Tag Archives: Maggie Smith

Pixel Scroll 10/8/24 Whirling Pixels Will Make Anyone Who Watches Them Dizzy

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(1) HEARTS OF DARKNESS. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian situates the new Joker movie in the context of ‘dark’ musical more generally: “Singin’ in the nuclear rain: new films push the musical genre in a darker direction”.

A murderous psychopath mournfully sings his heart out in jail. A family living in a below-ground bunker chorus together about the end of the world. A lawyer belts out a number about gender re-assignment surgery. Welcome to the movie musical 2024 – a period, it seems, of radical reinvention for the genre. Never mind the ebullient nature of High Society and other Hollywood golden age musicals, film-makers are now turning to all-singin’, all-dancin’ spectaculars to express something much darker….

(2) NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE. In an interesting footnote to yesterday’s Nobel announcement, the co-winner of the Prize for Medicine, Gary Ruvkin, is also part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes project which is developing instruments that will enable comparison of the DNA of eg microbial life on Mars or other planetary bodies with that of life on Earth. “Medicine Nobel awarded for gene-regulating ‘microRNAs’” in Nature.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to two geneticists who discovered microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that help to control how genes are expressed in multicellular organisms.

Victor Ambros, who works at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and Gary Ruvkun at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston share the prize pot of 11 million Swedish kronor (US$1 million), awarded by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

MicroRNAs perform a multitude of tasks in complex organisms, from embryonic development to cell physiology. Researchers have speculated that they were involved in evolutionary leaps, such as humans’ bulging brains, and they have been implicated in the onset of cancers and other diseases….

(3) THANKS SO MUCH, GUYS (/SARCASM). ABC News reports: “Nobel Prize in physics awarded to two scientists for machine learning discoveries”.

Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.

Hinton, who is known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto, and Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.

“These two gentlemen were really the pioneers,” said Nobel physics committee member Mark Pearce.

The artificial neural networks — interconnected computer nodes inspired by neurons in the human brain — the researchers pioneered are used throughout science and medicine and “have also become part of our daily lives,” said Ellen Moons of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences…

… Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a “huge influence” on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.

“It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he said in an open call with reporters and officials of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects,” Hinton said.

“But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”

The Nobel committee also mentioned fears about the possible flipside.

Moons said that while it has “enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind.”

Hinton, who quit a role at Google so he could speak more freely about the dangers of the technology he helped create, shares those concerns.

“I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control,” Hinton said….

(4) PRISON BANNED BOOKS WEEK. Learn about Prison Banned Books Week 2024 at the website.

Prisons are the largest censors in the United States.

Single state prison systems censor more books than all state schools and libraries combined. Literature gets banned by prison mailroom staff quickly flipping through books as they inspect the mail. These cursory judgments sweep up medical books, drawing and art books, popular magazines, history books and literature of all kinds. Prison censorship prevents people in jails and prisons from reading.

Recently, prisons and jails have been contracting with private telecom companies to provide tablets to detained and incarcerated people. While tablets offer unprecedented access to loved ones and outside allies, they have also been used to curtail paper literature under specious claims that mail is the primary conduit of contraband.

Content on tablets is also highly limited–with titles largely in the public domain whose copyright has lapsed because they were published in the nineteenth century. Despite obtaining these works for free, many prisons and jails charge incarcerated people to access this content. This inaccessible and outdated reading material is used to justify the denial of paper literature, including health and legal news….

… Demand Department of Corrections, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Sheriffs ensure that people held in carceral facilities have equal access to both paper literature and tablets. Reading should not be restricted.

(5) ANOTHER SHUTTLE WILL COMMUTE TO ITS NEW L.A. HOME. “L.A. Gets a Second Space Shuttle and You Can Join the Motorcade” – Los Angeles Magazine tells how.

It’s missing a wing and the tail is a little janky, but jaws are sure to drop when a giant space shuttle cruises the streets of Downey next week en route to its new home. The shuttle mockup Inspiration measures 35 by 122 feet and, while it never went to space, had an outsized impact on the space program and on Los Angeles history.

The idea of a reliable and reusable truck that could haul objects to orbit was around long before the first astronaut reached space. A 1959 proposal called for a vehicle that would be launched on a missile and glide back to earth. By 1972 engineers at Downey’s North American/Rockwell (later Lockheed/Boeing) plant were putting the finishing touches on an aluminum, plywood and plastic mockup of what a full-sized spacecraft might look like. “It was never meant to go into space,” says Ben Dickow, President and Executive Director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center. “It was a valuable tool in figuring out how to build the shuttle and see how things fit while still on the ground.”

A new $30 million pavilion next the Space Center will become the mockups new home, but for now it will reside in a temporary building at the museum. …

The 52-year-old classic will slowly trundle through city streets on October 17, like its younger cousin Endeavour did in 2012, greeting fans, dodging trees, and saying hello to Randy’s Donuts as it traveled from LAX to the California Science Center. Inspiration and Endeavour, the oldest and youngest versions of the Space Shuttle, will now both reside in Los Angeles….

… Along the way, it will pass a Kaiser Hospital, a TJ Maxx, and the 24 Hour Fitness built on the original site. When the old hangars were demolished, Inspiration was moved to the city yard. “The public works guys have been asking for that to be gone for 10 years,” says Dickow. “So, they’re excited to get their parking spaces back.”

Thursday, October 17
Site opens at 8am, shuttle starts moving at 9am, speakers at 10am

Columbia Memorial Space Center
12400 Columbia Way, Downey, CA 90242
Bellflower Blvd. will be closed for the move between Imperial Highway and Washburn Road.

(6) CHIMERA BRIGADE TEASER. “’The Chimera Brigade’ Unleashes a WWII Era of Superheroes in Stunning Animation” – Animation Magazine sets the frame.

…Based on the graphic novel by Serge Lehman & Fabrice Colin (published by L’Atalante), The Chimera Brigade is an 8 x 40′ saga directed by Louis Leterrier & Antoine Charreyron (duration: 8 x 40’) which imagines a world where Marie Curie’s work with radium creates the world’s first superheroes on the eve of the Second World War. The project was recently presented at the 2024 Cartoon Forum. The project is produced by Ron Dyens for Sacrebleu and Cilvy Aupin for Ciel de Paris.

About the Series: The Chimera Brigade is an animated fantasy adventure series with an international scope. The universal nature of the subject matter, the mythology of superhumans, and the fundamental opposition between Magic and Science — ingredients that have been at the very heart of fiction — all bring a powerful and exciting narrative thrust to this reinterpretation of history. This story will sweep audiences away on a thrilling journey through a familiar period in History, seen through an entirely new lens.

The Chimera Brigade will give a new take on the interwar period, covering the rise of fascism in Europe up to Hitler’s accession to power. It holds up a mirror to the tragic reality that tainted that era, its blind spots and stances, resonating with modern history, an example of how the fate of the entire world can sometimes crystallize in the neuroses of a single man.

(7) ONE MARYLAND – ONE BOOK. [Item by Maria Markham Thompson, CPA.]  The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) welcomes everyone to join in a discussion of What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J. A. Chancy on Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.

This book was chosen by Maryland Humanities as the 2024 One Maryland One Book (OMOB) to bring together diverse people in communities across the state through the shared experience of reading the same book.

The book discussion will be held in person at the BSFS Building, 3310 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21224. The building is fully accessible to all people and easily reached by several bus lines. Anyone who cannot travel to the building is invited to join the discussion via Zoom. Details including link and password are available on the BSFS website, www.bsfs.org.

(8) ROBERT J. RANDISI (1951-2024). Author, editor and screenwriter Robert J. Randisi has died reports Mystery Fanfare.

Bob was born August 24, 1951. He wrote over 650 books in the mystery, western, adventure, and fantasy genres, as well as being an Editor and Screenwriter. Bob founded The Private Eye Writers of America in 1981, where he created the Shamus Award. He also co-founded The American Crime Writers League; co-founded Western Fictioneers, and co-created the Peacemaker Award. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 8, 1920 — Frank Herbert. (Died 1986.)

By Paul Weimer: I read Dune thanks to the original Dune movie, even if I didn’t manage to see it for years. Once upon a time magazines like Starlog had multiple features over multiple months on SFF movies, and an issue of Starlog with Sting on the cover drew my eye. What was this movie? Who was “Paul” anyway?  The movie came and went in theaters before I got to see it, but I came away with the key fact that this was based on a novel. 

And so I found the novel in the library and read it. And it became one of my heart books, because I hit it at just the right time for it to speak to me. I didn’t get, until a re-read and reading the sequels, how much Dune actually critiques its Chosen One narrative, and how much of a trap Paul walks into, but I was swept away by the characters, setting and infinitely recursive labyrinth of worldbuilding.  It was on the re-reads that I’ve seen just how powerful, potent and nuanced Herbert’s novel was. 

The next few novels beyond the original Dune only reinforced that belief, as I found myself endless fascinated by what Herbert created. I firmly believe people could and will remake Dune in other media for decades to come, and bring new and different perspectives on it, all of them equally valid — and all of them equally unable to capture the entirety of the novel, and its sequels. I eventually sought out some of Herbert’s other work and have found much of it much more of its time.  The surreal The Santaroga Barrier for instance, feels like a counterculture version of Walden Two. The strange giant insects of The Green Brain. The city prison of The Dosadi Experiment. But frankly, it is Dune and its sequels (and I owe myself a re-read of the entire series) that holds me to this day.

Frank Herbert

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) MINTY-FRESH HORROR. “Mouthwashing is a horror gem set on a stranded courier ship in space” – a Polygon-recommended game.

A good horror game scares you in the moment, but a great horror game lingers in the back of your mind well past the end credits. We’ve been blessed in recent years with a plethora of excellent horror games, but with the arrival of October comes even more spooky games to get us nice and scared before Halloween. Mouthwashing immediately gripped me with its jarring, off-putting visuals, and kept me pinned under the weight of mounting dread.

Mouthwashing is a three-hour narrative experience that takes place on the Tulpar, a Pony Express courier ship in the middle of a long-haul trip through space to deliver cargo….

…The game jumps around on the timeline, showing us the crew’s dynamic before the crash, and the mounting despair after the disaster. Months after the crash, still lost in space, the crew is eager to find an alternate source of food as their supplies dwindle. The captain was badly burned in the crash, leaving him reliant on a dwindling supply of painkillers. No one is coming for them, they’re running low on supplies, and all they have in the cargo bay is crate after crate of mouthwash….

… If this nightmare scenario has you even slightly intrigued, I heartily recommend checking out Mouthwashing on Steam or Itch.io. The game opens with a short message with the ship’s name, the delivery status, and an ominous note: “I hope this hurts.” It certainly did, and that’s why my mind is still stuck in far space on board the Tulpar….

(12) NO MORE ORDERS OF ‘KAOS’. Variety reports “’Kaos’ Canceled After One Season at Netflix”.

“Kaos,” the Greek mythology comedy series that premiered in late August, has been canceled at Netflix, Variety has learned.

The show premiered on August 29 and starred Jeff Goldblum as the all mighty Zeus, albeit in a more whimsical and insecure portrayal. In a modern-day setting, Zeus has chained up Prometheus after interfering his with godly rule over humanity. Prometheus then attempts to overthrow Zeus with the help of three humans, Eurydice, Ariadne and Caeneus. Charlie Covell (“The End of the F***ing World”) wrote the entire eight-episode series….

(13) JUPITER WILL HAVE TO WAIT. “Hurricane Milton’s Imminent Landfall Officially Delays NASA Mission to Jupiter” – Gizmodo has the story.

NASA’s Europa Clipper, a mission set to probe Jupiter’s icy moon, will no longer launch on Thursday due to a Category 5 hurricane making its way towards Florida.

The spacecraft’s launch window opens October 10 and remains open until November 6. The Europa Clipper was supposed to launch on the 10th, but the unexpected rapid development of Hurricane Milton means the launch is officially postponed. In a release, NASA stated that the probe and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket which will launch it into space are safely secured in a Kennedy Space Center hangar. NASA did not immediately state a revised launch date for the spacecraft….

(14) GRAPHENE: MAYBE NOT QUITE VIBRANIUM. [Item by Steven French.] Has graphene lived up to the hype? Let’s find out: “Graphene at 20: still no sign of the promised space elevator, but here’s how this wonder material is quietly changing the world” at The Conversation.

…Incredible claims about its properties made it sound like something out of a Stan Lee comic. Stronger than steel, highly flexible, super-slippery and impermeable to gases. A better electronic conductor than copper and a better thermal conductor than diamond, as well as practically invisible and displaying a host of exotic quantum properties. 

Graphene was hailed as a revolutionary material, promising ultra-fast electronics, supercomputers and super-strong materials. More fantastical claims have included space elevators, solar sails, artificial retinas, even invisibility cloaks….

(15) THEORETICAL HOLES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature, a report that primordial black holes, which are smaller than their better-known cousins, visit the inner Solar System once a decade, simulations suggest.  “Black holes as big as atoms might be speeding through the Solar System”.

Microscopic black holes might whizz through the inner Solar System once a decade — and scientists should be able to detect them

Some physicists think that primordial black holes — tiny, super-dense bodies created soon after the Big Bang — could account for the 85% of the Universe’s mass that is invisible, known as dark matter. Studies have ruled out the existence of very heavy and very light primordial black holes, but testing whether they exist in the asteroid-mass range has been challenging.

Tung Tran at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and his colleagues investigated how the gravitational pull of a passing atom-sized, asteroid-mass black hole would affect the Solar System. They simulated how much the black hole would shift planets off their usual trajectories and for how long. If primordial black holes do make up all dark matter, the team calculated that fly-bys should create an observable perturbation around once a decade.

Researchers could look for such blips in existing data — such as Earth-to-Mars measurements made by Mars orbiters — and use them to put limits on how abundant such black holes must be, they add.

See the primary research paper here: “Close encounters of the primordial kind:”  

(16) DIANA RIGG, MAGGIE SMITH SING TOGETHER. (MOSTLY DIANA RIGG). [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via my YouTube feed, showing that even algorithms can be right twice a day. From the 1982 (or 1981, depending who ya believe) film of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Evil Under the Sun. (Peter Ustinov as Poirot.) “You’re The Top” is from Cole Porter’s musical Anything Goes, btw. “Diana Rigg & Maggie Smith sing Cole Porter’s ‘You’re the Top’”.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Paul Weimer, N., 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 9/27/24 Pixels Scroll Out Of The Sky And They Stand There

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(1) INUNDATED BY CLIMATE CHANGE. Author of the Southern Reach novels Jeff VanderMeer says “Hurricane Helene: Storm Decision Fatigue Is Getting to Me” in an opinion piece for the New York Times (unlocked article).

As the tropical disturbance that became Hurricane Helene moved north toward Florida’s Gulf Coast on Tuesday, I had an argument with myself about evacuating from Tallahassee: If I ran from the storm, would I get caught up in it anyway? I was thinking of Charlize Theron’s character in the movie “Prometheus,” crushed by a spaceship that crashed while she ran in a straight line away from it.

Stricken by the thought of being trapped (or worse) in my house by falling trees, I decided to drive to Greenville, S.C., with my elderly cat, but not without extreme anxiety. Many Floridians like me who were not under mandatory evacuation orders remember Hurricane Michael in 2018 and other recent unpredictable, dangerous hurricanes. For us, decisions about whether to stay or leave and where to go have become more tortuous in ways that may be difficult to understand for those who don’t experience hurricanes regularly.

Many don’t have the resources to flee monstrous storms such as Helene. But for those who can evacuate, there is a sense of not being able to outrun them or that the destinations may become just as perilous. Every possibility feels both right and wrong and also like disaster deferred for only days — while dithering only shrinks the window for escape…

(2) A CROSS-GENRE TO BEAR. “Dean Koontz: On Writing Novels That Make Your Publisher Extremely Uneasy” at CrimeReads.

I am a bad boy. I have spread mustard on a sandwich as much as ten days after its use-by date. I have loitered where signs are posted that forbid loitering, not because I wanted to loiter; I was in a hurry to be elsewhere, but I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me where I couldn’t loiter. I have washed garments that I was commanded to “dry clean only.” Really, when it comes to obeying the rules, I am a dangerous nonconformist. This has also been true in my writing life, and while I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed, either.

When I began to write cross-genre novels with Strangers in the early 1980s, my publishers knew I was doing something unconventional, and they knew they didn’t like it, but at first, they couldn’t put a name to it or explain why such work made them uneasy.

Initially, I didn’t realize it was the manuscript of Strangers they found off-putting. I thought it must be something about me that repelled them. Something about my face? Everything about my face? Or could it be that I shouldn’t have eaten an anchovy and horseradish sandwich on garlic bread for breakfast that morning?

No. It was Strangers that made their eyes water and induced in them a shortness of breath equal to that of end-stage bacterial pneumonia. The novel was a thriller with a science-fiction premise, a love story, and a paranoid conspiracy tale, written as a mainstream novel, with a theme of transcendence. I was pressured to cut the 940-page manuscript to 450 pages and turn it into a flat-out sci-fi horror novel with a smaller cast and a theme of existential dread. I had considerable respect for the publisher, but I knew why I had done what I’d done, and I knew it wouldn’t work if half the text was cut….

(3) NYT ACKNOWLEDGES GAIMAN NEWS. Yesterday’s New York Times covered the sexual assault allegations made against Neil Gaiman and their effect on film and TV projects: “Production Linked to Neil Gaiman Is Halted Amid Sexual Assault Claims” (behind a paywall).

The production of a movie based on a book by the noted British author Neil Gaiman has been paused by Disney amid allegations that five women have made against him relating to conduct from 1986 to 2022, including one woman who said Mr. Gaiman groped her on a tour bus in 2013 and later paid her $60,000.

The women shared their allegations, which included claims of sexual assault, groping and kissing, on the podcast “Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman.” Mr. Gaiman, 63, has told the podcast he denies any wrongdoing.

The allegations played a role in pausing the production of “The Graveyard Book,” an adaptation of the eponymous young adult novel by Mr. Gaiman, according to a person at Disney. But the allegations were not the sole reason that the production, which was in development, was paused. Disney would not provide any additional reasons.

Another production related to Mr. Gaiman has been canceled for unspecified reasons. “Dead Boy Detectives,” a TV series based on a comic book by Mr. Gaiman, will not return for a second season, according to Netflix, which declined to share why the series would not return. There have been no changes to the Netflix series “The Sandman,” which is based on a separate comic book series by Mr. Gaiman.

Amazon would not say whether there would be any changes to “Good Omens,” a series based on a novel by Mr. Gaiman written in collaboration with Terry Pratchett.

The turmoil around the productions linked to the author has come amid the launch of the podcast, which in July and August released six episodes that detail the women’s accounts. The series has drawn widespread attention among fans, in literary circles and in the entertainment industry….

(4) MARI NESS ON GLASGOW 2024 ACCESSIBILITY.  “Glasgow 2024 – a Worldcon for our Futures – though perhaps not disabled futures” by Mari Ness at Blogging with Dragons.

…Glasgow 2024, a Worldcon for our Futures, had this statement on their Accessibility page:

“The Accessibility Team is committed to providing an equitable experience for all disabled members of Worldcon. Support will be available for those with mobility needs, visual impairments, hearing loss or differences, and various types of neurodiversity. “

A message from the con chair added this:

“Considering access, inclusion and diversity as integral to Glasgow 2024 has created an environment where we think carefully about what Worldcon can become – a convention to represent all of our futures as well as a place where everyone can celebrate, and an event where we can take these realities joyfully forwards after it is over.”

This all sounded, if not entirely reassuring, at least hopeful. So I bought my tickets.

It was not, in fact, an equitable experience for all disabled members of Worldcon…

Ness then details more than a half dozen accessibility difficulties she faced at the convention. She raised these issues to the committee with this result:

…On August 12, 2024, my last day at Glasgow 2024, I filed an official complaint, in person, about the con’s multiple accessibility issues. I was assured that this complaint would be escalated to the appropriate people for a response.

As of today [September 22], I have not received a response.

(5) SHADOW BANNED. [Item by Steven French.] For Banned Books Week, Leeds Central Library has published a list of books that were ‘banned’ by the Library in 1975 and which were only available to the public on request (although the list was not itself made know to said public before an alternative newspaper published it!). It included not only the likes of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal but one Brian Aldiss (his Booker Prize long-listed novel The Hand Reared Boy was deemed too racy for the good burghers of Leeds). “Banned Books in 1975 – The Secret Library” at Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog.

(6) MAKING MONEY WITH ROBOTECH. CBR.com looks at “Jim Lee’s Revival of an ’80s Mecha Sensation — Robotech!”

…As many fans are aware, the show that became known as Robotech in the West is actually an amalgam series of sorts. Screenwriter Carl Macek was hired to adapt the 1982 series Super Dimension Fortress Macross for daily American syndication. Still, the weekly series didn’t have the requisite 65 episodes required for a syndicated series. A decision was made to pair Macross with two shorter anime, 1984’s Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and 1983’s Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, to create an 85-episode series.

The disparate continuities would be explained as time jumps between episodes, but this didn’t make things easier regarding marketing and promotion. Complicating matters for the brand would be American model kit manufacturer Revell’s existing deal with the producers of Macross and a few other anime studios for a line of mecha scale-model kits imported from Japan. Revell called their two model lines Robotech Defenders and Robotech Changers. Revell even had a deal with DC Comics to promote Robotech Defenders as a limited series….

… While Robotech never reached the heights of Transformers‘ American popularity, the series had a devoted fan following. As other 1980s properties received comic book revamps in the early 2000s, it seemed inevitable that Robotech would join the fad. After bouncing around various indie publishers in the ’90s, the Robotech rights landed with Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint circa 2002. As Harmony Gold creative director Tommy Yune bluntly stated in the first WildStorm release’s introductory text piece: “Everybody’s jumping on the ’80s bandwagon.” Harmony Gold viewed the reignited enthusiasm for ’80s properties as an opportunity to reboot Robotech, declaring the WildStorm series a new canon that superseded any preceding tie-in material….

(7) THE LATE DAVID GRAHAM. [Item by Steve Green.] Talking Pictures TV, the UK-based family-run cable channel which specializes in vintage television and movies, has posted an interview on its ‘Encore’ website with actor David Graham, who died September 20 at the age of 99. Graham featured in many of Gerry Anderson’s puppet series (he is best known for playing the chauffeur Parker in Thunderbirds) and also Doctor Who (voicing early Daleks and appearing on screen opposite both William Hartnell and Tom Baker). “Talking Thunderbirds: Voice Artist, David Graham”. Registration required.

In this Encore exclusive peak behind the curtain, we talk to the very talented David Graham, as he discusses his career, where the inspiration for Parker’s voice came from, being the voice of the Daleks, and other varieties of characters he’s voiced!

(8) VERSUS CLICKERS. “The Last of Us Season 2 Trailer: Joel, Ellie Return to Fight Clickers” – Variety sets the frame:

HBO released the first trailer for “The Last of Us” Season 2, featuring the return of Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, the two zombie apocalypse survivors from the hit video game adaptation.

The eight-time Emmy-winning series (with 24 total nominations) chronicles the story of Joel and Ellie as they navigate a world overrun with zombies infected with a parasitic fungus — not to mention the ruthless vigilantes, mercenaries and cannibals just as desperate to survive.

Here’s the official logline for Season 2: “After five years of peace following the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.”…

(9) MAGGIE SMITH (1934-2024). Actress Maggie Smith, well-known to fans from Hook and Harry Potter, died September 27 at the age of 89. The AP News obituary says: “…Smith drily summarized her later roles as ‘a gallery of grotesques,’ including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: ‘Harry Potter is my pension.’”…

Read more about her memorable roles in Olivia Rutigliano’s “A Requiem for Maggie Smith” at CrimeReads.

…She began her career as a stage actress, with her earliest breakout role as Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier in Othello at the National Theater in 1962. When she reprised the role in the 1965 film adaptation, she was nominated for her first Academy Award. She would go on to be nominated for six, winning for two.

Maggie Smith was not in many crime movies. But she was often the most memorable part of the ones that she was in: Dora Charleston in Murder by Death, Miss Bowers in Death on the Nile, and Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park. And we cannot forget her turn as the stern, intolerant, but ultimately-supportive Mother Superior of St. Katherine’s in Sister Act. She could whip that steeliness into provincial villainy just as easily as stony protectiveness or begrudging kindness. She had that twinkle in her eye, an overwhelming wittiness, and a knack for nuance that was so razor sharp that she could be flip and solemn at the same time, an affective style that would become her trademark.

Since the announcement of Smith’s passing, earlier today, I have watched an outpouring of tributes and trivia about her: an endless, adoring parade of praise and respect. Maggie Smith was one of those actors who openness to many different kinds of roles kept reinventing her for younger and younger generations. By the time she appeared as the no-nonsense Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, my generation had already seen her as the elderly Wendy in Hook, Mrs. Medlock in The Secret Garden, and many others….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: “The Enterprise Incident” (1968)

“The Enterprise Incident” I believe was truly one of the classic episodes of the Star Trek series. Airing fifty-six years ago on NBC on this date, it was scripted by D.C. Fontana, one of eleven episodes that she would write including “Catspaw” that I dearly love, and directed by John Meredyth Lucas as the second episode of the third and final season.

If you’ve forgotten, the story is that Kirk violated the neutral zone. The Romulans have a new bit of technology called a “cloaking device” (just go with the idea please). Kirk pretends to be crazy, then pretends to be a Romulan to get to it. Meanwhile, Spock pretends to be in love. But is he pretending? Who knows. It’s fun to watch, isn’t it? 

D. C. Fontana says she based her script very loosely upon the Pueblo incident but I’ll be damned I can see this. It’s a Cold War espionage thriller at heart and most excellently played out. You did note the Romulnan commander never gets named? Later novels including Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz gave her the name of Liviana Charvanek. 

Speaking of Vulcans, Fontana deliberately kept the romance between her and Spock low key to the finger games they did. And then there’s Roddenberry’s idea, never done, Spock “raining kisses” on the bare shoulders of the Romulan commander. Oh awful.

Season three had no budget, I repeat, no budget for frills, so this episode suffered several times from that. Kirk was supposed to have surgery done on him after dying but that got deep sixed, and McCoy was supposed to accompany him back to the Romulan ship but my, oh my ears are expensive, aren’t they? 

Fontana would co-write with Derek Chester a sequel: Star Trek: Year Four—The Enterprise Experiment, a graphic novel published by IDW Publishing in 2008.

Critics then and now love it.

It’s airing on Paramount + as is about everything else in the Trek universe. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bliss can’t risk the distraction
  • Breaking Cat News is part of the fandom (and even gets the salute correct).
  • Eek! runs into the standard fix question.
  • Carpe Diem has misorders.
  • Macanudo objects to a wishful tradition.
  • Tom Gauld finds out a lovely-sounding idea is overrated.

(12) IT’S ALL TRUE, I SWEAR BY MY TATTOO. NPR research reveals “More than 15 markers claim aliens and UFOs have visited Earth”. One of them is in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The full citation is here: “Pascagoula UFO 1973 Historical Marker”. A full-size photo of the marker is here.

…“It was the evening of October 11, 1973 when two local shipyard workers went fishing,” the marker says, at the edge of the Pascagoula River.

The sign says Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker spotted a football-shaped craft, which took them aboard.

“Inside the craft, Hickson was examined by a robotic eye, then both men were deposited back on the river bank and the space ship shot away,” the marker says. Stamped at the bottom is the seal of the city of Pascagoula and the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society….

There’s no way to really know what happened that night in 1973, when the men waded headfirst into one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Are we alone?

But the marker is now one of at least 15 that say, without hesitation, that aliens have come to visit Earth.

They join more than 180,000 other historical markers dotting the country’s landscape, and NPR found they wouldn’t be the first to claim something that may, or may not, be true.

There’s a marker in Massachusetts that claims the town was once home to a real, live wizard. New York has a marker about a ghost that plays the fiddle on a bridge in the moonlight….

(13) SUPER DUBIOUS. Ryan George decides “Invisibility is a Sketchy Superpower”.

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