(1) THOUSANDS SIGN AUTHORS GUILD LETTER CALLING ON AI INDUSTRY TO PROTECT WRITERS. Over 9000 authors, including genre-recognizable names like Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Carmen Machado, Joe Hill, Edward M. Lerner, Brendan DuBois, Terri Windling, Matthew Kressel, Sean Wallace, and Cecilia Tan, have signed an open letter from the Authors Guild to the CEOs of companies developing AI generative software to not use their members’ work without consent, credit, and compensation when developing their systems.
The Authors Guild, the leading professional organization for writers in the United States, has submitted an open letter to the CEOs of prominent AI companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft. The letter calls attention to the inherent injustice of building lucrative generative AI technologies using copyrighted works and asks AI developers to obtain consent from, credit, and fairly compensate authors.
More than 9,000 writers and their supporters have signed the letter including luminaries such as Dan Brown, James Patterson, Jennifer Egan, David Baldacci, Michael Chabon, Nora Roberts, Jesmyn Ward, Jodi Picoult, Ron Chernow, Michael Pollan, Suzanne Collins, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Roxane Gay, Celeste Ng, Louise Erdrich, Viet Thanh Nguyen, George Saunders, Min Jin Lee, Andrew Solomon, Rebecca Makkai, Tobias Wolff, and many others.
The open letter emphasizes that generative AI technologies heavily rely on authors’ language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry serve as the foundation for AI systems, yet authors have not received any compensation for their contributions. These works are part of the fabric of the language models that power ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI systems. Where AI companies like to say that their machines simply “read” the texts that they are trained on, this is inaccurate anthropomorphizing. Rather, they copy the texts into the software itself, and then they reproduce them again and again.
Maya Shanbhag Lang, president of the Authors Guild, said, “The output of AI will always be derivative in nature. AI regurgitates what it takes in, which is the work of human writers. It’s only fair that authors be compensated for having ‘fed’ AI and continuing to inform its evolution. Our work cannot be used without consent, credit, and compensation. All three are a must.”…
We, the undersigned, call your attention to the inherent injustice in exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit, or compensation.
Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the “food” for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.
We understand that many of the books used to develop AI systems originated from notorious piracy websites. Not only does the recent Supreme Court decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith make clear that the high commerciality of your use argues against fair use, but no court would excuse copying illegally sourced works as fair use….
Last week, SFWA signed the “Creators Call for Action on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Copyright Exceptions,” a joint action from 24 creator-led organizations delivered to the European Union and United States governing bodies. This letter addresses the harm already caused to creators by AI companies’ manipulations of exceptions to copyright enacted by the 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The details of this issue are well explained on the National Writers Union (NWU) website.
We felt it was important to sign onto this particular joint call for a number of reasons:
Working with other organizations to monitor and respond to developments both in generative AI and in the legal environment around it is essential to advocating for concrete protections and restitution for writers.
Responding to the unique issues that AI presents to creative copyrights is a global effort, not one limited to Silicon Valley. It’s important to ensure that writers’ rights are respected around the world, so corporations who may try to relocate their operations rather than compensate creators fairly will have no place to go.
This letter, written by the NWU, is one such global effort, and we encourage everyone to read the letter in full to better understand some of the important copyright issues regarding the use of AI/ML applications. You are welcome to distribute the joint call and spread the word. Access the PDF of the complete joint call for action here.
A South Carolina school board meeting, in which community members railed against an African American culture writer’s award-winning memoir about racial injustice, featured a special guest appearance: Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famed author in question.
On Monday evening, the Lexington-Richland District 5 School Board met to discuss the outrage concerning Coates’ 2015 nonfiction bestseller, Between the World and Me, which has repeatedly caused political literary mayhem among reactionary right-wing communities and been placed on book ban lists.
In February, after getting approval from higher-ups, an AP Language teacher at Chapin High School conducted a lesson involving Between the World and Me. The book, written as an essay to Coates’ son to prepare him for the life he will live as a Black man, details personal accounts of Coates’ life and his first-hand experiences with racism. However, the lesson was shut down and the book was removed from the course after students filed a complaint claiming the book made them feel “guilty for being white,” local news outlet CBS 19 Columbia reported.
According to footage obtained by CBS 19, a slew of people wearing blue rallied in support for the book and for academic freedom during the board hearing. And Coates sat in the back of the room next to the teacher who assigned the book as a sign of solidarity….
… The board did not conduct a vote after public discussion.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Lexington-Richmond District 5 wrote that it is “important to understand” that Between the World and Me “is not banned in our school district.”…
(4) INNOCENCE ASSERTED. Michele Lundgren, wife of sff artist Carl Lundgren, charged by Michigan authorities this week with numerous felonies as a fake Trump elector, gave an interview to a reporter in which she says she was duped. “I was an innocent little bystander in the whole thing thinking I was doing my civic duty.”
However, if you watch this Detroit Free Press video from December 15, 2020 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NgLQxMV9c&t=206s — it shows her just after the Michigan fake electors were turned away from the State House, standing next to Ian Northon, an attorney, nodding vigorously as he explains his theory of why the GOP fake electors should have been let in. (Thanks to Kathryn Cramer for the link.)
Michele Lundgren, left, in news video covering 2020 attempt to deliver fake Trump electors.
… As with all of the stories in the Liaden Universe® series, Salvage Right is a sci-fi space opera story. But are there any other genres at work in this story as well?
Sharon: Salvage Right is as pure a space opera as we’ve written in a while. It was fun to let all the stops out.
Steve: We also draw from regency romance and comedy of manners fiction; almost every time a character bows that’s tip of the hat to Georgette Heyer!
Are there any writers, or stories, who had a big influence on Salvage Right but not on anything else you’ve written?
Steve: I don’t think so; nothing recent, certainly, and with Salvage Right being a merge of story lines, it would be hard to filter one new factor in, I think.
Sharon: Harlan Ellison’s short story “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”; The Prestige, the novel by Christopher Priest….
(6) O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN. Kimberly Unger is at San Diego Comic-Con. From her hotel room window she was able to take a great photo of this bit of Star Trek publicity.
(7) TRACING OPPENHEIMER’S FOOTSTEPS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. William Deverell takes readers on a historic tour of a Caltech neighborhood significant to the history of J. Robert Oppenheimer in “The Pasadena Project” at Alta Online.
It’s only a couple of hundred yards from our house to the heart of the Caltech campus, less than a 10-minute walk, an environment our dogs never tire of exploring. Devoted mostly to classrooms, dorms (“houses,” in Caltech parlance), and research labs, the campus is almost always quiet, and if you know where to look, there are places on campus that are little changed from when Oppenheimer and members of his eventual Los Alamos team worked there.
Hiding in plain sight, innocuous and out of place, is a small Spanish revival home, smack-dab in the middle of everything else. This is the Tolman-Bacher House. Built around the same time as our home, which it resembles, the Tolman-Bacher House was the residence of Richard Tolman and his wife, Ruth (Louise Lombard plays her in the film). Richard Tolman had come to Caltech in 1922 as a professor of physics. He was a giant at Caltech and, later, in the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer (played in the film by Irish actor Cillian Murphy) often stayed with the Tolmans when he’d come to Caltech from Berkeley during many a spring term in the 1930s. His brother, Frank, was a graduate student at Caltech then….
… Being a Nolan screenplay, the story is told in nonlinear fashion. Cillian Murphy, with his open, seemingly guileless expression, is completely convincing as the scientist known as the father of the atomic bomb who, after building it, counseled against its use and made many enemies in the process. But no one can get inside the head of a genius—be it a painter or a composer or a brilliant scientist, so we don’t leave the theater with a feeling of knowing what Oppy was all about, except on the surface. (There is even a glimpse of Albert Einstein, played by that wonderful actor Tom Conti.)…
(9) FRANK WALLER (1957-2023.) Longtime LASFS member Frank Waller died July 18 at the age of 66. He had quadruple bypass surgery on his heart in May, but had gone through rehab and was out of the hospital. Frank joined the club in 1988. He is survived by his sister, Beth and his brother, Joe.
(10) MEMORY LANE.
2005 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Graham Joyce wrote our Beginning this time. Selecting his best novel is a futile exercise as everything is fantastically good but I’ll single out Some Kind of Fairy Tale and The Tooth Fairy as the ones I found the most interesting reads.
No Hugos, not even a nomination, but he’s won a few BFAs and even one WFA for The Facts of Life novel.
Mike picked The Limits of Enchantment which was published eighteen years ago by Artia Books in the States with the cover illustration by David Sacks. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
And now for our Beginning…
Prologue
If I could tell you this in a single sitting then you might believe all of it, even the strangest part. Even the part about what I found in the hedgerow. If I could unwind this story in a single spool, or peel it like an apple the way Mammy would with her penknife in one unbroken coil, juice a-glistening on the blade, then you might bite in without objection.
But Mammy always said we have lost the art of Listening. She said we live in an age when everyone chatters and no one takes heed, and that, she said, is not a good time in which to live.
And while I offer you my story unbroken, like the apple peel, it hangs by a fibre at every turn of the knife. When you come to know the nature of the teller of this tale you may have good reason to doubt both. You may suspect the balance of my mind and you may condemn my position. You may start to disbelieve.
Perhaps I once was mad. Briefly. Perhaps that much is true. And this, in an age where we no longer have the patience to listen, may cause you to break off, to give up on me, to turn away. A young woman has so little of interest to offer, after all. A young woman of unsteady temper, even less.
What they did to Mammy they tried to do to me. They released the dogs. And when it comes to telling how it was done, I only ask this: when doubt wrinkles your brow; when incomprehension clouds your eyes; when distaste rests like a rank fog on your lips, then think how we few have held our tongues for so long. How we have choked back the truth. How we have burned in our hearts rather than risk the telling. And when you feel most far from me, then at that moment listen hard. Not to your thoughts, which will mislead you, nor to your heart, which will lie, but to the voice behind the voice, and trust the tale and not the teller.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 20, 1924 — Lola Albright. Though she’s best remembered best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Peter Gunn, she did do some genre performances. She’s Cathy Barrett, one of the leads in the Fifties film The Monolith Monsters. Television was really her home in the Fifties and Sixties. She was on Tales of Tomorrow as Carol Williams in the “The Miraculous Serum” episode, Nancy Metcalfe on Rocket Squad in “The System” episode, repeated appearances on the various Alfred Hitchcock series, and even on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the episodes released as the feature length film The Helicopter Spies. She was Azalea. (Died 2017.)
Born July 20, 1930 — Sally Ann Howes. She is best known for the role of Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was in Brigadoon as Fiona McLarenat New York City Center Light Opera Company, and in Camelot as Guenevere at St. Louis Municipal Opera. She was even in The Hound of the Baskervilles as Laura Frankland which has a certain Starship Captain as George Stapleton. (Died 2021.)
Born July 20, 1931 — Donald Moffitt. Author of the Baroness thriller series, somewhat akin to Bond and Blaise, but not quite. Great popcorn literature. Some SF, two in his Mechanical Sky series, Crescent in the Sky and A Gathering of Stars, another two in his Genesis Quest series, Genesis Quest and Second Genesis, plus several one-offs. (Died 2014.)
Born July 20, 1938 — Diana Rigg, née Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg. Emma Peel of course in The Avengers beside Patrick Macnee as a John Steed. Best pairing ever. Played Sonya Winter in The Assassination Bureau followed by being Contessa Teresa “Tracy” Draco di Vicenzo Bond on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. By the Eighties, she’s doing lighter fare such as being Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper and Miss Hardbroom in The Worst Witch, not to mention The Evil Queen, Snow White’s evil stepmother in Snow White. Now she would get a meaty role in Game of Thrones when she was Olenna Tyrell. Oh and she showed up in Dr. Who during the Era of the Eleventh Doctor as Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower in the “The Crimson Horror” episode. (Died 2020.)
Born July 20, 1947 — Michael “Mike” Gilbert. A fan artist in the late ’60s in Locus and other fanzines as well as an author, and publishing professional who won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist at the first Noreascon. His wife Sheila was the co-publisher of DAW Books, and Mike worked in both editorial and art capacities at DAW, and was one of their primary first readers. He died of complications following open-heart surgery. (Died 2000.)
Born July 20, 1949 — Guy H. Lillian III, 74. Letterhack and fanzine publisher notable for having been twice nominated for a Hugo Award as best fan writer and rather amazingly having been nominated twelve straight times for the Hugo for best fanzine for his Challenger zine, unfortunately never winning. As a well-fan of Green Lantern, Lillian’s name was tuckerized for the title’s 1968 debut character Guy Gardner.
Born July 20, 1959 — Martha Soukup, 64. The 1994 short film Override, directed by Danny Glover, was based on her short story “Over the Long Haul”. It was his directorial debut. She has two collections, Collections Rosemary’s Brain: And Other Tales of Wonder and The Arbitrary Placement of Walls, both published in the Nineties. She won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “A Defense of the Social Contracts”. “The Story So Far” by her is available as the download sample at the usual suspects in Schimel’s Things Invisible to See anthology if you’d liked to see how she is as a writer.
(13) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 88 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Someone Somewhere Must Know What’s Going On”, John Coxon is on brand, Alison Scott wants to do Mark, and Liz Batty had a few twinges.
We re-introduce ourselves for anyone who hasn’t listened before, and then we dive into in-jokes, regular segments, waffling, and all the other things that have firmly cemented us as “a podcast that people can listen to”. (COVID, Eastercon, Hugo Awards, Chengdu, Clarke Awards, Arkham Horror, and—checks notes—cycling.)
(14) VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS REFERENCED ON BANDCAMP. [Item by Steve French.] Back in 1974, British experimental folk musician Mike Cooper released his ‘landmark’ album, Life and Death in Paradise. The opening track was apparently influenced by David Lindsay’s classic 1920 SF novel A Voyage to Arcturus, which influenced Lewis, Tolkien and more recently, Pullman. “A Reissue of ‘Life and Death in Paradise’ Brings Mike Cooper’s Music to a New Generation” at Bandcamp Daily.
The opener, “Rocket Summer,” like the songs on Trout Steel (inspired by Richard Brautigan’sTrout Fishing in America) was born of Cooper’s “esoteric” choice in literature—in this case, a sci-fi book called A Voyage to Arcturus. Aside from its narrative of interstellar travel, it’s filled with “lots of references to sound and color” which were attractive to Cooper.
The album has just been re-issued, prompting Bandcamp to give Cooper the full-on ‘feature’ treatment.
…Around 2010, Rice wanted to make the runs harder, and he thought wearing a mask and black clothing would do the trick. When he remembered that parts of the Star Wars franchise were filmed in Death Valley, he got the idea to dress up as the villain of the series.
Rice, who edits a cryptocurrency trade publication, has done the Darth Valley run most years since then, with breaks during the coronavirus pandemic and a cross-country move. Sometimes other runners join him – occasionally in a Chewbacca costume….
In a Halloween-store Darth Vader costume, complete with a helmet, Jon Rice tries to make his near-annual “Darth Valley” run as difficult as possible.
On Sunday, the New Mexico resident completed his run as temperatures neared 130 degrees Fahrenheit. https://t.co/bdNlQz8CNE
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 18, 2023
The “Wilhelm scream” is arguably the most recognizable stock sound effect in the history of film and television, having been used in everything from mega-franchises like “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “Die Hard,’ to beloved TV shows from “X-Files” to “SpongeBob SquarePants” to “Game of Thrones” and beyond.
If the mere mention of its name doesn’t immediately make the sound play in your head, you may recognize it from this scene in the movie that made it popular, 1977’s “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” when the effect is used for a stormtrooper that falls off a ledge after Luke Skywalker shoots him with a blaster round.
The scream that’s been used in more than 400 films is finding new life this year after California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Professor Craig Smith discovered the Wilhelm’s original recording session while preserving a collection of 35-millimeter sound films he got from USC’s Cinematic Arts Library.
(17) SONIC SCREWDRIVER. There will be a new sonic screwdriver in the hands of the new Doctor Who. And it’s ready for its close-up.
Some of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are leaking radio waves that could interfere with astronomy.
In the last few years, astronomers have warned about light pollution and other unintended consequences of the growing number of satellites. Since 2019, the company SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, has launched more than 4,300 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit, where they make up around half of all active satellites.
Federico Di Vruno at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Cheshire, UK, and his colleagues used the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands to observe 68 Starlink satellites. They found that 47 of the satellites were emitting radio waves at frequencies very different from those used, and approved, for satellite communications with control stations on Earth.
The satellites’ emissions are not harming current radio astronomy observations, but such emissions might cause problems in future, as more and more satellites are launched. And although the emissions don’t violate any regulations, satellite operators and government authorities might consider regulating them, the authors say…
(19) FROM THE MAKERS OF MINIONS. The trailer for Migration, coming to theaters December 22.
The Mallard family is in a bit of rut. While dad Mack is content to keep his family safe paddling around their New England pond forever, mom Pam is eager to shake things up and show their kids—teen son Dax and duckling daughter Gwen—the whole wide world. After a migrating duck family alights on their pond with thrilling tales of far-flung places, Pam persuades Mack to embark on a family trip, via New York City, to tropical Jamaica. As the Mallards make their way South for the winter, their well-laid plans quickly go awry. The experience will inspire them to expand their horizons, open themselves up to new friends and accomplish more than they ever thought possible, while teaching them more about each other—and themselves—than they ever imagined.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Darrah Chavey, Steve French, Daniel Dern,Kimberly Unger, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
The winner of the 2023 Philip K. Dick Award, given for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States, was announced April 7 at Norwescon 45:
The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger (Tachyon Publications)
Special citation was given to:
The Legacy of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson (Tordotcom)
The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the award ceremony is sponsored by Norwescon.
The year’s judges for the 2023 award were Michael Cassutt (chair), Matthew Goodwin, Stina Leicht, and Elise C. Tobler.
The six works nominated for the 2023 Philip K. Dick Award were announced by the judges and the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust on January 12.
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell (Stelliform Press)
Widowland by C. J. Carey (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Ymir by Rich Larson (Orbit)
January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky (Tordotcom)
The Legacy Of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson (Tordotcom)
The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger (Tachyon Publications)
First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 7, 2023 at Norwescon 45. Plans for the ceremony will be posted here when they are available.
The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States during the previous calendar year.
The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the Northwest Science Fiction Society.
The 2022 judges are Michael Cassutt (Chair), Matthew Goodwin, Stina Leicht, and Elise C. Tobler.
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) released the names of the six finalists for its 2022 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. The finalists are:
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Assassin’s Orbit by John Appel
Nucleation by Kimberly Unger
The Councillor by E. J. Beaton
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
The award includes a framed award document and, for the novel’s author, a check for $1,000 and an invitation to be the Compton Crook Guest of Honor at Balticon (the BSFS annual convention) for two years. Balticon is held in Baltimore over Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-30th. Because Balticon was held online for the previous two years, this year’s Balticon will also include past winners Micaiah Johnson (2021), Arkady Martine (2020), and R.F. Kuang (2019).
Members of BSFS selected the finalists by reading and rating debut novels published between Nov 1, 2020 and October 31, 2021. The finalist round of reading and rating will close April 8 and the winner will be notified on Sunday, April 10 and announced to the public on Monday, April 11.
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has been giving out the Compton Crook Award for best first novel since 1983. Past winners have included Donald Kingsbury, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Flynn, Wen Spencer, Maria Snyder, Naomi Novik, Paolo Bacigalupi, Myke Cole, Charles Gannon, Fran Wilde, Ada Palmer, R.F. Kuang, and Arkady Martine. Last year’s winner was Micaiah Johnson for The Space Between Worlds. This year will be the 40th winner.
The Award was named in memory of Towson State College Professor of Natural Sciences Compton Crook, who wrote under the name Stephen Tall, and who died in 1981. Professor Crook was active for many years in the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and was a staunch champion of new works in the fields eligible for the award. For more details visit here. For more information contact [email protected].
BSFS is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, charitable, literary and educational organization, dedicated to the promotion of, and an appreciation for, science fiction in all of its many forms. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society was launched on January 5, 1963 and has been holding Balticon since 1967.
(1) PLAY IT AGAIN, JEAN-LUC. At Amazing Stories, Kimberly
Unger tells how Picard is doing in checking off “The
Required Plots of Star Trek”. She has an infographic with 13 of them.
A few years ago, I had the privilege to work on a game being built for Star Trek: Discovery (I will remain salty about the cancellation of this game until the day I die). While that game ultimately never made it to market, it gave me a chance to do a number of deep dives into one of my favorite properties. While we were in the early days of building the game design bible to give to the writers, I came up with a list of recurring broad plotlines that seemed to show up in every variation of Star Trek (and many other SF shows including Dr. Who, Stargate, etc.).
Now that Star Trek: Picard is on the air, I’m working my way down the list, watching to see which of these thirteen recurring plots show up.
Am I an expert in any of this? Hardly. I just try to keep up to date on what’s up while simultaneously not fall for conspiracy theories or mis/disinformation. (Harder than you’d think in this age, sadly.)
So, now we circle back around to say —
Hey, there are a lot of conventions, conferences and festivals coming up.
For me, these are writing- or book-related, but again, I see a lot on the horizon and some that just recently passed: toys, electronics, food service, etc.
It’s convention season.
And, apparently, coronavirus season.
So, if you’re running just such a conference, lemme give you some advice:
Get ahead of this now.
Do not make us e-mail you to ask you what’s up.
This isn’t about causing panic — it’s about undercutting it. It’s about reassuring us that you have this in your mind, with plans forming….
Regina Kanyu Wang, a council member of World Chinese Science Fiction Association
(WCSFA) and who lives in Shanghai, commented today on
Facebook about the situation.
Talking about the coronavirus (COVID-19), now the situation in China is OK, with doctors and nurses really fighting in the frontier as well as normal citizens sacrificing their convenience of daily life (Especially those who live in Wuhan and Hubei in general! They’ve endured so much.) I am in Shanghai and my life is as normal, but I have friends and friends’ families living in Hubei, who are really trading their normal life to win more time for the world to take control of the plague. Recently, there have been an increase in numbers of cases in Korea, Japan, Italy, Iran and the US, and also first cases confirmed in more countries.
I realize that local governments may not tell the people how dangerous the virus is because they are afraid of panics and influences on economics. Wuhan and Hubei government did the same, and look what it’s like now….
… Pandemic novels, like pandemics, come and go in waves. The 60s had Michael Crichton’s “The Andromeda Strain.” The 70s saw the mega-success of Stephen King’s “The Stand.” Robin Cook gave us “Outbreak” in the 80s. By the 2000s, Max Brooks’s “World War Z” and related “The Zombie Survival Guide” were deemed so plausible for emergency scenarios that Brooks now consults for the military. And in 2014, Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven,” about a deadly plague called the “Georgia Flu,” dominated award lists and won widespread recognition.
With the coronavirus on everyone’s minds, reading books about epidemics can either be a frightening turnoff or a fascinating “what if” thought experiment. For readers in the latter category, let’s talk about books you might dare to consider.
… Though the two had never met before, Delany has been hugely influential on Harris, and served as the basis for a character in the latter’s 2019 Black Exhibition, at the Bushwick Starr. And Delany was very aware of Harris. The superstar playwright made an indelible mark on the culture, and it was fitting that the two should meet on Broadway, in Times Square, Delany’s former epicenter of activity, which he detailed at length in his landmark Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and The Mad Man. …
Over turkey club sandwiches and oysters, Harris and Delany discussed identity, fantasy, kink, and getting turned on in the theater.
HARRIS
Can I ask you about the play? How are you processing it?
DELANY
I was confused in the beginning, but then I realized, Aha! This is therapy. And then, Aha! The therapists are nuts! Then I traveled around having sympathy for all the characters, especially the stupid good-looking guy. He was sweet, I’ve had a lot of those. The character that I identified with most is the one who insists that he’s not white. I used to get that all the time, I mean, the number of times I was told by my friends at Dalton, Well, I would never know that you were black. As if I had asked them.
One of the best things that ever happened to me happened when I was about ten, which was a long time ago. I was born in 1942, so this is 1952, and I’m sitting in Central Park doing my math homework. This kid, he could have been about nineteen or twenty, and I think he was homeless, he walks up to me, and he says to me with his Southern accent, You a n****, ain’t you? I can tell. You ain’t gonna get away with nothin’ with me.
And I looked up at him, I didn’t say anything, and he looked at me and said, That’s all right. You ain’t gonna get away with nothing from me.
And I was so thankful for it. I realized, first of all, he was right. He was being much more honest with me than any of my school friends.
It was also my first exposure to white privilege. There were a lot of white people from the South who felt obliged to walk up and say, You’re black, aren’t you? They thought it was their duty. In case I thought, for a moment, that they didn’t know. This was part of my childhood: people telling me that I was black….
Rosel George Brown is a classic SF author of whom I have long been aware without managing to track down much of her work. Step IV was in fact the third Brown piece I ever read, after 1959’s ?“Car Pool”, and Earthblood, her 1966 collaboration with Keith Laumer. In large part this is because her career was cut tragically short. Aged just 41, she died of lymphoma in 1967. Most of her work is very much out of print.
Still, this particular story is available. What did my Young People make of it?
…During World War II, he was a civilian scientist with the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command.
After the war, he came to the U.S. to study physics. Together with physicist Richard Feynman, he was able to reconcile two competing theories of quantum electrodynamics, the study of how sub-atomic particles and light interact. “He was able to show that all these different points of view were one and the same thing,” Dijkgraaf says. “He was a great unifier of physics.”
… Dyson permanently joined the Institute for Advanced Study in 1953. From his perch there, he pursued many other topics of interest. He helped to design an inherently safe nuclear reactor that could be operated “even in the hands of an idiot.” In 1958, he joined Project Orion, a plan to power a spacecraft with controlled nuclear explosions.
The spaceship was never built, but Dyson later described it as “the most exciting and in many ways happiest of my scientific life.” Dijkgraaf says Dyson was probably one of the few people on Earth that felt let down by the 1969 moon landings: “This all looked very disappointing in Freeman’s eyes,” he says. Dyson wanted to go to Saturn with nuclear-fueled rockets. “[He] was kind of envisioning jet planes, and in the end we took a bicycle.”
February 28, 1956 — The “A Pail of Air” episode of X-One first aired. A boy narrates tale of a lifeless Earth. The Earth has been pulled away from its orbit by a comet when he was a baby, and his family live in a nest. The script’s by George Lefferts from a story by Fritz Leiber. Two more episodes would be based on stories by him, “Appointment in Tomorrow” and “The Moon is Green”. The cast includes Ronnie Liss, Pamela Hamilton and Joe De Santis. You can hear it here.
February 28, 1989 — Journey To The Center Of The Earth premiered. It was written by Debra Ricci, Regina Davis, Kitty Chalmers, and Rusty Lemorande, as directed by Lemorande and Albert Pyun. It starred Emo Philips, Paul Carafotes, Jaclyn Bernstein and Kathy Ireland,. It was based on an uncompleted version for a different studio that Lemorande wrote and directed which was much more more faithful to Verne’s text. It was a sort of sequel to the film Alien from L.A.which has been noted here before. Critics usually used one word to describe it — “a mess”. Though it actually has a middling rating among the audiences Rotten Tomatoes at 42%.
February 28, 2011 — Tyrannosaurus Azteca premiered on Sci-fi. (Also known as Rex Aztec.) It was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith as written by Richard Manning. It starred Starring: Ian Ziering, Shawn Lathrop, Milan Tresnak, Marc Antonio, Dichen Lachman and Jack McGee. It was made on he cheap, less than a million in total and critics noted that the CGI at times is much less than believable. You can see it here.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 28, 1913 — John Coleman Burroughs. Artist known for his illustrations of the works of his father, Edgar Rice Burroughs. At age 23, he was given the chance to illustrate his father’s book, The Oakdale Affair and the Rider which was published in 1937. He went on to illustrate all of his father’s books published during the author’s lifetime — a total of over 125 illustrations. He also illustrated the John Carter Sunday newspaper strip, a David Innes of Pellucidar comic book feature and myriad Big Little Book covers. I remember the latter books — they were always to be found about the house during my childhood. (Died 1979.)
Born February 28, 1928 — Walter Tevis. Author of The Man Who Fell to Earth which became the basis of the film of the same name starring David Bowie. There’s apparently a series planned of it. He also two other SF novels, The Steps of The Sun and Mockingbird. All off his work is available from the usual digital sources. (Died 1984.)
Born February 28, 1942 — Terry Jones. Member of Monty Python who is considered largely responsible for the program’s structure, in which sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punchlines. He made his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he co-directed with Gilliam, and also directed Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson’s 1986 film Labyrinth, though little of that draft remains in the final version. (Died 2020.)
Born February 28, 1946 — Leanne Frahm, 74. Australian writer whose “Deus Ex Corporus” won the Ditmar Award for best Australian short fiction. She won a Ditmar again in for “Catalyst”. Her story “Borderline” won an Aurealis Award for best science fiction short story. She’s won the Ditmar Award for best fan writer twice.
Born February 28, 1947 — Stephen Goldin, 73. Author of the Family d’Alembert series which is based on a novella by E.E. “Doc” Smith. I think the novella is “Imperial Stars” but that’s unclear from the way the series is referred to. Has anyone read this series? How does it match up to the source material?
Born February 28, 1960 — Dorothy Stratten. She played the title role in Galaxina. She also showed up on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as Miss Cosmos in the “Cruise Hip to the Stars” episode. And she was Mickey on the Fantasy Island episode of “The Victim/The Mermaid”. (Died 1980.)
Born February 28, 1968 — John Barnes, 62. I read and really liked the four novels in his Thousand Cultures series which are a sort of updated Heinleinian take on the spread of humanity across the Galaxy. What else by him do y’all like? He’s decently stocked by the usual digital suspects.
Born February 28, 1970 — Lemony Snicket, 50. He’s the author of several children’s books, also serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Though I’ve not read the books, they’re very popular I’m told at my local bookstore. It has been turned into a film, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and into a Netflix series as well which is named, oh you guess.
My guest this time around was Keith R.A. DeCandido, who has written novels and short stories in so many franchises — more than 30, including Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, Farscape, and on and on — that a decade ago he was named Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
He writes fiction in his own worlds as well, including multiple novels and short stories in the Dragon Precinct series, a police procedural set in a high fantasy universe. He also writes reviews and essays for tor.com, including his popular rewatches of multiple Star Treks, Stargate SG-1, and other series. And those are just a few of his facets, which include music, martial arts, and more.
…Young fans are interesting to us because the audience of people who have been most interested in our work so far is relatively small and skews to an older demographic. We cherish this community of long-time fans with some existing connection to the history we study, but we are also interested in reaching a younger audience who have little to no connection to early fan history.
This begs the question…
Are Young People Interested in Early Fan History?
This is a question we ask ourselves often..
Although almost none of the First Fans of the 1930s are still with us, we fortunately can learn something of their stories through the people that knew them. This is the core community of collaborators and readers that we have interacted with through the course of this project so far, and is one primary audience for our work.
But what about, for lack of a better phrase, young people? Do Millennials and Gen Z, born into the chaotic fullness of modern fandom, have any interest in the origin story of the SFF fan community?
Far below Toronto’s streets, Safe provides a refuge to beings living with marvelous gifts and onerous curses—people who, if caught by the authorities, would be subjected to unpleasant experiments. Some of the refugees have been so subjected before they escaped to Safe.
Matthew is able to pass for a regular human. He can venture above to buy necessary supplies without letting any normal know that Safe exists….
(12) THE DOCTOR. THE MASTER. THE CYBERMEN. “Set
course… for Gallifrey” The Doctor Who season 12 finale airs March
1 on BBC One.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, JJ,
Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Bill, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for
some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the
day Chip Hitchcock, assisted by Anna Nimmhaus.]
