(1) CHINA’S 2024 GALAXY AWARDS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The 35th Galaxy (“Yinhe”) Awards were presented in Chengdu on Saturday September 28. There doesn’t appear to be a video of the ceremony officially available, but a screen capture of the livestream has been posted to Bilibili. A fuller translated list of the winners may follow later, but here is a brief summary of the winners that Anglophone fandom might recognize:
Best Novel was won by Yan Xi’s Age of the Gods, which appeared in the 2023 Hugo nominations below the cutoff point. (This was originally published online in 2022, and in print in 2023, which I assume is why it appeared for two different years.)
2023 Hugo Best Short Story finalist Jiang Bo was one of three Best Novella winners here
2024 Hugo Best Short Story finalist Baoshu was one of five winners in the same category here
The Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams comic and R. F. Kuang’s Babel shared the Best Imported Book category
Adrian Tchaikovsky won Most Popular Foreign Writer, presumably based on the serialization of City of Last Chances (and possibly Cage of Souls, although that was serialized in 2024)
Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, as translated by Feng Xinyi, shared the Best Translation category.
Click for larger images.
Galaxy Award banner Galaxy Award bannerGalaxy for Best Short StoryGalaxy for Best NovellaGalaxy for Best NovelGalaxy for translation of Dying InsideGalaxy for BabelAdrian Tchaikovsky
(2) TOYPLOSION AND BACK AGAIN. Cora Buhlert has a three-part report about her trip to Toyplosion, a vintage toy convention, and the sights coming and going. Lots of photos, toy commentary, local history, and family stories.
…As I ventured further into the city center, I had to stop at a pedestrian crossing where the pedestrian traffic light symbol was not the regular stick figure, but a little miner with a lantern. Apparently, this is a thing in the Ruhrgebiet. Coal mining may be dead, but the miners are still around, immortalised as “Ampelmännchen”. In many ways, this is very illustrative of how the Ruhrgebiet has turned its industrial history into a tourist attraction….
…The same stall also had several vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls as well as other girl-aimed toylines of the 1980s on display. I chatted a bit with the owner and reminisced about how my Grandma bought me the entire first wave of Strawberry Shortcake dolls in January 1982, when my parents were on a cruise (my Dad had co-designed the ship, so it was work for him and he apparently spent most of his time running around and fixing problems, while my Mom was terribly seasick) and I was sent to stay with my grandparents. Grandma took me shopping in the city center and after spending an inordinate amount of time trying on clothes, she took me to what was then the best toyshop in town, where they had just gotten Strawberry Shortcake dolls in stock. And because I couldn’t decide in which one I wanted, Grandma – bless her – bought me the entire first wave. I don’t even want to think about how much that would have cost her – US toys were expensive in the 1980s because of the high exchange rate. What makes this even more remarkable is that my Aunt and to a lesser degree my Mom always referred to Grandma as “stingy” (she was their stepmother – my biological grandmother died young and I never met her), yet my supposedly “stingy” Grandma spent what must have been a lot of money just to buy me Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Grandma had actually worked as a dollmaker for a while in the difficult years after WWII, so she had an affinity for toys and always got me nice ones. Grandma and Grandpa even gave me handmade doll beds – Grandpa, who was a carpenter by trade, built them and Grandma sewed the pillows and blankets. I’m not sure if I ever told Grandma how much those Strawberry Shortcake dolls meant to me (she died in 1996 and has dementia for the last five years or so), though I suspect the fact that I promptly turned her kitchen floor into Strawberry Land and appropriated Grandpa’s footstool as a house for the dolls told them how much I loved their gift. I still have the dolls BTW – packed away in a box – and they still smell….
…Now it’s quite common for German coalmines to have names. However, German coalmines are have names like Germania or Teutonia or Concordia or Zollverein or St. Bonifacius or Zollverein or Monopol or Heinrich Robert or Count Friedrich or Queen Elisabeth or Victoria Auguste or Sophia Jacoba or Ottilia or – if the mine was in former East Germany – Karl Liebknecht or Ernst Thälmann. Erin, however, sounds much more like an Irish maiden than a coalmine in the Ruhrgebiet.
Turns out that there is a reason for this, for the coalmine Erin was established in 1867 by William Thomas Mulvany, an Irish geologist and entrepreneur who came to the Ruhrgebiet in the 1850s in search of business opportunities that were difficult for a Catholic Irishman to access in Ireland under British rule. He wound up founding and operating several mines in the Ruhrgebiet and gave them all names relating to Ireland such as Hibernia, Shamrock and of course Erin. …
I’ve dreamed of being a writer since I could form sentences but what really ignited me was a Halloween short story I did back in the 5th grade. As I advanced through middle school, high school, and college, my passion for writing increased into an obsession almost. I truly felt that I would cease to breathe if I could not put pen to paper and bleed out my imagination all over the page. Writing is my sanctuary; it always has been a way for me to deal with my living nightmares.
Tell us about your work in 25 words or less.
I craft Puerto Rican Gothic tales, eerie thrillers, and soulful poetry that blends my Afro-Boriquena roots with cultural magic and folk tales…
This is a corollary to my recent post about historical fantasy set in the Renaissance, and it discusses the extent to which historical settings free women writers to write honestly and brutally about anxieties of beauty. Basically, evaluating the book My Lady Jane in tandem with The Familiar got me thinking about a recurring beat in historical fiction, and what it says about our media environment and repressed emotions surrounding beauty. As the late Harold Bloom was fond of remarking, “period pieces” often tell us much more about contemporary anxieties than they do about whatever history they purport to depict, and one could add that the anxieties of women — the primary creators and audiences of historical dramas and fiction — are especially likely to seep through the period trappings.
In particular, I’ve recently been fascinated with a cliche beat we could call the “wardrobe humiliation scene.” It’s a fixture in the first act of a standard historical book/drama, along the lines of: whilst getting fitted for a dress, the heroine — usually preparing for some ball or arranged marriage — gets told by various assessors that she’s plain, unfashionable, ill-groomed, or fucking busted (or they insinuate as much); various forms of historical looksmaxxing are often utilized (fabrics, powders, jewelry) to conform her to the norms. It’s a masochistic, often weirdly humorous scene — as repetitious as it is, the needs it satisfies are multifaceted and often not as straightforward as one would think….
Howl’s castle has such an intricate and detailed design. Could you describe the castle’s animation process? How many people were involved?
I’m not sure I can count. There were many, many people who worked on it. In terms of drawing such a large item like that castle, there would usually be a base design for it, and then various animators could draw from that base design. But in this case, there was no such initial base design. So there might be one scene where it was drawn one way and then another scene where the little house wasn’t in the same place. But somehow, even with these angle changes that may show different things, it looked like one castle in the end.
There may be different things stuck onto the castle, but as long as there’s the mouth and the eyes and the chimneys, then people just perceive it as the same thing. So, we take advantage of that sort of misconception on the part of the audience to draw slightly different things.
(6) MEGALOPOLIS B.O. STINKS; WILD ROBOT MUCH SWEETER.[Item by Mike Kennedy.] Going into Sunday, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $120M epic Megalopolis is projected to open in 6th place domestically this weekend, with a disappointing $4M box office. It is also received a low score (D+) from movie viewers according to rating firm CinemaScore.com.
The Wild Robot (DreamWorks), meanwhile, is opening 1st domestically with an estimated $35M weekend box office and an A audience rating from CinemaScore. Final box office totals may change for either film. “’Megalopolis’ Bombs at Box Office, ‘Wild Robot’ Soars to No. 1” in The Hollywood Reporter.
DreamWorks Animaton and Universal’s family film The Wild Robot is charming moviegoers and audiences alike, boasting both a stellar 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a 98 percent audience score, not to mention an A CinemaScore from moviegoers. Thanks to great word of mouth, Wild Robot came in No. 1 with an estimated $35 million.
If only the love were being spread around.
Francis Ford Coppola — in one of the low points of his long and illustrious career — is watching his new movie Megalopolis get almost utterly rejected by moviegoers (it was likewise maligned by many critics). The film received a disastrous D+ CinemaScore from audiences and only cleared an estimated $4 million in its domestic debut (many rivals predict final numbers will be lower). Heading into the weekend, tracking and Lionsgate expected it to do at least $5 million to $7 million.
(7) TOBIAS TAITT DIES. Tobias Taitt, writer of the autobiographical comic Black, passed away September 16. James Bacon toured the Cartoon Museum’s exhibit about the comic (artwork by Anthony Smith) in 2021: “BLACK: The Story Of Tobias Taitt”.
(8) KRIS KRISTOFFERSON (1936-2024). Actor and country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson died September 28 at the age of 88. In 2004, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His performance in the film A Star Is Born (1975) earned him a Golden Globe for best actor in 1977.
In the sff/h genres he is best known for his appearances in the Blade movies (Blade, Blade II, Blade: Trinity) opposite Wesley Snipes. Also in Planet of the Apes (2001) as Karubi.
His music appeared in another half dozen sfff/h titles including Watchmen (2009)
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Anniversary, September 29, 2005 –The debut of XKCD
By Paul Weimer: It started off innocently enough, with some random sketches by its creator Randall Munroe. A girl in his class. Excitement at the debut of SERENITY. It was mildly amusing but would never have had its cultural impact if it stayed that way. A few months in, the webcomic got geekier, the artwork better, and then there was the secret sauce. The thing that made, I think, the webcomic really take off.
The alt text.
Alt text gets a bad rap. On Mastodon, you get hated if you don’t put it on your photos. Other sites don’t allow it at all. But in XKCD, the creator made alt text an art form, instead of describing his drawings, but coming up with the idea of footnoting them, often with some very funny, if sometimes mordant comedy and observations.
Why wouldn’t a comic that blends science, technology, history, popular culture and more not be utterly popular, especially one that works on several levels, in and out of the text itself?
The intellectual curiosity (as seen in his two books, What If and What if 2) and his ability to just make that into a simple and amusing image on a regular basis makes XKCD something to enjoy time and again and again.
My favorite XKCD strip is going to be an obvious one. He won a Hugo for a 3000 image strip that Munroe updated over five months, telling a grand story set millennia in the future as the waters of the Mediterranean rise…but it is not the story of that rise. It’s the story of the relationships and the people who watch it inexorably happen.
…The play follows two inseparable friends, Will and Jim, on the verge of adulthood. As contrasting as night and day, one yearns for adventure beyond their small town, while the other finds comfort in familiarity.
Their lives take a thrillingly unsettling turn when a mysterious carnival, led by the enigmatic Mr. Dark, rolls into town under the cloak of darkness.
The carnival offers irresistible promises, but at a sinister cost. Will and Jim must confront their deepest desires and grapple with the consequences of wishing for things better left untouched….
Performances run on weekends from October 11th to 13th and October 18th to 20th.
General admission tickets are only $22 and can be purchased online by clicking here.
For more information about the play, visit the website by clicking here
As promised by a creepy social media campaign that emerged online this week, “Sinners are coming.”
Michael B. Jordan appears in the new Sinners trailer, marking the first look at his buzzed about but until now very mysterious horror movie with Ryan Coogler, his director on Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).
Jordan stars as twins in this period piece set in the South. A cryptic logline explains the brothers tried to leave their troubled lives behind but return to their hometown for a fresh start, only to discover that “an even greater evil” is waiting to welcome them back. Early reports described the project as a vampire film…
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat “disappearing” purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they’re just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it.
When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like “buy” or “purchase,” unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.
The new law won’t apply to stores that offer “permanent offline” downloads and comes as a direct response to companies like PlayStation and Ubisoft. In April, Ubisoft started deleting The Crew from players’ accounts after shutting down servers for the online-only game. And last year, Sony said it would remove purchased Discovery content from users’ PlayStation libraries before walking back the move.
In all likelihood, in the next 25 years, we’ll find evidence of life on another planet. I’m willing to say this because I’m not a scientist and I don’t work in media relations for NASA. But all evidence points to us getting closer, every year, to identifying moons in our solar system, or exoplanets beyond it, that can sustain life. And if we don’t find conditions for life on the moons near us, we’ll find it on exoplanets — that is, planets outside our solar system. Within the next few decades, we’ll likely find an exoplanet that has an atmosphere, that has water, that has carbon and methane and oxygen. Or some combination of those things….
… But at the moment, much of the work at JPL is devoted to finding and examining exoplanets, and there is an urgency to the work that is palpable. In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics, I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when. And if there’s going to be one scientist to bet on being part of the team that does it, it will be Vanessa Bailey. To date, only 82 exoplanets have been directly imaged, and Bailey found one of them….
In this Fanbase Feature, THE FANBASE WEEKLY podcast co-host Bryant Dillon participates in a one-on-one interview with special guest Craig Miller (writer – STAR WARS MEMORIES, MORE MOVIE MEMORIES / original Director of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm / marketing consultant on THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE DARK CRYSTAL, & more) regarding his recently released book, MORE MOVIE MEMORIES (2024), the origins of his career, his thoughts on his own place in pop culture history, his love for and approach to being both a creator and part of fandom, and more.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, Paul Weimer, James Bacon, Lise Andreasen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
(1) SANDERSON’S LATEST KICKSTARTER BONANZA. [Item by David Doering.] Brandon Sanderson has once again won the hearts of his fans. His current Kickstarter for “Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere® RPG by Brotherwise Games” had a campaign goal of $250,000. It’s currently raised $12.3 million, and has one day left to run. It is the largest RPG Kickstarter of all time.
The Cosmere® Roleplaying Game is a new system that encompasses the entire universe of Brandon Sanderson’s best-selling novels. This original RPG launches in 2025 with the Stormlight World Guide, Stormlight Handbook, and Stormlight Stonewalkers™ Adventure. It expands to include Mistborn® in 2026, with a steady rollout of new worlds and adventures for years to come!
Days after a public outcry over images of thousands of discarded books in a dumpster, New College has moved to fire the dean of the college’s library.
In a letter dated Aug. 16, the university’s general counsel sent Shannon Hausinger a letter saying a preliminary decision to fire her was made after they deemed her responsible for the improper disposal of 13,000 books.
The letter claimed Hausinger “deleted or failed to maintain notes relating to the reasons or justification that each book was selected for disposal.” The letter said that Hausinger sent a link to the library’s weeding policy to General Counsel for review on Aug. 14, but that the dumpster had arrived on campus on Aug. 13.
Hausinger was given 10 days to reply to the letter before a final decision would be made. New College did not immediately confirm if a decision had been made as of Tuesday.
In a statement Monday, university spokesperson Nathan March said the books in the library that were disposed of were separate from the hundreds of books in the Gender and Diversity Center — the removal of which received praise from the likes of trustee Chris Rufo and spokespeople for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“There is no connection between the New College Library and the books that were removed from the Gender and Diversity Center,” he said. “As previously stated, the Gender and Diversity Center was in a separate building, and the books were never a part of the library’s collection. Those books could have been claimed at various times, and finally were claimed and donated; (they) were not discarded.”
Faculty and students have contested that characterization, saying they had no warning to claim the books and that it is unclear how many of those have been saved….
Black Myth: Wukong, which was released last week, is China’s first “triple A” rated game, an industry term meaning a high budget blockbuster game, and is based on the famous 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.
Within three days it had sold more than 10m copies worldwide according to the game’s developers, Game Science.
But amid its success there has been debate over a list of topics to avoid that was sent to influencers and content creators along with access to a pre-release version of the game. The document, which was quickly shared on social media, listed issues to avoid while live-streaming the game.’
Do NOT insult other influencers or players. Do NOT use any offensive language/humor. Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse. Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘Covid-19’. Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc.
It wasn’t clear what the instructions meant by “feminist propaganda”, but reporting on the directive noted Game Science employees had faced allegations of sexist and inappropriate behaviour, most notably in reports from game website IGN in November…
A bill to protect performers from unauthorized AI replicas was approved by the California Senate on Tuesday and will soon head to the governor’s desk.
SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, has made the bill one of its top legislative priorities this year. AB 2602 would require explicit consent for the use of a “digital replica” of a performer.
The bill mirrors language in the SAG-AFTRA contract that ended last year’s four-month strike against the film and TV studios. It would also extend those protections to include other types of performances, such as videogames, audio books and commercials, and would also encompass non-union work….
…MARTÍNEZ: Now, you wrote an essay for NPR about your very first D&D character. Tell us about that.
WELDON: Well, yeah, I started playing a few years after it came out. And when I was 13, I started playing as a character who I stuck with for years. He was a kind of wizard called an illusionist. And I chose him because I found this one pencil sketch in a D&D rule book by illustrator Jeff D. It was an illusionist casting a gnarly-looking spell, and I dug that, but what I loved, what moved me, and what frankly sealed the deal for my young closeted, queer self was his outfit. And I went back and found this illustration. You can see it in the essay. A, He had thigh boots for one thing. I mean, I’m not made of stone.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
WELDON: Plus, he had very tight pants, and this form-fitting tunic, a sleeveless tunic – you and I would call it a tank top. But the important thing is that was a tank top with shoulder pads, and I’m not talking like little epaulets. I mean these were some dramatic, flared out, Ming the Merciless meets Julia Sugarbaker shoulder pads. So I’d love to sit here and tell you that it was something profound that hooked me on the game, like the magic of the imagination and the camaraderie with my fellow players, but real talk, it was that muscle shirt with the big swoopy shoulder pads….
The years go on, but the pain of loss hardly fades. Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 42, and his Black Panther costar Lupita Nyong’o marked the occasion with a touching Instagram post….
“Grief never ends. But it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love,” Nyong’o wrote on Instagram, attributing the words to an unknown author.
She concluded the post more directly: “Remembering Chadwick Boseman. Forever.”
(7) CAROL ANN MACLEOD (1952-2024). Carol Ann MacLeod, wife of Glasgow 2024 guest of honor Ken MacLeod, died August 16. MacLeod made the sad announcement in a blog post today.
Carol, my beloved wife whom I met in 1979 and married in 1981, died on Friday 16 August.
She was the centre of my world, and she’s gone.
There will be a funeral service at Greenock Crematorium, on Monday 2 September, at 2 pm, to which all family and friends are invited. Family flowers only please. There will be a retiral collection in aid of Carol’s favourite charities.
(8) FRAN SKENE (1937-2024). Vancouver fan Fran Skene died June 17 at the age of 86. File 770 only learned that when we were notified of plans for her memorial. Garth Spencer has written a fine tribute to her in Obdurate Eye #41.
Fran chaired the 1977 Westercon, held in Vancouver, and three editions of the city’s annual V-CON (1978, 1981, and 1986). She was one of the leaders of the Vancouver in ’84 Worldcon bid (won by L.A.)
She published the fanzine Love Makes the World Go Awry from 1979 to 1983.
She was a guest of honor at MileHiCon 10 (1978), Westercon 35 (1982), Ad Astra 7 and Keycon 5 (1988), and the CUFF delegate in 2019.
(9) JOHN ADCOCK (1950-2024). Yesterday’s Papers website host John Adcock died June 1. The site’s new administrator, Rick Marschall, paid tribute in “RIP, John Adcock”.
…John Kenneth Adcock was born in 1950 in Nelson, BC, Canada; and grew up in Trail, BC. He was a cartoonist, illustrator, storyteller, and blogger. As a professional and amateur scholar he shared his love and fruits of research in the areas of comics and cartoons; dime novels and “penny dreadfuls” and various genres of folk music.
In recent decades John devoted himself to this web magazine In its electronic pages he published thousands of articles (many by himself but also by scholars from around the world) and illustrations. It commenced in 2008 with an article about Walt Kelly’s Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo. At the time of John’s death there had been 5,562,010 page views of the Yesterday’s Papers site.
Yesterday’s Papers is widely respected as the internet’s premier site for scholarly essays; news and analysis; reviews and commentary on the history and heritage of the comic-strip art form….
(10) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
August 28, 1916 — Jack Vance. (Died 2013.)
By Paul Weimer: One of my heart authors.
I first heard of Vance’s work through the famous Appendix N in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Vance’s Dying Earth was hard to find at that point, however, and so my first exposure to Vance’s work was as the progenitor of the D&D magic system, instead of his science fiction and sword-and-planet works. My older brother had copies of the Tschai novels, featuring stranded astronaut Adam Reith. Since I was watching cartoons like Blackstar (which featured a stranded astronaut), the appeal was a connection for me to try Vance’s work.
Jack Vance. Photo by Hayford Peirce
On such a hook, a lifelong love of Vance’s work began. I stumbled on various short stories of his, here and there, and briefly contemplated buying a far too expensive used copy of the Dying Earth. But in the 1990’s the Dying Earth got re-released (as did the Tschai novels, the Demon Princes novels, and much more) and I deeply absorbed all the Vance that was republished. And then there are the Subterranean Press anthologies of his work, which I might decide to do columns on, in a re-read of his most excellent short fiction.
Vance’s use of language (and footnotes!) charm me incessantly. His baroque and descriptive locations, ideas, cultures, societies and worldbulding keep me going back to his work, from short stories to novels. Yes, some of his main characters can be sometimes faceless determinators, vessels for the reader to explore the worlds they live in more than having personality. But even that is a stereotype, an exaggeration, and perhaps his characters don’t come colorfully off of the page. As interesting as Ghyl Tarvoke is as a character in Emphyrio, it is the unusual social systems and the tenor of his writing that draw me in and keep me turning pages in one of his best and most definitive novels. It’s the one SF novel of his I’d commend to you if you want to try his SF side.
Trying to choose a favorite Jack Vance work is much harder than it looks. I have already named some of his best and some of my favorites. But I am going to go with one of his non-series minor stories. “Green Magic”. It’s short, sharp, and in the end has a poignant melancholy to it that infuses a lot of Vance’s work. The price of knowledge can be hard and steep, and in the story, Howard Fair indeed learns that cost.
And if you think his fiction is wild, his real life (as seen in his autobiography, This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is “I”) was pretty wild, too. Such a talent.
Dick Lupoff delivers Jack Vance’s 2010 Hugo for This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is “I”)
(11) COMICS SECTION.
FurBabies continues the encounter with AI food service.
…This is a confession. When I read the widely-beloved book My Lady Jane however many years ago, I felt it was some kind of cultural gaslight designed to torture me personally. No matter how I tried to understand its appeal, I could never figure out just why, or for whom, My Lady Jane existed. Its humor felt forced and precious; its cutesy insistence on giving Protestant child-martyr Jane Grey the fairytale AU she somehow “deserved” (or would have even wanted) came across as a fake-friend kind of projection. In terms of style, My Lady Jane felt engineered to appeal to the twee librarian blogs that dominated YA in the 2010s. None of it clicked for me, and I never had one of those poptimist conversion experiences by which one learns, like a chill and well-adjusted person, to stop worrying and love the Silly Thing For What It Is….
As for the quickly cancelled TV series:
… We know that the real Jane Grey would have resisted such portrayals, but as a figure of the stuffy, backwards past, she couldn’t have known any better, and will receive our punishment/liberation anyway. Our female gaze is constant and sharp, and we do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, we want our female gaze to be inflicted on others….
With the second season of Amazon’s The Rings of Power featuring a hill troll called Damrod lumbering around, now is the perfect time to consider these massive creatures afresh. More specifically: if you’re asked to portray one as an actor, what do you do?
“We had a little bit of difficulty right at the start because: how do you actually play a troll? How do you move?” This is William Kircher, who played Tom, one of the three cave trolls in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Kircher was lucky enough to portray not just Tom; like the other two actors in the troll sequence, he also doubled up as a dwarf in the Hobbit trilogy (and got paid two separate fees for his trouble). But, while his dwarf Bifur was for all intents and purposes just a small man who had never been to the barber, his troll role took a little more thought. “It was bloody hard work,” he says. “There’s no easy way to play a troll.”’
Dinoland U.S.A. has been underused for years, and the news the new land will be receiving attractions dedicated to Encanto and Indiana Jones is a lot to look forward to. However, there is one beloved attraction that will have to go to make room for what’s new, and when Dinosaur finally closes it will also end a nearly three-decade run for Bill Nye The Science Guy at Walt Disney World.It’s sad when moments like this happen, and Bill Nye is a pretty iconic figure for many who grew up with him. It will certainly be sad to see him go.
Bill Nye’s relationship with Disney goes back to the early 1990s when his self-titled TV series was produced by the company. Perhaps that was why, in the late ‘90s the famed educator could be found in three different places at Walt Disney World. However, two of those three attractions are already gone, and as one fan pointed out on Twitter, the third is now on the chopping block….
The exact date that Dinosaur, and by extension Bill Nye, will disappear from Disney World is unclear. D’Amaro said the Tropical Americas construction would be done in phases, so even if work begins soon, that doesn’t mean Dinosaur will close on the day that work starts. D’Amaro specifically mentioned fans having a bit more time to say goodbye to Dinosaur, indicating it will be open for at least a while during construction….
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, David Doering, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
(1) GLASGOW POSTS WORLDCON CONVENTION GUIDE. Glasgow 2024’s Convention Guide is available for the public to download from this link. The guide is also available through the members portal. portal.glasgow2024.org
(2) TL;DR WORLDCON PROGRAM. For comparison, Scott Edelman has scanned the Discon II (1974) program – all four pages of it. See it on Facebook.
…The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code….
Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was in ruins: 95% of the island was without power, half the population didn’t have tap water, and there was at least $90 billion in damage.
That catastrophic moment of grief and wreckage is the setting of Gabino Iglesias’ latest, House of Bone and Rain, the follow-up to 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home. The latter earned the Austin-based author a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel—the only Latino writer to achieve the horror genre’s highest honor—as well as a movie deal with Sony.
For House of Bone’s protagonist, Gabe, and his childhood friends, death is omnipresent in the wake of the storm. But after one of their mothers is gunned down at a club, they begin to look for answers in an even more dangerous world of drug kingpins, gang brutality, ghosts, and Lovecraftian monsters. Inspired by a tragedy that happened in the author’s own life prior to his move to Texas in 2008, the gothic coming-of-age tale induces emotional gravity as the characters navigate the loss of home and youth.
“The inciting incident with the mother getting shot, that actually happened to me and my friends,” Iglesias says. “I think I started formulating that story in my head in the summer of 1999—because when I actually sat down to write it, it was all there 20 years later.”…
The BBC has removed a six-year-old Doctor Who charity advert from all its platforms, following the discovery that it starred the teenager who has been named as the suspect in this week’s Southport stabbings.
Axel Rudakubana, now aged 17, has been charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder following the attack in northern England on Monday July 29, in which three young girls died, and several were left critically injured in a multiple stabbing that occurred in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
The Times newspaper reports that the 2018 video sees Rudakubana, then aged 11, emerge from the famous Tardis in a brown trench coat and tie, similar to clothes worn by the show’s former star David Tennant.
(6) HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS. Members will vote in the 2024 Horror Writers Association Elections for Officers and Trustees between August 19 and August 25. There is only one announced candidate for the offices of President and Secretary. Five candidates will vie for three Trustee positions.
The elected officers shall hold their respective offices for terms of two years, beginning on November 1 and ending on October 31.
FOR PRESIDENT
Angela Yuriko Smith
FOR SECRETARY
Becky Spratford
FORBOARD OF TRUSTEES
Linda Addison
Patrick Barb
James Chambers
Ellen Datlow
Cynthia Pelayo
(7) INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER. In “The Word-Hoard: Clark Ashton Smith” at Muse from the Orb, Maya St. Clair shares a list of exotic words she learned by reading Smith’s fiction.
Clark Ashton Smith was a weird fiction writer and poet of the 30s, a multitalented storyteller-artist-sculptor-craftsman from northern California. Initially acclaimed as a local poet and wunderkind, his fantastic poetry and stories eventually found success in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. Mostly an autodidact, Smith lived with his family in an out-of-the-way cabin and did not pursue more than a middle school education. Instead, he drew from inspirations — Baudelaire, Poe — and resources at hand — the Oxford Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica — to create his trademark maximalist style. His work attracted the attention of a fellow “obscure companion in the realms of the macabre,” H.P. Lovecraft, and the two maintained a spirited correspondence until Lovecraft’s death. (Smith sent Lovecraft a carved dinosaur bone.)1 Robert E. Howard likewise thought that Smith was excellent, and wrote Smith that he would sacrifice a finger “for the ability to make words flame and burn as you do.”
At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe easily won the decathlon in the first modern version of the event. The grueling, ten-part feat was not the only addition to the burgeoning modern games. Other events that debuted at the 1912 Olympics included architecture, sculpture, painting, music… and literature.
… The artistic jury would “only consider subjects not previously published, exhibited or performed, and having some direct connection with sport.” The [1912] Stockholm literature competition had fewer than ten entrants, but included Marcel Boulenger, a French novelist who won a bronze medal in fencing (foil) at the 1900 Olympics, French Symbolist Paul Adam, and Swiss playwright René Morax. The gold was awarded to two Germans, Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, for their work “Ode to Sport.” The jury was effusive in their commendations, calling the piece “far and away the winner,” because it “praises athletics in a form that is both literate and athletic.” The narrative ideas “are arranged, classified, and expressed in a series that is flawless in logic and harmony.”
Yet Hohrod and Eschbach never existed. They were pseudonyms for Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who had just won the very competition he organized….
The first thing that hits you when you press through the revolving doors of the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention centre in Rosemont, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, is the wall of sound. A cacophony of laughter and karaoke, pumping bass and gleeful, shouting voices. The second is the odour. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, coffee, alcohol, baby powder and deodorant. But the other senses fade out when your eyes start to process what they’re seeing. Because the thing that makes entering this lobby so sensationally surreal – the kind of experience you usually have to lick rare Amazonian frogs to achieve – is what people are wearing. In December 2023, I attended the Hyatt Regency for a convention called Midwest FurFest. It’s a gathering, one of the biggest in the world, for an often-misunderstood community known as “furries”, which is why about half the crowd – and there are nearly 15,000 people here this weekend – are dressed head to toe in massive, flamboyantly colourful, furry animal costumes….
(10) MAVERICK KONG. Maverick Theater, a small 75-seat venue in Fullerton, CA will present King Kong as a stage play through August 25.
Back for its 5th year! An original Maverick Theater stage adaptation of the 1933 film by Merian C. Cooper. The play is based on the Delos W. Lovelace novel, which is the same storyline and dialogue from the original film with only minor changes and additions. The overall show will have a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek feel but all the characters will be played honest and as true to the original; even the man in the monkey suit.
The Maverick Theater’s special effects team known as “Maverick Light & Magic” will take on the beauty and the beast adventure using a live compositing* process of multiple video sources. Similar to the process Willis O’Brien used to create the original King Kong. Actors will be interacting with live rear screen projections to create the illusion of Kong.
He’s scaled the world’s tallest building, dangled mid-air from a plane, set records for holding his breath underwater and, when he broke his foot shooting a rooftop parkour scene, just kept on running.
Now Tom Cruise, the 62-year-old movie star committed to a relentless dice with death, will take on his most high-profile hair-raiser to date: rappelling 42 metres (137ft) from the roof of the Stade de France as part of the Olympic Games closing ceremony this month.
The live broadcast will then reportedly cut to prerecorded footage of Cruise zipping through the streets of Paris on a motorbike, then on to a plane bound for California, clutching the Olympic flag all the while.
When he arrives stateside, he disembarks the plane by chucking himself out of the window, before skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. He then passes the flag to assorted athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they relay it round Los Angeles – the host city for the next games in 2028.
Cruise has been shooting the new Mission: Impossible movie in London and Paris since the new year, and sightings of him speeding around the French capital earlier this summer had been credited to that production.
Likewise, residents of Los Angeles are now so accustomed to his fondness for near-lethal stunts that the sight of Cruise falling from a huge height on to on the Hollywood sign in March raised few eyebrows.
It is believed the actor himself approached the International Olympic Committee and suggested the show-stopping sequence himself, having previously helped carry the torch through LA as part of its relay en route to Athens in 2004….
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
August 3, 1904 – Clifford D. Simak. (Died 1988.)
By Paul Weimer: The rural science fiction writer.
A lot of the science fiction writers of his time and age were big city enthusiasts and wrote their science fiction presents and futures extolling the city and its virtues, be it on Earth or another planet, or even planetwide cities.
Clifford Simak
Clifford Simak was different, very different. Much of his science fiction and fantasy could be considered rural, or pastoral, and my reading of him always seemed to come back to those liminal spaces between the civilized world and the wilderness. Themes of self-reliance, and yet community with others living in that same sort of space. An essential paradox that describes rural life…and Simak’s fiction.
And of course, always, Dogs. Aside from the rural life and setting of many of his stories, dogs, sometimes normal, often superintelligent or sentient, pop up everywhere. The themes of what dogs mean to humans: intelligence, companionship, loyalty and fidelity, are themes that one can find in Simak’s work whether or not there is an actual dog in it.
There are many fine Simak stories and novels I’ve read and enjoyed, from the “Big Front Yard”, one of the best first contact alien stories out there, to the strange and surreal “Shakespeare’s Planet”, “The Goblin Reservation”, and many more. Way Station, with its immortal caretaker of a rest stop for interstellar tourists, is particularly fun.
The one Simak story that stands above the novels, novellas and others for me is “Desertion”, part of the City cycle of future history stories that he wrote. “Desertion” is the one set on Jupiter, as the commander of a base around Jupiter is confronted with the fact that everyone he has sent out onto Jupiter, transformed for the purpose into Jovians…has disappeared and never come back. Our protagonist, X, and his dog, eventually come face to face with the stunning truth of what happened to their comrades. It is powerfully moving, as is much of Simak’s work.
…Easter eggs, that is, those fan-centric surprises with which the modern blockbuster is sprinkled, or in this case cluttered.
They take many forms: unpublicised cameos, in-jokes that only franchise devotees would clock, surprise scenes stowed away in the end credits, abundant references to other movies, even allusions to controversies on the sets of other movies. The Easter eggs in Deadpool & Wolverine belong to all these categories and more. There are so many, in fact, that it’s tempting to ask: which came first, the movie or the eggs?
Whatever the style of Easter egg, the point is the same: to encourage, flatter and reward the deepest possible level of fan engagement and to keep completists coming back for more….
…Given the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Easter eggs are likely to remain a staple item on the menu. “I grew up watching Wayne’s World, which operated on much the same lines,” says [film critic] McCahill. “But I fear, after Deadpool & Wolverine, every big Hollywood movie is now just going to be a series of meme-able moments. Directors should be storytellers, not winkers. And as with their chocolate equivalents, Easter eggs should be consumed in moderation.”
SCOTT SIMON: But that’s really Hank Azaria, the voice behind many characters from the long-running “Simpsons” – also the pharaoh in “Night At The Museum” and Jim Brockmire, the plaid-clad sports announcer. And he’s now the presence behind Hank Azaria & The EZ Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen cover band that debuted this past week at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. The six-time Emmy award-winning actor joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us….
IN MODERN MICROCHIPS, where some transistors have been shrunk to less than a 10th of the size of a Covid-19 virus, it doesn’t take much to mess with the minuscule electrical charges that serve as the 0s and 1s underpinning all computing. A few photons from a stray beam of light can be enough to knock those electrons out of place and glitch a computer’s programming. Or that same optical glitching can be achieved more purposefully—say, with a very precisely targeted and well timed blast from a laser. Now that physics-bending feat of computer exploitation is about to become available to far more hardware hackers than ever before.
At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they’re calling the RayV Lite. Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies….
…Their goal in creating and releasing the designs for that ultra-cheap chip-hacking gadget, they say, is to make clear that laser-based exploitation techniques (known as laser fault injection or laser logic state imaging) are far more possible than many hardware designers—including clients for whom Beaumont and Trowell sometimes perform security testing at NetSPI—believe them to be. By demonstrating how inexpensively those methods can now be pulled off, they hope to both put a new tool in the hands of DIY hackers and researchers worldwide, and to push hardware manufacturers to secure their products against an obscure but surprisingly practical form of hacking….
It looks like NASA officials might be seeing the writing on the wall for the very troubled Boeing Starliner, which has marooned two astronauts up in space for almost two months due to technical issues.
An unnamed “informed” source told Ars Technica that there’s a greater than 50 percent probability that the stranded astronauts will end up leaving the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, with another unnamed person telling the news outlet that the scenario is highly likely.
“NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”…
… Many signs are now pointing towards SpaceX rescuing the stranded astronauts, according to Ars. These signs include the space agency giving more than a quarter million dollars to SpaceX for a “SPECIAL STUDY FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE,” and SpaceX actively training for the likely situation of the company sending a Dragon capsule to the space station to bring the astronauts home.
If SpaceX does get the green light, expect the Starliner project to be shoved into the proverbial dumpster, according to Ars‘ analysis.
It would be a bad look all around, because it would mean the American government had funneled a total of $5.8 billion into malfunctioning junk.
If this scenario happens, with Starliner not deemed safe enough for human travel, we hope politicians and others investigate what went wrong, given that SpaceX has managed to build the immensely more reliable Dragon capsule at 50 percent less cost than Boeing’s spacecraft….
Released in 1980, “Superman II” is a sequel to the super popular Superman I, and it was also followed by Superman III. They really nailed the numbers on these. Superman 2 continues the Man of Steel’s adventures as he battles Kryptonian villains including General Zod amidst the growing popularity of superhero films during the late 70s and early 80s. Superman II definitely raises some questions though. Like where did Marlon Brando go? Why didn’t Lex Luthor just shut his lights? Why are snake bites so painful? Why did Superman have to give up his powers and then get them back so easily? What was with that cellophane S? To answer all these questions, check out the pitch meeting that led to Superman II.
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) TOMLINSON AND ROBINSON SUE MILWAUKEE. In February, Patrick Tomlinson and his partner, Niki Robinson filed a lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee over the multiple instances of swatting: “Robinson v. City of Milwaukee, 2:24-cv-00264”. At the link you can download (free) the original and amended complaints.
The amended complaint filed May 1 details several experiences with swatting, and in addition to the City of Milwaukee names 10 police officers as defendants. Here is an excerpt:
1. Niki Robinson and Patrick Tomlinson are the targets of a vicious campaign of domestic terrorism, carried out at the hands of a group of bullies who hide behind the anonymity of the internet.
2. The bullies’ main weapon of choice is something called “swatting,” which is when someone who wants to endanger the life and safety of another calls 911 and lies to provoke a dangerous police response to the victim’s home….
…11. Niki and Patrick have tried to work with the City of Milwaukee to stop this, but the City of Milwaukee failed to adopt a policy or train its officers on how to prevent Niki and Patrick’s stalkers from using the police department as a tool of terror.
12. And while many of the police officers who have responded to Patrick and Niki’s home have been kind, understanding, and compassionate, others have not.
13. The worst offender is Sergeant Lyndon Evans.
14. On three occasions, Sergeant Evans responded to a swatting call with abuse and violence.
15. Sergeant Evans told Niki and Patrick that he was “well aware” of the situation, but still demanded to be let inside their home, going so far as to threaten to break down the front door if he was not allowed inside.
16. Niki and Patrick live in a constant state of fear, worried that the next encounter they have with the police will be their last.
17. Every knock on the door or police car that drives by leaves them terrified that they are about to be staring down an officer’s gun or that they will be paraded outside in handcuffs to their further humiliation.
18. This lawsuit seeks to end the madness and vindicate the violation of Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. It seeks to effect change through punitive damages by punishing the Defendants for their egregious conduct with the hope that the punishment is significant enough to prevent this from happening again in the future…
A dozen years after its first crowdfunding campaign, the first installment of Marc Scott Zicree’s Space Command has been released, with several Star Trek actors in the cast. “Space Command: Redemption” is out now on Tubi, VOD, and physical media, with more installments from the series in the works.
Space Command is a sci-fi series inspired by Star Trek. The ensemble cast for “Space Command: Redemption” features Star Trek: Discovery’s Doug Jones in a leading role. Other franchise stars include Robert Picardo (Voyager), Armin Shimerman (Deep Space Nine), Faran Tahir (J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek), and the late Nichelle Nichols (TOS). The cast also includes several Babylon 5 stars including Bill Mumy, Bruce Boxleitner, and the late Mira Furlan….
(3) I, THE JURY. Alec Nevala-Lee shared with Facebook readers that he was part of a Pulitzer Prize jury this year.
Now that the list of winners has been announced, I can reveal a very cool fact: I served on the jury for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography! I spent much of last year reading through dozens of books with four other jurors, and I’m delighted to finally share the titles we chose: KING by Jonathan Eig, MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE by Ilyon Woo, and LARRY MCMURTRY by Tracy Daugherty.
(4) SFF POETS TAKE UP AI ISSUE. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) Executive Committee and key volunteers have put together two options for the SFPA to adopt as its policy regarding works derived from generative tools (including AI, large language models, etc).
Members have been sent an introductory statement and have until May 22 to vote for one of three options:
The Voter’s Packet for the Hugo Awards will be released shortly and made available to all members of Glasgow Worldcon. As is traditional, Nerds of a Feather has put together a compilation of what we feel represents the best and the breadth of our collective work published in 2023. While the purpose of the Voter’s Packet is to help eligible voters make an informed decision when casting their ballots, we are also making the packet available to all of our readers who may want to take a look back at what we did last year….
…If you have a trusted beta reader, someone who you know knows books, knows story, knows the genre you’re writing in, and you know that person to be smart and creative, capable of giving you solid advice, then wow—congratulations. Hold that person close. Give them gifts of frankincense and myrrh.
But unfortunately, most of the people we know can not reasonably be described in such glowing terms. I wish I could remember who it was, decades ago that, in a documentary about screenwriting, described the focus group as:
The uninformed reporting on the unknowable to the unimaginative.
…but that pretty much nails it. And what are beta readers or our writers group friends but a focus group? In Story Trumps Structure, Steven James wrote on the subject of beta readers:
I can’t think of any other field in which people who aren’t experts critique other people who aren’t experts in the hope of everyone becoming an expert.
Yes, people chosen at random or from a pool of friends and family may have opinions, but do they have informed opinions? And if they say something akin to “I didn’t get it,” “I liked it, I guess,” “It was really creative!” and so on (you know you’ve seen stuff like this) sans detail or actionable advice, well… does that help?…
I’m in a weird place professionally. To get a job in publishing, it’s pretty much imperative that you stay abreast of recent trends and read voraciously from current frontlist books. And I certainly try. But left to my own devices, I inevitably end up crawling back to New Wave sci-fi like a starving flatworm whose only brain cell yearns for stream-of-consciousness novellas about interdimensional alien sex written fifty years ago by chainsmokers in dagger-collared shirts.
If you share my foibles, or if you’re simply in a reading rut, you’d be hard-pressed to find something more exciting than Five Fates. Not only does it boast a sci-fi supergroup (Frank Herbert, Harlan Ellison, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, and Keith Laumer), it provides a fascinating snapshot of where speculative fiction was “at” during a pivotal moment of the genre’s history….
…Five Fates, published in 1970, positions itself firmly in this mindfuck vein of the New Wave. Per the jacket copy, it’s “one of the most bizarre and original fictional concepts ever created,” a showcase opportunity for five of spec fic’s foremost writers to go absolutely wild. Its biggest names are red-hot at the time of publication: Frank Herbert has just finished Dune Messiah, and Harlan Ellison is in the midst of his decade-long, nearly-unbroken Hugo streak (he’s hard at work, the back cover informs us, on Again, Dangerous Visions.)
The central concept of Five Fates is this: all five contributors were sent the same disturbing prompt — in some dystopic world, a man named William Bailey is admitted to a Euthanasia Center and killed. The surrounding questions — how did he get there? how did society descend to this point? is there an afterlife? — are left up to the writers to flesh out. Each of the five resulting novelettes (which average around 30 pages) offers a vastly different concept, style, and literary goal. It’s a literary blunt rotation/samsara, a hallucinogenic journey that produces several great tales and one masterpiece….
For Reason’sJune 2024 special issue on AI, all of our brief reviews involve AI in some form or another. Of course, we decided to ask an AI to write one of the reviews. Since X’s AI is named Grok, after the term coined by sci-fi author Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land, it was only natural that we’d ask Grok to write a review of another Heinlein novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. See what Grok wrote for us below….
This week on Planetary Radio, we celebrate the longest-running science fiction show in history, “Doctor Who.” We explore how this iconic series has influenced the scientific community and look forward to the new season of the show with Russell T. Davies, the past and present showrunner of “Doctor Who.” Then, space fans from around the world share how the show has impacted their lives and space careers. We close out with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, as we discuss what we would do with a time machine in What’s Up.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born May 8, 1940 — Peter Benchley. (Died 2006.) Yes, Peter Benchley, the writer responsible for Jaws. I’ll get to that in a minute. Really I will. Trust me.
Although Jaws is what he’s best remembered for, his work that has been adapted for film and television includes genre: Beast, Creature, The Deep, The Island and White Shark. He has one film work of interest at least to me that’s non-genre, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, about writer Dorothy Parker and the members of the Algonquin Round Table.
Peter Benchley
So, let’s look at some of his novels other than Jaws. Jaws was his first and his second was a more or less an adventure genre novel, The Deep, of treasure hunters who discover Spanish treasure. Well and drugs. Then it gets complicated. Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to it even before its publication, hiring Benchley to write a screen adaptation.
The Island, several years later, is effectively genre as it has two elements that are fantastic. One is that is a lost colony of pirates that have remained undetected since the establishment of their pirate enclave by Jean-David Nau, the notorious buccaneer L’Olonnais, in 1671; second is a sort of Logan’s Run premise is that the pirates kill anyone over thirteen that they capture. It too would be filmed.
In Beast — and none of his titles will win awards for originality, will they? — a fishing community in Bermuda is disrupted by a series of mysterious disappearances at sea. Think large sea monster and you wouldn’t be wrong. Yes once again it became a film.
White Shark does not feature a shark, despite what the title suggests. It has Nazis and biological weapons with nary a shark to bite into anyone, not even a Nazi, the pity. To avoid confusion and to capitalize on the miniseries adaptation, the book was republished as Creature. It was also a film called, errr, White Shark.
Which brings us to Jaws. It was published fifty years ago, his first novel. It was an outgrowth of his interest of the experiences of Montauk, New York shark fisherman Frank Mundus. Doubleday gave him a rather nice advance to write the novel while he was he was still a freelance journalist.
Despite critics generally hating it, it did exceptionally well with the reading public as Doubleday undertook an extraordinary publicity campaign including getting it adopted by book clubs everywhere. As a result, it stayed on bestseller lists for nearly a year, and millions of copies of the paperback edition were sold.
Jaws is definitely horror. With Very Big Teeth. Lots Of Sharp Pointy Ones. Now that we’ve got that Very Important Fact out of the way, let’s talk about it.
It premiered forty-seven years ago on this date. It was Spielberg’s first major film after directing such things as episodes of Night Gallery,The Name of the Game, Columbo, and the rather excellent Sugarland Express.
The screenplay is credited to Peter Benchley. He wrote the first draft here, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb who’s Harry Meadows here and was Ugly John in the MASH series (and I can still picture him in that role with his rather full mustache), then continuously rewrote the script during principal photography. That must have been an annoying thing to the director!
It had a kickass cast of Roy Scheider as Chief Martin, Robert Shaw as Quint, with Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper as the studio didn’t get any Really Big Names that they wanted so badly — which was as Speilberg intended, and he got what he wanted here, for the “the superstar was gonna be the shark of the film” as he stated in interviews. Very Big Teeth. Lots Of Sharp Pointy Ones was going to be the Superstar. Yes, that did make a very good superstar. Well of multiples these together did as there were lots of mechanical sharks. They broke down a lot. The mechanics of this wasn’t quite there yet.
It was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean and if something could go wrong, it did. Repeatedly. And of the multitude of mechanical sharks added immensely to the budget woes so the film apparently went four to five million over its eight million budget. Or more. The studio has never actually released accurate production costs. That really didn’t matter as it made nearly a half billion in its first run at the theatre. Repeat — it made a half billion dollars.
I discovered that there are three sequels, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D and Jaws: The Revenge. I can happily admit that I’ve seen none of them. Who here has? I think y’all know my admittedly low opinion of sequels and the idea of a sequel to this perfect film leaves me, well, sea sick.
Charging across the hilly terrain, swords raised, shields gripped against their chests, the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons faced off, their bodies protected only by chain mail cobbled together from … wire clothes hangers. Just beyond the grassy battlefield, students strolled by on their way to class.
This was the fall of 1969, when a group of Terps marked the 903rd anniversary of the Battle of Hastings with a re-enactment on South Chapel Lawn. It was the fitting official launch of a new group on the University of Maryland campus called the Maryland Medieval Mercenary Militia (MMMM), in which members gave themselves archaic names, learned English country dances and meticulously studied the military strategies of the Middle Ages so that they could recreate historical battles for kicks.
“Nowadays, re-enactment is a big thing. Back then, it was Confederates, Union, Revolutionary War and that’s it,” said Bruce Blackistone ’72, one of the founders of the group. “This was way off-center for the average re-enactment group.”…
… Blackistone, who by then was the self-designated first warlord, hoped to have a dozen soldiers on each side of the battle, but in the end, it was a six-on-seven fight. (Blackistone came down with a 104-degree fever the night before and had to stay home.) They carried shields made from lids of peach baskets and wore hand-sewn tunics. Nucker also threw on a sheepskin leather jacket borrowed from her mother.
After the Battle of Hastings’ re-enactment, the group grew, doing swordplay demonstrations on campus and branching out to recreating medieval life more broadly with feasts and dances. They began gathering in a small space under the steps of Francis Scott Key Hall, though they’d often “spill out onto the front or back lawns and womp on each other’s shields a bit,” said Blackistone.
Like any warring faction, the group developed rivals. A few years after MMMM’s founding, a chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA), which started in Berkeley, Calif., in 1966, popped up in the area. “They were high medieval upper class, and we were low medieval lower class,” said Blackistone. “Everyone who belonged (to SCA) was some kind of nobility. We had very little nobility, and a lot of Vikings and peasants and riffraff.”…
…As more of the club’s members graduated, an offshoot formed: Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, which eventually ballooned to some 600 members across the mid-Atlantic. Just as Privé graduated, the university moved the club to a smaller office in a distant corner of campus. These two events, Privé speculated, led to a dwindling of the club’s presence on campus. Sometime in the years following the office move, MMMM died a quiet death at UMD.
For some, though, MMMM was just the beginning of a lifelong madness for the medieval. Nucker and Blackistone still sail Viking ships together through the Longship Company, a nonprofit organization inspired by the vessel they converted out of a Navy Motor Whaleboat in a parking lot behind the North Campus residence halls during their college years. Now, they take the public out on their 39-foot, 12-oarred Sae Hrafn (“sea raven” in Norse) to teach guests about Viking seafaring. (They’ve also commissioned two other boats, the tall ship Fyrdaca, or “fire drake,” and the smaller Gyrfalcon, named after a type of Arctic falcon.)…
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has shown off a CGI video of its vision of a lunar base, a vastly ambitious plan the country is hoping to realize in a matter of decades.
The showy — albeit dated-looking — render shows plans for the International Lunar Research Station, a Chinese and Russian endeavor that was first announced in 2021.
The video is also raising eyebrows for a bizarre cameo: a NASA Space Shuttle taking off from a launch pad in the distance, as spotted by Space.com.
It’s either some next-level humor from the Chinese space program or a hilarious oversight, since the Shuttle has been retired for more than a decade — not to mention that China and NASA aren’t even allowed to talk to each other, nevermind collaborate.
As space reporter Jack Kuhr later spotted, the state-run China Global Television Network came up with an equally hilarious fix to hide the Shuttle taking off in the background.
“Boom problem solved,” Kuhr tweeted. “CGTN went ahead and slapped an ol’ reliable blur bar over the Shuttle.”
The Shuttle (now properly blurred) appears at about the :40 second mark in the video.
Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman to go to space and one of NASA’s most decorated astronauts and leaders, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday, the country’s highest civilian honor. Across her 30-year career, Ochoa flew on four space shuttle missions and led operations as director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Ochoa is the tenth astronaut, and second female astronaut, to receive the Medal of Freedom. She was presented the award at the White House along with 18 other honorees, including Jane Rigby, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who played a large role in the James Webb Space Telescope’s mission….
This spring NASA will launch what could become one of this decade’s most transformative missions in astrophysics. But you’ve almost certainly never heard of it—and it’s not even going to space. Dubbed the High-Energy Light Isotope eXperiment (HELIX), the mission seeks to solve a long-standing mystery about just how much antimatter there is in the universe and where it comes from—all from a lofty perch in Earth’s stratosphere, slung beneath a giant balloon set for long-duration flights above each of our planet’s desolate poles.
Led by Scott Wakely, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, HELIX is designed to study cosmic rays—subatomic particles that pelt our planet from the depths of interstellar and even intergalactic space. These particles include those of ordinary matter’s opposite-charge version, called antimatter. Scientists suspect the sources for the antimatter showering Earth from space could be almost anything, ranging from emissions by conventional astrophysical objects to the esoteric behavior of dark matter, the invisible stuff that seems to govern the large-scale behavior of galaxies. Figuring out which explanation is right may depend on a deceptively simple measurement: gauging how much time each of two specific particles spent hurtling through the galaxy. It’s like carbon-dating cosmic rays. “The models are all over the place. A measurement of this ratio is what everybody wants,” says Nahee Park, an astrophysicist at Queen’s University in Ontario and a member of the HELIX team….
(16) DUBIOUS KICKS. Stephen Graham Jones is a bit skeptical about the footwear in this new Superman publicity photo.
(17) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Boston Dynamics has a new humanoid robot, so they say goodbye to the outgoing HD Atlas…
And then say hello to All New Atlas with a freaky lil’ routine…
Maybe to take an edge off of All New Atlas, Boston Dynamics then dresses up Spot as Sparkles…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Bill, Michael J. Walsh, 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 Daniel Dern, who says his title “feels like it should be an anthology of ‘future fairy tales’ (perhaps edited by Jane Yolen)”.]
(1) DEAD PLASTIC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] What would you do if the world suddenly ran out of digital money?
With some parts of Worldcon fandom (such as publications policy increasingly becoming digital myopically to the exclusion of all else), this is a very topical subject. Of course sercon trufans know that the current trend is to be abhorred: they’ve read the likes of Brunner, Gibson and Orwell).
The past couple of decades, SF has on occasion looked at digital privilege, monitoring and so forth, as well as social reactions against it (Max Headroom’s Blank Reg for example). So the new BBC Radio 4 drama series, that had its first episode this week, is timely. It envisages a near-present day in which suddenly all debit and credit cards stop working. The phenomena is not local, or national, but global….!
Valentine’s Day 2025. The UK awakes to financial catastrophe and no one can access any money. Ross sees opportunity as the country descends into chaos, but Grace has picked the worst day run away.
A fast-paced satirical drama starring Robert Bathurst (Cold Feet, Toast of London), Charlotte Richie (Ghosts, Call the Midwife), Aaron Heffernan (War of the Worlds, Brassic) and Josette Simon (Wonder Woman, Blakes 7).
(2) HANGING OUT ONLINE. John Scalzi, in “One Year of Bluesky”, assesses the social media platform for his Whatever readers.
…Now, the flip side of this is you can’t just sit back and let Bluesky happen to you. You have to engage with it — actual engagement! Not the kind where an algorithm pokes you with a stick! — or you’re going to be bored. It’s not an endless TikTok firehose where all you have to do is put yourself in its path. It’s a spigot, and you control how much or how little you get. Everyone says they want that, but it turns out a lot of people kinda like the firehose instead.
The other aspect of Bluesky being algorithm-free (and still being relatively small; its user base currently sits at 5.5 million) is that it’s not great for being famous or being an influencer, or being a troll. I think the Bluesky technical and cultural schema confuses the famous and/or influencer and/or shitty people who come onto the service to be famous, or to influence, or to be shitty for clicks. You can’t game an algorithm to go viral, and the sort of marketing that works on other social media works less well on Bluesky, and even if it did work that way, there aren’t hundreds of millions of people to broadcast at. You can try to do all these things on Bluesky, obviously. But Instagram and TikTok and Threads and the former Twitter are all still there, and much easier to game and influence and troll. People who come to Bluesky to do those things don’t seem to stay very long.
Which is a feature, not a bug, for me, and comports with how I want to do social media….
…Humanity, thanks to industrialized agriculture and the highway, now possesses the upper hand. But underneath it all, one sometimes senses a vague, sublimated longing to return to more survivalist times. Plexiglass Paul Bunyans and the Giant Musky dot the landscape, standing in shared reverence to older struggles of brute force, consumption, survival. On the radio, Gordon Lightfoot reminds us that even the sunny Great Lakes are biding their time to kill us. And this year we have Hundreds of Beavers, a two-hour slapstick tour de force that gleefully revives the hairy, primordial struggle of the old Midwest. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville chronicled the “universal cannibalism of the sea”; Hundreds of Beavers brings us, at last, the universal cannibalism of Green Bay, Wisconsin….
In this 19th century, supernatural comedy, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper when he loses his whole operation in a fire and is stranded in the wilderness. Now facing starvation, he must survive in a surreal winter landscape surrounded by Hundreds of Beavers – all played by actors in full-sized beaver costumes. Using nothing but his dim wits, he develops increasingly complex traps to battle the beavers and win the hand of a mischievous lover.
(4) RAY DALEY (1969-2024). Author Ray Daley died April 19 following a heart attack on March 28. His earliest sff was self-published beginning in 2012. His work included the collection A Year Of Living Bradbury; 52 Stories Inspired By Ray Bradbury (2014).
…I can be a bit anal about wanting to be as factual as I can be, to the point where it actually gets in the way of the storytelling. I actually came across this problem when I wrote my first story I decided to sell. I had a great idea but the facts ruined it so I had to go with my own reality on that occasion….
(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 27, 1963 — Russell T. Davies, 61. Let’s talk about the man who in large part made the revival of Doctor Who possible, Russell T. Davies.
He was both the showrunner and head writer for the revival of the Doctor Who for the first five years. His last episode was the Tenth Doctor’s “The End of Time” which he wrote and executive produced. He wrote thirty-one episodes during his tenure.
But let’s go back in time to his earlier series.
Russell T. Davies in 2008.
His Dark Season children’s series had three young teenagers in a contemporary secondary school who discover a plot by the villain Mr Eldritch to take over the world using school computers. The next three episodes focus on a new villain: the archaeologist Miss Pendragon who becomes a part of the ancient supercomputer Behemoth. The two distinct plot elements who later converge when Pendragon crashes through the school stage as Eldritch walks into the auditorium.
Following up on that would be Century Falls which tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides many powerful secrets. Something dark has happened here and it will take her to bring it out into the light.
And then there’s The Second Coming which gave BBC the vapours (spelling there deliberately used) It concerns a video store worker by the name Steve Baxter, played by Christopher Eccleston, who realizes he is in fact the Son of God that has but a few days to find the human race’s Third Testament and thus avert the Apocalypse. It ran on Channel 4 with major changes from what Davies originally envisioned.
Torchwood was his first post-Who series and I think it was brilliant early on. From my perspective, the characters, the setting and the storyline was quite amazing. No, not every story was great but over the first two seasons were well-worth watching. Now keep in mind that of the first two series, Davies wrote only the première episode but was the showrunner with Christopher Chibnall. The last two series, “Children of Earth” and “Miracle Day” I cared not for at all.
Then he would do the Sarah Jane Adventures, technically a children’s series but I saw it and it was lovely for everyone. A spin-off of Doctor Who with the companion Sarah Jane played by Elizabeth Sladen. He would be one of five, yes five, executive producers here.
Now living in modern-day Ealing, London, she investigates extraterrestrial matters and protects Earth against alien threats with a group of teenage accomplices. It ran five series with a sixth planned until she passed on from pancreatic cancer.
Davies made a cameo appearance in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Haven’t seen it? What are you waiting for?
So Davies has now returned as Doctor Who’s showrunner. He of course cast Rwandan–Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa for the Fifteenth Doctor. Or was the Fourteenth Doctor originally? Only Davies knows. Or did a week later. Time is a cool thing.
I’m reasonably sure that covers his genre work.
(6) COMICS SECTION.
The Far Side proves even a Western showdown has a logical order.
Tom Gauld’s cartoon has a bit more edge than usual!
… Though this may be an entirely new saga, there is no question that it is set within the all-too recognizable world of the Falloutseries. In fact, Nolan was committed to bringing this vast universe to life as faithfully and precisely as possible — and this daunting task fell on the shoulders of production designer Howard Cummings and costume designer Amy Westcott….
… And so, Cummings and Westcott dove into the vast world of Fallout. Neither being self-proclaimed “gamers,” this involved a mountain of research….
…The more he watched and listened to the fans, the more detail he discovered within the universe. “It all has such history. It’s crazy — I used to turn on my phone and just fall asleep listening to the history of Fallout.”
Cummings became so familiar with the look and feel of Fallout that Bethesda Games, the company responsible for the series, essentially “let [him] go” do his thing, he says. “But I had to go to them when we were creating new stuff, because I wanted to make sure it was right. I knew that fans would sit there and go through it all and find every friggin’ Easter egg!”
Bethesda collaborated with Cummings, helping him craft many new crucial pieces of Fallout lore — perhaps most excitingly, a map showing the locations of every single Vault in America. It is this mixture of ultra precise replication paired with thoughtful new creation that makes the design of the series a feat in world-building and a surefire hit with fans and newcomers alike.
New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman is teaming with Graphic India for the English-language animated movie, Cinnamon.
Based on a short story written by Gaiman, the screenplay is being adapted by the Coraline author and leading Indian animation writer and creator, Sharad Devarajan (The Legend of Hanuman; Baahubali: The Lost Legends) with Sarena Khan and Sujatha SV. Indian animator Jeevan J. Kang is set to direct.
Blurb for project: Born with pearl eyes that render her blind to the physical world, Cinnamon’s destiny is shaped forever when a mysterious talking tiger appears. Offering to lead her through the wonders and trials of the wild, Cinnamon begins a perilous adventure that will shape her path and test her resolve. She enters a hidden realm where the line between the mundane and the mystical is as thin as a whisper and where the ancient wisdom of India breathes life into a jungle thrumming with secrets….
(9) IMAGINARY WEALTH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] OK, it’s mostly guesswork. But it’s still interesting to see these extremely rich fictional characters ranked and to see that none of them would be so rich as to be completely out of line in the modern world. Only the top 2 crack the $50B mark, leaving them way, way behind in the race for the richest person in the world (for which they’d have to be worth over 4 times that much). “15 Richest Fictional Characters Of All Time” at The Richest. The ladder runs from Jay Gatsby to Scrooge McDuck, with a surprising number of sff characters in between.
2 – SMAUG
Smaug’s Net Worth: $54.1 Billion
The Hobbit’s very own dragon Smaug never speaks a word, but has managed to invade the town of Dale, which happens to be sitting on a pile of gold.
Some sources have placed Smaug’s net worth as high as $62 billion dollars, with $54.1 billion deemed a “conservative estimate.”
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the dayJeffWarner.]
(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS CLOSE IN ONE WEEK. Nicholas Whyte, Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administrator and WSFS Division Head reminds members that they have until March 9 to submit nominations for this year’s Hugo Awards. Full information at “Hugo Awards – Nomination Ballot”.
They also are offering Chinese translation for the 2024 Hugo Award nomination process as a courtesy to the Chinese-speaking 2023 Chengdu WSFS members who have nomination rights for the 2024 Hugo Awards.
Do you make a conscious effort to include female characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
I write all characters, but I am always trying to get inside women characters in a complex way that blows out the walls of archetypes. The old woman who is complex and funny and real (and swears! All the older women I admire swear), the ingenue aged woman who is brilliant, unpredictable, problem solving, and forward moving, the mother whose entire existence is not mothering, but is a whole person who happens to have kids, the little girl who is smart and weird and does not give a crap about boys.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
We all have darkness in us, and if we can get inside it and open up our fears and where they come from, it can help people manage their very real lives.
(3) CHUCK TINGLE ON CAMP DAMASCUS CATEGORY. The Horror Writers Association moved Chuck Tingle’s novel Camp Damascus out of the YA category into the main Novel category. One of the responses earned this callout. (Whoever’s blog this is, I see there also were other comments supportive of Tingle’s book.)
(4) IWÁJÚ. Eddie Louise calls Iwájúon Disney+ — “Amazing science fiction for kids with deep cultural and societal commentary.” See trailer at the link.
“Iwájú” is an original animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria. The exciting coming-of-age story follows Tola, a young girl from the wealthy island, and her best friend, Kole, a self-taught tech expert, as they discover the secrets and dangers hidden in their different worlds. Kugali filmmakers—including director Olufikayo Ziki Adeola, production designer Hamid Ibrahim and cultural consultant Toluwalakin Olowofoyeku—take viewers on a unique journey into the world of “Iwájú,” bursting with unique visual elements and technological advancements inspired by the spirit of Lagos. The series is produced by Disney Animation’s Christina Chen with a screenplay by Adeola and Halima Hudson. “Iwájú” features the voices of Simisola Gbadamosi, Dayo Okeniyi, Femi Branch, Siji Soetan and Weruche Opia.
(5) LIKE SAND THROUGH AN HOURGLASS. Maya St. Clair finds what time has done to the first Dune movie – not that a lot of time needed to have passed before the results were known: “Make Sci-Fi Cringe Again (Duneposting 1)”.
The other night, a friend and I went to an anniversary screening of David Lynch’s 1984 Dune. Its manmade horrors were consumed in the way God intended: on a towering screen, with a printout of the infamous Dune Terminology sheet balanced in my lap, as I inhaled a bucket of curly fries agleam with twice their weight in grease. Visually, Dune is an orgy of delights: a dense mannerist universe filled with gilt and wires and inbred animals/people. The voiceovers are camp, the editing ridiculous, the hairdos lofty and aggressive (Aquanet — like spice — must flow). Around the midpoint of the movie — when Sting steps out of a sauna in a codpiece —most people had come to the unspoken understanding that it was okay to laugh instead of sitting in respectful, cinephilic silence. The Harkonnen milking machine (i.e. a rat just duct-taped to a cat) brought down the house….
(6) DUNE PT. 2. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Front Row on B Beeb Ceeb’s Radio 4 (a.k.a. the Home Service) first third sees a review of Dune Part II.
Now, while I concur (others may disagree) that for all its spectacle Part I was a little ponderous (go in with a medium or large real coffee Americana) it was faithful to the novel and the SFX far better than the Lynch offering… This last is, of course unfair, the Lynch offering came out four decades ago… Yes, just a decade short of half a century and so you’d expect as big an improvement in cinematography as there was between 1984 and films made towards the end of the war (that’s WWII in case you were wondering how old I was).
So, how did the Front Row review go? Well, the first thing that surprised me was that one of the reviewers hates epic ‘sci-fi’. Yes, for some in the arts, SF remains a ghetto genre. (Or perhaps we at SF² Concatenation should swop our book review panel of ardent SF readers to those that loathe genre literature. Perhaps File 770 should be edited by someone outside of fandom? Perhaps Boris Johnson should become Prime Minister…)
Be thrilled. Be amazed. The truth is out there….
You can listen to the first third of the programme here: “Front Row, Dune 2”.
(7) ABOUT THOSE LENSMEN. Steve J. Wright may not be treading new ground in “How the Other Half Lives”, but fascism, John W. Campbell Jr., and the Golden Age have been thoroughly plowed under by the time he’s done.
This is spilling out of a discussion over on File 770 (item 4 on the scroll), which in turn derived partly from Charles Stross’s “We’re Sorry we Created the Torment Nexus”. It also ties in, of course, to the ongoing “was John W. Campbell a fascist?” non-debate (because people who say no are not changing their minds, ever.)
“Fascist”, of course, is one of those terms linguisticians call “snarl words”, where the negative connotations have pretty much obscured the original usage…
…But were Golden Age SF writers in general, and John W. Campbell Jr. in particular, happy with elitism? Oh, you bet they were. The Gernsbackian ideal, as exemplified in Gernsback’s own ridiculous novel Ralph 124C41+, was a homogeneous, rationally-planned society in which government, if it existed at all, was strictly subordinated to the scientific elite – in the eponymous Ralph’s case, the “plus men”, entitled to that + sign on their names, whose unfettered experimentation led to an endless round of fresh discoveries and scientific benefits for the general populace. And you can’t throw a brick in Campbell-era SF without hitting an omni-competent super-science hero with world-transforming insights and the steely determination to push aside bureaucratic meddling and Get Things Done. Campbell himself regarded Astounding as not just a science fiction magazine, but a proving ground for the ideas that would shape the world of tomorrow. And he had plenty of sympathy from SF fans, who were happy to believe that their time would come, and they would be in the vanguard of the new elite. Granted, not many fans took it as far as the rather alarming Claude Degler, but if you said “fans are slans” at any fannish gathering of the times, you would see more than one head nodding in approval….
…Navalny got in one last laugh at his funeral on Friday. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, the tune playing in the background wasn’t some funeral dirge, but the theme from his favorite movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was the refrain that plays during the movie’s famous final scene, as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s soulful killer cyborg gives a thumbs-up while he is lowered into a vat of molten steel, sacrificing himself to save the future….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 2, 1966 — Ann Leckie, 58. So let’s start with Lis Carey talking about her favorite work by our writer this Scroll, Ann Leckie:
Ann Leckie wins Hugo in 2014. Photo by Henry Harel.
Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, starting with Ancillary Justice in 2013, gives us a culture where biological sex is ignored, and only female pronouns are used. Breq, our protagonist throughout the trilogy, is the only survivor of a ship destroyed by treachery, and she’s the ship’s artificial intelligence, occupying an ancillary body, i.e., a body whose own personality has been erased and replaced with one more useful to the empire, and presenting herself as an officer.
In her quest for revenge, she becomes more and more fully human, and more and more aware of what’s wrong with the empire she serves. We see glimpses of a galaxy beyond the Radch Empire, some of them fascinating.
We’re certainly not given the impression that the Radch are the good guys. In subsequent books and stories, we get looks at the Radch from the outside, and at the other human cultures trying to survive in a galaxy where the Radch are the major human power. It’s a wonderfully complex and layered universe, and it’s well worth exploring.
Ancillary Justice swept the awards field in 2014: a Hugo at Loncon 3, a British Fantasy Award, the Clarke a Kitschie, and a Nebula. The sequel, Ancillary Sword was nominated at Sasquan and won a BSFA Award; the final book in the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, was a Hugo finalist at MidAmeriCon II. Her next book set in that universe, Provenance, novel garnered a Hugo nomination at Worldcon 76.
Translation State, though also part of the Imperial Radch, is a pretty a stand-alone story. Yes, I liked it a lot. So let’s have Lis set the scene for you again…
It’s set in that universe, on the edge of human space, in a space station where the human polities including the Radch, and several alien polities, attempt to maintain calm and peaceful relations with the Presger, whom no one has ever seen, but who could destroy everyone if they got annoyed.
This is the book where we really get acquainted with the Presger translators, who appear to have been created from humans, but really aren’t, anymore.
It is, I would say, primarily a missing person case more than a murder mystery but it is both. It is a fascinating story.
She’s also written an excellent fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, which I’ve been listening to of late. Adjoa Andoh narrates the audio version. She’s been on Doctor Who numerous times, mostly playing the mother of Martha Jones. She does a stellar performance here.
Leckie has published a baker’s dozen short stories, two set in the Imperial Radch universe. I’ve not read any of them. Who has?
I look forward to seeing what she writes next.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Reality Check shows a fan pedant in (unwelcome!) action.
Close to Home has the most grotesque Pinocchio joke I’ve ever seen.
(11) GOOD OMENS VISUALS. Colleen Doran’s Funny Business is back with “Good Omens Peeks” – artwork at the link.
… I don’t know if, you know, getting cancer, going blind, smashing my face in, and generally having a really awful 2023 hasn’t been some weird sort of super-motivation, but I’m working very steady, and I actually think the art has gotten more solid as I go along.
I’m also very far behind schedule, but since the book was so far ahead to start, even though it’s going to be late, it won’t be horribly late. I set some pages aside and was unable to work on them for months, and that distance helped me work through some problems, too.
Anyhow, here’s some of my art in progress. And thanks for all the votes in the ComicScene awards for Good Omens as #1 crowdfund campaign of 2023….
(12) AFTER MIDNIGHT. Bitter Karella is back with the members of The Midnight Society, who are being a trial to Ursula K. Le Guin. Thread starts here.
Le Guin: ok fine Le Guin: what's your solution King: ok so omelas doesn't control the sky King: What if the kid lived in a balloon? Le Guin: oh christ that's the worst one yet
— The Midnight Society (@midnight_pals) March 2, 2024
…About 45 minutes into the movie, I thought for sure I was toast. Those gorgeous desert sand dunes reminded me of pillows, and I questioned what life choices I made that led me here, to seat H35. But then I saw a guy nod off two rows ahead of me, and I thought about how annoying it would be to have to see this movie again just to catch the parts I missed. I’m not weak like him, I thought, inhaling my Diet Coke. And, to even my own surprise, I powered through, savoring Paul Atreides’ larger-than-life odyssey all the way until the credits rolled at 6:18 a.m.
On the escalator down, I caught up with the three friends from New Jersey. “What are your plans this morning?” I asked, and they told me they were going to walk west to watch the sunrise over the Hudson. I didn’t have the heart (read: brain cells) to tell them the sun rises in the east.
(14) JUSTWATCH. Here are JustWatch’s charts of the most-viewed streaming movies and TV series of February 2024.
Scientists and researchers are celebrating what they call a “dream” discovery after an exploratory drill confirmed a high concentration of helium buried deep in Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of Pulsar Helium, said the confirmed presence of helium could be one of the most significant such finds in the world.
“There was a lot of screaming, a lot of hugging and high fives. It’s nice to know the efforts all worked out and we pulled it off,” Abraham-James said….
…According to Abraham-James, the helium concentration was measured at 12.4%, which is higher than forecasted and roughly 30 times the industry standard for commercial helium.
(16) 2021 FLASHBACK: STRICTER RATINGS FOR THESE SFF MOVIES. The British Board of Film Classification ratings change to Mary Poppins (see Pixel Scroll 2/26/24 item #9) was just the latest to affect sff films as shown in this 2021 BBC News article: “Rocky and Flash Gordon given tighter age rating”. In 2021 the extended edition of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring has also been moved up to a 12A for its “moderate fantasy violence and threat.”Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was moved from Universal to PG.
…Of the 93 complaints the board received last year, 27 were about 1980 space opera film Flash Gordon.
The movie’s 40th anniversary re-release was reclassified up to 12A partly due to the inclusion of “discriminatory stereotypes”.
The BBFC did not say what the stereotypes were. However Flash Gordon’s main villain, Ming the Merciless, was of East Asian appearance but played by Swedish-French actor Max von Sydow….
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back in the day at school — seems like half a century ago (hang on, it was) — there were a bunch of us whose aim in chemistry was to get the contents of one’s boiling tube to mark the ceiling… We were the back bench bucket chemists! Those were the days. Very much in that spirit, physics Matt O’Dowd asks “What Happens If We Nuke Space?” Come on, Bruce Willis has done it?
EMPs aren’t science fiction. Real militaries are experimenting on real EMP generators, and as Starfish Prime showed us, space nukes can send powerful EMPs to the surface. So what exactly is an EMP, and how dangerous are they?
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Eddie Louise, JJ, Bill Higgins, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peace Is My Middle Name.]
(1) LEAVING THE HAMC. Cheryl Morgan’s 7-point “Public Statement re the Hugos” at Cheryl’s Mewsings explains why she recently resigned from WSFS’ Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. It says in part:
3. As a member of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee it was my duty to ensure that the results of the Hugo Award voting process were posted to the official website promptly and accurately, as they were supplied to us by each year’s Worldcon, including those from Chengdu. We had no authority to comment on or change those results in any way.
4. I am not, nor ever have been, a member of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (MPC).
5. I am not, nor ever have been, a Director of Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), and have no financial stake in that organisation. WIP was created from the corporation that ran the SF&F Translation Awards (of which I was a Director), but no directorships carried over from the one organisation to the other, save for Kevin Standlee who is a Director of WIP because of his membership of the MPC.
6. I resigned from the Hugo Award Marketing Committee, primarily because I no longer wish to be held responsible for (including being subject to legal and reputational risk for) the actions of organisations of which I am not a member and over which I have no influence….
(2) DAVE MCCARTY SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS. McCarty’s name is in the news because of the Hugos, but two people today shared other grievances at Bluesky.
The book that changed me as a teenager I was a weekend lurker in the fantasy and science fiction section of my local bookstore, eager to spend my weekly allowance, but overwhelmed by the selection. I was drawn to the monsters and half-naked women on the paperback covers of Arthur Saha’s Year’s Best Fantasy anthologies, but too embarrassed for a long time to bring one up to the counter and pay for it. When, eventually, I got up the nerve, I found the stories uniformly enthralling, and the bookseller didn’t bat an eye. After that, I grew much more bold about what I wanted to read, regardless of how lurid the cover might be.
…Unsurprisingly, the new license terms generated a storm of criticism. Judging by what I saw on social media, and by what authors who alerted me to the new TOU told me, many rights holders took steps to cancel their contracts. Findaway/Spotify appears to have been caught completely flat-footed by the backlash.
… There’s still some vagueness (“otherwise use”) and I note the inclusion of “training” (AI training? It’s not clear, although I think the language following suggests not).
But it is a substantial change, and it does address the criticism of the original version. The license is no longer irrevocable or royalty-free. “Translate” and “modify” have been removed, as has the derivative works language. There’s no longer a moral rights waiver. And, pretty clearly in response to authors’ and narrators’ concerns, the final sentence rules out using audiobook files to create new works based on the original, or to create new machine voices, unless the rights holder gives permission (although, if I were a narrator, I might wonder whether “new” in that context creates a loophole for duplicating an existing voice).
There are two ways to look at what happened here. One is that Spotify tried an egregious rights grab, got called out for it, and did what greedy corporations sometimes do when challenged: walked it back, though not quite completely. The other is that Spotify did not anticipate the backlash, and whether because it recognized the validity of the criticism or simply saw that its self-interest was at stake, reconsidered and implemented the change.
Regardless, I do think that Findaway/Spotify deserves some credit….
This week, I took down that psychoanalytic take I did about Cait Corrain. Reception of the piece was positive, but I’d started to feel rankled and uncomfortable when I saw it on my page, like I needed a shower….
St. Clair’s explanation deserves a click-through to read. And I truly empathize with the next paragraph.
…As the Internet plunges its talons further into everybody’s brains, this kind of doom spiral is going to get harder to resist. The SFF, publishing, and book-reading communities have largely chosen their futures, and it’s more of this codependency: more controversies, more incidents called Something-Gate, more of that awful, druglike disgust that keeps one fixated. As writers, we could follow along: delve into endless Internet research, throw around receipts, assemble our alembics and phials and glass curlicues and try to distil the final Take on this week’s Cait Corrain. Or maybe we could think about literally anything else….
(7) THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND. Peter Wood discusses “The Pros and Cons of Nostalgia” at Asimov’s SF blog From Earth to the Stars.
Margaret Atwood and I both grew up in large Canadian cities and our fathers ran summer camps in rural Ontario. Atwood’s father, a forest entomologist, took his family from Toronto into the wilds of Ontario to live with graduate students. As a teenager, Atwood worked as a camp counselor for three years.
I tell you this, because our family lived at the northern Ontario summer camp my Dad ran for the Ottawa Boys Club every summer until we moved to Florida. I worked for three years as a camp counselor in college. No need to cue the Twilight Zone music, but the settings of two of Atwood’s short story collections—Moral Disorder and Cats Eye—spoke to me because of her descriptions of rustic Ontario in the summer and cold dark winters in Toronto.
Like Atwood, I often use my own memories to embellish my writing. “Une Time Machine, S’il Vous Plait”has scenes in a summer camp in northern Ontario and sections in the dead of winter in Toronto and Ottawa in the 1970s. Those scenes were some of the easiest in the short story to put to paper, because they are still vivid to me. Their impressions are much stronger than memories of much more recent events….
…It seems that AI may be soon having its day. Early in the book you tease a reason for Thalamus finally coming about and mention an “emergency final page.” When we get to the end, you offer a very honest experience with using Midjourney, and how you felt you needed to accommodate AI in your work, or quit. To start, how do you feel about someone typing in “Dave McKean style comic book cover” into Midjourney and using the result?
I had completed the book by June of last year, and had written that last page as a much more positive paragraph with walking anecdotes and bird pictures and a sense that I’d never felt more professionally fulfilled and personally happy as I did at the time, partly because I really enjoyed putting the book together and revisiting so much stuff that I determinedly had not looked back at for decades. But then the Midjourney thing happened and suddenly the book took on a whole other meaning for me, it was literally the end of my era, from now on my life is pre and post AI.
To start? I consider that action to be theft, the final image will be trained on my work without my knowledge, agreement, or any reimbursement. It’s fraudulent, because the user will consider it their work when my name is in the prompt, surely no simpler paper trail has ever existed for a fraud court case? So then it also makes a difference to me whether this is just one person at home having some fun with a new tech toy and not taking it any further, or someone selling that image, and there’s a greyscale of uses in between. The legal side is a minefield, and we really haven’t caught up with the implications. And finally, and most importantly in this case, the people I’ve talked to who are enthusiastic about AI actually believe this is a creative act. Typing a few words into a bot, and they will tell you how much they thought about the exact words to use, and tweaked the prompt 20-odd times, but this is essentially typing a few words into a bot and waiting a minute. This is such a denuded idea of what creativity is, they are only fooling themselves. There will always be artists who will use it as a tool and be very clear and thorough about staying on the right side of perceived moral lines, but I think they are hypnotized by the shiny new thing. They will be the Trojan horse that wrecks the notion of art, something which has carefully evolved over tens of thousands of years and helped shape the best of us, trashed by glorified predictive text. And you have no idea how sad it is for me to hear artists justify this work with the sort of evasive, relativist art-bollocks that has corrupted the contemporary gallery market….
(9) BISHOP REMEMBERED. Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams tells about her friendship with the late Michael Bishop and his family in “Cri de Coeur”.
…The 1992 World Fantasy Convention was held in Mike’s hometown—Pine Mountain, Georgia—and that’s where I got the chance to really get to know him. After spending time with Mike and his wife Jeri, they invited me, and a couple of other people, over to their beautiful home. They gave us a tour of their house, which I believe had been owned by Jeri’s family for a few generations. They also regaled us with stories about their son Jamie and daughter Stephanie, who were both away at college.
My oldest daughter was born in 1993, and I tentatively included a photo of her in a few of our authors’ holiday cards. Mike’s response to the photo and his sincere interest in my family encouraged me to continue to include these photos in cards and to expand on the number of people who received them. [I know some authors were perplexed, but I was delighted that eventually many started sending photos of their kids and/or pets back to me.] As I told Mike years later, I also tried to emulate the loving home life for my kids that he and Jeri had provided for their own children.
Mike’s ninth story in Asimov’s, “Cri de Coeur,” was our September 1994 cover story. This moving novella about the journey on a generation starship was also a finalist for both the Hugo and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. There was a twelve-year gap between Mike’s tenth Asimov’s story in 1996 and his eleventh in 2008. During that time, Mike and I mostly stayed in touch via holiday cards.
On April 16, 2007, Mike and Jeri experienced one of the most terrible tragedies that can befall a family. Their thirty-five-year-old son Jamie, now an instructor of German at Virginia Tech, was murdered in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. Mike’s next tale for us, “Vinegar Peace, or, The Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage” (July 2008), was the painful story of a society that sends adults to orphanages after their last child dies. It, too, was nominated for a Nebula….
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 19, 1937 — Terry Carr. (Died 1987.) I’ll admit right now that I do not know Terry Car from any of his novels which are Warlord of Kor, Invasion from 2500 co-written with Ted White, and Cirque. I’ll certainly invite opinions on how they are. What I do know about him is from his most excellent and rather extensive work in the area of editing anthologies.
But first I must discuss his work as a fanzine editor, winning his first Hugo for the zine FANAC, co-edited with Ron Ellik, which they started in 1958. There were seventy-one issues (the last six were co-edited with his first wife, Miriam Carr). Read the first issue at Fanac.org. Terry would win a second Hugo for Best Fan Writer in 1973 at Torcon II. He would also be the 1986 Worldcon’s Fan Guest of Honor.
Terry and second wife Carol Carr, center, Jock Root and German literary agent Thomas Schlueck left, with Gary Deindorfer at far right, on the subway coming back to Manhattan from a gathering at Ted White’s house for TAFF delegate Schlueck in 1966. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
His work on anthologies began in the Sixties on the first seven volumes of World’s Best Science Fiction with Donald A. Wollheim. I’m reasonably sure that I’ve read at least some of them as the contents are quite familiar.
Also while working for Donald A. Wollheim at Ace Books, he was responsible for the acclaimed Ace Special series, bringing out R.A. Lafferty’s Past Master (1968), Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage (1968).
Now I know that I’ve read much of his next two anthology series as they were quite excellent. They came out almost out at the same time as the Seventies got under way, with Universe having an impressive run of seventeen volumes, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year with just a volume less.
He also had an anthology series devoted to original fantasy only, New Worlds of Fantasy which published three volumes stating in the Sixties. He did five volumes in the Fantasy Annual reprint series starting in the late Seventies.
His work would earn two Best Professional Editor Hugos (1985, 1987).
Lastly, he published in his regrettably brief lifetime a reasonably large amount of shorter fiction, over forty pieces. The Seventies collection The Light at the End of the Universe is the only sole look at his short fiction to date. Subterranean Press, where art thou?
The trailer buzz was worrisome, advance ticket sales anemic. Then last week, the critic reviews for Madame Web were posted, and they stung deepest of all — Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff received the lowest average Rotten Tomatoes score (13 percent) of any major superhero film in nearly a decade.
“On Wednesday night, you could actually watch advance purchase sales declining in real time as buyers were refunding their tickets,” marvels a major theatrical chain insider. “It really says something when you’d rather have Shazam! 2 numbers.”
It marked one of the lowest starts in Hollywood history for a film based on a Marvel character. Domestic box office for the first six days in North America was just $26.2 million after opening midweek on Valentine’s Day. International tallied $25.7 million from 61 markets. Even the fan-friendly CinemaScore grade was poor (C+ — extremely low for a superhero title).
Like DC and the once-unstoppable Marvel, Sony is now finding itself in under the gun to reevaluate how it makes comic book movies….
A draft script from the original Star Wars movie trilogy, left in a London home rented by the actor Harrison Ford in the 1970s, has sold for more than $10,000 at auction.
The fourth draft of the screenplay that became the epic 1977 film “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” was unbound and incomplete. But it included iconic scenes, including the one that introduces Chewbacca – the towering, hairy Wookiee who co-pilots the Millennium Falcon alongside Ford’s character, Han Solo – in a dimly lit tavern.
The script, dated March 15, 1976, and titled “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller,” sold to an Austrian collector for about $13,600 during a live-streamed auction on Saturday. The seller owned the home that Ford had rented while working on the film….
(14) SPIDER MAN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] People have certain expectations of an Adam Sandler movie. They should throw them out the window before seeing this Netflix pic.
It was almost random, to be honest. I had a general meeting with him in L.A. a couple of years ago, because I’m a massive fan of his, and by the end of that chat, he was like, “Hey, what about this space film I hear you guys are developing, I’d love to read it.” We weren’t that far along but that’s how it unfolded. I remember going back up to my room and thinking: that’s pretty fucking brilliant. It was like an epiphany. But when it he said he wanted to do it, I was like, “the issue is that you’re a big name in the comedy circuit, but I’m just a little concerned about being able to pull up the financing for this with you in a dramatic role.” It’s a weird thing to say to one of the highest-grossing actors! But he’s not going to bank a dramatic science fiction film like George Clooney would. He asked how much we needed, and I said, “Well, it’s in zero gravity, one of the characters is CGI, so it’s gonna cost a bunch of money.” And he says: “I’ll get your money, I have a deal with Netflix.” And three weeks later we were shaking hands….
One similarity between “Spaceman” and “Chernobyl” was that you didn’t try to give your actors Eastern European accents. Adam Sandler sounds like Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan sounds like Carey Mulligan.
I hate accents. They’re the most ridiculous thing ever. To me, if we want to suggest they’re speaking Czech, why is the best way to achieve that having them speak English with a really fake accents? Have you ever heard an accent in a movie work?
…Start-up companies around the world are competing to develop technologies for producing chicken, beef, salmon and other options without the need to raise and slaughter animals. China has made the development of the industry a priority. In the United States, the Department of Agriculture has given initial blessings to two producers.
Now, a measure in Florida that would ban sales of laboratory-grown meat has gained widespread attention beyond state borders. The bill, which is advancing through the Florida Legislature, would make the sale or manufacture of lab-grown meat a misdemeanor with a fine of $1,000. It’s one of a half-dozen similar measures in Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia and elsewhere.
Opponents of lab-grown meat include beef and poultry associations worried that laboratory-made hamburgers or chicken nuggets could cut into their business.
Supporters include environmentalists who say it would reduce animal cruelty and potentially help slow climate change. Meat and dairy together account for about 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations.
Other backers of the industry include advocates for space exploration, a subject particularly relevant to Florida, which is home to the Kennedy Space Center and the site of countless launches to the moon and beyond. Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX has its own outer space ambitions, has partnered with Israel-based Aleph Farms to research lab-grown meat on a Space X flight to the International Space Station that launched from Florida.
How’s this actually made?
Lab-grown meat, also called cultivated meat, is grown from cells that have been taken from an animal. The animals aren’t slaughtered.
Then water, salt and nutrients like amino acids, minerals and vitamins are added to the cells, which multiply and eventually become minced meat….
(16) CAKE AND CANDLES. James Bacon volunteered to let me run the poem he composed to wish me “Happy birthday”.
Happy birthday to you Mike, We wish you cheer & delight, On your auspicious nice day Hoping your brother’s is a nice night.
You report on the appalling news That’s giving us all the horrid blues Doubtful of when it might actually end With an apology, perhaps only if wills bend.
We need to see your cheerful smile Defeating those who tried to defile Shining a light on where it went bad Finding reason to cease being sad
A happy day is yours to enjoy What positives can we also deploy Looking forward upward bright Some cake and cheer on birthday night
Ray Bradbury’s 89th Birthday Cake. Photo by John King Tarpinian.
[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Jean-Paul Garnier, James Bacon, Daniel Dern, Jason Sanford, Anne Marble, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]
… Funko has revealed three new POP vinyl figures of Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) as Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, Sir Alexander (Alan Rickman) as Dr. Lazarus, and Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) as Tech Sergeant Chen. They’re all given the classic look from the original “Galaxy Quest” TV series, though they’re not intended to be the classic versions of their characters. If they were, Tim Allen’s hair mold would probably look more retro. However, they did depict Fred Kwan with that semi-squinted expression in his eyes, which only really happened when he was fully in character on the show. Personally, I’d like to have a series of “Galaxy Quest” Funko POPs with them looking disheveled, such as Sir Alexander with hair poking out of his torn alien headpiece.
What’s a little disappointing is the lack of the rest of the original crew, with no figures for Gwen DiMarco (Sigourney Weaver) as Lt. Tawny Madison and Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell) as Laredo in sight. Seems like quite an oversight to exclude both the woman and the Black cast members from the movie/series, especially since the packaging for the other figures indicates that there are two other “Galaxy Quest” Funko POPs on the way…
(2) AFTER ACTION REPORT PART II. {By Steven French.] [Part I was in a previous Scroll.] It wouldn’t be a fantasy exhibition in Leeds without *some* mention of JRR! Leeds Central Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination included a couple of displays with Tolkien-related material including one with a photo of his and Edith’s house in West Park, out on the edge of the city, as well as two of his poems that were published in the university student magazine The Gryphon. One, ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ not only features a dragon on its hoard but also makes mention of a ring (!). The other, ‘Light as Leaf on Lindentree’ , from 1925, eventually became the Song of Beren and Lúthien which Strider recited to the hobbits on Weathertop.
(3) AFTER ACTION REPORT PART III. [By Steven French.] And finally (honest!), no fantasy exhibition would be complete without a dragon or two and Fantasy: Realms of Imagination at Leeds Central Library had its fair share, including this fine example:
Plus an egg or two:
But my favourite was this little fellow, made by the Bermantofts Pottery of east Leeds:
(Bermantofts Pottery also made the ox-blood faïence (glazed terracotta tiles) for the facades of such London Underground stations as Covent Garden and Russell Square)
Even the reading room, with its magnificent ceiling, took part in the spot-the-dragon competition (can you see it?!):
Fun for kids of all ages!
(4) ABOUT THOSE SMOFCON VIDEOS. Ersatz Culture advanced this “Modest Proposal” about the Chengdu panels at SMOFcon:
If WSFSy types want to try to rebuild trust, maybe they could start by making the videos of the Chengdu panels at Smofcon back in Dec available to all?
AIUI currently they are available to anyone who forks out for a membership, but as a gesture of good faith, make them free? pic.twitter.com/0wAC5fCBkZ
He’s also posted this at Mastodon, where Cheryl Morgan gave a response that can be read at the link.
(5) TIANWEN. The “Tianwen” project was announced in Chengdu last October with the cooperation of representatives of several professional writers groups and Hugo Award Administrator Dave McCarty. This puff piece encompasses what we know so far: “Tianwen: Unveiling China’s Diverse Science Fiction to the World” at News Directory 3. While the publicity seeks to associate a new literature prize with the Hugo brand, it does not appear to claim a formal connection to the WSFS award.
The announcement and unveiling of the “Tianwen” project at the first Industrial Development Summit of the World Science Fiction Conference is set to revolutionize the Chinese science fiction scene. This global project, launched by the Chinese Authors Association and the Organizing Committee of the World Science Fiction Conference, aims to discover new talents, support science fiction works, and promote the integrated development of the industry.
The project was unveiled by Alai, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, Hiroshi Osawa, Chairman of the Japan Science Fiction Writers Association, and Dave McCarty, head of the Hugo Award Selection Committee. Alai expressed his hope that “Qu Yuan’s romanticism and idealism will be better publicized in ‘Tianwen’”, while Osawa emphasized the impact of the project on shaping the future generation.
The “Tianwen” plan includes the establishment of the Tianwen Global Science Fiction Literature Prize, which will be awarded annually from 2024. This prize aims to encourage new and young writers, focusing on their innovative literary works and expression of new cultural fields. It will serve as an important supplement to the prestigious Hugo Awards and contribute to the diversity of the Hugo culture.
Additionally, the “Tianwen” project will host various activities to promote the integrated development of the global science fiction industry. These include sub-forums, award ceremonies, promotion conferences, creation salons, exhibitions, and industry roadshows.
Liang Xiaolan, the chairman of the World Science Fiction Conference Chengdu 2023, emphasized that “Tianwen” is not only an award and program, but also a platform for the industrial development of national science fiction culture. This initiative aims to elevate Chinese science fiction to a global level and promote exchange and collaboration between China and foreign countries.
With the inclusion of Chinese works in the selection process of the Hugo Awards for the first time, “Tianwen” will play a crucial role in showcasing Chinese science fiction to a wider audience. Dave McCarty views “Tianwen” as a valuable platform for international science fiction exchange, leading the way for the global science fiction industry….
(6) LESS PAIN, MORE GAIN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The Directors Guild of America–the most prominent Hollywood Guild that did not strike last year—has now gotten a bump in several contract areas to more closely match their sibling guilds. You know, the siblings who did walk the picket lines. “DGA, the Guild That Didn’t Strike, Gets Improved Contract Terms” in Variety.
The Directors Guild of America, the Hollywood union that did not strike last year, told members Thursday that it has won additional gains, including a viewership bonus for streaming shows.
DGA members will get a 50% residual bump for work on the most-watched shows on streaming platforms, matching the terms won by the Writers Guild of America.
The DGA also got increases in several other areas, including a .5% increase in pension and health contributions in both the second and third year of the contract.
The DGA agreed to a three-year deal with the major studios on June 3, about a month into the WGA strike. At the time, DGA negotiators did not seek a viewership-based bonus, instead choosing to focus on a 21% increase in streaming residuals to account for the growth in foreign subscribers.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was not obligated to reopen the terms of that deal, which was ratified by 87% of the members. But by doing so, and matching the streaming residual terms obtained by the WGA, the AMPTP helps DGA leadership make the case to its members that they were not disadvantaged by refusing to strike….
…When literary authors cross over into science fiction, they often do so as enlightened homesteaders, equipped with notions of the field’s backwardness and confidence that their own innovative ideas will reform the backwaters of tropey sci-fi for the better. (Remember when Ian McEwan — in A. D. 2019 — told sci-fi writers that they’d better start “actually looking at the human dilemmas” that would arise with high-level AI?)
Samantha Harvey falls into a different camp, in that she’s not attempting what we might consider “science fiction” — not exactly. I initially found Orbital (2022) because it was displayed the sci-fi section of my library; however, Harvey has described it as “space realism”: a rendering of life in space as humans currently experience it. Orbital takes place in the near future, on an international space station (the ISS in all but name), wherein six astronauts live and work, sheltered from the black void by its narrow walls. Their daily tasks are structured and mundane, and nothing happens in the novel (spacewalks, toilet repairs, floating dinners served in bags) that hasn’t happened in real life. No speculative elements, except a new manned mission to the moon, are introduced.
That being said, sci-fi fans would do themselves a disservice in skipping Orbital. Although it has no aliens or new technology, it’s one of the most inventive and immersive novels I’ve read in a long time.
(8) A HIGH WIRE ACT. That’s what Paul Weimer says readers are witnessing in his review of the final volume of a trilogy by Kevin Hearne, A Curse of Krakens: “Seven Kennings Trilogy and the Power of Story” at Nerds of a Feather.
…Right at the start, we find that this novel, and this trilogy is about the telling of story. A bard with the power of a Kenning, in particular the magical ability to project his voice, begins to tell the war-weary city of the war that they themselves are suffering privation under. We are in medias res of the Giant’s War, and the bard, we soon learn, has been sent to tell the story of the Giants War and prepare the populace for what is to come next.
But it’s not a simple linear narrative. This is not a simple recitation of facts. The bard has collected and (with his flawless memory) organized a raft of stories from, ultimately, twenty or so points of view. This sounds absolutely unwieldy and unsustainable and it is a high wire act that Hearne works at through the books. Hearne manages it by telling the stories of these characters through the bard in a narratively interesting and engaging order, which is not a straight up order by dates. And by having the bard tell the stories, we can use present day events in Pelemyn itself as a breather and a buffer from the stories he tells.
What’s more, this ambitious three volume out of order narrative drives plot right up to the “present”…
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 28, 1981 — Elijah Wood, 43. In Elijah Wood, we’ve an actor that I always enjoy watching. Best known here and in the greater film community for being Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, he has a much more extensive film career.
Elijah Wood in 2011. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
He makes his debut in a blink and you’ll miss it performance as Video Game Boy #2 in Back to the Future Part II; he next has a significant genre role as Nat Cooper in Forever Young, the screenplay being written by J. J. Abram from his story named “The Rest of Daniel”.
He next shows up as the young Mike Marshall (primary version) in Radio Flyer with Tom Hanks playing, uncredited the older version and the film narrator. Fantastic film that.
Then he’s Huck in, well, The Adventures of Huck Finn. Haven’t seen it, but the usual suspects at Rotten Tomatoes who did see this Disney Production did like it and gave it a seventy-three rating. I know it’s not genre, but I like the story. A lot.
Elijah Wood in 2019. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Next is SF in Deep Impact where he plays, let me see my notes, Leo Biederman, a teenage astronomer who discovers the Wolf–Biederman comet . Oh look they cast a teenager as a teenager!
Now we have an adult role for him in one of my favorite films — he’s Patrick Wertz in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Good role, wonderfully executed by him.
Can we skip Sin City pretty please? Yes, I know, and do forgive me here.
He’s got a minor role in, depending in how you frame it, the reboot or new version or remake of The Toxic Avenger. I personally see no reason for such a perfectly trashy film to be made again, do you?
The graphic novelist Posy Simmonds has won the Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics festival – the first time a British artist and author has been awarded the world’s most prestigious prize for lifetime achievement in comics.
Simmonds’s satirical observations on modern British society, interweaving detailed illustration with long literary texts, are held to have redefined the graphic novel genre.
She said of the award: “I was gobsmacked – époustouflée, as you would say in French … It’s extraordinary because if you’re writing or drawing, you work in a room on your own, and it’s then very extraordinary when the book, or your work, or you are given a lot of exposure.”…
(12) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport has another free story – “The Empty Throne” by Benjamin C. Kinney – to encourage new subscribers.
For the final free-to-read story of January, Benjamin C. Kinney takes us to 19th century Budapest, where a young woman wrestles with her father’s angels. Note: Should you be inclined towards tremendous footnotes, the author has linked one at the end of the story for you to peruse.
(13) SQUISHMALLOWS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This Entertainment Weekly article recommends these as Valentine’s Day gifts. Hmpf. Perhaps for one’s young nephew, or niece, but it might be just a little bit ick (or EW) to give an adult love interest a squishy pillow-shaped plush styled after an underage tween/teen. “Harry Potter Squishmallows are available at Amazon just in time for Valentine’s Day”.
… Your wish has been granted with no wand-waving needed, as Harry Potter Squishmallows now exist. The lovable main character has been reimagined into a poofy, cozy plush toy that will delight any HP fan come Valentine’s Day. The Gryffindor legend has his glasses, Hogwarts house robe, and trademark lightning bolt scar all in an ultra-huggable material.
If you’re interested in snapping up the OG trio, Ron Weasley is also available, and Hermione Granger can be preordered now, too, with the official launch date set for February 13….
(14) THUNDERBOLT FANTASY. A new episode of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up today, where they discuss the second season of the Taiwanese Wuxia Puppet series Thunderbolt Fantasy, with special guest Tom Merritt of the Daily Tech News Show and Sword & Laser Podcast. “Anime Explorations Podcast: Episode 16: Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 2”.
…The clip that began picking up steam was Tyra on the Jumbotron, covering her eyes with her hands as the two furries leaned over her to caress one another….
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Kathy Sullivan, Alexander Case, 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.]
…Criticisms of Starship Troopers’ themes, while hyperbolic, were not entirely off-base.In Heinlein’s world, the idealmilitary life is violent, abusive, and deindividualizing; death is and should be omnipresent at every stage of training. For example, there’s the basic training exercise in which
“… they dumped me down raw naked in a primitive area of the Canadian Rockies and I had to make my way forty miles through mountains. I made it [by killing rabbits and smearing fat and dirt on his body] … The others made it, too… all except two boys who died trying. Then we all went back into the mountains and spent thirteen days finding them…. We buried them with full honors to the strains of ‘This Land Is Ours’… They weren’t the first to die in training; they weren’t the last.”
Through the eyes of Johnnie, we experience an intensity of life that makes civilian existence seem anemic, even pathetic….
…With all that being said, it feels wrong to mention Fourth Wing in the same breath as Starship Troopers. Putting aside the fact that Fourth Wing is a poorly-written work whose prose has been critiqued to death by many people before me, the two books seem to represent opposing moments in publishing history. Heinlein, for all his faults, was writing “up” for an audience of teens, treating them as adults and including them in the sphere of “adult” science fiction, with complex worldbuilding and (relatively) sophisticated themes. Sixty years later, Fourth Wing and its team (author Rebecca Yarros and Entangled Publishing) represent a publishing world moving in the opposite direction: creating books for adults in an actively juvenile style, and cultivating an audience of adult readers who no longer demand that published books have good writing at all so long as they check necessary boxes of sensation and eroticism.
But thematically and content-wise, the two books are as close as one could possibly get. Fourth Wing, like Starship Troopers, sells a military coming-of-age story in which mass death is a part of the allure (“brutally addictive,” says the cover blurb). Someone on Reddit puts the death count of Fourth Wing at 222 cadets, plus an untold number of civilians — though it’s widely considered a “fluff” read. Its primary audience (and the primary audience of most mainstream fantasy now) is female, young, progressive, and would probably be aghast at being compared to grimdark bros, Heinlein apologists, or men in general. And yet here we all are, hooked on the same stuff….
…First published in paperback by Ace Books, the novel sported cover art by award-winning artists and biracial couple Leo and Diane Dillon. Their painting featured profiles of the book’s protagonists in the left bottom corner looking off into the distance. Surrounding the pair is a blue and white celestial-like scene with what appears to be a brown planet and a spaceship hovering above.
(Leo Dillon, of Trinidadian descent, died in 2012. He was the first African American to win the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustrators of children’s books, while the Dillons were the only consecutive winners of the award, having received the honor in 1976 and 1977.)
The Dillons’ original 17 and 1/4 by 13 inches acrylic painting is now being offered for sale for the first time at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America global book fair taking place in San Francisco in early February. The asking price is $20,000.
“It is literally unique. This is it, the original and not a print,” said Mark Funke, a rare bookseller who lives in Mill Valley where his business is also located.
Scouting out shops in the East Bay several years ago looking for new material to sell, Funke had received a tip about the sale of various items from a home in the Oakland hills. It led him to receive an invite from the executor of the estate to come to the house.
To his amazement, Funke had stumbled onto the archives of three individuals involved in the world of science fiction writing. One was the late Terry Carr, an editor at Ace Books who published the works of Le Guin and other sci-fi authors and died in 1987. While most of Carr’s personal papers had gone to UC Riverside, Funke found several boxes still in the house and acquired them….
… Funke is now handling its sale on behalf of the Carr and Lichtman Estate. He will have it available on a first-come, first-served basis at his booth at the book fair.
“I am pricing it high for the artists but, I think, reasonable for it being Le Guin’s most famous novel. She won awards for it, and it ratcheted her up to the greats of science fiction,” said Funke. “It’s got very topical content; this idea of the planet Gethen and ambisexual individuals. I just think it is fascinating and a very active topic in today’s discussion.”
In a statement to the B.A.R. about the sale, the executor for the family estate said, “The Carr-Lichtman family has treasured this artwork for over 50 years and now it is time to find a new owner who will cherish this remarkable work of science fiction publishing history for the next 50 years.”…
We have partnered with the University of Delaware for an academic illustrated catalog of the Korshak Collection. We don’t want to give away all of our surprises, but the catalog will include a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman and entry by Pulitzer prize winner author Michael Dirda, as well as an interview with the Hugo Award winning artist Michael Whelan. We are so grateful for this partnership and all of the outstanding contributions that have made this project possible.
… This is a fascinating book, and, for Captain Britain fans, a definite buy. For comic fans interested in Marvel UK, of great interest. Yet it is also an excellent autobiography, a very readable and personal exploration of a comic fans desires, aspirations and progression to be a writer and an insight into how Marvel UK was, and offers real honesty when it comes to a comics career that took an interesting turn that saw David Thorpe’s work in the industry elsewhere. The story is brimful, and includes how another comic related moment saw him turn to a very successful career beyond comics, one that arguably has made a real difference to the world….
… David Thorpe came up with the concept of Earth 616, and he describes it as a Stan Lee styled “Hoo Boy” moment when he heard Mysterio say “This is Earth dimension 616. I’m from Earth 833.” to Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Far From Home and that is something that any comic reader can appreciate, many of whom have imagined themselves as writers….
A golden glow illuminated the employees huddled inside a Hex & Co. cafe on the Upper East Side, a haven created for board game enthusiasts to gather for fantastical quests.
Meticulous campaigns were second nature to these workers — how many times had they infiltrated an obsidian castle or vanquished a warlock? They had been immersed in this particular adventure for months, navigating a labyrinth governed by strict rules and made harrowing by unfamiliar tasks and tests. Now they gathered to plot their final triumph: unionization.
On that Tuesday in September, Hex & Co. workers confronted their bosses with a demand for recognition. Less than two months later, they voted to join Workers United, the same group that has been organizing workers at Starbucks stores across the United States. The workers at the three Hex & Co. locations across New York City were just the first employees of a board game cafe in the city to unionize. Workers at the Uncommons and the Brooklyn Strategist followed this month.
All the stores fall under the ownership of either Jon Freeman, Greg May or both, and they pleaded with their employees not to unionize, saying that a union would wipe out the “flexible and open-door atmosphere we have tried to foster.”
Teaching board games is a far cry from swinging a miner’s pick or working numbing hours on an assembly line. In fact, many of the cafe workers said they hung out at their workplaces in their off hours. But in the end, complaints over dollar-an-hour raises and bands of unruly children reigned: Among the 94 employees who voted, only 17 dissented….
…Only 10 percent of American wage and salary workers were union members in 2022, a historical low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The food-service sector’s membership rate was less than 4 percent. But this fiscal year saw the most representation filings since 2015, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
Young workers “are willing to take risks, because they feel like their future is at stake,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University.
After slogging through a recession and a pandemic, many found themselves earning minimum wage while corporate profits soared, she said….
(6) AI AS SEEN BY THREE SFF AUTHORS. The River Cities’ Reader tells fans how to access the “Virtual Event: ‘Speculating Our AI Future,’” with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells on January 11.
Designed for those fascinated by, or terrified about, the rise of artificial intelligence is invited to a January 11 virtual event hosted by the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries, when Illinois Libraries Present’s Speculating Our AI Future finds bestselling science-fiction writers Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells in discussion on the promise, perils, and possible impacts that AI will have on our future, as well as AI as portrayed in contemporary and future science-fiction writing.
The Speculating Our AI Future panel discussion with Corry Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells will begin on January 11 at 7 p.m., participation in the virtual event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org, and calling (309)755-3393 and visiting SilvisLibrary.org.
Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Martha Wells.
(7) GRAPHIC EXAMPLES. Sam Thielman hits the high notes in a review of “The Year in Graphic Novels” for the New York Times.
Good graphic novels tend to appear in bookstores seemingly out of nowhere after years of rumors, scattershot serialization, “process” zines and snippets posted to social media. As literature, long-form comics are uniquely resistant to editing. As visual art, the cartoonist is in the weird position of having no access to the final product until it’s presented to the public. So it’s frankly miraculous when we get as many good comics as we do. This year there were remarkable new books from established masters and freshman graphic novels from brilliant young artists. Better still, a gratifyingly thick stratum of our 2023 stack was devoted to making us laugh. It’s a rich conversation, and one that promises to continue into next year and long beyond.
From the moment you open it, Daniel Clowes’s MONICA (Fantagraphics, 108 pp., $30) announces its ambition. Against the weird hellscape of its front endpapers, the title spread depicts the world at its lifeless, churning, brightly colored beginning. Then all of time (so far) goes by in a whoosh on the next two pages — the dinosaurs, Jesus, Hitler, Little Richard, Sputnik — alongside the copyright boilerplate and the names of the editors and publicist. In Clowes’s smooth lines and precise hues, the rest of the book borrows styles from war, horror and romance comics to tell the story of an ordinary woman trying to give her life some meaning. Is such a thing even possible? Could the attempt destroy everything?…
(8) EVA HAUSER (1954-2023). Past fan fund winner (GUFF) Eva Hauser died December 23 at the age of 69. Here is an excerpt from Jan Vaněk Jr.’s tribute on Facebook:
I am sad to announce that the 1992 GUFF delegate died on Friday 22nd. Eva Hauser[ová] travelled from Prague, still-Czechoslovakia to Syncon ’92 in Sydney, and then to Melbourne and back.
If you were there (despite the small attendance, the trip report reads like the Who Is Who of a golden age of the Australian fandom, and a testimony to their hospitality. Even though so much, and many, have already been lost in time, like tears in rain…), you may remember; and then you will understand why Eva is so much-lamented and widely eulogised from many different communities she was a part of….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 27, 1951 — Charles Band, 72. We have come tonight to honor a true film genius in Charles Band. He entered film production in the Seventies with Charles Band Productions. Dissatisfied with distributors’ handling of his movies, he formed his own company in the early Eighties. At its height, he would release an average of two films a month, one theatrically and one on home video.
So what are you going to recognize out of his hundreds of films?
Most of his films paid the cast next to nothing, were notoriously lax on safety measures according to State officials who fined him considerable amounts over the years and he paid screenwriters, well, guess.
Trancers, also released as Future Cop, the first of a series, which I’ve seen and liked, had Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt in the lead cast. Supposedly the detective here is homage to Bogart’s various detective roles.
As producer, he did Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. Richard Moll who is in the cast and he shaved his head for his role here. The Night Court producers liked the look for Moll, so he continued shaving his head for the show.
Now he also produced a lot of more frankly sleazy SF such as Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, Galactic Gigolo, and Space Sluts in the Slammer, and the post-apocalypse zombie films, Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King and Barbie & Kendra Storm Area 51.
His autobiography has a title that’s every bit has as over the top as most of some of film titles are, Confessions of a Puppetmaster: A Hollywood Memoir of Ghouls, Guts, and Gonzo Filmmaking.
One final note. His entire financial house of cards collapsed in the late Eighties and was seized by various banks who in turned sold the assets off to MGM, so you’re likely to see one of his films streaming just about anywhere these days.
“No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority….
(11) CORE TELEVISION. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Now, I don’t agree with everything in this article (for one thing, Foundation is execrable.) But it is an interesting look at what Apple+ is doing in SFF and why so much of it works. “The Best Sci-Fi Shows of 2023 All of Have One Shocking Thing in Common” at Inverse.
…For All Mankind isn’t the only sci-fi show pushing the limits of the genre on Tim Cook’s dime. The Apple CEO has been quietly funding some of the best science fiction TV in recent memory, ranging from the centuries-spanning Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation to the mind-bending near-future of Severance to the globe-trotting Godzilla spinoff series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters — to name just a few.
And while it’s hard to say what exactly defines an Apple sci-fi show, Inverse spoke to several showrunners and producers who all agree the tech giant brings a unique, futurist perspective to the genre that — when combined with endless cash — helps explain why, all of a sudden, it seems like the best science fiction television is all coming from the same company that sold you your iPhone….
… One thing you can say about pretty much any show or movie on Apple TV+ is that it probably looks gorgeous. While many Netflix productions have a certain flatness to them that can make it feel like the streamer has been cutting corners, Apple is pouring a lot of money into the look (and star power) of its original series — it helps to have a trillion-dollar cash pile, even if Amazon and Disney are still outspending the MacBook maker….
Just as you can count on our planet making a full rotation around the sun every 365 days or so, you can also rest assured that SYFY will use the key of imagination to unlock its annual New Year’s marathon of The Twilight Zone. The honored tradition of airing Rod Serling’s groundbreaking anthology series won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, the 2023-24 edition is super-sized, with the marathon spanning a total of three whole days — starting Saturday (December 30) and ending Tuesday (January 2).
Who needs to smooch someone at midnight when you’ve got Jason Foster (Robert Keith) teaching his wicked family members a lesson they’ll never forget in “The Masks”? Fittingly enough, the classic episode — which revolves around a collection of vain and greedy individuals ordered to wear hideous masks until the stroke of midnight — will air about 40 minutes before the ball drops. If someone offers you a grotesque party favor along with that glass of Champagne, you might want to turn it down….
(13) CHINA’S MIXED SIGNALS ON VIDEO GAME PLAYING. “Will China Ease Its New Video Game Controls? Investors Think So.” The New York Times says, “After a market rout, gaming companies like Tencent and Netease rally on signals that regulators might apply proposed curbs on users less harshly than feared.”
…The events of the past several days underline the push-and-pull forces in Chinese policymaking. The country’s top leaders have acknowledged they need to stabilize the economy, which has been slow to recover from being virtually locked down during the Covid pandemic. But the government’s tight control of how companies do business continues to inject uncertainty into the markets.
China’s National Press and Publication Administration, which issues licenses to game publishers and oversees the industry, unveiled a proposal on Friday aimed at effectively reducing how much people spend playing games. The plan took the industry by surprise, and investors dumped tens of billions of dollars in company stock.
The regulator issued a statement on Saturday stressing that the draft rules aim to “promote the prosperity and healthy development of the industry,” and said it is “listening to more opinions comprehensively and improving regulations and provisions.”
Then on Monday, the agency announced that it had licensed about 100 new games, after licensing 40 others on Friday. And a semiofficial association affiliated with the agency said that the additional game approvals were “positive signals” that the agency supports the industry.
The new regulations would cap how much money users could spend within games on things like upgrading the features of characters or procuring virtual weapons or other things used by the characters. It would also ban rewards that companies use to entice players to return. The proposal did not specify a spending cap…..
… The industry is still reeling from earlier restrictions first imposed in 2019 aimed at what the government deemed was an online gaming addiction among minors, as well as a broader crackdown against tech companies. Regulators also stymied publishers by not issuing any new game licenses for an eight-month stretch that ended in April 2022….
Outer Space is so huge, there’s really no way to wrap your head around the entire thing. This makes it all make sense.
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Dann.] A tale of old Japan. A tale as old as time. A beleaguered hero looking to avenge past wrongs. Western forces looking to control a local government. A beauty of a beast.
When the culture and government deny any usual path to survival, much less happiness, our hero seeks unusual opportunities instead. Learning the secrets of steel. Surreptitiously learning the secrets of the sword. All of them.
Eventually, our hero sets out on a path of vengeance leaving rivers of blood along the way. Companions are found, whether or not our hero desires their companionship.
Each character is well-developed with unique strengths, flaws, and motivations. Even the villains have a compelling story to tell.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Dann, Olav Rokne, Michael J. Walsh, James Bacon, 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 Cat Eldridge.]
