist, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which was published in 1926. (Died 1947.)
Born October 12, 1903 — Josephine Hutchinson. She was Elsa von Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein. She was in “I Sing the Body Electric”, The Twilight Zone episode written by Bradbury that he later turned into a short story. (Died 1998.)
Born October 12, 1904 — Lester Dent. Pulp-fiction author who was best known as the creator and main author of the series of novels chronicling Doc Savage. Of the one hundred and eighty-one Doc Savage novels published by Street and Smith, one hundred and seventy-nine were credited to Kenneth Robeson; and all but twenty were written by Dent. (Died 1959.)
Born October 12, 1916 — Lock Martin. His claim to fame was that he was one of the tallest humans that ever lived. At seven feet and seven inches (though this was disputed by some who shouldn’t have), he was also quite stocky. He had the distinction of playing Gort in The Day The Earth Stood Still. He was also in The Incredible Shrinking Man as a giant, but his scenes were deleted. And he shows up in Invaders from Mars as the Mutant carrying David to the Intelligence though he goes uncredited in the film. (Died 1959.)
Born October 12, 1924 — Randy Stuart. She’s best remembered as Louise Carey, the wife of Scott Carey, in The Incredible Shrinking Man. She was also Frances Hiller in “Anniversary of a Murder” on One Step Beyond which conceived as a companion series to TheTwilight Zone. (Died 1996.)
Born October 12, 1943 — Linda Shaye, 79 . She’s been an actress for over forty years and has appeared in over ninety films, mostly horror. Among them is A Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters, Insidious, Dead End, 2001 Maniacs and its sequel 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams, Jekyll and Hyde… Together Again, Amityville: A New Generation, Ouija, and its prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil. She even appeared in the first and only true version of The Running Man as a Propaganda Officer.
Born October 12, 1942 — Daliah Lavi. She’s in Casino Royale as The Detainer, a secret agent. In the same year, she was in Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon as Madelaine. She was Purificata in The Demon, an Italian horror film. If you’re into German popular music, you might recognize her as she was successful there in Seventies and Eighties. (Died 2017.)
Born October 12, 1965 — Dan Abnett, 57. His earlier work was actually on Doctor Who Magazine, but I’ll single out his co-writing Guardians of the Galaxy #1–6 with Andy Lanning, The Authority: Rule Britannia which is an exceptional piece of work by any standardsand his Border Princes novel he did in the Torchwood universe as great looks at him as a writer.
Born October 12, 1968 — Hugh Jackman, 54. Obviously Wolverine in the Marvel film franchise including the next Deadpool film. He’s also been the lead character in Van Helsing as well as voicing him in the animated prequel Van Helsing: The London Assignment. One of his most charming roles was voicing The Easter Bunny in The Rise of The Guardians which I really, really liked. And he played Robert Angier in The Prestige based off the novel written by the real Christopher Priest. Not the fake one.
(9) GOING POSTAL. “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.” Well, they haven’t got there yet. “Irish postal service launches digital stamp” – BBC has the story.
An Post, the postal service in the Republic of Ireland, has launched a new digital stamp.
Customers will receive a 12-digit unique code via the company’s app which they can write onto their envelope where the traditional stamp would go.
An Post’s letter sorting technology will recognise the code as a live stamp when it is being processed for delivery.
The digital stamp costs €2 (£1.76) compared with €1.25 (£1.10) for a normal one.
Garrett Bridgeman, managing mirector for An Post Commerce, said: “Here we have a product that works for everyone; busy individuals who are time-poor and want to purchase stamps at a time and place that works for them; or last-minute senders, as well as SMEs and business owners who need to post at irregular hours and may not have stamps to hand.”
Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG) laid off 82 scripted, unscripted, and animation employees on Tuesday, and will not fill 43 more vacant positions. The 125 positions represented 26% of the companies workforce across those units.
However, the layoffs, which were generally expected, don’t tell the whole story of what’s going on at Warner Bros. Discovery’s animation units. In fact, there was an even more consequential announcement yesterday that fundamentally alters the structure of Cartoon Network Studios going forward and will have a far-reaching impact on the projects that it produces. The company calls it part of its “strategic realignment.”
(11) GAINING AN EDGE. Michael Harrington interviews Oliver Brackenbury, editor of New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine at Black Gate.
What are your thoughts on “inclusion” in the New Edge Movement?
[Brackenbury] This resurgence of New Edge Sword & Sorcery as a term to rally behind, back in the spring of this year, started from that all too familiar conversational space of “How do we get more people into this genre?” Well, if you want more people getting into this thing we love, then you need to include more people!
You can’t hope to expand an audience without reaching outside that audience, while doing your best to make the scene welcoming for everyone. For example, don’t scratch your head wondering why more women don’t read and write in the genre when you’re reluctant to call out sexism in the scene, or perhaps simply aren’t directly reaching out to women, merely hoping they’ll show up. You can replace “women” and “sexism” in this example with just about every intersection of identity that isn’t my fellow white, cishet, neurotypical, able-bodied fellas (or “white guys,” for brevity’s sake).
Nothing wrong with my fellow white guys, I don’t want them to go away, or have anything taken away from them. I just think inclusion is vital if S&S is to have a third wave of mass appeal, akin or even superior to what it enjoyed in the second wave of the 60’s through early 80’s. Call out hatred and harassment, give people a head’s up when they go back to read certain classics, and just, ya know, be cool, man.
A larger, more diverse scene benefits absolutely everyone. With a greater variety of people, we’ll get to enjoy a greater number & variety of stories, artistic works, and viewpoints!
(13) SPIRITED TRAILER. Nothing says more about the holidays than it’s time for Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds to bash each other on Apple TV!
Happy Birthday, Hugh. This year, I’m giving you the gift of being much worse than you at singing and dancing. But at least there’s Will and Octavia!
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Cora Buhlert, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
…“That Story Isn’t The Story” is about growing while our trauma lives on inside of us, and while the sources of our trauma continue to live on around us, and often pursue us and belittle us. It’s about surviving by controlling our own stories, and the breath of life that comes from someone believing in you.
I’m certainly sitting here in part because of such believers….
…In the early years of the 1980s, I was fooling around with a novel that explored a future in which the United States had become disunited. Part of it had turned into a theocratic dictatorship based on 17th-century New England Puritan religious tenets and jurisprudence. I set this novel in and around Harvard University—an institution that in the 1980s was renowned for its liberalism, but that had begun three centuries earlier chiefly as a training college for Puritan clergy.
In the fictional theocracy of Gilead, women had very few rights, as in 17th-century New England. The Bible was cherry-picked, with the cherries being interpreted literally. Based on the reproductive arrangements in Genesis—specifically, those of the family of Jacob—the wives of high-ranking patriarchs could have female slaves, or “handmaids,” and those wives could tell their husbands to have children by the handmaids and then claim the children as theirs.
Although I eventually completed this novel and called it The Handmaid’s Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?
For instance: It is now the middle of 2022, and we have just been shown a leaked opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States that would overthrow settled law of 50 years on the grounds that abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and is not “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition.” True enough. The Constitution has nothing to say about women’s reproductive health. But the original document does not mention women at all….
One hundred and one years ago today, Shirley Jackson was born. During her lifetime, she wrote “The Lottery,” and The Haunting of HillHouse,and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the latter of which features what I consider to be the best first paragraph of all time, or at least of any novel that I have ever read. Here it is:
“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”
It almost seems like overkill to explain why this paragraph is so wonderful….
(4) PRESENT AT THE CREATION. Here’s Rich Horton’s latest look at potential Hugo winners and nominees from the 1950s — this time, stories published in 1952 (first eligibility year of the Hugos): “Hugo Nomination Recommendations, 1953” from Strange at Ectbatan.
Continuing my project of suggesting potential Hugo nominees (and winners) for the early years of the Hugo — basically, pre-1958. Here’s a look at 1952. This is the year covered by the very first Hugos, from the 11th Worldcon, Philcon II, in Philadelphia, in September 1953. The only Fiction Hugo actually awarded went to Alfred Bester’s novel The Demolished Man. Apparently there were plans to name a Short Fiction winner, but there were insufficient votes….
(5) FANZINES ARCHIVED AT HARVARD. The article doesn’t have that much to say, but that it appears in Harvard Magazine might interest you: “The Geeky Underground”.
BEFORE HE WAS the acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was just another teenage boy with a science-fiction zine. Pronounced “zeen,” these self-published, often-low-budget magazines are staples in subcultures and underground movements—including punk-rock devotees, palindrome-writers, and the riot grrrl feminists of the 1990s—but the medium first got its start in the 1930s, in the bedrooms and basements of devout sci-fi fans. Their zines, which helped launch genre legends like Bradbury and Robert A. Heinlein, were handmade, wacky, and delightful. A single issue might house a hand-drawn comic titled “The Return of the Space Boggle,” a poem about a ghost with dry skin, and an epistle from a teenaged sci-fi author on “the various problems connected with space travel that make it difficult to write up sex properly.”…
Some people claim that the reason that SFF-related non-fiction books have increasingly been crowded out of the Best Related Work category at the Hugos is that there are not enough non-fiction books published every year to fill the Hugo ballot. This is wrong, since there is a wide spectrum of non-fiction books covering every SFF-related subject imaginable released every year. Today’s featured non-fiction book proves how wide that spectrum truly is, because it is a book about the history of lesbian relationships as portrayed in manga and anime.
My book is By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga.
Lesbian-themed animation and comics (and related media), known as “Yuri,” is the newest genre of Japanese pop culture. Even though it’s only been acknowledged as a separate genre for a little over a decade, Yuri has a literary and artistic history that can be traced back to the early 20th century. My book is a series of interlocking lectures and essays that trace that history and bring the story of Yuri to the present. I cover key series and creators, as well as the efforts by creators and fans to carve out a space for ourselves in the larger Japanese pop culture fandom.
(7) CROMCAST PODCAST COVERAGE OF HOWARD DAYS. The good folks of The Cromcast have posted yet more recordings of the 2022 Robert E. Howard Days.
This recording from Friday, June 10th includes academic papers delivered by Drs. Dierk Guenther, Gabriel Mamola, and James McGlothlin. The panel is moderated by Dr. Jason Ray Carney.
This recording is from Friday, June 10th, and is from the Robert E. Howard Celebration Banquet. The guest of honor is Fred Malmberg, who shares comments and stories about his years in the gaming industry, as well as the influence of Robert E Howard on the history of gaming. The guest of honor is introduced by Rusty Burke.
For this recording, Josh and Luke are joined by various attendees for afterhours conversations on Friday, June 10th.
(8) BEYOND GAME OF THRONES. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] The Guardian has a very extensive interview with Emilia Clarke, which is easy to miss, because it was posted in the theatre section rather than the film or TV sections: “Emilia Clarke: ‘The best place in the world is backstage at a theatre’”.
…The actor is no stranger to the divisive power of art – on which more later – but the spare and lean production marks a pronounced change from the jobs she has done since being catapulted into superstardom by Game of Thrones in 2011. Following the phenomenally successful HBO series, in which she portrayed Daenerys Targaryen, Clarke has starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys, played Han Solo’s love interest in Solo: A Star Wars Story and dressed as an elf in Paul Feig’s Emma Thompson-scripted romcom Last Christmas. She has won a Bafta Britannia award and been nominated for numerous Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards; in 2019, she was one of Time’s100 most influential people….
(9) WOULD THAT BE A TOTAL OF SIX BODIES? Two adaptations of The Three Body Problem are moving forward.
The Three-Body Problem by Chinese author Liu Cixin is the Science Fiction trilogy that’s made the biggest splash in the 21st Century, and a TV series adaptation is highly anticipated by fans. Just this week, Chinese studio Tencent released a poster and the second trailer for the Chinese TV adaptation.
…The first trailer for the Chinese version of The Three-Body Problem was released back in November 2021. So far, no premiere date for the series has been announced. Reports on Chinese social media suggest that the series is currently being re-edited to get approval from government censors before a release date can be determined. That means the whole series has been shot….
The drama series adapted from Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning trilogy has added four more actors to its sprawling ensemble, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Jonathan Pryce (The Crown), Rosalind Chao (Better Things), Ben Schnetzer (Y: The Last Man) and Eve Ridley (Peppa Pig) have joined the show….
The title of the 1982 film Blade Runneris taken directly from a book. Well, from two books: the 1979 novella Blade Runner (a movie) by William S. Burroughs, which, in turn, was based on the 1974 novel The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse. Both of those books are science fiction stories set in the near future, but have nothing to do with escaped androids. Instead, the movie’s plot is based on the 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s tempting to say that Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece took the name Blade Runner and slapped it on a Philip K. Dick story, but the truth is, Blade Runnersucceeds because it’s not really an adaptation of anything….
(11) MEMORY LANE.
1963 – [By Cat Eldridge.] So fifty-nine years ago on this evening, like peanut butter and chocolate two great monsters united when King Kong Vs. Godzilla premiered. Really would I kid you? (Well I would and you well know it, but that’s why for a different discussion, isn’t it?)
Not at all surprisingly, this Japanese kaiju film was directed by Ishirō Honda, with the special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Nine years previously, Honda directed and co-wrote Godzilla of which Tsuburaya is considered the co-creator.
The script was Shinichi Sekizawa, mostly known, again not surprisingly, for his work on the Godzilla films but he did some other genre work such as Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon and Jack and the Witch.
It started out as a story outline written by King Kong stop motion animator Willis O’Brien in the early Sixties in which Kong battles a giant Frankenstein Monster. The idea was given to the Tojo film company without his permission and they decided Godzilla would be a bigger draw.
An individual by the name of Merian C. Cooper filed a lawsuit against the film showing here claiming he had exclusive right to the King Kong character in the United States, a claim that the film distributor quickly refuted as it turned out many individuals did.
It had already been the single most popular Godzilla film in Japan before it showed here and remains so to date. It made nearly three million here, not bad considering its tiny budget of four hundred thousand— two men in suits don’t cost much, do they? — so the film made twenty times that in its first run. Monsters rock!
The Hollywood Reporter liked it: “A funny monster picture? That’s what Universal has in “King Kong Versus Godzilla.” Though the New York Times noted “The one real surprise of this cheap reprise of earlier Hollywood and Japanese horror films is the ineptitude of its fakery. When the pair of prehistoric monsters finally get together for their battle royal, the effect is nothing more than a couple of dressed-up stuntmen throwing cardboard rocks at each other.”
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give a so-so rating of fifty six percent.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 26, 1904 — Peter Lorre. I think his first foray into genre was in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea film as Comm. Lucius Emery though he was in an Americanized version of Casino Royale as Le Chiffre which was an early Fifties episode of the Climax! series. (James Bond was called Jimmy. Ooh the horror!) Other genre roles were in Tales of Terror as Montresor in “The Black Cat” story, The Raven as Dr. Adolphus Bedlo and The Comedy of Terrors as Felix Grille. (Died 1964.)
Born June 26, 1910 — Elsie Wollheim. She was one of the original Futurians of New York, and assisted them in their publishing efforts, and even published Highpoints, her own one-off fanzine. She married Donald A. Wollheim in 1943. When he started DAW Books in 1972, she was the co-founder, and inherited the company when he died. Their daughter Elizabeth (Betsy) now runs the company along with co-publisher and Sheila E. Gilbert. (Died 1996.)
Born June 26, 1950 — Tom DeFalco, 72. Comic book writer and editor, mainly known for his work at Marvel Comics and in particular on the Spider-Man line. He designed the Spider-Girl character which was his last work at Marvel as he thought he was being typecast as just a Spider-Man line writer. He’s since been working at DC and Archie Comics.
Born June 26, 1965 — Daryl Gregory, 57. He won a Crawford Award for his Pandemonium novel. And his novella We Are All Completely Fine won the World Fantasy Award and a Shirley Jackson Award. It was also a finalist for the Sturgeon Award. I’m also fond of his writing on the Planet of The Apes series that IDW published.
Born June 26, 1969 — Lev Grossman, 53. Most noted as the author of The Magicians trilogy — The Magicians, The Magician King and The Magician’s Land. Winner of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. He wrote the screenplay for The Map of Tiny Perfect Things film which was based off his short story of that name. I hear his Magicians trilogy has been made into a series — who’s seen it?
Born June 26, 1969 — Austin Grossman, 53. Twin brother of Lev. And no, he’s not here just because he’s Lev’s twin brother. He’s the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible which is decidedly SF as well as You: A Novel (also called YOU) which was heavily influenced for better or worse by TRON and Crooked, a novel involving the supernatural and Nixon. He’s also a video games designer, some of which such as Clive Barker’s Undying and Tomb Raider: Legend are definitely genre.
Born June 26, 1980 — Jason Schwartzman, 42. He first shows up in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox’s personal brain care specialist. (Uncredited initially.) He was Ritchie in Bewitched, and voiced Simon Lee in Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation. He co-wrote Isle of Dogs alongwith Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Kunichi Nomura. I think his best work was voicing Ash Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Born June 26, 1984 — Aubrey Plaza, 38. April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation which at least one Filer has insisted is genre. She voiced Eska in recurring role on The Legend of Korra which is a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. She was in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Julie Powers. And she was Lenny Busker on Legion.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
Shoetoday is about a cat, so of course it belongs in the Scroll.
At a time of widespread debate over the depiction of women in film, the top Japanese animators have long been creating heroines who are more layered and complex than many of their American counterparts. They have faults and weaknesses and tempers as well as strengths and talents. They’re not properties or franchises; they’re characters the filmmakers believe in.
… Because Japanese animated features are made by smaller crews and on smaller budgets than those of major American films, directors can present more personal visions. American studios employ story crews; Hosoda, Hayao Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai and other auteurs storyboard entire films themselves. Their work isn’t subjected to a gantlet of test audiences, executive approvals or advisory committees….
We love dystopias. There’s something shuddery and intriguing about exploring a world that’s a lot like ours, but there’s something wrong with it. We fall to the allure of it. Sure, this brave new world is terrible, but how cool would it be to survive? Maybe even become a hero? And for many of our favorite dystopian stories, survivability feels possible — at least for a while. These scenarios borrow from today and hold warnings about what tomorrow could be unless we act. We feel prepared by watching them. We feel, for a little while, empowered.
… These stories are about people’s extraordinary efforts to thrive, and sometimes they fail. Let’s explore some of our favorite dystopias and imagine what it would be like to try and live in them.
5. Snowpiercer
Stylistically similar to Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” “Snowpiercer,” directed by Bong Joon-ho, is an adaptation of a French comic that foretells a world of few survivors on a frozen Earth. Society is packed into trains that run ceaselessly across the world. Classism allows the elite to feast on the plight of the poor. If you were trapped in a world like this one, imagine the smell. Even in the forward cars, people smell in closed quarters. Water is at a premium. The stink of the train’s oils and electricity will always be in the air.
As in “Elysium,” there’s a chance you might find yourself among the privileged, but it’s far likelier you’ll be in the cattle cars. Sure, there’s a guy that looks like Chris Evans, but your fate could be as simple as winding up an awful-tasting protein bar for your friends to eat. It’s life, of a sort, but it’s not desirable. The end of the film suggests that the world beyond the train is healing, and someone with a gift for survivalism and the right gear to keep warm might make it — but to do what? It’s going to be decades of hard living and starvation before the first villages thrive.
… Released by Pixar in 2008, Wall-E was ahead of its time on AI sentience, automation of the workforce, and interstellar travel. But perhaps the movie’s most timely theme is its complicated environmental message.
While the climate crisis isn’t overtly mentioned, it’s probably safe to assume it had a role in turning our planet teeming with life into a barren wasteland devoid of sentient life — save for the garbage-collecting robot known as “Wall-E.” And in the years since, this kind of lifeless apocalyptic setting has become farmorecommon in Hollywood sci-fi movies, reflecting the growing trend of “climate doom” in real life.
But what is “climate doom” and are we really doomed to the future seen in the movie. Or can climate optimism win out and save our planet before we turn it into a gloomy garbage heap a la Wall-E?…
Astronomers discovered a rocket body heading toward a lunar collision late last year. Impact occurred March 4, with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later spotting the resulting crater. Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern crater (18-meter diameter, about 19.5 yards) superimposed on a western crater (16-meter diameter, about 17.5 yards).
The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cora Buhlert, Daniel Dern, Michael J. Walsh, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cora Buhlert.]
(1) BEGIN AT THE FRONT. Alex Shvartsman is including File 770 in today’s cover reveal of The Middling Affliction, his humorous urban fantasy novel forthcoming form Caezik SF&F on April 12, 2022. Art is by Tulio Brito.
What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out.
Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous secret: he’s one in a million – literally.
(2) WHEN YOUR STORY’S FINISHED, WHAT NEXT? [Item by Melanie Stormm.] John Wiswell recently wrote a thread on how a Nebula winner submits short fiction. Thought it might be helpful to someone. Thread starts here. An excerpt from his advice:
Also, I NEVER pay a submission fee. I don't sub to markets that charge them. Submission fees are a frequent sign of scam artists and of a market having very little audience.
(3) LOOKING AT THE SUBJECT FROM ALL SIDES. Brenton Dickieson has launched his “Blogging the Hugos 2021” novel review series at A Pilgrim in Narnia. His introductory post tells why he’s writing it, and gives the schedule.
…The 2021 Hugo Awards ceremonies will be on Dec 18th at DisCon III in Washington, DC. Ahead of the event, Signum University is hosting a panel discussion of the nominees. My job will be to represent Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, not so much in a battle of books but a winsome argument about great storytelling. Last year, I was delighted to represent Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, a novel that did not win but was also nominated for the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Mythopoeic Award, and the Locus Award in the category of Best First Novel. It’s a beautiful, evocative book, and I very much enjoyed last year’s Signum Roundtable.
Thus, in looking forward to December’s conversation, I am blogging through the Hugo novels, offering a review or thoughtful essay each week leading up to the convention. I hope you can join in as we read and talk about the leading speculative fiction of the past year! This week, we’ll look at Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut Universe, followed by Martha Wells’ Network Effect next week….
…Not lost in world-building details, the structures of catastrophe and the struggles for liberation in the Lady Astronaut Universe are the context for stories of personal growth, trial, and triumph. The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky (2018) are from Elma York’s viewpoint, a friendly and self-conscious intellectual working as an IAC (human) computer with an unusually adept and intuitive mathematical sense. Elma finds herself in a battle to be heard as the mathematician who predicted the first global winter and subsequent global warming, as well as a skilled pilot vying to be the first woman in the space program. Her real battle, however, is with a general anxiety disorder that is triggered by stress and tragedy and an intense fear of the media or interpersonal conflict. With a winsome sense of relational connection and a rugged commitment to the possible, Elma finds a way to become “the first Lady Astronaut” (insert an earnest and upbeat 1950s TV commentator voice here).
(4) GORILLA MARKETING. [Item by John L. Coker III.] From a 1997 interview, here’s Julie’s take on the popularity of gorillas in DC comic books in the early-1950s, a topic mentioned in the November 9 Scroll (item #14).
Julius Schwartz: One day someone came into the office and said, “What has happened? Strange Adventures went sky-high.” I said, “Well, you know how it works. It must have been the cover,” because covers sold the magazines in those days. You went into a mom and pop store, where you saw hundreds of comics. You looked them over and picked out something that was interesting. I said, “Let’s look at the cover.” And on the cover, roughly, was this. It took place in a zoo, and there’s a cage, and inside the cage is a gorilla. And outside is an audience looking up at him, including a pretty girl whose name was Helen, as I vaguely recall. The gorilla had a little blackboard in his hand, and with a piece of chalk had written the following message: “Dear Helen, Please Help me. I’m the victim of a horrible scientific experiment.” You laugh, but it made you want to find out what it’s all about, so obviously you bought the magazine.
One way to find out is to try it again, so we tried another gorilla story, the secret being that the gorilla was not a gorilla, so to speak, but acting and reacting like a human. And it worked again.
We knew we had something, so I did a series of stories with gorillas on them, until finally all the other editors wanted to do one. Wonder Woman had one, Batman, they all had gorilla covers, until the editorial director said, “That does it. From now on, only one gorilla cover a month.” And then when that caught fire, they said, “We’re doing so well on this Strange Adventures, let’s put out another science fiction magazine.” I said, “Impossible. There are so many science fiction magazines being published that there are no titles left. I can’t even think of another title.” I’m sorry I never thought of Strange Gorilla Stories.
[Interview with John L. Coker III, 1997.]
(5) SPEAKING OF GORILLA ART. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] “King Kong” … Willis H. O’Brien … Ray Harryhausen: Exploring The Cultural Influence And Legacy Of A “Monstrous” Motion Picture Classic!
I had an opportunity quite recently to sit down once more with Host, Actor, Comedian, and Writer Ron MacCloskey for his Emmy Award Winning Public Television Series, “Classic Movies with Ron MacCloskey.”
Ron is the writer and producer of the new feature length documentary motion picture, “Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster,” now playing in theaters all across the globe.
For this Halloween themed episode of the popular program, however, we explored the cultural significance, history, and legacy of the most famous “Monster” of them all … King Kong … and his nearly ninety year influence on gorilla films of all shapes and sizes, as well as his career defining impact on the lives and reign of Stop Motion Animation legends, Willis H. O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
Our spirited conversation both precedes and follows the film segment. Simply click on the projector, or the blue link, in order to screen the program. ” Classic Movies: “The Gorilla”
(6) ON THE WEB. The Marvel’s Avengers – Spider-Man game character reveal trailer dropped today.
Watch the Marvel’s Avengers Spider-Man reveal trailer. Spider-Man swings into Marvel’s Avengers on November 30th, 2021. Get a first look at the Marvels Avengers PlayStation exclusive character joining the team in this cinematic Marvels Avengers Spider Man trailer!
(7) SELKIES SPOTLIGHTED. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] CrimeReads had an interesting piece listing a number of novels about selkies. I was kind of surprised that I only recognized one of the books listed. “The Story of the Selkie: Eight Novels Based in Powerful Folklore” by Melanie Golding.
… I love the idea that much of folklore is based on universal human stories that are still true today. Selkies may be mystical creatures but they are also women treated badly by men, then judged for their response by wider society. Because of this universality, as well as the compelling magical element, there are many modern novels that make use of selkie folklore, which in several ways shares roots with the folklore of mermaids. I’ve picked out a few that spoke to me. I hope many more readers will discover these sea-faring, shape-shifting, magic-realist tales….
(8) WFC GALLERY. Ellen Datlow has posted her World Fantasy Con photos on Flickr: WFC 2021 Montreal, Canada.
(9) AIRING OUT THE PROBLEM. Adam Rogers in WIRED has an interview with Neal Stephenson about Termination Shock and how didactic writers should be when composing near-future climate sf. “Neal Stephenson on Building and Fixing Worlds”.
… Stephenson stressed that achieving net-zero carbon emissions isn’t enough and that there’s no more important idea than developing technologies that can quickly suck carbon out of the atmosphere. “We need carbon capture on an enormous scale,” he said. “We have to do that. That’s the big solution that we really need to implement.”
“It truly is a solution,” he continued. “It would get rid of the underlying problem and kind of undo the mistake that we made by putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place.”…
Nothing spells plot like an independent trader plying the spacetime lanes in search of profit, in a world very much skewed against the little guy. Nothing, that is, unless one adds family! Now in addition to scrabbling after profit, one has extra motivation: failure isn’t merely an individual catastrophe. Bad judgement, terrible luck, or the machinations of a vast inhuman corporation could drag one’s whole family down into poverty…or worse….
(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1951 — Seventy years ago, Flight to Mars as produced by Monogram Pictures premiered. It was produced by Walter Mirisch and directed by Lesley Selander. It starred Marguerite Chapman and Cameron Mitchell. The screenplay was by Arthur Strawn and it would be his only SF work. Critics who really didn’t like it compared it to the previously released Destination Moon and Rocketship XM with the comparison not being at all great as one critic noted: “Destination Moon was scientifically accurate, and Rocketship XM had a gripping dramatic script. This copycat production has neither.” This movie reused the ship interior from the Rocketship XM production, and the suits from the Destination Moon shoot. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a twenty-two percent rating.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 11, 1916 — Donald Franson. Author of A Key to the Terminology of Science-Fiction Fandom and An Author Index to Astounding/Analog: Part II—Vol. 36, #1, September, 1945 to Vol. 73 #3, May, 1964. With Howard DeVore wrote A History of the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards, Listing Nominees & Winners, 1951-1970. When I stumble across an author and their works like this, I’m reminded how deep the genre is. (Died 2002.)
Born November 11, 1917 — Mack Reynolds. I assume you know he was the first writer to write an original novel based off the Trek series? Mission to Horatius came in 1968. I’m fond of his very first novel, The Case of The Little Green Men. He was a Hugo finalist at Chicon III (1962) for his “Status Quo” short story. Worked as an organizer for the Socialist Labor Party, then later was the most prolific short fiction writer in Campbell’s Analog – go figure. (Died 1983.)
Born November 11, 1922 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The Sirens of Titan which was nominated for a Hugo at Pittcon was his first SF novel, followed by Cat’s Cradle — which after turning down his original thesis in 1947, the University of Chicago awarded him his master’s degree in anthropology in 1971 for this novel. It was nominated for a Hugo at Pacificon II. Next up was Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, which is one weird book and an even stranger film. The book was nominated for Hugo Award at Heicon (1970) but lost to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. However, the movie Slaughterhouse Five won a Hugo at Torcon II (1973 — over a field that also included Between Time and Timbuktu, a TV adaptation of other Vonngeut material.) While I’m fairly sure Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is his last genre novel there’s a lot of short fiction where something of a genre nature might have occurred. (Died 2007.)
Born November 11, 1925 — Jonathan Winters. Yes, he did do quite a few genre performances including an early one as James Howard “Fats” Brown in “A Game of Pool”, a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone. He next shows up as Albert Paradine II in More Wild, Wild West. He had a recurring role in Mork & Mindy as a character named Mearth. You’ll find him in The Shadow film, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Flintstones, both of The Smurfs films and quite a bit more. He of course was a guest on The Muppets Show. Who wasn’t? (Died 2013.)
Born November 11, 1935 — Larry Anthony. Actor who made two appearances on the original Trek in “The Man Trap” (uncredited) and “Dagger of the Mind”. He also appeared on The Wild Wild West, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and had five appearences on Batman playing two different characters. He made two appearances on Get Smart! And his final genre role was on Mission Impossible. (Died 2005.)
Born November 11, 1947 — Victoria Schochet, 74. Wife of Eric Van Lustbader. She co-edited with John Silbersack and Mellisa Singer the most excellent The Berkley Showcase: New Writings in Science Fiction and Fantasy that came out in the Eighties. SFE says she has worked editorially at Analog though not what she did there.
Born November 11, 1960 — Stanley Tucci, 61. Actor, Director, and Producer with a lengthy resume of character roles in genre films including The Core (Yay! The Core!), Prelude to a Kiss, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Muppets Most Wanted, Beauty and the Beast, The Lovely Bones, Captain America: The First Avenger, Jack the Giant Slayer, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, and The Hunger Games films, as well as numerous voice roles including Leonardo da Vinci in Mr. Peabody & Sherman.
Born November 11, 1962 — Demi Moore, 59. Ghost, of course, for getting her Birthday Honors. And yes, I did see it. Sniff. But she got her genre creds with her second film Parasite which is good as she didn’t do much after that of a genre nature. She has a recurring role as Linda in the Brave New World series that aired on Peacock for just one series before being cancelled.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
Bizarro earns its name with a superhero joke that could have been inspired by the quality of copyediting I do here…
…The rising star has had roles in Russell T Davies’ Years and Years and It’s a Sin, and with Davies set to take over from Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall next year, many have wondered whether he might bring West – or her It’s a Sin co-star Olly Alexander – along for the ride.
West herself addressed the rumours during an exclusive chat with RadioTimes.com.
“I mean, the fact I’ve been named as one of the favourites is quite special,” she said. “So I mean, it would be an honour to be the Doctor. I’m glad people think I could do it. So yeah.”
It’s official – no Doctor Who theory is too outlandish any more. After series 12’s finale essentially canonised the Morbius Doctors and added Jo Martin’s Time Lord to the roster of regenerations, we’d say any and all bets are off for deep-cut fan ideas about the series as it continues.
Which is why we’re not dismissing out of hand the latest theory about Doctor Who: Flux, and specifically the idea that the series might be drawing from a story that never actually made it to TV – Lungbarrow, written by Marc Platt for Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor but left on the shelf until Platt adapted it into a book some years later.
… That story would have delved into the ancestry and backstory of the Doctor, centred around his/her ancestral home of Lungbarrow – and now some fans think they might have seen that abandoned family seat in new series 13 episode War of the Sontarans, specifically within a black-and-white vision scene where Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor gazed up at a ruined, floating house before the main action of the story kicked off….
In this episode, we re-examine the saga of the notorious Sad Puppies. What happened? What ripple effects did it have on the sci-fi/fantasy community? Did we learn anything from this? Should we learn anything from this? And is there more to the story than the official narrative?
Kurt Schiller joins us to talk about angry mobs, squeecore writing, and the musical stylings of forgotten 90s techno group Psykosonik.
(17) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 44 of Octothorpe is up. What are John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty saying this time? Listen here.
We discuss burning melons and the latest news from Reclamation 2022 before discussing what an Eastercon might look like if it were held at a campsite. To round it off, we talk a lot about Dune. With sound effects.
(18) ASIMOV NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The cover story of this week’s Nature concerns soft robots. Soft robots have garnered interest thanks to their ability to carry out complex tasks such as crawling and swimming. But making soft actuators remains difficult. This week’s Nature sees researchers’ new bubble-based method based on elastic polymers (plastics/rubbers) .
Inspired by living organisms, soft robots are developed from intrinsically compliant materials, enabling continuous motions that mimic animal and vegetal movement. In soft robots, the canonical hinges and bolts are replaced by elastomers assembled into actuators programmed to change shape following the application of stimuli, for example pneumatic inflation…
(19) FOR TEN YEARS WE’VE BEEN ON OUR OWN. And one for your home team… “US astronomy’s 10-year plan is super-ambitious” – “Its ‘decadal survey’ pitches big new space observatories, funding for large telescopes and a reckoning over social issues plaguing the field.”
A long-anticipated road map for the next ten years of US astronomy is here — and it’s nothing if not ambitious.
It recommends that NASA coordinate, build and launch three flagship space observatories capable of detecting light over a broad range of wavelengths. It suggests that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) fund two enormous ground-based telescopes in Chile and possibly Hawaii, to try to catch up with an advanced European telescope that’s under construction. And for the first time, it issues recommendations for how federal agencies should fight systemic racism, sexism and other structural issues that drive people out of astronomy, weakening the quality of the science….
(20) THEY CAN FLING IT FASTER THAN YOU CAN CATCH IT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] An interesting idea, and of course, nothing could possibly go wrong – “Company Wants to Launch Satellites With Huge Centrifugal Slingshot” (Gizmodo) — like, say, supercriminal seizes control of the aim controls, or there’s a sinkhole, and suddenly it’s aimed at Cleveland or whatever…
…Alternatives to launching rockets haven’t exactly been runaway successes, however. In the 1960s, the United States Department of Defense and Canada’s Department of National Defence formed a joint partnership called Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) to essentially develop giant Earth-based guns that could blast objects into space. HARP successfully fired a projectile 180 KM into the atmosphere using a 16-inch cannon built at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’ Yuma Proving Ground, but by the late ‘60s both governments had withdrawn funding for the research project, and it was officially shut down before it came to fruition.
SpinLaunch is taking a somewhat similar approach to Project HARP, but the kinetic space launch system it’s been developing since 2015 does away with explosive materials altogether. In its place is an electric-powered centrifuge that spins objects inside a vacuum chamber at speeds of up to 5,000 MPH before they’re released through a launch tube that is roughly as tall as the Statue of Liberty….
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Back4Blood,” Fandom Games says this slaughter-fest “still fuflills the need to kill a million zombies” and “feels like riding a bicycle after a mild concussion.”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, John L. Coker III, Melanie Stormm, John Coxon, R.S. Benedict, Alex Shvartsman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
(1) NEW PANEL FOR CORDWAINER SMITH REDISCOVERY AWARD. [Item by Steven H Silver.] Robert J. Sawyer and Barry Malzberg have retired as judges for the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. A new panel has been created to select the honorees. The new panel includes Rich Horton, Steven H Silver, and Grant Thiessen. The new panel’s first selection will be announced at Readercon the weekend of August 13-15.
Over the past year, you joined me as I’ve baked and shared homemade scones and pizza, or ordered takeout weiner schnitzel and sushi, my guests and I doing our best to seize those moments of community COVID-19 tried to steal from us. In this case, John Wiswell and I pretended we were sitting across the table from each other during the Nebula Awards weekend.
John Wiswell won a Nebula Award earlier this month for the short story “Open House on Haunted Hill,” which had been published last year by Diabolical Plots. He’s also appeared in Nature, Uncanny, Weird Tales, Fireside, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Cast of Wonders, Podcastle, and Pseudopod. In an astonishing show of prolificacy, he managed to posted fiction on his blog every day for six straight years, which I find astonishing. I found his Nebula acceptance speech astonishing as well; it was one of the best I’ve ever heard.
John and I were supposed to enjoy specialty hamburgers together this time around, only … something went wrong, as you shall hear. Why did I end up eating a chuck roast, brisket, and short rib burger while John only got to nibble on ice cream and carrots? For the answer to that question, well … you’ll have to listen.
We discussed his motivation for giving one of the greatest acceptance speeches ever, how he learned to build meaning out of strangeness, the way writing novels taught him to make his short stories better, his dual story generation modes of confrontation vs. escape, why what we think we know about the Marshmallow Test is wrong, the reason we’re both open online about our rejections, how the love of wallpaper led to him becoming a writer, why we’ve each destroyed our early writing from time to time, what he learned writing a story a day for six years, and much more.
(3) GARCIA APPEARANCES. Chris Garcia will be doing presentations at two Mystical Minds convention gatherings in the coming year.
Mystical Minds is a new Pagan, Paranormal, and Metaphysical convention created to expand our minds as well as our networks!
Witches, Pagans, Paranormal investigators, psychics, mediums, metaphysical practitioners, UFO experts, cryptozoologists, mystics, and other free-thinking spiritual seekers will come together in person this fall and spring for two conventions in the beautiful Bay area of Northern California!
Before Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted, or even Ghostbusters, San Francisco and the Bay has been home to research into the unknown. From occultists and de-bunkers in the early 20th century, to TV personalities in the 70s and 80s, to hard core particle physicists, research into the paranormal has happened here! Join Chris Garcia as he tells their stories!
An architectural marvel, containing a story of American eccentricity, and a debate over the potential paranormal aspects. We will look at the history of the House, the stories surrounding its building, the recounting of what people have experienced, and how development in the area may have something to do with all the fuss… both before and after Sarah Winchester showed up!
(4) HARD DRIVES OF IF. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster, Designated Financial Times Reader.] In the July 16 Financial Times, Tom Faber discusses “interactive fiction” or IF, a genre between a video game and a novel.
After a few wilderness years (around 2000), IF re-emerged among a niche community of writers and intellectuals who organised around the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, founded in1995. This renaissance as partially triggered by progress in technology. Writers developed methods for inactivity such as multiple choice as an alternative to the intimidating grammar rules of the text parser. New tools such as Twine, ChoiceScript and Inklewriter empowered those without coding skills to create their own games. This contributed to a diversification of the creator pool, particularly encouraging queer writers who have broached provocative topics not tackled in the gaming mainstream, ranging from gender dysphoria to clinical depression to unconventional kinks…
…One of the most remarkable IF writers is Porpentine, author of the vivid story With Those We Love Alive. On this tale of an artist enslaved by an insectoid empress, you roam an alien world of ‘glass flowers on iron stalks. Canopy of leafbone. Statues sunk into the earth.’ Porpentine asks you to swap words out, wipe them away, and — most intimately — to draw symbols on your arm which represent emotional responses to the narrative.
(5) FREE DOWNLOAD FROM TAFF. Willis Discovers America and other fan fiction by Walt Willis is the latest addition to the selection of free ebook downloads at David Langford’s unofficial Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site, where they hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund if you please. Here’s the download page.
The title piece is a wildly silly imagining of Walt’s first trip to the USA in 1952, written and serialized in multiple fanzines before he actually began the journey; the text used here is from the collected edition of 1955, which included a new preface and annotations explaining some of the more arcane in-jokes. Further items range from scripts for two recorded “taperas” or tape operas that had fans rolling in the aisles at 1950s conventions, to a 1987 recasting of The Enchanted Duplicator as a computer text-Adventure game. Most of this material has never before been collected.
Edited by David Langford, who has added a few more explanatory notes; research work by Rob Hansen and others; proofreading by Pat Charnock. Cover artwork by Bob Shaw, drawn on to stencil for the collected Willis Discovers America (1955). 45,000 words.
(6) YOU COULD LOOK IT UP. John Scalzi tweeted this response to an item screencapped here the other day:
More seriously, if you wish to know who I'm "stealing" ideas from for any particular book, it's usually right there in the text or in the acknowledgements. The text for "Kaiju" shouts out the original Gojira, Jurassic Park and Pacific Rim. I'm not exactly shy about these things.
(7) ELVISH. The On fairy-stories website interviews Elvish linguistic scholar Carl F. Hostetter, editor of The Nature of Middle-Earth, a new J.R.R. Tolkien book: “From Linguistics to Metaphysics”. The book proposal with many of the edited texts was seen and approved by Christopher Tolkien, who passed away last year.
In your opinion, why did Tolkien not develop completely the Elvish languages?
For much the same reason that he never completed The Silmarillion: at first, because things grew and changed in his imagination and their expression on paper, and then, after the intervention and completion of The Lord of the Rings, because he had to revise everything to make it consistent with the published book and the thousands of years of “new history” that the introduction of the Second and Third Ages required, a task he was never able to achieve. With the languages, this was because whenever he attempted to make “definitive” decision on some point of phonology or grammar, he would almost inevitably start revising the whole system, which makes sense since any language is a complexly intertwined system, such that a change in one feature or detail can and almost always does affect other aspects. Nor, I think, was it ever Tolkien’s intention to make the Elvish languages “complete” or “finished”: they were primarily an expression of his linguistic aesthetic, and its changes over time. Unlike, say, with Zamenhof and Esperanto, Tolkien had no utilitarian purpose in mind for his languages.
(8) THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, their quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination. Issue 7 features a piece on The Expanse by science, technology, and society scholar Damien P. Williams, and a piece on “Sultana’s Dream,” a 1905 Bengali feminist utopian speculative fiction story, by musicologist and media scholar Nilanjana Bhattacharjya.
One of the most engrossing things about the small-screen adaptation of The Expanse is how viscerally it examines the human costs of life in space. After being exposed to a massive dose of radiation, starship captain James Holden gets a permanent anticancer implant, like a far-future successor of a Port-A-Cath. And from the first episode, we’re made to understand that the Belters—descendants of humans who have worked, lived, and started societies on asteroids or the moons of other planets in our solar system—have different physiologies than the humans who still call Earth home. Gravity weighs heavier on Belters: it constricts their blood vessels, strains their hearts, and cracks their bones….
Author Grady Hendrix (‘Horrorstör’, ‘We Sold Our Souls’ and more!) graciously took time out of his busy schedule for an interview with our very own library staff member Kevin Kennel, to discuss his new book, ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ and his experiences as a writer and author. …Please note: this video contains adult content and is an interview about an adult horror novel.
… But in this world, we are never going to get the chance to start over. This was one of the reasons Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels objected to 19th-century utopias like that of Charles Fourier, the French designer of small communes living in perfect harmony: They were fantasy solutions that served only to distract people from the real work of politics and revolution. They were also in competition with Marx and Engels’s own ideas, so there was the usual left infighting. But it was a legitimate complaint: If utopia isn’t a political program, then what is it for?
The answer should be obvious. Utopias exist to remind us that there could be a better social order than the one we are in. Our present system is the result of a centuries-old power struggle, and it is devastating people and the biosphere. We must change it—and fast. But to what?
Utopias are thought experiments. Imagine if things ran like this: Wouldn’t that be good? Well, maybe…let’s live in it fictionally for a while. What problems crop up in this system? Can we solve them? What if we tweak things this way, or that? Let’s tell this story and then that story, and see how plausible they feel after we spend some imaginative time in them….
(11) STEPHEN HICKMAN (1949-2021). Famed sff artist Stephen Hickman died July 16 reported his friend and colleague Ron Miller on Facebook: “Lost one of my best friends, Steve Hickman, this morning and the world lost one of its best artists and finest human beings.” Hickman had over 350 book and magazine covers to his credit. He won the 1994 Best Original Artwork Hugo for his Space Fantasy Commemorative Stamp Booklet. He was a six-time Chesley Award winner.
(12) JUDI B CASTRO OBIT. Judi Beth Castro died July 15 of a sudden illness. She was 58. Her husband, author Adam-Troy Castro, announced her passing on Facebook.
The love of my life, Judi Beth Castro, lost her fight for life at 10:50 PM Thursday night. The illness was sudden, and she was always in critical danger, but between Tuesday night and Wednesday evening her numbers were improving at such a steady rate that we thought there was hope. Alas, the decline began on Thursday morning and by afternoon there was no doubt….
Her genre credits include Atlanta Nights (2005; a parody which she contributed to with many other co-authors), and the short fiction “Unfamiliar Gods” co-authored with Adam-Troy Castro.
(13) MEMORY LANE.
1953 – Sixty-eight years ago, Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe premiered as a black-and-white movie serial from Republic Pictures. It was originally going to be a syndicated television series. It was directed by Harry Keller, Franklin Adreon and Fred C. Brannon as written by Ronald Davidson and Barry Shipman. Its cast was Judd Holdren, Aline Towne, Gregory Gaye and Craig Kelly. It would last but one season of twelve twenty-five minute episodes. And yes, it was syndicated to television on NBC in 1955. Some sources say Dave Steven based his Rocketeer character off of Commando Cody. And there’s a clone trooper named Commander Cody who serves under Jedi general Obi-Wan Kenobi, an homage that Lucas has openly acknowledged as he watched the series as a child.
(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 16, 1928 — Robert Sheckley. I knew that his short story “Seventh Victim” was the basis of The 10th Victim film but I hadn’t known ‘til now that Freejack was sort of based of his Immortality, Inc. novel. I’ve read a lot by him with Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (written with Zelazny) being my favorite work by him. Sheckley is very well stocked on the usual suspects. (Died 2005.)
Born July 16, 1929 — Sheri S. Tepper. Nominated for an Austounding Award way back when, she had a long career, so I’m going to single out Beauty, The Gate to Women’s Country, Six Moon Dance and The Companions as my favorites knowing very well that yours won’t be the same. (Died 2016.)
Born July 16, 1951 — Esther Friesner, 70. She’s won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice with “Death and the Librarian” and “A Birthday”. I’m particularly fond of The Sherwood Game and E.Godz which she did with Robert Asprin. She won the 1994 Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction, for lifetime contributions to science fiction, “both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late ‘Doc’ Smith well-loved by those who knew him,” presented by the New England Science Fiction Association. She’s well stocked at the usual suspects.
Born July 16, 1956 — Jerry Doyle. Now this one is depressing. Dead of acute alcoholism at sixty, his character Michael Garibaldi was portrayed as an alcoholic, sometimes recovering and sometimes not on Babylon 5. Damn. (Died 2016.)
Born July 16, 1963 — Phoebe Cates, 58. Ok, so her entire genre appearance credit is as Kate Beringer in Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Yes, I’ll admit that they’re two films that I have an inordinate fondness for that the Suck Fairy cannot have any effect upon them what-so-ever. Update: I’ve discovered since I last noted her Birthday that she was in Drop Dead Fred, a dark fantasy. She also stopped acting six years ago.
Born July 16, 1965 — Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, 56. Best remembered genre wise as Tommy Webber in the much beloved Galaxy Quest though his longest acting role was Patton Plame on the cancelled NCIS: New Orleans.
Born July 16, 1966 — Scott Derrickson, 55. Director and Writer of Doctor Strange who also had a hand in The Day the Earth Stood Still (as Director), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Director and Writer), Urban Legends: Final Cut (Director and Producer) and the forthcoming Labyrinth sequel (Director and Writer).
Born July 16, 1967 — Will Ferrell, 54. His last genre film was Holmes & Watson in which he played Holmes. It won Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screen Combo and, my absolute favourite Award, Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel. Wow. He was also in Land of the Lost which, errrr, also got negative reviews. Elf however got a great response from viewers and critics alike. He also was in two of the Austin Powers films as well. Oh, and he voices Ted / The Man with the Yellow Hat, a tour guide at the Bloomsberry Museum in Curious George.
…Facebook is a time suck garbage site that exists as the propaganda arm of the DNC/Corpo-Uni-Party, to spy on you to sell to advertisers, and to steal everyone’s personal information. After bamboozling all the content creators to go over there to build “community” they now hold them hostage because the content creators are scared to leave because they’ll take a financial hit (The Oatmeal’s got a great cartoon about it)….
(17) SUSTAINABLE USE OF SPACE.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science:
Last month, at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Cornwall, United Kingdom, the leading industrial nations addressed the sustainable and safe use of space, making space debris a priority and calling on other nations to follow suit. This is good news because space is becoming increasingly congested, and strong political will is needed for the international space community to start using space sustainably and preserve the orbital environment for the space activities of future generations.
There are more than 28,000 routinely tracked objects orbiting Earth. The vast majority (85%) are space debris that no longer serve a purpose. These debris objects are dominated by fragments from the approximately 560 known breakups, explosions, and collisions of satellites or rocket bodies. These have left behind an estimated 900,000 objects larger than 1 cm and a staggering 130 million objects larger than 1 mm in commercially and scientifically valuable Earth orbits.
(18) SUPERPRANKSTERS? Isaac Arthur’s video “Annoying Aliens” contends, “Fictional portrayals of alien invasion or reports of alien sightings and abductions often imply motives which on inspection make little sense… unless perhaps the true purpose was mischief.”
(19) DISCWORLD COMMENTARY. YouTuber Dominic Noble says he has finally overcome his “sense of loss and deep sadness at the tragically too early passing of the author [Terry Pratchett] due to Alzheimer’s disease” and is planning to do videos on the Discworld books. He begins with this overview of Discworld and his appreciation for it and for Pratchett.
It’s been a decade since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two arrived in theaters and brought an end to JK Rowling’s saga of witches and wizards. Like most 90s kids, I too read all the books and saw all the movies as a kid and teenager but have completely left the series behind since. Ten years later, how does Harry Potter hold up? In this video essay, I try to get to the heart of Harry Potter as while as examine my own relationship to the series.
No official works cited for this video, though I imagine my criticisms of Rowling’s transphobia will draw some ire. I have no intention of arguing the ethics or legitimacy of Rowling’s claims….
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Joey Eschrich, Chris M. Barkley, Jennifer Hawthorne, Steven H Silver, StephenfromOttawa, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, N., Daniel Dern, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]
(1) WITH THANKS. John Wiswell, Nebula winner for ”Open House on Haunted Hill,” has made his touching “Nebula Awards 2021 Acceptance Speech” a free post on his Patreon.
…Saying that, there’s one other author I cannot end this speech without thanking. It’s a little gauche, but I hope they’re listening.
Because my story, “Open House on Haunted Hill,” was rejected several times before Diabolical Plots gave it a chance. And in my career my various stories were rejected over 800 times before I won this award tonight. And that’s why I hope this author is listening.
You, who think you’re not a good enough writer because you don’t write like someone else.
You, who haven’t finished a draft because your project seems too quirky or too daunting.
You, who are dispirited after eating so many rejection emails.
You, who are going to write the things that will make me glad I’m alive to read them.
What the field needs is for you to be different, and to be true to your imagination….
Do you make a conscious effort to include LGBTQ material in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
Because my life as a lesbian/feminist of colour is my context I don’t have to remind myself to include Queer material. That’s where I begin. There are, of course, other types of characters in my writing but my experience is centralised. I have a Queer social and political circle and they are easily represented in my work. For so long women, lesbians and people of colour were told our stories weren’t important, other (white) people wouldn’t be interested in them. Now we know that was just another way to dominate our experience. I long for the day that non-Queer writers and non-Black writers feel sensitive enough to do the research and include authentic characters in their work who don’t look like them.
How does the old saying go? “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” It’s often true that the first encounter has an ineradicable effect, whether the meeting is with a person, a work of art, or a world. It’s certainly true in my case; I had my first and, in some ways, most decisive encounter with Middle-earth before I ever read a word of The Lord of the Rings. My first view of that magical place came through the paintings of Tim Kirk, in the 1975 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar, and that gorgeous, pastel-colored vision of the Shire and its environs is the one that has stayed with me. Almost half a century later, Kirk’s interpretation still lies at the bottom of all my imaginings of Tolkien’s world.
(4) CASTING THE MCU. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I listened to this podcast Leonard and Jessie Maltin did with casting director Sarah Finn – “Maltin on Movies: Sarah Finn” Finn has cast every role in every film and TV series on Disney+ in the MCU, so she has a lot of inside knowledge. Among her goals is to find actors who enjoy playing superheroes and like working with each other. She also discusses why it was a gamble to cast Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man and why Vin Diesel was cast as Groot because of his voice work in The Iron Giant.
She also reveals Dwayne Johnson’s secret for success: he is genuinely a nice guy who even volunteered to do the dishes after a casting call!
Finn also discusses her work as casting director on The Mandalorian and her work for Oliver Stone, including the gamble of having Eli Wallach play a substantial role at age 95 on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Elizabeth Olsen has weighed in on the future of WandaVision – and sadly, fans shouldn’t expect there to be a second season.
“No, that’s easy for me to answer. It is a limited series. It’s a fully beginning, middle, end, and that’s it kind of thing,” she told PEOPLE in January ahead of the Disney+ show’s premiere.
During a recent virtual chat with Kaley Cuoco for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series, Olsen once again echoed her comments about the series likely not returning for season 2….
(7) GRANTS AVAILABLE. The Ladies of Horror Fiction review site are offering nine 2021 LOHF Writers Grants. Applications must be submitted by August 31.
Nine recipients will receive the LOHF Writers Grant in the amount of $100. The Ladies of Horror Fiction team will announce the recipients of the LOHF Writers Grant on September 15, 2021.
The LOHF Writers Grant is inclusive to all women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes who have reasonably demonstrated a commitment to writing in the horror genre. All grant provided funds must be used in a manner that will help develop the applicant’s career.
The grants are funded by Steve Stred, Laurel Hightower, Ben Walker, S.H. Cooper, Sonora Taylor, and several anonymous donors.
(8) TEN FOR THE PRICE OF FIVE. Two entries from James Davis Nicoll from the pages of Tor.com:
Science fiction and fantasy are rich in characters who deserve (and sometimes find) rewarding personal relationships. There are also characters that other characters should never, ever date. Ever. Here are five fictional characters from whom all prospective love interests should run screaming…
Few calamities sting like being driven from the land one once called home. Exile is therefore a rich source of plots for authors seeking some dramatic event to motivate their characters. You might want to consider the following five books, each of which features protagonists (not all of them human) forced to leave their homes….
…Unlike the two previous stories, “The God in the Bowl” remained unpublished during Howard’s lifetime and appeared for the first time in the September 1952 issue of the short-lived magazine Space Science Fiction. Why on Earth editor Lester del Rey decided that a Conan story was a good fit for a magazine that otherwise published such Astounding stalwarts as George O. Smith, Clifford D. Simak and Murray Leinster will probably forever remain a mystery.
As for why I decided to review this particular Conan story rather than some of the better known adventures of our favourite Cimmerian adventurer (which I may eventually do), part of the reason is that the story just came up in a conversation I had with Bobby Derie on Twitter. Besides, I have been reading my way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard editions of late and realised that there are a lot of layers to those stories that I missed when I read them the first time around as a teenager.
Three Worldcon insiders, Tammy Coxen, Nicholas Whyte, and Vincent Docherty will join Gadi and Karen to discuss the Hugo, Astounding, and Lodestar awards, their history, and current trends.
Like last year, we will be interviewing category nominees in the next few months, with this show as the opening segment.
(11) GAME WRITING ARCHIVE. Eatonverse tweets highlights of the UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Today’s rarity is from Marc Laidlaw —
(12) HERE THEY COME AGAIN. Those pesky aliens.Invasion launches on October 22 on Apple TV+.
(13) MEMORY LANE.
1971 — Fifty years ago at Noreascon 1 which had Robert Silverberg as its Toastmaster, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine. It was its third such Hugo win in a row, and seventh to that date.
(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born June 9, 1911 – J. Francis McComas. With Raymond Healy (1907-1997) edited the pioneering and still excellent anthology Adventures in Time and Space – and got Random House to publish it. Thus although not having planted the crops, he knew to harvest: they also serve who only sit and edit. With Anthony Boucher (1911-1969) founded The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the best thing to happen among us since Astounding. Half a dozen stories of his own. Afterward his widow Annette (1911-1994) edited The Eureka Years; see it too. (Died 1978) [JH]
Born June 9, 1925 – Leo R. Summers. Twenty covers for Fantastic, eight for Amazing, six for Analog; six hundred interiors. Here is a Fantastic cover; here is one for Analog; here is an interior for H.B. Fyfe’s “Star Chamber” from Amazing. A fruitful career. (Died 1985) [JH]
Born June 9, 1925 — Keith Laumer. I remember his Bolo series fondly and read quite a bit of it. Can’t say which novels at this point though Bolo definitely and Last Command almost certainly. The Imperium and Retief series were also very enjoyable though the latter is the only one I’d re-read at this point. The usual suspects have decent though not complete ebooks listings for him, heavy on the Imperium and Retief series and they’ve just added a decent Bolo collection too. (Died 1993.) (CE)
Born June 9, 1930 — Lin Carter. He is best known for his work in the 1970s as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. As a writer, His first professional publication was the short story “Masters of the Metropolis”, co-written with Randall Garrett, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957. He would be a prolific writer, average as much as six novels a year. In addition, he was influential as a critic of the fantasy genre and an early historian of the genre. He wrote far too much for me to say I’ve sampled everything he did but I’m fond of his Castillo, Great Imperium and Zarkon series. All great popcorn literature! (Died 1988.) (CE)
Born June 9, 1931 – Joanie Winston. Vital spark of Star Trek fandom; co-founder of the first Trek convention, got Gene Roddenberry to attend; co-organized the next four; became a sought-after guest herself. Reported in The Making of the Trek Conventions, or How to Throw a Party for 12,000 of Your Most Intimate Friends, got it published by Doubleday and Playboy. Appreciation by OGH here. Quite capable of playing poker at a 200-fan relaxacon rather than bask in glory at a Trek megacon the same weekend. (Died 2008) [JH]
Born June 9, 1934 — Donald Duck, 87. He made his first appearance in “The Wise Little Hen” on June 9th, 1934. In this cartoon as voiced by Clarence Nash, Donald and his friend, Peter Pig (also voiced by Nash), lie their way out of helping the titular little hen tend to her corn. Donald Duck was the joint creation of Dick Lundy, Fred Spencer, Carl Barks, Jack King and Jack Hannah though Walt Disney often would like you to forget that. You can watch it here. (CE)
Born June 9, 1943 – Joe Haldeman, age 78. Two dozen novels, eighty shorter stories; ninety published poems. Seven Hugos, five Nebulas; three Rhyslings; Tiptree (as it then was); Skylark. Edited Nebula Awards 17. Pegasus Award for Best Space Opera Song. SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) Grand Master. Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Guest of Honor at – among others – Windycon I and 20, Disclave 21, Beneluxcon 7, ConFiction the 48th Worldcon. Wide range has its virtues; he’s told how one story sold at a penny a word and five years later was adapted for television at five times as much; also “I don’t have to say Uh-oh, I’d better get back to that novel again; I can always write a poem or something.” [JH]
Born June 9, 1954 — Gregory Maguire, 67. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West based off of course the Oz Mythos, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister retelling the tale of Cinderella and Mirror, Mirror, a revisionist retelling of the Snow White tale which is really excellent. Well you get the idea. He’s damn good at this revisionist storytelling. (CE)
Born June 9, 1963 — David Koepp, 58. Screenwriter for some of the most successful SF films ever done: Jurassic Park (co-written with Michael Crichton), The Lost World: Jurassic Park,War of The Worlds and, yes, it made lots of money, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He won a Hugo for Jurassic Park which won Best Dramatic Presentation at ConAdian. (CE)
Born June 9, 1966 – Christian McGuire, age 55. Co-chaired eight Loscons. Chaired Westercon 63, Conucopia the 7th NASFiC (N. Am. SF Con, held when the Worldcon is overseas), L.A.con IV the 64th Worldcon. A founder of Gallifrey One; chaired or co-chaired its first 12 years. Fan Guest of Honor at Baycon 2002, Westercon 51, Capricon 29, Loscon 36. Evans-Freehafer Award (L.A. Science Fantasy Soc.; service). [JH]
Born June 9, 1967 – Dave McCarty, age 54. Chaired three Capricons. Chaired the 70th Worldcon, Chicon 7, which by our custom means the seventh Worldcon in the same town with continuity from the same community. No one else has managed this, or come close; the nearest have been Noreascon Four (62nd Worldcon), L.A.con IV (64th), and Aussiecon 4 (68th). Also served as Hugo Awards Administrator, and on the World SF Society’s Mark Protection Committee, two of our least conspicuous and most demanding tasks. Fan Guest of Honor at Windycon 28, Capricon 38. [JH]
Born June 9, 1981 — Natalie Portman, 40. Surprisingly her first genre role was as Taffy Dale in Mars Attacks!, not as Padme in The Phantom Menace. She’d repeat that role in Attack of The Clones and Revenge of The Sith. She’d next play Evey in V for Vendetta. And she played Jane Foster twice, first in Thor: The Dark World and then in Avengers: Endgame. She’ll reprise the role in Thor: Love and Thunder in which she’ll play both Jane Foster and Thor. That I’ve got to see. (CE)
The cast for the upcoming animated movie, DC League of Super-Pets, includes Dwayne Johnson as Krypto and Kevin Hart as Ace. The cast also features Kate McKinnon, John Krasinski, Vanessa Bayer, Natasha Lyonne, Diego Luna, and Keanu Reeves. The movie will be released May 20, 2022.
(16) LIGHTS ON LANGFORD. Cora Buhlert continues her Fanzine Spotlight by interviewing David Langford about his famed newzine: “Fanzine Spotlight: Ansible”.
Who are the people behind your site or zine?
In theory it’s just me. In practice I couldn’t keep going without all the correspondents who send obituaries, interesting news snippets, more obituaries, convention news, too many obituaries, and contributions to such regular departments as As Others See Us and Thog’s Masterclass. The first collects notably patronizing or ignorant comments on the SF genre from the mainstream media, with special attention to authors who write science fiction but prefer to pretend they don’t (Margaret Atwood once explained that SF was “talking squids in outer space” and since she didn’t write /that/ she had to be innocent of SF contamination). Thog’s Masterclass is for embarrassingly or comically bad sentences in published fiction, not always SF — as well as the usual genre suspects, the Masterclass has showcased such luminaries as Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov and Sean Penn.
…Scheduled for May 17, 1966, Gemini 9 was supposed to be the first real all-up test of the two-seat spacecraft. Astronauts Tom Stafford (veteran of Gemini 6) and Gene Cernan would dock with an Agena and conduct a spacewalk. If successful, this would demonstrate all of the techniques and training necessary for a trip to the Moon.
The first bit of bad luck involved the Agena docking adapter. Shortly after liftoff on the 17th, one of the booster engines gimballed off center and propelled rocket and Agena into the Atlantic ocean. The two astronauts, bolted into their Gemini capsule for a launch intended for just a few minutes after, had to abort their mission.
Luckily, NASA had a back-up: the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ADTA). The ADTA was basically an Agena without the engine. A Gemini could practice docking with it, but the ADTA can’t be used as an orbital booster for practice of the manuever that Apollo will employ when it breaks orbit to head for the Moon.
ADTA went up on June 1, no problem. But just seconds before launch, the Gemini 9 computer refused navigational updates from the Cape. The launch window was missed, and once again, Tom and Gene were forced to scrub. Stafford got the nickname “Prince of the Pad.”…
When I heard that the Swedish Chef from “The Muppet Show” was opening a Chelsea location of his celebrated bistro, Dorg Schnorfblorp Horganblorps, I was skeptical. I’m always hesitant to believe the hype surrounding celebrity chefs, especially when they’re made of felt. While the city was abuzz, calling Mr. Muppet the new Jean-Georges Vongerichten, I was certain that this newcomer was nothing more than a passing fad, a Swedish Salt Bae. But, after such a tough year for restaurants, I was curious about how this mustachioed madman’s gimmick had sustained its popularity. Eventually, I decided that I had to go see for myself—could the Swedish Chef’s bites ever live up to his bark, or bork?
Dorg Schnorfblorp Horganblorps has been open for only three months but already has a wait list that extends to the end of the year. I was amazed that anyone could get a reservation at all, considering that the restaurant’s Web site contains no helpful links or information, only a gif of a turkey being chased by the chef wielding a tennis racquet, captioned, “Birdy gerdy floopin.”…
It sounds like the plot from a cheese science fiction movie: Scientists unearth something that’s been buried in the frozen ground of the Arctic for tens of thousands of years and decide to warm it up a bit. The creature stirs as its cells slowly wake up from their long stasis. As time passes, the animal wakes up, having time-traveled 24,000 years thanks to its body’s ability to shut itself down once temperatures reached a certain low. It sounds too incredible to be true, but it is.
In a new paper published in Current Biology, researchers reveal their discovery of a microscopic animal frozen in the Arctic permafrost for an estimated 24,000 years. The creature, which would have lived in water during its previous life, was revived as the soil thawed. The discovery is incredibly important not just for the ongoing study of creatures found frozen in time here on Earth.
The tiny creature is called a bdelloid rotifer. These multicellular animals live in aquatic environments and have a reputation for being particularly hardy when it comes to frigid temperatures. They are obviously capable of surviving the process of being frozen and then thawed, and they’re not the only tiny animal to have this ability….
(20) HAVE AN APPLE, DEARIE. Atlas Obscura would like you to “Meet the Appalachian Apple Hunter Who Rescued 1,000 ‘Lost’ Varieties”. Daniel Dern sent the link with two comments: “1: I don’t know whether any of these are better at keeping doctor away. 2: Have they been tested for ‘putting people to deep-sleep’?”
AS TOM BROWN LEADS A pair of young, aspiring homesteaders through his home apple orchard in Clemmons, North Carolina, he gestures at clusters of maturing trees. A retired chemical engineer, the 79 year old lists varieties and pauses to tell occasional stories. Unfamiliar names such as Black Winesap, Candy Stripe, Royal Lemon, Rabun Bald, Yellow Bellflower, and Night Dropper pair with tales that seem plucked from pomological lore.
Take the Junaluska apple. Legend has it the variety was standardized by Cherokee Indians in the Smoky Mountains more than two centuries ago and named after its greatest patron, an early-19th-century chief. Old-time orchardists say the apple was once a Southern favorite, but disappeared around 1900. Brown started hunting for it in 2001 after discovering references in an Antebellum-era orchard catalog from Franklin, North Carolina….
From a calm socialite, she morphed into an unhinged puppy kidnapper and then a vindictive glamourpuss. Why don’t we hate her?
And for dessert, here’s a Cruella parody video.
(22) CAN YOU MAKE A WALL OF TEXT? The Lego Typewriter has some moving parts that simulate a real typewriter but, no, you can’t produce copy with it. At the link is a video of the assembled 2000+ piece project.
(23) BREAKING INTO THE MCU. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “The Marvel Character Tutorial” on Screen Rant, Ryan George plays Marvel screenwriter “Richard Lambo,” who says if you are trying to sell a screenplay to Marvel, make sure he or she has plenty of abs (four will do, but a six-pack is best) and leave plenty of room for snark!
(24) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: Returnal,” Fandom Games says that Sony’s new game puts you “in a Gigeresque sci-fi setting” where your goal is “to kill all the wildlife” in a game so depressing that Sony should “just throw away the game and have someone come over and kick you in the scrotum” to achieve the same painful effect. (Or “slamming your face into a brick wall” is mentioned at another place, if the first option isn’t available.)
[Thanks to John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, James Davis Nicoll, Daniel Dern, Gadi Evron, Cora Buhlert, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA) announced the 56th Annual Nebula Awards® winners in an online ceremony on June 5 hosted by Toastmaster Aydrea Walden.
These awards are given to the writers of the best speculative fiction works released in 2020, as voted on by Full, Associate, and Senior SFWA members.
Martha Wells
P. Djèlí Clark
Sarah Pinsker
John Wiswell
Greg Kasavin
T. Kingfisher
BEST NOVEL
Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
BEST NOVELLA
Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
BEST NOVELETTE
“Two Truths and a Lie”, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)
BEST SHORT STORY
“Open House on Haunted Hill”, John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots)
THE ANDRE NORTON NEBULA AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT FICTION
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
BEST GAME WRITING
Hades, Greg Kasavin (Supergiant)
THE RAY BRADBURY NEBULA AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMATIC PRESENTATION
The Good Place: “Whenever You’re Ready”, Michael Schur, NBC (Fremulon/3 Arts Entertainment/Universal)
Additional awards and honors presented:
Nalo Hopkinson
THE SFWA DAMON KNIGHT MEMORIAL GRAND MASTER AWARD
Nalo Hopkinson
THE KATE WILHELM SOLSTICE AWARD
Jarvis Sheffield
Ben Bova (posthumous)
Rachel Caine (posthumous)
THE KEVIN J. O’DONNELL, JR. SERVICE TO SFWA AWARD
Connie Willis
Jarvis Sheffield
Ben Bova
Rachel Caine
Connie Willis
Presenters joined virtually from around the country, including SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal, SFWA Vice President Tobias S. Buckell, incoming SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy, and writers and creatives Nisi Shawl, Carrie Patel, Mallory O’Meara, Mark Oshiro, Troy L. Wiggins, and Adam Savage.
