(1) HENKIN OUT AS CHAIR OF SAN ANTONIO EVENT. Anime News Network reports “San Japan Chair Resigns After Claiming PoC Guests Aren’t Profitable”. But Henkin reportedly owns the for-profit corporation that owns San Japan, and still controls the event. (The committee’s full statement is on Facebook.)

Staff of the San Antonio-based convention San Japan announced on Saturday that chairman Dave Henkin will step down immediately following “hurtful and ignorant comments” he made on his private Twitter account. Henkin wrote in a private post that the reason the convention doesn’t book People of Color (PoC) guests is because the convention is often asked to book “sexual predators and popular asshole divas” and those guests bring more money.

“Show up by the hundreds with cash to PoC, then I’ll book them,” Henkin wrote on Thursday. He later followed with a public apology on his Facebook account the same day.

San Japan wrote that the committee will select guests “by a combination of fan submissions, staff recommendations, and formal recommendations made by an equity committee.”

…”Our staffing, programming, and community programs will begin an immediate and comprehensive review of acceptance criteria and any possible biases that exist as barriers to entry to the convention,” the convention staff stated. “Please do not hold the stupidity of one man against the work of countless POC and LGBTQ+ individuals who have worked for over a decade to make this a model conference. We look forward to the opportunity to prove ourselves during our next convention.”

San Japan’s convention board will function without a chairman for the time being and make decisions based on committee…

(2) IT’S IN THE CAN. Just like in a Hallmark Channel Christmas Special, you can have a Doctor for Christmas.Entertainment Weekly has some rare good news: “Doctor Who star Mandip Gill confirms next holiday episode has been shot: ‘We were lucky'”.

Thanks to the pandemic, the immediate future of many shows is in doubt. But Doctor Who star Mandip Gill confirms that the annual special holiday season episode of the time travel series, titled “Revolution of the Daleks,” has already been shot. “I can confirm that,” says Gill, who plays companion Yasmin Khan on the Jodie Whittaker-starring show. “There is a festive episode. We happened to be quite lucky and fit it in, so that will be exciting.”

(3) EXCELLENT TRAILER. Warner Bros. dropped a teaser trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music.

Whoa. The wait is finally over, dudes! Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter star in the first official trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music! Watch now! And remember: be excellent to each other. Directed by Dean Parisot with returning franchise writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, the film will continue to track the time-traveling exploits of William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. and Theodore “Ted” Logan. Yet to fulfill their rock and roll destiny, the now middle aged best friends set out on a new adventure when a visitor from the future warns them that only their song can save life as we know it. Along the way, they will be helped by their daughters, a new batch of historical figures, and a few music legends — to seek the song that will set their world right and bring harmony in the universe.

(4) RARE ACCOMPLISHMENT. N’dea Yancey-Breas’s article “NASA Astronaut From Historic Spacewalk Becomes First Woman to Reach Deepest Part of Ocean” in USA Today, tells how Kathryn Sullivan, who was the first woman to walk in space in 1984, became the first woman to both walk in space and travel to the bottom of the Challenger Trench, the deepest part of the ocean.

…She traveled to the deepest point in the ocean, located in the Western Pacific Ocean, on a submersible called the Limiting Factor piloted by Victor Vescovo of Caladan Oceanic before returning to its mothership the Pressure Drop. Vescovo, who has also piloted the Limiting Factor on a recent dive to the Titanic, became the fourth person to reach Challenger Deep last year.

(5) CAPER CRUSADERS. In “Future Crime: Top 5 Crime Movies In Futuristic Settings” on Criminal Element, Drew Murray, whose new novel is about a murder at a Midwestern Comic Con, discusses five sf movies involving crime and criminals. Number two on the list is —

2. Inception (2010)

Who doesn’t love a professional thief? What if instead of stealing your material possessions they want to take knowledge from your mind?

Leonardo DiCaprio is that cat burglar, slipping into your subconscious while you sleep. In Inception he’s given the ultimate challenge: to plant an idea inside the target’s mind without them knowing. This ingenious concept launches an excellent heist movie set against a mind-bending backdrop that is stunning and surreal, like a Dali painting brought to life.

There’s an excellent supporting cast here with Tom Hardy, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, and Ellen Page, forming the motley crew that every great heist needs. There’s innovative action, using multiple physical dimensions as well as time itself. Sure, it can be confusing if you think too deeply about it, so don’t. Buckle yourself in and just enjoy the ride.

(6) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Kevin Polowy, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story, “Looney Tunes’ Strips Elmer Fudd of Trademark Guns To Acclaim–And Controversy” — says that in the new Looney Tunes show on HBO Max Elmer Fudd no longer has a gun, although the show’s writers say that Fudd continues to violently attack Bugs Bunny without using a firearm.

…”We’re not doing guns, but we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in,” executive producer Peter Browngardt told the New York Times. While Fudd’s disarming is drawing the bulk of media attention, his fellow legacy gunslinger Yosemite Sam has also lost his trusty firearms since the new series launched late last month.

Unsurprisingly, the decision has been met with equal parts accolades and scorn in a country still fiercely divided on gun issues.

“You can’t take away his gun!” Joe Piscopo, the Saturday Night Live comedian-turned-radio host said on Fox News. “Drop an anvil on his head, it’ll be fine. Explode some dynamite, that’ll be fine….”

One of the show’s animators fired back – so to speak: “Looney Tunes Cartoons Artist Addresses Backlash Over Elmer Fudd Gun Ban” at ComicBook.com.

“Do you guys SERIOUSLY care whether or not Elmer Fudd has a gun in our shorts? You know how many gags we can do with guns? Fairly few,” Michael Ruocco, an animator on New Looney Tunes and Looney Tunes Cartoons, tweeted Sunday. “And the best were already done by the old guys. It’s limiting. It was never about the gun, it was about Elmer’s flawed, challenged masculinity.”

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

• June 9, 1870 –One hundred and fifty years ago, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater was published in Paris as Vingt mille lieues sous les mers: Tour du monde sous-marin. The novel was first translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier,  but it was rife with errors and the Reverend cut a quarter of the text. In 1962 Anthony Bonner published a fresh, essentially complete translation of Verne’s masterwork. This edition also included a special introduction written by Ray Bradbury.  The novel has seen several adaptions to film including Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Fifties SF anthology series Tales of Tomorrow adaptation. Captain Nemo gets borrowed by film makers and used in a number of other video and text fictions, always played by a Caucasian actor even though he’s East Indian in the novel. He’s got a lead role in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which was as you made into a film. The film does not use a Caucasian In this role, instead employs Naseeruddin Shah, an Indian actor. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

• Born June 9, 1911 – J. Francis McComas.  With Raymond Healy (1907-1997) edited the pioneering and still excellent anthology Adventures in Time and Space – and got Random House to publish it.  Thus although not having planted the crops, he knew to harvest: they also serve who only sit and edit.  With Anthony Boucher (1911-1969) founded The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the best thing to happen among us since Astounding.  Half a dozen stories of his own.  Afterward his widow Annette (1911-1994) edited The Eureka Years; see it too.  (Died 1978) [JH]
• Born June 9, 1925 – Leo R. Summers.  Twenty covers for Fantastic, eight for Amazing, six for Analog; almost six hundred interiors.  Here is a Fantastic cover; here is one for Analog; here is an interior for H.B. Fyfe’s “Star Chamber” from Amazing.  A fruitful career.  (Died 1985) [JH]
• Born June 9, 1925 — Keith Laumer. I remember his Bolo series fondly and read quite a bit of it. Can’t say which novels at this point though Bolo definitely and Last Command almost certainly. The Imperium and Retief series were also very enjoyable though the latter is the only one I’d re-read at this point. The usual suspects have decent though not complete ebooks listings for him, heavy on the Imperium and Retief series and they’ve just added a decent Bolo collection too. (Died 1993.) (CE)
• Born June 9, 1930 — Lin Carter. He is best known for his work in the 1970s as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. As a writer, His first professional publication was the short story “Masters of the Metropolis”, co-written with Randall Garrett, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957. He would be a prolific writer, average as much as six novels a year. In addition, he was influential as a critic of the fantasy genre and an early historian of the genre. He wrote far too much to me to say I’ve sampled everything he did but I’m fond of his Castillo, Great Imperium and Zarkon series, all great popcorn literature! (Died 1988.) (CE)
• Born June 9, 1934 — Donald Duck, 86. He made his first appearance in “The Wise Little Hen” on June 9, 1934. In this cartoon, Donald and his friend, Peter Pig, lie their way out of helping the titular little hen tend to her corn. You can watch it here. (CE)
• Born June 9, 1943 – Joe Haldeman.  Two dozen novels, eighty shorter stories; ninety published poems.  Seven Hugos, five Nebulas; three Rhyslings; Tiptree (as it then was); Skylark.  Edited Nebula Awards 17.  Pegasus Award for Best Space Opera Song.  SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) Grand Master.  Science Fiction Hall of Fame.  Guest of Honor at – among others – Windycon I and 20, Disclave 21, Beneluxcon 7, ConFiction the 48th Worldcon (1990).  His wide range has its virtues; he’s told how one story sold at a penny a word and five years later was adapted for television at five times as much; also “I don’t have to say Uh-oh, I’d better get back to that novel again; I can always write a poem or something.”  [JH]
• Born June 9, 1949 – Drew Sanders.  Officer of LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Soc., oldest SF club in the world) and later of SCIFI (S. Cal. Inst. for Fan Interests – pronounced skiffy) when it incorporated separately.  First-rate costumer while married to Kathy Bushman; here they are as “Golden Apples of the Sun, Silver Apples of the Moon” in the Masquerade costume contest at Suncon the 35th Worldcon; he served as Masquerade Director himself, a huge task, e.g. at Nolacon II the 46th Worldcon (1988); here he is as the Joker, from Batman; he said, brilliantly, “the Masquerade is like a cross between kabuki and Little Theater”.  Part of the world of LASFS pastimes when that included LASFS Poker, which ran to games like Soft Shoe (because you could shuffle off to bluff a low).  Among few close friends of Bruce Pelz.  [JH]
• Born June 9, 1949 – George Kelley, 71. Notable collector and blogger with 30,000 books in his basement, which he points out include “many books NOT in the Library of Congress.” (OGH)
• Born June 9, 1951 – Jim Glass.  LASFS Librarian in the days of our first Clubhouse; earned our service award, the Evans-Freehafer, 1978; trained his successor Sue Haseltine who earned the Evans-Freehafer herself, 1985; now that’s service.  Associate Technical Fellow at Rocketdyne; an idea man; a steady stream of visitors to his office asked him about propellants and nozzles and mining Lunar polar regolith and Mars.  He liked to quote Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), “The Earth is the cradle of humankind.  But one cannot stay in the cradle forever.”  This drawing by Angelo Dinallo was brought to his memorial.  (Died 2007) [JH] 
• Born June 9, 1954 — Gregory Maguire, 66. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West based off of course the Oz Mythos, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister retelling the tale of Cinderella and Mirror, Mirror, a revisionist retelling of the Snow White tale which is really excellent. Well you get the idea. He’s damn good at this revisionist storytelling. (CE)
• Born June 9, 1963 — David Koepp, 57. Screenwriter for some of the most successful SF films ever done: Jurassic Park (co-written with Michael Crichton, which won the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo at ConAdian), The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of The Worlds and, yes, it made lots of money, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (CE)
• Born June 9, 1966 – Christian McGuire.  This amazing astounding fan chaired eight Loscons (three with Shaun Lyon, one with Cathy Johnson, one with Michelle Pincus, and one with Crys Pretzman), Westercon LXIII, Conucopia the 7th NASFiC (N. Am. SF Con, held when the Worldcon is overseas), and L.A.con IV the 64th Worldcon. He was also a founder of Gallifrey One and chaired, or co-chaired its first 12 years. In between, Fan Guest of Honor at Baycon 2002, Westercon 51, Capricon 29, Loscon 36. He has been a panelist on Kevin Standlee’s Match Game SF. He is still alive. [JH]
• Born June 9, 1967 – Dave McCarty.   Having chaired three Capricons, he chaired a bid to hold the 70th Worldcon in Chicago; when the bid won, he chaired the con, by no means inevitable.  It was Chicon 7 (2012), which by our custom means the seventh Worldcon in the same town with continuity from the same community.  No one else has managed this, or come close; the nearest have been Noreascon IV (62nd Worldcon) and L.A.con IV (64th Worldcon).  Also served as Hugo Awards Administrator, and on the World SF Society’s Mark Protection Committee, among our least conspicuous and most demanding work.  Fan Guest of Honor at Capricon 38, Windycon 38.  [JH]

(9) COMIC CREATORS SIDE WITH BLM. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Veteran comic book writer and editor Gail Simone has challenged fellow comic book writers to sell a piece of art from their collection, with money going to Black Lives Matter. Using the hashtag #ComicWritersChallenge, she’s inspired dozens of writers (including some very high profile creators) to participate. Some of the art that’s been up for auction is the sort of work that is literally never available. This includes such treasures as an original page from Crisis On Infinite Earths, the first page of Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow, a piece by Greg Hildebrandt, a piece autographed by both Neil Gaiman and and Bryan Talbot, a page from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman and more. In one week, they’ve raised more than $200,000 for BLM. 

I wish I had the disposable income to keep bidding on the Bill Sienkiewicz piece. 

It’s worth reading the thread that started it all off. Thread starts here.  

There’s a spreadsheet tracking all the donations and bids: here. (Google Docs)

(10) MCDUFFIE AWARD TAKING NOMINATIONS. ComicsBeat says it’s time to “Send in your 2020 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics nominations now”. Submissions will be taken until September 1.

The Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is now officially accepting submissions for its sixth annual ceremony. Like so many other events, the McDuffie award has shaken off COVID delays, but continues nonetheless. The event will name one winner from five honored finalists, whose work resembles a commitment to excellence and inclusion on and off the page, much like the late Mr. McDuffie’s own efforts to produce entertainment that was representative of and created by a wide scope of human experience.

The Dwayne McDuffie Award’s motto, in his own words, is as follows: “From invisible to inevitable.”

Master of ceremonies, actor Phil LaMarr will announce the winner later this year via video. 

(11) YAKKITY-YAK. Cora Buhlert is back with a “Retro Review: “A God Named Kroo” by Henry Kuttner”.

…Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

“A God Named Kroo” begins with Kroo, a minor village god in the Himalayas. Kroo has a problem, for his last worshipper died fifty years before. Ever since then, Kroo’s temple has lain abandoned, avoided by the villagers. Now the only follower that Kroo has is a yak, which wandered onto the temple grounds one day in search of food and now belongs to Kroo according to ancient tradition….

(12) ONE FOR THE RECORDS. Mike Allen says, “The appearance the four of us just made on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, ’The Big Idea: C. S. E. Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee, Mike Allen’ …sets a new record for the ‘largest number of authors co-writing a single Big Idea piece,’” according to John.

(13) GAIMAN’S TAKE. Neil Gaiman fielded a question about the latest J.K. Rowling controversy.

(14) SCHRÖDINGER’S EGG. Randall Munroe illustrates what he found out from scientists in “Can You Boil an Egg Too Long?” at the New York Times. It’s all very earnest.

…If you boil an egg for five or 10 minutes, it becomes firm and cooked. If you boil it for hours, it becomes rubbery and overcooked. Beyond that, things get a little mysterious.

Eggs are full of coiled-up protein molecules. Heating the proteins makes them uncoil and link up with one another to form a three-dimensional lattice, transforming a runny raw egg into a firm, rubbery cooked egg. This scaffolding helps give baked goods their structure.

(15) ON THE EVE OF STAR TREK. Vintage Everyday posted a gallery of Jay Kay Klein’s masquerade photos from the 1966 Worldcon: “Science Fiction & Fantasy Costume Contestants Posing at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, 1966”.

The three co-chairmen of that Worldcon each represented their city’s fandom; they were Ben Jason of Cleveland, Howard DeVore of Detroit, and Lou Tabakow of Cincinnati. The guest of honor was L. Sprague de Camp and the toastmaster was Isaac Asimov. Of special note: Gene Roddenberry premiered the pilot episode for his TV series Star Trek at Tricon.

This collection is primarily comprised of photographs taken by Jay Kay Klein has he documented Science Fiction & Fantasy fandom at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. The majority of images were taken by Klein while attending Science Fiction & Fantasy conventions and events….

(16) UP FROM THE RANKS. Fanac.org has posted an audio recording of the first segment of the “Fans Into Pros” panel at the 1978 Worldcon.

IguanaCon II, the 36th Worldcon, was held in Phoenix, Arizona in 1978. Guest of Honor Harlan Ellison, along with Robert Silverberg, Dick Lupoff and Ted White participated in a panel on “Fans Into Pros”. This audio recording (enhanced with more than 50 images) is Part 1 of that panel. It’s clear that the participants are old friends, with the combination of sharp wit and long familiarity. There are multilingual puns, sincere stories of friends that helped them become professionals, tales of writerly poverty, editorial benevolence and malevolence, and a ready acknowledgement (in detail!) of how fandom helped these writers become professionals in the field. Well worth listening to for both the content and the occasional conversational gymnastics. This recording courtesy of IguanaCon chairman Tim Kyger.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Olav Rokne, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, Todd Mason, Cat Eldridge, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]