Tag Archives: Kate Heffner

Pixel Scroll 3/21/24 Mr. Sandworm, Bring Me A Dream

Posted on by
29

(1) MASTER OF SF. Vernor Vinge died March 20. One of the many callbacks to this distinguished sf author’s genre contributions comes from the Hugo Book Club Blog: “A Tribute To Vernor Vinge”.

…“Singularity is the point at which our old models will have to be discarded, where a new reality will reign,” Vinge wrote. “This is a world whose outlines will become clearer, approaching modern humanity, until this new reality obscures surrounding reality, becoming commonplace.”

One of these forays into singularitarianism helped launch an entire subgenre of science fiction. First appearing in a Dell paperback alongside George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers, the story True Names offered a blueprint for cyberpunk that would influence and inspire everything from blockbuster movies to role playing games and television series….

(2) CIXIN LIU ON PRODUCTIVITY ISSUES. [Via Zionius on Weibo] On Wednesday, Singapore newspaper The Straits Times published an article tying in with the release of the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem.  The piece includes a few quotes from Liu himself, where he talks about his activity in recent years, and his sympathy with one of his peers, George R.R. Martin.

While he yearns to see Martin place the long-delayed sixth book, The Winds Of Winter, in the hands of publishers, Liu, 60, also sympathises with his 75-year-old peer’s plight – Liu himself has been through a long fallow period.

“The Winds Of Winter has been delayed for 10 years. As a writer who also writes fantasy literature, I completely understand this, because I have not been able to publish a new work for more than 10 years,” Liu tells The Straits Times in an e-mail interview…

Other than Of Ants And Dinosaurs (2010), a work that imagines a war between the two species of the title, Liu has not produced a new novel since.

“Martin has at least published other works during that time, and I had done almost nothing,” he says. 

(3) A LIFELINE TO SANITY. The Guardian calls it, “’A fascinating insight into pandemic psychology’: how Animal Crossing gave us an escape”.

“Today is the first day of your new life on this pristine, lovely island. So, congratulations!” says Tom Nook, the benevolent tanuki landlord, a few minutes into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (Nook is often besmirched online, but you can’t argue that he’s extremely welcoming.) Many players read this comforting message at a destabilising and frightening time in the real world: Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on Nintendo Switch on 20 March 2020, a few days before the UK entered its first Covid lockdown.

This was fortuitous timing. When we were all stuck at home, the game let us plant our native fruits, tend to our flowers and see what the town shop had on offer, repaying our extensive loans (interest-free, thankfully) to Tom Nook as a way of escaping the chaos and daily death tolls. We opened the gates to our islands and welcomed friends and strangers into our pristine little worlds. As real life crumbled, we started anew with bespectacled cats, sheep in clown’s coats and rhinos who looked like cakes.

The game’s sudden popularity caused Nintendo Switch sales to skyrocket among pandemic-induced shortages. New Horizons had sold 44.79 million units by December 2023 – nearly three-and-a-half times more than any other game in the Animal Crossing series, which has been running since 2001. It’s the second best-selling Switch game to date, behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe….

(4) BOT AND PAID FOR. Annie Bot has already been called “A sharp take on a sex robot that becomes human” in a paywalled New Scientist review:

I opened the novel with low hopes, because the idea of a robot learning to be human, then chafing at its bonds, seemed a bit old hat. How wrong I was. Right from the first page, the book is coruscating, unexpected and subtle….

Now Glamour has interviewed author Sierra Green in a Q&A titled “Annie Bot Is a Chillingly Prescient Novel That Asks What Happens When a Sex Robot Realizes Her Worth”.

…The character of Doug felt so real to me (a man who would rather have a sex slave robot than a real human companion), which is scary, to say the least. What does his character represent to you, and why do you think it is important to demonstrate these types of men in the media?

This is a complicated subject. I think it’s important to try to understand what in our society encourages a man to feel like he ought to be in control, even when he’s not. No one likes to feel helpless, but men can feel doubly conflicted when they are denigrated because society has taught them that they deserve respect. Suddenly they have to reassess the entire system. When we see a character like Doug who is lonely and wants to be in control, we understand why he’s reaching out for a connection. We’re not surprised that men turn to the internet for pornography, and Annie is just a step beyond that. What matters to me is that Doug learns from his situation. He experiences deep shame, isolation, and rage, but he’s also willing to reflect on how to become a better man, a better human. Almost despite himself, he takes risks that lead him where he needs to go.

Do you think if Stellas really existed, a lot of men would buy them?

Yes. Women would buy them too, or the male Handy models. People will buy a new toy whether it’s good for them or not….

(5) MONSTER MASHER. Radio Times says “Doctor Who needs Steven Moffat – despite what he might say”.

…Every showrunner has brought something incredible to Doctor Who, from Russell T Davies’s famously skillful writing to Chris Chibnall’s bold new directions, but there’s something that Moffat brings to the show that no other writer does.

He remains unmatched as Doctor Who’s monster maker. By his own admission, his creations are simple and actually a little formulaic, usually riffing on a childhood fear to create a chilling physical embodiment of our nightmares. But it doesn’t get old – because he does it so well.

Moffat’s first episodes, a season 1 two-parter, introduced the Empty Child. Arming his creation with a haunting catchphrase (“Are you my mummy?”) and a gruesome physicality (I’ve never forgotten that transformation scene), he immediately ensured his first Doctor Who monster would be one for the ages. But it was far from his most iconic.

In season 3, Moffat penned what is widely described as one of Doctor Who’s best ever episodes, Blink, creating an all-time classic monster, the Weeping Angels….

(6) A TILT TOWARD NORTH AMERICA. “Doctor Who’s schedule change is inevitable – but still heartbreaking” opines Radio Times.

With the decision being made to debut new Doctor Who episodes at midnight on BBC iPlayer, many Whovians have expressed their disappointment. They argue that the choice was made for US-based audiences, and it undeniably was.

When the first two episodes are released on BBC iPlayer at midnight on Saturday 11th May, they will also be available on Disney Plus at 7pm ET on Friday 10th May, before BBC One airs them again later in the day on Saturday.

This means that while viewers on the US East Coast can enjoy the premiere episode in the late evening, UK fans will have to stay up into the late hours of the night to watch, diminishing the event nature and experience of watching the series…

(7) NEW HORROR. Gabino Iglesias reviewed Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher Of The Forest, C.J. Cooke’s A Haunting In The Arctic, Tim Lebbon’s Among The Living, and Amanda Jayatissa’s Island Witch in “Demons, Haunted Forests and Arctic Nightmares in 4 New Horror Novels” for the New York Times in February.

(8) SPUR AWARDS. The Western Writers of America have presented the 2024 Spur Awards. Complete winners list at the link – there do not appear to be any genre works among them. Not even Thomas Goodman’s Best First Novel The Last Man: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery has much to do with jolly old elves.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 21, 1946 – Timothy Dalton, 78. Timothy Dalton made his film debut sixty-eight years ago as Philip II of France in The Lion in Winter. I remember him distinctly in that role. Of course, I’ve watched that film enough times that I think I’ve memorized much of the script. 

He would do two Bond films, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill. He made a decent Bond, but then I think the only true Bond was Connery. 

Timothy Dalton in 1987.

Now doing a dive into his genre roles, he was Prince Barin in Flash Gordon, and had a major role as film star Neville Sinclair, one of baddies in The Rocketeer. An absolutely amazing film which is why it got a nomination for a Hugo at MagiCon. 

And he was Lord President Rassilon in “The End of Time”, the last Tenth Doctor story. He made a rather impressive Time Lord indeed. 

I’ll finish up with his role as the Chief on the DC Universe/Max Doom Patrol series which just wrapped up. It was a great role for him, and a most excellent series indeed. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) TRAINING FOR WAR. James Bacon reviews an issue of Battling Britons, “The Fanzine of Vintage British War Comics”, for Downthetubes.net: “In Review: Battling Britons 6 – Planes, Trains and Giant Vampire Bats!”.

The Book: The latest issue of a fanzine dedicated to British war comics, offering articles, reviews and features on comics such as Commando, still published, and vintage comics such as Battle Picture Weekly, War Picture Library, including items on strips such as “Black Max”, “Dredger”, “Maddock’s Marauders”, “Kommando King” and more…

…Editor and publisher Justin Marriott often writes about subjects that are close to my heart, and this issue he looks at Commando comics that feature trains. He starts this with a fabulous laugh out loud list of the ten things he has learned from reading comics which featured trains. It’s a light hearted and humorous approach, and then lists some 30 Commando stories, and discusses them briefly….

(12) NOT JUST LOOKING AT THE PICTURES. And Downthetubes.net founder John Freeman suggests, “Comics: The Answer to The UK’s Literacy Crisis?”

We’re used to Spider-Man saving the world from the Green Goblin and a multiverse of masked miscreants. But new research by Comic Art Europe, and a separate research project by the National Literacy Trust, suggests that he could have the super-powers to do something even more valuable – something our government has signally failed to do: turn us into a nation of readers again

That’s the view, at least, of Lakes International Comic Art Festival chair Peter Kessler MBE, in an article for the latest issue of Books for Keeps magazine.

“A unique project has been unfolding in a primary school in North Manchester,” he notes, discussing the Comics and Literacy Project the Festival worked on as a partner of Comic Art Europe, launched in 2021, supported by The Phoenix comic, its full, interim report here on the Festival web site.“Abraham Moss is a typical, hard-working community school in an underprivileged area. Most of its students are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and it has a higher-than-average number in receipt of the Pupil Premium subsidy given to disadvantaged students. The school has spent two academic years participating in a Europe-wide research project entitled Comics and Literacy. The aim of the project: to analyse and quantify the impact of exposure to comics on young people.

“The results are jaw-dropping….”

(13) FANAC ZOOM NOW ONLINE. You can view the two-part FANAC History Zoom: “The Women Fen Don’t See” with Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith on YouTube.

Part 1 – 

Description: Women did not magically appear in fandom with the advent of Star Trek, but have been part of science fiction fandom since the earliest days. They’re faneds, and convention chairs, writers and artists, club fans and costumers. Sometimes, they’re all of the above. Our impressive panelists (see bios on the bottom) Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith talk about why early female fans have received less credit than they deserved, or been overlooked entirely, and describe the contributions of a number of them…In this recording (Mar 2024, part 1 of 2), our panelists talk about how this research began, and why women that were cranking the mimeos, writing fanzine articles and going to conventions were not even regarded as fans. Early fan historians didn’t correct this impression, reflecting the attitudes of society and ignoring women’s contributions to fandom, especially married women. In this recording, you’ll learn about what fans did say about women in the community, “the radical hoax of Lee Hoffman”, and Miss Science Fiction 1949 (and the Fake Geek Girl response that ensued).

Women discussed in this part 1 include Jean Bogart, Pam Bulmer, Daphne Buckmaster, Marion Eadie, Helen Finn, Nancy Kemp, Trudy Kuslan, Lois Miles, Frances Swisher, and Jane Tucker. There’s a lot of information, a little hero worship and a dive into those hard-to-research women whose fanac was not primarily in fanzines. The discussion continues in Part 2. For more fan history, go to https://fanac.org and https://fancyclopedia.org. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our channel.

Bios: 

Claire Brialey – Claire encountered fandom in her early teens, in the mid-’80s, after having read SF for five or six years. She’s a fanzine fan and co-editor of Banana Wings, as well as having won the 2011 Best Fan Writer Hugo. She’s a former President of ANZAPA and a conrunner (up to and including the Worldcon level). She’s worked on clubs, fan funds, and awards administration. She is one of the Guests of Honor of the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow. And she still enjoys reading and watching SF. 

Kate Heffner – Kate Heffner (she/they) is a PhD researcher at the University of Kent England in the Department of History and an adjunct faculty member in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. She is completing her dissertation entitled ‘A Fanzine of Her Own: Femme Fans in the Post-War Era.’ She is the recipient of the 2022 Peter Nicholls prize for best essay and a former judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award. For the last several years, she has also been adding to Fancyclopedia.org. 

Leah Zeldes Smith – A retired journalist, Leah has been an actifan for more than 50 years, since she was a young teenager. She is a fanzine fan, and her zine STET was nominated for the Best Fanzine Hugo 3 times (1993, 1994, 2001). She’s a DUFF winner (93). She’s been involved with APAs, clubs and convention running. Leah’s involvement in documenting fanhistory dates back several decades. She has been a mainstay of Fancyclopedia, and has made thousands of updates to the site. Recently she’s pulled together a list of Fandom Firsts.

Part 2: 

Description: Women did not magically appear in fandom with the advent of Star Trek, but have been part of science fiction fandom since the earliest days. They’re faneds, and convention chairs, writers and artists, club fans and costumers. Sometimes, they’re all of the above. In this part 2 of the session (Mar 2024), our panelists Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner and Leah Zeldes Smith continue to talk about why early female fans have received less credit than they deserved, or been overlooked entirely, and describe the contributions of a number of them.

Women discussed here include Ina Shorrock, Bobbie Gray, and Ethel Lindsay. There’s more about Femizine, the impact that early female fans can have on younger generations today, and whether women fans today will experience the same sorts of erasure. At about 32 minutes in, Q&A from the audience begins, with the difficulty of researching women fans, especially those that change their names multiple times, and anecdotes of Nan Gerding, Lynette Mills, Fuzzy Pink Niven, and Noreen Shaw. Maggie Thompson contributes a wonderful anecdote about her mother SF author Betsy Curtis and Tony Boucher. The recording concludes with a welcome discussion of how women have been treated in fandom in recent years.

(14) OSCARS A RISING TIDE FOR THESE ACTORS. JustWatch asked: (1) Which movies featuring Oscar-winners Emma Stone and Cillian Murphy are the most popular with audiences? (2) Are their 2024 Oscar-winning pictures at the top?

Key Insights

Poor Things is topping our popularity ranking, with an overall popularity of 48.6% among global audiences. The Favourite, her other Oscar winning performance, is no surprise in second place. Followed by La La Land, which was also a top contender during the 2016 Oscars. Surprisingly, Cruella ranked lower on the list, even though it was a big budget Disney project. 

Oppenheimer blew away Cillian Murphy’s other movies, garnering more than 60% of global popularity. Inception, another Christopher Nolan project, took second place. Dunkirk, A Quiet Place, and The Dark Knight also ranked in our top 1010. 

We created this report by using our JustWatch Streaming Charts, which are calculated by user activity, including clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >40 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.

(15) DON’T BOTHER ME, I’M BUSY. The form letter Robert A. Heinlein devised to answer his mail is making the rounds again. In the Seventies when I heard this existed I wrote him a fan letter in hopes of receiving a copy in reply, and I did — though it was a later variation than this one. (Click for larger image.)

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Arriving in theaters on September 9: “’Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Trailer: ‘The Juice Is Loose’ In Sequel Teaser”. Let Deadline lead the way.

… The logline: Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Ortega), discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem….

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

Pixel Scroll 3/11/24 Fast Pixels At Ridgemont Scroll

Posted on by
21

(1) GLASGOW 2024 COMMUNITY FUND NEWS. The first deadline for Glasgow 2024 Community Fund applications is March 15. Details at the link.

In order to make Glasgow 2024 more affordable for those who need it most, we are running a community fund to help with the costs of attending. With the first deadline for applications coming up on the 15th of March, we encourage you to apply for funds if you need them in order to attend; or else to donate funds to help others attend, if you are able to do so. We are so grateful to all of you who have already done so!

(2) VILLAINOUS OSCAR PRESENTERS. Variety took notes on these Batman jokes at Oscars 2024.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito had a “Twins” reunion at the Oscars as they joined forces to present best visual effects to “Godzilla Minus One” and best film editing to “Oppenheimer.” But it was their jokes about Batman that stole the show and had the Oscars audience uproariously laughing.

“Arnold and I are presenting tonight together for a very obvious reason,” DeVito said.

“We’ve both tried to kill Batman!” Schwarzenegger revealed to applause….

…“Oh. He threw me out a window!” DeVito said about his Penguin death. “There he is. He’s right here. He’s right there. Look!”

The camera then cut to Micheal Keaton in the audience. Keaton was a presenter at the Oscars earlier in the night, taking the stage alongside his “Beetlejuice” co-star Catherine O’Hara.

“You have a lot of nerve to show your face around here,” Schwarzenegger quipped to Keaton.

DeVito then yelled: “We’ll see you after the Governor’s Ball, pal!”

(3) TRACKING THE ELUSIVE KAIJU. Variety analyzes “How ‘Godzilla Minus One’ Surprised With the VFX Oscar”.

…In late 2023, many still didn’t have the Kaiju movie, released by Japan’s Toho Studios, on their awards radar. But it was incredibly well received when it opened Dec. 1 in the United States, and in the weeks that followed, a VFX branch committee included the movie in the category shortlist.

Then came the Jan. 13 VFX category “bake off,” an event held at the Academy Museum during which the potential nominees representing the 10 shortlisted movies presented clips and spoke about their work before branch members entered their ballots for the final five. The “Godzilla Minus One” team made a charming  presentation, talking about their creative problem solving and challenges. The movie was made for under $15 million and the VFX were pulled off by a team of just 35 people.

The well-received presentation seemed to have secured the team a trip to the Dolby Theatre and when the nominations were officially announced on Jan. 23, a video of the thrilled team in Tokyo went viral. From there, they spoke at screenings and appeared at events including the nominees luncheon, building momentum along the way. In early February, as part of Variety’s Screening Series, the team also participated in a Q&A following a screening at Harmony Gold in Hollywood. The film played to a packed room, with guild members and Academy voters staying long after credits had rolled to meet the filmmakers….

(4) FEBRUARY THE FIRST IS TOO LATE. Peculiarly, if you want to see this Oscar-winner, you’re out of luck. “’Godzilla Minus One’ Isn’t Streaming or in Theaters: Here’s Why”. IndieWire knows the answer.

If you want to catch up with Oscar Visual Effects nominee “Godzilla Minus One” before the awards Sunday night, you’ve got exactly one option: Find an Academy member who will invite you to view it on the voters’ portal. For everyone else in the world, you’re out of luck.

Why? Although never confirmed by Toho, it relates to an apparent contractual agreement between Toho, the Japanese studio that created (and still owns rights to) “Godzilla,” and Legendary Entertainment, which licensed the monster character for a series of films released by Warner Bros. Legendary’s latest with Warners, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” fifth in the MonsterVerse franchise, opens wide in the U.S./Canada March 29.

Toho retains the ability to make its own “Godzilla” movies, but with the reported limitation of not releasing them in the same year as a Legendary production. Under that arrangement, “Godzilla Minus One” opened in Japan last November, and then domestically (as well as multiple European countries) in December.

“Godzilla Minus One” turned out to be a sleeper success in the U.S, grossing $56 million stateside. That’s stunning for a subtitled film and even more so for one that was anticipated as pre-holiday filler. A black-and-white version was added in January.

However, Toho notified theaters that all dates for “Godzilla Minus One” had to end by February 1 — even though “Godzilla Minus One” still ranked #8 in the final weekend of its run, after January 26, with a $2.7 million gross. It’s highly unusual to force a film to leave theaters while it’s still making money, but that’s consistent with reports of limits imposed on its looming competition with “Godzilla x Kong.”…

(5) SHARON LEE UPDATE. In “And when the stars threw down their spears”, author Sharon Lee tells how she’s been keeping up with life since the loss of her husband and collaborator Steve Miller.

It’s a funny thing, how life goes on.  Until it doesn’t, of course, but we’re very good as a species about ignoring that.

So — life.  Much changed, but still moving, still demanding attention, response, thought, and action.

My short-term goal is to find all of Steve’s papers — which is not as easy as you might think — and get them into boxes to send to the archive at Northern Illinois University.  My brother-in-law and nephew are coming up from mid-Coast in a few days to help me, literally, with the heavy lifting, and a Dumpster has been engaged to receive such things as no longer have utility.

My longer-term goals are to finish the sequel to Ribbon Dance — the deadline having been moved from September to November — and start work on the book after that…

(6) KAPLAN ONLINE READING. Space Cowboys Books will host an “Online Reading and Interview with Carter Kaplan” on Tuesday, March 26 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for free tickets at the link.

Carter Kaplan is the author of The Invisible Tower Trilogy: Echoes, We Reign Secure, and The Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus. His first novel is Tally-Ho, Cornelius! Diogenes is an Aristophanic comedy. Editor of Emanations; IA edition of The Scarlet Letter with Afterword, “A” is for Antinomian: Theology and Politics in The Scarlet Letter; the anthology Fantasy Worlds. Co-translator and editor of Creation of the World by Torquato Tasso. Book on Wittgenstein and literary theory: Critical Synoptics. Articles on “Karel Čapek,” “Menippean Satire” and “Dystopian Literature” in The Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics. Articles on “Herman Melville” and “Michael Butterworth” in A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (which has an article about him). A chapter on William Blake and Michael Moorcock appears in New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Teaching includes Literature, Philosophy, and post-graduate Medical Research Writing in universities ranging across Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York City, and Scotland.

(7) FANAC FAN HISTORY ZOOM.  This is the last FANAC Fan History Zoom for this season and it will stream on March 16. To attend, send a note to [email protected]

We have less than a week until the next FANAC Fan History Zoom program. We have some very knowledgeable fans on this program and it promises to be an enlightening subject in an often overlooked area of our field. Join us!

 Please get the word out to all your friends.

The Women Fen Don’t See

Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Time: 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, Noon PDT, 7PM London (GMT), and Mar 17 at 6AM AEDT in Melbourne

(8) SECRET NO MORE. In “Move Over, Alan Turing; Meet the Teenage Girls Who Rocked Bletchley Park”, New York Times reviewer Sarah Lyall discusses THE ENIGMA GIRLS: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets and Helped Win World War II, by Candace Fleming.

As war raged in Europe in 1941, Sarah Norton, the 18-year-old daughter of an English lord, received a letter in a plain brown envelope with no return address. “You are to report to Station X at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire in four days’ time,” said the letter, signed by a mysterious “Commander Travis.” “That is all you need to know.”

Little did Sarah realize she was being recruited for Britain’s top-secret wartime code-breaking operation. Arriving at Bletchley Park with a suitcase full of “what she considered the bare essentials — five daytime outfits, an evening gown with matching shoes, lipstick and, most importantly, her teddy bear” — she would work alongside hundreds of similar recruits to help intercept and decipher the Nazis’ secret communications.

“This is the story of a handful of young women — teenagers really — who left their childhoods behind and walked into the unknown,” Candace Fleming writes in “The Enigma Girls,” her beguiling new account of their contributions. “For most of their lives, they never breathed a word about their war experiences.”

We learn about 10 of these real-life conscripts. In addition to Sarah, there was Mavis Lever, also 18, who was assigned to work with Dilly Knox, a Greek scholar who had “spent years successfully deciphering ancient papyri fragments at the British Museum.” There was Patricia Owtram, another 18-year-old, whose job was to monitor radio frequencies for enemy communications while simultaneously converting the Morse code messages into plain text. And there was Diana Payne, just 17, who helped operate the massive “Bombe” machines, which sped up the process of breaking the enemy’s ever-shifting codes….

(9) LISA MORTON Q&A.  Alpha’s Court scored an interview with “Lisa Morton: Author, Editor, and Screenwriter”. Her new release, Placerita, comes out in June.

Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work?

A: Everywhere! One of my favorite places is my own backyard, which is both full of amazing plants and which draws all kinds of wildlife at night. As a horror writer, there’s certainly no shortage of fodder in the daily news and, of course, reading other writers’ work is always inspiring.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 11, 1952 — Douglas Adams. (Died 2001.) Was there ever a better work of epic humorous, and yes I deliberately used the British spelling there, SF  in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that Douglas Adams delightfully created? 

I first encountered it as the BBC television adaptation on public television in the Eighties. It was quite good. Really it was very, very silly. 

Douglas Adams in 2000.

I next listened to the most excellent radio series which originally broadcast in by BBC Radio 4, and then on the National Public Radio where I heard it. I think it one of the best full cast SF dramas I’ve heard and I’ve listened to it at least three or four times that I can remember. 

Now the books. Oh they’re most excellent as well. All five of them that he wrote before his very untimely death as there were more later, one of which I’ve read. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the note of “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” on the cover. 

I’m trying to remember at what point the novels finally weren’t based on off the radio series but I know that it finally happened. 

I have not read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency novels which were described by him as “a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics”. I did see some of the BBC series, oddly enough filmed in Vancouver, and it’s silly and fun.

Adams was the script editor for the seventeenth season of Doctor Who, and he wrote three scripts starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor — “The Pirate Planet” City of Death” and “Shada”. 

The latter was only partially filmed but never not televised due to industry disputes which even unclear to this day. It was later completed using animation for the unfinished scenes and broadcast as Doctor Who: The Lost Episode on BBC America seven years ago. 

The last thing I want you to mention is Last Chance to See, BBC radio documentary series and a book, written and presented by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. Adams and Carwardine travel to various locations in the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction. It’s quite extraordinary.

(11) WRITER BEWARE. Victoria Strauss gives Writer Beware readers a detailed rundown about “Author Complaints at City Owl Press”. This is just a taste.

…Several authors announced their split from COP on social media, without providing details as to why, causing questions and concerns from observers. This is also the point at which COP authors started contacting Writer Beware. Then, in late January, Erin Fulmer published her detailed series of blog posts about her departure from COP. Authors are often very, very reluctant to go public with publisher complaints, whether because they don’t want to single themselves out, fear retaliation and blowback from the publisher and/or fellow authors, or are simply too exhausted and demoralized–but a flood of other accounts followed Erin’s: Megan Van Dyke, SL Choi, Elisse Hay, Jen Karner, Lisa Edmonds, Lily Riley, and more have all chosen to speak out about their experiences.

This unusually public discussion has had an impact. On February 22, COP posted a public apology to authors and readers, with a pledge to implement “systematic and operational changes”. (This is the overshare mentioned in the first paragraph; it was later reformulated in response to criticism)….

(12) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD. [Item by Steven French.] Early Antarctic explorers would while away the weeks of darkness by writing stories, some silly, some fantastical – the first book printed on the frozen continent included a science-fiction story (complete with drawings) about exploring an undiscovered tropical region of Antarctica: “Antarctica Publications Tried to Hide Danger in Fiction and Strange Stories” at Atlas Obscura.

…It imagines the Nimrod’s party making their way into the strange land of Bathybia, 22,000 feet below sea level. They used rafts made of giant, man-sized mushrooms to travel down rivers into a red jungle, encountering giant ticks, alcoholic algae, and huge carnivorous versions of microscopic Antarctic rotifers….

(13) IT’S NOT KANSAS CABERNET SAUVIGNON, TOTO. But drink enough and you will see flying monkeys. “The Wizard of Oz Tornado Etched Wine” from Mano’s Wine.

Embark on a mesmerizing journey with our Wizard of Oz wine bottles. Expertly deep-etched and lovingly hand-painted, these enchanting collectibles capture the essence of the beloved film. Sip from the elixir of nostalgia and let the magic unfold with every pour. Raise your glass to the Emerald City and indulge in a taste of cinematic splendor.

(14) WORM HYPE. [Item by Steven French.] Nature invites you to “Meet the real-life versions of Dune’s epic sandworms”. “‘Dune’s sandworms can grow to at least 450 metres long, about 15 times the size of the longest blue whale. How big do real-life worms get?”

…There are annelid worms that get up to several metres in length called eunicid worms, a type of bristle worm. They’re pretty gnarly — they have big jaws, they look a bit like Graboids from the 1990 film Tremors. Some of them are ambush predators. They eat octopuses, squid, vertebrates….

There are some earthworms that get really big, as well. Megascolides reaches up to 2 metres. The biggest ones are from Australia.

(Of course they are!)

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Dan Monroe wants to find out “Whatever Happened to LOGAN’S RUN?” (See, I didn’t know anything had happened to Logan’s Run!)

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