25 Time Flies Like An Arrow, Pixel Flies Like A Scroll

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) STRAIGHT TALK. C.J. Cherryh delivered a “Straight Talk on the Craft” on Facebook yesterday. It begins —

I’ve occasionally encountered people with the notion that editors are so eager for submissions that they will fix any grammatical shortcomings.

Fact: they will fix an outirght mistype, or one of those situations so rare it has professional English instructors arguing pro and con in the bar.

Anything short of that will not get editorial rescue—in the ‘life’s too short’ category.

If you are preparing for life as a professional writer, it’s YOUR business to become versed in your language of choice, its rules and its punctuation, its capitalizations. You will be expected to turn in a manuscript without any extraordinary need for help with the language. It should ALREADY read like a professionally written book. The editor has a thousand other jobs to do. Rewriting your work is not one of them….

(2) A CULTURAL ICON. A few weeks ago we linked to NBC News’ profile “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” about Edyth Eyde aka Lisa Ben aka Tigrina. As Tigrina she served as secretary of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the mid-Forties. Fanac.org recently posted some examples of her work – “Menace of the LASFS Retroactive Series 1945-11” – which Bruce Pelz mimeoed in the early Sixties. She made the minutes very amusing.

…Treasurer Ackerman announced in reverent tones that the cash on hand amounted to $52.13. I could not vouch for the intensity of the resultant gasp of delighted amazement as this startling news penetrated our brains, but I heard the next day that residents of Pomona complained of a violent windstorm……. Director Laney asked for this report to be repeated, for it was such beautiful music to our ears. Treasurer Ackerman graciously complied, Director Laney thereafter requesting thirty seconds of respectful silence. This in itself is unusual among fen, but then so is $52.13….

The “Menace” of the November 29, 1945 meeting are more serious in tone because they include a proposal for a convention responding to the atomic bombing of Japan just three months earlier.

…Art Joquel proposed an “Atomicon,” a non-technical conference on the subject of the Atomic Bomb and the sociological implications of the Atomic Age. The idea met with general approval, and it was decided that such a project would afford good publicity if interesting speakers could be obtained and the meeting be opened to all who might be interested. Director Laney suggested a public conference, but Art Joquel advised a conference on a smaller scale first, to determine whether it would be successful enough to warrant a conference open to the public. It was suggested that Mr. Van Vogt, or some other science fiction author, or perhaps someone from one of the universities, well acquainted with the subject of the coming Atomic Age, be prevailed upon to give a lecture, preferably non-technical, with emphasis on the sociological aspects of the Atom Bomb menace. It was further suggested that perhaps notes could be taken and printed in Shangri-L’Affaires. Various times and locations were discussed for the Atomiconvention, but nothing was decided upon definitely, since the date of the conference would largely depend upon the speakers. Director Laney delegated to Art Joquel the responsibility of the project, Fran himself to contact Mr. Van Vogt concerning his speaking at the conference….

(3) STRANGER THINGS DIVIDES TO CONQUER. ‘Stranger Things 5’ splits into 3-part release, premiering November” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Netflix isn’t just handing over all episodes of Stranger Things 5. That’d be too easy. The streamer is following their season 4 strategy by splitting the final season of their mega hit show into multiple parts….

…Stranger Things 5 will be split into three premieres. Volume 1 will arrive on Nov. 26, Volume 2 on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve….

The fifth and final season’s premiere episode is titled “The Crawl” and will pick up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4….

(4) PANNED. Entertainment Weekly is not a fan: “’Fountain of Youth’ review: John Krasinski and Natalie Portman fail to find treasure”. The opening paragraph says —

Pee-wee Herman brought us to the basement of the Alamo; Guy Ritchie’s new globe-trotting quest brings us to the basement of the Great Pyramids. And I think after watching both movies, most people will agree to stick with Pee-wee….

(5) THE DOCTOR WON’T MAKE THIS HOUSE CALL. “The ‘War Between Land and the Sea’ Trailer Gives Earth a Battle the Doctor Can’t Stop” – Gizmodo introduces the clip.

To mark the climax of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season, today the BBC revealed the first footage from War Between Land and Sea, which will see UNIT as the front line of defense when the Sea Devils—a race of aquatic reptilians who have existed on Earth since the dawn of time, hiding their advance civilization in hibernation alongside their other distantly affiliated ancient Earth dwellers, the Silurians, for millions of years—emerge from hiding and make themselves known to the Human race.

How do things go? Well, you could tell by the title of the miniseries alone that the answer to that is seemingly “not well”—and without the Doctor to fall back on like they’ve been able to the last couple of times the Sea Devils and Silurians alike tried to emerge, it’s up to humanity to find away to counter the threat of Earth’s ancient reclaimers… and if not co-exist with them, survive their wrath….

(6) BARRY B. LONGYEAR (1942-2025). Prolific sf author Barry B. Longyear died May 6 at the age of 82.

It was love at first sight when fans encountered the science fiction of Barry B. Longyear. After his first story appeared in Asimov’s in 1978, a spate of short fiction followed in 1979 — filling his first collection, Manifest Destiny. They included “Enemy Mine”, which achieved science fiction’s Triple Crown by winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award. And fans sealed their approval of his amazing output by voting Barry the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer in 1980 (now the Astounding Award).

(He was not a fan of the 1985 film adaptation and was prone to identify himself as “the author of ‘Enemy Mine’ – which there was an attempt to make into a movie.”)

His other award-winning work was the novel The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook which received the Prometheus Award in 2021.

And he wrote three books in the popular Circus World series.

When Barry made his never-to-be-forgotten 1989 appearance as Windycon guest of honor he advanced a simple plan for achieving greatness in the sf field. He had noticed that all successful science fiction writers have a middle initial — Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell — and to help him achieve equal success he insisted publishers and fans be sure to call him “Barry B. Longyear.”

Having enjoyed less than full success with this scheme in the past, he came prepared to drive home his point with memorable visual aids. Barry B. Longyear dramatically unrolled the hem of his sweatshirt — striped with alternating yellow-and-black bands down to his knees. He reached into the paper sack behind the lectern and removed headgear with two bobbling, fuzzy yellow balls on steel-spring antennae. Once completely costumed he rehearsed the audience in his full name, “Barry B. Longyear!” His wife, Jean, emerged from the audience costumed as a sunflower with a halo of yellow petals and green-leaf gloves. In the audience, George Alec Effinger said admiringly, “Nobody I’ve ever been married to would do that for me!”

The family obituary recalls Longyear’s many accomplishments in addition to his writing:

…Barry and Regina married and were together for 58 years. They shared love, understanding, ideals, and values – a real partnership in joy and sorrow. They made their home in Maine and found many close friends in their community. Barry’s immense talents provided enjoyment for his friends and countless fans: writing, painting, acting, carpentry, wood carving, and stonework. He was known for his intelligence, kindness, and sense of humor which could verge on the sardonic but was always witty. He was the author of Enemy Mine, a novella that won all three major science fiction awards in the year it was published. It was made into a film some years ago. Recently Disney purchased the film rights for the next three books. Barry’s Turning the Grain was released recently.

In 1981 he entered St. Mary’s in Minneapolis where he began his recovery from substance use disorder. He remained clean and sober until his death. He founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in Maine, the Dragon Slayers in Farmington, Maine, in 1982. His passion was for the newcomer. When a new person arrived, his whole heart and soul embraced them and hoped for them. If they did not come back, he was deeply grieved, thinking, “That person is going back to the nightmare.” For other recovering addicts, he was always ready with a hug, encouragement, a gold nugget from his treasure house of ever-accumulating wisdom. He would do anything for a friend, as many can attest to….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 79.

Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was the first female Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley.

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. I find it interesting that none of the original Bond films are streaming.

She’ll have an even minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin which will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. Possibly even other titles that I’ve not found. I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad.

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers.

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. It seemed that Macnee was more engaged here in that role than he was previously.

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been!

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor. As I said above she was the first female Doctor. So given we have in the form of Billie Piper our newest female Doctor, our image is of Lumley in that role.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.
Brewster Rockit knows the workaround.
Eek! tells what happened after Luke was introduced to his father.
Speed Bump has a dark fun side.
Robbiegeez: alien comic involves someone who obviously flunked alien infiltration 101.
Tom Gauld threw a doubleheader this week.

(9) MANDALORIAN PROGNOSTICATION. “Disney+ Calls It Quits With Its First-Ever Star Wars Show (Report)” – The Direct explains what’s next for it.

The first live-action Star Wars show to ever be released reportedly came to an end and won’t continue on Disney+. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has been the home of multiple live-action Star Wars series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka. Some shows have received multiple seasons; others were created as limited series.

After years of its status being uncertain, The Mandalorian, which premiered in November 2019 as Disney+’s first Star Wars series on the day that the streamer launched, will reportedly end with Season 3, meaning that Season 4 will not be developed at Disney+.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian‘s future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu….

(10) BACK TO WAKANDA. Entertainment Weekly includes art from the animated series in “’Eyes of Wakanda’ first look: Creator sets up ‘spy-espionage story’”.

… EW’s exclusive first look at the series reveals some of the warriors we’ll meet. [Showrunner Todd] Harris sets expectations of how much he’s able to reveal: “We try to mirror the actual spirit of the nation of Wakanda by keeping as many secrets as possible.” However, we do know the story involves the Hatut Zaraze, which translates as “Dogs of War” in the Wakandan language. These CIA-esque defense divisions attempt to recover Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda’s enemies.

“When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they’ve got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don’t turn into a bigger problem,” Harris says. “We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world.”…

…Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as “anthology adjacent.” It’s a collection of short stories set at different time periods that all tell one continuous narrative. It’s the equivalent, Harris says, of visiting the British Isles during the time of King Arthur and then returning during the Industrial. “Same country, two different worlds,” he explains. “As we make our touchstones through time, we get to see that kind of evolution.”

The show will be less about the great-great-great ancestor of some Wakandan character (though there is some of that) and more about principles. “We have characters that are very important in the show, but it also examines what kind of person Wakanda makes,” Harris says. “A 10,000-year-old society. What kind of fortitude, what kind of lack of temptation to over expand? All these different things to keep things from imploding, all these different things that have been the detriment to a lot of history…how did they avoid that and what kind of person does that make? What kind of rock-solid principles keeps them on the straight and narrow that balance that’s so hard for everyone alive?”…

(11) GALACTIC BEAUTY. [Item by Steven French.] Some gorgeous shots here including one of a rare ‘double arch’: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures” in the Guardian.

This year’s collection of images from Capture the Atlas features an extraordinary milestone: a historic photograph of our galaxy taken from the International Space Station by Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from his latest mission onboard the ISS.

(12) ON BEING REPLACED BY AI. [Item by Steven French.] People from around the world talk about their experiences of being replaced by AI (but it does end on something of a positive note): “’One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI” in the Guardian.

As a kid I was always arty – sketching, making Play-Doh sculptures. I studied game design and art at college, and went down an Adobe Photoshop rabbit hole. It was fun and I was good at it, so I decided to turn it into a career, starting at the company when I was 21. They sell a platform that creates landing pages and email layouts. I’d design the templates and do bespoke work for clients.

When generative AI came along, the company was very vocal about using it as a tool to help clients get creative. As a company that sells digital automation, developments in AI fit them well. I knew they were introducing it to do things like writing emails and generating images, but I never anticipated they’d get rid of me: I’d been there six years and was their only graphic designer. My redundancy came totally out of the blue. One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI.

I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I’m not the only victim – it’s happening globally, and it takes a huge mental toll. I went to college, I studied, I did six years of work. Was it all for nothing?

After I was let go, I spent months looking for a job. I didn’t find work in graphic design, but did get a job as a content creator at a PC manufacturer. I make videos of the production line, interview staff members and do some social media. I’m not worried here: my employers don’t agree with replacing human roles with AI. I may use it to edit pictures but only to enhance something a human created – say, to remove cables in the back of a product image. We would never post an image entirely generated by AI, which is what my old company is doing. My advice to every graphic designer is to learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared.

(13) TRAILER PARK. Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

(14) TRAILER PARK ANNEX. Netflix also has released the first six minutes of Wednesday: Season 2. Part 1 is coming on August 6. Part 2 is coming on September 3.

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

John Hertz at Loscon 50

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By John Hertz. [Reprinted from Vanamonde 1621-1626.]

In Los Angeles our local science fiction convention is Loscon, held over Thanksgiving weekend. Loscon L (or 50, if you prefer) was November 29-December 1, 2024 at the L.A. lnt’I Airport (LAX) Hilton Hotel; Author Guest of Honor Larry Niven, Artist Guest of Honor Laura Brodian Freas Beraha & Ghost of Honor Frank Kelly Freas, Music Guest of Honor Kathy Mar, Fan Guests of Honor Genny Dazzo & Craig Miller; attendance about 700; Art Show sales about $14,000 by three dozen exhibitors; chair, Eylat Poliner.

I led three Classics of SF book discussions, on The Currents of Space (I. Asimov, 1952), Star Man’s Son (A. Norton, 1952), and Wasp (E.F. Russell, 1957)(“Classics of Science Fiction at Loscon 50” at File 770); taught English Regency ballroom dancing (“The English Regency and Me” in Mimosa 29); served as Hall Costume Judge (“Hall Costume Awards” at Loscon.org [Internet Archive link]); and — there being nowhere to put a Fanzine Lounge — helped Heath Row with a Fanzine Corner.

Sue Mason (since 2015), Suzle (Suzanne Tompkins; since 2021), and I (since 2003) judge the Rotsler Award (announced at Loscon since 1998, for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the SF community, sponsored by the S. Cal. lnst. for Fan Interests — initials SCIFI pronounced “skiffy”); we gave this year’s to España Sheriff; tech wizard Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink using her powers to work with me producing the display in the Art Show (“España Sheriff Wins 2024 Rotsler Award” at File 770), added to the full display of all Rotsler winners to date (“Rotsler Award Display at Glasgow 2024” at File 770).

This was Loscon’s first year at the Airport Hilton. First year at a hotel is often awkward. Closing Ceremonies applauded Christian McGuire, the Hotel Liaison. To the fans next to me, who were from Australia, I muttered “If you think his having chaired a Worldcon (L.A.con IV) made it easy to be Hotel Liaison, you should think again.”

The book discussions were on three days at the same hour in the same room. Finding one, you could thus readily find the rest; but what if 2:30 p.m. wasn’t convenient for you? Also, in the Grid we get at cons now, they weren’t shown with most other programming but tucked in a lower-left corner. I pointed them out to folks who knew enough to ask me. The room was arranged well: circular tables that attenders could sit around, better for discussion than placing me behind a table at one end with everyone else before it as if they were an audience for me to do all the talking.

The propeller of my beanie was damaged: I had got a new propeller from Interstellar Propeller of Berkeley, the only Ray Faraday Nelson-approved propeller-beanie manufacturer. The nice people at the Costume Repair Station did the repair.

Friday, The Currents of Space. Its opening scene gives us a better grasp than the characters in the book have of the misfortunes befalling the man called Rik — following the classical definition of irony as a conspiracy of the author and the audience against the characters (e.g. hearers of Greek myth know, though Oedipus does not, who it is he kills and who it is he weds). The opening use of the psychic probe follows both If there’s a gun on the wall in Act I it had better be fired before the final curtain and In tragedy a wrong which the wrongdoer deems minor turns out to have major consequences –– although Currents has a happy ending. Currents does not explicitly state, only inviting us to consider, the parallel between the position of its kyrt textiles and the history of cotton up to the 20th Century; also the racial inversion compared to 1952 in the United States, blacks being powerful in Currents and whites being dominated; a heavier hand would have made much of these. Throughout, Currents gives us several more points of view than many other stories; and, we noted happily, more strong female characters than many 21st Century folk attribute to SF of that time. It’s a detective story; there are lots of detective stories in SF; they’re a way for the author to acquaint the reader with an invented world, since the detective has to go round learning things (here again is Theodore Sturgeon’s Science fiction is knowledge fiction — note that the root of science, Latin scientia, means knowledge).

For lack of a better name we’ve been calling fan tables those locations at a con where clubs, cons, bids to hold cons, and other fan activities, can place an ambassador to answer, (and invite) questions, and more or less, within the bounds of civility, make friends. At L50 these tables were in the Dealers’ Room. Act of policy by the con committee? Forced by the hotel? Done without deliberation? Did the placement of fan tables keep them from people who didn’t consider going to the Dealers’ Room?

My own preference, and what has been usual, is for these to be along a main hallway in which any who wish can pause at a table and engage in conversation. Operations’ agents in the Dealers’ Room want to sell. A member of the Loscon committee who had not made this placement pointed out to me that conventions want to sell memberships, bids want to sell pre-supporting status, and convention attenders (not “attendees”, aiee) who go into the Dealers’ Room are disposed to spend money. Does her way of looking at things commercialize fan activities? We still, in an instance of good terminology, insist we are dealing in memberships, not admission tickets, i.e. a right to participate, not a right to watch others, unlike what is apparently supposed by many who arrive nowadays. Shall we — I’ll say it — pander to that supposition? ln fairness I report I found people staffing L50 fan tables to be civil and not pressure-wielders.

Once, it seems, everyone taking any part in fandom knew, whether or not active in, other parts. Maybe you exhibited in the Art Show, or bought things there, or went to the Art Auction whether or not you bid. Maybe you didn’t, but you did last year. Anyway it didn’t occur to you Oh no, that’s only for those people over there. Likewise panel discussions. Filking (our homemade music, adopting a typo of “folk music”). Serving on the con committee. Fanzines. But we began to fragment.

Heath Row invented the Fanzine Comer for L48. For L50 he and I did it again. The existence or even the possibility of fanzines is apparently not obvious now — commentary, discussion, anecdotes. Patrick Nielsen Hayden says Fanwriting is not a junior varsity for pro writing. A Fanzine Lounge is better for hanging around and browsing fanzines, I think, but so far at Loscons we’ve not managed a place to put one. When there is one it may have the defect of being a Place to Go, thus requiring a decision to go there.

Friday night, Regency Dancing. Jane Austen (1775-1817) lived then, one of the great authors in English literature; but she’s like a Martian writing for other Martians — never mind whether there really are or were any Martians, we have them in SF stories — she doesn’t explain anything. Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) wrote novels set then; she had to do what an SF author must, take us into the world she writes of, without stopping to dump information. She wins us with characterization, event, wit. Her books sparked fannish interest in this colorful period. Among my favorites are Arabella (1949), a neat introduction; A Civil Contract (1961), mostly taking place after marriage; and Cotillion (1953), whose ugly duckling is not the protagonist and is even a man.

Aristocratic pastimes often require a lot of work-up. My task is ~~characterization, event, wit~~ opening the door of this dance to people who don’t have such resources, and might not care to. I musn’t fall into the pit of dumbing things down. Some say I succeed.

The Art Show had a history of Loscons, with names and photos. I was Fan Guest of Honor at L38. At L50 there was a half-panel montage of Jerry Pournelle photos showing him in various stages of his career – his career with us; he had several. I wish it had been captioned “The First Loscon Guest of Honor”.

Loscon is sponsored by the LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, founded 1934; pronounced as if rhyming with a Spanglish “más fuss”), which gives two annual awards, the Evans-Freehafer (after E. Everett Evans & Paul Freehafer) for service to LASFS, and the Forry (after Forrest J Ackerman) for service to SF. There was a list of the E-F winners, and next to it a list of the 4e winners. I wish each list had not just named its award but said what it was.

In recent years con Art Shows haven’t seen our top pro artists. I know some, and I’ve tried to invite them. Fanzine artists too notoriously don’t show, which is one reason I started the R Awd exhibit. At MidAmericon II Steve Stiles exhibited a comic strip about how he’d never win a Hugo (i.e. for Best Fanartist). That year he did. You might think this would have unblocked the road, but – At L50, I was ecstatic to find Rick Sternbach’s work in the Art Show. So was Greg Benford, who bought promptly. I saw Sternbach at a party and thanked him. Hoping to be helpful I described Kelly Freas’ method. He would show a painting he couldn’t afford to sell for less than, say, $2,000 in 1998 money; around it, a few studies he could sell at $500; around those, sketches he could sell at $100 (i.e. minimum bids, subject to Auction rules and like that). Everybody could get into the act. To my surprise this was news to Sternbach.

With Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, the Woman With Too Many Names (which l say affectionately, she’s a longtime friend — she keeps Laura Brodian for work in classical-music radio; Kelly had a two-part unhyphenated surname, like James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879]; she married Kelly in 1988, he died in 2005, she married Steve Beraha in 2012; she accepts Laura Beraha and Laura Freas), being Artist GoH, and Kelly being Ghost of Honor, we had a swell exhibit of their work singly and together.

Actually the fan With Too Many Names was Jack Harness — another long-time friend — who inter alia was Scribe JH or Scribe, Hawkman or *Wheet–Wheet*, Arson — his puns made people want to set him afire — Harmless, a misnomer since he often won at LASFS Poker — of which, to people who reasonably think Poker is Five-Card Draw or Five-Card Stud with Baseball being for weirdos, I say You ain’t seen nothin’ since in those days we even had Soft Shoe, where you could shuffle off to bluff a low — and now back to our program.

On Saturday in the Art Show I saw another fine exhibit, a Memory Wall with names and photographs of people we’d lost. Tony Benoun, co-founder of the thriving Doctor Who con Gallifrey One, who earned the Evans-Freehafer and whose widow Sherri will chair L51 next year. Marty Cantor. Melissa Conway, so helpful while head of Special Collections at U.Cal. Riverside including the Eaton Collection of SF; she gave a home to Bruce Pelz’ fanzine collection and later Jay Kay Klein’s photos — and a door decorated by Selina Phanara from the 2011 LASFS Clubhouse (File 770: “John Hertz: Klein is Big, Door is Dear”). Karl Lembke. Fuzzy Pink Niven (File 770: “John Hertz on Fuzzy Pink Niven (1940-2023)”). Sean Smith. Here was the Jerry Pournelle montage. With Post-Its people could stick memories onto the photos.

Saturday at 2:30 p.m., Star Man’s Son. Announcing it I’d said “From, say, Paragraph 5, we know what is happening and what will…. Her sense of event — of character — of the telling detail — keep us eager to watch her bring about what must occur,” with which the discussion agreed. We thought the semi-telepathic relation between Fors and the panther Lura didn’t make the book fantasy, since the author presents it as possibly a mutation in her post-nuclear-war world. We liked the interplay of the tribes, and recognized the ancestral Tuskegee Airmen. We were sad to see little of women, but thought this grew organically from the story; no decision whether that point was helped for us by our being aware Norton was a woman.

The hotel had Destination Elevators, three on a side at each floor, A-C, D-F. On a keypad you entered the floor you wanted: a display told you which elevator would take you there. While on the second floor I wondered aloud whether we’d get 2B or not 2B. That joke didn’t work.

Again there was no Masquerade (our on-stage costume competition); nobody could be found to run one. Again a group called the Nerd Mafia held a cosplay event. Cosplay, in principle a good term, has come to mean what the costuming community calls re-creation costumes (faithful copies of known images, e.g. from television, motion pictures, comic books), not originals: so not the whole truth. I found the Nerd Mafia sign-in table and tried to learn who they were, whether they disregarded our decades of Masquerade know-how (and if so, why) or were merely unaware (and if so, why). That too didn’t work. Saturday night at dinner I was just thinking I might learn by going to watch what the Nerd Mafia was doing, when someone came in talking about the results — instead of starting around 8 p.m., it was all over by then. Dean Gahlon says It’s not so much re-inventing the wheel as it is re-inventing the square wheel. But what do I know?

At a party I found Aldo Spadoni putting down the design of the Enterprise from Star Trek; he said the ship was unstable, with various other wrongs. I said the effective imagination of ST deserved applause; look how ST reached people. In SF we invent things that have never existed; what can they be accurate compared to? Afterward — l’esprit d’escalier (French, “the wit of the stairs”, the thing you think of going downstairs later) – I realized I should have turned the discussion to comparing how this problem is addressed in visual and in verbal art.

It used to be that one’s choices were to attend an SF con in person, or get a Supporting Membership and hear about the con afterward. Now for some cons and some people there’s virtual attendance, e.g. by Zoom. In person you can run into people — figuratively, I mean — at a party, in the Art Show, the Dealers’ Room, the halls. Thus I ran into long-time friend Lloyd Penney at Loscon.

We’d both been at the Buffalo NASFiC: he being Editor-in Chief of Amazing had a Dealers’ Room table; but I having by what Rich Lynch with good reason called “a long and at times strange journey arrived in Buffalo late” (File 770: “NASFiC Third Day Photos”) found my hands full what with setting up the Fanzine Lounge and the Rotsler Award exhibit, and leading Classics of SF discussions; I scarcely got to the D Rm at all and our paths didn’t cross otherwise. He’s now both amazing and Amazing, engaged for this position after a substantial fannish career (Fancyclopedia; Lloyd Penney), which he continues; he and his wife Yvonne had been fan Guests of Honor at L39; he’d said he really wanted to attend this Golden Anniversary Loscon, which he did, coming 2,000 mi (3,500 km) from his home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. So our encounter was welcome, and though each bound elsewhere we managed to converse, about fanzines, prozines, cabbages and kings.

The Rick Sternbach original that Greg Benford was so glad to get in the L50 Art Show was RS’ color illustration for GB’s Against Infinity (1983), which as it happens I’d mentioned in reporting RS’ Art Show tour while RS was Artist GoH at Denvention Ill (File 770 155 p. 28). Manuel Lopez confronts the being “Aleph” on the surface of Ganymede, looking up with mouth turned down, Space gun in hand, standing amid and shadowed by textured rocks, Jupiter with its Red Spot above. The top third of the picture is near-empty Space. RS talking of it at D3 told of having to get lightness, darkness, in the shadows: “I hate shadows.” He did them well anyhow.

Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Wasp. I’d brought the 2001 NESFA Press collection Entities, edited by Rick Katze (rhymes with straits), cover art by Bob Eggleton, cover design by Alice Lewis, with Jack Chalker’s “Wasp is [Russell’s] most famous and most read novel”. On Friday, at the end of Currents of Space, Cheri Kaylor had asked to borrow my copy of Star Man’s Son so she could re-read it overnight to be ready for Saturday, which she did; she did it again with Wasp. We all have different gifts. The discussion agreed Russell had succeeded, in addition to telling a good story, at satirizing bureaucracy, the second of which would have had little force without the first; also, he showed, an operation reflects the nature of the beings running it, comparing the Sirians with the Terrans. The wasp-strategy worked because the Sirians, being tyrannous, were bureaucratic, rigid, and fearful (which may amount to saying the same thing four ways). And Russell was funny.

Just catching the end of Questions & Answers with Larry Niven, I asked “You’ve done fine collaborations, but may we hope for more SF by you alone?” He said, “You can always hope.”

Over coffee, talk of education. I said, as I do, liberal arts are those arts which suit one to the exercise of liberty; this brought in Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), his memoir Up from Slavery (1901) and the Tuskegee Airmen, W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963; inter alia first black to get a Ph.D. degree from Harvard, 1895) and “‘I don’t agree’, said W.E.B.” (D. Randall, 1969). Hispanics and Asians are in it too. Brad Lyau kindly reminded me that DuBois’ name according to his own pronunciation rhymed with poise.

At a party I saw a man performing feats of playing-card magic for a woman. How out of practice I am; I couldn’t pass a Magic Castle audition now. Later I saw the woman had picked up a Mark Wilson (1929-2021) book, so I gave her a recommendation. Here too we suffer from terminological inexactitude. By magic I mean the theater art. The great RobertHoudin (1805-1871; name rhymes with no fair, you ran) said a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.

I met a man who said he’d learned of fallacies and syllogisms from Martin Young. I found Young and thanked him. Chaz Baden also had my thanks for another set of Bear’s Picnics (he’s sometimes called the Bear). He sat at a supply of alcoholic and non-alcoholic fluids mixing cocktails and mocktails, some old, some new. This lubricated conversation. In fandom more nearly than anywhere else we love you for your mind.

In the Dealers’ Room I saw a U.S. Marine in dress uniform. He hadn’t read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). I described its Mobile Infantry. He said, “Yes, those sound like Marines to me.” And Heinlein had been a Navy man.

There was a tea party for Fuzzy Pink on Sunday. So many wanted to be part of it that it needed several seatings. Kim Brown, Genny Dazzo, and friends circulated with trays of teacakes, scones, tea sandwiches, and pots of green or black (which Chinese call red) tea. I found someone to sit with who looked a little lost, and answered questions. We were all given pink lanyards with Fuzzy’s name. I won a teapot in a raffle. At Closing Ceremonies Larry thanked everyone for tributes to her all weekend.

Somewhere along the line I saw a video of Tim Griffin singing “307 Ale” (T. Smith, 1991) with Larry. In another Denvention III coincidence Kathy Mar had been its Music Guest of Honor. At L50 Closing Ceremonies she sang “Ship of Stone” (Don Simpson, 1981). The gavel was duly struck and given to Sherri Benoun. Afterward there was a feedback session, which I couldn’t stay for, but later several on the con committee told me people had said the Classics of SF discussions were a highlight for them, thoughtful, insightful, engaging. One doesn’t turn away thanks. I thought to myself I’d succeeded in getting other people to do some of the discussing. And (P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins ch. 3 (1934)) it was time to go home.

Pixel Scroll 12/30/24 Look My Friend, I Happen To Know This Is The Pixel Express

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) DOCTOR WHO ACTOR ON HONOURS LIST. The King’s New Year Honours 2025 list includes several major figures of genre interest:

The Order of the Companions of Honour

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, O.B.E., Author and Screenwriter. For services to Literature.

Ishiguro won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, and many of his works have fantastic elements.

Knights Bachelor

Stephen John Fry, President, Mind and Vice-President, Fauna & Flora International. For services to Mental Health Awareness, the Environment and to Charity.

His varied acting career includes such productions of genre interest as TV’s Blackadder and the films V for Vendetta and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

Member of the Order of the British Empire

Thomas Stewart BAKER, Actor and Writer. For services to Television

He played the Fourth Doctor in the Doctor Who series.

(2) F IS FOR FAKE. Silvia Moreno-Garcia today sent this warning to her newsletter readers:

I was going to try to show a newspaper for proof of life, but who gets newspapers these days? Anyway, it’s December 30, 2024 and there has been a scammer going around Facebook pretending to be me and trying to join writer groups. So this is a reminder:

1. All my official social media channels are listed via my website.
2. I do not direct message people, nor do I read or respond to direct messages.
3. I do not conduct business via social media or without my agent.
4. I do not offer personal advice via social media.

Don’t accept any messages from suspicious accounts! Stay safe!

(3) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Cora Buhlert has revealed the winner (?) of “The 2024 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents”.

…I’m thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2024 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents is…

Drumroll

Fire Lord Ozai

As voiced by Mark Hamill in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and played by Daniel Dae Kim in the eponymous live action series, Fire Lord Ozai is the supreme ruler of the Fire Nation and a genocidal tyrant. His grandfather already wiped out the Air Nomads, while his father Fire Lord Azulon set his sights on the Earth Kingdom and Northern and Southern Water Tribes. Fire Lord Ozai, meanwhile, continues his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and tries to conquer or wipe out all other nations. He succeeds, too, and – granted near unlimited power by a passing comet – crowns himself the Phoenix King, ruler of his entire world.

After another Fire Lord accepts on his behalf –

…Scattered applause can be heard around the auditorium from those audience members who accepted the award on behalf of their parents. Hans Beimer is about to boo again, but Luke Skywalker, who’s sitting in the front row in full Jedi robes, uses a mild Force choke on him, just enough to shut him up.

At the bar in the back, Tyrion Lannister, who’s already quite drunk, calls out, “Well spoken, lad. You tell ’em, kid.”

(4) WEIRD AND WILD SCIENCE. Ian Tregillis has revealed that the “Wild Cards” universe is the basis of forthcoming article co-credited with George R.R. Martin. As he told readers of the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society newsletter:

…My last several blog posts for the Wild Cards website documented the step-by-step development of silly, yet increasingly sophisticated mathematical models for distilling the fundamental premise of Wild Cards into a concise, self-consistent physics framework. (Laying aside the unanswerable question of how any virus, extraterrestrial or otherwise, could imbue people with a panoply of physics-abusing powers.)

The work eventually reached a level where instead of writing another stupid blog post, it was worth attempting to turn the whole thing into a serious physics research article. I pitched this notion to George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass back in March.

“Ergodic Lagrangian Dynamics in a Superhero Universe”, by I. L. Tregillis & George R. R. Martin, will appear in the American Journal of Physics in early 2025.

Tregillis has previously used these thoughts to put together a whimsical (math-light, meme-heavy) hour-long presentation that takes a lay-audience through the development of this model, from first principles to the final result. To date he’s presented “The Math (& Physics) of Wild Cards” to the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society (November, 2023) and at Bubonicon 55 (August, 2024).

(5) IN PIECES. This is pretty ridiculous. The new Superman trailer redone in Lego: “Official Superman Teaser Trailer – in LEGO”.

(6) ON DISPLAY IN LA. Lauren Salerno tells readers of The Mary Sue “Science fiction has always been a space for queer expression”.

…Star Wars may be playing catch-up on representation, but science fiction fandom has been a safe space for queer expression since its modern beginnings. At the USC Fisher Museum of Art, an exhibition titled “Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation” explores queer history in sci-fi, starting from the 1930s through to the 1960s. Art, literature, and other ephemera have been carefully curated by ONE Archives, the largest repository of LGBTQ+ materials in the world. According to Alexis Bard Johnson, the Curator at the ONE Archives and USC Libraries, the starting point for the exhibition came from noticing the sheer volume of science fiction material in the archive. Many of the items on display come from the collections of Lisa Ben and Jim Kepner. Both were queer activists who were heavily into sci-fi fandom and members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.

It’s important to note that there are two ways of looking at the word queer. One way is a person of one gender who has attraction and desire for someone of the same gender. Another definition of queer is someone who exists outside of the mainstream. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, people with queer identities could inhabit both of those definitions. In this way, it became a space to fit in a little more comfortably when it was not very safe to be out.

The other factor that made sci-fi fandom a haven at the time was the proliferation of fanzines. Lisa Ben and Jim Kepner learned how to produce fanzines during their time in the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. The club even had printing machinery for members to use. Lisa Ben published the first lesbian publication in the U.S., Vice Versa. Jim Kepner had his own zine called Toward Tomorrow. Having a means of production for outsider ideas along with the community built through a love for science fiction was an incredibly powerful way for queer people to find each other….

(7) IN MEMORY YET GREEN. Gizmodo has posted a genre-based in memoriam list: “Honoring the Inspiring Sci-Fi, Horror, and Fantasy Luminaries Lost in 2024”.

In io9’s annual “in memoriam” post, we pay tribute to actors, directors, artists, composers, writers, creators, and other icons in the realms of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy that have passed. Their inspiring work has impacted the lives of so many and will live on through their legacies in the worlds of genre entertainment….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

One Million B.C. (Raquel Welch version)

By Paul Weimer: Or, WPIX strikes again.

I’ve mentioned WPIX, an independent station in NYC (channel 11) was responsible for me first seeing this movie¹. It was around when I was first watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, so it was around 1980 or so.

The movie is sheer nonsense. I had cause to rewatch it a couple of years ago, randomly during the height of the pandemic (big mood) when I tried to, and failed, to work from home due to technological limitations. I wanted to have something mindless on. And of all the things I could have picked, I delved into my youth and went with One Million B.C. I wound up watching more of the movie than I intended, as my laptop and my internet connection glacially struggled and my work production was minimal. (I would soon go back to the office, and in an office of 120 people, be one of ten in the building for weeks on end.)

So while I remembered a lot about this movie (and not just Raquel Welch in the famous fur bikini), there was a lot that I didn’t remember so much and got to see on the refresher. I remembered there was a big climatic battle between the two factions, for example, but the volcano erupting in the middle of it in a deus ex volcana was not something I had actively recalled. But the Triceratops fight against the small meat-eating dinosaur? I think that made a big impression on me back in the day and is why the trike is in my top three dinosaurs.

And sure, humans and dinosaurs never co-existed together, ever. But I do wonder if Stirling’s The Sky People, which is set in a universe with a habitable Venus and Mars wasn’t inspired by this film. While his Mars is all ancient civilizations, his Venus is jungles…with dinosaurs…and, cavemen (and beautiful cave women, too as it so “coincidentally” happens).

Fun fact: Apparently there is an earlier 1940 version in black and white. No fur bikinis in that one. Not only because of the mores of the 1940’s…but bikinis themselves had not yet been invented yet! I’ve never seen it. I wonder if any Filer has?

Anyway, the remake is mindless fun, still.

¹ The luxury of pre-cable TV in New York was in retrospect incredible: CBS (2), NBC (4) ABC (7). Independent stations on 5 (later, Fox) 9 (later the CW), and WPIX 11 the biggest of the independents (later WB). 13 was PBS, and then there were other PBS stations including 21, and 50 (50 showing the Doctor Who “movies” I’ve mentioned before). So the Independents really could specialize and WPIX specialized in movies. They called themselves “New York’s Movie Station” and meant it.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater skipped the requirements.
Dinosaur Comics rewrites Sherlock.
Frank and Ernest might need more popcorn.
Off the Mark has a very thorough cat.
Rubes demonstrates an unusually powerful insect spray.

(10) D&D UPDATE BRINGS CONFLICT. The New York Times explores how “D&D Rule Changes Involving Race and Identity Divide Players”. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

While solving quests in Dungeons & Dragons, the gamers who role-play as elves, orcs and halflings rely on the abilities and personalities of their custom-made characters, whose innate charisma and strength are as crucial to success as the rolls of 20-sided dice.

That is why the game’s first significant rule changes in a decade, which became official this fall as it celebrated its 50th anniversary, reverberated through the Dungeons & Dragons community and beyond. They prompted praise and disdain at game tables everywhere, along with YouTube harangues and irritated social media posts from Elon Musk.

“Races” are now “species.” Some character traits have been divorced from biological identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by definition. And Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed a trend throughout role-playing games in which players are empowered to halt the proceedings if they ever feel uncomfortable.

“What they’re trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling,” said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master.

The changes have exposed a rift among Dungeons & Dragons players, a group as passionate as its pursuit is esoteric, becoming part of the broader cultural debate about how to balance principles like inclusivity and accessibility with history and tradition.

Robert J. Kuntz, an award-winning game designer who frequently collaborated with Gary Gygax, a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, said he disliked Wizards of the Coast’s efforts to legislate from above rather than provide room for dungeon masters — the game’s ringleaders and referees — to tailor their individual campaigns.

“It’s an unnecessary thing,” he said. “It attempts to play into something that I’m not sure is even worthy of addressing, as if the word ‘race’ is bad.”…

(11) BY GEORGE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George took Christmas week off, so to speak, but strung together his 10 favorite episodes from 2024 in a one-hour Pitch Meeting compilation. “Pitch Meeting: Ryan George’s Picks For 2024”.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Kraven the Hunter Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/2/24 One Pixel, One Scroll And One Bheer

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TERM FOR THE TIMES. The Oxford University Press announces the “Oxford Word of the Year 2024”:

Other candidates shortlisted for Word of the Year —

demure
dynamic pricing
lore
romantasy
slop

(2) TABLE TALK. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Exhibits team is taking applications for the art show, dealers’ room, and fan tables through January 15, 2025.

Art Show

The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Art Show will feature science-fiction, fantasy, and other genre-interest art, including sculpture, jewelry, and models displayed in a gallery setting alongside work from one of our guests of honor, artist Donato Giancola.

Sales are made by the convention on behalf of artists.

Visit our art show page to find out more and apply.

Dealers’ Room

The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Dealers’ Room team looks forward to bringing together a vibrant and diverse dealer’s room with a large and curated selection of merchandise and services that represent the best in our fandom community. Dealers staff their own tables or booths and sell their own merchandise.

Visit our dealers’ room page to find out more and apply.

Fan Tables

Worldcon offers no-charge table spaces to clubs, groups, conventions, and organizations that promote science, science fiction, fantasy, horror, costuming/cosplay, and other fannish pursuits. This table space is an opportunity to share your enthusiasm with Worldcon members who have similar interests.

Visit our fan tables page to find out more and apply.

(3) VISIT THE MIDWAY. Also, the Seattle Worldcon 2025 website has added a “Fun Stuff” area with coloring pages, a Seattle playlist, a trivia game, free cross stitch patterns, links to their specially-designed fabrics, and more.

(4) THE HOWEY/ADAMS 2024 BEST VOLUME. A Deep Look by Dave Hook reviews “’The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024’, Hugh Howey & John Joseph Adams editors, 2024 Mariner”. Here’s the TL;DR version (but you’ll miss a lot if you don’t click through.)

The Short: I recently read The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024, Hugh Howey & John Joseph Adams editors, 2024 Mariner. Among the 20 stories, my favorite was the “The Long Game” by Ann Leckie, from The Far Reaches, John Joseph Adams editor, 2023 Amazon Original Stories. My overall rating for the stories included was 3.6/5, or “Very good”. I recommend it, but there were two stories that were “Did not finish ” for me….

(5) GET READY. BookRiot offers a list of ways to “Prepare Your Library Before January Arrives: Book Censorship News, November 22, 2024”.

… Here are some of the things that public libraries, as well as public school libraries where applicable, should be considering right now to prepare for the new administration. There are fewer than two months—and honestly, about one month with the holidays—to shore up your institutions to make them as strong and solid for the community as possible…

An example of their advice is:

Update Your Collection Management Policies

The thing that will protect your library collection the most is your suite of collection development policies. These policies might be one single policy with several sections or several policies that fall under the umbrella of collection management. These include not only the types of materials you acquire but also how you make those decisions—we know that books don’t simply appear on shelves. Explain the review sources you use and why they’re used, as well as explain where and how recommendations from the community and from the professional field come into consideration. Be as clear as possible about the difference between review materials used to make collection decisions and tools used to help in reader advisory. You don’t rely on reviews nor on recommendations from places like BookLooks or RatedBooks, created by Moms For Liberty and Utah Parents United and their cohorts respectively, as those are not professionally vetted sources. You don’t purchase materials based on reviews from Common Sense Media but you may utilize it in helping patrons find materials. It is annoying to get this granular, but that granularity is crucial. Most people don’t know how libraries select material….

(6) MEDICAL UPDATE. Moshe Feder told Facebook readers he went to the emergency room with abdominal pain on November 30, where the decision was made to have his gallbladder removed. The surgery was successful.

…My gallbladder was in much worse shape than they thought. I’m not sure how infected — white cell count was just a bit high — but I think it was beaten up by years of stones. It wouldn’t have come out neatly through the laparoscopic incision.

So they had to switch from the 20-minute robotic method to the old style 2-hour procedure with a much longer incision.

To say I’m sore is an understatement. I can barely move without aggravating the incisions, and I’m praying that I never cough or sneeze. Even mere belching hurts!

(7) OCEANS OF MONEY. The Hollywood Reporters hears the register ringing as “’Moana 2′ Sails to Record-Busting $225 Office Opening”.

Disney’s fantasy musical served up a mammoth holiday domestic debut of $225.2 million, according to final numbers (that’s up from Sunday’s estimate of $221 million). Smashing numerous records, the Moana sequel boasts the biggest five-day debut in history — besting The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($204.6 million) — as well as delivering both the top Thanksgiving opening of all time and the biggest Thanksgiving gross of all time by a mile, beating Frozen ($93.6 million) and Frozen II ($125 million). And its three-day weekend haul of $139.7 million is the biggest opening ever for a Walt Disney Animation title….

… Overseas, Moana 2 sailed to $165.8 million — Sunday’s estimate was $165.3 million — for a global start of $389 million to boast the biggest global launch of all time for an animated film after passing up Super Mario ($377.2 million)….

(8) UNPLUGGED. “Stephen King’s Maine radio stations will go silent for good on New Year’s Eve” reports AP News.

Stephen King’s raucous rock ‘n’ roll radio station is going silent at year’s end.

The renowned author and lifelong rocker who used to perform with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band that featured literary icons, said Monday that at age 77, it’s time to say good-bye to three Bangor, Maine, stations that have been bleeding money. King kept the stations afloat for decades, and he said he and his wife, Tabitha, are proud to have kept them going for so long.

“While radio across the country has been overtaken by giant corporate broadcasting groups, I’ve loved being a local, independent owner all these years,” King said in a statement. “I’ve loved the people who’ve gone to these stations every day and entertained folks, kept the equipment running, and given local advertisers a way to connect with their customers.”

… King’s foray into radio began at age 36 with his 1983 purchase of a radio station that was rebranded WZON in deference to his book, “The Dead Zone.” That station went through a few permutations before closing, and then being reacquired by King in 1990.

The ZONE Corporation’s current lineup consists of WKIT-FM, which bills itself as “Stephen King’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio Station,” along with WZON-AM Retro Radio and an adult alternative station, WZLO-FM. They’ll go off the air on Dec. 31….

(9) LYNN MANERS OBITUARY. Longtime LASFS member Lynn Maners died December 1. His partner Carol Trible said that he was discovered in front of the TV by Maner’s ex-wife, Nancy Bannister when she went over to the house about 5 p.m.”

Maners held a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from UCLA, his thesis titled “Social lives of dances in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. He later moved to Tucson, AZ and taught at Pima Community College.

Whether at LASFS meetings in person, on the club’s Facebook page, or in recent years at its live meetings via Zoom, Maners could be counted on to highlight the occasion with interesting trivia, odd news stories, and linguistic curiosities.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 2, 1971 — Frank Cho, 53.

So we have Frank Cho. Surely many of you are familiar with the delightful genre Liberty Meadows strip which he wrote and illustrated with its cast of not-always-charming talking beasties and their resident therapist Brandy Carter, who Cho says is an artistic crossing between Lynda Carter and Bettie Page. It ran from ‘97 to ‘01 with some additional material for a few years after that. Here’s a Liberty Meadows strip.

Only in The Dreaming Library does this idea really exist…

He stated his comic career working for Penthouse Comix along with Al Gross and Mark Wheatley. The three of them, likely after a very long weekend, thought up a six-part “raunchy sci-fi fantasy romp” called The Body, centering on an intergalactic female merchant, Katy Wyndon, who can transfer her mind into any of her “wardrobe bodies”, mindless vessels that she occupies to best suit her, ahem, mediations with the local alien races that she encounters while traveling the galaxy trading and trying to become wealthy.

The story was never published for several reasons. Even Kathy Keeton, wife of publisher Bob Guccione, and the person at Penthouse who published the raunchiest comics I’ve seen this side of The Hustler wasn’t interested.

There’s Jungle Girl Comics which was created by Frank Cho, James Murray, and Adriano Batista. Think a female Tarzan. Though she (mostly) stays on the ground in her jungle.

Now Cho loves young females in bikinis that barely cover the parts that need covering. Or nothing at all. Both of these kept them on. His first title at Marvel caused controversy because he claimed that Shanna, the She-Devil, another jungle strip, was supposed to be fully nude. It turned out that he was right as Marvel was intending to launch an adult line of comics. They didn’t, and so history wasn’t made.

I’m not singling out specific title at either DC or Marvel as there’s really too many, and what you will like is very much a matter of personal taste. But one more note we part and that’s about his work at DC.

His work there, well, other than the Harley Quinn covers which are decidedly on the silly edge of things, are more traditional in feel and the Green Arrow one I’ve chosen certainly is. Yes, I’m a really big Green Arrow fan, he’s one of my favorite DC characters, particularly the modern take on him. Here’s a variant cover he did for volume 8, number 1 of that series.

Name a character, Hulk, Spider-Gwen, Hellboy, Red Sonja, New Avengers, Batman, Harley Quinn, and Cho has likely had a hand in it.

Cho is, without doubt, one of my favorite modern comics writer and illustrator.

A very, very impressive amount of his work is available in digital form. Suitable for enjoying on an iPad as I do these days.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics tells us there are two things to look forward to.
Pardon My Planet has an update about mass monkey creativity.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal redefines a generation.

(12) FROM UNDERCOVER TO ON THE COVER. “CIA Officer’s Cover Was a Comic Book Author. Now, He’s a DC Writer” – Business Insider has the story.

To say that Tom King has had a varied career is an understatement.

As a little boy growing up in Los Angeles, King wanted to be a comic book writer. After honing his writing skills as a young man, his dream came true when he interned for Marvel in New York.

But the bubble burst when Robert Harras, the editor in chief of Marvel at the time, told him that “comics are dead” and he should find a real job. So, he studied philosophy and history at Columbia University, and worked at the Department of Justice for over a year after he graduated in 2000.

Then, 9/11 happened. King told Business Insider he felt a call to action, which led to another career move: joining the CIA….

… Things came full circle when he was given a cover for when he traveled abroad. He dismissed his boss’ suggestion and instead told border security interrogators that he was a comic book writer….

… After the birth of his first son, King left the CIA — partly because he didn’t want to give him “a fatherless life” — and returned to his first passion: comics…

… In 2013, he wrote for the Vertigo imprint, before his first work at DC Comics, “Nightwing” — about Batman’s former sidekick — was published in 2014. Since rejoining the industry, he has earned many accolades, including winning the best writer Eisner Award, considered the Oscars of comic books, in 2018 and 2019 for “Batman,” “Mister Miracle,” and “Swamp Thing.”…

(13) TODAY’S FAKE NEWS. “The Perfect Calvin and Hobbes Live-Action Series Already Exists (But Fans Will Never See It)” at CBR.com.

When someone thinks of the greatest and most influential comic strip of all time, it’s more than likely that Charles Schultz’s Peanuts is one of the first titles to come to mind. However, it’s also nearly impossible to leave Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes out of the conversation, especially considering the impact it’s had on not just American culture, but the entire world. Given said cultural impact, some may be wondering why the strip has never been adapted into a film or television series in the 40 years since its conception. The truth is, any kind of screen adaptation or official merchandising of the characters is something that Watterson has always been vehemently opposed to. While it’s more than likely that an actual TV or movie adaptation, whether live-action or animated, will never see the light of day, that certainly hasn’t stopped the imagination of its fans online….

… As much as its creator may detest the idea, there’s no doubt that Calvin and Hobbes would lend itself to wonderful work of animation; but the wiki page of a hypothetical TV series is perhaps the closest anyone will ever get to making one of their own. According to the page on “Calvin and Hobbes the Series”, the fictional series first premiered on Nickelodeon back in May of 2016 and lasted an impressive run of 163 throughout 5 Seasons until 2021. While some of these fake episodes can be found online, as short fan fiction stories, “JaJaLoo” provided a full list of each episode and even went the extra mile of giving each one a name. They even provided an in-depth background on the show’s production, writing that the Nickelodeon series was actually a reboot that followed a previous attempt to adapt the strip by Cartoon Network titled “Calvin and Hobbes: the Animated Adventures”. This part of the page offers some rather confusing contradictions to the rest of the page, however, as it also claims that the reboot was done in live-action, despite previously claiming that it was also animated with voice actors like its predecessor…

… Some might be wondering why it is that Watterson has been so reluctant to approve any such adaptation or merchandising of his characters for these years, but his reasoning behind it actually isn’t all that complicated. He spoke about his reluctance in a 1987 interview (via Internet Archive), claiming that doing so would compromise the experience for the reader and would also result in cheapening his work.

“I think it’s really a crass way to go about it–the Saturday morning cartoons do that now, where they develop the toy and then draw the cartoon around it, and the result is the cartoon is a commercial for the toy and the toy is a commercial for the cartoon. The same thing’s happening now in comic strips; it’s just another way to get the competitive edge. You saturate all the different markets and allow each other to advertise the other, and it’s the best of all possible worlds. You can see the financial incentive to work that way. I just think it’s to the detriment of integrity in comic strip art.”…

(14) SUPER-ADULTING. “Superman & Lois Quietly Breaks an 86-Year Lois Lane Trend for the Better” says CBR.com.

…When Superman & Lois debuted, viewers discovered they had twins who were 15 years old. This small detail allowed both Superman and Lois Lane to become true adults in both their relationship and as parents of children nearing adulthood themselves. After being a representational figure for women for more than eight decades, Superman & Lois allowed her to do that again for adult fans.

While there are plenty of problematic portrayals of women in the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics, Lois Lane was always a bit different. From the first issue of Action Comics in 1938 through the decades that followed, Lois Lane was always a woman working in a field dominated by men, and she won their respect. While it’s true many stories feature Lois swooning over Superman and berating Clark Kent, she was equally concerned with breaking a good story, especially the Man of Steel’s true identity….

(15) STICKTOITIVENESS. Smithsonian Magazine reports “A 65,000-Year-Old Hearth Reveals Evidence That Neanderthals Produced Tar for Stone Tools in Iberia”.

When fire was invented, it changed the course of human evolution. It provided warmth, enabled cooking and facilitated the creation of more advanced tools. For instance, one pivotal tool, the stone-tipped spear, might have been assembled using tar and other adhesives. While early tar production remains largely a mystery, scientists have now uncovered a 65,000-year-old hearth that appears to have functioned as a small-scale “tar factory.”

In a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews in November, scientists describe a 65,000-year-old hearth found in Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula. The fire pit was theoretically used to make tar—and if that conclusion is proven true, it also represents the first evidence of the use of the plant rockrose, Cistus ladanifer, for obtaining tar….

… Scientists already knew that Neanderthals made adhesives using other materials like ocher and naturally sticky substances to haft stone tips onto wooden shafts to create weapons. The newly described hearth in Gibraltar represents a “specialized burning structure” for tar production, the researchers write in the study…

(16) WAVING GOODBYE. Philip Plait describes “A new way black holes shake the fabric of the Universe” at Bad Astronomy Newsletter.

A team of astronomers has examined a potentially new source of gravitational waves, and discovered it’s possible — maybe — it could be detected with currently working instruments. The source would be the lumpy disk of material swirling madly around a black hole right after it forms^*.

First things first: Gravitational waves were the last prediction made by Einstein’s theory of relativity that remained unproven, at least until 2015 (and announced a year later after a lot of analysis). The idea is that what we think of as space (or spacetime) can be warped, distorted, by masses in it. That distortion is what we perceive as gravity….

…If you accelerate a massive object, it not only dents space but also creates ripples in spacetime, called gravitational waves….Space shrinks and expands as the waves pass by, and if you had a very accurate ruler, for example, you could measure that oscillation.

Astronomers have built just such a detector, called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). I’ve written about it many times; it detected the first gravitational waves in 2015 (there are other observatories that are part of a global collaboration with LIGO, too, and ESA is building a space-based version called LISA that will be freaking amazing… and astronomers can even use pulsars in the galaxy to look for these waves, which is pretty metal). Now here’s an important thing: Any accelerating mass makes GWs (please accept that abbreviation so I don’t have to type it our every dang time), but they tend to be mushy, spread out and weak. The waves get much sharper and stronger a) the more massive the objects are, and 2) the harder they’re accelerated. That’s why almost all the GWs detected have been from merging black holes: they’re very massive indeed, and as they merge they are whipped around each other at nearly the speed of light….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Michelle Morrell, Diana Glyer, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Hayao Miyazaki Wins Forry Award

Posted on November 9, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Animation creator Hayao Miyazaki was voted the 2024 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society at their September 12 meeting.

The Forrest J Ackerman or Forry Award has been given by the LASFS annually since 1966 for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Usually, it is presented at Loscon, the convention hosted each Thanksgiving Weekend by the club. Ackerman joined LASFS in the year the club was founded, 1934.

Hayao Miyazaki is a founder and the honorary chairman of Studio Ghibli, a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films who is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation.

His films Spirited Away (2001) and The Boy and the Heron (2023) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, while Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and The Wind Rises (2013) received nominations. His other films include The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Whale Hunt (2001).

The names of all previous Forry Award winners can be seen here.

[Thanks to Charles Lee Jackson II for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 8/20/24 Something Pixel This Way Scrolls

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW SEATTLE WORLDCON BLOG. Seattle Worldcon 2025 has launched Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow, a blog that will feature local Seattle food and sights, plus sff subjects in line with their theme. The first post, appropriately enough, is: “Announcing the Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow Blog”.

Starting tomorrow and running on alternate Wednesdays, the Local Flavor column will introduce you to food traditions known to long-time residents of the Pacific Northwest, with a dose of nostalgia and the occasional recipe thrown in. On the opposite Wednesday, look for Around Seattle, written by Sophie Ding and Jason Sacks, a tourism-focused feature to educate you about opportunities for discovery and adventure during your visit to the Emerald City.

On Fridays, visit our Fantastic Fiction column for inspiration related to our theme, Building Yesterday’s Future—For Everyone. A distinguished cadre of fan writers will take you back to the 1961-1962 era of the first Seattle Worldcon and Century 21 Exposition, also known as the Seattle World’s Fair, events that cemented Seattle’s position as a global center for futurism and technological innovation. We hope immersion in the speculative fiction dreams and influences of the era will inspire you to make something—a story, costume, poem, argument, essay, panel idea, heart wish, or short film—to bring to our Worldcon. In the meantime, enjoy posts from writers including James Davis Nicoll, Rachel S. Cordasco, Cora Buhlert, and the fabulous Galactic Journey collective led by Gideon Marcus and Janice L. Newman.

(2) FANHISTORY REDISCOVERED. LASFS history features in the exhibit “Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation” which will run from August 22-November 23 at the USC Fisher Museum of Art. (Rob Hansen’s Bixelstrasse documents these beginnings as well.)

Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation considers the importance of science fiction fandom and occult interests to U.S. LGBTQ history. Science fiction and occult communities helped pave the way for the LGBTQ movement by providing a place for individuals to meet and imagine spaces less restricted by societal norms.

The exhibition focuses on Los Angeles from the late 1930s through 1960s and looks both forward and backward to follow the lives of writers, publishers, and early sci-fi enthusiasts, including progressive communities such as the LA Science Fantasy Society, the Ordo Templi Orientis at the Agape Lodge, and ONE Inc.

Spanning fandom, aerospace research, queer history, and the occult, Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation reveals how artists, scientists, and visionary thinkers like Jim Kepner, Lisa Ben, Margaret Brundage, Morris Scott Dollens, Marjorie Cameron, Renate Druks, Curtis Harrington, and Kenneth Anger worked together to envision and create a world of their own making through films, photographs, music, illustrations, costumes, and writing.

Programming will include film screenings, panel discussions, and a Halloween cosplay event. This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative.

Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation is among more than 50 exhibitions and programs presented as part of Pacific Standard Time. Southern California’s landmark arts event, Pacific Standard Time, returns in September 2024 with more than 50 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present.

(3) CAT’S CREDO. On her blog today Cat Rambo declared:“I am Cat Rambo and This is What I Believe” Cat’s credo begins:

I believe every human being has dignity and worth. That one should treat others with respect, including their pronouns and the pronunciation of their name. That people should be free to live, worship, and connect with the universe as they please. That decency, ethics, and accountability are core values. That understanding and acknowledging one’s own privilege is part of that accountability.

I believe stories matter. That they shape how people think about and understand their lives and the world at large. That they gift us with hope and empathy.

I believe that all paths to publishing – traditional, indie, small press, crowdfunded – are valid for writers and that nowadays more and more people are able to create their own art and tell their own stories in a new way that has created a wealth of great new writing, including many stories that wouldn’t have been told through traditional publishing….

The complete statement is at the link.

(4) ONE AND DONE. The Acolyte? Fuhgeddaboudit! “’The Acolyte’ Canceled: Disney’s Star Wars Spinoff Done After One Season”.

The Acolyte will not return for season two, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Lucasfilm has opted not to continue the Disney+ Star Wars series, which aired its season one finale last month.

The Leslye Headland-created show earned respectable reviews from critics, but was panned by audiences, with only 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The show was review-bombed from some quarters who perceived it as “woke,” with certain corners of the internet going after Headland, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the series’ diverse group of actors.

“Honestly, I feel sad that people would think that if something were gay, that that would be bad,” Headland told THR in June. “It makes me feel sad that a bunch of people on the internet would somehow dismantle what I consider to be the most important piece of art that I’ve ever made.”

Also in June, star Amandla Stenberg fired back at racist backlash with an original song on social media.

“It was an easy target,” said one source of the back-and-forth’s connection to the show’s cancellation. “And it hurt the public perception of the show.”…

The June article linked above is this post from The Hollywood Reporter: “’The Acolyte’ Star Releases Song Firing Back at Fan Backlash”.

…There has been some earnest debate among fans over things like canon consistency issues, but last week, the show’s backlash reached an intense level after the third episode introduced a coven of characters that have been described (wrongly, says Headland) as “lesbian space witches.” There was also uproar over Headland giving a playful answer to a junket question where a reporter asked whether The Acolyte was “the gayest Star Wars.” In addition, a 2018 quote from Stenberg regarding her film The Hate U Give has been taken inaccurately out of context. Stenberg told The Daily Show host Trevor Noah that “white people crying actually was the goal” of the film, but the quote has been mischaracterized in some conservative circles as if Stenberg was talking about The Acolyte….

(5) ANIME HELPING JAPAN’S “DIGITAL TRADE DEFICIT”. “Japan’s anime exports poised to match chips and steel” reports Nikkei Asia.

Japan’s exports of anime and other content are close to parity with steel and semiconductor devices, presenting an opportunity to develop a key sector that will prop up the economy.

U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles assumed the unofficial title of the world’s fastest anime fan when he won the 100-meter gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Aug. 4. Draped in the American flag, Lyles celebrated by assuming the open-palmed kamehameha pose made famous by the “Dragon Ball” anime franchise.

The moment demonstrated the potential for anime and other Japanese content to erase Japan’s digital trade deficit, which doubled over five years to 5.5 trillion yen ($37.4 billion) in 2023.

Driving the deficit were payments for cloud services and internet ads. But Japan’s content industry “will be the trump card in recovering from the digital deficit,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Under the economic principle of comparative advantage, countries become rich by making the most of their strengths. Japan’s digital trade deficit is not necessarily a problem, but it is also necessary to enhance the earning power of areas where there is potential for growth, such as the content industry, according to the 2024 edition of the government annual economic white paper.

The “Jujutsu Kaisen” anime series was the world’s most in-demand TV show in 2023, according to the “Global TV Demand Awards” report from U.S.-based Parrot Analytics. The “Attack on Titan” anime series was in 2021.

Other popular anime, such as “Oshi no Ko” and “Demon Slayer,” have been very successful outside Japan.

Globally, Japan trails South Korea in live-action films and TV dramas. China has the lead in mobile games.

(6) LEGAL FLIM-FLAM CANCELLED. “Disney stops trying to use Disney Plus excuse to settle a wrongful death lawsuit” – The Verge tells why.

Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial.

“With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” chairman of Disney experiences Josh D’Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. “As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”

The lawsuit was filed in February by Jeffrey Piccolo, the husband of a 42-year-old woman who died last year due to an allergic reaction that occurred after eating at a restaurant in the Disney Springs shopping complex in Orlando. The case gained widespread media attention after Piccolo’s legal team challenged Disney’s motion to dismiss the case, arguing that a forced arbitration agreement Piccolo signed was effectively invisible.

As noted by Reuters, Disney initially made no mention of arbitration when it first addressed the case in April, instead arguing it wasn’t liable because it merely serves as the landlord for the Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant and had no control over the restaurant’s operations. Disney then later argued in a filing in May that Piccolo had allegedly entered an agreement to arbitrate all disputes with the company by signing up for a Disney Plus trial in 2019, and using the Walt Disney Parks’ website to buy Epcot Center tickets.

(7) MAURICE BROADDUS LEADS PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR LIBRARY RESTORATION. “First Indianapolis library to serve Black community reopens at school” reports Chalkbeat Indiana.

Maurice Broaddus was a writer by trade and became a middle school librarian by accident.

The award-winning Afrofuturist and sci-fi author once filled in at The Oaks Academy middle school, where he was also a teacher, for the librarian going on maternity leave. The librarian never came back.

“Six, seven years later I’m still covering her maternity leave,” he joked.

But what started as mere chance has become an opportunity to mentor young writers, support artists of color, and restore a historic Indianapolis library that was the first in the city established specifically for Black residents.

“It’s been a lesson in collaboration, a lesson in building relationships, a lesson in dreaming alongside our neighbors,” said Broaddus, who is Black. “Ultimately, what does it look like to restore a space and then it be true to its purpose?”

Broaddus led the project to reopen the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, established within the now-closed John Hope School No. 26 in 1922, to students at The Oaks Academy middle school, a private Christian school in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood. The library originally existed to serve Black residents in a de facto segregated part of the city. Its restoration after nearly 30 years of disuse will give Oaks students their own library collection, Broaddus said, while memorializing its place in Indianapolis history.

“We are honoring the past, but we’re doing present work,” he said.

The restored library opened last week on the first day of school at The Oaks. Many shelves are still empty — Broaddus is waiting on a major 1,000-book order — but he’s started curating three special collections on the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and Afrofuturism….

(8) ESSAYS ON WOMEN AND GENDER IN TOLKIEN. At Writing From Ithilien, Robin Anne Reid shares a “Call for Proposals: deadline March 15, 2025” for an anthology titled ‘Great Heart and Strength:’ New Essays on Women and Gender in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Full details at the link.

We invite submissions for an anthology focused on women and gender in Tolkien’s writings. In 2015, Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan published Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the first volume dedicated to the subject of women in Tolkien’s works and life, which collected the major milestones of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies alongside new essays. Since then, feminist scholarship and gender theory has flourished in and outside of Tolkien studies. This volume will honor Croft and Donovan’s work and build on the past decade of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies by presenting a new collection of essays on women and gender in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

(9) MARS CALLING? “In 1924, a radio receiver built for the battlefields of World War I tested the idea that humans were not alone in the solar system, heralding a century of searches for extraterrestrial life.” “Scientists Seeking Life on Mars Heard a Signal That Hinted at the Future” – an unlocked article that bypasses the New York Times paywall.

…During that weekend [in 1924], Earth and Mars were separated by just 34 million miles, closer than at any other point in a century. Although this orbital alignment, called an opposition, occurs every 26 months, this one was particularly captivating to audiences across continents and inspired some of the first large-scale efforts to detect alien life.

“In scores of observatories, watchers and photographers are centering their attention on that enigmatic red disk,” the journalist Silas Bent wrote on Aug. 17, 1924. He added that it might be the moment to “solve the disputed question of whether supermen rove his crust, and whether those lines, which many observers say they have seen, really are irrigation canals.”

Scientists plotted for years to make the most of the Martian “close-up.” To aid the experiments, the U.S. Navy cleared the airwaves, imposing a nationwide period of radio silence for five minutes at the top of each hour from Aug. 21 to 24 so that messages from Martians could be heard. A military cryptographer was on hand to “translate any peculiar messages that might come by radio from Mars.”

Then, lo and behold, an astonishing radio signal arrived with the opposition.

A series of dots and dashes, captured by an airborne antenna, produced a photographic record of “a crudely drawn face,” according to news reports. The tantalizing results and subsequent media frenzy inflamed the public’s imagination. It seemed as if Mars was speaking, but what was it trying to say?

“The film shows a repetition, at intervals of about a half hour, of what appears to be a man’s face,” one of the experiment’s leaders said days later.

“It’s a freak which we can’t explain,” he added….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 20, 1951 – Greg Bear. (Died 2022.)

By Paul Weimer.

I first encountered the work of Greg Bear through, predictably, Blood Music, in its original shorter publication in Analog, and then its longer novel format. I then bounced around various of his works (Eon enchanted me, being a multiverse novel, particularly) and I followed his work until his period of technothrillers, which frankly left me cold. Darwin’s Radio, interestingly enough, was in 1999, one of the very first ARCs I ever received, as I started to get into the whole idea of fan writing and reviewing. Hull Zero Three was a good mystery set on a generation ship. While I had issues with a different author’s Foundation novel, I liked Foundation and Chaos pretty well.

Greg Bear in 1993. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

There are still some Greg Bear works I have not touched that I want to (besides those technothrillers). I am still not sure what to make of or what the Mongoliad even is, even back when it was apparently a thing. But what I want to go with here, is that Bear clearly liked to invent, reinvent and try stuff that didn’t always work, but was at least interesting. The Infinity Mage and The Serpent Concerto are a fascinating pair of portal fantasy novels that I adored. The City at the End of Time is dreamlike, surreal and long but deeply moving. Even his last work, The Unfinished Land, which I kind of bounced off, I later learned from a colleague that Bear was tapping into a strain of 17th and 18th century novels, a key to the text I completely and utterly missed.

And I think that’s true of a bunch of Bear, for everyone. There is going to be stuff in his oeuvre that is Not for You and that’s okay. The strong writing and ideas may be across his oeuvre, but the diversity of his work may mean that there are Bear novels you will eat like candy (again, hello Eon) and stuff that you might stay well away from. Dinosaur Summer might be one to hand to teenage readers getting into SFF, because, well, dinosaurs in a YA-like novel. People who like disaster novels might try Forge of God (goodbye Planet Earth!). Moving Mars is an audacious novel about, well, it’s right in the title. And he’s done tie-in novels for Star Wars and Star Trek. It’s impossible to encapsulate all of the stuff he has done. Go forth and read one.

(11) YESTERDAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born August 19, 1950 — Mary Doria Russell, 74.

By Lis Carey: Mary Doria Russell was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, and has a degree in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan, and taught anatomy at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dentistry. I mention this so explicitly because Wikipedia seems to believe she only graduated high school. Wikipedia is very useful, but it’s a starting point, not a source.

It’s also interesting to note that she was raised Catholic, left the Church at fifteen, and in adulthood, became interested in Judaism and ultimately converted. She’s seen religion from several angles, and that, too, contributes to her fiction.

Ms. Russell has written two books that are clearly science fiction, The Sparrow, and its sequel, Children of Grace. In The Sparrow, in 2019, the radio telescope at Arecibo receives a signal that proves there is intelligent life on a planet that humans will be able to reach. While the UN is arguing about what to do, the Jesuits organize and launch their own 8-person scientific expedition. It’s led by Father Emilio Sandoz, a linguist, and he’s in for what will be first a delightful experience, and then a harrowing one, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. It was a very successful book when published in 1996, and won several awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the JamesTiptree Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award), and the British Science Fiction Association Award. I loved the book myself, and it’s got 4.14 rating on Goodreads, but from looking at the reviews there, it’s perfectly clear, and no surprise, really, that such a high-profile book found some readers who were really looking for a different book, and would have preferred not to find this one.

Children of God is the sequel. Emilio Sandoz finds his return to Earth almost as harrowing in some respects. He leaves the priesthood, planning to marry. He agrees to teach the language of the planet Rakhat to Jesuits planning a return expedition to help the oppressed servant species on the planet, but refuses to return himself. Things don’t go as he intends, and he learns that the impact of the first Jesuit expedition was as harrowing for everyone he left behind as for himself and the members of the expedition who did not survive. It’s another fascinating and rather harrowing story.

In both cases, the story benefits from Ms. Russell’s anthropological studies, helping to ground the stories and give the alien cultures some depth.

These are Mary Doria Russell’s only science fiction books, but that same anthropological background is at play in her historical fiction. I think that her two books about Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers, Doc and Epitaph, might particularly interest some sf fans.They’re different and deeper stories than Hollywood ever led us to expect.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Crabgrass celebrates a reluctant reader
Red Rover’s song sounds a little familiar, don’t you think?
Thatababy recommends an island vacation spot.
Carpe Diem carries a warning.
Brewster Rockit takes up book reading.
Land of NOJ is a comic – and a game!

My original published series, Land of NOJ, has come to an end (for now).

Thanks to @phoenixcomicuk for allowing me to go mad with my layouts! Here's what I consider the best page of the run, which took me months to plan & iterate on. All you need is a 6 sided die.

Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/b3zPVm4VLB
— nellucnhoj.bsky.social (@nellucnhoj) August 20, 2024

(13) IF YOU CHECK THESE BOOKS OUT, YOU MAY CHECK OUT. “Evidence stacks up for poisonous books containing toxic dyes” says Phys.Org.

… If you come across brightly colored, cloth-bound books from the Victorian era, you might want to handle them gently, or even steer clear altogether. Some of their attractive hues come from dyes that could pose a health risk to readers, collectors or librarians.

The latest research on these poisonous books used three techniques—including one that hasn’t previously been applied to books—to assess dangerous dyes in a university collection and found some volumes may be unsafe to handle….

… “These old books with toxic dyes may be in universities, public libraries and private collections,” says Abigail Hoermann, an undergraduate studying chemistry at Lipscomb University. Users can be put at risk if pigments from the cloth covers rub onto their hands or become airborne and are inhaled.

“So, we want to find a way to make it easy for everyone to be able to find what their exposure is to these books, and how to safely store them.” Hoermann, recent graduate Jafer Aljorani, and undergraduate Leila Ais have been conducting the study with Joseph Weinstein-Webb, an assistant chemistry professor at Lipscomb.

The study began after Lipscomb librarians Jan Cohu and Michaela Rutledge approached the university’s chemistry department to test brilliantly colored 19th- and early-20th-century fabric-covered books from the school’s Beaman Library. Weinstein-Webb was intrigued to hear about how the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library had previously examined its own 19th-century books for the presence of an arsenic compound known as copper acetoarsenite….

(14) NEWS FROM THE CIRCULAR FILE. Variety is watching things roll out at gamescom. “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’ to Launch on Xbox, PS5”.

…“Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” has received a release date for Xbox with plans to launch on PlayStation 5 next year.

Xbox announced out of video game convention gamescom on Tuesday that the Bethesda Game Studios-produced game will drop Dec. 9 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC and Steam and arrive on Sony’s PlayStation 5, main rival console to Bethesda parent company Microsoft’s Xbox, in Spring 2025.

The release of the game on PS5 is a significant step in Xbox’s strategy to rollout some of its exclusive games across competitor devices, and a break from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer’s comments back in February that “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” would not be among those titles.

… Per Microsoft’s description for the game, “From MachineGames, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, set between the events of ‘Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the The Last Crusade,’ ‘Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’ immerses players in an all-new single-player, narrative driven adventure. Blending cinematic set-pieces, puzzle-solving, and hand-to-hand combat, players will embark on an authentic Indiana Jones™ experience around the world to try and defeat the sinister forces working against them.”…

(15) HERE’S THE BEEF. Another Variety report from gamescom is about Amazon Games’ launch of King of Meat, “which allows players to fight weird and wonderful creatures, and build treacherous dungeons.”

Amazon’s description for the King of Meat game says:

Set in the mystical world of Loregok, King of Meat takes players to a place of dragons, trolls, skeletons, and, of course, corporate commercialism – where high fantasy meets the glitz, glamor, and media-infatuation of modern-day celebrity. The focus of this obsession is the wildest survival game show imaginable, “King of Meat”.

In the Komstruct Koliseum, YOU are the entertainment; a contender desperately seeking glory, gold and fame. Race through chaotic, unhinged dungeons battling all manner of monsters, all while trying to impress the bloodthirsty crowd with your combat skills and showmanship. But that’s not all! Dare to imagine lava filled rooms, spinning blades, flaming balls of fire, rotating spikes… and that’s still not all! There’s giant horse hooves, inter-dimensional black holes, exploding ducks and sausage-meat gym jocks. Nothing is off the table in King of Meat, and whether you’re crowned victorious or you perish anonymously, you’ll need to play with style to satisfy your audience.

Think that’s all, now? Think again! Further glory awaits those who create their own devious dungeons. What traps, tricks and trials are hidden in that dastardly brain of yours? Use all your cunning and creativity to build the most fun and outrageous dungeons for other King of Meat contenders to face, and the best will be famed and celebrated across all of Loregok.

(16) STONE CIRCLES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Having reported Nature’s paper on Stonehenge’s Altar Stone coming from Scotland (see Pixel Scroll 8/15/24 item 16) that revealed Neolithic Britain was far more connected than thought, I forgot to say that I recently (this month) had a break, visiting old friends of SF² Concatenation, in Britain’s Peak District National Park. There we visited three Neolithic and Bronze Age stone circles and a barrow. I have an interest in current human ecology and also one in palaeoclimatology [three university textbooks under my belt that include these disciplines] and so have a casual fascination [I have no expertise here] in the way folk lived thousands of years ago.

Two of the stone circles I visited were at Barbrook (see picture). Which is a real tiddler compared to Stonehenge but fairly typical of Neolithic Britain.

Jonathan at Barbrook One centre stone. Note: the hill on the skyline immediately to the left of Jonathan’s head is the site of Gardom’s Edge stone that Jonathan visited in 2022.

But my favourite stone circle visited this month was Arbor Low (see picture) even though its stones have all fallen over. (Von Daniken types might blame the exhaust from an ancient UFO taking off too quickly… Ahem… I digress into loveable Bob Shaw/Von Donegan territory.)

The thing is, that Arbor Low, Gardom’s Edge and Barbrook, though distant, are all visible from one to each other. The Neolithic humans in the Peak District landscape were more connected than it might seem. Similarly, the Nature’s paper on Stonehenge’s alter stone coming from Scotland suggests that Neolithic Britain as a whole was more connected.

(Even when I take a break, it seems I am shadowing current science…)

Finally, let’s put this all in a present-day context. It was arguably from the Stone Age that we began our technological march over thousands of years through to today. I keep telling folk today that the machines are taking over, but nobody ever listens…

Of course, the other thing to say about having a casual interest in the Neolithic as well as SF is that I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch. But that’s another story for another time…

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Lise Andreasen.] Math history! Computer science history! Science fiction history! Stand Up Maths leads us on “The search for the biggest shape in the universe”. Features a visit to a highly historic computer.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Paul Weimer, Linda Deneroff, Lise Andreasen, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 6/2/24 Take Me Down To The Scroll Tonight, I Want To See The Pixels

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MAKING IT UP. Sarah Gailey interviews the authors and editors of The Worst Ronin in “Middle Finger To the Sky: The Worst Ronin by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Faith Schaffer” at Stone Soup.

Gailey: What did you get to do here that you might not have gotten to do if this book landed elsewhere?

Tokuda-Hall: [The Worst Ronin] was largely written with a middle finger to the sky–when POC are invited to the table to tell our stories, there are usually so many caveats. Yes, we want your story but we want it to be about your marginalization. Or, yes, tell your story, but we want it to be edifying about your culture. There’s this demand that we serve the white gaze, and not a respect for our boundless imaginations. We want to make up shit, too. And so I very stridently let the reader know, in many ways, that this book is not there to educate them about anything. This is not historically accurate. This is a work of invention.

Gailey: How did you first dive into the story, knowing you could do whatever you want?

Tokuda-Hall: I took such joy in writing this book. I had a misguided notion at first that I would keep it super wholesome and middle grade, but my brain just doesn’t work that way, and as soon as I accepted that the plot and characters took off and I just felt like I was sprinting to catch up with them. The hardest thing with this book was balancing the humor that is so inherent to the central characters (The Worst Ronin is a buddy comedy, in its heart) with the darkness of the stories they each would face. …

(2) WHITHER STOKERCON 2025? During last night’s Bram Stoker Awards ceremony it was announced that StokerCon 2025 will be held June 12-15 at the Hilton Stamford Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut.

(3) UBIQ. The Society of Illustrators will host “JACK DAVIS: A Centennial Celebration”, an exhibit of work by the famed MAD Magazine cartoonist and commercial illustrator, at its New York location from June 12-September 21. Full details at the link.

The Society of Illustrators marks the centenary celebration of Jack Davis’ birth by hosting a retrospective featuring the original art from among his most admired works, many for the first time ever. The art on view represents every genre and every phase of Davis’ six-decade career: from EC Comics and Mad Magazine to TV Guide and Time Magazine, from Raid and McDonald’s ads to NASCAR and Super Bowl promotions, from history book illustrations to movie posters….

…“Jack Davis was quite possibly the most ubiquitous American humor illustrator of all time. Davis was a master cartoonist, caricaturist, and illustrator, and his funny, fast-paced, manic, beautifully rendered work has graced the covers of countless comic books, magazines, and record albums and has also appeared on movie posters, bubble gum cards, and advertisements. A virtual mind-boggling one-man industry, Davis has been called “the fastest cartoonist alive” and ‘the master of the crowd scene.’ It’s astonishing to realize that this quiet Southern gentleman was usually finished with assignments for the day and out on the golf course by 2:30 p.m.”

– Drew Friedman from his Fantagraphics book, Heroes of the Comics.

(4) LOSCON 50. Can it be Loscon 50 already? Why, it wasn’t that long ago I missed the first one while I was at grad school….

However, I trust the committee’s count. And here’s the graphic that accompanies their Progress Report #3 on Facebook. Get a full update there.

(5) BEFORE YOU CAN READ THE OMENS. Colleen Doran’s Funny Business brings us a “Good Omens Update”, a highly detailed tour of Doran’s techniques for producing art for the book. So much more is involved than I ever guessed.

…I use the construction method of drawing, as you see. This is an old-school technique. Some people seem to assume that artists always use computers and tracing for their drawings, but most cartoonists of my generation work extemporaneously. There’s quite a bit of noodling around and searching in the sketches. Using too much reference often results in stiff, dead work.

In comics, it’s very important to make sure you’ve considered word balloon placement when designing a page. The script for Good Omens is more copy-heavy than most modern comic book scripts because I want to preserve as much of the clever original language as I can….

(6) DIVING INTO NETFLIX. If you’re interested in the latest business statistics on Netflix and its content, JustWatch recently released a page where they provide data and analysis: JustWatch: Netflix Statistics.

Some of the page’s features are content expansion, popularity, subscription prices, its market share, and much more.

(7) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport’s stories for June are by authors Kelly Robson, Laura Anne Gilman, Meg Elison, and Yi Sheng Ng. The first story of the month is free to read, but they seek “paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week.”

In this, June’s first, free, story, Kelly Robson shows us how, at Versailles, getting old is no picnic. But sometimes there are options… “The High Cost of Heat” by Kelly Robson.

(8) USE THE FORCE…OF MEMORY. After all this time can there still be “Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About the Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy”? Maariv Periodical challenges you to find out. Their first fact is:

Big Mistake

When it came to signing a contract with James Earl Jones to fill in Darth Vader’s voice, George Lucas offered him a choice: He could take a salary of $7,000 for his work or royalties off the back end of ticket sales. Back then, $7,000 was a decent amount of money, so Jones took the cash, which turned out to be a costly mistake.

Had he chosen the alternative, he would have earned far more; Jones admitted years later that the decision cost him “tens of millions of dollars.” In comparison, Sir Alec Guinness took the royalties – and his heirs have earned an estimated $95 million for his work in the first “Star Wars” film.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY DOUBLE FEATURE.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1929 — Norton Juster. (Died 2021.)

By Paul Weimer. Once upon a time when the world was young, a 2nd grade teacher had a reading session with my class. We read a book about a character who had found himself in a land of mathematics and weirdness, of two princesses bound, of paths to infinity and clock-like dogs. It was a wild and magical place and I adored the book to pieces.

The problem is, I had misunderstood the title. I thought the title was “Milo and the Mathemagicians” and did not see or find the book for three decades after that second grade classroom. Some days, I wondered if I had just imagined or hallucinated the existence of this book.

Enter the pre-LLM internet. It was the mid 2000’s and I got the urge to try and find some books of my youth among dome other things. And in that time, the Internet was at its peak for finding information that you wanted. SEOs were not yet a thing. Amazon was not full of crap. Websites still proliferated. And I had great success. I managed to find a copy of an old liberal arts college math textbook that, decades ago, had introduced me to Escher and other wondrous things. (Oddly, it was just called The Math Book) I found some old SF anthologies I had not seen for years. I hit upon authors and musicians and others I had dimly remembered from my youth. It was a great time for me for rediscovery.

And then there was Milo. I was throwing search terms in one day trying to find “Milo and the Mathemagicians”, and somehow managed to hit The Phantom Tollbooth. I read the description and thought “Is this it?” I bought a copy and with anxious anticipation, I started reading it. Did you ever have that feeling, wondering if the book you are reading is something that is going to be that good, or live up to the suck fairy? I had that feeling re-reading The Phantom Tollbooth.

Imagine my utter happiness when I delved into the book and found, to my delight, that it WAS the book I had remembered from that second grade class. And all of the joys in the book, the wordplay, the characters, the concepts (how many children’s books try and explain *infinity*) and the absolute heart of the book. And the artwork and drawings. I had not remembered specific drawings from the second grade class, but I had remembered the book WAS illustrated. And the illustrations are wonderful!

I don’t regret seeking out the TV movie that was made, subsequently, it doesn’t quite work for me, but I can see why it was made.

But speaking of movies, the other Juster property I adored that I did not realize at the time WAS Norton Juster was the Academy Award winning short film The Dot and the Line. I had seen it way back when I had read Flatland, and loved it, but had no idea that it had anything to do with The Phantom Tollbooth. Imagine my delightful surprise when I found out it was based on a Juster book. I think, given its dynamism, that the short movie is better than the actual book and I do recommend that fans of The Phantom Tollbooth go seek it out.

I’ve now, including the second grade class, read The Phantom Tollbooth four times. And I look forward to it again. And I really need to rewatch The Dot and the Line myself. Don’t jump to the island of conclusions that The Phantom Tollbooth is for children alone. It works for readers of all ages. If you have any interest in wordplay, mathematics or whimsy, pick it up and give it a spin.

Born June 2, 1915 — Lester Del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer. For me, first and foremost, Lester Del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn Del Rey. And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge).

Lester Del Rey at a Philcon around 1964. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser). And Lester Del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”. I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other Del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester Del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester Del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”. I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard. “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But, now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a Del Rey story at it’s best. Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger. Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit celebrates the Deep Space Network.
Carpet Diem introduces a very careful driver.
The Other Coast stops an invasion.
Bizarro updates a fairy tale’s nutritional information.

(11) UPDATES TO THE BLOCH WEBSITE. Jim Nemeth, curator of the Robert Bloch Official Website announced three new additions.

1) Bill Gillard, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, recounts his recent travel to Laramie, Wyoming, to research the Bloch papers/archives collection, housed at the University of Wyoming. With photos! Read: Robert Bloch Papers
2) Matthew R. Bradley’s interview of Bloch; from Filmfax magazine (Aug/Sep 1993) Read: Heart of a Small Boy.
3) See Bob’s military draft card. See Gallery page.

(12) SPACE, THE FINAL EPISODE. Camestros Felapton has closing remarks on the conclusion of a Star Trek series: “Farewell Star Trek Discovery”.

….Notably, this season had the best attempt yet at marrying the idea of single season long story with Star Trek’s more traditional episode-long stories. The basic plot idea (a quest for a series of clues leading to a hidden secret treasure) was not terribly original but it was enough of a hook to ensure each episode could have its own sub-story while overtly moving the plot along. The broader plot was also well served by the two antagonists who became more interesting as the season progressed….

(13) LEARNING ALL OVER AGAIN. “How NASA astronauts are training to walk on the Moon in 2026” in Nature.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins was having a hard time seeing in the eerie twilight of the Moon’s south pole this month.

Rubins made her way carefully through the deep shadows on the lunar surface, her path dimly lit by lights on her spacesuit’s helmet. She was hunting through the volcanic landscape for geological treasure — Moon rocks that she could pick up and bring back to Earth, which would reveal secrets of this frozen world. As the first person to set foot on the Moon in more than half a century, Rubins was making good progress on her historic foray — despite the piles of cow manure along the way.

The rock-strewn plain wasn’t really the Moon but was, in fact, the high desert of northern Arizona. Rubins and astronaut Andre Douglas were participating in the biggest dress rehearsal yet for the next time NASA plans to send people to the Moon’s surface, a mission known as Artemis III. If all goes to plan, Rubins or one of her colleagues will be stepping onto the actual Moon a little over two years from now. So NASA is training its astronauts to make the most of their precious time there — given that no human has set foot on the lunar surface since the last Apollo crew blasted off in 1972….

(14) PIGS NOT IN SPACE. Slashfilm discusses Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon and a little-known predecessor in “This 14-Minute Short Isn’t The First Sci-Film, But It Came Close”.

…But “A Trip to the Moon” wasn’t the first sci-fi film. Indeed, it wasn’t even Méliès’ first sci-fi film.

If one is to trust the Aurum Film Encyclopedia, the first sci-fi film ever was “The Mechanical Butcher,” a short made by the Lumière Brothers in 1895. The Lumières, as all first-year film students know, invented the Cinématographe motion picture system, one of the earliest motion picture cameras, making them among the very first filmmakers. “The Mechanical Butcher” is only 53 seconds long, and depicts butcher characters lifting a pig into a futuristic machine and extracting it as prepared pork products. Mechanized slaughterhouses were relatively new in 1895, and the Lumières made a short depicting the absurdity of sped-up, high-tech meat manufacture. Why, only a moment ago, these pork chops were alive! If sci-fi is a genre that analyzes technology’s effects on human development — techno-anthropology — then “The Mechanical Butcher” certainly counts….

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

Loscon 50: “Celebrating 50 Loscons”

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Loscon, the annual convention of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and family reunion of the science fiction reading community, celebrates its landmark 50th event from November 29 to December 1, 2024. The guests of honor are beloved figures in sff community history:

AUTHOR GUEST OF HONOR: Spider Robinson, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, known for Telempath, Stardance (with his late wife Jeanne) and the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series.

MUSICAL ARTIST GUEST OF HONOR: Kathy Mar, singer, guitarist and songwriter, who shines as the guiding star of KINDNESS. Her indie “filk” works include award winners such as Velveteen, When Giants Walked, and Drink Up The River.

VISUAL ARTIST GUEST OF HONOR: Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, illustrator, costumer, and Regency dance enabler. Her cover and interior artwork has been published by TSR, The Easton Press, Analog, Weird Tales, and more. Her doctorate is in music education, and she is known to Los Angeles radio audiences as a classical music presenter.

GHOST OF HONOR: Frank Kelly Freas, illustrator of many science fiction books and magazine covers, known to the rest of the world for MAD Magazine’s character Alfred E. Neuman, his art on album covers for Queen and so very much more. He attended Loscon for years until his passing in 2005, and [super] naturally, he haunts us still with his gremlin smile.

FAN GUESTS OF HONOR: Genny Dazzo and Craig Miller, bicoastal fan “power couple” and longtime supporters of the LASFS and Loscon. Genny was a conrunner from New York, working on the early Star Trek conventions there, and moved out west to marry Craig Miller, a power in Loscon from the very start and publicity professional.

Nerd Mafia will return to host a cosplay costume contest for all ages on Saturday.

Loscon is held at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton, on Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport. Weekend memberships are currently available at discounted rates.

For updates, follow Loscon on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and search for #Loscon.

Loscon 50: Nov 29- Dec 1, 2024 Los Angeles area’s longest running Science Fiction Fan Convention. Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel 5711 W Century Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 2/29/24 Scrollaris

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) STOKER AWARD UPDATE SPARKS KERFUFFLE. [Item by Anne Marble.] The Horror Writers Association has realized that Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle was in the wrong category in the list of finalists — it is not a YA novel. So they moved it to the Adult category – increasing the finalists there from five to six (i.e, nobody was dropped). And because of this change, they added a YA novel by author Kalynn Bayron to the YA category.

But as a result, some people are yelling at Kalynn Bayron on social media — apparently because they think she “stole” the nomination from Chuck Tingle. And Brian Keene has stepped in and asked people to yell at Mr. Keene instead. Let’s see if the people who were so eager to yell at Kalynn Bayron (a young Black YA author) are just as eager to yell at Brian Keene. (Somehow, I doubt it.)

(2) STOKERCON GOH NEWS. Paula Guran will be unable to attend StokerCon 2024 the convention announced today in a newsletter. A reason was not given; the committee hopes she will be able to join them at a future event.

The remaining GoHs are Justina Ireland, Nisi Shawl, Jonathan Maberry and Paul Tremblay.

(3) ANNUAL YARDSTICK. Publishers Weekly reports “New Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey Finds Minor Changes” in the publishing industry.

The third edition of Lee & Low Books’ quadrennial “Diversity Baseline Survey” found that the publishing industry has made incremental gains in broadening its workforce since the survey was introduced in 2015.

The survey’s top-line findings show that white people made up 72.5% of this year’s 8,644 respondents, down from 76% in 2019 and 79% in 2015. Those identifying as biracial/multiracial were the second largest group, at 8.3%—a significant increase over the 3% in 2019 who identified as biracial/multiracial. The percentage of respondents who were Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander/South Asian/Southeast Indian rose slightly, to almost 8%, from 7% in 2019. Black respondents held even at about 5% of the publishing workforce, while those identifying as Hispanic/Latino/Mexican fell to 4.6%, from 6% in both 2019 and 2015….

(4) REACH OUT. Dream Foundry calls for donations to “Con or Bust”, which seeks to assist creators or fans of color with opportunities they can’t afford:

Con or Bust has received a slew of applications for extremely exciting opportunities that we are not currently able to fund or support. You can help us change that! Since late October, we’ve had to defer or decline 14 applications requesting over $25,000 in fiscal support. In most cases even a small portion of the request made as a grant would be a huge help to the applicant. Most fiscal grants we’ve made are $500, and that’s also the largest amount we’ve granted out of our unrestricted funds. …

…If you’ve ever been to an industry event that inspired, motivated, or nurtured you, then you know what these opportunities can mean. Help us bring that to more people!

(5) WRITERS AND ARTISTS, GET READY. Dream Foundry is also looking ahead to their annual Writing and Arts Contest which opens to submissions from April 1 through May 27, 2024.

(6) MACHINES IN TRAINING. Rivka Galchen is “Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem” in The New Yorker.

…“Solaris” is mostly serious in tone, which makes it a misleading example of Lem’s work. More often and more distinctively, he is funny and madcap and especially playful on the level of language. A dictionary of his neologisms, published in Poland in 2006, has almost fifteen hundred entries; translated into English, his invented words include “imitology,” “fripple,” “scrooch,” “geekling,” “deceptorite,” and “marshmucker.” (I assume that translating Lem is the literary equivalent of differential algebra, or category theory.) A representative story, from 1965, is “The First Sally (A) or, Trurl’s Electronic Bard.” Appearing in a collection titled “The Cyberiad,” the story features Trurl, an engineer of sorts who constructs a machine that can write poetry. Does the Electronic Bard read as an uncanny premonition of ChatGPT? Sure. It can write in the style of any poet, but the resulting poems are “two hundred and twenty to three hundred and forty-seven times better.” (The machine can also write worse, if asked.)

It’s not Trurl’s first machine. In other stories, he builds one that can generate anything beginning with the letter “N” (including nothingness) and one that offers supremely good advice to a ruler; the ruler is not nice, though, so it’s good that Trurl put in a subcode that the machine will not destroy its maker. The Electronic Bard is not easy for Trurl to make. In thinking about how to program it, Trurl reads “twelve thousand tons of the finest poetry” but deems the research insufficient. As he sees it, the program found in the head of even an average poet “was written by the poet’s civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time.” The complexity of the average poet-machine is daunting….

(7) THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. It was the club’s first in-person meeting outside of a Loscon since the pandemic. See photos at “We’re Back Baby! LASFS 1st Meeting in Years” on the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Website.

(8) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 104 of the Octothorpe podcast is “Groundbreaking and Great”. And humble!

Octothorpe 104 is here! We know you’ve eagerly been awaiting our takes on the Hugo Awards, so here they all are, as we discuss our favourite SF of 2023!

Hang on, what do you mean? Something else happened with the Hugo Awards and you thought we were talking about that? Well, er…maybe next time!

John is in the bottom-left, sitting in a chair, wearing a blue shirt and purple trousers, holding a can, and reading an ebook. Alison is in the upper-middle, lying down upside down, wearing a purple shirt and stripy trousers, and reading an ebook. Liz is in the bottom-right, wearing a pink shirt with green trousers, holding a mug of a hot beverage, and reading a physical book. They are surrounded by floating beer bottles, books, the Moon, a mug with a moose on it, and two cats. The word “Octothorpe” appears in scattered letters around the artwork, against a pinky-purple background.

(9) FREE READ. Worlds of If #177 is available as a free download for a limited time at the Worlds of If Magazine website. And the print version and t-shirts are also available for order there.

(10) JAIME LEE MOYER HAS DIED. Author and poet Jaime Lee Moyer was found dead today after friends requested a wellness check. C.C. Finlay announced on Facebook:

Dear friends of Jaime Lee Moyer, we have some very sad news. No one had heard from Jaime in more than ten days, which was concerning because her latest book was scheduled for release this week.

This morning we contacted her rental company and the East Lansing Police Department and asked them to perform a wellness check. They found Jaime deceased in her bedroom, apparently from natural causes. They’ve contacted her family to make formal arrangements. We only just received the news, and we don’t know any other information at this time.

Jaime has friends in the writing community all over the world. We thought this would be the best way to reach you. If you are a friend of hers, a client, or are waiting to hear an answer from her on anything else, we wanted you to know as soon as possible.

With love and grief,

Charlie and Rae

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 29, 1952 — Tim Powers, 72. Now Tim Powers is a writer that I really admire. He’s decently prolific as he has twenty novels published. Now remember this essay is about what I like, so I may or may not mention what something that you, so please do t be too miffed by that.

Where to start? That’s easy as it has to be The Anubis Gates. Victorian London and Egypt. Ancient Egypt. Time travel. Anubis. Oh ymmm. It’s on my list of To Be Listened To list as I’ve already read it several times and the sample at Audible indicates Bronson Pinchot does a great job of narrating this.

Just as good in a very different manner is On Stranger Tides takes place during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy which was nothing of the kind, when an individual on his way from Britain to Haiti has a series of increasingly wild adventures. I know the novel was purchased to be part on the Pirates of Caribbean franchise. I’ve not seen the film, so I don’t know how much, if anything of his novel made it into the film, but I’m betting nothing except the name did.

Declare, a secret history of the Cold War, is extraordinary. I mean it really. When I was still actually reading novels as opposed to listening to them, as I’m doing now, I didn’t spend six to eight hours a day on one but I remember I did on Declare just to see where the story went. Stellar.

The Vickery and Castine series is just fun, and I mean that as a compliment. Set in contemporary LA, rogue federal agents Sebastian Vickery and Ingrid Castine can see ghosts and other things that are the secret reality of that city. It’s an ongoing series with four novels so far. Highly recommended.

Then there’s Three Days to Never which I’m not convinced actually makes sense but is really fun to read with its wild mix of supernatural history of what actually happened, time travel and foreign agents.

Ok, those are my picks as the Powers novels that I really like. So what’s your choices?

(12) COMICS SECTION.

The Far Side has two hunters who took down the wrong quarry.
The ArgyleSweater points out the danger of shopping.
Peanuts – published in 1955 — has Lucy laughing at Charlie Brown’s space news.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is still figuring out how to get Earth demoted to Pluto’s status.

(13) TWO COMPANIONS CUT A RUG. Radio Times makes sure we don’t miss out when “Karen Gillan and Jenna Coleman share cute Doctor Who reunion”.

Amy Pond and Clara Oswald may have never met on-screen, but the former Doctor Who companions certainly look like they get along behind the camera.

Karen Gillan (Amy) and Jenna Coleman (Clara) were spotted together at an event in London last night, with former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat also in attendance.

Gillan took to the opportunity to share a video of the trio on the dance floor on TikTok alongside the caption: “We might have had a few red wines… but look WHO it is!”…

@karengillan
We might have had a few red wines…but look WHO it is! #doctorwho
? original sound – Karen Gillan

(14) AGBABI Q&A. HAL interviews 2021 Clarke Award nominee Patience Agbabi, author of The Past Master, at Carbon-Based Bipeds.

HAL: Hello Patience, and congratulations to you on finishing your tetralogy. I’m curious, did you always know this would be a four-book cycle or did the project grow more organically?

PATIENCE: …In reality, a series made sense for lots of other reasons since I had too many ideas to fit into a single book: I wanted to explore the past as well as the future; to take different angles on ecological issues, becoming more covert as the series progressed; and also, I wanted to develop my hero, Elle, from a 3-leap girl to a 4-leap young woman. Elle is black, of Nigerian origin and autistic. It was a positive challenge to show the reader how she overcomes numerous obstacles to reach maturity. I originally submitted the manuscript as young YA but Canongate wanted to market it as middle-grade since my hero was 12 and children like to read up. But since my hero gets one year older with each instalment, I knew I’d be segueing into YA territory anyway, which demands a greater level of introspection.

(15) STRINGS ATTACHED. SOMETIMES. “Muppets, marionettes and magic: My life with puppets” – hear an interview with Basil Twist, who created puppets for the My Neighbour Totoro production by the Royal Shakespeare Company at BBC Sounds.

Basil Twist’s fascination for puppets started as a child watching productions his mum put on as an amateur puppeteer. Basil built his own puppet characters of Star Wars as a kid and loved it, but became a ‘closeted puppeteer’ in his teens. It wasn’t cool anymore, and playing with dolls was seen as feminine. Basil pursued an education at college, but became unhappy and dropped out. Later moving to New York, Basil could finally embrace his puppetry passions. He scoured phone books and bashed phones to track down people involved in puppetry. His diligence took him around the world, winning awards and captivating crowds along the way. During the pandemic Basil found his biggest challenge to date – bringing the much-loved animated Japanese character Totoro to life for a live action stage show….

(16) OUTSIDE THE BOX. The Onion reports “Litter-Robot Recalls Thousands Of Self-Cleaning Litter Boxes That Accidentally Transported Cats To Year 1300”. (Could they be using the same version of the software as my comments section, which unaccountably tells people they’re in random years?)

(17) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Jessica Grose wonders “Could Swifties or Trekkies Decide the Election?” in a New York Times opinion piece. (Well, maybe I exaggerate. I don’t think it really worries her.)

…Social media is where many young voters live — about a third of adults under 30 regularly get news from TikTok, according to Pew Research. And turning out young voters who are otherwise not particularly politically engaged will be key to winning elections up and down the ballot in November. The left-leaning Working Families Party isn’t exactly a threat to take the White House in 2024, but it is on to a new way of reaching Gen Z voters at a time when the old ways are increasingly useless.

As Marcela Valdes explained this week for The New York Times Magazine, young voters tend to have low turnout rates. “No one is more ambivalent about participating in elections than young people,” she wrote. (It’s worth noting, though, that turnout among Americans ages 18 to 29 was historically high in 2018, 2020 and 2022, according to C.I.R.C.L.E., the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.)…

(18) TOMORROW’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT! Kathryn Schulz doubts we’re prepared for “What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet” as she tells readers of The New Yorker.

…But “space-weather forecaster” is an optimistic misnomer; for the most part, he and his colleagues can’t predict what will happen in outer space. All they can do is try to figure out what’s happening there right now, preferably fast enough to limit the impact on our planet. Even that is difficult, because space weather is both an extremely challenging field—it is essentially applied astrophysics—and a relatively new one. As such, it is full of many lingering scientific questions and one looming practical question: What will happen here on Earth when the next huge space storm hits?

The first such storm to cause us trouble took place in 1859. In late August, the aurora borealis, which is normally visible only in polar latitudes, made a series of unusual appearances: in Havana, Panama, Rome, New York City. Then, in early September, the aurora returned with such brilliance that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up at night and began making breakfast, and disoriented birds greeted the nonexistent morning.

This lovely if perplexing phenomenon had an unwelcome corollary: around the globe, telegraph systems went haywire. Many stopped working entirely, while others sent and received “fantastical and unreadable messages,” as the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin put it. At some telegraph stations, operators found that they could disconnect their batteries and send messages via the ambient current, as if the Earth itself had become an instant-messaging system.

Owing to a lucky coincidence, all these anomalies were soon linked to their likely cause. At around noon on September 1st, the British astronomer Richard Carrington was outside sketching a group of sunspots when he saw a burst of light on the surface of the sun: the first known observation of a solar flare. When accounts of the low-latitude auroras started rolling in, along with reports that magnetometers—devices that measure fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field—had surged so high they maxed out their recording capabilities, scientists began to suspect that the strange things happening on Earth were related to the strange thing Carrington had seen on the sun….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Kathy Sullivan, Lise Andreasen, JeffWarner, Anne Marble, Jean-Paul Garnier, Jeffrey Smith, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JeffWarner.]

LASFS Sends a Platoon to the Storage Wars

Posted on February 8, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Color photo. Taken outside storage unit. Four people looking into cardboard storage box. — LASFSians hard at work: What’s in this box?

[INTRODUCTION. I got a little misty reading Heath Row’s article in The Stf Amateur about LASFS divesting some of its fanzine files. Since the clubhouse was sold in 2016 these decades-old legacies have been in a storage unit, and the club is no longer willing to bear the cost. The good news is part of them will end up filling gaps in the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside, with the remainder hopefully accepted by the University of Iowa’s collection, so the materials will live on. While people were pulling stuff out of the unit they also found some club heirlooms. Heath Row gave File 770 permission to run his account of the work party.]

By Heath Row: Fun with Fanzines. Last weekend, I went to Sylmar to join a handful of LASFSans in cleaning out one of the club’s storage units. At the December board meeting, Elayne Pelz informed the board that the unit’s monthly cost had increased substantially, and the board voted to divest the club of the filing cabinets holding the club’s archives and various clubzine back issues, including De Profundis, APA-L, and LASFAPA.

I went to see how much of those I could salvage, box, and fit in our car, for donation to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside, and the Iowa Archives of the Avant-Garde at the University of Iowa, which has a sizable holding of apae material, including my previous donations. Pelz had previously reached out to potential homes, finding no takers, but I was able to identify and secure interest. The storage unit in question is not one we have ready access to. Materials are stored in large, wooden walk-in crates—pods—that are then warehoused. With a work group involving Pelz, Christian B. McGuire, Cathy and Dean Johnson, Gavin Claypool, and myself, we were able to empty three of five such crates, cutting the club’s storage costs substantially.

Color photo. 14 "banker's" storage boxes stacked against an iron paling fence. — The resulting Banker’s boxes, now in my storage.

Over the course of several hours, I was able to prepare almost 20 Banker’s boxes of De Profundis dating back to 1957 (three boxes), APA-L #1-360 (five boxes), and LASFAPA #1-487 (11 boxes). While no archive wants the hard copy APA-Ls—they’re scanned and available online—the other materials will eventually go to Eaton. Duplicates from their holdings will hopefully go to Iowa.

Color photo of 5 three-drawner steel filing cabinets and 1 two-drawer filing cabinet. Gavin Claypool in background. — Gavin Claypool and some of the filing cabinets for disposal.

Pelz plans to donate early materials from the 1940s and 1950s to Fanac. Cathy Johnson assessed the club archives, and as far as I know, only clubzine and apae materials were set aside for disposal. (I didn’t see any back issues of Shangri L’Affaires, but there weren’t any in the cabinets we got rid of, so they’re still in storage.) After I’d boxed the materials I wanted to salvage, I got a chance to see some other prime holdings of the club. That included William Rotsler’s 1997 Hugo for Best Fan Artist and the urn that held his ashes after cremation. His ashes were subsequently spread by his family; the urn is empty.

Color photo of 1997 Hugo Award trophy. Chrome-plated rocket on marble base shaped like the state of Texas — Rotsler’s 1997 Hugo for Best Fan Artist.

Color photo. Bronze-colored urn for holding the ashes of William Rotsler. — Rotsler’s 1997 Hugo for Best Fan Artist.

I also learned about a new—to me—LASFS-oriented apa, SSAPA, or the Second Sunday APA. It debuted April 14, 2002, and didn’t seem to last long. Does anyone remember anything about the SSAPA? (Joe Zeff, perhaps? You were in #1!) One additional vignette: When we identified the filing cabinets containing LASFAPA, they were locked. There was an assortment of keys and padlocks on hand, but none of the keys worked for those cabinets. I was worried we wouldn’t even be able to open them. I tried to jimmy it open with a flat key ring attachment, and Dean Johnson used what few tools he’d brought. Then we had the storage unit staff drill the lock bolts out! That did the trick.

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