(1) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to split a pastrami sandwich with Martha Thomases in Episode 244 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast. Edelman adds, “Those not interested in my conversation with a comics guest because they only care about science fiction should know I devoted seven minutes of the intro to eulogizing Barry Malzberg.”
Martha Thomases is a freelance journalist who has been published in the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, and more. She’s a VP of Corporate Communications at ComicMix.com as well as a weekly contributor there. From 1990-1999 she was Publicity Manager at DC Comics. She also worked as a researcher and assistant for author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner’s Song, On Women and Their Elegance, and Harlot’s Ghost. She created Dakota North with Tony Salmons for Marvel. Next year, A Wave Blue World will publish Second-Hand Rose, her graphic novel with Richard Case.
We discussed her theory that your popularity in high school determines whether you’ll move to New York, why she was into DC rather than Marvel at the start of her comics fandom, Denny O’Neil’s explanation of the true difference between Metropolis and Gotham City, the realization she had at 35 as to the true reason her parents allowed her to read comics, the weirdness of Little Lotta and Baby Huey, why she was more nervous meeting Denny O’Neil than she was meeting Norman Mailer, how Dakota North was born, our mutual love for the She-Hulk TV series, selling comics to comics fans vs. selling them to potential readers who don’t yet know they’d like comics, and much more.
(2) WRITER BEWARE. Victoria Strauss has full details of legal charges against scammers and what they did in “Karma’s a Bitch: The Law Catches Up With PageTurner Press and Media” at Writer Beware.
…The CEO and VP of one of the worst publishing scams of the past few years have been arrested in California.
Some background. The scam in question is PageTurner Press and Media, one of the biggest and most brazen of the vast array of publishing/marketing/fake literary agency/impersonation scams operating out of the Philippines….
…PageTurner operates as a type of pig butchering scam (where victims are tricked into handing over their assets via escalating demands for money). The most elaborate of its schemes involve multiple false identities and company names, with victims handed around between them. Most writers I’ve heard from were fleeced to the tune of low- to mid-four figures, but many lost substantially more–tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands in some cases. The largest payout I know of was extracted from an author who was recruited to buy costly re-publishing packages, then pressured into paying for hugely expensive marketing schemes, and ultimately targeted by one of PageTurner’s fake film companies and convinced to purchase a screenplay, treatment, PR campaign, and more, all for eye-popping amounts of money. All told, this author lost in excess of $600,000….
…On December 9, 2024, Sordilla was arrested in California, along with Innocentrix VP Bryan Navales Tarosa (who, like many individuals involved in these scams, started his career as a sales rep for Author Solutions). Sordilla and Tarosa are both residents of the Philippines, but were visiting the USA at the time.
One day later, authorities arrested Gemma Traya Austin, a US resident and PageTurner’s registered agent, who according to an August indictment in the US Court of the Southern District of California of all three individuals on charges of mail and wire fraud, was responsible for PageTurner’s US bank accounts. (These have been seized; they reportedly contained nearly $5 million.)…
(3) MORE RICHARD MORGAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Having got through to the semi-finals of the BBC’s Christmas University Challenge a few days ago, SF author, Richard Morgan’s Queen’s College Cambridge team last night (2nd January) faced Churchill College Cambridge (that’s twice they have faced a fellow Cambridge college). This time they did not get it so easy as the two teams of alumni (the regular University Challenge has teams of current students) were more even matched. Indeed, Richard’s performance was not so sure-footed. There was even one SF/F book related question on horror to which Richard gave the answer ‘Arthur Machen’ when in fact it should have been M. R. James….
And the competition was close, ending in an almost nail-biting-down-to-the-elbows 95-95 draw. This necessitated a tie-breaker question and Queen’s won! This means that we will see Richard and his team in the finals tonight. “University Challenge Christmas 2024 E09 – Churchill, Cambridge v. Queens’ Cambridge”.
(4) DIGITAL D&D SLOT MACHINE ON THE WAY. “Wizards of the Coast Goes All In On New D&D Gambling Game” at Dungeons and Dragons Fanatics.
In news which came as a surprise to many Dungeons & Dragons fans, Hasbro recently announced a licensing deal with the gambling company Global Games to produce a number of new products. This includes an upcoming digital slot machine entitled Dungeons & Dragons: Tales of Riches, which will be hitting casinos and online iGaming platforms sometime in early 2025.
It’s a somewhat controversial move for Hasbro given the often negative connotation of gambling among many consumers, but also speaks to some of the growing financial pressures Hasbro is facing and the value of licensing global intellectual properties like D&D….
… It’s not entirely clear why Hasbro has decided to license out the Dungeons & Dragons brand to a global online casino distributor, but like many business decisions it likely comes down to dollars and cents. Global gambling is a highly lucrative market and the potential licensing revenue could be significant (although neither Games Global or Hasbro has provided any information on the financial details)….
(5) TOUR DE FORCE. Visit another writer’s bookshelves in “Shelfies #17: David Agranoff”. (Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.)
…My office is designed so that when I am sitting at the desk I can reach and grab any resource material or actual Philip K. Dick novel without getting up.
You can see that I have the books in three stacks. Between the stacks, I have the seven books I most often use or reference. (Pot-Healer, Time Slip, Scanner Darkly, Eye in the Sky, High Castle, Do Androids, and my favorite, Three Stigmata)….
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Born January 3, 1892 — J.R.R. Tolkien. (Died 1973.)
By Paul Weimer: If Isaac Asimov (see January 2nd’s scroll) was one of the two midwives of getting me into science fiction. J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the two midwives of getting me into fantasy (the other, absolutely no surprise to any of you, was Roger Zelazny). I think I’ve told the story before of how I got into his work. The next weekend, the newest issue of TV proclaimed that they were going to show all three Tolkien movies — The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King. I had a week, friends as a ten-year-old reader of genre to read the extant Tolkien canon.
I read The Hobbit, and then blitzed through The Lord of the Rings in short order. I bounced off of The Silmarillion and would not try it again for another decade. But I felt armed and ready for the animated movies.
Lord, I was not ready for “Where there’s a Whip, there’s a Way”. But, then, no one really is.
But back to Tolkien himself, he was in fact, my ur-Epic Fantasy as well as being the ur-Epic Fantasy for most of modern fiction. I measured a lot of the epic fantasy of the 80’s and 90’s by the roads of Middle Earth. His worldbuilding, his prose, his iconic and mythic writing draws me in again, and again, and again.
(7) COMICS SECTION.
- xkcd teaches us how to fold an Origami Black Hole. (Don’t miss the note that appears when you mouse over the cartoon.)
- Bizarro knows late night thoughts.
- Candorville bridges the generational divide.
- Curses did everything but the work.
- Heart of the City learns about fanfiction.
- Thatababy has a strangely logical explanation.
- Brewster Rockit finds out who replaced Baby New Year.
(8) SFF ON JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] This was the final of the “Second Chance” tournament, in which 9 players who had come in second in regular play were brought back to compete for a spot in the upcoming Wild Card tournament. The first round of play had a category “Sci-Fi Fill In”. The players took it in reverse order.
$1000: Richard K. Morgan’s tale of cyberwarriors: “Altered ___ “
Kaitlin Tarr responded correctly: “What’s ‘Carbon’?”
$800: By Ursula K. Le Guin: “The Left Hand of ___ “
Colleen Matthews gave us “What is ‘Darkness’?”
$600: Rick Deckard is on the hunt: “Do Androids Dream of ___ ___ “
Colleen knew it was ‘Electric Sheep’.
$400: A Harlan Ellison classic: “I Have No Mouth & I Must ___ “
Will Yancey tried “What is ‘Speak’?” but of course this was wrong. Colleen and Kaitlin didn’t know this either, so it was a triple stumper. (Honestly I think this was a misstep by the clue-setters in terms of difficulty.)
$200: A full-course meal available from Douglas Adams: “The Restaurant at the End of the ___ “
Colleen got it: “What is ‘the Universe’?”
(9) KEEPING DOCTORS AWAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Apple+ is free this weekend (Jan 3-5):
And this article covers a bunch of other (all legit) ways to get Apple+ free. (We’re currently halfway through the free-with-Roku 3-month deal.)
Here’s the BestBuy URL, which I suspect is (non-Roku-users) best bet (other than Apple’s 1-week free trial):
My A+ rec’s include Ted Lasso; Shrinking (with Harrison Ford), Slow Horses. (None of which are sf, FWIW).
BTW, Apple offers the first episode of each series free, without having to subscribe first.
(10) HADFIELD Q&A. “Business Daily meets: Astronaut Chris Hadfield” – hear the interview at BBC Sounds.
Colonel Chris Hadfield is a former fighter pilot who became an astronaut and served as a commander of the International Space Station (ISS). While in orbit he became a social media star, posting breath-taking pictures of earth, as well as videos demonstrating practical science and playing his guitar.
These days, the Canadian invests in businesses and has written several best-selling fiction and non-fiction books.
In this programme, Chris Hadfield tells Russell Padmore how he was influenced by Star Trek, and the Apollo missions to the moon, as a child. He outlines why he welcomes private investment in space and he explains how he has become known for being the musical star in orbit.
(11) I TAKE MY T. REX ON ROUTE 66. “How did dinosaurs travel millions of years ago? Prehistoric highway may hold answers” on NPR’s “Morning Edition”. (Linking to this story again as an excuse to use Dern’s title.)
The discovery of a “prehistoric highway” in the United Kingdom could reveal more about how dinosaurs traveled millions of years ago.
(12) WHY WASN’T I TOLD? The New York Times says there’s Broadway production of Our Town with Jim Parsons as the Stage Manager, and it’s closing January 19. The supporting cast includes some other notables from TV like Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes.
Kenny Leon brings Thornton Wilder’s microcosmic drama back to Broadway, starring Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) as the Stage Manager. Zoey Deutch and Ephraim Sykes play the young lovers, Emily Webb and George Gibbs, with Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes as Mr. and Mrs. Webb; Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs; Donald Webber Jr. as Simon Stimson and Julie Halston as Mrs. Soames. (Through Jan. 19 at the Barrymore Theater.) Read the review.
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Nancy Lebovitz, Nickpheas, David Goldfarb, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]