…In an effort to get more attention for their cause, Brocksom started sending T-shirts to creators with large followings. A friend encouraged them to send one to actor Tennant, whose child identifies as non-binary. Tennant is no stranger to allyship, often speaking up and wearing Ts and pins in supports of the LGBTQ+ community on red carpets and awards ceremonies.
Last year, at the press launch for Good Omens‘ second season, he wore a shirt that read: “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks.”
Brocksom’ husband found an address for Tennant’s fan mail and they mailed him a package of T-shirts with all their designs.
“I didn’t think it would go anywhere,” Brocksom tells Yahoo Canada. “I thought he’d wear one to a doctor’s appointment with his kids or something, and then the message would be out there.”
On Friday, Brocksom woke up to hundreds of T-shirt orders. Tennant’s wife, Georgia, had posted a photo of him wearing their “You will have to go through me” T-shirt on Instagram where she has more than 410,000 followers. The actor and his family attended their children’s school Pride events….
(2) BIRTHDAY HONOURS. This came out June 14 but it’s news to me! “The King’s Birthday Honours List 2024”. No sff figures listed that I can see, but Bookseller spotted a bunch of authors and other contributors to the arts.
Monica Ali, Joseph Coehlo, and Niall Ferguson were among the authors recognized on the King’s Birthday Honors List in the U.K., the Booksellerreported. …
Niall Ferguson, who was awarded a knighthood, told the Oxford Mail, “When an individual is honored by the King, implicitly his formative influences are the real recipients of the honor.”
Children’s Laureate Coelho (OBE) was recognized for services to the arts, to children’s reading and to literature. Other authors on the honors list include Susie Dent (MBE), Rory Cellan-Jones (OBE), and Jamila Gavin (MBE).
Richard Charkin (OBE for services to literature), a recent past president of the International Publishers Association, former CEO of Macmillan Publishers, executive director of Bloomsbury from 2007 to 2018, an executive at a range of other publishers, and author of the memoir, My Back Pages…
Other honorees include Jenny Brown, founder of literary agency Jenny Brown Associates, who was given an OBE for services to literature; Nicholas Poole, past CEO of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (OBE for services to libraries, to the arts and to museums); and Di Speirs, audio executive editor for books at the BBC (MBE for services to broadcasting and to literature).
Also honored were Sarah Hosking (MBE), who founded Hosking Houses Trust, as well as librarians Sally McInness and Julie Kay.
As the foremost editor in Science Fiction, I was once again shocked not to win the Locus Award for Best Editor despite my impressive track record of not just editing books but also editing small wildlife into a variety of interesting shapes. I immediately cancelled my subscription to Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly in protest as I don’t have a subscription to Locus but, let’s face it, they are all in on it, they are all part of the Big Magazine cabal controlling the media and if we don’t all chip in and send a message that the ordinary folk will not put up with this kind of nonsense then where will be? In my case, I’d be in the drawing room with nothing to read because those spiteful wretches at Small Arms for Small Felines Monthly refused to send me this month’s edition on the spurious grounds that I hadn’t paid them. It is cancel culture gone mad when publishers start boycotting tax-payers just for having opinions….
(4) CROWDFUNDING A LADY ASTRONAUT COLLECTION. Mary Robinette Kowal today launched a Kickstarter appeal for Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts, a collection of 9 short stories in the Lady Astronaut Series written by her, including one written just for this collection….
In 1952, an asteroid slammed into Washington, DC and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, triggering a climate crisis that threatens life on Earth.
Through four novels and numerous short stories, readers follow the pioneering women who strive to save humanity. The series’ primary protagonist, Dr. Elma York, a pilot and experienced mathematician, battles misogyny and social anxiety while planting her flag as the first Lady Astronaut. She and her fellow scientists reach for the Moon and beyond, bringing lasting change for humanity.
Through the Lady Astronaut Universe, Kowal has shone a light on the real-life accomplishments of women in space science and inspired a new generation entering STEM fields.
In the opening hours the Kickstarter has already scored pledges in excess of its $30,000 goal.
(5) SF IN BULGARIA & ROMANIA. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] With a friend of mine and a fan from Romania we published a paper in Locus. It is available online now: “SF in Bulgaria & Romania: How Many Dwarfs Does It Take to Match a Giant?” by Valentin D. Ivanov & Cristian Tamaș. From the June 2024 issue of Locus magazine. Locus hardly needs advertisement help, but the speculative fiction in our countries always does!
Here’s an excerpt:
Outside of the vast English-speaking fandom lies a tapestry of diverse and weakly interlinked communities from the countries with small language bases. These languages, and the nations that speak them are often – because of inertia, rather than ill intent – perceived as “minor.” Indeed, they are minor in one critical aspect: as literary markets. This circumstance has a profound effect on their literature….
Attentive readers may have noticed the careful choice of words in the title. The speculative fiction communities of “minor” countries do not want to fight the giants. We aspire to become a giant ourselves, albeit multifaceted, multilingual, and multicultural, by means of teamwork and cooperation….
…Human-monster pairings are what sets monster romance apart from its close cousin, the wildly successful genre of romantasy, a genre epitomized by Sarah J. Maas’s blockbuster A Court of Thorns and Roses series. In those books, more established and more human-adjacent paranormal creatures like elves, dragons, and fae dominate the stories, and humans are reduced to bit players, if they figure into the books at all. But in monster romance, we’re usually in a world that’s vaguely similar to Earth, or at least connected to it in some way. For many readers, ACOTAR was the gateway drug to other books with nonhuman characters. Others found their way there via fanfic, where the themes that dominate these books became established over the years via an iterative, collaborative process that gradually hardened into tropes. They generate reams of conversation. In one popular TikTok, Laura Whitney at first seems to scoff at monster-romance readers by saying, “People are literally out here reading monster romance?” Then she whispers, “Which ones?” So many people appreciated the 3,712 recommendations generated in the comments that 18,900 people have bookmarked the post.
When I first told friends about the latest turn my reading had taken, I got a lot of blank stares at first but soon fell into a delightful text exchange with a friend who has a Ph.D. and who also read Morning Glory Milking Farm. She sent me a link to Hermione Granger–Draco Malfoy fanfic that she said had taught her a lot about BDSM. I started to realize that, though many of us may be out here walking around with the latest literary fiction from Riverhead or Pantheon in our tote bags, our phones runneth over with stories of men with tails and two dicks….
This was an amazing movie, and should have had more Oscar nominations. It probably would have, if a) it had been made in the West, or b) it didn’t have Godzilla in it. The acting was wonderful. All the other good things people have said about it are true. However, they all missed the, well, kaiju in the room.
This was not a monster movie….
(8) JOHN MADDOX ROBERTS (1947-2024). The SFWA Blog has posted a tribute — “In Memoriam: John Maddox Roberts”. He died May 23 at the age of 76. Here is an excerpt:
John Maddox Roberts…, also writing as Mark Ramsay, was a prolific and best-selling science fiction, fantasy, historical, and mystery writer over the course of thirty-five years. He was the author of many novels set in ancient Rome, including Hannibal’s Children and its sequel The Seven Hills, and the SPQR series, the first of which, now titled The King’s Gambit, was an Edgar Award finalist in 1991….
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
June 25, 1903 — George Orwell. (Died 1950.)
By Paul Weimer: Big Brother. For genre fans, Orwell begins, and often ends at 1984. (Sometimes Animal Farm as well.) Sure, Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell’s contribution to letters is far greater than that. “Shooting an Elephant”, as it turned out, was the first piece by Orwell I read, before 1984, back in High School. I had heard of 1984, but not yet read it, and so when we were assigned the story to read and discuss, I was enthusiastic to engage with a story that was post-colonial in the midst of the end of British Colonialism.
Animal Farm isn’t serious as a speculative work. Through and through, Animal Farm is an allegory and a rather pointed one. I read that next, and I didn’t need a teacher to see just how perfect an allegory it is. You may have seen the animated movie, which had the ending changed to remove some of the bite of that inescapable allegory. Accept no substitutes, read the original.
George Orwell.
But now we come to 1984. I’ve had 1984 as a fixture in my genre life ever since I picked it up in my early 20’s. Room 101 and the rest blew me away, and I realized I had seen bits of the John Hurt movie a decade earlier and not realized what I had seen. It was a sharp blow to come across scenes in the book that my dim memory of the movie foreshadowed. It only enhanced and pressed upon me the power of the narrative of Winston Smith’s story.
1984 has cropped up in my genre life in other forms, too, than the movie and the novel. On a rainy day exploring London before Worldcon in 2014, my traveling companion and I found ourselves by a theater that was showing an adaptation of 1984. So the idea of seeing proper London theater, featuring 1984, was irresistible. My friend and I wandered around that area of the West End, eager for evening to come to see the performance.
It was a fascinating (if brutal) metanarrative of 1984, deconstructing the world of the Party from a future where the Party had fallen. Rapt, I bought a copy of the 1984 play after the performance. I would also find — but not attend — the play again in 2017 in Melbourne, delighted that the dark 1984 play had “followed me” on my Down Under Fan Fund trip. Given what I choose instead to do, perhaps I should have seen it again after all.
I’ve read and watched and listened to other versions of 1984, from audio dramas to movies. 1984 continues to follow me in my genre life. Big Brother really is watching me.
HBO is at long last signing up with the Lantern Corps.
The premium cable outlet has given a straight-to-series order for Lanterns, based on the long-running Green Lantern characters — specifically John Stewart and Hal Jordan — from DC Comics. Chris Mundy (Ozark) will serve as showrunner on the eight-episode drama and co-write the series with Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, Lost) and Eisner Award winner Tom King, known for his work on several Batman titles, Mister Miracle and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow for DC Comics.
The (ahem) green light for Lanterns comes almost five years after what was then HBO Max began developing a Green Lantern series with producer Greg Berlanti — the mastermind of the DC Arrow-verse on The CW and one of the writers of the 2011 Green Lantern feature film that starred Ryan Reynolds….
(12) BACK TO BARBARELLA. Here’s the first trailer for the Sydney Sweeney Barbarella (2025).
A remake of the 1960s cult classic Barbarella is currently in the works with Sydney Sweeney set to star…
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, Valentin D. Ivanov, Dann, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern (via Robert Zimmerman’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, of course).]
(1) BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS TAKING NOMINATIONS. It’s time for eligible voters to nominate for the British Fantasy Awards 2024. Full details at the link. Voting will remain open until Saturday, June 29.
You can vote for the BFAs if you are any of the following: – A member of the British Fantasy Society – An attendee at FantasyCon 2023 (Birmingham) – A ticket-holder for FantasyCon 2024 (Chester)
For each category, you may vote for up to three titles. There is no requirement to complete all three fields for each category, or to vote for every category. …
A crowdsourced list of suggestions has been created here: http://tinyurl.com/suggestionlist2024. You may vote for titles not on the suggestions list – this is just to help you generate ideas if you need some guidance….
…The four titles or names with the highest number of recommendations will make the shortlist of nominations. In case of a tie, the title with the most recommendations in space “1” will go through – so please rank your votes in order of preference.
(2) WORLDCON 2026 SITE SELECTION OPENS. Glasgow 2024 announced that WSFS Site Selection for the 2026 Worldcon is open. Complete directions for voting are at the link.
Los Angeles (Anaheim) in 2026 is the sole bidder on the ballot. Their website can be found here. Write-in bids are also allowed, however, to be selected they must meet the requirements in the WSFS Constitution and file the necessary documents with the administering Worldcon.
Glasgow 2024 WSFS Members who wish to vote in Site Selection need to purchase an Advance WSFS Membership in the 2026 Worldcon, at a cost of £45.00 (GBP). All members who pay this fee will automatically become WSFS Members of the 2026 Worldcon, regardless of who they vote for (or indeed if they vote at all). All Advance WSFS Membership fees received by Glasgow for the 2026 Worldcon will be passed on to the successful candidate.
There are three ways for you to vote in Site Selection:
We have partnered with Election Buddy, a leading provider of secure voting solutions, to enable easy online voting for Site Selection this year. Full information on how to vote online is provided below. This is the quickest and simplest way to pay your fee and submit your site selection ballot.
Attending Members can vote in person at Glasgow 2024, until the Site Selection desk closes at Noon on Saturday, 10th August.
You can also submit a printed ballot by postal mail. If you wish to use this option, please contact us at [email protected]. All postal ballots must reach us by Thursday, 1st August.
(3) WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION. The winner of the 29th Women’s Prize For Fiction is Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan, a non-genre novel.
The only shortlisted genre work was The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord (Gollancz).
The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, and the “Bessie”, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.
A memorial to The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien has been unveiled at the University of Oxford college where he used to teach.
The bronze sculpture, created by sculptor Tim Tolkien, the writer’s grand-nephew, was revealed at Pembroke College.
Neil Gaiman, who served as master of ceremonies at the event, told the BBC that Tolkien was a “towering figure” who “singlehandedly created an entire genre of literature”.
The college said Tolkien was “one of the college’s most esteemed fellows and a literary giant of the 20th Century”.
The memorial design depicts Tolkien as he looked during his time at Pembroke.
Its Junior and Middle Common Rooms each raised 10% of the funds. The Tolkien Society and the Tolkien Estate also contributed.
The author served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the college from 1925 to 1945.
He also wrote The Hobbit, part of The Lord of the Rings, and critical works such as Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics during his time there.
A special poem was read out at the unveiling by writer and Pembroke alumna Roz Kaveney.
Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Good Omens, said he had been a fan of Tolkien ever since he bought an “ancient green hardcover” of The Hobbit for a penny.
He said: “Even more exciting for me was finding in the school library The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.
“I read them over and over and when I got to the end of The Two Towers I’d go back to The Fellowship of the Ring.
“And when at the age of 12 I won the school English prize they said: ‘What do you want? We’ll get you a book.’ And I said: ‘Can I have The Return of the King? I want to find out how it ends.'”
He said hosting the event was “an honour that I’m not worthy of, and that’s fine because none of us are”.
He added: “Being in this place feels huge and strange and very appropriate. Walking the grounds that Tolkien walked, [feeling] just slightly disappointed that there are not enough trolls and elves here as well, but maybe they’ll turn up.”…
…Thinking back over the decades I’ve been going to cons, in the last few years, things seem to have changed. For one, there are more writers, and fewer fans on panels….
(6) MALIK & SHAWL EVENT. Usman T. Malik will be in conversation with Nisi Shawl at Hugo house in Seattle next week. It will be a hybrid event. Free registration to see it online is available here.
Xinran: What excites you about the literary scene in China today?
Lai Wen: I think Chinese science fiction is particularly good. It’s something that often sucks in the fundamental social conflicts and contradictions of a given time and remodels them through these incredibly creative and vast fantasy worlds. The earliest Chinese science fiction novels weren’t all that great, to be frank, but they still told you a lot about Chinese society, our way of life, our fears and our hopes.
Lu Shi’e’s New China, published at the beginning of the twentieth century was one of the first examples of homegrown Chinese sci-fi/fantasy. The memory of the Opium Wars—the defeat by foreign powers and the vast numbers of the population who remained addicted to the drug—was still raw.
In his novel, one of the central characters is a genius doctor who invents medical techniques that can pull the population out of an opium-induced stupefaction and supercharge their minds. China then goes on to experience a period of intense rejuvenation, emerging as an economic and cultural superpower where peace and prosperity reign. The novel itself is somewhere between wish-fulfillment and prophecy, as many of the novels from that period were.
I think that the creative and original wave of science fiction coming out of China can be understood in the context of our history. Throughout the twentieth century, change was occurring at a frenetic, world-shattering pace. The final Manchu/Qing dynasty ended in 1911 and then power was dispersed amongst hundreds of local war lords jockeying for position; then Kuomintang was able to unite China under a modern nationalization program.
There was the Second World War, the civil war, Mao’s communists, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, until, eventually, the country was opened up under Deng Xiaoping. Today, China has emerged as a dominant global power.
So many Chinese people born in the last hundred years have lived through successive social systems and different economic models compressed into a handful of decades. Chinese science fiction reflects this. During the period of Communist dictatorship, the genre tended to be more sterile, reduced to the level of propaganda for the Party, but in the 1980s and 1990s science fiction went through something of a revival under Deng’s administration.
While censorship was still robust, science fiction and dystopic fantasy enabled cutting political and social commentaries to fly under the radar. Nineteen Eighty-Four made it past the censors, for instance, and many of the classics of Western science fiction were accessible to people during this time, along with Hollywood films such as E.T.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most famous Chinese science-fiction writers lived through this period—writers such as Han Song and, most famously of all, Liu Cixin, whose most successful novel, The Three-Body Problem, has been made into a Netflix series….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 13, 1893 — Dorothy Sayers. (Died 1957.) I’m going to talk about Dorothy Sayers tonight who though she wrote a handful of ghost stories is here because of mysteries. Oh, what mysteries they were.
Her first novel, Whose Body?, was published in 1923. Over the next thirteen years, she would write ten more novels featuring the ever so proper Lord Peter Wimsey who solved mysteries. In Strong Poison, we would be introduced to artist Harriet Vane who Wimsey would fall in love with in an properly upper-class manner. Harriet appears off and on in the future novels, resisting Lord Peter’s proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night six novels later.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Yes, I read all ten of these novels in order some forty years back. I like them better than Agatha Christie novels on the whole as the social commentary here gives them a sharper edge and I think Sayers described her society better than Christie did. Now Christie was way more productive over a much longer period of time as Sayers stopped writing these mysteries, which includes short stories, by the later Thirties in favor of writing plays, mostly on religious themes which were performed in cathedrals and broadcast by the BBC.
So there’s eleven novels and the short story collection, Lord Peter Views the Body, which I’ve not read but now I see is on the usual suspects as a rather good deal of just a dollar, so I’ll grab a copy now. Done.
I’d like to speak about The Lord Peter Wimsey series starring Ian Carmichael of the early Seventies, it covered the first five novels. Carmichael said he was too old to play the part for the romantic relationship of the later novels, but it didn’t matter as the series was cancelled.
I thought it was a rather well-done series and I caught it recently on Britbox, one of those streaming services, and it has help up rather well fifty years on with the Suck Fairy concurring.
He did play Wimsey into the BBC radio series that covered all of the novels and ran at the same time. They are quite excellent and are available on Audible at a very reasonable price.
Finally she wrote, according to ISFDB, a handful of genre stories, four to be precise —“The Cyprian Cat”, “The Cave of Ali Baba”, “Bitter Almonds” and “The Leopard Lady”. Three seem to be fantasy and the fourth, “Bitter Almonds” I’ve no idea about. Anyone have knowledge of these?
Carpe Diem offers the correct explanation why one species became extinct.
(10) THE BOYS IS BACK IN TOWN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Season 4 of The Boys, based on Garth Ennis’ comic book series, (all available in digital omnibus editions via Hoopla, etc.) starts up (on Prime) Thursday, June 14 with the first 3 episodes, the following 5 dropping weekly.
Reminder, the Prime spin-off series GEN V takes place between The Boys seasons 3 and 4.
If you haven’t seen Seasons 1-3 and GEN V, watch those first.
Like the comics, The Boys (and GEN V) contains lots of fairly explicit violence, cussing, sex, nudity, and drugs. And a bit of song and dance here and there, but not much.
Also returning, August 8: the 4th and final season of The Umbrella Academy.
(12) GINA CARANO SUIT PROCEEDING. The Hollywood Reporter updates readers: “Mandalorian Lawsuit: How Gina Carano, Disney Are Battling In Court”. “At a Wednesday hearing, a judge expressed skepticism that the Carano’s lawsuit should be tossed before discovery is allowed to take place.”
A federal judge has signaled that Gina Carano‘s lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm over her termination from The Mandalorian will be allowed to proceed as the court considers whether the First Amendment allows private companies to sever ties with employees who publicly clash with their values.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett on Wednesday pushed back on arguments from Disney lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, who argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the company has the “right not to associate with a high-profile performer on a high-profile show who’s imbuing” the Star Wars series with “views it disagrees with” that could turn fans away from the show.
Petrocelli urged the court to find in favor of Disney on its First Amendment defense on dismissal rather than at a later stage of litigation after discovery takes place in which it’s determined whether the case should be allowed to proceed to trial.
“I’m not convinced there are no disputed facts,” Judge Garnett responded. She pointed to allegations that Carano was terminated to deflect attention from Disney’s contentious business decisions at the time, including the company’s contract dispute with Scarlett Johansson and criticism of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which led to the dissolution of its special tax district in the state….
(13) LATEST IN CAPTAIN FUTURE SERIES. Hugo, Locus, and Seiun award-winning author Allen Steele returns to the world of Edmond Hamilton’s classic SF pulp hero with Lost Apollo, a new Captain Future adventure,
The first installment of a two-part story arc takes the cosmic defender and his uncanny crew on a quest across parallel worldlines to save not just our own universe, but countless others!
When an archaic spacecraft unexpectedly comes through a spacetime rift between Earth and the Moon, Curt Newton and the Futuremen intercept it and discover that it’s Apollo 20, a NASA lunar mission from 1973. Yet history doesn’t record there being any further Apollo missions after Apollo 17 in 1972, which can only mean this craft and its crew must have come from a parallel universe … but how, and why?
To discover the answers, Newton enlists the aid of an old foe, a renegade Martian physicist who has unlocked the secret to multiverse travel. Together with the Apollo astronauts, the adventurers lead a military expedition back to the worldline the wayward spacecraft came from, only to discover an unexpected menace awaiting them, a force that threatens Earth … not just one, but many.
Allen Steele’s Captain Future series has been acclaimed by science fiction fans and pulp enthusiasts alike as the blazing return of a classic SF champion. The debut novel, Avengers of the Moon (Tor, 2017) was nominated for Japan’s Seiun Award for Best Foreign Translation. Steele is also the author of an unrelated 1995 novella, “The Death of Captain Future,” which received the Hugo, Locus, and Seiun Awards and was a finalist for the Nebula Award.
Lost Apollo is his sixth Captain Future adventure and his fifth to be published by Amazing Selects.
…In the best case, Santos said, the advent of molecular machines will be less like the invention of an individual tool and more like the creation of a new toolbox. “We have to decide which tool works best for each job,” she told me. Nanomachines bring to mind other innovations for which scientists have found new applications over time. After lasers were invented, in 1960, the military used them to improve guidance systems for smart bombs; now they are used for eye surgery, high-speed Internet, and tattoo removal. Of course, for every technology like the laser, there are many others that never live up to their promise. Directing the right number of molecular machines to the right places, so that they do exactly what they’re made for and nothing more, is much easier in a petri dish than a living body.
Some machines could have untoward interactions with the immune system; others may be harmful to mammalian cells. It will probably be many years before the technologies are tested in humans. “There’s a huge leap between showing something works in a lab and proving it works in people,” Mihail Roco, a senior adviser at the National Science Foundation, who helped create the National Nanotechnology Initiative, told me. “These nanomachines could be a new treatment paradigm, but the human body is enormously complex. Many things we thought would work turned out to be ineffective or toxic.” Still, he went on, “Even if you don’t get exactly what you hoped for, you often learn something useful. You advance knowledge that, down the line, could benefit humanity.”
The 59th Annual Nebula Awards took place in Pasadena, California on June 8th, 2024. Hosted by Toastmaster, Sarah Gailey, the evening brought with it a toast to service, remembrance for those we lost in the publishing field, celebration of our finalists and winners of the evening and the induction of the 40th SFWA Grand Master, Susan Mary Cooper.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ellen Datlow, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Anne Marble, Bill, Daniel Dern, Andrew (not Werdna), Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Mark Roth-Whitworth introduces us to his cat of many names:
This is my Lord & Master, after a hard morning, relaxing with a good book (my new one). Everyone knows cats have several names, but he’s got more than usual. He came with the name Tico, which I didn’t think was formal enough, so I expanded it to Don (in the Spanish usage) Tico Smiley, which, if you abbreviate, last name first… you get Smilodon. Then, my ex added Velociraptor, seeing him open the basement door (which now has a latch on it). Then I added the last, he says, going up the steps… what?! There are paws around my ankle? No, they’re gone! So that made him the Cossack, the Terror of the Steps.
Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
(1) SEATTLE 2025 WORLDCON MEMBERSHIP RATES RISE TOMORROW. At least for a few more hours the cost of a WSFS Membership + Attending Membership Supplement for an adult over the age of 25 is $175. The other permutations are explained at the Memberships – Seattle Worldcon 2025 page.
Mark Roth-Whitworth sent a few editorial comments along with the foregoing reminder:
I just got our memberships for Seattle in ’25. Ouch. This far out, $175 each, and I think it goes up after tomorrow.
Was the same demographic going as did back in the Sixties and Seventies, it would be a *lot* smaller. Most of us were working class. Hell, my late wife and I together maybe made the median income, or maybe just under. In 1993 it would have been hard to pay for this.
Forget the graying of fandom, how about the economic stratification of fandom? Where are the folks who are making a living working construction, or flipping burgers, or barista, or drive a cab, or working in a thousand other jobs that we need, but make crap wages? Or people on SSI or other welfare?
I know I ghosted a con or two in my mid-twenties, when I just did not have the money. I don’t know a lot of folks who go to other than their local cons, and work them to afford it.
Have we become elite?
(2) EMMY AWARDS. Genre TV was shut out at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony which aired on January 15. The complete list of winners – largely repeated wins by Succession, The Bear, and Beef — is here.
(3) HISTORIC MOMENTS IN TELEVISION. There are, however, plenty of genre highlights in the Television Academy’s anniversary list of 75 “Top TV Moments”.
Arguably the first one on the list is genre, because fans voted the Hugo Award to TV coverage of the Apollo 11 mission. Beyond that, you have to wait ‘til way down the list before there’s another.
1. The Moon Landing. After Apollo 11 landed on the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong proclaims “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 1969.
40. The Twilight Zone. “Time Enough at Last” After a nuclear catastrophe, loner Harry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is left with all the time in the world to read his beloved books, only to shatter his glasses, leaving him virtually blind. 1950.
50. Star Trek – Kirk and Uhura kiss, 1968
51. Game of Thrones — “The Rains of Castamere” At Robb’s (Richard Madden) wedding, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) reveals chain mail under Bolton’s (Michael McElhatton) clothes just as Robb’s wife is murdered, Robb is shot with arrows, and his men’s throats are cut.
And there are several more beyond that, from The Last of Us,Lost, another from Game of Thrones, and the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan.
(4) DEEP IMPACT. Animation World Network’s Kevin Geiger anticipates “The Impact of AI on Hollywood in 2024: 12 Predictions”. Short version: AI will take away a bunch of existing jobs. Here’s an excerpt of what he forsees.
4. Deepfake filmmaking has become the new paradigm.
The continued evolution of deepfake technology enables filmmakers of all resource levels to create younger versions of living actors or bring deceased actors back to the screen. This has already been used to tell stories that span different periods. While the technology offers exciting creative opportunities, it raises significant ethical concerns regarding consent and the potential misuse of digital likenesses. Seeing is no longer believing.
5. Rise of the AI-driven extras and stunt doubles.
The use of AI-generated virtual extras and stunt doubles will be a game-changer in reducing production costs and logistical complexities, particularly in scenes requiring large crowds or dangerous stunts. However, the application of AI technology will accelerate the reduced employment opportunities for human extras and stunt performers.
6. The visual effects industry becomes more director-driven.
AI’s ability to produce sophisticated visual effects quickly and cost-effectively is set to enhance the visual storytelling in films. The prospect of generating visual effects via “prompting” (otherwise known as “directing”) will make VFX more director-driven, and encourage greater creative expression and experimentation. The number of “technical directors” required on a film will be reduced: a benefit to major studios and indie producers, but a threat to hired guns.
7. AI-assisted editing is now the default starting point.
AI-assisted editing is revolutionizing work reels and post-production by autonomously selecting takes, suggesting edits, and assembling rough cuts. This can significantly speed up the editing process and reduce costs, but over-reliance on AI could reduce the editor’s creative control, lead
Best Drama: Origin Best Comedy: American Fiction Best Musical: The Color Purple Best Director: Ava DuVernay (Origin) Best Screenplay: American Fiction Best Actor: Colman Domingo (Rustin) Best Actress: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Origin) Best Supporting Actor: Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction) Best Supporting Actress: *TIE* Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers), Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) Best Ensemble: The Color Purple Breakout Performance: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) Emerging Filmmaker: Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) Best Independent Feature: A Thousand and One Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Best Documentary: Stamped From The Beginning Best Music: The Color Purple Best International Film: Io Capitano Best Short Film: The After
While other Best Of type anthologies only consider short stories, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 also includes poems. I recently interviewed Stephen Kotowych, the editor of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy And Science Fiction: Volume One, which also includes poetry. Is there something going on in the speculative realm where poetry is becoming more popular or respected?
Speculative poetry is such a wide and important form that we decided to include this year to make the book separate from last year’s. Hopefully, it’s something that matches up with the vibrancy the speculative poetry world exudes [and this is a] chance to showcase some of that speculative poetry vibrancy going on
…The characters of The Lord of the Rings used poetry as a coping mechanism to deal with negative emotions. Shortly after leaving the Shire, the hobbits were overwhelmed with uncertainty and weariness about the journey ahead. To raise their spirits, Frodo recited “The Road goes ever on and on,” a poem that Bilbo had taught him. In Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf and Bilbo both sang sections of this same poem. As the hobbits rested at Weathertop, poetry again assuaged their worries. In the chapter “A Knife in the Dark” from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn “began to tell them tales to keep their minds from fear.” These tales came in the form of poems, such as the song of Beren and Lúthien….
(8) FREE READ. Entries in the Quantum Shorts flash fiction contest are available to read at the link. The shortlist will be announced in March.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones, 93. This Scroll you’re getting James Earl Jones, most notably known in our circles as the voice of a certain Sith Lord whose voice he did up to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but he’s got much more, and sometimes surprisingly diverse career here. So let’s see what he’s done…
His film debut was as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52’s bombardier in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
In 1969, Jones participated in making short films for what became Sesame Street. These were combined with animated segments, then were shown to groups of children to see if the format appealed to children. As cited by production notes included in the Sesame Street: Old School 1969–1974 DVD, the short that had the greatest impact with test audiences was one showing a bald-headed Jones counting slowly to ten. And yes, it was shown on the show when it aired.
I truly love him in Conan the Barbarian as Thulsa Doom, an antagonist for the character Kull of Atlantis. Thulsa Doom was created by Robert E. Howard in the “Delcardes’ Cat” story. Neat character for him, I’d say.
He’s in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold withthe name of Umslopogaas, a fearless warrior and old friend of Allan Quatermain. I looked him up in the original novel, Allan Quatermain. Please don’t make me do that again. Really. Don’t.
Ahhh, Field of Dreams: “Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it.” Great role. To say more would involve spoilers, right?
He voices Mufusa, the lion murdered by his brother in The Lion King and its sequel, who death does not stop from being present. Really present. Extraordinary performing by him.
Did you know that he narrated Stallone’s Judge Dredd? Well he did. He was uncredited at time but as is with these things, it didn’t stay a secret permanently, did it?
He had series appearances on Faerie Tale Theatre (as, and I simply love it, Genie of the Lamp, Genie of the Ring), Highway to Heaven, Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories, Picket Fences, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, (he was the uncredited narrator of 3rd Rock from the Sun (maybe he’s the nameless narrator for all of the multiverse?), Touched by an Angel in which he’s the Angel of Angels, cool name, Stargate SG-1 , Merlin and finally as himself on The Big Bang Theory.
He hosted Long Ago and Far Away, a children’s series that lasted thirty-five episodes with each of them based on a folk or fairy tale. Stop motion animation, live actors and traditional animation were all used.
That’s it, folks.
Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones and Jim Parsons in a scene from Big Bang Theory.
A rare copy of the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man has sold for more than £1m.
The comic, published in March 1963, reached a record-setting $1.38m (£1.1m) at auction. It is one of only two copies of The Amazing Spider-Man No 1 rated “near mint/mint” by comic book grading service Certified Guaranty Company (CGC).
“It was obvious this Spider-Man was an opportunity not likely to come around, and the final price reflected that,” said Barry Sandoval, vice president at Heritage Auctions, the company that ran the auction, according to Fine Books magazine.
The copy sold for nearly three times as much as a CGC-rated “near mint” version sold in July last year for $520,380 (£410,184)….
About a decade ago, Zack Snyder developed a storyline for the DC Extended Universe that involved Bruce Wayne impregnating Lois Lane.
The subplot in which Batman cuckolds Superman was poised to unfold in “Justice League,” with Batman dying in the sequel and Lois raising their spawn with Superman. Snyder’s vision for Wonder Woman was equally unorthodox, with visuals featuring a superheroine who brandished the decapitated heads of her conquered enemies like an ISIS jihadi.
Warner Bros. and DC Studios — which hold a firm grip on their intellectual property — rejected Snyder’s ideas, which were deemed “super creepy,” according to a source familiar with the back and forth. (DC declined to comment for this story. A representative for Snyder did not respond to a request for comment.) But in the next decade, artists and rival studios won’t need permission to create their own take on the characters.
A sad fact of Hollywood is that while superheroes never truly die, all copyrights do. On Jan. 1, Disney lost control of “Steamboat Willie,” and within 24 hours two horror-comedies starring Mickey Mouse were announced. The DC characters are the next major expirations looming on the horizon. Superman and Lois Lane will enter the public domain in 2034, followed by Batman in 2035, the Joker in 2036 and Wonder Woman in 2037….
…In a 2005 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the effects crew and film’s creators opened up about the ways they shaved tens of millions off the film’s cost. Basically, they shot it like a TV show, creating only what was necessary and meticulously storyboarding things out so no resources were wasted.
One of the movie’s most ambitious set pieces, a wild chase scene early in the film, was projected to be one of the costliest segments in the film. So instead of trying to build out a massive CGI chase, they built a trailer with a cantilevered arm big enough to hold the on-screen hovercraft and actors. Then they just shot the scene on Templin Highway around Santa Clarita. For the Reaver vehicle chasing the crew, they hacked an old pick-up truck together with some CGI overlays for final effects. In the end, a scene expected to take 30 days was finished up in five.
To create the spaceship models in the space-set scenes, they used a common cost-cutting approach called “kit bashing,” where you combine several different ship models and kits and mix them all together to create something new. It’s a cheap alternative to full-on spaceship design, and it saved time and money for plenty of those space scenes.
They even had to rebuild the Serenity ship itself for sets, using old blueprints and DVD screen grabs for reference, a process they knocked out in a brief 14 weeks and under budget. All the explosions and pyrotechnics in the film were also done on a tight schedule, filmed across three nights at Mystery Mesa near Valencia. Traditionally, that level of sci-fi action pyro work for a blockbuster movie would’ve taken around two weeks….
Danish movie journalist and friend of TrekMovie Johan Albrechtsen has once again used a non-Star Trek promotional junket to recreate a Star Trek moment. As Paul Giamatti was promoting his award-winning role in The Holdovers Albrechtsen brought up the actor’s previously expressed interest in playing a Klingon in Star Trek. And he persuaded the Giamatti to recreate his famous “I am not drinking any f###ing Merlot!” moment from the 2004 wine-themed film Sideways, but this time in Klingon. The moment was then edited to create a new Star Trek “audition tape” with Giamatti as a Klingon captain, cut into a scene from The Next Generation….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kathy Sullivan, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
…Capaldi became famous as the permanently angry spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC comedy The Thick of It, which ran from 2005 to 2012 and, after that, between 2013 and 2017, he played the sternest, least imp-ish Doctor Who in decades. In his new Apple TV show, a police procedural called Criminal Record, which Capaldi co-produced with his wife, Elaine Collins, he stars as an ageing detective: another scowler. Now, coffee in hand, he smiles affectionately. So, did he bump into any other Doctor Whos this morning? “David [Tennant, 10th Doctor] used to live in Crouch End, near me. Matt [Smith, 11th Doctor] lives around here. Jodie [Whittaker, 13th Doctor] is nearby, Christopher [Eccleston, 9th Doctor] too, I think.” But no, no encounters with his fellow alumni this morning, Capaldi says….
(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [By Ersatz Culture.] A few recent-ish Chengdu-related items ahead of the release of the Hugo nomination statistics. NB: with a couple of exceptions, all of the links below are to Chinese language pages.
Chengdu con reports posted by Zero Gravity
A couple of days ago, RiverFlow posted updates to Twitter about the next issues of the Hugo winning fanzine, Zero Gravity.
The total number of words exceeded 420,000, with 300 pictures or more. After finishing the typesetting of the first two issues (140,000 words each), I realized that there were still 42 articles that had not been typesetted.
fans write about each other, refer to each other, and also write about writers and salons, and this symmetrical perspective is interesting. I am sure that more than 50% of the important people and things of this conference have been recorded!
Several of the reports which (presumably) will appear in the upcoming issues have already been posted online. Whilst I don’t think there are any previously-unheard revelations, they do provide further insight into the varying experiences that domestic attendees had. In the order that they’ve been published online:
The last item isn’t really a con report as such; it’s more of an article about Brian Aldiss’ relationship with China. It has an interesting tidbit that in 1979 Aldiss was part of a British delegation that had an audience with future-leader Deng Xiaoping. This meeting was apparently captured on video, and the author ponders whether the recording might still be lurking in a vault somewhere.
The author on left with Ling Shizhen, co-editor of Zero Gravity in the middle.Chao Xia (right) with Best Artist winner Enzhe ZhaoDongfang Mu with Robert J. SawyerMo Xiong (left) with Cixin LiuSun Saibo in front of a street sign reading ‘Science Fiction Avenue’Members of Beijing Normal University Science Fiction SocietyThe Uganda Worldcon bid table
WSJ China features science fiction in their review of the year
In years to come, when people look back on 2023, they will surely notice the weight of science fiction in it.
Since the beginning of the year, there has been the popularity of the movie “The Wandering Earth 2” and the [Chinese, not Netflix] TV adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem”. “Journey to the West” with only a 2 million yuan [around $300k USD] budget unexpectedly earned over 60 million yuan [around $8.4m USD] at the box office. Phenomenal movies, topics such as the universe, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence continue to gain popularity. Science fiction themes in literary creation are experiencing a “big explosion” in China. People are increasingly talking about the impact of the Internet on everyday life. Consider the changes that the rapid development of science and technology has had on people…
This year, following Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang respectively winning the Hugo Awards for Best Novel in 2015, and Best Novelette in 2016, there was once again a Chinese winner, Hai Ya, who won this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Winning [a Hugo] is highest honor for international science fiction writing.
People can’t help but wonder, did the golden age of European and American science fiction end in the last century? Has the secret to its resurrection been found in China today?
The core focus of the piece is the Chengdu Worldcon, and there’s a fair bit about the Chinese Hugo winners – although Enzhe Zhao is seemingly ignored – but the absence of any details or photos from the event makes me think that the author of the article was not in attendance. There’s also a fair amount about the wider Chinese SF publishing industry.
New Year’s Day run in the vicinity of the con venue
January 1st saw a “welcome run” take place in the grounds of the SF Museum that was the venue for the Worldcon, as reported on Weibo by the Sports Chengdu account. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no activities in the actual museum itself since the con – other than the Lukyanenko visit covered in a couple of earlier Scrolls – and no future events have been announced, other than the Chinese Nebula/Xingyun conference, previously covered in the December 12th Scroll.
(5) HOWARD WALDROP (1946-2024). Writer Howard Waldrop, creator of many brilliant short sff stories, died of a stroke on January 14 at the age of 77. Howard Waldrop’s classic “The Ugly Chickens” (1980) won a Nebula and World Fantasy Award. Waldrop was also recognized with a World Fantasy lifetime achievement award.
He was a wildly popular program participant at cons. His presentation “Howard Waldrop’s Condensed Cream of 1950s Science Fiction Movies” involved acting out key scenes from a lot of the movies. For 3-D movies, he hid under the table and threw wadded-up paper at the audience. He also was an unsurpassed live reader of his own stories.
Lawrence Person’s Waldrop obituary is especially recommended. However, there is no better introduction to Howard than the one he wrote himself for the now-shuttered SFF Net.
Are they science fiction? Are they fantasy? Are they alternate history? Are they from Mars or from Venus?
In the 1970s and 1980s, Howard Waldrop’s disorientingly strange/familiar stories made him a famous unknown writer.
They racked up best-of-the-year inclusions and award nominations, sometimes several stories a year in different categories. “Custer’s Last Jump” and “Mary Margaret Roadgrader” were nominated for the Nebula in 1977. In 1980, “The Ugly Chickens” captured both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award, and narrowly evaded the Hugo. In 1983, “Ike at the Mike” was up for the Hugo. In 1986, two Waldrop stories, “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” and “Heirs of the Perisphere,” were nominated for the same Nebula award, placing hardcore Waldrop fans in a schizophrenia-inducing double-bind.
Amid such celebrity, Waldrop himself continued to live below poverty level, volunteering for a top-secret study that helped determine the nutritional limits of using integrity as hamburger helper. As part of this historic experiment, he once pulled a story that had already sold to a big-bucks market in order to place it elsewhere for half the price.
Occasionally stories slipped through to higher-paying markets — Playboy, Omni, and the like. Howard compensated for these lapses of vigilance by selling his books only to very-high-quality small presses or to publishers who could be counted on not to distribute them.
Award nominations kept racking up: 1987, “The Lions are Asleep This Night,” for the Nebula. 1988, “Night of the Cooters” for the Hugo. 1989, “Do Ya, Do Ya Wanna Dance” for the Nebula, and 1990, “A Dozen Tough Jobs,” for the same.
And now, SFF.NET, bless its heart, has brought Howard Waldrop to the World Wide Web. So thanks to the wonders of cyberspace, to Howard’s uniquely contrarian marketing savvy, and to his inability to keep his stories off the awards short-lists, Howard Waldrop is now a legendary unknown writer.
Nor should it be forgotten that Waldrop wrote what became the Wild Cards universe’s origin story, “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway” (which I think of as “Jetboy’s Last Adventure”). Bradley Denton got Howard to tell how that happened in “Fifty Minutes Over Manchaca (now Menchaca) Road!”
…HW: You’ll recall in “The Annotated Jetboy,” where I talk about Danny Deck writing the biography of Jetboy? Danny Deck is the hero of Larry McMurtry’s novel All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. And of course he writes Godot Is My Co-Pilot: A Life of Jetboy.
…Anyway, I was gonna do the Jetboy story about the A-bomb for Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and either Lew or Bud (sf authors Lewis Shiner and Walton “Bud” Simons, both Austin-based at the time, like Howard), I can’t remember which, said, “You should talk to George. George and that bunch in New Mexico have been playing a superhero role-playing game, and they’ve spent so much time and money on it that they’re trying to find a way to turn it into a book. You oughta tell him about this Jetboy thing, because it sounds like something that would fit in there.” If it was Lew I was talkin’ to, he told me to call Bud, and if it was Bud I was talkin’ to, he told me to call Lew. One or the other of ‘em knew more about it than the other one did, right?
See, I didn’t even know about this. George hadn’t mentioned it to me in a letter or anything. So I wrote to George, and I said, “I’ve got a story that might fit with whatever goddamn thing you’re doing. You should tell me about it.”
So he sent me the prototype Cut and Shuffle, which was all about what was going on in the Wild Cards world before anyone else even knew what it was. And I said, “Yeah, that sounds about right, I can work with that. But your timeline is all wrong.” See, they were gonna start it in the 1980s, with the world having gone on for thirty years.
BD: Oh, so they weren’t initially going to do an origin story? They were going to jump into the world of Wild Cards three decades on?
HW: Right, exactly. I said, “That’s all wrong! You gotta tell how all this came about!” So I got them to tell me all the stuff about Dr. Tachyon, and the virus, and the whole thing, y’know. And I stuck it sideways into the Jetboy/A-bomb story, and sent it to George.
And of course George says, “When we send you stuff, you should read it! You got all this stuff wrong!” I said, “Ah, that’s your job! You can fix that!”
And he did!
Howard Waldrop
(6) TOM PURDOM (1936-2024). Tom Purdom died January 14. He was 85.
His first published short story, “Grieve for a Man”, appeared in the August, 1957 Fantastic Universe. His first novel was I Want the Stars (1964). His other novels include Five Against Arlane, and The Barons of Behavior. His literary memoir, When I Was Writing, appeared in installments in The New York Review of Science Fiction.
From 1990 to 2023 he had almost three dozen short stories published in Asimov’s.
He served as a Vice President of SFWA in its early years.
His wife, Sara, predeceased him in 2006. He is survived by his son, Christopher.
Filer Mark Roth-Whitworth knew him, and shared these memories on Facebook:
I’ve known the Purdoms since the late Sixties. He was a constant in Philly fandom. In the late seventies, he and his late wife Sara had house parties, as did Winona and her ex, Tom Smith and Viv, and later, when my ex (Morgan’s mother) and I bought a house in the area, we all rotated – was it every Friday but second (the PSFS meeting) having an open house. Michael Swanwick would show sometimes, and then there was the late David Sherman. Not sure when, but Tom built a small harpsichord from a kit.
And he was always there, his loud baritone… and now he’s gone.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 15, 1974 — Shaun Tan, 50. Australian-born and resident Shaun Tan’s one of my favorite artist and writers. Not just for his work which is extraordinarily wonderful, but for being a really nice individual. Tan was an easy choice for the Birthday for this Scroll.
His fiction is all YA. It’s all illustrations with words. Or not, sometimes. Think school libraries as where you’ll find it in Australia. Children love him. School librarians adore him just as much.
So now some selected works by him that I’ve enjoyed.
The Haunted Playground also known as The Playground would do Stephen King proud if King wrote children’s literature (I don’t think he’s written any, has he?) with one male encountering a larger group of males on a playground that are not what they seem to be. Truly chilling.
The Arrival has a man coming from a city that might or might not be in Eastern Europe to what might or might not be New York City. The city is awesomely depicted as steampunk. Did I mention that it has no spoken narrative?
The Lost Thing is set in the near future, a dystopian Melbourne. It’s is a story about Shaun, a kid who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. And he found something that doesn’t fit in either. (SPOILER ALERT. GO AWAY FOR A AWHILE.) There’s a secret utopia out there. Really there. (YOU CAN COME BACK BACK NOW.)
It was adapted into a fifteen-minute animated short film which was directed him and Andrew Ruhemann and narrated by Tim Minchin. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.
One he didn’t do himself as creator is The Stray Cat, a tale of the supernatural horror by writer Steve Paulsen with rather macabre illustrations by him. The cat, a black cat of course, is scarily drawn.
Librarians have constantly praised Tan for understanding children and being willing to give generously of his time to meet with them.
Those illustrated works are an excellent representation of his works. Now let’s talk about his Awards. Usually I mention Hugos first but I want to note the Awards that the folks who in children’s books gave him.
No, I forgot an Award, what was it! Ahhhh that one. He won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council, considered by everyone in children’s literature to be the major Award in the field.
In our community, he got the Hugo for Best Professional Artist at Aussiecon 4 (nice to win at home, isn’t it?), again at Renovation, nominated for two more at Anticipation and Denvention 3.
There were three World Fantasy Awards first Best Artist and another nomination. I can’t count the number of Ditmar Awards and nominations that he received. Seriously it’s that many.
It looks like the Peregrine lunar lander’s final resting place will be back at home where it started. The doomed spacecraft, which experienced an anomaly shortly after launch and has been leaking propellant ever since, is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, Astrobotic wrote in an update on X this weekend. The company plans to host a press conference with NASA on Thursday January 18 at 12PM ET to discuss the lander’s fate.
Controversially, the spacecraft is also carrying human remains, including those of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke; Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry; Roddenberry’s wife, Majel Barrett; and Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley, who played Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott and Dr. Leonard McCoy, respectively, on the classic sci-fi show. Stored alongside these remains are samples of DNA of the U.S. presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.
[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Michael J. Walsh, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Becoming Terran by Mark Roth-Whitworth (Novus Mundi Books, 2024)
Review by Lis Carey: It’s 2077, with climate change hitting hard, trillionaires bent on world control, and ordinary people in many places struggling to survive.
A young woman from Niger is working in a hotel in North Africa, when it is seized by one of those trillionaires, Phillippe Tolliver. She catches his attention, and manages to impress him enough that he decides she worth recruiting as his newest personal aide. Renamed Francoise Trouve, she insists on taking her little sister, renamed Amelie, with her.
She takes advantage of all the education he gives her, by AR and intense study, and her sister is tutored until she’s sent off to an elite private school in England. They both get genetic engineering to soften their curls and lighten their skin, and Francoise works hard at making herself indispensable to him. First as his aide, and later as a skilled business operative he can send into any of his corporations, both to learn more herself and identify and solve problems, she does.
But Tolliver has recruited someone who will be useful only as long as it serves her greater goal, which is no longer just advancing herself and her sister. As she has learned more about Tolliver, and about the 400 trillionaires who don’t believe they’ll have enough power until their control is total. She wants to bring them down.
The story, and the world, are a bit dark, but absorbing, with good worldbuilding and good characters. Francoise is already a strong woman when we meet here, and grows in knowledge, understanding, and judgment. Amelie, a little girl at the start, also grows into a strong woman, with a different temperament entirely, but the same values–and the same ultimate goals, though she pursues them by her own path.
There’s political intrigue, business intrigue, other interesting characters who are varied and important to the beneath the radar struggle in their own ways. This is in the end a thoughtful and hopeful book.
…“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”
In a recent interview, Quentin Tarantino, whose next film is reportedly called The Movie Critic, admitted that he no longer reads critics’ work. “Today, I don’t know anyone,” he said (in a translation of his remarks, first published in French). “I’m told, ‘Manohla Dargis, she’s excellent.’ But when I ask what are the three movies she loved and the three she hated in the last few years, no one can answer me. Because they don’t care!”
This is probably because Rotten Tomatoes — with help from Yelp, Goodreads, and countless other review aggregators — has desensitized us to the opinions of individual critics. Once upon a time, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert turned the no-budget documentary Hoop Dreams into a phenomenon using only their thumbs. But critical power like that has been replaced by the collective voice of the masses. A third of U.S. adults say they check Rotten Tomatoes before going to the multiplex, and while movie ads used to tout the blurbage of Jeffrey Lyons and Peter Travers, now they’re more likely to boast that a film has been “Certified Fresh.”…
This might be my most horrific conversation yet! Not merely because of my guest — but because certain scenes from Night of the Living Dead were shot in the basement of our chosen venue, The Original Oyster House!
Michael Bailey is an award-winning writer and editor, having been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award nine times, winning once for the anthology The Library of the Dead, and a four-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee. His novels include Palindrome Hannah (2005) and Phoenix Rose (2009). His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Birthing Monsters: Frankenstein’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Cruelties, Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road, Canopic Jars: Tales of Mummies and Mummification, and most recently Hybrid: Misfits, Monsters and Other Phenomena.
Many of these stories have been gathered in the collections Scales and Petals (2010), Inkblots and Blood Spots (2014), Oversight (2018), and The Impossible Weight of Life (2020). He’s the owner of the small press Written Backwards, which has published many excellent anthologies, and I’m not calling them excellent simply because my own short stories have appeared in many of them. He’s currently the screenwriter for the documentary series Madness and Writers: The Untold Truth. Maybe?, which all of us in the horror community are looking forward to seeing.
We discussed his Stoker Award-nominated poetry collaboration with Marge Simon (and how they managed not to kill each other during the writing of it), how he knows when a poem is a poem and not a short story, what reading other anthologies taught him that made his own anthologies better, the economics of small press publishing, how to lose awards gracefully, the way getting an early story torn apart by Douglas E. Winter at Borderlands Boot Camp gave him the boost he needed, why his novel Psychotropic Dragon took 16 years to transform from an idea into a book, how one of the joys of writing is never knowing the end until you get there, his new obsession of making chocolate from fruit to bar, our shared love of revising continually, and so much more.
(3) SAAVIK JUSTICE WARRIOR. Charlie Jane Anders is back with “7 Hot Takes About Star Trek” at Happy Dancing. I second this motion:
4. We need a Saavik TV show or movie.
I understand why Jean-Luc Picard became the first Star Trek character to headline a TV series — because after all, Patrick Stewart is a beloved figure, even to extremely casual Trek fans. But when I think about Star Trek characters who both need and deserve to be explored further in long-form storytelling, my mind goes to Saavik. Even in a film as overstuffed with goodness as Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, Saavik stands out as one of the most interesting characters: an ambitious young Vulcan who looks up to Spock while also striving to embody the Starfleet values that Kirk often overlooks (because they come in the form of regulations.) Later, there are hints that she’s half-Romulan. The treatment of Saavik after Wrath of Khan is one of the worst travesties in Star Trek history: first, she helps the rejuvenated but rapidly-aging Spock through a slew of pon-farrs, then she’s tossed aside. Saavik is basically transformed into one of many plot devices in a clunky movie that only exists to bring Leonard Nimoy back to the franchise he’d been so eager to escape. Saavik was supposed to return in Star Trek VI as a traitor to the Federation, but she was replaced by Valeris. I have so many questions about this character: Does she have Spock’s baby? Why didn’t she go with Kirk and the others in Star Trek IV? How does she approach her return to the Federation after everything she went through? Justice for Saavik!
On a remote planet, the Guardian of Forever sits, a passageway through time to other realities, locations, dimensions. All of a sudden, Captain Kirk comes through the portal, with Spock close behind him, fresh from an adventure observing the beginnings of the Orion civilisation. There’s just one problem: Dr Bones McCoy has no idea who Spock is – and neither does anyone else on the starship USS Enterprise.
This scene, from an episode called Yesteryear, doesn’t feature in any of the five core Star Trek series. The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise are modern classics that contain unending nostalgia for fans, but there’s another early Star Trek show that many people overlook – Star Trek: The Animated Series. It ran for just 20 episodes. Its status, and specifically whether it’s considered part of the “canon”, is uncertain. But it has an important legacy, bringing animation in as a key part of the franchise as well as keeping Star Trek in people’s minds during an in-between era, much like the one we’re entering now….
(5) BAD REVIEWS. Mark Roth-Whitworth’s “Bad reviews, good and bad” is about what make a bad review poorly written — it’s not about the review, it’s about style and form.
…I’ve always heard that any publicity is good publicity, but that’s not always the case… and not all bad reviews are equal….
…A legitimate bad review follows the kind of review that most are, dealing with things like writing, worldbuilding, etc. The bad review I looked at violated two basic rules…
… The question is: How did we get here? How did the trillions of data points at the core of generative AI become a toxin of sorts that, depending on your point of view and the decision of the highest judicial authority, could potentially hobble an industry destined for incredible innovation, or poison the well of human creativity and consent?…
… But whether AI researchers creating and using datasets for model training thought about it or not, there is no doubt that the data underpinning generative AI — which can arguably be described as its secret sauce — includes vast amounts of copyrighted material, from books and Reddit posts to YouTube videos, newspaper articles and photos. However, copyright critics and some legal experts insist this falls under what is known in legal parlance as “fair use” of the data — that is, U.S. copyright law “permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder.”…
… However, the concept of “fair use” is based on a four-factor test — four measures that judges consider when evaluating whether a work is “transformative” or simply a copy: the purpose and character of the work, the nature of the work, the amount taken from the original work, and the effect of the new work on a potential market. That fourth factor is the key to how generative AI really differs, say experts, because it aims to assess whether the use of the copyrighted material has the potential to negatively impact the commercial value of the original work or impede opportunities for the copyright holder to exploit their work in the market — which is exactly what artists, authors, journalists and other creative professionals claim.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood, who discovered that 33 of her books were part of the Books3 dataset, explained this concern bluntly in a recent Atlantic essay:
“Once fully trained, the bot may be given a command—’Write a Margaret Atwood novel’—and the thing will glurp forth 50,000 words, like soft ice cream spiraling out of its dispenser, that will be indistinguishable from something I might grind out. (But minus the typos.) I myself can then be dispensed with—murdered by my replica, as it were—because, to quote a vulgar saying of my youth, who needs the cow when the milk’s free?”…
(7) MISSION IMPERTURBABLE. Here are links to four more installments of Cass Morris’ diary from her adventures on Disney’s Star Wars-themed Starship Halcyon.
…Noah and I started at Weapons, which was simple but very satisfying: I was aiming, Noah was firing. I really can’t overstate how cool it is to play the game on that enormous viewport. It’s very easy to forget you’re not actually in space, firing lasers. From there we moved to Shields (I think; I may have steps 2 and 3 backwards in my brain), which is essentially playing Pong, but it’s also so satisfying. We both liked this station best — which apparently is an unusual choice? But we were very good at it. (This would be important later). Loaders was a bit like weapons, with one of us moving and the other grabbing cargo out of space. Then Systems was the hardest by far — but I think my second-favorite station. The display tosses up a sequence of positions that the console’s various dials, buttons, and toggles need to be in, and you have to match it as fast as possible to keep the ship in good repair. That station was manic. There are so many buttons. It was genuinely hard to keep track of them! But hard in a fun way….
(8) EXERTING A SPELL. The one book that makes the £50,000 Wolfson Prize Shortlist worth noting here is Portable Magic A History of Books and their Readers.
Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands, exploring when, why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium’s worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small, Smith reveals that, as much as their contents, it is books’ physical form – their ‘bookhood’ – that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper’s Riders, to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese, this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in significant and unpredictable ways.
Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback, and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers, and proposes new definitions of a ‘classic’-and even of the book itself. Ultimately, it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal – and more turbulent – than we tend to imagine.
(9) BROOKLYN SCIFI FILM FESTIVAL. The 135 short and feature length films selected for screening at this year’s Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival are listed at the link above. The festival runs October 9 through the 15, and fans from around the world are welcome to join this one-of-a-kind event as all films will be made available online for streaming and rating through Brooklyn SciFi’s Netflix style festival platform.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 8, 1925 — Peter Sellers. Chief Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films which are genre. Of course, he had the tour de force acting experience of being Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He also took multiple roles (even the Queen) in The Mouse That Roared. Amusingly he was involved many folk tale productions in various mediums (film, radio, stage) including Cinderella, Tom Thumb, Mother Goose and Jack and The Beanstalk. (Died 1980.)
Born September 8, 1937 — Archie Goodwin. Comics writer and editor with a very long career. He was the writer and editor of the horror Creepy and Eerie anthologies, the first writer on the Iron Man series, wrote comic book adaptations for Marvel of the two Star Wars sequels and edited the Star Wars line for them. For DC, he edited Starman which Robinson said he was inspiration for. (Died 1998.)
Born September 8, 1945 — Willard Huyck, 78. He’s got a long relationship with Lucas, first writing American Graffiti and being the script doctor on Star Wars before writing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom before being the writer and director on Howard the Duck which, yes, is a Lucasfilm. It’s the lowest rated on Rotten Tomatos Lucasfilm production ever at 15% followed by Radioland Murders, the last script he’d write for Lucasfilm.
Born September 8, 1952 — Linda D. Addison, 71. First Black winner of the Stoker Award which she has won five times which is rather amazing. Equally amazing, the first two awards were for her poetry collections Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial. Indeed all five of her Awards were to be for poetry collections. She also is the author of the story “Shadow Dreams”, published in the Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda anthology.
Born September 8, 1954 — Mark Lindsay Chapman, 69. Sorry DCU but the best Swamp Thing series was done nearly thirty years ago and starred the late Dick Durock as Swamp Thing and this actor as his chief antagonist, Dr. Anton Arcane. Short on CGI, but the scripts were brilliant. Chapman has also shown up in Poltergeist: The Legacy, The New Adventures of Superman, The Langoliers and Max Headroom to name a few of his genre appearances.
Born September 8, 1965 — Matt Ruff, 58. I think that his Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy is his best work to date though I do like Fool on The Hill a lot. Any others of his I should think about reading? And of course there is the adaptation of Lovecraft Country which I’ve not seen as I don’t have HBO. He won an Otherwise Award for Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, and an Endeavour Award for The Lovecraft Country.
Born September 8, 1975 — C. Robert Cargill, 48. He, along with Scott Derrickson and Jon Spaihts, worked on the script for Doctor Strange. More intriguingly they’re writing the script for The Outer Limits, a movie based on the television show. The film if ever happens, produced by MGM, will be adapted from just the “Demon with a Glass Hand” episode begging the question of what they’re writing for a script given that Ellison did write the Writers Guild of America Awards Outstanding Script for a Television Anthology script.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
The Flying McCoysshows the doctor is surprised by results of Dracula’s medical test.
It must be very complicated being George Lucas. On the one hand, you get to wake up inside a vast Scrooge McDuck money vault every morning. On the other, you have to live with the absolute mess Disney has made of your life’s work. To be George Lucas must be to know that you are indirectly responsible for allowing something as soggy and aimless as Ahsoka to seep into the world.
Ahsoka has now reached its halfway point, with four of its eight episodes aired, and it’s fair to say that literally nothing has happened. We know what’s going to happen, because the characters won’t stop talking about it – they’re going to meet a new baddie who has been banished to a different galaxy and represents an enormous existential threat – but the show is plodding towards it so glacially that it feels as if we may never actually get there. It’s almost (almost!) as if Star Wars realises it has spread itself too thin and is doling out plot one measly quarter-portion at a time….
(13) FILL UP THE THIRD. Simultaneous Times Vol.3, a science fiction anthology, is now available from Space Cowboy Books. Edited by Jean-Paul L. Garnier, with cover art by Austin Hart (Critters Award Winner).
Sixteen wonderous stories of science fiction by authors from all over the world! From alien invasions to sentient plants to intergalactic travelers, this book has it all. Featuring stories from the 2023 Laureate Award winning, and two-time Hugo Award longlisted podcast Simultaneous Times, as well as stories appearing for the first time, this collection spans multiple generations of award-winning science fiction authors and covers a wide variety of SF styles and themes.
Stories by: Jonathan Nevair (Indie Ink Award Finalist); F. J. Bergmann (Writers of the Future Winner); Brent A. Harris (Sidewise Finalist); Gideon Marcus (Hugo Finalist); A. C. Wise (Sunburst Winner); Tara Campbell (Robert Gover Story Prize Winner); David Brin (Hugo Winner); Robin Rose Graves (Laureate Award Finalist); Renan Bernardo (Argos & Utopia Award Finalist); Christopher Ruocchio (Manly Wade Wellman Winner); Toshiya Kamei; Todd Sullivan; Susan Rukeyser; Ai Jiang (Nebula Finalist); Cora Buhlert (Hugo Winner); Michael Butterworth (Laureate Award Winner).
…The world of the Swedish writer Karin Boye’s little-known 1940 novel, “Kallocain,” is a close cousin to those depicted in “We” and “Brave New World.” Like Zamyatin’s and Huxley’s dystopias, Boye’s underground World State is a centralized authoritarian society whose inhabitants’ lives are tightly controlled. And, as in these earlier novels, Boye’s closed state is destabilized by the experience of awe. That wonder, however, is sparked by a contact not with the unpredictable and ungovernable external world but with the equally unpredictable and ungovernable reality of human experience—and, specifically, female experience. The women characters in many classic twentieth-century dystopias tend to be flat, mere foils to male protagonists. But in “Kallocain” it is the inner lives of women that come to illustrate both the state’s power over its citizens and their own power to resist….
… Dystopias weaponize what they fear. The World State of “Kallocain” fears truth, and therefore weaponizes truth. It fears familial bonds, so it weaponizes them, too. In her description of that process, Boye articulates a deceptively simple idea: when the state creates a weapon that requires human coöperation, it opens the door to that weapon being used against it….
…A decade earlier, the flamboyant purple dresses made fashionable by the style leader Empress Eugénie of France were the preserve of the fabulously wealthy. Yet in just a few years, colours once made with expensive vegetable dyes were being industrially produced cheaply, thanks to an accidental discovery by an 18-year-old chemistry student William Henry Perkin. While attempting to synthesise quinine from aniline, a derivative of coal tar, Perkin realised the intense purples this colourless chemical produced could be used as a dye. He quickly established a factory for his new “mauveine”, as he called this early synthetic dye and chemists across Europe soon followed suit, expanding the synthetic colour palette. “The modern world of ubiquitous colour begins at this point,” says Winterbottom. “London’s streets and train stations are covered in brightly printed posters. People wear brightly coloured clothes. Everything from books to postage stamps becomes colourful.”
This rainbow transformation affected the entire social spectrum, from a working class who were now able to afford bright colours to members of the social elite rethinking their wardrobes. “Women asserted a more emboldened identity through colour,” says Winterbottom. In addition to loud dresses, ankles sporting coloured and striped stockings could be flashed thanks to newly swinging steel-hooped crinoline petticoats, which replaced the layers of fabric that previously helped to fill out skirts….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Francis Hamit, Jeff Smith, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Smith.]
(1) JMS RETURNS TO MARVEL IN CAPTAIN AMERICA #1. Marvel Comics has announced that writer and filmmaker J. Michael Stracyznski will return this September in Captain America #1. Marvel previously shared the news with io9.
Stracyznski has written fan-favorite stories including AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and THOR, and now he’s ready to embark on a new adventure with Marvel’s star-spangled hero! Alongside superstar artist Jesús Saiz (PUNISHER, DOCTOR STRANGE), the talented duo is ready to take Steve Rogers on an exhilarating new adventure.
Decades ago, Steve Rogers changed the world forever. Now powerful and insidious forces are assembling to ensure he never does it again. Past, present and future collide as the man out of time reckons with an existential threat determined to set the world on a darker path at any cost…
Speaking with io9, Straczynski says, “Overall, the goal is to do some really challenging stories, some really fun stories, and get inside Steve’s head to see who he really is in ways that may not have been fully explored before. If folks like what I did with Peter in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and Thor in, well… THOR, then they should give this a shot, because I’m really swinging for the bleachers in this one!”
Investigating Afrofuturist expression through art, music, activism and more, this exhibition explores and reveals Afrofuturism’s historic and poignant engagement with African American history and popular culture. From the enslaved looking to the cosmos for freedom to popular sci-fi stories inspiring Black astronauts, to the musical influence of Sun Ra, OutKast, Janelle Monae, P-Funk and more, this exhibition covers the broad and impactful spectrum of Afrofuturism.
A highlight of the exhibition is the Black Panther hero costume worn by the late Chadwick Boseman. The Black Panther is the first superhero of African descent to appear in mainstream American comics, and the film itself is the first major cinematic production based on the character.
The exhibition also utilizes select objects to elevate stories that speak to Black liberation and social equality, such as Trayvon Martin’s flight suit from Experience Aviation, and his childhood dream of being an astronaut.
(3) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WEARY. Mark Roth-Whitworth says, “I’m so tired of hearing how ‘character-driven’ stories are somehow ‘better’ than plot-driven, and I’ve written a rant, er, sorry, criticism.” “Character- or Plot-Driven – A False Dichotomy?”
As I’ve been developing as a writer, and submitting stories, I read and hear a lot about character-driven stories vs. plot-driven these days. Most novels seem to me to still are “plot-driven”, while a lot of shorter fiction that gets published in magazines is character-driven, or primarily thus, and I have issues with this.
Many years ago, in a long letter to my just-teenage children, speaking of people and relationships, I said that barring some life-changing event, whoever someone is at eighteen is who they will remain, only growing to be more of that. The result of that is that thinking someone is perfect, except for one little thing that you can fix… well, you can’t. In a story, the same is necessarily true….
(4) HAPPY WINNERS. Frank Wu and Jay Werkheiser are ecstatic to have won Analog’s AnLab Award for their novella “Communion” in the Jan 2022 issue as you can see in this photo taken by Brianna Wu. The winning cover was Eldar Zakirov’s artwork for the same story. Frank’s elevator pitch for the story is –
A space ship is about to crash and a 50-km-long mag wire is an essential part of the drive. During the crash, the robot saves the wire – and the mission and his human captain – by wrapping the wire around his arm and using his own body as a heatfield!
Frank Wu and Jay Werkheiser with their certificates recognizing their Anlab-winning novella “Communion” in the Jan 2022 issue. Photo by Brianna Wu.
…For instance, the Regency era – officially from 1811 to 1820—was well before England had a police force. So where does a lady sleuth get her official back up and assistance?
What’s more, record keeping was patchy at best and, if it did exist, was not centralised or easy to access. This was particularly the case for women because a vast majority of them could not read. Education, my dear fellow, is wasted on women—or at least that was the majority opinion of the time. How then, does a lady sleuth track down the information she needs to solve her mysteries?
So, when it came to written information, my lady sleuths had to be the kind of women of that era who would be feasibly taught to read, and secondly have access to the various places these records were kept. That is why I decided to make Lady Augusta (aka Gus), and Lady Julia part of the highest rank in Regency society, the aristocracy. At this rank, they would have a chance of some education, as well as having access to private libraries (public libraries as we know them were not yet in existence). They would also have the social clout and contacts to obtain information from other sources. At that time, most of the government officials were men from the gentry class or the aristocracy and since Gus and Julia move in those circles, they literally have friends in high place: excellent sources of information….
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Modern Library’s editorial board ranked “Brave New World,” the 1932 novel about the discontents of a technologically-advanced future society, as the fifth most important novel of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the book was challenged as required reading in the Corona-Norco Unified School District in 1993 because it is “centered around negative activity.” The novel also was removed from a high school library in Foley, Ala., in 2000 after a parent complained that it showed contempt for religion, marriage and family.
“Animal Farm” by George Orwell. The 1945 allegorical novella has been a target of complaints for decades, according to the ALA. In 1987, “Animal Farm” was one of dozens of books banned in schools in Bay County, Fla. Then 44 parents, students and teachers filed a federal lawsuit, and the school board reversed the decision. ‘’The only thing we have succeeded in doing is making sure every child in Bay County reads the books we banned,’’ a board member told the Associated Press.
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. If you’re going to write a historical novel, you’ve got to start with that one. It’s a fascinating book about the way that medieval England actually was, as opposed to the novels about it. It’s still a book that I go back to if I’m setting a story in anything like medieval England.
It’s time to head to Anaheim, California to take a seat at the table with William Shunn, the first of five guests I managed to chat and chew with for Eating the Fantastic during last month’s Nebula Awards conference. I first met Bill in 1993 though his words alone, when I bought his short story “Colin and Ishmael in the Dark” for publication in Science Fiction Age magazine. We met in the flesh later that same year at the San Francisco Worldcon, and he’s been part of my life for the past 30 years.
Bill attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1985, when he was only 17. (A class which included Mary Turzillo, Geoffrey Landis, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Resa Nelson, and other writers with whom you might be familiar.) In addition to being published in Science Fiction Age, he’s also appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, and other magazines. In 2002, he was nominated for a Nebula in the category of novelette for “Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites,” and a few years later hit the nomination trifecta when he was up for a Nebula, Hugo, and Sturgeon Award for his novella “Inclination,” which had been published in Asimov’s in 2006.
In addition, if you’re a writer, you might be familiar with what’s come to be called the “Shunn format,” a guide to proper manuscript preparation which first appeared online in 1995 and has since become the gold standard for numerous publications. His widely acclaimed memoir, The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary, was published in 2015, and in addition to detailing the youthful indiscretion which prevents him from ever returning to Canada, explains how Clarion changed his life and helped him become the writer he is today.
We discussed what he hoped would happen when he arrived at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshop when he was 17 vs. what actually did happen, how his post-Clarion homelife was haunted by Ray Bradbury, the time Kate Wilhelm critiqued his critiquers, how an early rejection from Playboy got him in big trouble, the way a tragedy scuttled the sale of his memoir to a major publisher, how he and Derryl Murphy collaborated on a novella without killing each other, and so much more.
(9) RAJNAR VAJRA-LOEB (1947-2023). Rajnar Vajra-Loeb, known to the sff field as author Rajnar Vajra, died May 16 at the age of 75. Memorial comments are being gathered on his funeral information webpage.
He twice won the Analog Readers Poll, in 2002 for the short story “Jake, Me, and the Zipper” , and in 2005 for his novella “Layna’s Mirror”.
His 2015 Hugo-nominated story “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” was on both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies slates, however, as reported by Chris Barkley at the time “he has vehemently disassociated himself from them. When other nominees dropped out of the Hugo Awards race, he bravely stayed in, because he believed in his story and vacating the nomination slot may have given the ballot yet another puppy candidate.”
He lived long enough to celebrate the “book birthday” of his latest novel Opening Wonders released on May 2.
(10) MEMORY LANE.
2019 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a fantastic writer. Mexican born and raised, she moved to Canada in her twenties. Her debut novel, Signal to Noise, is a superb first novel.
She’s the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, a press devoted to weird fiction. With Lavie Tidhar, she edits The Jewish Mexican Literary Review.
Gods of Jade and Shadow, the source of our Beginning, a historical fantasy, was published by Del Rey four years ago. Gods of Jade and Shadow was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel.
And now let’s go into our Beginning….
But what the lords wished was that they should not discover their names.—Popol Vuh, translated into English by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Griswold Morley from the work by Adrian Recino
Some people are born under a lucky star, while others have their misfortune telegraphed by the eposition of the planets. Casiopea Tun, named after a constellation, was born under the most rotten star imaginable in the firmament. She was eighteen, penniless, and had grown up in Uukumil, a drab town where mule-drawn railcars stopped twice a week and the sun scorched out dreams. She was reasonable enough to recognize that many other young women lived in equally drab, equally small towns. However, she doubted that many other young women had to endure the living hell that was her daily life in grandfather Cirilo Leyva’s house.
Cirilo was a bitter man, with more poison in his shriveled body than was in the stinger of a white scorpion. Casiopea tended to him. She served his meals, ironed his clothes, and combed his sparse hair. When the old brute, who still had enough strength to beat her over the head with his cane when it pleased him, was not yelling for his grandchild to fetch him a glass of water or his slippers, her aunts and cousins were telling Casiopea to do the laundry, scrub the floors, and dust the living room.
Casiopea, who had prayed at the age of ten for her cousin Martín to go off and live in another town, far from her, understood by now that God, if he existed, did not give a damn about her. What had God done for Casiopea, aside from taking her father from her? That quiet, patient clerk with a love for poetry, a fascination with Mayan and Greek mythology, a knack for bedtime stories. A man whose heart gave up one morning, like a poorly wound clock. His death sent Casiopea and her mother packing back to Grandfather’s house. Mother’s family had been charitable, if one’s definition of charity is that they were put immediately to work while their idle relatives twiddled their thumbs.
Had Casiopea possessed her father’s pronounced romantic leanings, perhaps she might have seen herself as a Cinderella-like figure. But although she treasured his old books, the skeletal remains of his collection—especially the sonnets by Quevedo, wells of sentiment for a young heart—she had decided it would be nonsense to configure herself into a tragic heroine. Instead, she chose to focus on more pragmatic issues, mainly that her horrible grandfather, despite his constant yelling, had promised that upon his passing Casiopea would be the beneficiary of a modest sum of money, enough that it might allow her to move to Mérida.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 2, 1915 — Lester Del Rey. Editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey. As regard his fiction, I’m fond of Rocket Journey and Police Your Own Planet, early works of his. His Jim Stanley series has much to say for it. And he got nominated for four Retro Hugos. (Died 1993.)
Born June 2, 1929 — Norton Juster. Author of the much beloved Phantom Tollbooth and its less known variant, The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth. Adapted in 1970 into a quirky film, now stuck in development hell being remade again. He also wrote The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, a story he says was inspired by Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. (Died 2021.)
Born June 2, 1937 — Sally Kellerman. She makes the list for being Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in the superb episode of Trek “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. She also had one-offs on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Invaders, and The Ray Bradbury Theater. She played Natasha Fatale in Boris and Natasha: The Movie. (Died 2022.)
Born June 2, 1941 — Stacy Keach, 82. Though best known for playing hard-boiled Detective Mike Hammer, he’s got a long association with our genre starting with being The Mountain of the Cannibal God, an Italian horror film. Next up for him was Class of 1999 followed by voicing both Carl Beaumont / Voice of Phantasm in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, a film I really, really like. More horror, and a really silly title, await him in Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return where The Hollow has a tasteful title which the Man with the Screaming Brain does not provide him. Storm War, also known as Weather Wars, is SF. And then there is Sin City: A Dame to Kill For which is a rather nice piece of film making. And yes, he’s been in a televised version of Macbeth playing Banquo.
Born June 2, 1920 — Bob Madle. Helped start his local sf club in 1934, went to what he considered to be the first-ever sf convention in 1936, and attended the first Worldcon (Nycon I) in 1939. Bob Madle and named the Hugo Awards. He was the first North American TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate to an overseas con (Loncon, 1957). Twenty years later he was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1977 Worldcon (listen to his GoH speech here.) First Fandom has inducted him to their Hall of Fame, and given him the Moskowitz Award for collecting. He’s a winner of the Big Heart Award). This post about his centennial birthday in 2020 includes photos and a summary of his fannish life in his own words. (Died 2022.)
Born June 2, 1979 — Morena Baccarin, 44. Very long genre history starting with portraying Inara Serra in Firefly and Serenity; Adria in the Stargate SG-1 series and the Stargate: The Ark of Truth; Anna in the 2009 version of the series V; Vanessa in Deadpool and Deadpool 2; and Dr. Leslie Thompkins in Gotham.
Born June 2, 1982 — Jewel Staite, 41. Best known as the engineer Kaylee Frye in the Firefly verse. She was Jennifer Keller in Stargate Atlantis, Catalina in the Canadian series Space Cases, Tiara VanHorn in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show and “Becca” Fisher in Flash Forward. Genre one-offs? Oh yes: The Odyssey (twice), Are You Afraid of The Dark (again twice), The X-Files, So Weird, Sabrina: The Animated Series, The Immortal, Seven Days, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, Legends of Tomorrow, The Order and The Magicians.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate has filed a bombshell lawsuit accusing a writer of ripping off the late author’s iconic Lord of The Rings series and is demanding his books be taken out of stores, RadarOnline.com has learned.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, The Tolkien Trust, which is responsible for managing the intellectual property of the late Professor J. R.R. Tolkien, is suing a man named Demetrious Polychron.
In the suit, the Trust said the lawsuit was brought due to Polychron’s “willful and blatant violation” of its copyright interests in the Lord of the Rings franchise.
The Trust said despite the author being aware of its rights in Tolkien’s work, he decided to “write, publish, market and sell a blatantly infringing derivative sequel to the Tolkien Trilogy entitled The Fellowship of the King (the “Infringing Work”). In addition to clearly mimicking the title of the first book in the Tolkien Trilogy, the Infringing Work constitutes a blatant, wide-ranging and comprehensive misappropriation of Professor Tolkien’s creative opus.”
The Trust said its aware that Polychron plans to release up to six additional books — all based on Tolkien’s characters.
“The Infringing Work is currently being offered for sale on various online platforms in the United States for $17.99 – $26.99 a copy,” the suit read.
The suit explained, “Neither Professor Tolkien nor the Tolkien Estate has ever authorized any written sequels to the Tolkien Trilogy. Not only was the Infringing Work unauthorized, but the Tolkien Estate had already expressly refused the [Polychron’s] request to publish any work of this nature, in keeping with its longstanding policy.”
I feel as if a big part of revision is going from the general to the specific. My first drafts, at least, always include a lot of details that are kind of fuzzy. Sometimes, a piece of information changes every time it comes up, because I haven’t made up my mind yet what the actual real version is, and I’m just hedging my bets. Sometimes there’s a highly specific piece of backstory, front story or side story, but it’s just really a placeholder — a supporting character is a stock character, or someone’s job is merely a sitcom job that doesn’t feel like a real employment situation. And sometimes, things are just left so vague that they could be anything, or there’s no information whatsoever.
So when I revise, I try to nail things down more. On one level, this is just a process of deciding on stuff. Where did this character grow up? Who were their parents? What kind of job do they have, and what specifically does the job ask of them? And so on….
Don’t tell me “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is merely a cartoon. It’s a visionary work that redefines what the animation medium can achieve, sitting alongside the handful of sequels such as “The Dark Knight” and “The Empire Strikes Back” that elevate their franchises by pushing them in surprising new directions.
On a personal level, this animated second installment of the web-slinging superhero is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing an accurate depiction of my life and culture on a movie screen – well, with a few fantastic elements added into the mix. That’s invaluable.
“Across the Spider-Verse” takes place a year after the events of the previous film with Miles Morales (a.k.a. Spider-Man) facing a new threat. Unfortunately, it’s one that causes him to interact with a new group of Spider-People from across the multiverse.
So why did I respond so deeply to this superhero story? Like Miles, I’m made up of an exciting ethnic mix of Puerto Rican and Black parents brought together in the melting pot that is New York City. Neither of us possesses the acceptable amount of Spanish fluency that our fellow Boricuas require. Nonetheless, we have a weakness for fried platanos, as well as an appreciation for our heritage. Just hearing the word “bendición,” a standard greeting and farewell term used in Latino culture, used in “Across the Spider-Verse, ” filled my eyes with tears and pride….
…Considering Billi’s feline status, Baker was naturally a bit skeptical at first.
“I was concerned because they [the buttons] were quite large for a little tiny kitty, and I was not sure that she was actually going to be heavy enough to press them,” Baker said. “So I started with a word that I’d really not recommend that you start with, which is ‘food,’ because it becomes very motivating for them. And Billi loves food.”
Baker’s concerns quickly washed away once it became clear that Billi was able to press the button “food” — which she appeared to enjoy doing perhaps a little too much.
“She was definitely heavy enough for it,” Baker said. “And then I later regretted starting with food because it kind of backfired on me, but it definitely got the ball rolling.”
Today, Billi has 50 words on her board, and — like Bunny — is part of the ongoing research project called TheyCanTalk, whose goal is to understand if animals can communicate with humans through AAC devices. While the study is mostly made up of dogs, about 5 percent of the animals using AAC devices are now felines. It turns out that many cats have been successful at using the device.
“They have this reputation of just doing what they want and not really caring what the humans are doing, and I think this is a great opportunity to see that they actually are paying attention,” Smith said. “Seeing that they can be engaged, that they’re not just cat automatons, that aren’t driven by instinct 24/7 can function a great deal positively for their role in other studies.”
…On April 2, Ingenuity soared 52 feet up into the Martian sky — a record height for the drone — to take a suborbital photo of Mars’s landscape.
After landing, it disappeared. When scientists attempted to upload instructions for a subsequent flight, Ingenuity’s radio sign was gone.
Scientists eventually located Ingenuity after six days of searching as the helicopter’s companion on Mars, the Perseverance rover, crested a ridge and drove closer to where the helicopter had landed.
Ingenuity, controlled via radio signals relayed from Perseverance, completed its five-flight mission — a simple series to prove that the helicopter’s design would work in the thin Martian atmosphere — in May 2021. Then, Tzanetos’s team received approval to keep flying.
“At that point, we’re on borrowed time,” Tzanetos said. “None of the mechanisms were designed to survive longer than that.”
Somehow, they did — for months and months, and dozens more flights. By May 2022, it seemed as if Ingenuity’s miraculous story would finally plummet down to (Martian) earth. Winter was setting in, and NASA feared the lower temperatures would cause Ingenuity’s solar-charged batteries to fail, or even freeze overnight.
The helicopter entered a low-power state after its 28th flight in late April of that year, and scientists told The Post they weren’t sure if it would fly again.
Incredibly, Ingenuity’s delicate parts stood up to the Martian cold. But NASA still faced the challenge of reconnecting with the helicopter every time its components froze, Tzanetos said. The Ingenuity team adjusted by using data on Martian sunrises to calculate when the helicopter would thaw out each morning and regain enough charge to power on….
(17) CAN WE MOVE EARTH ACROSS SPACE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Shades of Stephen Baxter in this week’s PBS Space Time when Matt O’Dowd asks can we move planet Earth across the Universe?
Interstellar travel is horrible-what with the cramped quarters of your spaceship and only the thin hull separating you from deathly cold and deadly cosmic rays. Much safer to stay on here Earth with our gloriously habitable biosphere, protective magnetic field, and endless energy from the Sun. But what if we could have the best of all worlds? No pun intended. What if we could turn our entire solar system into a spaceship and drive the Sun itself around the galaxy? Well, I don’t know if we definitely can, but we might not not be able to.
(18) TALES FROM THE ZONE – ROADSIDE PICNIC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]In this week’s Media Death Cult Moid Moidelhoff considers Roadside Picnic. Roadside Picnic is in the Goldilocks zone, it is a perfect balance of a straight narrative that requires nothing more than standard plot and characters to make sense. But the sub-text is as thick as porridge… “Tales From The Zone – Roadside Picnic”.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Steven H Silver, Rich Lynch, Jennifer Hawthorne, Scott Edelman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter. John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jake.]
(1) HOW PROZINES ARE COPING WITH SUBMISSIONS PRODUCED BY AI. The Dark, edited by Sean Wallace, is another sff publication being sent a lot of AI-written stories. They’ve adopted a policy in response:
1) As there’s been an uptick on AI-generated submissions lately, we’ve gone ahead and updated our guidelines for The Dark, with this statement, lifted pretty much from the @clarkesworld website:
3) Quite a few other magazines have already added something similar and I am hopeful that the genre writing organizations in our field follow suit with their positions on this matter sooner than later. Thanks!
Meanwhile, Matthew Kressel, designer of the Moksha Submissions System used by many sff publications, told Facebook readers today he will “soon be releasing a set of tools for Moksha to allow editors to easily filter AI-generated submissions. Yes, it relies on author affirmation that the work is wholly their own, but to affirm otherwise would be plagiarism. Gotta start somewhere.”
(2) STATEMENTS FROM AUTHORS ORGANIZATIONS. In the UK, the Society of Authors discusses the challenges of “Protecting copyright and creative careers in the face of new technology” in its statement on “Artificial Intelligence” which begins —
Whatever your area of work, whether you are an academic, an illustrator, a poet, a scriptwriter or a translator (to name a few), AI systems are being trained on existing copyright-protected works (input) and these same systems are being used to generate works ‘in the style of’ those existing works (output).
The AI development race is opaque, unfettered and unregulated, and driven primarily by the profit motives of large corporations, despite some likely adverse impacts. The ethical and moral ramifications of these AI systems are complex, and the legal ramifications are not limited to the infringement of copyright’s economic rights, but may include infringement of an author’s moral rights of attribution and integrity and right to object to false attribution; infringement of data protection laws; invasions of privacy; and acts of passing off.
And these aren’t issues for a hypothetical future….
And in the U.S., The Authors Guild discusses the problem in its advocacy article about “Artificial Intelligence”.
Artificial intelligence machines capable of generating literary and artistic works and performing other fantastical tasks that were once “science fiction” are at our doorstep. Today, commercial AI programs can already write articles, compose music, and render images in response to text prompts, and their ability to do these tasks is improving at a rapid clip. A wide assortment of tools to help writers write are commercially available today and show great potential to expedite and improve many writers’ output. At the same time, once AI is writing good books on its own (which is not so far off), it threatens to crowd the market for human authored books.
AI-generated literary and artistic works, even in their most impressive form, are essentially mimicry of human expressive works. AI generative technologies (i.e, AI machines that are used to generate output) are “trained” on mass amounts of pre-existing works (e.g., text, images, recorded music), where the copied works are broken down to their components and rules and their patterns deciphered. The consumer facing AI machines available to date have been trained on works copied by internet crawlers without licenses or permission.
While AI-generated works might look or sound like human-created works, they lack human intelligence and feeling. AI cannot feel, think, or empathize. It lacks the essential human faculties that move the arts forward. Nevertheless, the speed at which AI can create artistic and literary works to compete with human-authored works poses a significant threat to both the economic and cultural value of the latter.
We are confronting serious policy issues about the future of creativity: Do we want humans or AI creating our literature and other arts?…
(3) SUDOWRITE ADVOCATE WILL DROP TWITTER. S. B. Divya, whose promotion of Sudowrite’s “Story Engine” on Twitter met with much criticism, announced yesterday that she will be leaving the platform.
YouTuber and author Hank Green announced that he has been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in a YouTube video last week.
In the video, Green recounted his diagnosis, saying it all started when “I noticed my lymph nodes were big.” After consulting with his doctor, getting an ultrasound and undergoing a biopsy, Green was given a diagnosis. According to Green, it was “good news, bad news.”
“One, it’s cancer. It’s called lymphoma. It’s cancer of the lymphatic system. And good news, it’s something called Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Green said. “It’s one of the most treatable cancers. It responds very well to treatment. The goal is cure. The treatment to get there is fairly well-known, if unpleasant.”…
…Last week, the Supreme Court resolved a major copyright dispute involving a Warhol that many experts thought would have a spillover effect on other cases, including a pair involving Prince that are currently playing themselves out in federal court in New York.
But in the end, the court’s Warhol decision appeared to be fairly narrow, the experts said, as the justices did not so much weigh in on how much of another work an artist can copy, but ruled instead on what sort of use such a work can be put to.
Warhol, who died in 1987, had created a series of silk-screen portraits of the rock star Prince that were based on a photograph of the musician taken by Lynn Goldsmith. One of the silk-screens was licensed by his estate to Condé Nast in 2016 to illustrate the cover of a special issue about the musician’s legacy.
When Goldsmith sued, asserting her copyright had been infringed, the Warhol estate argued that it was entitled to the so-called fair-use defense. The estate’s lawyers suggested that Warhol’s treatment of the image, which was colored, cropped and shaded in certain places, had been “transformative,” a term the courts have adopted to define just how much change the appropriating artist must bring to the underlying work to pass muster.
Many thought the latest Supreme Court decision might more clearly delineate what qualifies a work as transformative. But the justices chose instead to focus on how the Warhol portrait had been used, namely to illustrate an article about the musician. The court found that such a use was not distinct enough from the “purpose and character” of Goldsmith’s photo, which had been licensed to Vanity Fair years earlier to help illustrate an article about [the musician] Prince….
… Brian Sexton, a lawyer for [artist] Richard Prince, said the Supreme Court, in its Warhol decision, “went to great pains” to make clear that its findings were “limited to a single licensing dispute.”
“As Richard Prince makes individual paintings and does not license his works, the holding in Warhol is clearly inapplicable to his New Portraits litigation,” he said….
(6) OCTAVIA BUTLER FELLOWSHIP AWARDED. Dr. Lois Rosson is the winner of the second Octavia E. Butler Fellowship, which will support her work at the Huntington in Pasadena, CA. “Introducing the 2023–24 Huntington Fellows”.
Dr. Lois Rosson
Among the incoming cohort of fellows is Lois Rosson, winner of the Octavia E. Butler Fellowship. She received her Ph.D. from the history department of the University of California, Berkeley, in 2022 and took up a Berggruen Institute Fellowship at USC’s Center for Science, Technology, and Public Life the same year. Rosson is a historian of science, focusing on visual representations of the space environment. Her work has been supported by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, and The Huntington, where she was awarded a short-term fellowship in 2020.
As the second Butler Fellow at The Huntington, Rosson will develop her first book project, which explores why visual tropes that associated outer space with Western frontier expansion persisted into the late 20th century. At no point in this history, she argues, was the framing of space landscapes as topographies ideologically continuous with American Manifest Destiny an obvious or inevitable outcome. How then, she asks, did this perception become so dominant?
Rosson proposes two conceptual alternatives to depictions of space as a landscape couched in colonialist narrative. The first centers on Afrofuturist representations of outer space as a realm to which inhabitants of Earth can hypothetically flee—as opposed to landscapes characterized by prospective settlement or colonial resource extraction. The second compares representations of Latinx farm workers in midcentury California with visions of the labor-free space colonies developed by NASA at the time.
Rosson plans to spend her time principally working with The Huntington’s Octavia E. Butler Papers. Butler’s literary vision of space as a place of asylum, Rosson writes, is one of the most widely read of the 20th century. In Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, the protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, frustrated with life in dystopian California, compares Mars—“cold, empty, almost airless, dead”—to heaven. In Olamina’s view, the Martian landscape is not an especially inviting one, but it offers the prospect of escaping a planet characterized by degraded human life and violent climate catastrophe. At The Huntington, Rosson will focus on Butler’s ideas about how life in space should be organized as well as her upbringing in Pasadena and proximity to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Along with representations of space as a realm of noncorporate diaspora, Rosson explores the centrality of agricultural production to the large-scale space station designs that emerged in the 1970s and ’80s. While illustrations of these space stations depicted fully populated colonies set against the pastoral landscapes of fully engineered agricultural systems, the labor required to maintain these environments is never depicted. Rosson plans to compare depictions of agricultural production in space with the idealized versions circulated in 20th-century American print culture, which erased most traces of human labor. She argues that images of California citrus and vegetable farming—like those illustrated on lithographed labels held in The Huntington’s Jay T. Last Collection of Graphic Arts and Social History—function as visual precursors to the inert versions eventually depicted in illustrations of futuristic space stations in the early 1970s, a time when the rights of immigrant farm workers became increasingly visible in the United States.
In 1987, editor David G. Hartwell embarked on a massive undertaking.
Through conversations, panels, and a variety of correspondence, he came to realize the horror genre was at something of a turning point. A lot of horror writers and critics, when they cited their influences and favorite works, tended to favor short stories over longer forms of horror. In fact, a lot of the works that drove horror history appeared to be short stories. After much thought, he compiled what he felt was a definitive work on shorter horror at the crossroads of the genre; The way forward being paved by novels, the previous history built upon the foundation of short stories. It was meant as an all-encompassing paean to dark fiction, to discuss and outline Hartwell’s own thoughts and definitions of the genre.
The result was a huge tome titled The Dark Descent, as much a historical and critical work of horror as it was an attempt to codify and collect the best specimens of short horror stories. It’s award-winning, weighty in both content and size, and looms large in the collections of horror fans old and new.
That was thirty-six years ago. In the years since The Dark Descent landed with an almighty boom upon our bookshelves, horror has in fact changed quite a bit….
…Now, as you may have already gathered from the title of this post, I have some rather disheartening news to share. The movie that my dear friend Ben and I co-wrote, The Princess, is being removed from popular streaming platforms such as Hulu and Disney+. A decision made in the pursuit of cost-saving measures….
… Here is an article from Variety that provides further insight into this unfortunate development.
To be completely honest, Ben and I are both profoundly saddened by this turn of events. As Ben aptly expressed in his recent tweet, “After 25 years in LA, I finally had a movie that I’m proud of. Now, it could vanish forever…”
And indeed, that is the harsh reality we are faced with. Ben and I have dedicated countless hours to this industry, tirelessly honing our skills as writers. For 15 years, we have toiled together, overcoming numerous obstacles in the pursuit of our dreams. Finally, in 2014, our hard work paid off, and we broke into the industry. Yet, it took an additional seven long years before one of our projects was brought to life. The Princess was that project. Finally! We had achieved something remarkable—an offering for the world to experience. A piece of work that I could proudly share with my future grandchildren. Something to present to those who ever questioned my abilities as a screenwriter, proving that I had indeed left a mark on the world.
However, in an effort to cut costs, Disney has chosen to withdraw The Princess, along with several other films and shows, from their streaming services. This is reminiscent of a similar situation last year when David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery, removed a multitude of shows from HBO Max and even decided against releasing Batgirl to reduce expenses.
Now, both the creative team behind The Princess and ourselves find ourselves among the victims of such decisions….
…Deep in the jungle of central Vietnam lies an underground kingdom. Hang Son Doong, which translates as ‘mountain river cave’ is the largest cave passage in the world and a place of beauty. Located in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Quang Binh Province, the cave entrance was first discovered in 1990 by a local farmer. But it wasn’t explored until 2009 when a British expedition team rigged ropes and descended.
Often described as the eighth wonder of the world, Son Doong has its own lake, jungle and a unique weather system, and remained undisturbed for millions of years. However, in 2014, Son Doong’s future was thrown into doubt when plans were announced to build a cable car into the cave. With many arguing that this would destroy the cave’s delicate eco-system and the local community divided over the benefits this development would bring, the film follows those caught up in the unfolding events….
(10) MEMORY LANE.
2005 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Joe Hill’s the son of Stephen King. I’ve met him several times, and yes he looks like his father. He’s every bit as friendly and charming as his father is in person. Lovely family they are.
Our Beginning is that of “Voluntary Committal” which was published by Subterranean Press eighteen years ago.
I don’t know who I’m writing this for, can’t say who I expect to read it. Not the police, anyway. I don’t know what happened to my brother, and I can’t tell them where he is. Nothing I could put down here would help them find him.
And anyway, this isn’t really about his disappearance… although it does concern a missing person, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think the two things had anything to do with each other. I have never told anyone what I know about Edward Prior, who left school one October day in 1977, and never arrived home for chili and baked potatoes with Mom. For a long time, the first year or two after he vanished, I didn’t want to think about my friend Eddie. I would do anything not to think about him. If I passed some people talking about him in the halls of my high school—I heard he stole his momma’s weed and some money and ran away to fuckin California!—I’d fix my eyes on some point in the distance and pretend I was deaf. And if someone actually approached and asked me straight out what I thought had happened to him—now and then someone would, since we were known compañeros—I’d set my face into a rigid blank and shrug. “I almost think I care sometimes,” I said.
Later, I didn’t think about Eddie out of studiously formed habit. If anything happened by chance to remind me of him—if I saw a boy who looked like him, or read something in the news about a missing teen—I would instantly begin to think of something else, hardly aware I was even doing it.
In the last three weeks, though, ever since my little brother Morris went missing, I find myself thinking about Ed Prior more and more; can’t seem, through any effort of will, to turn thoughts of him aside. The urge to talk to someone about what I know is really almost more than I can bear. But this isn’t a story for the police. Believe me, it wouldn’t do them any good, and it might do myself a fair amount of bad. I can’t tell them where to look for Edward Prior any more than I can tell them where to look for Morris—can’t tell what I don’t know—but if I were to share this story with a detective, I think I might be asked some harsh questions, and some people (Eddie’s mother, for example, still alive and on her third marriage) would be put through a lot of unnecessary emotional strain.
And it’s just possible I could wind up with a one-way ticket to the same place where my brother spent the last two years of his life: the Wellbrook Progressive Mental Health Center. My brother was there voluntarily, but Wellbrook includes a wing just for people who had to be committed. Morris was part of the clinic’s work program, pushed a mop for them four days out of the week, and on Friday mornings he went into the Governor’s Wing, as it’s known, to wash their shit off the walls. And their blood.
Was I just talking about Morris in the past tense? I guess I was. I don’t hope anymore that the phone will ring, and it will be Betty Millhauser from Wellbrook, her voice rushed and winded, telling me they’ve found him in a homeless shelter somewhere, and they’re bringing him back. I don’t think anyone will be calling to tell me they found him floating in the Charles, either. I don’t think anyone will be calling at all, except maybe to say nothing is known. Which could almost be the epitaph on Morris’s grave. And maybe I have to admit that I’m writing this, not to show it to anyone, but because I can’t help myself, and a blank page is the only safe audience for this story I can imagine.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born May 23, 1909 — Robert Thomas Maitland Scott Jr., 1909 – 1945. Son in a father-and-son writing team who created The Spider, a pulp character who was clearly a rip-off of The Shadow. They wrote only the first two Spider novels before it was written by various house authors though it’s disputed if Scott Jt. had an uncredited role because the SF element in the series clearly reflect his tastes. He would die in a motor vehicle while on active duty with Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. (Died 1945.)
Born May 23, 1921 — James Blish. What was his best work? Cities in Flight? A Case of Conscience? I’d argue it was one of those works. Certainly it wasn’t the Trek novels. And I hadn’t realized that he wrote one series, the Pantropy series, under a pen name, that of Arthur Merlyn. (Died 1975.)
Born May 23, 1933 — Margaret Aldiss. Wife of Brian Aldiss. She wrote extensively on her husband’s work including The Work of Brian W. Aldiss: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide. He in turn wrote When the Feast is Finished: Reflections on Terminal Illness, a look at her final days. She also co-edited the A is for Brian anthology with Malcolm Edwards and Frank Hatherley. (Died 1997.)
Born May 23, 1935 — Susan Cooper, 88. Author of the superb Dark is Rising series. Her Scottish castle set YA Boggart series is lighter in tone and is just plain fun. I’d also recommend her Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children which is quite excellent. The Grey King, part of The Dark is Risk series, won a Newbery, and she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
Born May 23, 1942 — Zalman King. OK he’s best known for The Red Shoe Diaries which are decidedly not genre and indeed are soft core erotica but even that isn’t quite true as some of the episodes were definitely genre such as “The Forbidden Zone” set in a future where things are very different, and “Banished” which deals with an Angel now in mortal form all on Earth. I’m betting there’s more fantasy elements but I need to go through sixty episodes to confirm that. Denise Crosby appeared in two episodes of the Red Shoe Dairies playing the different characters, Lynn ‘Mona’ McCabe in “The Psychiatrist” and Officer Lynn ‘Mona’ McCabe in “You Have the Right to Remain Silent”. Zalman himself played Nick in “The Lost Ones” episode on The Land of The Giants and earlier was The Man with The Beard in the Munsters episode of “Far Out Munsters”. His final genre acting gig was on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as Gregory Haymish in “The Cap and Gown Affair”. (Died 2012.)
Born May 23, 1967 — Sean Williams, 56. Australian author who has been the recipient of a lot of Ditmar and Aurealis Awards. And I mean a lot. Most of his work has been co-authored with Shane Nix (such as Emergence and Orphans series, Star Wars: New Jedi Order novels) but I’d recommend The Books of the Cataclysm series wrote solely by him as it’s most excellent. He’s deeply stocked at the usual digital suspects.
Born May 23, 1986 — Ryan Coogler, 37. Co-writer with Joe Robert Cole of Black Panther which he also directed. He directed Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Producer, Space Jam 2, producer of the Wankanda series on Disney+. Black Panther was a Hugo finalist at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon, the year that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won.
(12) ‘BLOOM COUNTY’ – A BETTER FAREWELL. When the Bloom County comic originally closed its run in 1989 Mark Roth-Whitworth thought he could improve on the way it ended. “For something different: a Bloom County end”.
A long time ago, a comic strip ended: Bloom County. A lot of us were unhappy, but I also thought that there could have been a better ending… so I wrote one.
Star Date 93350.09 Captain’s Log of the Starchair Enterpoop, Helmsman and now commanding officer Binkley recording.
It seems that our long mission has come to an end. Apparently, we have been successful….
…In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff (comparable to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), published an article titled “The Value of Science is in the Foresight,” in the weekly Russian trade paper Military-Industrial Kurier. In it, Gerasimov suggested that the “very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” and that in many cases, nonmilitary means have exceeded the power and force of weapons in their ability to effect change on the international stage.2 Gerasimov argues that new technologies have reduced gaps between traditional forces and their command and control, though also noting that “frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past.”3 The future, Gerasimov suggests, lies in “contactless actions”—made through cyber or other electronic means—being used as the main means of military or intelligence goals. This belief—that traditional military interactions are giving way to newer and subjectively more effective indirect interactions via computers and electronics—has been dubbed by some as the Gerasimov Doctrine…..
Over the years, there have been many memorable movies about Hercules that have captivated audiences worldwide. Some examples include the groundbreaking 1958 Italian film Hercules, starring bodybuilder Steve Reeves; Disney’s beloved animated feature Hercules (1997), which boasts an unforgettable soundtrack; and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s action-packed performance in Hercules (2014). Each film offers its own unique perspective on the life and legend of one of Greece’s most iconic heroes, with stunning visuals, thrilling action sequences, and engaging storytelling.
Now it’s your turn to let us know which Hercules movies stand out as the best among this legendary lineup. We invite you to vote on your favorite films featuring this mighty mythical hero. Together we’ll determine which movies truly capture the essence of Hercules’ strength, wisdom, and enduring popularity across generations. So grab your lion-skin cloak and club – it’s time to dive into the world of Hercules like never before.
Number one on the list is actually a sequel:
Hercules Unchained (1959)
In this timeless sequel, we’re treated to the unstoppable Steve Reeves as he takes on the role of Hercules, flexing his muscles and captivating audiences with his charm. With a gripping storyline that has him breaking free from an evil queen’s clutches, it’s no wonder this film became a hit, making Reeves a household name and cementing his status as a beloved hero in cinematic history.
(15) NEW ESTIMATE AS TO HOW OLD ARE SATURN’S RINGS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]There are two main, competing hypotheses: (1) They are ancient and either formed with Saturn or during the late veneer, or… (2) They are young and formed since then. Now data has been analysed from the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) on the Cassini spacecraft, which began orbiting Saturn in July 2004 until end of mission in September 2017. Continuous bombardment by non-icy micro-meteoroids from beyond the Saturnian system is a source non-icy material in Saturn’s rings. Knowing that rate of micro-meteor accumulation in the rings and knowing how much is the non-icy component to the rings, it is possible to estimate the age of the rings. Using CDA data European and US based astronomers estimate that the rings’ age is between around 100 million and 400 million years: hypothesis ‘2’. This estimate chimes in with a previous one using a different method. (See Kempf, S. et al. (2023) “Micrometeoroid infall onto Saturn’s rings constrains their age to no more than a few hundred million years”. Science Advances, vol. 9 (19), eadf8537.)
Black holes might really be strange defects in spacetime called topological stars that are generated by hidden cosmic dimensions, reports a new study.
Topological stars are completely hypothetical and only exist as mathematical constructions at this point. However, they have the potential to probe perplexing paradoxes of the cosmos, including the true nature of black holes and the mind-boggling ideas raised by string theory, a framework that attempts to reconcile seemingly contradictory physical laws into a unified theory.
String theory proposes that particles in the universe are actually vibrating strings tethered to many extra dimensions that are imperceptible to us. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have worked for years to envision the objects and phenomena that might exist in such a universe, including topological stars, or topological solitons, which are bubbles of nothing that form in the fabric of spacetime.
Now, the team has used simulations to show that topological solitons would appear “remarkably similar to black holes in apparent size and scattering properties, while being smooth and horizonless,” according to a recent study published in Physical Review D. In other words, the hypothetical objects would look almost exactly like black holes from our perspective, raising the tantalizing possibility that they may actually lurk in our universe.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Jeffrey Smith, Francis Hamit, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Charon D.]
By Mark Roth-Whitworth: I mentioned on File 770 last week that I’d just signed a contract for two novels. One of the things that I was asking for was to have them insert on the disclaimer page (you know, “This is a work of fiction…”) a statement like “This work may not be used to train generative AI” (chatbots, that is). Their lawyer said no, and after thinking about it, I decided that this needed a much broader solution. So I just sent this email to my Rep and both Senators, and it’s my part of the answer to chatbots and copyrights.
Hon. [Rep.|Sen]
I was negotiating a literary contract for two novels with a publisher last week, and the issue of AI training came up. I had been asking for them to print, on the disclaimer page, that the work could not be used for such training. Their lawyer tells them that they could not police large companies training generative AIs – chatbots – and so only put it in the contract that they would not.
The training of chatbots is a huge issue for artists, writers, and others, as much is done by simply scraping the Web, ignoring copyright notices. I believe that we can begin to address this issue by what I am requesting: you introduce as a bill to modify existing copyright law. My draft, and I am certainly not a lawyer, would be the following:
“Works in copyright may not be used to train generative AIs without explicit permission from the copyright owner.”
The impact of this would be that the corporations running and training them would be required to search whatever data they are using for copyright information, before they use it for the training. Further, should there be any question of copyright violation in this manner, if the chatbot is capable of printing out explicit copies of the work in question, it would be a prima facie case of violation. That would make it possible for creators to sue without being millionaires.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your response.
