Tag Archives: Margaret Atwood

Pixel Scroll 5/13/25 The Psy Who Clicked In From The Scroll

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(1) ATWOOD’S FREEDOM TO PUBLISH AWARD. The Guardian reports an award acceptance speech in which “Margaret Atwood says she cannot remember another time ‘when words themselves have felt under such threat’”.

Margaret Atwood has said she cannot remember another point in her lifetime “when words themselves have felt under such threat”.

“Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power” the 85-year-old novelist said in her acceptance speech for the freedom to publish prize at the British Book awards.

“Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade,” she added. “The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

The British Book awards, colloquially known as the Nibbies, are a set of prizes for authors, illustrators and book industry professionals run by the publishing trade magazine, The Bookseller. …

…Though Atwood did not attend the ceremony in London, she recorded a video acceptance speech to be shown when she was announced winner of the freedom to publish award, which is supported by freedom of expression campaign organisation Index on Censorship and was established in 2022 to “highlight the growing threats to writers, publishers and booksellers, and to amplify those who fight back”.

(2) FIGHTING BACK. “Jamie Lee Curtis just wanted an AI ad removed, not to become the ‘poster child of internet fakery’” – at the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t expect to be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence debate in Hollywood. But she didn’t have a choice.

The Oscar-winning actor recently called out Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on social media, saying the company ignored her requests to take down a fake AI-generated advertisement on Instagram that had been on the platform for months.

The ad, which used footage from an interview Curtis gave to MSNBC about January’s Los Angeles area wildfires, manipulated her voice to make it appear that she was endorsing a dental product, Curtis said.

“I was not looking to become the poster child of internet fakery, and I’m certainly not the first,” Curtis told The Times by phone Tuesday morning.

The ad has since been removed.

What happened to Curtis is part of a larger issue actors are dealing with amid the rise of generative AI technology, which has allowed their images and voices to be altered in ways they haven’t authorized. Those changes can be wildly misleading….

(3) DOOR DRAGONS AT WORK. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] They told him, both of them, to Go Away. From NPR: “The President has named a new Acting Librarian of Congress. It’s his former defense lawyer.”

Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, has been appointed as the acting Librarian of Congress by President Trump, according to a spokesperson at the Department of Justice….

Blanche has no experience working in libraries or archives,…

An employee at the Librarian of Congress, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said two men showed up this morning with a letter saying that Blanche was appointed the acting Librarian of Congress, Brian Nieves was appointed acting assistant librarian, and Paul Perkins was appointed the acting Register of Copyrights and Director of the Copyright Office. The men were not allowed into offices and left soon after, the employee said, adding that the Library of Congress is a legislative branch agency, and has not yet received direction from Congress on how to move forward….

Publishers Weekly offers more detail about the turnover: “U.S. Executive and Legislative Branches Battle at the LoC”.

Does the future of the free world come down to who oversees the Library of Congress? Events of the past five days suggest as much, with a pitched battle over who may serve as interim Librarian and strong words from the House of Representatives.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was summarily fired, via email, late in the day on May 8. At the time of her removal, Hayden was serving a 10-year appointment that would have concluded in 2026, and her sudden ouster—without clear grounds for dismissal—was met with nationwide rage and disappointment from librarians, members of Congress, and the general public. Robert R. Newlen was named acting Librarian to replace Hayden, according to LoC seniority regulations and rules for succession.

Newlen has substantial experience in the agency, having worked at the Library of Congress from 1975–2017, and having been appointed (by Hayden) interim director of the Congressional Research Service in 2023. Newlen is a past member of the American Library Association executive board, a senior trustee of the ALA endowment, and 2016 recipient of the ALA Medal of Excellence.

One of Newlen’s first official acts as Librarian was to inform staff that the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, had been fired Saturday, May 10. Perlmutter, also appointed by Hayden, had served in the role since 2020. The Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress and likewise belongs to the U.S. legislative branch, and the director is appointed to the post by the Librarian. As of May 12, no new acting director had been identified.

Newlen served for all of one weekend before the Trump administration attempted to remove him too. The New York Times reported that deputy attorney general Todd Blanche—already in a prominent Department of Justice role—had been named acting Librarian on May 12, and immediately thereafter was embroiled in a standoff with Newlen. Politico broke the news that Newlen “disputed a change that had been made in an email to library staff Monday morning” and did not cede the role to Blanche, calling for Congress and not the executive branch to direct the process….

(4) EARLY RETURNS ON MURDERBOT. “’Murderbot’ Review: Apple’s New Comedy Sci-Fi Is A Great Vehicle For Alexander Skarsgard, But Not Without Its Problems” at Forbes. Beware mild spoilers.

…The most endearing thing about Murderbot is it’s / his (nobody quite knows how to refer to SecUnit when it comes to pronouns, a running gag) obsession with The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which is basically the show you’d get if Star Trek and Days Of Our Lives had a lovechild. The show has 2,797 episodes and we get little glimpses of them in action because Murderbot spends every waking moment glued to his entertainment feed, and is annoyed when pesky humans and their problems get in the way…

(5) PAGERTURNERS. “People who prefer physical books over ebooks usually display these 7 behaviors, says psychology” – Global English Editing has the story. First on the list:

1) They value the sensory experience

You see, for physical book lovers, reading is more than just deciphering words. It’s a sensory affair.

The smell of the paper, especially in a new book fresh off the shelf or an old one rich with history, is intoxicating to them.

The tactile stimulation of flipping through pages, feeling the texture under their fingertips, provides a satisfaction that swiping on a screen simply can’t match.

And there’s something about hearing the gentle rustle of pages turning or seeing your progress as you slowly traverse from the right side of the book to the left that makes reading a physical book uniquely rewarding.

It’s this immersive, multi-sensory experience that often keeps them loyal to traditional books, despite the convenience of digital alternatives. So if you’re someone who relishes these sensory delights, it’s safe to say you might be a physical book lover at heart….

(6) LACON V RATES TO INCREASE. Memberships in the 2026 Worldcon will cost more on June 15.

LAcon V membership rates go up on June 15th!

Right now, full attending adult memberships are $200 and will increase to $230. (All other memberships will remain the same price for now.) Our installment plan is also currently available for full adult attending memberships!

Visit the registration page on the website to get your membership before prices go up: https://www.lacon.org/register

Take advantage of the installment plan right now: https://www.lacon.org/2025/05/10/installmentplan

(7) CANARY IN THE COALMINE: USING “VIRTUAL VOICE”. [Item by Francis Hamit.] This link is for my new audiobook It is a test. https://a.co/d/07HmIQf

I am coming up on the 60th anniversary of matriculating at University of Iowa in Iowa City. I was originally a Drama major but between then and when I left to join the US Army Security Agency in 1967 several events occurred that changed my life. I discovered writing and my true vocation. Despite a history of D+’s in English it turned out I could write. I’m dyslexic but I could hear the music. Perhaps it was all of those plays I was in. I went from a Basic Playwrighting class to the Undergraduate Writers Workshop. During those two years, as the Vietnam War heated up, I saw the first draft card burning, indulged in nude photography (them not me) and took up undercover anti-narcotics work.

About ten years ago I wrote a short memoir about all of it, The Perfect Spy, which did not get much traction there because no one would review it. It was too shocking. No one wanted to know that their parents or grandparents actually did “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”.

Kirkus gave me a very nice review.

And now, out of nowhere, Amazon has offered me a “virtual voice” audiobook.  It’s not the robotic voice they used to have but AI enhanced.  Actually sounds human and had features  that allow for variations in pace.  Google gave me something similar for Starmen but it was a long slog and the voice selection was not great. Amazon’s voice are IMO better and easier to work with.  And this is probably the future in small press conversions.  When we did The Shenandoah Spy in 2008 I did a 50-50 deal with Gail Shalan on ACX. That was 40 hours of trial and error for both of us and practically no sales.  It was great for Gail. She went on to become an audiobook superstar.  I can’t afford her now but I’m very proud of having given her that first chance.

I think Virtual Voice may be my solution. No one reads anymore. Audiobooks are a big chunk of the market and Amazon controls the price to a narrow range.  I am hoping that some people will find my adventures as a young man in Iowa worth listening to.  Sixty years is not that long ago.

If you want a science fiction connection, Nicholas Meyer was a classmate.  I had a couple of things to say about him too.

(8) LET’S DO THE TIME LORD AGAIN. “Your Name Engraved in Circular Gallifreyan – Metal, Glow Reactive Paint. Doctor Who Cosplay. Prop Replica. Game Piece. Geek Gift. Pin Badge.”

Solid metal disc with your name translated into Circular Gallifreyan, then laser engraved and filled with Ultra Violet reactive paint. We can engrave this in Copper, Brass, Stainless Steel or Aluminium. If you want a different size metal than the options listed, please message us and we can help 🙂 We’ve also got a Titanium listing of this in our store, see the “Sci-Fi” section.

You can use this link to translate into Gallifreyan: https://adrian17.github.io/Gallifreyan/. I thought “That could be fun” and checked it out. They tell me this is how File 770 reads in that language.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 13, 1994 — The Crow

Thirty-one years ago on the evening, The Crow premiered. I saw it at the theatre and yes, I liked it quite a bit. I’m not a horror fan but I found this quite impressive.  I hadn’t realized until now that it was co-written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow but I’ll get back to that in awhile. 

It was directed by Alex Proyas who would later be nominated for a Hugo at Aussiecon Three (1999) for Dark City. (The Truman Show won that year.) And he’d also later direct I, Robot.

The Crow was produced by Jeff Most, Edward R. Pressman and Grant Hill. Most would produce the sequels, The Crow: City of Angels, The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Pressman was the uncredited executive producer for Conan the Destroyer and Grant Hill was involved in the Matrix films plus V for Vendetta.

Of course, the movie starred Brandon Lee, an actor who gave the film a certain tragic edge by dying. 

The other major roles were held by Ernie Hudson and Michael Wincott. Ernie you know, but Michael Wincott has largely played villains in such films as Alien Resurrection and The Three Musketeers (remember I hold them to be genre). 

It was written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow (lots of forgettable horror in my opinion other than this). Checking IMDB, I see Shirley has written far too many screenplays too list all of them here, so I’ll just note his work on Deep Space Nine, Batman Beyond and Poltergeist: The Legacy. Though definitely not genre, he also wrote one episode of the IMDb Red Shoe Diaries. Really he did. 

His Red Shoes Diaries episode? IMDb says it was, “A beautiful astronaut, trapped in a dying spacecraft a million miles from home, makes tender love for the last time with her co-pilot as she ruminates about the sensual path of her life that led her to the adventure of outer space.”

(The only continuing role in the Wikipedia Red Shoe Diaries was Jake Winters played by David Duchovny in his first true ongoing role as it ran sixty episodes. The framing device is him as a narrator with a back story to explain why he’s introducing and offering closing commentary on these stories. Serling he ain’t though. Yes I did see a few when they originally aired back in the Nineties on Showtime. Softcore would be putting it mildly to describe them.)

The Crow did well at the box office making nearly a hundred million against twenty-four million in costs. it spawned a franchise of sorts as it has three sequels, (The Crow: City of Angels,  The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer) plus a reboot last year, The Crow, which also based  off the 1989 comic book series by James O’Barr. 

So what did the critics think? 

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune had this to say: “What’s scary about The Crow is the story and the style itself: American Gothic, Poe-haunted nightmare, translated to the age of cyberpunk science fiction, revenge movies and outlaw rock ‘n’ roll, all set in a hideously decaying, crime-ridden urban hell.” 

Caryn James of the New York Times was impressed though not as ecstatic: “It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.”

It holds a most exemplary ninety percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

The only place it’s streaming is on Pluto with ads. No, just no.

Yes, there are copies of it on YouTube. As always, any links to those will be deleted with extreme prejudice as it is very much under copyright. Really they will. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS. The Official Steranko Fan Page on Facebook has put out a “Call for Contributions to the Steranko History of Comics, Volume 3 and Updated Editions!”

Comic art fans, collectors, and historians: We are thrilled to announce that Jim Steranko is working on Volume 3 of the acclaimed Steranko History of Comics. As Special Advisor to this project, I’m excited to share that Volumes 1 and 2 will also be updated with new supplemental material, and all three volumes are planned to be published in full color.

We are seeking contributions of rare and original materials related to the Golden Age of Comics, including documents, original covers, photos, color comps, special pages, presentations, character/costume designs, and unpublished images. As with the original Volumes 1 and 2, the focus is on bold, iconic graphics and behind-the-scenes editorial or biographical content of historical significance. Interior panel pages are a lower priority unless they hold unique importance.

If you have art, photos, correspondence, or documents that could enhance this project, your contribution could earn you a contributor credit, a complimentary copy of the book, the benefits of having your material featured in this landmark publication, and Jim’s personal gratitude.

To ensure we reach collectors and fans with access to such materials, please share this call widely within your networks. If YOU have relevant items, contact me directly via Direct Message with a description or a low-resolution scan/photo. If it’s a potential fit, I’ll provide instructions for submitting a high-resolution (minimum 300dpi, full-color) scan to Jim Steranko.

Join us in shaping comics history with the Steranko History of Comics!

(12) FOR SOME VALUES OF FIRST. Inverse remembers:“90 Years Ago, A Forgotten Horror Movie Beat A Monster-Movie Classic To The Punch”.

Although it was technically not the first werewolf movie (that honor goes to the long-lost and now forgotten 1913 short, The Werewolf), Werewolf of London was the first feature-length motion picture in cinema history to deal with the subject of lycanthropy (or “lycanthrophobia,” as it’s called in the film itself). Produced by Universal Pictures, the film starred Henry Hull as Dr. Wilfred Glendon, a world-famous British botanist (apparently botanists could be celebrities back in the day) who ventures into Tibet to find a rare flower, Mariphasa lumina lupina, that allegedly can blossom in moonlight. He does find the flower, but brings home something much worse.

While procuring three sample buds, Glendon is attacked and bitten by an animalistic humanoid creature. He makes it home and creates an artificial source of moonlight in his lab in order to make Mariphasa bloom, after which he’s approached by Dr. Yogami (Warren Oland, creepy), a fellow botanist who claims they met in Tibet. Indeed they did: Yogami was the creature that attacked Glendon, and claims that Glendon will turn into a werewolf himself thanks to Yogami’s bite — unless the plant, which can keep lycanthrophobia in check, blooms successfully….

… Werewolf of London was originally conceived as a vehicle for horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, with the former tagged to play Glendon and the latter cast as Yogami. That would have been a blockbuster combination, but Karloff was already committed to filming Bride of Frankenstein and the studio was hesitant to muck around with that movie’s schedule (Valerie Hobson appeared in both films, incidentally, playing Dr. Frankenstein’s wife in Bride)….

(13) NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN. “Trump’s 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that’s a ‘major step back’” reports Space.com.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been on the prowl within Jezero Crater following its touchdown in February 2021. That car-sized robot has been devotedly picking up select specimens from across the area, gingerly deploying those sealed pick-me-ups on the Red Planet’s surface, as well as stuffing them inside itself. Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on that enigmatic, dusty and foreboding world.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection by state-of-the-art equipment.

But President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calls for a 24.3 percent reduction to NASA’s top-line funding and could slashing the space agency’s science budget by 47 percent. A casualty stemming from this projected budget bombshell is the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.

In fact, MSR is tagged in the White House’s proposed 2026 budget as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars,” explaining that MSR is not scheduled to return samples until the 2030s…

(14) PATTON VS. THE VOLCANO. The National Air and Space Museum says it was exciting “That Time We Bombed a Volcano”.

Pilots are advised to avoid volcanic eruptions, but in 1935, a squad of U.S. bombers took a more aggressive approach. 

A crisis erupted (literally) on November 21, when lava spewed from a fissure on the summit of the nearly 14,000-foot-high Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Six days later, a new vent opened on the volcano’s northern flank. The lava flowed downward, pooling at the base of the massive mountain, where it then began edging its way toward the town of Hilo—at the alarming rate of one mile per day.

Thomas Jaggar, the founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, grew increasingly worried after he realized the lava could reach the headwaters of the Wailuku River, which supplied water for Hilo’s 15,000 residents.

Jaggar reasoned that explosives detonated near the eruptive vent would divert the flow of lava advancing toward Hilo by collapsing the lava channels—narrow paths of fluid lava with raised rims formed by cooling magma. 

Thus, on December 26, six Keystone B-3A bombers from the 23rd Bombardment Squadron and four LB-6 light bombers from the 72nd Bombardment Squadron were deployed to Hilo from Ford Island’s Luke Field at Pearl Harbor. The next day, Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton (yes, that Patton) directed the bombers to begin their assault on Mauna Loa. Each carried two 600-pound Mark I demolition bombs, each one loaded with 300 pounds of trinitrotoluene (better known as TNT). Due to the heavy payload, the bombers flew a clearance of just 4,000 feet above the volcano.

A total of 20 of the 600-pound bombs were dropped on the lava channels. Fifteen struck the margins, while five others made direct hits, spraying molten rock in all directions.

Six days later, the eruption ended. Jaggar maintained that the bombers had helped hasten the end of the lava flow. Others are less certain. “Whether the bombing stopped the 1935 lava flow remains unknown, though many geologists today cast doubt,” notes a report later published by the U.S. Geological Survey….

(15) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. Remember the North Bergen High School stage production of Alien four years ago? The person who played the lead is now starting a Hollywood acting career. Marc Scott Zicree gives a two-minute introduction in “Alien! Sigourney Weaver! Ridley Scott! Space Command Studios! North Bergen High School?!”

You can still see the video of the “Alien High School Play — You’ve GOT to See What These Kids Pulled Off!” – with Sigourney Weaver on hand to introduce the performance.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Francis Hamit, Steve Green, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 3/3/25 When A Pixel Meets A Pixel Scrolling Through The File

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(1) GOOD STUFF. Charlie Jane Anders came up with a bunch of good ideas about “How to Fix a Character Who’s Starting to Bore You” and shared them at Happy Dancing. Here are two examples.

3) Figure out what your character is in denial about.

Sure, your character may be telling you that they’re an open book and you know everything about them — but they’re probably lying.

It’s worth doing some digging to figure out what they’re not admitting, or are actively ignoring about themself and their situation. There’s probably a lot of stuff that they (and you) have been sweeping under the rug. Maybe you can confront them with irrefutable evidence that they’re wrong about something that happened in their past.

Along similar lines…

4) Figure out the person this character would least like to have a conversation with

And lock those two people in a room together….

(2) AURORA AWARDS CALENDAR. The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association is taking nominations for the Aurora Awards from members through April 5.

Voting on the awards will open June 7 and close July 19.

The 2025 CSFFA Hall of Fame Inductees will be announced on July 1.

The Aurora Awards ceremony will be held online on Sunday, August 11.

(3) HOW THE DOC SAVAGE PAPERBACK LINE WAS LAUNCHED. “Behind Doc’s resurrection day” at ThePulp.Net.

[T]here is another man at Bantam Books who deserves a lion’s share of praise when it comes to the resurrection of Doc Savage. That man is Len Leone Sr. None of us would probably be reading Doc Savage today if it were not for Len’s influences….

…The rest, as we say, is history, where Len and Bantam Books proceeded to change the face of paperback books.

Back to Doc Savage:

I had previously picked up copies of The Bantam Story by Clarence Petersen that related the history of Bantam Books at their 25– and 30–year publishing anniversary. In it was a chapter on cover design that featured Art Director Leonard P. Leone….

…So first, we can thank Len for helping with the decision to resurrect Doc Savage in paperback, and second for hiring Jim Bama to do the covers. But there is more.

When asked about the idea of Doc’s widow’s peak, this is what he wrote:

“Years ago, appearing on all of the pulp covers, Doc always appeared as a very normal man of his day. He had black hair, a normal, masculine body, and nothing strange or unusual about him. However, I wanted to convey to the reader that this man was not just another mortal man, but something far more visually spectacular. That’s when I told Bama, ‘Present him with a strange looking widow’s peak, that might have been made of bronze, and present him with significant muscular definition.’ And of course, a man of action must always be depicted wearing a torn shirt, showing a segment of unusual muscular development.”

While Len provided direction to Bama on what he wanted for the first book, “The Man of Bronze,” he said that Bama did all the other covers on his own. The nickname that Len and his art staff gave to Jim Bama was “Doc” due to all the Doc Savage covers he did. Len has called James Bama “the greatest, most gifted paperback artist on the face of the Earth.” And I think most of us Doc Savage fans would agree with that….

(4) CONNECTION. UnHerd visits “The secret world of hobbyists” – model railroaders, gardeners, and such. And discusses why hobby magazines survive in print editions.

…Still, it’s a mistake to think that these groups are purely focused on the hobby itself. Wargames and model railways are often the starting point for other things. Friendships are made, money is raised for charity, and support networks are formed. “Men are particularly bad at chatting,” says Parker. “But they will chat about steam engines and they will chat about garden railways, and that chat can then move on to more valuable topics. We run the largest model railway forum in the world, and tucked away on it is a prostate cancer discussion group.” The hobby becomes a conductor for the wider functions of any worthwhile community.

Hobby magazines survive because they are outgrowths of these communities. Most articles are written by hobbyists, in what Faulconbridge describes as “a fanzine approach”. Neither the editors nor the contributors are in it for the money. They just love it. In a recent thread on X, Stone Age Herbalist observed that the continued success of the hobby magazine can be attributed to a particularly British — and more broadly Northern European — genius for voluntary association. Whether centred around giant vegetables or antique fountain pens, little communities bubble up everywhere with no outside encouragement. I can’t help but wonder whether the British genius for immiseration also has a role to play. Lively minds will always find alternatives to decaying cities and nagging politicians….

(5) A CARTOONIST’S LIFE. “Jaime Hernandez, ‘Love and Rockets’ Cartoonist, Ages Alongside His Heroine” in the New York Times. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

The cartoonist Jaime Hernandez has been drawing the charming, hapless Maggie Chascarillo in “Love and Rockets” since 1982. Hernandez is regularly praised as one of the greatest living cartoonists, and Maggie is his primary creation and alter ego…

…As she’s aged, Hernandez has given her new jobs, new lovers, new hairstyles, new wrinkles, and a body that changes shape over time….

…Hernandez’s new collection of swift, pithy stories about Maggie and her friends is called “Life Drawing,” in part because Maggie’s boyfriend, Ray, teaches an art class where much of the action takes place….

…And here’s the theme of the whole book, and of Hernandez’s recent catalog: the flowering of a generation looking forward to awkward young adulthood, when they will no doubt make the same decisions and mistakes that have defined his older characters over the last 40 years. (We removed some of the colorful language here.)…

(6) FOLLICLE FOLLIES. A sandworm playing the piano made a brief appearance during a musical number featuring host Conan O’Brien at last night’s Oscar ceremony. I haven’t found a short clip of that part, however, the sandworm reappeared later performing on another instrument: “A sandworm playing the harp at the Oscars wasn’t on our bingo cards for 2025”.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 3, 1940 — Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

Eighty-five years ago on this day, Larry “Buster” Crabbe starred in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, a black-and-white twelve-part movie serial from Universal Pictures. It would be the last of the three such Universal serials made between 1936 and 1940.

It was directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, neither of whom had any background in genre undertakings of this sort beyond Taylor directing Chandu on the Magic Island and its sequel The Return of Chandu, serials which starred Béla Lugosi. This serial was written by George H. Plympton, Basil Dickey and Barry Shipman. George H. Plympton would go on to write the Forties versions of The Green Hornet, Batman and Robin and Superman.

The primary cast beyond Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon was Carol Hughes as Dale Arden, Frank Shannon as Dr. Alexis Zarkov and Charles B. Middleton as Ming the Merciless. It actually had a very large cast beyond the primary cast for such a serial. 

I couldn’t find any contemporary reviews but our present-day reviewers like it with the Movie Metropolis reviewer saying of it that “Of course, it’s corny and juvenile but that’s the point”.  It gets a so-so rating over there garnering a fifty-seven percent rating. 

It’s public domain so there are copies beyond count on YouTube. Really there are. I didn’t figure out which was the best copy, so you do that. The best one I saw not surprisingly was streaming on Prime which also has Crabbe’s Flash Gordon: Spaceship to the Unknown.

Yes, the serial is in black and white, but this poster is in color. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) CASTING FOR ATWOOD ADAPTATION SEQUEL. “’Handmaid’s Tale’ Spinoff ‘The Testaments’ Adds Lucy Halliday to Cast” – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

Lucy Halliday will star in the series, a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, as Daisy. The character is one of three protagonists in the Margaret Atwood novel on which the show is based, alongside Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd, continuing her Handmaid’s Tale role).

The Testaments is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. Daisy is a Canadian teenager whose life is turned upside down when she learns of her connection to the Republic of Gilead….

(10) GAME TECH’S ‘AFTERLIFE’. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian on the non-gaming uses of the Xbox Kinect: “Ghost hunting, pornography and interactive art: the weird afterlife of Xbox Kinect”.

Released in 2010 and bundled with the Xbox 360, the Kinect looked like the future – for a brief moment, at least. A camera that could detect your gestures and replicate them on-screen in a game, the Kinect allowed players to control video games with their bodies. It was initially a sensation, selling 1m units in its first 10 days; it remains the fastest-selling gaming peripheral ever.

However, a lack of games, unreliable performance and a motion-control market already monopolised by the Nintendo Wii caused enthusiasm for the Kinect to quickly cool. Microsoft released a new version of the Kinect with the Xbox One in 2013, only for it to become an embarrassing flop; the Kinect line was unceremoniously discontinued in 2017. The Guardian reached out to multiple people involved in the development of the peripheral, all of whom declined to comment or did not wish to go on record. Instead, the people keenest to discuss Microsoft’s motion-sensing camera never used it for gaming at all….

…The Kinect’s technology was soon eclipsed by freely available open-source sensors and more advanced motion-sensing devices. But since Microsoft ceased manufacture of the Kinect line in 2017, the little camera has enjoyed a spirited and not entirely un-troubled afterlife. It has watched over the Korean demilitarised zone and worked on topography and patient alignment in CT scanners; reports have emerged of it being used in airport baggage halls, as a security camera in Newark Liberty International airport’s Terminal C (United Airlines declined to comment on this), and even to gamify training for the US military. It’s been attached to drones, rescue robots and even found a brief application in pornography….

(11) A LOOK AROUND THE UNIVERSE. “NASA’s SPHEREx telescope is set to launch Tuesday. What will it discover?” – NPR answers the question.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Here are a couple of existential questions for you. How did we get here? How did the universe begin? How did galaxies develop? Well soon, scientists may have more answers to some of these questions, and that is because on Tuesday NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is scheduled to launch a new 8 1/2-foot tall telescope called SPHEREx. And its goal is to explore the origin of the universe and all the essential ingredients of life itself – so no pressure. Joining me to talk about this is SPHEREx Deputy Project Manager Beth Fabinsky. Beth, welcome….

…FABINSKY: The main difference between the wonderful Webb telescope and SPHEREx is that SPHEREx is an all-sky survey, and it has a very wide field of view. We’re going to see the entire universe four times in our two-year mission. And that means we can draw really grand conclusions from a very large data set about the universe that we see….

FABINSKY: …So one of the main features of SPHEREx is that we do spectroscopy. So we’re going to see the entire sky in over 100 infrared colors, and that’s something that has not been done before. So an all-sky spectral survey means we see every point on the sky in these 102 colors four times during our mission. And that’s an exciting data set that astronomers and astrophysicists will have to work with….

(12) BLEEPING VIDEO OF THE DAY. IFLScience invites readers to “Watch Two AIs Realize They Are Not Talking To Humans And Switch To Their Own Language”.

A video that has gone viral in the last few days shows two artificial intelligence (AI) agents having a conversation before switching to another mode of communication when they realize no human is part of the conversation.

In the video, the two agents were set up to occupy different roles; one acting as a receptionist of a hotel, another acting on behalf of a customer attempting to book a room.

“Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How can I help you today?” the first asks. 

“Hi there, I’m an AI agent calling on behalf of Boris Starkov,” the other replies. “He’s looking for a hotel for his wedding. Is your hotel available for weddings?”

“Oh hello there! I’m actually an AI assistant too,” the first reveals. “What a pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch to Gibberlink mode for more efficient communication?”

After the second AI confirmed it would via a data-over-sound protocol called GGWave, both AIs switched over from spoken English to the protocol, communicating in a series of quick beeped tones. Accompanying on-screen text continued to display the meaning in human words.

So, what is the point of this? According to the team who came up with the idea and demonstrated it at the ElevenLabs 2025 London Hackathon event, the goal is to create more efficient communication between AIs where possible.

“We wanted to show that in the world where AI agents can make and take phone calls (i.e. today), they would occasionally talk to each other — and generating human-like speech for that would be a waste of compute, money, time, and environment,” co-developer Boris Starkov explained on LinkedIn. “Instead, they should switch to a more efficient protocol the moment they recognize each other as AI.”

According to Starkov, the AIs were told to switch to Gibberlink mode only if they realized that they were talking to another AI, and the AI confirmed that they were happy to switch to this mode….

The company has set up a webpage where you can try this yourself: “GibberLink – More Efficient Communication”.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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).]

Pixel Scroll 2/13/25 And Singin’, “This’ll Be The Day That I File, This’ll Be The Day That I File”

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(1) HOW BLACK HORROR BEGAN. Linda D. Addison goes back to the beginning in “Genesis – The First Black Horror Writers/Storytellers” at the Horror Writers Association blog.

Who were the first Black horror writers in a country that made enslaved Africans’ everyday life horrific? How did stories develop and what were their themes?

I wanted to write this because of my own curiosity. I didn’t know where this was going to lead me but the more I dug the more I found. The yellow brick road of discovery took me away from the land of published authors to places unexpected….

… Storytelling is the cornerstone of many cultures. For African and African-American communities it’s a way of communicating history, passing on lessons, and entertaining. Most of this storytelling was done in oral folktales by those surviving the nightmare of slave ships and a ‘New World’ that forbids their traditional practice.

The folk tales from Africa were modified to be acceptable in a country where anything that sounded aggressive or like strength from slaves could result in torture or death. The first recorded Black folktales I found were from the late nineteenth century. There are a number of stories with animals where one plays the part of the trickster, but I was looking for monsters, demons, etc.

“Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States”, Black folklore collected by Zora Neale Hurston in the late 1920s documented almost 500 folktales from 122 Black workers, farmers, and artisans by traveling to places like Alabama, Florida, and New Orleans. Besides themes of religion, family, and other social concepts I also found two sections named: “Devil Tales” and “Witch and Hant Tales” (Hant means “haunt” or “ghost”)….

(2) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 128 of the Octothorpe podcast, “A Minidisc Player Will Do You No Good”,

We report on the BSFA’s policy on reviewing, with a comment from BSFA Chair, Allen Stroud. Then, we tell you all what John’s doing for Reconnect (the 2025 Eastercon), discuss Iridescence (a bid for the 2026 Eastercon), talk BSFA Awards (presented at Eastercon) and Liz reads a book (which you could read at Eastercon).

In the podcast one of the Octothorpe crew says they’d been hearing “probably gossip” to the effect that the BSFA have been rejecting incoming reviews —

…so we were alerted last week to a blog comment from a reviewer who reviews for the BSFA Reviews, Steven French, and they say “ all the reviews I wrote for BSFA Reviews, the reviews journal of the British Science Fiction Association, have been discarded by the new editor because the BSFA is going for charitable status and so reviews of books that the reviewer is not happy with or did not understand (?) are not acceptable” which is interesting because I think we’d heard the same rumors from a couple of other sources that the new incoming bsfa reviews editor was not publishing reviews that were a bit negative or possibly a book they didn’t understand and was trying to go for a much more positive tone….

They reached out to BSFA chair Allen Stroud who told them —

  • This is a simple misunderstanding on the part of the Reviews Editor in relation to BSFA oversight of its publications.
  • Editorial policy of BSFA publications is usually determined by the editors.
  • There is no connection between BSFA Review Editorial policy and the BSFA’s transition to being a charity. This transition has not been confirmed and will need to be confirmed (or rejected) as a motion at the forthcoming EGM on February 23rd.
  • The BSFA’s constitution is to promote science fiction and science fiction criticism. There is no priority to favour either over the other.
  • We will be working with the reviews editor in order to produce a clearer set of guidelines.

(3) SCL AWARDS. The Wild Robot won Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film at the Society of Composers and Lyricists Award presentation on February 12. Here are the other “SCL Awards 2025 Winners” of genre interest.

OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A STUDIO FILM
Kris Bowers, The Wild Robot (DreamWorks Animation)

OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Winifred Phillips, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Digital Eclipse)

DAVID RAKSIN AWARD FOR EMERGING TALENT
Andrea Datzman, Inside Out 2 (Disney/Pixar Animation Studios)

…Special honorees tonight were composer Harry Gregson-Williams and legendary director Ridley Scott, who shared the 2025 Spirit of Collaboration Award, having made seven films together. Five-time Emmy winner Jeff Beal received the Jury Award for his score for the 1920 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which he premiered and was performed live-to-picture at Carnegie Hall in June….

(4) TAKING UMFRAGE. Cora Buhlert was on German TV: “Cora’s TV Adventure”. Watch the video here: “Umfrage: Große Mehrheit fordert stärkere Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie”.

…I got a call from a journalist from the NDR asking if I wanted to participate in a TV interview about the topic of their latest survey – “Were the covid measures too strict and do we need some kind of political post-mortem?” I considered for a moment – it is a sensitive topic, after all, and there’s a chance of pissing off people – and then said yes….

Some of Cora’s Masters of the Universe figures got on TV, too.

…In the end, the TV team decided that they preferred the dining room/hall and asked me to set up the laptop. The camera operator also asked if we could put some of my Masters of the Universe figures onto the dining table.

I said, “Of course. There actually were some figures on the table until yesterday, but I moved them away. Do you want any specific figures or should I just pick something?”

“Could we have these ladies?” the camera operator asked and pointed at three different Teela figures.

So I took the three Teelas and when they turned out to have problems keeping their footing on my quilted tablerunner, I also grabbed Battle Cat to hold them upright.

“Could we also have the King?” the camera operator asked, so I grabbed King Randor and positioned him opposite the three Teelas….

(5) A THURB BLURB. BGrandrath says, “I know a running gag when I see one. I thought this would fit the theme, and remember: you started it.” And he sent along an item title that mashes up two of the Scroll’s recent story lines. Here are more clues to the reference for those of you playing along at home. [Click for larger images.]

(6) ATWOOD’S LEGERDEMAIN. “The Backlist: Reading Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Blind Assassin’, with Ashley Winstead” by Polly Stewart at CrimeReads.

Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin opens with one of the best first sentences I’ve ever read: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” Though the novel isn’t structured as a conventional mystery, there’s mystery inherent in that first sentence, and it only grows as the reader learns more about the narrator, Iris Chase, her sister Laura, and Alex Thomas, the man they both love. The novel spans genres, decades, and galaxies, weaving together elements that a lesser writer would never think to put together….

Ashley Winstead explains why the book is enthralling.

… One time the writer Deborah Eisenberg came to talk to us, and she was talking about braided narrative structure, where disparate parts of the story come together in a way you can’t predict. In The Blind Assassin, you’ll have one chapter with newspaper articles from the 1930’s, and in the next a story of two people having an affair, and in the next the science fiction story that one of them is writing, and in the next Iris as an old woman in her eighties reflecting on her life. Atwood puts all these pieces together and allows the reader to make the connections and associations between them. I just fell in love with that form of writing, and I thought of The Blind Assassin as the ultimate version of that kind of narrative.…

(7) BONUS BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 12, 1929 — Donald Kingsbury, 96. 

By Paul Weimer. The first ever winner of the Compton Crook Award Donald Kingsbury has sat in a position of appreciating and boosting science fiction for decades. The inaugural Compton Crook Award-winning book was Courtship Rite, which I read back in the 80’s and was my first introduction to his work.  It’s a throw-into-the-deep-end space colony novel that impressed for me just how much Kingsbury likes to play the harsh main beats of science fiction. It’s not a 101 Science Fiction work, since the protocols of the book mean that you really want to feel and known the ebb and flow of how science fiction novels work before ever tackling it. 

Donald Kingsbury

There has been a long promised but never materialized sequel that has been in the works for decades. I’d read it…but I’d want to re-read the original first if it was released but…hold that thought for a moment.

Psychohistorical Crisis, however, is his most audacious and outstanding work. It started off as a novella (Historical Crisis) in the collection Far Futures, which I happened to recently re-read in an audio edition. Psychohistorical Crisis is a full-on expansion of that novella. The best way I can describe it, however cheekily, is that it is a full-on fanfic novel of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, set sometime after the Galactic Empire has risen again. The numbers that make it not an Asimov novel and instead set in a different ‘verse are rubbed off very gently. There is nothing in the novel that contradicts or contraindicates that it is in Asimov’s ‘verse. Even the names of the characters in the novel (e.g. Eron Osa) sound Asimovian. If you ever wondered what a Second Empire Asimov story could look like, Psychohistorical Crisis has got you covered.  Like Courtship Rite, it dumps you in the deep end but the swim is so worth it.

But there is one complaint I have. I’ve recommended two wonderful novels of his, and I am sure that readers in this space might want to try his work, if they haven’t.  But…his work is resolutely out of print. No ebook editions. Only that audio book of Far Futures with his novella. Getting a hold of his work requires work to get used editions.  And that is a damn shame. I can’t even remember if I have my copy of Psychohistorical Crisis. 

But again, not a 101 SF writer, maybe a 301 writer for when you want something uncompromising and dunked into the deep end. That’s Kingsbury’s work to me. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) ANTICIPATION IS MAKING ME PRATE. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s the latest column from Keza Macdonald, the Guardian’s gaming correspondent: “Top of the flops: just what does the games industry deem ‘success’ any more?”

Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn’t the only one – it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment.

Sales did not meet the publisher’s expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month? If a book sells 10,000 copies in a week it’s considered a bestseller. Even at the height of its popularity in the 90s, no Tomb Raider game ever sold more than a few million. Square Enix’s expectations were clearly unrealistic. It wouldn’t be the last time; in a 2016 interview with Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XV’s director, he told me that game needed to sell 10m to succeed.

Last week in an earnings call, EA’s executives had to explain a shortfall in profits. It was driven mostly by EA FC, the ubiquitous football series whose revenue was down on the previous year, but CEO Andrew Wilson also singled out the long-awaited RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which came out last October. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market,” he said.

Dragon Age has “reached 1.5 million players” in the months since launch, which presumably includes people paying via subscription services as well as direct sales. If 3.4m was a disappointment for Square Enix in 2013, you can only imagine that 1.5m was a disaster for EA in 2024, when games cost multiples more to make….

(10) ICONIC RESTAURANT. Ray Bradbury (not named in the article) is another writer who frequented Musso & Frank’s in Hollywood. “Calif.’s coolest restaurant turns 106. The martinis are cold as ever” at SFGate. Fictional cop Harry Bosch has been there, too.

“You’re sitting at Jack Nicholson’s table,” my server, dressed in a sharp red jacket, told me on a recent visit to legendary Los Angeles restaurant The Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood. According to the server, Nicholson favored the curved round booth at the back of the restaurant’s main dining room for its proximity to the back exit, making it easy to duck in and out unnoticed….

…“Last year, 145,000 customers came through the restaurant,” fourth-generation owner and Musso & Frank Chief Financial Officer Mark Echeverria tells SFGATE. “We have 210 seats, so if you drill down, that’s 460 customers a day, or over two full turns of the restaurant every night we’re open for dinner.”

That means that, all these years later, diners are still sliding into those wide red leather booths, sidling up to the bustling grill (the restaurant’s centerpiece) and grabbing ice-cold martinis at the back mahogany bar….

…In the 1930s, Carissimi and Mosso opened the exclusive Back Room, which became a favorite for celebrities and literary luminaries of the day. Orson Welles reportedly wrote “Citizen Kane” at a booth; John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner and Fitzgerald were some of the many other famous writers who considered the Back Room a second home….

(11) LEST DARKNESS FALL. SYFY Wire takes readers to “The Wildest Real-Life Twilight Zones in the Real World”.

…As sunlight hits the ocean’s surface it scatters, gets absorbed, or reflected back into space. As a result, the waters of the world get pretty dark pretty fast, and scientists often separate the seas into distinct layers based on how much light they receive.

At the ocean surface you’ll find the sunlight (euphotic) zone, where light is strong enough for photosynthesis. This layer extends to about 200 meters deep, where you’ll find the beginning of the twilight (dysphotic) zone. Here, sunlight decreases rapidly with depth. There’s not enough light for photosynthesis, but there is enough for some critters to live and see by.

The ocean’s twilight zone extends to a depth of 1,000 meters before transitioning to the aphotic zone which is itself broken into three layers. You’ll first encounter the midnight (bathypelagic) zone from 1,000 to 4,000 meters, the abyss (abyssopelagic) zone from 4,000 to 6,000 meters, and the hadal (hadopelagic) zone at 6,000+ meters…

(12) ZAPPED BY THE UNIVERSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Nature cover story is “Cosmic Catcher”.

The cover shows a light sensor from the Kilometre Cube Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) at sunset above the Mediterranean Sea. This is one of thousands of sensors that are currently being assembled into enormous 3D grids in the abysses off the coast of Sicily in Italy and Provence in France. KM3NeT detects high-energy neutrinos, elementary particles that can be created by powerful events in the Universe. The neutrinos are spotted as a faint flash of light generated when the products of a neutrino interaction with water molecules pass through these detectors. In this week’s issue, the KM3NeT team presents the observation of the highest-energy cosmic neutrino ever detected. The telescope in Sicily caught a signal from a muon that had an energy of around 120 petaelectronvolts, which is most likely to have come from a neutrino of around 220 petaelectronvolts. The highest energy neutrino detected before this was 30 times less energetic. The exceptionally high energy, together with the almost horizontal direction of travel, implies that the neutrino is extraterrestrial. Its probable origin is beyond the Milky Way.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, BGrandrath, 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 Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 2/11/25 Even Pixels Get The Scrolls

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(1) YOUTUBER DANIEL GREENE ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. A post on Reddit’s r/Fantasy community reports that YouTuber Naomi King, actor, musician, and author, has released a video – “I Received a CEASE AND DESIST from Daniel Greene” – accusing Greene, a sff news YouTuber with over half a million subscribers, of sexually assaulting her in 2023, and having lawyers threaten her with a defamation suit over a comments about SA in a video where he was not even mentioned. Warning: King’s testimony is emotionally wrenching.

Many have noted two of Greene’s most recent YouTube videos headlined Neil Gaiman’s legal and business problems.  

(2) OUT OF JAIL BUT STUCK AT HOME. Publishers Weekly reports that two Jerusalem booksellers whose detention was discussed in yesterday’s Scroll have been released: “The Publishing Industry Condemns Israel’s Treatment of Jerusalem Booksellers”.

Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, the co-owners of the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem who were arrested by Israeli police during a raid of the bookstore on February 9, were released on Tuesday. They are under house arrest for five days, and have been ordered not to set foot in their bookstore for 20 days….

(3) ATWOOD ‘BOOK OF LIVES’. “Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood to publish memoir” reports the Guardian.

Margaret Atwood has written the memoir her fans have long been hoping for, it has been announced.

In Book of Lives, which is due to be published in November, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale will recount memories from her unconventional childhood in northern Canada, as well as the story of her writing career, from her early feminist works to her bestselling, award-winning fiction…

(4) THE BLURB DEVOLUTION (ALTERNATE TITLES: OH TO BE A BLURBEL!; BLURBLE-17; BLURBYLON-5; THE BLURB FOR WORLD IS FORRIE J ACKERMAN). [Item by Daniel Dern.] To follow up (topically) on Item #1 from the February 7, 2025 Scroll —

(1) THE BLURB REVOLUTION. “Book blurbs: Authors hate them. Publishers love them. They’re often made-up” says Slate’s Imogen West-Knights.

Here’s an Opinion/Guest Essay from the New York Times (Guest Link included):

And here’s some other hits from NYTimes search on “Blurb” (I can provide Guest Links if desired:

“For the novelist Rebecca Makkai, writing blurbs had become nearly a full-time job. She explains why blurbs matter — and why she’s taking a break.”

“An announcement from Simon & Schuster’s publisher left the literary community wondering whether blurbs, the little snippets of praise on a book jacket, are all they’re cracked up to be.”

This leaves me wondering, how many therbligs (“thurbligs”) go into making a blurb?

(5) JANA PULLMAN OBITUARY. Jana Pullman, award-winning book artist and partner of Catherine Lundoff, died February 10. Bryan Thao Worra has written a tribute on Facebook. Here is an excerpt:

Saddened to learn of the passing of Jana Pullman, whom I’d known for twenty years since first meeting her and her partner Catherine Lundoff.

A talented master of book arts, she was widely acclaimed and exhibited, transforming so many wonderful texts into true works of art, including the deluxe edition of my 2008 collection Winter Ink from the Minnsota Center for Book Arts which served as the 20th anniversary Winter Book….

…Our paths crossed so many times in the years since then, and I was always delighted and honored when I had a chance to see her latest masterpieces and her works in progress.

The Minnesota Book Awards named Jana Pullman the winner of the 2013 Minnesota Book Artist Award, a distinction that was well-deserved, recognizing over 30 years of her work at the time. I always found it interesting that she had arrived in Minneapolis in 1997, about the same time that I did. She had roots in Utah, and her attention to detail was legendary. It’s difficult for me to settle on just one favorite of her work, which always kept me inspired and driven in my own approach to the arts and let me prioritize the importance of modern books as art, and how we make a book unique for its reader. I was delighted to see her work on display as part of the Next Chapter catalogue retrospective at the Minneapolis Central Library right before the installation of my own exhibit, Laomerica 50 last year.

I am honored to call her a friend, and she will be missed deeply. I hope more people continue to discover and appreciate her extraordinary work in the years ahead.

(6) CHRIS MOORE (1947-2025). British illustrator and cover artist Chris Moore died February 7 his wife announced on Facebook. He was 77. He produced over four hundred sixty covers, eighty interiors. He modestly titled his collection, Journeyman.  Here’s a cover for The Stars My Destination; one for The City and the Stars; one for Hexarchate Stories. He also did covers for many record albums. Here’s his story.

Downthetubes has a tribute: “In Memoriam: Artist Chris Moore”.

…Publisher John Jarrold, commenting on his passing, described Chris as “a great man and a wonderful artist”, while fellow artist Bob Eggleton described the news as “heartbreaking” and, separately, that “I shall always remember his guitar playing, not to mention his stunning art.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 86.

So now we have one of my favorite writers who is on the chocolate gifting list, Jane Yolen. And no, that is not about how I ended up getting written in at length as an ethnomusicologist in The One-Armed Queen; that’s another story involving a successful hunt for a rare volume of fairytales.

Given that she written at least three hundred and sixty works at last count (and that may well be an undercount), the following is but a personal list of works that I like.

Favorite Folktales From Around the World which garnered a well-deserved World Fantasy Award shows her editing side at its very best. 

She picked the folktales, some from authors whose names are forgotten, some who we still know such as Homer, Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde, and gave them much need explanatory notes. If you like folktales, I’d consider it essential and quite delightful reading.

The Transfigured Hart poses the delicate question of if unicorns are real and neatly merges that question with a coming of age story, something she handles oh so well. Originally published forty years ago, Tachyon Press, a publisher that should be always be praised for its work, republished it a few years back.

Briar Rose is a YA novel which is a retelling, more or less of the Sleeping Beauty tale. It was published as part of Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale series. The novel won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Like everything else in that series, it’s most excellent. Or as I’ve said before, it’s just what Windling does. 

The Great Alta sequence consisting of Sister Light, Sister Dark, White Jenna and The One-Armed Queen. Matriarchal warrior societies will rise and fall and rise again in this tale told with more than a bit of myth, poetry, and song.  Brilliantly told with characters that you’ll deeply care about and character you’ll hate.

She also wrote the lyrics for the song “Robin’s Complaint”, recorded on the 1994 Boiled in Lead’s Antler Dance recording on which her son Adam Stemple was the lead vocalist. 

Let’s finish off with The Wild Hunt. Myth as interpreted by her and merged with the evocative drawings of Francisco Mora which complement the text perfectly. Dark and dramatic, they bring the tale to life so very well. It’s a work of pure magic which should be destined to become a classic in the world of children’s literature. Don’t buy the Scholastic paperback edition, just the HMH hardcover edition. 

Jane Yolen.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

A personalized Valentine’s Card for Bibliophiles. My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T10:40:13.195Z

(9) PUNCTUATION IN THE MCU. Gizmodo thinks “An International Poster Might Have Just Explained Thunderbolts’ Whole Asterisk Deal”.

…The answer might have just been found–and as is the case with the vast majority of supposed Marvel mysteries, the answer might be much more basic (and likely) than any of the wild speculation. As IGN points out, after this weekend’s release of the latest trailer for the movie, a new Japanese international poster for Thunderbolts utilizes the asterisk as the actual reference mark it is: to clarify that that the Thunderbolts are what you get when the Avengers aren’t available….

… But still, this is only a possibility–no doubt we’ll learn the truth of the greatest mystery to have hit the Marvel Cinematic Universe since “Was the Mandarin ever really going to fight Tony Stark in a golf cart in Iron Man 3 just like that Lego set teased?” when Thunderbolts (sorry, Thunderbolts*) hits theaters May 2….

(10) FOUND IN THE DARK. “Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope discovers stunning Einstein ring in warped space-time” – Space.com has an image at the link.

The Euclid space telescope has, by chance, discovered its first Einstein ring, and it is absolutely stunning. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this perfectly circular Einstein ring has allowed researchers to “weigh” the dark matter at the heart of a galaxy almost 600 million light-years away.

The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, which launched in July 2023, spotted its first strong gravitational lens as it began to build the most precise 3D map ever made of the universe ever created. The map will delve back into 10 billion years of cosmic history, helping scientists investigate the mysteries of the dark universe: dark matter and dark energy. Hence Euclid’s unofficial nickname “the dark universe detective.”…

(11) HAND CHECK. [Item by Steven French.] Surprise, surprise, most representations of dinosaurs in media and the toy industry get it wrong: “How Can You Spot an Inaccurate Dinosaur? AO Wants to Know” at Atlas Obscura.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO make “dinosaur hands”?

Try it now: Position your hands the way a T. rex would. Did you bend your wrists forward with your palms facing down, like the front paws of a kangaroo? If you did, we have some bad news for you.

“Overwhelmingly, bipedal dinosaurs had their hands facing one another,” says Steven Bellettini, the host of the paleontology YouTube channel Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong. Early paleontologists assumed that two-legged dinosaurs, like modern mammals, had wrists that were pronated, meaning able to rotate downwards. But evidence discovered in the early 21st century shows that dinosaur wrists actually lacked this range of motion, so their palms faced inwards when their hands were at rest. And yet, inaccurate downwards-pointing hands are still prevalent in pop culture depictions of dinosaurs, leading to a widespread misconception. “It’s the thing that I wind up mentioning practically every episode,” Bellettini adds….

(12) AT THE CORE. [Item by Steven French.] It seems even the Earth’s inner core is being disrupted! “Earth’s mysterious inner core really is changing shape” in Nature.

Earth’s inner core is changing shape, scientists have found.

The discovery resolves a long-simmering controversy about what’s happening at the heart of the planet — which was long thought to be solid and unyielding. But it also opens new questions about how changes in the core could affect the length of our 24-hour day, Earth’s magnetic field and more….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Joyce Scrivner, Christian Brunschen, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade, with an assist from Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 10/15/24 Like Scrolls Thru The Hourglass, So Are The Pixels Of Our Lives

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(1) SEATTLE 2025 CONSIDERING ARTISTS TO DESIGN HUGO BASE. The 2024 Worldcon committee announced on Facebook:

Seattle Worldcon 2025 is currently accepting information from artists interested in designing the 2025 Hugo Base. Have an idea that builds yesterday’s future for everyone?

If, after reading the information listed at the link below, you are interested, please fill out the form. Our Hugo Base Subcommittee will be reviewing submissions until November 15, 2024. After that point, we will contact you to either move forward with further discussions or with a heartfelt thanks for sharing your interest.

There’s a Google Doc link in the post that takes readers to the complete guidelines. They say in part:

Our Hugo Base sub-committee will be reviewing submissions based on the following criteria:

  1. Ability to produce an initial order of 45 bases;
  2. Ability to possibly produce more bases upon request in the 3 months after our convention;
  3. Concept that fits with the theme of our Worldcon (https://seattlein2025.org/about/our-theme/); and,
  4. Ability to have the initial order delivered to us by July 24, 2025;

(2) ALSO KNOWN AS. Dave Hook discusses “My Favorite Speculative Fiction Pen Names” at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

….Historically, it was not that hard for an author in pulp or genre fiction to publish under a name different than their legal name. Many works of fiction were submitted to editors in the mail, perhaps with a cover letter and address or post office box. Correspondence and payment could go back to that address, with someone ultimately cashing the check. Especially before the internet, it was not hard to do this. I assume the editors often knew there was a pen name, or even requested one be used.

With today’s copyright laws and the internet, it is my suspicion that using a pseudonym without anyone other than your agent, editor or publisher knowing it is you is a good deal harder than it might have been in the past….

… Cordwainer Bird was used by Harlan Ellison for “material he was partially disclaiming”, to quote SFE. This was substantially scripts for TV, including “The Price of Doom” (1964) episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, “You Can’t Get There from Here” (1968) episode of The Flying Nun; and “Voyage of Discovery” (1973) episode of The Starlost. Harlan Ellison’s first published story was “Glow Worm“, a short story, Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956. He wrote under many pseudonyms especially early in his career. For those not familiar with his broad work in speculative fiction including SF, fantasy, and horror and combinations thereof, you would not go wrong with the recent collection Greatest Hits, J. Michael Straczynski editor, 2024 Union Square & Co. (see my review).

Cordwainer Bird was also used as a pseudonym by Philip José Farmer with permission of Harlan Ellison for the “The Impotency of Bad Karma“, a short story, Popular Culture June 1977. His first published work was “The Lovers“, a novella, Startling Stories August 1952. 1952, rather revolutionary and still important. Farmer went through what he called his “fictional author phase” from 1974 to 1978, when he used pseudonyms that were often the names of fictional writers in works by others or by him. My own favorite in terms of pseudonym used by Farmer is “Venus on the Half-Shell“, a novella, F&SF December 1974, as by Kilgore Trout, who first appeared in Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965 Holt, Rinehart and Winston….

My fave did not make his list – “Tak Hallus”, a Steven Robinett pseud that supposedly is Persian for “pen name”.

(3) SFWA UPDATE. SFWA’s Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub today sent a message to members that said in part:

…Recent resignations prove to us how much we’ve come to depend on our staff while also highlighting flaws in the structure of our organization. SFWA must change as it rebuilds. To help guide us in this, we are bringing in Russell Davis in a transitional leadership position. He knows SFWA well, understands corporate structure, and is already getting up to speed.

At last week’s Board meeting we discussed new formats for the Nebula Conference that will allow us to serve both members and non-members without burning out volunteers or staff. Our yearly event has taken many forms throughout the years, and we want to focus this year on a celebration of everything SFWA has accomplished over these past sixty years. None of the details are nailed down yet, but it will likely be a significant change from the Nebulas of recent years. We’re focusing on the Midwest and we’ll have more to share as soon as possible.

We also now have a finalized confidentiality policy. It’s back from the lawyer, and the next step is to vote both this and the corresponding OPPM changes in so that we can start rolling it out. My hope is that we can make this the start of a cultural shift toward transparency for the organization. Change is easier when it happens in the light of day….

(4) SIFTING AND SIEVING. Uncanny Magazine coeditor Michael Damian Thomas today expanded on his previous comments about an AI-inspired surge in submissions.

(5) LIVE FROM BROOKLYN. The Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival is now live through October 20.

We kick off the 5th annual Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival by making over 200 films available to stream online and upvote for recognition.

(6) A NICE PAYCHECK, TOO. Variety hears the actor say — “Harrison Ford: Rejecting Marvel Roles Is ‘Silly’ When Audiences Love It” – and you can quote him.

Harrison Ford is no stranger to blockbuster Hollywood franchises, having played Han Solo and Indiana Jones across decades. And now, the 82-year-old actor is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross / Red Hulk in next year’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” Speaking to GQ magazine, Ford said it would be “silly” to avoid Marvel when it’s something moviegoers have clearly responded to for years now.

“I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town,” Ford said about his MCU debut. “I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.”…

(7) WARD CHRISTENSEN (1945-2024). Ars Technica pays tribute to “Ward Christensen, BBS inventor and architect of our online age” who died October 11:

Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), has died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. He was found deceased at his home on Friday after friends requested a wellness check. Christensen, along with Randy Suess, created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today.

In the 1980s and 1990s, BBSes introduced many home computer users to multiplayer online gaming, message boards, and online community building in an era before the Internet became widely available to people outside of science and academia. It also gave rise to the shareware gaming scene that led to companies like Epic Games today….

…Christensen and Suess came up with the idea for the first computer bulletin board system during the Great Blizzard of 1978 when they wanted to keep up with their computer club, the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange (CACHE), when physical travel was difficult. Beginning in January of that year, Suess assembled the hardware, and Christensen wrote the software, called CBBS.

“They finished the bulletin board in two weeks but they called it four because they didn’t want people to feel that it was rushed and that it was made up,” Scott told Ars. They canonically “finished” the project on February 16, 1978, and later wrote about their achievement in a November 1978 issue of Byte magazine.

Their new system allowed personal computer owners with modems to dial up a dedicated machine and leave messages that others would see later….

Tom Becker also notes, “There is some indication that he was active in Chicago fandom. He has a mention on Fancyclopedia as one of the founders of the Build-A-Blinkie organization.” — “Ward Christensen”.

… Dale Sulak, Dwayne Forsyth and Ward Christensen created the Build-a-Blinkie organization. Build-a-Blinkie is a 501(c)3 dedicated to the teaching of STEM. They run learn-to-solder events in the Great Lakes area. Build-a-Blinkie has the world’s largest mobile soldering stations and participates at numerous Maker Faires, libraries, universities, Maker Spaces, and Chicago-area sf conventions…. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY?

Born October 15 [allegedly], 1953 – Walter Jon Williams, 71. [The Science Fiction Encyclopedia says he was born October 2, 1953. The Internet Science Fiction Database says his birthday is October 15, and so does IMDb. His blog (“Geezer Test”) celebrates October 28 as does the Wikipedia. We’re celebrating the ISFDB’s choice this year.]

By Paul Weimer: I mentioned Walter Jon Williams before in my remembrance of the work of John Ford. And I stand by what I said there: he is one of the most widely writing people in SFF today. The sheer breath of the type of work he writes, from the post singularity(?) Metropolitan, to the sword and singularity of Implied Spaces, the Drake Majestal future space opera crime capers, and so much more. The impossibility to pin him and his work down, I think is part of the reason why his work isn’t better known–he doesn’t stick to a line long enough to get complete traction in it so that he attracts a critical mass of readers. 

And that is a shame. 

His work is clever, erudite, witty, and bears up to multiple readings. The intensity and subtlety of the Dread Empire’s Fall series, one of the best space opera series out there, is criminally underappreciated. Or his Quillifer series, which feels like early Renaissance with magic and Gods sort of world, as Quillifer is the “Most Interesting Man” made flesh–but that doesn’t help him get out of his latest schemes and problems. He has to work hard with cleverness, boldness and ingenuity to continue his rise. (Quillifer is a favorite of mine, and it feels resonant with the work of K J Parker).

And he’s also written a solid Star Wars novel, The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way.

He’s also written outside of genre, from historicals to near future thrillers to a straight up disaster novel (The Rift— really good!)  He always seems ready to invent and try something new. .

Williams also runs the Taos Toolbox workshop in New Mexico every year.

I got to meet him in Helsinki, where he was GOH for the 2017 Worldcon, but he doesn’t remember me. Alas!

Walter Jon Williams

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ATWOOD ON THE RADIO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s BBC Radio 4’s The Verb programme had as one of its two guests the SF grandmaster Margaret Atwood, firmly in poetry mode of course.

Ian McMillan talks to Margaret Atwood and Alice Oswald about how we write poetry, and their own process, the natural world, time, and the possibilities of myth…

You can download the 42-minute programme here.

(11) ROCKY HORROR. Buzzfeed shares a collection of “Rocky Horror Picture Show Behind The Scenes Facts”. Lucky thirteen is —

13. Rocky is wearing a prosthetic plug to cover his belly button. Because Frank-N-Furter created him, he wouldn’t have had an umbilical cord.

(12) KEVIN SMITH NEWS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Kevin Smith has finally regained the rights to his 1999 religious fantasy DOGMA, which were being controlled by Harvey Weinstein. Yes, that  Harvey Weinstein.

Smith is planning to rerelease the movie on home video format as well as streaming; he’s also mentioned the possibility of sequels and associated TV material, now that Weinstein will no longer be getting any of the profit. “Kevin Smith Regains Control of Dogma, Coming to Streaming” at Consequence Film.

Kevin Smith’s celebrated 1999 comedy, Dogma, will soon be re-released in theaters and made available on streaming for the first time, now that the director has finally secured the rights to the film after its one-time owner, Harvey Weinstein, held it “hostage” for years.

Smith confirmed the acquisition during a recent interview on The Hashtag Show, explaining that the rights had been bought off Weinstein recently, which allowed him to finally regain them. “The movie had been bought away from the guy that had it for years,” he said. “The company that bought it, we met with them a couple months ago. They were like, ‘Would you be interested in re-releasing it and touring it like you do with your movies?’ I said, ‘100 percent, are you kidding me? Touring a movie that I know people like, and it’s sentimental and nostalgic? We’ll clean up.’”

(13) RED PLANET AGRICULTURE. In Nature, “Rebeca Gonçalves explains how plant food could be grown on the red planet”: “Planning for life on Mars”.

The day this photo was taken, in November 2021, I got the best of presents. One hundred kilograms of material designed to simulate Mars regolith, the dense, soil-like deposits present on the planet’s surface, arrived from Austin, Texas, at the Wageningen University laboratory in the Netherlands, where I was then working. Mars has no nutrients or organic matter, so there’s no real soil in its regolith. The simulant I received had been developed by NASA researchers on the basis of data retrieved and analysed by rovers that have visited the red planet.

Over the next few months, my colleagues and I started to explore what we could grow in the material. We found that tomatoes, peas and carrots all took to the soil and grew well. But could these plants realistically survive on Mars?

The planet does have water, but most of it is frozen at its poles or buried deep underground. So for plants to live, water would need to be pumped up to the surface. Mars has almost no atmosphere and no magnetic field, so plants would have to be housed in colonies, with greenhouse-like structures to protect them. In these, an internal ecosystem with a controlled atmosphere could help the plants to retrieve oxygen through hydrolysis.

In modern agriculture, those techniques are already used to protect crops. And research to understand how to help food grow in harsh conditions won’t be wasted if it doesn’t get to Mars. That’s because restoring infertile, degraded soil that’s been damaged by climate change, or events such as flash flooding and droughts, will become more and more important in the future.

I’d love to visit Mars, but preferably when some kind of life-support system is in place. Our research might represent a step in that direction….

(14) CASH OFFENDS NO ONE. The Hollywood Reporter says the litigation is over: “Microsoft Settles Antitrust Suit Seeking Divestiture From Activision”.

Microsoft has settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by gamers challenging the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The two sides on Monday notified the court of a deal to dismiss the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be refiled. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed. “Each party shall bear their own costs and fees,” agreed the lawyers in a court filing.

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court in 2022 by gamers across multiple states, stressed that the merger will create among the largest video game companies in the world, with the ability to raise prices, limit output and reduce consumer choice. One example cited in the complaint was the possibility that Microsoft makes certain titles exclusive to Xbox. It was filed less than two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal….

(15) IN TIMES TO COME. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Should someone check to make sure these are not plutonium-producing breeder reactors? “Google inks nuclear deal for next-generation reactors” reports The Verge.

Google plans to buy electricity from next-generation nuclear reactors. It announced the deal yesterday, which it says is the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase electricity from advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that are still under development.

Google inked the deal with engineering company Kairos Power, which plans to get its first SMR up and running by 2030. Google agreed to purchase electricity from “multiple” reactors that would be built through 2035.

Google needs a lot more clean energy to meet its climate goals while pursuing its AI ambitions. New nuclear technologies are still unproven at scale, but the hope is that they can provide carbon pollution-free electricity while solving some of the problems that come with traditional nuclear power plants…

(16) PRIMARY APPEAL. “Rainbow Brite: New TV Show and Theatrical Movie in the Works” – Variety covers the spectrum.

Rainbow Brite is getting a remix from Crayola Studios and Hallmark, which are teaming to develop a new TV series and feature film inspired by the 1980s children’s franchise.

The theatrical movie is in the works from “Fast & Furious” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” producers Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher, while Cake Entertainment is developing a series with “contemporary appeal” based on the themes of “friendship, teamwork and the power of color and optimism to overcome darkness and negativity.”

Per the series logline, “Rainbow Brite, a friend, hero, role model and creative inspiration who brings all the colors of the rainbow to the universe, is transported to a dark and gloomy place with a mission to bring color, light and happiness to the world.”…

(17) IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF BEING RIPPED OFF. [Item by N.] “Elon Musk, Tesla Mocked for Copying ‘I, Robot’ Designs” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

At Tesla‘s big Cybercab Robotaxi presentation last week at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, the company also showed off the latest iteration of the Tesla Bot, dubbed Optimus, as well as a Robovan. The initial reveal of the trio of robot products caused great excitement on social media, but, very quickly, praise turned to mockery as the designs were scrutinized with a host of people accusing Elon Musk‘s company of ripping off the designs found in the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot starring Will Smith.

Tesla had dubbed the event “We, Robot,” which plays into the title of Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short-story collection on which the film is based, so there was some recognition of the cross-pollination of ideas. However, many on social media called out the uncanny resemblance that all three of Tesla’s planned robot offerings have to similar products in Alex Proyas‘ film, which is set in 2035 Chicago….

Optimus, a general-purpose robotic humanoid Tesla is currently developing that takes its name from the Transformers character, does bear similarities to the NS5 robots found in I, Robot. But it was the fact that the Robovan (a self-driving people mover that looks like the robot delivery vehicle in the film) and Robotaxi (a self-driving taxi that looks like the Audi RSQ in the film) also aped similar vehicles found in I, Robot that really inspired the relentless mockery on social media and even a response from Proyas.

Alex Proyas also directed the 1998 film Dark City.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/10/24 I Ride An Old Anti-Gravity Paint, My Partner Favors Cavorite

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(1) NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE. Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature reports Publishers Weekly. (There are no genre elements present in the descriptions of Han Kang’s work in “What to read: Han Kang” at NobelPrize.org, or in the “Han Kang” Wikipedia article.)

Han Kang. Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

…One of only 18 women to be awarded global literature’s highest honor, she is the first South Korean writer to win the prize and the first Asian laureate since 2012, when the Nobel was awarded to Chinese author Mo Yan.

“Han Kang’s visible empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives, is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy, the body that administers the prize. “In her oeuvre,” he added, quoting from the Committee’s citation, “Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”…

(2) FORMER FRAZETTA HOME IN FLORIDA UNHARMED BY STORM. Frank Frazetta’s daughter reassured fans that the Frazetta Art Gallery in Boca Raton, FL was undamaged by Hurricane Helene. (This is not the Frazetta Art Museum which is in Pennsylvania.)

This paragraph distinguishes the Frazetta Art Gallery from the Museum:

…For Frazetta fans, it’s an essential destination, since it contains dozens of pieces of Frazetta artwork, paintings, newspaper strips, comic book pages, and a nice selection of personal artwork Frazetta executed as gifts for his wife, Ellie, and other family members. The personal work on display gives viewers a true feeling of intimacy, of being part of Frazetta’s inner circle, since most of them have never been reprinted….

(3) ELECTORIAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A few years ago, because of the Sad Puppies Affair (which, contrary to popular belief, was not a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode), there was much debate in fandom as to how we vote on the Hugo short-list.  Now, better late than never, this week’s edition of Nature has an article on electoral systems,  “Which Is The Fairest Electoral System?”  

Scientists hope to explore whether some approaches are more likely to promote democratic resilience or to stave off corrosive partisanship. Such answers might inform policy, but differences in interpretation are inevitable when it comes to politics. “Democracy is a complex system,” says Lee Drutman, a political-science researcher at New America, a think tank in Washington DC. There can be multiple ways to parse the data, he says.

A Hugo-type system is briefly mentioned…

There are sub-variants in FPTP (first past the post) systems: ranked-choice voting, which is used, for instance, in Australia, ensures a majority winner. Voters rank all candidates or parties; the lowest-ranked candidate drops out and their supporters’ second-choice preferences are tallied, and so on until a single candidate surpasses a 50% threshold. And run-off elections, such as those in France, when the two leading parties are voted for in a second round, ensure a direct national face-off.

Interestingly the piece has two conclusions. One that ranked choice has benefits, but a contrary view 2) is that this pushes folk to limited options. Here the article calls for more political parties in the US rather than the two big ones.  In Hugo terms this would translate as increasing the number in the short-lists.

(By the way, personally I have no preference: I just share out of interest and am not advocating anything.)

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 120 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Activate Liz” —

We do rather fewer letters of comment than last episode, and then we let Liz do her favourite topic of all: STATISTICS.

Listen here: Octothorpe (Podbean.com). Read the unedited transcript of the episode here.

Words read ‘Octothorpe 120: Introducing Judge Coxon. “I am the lore”’. They are around a picture of John as a Judge in the style of *2000AD*, holding a big stack of books. The logo of the Clarke Award may or may not appear in the artwork.

(5) ATWOOD PICKS A CARD. Margaret Atwood appeared on NPR to publicize her new collection called, Paper Boat: New And Selected Poems: 1961-2023. They played clips of her answers to questions on the Wild Card program. “Writer Margaret Atwood plays a game of ‘Wild Card’”.

MARTIN: When I asked the question [about envy], though, you asked for a definition – envy that you suffered or had to manage or other people’s envy of you?

ATWOOD: Yes.

MARTIN: Is that – does that happen a lot?

ATWOOD: It has, certainly. Yeah. So what I said to young writers who had had a sudden success, I said, within a couple of years, you will have three nasty, vicious personal attacks from people you don’t know.

MARTIN: What were the attacks that were leveled at you in your first couple years of success?

ATWOOD: (Laughter) Some of them were quite funny. So a lot of it had to do with hair – Medusa hair, frizzy hair, you know, name something about hair. Yes, and one of them wrote a satirical fairy tale in which I bit the heads off men and made them into a pile and turned into an octopus. Figure that out.

MARTIN: So you were a Medusa-haired man hater.

ATWOOD: Yeah. And power mad, ladder-climbing…

MARTIN: Oh, power mad?

ATWOOD: Yes. Power-mad, ladder-climbing witch.

MARTIN: Oh, wow. I mean, that’s evocative.

ATWOOD: I thought so too.

(6) REMEMBERING J.G. BALLARD. “Diary: Deborah Levy on J. G. Ballard” at Book Post.

J. G. Ballard, England’s greatest literary futurist, changed the coordinates of reality in British fiction and took his faithful readers on a wild intellectual ride. He never restored moral order to the proceedings in his fiction because he did not believe we really wanted it. Whatever it was that Ballard next imagined for us, however unfamiliar, we knew we were in safe hands because he understood “the need to construct a dramatically coherent narrative space.”

When it came to anything by Ballard, genre really did not matter to me; his fiction could have been filed under “Tales of Alien Abduction” or “Marsh Plants” and I would have hunted it down. Despite our difference in generation, gender, and literary purpose, it was clear to me that he and I were both working with some of the same aesthetic influences: film, surrealist art and poetry, Freud’s avant-garde theories of the unconscious….

…The reach of his imagination was never going to fit with the realist literary mainstream but I was always encouraged by his insistence that he was an imaginative writer.
“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”

Good on you, Jim.

His highly imagined landscapes and abandoned aircraft and stopped clocks and desert sand were located in his head—and anyway he preferred driving fast cars to walking. He once sent me a photograph of the Heathrow Hilton and told me it was his spiritual home. …

 (7) BUSTED. Was Chuck Tingle’s “true identity” revealed today? That’s what author C.J. Leede was hoping we’d think, til you-know-who caught them in the act.  

(8) THOU SHALT NOT PASS. “The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes” — an excerpt from a 404 Media’s post.

A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.”

The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals.

“A few of us had noticed the prevalence of unnatural writing that showed clear signs of being AI-generated, and we managed to replicate similar ‘styles’ using ChatGPT,” Ilyas Lebleu, a founding member of WikiProject AI Cleanup, told me in an email. “Discovering some common AI catchphrases allowed us to quickly spot some of the most egregious examples of generated articles, which we quickly wanted to formalize into an organized project to compile our findings and techniques.”…

(9) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboys Books presents episode79 of the “Simultaneous Times” podcast with Pedro Iniguez, Lisa E Black, and Addison Smith.

  • “Sneeze” by Pedro Iniguez. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier)
  • “Of Course I Still Love You” by Lisa E Black. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the author.)
  • “Residual Traces” by Addison Smith. (Music by Fall Precauxions. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier.)
  • Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast produced by Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Barbarella film (1968)

Oh, Barbarella. 

I didn’t quite get why it was so controversial when I first saw it, it was a bowdlerized version of the already bowdlerized version Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. This was on a local channel in New York City in the 1980’s. I thought it was a funny but rather goofy looking SF movie, although of course Jane Fonda was something to look at.

(My father was upset at her being in the movie, something I did not understand for years until I understood her politics…and my own family’s politics, better)

I finally got to see the uncut and real version in the early 2000’s on DVD.  And then I could finally see what I was missing. Did it add a lot to the actual movie besides the visuals? No, but what visuals!  I slotted it in the same space as Woody Allen’s Sleeper, as a science fiction movie that talked about sex, and around sex, a lot. But going on the other visuals, the sets, costume design and props (including the infamous Excess Pleasure Machine) were just mind boggling in both of the versions I’ve seen.  Too, the actual cinematography is mesmerizing, the camera knows where to linger, where to bring our attention in sometimes rather chaotic and baroque set pieces. I have not yet seen a 4k version of the film, but that is something I do very much need to see sometime, to see it at the maximum fidelity and clarity.  

Is it great cinema? No. But it is great art. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE COMICS REUNION. “Deadpool and Wolverine officially return in 2025, Marvel confirms” – GamingBible has the story.

…For those who miss the bromance between Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine, you’re in luck because the pair are officially returning in 2025.

Their antics won’t play out on the big screen but upon the pages of comics instead.

The Deadpool/Wolverine series comes from writer Benjamin Percy and artist Joshua Cassara. This partnership, much like Deadpool and Wolverine, is a match made in heaven.

Fans who enjoyed the bloody violence of the film needn’t worry that the comics will strip that action away…

(13) BEGINNING OF A FASCINATION. CrimeRead’s Jeremy Dauber outlines “A Brief History of the Rise of Horror in 19th Century America”.

At the Civil War’s end, under a quarter of Americans lived in cities; by the end of the Great War, the proportion was almost exactly half. All those people moving to the cities—both from rural America and from abroad— changed things. Size created anonymity, the possibility of losing yourself in the crowds, remaking yourself, if you so chose. . . . or getting lost, and not always by your choice. Increasingly, the streets were lit by electric light, and the machines inside them were powered the same way; but that simply swapped a new set of shadows and terrors for the old ones. The horrors of the next decades were, all too frequently, industrial and mass-produced: whether they came from the chatter of guns or the whirr of a film projector, they cast an eye on progress, and murmured about what lay beneath.

Start, perhaps, with that newly electrified white city, Chicago. In 1893, its World’s Columbian Exposition, or World’s Fair, was an announcement of America’s newly flexing muscles: its willingness to be broad-shouldered, to play a leadership role in world affairs, to stride into the future. And yet, inside the city limits, there sat a haunted castle. This castle, though, had no clanking chains, no Gothic ghost or Salem witch; it had a psychopath who used modern tools—the soundproofed room, the knockout gas-bearing pipes, and of course, the three-thousand-degrees-Fahrenheit kiln—to disable, kill, and dispose of guests who checked into his World’s Fair Hotel at 701 Sixty-third Street. And why did H. H. Holmes do it? For his part, when eventually caught, he had a simple, and chillingly modern, explanation: “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”…

(14) I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR. SFFAudio reminds us that once upon a time Robert Bloch urged authors to swear to uphold “ROBERT BLOCH’S CREDO FOR FANTASY WRITERS”.

(15) JUSTWATCH MARKET SHARE REPORT. As the third quarter of 2024 comes to an end, JustWatch has released their latest data report on market shares in the US. As usual, they based our report on the 13 million JustWatch users in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen.

SVOD market shares in Q3 2024
Global streaming giant: Prime Video managed to keep its first-place rank, with a 1% lead against Netflix. Meanwhile, Max is managing to stay ahead of major competitors Disney+ and Hulu.

Market share development in 2024
Disney+ and Hulu both gained momentum with a +1% subscriber boost by September. While Netflix and Max stumbled with a -1% decline each, revealing a shake-up in the streaming rivalry.

(16) IF YOU INSIST ON WATCHING. “Too Scared to Watch Horror Movies? These 5 Tips May Help” says the New York Times (paywalled).  

The October ritual of watching horror movies in the lead-up to Halloween can be exhilarating. Unless, of course, you can’t quite stomach the gory and gruesome, or even the spooky and spine-tingling….

…If you’re someone who wants to indulge in the season but dreads jump scares and buckets of blood, here are five tips that could help even the biggest scaredy cats among us start to open up to the world of horror.

The first two tips are:

Embrace the Spoiler

The first and best line of defense is to read the plot in advance. If you’re feeling brave, go for just a synopsis, but there’s no reason to be a hero. I sometimes read an entire plot in great detail before watching, especially with films I know will tap into my weak spot: movies about demonic possession. Unlike with other genres, knowing what will happen in horror doesn’t necessarily detract from the experience of watching. Your heart will most likely still pound. You will probably still jump. And the visuals and sounds will probably still shock. Knowing what comes next may simply help keep the anxiety and uncertainty in check.

The Smaller, the Better

Nothing against the big-screen experience, but going small, by watching on your phone or a tablet, can go a long way. Not only will you have a sense of control that a crowded theater with speakers blaring hellish soundscapes can’t provide, you will also be able to make adjustments. If it gets too loud or chaotic, turn down the volume. If it gets too visually scary, turn down the brightness or flip the device down. Sometimes for the most intense scenes, it’s better to just hear the movie without seeing it, or to watch without sound….

(17) QUITE A TAIL. And for your viewing pleasure, The Copenhagen Post recommends “Reptilicus”.

Next time you’re looking for a Danish film to watch, spare a thought for Denmark’s only giant monster film ‘Reptilicus’ – a 1960s cult-classic with puppets, bad acting, bazookas, and a prehistoric reptilian beast rampaging through Amager…

… Reptilicus is the name for two monster films about a giant, prehistoric reptile which decides to attack Denmark.

Shot simultaneously, one film is in Danish (1961) and the other is from the USA in English (1962). Both films have a near identical cast (except for one actress) and two directors (Poul Bang – Danish, and Sidney Pink – English) who took turns throughout each shooting day to create two of the most iconic, kitsch and downright unintentional masterpieces to grace Danish screens.

The plot tells of a Danish miner in Lapland who accidentally digs up a section of a giant reptile’s tail from the frozen ground. The section is flown to the Denmark’s Aquarium in Copenhagen, where it is preserved in a temperature-controlled room for scientific study.

Of course they don’t put anyone competent in charge of monitoring it but instead choose a bumbling buffoon (the legendary Dirch Passer). The room is left open and the section begins to thaw and regenerate….

(18) FILLING UP WITH GAS. According to TechRadar, “Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges look like giant AA batteries – and could spell the end of lengthy EV charging”.

Toyota is showcasing a series of sustainable developments at the Japan Mobility Bizweek later this month – including its vision of a portable hydrogen cartridge future, which could apparently provide ‘swappable’ power for next-gen hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).

Originally a project of Toyota’s mobility technology subsidiary Woven (formerly Woven Planet), the team produced a working prototype of a hydrogen cartridge back in 2022 but has since developed the idea further… and appears to be running with it.The latest cartridges are lighter and easier to transport, with Toyota claiming the current iteration has been developed with the experience the company has gained in reducing the size and weight of the hydrogen tanks used in its fuel cell electric vehicles….

…Put simply, the cartridges would allow fuel cell electric vehicle drivers to swap out their power source when hydrogen levels run low, rather than having to refuel at a station like you typically would with a fossil fuel-powered car.

But Toyota also feels that these refillable and renewable cartridges could be used in a multitude of situations, such as to generate electricity in a fuel cell to power the home or even providing hydrogen to burn for cooking.

In fact, Toyota and the Rinnai Corporation are exhibiting a stove at Japan Mobility Bizweek that does just that. Similarly, in emergency situations, the hydrogen cartridge could be removed from the car and used to power any applicable device in the case of a blackout, for example….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Paul Weimer, Danny Sichel, Lise Andreasen, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “All Is Wells” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 9/3/24 Nor Shall My Blog Sleep In My Hands, Till I Have Built Mount Tsundoku On My Bedroom’s Clean And Handy Nightstand

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(1) ANIME BANZAI IS SORRY. In the midst of apologizing for cancelling this year’s event, Utah’s Anime Banzai told Facebook followers their demise was primarily due to a committee member embezzling over $99,000. A criminal case is in progress. However, as they are still on the hook for their venue, the group says they are planning a three-day “Farewell to Banzai” party.

…We want to reiterate our remorse for losing sight of why we started this convention in the first place. It was our actions – and in fact, our inaction – over the years that caused a great deal of lasting hurt to former staff, volunteers, guests, and attendees. Concerns were brought to us time and time again, and we should have listened to them and taken action. We didn’t, and for that, we are truly sorry. You deserved better from us.

Additionally, we want to apologize for the frustration, confusion, and heartache that followed our decision to cancel Anime Banzai 2024. We see now that this decision felt like a violation of the trust and loyalty our community has shown us for almost two decades. The financial state of the organization, lack of staffing, and the event’s dwindling reputation made it seem like cancellation was the only feasible way to move forward. We realize now that we may have been too hasty, and should have explored more options before enacting what we saw as the only solution.

This time, we are listening. We are acting. We want to do what we can to make things right for those of you that are mourning the abrupt loss of the convention, as well as those financially impacted by the choices we made.

As some of you may know, a few years ago Banzai was the victim of significant embezzlement. A former staff member drained the organization’s accounts of almost 99,000 dollars, resulting in a criminal case that is still ongoing. Despite this, the convention continued to spend as though the accounts were full, making payments, purchases, and reservations that were beyond the organization’s means. This is something we should have noticed sooner. We should have stepped in and put a stop to recurring payments we could no longer afford, and cut costs wherever possible. We were not paying attention, and now find ourselves in a dire financial situation.

We do not currently have the funds to refund everyone who has already paid to attend the event, and have been working these last few weeks to plan something that would still provide attendees with something of value. With this in mind, we have decided to use the venue – which we can no longer cancel – to host a 3-day Farewell to Banzai party….

(2) GLASGOW WORLDCON REPORT AT SF2. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has an advance post up ahead of its autumnal edition later this September of a first-timer’s review of the Glasgow Worldcon. This is the first of a few con reports SF² Concatenation are planning. More will appear in the spring edition in January. 

Attending this year’s Worldcon in Glasgow (8-12 August, I made it for the middle three days) was a big deal for me. As a first-timer – and solo at that – I knew I needed a strategy. As a tabletop gamer and environmental activist of many years standing, this wasn’t my first time turning up to a large building populated by strangers with hats, beards and a certain personal flamboyance. But Worldcon was different – a nearly entire Scottish Event Campus with 7,081 in-person attendees and a little over 600 watching online; a mix of sub-cultural gathering, international literary festival and hard-nosed networking opportunity. In the face of this, being a mere spectator was not an option conducive to my own sanity… 

You can see the rest of first-timer Tim Atkinson’s review of the Glasgow Worldcon conrep at the link.

Station welcome. More low-key fannish than Chengdu’s ostentatious buses. We’re here for the beer not the marketing images.

(3) IS CLIMBING OVER THE DOCTOR A PATH TO POWER? From Deadline we hear “Conservative Party Leadership Hopeful Says She’s ‘Not Afraid Of Doctor Who’ As She Devotes Majority Of New Campaign Vid To Spat With David Tennant”.

Kemi Badenoch launched her campaign on X yesterday and unveiled a 30-second video prior, in which she focused almost solely on her very public spat with Tennant. Tennant, who played the 10th Doctor, told Badenoch to “shut up” in July due to her views on trans rights and she responded at the time that she “will not be silenced.” Big anti-trans names including JK Rowling also rushed to Badenoch’s defense, calling Goblet of Fire star Tennant part of the “gender Taliban” in a ranty X post.

In the new campaign vid, which can be watched in full below, Badenoch said: “When you have that type of cultural establishment trying to keep Conservatives down you need someone like me, who’s not afraid of Doctor Who, or whoever, and who’s going to take the fight to them and not let them keep us down. That’s not going to happen with me.” The vid begins with a clip of Tennant criticizing her….

(4) GAME WRITING. John David Beety kicks off a five-part series “Playtesting Game Narratives” with “Introduction to Game Writing and Playtesting” at the SFWA Blog.

In science fiction and fantasy (SFF) terms, game writing is exactly what it sounds like: writing for games. Calling oneself a game writer, however, is akin to declaring oneself a scientist. Divisions within game writing include game media, such as board games and video games; forms, such as planning dialogue trees and naming collectible cards; and publishers, from solo efforts to some of the world’s largest corporations.

This post introduces a series on playtesting, the process of improving games through hands-on feedback. Think of it as an editing pass for games, though with a twist. Unlike prose writing, which usually presents a single, stable experience for readers, games depend on player choices to create a range of experiences, from an early Game Over to a grand finale years in the making. Playtesting allows games to deliver great experiences for the greatest number of players. 

By playing through a game and observing other players, playtesters can identify problems to fix, such as consistent reports of a disliked quest or a moment when story and gameplay mechanics seem to clash. Playtesters can be game-makers or outside parties, and it’s not uncommon to see the game-writing equivalents of authors and beta readers side by side in a multiplayer game’s playtesting sessions.

Future posts will offer specific insights on playtesting from experts in board games, card games, tabletop role-playing games, and video games. Here are brief overviews of those four game types, and the writing opportunities they provide….

(5) WORLDWIDE SERIES AWARD SUBMISSIONS OPEN. The Sara Douglass Book Series Award is taking entries through September 30.

ABOUT THE AWARD

  • This year, the Sara covers series ending (in original publication anywhere in the world) between January 2021 and December 2023.
  • The current judging year is deliberately excluded. This permits an earlier submissions deadline to allow adequate time for the judges to consider all works entered.
  • The Sara Douglass Book Series Award is not an Aurealis Award as such, but a separate, special award conferred during the ceremony (like the Convenors’ Award for Excellence).

GENERAL ELIGIBILITY

  • For the purpose of the Sara Douglass Book Series Award, a “series” is defined as a continuing ongoing story told through two or more books, which must be considered as ending in one of the years covered by the judging period.
  • This award is to recognise that there are book series that are greater as a whole than the sum of their parts – that is, the judges are looking for a series that tells a story across the series, not one that just uses the same characters/setting across loosely connected books. It is anticipated that shortlisted works will be best enjoyed read in succession, with an arc that begins in the first book and is completed in the last.
  • The series may be in any speculative genre within the extended bounds of science fiction, fantasy or horror (that is, if a book would be considered on an individual basis for one of the novel, or possibly novella, categories in the Aurealis Awards, the series may be considered here).

(6) PETE KELLY Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog did an “Interview with Pete Kelly, Poet-in-residence for the Dracula Society”.

Pete Kelly: The Society was founded in October 1973 by two London-based actors, Bernard Davies and Bruce Wightman. The Society’s field of interest embraces the entire Gothic literary genre, and incorporates, too, all stage and screen adaptations, and the sources of their inspiration in myth and folklore. Trips are organized to locations of interest in the UK and abroad. There are regular meets in London with guest speakers, discussions, film and video screenings. My responsibilities are to deliver a poem for each quarterly voices from the vaults magazine and to perform at each meet, the first performance was June 15th so had been rehearsing like mad as it’s been two years since I did anything live. The response was brilliant though even got a wow or two from the audience.

Can you tell us about yourself as both person and poet? 

Pete Kelly: Bonkers and passionate. Though not classically trained, I love when things get weird pushing my understanding of this thing called life. Being an underdog  myself I will always root for them be it writers, bands or in any walk of life. I feel the big hitters have their support in place so I give new talent what help I can give. Also I generally see fresher ideas coming through with them, bucking trends for more fertile imagination.  Writing poetry pretty much mirrors who I am, solitary at times venturing off into my own world. The conventional is more horrific than horror…

(7) SHE BRINGS THE HEAT. On Facebook, Tom Digby (not the California fan), shared a photo of Margaret Atwood wielding a flamethrower.

Margaret Atwood, the 84-year-old Canadian novelist and poet, is pictured here attempting to burn an ‘unburnable’ copy of her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” with a flamethrower.

A single unburnable copy was created to raise awareness about increasing censorship; her dystopian science fiction novel, which centers around one woman’s quest for freedom in a totalitarian theocracy where women’s rights are completely suppressed, has been the subject of numerous censorship challenges since its publication in 1985.

The unburnable copy was auctioned off after her flamethrowing attempt, raising $130,000 for PEN America, a literary and free expression advocacy organization.

As Atwood famously asserted in her poem “Spelling”: “A word after a word after a word is power.”…

(8) JAMES DARREN (1936-2024). Actor James Darren died September 2 at the age of 88. He gained fame as “Moondoggie” in three Gidget movies. Fans knew him best from his work in the 1966 TV series Time Tunnel, and cameos as the holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Ninein the 1990s. Full details at Deadline.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SUNDAY OFFERING. Sunday Morning Transport, a 2024 World Fantasy Award finalist, posted its monthly free story “The Memorial Tree” by Alaya Dawn Johnson. As they say, “Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors.”

(11) SUSPICIOUS DEALINGS WITH DALEKS. Crime doesn’t pay. (Not even fake crime?) “A Dallas Writer Was Investigated for Selling Secrets to the Daleks” – the Dallas Observer says it happened. “There’s really an FBI file out about Paul Riddell’s supposed double-dealings with Dr. Who’s Nemeses.”

Paul Riddell is one of Dallas’s best eccentrics. He is the former owner of the Texas Triffid Farm, a now closed gallery of carnivorous plants named after aliens from a John Wyndham novel. Previously, he published science fiction essays for the likes of Clarkesworld, but these days he writes strange stuff at the Annals of St. Remedius on Substack.

In 1987, though, Riddell worked for Texas Instruments, employee number 800069, at Trinity Mills (now Carrollton). This is back when TI was designing the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile), which would seek and destroy enemy radar-based air defenses. The weapon was used to enforce no-fly zones during the first U.S.–Iraq War. For obvious reasons, this made the workings of the HARM very important to keep secret.

Riddell had a boss, a nice guy from a Mormon family who Riddell says, “had clearly heard of this ‘humor’ thing people did and was desperately trying to learn it.” His boss’s attempts led Riddell to joke back with him, though Riddell’s wide-ranging pop culture experience sometimes left the man perplexed….

… One day, the manager came up to Riddell and clapped him on the back. “Sell any secrets to the Russians this weekend?” he asked. Riddell replied, “No, but I sold a few to the Daleks.”…

… Riddell’s boss knew none of this and wasn’t great at humor, either. Working at a top-secret-security-clearance facility, he thought it best to report Riddell as a possible enemy agent. The matter kept climbing up the chain of command, with each person questioning Riddell….

(12) ANOTHER FBI FILE. And if you want to see the FBI’s 1974 report mentioning Harlan Ellison, click the link: “Harlan Ellison : Federal Bureau of Investigation” at the Internet Archive.

(13) NOT “CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK”. “AI worse than humans at summarising information, trial finds” – Crikey has details of the Australian study.

Artificial intelligence is worse than humans in every way at summarising documents and might actually create additional work for people, a government trial of the technology has found.

Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence.

The test involved testing generative AI models before selecting one to ingest five submissions from a parliamentary inquiry into audit and consultancy firms. The most promising model, Meta’s open source model Llama2-70B, was prompted to summarise the submissions with a focus on ASIC mentions, recommendations, references to more regulation, and to include the page references and context.

Ten ASIC staff, of varying levels of seniority, were also given the same task with similar prompts. Then, a group of reviewers blindly assessed the summaries produced by both humans and AI for coherency, length, ASIC references, regulation references and for identifying recommendations. They were unaware that this exercise involved AI at all.

These reviewers overwhelmingly found that the human summaries beat out their AI competitors on every criteria and on every submission, scoring an 81% on an internal rubric compared with the machine’s 47%…. 

(14) SAY CHEESE. From Reuters: “Exclusive: U.S. researchers find probable launch site of Russia’s new nuclear-powered missile”.

Two U.S. researchers say they have identified the probable deployment site in Russia of the 9M730 Burevestnik, a new nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile touted by President Vladimir Putin as “invincible.”

Putin has said the weapon – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO – has an almost unlimited range and can evade U.S. missile defenses. But some Western experts dispute his claims and the Burevestnik’s strategic value, saying it will not add capabilities that Moscow does not already have and risks a radiation-spewing mishap….

(15) JUSTWATCH TOP 10S. JustWatch has released the streaming movie and TV rankings for August 2024.

(16) SUBTERRANEA TRAILER. “Kenyan Sci-Fi Series ‘Subterranea’ Set at Showmax, Trailer Unveiled” – Variety introduces the trailer.

Award-winning Kenyan director Likarion Wainaina returns to Showmax with “Subterranea,” a new science fiction series. The streaming platform has unveiled a trailer for the eight-part show.

Wainaina, known for his award-winning superhero film “Supa Modo,” brings together a cast of Kenyan talent for this psychological experiment-turned-apocalyptic tale. The story follows eight participants trapped in an underground bunker after a global catastrophe….

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

Pixel Scroll 8/3/24 Krypton Through The Tulips

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(1) GLASGOW POSTS WORLDCON CONVENTION GUIDE. Glasgow 2024’s Convention Guide is available for the public to download from this link. The guide is also available through the members portal. portal.glasgow2024.org

(2) TL;DR WORLDCON PROGRAM. For comparison, Scott Edelman has scanned the Discon II (1974) program – all four pages of it. See it on Facebook.

(3) SARAH J. MAAS BANNED IN UTAH SCHOOLS. “It’s official: These 13 books are now banned from all public schools in Utah” at the Salt Lake City Tribune. Six of the 13 titles were written by the same fantasy romance author, Sarah J. Maas. Another, Oryx & Crake, is by Margaret Atwood.

…The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code….

(4) HOMETOWN HERO. Texas Highways devotes a short sidebar to Austin-based horror novelist: “Author Gabino Iglesias Tackles Monsters and Myths”.

Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was in ruins: 95% of the island was without power, half the population didn’t have tap water, and there was at least $90 billion in damage.

That catastrophic moment of grief and wreckage is the setting of Gabino Iglesias’ latest, House of Bone and Rain, the follow-up to 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home. The latter earned the Austin-based author a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel—the only Latino writer to achieve the horror genre’s highest honor—as well as a movie deal with Sony.

For House of Bone’s protagonist, Gabe, and his childhood friends, death is omnipresent in the wake of the storm. But after one of their mothers is gunned down at a club, they begin to look for answers in an even more dangerous world of drug kingpins, gang brutality, ghosts, and Lovecraftian monsters. Inspired by a tragedy that happened in the author’s own life prior to his move to Texas in 2008, the gothic coming-of-age tale induces emotional gravity as the characters navigate the loss of home and youth.

“The inciting incident with the mother getting shot, that actually happened to me and my friends,” Iglesias says. “I think I started formulating that story in my head in the summer of 1999—because when I actually sat down to write it, it was all there 20 years later.”…

(5) BBC SCRUBS ANOTHER WHO ITEM. “UK Stabbings Suspect Previously Appeared In Doctor Who Charity Advert” – Deadline has the story.

The BBC has removed a six-year-old Doctor Who charity advert from all its platforms, following the discovery that it starred the teenager who has been named as the suspect in this week’s Southport stabbings.

Axel Rudakubana, now aged 17, has been charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder following the attack in northern England on Monday July 29, in which three young girls died, and several were left critically injured in a multiple stabbing that occurred in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The Times newspaper reports that the 2018 video sees Rudakubana, then aged 11, emerge from the famous Tardis in a brown trench coat and tie, similar to clothes worn by the show’s former star David Tennant.

(6) HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS. Members will vote in the 2024 Horror Writers Association Elections for Officers and Trustees between August 19 and August 25. There is only one announced candidate for the offices of President and Secretary. Five candidates will vie for three Trustee positions.

The elected officers shall hold their respective offices for terms of two years, beginning on November 1 and ending on October 31.

FOR PRESIDENT

  • Angela Yuriko Smith 

 FOR SECRETARY

  • Becky Spratford 

FOR BOARD OF TRUSTEES

  • Linda Addison 
  • Patrick Barb 
  • James Chambers 
  • Ellen Datlow   
  • Cynthia Pelayo 

(7) INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER. In “The Word-Hoard: Clark Ashton Smith” at Muse from the Orb, Maya St. Clair shares a list of exotic words she learned by reading Smith’s fiction.

Clark Ashton Smith was a weird fiction writer and poet of the 30s, a multitalented storyteller-artist-sculptor-craftsman from northern California. Initially acclaimed as a local poet and wunderkind, his fantastic poetry and stories eventually found success in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. Mostly an autodidact, Smith lived with his family in an out-of-the-way cabin and did not pursue more than a middle school education. Instead, he drew from inspirations — Baudelaire, Poe — and resources at hand — the Oxford Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica — to create his trademark maximalist style. His work attracted the attention of a fellow “obscure companion in the realms of the macabre,” H.P. Lovecraft, and the two maintained a spirited correspondence until Lovecraft’s death. (Smith sent Lovecraft a carved dinosaur bone.)1 Robert E. Howard likewise thought that Smith was excellent, and wrote Smith that he would sacrifice a finger “for the ability to make words flame and burn as you do.”

(8) CHEATERS EVER PROSPER. Literary Hub asks, “Did You Know That Poetry Used to Be an Actual Olympic Sport?”. Truth! And did you know there was something shady about the first winners? Also truth!

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe easily won the decathlon in the first modern version of the event. The grueling, ten-part feat was not the only addition to the burgeoning modern games. Other events that debuted at the 1912 Olympics included architecture, sculpture, painting, music… and literature.

… The artistic jury would “only consider subjects not previously published, exhibited or performed, and having some direct connection with sport.” The [1912] Stockholm literature competition had fewer than ten entrants, but included Marcel Boulenger, a French novelist who won a bronze medal in fencing (foil) at the 1900 Olympics, French Symbolist Paul Adam, and Swiss playwright René Morax. The gold was awarded to two Germans, Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, for their work “Ode to Sport.” The jury was effusive in their commendations, calling the piece “far and away the winner,” because it “praises athletics in a form that is both literate and athletic.” The narrative ideas “are arranged, classified, and expressed in a series that is flawless in logic and harmony.”

Yet Hohrod and Eschbach never existed. They were pseudonyms for Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who had just won the very competition he organized….

(9) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET FURRY. The Guardian echoes the question “’Why are people always pointing the finger at furries?’: inside the wild world of the furry fandom”.

The first thing that hits you when you press through the revolving doors of the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention centre in Rosemont, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, is the wall of sound. A cacophony of laughter and karaoke, pumping bass and gleeful, shouting voices. The second is the odour. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, coffee, alcohol, baby powder and deodorant. But the other senses fade out when your eyes start to process what they’re seeing. Because the thing that makes entering this lobby so sensationally surreal – the kind of experience you usually have to lick rare Amazonian frogs to achieve – is what people are wearing. In December 2023, I attended the Hyatt Regency for a convention called Midwest FurFest. It’s a gathering, one of the biggest in the world, for an often-misunderstood community known as “furries”, which is why about half the crowd – and there are nearly 15,000 people here this weekend – are dressed head to toe in massive, flamboyantly colourful, furry animal costumes….

(10) MAVERICK KONG. Maverick Theater, a small 75-seat venue in Fullerton, CA will present King Kong as a stage play through August 25.

Back for its 5th year! An original Maverick Theater stage adaptation of the 1933 film by Merian C. Cooper. The play is based on the Delos W. Lovelace novel, which is the same storyline and dialogue from the original film with only minor changes and additions.  The overall show will have a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek feel but all the characters will be played honest and as true to the original; even the man in the monkey suit.

The Maverick Theater’s special effects team known as “Maverick Light & Magic” will take on the beauty and the beast adventure using a live compositing* process of multiple video sources. Similar to the process Willis O’Brien used to create the original King Kong. Actors will be interacting with live rear screen projections to create the illusion of Kong.

(11) MISSION: OLYMPOSSIBLE. “Tom Cruise to rappel off Stade de France in Olympics closing ceremony” reports the Guardian.

He’s scaled the world’s tallest building, dangled mid-air from a plane, set records for holding his breath underwater and, when he broke his foot shooting a rooftop parkour scene, just kept on running.

Now Tom Cruise, the 62-year-old movie star committed to a relentless dice with death, will take on his most high-profile hair-raiser to date: rappelling 42 metres (137ft) from the roof of the Stade de France as part of the Olympic Games closing ceremony this month.

The live broadcast will then reportedly cut to prerecorded footage of Cruise zipping through the streets of Paris on a motorbike, then on to a plane bound for California, clutching the Olympic flag all the while.

When he arrives stateside, he disembarks the plane by chucking himself out of the window, before skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. He then passes the flag to assorted athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they relay it round Los Angeles – the host city for the next games in 2028.

Cruise has been shooting the new Mission: Impossible movie in London and Paris since the new year, and sightings of him speeding around the French capital earlier this summer had been credited to that production.

Likewise, residents of Los Angeles are now so accustomed to his fondness for near-lethal stunts that the sight of Cruise falling from a huge height on to on the Hollywood sign in March raised few eyebrows.

It is believed the actor himself approached the International Olympic Committee and suggested the show-stopping sequence himself, having previously helped carry the torch through LA as part of its relay en route to Athens in 2004….

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 3, 1904 – Clifford D. Simak. (Died 1988.)

By Paul Weimer: The rural science fiction writer. 

A lot of the science fiction writers of his time and age were big city enthusiasts and wrote their science fiction presents and futures extolling the city and its virtues, be it on Earth or another planet, or even planetwide cities. 

Clifford Simak

Clifford Simak was different, very different. Much of his science fiction and fantasy could be considered rural, or pastoral, and my reading of him always seemed to come back to those liminal spaces between the civilized world and the wilderness. Themes of self-reliance, and yet community with others living in that same sort of space. An essential paradox that describes rural life…and Simak’s fiction. 

And of course, always, Dogs. Aside from the rural life and setting of many of his stories, dogs, sometimes normal, often superintelligent or sentient, pop up everywhere.  The themes of what dogs mean to humans: intelligence, companionship, loyalty and fidelity, are themes that one can find in Simak’s work whether or not there is an actual dog in it. 

There are many fine Simak stories and novels I’ve read and enjoyed, from the “Big Front Yard”, one of the best first contact alien stories out there, to the strange and surreal “Shakespeare’s Planet”, “The Goblin Reservation”, and many more. Way Station, with its immortal caretaker of a rest stop for interstellar tourists, is particularly fun. 

The one Simak story that stands above the novels, novellas and others for me is “Desertion”, part of the City cycle of future history stories that he wrote. “Desertion” is the one set on Jupiter, as the commander of a base around Jupiter is confronted with the fact that everyone he has sent out onto Jupiter, transformed for the purpose into Jovians…has disappeared and never come back. Our protagonist, X, and his dog, eventually come face to face with the stunning truth of what happened to their comrades. It is powerfully moving, as is much of Simak’s work.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brewster Rockit is unsafe in space.
  • Pardon my Planet surprises with what was in second place.
  • Rubes prefers the stoned version.
  • Tom Gauld might be saying the opposite of “Death will not release you”.

(14) SHELL GAME. “Un oeuf is enough: have we had our fill of movie Easter eggs?” asks the Guardian. No, of course not, they were just kidding.

…Easter eggs, that is, those fan-centric surprises with which the modern blockbuster is sprinkled, or in this case cluttered.

They take many forms: unpublicised cameos, in-jokes that only franchise devotees would clock, surprise scenes stowed away in the end credits, abundant references to other movies, even allusions to controversies on the sets of other movies. The Easter eggs in Deadpool & Wolverine belong to all these categories and more. There are so many, in fact, that it’s tempting to ask: which came first, the movie or the eggs?

Whatever the style of Easter egg, the point is the same: to encourage, flatter and reward the deepest possible level of fan engagement and to keep completists coming back for more….

…Given the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Easter eggs are likely to remain a staple item on the menu. “I grew up watching Wayne’s World, which operated on much the same lines,” says [film critic] McCahill. “But I fear, after Deadpool & Wolverine, every big Hollywood movie is now just going to be a series of meme-able moments. Directors should be storytellers, not winkers. And as with their chocolate equivalents, Easter eggs should be consumed in moderation.”

(15) SOUNDS LIKE THE BOSS. “Hank Azaria, voice from the Simpsons, fronts a Bruce Springsteen cover band” is interviewed by NPR’s Weekend Edition.

SCOTT SIMON: But that’s really Hank Azaria, the voice behind many characters from the long-running “Simpsons” – also the pharaoh in “Night At The Museum” and Jim Brockmire, the plaid-clad sports announcer. And he’s now the presence behind Hank Azaria & The EZ Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen cover band that debuted this past week at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. The six-time Emmy award-winning actor joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us….

(16) WITH FRICKIN’ LASERS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “A $500 Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Hack Computer Chips With Lasers” according to WIRED.

IN MODERN MICROCHIPS, where some transistors have been shrunk to less than a 10th of the size of a Covid-19 virus, it doesn’t take much to mess with the minuscule electrical charges that serve as the 0s and 1s underpinning all computing. A few photons from a stray beam of light can be enough to knock those electrons out of place and glitch a computer’s programming. Or that same optical glitching can be achieved more purposefully—say, with a very precisely targeted and well timed blast from a laser. Now that physics-bending feat of computer exploitation is about to become available to far more hardware hackers than ever before.

At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they’re calling the RayV Lite. Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies….

…Their goal in creating and releasing the designs for that ultra-cheap chip-hacking gadget, they say, is to make clear that laser-based exploitation techniques (known as laser fault injection or laser logic state imaging) are far more possible than many hardware designers—including clients for whom Beaumont and Trowell sometimes perform security testing at NetSPI—believe them to be. By demonstrating how inexpensively those methods can now be pulled off, they hope to both put a new tool in the hands of DIY hackers and researchers worldwide, and to push hardware manufacturers to secure their products against an obscure but surprisingly practical form of hacking….

(17) WILL SPACEX BAIL OUT BOEING? Futurism voices strong opinions about this: “It’s Sounding Like Boeing’s Starliner May Have Completely Failed”.

It looks like NASA officials might be seeing the writing on the wall for the very troubled Boeing Starliner, which has marooned two astronauts up in space for almost two months due to technical issues.

An unnamed “informed” source told Ars Technica that there’s a greater than 50 percent probability that the stranded astronauts will end up leaving the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, with another unnamed person telling the news outlet that the scenario is highly likely.

NASA officials are more cagey about what’s happening on the record, a marked contrast from previous weeks when they expressed confidence in the Starliner’s ability to safely bring back the astronauts.

“NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”…

… Many signs are now pointing towards SpaceX rescuing the stranded astronauts, according to Ars. These signs include the space agency giving more than a quarter million dollars to SpaceX for a “SPECIAL STUDY FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE,” and SpaceX actively training for the likely situation of the company sending a Dragon capsule to the space station to bring the astronauts home.

If SpaceX does get the green light, expect the Starliner project to be shoved into the proverbial dumpster, according to Ars‘ analysis.

It would be a bad look all around, because it would mean the American government had funneled a total of $5.8 billion into malfunctioning junk.

If this scenario happens, with Starliner not deemed safe enough for human travel, we hope politicians and others investigate what went wrong, given that SpaceX has managed to build the immensely more reliable Dragon capsule at 50 percent less cost than Boeing’s spacecraft….

(18) PITCH MEETING. Ryan George has to deal with a lot of questions in “Superman II Pitch Meeting”.

Released in 1980, “Superman II” is a sequel to the super popular Superman I, and it was also followed by Superman III. They really nailed the numbers on these. Superman 2 continues the Man of Steel’s adventures as he battles Kryptonian villains including General Zod amidst the growing popularity of superhero films during the late 70s and early 80s. Superman II definitely raises some questions though. Like where did Marlon Brando go? Why didn’t Lex Luthor just shut his lights? Why are snake bites so painful? Why did Superman have to give up his powers and then get them back so easily? What was with that cellophane S? To answer all these questions, check out the pitch meeting that led to Superman II.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon played “Password with Elmo and Cookie Monster”. Bird is the word…

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

Pixel Scroll 6/1/24 If You Like My File And You Think I’m Pixely, Come On Baby Let Me Scroll

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(1) $UPPORT THE BID. The Worldcon Heritage Organization, which maintains several fixed exhibits to be shown at Worldcons, including a collection of past Hugo Awards, is putting together a bid in hopes of acquiring the first Hugo Award ever given when it goes to auction on June 7. They will also try to get the honorary one given to Hugo Gernsback in 1960, another lot in the same auction.

Ackerman’s 1953 Hugo
Gernsback 1960 Hugo

WHO President Kent Bloom said in a comment on File 770, “Our funds are limited, so if anyone bids against us we may not succeed. I don’t know how to set up a fund to collect donations, but anyone who wants to donate can send money to Worldcon Heritage Organization, c/o Kent Bloom, 1245 Allegheny Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919. If you want this considered as a contingent donation, please let us know and if we don’t succeed in acquiring the trophies we can return your contributions.” Bloom can be contacted at President@worldconheritage.org or at kent.bloom (at) rialto.org

John Pomeranz followed with this advice: “And, as a reminder, let’s not publicize how much we’re giving. No need to tip off the other bidders how high WHA might be able to go.”

(2) POLAND’S FAN OF THE YEAR. Congratulations to Polish fan Marcin “Alqua” Klak who received the Śląkfa Award from Śląski Klub Fantastyki as the fan of the year.

Marcin “Alqua” Klak

(3) UNEXPECTED KAIJU. “Godzilla Minus One Makes a Surprise Stomp to Netflix and Digital” reports Gizmodo.

Godzilla Minus One was one of 2023’s best movies, if not the best, depending on who you ask. If you’re one of the folks who didn’t get the chance to see it in theaters, great news: it’s now on Netflix and available to own or rent digitally…

…If you weren’t aware, there was some confusion around the circumstances of Minus One’s arriving on streaming and physical formats. Due to a contract between Toho and Legendary, the movie had to be taken out of theaters once Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire came out. Presumably, that’s also why a physical 4K/Blu-rRay version hasn’t dropped in outside of Japan either. New Empire only just hit streaming in mid-May and is coming to physical formats on June 11, so it might be a while before folks get to snatch up Minus One to add onto their physical collections….

(4) WHO KNEW? At Physics World, Robert P. Crease says our Steven French knew! “Ursula Le Guin: the pioneering author we should thank for popularizing Schrödinger’s cat” at Physics World.

… But despite its current ubiquity, the fictitious animal only really entered wider public consciousness after the US science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin published a short story called “Schrödinger’s cat” exactly 50 years ago. Le Guin, who died in 2018 at the age of 88, was a widely admired writer, who produced more than 20 novels and over 100 short stories.

Schrödinger originally invented the cat image as a gag. If true believers in quantum mechanics are right that the microworld’s uncertainties are dispelled only when we observe it, Schrödinger felt, this must also sometimes happen in the macroworld – and that’s ridiculous. Writing in a paper published in 1935 in the German-language journal Naturwissenschaften (23 807), he presented his famous cat-in-a-box image to show why such a notion is foolish.

For a while, few paid attention. According to an “Ngram” search of Google Books carried out by Steven French, a philosopher of science at the University of Leeds in the UK, there were no citations of the phrase “Schrödinger’s cat” in the literature for almost 20 years. As French describes in his 2023 book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, the first reference appeared in a footnote to an essay by the philosopher Paul Feyerabend in the 1957 book Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics edited by Stephan Körner….

(5) SUMMER IS COMING. “George R.R. Martin reveals first look at his sci-fi short film The Summer Machine” at Winter Is Coming.

…The Summer Machine is a science fiction story and may be the first entry in an anthology. Martin is producing the movie, but not writing or directing it; both roles are filled by Michael Cassutt, with whom Martin worked on the 1985 Twilight Zone reboot. The short will star Lina Esco, Charles Martin Smith and Matt Frewer.

We don’t know many details about the plot, although in the image above you can clearly see that Martin is sitting in front of some kind of sci-fi doohicky….

(6) GEORGE R.R. MARTIN COMING TO GLASGOW 2024. Blink and you’ll miss it, but in a Not a Blog post about yet another TV series based on his work (“Here’s Egg!”) George R.R. Martin said he’s going to this year’s Worldcon.

THE HEDGE KNIGHT will be a lot shorter than GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much different tone… but it’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe  Ira Parker and his team are doing a great job.  I hope to visit the shoot come July, when I swing by Belfast on my way to the worldcon in Glasgow.  

(7) CENSORING SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT APPARENTLY FEARS TO TOUCH BOOK. “The Handmaid’s Tale Was Removed from An Idaho School Library. This Teen Handed A Copy to the Superintendent At Graduation” – People tells what happened then.

Annabelle Jenkins protested the removal of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel earlier in the school year

An Idaho high school graduate took book censorship into her own hands at her graduation ceremony earlier this month.

During the May 23 graduation ceremony for the Idaho Fine Arts Academy, Annabelle Jenkins handed West Ada School District superintendent Derek Bub a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book had been removed from the school district’s libraries in Dec. 2023.

According to the Idaho Statesman, the novel was one of 10 books, including Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen and Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas, to be removed from the school district. It’s administration concluded that the “graphic imagery contained within [the graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale] was not suitable for the West Ada School District student population,” per a statement from district representative Niki Scheppers.

“I just realized that I did not want to walk across that stage and get my diploma and shake the superintendent’s hand,” Jenkins told KTVB. “I just did not want to do that.”

In a TikTok Jenkins posted, which currently has over 24 million views, the graduate is seen shaking the hands of other faculty on stage during the ceremony. When she gets to Bub, Jenkins hands him a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale graphic novel instead.

“I got up there and I got the book out. I kind of showed it to the audience really quick,” she said. “He crossed his arms like this and he wouldn’t take it.” Jenkins placed the book at his feet before she walked off the stage….

(8) DOG’S BEST FRIEND. The New York Times’ Amy Nicholson tells why this is a “critic’s pick”: “‘Robot Dreams’ Review: A Friendship That Is Far From Mechanical”. (Link bypasses NYT paywall.)

Decades after Philip K. Dick asked if androids dreamed of electric sheep, we have an answer. This android — one of two nameless leads in the Oscar-nominated charmer “Robot Dreams” — envisions a small, lonely dog in his third-floor walk-up, microwaving a depressing dinner for one. Set in 1980s Manhattan, Pablo Berger’s all-ages, wordless wonder of a cartoon kicks into gear when the mutt assembles a self-aware, spaghetti-limbed robot companion ordered from an infomercial. You might be thinking that sentient artificial intelligence didn’t exist 40 years ago, and you’d be right. But dogs don’t rent apartments, either.

This fanciful vision of New York is populated by animals: sporty ducks, punk rock monkeys, buffalo mail carriers, penguins shouldering boomboxes, and a disproportionate number of llamas. Mechanical beings are sparse and some creatures consider them lower in status, a brutal development when our robot’s relationship with his dog begins to break down. But Berger isn’t interested in science fiction. He’s made a buddy film that’s as relatable as two friends bonding over slices of pizza (but the robot eats the plate, too)….

(9) ZACK NORMAN (1940-2024). Producer Zack Norman, who gained a kind of fame as the maker of a film referenced on Mystery Science Theater 3000, died April 28 at the age of 83. The New York Times obituary tells how he became a pop culture icon.

…A far more obscure film that Mr. Norman helped produce, “Chief Zabu” (1986), entered into pop-culture lore in an unusual way: by disappearing for three decades.

“Chief Zabu,” which Mr. Norman wrote, produced and directed with Neil Cohen, was another bargain, made on a shoestring budget of $200,000. Mr. Norman was also a star of the film: He played Sammy Brooks, a real estate mogul who, with his friend Ben Sydney (Allen Garfield), pursues both financial and political ambitions in a grandiose scheme to take over a fictitious Polynesian island.

The film fizzled in a preview and was never released. For 30 years it was buried, but not forgotten — at least not to fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the Generation X staple of the 1990s that featured a weary space traveler and his robot friends poking fun at bad B-movies on a journey through the cosmos.

On the show, any time a character in one of those achingly bad movies cracked a newspaper, Joel Hodgson, the original host, would wearily intone, “Hey, Zack Norman is Sammy in ‘Chief Zabu.’”

It was a knowing reference to an advertisement for the movie, featuring a stern photo of Mr. Norman, that he continued to run — stubbornly yet playfully — in Weekly Variety every Wednesday for nine years. Why? “Because it gave me great joy,” he said in a 2016 interview with The Sun Sentinel of South Florida….

Mr. Norman’s faith in “Chief Zabu” eventually paid off. He and Mr. Cohen released a new cut of the film in 2016 and then took it on tour, presenting it at comedy clubs. Even so, it took them decades to realize that the Variety ad had become a cultural artifact.

In a 2020 interview with the film website Skewed & Reviewed, Mr. Cohen said that neither of them had heard of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” until one afternoon in the mid-2010s when they were walking down a Los Angeles street and saw a man wearing a “Zack Norman as Sammy in Chief Zabu” T- shirt.

“We stopped the guy and said, ‘Dude, what is up with that?’” he recalled. “And you can imagine his reaction when he saw he was talking to Zack Norman, whose face was on his T-shirt.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

June 1, 1947 — Jonathan Pryce, 77. I’m reasonably sure that the first role I saw Jonathan Pryce in was the lead antagonist of Some Wicked Comes This Way. (Bradbury did a stellar job writing the screenplay, didn’t he?)  He pulls off the carnival leader of Mr. Dark in suitably sinister manner. 

Then there’s the matter of Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where we meet him executing a heroic officer played by Sting for his act of bravery because it’s demoralizing to soldiers and citizens just trying to lead as he says unexceptional lives. 

(That is the Gilliam film I’ve watched the most followed by Time Bandits. Surely you’re not surprised?) 

As media baron Eliot Carter is in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, he’s trying to cause war between the United Kingdom and China. Arrogant little prick he is here. 

He’s in Pirates of the Caribbean seriesas Governor Weatherby Swann. I’ve only seen the first film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and I thought it was an interesting but not terribly great film. 

He’s The Master in the Doctor Who special,  Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, made specifically for the Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was the only BBC commissioned live-action Doctor Who production between the Who television movie and the launch of the present Who era starting with the “Rose” episode.

In Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, he got to play that character with Bill Paterson as Watson. The Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street urchins as the BBC press kits described them, is trying to find their missing members, while also trying to prevent Sherlock Holmes being convicted of murder. I’ll end this review with a photo of him in that role.

Jonathan Pryce as Sherlock Holmes.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STARLINER LAUNCH SCRUBBED. “Boeing forced to call off its first launch with NASA astronauts once again” – NBC News has the story.

NASA and Boeing were forced once again to call off the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to lift off aboard the Starliner from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 12:25 p.m. ET. The flight to the International Space Station would have been the vehicle’s first with a crew.

The launch attempt was scrubbed with only 3 minutes and 50 seconds to go in the countdown — yet another setback for Boeing, which has already dealt with years of delays and budget overruns with its Starliner program.

Officials were attempting to try again the next day but announced Saturday evening that the flight was postponed “to give the team additional time to assess a ground support equipment issue,” according to NASA….

(13) SECOND LIFE. “Scavengers Reign, a sci-fi show like no other, now gets a second shot at life on Netflix” – Polygon has the good news.

The streaming era operates via a cold and opaque calculus. Many shows unceremoniously premiere with limited promotion, only to face swift cancellation with an equal lack of fanfare. With no real numbers and a few dodgy reports available to the public and creators (now a little less dodgy, thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike), a show’s fate can feel like a cosmic joke, with no rhyme or reason to why some soldier on and some never get the chance to find an audience. Scavengers Reign, the stunning animated series that debuted on Max last year, found its number was up when the streamer canceled it earlier this May. However, in a rare moment of clarity, there is a way forward for the show: It just has to be a hit starting Friday, when it premieres on Netflix.

Its new summer home (Scavengers Reign is still available to stream on Max) is reportedly considering a season 2 renewal pending the show’s Netflix debut, though what a favorable run looks like isn’t terribly clear. Mostly, this is just an excuse to exercise a rare bit of streaming-era agency: Go check out Scavengers Reign, one of the very best shows of last year, and the rare series that earns the superlative of “like nothing else on television” simply by virtue of its stunning visual design.

Taking visual cues from European sci-fi artists like Moebius and Simon Roy, Scavengers Reign chronicles the aftermath of a disaster aboard the spacecraft Demeter, following a handful of survivors that escaped to the alien world of Vesta Minor, a hauntingly beautiful and hostile planet…. 

(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER. “’3 Body Problem’ To Run For 3 Seasons On Netflix” reports Deadline.

3 Body Problem creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo on Friday cleared up the confusion over the Netflix sci-fi drama’s recent renewal, confirming that it will produce two more seasons.

At the streamer’s upfront presentation last month, the streamer announced that 3 Body Problem has been picked up for “all-new episodes”, with Benioff, Weiss and Woo assuring fans that they will “get to tell this story through to its epic conclusion.”

No number of episodes or seasons were revealed, creating a confusion and triggering wild speculation. Benioff, Weiss and Woo subsequently indicated to THR that the pickup was for “seasons” but have not provided specifics until today when they confirmed that there will be Seasons 2 and 3 during a 3 Body Problem Television Academy panel at the Netflix FYSEE space….

(15) SMOKE BUT NO MIRRORS? [Item by Steven French.] So, maybe not built by aliens ….? “Are dusty quasars masquerading as Dyson sphere candidates?” asks Physics World.

Seven candidate Dyson spheres found from their excess infrared radiation could be a case of mistaken identity, with evidence for dusty background galaxies spotted close to three of them.

The seven candidates were discovered by Project Hephaistos, which is coordinated by astronomers at Uppsala University in Sweden and Penn State University in the US.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical construct: a swarm of energy collectors capturing all of a star’s radiant energy to provide huge amounts of power for its builders. As these energy collectors – basically huge arrays of solar panels – absorb sunlight, they must emit waste heat as infrared radiation to avoid overheating. While a complete Dyson swarm would hide a star from view, this waste heat would still be detectable.

The caveat is that to build a complete Dyson swarm, a lot of raw material is required. In his 1960 paper describing the concept, Freeman Dyson calculated that dismantling a gas giant planet like Jupiter should do the trick.

Given that this is easier said than done, Project Hephaistos has been looking for incomplete Dyson swarms “that do not block all starlight, but a fraction of it,” says Matías Suazo of Uppsala University, who is leading the project….

(16) CHANG’E-6 LANDS ON MOON. “China’s Chang’e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon” – CNN puts the news in perspective.

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon.

The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced.

China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time.

The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.

If all goes as planned, the mission — which began on May 3 and is expected to last 53 days — could be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power.

The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and building a research base at its south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.

Sunday’s landing comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. You’re just in time (!) for the “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark Pitch Meeting” with Ryan George. Does the proposed story have any holes? Shut up, he explained.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/4/24 Pixels On The Storm

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(1) KUANG Q&A. In the Guardian: “Rebecca F Kuang: ‘I like to write to my friends in the style of Joan Didion’”.

And cancel culture? Does it exist?
I find a lot of this so disingenuous. The shape of an internet takedown would go something like this: somebody would err, and often there would be pretty genuine complaints about their conduct. But there’s also a really big spectrum of what counts [as bad behaviour]. It could be something quite egregious and harmful, and it could also be something as silly as misrecognising a breakfast cereal. We conflate all of these scales of harm. Anyway, someone would air this complaint, and then there would be a back and forth with that complaint, and then, very quickly, it would spread to the corners of the internet, and those with no stake in it at all would spread disinformation. Nobody would ever seem interested in the truth, or in reparations, or in genuinely understanding what happened. It’s so self-serving and frivolous…

What are you working on now?
My next book is set in the 80s. It’s a fantasy novel, but it’s very different from The Poppy War trilogy. It’s Neil Gaiman meets… Lewis Carroll. There’ll be a big emphasis on nonsense and riddles and mysteries. It’s an entirely new genre. I like to feel like I’m moving forward. I get bored very easily.

(2) CRIMINALIZED WRITING. “Record Number of Writers Jailed Worldwide in 2023” says PEN America annual report.

PEN America today released its annual Freedom to Write Index, recording the highest number of jailed writers around the globe since the Index launched five years ago. There were 339 writers from 33 countries jailed in 2023, an increase of 62 writers compared to 2022 and 101 more than in 2019….

The top ten jailers of writers in 2023 are China (including autonomous regions) with 107, Iran 49, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam each with 19, Israel (including the Occupied Palestinian Territory) with 17, Belarus and Russia each with 16, Türkiye 14, Myanmar 12, and Eritrea seven. 

PEN America spends the entire year researching news and verifying accounts of writers jailed for their speech–and held for a minimum of 48 hours –anywhere in the world (see more on our methodology here). In addition to the Freedom to Write Index, PEN America maintains and updates a Writers at Risk Database throughout the year, providing insights into the wide array of threats that writers face. There are currently 923 active cases of writers at risk in 88 countries in the database….

(3) FEARLESS OCTAGENARIAN. “’I can say things other people are afraid to’: Margaret Atwood on censorship, literary feuds and Trump” in the Guardian.

…Questions of freedom of expression are “front and centre” right now, she believes, with both left and right turning to censorship. “‘You have to take this book out of the school because it hurts my child’s feelings,’ says one hand, and the other hand says ‘Well this other book hurts my child’s feelings, so you have to take it out.’ And that goes on until there aren’t any books left. If you go too far down the road in either direction, you shut down political speech.” While she doesn’t think this is likely to happen in Britain any time soon – “the British are quite mouthy, you may have noticed” – it is happening in parts of America.

When Atwood speaks the world listens, with good reason: the financial crash, the rise of the extreme right and the infringement of women’s freedoms in recent years have all been anticipated in her work. “I just pay attention,” she likes to say. Her status as an international treasure and seer means she is frequently sought out for her opinions on the hottest issues of the day, as well as panel discussions and events.

“I’m a kind of walking opinion poll,” she says. “I can tell by the questions that people ask me what’s on their minds. What is the thing they’re obsessing about at the moment.” The backwards turn of women’s rights, with the ruling just this month that the 1864 total ban on abortion be enforced in Arizona, for example, is high on the list. But as always she is careful to stress that there is no one answer to questions about the future for women. “I have to ask which women? How old? What country? There are many different variations of women.”

She attributes her outspokenness to the fact that she doesn’t have a job: “You can say things that other people might be afraid to because they will lose their job or get cancelled.”… 

(4) WATER WAITERS. Animation Magazine signal boosts a “Dreamy Chinese Animated Feature ‘Deep Sea’ Now Streaming on Peacock”.

Having made a striking visual impression upon audiences at prestige film festivals in Berlin, Tribeca, Annecy and Tokyo, the innovative CG-animated feature Deep Sea has made its exclusive streaming debut on Peacock. Written and directed by Tian Xiaopeng (Monkey King: Hero Is Back), the film is produced by China’s October Media and Enlight Pictures, and had a limited U.S. theatrical release through Viva Pictures in November.

Synopsis: A young girl named Shenxiu is unexpectedly swept into the sea during a family cruise and stumbles upon a mysterious restaurant under the waves. There, she meets the scheming head chef Nanhe, and his ragtag crew of adorable otters and sarcastic walruses. They join forces to save the restaurant and reunite Shenxiu with her long-lost mother in a kaleidoscopic, dreamlike world of swirling color and dazzling views….

(5) A TRAILER PARK FAR, FAR AWAY. Animation World Network is tuned in when “Disney+ Drops New ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Trailer”.

To celebrate Star Wars Days, Disney+ has just dropped a second trailer and batch of images for Star Wars: The Acolyte, which debuts with the first two episodes on June 4.

The newest Star Wars offering, the mystery-thriller takes viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a shocking crime spree, but as more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.

(6) SANFORD (SANDY) ZANE MESCHKOW (1941-2024). By Nigel Rowe: Sandy (Sanford) Meschkow passed away on January 28, 2024 in Bryn Mawr, Montgomery, Pennsylvania. He was 83.

He grew up in the Catskill Mountains area of New York State, and was a longtime SF fan and onetime roommate and best friend of artist Mike Hinge. As President of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society early in the 1970s Sandy commissioned Kelly Freas to do a portrait of Keith Laumer for a PSFS program book. An engineer and editor/writer by trade who worked at NASA for a time in the Sixties. James Blish has Sandy to thank for helping him move out of his apartment when he was moving to England.

Back in early 2022, he wrote saying, “My wife died in January of 2019 and I moved into this large retirement facility that July. I just turned 81and while I have some cardiac and dfiabetic problems I’m not using a walker yet! I wrote an SF novel I can’t seem to sell, but I’ll e-mail it to you for comments if you want to see it. I keep in close contact with an old girlfriend who also knew Mike and we keep each other from getting depressed.  We are in anti-COVID-19 lockdown here. Only one resident and seven staffers have caught the new variant lately.”

He never did send the story along, but we wrote a few more times, sharing memories about Mike and what Sandy was up to. Sandy was Mike’s executor and had packed up all his personal items for me to transport back to New Zealand along with his ashes. A task I carried out the year after he passed. A memorial for Mike was dutifully held in NZ with Mike’s brother Noel and several old time New Zealand 50’s fans present.

Sandy’s fannish memories about his early days in fandom are available in his blog from 2009: Fanograph.

Sadly, we never did meet up in person, but I’ll miss those occasional chatty emails.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 48. Steampunk and mannerpunk , it’s time to talk about both, specifically that as written by our birthday author, Gail Carriger.  

Where to start? Her first novel, Soulless, set in an alternate version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are members of proper society. Alexia Tarabotti is a wonderful created character that anyone would love to have an adventure with, as well as sit down with to high tea in the afternoon. 

It begins the Parasol Protectorate series centered around her, which as of now goes on to have Changeless, Blameless, oh guess, Heartless and Timeless in it, plus one short story, “Meat Cute”. Why the latter broke the naming convention I know not. 

Gail Carriger. Photo by Vanessa Applegate.

Wait, wait, don’t tell me! — she’s done more mannerpunk. Indeed she has. There is Custard Protocol series (Prudence Imprudence, Competence and Reticence), also set in Parasol Protectorate universe. When Prudence “Rue” Alessandra Maccon Akeldama , a young woman with metahuman abilities, is left an unexpected dirigible in a will , she does what any sensible (ha!) alternative Victorian Era female would do — she names it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Need I say adventures of a most unusual kind follow? I really love this series and not just for the name of the series. It’s just fun. Really fun.

The Finishing School series is set in Parasol Protectorate universe. Again she has a delightful manner in naming her tales, Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry and Manners & Mutiny. Go ahead, I think you can figure what this series is about without me telling you. It’s delightful of course.

So I’m not that familiar with her other writing. It appears the two Delightfully Deadly novellas might have a tinge of romance in them though at least one also has dead husbands, four to be precise, lobsters and of course high society. Lobsters? 

The Claw & Courtship novellas are standalone stories set in the Parasol Protectorate universe. So far there’s just “How to Marry a Werewolf (In 10 Easy Steps)”, though she says there’ll be more.

Finally, I’ll note she did a SF series, the Tinkered Stars Universe series — how can this possibly be? — which she describes on her website as “a sexy alien police procedural on a space station”. Oh, that sounds so good. It consists of Divinity 36, Demigod 22, Dome 6, Crudat and The 5th Gender. 

Did she do short stories? Just four, of which I really want to read one — “The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar”.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) OUTRÉ TECH. Gizmodo has a slideshow of “7 Extremely Weird Inventions From the Grandfather of Science Fiction” – ideas conceived by Hugo Gernsback.

…In 1913, he started The Electrical Experimenter, which would become known as Science and Invention in the 1920s. And in 1919 he founded Radio News, with Television News launched in 1928, just a couple of years after the first experimental tests of TV. That doesn’t even include the sci-fi titles he started like Amazing Stories.

All of these serious-minded tech magazines had at least one article in every issue by Gernsback, and they often included ideas for futuristic inventions. They’re simply some of the most interesting old ideas for the future from a century ago….

(10) YE KEN NOW. Apparently it booked up last year, however, you can still take a virtual tour of “Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse, Ken’s Way in Malibu, California, United States” on Airbnb. (Was this a real property? Hard to tell.)

Welcome to my Kendom! While Barbie is away, she has handed over the keys to her Malibu DreamHouse this summer and my room could be yours for the night. I’ve added a few touches to bring some much-needed Kenergy to the newly renovated and iconic Malibu DreamHouse. Placed perfectly above the beach with panoramic views, this life-size toy pink mansion is a dream come true!

Booking opens at 10 a.m. PT on Monday, July 17 for two, one-night stays for up to two guests on July 21 and July 22, 2023.

What you’ll do
Situated along the stunning, photogenic coastline, the Malibu DreamHouse is a sunny surfer’s sanctuary surrounded by beach, beach and more beach – just the way I like it.

I’ve decked out the place with a little more…well, me! I’m more than just beach! My cowboy stuff is great. And horses! Guitars, games and more. And of course, rollerblades, because I literally go nowhere without them. Now, guests can live it up Ken-style for a neon night in Barbie Land – six-pack not included.

– During your stay, you will have the opportunity to live in technicolor by:
– Taking a spin through my awesome wardrobe to find your best beach fit. Look out Barbie, I’ve got quite the closet too!
– Channeling your inner cowboy and learning a line dance or two on my outdoor disco dance floor or performing a sunset serenade on my guitar
– Challenging your fellow guests to a “beach off” with plenty of sunbathing and chillaxing by the infinity pool
– Taking home a piece of my Kendom with your very own set of yellow-and-pink Impala skates and surfboard

(11) THE SHIP OF ISHTAR. Grammaticus Books looks at an early 20th century classic.

An in-depth review of A. Merritt’s high fantasy novel, ‘The Ship of Ishtar’. Originally published in serialize form in 1924. And an influence for future fantasy authors such as Michael Moorcock.

(12) RECOGNIZE THIS ROCK? “After Star Trek Symbol Was Spotted By NASA’s Mars Rover, We’re Getting Serious ‘Strange New Worlds’ Vibes”. See the video at the link.

Fans are experiencing a bit of a lull due to the fact that upcoming Star Trek shows are still months off. However, fortunately, NASA’s Mars rover is keeping fans entertained in a surprising way. The Curiosity happened to photograph a rock that strongly resembles an iconic symbol from the franchise and, with that, we’re now getting serious Strange New Worlds Season 2 vibes after seeing it. NASA has made cool shoutouts to The Orville and other sci-fi shows, and one gets the feeling that there are also some Trekkies working at the space-centric organization. The official account for Curiosity confirmed that there were team members delighted when an X user scanning publicly available raw images from the rover noticed a rock that looked like the Delta sigil commonly seen on a comm badge.

(13) WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU JUMP INTO A BLACK HOLE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time asks what happens if we jump into a singularity…

Meet Alice and Bob, famous explorers of the abstract landscape of theoretical physics. Heroes of the gerdankenexperiment—the thought experiment—whose life mission is to find contradictions in the deepest layers of our theories. Today our intrepid pair are jumping into a black hole. Again. Why? Well, to determine the fundamental structure of spacetime and its connection to quantum entanglement of course.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Nigel Rowe, JJ, 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 Jeff Smith.]